Tag: Memoirish

Half-birthdays should be A Thing™

General

Today is my half-birthday. I’ve been trying to make that A Thing™ for a long time. My friends and family haven’t taken to the idea, however. I’m sure they have their reasons, considering they haven’t celebrated my, or anyone’s, half-birthday for 5 decades, so I forgive them. I would still love to make today, the 28th of June, the day I celebrate my birth, for one major reason.

One way to celebrate a half-birthday: cupcake!

If you’ve mentally done the math you can immediately see the problem, right? Six months from today in either direction lands on the 28th of December, and having a birthday on that date just sucks. It’s smack dab in the wasteland between two major winter holidays; the hegemony ensures that everyone is aware of and probably celebrates (or at least observes) Christmas, and the calendar itself enforces New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, making them impossible to ignore. Those holidays are heavy hitters, imposing their existence on the entire population.

And my birthday just gets overwhelmed by the giants. Few people have the attention or even resources to put together a separate celebration for anyone. Look, I know I’m complaining a bit here, I accept that. It was more difficult when I was younger, much younger. Lots of kids (not all of them, of course) celebrated their birthdays during the school year or in the summer when more kids and their parents were available to put a party together. Not so in the doldrums of December. Y’all were tired.

When I got older, it became less of an issue but still an issue. Starting over 20 years ago, my family began celebrating Christmas by traveling somewhere warm and sunny. And so to be in that place on Christmas Day, but to avoid other heavy travel days, my birthday often became a traveling day. My finances haven’t been great recently, so I often stay home, house-sitting for those on vacation, or I am otherwise unable to travel. That means my recent birthdays have been either in airports, or separated from my family with only my closest friends to help me remain grateful for another year.

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve enjoyed some epic birthdays. One year me and my friends had an amazing dinner and then visited the Acropolis, a famous steak house in Portland (oh, and also it’s a strip club.) I do have pictures from that night but, respectfully, won’t be posting them. Several of my recent birthdays were celebrated in song, with karaoke. I love karaoke, even if I’m not a strong singer. A close friend once said that singing is about volume and enthusiasm, and when I want to, I’ve got plenty of both.

And I am, honestly, grateful for my life, my friends, and my family; it’s just the random circumstances of the day of my birth that I’m focusing on here, I promise. So yes I’m whining a bit but this half-birthday idea was my attempt to do something about it! What if we celebrated my one day a year (everybody gets one!) that’s all about me… in the summer? Wouldn’t that be great? Warm weather, grilled meats, no pesky overwhelming holidays encroaching… It would, it would be great. Let’s do it! If not this year, then next year!

Thinking about planning to examine cars

Cars

For the longest time, I did not own a car. I didn’t own a car for more than two decades. I used public transit or made use of short-term car rental services like ZipCar, or relied on friends and family to pick me up, or I rode my bicycle for short trips. It was fine, really; when I was employed, I could bus to my office, and I could check out a motor pool car if I needed to drive for work. And when I wasn’t working… where did I need to go, really? I could still use the other options, I just did them less often, because I had no money.

But in July 2016, however, I got a decent-ish job working at a call center for a major US bank. The call center was over 18 miles by surface streets, and since my schedule (after training) was a very early shift, public transit did not have any option to get me to the call center on time. I needed a car.

My cousin was looking to upgrade to a newer car, and I bought her used 1996 Honda Accord for cheap. It ran, almost everything on it worked, and it got me to work on time, and that’s all I cared about. I’ve tried to keep up the basic maintenance on it, and it’s served me well, with only minor hiccups here and there.

I have insurance, the car is legally registered, it uses a moderate amount of gasoline, and it only leaks a little oil. I’ve driven it to the beach and back several times. When a prospective employer asks if I have reliable transportation, I am comfortable saying yes. As long as I keep the fluids topped up, I often joke, it will probably outlast me.

For all of those reasons, I did not pay any attention to cars as a topic. I paid no attention to car makes and models, or trends in cars, or prices for new or used cars. I gave zero thought to what kinds of cars I liked or might buy, assuming I had money to buy a car, which I nearly always did not.

