Twitterpainted

My parents subjected me to Bambi when I was a child.

While there was much trauma to be had in this supposed family film, the most traumatizing scene for me was not the matricide of the prince of the forest, but the horrors described by a friendly old owl on the condition of being “twitterpainted.”

Granted this was meant to be humorous, but the scenes following most definitely were not as poor Bambi and his friends were all inevitably zombified by the end of the film.

Growing up I watched many of my friends fall victim to this disease and realized early on that friend owl was right - losing your head was simply not worth it. Hence I quickly put up all my defenses and bunkered down into curmudgeonhood at the tender but intelligent age of twelve.

Eventually they got me on pity. I was set up on Valentine’s Day a decade later by coworkers and thus ended my single streak. Yet I eventually ran from that and other potential relationships, as the seriousness of the situation kicked in. Did I really want to tie myself up in something so permanent? Lose sight of my own life?

One New Year’s I found myself the inadvertant victim of what I’ve since learned is called “car therapy”; people have discovered its best to talk about uncomfortable subjects with someone while driving in a car. The idea is that within the confines of a moving vehicle it’s easier to force folks to talk things out - mainly because they can’t escape, but also because the soothing motion of the vehicle and having a destination drives home the idea that by talking it out you’re moving forward. Frankly, reading the description to myself out loud, I wonder if Americans aren’t friggin’ twitterpainted idiots when it comes to their cars....

Anyway - back to this late night January drive: the weather was awful, with pouring buckets of rain (never thunder, though, blasted California) and my current paramour drove us northwards towards the home of friends far away to visit on our holiday weekend off. I hadn’t exactly relished the idea of spending my New Year’s Eve stuck in a car, but since I didn’t have to drive I relented. Yet no one had told me that the driver expected me to keep them awake the entire drive with cheery conversation.

Normally that’s not a problem for me, as typically I’m babbling about whatever nerdy topic I’m enamored with at the time. I am not prepared for the sudden -

“So, what are your goals for the next five years?”

“Do you see yourself getting a house?”

“How about kids?”

“Retirement?”

For reference this particular relationship was about three months in; we’d met around Halloween, and were now spending all the holidays together like good lonely people do. If there is a time frame for when to talk about these issues perhaps three months isn’t too early, really; but for me, pretty sure any time was too early given I seriously considered how hard I would hit the pavement driving 55 miles on wet road.

The truly sad thing was...I had no answers to these questions. I hadn’t thought about what I wanted to do in five years. I’d never considered buying a house - gosh, that was a pipe dream in this state - and kids? Come on! If you can’t even afford a house what’s the point of filling it with little debt-mongers? At this point in my life I wasn’t even sure I’d ever afford to retire, let along support other mouths to feed.

Needless to say my lack of responses / optimism did not go over well. We argued, mostly about the necessity of having something to live for - an argument I fought mostly out of pride, not any sort of principle. I figured this might be our last holiday trip together and wondered if it was too late to find a drinking buddy for St. Patrick’s Day.

Ten years later that person still drives me crazy - in rainy weather or otherwise. I may not have had life goals, but apparently that didn’t mean losing my seat in the car it just meant being a passenger on someone else’s ride until I figured it out.

Being “twitterpainted” hasn’t zombified me; rather it’s injected life into the mindless living corpse I’d been before.

Should we ever hit the kiddos mark we are never watching Bambi.

(and you thought Disney princesses ruined romantic relationships - ha)