Adventures in Awkwardness

It started and almost ended with a railroad track. It is a cold day in late December. I wake up early in the morning to the sound of a jackhammer tearing apart the street outside my apartment. It is loud and quite obnoxious. I sit up in bed and curse out loud. It is bad enough that I live next to a bar that plays music late into the night. I use earplugs but they don’t work at all. Despite the noise I fall back asleep and dream about a life full of mystery and excitement. I wake up an hour later and the noise of the jackhammer has stopped. I look outside to see a snowstorm, the streets fully covered in white powder. It’s funny how things change. When I was a kid I would dash into the snow, running to my neighbor’s house to see if my best friend Carl was home. I would make snow sculptures and see how far I could sled down the road. Now I am excited to take a walk. I walk through the neighborhoods surrounding the town. Everything looks the same, oak trees covered with snow lining both sides of the street. There is almost no one around. I see an older gentleman shoveling the street outside his house and some guys walking but that is pretty much it.

I decide to walk towards the park next to the river. I stop by the tiny playground near the edge of the park and sit on the swing. I came here once freshman year with a girl that was truly right for me. When the rain started to come down things got physical and everything seemed so perfect. Things stopped when she told me she wasn’t ready for a relationship and that was pretty much it. I have been in love twice since that night but I will never forget her. I never plan it but I end op coming to the playground and swinging on the swings at least once a month. I continue into the park and walk along the railway tracks, ignoring the no trespassing sign. The snow crunches under my feet as I slide on the slick wooden tracks. The tracks look wonderful covered in snow as they stretch into the distance as far as I can see before disappearing into the fog. I imagine a steam engine appearing out of the fog and revving towards me. I follow the railway tracks to the edge of the riverbank high above the water. The railway tracks go all the way across the river and form a bridge. It is just wide enough for a train and there are no safety rails on either side.

My mind swirls with thought. I wonder what would happen if I try to cross the railway bridge. It would be dangerous and scary but it is an enticing thought. I know it sounds stupid but my life has become boring and I have become complacent. I need to challenge myself to find out what I want and not let others decide things for me. I must have the courage to go after what I want. Living in fear is not easy and never satisfying. There are breaks between the planks of wood of the railway and I have to be careful. Slowly I walk from plank to plank taking my time to make sure I don’t slip. I stop after only a handful of planks and look around me. The river below me is so far and a fall would most likely take my life. The snow is intense and swirls around me. The wind has gotten stronger forcing me to kneel. Should I continue across the railway bridge despite the dangers? Am I trying to prove to myself I am not afraid to go after what I want? With the snow falling around me I come to a realization. In order to be happy and discover what I want to do with my life I need to answer one important question.

Who am I? It is a question I have asked myself since I was a young kid. We live in a society focused on labels and it is how most people define themselves so I guess that’s where I will start.  My name is Sam Davis. I am 25 years old. I graduated college last year so I guess I would be labeled a graduate. I thought when I graduated everything would magically come together. The great heavens would open up and I would have all the answers. It never quite happened that way but I did enter graduate school. The prospect of getting a job scares me to death. I think it would be so cool to buy a motorcycle and travel the country getting into mischief. I would party every night and be with beautiful women everywhere I went. It would be glorious. I made the mistake of telling my parents that’s what I wanted to do with my life and they were less than pleased. In terms of getting a well paying job in the future and pursuing the American dream it was the right call to choose graduate school. I am seeking a degree in college student development, which basically means working at a University helping students make the transition from high school to college.

Physically I am quite the dreamboat, dare I say sexy. I look exactly like Fabio except I don’t look girly and I don’t have a stupid accent. Okay that was mean and I must admit if I were a woman I would…hmmm…love him for his personality. Anywhoo, I don’t really look like Fabio. I am relatively tall. Friends would describe me as gangly, with long arms and legs. I am not muscular, but I am lean. Any muscles I do have are more because I am so thin. Upon our breakup my ex-girlfriend described me as a misshapen weather beaten beanpole. She wasn’t very nice. I have short brown hair. Sometimes I spike it in the front but usually I am too lazy to buy hair gel. I have a square face accented by a dark dimple of my left cheek. I have brown eyes and I wear thinned framed glasses. Although I sometimes wear jeans my wardrobe of choice is kakis and a polo shirt. Some people say I look like Stephen Colbert and while I wouldn’t call him a stud I take it as a compliment. He has a unique air of sexy sophistication about him and his confidence is alluring. Um…that’s what some of my lady friends have said about him anyway. It’s curious how when people are asked to describe themselves they always think about the physical.

