Month: June 2018

It has been suggested to me that my view of the world can be a little bit negative.  It has been said that instead of finding the joy in life, I always seem to focus on the little things that irritate or annoy me.  I have been called a pessimist, although I don’t think that word truly applies to me.  A pessimist is someone who believes that given any set of circumstances, the worst possible option will always happen.  This isn’t my belief.  I believe that good things do happen, I just know that something stupid is always coming hard on its heels to screw it up.  Life is sort of a shit sandwich, with really good quality bread.

A perfect example is yesterday.  I went out to lunch with a few friends that I had not seen in a very long time.  I had a wonderful time talking, catching up with their lives, and enjoying a good meal.  I drove home in a pleasant mood, and when I walked in the door, my daughter asked how my lunch was.  I told her I had a good time.

She smiled, and said, “Great.  Hey, by the way, something is wrong with my car.  It stopped running.”

Shit sandwich.  Really good bread.

My wife has told me that I always see the glass as half empty.  This also is not true.  The glass, in my opinion, is completely empty.  The rim is also cracked and chipped so when you try to take a drink you cut your lips and all you can taste is your own blood.

Okay, perhaps that analogy went a little darker than I intended, but you get the point.

I think my basic lack of faith in humanity began at a very young age.  I recall being lost at a supermarket and wandering the aisles, crying.  A man stopped and asked me what the problem was.  I told him I couldn’t find my mother.  He knelt down beside me, put one hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes.  He said, “And I can’t find the baking soda, so I guess we’re both out of luck today.”

I learned a very valuable lesson that day: nobody cares about your problems when they have problems of their own.  I have taken that ideal to heart and I have happily shared my insight with anyone who has ever sat down next to me and attempted to start an uninvited conversation.

On a side note, I do find it interesting that when I was in my twenties I had the exact same outlook on life, but I was described as brooding, deep, and intense.  I was considered thoughtful and profound.  Since turning fifty, the vocabulary has changed drastically.  Now I more commonly hear the words: cantankerous, grumpy, or crotchety.  Not quite so flattering.  Pretty accurate, I must admit, but I liked the brooding comments better.  It isn’t as much fun being the angry old man that everyone points to as a cautionary tale for their children.

Anyway, back to my original purpose for this rant.  In answer to those closest to me that continually tell me that I need to cheer up, and that I need to focus on all the good things that life has to offer, I have a simple response:

Not gonna happen.

I tried to be positive for a while.  I really did.  I tried to do one act of kindness for another person every day.  It wasn’t always easy, but I did it.  I discovered that it was a lot more work than I expected.  On the other hand, the petty acts of mindless retribution just seemed to happen on their own.  They take no effort whatsoever.

I’m too old to change, now.  Too stuck in my ways, you might say.  I don’t really worry too much about it, though, since my closest friends and family are still willing to put up with me.  And if they haven’t bailed on me yet, they probably aren’t going to anytime soon.

So, I will continue to gaze up at a cloudless, blue sky, and while others enjoy the view I will think about skin cancer.  I will hear the laughter of children at the park, and I will check my watch and wonder how long it will take before one or more of them begin crying.  I will gaze out over the endless horizon of the ocean, and I will ponder about how much it would suck to get eaten by a shark.  And my friends and family will stand next to me, pointing out the way the sunlight dances on the water, trying to get me to cheer up.

It won’t work, but they’ll keep trying.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go outside and chase some kids off of my front lawn.

This week, my oldest daughter, EM1, is taking a friend and going camping.  Ordinarily, this would not be a big deal.  People go camping every day and no one feels the need to write a blog about it.  But this trip is a bit of a special occasion.  You see, this is her first time going camping without her parents.

To provide a little bit of background, this is the same girl that won’t leave the house to go into the garage by herself because, “there are spiders out there.”  This is the same girl that won’t go in the back yard and do yard work because it’s dirty and she will have to touch bugs.  Her entire experience camping up until now has been hiding in our trailer, away from the dirt, mosquitoes and animals, while other people worked to set up camp and provide her with meals and snacks.  She is like a baby bird, poking her head outside the nest just long enough for someone to cram food into her mouth.

Before leaving for this trip, she asked me if I would take her outside and show her how to set up the tent.  I thought that was a smart, logical request, and I told her I would be happy to do it.  I removed an old plastic tarp from the garage and handed it to her, explaining that she would need to place the tarp on the ground under the tent to keep it dry in case there was any unexpected wet weather.  EM1 refused to touch it.

“It looks dirty,” she told me.

I said that yes it was dirty.  We used it on our last camping trip and it was on the ground for four days.  Then she asked if there any bugs on it.  I said probably not, but that I could not guarantee some critter hadn’t crawled in at some point.

