Year 5

Imagine with me driving down the highway, it's midday. The clouds are spinning sunlight through them like a spider's web, soft and slow. The music is turned on in your car. You're listening to a song that makes you happy to be alive. Without realizing it, you are connected to the long eons of human beings who have been moved by the sound of music. The world is a benevolent place. And in the haze of early afternoon, a shape flashes inn front of your car. It's a deer, and it's now ensconced on your front bumper. You're on the phone with your insurance company when the life passes from the deer's eyes. It occurs to you suddenly that you are going to perish yourself some day, and get buried, and cried over, if you're lucky. And then a lot of other generations are going to do the same thing. In short, you were lied to. The world is not a benevolent place.

This is analogous to the pictures that I've been posting over the last few days. It appeared that I was headed on a path for greatness, at least cuteness. By the time I was thirty I'd have changed my name to Max Power and I'd be working at Goldman Sachs with a hefty expense account and driving home in my Corvette. And then I hit year five. It all ends. Scroll through the pictures from the previous days of my blog and tell me you saw this coming? You didn't. It's like that f-ing deer jumping out into the road.

Interpolation
S: Are you serious?
M: What?
S: Someone let their dog poop on the walkway we dug out to the car. It's the one place we can go, and they let their dog poop on it.
M: The world his a shitty place.
S: Huh.
M: That was a joke.
S: Oh.
M: Genius wasted.

Let's deal with the specifics first. I went from a cute young boy with a Jim from the office haircut to looking like the strange white guy from every missing child poster of my youth. Give me a mustache in this photo and I'm pretty much a forty year old man. The hairstyle is? Well? Pretty much the sort of thing you see on men who troll by elementary schools offering candy. The glasses. Huh? Huge. And weird. And they make me look strange. My hip Lacoste shirt? Gone. Replaced by a shirt that says, "Hey, hey, come here. I've got some cool Lizards I want to show you back at my house. What? Where are you going friends? Oh. I guess I'll just walk home by myself. No parties this year?"

Interpolation:
S: My parents roof is having trouble.
M: Well, I dug our roof out for three hours today.
S: That's great.
M: So are you telling me that your parents need their big strapping son-in-law to come and help them clear off their roof?
S: That would be great yeah.
M: I can hardly feel my left shoulder, and I think I may have torn an MCL or something up there. My sciatic nerve is.....

This is the year that I kissed the Goldman Sachs job goodbye and officially became socially awkward enough to pursue an MFA. Thanks year five. In this year I was incredibly scared of my kindergarten teacher who tried to hold me back. I learned that I can't cut straight with scissors. Still can't. I learned that other kids don't take to the kid too shy to talk in class. For some reason, (though with the picture now I'm not sure I blame them) they don't want to hang out and be his buddy. Special thanks to Chris, wherever he is for not thinking that I was a regressed learner just because I looked like a forty year old and didn't speak.

Positives-Nothing good about being give. Terrible year. You're no longer young enough to have people expect nothing from you. Suddenly, you are thrust into school and expected to do things like glue macaroni and cut out circles and say the alphabet. And they begin B.F. Skinnering your ass, rewarding you for the good things and subtly punishing you for the bad. You begin to learn about social groups, and you have to try and figure out how to orient yourself. I'm certain that I'm not extrapolating my experience to everyone. I'm pretty sure five is terrible across the board.
The funny thing is, I worked for a few years at elementary schools. All the kindergarten teachers were sweet old librarian types, or young and pretty education job graduates who loved each and every one of their students. Where were you all when I was in school?

Actual Positive-I spent four hours digging out snow in various places around my house today. Parts of my body hurt that I'd forgotten that I have. "Oh, there's a muscle there. Who knew? And it's inflamed." And at the end of the day I've still got five hundred other house projects looming.

Positive- I think we may have gotten a Nintendo this year. This pretty much says it all. Who needs friends when you can just create friends on your television? Who'd want a bloke to throw a football to when you can just conjure up Mario and kill some Koopa Troopa's?

Negative-Pretty much everything else. Expectations, the soul-crushing boredom of school that might hit you only once or twice but it is the beginning of something that you didn't know existed when you are climbing trees in your back yard. The world is not a benevolent place out to bring you joy. It is dull and drab and grey and full of scissors that will not cut straight. It almost makes you glad you are going to be thirty. Then you wonder whether the pain in your lower back will cause you to remain bedridden on one of your weekend days instead, and you long for the big glasses, the strange hair, and the collared shirt because you were young.