So I’m marking another elliptical spin around the sun, another year in the rearview mirror. This isn’t a milestone year so it’ll be a quiet affair: dinner, maybe a few drinks, a quick jaunt to Sri Lanka and back. When we’re young every birthday is a major event. Turning one is worthy of celebration, even if most of us don’t remember it, at two we’ve doubled our age, at three we’ve tripled it. At four, five, and six we really start to explore the world on our own, make friends, try on and discard personas. Ten marks the beginning of the double digits but the next big step isn’t until thirteen, considered in many cultures to be the age of adulthood, although its onset usually starts earlier. At sixteen, in the US, you can drive a car, at eighteen you can vote, and at twenty-one you can legally drink. Then the way stations only come once every ten years: thirty is when you say you’ve got the whole adulting thing figured out, even though you haven’t and never will, and at forty you’re “over the hill”. The Eternal Footman who holds your coat and snickers stands a little closer. Fifty is the half-century mark and from there, well, the years roll on at the same rate but they seem to go by faster.
Thirty years ago on another birthday I wrote this poem:
I’d like to sleep late,
Warm in my cocoon, stretch,
Before throwing the sheet
Off like a lost ship’s hatch
And like a single sailor stand
Looking out over miles of empty sea
Without a single stretch of land
To disrupt any possibility.
The reality’s more mundane:
Alarm clock, dark fumbling, shower.
All through it my brain
Mutters that I have work in an hour.
A birthday passed is like death:
A miracle without fanfare.
One moment you’re drawing breath,
The next you only once were.
It’s morbid but the truth is I really do think of birthdays as something to celebrate. The older I get the more I come back around to every one being a milestone, another year that I feel lucky just to be here.
Almost nine years ago, on September 23rd, 2014, to be precise–well, I can’t be really precise but I think it was about 12:13PM that it was finally over–I finished chemotherapy. This is the date I mark as the end of my fight with cancer. The doctors will say it wasn’t really over until the following December when I had a major surgery. There were no signs of cancer at that point but the doctors said, “To be safe we’re gonna nuke it from orbit.” And there were still no signs the following spring, but I had a small surgery anyway to be completely safe.
I was diagnosed in June 2014, finished chemo in September 2014, and a final surgery in March 2015. For nine months I lived with cancer. I woke up with cancer, ran errands with cancer, ate with cancer, and, at night, when I got into bed, there was my wife, a couple of dogs between us, and, right there with me, cancer, which is why I sometimes woke up soaked in sweat. I went to meetings of people who had, or who’d had, cancer. Some of them had been in remission for twenty years, but they still lived with cancer. This will be my life, I thought. I will always live with cancer.
For a long time that was my life, and I’d slipped into it easily. Almost overnight I’d gone from a guy who couldn’t pick my primary care physician out of a lineup to someone who walked into appointments with specialists and said, “So, how did your kids like the trip to the zoo this weekend?” I got used to having needles stuck in me, and I became an expert at navigating hospitals.
It changed gradually. My oncologist decided she only needed to see me every six months, then only once a year. Then she moved to Chicago.
It was like my hair growing back. For a while I was aware of it, mostly because it itched, but by the time I got around to needing my first post-chemo haircut I didn’t even think to mark the occasion.
I still live with cancer. It’s just not the life I imagined. I can’t even articulate what it is I did imagine, although it involved continuing to go to support groups–I’m sorry, I haven’t been back to one since 2014. I imagined I’d continue to be on a first-name basis with various medical specialists–but I only see my new oncologist once a year and, honestly, I couldn’t pick her out of a lineup.
At one time I wondered if my hair would grow back. Then it did, and I quit wondering.
I’ll always live with cancer but not like I used to. It’s like an old friend who moved away, but one I never want to see again because it tried to kill me.
For most people big anniversaries end with a five or a zero but I prefer the odd numbers. When separated into equal parts there’s a remainder–something left over. And I get to decide what that is. Maybe it’s cancer–the brief but terrible experience of all of it, the surgeries, the chemotherapy, the uncertainty. It can also be me, still here, still odd.
There was an unexpected passenger in the car. I know a thing or two about spiders and even I was surprised to see the large orb web spun over the passenger seat, not to mention the large Aranea cavatica in the middle of the web, and if you know anything about spiders you know that’s the same species that was the hero of a famous children’s book. Some people think the pig is the hero of the book but let’s be clear: there’s a reason it’s called Charlotte’s Web and not Wilbur’s Mudhole.
