Browsing Feedly this morning I noticed a couple of posts showed up from my own blog. Which I found interesting given that I had not written anything. They were bot-produced spam ads for an internet paper-writing service, hilariously written in some of the most garbled uncanny English one could imagine. Perhaps the most desperate of cheaters, in the waning hours before a course term paper deadline, on their sixth cup of coffee and still staring at a blank Word file, would forgive such trifles, or even be impressed with the occasional (and apparently random) insertion of dollar-plus vocabulary to pad out the ol’ word count. But otherwise, how the hell does spam like this sustain itself?

Fortunately the offenders were not intelligent users, just bots exploiting a dummy test user I’d set up and forgotten about, and probably didn’t bother to give a strong password to. (Pro tip: delete your old unused WordPress users. Luckily I am good about more thorough about this at work where I am compensated for maintaining WordPress sites.) Easily deleted, but I’ll always remember them.

Anyway, while I’m here, I guess I could check in about the pandemic at least once for the historical record. Not that this website will be in the top 100 million sources future scholars will study to understand how society dealt with it in real time. And also, my experience hasn’t been that unusual.

I’m still struck by the speed in which things shifted. When it started to creep into the country in early March, my wife and I were still thinking we’d make a planned trip to the UK at the end of the month. But we’d probably try to keep an eye on the news when we were there, in case anything happened. My boss was planning a trip to Florida to watch spring training baseball. On Monday the 16th he came to work having reluctantly decided he’d have to forgo the trip, prudently assessing that going from stadium to stadium while a virus was spreading was a poor choice. By Friday, they weren’t even playing the games anymore and we were obviously not going to the UK. It wasn’t even a discussion. I think Tuesday evening we were just like, “Oh, we’re not going, are we.” Everything was cancelled and I was working from home indefinitely.

I’m fortunate though. Perfectly healthy. My job translates fine to working from home and it’s stable (in fact a lot busier) for now. We don’t have kids so were not thrust into surprise full-time parenting. I wear a mask when I go anywhere, upped my food bank donations (and made several others) and have been tipping the hell out of my service bills. My quarantine hobby is trying to learn some Spanish (an interesting endeavor and worthy of another post sometime). Me llamo Josh! Estoy estadounideste y hablos un poco de español. ¿Como se llama usted? (I bet I got that wrong somewhere because my app doesn’t make me write anything, just read and speak.) Edit: I did get it wrong somewhere and had to fix it, though I don’t dare consider it right yet.

All for now but maybe I’ll try to do a few more posts soon. Please email me if you want to purchase any essays though!

Migraines remind us that the body is a large semi-pliable sack of chemical reactions. Mostly the reactions are based on the various inputs into it and behaviors towards it, but they can also go on- and offline all by themselves. Just part of the fun of organic existence. If all the reactions are proceeding within nominal tolerances, one feels “fine.” Sometimes the processes can be overclocked with drugs that can make you feel really great, although if you feel too great you might have a heart attack at 27, or at least, a hangover. Or more commonly, if, for example, I eat a lunch too high in fat, my afternoon at work becomes a multi-hour battle against sleep. Personally, migraines are the most dramatic example of the reactions going awry, and no one really knows why they happen, which is super fun.

I had migraines as a kid, though I didn’t really know what they were at the time. I would just wake up in the middle of the night with really terrific headaches. I would try to quietly invade my parents’ bathroom for some aspirin, trying not to wake anyone up, but instead stirring up the dogs and achieving the opposite. In my teens I had about one migraine a year. Seemingly out of nowhere I wouldn’t be able to see out of my left eye, like curtains were being drawn around my head. (In the migraine biz this is known as having an “aura”, which sounds interesting or mystical but turns out temporary blindness is neither.) Thirty minutes later my brain felt like it was making an armed escape attempt. I was still getting the occasional stress- and/or exertion-induced episodes into my early twenties.

Then they stopped for about two decades.

A couple years ago K and I were flying home from somewhere. We both tend to get a bit grouchy and anxious when flying and I tend not not feel like eating much either, which most certainly does not improve the experience. So it was a long day and I arrived home hungry and crabby and over-tired. I dropped a pen on the floor and when I reached down to get it I couldn’t see it. It’d been almost twenty years but the curtains were being drawn.

Now I get migraines again. More frequently, and way worse than I did before. Although actually the aura that one day was comparatively rare, usually I don’t get them. But now I get vomiting, which is even less mystical.

So I think a lot about blood chemistry, and how it gets out of whack. From what I can tell, mine appear to be caused by falling behind on calories, like if I end up eating two or three small meals in a row, especially if most of what I do eat is relatively high in carbs or sugar. If I’m going to get one I’ll wake up with some budding symptoms, and they will either dissipate or really start to party over the course of the morning. By lunch either the fog is clearing or I’m lying in my basement with a towel over my face to hide from light, clutching the right side of my forehead and whimpering. Alternatively I have some meds which will knock me out for a bit. I still lose most of the day but there’s less whimpering. Thankfully this is not common, 3-4 times a year. If I don’t break my various dietary rules it’ll stay that way, but I inevitably have a bad day, which is why it is not zero times a year. I think. The dietary thing is more of a well-supported theory than a fact as yet. But it aligns with some migraine research.

