HumorIs – Adam Overland

It feels as though I need an adventure. Some new path to shock me out of this simmering, thickening soup of self. This alway happens. Here is the routine. Here is the comfort in doing the same things. Here is the bubble. Live inside it where the voices of your once desires are muted. Don’t let them in. Let the ones already in reverberate ever more quietly until they disappear. That’s right, sit on the couch, turn on the TV, let the days dwindle. 

I’ve gained a dozen pounds since I’ve been back from 3 months on the road living and working from an RV. I’m a beefy monster. So I’ve been thinking about taking a train ride, doing something—there’s a new route to Chicago from St. Paul. I’ve never been on a train besides a city train—a light rail. Not a real train. Then when I get there I could walk for miles. Or should I camp somewhere without internet access and write? Then choose instead to have a fire and drink too much. Long for a cigarette because fire always makes me want to smoke, to have a little of it burning inside me. 

I looked into joining a boxing club. In my notes, while on the road for three months, I wrote down “join something.” Then I wrote down things like “Meditate. Boxing. Japanese gardening.” But then, as I was booking a first boxing appointment, the club let me know they were permanently closing the location nearest me the next weekend. Boxing sounded good when it was in my neighborhood, but now my options were a dozen miles or more away. How badly did I want to punch? To be punched? I only wanted one of those things badly. So I took it as a sign that the universe did not want me to box—what I might unleash on the world would be too devastating. These hands are lethal weapons. In the end, I bought a book on Japanese gardening. It isn’t a thing you can join, but my list wasn’t explicit. 

The other night I was wandering in my kitchen when I started to make another list. I grabbed a pen and wrote down “avenge.” Then I thought, avenge what? I wrote down “…my father’s death,” and it sounded cool. “Avenge my father’s death.” My whole life I’ve wanted a quest of some kind—some direction pointed out to march in, with a very specific objective: find the treasure; vanquish the enemy; rescue the maiden; avenge my father’s death. 

I feel as though this is why some people join the military, or the shriners—there’s a well-defined objective, especially in times of war and/or parades that require men in funny hats to ride in circles on undersized motorbikes. 

So I wanted to avenge my father’s death, but there was a problem: he isn’t dead. He’s just old, retired for over 20 years now, after 35+ years with the U.S. Post Office. Most days you can find him fishing on the Missouri River, or spending time with my mother, whom he loves dearly. Generally, he’s enjoying himself and is in pretty good health. 

At almost 80, it seems like there may not be much more time left to avenge my father’s death. After all, Father Time is hard to find and harder to beat mercilessly. If my dad gets a specific disease, cancer or something, I can try to avenge what it did to him. Set up a charity and raise money for him and others like him, taken too soon—a noble cause, to be sure. But old age … you can’t raise money off that.

And even so, how would you avenge Father Time? By not dying yourself someday? I just can’t see that there’s going to be any avenging that needs to happen. Still, you never know. My dad has a quick temper and could get himself into trouble yet, at which point I might be needed. And then I’d finally have something to do. But then I worry, what if the avenging requires boxing skills, skills which I don’t have? I bet then I’ll regret not driving those extra miles to take boxing lessons.