Caustically Optimistic

Lent

I’ve given up soda for Lent.  So far I’ve succeeded.  I was tempted at lunchtime of the first day to consider a Diet Coke to be, ‘pop,’ but I cannot stand that word unless it is immediately preceded by, ‘snap,’ and, crackle.’  Also, it is not ‘lunch’ unless it involves Valerie, Cindy, Ashley or a combination of the three: I don’t enjoy it without them so why not skip the soda?  If I can live without my friends then perhaps I can live without other things that make me happy like bicycles and diet soda.  I can do anything through Christ who strengthens me and during Lent we commemorate a time when Jesus went without not just Diet Coke, but the entire extra value meal.  I am sure I can go without soda for forty days – but if you’re calling to ‘pop’ I am judging you.  I am not giving that up; forget about it. 

Likewise, I am to take on a burden during Lent.  I have decided that I am going to take on the burden of being as awesome as Leah Monster.  Now, I realize that I cannot be as awesome as Leah Monster but I can attempt it and it is the effort I grade on as much as end result.  I would articulate her awesomeness but during my current melancholy she has been a cool breeze in Hell.  I have many good friends but she is one of the few that doesn’t change the subject, drop the call, or have a friend beep in when I need someone to talk to and she’s the one of the fewer who understands what I’m saying, or gives me that impression.  Also, she is in a band.

Normally, when someone tells me they are in a band I look upon with the same pity that you look upon someone who recently had their iPod stolen or their dog has died.  Leah Monster is an amazing band that I think plays Jazz and does public, impromptu concerts: they bring their art to you if you want it or not.  It is a symptom of a larger dynamic in Leah Monster that she lives life on her own terms, makes things work, and doesn’t sweat it.  She’s found her secret to happiness.  Each person has his or her own and this is what makes my burden so difficult.  In order to be awesome like her I have to find what makes me happy and pursue it (I already have the life and liberty secured).

Giving up soda?  That’s hard; it is something I love dearly.  I run on Diet Coke and Evil.  What is going to be harder is to pursue what Leah Monster does in her awesomeness – which would be to fulfill her obligations as a friend and do what makes her happy (and in a way that doesn’t hurt other people).  One of the qualifiers that I have for giving up something for Lent is that it is something that I shouldn’t do after Lent, or in some cases less often, and the other qualifier I have for the burden I take on is that it should be something that I continue to do after Lent.  I feel like I’m setting my self up for an, ‘epic fail,’ but that remains to be seen.  My friend Enzo, who is agnostic, would probably tell me that giving things up for Lent is arbitrary but he’d agree that making an endeavor toward self-improvement in a time frame is an acceptable way to avoid other drudgery.  Enzo reads this so I can talk smack about him. 

Talking smack and talking crazy are two things I will never, ever give up.  I am having a hard enough time with the Diet Coke.  

Are you feeling lucky, punk?

I work with someone who assaults the English language every time he opens his mouth.  His grammar, diction, word choice, and just about everything that goes into forming and presenting our language is terrible.  I can overlook many faults but his use of our language really grates my nerves.  It makes me want to my friend Erin in Saint Louis to put him on speakerphone so she can hear nails on the chalkboard as well.

Recently, because I speak Seventh Grader, I have been called up to translate what he is saying from his language into English but it hasn’t worked that well.  Seventh Grader is a dialect of English; you can hear it in there and sometimes pull it out but you always know what they’re getting at despite their grammar.  Hip-Hop also has a lot of ties to English and beyond not knowing what certain words mean from Hip-Hop to English you can get the gist.  The most charitable thing I’ve thought about this person is that he has aphasia.  This is what I will be afflicted with in my old age or if I’m in a car wreck on the way to work: aphasia.  He doesn’t have aphasia, he has a completely apathetic attitude to the idea of people understanding him when he speaks and he is not too concerned with seeming literate or professional. 

What I’ve decided to do, when called upon to translate for him, is to attach what I thought he said into Huttese (the language of the Hutts).  He’s a crabby fat man and I call him Stinky the Hutt because I am cruel and childish, this is just the next logical step.  When he wanders into the office and says something and another person says, “What did he say?” I will respond with one of the few phrases I know in Huttese. 

I looked them up just for this, I did not learn Huttese the way other people learn Klingon or Elvish.  I did not do this in my quest to challenge Melody’s leadership in the Forest of Nerds or to help her bind warring factions within.  I did this to be a jerk-face. There is nothing that Vicki and I disagree with more than learning languages to be dorks. 

