I have a few ideas for societal improvement, allow me to share.

Everyone should work in a restaurant. You've heard this one before, but often it is "everyone should wait tables". I include the kitchen staff because they are putting in work, sweating profusely, without the tips.

Everyone should go without a car for a while. Because my POS Audi regularly acted like Mona-Lisa Saperstein from Parks and Rec, (“Money Pleeeease!!”) I had to park it for a year or more in college. I got a job I could walk to, and lived all seasons on foot.  Actually I don't recommend it. Too much walking in the rain and brutal cold. I realize that I am not alone, or even in the minority in this, but in my case, it added to my bitterness. All it did was teach me that riding the bus takes an hour longer, and although thousands of cars may pass you in the pouring rain, none will be stopping.  

And my main point, everyone should live alone. Not forever, but long enough to learn that if anything needs to get done, it's on you. Knowing that no one else is going to take care of your shit is a very valuable lesson. Want to eat? Make something. Out of clean silverware? Wash some. Need to connect that new TV to the wifi? Do it. 

I'm not saying that we all need to know how to do everything, but we should be aware of what is, and needs to be done. Think of the episode of The Office where Dwight resigns. Only after he's gone does Michael realize how many unseen tasks he had taken on. Dwight is of course a major league suck up, but for the purposes of this post, he is also as self sufficient as anyone. Self sufficiency should lead to an appreciation for all that is done for you. In short, be more like Dwight.

I get out of the shower and lay on my bed. I look at the pictures on the wall. One of Nick and I in the apple tree, him smiling and looking at the camera, me with half-eaten apple in hand, oblivious to the camera. The other of Nick and I wearing aviation headsets in the back seat of a plane, him in the background smiling and looking at the camera, me in the foreground sticking my tongue out. My eyes well up a bit and I think, What the fuck happened?

A little reality in an Instagram world

I always try to appreciate the truth, especially when it might be easier not to tell. I know that despite your social media posts, all is not champagne and white sand beaches. I love to see people of all walks share their difficult moments in heartfelt honesty. If I may offer some advice, try to be honest with the people around you. A little reality in an Instagram world.

I am literally jealous of homeless people. And of course I'm being short sighted. I realize that I have many positive things in my life that a homeless person likely does not. And I realize that their lives are difficult. But for years, when I see the homeless, I think I'd like to trade places. More interestingly, would a homeless person want to trade places with me?

In 1994 I turned ten years old

In 1994 I turned ten years old.  For the first time in my life, people were talking about soccer.   Sportscenter, the local news, and the kids in the neighborhood put the summer baseball season on the back burner and started talking soccer.  

For a month that summer, the United States would host the FIFA, (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) soccer to the Americans, World Cup.  The tournament would be played out in nine US cities from June 17th to July 17th, feature 24 teams representing countries all over the world, and set an attendance record (of 69,000 average fans per match) that still stands.  The opening ceremony was emceed by Oprah Winfrey, attended by President Bill Clinton, and featured musical act Diana Ross. 

The ’94 World Cup did a lot to bring soccer out of the dark to compete with what were commonly referred to as “the four major sports” (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) back then.  FIFA is said to have chosen the US as the host in ’94 in exchange for a promise by US Soccer to establish a top flight soccer league in the US. The ’94 World Cup acted as a predecessor to this new league, hoping to grow the game in the world’s largest market. Two years later Major League Soccer established itself with 10 teams in the US. 

Even before the start of the tournament, the kids in the neighborhood had World Cup fever.  Everyone was talking about Brazil, Columbia, and team USA’s long-shot chances as school let out for the summer.  Tony Meola and Alexi Lalas replaced Don Mattingly and Roger Clemens in our sports-conscious for one summer. The bash brothers took a backseat to the incredible afro of Columbian midfielder Carlos Valderrama and all those one-named Brazilian players like Romario and Ronaldo.  

