I spent about twice as much as I wanted to for running shoes and inserts ($141 total), but hopefully it pays me back with less pain in my shins in the coming weeks.

The fitting experience at Fleet Feet Rochester was like stepping into my own personal hell. Bare feet. Communal socks. HLUEH!  The store itself and the sales staff were totally great, but for someone who hates feet as much as I do, it was very difficult for me to be asked to take my socks off and stick my foot into a foot-sizer that thousands of other feet have touched before, and then slip into a (hopefully-clean?) pair of used running socks that was pulled out of a basket.

But anyway.  My feet totally stumped the guy.  The initial test with a pair of neutral New Balances indicated extremely-slight over-pronation.  He fitted me into a pair of Sauconys with gentle support, but the new video showed they actually made things worse, and I could tell because after just 30 seconds on the treadmill, my shins were in pain.  So then he put me into a pair of Mizunos with more support but they were not comfortable to me.  Next up was a pair from Brooks that felt pretty good and then a pair of Asics that also felt pretty good.  I had a hard time noticing a difference so I went brand-loyal and chose the Asics (because that’s what I’ve been using).

We settled on these Asics GT-2150:

(link)

Then we slipped in these Superfeet Green Inserts and they helped reduce the pain I generally feel in my shins, so I got them too.

(link)

I’ll probably give them their first road test later tonight, after it cools down a bit.

Thanks again for the tips.  I’ll split up my therapy bill between the lot of you.  Look for it in the mail.

lazybaby:

hmmm…interesting….

sarasynthesis:

arshley:

jayalzacee:

you can tell a lot about a person by
the way they handle four things:

• a rainy day
• the elderly
• lost luggage
• tangled christmas lights

• Pout and find an excuse to do nothing all day.
• Get depressed. Always get depressed.
• The only time this happened to me I ended up with strep throat, whatever that means.
• Carefully, diligently, and efficiently untangle them.

…I’m just going around my house at midnight and making sure that the screws on all the outlets and switches are vertically aligned.

What?

NO; YOU’RE AN OCD!

I enjoyed the Seven Things meme so much, I’ve decided to continue sharing my oddities with all of you.

You all know about OCD. I’ll probably do a “More things” post about my as-of-yet-undiagnosed OCD at some point in the future, but tonight I’m here to talk to you about something different, yet similar.

I have OTD.  Obsessive Twitter Disorder.

OTD is an affliction.  The primary sympton is an inherent need to read every tweet from everyone that I follow.  This proves promblematic on many levels and it stems from a deeply-rooted feeling that I can trace all the way back to junior high.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a tremendous fear of being left out of “cool” events and “cool” conversations.  When I was growing up, my best friend was David D.  He lived five houses down the street; we were in the same class in grades K, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6; we walked to and from school together, played on the same teams in little league, played tennis together, and built elaborate GI Joe forts in our backyards.  I have vivid memories from that period of my life.  I remember one summer Dave had been given one of those mail-order frogs that arrived as a tadpole and you would drop into a tank of water and feed until they grew into a normal little frog.  He had done all the work to get this little guy, named Froggy, to spout arms and legs and do all the things that frogs do.  One week they went on vacation and asked me to go over to the house every day to feed Froggy.  They gave me a key to their house and carefully explained how many of the little brown food pellets I was to gently drop into the tank every day.  They showed me how to ever so slightly lift the lid of the tank, just leaving enough room to drop in the food, preventing Froggy from jumping out of the water and hopping his way out of the house.  The first few days I diligently walked over to the house, let myself in, and dropped a few pellets into the tank.  I’d talk to Froggy like he was a dog: “Good boy! Eat it up! Yummy!”  Frogs, however, aren’t really great pets.  They rank only slightly higher than fish on the interactivity scale, but really that’s not saying much.  I don’t specifically remember what happened, but I missed two days of feeding.  The following morning, I woke up with terrible knot in my stomach.  I was so uncomfortable.  I just knew I had messed up, big time.  I walked down the street, went in the house, and hesitantly turned the corner into the kitchen where Froggy’s tank was positioned on the counter near the sink (good natural light from the window in that position).  My worst fears were realized when I looked into the tank to see Froggy floating, lifeless, at the surface of the water.  My neglect had killed my best friend’s pet.  I ran out of the house, locked it up, and ran home.  I never told Dave or his parents what happened, and I don’t remember them ever questioning or confronting me about it, but to this this day I still feel guilty (clearly).  In the summer of 1991, before 7th grade, his family moved down to the NYC area where his father accepted a position as the superintendent of a school district in affluent Westchester County.  The friend that I had spent my entire childhood with was suddenly gone from my life.  I remember saying goodbye to him the night before he moved.  Hugging his beagle (Buster, who I loved dearly), hugging Dave, his brother, and his parents, my eyes welling up with tears, we said our goodbyes.  I walked out the door for the last time and walked home in the dark, sobbing.

