#reminiscing

I never went to piano lessons as a kid. It wasn’t like I was skipping out on a planned activity or anything — my parents didn’t play the piano, neither more nor my brother showed any interest, so we never had the “traditional” music education.

In fact, until the fifth grade, the sum total of my musical education involved playing the recorder in fourth grade music class. We played simple things, like “Hot Cross Buns” and the like. There were notes on sheet music, sure, but basically we just learned that notes on a specific part of the staff corresponded to a specific fingering.

In fifth grade, though, that’s when band started. A real band, with woodwinds and brass and drums (sorry, percussion). Well, choir started, too, but I didn’t actually know anyone who wanted to be in choir. We all wanted to be in the band.

They held band in the multi-purpose room, it being the only space large enough for anything larger than your average 26-person class. (The multi-purpose room served as cafeteria, assembly hall and general activity room.) We all sat in folding chairs arranged more-or-less like a traditional orchestra and waited for our teacher, Mr. Mash.

Mr. Mash began with the band program in the district where I grew up in 1968 — when I sat down in that chair (in the back, naturally), he was in his 30th year.

30 years of dealing with children — in any capacity, much less teaching — does something to a person. Actually, it’s probably capable of doing several things. He wasn’t beaten down, letting kids walk over him. He wasn’t a disinterested old-timer, coasting until pension. He very much cared about music, and tried to teach children. He was just a little bit … ornery.

Much like the Sorting Hat, one of the things that determined what instrument you played was your choice. Unlike the Sorting Hat, it wasn’t the ultimate determinant. In that respect, choosing an instrument was more like choosing a game piece in Jumanji — you could have a preference, but you were stuck with whatever the game gave you.

Yes, in this metaphor Mr. Mash was a horrifying board game that seemed to strive to kill its participants, unless they somehow survived and grew stronger for the experience. So, pretty apt.

Anyway, since Mr. Mash had absolutely no knowledge of us prior to walking into the “band room” the first day, the way he made his determinations probably amounted to some amount of individual preference, band balance and the Test.

The test was basically the sole knowledge of our musical acumen. It consisted of Mr. Mash taking you into a small room with a tape recorder. With a notepad at his wrist, he’d go through a series of short tests. One tested the student’s ability to determine pitch — which notes were higher or lower. One involved two series of notes, and it was up to the student to determine whether they were faster or slower than the previous sets.

Upon completion of the test, Mr. Mash then would go over what he thought was the best instrument choice.

I sat at the back because I wanted to play the drums (Percussion! Sorry!), so my test came near the end. When Mr. Mash looked over my results, he shook his head.

“You need higher scores to be a percussionist. I don’t think you’re really cut out for it. Maybe you’d like to try the trombone?”

Now I’m sure there were several good reasons: Of our 70-person band, I think something like 12 wanted to be percussionists. And I’m not disputing the scores — they probably were low. In playing the trombone, I had many years of enjoyment and fun all the way through the end of high school. But there was one thing I realized around ninth grade: The test was flawed.

Having exactly zero musical education beforehand, I literally had no concept of things like “higher pitches,” or designating which was faster of eighth notes and triplets. One can argue that knowing those kinds of things were important to playing in the band, but that’s also the point of the class — to learn more.

Basically, a significant portion of my education (and free time, to an extent), was determined by a test that asked questions without ensuring that I even understood the answers.

I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. I feel like imparting my own takeaway sort of defeats the whole point.

It feels like summer’s finally over. It’s been pretty hot even through the majority of September, and the rains that came were either parts of thunderstorms or hurricane-driven, so they didn’t really feel like “fall” rain. Then yesterday I read about the fall foliage outlook, which makes it feel like fall … and it started raining.

The change in seasons is more than just a semantic difference for me. I always get a bit doleful this time of year because it signifies a pretty dark anniversary for me — the gut-check realization that things don’t always work out the way they’re supposed to. And it always coincides with the first rain of fall.

It was literally my first day at work. The first day of my first job right out of college, and I got a Facebook message from a high school friend I hadn’t spoken to in probably four years, asking for my phone number. He called me later, around 6 p.m.

I remember exactly where I was when I got the call, standing in an empty office, staring at the drops of rain as they rolled down the window. I remember walking home immediately after, lost in thought as I gazed at the trees that had just changed their colors.

My friend called me to tell me a relatively good acquaintance (the technical definition would be “person I was friendly toward who I never happened hang out with”), who I had gone to both high school and college with, had taken her own life. (I wrote an essay about that day some time ago, if you’d like to read it, but it’s much too long to even excerpt here.)

