{"id":1022,"date":"2010-05-25T21:47:32","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T02:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deepsicks.com\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2022-04-15T20:59:48","modified_gmt":"2022-04-16T01:59:48","slug":"scared-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/2010\/05\/25\/scared-funny\/","title":{"rendered":"scared funny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I skate goofy foot and wear a helmet. These things are not related, beyond both making me a weirdo, apparently. I’m funny. My friends tease me. Don’t that feel wrong? the wind not in your hair?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t have health insurance\u2014haven’t for almost a year, since I left Canada. I haven’t been entirely unemployed, but this is how America Works. I’ve been on and off contracting for a college. They don’t have the money to actually hire me, and certainly not to pay me benefits. It’s a religious school. Maybe they’ve been praying for me instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s funny, because it really is scary, and because I sound bitter, and I am, but I’m being facetious, too. It didn’t take long for me to remember that I shouldn’t expect, much less think I deserve, that my basic health and safety needs should be met when I’m lucky enough to be proud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I wear a helmet and ignore the fact that if luck runs out in a crash bam accident bad enough where a helmet saves my life, my brain will be intact but my body’s gonna wish it were dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t think about this dodging pothole traffic on my bike or carving arcs through winding suburban parks on my longboard, though. I just go. I feel fantastic. And when I take a hill too fast unable to slow, panic know a sharp turn is just around the corner FAIL! need to bail right now<\/em> but my legs can’t run fast enough to match my velocity and I stumble fall fly forward head over heels into the grass leaves branches trees, every time my head smacks hard I think AWESOME! I’m wearing a helmet RAD! I am so rad, rolling into a heap at the side of the path, my comrades out of sight further down the trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You fall when you lose faith\u2014question confidence, your own inner balance, stop praying to yourself for just a second, or worse, become aware of the prayer and wonder how in hell it’s actually working.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Grass stained, stinging, blood poking out, I rise tall and feel divine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As we drive back to the city, Natalie in her convertible taunts Gabe in his gonzo Riveria, tempting him to race the twisted guts of torn-up 35W. In the revving Riv with Gabe I put my helmet back on, and Gabe thinks it’s funny so drives faster to show Natalie and Andrew in the other car how funny I am. They go faster. We go faster. I take off my helmet so it isn’t funny anymore but quickly put it back on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is too scary to not be funny.
We are all going to die.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We don’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later Gabe says I fell off my board to prove I need a helmet. I think I fell because I needed to fall, to know I’d be okay. The first real ride of the summer, the first lost control out of the way. A cyclist who witnessed it grunted as he passed me, “You okay?”\u009d actively pedaling by, and I know it is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Didn’t need that skin anyway. That illusion of control.
The belief I can get away with anything.
The fear that I won’t.<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s funny, because it really is scary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[30,31],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-narratives","tag-now-zen","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8043,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions\/8043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}