Don’t worry, the question in the title is rhetorical. I feel fine.
Here’s me at the hospital in 2017, when I manifestly did not feel fine:
You don’t ever want to go to the hospital. Trust me, nothing good ever happens there. They poke you with needles and tell you things that you absolutely never want to hear. There is only bad news at hospitals. Even when they say something good, like “you’re not going to die” what they really mean is “you’re not going to die yet.” The good news is still bad.
But sometimes you still have to go to the hospital. A hospital is just a building where all the people who can fix what’s currently wrong with you all hang out in. I’m going to tell you the steps you need to take in order to find out when it’s time to get their help.
Note: this is only a useful checklist if you don’t feel very good and have some doubts about whether or not you should be going to the hospital. If you should obviously, definitely be at the hospital right now, please just go (for example, if you can’t walk, if you’re wounded and bleeding, or if another, unexpected person is coming out of you).
Take a walk.
It’s okay if it’s a short walk. The purpose is to “get the wiggles out” and “shake out the cobwebs”
Drink a glass of water.
You don’t have to be one of those guys crawling through the desert with vultures circling above him to be dehydrated
Have a snack.
Try to make it healthy and high in protein to get energy and fill your tum-tum.
Take an ibuprofen.
Tylenol or aspirin will do.
Take a nap.
Just a little one. Naps of around 20 minutes are ideal.
If none of these things work, then you should probably go to the hospital, just to be safe. Alternatively, you can call one of your smarter friends and tell them what’s wrong with you and they will say “I’m sure you’re fine” and “you’re okay” or “you’re always worried about something” and you’ll feel better.
Or, conversely, you won’t feel better and Life Is Just Like That Now. This can happen even when you do go to the hospital.
COMMENCING PERSONAL ANECDOTE
I had my brain thing and I had a neurosurgeon who was very good at surgery but not very good at other things (like talking to people, or looking at people in the eye, or being any comfort whatsoever). He retired and I got a new one who is very good at those other things (I don’t know how good he is at surgery, fortunately). He is so good at talking, they actually put him on video.
I asked him about some of the lingering ailments I had after my brain surgeries and radiation therapies were completed. I told him I had memory problems, lingering and occasional headaches, balance issues, and an itchy shunt.
His response: “Yeah.”
I think I was hoping for something more robust. I don’t know what, exactly, I was hoping for. I asked if I just had to live with those things now.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
I think he elaborated a little further about how I was lucky I didn’t have some of the more irksome complications from brain tumors (for example, death), but I was busy making these faces as the camera slowly zoomed in on me.
I didn’t decide to be a cat person. It happened to me without my consent or my input. I’m happy it happened, but I never expected it.
I grew up with dogs. All of my family members had dogs. My brother and mom were highly allergic to cats, so we never had one of those. Here is a photo of me with Molly, the first dog I can remember.
Here’s another bunch of photos of me with dogs, to prove my point. Lots of dogs.
I didn’t live with a cat until the 6 months I spent living with my aunt Posy, in the DC metro area, right after I graduated from college. She had a cat named Angel, which is a funny name for her because she was actually a devil. She was big, mentally ill, and feral. She hated me and she didn’t even like Posy very much. She hissed at me and lunged and made my life miserable.
I didn’t think about cats for years. I visited people who had them, but I never cared much about them. I mean, sure, fun to play with but they bite and scratch a lot and they’re not big dumb goofy companions like dogs, right? Who cares.
Enter Eli
Eli was my pal Lindsay’s cat. He loved me. I’m sure he loved lots of people, but this was new territory for me. He loved me. Cats didn’t like me! I didn’t like cats!
But Eli jumped into my arms whenever I saw him. He was the best cat I ever knew. He single-handedly changed my opinion about his entire species. He was like an ambassador from the Cat Kingdom. Eli was very wise, so I am certain that he knew how important cats would one day be me. Here’s a photo of me and Eli in Lindsay’s kitchen.
Suddenly, Cats Everywhere
In the last few years, my brothers all got cats. Will, Rob, David. My sister did, too. I met some more nice cats and I liked them. No offense to the dogs in the audience, I still love you. There’s room in my heart for more than one type of animal.
