I can’t bear to send my kids outside to the bus on bitter Minnesota mornings. Maybe it’s guilt, perhaps pity—probably both. Either way, if I decide it’s too cold, I announce I will take them to school, scoffing at the idea of forcing them to walk.
The universe seeks balance.
Cheers.
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“At this time, we’d like to welcome customers needing assistance or additional assistance to board.”
That announcement was my least favorite part of traveling alone as a child for various reasons—primarily because of how singled out it made me.
I could feel strangers’ eyes on me as an airline employee walked me to the gate, ensuring I wasn’t lost in transit. I wondered what stories they concocted about a thirteen-year-old traveling alone from Syracuse, NY, to Minneapolis, MN.
The freedom that comes along with a trip alone halfway across the country—with a layover in Detroit—gives a teenager in the throes of puberty a high unlike any other.
Decked out in K-Swiss kicks, baggy Tommy Hilfiger carpenter shorts with a braided belt, a matching Hilfiger tee, a puka shell necklace, an overwhelming amount of Hilfiger cologne, and a Discman clutched in my hand—I did my best to look important. I was oblivious to the fact that each attempt to mask my teenage awkwardness only highlighted it further.
I spent my first seven years in upstate New York, where I met my oldest friend. He lived two blocks away in the small town of Ogdensburg, on the shore of the St. Lawrence River—a river that became our playground.
When I moved to Minnesota, staying in touch with him wasn’t easy. We were learning to read and write then, and long-distance phone calls in the ’90s were more expensive than a plane ticket—or so my parents insisted.
A summer trip became a tradition.
Often, I would fly out with my parents. They would stay for a week and then head back to Minnesota, while I remained in New York, halfway across the country (you’ve gotta love the nineties), for an additional week and then flew home as an unaccompanied minor.
I much preferred the latter since my parents turned into different people when they got within five miles of an airport—and this was pre-9/11.
We would spend our days swimming in the frigid, crystal-clear blue water of the St. Lawrence River until we were too exhausted to fight the current.
We would shove peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into our mouths in wet swimsuits, forming wet spots on the carpet as we rewatched our favorite movies from the limited selection of VHS tapes at camp, with the distant sound of boats coming from the river.
For my Midwestern friends: camp = cabin.
One summer, we watched Forrest Gump at least once a day for two weeks. It turns out that this does little for a person. Well, aside from making them irritating to servers at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. when you suggest their trivia questions aren’t challenging enough by throwing trivia questions back at them.
On rainy days, we played board games whose boxes were disintegrating due to humidity and years of use.
We skipped rocks, perfected ’N Sync dances, roasted marshmallows, and memorized the lyrics to “Summer Girls” by LFO.
As LFO would say, “I think about that summer, and I bug ’cause I miss it.”
As we grew up, he began taking trips to Minnesota.
Impossibly, we both found our footing immediately within each other’s friend groups. These microbursts of time allowed us to be a better version of ourselves, free from the insecurities that plagued us in school with our day-to-day friends.
I felt exotic. Girls giggled when a Minnesota “oh” would come through in words like “boat.” People were interested in me instantly, so the most challenging part of making friends—breaking the ice—was eliminated.
The distance didn’t stop me from crushing on girls from both states, adding hormone-fueled excitement to my trips.
Year after year, we would pack the best summer we could imagine into less than two weeks.
That’s another reason I despised hearing that boarding call at the gate.
It was then that a lump formed in my throat, and tears stung my eyes—another perfect summer vacation had ended.
I began questioning how long our friendship would last as I got older. The question was undoubtedly brought on by jealousy, as solid friendships formed with others over the fifty weeks we weren’t together each year.
“Singing in My Sleep” by Semisonic played through my headphones as I took my seat on the plane. The melody of that song brings me back to that tarmac every time I hear it.
For that, I have my best friend’s mom to thank. She always sent me home with a gift, often hidden in my suitcase. This year, she gave me Feeling Strangely Fine by Semisonic, an album I adore to this day.
I was thumbing through coins in my hand when my seatmate, a white-haired woman who smelled like peppermint, sat down next to me. I smiled and went back to examining a Canadian toonie.
Yes, the two-dollar coin is actually called a “toonie.” Oh, Canada—never change.
“Do you know how many animals are on that coin?” she said, buckling her seat belt.
“One?” I studied the scenery around the polar bear on the back of the coin, thinking I’d find a bird flying in the background.
“Six.” She raised her eyebrows as her red lipstick formed a smirk.
I gave her a skeptical smile back. She held out her hand for the coin.
Canadian Toonie
“Everyone can see the polar bear, but if you turn the coin upside down”—she spun the coin in her hand and covered the bottom half with her thumb—“cover the bear’s body… There. The bear’s legs turn into four seals.”
Hidden Seals
“That’s pretty cool.” I adjusted in my seat, interested in where the sixth animal would come from.
She held the coin back in her palm and gave it a quarter turn. She picked it up, covering the bear’s head and forelegs with her thumb.
“And the tyrannosaurus rex makes six. Some people think it looks like the T-Rex is eating a seal, and that makes seven, but I’ll leave that up to you.”
Hidden T-Rex
She was a gift from the universe. I shudder to think what that plane ride would’ve been like if I’d been left alone to brood in my teenage angst.
We talked to each other most of the flight, and she distracted me from wondering if the next trip would be the one when it didn’t click—if it would be the meeting when we discovered that the ember that kept our friendship going had been extinguished. I would catalog new things I liked or new hobbies I’d developed and wonder if those would be the things that would fracture our friendship.
On the second leg of my trip, it was clear the universe wasn’t done with me. My seatmate turned out to be a twenty-something woman traveling the world on her way to California. She had a worn backpack adorned with patches and keychains. Her chocolate hair was wrapped up in a messy bun. She told me about her globe-trotting adventures in her French accent.
Our conversation began when I showed her the number of animals on the back of a toonie.
A real toonie, for one.
Of course, that trip was not the last good one. The tradition of making sure we see each other at least once a year has continued through middle school, junior high, high school, college, jobs, and kids from halfway across the country.
This year has been hectic with life changes for both of us, so it seemed that meeting wasn’t in the cards.
On a chilly, sun-filled Friday morning in October in Minnesota, I was forcing my wife to watch videos my friend and I had filmed of ourselves and texted to each other earlier that week. She stood in our entryway, confused as she tried to identify the humor in the videos.
We were getting ready to walk out the door to get a coffee as I talked about how much I loved that he and I recorded goofy videos for each other.
Then the doorbell rang.
A man with a beard, camo hat, and Spirit Halloween bag stood on my front deck as my wife flattened herself against the wall to avoid being seen.
I would have been up against the wall nine times out of ten with her, but this looked like nothing more than a delivery—not someone trying to sell me a Kirby vacuum.
I greeted the man, who was distracted by his phone. I regretted opening the door, but he finally looked up, pulled down his fake beard, and revealed a familiar grin.
The Surprise
Not many people can honestly say they have had a friend their entire life.
I can.
He was there when I was born and has remained a constant—a source of laughter and advice.
Some friendships endure because both people work at it, and others just are.
I’ve sat at the end of a dock—listening to the water of the St. Lawrence River flow by, drinking beer and talking until the sun starts to come up—long enough to know our friendship is the latter.
As I watched the hours tick down on the final day of his most recent visit, dreading every passing minute, I tried to reframe the situation.
I always thought of the boarding announcements at the airport as the end of a good time.
I spun that thought around, just like the woman had shown me with the toonie, and looked at it from a new perspective. The announcements did not ask me to board a flight traveling away from a good time; they were taking me to the next one.
So I wait, never wholly rid of the fear that the next meeting will be when things don’t click—until we meet again, and they do.
