Things Stupid Kids Do: Episode 2, Part I (The Journey Begins)

My first year in college was a short one. During the earlier summer orientation I scheduled myself into Calculus (bringing with me barely any background in algebra from high school), Anatomy and Physiology (plus lab), General Psychology, Chemistry I (plus lab), and some other course I cannot for the life of me recall any more (I should look it up someday). As long ago as that was, I still remember one of the “helper students” looking over my schedule and remarking, “Wow, you must be really smart.” She was cute, so I was flattered by the comment and felt pretty great! But smart? No, only just barely smart enough to have that uncomfortable feeling that maybe I had created a schedule that I might later regret. Indeed, come the first semester of my college life I did not do so well and was invited to not return for a second semester.

It was embarrassing but at the same time, quite a relief. I hadn’t really wanted to go to college. My family expected it, so being a path-of-least-resistance kinda guy, I let the currents sweep me along. But by having the school drop-kick me out, I was released without ever having to go against the family expectation. Yay! Finally I could have some “real world” on my plate!

Turns out real life with only a high school education and no marketable skills can serve up a pretty tasteless plop of inedible nastiness on one’s plate. In a short time I decided to re-apply to college (a different one). Because I’d already established myself as a loser, there were no more expectations about me and what my future should hold. I was on my own. To help out with my real life experience, and in response to hearing that I was planning a return to college, my mother insisted that I start paying rent.

So I applied and was accepted into college (again) – opting to not transfer any of the mediocre grades I had received before flunking out a year ago. It was a clean slate and I was somewhat determined to make a better showing of it. So my first semester I received an A in every class but one. That class was “French I” which was “taught” by an authentic French professor. In his class I earned (get ready) a big fat F+. In my entire history of experience with colleges, I have never since heard of the plus/minus option being applied to anything less than a grade of C. Obviously then, that was not a good class for me and, in addition to what will form the crux of Part III of this blog some day, it killed my motivation to keep fighting for the A (since I would now never be able to achieve a perfect 4.00). So what would be the best major for me to get into?

My interests have always waxed toward the sciences (physics especially) but back then I was the perfect storm of stupid and lazy. I didn’t want to work hard at learning so I majored in psychology (thinking naively that it was an area built upon a foundation of common sense and furnished with intuitively obvious theories and ideas). By the time I realized my naiveté I was in too deep. But I did what I could to protect my stupidity and nurture my laziness by only putting in enough effort to get fair to good grades. After all, I was starting to consider that graduate school might be a good way to put off the “real world” a little longer. Besides, doesn’t graduate school work where you automatically graduate with the security of a nice high-paying job? It’s pretty much automatic; I think it’s something like a coupon at the bottom of your diploma that you tear off and cash in on the job you want. In case you wondered how it worked.

Not that it’s all that relevant here, but I wanted to add that the ONLY reason I ever even started to consider pursuing a doctoral degree was because I had “that professor” who made me think that, if HE was able to get a doctoral degree, then I certainly can! (I really thought he was an idiot.) So even today, although I hope to genuinely inspire students to continue on and develop their expertise, I secretly wonder if I am “that professor” to some of them.

Without giving too much of a future month’s topic away, I should mention that my best friend and I were living in an all-male dormitory called “Hall” which we lovingly (cough-cough) pronounced as Hell. Fortunately we were moved to the newest dormitory on campus (right next to the library!) the very next semester. It was a co-ed dorm in almost the strongest and most literal interpretation of “co-ed” possible. As it turns out, my future wife lived a few doors down from us. An amazing coincidence, no?

My first ever full year of college was a very long one. I didn’t get many opportunities to get home to visit and there were a lot of events that added stress and fatigue. NOT TO MENTION that winter in the northern parts of New Hampshire involves a combination of two horrible things: Snow and Cold. Correction: FUCKING snow and FUCKING cold. So when the end of the semester began to thaw its way onto campus my roommate and I decided the best way to celebrate would be to borrow a big green wooden canoe from my aunt and uncle (the Blatchfords are always and awesomely generous) and take the Pemigewasset (“Pemi”) to where it runs right into the Merrimack river and follow that pretty much all of the way home! It couldn’t have been more than about 100 miles long of a trip. Plus it was all down-river (we would never even have to row, right?!).

Here, take a look at the map. We wanted to go from the top red circle to the bottom red circle. Possibly further if we had enough daylight, but anywhere in that bottom circle would be a pretty simple pick-up point for our parents to come get us.

So it was settled! My friend and I arranged to get the canoe (with its two wooden canoe paddles) delivered to our dorm for the last day of the semester. We had a pup-tent in case the trip lasted more than a full day and we purchased our provisions: A couple bottles of Coke and a package of hot-dogs. This was going to be an awesome first-time canoe trip for the both of us!

