Fifteen or so years ago I woke up because I heard repeated banging and sleepily muttered to check the front door.
The clock said it was three thirty something and as I made my way to the door I took a minute to make sure the kids were ok.
Both were fast asleep and the dog hadn’t joined the family yet so it was just my face the police saw.
‘Sir, do you know the door to your Honda Odyssey is open? Is it possible you opened it? Could you come verify nothing was taken?”
I walked outside with the two cops and confirmed it was all fine. I had carried a sleeping child into the house and couldn’t remember if I had forgotten to close the door or not.
Maybe I left it open, maybe someone opened it and found nothing. Two car stereos had been stolen from in front of the house, both had come from a Camaro I had owned.
Thought about it today as I wandered through a parking lot looking for my car. I hadn’t paid much attention to where I parked but I wasn’t worried because I park in one of the same four places when I go to the gym.
I knew I’d find it within a moment.
Years Of Study
Someone accused me of emotionally responding to a silly remark they made because I disagreed with their assessment.
I pushed back and suggested they weren’t as well informed as they claimed to be and they responded with a couple of links and the names of a few authors they read.
“I have been studying this for years. I know quite a bit.”
I am paraphrasing but it is close enough to what they claimed. It made me chuckle a little bit because I remembered being lectured in high school about not being able to solve an equation if you had the wrong information.
‘It is hard to solve for X if you haven’t set up your equation correctly’ or something like that.
The concept stuck with me especially when it comes to analysis and conclusions that are tied to news sources. If all you watch is right wing media or the converse you will have very different ideas of what is going on in the country and world..
If your research only consists of the side that favors your political perspective in other areas your perspective will be skewed.
And when it comes to particular places there is no substitute for visiting and seeing what life is really like. Many Texans tell me about California but most of what they know is from television.
They don’t know how different sections of the state are and they really don’t know how very different parts of Los Angeles are so when they come to certain conclusions I don’t take them seriously.
They don’t know enough to provide an educated answer.
Hell, I tease some people about places in the midwest but the truth is I don’t know what those places are really like.
I know enough to repeat things that I heard but I can’t tell you what it smells like in particular restaurants or bakeries. Can’t tell you what the sounds are like at the shore any more than some of these others can tell me about the little details that make up these other things.
Aging Has Its Moments
I think I had a case of food poisoning hit me the other night. It was an experience I’d rather not repeat again.
From about 8:30 PM to 2 AM there was a demon attacking me and at one point I had muscle spasms that had me rolling around on the floor trying to find a way to stretch out and get comfortable.
I alternated between feeling miserable and feeling angry.
Played around with whether I would hit a drugstore to pick something up to help make me feel better but wasn’t entirely sure what that would be.
Didn’t like the idea of potentially fouling up the new car either and decided I would just gut it out and that is what I did.
Still not sure what did it, but I decided this aging thing really has its moments.
In college one of the guys told me you were never really hung over unless you thought dying would be a relief. I always thought that was extreme.
Thought about it briefly the other night and realized I am still in a place where as miserable as I have been there is always this question of what happens if I held on a few more minutes.
If there is a higher power and he/she/it showed me a video of my life that said “if you had only held on an extra five minutes you would have gotten all these things you asked for” I would be pretty angry.
That might sound like nonsense, but we all have our tricks for getting through the hard times and that is one of mine.
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