Tag: morons

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My Scoreboard.

Soon, I found myself keeping score. About to graduate, aimless, preparing for joblessness and possessing a degree worth about as much as the paper it was printed on, I realized — belatedly — that I wasn’t exactly a modern guarantee of potential.

I started searching for something tangible, something worthwhile to get me through my remaining months at school. As a college basketball obsessant, it’s no surprise that the end of the NCAA Tournament had something to do with it. With the games over, I felt a sense of emptiness. During the Tournament, a one-too-many-beers promise to follow a favorite team had suddenly turned into a road trip. (Dude, we’re going to Phoenix!) I had goals and aspirations and dreams. Most importantly, I had more games to watch.

But the Tournament ended, my team lost, Phoenix turned out to be a hell of a drive — who knew? — and I was facing the unthinkable: graduation. So it came to be that out of a month of non-stop basketball watching, I started keeping score.

It was innocent enough at first. I decided that I’d make up goals to distract me from my life as a writer of failed cover letters. These daily goals were my way of staying sane, of finding blips of success hidden amongst routine.

I started with a small one: every day, make someone laugh really hard. I wasn’t going to make milk come out anyone’s nose — you’d be surprised how rarely one sees college students consuming milk in public — but I could try. Do it once a day, and I could enjoy the scoreboard at the end of the night: Dan 1, Failure 0.

I liked coming out on the winning end so much that I added more categories to my day. The points started trending upwards, the scoreboard spinning like an odometer on a cross-country trip (to, please God, anywhere other than Phoenix). Being thankful for little things wasn’t hard; I could rack up a dozen points a day doing that. Being punctual was even easier. Soon, I was running up the score. 5-0, 10-0, 20-0.

It only got worse from there. I had started out seeking moral victories and joy in day-to-day moments, but the high from those little wins faded faster with each day. I craved even bigger wins.

In one day, I decided to start being more spontaneous and to start speaking Spanish more often. But I abused the system. Getting a haircut at a barbershop run by Spanish-speakers and discussing mullets fit both requirements. Or: Look! I’m ordering a chalupa without sour cream!

I decided to stop skipping breakfast, and I was earning easy points there, until I decided that I wanted to start sleeping later, which meant that I wasn’t waking up early to eat breakfast anymore. But the scoreboard took no notice. I’d only ever created one rule: complete the category and earn the point. There was no penalty for breaking the rules, because there really weren’t any rules.

The points piled on. I had created my own metrics for success, and by my own best standards, I’d become wildly successful.

With so many paths to success, I’d guaranteed myself blowout victories with each new day. I’d been giving myself points for reading books, for creating esoteric theories, for watching new movies, for blogging, for napping — all at odds! — but the scores kept going up, and it didn’t matter how hollow my victories had become. I found myself saying odd things in the morning, like, “Right here, in this moment, this is where the day will be won.” When had I started talking like a member of the Roundtable? When had I become obsessed with winning?

Then graduation came closer — first weeks away, then days, then looking back as I crossed the dais — and I wasn’t any closer to getting a job. But I’d still been finishing my day completely convinced that I’d spent it well. I was a success, but only in a world in which I controlled the definition of success.

A few weeks after graduation, I was lucky enough to take a job that I actually wanted. Everyone wanted to know: how much money would I be making? In a world where success can’t be easily measured, salary seems like the simplest way to understand value. But I’m not sure that’s what really constitutes success.

I’d like to think my daily scorekeeping — at least my initial efforts — came close to defining two key measures of success: chasing ambition and building a better community (one in which, I’d hope, success can be further nurtured). But I’ve started to realize that we can’t attach a number to success, and we probably shouldn’t try to.

So I’ve stopped keeping score. When I make a friend laugh, I’m not declaring it a personal victory. Happiness isn’t tied to some internalized competition. I’m not winning, but I feel sane.

Though part of me still thinks that I’d need a scoreboard to know for sure.

