Solutions and Other Problems Read online

  18. CAT

  Adopting a cat is an entirely different process from adopting a dog. With dogs, it’s all very regimented. Visitation hours and stuff. With cats, they’re like, “What do you want? Cats?” You say yeah, and they say, “Great. Grab however many you want—they’re strewn throughout the building.”

  And then you walk around for three hours trying to find one that likes you. At the end of the day, we’d narrowed it down to four possibilities:

  An 11-year-old unicorn beast, but the horn is a wart instead of a horn. Likes being touched. REALLY likes being touched on the wart

  The statistical average of all cats. 5 years old, medium hair, kind of likes petting, kind of hates it, mostly is just around

  A blimp monster with tiny legs poking out

  A squirrel-like creature of unknown age and origin who seemed genuinely desperate to touch us with his whole body at the same time

  We went with the desperate one. He seemed like he wanted it the most. We named him Squirrel because that’s what he looks and acts like. Pretty straightforward.

  Squirrel’s best friend is a green and yellow mouse toy.

  They have a mercurial relationship. Not on Mouse’s end—Mouse isn’t real—but as far as Squirrel is concerned, the drama never stops.

  I don’t understand how he maintains it. Every day, he finds new inspiration for doing all manner of bizarre things to his mouse friend.

  My handle on their relationship is limited to the basics. Like, I can tell when he’s mad at it because he puts it in the bathroom. I get that. Sometimes, when you’re so fed up with your mouse friend that you can’t even look at it, you’ve gotta do something. Teach it a lesson. Put it in the bathroom so it can think about itself.

  It’s always antagonizing him—falling off the bed, hiding behind the water bowl when he least expects it, making everybody feel stupid with that infuriating look on its face.

  That isn’t the only kind of fight they have, though. Some are more involved.

  For example: One day, Mouse got wet. Squirrel took it as a personal attack, and things got weird for a while.

  Another day, I walked into the bedroom, and Squirrel was doing his actual best to shove Mouse all the way down his throat. I don’t know what happened to provoke this, but he seemed extremely motivated.

  When Mouse started to fall apart, we bought new mouse toys. We thought this would work. I mean, why wouldn’t it? He obviously has the power of imagination on lockdown, so why wouldn’t he be able to seamlessly transition between mouse friends? None of them are real—just pretend it’s the same mouse and move on with your life.

  He hates the new mice. He refuses to acknowledge them. If they try to be his friends, he puts them in the bathroom.

  I suppose it’s noble of him to be so loyal to Mouse. I mean, yeah: no other mouse could ever compete with what these two have been through together. I understand why it would be infuriating when they try to insert themselves into the relationship. That’s very rude of them. How dare they.

  He obviously hates them, but unlike with Mouse, there’s no passion behind it. He just straight up hates them and doesn’t want to be their friend, end of story.

  I don’t know what the future holds for them, but they’ll figure it out. They need each other too much to let anything stand between them for long.

  19. FISH VIDEO

  There’s video footage of my first attempt at friendship.

  Due to the way books work, I cannot show it to you. But, for the purposes of foreshadowing, I’m going to describe the video.

  I’m two. The friend I’m trying to make is a sardine.

  It’s dead, so right from the beginning, things aren’t going well.

  I’m really doing my absolute best to get the conversation started, though.

  I don’t know about death yet, but I can sense my friend isn’t doing as great as his max potential probably. He needs my help. The determination sets in across my face. By god, I am going to help this fish, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop me.

  Plan A: blow on the fish.

  Plan B: blow as hard as you can on the fish—a tremendous air current will surely invigorate him!

  Still not working. Okay, moving on to Plan C: motivate the fish by yelling encouragement directly onto his body.

  Minutes later, he still isn’t okay. I, however, do not appear to be discouraged by this at all. This fish is my friend, and I am prepared to do everything I know. For instance: setting him on the ground with ceremonial precision and then backing away with my arms raised.

  And if that doesn’t work, there’s always singing…

  Most people wouldn’t know where to go after singing, but I do:

  Vigorous massage.

  This is a home video from the ’80s. Compared to the resolutions available in modern times, the quality is like standing behind a wall and guessing what’s on the other side. And I’m mangling the poor fish so badly that even at this ridiculous resolution, you can see pieces of its body rubbing off on my mittens.

  Fast-forward five minutes. For some reason, my grandma is still filming. We are well past the turning point between cute and sad. The other people on the beach are becoming uncomfortable. Sensing this, my mom makes an attempt to end the situation.

