Ted Talk – Secrets of Longevity
My latest favorite snippet of valuable learning once again comes from a TED Talk. I’ve been watching these for years.
In this talk, to find the path to long life and health, Dan Buettner and team from National Geographic study the world’s “Blue Zones,” communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. At TEDxTC, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100.html
No surprise, Japan and Italy include one of the blue zones where people in a certain community share a long life. And we find out a little bit of why that is. It’s not all what you might think.
January 10, 2010 at 2:59 am | family, friends, inspiration, interesting, learning | No comment
What to do on your birthday
There is a speaker guy named Seth Godin. Everybody likes him. Me too. And I read his site today, about birthdays. He was asking, what should we do on your birthday? Because mine is this coming week, it got me thinking about how I’ve been the past few years. Gifts have been really difficult to give and receive. I don’t take giving lightly in most cases. It’s hard for me, because if it’s going to be a thing I give, I want it to be special because it really will represent something, it acts on my behalf when I’m not there. Certainly I’m not better at receiving, because people ask me what I want for my birthday and I really can’t bring a certain object I want. I really just want to be better than I am. I want to see continuous improvement both slow and steady and through wild bursts and revelation. Projects I want finished, objectives I want conquered. Because it seems that when these things have happened, all the other gifts just flow in. But I don’t just want them done. I want to be engaged throughout the process. Nobody can do that for me, can they?
And yet when I think about that. It sounds like I want to rush through a segment of my life to get it where I expect I should be. As if I’m not quite complete yet. Not good enough. Analyzing that is kind of fun at this moment, because it’s a good reminder of how ridiculous it is. I’m happy that I don’t really believe that. And I’d be sad if others did for themselves.
If someone’s birthday is a day to be celebrated, it’s because of a person’s uniqueness and celebrating it because before that date, they weren’t here. The world before them didn’t enjoy their personality and contributions, their silliness, their ideas, and the things they do for others. At their moment, the pebble struck the water’s surface and the ripples began. The sequence of events in our world without their existence is difficult to imagine. Maybe even lonely.
And because they are here, often so briefly, it is one day a year where we remind them that it has been important that they are here, important to us, many of us. That’s the best thing we can probably do for people. And if we are all too distracted on that day to know or remind ourselves of the reason, that’s ok too. Because even if we realize it on another day, it’s that moment we appreciate somebody for who they are, we are bigger, we have grown.
So how do you celebrate someone’s uniqueness? I wish I could give a perfect answer, but I’ll try. I think the best you can do, is knowing them, you know what they like, what they do, want to be, or accomplish. Do your best to imagine what it takes to get there or to do that. And if you find your own personal way to help them do that, that day, I think it would be a hero’s gift, without a doubt. If you are close to them and already doing that, then maybe just a small surprise is something that’s needed. If you are far away, a card sent or a friendly phone call, can encourage and help and just tell them how much you and the people in their world appreciate them. You can also try to engage in their world a little more too. If you only saw them twice this year, try for five times over next year.
July 4, 2009 at 9:18 pm | family, friends, learning, nostalgia | No comment
Our last night in Japan
This is the sixth time I’ve been to Japan. This visit has been the longest, nearly two months. I’m a little nervous for some reason the night before the flight. Perhaps the large coffee I made myself, or just jitters for everything to work out ok. But it already has worked out ok. I suppose if my plane goes down in the ocean tomorrow, in my last moments I hope I could remember how great everything has been. We’ve been treated so well. Many outings and terrific meals at home and at various places. There has been a lot of good humor, surprises and interesting conversations. I came here hoping that I would have learned a little more about myself, perhaps came back a changed person. I do feel changed, but I realize now that no visit to another country helps you become the person you want to be. These changes are more involuntary. Nearly too subtle to report or specify, but I can feel them a little bit.
Every other time we have this final night, I always well up with tears at some point. It’s thankfulness you know. The part of me that can’t express properly I internalize and spills out of my eyes I guess. This time I want to hold it together. I’ll be just as thankful, but I want to save it for the plane. We are nearly packed, only a few accessories like this laptop and some trinkets are left to jam into my bag. Tomorrow, I imagine we won’t rush at all being we have a later flight. We’ve done this a few times now, so no real uncertainties.