My last several jobs were either contract work, with expiration dates, or positions I took out of desperation, keeping a hope of finding something better. I was unable to save up enough money for a down payment and never felt secure enough to take out even a short car loan. That situation has shifted, though. I like my new job, and I can dream a little that maybe I’ll still be there for the foreseeable future. I can think about the possibility of planning to examine the options of perhaps getting rid of the ancient Honda… and replacing it with something newer.

Last night I started figuring out some things. What is a decent price range for a reliable car for me? How will it impact my budget? What will gas, insurance, and maintenance cost? How long will it take to save up a down payment, and is it worth it trading in the Accord? What is my credit score and how does that affect the interest rate and how much money will my credit union loan me? Should I buy a hybrid vs a gasoline car?

I started a spreadsheet to start tracking some of this stuff, because of course I did. I’ve got a first draft of what years, makes, and models interest me, just to get a feeling of what’s out there. It’s a start. Stay tuned for posts where I share some of my research and ask you, my readers, for your advice. Thanks in advance!

That one time I was briefly stranded in Montana

General

Red-haired Caleb was in the backseat, sleeping. I was in the passenger seat, enjoying the music and looking out at the vast empty Montana prairie in front and on either side of us under the late afternoon, early evening summer sun. The car smelled of junk food and sweat. It was Day 2 of the trip, still early in the morning, a day after we had left Portland in a rented car.

Jake, dark-haired, features sharp, was driving, hunched forward, hands gripping the steering wheel, face suspiciously blank.

The car, a 2000-ish Subaru Legacy, lurched a bit as the engine backfired. The blank expression on Jake’s face shifted almost imperceptibly into worry.

I turned the music down a bit to facilitate conversation. “Everything OK?”

“Could you check the map and see where the closest town is?”

I reached down into the footwell and picked up the paper road atlas. Omnipresent portable GPS was still a decade away. It was the afternoon of 20 July 2002, and we were about fifty miles east of the Montana-Idaho border on I-90. It hit me. “We didn’t get gas, did we?” Jake glanced over at me, and nodded. I craned my neck and saw the gas gauge, needle dead on empty, the orange gas pump-shaped light on, steady.

Gleefully wasting gas

Three hours earlier, I had been resting in the back seat, having driven through the night on one of the first shifts of our epic road trip. We had all gotten out of the car to take pictures of the famous Montana Big Sky at sunrise, marking our progress toward our destination, Mount Rushmore, formerly The Six Grandfathers (Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe to the Lakota). We stopped in Butte (hehe, butt) to get gas and breakfast. At some point over the next few hours, I had laid down in the backseat to get some rest, Jake taking shotgun for Caleb driving.

I got maybe 20 minutes of rest before I heard my friends giggling, the engine at full speed. Jake was leaning over toward Caleb, holding my digital camera to get a picture of the pegged speedometer without obstructing Caleb’s view of the road. I laughed, sat up, and we commemorated our breaking in of getting the rental to an indicated 120 MPH. Caleb and Jake explained that we were taking advantage of the Montana freeways’ lack of speed limits, a plan they had hatched shortly after we had crossed into the state and without consulting me, the person financially responsible, on paper, for the car rental.

Dusty out of focus picture of a Toyota instrument cluster. The fuel guage is at 3/4 of a tank; the speedometer needle is pegged above an indicated 120 MPH, and the trip odometer, ominously, reads 773.4, or HELL if read upside down.
Somewhere between Missoula and Bozeman, we hit maximum speed.

Legal intervention

Around 10:20 AM, east of Billings, a state trooper pulled up behind us, red and blue lights flashing. Caleb panicked; he wasn’t yet 25 years old and technically not a legal driver for this car, at least as far as Hertz was concerned. After we pulled over, with the trooper looking into a car filled with the detritus of three white guys on a road trip, he asked the question all cops ask: “Do you know how fast you were going?”

We learned that Montana did have speed limits on its freeways. In 2002, the posted limit was 75 MPH, and the trooper ticketed us for exceeding the limit by 25 MPH or more; his radar clocked us at 102.5 MPH, according to the ticket. I still have a picture of the ticket, which I won’t post because it shows info about Caleb I’m sure he doesn’t want on the internet. We pulled $40 from our gas fund and paid the officer immediately in cash. The ticket was our receipt, and we continued into Billings.

