My Life, On The Oregon Trail

As a small child in elementary school, I would tune myself out from the rest of the world and invest everything I had into the teal Apple computer in the back left corner of the classroom. Nothing anyone said to me was of any importance because this was a special time. For an hour or so, I was God. After the computer actually got started up after about 10 minutes, I double-clicked it: The Oregon Trail. And even from early adolescence, my inability to let trivial disputes go and my speedy attachment issues prevailed--exclude me from playing Four Square? You're going in the wagon. You told me we were best friends while we were learning about multiplication tables? You're going in the wagon.

Yeah she does. And she probably deserved it.

A lot of different things could get you in the wagon, but the most important factor in a venture on the Oregon Trail was the mood I was in that day. If it was a rough day at school, you could be sure as shit that I was going to ford the river every time. Looking back, if anyone had found out that I was using The Oregon Trail as a virtual means of revenge, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to play it anymore... actually, I probably would have ended up on a list somewhere. But in the end, I never cared too much about finishing the journey--that took like... four more hours than I had, and I never cared enough to save it to my floppy disk (YEAH, that was a thing). The Oregon Trail was my fix, similar to what I imagine someone feels after doing cocaine.
But after my seven to eleven year old vengeance was completed, I realized that there was no Oregon Trail in middle school, and that's a shame because middle school is definitely the time that you need some revenge-Oregon-Trail. The game persisted in my mind though, and even through college, sometimes I imagined who I would put in my wagon. I would assign people roles, and I contemplated which weak friend would be the one to come down with typhoid of dysentery. But when I moved up to DC and started living in an apartment and doing more adult things, I realized that The Oregon Trail, much like life, is not something that you plan. The Oregon Trail is something that happens to you. Life is pretty much reflective of everything on The Oregon Trail: sickness, lost materials, negotiating with people you meet along the trail, gathering over 200 pounds of food and having to leave some behind. But most of all, I realized that the more alcohol you add to the situation, the more out of control the trail becomes.
So one night, all us pioneers (Jill, Andrew, Ben, Nicole, Catherine, Catherine's brother, Nicole's boyfriend--yeah, I know you can only include five people in your wagon. This is my Oregon Trail, I do what I want) decided that we were going to go out for a night in Arlington. Everything seemed to be going well:

Weather: Fair
Health: Excellent
Food: Enough, I guess
Miles Traveled: 0

We all met at Jill and Catherine's and started to drink before going out to a nice place called Clarendon Ballroom, an establishment that houses a good 85% of Arlington's frat boys and hipsters. They only play 45 second clips of songs, and epileptics are not encouraged to go there. But while waiting for Nicole and her boyfriend to show up at Independence, Missouri, or the apartment, everyone had imbibed enough that we decided no one was going to drive, and thus, our first game move: wait for a ferry (taxi) across the river.

Weather: Fair
Health: Silly
Food: Less than before, but still okay
Miles Traveled: 1.2

We had to take two ferries to get to the bar because apparently Arlington doesn't have ferries big enough for everyone. After we got to the establishment, I regretted choosing farmer instead of banker because I needed to stop at the ATM. (By the way, why was farmer ever a good option?) I walked with Nicole and her boyfriend to retrieve money, and then soon after we entered. With me at my resting annoyed-rate of 4, I decided not to drink but rather watch those around me. I made people come out to the dance floor, and eventually, everyone started consuming more and more alcohol. People began to get more and more intoxicated, but it didn't matter because that's how you play the game--at a grueling pace. Nicole told me that I didn't know how to dance, and then her and her boyfriend left. I can only assume they were eaten by a bison or perhaps contracted cholera and died. Either way, they were off the trail. RIP.

Weather: Whatever
Health: Fair
Food: This will be more applicable later.
Miles Traveled: 1.2

Because Arlington is comprised of mostly rich, old people, the bar was closing at 1 that night and by that time, it had become painfully obvious who was going to be hung over and who was not. As I was ushering people out of the bar with Catherine and her brother, it was apparent that some members of the wagon had lost some wheels, axles, and approximately 45 pounds of food along the way. Soon after we got everyone outside, Catherine and her brother left, probably in passive disgust that they were even on the wagon to begin with. So, there I was--sober as could be with three people left: Andrew, who ran across the street without looking, Ben, who looked as if he had contracted typhoid, and Jill. Jill seemed to be fine, so while Andrew and Ben went inside a 24 hour diner, Jill stayed outside while I smoked.
Jill began to tell me about her life and how everything seemed to be different. At that point, she asked me if she could have a puff of my cigarette. By this time, I was just happy to have someone to talk with who could speak in complete sentences. But after just a couple of puffs, everything changed. Jill began to cry, and I asked her What's wrong? And with smoke still seeping out from her lips, she announced, Please don't tell the boys, but I think I'm pregnant. And then I went into panic mode. This is that point in Oregon Trail when everyone's dying, health is poor, no one has food, and the weather is hot. I immediately grabbed the cigarette from her and instructed her to go inside.

