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The disappointingly simple gift

My uncle Mike had a heart attack on Monday. It seems to be a common occurrence in our family.

Mike was the one I looked forward to seeing the most at Christmas. I never really knew much about his life or what he did for work, but none of that mattered because he brought the best snacks. When all the adults in the room were having their boring adult talk, he paid attention to me.

One Christmas Mike gave me a disappointingly simple gift: a plastic container containing ten, like-sized plastic monkeys. One by one, he showed me how to connect their wildly extended arms.

I still remember this gift.

Slop, it's what's for dinner

There’s a reality TV show famous around the world featuring Gordon Ramsay and struggling restauranteurs.

Price cuts on encyclopedia-size menus foreshadow bankruptcy. What could have been brilliant, local signature dishes are replaced with plates of mush that even zoo animals would send back. Customer faces resemble babies eating broccoli for the first time. And broken down owners can’t remember what made them different anymore.

Now it’s been spilled all over the internet. So much slop.

Does anyone really want to fix it?

There is construction across the street. When you live in a city—especially one this old—the only direction to build is up so that the sun can never see you. The construction workers start before the garbage men make their rounds and continue on weekends and sometimes even holidays, too.

I doubt most of the workers really want to be here. Some can be seen stumbling as they negotiate the heavy workload. With every drag on their cigarette, they try to forget how they got here, and the forces large than them playing a deadly game.

Two of them use wheelbarrows. One of the wheelbarrows squeaks. Tinnitus would be a blessing compared to this sound. It penetrates through thick concrete walls, all the way to the nearest tram.

The solution for that squeak is expensive for the workers. I could pitch in. My neighbours could pitch in. But we’ve all just become used to it.

When a house isn't a home

Imagine someone builds a beautiful house, but it’s completely landlocked. It’s entirely surrounded by other properties and there’s no road leading to it. None of the windows face south and the doors are all on the second floor.

Inside, the occupants worry about one thing: what color to paint their house. Because it’s a house and always will be. It will never be a home.

I was asked to edit a pitch deck last quarter. It was one of “those” houses. It would have meant a lot of money, but that would never be enough to cover the cost of the paint.

Is your muscle bigger than mine?

I used to be a news buff. It was as much of a staple in our house as sweet tea growing up. I learned a lot about the way the world supposedly worked around that dinner table.

Decades later and I had become the fact checker in chief. Over the past months, I’ve decided that most conversations about the news are just an exercise. An exercise in showing off who has the biggest bias, and that bias works like a muscle.

The more I flexed, the more it seemed to matter.

If you can't beat them, join them

It was precisely 15.15 on a Monday afternoon. Most office workers wouldn’t be going home yet, but these two were. They were dressed like people who had already met their quotas. They could have been brothers.

People tend not to pay attention to how much conversations bounce around in tight spaces like the tram we had all just sat down in.

After massaging the nicotine pack into his lower lip, the more rugged one blurted out with immense pride: “I wrote the best damn report ever in my life today.” His colleague asked him about it. I heard something about writing and so my antenna went up.

The rugged one went on to say that he simply summoned Mr. GPT to do it. When pressed further what Mr. GPT had written on his behalf, the rugged one couldn’t recall, but he was certain that it was the best report ever. On that there was no negotiating.

The colleague seated across from him wore his discomfort on his face. He pushed back on it a bit. The rugged one proclaimed: “If you can’t beat them, join them!”

Why this gym is failing

I go to a gym. It is a hole in the wall. I don’t go there because of the latest and greatest machines—because there aren’t any. I go there because of the people.

The receptionist and trainers, and some of the clients. Then again, there are plenty that rub me the wrong way. Like the dude that always inserts himself into my personal space. I guess we will be forever synchronised in our mutual frustration for each other.

There’s one thing everyone complains about: the music.

The owner of the gym is a metal head and could be easily mistaken for a festival goer from the 90s. He likes to work out there too. And for his favorite music to accompany his workouts. Meanwhile, most of the customers wear headphones.

He complains about business. And contemplates out loud about even selling the place. He used to ask me for advice, but stopped doing that ever since I pointed out that his gym is not his living room. Metallica blares on.

The worst Monday ever

A lot of folks dread Mondays. Just scroll through Instagram on a Sunday evening. You would think Monday is judgement day.

The toughest Monday in my life came around this same time 14 years ago, in the midst of pr-ing the launch of a client’s book.

Life after my heart attack hadn’t settled in yet. My relationship with my partner was disintegrating. And our rental agreement on the flat wouldn’t be renewed. It always arrives in threes.

I opened my calendar that morning to a Wagner opera. Who and what could I rely on any more? Our two kids were too young to understand any of this. But at least I still had Bibo.

There will always be unresolved tension.

Why are you lying?

It was my first job after moving to Prague. And I was oozing Georgia peach all over the place. I think my coworkers tolerated it in exchange for my knowhow. But they spoke Czech—and at the time I didn’t—so I’ll never really know. And whenever I asked them how they were doing, they responded with an unenthusiastic, “I am normal.”

Getting sick is never fun, especially when you don’t have anyone to lean on and all you want is your mom. Like any good American who had been trained that they could be easily replaced, I marched myself and my fever into the office that morning. Of course I had to be the first to arrive. Everyone had to see me, didn’t they?

Lukáš, my junior colleague arrived a half-hour later. The usual “How are you?” routine began. A cheery “I’m good!” fell out of my sore throat when it was my turn.

“Why are you lying to me?” Lukáš asked. “Why do you Americans lie like that?”

Normal is a really good word.

Where did everyone go?

It was the oddest thing. All the children sat in a ringed circle, underneath a statue. The statue to Josef Jungmann, the father of modern Czech language. Their backs turned toward him.

That summer day it seemed almost unfair for the throngs of passing tourists to enjoy it all alone. The children, each one with a device in hand, would react with rapid fidgets and bursts of joy. The joy of conquering something. Then they would pass along a nudge to their vacant friends.

Later that day, errands saw me pass through the mall. Instead of a ringed circle, they sat side by side on food court benches. Then on the tram on the way home, seated one in front of the other. Except they were old enough to be the children’s parents.

I looked back down. Another DM.