I Just Couldn’t Even

                Have you ever been all, like, I just can’t even?  Me, too.

                What’s that?  Some of you don’t know what being all, like, I just can’t even means?  Well, it’s a fun way that the kids nowadays have of saying, essentially, that they’re apoplectic.   Of course, some might say that they’re literally apoplectic, but what they mean is that they’re figuratively apoplectic.  If they were literally apoplectic, then they wouldn’t be able to come up with the words to indicate their apoplexy, or, as they say, that they just can’t even.   And, seriously, the word “apoplexy” isn’t about to make a return to buzz-worthiness again, any time soon, like “selfie” or “synergy” or “buzzword.”  So, the kids just say, “I can’t even.”

                And that’s what happened when I decided to quit my job at the Department of Veterans Affairs.  I just couldn’t even, anymore.  And that’s a phrase I’ll use right now.  I just can’t even.  I’ll use this because it will help me depersonalize this.  I don’t want to call anyone out, right now. 

This is what your tax dollars got
you for nearly eight years.

Saying “I just can’t even” won’t really help that, but I just want to tell the story of why I quit my job.   And I think “I just can’t even” is going to be a funny way to tell this.  Besides, this was a very emotional decision for me.  I, both literally and figuratively, just couldn’t even anymore, and this is my story.

                A few months before the end, I had completed a very technical bureaucratic analysis of minutia for the Togus VA Regional Office in Augusta, Maine.  Rather than bore you with all the bureaucratic minutia and bullshit, I’ll just call this a bullshit report, and in the interest of providing a little background, I will say that there are dozens of these bullshit reports completed each year at the regional office.  For the last few years at Togus, I’d completed one or two bullshit reports every fiscal year.  I’d also helped a number of people edit the passive sentences out of their bullshit reports. 

                Passive sentences are bad.  When passive sentences are used in a bullshit report, it is very bad.  Bullshit reports are very, very important.  They can’t have passive sentences used in them, even though every single fucking award and denial notification letter sent to veterans by the VA about their disability compensation decisions is chock fucking full of the passive voice.  Internal bullshit reports are much more important than the letters sent to veterans.

                And I liked writing and editing bullshit reports.  I have an analytical mind, and as you can clearly see, I write good.

                One of my favorite memories of working on a bullshit report was when I helped my friend, Lee, edit the passive sentences out of his bullshit report.  When one of us submitted a bullshit report, a bean-counter would use the Microsoft Word review tool for a spelling and grammar check.  The percentage of passive sentences is also shown by the tool, and if there were passive sentences, the bullshit report would be returned to the author for correction.  When I got together with Lee, he said something along the lines of, “What the hell is a passive sentence?  Will it help if I end more of them with ‘comma damnit?’”  Bean counters don’t like passive sentences, so I showed Lee how his passive sentences could be changed to good ones.

                Anyway, I had completed my last bullshit report at the end of April, and I submitted it to the bean counter.  I had no passive sentences because I was a good bullshit reporter.  This bullshit report included a formal recommendation that we start reviewing some of the bullshit data from this bullshit VA intranet website.   My rationale was that we could review that bullshit data and identify bullshit training needs, hopefully helping us reduce errors and potentially speeding up the process for some claims.

                Brilliant idea, you say?  I know, right!  You have my wholehearted agreement on that one.  However, the bean counter—possibly not of his own decision—called to ask me if he could remove my recommendation, not because of something terrible like the passive voice being used, but, essentially, because it made another person’s bullshit report look bad.  The other report recommended a very round-about way of obtaining access to the intranet site that I had referenced in my recommendation.

                Now, I explained to this bean counter that I had nary a fuck to give about the other recommendation, for I had actually resolved the problem of getting access to the site.   All I had to do was ask for access and then get local management’s approval.  It was very simple.

                Furthermore, I explained that my recommendation could have a very real impact on the quality and timeliness of completing the VA disability compensation claims we processed.  I told this bean counter, in no uncertain terms, that if he removed my recommendation, I quite simply would not even be able to, anymore.

                Indeed, I wouldn’t even fucking be able to.

                “Okay,” he said.

                Flash forward to early July.  I was looking at the information that needed to be gathered for my next bullshit report, due at the end of July.  (This second bullshit report of the year for me did not happen, because—spoiler alert—I could not even.)   I decided to look at the saved copy of my previous bullshit report on the shared drive.  My recommendation had been removed.

                I could not, fucking, even, nor would I any longer, fucking, even be able to.

                So, I went home and shut down for a day or so.  I had been feeling trapped in this job for a while, and this was the proverbial last straw.   Not only was I no longer intellectually or creatively challenged or stimulated, but now I could not even.  I had to leave.  I went in, and gave my notice.

                It was actually a pretty easy decision.   Being no longer even able to in a job makes leaving the only thing to do.

A Few Thoughts on the Anniversary of Moving into my Home (Also the Anniversary of the Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, Which is Unrelated and not Mentioned)

So, here’s a flashback for your Friday.  A year ago, right now, I was at my old apartment in Portland, Maine, getting the last of my stuff from TedPlace and bringing it to TedHouse, my home in Hallowell.  I had moved because I was tired of the one-hour commute, each way, to my job at the Togus VA Regional Office in Augusta.  And now, this evening, I’m going to go out and have a nice, but simple dinner to observe both the anniversary of moving and the final paycheck from that job.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of regret.  I like to process through the reason things happen and move forward.  And, indeed, things do happen for a reason.  In my life, most things—the things I have control over—have happened because I decided to do them.  It’s quite simple.  I’m not much of a spiritual man.  I moved to Hallowell to save myself ten hours of commuting each week.  Now, I’ve also dropped 40 hours of working from my schedule, at least temporarily. 

No regrets, though.  Hallowell is a wonderful little town, and I love TedHouse.  But there’s something about this that has made me reflect on the last two moves I’ve made.  I moved to Portland, in 2011 to be with the woman I loved.  One year after moving in together, she was moving out.  We had a difference that we could not reconcile.  It wouldn’t work.  Again, no regrets.  Our relationship was wonderful, while it lasted, and I loved living in Portland.  I stayed for two years after she moved out of our apartment.  It was my choice to move and to stay. 

Then, after three years of commuting from Portland paired with mandatory overtime, I was approaching burnout.  I had been dating someone, and after breaking up, I felt that there was nothing keeping me in Portland.  So, I moved to have more time to myself away from the job that I once really enjoyed.  My commute was down to 15 minutes, but I very soon fell into a pretty significant depression.  It happens.  I have mental problems.

I look around my home and see the remnants of that depression in the form of projects that never happened.  My home is quite habitable without having completed them.  I had just hoped to at least move the floor lamp from my kitchen back to the living room and fix the wiring to install my awesome new—well, now year-old—pendant lights over my Tedmade butcher block table.

Again, do I regret anything?  No.  My depression and that job were on a collision course that I could not avoid.  I just may have to start thinking things through a little more thoroughly before I make any major changes.  I hope to start the grad school in a month.  But at the end of that, will I be able to stay here at TedHouse in Hallowell?  I don’t know.

I do know that I’ll have to be sure about any job that may require me to move from TedHouse.  The last two parts of my life that inspired me to move—a romance and a job—both ended within a year of those moves.

Just something for me to think about before I do something regrettable.

Some People Have to Learn the Hard Way

                My son, Adam, once initiated a freestyle lesson in Spanish.  He was about six, so the lesson consisted of him asking me to translate various words from Spanish into English for him. A big problem with the lesson—indeed a major flaw in this whole thing—was that he didn’t exactly “know” any words in the Spanish.  He knew quite a bit of gibberish, but I still tried to help him as best as I could.

                “What does ‘fasololo’ mean in Spanish?” he asked.  Now, let me be honest for a moment, I don’t remember the exact words in gibberish that he wanted translated from Spanish to English—or the translations I provided him—but that shit isn’t important.  I was laying down some classic, dad-level bullshit.

“’Fasololo?’ That means ‘table’ in Spanish.”