Good, but not great; decent, but not bad. If my life were a train ride, I’d say I’ve spent forty years rumbling along the tracks, unsure of where I’m headed but always moving forward. My journey has been filled with missed stops, unexpected detours, and many freight cars packed with regrets trailing behind me.
As a tween and teenager, I found myself at Spencer’s Gifts in every mall that had one, always eager for an escape from that train ride. Spencer’s was the store equivalent of jumping off the tracks and sneaking into an R-rated movie before you were of legal age. They were famous for their posters, graphic T-shirts, blacklight-themed decor, and cashiers who sported their best Goth look while being irritated with every customer’s audacity to breathe the same oxygen.
Old habits die hard, of course, so this past spring, when I came across a Spencer’s, I had no choice but to check out how the store has evolved since the late twentieth century.
One of the first graphic tees I saw hanging on the wall was bright red with white lettering, which read: “Don’t Bully Me, I’ll Cum.” It may be the best shirt I’ve seen in my forty years.
I was there to find a specific section I remember from my teenage years, so I browsed the store while “Believe” by Disturbed played over the speakers. I paused momentarily to confirm that my jeans hadn’t turned into the baggy, carpenter jeans designed by Tommy Hilfiger I wore in the late nineties.
As I wandered through Spencer’s, it felt like I had stopped the train for a moment, stepping back into a time when I was blissfully unaware of how fast that train would start picking up speed. I came across the posters, which, to my pleasant surprise, have yet to be updated since the early 2000s. There were posters of the Playboy logo, Scarface, Pulp Fiction, 2Pac, Sublime, The Smashing Pumpkins, and the timeless Pink Floyd “Back Catalogue.”
The blacklight section is still adorned with blacklight mushroom candles and sculptures positioned directly next to the lava lamps.
As I continued searching for the section I was looking for, I came to the store’s back wall, and I froze as I took it all in, mouth and eyes both open wide.
“Do you want me to get something down for you?”
“What? No. No. No, thank you. Just lookin’,” I said to the twenty-year-old sales associate as she glared at me with a look aimed at informing me I had indeed been breathing too much of her oxygen.
The back wall of Spencer’s was adorned with hundreds of sex toys ranging in sizes from beginner to, err, expert(?).
I turned my back to the wall of sex and was faced with the novelty bachelor/bachelorette party gifts. While turning to stare at gummies and straws in the shape of penises wasn’t the exact escape I was looking for, it was an improvement from having a twenty-year-old offer to get a giant dildo down from the top row of the sex wall.
I found the remnants of the section I was looking for next to the “Pin the Junk on the Hunk” poster game.
There was a tiara with “Birthday Bitch” on it, a shot glass with the words “Birthday Bitch” printed on it, and a glitter-colored wine glass that read “Birthday Bitch.”
In high school, the birthday section was stocked with “over-the-hill” gag gifts full of sophomoric humor. I remember seeing a cane with a horn attached to the handle and emergency adult diapers packaged behind a thin piece of plastic with “In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass.” These products were not as sophisticated as adding “Birthday Bitch” to drinkware, but they can’t all be winners.
As I laughed at jokes built from the lowest common denominator with my friends, I would also imagine my life when I turned forty.
Where will I be living? Will I have any of the same friends? Will I have children? What will my hair look like? These are the thoughts that would run through my mind as I rode along the train tracks of youth, oblivious to the steep hills and sharp turns ahead.
I would never have a specific goal in mind because my perception of life has been that I am on a train driven by an unknown conductor headed to an unknown destination. If I am kind, polite, and well-behaved, the conductor will give me a little extra time at stops along the way and, at minimum, will keep the bar cart sufficiently stocked.
Regrets? They fill the freight cars added to the end of my train, trailing behind as I ride the iron rails of this journey through life. Those cars are heavy and without brakes. They make the climb up hills taxing and the trips down perilous. The heaviest car among them is filled with the realization that I could’ve taken the highway.
When the tracks run parallel, I often find myself in my observation car, face pressed to the glass in awe at the freedom people in their vehicles have to stop at roadside attractions or take an exit they hadn’t planned.
If only someone would have written a song in the early nineties informing me that life is, in fact, a highway.
As I imagined my forty-year-old self in a dimly lit store reading gag birthday cards about impotence, I felt desperation for the confidence and knowledge that comes with being that old. I longed for a “boring” life as an adult filled with more certainty than uncertainty.
I wish so desperately that I was writing to inform you that I have finally made it. I would tell you this piece was written from a place of certainty and peace about the man I have become. I’d say to you that those silly self-conscious thoughts were due to the hormones racing through my body, and I am comfortable with myself.
I might make fun of myself for caring so deeply about what people thought of me, both in appearance and as a person. Or, I’d write out prolific life lessons I’ve gotten along the way that would provide you with an unexpected “aha” moment, leading to the last change you needed to round out your already wonderful life.
Instead, while my body has not escaped the effects of the passage of time, my brain hasn’t aged a day.
I know this because I am desperate for your approval, literally. All I want to do right now is give up and leave the words I have written saved in a document as “Untitled 11.” As a forty-year-old, I live my life desperate for a like or share on social media or even a minor compliment as a clue I haven’t completely fucked up my entire life by believing I could make a career from writing.
When those feelings bubble up, my train can become a lonely place. The dark outside makes it difficult to believe I am heading in the right direction. My instincts tell me to pull the emergency brake and get off before the entire thing derails.
Every time I reach for the brake, I am stopped.
The one thing my teenage self was sure of was that my train ride would be much more fun if I had someone on board with me.
Her name is Jenni, and I asked her aboard at 8:05 AM on October 8, 1999.
I couldn’t believe she got on then, and every day, I am equally astonished that she is still here. Because, of course, she doesn’t belong here. She should be on the highway or up in the air on one of those jets I see soaring in all directions.
Yet, no matter how many times I have pointed out these superior options to her over the past twenty-five years, she tells me she loves our train.
She stokes the burners when those cars full of regret start to slow us down. When we sit beside each other in the observation car, she points out the beautiful scenery past the highway. And when we head to the bar car, she makes the people on the road wish they were on our train.
Regardless of how many cars full of regret I have acquired over the years, I would still walk back down the mountains and valleys, through storms and sunshine, and across the two-and-a-half decades to find my fifteen-year-old self and hug him.
I’d hug him because having the courage to ask Jenni aboard this train feels like the most crucial decision of my life.
Over the past twenty-five years, she has brought me our two wonderful children, millions of smiles and laughs, and got me through some of the darkest times of my life.
I apologize if you came here looking for the answers about being an adult I was starving to find inside Spencer’s gifts all those years ago. I wish I had a manual or even the hubris to pretend I have the wisdom to write one, but I don’t.
All I’ve got is this:
However, you choose to travel through this life, whether by plane, train, or automobile, don’t do it alone.
Do it with someone who laughs with you. Do it with someone who cries with you. Do it with the person who knows moving forward is just as important, if not more so, than moving in the exact right direction.
My beard has white hair now, I think hard before doing any physical activity, and I have started to squint while trying to read a menu in a dimly lit restaurant.
But when I look into Jenni’s eyes and she smiles at me, I am a fifteen-year-old again whispering, “Will you go out with me?” into her ear.
Twenty-five years later, if I shut my eyes and listen hard, I can still hear the echo of her whispering, “Yes.”
New trains with faster engines and modern accommodations leave the station every day. It’s easy to watch them zip by and think the trip would be better on a new train.
However, if I do have a bit of wisdom from these forty years, it’s that each time I have taken an opportunity to tour these trains to see what I’m missing, I walk away muttering a phrase only an old guy would coin:
“They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to.”
