Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Year 05

Happy Birthday To This

by

I have been blogging for over a fifth of my life.

Purely as a statement, it’s meaningless. Abstract. People will tell you that you’ll be asleep for a third of your life, or waiting in line for a seventh of it, but you won’t suddenly re-evaluate the way you’ve been living your life. People don’t find god in an attempt to save themselves from a seventh-of-a-life of waiting in line.

I have been writing this personal web log for five years. I turn twenty-four in less than a month. I have been blogging for over a fifth of my life.

That’s a little more succinct. It works in numbers that you may be able to grasp – you know what “five years” feels like, and you either remember what it was like to be twenty-four or you can imagine what you want to be doing when you will be.

Or maybe you can’t do either. Perhaps you’ve never done anything for five whole years – not live in one place, or date one person Perhaps twenty-four is just another meaningless milestone in the blithe fiction that is your imagined future – so you can’t relate to that either.

Also, there are the concepts of “personal web log” and “blogging.” What do they even mean?

I have been writing this personal web log (an internet-based, sometimes diary-like, irregularly updated collection of thoughts, feelings, links, pictures, music, and other online errata) for five years (one year longer than a US president’s single term in office, half of a decade, less than a third of the the time The Simpsons has been on the air). I turn twenty-four (twice as old as a twelve-year-old, one year shy of a quarter century, three years younger than Joplin, Hendrix, and Cobain were when they died) in less than a month. I have been blogging (“blog” n., short for “web log,” thus “blogging,” v., the act of creating and maintaining a blog) for over a fifth of my life.

Is that explanation thourough enough? How else can I more succinctly quantify this peculiar obsession to you? It is at once less and more than keeping a diary, more and less than a simple concatenation of thoughts I have and pages I view. It started out as a place to say something without editing, but soon evolved into a more oblique window into my life complete with its own voyeristic audience of hundreds. Sometime after that it became about documenting moments in time, snapshot stories of misadventures freed from the banality that surrounded them.

All of this attempted definition begs the question: what is it now? And: how can I hope to quantify something that I can’t even define? This is no longer my occupation, or my pre-occupation. Sometimes I only write once in a month, and other times I have a week’s worth of sentiments tied together with a common string. In the past this was the central repository for all internet statements, the me-archive. Now I sometimes want to publish a thought or a piece of writing that has no place here.

Ulimately, I have run out of pithy, charming, defining things to say on August 26th. August 26th now looms less as a day of celebration, and more of a mandatory mark on my calendar to remind me to remember, and to try to remind you, what this means to me. The date has become less like the birthday of a child over whom I dote and obsess and more akin to the wedding anniversary of a second-cousin – to whom I periodically send a card.

In either case, I thank you so much for being an inexorable, impossible-to-define part of this half-decade-passed … for being the eyes and ears receiving these words and sounds … for being a friend, even if you are a silent one. I may not be able to articulate my definition of what you’ve been consuming, but it couldn’t be whatever it is without you to observe it.

So, thank you. And, Happy Birthday To This.

Looking Up to Something

by

Having never had siblings I always feel a little awkward with Elise’s brother. On one hand I completely identify with him, because he’s dragged around to adult-stuff all the time and all he really wants to be doing is reading or playing a video game. On the other, what could some twenty-something year-old have said or done for me to cheer me up on all of those occasions of my youth?

Elise and I brainstorm sometimes about finding him some cool teenagery hobby; she had batted around drumming and web design for a while, but neither really went anywhere. So, imagine our surprise last night when Elise’s mother remarked as we approached her truck, “You’ll have to squeeze into the front; the bass is in the back.” Apparently Elise’s little brother (who, incidentally, is now about as tall as we are) got an electric bass over the summer.

When we returned to our house the four us us sat around chatting and catching up and, much as I’ll play guitar through any conversation just for the sake of playing guitar, out came the bass. However, it was out of tune from bouncing around in the back seat. Tuning isn’t a problem in our house, considering Elise and I are both in-tune-freaks and own four tuners between the two of us.

While her brother proceeded to tune up and noodle I fetched a guitar with broken strings and fixed it up. Once I was restrung I began to quietly follow along with his noodling. I thought I recognized the song, but I wasn’t sure. Not wanting to embarrass him, I waited until Elise and her mother headed upstairs to examine something in the bathroom.

“Is that ‘Seven Nation Army’?”

“Yeah, but internet tabs are always wrong,” he grumped.