I gently coaxed the spider out with a stick and she was easygoing about it, maybe realizing a car isn’t the best place for a spider, although inside is better than outside. Sometimes, when I’ve been in the passenger seat myself, I’ve looked over at the rearview mirror and seen a spider clinging to it only to fly away after a few minutes. And if you’re thinking spiders don’t fly, well, sometimes they do when they’re young and they use their silk to catch the wind so it carries them upward, and most also fly when the car they’re hanging onto reaches highway speeds.
The one mistake I made was telling my wife there’d been a spider in the car. She was upset that there’d been a spider in the car, and that that I’d put Charlotte among the flower pots and not out in the yard, well away from the house and anywhere she—my wife—might want to go. She—my wife—would even have preferred that I kill her—the spider. And I feel like I’ve failed. We’ve been married almost thirty years now. We have an anniversary coming up in a few days, in fact, and yet she still doesn’t appreciate that I know a thing or two about spiders. When we see a spider in the house she doesn’t care that I can accurately identify it as, in most cases, a wolf spider which, if you know anything about spiders, you know is a member of the Lycosa family—a group that’s completely harmless to humans, doesn’t build webs, and, let’s face it, isn’t nearly as bad as whatever pests it’s eating. Having a spider in the house is like having a guard dog that doesn’t need walking, lets itself in and out, and catches vermin. In other words it’s like having a guard dog that’s a cat. A very small cat that just happens to have eight legs and eight eyes.
And this is where I admit that she has good reason for being suspicious of my association with spiders. Back when we were first married, when the ink on the license wasn’t even dry, we were out on the back patio and I caught a small member of the Salticidae family and went to show it to my wife. If you know anything about spiders you know this family is very cute, with fluffy bodies and lovely iridescent green and purple markings and big round eyes. They’re completely harmless to humans and they’re almost friendly. There’s even a trend of people finding these spiders in their homes—the people’s homes, not the spiders’—and building little terrariums and making them pets. It’s like keeping a hamster. A very small hamster that just happens to have eight legs and eight eyes, and that might, when it dies, leave behind an egg sac with a hundred or more babies inside, but if you know anything about spiders you know most of them will eat each other.
And if you know anything about spiders you also know members of the Salticidae family are commonly called “jumping spiders”.
This one jumped down her shirt.
She didn’t divorce me on the spot so there’s that but she hasn’t exactly let go of it either, even after all these years. I understand she was upset, but I was upset too. The spider died! And I was at least partly responsible! But it’s never happened again. I’ve done my best to keep spiders away from her, both for her benefit and theirs. At some point, surely, the incident will be, if not forgotten, then at least forgiven. There’s got to be a statute of limitations on something like this. Anyone who knows anything about spiders, would you please let me know what it is?
April 2022-Things got off to a rocky start when someone said, “Hey, remember pet rocks?” This sent everyone off into a research project that uncovered, among other things, the fact that there was an official “Pet Rock” invented by an advertising executive and sold in a cardboard box with ventilation holes in 1975. Most staff old enough to remember the fad thought pet rocks were just rocks that people found and gave to each other as a joke in the mid-‘70’s. The fad was briefly revived by the film Everything Everywhere All At Once. A discussion of whether or not pet rocks should have googly eyes attached quickly degenerated into everyone sticking googly eyes on everything.
May 2022-Most of staff time was dedicated to removing googly eyes from everything following complaints that the office looked “like a Marty Feldman convention”.
June 2022-The opening of a gyro truck on a nearby corner prompted staff to debate whether there are enough gyro places around to try and find the best one in Nashville. Some staff argued in favor of pizza with others saying pizza is too quotidian, which in turn prompted responses that it was just a gratuitous excuse to say “quotidian”.
July 2022-A debate over whether the word “gratuitous” can ever be gratuitous ended with staff going out for milkshakes.
August 2022-A spider was found in the offices. It quickly captured and gently placed outside by the team leader who described himself as “an arachnophile”. This led to everyone else laughing for at entire week while the team leader kept repeating, “I just mean I really like spiders! What is wrong with all of you?”
September 2022-This seemed like a good time to take a shower.
October 2022-Staff decided to take a ghost tour of the offices which meant everyone going through file cabinets looking for the oldest things they could find. The winner was a dot matrix printout of Umberto Eco’s short essay on the difference between DOS computers and Apple’s Macintosh in which he said “I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant.” The printout was then respectfully burned and staff swore they saw Joan Rivers in the smoke.
