Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

Twenty-five years marks a silver anniversary.  Someone, somewhere, owes me silver.  Why? 25 years ago, this week I take, I went to my doctor's office with an ear infection and easy bruising, and I came home with Lupus.  Just like that, life at sixteen changed. In that regard, as I sit here looking at a quarter of a century, more than half my life, and a sentence comparable to manslaughter I can't say I'm nostalgic.  I mean years of taking vitamins the size of chicken patties, years of staring down the gremlin bottles on my dresser, years of putting my feet on the floor in the morning and letting out moans and wails, years of endless doctor visits and blood draws, and years of wondering when the next friend will bail on me because the Lupus is too much.  That latter part: I called and left a message, the day of a meeting, that I couldn't make it.  Seven years later and I remember the spinning room, the adverse drug side effects, the trips to my p...

It's been two weeks now, I think.  Today I'm sitting at the Eastern Iowa Airport, situated in the middle of a veritable corn field, heading on the next leg of my late summer journey.  Farther left, farther west.  Farther removed from the city I've long called home, that's no longer feeling like home, and yet within the same proximity to those I chatted away that night with . . . a coup, a message, a saving stream of wifi. Sitting at my computer, working on a fellowship app I was about two minutes from pushing back for a break of coffee and idle work around my apartment, but like any red blooded western soul I opted to divert my eyes and head with a couple seconds of Facebook scrolling.   That’s when the messages from friends in Turkey popped up about low flying jets, and then someone saw a tank . . . 3pm turned into a protracted timeline of messages, chats, and a game of holding our collective breaths.   Ironically, or perhaps poetically, the app is to spend fi...