Shoelaces for Josie

Did I just call a baby killing an “incident”? I didn’t mean to. That sounded harsh and uncaring; not true. But maybe the kid has a better future ahead of him some place other than the ash tray of a wasteland he existed in for his short time here.

I haven’t seen Chip in awhile…shorty shorts/beer gut/serial killer look-a-like neighbor. It wasn’t his baby. It wasn’t Tattoo Guy’s either. He has a dog named Joker, but I’d guess that’s just a ruse to approach women. Why does it seem a dude out and about with a dog is safer than a dude just wandering around? A dog gives him a reason to be there, making our female logical brain conclude that there’s no other ulterior motive thereby letting guards slip.

And my other neighbors are old with like 80 grown children living with them. They all smoke a lot of pot, and in my experiences with the druggies of this world, where there’s dope smoke, there’s cocaine fire. Or heroin. Or ice. Or khat. (Eating the leaves of a khat shrub produce similar effects as ecstasy – it’s primarily an African-sourced drug so it often crops up in areas with an influx of African immigrants. If you care. Which you probably don’t. But now you know and maybe someday you’ll win Jeopardy! because of me.)

But my point is that my neighbors killed a baby, and that’s serious. And it’s not cool. Pick on someone your own size, man. At least pick on someone who can fight back. So I think I’m going to buy some nun-chucks and a bo-staff. And maybe a sword and a suit of 14th-century armor. Then I’m going to sit in my campfire chair in my dog pen, quote Shakespeare with Eminem rapping on my boombox and tell those baby killers to come bring it to L’il Red.

Last night, I accidentally* punched myself in the face with my boxing glove.

This morning, I woke up with blood-encrusted teeth…yum.

An hour ago, I discovered that I’ve had a credit card for five years. I didn’t know the account existed; I don’t even have the piece of plastic!

This is my life. My brilliant, wonderful, amazingly awe-inspiring life.

But lately, temporary has not been my friend. I don’t like hearing it knock on my door. I pretend like I’m not home and when it keeps knocking, I start to grump around and then I mope and then I open the door to see what it wants.

Temporary homes, temporary relationships, temporary appliances, temporary jobs. We lead temporary lives. There’s no getting away from that, I know. But I used to embrace the temporariness. Oh not the fact that my time here on earth is temporary – I’d like my life to stretch on as long as it’s meant to, but I used to look forward to the next move, the next relationship, the next washer and dryer set, the next job. Today – and yesterday – and tomorrow, I do not look forward to the temporary shoes my life seems to be wearing.

I’m tired of opening the door to another new home, looking around at all its imperfections and thinking, “Well, this will be okay until I find something that fits better.” I’m tired of looking across the dinner table at my date and thinking, “Well, he’s okay for now.” I’m tired of looking for new appliances and new jobs. I’m tired of all the uncertainty temporariness brings.

I’ve made choices based on finances. Choices I made because I told myself my bank account couldn’t handle a different path. The reality was most of those choices based on finances were made because I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my savings goals or my unwillingness to take out more loans.

I’ve made choices to stay in relationships long past the jump-ship point. Choices I made because I told myself it was better to be with someone than to be alone. Choices I made because I told myself they needed my help – as if I was the only person on the entire planet who had the ability to help them. Seriously, how narcissistic is that? The reality was that I chose to stay. Nobody forced me into it. The yellow-brick road didn’t stop.

I’ve made choices to live and to move. To take a job or keep on looking. To take the fork to the left or keep on going straight. To buy a microwave or do without. Choices, all of them choices, and almost none of them was my back scrunched into a corner. I felt like it – many times I have felt like a cold stone wall was digging into my shoulders as I faced down my decisions with a lone shot in my rifle. But in reality, I just wasn’t looking hard enough for extra shells, and I wasn’t looking in the right places.

