On Writing “I Know Your Pain”

Posted on August 14, 2015 by Matthew Appleton

Whether they are poets, songwriters, novelists, or essayists, writers of all kinds compose items that unexpectedly assume lives of their own. The textbook example of this phenomenon is Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Thanks to numerous adaptations that range from 19th century stage productions to 1930’s Universal studio monster films through Gene Wilder’s and Mel Brooks’s comical, loving pastiche, the overwhelming array of cultural connotations so thoroughly exceeds the novel’s original construct that Frankenstein, much like the monster in the story, completely broke free of the boundaries originally imposed by its creator – as evidenced by the fact that many often refer to the monster by his fictional creator’s name.

I experienced a very small taste of what this might be like when I made this post to Facebook earlier this year:

May 3 ScreenshotFor added measure, I quickly appended the following comment:

May 3 Add

When I made that post, it was intended as a love note to my wife, Sally. I wasn’t reflecting on the angst and ostracism I experienced throughout my teens so much as I was expressing amazement at the way Sally possessed so many different elements I never thought I’d find in a woman who would love me. While the post explicitly referenced some of my younger self’s interests, I left unsaid other aspects of both that and my current incarnation. Most notably, my proprietary blend of social awkwardness, geeky tendencies, intellectual pursuits, off-kilter mannerisms, and occasional intentional goofiness. Unbeknownst to probably everyone who read it, the end of the original post contained subtext referencing a difficult period in my life that happened much closer to the present than my teen years. Much to my surprise, it garnered 40 Likes – which by itself almost awed me, given that on an exceedingly good day the most Likes a post of mine will receive is somewhere around a couple dozen.

A couple weeks later, I received a Facebook message that simultaneously honored and humbled me. A friend from high school had read the post to her exceptionally bright teenage son in an effort to alleviate the loneliness and sadness that he was experiencing and had most recently manifested itself in being unable to find a date for the 8th grade prom. It seemed to have helped him, and she wanted to know if I could write a couple paragraphs for him to let him know that things would eventually get better for him. Without a second thought, I agreed to do so and even promised to have something within a couple days.

But, as I started contemplating what to write, the enormity slammed into me like the Enterprise-D plowing into Veridian III. As I previously stated, the original post was a love note to Sally, and when writing it I only superficially reflected upon what it was like for me at 17. The fact is that I rarely think about my teen years anymore. It was a sad, frustrating, frequently lonely time, and properly revisiting it is somewhat unsettling. Additionally, although I agreed to do this for my friend’s son, it was impossible for me to not think of my own son, Brandon, as I attempted to compose this item. He too is a very bright child, and he didn’t merely inherit some of my difficulties with social moirés. Brandon was diagnosed with high-functioning autism early in elementary school and has already encountered all sorts of difficult challenges while navigating the neurotypical world.

I don’t know whether Mary Shelly, as she wrote Frankenstein, imagined anyone outside of her social circle having any interest in the final product, but I knew almost immediately I was writing for an audience larger than my Facebook friend’s son. I was writing for my son and all other adolescents and young adults struggling with the world. Just as importantly, I was writing for the 13-year-old who still resides somewhere deep within me and never properly found his voice.

While making all these connections, I realized that I what I needed to say would take more than just a couple paragraphs and that I unexpectedly created a Frankenstein monster of my own. After recognizing that, I started, edited, scrapped, rewrote, and completely restarted anew numerous times. However, I never found something that made me happy. I just couldn’t compose anything I truly liked better, so as a solution to this problem, I decided to use the indecision to properly harness my difficulties to my advantage. The italic paragraphs of “I Know Your Pain” really were my first few attempts at writing an introduction, and by piecing them together I felt that I tapped into the kind quick-turning tangential thinking that both plagued me as a teen and still gives me issues today.

Every writer will tell you that writing is work, but that piece rated higher on the difficulty scale than most of what I’ve composed over the years. At the same time, I experienced an enormous sense of satisfaction as I watched certain portions of “I Know Your Pain” appear on my screen. I’m not certain, but I can’t help but feel that was partially the result of my inner 13-year-old finally finding his voice. Because of that, I’m especially pleased with the final result. I don’t know if it’s my best work, but at this moment, just a few days removed from initially posting it, I already feel as though “I Know Your Pain” is one of my favorite essays.

