A silver car. A bird. A flag. I’m in a car full of 40+ year olds playing a life scavenger hunt game. We’re all giggly, feeling carefree and kid-free on a night out in Seattle for Susan’s birthday. At the Flatstick Pub, I hesitated about the chest-height mini-golf-like game where you hit a ball sideways with a mallet.
I’m a curmudgeon. Why is it that my sole goal is to get home whenever I’m out?
My hesitation was for no good reason. Once I got past the second hole, I started having a good time—like a really good time. It was so good that when hole eight came along, and all seven of us got the worst score, I was all for doing a redo. And lo and behold, I got a hole-in-one.
My curmudgeon returned when, after duffleboard, everyone stopped at a shelf of board games. When Ticket to Ride, among others, wasn’t picked, and Uno was, my jolly self returned. The seven of us piled into a wooden booth. Seated last, Matt pressed hard into his wife, causing a pile-up into Susan and Patrick. Just big kids we are, and a traffic jam of laughter.
I feel bad for not reading this post to Patrick on the ride home. But insecurity got the best of me.
I want to fix that! I want to beat up my insecurity and tell it to go to H.E. double hockey sticks. I want it to leave me alone. I want to dig up a hole in my yard, throw it in and bury it, then slap my hands together in sweet relief at its absence.
I want to pile drive it like a WWF wrestler from the top rope, a flying elbow drop. Boom! “Get out of here, you giant no-good son of a motherless goat,” I’d say to it.
Then poof, it’d be gone, and I’d be happy and carefree, and life would be pretty super duper cool.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 