Me Chuga means, “I’m hungry,” and is one of my favorite things to attribute to him as well as U wamma wonka which means, “are you going to buy that?”  The reason I like those phrases owns to the idea that they’re things he might actually be saying.  I also like to say, “do you feel lucky, punk” which is: dopa mee gusha poodunky?  Before you send the men in white coats, I found all of this on Wikipedia.  I would never, never take the time to seriously study German and I lived there.  I wouldn’t take time out of my life to learn a fake language for any reason.  

The best part is, if I have to butcher a language why not butcher someone else's?

[aqua turtle]

Question: What has happened to Suburban Island?

What I discovered: I enjoy people assuming I’m an idiot.  It gives them something to feel smug about.  Charles Wallace Murry in A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L’Engle

On Facebook I went on this ‘aqua turtle’ jag.  I was finalizing my divorce and trying to find a way to endure purgatory when I ran across something that a student taught me.  One of the secrets of teaching is that you learn more from your students than you teach, if you’re paying attention to them.  It bears repeating that I am not here to help, but to observe and pass judgment – giving me the tools to see things and integrate them into my purposes. 

The important thing to realize before I continue is that the child who taught me this skill is a normal child.  He is not a weird kid.  He is not living in La-La Land.  He was a well-adjusted, popular kid who gets decent grades, behaves decently, and doesn’t throw up a ton of red flags.  This might be different if one of the peculiar kids who concern me showed me this.  Okay, seventh graders are all a little different and you cannot really say that they’re normal but en mass they have a normality to them – a baseline from which you can work and assess. 

 This kid, we’ll call him J.T., isn’t a teacher’s pet and he isn’t strictly Eddie Haskell either.  He also was wary of me at the beginning of the year because I am a freak.  Normal people avert their eyes from the supernova instead of staring into it.  His caginess clued me into his normalness.  One day I was cranky, perhaps overtired and under-whelmed by my students; J.T. noticed this stress and said, “whenever I am stressed out I make an aqua turtle and I feel better.”  Then, he showed me how to make an aqua turtle and told me a thing or two about aqua turtles. 

While this interaction was going on Valerie’s son could have ridden through my room on his unicycle juggling and I wouldn’t have batted an eye. It was incredibly surreal because it was just so weird.  At first I thought he was making a joke and then I realized that making the aqua turtle sign with this hands and then making the aqua turtle swim really did calm him down.  I tried it.  It worked.  It is like crack cocaine.  Then the other students caught onto this because I was doing it and I am the Pied Piper.  I can get the students to do anything; it is my super power. 

So, during the very surreal experience of the divorce being finalized and my job being hectic the aqua turtle swam back into my head and I started doing it.  My friends on Facebook have wondered what the aqua turtle I am talking about is and my coworkers are wondering what I am doing, what a Jewish aqua turtle is (N8 said it was left over right, not right over left?) and why either turtle would do the backstroke.  I have, however, been calmer and more alert all at the same time. 

It freaked out a customer on a test drive though.  He was singing along to “Single Ladies” on the radio and dancing in the car in such a way that I thought – I hoped and prayed – he had forgotten I was there and suddenly he asked what I was doing.  I said, “aqua turtle, what are you doing?”  He did not buy the car.  He is the second seemingly macho straight dude to come in and test drive a macho car and sing and dance to that on the radio during the drive, while at the wheel.  It would be four but I am going to make assumptions about the pair of guys who test-drove the station wagon who had an obviously rehearsed this and had coordinated car-dance moves.  They had to be playing a prank of some sort on me.  It was uncomfortable.  Thankfully, aqua turtles can pull you through any situation. 

Another situation was this: someone was lecturing me on being professional.  During this lecture he picked his nose and ate it, in front of me.  Instead of immediately text messaging Liberty van Zee or Valerie (because I am a vicious gossip) and telling them what just happened I made the aqua turtle.  If you that’s weird it’s a helluva difference from picking your nose and eating it.  If the aqua turtle does something for me – beyond being a calm reminder of a time before purgatory – its keeping things inside my head and from wandering out of my mouth.  

divorce

I haven’t been writing because I was in the process of finalizing a divorce and I didn’t want to vomit emotion all over the place when I was in the midst of reining my emotions in and conceptualizing what was going on. 

 

The short version is that about a year ago I was dumped, for ill-explained reasons, and then suddenly I started to hear from the friend after twelve months of complete radio silence.  They offered to make an apology and an explanation which I declined with the caveat that if they needed to explain themselves or their actions or even apologize I would listen but that I didn’t need it and was over it and done.  I also offered my own apology for whatever unexplained offense I committed but also stated that after a year whatever it was I should be feeling I was over.  When I typed that it felt like a huge weight had been lifted but I wanted to wait a few days to make sure that it wasn’t a stage of grief but was the real thing. 

