Hybrid

Essays

Oct 18

My favorite non-pet animal is a sloth bear. When we visited my sister, I used to take my kids to the San Diego Zoo, and they had sloth bears. There is something so weird about animals that somehow mated when you can’t really see the connection. A zorse makes sense because zebras and horses are pretty much the same size, but sloths and bears? Did someone encourage the sloth with a four-pack of wine coolers, or did they meet on animal Tinder? Either way, the animal is adorable, and it might rip my head off if I put it in the cage.

I traded in a gas car in 2005 for a Toyota Highlander Hybrid, and I felt like I was saving the world. I still don’t know how it worked since I filled it with gas all the time, but I was surely helping the environment with my purchase. It said "hybrid" on the back, which was supposedly a badge of honor. The car drove well. I don’t think any mating was involved.

Multihyphenates are really hybrid workers. I guess if you are working two jobs, you are a hybrid of a barista and a yoga teacher. That would make pretty solid offspring. They could ramp up on fancy coffee to start the day and then power down into ease with yoga in the light afternoon. People would marvel at their dexterity.

I see a practitioner whose business is called Hybrid Healer. I don’t know if it’s a hybrid of Eastern and Western medicine or some other interdisciplinary revelation, but I love it. Within a single session, I can get myofascial massage, cupping, acupuncture, and a sound bath. Maybe hybrids aren’t only offspring, but a bastion of optionality.

Some people call themselves ambiverts, which is a hybrid of an introvert and an extrovert. This makes no sense to me, but maybe that’s because I am such a hardcore introvert. How can you flip a switch and hop between the two personality types? Or maybe everything is ambi-adjacent. If that’s the case, then maybe everything is hybrid.