Been nearly two days in Chicago with a day to go. Have seen a full game in Wrigley Field (Cubs 3, Pirates 2), seen both of the previously unseen campuses I passed up as possible collegiate choices, and managed to smash up my wedding ring finger into a purple pulp. You didn’t think this town was gonna let me off easy, did you?
This post will likely be short, in large part because typing with nine fingers is a task I’ve never had to learn. Rather than being 10% slower, it really seems about 98% slower given how long it takes for me to decide which finger to sub in for the S finger. Luckily, this finger is only responsible for three letters (and two of them are w and x), but unluckily s is pretty common. I don’t know if the finger’s broken or not, but I’m leaning towards not at this point given that it’s pretty much stopped hurting. Last night when I willingly took two painkiller pills, was talked into a third, and never refused ice, the signs were pointing to badness.
The method of the smashing was picking up a bowling ball. Just nanoseconds before lifting, I was wrapping my left hand around the ball as support and the old-school see-saw ball-returner shot a ball into the row at breakneck (or break-finger) speed. The entire stopping point of the chain-reaction impact was my hand, primarily focused on one finger with peripheral contact on the two neighbors. Sandwiched between a 14 and a 12, this did not lead to warm fuzzy feelings. Somehow, in about 20 years of bowling, this had never once happened to me. And it really bugged me because it was entirely preventable. And because it hurt.
This is hardly the focal point of the trip, though, and shouldn’t be where I put so much emphasis. The trip has been about an old friend and his new friends. Fish has been the consummate host, as always, and given me a glimpse of both Chicago and alternate pasts that I have turned away from. His group is what I remember of groups assembled at schools – smart, funny, interested, and interesting. Everything about school except for school was always great. If everyone could self-select and come together for such things in the interest of some sort of club or life commitment (or even society?), things would be really cooking. But sadly school seems to be the only thing deemed worthy of bringing like-mindeds together from such distant places in a socially comfortable setting. And thus my path is barred, by my own volition.
Nevertheless, it’s good to see a friend doing well, to immerse in his world, and to talk through all the things it seems go unsaid these days. Examining one’s own life is often so difficult without the full-length mirror that is someone who has known you across a multitude of years and situations.
Debate and discussion. The caterpillar story. A coat forgotten and regained. Misty walks on paths not taken. Cheez-its and carrots, coffee and Cheerios. Once more unto the grocery store. Everything’s different and nothing’s changed. Everything’s perfect and Fish is god. Ow.
It is still too early to be too late.
