Respect

On Tuesday April 9 I am going to work my first game as data operator, or scorekeeper on a laptop instead of a scorecard, at the Memphis Redbirds game. This is different from the Baseball Info Solutions gig I worked for eight years before the company stopped sending people out to live games. This is for Major League Baseball, although it's still minor league games at the AAA level. I've been running hard collecting data for BIS in their new iteration as Sports Info Solutions, getting stats at ten college football games this past autumn and the six March Madness college basketball games here in Memphis a couple weeks ago. I decided to have some job opportunities e-mailed to me automatically by Indeed.com even though I got scammed by some fuckers last year, and out of nowhere this gig with MLB came up, watching baseball and putting in every pitch and every play, and I decided that I had to apply for this even though it almost felt like a scam, felt too good to be true, and they sent me a test of baseball rules which I aced, and they set up a Zoom interview the next day and I aced that so well that they offered me the job on the spot. I've ran the gamut of emotions about it in the past month since it happened: pride, awe, shock, worry, fear that it's a scam which won't go away until the moment they let me into the press box to do the job Tuesday night. And I didn't know when I would post here about it, but I knew I had to because it's such a major moment in my life--the fat broke loser Negro from the West Side of Chicago is an employee of Major League Baseball. Still a wow just to type that.

Then today another major moment happened, a moment I had been waiting for and a moment that I knew was probably coming soon but still came as a total stunner. I checked my phone after work and saw a missed call and voice mail from the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, and I knew exactly what that meant. Finally, at long last, my father is dead.

There has, predictably, been no reaction from me because that's just how I handle everything. Yes, lots of thoughts and memories (mostly bad) and racing emotions, but nothing to make me physically exert any kind of feeling outwardly. There was something I thought to do out of respect for him, I don't even remember what, but I stopped stone cold when that word popped in my head. Respect. That's what my enmity towards him is all about. I have co-workers who don't understand how I could go years not speaking to him. No matter what he did to me, he's still my father, they'd say. I won't offer this explanation to them because I don't want to get that deep into it. But it's a matter of respect. He did not have respect for me as a person. He's my father, so obviously there's a level of authority that says he didn't have to show me respect, he just had to raise me. He didn't do a good job of raising me, but way more important than that, he didn't treat me like I was a Goddamn human being. It's more than the beatings, the airplane spinning me and threatening to slam my body to the concrete, the choking my mother in front of me, the cheating on her in our apartment while I was there and she was not...etc. I took all of that and continued to talk grudgingly to him as an adult, but he never treated me as more than his son, and he never apologized for his behavior, and he reminded me of Donald Trump in that he never even understood that the things he did hurt other people badly. He couldn't see anything other than what affected him. He didn't respect me other than when what I was doing may aggrandize him. When I won the spelling bee in 1990, he said to me in front of other people, "I want you to win nationals so I can go on Arsenio!" Not we, he. Always.

So fuck him. Burn in hell. Eternal apologies to my mother, and I'm forever grateful that she birthed me, but I will never understand why with him.

