baseball

Fear’s Like This Thing, You Know?

zacharysteele 5 Comments

In third grade I liked a girl named Lori. It’s fair to say I thought she was cute, and made me long to fly through the air a la Rudolph if only she would tell me the same. She never did. It isn’t because I wasn’t cute, because, well, I just was. Deal with that.

Pimpin' it Hef style. Don't be hatin'.

Pimpin’ it Hef style. Don’t be hatin’.

The problem is, she never had the chance. In retrospect, all the “I like you this much” signs were there, but I trembled at the mere thought of talking to her. Eight years old and I was afraid to talk to a girl. Why? I don’t know. I really don’t. Would she have turned into a dragon and devoured me? Maybe. Possible even. Might she have spat acid in my face, turned me into a head-bandaged-wrapped elephant man? Or might she have even been so bold as to do the unthinkable, and talk back? Perhaps want to talk further? EGAD!

I was terrified. And so I never spoke to her. We crossed paths many times on the playground, during recess, in the lunch room, or in the aisle between our desks, but I went stone faced every time she came near, as if I’d tried to stare down Medusa to work up my nerve. On the last day of the year, she asked to sign my shirt (For those of you who have never experienced Sign Your Shirt Day, I’m sorry, but no amount of chocolate will EVER make up for your loss). I have very few clear memories of my childhood, but I remember that moment vividly. I mouthed nothing, blankly handed her my blue marker and turned around quickly, lest she dare sign the front and force me to possibly make eye contact. She signed along the neckline of my white t-shirt. She picked a spot nobody else had signed, wrote slowly and legibly. I like to think there was meaning in that. Perhaps the next year I might have braved a conversation to find out. However, I never would get the chance to embolden myself up to the point of speaking before running madly in the other direction. We moved from Scottsdale back across the country to Florida that summer, and I began fourth grade wondering, for the first time in my life, “What if?” This would not be the last schoolmate named Lori I wish I had spoken to. Nor would it be my last regret.

Before I go on, I should say that this isn’t a lament of one singular moment in my life that might have completely altered the scope of the years that followed. No, this is something much worse.  This is the beginning of a pattern. One that makes no damn sense at all.

In High School, I joined the school paper and took my hand at journalistic prose. Enthralled by the idea of exercising my love for writing, I dove in the deep end, the rambunctious idiot I was. At the back side of the first year, something happened that boggles my mind to this day: I quit. I had written several articles, some which were fun little escapades through the fields of my insanity, and had even received some praise. I covered the football team, which meant I got to be on the sidelines, near the cheerleaders–GAK!–immersed in the atmosphere of hyper-exuberant jockiness. But I quit. Why? Beats the hell out of me. Something within just suggested all of this fun and love and certainty of purpose was just not for me.

Same year. I join the baseball team. (Author’s note((which is a really absurd aside, because isn’t this whole thing just one big author’s note? Idiot.)): There is no adequate reference to how I feel about baseball. Best I can say is this: If you believe in Evolution, and see humanity as this ever-changing creature, from atomic particles to the ultimate source of energy we will eventually disperse into … that.) I had gone through a ridiculously stupid growth spurt. From five foot five to six foot one in six months. I was all arms and legs and leaner than a pole, like some kind of anorexic marionette. I was really good at baseball, though. It consumed me. But that year, for all my talent, I floundered. The coaches saw something in me, despite it all, and begged me to spend more time in the weight room. Maybe they were just concerned a good breeze would lift me away. I don’t know. I smiled, nodded, and never bothered. I just stopped playing. Why? Beats the shit out of me.