He asked me a couple others, like “dongo” and “wakookie.”  I gave him answers.  “That means ‘coat rack,’” and “That’s how you tell a girl she’s pretty.”  There was a bunch of stuff like that.

Now, I’m not sure why he thought I knew Spanish.  I had just graduated from college with a minor concentration in French, and he knew that I’d been doing French homework for a while.  I had probably told him that I’d taken some Spanish in high school, but I certainly don’t remember much of that.  I could have taught him how to say, “Como se dice ‘fankobabi’ en Español?”  But I didn’t.  I really failed that kid on the whole Spanish thing.

But, anyway, as our little Spanish lesson was running its course, he asked me what “kobubo”—or something like that—meant in Spanish.  I replied, “Oh, my goodness! Don’t ever say that again!  That’s a really bad word.”

“What does it mean?” he asked.  I really had his attention.  Adam has always had an affinity for foul language, and this was quite a tease for him.  I did not relent, so he never found out what it meant, because it was gibberish, of course, and I was making this stuff up as the conversation progressed.

However, for context, let’s just say that “kobubo” means “fuck your mother” in the Spanish I was making up for Adam.  See what I’m saying?  That’s a really bad thing to say.  I did the right thing not teaching that to a six-year-old.  I stand by this.

Now, when I first thought of writing about this impromptu Spanish lesson, I wanted to tie it in with the time Adam learned to use the proverbial “C-word.”  Don’t worry.  It was pretty funny, and, heads-up, I’m going to be dropping the “C-word” on you in a bit.  But I wanted to tie the two episodes together by using the Spanish lesson as an example of a time when I told Adam not to use a word because it was bad, but he didn’t learn to follow my advice.

But that wasn’t the lesson at all.  Indeed, if Adam learned anything from the Spanish lesson, it was that I’m not 100% trustworthy.  I mean, now, as an adult, he has an appreciation for the fine art of bullshitry, but when he was a few months shy of eleven—at the time of the C-word incident—so he was still a pretty concrete thinker.  And my word, perhaps, was rather dubious.

Now, about that C-word.

For about six years during my marriage, we lived a couple blocks from the high school in Old Town, Maine.  During the summer, the high school pool was open to the public.  The kids, especially Adam, were huge fans of going to the pool.

He loved to swim, and he pushed himself to master the skills he needed to have access to the deep end and the diving boards.  He would have spent his entire day there if he could some days.  For a while, my ex-wife, Kathy, and I wouldn’t let him go without his older sisters.  We didn’t necessarily expect them to “supervise” him, but we did expect a full report.  Now, we realized that his older sisters weren’t going to tell us everything.  Kathy and I had both been kids before, but looking back, we at least subconsciously knew that Krystal and Kasi, our older two daughters, had a relatively low threshold for embarrassment, and we’d at least hear about a lot of Adam’s actions that embarrassed them, if not everything he did.

Ultimately, he was able to go alone.  We may have caved in a little for him.  He was so, so consistently persistent about wanting to go to the pool on his own, and the girls didn’t always want to go.  They were about thirteen and fourteen at the time, and they had lives to live.  We felt that this was safe for Adam to do there in small town, Maine.  Besides—and now that I think of it, as this was the summer before he turned eleven, the summer when I was unemployed and trying to focus on the ol’ job search—I could always go up and check on him, and I often did. 

I’d usually walk up to the pool, oh, every other time or so, and I’d see how he was doing.  The lifeguards liked him, because he was—and still is—really funny.  I’d check in with them and make my presence known to him, and I’d walk home.  What an idyllic life we led in those days, kids going swimming while mom worked and ol’ Ted desperately searched for worked before the unemployment ran out.  Ah, yes, these were pretty good days, indeed, the unemployment notwithstanding.

Until. . .

One Friday evening, Adam had gone to the pool for the couple hours it was open after dinner, and I went to check on him.  His older sisters certainly weren’t going to watch over and report on him, for they were having a sleepover with a couple of their friends.  And young Amber was home tagging along with her older sisters.  The girls were probably planning a fashion or talent show—as they often did.  What a glorious, fun-filled evening of family time we had ahead of us.

Now, I’m not sure exactly what prompted me to go see what Adam was up to, but I’m willing to bet that it was Kathy.  She always had—and still has—a pretty amazing intuition when it comes to the kids.  She and I have been divorced for five years, but if she tells me that she has a gut-feeling that something may be going amiss with the kids, I believe her.  Still.  She probably just said something like, “Why don’t you go check on Adam,”  while she was in the living room with the girls as they planned their talent show or painted each other’s nails or whatever girl stuff they had planned.  I don’t really remember what they were all doing.  I just remember that their lives were about to change. 

So, I walked up to the high school, a very short walk from what we all refer to as the “white house,” a reference not just to where we lived but to a period in our time together as a family.  From our driveway we could see part of the high school parking lot, and I walked the hundred-or-so yards there.

I had made it to the parking lot when I first heard it.  “Ice cream cunt!”  I recognized the voice immediately.  Adam has a pretty distinctive voice, and I could pick it out of the crowd of boys on the patio area outside the pool.  Oh, but I could hear him.  Adam can, shall we say, project.  I heard “Ice cream cunt!” a few more times as I sped up my approach.  And, yes, those were the exact words.

The Old Town High School pool has been the home of a number of state championship swim teams over the years.  The banners were proudly displayed in the gym, and the school records were displayed above the bleachers by the pool.   And just outside, on a fenced-in patio area, my son shouted, “Ice cream cunt!” so close to where so many champions had so nobly represented good ol’ Old Town High.

“Ice cream cunt!” Adam yelled.

I had cut across the grass in the most direct route, as soon as I’d recognized the voice.  I could see him surrounded by teenagers, who, for their own amusement, were clearly prompting him.  When I got close enough that he noticed me—and perhaps my expression—he stopped.  “Adam,” I said, “Get your stuff.”

He stopped yelling it, and the peckerhead teenage boys who had been just moments prior encouraging him, well, I don’t remember too clearly what they did next, besides disperse.  I vaguely remember what was probably a few “uh-oh” looks on their faces along with a few smirks.  I don’t remember saying anything to them, but I may have.  I do remember staring daggers at them. 

And Adam and I walked home.  Our conversation was rather cyclical.

“I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!” Adam would say, pleading with me.  And, retrospectively, I must give him credit for his honesty.  He did not, at that time, know what ‘cunt’ means.

“Look,” I’d reply, “You can’t say that.  It’s a bad word.”

“But I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!”

And that was no lie.  The kid had integrity, and I’d like to give him credit for that now, for I could not, then.  “It’s just a really bad word. You don’t ever want to say it, especially in front of your mom or sisters.  Just don’t”

“But I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!”

And around we went, for all those couple-hundred yards that we walked home.  And Adam has what you might call “voice modulation issues.”  That kid’s voice carried.  He is and always has been an animated and gregarious presence, and he’s always fun to be around.  He’s really funny.  But as I think about him and his lively presence, I can’t help but think about how that conversation played in the neighborhood.   I mean, sure, Adam has heard me yell, a lot, maybe more than anyone else in the world, but I usually tried not to broadcast my displeasure all that publicly.  So, on that summer night, these many years ago, I imagine that anyone in their living rooms or sitting on their back decks or even anywhere near an open window along that street, I imagine they heard that succession of Adam yelling, “But I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!” with pauses in between when I would quietly plead with him not to say that word.

That word.  The “C-word.”  Cunt.  Let’s talk about “cunt” for a moment.  “Cunt,” that most profane and dreaded synecdoche.  Most people, especially the women-folk, aren’t big fans of it.  Some people just don’t care.  Some people just use it to push a button.  Like any profanity, it carries a certain amount of weight—“fuck it” expresses so much more frustration than “damn it.”  “Cunt” is a heavy one, indeed.    Motherfucker, bitch, cocksucker, cunt, asshole, these words are not meant for polite society or for my gentlemanly conversations.

