Solutions and Other Problems Read online

  While it was happening, though, there wasn’t enough time to make sense of anything. It was just:

  —Field

  —Gurgling sound

  —Child is out of stroller

  —Child is running……… away? Around? Definitely running.

  —Something is wrong for sure.

  I couldn’t tell what was wrong, but I sensed the situation should not be allowed to continue or develop in any way.

  Yes: somebody should definitely do something about this…

  It is me. I am the somebody. I should do something.

  On instinct, I begin chasing her.

  This seems to make the running worse.

  Fortunately, her mindlessly fleeing body still hasn’t committed to a direction, so she isn’t getting away.

  I yell, “WHAT IS WRONG?” at her.

  Nobody tells me.

  I yell, “WHAT IS WRONG?” at her again.

  Is it helping? I can’t tell. But the screaming is becoming more specific.

  Somehow—possibly through sheer force of will—I realize that “BARGADONS” might be the word “dandelions.”

  A victory to be sure, but the situation is far from under control.

  If I want everything to go back to normal, I need to find some way to convince a 2-year-old that dandelions aren’t scary.

  It seems like that should be easy.

  But once you’re actually in the situation, you discover that explaining why dandelions aren’t scary is more complicated than you ever could have guessed.

  The logistics are a nightmare.

  The conversation goes nowhere.

  You say: THEY’RE JUST DANDELIONS.

  The kid keeps screaming.

  Go ahead: tell her they’re just dandelions again. Try it.

  The screaming intensifies.

  Touch the dandelions. Grab them in your hands to demonstrate how powerless they are. Yell, “LOOK AT ME—IF DANDELIONS ARE SCARY, WHY AM I DOING THIS??”

  Do it again if you want. Touch them again. Yell, “LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT ME IF DANDELIONS ARE SCARY, WHY AM I DOING THIS?????”

  It won’t work.

  Because here’s the thing about explaining why dandelions aren’t scary to a 2-year-old who is scared of dandelions: you can’t do it. I know exactly how to not be scared of dandelions, and I still couldn’t explain it. I didn’t even know where to start. I couldn’t think of a single reason why dandelions WOULD be scary. If someone offered me a billion dollars to guess what the least scary thing in the entire world is, dandelions would be in my top two guesses, probably.

  And this kid is tiny and irrational and full on robo-sprinting from how scary dandelions are—she can’t help me.

  So I did the only other thing I could think of.

  I trapped her under a towel and dragged her into the woods.

  I let her out when we got to the woods because there were no dandelions in the woods, so I figured it’d be okay.

  But sometime during the four minutes it took me to get the towel over her, pin her arms down, and haul her flailing body into the forest, she decided she was scared of me—possibly even more than dandelions—and as soon as the towel was off, the escaping-type behavior resumed, and I had to do the towel again and carry her like that for a mile.

  By the time we got back, she was so scared of me that I had to lock the doors and windows to prevent her from getting loose.

  That day was traumatic for everyone.

  For her because that was the day someone she trusted walked her directly into the center of everything she feared the most, and when she tried to escape, the person chased her and trapped her under a towel. And the person did this twice.

  And for me because that was the day I had to trap a screaming 2-year-old under a towel not once but twice—without any way to explain why I needed to do that—and I felt like such a monster when she spent the rest of the day crying and hiding from me, and she was still doing that when her mom got home, which looked pretty bad, so I had to try to explain, but—as it turns out—“I had to because of the dandelions” is not a satisfying explanation for irreversibly traumatizing someone’s 2-year-old, especially when it also turns out that nobody knew she felt that way about dandelions.

  That child’s mother still probably thinks I did some horrible mystery thing to make her kid afraid of dandelions. And the poor kid—who, we must remind ourselves, was already facing a difficult life of being the only person in the entire goddamn universe who has ever been scared of dandelions, let alone THAT scared of dandelions—has probably spent the rest of her difficult, dandelion-fearing life struggling with the explosion of psychological consequences I caused that day.

  Turtle

  When I do something I disagree with, it still doesn’t quite feel like I’m supposed to be in the category of people who do that. I’m doing it, yes. But not because I’m like that…

  Sure: I yelled at a turtle. But I had a reason for doing that. And the reason was…

  … well, originally, I tried to just honk at it, but my horn doesn’t work anymore. The car alarm wouldn’t stop, so, in a fit of rage, I ripped out the fuse with my bare hands.

  My point is: I tried to just honk at the turtle, but I couldn’t.

