Everyone loves looking at the underside of the stingrays. They have those goofy grins. They look like they’re gently smiling at the world, happily floating along the water. But they always look like that. Their faces are frozen in place like Wybie in Coraline. They look like that all the time. After all, the stingray that killed Steve Irwin was also smiling.
Sometimes you need a lot of strength just to have a celebration. I’m not just talking about the strength to label 250 seating cards and design shirts and shlep boxes. I’m talking about the strength to decide to celebrate even when you sometimes don’t want to.
I glanced at my phone and watched as the date changed from May 6th to May 7th and realized, it’s four years later and I am in a hospital, waiting again.
I went back and forth between absolute calm to abject panic to crushing depression and then back to the warm blanket of denial.
It took me over twenty years before I tried out Halloween Horror Nights and I left wondering why I waited that long.
We gather together at an ungodly hour to reenact the original 26.2 miles run by Pheidippides which, fun fact, he wound up dropping dead from.
I lost patience for the inane conversations I used to be a part of and I’m way more judgmental of people who can’t handle the simplest situations. I wouldn’t call those lessons as much as I’d call them side effects.
