Break Out

When I was a teenager, I dealt with zits. But they weren't the nice polite little red dots, easily squeezed and then dried up with special cream promoted by cute models on TV. No. I had something called cystic acne, otherwise known as "under-the-skin zits."

Under-the-skin zits are these hot and infected mounds of ouch that grow beneath the surface of the skin. They cannot be squeezed and if a squeeze is attempted, all that comes out is this clear liquid leaving behind a lump 100 times the original size. I once had one between my eyebrows and ended up walking out of the bathroom looking like one of the characters from Star Trek.

My mom was one of those parents that let me stay home from school when The Zits were really really bad. I recall one day in grade eleven, I had six under-the-skin zits on my face at once. My friends were heading up to Seymour to go snowboarding and I stayed at home reapplying antibacterial cream to my war wounds.

Eventually my mom got sick of me whining about my appearance and one day when I was begging her to stay at home, she told me something I'll never forget. A bit cross with me, she said, "Suzy, you're thinking much too highly of yourself to think that everyone is looking at you and your zits." She was annoyed. She was harsh. But she was right.

I often remember her words when I get my feet stuck in my own ego. We can't really engage in life when we're worried about what everyone else will think of us. The land of worry has high electric fences around the perimeter.

But I say we break out of our prison of worry to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Even if we do look like a Vulcan.

SSBB

I took the kids to the pool last night and while we were piling our sweaty bodies out of the van, Katie and I said something at the exact same time, so she shouts out in a panic, "JINX ROOF!" and I'm all, "what?" and she's like, "if we say something at the same time and someone says 'jinx' first, I can reply with 'jinx roof' and then I win, and they can't speak until I say their name."

That is just way too much control for an nine year-old to possess. But it reminded me of when I was her age and the games we used to play. Not 'doctor' you sickos. We played Super Sonic Bounce Back.

When we were tucked into our tiny metal desks, being fed some bullshit about long division, one of us predictably got bored and stirred up some chaos. Notes were passed, a couple kids farted, and we could always count on some bully to call someone a name of some sort: "You're such a LOOOOO-ZERRRRR, Bobby!" or "How did you ever fit that McFat ass in that desk, Betty!"

Apparently I'm so old that my classmates names were Bobby and Betty. Awesome.

If Bobby and Betty were on their game, they would have anticipated the verbal assault and had written in permanent ink on their palms: "SSBB" so that when someone calls them an idiot, they could simply throw their hand in their opponent's face and point to the letters, proclaiming their own innocence: "Super Sonic Bounce Back! HA HA HA! Looks like your insult bounces off me and goes back to YOU! YOU'RE the idiot NOW!"

It's brilliant.

And it's totally how the real world works, but without the dirty hair and sticky fingers. Well, most of us anyway.

We treat people like shit and it always comes back around. It just does. Call it Karma, call it SSBB, call it John 3:16 but whatever you want to call it, it's always the same: the way we treat others will leave a mark on our own hearts whether we want it to or not. Our own poor choices will hurt others, for sure. But they will disable us. They don't just bounce back; they Super Sonic Bounce Back.

And there's not a single long division lesson on this earth that is more painful than that.