48 Years Of Perseverance

I'm not the "keep pushing 'til you make it" type. Anyone who knows me knows that I get frustrated and defeated when I don't get my way. This year I had occasion to apply for different job opportunities since my day job keeps losing business year to year. It didn't go well this spring and summer. I got scammed by a job posting on Indeed, and by the time I figured it out they had already shipped me a check in my name for over $6,000 that I was supposed to use to "buy" supplies for the job. That was not going to end well. I sent it back. Then I applied to a couple of different companies that were looking for people to watch college football games and do some basic scout work for them, including the company that I worked for doing scorekeeping for minor league baseball before they went remote. I was humbled by the depth of questions on the interviews and embarrassed that I didn't know certain play calls or formations or even who won the football national title last year. I don't watch college football, mostly because I worked on Saturdays. But still, when I didn't hear back from one group and the other sent me a form rejection email, I was very down in the dumps. But the group that I previously worked with when it was Baseball Info Solutions was now starting up the same type of position going to college football games. So I persevered, swallowed my pride, and applied for that one too, and I did much better in that interview because they weren't trying to drill my football knowledge for 45 minutes. They mostly wanted to know about my real life job record and responsibilities. They also said something to the effect of "We already know about your accuracy and dedication because of your work with the baseball side, we just want to get to know you here on the football side." It seemed like a formality that I would be selected to work the University of Memphis football games. Then weeks went by, all the way into the beginning of August, and I heard nothing. That was a very tough stretch. If I wasn't good enough for this gig with all of my prior experience, what would I do? Go back to applying for scam data entry jobs? Finally, finally, they one morning sent me the contract to sign for the gig. And my perseverance paid off. I greatly enjoyed working with what is now Sports Info Solutions, even accepting the chance to work Arkansas State football games 85 miles away, and now I wait for them to develop a similar program to work college basketball games. I will certainly be applying for that too. I know now that I can't get discouraged when I don't instantly get rewarded for my efforts. The blessing will come. I just have to wait for it sometimes.

47 Years Of Weirdness

I saw a random Facebook meme this morning before work and decided to share it as my theme for the day. It said: "I'm Different. And I Like That Shit." I captioned it: "Happy 47 to me. I'm learning to embrace my weirdness. As if I wasn't annoying enough." What that means simply is, I'm not trying to hide my quirks like I always used to. I am what I am. Whatever that entails, whatever social awkwardness, whatever inappropriate comments, whatever abrasive, aloof, sometimes confrontational front I put up to get through the day, it's me. Not everyone likes me. Hell, most people probably don't. And that's fine. I find that when I'm trying to be someone else, trying to fit in and be likeable, it may work and it may not, but I don't like how it feels because I'm being someone other than me. It can take years for people to feel even a little comfortable with their traits. I feel like I'm slowly getting there. And it's not fooling myself into thinking that I'm actually the normal one and everyone else is the problem. It's acknowledging that some things I do are fucked up, some aren't, but they're all MY things. When I wear my normal khakis and collared shirt to work on Halloween and declare that I'm dressing as a big fat nerd, or when I shake my considerable backside to the music at the bowling alley while waiting my turn, or when I make a bad pun joke to my wife knowing she won't find it funny at all, I'm being me, which is different from everyone else, but what would being like everyone else accomplish? Nah, I'm going to enjoy the things that make me me, and I'm going to have days where I feel down about me and wish I was better, and I'm going to have days where I feel like I'm awesome, and everything in between. It's all good. I've always been different. Finally, I'm kinda starting to like that shit.

I Socialized And Made Friends, And Pigs Do Fly

If you know me, then you know that I don't play well with others. Eight years ago I took a leap and joined a bowling league here in suburban Memphis even though I didn't know a soul. I did it because I missed bowling and I missed competing although I'm not a very good bowler, but I also did it as an attempt to socialize and be around people besides my wife and co-workers. I may not be the friendliest, but I did want some interaction with people, especially here in a new city where I know nobody and wasn't going to have any chance to hang out.

The team I joined was kinda perfect for me, but kinda detrimental too. The team captain was Richard, who was an oddball with a limp and a weird sense of humor. He would express mean opinions about people, usually minorities or women, but in a "You get what I'm sayin' man?" chuckling kind of way. So we got along with not much more in common than dark jokes and sports talk. Fine for my comfort zone, but didn't help me as a person. The other guy was Charles, and he hardly said a word. He was pleasant but he was basically a mute. His voice was extremely gravelly, so that may have been why he didn't talk, but he seemed very introverted besides that. Fine for my lack of self-confidence since I didn't have to talk to him, but again, didn't do much for my growth and wasn't really much fun. This is a four-person mixed league which means that at least one person on every team must be of the opposite gender, and we filled our female opening with a lady who, like me, walked in and joined a random team with an opening. Bobbie was an older lady originally from Chicago, so we bonded over that. She brought her high school grandson occasionally, and I called him Youngblood because he reminded me of me: Big guy, quiet, kept to himself, had a girlfriend who was probably as important to his self-worth as "Giselle" was to mine at that age. So I offered advice to him sparingly and thought of him as a play-nephew. We were the worst team consistently every year. Our handicap was so high that, at my request, our team name was "Handicap Team" the last couple of years we bowled. (Hey, I wanted to call us "We're Handicapped," but Bobbie thought otherwise.) We finished 5th out of like 20 teams one year just because we would win so many games using that high handicap. We were one of the longest running teams, and we were used to each other's personalities. Then Richard started to change.