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The Blog Post That May Make Me The Butt of Your Jokes.

For the last 10 days, there has been something wrong with me. I have been slightly more irritable than usual. I’ve been twitchy at work. I’ve gone through long spells when my mind appears to be in a very different place.

Today, I believe I’ve discovered the problem.

I may be bleeding out of my anus.

Now, this is probably not the type of thing you’ve come to this blog to read, and perhaps you’ll be inclined to click away, to read about my mother or my experience with Kosher-approved pornographic advertising. I’ll understand.

I’ll admit that this diagnosis hasn’t been doctor-confirmed. [1. Though, you’ll admit, ‘slight anal leakage’ isn’t exactly a tough one to figure out.] But I’m still confident in it, partially because I can’t imagine many people have spent as much time thinking about their own ass as I have.

Some kids spent their childhoods looking up at the sky and guessing what each cloud resembled. My mother has stories of me, a two-year-old who’d come out of the bathroom describing in great detail what I’d just produced.

In fourth grade, when a family friend was asked what he was thankful for, he replied, “The toilet.” I just nodded in agreement.

At Hannukah, my siblings and I all hoped that mom and dad would gift us the latest edition of “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.” [2. We’ve collected just about every one of his volumes.] The toilet is where I learned to appreciate Dave Barry’s columns, where I studied the Wall Street Journal’s middle column and where I occasionally penned verse. [3. Poo-etry, perhaps?]

You get the idea.

Things get murky [4. Yes, there’s still time to bail on this blog post yet.] about three weeks ago, when I started to feel an odd twinge in my right shoulder. I went to the doctor. His verdict: a pinched nerve in my neck. He told me to take two-a-day of some pill that had more Xs in its name than I cared for.

That night, after popping the first of the pills, I felt something where I didn’t want to. Let’s call it an unwanted tingle.

I blamed it on the chicken fried steak I’d eaten at lunch.

But the tingle was still there on the second day. On the third, I started to feel that something was seriously wrong. I looked, of course, to my stool. [5. A technique, I learned, of course, via the musical episode of ‘Scrubs.’]

By week’s end, I was really worried. I was twitchy at work. I was tingly when I didn’t want to be — and where I didn’t want to be.

On day seven, I had to drop my laptop off at the store for some repairs — a note that would seem unrelated, except that afterward, I had a sudden urge to check WebMD for advice on my condition. I went to the public library to check my email, read the terms of agreement and decided that Googling anything beginning with the word “anal” might get me banned from all city buildings for the next year.

Finally, I got the laptop back. I checked first to make sure everything was in working order with my Mac — at least everything’s okay on this end, I told myself — and clicked toward my internal diagnostic confirmation.

Gastrointestinal problems? Check. Dermatological discomfort? Check. Special sensations? That might be one way to put it. Never had such an unspeakable tingle sounded more obscurer.

I walked over to the bathroom, where I’d left the bottle of pills on the counter. I felt up my shoulder, and I thought about my other twinge. Suddenly, the pain up top was tolerable.

The symptoms are now starting to subside, but the tingle was still there today. Also worth noting: I haven’t exactly figured out a way to casually mention my temporary condition at the office. It hasn’t been easy keeping my mind off of it, either.

In a chat with my boss this afternoon, I started to drift off. My boss asked if I was listening. I assured her that I was.

“I just can’t tell what you’re thinking about right now,” she said.

I squirmed a little in my seat, and I started to assure her that I had only two things on my mind. [6. I actually meant this new Twitter project and a meeting I had later in the day.]

Then I decided that I probably shouldn’t think too much about any number two.

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More Proof That I Am, in Fact, an Idiot.

I am an idiot.

I’m 22 years old and blissfully unaware of the world around me. Blissfully unaware, I’d venture, is one step closer to bliss than most people ever get.

But it’s that bliss that, today, reminded me of how big an idiot I really am.

