a decidedly myopic rehashing of the not so obvious... Seinfeld should have thought of it
I was on fours of the hospital shower, puking up blood, drained yet smiling between coughs, thinking about the events of the last 48 hours.
I should start with saying that she’s not exactly my wife, but we were engaged, and she’s nine, but she did ask me to marry her, and her parents are good friends of mine so we laughed about it. When I left that night, I hugged them goodbye, I called the wife “Mom”, she laughed and gave me a “fuck you.” That’s no way to talk to your future son-in-law.
I was headed home on the Taconic State Parkway going south from a toys for tots convoy of emergency service vehicles and Jeeps – on the northbound side the parkway, there was a stalled CRV in the right hand lane just around a blind corner - I drove over the 100 foot wide grass median and pulled up alongside them, which was tough to do as I was off camber - there were two women with a five month old in the car, which had run out of gas - there was no room to get the CRV off the road as it would’ve rolled over - cars were screaming by at 70 miles and hour swerving to avoid us while honking.
I quickly got all of them out of the car, hooked up a tow strap and a soft shackle - we waited for a break from traffic, and one woman and the baby came with me in the jeep and the other woman steered the CRV and we dragged them safely to a gas station - so grateful I have a Jeep.
I went to my coffee shop in Morristown. It seems like an odd place for me to be since I don’t venture drink coffee. In this shop that also serves tea and muffins and weird flat sandwiches that then put in the oven, there is bar seating by the front window and a long and high picnic looking table.
A funny thing happened while making tea...you already know that part. It reminded me of a joke I used to tell:
Moses and Jesus were on the golf course. Jesus swings, the ball skips across the lake, rolls over the grass and up a tree, a bird grabs the ball and flys it down the fairway, dropping it on the green, a squirrel grabs the ball on the mouth and carries it over to the hole where he drops it in. "Another hole in one," Jesus shouts. Moses responds, "Are you here to play golf or are you here to fuck around." My story is the opposite of that.
I’m 50 years old, actually I’m 54 and aging by the day. By all measures of age, I’m past the middle; halftime is over and I’m a few minutes into the third quarter with more time behind than ahead. That is if we’re measuring by the average age of an America.
But if you compare me to those from the Bible, I’m still a youngster, especially when you consider that Abraham lived to be 175 years old and his father Terah was 205. This was before germ theory and wars and covid and Al Sharpton. And it predates vaccines and hospitals and almond milk and gluten free donuts. And the clock hadn’t been invented yet so did time even exist?
I was once asked to fire an employee for using the f word. And I don’t mean fudge or filth/flarn/flarn/filth like Eddie Murphy used back when he was funny. This was the full f word with a capital F and all of the @#$ after. He didn’t say it around customers, and it wasn’t focused on anyone or anything. It was used under his breath and barely audible to anyone around him.
I explained that the F word is perhaps the greatest word ever invented. If it’s used appropriately, it’s perfectly acceptable, it just depends on the context and audience.
It’s used in frustration: ooooh fuck!. It’s excitement: Oh Fuck!. It’s surprise: OH Fuck! It’s frustration: OH FUCK! It’s aggravation with someone else or with yourself: Fuck you! Fuck me! It’s slow release surprise: oohhhhh fuuuuccckkkk! It’s mock confusion: what the fuck? It’s an act: Let’s fuck! Its a different act: Let’s fuck them up! It’s also despair and outrage and exhilaration, pain, confusion, befuddlement, and it’s used at heightened states of stimulation of the underwear area: FUUUUCCCKKKK! I still have the hangover from when we used it in drinking game while watching Wolf of Wall Street.
It was originally considered a pejorative but it can be used, sometimes with modification, as a noun, verb (both transitive and intransitive), pronoun, conjunction, adjective, adverb, and interjection. George Carlin famously used fuck and motherfucker as two of his seven dirty words, which, as he pointed out is duplication as Fuck is the root form and Motherfucker being derivative of said root.
Holy fuck it’s unfucking believable that fucking people use fuck in so many fucking ways and most fucks don’t give a fuck and those who don’t use fuck, are fucked and I can only say, what the fuck?
I was on a super stressful phone call with a grad school classmate. We had completed the grad school group work that he had declined to contribute to and he wanted me to redo work that had been already done and submitted. And it’s funny that people say they want to help and their help requires you doing additional work. And I couldn’t have this conversation sitting down, I needed to pace. This was late night, and I had the lights off, and MacBook cords everywhere, and I was focused on the conversation, and my big toe got hung-up, mid stride. I caught myself, kind of, and I wish my reflexes were worse because I would’ve just fallen on soft carpet.
I pivoted sideways a bit off camber, landed with all of my weight on my big toe, then spun, my opposing foot landing on the mini trampoline, which sprung me enough to launch me face first in a big potted plant. Holding foot, spitting dirt from my teeth, I lay on the floor in the dark listening to all of the work I would have to redo. I considered telling my classmates about my late night mishap, but I don’t think they would have believed me.
One year to live - when I came with the idea to write about this, I didn’t want to lose it and there are countless times where I would have a great idea, not write it down and it would be lost forever. This is the reason I have crayons in the shower, at least that’s what I tell my girlfriend.
When the idea came to me, I was in my truck, again, the best ideas come to me when my mind is unfocused and I’m doing something else. So I pulled out the notes app on my iPhone, walled garden and all, and used voice to text, I couldn’t type, I was driving.
I’ve had been bald follically challenged for a little over a decade when I decided to go (sans hair). It really wasn’t a decision I made but more of a decision made for me and immediately after I converted my head into, well something that was less haired and really smooth and hairless, I put on a hat and went to see my girlfriend. She knew me from the days when one needed a rake and a weed whacker to get anywhere near my scalp. And her, being the understanding person she was, asked me to take the hat off. She then asked me to put it the hat back on.
I woke from the sickness at 4:50am, naked and alone, and in reasonably good spirits except for a weakened cerebral cortex and the look of borrowed contentment common to all who survive. I typically wake alone as my girlfriend has her own place and I wear clothes to bed as there’s no reason to be naked by myself. No good reason. Waking unsheathed had me a bit unsorted especially when I went to sleep in full sheath and fully sorted. And even though I didn’t have an audience, I couldn’t get my clothes on fast enough.
