You Won’t Feel a Thing

Here are step-by-step instructions for anyone who wants to undergo exrcuciating pain and torment:

Step 1) Don’t go to the dentist for 7 years.

Step 2) Go to the dentist.

I’m sure there are other ways to go about being tortured, but this is one of the few where you get to pay for it. 

First they took x-rays of my teeth.  Then they examined them one by one with a mirror and scalpel.  The examiner would say things like, “Number 29 needs an M-O-2,” to someone who recorded it on a computer.  And I would be thinking, “M-O-2?  Is that bad?  That sounds bad.  Maybe it stands for molar obtrusion.  And maybe the 2 means it’s twice as bad as a typical molar obtrusion.  Oh number 29, what’s wrong with you?”

Then the dental hygienist sat beside me and told me all my problems.  Not just dental, either.  “Your self-esteem is too low.  You use humor to deflect from serious issues.”  Just kidding.  But seriously, my teeth are messed up.  I had five cavities, needed one crown, I grind my teeth when I sleep which is wearing them down, I need three wisdom teeth removed, I have a periodontal infection (or something like that), and one of the cavities is so deep I may need a root canal.  “But good news, you don’t have oral cancer.”  That is good news, but considering I never even contemplated the idea of ever having oral cancer, it doesn’t do much to soften the blow. 

“Good news!  Your grandma’s house isn’t on fire.”

Awesome.  Anyway, then they did a cleaning.  This mostly consisted of someone stabbing my gums with a scalpel.  It wasn’t supposed to hurt so bad, but because I hadn’t been to the dentist in seven years my gums were inflamed. Consequently, a typical cleaning felt to me like I was chewing on Hellraiser’s head.  This took over an hour.  I felt bad for both myself and the dental hygienist.  She was probably experiencing something similar to what a janitor might feel when he walks into the bathroom and sees that somebody took a shit all over the floor.  But she did a good job and when she was done my teeth were all the same color.  Which is nice. 

At this point I thought I was about done.  I was wrong.  She took me to another room where she told me the dentist would fill three cavities and put a crown on one tooth.  She said, “The hard part’s over.  You’ll be numbed for this so you won’t feel a thing.”  She was wrong.  The dentist gave me two shots, then started drilling.  Ten seconds later I screamed in pain.  So she gave me another shot and started drilling.  Same results.  ”I’ve never had to give anyone this much,” she said.  She ended up giving me somewhere between five to seven shots.  I lost count after the entire right side of my face went numb.  I couldn’t feel my temple.  My temple!  I don’t think you’re ever supposed to lose feeling of your temple. 

Of course that drilling sound is terrible, but I don’t know if it was because I’d been novacaned into half-retardedness or what, but a sense of peace came over me.  I thought, Wow, the high-pitched noise of the drill against my teeth sounds like seagulls on the beach.  How lovely.  Number 29, isn’t it lovely? 

By the time they were done I had been there five hours.  For the last two I had been asking them, “Are we almost done?” in a sad whimper.  “Please?  Please, I don’t want to be here anymore. Take a hammer and knock me out.  Hit me in the temple, I won’t feel a thing.”

How Not to Impress a Woman: Part III

After the trauma of that first rapid, me and my brothers were hesitant to agree to any more fun activities.  Hesitant, but not unwilling.  After a while we pulled our rafts to land beneath an old railroad bridge that ran about 40 feet in the air across the river.  She pointed up and said, “I’ve jumped off it a dozen times. Trains don’t use it anymore so it’s safe.”

Well, as long as it’s safe…

Me, Johnny and Seth followed her as she climbed up the valley wall, and then slowly we made our way across the railroad bridge.  We were stepping carefully from board to board while Helen was doing cartwheels (not literally).  She seemed to be in a constant state of testing the fates.  Like that scene from Forrest Gump when Lt. Dan is sitting on the perch of his boat during the hurricane, screaming, “You call this a storm? Ha ha ha!”  That was Helen, only she never left the perch.

Now from the ground, 40 feet did not look that high.  I could raise my hand and fit the gap between two fingers and laugh. “Pshh. That’s it? 40 feet? I could jump off that onto a slab of concrete.  Head first.”