From the day he moved until several years later - sometime in high school - I truly felt like I had no friends at all.  Kids that I thought were my friends excluded me from their circles and cliques after Dave moved away.  It felt as though the only reason they included me in the first place was because they liked Dave. and I was always just a “tagalong,” so when he left they had no reason to keep me around.  One day in the spring I went to a garage sale at a house neighboring one of these other kids.  There I bought a GI Joe Skystriker (which I still have).  By that point in my life I had my heart set on joining the Air Force to become a pilot, so to me the Skystriker was “The Toy of all Toys,” and to find it in pristine condition at a garage sale, for an amazing price, was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.  I shelled out the cash and carried the big box all the way home.  Returning to school the following Monday, I was incessantly made fun of for my purchase.  Kids mockingly singing the GI Joe theme when I was around became a sad trend throughout the rest of that school year.

By now you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with Twitter.

Do you know that feeling when you go to dinner, a movie, or a sporting event - any event where a group of friends sit in a long line - that if you’re sitting on the end you always feel like you’re missing out on the conversation that is taking place on the inside of the line?  Or is that just me?  That seed, of feeling excluded, was planted when I was 11 years old, and it has yet to die.  One of its (many) branches extends into Twitter.  I have a fear that if I don’t read every tweet, then I’ll have missed some cool conversation between everyone else, leaving me feeling left out.  As a good example: I would have felt like a complete outcast if I had missed the night of #TWITTERBUS2009.  Now sure, it’s all just jokes and fantasy, and not being a part of it would have had absolutely no effect on my actual life, but if I had logged in the next day, having not read through all of the previous nights excitement, only to find people still buzzing about it, I’d have felt tremendously excluded.  It’s not that I feel like I’m so special that I deserve to be a part of everything.  It’s more so that I just truly care about everyone I follow and I want to be a part of the activities that they are a part of.  As @luckyshirt so wonderfully described with his recent blog post, it’s a wonderful community filled with truly caring people.

So, my fear of being excluded leads me to read every tweet from everyone I follow.  As of this moment I am following 206 people.  Problems arise from this, and it’s only gotten worse since I discovered the joys of Favrd.  On the one hand, I visit Favrd and see dozens of people showing up on the front page and the leaderboard every day, people that I’m not currently following, but who consistently they make me laugh.  I *want* to follow these people, but unfortunately I just don’t have the time for it.  On the other hand, as a result of Favrd, I quickly went from following ~100 to following 200+.  This was beneficial as I’ve started developing good relationships with all of these new people, they consistently make me laugh (I hope that I return the favor now and then) and I feel a part of their community.  Hell, just today we all celebrated the birth of @thedayhascome’s baby girl, in grand fashion.  I’d estimate that between 100 and 150 of the tweets I read today were @replies to both his original emergency c-section tweet and to the subsequent birth of Lucy Kate.  That’s 150 tweets, averaging 100 characters each.  If it takes me 10 seconds to read a tweet and process it… well there’s 25 minutes of my day right there, just spent reading about ONE person.  You can see how this gets very overwhelming, very quickly.  At work I’ve been gently and politely nudged by my boss to spend less time on the site.  He described the fact that when people walk past my office, they can only see one of the many monitors I have, and that monitor tends to always have my Twitter page loaded, front and center.  So regardless of how hard I might be working on actual work on the other monitors, all they ever see is Twitter, which gives the impression that I don’t do any real work.  When out with friends, I’m constantly checking my iPod for wireless signal so I can load up as many tweets as I can to catch up on so I don’t have to read through 300+ when I get home.  I’d estimate that in any average daytime hour, I accumulate 60-100 tweets.  Going out for three or four hours can mean another hour spent awake when I get home, just catching up on the tweets that I missed while I was offline.

