Category: What I think

Due to my rather intermittent presence on this blog, not to mention the fact that all of you have your own rich and fulfilling lives to live, you may not know that I suffered a really nasty meniscus tear in October of 2020. It was a glorious moment, to be sure, and nearly worth the thousands of dollars in medical bills and months of rehabilitation.

There I was, charging toward the goal from my Center Attacking Midfielder position. The winger, sensing that I was going to make a run, played a perfect cross into the box just behind the centre back. The keeper was stuck in no man’s land—come off your line to try to intercept the cross or stay on your line and wait for the shot. Ultimately, the keeper made the decision to come out just a hair too late, and I was able to slide just underneath the outstretched, gloved fingers and strike the ball perfectly into the back of the net at the same moment I felt the meniscus tear in half in my right knee.

That 10-year-old girl never had a chance.

Yes, it’s true. I injured myself at great cost in a parents versus kids soccer game at the end of my daughter’s fall U11 soccer season. But I’m telling you, I don’t care if she was seventy pounds—it was the best goal of my life. (Since some of you tend to have broken sarcasm detectors, yes, I know this is all very, very pathetic.)

So after a expert consultation and arthroscopic surgery at the hands of Dr. Scott Van Steyn (I just made my final payment today, Doc—enjoy that vacation!) at Ohio Orthopedic in Columbus, Ohio, I am now left with approximately 55 percent of a meniscus in my right knee. The tear was far too bad to repair, unfortunately, but removing the damaged portion meant a much faster recovery—in theory.

“Well, Mark, this is the first step to an artificial knee,” he began.

Wait. Time the fuck out. Artificial knee? I cannot possibly be that old.

Well, it turns out that I can be.

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How’s your year going so far?

I gotta admit, mine hasn’t been the very best. Although, based on how it began, I expected something completely different. I’m guessing we all did.

My story is no better and no worse than yours, but it is mine, and so I want to tell it to you, for whatever it’s worth.

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A post shared by Bark M. (@barkmfors)

My Monday, March 4th, started off like pretty much every other Monday. I had flown into Miami the night before to meet with one of my largest clients. I was proposing an additional $460,000 of annual spend, which would have made them my second-largest client overall, so I had spent the entire morning reviewing the proposal with my local sales and management team. We felt very good about the prospects of the deal, so I dialed into my weekly team meeting at 12:30 PM with a rather genial mindset.

Until I saw who was on the call, that is. In addition to my boss and my colleagues, my boss’ boss and the VP of HR were dialed in. Text messages started flying immediately between all of us.

“Something’s going down.”

“Oh, shit.”

Unfortunately, we were right. Moments after the call started, my boss’ boss gave us the words every upper-middle class worker dreads:

“We’re going to have to let you go.”

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7 Toxic Phrases Parents Need to Stop Saying to Their Sons

I genuinely try my best not to live in an echo chamber, as much as anybody really can in the year 2018. What I actually mean by this is that I don’t typically “unfollow” or “unfriend” over political beliefs. It’s no secret to anybody who’s ever read a single word that I’ve written that I am generally to the right of Ronald Reagan on most issues, although I like the think that when it comes to social issues, I’m fairly Libertarian, and I wish that more Republicans would be, too. Marry whomever you like. Smoke whatever you like. But please don’t force me to pay for failing social programs, your healthcare, or your “right to housing” or whatever that lady from Westchester is talking about in between her hilariously incorrect takes on global politics.

There’s one guy whom I follow on Twitter (and if you’re not following me…well, that’s actually pretty smart of you) who hits retweet on every single possible liberal social issue. He’s a basic white dude, but of course he’s an advocate for LBGTQ, for womyn, for minorities, for poor people, for immigrants…you name it, this dude is on it. He’s childless, but he’s all about Marching For Our Lives. He tweets about toxic masculinity at least once a day. Drives me crazy.

In the real world, he and I get along smashingly, mostly because we don’t talk about any of that silly shit in person. I even coached him around a racetrack once. Genuinely nice guy.

Unfortunately, I can’t agree with him on most of what he says, or really any of it, because I don’t get to have the “luxury” (note the sarcasm here) of living childless in a three-floor walkup in a trendy neighborhood. I’m raising kids.

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Before we begin, I have a confession to make: I don’t read automotive blogs/websites. I mainly avoid reading them because:

A. Most of them are terrible.

2. I don’t have a ton of spare time.

D. I’d prefer not to have my own opinion of a car/topic colored by somebody else.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. If a friend or colleague I respect writes something about a topic which interests me, I’ll read it, regardless of the outlet in which it appears.

Which brings me to The Drive.

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It happens to everybody, at least those of us who are fortunate to be gifted with a life free of serious illness or injury. At some point, we get old. But, just like in the Letters to the Editor in the old Penthouse Forums, I never thought that it would happen to me. However, even though I live in my own little solipsistic world, the real world continues to turn around me. Two things happened in the past few days to remind me just how old I am, and maybe just how out of touch with reality I’ve always been.

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