Escape from Nashville

The moral of this story is that I am a goober. I’m stating the moral upfront so those with attention spans too short for a 1,000 word blog can still get the full effect. “I’m not going to finish reading this, but I know it confirmed some long-held suspicions that Nathan Lee is, in fact, a raging goober” you just read in your mind’s voice before closing this window.

And now for the long version. I saddled up Blues Traveler, my trusty steed of a car, and galloped across I-75 to the country music capital of the world – Nashville, ‘Murica. Normally I would spend this time resting in the cupboards of Taylor Swift’s mansion, but as I previously wrote, I broke up with her and she has since sought solace in relationships with men who look exactly like me.

We even have the same butterfly tattoo on our stomachs! Creepy…

No, this time I was in town for a YSA conference, where twenty-something Mormons go to socialize, attend religious classes, and pretend we're not twenty-something. The conference was fine, and I did the typical things – danced the Cha-Cha Slide with such intensity that the aurora borealis shone brighter that night, Cupid Shuffle’d with enough grace that somewhere a terrorist reconsidered his stance on America, and tried out some new Mormon pickup lines.

Yo girl. My name’s Thummim. I’ve been looking for my eternal companion and I think your-him.

Get it? Urim?...Uh, let me try again.
Yo, girl. Is your name King Lamoni? Because I’d cut that guy’s arms off for you. 

Wait, that came out wrong…Baby come back, I’ve got more!

That is, everything was fine until Saturday evening. The activities were shifting to a different church 10 miles down the road. I made it about 2 miles before Blues Traveler started billowing the blackest, thickest smoke I’d ever seen emitted from an exhaust pipe. It was like a dark genie being released from its lamp to grant me three wishes, as long as those wishes were all “I’d like to pay several hundred dollars in auto repairs.” My car slowed to a crawl, and I pulled over into the nearest yard, which happened to be a sprawling, palatial estate. I called my friend Janna, and she picked me up and took me back to the conference while my car was towed to a mechanic. 

It was Easter weekend, so I knew my car would not be fixed until at least Monday. I resigned to make the most of my extended stay, because what could I do? Sometimes crappy things happen, and it’s nobody’s fault. I texted my boss that I was stranded in Nashville, and one of the conference organizers was nice enough to let me crash on his couch Sunday night. Janna gave me a ride to the airport so that I could get a rental car.  Everything was set for a day of fun in Nashville while my car was being serviced.

The first thing I wanted to do Monday morning was visit Nashville’s replica of the Parthenon and Athena statue, because the South can have nice things too! Unfortunately these Greek knockoffs are closed on Mondays, and the park it is located in was all but abandoned. It is clear that the City of Nashville doesn’t understand why tourists come to their city. Hint: it ain’t for classic culture. If any government officials stumble upon this blog, let me help you out.

Behold, the Garthenon!

Afterwards I drove downtown so that I could wander the city. When pulling in to a parking deck I sideswiped a cement pillar. I started panicking, thinking of all the money it would cost to make amends to the rental company, not to mention what I would surely owe the mechanic for my own car. I purchased a bottle of water and used my brand new shirt as a rag, because I accidentally tore a gaping hole in it the night before anyway. I scrubbed the scrapes and dent vigorously, and made about as much difference as a rational person would assume.

“Hand me a bottle of water and a button-up shirt. I can fix this.”

My vacation was quickly unraveling. I drowned my sorrows in Nashville barbecue, took a nap in a Goodwill parking lot, and then called the mechanic. They had not even looked at my car yet, so I was stuck for another night. I Pricelined the cheapest motel I could find, ignoring all of the Yelp reviews, and checked into the Please Don’t Stab Me Inn (“Free Continental Bandages!”). After dropping my bags off I drove to the nearest fast food joint, a ghetto Jack in the Box. I was the only one in the restaurant until a man and woman walked in. They were middle-aged, disheveled, strung out, and hungry. They politely asked for some food, and I purchased a couple of burgers. The man was grateful and hugged me for an uncomfortable amount of time. Twice. I retired to my motel room and slept, hoping that the next day would be better. “Roll with the punches," I told myself.