So what have we done? Well it has been a mix of everything. A lot of mundane activities around the house, which I like. I enjoy spending entire days around the house as a matter of fact. I don’t even mind on some days that Japan is right outside and I don’t even step off the porch. We’ve had many day trips, some for shopping, some purely for scenery. Obsessed with taking pictures, I’ve burned through memory cards and entire camcorder hard disk. I’m happy I haven’t had to copy more than one set of cards and the camcorder because I am out of space on my laptop to backup to. We went to various locations to view cherry blossoms. This was the point of coming this time of year. I went on a run at Camp Zama military base (United States) during their festival. I went on training runs around the neighborhood. I’ve had special moments drinking in the beauty.
Family came over several times and we drove to visit them as well. Recently we went with Grandma and Grandpa to see Mt. Fuji from a secluded lookout point. Juri and I spent a night in a small village of historic build called Shirakawa-go. We went on a picnic bike ride over one of Dad’s long lunches. We played a few putt-putt golf challenges behind his animal hospital. We watched Mom’s favorite concert DVDs of the ultra-popular boy band called Arashi.
Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of downtime too, where I could have been building many new work initiatives. I did work, but I also let go of many proactive work possibilities in exchange for nothing special. On this last day I’d like to be able to say I went down my to-do list, the one that I wrote and rewrote several times while here and did everything on it. I’d like to say that but I can’t. Even if that makes me not bad, but just normal, I’m still regretting it. I did a few things, but not nearly enough. Even though I have a lot of fun working on the design projects I do, I trade that sometimes for letting my ‘Mr. Hyde’ take advantage of time-wasters.
Juri has a fun and unique family here. They appreciated that we spend time with them. They enjoyed even short opportunities to chat and drink tea together. Juri does a fantatic job quickly translating my little quips and jokes into something that works on their end. They are always laughing with us, and that is why we came. As much of a physical burden we must be, I thought that we could bring some happiness with us for them. Winter was long and cold for us and it had been too long. We thought we could bring some variety or some sunshine to the family.
I have a few pictures from the last couple weeks. We are happy for what we’ve been able to take part in. We are thankful to our family here and back home for taking care of us and our things. Stories and humor live on when the moment is over. We look forward to the next chance to come back again. We want it to be an ongoing exchange because it feels right, makes it less sad, and most of all, I haven’t climbed Mt. Fuji yet!
April 21, 2009 at 9:05 am | Japan, family, photography | 1 comment
Holiday Linux for Aunt Judy
Two posts ago, I attempted to lay out whether Linux could replace Windows sufficiently for most people. Some rewarding field work today proves it can and does happen. My Aunt was complaining about viruses again after we reinstalled XP less than a year ago. Imagine my surprise hearing of this. But it got me thinking about what I could do about it this time for a more permanent fix. Refreshing Windows is annoying for sure, but worse is the way people respond to their infected computers. They feel uncertain if they can properly use a computer, that maybe they caused the problem. Some feel guilty for wasting money on an lemon, even though their PC is probably fine.
Fortunately aunt Judy has a small set of needs for computing. Webmail and Internet searches and maybe the occasional letter document. She added pressure by surprising me with her dysfunctional printer that could only spit out blank pages. And we needed to give one more critical device a closer look. She hopes to one day see her grandkids on her new webcam before they graduate college.
I only had a disc of Ubuntu Studio 8.10 on hand that I had planned to eventually use at home. It would work fine, though it has too many programs Jude has no use for. Oh well. Either I could spend two hours removing stuff in the package manager or She could simply ignore some of the menu clutter. After a briefing, she assured me she didn’t have anything on the computer she was keeping so I went with an overwrite install on the hard drive. A nice clean slate. Cool!
Ubuntu Studio didn’t come with office, so I installed OO.org. Then I added MS Core fonts and Flash Player 10 for a better web experience. Of course the Ubuntu auto updates were dying to join the party so we let them in.
This “Studio” distribution of Linux is centered around media creation and it’s really beautiful. I loved the startup animation and login screen. The main menu bar and empty desktop are dead simple. I replaced the wallpaper with a fun 3D graphic I created last year and some nice big essential desktop icons. Then I reinstated some of their web favorites. Judy was pleased I didn’t delete Google and returned it to its proper location. Everything was going well, but I still had that feeling that I’d be abandoning them tonight and something they expected wouldn’t be there. I think they voted for Bush so maybe they’ll appreciate security and overlook any of the liberties I accidently might have taken away from them. ;>)
Next I installed the latest skype from a .deb installer file on skype’s homepage. The webcam and video test worked, but later we got an audio io error when I rang her from Skype at home. Add to that, her printer managed to still only spittle out blank pages. This makes me growl. Sure we haven’t lost anything that wasn’t disabled before, but I can’t stand loose ends.