Metaphorically I have no idea who I am. I wish I were a hippy. I would smoke a lot of grass and then maybe things would make sense. I would sit on my couch munching on week old Cheetos and speculate on the nature of the universe. It seems like potheads have the most fun. They laugh at nothing and truly live in the moment. Marijuana advocates say it helps you think more clearly. My freshman year roommate Colin, who dropped out of school after failing every class, told me Einstein theorized the concept of relativity when he was particularly stoned one evening. Thomas Newton discovered gravity while smoking a joint. There’s no way Benjamin Franklin would have flown a kite in a rainstorm to discover electricity unless he was high on something. People always say that necessity is the mother of invention. In reality laziness is the mother of invention, which is ironic really. Hmm, I am too busy to get up from my chair and change the channel on my television. Eureka, the remote control is born. Hmmm, reaching for my beer is so inconvenient. Aha, I can put a drink holder in my Lazy Boy chair. Add vibration so I can get an instant massage and I am set. The next thing you know robots are doing everything for us.

The most preposterous invention I have seen is called the Pet Petter. It is basically a wooden pole with a human like arm and hand attached. Pet owners can go on vacation without having to worry about neglect. The cat or dog can rub itself against the hand and everything is fine. For one, this concept strikes me as extremely creepy. It chaps my ass that this device actually sells and the inventor is a millionaire. It all comes full circle though. I have it on good authority that the inventor was high during the formulation of the idea and the entire patent process. There is no way it is a coincidence. Despite the occasional exception, in the end potential inventors don’t remember the ideas they had when they were high. The use of Marijuana doesn’t offer me any answers. I must be here for a reason right. I wake up, walk around aimlessly to pretend I’m doing something, and then go to bed. Ironically, this is exactly what I want to be doing when I am a senile old man. Hopefully I would also be wearing a cape and smoking a pipe. I would walk around and make small talk with the locals, discussing such thrilling topics as my unique status as the oldest superhero. When people questioned me I would hit them with my cane and remind them that anyone wearing a cape had automatic cape wielding magic powers. That does sound awesome but right now it’s not nearly as exciting.

Hmmm, would I be happier if I was actually doing something? I imagine myself working in an office somewhere making instant coffee and making idle gossip at the water cooler. If I was doing something like that I would get so bored. I would end up making photocopies of my butt and playing practical jokes on employees. I definitely have to be doing something I really enjoy and find valuable. The real question is whether I can I be lazy and do nothing while still contributing something to this world? Balance the two and my dreams and inspirations are fulfilled. I have been thinking about these questions for some time. I feel I have to answer them before I can fully mature and discover what I want to do with my life. I guess it’s best to start t the beginning. When I was ten I started to think about the bigger picture. On a briskly cold November day before my Saturday ritual of watching morning cartoons, breakfast made me think. I am chewing away at my lucky charms cereal and thinking about leprechauns. I can’t help but wonder why midgets are being used to sell cereal. Do they eat a lot of it and if they do are they allowed to eat different kinds of cereal. I have to admit at age ten I really wanted a Leprechaun. I thought if I followed a rainbow I could grab one and take it back home with me. I had a lot of deep thoughts when I was ten. Regardless, I start to compare Leprechauns to myself when I suddenly have an epiphany. I ask my dad for help.

         “Dad, who am I?”

         He doesn’t look up from his paper. He reads the paper every Saturday after breakfast. He doesn’t like to be interrupted but this was a topic I was particularly interested in. I was feeling insecure as of late and felt I would have a better understanding of my life if I discovered an answer to the ultimate question.

“You’re a monkey, now eat your porridge.”