“Yeah, they suck. It’s better to trust a site that specializes in one artist, especially for bass, because random people never really know what positions or techniques a certain player tends to use. Do you know what Occam’s Razor is?

He gave a half-wince of understanding.

“It’s the idea that the simplest explanation is almost always the best one. So, the simplest way for that bass player to play the song is probably the right way to play it.”

(Elise, passing through (or was it later?) commented: “Yeah, like Dave Matthews will always play something in in the most obscure possible way, but Ani will will do it the easiest.” I smirked, and inexplicably failed to also include Joni Mitchell in our comparison.)

“Well, let me hear it.”

He did, and it became apparent that there was a slightly easier and more-correct way to play it. And, since Jack White isn’t necessary a king of bass-playing technique, I didn’t really have qualms about changing up the positions to make it a little simpler.

“Hey, hold on, I have that record.”

Over to the CD collection I bounced, and back I came with Elephant. We listened to the song and i immediately realized that his riff was transposed by a fourth (effectively, a string) – easily fixed. And, then, ten minutes after playing a bad internet transcription in the wrong key he was playing along to the song! I pointed out the quick walkup at the end of the verses and then improvised some chords to accompany him (since the whole song is almost all bassline and guitar solo).

Elise and her mother came down at about this point, both looking somewhat bemused at the White Stripes jam that has sprung up in our living room. Later he told me the other song he was learning was “Money.” I told him I had that too, and that I was impressed, because it’s notoriously in a weird time signature. I put it on, but just listened; my brain doesn’t have the higher level functions required to count upbeat guitar stabs in 7/8. He was pretty good at it.

(Aside: Elise, her brother, and their sister all have ridiculous natural musical aptitude, which always makes me wish I had grown up in more musical family. More musical, I mean, than lip-synching Madonna into hairbrushes and sporadically breaking out into “Let The Good Times Roll” in the kitchen, both of which traits came from my father’s side.)

I’m really happy to have found a connection with Elise’s brother, and even happier to have gotten to be the cool older kid instead of the unspeakably geeky one, if only for once. Before he left I tabbed out the version we worked out and slipped it into his bag along with a copy of Elephant and White Blood Cells.

I bet I would have been a cool older brother.

CarSeat Flashback

by

When I was two and a half I learned that you only get credit for something you have the courage to do.

My mother contests my memory of this event.

I remember single frames of it almost more clearly than any other memory I’ve ever had. It was summer, and I was in the back seat, on the left hand side, in my car seat. The car was the Golden Nova, a two-door nugget of vinyl-seated glory from the mid-late seventies. We were at a gas station, but it wasn’t the Gulf station we always went to. We may have been in New Jersey.

It was hot. We may have been returning from a lake or pool. My mother, who does not like to pump her own gas (maybe because of this story), got out of the car to pump gas.

My mother, lest we forget, was only about two and a half years older than the mean age of my four favorite drinking buddies (i.e. she was pregnant at the age of my four favorite drinking buddies). What any of the four of them would do if they locked their two-year-old in the Golden Nova on one of the hottest days of the year I can’t say.

(That’s a lie. Two of them would McGuyver it open, one of them would have a panic attack and then do something highly logical, and the other one would helplessly flirt with someone who she suspected could open it for her.)

(I’ll leave the four of you to figure out who you are and which thing I think you would do.)

In any case, when mom got out of the car to pump gas she pressed down the lock on her car door before slamming it shut. Was it a reflex? Had she forgotten that tiny Peter was in the back, strapped securely into his car-seat, already beginning to die a slow death of asphyxiation?

It didn’t take her very long to realize our predicament. What had she done? I am missing the still memory picture to go with this part of the story, so have to extrapolate from the bits on either side. After yanking the door handle to no avail did she cup her hands to the glass, peering in and tapping frantically as if bothering an animal at the zoo?

I may have waved back at her as she peered into my vehicular cage. The whole situation was amusing to me – my mother now frantically seeking out a station attendant. Didn’t she know I could unbuckle own car seat and unlock the car door? Surely I had unbuckled my carseat in front of her before?

No, no, she didn’t know, because now she was back with a man who was wielding a curiously bent coat hanger. What was he doing with the coat hanger?

Never mind the coat hanger, mom. I tried to signal to her as she stood behind the attendant. Look at me! I was about to perform my toddler houdini routine, unbuckling the car seat strap and crawling up to the front seat to pull up the lock. How amazing a feat! Oh, the congratulations I would reap! She just had to watch… Watch, mom, watch.

