You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February, 2008.
Brooke is the first girl I ever asked to be my girlfriend and we officially dated for about 12 hours. It had taken me several months to summon enough courage to make the proposition; I was certain she would turn me down. Even before I asked her out, we would sneak away and make out almost every day, but somehow I wasn’t convinced she liked me in “that way”. Maybe she just needed someone to practice with, or maybe she was bored… Let’s face it, after-school reruns of Duck Tales couldn’t keep a pair of 14 year olds entertained for long.
I practiced honing my courage by frequently making fake offers, clearly just joking around. Which she would either fake-accept or fake-refuse, whichever could make a better joke at the moment. And so, when I finally did make my real request, she had to ask: “Are you serious?”
“Ummm…” [insert awkward period of silence] “…yeah.”
“Okay.”
Whew, what a relief! With our romance officially commenced, I began the business of trying to get underneath her clothes. She gracefully dodged my attempts and gently deflected my affections to more appropriate lewd behavior. Unfortunately, it was getting late and we had curfews, so we went to our respective homes and separated for the evening.
Brooke was my best friend. She was the first girl, outside of my family that I ever really knew, which is a pretty sad statement considering I was 14 years old when I met her. But I didn’t talk to girls as a general rule… or boys.
I had a couple of friends before. Occasionally I would pick up a schoolmate or a neighbor kid and have a play-date or two, but I never really felt close to any of them. Before I would get the chance to really open up either they would move or I would, and I’d be alone again. My closest friend, my childhood mate Geoff, lived half-way across the state from me. Since his parents were friends with mine I’d still see him every year or two, but it hardly satisfied my need for camaraderie.
I was a lonely child, and I felt like a freak amongst my peers and even today, I’m not entirely sure this feeling was unwarranted. I imagine most humans feel like outsiders from time to time, particularly children… we’re born with only ourselves to be fully aware of, and the rest of humanity is outside our walls. But there seemed to be more to it, I had evaluated the situation scientifically and gathered evidence for my case:
Exhibit A) I was the only kid in school who ate lunch alone.
Exhibit B) I was picked last for every team sport. I wasn’t physically inept, I could kick or dodge a ball with the best of them (well… the upper half of them anyway). But still I was the last kid waiting to be picked, even after Willard. Willard! Who, in spite of his coke-bottle glasses, may have actually qualified as legally blind!
Exhibit C) When called upon in class, other kids could give answers, even if the answer was wrong. When I was called upon, even if I knew the answer, I could only squeak. The sudden shock of becoming the center of attention rendered me mute. Words could not leave my mouth. Only tiny little moans and inaudible squeals escaped. I faked the flu for two weeks when a class presentation was due, justifying it for the greater good while imagining the horrifying prospect of my tightened, pinched larynx standing in front of the class, sending out high-frequency bursts that would drive neighboring dogs into a killing frenzy.
Exhibit D) I had the Dewey Decimal System memorized.
I know now that this was my fault, that had I reached out, someone would have taken me in. Even at the time, I knew this, but I didn’t know how to fix it… even the simplest social maneuvers in starting a conversation were beyond the scope of my imagination.
This feeling of isolation, as well as a general sense of hopelessness that surrounded my family at the time (my mother was at the tail-end of her own emotional breakdown, my family was evicted from our townhouse on Christmas Eve by our grinchy landlord and had to live for a few weeks in a homeless shelter, and my older brother had been arrested for burglary and traded his sentence in detention for drug & alcohol rehabilitation) led me to have a pre-life crisis when I was 13 years old. I broke down, gave into anxiety and despair, and spent the remainder of my 8th grade year at school at home, sleeping, having panic attacks, and vomiting.
When I finally came to, my mother was back on her feet and had gotten a new job and moved us from the shelter and into an apartment of our own. In the same complex lived a couple boys my age, Shawn & Tim… I was still at wit’s end, mentally overwhelmed and emotionally naked, yet they were still interested in friending me. I didn’t really have anything to lose, so I went along, and in doing so I found my path to healing. For the first time in my life, I really let go and allowed myself to become part of the group. We were adventurers together, we were carpenters together, and a handful of times, we were delinquents together.