What is great though? Once prolific virus code on Windows will wither and die trying to execute on Linux. Plus the addition of a hardware router (I can’t believe I missed this the last time.) helped us close the door on ancient history.
Now for the absolute best thing about today. Spending some fun time with Jude and Sammy chatting about everything. Family, politics, past Christmas’ and listening to old tape recordings of me, my sisters and my cousin Jen when we were 4-7 years old. I hope she had fun like I did. Judy apologized that it took six hours to do everything, but I could have been out of there in just two hours if I really wanted to just get it done. I loved introducing them to some of the fun stuff I do with computers such as discovering favorite music on Pandora.com web radio. They had no idea something like that existed. We also watched part of a feature film in full screen on Hulu.com and looked at all the free movies and TV shows Hulu has. It was a good test for Linux Flash player too. Judy’s old Dell was performing well and I think it might have long life ahead of it. I’m hoping now there are some new activities that will be enriching for them.
Next mission: Give Judy my old (yet very booming) Cambridge speakers so they have even better radio sound. And we WILL conquer the webcam and printer troubles eventually.
January 5, 2009 at 3:44 am | computers, family | 1 comment
The Last Mile
Too many problems over the past couple weeks, too many delays and it has really made our migration back to St. Louis a bitter last mile. Sure we have plenty of fun, but with some issues with fixit people, inspectors, loan officers, it just leaves me hoping for the final moments that we can pack a truck and finalize this stuff. We’re almost there.
We’re going to be moving from a house we own to an apartment or some other rental property. Why? Because despite being a buyers market, it’s not a freelancer’s market. They like for you to have two years under your belt before assuming you’re doing ok enough to give you a home loan. I don’t care that much anyway. Why would I want debt again? The reason for my self-employment over the past year has been flexibility anyway. Now that we are moving back, I can finally settle in more to what I love.
I want to say thanks to my parents for helping us get organized and for coming out to move a few things. Also their willingness to help us keep moving, and not to lose focus. Also thanks to our real estate agents. When we were looking for houses, our buyer’s agent was tireless. And we seemed so close, but it wouldn’t be. Our seller’s agent for our house is doing well too. We’re happy to be able to sell in this market. We found the right buyer and we sold intelligently. Sure I’d love to have the thousands of dollars I’m losing with going with agents. However, I’m doing ok. There’s always a better way to get it done. This is the way I did it and I’ll leave the regrets at the door of my new home.
Mostly I’m excited to get back in touch with old friends, classmates. Making new connections will be fun and so will spending time with family, such as my cousins who work in electric and building. I want to job shadow everybody I can just for the heck of it.
October 23, 2008 at 2:50 am | family | No comment
Dealing with the aging of loved ones
I’ve written about death before. It’s a topic you can’t avoid sometimes I suppose. It’s a topic worth exploring. Though I feel like my own death might be a ways off, being only thirty, I suppose you never know. Over the past few days, I’ve had a couple experiences that started to seem like a pattern. Noticing it, I began to desire to put it into words. This is just a short exercise, so bear with me.
Over time, we’ll have loved ones that grow old and die. When you are close to them and have been for some time, you’ll see the changes in front of you. One experience I had was thinking about my wife and I. We are still young and active. We are as sharp as can be in terms of mind alertness and personality. But eventually, we won’t be as sharp. One of us will get to the point where we notice the other starting to fail at certain things. It’s strange, but the thing that was most sad was thinking about one day having to tell someone else about how that loved one used to be, before they started getting old. Saying the words felt the most scary. “Yes I remember when they used to be so witty, and now s/he’s really lost a lot of that, really faded in the last three years.” I don’t know why, but it really gets me emotionally to think of that.
Another experience was I was watching this movie called “American Movie” about this guy my age who desperately wants to make a film. He feels like it’s his way to get out of being poor, or to be somebody. It’s a wonderful documentary. In it, he has an older uncle that he’s always trying to convince to fund his projects. The uncle is pretty old, his speech is slurred, his mind seems dulled. Sadly, the uncle dies sometime during the final production of the documentary, as it’s mentioned in the credits. At one point, the filmmaker’s dad, brother to the old uncle talks about him and how he used to be. The father is older, but still very sharp. He’s lived through seeing his brother grow up, become a scholar and then grow old and become senile. That might have been the brother that taught him to play baseball or tennis. That was the brother he might have looked up to, the one he wanted to grow strong like, or emulate. Now he’s a tired, old and dying man. How would you deal with that?