Richard's jokes became even darker and more cruel, making fun of people in the news suffering tragedies or people in the bowling league slipping or bowling bad. This despite his limp and his occasional fall on the lanes. Honestly, I chalked it up to more people, mostly white, being more and more aggressive and eager to share their opinions last decade since Obama became president and certainly since Donald Trump succeeded him. But this was more than that. Turned out that Richard had a tumor in his brain. He had a huge knot surgically removed, but the cancer returned. His behavior became more erratic, including going to bowl when it wasn't his turn, or taking even longer to get his gear on and off than usual. One time he started bowling on the wrong lane, and when calling his name didn't stop him, my patience wore off and I shouted out "Hey IDIOT!!" Another time, there was a Chinese church league that started after we were done on Wednesday nights, and they had to wait because we were often the last team bowling due to Richard's slow play. He turned to me one night and said out loud, "How does anyone know what those people are saying?!" followed by stereotypical Asian language mocking sounds that would make Shaquille O'Neal proud. I told him to knock that off, and he legit seemed surprised by my chiding him. "Why?" he asked, and I told him because it's ignorant.

All this came to a head right around the time coronavirus upended everyone's world. Early in 2020, Richard told us he would need another surgery for his brain tumor and he probably wouldn't be back that season, which was supposed to end in April. He tried to sound optimistic and vowed to be back the next year. But multiple brain surgeries didn't sound good, plus a bowler who knew nurses at his hospital told me that they said it didn't look good. Honestly, I think Bobbie and I were happy to get through the rest of the season without waiting for him to get out of the bathroom or hoping he knew which lane to throw on. And Charles just showed up and bowled every week. Nothing seemed to faze him. Most every public leisure activity started to shut down due to COVID, including our bowling alley, and our season ended early in February. I retrieved our prize money a couple of months later and mailed it out to Richard and Charles. Bobbie came to meet me at a gas station near her home in Mississippi so that she could tell me in person that she wouldn't come back to the league next season. Her drive to the alley was 45 minutes each way, and she had finally wearied of it. Richard and Charles got their money, and Richard thanked me via text. That was the last Richard and I would communicate. A league officer in August 2020 e-mailed me to ask if I had found new teammates to replace Bobbie and Richard, since Bobbie wasn't returning and Richard died. I had no idea until then that Richard lost his cancer battle.

I actually had a hard time dealing with Richard's loss for a couple of reasons. One, I don't handle loss well anyway, as depicted by me not attending my own mother's funeral. But two, I really didn't treat Richard with much compassion his last year alive. His breaking down was inconveniencing me, and his personality made me regard him as a pain in the ass more than a human whose health was failing. I didn't put his often awful choice of words and his brain tumor together until it was too late. It wouldn't have changed his speech, but it would have forced me to recognize that some of it may have been beyond his control. A counselor suggested that I write Richard a letter getting my feelings out, and that helped. I still have the letter. Richard can't ever read it but I feel like I shouldn't throw it away.