And, essentially, I teach middle school.  I do not live there. 

The problem with a platonic break up and in this case a platonic friend divorce is that the emotions are different, but still powerful.  This friend that I lost was the closest thing I have to a long-term friend and best friend from childhood.  A side effect of being an army brat is a lack of connection to people and a lack of relationships that the children of stationary civilians, ‘normal people,’ have.  I do not have a lot of close relationships.  I don’t think I have any close friendships and I’m not really close to anyone in my family.  I thought I was close with this friend and I think it was more that I wanted to check a box in my life that I did have a close friend, one from childhood, and we had been friends for a long time.  I feel lacking as a person that I do not have that social skill.  Of all the social skills I lack this is the only one I wish I did, indeed, have. 

I can’t deny that whatever the grounds they had for separation, dumping, and divorce are valid.  I think that, especially as someone so terrible at friendship, a person deserves to be served notice of divorce – even if it is swift, sudden, and severe.  So, I deserved to know what those valid reasons were.  I think I deserved to know that we weren’t friends and that they weren’t dead, in a coma, or in a Turkish prison.  Unfortunately, the terms of the separation and divorce make any reconciliation impossible on my end.  I really don’t want to be friends with a person like that – not matter how dear they were to me in the past.

The divorce was final in my heart when they emailed me back and I was filled with this dread that they would ask to be friends again and that I would relent and say yes.  It offered an apology and explanation – which can always open a door to reconciliation.  I shut the door but didn’t slam it.  I’ve let go of a lot of friends before: roommates, teammates, and classmates and the key differences being that I never really cared about those people and was more socially than emotionally bound to those people and I was the one dumping.  There is a lot of power in being the one who walks away.  I like to be in the driver’s seat. 

I know I am difficult to be friends with.  I’m temperamental, loud, arrogant, strange, embarrassing, and awkward; I’ve got very limited talents and interests, those talents and interests lend themselves to increased introversion; I say and do stupid things without realizing I have said or done something stupid counter-balanced by a finely-tune concept of forgiveness rooted in age-old Lutheranism; and if you are image conscious I am the last person to have in your entourage.  I have many, many faults that make me difficult to tolerate and spend time with.  Anyone who has difficulty doing that owes me no obligation beyond the politeness that indeed we are no longer to be associated in the acquaintance plus category of social interaction. 

Along these lines I also realize that I do not want to be tolerated by anyone.  There are enough people who, for reasons I do not understand, love me or like me and want me as a part of their lives.  They see something that this friend did not and frankly that I do not.  For some reason they want me around and for some reason this person does not.  I do not have time to maintain the relationships where I am wanted; why would I maintain the ones where I am not?  Why would I give up that time or even expect this non-friend to?  I’m hard to be friends with for a million reasons, but please move over if you don’t want to do it for those who do.

Emily, unfortunately, is going through something strikingly similar.  The key difference is that she is textbook definition of a good friend and a decent human being.  When we talked about our divorces I said something to this effect (and I will expand on it): losing a friend is like a tree losing a branch.  It hurts the tree in the short term but the wound heals over, leaves a scar, but the tree moves onward and upward – still growing.  At one point that branch helped the tree grow and now that it is gone other branches develop to take on that branch’s place in the nurturing and development of the tree. 

Am I sorry this friend is gone from my life?  Yes, and no.  I don’t need a person like that around and I don’t want a person like that around.  I don’t want to be a burden to others and I have other people who want me around.  The coin flips and I am presented with someone who I shared experiences and made memories with.  I learned a lot about being a friend (good and bad) from this person and I wouldn’t trade my time with them for something else.  There was a time when I’d have overlooked things and reintegrated them into my life but their absence taught me first that I wasn’t as important to this friend as they were to me but that I am important to other people.  Our relationship was long distance and it’s awful to say but I really didn’t notice them gone that often. 

I wish the other party well in life and I hope it is well away from me.  

not that close

One of the problems that I have is that because I don’t care what people think I also do not have many friends.  A bad part of being a male teacher is that if you have friends on the staff they are either few and far between or you become one of the girls.  This has handicapped me this year because I am so used to ‘being one of the girls’ that in my present purgatory I am unused to being in the pigpen instead of the henhouse.  If that makes sense to you, praise the Lord. 

There was a point last year when I came to the horrible conclusion that I was ‘one of the girls’ and I was an accepted part of the tribe when Valerie discovered she was pregnant and she showed me the stick she peed on.  I cannot cross-reference all my articles about how traumatizing this was: who pees on something and shows other people?  Right now I work with people who pee everywhere except in the toilet so in retrospect it wasn’t so bad.  At the time it was a misfortune wrapped in a trauma. 

