The King has returned to see this lil lady off to gettin hitched. (pictured: Flashback to 2002’s Winter Sports Dance, to which I returned to pass the crown I was benighted with the year before, accompanied by then hot-date & now awesome-bride, Jenny? – who is also Wheelers sister).
I was 4 years old and one of the kids I would play with in the neighborhood was riding her bike down my street. She was a few years older than me so to 4 year old me she might as well been 21 in the way I viewed her so in that sense I looked to her as an authority and someone who knew their shiz.
As she approached my house I exclaimed “wanna play!?” and she replied “yea, but not with you” – and she continued riding her bike down the street.
I was stunned. Yes, she DID want to play… but… no… not with…me?
It made perfect sense what she said but that reaction was one I had never even considered before. Up until that moment in my life I had only thought about either wanting to play or not wanting to play. Not being in the mood for play was understandable but I thought that if someone did want to play, then that’s the end of the analysis. The concept of wanting to play with some over others changed my whole perspective about the world. Merely existing was not enough. I had to achieve. I had to win people over. I had to be someone people would want to play with.
And thus the journey started…
Popular wisdom dictates that mentioning a horrible event is likely to will that event into being. If you say you’re going to die in a plane crash, for instance, your plane is more likely to go down because you jinxed it. This is the same foolishness behind “knocking on wood” – as if, because you said something might happen, you have put in a request to Fate for that thing to happen and the only way to cancel the order is by tapping your knuckles on wood.
All of this is silly caveman superstition of course. The truth is the opposite: saying things makes them not happen.
Actually, that was tongue-in-cheek, since the above statement is satirically using the same line of logic of the superstition I just mocked. In fact, 98% of Richardland content is satirical stuff said for some ulterior interpretation but I have to break character here in order to point out that you need not and should not believe verbal iteration has any effect whatsoever over the natural world through any cosmic effect.
-Now that that disclaimer is out of the way, I’m going to proceed to argue the opposite:
Proclaiming that horrible acts of random freak-accident style horror are likely to happen, makes them significantly less likely to happen.
Think about it… every negative thing that happens that is random is never predicted. No one says “my family is going to die in a natural disaster this month. I dont know where or how but I feel like they’re going to!” and then that thing happens.
Tragedy wants to sneak up on you. If you look around and say “I know you’re there”, sometimes it will give up from hiding around the corner and try a different time.
this is what happens when you’re not prepared for horrible random things to happen
Remember that Horrific-Adversidy is an ambush predator. If you look it in the eye and call it out then it has a less liklihood of getting you.
Like a Great White Shark – it’s actually a coward. It has powerful murderous teeth and jaws with which to destroy you, but it’s actually a scaredy cat. It only gets you by stalking you and then swiftly snapping you up with a surprise attack. If you are big enough, it will then go away for a little bit while you bleed out so as to avoid injury from your flailing attempts to not-fkking-die. If you don’t let it sneak on you, it is significantly less likely to identify you as worthy prey and if it gets you and you fight for survival, it is significantly more likely to decide you’re not worth it and not come back for a second bite. So in life, just like in the ocean: Be aware of potential dangers, confront them, and fight fight fight.
Make the potentially horrific your pet.
this is what can happen when you accurately assess potential dangers and confront them anyway
The reason I’ve been thinking of this is that my mother goes into hip surgery in a few hours. It’s a very safe procedure and I’ve searched everywhere for deaths, complications, and horrible things happening and it just doesn’t happen with hip replacements. She’s gonna get a titanium bulb in her ball-and-socket joint over a 2 hour long procedure and then be home within 2 days and running around within 3 weeks. That’s what the data says. Yet I’ve been secretly mentally preparing for horrible disaster as I always do with these situations. Not because I think it’s actually likely at all but because that kind of safety of being secure in the thought that what always happens will happen this time is exactly what Tragedy WANTS you to think… having just enough healthy knowledge that the best laid plans can end in disaster prevents disaster from happening. Not necessarily in practice but in effect for sure.
As I wrote before – I have a horrible sense of doom over this super safe and routine procedure, but if I let Fate know that I know what it’s considering, then it will give up and go home.
Wishing everyone a dignified New Year.
But even if the last calendar year didn’t go as perfectly as it could have, there are tons of chances ahead to balance it out…
Years are as awesome as you make them. Make this one a good one.
Old timey barber shops had it right all along: we are simply not built to shave our own faces. It’s a job for a 3rd party. Or a 2nd party. Or better yet: a political party. Why aren’t there laws forcing businesses to pay for my facial grooming? Because women don’t grow beards? This War On Men needs to end and my right for someone else to pay for my hair removal needs to be respected. The sides of my head need trimming and it’s discrimination to expect me to do it or use my own money to do it myself. These split ends and poofy peripheries are sullying my skull skin, stupidly. Someone please save me form this hell.
I previously mentioned that I was flying into Colorado Springs to try and get my cousin to consider me as part of her family again. Spoiler Alert: It was a miserable failure.
The background story is that in July 2012 I ran the laundry machine at 11pm at my grandparents old house that my mom, uncle and aunt jointly own but my aunt lives in and it woke my aunt up. She was so mad at losing sleep that night, she greeting me with screaming obscenities when I came home the next day and attempted to ban me from the property forever. When that didn’t happen since my uncle and mom didn’t go along with this punishment for laundering, she instead sought to cut me out of the family all together, making up nasty stories about me to her children (my 3 cousins) and their grandchildren, my uncle and my mother. Again, it didn’t fly with my uncle, mother or my 2nd cousins (my aunts grandchildren) but for some bizarre reason, all 3 of my first cousins went along with the excommunication, thereby cutting out my 2nd cousins too.
