Category Archives: Life

Little Tortures (or: “Dabid Can’t Sleep”)

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I couldn’t sleep last night. Not because I was worried/excited about anything or because my brain couldn’t calm down. But because there were little wrinkles in the bedsheets. See, when the sheets haven’t been pulled 100% fully taut on the mattress in a while, they start to loosen ever so slightly and these tiny little fabric creases form that send my nerves into overdrive.

I’ve learned not to complain about this often openly, lest I be taunted for being “delicate” like The Princess and the Pea. I know most people haven’t experienced this level of hypersensitivity and probably can’t relate, but little bedsheet crinkles have become one of my many lifelong adversaries.

My eternal battle with sensitivities doesn’t stop with wrinkles, though. If there’s a singular grain of grit, a crumb or anything else on the bed, it’s like a tiny dagger on my skin. And I would be lying if I pretended I hadn’t told my wife on multiple occasions that she needed to stop breathing because the noise was preventing me from falling asleep.

Growing up and going to college, I spent many sleepless nights trying to contort into positions where I couldn’t feel the springs of the bed through the mattress. No matter how sweltering it may be, I always wear a shirt to bed to dampen the feel of the bed on my skin. I also need a fan running constantly at night to cover up the inconsistencies of wind or raindrops outside.

So if you happen to talk to me in the morning and discover I’m grouchy or not fully with it, it may not be that I was up super late devising Pokémon movesets or obsessively reading about some fascinating new toy line—it may just be that I couldn’t sleep because of benign-looking little spikes impaling my body and keeping me awake all night.

These sensitivities are a big hindrance in the waking hours of my everyday life, too. I used to cut the tags off all my shirts so I couldn’t feel them “scratching” my back, I generally won’t wear long pants (AKA non-shorts) because I don’t like the fabric feeling constrictive on my body, and oscillating fans that move on and off my skin intermittently every few seconds make me want to hurl the fan through a window.

Our first DVD player had a little red dot-sized light that lit up whenever it was in use. I couldn’t handle that pinprick of light, so I’d pile anything I could in front of it to block it out fully: candles, action figures, matchboxes… whatever. Losing most of my sight has helped with this sensitivity to lights a lot (the sugary silver lining to a shit sandwich), but my touch sensitivity has either gotten worse than ever or I’m just noticing it a lot more now.

Despite how much my life has suffered as a result of losing the majority of my sight, I can’t help but wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off if some of my other sense hadn’t diminished as well.

Florida II (Or: “Cows Type; Dabid Flounders”)

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During graduate school, I became aware of a 2000 children’s’ book titled “Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type”. After reading the short little picture book, I immediately fixated on it, determining that I wanted to utilize it in my classes when I would eventually land my first middle school teaching job.

“Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type” is a book in which cows learn language and writing skills and utilize them as a method of civil disobedience in order to better their own status and conditions in the world. A short and simple narrative with a plethora of meaningful content for discussion buried underneath the surface, I thought reading it with my classes would perfectly set the tone for an empowering year of coursework with adolescent students.

Shockingly, this turned out to be a mistake.

Click Clack Moo Cows That Type Book Cover Art

The 13-year-old kids in my first independently-managed 7th grade English Language Arts classes immediately disdained the kid’s book—and me. The students weren’t interested in a deeper analysis of the tale at all; they asserted that they were too old for a “dumb kiddie book” and held the attitude that anyone who enjoyed reading a book of that sort (like me) must be a stupid baby.

This was conceived as an introductory lesson that would cleanly demonstrate the power and utility of written language skills, but the students took it as being childish and beneath them. It’s taken me 15 years to come to terms with and really understand why this transpired, but I think I finally do now. I was completely mind-blind to the reality that these 7th graders might respond to my carefully considered lesson in a different way than I had envisioned, and thus was caught utterly off-guard with a disastrous start to the academic year.

This disappointment—on my first or second day as a professional teacher—was my first major inkling that I might somehow be in over my head with this position. There would be ample more evidence to come of just how unprepared I was to manage a classroom of real, breathing children who wouldn’t necessarily dance to the beats that i foresaw.

A Day in the Life (or: “Dabid Does The Laundry”)

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There haven’t been any new entries posted here in a while, but I swear it’s not primarily because I’m being lazy or unmotivated. I’ve actually gotten inspired and started a multitude of entries on my phone or computer, but then I get distracted mid-entry and don’t go back to them. It’s challenging to find wherever I started writing, and more difficult still because I don’t have the patience to try to reread what I’ve already written, as the words disappear as my eyes move over them (having low vision sucks).

I’ve always had a hard time staying on-task except when being totally obsessed with what I’m doing, but it’s definitely gotten worse since my accident (which I’ll be referring to my stroke quadrilogy now, until I decide otherwise).

I think a chronicle of my day yesterday, as narrated by past me, illustrates this point to some degree:

Morning

My main goal was to do the laundry this morning, but I was having a hard time getting out of bed amidst the quiet. Eventually I managed to rouse myself and turned on the TV for background noise and went back to the bedroom to get the laundry, but saw that the donation box across from it was overfilled and spilling on the floor. Thus, I went to get a trash bag to empty some of the excess donatables into. Once in the kitchen, I saw out the window that it was cloudy outside and ideal lighting for taking review photos for my websites.

And so, I went to my stack of unreviewed action figures, grabbed one to photograph, and then started to head outside. The news caught my attention so I sat down to watch the TV for a bit. I got back up to take Figure photos, but had the epiphany I should shoot a 5-minute unboxing video first.

My office is a perpetual disaster zone, so I needed to remove a bunch of shipping boxes from the floor and table to make room. I plugged in the necessary lamp to the USB port on my computer to power it, and looking at my computer realized I should do one of my two daily eye training vision therapy sessions. After completing the session, I moved over to the unboxing table to record the video and discovered I’d need to mute the TV in the other room. I went to the other room, watched a few minutes of TV, and saw it was past time for lunch.

I set a pot of water on the burner and went back to record the unboxing in the now-accessible room with lamp lighting. I sat down and realized I never muted the TV. Back to the TV. Back to the video.

Unboxing completed, but needing the usual editing and minor polish. Wandering into the living room to begin the editing process, I hear the water boiling in the kitchen that I’d forgotten About and set some pasta cooking. I unmute the TV and sit down to wait for the pasta to cook.

Afternoon

Apathy noodles finish cooking, and I noticed it’s gotten sunny out and is no longer suitable for photos. I walk past the bedroom door, see the laundry basket, and decide I’d better take it down to the laundry room ASAP or else I never will. First load of laundry washing.

Walking back upstairs, I check the time on my 🍎 ⌚️ and note I’m well behind on my daily movement calories. I get my sneakers and prepare to go outside for laps in the neighborhood (I can’t drive anymore with my vision being what it is post-accident), but open the front door and see the elderly women who live across the street out walking. They habitually try to greet me or talk to me when I’m out at the same time as them, so I decide to avoid that by going out later instead.

Add sauce to pasta, set it microwaving for a minute and a half. At this point, I get a surprise alert from my phone some little vinyl figures sold on eBay, and realize I’ll have to blind-hunt for them and also a shipping box. Remember noodles in microwave. Eat noodles.

Still too sunny outside for photography, and laundry load 1 still washing.

Late Afternoon

Only a couple hours until my wife gets home from work, so I need to get in gear and get chores in the house done. Wash pots and pans from lunch and the night before. Go to put dishes away from the dishwasher and discover the latch on the detergent compartment stuck when last run and everything is still dirty. Begin rerunning dishwasher.

Notice giant trash bag of donatables on the bedroom floor I filled earlier. Take it out to my car so it may actually travel to the donation drop off and is out of the house. See there’s no old ladies out because it’s 90 degrees-ish now and decide to do that walk. Put on my shoes and realize I need to dry that first batch of laundry.

While going downstairs to set laundry drying, I almost stumble on a pile of boxes and remember I need to package that eBay sale. I spot an Amazon box that’s the right size, but it’s still full. I bring it back up, open and photograph it’s awesome Contents, which reminds me I still need to take review photos of that action figure from this morning. The lighting still works, so I do that, set the figure back inside and then go for my walk while my shoes are on.

I manage about 1.66 miles and 4500-ish steps before one of my nemesis old ladies appears and I flee back into the house. I’ll have to do the other half of today’s fitness requirements later to close my rings.

It’s too quiet in the house, as the TV turned off due to inactivity. I turn it back on, then package, measure and weigh the eBay item. I go back to my office to make the label and decide to do my other daily vision therapy session while I’m there.

Once that’s done, my wife’s work day is over, so I need to start making dinner while she comes home. Unload completed dishes in dishwasher. Make dinner.

I think I hear my wife coming up the hill, so I go down to hold the door for her. It’s not her—it’s some sales guy trying to sell us new windows. I try to tell him no, but he’s pushy and schedules an estimate for tomorrow. Future Dabid’s problem. Back to cooking. I’m on the clock here.

Evening

Have dinner, then walk remaining 40 minutes in swampy outside humidity to complete daily exercise with 11,0000+ steps and 700+ movement calories.

. Bring up mail from mailbox and rip up refinancing junk. At this point, I’m utterly exhausted.

Grind in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond for a bit; remember to do today’s Wordle while there’s still time remaining on it.

I go into storage and gather another half dozen items to take eBay photos for.

Night

Listen to about an hour of audiobook with my wife before she goes to bed. 21 hours of “The Way of Kings” down, 24 hours remaining.

Schedule USPS pickup for tomorrow for that eBay item I packaged earlier, since I can’t drive to the post office anymore.

Work through a few episodes of backlog of The Office and Simpsons Season 32 while mindlessly leveling Pokémon.

Continue reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes on my phone (it’s too hard to see text in a book now) as part of my studies of classic literature.

Set package outside the front door for USPS to pick up in the morning. Remember that I never made it downstairs to dry that first batch of laundry. Set that half drying and the other half washing. It’s after midnight now. I can finish the laundry tomorrow.

Greasy Brain Bag (Or: “Dabid Has A Dream”)

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Generally I don’t have any dreams when I’m sleeping, so when I had one this week that was coherent enough for me to recall it when I awoke, I quickly related it to my wife so that it would be firm in my mind for documentation. The term “my mind” is extra-appropriate in this instance, as the central subject of my dream was in fact my actual brain.

A lab wanted to examine my brain, so my wife and best friend removed it for me to drop it off there. This might sound difficult, but it turned out to be a relatively simple removal. If you’ve ever seen Doctor Strange or Avengers Endgame where The Ancient One can just kind of “power shove” your astral form out of your physical body, it was like that. Except with the “push” being to my face, and with just my fully physical brain somehow popping out of the back of my head. Just go with it.

Anyway, Brainless Dabid was seemed to be functioning just fine for quite some time. Super Smash Bros. was being played (I’m not sure which one, but I think Brawl or later), which should have been a flag to me that I was within a dream or something, since I can’t play Smash anymore since I lost most of my vision.

At some point, the lab called my wife to let her know they were done examining my brain and I really needed to get it reinserted into my head before it expired. I asked my wife and best friend if they could just pop it back in themselves, but they insisted it should probably be done at a hospital.

We went and picked up my brain at the lab, where it was handed back to us in a crumpled white paper bag. If you’ve ever gotten a nearly translucent white paper bag with patches of grease covering regions of it, like from a bakery or what-not, it was like that (with a good amount of brain matter deft to it–like a dense chunk of cake or something) . One of those clear plastic clamshells used at grocery stores and such may have been more hygienic for my brain, but whatever.

Anyway, we all went over to the hospital, which was a bit labyrinthine, so we had to wander for a bit while searching for the proper place to have a brain put back in to one’s head.

I overheard some nurse talking about how they needed to keep a baby elephant alive for the procedure (I assumed they were talking about mine, but my family didn’t seem to agree).

We eventually found a nurse, and realizing they were going to have to lift off the top of my head to reinsert my brain, I explained I was going to need to be heavily sedated. The nurse warned that I was gonna be “naWWWWW-seous!” after they put my head back on.

And then I woke up. I don’t know exactly how to interpret this dream, but I figured it was crucial that I chronicle it regardless.

What could it mean?

The World’s Worst Vegetarian (or: “Dabid and Food”)

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I have a confession to make: I am a vegetarian. You may have guessed that already based off my whack-job theory of how to save penguins that this blog is titled for, but if not, there it is.

When I was about 7 years old, my brain made the connection between “chicken” the animal and the “chicken” humans eat and realized what was going on. From literally that moment of horrific epiphany onward, I’ve never eaten another animal in my life.

Maybe it was the fact that I raised myself holding cartoon animals as role models and internalizing their lessons about life and morals, or maybe it’s just that most of my friends growing up were stuffed animals, but the idea of eating some other creature remotely like myself instantly traumatized me.

I try to always tell the truth whenever possible, but I learned early on not to be upfront about disclosing being a vegetarian, because that tends to be a loaded word that rubs people the wrong way. For whatever reason, it’s my experience that when I tell someone I don’t eat meat, they want me to justify myself and explain my values. And, well, I just don’t like to argue about something personal like values.

I’ve had some success in the past telling people who press me on it that eating animals violates my sense of justice, but I think it’s actually more that the notion of it just makes me really sad.

When television presents anthropomorphic pigs and ducks and rabbits to a kid as exemplar bringers of life lessons, it’s hard to conceive of them as lower beings meant to be killed and consumed for unnecessary purposes.

My brother-in-law used to profess how much he loved ducks, so it’s a deep incongruity to me that he’s able to go into restaurants and enjoy eating one. This is the sort of thing about being human I don’t think I’ll ever comprehend.

I try not to tell people I’m a vegetarian unless I have to. I’m not “ashamed” of it exactly, but my impression is that oftentimes people seem to think that they’re being judged or looked down upon when they find out someone else (ie me) is a vegetarian.

Even so, I don’t really get where that belief comes from. I’ve never in my life told anyone they were wrong for eating meat or that they shouldn’t, and I like to think I’m about as non-threatening presence as exists.

But still, there seems to be a palpable shift in others’ aura or attitudes whenever my sordid status as a non-meat-eater for 30+ years comes to light.

If I’m not trying to force my dietary views on others, I don’t get why they want to argue or push their perspectives on me. I can cook up a Boca Burger without feeling superior to anyone else—I wish everyone could accept that without thinking I want to debate them on their viewpoints or the merits of eating meat.

At some point, I think it permeated the public consciousness that every vegetarian was like a fractionally small group of militant PETA nutjobs, and because people are easily swayed to hate those who are different, this was easy and convenient to accept. But thinking every non-meat-eater is a holier-than-thou psycho is akin to thinking every person who identifies as a Republican is a MAGA hat-wearing white supremacist. It’s just not realistic.

It’s implausible to me why anyone would think not eating meat would make me feel “better” than anyone else. Having these feelings that make me a vegetarian aren’t easy and it isn’t fun. It’s a burden. Another barrier that separates me from other people.

It’s not being able to split a pizza with my best friend, not being able to eat at a club or work event if what’s provided isn’t suitable, and being “that person” acquaintances ask where it’s appropriate to go to eat at because of my “dietary restrictions”.

As far as my actual diet goes, I’ve been called “the worst vegetarian on Earth” by multiple people over the years, which I think is sort of weird since I never professed to eat healthily or nutritiously— I just said that I didn’t eat animals.

Growing up, I’d happily subsist on candy, macaroni and cheese, potato chips, crackers and anything similarly full of cheese, starch or sugar I could get my hands on.

As long as I kept my mouth shut and was cheap to feed my parents didn’t really care, and “healthy” was much less of a concern to me than foods having an offensive flavor or texture (like onions).

Once I went off to college and had better access to a variety of foods, my diet minimally evolved.

So what do I actually eat as an adult? As a general rule, if an entree is not something you’d find on a kids’ menu (or the veggie equivalent), I won’t eat it. So thumbs up to grilled cheese, fries, veggie burgers (with just ketchup and no other junk on them) and cheese pizza, but thumbs down to salads, pizzas with “toppings”, wraps, vegetable sandwiches, chili, etc. Baked goods and desserts are workable as well. (I also have a profound weakness for “limited edition” junk foods and sodas, but that’s neither here nor there.)

So, in conclusion: No, I don’t eat animals, nor do I eat healthily. Yes, being vegetarian sucks, but it’s what I’m wired to be nonetheless. And no, I don’t want to talk about it any further. So leave me alone to eat a ludicrous amount of Skittles and continue cheering for the roadrunner to elude the coyote and live another day.

Self-Checkout (or: “Dabid vs. Small Talk”

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Suffering through checkout is the worst part of any shopping trip. The judgmental nature of a clerk quizzically assessing why I need to purchase $320 worth of Marvel Legends action figures in one go doesn’t really bother me ( I need to make certain to get the whole waves while I can to ensure I have all the parts to complete the series’ Build-A-Figures—Duh!), but having to endure a few moments of forced social niceties sure as fuck does [I went back and forth for hours thinking about the usage of the objectionable word “fuck” here, but I think utilizing a little harsh written language in this scenario gives appropriate emphasis to my feeling regarding these types of interactions, and is thus the correct usage for such language].

My best friend/brother (I promoted him to brother in a YouTube unboxing video, so it’s legal) feels strongly about using the checkout lanes with actual employees, so I try to acquiesce to his wishes whenever we’re on a comics/toy/grocery run. I think I understand his moral values about wanting to support those workers’ jobs by using human-run rather than automated lanes, but hell if my blood pressure doesn’t spike every time some disinterested schmuck is forced to ask how I am and propriety requires me to choke out a robotic response that’s meaningless to all involved.

Consequently, I think self-checkout lanes are one of the great renaissances of our time. When used, no longer do I have to avoid eye contact with some kid or grandma trying to make “small talk” with me, nor do I have to be alert for rare instances where I’m oblivious to being “flirted” to. I can put my own Pokémon cards into a shopping bag without bending the pack or tossing them down too recklessly (risking damaging them).

I don’t want to sound like a sociopath or anything—I generally don’t have anything against (or for) hardworking employees. It’s just that whether it be calling for a pizza or a necessary doctor’s appointment, I’d rather bash my head into the wall than have to have that requisite interpersonal interaction. Having to communicate with another person sucks, and it’s particularly nightmarish having to interpret what others are really meaning by what they say or if they care at all. Add in complicating elements like oral “tones” and “body language” and the whole thing becomes even more of a Hellscape.

One of the cardinal sins of telling a story is to tell and not show, but I think I’m guilty of that here. I’ve been d so pall-encompassed by these difficulties all my life that it’s hard to recollect specific anecdotes .

Let me just let it be said that in the majority of the tens of thousands of times I’ve ventured into retail stores in my life, if an employee comes to ask me if I need help with anything or have any questions, I immediately leave the store. Even if I did need help or would have bought something, I feel too uncomfortable and just abandon ship. No Beanie Baby, Funko POP or Pikachu-colored anything is worth that kind of duress.

So yes, I am happy to pay rising prices for my toys and action figures, Target. Just please—please—keep those self-checkout lanes functioning.

Skidmore I (Dabid’s First Roommate)

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Anxious to escape from my young life as fully as possible, my senior year of high school came and I applied to a number of far-away schools with journalism programs that seemed impressive to my teenage brain, such as The University of Rochester, The University of Chicago and Oberlin College.

But ultimately, I ended up going to a Tier I liberal arts school named Skidmore College (affectionately nicknamed by students as “Smokemore”, due to being the #1marijuana-smoking school in the country at that time, but I wouldn’t be aware of or understand the meaning of that moniker for a long time).

Truthfully, I’d never heard of Skidmore in my life until a high school guidance counselor recommended it to me in my senior year, saying that it would be a good match for me because of my extracurricular activities, headlined by being president of my school’s animal rights coalition (no, really—we called it a coalition).

Skidmore was one of a couple schools I was accepted to, but it was the only college at which I qualified for scholarships that would cover my full education, room and board, and then some (about a quarter million dollars’ worth)—so that was where I went. Having never worked so much as a part-time job at that point and having parents that had literally not put even a penny into any kind of college fund for me, four fully-paid years of education with money left over on the side sounded pretty dang alluring to me.

Enrolling at Skidmore came along with a requisite I feared and dreaded: a mandatory first year in the dorms with a roommate. Having zero siblings and never even being permitted to have or attend a sleepover (not that I would have wanted to anyway), I had no clue what sharing a single room living space with another human would be like.

I determined that the best way to prep my impending roommate for a school year in close proximity to me would be to compile and send him a list of topics that fell within my sphere of knowledge (things like The Simpsons, WWE and Days of our Lives). I believe the school gave us the E-Mails for our roommates as a means to try to break the proverbial “ice”, but I think all my efforts to provide safe subjects for discussion did was successfully freak my unlucky roommate out.

Wanting to have first crack at settling in and setting up my first dorm room before my roommate even arrived on campus, I signed up for a one-week volunteer program for incoming freshmen that would allow me to move in a week earlier than other students in my class.

Unfortunately, Skidmore had apparently seen that ploy before and had other ideas. My assigned roommate was also signed up to take part in the program, and managed to arrive even earlier than I.

My first-ever roommate, Nate W., was not exactly a match made in Heaven for me. Nate was a hardcore athlete, and he wanted no TV, lights or noise after 8PM most nights because he had to get up at like 5AM or 6AM or some other ungodly hour for something called “rowing practice” in order to increase his endurance.

Despite his being underage, Nate’s parents set up a mini fridge for him and stocked it up with beer it would be a violation of the rules for him to utilize. It was also an unexpected and scandalous experience for me waking up one morning and having there be a third person in our room: some random girl in Nate’s bed.

Clearly, this first cohabitation experience was not going to end well.

It didn’t. I returned after my first college Christmas break to find half our room—Nate’s half—cleared out and abandoned. Nate had requested a room change without telling me and had already moved on to his new home before I even knew that was a possibility. I never liked Nate and was always uncomfortable around him, but even I felt a little rejected having had my first roommate silently abandon me.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have tortured him by playing dozens of episodes of the soap opera Passions (wherein the main cast was being sucked into Hell during one night of their time that took place over months of real-time) while he was in the room, despite Nate’s vocal objections. Oh well. I guess his endurance wasn’t so great after all.

Six-Month Brain Damage Anniversary! (Or: “Dabid’s State of Mind “)

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Today is the official six-month anniversary of when I had my blinding quadruple stroke, so I wanted to use today’s entry to reflect on how my life has changed since that event and commemorate what my present state of mind is.

To say that these six months have been the most difficult of my life would be an understatement of hyperbolic proportions. Suddenly becoming mostly blind at this point in my life is beyond debilitating. It sort of goes without saying, but virtually everything you do from when you wake in the morning until you go to sleep at night is dependent upon your vision.

It’s next to impossible for me to put how broken my vision is into precise words, because even after half a year of talking to doctors and therapists, I still really don’t understand it myself.

What I do understand, though, is that even with all of the vision therapy and experimental research I’ve done over the last six months, I would still say things have only improved by 0%.

I’ve been rather dreading this six-month mark, since that’s the traditionally agreed-upon cutoff for when chance of recovery drops to zero. But my neuro-ophthalmologist already told me I had a 0% chance of recovery after two months, so I’m a bit numb to it by now. I’m doing everything that can be done, so I won’t have to live with the regret of thinking I could have done more, but that’s cold comfort when nothing is helping.

Playing video games and watching TV/movies are next to impossible, since the on-screen motion just processes in what remains of my brain as flashing blurs. I mostly just listen to stuff anymore (I even got a dreaded “Audible” account, which I admit is not as bad as I thought it would be).

Reading comics is a nightmare, as my brain cuts off half of whatever I’m looking at. Whether I focus on a single panel or a whole page, half of whatever I’m trying to see blurs away. I’m getting better at puzzling out what I’m seeing, but image processing is still an immense challenge overall.

Just web browsing and typing on my phone is an ordeal, but with hundreds of hours spent doing it since my accident, I’ve gotten a bit better at typing without seeing half the keyboard and fixing errors as I make them so that the mistakes aren’t lost forever as my eyes move on to the next word.

Collecting is still a driving focus of my life, but a large amount of the joy of getting a new toy is definitely lost when you can barely see it at best and can’t see it at all if your eyes move away slightly. I’ve started to include additional context and personal anecdotes in my reviews and unboxing videos to make up for some of the discussion of the actual collectibles that’s lost to me not being able to see them.

You might think I would be buying less since I can’t independently drive to stores anymore, but I’m getting really good at making copious amounts of impulse buys online instead.

I haven’t thought too much about going anywhere or visiting anyone, because even if I could get somewhere else, what’s really the point of traveling to something or someone I can’t see anyway?

I think it’s an ironic and suitable Hell for me that after living most of my life distancing myself from others (consciously or otherwise), I end up being permanently distanced from living in this world and having normal relationships with others by an abrupt life-changing injury.

One of the hardest things has been coping with the fact that I look fine to friends and family from the outside (probably partially due to my propensity to overachieve through effort and force of will), but from my point of view the world is a nightmare kaleidoscope it’s a battle just to navigate through every day. “You don’t seem to be limited at all!” What a joke.

It’s still really hard for me to comprehend that this is forever—that I won’t wake up someday and be able to see the world around me and be able to interact with it as I did for the first 39 years of my life. I’ll never finish Cuphead, watch all those iconic normie shows and movies I wanted to experience, play Smash Bros. competitively or read all those comics Omnibuses I’ve accumulated and be able to really comprehend what I’m seeing.

If all the things I love aren’t truly accessible to me anymore in a manner that allows me to appreciate them, I have to wonder a little bit about what meaning there is in living on in this condition.

I haven’t given up, though. A wise ninja once told me that it’s all over once I give up on myself, so I need to keep going nonetheless.

I still have over 5 months left before the deadline I set for myself to finish this book, and I know in it’s completed form it will somehow be meaningful to someone and help them in their journey. I know it.

Summer DAYS (or: “Comic Books, Soap Operas & Dabid’s Faux-Italian Grandmother)

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My parents tried sending me to a children’s’ day camp or some such during the summer when I was a younger pre-teen, but it didn’t work out so well. I didn’t play or socialize well with other children, and being forced to participate in physical games and activities like “dodgeball” and “swimming” with other kids for hours every day was something akin to Hell for me. Trying to be forced to imbibe something called “Bug Juice” (I think a euphemism for Gatorade) made me cry.

This experiment was mercifully short, but my parents didn’t want me around the house for months when school was out of session, so I was instead shipped off to spend my summer days with my elderly grandmother in her subsidized senior living apartment.

Her apartment complex, Franciscan Village, was built inside a historic Franciscan Monastery, so everything was rather brown and tan and dull. Quiet, no other youngsters around, TV, nobody to bother me but an 80-something year-old woman who slept most of the day—yep, this was the life.

My grandmother—Mama Ricco, as she generally referred to herself in the third person (she began all phone calls the same way every time, whether calling someone or answering: “This is Mama Ricco…”)—spoke with a pronounced Italian accent and would frequently go off on tangents about her youthful days in Italy. It wasn’t until I was almost an adult that I found out she had, in truth, never even been to Italy or outside the United States at all and that her thick accent was entirely fabricated. She was an eccentric, hefty old lady and I loved her dearly.

Days passed leisurely with Mama Ricco, as she had a walker and wasn’t especially mobile, moving at a speed of about a quarter mile per hour. She didn’t drive and never left the apartment complex unless it was for a medical appointment or family event. Occasionally I’d escort her over to the complex’s chapel for prayer, but that happened more and more seldom as time passed.

With little other stimulation and no social trivialities to distract me, it’s during my years of summers with Mama Ricco that two of my most enduring lifelong interests developed.

The first was my initial exposure to one of Mama Ricco’s “stories”, a soap opera titled “Days of our Lives”. Mama Ricco preferred the show after DAYS (as I learned to abbreviate it, in the manner it was truncated by soap fans), “Another World”. I thought that “AW” was a little bland and boring, and never really got into it.

DAYS, however, I have no shame in admitting I watched literally thousands of hours of throughout my childhood, teenage years, college years and into adulthood. When I had to be at school during the show, I taped it on VHS tapes I set recording before leaving in the morning. I consumed soap opera books and weekly magazines to catch up on the decades of history that were before my time.

Who killed who and why, who was related to who, who had a checkered past as a drug dealer or had been possessed By the devil, who had banged their spouse’s Mom—I knew it all and was mesmerized by this no-doubt-realistic portrayal of what the world outside my own antisocial existence was really like.

I even did a presentation in high school discussing the soap opera, and it turned out to be a rare commonality I could have conversations about with other students who were fans (though I suspect not to the same obsessive extent as myself).

The other interest that developed during the era spent at Mama Ricco’s abode was a fateful one that would someday blossom into the work I’m most famous for: comic books.

The stars aligned and I was in the right place at the right time to have the perfect set of circumstances to be exposed to mainstream superhero history as it happened. The greatest decade of comic book-based cartoons was about to start (including X-Men, WildCATS, Batman: The Animated Series and more) and I was spending my days at an apartment complex a less than five minute walk from what would become one of the most beloved comic stores in existence, the then-recently-opened Carol & John’s Comic Book Shop.

I have a lot more memories of being in that comic book shop than I do most other things from growing up, but I won’t drag this entry out talking about how I eternally regret passing on the Bowen Designs Deadpool mini-bust I saw in the shop for $30 (which ultimately led to my obsession with statues and mini-busts).

