I'm going through what many people have called a mid-life crisis. When I was younger, I used to think of this as some kind of a joke. "Honey, Ray (a neighbor probably) bought a new Mercedes. What's he need that for?" or "Did you see Jim's toupee? How does he think nobody notices?" Both commentaries were joked about amicably by the discussing parties. But it didn't really occur to me that an extravagant purchase or a dramatic change in one's appearance is not something to be belittled. It is a real fucking crisis. They got it right at the beginning anyway, with the name, but the meaning got diluted and became easy for people to handle, maybe so people didn't commit themselves or suicide at age 50. The realization that your life didn't turn out as planned, as hoped for, or even very well. You look around one day and think to yourself, "I'm going to die like this? This is my life for the next however many years?" With medical advancements and the ingrained social idea that equates every death to a murder, they're not even letting people die anymore.
I'm writing this from a plane. Yesterday I quit my job, left my wife, and found myself at an international airport. Now I'm on my way to Bangkok. The only three people that know all of these things are the stewardess with the ass that hangs much lower than it should, the asshole who wouldn't give up the window seat for $100, and myself.
I wanted to set up a hidden camera in my house so I could see the look on my wife's face when she found out I wasn't picking up a pizza for the kids and then heading home, but there wasn't really time. And I couldn't face the possibility that I may run into one of the other occupants of my house during the installation. I can't look at any of them anymore. I have a shitty kid. Two shitty kids, really, but only one of them is really shitty. The other one just sits there. She may or may not be retarded. Retarded. That's a word I haven't used in a while. I was told not to. By the guy who played Dr. Cox from Scrubs when he was on Ellen I think. John something. I think he has a retarded son. It's not fair to the rest of the world to take words away from the language. As soon as a term starts being used derogatorily, we have to eliminate it from our vocabularies. Spastic used to be the term for someone who was spastic, but obviously kids started making fun of spastics, and the ones who weren't very clever simply yelled to the wheelchaired unfortunates, "Spastic!" We blame the kids, but only momentarily. Then we blame the language. That's unfair to the doctor who came up with the term spastic, a Dr. Warren Iditarod probably. But we got rid of it anyway. "No, Jimmy, spastic is a dirty word. Alfie is just... "retarded". That's a nice easy term that isn't offensive. It means late in French, I think, so now spastics can't be mocked. They are simply later than their peers in brain and body development. Nobody counted on little Corey to still not be very clever, but one day he moved on from the banned "spastic" and resorted to yelling "Retard!" at Alfie. Okay, no more saying retarded. Now he's... delayed. It's only a matter of time, but I'm not buying into it anymore. I like the word delayed, and if somebody calls a retarded kid delayed with a negative connotation, I will not renounce my right to use it otherwise when referring to little Alfie.
Oh yeah, so my daughter might be retarded. My son's just an asshole. I know half of him is me, and I know he grew up in a house with me, so I tend to receive a lot of the blame for his shittiness, but it's a lot easier for me to abandon my whole family if I blame him, and all of my other problems, on my wife. We had sex for the last time four months ago, when she was drunk and I was also drunk, and the whole experience went quite poorly. Since then I've had no desire to have sex with anyone or to drink. That was the hardest nut to swallow, the ruining-alcohol-for-me part. That means no more scotch. That cannot be forgiven.
It still didn't occur to me that I could just leave them though. I was at work yesterday, in the mid-morning, sitting at my desk contemplating nothing. Glen from accounting or human resources or my boss popped his stupid face in front of my doorway, MY doorway, and told me he was leaving for the day. Initially I was confused as to why he thought I would care. Maybe I was his boss. I'm not entirely sure. Either way, I decided I was also leaving for the day, so I put my coat on and left the building. I stood on the sidewalk under the awning for about twenty minutes. Realistically it was probably three minutes but enough passed through my mind in those three minutes that in order for you to believe me I have to say that it was longer. Passers were going by without any notice of me. One of the women, a young professional eating an energy bar, reminded me very slightly of my wife at a younger age. The next image I remember is that of removing my passport from the glove locker of my car, while in the long-term parking of an airport. The stewardess and asshole from earlier, after hearing the same detail, both found it oddly strange that a man who has never left the country keeps his passport in his car. Stewardess, that's another word they're trying to eradicate, due to its utterly offensive nature. She's a flight attendant now. Doesn't really have the same ring to it. And when we lose stewardesses, what will overtake it as the longest word that can be typed only with your left hand?
to be continued. the suspense is killing me.
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