My butt hurts.
That’s right kids, if you’re gonna blog you have to start strong, use the word “Butt” in the first sentence, if possible in the first three words.
My faithful four-legged companion had to give up his well-earned perch upon my lap for me to type this. So I hope you’re happy.
*Guilt* *Guilt* *Guilt*
Roger has moved to a different spot on the bed and I’m glad. I can keep an eye on him and he on me.
To my left is a chin cone bearded member of the Council of Ricks on my flat screen. Paused when my son lost interest in that episode. Frozen in place, in time. We're gonna talk about time in this blog,...eventually.
Time is why I’m here writing this, and not just the fact that it exists and therefore I do. Or maybe there is some sort of philosophical line of arguing that makes my words lies, but if that’s the case such an argument would fly way over my Corona quarantined head of uncut hair. Hair that brings about images of the “Aliens” meme guy.
My stomach is hungry, but the time merely reminds me that I’m overdue for my anxiety meds. I have alarms for them, but they seem more like overly loud suggestions. I kill the alarm with every intention of taking my meds. Little disolveable circular things made to put under one's tongue.
I place one under my tongue as my wife enters the room, her mask around her neck, at the ready and an indicator that she’s ready to make the weekly Sunday jaunt to get groceries. We used to go every week together; I bounced from Game Boy to idle game, to writing lyrics while leaning against the frozen foods aisle.
The last time I went I took pictures of the completely barren toilet paper aisle:
A bit later the highly picked over bread aisle:
We bought some sort of fancy kind of bread just because it was the only loaf left. People around me politely stepped out of the frame for the shot. These same people shared knowing glances that said ‘can you believe this?”
An old man said something to me when I took a picture of the bread or lack thereof. I wish I could remember what he said. I wish I could have spent more time with him. Learning the things he’s lived through, listening to the things he’s seen. Getting his take on all of those things stacked up against what was going on around both he and I.
Of course, since then things have only gotten worse, to the point where it’s become a running joke.
Before we even got home that day, my mom called us and said my dad had bread for us. My dad has always been the breadwinner both literally and figuratively. He has delivered bread since I was in kindergarten, with several years as a tobacco sales rep in between.
Forced to start over after the tobacco company changed hands he had to start at the bottom of the bread ladder. The people he had trained were now his superiors. His line of work taught me a lot of things. For one, I will never work as hard as my dad did. Often working 16 hour days, never having two days off in a row. On weekends, and during the summers as a teenager, I sat silently in my dark bedroom alone with my feelings of guilt as I listened to my dad get ready to work at 3 am, 2am and on rare occasions just after midnight.
Another thing I learned was that even the bread industry isn’t safe. The industry that makes bread, a commodity deemed so essential even the most hardened criminal in the most unjust times is given it and water. Even this industry was and is in a constant state of flux. Mergers, takeovers, layoffs, all of which resulted in routes being cut, always to my dad's determent. In almost every change made his job either less lucrative or increased the hours and miles he had to traverse, most of the time it was both.
All that changed when one of the few good stops left on his route took a turn for the worse. By the end his route was spread across the entire southeast corner of the state like some sort of overly gerrymandered voting district. This last big stop began crowding him in the same small tents as hundreds of workers. These workers were comprised of mostly immigrants afraid to get tested out of fear of deportation. Their lives important enough to do our dirty work slaughtering the animals we eat, but fleeting enough that they could get kicked out of the country at the drop of a hat the next time some politician wanted to look tough on immigration.
My dad was sent there day after day with no protection of any kind. At one point, the cases of COVID at that one plant made up a third of the new cases in the state. My dad's hand was forced and he retired, something I had always hoped he would get to do. But his retirement turned out to be something he had to do for his own safety. If he could have held out for a few more years he would have been entitled to a lot more money, but every day dropping off bread and picking up stale at the plant was another day of Covid Russian Roulette. Now he is retired and every free moment my mom has is spent on hold trying to figure out why his pension checks haven’t started coming yet. “Things are crazy what with everyone working from home because of the virus” she is told. As if she could relay that to the people on the waiting end of their bills and all will be forgiven.