I do use these words, though.  I don’t really use cunt so much but it has come up in conversations of mine recently, most recently by a woman who was doing some serious venting.  There’s nothing like a nice string of profanities, punctuated with a “cunt,” to let some steam off.  I do it all the time—again, not punctuated with a “cunt”—and often at work.  I mean, I mostly do it under my breath at work, but many times, I’m sure, it can be heard in neighboring cubicles.

And where did I learn this foul language?  A few, I learned when my parents let them slip in front of me.  Most of us learn a few of them that way.  Some, I learned in movies.  I was eleven-or-so when my family first got HBO.  “Cunt”, along with a few others, I learned from my dear brothers.  They were three and eight years older than I, and I often tagged along with them around the house.  I learned a lot from my brothers, a lot of “what not to do” kind of stuff.  If nothing else, I learned the value of discretion.  This lesson served me well in my high school years. 

Early on, I thought “cunt” was merely a naughty way to refer to a lady’s vagina.  As the years passed, I learned that a lady might not like the use of the word “cunt,” especially when it is used metonymously.  I did not have to learn this first hand, but I’m not sure where I learned it, probably the movies.  That’s where normal people learn dirty stuff.  Isn’t it?  I also may have learned it by watching friends make the mistake the mistake of using it.  Lesson learned.

Adam, on the other hand, didn’t always learn from the examples set by others or from a parent telling him not to do something.  Perhaps it’s part of his charm, but Adam, unfortunately, had to learn the hard way.  Ah, the perils of being an almost purely experiential learner.  I tried to tell him.  I honestly did.  That “I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means” conversation, that happened.  Just don’t say that word!  Not good enough for my Adam.

Could I have just told him that “cunt” is what “kobubo” means in English?  Perhaps, but for starters, I’m pretty sure Adam wouldn’t have remembered any of the words from the informal Spanish lesson.  Also, that would have been a lie.  We’ve established that “kobubo” means “fuck your mother,” not “cunt.”  And after the whole gibberish from Spanish to English lesson situation, I couldn’t risk another blow to my integrity with Adam.

Now, should I have told him that “cunt” is a slang term for “vagina” that we just shouldn’t use?  In the moment, that seemed like the worst idea, ever, but perhaps just telling Adam what a cunt is might have prevented what I now recall as the most embarrassing part of the whole “Adam learns the word ‘cunt’” episode.  He may have learned the dirty secret of what the word means, but the spread of the word may have been limited, at least on my watch.

And there we were, Adam and me, back from the pool.  Our “I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means” conversation had not, exactly, come to a resolution, other than me hoping, desperately, that he wouldn’t use the word again.

We got to the house, where the girls were probably in the middle of their fashion show.  My memory of what Adam and I walked into isn’t really clear.  I just know that Kathy could easily tell that something had happened, partly because she just knows stuff like that—it can be creepy—and partly, obviously, because Adam was home with me well before the pool closed.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Some teenagers were egging Adam on to shout something he shouldn’t be saying when I walked up there,” I replied.  “I’ve been trying to talk to him about it on the walk home.”

“What did he say?”

“He was using the ‘C-word,” I said.

“But I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!” Adam blurted out.

And again, he did not.  Indeed, he did not.

Kathy, for her part, was not exactly pleased with this turn of events, and she was in Adam’s face with a very loud, “Don’t you ever say that again!”  Adam may just get his voice modulation

Adam and Amber, a couple years
 after the "episode."

issues from his mother.

Looking back, I now have to assume that this is when my daughter’s learned the word “cunt,” along with their two friends.  I don’t remember a conversation with their parents the next day about my son introducing their daughters to the word “cunt.”  The aftermath of the “cunt” episode hasn’t really seared itself into my memory the same way the event, itself, did.

One thing I do know is that as I’ve been thinking about this situation, I felt like I had let Adam down.  Could I have prevented this incident by explaining to him that those weren’t Spanish words that he wanted me to translate into English?  Probably not.   And I surely would have regretted not making up English translation to his gibberish terms.  That was an opportunity of a lifetime.

On the other hand, could I have just been a little more understanding with him?  I could have just stopped on the walk home, gone to one knee to be on his level, and looked him in the eyes with my hands on his shoulders and said, “Adam, please don’t use that word.  I can’t tell you what it means right now.  It’s just a bad word.  I never say it, and those guys were jerks for teaching it to you.  Let’s just leave it behind us.”  I sure could have said that.

Hindsight being what it is, I could have done a lot of things different, but the question remains.  Would anything I might have done stopped Adam from using that word in front of my daughters and their friends?  Probably not.  Adam, he learns from experience.

When we first moved into the white house, after having been on the first floor of a duplex for a while, Adam tried a little experiment with the stairs.  He was living full time in a house with stairs, and even though he’d been in plenty of houses with stairs, he had to try something.   On a quiet afternoon soon after our move, Kathy and I were sitting in the living room when we heard a crash and an “Ugh, that hurt.”  We rushed into the hall to see Adam at the bottom of the stairs.  He had jumped from the top to see what it was like.  He was okay, but he’d learned his lesson. 

Now, let me ask you, do you think that there’s anything I could have said to prevent the kid who jumped down a flight of stairs “to see what it was like” from saying “cunt” in front of his sisters and their friends?  Me neither.  You see, Adam, Ol’ Adam, he had to learn things the hard way

I Live by a Certain Code

Well, that seems a bit more dramatic than what I’m going for here.  I don’t want to come across like one of those crazy Guantanamo Bay marines from A Few Good Men.   I just believe in returning favors and that sometimes for someone to get me to do something, I may have to get him to agree to reciprocate in advance.

Now, I don’t do things for people always expecting something in return.  I try to be a good person, and I try to do good things for people.  That’s just the right thing to do.  I try not to expect anything in return.  All this being said, I also try to do what’s funny.  Sometimes, I can effectively blend good deeds and humor.  Sometimes, being funny trumps that.  A man has to live by some standards.

Anyway, during my last drill weekend in uniform, in May 2013, before I became a member of

Me and my trusty M16 on our last day together.

the retired reserves following my 20-plus years of combined active and reserve service, I was presented with an opportunity to do a solid for one of my fellow soldiers.

That drill weekend was a four-day training event in Camp Ethan Allen, Vermont.  My battalion was spread-out with detachments from Maine to New Jersey, and for the last six or so years of my service, we’d been getting together for battalion-wide training at least once a year instead of doing our regular thing at our various detachment locations.  I hated these weekends, fucking hated them.  They often meant no booze, officially anyway.  That last weekend, I had a stainless steel water bottle filled with Jameson’s, because I was a God-damned rebel.  But this was my last drill weekend.  I was in good spirits, so the six-hour bus ride didn’t bother me.   I was almost free, and I had some whiskey. 

On our first morning, I was doing KP--kitchen police, for you civilians out there.  It may be odd for many to think of a Staff Sergeant doing KP, but I was in a small detachment:  just about everyone had one of these stupid jobs to do on these weekends.   I preferred KP over waking up in the middle of the night for fire guard.  Screw that waking up in the middle of the night bullshit.  Anyway, I was doing KP for breakfast, and I was helping  to clean up after morning chow, when Sergeant First Class Hatch, my detachment chief, came up to me.

“Hey, Ted, can you do me a favor?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied.  “What’s the favor?”

“Can you try to qualify this weekend?”

This may need some explanation. . .

So, I mentioned that this was my last drill weekend.  Late in the previous September, I had received my “20 Year Letter,” meaning that I had 20 good years of combined active and reserve service, creditable toward military retirement, for which I will start collecting a pension when I turn 60.  For a few drill weekends after that, I kind of went off the rails.  I was kind of an unpredictable asshole around my unit, and these weren’t exactly the best few months of my many years of military service.   That’s another story, though.

One thing on my unit’s training schedule while I was “off the rails” was a range day for my unit.  During our October drill weekend we had to qualify with our individually assigned weapons.  This happened just about every October, and during our combined battalion training events in the spring, anyone who didn’t qualify would have a chance to try to qualify again, if needed.