But actually being at 40 feet, and looking down, my tune slightly changed.  Oh my God this is so high.  How is this so high?  Why would anyone ever want to be this far from the earth?  The people look like ants.  And the actual ants I can’t see at all.  I want to see ants again! God, let me see ants again.

About a quarter of the way across, Seth stopped moving.  ”I can’t do it,” he said.  

I was immediately envious of him.  He was escaping.  However, I was not so envious of him later that day when he confessed that, up there on the bridge, he was so scared he peed himself.

“Like, literally?”

“Yes. Literally.”

Anyway, we made it to the halfway point, minus pee-pants of course, and Helen began climbing onto the outside of the rail to jump.  ”You guys coming?”

“Right behind you,” I said.  But Johnny said, “Screw this,” and started making his way back.  Another one down.

Within less then a minute Helen had climbed to the outside, and immediately jumped without hesitation.  By the look on her face you’d think she was jumping two feet onto a stack of feather pillows.  By the look on my face, you’d think I was jumping 400 feet into a pit of flaming spikes.  I was terrified.  I very carefully climbed to the outside of the rail, and now there was nothing between me and the jump.  All I had to do was lean forward, do a little hop, and I’d be on my way.  But I couldn’t make my body move.  To  jump would be to defy every instinct inside me, and so my body was in mutiny against my will.  

People below began to shout encouragements.  ”Come on!”  You can do it!”

No, I can’t.  My body refuses.  But finally, after a few minutes, I was able to jump by telling myself, and this is really embarrassing, that You’ve only got one life to live!  Not only is that incredibly corny, but it doesn’t actually make sense.  If I’ve only got one life to live, I shouldn’t be needlessly risking it. But whatever, it did the trick.  I jumped.

Now I had never jumped from a height of this magnitude before, and two things happened.  The first was that I kept expecting to hit the water every quarter-second.  I felt like I had time to pour a glass of wine, read a novella, then look up and say, “Still falling?  Seriously?” And the second thing was this: when I jumped I naively assumed that my feet would stay below me, where they belonged.  This was not the case.  They began to float out from under me against my will.  I couldn’t stop it.  I felt like there was an air-god, who controlled all things in his realm of falling, who demands that all humans in his world must bend to his will and become parallel with the ground.  The result of this was that I hit the river at a 45-degree angle and smashed my face into the water.  

It really, really hurt.

I came to the surface and someone said, “Oh my God, are you okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine,” I replied, but I wasn’t.  I had one of the worst headaches of my life.  In fact, just in writing about this I can a feel headache coming on.  It felt like I had taken an uppercut to the face from Kimbo Slice.  It felt like my skull was a prison, and my neurons were rioting.  Kicking down doors, lighting rolls of toilet paper on fire, shivving guards in the kidneys and throwing them off balconies.  

We got back in our rafts and it didn’t take long for her to suggest another fun activity, which involved jumping out of the raft and riding a rapid that was three times as strong as the last one.  But we were all defeated.  Johnny had chickened out.  Seth had peed himself.  And I was beginning to wonder if I had a concussion, considering all I wanted to do was find a cozy spot to lie down, close my eyes, and slip into a coma.  

The rest of the trip was uneventful.  We mostly sat in silence. She had broken us.

How Not to Impress a Woman: Part II

By the time we got into our rafts and began heading down the river, my brothers and I realized something about Helen–she had a little bit of a death wish.  She regaled us with “fun” stories that involved her doing things that sounded less like fun or more like…potentially fatal.  I’ve blocked most of these stories from my memory, but I remember one of them had something to do with cliff diving at night.  Cliff diving and nighttime are both scary enough on their own. There is no need to combine them.  But I didn’t say this.  I said things like, “Oh, sounds like fun.  I’ve always wanted to jump off cliffs at night…”

Yeah, just the other day I was standing on the edge of a cliff and thinking, man, I wish the sun wasn’t out right now, so I could leap headfirst into the darkness. What a rush!