November 2022-Staff member Joe Bertman came into the office singing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” but he couldn’t remember the words so he just kept singing, “Whoa, we’re half way there, whoa, half way there, take my hand ‘cause we’re half way there, whoa, half way there…” over and over again. No one was able to accomplish anything for the rest of the month because we all had the song stuck in our heads.
December 2022-The holiday break was celebrated by everyone getting together because none of us could remember what we were taking a break from.
January 2023-Everyone celebrated getting back together to go back to work because no one could remember exactly what that work is.
February 2023-Staff member Joe Bertman came into the office singing Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol” and no one was able to accomplish anything for the rest of the month because we all wondered how he managed to memorize it.
March 2023-Everyone celebrated the end of another successful year. No one could remember what exactly defined “success” was but after a thorough review of the year’s notes everyone agreed it was probably quotidian and gratuitous.
The incredible quality of many YouTube videos always amazes me, especially when I reflect on how I’m old enough to have seen the internet grow from, well, nothing–I remember when home computers were still a novelty–into an indispensable tool and a tremendous waste of time and everything in between. Because it’s my birthday here’s one of my own videos I made and published exactly ten years ago today:
And here’s another one published exactly eight years ago. The internet has changed and so have we all, but the idea hasn’t. I’m still wishing tomorrow brings everyone better things.
April 2021-The first team meeting of the new year started with assistant Joe Bertman bringing up the “Great Resignation”, the term for the large number of people reassessing their lives and leaving old, unfulfilling employment for new opportunities. Well, it wasn’t so much a discussion as just everyone sitting around thinking about a bunch of people quitting their jobs until finally someone said, “Well, anyway…” and normal work resumed.
May 2021-In previous years the team has tried to assess what exactly the best milkshake in Nashville is only to get bogged down by questions such as, should we pick a specific flavor? Should it be limited to strictly local places or chains as well? At least on the latter question everyone agreed that one fast food place—you know, the one with the creepy clown mascot, is out of the running because their milkshakes taste like the same grease they use for cooking their hamburgers and their tacos and, seriously, what kind of burger place also makes tacos? Pick a lane, creepy clown mascot.
June 2021-Carrying over the milkshake discussion the discovery that the best gyro place in town had gone out of business reminded everyone that there’d also been a previous goal of finding the best gyro in Nashville, which would be easier than the milkshakes because all gyros are pretty much gyro-flavored. But with the best place closed it didn’t seem fair to try all the remaining ones only to find the one that came in second.
July 2021-Did you know there are long-handled toenail clippers? Well, now you do. These were not actually needed for clipping toenails but the less said about that the better.
August 2021-Absolutely nothing happened in the month of August, and I mean nothing. Zip, nada, zilch, zero, nihil, nix, nowt, diddly, bagatelle, bupkis, the second half of Sartre’s best known philosophical work. This caused some panic among the staff until everyone realized how many different ways there are to say “nothing”, and everyone just kind of sat and thought about that until someone said, “Well, anyway…” and normal work resumed.
September 2021-When did every magazine in the grocery store checkout become a commemorative issue? Maybe I can find out from this copy of Entertainment Today’s special edition, “Magazines: Remember When They Printed Stuff That Happened Last Week?” that I picked up while I was buying milk.
October 2021-Slowly the shadowy figure advanced. In the gloom we could see glistening ichor, and the stench of putrescence was overwhelming. It had positioned itself between us and the cellar doors. There was no escape. It dragged itself forward across the dirt floor. I glanced up at the small window. Even if we could reach it the figure would be upon us before we could get through it. One more step and it could touch us. Reaching out with a large, claw-like hand, it said, “Can I borrow a dollar?”
November 2021-Winter officially settled in. Then it went back to fall. Or maybe it was kind of like spring. Anyway there was a short burst in there that felt a lot like summer. And then it was winter again. And then it rained and that could have happened at any time.
December 2021-Very little got done with the approaching holidays, but spirits were high, leading to an inter-office memo reminding everyone not to let spirits smoke during work hours. A sign-up sheet was sent around for anyone who wanted to donate an appendix.
January 2022-Avant de sortir de la douche, rincez rapidement vos cheveux a l’eau froide pour sceller les cuticles et preserver l’eclat de la coleur. Tout le monde y a pensé jusqu’à ce que quelqu’un dise : “Eh bien, de toute façon…” et le travail normal a repris.