The mechanic called me in the early afternoon. He had found the problem. It turns out that some goober had poured an entire gallon too much oil into my engine, flooding and ruining several parts. If you have good reading retention and remember the moral of this story, you have guessed by now that I am that goober.  Every time the engine light had come on the past couple of weeks I had poured a quart of oil into my car, because Blues Traveler has a slight oil leak, and that is usually what the engine light means. I never touched the dipstick, despite my father telling me that I should. I just blindly tipped up the oil can and hit the road. All of my ‘tough luck’ – the expensive car repairs, missing work, denting my rental car, etcetera – was my fault. It was a sobering realization - there was no invisible, malicious hand plaguing me. There never had been. The punches I roll with in life are thrown by me.

“This oil needs more oil.”

But if there is room in this blog post for two morals, it’s that my problems are small in the scheme of things, and I can strive to correct and prevent them. I’ve blindly tipped up the oil can and hit the road many times, but I am blessed with a support system that makes it difficult to fall too far. I thought about the couple back at Jack in the Box, and then I thought of my friends who are more than willing to help bail me out. I thought about my parents who worry about me and are there in a second if I need them. And then I thought, “Stop making life needlessly hard for yourself. Stop being a goober.”

I dropped my rental car off at the airport and hopped in a cab to take me to the mechanic. In keeping with the theme, the cab broke down several times on the way there. This was not because of my negligence or poor decision making, so I laughed it off and assumed this was the cab driver’s lesson to learn. On Tuesday night, 54 hours after I was meant to leave Nashville, I finally picked up my car and started the long drive back home. The engine light has yet to come back on, but when it does I will be better prepared.

And now, I wait...

The Call of the Void

I set sail in Blues Traveler on a Friday afternoon for the distant shores of Lake Michigan. Many people asked me what caused my sudden departure, confused by the fact that I was being associated with words like “sudden” and “departure”. As many of my close friends know, I am about as well traveled as a sequoia and only half as spontaneous. But as many of my close friends don’t know, once every 28 years I have the urge for adventure - a biological mystery manifest by compulsory travel north like the noble salmon - and Chicago seemed as good of a place as any to drop my eggs and die.

Frankly, this doesn't look as appealing as everybody makes it out to be...

But seriously, I was sick of Atlanta and sick of the grind and just wanted something new for a weekend. And if the FBI is reading this, my trip was in no way related to your investigation of an underground kitten fight club in the vicinity of my garage. Those kittens chose a life of violence, and the last time I checked cheering was not a crime.

Mis – ter Socks! Mis – ter Socks!

The drive was long, tedious, and infinitely more enjoyable than any stupid webinar I would have been on back at the office. A solid, thin sheet of snow covered the ground from mid-Kentucky up. It was a dull blur in the dark, but almost glowed in the interstate overpass lights to welcome me into new climes. I finally arrived in Chicago around 2am, dropped off my bags in my hotel room, and then wandered the streets for a bit, where I quickly discovered through my superior powers of observation that it was 10 degrees outside and that I was dressed for Miami. I basked in the city for as long as I could and then took refuge in my hotel until morning.

The next day I met my friend Sarah for lunch at Lou Malnati’s, one of Chicago’s most acclaimed pizza joints and not-so-subtle front for the Illuminati. Sarah helped me work out a game plan for the weekend, as I pretty much just showed up as a reverse carpetbagger with nothing but a bindle and the dream of eating deep dish pizza. As we dined it started snowing heavily, and I watched through the pane glass walls as Chicagoans couldn’t be bothered to care. It’s like they didn’t even notice. It was all I could do to keep the snow-panicked Southerner in me from grabbing a megaphone, jumping on a nearby bench, and exclaiming “DEAR OBLIVIOUS YANKEES, IT IS SNOWING! I REPEAT: IT IS SNOWING! PLEASE RUN FRANTICALLY HOME, SHUTTER YOUR WINDOWS, AND IF ANYONE KNOCKS ON YOUR DOOR DON’T ANSWER. IT’S A YETI, AND IT’S THERE TO CONSUME YOUR CHILDREN!”