As we were coming down from the high of speeding and the stress of legal entanglements, and as we looked for a place to eat that would meet our agreement (no fast food chains, only local establishments). We made another stop, to top up in Butte. Then we got lunch in Butte, because all of us were men and could not resist a city called Butte. As we pulled in to town, Jake reminded us “We should fill the tank before we leave!” But we did not.

The consequences of forgetting

Now, 300+ miles and almost five hours of freeway driving after filling up in Butte (hehe, butt), and an hour past Billings, as we neared the Montana-Wyoming border, we faced the consequences. The car’s backfiring increased in duration, jolting Caleb awake. After we explained to him the situation, he shared our worries. The map showed a possible exit ahead, Exit 544, and a town named Wyola. We coasted to the top of the off-ramp on fumes. Down below us, at the bottom of the off-ramp, a sign mocked us: “No Services”.

Close up shot of a Toyota instrument cluster. The gas guage is at empty, and there's an orange light in the shape of a fuel pump on. The speedometer is at 0 MPH; the car is at rest.
This is what it looks like when a car is out of gas.

We used the universal signal of car trouble: hood and trunk up, emergency flashers on. I worried that we had created a new problem with the car, thanks to incomplete information: I thought fuel injectors were damaged by running empty. We joked about Jake’s luck, and how he always seems to land on top of things. Except this time; he was driving when he noticed we needed to fill up, and was driving again when we failed to fill up. Unlucky.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if some bus full of the Swedish Bikini Team pulled up to take Jake to get gas?” Caleb joked. “That would be more his luck.”

Rescued

Not too long after, a large recreational vehicle pulled up alongside, and the nicest little old lady leaned out the door. “You boys having some trouble?” She was wearing a plaid shirt and faded mom jeans, not a silver bikini.

She and her husband, whose names I have sadly forgotten, took Jake up to the next exit, who knows how far away. Caleb and I held down the car, Caleb eating some of the cheese we had stashed in a cooler in the trunk, despite his lactose intolerance. Maybe an hour later, the kindly old couple returned Jake to us with a can full of gas. We tried to pay the couple for their time and effort but they refused. “Just pay it forward,” she told us. “We’re happy to help.”

The car ran fine after we topped up the tank, with no trouble with the injectors, for the rest of the trip.

Sometimes it works out, eventually

General

Got home from my new job (about a 35 minute commute because traffic was backed up on I5 and it spilled out onto the surface streets) and when I got out of my car, my dad was standing there smoking.

“How was your first day?” he asked.

“It was… good. I’ve got a good feeling about that place.” I chuckled. “I mean, I spent most of the day, about 90%, just signing in to things and resetting passwords. But, yeah. I like the people I work with.”

“That’s great, son. I’m glad it worked out for you.” Dad had been confounded by my stories about job hunting in the tech sector in The Year of Our Lord Two-thousand and Twenty-Three, for sure. Stories about being called in for three or four interviews and having the employer choose someone else. Stories about phantom job postings, where it’s clear the company isn’t hiring, just advertising positions for whatever economic gain it gets them. Stories about how me asking good questions in the interview caused the employer such distress about not knowing what they want this position to be, they pulled the listing, selected no one, and went back to the drafting board to start over from first principles.

It’s been a long job hunt, is what I’m saying. But I’ve landed in a good spot, I think.

Dad is basically of the Greatest Generation or slightly after, not quite a Boomer, and when he was job hunting he literally just had to walk in to a place, talk to the owner, and convince them to hire him. Much easier in the trades, I’m sure (he was an electrician) but pretty much standard job hunting behavior across many careers back in the day.

It’s almost never been like that for me. Early on, the only way to find jobs (that I knew about) was seeing a “Now hiring” sign in a window, or finding a job through these listings called “The Classfieds” in what we used to call “newspapers.” Then, at the very least I had to fill out an application, hand it in, and then wait to be called back for an interview when I started out. That call would come in to the phone in the house, which was wired to the wall, and not stuffed into a pocket that went everywhere with me.