I got a brain tumor and went through all that stuff and I felt like I needed something alive around, something to take care of. Something more demanding than a plant, silently withering away on the windowsill, but not as demanding as a dog, which is not allowed in most apartments around here.
My brother Will had adopted a little cat named Emmitt that he couldn’t keep. This new cat didn’t get along with Turnip, who was there before Emmitt, and he had to live somewhere else. The rest is history.
Thank you for reading The Collected Foremania. Please tell everybody you liked this issue. If you didn’t enjoy it, keep it to yourself.
You’re not prepared for how small he is. People think he’s a regular sized cat, but he isn’t. Until Bryn got Puppet, Emmitt was the smallest cat most anybody had ever seen. He is 7 lbs. I don’t have a photo that illustrates how small he is. You kind of just have to see him in person, which you never will. Sorry.
You Will Never Meet Emmitt
Something you need to know about Emmitt is that he is scared of everybody. If Emmitt detects you before you detect him (and he likely will), he hides somewhere deep, down, and dark. If I surprise him (not hard to do), then he will hide under the couch or the bed. If a stranger comes to the house and makes lots of loud noises, the bed and couch aren’t enough—he needs something even deeper, so he’ll slide himself as far into the back of the closet that he can get. The thoroughness with which he has wedged himself is directly proportional to how frightened he is, and how well he thinks he has hidden.
When my brother Will first adopted Emmitt, he hid in the most improbably small place in the room: under a dresser. He had barely enough space to fit his head. Will had a surveillance video that captured Emmitt slithering out from under a dresser in the middle of the night, long after the noises of the house had settled and he felt at least safe enough to eat.
When Emmitt joins me on a Zoom call (rare, because my raised voice scares him), I tell everybody watching to get a good look because that is the only time they will ever see him.
If I have a visitor, especially a visitor who likes cats, they’re always disappointed. “I thought you had a cat,” they say. Emmitt simply will not come out. The most ardent cat person can try every trick they ever learned but none of them work. One person even brought a can of tuna.
But Emmitt is extremely patient. His play style is Ambush Predator—he watches and waits. This served him well when he was a stray, but it makes him frustrating to play with. He might chase a fuzzy ball or something across the floor, but only once. He stops, hunkers down, and watches his prey bounce, scoot, and wiggle.
He ate that tuna, long after that person had left. Emmitt wins again.
It Takes Time and Patience
Let’s say you visited me a lot, and with a reliable frequency. It takes a while, but Emmitt might emerge eventually. In a couple of months, he might test the waters by sitting at the closet door. The week after, he might sit at the entrance to the bedroom.
You might go to the bathroom, and in the hallway, see this:
Eventually, after a few more weeks, he might finally come out and sniff around. He knows you can see him. He’s letting it happen. You’re a guest in his house.
It’s tempting to get excited, but trust me: don’t. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be happy that Emmitt feels comfortable enough around you to come out of his hiding place, because you absolutely should be. That’s a huge vote of confidence! I’m just saying: celebrate quietly. And don’t look at him. Don’t even acknowledge that he’s there. If he sees you looking at him, you blew it for that week. Better try again next time and hope he forgives you. If you, god forbid, talk to him, forget it! You just set the whole process back months, pal.
It takes even longer after that for Emmitt to let you pet him, and even then it’s a furtive permission. He needs the pets, and he wants you to pet him, but he’s also terrified. He’s being very brave, I hope you know. Terribly brave. Braver than the troops, honestly.
There Have Been Two Exceptions
Only twice in the entire time I have known him has Emmitt bypassed the process I described. One was when my pal Ben came to visit for the first time. Ben, at the time, had no interest in Emmitt at all, which might have factored into what happened after Ben came over and sat down on the couch.
Emmitt walked out of the bedroom like nothing was different, like Ben had always been there. He even rubbed his face on Ben’s shoes and permitted Ben to pet him. This had only ever happened once before.
With me.
When Will and Molly brought Emmitt to my apartment in Squirrel Hill, to drop him off at the home of a man who never had a cat before, he had no anxiety whatsoever. He walked around, smelled things, and even jumped up on my lap. He was home. I was his person. He’s been my best friend ever since. Will and Molly couldn’t believe it. This is the same cat that had hidden under a dresser for days.
