I am not someone who regularly shows other people how cranky I am. This is not because I am a saint. I think it’s more like, I’m shy. Which is to say I feel actual physical discomfort when I can’t hide my emotional discomfort. And maybe it’s that contradiction, and the possibility it creates for a spiral of self-defeating emotions, that defines being cranky. It’s why the best cure to crankiness, for me, is when someone is unconditionally nice to me.
I can’t remember who gave me my pair of socks that say, “I GOT THIS” and feature a stick figure riding a t-rex, but I used to wear them whenever I anticipated a hard day, and they did help. Now I only have one of the pair. When I’m feeling uncertain and/or scared, the two main strategies I use to cope are saying to myself, “You’ve got this, baby boy” or whistling the theme song to Indiana Jones.
Before movies were invented, people used cruder means to play with time. For instance, they made little paintings, poked ‘em full of holes, and then alternated between frontlighting and backlighting them. This created the illusion of travel from day to night to day to night, on and on as fast and long as you wanted. It’s funny, really, how such a silly trick was/is so entertaining. I think sometimes that these primitive entertainments reveal the glitchiness of our brains. It’s the same reason you can lose a weekend to slot machines or candy crush or Instagram or bothering blackheads. It’s the same as my cat chasing her ribbon, locked in, killer instinct.
For Christmas I got my partner a robot vacuum cleaner. At first I dismissed him as “that little self-driving suckbox” but as soon as he started bumping around the house I was transfixed and followed him from room to room, loving and admiring his progress. I take this as another evidence of what a simple creature I am. My partner promptly named him “Lil’ Roomby.”
A few days ago my grandpa died. Grandpa Bob. He was 93 and died at home, asleep. But I still miss him. Like Lil’ Roomby, he wanted to show you what was under his bed — that was the punchline after asking “do you want to see my ‘website.’” He claimed to have invented the Internet and when pressed on it produced a pretty culpable memo written on Westinghouse letterhead in 1972. He held a bunch of patents but was most proud of discovering a minor cave outside of Pittsburg. As the first spelunker to find it, he got naming rights, so naturally it is “Concave.” I took this picture of him a few years ago when I visited him in Maine and we walked into town and he bought us each a sandwich and a coffee. When he was with someone he loved, he could smile from ear to ear. His term of endearment for anyone under 12 years old was “hey you with the ears.” I wish I could go have another coffee and a sandwich with him right now.