Things that never occurred to us at the time we shoved off into the river:

1. Mosquitoes.
2. There are a bunch of dams that we will need to carry our canoe around.
3. These damn dams are embedded between steep banks and thick wooded areas with virtually no canoe-sized paths.
4. Deer ticks.
5. Just because you are going with the flow of a river does not mean that you will be making any time whatsoever. 
6. Gnats.
7. A 95 mile trip moving at 1 mile per hour will take about 4 days of constant travel unless you paddle.
8. Bugs.
9. One package of hot-dogs is not enough food for a trip that lasts longer than a half hour.
10. No-see-ums.
11. A calm lazy river can become a hysterical frenzy of white rapids very quickly.
12. People should never go on a long canoe trip down an unfamiliar river; especially if they have never been in a canoe before in their life.
13. Wooden canoe paddles are no match for rocks and rapids.
14. It is very difficult to paddle through rapids in a big green wooden canoe if you do not have a functional paddle.
15. It’s pretty easy to swallow one’s pride when you need help from more experienced adventurers.
16. People have a difficult time hiding that look on their face that says, “This is the last time anyone will ever see these boys alive again,” when they wave good bye and wish us luck.
17. You should mind your own business when you come across a burning Cadillac in the middle of the woods in the middle-of-nowhere in the middle of New Hampshire.

Bee Leaf

Of course the image above is meant to bee read as a rebus (Latin for “things”). But it occurs to me that it will really only bee successful for moderately educated/knowing people. We tend to categorize “things” at a level that relates to most people. This basic level means that if you are (like most people) only moderately knowing, then you get it. Sadly, though, like a secret we keep from our parents, very knowing people should not get it. NOT that they might not have tried… Instead, they would all bee like:

“Hm.. ok, a rebus puzzle… which of course is the Latin plural for ‘things’ but let’s see now, what does this say… Well, that’s clearly the Apis mellifera scutellata flying toward an Acer macrophyllum leaf. Apis-mellifera-scutellata-acer-macrophyllum… That doesn’t seem to mean anything sensible… Stupid rebus attempt. Pshaw!”

So that’s why I spelled it out in the title. Any-who… on with the show!

While stuck in traffic today, my moderately knowing brain wandered into thoughts about religion. It got there after reading about a Pakistani taxi driver in Pittsburgh who had been shot by a passenger (probably) as a religious hate crime somehow tying in ISIS and Muhammad. (The taxi driver appears to bee relatively ok.)

I found this incident to bee depressing on many levels. (1) Here we are in the 21st century where everyone is supposed to bee zipping around in flying cars and jet-packs, but humanity still leans on religion. (2) There are soooooo many religions with incompatible beliefs. I’ve heard religious people try to question my stance with, “Why would so many people think there is a god if there wasn’t really a god?” When really, it seems like there isn’t much of a majority in any one specific belief; so I could say “Why would so many people believe in so many different gods if there was only one true god?” (3) People ACT on their damn religious beliefs and biases with little regard for tolerance, patience, etc. (4) Worst of all, it makes my own belief-choice seem even more pathetic.

As quixotic as it may bee, my belief does not veer toward the supernatural. If it did, it would bee much easier to stay optimistic and cheerful. I think it is a lot easier to rationalize evidence as needed to maintain a supernatural belief. The classic example being to thank god for a success and blame oneself for failure. When you tend to hold non-supernatural beliefs, you lose that advantage. Evidence that is for the belief (supports it) is still great, but when evidence goes against it, well, crap. It’s as depressing as having your favorite sport’s team lose every game, every year. Yet you cling to the hope that someday… SOMEDAY, they will turn it all around.

My faith is in humans. It has to bee. (Is that whole “bee” thing getting annoying?) We are our only shot at getting it right. When has a supernatural being EVER swooped in like a super-hero to save a race? Ain’t gonna happen. We need to clean up our own rooms; make our own beds; cook our own meals; and tend after our neighbors. There’s no “mom” walking behind us to pick up after us. No maid service for the planet. Maybe we (as individuals) just don’t live long enough to appreciate that. And maybe the growing population makes us turn away from our potential, substituting instead our genetic material. “Let the kids figure it all out.” We are lazy self-indulgent bratty wasteful slobs.

I hope we figure it out (“grow up”) someday.

Things Stupid Kids Do: Episode 1 (Storming the Castle)

In psychology there is a term to describe younger adults who feel that they are special or so unique that nothing bad can or will happen to them, regardless of the behaviors in which they engage (personal fable).

I don’t recall feeling especially unique or special as an adolescent, however, I do recall that feeling of not having to worry that something bad would happen to me; At least, nothing permanently bad (illusion of invulnerability). So, yeah, realistically I knew that I could be in a car accident, but there was no real feeling that if I was in a car accident it would be painful, disfiguring, or scarring. In fact, I think I believed that no accident could be bad enough to kill me. Worst case scenario: I would end up in a coma for a few weeks, then wake up with a couple of bandages and a hungry belly.

As a result, I made some bad decisions and acted on them.

