“We could not talk or talk forever and still find things to not talk about,” Jennifer Coolidge’s character says of conversation with her husband in Best in Show, and that is how I feel about most people. As a teen, my parents and brother often chided me for my (excessive, in their view) introversion and …
Debate is raging within my household this week about whether I was recently (and accidentally) exposed to poison ivy while yanking weeds from our yard. I am inclined to say ‘no,’ while Crankenstein says the answer is very much ‘yes.’ Now I hear the strains of suspenseful music every time I sense the faintest itch. …
When you’re told enough times that you’re a worthless piece of shit, you unfortunately start to believe it — particularly when the person doing the telling is someone you love very deeply, who didn’t always treat you like garbage. By the end of my last relationship, I was used to having both insults and the …
There are, to date, two people in my life I’ve loved so unguardedly that ‘the mere idea of them,’ to paraphrase Nat King Cole (or rather, Ray Noble), can almost instantly reduce to me tears if I’m not careful. My grandma is one of them. If Papa, Grandma’s husband and the towering influence of my …
I have two big fears when it comes to Parkinson’s disease: losing my memory and losing my ability to type. Fortunately, dementia is rare in early-onset patients. But my motor symptoms have already arrived and are, so far, largely left-sided. I can tell that I’ve lost typing speed in that hand, which is maddening, and …
My mother-in-law is fond of chirping “The only disability is a bad attitude.” By virtue of her profession, Crankenstein strongly disagrees with this, and we both find it offensive, but we often joke about it at home anyway. That means when Crankenstein tells me “You seem more disabled than usual these last few days,” what …
My dad was in his forties the first time I saw him cry. Jack Buck, the favorite baseball announcer he’d faithfully listened to since he was a child, had died. As I quietly watched him from across the room, it was impossible to discern whether his tears were for the broadcaster he never actually knew …
On our first road trip together, Crankenstein and I visited her parents. It was a trepidatious occasion for us both. She was worried I’d flee within five minutes of seeing their house or meeting her father, and I was worried about the effect being back home would have on her mental health. For the first …
My heterosexual sister had a girlfriend before I did, not that their entanglement lasted very long. To give you an idea of approximately how humiliating that was, it helps to know that she’s more than a decade my junior. While I had close encounters of the almost-girlfriend kind in my teens and early twenties, I …
My favorite response to this week’s announcement of my Parkinson’s diagnosis came from one of my siblings, who said “First of all, it’s homophobic for this to happen during Pride month.” I don’t care much about Pride, which is currently little more than a soulless corporate celebration of a fictionalized account of Stonewall, but that …