Today marks the first day of the most boring six weeks in sports. Wake me when training camps start.

I don’t visit or come around anymore, I don’t call, and I certainly don’t write. It’s hard to say why. We could talk everyday and I think I’d still end up missing you somehow. Back of the bus, hand in hand next to you, I’d still be in my own head wondering what came next, how we might become closer yet.

Honestly, things haven’t been up or down. I’m sitting in my office and most of the staff has left. In an hour, I’ll leave with Robin for Bonnaroo. I won’t be doing any soul searching there, so I don’t expect to find myself, if only because I’m looking to leave myself behind on this mini-vacay. This is time out of mind, something I feel like I’ve needed more and more lately.

I’ll try and write about Bonnaroo when I’m back, all I remember anyway. I’ll try and finish a bunch of the real crappy blogs that aren’t finished. I will try to be the pestle, you and my experiences can be the mortar, and together, pesto! Magic, maybe something worth writing about.

Listened to NBA East Finals on ESPN Radio; heard Tirico’s amazing call of LBJ becoming the friendlier MJ. And Twitter is still dumb.

One day, so much new love.

Wednesday was Melissa my sistah’s birthday. I mention this first and foremost because I’m worried she’d be annoyed if I didn’t. She’s the kinda girl that spent the day casually tossin’ grenades over her shoulder smiling, “It’s my birf-day!” which is a surprisingly effective amends. But because what can’t go wrong usually does, the best birthday gift ever given by a brother was delayed from shipping. I feel pretty bad about that.

Meanwhile that same day, [...]

On Thursday, I stayed out all night drinking wine with Dave and some girl whose name I can’t recall. Ah, young life. On Friday, I was the sickest I’ve been since that one time I had pneumonia my first year of college. I don’t think these two things are related, but I am getting older, and imbibing all the live long night can’t help the immunosuppression system. I know people who are doctors.* [...]

All of this happened, but not all of it’s true. Or maybe the other way around—I can never remember which. But I felt every last bit of it, and then I obfuscated the whole mess in overwrought prose. [...]

On the way out to eat with Mom and Melissa on Saturday night, Mom decided it was story time.

“What has the name of your teacher in fourth grade? Lisa something?”

“Hilbert, I think.”

“That’s it. I remember getting a phone call from her—if you could convince your son to sign up for music, I could have a forty minute planning period to myself.” Earlier in the day, she and Melissa had attended my little cousin’s music recital—featuring song flutes and other weapons of shrill aural destruction. The song flutes sparked memories of what never was, my place among my fellow fourth-graders at This Is Our Story playing the “Tonette Band March.”

“So she wanted a break.”

Ignoring me, she pressed on, “She told me about how you were the only kid in the entire school that wasn’t going to end up playing the song flute, all the benefits of musical education.” And I was. Out of everyone in my fourth grade class, I was the only kid at Stringtown Elementary who opted out of the optional song flute lessons.

“I just don’t remember being that interested. I do remember getting to play on the computer for the entire period.” That’s what I would’ve told her if I had bothered to reply. I sat silent in the car, watching lights blur by cinematically.

“I got all sorts of calls from your teachers. All your Spanish teachers—can’t you make him behave? All the other students follow his lead; he can be very influential over the rest of the class. They look to him to see how to act.”

—And I used all that power for evil. “I dunno. I just never got along with Spanish teachers very well.” I thought back to my Spanish teacher at Sig School—I frustrated her so much that she got into arguments with my Biology teacher over the nature of my character. He couldn’t understand why someone so driven in his class, coming in before school for AP study sessions, could be such a pain in the ass for others. I liked him and his style of teaching; ultimately he defended me to her in what I understand was a pretty heated argument, took me out to lunch for hot wings, and told me to take it easy on her. For my mother’s sake.

I’d tell you what it was I did exactly to draw her ire so fiercely, but it was a lot of the Brando-ian-style trouble making. Being subtly subversive means never having to say I’m sorry, but it’s not very memorable either.

“And I never knew what to tell them,” Mom sighed.

—You could’ve said, my son, always very much himself, I gave him a strength that is unwieldy and unbreakable.

But I would’ve said, upon recollection, I have no idea why I was such an asshole to all those teachers. I, always very much myself, would like to change those stubborn parts of myself, those rebellious parts.

Recognizing that there were likely still hormonally-charged students like me roaming the halls, I changed my major from Secondary Education to English between my first and second semesters of college. Always very much myself: That’s as much of an admission of guilt as I can probably make. [...]

When I lose my words, too often I just sit quiet. Jaw broken, I thought I’d let you know [...]

A week and a half ago my Gran’ma was in a car wreck on a way to my uncle’s fiftieth birthday party. She was picking up Mom. It happened a few blocks from our house. I hear most accidents do. That’s why I’m moving away from her.

Mom was with her, and at an intersection she looked to her left and saw a car skipping a stop sign. She had one word to communicate all that fear. Maybe “oh!” Or “car!” Possibly the first half of “watch (out)!”

Thinking about it, I can almost feel their muscles tense, and then I wonder if seeing a car crash unfold powerless to do anything about it from the passenger seat is a metaphor.

I don’t wanna worry about dying.

Everyone was okay; the girl who hit them was apologetic. From the the spot of the accident, my Mom and Gran’ma could see a police officer issuing a traffic citation to a car he had pulled over. Once he finished with that, he drove right over to take his report.

My Gran’ma keeps nearly everything, and sorting through ten years of old insurance cards and registrations takes them. (Aside: When Mom and I went to get various items from her car while it was in the repair shop lot, we found several wrapped McDonald’s mints from the Eighties—least that was the copyright date on the labeling—in a car just a year or two old. She had to make a concerted effort to keep ‘em. Never know when you’ll need the original breath mints.) The officer was impatient. The officer was rude. Adrenaline exacerbated her Parkinson’s symptoms; her shaking was pronounced.

She repeatedly asked Mom if the accident were her fault. My Mom allayed her worry. Then she wanted to know if there was anything she could’ve done to avoid the accident. No, no, no. We are all in the passenger seat sometimes.

But this story is not about any of that so much. [...]

In my head, I started a book club with Ben and Beth and Cate and whoever the hell else reads books these days. The results: [...]