Over the years, I’d become very proud of my ability to qualify on the first try.  This hadn’t always been the case.   During basic training, I’d internalized the four fundamentals of marksmanship:  breath control, site picture, trigger squeeze, and relaxing.  I was the perfect soldier, except for the whole “relaxing” thing, I’d misinterpreted the living shit out of that.  Nobody noticed this until around my tenth year of service.   I’d usually hit 18 or better, out of 20, from a supported position, with my non-trigger hand and the barrel resting on a sandbag.  I’d also usually fail to make it to 23 total hits the first time from a non-supported position, with my non-trigger hand holding up the barrel.  So, I was a pretty shitty marksman until someone in my reserve unit was coaching me during one of our range days, and he said, “Why are you holding your weapon so loosely?”

I told him that I was just relaxing, and he explained to me that the whole “relaxing” fundamental thing meant to just relax, but you still have to hold your weapon firmly. 

Noted.

So, having figured this out, with the help of ol’ Staff Sergeant Buckley, I qualified as a marksman or sharpshooter, on the first try, every time, for about the last half of my military career.

Until, of course, the last time.

Now, in October 2012, with my 20-year-letter in hand, I simply did not give a fuck anymore

This is me, actually
giving a fuck.

and went off the rails—again, that is another story.  So, why bother wasting M16 ammunition on me when I was so close to putting in my retirement paperwork?  There were plenty of people in my unit who could have used those 40 rounds, either to practice or to just meet the requirements after a failed attempt.  So, I decided that trying was a waste of time.  Instead of just refusing to fire—which probably would have sufficed—I took the more hilarious route, and I decided to aim all of my rounds into a single silhouette.

Allow me to ‘splain.  For M16 qualification, the minimum standard is usually hitting 23 out of 40 targets on a range where the targets randomly pop up at varying distances, from 50 to 300 meters away.  The range is programmed for a machine to pull each target up in a set order for a set amount of time.  Sensors register each hit, and the target will drop after a hit or after the set time elapses.

I saw a documentary once that showed how this started.  In the World War II and Korean War eras, soldiers fired on circular targets as they learned to use their weapons.  The documentary discussed the invasion of Iwo Jima and how a large number of American soldiers and marines didn’t fire a round.  The defense of the island was so furious that many of our boys kind of freaked out (my interpretation) and didn’t fire back. Of course they didn’t respond, for they had been trained to fire at circles (my oversimplification).  So, the US Military came up with the whole pop-up target thing, with targets in the general shape and size of a person that popped-up to be shot.  The stimulus, as the documentary described, was seeing an enemy silhouette.  The response was to shoot him.  Stimulus-response, BF Skinner would be so proud.

But, these ranges are expensive, millions-of-dollars expensive.  So, unless there’s an active duty base or regularly used National Guard training area nearby, a lot of guard and reserve soldiers use an alternate, paper target to qualify, like the target in the picture below.

As you see from the paper target I’ve shown—and I’ve used this “alternate target” every time

Only five of these glorious 38 hits counted. 

but once in my reserve career and even a few times during my regular army years—there are ten silhouettes to hit.  And depending on variations in the standards—and they’ve changed over the years—you have to get three to five rounds in each silhouette from various firing positions for the shots to count.  In the picture, only five of the hits in the 50 meter silhouette counted.  I know, bullshit, right!  I told everyone that I scored a “38, because I waited for them to get close enough for me to take the high-percentage shot.” 

Now, I’ll admit that it is pretty “lame” that I missed the 50 meter silhouette twice, but I also must point out that I wasn’t trying my hardest.  I figured that any rounds I fired were a waste, and I was trying to make that obvious, in the most hilarious way possible.  Sure, there were some people who didn’t get it.  There always are.  “You know all those don’t count, right?”  No shit.  I was a soldier who was off the rails, not a fucking moron.  And I’m not sure why people didn’t get it.  I’d made a point of telling everyone that I didn’t give a fuck anymore.  (Again, that’s another story.)

Oh, and this led to the most hilarious and awesome “needs improvement” supporting comment on my final Noncommissioned Officer Evaluation Report, something along the lines of “Purposely failed to qualify by aiming all 40 rounds into the 50 meter silhouette.”   Also, telling everyone that “I didn’t give a fuck” anymore led to another “needs improvement” on that evaluation.  Apparently, making public professions of “not giving a fuck” displays a “lack of military bearing.”  Well, whatever.  I went out in style.

Anyway, that’s what I thought about my marksmanship score.  Whatever.  But apparently, a certain battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dan “Big Dan” Cloyd, wanted to clear my poor showing of “five” from the battalion’s readiness stats.  Sure, I had less than a month left on the battalion's books, but if Big Dan, my favorite battalion commander, ever, wanted me to try, I just might have to take something seriously, for a change.

Or would I?

You see, ol’ Hatch had made this whole “qualification thing” about the two of us.  He asked me if I would try to qualify as a “favor” to him.

So, I asked him, “Can you do me a favor?”

“What is it?” he asked.

Then, I opened the curtain on one of the longest running gags in the repertoire of the Ted Perrin Theater of the Absurd.  “Ask me if that’s a banana in my pocket, or if I’m just happy to see you,” I said.

Yeah, perhaps this might need some explanation, too.  You see, in military dining facilities, you can always take hand fruit with you after your meal.  In my barracks rooms, throughout my military career, I always had plenty of oranges and apples to snack on.   Indeed, that’s where I discovered that pairing orange sections with a nice pilsner was a great treat.  I didn’t put orange wheels in my beer.  I just ate the orange while sipping the beer.   For that idea, you’re welcome.

Anyway, one day, after lunch—probably in Bamberg, Germany—I put a banana in my pocket and walked around my battalion headquarters, where I worked, and I had people ask me if I had a banana in my pocket or if I was just happy to see them.  My reply was, always, “It’s a banana.”

I used that gag in many a dining facility in many duty stations, on many of my fellow soldiers.  I used it in Bamberg and Babenhausen, Germany; in Fort Hood, Texas; in Riyadh and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia while on deployment; during my annual training periods in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and Fort Lewis, Washington; and on many a guard or reserve training base throughout the northeast.

That's it, The banana in my right ammo
pouch.  That was the one that had been in my
pocket.  I wasn't "happy to see" anyone.

For some reason, this often made people feel uncomfortable.  Some people even suggested that this might be “kind of gay.”  Let me say this, as a heterosexual man, it’s not gay if you have a banana in your pocket.  And I’m sure that I’ve had more bananas in my pockets than just about anyone in history, so I’m an expert on the subject.

Now, if you randomly ask me if I have a banana in my pocket or if I’m just happy to see you, you’re on your own.  I cannot guarantee the contents of my pocket.  But if I ask you to ask me that question—unless you’re someone really, really special, and you’ll know if you are—just assume it’s a banana. 

I hate showing my hand like that, but seriously!

And, yeah, the request was out there.  “Ask me if that’s a banana in my pocket or if I’m just happy to see you.”  A very simple request, that I have a difficult time believing Hatch hadn’t received before, or at least hadn’t witnessed before.  But he looked at me, having asked me to qualify “as a favor,” and given this simple request in return—just a little something for my troubles—he said, “No.”  And he walked away.

Now, I ask you this.  Would you have been able to “try to qualify” that day and then be able to look yourself in the mirror and feel that you’d done the right thing?

Actually, you probably could.  But me, when a man asks me for a favor and won’t even ask me a simple, harmless question in return, I just can’t let myself be taken advantage of in that way.  I traffic in some next-level ethos, y’all.

Luckily for my friendship with Big Dan, they ran out of ammunition on the M16 range that day—see what I mean about wasting rounds on me—so I didn’t have to aim all 40 rounds into the 300 meter silhouette and disappoint him. 

And I’ll always have that shitty evaluation report to put an exclamation point on my marginal service.  You’re welcome, America.

