#68: Skin in the game

Actual updates

Another month, another road test, another failure. At least I failed over something different?

I should feel so good about this, actually. I did fine on the thing I flunked on last time (parking), I did fine on most things, and the person administering the test had nice things to say about my skills and abilities in a general sense. But I got kind of flummoxed by how many times I needed to turn the wheel back to straight after my 3-point turn (I didn’t actually do anything, I didn’t go when the car wasn’t pointing the right way or anything like that, but I hesitated a lot and was visibly uncertain) and she also wanted me to hold the wheel differently, which, I don’t know why I wasn’t holding it that way to begin with.

So that’s something so small, right, and everything else was fine, so what’s my problem? My problem is that it feels like there will always be something. Even moreso because it was something small. Like there will always be some small thing that can be held up as an example of why I can’t be trusted on the roads, and, to expand that to all that the license stands for, for why I can’t be trusted to realize any of these plans or dreams. Just like how there has been one thing after another to stretch out the process, that’s now being writ small in terms of the driver’s license. I will never get there, because someone will always find another task for me to complete or another flaw to use to throw out the whole thing.

This is, of course, baloney and balonistic thinking, but I can’t help but mire in it. It doesn’t help that the test came on the heels of a rough week: we were on vacation, which is always hard.

That sounds insane. Let me explain.

I’m reasonably good at my job. I don’t do something I’ve dreamed about ever since childhood, or anything, but I’m experienced and competent and I don’t make a ton of mistakes, and if I do make one, nobody has a tantrum at me and it doesn’t ruin anybody’s day or week. If I forget something, I just… do the thing or get the thing or fix the thing, instead of spiraling because I caused the world’s biggest problem. Sometimes they even feed me (and even when they don’t, I can eat lunch every single day if I want to¹ ). They actually pay me to be here, rather than it costing me money to be here. Imagine! So, while I’d rather be not-working than working, like anyone, I would not necessarily rather go on vacation.

After a week of that, to come home and flunk a test was just the icing on the cake, you know?

To be fair, we did have some fun on vacation. I got to float down a river in a tube, something I’m always available for, jumped off a big rock into a river a bunch of times (at any given time, you can safely assume I want to be jumping off something into a body of water), and also went to an amusement park/waterpark combo and got to go on some rides and slides with my little thrillseeker buddy, and that was pretty great - I’m glad he’s a fan of that kind of thing since it’s something we can enjoy together. But even that day was full of pitfalls. It’s impossible to avoid.

One facet of the trip was that, as is normal on a vacation, we walked a lot, and also as is normal for camping, I didn’t eat much - you can’t be constantly snacking unless you pack snacks, and we kept it pretty bare-bones in terms of other food options we brought along. Add to that the attempt to keep from spending all our money, and the one day we did have to buy our meals, I just ate the parts of other people’s lunches that they didn’t want (I knew Hap wasn’t going to finish his, for instance, so instead of wasting that and also buying myself something, I just ate his leftovers). None of this is that out-there, but the result, naturally, was that I lost some weight over the course of the trip. Over a pound a day, if we’re being specific. And then I came back and lost a bit more. And if I was normal about this, I would say “huh! that’s interesting” and then go on with my life. But I’m not.

Since coming back, it’s been easy - too easy, incorrectly easy - to keep skipping meals or eating minimal ones. Your stomach shrinks when you haven’t been filling it, and a little goes a longer way. I have to deliberately remind myself that it’s okay if I eat, and that moreover it’s not Wrong if I do. That I’m not doing something particularly virtuous or positive by eschewing food, and that no one cares what I weigh or how much that has changed in how short of a time. That I’m not “throwing out all my hard work” (the work wasn’t hard, and in fact wasn’t even work). The other day, I went to work and got a sandwich, and was going to eat half and save the other half for the next day, like I normally do. Before leaving, though, I realized that it was hot enough out that a turkey sandwich probably wouldn’t be in very good shape by the time I got home; since it would have been an even worse waste to throw it out, I ate the other half. I felt full to the point of sickness the rest of the day.

And the stupid thing is that as of late, I like my body! I bear no animosity to my soft stomach or my squashy arms. I like my giant legs that shim-shammy from side to side when I walk; I go around in shorts with them out in the summertime and blind people with their paleness and I don’t care one bit. My actual physical form is not the problem. But I’ve got brain poisoning over seeing Number Go Down, and when it happens, the little dopamine slot machine goes all cherries and rewards me with the feeling of success. It’s hard to reprogram. I’ve been working on it for almost 20 years and most of the time it’s okay! But it’s so easy to kick down that sandcastle. So, back to building it back up again, I guess.

Speaking of bodies. This is actually what I wanted to talk about, funny enough, and I’m just getting to it at the end. I wanted to talk about my skin.

In general I have not given my skin much thought. It isn’t very interesting - I have the normal amount, it behaves in a pretty standard way, it gets the occasional pimple at certain specific times, it browns ever so slightly in the sun (it seems like more to me but I’ve been assured by many people that it’s really barely any color at all). It has some illustrations and I’d like it to have more. Mosquitos love to bite it.