It was the first time I had really dealt with death of someone my own age after high school. Death is unexpected for the young, but at least sometimes it feels like it makes a perverse sort of sense: crazy accidents, car crashes, sudden medical emergencies … none of those really give off the “Well of course it happened that way” vibe, but at least there’s some logic behind it. In those cases, maybe there was a car involved, driving much too fast to stop. Maybe the rope broke when he/she went rock climbing, so nothing could be done.

But this? This felt more like typing something into the computer and having it just freeze up, completely unable to do anything except flash cryptic error messages that don’t actually help you fix the problem. Unexplained error. File not found. Connection unavailable.

It broke my heart, in a somewhat oblique way. I identified with her, as I had known her practically my entire life and even received the same scholarship to the same university 300 miles away from our hometown.

I felt responsible, like there was something, anything, I should have done to help. After it happened, I immediately resolved that I would do better by all the rest of my friends. I promised myself I would do a better job at keeping touch with them on Facebook (which, looking back on it, is like the bare minimum one can do and still be said to be “keeping up”), and making sure to call and visit and … of course it didn’t happen. In my defense, I was still living 300 miles away from the vast majority of them at the time (since increased to nearly 2,700), but the simple truth of the matter is you can’t keep up with everyone you’ve ever met, or even everyone you’ve ever called a friend. It’s just not possible to do that and have any other kind of life (up to and including eating, sleeping and working).

But there are things you can do. Things that I do. Little things. But I think they help — not just to mollify my own guilt, but I think they also might help the people I’m “keeping tabs on.” For example, when I see one of those cryptic depressed Facebook statuses (“Everything is SO HARD lately” or “UGH why can’t it just stop?!”), I don’t immediately dismiss them. I don’t necessarily jump into action right away, but I will keep an eye on things. I make sure there haven’t been a lot of those kinds of posts in a short span of time. If the number starts to worry me, I try to figure out if anyone else has been in touch with them — either through the comments or even something as stupid as the Likes.

If it seems like no one’s been reaching out, I make sure someone does. I try to be discreet about it — if it’s someone I don’t really talk to on a regular basis, I might try to go through a mutual friend or something, but if I can’t find anyone else I will make it awkward and just start chatting them up (via whatever means are available to me).

It may feel weird at first, but it’s completely worth it.

I think about these things all the time, but it gets especially bad around this time of year. When the first rain of fall comes (again, not a calendrical definition, more of an emotional one), I go over the whole thing, again and again. It brings back a little of what I felt that day, walking home from work, leaves crunching underfoot.

Autumn generally has a melancholy feel to it, what with leaves turning brown and falling back to earth. It may have been thematically appropriate from an aesthetic point of view, but it certainly didn’t make the experience any easier to get through. And it makes me all the more resolute to make sure I never have to endure the entirety of that feeling again.

I always try to make sure I write for a purpose, to make sure that I have a point. So let me just leave you with this: Live like you’re responsible for someone else. You don’t have to make sure everyone you know is always happy, you don’t have to be available every time the smallest thing in life goes wrong … but at the same time, make it known that you’re available for people when they truly need help.

In the grand scheme of things, being available for that kind of comfort, advice or help is an incredibly small portion of your time, and will be a minuscule part of your life — but it could be huge for that other person.

There's a lot of baggage that comes with getting older. When you're younger, you hear all about the changes your body's going to go through and how different everything will seem and how uncomfortable showers will be in middle school, but discussions of aging with children (understandably) tend to peter out around right around puberty.

Then you blow right through your teens only to discover (surprise!) that you continue aging even after that. You don't just hit adulthood, coast for 20 or 30 years until one night your hair turns gray and you are, in fact, old. There's a continuum, a process.

You figure that out, though. There's a certain point where it dawns on you that you will continue to get folds and wrinkles and skin spots. You'll find getting up in the morning takes a little bit more effort, getting into bed a night feels a little bit better, and some midnight you'll discover the pure agony of hitting the bar after work when all you really want to do is go home and sleep.

Theoretically. So I've heard. Hey, I'm not in college anymore.

The part no one prepares you for, the part that is so gobsmacking, is when your parents — who've been adults all their lives — photos of some nebulous "before you were born" period notwithstanding — start showing their age. Wait, you mean while I was busy getting older, they were getting older, too?

It's probably a little different for me. My parents were pretty old when they had me, as they've been retired since before I started college. They're the most active people in their retirement community — which isn't saying much — and are a "young 65."

They both exercise, go out and do things regularly, and my mom's even got an iPhone AND an iPad (which I get called upon to fix, over the phone, pretty much every other week). But I've noticed the last few times I've seen them that my dad has more trouble walking around than he used to. My mom has a little bit of trouble texting on her tiny phone, and squints a little so she can see it. Heck, next time I move I'm probably going to have to pay somebody to help me lug those 7-foot bookcases — and accompanying 14 boxes of books — up the stairs. No more free labor for me. It gets at me because the thing my parents always stressed was adaptability. It's fine to know what you're doing, but it's even better to know how to handle yourself when the situation changes. They seem to have things under control even when stuff goes haywire. Frankly, they make it look easy.