I did not return to the league in 2020 or 2021. I needed the time away so soon after Richard, and my wife was extra wary of me going somewhere social after we both caught COVID. But I decided to go to the meeting last week to get ready for the new season. Just like eight years ago, I was going without a team and hoping to catch on with a team that had a male opening. Unlike eight years ago, I knew the people in the league, and I was going to be happy to see them for the first time in two years. There was a scenario I imagined as the best-case, but my nature is to assume and prepare for the worst, so I just went to the meeting with my new ball ($72 for drilling, fucking inflation) trying to be ready for whatever.

The scenario was this: There was a team throughout the years that was comprised of a woman and her daughter, Margo and Missy, and they seemed to have different partners filling out their team all the time. I always had the most fun bowling against Margo and Missy because their averages were low compared to the rest of the league and they didn't take it seriously at all. They were quiet but friendly, and we developed a rapport because I feigned fear whenever we bowled them since they had even more handicap than we did. "OH NO, we're bowling Missy and Margo! Y'all always kick our ass!" They would smile and chuckle and swear that they didn't always beat us, and then every time one would throw a strike or spare, I would raise an eyebrow and yell out, "Oh, there they go!" And they would start laughing. It was always a blast playing them. I hoped that they would still be around and they would have an opening, but I started thinking of reasons why it would be a longshot: The mother, Margo, was in her 60s or maybe even 70s, so why would she still be interested in coming out to a bowling league post-COVID? And even if they were still in the league, would they have a random opening this year? And if they did, would they want me on the team? Just because we made each other laugh didn't mean that they would want me as a teammate necessarily. Well, it all came together, sorta! 

See, Missy and Margo were there last week, along with Al, who has been their partner for the last few years. I asked them if they had a fourth, and they all said they did last year, but they didn't know if he would be back. So I said, if they need a fourth, I was available. After some discussion, they called me over and asked me to come aboard. I was thrilled. There was a small issue that I knew nothing about: Their fourth from last year had shown up at the meeting. I never met the guy, so I didn't know he was standing there until he asked them about his spot, and Missy told him, "We got someone else. We didn't know you were coming back." I kinda felt bad about it because it then felt like they kicked him off to make room for me, their old buddy. But later it was explained to me by a third party that they didn't like him as their partner last year. Evidently, he didn't have etiquette as far as watching out for other bowlers before he rushed up and started throwing, and also, he was a bad teammate, often not showing up for league play and not calling or informing anybody. (When I looked at last year's standings and scores, I saw that he did indeed miss seven weeks of bowling out of a 34-week season.) Poor guy, reminded me of Richard.

That's when it dawned on me: I was being invited by Missy and Margo because I wasn't a bad teammate, because I made each matchup fun when we played against each other, because I was genuinely happy every time I saw them. And I made a good impression on them so that when the chance came, they eagerly brought me aboard. Wow, I can socialize and make friends after all. This third party told me that Missy and Margo were happy to see me when I came to the meeting. That was so wild to hear because I was so happy to see them. They were my ideal team to join, and it actually happened. I'm so used to looking at the dark side of things and dismissing any good fortune as happenstance, but I have to accept the reality of what happened. A team didn't really have an opening but made one just for me because they like me. That's dope. We may not win many games, but we'll smile and laugh and have fun, and that for me is winning.

46 Years Of Compassion

Be gentler to yourself. You matter. Allow yourself to be a human. Don't be a slave to your tongue. Remember to enjoy. Your past is your past. Your mistakes have happened. They're OVER.

I wrote those phrases on index cards and taped them around my home desk a few months ago. It's the result of counseling I received during this trying year, the second stressful trying year of COVID for all of us. I think everyone could use some counseling during such crazy times, or at least have people who listen and give intelligent feedback in your lives. This counselor didn't necessarily say anything brand new, but I suppose at this stage I was ready to listen.

It took almost half a century, but I finally learned to stop being quite so hard on myself. That is a lesson I had to learn in order to stay alive. The stress of being a perfectionist know-it-all was affecting me and my relationships such that I didn't know how much more I could take before I started breaking down. Who knows how much damage I've done to myself to this point. But I've begun to look at life in a different manner. The old way of beating myself up for every shortcoming was not getting it done.