Weather: We're inside the diner, doesn't matter
Health: Terrible
Food: Way over the 200 pound limit, everyone ordered too much
Miles traveled: Too many

Within the first five minutes, Jill announced her "pregnancy," Andrew wanted breakfast, and Ben didn't have his debit card. So I had to go negotiate with the people at the bar, Indian style, to get the debit card back. By the time I returned, the food had arrived, and Jill was taking a leave of absence in the bathroom. She had forded the river, Virginia Woolf style. At this point, she was a goner. For my troubles, I left a substantial tip for the waitress on Jill's card because she was still in the bathroom, and then we got another ferry to take Jill home. Finally, it was just Ben, Andrew, and me. As soon as we got in the car to drive home, Andrew "fell asleep" in the front seat, probably from measles, which left on two surviving wagon members: Ben with typhoid, and me. I managed to get the wagon back to our apartment, but only after losing six of the original wagon members, seven oxen, all the food, and at least 4 boxes of bullets.
But that's the thing about The Oregon Trail, and life in general... you don't really play to be a hero and make the highest score--you just play to survive. We found out the next day that Jill was not pregnant at all--apparently that was just something she needed to say whilst on the trail. Andrew's measles nap was apparently completely premeditated, and everyone else's departure was made with clear minds. However, what happens on the trail is nothing to be ashamed of, and it's nothing we should hold over one another's heads for revenge because the Oregon Trail is a messy place. If life were as easily planned as a game that can be saved on a colorful floppy disk (mine was yellow, for those interested), then it would probably be a lot easier than it is. But we ford rivers and lose axels and sometimes people get cholera, but it's not about what happens on the trail--it's just about making it to the end.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Cat Toy

Yesterday, when I was sitting in class, two girls were up in front of the class giving a presentation. Meanwhile, I was on Facebook, Twitter, my email, my school email, and by chance... the same website that the girls presenting were on in front of class. All of a sudden, the girl's computer died and she was stranded. The military guy sitting next to me looked over and saw the similar website and volunteered me, or rather my computer, to be the proxy in the middle of their crisis. Immediately, I started minimizing tabs, but not so many that it would uncover the up close shot of Jennifer Lawrence that is my wallpaper. Right as the girl got to my computer, I had an unreasonable number of windows minimized, and then it hit me. Dear God. What if they get on Google?
These people weren't my roommates or a best friend... this was a giant class of people looking at my computer screen, which by this time, was reflected on a giant projection screen. And of course, they didn't just need it for that website--they needed it for two or three websites. So, they opened up tab after tab revealing my most visited pages, which happened to be much less revealing than I had anticipated. But it wasn't the most visited pages that I was worried about... it was what happened when you type that first letter into the search bar. There were safe letters and... well... not safe letters. And I sat there going through the alphabet in my mind, saying a silent prayer that they didn't need the letters G or O or P or L or F or K or N or Y or S or T in particular. What if they found my Neopets account, or the one time I searched "How to Make Meth?" There were too many Google searches I worried about, and not a damn thing I could do about it. My life was on display and the only thing worse than typing one of those letters was the sinking feeling in my stomach that those letters might get pressed.

I'm sorry, Skeeter. I'm just... sorry.

And it reminded me that I've always been that way... the guilty one. That was my computer, and it didn't matter what came up... But the embarrassment of what happens if people find out my personal details is something that has always haunted. And one of the first occurrences of it happened when I was 11 years old.
As an 11 year old, I was pretty much pure of heart. I attended church every week, and it was actually my preacher that gave me my cat, Skeeter. Middle school was rough, so Skeeter was my best friend. We would hang out together all the time and do cool stuff like watch television and walk around the house. Skeeter's favorite toy was a small mouse that cost about 1.99 from Wal-Mart. The way it worked is that you would pull out the toy mouse's tail and it would vibrate around the room, and Skeeter would chase after it. One day, Skeeter and I were doing our thing, hanging out in my room, and tossing the vibrating mouse. He would chase after it and then carry it back to me, like a dog. I'd pull it's tail again, and we'd repeat the cycle.
But on this day, everything changed. I pulled the mouse's tail out, but because of my fantastic coordination, I dropped it. In my lap. And all of a sudden, I felt something. I started to pick up the mouse, but then, well, you know... I just kind of left it there. The mouse stopped vibrating, and I stared down at my lap, then I looked at Skeeter. He didn't need to be there for this--actually, I'm pretty sure that I didn't need to be there either. Skeeter waited there in front of me to throw it again, but I wasn't sure what to do because I wasn't really sure what was going on either. I picked Skeeter up and put him out of my room because even at a young age, I really wasn't feeling the whole voyeurism thing. I sat back down in the butterfly chair in my room (because we all had butterfly chairs... don't lie) and held the mouse in my hand. As an 11 year old, I think that was my first insight as to what it might be like to do cocaine, or heroin maybe.
I went and listened at the door to make sure everyone, including Skeeter, was away from the premises. With no one in ear shot, I pulled the mouse's tail again and "accidentally" dropped it again in my lap. And this is the point in the story where I move on to more pertinent things...
So, two weeks later, no one in the house knew where Skeeter's favorite toy had gone. We had searched and searched, and when they asked if I had seen it, I remember becoming really defensive, Why would I have seen his stupid toy? I don't know where it's at. It's no where that I could find it. My skills and persuasion and lying had obviously not began to fully develop at this point, so I might have well said, Hey guys, go check in the pocket in my butterfly chair--it's there. Promise. But other than that, I kept my mouth shut. We all have our secrets, mine just happened to vibrate in ten second intervals at the pull of a tail. But even with all the secrecy and, um, other stuff, there was this sinking feeling that what I was doing was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Nothing was making sense anymore because I had been introduced to this new, shaky world of happiness and confusion. But with all the positives, the negatives seemed to always outweigh the positive. I couldn't look at Skeeter because I took something that he thought was innocent and made it into... whatever I made it into. So after the longest time, I broke.

I don't think the brand name is a coincidence.