February 2022-Staff decided to skip Valentine’s Day in favor of calling up radio stations and suggesting that in addition to Two-fer Tuesdays they should have One-Hit Wednesdays, Three-fer Thursdays, Fiver-Fridays, Super Saturdays, No One Listens On Sundays, and Meh Mondays.
March 2022-The final team meeting of the year started with assistant Joe Bertman mentioning that there was an American sitcom called Lab Rats and pretty much the entire cast was born after the whole senior staff graduated from high school. This prompted an emergency discussion and assistant Joe Bertman is no longer part of the senior staff.
It’s my birthday today and, well, I always have trouble with the question, “What do you want?” Obviously I appreciate the thought and I want to be realistic, but if I could be completely unrealistic I’d want to take a train trip from Portugal to Singapore. I realize that’s not completely unrealistic since it is now possible, but I don’t want to wish for the impossible or even nonexistent.
The world’s longest train trip. For now, anyway. Source: BoingBoing
A three-week train trip sounds amazing to me. Maybe parts of it would be tedious or boring but part of the fun of train trips, and, I think, adding to the romance of train travel, is that there’s a constantly shifting landscape out there. Trains also offer a certain amount of freedom within their confines. Unless you’re the conductor you’re not driving so you can wander up and down the cars. There’s usually more space than there is on an airplane, and it’s easier to change seats.
And consider this: if an airplane’s engines stop working that’s it. The pilot or pilots will do the best they can to make a safe landing but it’s still at the mercy of gravity. Even a boat has its downside—specifically if it goes down and you end up hoping there are enough lifeboats to hold everyone. I don’t mean to downplay the severity of train crashes, which can be terrible, but if a train’s engine breaks down or it’s just stopped by leaves on the tracks then you still have a pretty good chance of walking away. Train travel may be slower but keeps you close to the ground.
Thirty years ago I took an overnight train trip from Moscow to St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg, Russia, specifically—a train trip from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Florida would have been more than just one night, not to mention a spectacular feat of engineering, but that’s another story. It was an old style train, mostly wood, rickety, and a tall, thin gentleman came by and brought me some tea in a glass cup with a metal holder.
I read some but I also spent a lot of time just watching the snow-covered countryside, dotted with lights of small towns off in the distance, slip by, and I wondered what was going on in those homes that kept their fires burning all night. I slept some, and at one point I went to the end of the car and stood in the cold, wintry air. I could look down and see the tracks and gravel, and how fast the train was moving, but when I looked out at the snow it all seemed impossibly still.
Yeah, I definitely want three weeks of travel like that.
Live theater’s had a rough couple of years obviously, and it’s something I miss even though I didn’t really think about it until I read that the Nashville Children’s Theater is celebrating its 90th anniversary. So it’s almost as old as I am! And it’s really responsible for instilling a love of theater in me. Or maybe I always loved theater and the NCT just gave me what I wanted.
My memory is hazy but I think from kindergarten through sixth grade we had a school field trip to see at least two shows a year there. One of the earliest, maybe the earliest, was a production of Pinocchio that I saw in kindergarten and remember vividly because, much as I hate to say it, it was awful. Pinocchio was a whiny little jerk, and while the point of the story is that he starts out bad and ultimately redeems himself, thus becoming a real boy, the stage Pinocchio was still so annoying even at the end I wished he’d stayed a puppet. The Fox and the Cat, the story’s main villains, weren’t outsiders but life-size toys Gepetto had made and that somehow turned evil, and the giant whale that swallows Gepetto and Pinocchio wasn’t giant at all. It was another toy that Gepetto had built and was set against the stage wall. To go inside it Gepetto and Pinocchio had to get down on all fours and crawl in through the mouth, and it was about then that I started wondering why Gepetto had filled his workshop with psychotic toys that were all out to murder him, but that’s another story.
Fortunately the theater redeemed itself with a production of Really Rosie! that I loved even without knowing that it was a collaboration between Maurice “Wild Thing” Sendak and Carole King, whose album Tapestry is almost as old as I am.
Every other play I remember seeing at the Nashville Children’s Theater was great. They put on a wide range of plays, from standards, like an adaptation of The Emperor’s New Clothes, set in China and, if I remember correctly, with an all-Asian cast, to a contemporary drama about a girl dealing with her widowed father dating a new woman, to a series of extremely avant-garde mime sketches. And again and again the plays I saw taught me that, with a bit of suspension of disbelief, anything is possible on stage.