 "Just a reminder, yetis will not attack those in possession of a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk..."

Afterwards the plan was for Sarah to drop me off at Millenium Park where I was to wander around and take dozens of pictures like some big out-of-town goon before using my iPhone’s map to find a bus to take me back to my hotel. Instead what happened was Sarah dropped me off at Millenium Park, I took three photos, my phone instantly shut down due to the bitter cold, and I walked around Chicago lost like some big out-of-town goon. This was a constant issue while I was there. Any time my phone was out of my pocket for longer than 30 seconds I swear Siri would shout, “Nope, I’m outta here! Hope you die in the cold, sucka!” and maliciously switch herself off. I genuinely have no idea how Northerners communicate 50% of the year.

I developed a plan for my long, frigid treks while I was there – find a Starbucks, order a coffee, pour it down my pants, walk until hypothermia starts to set in, repeat. I may have substituted hot chocolate for coffee and my face for my pants, but the concept is the same.

I finally made it back to my hotel and loaded my bags. I had reserved a room at a hostel in Wicker Park for the following two nights. I wasn’t really sure what staying at a hostel would be like, but it felt like having a slumber party at a community college frat house. That night I took the L train back into the city to explore Navy Pier and look out over Lake Michigan. The surface was frozen for as far out as I could see, a serene white expanse that bade me walk. Luckily my common sense took over and bade me live. The following morning I went to the YSA ward before checking out the prestigious Field Museum. I was relieved to find out it was not a collection of dirt samples from various meadows and grasslands, but was instead a sprawling complex with thousands of ancient artifacts from all over the world. Perhaps their most famous exhibit is the world’s largest T-rex skeleton, Sue. Although certainly big and capable of eating me like a Snickers bar, Sue did not live up to the preconceived notions that television and movies had given me about the size of dinosaurs. It’s almost like movies have skewed my expectations and sense of reality.

Sue and I, moments before she disappointingly did not reanimate and run amok through the city.

After the Field Museum I went to the Shedd Aquarium. As with any animal exhibit, I spent most of my time wondering what the displays would taste like and concluded that most of the animals would fall on a spectrum of “delicious” to “very delicious”. I left before I could end up in the headline Hillbilly Goes Noodling for Rare Amazonian Catfish, Calls it ‘Almost as Tasty as Captain D’s’.

My final morning in Chicagoland was spent at Willis Tower, the second tallest building in the United States and the first tallest building formerly called Sears Tower. They took me up to the 103^rd floor to a fantastic view, and they have a few glass-floor alcoves where you can live your nightmares by stepping out and visualizing your death 1,300 feet below. It’s hard not to think ‘what if I jumped?’ when up that high – not from a dark perspective, but from a purely inquisitive daydream. I don’t think I’m the only one who has these compulsions, because the French have a term for it - l’appel du vide, or ‘the call of the void’. I spent quite a while up on the 103^rd floor just soaking up the city and thinking. I was happy to be there, happy to be experiencing something new and to be taking steps outside myself.  Maybe the void isn’t the pavement on Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago, but maybe it is Chicago. Or Taiwan. Or Abu Dhabi. Maybe it’s just the compulsion for the unknown, and maybe I had already answered the call when I drove 12 hours north for the weekend by myself. 

Or maybe, as most people told me when I got back, I’m an idiot who drove straight into the coldest Northern winter in recent memory instead of driving to Miami and getting a tan.

Little bit of Column 'A', little bit of number 2.

How to Raise a Baby (and Possibly a Despot)

If there is one thing women ask me, it’s “Nathan, how do I raise my baby?” To which I reply “Oh, crap! It’s not mine is it!?” To which they reply, “If you had even the most basic understanding of human reproduction and recalled the limitations of our friendship, you would know that isn’t a possibility.”

First of all, I don’t know what you’re talking about. We tooootally high fived.
And second, did that mean nothing to you!?

So I haven’t actually raised any babies myself, but I feel pretty confident in playing armchair quarterback on this one. I mean, I was a baby once, and according to those Polaroids I was adorable and blurry. Also, I’ve Photoshopped a diploma that says I hold a doctorate in Early Childhood Development and Fascist Studies. (It was a dual degree. The fake college I went to was very avant garde.)

