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[mcjickson]

TAKE ME TO CHURCH

I've said it before, but it's worth saying again: You raise your kids to be independent, and then they are. And then, of course, there you are. And this is particularly on my mind today because it's Declan's 19th birthday.

I should be missing him because he's off at Iowa finishing up a banner freshman year where he entirely came into his own, but instead I'm missing him because he just finished up the semester at his mom's house, one tiny mile and one enormous pandemic away.

You can't blame me for wanting him around past the point where he should want to hang out with his dad. He always arrives with an avalanche of great songs I need to hear and never would be exposed to without him. He'll play the absolute nerdiest of board games with me without judgment, and talks glorious smack the entire time. I get to cook for him, which is nice is because he really appreciates it, and frankly it's nice to be needed. But the best part is that he's the funniest fucking person I've ever met.

About this time last year, he burst into my bedroom around four in the morning. "Dad, the police are here." I"ll admit it, people, my first thought was oh-no-what-the-hell-did-you-do?, but thankfully I kept that to myself. I jumped out of bed, and walked to the front door, making a mental note of seeing a baseball bat on the couch in the living room. As it turned out, our boneheaded roommate had not only left her car unlocked, but left her wallet in the side door. The police had found her credit cards and other i.d. strewn across lawns up and down the block, and wanted to know if we had seen anything. When it was clear I could offer nothing of value, I went back inside to check on Declan. I picked up the bat on the way to his bedroom.

"You ok?"

"Yeah, I'm good."

I held the bat up for consideration. "Um, what exactly were you going to do with this?"

He laughed. "I saw the police lights, but I wasn't taking any chances." I laughed.

"Better question, then: Instead of going to the door, why didn't you just come get me?"

"Dad," he smirked, "I'm the alpha."

I laughed so hard I literally teared up. He was proud of it, as he should have been. He clearly had it chambered before I entered the room.

The other reason I've been missing him is decidedly more selfish, but just as dear to me.

My biggest goal when I decided to salvage this wreck of a husk was to be able to play basketball again. And nobody's pushed me in that department like Deke has. In punishing games of 1-on-1, he has absolutely worked me. He's a lanky, graceful southpaw with a lightning-quick first step and an unholy terror of a three-point shot. Since I have to respect the jumper, I have to play him close, but since he's so fast, I have to kill myself to stay with him.

I win sometimes. He probably lets me. I'm ok with it.

Because the most important thing for me when we play is for him to see how hard I want to go. To see that I would rather be in pain that have him see me half-assing the efforts to stick around and discover the kind of man he's going to become. And frankly, it wouldn't just be disrespectful to him, but to basketball, which I've always considered my church. The court's always been a sacred place to me; a place to clear my head, to get caught up in blissed-out devotion to raining jumpers and perfecting free throws.

Oddly enough, that's the first nickname he brought home from Iowa: Church. Evidently that's what he answers to out there. He tried to tell me the origin story, but the details were murky in the best kind of i-guess-you-had-to-be-there way. What I found particularly endearing was that he wasn't aware of the slang usage of the term, in which it's a one-word affirmation of something cool.

It makes sense for him, though, because that's been Declan's key to drawing great people into his orbit. He affirms his friends incessantly and sincerely, and you can see they love him for it. He had an, ahem, informal gathering here over the holidays, and my favorite part of the night was when I heard all of them singing in unison in the basement. To their credit, no one in that crowd is too cool for school, either. They cycled through belting out Skynyrd as hard as Post Malone, Abba as enthusiastically as Blackbear. It was glorious. It was like having pure joy pumped into the vents. It also wasn't the first time Deke's called to mind those lyrics from the Counting Crows' Mr. Jones, another song they went hard in the paint on:

when everybody loves you, son, that's just about as funky as you can be

And everyone really does love him. He's the glue. There are so many reasons I'm beyond proud of him, but more often that not the ones I admire the most are the ones it took me way longer to figure out on my own.

It took me half a lifetime to realize what he somehow gleaned in his teens. That if you can really put yourself out there, and put your energy into making other people feel seen for who they really are, and celebrate the things you love about them in ways they can feel, then everything else is gravy. Good things will come to you.

Happy birthday, Church. You make me so happy to be alive for longer than I expected. I don’t know if either of us will ever be famous, but in the only way that really matters, Mr. Jones and me are gonna be big stars.

[mcjickson]