My brothers and I stiffened just a little when she said that she had ”fun” stuff for us to do along the way.  I didn’t know what this fun stuff was, but I quickly overcame my fear and decided that I was down for whatever.  And who knows, maybe one of the fun things she had in mind was sneaking off into the forest to make out with me.  (SPOILER: This was not one of the fun things she had in mind).

After about 20 minutes of little to no rapids, the river opened up into a still inlet. We brought our rafts to shore and Helen pointed to a large rock on the shore that rose up about 10 feet above the water.  ”A lot of people get a kick out of jumping off that rock into the water,” she said.  ”It’s real fun.”

Well hell, I thought, that’s nothing.  My mom jumped off first, laughing and yelling on her way down.  We all did it, including Helen and Poopdog.  I was silently relieved.  Little did I know her fun activities would escalate in insanity.  

We started moving down the river again, and not much later we came to our first substantial rapid.  As we approached it she said, “You know what I like to do?  Get out of the raft and just ride it myself.”  

That’s what she said.

Me, Johnny and Seth all looked at each other.  This certainly didn’t seem like a good idea, but who would be the one to chicken out?  We could all say no together and save face in our solidarity, but if just one of us said yes….

“Let’s do it,” I said.

We all jumped into the water.  The rapids were (rapidly) approaching. I looked over to Johnny and I swear I communicated the following words with my eyes: 

Dude, we’re all wearing life jackets.  You can’t drown in life jackets, right?

To which he responded (with his eyes): Yes, it’s possible.  Start praying.

Then we hit the rapids and it was fun for about five seconds.  Then I got sucked under.  I told myself to stay calm, to literally go with the flow, that I’d have to come to the surface eventually.  That lasted for about 10 seconds.  Then I panicked.  I started flailing my arms aimlessly as I was tossed and turned.  I didn’t even know which direction was up.  If need by though I would swim to the river bottom and dig to China.  I was NOT going to die!  

Then I popped up to the surface, with a look of complete terror on my face.  Seth and Johnny popped up, too, equally terrified.  Helen was wading in the still waters and I immediately attempted to change my expression to one of joy and elation.  I think I ended up looking psychotic.  

“Are you guys okay?” my mom called to us.

“Yeah, we’re fine!  Just having some fun!” I reply.

To be concluded….

How Not To Impress a Woman: Part I

Any man who wants to impress a woman should keep the following questions in mind:

1) Is it physically possible for me to do this?

2) Will this jeopardize my life?

3) Am I an idiot?

If the answer to any of those questions is yes, you probably should not do what you are about to do.   The following story takes place roughly 5 years ago.  It is all true, and the names have not been changed (except for mine, which I will change to John McClain).  And also people’s names I forgot. 

I (John McClain) once went on vacation with my family to Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  During this trip we went white-water rafting.   Since there were like eight of us, they gave us two rafts and two guides.  The first guide was a young man who was not only very ripped and handsome, but also polite, humble and charming.  We will call him PoopDog.  The other guide was a beautiful young woman, roughly my age, with dark hair and mischievous eyes (you know what I mean by that? Like she’s got this secret and she’s not telling you).  Anyway, we’ll call her Helen. Naturally, me and my two brothers, Johnny and Seth, opted to ride in her raft.  I remember thinking that Johnny and Seth were too young and weak to pose a threat, and so it came down to me and Poopdog.  I must destroy Poopdog and impress her with my wit and courage.  I also remember thinking, in the back of my mind, there is a small chance that I’m a complete idiot, and I’m soon going to prove it. 

We took a van to our launch site.  On the ride there, Helen began talking about how much fun we’re all going to have, but how a lot of people, even ”big strong men,” get scared by some of the bigger rapids.  I responded with, “I never get scared.”

I meant for it to sound facetious and self-deprecating. You know, I could be the guy who has a sense of humor about himself but who is also very handsome and manly, and who is not vain but has a humble sense of humor about how handsome and manly he is.  (Yes, I was attempting to convey all that with four words).  Instead, for some reason, I said, “I never get scared,” with a completely straight face, so that it looked like I was being serious.  I ended up sounding like a cocky, delusional asshole.  Of course I get scared.  Everyone gets scared.  To say you never get scared is absolutely ridiculous.  I might as well be one of those guys who tells people they can bench press 800 pounds.  No, you can’t, and it’s sad that you feel the need to lie about it.

