A Kevin Smith Doppleganger Visits the Old Set of Mall Rats

Ah. I woke up to the pitter-patter of a Friday morning in the rain. A perfect day for someone looking for things to do that make him feel like a kid again.

Play with worms!

Run around in the rain!

Jump in some puddles!

There were a few problem though. The rain here in Chaska USA wasn't enough to send worms running for the surface – just a brief shower. So when I took the dog out to do her business, my eyes scanned the driveway for thick, squirming night crawlers inching about, but it was empty. NUTS. So I figured, let's stand in the rain. Look up to the overcast sky and just let the rain pelt me all over – just like when I was little. Nothing. The rain had already stopped. As a matter of fact the only rain that hit me was a fat, suicidal drop that slid off the garage roof and hit me square between the eyes. NUTS. Puddles! Quick! Scan the streets! Are there any puddles left? Come on rain, don't fail me now! None. NUTS.

Bah! I need a backup plan. What am I going to do? Build a fort out of the sofa cushions, sock puppet show, bake cookies? I could feel the adult world squinching in on me. The kids needed pancakes. They need to get dressed. Dishes need to be done. Coffee needs to be made. We need to pack for the cabin. The dog needs food. Subway is giving out FREE breakfast today...how are we going to fit that in?

Then we got a phone call that changed the fate of my day. One of my wife's co-workers called (shout out to Heidi Miller) and needed her key to get into work. We need to bring her the key. I should focus on being a kid...need something for the blog. But I went anyway, lured into the car by the prospects of a FREE Subway breakfast sandwich with layers of black forest ham, egg whites, cheese, green peppers, onions and tomato. YUM. I must go to there.

So I went, figuring with all the adult stuff I had to get done today, I'd have no time to do anything remotely child-like (outside of my usual immature jokes and whining). We pulled into the Eden Prairie mall parking lot and there it was. The only way to describe its sheer beauty is to draw analogies to opening the Ark of the Covenant. It spoke to me. My eyes drew wide. A smile skittered across my face like a Batman villain. I might have even wrung my hands a bit before approaching it. The largest puddle I had seen since last year's ten inches of rain.

WOW!

Just when I thought all hope was lost for the day, there it was – a huge, ginormous puddle out in front of the mall that Kevin Smith, who ironically looks a lot like me actually, shot his film Mall Rats. I doubt the early mall goers thought they'd see a grown man trounce about in a puddle that morning while they walked by holding their Starbucks cups in their hands. I thought maybe they would see me stamping my feet in that puddle and think back to when they were kids and just how inviting and persuasive puddles tend to be. But they probably didn't.

Nevertheless, I puddle jumped this morning – have the wet tennis shoes and jean bottoms to prove it. I actually did it twice, once walking into the mall and a second time coming out of it. I also tramped in a smaller puddle at Subway afterward, but it wasn't as splendid. But I still recommend it.

Prior to puddle-jumping, my adult brain quickly went through a list of tasks or negative outcomes of the jumping – you'll have to dry your shoes in the dryer, pants too, you'll need new socks, those pretty ladies walking into Barnes & Noble will laugh, you might slip, you don't know where that water has been, was that an oil slick rainbow over there, the old mall-walkers will think you are dumb, your shoes smelled prior to this and now they'll smell worse...

On and on, my adult brain did everything in it's power to persuade me NOT to do this. And overcoming that instinct is what makes this experiment kind of exhilarating. I mean we have grown up to this point learning the consequences of our actions and we've become so saddled into avoiding those consequences that we miss out on the little things, the things that might just actually make us excited again.

So go out today and jump in a puddle!

BREAKING NEWS: Fat, Blue Orangutan Spotted in Suburban Tree

Oh, wait.

That's me.

Okay. I learned a few things this morning in my misadventures to be a kid again:

1.) I need to lose some weight. A LOT of it. See, when you scope out a tree for climbing, you generally think, “No. Problem. Child's play.” Then you realize you no longer have the flexibility or strength in your legs, back and arms to make the most important transition in tree climbing – the first level. I found out the hard way. I scoped out a tree in the backyard first – away from the sensitive viewing of the wife. I made three hilariously inept attempts to break that first level by pulling myself up into the bottom layer of branches.

FAIL. Sweatshirt and pants separate at the plumber's crack – cold breeze blows into nether regions.

FAIL. Branch bows dangerously close to breaking. Heart pangs for poor sugar maple. Abort.

FAIL. Thicker branch this time. Got feet up to branch with hands. Muscles strain under a sudden, unexpected, intense increase in the Earth's gravitational pull and give way(I'm thinking Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson from the popular Fringe television series will be visiting shortly, because that has to be a first in physics, right?). Lie in dandelions contemplating a new approach. I need a ladder.