THE CONSTANT

I think about Edith Fuller a lot. Edith Fuller, if you don’t remember—and there’s absolutely no reason you should, all things considered—was a wunderkind kindergartener who qualified to represent Tulsa in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. You know, the one for eighth graders. At 6, Edith was the youngest contestant in the history of the Bee, and as such was the darling of the media covering the event. And with good reason—as she had no idea of the relative enormity of her achievement, she carried herself with the infectious humility of a genuine 6-year-old, not a media darling. She was basically the Bad News Bears of the Spelling Bee: a scrappy little towheaded upstart that you couldn’t help but root for. She made the final round of competition but caught some brutal words early in the day, and spent the rest of the event doing insanely adorable color commentary and interviews. And then the tournament was over, and Edith went home with her family and back to being a 6-year-old. I could not wait to see her come back as a first-grader. I was so very excited to see how far she could get with another year of study under her belt, so when the next year’s finalists were announced, I immediately searched the list to find her speller number. And she wasn’t there. She hadn’t qualified. There was no joy in Mudville; first-grade Edith had struck out. I felt a slight measure of relief for whichever 8th-grader from the greater Tulsa region had pulled off the upset. Turns out it wasn’t an eighth-grader, though. It was a dapper little 3rd grader in a bow tie. Young Sal Lakmissetti had done the impossible and knocked out America’s sweetheart. I was happy for him—until I read about how it happened. One of the reasons that watching the Bee is so emotionally involving is that the tension between the spellers and their occasionally overbearing parents can be so heart-wrenchingly intense. Edith had been a respite from that—her parents seemed to have been surprised that she had developed those skills. Sal’s dad on the other hand, had gotten indignant when Sal lost to Edith in Tulsa the year before. So he hired the previous year’s tournament champion to give Sal private lessons for a year. You know, the way you do when you want your 3rd grader to trounce a 1st grader in a contest for 13-year-olds. Not for nothing, but that is basically the plot of the movie Bad Words. Sal’s dad had turned him into Chitanya Chopra. I wonder if Sal’s dad knows how to spell “autofellatio.” I wonder if Edith had been heartbroken when she lost the Tulsa bee. Turns out, the next year she wasn’t interested in participating at all. And her dad didn’t push her, because it wasn’t about him. Edith Fuller’s dad got it right, and he just let her be a second-grader and pursue whatever her enormous second-grader heart wanted. I was ecstatic she didn’t return, that she was out there getting to be a kid. The funny thing is, I’m not really obsessed with spelling per se. What I am obsessed with, however, is the raw human drama of watching painfully awkward home-schooled kids on ESPN. There’s no denying the hilarity of some of their more awkward moments. But the real reason to watch is to marvel at their bravery. I’ve heard it alleged that the #1 most commonly held phobia in American adults is a fear of public speaking. And yet year after year, some of the most sheltered kids in America gather in a hotel in DC called The Gaylord (because these kids aren’t bullied enough, I guess), and walk up to a microphone before millions and risk entire-hometown-disappointing embarrassment. Wanting to more fully understand what these kids go through, I let my family talk me into entering an adult spelling bee sponsored by the local library. After my initial disappointment that “adult spelling bee” didn’t mean it was a four-letter-words contest, I got fully enthused at the prospect of competing, and even had our friend Scott design a t-shirt for me to compete in, emblazoned with a bee illustration and the mantra that governed my participation: “Edith Fuller is my constant.” By “constant”, I was referencing what was maybe the best-ever episode of Lost, a self-contained narrative about a man searching for the love of his life across shifting time periods. The usual complications of time travel narratives were overcome by the idea that in order for him to find his true path, he had to serve as a “constant” to remind other people what their true purpose was. My true purpose in entering the bee was to try to have the kind of come-what-may attitude that made Edith shine. And that’s largely the way it went down. I breezed through the first few rounds with ease, the words got hard in a hurry, but I acquitted myself nicely. After a solid initial hour that whittled a field of about forty people down to six, I was relieved when I got thrown a softball for an umbrella-drink-loving goober like me: daiquiri. Which I promptly misspelled. I’ll never forgive myself for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but I’m always happy to throw that t-shirt on these days. Of course, now, a couple years removed my own bee experience, it’s more evident than ever to me that when I throw that t-shirt on, Edith Fuller is a codename. A transparent alias, at that. I’m sure you have a person in your life that serves as your constant: not necessarily your partner or best friend (though it could be), but the person you go to when you need to be reminded of who you really are. What you’re really about. Who believes in you with no agenda. I’ve been lucky to be that for a few people—I was my brother Patrick’s constant, for instance. And while Declan’s always been my wartime consigliere—there’s no one more clutch in a crisis—Delaney has always been my constant. They say having kids is like living with your heart outside your body, and that has always hit me at a cellular level. I don’t talk about it often—or ever really—as it’s not something that happened to me, or that I went through, it’s Delaney's story. But for context I need you to know that when she had a debilitating mystery affliction a couple years ago, she was put through a series of tests for terminal illnesses. Those tests came back negative, but for a little while I had to confront the possibility of losing my baby girl and it nearly fucking broke me. Thank jeebus, the folks at the Mayo Clinic were able to diagnose her malady, and it’s something she had to learn to live with, and cope with, and thrive with. And she’s done all of that, admirably, but it required her to delay college for a frustrating year. Given the ways we’ve all been sidelined lately, it’s done me good to remember the ways Delaney got through her involuntary gap year with grace. Multiple creative projects. Tending to the care of small things. Finding ways to breathe through the worst of it. And leaning on the people who love her most. And I’ve treasured her as my constant like never before, and spending time with her got me through being 2x4’ed by my avowed best friend. (There’s been some good-natured conjecture by well-meaning friends as to whether the most recent playlist was indeed a break-up mix. First of all, I don’t want to knock whatever any of you have do to get over somebody, but listening to a bunch of songs that rub your nose in the loss just isn’t my thing. There’s no denying that when I sequenced the songs, I was struck by the lyrical subtext that emerged, but they weren’t selected for that purpose. In fact, most of those songs were in the playlist before I found out what had happened. But it merits a thoughtful inquest, in any case. You poor bastards.) And I guess that’s the thing. There’s something legitimately sad about when your best-laid plans and most fervent desires don’t work out the way you envisioned, especially when it was completely out of your control. (And dear readers, as you well know, most things are out of our control.) But maybe, just maybe, if you can somehow keep your eyes open for the joy you find on the detour, and have a sense of where—or more specifically who—your true north is, you might wind up writing a better story than the one you had planned. And maybe this new story was the point of you all along. I love the thought that right now, in all likelihood, Edith is doing something that's simultaneously challenging and entirely age-appropriate. Which, in a very real way, will be her trophy for not participating. I don't think Edith's done with the Bee, but I'm also not sure I would be heartbroken if she was. And I absolutely believe that, much like Delaney, Edith has more in store for us than we could ever imagine. Even in the middle of missing my people—and especially my North Dakota hussy constant—I have to say that being reminded of who I really can be has me feeling like one of the Bad News Bears myself these days, with all the swagger of Ahmad stepping up to the plate in the Astrodome: “Back up, suckers. I feel good.”

[mcjickson]

PIXELS DAY 1043

My girlfriend says the craziest shit in bed.

I mean, let’s be honest here, the fact that she’s even there in the first place is a minor miracle. I have a bit of a snoring problem. No, scratch that—I have a bit of a breathing problem. Wait, that doesn’t do it justice, either: I have an enormous breathing problem.

How bad of a problem? For years (read: decades) I have had (and have been) a near-legendary snoring affliction. The kind where you’d get complaints from people two bedrooms over. The kind that completely, understandably, torpedoed entire relationships. The kind where strangers at an adjacent campsite felt justified waking me up in the middle of the night in the hopes they might get a five-minute break.

So yeah, pretty bad.

For instance, when I was recuperating in the Intensive Care Unit after the emergency operation on the leg, the nurses would wake me up every twenty minutes because my oxygen intake was dipping to brain-damaging levels.

So yeah, as I’m not particularly a fan of courting dain bramage, the CPAP machine has been both mandatory and life-changing. And while the machine prevents the snoring, it also makes enough noise that I’ll often try to give her a head start in getting to sleep before I mask up and turn the thing on.

And people, let me tell you, that’s when the fun starts, because—god bless her—Pixley talks in her sleep. And it’s glorious.

The first time it happened, it caught me off-guard. Just as I was slipping into bed she said, out of nowhere, “You know those apples?”

It seemed an innocuous question, as we had bought some at the grocery store earlier that evening, so I responded; “Yeah?”

“Why don’t you pound those apples up your ass?” Immediately I cracked up, as this seemed like a particular brand of non-sequitur humor that is usually Declan’s forte. But then I realized she wasn’t laughing with me, and was instead grouchily waking up. We spent a few minutes trying to figure out what spectacularly warped Good Will Hunting scene was playing out in her dream, and then knocked off for the evening.

