Everybody Dance Now

I once spent a very entertaining evening with Alex, a then 12-year-old boy with a consuming interest in Dragon Ball Z. He had invented a super hero, entirely of his own creation, who was completely undefeatable. It reminded me so strongly of the many, many times in my life when I wished I were secretly invulnerable.

Last year, while the Honda was getting an oil change, I went for a walk in the surrounding neighborhood of Santa Monica. On one leg of my journey, I passed a father doing yard work while his two young (8 and 6, I'm guessing) sons rode impossibly small BMX bicycles up and down the side walk. The dad had set up a ramp, maybe 6 inches at its highest point, and while he trimmed the hedges, the boys took turns taking the ramp at the greatest speed they could muster with less than 2 feet of leg to employ at the pedals. They were not getting much "air", as the experts might say.

But as the older boy passed me, headed back towards the starting line, I overheard something. As he rode up and down the sidewalk, totally absorbed in this not-at-all dangerous stunt performing, he was humming the base line of the song frequently played beneath the introduction of basketball players at NBA games. You've probably heard it. It goes: DUN dun DUN, Dunt dun dun DUUN dun...Are you ready for this?

When I wonder why the hell I torture myself like this, fighting an uphill battle against way too much work in way too little time, I remember Alex and boys like him, and try to lose myself so completely in my work that it becomes play, and if Michael walks by my desk, all he'll hear is me, humming to myself "DUN dun DUN, Dunt dun dun DUUN dun..."