The result is that I don't take every angle of life and see it as a failure on my part. That's not to say that I don't recognize when I don't measure up or when I make a mistake. But I've tried to make the effort to stop seeing every mistake as some horrific personal failing that needs to be examined over and over. This life is one of examining and ruminating over mistakes constantly, as you can tell reading this blog. So it's not easy and more than a little weird to not beat myself up over errors. But it's a relief, and it allows me to enjoy life more.

Part of the adjustment is recognizing the voices in my head that try to bring me back to self-flagellation and just letting those voices happen without freaking out. For example, I received an error at my data entry job last week. I take great pride in not making errors. This was my first one in a long time, more than a year I think. I saw what it was and I know how I messed up--going too fast and overlooking a procedure. Normally that would ruin my whole day. I tried to forgive myself and let it go. But later that day I was chiding myself in an unfamiliar way. I was double-checking my work and this teasing woman's voice in my head kept saying, "Of course you're double-checking. You got an error. Mr. Perfect, who never makes mistakes, got an error. Ha ha ha." It wasn't aggressive, but more like a person taking joy in the misfortune of others, and I never heard that voice in my head before. It was the manifestation of my psyche needing to chastise me for a fuck-up, and since I didn't do it in my normal way--ruminating and cursing myself all day--it found a different way. But I recognized it and let it happen. As my wife has been advising me, I sat with my feeling instead of fighting with it or wrapping myself in it. It's such a different method than I'm used to. But I recommend it. Beating myself up didn't accomplish what I thought it would. I really did think all these years that those who are great at what they do kill themselves for every mistake in an effort to train themselves not to make the mistake again. And maybe some do that, but it didn't work for me. I would still make mistakes, and sometimes the same mistake, and I bet most everyone else does too. The sooner you learn compassion and self-grace, the less stress your spirit carries around. And take it from me, that shit's heavy.

45 Years Of Hate

No shock to anyone who has ever read this blog, but I hate myself. Like, I've never really liked myself, not for longer than a little while anyway, and most days, I hate who I am. I hate being fat and ugly, I hate switching between needing attention and quietly pouting, I hate being a needy momma's boy who lost his momma when he was ten, I hate being just smart enough to realize that I should have been much more successful in life if only I had motivation and direction, I hate the way I hate all men because I'm jealous of them, I hate not being able to satisfy my wife, and before I met her, I hated chasing pussy and valuing women only by whether they were willing to fuck me. 

In this year of coronavirus, I was in the midst of very slowly establishing a routine to get healthier physically and work on the most enduring aspect of my self-hatred, my obesity. I started working out at a gym a few years ago along with my wife, who had a couple of health scares that motivated her to join a gym and drag me with her. She had stopped going regularly because it's hard and because she was dealing with her own food and life issues. I haven't gone to the gym every single day since we joined either, but I was hitting the treadmill about once or twice a week while hitting the weights every weekend, in addition to my Wednesday night bowling league. When I really hit the gym and started eating better and dropped about thirty pounds in 2018, I noticed the change, and so did people around me, and I felt good. I mean, what obese person wouldn't feel good about losing weight and getting compliments? But we went on a cruise for Christmas that year, and I went cray cray at the buffets and really took the opportunity to relax and lay off the workout routine, and I found all the weight I lost by next spring. 