A few weeks later, it happened again, although this time I was acutely aware she was sleep-talking when she asked, “why are you so poor?”

And while there’s a lot of anecdotal history to support that question, I thought I’d try to ferret out some more. “What makes you say that?”

She scrunched up her still-sleeping face and explained, “I thought you put up a sign that said ‘will write for food.’ I’m just now processing it and asked ‘Why are you so poor?’”

As demeaning mid-slumber interrogations go, I found it largely adorable. I’m also trying to decide if “will write for food” should be the title of my memoirs or the first line of my job-seeking cover letter. Either way it’s a keeper, and it’s to her credit that she was mortified to find out the content of that conversation over breakfast the next morning.

And that’s really the heart of what’s going on here. The part where I once again am dumbstruck by my dumb luck. That thing where I realize that this is a guile-free human being. Literally never an unkind word in my direction, no matter how much I deserve it. Never anything less than the benefit of the doubt. A person who says something mildly untoward in her sleep and then wakes up and apologizes.

I remember a time long before she came into the picture, a time when I had no idea what I needed from another human, a time where I had absolutely no faith in my ability to judge anyone’s character. A dark era where—like literally millions of people in the same boat—I spent a lot of time combing through online dating profiles.

No matter how much people try to put their best face forward, the prevailing wisdom on dating profiles is that they’re suspect, a likely catalog of falsehoods and exaggerations. There’s some truth to that—it’s easy and somewhat entertaining to read the whoppers—but what I saw time and again was people inadvertently telegraphing everything that had gone wrong in their previous relationships.

“I value honesty above all other qualities” means “I was lied to, badly.” Or “I love all kinds of outdoor activities” is another way of saying “I couldn’t get my last boyfriend off the couch.” It becomes a kind of coded subtext that lets you know the checklist of qualities a person was looking for.

To be fair, I used to have a list like that, I think. A super-unrealistic set of foolproof ways to ensure that the next thing would work. A list so exacting that I don’t think I was looking for a real human being so much as an unattainable list of qualities, the better to not have to face the criminally obvious need to work on myself.

Which is a long way of saying that I didn’t realize that I just needed someone phenomenally kind and patient. Someone real.

And, for lack of a better way to say it, someone who would give me an experience like the following one, which is currently my favorite example of her sleep jabbering:

On one especially late night of staying up writing, I tried to gingerly make my way into the bedroom so as not to wake her. The door creaked the tiniest bit, and suddenly she sat bolt upright in bed, spread her arms out in a forbidding way, and said “WAIT—do not get in here.”

Slightly alarmed, I asked “what’s up?” and she scowled and said, “there’s a spider in the bed.”

“Where?”

“In an imaginary cup.”

No, really.

“Okay, honey, can I ask a question? If the cup is imaginary…is the spider imaginary, too?”

She made a face that somehow managed to simultaneously indicate that 1) she realized that she had been talking in her sleep 2) she had woken up 3) it was dawning on her how hilarious she was being, and most importantly 4) she was embarrassed at the thought that I would someday tell this story to our friends.

We laughed our asses off until our sides hurt. And then we slept like babies. And if it’s not immediately apparent, the CPAP machine is only partially responsible for how soundly I sleep these days.

[mcjickson]

DAY EIGHTY-SEVEN

As the workouts get longer (and my lung capacity ever-too-slowly returns), I find that it’s easier to just pick an album to listen to in its entirety than to keep looking down at the phone screen and risk becoming a cautionary Youtube video about treadmill mishaps. Deciding on which album to listen to is the hard part. How does one pick the appropriate soundtrack for my hamster-wheeling? I’m reminded of that one line from Ok Go’s first self-titled album: “working on an inch-less waistband in a strip mall wasteland.” Yeah, that about sums it up. Album selected.

It kicks off with their first hit, “Get Over It”, which seems regrettably appropriate. I’ve been beating myself up pretty bad for a pretty huge transgression: I let Delaney down in a woefully inexcusable way. It’s an uncomfortable (and, thankfully, acutely unfamiliar) feeling, and I do indeed need to get over it.

Let me explain: Delaney J is a recklessly--some would say obsessively—creative individual. She makes no small plans, and unlike her father, she makes good on all of them. A while back it started to dawn on her that she might like to be a filmmaker someday, a career that aligns with many of her passions. A good friend of ours suggested that in today’s world of three-picture deals for Young Adult fiction series, she might have a more direct path to her goal if she were a published author first. It’s an herculean challenge to get a first-time screenwriter’s script into the hands of people who can help get it made. As a published author, however, you have the opportunity to open doors while being the natural choice for adapting your novel for the screen.

That conversation took place right before Christmas break, and per the schedule she spent most of that week holed up in her room at her mom’s house.

On New Year’s Day she showed up at my place. With the novel she wrote over the previous four days. All 138 pages of it.

We dove into the early pages as I raved about how impressed I was, how proud of her I felt, how we could—with her permission—edit the novel in ways that would make it everything she wanted it to be. She made plans to do a second draft, one that she’d be less embarrassed to have me read. I told her that she had no need to feel embarrassed, and that’s where we left it.

And left it. And left it. She’s a bit of an unstoppable jugglenaut*, so she moved on to other projects and pursuits. Every now and then I’d read a few more pages because the wait for draft number two was killing me, but we got about a year down the road and I wondered if she’d just lost the need to see it through any further.

Here’s where we get to the part where I’m a clueless fool. (Shocker.)

One night a month or so ago we’re out at dinner and she was being uncharacteristically brusque with me. I asked her what was up.

“You never read my book.”

And then it all dawned on me. I was waiting for the second draft, but she was waiting for my first round edits. It crushed me to see how crestfallen she was, how the one person she banked on to believe in her creative talents had dropped the ball. Sure, I thought I was waiting for her to get the novel in a place where she wanted it, but how was that more important than reading the damn thing in the first place? It’s a horrible thing to disappoint the people you love the most, especially someone who’s never, ever let you down.

I thanked her for clearing the air, implored her to forgive me, and made a plan to get her the edits in short order, to take or leave as she saw fit. It’s a blatant case of too little, too late, but I needed her to see it wasn’t for a lack of wanting to. As she has an enormous heart, she graciously agreed to it.

“Mediocre people do exceptional things all the time” is one of the best lines from that Ok Go album, and I set out to prove it true by diving into the book. It was a transformative experience for me. It’s a familiar coming-of-age tale, but there are passages that are outright brilliant, and narrative flourishes that many published authors simply aren’t capable of. It’s a fun read. It’s a touching read. And the best part is, every minute of immersing myself in it felt like spending time with her.