So, if you need us, we’ll be in the bar car dancing to and singing our favorite songs. We won’t know where we’re headed, but everyone is welcome, and Jenni will make sure it’s the ride of your life.
There are the nights you anticipate, knowing it will be unforgettable. Then, there are the nights that surpass your expectations. On the latter of those nights, the gravity of the experience steals your breath as you realize you are living one of those nights.
In that moment of realization, time slows down. Everything sharpens: the features on the faces around you are more vivid, and their chatter and laughter are more melodic.
Since 2018, I have observed a marked shift in Jenni’s attitude and drive. I might have attributed this growth to the wisdom and experience that come along with years of hard work, but after attending the WaveMaker Awards, I realized there was more to it.
I nominated Jenni for the Community Impact Award, given to women who make giving back to the community and/or youth a top priority in ways that promote the development of others, either through their work or through volunteer efforts. I nominated her because it is astonishing how much of her time Jenni dedicates to various organizations while caring for our family.
When I opened my email on July 12th and saw Jenni had won, my reaction was more relief than shock.
Whenever I tell her, “You are absolutely stunning,” or, “You are so talented,” her response is always the same.
“You have to say that because you love me.”
My desperation for acknowledgment of her hard work had been growing as I watched her excel professionally, complete her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Minnesota, serve on multiple boards, all while dazzling everyone she meets.
In other words, it was about damn time.
Having never attended a TeamWomen event before the awards ceremony, I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that Jenni would receive an award and have a minute on the stage to dazzle the crowd with her charm and intelligence – and I couldn’t wait.
As we entered the elegant ballroom adorned with ornate furniture and gorgeous chandeliers, the buzz of the attendees was palpable. Everyone I spoke with was kind and inviting.
We sat down for the ceremony honoring twenty-two women who would be awarded awards across various categories throughout the evening. Each was given a minute to answer a pre-selected question on stage.
Throughout the ceremony, I was in awe of the women who walked across the stage. Each came from vastly different backgrounds and shared unique stories, yet they were all impressive. Entrepreneurs, C-Suite Executives, volunteers, and even a high school senior all shared valuable insights about their journeys. However, it wasn’t their accomplishments that made them impressive; instead, it is the thing every honoree had in common: their spirit and drive.
At some point, all of these incredible women have been given the message (directly or indirectly) that they didn’t belong because they were women.
And yet, they persisted.
My heart swelled as I sat with our 5-year-old daughter, listening to the empowering stories of women who got what they wanted because they didn’t quit and found a supportive community to give them the help they needed when they needed it most.
“Two more women, then it’s Mommy’s turn,” she whispered to me as she followed along with the ceremony program in her hand.
She beamed at me when her mother graced the stage in her elegant floral patterned dress, looking the part of an award winner. The emcee asked her the pre-selected question…
And Jenni absolutely killed it.
It would be easy to assume she always accepts awards if you didn’t know her. She spoke with poise and drew everyone in. She told a joke that not only got laughs but got an applause break as well. Tears welled in my eyes as she spoke.
Fortunately for my ego, they started to play her off as she began to mention me.
Now, if she had been talking about anything else, I would have gone to the sound booth and clarified to the person running the controls that my wife would get as much time on stage as she needed.
However, it felt merciful when the music started, just as she began to mention me. There is only so much public crying a guy can make it through, you know?
It’s something special to watch someone in their element. It’s even more remarkable when that person is your spouse.
Watching Jenni work a networking room is like watching a prolific artist paint. Her tools become extensions of herself, and every interaction seems effortless.
On these nights, I watch her from across the room. No matter the distance, I see the sparkle in her eye, hear the pitch of her laughter amid the crowd, and fall in love all over again as she makes others fall in love with her.
Thank you, TeamWomen, for providing a place for Jenni to thrive. Thank you for offering a place for our daughter to see that all options are on the table for her in this life. Whether she wants to open and run a brewery, become a professional wakeboarder, lead a company as CEO, or anything in between, she’ll grow up knowing that she can and doesn’t need to do it alone.
Thank you, Clementine, for being your mother’s daughter. As a Kindergartener, you recognized the importance of the night and never wavered in your decision to attend an event with a bunch of boring adults. As I’ve written recently, I love you for that and a million other reasons.
Jenni and Clementine watching the TeamWomen WaveMaker Awards
Thank you, Jenni, for attacking every day, taking risks, and giving our daughter a front-row seat to learn from the best.
Maybe Jenni is right; maybe I have to say these things because I love her.
“Am I?” I ask, running my hand along my forearm, “I guess I am.”
Before we move on, it’s essential to disclose that I’m not too fond of the wind. In fact, I despise it. I am not a sailor or kite enthusiast. I only find the wind beneficial when it cools me down on a hot day, unless I’m on the golf course.
While returning from a walk on a windy day late this spring, I noticed a small section of shingles that appeared to be missing near the highest peak of my roof. I snapped a picture with my phone and decided since I knew nothing about roofs, I would look for someone who did.
My ability to ignore problems that I presume to be expensive is near a super-human level.
That’s going to be expensive. Let’s ignore it, I thought when I felt my molar crack after biting into a boneless wing at Buffalo Wild Wings in my late twenties. Of course, my tooth had been sore for a while before it broke. An average person would have gone to a dentist as soon as possible. I pride myself on being below average, so I lived with aching pain on the left side of my face for at least a year.
I discovered I could chew on one side of my mouth, and Ibuprofen would help me through most of it. What makes me so impressive is my ability to fight through the times when the pain consumed almost the entire left side of my face and still find a way to ignore the fact the problem would be solved by making an appointment. The bright side? Root canals aren’t bad when you have been in agony for months, aside from the Endodontist remarking at how sore the tooth must’ve been multiple times throughout the procedure.
I knew. Jesus, I knew.
As days turned to weeks, my house felt like a sore tooth every time it rained. I would wince at the sight of dark clouds, knowing I had a potential problem above my head.
The last week of June, the doorbell rang in the middle of the day. I answered, ignoring my desire to fall into my regular hiding routine when someone comes to my door. I worry, occasionally, that saying, “Don’t open the door,” as though the cartel or a bookie to whom I owe money is standing on the other side of the door hoping to get in, will give my children a complex.
I guess I will find out in about twenty years or so.
I answered the door with the swagger of a man with nothing to hide, and a young man in his early twenties stood on my front step. He launched into his pitch when I opened the door, offering me a free roof inspection for hail damage.
“I don’t know about hail damage, but I want to show a spot I know needs attention,” I said as he followed me into my front lawn to get a better vantage point to look at the section of roof I had seen in the spring.
“I actually don’t know a lot about what happens next, but if you would like us to do an inspection, my boss will come over and take a look. He can answer your questions.”
When the boss man came to my door, he told me we had hail in August 2023. I informed him about the spot on my roof I was concerned about, but he made it clear his mission was to get on my roof and find hail damage. I left him to look around on my roof.
He finished his inspection in fifteen minutes and informed me he had found hail damage. He started scrolling through pictures of my roof on his phone; at least, that’s what he said. It could have been a picture of any roof. That is not to say I thought he was tricking me, but more to demonstrate that my knowledge of shingles is limited to the disgusting virus that showed up on my arm a couple of years ago.
The salesman also showed me a crack in my siding, which I immediately called out was caused by my eight-year-old and not Mother Nature. My honesty was not the correct answer, as he explained that it had the characteristics of hail damage.
He quickly explained the order of events, and I signed a few documents on an iPad.
No, I didn’t read the agreements I was signing. Yes, he told me what the agreements said. No, I wasn’t listening. No, I didn’t ask any questions. Yes, I’m aware I should have gotten clarification on what I was agreeing to.