When Brooke moved in, she became part of the group. At first I hid behind Tim & Shawn and said as little as possible, but I eventually relaxed and became comfortable around her. She wasn’t like the other girls I knew. Well… I didn’t know any other girls.. But the girls I saw at school seemed fussy and complicated. Brooke on the other hand, was laid back and funny. I could relate to her, we could talk & joke. As our circle of friends closed to practically just the two of us, (Tim & I had a falling-out with Shawn, and then Tim became involved in after-school activities and spent much of his off-time with his girlfriends), Brooke and I kept each other intimate company.
It was this ease of spirit that naturally led us to making lascivious jokes, then making fake intimate gestures, then eventually led us to all-out snogging. She was my first kiss and in truth, I wasn’t joking. The pretense of humor simply allowed me to do these things without putting my pride and my heart on the line. I was taken with Brooke. Having a feminine presence in my life who truly seemed to value my company was a breathtaking sensation. Unfortunately, the humorous facade of our affection allowed me to believe it really was all in jest and I never felt confident that she really did have a romantic interest in me.
And so that night shortly before summer when I finally asked Brooke out, I left her on her doorstep and went home and spent the evening with my anxieties. She had been rather quiet on the walk home, we didn’t have our normal chemistry. I hadn’t heard from her in hours… not since she went to bed. Our courtship was clearly in a downward spiral. Did she accept only to be nice and to spare my feelings? (I’ve done the same thing myself.) Was she sick & tired of me pawing at her? What would happen if we broke up? Would we still be friends?
This thought terrified me. I hadn’t known any couples to retain friendship after a broken courtship. My brother hated all the girls with whom he had dated. Tim didn’t like any of his former girlfriends either… they were all crazy, pushy brats. Even my father and mother after their divorce, though put on a good front for us kids, I knew they secretly disdained each other. As far as I knew, it wasn’t possible for lovers to separate and still care for one another.
I couldn’t handle the idea of Brooke hating me, and so I wrote a note …not “breaking up” with her per se… more like “annulling” our romance. I told her that I hadn’t really meant it, that I was caught up in a moment of pubescent passion. I asked her to please forgive me that I gambled our friendship on such silly whims.
I gave Brooke the note the very next morning, and she read it as we walked through the forest. She forgave me and let me know that she just wanted to be friends too. Whew! What a relief! (It wouldn’t occur to me until years later that she might have said this to save face.) Our courtship was over, just hours after it began, and most of those were sleep hours.
Tim told me I was an idiot. He was probably right. Yet, before the summer was over, he and Brooke started going out (I gave him my blessing). I was a little jealous watching Tim & Brooke as a couple, but I felt comforted that none of my cherished friendships were in jeopardy. I found that I was pretty happy with the role of the third wheel (no, really). Then, shortly after the school-year started, Tim broke up with Brooke. After that, Tim and I would hang out or Brooke and I would hang out, but they didn’t really spend much time around each other. We were no longer a trio of friends.
I rest my case, Tim.
Brooke and I eventually started becoming intimate again, but it was all in jest.
Author’s note: Please allow me to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming with a pathetic attempt to discredit my heckling toddler… I have another installment of “Awkward Love” due, and I’ve already put it off once, but it’s best not to rush these things. And since I live in constant fear of running out of things to write about, I try to seize these little anecdotes when they present themselves… sometimes it works wonderfully, other times, not so much.
“Daddy? What’s your hair doing?” My 2 year old daughter, Maia, asked me.
“I just got my hair cut,” I told her, “do you like it?”
She frowned. Frowned! “You need your hat.”
As if I’m not self-conscious enough about my hair! …the little brat. I know it’s fallacious to ignore the message and attack the credibility of the messenger, but it’s not as if her hair is any great example of style. She has nothing but wispy hint of hair that floats around her head, except where glued down with jelly.
She wants to give me fashion advice!? She spends most of her time naked! And I’ve seen her dress herself… the horror! Whatever method she uses to choose her clothing is a complete mystery to me, I’ve seen an ensemble which included a Sunday dress, holey jeans, a polyester scarf from off one of her stuffed animals, my porkpie hat, and her sister’s snow boots. Somehow I don’t think she’s the person to tell me how to accessorize!