One night towards the end of the editing process, I paused, looked over at Pixley and wondered aloud, “Why the hell did it take me so long to finally have this experience?”

I’m going to paraphrase her, badly, but what she said was so on point I’m still more than a little in awe of her: “You know how you buy books but then they sit around on your bookshelves until you finally get around to reading them, and about halfway through you realize—this is exactly what I need to be reading at this point in my life? Well, this is when you were ready to read her book.”

So yeah, I realized it’s all for me here right now. The right book. The right album. The right person. There are times when I am overwhelmed by my preposterous run of good fortune. This is one of those times.

I recently presented Delaney with the edits. It was fun to get to tell her how well-constructed the characters are. Show her the passages that made me laugh out loud. Offer her advice on how to improve certain sections and watch her turn the ideas over in her mind.

She did that thing we all do when we create something, where you can’t really stand to look at it too closely because you can only see its flaws. “Why should anyone read this? I’ve heard this story a million times.”

Immediately I countered. “Here’s the thing: No one’s ever said it the way you’d say it. You’re the difference. You have a distinct and unique voice. You’re the reason I’d want to hear that story again, to hear how you’d tell it.”

Mostly it was just good to see my little girl have her faith restored in her dad, a guy who’s grown eminently more flawed, marginally more human, and acutely more appreciative of her in the space of a few months.

I get about forty-five minutes into the workout, wondering why I do the stupid, careless things I do. The last song seems to taunt me:

“It’s not just that I’m selfish and scared. It’s not just that I’m so unprepared. It’s just—you’d think I’d grow out of this, wouldn’t you?”

That makes me laugh. Feeling somewhat cleansed and energized, I turn up the speed on the machine and breathe a little easier. Spotify serves up the next available song from the Ok Go catalog, and it’s “Here We Go Again.” I laugh harder at the combo of irony and serendipity of listening to that song on a treadmill.

A while back I re-watched that video of the high school kids performing Ok Go’s routine for a talent show. Because they’re doing it live, your joy at watching them is intermingled with a palpable sense of worry that they might fall and hurt themselves, but they’re so incredibly talented and competent that you feel a little foolish for worrying when it’s over.  I wish someone could’ve told me that that’s what parenting teenagers would feel like.

The editing on Delaney’s first novel continues apace, and it continues to bring us closer, which, truth be told, is a pretty good trick. Her biggest concern now is that she’s not crazy about the ending. She’s toyed with it a number of ways, but none of them are really doing for her, and I don’t think she’ll be ready to feel like it’s done until we get that figured out.

Luckily for both of us, if there’s one thing I seem to be good at lately, it’s rewriting the ending.

[mcjickson]

DAY TWENTY-THREE

Ok, so, long story short (just this once), I finally hit on a name for this thing. Like most of the cryptic references I make, it could use a slight bit of explanation.

Deke and I have always had a somewhat adversarial component to our relationship. To wit: when he was about seven or eight, we got into a bedtime routine that included us shouting quasi-insulting nicknames at each other through his bedroom door as a final sign-off for the evening. “Goodnight punk.” “Goodnight old man!” and so on.

One night he improvised and caught me off guard:

“Goodnight Deke, you weasel!”

“Goodnight Pants McJickson!”

No, really. Pants. McJickson. Out of the clear blue. I was dumbfounded. We laughed until we couldn’t breathe, then we laughed some more. And it stuck—to both of us. We use it for everything, all the time. Reservations. Internet handles. Character names. It’s peculiar and it’s us and it’s the kind of enigmatic reference I was searching for. But it needed a bit of phrasing to become a viable blog title.

So I thought a good bit about what is thing really about. It’s sort of about the weight loss efforts. It’s certainly about the inadvertent (and now deliberate, I guess) introspection that accompanies those efforts.

But mostly, it seems to me, it’s about this idea that we’re at the point where doctors have probably done just about everything they can for me. That the kind, supportive people around me have done everything they can. How if there’s going to be any more to this story, the rest of the progress is on me, and only me. It feels like a “physician, heal thyself” kind of situation.

And then the wordplay hit me. And the name fell into place:

McJickson, Heal Thyself.

[mcjickson]

DAY TWENTY-ONE

I cancelled Deke’s fitness membership yesterday.

Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I merely initiated the Bataan Death March that is attempting to extract oneself from being billed by a mega-gym for a service you’re not using. It’s an insidious practice, and they clearly make their entire profit margins by making it an interminable chore to stop your billing.

As you might imagine, the bureaucratic hurdles are not the part of this that got me down a little. When I first suggested that we sign up for the club together, Deke was enthused about the idea of getting to play racquetball with me, and blithely agreed to support me in my stop-actively-dying efforts. The reality, though, is that he’s been too busy with homework and/or video games to join me, so it’s time to stop paying for an unused membership.

This is not a those-kids-and-their-damned-video-games diatribe. He’s earned the money for the game systems and the time to enjoy them as he likes through both chores and better grades. Sometimes when he’s playing I miss having him in the room with me, but when I hear his genuine hearty laughter from his in-game exchanges with his friends, it reminds me of the way I’ve only ever laughed with my brothers, and I wouldn’t take that from him. Plus every now and then I overhear snippets of the kinds of deep conversations that they’re having, and I realize they’re no different from the things my good friends and I would talk about over albums or between movies.

Like pretty much every parent of the last twenty years, though, I do wish he’d get outside more. Nothing looks quite as lonely to me as a barren playground basketball court. I don’t know how much harder my teen years would’ve been if I didn’t have Pat Tannous and Mike Cimino to while away the days playing pickup games or 56, but it’s clear that Deke’s finding those kind of connections in his own way.

Still, I can’t help but wonder how we got here, with empty playgrounds and kids who seem to have lost the drive to simply go explore the world around them and have adventures. The thing is, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with these kids. I think it’s us.

We’ve created a needlessly fearful environment for kids. Even though crime’s down and the world’s objectively safer, we still are aggressively overprotective. Admittedly, I get that impulse and it’s completely understandable in its way, but we take it way too far. In Florida they recently brought felony neglect charges against a couple for letting their 11-year-old play in their own backyard, largely because people were terrified that a child was on his own. I’ve been guilty of this—it took way too long for me to develop a comfort level with my kids going to the local playground on their own. To say nothing of how mercilessly overscheduled their non-school hours have been.

Of course, we used a lot of that overscheduling to try and instill a love of sports and exercise in them. I coached sports I’d never played. Played games of (insult) H-O-R-S-E with them ad infinitum, which Delaney often won. At one point Deke and I even had a tragic Gift-of-the-Magi situation with basketball, where I was coaching because I thought he wanted me to, and he was only playing because he thought I wanted him to.