My brain shut off when I recognized that getting a brand new roof due to hail damage is a big game I am forced to play because I own a house.
He quickly had a representative from my home insurance company on speaker phone and began filing a claim. By the time he left, I had convinced myself all of this was great news since he seemed confident my insurance company would agree that I needed a new roof and new siding, all for the low price of my $1,000 insurance deductible.
The following morning, I found myself in a terrific mood, trying to slow the pace of our Wednesday morning by snuggling with my daughter on the couch before taking her to daycare. Then, I got a text message from my insurance company, which gave me a brief policy outline and informed me about the cost of my deductible.
Immediately, my mood improved as I patted myself on the back for remembering the cost of my deductible despite not thinking about home insurance since we bought our house six years ago. I read on to discover there was a little more to the story.
This is when the heat in my chest began to build, and every inch of my skin started to sweat, prompting my daughters question. It turns out my deductible for wind and hail damage is $11,820.
The extra twenty dollars feels a little excessive, doesn’t it?
I understand the reaction to that dollar amount will vary. I am aware that relative to the cost of a new roof and siding, it is a drop in the bucket. However, it feels substantial when you are an unemployed writer with an exceptionally small following.
After I got my kids to school, I occupied the rest of my time conjuring up the different scenarios and paths I would lead my family down to financial ruin because I quit my job.
It’s odd to be acutely aware when my mind spirals out of control. I have a voice in my head shouting rationalizations. Unfortunately, that voice exists in the way back of the vehicle, driving off a cliff into a pit of despair.
A week later, I had an appointment with a roofing company representative and an adjuster from my insurance company. The plan was for the two of them to climb up on my roof and determine my fate as I curled up in the fetal position in my shower, fully clothed. However, due to the kind of communication you would expect from an insurance company, the adjuster never showed up.
The gentleman from the roofing company got up to take a look for himself and promised to specifically examine the section of my roof that had started this mess. When he finished, he told me it looked like the section of roof I noticed had been previously repaired, but a shingle was missing up there. He then informed me, with confidence, that there was hail damage on the roof, and it would more than likely need to be replaced. The humid, eighty-five-degree weather allowed the sweat forming all over my body to go unnoticed. Or, at least, unquestioned.
I spent the next forty-eight hours trying to decide what soul-sucking job I should find to eat up the next twenty-five to thirty years of my life while I awaited the rescheduled appointment with the adjuster.
A statistic about worry has popped up in multiple memes, videos, and posts on the internet. Cornell University did a study on worry and found 85% of what the subjects studied worried about never happened. With the 15% that did happen, subjects discovered they could handle it better than expected. I have yet to find the data on this study, but when I first read this statistic, I thought: I’m worried those people don’t know how to worry properly.
Of course, we don’t need to find this study to know it is true. Even the most unseasoned of worriers know that most of the time, the real bad stuff in life is not the things that consume our thoughts. Instead, the bad stuff barges in unannounced, like the Kool-Aid Man.
Knowing this doesn’t stop me.
When the insurance adjuster and the roofer showed up for the rescheduled appointment, I braced myself as I listened to their footsteps on the roof like a couple of reverse Santa Clause’s searching for a way to take eleven thousand dollars up the chimney. I distracted myself from that by wondering what my deductible would be if they took a wrong step and fell off my roof.
The moment of truth came with a tap-tappity-tap-tap on my front door from the insurance adjuster.
After greeting me with one of the limpest handshakes I have ever been a part of, he began to give me his assessment of the damage. I braced for what I deemed to be the inevitable.
“Well, I got up there and took a look around. I have to say your roof is in great shape. There are some small impressions from hail…” I stopped listening as relief swept through my body, and I eyed the roofer. I expected to see an eye roll or a slight shake of the head as he listened to an assessment directly contradicting the reports I had gotten on the status of my roof. To my surprise, he stood resolute with a poker face that could inspire Lady Gaga to write a hit single.
I decided to check back into the assessment. The insurance adjuster continued, “… you are missing a shingle, so you should get that repaired. Otherwise, your roof is in great shape.”
I positioned my hand for a fist bump to avoid another wet noodle handshake. The fist bump was only a fraction less awkward.
As the adjuster made his way to his truck, the roofer started in with his final assessment, “Yeah… So… Like he said, you’re roof is in good shape, and you just need to repair that shingle.”
We had a brief discussion as I had questions, shockingly, about the cost of repairing a single shingle on a roof. He made it sound like they would send somebody out to fix it with little trouble.
I decided to ask him what he thought about my wind and hail deductible, thinking that since he has these conversations often, he could let me know if my current deductible is higher than average.
I missed the answer to my question because he spun off on a fifteen-minute tangent about hurricane insurance and how expensive it is for people who live in hurricane regions. As a guy in Minnesota who will never move to a state in a hurricane zone, this information will surely come in handy.
As the roofer walked to his truck, I allowed myself a moment to enjoy the relief with the hot summer sun shining on my face. I imagine it’s what Andy Dufresne felt like his first morning on the beach in Zihuatanejo.
The following morning, my phone rang. It was another roofing company offering a free inspection. Another roofing company called in the afternoon. Over the next ten days, I would receive forty-two calls from people wanting to get on my roof to check for damage.
As I write this, my shingle is yet to be repaired. To make life more interesting, I have two weeks to find a new home insurance company as my current company is leaving the country.
You may ask yourself, how can he continue to put these things off, knowing they will only cause unnecessary and prolonged anxiety?
As the old saying goes, I am one shingle short of a complete roof. Literally.
I sit down for breakfast with most of my ten roommates at the Boston Market on University Avenue near the University of Minnesota campus. We leave the gray drizzle and get a table big enough to seat our group of college undergrads, all nursing hangovers.
No hangover cure works like a cheap, greasy breakfast—at least, not one I know of. A Greek yogurt parfait, half a grapefruit, and a green smoothie may also do the trick. Still, I prefer a breakfast skillet with questionable hollandaise dumped on the top, which pushes me toward the line of bowel incontinence.
Looking back through my mind’s eye, it’s hard to believe any of the guys seated at that table have become successful and fathers.
This was not a lazy breakfast. We had business that needed our attention.
The weekend before the final exams for the spring semester has been special on the U of M campus since 1942. However, it wasn’t until the early otts that the University began to book bands and reserve a place for them to perform. The names of the artists booked have historically been underwhelming, but I wouldn’t know, as parties are held all over campus to celebrate spring jam for the bargain price of five dollars per solo cup.
For my roommates and me, the coup de gras of parties was held in the parking lot behind the houses at what some people called “11th & Uni” (11th Street and University Avenue) while others called it “10th & 4th” (10th Avenue SE and SE 4th Street). Neither was better than the other as it got you to the same place. On Spring Jam weekend, that parking lot would host the keg race.
If you’re unfamiliar with a keg race, I’ll explain the rules, but first, what is drinking responsibly like?
The rules of a keg race are simple:
1. Assemble a team of seasoned binge drinkers.
2. Buy a keg and tap (*Note: The tap can be rented, but you should be aware you may forfeit a pretty hefty security deposit if you don’t return it to the liquor store in working order).
3. Drink until the keg is empty. If you are the first to complete this task, you are rewarded with nothing but pride(?).
Our business at breakfast was the keg race—specifically, how to win it. We had been talking through strategies over the week, but nothing had piqued our interest.
“What will really slow us down is having to piss all the time,” someone said.
“Well, there is no getting around the fact that drinking beer makes you have to pee,” another of my roommates countered.
Do you ever have an idea that is equal parts genius and stupidity? An idea whose mixture is such that voicing it is a no-lose proposition because you will either be lauded as a forward thinker or everyone thinks you are telling a hilarious joke?
“We could pee and drink simultaneously if we wore diapers,” I said.
