If I rubbed a lamp and a djinn came out of it, offering three wishes, the first would be for a limitless supply of money. The second would be to never get sick again. The third? No, wishing for more wishes doesn't work. So I have something else I want for that one.
Remember a while ago I begged the universe to send me back to my freshman year of college so I can try at life again? Because I think that would be a good starting point for me to try again. I'd know so much more (and I might be able to skip the money wish if I invested in Apple just before they introduced the smart phone). But I wouldn't want to go back to that time for the wish.
Everyone gets nostalgic, even me. I try to look toward the future as often as possible but even with that mindset I think about the past often. And I'm not talking about capital-H History here. I mean my own life, in particular my childhood before the world was ruined for me by child abuse.
This is a different kind of nostalgia. Those of you my age will know the usual kind when thinking about Thundercats and TMNT and Transformers and 'Eighties horror movies, et al. But when you're just a kid your parents drag you around in their world. Do you, like me, ever feel nostalgia for your parents' youth? Their youth was dying when you were just a kid. The world was moving on, and it was leaving them behind. The world was all but yours at the time.
I remember Mom driving down the road, me sitting in the passenger seat of her Mustang, when I accidentally knocked the cup holder off the window. It was the plastic kind with the tab you slid down into the window trim. I was horrified because it went right out the window. I started crying uncontrollably even when Mom said it was okay, that it was just a cup holder, that we could get another one.
Maybe that's the origin of why I'm almost a hoarder. I sometimes think it was the baseball my dad's parents got me, the one I lost on the Prairie Path, but the cup holder thing happened before that. I'm not too much of a hoarder now, but I still have the impulse. I'm going to have to get pretty tough about it soon.
But that's what I'm talking about. That moment I was in Mom's world, not mine. And I know it sounds crazy to label that incident as traumatic, but I think it really *did* have a say in how I turned out. But I miss her world, the one where she had friends she saw regularly before they stopped coming around. Which coincided with Mom's marriage to my stepdad, not too much of a surprise there.
But I feel a little nostalgia for my stepdad's world, too. When he would drag me around with him to hardware stores and theaters and such, I was in his world, not mine. It wasn't mine yet as we crossed the tracks, him fishing a Winston cigarette out of his shirt pocket with his Zippo from the Army. Though he wasn't Southern he did, indeed, have his name on his belt buckle. For as much self-loathing as he had, he was pretty narcissistic about it.
And then there was Dad's world. When he'd bring me to Dominick's where he worked at the deli, he'd pull lobsters out of the tank with their pincers rubber-banded. I'd touch their weird soft stomachs in wonder. Or when we'd go camping with his Viking pop-up. It had a kitchen in it which he thankfully never used. All cooking during such events was to be done over the campfire. Or the times he'd go to a party because when I was a kid, after his marriage to my first stepmom, it was his world, and he was still making grand use of it. I remember one time my cousin and I slept on one side of the camper. I say "slept," but we were kept awake because the other side of the camper bounced slightly. His world, indeed.
My third wish would be to go back in time and experience living in their world. To experience life before my world started taking over.
I'm kind of surprised that we haven't been kicked out of our house yet. A new bank bought out the bank that owns our house, and they've shown an interest in us again, but we're still here. So I've been going through the house, trying to undo my hoarder-ish ways by throwing out stuff we don't need. Part of that process involves finding caches of photos that Grandma hid all over this house during her last year or so. Many of the photos are of my world, but not all. Quite a few are pictures of Mom's world. Of Dad's world. Of Grandma and Gramps's worlds. But looking at pictures, while amazing, isn't good enough. When you look at old pictures it's easy to think of that old world as being in black and white, for example. Or oversaturated with yellows, browns and greens like photos from the 'Seventies and early 'Eighties. Photos don't do it justice.
I want to immerse myself in that world. Not for long. I wouldn't want to stay there. I think maybe five minutes would work.
When you live a full life it's easy to look around and think of things as permanent. I'll bet the dinosaurs never suspected that they would be wiped out. Just like I'll bet that almost each and every one of you thinks America will go on forever. I know *I* think it will. It won't because that's what the world does. It moves on. The world of my parents is gone as if the Langoliers had eaten it up by the second. *My* world is gone. The generation who would have been my children's age if I had them? Their world is gone, too. If I had grandkids it would be *their* world right now, at least until the world moves on again. Stein's Law: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Not even the planet is permanent. There will someday be no Earth.
Which is why we should all strive for excellence, as Outlaw Vern would say. If all we have is our moment in time, we should make it the best we can.
900 Goodnight, Fuckers columns. When I started these I knew I wouldn't stop, that I'd keep going and going until the world stopped me. The only reason I'm surprised that I made it to 900 is because I'm surprised that I'm still alive. I always figured to die at 40, and I almost did. But before I figured that, I used to think I'd die at 46. I'm 46 now. I was probably wrong about that, too.
Thank you for reading, everyone. Sometimes I idly think I might stop at 1000 if I made it that far. Now that I'm close to that milestone I can safely say I'll keep writing these as long as I keep getting ideas. And one more! The one I wrote for when I die. Nighty-night. See you next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment