Where We Are This Week

The demise of a coal miner and his love for the rollercoaster.

I’d like to start this week’s post by saying you’re welcome. I could have rattled on about any number of things this week but I won’t because, surely, there is no need for one more hot take on Kristi Noem or Donald Trump’s trial in New York. I won’t even be writing about campus protests or the war in Gaza.

“Why?” I hear you saying aloud to your phones and computers. “Babe, he’s not even going to mention Gaza this week!” you exclaim to your partner as they make breakfast. Great, now there’s coffee and toast on the floor and you’re out of bread. You’ve got a couple of options; pick the toast up from the floor, brush it off, and pretend as if nothing happened as you convince yourself you mopped very recently. Or, you decide that today is the day you’re going to start that new diet. No carbs, intermittent fasting, and the one that includes push-ups as you slurp the coffee from the floor.

Coffee ain’t cheap after all, and you don’t have enough time to make a new pot before you have to go to work. Of course, you’d have plenty of time to do so if you hadn’t stayed up all night watching origami tutorial videos online — which in itself was a stupid thing to do because you haven’t had paper or scissors in the house for years after the accident.

But your therapist said that he thought you’d been making great strides as of late and thought it was time to get back on to the horse so to speak. (Not an actual horse, mind you, you’re still years away from being ready for that.) And even when you did finally go to bed you couldn’t get comfortable because instead of using paper, you pulled off all of your sheets, starched them stiff, and folded those for practice. Sleeping in a paper crane did wonders for your back and now you’re driving to work hunched so far over that you can barely see over the steering wheel. You didn’t even notice the blue lights flashing in your rearview mirror until the cop had to pull up beside you and motion for you to pull over.

“If that’s the worst thing that happens today,” he says to himself, “I’ll be fine.”

Now, you’re sweating bullets, the new wool vest you bought is stabbing you through your button-up. You’re allergic to wool but it was such a great sale that you couldn’t pass it up. Regardless, the fix is in, the cop must have seen you blow through the last five red lights and is about to haul you off to county.

In reality, however, the policeman couldn’t believe his luck. His daughter has been going through a big Disney phase lately and they haven’t been getting along since the divorce. You, and you’re unfortunate posture and the coffee stains on your shirt — why didn’t you change? — are a dead ringer for the hunchback of Notre Dame, he says. He wonders if he could get a picture, he figures that’ll go a long way in patching things up with his daughter, Anastasia — what are the odds, right?

It’s not her fault, you know — the divorce. He says he hasn’t been the same since he got back from the war. He found it hard to re-civilize after becoming a cold-blooded killer, not to mention the sleepless nights and pitiful rations he was given in Desert Storm. You sure can relate to those last two conditions, you tell him, and he slaps you on the back so hard that you double over even further. He said he loves jokes and can’t get enough of them since he was able to retire from the military.

You and your fellow soldiers didn’t joke much, you inquire, forgetting the time. No, he says, Saddam outlawed humor in his armed forces. Before you can even thank him for his service, he blows a cloud of smoke in your face, shuts the door of your car, and bids you adieu offering the most graceful curtsy you’ve ever seen. As he pulls away, you lean your head out the window and wish him good luck with Anastasia. “Who?” he says as he peels out leaving black tire tracks behind him for half a mile.

You resist the urge to follow him wherever he’s going. You’re three hours late for work as it is and you already knew you were on thin ice after your performance last quarter. “Coal isn’t going to mine itself,” you tell yourself as a tepid motivation to turn the keys in the ignition which wasn’t a metaphor for anything because you’re an actual coal miner.

Mining coal is the only job you’ve ever known. Sure, it’s why you have a bad back and two black lungs, but it puts food on the table and pays for your monthly Netflix subscription. You just love getting those DVDs in the mail every week.

As you descend the elevator shaft into the dark caverns of the mine, you check your watch. It’s now been a full seven hours since your shift was supposed to begin and everyone knows you won’t be able to hit your coal quota in just one hour. I mean, you’re not Tracey Taminksy for God’s sake. You curse yourself for not living in the same town as your job but you remind yourself that living in a place that didn’t have a Six Flags wasn’t an option.

Before you even swing your pickaxe, the boss calls you into his office. He’s livid. His day has had a horrible start. His favorite writer published the most nonsensical drivel he’d ever read and on his way to work, he got written a massive ticket by a smoking Iraqi policeman with impeccable etiquette (your boss is also a big Six Flags guy), and to top it off, you’re a full eight hours late to your shift. He’s had a lot of tolerance for you in the past — given you days off when your mom disappeared with that magician or when you had that song stuck in your head for a month straight.

This, however, is the straw that broke the camel’s back. (Not the camel, though, he’s fine.) Regrettably, he fires you. You beg for one hour to prove your worth but he knows you’re no Tracey Taminsky. His decision is final but wants to stay friends and wants to know if you’ll meet him at the ‘Goliath’ this weekend. You don’t know, you need more time; it’ll take a few hours of riding the Canyon-Blaster nonstop to clear your head. He understands and wishes you well.

On your way home, hunched over in your Nissan Leaf, you’re racking your brain, trying to figure out how to put your life back in order. Of course, you’ve got your wife and kids at home but you’ve no longer a stable job to provide for them. Then you’ve got this former Iraqi special forces veteran who might have a thing for you and you’re pretty sure you want to see where that goes but have no idea if he lives near your favorite amusement park.

Preoccupied by your unenviable situation, you don’t even notice that your car’s battery is dying. The mine doesn’t have a charging station and you’ve always refused to install one at your house out of principle. Those things are trying to put you out of a job, you know? Your life is unraveling by the minute but there’s only one thought that keeps plaguing you. How fragile our lives are, how easily our ramshackle existence is thrown into unadulterated chaos by the smallest of details, and how all of this could have been avoided if I had just written about Gaza. You’re welcome.

To a better next week,

Cheers,

~FDA