I had to go to Target this afternoon because there was a hot yoga class in town that I wanted to try, and to take the class, I needed to first purchase an official yoga mat. Such a mat is the consistency of an oversized Shamwow, except that it costs $20 and does nothing that a $3 towel wouldn’t do when it’s 95 degrees inside a yoga studio and your palms are too sweaty to grip much of anything. [1. I also must report that my yoga class consisted of what I must assume were the five most flexible people in all of South Texas. The yoga teacher herself may have been born without joints, bones or the ability to sense the unstoppable pain in my lower back. I don’t think she was a contortionist; I think she was a human balloon animal.]

There was traffic on the way to Target, so I called a friend while I waited in traffic. I kept talking as I got to the store, parked the car, grabbed a hand cart and found the oversized Shamwow that would be my platform for future yoga futility. I started walking back toward the checkout line.

Somewhere during the walk, the idiot in me took over.

For the most part, I try not to be an asshole in public, and generally, I look upon other assholes with scorn. At the top of the list of assholes in public are People Who Talk On Their Cell Phones While Urinating. Just below that, on the list of assholes worthy of title case, are People Who Talk on Their Cell Phones in the Checkout Aisle.

I decided, mid-walk, that I did not want to enter that second category.

But instead of doing the rational thing — explaining the situation to my friend, hanging up and calling back a few minutes later — I just kept walking and talking.

I walked and talked over to the toiletries aisle and picked up some paper towels. I found the grocery aisle and eyed a pint of ice cream, though I eventually passed on any. I looped through to home furnishings and grabbed two scented candles, then back to sporting goods, and over to menswear. At some point, I found myself back in the grocery aisle and decided upon a single can of minestrone soup. My handcart was getting progressively heavier. My left arm was starting to sag. I kept talking.

During my fifth or sixth loop of menswear, I looked down the aisle toward the store’s entrance and noticed that it was getting dark. I told my friend that I had to go and hung up. I saw the counter flashing on my phone. I’d been walking and talking for nearly 40 minutes, it said.

I walked over to the checkout aisles and found an empty lane. I put my things on the belt, and in a conscientious effort not to be one of those aforementioned assholes, I smiled at the cashier and said hello. She said nothing. She put my items in a bag and told me the price of my goods. A trip for a cheap yoga mat had turned into a full-on shopping spree, all in an effort to be polite to this cashier. I thanked her and wished her a nice day, and I actually kind of meant it. She didn’t respond.

I grabbed my bags, and my left arm sagged again. I didn’t feel like an asshole, which was a thought with about as much comfort as my $20 yoga mat. I only felt like an idiot.

Which is, to say, I only felt like myself.

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My Mother and Her Puta Grande

The family

**I told this story live at Ignite NewsFoo in December 2011. You can watch it here.**

Right now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a story about my mother.

Eleven months ago, I was returning home. I’d spent six months studying abroad in a very pleasant beachside town in Spain. I was well-tanned and full of doner kebabs. My town was just a week away from celebrating its annual bullfights-and-sangria-and-fireworks festival, and the Spanish national team was in the semifinals of the European Championships. I very much did not want to leave.

But it is out of this — just before the crescendo — that I found myself leaving. I boarded a plane in the heart of the country and landed nine hours later in Atlanta, where the heat index was topping three figures. Baggage claim at customs was slightly less packed than a Mumbai rail station. The customs agents were surly, as their baggage sorter had just broken, which left thousands of bags piled up at the gates, looking surprisingly like the Agro Crag on Nickelodeon’s “Guts.” Atlanta, I should note, is really not the kind of place that America should be using to greet our foreign guests.

But soon enough, I found myself leaving Atlanta and heading home to Washington, D.C., where temperatures were cooling into the high 90s, where the humidity just sort of wicks away from your body until you’re left stewing like a game hen in a crock pot. I was flying into Dulles Airport; my family was meeting me there.