I don’t really know how brains work, but I understand there are lots of neurotransmitters and receptors sending and receiving signals. It’s actually a wonder than there aren’t massive breakdowns all the time, except that mammal brains have had a few hundred million years to weed out the versions that were susceptible to such things. Still, a few non-life-threatening mistakes got through the process, so I probably won’t die soon, but I still get migraines and wear glasses and have gained weight since my mid-thirties. Everyone’s got some minor to major problems like this.

Anyway, my brain is one of those that has this annoying flaw. My proteins or glucose or something isn’t within tolerances and I get triggered. For some people it’s light or sound or smells. I recently read something about how all of those are sensory overreactions. As it happens, migraineurs often do have overactive senses. None of these seem like my specific trigger but I never though about how this is totally a thing for me. I have been complimented as “sensitive” but I think this means “generally attentive towards others’ feelings” and not “my senses work really well.” But it turns out both statements are true! I definitely get light-sensitive when I’m tired, and can’t handle a ton of sun. I have taken to sleeping with an eye mask a lot because the streetlights seem too bright to me at night, even through our shades. I always hear weird little noises around the house that my wife doesn’t. (Sometimes this is handy: more than once I have discovered hidden leaky pipes because I could hear the dripping.) I don’t like vinegary foods because they smell so sharp I can’t get near them.

What they don’t tell you about migraines is that it’s not just the occasional acute attacks, there are a lot of semi-crummy days when your blood feels thick and sluggish. I call these either Code Yellow or Orange depending on the severity. I guess these actually sorta are migraines, just low-level enough that I can kinda function. It’s not a good time, and sometimes it’s a state that I’m hovering in for a few days, but it’s not Code Red either. The upside is that when things are running smoothly, or when the fog does lift, I’m really aware of it. It’s genuinely euphoric to feel normal, to have all the receptors chugging along harmoniously.

When I was in my early twenties I was on the phone with my sister Liz and she said she had something to tell me but I might not like hearing it. I had no idea what she was talking about. She said she’d started seeing this guy that I had known growing up. Let’s use an obviously made-up name and call him “Greg.” She wasn’t sure what my reaction would be to Greg. I wasn’t especially overprotective of her or anything like that, and she definitely wouldn’t care about my opinion of a boyfriend. So it was sort of weird that she was even making a point to inform me. Therefore my response was mostly something like, “Huh, Greg. OK. So?”

I didn’t really even know him that well, and not at all as an adult. He was among the local kid population in the fairly typical suburban neighborhood where I grew up. By rule of proximity, I was friends with all the boys my age to varying degrees. When you’re a kid you’re friends with anyone your age who lives within walking distance and isn’t too much weirder than you. But even so, he wasn’t a kid I was good friends with. I don’t recall ever meeting up with just him specifically. It was mostly by association. He was in my classes and on my baseball teams. If a bunch of kids got together to play basketball or video games we would likely both be there. Sometimes there was a group of four of us that played Street Fighter 2 on Super Nintendo. Greg owned the game and was, by extension, the best at it. Greg’s best pal “Dan” was always there as his foil. But his main challenger was our mutual friend “Finn.” I rounded out the foursome even though, in the realm of Street Fighter 2, out of the four of us, I was a distant fourth. Mostly I suppose the invites came from Finn, who considered me a funnier and less mercurial balancing force to Greg. Because the other thing about Greg was that he was the kid who would lose his temper when things weren’t going so great and unceremoniously depart in a huff. He literally took his ball and went home from basketball games with some regularity. Gaming get-togethers always ran the risk of abrupt endings. He might lose a particularly tense Street Fighter showdown and festivities would come to a halt, with terse instructions as to the location of the exit to his house, and to which side of the door we were expected to direct ourselves.

By high school one’s friends are generally less proximal and more self-selected, and by the time graduation rolled around I wasn’t hanging out with any of these guys anymore. Finn’s family had moved away and everyone got older and things just change. I went away for college and didn’t stay in touch with more than a few people, so even more time and distance filled in the gap.

So when my sister brought up Greg, it wasn’t unlike her mentioning any random kid I’d known years ago. My reaction to finding out he was dating her was some part “Huh, a kid I knew is now dating my sister, weird.” But it was mostly “Wow, he’s still around town?” In total, I didn’t really care, or understand why she was treading carefully about it. She further revealed that the concern about my reaction actually originated from Greg. To which I was equally mystified. Greg didn’t have a sister, maybe he thought all brothers wanted to beat up anyone who got near theirs. But Liz told me that Greg was afraid of me in general, even aside from anything that might have to do with her. Now I was entirely confused. Afraid of me? Afraid of me? Who would be afraid of me? I am really not the sort of dude people fear. I’m not physically imposing, and am generally quiet and unassuming and I’d rather ignore and be ignored. Many people respond to physical presence, a booming speaking voice, or radiating confidence. I do not have, nor have I ever had, any of these.