The third experience was today. I was helping my friend move a couple pieces of furniture in his new house. He had a photo of his mother on the window sill. He and his siblings are going to make a trip with mom in the coming months. An Alaskan cruise. They have an urgency to go this year because mom is starting to show signs of aging. Some frailty, even senility. They want to create this trip and experience it, as well as have the memory of it while mom can still do it. She deserves to experience it with all the senses she can. Everyone else too. How will they feel on the plane ride back from that trip? Once it’s over, it’s not the end of her life by any means. But they will have some feelings to contend with perhaps.
I don’t want any loved ones to die, certainly not my close family and my loving wife. But it’s going to happen isn’t it? This mindscape I live daily, lost in thought not nearly in the moment as I should be, it’s happening to all of us though. We can face it now, keeping it close to us, or face it later. We will have to face it. A popular writer I recently read about decided to estimate how much longer he has left to live. From that, he’s started a running countdown clock on his website. He wanted something he would see every single day. He’s done this to completely face that fact of his own death and to deal with how much there is to create, to accomplish before his own passing day.
I guess I don’t have an exercise on this as I thought I did. Writing this article has been the exercise. For you, maybe reading it will be. I ask that you take care of yourself and loved ones. Have many special and exerting experiences to stay sharp to live fully and enjoy others around you. Drink good red wine, do crossword puzzles and math problems, engage in new conversations, meditate. Or just be you for as long as you can.
September 28, 2007 at 5:27 am | family, philosophy | 1 comment
Lost my camera in Current River
 Juri and I went camping with my family this past weekend. We drove to St. Louis, and from there, down to Poplar Bluff (Van Buren) Missouri. I have quite a few memories of that place growing up. It was a spot we’d go to for vacation when I was little. Saying the Smick’s are outdoors kind of people is an understatement. I don’t do it enough, but when I do camp with family, I love it. You have the little nuances of the woods, creepy crawlies, animals that rustle the leaves nearby while you are trying to sleep, frying up potatoes and bacon outside over a flame. A chill of the morning and warming up with a nice fleece and putting a few sticks on the fire.
The main purpose of the trip was a family reunion. Dozens of family were there, some stayed in the park, some lived a few miles away. I got to talk to a lot of relatives, gave and received many hugs and kisses. Also, Juri and I went on her first canoe trip. I had my camera, safe and sound in a plastic baggie, even got some nice shots off with it. Everything was fine until I neglected to take it out of my pocket when I was helping my cousin fish out his lost paddle and life jacket from the river. The current sucked the baggie with my camera and driver’s license right out of my pocket. I try not to form attachments to things, but it’s hard you know. That camera took really great macro pictures, even good video. It cost me about 200 bucks, so I’m expectedly bummed. But the photos from the reunion including some nice canoe pictures were lost. That’s just heartbreaking.
But I noticed something kind of special. For me at least. As outgoing and goofy I sometimes can be, I’m actually pretty quiet. Since I don’t remember names all that well, I always feel a twinge talking with cousins that I don’t see very often. I’ll not know their girlfriend, or their married name or their kid’s names, so that bind makes me stay off to the side. But those missed opportunities to talk to family are wasteful, even rude.  I was actually happy that my dad had told a bunch of people about the lost camera. Some family members came up to me to sympathize a little. And though I didn’t need sympathy, that loss was a perfect conversation starter. You wouldn’t think you’d need an icebreaker to talk to family, but you know how reunions are, there’s just as many strangers as close kin.
My aunt said that a cousin of mine lost his wallet on that same river and somebody found it a few weeks later and returned it. I won’t hold my breath, but if it does turn up, I might actually be able to get photos off the card. Flash memory is pretty durable. I’ve had a thumbdrive go through the laundry once or twice unscathed. We’ll see if it turns up. So now, I have to decide if I want a replacement camera.
We did not have a good weekend for electronics for sure. Juri has also lost her electronic translator dictionary and that costs more than the camera to replace. On the bright side, I didn’t have any ticks dug into my scrotum this time. That is a good trade.
