Perforation Problems

Neither Michael nor I are sports people. My mom loves any and every sport and doesn't understand how anyone can not want to spend an afternoon at the ballpark. I was a constant disappointment to her as a kid, whether I was bringing my book with me to read in the stands at Wrigley Field or expressing zero interest in driving 3 hours to go to an IU basketball game. Actually, forget the "as a kid" part. It's still a disappointment to her. When my dad asked me a few weeks ago if I was going to watch the Super Bowl—even "just for the commercials"—I laughed at him. At least I've stopped pretending. For awhile in college and my early work years I thought sports were one of the things I had to feign interest in to appear normal and healthy, like enjoying happy hours, and parties, and social interaction in general. I wish I could go back to my younger self and tell her there's an entire population of introverts out there, and you don't have to beat the ...

I walk into Calvin Fletcher's on a Friday afternoon, pulling off my gloves and blinking as my eyes adjust to the dim light. It's sunny outside today but still cold—a winter fakeout. This winter will never end. I walk inside a few steps and turn in a circle, scoping out the seating. All our preferred spots are taken—in fact, there aren't any empty tables at all. I stand there dumbly for a moment, uncertain where to go and aware that people are looking at me. I head for the sitting area at the back of the room. There's a man sitting in one of the chairs, but the couch is free—and maybe by the time Sarah gets here something will open up, anyway. As I walk over, the man is staring at me in a way that sets off warning bells—as if he's been waiting for me, as if he knows I'm coming that direction and is excited about it. It's too late to change my path—I've already committed. I sit down, take off my coat, and pull out my computer, hoping to inspire a sense...

When we were kids, my mom worked for a small business owned by a couple that went to our church. American Leak Detection—they found leaks in swimming pools. In high school the couple gave me my first job, helping them with random grunt work a day or two a week for $5.15 an hour. Lois, the squat, curly-haired wife (the epitome of a grandma) would have m&ms and goldfish for me to snack on when I got there. I decimated them on the reg, but man, I did an excellent job of sorting the brochures in their supply closet. I'm sure I was a huge asset to them.  But back before I was old enough to work, American Leak Detection gave my mom her first job after having kids. And in the summers, when she was off being their accountant three days a week, the three of us were left gloriously alone. Ah, summer days of sleeping in and mindlessly watching episode after episode of Bobby's World and Animaniacs, of laying on the couch reading the romance novels I swiped from my mom's library ...

I don't think I used to get depressed in the winter, but maybe I just wasn't very cognizant of it. I don't remember thinking, "wow, winter is really fucking depressing" until I was in my late twenties, working in a cubicle in an office. Maybe that was part of it, too. Life looks different from within mauve cubicle walls. One year, one of my friends gave me an extra sun lamp he had, and I put it in the corner on my desk so the white glow would hit me as I stared at the computer. I don't remember it working. When I was a teacher, I don't remember thinking of winter as particularly bad—but in those days January meant second semester, which meant it was that much closer to summer vacation. And it was romanticism and modernism time in American Lit—Thoreau and Whitman and Hemingway and Faulkner. My favorites. Also, when I was teaching, that "I can't wait until summer when I don't have to work" feeling was with me all year round, so what dif...

There’s a room upstairs in my grandparents’ house that’s full of boxes and miscellaneous junk—blankets, pillows, unused furniture. My grandma used it as her storage area, and before her funeral we used it as a place to shove things from downstairs so there’d be more room for people to visit after the service. Nobody’s been up there in a year. This weekend my mom and I spent the night at Grandpa’s. We picked him up on our way to Wabash for First Friday, where we went shopping to spend the gift cards we still hadn’t used from last Christmas. Grandpa stood there quietly looking at things while we shopped, helped Mom get a purse down, said he liked the sweater I was trying on. I kept watching him out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to get irritated, but instead he reminded me of a docile puppy—agreeable, patient. After we walked over to a restaurant for dinner. They were understaffed and slow—it took an hour longer than it should have, but again, no more than mild complaints...

Monday evening I got back home after dinner with Amanda and checked the mail. Local sales fliers, the power bill, my ever-present Cheryl's Cookies catalog tempting me with buttercream-covered deliciousness—and a Christmas card from my grandpa. A thin green card with penguins on it, one he probably picked up at Dollar General, where he told me he'd been doing all of his shopping. "Merry Christmas to you both," the inside said. "See you on Christmas Day. Love, Grandpa." For some reason—maybe it's because I've already been overemotional this month, maybe it's because I was tired and overwhelmed with everything to do—this made my eyes well up. It seemed like something special, a turning point. Grandpa had not only picked out cards, he had signed them, addressed them, mailed them. Christmas cards! Grandma would be so proud. "Got your Christmas card!" I texted him. "Grandpa sent us a Christmas card!" I texted both Mom and Mi...

I first saw it Monday morning, the "me too." "If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me too.' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem." I'd been trying to avoid Facebook and Twitter, with limited success. I'd logged myself out on all my devices so that when I went to Facebook out of habit, I'd have to think twice, have to take an extra step. The result was that instead of going to the Facebook app I just went to facebook.com on my phone, which I somehow convinced myself wasn't as bad. "I'm just checking real fast." "I'm waiting in line, I might as well." "I just have to check my clients' business page. I might as well see if I have any notifications while I'm on there." I might as well, I might as well, I might as well. I've been thinking and reading a lot lately about the addictive nature of Facebook and how it nega...