Now that my credentials are out of the way, enjoy these excerpts from my latest book, How to Raise a Baby (and Possibly a Despot). Because you can never be sure your spawn isn’t destined to lead a brutal regime.

From Chapter 1 – The First Day

Congratulations, Parent! You have just expelled a baby from your womb! You are now ready to bring that purple little alien back to your house and raise it into a less purple, possibly ruthless human adult. This is day one of an eighteen year endeavor, or even longer if your love for and/or fear of this kid transcends legal obligations. What you do today will set the tone for the rest of your parenthood, so it is important to take the correct first steps. You’ve got to let your baby know up front that you are in charge, otherwise the child may eventually throw a tantrum on you during an inopportune time, like a church service or political cleansing.

Your baby will also be looking for the upper hand, and it will do anything to get it. And I mean anything. Your baby will urinate just…just everywhere. This has something to do with its underdeveloped bladder control muscles, but more to do with a power struggle. Babies, much like dogs, assert their dominance by marking their territory. I suggest that the first thing you do upon bringing your baby home is to mark each corner of their room before they have the opportunity to do the same. I hope it’s not too early in this book to mention that I’m now taking pre-orders for the follow-up guide, Let Your Scent Do the Parenting. Early reviews are already calling it “completely devoid of science”.

From Chapter 7 – Teething

Babies are notorious whiners, and don't even get them started on teething. Traditional science says that babies cry while teething due to the pain of their teeth breaking through their gums. However, my research has found that babies cry while teething purely for vain and selfish reasons. All they've known up until this point in their lives is adorable gumminess, and they see this as the source of their power to make people feed them, bathe them, and cater to their every whim. Now they're being forced to transition to a life of garish horse teeth, which they view as weakness. In order to soothe a fussy baby, I suggest fashioning tiny little baby dentures so they can see that one day a mouth full of teeth will command something more powerful than adorableness – fear.

Wait, no. Respect. One of those two, but definitely not both.

Anyway, in the short run it will greatly aid their efforts to masticate everything they can reasonably fit into their face.

“I believe it’s time for my breastfeeding.”

From Chapter 11 – Socializing your baby with others

Humans, when left alone to freely socialize, inherently fall into a structured hierarchy. The lower levels consist of the feeble-minded, the weak-hearted, and YouTube commenters. The top level consists of brilliant thinkers, decision makers, and tyrannical rulers. It’s important to teach your baby how to properly integrate into playground politics as to become one of the latter.

Again, because your baby is a baby (probably), it lacks the motor skills necessary to vocalize its need for peer companionship/servants, which makes the complex social landscape of the playground even more challenging. However, I believe babies understand more than they are able to acknowledge. In order for your baby to find friends/devotees, you will have to be its mouthpiece.

Hold your baby in front of your face, approach the nearest baby stranger, and start talking in such a way that clearly identifies your baby’s intention to form a friendship/start a revolution.

HELLO, I THINK YOU ARE NICE! DO YOU LIKE PLAYING ON THE SWINGS?
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON NEO-MARXIST POLICIES AS A MEANS TO SUBJUGATE THE PROLETARIAT?

From Chapter 79 – Revolution

If you are as slow of a reader as I am, you should be at this chapter somewhere around your baby’s 18^th birthday. And if it turns out your baby was destined to become a despot, you should be moments away from witnessing your baby’s first political upheaval. Despite your own personal political affiliation, it’s important to be there for your child during this process, if only because dissension is generally a capital offense. You may want to remind your tyrant-in-waiting that coups are hard, and they may not succeed during their first try. If they do indeed fail, probably because the current dictator’s mom also bought this book and applied its principles better than you did, give them a hug and offer to kiss any boo-boos that may have resulted in battle. Just don’t do this in front of their aides. Despots hate that.

But if they do succeed in overthrowing a government and placing themselves on the throne, then congratulations! You have successfully raised a baby (and definitely a despot). You can thank me by suggesting I be appointed to a governmental post with a humble title (Minister of Awesomeness maybe?) and a modest harem.

High five!