Okay, I keep breaking my own record. Record for push-ups or number of Taylor Swift songs I dare sing along to? Yes, both of those, but more applicably for today: breaking my own record for the latest in the day I still haven't written yet.
Today's was 2:05am.
There was a get-together at a friend's house tonight with a bunch of folks from high school (one of which I hadn't seen in nearly three decades), and as usual, I was inexplicably afraid to go to it. I mentioned it in a podcast once, and I think I said so just the other day, but I get this unreasonable dread whenever my old friends have a get-together, and always worry about how it will go, whether I will be accepted or not, whether I should even attend.
It was at the house of a guy I knew early on in high school, but then he moved away before we could become good friends. He'd stayed in touch with the other guys, though, and the one road trip my friends and I took together was to go to his high school graduation, a couple of days after mine. He and his wife now live in a huge, gorgeous home right next to the lake, but on the other side of it, so that, when I went out on their back deck, I could actually see the streets and businesses on my side I go to every week. It was a magnificent house that was so clean you'd think they moved in yesterday, and reminded me that I live in the kind of squalor they usually make reality shows about ("Oh my dear Lord, what are all these tampon boxes doing in here?!").*
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| (not my room, but it might as well be) |
I went, though, and even though there was a long stretch of discomfort when people started in on their religious beliefs (until, that is, it was revealed that one of the wives, from Bangladesh, was Muslim). That was an interesting conversation, in that everybody has their little thing, the thing that's most important to them, the thing they can't let go of and have to bring up at every opportunity. I guess it's sad that for me it's Star Wars, but hey, everybody has their thing.
I guess writing is a thing for me too, though I sure didn't get a lot of it done today (or this month).
So, it was a bunch of my high school friends and their wives, and I was the only solo party. I also seemed to be the only one who didn't want to talk about religious subjects--I just can't tolerate it, kids, any more than you would enjoy listening to my "Huzzah, abortions for everyone!" or "Women are inherently bi-sexual" diatribes. One of them, however, did lose most everybody else in the room when he started in about the entire nation of China doing Satan's work for him (poor guy must hate being put out of a job like that).
I am not a people person, as you know, Bob, but I do enjoy asking people questions about their jobs or their childhoods or their fears or being parents or their sexual disfunction or their brushes with nature--practically anything but their religious views. My old friend Dennis's new wife works at a ski resort and encounters celebrities and the ultra-rich, and she spoke--rather fascinatingly--about their exploits and entitlement, and I could've stood to listen to her stories for an hour or more.
Also, there was the girl from Bangladesh, who said almost nothing throughout the night, and for the first hour, I worried that she didn't speak English at all.
But I got to talk a lot myself, telling embarrassing stories and asking for details from everyone else (very few of the wives said anything throughout, and I wondered if they were just less comfortable with their husbands' friends, or if the role of a wife in a traditional conservative marriage is to sit there contentedly and say little).
Oh, and at one point, my buddy Dennis said the funniest thing of the evening, which really surprised me, because it was totally something I would've said. One of the guys, Kyle, was telling about the last time he'd wet the bed, and he said, "Oh, this was twenty or twenty-five . . ." "Days ago," Dennis filled in, before Kyle said, ". . . years back."
I got a huge laugh--bigger than I ever have before--from telling the story from two years ago about my brother and his encounter with a skunk at our house. I had meant to podcast about it, but got scared off by somebody who threatened to rage-quit the show over stuff like that, so I never mentioned it (though I do tell the story in "A Sidekick's Errand"), but dang, if it was that funny, I really should have told it.
My buddy Rhett's wife, who hates Disney with the burning passion I pretty much only hate The Orange One with, started bitching about UP, WALL-E, and TOY STORY 3 (all movies she hates), while extolling the virtues of, get this, TRANSFORMERS 2. That's right, REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. I did find out, from both of them, that their son thinks I am really cool, despite me snapping at him the last time he was around when I was trying to have a conversation with his dad.
Her antipathy toward Disney should be amusing, because she's so consistent about it, but since that company brings me more joy than any other (all they'd have to do is start manufacturing Pepsi and boobies, and they'd be the only organization I would need for happiness), it's pretty tiresome. I have talked about her before, though not in much detail, but she's staunchly anti-feminist, more so than anybody I know (even my uncle with his MAGA hat collection), and it's super hard for me to get my head around that. It was like that scene early on in "Downton Abbey" when you find out the Dowager Countess is vocally against women gaining the right to vote.
Anyway, because everybody in the room had to get up early or deal with complaining, needy children, we ended the night quite early (it was a weeknight, of course, and maybe that has something to do with it). Everyone had a long drive ahead of them. But it is a testament to how wrong I was to be hesitant to go that I would have enjoyed staying just a little while longer.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In October: 1976
Push-ups Today: 67
Push-ups In October: 860
Finally, at a bit past three, I quit for the day, having outlined the next scene and its aftermath, but only getting three hundred or so words total that qualify under my super-strict definition as writing. But I don't feel ashamed, not in the slightest. There are days when I'm going to be busier than others, and that I forced myself to write a couple of paragraphs before allowing myself to go to sleep is something I am more than willing to pat myself on the back over.
Words Today: 326
Words In October: 12,317
*Just the night before, my cousin had grimaced while looking into my car, which looks worse than the ones you see by freeway overpasses where homeless people live in them. Yes, it's quite horrific, as everything is in my life. And I was reminded of that line at the end of DARKMAN, where the bad guy says, "I know you too well! You could never live with yourself!" To which, Payton Westlake says, "I'm learning to live with a lot of things."
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