She responded with, “Oh, wow, that must be nice, never being scared.” 

But she was slightly sarcastic, and I got the impression she was saying it for the benefit of Poopdog.  After work they’d get together and laugh about the loser who never gets scared.  I felt the need to clarify:

“I don’t never get scared.   I mean, sometimes I do.  Ya know, I mean, some things are scary…”

This was followed by a profound silence.  Honestly, what could she say to this?  I guess she could ask, “Oh yeah, what kinds of things are scary,” to which I could reply, “Lots of stuff; monsters, angry dogs, ancient Indian burial grounds, evil clowns, normal clowns, people with gigantic eyes, certains types of snakes like that huge anaconda from the movie Anaconda,” etc.  Thankfully she changed the subject.  Poopdog: one point.  John McClain: zero.

To be continued….

The Worst Deal Ever: Part II

Here is the consequence of me partaking in the worst deal ever: I pay $380 a month for a 2003 Honda Civic.  Over the course of 5 years.  It already had 60,000 miles on it. 

That’s a total of $22,800.  For a Honda Civic. 

Here is how it happened.  Approximately two years ago I was in desperate need of a reliable vehicle.  I was fresh out of college, had bad credit, and no dealership would finance me.  So I bought a ‘97 Grandam off my stoner friend, the day before he moved to Portland.  Three weeks later the car was done.  At this point in the story I am Jabez, roaming around muttering, “I just can’t catch a break.”  Enter Mr. Scratch, AKA, Tom Wood Honda Dealership.  They told me all about this great program they have, whereby they help finance recent college graduates with bad or no credit.  All they needed was to see a copy of my transcripts.

Well I bring them my transcripts and the assistant manager looks them over, like actually studies them.  He points to one class and says, “What’s this F here?  That’s not good.”

“I failed that class on principle.”

“I’m just joking with ya! You’re fine!”

Okay, why do they need my transcripts?  And why is this guy examining my course load?  Do they increase my interest for every C?  If I had gotten a 4.0 would they give me a car for free?  Anyway, while talking to this guy, a salesman emerges from the shadows, cloaked as an angel of light.  He is only slightly older than me, so immediately he adopts this “Us Vs. Them” mentality.  The world sucks.  Life is hard coming out of college.  Let me help you out.  He never stopped talking or asking questions.  I couldn’t even get one moment of silence to think a rational thought.  He asked me if I liked to party.

“Do you like to party?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s cool.  I went to this party the other night… [blah blah blah] Anyway these Civics can drive for 300,000 miles without a hitch. You know?”

No.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t even know how we got outside, standing over a Honda Civic with 60,000 miles on it.  He was weaving an intricate web of facts, emotions and stories, and I was powerless to stop him.  When he showed me the inside of the vehicle, he said things like, “It’s got power-locks, power-windows, the works.  It doesn’t have power-seats though; Honda believes in keeping things simple.”

Keeping things simple?  Why didn’t they believe in keeping the locks and windows simple?  Are they morally opposed to only certain forms of complexity: like seats that move with the push of a button? And why is he referring to Honda as if Honda is an actual person.  Like there’s one guy making everything.  Like E. Honda from Street Fighter 2 is locked in a manufacturing plant, rapidly punching cars into existence. 

Anyway, before I even knew what was happening I found that I had agreed, in principle, to purchase the vehicle.  They took me back to some office where their finance manager would hash out the details and I would sign the paperwork.  This guy wouldn’t stop talking, either.  He explained to me, in detail, approximately 3000 added services that I needed to purchase.  This service is essential.  This one is a matter of life and death.  If you don’t purchase this one, your future children will suffer an excruciating death at the hands of a merciless foe.    I think I only managed to reject a couple of these services, and one of them was something ridiculous like, “If the world ends before you’ve finished paying off your car, we will cut your interest rate in half.” 

