Day 3: Dog

I can remember a day at school about twenty years ago when I had the kids out on the playground following some kind of special event. I was walking with one of the moms from that year, as we followed the kids while they completed what they felt was a death march of an obligatory lap around the track before running off to play. For some reason, this mom had their family dog at school. It walked with us, leashed because our school playground technically doubles as a city park. As we walked, I commented how I had always told myself if I hadn’t gotten married by the time I turned 30, I was going to get myself a dog.

“So how old are you now?” she asked. 

“Twenty-nine,” I answered. “For about another week.” 

Getting a dog is one of the few things I remember clearly about that year. I waited to find him until school was out before because I wanted to be home all day to bond with him (and I knew it would be a him), and I knew I wanted a Westie puppy. I’d had a Westie growing up and figured since they didn’t shed I wouldn’t be allergic. When I found him and the day had come to pick him up, Erin drove me so I could kickstart the bonding process by holding him in my lap on the way home. In a way, Erin had named him. When I told her the names I was considering, I told the first choice, which I don’t remember, then the second, then held out dramatically for the third, the one I was leaning toward the hardest: Spencer. As soon as I said it, she replied, “It doesn’t matter what you name him now, because that’s what I’m going to call him!”  

And now excuse me as I go cry for about ten minutes after remembering all of this….

Anyway. 

When I brought Spencer home, I was very clinical about making sure I had everything he would need. I had the crate, the toys, the treats, food, dishes, collar, leash, and even a book about dogs from the famed “For Idiots” series, which turned out to be surprisingly informative. I figured since I grew up with dogs I probably had most things figured out, but soon discovered how steep the learning curve is for the human in the first year of a puppy’s life. Since 30 years old is barely a hazy memory for me now, I can say with complete certainty that if (I know, I’m still hedging on this) I get a dog this summer, it will be an adoption, and most definitely not a puppy. This time around I have a better idea of what to expect, but I’m finding myself stuck on one problem, and it’s a big enough problem, at least in my head, that it’s probably one of the final hurdles preventing me from committing all the way to getting a new dog. 

I can’t think of a name. 

Speaking as someone who has agonized over naming dozens of characters in just the past ten years, names are not small things for me, and there are absolutely right and wrong names in just about every situation. I really don’t think I’d get lucky enough to find a dog to adopt who already had a good name — my sister sent me a link a few weeks ago of a dog she found while internet window shopping that was named Fuzzy, for crying out loud. I mean, FUZZY. Clearly the family that had to give up Fuzzy had given his naming rights to the two-year-old who most likely was in charge of the house.

First, to stop anyone from bringing up this point, I don’t subscribe to the idea that you need to see the dog’s face and know it’s personality before you give it a name. So there’s that. If I’m going to name a dog that will hopefully be with me somewhere between ten and twenty years, the name should either be meaningful or at least have a good amount of character. It could be named after someone or something. It could be a tribute to someone. It shouldn’t be too many syllables long. It shouldn’t be something that lends itself to insipid attempts at clever abbreviations. It can’t be a name that references anything too easily dated; five years ago “Jesse Pinkman” might have been a good name for a dog (not really), but now it would just feel out of touch.

I’m not entirely sure I can make this decision until I have that perfect name figured out. This is a tough nut to crack, and I don’t know if I’m getting any closer. It could take some time.

Day 2: Celebration Overkill

A friend of mine retires from teaching in a few weeks. She’s not one big on ceremony, and has asked that instead of our school holding its standard nod toward a retirement party that we only have a cake in the staff lounge. I appreciate where she’s coming from on this, because I wouldn’t be comfortable as the center of attention in a big celebration. When it’s my turn to retire in another eighty-five or so years, I hope I’ll be able to duck out with minimal fanfare as well. 

Some of us got to talking about retirement yesterday, and how retirement parties are generally given much less acknowledgement now than even fifteen or twenty years ago. A retirement is no small thing, after all. It’s the closing of a career. 

The more we all talked about it, we realized almost every half-special event in this post-millennial social network driven culture we’re all trying to navigate seems to have some kind of manufactured celebration tied to it. It’s possible that because of this the idea of a what makes an event special has been diluted by so many other over-the-top celebrations, and people might be burned out on them by the time they reach retirement age.

For example: A generation or two back, if you wanted to go to prom with someone, you found maybe the nerve to ask, they said yes or no, and boom, the deal was done. Now, and I apologize in advance for using this abomination of a word, promposal (and thank you, spellcheck, for rightfully trying to correct my use of that word) videos go viral with frightening regularity. Also, when did going to prom become about a photo shoot with twenty couples posing at some completely arbitrary location, like a park or a grain mill to create atmosphere that has nothing to do with prom? When Peter Parker picked up his date in “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” he awkwardly gave her a corsage, her mom took a picture or two, and her dad drove them to the dance. Why does it need to be more than this? (Granted, Peter was going to homecoming instead of prom, and half an hour later he was fighting his date’s father from the outside of an invisible cargo jet 20,000 feet in the air, but I feel my point here still stands.)