I’m constantly fighting with trying to keep the number that I follow somewhere below 200, in an attempt to eliminate Twitter overload.  I’ve had to make some painful cuts in recent weeks by unfollowing people that I really like, but who post with far too great a volume.  I essentially break down my followees into three categories: 1) real life friends, coworkers, acquaintances, 2) companies, blogs, news, information, and 3) Favrd folk.  The first category never decreases, it only grows - I’m not going to unfollow someone that I hang out with all the time, especially if I like their tweets (@shotcopter, @carhaulspicklaw, @doppelgang3r, etc.).  The second category generally fluctuates, but it suffers a lot from my fear of exclusion.  Tweeters like @TweetBomb and @TweetContest post absolute rubbish, in high volume, but they offer the opportunity to gain a load of new followers (if you’re bombed) or win prizes (and I don’t believe for a second that you don’t care about gaining more followers. We all have a voice and we all want to be heard, otherwise we wouldn’t be using Twitter in the first place.)  It also includes people that I think are generally awesome or that consistently link to great content (@garyvee, @veronica, @MarsRovers).  The final category includes the bulk of the people that I follow, and also the VAST majority of the tweets I read on a daily basis.  Every time I visit Favrd, I’m tempted to follow everyone there because they’re all hilarious, but unfortunately I just can’t afford to do that.

People have talked about “the Favrd effect” on your follower count - that once you start making your way into the Favrd community you notice your follower count start to grow, but at some point it tends to level off, and then maybe you see it decrease.  The decrease is often the result of people deciding to unfollow these Favrd folk with the rationale that they don’t need to see them in their Twitter feed if they are just going to go back and read them on Favrd.  Why should I follow @hotdogsladies if I know all his tweets are going to end up at the top of the leaderboard, where I’ll inevitably see them anyway?  And while I’m on the topic of Merlin, let’s be honest now: sure he’s moderately funny, but he’s not any more funny that @aedison, @sween, @abigvictory, @InsoOutso, @zolora, or anyone else that I follow.  You all know who you are, and I love you all.  I’m  sick of people getting recognized not for the content of their tweets, but for the name of the person posting them.

I know why I continue to follow these people; OTD.  I don’t want to miss out, I don’t want to feel excluded, and I don’t want to be left behind, because I sincerely and earnestly care about these people.

I was tagged by @Jessabelle2o7 and indirectly by @zolora (who tagged, um, everyone in general).  So here it goes.  This turned out longer than expected…  here are (roughly) seven things you don’t know about me.

1) I have been 100% sober for 29 years.
That’s right, my entire life.  I’ve never had more than a sip of beer;  my dad probably gave me a taste of whisky when I was a kid; I’ll sip on a glass of white wine or champagne at a wedding or extra special occasion, but that’s about it.  And nevermind smoking or any sort of illicit drugs.  (Though, surely I’ve spent enough time locked in cars and enclosed rooms while my friends enjoyed any of a large variety of substances.  I know that there must have been times that I unintentionally buzzed a good contact high.  And there was all that post-wisdom-teeth Vicodin that I enjoyed - and missed dearly when it finally ran out.)  I have no explanation for why I never got started, nor for why I haven’t started yet.  In college I considered myself to be straight-edge, but I was never hardcore about it.  I could never imagine myself being a big enough delinquent asshole to go around burning down liquor stores, but there were several years where I felt proud to wear an X on my hands when I would be out at a club rocking out to some band.

