Baffling, Bewildering, Perplexing and Puzzling

One Big Ball of Confusion (Non-Fiction)

(Pour Painting by Jo Snow)

Life can be confusing.

As a young child, I could never understand why the barber shop, with that classic, twirling red, white and blue pole out front, scared me so.

It is possible, I guess, that the barber nicked my ear a time or two. Or, who knows? Maybe I just didn’t like his face.

As a participant in youth sports, I didn’t understand why some parents would lose their minds over kids playing a game.

Now, I realize some of those parental units were attempting to relive their glory days, and others were just too emotionally involved. I’ll have to say, years later, watching my son play, the confusion cleared itself up. Those contests feel so important as a parent. They aren’t, but in the moment, they sure feel momentous.

As a teenager, the mere sight of girls brought a smile to my face and a whole new dimension to the confusion illusion.

A dimension I have yet to decipher.

When I moved to Atlanta in my early twenties, the confusion followed me.

I had no idea of what to do with my life. I was working on a buddy’s construction crew while a large bustling city stared right back into my face.

I could see a multitude of paths shooting off in all directions, I just didn’t know which one to take.

I decided to delve into some of those other possibilities by interviewing for a ton of different jobs.

One of those, was for the distinguished position of salesman at a firm that sold cheap costume jewelry.

The newspaper listing was a little murky and I didn’t realize what the job entailed, until I was seated in a puffy chair across from a man who appeared to be very nervous. He was sitting behind a low slung desk with loud rock music blaring in the background and bargain-basement jewelry lying around everywhere.

He looked small… and slimy.

His office was in an old warehouse that smelled like weed, perspiration and desperation. I was more than a little apprehensive about what in the hell I was getting myself into.

His very first question was, “How big is your trunk?”

I looked around for the exit sign.

Sometimes, a question without context can be extremely perplexing.

I’m pretty sure that firm was not on the up and up, and I’m quite sure that selling costume jewelry out of my car would have led me to starve, but at that particular point in time, I was just a ball of confusion.

I didn’t have a plan for the future all mapped out. In fact, I probably didn’t even have the next day mapped out.

Some people have a strict, linear, plan for the days of their lives. They plan the work and then work the plan. Good for them, but my life has rarely, if ever, followed any type of a script.

My circuitous path through the world has been anything but straight. If drawn, it would look more like the path of a pro soccer player’s movements over a 90-minute game plus two overtime periods, which is fine by me.

That straight line looks pretty damn boring to me now.

Certain things have always mystified me.

Like:

- Really unaware people.

So unaware that they are unaware.

- Litterers.

Trashy people doing trashy things.

- People who never pet their dogs.

It’s in the name dummy. Pet!

- Weirdos that don’t like music.

I’m guessing these cretins also lie, cheat and steal, love clowns and mimes, and hate themselves.

- Social media sermonizers and keyboard warrior trolls.

The most wrong, always right, people on the planet.

- Home Owners Associations.

Don’t get me started.

- Judging an entire group of people because of the actions of a few.

A little discernment, please.

- American’s who say they hate soccer.

What in the absolute hell? You waste your hate on a sport? Just ignore futbol and find something more serious to hate on. Dodgeball, anyone?

- Getting all worked up over what someone else is wearing, or purple hair, or if a shirt is tucked in, or if a hat is worn backwards.

Why on earth would any of that bother anyone? Have those people ever once considered that, maybe, the folks they are incensed about don’t like looking at them either?

Nope! There they are, unaware people being totally unaware.

I know we all have certain things that puzzle us.

Heck, I get as confused about my own self as I do anything else.

Whenever I come close to figuring out exactly who I am, I go and do something that changes the entire equation.

Over the years, I’ve been called many things.

Horrible things.

Things I wouldn’t call my worst enemy.

Okay… that’s a lie, I would and I have.

The difference is, they deserved it.

At times, family and friends have referred to me as, a recluse, anti-social, feisty, both laid back and high strung, and complicated.

As for being a recluse or anti social, I love people, I just prefer the company of strangers.

I feel like I’m feisty when I need to be, and its true, I can be laid back or high strung, depending on the day.

So, yeah, I guess complicated fits.

Or, confusing.

So many things in this world just leave me shaking my head.

Like, the sheer number of fast food restaurants, mattress stores and vape/smoke shops doing business in our communities.

If you dropped in from Venus, you would think all we do is sleep, smoke blueberry stuff, and eat greasy, shitty food.

Well, I guess that is, sort of what we do.

We also spend an inordinate amount of time online. One current phenomenon that has me totally flummoxed, is the massive number of internet influencers.

Complete strangers telling you what to wear and how to wear it.

Informing you of what is popular and what is not.

So many babbling heads in boxes telling you what to think about almost everything.

As far as fashion goes, I guess those folks don’t realize it but influencers have been around for a very long time.

I call them mirrors.

Taking a glance at it influences you one way or the other. Either, you are good to go, or you change.

Simple.

