OUR WORLD:
How many more times are people going to write the “Exercise is the Best Distraction!” article during quarantine? We get it, working out is good for you. Yet these writers and trainers and celebrities wearing sports bras and cool jogging pants, can’t wait to share this “discovery” with anyone who has a pulse. You might as well write an article entitled “Shooting Yourself in the Head Does Not Increase Life Expectancy”.
I do hope that this HISTORICALLY SIZED ordeal leads to a more empathetic and compassionate society, but…can we not turn into dopes who nod at every BLATANTLY OBVIOUS suggestion thrown our way? If the only people outside of our family that we’re directly interacting with are Peloton trainers named Hannah, I’m worried we’ll all become amateur motivational speakers who confuse ambiguous platitudes with wisdom. Yes, I checked dictionary.com to make sure I was using ‘platitudes’ correctly and that’s exactly the kind of unfiltered honesty we need right now! That’s why you’re here! That’s why I’m here! THAT’S WHY WE’RE IN THIS RIDE TOGETHER NOT ALLOWING OUR INNERSELVES TO TELL US TO STOP RIDI–Wait. Did you…Did I…Jesus Christ you guys, I’m starting to talk like Peloton Hannah.
Yes, exercise is the best distraction right now. I’m not arguing that because I agree with it and because I bought an exercise bike and the Peloton app and I really wanted to tell you that. BUT! How about some real-life, salt of the earth, HONEST other “best” distractions? Remember, the point is to distract your brain for the sake of your mental health. Let’s bend the rules a bit, and prioritize honesty, shall we?
GETTING IN ARGUMENTS ABOUT SOMETHING SMALL AND BRINGING IN PAST DISAGREEMENTS AND OTHER UNRELATED ISSUES TO MAKE IT BIGGER
(Right when I started to write this section, I took WAY too big of a bite of a banana and now I’m thinking that mondo-sized banana bites are a top-tier corona distraction…PUSH PAST THIS, JIMMY! DIG DEEP!)
Allow me to paint a picture: You’re cooking dinner for your sweet, sugar baby on a Tuesday night. Seasoning raw chicken with your bare hands is gross but you do it because you love your cutie pie, sugar baby. Cutting vegetables you aren’t even excited about eating with a purple knife that isn’t sharp enough. Talking yourself out of adding potatoes to round the dish out because you’ve eaten 6.7 pounds of pretzel rods over the last 36 hours. “All I really want is chicken and vegetables,” is ALWAYS a lie, but it’ll make you both feel superior to the rest of the world for one meal, so that’s the plan.
Midway through prep, cleaning while you cook so the love of your entire life doesn’t have to lift a finger even afterwards, you notice an old paper grocery bag has reappeared…next to your newly purchased $100 garbage can. You’ve seen this arrangement before, but she vowed to retire it once you agreed to the $100 stainless steel trash can purchase.
“Sweetheart? What is this?”
“What is what babe?”
(Now with a hint of an edge) “This,” you say as you remain “calm”, but point.
She lets out an audible sigh (aka the couple fight’s starting whistle) and heads over to the kitchen. When she arrives to see her HUNK of a husband standing in place while pointing at a paper bag on the ground, she knows what he’s pointing at, but MUST ask once again.
(With a distinctly annoyed tone) “What?”
This is where the fight begins and GOOD GOD is it a delicious distraction! As you smack your lips in anticipation, remember NOT TO HOLD BACK! NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO SLOW DOWN! (Peloton Hannah would be so proud!) Nope! Bring up the thousands of makeshift “grocery bag garbage cans” you’ve had to clean up in all of the years you’ve been together. Make special mention of how now that you live in the suburbs, you can’t simply throw an open bag into a dumpster, before reminding her of the SOLEMN OATH that she took the day you agreed to put your CC # in the space below the ONE HUNDRED GODDAMN DOLLAR GARBAGE CAN SHE PICKED OUT ON LOWES.COM!