Whatever.  The total came to $380 a month.  Everyone said it with such large smiles on their faces.  The assistant manager.  This finance bastard.  The evil salesman.  $380 a month didn’t seem like that much money.  I can afford a measly $380.  Hell, my rent is like $200 and I pay that no problem!  They gave me the keys to the car and, here’s the kicker.  Every single employee stood in a group and applauded for me when I started it.  They took a Polaroid picture of me with the car.  They were so happy.  I was happy! Yaaaah for new cars!  I drove away into the gorgeous colors of a peaceful autumn day, the new car smell in my nose, glad to be alive. 

“Hey moon!  Seriously, come check this guy out!  He just agreed to pay $380 a month for a Honda Civic.  A Honda Civic, Moon!  And he’s happy about it! Oh I can’t wait to burn this guy again!” 

What I didn’t know was that $380 is a lot of money every month.  A lot.  It was twice as much as my rent.  It was more than both my student loan payments combined. $380 was insane!  Al Pacino in Scarface paid less money per month for his coke addiction than I do for my car.  Escaped convicts who recently filed for bankruptcy pay less money per month after financing the Batmobile.  Anyway…

That’s the deal.  Feel free to contact Tom Wood Honda as a preemptive measure and tell them to F-ck Off.  All that being said, I do get 39-miles-to-the-gallon on the highway, which is neat.

The Worst Deal Ever

Up until a few years ago, the worst business transaction in American History occurred between a young farmer named Jabez Stone, and Satan (or Mr. Scratch).  The story is called The Devil and Daniel Webster, and it really happened (not really).  Basically the story goes like this: Jabez was walking around feeling sorry for himself, saying things like, “Man, I have the WORST luck in the world!  I reckon I’d sell my soul for some good fortune.” 

Or something like that.  Then WAM! The devil appears with his hand cupped around his ear.  ”Say what?”

Jabez ends up trading his soul for 7 years of good luck, which of course is an awful deal.  Why?

1)  7 years (of good stuff) compared to infinite years (of bad stuff) is simply not comparable.  It would be like someone offering you a delicious cupcake in exchange for a billion flesh-eating ants.

2) Someone who possesses the ability to actually purchase your soul should not be trusted.  Or at least be subjected to a vigorous background check.  Once again, if some guy offers to give me a billion ants, one of my first questions is going to be, “Why does this guy have a billion ants? Do I really want to do business with a guy who owns a billion ants?”

                                            (actually I kinda do, anyway)

3) Good fortune on earth is not as good as torment in hell is bad.  If Jabez really wanted a fair deal, he should have bargained to spend half his eternity in heaven and half in hell.  But as we all know, dividing infinity by any number still leaves you with infinity.  Thus Jabez would have to spend two separate eternities in both places.  Meaning Jabez would have to rip his soul into two pieces.  And ripping one’s soul into two pieces does not sound like a good idea. (It sounds like something the ant guy might do)

There are many lessons to be learned from this story, but the most important I think are: Don’t make hasty trades, don’t do business with a creature who is inherently evil, and leave your soul out of all business transactions.  Unfortunately, I broke all three of these maxims a few years ago when I made what historians will one day deem:

THE WORST DEAL IN RECORDED HISTORY!

Only they probably won’t use that exclamation point, because historians don’t use exclamation points.  Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia in 1812!!!!    Not very scholarly.

Anyway, in Part 2 I will reveal this deal, and you will think I’m so stupid that you won’t feel sorry for me at all, not even a little bit (maybe a little bit).

The Taming of the Couch: Part III

Of course what was missing was a couch–more specifically, a tan-white leather couch in my basement.  I hurried downstairs and stood before it. It was approximately six feet long, three feet wide, and weighed roughly 12,000 pounds (give or take).  I rubbed my chin and asked it a question.

“Is it possible?  Can I get you up those stairs by myself?”

The couch gave me a blank stare in response.  Its buttons were tiny, vacant eyes.  Its cushions were gigantic tongues too lazy to speak.  What couches want more than anything, I realized, was simply to stay put.  Moving is a traumatic ordeal, and any move involving stairs is utterly terrifying.  Lucky for them, their size and shape discourage humans from doing this very often.  But maybe a stair-move is a right of passage for them, like buying your first car or spending three days alone in the jungle.  Like maybe three couches are sitting in a room conversing about how terrifying the outside world is.  But couch #1 says, “What? I don’t think it’s so bad out there.”  Then couch #2 is about to vehemently object when couch #3 interrupts, “Hey, don’t waste your time on him…. he’s never been on stairs.”  