One night as I was going to bed, I called my mom into my room. She turned the light on, and I sat up in bed--already crying, because that's what I do--and she asked me what was wrong. I broke into confession mode: Skeeter can't play with that cat toy anymore. I did something to it, or with it. I can't let Skeeter play with it anymore. My mom wasn't quite sure what to say because from the way it seemed, I was just really irrationally upset about this cat toy. I continued. Mom, I took the cat toy, and I put it on my lap. And then I kept putting it there, and then "something" happened. And then my mom pressed her lips together--at the time, I thought she was going to kill me in the same way that I imagined God was going to. Looking back, I'm pretty sure she was trying not to laugh. And God's mad at me too because I'm pretty sure this is a sin. I shouldn't be doing this. I know I shouldn't, but I can't stop, momma. And then I burst into the dramatic tears, and she hugged me.
After I calmed down, she asked for a little more of a thorough explanation of what was going on with the cat toy, and then she calmly tried to explain that all little boys eventually did what I did--albeit not with a cat toy, but that's neither here nor there. I wasn't quite sure how you happened upon the same effect without a cat toy, but that's not what concerned me at the moment; I was more concerned about my eternal damnation via cat toy. My mom had to explain that God doesn't send 11 year olds to Hell for assaulting their torsos, and even after the fact, it took months for me to be okay with it all. My mom ended our conversation with, Just be careful and don't bruise yourself, which is advice that I hold near to my heart to this day. I never gave Skeeter back the cat toy, mostly because that just seemed like a really weird thing to do. I threw it away soon after the conversation I had with momma.
So zoom forward. The presentation ended yesterday and no critical letter was pressed. A sense of relief flooded my body, but a small part of me still felt guilty that there could ever be anything on my computer that I would restrict the world from seeing. But when I think back to the conversations I had with my mom about the numerous acts I thought would send me to Hell over the years, I think we both came to the conclusion that sometimes secrets are best kept secrets. And with that revelation, I closed my computer and left class.

Most Likely to Succeed

In life there are three categories of aspirations we have: what we want, what we need, and what we don't really say out loud because it's silly. For some of us, learning how to approach the latter one is more difficult than it is for others. For instance, in elementary school, there was a group that would meet at lunch once a week called "The Banana Splits." Because of my early-onset fascination with exclusivity, I insisted in my seven-year-old mind that I should be in The Banana Splits. I mean, these kids got to talk about themselves once a week, on a Wednesday I believe, while... wait for it... EATING ICE CREAM. As far as I was concerned, I met all the qualifications: I loved to talk about myself, almost as much as I loved eating ice cream. So, one day, with all the courage in my curiously malnourished looking body, I approached our guidance counselor and asked for membership.
I'm sorry, Justin, but this is a group you can't be a part of. This would be the first of a laundry list of groups that I would be excluded from, including, but not limited to: the Girl Scouts, Black Student Association, any baseball team, people who can afford to attend "Restaurant Weeks," the New Hopewell Baptist Church youth group, varsity-level soccer teams, the sorority at my college, and people who qualify for food stamps in the state of Virginia. Completely abhorred at the idea of not being included, I sternly asked, Well, why not? Ms. Cruz went on to explain, Well, Justin. The reason we get together is because their parents are divorced. Divorce is a hard thing for someone your age to go through. You should consider yourself lucky that your parents are still together. She finished with a warm smile on her face. I did not. I was not lucky. I was not getting ice cream. My parents didn't give me ice cream. They gave me hominy, which is arguably the most disgusting food that God created. I don't know what kind of crazy world this woman was living in, but I was most certainly not lucky, and I let my mom know as soon as I got home.
Mom, I need you and Dad to get a divorce. My mom was stunned by it. I went on to explain how they were holding me back from ice cream, and how the only real solution to this horrible discrimination was for them to get divorced. I'm sure if I were older, I could have pulled together some statistics, a chart perhaps, but after my main argument of "ice cream is really good" had quickly become tiresome, I decided to give up. It was the first time in my life that I had truly come to the idea that sometimes, people were going to get things that you wanted, and there's nothing you can really do about it.
Fast forward a few years, and I was in high school. Middle and high school were not particularly fun places for me. I wore wind breakers most of the time and I had these thick glasses and people casually called me all kinds of slang terms for homosexual: most of which I had to go home and Google, which really led to some awkward Google search results. To this day, I thank God my parents don't really know how to use the Internet, otherwise I would have had a lot of explaining to do. But then toward the end of high school, I began wearing real pants and I got contacts and all that bullying had equipped me with a really edgy personality that often resulted in me saying awkward/mean things that other people thought were funny. I like to refer to that point in my life as "coming into my Tina Fey." There's really only so many times that you can try to persuade people that you're not gay before you just kind of decide to focus your energies elsewhere, so I began honing in on my storytelling and the commentary of all those pregnant girls we went to school with, and I haven't stopped since.
But my senior year, superlatives nominations came out. For all of you who live under a giant rock, superlatives is a popularity contest where you choose people that didn't really speak to you through high school and assigned them to glorified labels. Then, they would live in the back of your yearbook as a reminder that you're really jazzed that high school is something that only lasted four years. In the midst of the nominations, I rallied for my brother to be nominated as "Friendliest," because Casey really is the friendliest person I've ever met. He's much nicer than I will ever be, and it's not even in a fake way. If we could get Casey on the ballot, he would win because not voting Casey friendliest is like watching a cat video on YouTube and saying, Eh, I guess it's funny. Eventually, Casey would not only appear on the ballot, but also go on to win Friendliest. To my surprise, my name appeared on the ballot twice: once for Most Likely to Succeed, and once for Mr. South-Doyle (with or without the hyphen, which is a point of contention in the South Knoxville community). I had always assumed that Josh Wesley would take the coveted third spot; after all, he was one of the most attractive guys in our class with one of the most dashing personalities. He beat me for the coveted role of Othello in our AP Senior English class, and I don't even think it had to do with him being black. Josh Wesley didn't need affirmative action. Josh Wesley was affirmative action.
But even Josh was not competition for the two other nominees. In essence, I was just the wild card vote that happened to slide in a solid performance of quirky commentary and self-deprecating humor in the final hour. Competitor one, Ryan, threw all the great parties at his house. I had never been to one, but rumor had it that there was alcohol there sometimes. I had, sadly, never been around alcohol up to this point. Even at 18 years old, I became slightly paranoid when I swallowed some of the mouthwash while brushing my teeth. I once saw an episode of Dr. Phil where teenagers would drink mouthwash to get drunk, and then they started doing other stuff like crystal meth and watching porn. I admired Ryan from afar, but I knew that I could never be Ryan... not in high school, at least. Competitor two was Jonathan, who was Ryan's best friend. I never remember him playing football before, but he was the quarterback of our football team senior year. He broke his leg or did something really bad to it, the details escape me, but he managed to return for the final game. That year, he led the team to its best record in five years. In addition, they had been quite popular for some time. They were a part of the popular-Christian circle, which goes a long way in East Tennessee. I could never break into that circle because my opinion of Passion of the Christ learned more toward a horror movie as opposed to "an unbridled cinematic depiction of Christ's love." (I threw up afterward.) Obviously, in this equation, I was going up against Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain for the Oscar. I, of course, was Quevenzhane Wallis. It was really more of an honor than anything to be considered for the prized role.