I entered my twenties at a dead sprint, the only running I’ve ever done by the way. Afraid to talk to any of the female species, I missed out on countless friendships, dates, conversations, and lest I allow subtlety to ruin everything because my mom is probably reading this, sex. It wasn’t that I was incapable of wooing, I was simply terrified of what would happen if it was received well. WHAT IF SHE WANTS TO SAY MORE THAN JUST HELLO OH DEAR GOD WHAT WILL I DO? So, I avoided it. This led to an overdeveloped sense of marital need, and far too much loneliness to expect rational decisions related to females going forward. Perhaps I believed if I locked one down, I could stop fearing interaction. I don’t know. So I married the first girl who showed me any desire to be with me long-term. We dated three months before we were engaged. One year later, despite my worries I had stepped in a pile that wouldn’t wash off, we got married. It lasted a year and a half. In anything shy of grand style and theatrics, I retreated into myself, proceeded to once again shy away from female contact, and spent the next six years without any emotional connection. Then I met someone else who wanted to connect. Never one to learn from the past, I thought the best thing to do was to repeat the same action and expect an entirely different result.  So, we essentially decided we were getting married that first weekend, and I though that was as cool as a frozen banana in ice cream. Less than four months later, we were. Not a frozen banana in ice cream.  Married. Just to keep things clear. That one lasted an improbable four years, and ended with her insisting I was cheating on her (at one point with my gay friend) and trying to kill her. Of course, she did get engaged two months after our divorce, but that’s neither here nor there, or an apple worth eating.

I have no idea where that apple thing came from.  Sometimes, I tell ya.

Anyway.

The one thing I’ve never given up on: my dream to be a successful author. But I don’t talk about it much. I don’t talk publicly about much of anything. I opened a bookstore did you know–not unless you were there, since I HAVEN’T MENTIONED IT AT ALL ANYWHERE TO ANYONE–which fell during the economic collapse of 2008. Not to say there weren’t other problems.  There were plenty, but if not for that downturn, I still believe it would have survived, even if in some other form. Regardless, when it closed, I didn’t talk much about it. To family, to friends, to my then wife, to my cadre of associations on Facebook. I got quiet. Depressed. Withdrawn. I have two books published, and I tend to shy away from discussing them? Why? Because I don’t like them? Certainly not. If you haven’t read Anointed, well, first of all shame on you. It’s fabulous fun, even if it isn’t the best thing I’ll ever write. It was nominated for the 2010 Sidewise Award for Alternate Fiction, so it isn’t bad. Publishers Weekly liked it, so hey, right? Flutter, my second book was a nice step up in ability and storytelling, but I don’t talk about it. I whine about the silence it received, with that being the only sound I ever make regarding it. Genius. I’ve been working on the Storyteller, an ever-evolving piece of children’s fantasy that–toot toot–is freaking awesome. I’ve had a few near misses (and there it is, I hate that term and yet I wrote it. As punishment to myself, I’m not editing it out. Idiot. Near miss. It makes no sense in any context shy of “Did you see those trains collide? What a near miss that was!”) on publication, got myself worked up in promoting it, then stopped when all momentum on finding it a home dried up. It’s been one year plus and I’ve not made a single public statement about it. I have a Facebook page, so yay me. And though it needed some more work, a slight tweak in direction, there’s been no reason for it.

I had a list of things I was going to troll through in order to demonstrate what I now have come to accept.  Despite my best efforts to convince myself otherwise, I’ve been afraid for the better part of my life. Afraid to choose, afraid to act, afraid to live, afraid to succeed. I don’t know why, I only know that I can’t do it any more.  That ends now. I’m tired of being afraid.

No more fear. From now forward, I am me. Idiot, yes. Afraid to talk to this girl we call Life, no.

Maybe being afraid of a 500 lb. roach isn't all that awful, but still...

But I am still afraid of 500 lb. roaches. You should be too.

Progress is all about progressing and stuff

zacharysteele Leave a comment

That whole “Day Whatever” thing? Yeah, I think that can go away now. I mean, posting in a succession of days that mark every day I have worked on the novel makes great sense. Not that I often make sense. I usually make not sense, and with great precision. So, it’s canned. On a shelf to be forgotten forevermore. Like Apocalypse Tuna. But NEVER FEAR! I am still here. Still hereing and being here and being not not here in order to post what I have written on the The Progenitor.

That said, in the time I have managed not to waste watching football, cheering my fantasy baseball team to a long-awaited league winner winner chicken dinner championship (Yeah that’s right, I play fantasy sports. What of it? I’m a dude who likes sports, all right? Back off, lest I pummel you with my sportish knowledge and bore you to tears.), taunting the cat, humoring the dog, and putting back a healthy dose of the Fall’s first batch of chili, I have created more words! Words that pair with other words to form sentences and paragraphs! Paragraphs that talk about stuff and lead to other stuff. Two chapters worth, in fact! In fairness, they’ve seen a light edit, but I tend to read through what I last wrote in an effort to drop back into the flow of the story, which always results in some alteration along the way. I edit, therefore I am, or something.

