The Middle

Look out. (non-sequitur rant forthcoming...)

Break out the duct tape and the toilet paper and one of those Swiss Army camping tool thingys with the bottle opener, and the useless teeny knife, and the 'nail' file that you wouldn’t dare take to any part of your body (except long-unattended foot calluses - in which case it may aid in sparking a fire if you don’t have waterproof matches or flint.)

And while I’m on the subject, and already squirreling-off after 77 words, what’s the deal with those swiss-army scissors? They come already-dull, and what the FUCK is that little c-shaped piece of metal for? Is this for brain surgery on flying squirrels who’ve crashed into boulders after being exposed to kryptonite in the wild?

There must be a hidden camera so that the SWISS ARMY I.T. dorks can laugh at you until no sound comes out as you BEND 'extra bucks' coupons from car-lease-length CVS receipts with their stupid, dull scissors-tool, because your kids stole the Cutco kitchen scissors to cut your $300 jeans into shorts.

Is that just me?

I can’t keep plants or goldfish alive either; but our pet rats that are supposed to die in 12 months are, like, 47 years old. And they have impossibly large testicles, youthful vigor, and zero hair.

Somehow, I feel it’s all related.

My home, work, and life OOZES ‘The Land of Misfit Toys’ all over the place. My dentist isn’t named ‘Herbie,’ however. But she should be.

Anyway, as I was saying: LOOK OUT.

The good thing about being a - as Winnie the Pooh would say: “Bear of little brain,” is that when there’s too much going on in there (little brain,) if you just let all the noise and distractions RIFF, you won’t remember what you were so upset about in the first place.

So that’s handy.

An old acquaintance of mine would often say: “where you find the poison, you find the cure.” Or is it: “It’s not the poison, it’s the dose?” He said both things, and I can’t decide which is more applicable here.

If you’re one of those people who read my rants over coffee in the morning, or wine in the evening – Hiiiii!

I hope that I have once again served to make you feel like less of a loser. I know it’s Tuesday, and you probably have to go to work or something, but have that mimosa and celebrate being “In The Middle.’”

I mean, in a world of infinite possibilities, THE MIDDLE is the worst, and the best, that life can ever get. And that’s good news.

I’ll explain:

Not too long ago, whilst being lost somewhere in some canyon between Thousand Oaks and Malibu on the way to the beach, I experienced one of those panicky, twilight-zone moments, born of the age of smartphone-instant-gratification.

Never used to have these problems when I relied on the AAA ‘trip-tik.’

There’s a chunk of real-estate between the posh civilizations that we had to travel from-and-to, with no reception for WAZE or Google Maps (or whatever,) so the ‘MC of Directions’ – whether Siri or the WAZE-girl (desperately switched betwixt the two, longing for guidance,) AND the map itself, just got all bewildered and confused.

When that cursed, safari rainbow-wheel wasn’t tormenting me with the visual-equivalent of some circus of terror music, the detached GPS map insisted that my truck was on some road next to a freeway 30 miles west of my present location; and the Siri/WAZE directions-guy just blindly went along with it! Totally ignoring the predicament we were in, like some out-sourced customer service representative saying: “I’m sorry madam, but my computer says that you are not where you say you are.” (DICKHEADS!)

(My Siri has a male voice with a pleasant Irish accent, which delays my phone-throwing at least 5 minutes past homicidal frustration. He’s TOTally into me.)

As I’m blindly bobbing and weaving through canyon roads, glancing at my phone for something more than ‘No Service’ (GIMME 3G AT LEAST! For f@ck sakes), one of the 27 kids in my car (Ella or Emma?... one of those) lets out a pregnant sentence as if she’d been holding it in, as not to offend (the risk/reward-thing took over and she thought she’d be really helpful by exclaiming):

“WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!”

I don’t even like children, so I usually ignore them, but in this case I pondered that sentence for a moment and replied:

“Isn’t ‘the middle of nowhere,’ somewhere? And if-so, doesn’t that mean that we’re ALWAYS somewhere?”

Because I am such a loving, perfect, and intuitive parent, I could not only HEAR the eye-rolls of my 2/3 children that were in the car, but also translate the eye-roll noise into these words:

“Oh no. Oh no, no, no, NO, NO! PLEASE, mom. We just want to get to the beach. We’re already lost. If you squirrel-off right now on some philosophical/existential tangent, we’ll never see anyone we know ever again!”

I didn’t let that stop me, because they’re so young and dumb, and I am wise and spiritual. So I said, as I navigated my murdered-out, stupidly-large, GMC Yukon XL around impossibly-tight canyon curves to places unknown:

“Not only are we always somewhere, but we’re always in the middle. No matter your location. No matter your mood. No matter your life. No matter what. You’re ALWAYS in ‘the middle.’”

Some not-my-kid kid (Kayla, or Kaylee?) took the bait.

Not-my-kid kid: “How are we always in the middle?”

Me: “Well just take the planet we live on. It’s round. So you’re always in the middle, right? I mean, not only are you always ‘somewhere,’ but you’re always smack-dab in the middle. You can’t be on the left or right, or up or down, when you live on a ball.”

“And if the universe is expanding in all directions, then wherever you are in the universe, you’re also in the middle. So even though our intention is to get to the beach, we’re not really lost, we’re just in the middle.”

Back of the truck children: Silence (except for more eye-rolling I heard from my children. But this time I think it was rolling toward the sky in attempt to comprehend my infinite wisdom.)

Sydney (or was it Sandy? No idea… one of the kids back there): “So how are your moods always in the middle?”

Now, this was one of those questions that you know the truth of it, and the answer for yourself… but can’t nearly articulate for others. Especially Sandy (or Sydney?… whateves.)

Sometimes the truth, when you first see it, is like a firehose plugged into the back of your head that has to get through one of those environmentally conscious, paper straws that is the known framework of your life, vocabulary, and tiny mouth. So when you try to explain to others, you just spew whatever words come forth, and the straw dissolves, leaving the recipients of your words feeling like they’ve just been sprayed with wet boogers.

So I just went for it, with the first thing that came to me: “When I used to call my mom for some comfort during my deepest, darkest moments, and she didn’t know what to say, she’d default to:

"‘It can always get worse.’"

"That would annoy the SHIT out of me. There I was, pouring my soul out, and all she had was: “It could be worse??”

“Not only did I hate that, but it made me think twice about calling her (although I always did anyway,) because I wanted someone to get down in the dirt with me, and roll around, and validate the horror that was my life in the moment.”

“But there was something about that: ‘It could be worse,’ that was so annoying that it popped me out of the darkness that I was in, into a lesser darkness of my annoyance with her supposedly unempathetic response.”

"And I think, although annoying, what was so helpful about what she said was that it was absolutely true: ‘Even though you’re in the dark, you’re still somewhere. You’re still 'in the middle.’"

Not-my-kid kid (Ella or Emma or something): “Does your mom ever say something that’s just right?”

Me: “Yeah, she’d do that too. But she’s dead now… she’s in the middle-place where I don’t get to talk to her anymore… for a while. So that sucks.”

Back-of-the-truck kids: uncomfortable silence.

Me: “Look! There’s the ocean. We found it.”

Back-of-the-truck kid: “It was always in the middle.”