Dancing, dancing, dancing…

I attended the dance concert of my buddy Micah tonight. It was a very, very good show, although at times it felt very much like some sort of elementary school-level recital with “big people”. But it was good. Micah strutted his stuff quite well, and there was a girl that was in just about every piece that has been dancing for 15 years. At most she could be, what, 17, 18? Geez. But she was very good.

I always find it interesting how the sharper edges of memory soften with time, particularly with regards to people. Seeing Micah tonight was… interesting. He craves attention, yet seems utterly incapable of giving it in return. You talk, but you have to talk at him, because he is everywhere but with you. You never know if he’s hearing what you say, and it always makes you feel inadequate, like you can’t entertain him enough to keep his attention. You have to be just a little funnier, a little more odd, a little more dramatic than his buddies and friends he talking to while you are trying to congratulate him on the show. It is inherently frustrating, and inherently self-defeating to try to keep his attention. You can’t win against that, because you are struggling in vain with something you cannot change. That’s simply becuase you cannot change people. Tonight was, nonetheless, a frustrating experience.

My father has pulled one of his famous tricks and neglected to tell my mother and me about a class he is taking tomorrow which ends hours after the time my mother and I were supposed to leave for Indiana. Meaning we must wait (as we are not taking the Rat with us) until he gets home. Then he wants to express preferences about when we leave. “No, I don’t like you driving into the night. It’s better to drive from the night into the daylight.” Like my mother hasn’t driven trips like this for the past 10 years, because we’d never get anywhere if it were on him. Stretch breaks every hour of a ten, eleven hour trip are not cool, you old geezer. And like he has any fucking right to express an opinion. We were supposed to leave tomorrow at 3:30 p.m.. Now it may be the next morning around 1 or 2.

This sounds petulant as hell, but everyday I am reminded of just why the fuck I want to leave this house. And quickly, before I do someone bodily harm. I want no medical insurance, don’t claim me on your fucking taxes, you aren’t holding my shit for me while I’m away, you may not call, feel free not to visit, and don’t expect me to swing by Charlotte on my way to or from Chapel Hill to see my buddies on visits. I’m outta here.

(Yeah, I know, the end of this post is ridiculously infantile, but I would rather not take a baseball bat to my father’s head right now, so I shall blog it out).