Rambling Josh

Please give a warm welcome to my daughter, Sierra, as the guest columnist for this week’s Ramblings.

After having to hear me complain about how women’s voices have been silenced for so long, my father gave me the yearly task of writing our family Christmas letter. Be careful what you say and who you say it to. I enjoy writing, and it is something that I have put off for far too long, sort of like this Christmas/St Patrick’s Day letter.

As you may know, I live in New York, and as you may know, there is a bit of distance between Brooklyn and Rapid City. Thankfully, I am able to keep in contact with my family and see what they are up to via social media. Which does the job, but it’s not the same as being all together in person.

Whenever I come home it feels like a new place, but at the same time, it’s still the home that I knew before I moved out, and that’s because of my family.

My dad always sits in the same place on the couch every day with a cup of coffee or a Manhattan (depending on the time of day) to indulge in whatever non-fiction book he has picked up. I always loved that he almost exclusively reads non-fiction because it shows how much he truly enjoys learning and seeing the different points of view from every walk of life. No matter who they are.

I believe this is what makes him such a valuable and well-rounded professor. He loves teaching as much as he loves learning. He taught me to look for the good in everyone, no matter how much I disagree with them. As some of you may know, I am still learning that, but he has 23 years on me, so give me time.

My mom is straight up one of the hardest workers I know. When she isn’t helping people get better through physical therapy, she is at home baking, cooking, taking care of her beautiful yard, or driving around in her Jeep.

She is a woman who is so naturally beautiful and knows how to take care of things and just does it. She is so independent, but cares deeply for those who are around her, you can see it in her eyes and how she talks to people. She truly cares. Her laugh is so loud that you can literally hear it throughout our entire home. It’s so genuine, you simply can’t be mad about it when it wakes you up after a night of drinking too much.

Jackson, my little brother, has become such a caring young man that it sometimes surprises me when he is so sweet to me. He isn’t (as) annoying anymore and is instead chill and fun to hang out with. He really is someone that I have enjoyed seeing grow up.

He is so kind, great with people, and lets me talk at him for hours when we see each other. I’d like to think he finds me entertaining even though he says the reason he doesn’t want to date is because girls always want to talk too much. I fear I have ruined dating for him.

Ok, I hope I did alright? I love my family, and I am proud to be a member of the Ellis clan. 2025 will be interesting, because every year is, and I wish you all the best. Each year is a year to discover new things about yourself, and more importantly, the people who are meant to be in your life.

For me, I must admit that I attempted and failed to put space between me and my family because it’s hard to be away from them. They’ve always supported me no matter what, and they are proud of me no matter what. So I guess now is the time that I tell everyone that I am moving to France to pursue a career as a professional mime.

Wishing you and all you love a wonderful year.

Every other week for the past two semesters the students in my Aging & Death class take a field trip to the nursing home to hangout and chit-chat with the residents. Every other week for two semesters all has gone well, until last week. So it goes.

The visit got off to a rough start due to some technical issues I was having with the front door to the nursing home. Like most nursing homes, there are two ways to enter and exit, rather, I should say that there are two ways for visitors to enter and exit. As for the residents, the ways and the reasons that they enter are many, whereas the way and the reason that they exit are few.

For visitors, there are two keypads by the door, one on the outside to be used to enter the facility, and one on the inside to be used to exit the facility. If you manage to punch in the correct four-digit code the door magically unlocks so that you may enter or you may flee. If you manage to punch in the wrong four-digit code the door buzzes a buzz that one might hear in response to a wrong answer on a quiz show or for not having a steady enough hand with the board game “Operation”.

First time visitors generally press the button labeled “Press Button for Assistance”, which alerts the personnel at the front desk that they need to mosey about 40-feet from their desk to the front door, punch in the code, and open the door. You can plainly see the personnel at the front desk through the window on the door, and through the window on the door you can plainly see the look of annoyance when the “Press Button for Assistance” is pressed.

