Chapter 20: Kiss the Girl
By the time the war arrives on the home front, there’s nowhere to hide.
As I cowered in my own bedroom, I heard a knock.
“Scott, it’s me.” Though it was muffled by an inch and a half of composite wood, the voice of my wife was easily distinguishable. Additionally, it was the only one I even remotely wanted to hear.
After taking a moment to compose myself, I slowly opened the door and revealed what must have been a sad sight. A grown ass man seeking refuge from within his own home.
Her watery eyes matched mine and there we stood, silent in our observation of one another. I thought I detected pity. But Sherlock Holmes I am not. What she was really feeling was alone.
Sounds from the party already underway in the living areas came rushing in to fill the void, amplifying the intensity of my anxiety.
Today was Iris’s second birthday. Some twenty friends and family had come over to join us in celebration. Only problem is there was no us. Just Jamie. Scott was nowhere to be found.
'“Where’s my daddy?”
“I’m sorry,” I finally spoke in a language only my wife can decipher. “I wasn’t ready for all this. I don’t think I can go out there.”
I was still exhausted from Boston. Just the previous night my dad and I returned from that infamously rough trip to receive my third treatment. In fact, I had just woken up from a recovery nap, still half asleep only to find a host of people in my house, festivities in full swing. Evidently, I overslept.
Flashbacks descended upon me from my frat house days when I was caught off guard, and in boxer shorts no less, wandering into the chapter room completely unaware a mixer had been scheduled. However, back then I had the advantage of not having ALS to navigate the situation.
Before my eventual retreat, I had actually ventured out to try my hand at conversation with a few of our guests. Mid slur, it dawned on me that the only people I’ve interacted with the past two months were strangers in airports, hotels, and hospitals. Outside of immediate family, my significant decline had not yet been on display to anyone I truly cared about.
I tried my best to keep up, but by the time my lips finally moved to articulate my thoughts, the subject matter had moved on without me. So I traded in being a wallflower for a prisoner when I snuck away to the sanctuary of my bedroom.
“I don’t want you to look back on today with regret,” Jamie cautioned, tears still holding on for dear life.
It was time for cake.
A decision awaited me. This new social phobia I certainly wasn’t prepared for, but was I really prepared to miss my daughter blowing out her candles?
My emotions overwhelmed me. Anger over no longer being able to sing Happy Birthday. Sadness just thinking about how many future birthdays I might not be around for. Shame for hiding from the people I love.
In my head I justified my abdication of fatherly duties for self sacrifice. I didn’t want to take the attention off of Iris. And for one day I wanted Jamie to be free of worry and have fun. The odds of a breakdown right there in the middle of the party seemed likely so I chose to hide instead. But my not so well thought out plan backfired.
Everyone knew about the elephant in the bedroom at this point. Furthermore, Jamie wasn’t having a good time. Her husband was bailing on her.
As I labored to muster up some courage to face the unknown, I distinctly remember thinking, “I’ve been here before.”
I stayed with that thought long enough to travel back in time 26 years to the summer of ’95. A prepubescent me is standing on Travis Paustian’s driveway face to face with a girl two whole grades above me (and at least two inches in height as well).
Had this encounter gone poorly, my friends were gathered there to remind me about it for eternity. By my calculations there was a chance of rejection, albeit a small chance as her lips were eight inches from mine at this point, but a chance no less. I closed my eyes and went in.
I knew it was a resounding success because her tongue was in my mouth and cheers could be heard from the gallery.
“Man, I’m really REALLY glad I didn’t back out,” I applauded myself whilst still having my tonsils thoroughly examined.
And the rest, as they say, is history. I would go on kissing girls with somewhat reckless abandonment for years to come. Sure, I got rejected, but that’s actually the most important lesson I learned along the way. As painful as rejection is, it’s a wound that heals in time. And besides, the fallout is often not as devastating as initially imagined. But the UPSIDE…that juice is undoubtedly worth the squeeze.
I think in that way life is a lot like kissing girls (or boys).
You can’t learn how to kiss by reading about it in some book. You just have to do it. And you’ll never know what you’re missing unless you try.
I’ve arrived at numerous crossroads in my life where I ended up taking the riskier path. And if that gamble didn’t pay off in the short term it had a funny way of working out in the long run.
Back in college I got talked into doing a male beauty pageant for a charity. When we got to the talent portion, I performed a John Mayer medley that made me a bit of a celebrity, if not within the attending sororities then at least within my own mind. Let me tell you though, getting up on that stage was HARD.
Punch drunk on semi-stardom, when I graduated from Truman State, despite achieving Cum Laude status in my physical therapy track, I decided to forgo graduate school to roll the dice again. Tired of reading about how to do things, a few of my buddies and I moved to St. Louis and actually did them.
