The Urge of Crabs

I lead a very boring life. Some people might say it borders on monotonous. Up at 6:30 p.m. Shower. Breakfast. Toll booth all day. Home. Dinner. Bed. Wait, you’ve never met a toll taker before? Well, there aren’t many of us. It’s an honest wage, but just like any minimum-wage job, the days kind of just blend together: one big smudge of radios, loose change, and gasoline fumes. Maybe the gasoline has built up to toxic levels in my system, and what’s been happening can’t be real. It’s all a bad, vivid, nightmarish hallucination. That’s what I keep telling myself. It helps me deal with everything when it starts getting real bad, and I think that if I take a long enough vacation, away from the fumes and the impatience and the mind-numbing routine, things will start to get back to normal. 

I don’t know exactly when everything started happening, it was so long ago, but I do remember when I first encountered it. I saw it bulge when I was eating cereal. I get those red-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloths, not only because they’re easy to clean, but because they don’t bunch up like normal tablecloths do, so it wasn’t normal for anything to be underneath there. So, figuring it was an air pocket, I poked it with my spoon. It started scurrying in all directions, and then just melted into the table—I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the only way I can describe it. I dismissed everything as a not-fully-awake-yet delusion, finished my Honey Bunches of Oats and went to the toll station, ready—or so I thought—for the long work day. 

The first person I saw that morning was Barb. “Geez, Jim. You okay? It looks like you seen a ghost or somethin’.” 

“I must be a little hungover from last night. Didn’t get home until two.” I said. That’s what it was. I was hungover. Your brain plays dirty tricks on you when you’re getting sober so as to convince you never to drink that much again. Self-preservation, I used to call it. It must have been one of those many Saturday nights I picked up my girl Rachel and went dancing. We would dance in that bar ’till the wee hours of the morning and forget everyone and everything around us. In fact, I was going to propose to her...

Damn! I always get to that point in the story, and then all my creativity drains from me. There are way too many avenues to take with this story. And the publishing company is always frustrating me to no end. “We want your next book to be titled, Urge of Crabs.”  Urge of Crabs? What am I supposed to do with that?! I don’t even know what that means! Maybe if my publisher gave me a title that made just a little bit of sense, I could get somewhere with the book. I need to get this straightened out.

“Hello, this is Bernie. Talk to me.” 

“Hi, Bernie. It’s me again. Look, I’ve just got a killer block, and I want you to go over with me one more time, what is ‘Urge of Crabs?’ And another thing: why is it that I can’t choose my own titles anymore?”

“You can’t choose your own titles because you get more brilliant the more creative control we take from you. And besides, you’re a ghost writer. These books we’re producing are a dime a dozen. You could write, ‘I could not believe my urge of crabs when I saw two fat girls in a car!’ slap some other words around it, put the chapter titles I e-mailed you this morning in there, and boom! You got a book. Look, Josh, I’m a very busy man and I gotta go. If you have any more questions, call my secretary. She’ll be able to take care of you.” 

“C’mon, Bern—”

“See ya later, kid. And really. Don’t worry about it! You got this!”

I got this. Right. I don’t even have creative control anymore, apparently. If I’m so brilliant, why didn’t he e-mail the whole book to me? If only I hadn’t gotten my English degree off the internet, I could have had a cushy job writing at a magazine or something. 

Okay... well, usually if I read a newspaper, I can get some kind of inspiration and finally get something good down on paper. If Law & Order can rip things from the headlines, maybe I can. Let’s see...

FRESNO, Calif.—Tragedy struck the farm league baseball game between the Madison Wheelbarrows and the Fresno Sloths today when a careless fan threw a hot dog into the Sloth dugout. The hot dog, a Nathan’s Famous, tossed by 22-year-old actuary Chuck Finkleman, landed on the head of the Sloth mascot, played by 30-year veteran mascot technician Martin Gutierrez.

And then it happened. “One minute it’s the bottom of the 6th, and the next thing we know, a flock of seagulls are chasing Marty around the field,” Sloth shortstop Griff Sugarman explained. “I’ve never seen a sloth move so fast!” …

Baseball. I don’t think anyone will put crabs and baseball together. I could write about a giant mutant crab that goes out of control and destroys Fresno. But that sort of thing has been done to death. People will start to think I’m a hack writer, and I can’t let that happen. Okay, TV, don’t fail me now!

