Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

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I didn’t go on too many college tours when i was looking at schools (possibly to my detriment), but of the ones i saw i was almost wholly unimpressed. Sure, the concept is good: pair a couple dozen visitors with one friendly student and let the campus speak for itself. In my experience, it never really works out that way; the worst case scenario typically involves the campus saying very little and the tour guide following suit, but being bored definitely isn’t the worst possible result of a tour.

The best tour i saw was at my first choice school, Boston University. Our tourguide was a petite sophomore wearing two inch thick chunky heels who walked backwards and just-short-of screamed at us for a two mile circuit of the campus. As tour guides go i consider her my role-model, and i try my best to do her proud. In fact, i did so twice today.


In case you haven’t picked it up from context, i’m not exactly ecstatic about my college; after four years the same old mistakes and scheduling problems are tiring, especially pared with the fact that i should’ve shopped around more extensively for colleges to start with. However, just because i’m wearying of my collegiate experience doesn’t mean that i should pass on anything other than enthusiasm to incoming students — not only for the sake of being a good salesperson, but because i owe it to them to give them the best possible idea of why they might want to come here.

Some days that best example includes climbing onto desks, singing acappella in the middle of our bookstore’s lobby, telling my group that i’ll be making up a name for the athletic field until i can remember what it’s actually called, and making used-car-salesman like guarantees about our housing policies. It’s unorthodox, to say the least, but people never fail to smile, laugh, ask questions, and shake my hand when i give a tour in my own special fashion. And, while i would never suggest hiring an entire staff of maniacs like myself, there is definitely something to be said for being able to frankly discuss a campus in a way that’s both endearing and amusing … as well as entirely unscripted.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/09/385456151/

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Nothing to say. Wind blew this morning as we left the house, all coolness and invitation as it sang through the leaves hanging over my porch. Today is my last day at the Kingdom, and tomorrow i will belong to myself … one weekday in the midst of nine months without anything to answer to. And then a weekend. And then back to obligations, again.


Excuse me, i’ve been invited somewhere…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/09/85443667/

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There are only a handful of board games that i’ve ever played with more than two players. In fact, of all the games that one might find in your neighborhood toy store, there are a relative few that i played before the age of 18. My mother could only be coaxed into a one on one deathmatch of Monopoly every so often, after all, and there were only so many games a boy could have with only his mother and his GI Joes to play them with.


I don’t know how i feel about other people. I spent so long only having to worry about making myself happy that i am equally torn between continuing the behavior or trying to do the same for everyone else i know. I never learned how to make some of the people happy some of the time, or to be happy with some of the people some of the time. So, now that i have people in my life, people that i see every day when i get to work or every night before bed, i have trouble deciding who comes first: me or them.


Obviously it’s not as black and white as that, and if we were to all follow the golden rule it wouldn’t matter anyway, right? Still, there are some weeks in which i will bend myself in any direction to please someone else, and days like today where i’d rather sleep than talk to anyone in a mile radius.


I’m just not very tired.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/09/385427111/

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My grandmother is sick.

Even after having almost two months to think about this, i still don’t know what i think. Ten years ago all four of my grandparents were alive and as animated as ever, and five years ago two of them were in managed care facilities because they were not well enough to live at home with family members. Now i have a paternal Grandfather whose eyesight and conversation skills are slowly failing, and who i’ve seen the least out of all of my grandparents over the course of my life. And my maternal grandmother, the one i visit in Florida in December so that she can fly up to Philadelphia for Christmas, the family member who i’ve spent the most time with over the course of my life other than my own mother.

My grandmother is sick, and she may be dying.


Almost a decade ago she had colon cancer, and i didn’t know what to think at the time and by the time i decided she was in remission. When she lived in Philadelphia she used to walk a mile with a rolling shopping cart just to get twenty dollars of food at the grocery store; she has never driven, and she eschews the aid of services who cater to transporting Senior Citizens. She never completed grade school, and subsequently can read at a very low level and has trouble balancing her checkbook – at the same time, she is one of the more perceptive people i know, even if she presents her perceptions in the most basic way possible.

I am her only grandchild, and she misses me. I miss her, and wish she was still in Philadelphia so i could stop by her house to pester her every week or two, but she’s not. What she is is just a phone call away, but everyone knows how much i hate the phone. Of course, hating the phone doesn’t really matter when it comes down to talking to someone you love who might not be around for a long time.


Last month i called and had a hilarious conversation with her, like the ones i used to have with her years ago when she would interrupt my video games and put away my GI Joes before their battles were over. She asked to talk to Elise for a minute, and Elise smiled the entire time. It was a window for each of us, on either side of the phone, to look through to a different sort of time.


I haven’t called since, and today i received a rather accusatory email from my cousin Ashley, who has largely been spending her free time hanging out with my grandmother (her great aunt). She told me, in no uncertain terms, that if i can’t make the time or find the motivation to call my grandmother then i really shouldn’t bother caring at all. My grandmother is depressed, not eating, and not her usual chatty self. But she wants to hear from me.

I want to call, and i do call, leaving chirpy messages on her machine when she’s not at home in the evenings. But, i still don’t know what to think, and i guess half of my reluctance to call her once every week or two is connected to. Of course, the other half of it is that i don’t even talk to my own mother once every two weeks, but that’s something else entirely.


For how much i claim to like the internet, i seem to enjoy it when my life is unplugged from just about everyone else’s. I’ll call again tomorrow night.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/09/85414175/

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September and I have never really been entirely comfortable with each other, with its end of summer, start of school, and an inevitable new birthday on which i am expected to celebrate but typically just ponder. Even worse, for the last three years i have left a home every September: in 1998 from my childhood home to my mother’s current house, in 1999 from that house to the dormitories at Drexel, in 2000 from the dormitories to my first apartment, and last year from that apartment to the one i currently share with Erika, Lindsay, Kate, and Karen. September brings in change and the beginnings of golden leaves and cooler weather, and when it is over i hardly ever know what to make of it.

And, now, in my twenty-first go through the month, somehow it has contrived to change itself. Summer never really existed for me, so it cannot end. School has ceased to be a surprise. My birthday looks as though it might be the first time i celebrate the entire day with people who i’d actually choose to spend it with. And, i am staying in the same room of our apartment for another year.


I feel as though i can dig deeper or say more, but it just comes down to this: Change happens, and sometimes changing is just staying the same. I’m just not sure how i feel about it.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/09/85413360/