Even so, it can be jarring when life catches up. The little things I noticed may help subconsciously prepare me, but it's still disorienting when the big stuff hits. When I got that phone call (nonchalantly, because my parents are weird): "Yeah, your dad got out of Christmas shopping when he passed out at the mall and they had to pick him up in an ambulance." When my mom sent that (poorly typed, let's be honest) text message that said, "I had to go the emergency room last night because I felt like I was having a heart attack. I wasn't, but it sure felt like it."

Now, I don't think my parents are in any immediate danger of dying, but I've a handful of aunts and uncles who have passed, all at younger ages than my parents are now. It's sobering every time you lose someone close to you, but none of those really hit home the way it did when my dad almost passed out a few weeks ago after he woke up (which I at least partially blame on the ridiculously hot and humid York weather).

It's an eerie parallel, because as I see them coping with the changes that come with aging, so too do I have to come to terms with the changes they're dealing with, on top of my own aforementioned "Hmph! I get tired earlier" nonsense.

Part of growing up chronologically means growing up mentally and emotionally, and learning to deal with these kinds of new — and sometimes scary — situations. All you can really do is hope that your parents (of all people) prepared you to be able to handle the unexpected when it crops up.

Unless, of course, it's Siri, which my mom still can't figure out.

"When I ask 'What's next?', it means I'm ready to move on to other things. So, what's next?" — Jed Bartlett, The West Wing

Six months ago, I quit my job as a "Web Publications Specialist." The hours were absurdly long (overtime was expected and uncompensated), and even herculean efforts — like the time I put in a 25-hour day in order to help finish a website for launch — went unnoticed, save to be exploited for publicity purposes later. I enjoyed my co-workers, but I didn't really enjoy the work, didn't really get anything out of selling overpriced things to people who really didn't need them in the first place.

So I started looking around. I regularly surfed journalismjobs.com, trying to find something that suited my skill set. I mostly applied for sports editing, copy editing and page design positions, though I would occasionally branch out if it was in Washington state somewhere. For the first few months it never really went anywhere, but around February/March I started to get responses.

Some were in-state, others were from elsewhere. I had set up a few phone interviews a couple weeks in advance when all of a sudden I got an email from The Inlander, which had the tripartite advantage of a) being close, b) being snarky and c) being a copy editing position, which is where I've often felt I can do some of my best work.

I was actually on vacation in British Columbia when I got an email asking me to come in for an interview later that week. I had no problem with this, as I really wanted the job, so I cut it a day short and drove back across the state on Friday morning in anticipation for an interview that afternoon. When I got the job, I just couldn't stop smiling. It felt like one of those perfect moments — I was just coming off vacation, I was happy, and to celebrate I went to a friend's barbecue and got completely black-out drunk and passed out around 10 pm.

When I woke up at 2 am, my mind was clear and I immediately started figuring out what I had to do: resign, find a place to live, figure out how I was going to move everything. I had one thought, derived from an episode of The West Wing I always enjoyed. It's partially encapsulated by the epigraph above, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The idea behind is that there are things you can change and there are things you cannot. Oftentimes, when circumstances come at you, the best thing to do is not to whinge about how bad everything else and how unfair life is treating you. When the variables change, all you can do is survey the situation and figure out: What's next?

Six months ago, I plunked down in a low-slung chair, facing a brilliantly sunlit window the Inlander's publisher sat in front of. After asking the traditional "Why do you want to do this?" and "What are you hoping to get out of this?" questions, he turned to a topic intimately dear to my heart: loyalty.

"How long are you planning on staying in Spokane?" he asked. "We're looking for somebody who's in this for the long haul, five or 10 years."

Loyalty describes almost everything I've ever done in a professional setting. It's why I always worked so hard, both at the Evergreen and later at my former job. At the Ev, the loyalty was to the paper, to the profession, to the ideal that the news was a vital cog in society's machinery, but mostly it was to my friends. My friends, who toiled tirelessly day in and day out, trying to put out the best newspaper they possibly could. It was why I didn't mind staying late or taking on extra tasks: Out of loyalty. Even later, at a job I didn't feel any particular respect for, I was more than happy to stay late or help other people out because I knew they'd do the same for me if asked.