Everyone looked at me, processing what I had just said. Then, the discussion started with an even split between pro and anti-diaper people, and that is how it remained until we realized we could turn it into a theme with nothing more than a handful of white t-shirts and a black permanent marker.
“The front could say, ‘Boxers or Briefs,’ and on the back, we could each have a letter of Depends.”
Bringing the shirts into the mix transformed the idea from strategy to costume. The group unanimously agreed we had found the plan that would win us the event. Some of our mathematically inclined roommates even calculated how much time it would save our team by remaining within pouring distance of the keg. Needless to say, the data strongly suggested we had uncovered something revolutionary. I remember thinking, this is what the Wright Brothers must have felt like when they designed their first successful glider.
The day of the keg race arrived with warm weather and clear skies. We put on our, er, uniforms and made our way to the battlefield. We placed our keg in the first open space and readied for battle. One of the benefits of a keg race is that the only requirement of the playing surface is to be level enough to allow the keg to stand upright.
As we walked between a couple of houses into the rear parking lot, it was clear the keg race would not be the sole event of the day. A wrestling ring stood lazily in the center of the parking lot. The ropes dangled like forgotten Christmas lights hanging from a deck in July.
Our plan was to drink beer slightly faster than a typical Saturday afternoon while relying on the time-saving secret weapons hugging our loins to save us the trouble of walking away in search of a bathroom. Other teams decided speed was the only solution, so they brought beer bongs to speed up consumption.
Race officials positioned a large packing barrel in the center of the racing teams. This barrel was specifically designed to catch and hold at least fifty gallons of vomit, and it was used. I witnessed people vomit and immediately chug another beer. Countless college students threw up the foamy cold beer that had only made it halfway down their esophagus.
So immature, I thought as I tipped my red solo cup upward, finishing my beer in my adult diaper.
Shortly into the race, it was time to test the strategy. The warmth of my urine saturated the absorbent core of the diaper, and I’d be lying if I claimed it didn’t feel pleasant, like easing into a warm bath.
A short time later, a teammate approached me looking anxious, “I don’t think I can do it.”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Use the diaper.”
“It’s what they’re made for. I’ve already used mine, and,” I paused waiting for the flow of urination, “I’m using it again right now as we speak, you’ll be fine.“
“Fine,” he paused momentarily, “I’m going.”
“See, it’s kind of nice isn..”
“Goddammit,” my teammate said, looking down at his shoes.
I followed his gaze downward as a small amount of pee trickled down his right leg.
“I didn’t think it was possible to use a diaper wrong,” I gasped with laughter.
The race went on, and, as in so many sports, speed killed. Our strategy had failed, and we were not victorious that day.
My Own Worst Enemy by Lit played as I allowed myself to take in the sights of the field of play while I stood in an adult diaper sagging from repeated use. To my left, another person was using the vomit barrel. Behind him, the backyard wrestling continued, with one wrestler bleeding from his forehead. Behind me, a girl sobbed about her boyfriend talking to another girl. A light breeze carried on the warm May air blew through the parking lot, reminding me that the urine in my diaper was now cold and uncomfortable.
I made my way to change out of my racing uniform when I came across another of my roommates. This was the roommate who was the physical manifestation of my worst impulses.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to change. My diaper is about to fall off,” I said.
“We should probably change into another one of these, right?” He asked, holding up the box of diapers with two more diapers left.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
We went inside the house to use the bathroom for the first time that day. The bathroom was on the second floor, and we waited in a short line until it was my roommate’s turn. He walked through the doorway and turned to me, “You’re not going to change me?”
“Change you?”
“Well, yeah. I thought you were going to change my diaper,” he said, looking at me as though I was his father breaking my promise to play catch in the backyard.
A smile formed on my face as I said, “Yeah, I’ll change your diaper.”
We entered the cramped bathroom. My roommate lay lazily on the floor, put his feet straight in the air, and said, “Change me.”
“You need to lift up your butt,” I instructed through laughter as I crouched down, attempting to pull the diaper over his hips and up off his legs. As the diaper went past his knees, the heavy inside of the diaper inverted. It must’ve weighed three pounds.
“How many times did you go?” I asked.
“Oh, I lost track, but you are definitely going to need to wipe me.”
“Wipe you?”
“Yeah, haven’t you ever changed a diaper before?”
As I leaned to grab the toilet paper roll sitting on the toilet tank, I heard a light knock on the door, followed by the click of the latch. I turned to look over my left shoulder as three girls opened the bathroom door, eyes wide and jaws hanging slack as they tried to understand what they were witnessing.
My roommate propped himself on his right elbow to glimpse the girls who had walked in and said, “We’ll be out in just a minute.”
The girls slammed the door quickly, and laughter erupted on the other side of the door.
The embarrassment was too great, and I needed to explain. I left the bathroom, but the girls who walked in were nowhere to be found. I never got a chance to explain what was going on. I think about those girls often and wonder what the scene looked like from their perspective.
My roommate left the bathroom after a moment. “Thanks for your help,” he said, adjusting his fresh diaper while handing me mine.
I went back into the bathroom, locking the door this time. I changed into my new diaper and left the bathroom. As I walked out, my roommate stood beside an open window overlooking the back parking lot. I saw the party, and the wrestling was still in full swing.
As I walked toward the stairs, my roommate said, “Should we go out there?”
“Where do you think I’m going?”
“No,” he said, gesturing to the open window, “out there.”
The window opened out onto the roof without a screen. My roommate wanted to go on the roof. It’s tough to say how many beers I consumed at that point in the day, so it isn’t shocking that I made a responsible decision and said, “Yes.”
I’m unsure if it was because we went on the roof or just a song added to a long playlist, but it wasn’t long before we were doing the “Macarena” on the roof in our diapers.
I wore my diaper for the rest of that day, though I didn’t use it until the night’s end.
Many people will roll their eyes at this behavior, which they find immature and reckless. I will not argue that point. I am well aware of the dangers of binge drinking and climbing out onto roofs. I understand that wearing a diaper for the sole purpose of drinking more beer is concerning behavior.
However, that day played out like a scene from a stereotypical college movie. It is a scene you would see and think there is no way that would happen at a real college, but it did.
People ask, “Wouldn’t you be concerned if this was one of your children’s stories?”
This is shaping up to be a flawless travel day, is my first thought as I step off of the shuttle bus into the drizzle and chilly early spring air at the rental car lot next to the Philadelphia Airport.
As a sports fan, I know better than this. You are not supposed to talk about the perfect game or no-hitter with the pitcher in the dugout, as it guarantees a hit next inning when he’s back up on the mound. When the sportscaster talks about the incredible streak of made shots at the free-throw line, the next shot is sure to clang off the iron.
To be fair, it wasn’t a typical travel day.
My son had been asking to see my sister and their kids in Maryland since we saw them when they came to Minnesota in September. When my wife, Jenni, and I looked at the calendar and discovered Spring Break rolled into Easter this year, it seemed like a fantastic opportunity to book a trip to the East Coast.
We decided it would be fun to surprise our children with the trip when we got to the airport. Lucky for us, our daughter had been asking to go on an airplane… anywhere, so the surprise would land with her just as well as it would with him.
*Advice for parents planning to surprise their children with a trip: don’t pack your suitcase the morning of your flight. Yes, you will easily convince yourself that you aren’t procrastinating. You’ll think you’re preserving the surprise by not leaving the clue of a half-packed suitcase lying around. Unfortunately, this will make you panic every time you hear a noise while packing and cause you to question your mental capacity when you look at the random assortment of clothing in your suitcase when you open it at your final destination.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for a more significant reaction from my children. It’s not as though they weren’t excited, but I was hoping for utter shock. What percentage of people have had the experience of being surprised with a trip to the airport on the day of their departure?