I got her attention, I think, and I made a big show of reaching out to the lock, as if I was just working out in my toddler head that *I* could open the door for her. Yes, let her see the baby head wheels turning. Such a smart toddler. I would just have to… *gasp* unbuckle the car seat on my own! Could I? Dare I?

My chubby little fingers crept to the red release button on the car seat buckle, brow knitted in concentration. Would I be able to figure it out? Through the window my mother frantically motioned that I should release the buckle, though I studiously ignored her.

Then, there was a pop. The man’s wire hanger triggered the lock on the door, and the chipped metal knob had popped up into the unlocked position. Open went the door, the sticky outside air hardly a relief from the sticky inside air. My in-progress escape act quickly forgotten, my mother was all coo and apology for leaving me to suffocate alone in the Golden Nova on such a hot day.

To this day she insists I was too young to remember the story. I’m sure I’m making some of it up, though she confirms that it occurred. What I know to be true is that I *knew* I could unbuckle the car-seat and unlock the door, *knew* I could easily solve the problem myself.

But, I didn’t. I was too interested in making sure someone was looking on, as if only that affirmation would enable me to do anything. Having someone watch the process, though, wasn’t as important as achieving the result.

You have to be brave enough to try whether or not anyone will see you fail, because they will surely notice if you succeed.

Dance Your Cares Away

by

I learned about lending, dancing, and telling girls what you’re really thinking when i was ten.

It was an eventful year. My mother was dating a man who owned a boat. It was small, and speedy, and though I liked the man only mildly, I loved the way the water would whip up over the front of his boat when he gunned the motor.

Once a year the members of his marina went on “The Cruise.” It was, in fact, nothing like a cruise, except for that it featured boats and ports of call. It was somewhat like a cruise. It was more like a mile-long boat-trail of South Philly expatriates inebriatedly sloshing from marina to marina for a week in a parade of holdover 80s fashions and cheap beer.

The year prior my mother went on The Cruise, leaving me in the care of my Aunt, whose sun-room door I shattered one day while innocently kicking it. Whether it was because of the property damage (my allowance was temporarily garnished until I could match the “about seventy dollahs” replacement fee so I could understand how much money that was) or because my mother took pity on poor, bookish, no-friends-to-play-with-during-vacation (Michael had been discarded at this point, after turning into a bit of a bully) me, when I was ten I was allowed to join The Cruise.

In packing for The Cruise I was allowed a carefully allotted amount of GI Joes (which I showed nor lent to no one), a great number of books, and my Game Boy. Even nearing the end of the somewhat impoverished bit of my childhood, I knew that the Game Boy was the special thing. It originated from Dad, the source of all things Nintendo, but my mother tacitly approved of it in that it was not exhaustible like a book, that I could bring it places, and that she occasionally enjoyed a game of Tetris.

In addition to a somewhat fast boat, my GI Joes, my books, and my Game Boy there was also Barbara. Or maybe Barbra, but that sounded like a bartending She-Ra villain to me. Also, “Barbara” looked better in hieroglyphics, which I knew because I had also brought along my heiroglyphics kit, and was keen on secretly tattooing her name onto whatever was handy at the time (but not in a hooligan graffiti way).

Having had my heart broken by my longtime grade school crush just months prior, I had decided to be desperately in love with Barbara. She was a year older than me, had beautiful brunette hair, was always tanned, wore a stunning off-the-shoulder yellow sweatshirt at night when it was cool, and actively acknowledged my existence. Also, she was Italian, an obvious pre-requisite for marrying into my family. I dreamt of stealing away to a secret location where we could stare at each other and tentatively suggest the holding of hands only to decide better of it anyway.

I determined that the sole mission of The Cruise would be my seduction of Barbara, and I began to enact this plot at the first marina where we docked. Their bar (they all had a bar; at the time my mother was a marina bartender (though not of the villainous Barbra sort), so I’m sure she struck up some sort of kinship slash cheap drinks arrangement at every one) offered music, vis-a-vis dancing.

Now, I hadn’t ever danced at this point in my life, per se, if we count dancing as either receiving formal dance lessons or going somewhere public with friends or strangers at least partially for the purpose of dancing with them. What I had done is painstakingly choreograph the entirety of “Pump Up The Jam” in my grandmother’s front yard, desperately tried to mimic my mother’s mashed potato whenever she was getting pumped up to go out dancing, and memorized every second of every video from The Immaculate Collection.