I had a moment of faithlessness about having to cancel his gym membership, where I heinously let myself think (even for a second) that he wasn’t being supportive. You know, the kid who cleaned the dressing on my surgical wounds. The kid who stacked pillows under my leg and brought me every meal when I couldn’t walk. That kid.

A few minutes after making the call, I wandered by his room and caught him doing something unexpected.

No, not that. Reprobates.

He was doing pushups. Like, lots and lots of pushups. I didn’t mention it, but later he told me he’s been trying to work up to 200 a day, which turned out to be a preface to asking me to buy him a pull-up bar. Delaney’s a notorious gym rat at school as she preps for the summer golf tournament season, and now it turns out Deke’s trying to get shredded on our own premises. It seems I don’t know if I’ll ever begin to fathom how well I’m supported.

O me of little faith. One pull-up bar, coming right up.

[mcjickson]

DAY NINETEEN

I don’t know about you guys, but I would’ve set the over/under on this little experiment at 18 days, and would furthermore have strongly urged you to take the under. Tonight, for a much needed change, I decided I should push my limits at the gym rather than on the laptop. That went better than expected, though I won’t bore you (or me) with the details. I’ll add that I caught a glimpse of myself on my way out of the locker room, and noticed that I was wearing a shirt from a Colorado confectioner called Ritual Chocolate. On my frame, it is the epitome of redundant.

So yeah, I’m having fun with this, to the point where it seems to be time to house these posts on their own dedicated blog. Of course, that means I’ll have to come up with a suitable name for the site. And that’s proving to be more difficult than anticipated.

I’m not what you would call a perfectionist, but I do really relish a well-turned phrase. Eight years and 7,080 posts in, and I’m still happy with Now the Elephants as my Tumblr blog name. (If you’re not familiar with the story behind that, I’m including a link in the comments.) So you would think this would be easy, since I essentially get paid to come up with the right words. But sometimes the inability to find the ideal answer reminds me of that damning scene in Fight Club:

“How’s that working out for you?” “What?” “Being clever.”

Ouch. Here are some of the not-quite-right names I’ve come up with so far:

TL;DR—I’m sympathetic to the vibe of this one, as even my post-edited entries are a bit longer than I’d care to make them, but it doesn’t particularly feel of-the-moment, and it’s certainly not original.

The Rambling Wreck—Does double duty as both a self-deprecating reference to the woeful condition I let myself get into, as well as an accurate description of the tangent-chasing writing style I’ve been developing. Regrettably is wholly co-opted by Georgia Tech, and while I love Kenny Anderson and Dennis Scott as much as the next guy, I’m not really looking to cultivate a readership below the Mason-Dixon line.

Tea and Strumpets—Was really, really fond of this one. Tea deserves titular status as it was my fondness for sweet tea that got me in the most trouble health-wise, and I love the Shakespeare-coined strumpets for describing the more significant (other) aspects of my interactions with key characters in my sordid tales. Did a quick Google search on the term, and was devastated to see it’s the name of a charity benefit calendar featuring Reubenesque middle-aged British women. Passing on the name, but bookmarking the site in case things don’t work out with Pixley.

So no dice on the blog name so far. I did, however, have a great moment at the gym. I’ve been trying to work swimming into the mix, but between the breathing issues and the bloated carcass I haven’t been able to swim a full length of the pool without stopping. Until today. It’s a minor league victory, but I was surprised to feel the smile on my face when it was done.

They say nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. “They” are wrong. Having spent many years an athletically-inclined beanpole, and having also spent many years savoring insanely good food, I’m of the opinion that I’m less Tyler Durden and more Ned Schneebly, Jack Black’s School of Rock food loving faux-teacher. “When I get up there and start doing my thing, people worship me! Because I’m sexy and chubby, man!” Maybe I’ll get to skinny again someday. But I’ll take fat and happy and prolific and focused and in love for now.

People are always asking me if I know Dewey Finn. And yeah, I know that guy, but I think we’ve reached the part of the movie where he’s putting on a clinic.

[mcjickson]

DAY SEVENTEEN

This week I rediscovered the most efficient weight-loss method I’ve ever known: low-grade influenza. It’s easy to control your appetite when you essentially have no appetite.

Of course, making sure one gets plenty of rest tends to get in the way of working out, to say nothing of generally feeling weak and/or rubbery. And now that I’ve decided to tie the ritual of exercise to the ritual of writing, even a three-day hiatus has me missing both in equal measure.

But sick or not, I needed to take Deke downtown for his big Christmas present: tickets to see the Golden State Warriors play (and, regrettably, humiliate) the Bulls. I figured his excitement to see the game would make it easy for me to rally, but as it turned out the game fell the night of his 2nd quarter finals, and he was in an uncharacteristically-yet-understandably surly mood.

Deke and I parked a good mile from the stadium, hoping to grab some dinner and then walk over. When we got inside the restaurant I had picked out especially with him in mind, he mumbled something about not wanting to eat there and I quickly scanned the room for something sharp enough to stab him with.

Luckily for both of us, I decided to just bite a hole in my tongue and power through the evening, hoping the prospect of seeing the game itself would perk him up. It occurred to me that I am especially unschooled in how to parent a teenager. His older sister Delaney, now 17, has a 90-minute hair regimen in the morning, and a couple years ago we decided her life would be easier (as well as more manageable and lustrous) if she spent all her school nights at her mom’s house. As hard as it is for me to admit, this has worked out great for her in terms of feeling anchored and free to set her own course. But it’s also caused me to miss the day-to-day teenage angst she’s undoubtedly visited upon her mom. This is new to me.

Most parenting is just semi-educated guessing, and on this occasion I figured that there was something bothering him and he was just inadvertently taking it out on me. Rather than berate him for not making an effort, I just suggested we punt on the restaurant in favor of getting some quality junk food at the stadium and catching more of the pre-game warm-ups.

We trudged through the sand-like snow, and since my typical exercise session has been a half-hour of walking at a brisk pace, I decided this qualified as a legitimate workout. And let me tell you: heartfelt conversation is so much better than headphones.

An amazing thing happened just a few minutes into the walk. Unsolicited, he actually apologized to me for how he’d been acting, letting me know it’s the overflow from the stress of finals. The apology warmed me, but mostly I was so happy and relieved to see him maturing into the kind of person who can sense how he’s affecting other people even when he’s feeling lousy. So yeah, a lot of the time I guess at how to parent, and occasionally I get it right.

We talked about a lot of things on the way to the stadium: How his finals were going. Why strip clubs are a horrible idea. How we sorely underestimated how long the walk would feel in sub-zero temperatures.

