Buckle Up
A lot of people agree that December is the last month of the year. I am one of those people. I’m not afraid to admit it. In fact, I’ll be the first to admit it. I was taught from a young age that December is the final month and if you ask me, there’s something comforting about that. It feels good to know that there are no more months after this one until the next year starts. The moment one year ends, another begins. That’s how it is and that’s how it will always be. There’s nothing we can do about it.
When I was a wee lad, I had trouble understanding the concept of time; its constant movement, the never-ending march, the power it had over all living beasts. Sure, I knew the days of the week and most of the months. I knew that there were sixty seconds in a minute and one thousand minutes in a day. I’m not talking about that stuff. What I mean is that I couldn’t understand that time was forever. It extended behind me and in front of me beyond the bounds of my juvenile understanding. Every moment was gone the instant that it started. I couldn’t comprehend this back then and I’d be lying if I said I totally understood it now.
There’s no shame in not being able to understand complex stuff like time. Life is full of weird things like that. It all feels normal and comprehensible until you really put some thought into it. That’s when it starts to get scary. I would say that it’s good to mostly not think about things too closely, but every so often you’ve got to scare yourself by peering into the endless void. People spend so much of their life just cruising along on autopilot. There’s something to be gained from examining life’s many terrifying truths from time to time. Just don’t do it too often. Don’t get addicted to it.
You can get addicted to pretty much anything. I went to school with a kid who was addicted to eating orange flavored Tic Tac® candies. He would eat two or three packages of them a day. What are those specific packages called? Flasks? Candy flasks? Anyway, he said that eating them made him stronger and smarter, but I’m not convinced that was true. Yeah, he was super strong and he was the fastest kid in school, but he never seemed that smart to me. Also, his tongue was always yellow and his teeth were worn down to little round nubs and his breath smelled like battery acid. I wonder what he’s up to these days. I tried to look him up a few years ago, but I couldn’t find anything about him on the internet. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s the truth.
The kid who was addicted to orange flavored Tic Tac® candies had a twin sister who was completely unlike him. They didn’t look anything alike and they had different last names and she was in a different grade than us. I never really understood it, but I didn’t think about it too much. I thought she was cool because she was pretty good at skateboarding. Back then, it wasn’t super common to see girls skateboarding. I’m glad that has been normalized more these days. Skateboarding is cool and it’s not just for greasy boys. Anybody can do it if they want to.
So much has changed since I was in high school. Everybody has got smart telephones and they wear special glasses that make it so they can see through walls and stuff. It’s a totally different world than the one in which I grew up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I think that’s a good thing. While I don’t understand all of the new technology and jargon the kids use these days, I appreciate the progress that’s been made. That stuff isn’t for me. I’m a withered old man and it’s alright if I don’t understand all of the intricacies of today’s youth. I just hope that they keep skateboarding and I hope there is still at least one kid at every school who eats a ton of the same type of candy every day.
It’s weird stuff like that that makes life interesting. I feel like pretty much everybody knew at least one proud weirdo who did stuff that didn’t make sense to most people, but they didn’t care and they just went on doing their thing. I am so thankful for people like that. I was a bit like that in my own way when I was younger, but we don’t have to get into that now.
Actually, let’s get into it. It’ll be fun. Reminiscing about the old days can be enjoyable. Reflecting on our past selves is a rich, rewarding experience. Examining what we’ve done and who we once were can help us better understand who we are today. People don’t come from nothing. Each person is the result of their cumulative life experiences.
Anyway, when I was in high school, I was known as the guy who wore wigs. I was skateboarding behind a grocery store one day when I found a wet garbage bag full of wigs near a dumpster. Most of them were clean and dry so I took them home and brushed the knots out of the hair and disinfected them in the oven as best I could. I didn’t like some of the hairstyles so I trimmed them and styled them until they looked awesome and then I started wearing them to school every day with no explanation.
Students and faculty would ask me about the wigs, but I just acted like I didn’t know what they were talking about. I would tell them that my hair had always looked like that and the next day I would wear a completely different wig and it would happen all over again. I think it goes without saying that I didn’t have a great many friends back then, but I didn’t mind. The few friends I did have were cool and understanding of my wigs….
Whoa, this is getting out of hand! You probably won’t believe us, but this monthly newsletter was NOT written by AI. Crazy thing is, there is more to read!
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