Not A Total Loss

The Toyota Camry that I fretted over buying more than four years ago, and in which I invested four new tires and a new battery last year, and a full tank of gas the day before that cocksucker hit me, is no more. The body shop found more than $15,000 worth of damage once they disassembled it, most of which was from the crash but some of which may have been there through incidents prior. Whatever the origin, the damage was too much for my insurance company to bear, and they declared it a total, which means they are paying off the balance of what I owe, giving me the rest of the current value of the car, and destroying it. Because one kid who shouldn't be driving hit me so softly that my air bags didn't even deploy, my first car is dead. I'm not happy, to say the least.

I got a paper clip out of the car when I cleaned it out today. That was big. Let me explain. My wonderful wife bought me a tablet for Christmas, but the first instructions when I opened it was to install a memory card which was not included. Since when do computers not have everything you need right out of the box? So I went on the Walmart website and set up a grocery order, adding in a MicroSD memory card, which they informed me only after I picked up the order would be delivered to my house separately. A few days later, there it was. New problem: I didn't know how to open the slot on the tablet to insert said card. Researching the dilemma, two options became clear: Buy some tool that is used to open these types of slots, or use a paper clip and hope for the best. Walmart didn't seem to have this tool, so instead of looking at other purchasing options, I mentally settled for the paper clip option, but with all of our office utensils, we didn't have any paper clips. There's a million of 'em at my job, but I kept forgetting to steal one. I got the call that my car was declared a total and that I need to get to the repair shop to clean out my belongings. So I did just that, and searching under my seats for anything of value, there it was: a single paper clip. Guess it was meant to be. And yes, it did the trick. One last gift from my ride to me before it's crushed. My car deserved better. 

49 Years Of Ambition

Some cocksucker decided to make a right turn from the far left lane and smashed into me on November 19th. I was driving to work, but my mind was on my task upcoming the next day: my first time as clock operator for the NBA G-League Memphis Hustle. I was so nervous. I had been trained to operate the clock one time, and I was told that due to staff shortages, I would be the man in charge of the clock by myself the next time I came to Southaven, MS, where the Hustle play. It was thrilling but a little stressful that I would have such a responsibility so early in my newest sports occupation on the stat crew of the NBA Memphis Grizzlies. That worry and stress got slammed out of me by the Mexican kid who sideswiped me. I mean, he didn't even slow down when I hit my horn, just kept turning as if no one was there and hit me so hard that I had a bump on my head. I let out a loud "Fuck!", pulled over to the side of the intersection that the moron presumably was trying to turn down. He had to U-turn and come back, and when he did, he and some young girl, maybe his sister, got out of the car. The girl was in tears, probably scared shitless because she was in the passenger seat and got the brunt of the crash. I asked them for insurance information, and the girl showed me her cell phone and a man's name texted out, which is not what I asked for. Finally, their parents or whoever arrived and showed me insurance information, which had three names listed under insured drivers, none of which were the name that the girl showed me on her phone. So I kind of knew I was fucked. The father had the nerve to try to laugh it off, saying to me, "Ay man, I'm sorry about what happened. But hey, stuff happens, right?" I had been doing well holding my tongue, but at that comment, I had to say to him, "Tell him to watch out." He's lucky I'm a different cat, because someone else may have had a different reaction.

The accident situation is still in limbo. I filed a claim through their insurance, but it's been almost a month and they don't want to continue the investigation until they communicate with the guy who hit me, and it appears that family isn't interested in talking. So I went ahead and got my car into a repair shop, which I didn't want to do because I have to pay a $500 deductible to get the repairs done through my insurance. I wanted that guy's insurance to pay for everything because I wasn't at fault, but if they're going to drag forever, then I had to go forward getting my ride fixed because my wife and I spent a week using only her car, and it was very, very, very difficult on both of us. I'm going to wind up paying for that deductible and also for the difference between the actual repairs and what my insurance company quoted, and while that completely sucks, it wasn't realistic that I thought I would come away not paying anything. This was my first accident, so I didn't know the other company would screw me around so much. Lesson learned.

