Solutions and Other Problems Read online

  All you have to do is remember that this:

  is the symbol for when it is four seconds away from happening.

  We’re doing it like this because it’ll be closer to the actual experience if it comes out of nowhere.

  Relax for a little bit, though. It isn’t going to happen right away.

  Mistake

  A kid said hi to me.

  I said hello, how are you?

  She said good, how about you?

  And I said:

  And then I walked away, because there’s no coming back from that. What am I gonna do? Explain myself?

  I was thinking about it for an hour. I must have seemed insane to that kid…

  5. POOP MYSTERY

  October 1997.

  Winter’s first snow blankets the remains of autumn.

  And inside the house, for the third morning in a row, there is poop just everywhere.

  It appears to be horse poop.

  No one knows why it’s there, but it’s a pattern at this point.

  Naturally, the first suspects were the horses.

  The first theory was that sometime during each of the three nights, the smaller, weirder horse wandered into the house, ran around everywhere trying to figure out how to escape, and was just shitting the entire time.

  However, horses weigh roughly a thousand pounds and basically have rocks for feet, so pulling this off undetected would have been impossible. The horses were therefore temporarily ruled out as suspects, and we broadened our investigation to include the other pets and family members.

  As usual, Maddy seemed guilty.

  Murphy and Charlie were harder to get a read on.

  Nobody else was fessing up either.

  A few days later, the case took a mysterious turn when a single, large pile of horse poop appeared in the children’s bedroom, looking exactly as it would upon exiting the horse. Indicating that it was either created by the horses within the bedroom, or arranged to look that way.

  This strengthened the case against both the horses and the children.

  Upon further questioning, the children began crying and screaming.

  They said they would “never do that.”

  They pleaded for everyone to “please believe” them.

  Everyone was disturbed by the notion that the children may have gone out into the night, collected horse poop, and sculpted it into a pile on the floor of their own bedroom. The children, because children hate being accused of things like collecting and arranging animal poop, and the adults because that is the behavior of future criminals.

  It was a dark time. We were all suspects, plagued by doubt, haunted by possibility.

  And the piles continued to appear.

  Then, early one morning, we were awakened by an ominous thumping sound.

  I think we were all scared of it, until we realized that it might be exactly what we had all been waiting for: an opportunity to catch the suspect in the act!

  We clustered in the living room, pausing to acknowledge each other with disdainful, I-told-you-it-wasn’t-me glances before investigating the noise.

  As we crept closer, we could see the back door rattling with each thump. Something was trying to get in through the dog door…

  In a moment, we’d know the answer to the question we’d been asking for weeks—“Who the fuck has been doing this to us? Is it the neighbors?? Which neighbor is it? Do we know anyone who hates us enough to do this?”—and all the way to the door, we mentally revised our theories, impatient to find out who was right, but terrified to know.

  Then there it was: the answer. Standing on the other side of the door with a face full of frozen horse poop.

  The rest of the story pretty much told itself.

  Murphy was sentenced to nighttime house arrest and a stern talkin’-to.

  6. THE KANGAROO PIG GETS DRUNK

  Once upon a time, I saw four guys walking a dog across Las Vegas Boulevard.

  The dog, which was wearing a costume, was looking around like WHAT IS GOING ON—ARE WE OKAY—THIS IS THE MOST THINGS I HAVE EVER SEEN.

  And nobody responded because they were watching their friend twirl one of those spinny, flashy, light-up things that spells BIRTHDAY-BIRTHDAY-BIRTHDAY, PARTY-PARTY-PARTY when it goes around.

  The guys weren’t confused—they knew why this was happening: It’s somebody’s birthday! Of course this is happening. Why wouldn’t this be happening on somebody’s birthday?

  But dogs don’t know about birthdays. They can’t relate to the party-party-party thing. They don’t understand what a costume does, or why they need to wear one.

  Imagine how confusing that would be if you’d never heard of it before…

  Animals don’t understand what any of that means, so they also don’t understand what it doesn’t mean. As far as the animal can tell, this could be the first warning sign of a permanent and devastating change in lifestyle.

  But the only option they really have is to trust us.

  I mean, what’s the alternative?

  This is hardly an uncommon type of experience for domestic animals. I’ve spent basically my entire life running around in front of different pets, doing all sorts of things that seemed totally normal to me but probably not to the animals.

  One of the animals I’ve bombarded with my behavior is a dog who could charitably be described as simple. Dogs are fairly simple as is, but this one is much more than that.