Example one: Within serious jogging distance of where I grew up, there was a park that we would go to as kids to play (swing sets, etc.). It was located on a big chunk of forested land that had walking trails around a small lake (Kenoza). What was really interesting about this place was that it had a small castle, and it was (still is) fun to say its name. The castle was called Winnekenni (“winnee-kinnee” to some, “win-a-kinnee” to others) Castle!

Being bored pre-computers teens, my friend and I found our adventures through exploration of old, run-down, out-of-the-way places. Today those of similar ilk are referred to as “Urban Explorers!” I think we can all agree that being called an urban explorer is a way cooler title than “dipshit kid looking for trouble whilst trespassing.”

For some reason, our search for adventure brought us to the castle (perhaps to reminisce about the fun we’d had there as kids). Walking around, we visited the castle itself which always seemed abandoned and mysterious to us (everyone, probably).

The castle is not a very big one. Truthfully, it would probably have better served the role of barbican than castle. But because there was no larger castle-like structure to get to through this one, it makes a nice enough mini-castle. As we walked around the building, we noticed what appeared to be a power line or electrical cable hanging down the side of the castle.

“Think there’s any power going through that line?” One of us surely asked aloud, but both were already wondering. Saying it out loud was just our way of pointing out that someone was going to have to find out if it was a live wire or not.

My friend and I had long-ago settled the “who goes first” argument by simple agreement that we would alternate. No doubt we contracted the turn-taking agreement without discussion when one of us realized that we’d just finished doing something stupid. It didn’t seem fair to hog all of the stupidity, so one of us probably had said, “I went first last time.” So from then on we kept very good track of whose turn it currently was. No more arguments. Sometimes it was no big deal to be the one to go first, other times… well, it was a bigger deal. This was one of those times where it seemed like a bigger deal.

I was happy (for now) that it was his turn to go first. He grabbed the wire and touched it against as wide a variety of surfaces as he could find – except skin. It seemed pretty safe. Both of us moved the mental “whose turn to go first” peg into my column.

While he was moving the cable and trying to get it to reach different surfaces, it was apparent that the line was pretty well attached to something up on the roof. Looking up, we could see the line disappear between two battlements (merlons).

“Think there’s anything interesting up there?”

We had been fans of the Batman tv show and had always wanted to use a bat-rope to climb a building ala Batman and Robin. Even though we knew that the scenes in the television show of the crime fighters walking up a building were created by tilting the camera sideways, it looked like it should be easy enough to do for real.

My friend had not let go of the line yet, so he gave it a whirl. Basically it turns out that wall climbing works one of only two ways: (1) You can hold fast to the line and let your legs walk up the wall a little ways, or (2) you can pull yourself up the line one hand over the other while your legs stay in one spot until they lose traction on the wall and you just hang on to the line. There is no way for the hands AND the legs to move up the wall at the same time. So, turns out it was not at all easy enough to do for real.

Fatefully, there was a conifer tree growing about five feet away from the side of the building. While the cord was not quite long enough to reach around the base of the tree, we figured we could get a lot more slack in the line if we climbed the tree while holding on to the cable. In other words, we figured that we could tie the cable around the tree and just tight-rope our way across from the tree to the roof of the castle.

It was a bitch to climb the prickly bristly sappy tree high enough to get in line with the battlement. The tree was not a lumbering one, meaning that the higher we got, the more precarious it felt. The slightest wind put a sway into the trunk that made me rethink what we were trying to do. But my friend expressed no hesitation or doubt, so I figured everything was ok to proceed (illusion of transparency: look it up).

The thick plastic insulation around the line made it too difficult to tie around the tree in the same way as we might have been able to tie a rope. Of course, even if we had a rope, we would not have the advantage of it already being secured to the castle roof-top. We had to make do with what we had. Our solution was to wrap the cable about sixty-eleven times around the tree until it didn’t seem like it could just unwrap itself once we stepped on it to cross the few feet to the battlement.

Now that the cord was secured to the tree and to whatever it was attached to on the castle roof, it was time for phase two: tight-rope walking across.

It was my turn to go first. Because my friend was taller than me, the tiny voice of reason in my head wanted to use this fact to find a way out of doing this stupid thing. He would have had a much easier time reaching out between the tree and the castle than me… so maybe he should go first again?
I made the offer and it was declined.

Fine. Eyeing the setup, I had to admit that it looked perfectly simple and relatively safe to walk across that short distance to the castle. So I took a breath and committed.

To stand on the cable, I had to climb a few thinning branches beyond where it was wrapped. Slowly. Try not to look down. One small movement at a time. Right (coward) foot on cable against the tree. Try not to look down. Left (brave) foot probing toward the castle about half way along the stretch of cable. Try not to look down. Let go of tree with my left hand. Try not to look down. Slowly and wobbly stretch my brave arm toward castle. Try not to look down. Slowly let my weight accumulate on my brave foot. Hyperventilate as suddenly my weight on the middle of the wire pulls the tree-top closer to the castle dropping me barely to shoulder height with the edge of the roof!