Maia’s trying to pretend it never happened now. Like she didn’t mean insult me… Hmmmphf! She’s jumping in my lap and asking me to read to her. She told me: “I love you Daddy!” I think we might be in an abusive cycle. But what to do? I pick up the book and tell her: “Just keep your frizzy little head out of my face while I’m reading.”
It’s an odd situation to find yourself… Dangling off a small airplane several thousand feet above the ground. There was something just really surreal about the whole thing.
My instructor was sitting in the doorway of the airplane. He yelled at me: “Arch!”
This was the command to let go. It’s a reminder to adopt the proper skydiving posture after you let go of the plane. In this small of an airplane, there’s no jumping out the door, you’d hit your head on the underside of the wing… So instead, they have their jumpers climb out onto the wing-strut of the plane (a supporting bar that runs from the under-side of the wing to the base of the airplane), and just dangle there until instructed to let go, as I had just been directed to do.
But I was having technical difficulties. I couldn’t get my fingers to loosen their hold. It wasn’t that I was afraid, I’d been wanting to skydive for several years now. I couldn’t wait to experience this. “Adrenaline junkie” is hardly a first impression that anyone would get from me. Indeed, I usually have little interest in “X-TREEME!!!!” experiences… I find that living on the edge dulls my senses to the subtleties in life that I love so much. But somehow, I got skydiving under my skin. I wanted to experience this… I wanted the ultimate adrenaline rush. But now that I was here, I couldn’t seem to get things going. My fingers stopped taking orders from my brain… they had some sort of manual override.
I think my fingers just felt wrong about the whole thing. This was so unnatural, to willingly let go of a plane and knowingly send themselves, along with the rest of my body, plummeting toward earth at a frightening rate. I asserted my mind upon them again, but still couldn’t make them obey. I mentally imagined lifting one finger at a time from the airplane, but still, nothing.
My instructor yelled at me again: “Arch!!!”
“I’m trying!!!!” I yelled back, against the wind rushing in my face.
My interior struggle continued, yet still to no avail. My instructor surveyed the scene. It was clear that nothing was happening, it was the end of the day the sun would be setting soon, and we were getting out of range of our target, he needed me to go now or simply call it off. He couldn’t know the nature of the struggle my hands and I were having, he could only see that I was unable to comply with his command. I wonder if he considered his options, whether it occurred to him to have me climb back in the plane, or if it was just standard policy for him to do what he did. That is: TO PULL MY RIPCORD SO THAT MY PARACHUTE WOULD OPEN AND YANK ME OFF THE PLANE!
I can’t say as I blame him, and I have no hard feelings. God only knows how long it would have taken me to work it out with my mutinous digits. But I don’t know that I’ll ever be more shocked by any course of action that someone decides to take.
I didn’t get to experience free-fall, the ultimate adrenaline rush has still evaded me. But my slow flight through the beautiful countryside brought me an intense sense of pleasure and awe, which filled me from my toes all the way to my fingertips.
Dear Adam,
Do you want to go with me?
Yes
No
Go where?
In a different time or place, the first love letter I ever received may have read something more coherent like “go out” or “go steady”, but in my 5th grade class, the verbiage was simply “go”. He wants to “go” with her… they’re “going” together… these phrases meant true love, not merely a pleasant afternoon excursion.
Unfortunately, I was more than a little introverted during these years …my social life bordered on autism… so I wasn’t exactly hip with the slang of the age. Something seemed grammatically off-center about the whole note, and it bothered me. Oh sure, I could deduce what she meant, and that was scary enough. But it seemed like an important decision, and she had it boiled down to a single, incomplete predicate and a couple check-boxes.
Peggy handed me the note as I passed the coat closet on my way to the bathroom. Peggy was fairly new in our class, having only been in our school a couple months. I can’t recall ever having heard her speak… and (as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now) she sure as hell hadn’t heard much from me. Maybe once in a great while.. when a teacher called upon me (involuntarily) to answer a question. But neither the product of 8 & 7, nor the site of Napoleon’s defeat hardly seem anything to get worked up over (she must have wanted me for my spindly, scrawny 12 year old body). Frankly, it surprised me that anyone would notice me.