One month ago, I was called into the publisher's office for a meeting with him and the managing editor. As I sat down, I was told we were there to "talk about my position" — more specifically, the lack thereof. Due to budgetary constraints for 2011, they said they couldn't afford to keep me on. I could either take my leave then, with one week's severance, or continue to work through the end of December. I chose the latter, figuring that a week's pay ("completely fucked") was inferior to a month's pay ("mostly fucked").

When I went home, I did as any self-respecting Coug would: I drank. Heavily. I started when I got home at 4:30 pm and finished around 11 (when I passed out), taking most of a bottle of Scotch and a goodly portion of a bottle of Everclear with me. (This was actually a few days before Apple Cup, which I originally intended to attend but decided that — given my financial and emotional state — was probably not in the best interests of either my liver or my wallet.)

When I awoke the next morning (a Friday, which meant work), I stumbled out of bed and into the shower. I fashioned myself into the closest approximation of a functioning human being I could muster, put on my coat and marched out the door to work.

What next?

I gave myself one night to bask in self-pity, and then I started to get to work. I updated my resume, started rooting through my computer to find my portfolio website, couldn't, got three-quarters of the way through making a new one before I found the old one, ditched the new one and updated the old one. I started crawling JJobs again, firing off resumes and cover letters.

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in blaming people. Lord knows there's enough to go around. I could angrily denounce the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers for fucking over our generation so royally, leaving us with an endless carousel of education, internships, jobs that we get thrown off of well before the ride ends. Or to start scrutinizing and finding those tiny little things that don't seem like much when everything's going along swimmingly, but blow up to gigantic proportions when everything's going to hell. Things simply are what they are.

But none of that does any good. I know that's a tough prescription to take (much akin to a "Tough shit" offered when an accusation of unfairness is raised), but it's true. I struggled with it myself in those first few minutes after I went back to my desk after the meeting. I kept flashing back to that first meeting with the publisher, with the thoughts of loyalty running through my head: "I moved to Spokane, I quit my job, I gave my word that I wouldn't jump at the next incrementally better job ... You, on the other hand, laid me off/let me go/fired me six months in."

(These phrases sound like they're different, but only if you're not on the receiving end.)

It would have been easy (believe me) to level an accusation of hypocrisy, but that would have been intellectually lazy of me — and not changed a damn thing, besides. They looked at the numbers and decided what was best for them moving forward, what was best for the company. Obviously it's not the outcome I would have preferred, but it does me no good to carry bitterness for their ensuring the paper's continued existence. And, again, such vituperation can't help me; they can only function as distractions.

I enjoyed my time at the Inlander. I'm immensely fond of all the writers, production people and even some of the advertising folks (no, really!), and take great pride in a few of the stories I wrote (and had a great time writing sarcastic, cynical comments on just about every cultural product imaginable).

Though nothing's certain yet, I'm fairly deep into the interview process for one job, and I'm sure the hiring machinery for others will kick into a higher gear once the holidays are over. I would have preferred to have a gig lined up by now (as I tend to get all twitchy and stabby when I have nothing to do), but there's nothing I can do about other peoples' decisions — I can only influence my own. And however this interview or the next turns out, it's not that big of a deal. I'll simply do what I can: Examine what I did, try to figure out what I can do better next time, and ask myself the only question that matters ... What's next?

Yesterday was Moving Day; as is tradition, that means today is "Not Moving Day," owing to the soreness from yesterday.

Moving is supposed to bring about an onslaught of different emotions: a twinge of nostalgia at leaving the place you've called home, sadness at altering/losing the different interpersonal relationships you've developed at said location, and excitement or trepidation at thought of what's to come.

I don't know that exhaustion can rightly be counted as an emotion, but the depth to which I feel it now seems to indicate it should at least be in the running.

After the third or fourth major geographical upheaval in 12 months (with a few minor phase shifts as well), moving just doesn't have the same impact anymore. Sleeping for the first time under a new roof felt just as comfortable as sleeping under the old one, which is to say "not very" because I never really "settled in" to the old apartment in the proper sense. Despite living there for eight months, the overly spacious two-bedroom apartment treated me more as a guest in a motel room than a permanent occupant.

Sure, I have some memories. The hideously overweight 40-some-year-old creepster who lived on the ground floor and sat outside his apartment 80 percent of the time, whiling away the days smoking, eating peaches or painting his fingernails a flamboyant hunter orange. That wouldn't have been so bad were it not for his completely obvious leering at women half his age or whenever he'd get in the mood to go shirtless.

Or consider the Albertson's grocery cart in the parking lot that mysteriously disappeared and reappeared on no set schedule, without rhyme or reason. Nothing says class like an Albertson's grocery cart.

Obviously, it wasn't all bad. Friends came over, drinks were drunk (and drunks kept drinking), movies were watched, great books were read and many a sleep was slept. But none of this served to dispel the ever-present air of transiency.