Ok, now what has happened here is that I am balancing on a wire that has taken the shape of the letter “V” and both of my feet are being pinched by the bottom of that letter. I am high enough up that I do not want to fall. The nearest tree branches are too spindly to trust my weight on them without cracking, so I can’t go back to the tree. So I am committed to trying to grab the edge of the battlement and pull myself up to the roof. This is where adrenaline teams up with knowing the consequences of failure.

I could not see anything beyond the edge of the castle upon which my left hand was pressed upon. My right hand was pushed against the side of the castle for balance and support. I took a leap of faith and kinda jumped up with both arms stretched as far onto the battlement as I could reach and (lucky!) fingers found the far edge of stone and I was able to grab enough of it to haul my stupid ass to the top. As my weight left the cord, the tree swung back away from me to straighten up. It looked perfectly simple and relatively safe again.

Next was my friend’s turn. He’d seen what to expect so he made it seem pretty easy coming across. Of course, he did have the advantages of being taller and having longer arms to grab the edge of the roof. Plus I was able to help him climb up.

Sitting for a minute and looking at what we had just done, I admit that my heart was still pounding and I had small scrapes here and there. But best of all, I knew it was going to be him going first when it was time to get back down. Did I mention that it was going to be night soon?

As they say, it’s the journey, not the destination. The roof of the castle was unremarkable (almost). We looked around for a better way down (nothing). We took in the view from all sides (boring). Then figured we should get down while there was still a little bit of light left (smart).

First thing before we were getting ready to head back over to the tree was to double check that the part of the cable tied to the roof was secure (and not attached to an electrical source that might kick on unexpectedly). What we discovered was that the cable had curved around a big square fixture on the roof and had barely snagged itself to keep from detaching.

In other words, if we’d flicked the cable from the ground a few times, it would probably have come loose.

In other words, if we’d bounced around on the cable while crossing to the castle, it would probably have come loose.

In other words, we were super lucky that one of us didn’t smucker ourselves on the ground.

In other words, we were stupid kids doing stupid things.

Who Lives Under the Bridge NOW?!

I have a sad, and slightly embarrassing, confession to make.

It took me about 30 years of life to finally start to see people as something more than the flesh and bone that they walked around it.

In my defense, please remember that I am an introvert and so I tend to avoid interacting with people like an introvert avoids interacting with people.

There isn’t any particular event that I recall as an educating factor, it was just a threshold amount of life, I think. Finally enough experience in the world to “see the light” as they say. It just sort of evolved. But what the hell am I talking about? Basically I attributed prejudicial characteristics to people based on visual cues.

Huh?

Let’s give examples!

When I was a teenager, I really liked to think of myself as enlightened and open minded. However, some things I could not mentally tolerate. I was put off by behaviors and characteristics of others, such as the implicit intimidation I would feel in the presence of people with tattoos (keep in mind they were neither as popular nor as artistic in my day as they are now).

I did not like to see people with their mouths just hanging open (fish mouth = stupid person).

People who wore religious icons of any sort irritated me (religion = closed minded, ignorant, and uneducated). I really had no interest in being around or interacting with them (naively believing that if I left THEM alone, they would leave ME alone).

Really really really tall people freaked me out since they violated my made-up rules of what defines a human (tall = freak of nature and not to be trusted since they could spaz out for no reason at any time… and they were bigger than me).

Fat people made me think they had a poor work ethic. I genuinely thought they were lazy people since they had so much extra time to lie around eating rather than riding bikes, playing, working, and so on (fat = lazy and part of me envied them because I wasn’t allowed to do the same).

Other miscellaneous things affected my judgment of people such as the accents they spoke with, facial hair, too long or too short hair, people who drank alcohol, people who used the wrong (or mispronounced) words (“new-que-ler” for nuclear, seriously?!), the type of job a person had, mentally unstable people (the “crazies”), whether a person had a new vs. old car, whether they did their shopping at retail stores or thrift stores, homeless people, attractiveness vs. unattractiveness, age (old people are scary… almost as scary as really really really tall people), smokers, and so on.

Of course my judgments were exponentially more negative whenever I might meet a person who combined multiple elements. Imagine my view of a really really really tall, fat, religious, smoker wearing thrift clothes!

Basically, at some point it occurred to me that (for the most part) these were things that had no direct effect on me whatsoever. So why care about that? The person behind that superficial cue or behavior has a rich history of life experiences, beliefs, ideas, humor, pain, struggle, hopes, goals, losses. JUST LIKE ME. My fortune relative to them is merely that I rarely have to see myself. I just have to live in this skin-wrapped package of slowly dying meat.

Ok, admittedly, some exceptions still exist, such as the religious people who judge and treat me a certain way while trying to “convert” me or force me to live by their rules and standards directly or by pressuring lawmakers (they can righteously fuck the fuck off please); people under the influence of alcohol bug me because I get to see smart people instantly turned into stupid people (LITERALLY). Smokers still bug me because they force me to “smoke” with them… in fact the ONLY reason I don’t want to see marijuana legalized is because I don’t want to have to smell that shit everywhere. But these exceptions are relatively rare (and hopefully becoming more rare in most cases).