It is here that I must remind you that this is a story about my mother.

She had decided earlier in the day that she would make a sign with which to greet me at baggage claim. At the time, this seemed like a good idea 1..

She went to my younger sister, Ellen, and my brother, Sam. Both speak Spanish. She asked them to do a bit of light translation for her 2.. “I want the sign to say, ‘Welcome home, my big boy,'” she said. Ellen and Sam told her that they could help her with that. My mother, so overwhelmed by the return of her eldest, most prodigious son, neglected to realize that her two youngest children have a sense of humor more twisted than a licorice rope.

It is into this that I arrived at Dulles Airport. Over my shoulder, I had two bags. One was a guitar case that bulged in the middle and looked unusually like a Kirstie Alley “before” photo in a Weight Watchers commercial. The other was an LL Bean backpack that was only being held together with scotch tape and safety pins. In my rush to pack, I had attempted to load nearly 4,000 lbs. of souvenirs into four bags. My two checked bags had tipped the scales at 48 and 46.5 lbs., respectively, just under the 50 lb. airline-mandated limit. The remaining 3,905.5 lbs. had been stuffed into my carry-ons and maneuvered into overhead bins for my flights.

I mention this because, ordinarily, I am a fairly spry individual. And on this day, it would have been nice to have felt youthful legs beneath me. Instead, I was essentially anchored to the ground by my luggage.

This was an unfortunate break. Leaving the terminal, I saw the unmistakable figure of four Oshinskys. Behind them, a small crowd had seemed to gather around my mother. I mistook this for coincidence; unbeknownst to me 3., it was not.

The crowd was waiting to find out for whom this woman was holding her sign.

Minutes earlier, an Aeromexico flight from Mexico City had landed at Dulles Airport. One by one, the crowd had passed through baggage claim and seen my mother — a white, Jewish, non-Spanish speaker — proudly clutching a white sign with thick black lettering.

On its front, it read: “Hola, Dan, mí puta grande.”

Which, even if you’d spent your entire vacation inside a tequila slammer at Señor Frogs, you could accurately translate as “Hello, Dan, my big bitch.”

And so the entire adult male population of Mexico City — or something close to it — had collected their luggage and then moved toward my mother, waiting for her puta grande to appear.

It is into this that I appeared, some 3,905.5 lbs. of luggage dragging me down the hallway. I remember looking down the hall and seeing my mother, bouncing up and down, holding her sign. I remember getting close enough to read the words. I remember processing the words in my head, six months of Spanish still very fresh in my mind. I remember taking off, my legs breaking free from the ground, looking not unlike the Beast breaking his chains in “The Sandlot.” I remember my mother moving at top speed, setting what must’ve been a world record in the 60-meter dash, the sign still waving above her head. I remember her catching up to me at about baggage claim #7. I remember looking back; Ellen and Sam were laughing. The entire adult male population of Mexico City was laughing.

I remember looking up, into my mother’s eyes. She was crying.

“Do you like the sign?” she asked.

I smiled back. She wouldn’t know why until later. We’d wait until we were onto the highway, the TrailBlazer cruising along at 70 miles per hour, before we’d teach her her first four words in Spanish. We knew she wouldn’t throw Ellen and Sam out the window at 70 miles per hour.

I looked back up at my mother. Her eyes were fogging up. I smiled back and told her the only thing she wanted to hear.

“Yes, yes I do,” I said.

❡❡❡

1.) N.B.: The phrase at “at the time” can not and will not ever be followed by a clause of a positive nature. No one has ever used the phrase to introduce a pleasant memory. I have tried to find a way to do such a thing; I have failed. It is, at this point, my linguistic holy grail. >back to article

2.My mother, who does not fully understand the Internet, had never before heard of Google Translation. >back to article

3. “Unbeknownst to me” is the second most ominous phrase in the English language, only behind “at the time.” >back to article

That photo at top, from left to right: Sam, me, and my mother.

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