September 26, 2007 at 7:52 am | family, gadgets, photography | No comment
Try not to anger your one true fan
I sent my mom a small stack of my new business cards in the mail before heading off to Japan. I was really proud of them because Juri and I collaborated on them for a considerable amount of time. The card was also meant to be the symbol of my new business. We even made one side of the card in Japanese so we could show them off to Juri’s family and some other VIPs we are meeting with. I’ll also have to talk more about the barcode that I put on the cards at some point.
Anyway, after my mom recieved the cards, she fired up the old PC to look at my website and what I had been up to. I have always had the suspicion that everything I write makes her roll her eyes. She’s has been supportive despite the eyerolling thing. I wrote a post over a month ago about 25 things I had been thinking about. In it, I mentioned that I wanted to encourage my dad to quit smoking, but I often felt blocked by her. Seeking to deter conflict between my dad and I, she would steer me away from yelling at him about it. Isn’t that the true mother’s role in the animal kingdom? In order to continue the species, the mother must occasionally prevent the idiot son from getting eaten by his father for mouthing off about something he knows little about.
My comment that she was an apologist came from my perspective on several situations. But perspective, like perception doesn’t mean s***. Because perspective doesn’t show you that when you weren’t looking, your mom has been hounding your dad at every appropriate moment how his smoking will affect her and him in the future. Perspective won’t tell you how someone has been battling behind the scenes. Your belief in your own perspective can render you absolutely wrong. How many times do I have to learn this? If you scrubbed through my site right now, I bet you’d find tons of very uneducated comments that I would be embarrassed to recall if you reminded me of them. Even right now, I have to ask myself “Have I looked over this entry to make sure it really says what I mean? Will this entry bite me later? Will this entry hurt my number one fan when she reads it?”
If only self-editing weren’t so troublesome and time consuming. If only we could change our minds about a subject given new knowledge and have all of our old writings updated for us automatically. “Oh you see I don’t really hate people from Florida, I’ve righted all those wrongs, just check out my blog now!” We could be consistent instantly and always. Of course it wouldn’t be good for those of us who need to be truly held accountable for our actions such as presidents and dictators. But for those of us who don’t want to ruin their number one fan’s day, that ability would really help.
May 31, 2007 at 8:36 pm | family, learning, rants, writing | No comment
Why having an international marriage is easier now than ever
The other day, my boss said, “Mike I don’t know how you do it, being married to someone from another country, with the language barrier. Communication is hard enough for married people from the same town and background. It has to be tough!”
It’s hard to address that kind of comment or compliment when you’re biting into a burrito on a work lunch. Later, having digested it, the statement I mean, I truly believe it is easier to have a relationship like mine (with someone from another country and culture) than it ever has been in the past. In my case an American mutt in the Midwest, making a life here with a Japanese wife.
You must have that personal time to be who you really are
Personal space can be created quite easily from the coldness of computers and the internet. No matter what size your home his, I think that you can create personal space from having separate computers. It sounds terrible doesn’t it, but it does work. Juri can research her own interests, such as crafts, Japanese news and celebrities and comedy. If you think Youtube and internet videos were just a way to waste time, but don’t provide real value, you are very wrong. It is new to us and many others over the past year and a half that Juri can watch uninterrupted streaming Japanese TV programs in short and long clips. This simple flash video technology gives her her own Japan space. It’s relief from the exhaustion of being someone else all day. She has to play the role of an english speaking teacher in real life, but at home, she can go back to Japan and laugh at Japanese comedians, see popular dramas and of course read blogs or email family and friends in her own language. As I’m writing this, she’s in that space right now, just as if she was 5,000 miles away at home. Twenty years ago, she might be able to acquire a good book collection, or a video cassette library of Japanese movies, but this isn’t the same as connecting to her culture in real time with the Internet. Almost as good as being there.
Finding a group of your own kind to connect with
Finding a support group is easier. Every organized group, including the Japanese societies that exist in any locality have some sort of online presence. It might just be a mention in an article, or a phone listing, but more likely there is a little website for the organization. This means that finding a group of like minded people is easier than ever. You can find people around you with a short search on the web such as “St. Louis” + “Swedish organizations”. You must appreciate how creating your own island of your native people is valuable to a person who is away from their home. In our case, belonging to and volunteering with the Japan-America society, we go to more events and meet more Japanese people in a few months than we would grow to know over a decade, if this was 1960. Fifteen years ago, to find them, we’d have to luckily stumble across a flyer advertising an event that we could go to or meet someone who already knew about it. Now, anyone can subscribe to multiple online calendars getting notices via email of upcoming activities within a cultural group, from festivals, to nights out for beers or a dinner party.