The conversation turned to the recently deceased. About Bowie, about Rickman. About a grade school classmate of mine who died unexpectedly earlier this week. And about how my beloved Aunt Betty died not quite as unexpectedly from a brain tumor Sunday.

I tried in vain to adequately explain to my son what my aunt had meant to us when we were kids. My dad’s younger sister, Betty had this way of tilting her head when you were talking to her that made you feel like you were the only person in the world worth listening to. She had an infectious warmth, and I relished our occasional family trips to see her, her impossibly rugged husband, and their three rough-and-tumble sons, who were just slightly older than me and showed me how to be a half-decent older brother.

It’s so puzzling to me. Betty (and my similarly well-adjusted, bright and wonderful Aunt Mary) grew up in the same house where my dad endured an unspeakably fucked-up childhood, the horrors of which turned him into an emotionally stunted human being. They all had the same alcoholic father—how did my dad wind up an alcoholic and they didn’t?

I don’t know why some family maladies get passed on, or what makes one person more susceptible to inherited vices than another. You just hope the nonsense stops with you. I see traces of my father in myself, often in the things I don’t like: the muttering, the shrinking from conflict, the talking to myself. But I’m also acutely aware that much of what anyone likes about me came from trying to emulate the best parts of him: his raw talent, his dizzying intellect, the inestimable kindness at the heart of the man.

There are people you can’t save. But if I had a time machine, I wouldn’t kill Hitler. I wouldn’t buy the initial release of Apple stock. I wouldn’t try to remedy any of the things that have happened in my life that I regret or wish I could do over.

I’d go back and be his dad. Give him a dad who’d tell him how awesome he is, a dad whose biggest vice is fried chicken.

I apologize, folks. These things don’t start as heavy topics. Somehow I keep following innocuous thoughts down the rabbit hole and ending up in a thicket of real. Maybe it’s all the death in the air. Maybe it’s the brushes with my own mortality. Or maybe you just can’t fathom what you meant to your parents until you really submerge yourself in the Marianas Trench of what you feel for your own kids.

Delaney called me a couple weeks ago, asking me to help her with a paper she was writing for class. “I think I’m in trouble,” she said.

“Can’t think of what to say?”

“No, it’s just that it’s supposed to be a five-page paper, and I wrote twelve.”

I thought perhaps I was going to have trouble figuring out what to write about on a steady basis, but like Delaney, I’ve got the Grady Tripp problem of having perhaps too much to say. I suppose it’s a great problem to have.

Say what you will about Derrick Rose, but that dude was the only one out there trying last night. In no way am I comparing myself to Derrick Rose, but I promise you won’t catch me not trying anytime in the foreseeable future. Don’t call it a comeback. I’ve been here for years.

Actually, on second thought, go ahead, call it a comeback. But way more importantly, call your dad.

[mcjickson]

DAY THIRTEEN

My son Declan is a kleptomaniac.

Ok, so maybe “kleptomaniac” is a bit of an exaggeration. Each year I buy a new winter hat for my wicked huge cranium, and each year it invariably winds up on his head. I don’t mind it—in fact, it’s gotten to the point where I choose my hats based on how good they’ll look on Declan. But now he’s moved on to taking my headphones, so yesterday I had to grab a new pair on the way to the gym.

The headphones make all the difference in the workout. What has been insufferable tedium is instead transformed into energized reverie. The treadmill feels like less of a necessary evil and more like a cathartic transport. Taking me someplace better.

Of course, I left the video screen running on the treadmill, and my attention was piqued by a provocative-seeming episode of ESPN’s investigative journalism show Outside The Lines. Stalwart host Bob Ley was intoning at length about how performance-enhancing drugs were permeating some as-yet-undisclosed sport. I’m always amused by Bob’s overly-earnest Guy Smiley routine, but I also appreciate his passion and occasional righteous indignation. It’s very clear that he’s currently concerned about the damages amphetamines are doing to the participants in…

…oh, no. Oh hell no. He’s doing an expose on PED’s in professional video gaming?!

I laugh loud enough to alarm the guy at the next machine, but then my amusement is cut short by a sobering thought. Sometimes it seems like all my kid does is play video games. Do I have to worry about Declan juicing?

If the demon PS4 can lead a youngster down the yellow pill road, then the precursor gateway drug is all but certainly Mountain Dew. A standard punch line when referring to the preferred sustenance of lifetime basement dwellers, the Dew was a staple of Deke’s middle school years. Was it shitty parenting to let him mow through one twelve-pack after another? Yeah, probably. But I’m a firm believer that you pick your battles, and this particular indulgence bought a lot of credibility for his absorbing other lessons with grace.

It also bought him a protracted era of lethargy. Deke’s a fierce competitor when the mood strikes him—and certainly more of a natural athlete than I ever was–but he’d also be the first to tell you that he was aware of the fact that he was carrying a bit of a Dew baby. So, one day late last summer, as a newly minted high school freshman, he gave it up. Point blank. Cold turkey. It was impressive.

It was also amazingly effective. As it coincided with a late-breaking growth spurt, in mere weeks he was lanky, taller, more self-possessed. His voice also dropped two octaves, to the point where I’d wonder what grizzled 40-year-old was answering my son’s phone when I’d call. His sudden maturity—announcing itself with such a bold display of self-discipline—served as a wake-up call to me that I could do all the things I’ve been wanting to, if I just flipped the switch the way he did.

Let me tell you everything you need to know about Declan Halloran. When his little brother Wyatt was born, there were a series of medical complications that required Wyatt to stay in the NICU for four days. It wasn’t until day three that Declan, only three years old at the time, was allowed to come in with me to see his brother in the incubator. We sat there silent together, enraptured by our tiny new addition. Finally Declan furrowed his brow, looked up at me with tremendous concern in his eyes and asked me, “Dad, if he’s in there, how can he tell how much we love him?”

For reasons I probably will never go into here, we haven’t seen Wyatt in nearly a decade. But there is no doubt in my mind that Deke has all the qualities of an incredible big brother. That was fully in evidence over the recent holidays, when our surrogate immediate family came to visit, and Deke and Tylar (Pixley’s son) took the Duncan Twins—affectionately known as the Raptors–out in the snow for a game of backyard football. Breslin and Ridley were having the time of their lives, as ever—they are forces of nature—but I wish I could adequately describe the look of joy that came over Deke’s face as the game progressed.