I thought this was the worst that could be thrown at me but I was wrong.  My friends are having a rash of pregnancies and this means sonograms.  When Valerie was pregnant I was man enough to admit, “you can show me but I have no idea what I am looking at.”  There was another key difference; Valerie and her husband didn’t want to know the sex of the child.  My current situation is different and uncomfortable. 

I assure you that it isn’t because I don’t care (because I do not, but this isn’t the reason) but I really cannot tell what I am looking at when I see a sonogram.  I assume you are having an alien or a piece of used-up chewing gum.  I really cannot see a person in the picture, sorry.  I’ll look at it to be polite but it might as well be a calculus equation, a poem in Arabic, or just about anything else of which I am ignorant. 

What I’m finding vulgar, making fun of, is when people show you the picture and ask you to find the baby’s private parts.  Stop for a moment and think for a second about what you’re asking someone to do.  I’m not a fan of “I Spy” or “Where’s Waldo” books and I’m not about to that with you and your prospective child’s reproductive plumbing.  This also goes for later with the naked bathtub pictures and when they escape the house naked or fall into the toilet.  Puppies are cute, kittens are cute (especially when they’re LOLing) and koalas have a special place in my heart.  Naked children are something I can skin, even when they’re still germinating in your uterus.  Stop imposing the yearbook from your uterus on me.  We’re really not that close. 

Then today it was so cold and my snazzy wool trousers were so inadequate that I felt like my mother was going to need to get a sonogram so we could find my privates again.  It was that cold.  I called Marna and told her that I had lost my penis in the snow squall.  The senior salesman that is mentoring me even mentioned that it was that cold.   I was about ready to call my mother and insist on a sonogram so we could find it again.  I was horrified because I was on the brink of becoming ‘one of the guys’ by engaging in such a conversation and decided the best course of action would be to have a salad with grilled chicken on top with a diet soda and perhaps use some polysyllabic words to re-alienate them.  

And just imagine, if you will, the implications of this.  I had a creepy relative who used to tell me, “I used to change your diapers.”  He did not, that is a fiction because he doesn’t know how to change a diaper and I was born toilet-trained.  He has moved on to a better place, and if you saw his house in Uniondale you’d realize that just about anywhere is a ‘better place’ after that dump.  If sonograms existed when I was a tadpole he would have said, “we used to sit around your sonogram and try to find your peter.”  I would be so emotionally damaged that I would have to change my name to George Costanza. 

 I have a friend Peter and there is a story when someone tried to say something about my peter and he said, “I’m his Peter and pretty big.  In fact, I don’t think you know anyone with a bigger Peter than his.”  That was awkward.  So is being accosted by a sonogram terrorist.  We’re excited with you about the miracle of life.  I’ll look at the sonogram with all the blissful ignorance of going to the opera or looking at the work for Salvador Dali but just as in those occasions, don’t ask me to gaze upon nakedness or know what is going on.  

balenciaga ski masks

Or, 'there are no black people in the state of Maine,' 

Sunday at Lunch, my friend Erin and I decided to kidnap Richard.  We haven’t seen him in years and Erin misses him.  Just going to his house, calling him up, or showing up unannounced at his place of business isn’t our style.  We plotted how we’d go about it; we have it all worked out.

First, we’re going to stalk him because we don’t have any idea where he is.  We’re going to have to do some good old-fashioned police work and find that out.  Then we’re going to road trip there and have a stake out in the town in Maine where he was last seen and we believe he lives.  When he’s at work one day we’ll show up and take him.  Amanda won’t actively allow herself to be an accomplice in a crime so we’ll have her drive the get away van. 

Getting him out of his office will be the hard part.  This is what we think will work, tell us what you think: to distract any coworkers or clients who’d get in our way we’re going to have Foxy De sing the song and do the dance for Beyonce’s Single Ladies, Christian and Kirsten can do backup for her because they know the words and the moves.  Christian, don’t even deny it.  There are no black people in Maine so no one will be able to tell the difference between Foxy De and Beyonce.  Erin and I will snatch Richard while everyone is entranced by Foxy’s dancing.  We’ll have to borrow Christian’s Balenciaga ski masks and throw him in the van.  Kathy will be around in a minute in a chase car to retrieve the dancers.  It is the perfect plan.  The only flaw in it would be if Foxy De and Christian got into it on who got to be Beyonce. 

These, children, are the things you do for your friends.  You kidnap them in ski masks and throw them into vans.  I’ve done it before; it’s not that hard. 