I'm now in Spokane, more specifically Browne's Addition, working at a job that seems pretty damn perfect for me (more on that later). The hope is to keep this apartment for quite some time, to break the moving cycle. At least long enough so that the next time I have to move, it actually means something again.

Last month, I was pleasantly surprised to discover I had quite a bit of vacation time racked up at work. Once we passed through the busy season, I took the first opportunity to use it. I decided to take an entire week off and go camping - much to the surprise of nearly everyone I told.

Apparently, mine is not an "outdoorsy" dispositon.

Originally, the plan was to head to southern Idaho or Montana. After thinking about it further (and checking the state of my finances), I overruled that decision in favor of a campground we own a lot on in Western Washington. Adjacent to Mt. Pilchuck, itself nestled in the foothills of the Cascades, it seemed like a good place to get away from everything. Plus, I could take two or three days to venture up to Canada and make sure it was still there.

For the better part of four hours, I raced the clouds and the rain across the state. It was only upon arriving in Seattle that I realized they had separated, flanked and beaten me. Outsmarted by the weather yet again.

Thus it was rain, light hail and barely functional windshield wipers that greeted me as I drove into Seattle, Owl City pumping through the speakers. Though it's only been less than six months since I last laid eyes upon the Emerald City, it seemed like considerably longer. Whenever I used to cross the I-90 bridge, it used to feel like coming home, even though I've never lived in Seattle and haven't even had an address on the west side of the state in five years. Apparently, that's starting to catch up with me on a psychological level.

There exists in all of us a struggle between two people - the "ideal" self one aspires to be and the person who truly lives at any given moment. It is not a very "solvable" problem, in that the only way to do so is to stop growing as a human being. Sometimes, the difference between the two is vast. Whereas you might have been dreaming all your life of growing up to be a hot-shot lawyer defending the rights of the downtrodden, you may instead find yourself working a low-paying job as a social worker.

There's nothing inherently wrong or bad about the choices you've made in your life; they're just different than the ones you expected to make. Very rarely do things in life go exactly according to plan, but for most people these slight diversions don't seem large enough to alter the over-arching narrative they've constructed for their life. It's only a slight hiccup, after all. It's not until months or years later that everything hits them at once, that they're not where they expected to be, that the path they previously envisioned laying out before them in fact forked quite some time ago.

My realization was nothing so consequential or monumental as that. But as I drove around Seattle, looking for a place to park and walking around a bit, I realized that my vision of myself was drastically different than the one I pictured in my head.

Ever since I moved to Idaho, I've joked that I never actually admit that fact; I always just say I live in Eastern Washington. As with all jokes, there's a small kernel of truth at the center. In reality, I never even traveled to the eastern half of Washington state until I was 17. Aside from the superficial political difference, the western and eastern halves of the state always seemed to be two completely different places.

The west side was urbane, modern and contemporary. Even if you didn't live in Seattle, it was the place you identified with - and not just when people asked where you were from ("near Seattle" is the answer given by those who live anywhere north of Vancouver, south of Canada and east of the Cascades. It's just easier).

The east, by contrast, moved at a slower pace. Though not all farmers, theirs was a simpler way of life, not nearly so crowded or developed. They had Spokane, which was okay as small to medium cities go, but nothing to write home about.

I've always considered myself to be "from the west side," with everything that entails. During college, I always pictured myself moving back at some point after my sojourn out East, picking up exactly where I left off. But as I tried to navigate through the ridiculously narrow roads, try to navigate without being able to see anything more than the streets and the enormous buildings that rose up all around me, I noticed that - at the very least - I am woefully out of practice for west side living.

Yet at the same time, I felt a pull in the opposite direction, the other half of the dichotomy asserting itself. I still missed just walking around in the rain. I still missed being in a city where you could look up and see buildings towering over you. I still missed the culture that comes with having a million poeple in the same area. But instead of being the primary thoughts I was having, they were instead dancing on the periphery, secondary.

This reprioritization actually came as somewhat of a shock, despite having lived almost 8 months in Coeur d'Alene and the four and a half years prior in the small hamlet of Pullman. Obviously I don't take this as a sign I'll settle down in CdA forever or never move back to Western Washington, but it does come as something of a shock to realize fundamental aspects of your character are far different than you had expected.

Helluva way to start a vacation.

Everyone wants to be special. Everyone wants to have that one thing they're the best it, what they're known for - in many cases, what defines them as a person. I am not everyone. I accept the fact that I am good at a lot of things and the best at none just as I accept that I know a little bit about damn near everything, but am an expert in practically nothing.

This scattershot approach to life works for me, and I do not question it. But this is not to say that I am ordinary. Far from it, as everyone who has ever met me (and most people who have only heard of me) will readily tell you. This, however, extends primarily to my towering height, outsized wit, and/or spot-on impression of Sir Lawrence Olivier.