I would go on to win the category of Most Likely to Succeed, which is the equivalent of a BAFTA in the high school superlative circuit. And as I'm sitting here working on this in Washington D.C., three cigarettes, two Cokes, and a piece of cake in, I'm kind of wondering if the voters got it right. Sure, I made it to D.C. and I'm working on my Master's, but the biggest accomplishment of my day was getting everything I needed from the grocery store after three attempts in six hours. That doesn't quite scream "Excellence in Life." I'm working on solidifying a job for after my internship ends that doesn't require me to take food from one location to another. I give myself a high five when I remember to pay my utility bill before they send the late notice, and I purposefully schedule my work and academic duties around new episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I don't know if that's what would qualify me as "successful," but I guess in the grand scheme of things, I've done most of it kind of right.
But I guess after 99 blog posts and 22 years of life and multiple successes and failures, I have learned one of the Rolling Stones' most important life lessons: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. And as for the things that we want, but we don't talk about them because they seem silly... well, I think it's kind of silly to not talk about them. No, not everyone can be a singer or an actor or an astronaut or a writer, but if no one ever took the time to say the silly thing that they wanted, then no one would ever become any of those things. I didn't get my banana split, and I've lost a decent number of popularity contests in my day, but that doesn't stop me from announcing to the world what I want anyway. If it means enough to you, you'll figure out a way to make it happen. (Unless it involves you scheming to get your parents divorced. Don't do that.)

The Art of Rabbit Hunting

When I was younger, I used to go rabbit hunting with my dad. It was one of my favorite of all the hunting genres because it didn't require you to be quiet, and you got to walk around and do what you want for the most part. We would also bring along all of our hunting beagles (Andy, Alison, Gunner, Jimmy, Ed, and Coleen... the WIVK on-air staff) and they'd run around and bark and sniff things and when dad wasn't looking I would pet them or try to feed them leaves... you know... because it's funny to watch dogs eat leaves, especially when you're bored. But it wasn't until I got older that I realized how much I learned from going on these trips with my dad. Though I never got the itch for going out and shooting things, my love for stretching metaphors and meaningful life experiences ended up making the hunting trips way more applicable than I thought they would be.

The lessons would always come up in the most unpredictable of ways, and it was senior year of college that I realized exactly what it meant to be a good rabbit hunter. When it come to running around with a gun in the woods, I was always a little overly cautious--I always had a fear of shooting my dad in the face, or more likely, shooting one of the dogs. Once I actually shot a rabbit, I told my dad I was done; I kind of considered it more of a feat that I shot a rabbit and nothing else, and that's kind of the way that I went about the rest of my life. Get in, get out, call it a day.

And that's the exact approach that I took to my last Cinco de Mayo. My senior year was winding down quickly and after thesis and comprehensive exams were over, there wasn't really anything to do but show up to class and then celebrate with people in our spare time. The drink of choice at Maryville College is arguably a toss-up between boxed wine or margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant and considering that it was Cinco de Mayo (and a Saturday, mind you), margaritas were the obvious choice. I had decided that because it was too predictable for seniors to get drunk and make bad decisions, I would tread lightly in Margaritaville, but it didn't take too many margaritas for all of us to start reminiscing about the three years that had gone by. Then, someone inevitably said that we were all probably never going to be in the same place again at the same time, and that's when we all ordered more margaritas and ended up posing "Last Supper" style.

But after the initial margaritas, I had decided that tonight was the night: the night to go rabbit hunting. I was fresh out of a relationship and had been eyeing someone in particular for some time. I knew the follow up party that I needed to go to, and I knew that this would probably be my last chance to even solidify a decent conversation, let alone anything further than that, so I set off for the chase. Once the party had started, I wasn't sure how I would accomplish my goal, and like most of the hunts that I went on with my dad, I was pretty much ready to give up and go home after thirty unsuccessful minutes. Even as a senior, chasing after a freshman rabbit, I didn't have much confidence, and I didn't believe in my hunting skills. After all, this wasn't just a rabbit. This was a pretty rabbit who was transferring to a college in New York; everyone wanted to shoot this rabbit, metaphorically of course. (Disclaimer: I neither condone, nor encourage, anyone to shoot another person. Maybe I should lay off the metaphor for a bit.)