I was working back into a routine I could handle without wearing myself out, and the weights were a big part because it gave me better strength bowling, which lowered my handicap ten full pins. And I was starting to pump up the routine a little at the beginning of this year in anticipation of a family trip to Mexico in June. I wasn't trying to lose thirty pounds again, nor was I eating as restrictively as two years ago. I just wanted to be in my best shape so I could enjoy the trip without feeling worn out, and if I lost a noticeable amount of weight and started getting random compliments again, awesome. Then COVID-19 stopped everything. The gym closed because of local restrictions, the bowling league canceled the rest of the season because people weren't going to come, and suddenly I was left with self-motivation and home workouts if I wanted to keep my routine. But without a high level of discipline (and also I had a swollen ankle for a week), I fell off. I've been keeping a log of my workouts, and I didn't do a damn thing for five weeks after COVID hit our country. Then I got coronavirus myself, which ironically pushed me back to exercising regularly because my doctor said not to let the virus settle in my lungs. But I haven't been back to the gym, so my strength is wasted away, and I don't work out very hard here at home because I guess at the gym I'm motivated to really go for it since I made the effort to drive there and all, plus the circulation and A/C is much better. Or maybe those are excuses I hide behind to avoid how lazy I am. After all, in case you missed the top of this rant, I hate myself, and I always have.

I want to say that in this, my 45th year, I will do a better job of forgiving my shortcomings and trying to improve those areas where I can improve. But I know who I am and what I am. I'm a chickenshit afraid of my own shadow, and I'm mired in a lifelong routine of lying down wanting to get up and do for myself but not able due to some sort of emotional paralysis. Let me explain what happens most times when I want to do something. Take my wife, for example. I can't make myself be forward with her. Next year will be ten years of marriage, and yet I still cannot take her by the hand and lead her to the bedroom, not without an extraordinary amount of courage which takes me forever to build up. I feel like a man with confidence in himself can easily make his moves on a lady. Not me. I have to pretend I'm The Rock or some other sex symbol. It's a very taxing feeling. I don't think my wife feels like I love her very much, but I've always been like that. If you talked to "Karen," she would laugh recalling how I sat on her couch until 2 in the morning holding her hand, refusing to make a move on her until she went to bed and took off her own clothes. Same with "Grace," the one night stand who had to announce to me that she was going to kiss me as we sat on her couch. And "Sarah" had to pull her own bra off after being in my apartment, and The Co-Worker Who Shall Not Be Named had to pull me into her body with her legs while we were horsing around on my loveseat. You get the drill. It works the same way with exercise. Most days I think long and hard about getting up and putting on my cross trainers and putting on a workout video, then nightfall arrives and I get in bed and watch TV. And every time I do, I hate myself. And every time I think about grabbing my wife and showing her the physical affection we all crave and I fail to do so, I hate myself. I will never know how disciplined, motivated people do it. I mean, I guess I did it for a year working out and eating better, but then I broke and went back to my old habits.

I think the worse part of hating myself and my bad habits all my life is, I don't allow myself to feel good about anything that happens to me. I've been trying to enjoy my new car in this first month of ownership, but the monthly payments and the fear that I made a bad buy make it difficult. Any carb I eat brings on self-loathing knowing that I'm a diabetic and I need to cut down, yet I remember how much I craved sweets when I cut down before. Any compliment on a haircut or shave or clothes never brings a sense of pride, but rather a sense of envy because I think of guys much more attractive and in better shape and I hate myself for being such a loser that any small change in appearance make people feel like they have to pump me up. And I hate having to get counseling to deal with these issues because I feel awful about needing help, and I also don't think it helps me much. Like the days in my twenties of filling my nights with sex, when it's over I'm still me and I feel worse sometimes. Same with counseling. I'm trying to look forward to 2021 being a much better year like everyone else is. But in certain ways, it's going to be more of the same. Even when I can go back to the gym, or bowling, or on trips and cruises with my wife, every night when I lay down to sleep, I'm me. And it sucks.

I Bought A Car! Wait, What???