  Suddenly we zoom out. It’s the future. I’m a deeply depressed adult watching this video alone in the dark at my parents’ house after my sister’s funeral. I found it in a box in the garage and thought, Hey, I bet I know what would cheer me up! Watching videos from before I knew how horrifying everything is!

  And then here comes this battering ram of existential tragedy…

  … unintentionally raising every point it’s possible to raise about futility and really just hammering it until there’s nothing left.

  And I think I just found it devastatingly relatable.

  20. THE UGLY DUCKLING 2

  We aren’t good at explaining things to children. Especially not hard things like how nothing is fair or means anything but, you know, keep trying anyway.

  This isn’t anywhere close to being the hardest thing you can come up against before your eleventh birthday, but I was a weird-looking kid. Real weird-looking. The kind of weird-looking where it’s negligent to not address it.

  Nobody knows what to say to an ugly kid.

  You aren’t supposed to tell them the truth. What if they give up?

  Instead, you’re supposed to tell them about the Ugly Duckling.

  I don’t want to be too hard on Hans Christian Andersen because he isn’t around to defend himself, but I have a difficult time believing that Hans Christian Andersen was doing the best he could and trying his hardest when he wrote The Ugly Duckling. The guy was a maniac. Do you know how many stories he wrote? 3,381 stories. Do you really think he thought about any of them for more than four seconds?

  I’m not accusing Hans Christian Andersen of anything, but, as an ugly child, I found The Ugly Duckling to be an insufficient answer to my questions. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he wrote it when he was tired and didn’t want to deal with anything.

  And Hans Christian Andersen just wasn’t in the mood to deal with that shit. He was like, “Who knows, Felicitybelle. They can go fuck themselves.”

  But Felicitybelle wanted a hopeful future for those horrible, unsightly children. She stared at Hans Christian Andersen with a disappointed face until he felt obligated to take action.

  And Hans Christian Andersen was like, “Okay. The duck is ugly.”

  And no one added anything to the discussion until 1939 when Robert Lewis May wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Or at least that was the main alternative presented to me.

  And Robert Lewis May was like:

  I also apologize to Robert Lewis May, but that is some pretty convenient logic. What is that supposed to teach me about fitting in with my peers? “Hang in there, kid—maybe there’ll be some insane coincidence where your exact defect is the only solution, and everyone will be for
ced to accept you based on your utility”?

  What do I do if there isn’t? What do I do if I’m useless and ugly forever?

  I’m probably not the best person to be doing this, but sometimes you have to be the change you want to see in the world, and if you can’t be beautiful enough for everybody, the next best option is animal stories.

  Dear Children:

  Once upon a time, there was an ugly frog.

  Yes. It was the ugliest frog in the world.

  Anyw—

  Why is anything the worst anything.

  It is in our nature to compare things. We should not feel bad about this, but we should also be aware of how silly it is to look at a frog and think we know where it ranks on the Best Frogs of All Time scale. Why do we even have that scale? They’re frogs. Let them be.

  I think what I’m trying to say is: there’s no real way to tell who the ugliest frog is, and it doesn’t particularly matter, but, if it will be more exciting for you, we can say this is the ugliest frog.

  You’ve heard stories before, so right now, you’re probably thinking, Yeah, but that’s just where the frog starts. Surely the rest of the story is about the frog’s journey to success.

  No. That is not where the story is going. First of all, there is no such thing as a successful frog.

  Oh, I’m sorry—does the frog have to be beautiful and successful before we can talk about it? Is that how the world works? We only get to talk about frogs who are amazing? Guess what, children—this isn’t even a real story. It’s just a ruse to teach you a lesson about life.

  I’m glad you asked, children.

  As far as we can tell, life does not have a point.

  There is no need to be frightened. Yes, an invisible stranger just told you that life is pointless, but, much like this story, life doesn’t need a point. I mean, it can have one if you want. Go ahead—pick one. Whatever you want. Count all the rocks. Get faster at singing. Be as nice as possible. Grow 500 pumpkins and put them in a pile. But there’s nothing that requires life to have a point.

  Children… I’m trying my absolute best to explain the meaning of life to you. It’s honestly sort of disturbing that you’re stuck on the frog still. Do you know the frog? Does the frog need to be okay for you to be okay?

  What if I don’t know what happened?

  The frog isn’t real, okay? I made it up.

  There is no frog, life is pointless, and nobody knows what’s going to happen. I’m very sorry to inform you of this, but if you grow up only reading happy stories where you find out the answers to all your questions, you will be scared and confused and probably die in a dumpster fire. It is better to accept the utter futility of things as early as possible and save yourself the struggle.