So as the night continued and the bottle of tequila grew less and less full, I committed to my cause. The funny part about guys is that we're stupid when we're interested in someone. We do things and say things that we would never have otherwise, so of course, I made sure that we were interested in all the same things. And I guess, in a way, the same logic applies to hunting. There's a specific way that you walk when you're in the woods, even if you're rabbit hunting. You tread lightly, and you try not to make yourself too obvious because you don't want the rabbits to run before you get within eyesight of them. And there's two types of hunting: the kind where you sit and wait, and the kind where you're constantly moving, and of course, last Cinco de Mayo, I was constantly moving.

After the conversation had run out, I was running around the party trying to entertain in any way possible to keep my rabbit's attention, but nothing seemed to be sealing the deal. When the rabbit suggested that we should jump into a pool with all of our clothes on, I went for it. And when the pool was only three feet deep and I scraped my knees on the concrete pool bottom, I just kept going because it seemed like that's what you're supposed to do. But then, toward the end of the night, I had noticed that the rabbit had disappeared, and there were only two explanations as to what could have happened: the rabbit had left the party or someone else had shot the rabbit.

Disappointed, I went from room to room looking/sulking for the rabbit when I knocked on one of my friend's doors. He barely opened the door and put his face in the crack and asked what I wanted. Don't get me wrong, everyone deserves to get with whomever they want, but there's an ethical code to every hunt, and my dad's words suddenly shot back into my head: Justin, you should never shoot a sitting rabbit: no matter what. There could be something wrong with it, like wobbles. (Just in case you don't know, "huntchat.com" explains that wobbles are actually warbles, and warbles are parasites that cause white lumps in squirrels and rabbits. If they have warbles, you can apparently die. Congrats, you learned something today.) So when he barely had the door open, I had this gut feeling, almost like a mother's intuition, to push the door open farther.

When I pushed the door, I saw a pair of feet laying on his bed; they didn't look like normal feet though--it was more like, Hey, I don't know the floor from the ceiling, I think I'm just going to pass out now feet. And when he gave me the "get out of here, I have a job to do eyes," I channeled my dad the best I knew how and said, You know, my dad told me you should never shoot a sitting rabbit. There could be something wrong with it. I decided not to include the part about the wobbles because it didn't seem applicable. My friend just kind of stared at me confused, and as he did, I forced myself a little farther into the room to see the girl passed out on the bed, and I repeated myself, It's not ethical for a hunter to shoot a sitting rabbit. It's unfair because something might be wrong with it. I looked back over at the girl, You just can't shoot a sitting rabbit. And just like that, it was like saying "rabbit" three times awoke her from the dead, and she awoke from her slumber and excused herself from the room. I could tell that my friend was about to kill me, so I decided to excuse myself as well, but in the midst of my own hunt, it meant more for me to stop and make sure that we weren't going around shooting rabbits with wobbles... sure, we were in college and we all know what's on everyone's minds, but there's always a moment when you have to pull back and ask yourself, At what cost am I doing this?

So, I had given up on my own plans for the night, and I was getting my stuff ready to leave when I looked up and saw the rabbit again... my rabbit, that is. I had spent the evening doing shots and taking pictures so that the rabbit could put them on Instagram and talking about things I didn't care about just so that I could impress someone who ultimately, was just another person. I had set myself up to believe that this was the moment, and after all of that, I didn't even get to have a truly meaningful conversation, so as I saw the rabbit go into a room alone, I walked in, and announced I've been following you around all night doing shots and talking about stupid shit, when all I wanted to do was kiss you. I had caught the rabbit off guard. Look at my knees. This is stupid. I'm going to have scabs on my knees. Why? Because I'm not the person that's just going to come up and kiss somebody. I jump in pools after people--shallow pools. And then the rabbit asked, So, why didn't you kiss me? All of a sudden, I began to feel like the rabbit instead, gun pointed at me and everything. 

My dad always used to ask me why I never shot at more rabbits, and in the end, it was because I was scared... scared of shooting him or the dogs or just missing all the way around. I thought that maybe if I didn't shoot at all then it wouldn't be a failure. If you don't shoot at anything, you can't miss. But in the same respect, you can't take anything home. So in one of the bravest moments of my life, I closed the door, and I went in for the kiss. I. Shot. The. Rabbit. And it was the best fifteen second ending to a hunt in the history of all the hunts I've made.

So, in the end, the rabbit ended up deleting me off of Facebook, I went to DC, and the rabbit went to New York. I don't think my dad's intended lesson was to draw metaphorical comparisons between shooting a 4x10 and trying to kiss people, but that's just kind of how life works out I guess. I doubt I'll ever see that rabbit again, and I'm kind of cool with that because that night of hunting can teach a person a lot. There's always a code to go by. You can't just go around chasing anyone you want, especially if they're unconscious, but on the other hand, for hunters like me... you have to be willing to take the shot. You may not hit the target every time, and even if you do, the target may delete you off of Facebook, but you can't be afraid of pulling the trigger. After all, you don't know exactly how many hunts you're going to have in your life.