  One night, shortly after adopting the simple dog, I got drunk and fell asleep watching Animal Planet. The simple dog was lying on her bed in the corner, trying her best not to panic about my sudden decline in motor function.

  The next segment was about whales. I had the volume pretty high because I go sort of deaf when I’m drunk, and let me tell you: whale sonar is a huge surprise when you’re drunk and asleep.

  Hearing this unexpected noise caused me to shoot up and spill my water, which was also a surprise because I didn’t remember I was holding a cup of water, so it seemed like maybe I was being attacked. I yelled “STOP IT,” presumably to discourage the attackers.

  I felt so embarrassed when I realized it was just whales.

  That was a weird 10 seconds for me. It would’ve been a weird 10 seconds for anybody, probably.

  Now imagine that you are defenseless and totally incapable of caring for yourself.

  But it’s okay because there’s this big pink creature that looks like a weird pig or maybe a kangaroo.

  For some reason, the kangaroo pig feeds you and takes you outside so you can poop. You don’t know why it does this, but you trust it has its reasons.

  Then one day the kangaroo pig comes home smelling like chemicals and its legs don’t work. You think, It can barely walk… what if it can’t take care of us? What if we never get to poop again?

  The kangaroo pig turns on its picture-sound box and sits down.

  Maybe it is okay, you think. Maybe everything will be okay. Maybe it just needs to absorb some picture sounds. You start to relax. Your future seems optimistic again.

  Then, out of nowhere, you hear a noise like:

  MMMMMMMMMMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

  The kangaroo pig flops upright and assumes a defensive stance.

  It seems upset.

  What do you do?? How do you respond??

  I don’t know how every animal in the world would react, but if you’re this dog, you begin by performing your default panic action, sprinting.

  You do that for a while.

  You’re going really fast, but at some point, you notice the whales and decide they’re responsible for this.

  You try to bite the whales, but a solid surface is protecting them.

  Unable to cope with this twist of events, you sprint at top speed into the dining room. But no comfort is to be found there—only chairs. Inevitably, your reckless sprinting be
havior causes one of them to fall over.

  Somehow, your legs and head become tangled in the chair.

  Being a dog—and a below-average one at that—you don’t understand that this is just something that can happen when you collide with a chair, and chairs—which lack a nervous system—cannot attack you.

  It truly seems like the chair is doing this on purpose.

  You are now permanently afraid of the chair, which, for some reason, is never punished or restrained in any way.

  But you can’t question the decision. You can’t ask the kangaroo pig why it would allow such a violent object to live in the house after it saw what it did. Your only option is to stand by helplessly and hope the chair situation doesn’t get any worse.

  It’s got to be hard for pets. To be constantly assaulted from every conceivable angle by the insane-seeming behavior of their caretakers.

  Fortunately, animals are the psychological equivalent of tractors. It’s honestly amazing how durable they are. We can do pretty much whatever we want to them, and they’ll be like, Okay, we will try it. Thank you for interacting with us.

  We don’t stop there, though. We aren’t content to allow them to sit there and just passively accept how ballistically confusing their life is. No—we want them to participate.

  I didn’t realize the true extent of this until I saw a video clip of a rabbit competing in an agility competition.

  I’m not sure the rabbit knew it was competing, but everybody else knew, and they were cheering for the rabbit and having so much fun.

  The rabbit seemed to mostly be enjoying itself, which was surprising given how existentially confused it must have been.

  The next video was basically the same, except it was a lizard instead of a rabbit. The one after that was a hamster.

  Hours later, it was clear to me that no type of animal is exempt from agility competitions.

  Oh, you’re a bird? Doesn’t matter. Get out there with your little weird legs and jump over some sticks.

  Cats, dogs, horses, pigs, lizards, fish—as long as the animal has the ability to do something, it can compete.

  Animals get stuff like face biting and chasing each other. They get that. Chase each other, bite each other’s faces. Easy and simple.

  But crawling through and jumping over a series of tubes—tubes that are absolutely fucking surrounded by easier places to go—and trying to do it faster or better or fancier than other animals for no practical purpose whatsoever… I’ve got to think that’s less relatable for them.

  We’d explain if we could, I’m sure. We do the best we can.

  I can’t imagine they don’t have questions, though.

  And they go their whole lives like that. No answers, no context, no mercy.

  7. DAYDREAMS

  I have this daydream where I’m dressed like a conquistador and I’m riding a horse. It isn’t immediately clear why this is happening, but my muscles are intense and highly visible.

  I ride up to some vague authority figure—he’s wearing a crown, so he’s clearly important. I can’t hear what he’s saying because the music is too loud, but it seems pretty serious. A mission, maybe.