So it is with fish-mouthed disbelief that I see the internet trolls who trash-talk other people for the way they act, look, feel, or believe. This isn’t a local (USA) phenomenon. Other countries gleefully like to “insult” Americans for being fat or not being able to speak multiple languages or for behaving “like Americans” in other countries.

To some extent there is benefit to critical analysis, but nowhere near a benefit that would justify the amount of energy expended on the trash-talking that is taking place in the world.

When so shallowly insulted by others, as with, “You’re as ugly as a thing that is so ugly it doesn’t have a name except the name you have been given by your parents which is shared by others who aren’t as ugly so that wouldn’t be a good name for how ugly you are!”* Isn’t the best response simply to say as blasé as possible, something like: “So?”

*FYI: Typically the trolls use insults that are either parroted mindlessly from something they heard someone else say, or, when they create their own, tend to be as eloquent as my example here.

What can the troll say to that? They will scramble around in their uncluttered head for their sharpest repartee which will likely be something like, “Well… I don’t like having to look at you!” And again, the elegantly simple response of “So?” makes the point well enough again. The effort needed to say a single word compared with the buffoon’s attempt to assemble as many of the 4-6 letter words they know into the semi-coherent vomiting sound they call “speech” is unmatched.

I used to feel that simply ignoring the trolls was the best way to go. But that can escalate the trolls’ tirades because they feed off of others’ reactions. To give them nothing makes them hungry. So instead, I feel that the best way to get rid of them is to take the “nutrition” out of one’s reaction. They can’t get anything out of “So?” except frustration. Let them expend the limits of their intellect spinning their vile and wearing their stubby fingers away on their booger-coated keyboards. The effort of responding with a single word is negligible and you come away looking and sounding classy in comparison.

One last point, though. There are some other types of trolls that I wonder about. These are the “death trolls” whose insults stray into threats of violence (rape, torture, death). I have no idea how often such threats are actually carried out compared with the rates of similar stupid but unthreatened rapes, tortures, and killings. I don’t know if “So?” is a good enough response. But I wonder? It is emasculating to make a threat of violence only to have the object of your threat appear genuinely unfazed.

Ultimately I would prefer a world where what you see is what you get. The assholes of life would be obvious and we could avoid them. We would stop making them and they would eventually die out. But really the skinny troll fat-shaming another based on looks is the only way we have to reveal who should be the most ashamed. Skinny doesn’t make you a good (or a bad) person; attractive doesn’t make you a good (or a bad) person; rich doesn’t make you a good (or a bad) person; fat doesn’t make you a bad (or a good) person; ugly doesn’t make you a bad (or a good) person; poor doesn’t make you a bad (or a good) person. My truth is, it’s what you do, how you treat others, and what you value/devalue that makes you good or bad.

Are you a bad person?

Deep Pression

-or-

TLDL

First, let me make it clear that despite some of the content of this entry, you should still read this in a cheerfully lighthearted manner. This is all crap that happened YEARS before you were born (well, I don’t really know how old you are, but this was so many years ago that it is practically before I was born). So chill, ok? Besides, some people give me crap for writing anything that isn’t at least an attempt to be humorous.

This has to do with my seeming inability to socialize well. So, my earliest memories of having to deal with groups of people involved finding a corner and disappearing in my thoughts. Mainly this was because I never seemed to know what to say. And THAT was due to memories of strange looks from people when I did say something. So maybe I was imagining it all, maybe I was hyper-sensitive, but obviously I was socially retarded. Being horribly shy meant that once I started to talk to someone, I would feel my face getting hot, which would make me feel foolish and just want to finish my sentence in any way at all (probably usually nonsensically) and go find a corner to pretend to die in.

It took a lot of observing and testing the conversational waters with a person before I could maintain a conversation beyond three sentences. I could respond alright to questions, but could never really hold up my end of a conversation. This was very stressful for me because it seemed that conversation was an incredibly important skill since everyone around me seemed to be able to do it so effortlessly and all the time.

Having accumulated enough knowledge at this late point in my life, I feel pretty confident when I say that you can probably well imagine how depressing it can be to want to have a skill but not seem to be able to acquire it. Yeah, “practice” makes perfect. Well no; not always.

What did I try to do? Well, I remember trying to memorize good bits of conversation to use on others. That only works if you say the line, look at your watch, then smile and say, “Gotta run!” Otherwise, unless you memorized multiple follow-up sentences, plus possible branching topic-points, you were screwed and would quickly become embarrassed.

My best solution was to not talk much. Just observe and try to get a “read” on what sorts of things different people seemed to like to say or hear. Then try to say short and simple, but similar things to them. Not great, but with enough data, I could get by.

