Stupid Little Things To Live For

Emphasis on very dumb, very mind-melting.

In this moment I have no idea what to write.

During the holidays I bought a new laptop, so I must write something. That’s the goal, really, to write something. Anything.

This is a very bad, no good, worst time ever to write something silly, something stupid. Like, how watching Alan Cumming on The Traitors makes me want to live for just a bit longer—until the next episode, longer. Hopefully I can white knuckle my way to the finale and hold my breath for the Andy Cohen reunion.

It is very stupid to write about television in this moment, right?

But what if I am hyper focused on Prince William’s beard, so much so that I am rooting for it. It seems even sillier than watching television to cheer for a sovereign’s patchy stubble. Especially when he has such little hair up top and a brother in the United States who looks like Yukon Cornelius with an American actress wife who can’t market jam.

Absolutely mind melting to write about these things now, of course.

A few weeks ago, when it seemed like every single person who breathes was posting their farewells to TikTok, I was sitting in an actual movie theater yelling at a woman, “YOU HAVE TO GET OFF THE PHONE NOW.”

I think that’s the kind of person I have become: instead of “man shakes fist at sky;” I am “woman yells in movie theater about phones.”

In my defense, she was older than me and having a full-throated conversation on her cell phone during an opening scene. I typically turn resentful in theaters, waiting for someone else to do something. During the TikTok banning, I was my own analog hero who took action.

Phones in theaters seems even more pointless than imperialist beards and dressed-to-kill Scottish reality hosts when I could have stayed at home.

Then I started thinking, well, I guess I should know how to shoot a gun.

Because logically that’s the next step If I want to live.

That’s always the next step if you’re an American, more guns.

In my case it would be a singular gun and knowing how to remove the safety. There is a lot about me that is embarrassing: I have to climb a barstool like King Kong and I now stare longingly at the flip flops of the young, screaming at them inside my head, “ENJOY THOSE ARCHES WHILE YOU HAVE THEM, BABES!”

But back to the gun. I cannot let the body I call a soup vessel expire because someone shot me while I was fiddling with the safety. This can’t happen. I’d die twice of shame. The movies have told me this is a real possibility, and given our current state of affairs, I am choosing to believe it with my full chest and can do trigger finger.

I made it as far as getting a phone number before I was distracted by the prospect of attending bingo at the VFW. With an invitation like this, I thought, I’d try and live out a fantasy before another pandemic gets me. So I lined up my troll dolls and said, let’s go girls.

The trolls are not a euphemism, they are, in fact, hunks of molded plastic with inexplicably friendly faces and jewel-toned hair set to electrocution. I came across one troll doll in a retro toy shop—with rainbow hair and in need of some light belly scrubbing with a toothbrush and dish soap—and I felt something. Like a strand of barbed wire lifted off my bruised heart for a few seconds, and I remembered what fun felt like it. So, I bought it. And then I bought more: one dressed in a teeny Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer costume, another in a canary yellow Mexican poncho, one with a lavender jewel in its belly button and one in a Frankenstein costume. There are a few more, but this is not an insurance claim that won’t pay out.

The goal, with the trolls, was Roseanne bingo. I wanted to do my best season 4, episode 13 impression of the high-strung, ginger up-do, cat eye-wearing bingo player who blows the hair of a troll for good luck. This uptight queen has lived rent free in my head for three decades.

When a friend texted, “Do you want to go to bingo?” I knew this troll collecting thing had met its destiny. I would get to be the no chill eccentric with the troll dolls I wanted to see out in the world.

Bingo night at the VFW, sadly, was not meant to be, at least this time, it sold out before my friends bought our tickets.

I know this is an atrocious time to continue writing about my growing troll collection. It is also probably bad form to share that I now have a troll tree.

There are worse things a person can do than buy a 6-foot tinsel tree that sparkles like a silver disco ball. Some of my most favorite eccentrics, again, a personal goal I have for myself, have kept Christmas trees up all year. Mainly Carrie Fisher. (If I am being honest she is the One, the Only, I lift my hands up in prayer to Mother Eccentric.)

I had no plans for the trolls other than bingo, and maybe a collection I could count on one hand. But when the tinsel tree arrived and the white twinkle lights went on it, I thought: what if I put the trolls on the tree? What if I really leaned into the 10 year-old in my heart.

So I did.

And now it has a Popple on the top, a She-Ra among its branches, and a Moira Rose sticker. It even has Rocky in his Rocky IV (the one with the Russian) American flag shorts.

The troll tree will be a real conversation starter when the Enemy From Within foot soldiers arrive and ask me about my allegiances.

Then again, they’ll be talking about a different kind of orange troll, won’t they.

Until then, I have many, many stupid reasons to live for. Bingo for one, flexing my safety finger, yelling at old women when I could have just stayed home. At least now, though, I’ve written something. Anything.

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