With these two chapters, Agatha’s adventure has officially begun. A bit earlier than I had expected (I’m at 12,000 words, and I thought I’d make it closer to 20k before everything really took off), but it feels right. The story’s never wrong. When it says it’s time to fly, you jump. When it says have some meat and chill, you better not be a vegetarian.

Speaking of jumping, as this story plays with the concept of jumping through time, the task I face is explaining this, and the results therefrom, in a way that is easy to follow and understand. If I have failed to do so at any point, fire away. You’re the reader, I’m the writer. I stand behind the curtain, while you fall asleep in a field of poppies, or head off on a witch hunt with but some sketchy courage, a tin brain, no heart and a stupid bucket of water. I know everything. You know nothing. NOTHING!

So, here it is. All six chapters. 12k words out of a projected 90k pushes me past 10%. It’s a small benchmark, but something about crossing 10% has always infused me with excitement. Hopefully it shows.

Progenitor Manuscript .pdf

An Idea at 10,000 Feet

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“So, I’ve got this idea.”

“I literally just tensed up. Like you were going to hit me.”

This is a real thing, apparently. I tell my friends I have an idea, and it’s like I’ve catapulted a cow over the rampart. RUN AWAY.

I like ideas. I have many of them. Some of them become living breathing things. Others squirrel away in my head, awaiting the End of Days and Mental Apocalypse that will signal end of Me. Some of my ideas have worked. Some of them worked for a short time then flamed out badly. Some idea were quite splendid, but ultimately forgotten. A couple of them right-out sucked. But I keep going, producing ideas as if planting for a bountiful harvest come Fall, never the wiser, never the worse for it.

Like I said, I like ideas.

This a page from one of my favorite ideas EVER.

This a page from one of my favorite ideas EVER.

Ideas are the seed of creation. Plant them, water them, talk to them about your league-leading fantasy baseball team, and wait to see what happens. Do this daily and the growth will amaze. Forget a few days, give it half water, half evaporated passion, and maybe not so much. Forget it altogether and try to contain the shock and horror when you realize your ideas are smoking-hot scorched earth. I often time find myself in the in-between there, a shortcoming I continue to work on. My little factory of ideas is overrun with product. Distribution has been a bit slack.

Which brings me to my point. You see, I have this idea…

I want to blog my way through a book, open the door to the reader, offer raw material and my thoughts on it as I take the journey from conception to completion. The aforementioned friend, who shall remain nameless no matter how tall or bald he may be, thought me–perhaps justifiably–insane. Why would I want to put myself through the added strain of writing a blog every time I’ve written my day’s work? I don’t know. Jeez, if I had to come up with reasons for the vast majority of my ideas, I’d have shut down the factory long ago. I’m not what one might term an A-type personality, after all. I like cheese, and I damn well prefer to sit while I eat it. That said, I do believe that the exercise–and it would be precisely that–would be an interesting one. I have no idea how it will go, and I have no real plan for what material, or how much of it, I will share. But, being able to lay out the process of creation for all to see would have quite an appeal. If not to readers, then perhaps to writers. At worst, it will to me.

Again, this is an idea. In my head it seems a good one. At least an interesting one. But we’ll see. What I do know is that having people monitor my work and (EGAD!) even comment on it as I go would be significant motivation to create the best manuscript I’ve ever written. Then, after I’ve produced this other-worldly masterpiece of literature, the publishing industry will be so fond of the process they’ll create small rooms along Broadway in Manhattan, windows looking over the work space of writers in need of motivation, their day’s work scrolling atop the space, or accessible via tablets on the outside of the glass! They’ll be forced to record videos about their day’s work! People will watch the breakdowns as they flow from euphoric to despondent, from absolutely certainty to complete despair! BRILLIANT!

Then again, maybe not. My ideas can get away from me, after all, otherwise my friends wouldn’t fear them.

So here’s what I am proposing: I have an idea for a Young Adult fantasy novel. It’s been sizzling away in my brain meats for some time, and I’m pretty sure it’s at the right temperature to break out and devour. When next I write here, I will begin the process, detailing the idea, where it came from, how it has transformed, and give a rough idea of where I see it going. I’ll refrain from talking about the end point, or revealing spoilers that might dampen the reading of any material I post. Also, I’ll refrain from posting entire chapters, as I’m not entirely sold that people won’t run away screaming. If, however, you find yourself one who might be up for taking post in the bookstore of my mind and reading all that I have written, I’ll gladly create a way for you to do so. But you’ll have to let me know. Which seems a rather simple thing to say, but this is me we’re talking about. Assume nothing.