“For ten easy payments of $24.99, you’ll never have to not know where your remote is ever again!” —“But Stormy… did all those things you said to me when I was in that coma mean nothing?” — “From my perspective on stage, I could see Newt Gingrich reaching into Mitt Romney’s pocket and…”— “Today we’re cooking crab cakes. Nice juicy crab cakes with the perfect amount of that Dijon-y tang. Every so often I just get that urge for crab, and I have to run to the store and make them.”

Aha!! That is it! That is brilliant!

*          *          *

And at last, I knew my mistake: I should have never trusted that crooked fishmonger in the smelly alleyway behind the laundromat. But thanks to my instincts, and my faithful cocker spaniel Zippy, all of the defective crab was destroyed, and the power belonged to the Humans of Earth once again. Rachel and I were married the next summer and our main entrée was... sirloin tips.

Haiku One

A birthday weekend
Reese’s Peanut Buddha cake
No karaoke.

If I Won $1,000,000.00

I have just done a really impulsive thing. I have just entered a sweepstakes to win $1 million per year for the rest of my life. Here’s why:

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to win a life-changing amount of money? I mean—think about it. Listen. I know the cliché du jour is that money doesn’t buy happiness. And I’ll go for that. I’ve certainly seen the evidence right before me. I’ve worked in some of the most impoverished areas of the world and seen how happy people are with next to nothing by way of money. They’re probably the kindest people I have had the great good fortune to meet. So, I agree whole-heartedly that money doesn’t buy happiness.

But here are some things that money does buy:

Money buys freedom. If I didn’t have to worry about money, all my health care worries would fly out the window. For a man with a disability who gets around on crutches and a scooter, that’s a pretty big frickin’ deal. For instance, if I want to drive again, and really get my independence back, we’re talking about a $100,000 van. Another example: one of my Ethiopian friends wants me to accompany her on a trip back to her country when she goes over there for the first time in 5 years. If I had the money, I wouldn’t have to think twice about it. It would be a fait accompli. In Maine one moment and touring a coffee plantation, and breaking bread with my friend’s family the next.

But it’s more than freedom. With money also comes stability, and the means to make my family as comfortable as possible. I can put money in an account and make sure my niece has enough for college so that she doesn’t have to deal with creditors calling her 20 times a week for the rest of her life asking her where her payment is. So, in that sense, money can buy a less stressful, more comfortable future for someone.

There is another oft-quoted cliché that says, “Money changes people.” Clichés are clichés for a reason: there’s a grain of truth inside every one of them. If I come into a lot of money, sure, I’ll be changed, and for the exact reasons I mentioned. But if I am truly honest with myself, I don’t know how that much money would change me. I’d like to say that I’d be the same person I’ve always been. But there would be so many different avenues open to me, and who knows which avenue I’d decide to cruise. But I would hope I’d chose the right ones.

Then there are all those “what if?”s that have the potential of haunting me for the rest of my life. I have accumulated too many “what if?”s to count. Enough with the bloody “what if?”s. If I entered and won, I would be so happy that I made the decision to enter. On the other hand, if I never entered, I’d effectively be putting money in another person’s hands, and wondering. If you want something, all you have to do is put a little bit of energy and intent out in the universe, and wait. If you don’t put any energy out there in the form of action, you’re not going to get anything back. 

So I sit, and I wait. For almost two months. But it’s definitely worth the wait.

1,000 Words on Life, Birthdays, and Somethings

It’s my birthday coming up soon, and I always like this time of year because I can’t help but look at the past and where I have come from, and look at the far reaches of the future and see where my life is possibly heading. Some people say that you should always live life in the present, be happy in the now, and not to worry about all that other stuff. That may be true to a certain extent, but it is also good to see where you’ve come from, who has impacted your life, and how you may have impacted others, and it’s always good to keep your eye on where you’re going, because you never know when something is going to jump out in the middle of nowhere and take out one of your side-view mirrors. Sure, you can’t avoid every something that’ll come your way, but you can at least control some of the somethings, and that is always a good reason to keep your head up, because if you have blinders on, you hit every single something that hurtles itself toward the Smart Car that is your life. And those things look pretty flimsy, so you always want to pay attention, because the side-view mirrors on those things are, like, half the car!

