Joel Bergman has officially survived the first week of December 2009

Wow. This was a hectic week. No major catastrophes but a lot of little earthquakes that all converged on an already bustling December. Car trouble, school trouble, phone trouble, and having to deal with an overactive imagination through it all.

It actually doesn’t sound that bad now that I’m writing it out on the page and mulling it over in my mind. I’m actually trying to figure out how I can exaggerate the story a bit for inflation’s sake.

I don’t know why I do this to myself.

I think a dam breaks in my mind and the thoughts start gathering and converging into all of the possibilities of what “could happen” which has absolutely nothing to do with the likeliness of what “may happen.” Like my classroom is displaced on a day when I’m going to have to be out and I’m imagining the building getting set on fire with kids screaming, jumping out of windows; a slightly less chaotic version of Lean on Me with mixed martial arts matches breaking out for entertainment.

On the sub plan, I wanted to write, “If anything starts to go awry, just save yourself.”

But everything was fine. There were no problems. I came back with the sub report in tact and the desks all in place (apparently they were brought in mid-morning sometime). He even swept.

Also, I was driving through a gas station car wash earlier this week imagining how I can survive the wiles of everything I was going through at school when I heard a loud crack somewhere on my left; sounding like a sledge hammer pounding into the metal next to my ear. It was actually the sound of my mirror getting snapped off by the metal bars of the washer.

There are no words.

Right afterwards, a handy man started making it worse by telling me how easy it is to replace the mirror.

“It’s simple. You just pop this part out and wedge that back through there and screw it all in. It’s easy.”

I just nodded and smiled saying, “Great, cool. That’s really cool. I’ll do that Thank you very much.”

He was clearly not familiar with my version of “easy.”

I spent the early part of this afternoon trying to stay out of my overly-stressed Armenian mechanic’s way while he walked around muttering and yelling about anything and everything. It was obviously a busy time for him.

To top it off, I had made the mistake of driving into the wrong garage slot and I’d immediately set him off. I think his anger at me was throwing off the coherence of his English which made me even more timid than I already was.

“You go out! What you need?! Back this!”

“What? I… I don’t… um… my mirror. I need to get it fixed. Can you…?

“No! You go out!”

“What? You can’t? You want me to…”

Of course, here my imagination starts to take off. I started imagining that I’d finally come across the type of situation that is truly impossible for anyone to fix. The type of situation where a mechanic just shakes his head and says, “You’re screwed. This is impossible to fix.”

But, again, there was no problem.

Part comes on Monday.

Christmas is Coming Like a Freight Train

Christmas is coming like a freight train. Richelle is busy decorating all over the house. She keeps saying things to me from the living room which I can’t quite hear.

So I say, “I can’t hear you!”

Then she says nothing.

Which means she’s either mad or she can’t hear me say that I can’t hear her.

I’m trying to make the tiny bit of wine left in my glass stretch as far as it can possibly go.

The music is taunting me.

She’s expressing worry about the Nativity scene and simultaneously hurrying me to get cheese and crackers that she wants to have with the wine.

She’s like a movie director on a deadline.

Slightly Overdramatic

In the spirit of adding a little variety to my life, I walked down the cracker isle in the supermarket today. I don’t know why I like just reading the labels.

Although 99.9% of the boxes cost way too much and I start whispering the amounts under my breath. I wish we could all be on board with realizing that they are just charging way too much for this stuff. Who is paying four dollars for Chicken in a Biskit? Somebody’s keeping it out of my reach.

I’m avoiding responsibilities by turning to writing my journal right now. My mind and body are refusing to work. We all know what needs to get done. The Id and the Ego are just through with "doing things". Even my Superego is sprawled out on the couch, eyes glued to the TV, with a half-gallon jug of ice cream propped up on his stomach. I'm letting him just zone out for now. The TV's not even on.

There are papers to grade. There is food to cook. But we’ve got nothing left.

I feel like Djimon Honsou in the movie Amistad where he’s stretching his chained hands out from the prisoner’s box and yelling, “Give me free!!!”

This maybe slightly overdramatizes my situation, but you feel how you feel.

An Attempt At An Explanation

5 AM. My body has a long standing rule to be perfectly willing to get up early on mornings that I don’t have to get up early and crave like the living dead to sleep longer on days that I do have to get up early.

For some reason, I started to think about my inability to maintain even a shred of normality in social situations. Or at least my perception of this.

I’m an introvert which means I look at parties or get-togethers the way many might look at war. My aim is not to have fun. My aim is to survive, keep all of my limbs in tact, keep all of my vital organs fully functioning, to not be dragged away in a straight jacket to an insane asylum, and to keep the odd misbehaviors from drawing so much attention that you don’t get invited to the next war.

From the looks I see on faces, I am absolutely sure I’ve frightened a lot of people out there. I would like to say that I don’t know myself half as well as I would like, but I do believe there is a normal person buried deep within me somewhere. The problem is, I think he’s been hog-tied by a maniac who walks around screaming “Hey!” at people while smiling too much and nodding too vigorously.

I don’t know why I get the instinct to run the other direction every time I see a room of people. I’ve always had trouble following the “just act like yourself” rule because, when the pressure is on, I can’t remember what “yourself” acts like. There's no script.

The normal guy inside me is pleading with me to just smile, shake hands, and say “How’s it goin’?” in a calm voice. The nod isn’t even necessary.

But, even before I enter the room, the maniac is already panicking and hyperventilating with sweaty palms thinking, “Oh geez, oh geez. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. We’re under attack! Abort the mission! Bravo! Tango! Echo! Pull back, men!”

Grandma

Okay. I haven’t been back to this thing forever. I’ve been slacking. I admit it. There are extenuating circumstances but there are always extenuating circumstances.

As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”

I will give myself a tiny little pass on these past few weeks though. My grandmother died and I’ve been having trouble putting my thoughts into words about it. It was only about a month ago that my Dad called to tell me that she had cancer. I cried a lot that day and I think I outcried everyone at the funeral. Not that there’s any competition for these things.

But I’ve been feeling like I need to write something about it. About her. And I just can’t think of the right words.

Any words that I have to write about her just seem so trivial.

It feels like it’s so long till I’m going to see her again.

My Dad once told a story about his own grandmother when he was a child. She was coming to visit the whole family on the train and he had so much excitement to see her. But several weeks would pass by and when it came time for her to leave, she would have to board the same train and wave good-bye. Being only a child, it was difficult for him to understand that he was going to see her again someday.

That’s how I feel.

I love you, Grandma.

Bad Decision

Sunday morning. The Portillo’s polish sausage last night was amazing, but combined with a few too many fries and a chocolate shake large enough to bathe in while I’m sucking it down was a bit too much.

As Miss Piggy once said, “Never eat more than you can lift.”

Our TV is Digging Itself a Hole in Our Backyard

Saturday morning. Our massive, big screen TV in the living room is slowly dying which is breaking my heart. You realize how attached you get to things after they start packing their bags and showing you the tickets of places their going to be traveling in the world. We had so many good times!! Don't leave!!!

I still watch a little Fox News for the political commentary but it looks as though everyone I’m seeing has just crawled out of a pool of a highly toxic pink jello. On a Saturday morning coffee high, this only increases the levels of paranoia one can experience.

I start to feel a sneaking suspicion that liberals may have something to do with the fact that O’Reilly looks like his hair is playfully on fire.