This was written in 2016 and originally posted to my Medium.com page. I am reposting here on the one-year anniversary of the day we lost Tom Petty. 

Two hours, four days a week. That was my Kid-Free Time to Myself total last year. The amount of stuff I could get done in those eight hours would knock your socks off. Unless you are a mother, in which case you would be like, “Yeah that sounds about right.”

When your Get Stuff Done time is limited you learn to be incredibly efficient at errands and tasks. Which is why it seemed revolutionary and a little scandalous when I decided to spend one of my precious mornings each week ice skating. By myself.

I realized that the local ice skating rink had open skate time on Thursdays while my youngest was at preschool. I had taken my oldest ice skating a couple of times and gotten good enough so I could skate around at a decent speed without falling or running into other people. I had no idea how to stop, but it’s not like stopping is an important skill or anything.

So one morning I decided to drop my daughter at preschool, head two towns over, and ice skate. By myself. At ten o’clock on a Thursday morning.

The place was pretty empty except for a small group of older people who were all decked out in their skating gear and were obviously regulars. I rented my skates, paid the entrance fee, and got on the ice.

“Take it to the Limit” was playing on the sound system, and it echoed around the mostly empty rink in a way that I decided was peaceful and not creepy.

The rink had just opened for the day, so the ice was shiny and perfectly smooth. As I skated around the perimeter at my beginner pace and watched an old man lap me twice, I noticed that my skates were cutting lines into the perfect ice.

“I’m ruining the ice!” I thought. Sharp little icicles of shame formed in my heart and I started the familiar one-woman tango of feeling bad about myself.

Then I remembered my favorite Tom Petty lyric: Think of me what you will, I’ve got a little space to fill. Tom Petty (my Personal Rock God and Musical Savior) reminded me that the simple fact of my existence gives me the right to take up space and make marks in the ice. I paid my money, so I get to skate around in a slow ellipse and listen to the Eagles and Richard Marx with some nice retired people. Also, I am keeping the Zamboni driver employed.

I have a tendency to hide when left to my own devices. Sometimes I will get this sad invisible feeling, this existential loneliness that I feel even in a crowded room — especially in a crowded room. I’ve learned that this is a sign that I have been hiding.

I’ve identified a few masks that help me hide. Here are the top four:
1. The Stepford Wife: My life is perfect and I am handling everything like a boss!
2. The Giant Ear: I will use my killer listening skills to avoid having to ever volunteer any information about myself!
3. The Southern Belle: I will exhibit my best manners at all times, never asking for what I need or want!
4. The Pleasure to Have in Class: I am an obedient child and I will let the adults around me make my decisions, even if those adults are bagging my groceries or abusively honking at me!

Hiding feels safe, and then hiding feels lonely. At the ice skating rink I remembered that I have a right to be seen. As a grown up I have to choose to be seen if I want to be happy, even if that means scuffing up some perfectly smooth ice.

I wish I could always keep Tom Petty’s “think of me what you will” attitude top of mind. What I tend to default to is more of a “please never think anything negative or I will die” attitude.

But I’ve decided to fake it ’til I make it, and pretend that I could give a toss what anyone thinks of me, my ice skating hobby, my questionable math skills, my split ends, or any of the ways I fill my space.

Because it’s my space to fill. I hope you fill some space today in a way that makes you as happy as ice skating (and Tom Petty) make me.

Photo by udiscovermusic.com

Eye doctor equipment inspired by Disney Pixar’s “Wall E”

Welcome to the eye doctor! Hard to believe it’s been a whole year. My, how you’ve grown slightly bigger, and aged! I know you enjoy going through life using your corrective lenses and pretending to be just like everyone else, but here at the eye doctor we feel it’s important to remind you at least once a year that you are, as the kids say, “nearsighted af.”

Let’s start in this room with me, a person whose title will forever be a mystery. Am I a Registered Nurse? A Physician’s Assistant? A receptionist from the temp agency? That is for me to know and you to not know, ever.

I (whoever the heck I am lol) will now ask you the first set of questions that you will just make up the answers to, including “how often do you change your lenses, do you ever sleep in your lenses, and what brand of solution do you use?”

Keep in mind that you will be summarily thrown out into the gutter if the answers to these questions even approximate “I change them whenever they are so covered with crud they are rendered opaque, sometimes I fall asleep in them, hee hee, why, is that bad, and how tf should I know the name of my contact solution, it is literally saltwater.” It should be noted that “just use my answers from last year” is also an unacceptable answer for which you will be judged.

Let’s proceed to the part where you have to take out your contacts and really come to grips with your visual situation. We enjoy seeing our patients go from “I’m winning at life,” to “I’m that old man from The Twilight Zone who survives nuclear annihilation only to break his glasses and be condemned to a life of misery.” We believe humility is an important step in acceptance, which is an important step in our secret plan to overthrow the government and install an optometric dictator, wait, I mean eye health.

The world is over and you can't see. Womp Womp.

Now that you are staring blankly ahead and awkwardly not seeing anything, I will leave you alone with your thoughts while you wait for the doctor. We have a fantastic selection of magazines for you to not read while you wait!  

Hi there, I’m the eye doctor. I hope your favorite thing is when an old man turns all the lights off and sticks his face millimeters from yours while shining laser pointers into your eyeballs!

After that, I will pull this old-timey contraption up to your face and make you look through different lenses and tell me which letters you see. Then I will slightly change the lenses and ask you which of two lenses is more clear, one or two (sometimes I will use different numbers, with no detectable pattern in my number choice). Most of the time the two lenses will look exactly the same to you and you will just randomly pick one, growing ever more anxious as you make up more and more answers and dig yourself into a hole of pure lies. One or two? Two or three? Three or four? Sixteen or Thirty-two? π or θ?

This will last for 550 minutes or until numbers and letters begin to look like meaningless symbols, (whichever comes first) and then the Fun Train will keep on chugging down to pupil dilation! This is where we drop some brackish yellow burny stuff in your eyes and make you wait some more while you look at blurry pictures in People Magazine or just hang out with your own relentlessly unhelpful thoughts.  

I heard through the grapevine that you have astigmatism.

​Then we shine some more laser pointers into your eyeballs, after which you finally get to go out in public, wearing disposable sunglasses that look like something that would happen if the California Raisins and your grandma designed eyewear together.

You have now completed your eye doctor visit. Go out into the unbearable sunlight, dear patient, with your keepsake glasses, your scarily-dilated pupils, and your ego squashed back down to a healthy size. “See” you next year bwahahahaha!