Of course it’s not like that now. Jobs are advertised on the internet, same as every other thing, on specialized websites where I can upload a digital resume, which gets scanned and used to fill out applications, which are reviewed by computers and potentially forwarded to screeners and HR folks, or recruiters. That may trigger a phone or video call where they size you up. If that goes well you get forwarded to a hiring manager. If they like you, they’ll have you interview with even more people.

That’s how it works normally. Sometimes, sometimes, there are detours.

In the case of my current job, I did use one of those job posting sites to make the initial contact, and got a video call with the owner of the business. Except for it being digital, it could have been very much like my dad’s experience. That first conversation was casual in tone but covered a lot of ground as far as experience and my temperament went. I must have made a good impression, because there was only one more round of interview, a panel interview with the other owner and two of the techs I’d be working with, and literally three days later I had a solid job offer.

After 250 days of being an unemployee, I am now, once again, an employee. Better days are ahead, friends. I can feel it.

Expiration dates

Daily Story Project

Walked downstairs this evening to find dad in the kitchen unsealing a gallon bottle of Herdez green salsa, using his pocket knife to cut away the seal around the mouth.

“Oh,” I said, “did we run out of green salsa?”

“No but I saw this in the back of the fridge and figured we might as well use it.”

I frowned, pinching my eyebrows together. “I don’t know that I would trust that salsa, dad.”

“Why not?” he said. “What’s in here that would go bad?” He gestured at the bottle. I could tell my reaction to this was confusing to him.

“What’s the expiration date?” I picked up the bottle and turned it around. The label had printed on it “Good until May 2024”. I read that out loud, added “So it was good until last month. I probably bought it a year ago.”

“Well, Hell, I’m sure it’s still good.”

“OK. Let me know how that goes.” I was sure I bought it at least a year ago, long before he’d moved in. And then promptly forgot about it, because it was hidden away in the very back of my fridge, on a lower shelf, out of sight, out of mind. When I did accidentally see it in the intervening months, I felt a shiver of shame for having not used it at all, and then to avoid that bad feeling, had immediately put it out of my mind again.

Such is the weird way my brain works. I don’t have an official test or diagnosis, but from all I’ve read, this is basically ADHD, or at least something very much like it.

I went in the fridge and got a bottle of Mexican Coke out of the bin. “There’s so much food in there.”

Dad’s voice was both encouraging and tinged with fatherly concern. “Yeah, we should use it up. Hell, we have that whole package of chimichangas in there we haven’t even opened yet! That’s what I’m making for myself.”

“Yeah.” The guilt for buying food, ignoring it, and having to throw it out when it goes bad felt like a cold stone sitting in the bottom of my stomach, the cold radiating up my chest and back. I know I should eat the stuff I buy, I know I shouldn’t buy more food when there’s food still to eat. But that’s also why I tend to buy either canned goods or frozen foods, things that will keep a very long time. I know that if I don’t see it, I’ll forget about it until somethind reminds me.

If dad wasn’t here and I was buying food for myself, I would not buy nearly as much, for exactly this reason. I don’t like it when food goes bad. So I don’t buy it, then when I get hungry, I buy something from a fast food restaurant, something immediate, delicious, and expensive. Another bad habit.

I went out for a walk after that, putting on my trail shoes and wearing my coat because it’s been so rainy lately. When I got back, I made myself a pastrami sandwich, using the tomatoes, onion, and lettuce that had not yet gone bad, and opening up the new loaf of bread we had gotten, what, two grocery trips ago? No mold on the bread.

Might as well use it up.

Righty, tighty; lefty, loosey

Cars

My butt was on the ground and my hands were inside the car door, from which I had removed the interior panel. The wiring harness for the windows, door lock, mirror controls and door light snaked across the painted metal, hanging down like vines growing across a wall. My left hand held the bottom of the window glass, keeping it from sliding down from its raised position; through the access hole in the door designed by clever engineers for exactly this purpose, my right hand held the nut that I was trying to screw into the window regulator to hold the window more permanently in place. Uh-oh. I needed a third hand.

“Hey, dad,” I said, “can you get me the 10 mm socket? And the extender-thingie?”