Generally, scattered about in the 40-feet between the front desk and the front door, are a handful of residents working on puzzles, watching Gun Smoke, gazing at the birds flittering around the birdfeeder, napping, or just staring at you while you try and make pleasantly apologetic and appreciative eye contact with whomever the “Press Button for Assistance” has roused.

Rest assured that the roused will quickly inform you as to the four-digit code so that you can assist yourself rather than press the “Press Button for Assistance” button the next time you come or go from the facility. It will also be pointed out that in the event that you forget the four-digit code, it is written on the hand sanitizer dispenser next to the door. Information that will ratchet your pleasantly apologetic and appreciative expression up a few maniacal notches as you nod and smile like a bobble-head hoping to atone for the 80-feet of angstful movement your button pressing incited.

I’ve never been comfortable pressing buttons or ringing bells for assistance, I’d sooner mill around making rustling noises and clearing my throat than summon the chagrin of whomever has been tasked with responding to the buzzer or bell, so I was much relieved to acquire the four-digit code. Armed with the code I have entered and fled the nursing home without incident many times over the years…until last week.

Last week I punched in the four-digit code, pulled on the door, and “BUZZZZZ”. There it is, the chagrined look from the front desk personnel I’ve managed to avoid for so long. I quickly punch in the code again, pull the door, and “BUZZZZZ”.
The owner of the chagrined look is on the move, so I quickly check the code on the hand sanitizer dispenser, punch it in, pull the door, and “BUZZZZZ”. The chagrined is zigging and zagging through residents, interrupting Gun Smoke, scaring birds away from the birdfeeder, displacing puzzle pieces…I give it one more shot…”BUZZZZZ”.

The chagrined says (demands), “Just stop. It’s loud.” As I plead my case, reciting the code to her, she presses the same four numbers that I had entered, and “Click”…the door opens. As she stalks back to her desk there is a vast chagrin aura present about her whole person, and I apologize again as I walk by the desk. The apology apparently sounded like “BUZZZZZ” to her, as it elicited the same expression.

The door also buzzes if it is held open for more than 10-seconds, after which, the miffed personnel at the front desk has to come and reset the code to make the buzzing stop. I’m not sure why they chose 10-seconds? Nobody in there does anything in less than 10 minutes, so I am skeptical of anyone making a break for it in 10-seconds.

At the conclusion of our visit, I was holding the door open for my students…mentally counting down 10-seconds…4…3…2…just one more student to go…as the door is about to close behind us…”BUZZZZZZZZZ”…I fled and didn’t look back. I didn’t need to look back, I could feel twisted and jagged chagrin shrapnel lodging itself into my backside as I hustled across the parking lot.

I hope she’s on vacation next week. If not, I’ll just swing from the birdfeeder, bust through the picture window, and land on the puzzle table. Gun Smoke will be turned up loud enough that nobody will notice.

There are many quotes and sayings that muse about the journey being more important and more meaningful than the destination. “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “It’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive” by Robert Louis Stevenson, “It’s better to travel than to arrive” by Robert M. Pirsig…and so on and so forth.

I suppose it is often the case that such thoughts are important reminders for us to be present in our journeys so as not to miss all that may present itself enroute to our destinations. Destinations that we have possibly festooned with more grandeur in our mind than they produce in reality. So it goes.

Afterall, sometimes, as the Griswold’s discovered, you arrive at your destination only to have Marty Moose tell you, “Sorry folks! We’re closed for two weeks to clean and repair America’s favorite family fun park. Sorry, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!”

There are very few absolutes in life. The journey isn’t always going to be better than the destination, nor the destination always better the journey. Much depends upon the company one travels with and the destinations one chooses to travel to, with, in my opinion, more weight given to the former.

Enduring a journey captive to boorish company can sully most any destination, especially if the destination is shared and offers no reprieve from your captives. One must also keep in mind that the captivity may run both ways. Misery, after all, loves company.

So, what is one to do? Never venture anywhere? Never venture with anyone? Both viable options I suppose. Afterall, the houseplants get fidgety and sullen when I’m not there to whisper sonnets of adoration and caress their leaves. Or, choose travel companions wisely, and trust that your plants will forgive you.