In my sheltered life I have a number of things that most people experience earlier than me, and some things I never thought I'd do. Living in Chicago and not needing a vehicle, I didn't even bother to get a license until I moved here. And that was only because Grizzbabe had no interest in driving me to work every day, and where we live, public transportation to my job would be impossible. We existed as a one-car couple for several years. On weekends when I worked I drove the car alone, and when we both had to work, she dropped me off and picked me up. Then I scraped up the bottom of the car and Grizzbabe's uncle came to our rescue in his pickup truck, and he told us to keep it for as long as we needed, so when her car got fixed, I just drove the pickup as if it were mine. The plan was always to save up and get another car, but in the meantime, we put a lot of time and money into maintaining the 2001 pickup. Finally, in November the ABS and brake lights came on and the brakes felt very soft, like, I had to really force the brake pedal down to stop the thing. One repair joint replaced the brake hardware for $1400 and the lights were still on. Another place said they couldn't figure out what the lights signified because the truck was so old that they couldn't read the diagnostics. Then the dealership said that the ABS switch was broken but couldn't be replaced because no one made the part anymore. I asked if the truck was safe to drive, and the repairman said the truck was at risk of locking up since the antilock switch was dead. "I'd get rid of it," he said without a hint of care.

It was easy to drive my wife's car for the last few weeks because she works from home right now thanks to coronavirus. But I know eventually she will have to go back, so I started looking into what it would take to purchase a car. I knew that we had a couple thousand dollars saved because last year my wife made me start throwing $300 per month into a savings account with the purpose of having about $15,000 for a car in about five years. So I had those parameters: I can put $2,000 down and I can handle $300 per month. From there I just had to figure out what I wanted. I think when I started looking that I had the goal of something with less than 80,000 miles on it that cost less than $15,000. But a couple of factors made me come off of that mindset. For one, my wife got a used car a couple years ago that was certified pre-owned, which takes the process of wondering how healthy the vehicle is out of the equation because it's been fully inspected, so I refused to look for anything that wasn't certified. And second, being a big fat ogre, I was keeping all searches limited to not just mid-sized and larger, but only those with good safety ratings according to the Consumer Reports Buying Guide, and it had to have decent gas mileage. Basically, using those guidelines, it became clear that in my price range I was going to have to take cars that either were about five years old with way over 80,000 miles or something from last year or a couple years ago with 40,000 or so miles already racked up.

Then I saw a unicorn in the field: 2020 Altima, 4,000 miles, in my price range. Sent in my credit application to the dealer, traded phone calls, decided to go over there this past Friday after work. I'm three quarters of the way to the place when the guy calls me and starts stammering about "I-I-I got some bad news about your car, man." He claimed that another dealership got the car from them while they were putting together my deal, and by the time they contacted the other dealer, it had already been sold. I didn't like the smell of that tale, and my uncle was quite upset when I told him about it, calling it a classic bait-and-switch and suggesting that I write up a bad review of them. So back to the drawing board and using a broader search engine at the request of my uncle, two more unicorns come up, also in the 3,800-4,000-mile range, and guess where they're located? Yep, that same dealer.

Meanwhile, I had already sent another credit application to a Toyota dealer near the house because I saw a car that I decided would be good enough: In my price range with over 42,000 miles, but it was a 2019 Camry. It had been a rental, which explained why it had so many miles, and its second owner had hit an animal according to its Carfax report, and I decided that I was fine with that because it's still certified pre-owned, so whatever damage was done, it couldn't have been that bad. Looking back now, I don't know why I decided that was my car. When everything you're looking for comes in around the same price, seeing something one or two thousand bucks less must have popped me as a sign that I have to get this car. Smarting over my experience with the Altima dealer, I contacted the Toyota folks and told them I'd probably be there Sunday to talk. By that time, I saw another Camry at that dealership that was the same year for about the same price with maybe 4,000 less miles and no deer dings on its Carfax.

