The Ritual

Every modern history class I took as a kid taught by the decade, as though there were societal shifts visible in real time that concluded their plots before the year ended in zero again.  The I-Love-Lucy decade.  The Space-Race decade.  The one with Nixon.   I grew up thinking that not only do countries have hand drawn borders like on an atlas, but there was a public announcement over a giant loudspeaker in December 1979 that the Reagan Revolution would be commencing shortly.

More often than not, I’m the guy at work who never notices that my buddy in the next cube dropped fifty pounds because I see him every day.  I catch these things years after they happened.  Here in 2014, I am told that the 2000s were the iPod decade. iPods snuck up on me so gradually that I only remember surviving without one when I get a forward on Facebook that reminds me alongside photos of people blowing into Nintendo cartridges.  I get the difference only when I’m forced to consider it.

I was a really awkward kid.  I had trouble making friends and despite being surrounded by good people always felt just a little out of place, because I was and everyone was nice not to point it out.  I cherished anything that was “just mine” but it’s hard to find that when you feel uncomfortable and shy in your own skin.

Then Steve Jobs built an iPod.

I have wonderful friends on the West Coast, where I have never stood.  Texas scares the bejesus out of me.  I love people who live there.  As I was writing this, an Aussie popped in  to say a kind word.  It’s all heightened today.   If I got picked on at school, it stopped at 2:30.  Now it’s on Twitter and Instagram.  Kids have it a lot harder, but they have a lot more hope.  There are seven billion people alive at this moment, and odds are I have a few things in common with at least five of them, and they’re not so hard to locate anymore.  At some point between then and here, no one had to be lost anymore.  I missed it the day that happened, but there it is.

I have a ritual.  When I decide that anyone needs to be my friend, whether I just met them or have been bumping around them for years, I like to spend a few days to get to know them.  I may inundate them with questions about themselves.  I may mail them DVDs of my favorite shows with instructions to watch them yesterday and be prepared to discuss key plot points.  Beyond the geekery of the process, it is probably the most hopeful thing I do.  I never have to feel awkward again, and neither do my kids.  I had this awesome ritual prepped and ready as a kid, and now that the world is smaller I get to finally use it all the time, including today.

Thanks Steve.