The Crossover Kid

I’ve always sort of lived here, in the middle space; never really latching on to trends or pop culture. The younger me was into playing baseball and hockey, listening to my brother’s favorite music, and cooking. And girls. Still am.

I enjoy solitary things. Three or four hours in the kitchen is a catharsis. Cross-country flights in Business Class (expensing it) are where a lot of the notes for this self-serving bloggity blog were scribbled. I just love being alone. Maybe that’s what fuels this odd distrust I rely on so much. Of course, if I were to be trendy, it’d be the odd distrust I’d lean into. Who the fuck came up with that one? Probably some twatty life coach. Boy, how did we survive for 2,000 years without life coaches? Baseball coaches, executive coaches, financial coaches; I get it. But life coach? C'mon. Anyway, whether I’m relying on distrust or (sigh) leaning into it, it's essential. I’m skeptical of everything, so anything unknown that manages to penetrate is scrutinized. It’s a system that’s served me well so far.

It's the same innate read on people and stuff that allowed me to become a lost and lonely “crossover kid” in grade school. I managed to get along with everyone but got really close to no one. There were one or two “good friends” in as much as pre-pubescent boys can form anything really meaningful or lasting. It was the 70s. Kids were quite stratified in the barely middle-class ‘burb I called home. There were the nerds before there was their Revenge. There were the troublemakers before they became stoners. There were the ballplayers. And there were the girls who slotted into whichever group made them feel special. I sort of just floated.

The nerds, of course, are today’s most accomplished 50+ year-olds; the doctors and lawyers and shrinks we all now need, engineers, coders, and collectors (the nerds who saw the investment value in comic books and baseball cards when the rest of us dog-eared and took Crayolas to the former and clothsepinned the latter to our spokes so our Huffys would sound like Harleys).

The troublemakers were easy to identify. They came to school wrinkled and disheveled. Their preoccupied, hungover, or uncaring parents treated school as daycare for their borne crosses. Their survival and thriving to this day are the most impressive. Some have become furniture at local bars where they hold court on Friday nights and fling envy at contemporaries’ good fortune (there but for the effort they made go I). Others shook it off joined the nerds or found their way despite the odds. Good on ya.

The ballplayers had the outlet that enabled them to be more than a kid. They were admired and subsisted on the recognition. Elevated to “jock” status in high school, their voices deepened even as they shallowed. Glory Days.

The rest became (smartly) firefighters, police officers, and tradesmen. Jobs that you do and then shower after clocking out. All honest, essential pursuits my sainted Mom always implored me to pursue. But I knew better. I knew so well that here I sit having just begun my 60th trip around the sun with unplanned free time on my hands — today’s advertising industry is a much younger man’s turf — so I’m arranging words into a blog about words.

It’s about survival.