The working title of this project is Specimen A. If it had a subtitle it would be: The Progenitor. It may well wind up with both. Or neither. Or one. Who knows?

So there you go. My idea. Well, my most recent idea. We’ll see how it goes.

Charles in Charge and Writing Do Not Mix

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Sometimes I’ll do anything I can to avoid writing. I’ll run from the computer like it’s a Charles in Charge reunion special. Reading, destroying brain cells on Facebook, over-managing my fantasy baseball teams, catching up on baseball news I already knew, Words With Friends, walks, shopping, driving, sitting on the patio like a grown man in time-out, harassing the cat … name it. It runs contrary to the idea writing is my passion, my life, I know, but I do it regardless. Not because I’m afraid to write. Rather, because I’m afraid to write badly.

On the surface it’s an absurd statement. It reeks of a failure in confidence. If you’re afraid to write, avoiding it for any reason, then perhaps writing isn’t for you, right? However, I don’t lack confidence in my writing. Though I’m no savant and have a great deal yet to learn, I’ve worked hard on my craft. Besides, Publisher’s Weekly thought well of me. Shouldn’t I? My issue, though, isn’t with my talent, or my ability to weave a compelling tale, or whether or not what I’m about to type will be pure crap. The ‘delete’ key takes care of that. If not, editing exists for a reason. What I’m afraid of is producing work that floats off into the ether like space debris: forgotten and forever to orbit in the dark vacuum of nothingness. Perhaps that means it was bad, perhaps it doesn’t. Sometimes you can feel so damned positive you’ve written something great–or at the least good–only to watch it wander into an uncaring world that as much notices it as avoids it altogether.

Maybe that doesn’t qualify it as bad, exactly, but as a writer it becomes difficult to separate good from bad when feedback is non-existent.  Sure, you get some words of encouragement from those who know you, or from other writers, or beta-readers, or even your Publisher/Editor/Agent. They like it. They praise you in widely generic ways. They might even specifically site an instance in your work they particularly liked. Which makes you smile. It makes you proud. It gives you that momentary feeling of heroic wonder. Then it becomes print, you talk about it through various social media portals, maybe you have some events, and you wait for the accolades and reader reviews. And wait. And wait. Ultimately, the silence invades your mind, leaving a gap in your defenses wide enough for an F5 tornado of doubt to plow a destructive path through your pristine landscape of ignorant bliss.

No matter how much you talk it up, nobody’s talking back. Your book sucks. It must. It has to. You re-read it. It doesn’t feel as sublime as the last time you looked it through. Are you no longer blind to the truth, or have you allowed silence and doubt to insert their impression in your head? What does that mean for your current manuscript? Should you suspend writing in order to review what you’ve written? Will this unedited piece of unfinished potential crap offer you insight as to why your recent work is failing? Or are you over-thinking it? Of course, you can go to your Publisher/Editor/Agent for advice, but they’ll tell you to cool your jets, this kind of thing happens all the time. But no, you think, this is happening to me. It wasn’t supposed to. My book was good.

Or was it?

It’s troubling to think all this can cross through the mind in a fraction of a second. Even more troubling, however, is the anticipation it can and might likely happen to your work-in-progress–before you’ve even finished it. You have constructed a fully viable, fully entrenched, vision of your manuscript’s future while it still doesn’t even know how it will end. The characters are gathering for an intervention and you’re in the corner wallowing about how nobody will ever care about anything you write. Ever. I suppose if I were a parent, I might better understand this, or how to cope with it. My cat doesn’t inspire worry. Her naps will always be quality naps.

So, I’ll stare at the computer screen, eyeing the open Internet tabs, finger ready to open Scrivener. I might read what I have to that point, if I haven’t wandered off already. Maybe pack the laptop and head out for coffee, read it there. Maybe take a drive to hunt for inspiration. It doesn’t happen all the time, and generally by the time I’ve begun typing, my fears have waned. My characters are at the forefront. I’m a God, moving pieces, orchestrating fates, divining obstacles. All is good. My work is good. My story is good. My book, so far, is good.

