you can stop data crawling me now

i offer nothing to create ad content

the breeze is more interesting

i buy my stamps in person

with cash

my truck is made of steel with three electrical amenities from 2005

i am as relevant as whatever debt i have is

that's where i end

stumps will sometimes sprout, so my name is on a few lists for that reason

i have dogs

i want nothing more than i have

anything added only draws attention away from the wind

i have sat and looked out windows for more hours than i have been at parties

mainlybecauseitissaferthatwayforallconcernedandnothingmore

im only interested in anyone who may have a lead on time travel

and i don't seek even that out

i don't understand your fear

and you don't understand my blankness

im doing the things i am supposed to

it always feels sour

i like working with people who are dying because they are truthful

most people who are traumatized by being with someone who dies in front of them-

is the sound

it's called the death rattle and it is just a part of the process in death

if everyone knew that, no one bothered by it would be less bothered

i have never met a consistent Christian

i'm one... and inconsistent Christian

if you know of one, i'd listen to that story

i don’t remember my dad's voice but I would prefer to remember his death rattle than the voice of the 911 operator

the thing i try most hard to be is basic

like it is a goal to maintain

sisyphus

the earth is flat- but it is housed on a globe of water and atmosphere

religion is cancer

drugs are not the worst thing to be addicted to

i have never heard of a support group for adults who have a parent that switches gender that is based on the adjustment rather than the supporting of it

when my kids were little, and i did not have them on the weekends

i would turn the furnace off

to have my physical and emotional match up

now

when i get cold i am so deeply sad

i guess i programmed that in myself

veganism absolutely is a religion

i'm next in the cue

so.....

suicide disease

trigeminal neuralgia

worst pain known to man

Oct 7 is trigeminal neuralgia awareness day- areas all over the world 'light up teal' in honor of those who suffer and those who suffer no more.

If you have TN, we are linked by this terrible beast and I will always be here to talk you through. It almost took me, too- before I even knew what it was. You are not alone and the medical community IS making strides for research and treatment. There are people who DO understand, I am one and I am here for you.

My favorite mythical creature is the responsible 'adult'. I first heard about this amazing creature when I was a small child. Everyone spoke of the powers adults held. They could chew gum whenever and where ever they pleased, could drink soda with anything, could drive, make decisions for others... adults had super powers and were able to access anything they wanted and had answers.

As a kid I learned adults could make humans. I learned they could decide what happens to humans, they made and enforced laws, and no one told them what to wear.

As a teenager, I realized that my childhood ideas of the adult were, actually, quiet skewed. I had to relook at the decision to think if they still existed... I was having my own job now that magically gave ME money. I was able to buy my own gum, I found out I did not even like soda, I not only learned how to drive but I could do so and people who WERE a form of adults would ask ME to drive them places! Still.... these 'adults' did not have to raise their hands to go to the bathroom Monday through Friday, they did not get detention for not using crayons on dittos, and still had ruling authority over others.

I always loved the idea of adults because when I was small I learned they for the most part loved kids, did cool things, had neat things, owned animals, and said amazing and smart things. I wanted one of my own to know... or I wanted to learn to become one because that is what everyone said could happen, that I would be able to grow up and become a responsible adult.

I didn’t know my Grandma was an adult... she was a gram. She also didn’t have everything she wanted and she never had any desire to drive a vehicle. She also, to be fair would flip her dentures out at children in the market to watch their facial expressions and she laughed at anything to do with farts... even I was not that childlike. My dad was not an adult because he was a criminal, adults were never criminals. My mom, not much older than me was not an adult because I was taught that adults never lied. My mom was a liar. So maybe a responsible adult was a real adult.

Finally- I exchanged 'adolescence' by being handed a piece of paper called a diploma coupled with turning 18 with being a 'young adult'; and told when I was 21 I was FINALLY going to morph into this mythical creature I have been searching for my whole life! However, before I was old enough to go to war, but not drink or purchase a few certain things or go a few certain places in my own country- I made humans. When I looked at the first human I made, I realized perhaps a real adult did not fully form if they did not follow proper timelines of leveling up??? I waited it out and continued to look for the adult that for half my life, my entire prospective identity was based upon being measured against.

