F5…refresh.  When I’m feeling an overwhelming need for change it usually ends up with a shaved head (mine) or some kind of cleaning house (not the actual house).  It feels good to go light with an old fashion buzz in spite of the fact that my mom cries big Mexican tears that I “look like a cholo.”  It also feels good to file and or delete photos from my phone, but it is not without a small moment of regret when I hit ‘confirm delete’ and watch a year of photos just vanish.

Within the last two weeks, I did both: buzz the head and delete all the images on my phone – the hair was too long and I needed space on my hand-held, life-controlling unit they call a smart phone.  As a result, two things happened.  The first is that any new photo that I took with a shaved head highlighted an unmistakable feature that before last year went relatively unnoticed: I have a bald spot in the front of my head.  A-BALD-SPOT.  Lo and behold, not a few people happened to point this out on a blog post and damned if they weren’t right.  I told the wife and she laughed.  I told the kid and he laughed.  I, I did not laugh.

No, I am not losing my hair; yes, there is clearly a spot where no haireth doth grow, but the reason is simple enough: I have a pretty nasty scar in the front of my dome where someone threw a shopping cart on my head during a fight.  (That, as they say, is a story for another post.)  Whatever the case, it was obvious, looked ridiculous, and it was clear that shaving my head is no longer an option unless it’s down to the scalp and it stays that way.

Interestingly, deleting photos also came with the realization that, in some small way, I was figuratively about to leave behind a bunch of past memories.  The little phone, its camera, its tiny little storage card now just sat there as a reminder that I was obliged to make and capture new memories — to fill it back up with beautiful images of friends, trips, dog photos, dumb signs, social media downloads, family, selfies for which my son would tease me, food I’ve made, and the inevitable grainy photos of the ground, my finger, space…all of which resulted from just hitting the wrong button.

It didn’t take long to realize that the scar and my hair were not coming back on the silver-dollar sized patch on the front of my head, and it took less than five seconds to delete all of the photos that I had amassed over the last year or so. 

Now, I guess, I grow out the hair and let a few curls hide the landing pad…and begin to grow new memories to replace the ones that I no longer call up to explain my raison de etré.  I’m okay with that. 

Just be sure to duck when someone throws a shopping cart at your head…and backup the photos you mistakenly feel you won’t miss.  Backup…it’s the new sunscreen.

I hate chickens; they freak me out.  The jerky movements, the vacant eyes, the feet.  No, no, and nope.  The little hen above (the one with the jacket) hangs out all day with her two coopmates, who, under the cover of darkness, peck the hell out of her while she just sort of sits around and stares out of the cage — no noise, no fight…just chicken.  So the good owners finally decide to get the hen a jacket, which is meant to protect her from the abuse of her buddies, who still occasionally walk by and peck at the piece of Kevlar.

Seriously, I could go on about the birds, but this post isn’t really about chickens, it’s about people…people acting like chickens.  Every time I look at the chicken jacket I am reminded that some people just don’t have a vocabulary for helping others in need.  Too busy to take a call, not enough time to hear out a friend who is swimming in pool of doubt or fear, or, perhaps, just bewildered about what to say to offer solace.  It’s passive, and odd, and I find myself falling into this trap all the time.

Others, far better than myself, DO take the calls, DO make time to listen, and DO tend to rebalance the chicken shit-house in which we sometimes find ourselves living.  Those people are like the chicken jacket.  You’re not going to change the basic nature things, but even the smallest bit of help in the form of a good listener makes a huge difference in one’s quality of life.  When I need ’em, I’m glad to know that I own a few jackets.

Okay, off for lunch — a hard boiled egg and a banana.  Cheers.

Last week, I almost created a category for the blog entitled ‘Excuses’ because, hell, I’ve been coming up with a lot of them lately for putting off suffering time in the water: jacked up shoulder, too damn cold, too much work/too little work, wondering how to fix things that can’t be fixed…a dog that has serious anxiety about not finding a place for his favorite bone.  All shite excuses, yes, but man how they can take on false importance.  Bugbears, all of them.

It’s time to search out some suffer-time and realize there is no perfect place to hide — it’s your own goddamned bone so go out and enjoy it.  People like you better when you enjoy it.

Oh, and go read Alain De Botton’s book Status Anxiety.  He makes a compelling historical argument about how our notions of success or failure are bound up in an overly simplified binary: you either are or you aren’t.  He notes that success and failure (words that have no inherent value) coexist…you can be one hell of squirrel chaser and totally suck at hiding bones.  Give it a few days…if you don’t fine the perfect place, you’ll find one that works.