I should have replied “
No”. I hadn’t even noticed her until now, I knew nothing about her except that her name was Peggy… and sure, I could have picked her out in a lineup, but otherwise… zip. I wasn’t interested. In fact, I’d had a bit of a crush on Amy for about a year by that time. And though I wasn’t planning to do anything about this infatuation, becoming Peggy’s boyfriend would put a terrible kink in the fantasy.
But still, I admired Peggy’s courage. I certainly didn’t have the guts to even write such a letter, let alone actually give it to the object of my affection. She’d put herself on the line, and I knew I held her pride in my hand. I didn’t have the heart to turn her down. So I did nothing at all. I didn’t check either box, and hoped that if I left it alone it would go away.
Peggy wouldn’t be stopped though. A week after the note was delivered, our class was having a small party in which I couldn’t participate because I’d fallen behind on my lessons. My teacher gently let me know that I’d have to sit out in the hall and catch up on my academics. (I didn’t mind so much… reading in the hall seemed more comfortable than socializing.) Peggy, looking for another opportune moment, DIDN’T TURN IN HER HOMEWORK so that she could have another moment alone with me!
I knew I was in trouble when she walked out the door.
“Did you read my note?”
I nodded.
“What’s your answer?”
Wow. She cut right to it. I was on the spot, I had but a moment to think of a way to let her down easy. How could I get out of this without hurting her feelings? I knew of only one way… I nodded.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said… “okay.”
A moment later, Adela walked into the hall… she needed study time too. Peggy told her the “good” news. “We’re going together!”
It was official.
That night, shortly before dinner, my mother answered the phone and told me the call was for me. I rarely got calls.
“Hello?”
“Hi Adam, it’s Peggy!” She must have looked me up in the book. This was bad. I had hoped the boyfriend thing was just an honorary title, but now she clearly expected me to participate. I had to actually talk to her.
Fortunately, she was able to carry the conversation more or less without me. Suddenly this girl, who I hadn’t heard two words from before this day, was rambling on in a rapid succession of words. I didn’t know what she was saying… I was too panicked for that… but I was able to decipher when she finished a sentence, a necessary que for some sort of agreement from me, and that seemed good enough.
Then suddenly, as if my nerves weren’t already shot, a third party giggled into the phone.
“CHRIS, GET OF THE PHONE!!!” Peggy yelled. I winced. “OHHH! It’s my little brother!”
“Peggy’s got a boyfriend! Peggy’s got a boyfriend!” Chris started chanting.
“CHRIS! SHUT UP!!! Adam, I’ve got to go! I LOVE YOU!” She hung up.
What the fuck?
In a daze, I hung up the phone. I felt shell-shocked.
My family was naturally curious who this girl was that I was talking to, and I explained to them about my girlfriend. My mother took it very well, she was excited for me… She probably was happy that I was coming out of my shell, or perhaps she was glad to discover that I wasn’t gay. My older brother, on the other hand, without knowing its recent history, began a startling rendition of Chris’s chant: “Adam’s got a girlfriend! Adam’s got a girlfriend!”
“MATT! SHUT UP!!”
I can’t say how our romance progressed for Peggy, but for me, it didn’t really progress at all. Peggy was already declaring love, and certainly wanted something from me. But for my part, I stayed the course at my monosyllabic end of the conversation. She called me nearly every night. The conversations always ended with her screaming at her brother and shouting her affection for me as she was running off, presumably to beat him.
At school, I was safe until recess. I was something of a “Wall Ball” all-star (think racquet ball, but with a large rubber ball & no racquets). I wasn’t the best player, but I wasn’t far off. But on the occasion, when I lost a round and had to wait in line for my turn to come around again. Peggy would run up & grab my hand and pull me off to whatever game she was playing with her friends… often “tag” or “hide & seek”. She found several cozy hideouts for us, which left us in close confines and often face to face, but I never seized the moment.