“Sure,” dad said from behind me. I turned my head and watched as he poked through the toolbox, which was sitting on the rear passenger seat, that door also open. Otherwise my entire field of view was this unassembled door.

Four days earlier, after driving dad over to my nephew’s house to watch their cat while my nephew and his wife went camping, my inside car door handle had stopped working. I had hurriedly and in frustration given maybe a bit too much force to the switch to roll the driver’s side window down so I could exit. After chatting with dad and my nephew, I’d gotten back in the car and found that the window switch had broken, too.

Hazards of driving an old car. My car was new in 1996 but increasingly less so every year after that. I’m the third owner, and while it continues to run with just minor maintenance – I joke that as long as I keep the fluids topped up, it’ll outlast me – some things are just worn and fragile. In fact, this is the second time the window switch has broken. It’s a cheap part, but annoying to replace.

Behind me I heard dad click the socket onto the extension-thingie. “Here, son,” he handed it down to me. I asked him to hold the window in place, then used both hands to put the socket on the bolt head, and turn it.

“Righty, tighty; lefty, loosey,” dad said, ironically.

I chuckled. “I know! I learned that from you, at least.”

I’d learned a lot from dad, including many lessons that seemed to be simple rules for living under his roof growing up, but turned out to be cleverly disguised as life lessons. When I was a kid, our roles would be reversed from what I was doing now. He’d be the one with his head and hands on thing he was fixing; I’d be the one who had to find and bring the right tool, the tool he’d forgotten he’d needed right then and there. That lesson was “know your tools” and I always thought it was like magic how he could look at a bolt and know, somehow, that it was a 12 mm, or a 3/8″, depending on the circumstances and the part.

“I don’t care if you borrow my tools,” he told me, “as long as you put them back where you found them.” Again, that’s something specific for him; he always tried to keep his toolbox organized, the garage neat and tidy; he’d clean up spilled oil, polish his Craftsman wrenches before sorting them into their proper places. But that’s also a lesson about life. It’s OK to share, but make sure you return what you’ve borrowed.

He taught me how to maintain a car, what the parts of the car did, and backed it up with the lesson “Don’t just be a parts-swapper; fix the problem.” He had unkind words for engineers who designed things without any care for how the things would be used; he dismissed them as idealist eggheads, generally speaking. Dad was always a blue-collar working-class guy. He got dirt under his fingernails, he barked his knuckles trying to turn a wrench in tight spaces. And even though I was distracted, angsty, and dealing with a brain that I would not learn until much much later operated in non-standard ways, I did learn from him.

Happy Father’s Day, dad. I would not be the person I am today without your guidance and advice. Love your guts.

Saturday Night Grief

Daily Story Project

It’s been a gray rainy day. Sure there have been moments where some blue sky shows through the clouds but those have been few and far between. I did manage to get out and do a short walk without getting too wet, but even that involved sheltering under a tree for a few minutes to avoid a shower that would have drenched me.

I’m restless and unfocused today, for reasons that I will post about shortly but can’t just yet. Bear with me. Good things have happened, but despite being positive news, it heralds a change, and I think I’m grieving the change, which… that’s weird, right? Oh, maybe not. Wait, I can’t ask you because you don’t know what this is all about.

Been basically snacking all day, since I’ve been primarily stuck inside. Coffee, two cherry turnovers, half a bag of Pirate Booty, a hot dog, three chicken tacos, a hot dog, a handful of mini cinnamon rolls, and a pickle. Oh, and a can of Squirt and a bottle of Mexican Coke. A lotta carbs. I’m sure the weird fuel I’m putting in my body has some kind of an effect on my mood, but I am not a fooditician so I cannot say for certain.

Worked on some maps for locations my players will definitely absolutely get to, and one location they might possibly get to, and another map for a location that’s really only important to me to detail. Once I start a map it comes together quickly, though I can endlessly add details unti the cows come home, which is a farming metaphor I don’t use often.

The change in weather has caused my ears to stop up, I think, leaving me fuzzy-headed and distracted by the sinus and ear pressure. Incredibly distracting and annoying.

It’s the middle of June and I had to turn my heat on in the apartment today. That just seems so weird. That’s how chilly it is today.