It's amusing what people will believe when you present them with a secret identity.

That's right. I - and, I suspect, many others - possess secret superpowers that ordinary mortals would exhibit polite interest learning about. It's always a struggle, trying to keep the lid on my innate gifts, but I've managed to keep them under wraps for quite some time. I only bring them into the open now to encourage others to shed the mask they have been living behind, and reveal their true selves to the world.

It is with this high-minded ideal in mind that I present this list of my Perfectly Ordinary Superpowers. Each POS on its own is powerful and frightening, but you shouldn't be alarmed. I am no more dangerous than any other 6'7" rage-filled Irish giant you might cross paths with, but keep in mind that if you should wrong me, things could some become very ... uncomfortable for you (largely as a result of this first power, but still).

Super Awkward

We've all met awkward people before. Whether it's the painfully cheesy guy who's convinced he's the most hilarious thing since sliced bread or simply the loner girl who's perfected the piercing stare without ever mentioning a word to anyone else, they exist all around us.

Rank amateurs, says I.

I possess the unique ability to turn any situation excruciatingly awkward at the drop of a hat. It can be as simple as dumping Diet Pepsi all over my khakis when I first meet someone, or as silly as saying the wrong thing ("Who could possibly like x?" I boom as part of a joke, to which I invariably get "I like x," seeping acidly from another's lips in return). Regardless, it as a skill as of yet unmatched by anyone I've met. Though, to be fair, were I to square off against another who powers in the same range as mine, it would be a distressing meeting for everyone in the general vicinity.

Super Reflexes

We're not talking about whacking my knees with tiny rubber hammers. I'm taking reflexes here, people, like hearing your boss walk down the hall to ask you to work over the weekend and being quick enough to duck under your desk and silently roll out the door.

Granted, a vast majority of the situations where I call upon my reflexes are in fact of my own making, but my sloth-like speed and aging bovine-eqsue grace have proven themselves time and time again. Two quick examples:

As I walk down store aisles, there's a large amount of kinetic energy that needs to be stopped if, say, a small (stupid) child decides to cut in front of me and I'm barely paying attention. I've yet to trample any young'uns, but my quick movement usually requires half-throwing myself at shelves. This action causes an equal and opposite reaction of products leaping off the shelves in some sort of retail suicide attempt. On one occasion, I slammed into a shelf of clocks with my back and felt them wobble. I automatically reached my hand up and pinned one against my back in mid-air. holding it there.

An elderly female clerk, who watched the whole thing, stared at me as I tried to catch my breath and feel around to get a good grip on the clock. She scowled at me. "I know it fell, where is it?" she demanded. "Trapped between my hand and my back. Gimme a second," I responded loftily. Only my deft hands saved that timepiece from shattering on the unclean floor, doomed forever to the "clearance bin" for maladjusted products.

Similarly, during high school I went to a McDonald's while on a basketball trip. Being a mere (where the value of "mere" is six feet, three inches) freshman at the time, I obediently stood in the back of the line while the older players ordered and received their food. When I finally got mine, the box of fries for some reason stood on its two little "feet" about an inch away from the tray's left front lip. A senior tried to squeeze down the same narrow aisle as me, so I maneuvered to the side to let her pass. She still accidentally bumped me, causing the fries to tip over and hurtle toward the ground. Without even thinking, I reached with my right hand (hanging onto the tray with my left) over the breadth/depth of the tray, grabbing and arresting the fries mid-fall. I lost a total of three fries that day.

Super Sleep

Technically, this isn't the ability to sleep so much as the ability to wake, but "Super Awakening" just doesn't have the same ring. Besides, my powers, my names.

I have no practical need for an alarm clock. I currently roll out of bed with nary but my cell phone to wake me, but even its (hilarious) ringtone alarm remains largely superfluous, serving only to elicit small chuckle as I roll over to turn it off, completely awake.

That's right. I don't need technology to tell me when it's time to get up. My body takes care of that on its own. Unless I'm incapacitated (read: stone drunk) or already sleep-deprived the night before, I can wake up within five minutes of whatever time I want to. Suck it, Circadian rhythms. Your internal clock has nothing on mine. And we're not even talking about waking up an hour early and having to keep checking the time, or even doing it on a daily basis at the exact same time. I can set my internal alarm early, late - it matters not. I may not be the most chipper person in the world, but I rather suspect that has more to do with my refusal to drink coffee than anything else.

Consider yourself warned, citizens. Prior knowledge of the existence of my superpowers implies a waiver on your part regarding any damages you may sustain from my exercise of them. One day, you just might wake up ... but I'll already be ready.