Sincerity has always been one of my defining attributes. I’ll joke around, of course, but when I say something seriously, I mean it with all my heart (dating someone in whom I wasn’t interested, notwithstanding). It was this quality which left me so awkward with my various romantic prospects… A pre-teen shouldn’t worry so much about seriously committing to someone, but I wasn’t about to kiss her or tell her I loved her unless I was prepared to truly go the distance.
Peggy must have sensed this. Only a month or so into our courtship, she called me on the verge of tears. “It’s over, isn’t it?” I’m not kidding, she really said this.
In my own defense, my behavior had remained consistent since the beginning of the relationship. I don’t know why it suddenly occurred to her that I was unhappy. But here I was, with her handing the end of our awkward love to me on a silver platter. The damage was done, I’d already hurt her, though I wasn’t sure how… and God only knows how much effort it would take to keep it going. So I got out of our love using the same words I used to get myself into it.
“Yeah… Okay”.
She hung up.
The next day at school, she still had red eyes. I felt terrible. I had never really hurt someone like this before… Sure, I’d embarrassed Connie, but I didn’t believe that she actually felt anything for me in our one-day romance. And to think, the only reason I went out with Peggy in the first place was to avoid hurting her feelings.
It wasn’t long after this that her family moved again. I was starting to get a complex. First, Connie moved shortly after our horrible afternoon journey, now Peggy was taking off. I imagined these poor girls going home to their families and telling their horrible tales. Their parents would reply: “he did what?!?! C’mon, get your things packed!”
But the guilt was certainly less acute without her in the classroom… I started thinking of Amy again… maybe it was time for me to take action. But how? Maybe a note? I doesn’t have to be eloquent… just ask her straight out, does she want to go with me? I know! Maybe include check boxes for a convenient reply.
I never did write the note to Amy though. She moved.
The first girl that ever caught my eye was Buffy. (No seriously, her name really was Buffy.) We were students together in my pre-kindergarten Sunday school class. She was beautiful… she had long curly brown hair, pinned back with bright plastic barrettes. She fashioned billowy long dresses and patent leather shoes. I was smitten. I would gaze at her as she organized the animals on the Noah’s Ark felt board while I built a wall around myself in cardboard bricks (a ridiculously clichéd sign of things to come).
Perhaps a factor in my crush was that shortly after I had turned four years of age, I received the devastating blow of being informed that I couldn’t grow up to marry my mother, my sister or my cousin. So, seeing as my list of potential brides was quickly evaporating, I felt an urgency to find some marital prospects before they were all taken.
Unfortunately, the weekly religious preschool scene was hardly the place to be picking up chicks. Also, it was around this time that my pathological shyness really started to become a severe handicap in my social life. I couldn’t gather the courage to talk Hotwheels with the other boys my age, much less make the moves on some toddler heart throb. And even if I did have the courage, what did I have to offer? I was a country boy on an allowance of $2 a week. I had a battered, hand-me-down tricycle. I still lived with my parents.
My relationship with Buffy ended before it began. We never said two words to each other, not the time of day, not so much as a request to pass the green crayon. Perhaps it was for the best… High school sweethearts have a difficult time going the distance, what chance would a preschool couple have? Plus, her name would have eventually started to bug me. Buffy? I mean really.
Nevertheless, my failure in the Buffy debacle kept me wary of love for quite some time. It was many years later that the opportunity presented itself. After her divorce from my father, my mother became a bit of a nomad, and we moved around every couple of years. And so it was that I found myself a stranger walking mid-morning into my new fourth grade class, already in progress during its second semester.
Being short on seats, my new teacher sat me next to Connie, and being short on books, Connie was obliged to share hers with me. We huddled closely together and studied. I was completely mortified, but tried to behave gentlemanly about the whole thing and pretended it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I also pretended not to notice the giggling of girls nearby & the plethora of notes that were being passed to Connie from these sources, even when I was recruited to complete the delivery. She was a regular post office.