So, really I had only danced in theory. However, in that bar that night, Barbara sitting a pre-adolescent longing-glance away, I knew my mission as soon as the needle hit the groove. I watched teevee; I had seen Saved By the Bell: girls loved boys who would dance with them.

I danced. I danced the stuff of legend, of blurry snapshots of my mother’s Miami-Sound-Machine-style dress swirling at my shoulders as I showed off the undeniable stylistic influence of Ms. Paula Abdul on my work.

Barbara, as chance would have it, did not dance. Not just that one night. Ever. However, I didn’t let this deter my plan – I danced with every damn woman in the bar. I had seen Saved By the Bell, and would drive her crazy with jealousy. At some point they played “Vogue” and, like a glittering black-and-white stop-motion convulsing star of the music television network, I delivered the coup-de-grace: voguing, verbatim from the video, and my perfectly synched, incredibly well-rehearsed “rap.”

Pre the adolescent stigma of being a boy too fluent in things of the world of girls, Barbara in fact seemed to find this charming. At the next marina her acknowledgement of me became a downright friendliness so long as her friends’ backs were turned (though, with them looking on she lead me to nearly drown in the marina pool’s deep end, me frantically tapping my toes off the bottom of the pool and dog paddling as she effortlessly freestyled away).

(Good Christ in heaven, this is a long one. You have to understand that in my head I just see the name Barbara, or alternately an ibis, and it all comes back to me in a flash.)

As the week progressed it seemed that my chances were improving; I turned in another masterful dancing queen performance, and generally had a completely unsullen time (possibly shocking the power of speech right out of my mother, as I don’t recall talking to her much at all). Then, two nights before my personal edition of Love Boat came to a close, I had the chance to seal my fate

:

Barbara’s brother wanted to play with my Game Boy.

I should mention that Barbara had an older brother, who must have been an early teenager, because I remember him as impossibly sage and completely oblivious to my existance. In fact, he appears at this point in the story seemingly out of nowhere, and I have no recollection of him before or after.

(This leads me to occasionally suspect he wasn’t Barbara’s older brother, but some other minor, less important character – except being the selfish only-child that I was/am I definitely wouldn’t have lent him my Game Boy unless I could have gained something from it, and god knows it wasn’t as if I was looking for some sort of tacit respect from his cool-dude teenageredness because, come on, I was spending alternate nights voguing and he was at that age where that seemed not sauve and worldly but impossibly “gay,” and on some level I already knew that and so consciously avoided him and all the other boys on the cruise, and so I have to conclude that he was in fact Barbara’s brother, and that the only reason he talked to me or even knew I had a Game Boy to begin with.

However, in the interest of full disclosure, I preface this section with the disclaimer that he may, in fact, have not been her older brother – he may have not been her brother at all or (and this is seeming more familiar as I think about it) he may have been a younger brother who has been dramaticized into a cool teenager over the course of the last decade and a half. Either way, I think it takes a little bit of the punch out of the story’s big conclusion to have him be something other than her older brother, who she clearly adored and slightly idolized, so let’s just stick with the older brother thing.)

I lent him my Game Boy for a predetermined amount of time. Let’s say from after dinner until ten. He got to use my Game Boy, and I quietly read a book in the boat’s homey cabin, my subconscious reeling from the impact my generosity would have on my relationship with Barbara.

As scheduled, at ten he returned the Game Boy, all games intact, and headed back to his boat. I picked it up and flicked the switch to on to light up that sickeningly spinach-green screen.

“There’s a scratch.”

“Hmm?” my mother’s boyfriend (who might have been named Adam) replied, peering down into the cabin from topside.

“On my Game Boy’s screen. There’s a scratch.”

Maybe-Adam descended the short flight of stairs and maybe looked at my Game Boy, or maybe didn’t, and said, “You can still see just fine.”

“Yeah, but there’s a scratch. I…” I looked with loathing at my now-ruined toy, “I don’t even want it anymore. I want one without a scratch.” And, then, in a wonderful burst of child-logic, “I’ll give this one to Barbara’s brother, and he can buy me a new one.”

Maybe-Adam, already frustrated-beyond-belief with my oblivious self-centeredness and with my mother’s endorsement of it, turned away.

“That boy doesn’t have two pennies to rub together.”

(I know he said this because it was the first time I had heard a real person say it, and it has stuck in my head every since).

“But… there’s a scratch.”