Pajama Girl

                I had just left my ex-girlfriend’s place to go home and get ready for work.  Over the months, I’d end up making many of these five a.m. trips across Portland.  I hated getting up that early, and I still do.  These little drives across the city before getting ready for work didn’t, technically make my mornings that much longer.  They just made me get up after the first sound of the alarm.  I hate, hate, hate getting up in the morning, especially at ridiculously early hours, and I’m notorious for hitting the snooze alarm until it stops going off.  Half the time, I just sleep through the alarm, anyway.

                But these mornings together had the additional benefit—apart from the, ahem, obvious one—of getting me out of bed quickly because one of the few things that I hate more than mornings is being a nuisance to the good lady whose bed I share when I have to get up earlier than she does.  Not that there have been many of these bed sharing ladies who get up later than I do, my ex-wife, an ex-live-in-girlfriend, and the ex-girlfriend of this story, Tamra.  I had a commute of over an hour, one way, for about 7 years, and I got up early in order to get home at a decent hour.    Right now, I just have my cat, and I don’t give a shit about being quiet for her.  This makes getting up especially difficult for me, even when I’m well rested and have my head on relatively straight.

                I would love to put some of this into an on-line dating profile—along with assurances that I have a great ass—but I don’t want to seem like I’m just looking for a woman to use her just to help me get up early.  I’d also want to have sex with her, and I don’t want to come on that strong.

                So, I was on Congress Street in Portland, Maine, heading toward my place, when a few short blocks from Tamra’s, I saw a woman leaning into the driver side window of a car in a convenience store parking lot.  As I drove by, she pulled away from the car and started flagging me down. 

                Duty was calling.

                Now, I wear many hats.  Man, parent, grandparent, writer, bureaucrat for America, retired soldier, local man-about-town, woodworker, taxpayer, citizen, lover of well-crafted cocktails.  I could go on, but the thing is, I don’t let any of these define me.  I’m just Ted Perrin.  My one, simple goal in life is to be a good man.  I don’t want to be perfect—anymore.  I just want to be a good man who works hard and does good things.  Naturally, I’d prefer to do all this as hilariously as possible, for that is my calling in this world.

                And this, this damsel in distress was an opportunity to do a good thing and to serve my community, for I am a gentleman, and Portland was my community.  So, I pulled over and rolled down my window.  A twenty-ish-year-old girl with dark, shoulder length, somewhat greasy hair leaned in.

                “Can you please give me a ride over by Franklin Tower?” she asked.

                Why, yes I could give her this ride!  I lived very close to Franklin Tower.  So close, indeed, that I could throw a baseball from the backyard of my apartment building and hit it broadside, if only there were no trees or buildings in the way and I could throw a baseball about three or four hundred yards.  But proximity to my home and to my route there were not important, for this was an opportunity to serve my city, and she, my fellow-Portlander, was in need of my service.

                “Uh, sure,” I said, unlocking the door.

                This young woman said, “Oh my God! Thank you!” and she climbed in.  She wore a nondescript hooded sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants.

                I pulled away from the curb, full of myself after deciding to give this young woman a ride home, the smallest token of appreciation that I could give to my community on this cold and dark morning.  I wasn’t going to go too far out of my way, after all.  But deep down, I decided to bask in my own glory for a block or so before asking her the address where she wanted me to drop her off, or what brought her to such low estate, bumming rides across town from strange men, so early in the morning.  I didn’t say it, but I felt this toward her, “Goddamnit, you’re welcome, young lady.” 

                She, however, did not wait for a block or so, “Can I ask you a question?” she said.

                “Uh, sure,” I said.  I can’t remember what was crossing my mind before what happened next, but I was probably thinking about how lucky this girl was that I had picked her up.  I’m so fucking wise, and I give great advice!  I couldn’t wait to bless her with my wisdom.

                “Do you mind?” she said.  This wasn’t exactly the line of questioning that I was expecting, not that I know what I would have expected.  She was leaning over the console, her right hand open and hovering over the imaginary border between the console and the driver’s seat.

                “Uh, no, I guess,” I said, unsure of what was going on, and how it may have been affecting my status as a pillar of the community.  “What—“I started, but she was too quick to act before my full question came out, “—do you mean?”

                Her hand went forth, darting well past the boundary of my personal space and into my nether regions, or, what I often call my “man area.”  As far as having a woman reach forth and have a fondle of my general penis and ball area and general crotch region, this was not, shall we say, my first rodeo.  However, I must concede, that this was the first time this had happened in my car, with someone whom I’d just moments prior met, and whose name I did not know, while I was sober and the car was moving.  New territory, indeed. 

                I don’t remember exactly what I said, but the sounds that came out of my mouth were something along the lines of this, “Wha. . . uh. . .wha. . . huh. . .why?

                Completely disregarding what was clearly a question, my pajama clad passenger and fellow community member said, “I owe my roommate some money, and I can do lots of sex stuff for forty dollars.  I’m really good at it.”

                “Wha, uh, what was that?” I managed to say, continuing my sentiment that had been, moments prior, stifled in apoplexy.

                “What’s wrong with you?” She asked.

                “You just felt my crotch,” I said, beginning to pull myself together after the violation.

                “I had to make sure you weren’t the police,” she said.  “You can’t do that to a cop.”

                For that moment, I believed her.  However, I have since seen through what seemed to be her ironclad logic.  One can do that to a cop.  The difference is that a cop might not be as caught off guard, leading him to play along, which would ultimately lead to the arrest of the young lady for, dare I say, the prostitution.   But I wasn’t that clear-headed.

                “What?”

                “Look, I just need money to pay my roommate,” she said.  “I promise I’m good at it.”

                I must admit, as a sales pitch, this approach was fucking brilliant.  I have no idea if she actually thought that a cop had to say, ”No, you cannot feel my genital region, for I am an officer of the law,” when she reached over and asked, “Do you mind?”  But I’m sure that many a man had, indeed, responded to her touch, getting the wheels turning and the thinking coming from the non-brain head.  I will admit that similar touches, in more tender and loving situations, of course, had, in the past, yielded such an interest from me.  However, I, as I’ve noted, am a gentleman and such random groping of my, ahem, “penis and balls” resulted in no such tumescence.   The only, shall we say, stiffening was in my spine.  So, mustering all the gentlemanliness in my being, I told her, “Look, I just left my girlfriend, and now I have to go to work.  I can still drop you off by Franklin Tower.”

                “Please,” she said.  “I really need the money, and I’m really good at it.”

                Therein we find the dilemma.  Do I forsake my commitment to monogamy, to being reasonably on time for work, and to the rule of law in order to help out a fellow citizen in such dire circumstances?  I mean, I could still be reasonably on time for work.  But then there’s that girlfriend, not to mention the moral and legal problem of paying cash money for sex stuff, no matter how good this young lady was at it.  What if I became addicted to how good it was?  There were a number of issues at play.  And sure, forty bucks isn’t exactly top dollar.  Would that even count?  I decided that it would. 

                “Yeah, I’m sorry.  I can’t.”

                “Please, I promise I’m really good at it.”

                “I can’t.”

                “Bring me back,” she said.

                “What?

                “Just bring me back.”

                “You don’t need a ride?” I asked, still having a difficult time wrapping my mind around all this.  I mean, a prostitute and a liar?  What kind of person had I let in my car?  “I, uh,” continued as I made a very illegal U-turn, partly going the wrong way down a one-way street, to bring her back.

                “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

                I didn’t know what to say.  I hadn’t even begun to process the fact that she was a liar because I was still unable to process the concept of the whole groping my business area thing.  “I’m just flustered, I guess.”

                “What? Why?”

                Her groping of my tender bits had been such an affront to my gentlemanliness.  That’s all I could think about and all I could say.  “You grabbed my stuff.”

                “Ugh,” she blurted in disgust.  “Just let me out here.”

                I did, still a few blocks from where I’d picked her up, and then I made my way home and to work, not knowing that I’d never be the same, trusting soul I once was again.

                I debated whether or not to tell Tamra about my experience, unsure of how my story of picking up a prostitute right after I left her place might go over.  I decided to tell her.