My butt still hurts, or I should more correctly say it’s falling asleep. I envisioned this writing position to be more comfortable, in fact, I remember it being more comfortable, but I’m stuck now, my buddy has curled up next to my legs and I don’t want to force him to have to move again. Laying against me in what feels like an act of solidarity or support.
I never intended this blog to be about my dad, but my blogs tend to take a circuitous route to where I intended. At the very least, my blogs spin-off into lengthy pre-topic tangents that a better writer would just lop off like pruning a plant for its own benefit.
I got off the phone with my mom before all of this. They’re preparing to go camping. I was driven to call my mom after Ozzy came on the shuffle of the USB drive which contains that half of the alphabet (M through Z) . This made me think of her, made me think it was time to come back upstairs. Before that “Stand by me” a song my wife loves. So I hugged her before retreating to my room and this chair that numbs my buttcheeks. If a tourniquet could be applied to butt cheeks I bet it would feel like this.
I pause to reply to a discord chat. We’ll see what comes of it.
Before those two songs came on shuffle, a friend I know as Boom had DM’d me out of the blue to tell me he was starting a new dynasty in video game college football.
Meanwhile back in the present, my son wandered in long enough to ask several times to play football only to leave again with a fold-able tent another friend of mine had given me. I do not like that tent's chances of survival…..
Back to Boom. I told him I couldn’t play video game college football right then because my four-year-old was monopolizing the Xbox 360 to play Minecraft and that I had started a dynasty with an entire narrative around it.
He asked me to expand on the narrative and tell him what was up. The result is below, sorry for the bad spelling/grammar.
The tweet was proceeded by this:
He talked me into posting it, I got two retweets, more likes than I thought I would get and about three or four new followers, about as many as I lose every time I post a tweet asking people to read my blog.
Around the time “proceeded by” was written above, my son returned more adamant about playing football but unable to bring me the mouse to set up a game for him. I think I’ll get up and hope that Roger will still be in place when I return. Perhaps a break for my still numbing ass. Before I can attempt such a maneuver, my son leaves again, this time armed with a pool noodle.
I now lay in bed, my keyboard lying diagonally across my body. Having returned from urinating, letting my four-legged buddy out into the blast furnace that is this mid-June heat.
My son ultimately got his game, forcing the cone-shaped citadel Rick off the screen. I put that game on CPU vs CPU so he enjoys the illusion of thinking he is playing. Much like I pretended to play arcade machines when my parents didn’t have the coinage to enable me to play the game for real.
Now my boy lays next to me, with his back to the game he believes he's playing. This doesn’t stop him from pressing buttons. He squirms his way under covers.
At some point in this post during the butt numb era, I received a response from my discord question. This person, whose name and avatar or profile pic is of the kool-aid man, keeps his response all about himself, with no interest in my offer to expand on how I’m doing, but not in general chat. I’m secretly glad about that.
My eyelids grow heavy. Man, writing in the first person is easy.
On my way to the back patio door, I thought maybe this will be how I write my first book. I already do 90% of my writing in my journal which no one will read. Write what you know is what “they” say and I haven’t had near as much practice narrating my own life as writing anything else.
Writing in first-person feels like cheat mode.
I always want to write in third. I like the freedom of being able to create and enter multiple characters'minds. Third also avoids the trap of knowing with relative certainty, unless you’re hearing the story from a ghost, the first-person protagonist will survive to tell you the story you are reading.
I really should read more. If for no other reason than perhaps karmically I owe it in exchange for anyone reading this. God bless you btw.
My butt isn’t as sore anymore.
The announcer narrating my son's now forgotten football game sounds like a cross between Stimpy and that guy from "The Bird Cage" who later did the voice of the warthog in the Lion King.
Eventually, something caused me to get up. As I did so, I looked down on the bed, my son lost his battle with his eyelids, the controller left limp in his hands, taking up the majority of his torso.
I would learn soon that not did Boom attend the same high school as I, but graduated the same year. Neither of us remembers the other, both of loners us our own way. He took things a step farther than me though, intentionally dodging picture day.
I exchange twitter DMs until my battery dies. Just another form of writing, another form of therapy started with a lengthy DM that started "Dear Boom."
