I used to enjoy pointing out to people before they had children that there was nothing anyone could ever actually tell them to prepare them for it. There are no combination of words, up to and including "Don't expect to get much sleep" that can adequately convey or even obliquely demonstrate what it feels like on the third straight night of nonstop inexplicable screaming, finding at last that blissful moment of silence, letting the ache of your overworked back and your sweat-sour muscles drain into the unfamiliar pillow-top of your mattress, only to have it shattered 20 minutes later by yet more inexplicable screaming.
Some things you have to be hit in the face with before you will notice them. Like being hit in the face, for instance. Seen it a million times on television: artificial to the point of camp (John Wayne) all the way along the scale to realistic to the point of pornographic (mixed martial arts). You can even take all the martial arts classes you want, but nobody there is going to really really try to put their fist through the back of your head by entering through the front, like someone would if they meant it. Oh the flash of colors, the vertical inversion of balance, the heat, the light, the existential oneness and mortal chaos all at once... As bullshit poetical as all that is, it's just a string of words that most people don't know doesn't come close to the actual thing of it.
There are milestones and activities that aren't necessarily necessary, but likely over the course of one's life (parenthood and being violently struck are two, and more commonly linked than you'd imagine). Caution is fine, book-learnin' is perfectly nice and good, but when you get right down to it, there is no substitute for experience. There isn't even a good preparatory course for it. This extends to many aspects of human life, social, physical and otherwise: sex, drunkenness, infatuation, kidney stones, wasabi...
Divorce is another one. Not just the act of being divorced, I mean more specifically the post-divorce living as a single person. It really is a crash-course re-education process wherein one is left alone with the quirks and failings of their own personality, no longer apologized for, mitigated, excused or ignored by the presence of another person. It can be crushing. But the only options are hermitude or to stand up on wobbly legs, like a newborn horse, and see if you can run. The latter can only occur if/when we accept that mistakes are not only likely but inevitable. Along the path to self-actualized true independence, there are bound to be reversals, some trivial and teachable, others paralyzing-bordering-on-catastrophic.
I'm not immune. For instance just this weekend I realized I totally overcommitted to new television shows on the DVR. I don't know how I'm going to recover. Before I had someone else with me to veto the horseshit I'd buy in to based solely on shiny, shiny hype. Because seriously: I have two episodes of the new Hawaii Five-0 waiting for me. You could have told me anything you wanted nine months ago, and I would have never, ever, ever believed that was possible. Some things you just have to feel.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
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6 comments:
the message i take from this is that non-single people enjoy privileges and benefits the single among us can only dream of, up to and including tax breaks.
no wonder single people are bitter at times, like for instance when married people whose spouses have real jobs with real incomes get life-sustaining fellowships over single people with NO source of income.
hypothetically speaking and whatnot.
there's a new Hawaii Five-0? what the HELL?
Well, you can go the other direction and point out that with two people who have questionable yet enthusiastic taste, the drek on your VCR (sorry, we're way last millenium)is even more disturbing, because no one had the sense to ask what they were thinking. For instance, we have several Kids in the Hall "Death Comes to Town" episodes on tape, which we have yet to watch, but we're salivating for the kids to go to bed somenight early in the next decade so we can watch them. Not to mention all, and I mean ALL, of every single Babylon 5 episode and made-for-TV movie gathering dust in a box somewhere. Get this, we taped them for whenever we had kids so they could enjoy them too. Seriously. I still loves me some Bab5. Even more scary (but no less enthusiastically fan-boy and fan-girl), we realized the tapes are probably useless by now, so we bought them all on DVD. Still, we have the tapes taking up room that could otherwise be used for something more useful, like all the Mystery Science 3000 DVD's we're spending the kids' college funds on.
See, with one person, it's just a quirk. You're so cute when you say, "Book 'em, Danno." With two, it's mob mentality. Get the pitchforks. We need to shovel out this mess.
KnK: It's funny, I was thinking of the fellowship-for-married-academics thing specifically when I wrote it. Motherfuckers. I'm glad what was implicit came out.
Also yeah, Hawaii Five-0. Everyone in it is good except the dude who is the principal star who is like a black hole where charisma goes to be smashed at a molecular level. Other than that, it's fine.
Kay-Z: Oh holy crap, "Death Comes to Town" is totally worth it just for Scott Thompson as the coroner guy. That's going to stay with me for a long, long time. The rest of it was OK, but I forgot how versatile and deeply, deeply funny Scott Thompson is.
And Star Trek people think Babylon 5 people are dorks. But at least we can all make fun of the Farscape people.
I stayed up until the wee hours this weekend finishing the Death Comes to Town collection. My husband fell asleep, so missed most of it. He asked when the kids could watch it, and I told him never. I'm not such a prude, but holy cow, I can't get the vision of that giant vacuum up the skirt of Kevin McDonald out of my mind. Scott totally stole the show, though, I agree. He had the best characters to work with (still cracking up with the vision of him falling into the grave with his pants down). Although, Mark as Death was wonderful as well.
But, the question is, would you have put it on your DVR 9 months ago?
You're right, I think the scene with Death talking to the nice lady at the visitor's information kiosk was really a highlight. And then the owl's blood bar scene right after that. Still not a Bruce McCulloch guy, though. He only has two voices. Although his lawyer guy was pretty good. I miss that show.
You know what you need? You need to go to a nice bridge event. Bring a projector, and we can show a few KITH episodes (of course! We have them all on DVD) on the face of the Dam.
You may have forgotten Bruce's bank teller "my pen" voice. It's a skit I reference often.
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