Sometime during my sophomore (or maybe junior) year of high school, I remember reading a book on how to be funny. The only two tips I absorbed (and retained) was to try to build off of what someone else just said, and to use exaggeration and obvious absurdity. It took until my senior year to finally start to try some of those things out. Needless to say, you aren’t going to find any “You were a funny guy” quotes in my yearbook. Actually, I think only four people actually signed my yearbook (the lunch lady, the girl three rows back in my geometry class who thought she was signing someone else’s book, my sister, and a teacher who felt bad for me – I don’t think I ever had that teacher for a class, though).

There were only two groups I did my best with in terms of having conversations: My relatives and adult female strangers. (Uh, huh. Don’t let your mind wander any further than that my pal. I mean grandmother-types who appreciated soft-spoken, overly polite, mostly quiet boys. Adult males always seemed to want to talk about sports, hunting, cars, guns, and about thirty nine other topics I had no interest or knowledge of.)

Ok, quick time-jump, but then I have to get back to something… The sense of humor I have today is a product of graduate school. I had to learn how to talk to groups of people without throwing up first. So I had to feel like they were friendly toward me which was achieved if I could hear them laugh. So here was the problem: I never felt confident that what I was saying was sensible or even appropriate. But that was when it clicked with the humor book for me. It occurred to me that I could stop worrying about whether I was saying something stupid or inappropriate if there was a chance that people would take it as a joke. That was really freeing. Not that I instantly felt comfortable about talking in front of groups of people, but it did start the wheel rolling.

Back in high school, I remember dreading oral reports, so I watched intently the students who went before me. The worst thing they did was behave nervously: Shaking, complaining about being nervous, not looking up from their notes, or the floor, and so on. I could see that the students in the class responded to that and made it even worse! So about 95% of my energy during a report was to monitor my behavior and try to suppress those nervous indicators. Of course my reports probably sucked since only 5% was focused on what I was saying. But I figured if I could not talk well in front of others, I could at least not show that it bothered me.

So, back to grade school to early junior high. For the most part, I was pretty lonely. I did have a pretty good friend who was as much a misfit as I was so part of me felt like our friendship was built on a mutual recognition that neither of us could do any better. We shared interest in science fiction and comic books. But then he moved away. As I understand it, he enlisted and at one point tried to find me, but it was when I was away at graduate school. He didn’t give my family a way for me to contact him, so we never saw each other again. I think he now lives in Florida. I did try to contact him a few years ago (via facebook), but my message was ignored, and I gave up. My childhood wasn’t really designed to build self-esteem or confidence.

It’s at this point that I wanted to say something like, “needless to say, I was pretty depressed most of the time” but I kinda hope that that actually would need to be said. Maybe the majority of kids are not depressed and it is only a minority. But really, yeah, I was fucking super depressed. I was a loner. My days were spent sleeping and nose in a book hidden away in my bedroom. I would occasionally come out to ride my bike to the store or explore the woods, but otherwise it was just me avoiding exposure to people so I would not have to blunder my interactions with them. (Don’t ask about my love life – only one girlfriend when I was in high school and I was almost paralyzed with fear in terms of showing physical affections. Too personal, so no more details about that…)

Depression became such a core part of me that I don’t think I will ever detach from it. Surely that much sadness at so early a time of cognitive development affected my brain chemistry and mental framework such that even 30+ years later I cannot imagine not having at least a minimal but constant level of depression. It has become part of my self-identity.

I made another friend in high school and he helped me to deal with my cloak of depression and really helped to develop my sense of humor. Our humor was pain-based. (The best kind of humor, right?!) It actually made things more bearable to laugh at the things that bothered us deeply. So a personal failure became a source of jokes which made the crappy bits of life less overwhelming.

So anyway, here’s the thing. When I was at my worst in terms of being depressed, I had a major internal struggle. One part of me just wanted everything to be over with; so yeah, thoughts of suicide were there. But, the other part fell into the category that the Internet refers to as “first world problems.” I knew that so many people in the world had it so much worse off in life than I did, and what the fuck did I even have to feel depressed about?! Really? You want to end it all because you can’t talk to a random stranger?! So guilt factored heavily in any plans toward suicide. Yeah, guilt, plus I really don’t like pain and suffering. Well, specifically, my own pain and suffering. There wasn’t really a lot of options to off-one’s self back then that didn’t involve some potentially bad moments of pain and suffering. So, no. (Again, first world problems, right?)

This was probably the closest I ever got to being religious. I actually tried to pray that I just not wake up. And I have to say, those prayers not being answered did not lend credibility to any all-powerful supernatural entities existing that cared about me. So to deal with the internal struggle I made a deal with myself that I would just try to figure out some method, but not actually use it on myself. It became an intellectual Russian-Roulette challenge.

After maybe five years (junior in HS) I came across a method that would theoretically work. I can only imagine how much faster things might have moved along if only the Internet had existed back then. Anyway, I prepped the method and then decided to work backwards to see if I could determine the historical effectiveness of my method. Again, no Internet, so it was slow going. Finally learned enough to know that it would be a horrifyingly nasty, painful, and drawn-out way to go. I gave up. Intellectually I had been gradually coming to the realization that the end is inevitable anyway. If I wait long enough, my prayers will be answered.