It's Dec. 31, which means I’m parked in front of my television starting my annual personal Twilight Zone marathon. Though I stole the idea from the SciFi channel, mine’s better because a) there aren’t any commercials and b) I have the full complement (the original series and the remake from the ‘80s).

But, as with whenever I watch movies, I need something else to do at the same time. Since my blog has lain dormant for more than a month, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to update with a summation of this year. However, seeing as how distracted I am (“ooh, pretty flickering black-and-white television!"), it’ll be largely composed of lists

Thoughts that have occurred to me only since I've lived in Idaho:

• "When that nice young man driving by as I was walking down the road yelled, 'I will set you on fire!' at me, was that a threat or a come-on?"

• "Hmm ... It's New Year's Eve, and my apartment faces both downtown and the outskirts. From which direction am I least likely to get hit with a stray celebratory bullet at midnight?"

My top entertainment products produced this year:

• Castle (TV show)

• The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

• In The Loop (movie)

• God Is A Twelve-Year-Old Boy With Asperger's, by Eugene Mirman (standup)

• Zombieland (movie)

• The Unusuals (TV show)

• Star Trek (movie)

• My Weakness Is Strong, by Patton Oswalt (standup)

• The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

Things I miss about Pullman:

• A bus system that takes you everywhere in town, for free

• Bars populated by people that don't look ready to kill me for being younger than 40 and/or giving them unwelcoming looks when they loudly proclaim their bigotry

• The town being small enough to walk everywhere you could want to go

• New Garden

• The people

Job titles of four positions I applied for but didn't get:

• Anything with the word "newspaper" (a few small-paper editors, sports writing, etc.)

• Social networking director

• Text processor (for a bible software company, but I withdrew from that one fearing damnation)

• Editor, I Can Haz Cheezburger group

Discomfiting realizations from 2009:

• Remember how much we were looking forward to 2009? Look how that turned out. Now consider how optimistic people are about 2010. And how often do the expectations of optimistic people come true? We're in for a rough year.

• As our body of knowledge amasses in ever greater qualities, our ability to use the truly innovative kind of imagination decreases at a similar rate. In earlier times, people were able to conceive of interplanetary travel with relative ease. Now that we know how difficult and expensive such trips would be, we can walk into a movie like Avatar secure in the knowledge that, if such things are even in the realm of human possibility, they are so far off in the future as to be fictional.

• Much along the same lines, as interdisciplinary studies become the norm, the propensity of revolutionary new ideas appearing will decrease drastically. Great breakthroughs are usually found by people who have no knowledge of dogmatic "facts" (generally accepted principles that may not be the case) in a particular field. Obviously, most people who claim such things (think perpetual energy) are cranks. But Einstein was able to formulate his theory of relativity because he didn't know the rules of the system. Once everyone is grounded in precisely the same knowledge, the chances of a brilliant outsider to see something no one else did are greatly diminished.

Things I'm sad are no longer with us:

• The Post-Intelligencer

• A friend from high school

• Jon Updike

• B. Dalton stores

• The Rocky Mountain News

• Ted Kennedy; and with him, civility in the Senate

• Walter Cronkite

Things people thought might have disappeared I'm glad are still around:

• Ernie Harwell

• Web comics

• Used bookstores

• Sbarro's

• Borders

• Miramax

Things I wish would disappear:

• Athletes in the news for things other than athletics (Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, etc.)

• The phrase "raising Cain"

• People being surprised when politicians act like politicians

• Archie comics

• Printed phone books

• TV news

Technical skills I have learned while on the job that weren't strictly necessary:

• How to use XSLT to style/translate XML files

• Working knowledge of ASP.NET

• Advanced Javascript magic

• Useful tricks for AfterEffects, Illustrator and Blender

Women I would gladly marry if only they would rescind the restraining orders:

• Tina Fey

• Sarah Vowell

• That one girl from high school

• Zooey Deschanel

The Six Most Recent Additions to My "To Read" List:

• Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger

• Gilligan's Wake, by Tom Carson

• Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, by Barton Gellman

• The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture, by Nathan Rabin

• Looking for Calvin and Hobbes, by Nevin Martell

• His Name is Still Mudd: The Case Against Doctor Samuel Mudd, by Edward Steers

Things I’ve learned from watching The Twilight Zone:

• Most alien planets/asteroids look like Death Valley

• Windows in the 1950s had the tensile strength of wax paper

• Time must have worked a helluva lot differently back then (direct quote: "Well, we can't see the movement of a clock's hands, but they move")

• In most alternate realities, Earth ceased to exist by the mid-80s.