She asked me to open it up and check.  I suggested we open it up together outside while we set up her tent.  She walked away and told me she had something she needed to do.  I am not sure at this point if she is going to take the tarp with her.  I do know that she has still not learned how to set up the tent.  I can only hope that the friend camping with her knows what she is doing, and they won’t end up just draping the tent over a tree branch and sleeping on the ground underneath it.

Honestly, I am not completely sure why she decided she wanted to go camping.  My only guess is that EM1 was talking to a friend and told her that she camps with her family every year.  Which is true.  Then perhaps she said that with so many years of camping experience, she was an expert.  Which is a shameless lie.

I am afraid her friend may have been lulled into a false sense of security, like a blind man who has been promised a guide animal and then dropped into the middle of a busy freeway with a squirrel on a leash.  Except that the blind man probably wouldn’t get eaten by a bear in the middle of the freeway.  So, maybe it’s more like being surrounded by bears in a cave while holding a squirrel on a leash.

My daughter would be the squirrel in both analogies, just in case anyone was wondering.

My second concern has to do with the campfire.  While rummaging through EM1’s grocery bags (yes, I was snooping.  Shoot me.) I noticed that she had hotdogs and marshmallows.  I also noticed that she is packing absolutely no firewood or charcoal.  I don’t know what she thinks she is going to be burning to cook her food while she is on her outdoor adventure, but I admit to very mixed emotions on the proposition.

On the one hand, I would feel bad if she is unable to have a fire and has to eat all her meals cold.  That would be unfortunate.  On the other hand, I can vividly picture the ten o’clock news announcing that 5,000 acres of forest have just been burned to ash because two girls decided to set fire to their tent to make s’mores.  That would be … well … slightly more than unfortunate.

My friends and I were putting up tents and camping in the wilderness by ourselves at her age, so although I would personally prefer that my daughter do her camping in the backyard where I can see her and I know she is safe, I also know that she is an adult and needs to be able to make decisions for herself.  I just have to hope and pray that those decisions are good ones.

In other words, not the same decisions I made at her age.

My dad used to tell me that you can grow up lucky or smart.

I grew up lucky.  I hope EM is smart.

My eighteen-year old daughter, EM2, came to me the other day and said something that I’m quite sure no parent wants to hear from their teenage child.  She walked into the living room, stood in front of the television so I couldn’t completely ignore her, and she told me, “Dad, I want to get a tattoo.”

I don’t know what prompted this conversation.  Apparently, she had been thinking about it for several years, but was waiting until she turned eighteen before she decided to verbally punch me in the gut with the idea.  My mind immediately began to spin out of control with questions.

What kind of tattoo?  Where are you going to put it?  How big will it be?  Who gave you this idea, and do I need to kill him?

Then, I started imagining the things she might be contemplating.  Was she going to have a rose put on her chest?  Or perhaps some kind of elaborate lower back tattoo?  Or was she just going to cut to the chase and print the word “NEXT” on her thigh?  All these things flashed through my mind in an instant, but to my credit I just sat still and said nothing.

I wanted to tell her, no.  I wanted to forbid her from doing anything permanent to her body that she might one day regret.  But, I didn’t say anything to her for two main reasons.  One, it is her body to do with as she pleases.  I have no control over that.  And, two, I was afraid if I told her she couldn’t do it, she would go ahead and do it anyway.  I know that kid.  She would probably get a tattoo in hanzi that said, “I have the world’s worst father,” just to spite me.

I finally asked, “Are you sure you want a tattoo?  People will have a certain perception of you when they see you have a tattoo.”

EM told me she wasn’t worried about that.  She said that most of the other girls at the strip club already have tattoos.

Most of the time, I love my daughter’s sense of humor … but not always.

By the way, just as a side note, why is it when a man has the word “Mom” tattooed on his arm it is considered to be endearing, but if a woman has “Daddy” on her, it is a homing beacon to every predatory male on the planet?

Okay, that isn’t really important.  What is important, is my daughter researched local tattoo shops, picked one out and made an appointment to go in.  EM then asked me for a ride because she doesn’t have her driver’s license yet.

I’m still not sure if I made the right decision, but I agreed to drive her to her appointment.

The tattoo parlor was in a small, outdoor strip mall, located between a Jiu Jitsu studio and a liquor store.  I felt this was incredibly appropriate as both establishments probably added to their business clientele.  Martial arts students, flush with their recent promotions to blue belt, could wander in to request a tattoo of their dojo’s logo or emblem, making a quick stop at the liquor store beforehand to bolster their courage.

Inside the tattoo shop, EM and I were met by a large garage-style mat on the floor that said “Welcome,” a cow skull with ornate etchings on its surface hanging on the wall, and a receptionist with straight black hair, several facial piercings, and a butterfly tattoo on her neck.  The receptionist smiled at my daughter pleasantly, then gave me a look that clearly stated, “who are you, and why are you following young women into tattoo shops?”