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I Know Your Pain

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Matthew Appleton

I feel your pain. I see myself in you, and I feel your pain…

When I was your age, I felt like one of the outcasts on The Island of Misfit Toys. During elementary school, interacting with others was like playing a game of Minesweeper, and while I gradually learned the right things to say or do, the random element of the game ensured that I would eventually make a new mistake, thus exploding the board and resulting in a round of merciless taunting and teasing from those whose approval I sought. As a result, by the time I entered middle school I already found that the safest path involved losing myself in worlds of my own choosing. That meant video games, collecting baseball cards, and consuming copious amounts of science fiction, both printed and on screen.

Frak. I’m not certain that’s the best way to introduce what I’d like to tell you. Let me try another tack…

At the age of 12, I was nerdy, counted very few friends due to a heinous deficiency of social skills, and felt both lonely and horribly misunderstood by those around me. Worse, that was the age where my hormones went into spastic overdrive and I found myself romantically attracted to, or just plain hormonally driven towards, others and terrified of being rejected by them. (I use the generic term “others” because I don’t want to assume your sexuality.)

Smeg. I still don’t think that quite captures it. I’ll start from a different angle…

Back when I warily stood on the precipice of becoming a teen, I already felt shell-shocked. Since the beginning of elementary school, I struggled at various times to cope with a fierce onslaught of taunting for my athletic inadequacies, clearly and unapologetically demonstrating “grade grubber” proclivities, a lack of innate social skills, and a pair of unusually large ears that protruded from my head at an extremely unfortunate angle (to this day, it’s still easy to recall the pain of having other kids sneak up behind me to violently flick them and/or call me “Dumbo” to my face.) It was an aggravating and depressing period, and it seemed like the end was never in sight.

Hell. I don’t think it’s possible to compose a satisfactory introduction for what I want to say. There’s far too much and the memories from my own pre- and early teen years sometimes unleash emotions in unexpected, disconcerting ways. What I’m trying to say is this: although I don’t know any of the details in regards to what you’re currently experiencing, I know exactly how you feel.

Because of this, I want to help.

I’m sure you’ve probably already heard it enough times to think it’s some kind of hoary cliché, but it really will get better. I know… I know… Please, just listen… I know what you’re already thinking: things are different for teens today than they were when I was your age. Thirty years ago, I said the exact same thing to the adults who tried to comfort me when I shared the depression and frustration that resulted from my inept navigations through the seven concentric circles of social hell entombed in the hallways of middle and high school.

However, I will concede that in one way you’re right, though probably not in a fashion you’d expect: it’s actually better. Today’s world is far more accepting of and accommodating towards geeks and social misfits than it’s ever been. In some ways, pop culture even celebrates such people, and that’s something you can wield like a life preserver. It’s a world I could have never imagined when I was your age – as evidenced by the fact that thirty years ago, Doctor Who was only available to American viewers via late-night weekend broadcasts on public television. The concept of global simulcasts of season premieres existed only in some kind of feverish fantasy.

Yet, I know that’s small comfort, because in the only way that truly matters to you right now, the teenage experience – the American version of it, that is – has remained constant for multiple generations. The adult world may be making The Big Bang Theory the highest rated sitcom on television, but that doesn’t change the fact that any version of Sheldon, Amy, Leonard, Howard, Bernadette, or Raj currently attending middle or high school is likely just as ostracized now as they would have been when I was 12.

Okay, that last paragraph probably isn’t helping, but I hope the next few will. All the jocks, popular kids, and the others who seem cool, confident, and self-assured right now are struggling too. They are surely almost as insecure and emotionally distraught as you are; they’re just doing a better job of compartmentalizing it. Worse, a few trolls are coping by weaponizing the rather ugly human need to feel superior to others and unapologetically humiliating you. Yet, at the risk of sounding like the epilogue to The Breakfast Club (if you haven’t seen that movie, do so post-haste – if necessary, without your parents’ permission), they are more like you than different. The fact is that the teen years are brutal for everyone, and an imperceptibly minute percentage of mature adults view their teen years as the best of their lives. Keep that in mind as you fantasize about your adult life, which should last roughly three times longer than your entire childhood.