All of these thoughts washed over me as I pounded out steps on the treadmill. In the headphones, lyrics from Smallpools’ “Dreaming” provided an appropriate subtext for the moment: “…they want us to surrender, but I could go all night right here between their crossfire…” (It’s not lost on me that lyrics out of their musical context can lie a little flat on the page. I offer them here as a nod to when songs serendipitously provide timely running commentary.) When it comes to the times we’ve faced adversity together, young Will Hunting and I have always been offered the belt but taken the wrench. Because fuck them, that’s why.

My mom was a brilliant woman with a razor-sharp wit and a fascination with the world I still hope to match. A dyed-in-the-wool Vatican II Irish Catholic, she spent a decade pregnant with the six of us, and as her oldest it fell to me to keep up with her humor and verve. That friendship is the only reason I wound up a marginally talented writer, but more importantly, I think it’s the reason I tend to relate to women and form friendships more easily with them.

I only mention this because when I found out my firstborn was going to be a girl, a massive wave of relief swept over me, knowing that it would be easier for me to connect. (And if you know Delaney, you know that happened, in ways that continue to surprise me.) But I’ll confess I was terrified at the prospect of having a boy, fearing I’d be an inadequate role model like my male progenitors.

I don’t know if it was foolish of me to worry, but he’s more than I ever could have expected, even in spite of my shortcomings. I’m not fishing here. He and I both know I’ve had my moments. And if I’ve taught him nothing else, it’s that as a human being you have a choice to not be the sum total of all the bad things that have happened to you. He’s an incorrigible smartass (whoa, shocker), but he’s nobody’s victim. That alone makes me feel I’ve done better than expected.

And all that being said, he was never in any real danger, because of the incredible support network we’ve got. I’m so incredibly grateful for the people who have, when necessary, metaphorically saved my life: Sherry and Patrick, Clan Clemente, exceedingly large-hearted Dave Duz. But there’s only one person who’s ever literally saved my life, and he’s likely wearing my hat right now.

One of the more cloying things about many fitness zealots—especially the newly converted—is how many of them tend to file everyone in their life into two categories: supporters and haters. It’s such a reductive binary, and you can get branded a “hater” for even the most innocuous of slights. While there’s no denying how gratifying the outpouring of support has been over these pieces, I can promise you that I welcome your sarcasm as much as your warmth. Declan and I know the difference between good-natured teasing friends and the increasingly-insignificant people who are actively trying to destroy what we are. They come to build a wall between us; we know that they won’t win.

[mcjickson]

DAY TEN

After tonight’s workout, I was sitting at a café table in the overpriced juice bar, waiting for Pixley to finish up in the locker room. I glanced at the basketball game on the wall-mounted TV and saw something strange and kind of wonderful. The Pacers were wearing their Hickory High uniforms tonight, an homage to the movie Hoosiers. On the slim possibility you’re not familiar, it’s a sports movie about small-town underdogs, and their uniform seems especially appropriate on Paul George, the NBA’s most under-appreciated scrapper not named Kawhi Leonard.

At work today I passed on an opportunity to go to Dickey’s barbecue for lunch with, among other people, our very own version of Jimmy Chitwood. Because we work for a Globo-Chem-styled conglomerate, it rarely feels like we’re underdogs.  That being said, what I really dig about coming to work each day with these particular people is that not only are they largely hilarious, they’re prodigiously talented, and they similarly play for the love of the game. (Because let’s face it, out in our particular Eastern Iowa warehouse we’re not doing it for the glory.)

I’m not particularly a fan of sports metaphors, but I’m a sucker for movie corollaries, and I suppose if I have to find my own place in the Hoosiers mythos, it would probably be the son of assistant coach Shooter. Like Shooter’s son, I once had to escort my drunk father off a basketball court where he had interrupted play.  That would also make me a tenacious defensive player who, if I remember correctly, gets clobbered on a fast break and crashes into a glass trophy case. That’s probably pretty accurate:  decent role player, lots of assists, occasional floor leader, but every now and then I’m gonna break some shit.

Dickey’s, while a delicious staple of the week’s lunch rotation, is one of those ways I suppose I was trying to destroy myself. Sure, I managed to get out of there last week for just 600 calories. But context is everything, and the context here is that my usual meal from there clocked in at 2000 calories. That’s an entire day’s worth in one meal. For an idiot diabetic.

And here’s the thing: In much the same way that no one wants to hear about your fantasy football team, I know that no one wants to hear you talk about your caloric intake. But what I’m really trying to say is that while I’m not attempting some insanely rigorous diet (yet), just scaling back to something reasonable (as opposed to eating my feelings a day’s worth per meal) is making a huge difference.

Everyone’s got their own worries about growing old. For ages mine was that I’d become one of those senior citizens who doesn’t talk about anything but their maladies and what they ate the day before. Now that’s kind of all I do. Kill me now.

Then again, Gene Hackman was 41 when he had his star-making role in The French Connection, after which he appeared in more than 50 movies over the next 30 years. I suppose it’s easy to get rusty and think you’re over, but if Norman Dale can launch three decades of brilliance starting at 41, maybe I still have a shot at writing my underdog story.

[mcjickson]

DAY EIGHT

Eight days into this little experiment, and I decided to tell my girlfriend about the promising first weigh-in. I’m down a decent number, but I’m guarded about getting too excited about what’s essentially just losing the water weight. The key, it seems, is to not get too excited about early returns. (This is the point where a lousy thinspo blogger would insert a facile metaphor about how that applies to relationships.)

Instead, I will insert facile relationship reality here. Pixley is a tough one to contain in simple sentences. The snow was coming down in droves of heavy wet flakes so I dropped her off at the door and went to park the car. Of course, I missed her on the way in, as she was standing just to edge of the entrance taking close-up pictures of snowflakes that had fallen on her infinity scarf.

When I doubled-back and found her, her hair was frosted with the new snow and she wore the kind of smile that only comes from a genuine fascination with the giddy beauty of things that are simultaneously tiny and profound. If you saw her in a movie, you could easily file her energy and frivolity under the manic pixie dream girl umbrella, but I can assure you that she’s not manic, and she’s entirely too real, too genuine, too guileless to be some make-me-complete wish-fulfillment fantasy.

We stowed our jackets and met at the treadmills upstairs. I can’t keep up with her, so I don’t really try, and while I find it comforting to work out together, I find myself slightly jealous at her ability to just run. When I hit the 30-minute mark I decide to step it up to a jog, and the fact that I get a full minute in without collapsing is today’s minor victory.

I think about how her presence motivates me to keep at it, and I figured out why this particular situation is different for me: Over the years, I’ve been around people who desperately needed me to change in order for me to be what they wanted. Pixley has never asked for anything other than what I am, and that freedom to just be myself makes me want to be a better person. A kinder person. A more creative person. And, certainly, a person who’s marginally healthy enough to be a pain in her estimable ass for an unreasonable number of years.