My wife and I have been fans of David Francey’s music for many years, as have our good friends, Paul and Jodi. Which of us introduced the other to Francey’s music is a question none of us can recollect, nor is it a recollection that seems all that important. What is important, at least to us, is his music, and when I heard that the 70-year-old folk singer from Elphin, Ontario, was going to be performing in St. Paul, Minnesota, the troops were rallied for a road trip.

My cousin Jamie and his wife Tammy live in Minneapolis and knowing that they have similar taste in “folksy” music, I inquired into their interest in attending the concert. They gave Mr. Francey a listen, signed on for the destination and graciously offered to host us Dakota folk in their home on our pilgrimage east.

Through the company and camaraderie of good friends, the kindness and generosity of dear family, and a tremendous night of song and story, this journey and this destination proved to be equally enjoyable. I wish you the same in the journeys and the destinations that await you.

Take it away Mr. Francey…“This morning, this morning the sun rose and then, the world kept turning again and again, singing your songs from beginning to end, while the hearts break without a sound. That′s the way that the world goes ‘round.”

On Christmas Day, while the family was opening gifts, Sierra and Jackson told me, “You will have to wait for your present, it isn’t ready yet, but the wait will be worth it.” Of course, I didn’t mind, I didn’t care if they were just telling me that because they didn’t get me anything and figured I’d forget that they didn’t get me anything within a day or two, because, as most of us eventually figure out, just being together when being apart is the norm, is plenty.

A few days ago, a package arrived, and although I haven’t been skeptically counting the days with suspicions of deceit and gift betrayal, the wait was indeed worth it. The kids had a figurine of myself and Mortimer Snerd made. Who is Mortimer Snerd? As I wrote several years ago in my column entitled “Mort”…

Mort and I go way back many years. Our paths first crossed Christmas of 1982, when my parents entertained my dreams of becoming a ventriloquist and gave me Mortimer and the Edgar Bergen album “Laugh and Learn! Lessons in Ventriloquism with Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd”. A dream, that thanks to The Twilight Zone episode 98 “The Dummy”, soon became a nightmare.

From that point on, Mort and my relationship was a bit tense and tempestuous. I’m 52-years old, but I still have an occasional nightmare involving my pal Mort not being so pal like. The nightmares subsided after I hired Mort on as the night watchman at the Gashole (my garage bar). We all need a purpose in life.

Mort’s factory issued rubber loafers were lost years ago, so I outfitted him with a pair of cowboy boots I wore when I was a wee toddler. He looks snazzy, and I figured that the “clip and clop” of cowboy boots would make it harder for him to sneak up on me. A win-win.

My Edgar Bergen album has been lost to time as well, I have suspicions that Mort, who was always second fiddle to Charlie McCarthy, smashed it in a fit of jealous rage, but he has yet to admit to it.

The album is available on the internet, and if you take a gander at it you will understand Mort’s misgivings. The album cover shows Charlie McCarthy sitting smugly on Edgar’s knee, both dressed in tuxedos and top hats, while Mortimer looks on, grinning and bearing it, perched on a chair beside them in a ratty straw hat.

To further fan the flames, Charlie performed for royalty in England and Sweden, for two U.S. Presidents, and “received an honorary degree of Master of Inuendo and Snappy Comebacks from Northwestern University.” What did Mort get? He got stuffed in a box and exiled to North Dakota to sit on the bony knee of a 12-year-old boy, who soon got distracted by baseball and girls, grew a mullet and failed to give him the voice he yearned for. I dashed his dreams, so he haunted mine. So it goes.

The album cover also talks of how Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy first became famous by performing on radio shows in the 1920s. Ventriloquism on the radio?

Maybe Mort didn’t get exiled? Maybe he was tired of the dog and pony show, tired of listening to Charlie clack his yap, tired of Edgar’s sweaty hand. Maybe his little rubber loafers carried him to North Dakota in search of a little peace and quiet? I see the figurine the kids got me as a representative of “what could have been” if Mort and I had been more dedicated disciples of Mr. Bergen. What could have been if the three horsemen of our ventriloquism apocalypse, baseball, girls, and mullets, hadn’t mercifully interceded. Oftentimes, one never knows of the bullets they’ve dodged in life…I now have a figurine to remind me of one such grazing shot fired back in 1982.