Sunday turned out to be an eye-opening day. Remember, I never owned a car before, so all of what happened was new and I had no idea what to expect. My uncle had shared his bad experience buying his first car, getting exploited for 22% interest, so he told me that with my good credit I should ask for what kind of rate I would get before I go any further. My plan was to go to the dealer and discuss the numbers before I even looked at the car so as not to fall in love with it before I knew the real price. The salesman was smooth, of course, and brought the car around for me to get a peek. "You really need your wife here before you make a decision?" he asked, and I said yeah, because I never did this before and I was hesitant. He wanted me to take it for a spin, but he would need my license and insurance card beforehand. Insurance card? Why, I don't have driver's insurance. I've been tooling about town in my wife's car and her uncle's truck, and they have insurance, so I never considered needing my own. The salesman was bewildered. He drove me around instead, and informed me that no sale or test drive could happen until I got insured. I went home. I was flustered, so without shopping around, I decided that GEICO looked like they had pretty low rates and just like that, I signed up. Grizzbabe asked if I really wanted to wrap this up, and I said I think so, so she got dressed and we went back up to the dealer. I now had my insurance, but the salesman then informed me that I needed a second proof of address besides my license, and again, because I'm a 44-year-old child, I was caught offguard and couldn't produce any documents. I don't pay any of the bills or mortgage, and I didn't know how to access my pay stubs on my phone. Eventually I figured how to bring up my bank statement, but it look an embarrassingly long time to think of that. I was allowed to take my own test drive, where I noticed the gas pedal doesn't accelerate very swiftly and the inside door on the left felt a little flimsy, but I blew those concerns off not wanting to start this process from scratch. After all that, the finance guy whisked us to the back, where the paperwork was already drawn up on this electronic tabletop. That was what I was afraid of, because now whatever interest rate he gave me would have to be really bad before I got up and left. Indeed, it was slightly higher than what I thought it would be, but I was in too deep now. I signed my life away with my wife silently watching, and the deal was done. It was more of a monthly payment than I thought it would be thanks to the extra insurance I have to pay as well. But I am now the proud owner of a six-year car note. It is what it is.

It had started to rain rather heavily when I finally got the keys, so while Grizzbabe went home, I sat in the car for a few minutes trying to wrap my head around what just happened. It was a whirlwind experience. I didn't know if I had done the right thing or if I should have waited for something else, something cheaper, something with less miles, something roomier...as is my personality, I was swamped with doubt. Then I called my uncle, I guess expecting love and support for this decision as if I was still a kid. He couldn't hide his disappointment at the mileage and the interest rate, then he caught himself and said if I liked it and didn't feel ripped off, that's all that mattered. And you know what? I like the car and I don't think I was ripped off. I nervously babied the car home in the rain.

The stress of that process was what I called "adulting," or doing things that normal grown people have to do sometimes. I'm acutely aware of how un-adultlike I am and how I can get stressed and panicky about things most everyone does, like buying a car or working on my marriage. This Sunday buying the car reminded me of another day of adulting that I did in that six-year hiatus since I blogged. On July 19, 2017, the new owners of the student loan I co-signed for "Shelley" contacted me and offered to bring the loan to a close if I gave them about $3,200 cash. This would be in addition to the years I had spent sending in $100 per month while she paid zero. I was conflicted by the thought of coming up off that much cash to finish a transaction that I never started, but the thought of having the loan dead was very tempting. So without any legal advice, I took a shot at negotiating and I told them that I couldn't give them that much today, so I'd have to go back to sending installments, or I could give them $2,000 to close it, their choice. They conferred with their people and got back to me a couple hours later and accepted my terms. I don't care how dumb it may have been to give that much to kill off an eleven-year loan, I don't care if they may have accepted even less if I offered, I was over the moon that I was able to pull off the end of that long nightmare by calling my own shot. And I was proud of how I kept paying on that debt for years, setting the stage for having the ability to kill it off with only two grand. Not only did I do it because it was the right thing to do as the co-signer, but I did it because I wanted to protect my own name and credit for the future, and dare I say, I couldn't have financed the Camry if I hadn't taken care of that cunt's debt from 2005. So it all came full-circle. And BTW, the iPod with all the dozens of songs that I talked about in my last post? I connected it to the car through Bluetooth, and for the first time ever, I will have the ability to drive to and fro playing my favorite songs from childhood through adulthood as loud as I want. Like an actual grown-up.