Yet apparently, here was Greg having anxiety about me. Since I continued to seem baffled by the direction of this conversation Liz finally coughed up the details: he’d told Liz that in a fit of anger I’d once shoved him against a locker. What a crappy thing to do! I should feel bad! Only—I had literally no memory of this. Was he sure? He wasn’t thinking of someone else? This was completely out of nowhere, and so strange to hear I think I just scoffed. I had no defense, no side to the story. Which probably sounded a lot like lying. She even asked if I had been a bully in school! Which was another level deep and laughably ridiculous. So she didn’t know what to think. I was laughing it off either because it was entirely outrageous or perhaps I was a terrible liar.

(As it turned out she didn’t end up dating Greg for long and I’m not sure how he ever reacted to my denials. I ought to ask her again.)

Anyway, I still think about this from time to time. Memory is a funny, notoriously unreliable thing. I can say for certain I was no kind of schoolyard terror but could I have really forgotten a locker-shoving incident? Let’s break down some possibilities:

1. Such an incident is pure fiction.

He made up the whole thing. As described, he had his odd moments. Maybe he formulated a story in the event that I reacted badly to him prowling around my sister. Or maybe he just didn’t like me.

2. It’s partial fiction.

Maybe he dreamed it and got confused. Or maybe someone else victimized Greg and he somehow mis-remembered the perpetrator. Perhaps I was in the vicinity, or he didn’t like me and it was easier for him to believe that I’d done it rather than whomever else.

3. I am totally guilty.

Did I really have a moment of blinding pubescent rage that came and went so suddenly it didn’t even register for me, but traumatized poor Greg? Or maybe he was giving me a hard time about something and I overreacted and didn’t realize he wasn’t in on the joke. I mean, I’m making up reasoning for an event that I don’t remember and may or may not have happened. I don’t know what he could have done to provoke such a reaction and I was never much for random roughhousing. But I have to admit I’m rather haunted by the possibility. It’d be deeply shitty if I did, and even worse that I didn’t even remember. The problem is that I can never prove I did or didn’t do it. All I can say is that it would have been awfully out of character for me. If it really did happen, I doubt Greg would take much solace in that, though.

* * * * * * *

In any case, I get to enjoy this vague feeling of potential guilt forever. Thanks, Greg. Though unless it’s complete fiction it’s not a pleasant memory for him either.

So how should I deal with it? I could just own it. Doesn’t matter what I think or believe. If I ever see Greg again, I’ll just apologize. What if Greg is still tormented by this childhood incident that sapped his self-confidence and sent him into a dismal tailspin? What if he now he works nights trapping rats in the chemical factory because he’s too fearful of human contact? A simple apology could turn his whole life around. (I guess it should also be considered that the opposite could be just as true. His triumphant bullshit story to earn sympathy with a girlfriend in his early twenties taught him to trust his creativity and today he’s a millionaire artist living in Paris. He would be delighted to learn I was still worried about him.)

Or do I even need to justify it? Kids do kid stuff and it can be rotten but they’re kids and don’t know any better. There’s a reason they don’t try kids as adults. Adolescents especially are feral little hormone-churning monsters. I wouldn’t trust any of them, including myself when I was one. Let’s say it were definitely proven that it was actually Dan who did the shoving. I wouldn’t expect Dan of Today or defend himself. I’m sure he’d feel sorry. I’d certainly be sorry if it was me. But I kind of think it doesn’t really matter as a one-off incident between kids. I feel a similar weird helplessness when my Grandma obsesses over how I would only eat hot dogs when I was three years old. It’s not like I should have to justify my dietary choices as a toddler. Three-year-old me is only “me” in the linear biological sense, not in any real meaningful way.

Still. Any of this can’t help but feel like all of this is an exercise in being a weasel if there is any sliver of a chance I once was a jerk. Even if this didn’t happen, I guarantee I did something rotten as a kid that I never got called out on so directly. But at least every single other human is equally guilty of at least some moment of indiscretion or temper.

Anyway, Greg, sorry dude.

Accurate Whole Foods slogan:

Welcome to Whole Foods! We are immediately dispatching someone to get in your goddamn way

Actually though I just bought lunch there and since today’s choice was a big pile o’ kale salad I also allowed myself a cookie. I put a single cookie in a bakery takeaway bag. If I have too many treats sitting around my workspace I make poor lifestyle choices, so Just One it would be. The cashier felt my timid acquisition of a lone cookie so sorry that she just tossed it in my bag and didn’t charge me for it. So, also maybe:

Welcome to Whole Foods! Where pity will get you a free cookie