PREMATURE ADULTING

The Finger Painting Betrayal

When being a garbageman made sense

I am not by conventional standards a success. This has been going on for a long time.

I’ve had desultory triumphs on the road to sighing, giving up, and admitting I’m more average than the number five. In school, they smacked plenty of “Satisfactory” S letters while I racked up a handful of outstanding “O” marks. I wisely stayed mum about their failure to recognize my genius, but I simmered with confusion and resentment.

I could see the gold star system was impossible to resist, and I joined the army of tykes as we began to scheme our way to victory. It was every tyke for himself, except Meg who was popular, damn her.

It wasn’t enough to never receive the dreaded “U” for unsatisfactory — a letter reserved for future criminals and kids who ate glue. Being ruthlessly evaluated was a key part of life, and there was absolutely no way out.

I never liked the whole setup, but I persisted with a carefree but increasingly mute “nevertheless,” as I smiled and nodded and observed the tall people for weaknesses.

I toiled to beat the overlords to the punch. Once they knew I could figure out the instructions, they stopped giving them. You might say I learned to read minds, with the accuracy of a drunken sniper.

This was the reason finger painting was my favorite activity in my early years. You showed up, were given access to an assortment of colors, and everyone went to town. The teacher, realizing we were mollified and semi-sedated, no longer cared what the hell you did. I didn’t have to decipher instructions, or motives, or pass muster.

Then those bastards pulled me aside to hone my preternatural reading skills, which emerged seconds after being carted home from the hospital, swaddled in books. The book the teacher dusted off was about Bill and Jill, two insipid characters who caused me to glance back, with a deep sense of yearning, at the finger painters.

Bill and Jill were poor substitutes for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Their suburban lives were empty. As I leaned over the desk for Reading, I could hear the other kindergarteners squealing with delight, their grubby technicolor hands mocking my indoctrination into premature adulthood.

The Math Problem

I was a logical child who was passionately devoted to the simplicity of memorizing things, like multiplication tables and rules to simple games.

The goal was clear: memorize that sh*t and you are DONE.

Little did I know, math would turn into a cruel mockery of simplicity, and using logic would make me socially unpopular, perpetually scratching my head at how rules got made up on the spot by whoever was the most popular kid.

I gasped for air when it came to music, being popular, and fighting.

Like Jeff Lebowski’s legendary rug, Spelling tied the room together, combining the virtues of memorizing, handwriting, and when there was a spelling bee — sports! No one ever got into a fight over spelling, partly because almost no one cared.

I had simple needs, but the world wanted more. It demanded I choose a trajectory. Not just any path, but the right one.

At the age of 11, I copped to the fact that I was tragically and definitely a girl. I would never become my hero, Kenny Stabler of the Oakland Raiders. I could still hurl a dodgeball at lightning speed, but pre-Algebra arrived, cloaked on a black horse with blacker eyes. The Sisyphean writing splattered all over the wall like undercooked pasta.

Math would require constant effort. Sports were a cruel lie. Carbs were probably bad for you.

I’d be peddling uphill, probably forever. I wanted to coast. Our school dance that year strongly implied I might also be wearing a skirt, probably forever.

That most horrible of all adult contraptions would murder my only two career dreams. I wanted to work at the carnival or be a garbageman who rode the trucks, my practical and slightly smudged overalls keeping me warm in the winter and flapping in the breezes on summer days.

I would show the world I had a real job.

Where Dreams Go to Get Drunk

My only childhood dream happened on a motorcycle. My parent’s friend — how they knew a biker is beyond my comprehension — took me on a ride through the neighborhood.

I never forgot the feeling and vowed that, when I grew up, I’d get my own motorcycle, and no one could stop me.

My parents explained college was the only option, and I went with the flow. I read between the lines — college would not make riding a motorcycle impossible.

I couldn’t coast yet, so I trotted down the road more traveled and loitered where it intersected with the path of least resistance. I graduated in four years and rode off on my Yamaha, clutching what I was sure were essential skills in philosophy.

I’d mastered everything higher ed has to offer — to juggle and drink vodka. I exiled any hint of mediocrity by discovering sex, single-malt scotch, and Marxism.

What’s Wrong with Painting by Numbers?

I climbed out of the ivy with the world’s most ridiculous modern degree, now paradoxically more clueless than a blind alligator driving a Honda Civic.

My twenties were a desperate attempt to find a place where finger painting was still legal, but I felt like a hunted outlaw in a black-and-white B movie.

One windy Spring day, I gave up. I felt my soul was a dense and foreign thing, like a meatball tossed into a bowl of alphabet soup, flinging letters in every direction — yet making no sentences.

I pleaded with a dead God: just let me live the dream of coasting while I get everything I want!

I had to make a living, so I worked a ranch where the horses were non-cooperative and the thrill of driving a tractor died the minute I almost died mucking out a stable with an angry horse inside. I hid in the telemarketing cubicles, displaying a surprising talent with sales. When I fled animals and cubicles, I hit the jackpot of every striving coaster — temp work.

The path of least resistance was paying off because I fell into a government job, which provided cover. This was a career, right?

I no longer painted with my fingers. The gold star years felt like a scene from a tropical cruise I somehow stumbled onto. After I disembarked, the ship went down like the Titanic. Was the only fun part of adulthood earning money and drinking — and sex?

Bar Fly by Night

Sometimes growing up requires returning to a safe place, like your parents’ house or in my case, the downtown pool hall. Hanging out at Pete’s Pool Hall comprised the sweetest moments of college life, where the signage was clear and undemanding —

“No feet on walls.”

I joined a pool league, where my philosophy degree meant something. I drank. I smoked. I got really good at pool.

Intrusive visions of carnival life returned, but sanity seemed to prevail. Instead of honing my skills as a motorcycle cage rider, I threw good money after bad and got more education.

What an idiot.

Math Is Everywhere

After eighty-one jobs — only two of which resulted in getting fired — I’ve done the math: I like jobs.

Is it so wrong to want a simple, straightforward role — a thing to do, if you will, that doesn’t require constantly thinking up better ways to please someone so I won’t get the dreaded “U”?

I would’ve been happiest joining the military, so I could have a definite title, a set of instructions, a uniform, a foot locker, and a vague sense of a larger purpose.

I know this because a few months ago I finally had another dream. I knew with binary certainty that I was destined to play a flying monkey in Wizard of Oz, so I went to audition. The competition was non-existent, so I got the part.

As soon as I began taking instructions from the Witch of the West — a confident, interesting boss who has limited expectations of me — I realized that’s all I’ve ever wanted in life. Does it matter that she’s evil?

I have a uniform, a set of instructions, a title — “flying monkey #3”— a chair to sit on when I am backstage, and a vague sense of a larger purpose.

The wicked witch has never once asked me to choose a career, and she always explains my tasks in very simple terms.

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Jean Campbell recently started her first Substack newsletter to laser focus on getting her book, City of Lies: A Street Hustler’s Omaha Journey published.