I got approved for a new credit card, a rewards card with no annual fee, which just seems incredibly reckless on the part of the credit card company, considering my ancient history with credit as well as the fact that I am currently unemployed and have been since October 13 last year. Far be it from me to shield giant financial institutions from the consequences of their own actions, though. First thing I did with the card was buy an MLB.tv subscription for the rest of the season. Go Dodgers!

Tomorrow is Father’s Day and tomorrow’s post will be about my dad and how I’m happy he’s still here and how we have a good relationship. Not in exactly those words, of course. I plan on picking a story about something we shared together to illustrate that. So look out for that. If you would prefer to avoid stories about dads at all, for whatever reason, feel free to skip the blog tomorrow. I won’t mind; just wanted you to know.

This one’s for me

General

Tonight I am feeling many things and maybe, just maybe, writing about them will help me sort them out. Bear with me, this might just be personal ramblings and thoughts. I’m warning you up front; feel free to skip this one if it doesn’t interest you. This one’s for me.

It’s been a busy couple of days. That emergency I mentioned before is almost completely fixed; I still have some things to take care of but I have all the information and pieces I need to do that. But the stress of it is still with me, worrying about why it happened, and if I could have done anything to prevent it, and why it had to happen right now, alongside all the other things in my life I’m dealing with. Philosophically, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think bad or good things happen to me for some unknown reason. Things just happen and I get to decide how I react to them. But it is stressful to have to deal with several different minor crises at the same time.

The other minor crisis is the job hunt. I have been interviewing lately and that’s a good thing because eventually interviews should, under normal circumstances, lead to a job offer. But it’s been many months of searching, and many interviews, and I’m a bit tired of the process and wishing it was over. I do feel a sense of duty to show up, though, and I always give the best I can give at any one moment. The anxiety and stress feed my Inner Negative Voice, which tries to trick me into thinking I deserve bad news, but as mentioned I don’t actually believe that. All that Inner Negative Voice does is wear me down and tire me out and get me to lower my defenses against hopelessness. I’m stronger than that.

I’ve survived every bad day life has ever thrown at me. And I’ll survive many more. I’m not done yet, not by a long shot.

Might just need some rest, though. As soon as I’ve gotten this post to ~500 words, I’ll do that.

The other crisis is my dad’s living situation. He’s still staying with me, and I’m happy and glad to spend time with him and provide him with a place to stay while his living space is being repaired. But seeing him deal with the process of aging, and seeing how his health is declining (rightfully so, since he’s lived a long life already, full of all the things life can throw at someone), it’s eye-opening and… tragic? Tragic feels like the right word. He and I haven’t always gotten along, worse when I was much younger, but we have gotten to a good place in recent years, and I… I don’t want to think about him not being here. I’m not ready for that. I’ll just enjoy the time I do get to spend with him. I’m glad he’s here, in multiple senses of the word here. Here in my apartment, here in my life, here on the right side of the dirt, as he’s fond of saying.

Right now, in this moment

General

Back to the job hunt today. Yesterday was a holiday so there weren’t that many jobs posted I would qualify for. Today I found a few, including at least one where I have a personal reference – one of my friends in my D&D group is a manager at this business and said he’d speak highly of me. Any way I can get past the gatekeepers and gain some kind of advantage, right?

Things are kinda dire but I’m so full of negative energy lately, I don’t want to focus on that right now. I imagine you are as tired of reading about the stress as I am of writing about it. No, I am going to try to be positive.

I’ll start with the basics. Right now, today, I have a roof over my head. I have a comfortable bed to sleep in. I have food to eat, and my health (the cough has cleared up) and I’m able to move my body anywhere I need to go.

I have family and friends who love me. I am involved in fun things to do with my time. I can write and get my words out there for anyone to see. I have the freedom to engage with silly, happy, frivolous things that I enjoy.

For right now, in this moment, I have enough. I am safe. I am surrounded with the love of my inner circle. I am enough. This is enough.

Tomorrow will take care of itself. Yesterday is behind me. Right now, tonight, is what I can focus on.