I’m a writer. I don’t write simply because I can. I write to entertain, to bring something to someone’s life they will enjoy and share. It’s narcissistic, cathartic, inspiring, and humbling. I like to imagine a God, creating a Universe, filling worlds with living creatures, molding paths, futures, destinies, holding arms to Heavens when the job is done, with a notable “Huh? Awesome, right?” expression. That God would be bummed if even the crickets went silent. I guess it’s okay for me to be as well.

I just need to keep writing.

Maybe a drive first, though.

Tales of a Heroic Nothing

zacharysteele 1 Comment

I could have been a hero once.

Not in that Superman kind of way to which every kid aspires. You’d probably know about that. I’d have been all over the news. Likely because I would have exacted my revenge upon everyone who ever wronged me. Nothing too horrific, but with x-ray vision (which no kid should ever have), super strength, body like steel, and the ability to fly my ass away from any crime scene, I wouldn’t have exactly been kind about it. I guess, when you think about it, that would make me less of a hero than a villain. Less Luke than Anakin. More Jerry than Tom.

Boy that would have been cool.

But this isn’t a story about me being cool, largely because one doesn’t exist. No, this is a story about baseball, and perhaps other wandering ramblings in my effort to actually reach the point. If you don’t like baseball, then maybe just skim through, and settle on a few key words in order to get the gist. Let me help: turtle, cattle crossing, cactus cat, and this is totally unfair and stupid. I’m not sure yet if any of those will make it into this post, but if they don’t and you were skimming because you don’t like baseball, then that’s what you get for listening to me. Also, YOU’RE WELCOME. Because this story just got a whole lot shorter.

I grew up (for the most part, though a number of people will debate when, or if, I ever actually did that) in a small Northern Florida town called Palatka. Oh dear Lord, there’s a wiki page for Palatka! You have no idea how much that entertains me. Or perhaps you will, at some point. A wiki page! I’m not even sure the majority of the populace there even knows what the Internet is, short of some Big City way of greeting your neighbor like any decent folk would: with a shotgun and a beef about their pregnant daughter. Anyway, Palatka is a Timucuan Indian word for “cattle crossing”. Make of that what you will. If you’ve ever been near a cattle crossing, or heaven forbid through one, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what this town is like. I feel as though I’m allowed to sound negative about the town I still consider home, whereas I should probably kick the ass of anyone else who dares make fun of it. Largely because this is my blog, and yeah, but also because I still, oddly enough, have a fondness for it. A lot of “firsts” there. Including my first attempt to flee my dumb stupid hometown.

So. Baseball.

See, that paragraph was easy to skim, wasn’t it? Two words. Boom. Done. And half of it had to do with baseball. It’s like you didn’t even know you were reading about baseball and the next thing, you’re all, “I totally identify with baseball now.” It’s the magic of writing, folks. Be jealous.

The first story I recall writing, and the one that made me want to do it forever and forever amen, was a little piece about baseball. I was twelve, so I bypassed the obvious need for an intellectually inert romantic spin that would have livened the story up to a more readable state, and focused on what mattered most: Being a hero. The plot was a simple one. I didn’t want to confuse the issue, detract from the overwhelming power of being a hero in the most important sport in all of history. Short of bobsledding, of course. That’s a cool sport. But it’s really just Hollywood’s love child, isn’t it? Unless you’re Jamaican, nobody cares. And really, we only cared because we wanted to hear them talk about it, right? I mean, so you’re inept. So your country doesn’t actually have a winter. So you might have spokespeople that shout “Hooray beer!” at you in a way that makes you feel the need to drink.

Cactus cat.

Still skimming? Well, you just totally missed a whole paragraph about Jamaican bobsledding. Skimmers. This is why book clubs are so fascinating, and why dropping in on one in order to talk about something that didn’t actually happen in the book is so much fun. You know these people haven’t all read it. Either they skimmed while being talked at by family that just won’t go the hell away for an hour, or they didn’t really read all of it, so if you drop in something–I don’t know, about a Jamaican bobsledding team for instance–they’ll panic. If they deny it, they risk the chance exposing they missed something while knocking a spouse upside the head. If they go along with it, you know they didn’t read it.