Having lunch with Erin was fantastic and the perfect cap to a weekend themed on friendship.  On Friday another friend capped my need to be needed by calling with a problem that needed solving or a vent that needed venting.  Being needed is a vital part of a friendship – at least for me.  On Saturday another friend called with the same need during the day and I realized while this friend shared their tribulations with me that I was lucky to have this friend.  She is the person who’d do anything for you whenever you needed her to.  I only wish I weren’t such a taker when I should be more of a giver.  She was also going through the painful experience of divorcing a friend.  

The second friend reminded me of the fact that I too had recently been divorced by a friend – several in fact – because of my support for President Obama during the campaign.  Being dumped from a romantic entanglement is painful but being divorced from a friend is worse.  It hurt, it was the lamest reason to lose a friend and I certainly didn’t ditch them when I disagreed with their politics.  I counted one as a ‘best friend’ from childhood and I am steadfast in the fact that I do miss them and I am glad I will never see him again.  I have reached a point where I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that we’ve divorced and I no longer resent the time I spent with them in my life or the sacrifices I made to be their friend.  Normally I look back on time spent with awful human beings with a mix of bitterness, rage, and wistfulness but in this case I will maintain my antipathy for my friend but cherish the time we spent together and value what I learned from them about being a human.  As dreadful a person as he is and while his reasons for divorcing me are inane I did learn a great deal about how to be a friend and how not to be a friend from him.  I don’t know if it’s some strange level of maturity or wrong because it’s charming and incongruous all at once.  

There are no steadfast measures of friendship.  One story I could tell you would be this: I had sushi this weekend with Paul and Christian.  Paul was late so Christian and I walked around the mall waiting for Paul’s slow ass to arrive and we ran into one of my former students – which is always a fiasco – and the student pointed out that I had a shirttail sticking out of my zipper.  Christian had noticed and not told me and I knew this and said, “You betch!” and shoved him and then Christian shoved me back – all in play – but I didn’t realize there was a low fountain behind me and I fell in.  The manager from Godiva came out as I was splashing around and asked what I was doing.  Christian said, “That cheap bastard is trying to scrounge enough change up to pay for his dinner.”  Then when the mall cops came to see what the commotion was Christian claimed I was his retarded older brother who fell a lot.  That is what friends do for each other: cover, cover, cover.  Later, when we were finally met Paul at the sushi place and he asked why I was sopping wet Christian said, “you make people wet, it can’t be helped.”  That is also what friends do for you: they memorialize your stupid moments, never letting you forget them and they make sure everyone else gets to enjoy them as well. 

Another measure of friendship would be when I left Erin today, and I will leave this at that.  We were at Erin’s office (yes, on a Sunday) and clients showed up so that was my cue to leave.  Erin said good-bye and hugged me; it was the most natural thing in the world.  I don’t hug people.  I don’t hug my mother.  I remembered to hug my Great-Grandmother when I saw her last instead of shaking her hand.  I don’t just hug like everyone else does; constant gratuitous touching is meaningless to me and probably to you as well but that it didn’t bother me is a measure of the fact that we’re friends.  In contrast the person I worked for on the campaign used to hug people all the time, including me, and it always made me want to jump out of my skin and throw myself in the Ohio River.  If we would have been friends it might have been different.  That’s what friends do for you; they reshape your comfort zones and push you to be better people. 

Grand Slam

The other day at Denny’s they offered unto us free Grand Slam Breakfasts.  I normally do not eat at Denny’s.  It is what I am talking about when I say, “I did things at university that I am not proud of.”  Contrary to popular belief and my own stringent mythology I do have a concept of shame.  I didn’t exercise it that day, I knew what a free meal at Denny’s would draw and I wasn’t going to miss it. 

I went with my mother, who was hard to get out of the house.  I thought we were going at seven and we didn’t leave until 10:00, we got there at 10:15 and sat at 10:45.  When we arrived I was excited to see a full parking lot; there were so many jalopies I knew I had hit the jackpot.  We didn’t wait long to be seated or to find a parking space.  The crowd was marvelous and vulgar.  There was a parade of mullets and then an exhibit of prison tattoos.  I was so disappointed that I couldn’t take pictures. 

The most comical part was my mother.  She sat, demure, on a bench and worked on her knitting.  She took compliments on her coach purse and politely carried a conversation with the person sharing the bench.  I think she was the only person there who had bathed in the last twenty-four hours.  I had not because my goal was to fit in with the other patrons.  I would have had to stop bathing a week ago to achieve that but I looked the part at least.