In short, you will survive this. I did, and you can too by treating high school as a crucible to be endured. The key is to focus on the reward waiting at the end of it all: graduation. I know it must seem like an interminable time away, but your diploma comes with a giant Reset button for your social life. The day after graduation, Facebook (or whatever the socially preferred platform is when that time comes) instantly becomes the only way you’re going to interact with most of these people ever again. This is especially true if you plan to attend college. In fact, college is better than a Reset button; because each year one-fourth of the players are newbs who know nothing about anyone or anything there, it’s a whole new MMORPG, and it’s a much friendlier environment than what you’re currently experiencing.

But, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. You still need to find a way to persevere during the coming years, and how you do it is simple. Be honest. Be yourself. If people are going to mock you, don’t let them mock you for something you are not. Embrace the things you love and find all the joy you can in them. Your interests are your protective armor, and you need to revel in them as much as possible, whatever they are: gaming of any kind, collecting, books, music, writing, or even sports – no matter how good you are at them. Never act a certain way solely because you think it will get more people to like you; it won’t work. At best, you may fool people for a little while, but they will eventually see through the pretense, realize that you’re faking it, and then will truly give you hell. Besides, the only people worth having in your life are those who accept you for who are you are.

When your teen years are long over, you may even find that life has a way of amazing you. Even at the age of 17, I never imagined that I would marry a woman who shared many of the interests I cultivated back then. It never occurred to me that I would meet an intelligent woman out there who loved reading genre lit, enjoyed watching sci-fi programs like Doctor Who, and might gently humor me when my attempts at geek humor fell flat. Yet, it happened. Nowhere as soon as I would’ve liked, but I did eventually find her. Thus, as a middle-aged adult I am experiencing what I feel are the best years of my life. (Though I feel that I should add that the college years were pretty damn awesome too.)

Push yourself as hard as necessary to get through your teen years. It’s your way of evening the score with a universe that is utterly indifferent to the hurt you feel. Because I know your pain, I also know that you possess the strength and skills to both survive them and become stronger for having done so. Most importantly, because I know your pain, I really want you to eventually feel my joy.

In the words of the immortal Chris Knight, “It’s a moral imperative.”

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Good Bye, Radio Shack

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Matthew Appleton

RadioShack’s bankruptcy filing came as a shock to no one. I didn’t know anyone who shopped there, and I know I hadn’t walked into one of its stores since sometime in my early 20s. Hell, eight years ago The Onion published an article titled “Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business.” Other than that, RadioShack’s television spots during the past holiday season, which featured various ‘80s icons and “Weird Al,” were just about the only things that even made me take any note of the chain over the past decade or so. Yet, when the first news of RadioShack’s imminent demise started surfacing a few days before it went into bankruptcy, I became a little teary-eyed. Until I read the news of its impending demise in PCWorld and PCMag, I never properly appreciated just how much of my childhood nostalgia is rooted in it.

For many of my formative years, Pops worked for the chain—which I still think of as “Radio Shack” (two words)—as a store manager. I believe he really enjoyed working there because I have no other explanation for the picture of his first RadioShack paycheck in the top of a photocube that sat on his desk for nearly 30 years. Because he liked it, he enjoyed bringing his grandkids there. One of the stores he managed was still open at the time of the bankruptcy announcement, and thanks to those visits, my mental image of the store’s interior is now permanently over 35 years old. I’m thankful that he took me there for many reasons, but none more so than I got to experience a vacuum tube tester firsthand. I’m sure that’s part of the reason I still associate RadioShack with the smell of ozone emanating from electronics.

Christmas 1975Pops made sure we didn’t just visit the store. While he worked there, and for many years thereafter, RadioShack items were a near ubiquitous presence in my life. For every radio-controlled vehicle, siren helmet, stuffed animal with a radio embedded in its belly (at least the dials were in the belly region and not the chest), electronic tchotchke, Realistic-branded audio component encased in a imitation walnut causing, and store-branded battery I recall, I’m sure that there are at least two more I’ve forgotten. The batteries have a special place in my childhood memories; I don’t recall how it started, but I’ll never forget the schoolyard argument over whether RadioShack batteries were just as good the name brands at other stores.

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The Urbanus Alces Americanus

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Matthew Appleton

Although I revel in my self-identification with the moose, my chosen Sherpa animal guide and I have our differences. Aside from physical stature, our respective preferred habitats represent the most notable of our dissimilarities. Whereas one most readily encounters moose in the cooler climes of North America, the urban jungles pockmarking the eastern seaboard encompass my ideal stomping grounds. But, it goes much deeper than that; I harbor absolutely no affinity with untamed nature and lack any desire to experience the supposedly great outdoors. In fact, I feel and hear the crunch of pine needles under my boots only after friends and loved ones placate me with sufficient amounts of a Scooby Snack equivalent.

