5 Random Things on Monday

I could write a coherent essay but then I would have to choose a topic when what I really have in my head is a list of random things from this Monday spent in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula.

1. I’m trying to be a decent friend to people who have experienced the death of a child but it is a role without much of a playbook. So I just asked the most recently bereaved, “How can I be a better friend right now?” and she told me exactly how. Which goes to show, asking a direct question can be very useful.
2. Sometimes the biggest favor you can do for someone is to let them lie to you. Just like the biggest favor you can do for an introvert might be to not invite them to dinner. Why insist on life and living your way? You just become an unwitting instrument of oppression. It’s dreadful.
3. Many people who like me as I am in my blog don’t have much use for me in person. It’s weird to figure this out because I am infatuated with people liking my blog, thinking, myself,  that it’s more me than me. This is a cracked thing but irrelevant. Like, who cares?
4. I’m worried that I don’t have a bucket list like other people do. Mostly, as I get older, I just want to be outside and be where other people aren’t. I don’t want to jump out of a plane or go to Slovenia. I mostly just want to be on a beach where the only tracks are of a single bird or in a canoe on a lake that has never felt a motor running through it.
5. I was once in a workshop with a comedy writer who met Gilda Radner his first day on the job at Saturday Night Live. He was hiding behind a potted plant and she came and found him, sat down next to him beyond all the leaves, and chatted about how he should write a sketch for her as a bird. He said he fell in love with her that moment and stayed in love with her for years. I thought of that today hearing that Gene Wilder died. Who loved her more is always a good question – the one near or far?

In conclusion, I have this to say: Tomorrow is Tuesday.