I feel as though this has defined much of my life to this point.  It nearly destroyed many of my best friendships in college when I just couldn’t put up with friends who seemed to put getting wasted at the top of their list of priorities.  It did destroy my first serious romantic relationship, as she spiraled into an unhealthy pit of drug and alcohol abuse that would eventually lead to some very dark times in her life (she’s since cleaned up).  Additionally, one of my closest friends recently recovered himself from the depths of opiate addiction.  To see him healthy and clean(enough) now makes me feel incredibly proud of him, not to mention lucky that he made it through without going fully supernova.

I’ve grown past judging other people.  There was a time when I thought I’d keep this up forever.  How wonderful, I thought, to be able to look my teenagers in the eye and not have to lie to them when they’d say “Oh come on dad! You know you used to do it too!”  But, as I now have no intentions to produce children of my own (see bonus, below), that’s no longer a valid reason to not drink.  If anything, my social anxiety (also see below) is what will finally lead me to the bottle, but I’m in no rush.

2) I still live at home, with my parents.
Yup.  I’m 29 years old and I’ve lived in the same house the entire time.  Go ahead, take your best shot.  I’ve heard them all; they don’t even phase me anymore.
How did this happen?  Well, I went to a college that was literally 5 minutes from my house, so living on campus would have been financially retarded.  So, at the time when most kids move away and start their lives away from home, I stayed put.  After graduation, my degree (K-12 Music Education) went to waste as I decided I hated teaching, and so I continued to live home while accruing 10 years of employment at a local golf course.  Then I finally got a “real job”…yet home I stayed.

“Why the hell didn’t you just move out?!”
Honestly?  There came a point where it made more sense to just stay home, put up with my parents, and save money.  As you can imagine, living at home is significantly more affordable than renting (yes, I’m paying, but it’s not much.)  Needless to say, I’ve saved a significant amount of money that will become a generous down-payment once I finally find a house (yes, I’m shopping… desperately shopping.)

Truthfully though, while there are often days and times when I feel like my life is falling apart due to a lack of personal space and personal time (I basically spend all my time in my tiny bedroom [FLICKR TOUR]), there are plenty of other moments when I feel incredibly grateful that I can be spending (mostly) quality time with my parents as they grow old (example 1, example 2).  When I finally buy a house, it will be bittersweet, for sure.

3) I FUCKING ROCK.
Anyone who really knows me will vouch for the fact that I’m very modest, humble, and reserved.  I rarely am one to make a scene or seek the spotlight, but I have to be honest with you… I fucking rock.
I’ve been playing guitar since I was 11.  I can remember the first day my brother (13 years older than me) stuck a guitar in my hands and told me he was going to teach me to play.  I resisted at first.  I wanted to go watch TMNT or play with my Micro Machines, but he was stubborn, and that’s the thing I appreciate more than anything else in my life.  I remember him playing me Golden Earing’s Radar Love and then passing me the guitar and teaching me how to play that bassline.  Next thing you know we were working on the guitar part for The Lemon Song.  I have no idea when it happened, but at some point it just clicked.  THIS was what I wanted to do with my life.  Playing guitar; making music; rocking the fuck out.  To this day, not a single thing brings me more joy.  Standing on stage and performing your own music for a roomful of strangers can be better than sex.

Most of the best days and nights of my life have revolved around my experience as a musician.  In the grand scheme of things, our band (FMGreen) really only ever enjoyed a modicum of success on the local circuit.  We played about 100 shows over the course of several years early in this decade, we released a full album (Yellow #5) and an EP (3 2 1 Go!).  We weren’t the most polished.  We weren’t the most graceful.  We weren’t the best looking.  But we. fucking. rocked.  I only use the past tense when talking about FMGreen because we haven’t really been much of a band for the past two years since we lost our primary rehearsal space.  Now we wait on me to buy a house, and then the rocking shall commence anew.