Charlie McCarthy has resided in a case on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History for the past 45-years. Mort…he’s among friends…he’s part of a family. Who’s the dummy?

John Boy Walton once said, “The mountains don’t need us, but we need them.” John Boy was a smart lad, a bit serious and prone to being overcome with emotion, but there’s worse ways to be. He was curious about the people and the world near and far to him, cared deeply for his family, and possessed a moral compass for truth and justice that was steadfast and unwavering.

“Passionate” would be a good word to describe John Boy, if one were looking for a word. Perhaps you are fortunate enough to have a John Boy, or two, in your life? Perhaps you are a John Boy? Maybe not in full, but in part. Bibs and bare feet are not for everyone. Apparently, Ike Godsey was not a stickler for the “No Shoes, No Service” policy in his store.

It so happens that I am fortunate enough, as my wife and my daughter are passionate people in possession of strong moral compasses. That is not to say that my son and I are immoral dastardly gangsters, rather that our compasses possess a few air bubbles that perpetually bump the needle about in a laissez-faire manner.

These differences in temperament are not chosen like a hairdo from a magazine (I’ll never make that mistake again), rather they are largely just the hand we are genetically dealt. A double scoop of nature with a sprinkle of nurture that can sometimes give those closest to us intermittent bouts of brain freeze.

Brain freeze, though painful, passes relatively quickly, and we always dig back in for more. Not because we love the brain freeze, but because we love the double scoop with sprinkles. So it goes.

Being around people that are passionate about things can sometimes nudge us to ponder that perhaps we should be a bit more passionate about things, that maybe we should care a little more about things. What things? Things that matter to those that matter to us seems like a good place to start. Beyond that? I guess one must just dabble a bit in life and see what raises their passion flag above the walls of their inner citadel.

Viktor Frankl once said, “Self-transcendence is the essence of existence.” Self-transcendence…moving above and beyond ourselves…the acquisition of more sprinkles for our double scoop.

John Boy Walton and Viktor Frankl…strange bedfellows, but their words were on my mind while I rambled about the Black Hills this past week, hoofing it up snow covered hills to see what I could see. Mostly what I saw was more snow-covered hills, but somehow coffee and jerky always taste better while sitting on a stump on top of hill. Half the jerky anyway, our dog talked me out of the other half.

The Black Hills don’t need me, but I need them. We all need something, or someone, to challenge us now and then. We need someone to point out that some of those sprinkles on our double scoop aren’t actually sprinkles (it’s amazing the places mice can get into).

Goodnight John Boy.

About a week before Christmas, I was wrapping one of the many presents I showered upon my wife in an attempt to offset my refusal to watch Hallmark movies with her, when I heard a knock at our front door. Nobody I know, or generally care to talk to, ever knocks on the front door, that’s what the back door is for.

The silly season has passed, so I didn’t suspect it to be a politician peddling promises, and it’s too cold out for the nice lads with the Latter-Day Saints to be out and about evangelizing in their white short-sleeve dress shirts.

Come to think of it, those nice lads still owe me a visit. A few years ago, they knocked on our front door and asked if they could educate me about their beliefs, but I had a dentist appointment to get to so I said, “Leave me your bible and I’ll study up for the next time you come around.” They awkwardly shifted around looking at each other for a few seconds, and then hesitantly handed over their bible.

Who could it be knocking on our front door at this hour (5:07PM)? The Christmas tree is hogging my vantage point in the front window where I generally lurk to peer out and determine whether to open the door or not. Throwing caution to the wind, I opened the door.

There stood a young boy, about 12-years-old, holding a plate of festively decorated homemade Christmas cookies in various quasi-discernable shapes. Festively decorated in the manner that a 12-year-old boy supplied with a big bowl of icing and a surplus of sprinkles would see fit. Not 4-H Burke County Fair blue-ribbon work…perhaps a participation trophy. So it goes.

