Here lies the body of Capt Chris
A man that the world never will miss,
He sailed all his days,
Across the blue sea,
But a life unfulfilled should never be.
Capt Chris German passed peacefully from this world today. He suffered a prolonged battle with undiagnosed ADHD that he bore great resentment for, and was always known to take the easy way out because he was so damn smart despite being completely stupid.
I was Capt Chris for most of my life so far. It’s not that I tried to be a jerk or worked at not fitting in, it just came to me quite easy.
A friend of mine once asked me, what did I always choose the easy route. She didn’t say that exactly, but I think that was what she meant when she said, “why are you always working at get rich quick schemes?” It seems to me, no one ever chose to get rich quick in the non-profit world nor waiting tables at restaurants or working the late shift at the local dishwasher plant. But from her sweet little perch at the social services office as a State worker, I guess that was what she saw.
Little did she know, just having a common conversation with the fry guy at McDonald's's was a challenge for me, let alone playing in the big world of government-backed employment. Relationships, jobs, homeownership, and even friendships were too damn difficult for me most days. I would never pass a government exam to get a job working for the State of Connecticut.
In fact, that inability to work a 9-5 job, with benefits and an office cubical was so antithetical to my existence, most people didn’t take me too seriously.
My Mom called me a con artist, My sister thought I was special needs, my father called me pecker head and the rest of the world called me asshole.
I wasn’t ever the most beloved man, and killing myself off out of this story is more a mercy killing than anything else.
I can imagine at the funeral, the old ladies would whisper as my wife walked by, “Oh she is such a saint, you know he never held a full-time job in his life? He was so shiftless”
And they’d probably be right. She is a saint. She more than most has had to bear the burden of my ADHD and my inability to work for anyone else. It was one of the first things I told her when we were getting together< i can’t work for anyone else, it just doesn’t work.
Maybe it was because I had a tough time following directions, or maybe it's because I have a huge case of rejection sensitivity disorder. I certainly have a short fuse and I have this horrible sense of entitlement being, as my 4rth grade teacher told my class on a daily basis, “the cream of the crop”
See the thing is, when I walk into a job, I have gotten to the point where I see everything that is wrong and want it all to just fall apart. I kinda look at it as if the whole thing fell down around our ears, it would be a good thing, and that makes for a lousy lead character in your own life.
Nope, I am sure of it, it was time to kill me off.
Capt Chris had jumped the shark, gone to Hawaii, opened up Edna’s edibles, and killed a whole pyramid of water skiers in my third sequel. I am played out.
And with my death, I am burying all my other things too. My resentment over my ADHD, my anger over never fitting in, my rejection, my unemployment, my wandering spirit, and those times I justified my bad behavior because I just couldn’t see myself as wrong.
And in my place, I offer a new me. A different me. A Me who is not defined by sailing because that is all my ADHD-riddled brain could do, but rather a man who loves music. A man who can write novels and stories better than anyone else around. A man who creates videos and podcasts and can explain the intricacies of crypto to Mr. and Mrs. America.
I want to make movies about the good parts of this Nation, and documentaries that figure out why it's not as good as it could be. I want to be reborn into a leading character in my life that I can be proud of.
I want to be A man who eats his vegetables, exercises regularly, and flosses daily. Who doesn’t find solace at the bottom of a bottle and resolves his differences with quiet words instead of yelling tantrums. A man that makes his bed each morning and has a job that affords him a better home, a better life, and yes, a better boat.
I have created a new me. A better me. A Me that I think was always there but had a tough time finding his way out. I‘d like to introduce you to my new leading character, That Sailing Guy.
He has a few gray hairs and is working to shed a few extra pounds. He’s poor as a church mouse, but he's full of ideas. And it is those ideas that I think you will like.
You might like his idea of a podcast that teaches Americans about crypto using language we can all understand. You might like his idea to rebuild America with Gus and Simon and rag-tag a bunch of travel trailers that work to win back the country they love from an evil President Crawford. That was the first book Whither We Tend, in the next book Governments of Men, Corpus Christ gets blown up by an Aircraft carrier, Simon liberates a concentration camp at Lake Powell and Gus gets shot down over the Navajo Nation.
Or maybe you’ll like his best idea, The Great Loop where five boats and 20 people sail 6000 miles around the Eastern United States and Canada, and we film the whole thing as 8-part docuseries. Those are just the ideas he has now, but the way his ADHD-addled brain works, you know he’ll have another huge idea in ten minutes.
I just hope the world will start to take him seriously in a way they never took his predecessor, Capt Chris.
That Sailing Guy is a serious-minded journalist who has the gumption to ask the hard questions and get to the bottom of the good stories. He has an eye for great camera shots that he gets from his father the watercolorist and a flair for the spoken word that he got from his mother, the thespian. I wish they were here to see this new man as he breaks away from his old persona and to become the man they always wanted him to be.
But you will get to see what's coming down the pike for That Sailing Guy and I do hope you enjoy what he’s bringing with him. Rest in peace, Capt Chris. I don’t think any of us will miss you, may God have mercy on your soul.
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