Another example: I remember the excitement when my sister and her husband were expecting and learned they were having boys, but I know they sure as hell didn’t go through all the pomp and faux ceremony of sharing that moment while sixty of their closest friends watched them cut into a mystery cake with either pink or blue inside, or popping a balloon to see what color of confetti was in it. Aren’t baby showers enough?

Don’t get me started on weddings. Back when I was young enough to be curious about seeing how many people I went to high school with were getting married, the engagement photo was basically a standard graduation-style head shot with two people instead of one. It showed up in the local newspaper and was never seen or heard from again because it had served its purpose. I can’t remember exactly when “Save the Date” cards became a thing, but I remember the first time I received one and thinking it was kind of bossy. Why exactly do these things and the engagement announcement portfolios that inevitably follow, require separate and extensive photo sessions? And when the actual wedding day arrives, why does the entire wedding party need to dance their way into the dinner with each couple getting their own entrance music, like they’re coming up to bat in major league baseball? Note to the future brides and grooms of the world: If you have your wedding party make dramatic musical entrances like that in the name of fun, you’re pretty much tipping your hats about the flash mob coming up during either the first or second song the D.J. plays. We’ve all seen it enough to know it’s coming.

I understand wanting to celebrate. I’m really not against it, even if I’ve leaned into a slightly-exaggerated version of a cranky old man voice here. But there’s celebrating to acknowledge an event and to enjoy the company of the people important to you, and there’s just taking the whole thing too far. Remember that whatever kind of party you’re throwing, it isn’t being entered into any kind of contest to be the best one ever, despite what Instagram wants you to believe. Just enjoy the moment and take it in for what it’s worth. Please. Because the first time I see an internet photo album that shows a couple at a cake tasting event deciding what flavor of cake their baby will smear and smash all over themselves during their first birthday party? I’m moving off the grid.

Day 1: Sidestepping Intention

Back in high school, my best friend and I had a pretty standard Saturday night routine. It wasn’t dramatic or exciting, but it worked for us. It involved some arrangement of the following activities: Eating at some fast food place, feeding quarters into video games at an arcade, seeing a movie at one of our regular theaters, then renting a video somewhere to watch back at my house while packing away some Doritos, Dr. Pepper, and Mountain Dew. Yeah, we were nerds, but I’ll be damned if we weren’t happy ones.

I picked up a philosophy of life from him throughout the months of Saturdays and thousands of suburban miles we shared. One night while driving through what passed for the affluent part of our hometown, we were talking about graduation parties and he introduced the following idea into our meandering conversation: “Don’t ever plan in too much detail. That way you won’t be disappointed when things don’t happen the way you want.”

That might seem objectively pessimistic, but in context it makes perfect sense, and I will argue even today that he had a legitimate point. He wasn’t saying to expect things will always go south regardless, or that you should never try to make something good happen. His point was how easy it is for people to get wrapped up in over-planning the details of whatever they had going on, hoping to arrange events that will live up to nearly unattainable ideals. If you spend all your time worrying about getting things set up and making sure they’re perfect, one thing going wrong can be enough to drag on the happiness and satisfaction you might otherwise experience, and make all of the stress that came with the preparation a waste of time and energy.  

Example: Whenever I visit my friends in Seattle, I never go with a checklist of things I absolutely have to do while there (other than buy some smoked salmon to ship home). I’ve always been perfectly agreeable to whatever they might suggest, and have let my experiences there build into memories I never could have anticipated or planned. Without this absence of planning, I wouldn’t know anything about Boom City, Port Townsend, or the Poulsbo street fair. Conversely, I can think of far too many times I’ve planned out elaborate lessons with way too many moving parts that I was sure would be huge successes, only to be stuck biting back at the frustration and anger I felt when things didn’t work out.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to put aside any effort to make my 50th birthday into an event. Instead I’m going to just take the month to reflect on things here in my May blog posts, and let anything else associated with my birthday either happen or not. (I’m not planting any seeds about surprise parties in saying this, by the way; God help anyone who would ever try going that direction with me, and I literally could not be more serious.) When I say I’m just going to let things happen, that’s what I mean. It’s more important to me to have the day pass and not feel disappointed about it than it is to put together some kind of memory-making bash.

The memories will take care of themselves. Maybe they don’t have to be spectacular because I’m landing on a decade number this year. Maybe something will sprout up and make the day landmark-worthy. 

Or maybe I’ll just go see Infinity War again after school that day, and be home in bed by 9:00. I ain’t gettin’ any younger, you know….