Among my many Gateway City adventures, included the launching of my own music publishing company. It was, by most metrics, a failure. I got a few tunes licensed on several MTV dating shows and “LA Ink” but what I was really doing was learning how to run a business, which came in real handy when I doubled down again later in life, this time leaving my management position at 24 Hour Fitness to start BodySmith. And that endeavor, by most metrics, was most certainly NOT a failure.
Now, I know that making an appearance at a two-year-old’s birthday party doesn’t seem on par with this collection of life altering scenarios, but to this slumdog millionaire it did. It was that terrifying.
Alas, when I finally snapped out of my flashback, I was elated to discover my seven figure question was: What do you do when your daughter needs her daddy?
Because I already knew the answer…
You kiss the girl.
And that’s exactly what I did. I took a deep breath, stumbled out into a world of uncertainty (aka a huddled mass in my kitchen) and planted a big smooch on the most beautiful birthday girl you’d ever set eyes on.
Even as I spoke the birthday song instead of singing it, I was immediately affirmed in my decision.
“Man, I’m really REALLY glad I didn’t back out.”
The rest of the party went accordingly. Though tired, I still found conversations where I could provide value. I didn’t fall over and I didn’t choke on anything. More importantly, I felt the unconditional love from all my friends and family. And of course most of all, I was there to help Iris blow out her birthday candles.
Perhaps, much like my personal training business would have failed to get off the ground without first cutting my teeth at entrepreneurship in St. Louis, the whole birthday jitters fiasco was preparing me for something even bigger too.
At peak #FlexOnALS hysteria, we had a massive flex session before attending the first inaugural Lou Gehrig Day at Kauffman Stadium.
For just a few days later was the first inaugural Lou Gehrig Day for major league baseball and this time some hundred people turned out, from every season of my life and area of the country, in support of me and my family for a magical evening at Kauffman Stadium.
Undoubtably, I would have been quickly overwhelmed without the recent warm-up. It was still hard to present my struggle in front of my friends and even harder to watch them process what I was going through. But it was a necessary moment in time for all of us and I now understood that I wasn’t being judged, I was being loved.
As our crew was assembling for the big pre-game tailgate in the parking lot, we handed out temporary #FlexOnALS tattoos to everyone. Even George Brett rocked one, and I later heard he sported it all the way through the weekend.
During the actual game, my family and a few close friends were set up in a suite, right next to my friend and prominent Kansas City ALS warrior, Sarah Nauser-Olson. Every Royals player loves this woman and Salvidor Perez let her know it when he Flexed On ALS for her later that evening in a press conference. The future Hall of Famer also hit a couple dingers in the first and fifth frame, creating a new fan in Iris simultaneous to her going absolutely bonkers when the crowd roared with delight.
Later in the night, the late great New York Yankee whose name has become synonymous with ALS received the biggest honor, his famous farewell speech put on display for all.
“Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth… that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for.”
How can you not be inspired by that level of gratitude and yet, at the same time, seethe outrage from the exact same prognosis Lou shared 80+ years ago with pALS today? That’s on all of us. We know from Operation Warp Speed what can be accomplished when the medical and biotech community feels an adequate level of pressure and incentive. It comes down to priorities. 6,000 Americans dying per year from a uniquely cruel neurological disease can’t compete with the demand for anti-aging beauty solutions or male enhancement drugs. And that’s just FACTS.
Circling back to the gratitude part, I understand what he meant by the “luckiest man.” For whatever psychological reason, it’s really hard to fully appreciate everything you have until the threat of losing it becomes imminent. As a consequence, I’ve never loved and felt love more intensely than I do now. Therein lies the gift in this utter mess.
View from our seats in the George Brett suite.
As I was perched on our stadium suite balcony, soaking in the beauty around me, my wife took the empty seat next to me.
After a few words she quickly pivoted, “Scott look!”
Right there on the Jumbotron was a slow pan close up of center field to reveal a team of boys, led by my nephew, each holding a sign, one per letter with the unmistakable trending hashtag…
#FlexOnALS
Reminiscent of Salvi’s prior homers, the stadium erupted and with it, Jamie, and me. We looked at each other and quietly shared in the perfection of the moment. This time I knew exactly what she was thinking. But I hesitated.
Now, it’s been well documented, that near the end of life, people don’t regret the things they did, rather they regret the things they DIDN’T do.
I’m not claiming to be near the end of my life, quite the contrary. It’s just that I don’t need to see into the future to understand this truth. Remember, I already know the answer. For I’ve been here before.
So I closed my eyes and went in.