2.) Once in a tree, you become acutely aware of a different system of laws governing the world in a tree. There is only one law and to me it seems like this law or instinct is the perfect scientific proof that man evolved from apes; in a tree, moving is secondary to a firm foot or handhold on a branch, or vine, if you are in the Amazon. This instinct kicked in almost instantaneously for me. I wanted to go higher, but my brain said, “Strengthen your foothold first, then look for a sure handhold before exerting movement.” It amazed me how those instincts grab you. So I climbed as far as the thin branches could hold me.

3.) Climbing a tree is still LOADS of fun! And the fun grows exponentially the higher you climb...and so does the pain of falling, but I don't suggest you do that.

So yesterday, I kind of got off track with the whole soda incident. My point with all of this is to take a moment out of our day to do the things that make us feel young again. I inadvertently fell into a rant about the soda companies, so I apologize.

On the home front, no news. Still no calls from my hot prospect job – which I would snatch up in a heartbeat. I mean working on the 23^rd floor of a skyscraper? Cool. Plus getting this job successfully remedies the mortgage issue. Go job!

Climbing that tree this morning got me to thinking about how we apply the tree-climbing instincts to everything in life – look before you leap, plan before you execute, and all that. When all this happened, unemployment, economic downfall and such, I was quick to look back to when we made some of our life decisions – savings, jobs, cars, mortgage – and bash ourselves for making poor decisions. I get that way sometimes. I have a passive aggressive emotional style.

Well, again, my wife told me something at that moment that made me look like the thick-headed fool I can sometimes be. She basically said that when we made those decisions, we couldn't have foreseen the impending economic deformity – we made our decisions based on the world around us at that time. Of course, had we known that the second Great Depression was upon us, that would have impacted our decisions back then. But we didn't know, so we couldn't factor that in.

I guess it speaks to our human ability to plan and make decisions to the best of our abilities, but in the end we are even more greatly impacted by the world around us – a world we have really no control over. In orangutan time, this would be the equivalent of a orangutan planning his movements in a tree, only to have the tree disappear in mid-swing. Now, the orangutan to the best of his instincts planned to have that branch right there to hold on to, but outside forces removed it and the orangutan fell. Poor orangutan. Here have a banana. Orangutan's eat bananas, right?

So in a sense, I need to come to terms with the fact that although this is a mess we were partly responsible for, a greater portion of it was beyond our prognostication, instincts and control. Joseph Campbell would say this is the point in the story where the hero is dealt a great blow and he must gather his strength and carry out his mission.

I like Joseph Campbell, he always has a way of making everyday life sound like an adventure.

The Ever Elusive, Ice-Cold, Glass Bottle of Orange Crush Soda

Alright, folks. Two disparaging things happened today:

1.) I did NOT get a phone call with a job offer from a highly successful accounting firm I have been interviewing at which has an office in downtown Minneapolis on the 23rd floor of a skyscraper. So I have begun to second-guess my skill set and my interviewing approach, despite the fact that the hiring manager seemed to be a HUGE advocate for me in the interview with the CMO.

2.) On the second day of my social experiment on being a kid again, I drove around Chaska looking for an ice-cold, glass bottle of Orange Crush soda and couldn't find any. So I had to settle for an ice-cold, plastic bottle of Coca-Cola, a suitable alternative, even for this pre-diabetic, almost 40-year old. Sure they had Orange Fanta, but I just couldn't pull the trigger on that one. Sorry, Fanta people. I just can't get into a soda that shares three letters with the word FART.

So anyway, the plan was to get an ice-cold, glass bottle of Orange Crush soda and sit on the curb in front of my house and just watch things: clouds, birds, the stocky neighbor mowing his lawn, etc. So I sat there, which wasn't as easy as it used to be as kid (we have those sloped curbs as opposed to the high round ones). I saw a rabbit under a pine tree, some birds and even a dove or two. The rabbit seemed more interesting. It's funny how rabbits have this illusion that if they sit still in their furry little rabbit-ball pose, that humans and other predators can't see them. I suppose in the wilds that works for rabbits, in a sub-division, maybe not so much.

As much as I thought about myself as that rabbit – hunched up in a ball and hiding under a tree from our mortgage company and impending hardship – my attention was drawn to the plastic bottle of Coca-Cola.

God, a cold soda tastes so DAMN good after a day of gardening and a long walk with the dog.

Anyway, I sat there with that plastic bottle and remembered back in the seventies, holding that glass bottle of Orange Crush – so cold, you had to switch hands with it until you were done. But it tasted so damn crisp and sweet, you'd guzzle it all down, knowing full well your throat would be frozen afterward. No one cared, then. Hot day. Ice-cold Crush. Yum. Soda always seems to taste better in glass bottles.