I haven’t seen any of them in the past 2 years and when I invited them to my house in North Hollywood in January 2014, all 3 rejected the offer. The youngest wasn’t in town but said she wouldn’t be inviting me to her wedding a few months later – the middle said “we had grown apart” and ignored my follow up – and the oldest cousin said that we were neither friends no family at this point. Damn. So having the opportunity to go to HER when my parents was passing through Colorado Springs anyway with my nephews, I took it in hopes I could use my charms and acute sense of logic and understanding to clear up any foul air and reconcile.
It was a miserable failure.
Here’s how it went down: We arrive at the house and my cousin (we’ll call her “April” since that’s her name) doesn’t make eye contact with me until I stare her down long enough because I’m goin in for a hug. I do and it’s a polite “I don’t know why you’re touching me but fine” polite return hug. Remember that we never had a fight and I’m not mad at her for any reason: she literally just stopped talking to me and then announced that I was neither friend nor family to her because of unclear reasons relating to her mother deciding I was no longer family to her because I did laundry one night. So my friendliness wasn’t an act and I had nothing to reconcile over (or if I do, I don’t know what it was because I don’t know WHY I was cut out of this family, exactly, or why they don’t want to ever see me anymore). I was genuinely excited to be back at her house which I hadn’t been to since 2004 when my 2nd cousins Matt and Kylie were born. Unfortunately for me, they were spending the summer with my Aunt back in California as they do every year just like the year my aunt screamed and ranted at me the next day I did that fateful laundry load at the house. But whatever. I had April and I was going to open my arms in a welcoming “lets forget that whole business about how you kicked me out of your family for no reason” embrace. I got snubbed every time. 4 times to be exactly.
Here are the 4 ways I got the cold shoulder in my attempts to be a part of my cousin April’s family again:
1- Talked about decorating: The official reason we were there was to see the remodeling they had done to the house since any of us last saw it, which was legit because my mom definitely wanted to see it and I was curious too since I never get any pictures or anything from April, ever, so it was nice to see the work they had done even though “being family again” was my “real” main interest. As we were being shown the truly excellent revisions they made to their basement, I recognized that I was going to get zero questions or interest about me or my life so I mentioned that I’ve done a lot of renovations to my own house in North Hollywood and that I would like for her and Matt and Kylie to come visit. This was ignored as she quickly pointed to drawers under a countertop down there and mentioned that they’re filled with Lego’s. Instead of pushing the issue, I commented on how great the Lego movie was, though she didn’t agree and oddly, found it annoying and poorly constructed.
2- Commenting on where the dogs sleep. As the house tour winded up to the master-bedroom, I again mentioned my house and how I’d like to show her some of the cool stuff I did to the bedrooms in it. This also went unacknowledged as she pointed to cushions on the floor at the end of her bed and noted that that was where Charlie and Moose (her dogs) sleep at night.
3- Neighborhood Construction: Moving outside to chat for awhile, I tried to change tracks and after asking a bunch of questions about what their past and future plans were for the great work they’d done to their back yard, I mentioned simply that I would love to just hang out with her and her family at any time and that maybe we could plan something specific at some point. Ignored again, she pointed at the new houses being built across the gully from her back yard, noting how they maddeningly cover her once-mountain-view and that now she will be looking instead at low-income housing with a view into her back yard.
4- My nephews Shoes: Finally, on our way out, it was crunch time. So doing that slow-walk to the doorway, I locked eye contact with her and said again that she is invited to my house any time and to please come visit next time, every time and any time she is in southern California visiting her mom. Her response? “You need to get that kid some shoes”, pointing to my nephew Rowan who was wearing raggedy hiking sneakers he had been giving an extra punishing in a creek the day before.
And that was that. As we walked away from the house I just went on a stream of “come visit me! come visit! Come to my house!” barrage for the duration of time until she went back inside. She laughed it off and deflected by facetiously saying the lights and decorating in my house would make her ill and I shot back from across the street that I am both the cause and cure of many ailments and to “Come visit, Come visit, Come visit, lets hang out, lets do stuff, lets be family and have fun together, I love you, Come visit!”.
These are comical rejections but it actually was really depressing. She was cold as ice to me the entire time, adopting a polite accommodation to a stranger persona. In my last email to her after she rejected the invitation in January, I asked her and her sisters “what am I doing wrong?”. Since none of them answered me and I still don’t know wtf I’m not doing right here, maybe one of you can help?…
My 3 nephews are up with their moms side of the family in Montana and my Parents are driving up from Texas to pick them up in their RV and drive them back down for their annual Texas summer visit there. I was invited to join at any point and decided that flying into Colorado Springs would be a good bet for me so I could experience just the right amount of days with a bunch of kids and parents in an RV to enjoy without going crazy.
“Footin it” is a cool hip new term I came up with to describe the act of traveling as a pedestrian on account of not having a car.
I have a special path I travel through my neighborhood and slip through an apartment complex’s rear parking that is up against a McDonalds parking lot where the fence is torn down in order to accommodate hooligans like me taking a short cut into the main road the fast food place resides on instead of making the crescent shaped long-way to the same strip-mall hub of stuffs.
While on my patrol I say hello to neighbors and close open mailbox doors and am generally the opposite of this guy:
There was something more to mention though about my on-foot travels but I have to admit that I’ve forgotten it. I was walking earlier and wanted to document something about my feet-driven travels but the concept has completely left me and now i’m just here with a blog that lets people know I’m ducking through broken fences in North Hollywood for no reason. I could have just left this part out and this post would be perfectly acceptable but I was hoping that writing about how I forgot an additional point would jog my memory on what else there was to speak of. I am sorry for doing this to you.