Extreme/Confide

Life is lived at the extremes.

Can you believe I just wrote that bullshit? You probably can.

Edit: Life is felt at the extremes.

But what does that even mean?

Edit: Life is remembered at the extremes.

Ok, now we’re cooking with gas. Certainly, the extreme points of our life will be remembered more so than the banal, ho-hum experiences like commuting to work on a Tuesday in 2004.

But, [oh god here he goes] “extreme” [told you] is subjective.

[eye roll]

Climbing Mt Everest might be extreme for some while for others, ordering the veal, may be living on the edge.

I tell you this because this decade-long midlife crisis I find myself in has me thinking about life.

[fiercer eye roll]

However, with technology, the life lived in the middle, the heretofore, unremembered life, can now be brought to mind.

Behold: pictures.

Like this one I recently discovered in a box that had to be explored after our move.

That’s me there on the right with the Yahtzee teeth. Circa 1980 I am guessing, maybe earlier.

Pictures contextualize the ho-hum and the banal into a wistfulness for the mundane because you and me we were different then.

Remember?

Remember how happy go lucky you were and my god how confident you were with your let me at ‘em attitude and…

-Did you say you were having a decade-long midlife crisis?

Uh-huh, doesn’t’ everyone?

No and what are Yahtzee teeth?

That is when god has your teeth in his hand like a handful of Yahtzee dice and shakes ‘em around and then throws ‘em into your mouth all willy-nilly and however they land, there’s your grill.

You ever hear of braces?

Sure have. You ever realize not everyone in Barberton Ohio in the 70’s & 80’s had dental insurance? Or health insurance?

Hey, I don’t need this working-class hero crap!

You need something.

The point of the picture is that it reminded me that I was really a happy kid; even though we were poor and even though I needed braces and even though my clothes were often torn and often not very clean. I was happy. There on that beach on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, happy.

***

What does it mean to confide?

To whom do we confide and what does that person to whom we confide, say about us?

What if you confide to no one other than yourself? What if, as Adam Duritz sings in the song Speedway from the This Desert Life album:

I got some things I can’t tell anyone I got some things I just can’t say

Maybe you confide in others. Maybe you have people you trust. Maybe you feel known by others. Perhaps you aren’t lonely in the least bit. You might be secure in yourself and know that you are a good person and that even if you confide your fears and insecurities and all the negative space of you, that you will still be loved, by someone, in the world.

Remember how I said life was remembered at the extremes? I used to confide in people. I was a young man…and I used to confide in people; used to trust them…people.

I trusted the worst people. Trusted people that used that trust against me, in the worst possible way. And I am damaged as a result.

Irreparably?

Firecracker Fuchsia

She was a marketer. Her specialty was naming colors. Her calling card became firecracker fuchsia. It won’t be in Wikipedia but everybody has something. She also loved the Counting Crows and collected choose your own adventure books; spent way too much money on this but everybody has something. My vice was collecting felonies…of the arson type. I burned up more than my fair share of abandoned sheds and cars. I ain’t sayin' it was right but I am sayin' they was abandoned and that oughta count for something. We met through a prison pen pal program. To this day I can’t think of how a successful marketer with copper mint in her color naming collection would get involved in a prison pen pal program. I sometimes wonder if it is some part of community service she has to do. Maybe for some sort of misdemeanor arson? Hot. You’re probably wondering what prison is like and if I have set anything on fire in prison. The answer is that the showers aren’t like what you hear, they are worse. Which is why I set an inmates bed on fire in prison. I told her about it in a letter. I thought I was communicating, opening myself up, risking, being vulnerable. She reported it and I got another 3-5 added to my sentence. Just great, another 3-5 years and a Counting Crows Round Here CD. Did she think I had a cd player? What kind of pen pal program puts prison inmates in contact with sadistic sociopaths that send you the lyrics to Mr. Jones? It’s obviously a song about his penis. I’m in prison for god’s sake! I don’t need lyrics about penises or just one penis, singular. I guess I have learned some grammar through the writing class but still. I still think about her. I wish I could reread the letters but I set them on fire. Maybe she’s out there naming a color, maybe it’ll be prison grey.