Zero Poop Thirty or The Poopcident

If you've ever met a Resident Assistant, you know that his or her job is the most important job of anyone else's on campus... at least, that's how an RA would tell it. I had the fortune/burden/opportunity of being an RA for three years, and after a long string of pot smokers, people who enjoyed loud coitus, nineteen year olds who announce their beer bongs in the hallway before they attempt it, and the occasional roommate-from-hell, you find yourself being a senior RA, and you're just tired. No one knocks at your door because they want to see you, and sometimes, when someone would knock on my door, I would run and hide in my closet or the kitchen... kind of like when Jehovah's Witnesses come to your house.
But in all fairness, you are warned before you take the position about all of the complications that come along with it. We're trained to handle them, and after a while, you suppose that you've seen it all. My freshman year, a guy in my building pooped out his window because he was afraid he couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. Unfortunately, the guy who lived below him had his window propped open and was greeted with a special surprise that thumped his window like a brick. Sure, I laughed until I nearly passed out from lack of oxygen, but in the course of three years, I was prepared for such an incident. Pooping, after all, is some serious shit.
Second semester of my senior year, I was riddled with studying for my comprehensive exams, finishing grad school applications, and fulfilling all of the things that I had missed in the previous three years (multiple snap judgments, drinking in bars, hasty relationship choices, et al). But one night a week, I was assigned to duty (okay, seriously... the poop puns are out of control), and on that night, I was responsible for the livelihood of our building and the residents that lived there, or at least the ones that I liked. Most of my night consisted of me walking around and talking to people, taking a nap, fixing something to eat, walking around some more, and then going to bed earlier than I would on a night that I wasn't on duty. And it was always in those hours that things happened that would never happen if I had been awake. That's not to say that I could have stopped them, but for some reason, it wasn't until I had fallen asleep that a fire alarm would go off, or someone would get their arm caught in a window, or that someone got trapped in the trash chute after smoking too much marijuana.
But on one night in particular, late in the evening after all the other hoodlums had gone to bed, it happened: someone shit under the stairs. I suppose that in the grand scheme of things, the biggest issue should have been that someone defecated underneath the stairs and was probably too drunk to realize it, but the biggest problem in my mind is that the poop wasn't found for nearly 24 hours. I've had some pretty pristine pooping experiences in my time, but I can't imagine that any poop is so glorious that it should ever go unnoticed for nearly an entire day. The whole situation made me doubt my ability to be an RA--if I can't use my Snoopy skills to detect that someone has casually pooped in the building in a frequently trafficked place, then really... what am I good for? To add injury to insult, another RA found the feces, reported it, and got to put up a building notice.

If it's been a while since you've been in college, it's a known fact that there's nothing in the world that infuriates a college student more than getting charged for something they didn't do. People who originally thought that the under-the-stairs-poop was the funniest thing since Modern Family, were all of a sudden up in arms about the situation, angrily stating, I'm not going to be charged for someone else's shit. As an RA, the charge didn't apply to me. I could poop anywhere I wanted free of charge... not that I would or did, but I liked knowing the option was there. After seeing how angry everyone was, I knew that this was my opportunity: if I could solve the mystery of the phantom defecator, then I would not only win the affection of all my residents, but I could also redeem myself in the eyes of administration. This was my comeback. If I were Lindsay Lohan, this could be my Liz and Dick.
The next night I was on duty, I formed a small group in the parlor of our building. Knowing that I had not fulfilled my programming requirements for the month, I decided to make it a program because if there's anything that people in our generation get sheer enjoyment from, it's blaming other people for stuff. Soon, a group of fifteen or so of us gathered with the Irish exchange student leading the charge against every person who walked through the area we were sitting in. In her thick accent, she would berate people as they walked in, asking them when and where they were on the night of what became known as the "poopcident." After a while, we started forming a timeline and the only hours unaccounted for were the hours between 2:00 and 4:00am. We had narrowed down our suspects to three with a heavy suspicion on one of my fraternity brothers. Did I like the idea of going after one of my own in the face of justice? No. Did it make all the sense in the world that one of my fraternity brothers was the one who pooped under the stairs? Absolutely.
Eventually, the meeting became a witch hunt and none of the three were safe, one of which was a girl. People wanted justice--people wanted answers for the poopcident. From across the room, someone texted me and told me that they had information I'd be interested in. The number was blocked, which is something I'm still surprised you can do via text message. I met them in the prearranged place, hoping that when I stepped away that Rachel, the Irish student, wouldn't instigate a full on attack on the rooms of the suspected. The texter was an eye witness to the poopcident, and as I suspected, it was my fraternity brother who shat in the first floor stairwell.

And just like that, I imagine that I shared the same feeling that Jessica Chastain's character in Zero Dark Thirty felt. She had spent all this time looking for Osama bin Laden, and then... (spoiler alert) they killed him. It was all over except the paperwork (and just for the record, being an RA requires a stupid amount of paperwork). When you invest all of this time in working to figure out the crime and the hidden location of your suspect, you've come to realize that you have put a part of yourself into this shit. You come out a different person, and even when your "Osama bin Laden" ends up being one of your fraternity brothers, you've made a big enough stink about it that you have to report it. Your nation... or residents... whatever... depend on you to instill justice. So without being able to predict one of the biggest blockbuster hits to come in two years, I asked myself What Would Jessica Chastain Do? or WWJCD? and then I wrote up the report. Word didn't get out of who exactly pooped under the stairs, but for the select few that know, it paints a dark picture of what can happen to you when you decide to funnel liquor. And for me, well, that's the last RA mystery that I ever solved. Sometimes, when life gives you a load that big, you just have to call it quits once you're done.

I Have to Hate You First

I've sat here tonight and desperately tried to think of a blog topic, or some kind of funny anecdote from years passed to write on, and I can't do it because I'm thinking about how frustrated I've become with my reality, and the circumstances I've allowed myself to become a slave to, and most of all, I think of how much I've come to hate myself. But in the moment, I hate myself for what I've let my life become. I hate the people around me because I feel their judgment, and I patiently wait for them to walk away from me so that I can hate them even more for not waiting for me to not feel like this. They've made me doubt myself and question who I am as a person. At times, some of them have made me feel unattractive and lazy and ugly and worthless. And from day to day, I find myself resenting them more and more because it only contributes to the hate I feel inside for myself. And I'm sure that "hate" probably doesn't seem like the right word because it's awfully strong, but I was once told that you can't hate something that you don't care about--you can't hate something you're not willing to fight for.
And that doesn't make any sense, right? Surely, that's the most ridiculous logic that you've ever heard in your life, and if I hadn't spent the past two weeks contemplating this topic, I'd think I was crazy, too. But life, as of late, has been difficult. I work two jobs and go to school, and at the end of the day, it feels awfully thankless. I hear from someone that they're disappointed in something I've done, and if it didn't happen in some context at work, I feel it when I get home. There's this quietness that envelops you, and you just don't feel wanted. And at night, you look in the mirror, and you feel like you're becoming all of the things you don't want to--you've become bitter and angry and you've lost a part of yourself and all you want are the people that know you best. You want the people from home and the life that you've left behind to join the adult world.