Am I the best guitarist in town? Abso-fucking-lutely not.  But I’m very good, and I’m not afraid to admit it.  There is nothing in my life that I am more proud of than the music I’ve written and the music I’ve made, and no one can take that away from me.
Ultimately, I can’t thank my brother enough for the gift that he gave me, and if my dying words are “Thank you, Sam.” then I’ll be dying happy.

4) I collect the little nuts from the ends of guitar strings.
Though I’ve never been diagnosed with OCD or ADHD… well…



I meticulously snip these from the ends of guitar and bass strings when I’m putting a new set on.  Then I drop them into their respective container.  One for colored nibs.  One for bass nibs.  One for silver nibs.  One for gold nibs.

Oh shut up.  You collect weird shit too.

5) I’m pretty self-conscious about the way that I talk.
I don’t know when it started to affect me, but within the past 10 years or so it’s become a major internal conflict.  I’ve never really told anyone.  I can’t really explain how I talk, nor why it’s so awkward.

I remember being shuffled off to speech therapy in elementary school.  They’d bring me into some office and have me practice my “th” sounds and my “ch” sounds.  I have a distinct memory that the speech pathologist had this little dollhouse that had a hole in the top.  The hole had a black cloth bag attached and inside the bag were various cheap toys - you know, the kinds of things you might now find inside plastic bubbles in vending machines.  She’d have me reach in there and pull something out, and then we’d practice saying the name of that which I had removed.  “Chair.  Chhhhaaair”  “Thimble.  Thhhhimbuuul.”

I don’t remember having a complex about talking in social situations in high school, or even in college.  But at some point after college, it has become a problem for me.  It’s not a lisp (for which I’m grateful), it’s like a dull mumble, sometimes a stutter here or there.  It makes me feel a wee-bit retarded, as I’ll try to say something, but it will just come out garbled.  I’m fairly certain this is one of the reasons I’ve become an internet addict.  On the internet, no one has to hear you speak.  I can type till my fingers fall off.  Twitter is 140 characters of pure bliss.

Some words just consistently trip me up - “Saturday” and “literally” come to mind.  My voice isn’t very loud and that just makes things worse, because no one can hear me, so I’m forced to repeat myself, and each repetition makes me more and more self-conscious. Often I just give up and keep my fucking mouth shut.

Worse still, it destroys me socially.  There is severe anxiety involved with me being in a social situation, especially with strangers, and it’s multiplied exponentially if we’re in a loud environment such as a bar, a bowling alley, or a sporting event.  My friends are great because they’ve never mentioned it and they seem to just put up with it.  You can imagine how hard it can be for me to meet new people.  Throw a beautiful girl into the mix and I may as well be a 2 year old drooling and muttering incoherent vowels sounds.
I should seek help, but it’s tough to find the motivation.  A few more months of being painfully single will probably be enough to get me into a therapist.

6) I’m sensitive. Perhaps too sensitive.
Old people make me feel so fucking sad.  Fuck you old people!  How dare you?  Now don’t get me wrong - I enjoy a good harmless old people joke - but in-person, they often tear me apart inside.  When I see an old person sitting alone at a restaurant, it just breaks my heart.  I invent scenarios for why they are alone; She’s a widow; He outlived all his children; All her friends have passed away; All his friends are locked up in some cruel nursing home.  It makes me afraid to grow old.  It makes me scared that I’ll be 75 and sitting alone in a McDonald’s drinking free coffee, pooping my pants, and staring at the empty seat across from me.  And when I see kids - or even adults - disrespecting old people, I just want to punch them right in the crotch.

But honestly, they do suck at driving.

