Three Tries

Dear J-

These are tough days to write: after a full day of work and another three hours of class the last thing I feel like doing is engaging my brain. There’s a lot to talk about: sports-wise, the Padres need to win four in a row to keep the playoff spot that seemed so sure a month ago; Cal continues its teasing ways on the gridiron; the NHL is about to kick off again. In popular culture, Comic-Con is staying in San Diego, the big town with a chip on its shoulder (this is front page news, and our editorial cartoonist has a smug superhero announcing “Take that, Anaheim” — like it was a personal attack). Life goes on outside the little neat lines I’ve drawn around it: schedule waits for no one.

I get very mixed messages at work: this is the highest priority until the next directive comes along. I’m not sure I’ve ever said it out loud but I don’t envy my boss the added responsibility with just a fraction more authority that goes with that particular job. Being the control freak that I am it would no doubt drive me nuts to know that my performance was being judged on the merits of others.

It’s funny that that’s exactly what’s bound to happen in real life, though. theVet has mentioned more than once that her vested interest in seeing me in presentable clothes is a reflection on her more than it is me, and every child is a mirror of the adults in their life, likewise. Right now of course it’s as easy as picking out the right clothes (and for me the dilemma of matching shirt to pants and socks is solved by figgy’s insistence on wearing dresses), but before much longer the behavior and demeanor is set by our tone. If the kid is crazy what does that say about the adults?

Mike

Old Time Song

Dear J-

I suppose it was inevitable; the songs of your youth show up on some nostalgia station or retro show and you end up reflecting on the passage of time. What were you doing the first time you heard it, and how long has it been now? If it feels like forever, perhaps it has been: the years have a habit of slipping away from you as you’re not looking. Me, since high school every four years or so I end up moving on to something else: new school, new job, new place to live; I get so caught up in the acts of change that I never realized counting off by twos and fours makes the time pass twice as fast.

We might be on the verge of something new or not; we keep picking up new experiences and talents as we get older, after all, and who knows what we can do now that we couldn’t when REM made the jump to mainstream radio. The jokes are about being aged to perfection and how we don’t get older, we get better, right? Yet you find yourself in a kind of stasis year after year; you settle into a comfortable groove, you decide that the path of least resistance must be the best one but that’s just putting your life on autopilot and killing time until the next big thing comes along.

How far away from Tubthumping are we now, twelve or thirteen years? It’s an amazing gap; I love reflecting on the changes and every similarity too. We’re still going out for lunch — together — when we can, but now we have a little passenger to tag along weekends; we’re still laughing with abandon, but now often at her antics. Kudos to your past, right, but let’s let it lie there; we flash back to it every so often when we get reminded by song or dance but only to visit, never to stay.

Mike