I am aware there are many many folks out there who do not have what I have, and I acknowledge their pain and their suffering. Right now I know that I have done, and will continue to do, everything I can to help them. My current safety provides me with a base that I can leverage at least some care toward them. I don’t have much, right now, but at least I have that.

We often enjoy stories where one person’s decisions can make a tremendous difference for the lives of many. When it comes to us and our decisions, however, we rarely allow the possibility to effect change. We do have power; each of us, but especially all of us. Working together. As a community. Organized. Strong, in numbers too big to ignore.

It starts, however, with us, individually, moving from our place of comfort in the direction of unity and justice. Before we march side-by-side, we must stand up and be where we are, right now. Stand on steady feet, on stable ground, and pick a path forward. We can do it but we have to think we are capable, first.

I am strong. I am capable. I achieve my goals. My path foward is marked and it is a path I can walk. I start my forward motion from here, where I am now. In relative comfort, with enough to fulfill my needs, and the health and strength to get going.

The Devil and Bean Dad

Music

In the car with dad, me driving, him riding shotgun. I was driving carefully through busy freeway traffic, navigating west on the Banfield on our way to a doctor’s appointment for him.

My Happy playlist was on shuffle, volume low, but I caught the opening chords of a driving buzzing guitar riff, and John Roderick’s warm, dynamic, resonant voice sang

“American schools called you Starlight
in fourteen point type
Ten times ten, and then
your most brutal-ful smile”

and I couldn’t help but turn the volume up and try to sing along. My voice, ravaged by a persistent cough and allergies, couldn’t keep up even at my best, but I did nod my head along to the beat.

Dad, his neck artificially stiffened with the metal rods the surgeons used to repair his broken spine, looked over at me from the corner of his eye, his head turning like Batman, from the shoulders. Dad’s mouth turned into a little smile.

“I,” I said, “have such… complicated feelings about this song.”

Dad’s eyebrow crooked a question at me that I could feel even though my eyes were fixed forward out the windshield. The wipers intermittently wiped away droplets of rain, squeaking just over the music.

“I don’t imagine you’ve ever heard of The Long Winters, but they are basically John Roderick. I’m pretty sure this whole album was written and performed by him, maybe with some session players from Seattle. I first heard him play as an opening act for another band I love.”

Long pause as the memories of standing at the edge of the stage of the Aladdin Theater, next to the speakers, listening to John Roderick and Sean Nelson from Harvey Danger, performing together. And at my side, she leaned into me, softly singing along. I felt her tiny but strong body fit perfectly against mine, my arm around her lower back.

“It was an early date with… Deb.” Or as my friends at the time called her, Devil. I scoured my memory. I don’t think Deb ever met any of my family. That had actually been a red flag. “You never met her, but Deb and I had one of those hot-and-cold relationships. We were either madly in love, or hated each others’ guts. And since we discovered The Long Winters together, when he sings about the New Girl, I can only think of Deb.”

“You erased so many mistakes
By sitting up and smiling
Your solo show
I hope it never closes
It was the ride of my life
Twice, you burned your life’s work
Once to start a new life
And once just to start a fire”

I laughed, loudly, suddenly, in the car. I gestured with a free hand, palm down, showing one level, then moving my hand up to cut a higher level. “And then, on top of all of that, there’s the whole Bean Dad thing.” I laughed again, feeling dad’s confusion at the reference.

“I don’t know what that means,” he said, finally.

“I know, I know! Sorry. So several years ago, John Roderick got canceled on Twitter for making a dumb joke about making his daughter cook some beans. He was trying to be funny, to play a character, the mean dad who makes his child do something hard to teach her a lesson, and it did not go over well. He got pushback, and instead of just saying he was exagerating, he doubled down and pushed back even harder. Eventually he deleted his Twitter account, stopped making his podcasts, and the Kids Online called him Bean Dad. It was silly and stupid.”

“If my nephew or neice were in the car right now and this song came on, they would have their own reaction to this, probably a very negative reaction. But damn, if I don’t love their music.”

So many complicated feelings in one song. And despite my attempt at explanation, I was quite certain dad had not even the slightest idea what I was talking about.

We drove over the ramp from the Banfield onto I-205 South, in the gray Friday rain.