It’s getting older.

Well, of course it is, all of me is, all of all of us are, but it’s hard to live in this society and not get the message that your skin is getting older and that’s bad. Every meme I see that says something like “if you remember [pop culture item from the early 90s], it’s time to add a [some kind of skincare product] to your routine,” my reaction is or else what? Is the implied or else that I’ll look old? I mean, of course I will, I am old. And getting older, against all expectations. I never thought I’d have to worry about this kind of thing, because I didn’t think I’d have to worry about being alive this long. Unfortunately for everyone, here I still am!

And that’s been my attitude for a long time. I have wrinkles, so what, I have a little red patch on one cheek where I messed with what I thought was a zit but actually was something else, so what. The most noticeable features of my face are my forehead corrugations, which are just like my dad’s (whose fascinated me as a young kid, so it’s good and right that I should have them myself now), and the deep dark circles I’ve had under my eyes since childhood. But in general, I’ve looked more or less normal for my age, and I haven’t put too much thought into this because I wasn’t worried about looking “old” if I didn’t. Also, I don’t want to devote a bunch of money that I don’t have, or time that I don’t have, to this whole thing! And I’ve got a strong antipathy towards being sold something to cure a problem I had to be told I was having, particularly where it comes to my appearance.

Lately, though, I’ve noticed the odd darker spot here or there - not surprising - and then having Thoughts about it, which is the surprising part. Do they make me look old? Does that matter? Does anyone notice? Should I do anything about it? This type of thing.

I assume I’ll come out landing on, respectively, yes, no, maybe but who cares, probably not - but the point isn’t really whether I start using various lotions and potions and sera² and nostrums and goo, the point is that I’m suddenly thinking about it. Worrying about it. Truly who gives a shit about the skin on someone else’s face! No one’s going to care but me - but up until now, “me” was a category that also did not care. Is this what it means to age, really? Or am I going to stop noticing this in a bit because that’s just what I look like now, and that’s what it means to age, really? Guess I’ll find out as I go along.

P.S. when I wrote this, I was thinking “Do I care? Do I not? It’s a sexy mystery!” and whenever I say any variation on that, it’s a direct reference to this:

What am I reading

I’m zipping through a Dennis Lehane book, Small Mercies, which, like every book about Boston, is about the projects in Southie. Every book about Boston is about the Southie projects, and every book about Boston is either directly or indirectly about busing. This one is directly about it.

It takes place in the summer of 1974, the summer that, for those of you not familiar with Boston’s recent history, the city was required by court decree to bus kids from predominantly white schools to predominantly Black schools, and vice versa, to effectively integrate the schools and ensure that all kids got a good education. As you might imagine, a lot of people embarrassed themselves on this issue. There were protests. People threw things at buses full of students. It’s a racist town, and it doesn’t always bubble to the surface in public like that, but that summer, it was in full rolling boil. This book sets that as the backdrop, as a bunch of miserable little racists gear up to protest because of how this is going to “ruin their kids’ lives.”

It’s a Dennis Lehane book, so it’s a mystery, in this case about the main character’s daughter disappearing and whether or not she was involved in a hate crime on the night of her disappearance. Just about every character is awful in some way, and they’re all deeply resistant to introspection, to any idea of examining their prejudices to see if they hold up to their own belief system. They’re miserable both in the sense of the insult and in the sense of the plain adjective. It’s a mean little book about mean little people who think they’re good.

The thing is, racists notwithstanding, busing worked - or, I guess, its successor program, which lets parents select their top 5 choices of schools for their kid to go to, regardless of neighborhood, has worked. I read a study about how segregated schools across the country were, and most cities had a high degree of segregation - because even if the schools didn’t actively prohibit any particular student from attending, they drew from the neighborhoods they were in, and those neighborhoods were usually pretty divided. Detaching the school a kid is sent to from the neighborhood in which they live had an effect: Boston scored high, higher than most, on school integration. Does this mean the Boston public school system is therefore perfect and all kids get a top-notch education? I mean, no, we live on Earth - but it means any kid could go to any school, and if one school is better than another, parents elsewhere in town can send their kids there anyway. I’d like all the schools to be good, of course, so the choice isn’t good school vs long schoolbus ride, but it’s better than what it was, and better than a lot of places still are.

Some links

Fascinating look at the way mental illness is defined, and what that means for its treatment. I hadn’t thought about this before, but neurology and psychiatry both study the brain, and yet never the twain shall meet - and only one of those is considered physical health and the other is a sort of Nebulous Other Category. But, as this shows, the way your brain works is the way your brain works, and treatments that have effect on the brain can have effects on your mental state! Mary Had Schizophrenia - Then Suddenly She Didn’t

Does it surprise you, as a person aware of Volkswagen’s past, that they owned an industrial farm/deforestation operation in rural Brazil that enslaved people and mistreated them hideously? Does it?? Volkswagen’s Secret

I do not love the methods in this story, but I do love the story. Would that we could all have the impact of this one tour-bus driver. Thank You for Finding Me

