Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

A couple of days ago, Tuesday, to be precise, as I walked down 186th with my dog, flashes of an old memory hit me so hard I nearly fell over. In the five or so minutes it took to get to Broadway, I found myself reliving a long-packed away memory of my sister and her long-gone motorcycle. It was a Honda, as I know someone will ask. Beyond that, my friends, it was silver, and I don't know anything of the makes, models, and snazz of bikes. Yet, I went to see my sister in the summer of 2000 when she first showed me her bikes. Well, they belonged to her and her then-girlfriend.   As sisters will do, the older one convinces the younger to go for a quick ride. Honestly, that wasn't hard. What she didn't realize, and was floored to learn, it was not my first time as a passenger. Though, for me, it was a complete shock that she rode bikes. Look, you all, my sister loved her truck, but she was never the type to devote an intense amount of energy to the road. She loved her speed, but ...

In the end, it is always about those left behind.  This we always know, but as the throws of life prove to us (every time) we never remember it until an end has arisen.  Every. time. In 2013 I met a woman named Barb, and when I met her she was recovering from just having discovered a cancer the size of a football in her leg.  A football.  A fucking football.  Barb with her three kids, a widower herself, a new husband with two nearly grown teenagers, and a suburban house.   When we met, she was just starting her home daycare up again . . . her Dad got certified so he could help her, and her family moved the daycare chaos up to the main floor since the surgery and cancer made walking up and down the stairs to the basement difficult on a good day and near impossible on most. I hadn't been married a year, when Barb and I met.  After that January meeting we saw each other again in the spring, after I helped moved a friend up there.  There was a par...