Just Three Things

            I’m writing this in a Berlin airport bar, honestly unsure if the bar or the airport is the more depressing part of this experience.  But it’s a sideshow.  I’m here because I’m flying to Oslo for a round of training that’s been promised to me since I started at the company in January.

            There seems to be a bit of a rush of new workers at the company, which I’m taking as a good sign.  And, along with all of this training we’re going to get in Oslo (I might understand what “residual load’ is when this is all done and, if you’re very good, I won’t explain it to you), there’s been a certain rush of excitement about introducing all us newbies to the rest of the company.  That manifested itself in a request to shoot a three-second video of myself waving at the camera – which was about as cringe-worthy as it sounds – and then include three facts about myself, which would float up in little word balloons around the video of me waving in semi-deranged style at all my new colleagues and readers.

            Oh boy.

            Three things.  How do I break myself down into three things, when I know that what they want is “reading, travel and dog-walking” when, in reality, the answer is closer to “obsessively blogging about my dead son; being unsure if I’m happy the pandemic is kind of over, because I enjoyed the excuse to be away from society and, fine, dog-walking.”

            These things don’t play well to my personality.  Even before Colin died and the bottom dropped out, I loved giving inappropriate answers to these kinds of things.  In freshman year speech in college, we were supposed to analyze a song about a break-up and present it.  Everyone else did classic ‘boy dumps girl’ or ‘girl dumps boy’ songs.  I did a song about suicide, because that’s a break-up from everybody.  I thought I was so clever at 17 doing that.  The difference now is that, when the inappropriate answers come up, it’s because they’re the real deal.  They’re the honest truth.  It’s true to say that “I like hanging out with my kids and I like dog-walking,” but it’s more true to say that I define myself as the father of a dead child and spend so much time wondering what is up with the universe and how long we’ll be carrying the scars of Colin’s death. 

            There’s no way to put that into a one-word description that will float like a soap bubble next to my name.  It wouldn’t be fair to my colleagues to say that.  To say nothing of the fact that, less than three months into the job, I’d rather not be the guy causing that kind of problem for HR.

            Honestly, I just want to work from home, take Murphy for walks, keep my house in order, learn to barbecue chicken like my Dad did and somehow cure childhood cancer.  And I want to stop getting these questions that assume I’m normal any more.  But I also don’t want to wear a T-shirt saying “Parent of a Child Who Didn’t Beat Cancer.”  I want to stop living in a world where everyone assumes you’re happy.  Because, honestly, it’s exhausting to keep pretending that I’m normal any more, but the option of letting the world know how not normal I am also feels tiring.

            I rewatched the “Hudsucker Proxy” this weekend.  There’s a scene where Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character is asked how she can be happy, to which she responds that she’s happy enough.  That sends the questioner laughing in hysterics.  It feels like my life some days.

            I ended up going with Elvis, 80s music and superheroes.  It’s not a lie, but it’s well off the whole truth too.