Was it an honest, no-big-deal mistake on her part? A thoughtless, harmless error? Uh, that doesn’t fucking matter, guys. We’re trying to preserve our mental health by engaging in “distractions.” So dig in, embrace your initial testosterone fueled reaction, and say something grand, like, “It’s fine, I’ve just resigned myself to having to pick up random trash bags wherever you feel like setting one up FOR THE REST OF MY GODDAMN LIFE!”
This is when she’ll be sure to point out that you are overreacting. (Thanks Sherlock!) And, like she’s reading the line from a script that never had a chance of being bought, she drops a “calm down” like the sledge-hammer those two words are.
Your move Jack!
“Oh, calm like you? Like how you were the first time you met my ex? Okay, yeah, I’ll be calm like you!”
And boom, enjoy the next few hours of not having every thought in your brain begin with, “wait, when was the last time I washed my hands?”
ROAD RAGE
If you haven’t been on the highways during quarantine, you are missing an opportunity to fear for your life from something other than THE INVISIBLE ENEMY. Nope, on these roads the enemy is very visible, in the form of a 2009 Nissan Altima with tinted windows that just swerved in front of you going 97MPH in a driving rain. THIS IS WHAT WE TRAIN FOR!!!!
Normally, the move would be to throw that invisible frisbee through the roof of your car and blurt out a panicked “Jesus!” before calming down by talking to yourself about how there should be an IQ test to get your license. But not now. This ain’t normal times! Now, you should speed up a little. Maybe even a lot, while laying on the horn. Widen your eyes, open your capillaries and allow the rage to coarse through your entire body.
Do you have a gun? Wave it!
Now, because it’s an Altima, you’re not going to want to pull even with it. Let’s be real, Nelson and his Tinted Windowed Nissan ALSO has a gun. But, he’s not going to be able to shoot you if you stay behind him. So that’s all you have to do. Get close enough to where this piece of human waste for driving faster than he should, can see you doing the Macarena with a pistol in his rearview. THAT’LL TEACH HIM!
On the off off off chance that a cop pulls you over, just explain to him that you were looking for a worthy enough distraction to preserve your mental health, and Nelson’s Nissan was the exact tonic you were searching for! If that doesn’t work (which it most certainly will not) well then you’re fucked and will probably be brought into the Police station. But, if you’re charged with whatever people are charged with for waving firearms while driving, at least you’ll have something other than your last meal to talk about on your next Zoom call.
ZOOMING IN ON EVERY PICTURE TEXTED TO YOU TO FIND, AND CALL OUT ANY IMPERFECTIONS
In this one group chat I’m in, any time someone sends a picture, the rest of us zoom in on every other part of the picture that’s not THE FOCUS of what the sender intended. Picture of their kid holding up a book? We’re all frantically zooming around the rest of the frame looking for something…anything…that doesn’t look the way that it should—GOT IT!
“What’s with this?” is sent right below a zoomed in screen shot of a beer can in the upper right corner of said picture. This will be followed by a barrage of hyper-critical texts along the lines of: “Wow, drinking already?” “Does your wife know you’re drinking?” “How many is that?” “When’s the last day you didn’t have 9 beers?” “Mix in a water!”
Before Dad of The Year knows it, his innocent baby picture has turned into a shame fest, devolving from sarcastic jabs, to pleas to change the subject, to finally, a legitimately angry “I’m not drinking!”
It’s never not fun.
MY WORLD:
Three years ago today, I got married to the VP of Ops. To commemorate our 3rd anniversary on a blog that brings in zero dollars and has caused a few tiffs (wait, you’re seriously mad that I wrote about how you wear the same black shirt like 3 days a week? Oh…yeah, slam the door! REAL MATURE!!!) I’m going to write about what I remember about our first date: on May 3, 2013.
It was a cold, dark night. A baby’s cry in the distance. A beggars cup rattled in between the hurried footsteps of guilt-ridden businessmen playing deaf. “What a world we live in,” I grumbled as I lit up a cigarette under a dim moonlight. Wait. Shit, sorry. Wrong night. That’s right, the night before our first date I was probably about to get smashed on 9 IPAs or something, when my roommate, Mike, asked if I wanted to go to a concert with him, his new girlfriend, and HER roommate.