This is a real outfit, that he thought was okay,
and wore out in public... like, for real.

If you haven't stopped reading after those two very self-deprecating paragraphs, you should get a gold star because I'm getting to a point, I swear. The point of all that being: this isn't the first time that I've hated myself or the people around me. Actually, some of the people that I love most in my life are people, at one point, that I have hated and/or hated me. They're the same people that I want now, and it didn't really hit me until I wrote on my last roommate's Facebook tonight about how much I missed him. Scotty John always had a terrible sense of fashion. See picture to the right. But regardless of that, we chose to be roommates. We had all of these plans and ideas for what my senior year would look like, but in the end, we didn't get to spend a lot of time together, and about half the time we did get to spend together, we were arguing: about who was going to do the dishes, or about him throwing out my feta cheese because it had "molded," or about the girl he was seeing, or about how I was trying to come in between him and the girl he was seeing. At times, the fighting became volatile with him going as far to curse at me via permanent marker on our refrigerator (which I subsequently spent about an hour and a half scrubbing off with alcohol), or it could be as quietly uncomfortable as a total freeze out on my end of the deal. By the end of the year, the small arguments had amassed to the point that I doubted we would even be friends after that. Two days before my graduation, he moved out, and we never really spoke much over the next couple months.
But when I went back for my first visit home in October, he was literally the first person I saw when I got back to campus. I had cleared busting into his public relations class via Facebook... actually, he was the one who gave me the idea, and then after class, we went and had breakfast together in the college cafe. And even though we never really addressed what had happened the year before or gone into any magical kind of explanation, we both kind of knew that there were wrongs on both sides of the fence and ultimately things that we didn't know about each other. At the end of the day, we were both going through big years in our lives: one of us dealing with one of the craziest relationships known to man, and the other one dealing with what it meant to be leaving home and everything he had known for his whole life. We were both in this transitory place that neither of us quite knew how to deal with, and oftentimes, it led to us standing in our kitchen with both of us holding our hands up looking at the other person and saying What do you want? And a lot of times, we didn't have the answers. But when someone is supposed to be in your life and you don't always have the answers... you don't always know what you should say to them, but you keep on going because you know in your heart that person is having to put up with as much shit from you as you are from them. You put up with one another because you care, and you believe in the good that could come of it.
And the frustration and the hating and the arguments... it made us real. The fact that we hated each other showed that we cared enough about each other in the first place to feel something for one another. I've never resented a single person in my life for hating me or being angry. I've only ever truly resented the people who walked away without a fight because that showed me they never cared about me in the first place. People are allowed to feel, and the tears and anger didn't make us less of men--it made us two guys who were trying to figure out our lives and just happened to have to figure out one another in the process.
Scotty is not the only one... the list goes on and on, and most of the people on that list are people that I have come to care about to varying extents, but when I look back on those people, we may have had a  time in the past that we couldn't stand one another, but we've never made each other feel like less of a person, and we've never gone out of our way to belittle one another. The arguments always varied and came from different places, but the reason I miss those people so much is because they almost always have encouraged me to be the person that I inherently am. And I suppose that's where the distinction comes in. One of the most important things you can ever know about a person is that you can't put them in a box--you can't apply your logic to their lives, and if you ever go into a relationship with another person with the hopes of changing them, you should know your attempts will be fruitless. We are all our own complicated, weird selves, and changing someone to fit the mold you'd hope they'd be... well, that's just selfish. In all of the hating, it's important to remember that there are people who are just going around blindly hurting others, and in a way, you have to be able to spot them pretty quickly after they spot you. You have to find the people who are going to challenge you and be able to distinguish them from the people who are just around to provide critique and look down at you.
And it's difficult because you have to sit down and literally take the time to think: who is it in this new experience who has my back, who's here to help me grow, and who is here to tear me down? It's a tricky triangle to place people into, especially when you're tired and frustrated with yourself.
So I try to remember that there are times when even the people I've come to care most about were people that pushed me to my greatest limits. And at this point in my life, I also try to remember that we're just a bunch of children who are trying hopelessly to identify what it means to be an adult. We want to go home. We don't want to have to try anymore because it's hard to remember when rent is due, and it's hard to balance life, and you get tired of assuming everyone else's stress on to you. You forget to make time for yourself and you start turning on the people around you; and when you feel like you've alienated them enough, you start turning on yourself.
I took the entire weekend and tried to collect my thoughts as best as possible, and I tried to ignore those around me because I know that to pull myself out of whatever I'm in right now, I need to take a moment to reflect. It wasn't until those days after Scotty had moved out that I started to consider what I could have done differently along the way to make the situation better, and at that point, it almost felt useless--my best friend and roommate was gone, and at the time, I didn't know when I would get the chance to make it better. But that's what the past is for, isn't it? We get lucky enough to have these people stick around--people we once believed we hated, just so that we can learn from the love we've given one another. You get the opportunity to make the present a little bit better than the past. And for now, I'm living in this moment and learning from the past and realizing that maybe in order to love other people... and to love yourself... you have to do a little hating first.