We stood and looked at each other for a bit, me attempting to process what was going on, he shyly gathering himself to tell me. “I’m selling Christmas cookies to raise money to buy a snowboard…they’re kind of expensive.” I inquired as to the price of his creations, “$15 dollars for one plate or $25 for two.” he said, while motioning towards the second plate of cookies sitting on the steps behind him.

So as not to deny any of my neighbors a plate of cookies, and to maybe enable him to make five more bucks and experience the joy of enduring his chosen means of entrepreneurship for another cold call, I handed him $15. Knowing full well that I had no intentions of eating the cookies.

You ever watched kids make Christmas cookies with icing and sprinkles? They are an unsanitary lot, especially during cold season, and no matter where they have been or what they have touched, I’ve never known of a 12-year-old boy that willingly washed their hands. That, and the fact that his black hoody was festooned with the fluttery tell-tale signs of a family pet that he liked to pet.

Why would I buy cookies that I don’t intend to eat? For one, it’s Christmas. Secondly, to help a motivated young man achieve his goal, and thirdly, peace of mind.

How would I feel if a few days later I read a newspaper report about a kid, disgruntled with poor Christmas cookie sales, holding up a liquor store to buy a snowboard? “The perpetrator brandished what appeared to be a sugar cookie shaped as a handgun, or a misshapen reindeer (reports vary), and angrily demanded all the cash, a scratch-off lottery ticket, and a fistful of jerky. Investigators followed a trail of festive sprinkles to a local snowboard shop where the perpetrator was apprehended without incident.”

Lastly, I bought cookies I never intended to eat for insurance. A few years down the road, when that pleasant cookie peddling 12-year-old is an angstful teenager marauding the neighborhood with his gang of defrocked Cub Scouts and altar boys looking to slash tires and crack the skulls of garden gnomes, he might say, “Skip that house fellas, old man Ellis bought Christmas cookies from me once.”

May your New Year be shiny and bright with copious fistfuls of festive sprinkles.

When I saw the picture of my Aunt Susie and my first-grade teacher Mrs. McEvers on the front page of the December 4th edition of the Burke County Tribune under the title, “Dixon Celebrates 40 Years in Salon Business”, my first thought was, “No way! 40-years ago wasn’t that long ago.” But, alas, I crunched the numbers, and it all added up.

Susie wasn’t very old when I was born, and coincidentally, neither was I. In genealogical and/or ancestral terms, she is not my Great-Aunt, but she is a great Aunt, and a kind, caring, selfless pillar of the community of Lignite and Burke County.

When I was a wee lad, Susie would sometimes babysit my brother Jarvis and myself while our parents piously attended Reverand Laurie Chrest’s bible study group at The 109 Church. I always knew when Susie was going to be our sitter, there would be a pre-payment of condolences in the form of TJ Swann in the fridge to ease the pain that was my brother and I.

“Little Creeps” as Susie mostly lovingly, and always rightfully, referred to us knuckleheads. I loved when she was in charge for the night, because if she was our sitter there was a good chance that some of the Burke Central High School class of 1983 would be called in for entertainment and reinforcements…and I would get to watch Saturday Night Live. “Back when it was funny.” As we of a certain age like to profess.

We loved being her Little Creeps and diligently strove to live up to the moniker. Oftentimes us Little Creeps would be abandoned at the farm with Susie in charge while the adults did adult stuff somewhere away from the farm. “Abandoned” might be a bit strong, we loved nothing more than going to the farm. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a grandparent’s “farm” in their young lives. A place where rules are bent and often broken.

A place where a bottomless tin of Strawberry Nesquik is in perpetual supply, and when Susie is in charge, you get a bendy or swirly straw to blow bubbles in it until it covers the kitchen table.

A place where the long rubber hose from big red fire extinguisher filled with fine white powder can be stuffed into the front of your little brothers ToughSkins jeans and sprayed until the fine white powder shoots out of the bottom of both of his pant legs…when Susie is in charge.