Actually though, the cactus cat story is pretty good, but I guess I’ll deal with that another time since I’m otherwise engaged in more important storytelling. So, in this story, a twelve-year-old boy, who looked NOTHING like me at all, is walking to the championship game. He steps in a hole, twists his ankle, rolls on the street a bit and feels the eternal letdown of potentially letting his team down. Not willing to give in, he hobbles to the game, where he’s forced to sit on the bench until there are two outs in the last inning, his team down a run, and the bases are loaded. Coach calls him up to pinch hit, because hero plot, and the kid delivers a game-winning hit, barely making it to first before his ankle completely gives out. Hero stuff! YAY!

I always loved that story. I always wanted to be that hero. I think part of me was certain it was prophecy, destined to be a part of ME and my heroic journey through life. Still, I walked very carefully to all my games. Who wants all that pain, right? Just give me the hero stuff. And a soda, if you don’t mind.

DISCLAIMER: I love baseball. Anyone who has had any contact with me whatsoever knows this. You may not. So, whatever your definition of love, whatever you deem to be the most passionate a human being can be about any one person or thing, you’re wrong. Just stop. It’s way worse than that. I don’t want to simply watch baseball. I don’t want to live it. I don’t want to own a team. I want to own baseball. All of it. Mine.  To love and to squeeze and to call George. Got it? There, now that’s out of the way.

I was on a few teams that were good. Two that even made it into the championship. I like to think I did a bunch of little hero stuff along the way to help out. But nothing big. Not that I didn’t try, I just didn’t get the opportunity. The first team got trounced in the championship. The second team, the second championship I was in, however, I flat-out got jipped. Worst part of it is, I didn’t even know. It was ten years later before I found out I had my potential hero moment ripped from my unknowing hands.

I played alongside a cousin of mine. He was six months older, always bigger, and always better. We played a lot together. Whiffle ball, a little with tennis balls, always he and I in a driveway annoying my mom by pitching against the garage door. On that first team, we were teammates. A few years later, we played on different teams. Teams that were both good. Teams that beat the snot out of other teams (there’s a lot of snot involved in Little League Baseball, in case you were wondering). Teams that faced off in the championship, my cousin pitching against us. We were evenly matched, my cousin and I. See, though he was better than me, we had played together for so many years that he couldn’t pitch anything I hadn’t already seen and hit. So, when the final inning came around, my team down by one, two outs and runners on first and second, I came up to bat feeling nervous but confident.

What I remember is this: I walked and the next guy to bat got out. Anti-climactic, I know. I could spin some wonderful tale about how he got me down to two strikes and I battled–as any good hero will–and earned that walk. Gave our team the chance to win. Not heroic stuff, but a courageous warrior type refusal to lose stuff. What I found out ten years later–ten years of seeing myself as the ultimate fighter who won out but didn’t have the support to be the victor–came from my cousin in a rush of undeniably heinous amusement. “Man, I remember that game,” he said, smiling slightly. “No way I was going to let you beat me. I just threw four pitches as far away from you as possible, and worried about getting Joe out. I knew he couldn’t hit me.”

Jaw. Floor. My chance at being a hero taken, not by circumstance, but by a cousin who was willing to be beaten by anybody but me. Images of what my life could have been flashed before my eyes. Al Bundy and his four touchdowns. Parades in my honor. A sense of confidence and purpose from that one moment driving me to a lifetime of success in the sport I loved. I stood there and gawked at him. Then, not wanting to seem surprised–ergo defeated–I smiled, said, “Yeah … crazy stupid Joe,” and walked out of the room, because that’s the way I roll. Non-confrontational to the bitter end. Then I went outside and beat the shit out of a tree with a whiffle bat. I’m sure the tree had it coming, hovering over me as it did like a cousin too afraid to let the sun shine on me for a moment.

And still, to this day, I think this is so unfair and stupid. Ok, I really don’t, but it was the last key word(s) to fit in, so, there. I did it. No, wait, there’s the turtle bit. So, advice you didn’t ask for with an image you didn’t want: When cutting the grass for a friend, DO NOT mow under any bushes that might line the side of the house, no matter how far under the grass may go. You may find it to be the unfortunate hiding place of a frightened turtle, and an unpleasant mess for you to clean.

Point here is I could have been a hero. I would have been. And all the x-ray power or superhuman strength wouldn’t have beaten it.

So intimidating.

So intimidating. You know it. I know it. It’s the glasses, isn’t it?