The World is a Vampire...

Nothing in life is really a problem, simply a situation that needs to be resolved. The unfortunate fact is that my life is nothing but situations. Some days I wake up in short breaths and anxiety.

I think many people do.

Poor people will tell you that money fixes everything. Rich people will insist that money doesn’t really solve a thing. I’m only seeking a happy medium, a way to pay my bills and shrink the steadily mutating debt weighing down on my shoulders. Some days I wake up aching, my muscles sore from carrying the daily burden of living here.

This place.

This illusion of freedom like hamsters in glass cages or Dobermans on retractable leashes. Trapped. A mime in one of those invisible boxes, all blank expressions and palms flattening against air.

We grow up believing that we can do anything. We can’t. But sweet disillusion tastes so much better than realizing that your parents are liars. Santa Clause and Tooth Fairies. Easter Bunnies. No mother sings a child to sleep with lullabies of mortgages and repossessions, student loans and health insurance. No father tosses a football and tells his son about car payments and credit card debt. Layoffs. Dead-end jobs. Divorce. Child support. Taxes. You can’t be anything you want to be, you can only attempt to be the best at what you do. We can’t all be astronauts and movie stars.

Writers.

Some days I wake up and wish I didn’t. Open tired eyes to another day of trying to be something. Trying. We’re always trying. Trying to get through college, graduate school. Trying to get a nice salary. Trying to impress people. Trying to buy a house. Trying to start a family. Trying to make it to retirement. Trying to die. They say that rational thought is what separates us from the beasts, and from our little domesticated housepets. Animals are never trying to do anything. They just are. I want to cross the threshold into a place where I can just be. A day, a week, a month.

Forever.

A frozen moment where situations do not exist. The wild spectrum of emotion disappears. Nothingness. Deep breaths and complete ease, without furrowed brows and headaches. Without the falsehood and the facades. Instead we are click-clacking at keyboards. Paying people to teach us things that we already know and then selling our recycled thoughts back into the consumer circus at some marketing meeting. In some promotional campaign.

We are borrowing money for tuition for the sole purpose of getting a job where you will spend half a lifetime paying it back. Thank you, Sallie Mae. Thank you, Savings and Loan. This degree under my belt will surely make the next 30-years of succumbing to authority worthwhile. Climbing this corporate ladder rung by tireless rung will now be somewhat bearable. As I’m creating my situations.

The work situation.
The home situation.
The car situation.
The situation with my family.

Masking the problems.

The only problems that ever really get solved are in arithmetic. But we still try. Try and try again. Try to find ourselves on the other side of the equal sign. But some days I wake up, and the entire equation seems nothing but a dream.

Where is your diploma?

I realized today that I am irritated by extremely trivial things.

I attended a great college. I went to New York University. I had a fabulous time partying my way through Manhattan, losing my inhibitions and my coveted accessories. On occasion, I even learned a thing or two, took a few notes, and attended a couple of lectures. My professors were all experts in the field, and dedicated most of their free time to teaching us future debutantes how to succeed.

This all sounds like the fabulous introduction to a high school reunion speech, but the fact is that I really hate telling people where I went to school. They immediately turn on that "wow" face as if I told them I re-invented the wheel. Or Velveeta.

Society dictates that you are supposed to go to a good school, get one of those "good" jobs where you earn a salary, punch a time card, and worry yourself about collating paperwork. I must apologize to the cubicle lemmings of America when I say that office work is just not for me. No matter my score on the SAT or my ambition of wearing pantsuits and carrying briefcases. Sitting at a desk for nine hours a day is just not my cup of tea, I don't care care how much you're willing to pay me.

I was walking through the parking lot to work today, and I saw a car with one of those bumper stickers in the back. It was one of those clear ones that you put in the rear window, that advertise your college or university in big bright letters. I squinted my eyes against the sun and for some odd reason I wanted to beat in that glass with a baseball bat.





New York University. Yes, that's what it said.

It seemed so pretentious and needy. Look at me, I paid over $40,000 a year for secondary education and now I'm driving a car that proclaims it. Look at me and my higher education. My purple and white. Look at me. Look!

I stood there for a few seconds and questioned the purpose. Life is all about impressing people. I think about that everytime a customer asks where I went to school and gives that cynical eyebrow raise. "New York University? Well, what are you doing here?"

I'm living my life one day at a time. That's what. If I could have it to do all over again I would surely go to community college. I would work a part-time job at Burger King and take home free french fries every night. I would try not to give these people something to talk about over glasses of wine.

So there I stood, staring at this NYU bumper sticker in the back of the window and wondering why any rational adult would feel the need to have it displayed. A status symbol, perhaps. Another backhanded way of telling people that "I am better than you." This is my proof.

It's similar to one of those bumper stickers that say "my kid is an honor roll student at so-and-so elementary school." Really? Do you really think I care about your eleven-year-old honor roll student as I'm tailgaiting your Volvo and rolling through a yellow light?

I don't.

And I don't care where you went to school.

Just food for thought.