And even if they hadn’t been great they were still field trips so they got us out of school for a couple of hours. That made them something to look forward to even though we usually came back more wound up than when we left, so I’m sure the teachers dreaded that. I remember coming back from one and as I stepped off the bus I said, “I’m so happy to be back I could kiss the ground!” Then I got down and kissed the ground and got up with dirt on my face.
“Aren’t you too old for that?” my teacher asked.
Never.
Check out some scenes from their amazing production of A Wrinkle In Time which I didn’t see because I was too old.
There’s been a major revival of interest in the detective series Columbo, and since I’ve been a fan ever since I was a kid and discovered late night reruns watching my black and white TV in my bedroom, and since September 16, 2021 would be Peter Falk’s 94th birthday let’s talk about it and why the possibility of a reboot needs to die. Right now. Even if I have to kill it myself.
What hooked me from the very beginning, and why I still love Columbo, is really Peter Falk’s charm. He was rarely angry and had a quiet, unassuming demeanor that set him apart from other detectives of the era, which is also why I think he’s still popular today. Other ‘70’s detectives—Kojack, Rockford, McCloud!—were darker and grittier and, well, there’s a lot of that around, which may be why they don’t get as much attention. It’s telling that one of the other exceptions, Murder, She Wrote, is also getting a new surge in popularity, with its stories of a mystery writer who lives in the quaint New England town of Cabot Cove where the leading cause of death is living in Cabot Cove, maybe because Angela Lansbury is also the woman who murdered Sweeney Toddput Sweeney Todd’s customers in pies, but that’s another story.
There’s also Columbo’s appearance. He spends most of his time in a shabby raincoat and smoking cigars, although at least once he switched to cigarettes and coffee when he was up all night doing research. Some people point to the show’s fashions as being very ‘70’s, but some of the same looks are still around today. I think it’s more a sign of when it was made that Columbo could smoke indoors and there was an ashtray every three feet. He’s also different in that he pretends to be absent-minded, wandering around, frequently talking about his wife, whom we never see, and, as an aside, I’m going to say Kate Mulgrew deserved better. And got it, first in space, then behind bars.
The fact that we never see Mrs. Columbo has spawned a fan theory that she doesn’t exist, which is funny, but the evidence doesn’t back it up. Other people in the series also talk about her and, once, she tries to replace Columbo’s trademark gray raincoat with a bright yellow slicker that he “forgets” and leaves behind several times.
And while Peter Falk became a producer, working hard on the show behind the scenes, Columbo deliberately makes himself small, staying out of the way, often hunched over. Even the show itself frequently makes use of long shots in big rooms or outdoors, making Columbo appear even smaller. When asked what his first name is he only says, “Lieutenant,” although sharp-eyed fans know his first name is Frank, from one of the few times he flashes his badge.
The show also has a not so subtle anti-establishment streak, which I think is a product of its time but also part of the show’s ongoing appeal. Most of his suspects are wealthy, powerful people, and though there’s always a deeper motive—a fear of losing their wealth or their position, mainly—they still feel they can get away with murder, and it’s satisfying to see them get taken down. In spite of that Columbo does seem to like, or at least respect, some of the suspects he trailed. In “Any Old Port In A Storm”, when the murderer is a high-class winemaker played by Donald Pleasance, Columbo seems to enjoy showing off his newfound knowledge of wine. Drinking while on duty—and, let’s face it, Columbo is always on duty, even when he’s on vacation—may be a violation, but in every other respect Columbo stays well above the law. And, okay, he goes out drinking again in “The Conspirators”, when he joins the Irish poet (and IRA sympathizer) Joe Devlin, and tries to impress him by reciting some limericks, including “The Pelican”:
A rare old bird is the pelican. His bill holds more than his belly can. He can take in his beak enough food for a week. I’m damned if I know how the hell he can!
And then there’s “Swan Song” in which the murderer is played by Johnny Cash, who starts with a good performance of “I Saw The Light” and ends with him being arrested for sending his wife down in a plane crash. But what also makes the episode memorable is how Cash and Falk have such natural onscreen chemistry, complimenting and complementing each other, that it’s not hard to believe actor and singer hung out together after the filming.
Even in “Murder Under Glass”, which is notable for being one of the few times Columbo comes out and says he dislikes his suspect, a professional food critic, but still wants to impress him with veal scallopini a la Columbo.