The surprise could be the worst destination in the world, say… Madison, WI, and still, I would be in a puddle of tears if I got surprised with a vacation at the airport.
We checked our suitcase without issue despite Jenni packing a bag for her and my daughter that weighed nearly half as much as their combined body weight.
Security took about ten minutes despite the fact we forgot to take tablets out of two of our carry-ons. We found food the kids and Jenni would eat before the flight, right before the hangry river of rage started to flow out of my wife; the Prosecco helped, too.
If your significant other gets “hangry,” do not ask them, “Are you hungry?” When you notice the hanger level starting to rise. I nearly derailed our trip by making this observation about my wife as we stood in line for pizza.
Our flight was on time, and we landed ahead of schedule. When we got to baggage claim, I immediately saw our overweight suitcase making its loops around the carousel and snagged it.
This is why I had the guts to allow myself to take a breath and pat myself on the back in the rental lot.
I walked over to look at the board to find my name and where my rental card would be parked. Instead of a parking space number next to my name, I saw “see desk.”
Most days, I would have been panicked by this message. On this day, it didn’t occur to me that I could ever have an issue traveling ever again.
I entered the small yet clean rental car office. I waited in a short line to talk to one of two representatives helping other customers.
I gave my name as I approached the kiosk and started to wince in preparation for bad news. After some quick clicking on the keyboard, the woman smiled and said, “You reserved an electric car; that’s why you needed to come in here today.”
I did, in fact, reserve a Tesla. It was a secondary surprise for my son and a treat for me. Before you start calling this a humble brag, I will let you know it cost ten dollars more than renting a Toyota Corolla or “something similar” when I reserved the car.
Once everything was settled, the rental car company representative told me they would immediately pull the car up for me.
My family was waiting on the curb when I joined them.
“Daddy, what if they gave us a Tesla?” My son asked as he saw our car weaving through the parking lot.
“Yeah, I don’t think we will get a Tesla, buddy.”
“Yeah, that would be, like, so expensive.”
I smiled and winked at Jenni as we silently acknowledged how perfect that was for the surprise to land even better.
Moments like those make you forget the whining, the fights, and the worry of having kids. Like a stack of napkins that have been blown to the ground by the wind, some of the moments are carried away before you have a chance to remember they existed; others hit the ground and stay put just long enough for you to bend over and grab them, almost as if they were holding on just for you.
If you’re a parent, chase those moments and stomp them to the ground before the wind whisks them away. Pick it up and shove it into your back pocket with the snot cover tissue and fruit snack wrappers because someday you’ll pull it out. It will be the most valuable napkin you have ever held.
When the Tesla pulled up, my son had the look of shock you’d expect to see on someone who just found out they were going on a flight halfway across the country for Spring Break at the airport.
As we pulled up to the booth at the exit of the rental car lot, the attendant scanned the barcode on the dash and said, “It’s not letting me check you out; there is a problem with the car.”
“What does that mean, ‘there is a problem with the car?'” Jenni whisper-shouted at me from the passenger seat.
Twenty-four and a half years of experience with this woman had taught me that the question was not rhetorical, so I repeated it to the attendant.
“I don’t know. Sometimes, there are errors with the car, but we don’t know what they are until a technician looks at it. Let me call my manager.”
“What the fuck does that even mean? Why would they drive a car up to us that wasn’t working?” Jenni continued from the passenger seat, making sure I was seeing the injustice of the situation we were in, and making sure I didn’t fold to the pressure in an effort to make the interaction as smooth as possible.
Usually, that would be a fair concern. However, I rented this car for my son, who had, just a week earlier, counted every Tesla we saw on the road throughout a thirty-minute drive. Leaving the rental car lot in something other than a Tesla was impossible.
The attendant wrapped up the call with his manager, “Yeah, you are going to have to bring the car back in and pick a new one. Good news, you’re getting a complimentary upgrade to any sedan in that row.”
“This is a Tesla… upgrade… Tesla!” is all I can hear from the whisper-yelling from the passenger seat.
“So, you’re saying there’s a problem with the car, not with my reservation?”
“Right. I know you really want to drive the Tesla, but you’re not going to be able to today.”
I hadn’t said anything about being excited to drive the Tesla, so this comment convinced me I would need to have a conversation with someone else. He directed the line of cars behind me to back up so I could return the vehicle.
“Do you want me to go talk to them?” Jenni asked. I would typically respond with an enthusiastic “yes,” but since going with the flow would have ruined my son’s day, I let her know I would handle it.
I returned to the rental car office and approached the woman who had assisted me the first time. I told her I wasn’t allowed to leave with the Tesla. She looked as confused as I was by this news and told me she would investigate. She went to the back room to discuss the situation with her manager.
I stood in the empty office waiting and rehearsing how I would get ‘tough’ if the answer was anything other than renting us the Tesla when my phone rang. I looked at the screen to see a call from an unknown number in Philadelphia and answered.
“Hi, Mr. Severson. This is Janet with Delta Baggage Services. Did you take the wrong luggage after your flight from Minneapolis today?”
I didn’t have to think about it as I closed my eyes and tilted my face skyward, “Most likely.”
“Have you left the airport, sir?”
“No, I’m at the rental car lot right now, but I can be back as soon as I have my rental car.”
She told me where to go to return the stranger’s suitcase I had in my possession and get my actual suitcase while I apologized profusely.
My anxiety, which is typically paired with my travel, was finally served. I had to jinx it by slowing up before I crossed the finish line and was now facing my punishment.
The woman returned from the back room, and I readied myself for battle. Fortunately for me, there would be no battle as she explained that she had missed a step in renting an electronic vehicle out to me.
As Jenni and our kids had never gotten out, I returned to the car to see “On Rent” written with white car chalk on the two back windows. The attendant from the booth had come around and written this to ensure we didn’t leave the lot in the Tesla. Having that written on both the windows took some fun out of driving it, but I had a suitcase to return.
We parked near the Philadelphia airport’s arrival doors in an area with few cars, hoping no one would walk through to tell Jenni she needed to move the vehicle.
I ran down the sidewalk and through baggage claim like a former Heisman Trophy winner to return the stolen luggage, convinced I was about to get an earful from an Eagles fan.
I found the Delta Baggage office and was relieved not to see anyone obviously waiting on their luggage. I found Janet, who assured me this kind of thing happens all the time.
“You have morons flying in from Minnesota all the time?”
Janet stared at me, not getting my joke. A hand reached from behind me and rolled what I thought was my suitcase away.
I turned and stood face to face with the man whose luggage I had taken. He looked to be in his late twenties. He stared at me with a vacant look. He wasn’t mad, but he didn’t have a look of understanding either.
“I am so unbelievably sorry.”
No change in expression.
I then did something I had never done before in my entire life: I pressed my palms together in front of my chest and started doing these twenty-degree bows as I repeated, “I’m so sorry,” multiple times.
Still nothing.
I was about to turn to Janet to gauge how this interaction was going from a third party’s vantage point. Before I could do that, a younger man leaned his head through the door and, with a thick accent, said, “It’s okay.”
“Are you sure? I’m so sorry, I was trying to figure out where to catch the shuttle for the rental cars and I grabb…”
“It’s. Okay,” the second man interrupted. The other man flashed me a quick grin before he turned, and they walked away.
Turning toward Janet to grab my bag, I said, “I’m just going to get out of this airport before anything else goes wrong.”
“It really happens all the time,” Janet called after me as I walked away.
“I really doubt that,” I said to myself as I began my way back to the rental car with the correct suitcase this time.
People often use hyperbole when discussing what they would do for their children. Parents make statements like, “I’d step in front of a bus for my child” or “I’d take a bullet for my kids,” and I always think: but would you?