  And I was already mad at something else, which is why I needed to drive fast, and I don’t know, it just seemed pretty confrontational of the turtle to cross the road right then. I mean, it’s a dirt road in the desert. Me and this turtle are the only things around for twenty miles. It felt personal. Like: Really, turtle? Right now? Right now is when you need to cross the road? You can’t hang out behind a cactus for two seconds while I blast through at 67 miles per hour? Yeah—that’s how fast I’m going. Does it seem fair that I—the thing going 67 miles per hour—had to come to a full stop and watch your stupid, slow body cross the whole road at an average speed of sixteen inches per minute? DOES THAT SEEM FAIR TO YOU, YOU FUCKING TURTLE????

  That’s nowhere close to how mad a person who’s actually like that would have been…

  9. BANANAS

  Anger is not a graceful emotion. I’ve never gotten mad and been like, I’m glad I behaved like that!

  I feel weird about it every time.

  Usually, knowing how weird I’m going to feel is enough to restrain me. But sometimes there’s just so much of it, and it isn’t going away, and you’re tired, and you start to think, Hey… maybe this isn’t such a bad thing… maybe I WANT this…

  And then you get to see what the worst part of you looks like.

  I found out what the worst part of me looks like during an argument with my ex-husband, Duncan, who is one of the nicest people in the world.

  We’re both nice people, usually. But this wasn’t a regular argument. It was the type of argument you can only have with people you’re really close to—people you know so well you start to forget they’re a different person from you, so it sort of feels like nobody can see you.

  I’m not sure where it started. There wasn’t an identifiable origin point. It began in 47 different places over the course of 9 years. But it crescendoed in the produce section of the Newport Avenue Market in Bend, Oregon.

  The day before, we’d decided to finally tackle cross-country skiing, which is a ridiculous activity that nobody can feel dignified doing. Duncan had never done it before, so he didn’t know that yet. I know everything, so I assumed I’d be able to teach him.

  We got up at 7 a.m., the worst time of day. It was also 7 degrees outside, which is the worst temperature. For some reason, we refused to acknowledge that those would be perfectly good reasons to not go through with this.

  We couldn’t find the normal-looking mittens. Then we didn’t have enough coffee left. Then we couldn’t find the car keys. These, also, were ignored as perfectly legitimate reasons to stay home. We were too busy arguing about who lost the keys this time, which turned out to be me. I was therefore also implicated for the mittens and coffee. Nobody remembered to pack food.

 
; 9:30 a.m. We arrive at the ski place. Duncan immediately finds out how humiliating cross-country skiing is.

  He falls over every four seconds. I keep trying to explain how to not do that, but it isn’t working—either because my teaching methods are ineffective or his learning methods are ineffective, but it is for sure somebody’s fault.

  Our average skiing speed is .2 miles per hour. Eons later, we’ve gone almost a mile. We decide to turn back so we can eat lunch before it gets dark. That’s when we realize somebody didn’t remember to pack food. We each secretly blame who we personally feel was truly responsible for this.

  Chili was the only thing on the menu at the lodge that day, so instead of eating lunch, we decide to go home. However, in order to do that, we need to go in the car, which is risky because there’s a long-standing feud about the car and whether it’s better to drive it like an old piece of lettuce or a NASCAR death-pilot.

  Normally, I might’ve been able to restrain myself from going there, but we’re driving in the snow, and I grew up in northern Idaho, so therefore I am a snow expert. It’s just a qualification I get to have for the rest of my life, no matter what. Duncan grew up in Seattle, so he’s seen snow before. Therefore, he is also an expert and not afraid of dying at all.

  900 feet outside the parking lot, Duncan stops the car. He says if I know so much, then maybe I should drive.

  This is very out of character for Duncan. Duncan being confrontational at all should have been like a smoke alarm—a smoke alarm that says “Excuse me, but something extraordinary is happening… maybe we should be cautious while we still can… ”

  But I’m feeling too self-righteous to notice.

  We switch places.

  Now he’s critiquing my driving.

  Just to be a dick, I slow down to 5 miles per hour.

  Cars are honking at us. Duncan says I should pull over and let them pass. I slow down to 2 miles per hour to see what happens. I’m so focused on being a dick that I don’t realize we missed our turn. But Duncan does. Suddenly he’s Mr. Safety, lecturing me about distracted driving. I stop the car. If he’s so talented, maybe he should drive. We switch places.

  For some reason, we decide that this would be the correct time to go grocery shopping. We disagree about the fastest way to get there. He’s driving, though, so we go his way. Both ways would be slow at this time of day, but the fact that Duncan’s way is also slow seems like proof that Duncan’s way is wrong.

  The instant we enter the parking lot, the debate about parking strategy awakens. Duncan is still driving, so I have to sit there while he wastes all of our time hunting for the parking spot of his dreams when we could just park one row away and already be inside, and this is doubly infuriating because of how hypocritical it seems in contrast to his position on driving speeds.

  By the time we walked through the entryway of the Newport Avenue Market in Bend, Oregon, we were so mad that we’d entered into that infinite loop where everything the other person does—no matter how innocuous it is—seems inflammatory. They could just be standing there, and it would seem like the most flagrant standing anyone has ever done.