• Military officers can be knocked out with a swift punch to the gut

• I'm 90% sure the father of Tim Matheson (Otter from Animal house) wrote for the show

• All scientists are required to possess a full complement of chemical-filled beakers. Even if you're a physicist with a time machine, next to it should lay a full spread of fancy tubes and Bunsen burners on a table.

• Turns out it was earth all along

As I sat down in the dark, empty newsroom, I was suddenly hit by a realization. I wasn't going to blog about it, but I figure you've got to have some milestones in life.

As of right now, I will be starting on my second year of employment at the Evergreen.

Wow, it feels really weird to say that. I'm honestly shocked I'm still working here. Last summer, I was only working one job (computer repair, 20 hours a week), and was getting really bored. I saw a house ad looking for columnists, and seeing as how I love the sound of my own voice (figuratively, of course [or should I say, literarily]), I ventured down to the Murrow dungeon and grabbed an application.

It wasn't the first time I considered working for the Evergreen (I had picked an app that spring but never bothered to fill it out), but it was the first time I actually turned my application in. I filled it out and turned it in on June 17th, and promptly thought nothing else about it.

On the 19th, I got a call from Kellie, the opinion editor at the time. She said to come on in for an interview on the 20th (a Wednesday). I was somewhat surprised it was so quick, but I figured I should have a sample ready to show her in case she wanted to see how I wrote. I did some research, looked up some quotes about WSU in the press recently, and wrote up a quick column.

When I went in, Kellie went over the basics with me, told me I was hired and asked when I could have my first column in by. It literally took about that long. I showed her my sample column, to which she made a few suggestions/edits and printed it. I remember walking between Murrow East & West staring at my watch around 4:30. Damn, I thought, I'm gonna be in the newspaper. And I didn't have to get arrested or anything.

I didn't even know columnists got paid at that point. I was perfectly willing to do it for funsies so I wouldn't be so bored. I wrote about half a dozen columns, submitted my name at the end of the summer as someone willing to do it again in the fall, and dismissed it when I didn't hear anything.

Then, on the Tuesday of Work Week (the week before school starts when all the sororities and fraternities clean/repair their houses), I got a call on my phone. It was Lisa, telling me the Evergreen needed an opinion editor and someone (I'm assuming it was Mel) had mentioned me as someone who was capable of handling it (translation to my ears: Your copy didn't require too much work during the summer ... but I showed them!).

I called her back and was invited to visit the newsroom the next day.

Well, I dutifully turned up and was immediately intimidated by all the people who were busily and purposefully going about their work. Clearly, these were people who knew what the hell they were doing. Being far too nervous to speak, I was lucky Lisa happened to be coming out of her office and introduced herself to me. She (along with Tor) pulled me into the office and closed the door, with Lisa behind the desk and Tor seated in the pink comfy chair. I don't think Victor said much beyond quizzing me on some InDesign stuff, and it mostly consisted of Lisa couching everything in terms of language that implied I was taking the job, or else (it was a masterful job of persuasion). That was pretty much it. The next thing I knew Lisa led me outside the office, announced I was the opinion editor (I specifically remember Kaci yelling, "Finally!" or "Thank God!"), and off I went.

That was 10 months ago.

I still feel a little foolish typing in "deeditor" at the login screen every day, but I've mostly gotten over it. And ... I'm in charge? I still haven't stopped looking over at the editor's office, expecting Brian or Lisa or Tor or somebody to walk out and tell me what to do or pointing out how to do something better. It's always a bit of a jolt to realize how far away Tacoma, Spokane and the 'Couv really are.

I won't say every day working at the Ev is fun, because God knows there are those ridiculously frustrating days that make you feel all stabby. But I almost always feel better walking into the newsroom than I do any place else, and there aren't many other locales that I can say that about.

And even though this summer's provided its own set of ridiculous happenstance, I still feel we're able to take whatever comes at us and keep on rolling. As long as there's a passionate core group, this paper's never going under. Thank god for the summer staff, by the way. They freaking rock, even if I never bother to tell them (because there's always more work to be done).

I didn't ever think I'd end up working as an editor (hell, I barely knew what an editor did) when I first applied for the Ev, and I certainly didn't think I'd ever move out of opinion. Regardless, I can confidently say I've never once regretted any decision I made regarding working here.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure and thank everybody who helped me out along the way. Of course, by those people I mean all the other editors I've worked with (even including some who I never served under/with, but now wish I had) and even some of my writers (shudder), all of whom have helped me to get better at this thing as I go along, and I only hope I can help carry on the tradition. I'd list everybody individually, but the worst thing I can imagine is forgetting someone, so it's gotta be a group thang.

In short, it's been quite an eventful year for me. But as the saying goes, tomorrow's another day. And damn, the day after that's Sunday, which means another paper.

Better get to work.