At recess that day, a few boys from my class told me that they’d heard several of the girls talk about how cute I was. I brushed it off, but when I got back to class, before the teacher began, Connie and her friend Jackie approached me. Connie remained silent and smiled endearingly while Jackie told me that Connie thought I was “a real fox”.
How is a ten year old to respond? I still don’t know. A “fox”? Who says that? What is this, 1940? (Years later, Brandy would tell of an occasion when someone referred me as “a dish”… I had no idea what that meant. Do all girls talk this way or do I simply inspire vintage compliments? I suppose it’s fitting, seeing as I have a bit of a silver-screen soul. But I grew up watching my brother, who was much more natural with the ladies than I, and who frequently received esteemed remarks ranging from “cute” to “hot” to “a babe”… I got my my brothers hand-me-down clothes and my grandfather’s hand-me-down compliments.)
Connie had me backed into a corner. First of all, the entire situation made no apparent proposition, it was just a nice compliment, but I could sense that something of importance was lurking underneath. I had no idea what I was being asked for. And to add to this, I wasn’t even talking to Connie, I was talking to Jackie! Which meant, if I did go out on a limb and accept whatever it was that was being put on the table, I was doing so in front of, not one but TWO females… both of whom terrified me. They were organized; it was a cunning tactical maneuver, and I knew right away that I was out of my league.
I politely replied: “Uh… thank you.” Not a brilliant remark, but it seemed acceptable… Perhaps if my mother had allowed me to watch prime-time television, I’d have been equipped with some better tools… flirting back (“You’re not so bad yourself, gorgeous”), or let her down easy (“It’s not you, it’s me…”).
No, I was unarmed, and had to wing it. I did the best I could, under the circumstances. However, my acceptance of the compliment apparently solidified our relationship. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Connie, she was very pretty with her long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. You could say I was interested …scared shitless, but interested. But I didn’t know how to reciprocate her interest. I didn’t know how to be a boyfriend.
That very day, Connie was to spend the afternoon with Jackie, who lived a few blocks from me. As such, she took the same bus as I did that day. She boarded the bus and sat down, not with Jackie at the back of the bus, but instead, with no regard to my anxieties, she sat with me several seats up. It was unbearably awkward. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I racked my brain, trying to think of something to talk about, but I was mute. I was in a panic. A couple times, when I tried to speak, I would open my mouth and nothing would come out but tiny little squeaks and grunts. I faked coughing to try and cover it up, and then spent the rest of the endless trip looking out the window.
The next day in class our teacher, who had noticed a great deal of giggling and other disturbances seemingly due to and my co-ed seating arrangement with Connie, shuffled things around a bit and I was moved to a different part of the room. Connie never tried to approach me again, surely sensing from my silence on the journey home, that I didn’t like her. I realize now that it was my responsibility to go to her, but I didn’t know that then. And even had I, there’s no way I would have had the courage.
After that first day in my new school I never heard any further tales of girls expressing their regard for me. On the contrary, I believe I caught more than one glare from Connie’s friends from across the classroom while they crowed around her to give support. I had blown it, broken her heart. A couple months later Connie would move to a new city. If only I could have held out until then, I could have escaped without being branded a monster.
Unrequited love is a horrible injury. Being only ten years old, I have to believe that Connie got over me… that my shyness didn’t cause any permanent scars. But it’s a terrible burden to bear. If only I could say that Connie was the only one that I’ve hurt…
Bob: I was feeling tight in the shoulders and neck, so I called down and had a Shiatsu massage in my room…
Charlotte: Mmh, that’s nice!
Bob: And the tightness has completely disappeared and been replaced by… Unbelievable Pain! …Just… staggering, unbearable pain.
Bill Murray & Scarlett Johanssen in “Lost in Translation” __________________________________________________________________
I’m between alternators at the moment.
…Well… it’s an alternator in one of my two disabled vehicles. I’m between starter-solenoids in my other.
Being somewhat impoverished, I’m having to make a financial plan in order to repair my cars. I’m no mechanic but I work fairly cheap, so my costs are down to the auto-parts I need. Unfortunately, I can’t quite fit these expenses into my tight monthly budget. And so my financial strategy for this project thus far entails: checking out a couple Chilton auto-manuals from the library, consistently bumping these repairs from my budget every payday, and an indefinite period of walking.