Having worked out more intensely and efficiently than I did, she hops off her treadmill and heads downstairs. She’s wearing an old t-shirt from her days working for the YMCA, and for whatever reason I finally realize that the back of that shirt reads “How can I help you?” It floors me suddenly, because I’m in awe of the fact that I really can’t think of another way she could help me that she hasn’t already.

I find myself pushing the end of the walk a little harder, as some small karmic recompense for the one way I’m wishing and hoping that she will help in the only way that matters: That she wakes up tomorrow and is happy to be exactly where she is, knows that the world is her oyster, and picks me again anyway. And picks me the day after that. And the day after that one. It’s a lot to ask—maybe too much, really–but I don’t waste the few wishes I get.

Thank you for flying Pants McJickson Airlines. We understand that you have a choice of, well…pretty much anyone else in the universe, and we appreciate your business. Maybe more than you’ll ever know.

[mcjickson]

DAY SIX   (a.k.a What’s a kweeno?)

You see a lot of surly faces around the gym. Maybe that’s why they call it cross training—because everyone’s so angry. That being said, I was glad to see a familiar face at the gym today.

Of course, I didn’t recognize the face at first. In the endless parade of kid obligations, you meet a veritable multitude of fairly interchangeable parents of other peoples’ kids. This particular face belonged to a mom of one of the kids I used to coach on Declan’s basketball team. She has a lovely face—she’s almost as pretty as her husband, and it would’ve been easy to dismiss them as impossibly beautiful likely-vacant types if they hadn’t proved to be the nicest, most genuine people I met through the gig. I gave her a half-hearted wave and left her to her aggressive spinning.

Upstairs on the treadmill, I realized one moment of seeing her another time was still crisp in my memory: Two years after the trainwreck that was that particular basketball season, Declan’s baseball team was playing her son’s team. She brought her whole ruddy-faced Irish brood to see her son’s game, but what stands out in my mind are two facts: She was wearing the kind of four-inch heels that no one wears to a kids’ baseball diamond—clearly they were hitting the city after the afternoon game—and she was tearing through a giant box of Popeye’s chicken.

Maybe I’d been too long out to sea at that point, but that might’ve been the sexiest thing I saw that year. (This probably says more about my relationship to fried chicken than Irish girls, but I’m trying to be candid here.) I couldn’t fathom how she and her uber-athletic husband could wolf that box of golden fried deliciousness and stay in the impossible shape they were in. I probably chalked it up to killer metabolisms, then forgot about it when Deke ripped a double.

But I thought, there she was, spinning, earning that occasional chicken indulgence, and the reason I didn’t recognize her at first was because she had that surly look of athletic determination on her usually-smiling mug.

When I came home from the gym, exhausted, I made quinoa successfully for the first time. I think I might actually like it, though I’ll never pronounce it any way but the way they do in the beer commercial. But no matter what kind of face I make when I eat it, I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to be harder for me to de-hulk, because my new secret is that I’m not always angry.

[mcjickson]

DAY THREE

The Gambler is a patently unremarkable movie, but the first ten minutes of it served to marginally entertain me as I pulled together my workout gear. After a promising scene in an underground casino, Mark Wahlberg’s character returns to his day job—as a college professor. There are times when I think that Mark might be a decent actor. This is not one of those times. I grab my stuff and go.

Ok, so the return to the gym starts with a miniscule victory: For the first time in ages, it doesn’t hurt to go up the steps to where the treadmills are. After four surgeries and as many months of wound care, there are Republican presidential nominees I trust more than this leg. Let’s dare it to buckle.

My biggest struggle with exercise—behind the whole inherent physical-struggle part—is the boredom. Luckily, my beloved Knickerbockers are playing the Miami Heat. And, in an even more fortuitous coincidence, they’re winning for once.

I push myself harder than any time in the last few months, not that you’d really be aware of it if you were at the adjoining treadmill. (Also, if you were at the adjoining treadmill and you didn’t say hi, that was pretty uncool of you.) The main challenge is just to not watch the clock. I count the ceiling fans. Try to remember song lyrics. Look around the room for half-assed celebrity doppelgangers, then back to the Knicks.

And it hits me. Why this doesn’t hurt the way it used to. Why it doesn’t feel as pointless as it used to. I thought I wanted a better body, but what I really want is to do things. To be able to go hiking without collapsing. To take my daughter roller skating. To play basketball again. It’s not a thunderbolt, but in my neck of the woods this passes for an epiphany.

Melo has a couple flashes of unselfishness. So do I, sometimes. Hey, Kristaps Porzingis reminds me of my brother. Whoa—that’s some mighty projecting you’re doing there, Liam. Truth be told, my Patrick-from-my-actual-mother looked a lot more like Tyson Chandler. Go figure. It seems unlikely that I would outlast the young man. It seems unlikely that I would get the second lease on leg. That this might actually work.

I guess what I’m saying is if Mark Wahlberg can make The Happening, and somehow have the unmitigated gall to turn up in another movie as a teacher, then maybe—just maybe—I can play basketball again.

[mcjickson]

DAY ONE

Hey, you want to know what’s a phenomenally stupid idea? Going to the gym on the first workday of the new year. The building is overrun with well-intentioned resolution makers and the hardcore lycra enthusiasts who strive to act casual about their space being invaded. Having had the presence of mind to bug out of work early to beat the impending crush, I luck out and find the last parking space, the last locker, and the last treadmill. Having remembered everything but my headphones, I start the trudge with the only distraction a close-captioned tv with ESPN that features a discussion of sports fan millenials but is closed captioned as “MILL LENTILS.” I imagine that mill lentils are pretty much my new diet staple. The show goes to commercial and it’s a cavalcade of—no lie—fast food commercials. It looks obscenely delicious, even though my brain knows the reality of that slop, and it’s not the first time today I’ve thought that maybe the world would be better off if certain ad people died. But not this ad guy. This ad guy is grateful to have at least 1.5 working legs, though the treadmill rebukes this notion. An intended 15-minute walk absentmindedly turns into 25, and I’m glad this is the first time I was able to work out without spending the entire time counting down how much time I had left. (On the workout, not my death clock.) Buoyed by my relative lack of searing pain, I decide to push my luck and swim some laps. Of course, by “swim some laps” I mean pathetically flail underwater for 10-yard clips, aghast at my diminished lung capacity. Is it possible to be aware of your flop sweat whilst also entirely submerged? (Spoiler: yes. Yes it is.) I wonder if this will be easier tomorrow. I wonder if I’ll live to find out.