My obsessiveness sparkles during back-to-school season

It's that time of year again

If you feel like I write a similar type of post every year in August, you’re probably right. My life is very repetitive. Anyway…

Well, at least it’s not in the closet anymore (photo by author)

I sat on the floor in the closet, sifting through a wicker basket stuffed to the brim with Barbie dolls. My eyes started to get a little watery, and it wasn’t from all the dust.

That’s a thing that happened this week. I’m not thrilled about it.

We’re not talking full-on tears or anything, but it was enough to get the point across. If there had been anyone around to see them, I probably could’ve explained the watery eyes away as allergies or contact lens problems. There wasn’t anyone around. That’s kind of the point, actually. The kids were back at school—two of them, inexplicably, in middle school now, and the third and last, the owner of the basket of dolls, in fourth grade, just two short years away from leaving elementary school behind.

I considered letting the dog join me upstairs to tamp down the loneliness. He would’ve bounded up to sit right beside me (or more likely, on top of me) while I attempted to make myself feel useful and productive in some nebulous way by moving stuff around in a cluttered and neglected closet. He’s also a semi-professional at licking away tears, so his presence would’ve solved several problems, but I’m a very strict dog owner, and I believe in setting firm boundaries.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what matters and what doesn’t lately. And by lately, I mean the last 15 to 20 years or so. Any of y’all ever do this? Nah, it’s probably just me. In the age of Artificial Intelligence, I remain the most human, and therefore, the most prone to insufferable navel gazing. It’s the very unique burden that I alone must bear.

(Don’t argue with me, please. I’m not trying to be relatable right now. I’m trying to be special, unique, one of a kind on this stupid spinning rock in an infinitesimal speck of an ever-expanding universe. I’m at that point of writing a piece where I’m prone to giving up, so abject delusion is the only way I can motivate myself to see this thing through. Thank you for your understanding.)

The first couple of weeks of each new school year, it’s not enough for me to clean out a disastrous closet or scrub some toilets or read a book or shop for some interesting groceries and cook them for dinner after a summer of sloth and fast-food takeout. No, I can’t just do normal things, because I am a man of letters and words and thoughts. I contain multitudes, more layers than a bagful of onions.

Instead of just getting on with my life and mowing the grass, I prefer to spend a lot of time obsessing over every decision I have to make, like a toddler fixating on the color of her dinner plate. It’s what I’m best at. I feel like I evolved from an amoeba to this specific lifeform so I could go pro at obsessing over the minutiae of daily existence. I’m this way pretty much all the time because being an obsessive requires constant vigilance and training, but like an athlete preparing for a big competition, I like to focus my energies on reaching peak neuroticism at key transitional times of the year, like back to school, end of school, and New Year’s.

I’m not talking about big things here: where to live, what type of career to start at age 44, whether the bunny cages should be cleaned daily or every other day. Everyone obsesses over those. But only the universe’s chosen ones obsess over things like where their kid should play basketball while civilization crumbles, if sweeping the kitchen floor is worth it in the grander scheme, and if getting the car’s oil changed is really a necessity when death comes for all of us eventually anyway.

Before I started excavating the closet, I asked my daughter if we could donate some of her larger Barbie items that were taking up a lot of space and hadn’t been touched in quite some time. The dolls are easy to store away, but pink airplanes and boats and RVs are a bit more cumbersome.

“No.” She didn’t take any time to obsess over her decision.

It was a bit of a disappointment, and I was slightly exasperated because I was looking forward to making that closet empty. For some reason, it felt meaningful, if only for a moment, so I was determined to chase that high. But my daughter’s response was mostly a relief because it gave me free rein to give up. I could put off the work for another year or so and table my death spiral contemplation of the passage of time for at least a couple of hours.

The afternoon of the first day of school, the children returned home as they tend to do, and a couple of neighborhood friends floated our way, also as they tend to do. My daughter and her best friend were playing Roblox in the bedroom, and the friend’s 4-year-old brother, who always tags along on their visits, was apparently getting bored.

“Andrew! Shelby wants you to play Barbies with him!” The friend shouted.

I got up from my computer and trudged upstairs, feeling both annoyed and mildly exhilarated. I don’t get asked to play much anymore. Flying a large pink airplane around the house used to be one of my primary job responsibilities, and now it’s not. And while that’s probably a good thing by any objective measure, it’s still a little jarring. The realization causes a crisis of identity.

If I’m not a Barbie airplane pilot anymore, what am I?

The occasional presence of a 4-year-old in the house, once again, after all these years of not having a 4-year-old in the house, is a blessing in some ways. Most importantly, it allows me to escape reality. As long as I can pretend that I’m still a Barbie airplane pilot, I don’t have to obsess over what or who I’m going to be next.

It’s almost impossible to obsess over questions of value and what matters when a 4-year-old is making those decisions for you. Moving the stupid plane around matters. A lot. And it always will. (Until it doesn’t… but no use thinking about that part now.)

So, I crawled around on my hands and knees, moving planes and RVs and boats all over the carpeted floor for about twenty minutes until it was time for the kids to head home. It was miserable and wonderful.

That night at bedtime, my daughter took a victory lap. “See, I told you we should keep the Barbie stuff. I kept it so you and Shelby would have something to play with.”

I mean, it seemed a little dubious and convenient, but I had a hard time arguing the point. Probably doesn’t matter anyway. The only thing that really matters is maintaining a supply of 4-year-olds to keep me and my junk closet full of toys relevant for as long as possible.

Words by me, Andrew Knott. Best known for duck.

Books:

Love’s a Disaster - contemporary fiction about a marriage proposal gone wrong, complicated families, second-chance love, Florida, sword fighting, and punk rock music.

Fatherhood: Dispatches From the Early Years - essays and humor about the very early years of my parenting journey