But like it or not this couch was moving.  I picked it up by one end and dragged it to the base of the steps, positioned myself just right and began yanking it upwards.  And it got stuck.  I repositioned the couch and tried again. Still stuck.  I could picture the couch screaming, “No!!! Not the stairs!!” And gripping onto the sides of the walls like his life depended on it.  After about five minutes of this, and out of breath, I stepped back and surveyed the situation.  It became clear to me that in order to get the couch up the steps I would have to take the railing off the wall and the basement door off its hinges.  And even then there was no guarantee it would work.  

The other option was equally troubling.  I could drag the couch through the basement door leading outside, around the back of the house, up a hill (covered with snow), up some steps onto the deck, past the deck and into the patio, through the patio to the dining room (whereby I’d have to move a table), through the living room (I’d have to move more couches), and down a hallway that turns at a 90 degree angle before leading to my room.  And because I lack the physical prowess to lift the couch up over my head, the journey may cause significant water damage due to the snow.

The short route (up the stairs) may be physically impossible, and the long route, while technically possible, would most likely ruin the couch itself.  I was in awe at the symbolic force of this predicament, and I was enamored (not discouraged, weirdly enough) by the following thought: there may literally be no way for me to do this on my own.  

I patted the couch.  ”Don’t worry.  You’re not going anywhere.”

It’s not that the couch will never have to face stairs again (it probably will), or never have to move at all (it must).  But in the meantime, when there’s no good way, rather than sicken itself with anxiety, it just needs to relax.  And that’s what I needed, too.  So naturally, I laid down, stretched my arms and legs, and the both of us took a nap.

Notes:
*The couch never made it to my room.  Instead I filled that empty space with a recliner.  
*Part II of this story is an pathetic homage to the incredible poem, A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island by Frank O’Hara.

The Taming of the Couch: Part II

So, where was I.  Ah, yes, I was about to attempt to clean and rearrange my room.  I needed to.  Somehow I felt it would prove something.  I strode into my room with a sense of divine purpose and flipped the light switch.  No light.  The bulb was burnt out and it was night.  This was infuriating.  I had seriously just replaced the bulb last week, and not with any bulb, but one of those expensive, energy-saving bulbs.  The ones that are supposed to burn for all eternity.  The ones with the guarantee on the box: “This bulb will outlast the sun.”  Meanwhile, 93 million miles away, the sun is laughing his ass off.  ”Are you serious? You thought…you really thought….oh that’s priceless.  Hey moon, come check this guy out!”  

Changing a bulb on a ceiling lamp in the dark is no easy task.  Especially since the first bulb I replaced it with didn’t work.  I was so mad I wanted to resurrect Thomas Edison and punch him in the throat.

“Moon, seriously!  Look at this guy!  He’s, ha, he actually replaced the burnt-out bulb with another burnt-out bulb! That’s too much!”

Anyway, after numerous other complications, I finally got my light working.  What I saw was not encouraging.  A precariously stacked mountain of mail on my coffee table.  A pile of dirty laundry in the corner.  Books in milk crates.  In milk crates?!!  Who am I?

“Moon! Get your ass over here!  This guy is using milk crates for a bookshelf!  Yeah, milk crates! He’s pathetic!”

I got to work.  I ditched the milk crates, did my laundry, moved some things around, and before long my room was almost complete.  In my soul I could feel that it lacked something essential.  But once I discovered what, once I found the last missing piece, I would have actually….completed….something. I would have accomplished a goal.  I would have changed.  I walked in circles around the room, holding my hands out like Monk at a crime scene, until my attention suddenly came to a rest at an empty spot by the door.  I narrowed my eyes.  I knew.

“Something’s changed, moon.  He’s got this crazy look in his eyes.  No, the milk crates are gone, man.  I’m tellin you, he’s like, different now.  He’s got motivation now.  Purpose.  Moon!  I think he’s the one.”