It’s not that I am questioning their love. Instead, it’s usually because those statements are uttered after something mundane occurs. It’s easy to claim you’d do anything, but we don’t get to know what we would do until those moments present themselves.
Now, I can tell my kids, honestly, “I would have a stern conversation with a rental car agent for you.”
Because even though it didn’t happen, I was ready. I was prepared to say what needed to be said to ensure my son got to ride in a Tesla.
I had a short time to come up with what I would say, and it was good. If said with the correct tone of voice, I would have gotten the Tesla and most likely gotten a discount. It’s a short statement that is to the point and could get me out of even the stickiest of situations.
Since I didn’t use it, I figured here is as good a place as any to share it:
“We can all agree that people who use bar soap in the shower are psychopaths, right?” I asked my friends Jenna and Terrence.
After getting showered and ready for the day, these were the first words out of my mouth when I sat down at the breakfast table while on vacation last year with a few other families. I have never had a strong opinion on body wash versus bar soap. However, when I sat down at the table, nobody was talking, and I felt the need to fill the two seconds of silence thanks to my social anxiety.
“I use bar soap in the shower,” Terrence said, staring at me with contempt aimed at making me uncomfortable.
I should have seen it coming. I should have known not to talk about anything related to the shower in public. It’s where all of my previous embarrassments come out to play. Something about the warm water and the vacant shower wall prompts my brain to play a highlight reel of all the things I have done to embarrass myself, like every time I have introduced myself to someone I have already met, for example.
Of course, I did my best to walk back my question by asking thoughtful questions about the merits of using bar soap. It didn’t matter that I was talking to an old friend who knew my proclivity for being awkward.
After a few months of beating myself up mentally in the shower, every time I squeezed the blue gel from my oversized Old Spice body wash bottle into my hand for saying what I said, we were invited for dinner at Jenna and Terrence’s home. When we arrived, Terrence handed me a small gift bag. Inside was a bar of soap from Baxter of California.
I have been using bar soap every morning since May 28, 2023.
Hi, I’m Tim, and I am a people-pleaser.
Let’s get on the same page with what that means:
“The people pleaser needs to please others for reasons that may include fear of rejection, insecurities, the need to be well-liked. If he stops pleasing others, he thinks everyone will abandon him; he will be uncared for and unloved. Or he may fear failure; if he stops pleasing others, he will disappoint them, which he thinks will lead to punishment or negative consequences.”
Reading that description feels like a punch in the right testicle because if you change the “he’s” with Tim, it reads like a summary of my personality. However, I take exception to the underlying negative tone.
It’s easy for the world’s non-people-pleasers to speak about us as though we are doormats who need to stand up for ourselves, learn to say ‘no,’ and set clear boundaries. They assume everything about the people-pleasers way is wrong.
Synchronicity (see: Carl Jung) popped up as I began working on this piece when a friend posted a meme regarding people pleasing on her Instagram story. I sent her a message asking her why I should stop being a people pleaser. I am simplifying the way I asked the question for brevity.
This is what it looks like when my social anxiety takes the wheel as I attempt to ask a simple question:
I am a neurotic mess.
“I think people pleasing becomes dangerous when you lose yourself. There’s an aspect of being able to be supportive and accommodating to the people around you, but when it goes too far, I feel like people lose themselves. Like if I am doing something only because I know it’ll make other people happy but it actually makes me uncomfortable or upset, then I feel like I’m doing more mental and psychological damage to myself than I would just saying no.”
It’s hard to believe I could get such an insightful response from a rambling question. Still, I have always been good at surrounding myself with intelligent people.
Her words have been playing on a loop in my brain since I read them.
I can trace many things I love in this life back to a moment someone could classify as people-pleasing.
One afternoon recently, after I did something my wife would classify as people-pleasing, I stopped her and said, “I don’t think you understand that almost everything I do in my life is for you.”
She explained how ridiculous that concept is, but I don’t think she, or anyone else for that matter, can understand how happy it makes me to make other people happy. It doesn’t matter if it is through a grandiose gesture or even something mundane, like holding doors.
When we started living together, she still loved Gray’s Anatomy. Me? Not so much, until I realized I didn’t like leaving the room when she would turn it on. So, I started it from the beginning and was hooked after two episodes. We watched it for as long as we could tolerate—probably too long.
If I hadn’t liked it, I would have watched it all the same because my person (IYKYK, Gray’s Anatomy fans) was happy to have me join her in watching something that made her happy, which, in turn, made me happy. The fact that I liked it was a bonus.
In college, I had a roommate who was (still is) obsessed with the Minnesota Twins. I learned of his obsession while watching the Twins lose to the New York Yankees in the ALDS in 2004.
I played baseball as a kid and liked watching a game occasionally. Still, I never described myself as a “baseball fan.” Desperate to make a friend out of a roommate, I listened intently as he broke down the games between obscenities being hurled at Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. This led to late-night tutorials about pitching mechanics, swing mechanics, and manager strategies I pretended to be interested in.
Fast-forward to me refreshing the ESPN website repeatedly in my room the following winter to see what moves the Twins would make during free agency.
One could argue that becoming a Twins fan in 2004 is a perfect demonstration of people-pleasing causing me to be uncomfortable and upset as it was the infancy of what would become a historical post-season losing streak to the Yankees. However, I used their excessive losing to my advantage by using it against the person who got me into this mess by reminding him incessantly about every failure, no matter how small, which also fills me with joy.
I could go on with examples like those mentioned above. So many things in my life make me happy that I could have missed out on if I had given in to my initial instinct to say ‘no.’
I allowed the analytical side of my brain to understand what people-pleasing is, and I placed myself in a box I didn’t fit.
Sometimes, there can be too much self-analyzing; sometimes, therapy can push you in the wrong direction. I may be a people-pleaser. There might be something in my past that may force me to serve others’ happiness before mine, but naming it and calling it negative is short-sighted. If everyone involved leaves happy, does the order they got there really matter?
I say no. If I lived that way, I’d spend most of my life alone because when opportunities arise, my gut instinct is to decline for any of a long list of trite reasons and stay home by myself. Giving in to that instinct would lead to an entirely new set of diagnoses that may or may not be accurate.
When I started working with a coach in September, I intended to get coaching on finding a new career. I needed someone to help me put together a resume and find something that aligned with what I wanted in life.
My coach, Ally, quickly recognized that I wouldn’t be happy switching to another standard job or career. She encouraged me to read Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. She described it as spiritual and a bit “woo-woo,” so I was unsure if it would be the right fit.
Desperate for answers and direction, I bought the book without thinking. I knew I needed something out of the norm to jump-start my new life, whatever it might turn into.
My mouth hung open as I read the first pages of The Artist’s Way. Never in my life had I seen myself so clearly in someone else’s writing. It was as though someone had downloaded all of my hopes, dreams, and fears, reorganized them into a book about how to put them into practice, and sold them back to me.
I cannot go more than a paragraph in the book without thinking, “Yep, I do that,” or “Do other people think like that, too?” I quit my job within a few weeks of opening the book.
Doing something solely for myself and my mental well-being was a relief. The relief, however, was short-lived when I realized the work was just starting because, for anything to work for me creatively, I needed to do a lot of work on myself.
Shadow-Work, to be precise.
The Artist’s Way is adorned with outstanding inspirational quotes from people throughout history. One name is quoted most frequently—a name familiar to me from studying psychology in college: Carl Jung.
If you’ve taken a Myers-Briggs personality assessment, you are more familiar with Dr. Jung than you realize.
While studying psychology in college, my relationship with Jung’s work was influenced by my relationship with religion as a lapsed Catholic and how his work was taught to me. He was presented as a descendant of Sigmond Freud’s teachings who liked to analyze dreams.