Now that I got that nightmare out of the way, I can proudly report that, yes, I am now an employee of the NBA in addition to Major League Baseball. The Grizzlies put a lot of job listings out there before this season began, but none of them pertained to my specialty, which is statkeeping. So I went on the Grizzlies official website to look under their job listings, and lo and behold, there was an opening for stat crew that they had not made public on Indeed.com, but there it was, right there with all the other jobs they had listed such as maintenance and security and usher and food court. I can't believe this is my life, but the day they called to set up an interview, it was my first day in Montego Bay, Jamaica, on vacation with my wife, so I had to set it up for a week later. But we finally talked, and they explained to me that the stat crew job wasn't something they publicized because they had a lot of people come in who thought they could work on stat crew but were mostly just fans who wanted a job with the Grizzlies and weren't really qualified to do what it takes. That explanation made perfect sense. It's why I take such pride in my scorekeeping duties with baseball and with the company that hires me to work college football. I know how difficult it is to be still and pay attention and do those jobs efficiently, and my experience (along with having someone already on the Grizzlies stat crew vouch for me because they also work in the Redbirds press box with me) made the right impression, and I was hired. Look at me, kinda sorta networking!

This being my rookie season, I have not worked any actual Grizzlies games yet. I was told that I would work G-League Hustle games almost exclusively in my first year until I proved that I knew what I was doing. I had no problem working my way up. I was only supposed to be clock operator for one game after being trained, and afterwards, I would start training to be a stat inputter, which can be hectic and difficult but presents a challenge I want to conquer. But someone on the scorer's desk got sick, and in all of the scrambling and moving people around to replace her, they gave me three more games to work the clock, which I took as a good thing because if I wasn't doing it right, they wouldn't give me more games. I actually love working the clock because there's a sense of controlling the game that appeals to me, and once you know the timekeeping rules to which you have to adhere, it's a pretty easy gig. It's a lot less stressful than stat inputting. The morning that I worked my first game, they kept asking me if I was nervous, and I kept telling them, hey, some doofus just hit me yesterday morning, so whatever happens today won't be anymore horrifying than that. The accident really did knock the stress out of my first day as timekeeper. It was a morning game, so there were lots of schoolkids in attendance on class field trips. My favorite part of the day was sounding the horn indicating the end of halftime and the start of the second half, which the kids clearly were anticipating because the shrieks they let out were piercing. I was like, wow, I've never had this much power in my entire life.

I feel like I am finding ambition now that I have worked my way into positions in all three of my favorite sports. I recently saw a clip of President Obama discussing how unimpressive some people are who have very high status in society. He got to meet all of the heads of state, very powerful people, very rich people, highly educated people, and some of them made the impression that they're not all that intelligent or talented, but got placed in positions of prestige due to connections. And I felt that. It reminded me of my days in junior high school on the Gold Coast of Chicago, rubbing elbows with kids whose parents were very rich and powerful. Some of those kids were really bright, some of them were not the sharpest bulbs. But when you have a leg up socially, you feel like you're entitled to anything. I have felt very not entitled to anything in my life, and I was feeling especially low a couple years ago when I tried to find other work and got scammed. But then the college football gig came along, then the baseball, and now the basketball, and it doesn't stop there: there's a new data company hiring for college basketball, and their compensation is about as high as one could imagine, and they desperately want someone for Memphis Tigers games. You damn right I applied for that as well. I don't know where my limit is as far as how much side work is too much, but I feel like I might shortchange myself if I don't go for every opportunity that I can. And I have passed on some potential gigs because the timing didn't feel right or the pay. But I don't think it would be too much to work some pro basketball games and mix in some college games, and then when those seasons end in April, it will be time for baseball again. Some people who work these gigs do way more games than that, because they also do college and youth sports. I really don't feel like I'm biting off more than I can chew. If anything, I'm making up for the previous 49 years in which I didn't feel good enough to try for any of these hustles. I am motivated, I am determined, and most of all, I am grateful as hell to have these chances in sports. My uncle texted me: "So proud of you. You're living your dream!" And he's right. That fat black boy from the West side of Chicago could never have seen these opportunities in his future because he didn't have the connections of the rich and powerful or any other connections. Took a minute, but I'm finally making it happen.

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.