140 Characters and Runnin’,or "What One Great Week Taught Me About the Importance of Patience and Reflection When Revealing Every Detail of"

I needed this. Sure I am sad that the gang has jetted off to Japan for six weeks, leaving me to fend for myself in an empty home. But since Miles’ birthday this apartment has been a seemingly non-stop factory of dirty diapers, peals of laughter, dramatic original scores to impromptu playtime, and buckets of crocodile tears. I needed this break. Time to relax and think. Time to slow down and figure out how this family will grow, and how we will be able to afford the next family vacation back to Japan. As much as I need to come home each day and have Maxy race into my arms, I needed this break. If you can understand that paradox, you are ready to become a parent, or you already are one.

And so it began: a quick dash out to the airport, in between classes, to kiss the team goodbye, and the next time I dragged my feet through my front door at the end of the day, it was to the sickly sweet sound of silence. Loneliness began to creep into the apartment like my lower neighbour’s cigar smoke through our window, but luckily I had made plans to stave off my solitude. I had lined up a week to reclaim my zest for single life and reconnect with friends who had so faithfully endured my distance.

If ever there were an occasion to mindlessly tweet and update the escapades of a newly independent Dad and Husband, it would have been last week. Honestly, I was too busy having a good time to tell you that I was having a good time, despite the fact that my staycation of the decade was filled with mental notes to post when I eventually got home. Those mental notes have finally caught up to me, so for those interested, I present a collection of tweets and updates from one of the best weeks in a long time:

- Note to self: Apologize to members of the Stag party for multiple rounds of “BangCock Surprise”

- Note to self: Apologize to cover band for verbal flaying. I didn’t need to hear “Blister in the Sun” that bad.

- Despite reportedly cooing “My Precious” to a piece of pizza in a darkened hotel room at 2 am, the slice wasn’t that good. Why do I remember one and not the other?

- Golf sucks. Bumper golf carts don’t. Unless you are in one being struck by errant drives from unruly golfing partners.

- Stag Party, night two: I thought it couldn’t get worse, but it did… I long for the unconditional love and innocence of my family’s embrace.

- Henry Rollins brought keen observation and witticism in one two-and-a-half hour breath. You can tell he is passionate about what he talks about, because he doesn’t shut up. Kinda reminds me of me in class.

- Been hyping the Public Enemy concert all week in my classes to a mixed reaction of indifference and incomprehension.

- Public Enemy concert review from a guy getting a little too old to rock out, but never too old to get down: F***kin’ great show, but my elbow started to ache from all the fist pumping, and the bass pouring from the massive speakers made me have to pee really bad.

- Didn’t think it would be possible to actually get drunk on the funk. Public Enemy rocked so hard that getting up at six the next morning for class was a near impossibility.

- My dates this Friday night are #Zombieland, #Resident Evil 4, and #KD with tuna… from the pot. Tonight is a total Homer night.

- My faith in public transportation is renewed. Barely forty minutes by bus and Canada Line from my front door to #Japadog’s new restaurant downtown. Mmmmm….. butter + shoyu fries.

- I really need to spend more time at Golden Age Collectibles.

- Malkin Bowl hosts #MassiveAttack in the drizzle and rain. Front row to soak up the near two hours of pure sensual pleasure. Too entranced, and cold, to dance. Just stood there with my mouth open.

- The perfect encore to a perfect concert: Nama-shoyu Ramen @ Motohachi.

- Note to self: It doesn’t matter if it is vegetarian. If you eat too much Indian food, your tummy will ache.

- A week’s worth of awesomeness doesn’t come halfway close to filling the space in my soul where my kids’ laughter should be.

But before you start rolling your eyes and muttering, “Oh here we go again, another one of these ‘Parenthood is magical and irreplaceable’ essays,” let me get to the point. As you can see, there was more than one occasion to share my thoughts and experiences. But instead, I ended up digesting and ruminating upon this small chunk of Life in hopes of arriving at truth a little bit meatier than a witty little tweet. For the last two years, I have enjoyed using Facebook and Twitter to communicate to my friends and colleagues my concise, insightful wit in 140 characters or less. I am used to it, since rarely do Kotomi and I communicate in anything more than that at any given time. You could say the history of communication in our relationship is based on brevity. It is a long legacy of haiku, short on words but long in meaning.

But since this is my big break, and I did, in fact, need this, I chose not to share with you my minute by minute account of one of the coolest weeks I have had in a long time. I wanted to see where this collection of observations and thoughts leads to. Maybe they would lead to something more to say than the 16 updates above, a “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” equivalent to Experience and Thought and how we communicate the two. Sure Twitter and Facebook are great for capturing the essence of any moment in our lives, but what about those times when we want to communicate the effect that a series of moments of experience and insight holds for us? Can it be done in 140 characters or less? Are we willing to stretch beyond the status box and demand more than a relatively small number of characters as the standard of connectivity for many of our friends and relatives?

Hmmm, I think I can see where this is leading, and I doubt it could have been crammed into a status bar.

I am not trying to convince my 156 Facebook friends that they should abandon the Tweet or Status Bar in favour of lengthy written discourse examining the cause, effect, and relationship between everything from the cutest thing their kids did to the latest episode of crappy service from Restaurant X. As much as it now frightens me to say… I need your tweets. I need your status updates. What else is going to keep me entertained on weekday and weekend evenings, once the family returns? Just remember that if you are reading this, then you have someone who would love to read something equally as long from you someday. Think about it, next time you get a break of your own.