jawn one.
My laptop went dark. It might be dead. I’ve had it for 9 years so I’m not sure what to think. Are laptops supposed to last a long time? Is anything supposed to last a long time anymore? It’s a MacBook Air. I don’t even know if they make those anymore. One second it was fine, working as always, then I turned back to start writing this week’s essay (the one you’re reading right now) and the screen was black. Hopefully, I Googled and YouTubed possible fixes and tried them all but nothing worked. Bad sign, I’d say. Now I will likely take it to a local laptop fixer and see what they can figure out. In the meantime Arle has been kind enough to let me borrow her laptop. It’s not the same though. You know how you get so used to something over time that any sort of change that comes along feels awkward? Well yeah, that’s me now. I want my computer with my stickers on it. Why did it break? What did I do wrong? I barely use it except to write on. But, maybe it’s not my fault. Maybe these things just wear out like anything else. I mean, of course they do. And even if they don’t, I’ve heard that all of those annoying Apple updates are actually tiny blow dart viruses that the company plant in your laptop via ‘updates’ over time. That way, they know exactly when you’ll be showing up at Best Buy to grab a new one. “That’ll be $1,200, thank you very much, Mr Thunder. Or is it Mr. Pie??” Ugh. Stay tuned.
jawn two.
As I sit here writing this, I’ve just returned from taking some of the kids to school and my car has 199,994 miles on it. So, six more miles until that elusive 200,000 mark. With my luck, I fully expect that the car will catch fire or simply explode the moment that odometer makes that illustrious change. So it was nice knowing ya, I guess. If by some chance though, both the Honda and I remain, well, then I suppose I’ll have a new stressor in my life. Because even though I have never owned a vehicle that made it to 200,000, I know enough about cars to know that celebrating such a milestone must come hand-in-hand with realistically facing facts. The car, I must admit to myself, is on thin ice. Every hundred miles from here on out will be a gift from the four-cylinder Universe. Every run down the valley and back without some new rattling or shaking or stalling situation must be considered a small victory in the Great War of Financial Attrition that so many of us have been fighting in since the day we graduated high school with nothing but a pack of smokes, a lighter, and a bad set of teenage muttonchops plastered to each side of my young face. But, oh, how she has guided us through so much. Like anyone who has had a car a long time, it’s nearly impossible not to anthropomorphize the damn thing. Especially if you’ve ever hauled your kids around for years in the backseat. That takes everything to the next level, I guess. Oh well. We’ll see. But having my old laptop crap out the same week that my car turns 200,000 miles is a not-so-subtle reminder that everything is fading. Including me.
jawn three.
Last night I had a semi-conniption while I was putting up some Halloween decorations. It wasn’t a hurl-your-popcorn-bowl-through-the-front-window kind of freak out, mind you, but it also wasn’t a gentle romp across the garden of mild annoyance either. I fell, I think, somewhere between the two. And here’s why. I have a lot more patience with a lot of things than I used to. I’m not proud or ashamed of the fact that I was impetuous and impatient as a younger man simply because what’s the point of all that now, you know? What matters most is who I am today and who I aspire to be moving forward. All that said, I still find myself absolutely infested at times with witchcraft and sorcery. These dark magic sons-a-bitches catch me in their sights and they show me no mercy whatsoever. And one of the times I’ve been noticing them messing with me more and more the past few years is whenever I’m trying to get up all of these goddamn Halloween or Christmas decorations that we have. I’m talking totes and totes of them: enough to float a small economy or kickstart a scary little religion, I swear. This all started long ago, maybe even when I was a kid myself and it has continued, year after year, into my 50s. There is no question in my mind that it’s a curse, this holiday decorating mania that comes over me. And as time has gone by, I have begun to notice how radically unstable I seem to get when, as the festive day in question is swiftly approaching, I find myself consistently torn between effervescent panic and festively-tinged turmoil as I take note of the date and hustle myself into a state of mild insanity as I try to find the time and energy to put up the five or six trillion garlands/ ceramics/ figurines/ jointed cardboard characters/ blow molds/ wall decor/ lights/ knick knacks/ trinkets/ dolls/ decorated wine bottles/ dime store goofs/ old masks/ vintage hats/ plastic skulls (Halloween AND Christmas styles)/ seasonal macrame/ ancient doilies/ doctored paintings/ felt art done by strangers/ and last but not least: the 247,362 pieces of holiday themed elementary school art that I have painstakingly footnoted, archived, and preserved over the last 15 years or so. Up on the step ladder last night, three plastic pushpins in my teeth, two more in my fingers, I steadied myself so that I didn’t fall to the floor and break my esophagus into fifty pieces with a worn out rubber bat in my fist. Trust me, I am overcome with the notion that I am getting older and that the likelihood of the local ambulance crew showing up to take one look at me laying there on the floor of my Halloween extravaganza with both of my midlife arm bones jutting out through my omnipresent black hoodie sleeves like two yogurt-covered pretzel sticks poking up from a bowl of blueberry sauce and cracking the hell up in hysterics is not lost on me at all. Everything about this decorating crap has become a war between my childish side, the side of me that desperately wants to ‘stay young’ and ‘never stop playing’ and ‘do it for the kids’ and this other side of me, the old man side, who just wants to take that fucking cackling mechanical witch that needs at least 55 push pins to hang beside the door to the kitchen (and STILL manages to crumble to the floor in an infuriating heap at least six or seven times while I’m trying to do other shit) and smash that motherfucker against the bottom banister of the stairs until it’s goddamn head pops off so that I can tear into it’s green foamy flesh like George (The Animal) Steel eating a padded turnbuckle! It must be my mental health voices telling me to give it up, you know? But I don’t know. What I should do? I can’t tell you that either. But I do know what I probably will do. Because you can’t keep a madman down.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