  And then, at the best part of the song, I get this look on my face like:

  There’s a knowing glance between me and the authority figure.

  I can tell I’m the only hope the authority figure—and possibly the world—has.

  Then I gallop away to do the mission.

  That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

  I don’t need to know the details. It doesn’t need to make sense. I just like the feelings.

  Here’s another one, one of my favorites: I’m driving…

  Real casual-like…

  My hat’s on backwards to lend credibility…

  My friend is there. This time it’s Greg.

  We are having fun.

  If I wanted to make the story accessible to a wider audience, I’d need to find some way to clue them in about the part where we don’t give a fuck, but other than that, the thing’s seaworthy as far as I’m concerned.

  It’s like being able to watch a movie, starring me, about anything I can imagine, and I don’t have to worry about exposition, believability, or a coherent plot, because I know I won’t ask questions.

  Most of the time there’s no real purpose to the activity—I’m just meandering through a buffet of things it seems like it’d be cool to be a part of.

  The stories can become more specific if I need them to be, though.

  Over time, they’ve had to become pretty extreme to give me the same rush.

  (There’s a part where I try to imagine myself dancing the best dance anyone has ever seen, but I don’t actually know how to do that, so I sort of gloss over it.)

  One of my deepest fears is that the footage gets leaked somehow. I don’t know how it’d happen—maybe they’ll get converted to video files when my consciousness gets uploaded to the internet—but my daydreams would get out, and everybody would see them.

  They’d seem even more ridiculous out of context.

  People I know would see them—people I know who are IN them. And this isn’t the kind of thing where you feel honored to find out you got a part.

  At best, the supporting characters are one-dimensional to a degree that is actively insulting to their personhood. At worst, I use them like ego-masturbation blob puppets, repeatedly forcing them to deliver lines they would never agree to in real life.

  Some of my costars would feel violated, others would feel slighted, absolutely nobody would be like, “Yeah, that’s about right—I feel comfortable about the way you portrayed me.”

  It’d be obvious what all my insecurities are, and how easy it is to make me believe I’m capable of greatness.

  But I can’t stop now. Where is there to go from here that wouldn’t feel like a catastrophic downgrade? I’m a tragic, greedy animal with too many dreams to feel satisfied by reality. I want to know what everything cool feels like. I want to ride dragons into battle. I want to be important. I want to know what it would be like if everybody believed in me, including Ryan. I want to win high-stakes dance-offs and math tournaments and stunning victories for humankind. I want to be brave like a gladiator. I want to be powerful like a god.

  I don’t know how to do that for real.

  Even if it was possible, it’d probably be hard.

  And nobody would be as impressed as I want.

  So I keep doing this.

  8. DANDELIONS

  It is time to talk about dandelions. Not the yellow ones—the ones you blow on and make a wish that you’ll find love or a penny or something.

  One summer, I had a job babysitting a 2-year-old who was terrified of those.

  I didn’t find out ahead of time, though. No one sat me down and explained, Hey, see this kid? Don’t take it near dandelions. I don’t care what else is going on—stay away from dandelions. No, listen—I’m not sure you understand how really, really, really serious this is: don’t take chances, don’t forget or get sloppy and accidentally go a little bit near dandelions. If your right hand is dandelions and your left hand is this kid, they should be far enough apart that your arms fly off, do you understand?

  No, I found out that the child was paralytically, nonsensically, apocalypse-level scared of dandelions the moment I pushed her stroller past the exact center of a sprawling ocean of dandelions.

  I don’t know whether she’d been trying to scream the whole time, or doing her best to hold it in until we reached the other side and she just didn’t make it. Maybe she’d been asleep. It’s even possible that she never realized how scary dandelions are until that exact second, and the timing was just really, really unlucky. I don’t know. She was in a covered stroller, so there could have been any number of warning signs, but I didn’t see them. From my perspective, we were walking through a normal field on a normal day, and nothing was weird at all, and then this started happening:

  In retrospect, I can look at the p
ieces and sort of put them together to form an explanation: the child—who either harbored an existing fear of dandelions or spawned one out of nowhere at that exact moment—noticed that the level of dandelions had become unacceptable and attempted to escape. But, due to being completely surrounded by dandelions for at least a thousand feet in every direction, there was no clear path to safety. She ran, but everywhere she turned, dandelions were there. Which probably made it seem like the dandelions were chasing her, so she ran faster, and that made the dandelions seem like they were chasing her faster, and pretty soon she was so scared her brain turned off, and her body just sort of kept running around on its own.