Eventually I turned 21. I had made humans. I was able to do all the things I was told were reserved for adults... but there was no excitement in it- basically I already had owned my own dogs for years and there was nothing outside of the new humans I found more exhilarating and empowered by having as part of 'my capacity' to do.

When I was 25 I clearly remember realizing that adults were not a real thing- they were a mythical creature designed to be either something promised, something pretended, or something established as an ideal- but did not exist. Society was showing me the whole time that this was true, I just kept seeking this thing I wanted to know or be like until I was so busy not being the thing I was enamored with finding my whole life I forgot about them.

Seeing this writing prompt was such perfect timing, I must say- because recently my curiosity and admiration of the allure of the ever illusive 'adult' reemerged. I realized what the adult really was and it really WAS all of the things I was told about my whole life- the adult was free, and could do whatever they wanted, when they wanted. The adult participates in commerce of the world around them with ease having earned it with just the title, the adult can consume anything they want- and they DON'T have to be responsible if they chose not to; being part of the freedom. They could be criminals, and they could laugh at farts- I was wrong about what the adult really was all about because I was told the wrong things.

Having said that, dear reader, should you still be here with me... slip around this fourth wall a second, if you please.

You see, a few years ago when I was actually writing a piece here on 'The Prose', most likely at that time 3 gummies in, I wrote a store about Bob Vila.

While I was writing that for my own (honestly our The Prose community entertainment) it occurred to me- adults really are things of fiction. THEY ARE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS that WE ... ME and YOU and all the other writers create. WE create adults in our writing. Sure, we flaw them- purposely so as to make them more like US, humans. I was so interested in adults because my whole life, since I was able to read because like you, I was reading their lives... we all have been about 'adults' but have you ever really met one? I haven’t and I have been working with and around humans a long time.

Sherlock Holmes, Atticus Finch, Jay Gatsby ... adults! and for the people who told us- no matter what generation you are from, they were all introduced to what an 'adult' was by Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Alexandre Dumas, C.S Lewis and their generation's ideas of adults going back to a time when Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji. Before that, older humans learned of adults through (and still today) from the likes of poetry by Homer and Shakespeare. Should you know who some, any, or none of those named above they are all the humans that shaped the definition of 'adult' being something more than a 'human who is done growing'.

We were only acting as adults when we were reading about them, as we lived their 'lives' and experiances with them. I believe that is why we also love so deeply the non-adults of The Outsiders and Hogwarts. I'd near guarantee almost all of us spent those 'two days' in the life of Holden Caulfield after he was expelled and then himself became aware of the 'adults' being mythical.

Perhaps adults at one time did exist in our history- but perhaps if they did, so then did dragons; we know giants existed, or at least what humans perceived as such by naming them so. And with having said that, even though I ebbed and flowed on it, and even though I looooooooove dragons.... my whole life my favorite mythical creature in the entire human world, has been the 'adult'.

btw: the banner pic, I asked AI to make Bob Belcher a human in a field of tulips.

I'm 45, sometimes I still wish I could be an adult.

love you guys

When I was about 5 I watched the first boxing match I remember with my dad. There was a recap fight they showed of Sugar Ray Leonard. While watching the television from my dad's lap I fell in love with boxing on a dark fall night in a room full of rowdy and loud movement my brain locked in. Sugar Ray Leonard moved in silent slow motion behind my eyes like a duck, I imprinted on boxing. I spent my entire childhood nostalgic for fights had decades before I was conceived. The only thing that ever dissatisfied me as being born a girl growing up was I could never be entered into a 'real' boxing match. I went on to be a fighter until I felt restricted by that same thing into adulthood. I could not tell you the names of more than 5 people I went to elementary school with but I've never forgotten any fight I have ever seen. I fell in love at first sight with 'classic boxing' in the day of classic boxing before I knew how to spell.