I would do everything in my power to scrounge up some spare change each day so that I could spend a half hour or so raiding the back issue bins for bargain comics that would expand my knowledge in these pre-Wikipedia times. It was here at Carol & John’s that I was first exposed to and began to become well-versed in the X-Men, Spider-Man, New Mutants, Fantastic Four, New Warriors, Thor and many more comic book icons that would eventually take the mainstream world by storm.

It was a perfect scenario to grow an intense specialized interest in, as I could watch the cartoons on TV and then go buy back-stocked comics to feed my growing need to know more and more about the Marvel characters whose toys on shelves were fueling my inner fire.

Mama Ricco passed away in the summer of 2004, but I didn’t attend her funeral since I avoid the rest of my biological relatives for any reason. Even so, I think it’s apropos that I was attending my first-ever comic book convention during Mama Ricco’s funeral, as the comic book expertise developed during my tenure as her sorta-ward would go on to be a core component of my life and future.

spider-Man No More! (Or: “Dabid Quits a Job)

Penguin Dome! Posted on by

Around the start of April in 2021, I got up the guts to ask to leave my job (which I have not yet talked about in this blog, but may or may not circle back to) as a marketing and communications executive in the collectibles industry. I hadn’t been doing well for months at that point, and It turned out that making the decision to resign was the correct choice for me.

I felt an extreme amount of pressure and responsibility on my shoulders in that job (almost certainly overvaluing myself, but whatever),and it ended up taking an immense toll on me physically and psychologically. You should never work for an employer whose well-being you set above your own, but that’s what I chose to do for too long, and by the end, I was seriously coming undone.

A big part of working in marketing is, well… marketing, which can be defined as the “action or business of promoting and selling products or services”. When one is zealously trying to promote or sell something, they oftentimes choose to present a rather lopsided perspective of their item in order to convince consumers to purchase it.

As an independent toy reporter, I had been blessed for years with the privilege of complete autonomy and being able to present a full analysis of collectibles—both the good and the bad—without being beholden to anyone. But being a company man, I suddenly had a responsibility to only give collectors partial viewpoints of items—something that contradicted my principle of 100% honesty.

I also had to learn to keep a multitude of secrets from my friends and fellow fans, violating my predilection for complete transparency in interacting with others and making me nervous about slipping up when talking to some of my closest friends . I might be spoiled, but staying true to my values is a priority in my life. Having to work around them for a job was tough for a brat like me.

Additionally, I frequently have enormous difficulties interpreting what others are saying or feeling or asking for, so I was constantly terrified I’d accidentally give an unsuitable response to one of the hundreds of social media comments I’d be moderating each day and the company would suffer for my mistake. I spent quite a few sleepless nights during that year and a half worrying about haplessly bringing shame to my employer. Those nights compounded and I felt more and more drained and sleep-deprived.

And I was being dramatically underpaid for the monumental amount of work I was doing and the damage I was doing to myself to do so, which didn’t help matters. (I also got tired of being called a “retard” by randos on the Internet who saw me in my company videos, which didn’t exactly encourage me to keep doing my best for them to keep their interest in collecting fun and interesting.)

My wife absolutely abhorred that I ever took such a high-demand, low-return job in the first place, and it was a frequent point of contention between us during my year and a half working in the industry. She loathed my devotion to the company and was delighted when I decided to give it up, so it was nice to have her full support on abandoning my job while in the midst of a pandemic and going back to my career as an independent reporter with limited and uncertain monthly income.

I gave about three months notice that I was quitting so that my boss would have adequate time to find a suitable replacement for me who could handle all my duties without disrupting the status quo, but it ended up being irrelevant—no one was actually hired to replace me at all. Nothing to make a guy feel superfluouslike his job being eliminated basically entirely. It actually made my decision to leave a easier for me, though—if my duties could be dissipated so easily, clearly I wasn’t as necessary as I feared.

While winding. down my preparations to leave my position, I spent many hours writing an elaborate step-by-step document detailing precisely how to perform all of my duties—but it was also a waste, as most of those tasks weren’t taken up by anyone else anyway and were never performed again.

And so, on August 1st 2021, I left my proverbial Spider-Man mask in a random alleyway trash can and retired from the corporate business world forever, beginning serious brainstorming for this book/blog, which I intended to be the capstone great work of my life. Little did I realize at the time that I might be starting such a chronicle too late…