Category Archives: The Ones Where I Try To Give Advice

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Superheroes Are for Adults, Too

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When my brother and I were little, we made absolutely everything into an elaborate game. We made up superhero names for ourselves. I was Tornado Boy and my brother was Storm Boy. We were awesome.

We took the whole “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back” thing to a whole ‘notha level. The cracks were laser sensors. Atypically colored tiles were faulty bricks that, if stepped on, would give out to a pit of boiling lava. Video cameras in department stores had to be avoided or else our arch nemesis Crystal Head would know where we were.

The best part about all of this was how efficient we were at making the mundane into something awesome. Trips to get new shoes turned into getting new superhero equipment Batman-style. Trips to warehouses became secret missions into our enemies’ hidden lairs.

I was thinking about all of this the other day as I was doing random chores around my apartment. It wasn’t glamorous or cool; it was just boring.

I think kid brains have the whole life thing figured out.

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An Incomplete Thought About Being Exotic According to Musical Tastes

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There’s a race going on, and it has nothing to do with running. It has to do with media consumption.

It used to be that when someone asked me about a show, a musician, a book, a movie, if I hadn’t consumed it, I became apologetic. I went out and found it immediately. I thought other people saw it as an affront to my intelligence or culture if I didn’t know what they were referencing. I had to be in on the conversation. It was important.

When you are constantly consuming media that people tell you is life-changing and essential, you start to learn something. You learn that everyone has their own list of life-changing and essential media. It’s not really the same for anyone.

I really like the Dave Matthews Band. I started listening to them in high school because a lot of my friends were. But then I grew attached to them because I liked them. Then I got to college. And almost no one I befriended listened to Dave Matthews Band. Everyone else became really exotic and different and sophisticated and cool because they listened to the xx and Bon Iver and Grizzly Bear and stuff like that.

What I failed to realize is that I was just as different and foreign to my Bon-Iver-listening friends as they were to me.

Media should never be a race. It should be enjoyable.

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Inside Voices Inside My Head

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I don’t remember a lot of things from grade school. But there is one image that is seared into my memory.

I’m in first grade. The class has just come in from recess. Our line was loud coming in from outside. The room is dark because we forgot to turn on the light in our dreadful anticipation of our teacher arriving. We know the inevitable lecture. We are not new to the ways of school. We know that outside voices are for outside and when we are inside, we need inside voices. But we disobeyed. And now a punishment awaited us.

Eventually, everyone learns the whole inside voices thing, and it’s not really a problem anymore. But somewhere in adolescence, someone starts telling people that as long as you are using your inside voices, you should be listened to.

I wish people didn’t listen to me so much. When someone gets coffee with me for the sole purpose of talking to me, I talk too much, I say things I don’t mean, and worst of all, I make mountains out of molehills.

I think a lot. It’s kind of something I do. But I waste it. I waste it on all of these gossipy things that I think are conversational mountains, but really, they are molehills. Tiny. Insignificant.

And it’s kind of like I’m using my outside thoughts, inside my head, trying to create drama among thoughts that don’t have drama. No one ever tells you that you need to use inside thoughts, inside your head, but you do.