Always…never…only…these are ultimatums, and ultimatums are dangerous. They’re also powerful which is why it’s easy to stumble into a choice that looks like a dead-end with nowhere to go. But nowhere to go? Come on, now, are you sure? Climb out of the box canyon. Dig a tunnel. Make a rope. How does that saying go?

I’m really good at the comparison game. Or really bad, depending on your view. I’m really good at it, because I compare a lot which is really bad. Physical attributes, cake-baking skills, house-cleaning habits, getting up from spills, hits on the funny meter, being neater, perhaps even a little sweeter. That’s just a short list – made infinitely shorter from the out-of-nowhere urge to rhyme.

I was born into the comparison game. I was not born with things like a set of bodacious ta-tas, an insatiable urge to clean my house twice a week or the gift of sitting around the campfire and telling funny stories. Which is fine, most of the time. Until I run into a situation where I find myself glancing down at my chest and wondering what it might be like to have Hells Canyon-type cleavage or wishing I could use my windows as a mirror for flossing my teeth or being able to wring laughs out of a group with no more effort than taking a breath. (Depending on who you are with that last one. If you’re a dead guy, then taking a breath is probably an almighty big effort. And with the second, if you have no teeth, then you probably don’t want a mirror-like window. And for the first, if you’re a man…I personally don’t think you should be desiring Hells Canyon cleavage.)

The comparison game is depressing for me. Rarely do I ever compare myself with someone where I might “win”. Which, if I did, I’d struggle with admitting that anyway, because who wants to be friends with someone who picks on the little guy while he’s down? You don’t step on people like that. Unless you accidentally don’t see them, because they just tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and you were too busy talking on your cell phone to notice. Hands-free is the way to be!

But also, who wants to be friends with the person who sets themselves up to lose? ALL the time. I just as well walk around with my finger and thumb in the shape of an L on my forehead (Song, anyone? Anyone??) Because you see, I never choose to compare something I’m okay with. I always pick something that I’m staggering along the cliff of insecurity with.

Comparisons are ridiculous. I always fall short, and I’m already quite short enough, thank you. I think it is human nature to compare. Our looks, our possessions, our families, our personalities – we compare, because of that whole keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ type thing.

Well. I don’t want to be like the Jones’. I want to be like me, all my imperfections and shortcomings to boot. So I’m not turning heads and I don’t have a clean house and I’m not stand-up comedian funny? Okay, that’s cool, I can deal. What I can’t deal with is feeling like I’m trying to mold myself into someone’s skin and doing things and pursuing ideals that don’t fit me simply because I came up short when I played the comparison game.

So I do things like make bucket lists and eat copious amounts of greasy pizza. I read books to make me think about grandiose philosophical theories instead of the things in my life I’ve blown into overgrown elephants instead of their original frog-like sizes. (And also because I want to say I’ve read Tolstoy and Wilde and Proust?) I dive into years-long projects with my eyes squinted half-way shut so I’ll actually leave the precarious edge I’m perched on. If we truly had our eyes all the way open about most of the decisions we make in our lives, we’d never move forward with much of anything.

Before I know it, I’ve got a whole line of overgrown elephants stacked up in my backyard. Taking up space, eating my grass and blocking the sunshine. Even if I wanted to start thinning out the herd, I can’t because I’m juggling all the distractions I gave myself to ignore the original Fatty McFatterson who first took up residence.

While these distractions aren’t a total waste, (Some of them are – when will I ever need to quote Marcel Proust? I find stuffy academic debates to be rather overbearing, arrogant, and boring. Big words don’t impress me; other big things do. Like mountains.) they don’t accomplish what I originally intended. They never do, of course. Distractions simply add more clutter and chaos to mask the original clutter and chaos.

We all do it, I think. Dream up distractions to one level or another. It’s easier that way, for the right now. It feels a little easier to breathe if we can just push off some problems and focus on other things that aren’t quite so difficult. And sometimes it feels easier to add distraction after distraction until life becomes so crazy that it’s impossible to think about anything.