I did not know it was so COMMON for people to have pets that really shouldn’t be pets. But! Wild animals are wild animals for a reason! Let them stay wild, what the hell are you thinking! The Menagerie Lurking in Rural America

Accidental shipwreck discovery? Kind of? Underwater Archaeologists Were Looking For a Lost Shipwreck in Wisconsin. They Stumbled Upon a Different Vessel Instead

Crooked cops! Crooked politicians! Secret identities! Secret everythings! Louisiana! Conversations With a Hit Man

My grandma did not have this specific weird couch but she did have a couch that was not famously beautiful, and various other furniture of the era. I bet your grandma had this one, though. Everything in here is so interesting. It Came From the 70s: The Story of Your Grandma’s Weird Couch

The spy in question was spying for the cause of abolition, by the way, so even better! Also, this article contains a photo of a man named Dr. Horace Greeley, who looks as much like a “Dr. Horace Greeley” as it is possible to look. The Brooklyn Allergist’s Office That Was Once Home to a Spy

Tremendously interesting investigation into what emoji are (a language? an alphabet? something else?) and how they got that way. Also, I thought this was going to be about specific emoji, and I would like to note that the “rofl” emoji - this one 🤣 - is the purview of a certain type of older internet user, someone a bit facebooky, and it always gives me a weird jolt when I see a peer or someone even younger using it. To quote someone I can’t remember right now online: nothing’s that funny. The Emoji Tongue

I guess this didn’t make the news in Canada, because I do not remember this at all, despite it happening in 1999 and being A Big Deal. Finding Robert Bogucki, the Man Who Disappeared On Purpose

Okay, first of all, this is really cool, I love this kind of thing, and early humans were way better at just about everything than we give them credit for, but also. ALSO. I’m sorry. But. Can I say something about the specific scientist who is pictured herein, in, uh, period garb chopping down a tree. Go look. Right?? Scientists Built a Canoe Using Only Prehistoric Tools. Then They Sailed the Dangerous 140-mile Route Early Humans Traveled 30,000 Years Ago

This headline sounds like it means something (the oceans? acid?) is going to space, but in truth a “planetary boundary” is a sort of threshold beyond which the planet might not be hospitable to life. So. That’s bad! “Ticking Time Bomb”: Study Says Ocean Acidification Crossed Planetary Boundary

Entry #1 in the “best headline I read this month” competition: Scientists Sink Cow 1629m Into South China Sea, Then Gigantic Animal Appears Out of the Gloom

And here’s Entry #2. “Yeti Blood Oath” Divides Denver Seminary

I actually did not know that flamingos eat weird! They do, though, and the reason why is FASCINATING. Why Do Flamingos Eat So Weird

It’s true, all of these Davids are super gay. But apparently, Florence as a city is less gay now than it was in the Renaissance? Sad if true!! Searching for Leonardo da Vinci’s Gay Florence

This is useful because last year I watched that Netflix show that was like “what if we tried to do for the Tour de France what Drive to Survive did for Formula 1?” and it… kind of worked, and I’m going to watch the second season when I finally get time, but what I really needed was an article like this before I started in on season one. Specifically, trying to understand how a solo sport, which you win by yourself, is also a team sport was turning my brain into a pretzel. This will help. How to Watch Cycling

I am not necessarily familiar with all the feuds listed here (there are a bunch of sports ones, for instance, most of which I’m hazy on at best), but it doesn’t matter, I’m always here to read about people famously and publicly disliking each other. The Best Beefs of the 21st Century, Ranked

Horse cloning isn’t even the scandal here - it’s a legal fight over the rights to the cloned horses. Also, who knew that polo was huge in Argentina? Cloning Came to Polo. Then Things Got Truly Uncivilized

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

I went through a PUP phase this month. Also, this video has one of the things I like most when watching a live performance, and that’s when a singer goes up on their tiptoes to hit a particular note.

Golf isn’t a real sport. Sorry to golf and to the one golf enthusiast that reads this newsletter. If it helps, I enjoy a ton of things that aren’t real sports; not being a sport isn’t a character flaw.

This song plays over the end credits of Slither (2006) and I’ve loved it ever since.

This month’s top 5: Things my kid has done at camp, according to my kid, in response to the question “What did you do at camp today?”

1. I dunno 

2. *shrug*

3. *blank stare*

4. Went swimming (they swim every day)

5. Mom, ringworm’s going around at camp! What’s ringworm?

He does not have ringworm, by the way!!

Alright, I’ll leave you with this: we’re heading up to Montreal³ at the end of August (when I would normally be writing the next issue, haha, prepare to wait a little while for that), and while I’m pretty sure everything’s going to be ok at the border coming back in,, there’s always the chance that it won’t, because that’s the kind of a country this is. So I’m telling people in advance, just in case, so everyone knows where I am and where I’m supposed to be. Obviously the specifics are for private conversations, but in broad strokes: if I’m not back in Boston by the beginning of September, something has Gone Wrong.

_{1 but do I? hahaha! also, more on this later}

_{2 what, how else do you expect me to pluralize “serum”?}

_{3 just for a visit! this isn’t The Move}