If I had to list the highlight of the visit it would have been a tie between when someone put a cigarette out in their pancakes and continued to eat them or when a mulleted person in a Sarah Palin t-shirt was called to their table but with the last name of professor I had in college.  This professor would only appear in public in a mullet and Sarah Palin t-shirt as a joke.  My mother said, “Did she call ‘Jewett’ and someone with a mullet and a Palin shirt follow her?  I can see her doing that, as a joke or on Halloween.”  This was so traumatizing that my mother took my camera and snapped off a picture.  We couldn’t get Sarah Palin in but we got the mullet and that’s enough to prove it happened.  It dominated our conversation because it was incongruent with reality.  I wanted to confront them, ask them if they were for serious, if it was really a joke.  I decided against it: cold pancakes = sad panda.  My mother and I concluded that we needed to burn down our house and move someplace better than this bizarre town.  

I also have to applaud Denny’s: they handed out enough food to feed half of India to the people of our town in little to no time.  It was a disgusting amount of food.  I was horrified my food was touching but I ate it anyway.  Gluttony would be my favorite deadly sin if Sloth weren’t so much fun and so easy.  I endeavored to eat all of the food but I could not.  I ate more than I should have but I felt if I didn’t eat myself sick that I wouldn’t get the full experience of the free Denny’s. 

While I was furtively stuffing my face with the food I was reminded of a conversation about this free meal with my friend from University, Amy.  She reminded me that we never paid at Denny’s, not once in the years we were there.  Nicole was always with us and she never let anyone pay because we never had a chance.  I am not really sure why they were giving away free food: their service is so terrible that I have never seen someone pay for their food in the first place.  Maybe they were just saving themselves a step, saving the manager the heartache of going through the motions of apologizing.  No matter the motive the result was what I wanted.  

keep away from it

There is an old guy at work that I am terrible to.  I learn from him because he is the best at what he does but he is a cantankerous son-of-a-bitch.  Whenever I can get under his skin, I do.  “One of these days I’ll learn my lesson,” should perhaps go through my head but fortunately someone learned it for me.

I go through life, of course, observing and passing judgment.  One of the best examples I can use of this is an uncle of mine.  He has been, my whole life, been held up as the ideal human being.  I have made it my business to emulate as best I can what he does correctly and eschew what he does poorly.  I think he’s a rotten jerk and I haven’t made mistakes like his.  I have made new and worse blunders. 

I learned a horrible lesson through observation this week:  do not put a hex on folks.  The salesman had sold this African lady a car that turned out later to be a jalopy.  Through the whole awful sales process that took many weeks of looking at different cars and through this whole time she always showed up in stuff, western attire.  After buying the car she decided she didn’t like it and appeared one day – in the snow – in native attire and put a root on the salesman.  It was a comical sight to behold and I had a hard time not laughing. 

Now, this salesman is a big guy.  I don’t mean he’s tall, I mean he’s fat.  He isn’t the Jabba the Hutt of salespeople but he blew past portly and into corpulent long ago.  Apparently, he’s rubber and this woman was glue.  The snowstorm unfortunately killed some of her family and left the rest in the hospital.  It came back at her.  Voodoo is do-do and crack is whack; keep away from it. 

We found this out while he was combing the obituaries for people he knows.  He does this every day and then comments on the funeral if he is going or has gone to it.  Occasionally he’ll discuss his own funeral and what he’d like to be like.  I like to pipe in about what I’d like at my funeral and which songs I’d like sung.  I told them, “So long and thanks for all the fish,” is what I’d like sung at my funeral but really, that’s only to ensure that Liberty van Zee and other celebrities arrive.  I can picture in my head Liberty belting out the song OR going through my stuff while everyone else is at the funeral. 

I find it morbid to fantasize about your funeral and I said so – dangerous considering that people who get in his way get dead – and he said, “Well, what do you fantasize about?”  He can be a foul human being and he was trying to imply something tawdry.  My dreams are far lamer than people might expect and my daydreams are pathetic.  I dream at night of Gretchen rescuing me from my self and bringing me home and I dream about being in my classroom again.  The dreams are ridiculous: Gretchen with a team of ninja math teachers, Gretchen with a team of music teachers killing people in the manner of Kill Bill, or Gretchen believing she needs to convince me to come back by bringing my seven children to get me fired from my job.  Any of these will work for me Gretchen but over-night a contract; it will do the same thing.  I daydream about lessons I could teach, turning events during the day into teachable moments, and exactly what kind of detention I would give my more sophomoric coworkers. 