I just pointed at my daughter, indicating that I was with her, then sat down in a chair in their waiting room.

I sort of zoned out at that point.  I remember watching my daughter get escorted into another room by a young man who had enough metal in his face to give an airport security guard fits.  Then, I just stared at the front counter, my gaze moving back and forth between a gold-colored statue of Buddha, and a small handwritten sign that said, “Cash Only!” and “We provide financing plans.”  That seemed a little bit of an oxymoron, but I didn’t have the headspace at that moment to wrestle with it.

It was only about fifteen minutes later when EM came back out to the waiting area with a bandage wrapped around her forearm.  She held out her phone to show me a picture of a cross inked onto the inside of her right wrist.  It was small, tasteful, and I felt as if I had somehow dodged a bullet.  I sighed quietly in relief as she paid the receptionist, and we listened to a rather lengthy litany of how to take care of her new tattoo over the next week.

As we walked out of the shop, I asked my daughter if she was happy with the cross on her wrist.  She said she was, and that she was already thinking about what her next tattoo was going to be.

As I sat down in the middle of the parking lot to digest this new bit of information, I couldn’t help but wonder what the other girls at the strip club were doing at that moment.

I have always loved gardening.  Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I have always loved having a garden.  I actually hate all the work that goes into it, such as weeding, hoeing, digging, planting, etc.  But nothing beats the feeling of picking your own vegetables from plants that you personally put into the ground and tended for eight to twelve hot, miserable weeks.

My entire life, wherever I have lived, I have planted gardens in the back yard.  Sometimes that consisted of nothing more than a three-foot by five-foot planter box with a few tomato plants and a zucchini bush, but I always tried to do something.  This year, my garden goals are a little bit more elaborate than they have been in the past.  I currently have a large area in the yard tilled, manicured and planted with tomatoes, pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupe, peppers, corn, and several varieties of squash.  Since retiring, I’ve decided to get a little more ambitious with my some of my projects.

When the field was cleared of weeds and the various seeds had all begun to sprout, I was feeling pretty good about my accomplishment.  I had done a really nice job.  At least, I thought so.  Unfortunately, others had different ideas about what I was doing.

Recently, I brought my wife outside to show off all the tiny plants popping up in neat little rows.  She asked me what I had planted.  I told her, pointing to the various tiny shoots of green as I described what they would one day produce.

“What about carrots and radishes?” she asked.

“What about them?” I asked back, slightly confused by the question.

“You don’t have any,” she stated simply.

Well, she had me there.  I had not planted any carrots or radishes.  I hadn’t realized that I needed to, but fortunately for me, my lovely wife was there to point out the folly of my oversight.  A garden without carrots and radishes is apparently nothing more than a mockery and a slight to the entire gardening community.  If the neighbors ever found out I had attempted such a thing, they would rally the village and run us out of our home with torches and pitchforks.

Hanging my head in shame, I climbed into my truck and drove to the nearest landscaping shop to purchase additional planter boxes in which to foster those critically important root veggies.  I bought four wine barrels, each one weighing in the neighborhood of a hundred pounds, then wrestled them into the bed of my truck to bring them home.

I’m pretty sure I tore something in my shoulder as I dragged those barrels off the truck and lugged them into the garden enclosure, but I had no time to worry about something so petty as permanently crippling myself.  I still had work to do.

Next, was a trip to the rock quarry to buy two thousand pounds of compost and planting soil, followed by an hour of shoveling the mixture out of the bed of my truck into the barrels.  When I had finished, I took a few minutes to lie on the ground and rest.  Okay, I think I actually passed out, but I can’t be certain because I don’t remember much after I started hallucinating.

When I was confident that I didn’t need to nap any longer and the taste of blood in the back of my throat had gone away, I ran one more errand.  This time I went to the local gardening center for seeds and watering equipment.

I finally had everything I needed.

When the seeds were planted, and the sprinklers were set on timers to water them regularly, I once more brought my wife outside to show her the garden.

I had spent seven hours of my day, as well as over $300 dollars from our bank account, to provide something that could have been accomplished at the grocery store in fifteen minutes for under two bucks.  But this had been an act of love, not a properly planned economic decision.  We might not be able to afford to feed the children dinner tonight, but in six to eight weeks they could have all the carrots and radishes they wanted.  (Which would be exactly none, as neither kid liked carrots or radishes.)

Flushed with pride – and perhaps a little bit of heatstroke – I  pointed at the barrels of dirt.  They weren’t much to see at that moment, but soon they would be teeming with green shoots of potential food.  The project might have almost killed me, but I was deeply gratified to see my wife smile and nod at the final results.

Then she glanced around the yard with a perplexed look on her face.  She tapped her chin a few times in thought.

Feeling my stomach turn and a sense of dread settling over me, I watched her gesture at an open spot of ground.

“What about lettuce?” she asked.