She isn’t to blame. You turn your back to clean up a kitchen table hemorrhaging Strawberry Nesquik and Little Creeps will do what Little Creeps will do. So it goes.

She had been annoyed with us often, like when we ate her cherry flavored lip gloss or gave her dolls crew-cuts, but the fire extinguisher incident may be the only time I remember her actually being mad at us Little Creeps. Perhaps that’s why she was instrumental in helping me to maintain my glorious mullet, or why she eagerly complied with my ill-fated request to have the New York Yankees symbol shaved into the side of my head? Little Creep payback.

I’m quite proud of my Aunt Susie…a great aunt indeed.

I have always thought it interesting how different days of the week possess a distinct “feel,” a personality of sorts. I suppose this feeling attributed to a specific day of the week is entirely a social construct dependent upon how that day is, or was, predominately spent in the social construction zone of your self-construction.

Many moons ago, each day was most likely just a period of light between the darkness comprised of a fairly short “To Do” list of finding food and not becoming food. Two things to do each and every day. Well…three things…need to make new humans to replace the ones that failed at task two. Turns out humans are pretty good at making new humans and quickly outpaced the sabretooth tigers nefarious plans for our populations demise. So it goes.

Once those three tasks were checked off you were free to spend the rest of the day doing as you please: crafting (sharpening sticks and stones), fashion design (tiger print…never wear polar bear after Labor Day), Netflix (cloud and star gazing…more tigers). Ah…the good ol’ days.

“The Social Construction of Days and the Self” sounds like a snoozer of a title you might see on the cover of a book lingering forlorn and forgotten at the bottom of the bargain bin at a used bookstore. Used books that never got used. Don’t blame it on the book, it’s the author that put the words in it that failed to compel readers to read it.

The singer/songwriter John Prine was quite adept at putting compelling words to our daily tasks of living, “You say you drive around the town till you just get bored, and then you change your mind, for something else to do, and your heart gets bored with your mind and it changes you.”

“Your heart gets bored with your mind and it changes you.” Sometimes we think we know what we need or want, our mind contrives all sorts of reasons for this and for that, and our heart goes along for the ride…for a while. It goes along quietly at the beginning, but gradually grows more insistent about the direction it would really like to go. An insistence, like that book at the bottom of the bargain bin, we can choose to ignore.

Don’t blame the heart, it’s the owner of the vessel that continues in an uncompelling direction. Sometimes willfully and knowingly and sometimes begrudgingly…without choice. Choice. As Viktor Frankl once said, “Everything can be taken from us but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

In our heart, in theory, we most likely know this, in our mind, and possibly in reality, we may not currently have an option for another route so we keep “driving around the town” despite the boredom our heart is experiencing. Maybe someday? Someday when…

To lean on the lyrics of Mr. Prine one more time, sometimes “Saturday made Sunday feel like it would never come” and other times it “felt just like Sunday on Saturday afternoon.”

What do the days of your week feel like?

On November 22, 1986, my 14-year-old self watched a 20-year-old Mike Tyson become the youngest heavy-weight boxing champion ever when he knocked out Trevor Berbick. On November 15, 2024, my 52-year-old self watched a 58-year-old Mike Tyson get beat by 27-year-old Jake Paul in a unanimous decision. A lot of life has happened in the 38 years between that day and this.

What did the 70,000 people that filled AT&T Stadium and the 120 million that tuned in (or attempted to tune in) via Netflix want? What did I want? Did I want to be 14 again? Did I want Iron Mike to be 20 again? Maybe I just wanted some sort of proof that age is just a number, and that even in our 50s we possess the power to summon forth our younger selves if we so desire?

The proof in the pudding was undeniable, and like a bowl of lukewarm tapioca it was neither savory nor satisfying. Despite whatever it was that each of us wanted, reality, stiff-legged and lumbering, was what we got. So it goes. I suppose if we were never to experience anything we found unsavory or unsatisfying we wouldn’t enjoy that which we do find savory and satisfying to the same degree.