I know the teachable moment of the week has to be: no voodoo in the classroom; leave your Santeria at home; and, the only roots I want to see are potatoes and carrots.  That stuff is the kind of thing that goes around comes right back around.  I would avoid it at all costs.  

if I knew (how to save a life)

I lost some of my best friends because of my work on the Obama campaign.  I realize that they weren’t friends in that event or even best friends but I lost them anyway.  I am not hurt by that turn of events: eventually people show their true colors and I’d prefer that happen sooner rather than later.  I had hoped that during my work on the campaign I would meet people to fill the hole in my life created by the loss of my friends.  

Instead I learned something else about life. 

When you love someone, whether it is fraternal, familial, platonic, or romantic, you carve out a special place in your heart for that person.  No one else can fill it.  People are special in their own way and no one else can take that place. Alternately Whitney Houston tells us, “Once you love somebody, don’t you always love somebody,” and Nate said, “If everyone is special then no one is.” 

I realized this truth last year when I wrote on my white board that, “You are my favorite student.”  Each of my students is a person that I love and care about – in their own way – and while I had students that I loved more than, or favored, more than others I did love them all.  It is what makes me a better teacher than most.  Between the ones I could depend on to help me and the ones I could depend on to laugh at my jokes, and the ones that I could depend on to be delightfully mischievous and need every ounce of my patience I realized that I loved all of them in their own special way.  Renea told me to do this, I wasn’t sure what she was talking about and I knew I couldn’t do it.  Many a time I felt like Luke Skywalker on the side of the pond waiting for Yoda to pull my ship out until I realized that I was failing because I was failing to believe.  Love is the key to success in any pure endeavor. 

I realized this, but didn’t know it, when the debacle happened with my relatives so many years ago.  I realized that I didn’t love them and I was perhaps using them or allowing myself to be used.  I contend that I wasn’t using anyone but for the sake of argument let’s grant that I was.  I also realized that while my sister and I will eventually destroy each other in a titanic clash that will make the 2008 Democratic Primary look like a PTA election I do love her.  It also refined my definition of family, as articulated by my cousin Daniel, “your family are the people that you’re related to that you care about and care about you, and have a relationship with.”  I would expand that to include the people who are at the core of your life.  It is how Valerie and Ashley are important to me and for some reason I am important to them.  It’s why I know I would do anything for Gretchen or Michelle and I know that when I really need them Michelle or Gretchen will save me.  It’s what would drive me to watch Cindy’s mom for the weekend because I know that Cindy would do the same for me.  It's why I wasn't lying when I told that customer I had a lot of children who needed me - and that I need. 

What you need to know about living and loving is this: it is going to hurt.  People will tear themselves out of your heart and leave big, gaping holes that might get smaller over time but will always remain.  The key is learning to move around them and not fall into them.  You can’t fit new people in those holes: only around them.  

I didn't meet the people to plug the holes in my life caused when I started working for Obama but I did meet great people during that time.  Sure, there are a couple people I'm glad I will never see or break bread with again, but there are people I cannot wait to see again.  

Parts of this post were brought out, illuminated, during a conversation with Kristi.  

four rules for lying

We all have those moments when we feel stupid.  When we put the milk in the cabinet and the cereal in the refrigerator or back into a shopping cart in the Kroger parking lot where our friend works, sending it flying into a BMW.  Gretchen would call these human moments.  I thrive off these moments.  They’re when I feel alive, when I feel stupid.  What I could live without are moments when someone I realize that someone thinks I am stupid. 

This Christmas we had our usual round of parties and this Christmas I even hosted one.  I’ve never hosted a party in my parent’s home before and I’ve only really co-hosted a party with Casey or Michelle before.  I have a social-anxiety disorder and I don’t like to go to parties, be at parties, or have one.  They’re an endurance test for me.  I think that’s why when I do need to do something of this nature I prefer to have a dinner party: it gives me something to do to absorb my nervous energy.  I spend the entire time nauseous and if I learned one thing from grandfather who served in the Navy it was, “having something on your stomach if you’re nauseous because if vomiting sucks you should try dry heaves.” 

I went to my friend’s acquaintance’s Super Bowl party this Sunday.  When I arrived at the party the host thanked me for coming to the party and apologized because they missed my party.  They had text-messaged the day of the party and said they could not attend.  They text-messaged days after the party and said they had missed the party because their stepmother’s father had died.  I put it out of my mind, save for concern for my friend acquaintance and their family.  I didn’t hold it against them:  I miss parties all the time for lesser reasons.  I preface my RSVP to social events with my social anxiety disorder in case I ‘freak out,’ and know in advance I can’t do it.  I once helped my friend Linda move in a valiant effort to avoid a meet and great with the Governor.