And it’s not just old people.  Lots of things make me sad.
I’d surely be offered a healthy dose of meds if I ever went to a psychiatrist.  I’m not sure if I ever want that to happen.

7) I’m superstitious about odd numbers.
In other words, I hate even numbers and I think they are the bringers of evil.
The basis for this comes from my birthday: 9/19/1979. All odd numbers, no matter how you slice it up.  Individually, in pairs, all together.  Odds everywhere.

This superstition isn’t without merit… but there are some glaring exceptions as well:

Good things that have happened on even years:

• 1994 - The Blue Album
• 1996 - Pinkerton

Bad things that have happened on odd years:

• 2001 - The Green Album, 9/11

In support of my hatred for evens:

• A 6 year relationship ended in 2008, on the 28th day of the month (January, not quite perfect.)
• George Bush was elected in 2000 and reelected in 2004.
• I know there’s more.

I’m on the fence regarding the number 2, because it’s a prime number, so it WANTS to be odd…

I hate evens with good reason.  You’ll just have to trust me on this.

A couple short bonuses, because I apparently love talking about myself:
8) I don’t want kids.
Honestly, I think I’m just too selfish.  Does that make me a bad person?  At least I can admit it.  I want to be able to sleep as long as I want, whenever I want.  I want to be able to go out at any time on any day to any where without having to worry about any thing.  I’m really not interested in having something that is entirely dependent on me for survival.  A dog or a cat will be plenty.  Maybe finding the right woman will change my mind… but 5 nieces and nephews have done a very good job of convincing me that my life will be just fine without booger-flingers of my own.

9) I magically make street-lights turn on and off.
You can try to convince me that it’s just coincidence, that it’s all based on timers, and it’s just me being in the right place at the right time - but I won’t believe you.  It happens too frequently and consistently with the same lights at different times of day for it to be coincidence.  My father also has this ability and all three of my siblings - separately and without my prompting - have told me that they notice it too.  It happens in the car and on foot, everywhere I go, even in different towns and cities.  It’s awesome.

Thanks for reading, I hope I haven’t scared you.  Please send me your old guitar strings.

I hereby tag:
@shotcopter (Done!)
@ashleychasse (Done!)
@Kalli (Bork bork. Not interested.)
@tdavenport (Done!)
@aedison (Done!)
@MsHiss (Done!)
@ttseco (Done!)

In August of 1997 I began my undergraduate studies at Nazareth College, in pursuit of a degree in Music Education.  The music department was housed in the Arts Center, and the students would relax, study, eat, drink, makeout, and do all that stuff which college students do, in the lounge.  The lounge was a cramped space located in the belly of the Arts Center.  In the center of the lounge there was a large, rectangular wood table that was surrounded by stackable plastic chairs of varying colors, and the exterior perimeter of the room was defined by several very small closets that lined the long edges of the table.

Some of these closets were locked; some of them unlocked; all of them full of clutter.  It was an accumulation of mess and disorder that had clearly been under construction for well over a decade.  All of them had windows on their tall, narrow doors, and they each had a small incandescent bulb that would illuminate their interiors.  A logical thought would be that they were to be used as practice rooms, but no sane person would dare enter a space of such size and proceed to practice trumpet, or flute, or even vocal work.  The original intent of these closets is still a mystery to me.

As busy as we were - music majors are notoriously bogged down by the vast amount of curriculum they need to cram into 4 years at a liberal arts school - we still found time to sit around in that lounge and procrastinate.  In an almost ritualistic manner, we’d find ourselves turning the knobs of every closet door - hoping that one day we might find a previously locked closet, unlocked.  We could see piles and piles of boxes and papers stacked within these rooms, but never could we get to the potential treasures that lie within.