To be concluded…

The Taming of the Couch: Part I

There comes a time in everyone’s life when the goals we set for ourselves, the dreams we pursue, the desires that well up from within us, magically manifest themselves in one mundane task.  Normally this task would not merit more than a passing thought, but in these moments we are inexplicably compelled: “I need to do this!”  This happened to me two Saturdays ago, and I named the experience “The Taming of the Couch.”

On this Saturday I spent the entire day home alone. I didn’t call anybody. I didn’t answer my phone.  My intentions were to sip coffee, read, write and reflect.  The writing was especially important to me.  See, lately I have had to face some harsh truths about myself; namely, that I lack the necessary perseverance and dedication it takes to become a successful writer.  In my lifetime, I have probably started around fifteen books and ten screenplays.  Each time I begin, I’m exhilarated with the possibilities. I think, “This is going to be the best book of the year. NO, of the decade. NO, of the century!” But it doesn’t take long for discouragement to set in, and soon I’m thinking, “This just sucks.”

The band Motion City Soundtrack has this song, Can’t Finish What You Started.  The lyrics feel like a slap in the face. “You’re too afraid to face the outcome/Quite likely you’re a failure/It’s a shitty thing to say, but hey man, the clock is ticking.”

So I am left with some vexing questions: how do I develop these qualities in myself?  Can I pull them out of thin air? Can I create them from nothing?  Essentially–how does a person change?  Skynard sang, forcefully, defiantly, almost like he was trying to convince himself, “And this bird you cannot change.” Adam Duritz sings, in a shaky, vulnerable response to a lover, “We’re always changing.”  They may be saying opposite things, but the heart behind it is the same: a lament that we don’t have any control over who we are becoming.  Wind-up toys that move thoughtlessly, not even to a hoped-for destination, but rather, until the last bit of kinetic energy fades into nothing.

So anyway, Saturday, two weeks ago, these thoughts floating around in my head,  feeling anxious about the new writing goals I had made for myself (will I actually complete them?), but also excited, (What if I actually do?), and after writing for about four hours, I was suddenly compelled to clean and organize my shit-hole of a room.  Little did I know it would end in an epic battle, lasting 90 minutes, between me and a couch.

I Don’t Wanna Die

The other day me and a friend were talking about how ridiculous it would be to fake our own deaths, and things like: how much money would it take to fake your own death to EVERYONE you know for one month. I think we both agreed we could never do it simply because of our mothers.

But that night as I was laying in bed, I started thinking about how I WAS going to die someday. And it could be any day. It could be tomorrow. I think a part of me has always believed that I’m invincible, but of course I’m not. Unlike Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, I’ve broken my wrist, I just sprained my thumb, I’ve gotten pnemonia and chicken pox and food poisoning, I’ve stubbed my toe and it really really hurt. The list goes on. I’m not invincible.

And I’m going to get old someday too. I could be one of those old men that take itty bitty baby steps; the guys that literally take 10 minutes to walk from their car (which their wife drove) to their table at Bob Evans. Now granted, I’m normally not sprinting into Bob Evans or doing cartwheels down the isles or anything…..but 10 minutes!??? I’m in an interesting predicament here because:

I don’t want to grow old
AND
I don’t want to die young

Of course no matter what I do I’m going to die Young (get it, because my last name is Young, ha!). See what if I get old and lose that beautiful sense of humor…..

I started thinking about the worst part of dying. This is maybe kind of selfish, but the worst part is that everyone else keeps living! It reminds of times when I was a kid and I’d have to go to bed early while everyone else was still up having fun and playing games. That’s what death is like.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I want to take everyone with me when I go. “If I go we all go!” type thing. No. But it’s just so sad, don’t you think? I want to keep telling jokes and laughing and crying and feeling and stupid bike rides and great movies and silly romance and a kiss and a thunderstorm and a fucking sunrise! Pardon my french but a SUNRISE! Never again???

And all of my memories.

I know when you die you don’t get to take anything with you, but what about memories? Cus I want to take them all, everyone last one of them. Well…most of them. (A few I may conveniently forget to take with me.)