“She a girl, right?” I slurred. Upon confirmation that “she a girl,” I quickly accepted the offer in my head, but had to do the thing where I acted like I had to think about it for a second. I did this by looking up and saying “uhhh….” (ACTING!) Actually, turns out that I was the 2nd choice for this date. My other roommate, a whiny little bitch of a human, who I’ve made cry multiple times in fights, called “Daaaaaaaave” , was asked before I was and turned down the offer. (Years later, Dave loves to remind me of this and how I basically owe my marriage to him. In response, I bring this up to the VP and she reminds me how much better looking I am than Dave. So, now that’s in writing.)
Anyway, upon accepting, I asked for a scouting report on the roommate from Mike, he said “she’s super fun, really cute, but I won’t lie, she’s kinda boy crazy.” I’ve told The VP this and she gets mad every time. She assures me that she wasn’t “boy crazy” (is “boy crazy” the delicate way of saying “slutty”? We’ll never know!) Instead, she reams Mike out and talks about how she would “like go on dates, but I wasn’t boy CRAZY.” Who do I believe? What do I believe? I don’t know, who cares? Honestly, the “boy crazy” thing didn’t really faze me. I was too busy looking through her pictures on Facebook and trying not to say things like “she’s too hot for me”-out loud. Because, that was the thing, my confidence was still a minor issue back then (back then? Jimmy, you asked Erin how you looked yesterday after meeting a middle-aged neighbor for the first time. It still ain’t great!) but seeing a bunch of hot girl pictures from her college sorority days definitely rattled my nerves. I wanted to ask Mike if he thought I was pretty enough for her, but Mike and I were in the beginning stages of our friendship so…I COULDN’T LET HIM KNOW THAT I WAS AN INSECURE BABY YET EITHER!!!
The 24 hours leading up to the date consisted of me going for a long run because I used to be able to do that without stopping after 13 minutes to use my “bad ankle” as an excuse. (“No, it’s not the fact that I drink too much and enjoy dessert every night, it’s this damn ankle!”) After the run, I did what back then was about the bravest thing I could do…I decided to wear the J.Crew hoodie that was a little too small on me. I’ve always SUCKED at buying clothes, which means that I normally only have one “hey, is he a cool guy?”-outfit available. This J.Crew hoodie (that my mom probably bought for me years prior) hadn’t gotten much wear because it was the “is this guy in good enough shape to wear something this fitting?”-size. But this hot-girl-date-night called for me to at least pretend like I could pull off this snug hoodie. Looking back, I pulled that hoodie OFF! (Allow me a few seconds to be sad about how much worse looking I’ve gotten in the years since…Hey! Looks aren’t everyth—goddamnit, yes they are. They are. They’re everything, and I have none of them and…I have nothing. I am empty.)
The plan was for Mike and I to go to the girls’ apartment in Lakeview, have enough drinks for me to feel not paralyzed by “Excuse me girl, am I hot enough?”-thoughts and then go to a concert at The Metro (cool person music venue by Wrigley Field that I had never been to before, but I definitely didn’t admit that, that night. I’m sure I said something along the lines of “Metro? Love the Metro!”) As we walked into their garden-level unit, I did that acting thing again where I pretended like I didn’t need to guzzle rubbing alcohol to feel comfortable. The VP was still getting ready, so I had time to settle on what pose I should be in when she entered the living room. The VP’s roommate, Amanda, put on some music and gave Mike and I NOT NEARLY ENOUGH BOOZE! Mike and I waited in the living room with Amanda, which meant that Mike and his new girlfriend, Amanda, made eyes at each other while paying enough fake attention to me to temper the bubbling awkwardness.