Questionable Parenting

I've thought about what my children will be like in the future, and I anticipate... well... that they will be little assholes. And I love it. I've imagined that I will train them like little animals to do things and say things that will make them irresistible to the public. I'll pull them out at parties and make them tell jokes to guests before ushering them back to their room to stay until I need them again. At least they'll know that they have a purpose, which I think is important to children. I can't begin to explain how important those first years of life are, especially now that I'm older because the things that my parents told and did to me really helped shape me into the driven, anxious, neurotic person that I am today. Actually, I think my parents did a lot of stuff just for entertainment sake, and now I'm hands down one of the most complex, potentially screwed up people that I know.
That's not to say they didn't love me though--I could be one of those kids who didn't get hugged as a child, and let's be honest, that's the not fun kind of screwed up. I'm not afraid of affectionate touch or base-level commitment. I'm just generally afraid of any kind of sexual interaction, the concept of aging, and a general distrust of doing favors for other people. Other than that, I'm pretty solid on the up and up, which considering what kind of money my friends are going to make for future therapists, I consider that a success. But that doesn't change the fact that my parents lied to me: actually, my parents lied to me a lot... and Wendell and Kathy, if you're reading this, I want you to know I know. I also want you to know that I know you know I know. This isn't for us: this is so everyone else knows.
I'm sure it all started with the best of intentions, as most habits do. When my mamaw died when I was six, I was terrified of death and the prospect of people whom I loved meeting their maker. I also really excelled at English as a child, not so much math. So when my mom's birthday came around, she told me that she was 32. And then the next year, she told me that she was 32 again. She continued to tell me she was 32 until I was eleven years old; eventually, I put the pieces together and come to realize that I had ultimately been lied to over and over. My mom instantly went from being 32 to 38, and though I guess I understood the sentiment behind it, all of a sudden, I had missed out on six years of my mom's life. Kathy had been steadily aging after all, and it was devastating because I wasn't really there for any of it. I was living all "my mom is consistently 32," when in actuality, she was getting older and older just like me.
But most of my mom's lies were to protect me, and in the grand scheme of things, I guess that makes sense. Mothers are supposed to do that, especially with their sons. Fathers, on the other hand, I have no idea what the hell they're supposed to be doing. No lie that my dad ever told me was anything but some kind of weird thing that he had made up in his head to terrify me. From the time I was little, he would pick up animals that he had killed and told me they had come back to life, and if the animal was small enough, he'd pick the entire thing up and come after me with it. And in all fairness, it's not like no one got enjoyment out of it--he loved it. But then there's me, thinking that all of these animals were just chilling out underneath my bed gunning for me in the middle of the night. That's why I started trying to make friends with all the animals, as written about in: Wendell Shot All My Friends.
As scarring as all the lies may have been, I think the problem was that my parents never teamed up to discuss what lies they were telling me. My dad sat me down one day as just a wee little child and explained to me about what puberty was. He told me that eventually, my penis would begin to grow and it would grow all the way down to my ankle; that's the reason that all men wear pants. Being the cunning child I was, I asked him about the men I had seen wearing shorts before, and he told me, "That's when you have to wrap it around your leg, and it hurts. A lot." And his logic had me for a while. I would go and check my penis every day to make sure the process hadn't started. I liked shorts. I didn't want to give them up. But a couple months later, my mom told me that if I ever had sex before I was forty, my penis would actually fall off. Again, I think she did that to scare me/protect me, but what she didn't realize is that she had given me a solution--not a threat. All I had to do was figure out what sex was, do it once, then boom: I could wear shorts all the time.
Eventually, I found out that both of my parents were lying: sex didn't make it fall off and as much as my guy friends like to believe that their... stuff... may be down to their ankle, I haven't met anyone who can prove such a claim. The lies continued for most of my childhood, and I began to be able to distinguish what the truth was, what things my parents would say just to protect me, and what my dad just wanted me to believe so that he could be entertained. But the one thing I never really got the hang of is the idea of lying by omission. One day when I was visiting from college, my mom was walking out the door, and I asked her where she was going. She said, "Oh, just down to the gas station. Be right back." I chased her out the door and said, "I'll go with you! I'll grab my keys." She responded, "Don't worry about it! I'll be right back." It didn't make sense because my mom hates being alone as much as I do, so something wasn't adding up. After a little more banter, I forced myself into the situation, and we were heading down the road.
My mom told me to turn behind this sketchy bar, and I said, "This isn't the gas station." She said, "Yeah, I know. I didn't want to tell you. We're picking up your dad's moonshine." Sweet. Illegal alcohol transactions are my favorite. So I pulled into this gravel driveway leading to this yellow painted cinderblock wall with a very shady looking back porch. A woman came out of the back with cutoff jean shorts and not a single tooth in her head. She said, "Pahp ya trunk," and placed a cardboard box into the back. She came up to my window and said, "Ya daddy's already paid," and smiled a toothless grin that closed her eyes. At this point, I felt like all decorum was out the window, so I turned to my mom and said, "Why the hell did you not tell me we were coming to pick up moonshine? I feel like that's something you tell someone before I pull into Popcorn Sutton's house." She said, "That's why I was trying to get out of there by myself. Some things are just better left unsaid, Justin."
And I guess she's right. The older I've gotten, I've come to terms with the fact that some things are better left unsaid, and sure... my parents did some weird stuff to me and Casey as kids. The lies were absolutely absurd sometimes, but in the end, I think they were trying to protect us from a lot of the potential negatives of life... kind of like when we asked why our neighbors had named their German Shepherds Hydro and Codone and my dad said, "Oh that's a seventies band." I guess that we got away from childhood pretty clean and relatively unharmed, especially in comparison to some of our other peers. And you know, I'm not going to act like I'm not excited about doing the same things to my kids.