An interesting aside, but I took a business trip to Pasadena, California last year around this time. Had to close down a branch of my former company (early warning signs, huh). But while there, I took in a slice of pizza and an ice-cold, glass bottle of Coca-Cola in a dinky Santa Monica pizzeria at a small table where Harrison Ford once sat to have a slice of pizza and an ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola. I took a picture of the picture of Harrison Ford in that pizzeria. I suppose that isn't important to my thoughts today, but still a nice addition to my growing connections to the famous actor.

Back to the point, my darling wife recently reminded me that soda didn't taste better back in the seventies because of the bottle type, but because of the switch in ingredients (yes, I really am that thick sometimes). Soda today is festooned with high fructose corn syrup, whereas soda back in the day was made with straight sugar.

Couple that move by the soda industry with the switch to plastic bottles and it makes you wonder if entrusting more aspects of our lives to big businesses is really the answer here. I mean it's one thing to be the ground zero point in revolutionizing the way American children contract diabetes, but to also tackle destroying the environment with plastic seems to point at a senseless use of multi-tasking.

Granted, these companies probably didn't know these things would turn into terrible things, but the driving force behind the changes was money. Corn syrup and plastic are cheaper than their predecessors, so making the switch, even though it effects countless millions of lives, made a handful of corporate big-wigs pretty damn rich. But at least they have priorities, right?

Wow.

All that from watching a rabbit hunch under a pine tree while drinking a soda. I bet it had a lot to do with the sugar rush. I mean, the high fructose corn syrup rush.

Walking the Path of Unfettered Crab Apple Blossoms

The twenty-seventh day of April. What a great day to start a blog, huh? Not the crisp beginning of the year. Not even the waxy beginning of the month. It's not even the beginning of the day. It's almost 3pm. Hell, it isn't even the end of anything. It is only near the end of something. It's almost May. It's almost dinner time. But it's not the beginning nor the end of anything.

Fitting this idea comes at a unorganized time calendarily. Seeing as everything around me marches closer and closer to the beat of a fiery financial shitstorm. Forgive me. I'm bitter. I'm unemployed. Cast out from a sixteen year career with a company who couldn't find their ass in a wind storm. Laid off by a middle marketing manager with a degree in theater who only had a year with the company because he was the just-hired “friend” of a former VP. I guess that's how the world operates – on theater degrees and comfy business-politico friendships.

I did mention I'm bitter, right?

So now, unemployed for the third month, my wife and I (though largely the wife – such a trooper) trudge through the paperwork mountains of trying to save our house from a trumped up mortgage devised by the Fannie Mae money-hungry deviants, amazed that we have to become destitute before our mortgage company will even consider modifying our loan. That's what the only piece of mail in our mailbox said today.

Even more ironic is the absence of junk mail in the mailbox. Seems even the capitalist marketers of useless products and luxuriously stupid services ignore you when they know your ship spirals downward in the great American financial maelstrom.

So what do any of my troubles have to do with this blog?

Simple.

On my way back from the mailbox – the checkered flag lap to a three mile walk with my dog – I ambled down a asphalt path lined with crab apple trees in full-on blossom. There, holding my own paper marker of financial destruction, I saw over a dozen trees domed in white blossoms, a breeze deftly bobbing through them, sifting blanched petals to the ground, their syrupy fragrant aroma clinging to my overly long nose hairs. To cross into my dandelion infested backyard, I had to walk underneath the trees and let those sweet dandruff flakes flock my hair.

That's what this has to do with this blog.

Crab apple blossoms covering my hair.

When I reached up to brush them off, I noticed their softness, their smooth velvetiness, how such a fragile thing could survive in this world that makes a name for itself by driving things into extinction by crushing everything it sees beneath its heel like a spent cigarette butt.

It was the first time in a long time that I didn't feel like an adult anymore. I felt young, like a ten year old again, collecting grasshoppers in mason jars, rubbing dandelion heads on girls' knees, sweating all day long from playing at the park and not giving a flying fuck about what I looked like, smelled like, or where my next meal came from.

So I think this is what my blog is all about. Defying adulthood. Doing those things that breathe fresh air into our lungs, fire crazy-ass ideas into our brains and drag out every last drop of worry, responsibility and menacing obligation.

We all grew up thinking that once we were unshackled from our parents, our limits were endless, and they were, but we gained new parents – government and business; and if we thought our parents were out to get us, we need to thank them, because these new parents are nowhere near as lenient and definitely have no love in their hearts for us.

So screw them.

Shirk adulthood. Spend one hour a day, a week a month to be a kid again. Go out and lie on a grassy hill, watch the clouds roll by, break off a stick and throw it in a stream or rushing gutter and watch it sail by, hit a baseball with a bat, run until you can't feel your legs anymore and whatever you do for that hour, don't give one damn notion or care about being an adult.

You'll be surprised at how much you're missing out there.