He told me they had missed my party because his wife had to prepare for a job interview on the telephone.  It was in that moment that I wanted to leave.  Had I not been parked in and had I not promised my friend Leslie I’d be at the party with them I would have left.  I reeled; I lost my balance.  I was furious: not that they had missed my party but because they didn’t have enough regard for me as a human being to coordinate their reason for standing me up.  If this wasn’t enough – because politeness would have dictating me writing off this indignity – his wife, also a friend acquaintance, apologized for us missing the party because he had been sick.  

I'm not mad they missed my party.  I could give a quick list of reasons why our party wasn't bereft of their society.  That' s tacky so I won't, what I am doing is tacky enough.  

I wanted upon to call Suburban Island because it says in the Bible in 2 Chaos Bean, 4:12, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the Suburban Island from whence cometh my scolding.  My scolding cometh from the Suburban Island; which made Web 2.0 and Social Networking.”  I need someone to right my ship.  I need someone to tell me to behave.  I needed to ask myself, “What Would Suburban Island Do?”  Simmer with rage, blog about it later!  I wanted to ask myself, “What Would Chaos Bean Do?  Use their toaster, a copy of US Weekly, and a bad gas line to blow up their house ala Jason Bourne.  If you can imagine, on my shoulders sit Chaos Bean in a red jack with a skeleton on it, she’s holding a martini telling me, “don’t get mad, get even,” on the other shoulder is a frazzled Suburban Island dressed in the manner of Glenda the Good Witch, she is juggling: a rosary, a lap top, cell phone, and a PDA with one hand, holding a Caramel Macchiato (double sugar-free caramel, skim milk) in the other saying Hail Mary’s entreating me to be good.  I don't like people treating me like I am stupid.  I hate it.  It disturbs my digestion.  

I let Suburban Island win this battle and endured the rest of the party and I wish I had done it better.  I had moments of rudeness of my own.  I was glad when game was over and I could leave.  I was glad when I left that I would never have to go back there.  The parking is impossible and I can never find their house anyway.  I think it was a hint from God: find other homies.  I've gotten the hint.  Please Lord, let those homies be Valerie and Doug.  Let me go home.  

I am not a good liar, and Chaos Bean isn’t either.  We have developed a few simple rules for lying to people to make your life easier and your friendships stronger. 

1. Don’t do it.  We try to be frank and explicit at all times – which creates it’s own confusion – people always know where we stand (near the open bar or the potato chips) and are never offended to learn we had led them to believe something false.  It’s easier to keep the truth together than it is to hold a lie in place. 
2. If you must lie, keep it simple.  It is very difficult to keep a complex lie straight.  For instance, when I taught elementary school Johnny’s great aunt Arlene died six times in one year.  Do not give a name of the relative who died and do not give them an important station.  Express that the relative wasn’t that close to you but you had to go because of family politics or your cousins needed you there.  Nothing makes you look like a bigger ass then being caught later in public with Dead Aunt Arlene.
3. “I am saying this because you want to hear it,” came right out of Chaos Bean’s mouth at our Grandmother’s funeral, and she proceed to tell my cousin a polite reason why we are not close with them.  Always preface what people want to hear with the fact that you’re only going to say it because of that.  You could see Chaos Bean’s deep and abiding love for humanity when she said this: she loved them enough to do this.  Normally we would suggest saying, “I know you want me to tell you that the name for the baby is clever, but really it is stupid,” or something similar. 
4. Coordinate your lie with the other liars.  In the rare occasions that Chaos Bean appear before Captain von Grandfather in a clothing made of curtains we do not profess that our faces are blue because the strawberries were so cold they turned blue.  We have a believable story prepared that is simple and easy to follow.  We have a scenario that is plausible in our lives.  I am a terrible driver and get pulled over a lot.  We live in the boonies and there are always cows in the median, tractors on the highway, or bizarre accidents.  Chaos Bean’s legendary pompadour doesn’t just happen. 

 Presenting believable lies to your friends, loved ones, and people with whom you share your life is the polite thing to do - if you must lie.  I would normally support any bad behavior: drinking, cursing, shoplifting, etc, but lying is so difficult and burns bridges so completely that it should just be avoided.  

As for me, this friendship has quickly gone from being that to an awkward social interaction that I am going to let die on the vine.  I feel that confronting the couple about this would be rude and pointless.  If they didn’t value me enough to tell the truth in the first place, to tell a believable lie, preface their lie, or coordinate it then they also don’t regard me enough as a human being to care that I think they’re rude.  This isn’t worth fighting fire with fire on, and it is never is: in situations like this it’s always best to walk away and not look back.  There are lessons to learn from everything and the lesson I’ve learned in this situation is that if they’re really your friends then they will tell you the truth or a quality lie.  If you can’t do that for someone then you are not a friend.