         I must add dear reader that I hate porridge and wonder why I keep eating it. Oliver Twist and his hapless gang of orphans ate such mush and they were well…poor. I like money and I want to make lots of it some day. I dream of having so much money I bath in it just for fun, paper cuts be damned. When I was younger my hero was Scrooge McDuck, so rich he had piles of gold coins stored away in a vault. When I was five I wondered why more ducks didn’t own large mansions. I figured the ducks that I saw wandering around the pond in town were just poor and homeless. I felt bad for them. It is unfair they have to wander around poor and alone when a pompous elitist duck was hogging all the wealth. Not to mention the duck thinks he’s so special he doesn’t have to wear pants. The children’s cartoon show was definitely promoting indecent exposure. Orphans also wear those goofy little sideways hats. How did those hats become trendy anyway? Those stupid beatniks wear those hats, drinking cappuccino out of tiny cups with their pinkies up. They write poetry they think is “deep”. Anyone who reads “save my soul poetry” in one of those hats doesn’t have a soul.

         “I don’t understand dad. I don’t feel like a monkey. Why don’t I have a tail and fur? The monkeys at the zoo make all these weird noises and fling their own poo.”

         Dad puts down his newspaper and glares at me. He always reads the sports section and rambles about how athletes are getting paid too much. He’s really just mad he never made it to the pros. He played rugby in college and apparently was quite good. As legend has it, meaning he tells the story every time he is drunk, when he visited Australia to play in a tournament despite a broken leg he had the winning score. Sometimes when he tells the story he has a broken leg and a broken arm or maybe two broken legs. Once when he had drunken a little too much scotch he told me he was paralyzed from the legs down and had to drag himself on his arms to score. The worst part of it all was I believed him, wondering how he had made such a wonderful recovery. I bragged to my friends at school of my dad’s accomplishments but they still gave me swirlies. They were just jealous.

         “You’re a monkey damn it! It’s called evolution. Wait; don’t tell me you haven’t learned about this in school yet. I am gong to call your teacher and have a word with her.”

         “But…I don’t understand dad.”

         “Think about it this way, maybe in a former life it was you that flung the poo?”

         “What does that mean. Dad, I just don’t know…why am I here?”

         My dad looks at me. On the outside he looks calm and collected but in his head he is cursing. He assumes the best way to answer this is to talk about sex. Was this the appropriate time for the “talk”? My dad had practiced having this conversation in the mirror but it always ended badly.  The more he talked the more confused he would get and he would end up having questions of his own. If I were indeed ready the explanation would have to be handled delicately.

         “Son, your mom and I…we got married because we were in love. You see it’s complicated. We…did this thing…”

         “What do you mean?”

         Oh boy my dad thinks. Maybe he could tape record a well thought out speech and play it at just the right moment. There would be no awkward explanations and hopefully no follow up questions. Wasn’t he too young to be thinking about this anyway my dad thinks? My dad needed an explanation that would work until I was older.

         “A stork…”

         “What’s a stork?”

         “It’s a bird. A stork dropped you off on our doorstep. You were wrapped in a cloth and placed in a basket.”

         “You said I was a monkey. Now I’m a bird. ”

         I would rather be a monkey than a bird. Monkeys may fling their own poo but they can be smart. I went to the zoo in Washington D.C. and saw Bobo the monkey solve the Rubik’s cube in less than a minute. That damn thing gives me a headache. After the monkey solved the cube, Bobo looked directly at me and frowned. He then proceeded to make loud farting noises. The monkey was clearly mocking me. Birds on the other hand just repeat what they hear and fly into windows. They are clearly uncoordinated and can’t think for themselves.

         “No, No. You’re not really a monkey. You were once a monkey. I know it doesn’t make much sense now, but…”

         “So I turned into a bird. That’s awesome. I always wanted to be a dragon and breath fire. Why couldn’t I be a dragon baby? None of this makes any sense.”

         Hmmm, there had to be a better way. Apparently my grandparent’s never talked about sex to my father although that was more common in those days.

         “Let’s go into the living room.”

         Dad sits on the couch and I sit across from him on the Lazy boy. There is an awkward silence as my dad stares at me. He crosses his arms and furrows his brow. I feel like I am about to be yelled at. I have no idea what is going on but he is making me uncomfortable. He smoothes his pants and clears his throat.

         “This is a tough topic but I believe you are mature enough to talk about it. I am going to tell you about the birds and the bees…”

         “You mean a stork.”

         “What, no.”