I don’t know if I believe in magic, but something happened that day. It was my favorite kind of miracle, a little one, just for the people there to see it. We’ve been inseparable (mostly) ever since.2 He’s followed me to three apartments, multiple girlfriends.
This is the first time we met:
So Now I’m a Cat Person
He annoys me sometimes. His little meow sounds like a rusty hinge. He loves treats, and I try not to give him too many. He has a bowl of dry cat food that he can eat from whenever he wants. Most of the time he just wants to be near me. He wants me to pet him. He especially likes it when I rub his face. We have our rituals, like he follows me into the bedroom every night and waits until I’m under the covers and jumps up and hangs out on my chest while I read.
As far as cats go, he’s extremely easy. He uses his litter box, except when there’s a basket of laundry around, and if so he pees in that. I don’t mind, it helps keep me on my toes and forces me to fold laundry and put it away as soon as it’s clean. He doesn’t do rascally cat things, like knock stuff over or try to escape.
Emmitt lived with Will for months long before he came to live with me. Even so, he only sees Will once in a while, so he still hides. Will took this photo just as he opened the door to my apartment. Emmitt, of course, hid in the closet.
Okay, okay, there was a brief moment shortly after I got him that I half-heartedly asked if anybody wanted to adopt him because I didn’t think I was going to be able to keep up with his fur and dander and the person I was moving in with was allergic and it was weird and it passed quickly. Lots of relationships have rocky starts.
This is the first post from the section I’m calling Short Foremania. They’re shorter versions of the Collected Foremania and I will hopefully write them more often because there’s less pressure.
I also made this logo.
Anyway, here’s finally the actual newsletter I wrote:
Whenever I go to the store, a timer starts. I don’t know how much time is on it until it hits zero.
There are factors, but the weight of each variable changes depending on the day, time of year, or even how much coffee I drank that morning.
The formula is invisible, but the march of minutes is inevitable. Something in me starts the stopwatch as soon as I step inside.
Tick Tock Tick
These are primary variables
which store?
time of day
my mood when I went in
how busy the store is
who’s with me
am I hungry?
ambient temperature
When the timer reaches zero, I gotta get out of there. I beeline for the checkout, if I can. If I can’t, then I’m going to be grumpy. Sorry.
The Weighty Variables
The more I love a store, the longer I can stay there. IKEA trips can last an entire afternoon. I can spend a long time in Target, too. I will endure a Giant Eagle and I’ll be there for exactly as long as it takes me to get what I need and get out, like a burglar. I plan trips to Wal Mart like a heist.
If I’m hungry, tired, over- or under-caffeinated, I probably should have just stayed home.
I have no idea! Maybe this is one of those things that happens to everybody and I live with this mythology about myself. It’s this mythology that led me to think myself a unique and pitiful creature overtaken by the anxiety and depression that plagued me for most of my younger years. That particular myth was dispelled by a therapist who not only told me I was not unique but that he could help me get better from it.
I think we all carry this kind of folklore about ourselves.
But we don’t carry it just about ourselves but about everything.
Babies love to drive the grownups crazy with the drop game. From the lofty air of their high chairs, they drop (or throw) a cup or pacifier or whatever, over and over. This is not only an entertaining game, it’s a young brain learning about the world. Baby talk is not just cute nonsense, it’s a young brain mimicking the sounds it hears, laying cognitive foundations that will evolve into language pathways.
We accumulate a lot of things as we grow. The fertile ground of youthful neuroplasticity is where stereotypes and prejudices grow. The things grown ups tell us, or things we overhear them say, plant themselves in our minds and, over time, turn into opinions and positions. We have a responsibility to dig up the bad ones and throw them out, or plant new ones. This metaphor is slipping away from me, so I’ll stop before I’m writing about picking fruit or whatever.
What folklore is stashed away in your library? Isn’t it time to take it off the shelf and examine it? Yes, I think it is.
Thank you for reading. Truly, thank you. Let people know you like it and I’ll give you a hug (or a hearty handshake)