I can’t stand hearing about the nonsense of people’s dreams. So, the idea that analyzing a dream about sorting paper clips in my underwear in an Arby’s with my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Schirmer, would reveal valuable information about my psyche did not lead me to explore more of his teachings.
Rather, it left me to view him as someone who had a few good ideas but was mostly a kook who thought the answers to life’s problems were in our dreams. As a twenty-year-old, that was all I needed to hear to shrug my shoulders, shake my head, and move on to something more concrete and scientific.
Jung’s contention is that we all have traits or interests that we have decided to ignore. Some of these are negative, and some might be positive things we were told to give up on at some point in life by parents and/or perceived authority figures.
“Without a well-developed shadow side, a person can easily become shallow and extremely preoccupied with the opinions of others.”
That sentence defines how I lived the first thirty-nine years of my life.
In my brain, shadow work meant I would need to get spiritual and blame my parents for all of the problems in my life, which were two things I had no interest in doing. So, I ignored the idea altogether.
Reading The Artist’s Way made it clear that avoiding shadow work would not be possible. It is around every corner. To get anywhere, I would need to uncover things that would certainly be uncomfortable and painful at times.
There is one crucial question everyone should ask themselves first and foremost before they dig into their childhood searching for answers about the person they have become as an adult:
Did my parents do the best they could to raise me?
If your immediate and honest answer to that question is yes, you need to understand the work is yours to do.
Chastizing your parents might feel good, but it will not get you further down the road. It will feel nice momentarily, but you will be left battling the same issues. Furthermore, you will have one or two fewer people to turn to for love, guidance, or even a hug.
If your answer to the question is “No,” you need to talk to someone far more qualified to help you out. You do not need advice from a guy who had to fight for his life to earn a 3.0 GPA and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.
For the “yes” people (like me), it’s time to grow up.
As an adult who is white-knuckling through this whole parenting thing right now, there are too many nights I go to sleep wishing I had done better for my kids. I resolve to be a better Dad the next day, but then I invent a new way to screw up.
You know what I don’t need? Having my children recite my ‘greatest hits’ of failures to me twenty or thirty years from now. I wrote the music and lyrics for those chart-toppers; no one knows them better.
You know who else doesn’t need that, your parents.
They are the low-hanging fruit. They are the people desperate for you to visit or pick up the phone and call for an update on your life. You probably aren’t going to go to the effort of tracking down all the bullies and awful teachers who played a significant role in creating your shadow, so don’t put all of it on your parents.
You don’t need to remind them that there were days they couldn’t take it anymore. The days when if they heard “mom” or “dad” one more time, they were sure they would have a psychotic break.
Take a look at your own body of work before blaming it all on your parents.
Does that mean you won’t trace some of your issues back to interactions with your parents?
Of course not.
When I’ve uncovered things, I’ve found that they are mostly silly. They wouldn’t register on my list of events on any given day of my adult life. However, they were devastating to the kid they happened to.
As an adult, it’s silly that I still know the name of the girl who made fun of me for spelling “baby” wrong during my second-grade spelling bee and still, if I’m honest, hold a grudge.
While it has played a prominent role in my avoiding the spotlight for any reason, personally or professionally, I’ve discovered that there is nothing that the girl or I can say about that incident that changes anything about the thirty-one years that have passed since the incident. Not to mention, she is an adult now, and while it was damaging to me, I’d guess she has no recollection of making fun of me.
I have been spending a lot of time rounding up these silly things that make up my shadow and shining lights on them, only to find they aren’t worth thinking about, let alone driving my life choices.
As I write this, I am thirty-nine with two children, ages seven and five.
My parents were my age and had three children (ages 11, 10, and 8) when I was born.
I am going to focus on my father through this example for no other reason than the fact that I grew up with Boomer parents who followed gender norms in the household. In those scenarios, our moms had the advantage of being constantly present. She had the luxury of being the parent who dolled out the love and affection at the steep cost of dealing with endless whining, fights, lying, and my two other siblings, Janie and Dave.
My Dad is the oldest of thirteen. He started delivering milk when he was young and stopped working (for the most part) just a couple of years ago.
He went to college, fought in Vietnam, attended medical school at the University of Minnesota, was a resident at Mayo Clinic, and dedicated his life to treating, healing, and saving thousands of children’s lives while maintaining a marriage and a family. That’s barely scratching the surface of his story, and I’m exhausted.
My Dad cared for every child and family he came across. Going out with him anywhere in Minnesota as a kid was a small taste of what it would be like to have a parent who is a celebrity. We couldn’t go anywhere without a former colleague or patient stopping him to say hello and, usually, thank you.
I have the things I have in this life thanks to the hard work my Dad put in professionally.
Did that mean there were areas where things lacked? Of course. There were events my Dad couldn’t attend when he was on call or had many patients. I don’t have what would be called an affectionate relationship with him; we don’t hug a lot or say, “I love you” often.
It would be easy to use that as the reason I am not where I want to be in my life. It would be lovely to remove myself from all responsibility and pin it on one of the two people who gave me this life.
That is akin to mining for shit in a mountain made of gold.
I didn’t need to do any searching to know my parents gave it their all for me. I can’t exist in a day of my adult life without being able to draw a direct line to them for all of the great things I have in my life.
I’ve found that shadow work is not the search for something or someone to blame for who I am. It’s the search for the person I truly am that I keep hidden away because of something I misinterpreted when I was younger.
For example, I loved when people would stop my Dad and remind him of how he saved their child’s life when they were younger. I craved that kind of attention. I wanted to have a positive effect on people’s lives. Because I wanted that kind of attention, I decided I needed to be my Dad to get it. I spent a lot of my childhood convinced I would be a doctor.
There are easier ways to get that attention, but I was an idiot kid who knew nothing about how the world worked. Is the kid who, with a broken wrist and using a cane due to a snowmobile accident, auditioned for his fifth-grade talent show by lip-syncing “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan a good judge of… anything?
Thoughts like that opened things up for me. I started coming up with more and more until I realized that I had held many beliefs about myself, my abilities, and my weaknesses since I was a kid.
Perpetuating false beliefs I developed in childhood for so long turned me into an idiot adult who doesn’t know anything about how the world works. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized it was ‘peace’ of mind rather than ‘piece’ of mind. So, no, calling myself an idiot isn’t harsh.
If I wasn’t a reliable source of knowing what I wanted to do as a kid, then there is no way I could accurately assess what I couldn’t do as an adult. Nevertheless, I trusted my own perception of what I was capable of, allowing these baseless, limiting thoughts to spread like an infection until I had a long list of things I couldn’t do and a short list of what I could do. The problem was I had no interest in doing any of the stuff on the shortlist.
The only thing that has been a constant want in my life is writing. I have been obsessed with writing for as long as I can remember.
I wish the path I obsess over was more practical, like being an accountant or doing something technology-based. It’s just not the answer for me. Even if I had the aptitude for those things, I’d be miserable doing them.
I have been miserable for a large portion of my life because I lived under the assumption that I needed to keep working through the misery to get the money, life, and time I wanted to pursue my dream. When I looked around, that was how life worked. Over time, this way of life took its toll, so I had no idea who I was anymore.
“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do in order to have what you want.”
Margaret Young
So, here I sit, typing away, hoping that Margaret is right about this one. I am doing what I want to do, which brings me more happiness between 8 AM and 5 PM on a weekday than I thought possible.
However, I am still searching for “who I really am.”
The good news? Thirty-nine years of being a moron has given me a lot of good stories and a penchant for good humor. I’ll be sure to bring you more “wisdom” as I pull it out of the shadows.