I don’t blame Iron Mike for the proof he revealed in this serving of tepid tapioca, for as Teddy Roosevelt once said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”

Sometime around 1980, my dad thought it was a good idea to get my brother and I boxing gloves. Perhaps his reasoning was that since we fought all the time, we may as well settle our never-ending disputes in a sporting manner? Whatever the reason, those gloves inevitably served to fuel more fights than they ever sportingly settled. I remember that they were black with a white “Rocky Marciano” signature across the palm, and I remember feeling “tough” just by virtue of slipping them onto my hands.

There’s a space between feeling tough and being tough that some bombastically fill with talk, and some, quietly fill with putting their fist in your talker. Of course, most professional fighters do both, while most of us that have chosen a less bruising vocation, recognize the pain in that gap as largely avoidable and undesirable and are quite happy to just feel tough while we quietly shadow box.

As it turns out, that shadow boxing opponent can prove to be a salty foe…relentlessly present, knows all our so-called moves, takes advantage of each and every weakness, never falls for a feint…as psychologist Carl Jung said of the “shadow self”, “I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.” The dark side…earlobe deep in tepid tapioca.

As I watched the fight unfold, as my enthusiastic prefight prediction of Iron Mike laying Jake Paul low 48-seconds into the first round shuffled by, as giddiness took an uppercut from reality amidst the ever-present commentary not-so-subtly hinting that 58-years-old was old…too old…I began to hope that at the very least, both fighters would leave the squared circle none the worse for wear. Health and humility intact.

I am reminded of what is often said of events such as this, “It is better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.” I am also reminded of something Kurt Vonnegut once said, “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

Thanks for trying Iron Mike…thanks for farting around.

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents were painting the garage or the house or most anything, and the absolute best way that you could “help” was to disappear until they were done? Delusionally, you would ask if you could help, or even more delusionally, your parents would suggest that you help.

Pick your poison, both delusions are going to be very short lived, and both will end with you pedaling your banana bike (with the ape hanger handlebars) down the driveway. Pedaling away from the paint tray you stepped in, the paint roller you dropped in the dirt, the general tedium of being an adult. Pedaling to where? During a painting project…anywhere. Unbridled freedom until the final coat dries.

Of course, you will come home a time or two (kids are needy) and find yourself mildly dismayed that your mother doesn’t drop everything, shimmy down the ladder, and fix you a bologna sandwich just the way you like it. Thin slathering of mayo…cut diagonal. What kind of degenerate wants their sandwich cut any other way?

Mildly dismayed until you realize that while they are painting, they don’t care what you eat. You come to this glorious conclusion when the terse response to your whiney, “Mooommm I’mmm huuungry” is, “Eat something. I’m busy.” With the same twinkle in your eye that you had when you pedaled away from painting, you saunter into the kitchen and eat a lot of somethings.

Everything except those fancy little square cubes wrapped in gold foil you snuck out of the cupboard last week. “Bouillon” sounds exotic, but they were almost as bad as those Circus Peanuts grandma tried to pawn off as candy…almost.

So, there you are, King of the Kitchen, a Keebler Fudge Stripe dangling off each finger. You smugly show your little brother the middle cookie when he asks if he can have one. He of course threatens to tell mom (that’s what little brothers do), but you know for a fact that she’s precariously perched on the ladder step that says, “NOT A STEP” and in no mood to hear little brothers whine about cookies and fingers, so you waggle the middle cookie with impunity.

My wife had me pick up a bucket of paint the other day so she could paint the shed and the garage. Like a good husband, I delivered the bucket of paint as requested, and the following morning I looked out to see her in her painting clothes meticulously applying a coat of “Crisp Linen” to the shed. It was a lovely fall day for a bike ride, but first I had to stop by the hardware store to pick up some hardware store type stuff.

I sauntered out to the shed to ask my wife if she needed anything from the hardware store, and she said, “If you are going to help me paint, pick up another paint roller.”

I remember when I was a kid, and the absolute best way I could help paint was to disappear until the painting was done. Sometimes I miss being a kid. It was a lovely fall day for painting. So it goes.