Finally, after what must have been more than 4 MINUTES, The VP entered the living room with a spin. I’m not joking, she walked in, waved and before introducing herself, she just spun around. It was so fucking cool. As I scrambled to say something interesting after introducing my DUMB self, the song “Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake came on. Mike and Amanda were being all gooey with each other across the room, leaving all the pressure in the world on me to say something at least MILDLY entertaining. (Has anyone mentioned your tiny sweatshirt yet?)
“You know, I don’t care what anyone thinks, this song fucking rules.” That was the first sentence I said to my now-wife. And she FRIGGIN’ LOVED IT! Honestly, I could tell in real-time that she thought, “whoa, this guy is secure enough to say that he loves a Justin Timberlake song on a first date.” Two things on that: 1) I wasn’t, but 2) You have to remember that back in 2013, Justin Timberlake wasn’t super cool yet. He was still “that boy band guy,” so it wasn’t the coolest thing for a guy to freely admit that he was into “that boy band guy.” My gamble paid off. Now, she thought I was secure enough to be with her “I know I’m fine as hell”-ass, AND she thought I was funny because who says that out of nowhere? THIS GUY DOES!
From there, the drinks were a flowin’! JIMMY IN HIS EL-E-MENT BABAYYYYY! (So, your element is drinking? Cool, I bet her Mom is so happy she found you!) By the time we walked over to the Metro, I couldn’t have cared less about who we were going to see. I was going to talk to The VP through the whole show and not give A CARE what was going on on-stage. Seriously, Jon Lenon could’ve been resurrected for a one-night only Beatles reunion show that night, and I wouldn’t have taken an iPhone pic. Now, it didn’t help that the band we were seeing was called “Purity Ring”—a band that neither The VP nor myself had ever heard of. What did that mean? You guessed it, WE ‘GON BE TALKIN’ THROUGH THE ENTIRE SHOW!!!! Yeah, legit fans of “Purity Ring” were about to HATE us…and they did.
Midway through the song about being pure or wearing rings or whatever, I got “shushed” by a (do I say what I really thought? Even though it’ll make me sound like a meathe–) dude who looked even wimpier than me in my tiny J.Crew hoodie. So you bet your ass your ass I responded to his “shush” with a hearty “go fuck yourself!” Yeah, I did! Listen, if you’re not drooling at the opportunity to show a girl who’s WAY hotter than you that you’re tough, as early as possible, I don’t know what to tell ya! Trust me, I did the whole sensitive guy thing throughout high school and you know how many dates that got me? ZERO! ZERO DATES!
From there, I reveled in being public enemy number one at this show. Now, if this were a Metallica show, would I have been so excited to be hated by everyone around me? Absolutely not. In fact, I would have been quite scared…maybe even cried. But this wasn’t a Metallica show. This was a “Purity Ring” show, a band that’s following primarily worked as freelance graphic designers who can’t wait to talk about their “disgust with consumerism” at every family gathering. It was the perfect setting for a fake tough guy (Me) to act tough. And while The VP will say that she hated it and hates tough guys and likes sensitive guys and blah blah blah. She loved it. I could tell, she loved that I told that guy to “go fuck himself.” She was impressed in that way you get when you’re uncomfortable but thrilled that you’re not next to the “shusher.”
When the show ended, The VP and I realized that we hadn’t listened to one song throughout the entire set (like I said, we were the worst people in that concert. Hand up, we were “those people.”) We met up with Mike and Amanda, and decided to all take a picture together. This is my favorite picture ever. I remember looking at it the next day and thinking “I actually pulled off the tiny hoodie! And…I think I really, really like this girl.”
VP, I love you enough to act tough when I’m really not; to dress cool when I really can’t; and to…care for a psychopath dog that I bought for you to get out of momentarily “forgetting” your birthday ONE TIME! (I didn’t REALLY forget it and that’s final and I will go to the Supreme Court to prove my innocence!)
Honestly, I’m looking forward to my first suburban tiff with a guy I think I can take, because no feeling is better than the one I get impressing you.
Happy Anniversary. I love you.
LETS LOVE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:
This song still kicks LIKE A MULE!
K, bye.
Jimmy's Chair 