Touching the Rut With My Left Hand
I think most hoarders secretly want their house to burn down. They think the problem would be solved, but it wouldn’t. There will just be a new house to put new stuff. That’s social media. If Meta deleted all of my accounts, I would feel lucky. Then, at some point, I would convince myself again that they were a necessary evil for business. And the cycle would start again.
Trappings Of My Past Self
I broke up with a girl once because she was a bad speller. I would imagine her leaving me a note in the morning, if we lived together, saying, “See you tonigte, hony.” I couldn’t do it. I feel bad because our first date was out of a rom-com. I still look her up from time to time. I’ve never found her online.
Differentiation
For Halloween in 5th grade, I went as myself. When we rang the doorbells in our apartment building, the adults shunned me for not “dressing up.” I tried to explain how meta what I was doing was, but they didn’t get it. My friends probably got full-size Mounds while I got an old Jolly Rancher. I was tired of wearing the store-bought costumes. Even the adults didn’t want me to be different.
Bartering With the Devil
In middle school, I once wrote something distasteful about the principal in bubble letters on a piece of paper. I wrote it in bubble letters so they wouldn’t know my handwriting. I was a smart kid, but not as smart as I thought. They called me into the office, and I almost let out a small turd in my tighty whiteys. He asked me to write in bubble letters on a piece of paper right then. They didn’t know the level I was at. I made the letters insane on purpose. I never got in trouble.
Stair By Stair
My English teacher in eighth grade wrote on a report card that I had “severe cerebral atrophy.” She didn’t understand that I had somehow found solace as a new kid in school by messing with her. To be honest, she made crazy seem like a teddy bear sitting on a bench seat looking out of a window on cool Spring day. She was at her pinnacle.
The Days Are So Long
Bark falls from a tree, and the ants celebrate because now they can board this boat headed nowhere. At least they will have snacks along the way. The branches look down in disdain.
Misconceptions
It’s hard not to judge people when we spend most of our time judging ourselves. Dumb-looking shirt. Stupid haircut. Why did I say that the way that I did? His name is Robert, not Richard. I stepped in gum because I deserved it.
Glockenspiel
I know what type of person you are solely by whether or not you hold the door for others. This is the only thing that is truly black and white in the world. I used to think Missed Connections would work. Everyone who rode the subway in New York City did.
Wisps of Grief
A summer day can feel like a blizzard even when it’s not cold. A sack of hammers landing on your big toe. A jellyfish sting that won’t stop stinging. Poison oak. Running fast around the corner of Old Man Jones’ abandoned garage and catching your inner forearm on a rusty nail. Grief is a sharp arrow.
Hammers to the Forehead
I’ve never had coffee, other than a sip here and there. When people hear this, you would think I just called them a child molester. I can say that because I spent more than a year as a prosecutor in a Sexual Battery and Child Abuse unit. It was called SBU on the inside. It would have made a good television show. I could rarely sleep at night with what I read every day.
Fahrvergnügen
Car rides with other people aren’t always “driving pleasure”. Small talk is a hangnail in mittens in ten-degree weather to me. It can be fun, but there’s still something about traversing the roadways alone. It’s a form of extreme freedom, and often, an escape from the pettiness of our world.
Crumbling Under An Immovable Object
I used to love working out. Now, I’d rather read a book. I don’t know who I would be impressing. How can I think I am fit and fat at the same time? Somehow, it’s possible. Maybe it’s more about forgetting how to have fun. I focus on things to avoid other things. What am I trying to scale, and why does the scale matter?
Dodging Raindrops
I was a stepchild. My stepbrothers were stepchildren. Half-time here, half-time there. Two rooms. Actually, I never really had a room at my dad’s. I just had a bed in my stepbrother’s room. I guess that was okay. My room at my mom’s was my haven. No child needs two havens. I had nightmares at my mom’s. I thought Creepshow was under my bed at my dad’s.
The Stories People Tell Themselves
The hair falls down Bobby’s neck in the barber chair. He sees hair from three people merging at his feet. He tells his mom he will be late for dinner. He tells a story to tell a story because everything else seems so beige. The real story is that there is no story. Bobby is just bored.
Leaving Too Soon
I left Brooklyn Heights right as puberty was having a strong conversation with me. I left North Hollywood right after I got my driver’s license and was free to explore Southern California. I left boarding school for college right after my mom told me she was going to die. I left my first college before I ever played a second of varsity basketball.
It All Comes Out In the Wash
The universe loves to lay bets on a seesaw. Watch for it the next time a bird takes a flying dump on a pedestrian’s head, and you laugh. Yours is coming when you least expect it. Splatter. The clock turns, and we start all over again.
Kicking Dandelions
Nothing is quite like the sound of a woodpecker. Peck, peck, peck. Horns honk in unmoving traffic. Jimmy chews his gum in rhythm with the off-center clock in the corner of Math class. The last water on Earth is a kiddie pool.
Pedaling Toward the Sun
I let my tears run into a jar that I hid under my desk in the back corner of my new room at a new college. I ate giant oatmeal raisin cookies at the mall with my stepbrother, and bought video games at Babbages, to assuage my inner turmoil. I pumped iron over and over until I looked like someone new. I didn’t cut my hair for a year. I was pedaling in place.
The Difference Between Wandering and Being Lost
My mind wanders constantly while my body sits in an Article chair at work, staring at a gigantic screen while sunlight pours through my front windows. Cars pass. People yammer. Lights go red, then green. Everybody is on some path.