The penultimate day was spent at a clearly frou-frou marina, which had a playground complete with a maypole. I had never seen or heard of a maypole before, and was frankly obsessed with the pointless-but-amusing idea of it. Even better, Barbara seemed to have given up on her other friends entirely, and spent the day with me. I decided my Game Boy screen had been sacrificed for a greater good, and immediately forgave her brother (though not genuinely; it’s the only big scratch on it to this day, after all.)

As our play time came to a close, I dared to ask if she would dance tonight, after dinner. Coyly, already in full grasp of that girl-control that I’m sure made future boyfriends howl with pleasure and frustration, she replied “Maybe.”

I returned to the boat in a love-struck haze. All my plans were coming to fruition. It was the last night, and I would consumate my week-long love-affair with dancing and… um… furtive not-hand-holding? I knew that kissing, and beyond that sex, lay on the horizon of romance, but if anything I was precociously optimistic – I knew that I wasn’t going to round any major bases with her on account of loaning her brother my Game Boy. I had seen Saved By the Bell.

Content with the day’s events, I retired to the cabin for a pre-dinner nap. I awoke later, to my mother rustling the blankets beneath me.

“Hmm? What? Stop.”

I have never enjoyed waking up.

“Peter, are you okay? Are you sick?”

I wasn’t sick, except for with love, and groggily swatted my mother’s hands away. I could sleep through dinner; it couldn’t be time for dancing yet.

“I didn’t think you would sleep through the whole thing. I thought you were going to come dancing? Barbara asked where you were.”

All of me deflated there in the bed, as my mother went on about the dinner and how long I had been asleep. What did it matter? I spent a whole week pining. I sacrificed my Game Boy. For what? Tomorrow was lunch, and then a long ride back to our home marina. No Barbara. No dancing. No furtive glances, or getting called out on a pop fly before I could touch first base. Just a scratched Game Boy, and back to school on Monday.

I was sick, I decided. It was the only explanation. Otherwise, I would be there romancing her. “I feel sick,” I told my mother, opting for the generic, “my stomach hurts.”

Satisfied with her correct prognosis, she swished off in her Conga-skirt back to the deck, leaving me to sink into the deep misery of my sudden sickness. No, not the imagined one; my love-sickness, suddenly intensified with no recourse in sight.

(You could probably stop reading there, but we haven’t got to my favorite bit yet. You can skip to the moral if you like. Actually, I’m going to take a break and use the restroom here, but can you just keep on reading. I’ll catch up with you later).

The next day, the last day, was known as kingfishing. Kingfishing was basically a hazing ritual where anyone new to The Cruise was blindfolded and made to do all sorts of silly things that were meant to scare, intimidate, and humiliate them. There was some mythology involved, but it was secondary to the hazing. Some people had eggs cracked over their heads, was the rumor.

Brussel sprouts being the only food that held that sort of power of intimidation for me, I was decidedly nonplussed about kingfishing. The other children on The Cruise, who here emerge from the invisible periphery of my memory to be allowed some speaking parts in my drama, stood in abject terror.

The new adults were taken first. As an adult (!?) I can appreciate the certain comedy in making one of my friends crawl around on the ground with egg in their hair, but the terrorizing of the children must be one of those things you have to be a parent to appreciate the comedy of.

Barbara was too to be a Kingfished. I’ve never been sure why. Could she have missed every Cruise previous? She couldn’t have been too young the last year, as that’s how old I was. In any event, Barbara, though not in abject terror, was suitable intimidated – as the mythology of the hazing had been built up for her while she played in the fraternal surroundings of the marina. Still upset about my blown chance of the night before, and probably too timid to say anything charming in broad daylight in the plain view of adults, I sullenly stood and waited to be forcibly blindfolded and made an omelet out of.

The event was uneventful, though I do recall garnering at least one laugh from the crowd when I replied to being presented with food representing eyeballs or entrails or something with “Yeah, and?” Afterwards we were a mess (you wore junky clothes; we all had plain white t-shirts and old shorts on), and were allowed to turn garden hoses on each other in order to get washed off before we changed.

It was a typical frenzy of children with water artillery on a warm day, and we emerged messless but soaked. Clean, dry clothes were dispensed by parents, who were already setting up for our au revoir lunch with members of Marina Frou Frou. Children were pointed to wooden changing booths, where boys and girls were strictly segregated left and right by a bored-looking chaperone mom.