Wearing only what is popular to others has always confused me, as there’s a library of formerly fresh trends hanging in every style-follower’s closet.

I still have things lurking in my own closet that make me question my entire existence.

- Black combat boots.

The closest I’ve ever come to actual combat is wrestling my Christmas tree out of the house each January.

- Silk shirts that have the seventies written all over them.

Strange graphics that look like an acid trip’s worst nightmare.

- Cut-off blue jean shorts.

‘Nuff said.

- Bowling shoes.

Okay, not really bowling shoes, but green, orange and tan oxfords.

Mere words cannot explain that purchase.

I once even owned a pair of dandy red shoes that I bought without any influence, except for maybe a substance or two, or mushrooms, or… I don’t know, I’m a little fuzzy on that time frame, but I will tell you a story about those scarlet kicks in a bit.

I have definitely had my fair share of fashion snafus, like the red shoes, a slick pair of white boots I owned and those out of the ordinary oxfords.

Style and I just seem to have a dubious connection. There’s really no method to my madness.

I even had one phase where I wore two shirts at the same time, although everyone else was wearing the usual one shirt.

Yep, sometimes the head shaking is directed right back at myself.

I do have a lot of respect for people who break out of the monotonous pack.

I’ve always admired one of my cousins and his wife, for the cool sense of style they exude. They just do their own thing and it always works. They look hip and stylish, no matter what the influencers are jabbering on about.

Speaking of the monotonous pack, a few years back, my wife and I attended a local function that absolutely blew my mind… and confused the hell out of me.

The event itself was fine, fun even. But, the dress code that evening was something else. I say dress code, because apparently there was one and nobody bothered to tell me.

If there were 100 guys at the event, at least 87 of them were wearing the exact same thing. Only the colors were different.

Polo, golf shorts and loafers. That’s it! That was the uniform du jour for the evening.

A few brave souls dared to buck the trend but the creepy clothing cluster ducks were out in full force.

I thought about hiding, thinking the organizers might try to kick me out, but I was sort of hoping they would.

I had never felt so embarrassed.

Almost sad, even…

for, those 87 guys.

I saw a couple of old friends in the crowd and wanted to go over and say hello, but I wasn’t sure I could find them again. It would have been like trying to locate Waldo at Team Canada’s Olympic dorm.

Anyway, about those rad red shoes.

Back when I was much younger and dumber and living in Atlanta, I bought myself a pair of fancy red high top boots.

Like I said, I can’t tell you why I purchased them. I have no earthly idea what that was all about. Maybe I was just jealous of the pope and his little red silk slippers.

Anyway, one evening my wife, Jodie (who was my girlfriend at the time), and I took some visiting friends out to a dance club in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.

A buddy mentioned that he liked the red shoes he found in my closet and asked if he could wear them. I answered in the affirmative, appreciating his appreciation of my fine taste in menswear. It also gave me the chance to wear the fancy white boots.

Later on that evening, while we were all out in the middle of a packed dance floor, my red-shoe clad buddy and I were all of a sudden, swapping fiery words back and forth with some guys dancing next to us.

I’m not sure why, but apparently the disco lights reflecting off of our boots were blinding them, because one of them took a poke at me that missed entirely.

As I said, we were young and dumb, so, game on.

I was pretty inebriated and after a couple of wild swings of my own, I grabbed the guy by his shirt and wrestled him around the dance floor. He was about the same size as me, and it quickly turned into a complete standoff, or stand up.

Nobody in the entire club even intervened, as I believe most of them probably thought we were just dancing.

I managed to maneuver him across the floor to a waist-high railing where another standoff occurred. At this point, we were locked into a weird pretzel-like knot with his head pointing toward the ceiling while mine was facing straight down at the floor.

In the midst of that mighty struggle, something groovy caught my eye.

And, that was my girlfriend Jodie, who was in the midst of stepping all over my fellow combatants glasses that had fallen off of his face onto the dance floor.

Really, it wasn’t a step, as much as a jump-on-and-smash.

A really sweet gesture, if you ask me.

While standing there all tied up and trying to figure out my next move, those glorious red high-tops from my closet also made an appearance.

Those cherry red Keds stirred something in me and with that renewed sense of power, and an extra set of hands, my friend and I managed to chunk the dude up and over the railing and onto the floor below.

And then, of course, the manager of the club decided to chunk the whole lot of us out of the establishment.

An early ending to a confusing evening.

My buddy and I were confused as to why those guys started the fight in the first place.

The rest of our heathen friends were confused about what exactly had happened.

And, the girls were confused by our decision to give in to our pugilistic tendencies by wrestling around with a couple of preppy punks, instead of dancing with them.

During the slow and humiliating procession of shame walking back to our cars, I mentioned to no one in particular, “Dang, was I glad to see those red shoes!”

What I didn’t say, was how I really thought those shoes were our problem in the first place.

I mean, if you’re a looking to pick a fight, why not pick it with the guys wearing the bright and shiny disco boots?