I live fairly close to work (about 1 and a half miles), so walking there on a daily basis isn’t unfeasible. But I have found that it’s taking a toll on me. I have genetic disposition toward physical stiffness, and my my typically tight legs and sore back have responded to this added workload by converting their sensory protest into debilitating agony.
The frustrating thing is… I really like walking, always have. As a teenager, I would go hiking & backpacking through the mountains. And honestly, I prefer walking to work over driving. I love walking through my neighborhood of large trees and beautiful bungalows. I like walking through the college campus and along the canal. I like walking down the alleyways of downtown, past old warehouses, through the park. I change my course every few days to amble along blocks of the city that I haven’t seen before.
Even after I have working transportation again, I would like my treks to continue. I’d like to continue taking long walks throughout my old age. I’m none too pleased that my body is putting up such a fight.
I know what I need to do. (Aside from fixing my automobiles, that is.) I’ve known for years what my physical fate held in store for me. Over the past few years I’ve witnessed my father deteriorating into an arthritic lump of bone-spur-prodden flesh. I’ve known this too was my destiny, I’ve been dealing with muscle-tension issues since my early teens.
No, the coercion to find alternate transportation simply brought to surface what was already waiting for me. I need to get in shape. It would seem only fair that walking 3 miles a day should help, but with my genes, passed down from my grandfather to my father to me, that’s not the case. Exercise itself will only further hinder me. More important to my body type is flexibility, the men of my family haven’t been able to touch their toes in God only knows how long.
But this stretching, the key to my physical future, is so hard to do. I know how to do it, I’m aware of all the techniques: warming up, going slowly, making sure I don’t overstretch, not to “bounce” while reaching… But still, its just so hard to find the time. And it’s so undignified when the kids see me weeping while making the effort to touch my ankles without bending my knees.
“Daily Stretching” has been a failed New Years resolution of mine for 8 years running. This year, I didn’t even try… Sure, I thought the thought, but by the unconsummated end of January 1st, I knew I was only dreaming. I’d like to say that I’ll start now, that my throbbing body has shown me the error of my ways, but that too would be just a pretense of self-discipline and conviction that I simply don’t have.
Therefore, the only option remaining for me is to pop a few ibuprofen and stop whining about it. And to get my cars fixed. Or better yet, buy a new car… New, as in: “it has a warranty where they will repair it when it breaks down”. And preferably it will have a CD player instead of a broken tape deck.
…and dual climate control.
…oh, and remote keyless entry.
…and… thinking of my future (finally)… a wheelchair lift.
This year, Super Tuesday here in the U.S. (the day 22 states hold their primaries and caucuses, effectively deciding who will be running for president) falls on the same day as Fat Tuesday.
I’m sorry, but I think that’s pretty bad planning on their part. Mardi Gras is a day for celebrating, which I guess will work out fine for the winner, but those who supported the losing candidates will be crying in their Mint Juleps.
Will the candidates be sporting masks? Will Hillary flash the cameras? Will the different campaigns dress as Mardi Gras tribes, clash on the streets and duke it out? “Iko Iko!!”
Seeing as the huge political event falls on such an important holiday, would it be a terrible imposition to the First Amendment to rename the holiday “Super Fat Tuesday”… “Mardi Gras Super”?
After “Super Fat Tuesday” of course, will come the rest of the Lenten season. For example, in regards to my preferred candidate I fear the day after Mardi Gras will be”Kicked in the Ash Wednesday”, a day of mourning where we can annoint ourselves in the ashes of his campaign. This of course begins our 40 days of prayer (that our party wins the race), penitence (popularly conducted by having to listen to all the debates), & almsgiving (to the campaign fund of our choice).
See Huckabee? A little separation of church and state is a healthy thing. Sure, you may think it’s a good idea now, Church intervening in State… but once State starts meddling with Church, you’ll be singing a different tune!
…
Look at my king, all dressed in red
Iko Iko, un de
Betcha five dollar, he gonna knock you dead
Jock-a-mo fe nane
Adam