I emerged from my changing booth to find Barbara, still soaked to the skin, just about to enter hers. Standing there, alone with her for maybe the last time before all the adults swooped in to carry me back to my other Barbaraless world, I stared at her carefully, trying to memorize every detail.

She stared back, fixing me with a penetrating gaze, almost mouthing the “what are you looking at?” that went with it. What was I looking at?

It was, I think, one of the last times I ever saw her face to face. I felt the need to say something profound and affecting, that would cement me a place in her memory.

“Barbara,” I addressed her, my love, “you can see right through that shirt.”

She winced a little, as if struck (not that there was anything to see under the shirt; she was eleven, after all. But, little girls are defensive of those flat-as-pancake nipples as soon as they find out the sort of asset they evolve into, and the sheer audacity of me admitted that I had been looking right at those breasts-in-escrow was shocking (even to me)).

Finished changing into drier clothing, I left the changing booths, Barbara probably still seething behind me.

That’s all i remember about The Cruise.

To this day I love to be the first boy on the dance floor, though now in our twenties some of the other boys have finally figured that bit out. I only lend things that I can stand imagining coming back in some form other than perfect. And, I’ve learned that the thing a girl least wants to hear is usually exactly what you’re thinking. I try not to employ that one too often.

Borrowing

by

I learned about borrowing when I was seven.

I played GI Joes with my friend Michael almost every day. He was my only friend outside of grade-school, and lived up the block in a orange brick house that had swallowed its porch up into its living room so that its front was flush with the porch steps of all the other houses on our side of the street.

It was tacitly understood that I was not to venture farther down the street than Michael’s house, and I always suspected it was because its jutting ugly orangeness obstructed the view of the steps porches on the other side of it. I resented the house, and never set foot inside.

Michael didn’t have many GI Joes of his own, choosing instead to diversify his toy collection to include a smattering of Ninja Turtles and Transformers. However, of his few Joes, he had an original Eel Viper. My oldest GI Joe was Dr. Mindbender, who wasn’t very old or very impressive, and Michael made sure to never let me play as Eel as our plastic men and woman battled across my concrete porch and living room rug.

One day, in a rare fit of benevolence, Michael left the Eel in my care when he went home for dinner. Carefully, I placed it on the top of my GI Joe bag – really an old faux-leather purse of my mother’s. He would be the first subject of my attention come the next play time.

Fate cruelly contrived for me to come down with strep throat that very night, rendering me couch-bound and under a strict hydration routine – no shape for playing GI Joes. For the entirety of sickness I whined and writhed on the couch, casting longing glances in the direction of the bag.

Two days later, just as I was on the road to recovery (but, still couch bound), a knock came at the door. At the point where I was actually mobile but still assiduously denying the fact in order to garner more days off from school, I hollered for my mother to get the door. She opened the inner door to our vestibule, peeked outside the front door, unlocked it, and engaged in brief conversation. Momentarily, she returned, our guest in tow.

Michael. Michael had come by to look for his Eel. Did I have it?, my mother asked.

It was the closest I have ever come to stealing anything. “Maybe,” I sputtered, trying to delay the inevitable. He couldn’t take it back yet; I hadn’t even played with it. Jinx had yet to kick the Eel’s ass. It wasn’t fair.

Michael stared at me dumbly, which he did a lot. My mother was nonplussed. I could have just said I didn’t have it. Or lost it. Or broke it in that way that GI Joes always broke, where they came apart at the waist and you needed an eye-glasses screwdriver and a tiny rubber band to fix them, and no one ever had the tiny rubber bands.

“I guess it’s in the GI Joe bag,” I sighed, deflated by my inherent morality.

My mother fetched the GI Joe bag from the fireplace (functional, I was told, but doubling as toy-storage) and then wandered away, leaving me couch bound and alone in the living room with Michael. Without much ado, he gripped the bag by its bottom corners and upended it, sending my entire 1988 GI Joe collection skittering across the ground with a sickening plastic crunch.

It was on the damn top, I thought.

Obviously god was punishing me for coveting his single, badly chipped Eel by forcing me to watch this massacre, this GI Joe holocaust, as Michael careless swept his hands through the pile of toys until, having swept away every last one into a wide blast radius away from his meaty paws, he came upon his poor marooned Eel.

“Get better,” he may have said, though not with much emotion. Rising without regard the dozens of dollars of precious plastic strewn around him, he let himself out.

To this day I always need to borrow things for about three-times as long as people are willing to part with them, but at least now I disclaim it up front.