So this year, I’m turning 40, and what do I have to show for it?

Massive anxiety and depression? A job which I have fallen out of love with? A website which I hardly ever use? I can’t seem to find any words inside of me with which to populate my online vanity project. But never mind all of that. None of those issues are anything new. You could have checked in with me any time over the past… well, forever, and I would have told you the same, apart from the website, of course. That’s a fairly recent addition to my ineffective arsenal, although we’re coming up on five years, so that’s something.

But what I really wanted to talk about was my little industrial strength goober. The Minkey turned twelve this year (12!), and has started in middle school. Where have the years gone? It seems like he just started kindergarten not too long ago. And of course, this year isn’t just about a confusion about the compression of the past, but also a unwelcome reminder that he’s very close to becoming an adult. Six more years, and he’ll have to get ready to join the world. I’m not optimistic at this point.

I mean, I know that eventually his poop and fart jokes will give way to something else, but I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I know that he’ll eventually get bored of Minecraft, and may pick up a book at some point, but I can’t imagine when that might be. and yet…

He’s my little guy. My Monkey Man. The baby who became a boy who became a young man, all, it seems, at once. And while it seems that he’s lost that preciousness which was the hallmark of his youth, I can say that at least he’s become more interesting over the years, though I beg you not to tell him that. Don’t encourage him to tell me more fart-related anecdotes.

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It’s been five years since I started this post, and that might make this the longest running project on which I have embarked. Of course, in Batmart time, I’ll probably only have spent a couple hours on this. So what’s changed, and what has stayed the same?

The Minkey is in his senior year of high school, has a girlfriend, and still tells fart jokes. He’s just over six months out from adulthood, and I’m now not sure how to feel about it. He’s grown considerably as a human being over this past half-decade, but the world has grown into a far more complicated place, and he’s going to be faced with some very serious decisions very soon.

There has been a… rhetoric in this country recently (well, not just recently- it’s been a part of this country for at least as long as I’ve been alive) that what this country really needs is fewer immigrants. Especially those damned illegals! People very close to me have jumped on this bandwagon, despite the fact that this proposed mass deportation would target my wife of 15 years. “Oh, well, she should have come here legally.” they say. I respond with the reminder that she wouldn’t have come had it now been an emergency, and hadn’t planned on even staying. Were it not for me and the Monkey Man, she would probably be in Mexico right now, living a good, contented life, relieved to be away from somewhere she was hated just for being brown.

So we’ve been talking about when we’re moving to Mexico. It’s no longer a matter of if. Of course, we were always going to go, but now there is a ticking clock. We’d like to wait until the Minkey finishes out the school year, but we also want to get out of here sometime shortly after the new year. If we decide (or need) to go sooner rather than later, he will have to decide if he’s staying here or coming with. On the one hand, it would be an incredible experience for him to come with us, a chance to immerse himself in another culture, but on the other, it would mean abandoning his friends, girlfriend, and the only life he’s ever known. I do not envy him.

I’m sorry if this has gone from moderately amusing to fairly depressing, but it’s been kind of a year, and that’s my current state of mind.

I’ll be trying to write more in the coming days, as I’ve embarked on a new literary journey, and I need to, once again, knock the rust off and remember how to write again. Welcome to Thunderdome, my pretty guinea pigs. Buckle up, it’s not going to be pretty.