         “You told me the bird that brought me here was a stork.”

         “No, no. Okay, there is no Stork. Just forget that. Let’s start over.”

         Dad is getting frustrated.  He now knows it was probably a mistake to talk about sex with me at such an early age. The stork explanation is obviously not working. He wants to be direct and just tell me that I came out of my mom’s vagina and leave it at that but that might be hard to grasp. Dad breathes out heavily.

“Okay, I’m going to level with you…your mom and I got together…you know, physically. Wonderful things happened and you came along.”

         “Wonderful things? What do you mean?”

         “Your mother and I had…okay, you were inside your mother and…uh…that sounds weird. You should talk to your mother about this.”

          More confused than ever I went to my mom for guidance. I find her in the laundry room putting laundry into the washer. She doesn’t look pleased.

         “None of these socks match. There are tall ones, small ones, and ones with different logos. There are not two socks alike. I bought you new ones last week. How does this happen?”

         My mom is usually a calm person. Her philosophy is getting all worked up over something never accomplishes anything. Contrary to her philosophy laundry makes her angry. Mismatched socks send her into a tizzy. I once made the mistake of telling her they were just socks and nothing to get made about. Smoke started coming out of her ears and then her head exploded.

         “Mom, I have a question for you. I just don’t understand who I am?

         “How many socks total do you think this is? I just don’t understand where they all go. It’s like the spoons in this household. Somehow we don’t have anymore. They all magically disappear.”

         Mom takes a deep breath and smoothes her apron.

         “Honey, I don’t mean to get so upset. You can be whatever you want to be.”

         Wow, I think, that sounds great. I have dreamed about being a fire-breathing dragon, protecting a castle with a wide moat and turrets stretching high into the sky. In the highest tower is a fair maiden locked away in the tallest tower. It is my duty to protect her from the evils of the world. I would say the many soldiers that manned the castle could do it but I ate them. An empty stomach outweighs a heavy conscious. This is probably not what my mom is referring to though.

         “But, I don’t know my place in this world.”

         “Well, what is your dream job?”

         I have never understood why people are always so focused on their jobs. I am struggling with identity and a job is just a small part of that. I realize now that my job is not what defines me as a person. When I was ten though, my mom’s question did make me think.

         “Well, I think being a firefighter would be neat”

         “See there you go. It’s a very noble job and I think you would be great at it; carrying big hoses and fighting fires. If that’s…

         “No, not a real firefighter. A Lego firefighter.”

         “What?’

         “Or Lego Batman. I haven’t really decided yet. Or I could be a Lego pirate commanding my own ship and getting advice from my own Lego parrot.”

         My mother looks puzzled. I haven’t seen this look since I was three and I stuck a cooked carrot up my nose. I had to go to the emergency room so they could remove it. By the time a doctor saw me it was the wee hours of the morning and the carrot had to be removed with large tweezers. It was quite the ordeal. I’m not really sure why I did it. I could have been jealous of the attention my sister got and I did it so my parents would notice me. I believe I simply missed my mouth and got confused. My parent’s have been helping me find my way ever since but in that moment I helped my mom realize something. I didn’t need to plan ahead for the future and decide so early on what I wanted to do with my life. Childhood is a precious thing.

         “You’re young. Right now just enjoy being a kid.”

I realize she’s right. I am young and I should live in the moment. Things were different when I was a kid. I felt little pressure to think about the future. My immediate concerns are what size Slurpee I want or where my sister keeps her diary. I’m 25 now and the innocence of childhood has passed. Some things don’t change though. I’m still as confused as I was when I was ten. I’m not sure what the perfect job for me is and I wonder if that’s a trap. I mean no job is perfect and I don’t need a job to make me happy. Even though I’m in school a part of me feels empty. What do I want and more importantly do I have the courage to go after it. I ask you to come on a journey with me dear reader. I will attempt to explore the moments and experiences that make me who I am today. The experiences cover different periods of my life, starting with childhood and ending with where I am today. I don’t offer epiphanies or even truth. I simply offer a portrait of a man exploring whom he is in the memories that have shaped his life. I present to you, dear reader, awkward moments and memories that I have experienced throughout my life. Each story offers insight into what I learned and how it shaped me. Enjoy!