Over the years I learned to get along better. Memorizing as much as I could in terms of interactions, personal conversational approaches, etc. until I could probably last about five minutes in a conversation with a stranger. Much longer the more I got to know a person. Thankfully I also learned the strategy of asking questions of other people (letting THEM talk was a wonderful way to avoid my foot-in-mouth disease).

Now I am ancient in years (at least it feels that way). I have learned tons of additional tricks to dealing with people. Still not comfortable with people, but I can push through it (burning a million calories doing so as I sit still and quiet in a crowd). The semi-autistic cocoon of self-absorption is my primary defense: I.e., remain unnoticed and quiet hoping everyone will pretty much leave me alone so I don’t mess anything up. If you don’t think I am capable of messing things up, get me into a social situation with strangers where I cannot escape but must interact. Things may seem normal at first, but you will be amazed at the rapidity with which my comments and behavior will unravel toward the bizarre once my repertoire of social tricks runs out. But seriously, don’t do that to me.

Wish I could end this on an up-beat note. Maybe say “It will be ok!” to someone else who is suffering as much as, or probably more than me (since I’ve learned to just live with it)… But sorry, no. It can totally suckity-suck-suck. To be honest, sometimes the best I can do to make myself feel better enough to get out of bed is to remember that it won’t last forever (life, that is). But what I can say is that the experience/feeling is not unique to you. Sure, maybe the triggers you have are different from mine. Maybe your agony does not compare to mine because you have different experiences that make it worse (but listen, I haven’t shared any of the worst parts of my life). Yet here is a “universal” concept for you to ponder: For every single one of the billions of people on the planet (except for two individuals), there is at least one person who feels better, and there is also at least one person who feels worse. And you aren’t special enough to be that one person who feels worse than every other single person on the planet.

Bottom line? Well, as shitty as you feel, it could be worse; and in fact it IS worse for many – yet they carry on. So go write a blog about it that nobody reads!

The Embarrassments of Love and War: Part II

Because I have a really bad memory, I cannot know for sure how accurate these recollections are. So much of my past is just gone from my head that I really only feel like I should be about 14 years old (I only have enough memories for someone about that age, I think). But some events have survived the cognitive blight that is my memory.

In the previous essay I focused on the embarrassments we suffer from our “kids” (our dogs) and don’t have enough yet to write an essay about what our cats do to us. I guess so far I can tell you that from outside it must look like a cat-fraternity house. They are both female, so technically you might think I should call it a cat-sorority. But I think we associate wild abandon, excess partying, and destruction with fraternities. So we live in a Cat-Frat (Kappa Alpha Tau).

If you happened to be walking by our big front window you might see a cat dangling from a curtain rod while another cat peers upside down from the drapes swatting and teasing her sister who has her claw stuck in the gauzy fabric (this is how haunted house décor got started). The curtains and drapes are a mess and we’ve had to replace the rods twice now. To reinforce them, we’ve taped long strips of wood to the metal rods and strung the curtains over that mess. 

See? Not much to say. At night when we are trying to sleep, that’s when it sounds like 10-pound bags of potatoes chasing each other sloppily around the house. This usually gets Socrates howling and barking which, despite his sexy voice, is not conducive to deep or restful sleep.

So this essay will be focusing on me. (Everyone’s favorite subject, right?) I thought it might be nice to give some examples of how I embarrassed my mom when I was little (my father wasn’t really around much, so while my mother’s embarrassments were usually public, I think his embarrassments were limited to the private disappointments he had in me).

Ok, since I was the first-born, no doubt when I was an infant I cried in public, pooped in public, puked in public, etc. New parents are probably always embarrassed by these introductory baby events. Even older than that, I was never the screaming child collapsed on the floor of the department store wailing because I was being denied a toy. By the time my sister came around, I doubt that they would have been fazed by such stuff anyway. So let’s skip that and go with what I actually remember.

The earliest memory of embarrassing my mother I can think of is probably when I was somewhere around five to seven years old (totally a guess – but surely not older than that). This memory is slightly enhanced because my mother would sometimes tell people this story. Parts of it seem like real memories to me, other parts I rely on her story.

Keep in mind that I lived pretty much by myself. No playmates to speak of (at least not on anything like a regular basis). So I never really learned any social skills. I basically lived inside my head. To be honest, I don’t have any idea what I did for play when I was little (like before third grade). There is a vague memory of some Playskool toys (pastel colored nesting cups?) but I wonder what I did to keep myself occupied? Doesn’t matter. The bottom line here is that I lived in my head and had to find my own sources of amusement.

Well, one thing that really fascinated me was when a sunbeam would slice through a window to the floor. It was like a “thing” to me. Sometimes, under the right conditions, there would be multiple columns of light shining through a window. The beams seemed like they should have felt more solid than they were. I would pass my open hand through the beam to try to feel the substance of it. Nothing. I couldn’t tell what was happening. Was it avoiding my touch? How could I not feel any resistance?