When I was a child, about the age of 10 I met a man younger than my father but older than my mother- I fell in a love with his speech, the way his hands folded around the chalk he was creating a masterpiece with, the tone of his voice and the way I felt when introduced to him. I remember crying when we met, and every time since, when we are together- I weep openly for a reason I believe is that he is the first person whom I ever saw Jesus in their eyes and it never left me. I started writing him letters as a child, then attending youth camps where he preached, continuing letters through marriage and raising my children. Whenever he was within a few hours drive, I was there to see him preach, watch him draw, and tell him face to face, crying, how deeply I loved him.We have been like father and child for 35 years separated by about 700 miles. I have never loved him less, everyday only more. I fell in love at first sight with true humble righteousness.

In seventh grade, you could sign up to be a 'special helper' for the students in the classrooms outside of the gym at the school. I was an athlete- so I was always in that hallway. I was curious to see why you had to apply to volunteer to do work that would take the place of gym class. One day, I was entering the room where you were to submit your information for the classroom helper- when I saw a child violently lash out at a woman who with the utmost genuineness in a perfectly calm and loving voice redirected, and curled him into her side rather than rebuking him. As he was at his extreme- she was at hers... and it was kindness. The feeling that flooded me of the visual of watching that boy move from violent to knowing he was loved and becoming calm- changed every cell in my body. I have worked since 7th grade in any capacity I could find or create to make kindness happen and went on to get several degrees in social work, substance abuse, policy writing, and ministry. There are times I go well over a year without a hug- I am not one to understand receiving kindness, but since that day I fell in love with kindness as it happen- I have done all I can to become it.

When I was on a school bus in 10th grade, I threw a penny at a boy who got very mad and came to return the penny to whomever was brave enough to say they had thrown it. I watched him stand there very angry for about 20 seconds before I jumped up and asked if he had a penny I could borrow. A few weeks later I told my Grandma I met a boy I wanted to have babies with- and we had a talk (ha). A few weeks after that, the boy ended up in my environmental science class, and we laughed everyday. One day, I told him the story of the penny- our sons are 23 and 25 now. I can not wait to see him again, and I will ask for no greater reward in heaven than to have a penny to throw at that boy when I get there.

When I was just out of high school, I thought I had fallen in love at first sight with an ultrasound picture. I was amazed at how much I could love something- until I held the boy on the print out... and felt the entire world turn inside out and upside down with what I know now was 'loving something more than you love yourself'- like a light switch that massive load of emotion fell down upon me in an instant and has never left... less than two years later when I first held his brother, I felt it again but with a familiarity; both times were love at first sight but each it's own endowment of feelings.

When I was in grad school, I hosted a stupid 'web tv' channel for a 'communications and technology' class. The top shows of the hour were on a banner at the top of the page when you logged in as live streams. When my 'channel' appeared at the top of the page, it grabbed my attention and I saw a 'channel' playing on the screen next to mine of a surly dude who looked like he was suppressed in disgust, go from one expression to an explosion of laughter that plucked some chord in my brain so hard I closed my news stream to go hear his voice, hoping to catch the sound of that laughter I saw- which I did not- but I spammed his chat log to the point of him making me co-host just to see who was bothering him. We talked for 6 hours that night and by the end of that week knew one another as if we were siblings. Hardly a day passed for 12 years that I did not do or say something to make that laugh bust into the air even if against his will until he was no longer here to laugh. I fell in love at first sight of a laugher's roar, only to find out later it echoed up from the soul of a good man with universes on his shoulders.

At work one morning, I was ordering something for a dog I was planning on adopting when I clicked on a link that took me to 'pet finder' where a different, little white dog appeared on my screen and I burst into tears- I could not dial the number associated with the little dog fast enough, not knowing anything about her and fumbled through a weird conversation with a notable rescue organization about a famous little dog with 500+ applications in play for her adoption. I explained I was very sorry but I was pretty sure the woman 'had my dog' though I'd never seen the animal before in my life. Three weeks later I was driving to Tennessee to pick up my dog, who I had until she at the ripe age of 22 crossed rainbow bridge. I fell in love at fight sight with a little busted up dog.

I have only one other love at first sight - I found in a stranger who somehow, in some way felt like home- one I never knew; but also one I never knew.

Funny thing... as I wrote this out- thinking of things I 'grew to love' always ended.

Those things I'd call 'love at first sight will only die when I do.