  I said, “Could you please get some bananas,” but not with the nice please—with the shitty one that means “Here, take this please that you don’t deserve and use it to get some goddamn bananas.”

  “Why do we buy bananas?” he asked. “We just throw them away.”

  This is true. It is a proven fact that you can never finish all the bananas. But I had so much anger in me. I needed to put it somewhere. It didn’t matter where. I just wanted it out.

  I muttered, “Maybe you aren’t good at choosing bananas.”

  Duncan hissed back, “Then maybe YOU should choose the bananas.”

  This is a reasonable point. And when you’re in full-on rage-ejection mode, there is nothing more infuriating than a reasonable point.

  You’re so mad, your brain starts malfunctioning. You can barely form thoughts, but you do somehow manage to form a sentence! It’s childish, needlessly inflammatory, and borderline nonsensical. You might as well throw sand at the person because saying this is going to have the same effect.

  You’ve never been this far before. You know you shouldn’t say it. You know it’s stupid and you’ll regret it later. But it’s too late. The sentence has formed. It’s on deck, ready to launch. You’re going to say it.

  The words start coming out.

  And even as you’re saying them, you’re frantically willing yourself to change course. Say something else! Anything! It doesn’t need to make sense! Make random noises if you have to!

  But there’s too much momentum. No one can stop it now.

  “Okay, guy—guess what: you don’t get to choose the bananas anymore.”

  A critical mass of anger awakened a primitive part of my brain, which unfurled like a cobra and spat the most hateful venom it could muster straight into Duncan’s face. And that is what it came up with.

  Let’s pause for a moment and take a closer look at this tour de force:

  At first, it sounds like I’m agreeing! Like maybe the argument is going to end!

  This is the first sign that things might go poorly after all. You may have noticed, guy, that I didn’t call you a name. I could have, but I didn’t. Because I am a serious person, and you don’t have a name anymore.

  I’m not sure what I was trying to do here. Hold on, before we find out what the next part is, I’d like to give you an opportunity to guess… go ahead—guess anything you want, guy. What do you think it’ll be? My six least favorite numbers? Moon facts? A poem about a ghost?

  Perhaps I thought it was going to be a huge surprise for Duncan, and this was an attempt at sportsmanship. You’ll want to take a second to prepare yourself for this next part, guy. I’m about to go crazy.

  At long last… the crushing blow.

  Here, I think I was attempting to demonstrate the full force of my power.

  It’s quite clearly supposed to be a threat. As though I have the power to decide whether he gets to choose the bananas, and god help me, I am finally going to use it.

  The sentence sat there, unable to be absorbed.

  Ten seconds passed in silence.

  Then, in an equally nonsensical turn of events, Duncan got super offended. How DARE I say this to him? Who did I think I was? The emperor of bananas?

  All he could do was stand there making a face like:

  I could tell he wanted to buy a hundred bananas right then. No: a thousand bananas. Just blow our life savings on bananas for the sole purpose of demonstrating what a horrific dick I was being.

  There wouldn’t have been enough bananas in the world to express it.

  He’d have to buy the grapes too.

  But he couldn’t do that any more than I could stop him from choosing the bananas. Neither of us could realistically prevent the other one from buying bananas.

  And that’s hilarious. No matter how mad you are, you can’t stop somebody from buying bananas. Not really. Not if they keep trying. And I think we both realized at the same time how absurd we are. And not just because of this—in general. We realized at exactly the same time that we are both stupid, serious, mad little animals who desperately want to stop each other from buying bananas, but can’t.

  And we never argued about bananas again because the risk of being unexpectedly confronted by your own absurdity while you’re raging mad isn’t worth it.

  10. LOSING

  People say that everything happens for a reason.

  Which is technically true, I suppose.

  But some of the reasons are too arbitrary to seem legitimate.

  That reason doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t explain how to prevent the pinecone from doing this in the future, it doesn’t explain what else pinecones do—it just raises a bunch of new questions that don’t have satisfying explanations either.

  If you keep going, you’ll eventually realize that the one true answer to all your questions is: Of cou
rse it doesn’t make sense—what business do you have expecting things to make sense?

  It’s a long process, but for me, the thing that started it was a bird.

  My guard was down, and it came out of nowhere.

  When your worldview gets T-boned by Birdhammer the Destroyer, you don’t necessarily realize what just happened. Because it hasn’t started spreading yet. You just feel… a little thrown off. Just a little. Like you saw something that was just a tiny little bit more than you know how to explain.

  You can’t freak out, though. You aren’t some nimbo pimbo who gets tilted by seeing a bird. Nope. Not you. You can handle this. You should be able to handle this, GOD DAMN IT It’s just a fucking bird.