                “Oh, that’s Pajama Girl,” she said.

                “Pajama Girl?” I asked.  Holy shit!  I thought.  She’s a super hero.  A sex stuff super hero with rock-bottom pricing!  And I had forty bucks to blow!

                “Yeah,” Tamra replied.  “I’ve seen her in the neighborhood, always wearing pajama bottoms.”  She also told me how she’d seen the person who she thought was Pajama Girl’s pimp and how he had someone over by Franklin Tower who kept an eye on her.  She told me she knew someone who knew someone who knew all this.   The second someone said that he took a ridiculous percentage of her sex stuff fees, giving her a mere pittance and some drugs in return for his protection.  Hey, people know people who know stuff, man.

                As for me, I’ve since broken up with Tamra and moved from Portland, so I probably won’t ever run into Pajama Girl again.  I’m just left with what will one day be an uncontrollable urge to go up to a young woman dressed in pajama bottoms and a hoodie in Walmart and say to her, “Really?” I’ll say.  “Really?  You get all dressed up like a prostitute to go to Walmart?  Really?”

Ted and Über Ted

                I know what you’re thinking.  What’s the difference?  Seriously!  Well, quite a bit, actually, or not so much, depending on which point in my life we’re talking about.  Hell, it can depend on my mood at any given time of day.

                But wait.  Before I go on, let me say up front that I’m writing about my mental problems.  I have them.  I experience very serious depressive episodes.  In years past, I’ve contemplated suicide.  I’ve ruled that out because I’ve been to too many funerals for young people, especially in my family.  I wouldn’t want to put my parents through the loss of another child, nor my siblings through the loss of another brother.  Having lost a niece to suicide, I wouldn’t want to put my kids and grandkids through that.  I’m stuck with this, at times, miserable existence that I sometimes hate.  I may as well try to pull my head out of my proverbially depressed ass. 

                And as I type out my hand-written words—that’s just how I can get the flow as a writer—I recognize the depth of the sadness of relying on not wanting to put my family through pain for my suicide prevention plan.  It’s not the best plan, and right now, it’s not the plan.  I’m in a better place emotionally now, and I haven’t really considered suicide in years.  When I did, though, thinking about the pain it would put my family through kept me alive.  So there, it worked. 

                Anyway, back to the question of the day.  What the fuck is this “Über Ted” bullshit I’m talking about?  I’m getting to that, so back off, and let me tell the story.

                Yes, I have what I affectionately refer to as “mental problems.”  I have a diagnosis of major depression.  I’ve been on medication since 2009 and off and on since 2000.  First, for many years I didn’t want to be really honest about it, partly because I was worried about how it would affect my eligibility for continued service in the army reserve.  Not long after I went on medication the last

The Face of "mental problems."

time, I felt the need to be a role model about my mental illness in my reserve unit.  I was honest about it when we had suicide prevention training, and I was honest about it during my annual health assessments.    I made quite a bit of progress with the therapist I was seeing at that time, as well.  Second, I just didn’t want to be honest about it.  I felt that my depression was a weakness, and I hated acknowledging it.  But the biggest reason I didn’t want to be honest about it is that I just didn’t want to be honest about how my mental problems were contributing to the downfall of my marriage and leading me to set a horrible example for my kids of how a man should be when in a relationship with a woman.

                For my part, I’ve made peace with those things.  I took a long hard look at myself in therapy and in life.  I was fully honest with a therapist for the first time.  Now, I’m not going to talk about my marriage in this piece.  This isn’t about that, and, for Christ’s sake, it’s been over five years.  I’ve stopped discussing my marriage with people. In the past people had a hard time with me accepting what is a fully accurate assessment of my responsibility.  Everyone, understandably, thinks I’m so fucking awesome that there’s no way that I just wasn’t a good husband to her and for her.  But that’s just how it was, and that’s as far as that goes.

                I know.  Get to the point, already.  What, the Hell, is my problem, and what, the fuck, is this Über Ted?   Quite simply, my problem is escapism.  My problem is the Über Ted.

                Ah, yes, the Über Ted, my idealized self.  For, oh, 35-ish years, I’ve held an idealized image in my mind of what I would like my life to be.   I know, lame, but there’s more.   I’ve compared Reg’lar Ted to the Über Ted throughout my life, always unfavorably, of course, and always at the expense of whatever semblance of self-esteem I may have been struggling with at the time.

                  I know.  I’m sure lots of people do that.  I’m sure just about everyone has, at one time or another, daydreamed about a better life, a better self, a better dream for a better future, better this and better that.  I’m not really talking about that.  I’m talking about living vicariously through the Über Ted.  This may seem odd because I’m sure there are many who live vicariously through Reg’lar Ted, which is probably a very normal response.  I mean, I am pretty fucking awesome. 

                Through therapy, I’ve done an enormous amount of self-esteem work.  I may have even, shall we say, “overshot the mark,” because I’m pretty much in love with myself, and who can blame me?  While out on the town recently, I told an adorable young lesbian couple that they were the second cutest couple in the bar, after me and myself.  I meant it, and they're pretty adorable.

                So, me, as a man, I’m cool with the self-esteem thing.  Now.  But I’m sure I’m confusing you.  You’re probably thinking, “Get to the Über Ted bullshit, Ted.”  I’m getting to it.  Keep your panties on.

                It began when I was a young pubescent-ish lad, and I started noticing how I was fitting in with others.  It wasn’t a great fit.   Somewhere in the time between fourth and sixth grades, I discovered my profound lack of athletic ability.  I also started noticing how my family couldn’t afford some of the things that other families could.  My first memory of this was when my parents bought a 1966-or-so Impala convertible.  In 1981 or 1982 or whenever it was, such a car would have been a sweet-ass ride for a high school student, and I sort of remember that my mom really liked it.  But what I more clearly remember is the look of judgment and sarcasm on Kerry Myatt’s face when she said, “Nice car, Teddy,” after my mom dropped me off for school one day.  That’s such a vivid memory for me.  The only thing I don’t remember is how to spell Kerry’s last name.  She may have also spelled “Kerry” differently.  I don’t know.

                One might think that I’d spare my own children such embarrassment, but no.  I didn’t.  For a while I was driving a white 1989 Plymouth Voyager minivan that had wood panel sides.  I affectionately called it the “Family Truckster.”  The kids, not so affectionately, called it the “Family Dumpster.”  Once, when I was bringing my two older girls, Krystal and Kasi, to a dance at the YMCA, they begged of me not to drop them off in front of the Y, which was in a little strip-mall plaza near our home.  I dropped them off by the video store nearby, and then I crept up on them and shouted, “Have fun girls!” right in front of the YMCA.  My exhaust leak echoed through the parking lot as I sped away.   Krystal and Kasi, I understand and acknowledge the pain my actions have caused you.  I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry.  Funny trumps regret.

                Alright, back to me.  There I was, nigh on pubescence, un-athletic, average, middle class, and I was noticing how girls didn’t swoon over me.  I know, crazy, right!  But don’t shed a tear for young Teddy Perrin.  He grew up to overcome all that shit.  Well, except for the athletic ability thing.  That never happened for me.   “Did God hate me?” is what I would have wondered if my family had been religious.  Thankfully, young Teddy did not have that weighing over him.  Thanks Mom and Dad!

                No, I’m just a simple American, and I was just a simple American boy.  I’m all about being part of the solution and not part of the problem.   So, I thought to myself, “Why can’t things just be different?”  Brilliant, I know.  In retrospect, I actually wanted things to have been different, but the former had started to work for me.  I began to daydream about a life that was different, and that, unfortunately, was as far as the plan went.  I’m sure lots of people daydream like this, and back then, it wasn’t a problem. 

The Rock 'n Roll Perrins, 35 years later.