Family Connections
Along with a personal space and time, Juri has the benefit of email, an efficient postal system between the US and Japan, and the ever valuable Internet Relay Chat. Replaced by Yahoo Chat, which was an important tool for the two of us when separated by the Pacific, Skype is now Juri’s tool of choice to see mom and dad weekly or daily. Skype gives a simple high quality audio and decent video chat that her and her mother and father can use for free. It’s common for Juri to fire up the computer at 5:30 in the evening after work and catch her parents online cooking breakfast and ready to say hello before they head to work. Her dad also will log in at his work and chat if time permits well into our dinner time and before bed. During family gatherings when Aunts and Uncles visit, the chat line is open and we can all say hello. To be able to see your family and talk to them through a computer and having that live video is absolutely priceless.
As I mentioned before, it was Yahoo Chat that worked best, but Skype provides a near perfect audio feed, so from being upstairs and eavesdropping, the voices often sound to me like her parents are her visiting the house. Surely 10 years from now, TV screens will be larger and the video feed, beautiful and fast, clear as a home movie. For now, Juri can connect with home, even having the arguments and fights that she normally would have with parents and brother. Trust me, I’ve seen them.
Access to products formerly out of reach
In some ways, it’s unfortunate because it makes hunting for unique gifts harder, but we are exposed to all kinds of cultural artifacts and common items just by visiting certain aisles of a supermarket, or even a Target store these days. You also have the World Market, which 40 years ago, might cater to a completey different group, but now seems to fit your average design conscious citizen looking for a new kitchen set or an exotic hot sauce. We don’t have a China or Asia town where I live, but we still have places we can go. Retailers have found that providing goods from other countries is another way to stand out and to keep shoppers interested. Consumers can tap into new tastes and decorative ideas. People like my wife, are able to see products from their home country and can comment on them whether good or bad. It might seem weird, but if she sees a really bad knockoff Japan product, we can laugh about it and use that experience to learn or reminisce. That poorly crafted knockoff sitting on a store shelf somehow provides value or appreciation of home, bringing home closer for that moment.
These are just the places that might be around town, depending on the area you live. But again with an internet connection, you can access all kinds of niche stores selling the items that you might miss, such as cooking spices, snacks, utensils and wares that you would just have to go on missing if it were 1957. If Juri wants to cook something she’s used to having, most of the items can be found. Probably everything but perhaps the rarer vegetables.
Ever since we met, we’ve had really good communication, so my bosses comment somehow went over my head, as if he was talking about problems other people have. For us, mostly it’s smooth. Whatever magic that is between Juri and I, be it a mixture of the right patience for one another and ourselves, or the simple knowing that we have outlets to be ourselves and little ways to retreat, we are making it work day by day, just like any international couple from the last century would. It’s easier for us I think than it has been for others because of our historical examples we can call up, and hopes toward the future. Come to think about it, the hope may be the real reason. If you can find hope in your life you conquer and live through anything.
May 8, 2007 at 12:31 am | Japan, family, interesting, nostalgia | No comment
Sleepwalker
We used to live in this ranch syle house where I shared a bunkbed with my older sister. This would put me at about four years old. My parents room was adjacent to our room, and the bathroom was across from them.
One morning my mom was talking to me and told me what I had done the night before. She said she was startled in the middle of the night seeing me walk into the bedroom. I didn’t say anything to them, just walked in like a zombie. My father was there too. I proceeded to to the side wall and began to urinate on it.
Now I don’t think I have sleptwalked since then, but I’m sure I was more creeped out than they were. Sleepwalking was something you’d see in bad comedys where somebody pretends to have a reason for ending up in a room they aren’t supposed to be. But for me, I worried I’d wind up in the street. I actually sat down and tried to break down the situation as best a four-year-old can. Why did I go to my mom’s room to pee? Where did I stand? I came to the conclusion that I must have flipped around my internal map of the house. Had I been initially traveling from the opposite end of the hall, my position would have been perfect for hitting the toilet dead on. Or at least the back of the lid. That made me smile. Why? Because looking at it that way, it was in fact a pretty good shot. Not bad getting off the top bunk while asleep too. The one little detail of the wrong room became irrelevant. I turned a failure into a success!
I don’t wake up these days with urine soaked walls, but in college a friend told me that his drunk roommate came home late one night and pee’d in the fridge. What a jackass I thought. I could do way better than that.
