The weirdest 2023 ever

Another year is about over, and it’s time to do that thing I do where I look back on it and think of all the things I could have done differently, and how things would have worked out. Then again, if I could go back and change things, I wouldn’t. I can’t risk changing things in a way that would make the timeline worse… Well, maybe if there was a guide with me who could tell me the odds of how things work out.

The year had its ups and downs, like most years. I spent all of November and some of December sick with some respiratory infection. But at least I didn’t die, right? The rough thing about it was how long it took for me to fight off the virus. It used to be that I got over those things quickly. Not so much anymore. Yay, growing older!

The beginning of the year was marked by a bad UTI that became a little more — how can I put this delicately? — systemic. My wife and I went to the islands for last Christmas, and we didn’t exactly worry about hydrating. That, combined with the long trip to and from, and I managed to develop a kidney stone. That was complicated by the UTI. And, well, I spent most of January praying my next visit to the men’s room to pee wasn’t my last one.

Ah, but summer was great. I spent most of the time right after Memorial Day teaching my kid how to ride her bicycle. She learned in about ten days of afternoon sessions. And, once she learned, she improved exponentially. I can honestly say that it was my greatest accomplishment, teaching her how to ride a bicycle. It was bigger than my doctoral dissertation, bigger than meeting and marrying her mother.

I mean, come on… I passed on a skill that is going to come in handy for the decades to come. Because, barring some traumatic brain injury, she’s going to remember how to do it for the rest of her life. It’s one of those weird things that gets encoded in the brain close to the walking center. (It must be a balance thing.)

Of course, there was plenty of work to be done between all that fun and all those illnesses. Things in Philadelphia and other big cities are getting better, but the public seems convinced that things are worse than ever. I don’t blame them. They were not around right after the 1918 pandemic, when the United States and many other countries were on the brink of many calamities. They were not around during the Great Depression. I hear things were really bad then. And, until I see lines for soup kitchens around every city block, I won’t be ready to say things are worse than ever.

Things are worse than ever on the internet, though. More people are convinced of what they see and hear from “influencers,” and they’re more skeptical of things the experts say. Vaccination rates are slumping because parents are equating how well kids did with COVID with how kids will do with measles and other childhood diseases. (Hint: They don’t do well. One in a thousand die from measles, in developed nations.)

And then there is the cultural controversy around my place of employment. I’m not going to go into it for obvious reasons. Let’s just say it is exhausting, and it keeps other things from happening. All because of the internet and the mis/disinformation shared on it.

No, don’t ask. I won’t tell you how I feel about it because you’ll never believe me. I work there, so whatever I say will be suspect, right? So stop asking.

Finally, there are the people we lost. Just yesterday, I found out that my late brother’s mother passed away. She was found dead right on Christmas Eve. Dad called me to tell me the news, and he sounded so sad. I don’t blame him. He had known her since they were both in their 20s. It is sad to see him lose more and more people around him, especially people he loved and cared for. Time goes on.

Next month, I’ll be reaching another age milestone of my own. It’s weird to be “middle aged.” I don’t feel middle aged in spirit, but I do feel it in my knees and other joints. So I’ll be heading back to the pool and back to the gym, trying to make it a habit. My mood is better after workouts. And I’m almost indestructible from an emotional perspective when I string together several workouts.

In fact, I almost got into a fight with a dude back in the summer, and I didn’t even flinch when he squared up to me. Part of it was that I’ve been around meatheads all my life, and I can tell when someone is more “bark than bite.” Another reason was that I had strung together several workouts, including some runs, and I felt nice and relaxed as he screamed and launched spittle at me when all I did was ask him to refrain from using foul language around my kid. “Let’s go outside,” he said.
”What for?” I asked. “Tea and cookies?” That really confused him, and that’s when he decided to get up in my face and try and make me flinch. I didn’t take the bait because I never take the bait.

In the end, he was fired, his bosses apologized to me, and my kid got to see her dad not even so much as sweat in what was a pretty crazy situation. Little did my kid know that I was constantly checking her location, the nearest exit, and how to deescalate the situation. Little did my kid know that her dad was ready and willing to burn the world down if the dude so much as looked at her funny.

Ah, the joys of parenting.

So this is all for this end-of-the-year blog post. I could go into more detail of everything that has happened. But you know how to read the other blog posts, and you can always look at my social media posts. I have nothing to hide. I’m a big Boy Scout dressed in primary colors. You can see me coming a mile away.

Happy New Year.