One afternoon during the fall semester of 2008 some friends and I were relaxing in the lounge - likely wasting time before one of our numerous zero-credit courses.  Almost subconsciously we’d scoot around the room and test the knobs, squeezing behind classmates sitting in the yellow, and orange, and lime colored chairs. On this day, I was moving south to north along the western wall when I came upon the second to last closet - a closet that in the past had always been locked; today the knob turned.  With a resounding thunk, the knob turned with my wrist, and a clamour arose among the classmates who shared in the ritual.  I slowly pushed the door inward, reached inside, and flicked on the light.  The filament fizzled as it sprang to life for the first time in what must have been many months, if not many years.

We spent the next hour or so tearing apart the contents of this closet.  One person would go in and start passing boxes and binders and folders out of the room as the others laid the items out on the large table.  I was the person responsible for passing the last box out through the narrow door.  After I had distributed the contents, I performed a final visual survey of this closet.  That which was once stacked floor to ceiling with stuff was now empty.  But, there was one last thing that caught my eye.  Sitting there, right in the middle of the floor, was a small rectangular block of wood.  The block was approximately 3/4” wide by 1/4” thick by 1.5” long.  It’s edges weren’t sharp.  It was green.  It was clearly a toy of some sort - perhaps used for impromptu stacking competitions or for the construction of colorful little castles - and it was now mine.  I picked it up, examined it quickly, and then slid it into my left pocket.

We continued rummaging through our booty, finding musical remnants of all sorts: method books promoting posture and techniques that were far from what would now be considered good practice, rusty ligatures and musty reeds, ancient NY State Curriculum documents, and so on.  Yet after digging through it all, no one found any other blocks.  We stacked everything back into the closet and proceeded on to our next class, or lesson, or rehearsal - all of us feeling accomplished and content that we had finally explored yet another chapter of Naz Music history.  That night I returned home and emptied my pockets onto my dresser as I always did.  Out of my right pocket I removed my default tube of ChapStick® (Medicated) and from the left I pulled a guitar pick (.88mm Dunlop Nylon) and, the green block.

The next morning I got dressed and filled my pockets with what I had removed the previous night, including the green block.  As I am a creature of habit, and my OCD can control numerous minor aspects of my life, this routine would continue on a daily basis.  Without exception I would carry the green block in my left pocket, from the moment I put my bottoms on to the moment I took them off.  The green block was with my everywhere I went, and it became as much a part of my identity as my glasses, at least in my eyes.  I felt naked without that block in my pocket.

Through the years, there would be days when I would misplace this block.  I worked through college and through 2005 at a golf course, which included almost daily usage of gas and electric golf carts.  There would be times that I would park the cart after a long bumpy ride on the course and not realize until I returned home that the block had wiggled its way out of my pocket.  Imagine my frustration and aggravation that I had lost the green block while driving across hundreds of acres of grass.  But, like geese flying south or the tides moving in and out, I would always stumble upon the green block.  I’d return to the course the next day and look in all the cracks and crevices around the seats of the golf carts until I would find the block wedged in there.  I’d then grab it and stick it right back in my left pocket, relieved that I felt complete again.  The block would fall out into couches and cars, and it took countless trips through the washing machine, but no matter what, I would always find it; it always came back to me.  It soon started to show its age.  The green had faded from a bright and brilliant pine to a dull and faded pear.  Yet, the fading color revealed the true grain of the wood, as unique as a fingerprint.

One evening about a month ago I returned from a round of disc golf at a local park.  At home I changed out of my shorts and into some pants, yet, when I reached into the left pocket of the shorts, the green block wasn’t there.  I must have checked the pockets on those shorts 15 times.  I check the pockets on the pants; I checked all the bottoms I had worn on previous days of the week; I checked the top of my dresser; underneath it; all around it.  I checked my car, my couch, my bed, the washing machine - but it was all for naught.  It was gone.

It’s still gone.  For 10 years - more than 1/3 of my 29 years - I carried the green block in my left pocket.  For 10 years, if I misplaced it, I would find it - or it would find me.  Now after a month without it, my pocket still feels empty, my hand still reaches down and expects to find it, and I still feel naked.