  Sorry.

  I’m really sorry.

  Hello again, children. Once upon a time, there was an ugly frog.

  And the world isn’t fair, so it didn’t grow up to be pretty or successful—it just stayed how it was.

  Then one foggy Christmas Eve, the frog realized that everything is equally ridiculous. And it went sledding because why not.

  21. THROW-AND-FIND

  By the time I was ten, I had adapted almost every friendship activity there is into either a single-player format, or a format that supports two players, but one of them is a dog that hates games.

  That’s how Shrimp Hide-and-seek was invented.

  I also figured out how to play a crude version of tag by exploiting a basketball’s natural tendency to roll downhill.

  A few years ago, I came across the official rules for an original game I created called Throw-and-Find. I don’t know how necessary it was to write down the rules for Throw-and-Find, but I did. You know—for the scenario where you remember your favorite game is Throw-and-Find, but you don’t remember the exact details of how to play.

  Here are the official rules:

  Maybe you think you want to find a potato today, but you’re wrong. Marbles are what you want to find. Or perhaps “(marbles)” is a friendly suggestion. It’s okay if you can’t think of anything to find… here’s an example to get you started!

  Every direction. Throw those marble sonsabitches in so many directions you don’t know where’ta even START lookin’.

  The exclamation point is heartbreaking. Are you ready, Scooter? Really, really ready? Ready to find some marbles? Okay… go get ’em!!

  There was no points system, no strategy. I didn’t need them. I just liked finding things, but didn’t know anyone who would hide them for me.

  22. SISTER

  It would have made sense to be friends with my sister.

  We were both children. We were both stranded at least 20 miles from the alternatives. There was even a lot we could relate to each other about, probably.

  But I think at some point we’d gotten the impression that we were rivals. Maybe there was a famine or something. Who knows. But it stayed like that.

  I do remember feeling envious of her friendships. They had so much fun. They invented a game called Marble Bla-Bla where you sing a crazy song and throw marbles at the ceiling fan. Yes: marbles. She loved them too. And only now, as I’m writing this 20 years later, am I making the connection that our interests lined up fucking perfectly.

  She never acted that fun around me. The only kind of game she liked to play with me was bullshit like crab basketball.

  I hated crab basketball. Because I didn’t want to play crab basketball—I wanted to play regular basketball. But I was bigger and stronger, so the only winning strategy for my sister was curling up around the basketball like a crab and refusing to participate.

  Even here, though, we were more alike than we realized. Crab basketball, for instance, is very, very similar to the strategy I have for life.

  I didn’t understand that then.

  The only person who understood my sister was her friend Becky.

  They had a confusing relationship. They were twelve, so maybe they just didn’t know how to interact with each other. Or maybe it was some hyper-advanced form of interaction that you’d have to be Level 1000 to grasp. All I know is that one day, I came home from school, and Becky was duct-taped to a computer chair in our driveway.

  There was a blanket wrapped around her head, and her arms and legs had been scribbled on with a pen. Extensively. From the quality of the marks, there’d been a struggle.

  I decided to not get involved until better information was available.

  When I tried to go inside, though, all the doors were locked.

  It was later revealed that this was a security measure to prevent Becky from flopping up the stairs and trying to get inside, but I had no way to know that.

  I knocked on the door, and my little sister shot out of the kitchen clutching a salad bowl full of something that looked like water and egg yolks.

  She yelled, “DON’T HELP HER, SHE LOVES IT,” and pushed past me. Egg water spilled on the floor.

  Outside, Becky made a sound. Screaming, probably.

  Whatever my sister was planning to do, it didn’t seem like Becky wanted it to happen. She heard my sister approaching and tried to scoot away.

  Then things got very intense.

  My little sister…

  … my little sister who used to be a baby…

  … my little sister who loves helping…

  … my little sister who didn’t want to walk on the lawn for fear of hurting it…

  —that person—

  … seized both of her friend Becky’s arms, and violently submerged them in a bowl of egg water.

  And as she did this, she shouted from point-blank range:

  FEEL THEM!!

  FEEL THEM, BECKY!!

  DO YOU LIKE THEM??!!!

  And that’s the kind of thing I don’t get involved in.

  I wouldn’t understand it.

  I don’t need to understand it.

  Best to assume they have their reasons and leave them to their terrorism activity.

  Neither
of them ever seemed to acknowledge these incidents after the fact. When I came back later, they were working on a geography project like nothing happened.

  Their relationship was 30% geography projects and 70% the weirdest shit I have ever seen.