RWG
By the time I could grow a beard, my father no longer had one.
He had worn a moustache for some time, but for the past several years (at least ten, actually) he has remained clean-shaven. At this moment, he is in Buenos Aires, eating steak tartare for less than the cost of the fast food burrito I ate tonight. To say I picked the wrong career path seems an understatement.
I recently bought a wet-shave kit, in an attempt to be more old-fashioned/soothe my irritated skin. It reminded me of an episode of Step By Step when Patrick Duffy was teaching the middle son how to shave, and left out the razor so he wouldn’t cut himself, assuming the kid wouldn’t even notice, baby-faced as he was. The kid shaved with it and then comedically asked his dad if next time they could actually use a blade. At the time, I thought, how would the kid NOT notice? I had only ever encountered cartridge razors, and if you remove those, there’s not even anything resembling a shaving surface. The writers of the sitcom were all probably in their 30s, and their fathers, when they were young probably still used an actual safety razor. My dad uses cartridge razors, but based on how fantastic my face has felt these past few days, I think I know what he’s getting for Father’s Day.
My brother designs cities. His favorite game was, naturally, published by Maxis while we were growing up. He would spend hours recreating existing cities, trying out new layouts, and earning ridiculously high approval ratings. When he had saved his games and retired to his room to complete his homework, I would cause fires, floods, volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, and the occasional alien invasion. This, I maintained, was scientific research into how well his cities could cope with such sudden devastation. If only I had played his New Orleans level, I feel certain disasters could have been averted.
In second grade, I lied on my eye exam. My brother had glasses, and while he frequently gave me Indian Burns, and would convince me Mom had said I had to share my cupcake (without revealing he had been given his own; though to be fair, Mom was always insistent we share) I looked up to him, in a pre-pubescent version of Stockholm Syndrome. And so, when he got glasses, I decided his ocular assistance devices were the coolest thing on Earth, and I needed a pair of my own. I faked the charts, though not so well as to be considered either stupid or legally blind. My glasses gave me headaches for awhile, but eventually my eyes adjusted. Now, as my vision finally has stabilized at a level where I can’t read billboards, I find myself wondering if this was going to happen anyhow (Mother and brother both needing glasses) or if I had inherited my father’s genes, but not his common-sense, and degraded my sight myself, possibly dooming me in a zombie apocalypse.
You program computers. One time, you were writing an emulation program, and it kept crashing on you. After fiddling with it for several hours, I watched you open it up in binary. I assumed this was a show for my benefit, and you weren’t really doing anything to it, but you started making changes to the ones and zeroes. You compiled it and ran the program again. This time it worked. I’ve always been a little afraid of you since then.
You can make commitments. I tend to avoid them. What I’ve gotten from you, though, isn’t anything noticeable like how I shave, or why I squint and need LASIK. I’ve gotten lessons in loyalty, trust, friendship and humor. My father always told me there are friends, and there are 3AM friends. The kind you can call at 3AM and say, “You need to get over here,” and they’ll be there as soon as possible without question, knowing if you were calling then and saying that, there was a damn good reason. I can count my friends, though there aren’t nearly as many as Facebook would have you believe, but I can rattle off my 3AM friends and their original home phone numbers on one hand. So much of how I define myself comes from those people on those fingers.
You’re always going to be on speed-dial.
Congratulations.
Cyn
Well this is just lovely.
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Rivka Jacobs
Matthew, you are such an thorough writer. You hit all the notes, the little things, the subtle things, the large and obvious things, with equal skill.
I think the change in direction,to a specific “reader” (last two paragraphs) at first threw me off, but then it seemed this was a letter, or written as a letter to a friend, and the story came together for me in that context.
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