Kicking and Screaming

o. The top bun of a dichotomy sandwich

I feel compelled to note up front that this prompt populated my brain with the most ideas of any prompt thus far, and yet has simultaneously been the hardest to execute. Thoughts are flying by in my head, but no words worth writing seem to come…

i. Limbo

Somewhere between “out with the old…” and its other half is where I reside. I don’t know what this middle land is called, nor what I do while I’m there. I just know I slip into the space between “old” and “in”.

ii. Efficiency

More than most, I have thoroughly conquered “out with the old…” I am ruthless when it comes to eliminating inefficiencies. I am a systems organizing maximizer analyzing refining genius. A SOMARG, for short. Wasteful systems tremble when they smell the rubber of my combat boots and see the glint of my Sickle of Progress in the sun. I have a gold medal in streamlining. I hold a PhD in bureaucracy eradication. I invented the game Six Degrees, except before it had any association with Kevin Bacon it was a much less glamorous model for getting anything accomplished in six steps or less. Trim the fat.

Onward is my motto. Stagnancy is my greatest fear.

iii. Change

Funny, then, that I have spent the past week dwelling on what the prompt is not. My mind breezed by “out with the old…” and scampered right up to “in with the new“‘s door before freezing and diving into the bushes to hide.

Out with the old is of no concern to me. It’s in with the new where I get stuck.

In with the new is about change.

iv. Near-death

I almost died when:
-Age 3. I moved to a new city.
-Ages 4, 8, 11, 14, 15, 16. I started at a new school.
-Age 17. I started college.
-Age 22. I moved to a new state.
-Age 22. I started my first real job.
-Age 22. I moved into an apartment on my own.
-Age 23. I ended a “relationship”.
-Age 24. I quit my first real job.
-Age 26. I quit my first real job (again).
-Age 26. I moved back to the other state.
-Age 26. My relationship became long distance.
-Ages 26-27. I said goodbye after a visit to or from The Boy (x6).

Out of respect for both your time and my reputation, the list above includes only the more material events, and leaves out those such as:
-Age 5. Trader Joe’s stopped selling my favorite coconut popsicles.

Counting this list alone, I have survived 22 near-death experiences. I’m bulletproof.

v. TP

Yet despite my immortality, tomorrow I will no doubt have to face something atrocious, like a change in the brand of toilet paper carried by my local grocer, and I will almost die.

Again.

vi. Personified

I sit in a saloon, knocking back shots of tequila. I can smell him on the breeze, but I refuse to acknowledge it.

The saloon doors slam open. He barges in with spurs on his boots, and looks around briefly before his eyes settle on me. I can feel his gaze pierce my skull. He saunters over. I glare – a meek glare that cannot stand up to his laser-vision, but a glare nonetheless. He speaks.

“So, Little Miss. We’ve done this 22 times. You ready to walk on your own two feet this time?”

I turn up my nose defiantly.

“Very well then.”

He slings me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and strides back out and into the sunset. I kick and scream the whole way.

Make that 23 near-death experiences.

vii. The bottom bun

It would seem my biggest fear in life manages to simultaneously be change, and lack of change. So I sit in the limbo between.

In the words of a great:

So it goes.