So, I look back at all the family birthday parties that I have had throughout the years, and marvel at the fact that people were able to get me anything because, a) my birthday is 11 days after Christmas, and ii) I am notoriously hard to shop for. But my life is more than just birthday parties. I think back to all of those times Mom and I had to pile in the car and head up to Bangor for my weekly physical therapy sessions, and that time when Mom put a soda on top of the car and forgot about it until we noticed the caramel-colored rivulets of high fructose corn syrup coursing down the back window. I think back at the scores of Christmases spent at my house on the lake, waking up to my sister’s excitement at what might be under the tree, and then making the trek out to my grandparents’ house overlooking the harbor, and the chaos of 20+ people all opening gifts at once. 

Another great aspect is that your birthday really brings your good friends out of the woodwork: 

• Those friends who are willing to go to the supermarket and buy all the ingredients to make the Reese’s Peanut Buddha Cake that they came up with, because what nontheist doesn’t want a Buddha cake for their birthday? And oh, by the way, they’ve never made a from-scratch cake before. I mean, c’mon, that’s love right there! Irony and love always go hand in hand. If you don’t have both in abundance, I’d go out and look for better friends. (Just putting that out there…)
• Those friends who call you up every year since childhood and you pick up right where you left off, and you’re sure to call them on their special day, because that’s what really makes the day special.
• Those friends who buy you trick candles (even though you’re asthmatic), and not enough frosting so the sides of the cake are naked, but you don’t mind because any birthday isn’t complete without them being there, and, y’know, sometimes culinary nudity in cake form is not such a bad thing. It adds character. 
• And, of course, those friends who take a minute out of their busy schedule and jot a little note off to you on your Facebook wall, some of whom you haven’t talked to all year (except on their birthday), and every time a message comes in, it puts a little smile on your face, because you realize just how significant you are in the grand scheme of things. 

And what of the future? Your guess is as good as mine. One of my friends’ mothers always told her growing up that the future is written in pencil; it can be erased and re-written at all times, depending on the choices we make. While the past is rigid and chiseled into stone, our future is like Jucuzzi jets of possibilities bubbling up to the surface, so random and slippery.

The future is something I like to think about from time to time. I remember once sitting in the parking lot of our local grocery store and looking around at things and wondering what everything would look like in 50 years. Because the stark reality is that nothing is static. Everything is always in flux. Almost everything. Your family will always be your family, and for the most part, your friends will always be your friends. And it is so nice to carry that notion around with you when the rest of the world seems chaotic and inhuman. Because, like it or not, we are not discrete entities; we are our experiences, our knowledge, and our opinions. We are the people we meet who leave indelible imprints on our lives, and we are those people who we imprint. And everywhere I go, I lug on my back a pack of my shared humanity and I, at any time, can unload it and use it at will. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is important not to dwell on any one thing, but at the same time. it’s also important to examine your life and find out how lucky you are to be living on this planet, and be comforted in the fact that, thanks to your backpack of life, you are strong enough to take on anything that runs at your side-view mirrors. Some of things will scratch your paint, or knock out a headlight or two, but there are very few things out there that will necessitate a wrecker. 

So, to all of you in my pack, I say thanks.

Say 氣!

Whenever I see the word “qi,” I usually associate it in my brain to be the easiest acceptable Q-dump that SCRABBLE and all its rip-offs/permutations have to offer. It’s a shame this word is used countless times a day as a sure-fire point-stravaganza in a game that people while away the time playing. I admittedly play it, and I can definitely confirm that as much as the word is an excellent Q-dump, the game, as it relates to the tech-savvy smartphone hermits, is a regrettably effective qi-dump.

So, what is qi, and why have I included it in my the title of my newest blog? Well, in the Eastern tradition, qì, (Traditional: 氣, Simplified: 气) is one’s life force; it’s what is inside a person that gives them their energy, and is part of the fabric that makes them who they are. So, in this blog, I am going to hopefully, through my writing about any topic under the sun, show you my qi and what makes me tick. So, sit back, relax and enjoy. And do not hesitate to comment. 

—s2e

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