I’ve been using all this to lead up to why I want to kill a proposed reboot. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reboots in general—I even think some have been great—but, while Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, and even Sam Spade, among other famous detectives, have been played by other people, and while Peter Falk didn’t originate the role, he made it his own. It’s hard to imagine the producers originally wanted Bing Crosby, and I just can’t picture Columbo as a blue-eyed sophisticate standing over a corpse crooning, “Bet she was a beautiful baby, buh buh buh…”
It’s because of Peter Falk that Columbo makes such effective use of the inverted detective story in which we know from the beginning who the murderer is and how they did it. How the detective unravels the mystery is supposed to be what draws us in, although, really, it’s just the pleasure of hanging out with Columbo for an hour or two.
What would a reboot look like? Even the innumerable Law & Order clones that have firmly planted the idea that most crimes are committed by the special guest star look ridiculous when we have darker, more complicated dramas like Broadchurch and The Sinner that explore how crimes don’t happen in a vacuum and are never really resolved, especially after just an hour.
Source: Atlas Obscura
And let’s not forget that part of the appeal of Columbo is that it’s always funny, or at least tongue-in-cheek. The murders may be serious but Columbo isn’t. He drives a broken down Peugeot, and occasionally brings along his Basset hound named “Dog”—I’m pretty sure Mrs. Columbo has given their pet a more elegant name. Columbo and Dog both are immortalized in a funny statue in, of all places, Budapest. Columbo even has his own amusing theme song, “This Old Man”, which he occasionally whistles to himself. Outside of Columbo Peter Falk is best known for comedic roles–the grandfather in The Princess Bride, opposite Alan Arkin in The In-Laws, and an aging performer in a made-for-TV remake of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys.
The show also sometimes really strains credibility with Columbo picking up on farfetched clues like a pair of not sweaty socks, or an episode like “Troubled Waters”. While it’s a great story with a great cast that includes Robert Vaughn and Dean Stockwell, what are the odds someone would commit a murder on the same cruise ship where a great detective just happened to be taking a vacation?
A reboot would almost certainly heighten the comedy, but then it would be too much like the MAD Magazine parody “Clodumbo”, where the punchline is that twenty-seven innocent people have turned themselves in just to get away from the detective pestering them.
Source: Columbo Site
Columbo himself says it best at the end of the best episode, “The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case”, when he’s asked if he’d ever consider another line of work. ““Me, sir? No. Never. I couldn’t do that.”
So I’m marking another elliptical spin around the sun, another year in the rearview mirror. This isn’t a milestone year so it’ll be a quiet affair: dinner, maybe a few drinks, a quick jaunt to Sri Lanka and back. When we’re young every birthday is a major event. Turning one is worthy of celebration, even if most of us don’t remember it, at two we’ve doubled our age, at three we’ve tripled it. At four, five, and six we really start to explore the world on our own, make friends, try on and discard personas. Ten marks the beginning of the double digits but the next big step isn’t until thirteen, considered in many cultures to be the age of adulthood, although its onset usually starts earlier. At sixteen, in the US, you can drive a car, at eighteen you can vote, and at twenty-one you can legally drink. Then the way stations only come once every ten years: thirty is when you say you’ve got the whole adulting thing figured out, even though you haven’t and never will, and at forty you’re “over the hill”. The 
Almost nine years ago, on September 23rd, 2014, to be precise–well, I can’t be really precise but I think it was about 12:13PM that it was finally over–I finished chemotherapy. This is the date I mark as the end of my fight with cancer. The doctors will say it wasn’t really over until the following December when I had a major surgery. There were no signs of cancer at that point but the doctors said, “To be safe we’re gonna nuke it from orbit.” And there were still no signs the following spring, but I had a small surgery anyway to be completely safe.
There was an unexpected passenger in the car. I know a thing or two about spiders and even I was surprised to see the large orb web spun over the passenger seat, not to mention the large Aranea cavatica in the middle of the web, and if you know anything about spiders you know that’s the same species that was the hero of a famous children’s book. Some people think the pig is the hero of the book but let’s be clear: there’s a reason it’s called Charlotte’s Web and not Wilbur’s Mudhole.
April 2022-Things got off to a rocky start when someone said, “Hey, remember pet rocks?” This sent everyone off into a research project that uncovered, among other things, the fact that there was an official “Pet Rock” invented by an advertising executive and sold in a cardboard box with ventilation holes in 1975. Most staff old enough to remember the fad thought pet rocks were just rocks that people found and gave to each other as a joke in the mid-‘70’s. The fad was briefly revived by the film Everything Everywhere All At Once. A discussion of whether or not pet rocks should have googly eyes attached quickly degenerated into everyone sticking googly eyes on everything.
