July 21st, 2025 - Natural History
Dear TNY,
Another week in the books and “Natural History” is what offered.
Like, I’m not raging about this one or anything. It’s fine, I guess. It’s about 3x too long. And nothing happens. And nothing matters. It’s a totally pointless volume of words that doesn’t even come close to transcendence.
But that’s cool, guys. If at this point you understood what good writing was, you would be publishing it. But you don’t. It’s like that scene from Good Will Hunting. The one where they meet in the park and Robin Williams gives him the speech (in 2021, in the middle of a 70+ day long roadtrip with my sons, we stopped in to the Boston Commons, found said bench, and I have a pic of my sons sitting on it, just like in the film; I cried, my sons and I watched the movie afterward, and they said everyone in the movie talked like me). And he said, “You’re just a kid. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. The reality is you don’t even know you are fucking up. You’re just a kid. You knew people who did the job. You got hired for the job. But you don’t know shit about the job. You’re just a kid who’s pretending to be an adult, except you’re blind to that fact and you could stand to learn more. To listen more. But you can’t. You haven’t had your moment yet with Mr. Williams. And you aren’t likely to either.
And I’ve been thinking about this with my son too. He’s very mature for 15. He’s always been mature. And he’s quiet, too. And he reminds me of the idiom, “It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Except in his case, my perception when he’s quiet is that he knows what’s going on. But he doesn’t. This summer he pulled a few things that I was astonished a human of his age would. Especially after having been given guidance. But he’s just a fucking kid. He doesn’t know shit. He’s barely got any miles on him.
And this brings me back to Ben. Gentle, gentle Ben. Who, when asked how he maintained oceans of patience for his special needs patients but no patience for his own teen sons, he sighed and said, “Because my kids should know better, they have been told. The patients don’t know any better.”
And I think about a lady in my life. Whom I am deeply sad about right now. Because of things she said. How she works. Processes the world. And she says these things and acts in certain ways and they are so hurtful. One of which being that you can’t even bring up any of these things as criticism lest ye want to face down the fiery blast of reverse criticism, ensuring that the original message was never heard at all. And now, I just look at her and say to myself, “You’re just a kid. You don’t know what you are doing.” In that way it is much easier to summon the patience to wait a little longer for her to grow up.
But then, if we expand all of this, if not knowing what you are doing is loosely equated to being a kid, then…aren’t we all just kids? Not a one of us has been through this before. There’s no manual for it. And depending on whom you ask, there are seemingly more gods to choose from than a person could learn about in a lifetime. If religion is the manual anyway. My guess is that it isn’t because every word of those tomes were uttered by men, who are the worst form of evidence. So, like, should I just roll over for you guys like I do her? I don’t roll over for everyone, should I start that? And, I’m just a kid under this premise, so shouldn’t I be cut some slack?
Deep, deep, sigh.
Lower expectations. Increase patience. Try to be more kind. And forgiving. And let go.
We’ll see.
Nick
P.S. After writing this, I jumped in Chuck to go to a swimming hole (didn’t pan out, way too many people, most of them teens; yuck). On the way back, we drove by a kid sitting in front of his house with a table that had a pitcher and a stack of cups on it. He was holding a cardboard sign that said: Lemonade $2. And I laughed and told my youngest that I wouldn’t give him my money for some crappy lemonade, but maybe if he showed me some skateboard tricks. This is a throwback to a story I told my boys last year from when I was 6 years old. We were renting a house in Cedar Hill, NM, not very far from where my father and brother are buried now, and we had a concrete pad to park on. My brother and I would get our skateboards out and do “tricks”, eventually coming up with the plan to make a sign for out at the road so that people driving by would come down the laneway and pay us money to see our tricks. I remember being excited when telling our father of this plan. He asked to see our tricks and we did them. Riding around in circles and figure eights. That’s it. He said our tricks were shit and did not let us have the sign. I was devastated. And when I was joking with my youngest today about that, I told him that I wish I could travel back in time and swing by my old house, drive down the laneway, and ask to see the two boys who could do all the tricks. And I’d happily pay big money to watch my young self feel any sense of worth, that he had value in this world. What more could there be? And how sad is that? That’s how my thinking functions. I was just a fucking kid. And I got hammered. But it’s not my dad’s fault, you know? I was also telling my youngest about a time when my father thought it was funny to keep his lighter lit (after lighting a cigarette) and put it under our elbow if we were sitting on the couch next to him. We would scream in pain when we realized we were being burned and he would laugh and laugh. What was he thinking? God knows. But he was just a fucking kid, man. He didn’t know what he was doing. So much of this life is not knowing what you are doing. It makes it so painful to be here so much of the time.
