1983

do you know when you're peaking?

Raking my road this morning I pretend it’s a Zen garden.

Rake sand lines, move stones. Pick up litter, make a curve, feed some street doggos, rake some more. I enjoy the order of the rake lines in the desert sand. Works better if you spray water first but water isn’t on yet in the pueblo. Too early. I clean the algae out of the dog water bowls and wonder if I could make something edible out of a replenishing resource that regrows in a day because it’s so ungodly hot here. I pull a couple ticks off Calico’s ear and smash with a rock. It’s 6:30am. I walk around the block with a small pack of the outside street dogs and drop my secret kibble bags to sad and feral old bony black dogs with gray faces who live in a field.

One of the security guard trucks drives by like he does every morning. He blasts 80s tunes and gets ol yeller Pedro to chase him. Harmless and predictable fun in this dusty pueblo where contract workers come briefly to build a pipeline for a Chinese natural gas company that runs through the Mexican desert.

As the security guys in the truck disappear down the road with a wave, I sing along with their car stereo, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Tears for Fears. I know every word, every beat. It’s a welcome memory in a town where it’s all Nortena, all the time. I think about the lyrics now that it’s 40 years later

Welcome to your life
There's no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you
Acting on your best behavior
Turn your back on Mother Nature

Everybody wants to rule the world

—Tears for Fears

When that song came out, I was a junior in high school so I didn’t realize it was a Prophecy of big brother and the pending technocracy. Oh to be a Coppertone scented teen again. I was learning how to smoke weed and drive a stick shift. I had a boyfriend named Billy with a Caprice Classic convertible, big blond curls and a weekend job at Burger King running the drive thru window, cutting up with my besties. I bought a used Mazda RX7 with my part time cash and spent free time learning the dances of Madonna and Prince from the newly minted MTV. Fun, fun, fun. Like a Beach Boys tune gone New Wave.

Little did I know, that was as free and fun as it was gonna get. I had some laughs for sure since then but nothing as free as cruising the causeway looking for dolphins and not thinking about housing, markets, money or the pending Apocalypse. I used to make fun of people who peaked in high school. Turns out I did too. I just missed the whole thing cuz I was going places.

I used to visit my hometown of Clearwater, Florida after college and feel sorry for the dudes who were still “stuck” in town. Such losers. Living in the past, the locals who couldn’t let go of the koozie of teen spirit. Still listening to REO Speedwagon’s Keep on Loving You at the beach, grabbing some curly fries at the Pavilion dock and cruising in their Camaro with a cooler full of brewskies. Dude.

*(I’m pretty sure you can’t cruise anymore since the round about was installed and the yacht club members closed the island after the Freaknik incident. Those beers better not be an open container or you’re going to jail, bro) 2024 Camaros MSRP at $88,000 so you’ll likely not want to eat the curly fries in the car. But 1983 was a simpler vibe.

Not sure when I was nipped by some Ambition Parasite, I wasn’t pushed by my parents for sure. They were hoping I’d pretty and get married. I had zero interest in that. I skipped town with my big city dreams and moved to NYC to be a writer in the mid 90s right after doing average work at a mediocre state school. I took a job that sounded a lot cooler than it was in Creative Adjacent middle management and advertising (copywriting and travel writing for some magazines, mostly getting eaten alive from living in that hellscape). I ended up moving to Atlanta and opening a wine bar because I still can’t figure out what’s going on in publishing. But at least I wasn’t in Florida, right?

To me, being in Florida was/is a Rat King knot of HOA cage fighting. Your fence is too tall, your garage door was left open after 10am, you can’t paint your front door yellow. The alligator in the retention pond ate my Pug. I’ll admit, there are some great restaurants and the thrifting is above par, but I just can’t.

I don’t have any living family in Florida anymore, so I have no reason to visit but sometimes it calls to me-the sea birds, the Gulf, the dolphins, the grouper sandwiches, the sunsets, the superior air conditioning. But something there always sets me ablaze. Not sure if it’s the traffic, the sauna level humidity that peels my inner wall paper, all the political fighting with Boomers from NJ mingling with local Boomers and rednecks that has made it an overpriced swamp.

After my mom passed, I had to return to close out the house and I connected with some of my classmates. Not on FB, but in real life. And guess what? The kids who stayed in town are just fine. Better even. Grounded. Wealthy. Rooted. Some are married, some divorced, widowed, they’re grandparents even which freaks me out because I’m still 29 in my carrot brain.

This one goofball who worked at his dad’s pool store over the Summers, who we never liked because he ratted on some of us for passing out the answers on a math final…he owns multiple stores now in a franchise covering the entire Southeast. Another guy’s dad started the goofy sounding Home Shopping Channel that the son grew into a Network Empire (people call in and buy crap on the television? that’s never gonna work, my forecasting skills are legendary ) and the girls I hung out with who weren’t super smart inherited family hotels on the beach. Many got married and managed fat real estate portfolios right out of school while their stock brokerage husbands stacked cash in their 700 unit storage facility that they bought in the late 90s with a loan from their grandpa who invented Formica. Everyone goes skiing in Switzerland.

As usual, joke’s on me. The world doesn’t work like I thought it did. I’d been brainwashed by grass roots cottage industry hysteria. I’ve been running hither and yon chasing dreams and brass rings and I’ve made money and lost money but mostly been an entrepreneur who pulls five figures. Like a Mexican landscaper.

I’ve been overturning rocks looking for my bliss because someone told me that the world was my oyster once and I held on to that nonsense. How hard could it be? I was riding high at 17 and it was smooth sailing like a Buffet tune. Jimmy, not Warren. Surely the best was yet to come (and it was if you had generational wealth or a chemical factory)

Of course I know that money doesn’t really make the world go round (except it does) and I’m sure some of them wish that they had a dog rescue in the middle of the desert because they are miserable despite being billionaires and this is where you build real character. Ha ha, just kidding. No they don’t.

Welcome to your life, there’s no turning back.