For one summer, in 1994, we played soccer.  I don’t think any of us had played organized soccer before that summer, and most of us weren’t about to start, but for that summer we hopped on the bandwagon and gave it a try.  We didn’t have goals or cleats, numbered jerseys or chalked sidelines, but so it went with most of the childhood games we played. We learned to make due. 

Our field was, as usual, in my backyard.  It was one of the bigger backyards in our neighborhood of 1,000 square foot ranch houses and quarter acre lots.  There was a round patch of dirt, (the pitcher’s mound) in the middle of the field. Outfield fences on one side and my house on the other were the only sidelines we needed.  Three maple trees and a ski pole acted as the goals.

One thing I remember about that summer is how hot it was.  I remember one of the neighborhood kids bringing frozen bottles of water to the field and how great an idea that was.  I’d try to coax a drop of water from the thawing chunk of ice inside the bottle when the game paused a minute or two.  

It was a strange summer that year.  Major League Baseball would go on strike, cancelling the World Series for the first time in 90 years.  The O.J. Simpson murder case took over the airwaves when helicopter news teams chased his white Ford Bronco down a Los Angeles freeway.  And the World Cup was to be held on US soil for the first time.  

Some of the older kids were talking about the Columbian team.  They were a big story going into the tournament. Their stars showed up in ads on TV and became instantly recognizable.  I thought they were joking when they said a player was murdered for a mistake he made in the game. We may have laughed about it but it was no joke.  Andres Escobar had deflected a pass into his own goal in Columbia’s unexpected loss to the United States. After returning home to Columbia following the team’s disappointing elimination, Escobar was shot six times outside a nightclub in his native Medellin.  I remember thinking it must have been a joke; a soccer match could never mean that much.  

So we spent the summer playing soccer, 3 on 3 with the goalies, on a tiny field in my backyard.  We tried to slide tackle, bicycle kick, and all sorts of funny moves, laughing at our ignorance all along.  We practiced our moves, staging trick plays and shooting against the soccer fence we otherwise called the Green Monster.  We tore up the lawn practicing celebratory knee slides like the ones we saw on TV.

It didn’t last forever, and over the next few years, as I made my way through middle school, and the older kids through high school, our ongoing backyard whiffleball games got more organized, sophisticated, obsessive. As with most of America, we went back to the norm, futbol was left behind.

I wrote this several years ago, guess I never shared

It’s never good news when your doctor schedules your appointment on her day off.  I should have known that going in. After several months of tests, questions, and doctor visits, this is what it came to.  My mother and I waited for someone to call us in, and tell us something, anything.

I had no idea what to expect.  Recently I had two tests done, and afterwards one of the doctors looked me in the eye and with a very serious, sentimental tone, told me this could be something very serious.  That was the only clue I had for what was to come.

Within a minute or so of being called into her office, the doctor gave us the news.  It was ALS she said. And immediately she began to tell us what that meant. She tried to soften the blow by relating the story of a friend of hers who had recently been diagnosed with a far more severe manifestation of the disease,  implying that I was lucky in some way. It’s funny how people try to relate by letting you know that they know someone with the same problems. All I can remember thinking the whole time she related stories about her friend was, great I don’t give a shit, or something to that effect. 

She told me to be a couch potato.  She used those words.  

I usually write when I'm feeling reflective, when I'm not using short term distractions to hide. Busy hands are happy hands. I think there's a lot of truth to that. I used to be able to escape into life, now I use a book or Netflix or too much YouTube. 

I used to sit alone in my dorm listening to the acoustic version of the Counting Crows song Have You Seen Me Lately? over and over. Among other similarly somber songs. I even used a few lyrics as my AOL Instant Messenger away message. A year+ out of high school I had lost my brother, hadn't made any friends at UVM, and felt like I wasn't the person I'd always been. And the world kept moving around me. 

And of course now I know I'm not who I used to be. 

I could say that I look back wistfully, jealous of all the things I had but couldn't see. But I don't. The only real difference is that with time I climbed out of that hole and made a new me. I can't climb out of this one.

Enough. YouTube time.