                Hell, back then, my daydreams were hilarious.  At first, preteen Ted wished he was in some kind of rock star family—not unlike the Partridges.  No, very much unlike the Partridges.  The Perrins rocked, hard.  And this new, imaginary Ted was the smartest and most athletic kid in school.  Naturally, he had his choice of sweethearts.  It’s hard to imagine how that earliest version of the Über Ted would have played out because, in the coming years, the Über Ted was, for lack of a better explanation, a little more grounded in whatever plans I had in reality. 

                And as I became a teenager, and I became somewhat more comfortable with myself—somewhat—the Über Ted became a little less grandiose.  Well, now that I think of it, just as grandiose.  I just didn’t dream of being in a rock star family, anymore.  I settled for my regular one.  Naturally, the Über Ted was still the smartest kid around, and he was never, ever awkward or uncomfortable with girls.  He didn’t peak at five-foot-nine, either, nor did he have acne or my crowded teeth.  Oh, and he was the best long distance runner in the state.  Ah, but I’m being modest, the Über Ted was the best long distance runner in the country, destined for Olympic glory.  Of course, by “Olympic glory,” I mean “all the gold medals.”

Teenage Ted, Dreamer of
big, big dreams.

                In later years, if I thought about the Über Ted and his past, I softened the whole “all the gold medals” thing.   Silver and bronze medals build character in your first couple Olympiads.   Oh, and by “if I thought about the Über Ted,” I mean that I did that shit all the fucking time.

                As my high school years were ending, I was subconsciously sabotaging my college plans.  I had been recruited by the cross country coach at Columbia University, so I applied there and to Cornell, with Ohio State as my safety school.  But I had no clue what I really wanted to do, and I felt completely lost as I navigated the application process.  Going to an Ivy League school was a bit too much pressure for a young man who felt like he was the biggest, most awkward dumbshit in four counties.  So, I blew off the College Board Achievement Tests—a requirement for both Columbia and Cornell at the time—and I wrote, uh, scribbled, actually, an absolutely atrocious essay on my applications.  I can’t remember what it was about.  I just know it was very far from the best expository composition in my life. 

                After that, I settled on joining the army reserve and going to Ohio State and screwing that up by never going to class.  This led to me joining the regular army.  The Über Ted didn’t join me in uniform right away.  He was busy kicking ass at Columbia University, in the classroom and on the championship cross country team.  He learned so much cool shit and impressed the bejeezus out of all those cute Ivy League chicks.  They were so damned lucky!

                Oddly enough, I began to recognize that some parts of my life weren’t so bad.  It’s been hard for me to wrap my mind around that sometimes because in those years, I often felt that my very existence was so utterly horrible and pathetic, but I realized that joining the regular army wasn’t so bad, so the Über Ted signed up.  Or, he had signed up, rather.  Only he had realized as a senior in high school how he had no clue about what he wanted to do with his life.  He just joined the regular army out of high school and didn’t need to waste a year with a non-term at Ohio State and staying with friends, like I had, before I realized that I just needed to do something.

                No, the Über Ted joined the regular army, and our timelines met after his tour of duty in Korea as we started our service at Ft. Riley, Kansas.  I was doing double duty, actually serving in the real world and vicariously serving as the Über Ted.  I know.  That seems like a lot, but apparently, I’m a much better multitasker than I present as in the real world, you know, to people.

                Let me be clear.  I wasn’t constantly thinking about how sucky I was and how much better my life would be if I were the Über Ted and perfect.  I thought about it a lot, though, in my quiet moments, alone, when I felt rejected, when I felt foolish, when I felt dumb, when I felt hideous.  Very often, indeed, but not constantly.  Simple self-confidence would have gone a long way for that young Ted, but for that Ted, self-confidence was as foreign as could be.  It was such an abstract unreality when compared with the self-image I had.  The Über Ted had a better chance of becoming Real Ted than that Ted had of feeling worth a good God damn.

                Okay, now.  Put your tissues away.  This was just something I experienced.  It was all in my head, anyway.  I’ve had a good life.  I served well and honorably during my regular army years, and so did the Über Ted.

                Then, we went to college.  I went to the University of Maine to major in English.  The Über Ted made it past the wait-list at Bates College, where he matriculated to become a man of letters.  When I realized and accepted that UMaine wasn’t such a shithole, the Über Ted joined me there.  I did pretty well.  Indeed, it was difficult to convince myself that I was a fucking moron while I was performing so well academically and earning such a variety of honors.  I accepted that Phi Beta Kappans are at least book smart, but I was sure that I was the stupidest one of them.

                I did have an experience at UMaine that was rather emotionally traumatic.  I read James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty for the survey of American Literature, and it was horrifying.  If you haven’t read it—and I haven’t read it in around 17 years—let me summarize.  In the story, Walter Mitty is a fucking loser, idiot who daydreams through his mundane life with grand and heroic thoughts of a different life.   I hated reading it and seeing how foolish and escapist living vicariously though daydreams was.  On a critical note, as a daydream escapist, I thought that Thurber didn’t capture this phenomenon very well.  Mitty’s daydreams were far too disconnected to be taken seriously.  It would be more believable if there had been even a little bit of exposition along the parallel narrative of Mitty’s daydreams.

                And you know, I’ve thought about writing this as a longer piece, focusing on the parallel between the Über Ted and Walter Mitty.   The working title is Suck it, Walter Mitty.

                Did I participate in the classroom discussion of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? Quite simply, fuck no.  I wasn’t quite ready to share my own secret Über Ted life with the world.  Also, my professor didn’t help me feel that the classroom, or anywhere else, might be a safe place to discuss the Über Ted, either.  I don’t remember his exact words, but this is what his discussion of the story felt like, “Walter Mitty is the biggest fucking loser moron in literary history, ever.  While it may be hilarious on the page, any people who actually do this and think these sort of thoughts not only do not deserve to breath the same air as us normal people, but they will also get a ‘C’ in this class.”  Then, he looked in the eyes of every student in class that day to see who might be harboring such dumbfuck escapist thoughts.  Somehow, I hid my true self, and I kept my “A.”

                At this point, having realized that living vicariously through my idealized self was not a healthy or effective use of my brain power, I decided to stop.  But having developed this as a coping mechanism for dealing with my self-loathing over what had been over 15 years by then, I couldn’t stop. Or, rather, I just didn’t know how to stop.  There was no way I was going to talk to someone about it, either.

                I just kept living and accepting things about me and letting the Über Ted integrate them into his story, too.  I met the woman who is now my ex-wife, Kathy, and her kids, and we became a family.  I helped her raise those kids, and I love them.  I’ll always be there for them, and their children.  The Über Ted was along for this ride, too.  We were pretty integrated, except for me hating myself and wanting to be a different, smarter, better looking guy and a better husband and parent.  I just wanted to be Über Ted, but living my life.

                I had graduated, and I was working outside my field, but I was working.  I loved my wife and kids, and I was happy with them.  But I was miserable in me.  I hated that I couldn’t stop hating myself, and I just wanted it to stop.  Daydreaming about the Über Ted was replaced by me constantly talking to myself about what a worthless, piece of shit, fucking moron I was.  I had invested hope in waking up to be the Über Ted, and that felt like the stupidest thing anyone had ever done.  “Miserable” doesn’t begin to describe how I felt.  Then again, it’s a very simple way to describe how I felt, and I think that many of you can relate to it as the introduction of the description of my old feelings of worthlessness.  Anyway, Kathy could see that I wasn’t right, and she pushed me to get help.  Ultimately, she had to call the police one night when I was beset with desperation, and I took a Leatherman-like hand tool off to the nearest bit of forest to do myself in.  A policeman caught up with me on the trail, and he brought me to the emergency room.

                When I left the house, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do.  Jam one of the blades into my neck or temple or chest, I guess.  I didn’t have a fully formed plan.  As many who are close to me will attest, I’m not good at planning anything.