Even in those circumstances, I am extremely reluctant to interact with nature more than necessary. What’s so appealing about tromping through fields and forests filled with blood sucking, welt causing, disease carrying, and otherwise absolutely irritating ticks, fleas, and other insect vermin? In fact, I’m very much like Melman, the giraffe in Madagascar, when he encounters real nature—as opposed to the manicured, well-coiffed version that surrounds his Central Park Zoo home. When I find myself dealing with the hirsuteness of the predominantly untouched wild, I frequently start thinking, and sometimes even exclaim, “Ah! Nature! It’s all over me! Get it off!” With the exception of the occasional jaunt on a well-maintained trail in a state or national park, I just lack the capacity to appreciate any form of nature that differs from the well groomed and impeccably maintained version of nature found in places such as Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park.

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The Best Laid Schemes o’ Moose an’ Men

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Matthew Appleton

All of us commit incredibly stupid acts when we’re teenagers. If we’re extremely lucky, those dalliances with doltishness flirt past the attention of the authority figures in our lives, and we experience a cheap thrill that leaves no one the wiser. Failing that, you just hope that no one got hurt and that the consequences were minor and easily surmountable. I possessed enough intelligence to avoid doing anything that landed me in serious trouble, but one event stood out as a moment where I clearly failed to apply any discernible amount of intelligent forethought. At the end of 10th grade, I ran for Junior Class Treasurer.

I never thought, not even momentarily, that I might actually win the election. I existed on the fringes of the social circles and cliques in my high school, and as a result, the notion that I could win anything that remotely resembled a popularity contest—even an election for class treasurer—stuck me as utterly ridiculous. So, I treated my candidacy as a lark, and I displayed sincerity only as long as necessary to acquire the prerequisite teacher approvals on the paperwork I needed to file to run for the position. Once I accomplished that goal, I did nothing to make anyone aware of my candidacy. No signs in the hallways nor any of the other traditional trappings of high school student government campaigns. I devoted all my energy to composing a speech that made it quite clear that I treated the election with the same solemnity Monty Brewster displayed in his campaign for mayor.

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The Moose Mythos

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Matthew Appleton

Superheroes typically come with origin stories that contain a moment or event that defines their being. Alas, my unerring ability to earnestly state the blatantly obvious at the most ridiculous moment, in a manner completely devoid of irony, does not make me one. Thankfully, that means I’m not required to wear tights with my underwear on the outside. Fashion choices aside, us normal folk are usually more complex than superheroes, and very few of us have one key story or noteworthy event that encompasses our essence. However, I am lucky in that I possess a backstory that explains why the moose is my rightful token spirit animal. My self-identification with the moose didn’t result from a childhood obsession, nor did I engage in geeky fanboy behavior by taking inspiration from the end credits to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Rather, it’s the result of one man: Pops.

Pops was my maternal grandfather. Because my parents separated when I was still a toddler and lived roughly 180 miles apart for most of my upbringing, Pops played just as pivotal a role as my dad when it came to raising me. Pops registered me for Little League baseball and volunteered as a coach for a couple of my teams. Pops repeatedly brought my brother, cousin, and me to the Smithsonian museums via the Metro, and he even took me to my first baseball card shop. Most impressively, Pops—a licensed pilot throughout his adulthood—frequently assisted my parents by volunteering to fly my brother and me back and forth between them. I should note, however, that he wasn’t just helping my parents by shuttling the two of us between the Maryland foothills and South Jersey shore—he loved any excuse that gave him reason to go airborne.

Pops & UsHe also clearly loved showering affection upon his young grandchildren. I have plenty of memories of him gathering two or three of us into his lap while grabbing one of his airplane magazines. After we all settled into his chair, he would read to us and show us pictures from those pages. Even though he passed away over 11 years ago, I can still easily recall the scent of his cologne mixed with the aroma emanating from the generous application of Vitalis required to straighten and plaster his incredibly wavy hair into a standard part on the side. That smell is so deeply interwoven with those memories that I am unable separate them. Looking back, it’s clear that we were likely the only audience at the time that appreciated him sharing this information. However, that’s likely because the amount of affection and attention he gave to us while doing so made us completely unaware that this just happened to give him an excuse to indulge in one of his passions.

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