The sunbeams also seemed to have texture. This made it all the more amazing that I could not feel it. Although I did not know it at the time, the texture I was seeing was the reflections of light bouncing off of the particles of dust floating in the air. But since I could only see that when the dust floated through the light, I believed that the sunbeams contained or were made up of the particles. So I would pass my hand through the beam and watch the particles dance and swirl in the wake I left behind. I wanted to capture some of these floating “things” so I carefully reached out with both hands and clapped into the light to try and catch some of the little dots of whatever. CLAP! Slowly bring my hands to my face. Open hands and find…?! Nothing. Drat! Try again! Clap! Look. Clap! Look. Clap! Look. I probably tried different clapping speeds, but nothing seemed to work.

Who knows how many times I did this. I was in my own little world and trying to figure it out. Nothing embarrassing about that, right?

As it turns out, a conversation had been going on between my mother and a neighbor during my methodical clapping into the air. Yeah. Well it was a proud opportunity for my mother to brag about her son to the neighbor as they sat in the other room drinking coffee and smoking. Apparently someone had told (lied to?) her that it was already clear that I was college material. I suspect that she had timed her delivery of this information so that it would be the last thing she and our neighbor talked about as we concluded our visit. She wanted to leave impressively. So as she expanded on her brilliant son whilst being escorted through the house to the door so we could go home, they turned the corner to see little-boy-brilliant sitting on the floor. What was Mr. College Material doing? Well, it looked like he was staring vacantly into the air and clapping slowly at nothing, probably with his mouth hanging slack. (At least I was not a drooler.)

We did indeed leave the house impressively.

The neighbors had little to do but talk about each other. So I can only imagine how that turned out for my mom and her standing in the group.

The Embarrassments of Love and War: Part I

I do not have kids (although there is an unconfirmed rumor that I was one a long time ago). What I do have, though, are pets (two dogs and two cats, but this essay is only going to focus on the dogs). They are the nearest I will have to the terrible burden of human offspring. Some people have tried to convince me that having kids is a great idea: “You never know love until you see your child for the first time” and “Your life changes; nothing will be more important to you than your kids.” But frankly, I am too lazy and selfish for those arguments to work. And truth be told, such arguments remind me too much of the “Just jump in! The water’s fine!” prank. In psychology we learn that misery does not love company, rather, misery loves miserable company.

So, in my haste to dodge the progeny bullet, I ended up stepping into dog poop. (I am not just being figurative. I’ve actually stepped barefoot in dog poop. The horror of it was that while I was heaving with disgust, there was a conscious part of me that thought it felt good squishing betwixt my toes.)
The point of this presumably mostly-ignored-by-the-world and long overdue blog entry is NOT to try to argue that dogs are better (or worse) than kids, or to suggest that the trials and tribulations of pet ownership are in any way the same (or different) from child ownership. It is actually just an observation that everyone who has human or canine pets can relate to: Embarrassing moments. (If you are childless and petless, then I feel arrogant envy and pity for your less meaningful life of hair-free and foul-smelling-stain-free clothes.)

As I mentioned, we have two dogs.

Socrates is a dappled short-hair mini-dachshund (maybe not so mini anymore) who has emotional problems but is essentially a lover. By “lover” I mean that he really likes to hump soft looking dogs, cats, raccoons, geese, pillows, and whatever else he can wrap his paws around. Neither the sex nor the size of the objects of his affection seem to matter. Socrates is an equal (and any) opportunity lover. I’ve heard the experts say that this is a dominance behavior. Well, I’ve seen the sparkle in his eye. It doesn’t look like a dominance sparkle to me. In fact, I should just warn everyone: He knows how to charm a smile out of you. Rolling to his side, he will raise a paw in salute, partly covering an eye in coy sweetness. Do not be fooled. He is trying to lure you close enough… close enough. Socrates is love.

Cricket, on the other hand, is a mix of Sheba Inu and Chihuahua (Sheba-huahua). She’s a sassy little blond with a lot of energy (jumping at the door when we get ready to go out; chasing the cats). Cricket has established a threat assessment base on the couch by the front window. Everything and everyone that passes triggers Cricket’s emergency broadcast system. Mail delivery results in an instant crime scene of vicious snarl, puncture, tearing, and bark. The daily chaos of paper on the floor would nauseate a seasoned homicide detective. You would know her by the tuft of hair that sticks up on the back of her neck punk-rocker style. She is a perpetual bad-ass. My little princess, Cricket, is war.

We take our pups to the local dog park where they roam and mingle with the other small dogs. By roam and mingle, I mean of course, hump and fight. If we are not pulling a hip-pivoting Socrates off of a nearly violated vallhund, we are snatching a snarling Cricket away from a terrorized terrier. (FYI: A vallhund looks like a German shepherd corgi mix; I learned this when trying to find a type of dog that would alliterate with “violated.”)

Yes, it’s embarrassing to have to apologize to everyone for our deviant dogs. But by hitting both ends of the continuum, on average, they balance each other out. I can’t imagine life without them.