It may have been in the ER that night with Kathy and the crisis worker, it may have been during the follow-up appointment with a psychiatrist, it may have been in my first appointment with a therapist, or it could have just been in a conversation with Kathy, but I started telling some of these select few about the Über Ted.  It wasn’t all that liberating.  As one prone to self-criticism and a tendency for perfectionism, it felt like defeat.  I felt like the King of the Dipshits.  I was worse than that dumbfuck Walter Mitty because people knew.  I mean, at least the Über Ted had some direction, unlike that piece-of-shit Mitty’s day dream self.

Part of me wants to reread the story, but most of me doesn’t.  I just watched the trailer to Ben Stiller’s 2013 version of the film, and I wanted to cry.  Fuck Walter Mitty.

I did feel exposed, but through the cavalcade of therapists over the next few years, I had the opportunity to make some progress.  I also had the assurances of a board-certified psychiatrist that because I knew that this Über Ted stuff wasn’t real, I wasn’t insane.  So, I had that going for me.  And I was able to process through some of the bullshit that had made me a miserable, depressed, pathetic daydreaming loser.  I was able to achieve a level of self-acceptance that I had theretofore never reached.  Unfortunately, I never really worked through the Über Ted bullshit, and I just accepted that as part of “being Ted.”  I made myself suppress the desire to be the Über Ted.  It wasn’t that hard.  Sure, he snuck back in every once in a while, mostly around my discomfort with my physical appearance.  The Über Ted was taller, a little more muscular, more handsome, and he had a full head of hair and could grow a full beard.  A full head of hair and a full beard, for Christ’s sake, is that so much to ask for from a man’s deranged fantasy of becoming his idealized self?  I thought not.  But, whatever.  I’d catch myself thinking about the Über Ted, and I’d just say, “Cut the shit, Ted.”

It seemed to work for a while, at least until I started going through the separation and divorce with Kathy when I fell into a pretty deep depression.  I was fully honest with my therapist and with myself—for the first time—about my part in the downfall in the marriage.   For a while, all this honesty with myself kept Über Ted away.  It was kind of weird for him not to have his fingerprints all over a period of serious depression.   I’m not going to go so far as to say it was nice.  I hated the man I’d let myself become.  This period of depression was just different. 

But don’t get me wrong.  The Über Ted was still lurking around.  He was changing, along

Visitors to TedHouse enjoy this
picture on my hand made
bedside table.  So hot!

with my self-image.  I was beginning to accept what a magnificent specimen of manhood, intelligence, creativity, and awesomeness I am.   And I had begun to see just how God-damned good-looking I am.  I mean, seriously, look at me.

But the Über Ted isn’t just a pretty face with a great mind and an amazing ass.  He’s always been a man who did things, and for a while, Reg’lar Ted was, too.  I had started TedBlog, and I made TedBar and some other furniture.  I got interested in cooking and in creative cocktails.  I made foolish videos for the YouTubes.   I was doing creative things, and I loved it. 

Then I got busy with “busy-ness,” and I stopped making time for the things that I enjoyed.  I had to do a lot of overtime at work, and that ate away at me.  My free time became less of a time to create cool shit and more of a time to rest and sleep away the stress.  And, in the interest of full disclosure, I drank some of that time away, but I did create a few of my own cocktail recipes.  So, really, I was still pretty creative. 

I bought a house 50 miles closer to work, hoping the ten hours per week that I was no longer spending on the commute would be spent getting the rest I needed to be creative during my “TedTime.”    Anyway, I love TedHouse, and I’ve loved the process of decorating it and making some of the furniture, like the desk I’m writing on now. 

But the time to be creative slipped away from my grasp, and I was falling.  This happens.   I have a mental illness, and I’m prone to depressive episodes.  My old psychiatrist once told me that 100 percent of people who experience three or more major depressive episodes will experience another.   She was right, in my case, many times over. 

So, I was falling.  Like I said, this happens.  After the Newtown shooting, I was devastated.   I hated everything, myself included.  I walked through a fog for a couple weeks.  I was just shocked and saddened that mental illness didn’t become the important talking point.  I was consumed with what I call my “I hate everything feeling.”  Then, in my nephew’s basement, where I had been doing my woodworking, I made a cut, and as his saw tore into the pine, I felt my mood lift.  I didn’t hate everything anymore.  This happens, too—usually not quite so dramatically.  It happens, though, and I like stuff again. 

This liking stuff again just wasn’t happening last fall.  (Full disclosure, it’s not there all the time now.)  But last fall, I mean, I really hated everything, more each day.  There was a confluence of things that probably all fed into this to varying degrees.  I had written a novel years ago, only a draft, and it was still a raging piece of shit that needed a lot of work.  I lost the soft copy of it.  I still have the hard copy, but losing it just reminded me of what a lazy, non-novel-editing motherfucker I’d been for so long.  The Über Ted would have finished that shit.  I also had the anniversaries of the two big break-ups of my life to consider and reflect on the changes I’d made—along with the changes I felt were still necessary.  I’d had another break-up a few months prior, and I had to think about why I'd let that go as far as I had.  And there were other things, but this is enough disclosure for now.

And the days grew shorter, and I hated everything, including myself, naturally.  And my old friend came back to haunt me.

Since October 2014, I’ve missed a lot of work, many days, just lying in bed or on my couch, hating every fucking moment, wishing for the Über Ted to just take over.  The time was ripe.  He edited and finished his damn novels—and sold them and had them made into movies, of course.  He wrote regularly and did lots of cool, creative stuff.  Yeah, sure, he had his share of problems.  He’s human, just like you and me, but he took care of himself.  He dealt with his shit like a normal person.

And me, I just wallowed in misery, unable to understand how this could or would stop.  There were no magic moments when my mood just changed, and it never seemed to change gradually.  The Über Ted didn’t seem like he was ever going to take over—that worthless son of a bitch.  So I decided to give it up.   This Über Ted bullshit just didn’t work for me, and I found a therapist.  We’re working on getting my head out of my ass and into my life.  She says that we’re working on getting me out of my head and into my life.  Fuck it, I’m paying for this shit, so I call it whatever I want.  As long as the result is me engaging my life rather than some bullshit idealized self, it doesn’t matter what language we use. 

I have to admit, though, It’s not very easy to give up living vicariously through the Über Ted after 35 years.  A great deal of the time, I just don’t know what to do with myself or what to think.  I still have days when I don’t feel like I have enough energy to get out of bed.  It’s so easy to go through the motions of life with hope for the Über Ted at the back of my mind. There are times when it’s a hell of a lot harder to just go through the motions of my life.   I had no idea how deep all of this ran, and sometimes, I don’t know what to hope for or what a regular future might be like.  It still gets pretty dark every once in a while.

But I’m slowly making changes.  I’ve been doing some writing.  (You’re reading this, aren’t you?)  Indeed, writing this is going to help immensely, I hope.  How can I go back to the Über Ted if I’ve exposed him for the fraud he is?  I’m even starting to rewrite that piece-of-shit, unreadable novel. (Keep your pants on, it’ll take a while.)  I recently completed another woodworking project—this awesome desk I’m using right now—and I’ve got another one in the hopper, bunk beds for my grandkids.  Well, there are a few in the hopper, end-tables and shelves and whatever I may feel like.

Sometimes, I just don’t know what I’m doing.  I catch myself heading to fantasyland.  Not as the Über Ted, but I fantasize about being Reg’lar Ted with all the work done that I need to do.  That’s pretty dangerous for me right now, too.  It’s just another side of the Über Ted coin where I don’t have to do any work for things to get better.  I try not to beat myself up much.  That’s been pretty disastrous in the past.  And after all, this Über Ted stuff is kind of funny.   What an elaborate procrastination scheme!  It’s much better than “planning ahead so I don’t have to do anything right now.”  I don’t even have to plan ahead because my idealized self would have already done it, and much, much more.

Maybe someday I’ll be able to write about this in more detail, with fewer “fucks” and “shits.”  Though, to be sure, I’ll never tell all.  I’m telling enough, and all this feels pretty stupid.  No one needs to know all the inner-workings of this big ol’ brain of mine.  For now, I’m just trying to do some shit and, honestly, to give a shit.  It’s just going to take some time.