Dear Dad,
I’m going to be a dad.
I wet myself about twice a day from being excited and absolutely terrified. It’s funny how NOT unique of an experience this is, and it’s funny how many seemingly unready people have kids, and it’s funny that everything kind of works out, despite the fact that some of us have never changed a diaper in our lives up to this point.
I’ve been thinking about the incredible odds all of us living and who have ever lived overcame to make it here. I’ve been doing some reading. It’s mind-blowing.
Let’s do some basic biology and math (Warning: you might think this is inappropriate to write about.) : On average, there are five hundred million sperm in one “shot,” so to speak. It only takes one sperm, right? So, just in that one swim team you were a part of — the odds of you being born were one in half a billion. Good job, there, Michael Phelps.
That, however, is hardly a number compared to the number you would come up with if you added all the instances. Because there were other “acts” in which your could-have-been siblings didn’t make it. And then we have to consider the odds against your parents, and their parents and so on, then factor them into the equation. We’re just tapping the surface.
There isn’t a number big enough.
People throw around the saying, You’re one in a million. But it’d be more accurate to say, You’re one in a googolplex multiplied by a googolplex. Or, you’re one in Graham’s Number, a number considered to be so big that there isn’t enough space in the universe to write it down, assuming each number takes up at least a little space.
It’s hard to call anyone on earth a loser. We’ve all made it, for whatever reason. It’s pretty precious, you know?
Life.
About My Guitar
Some have asked me what kind of guitar I used on my latest CD. The answer is, the bulk of the work was recorded using my very first guitar. I bought it when I was fifteen from Mrs. Glassman, my Phy. Ed. teacher. She was having a Saturday garage sale and said twenty dollars was a reasonable price because the guitar had been in the family a long time. Since she was a kid. I thought twenty was steep. The guitar said “Silvertone” on the headstock, but that was before I painted it completely in red, blue, and yellow stripes. Two days later, I realized the guitar looked like a clown, and so I took a putty knife to it and scraped for several hours. I brought it to my sister Ingrid. She was the artist in our family and she had ideas. She painted it completely black with four small white stars near the bottom-right. I thought she improved it greatly, besides the stars, so I used a magic-marker to cover them. She wasn’t overly offended. The guitar remained like that for several years, even through the recording of the last CD. Only recently did it change when I painted it green and gave it to my wife as a wedding gift. She affectionately keeps it in storage. But perhaps she would sell it to you for twenty dollars.
About Visiting Family
I’ve been visiting my family in Minnesota and helping my dad remodel the upstairs. Before arriving I bought the new Neil Diamond album, Home Before Dark, and it’s been competing heavily with Credence Clearwater Revival. Even though it lacks the sort of classic rock feel you want when you’re working construction, it’s been in the CD player more than anything. The songs have been getting under my skin. Simple and deep. And I think it’s been influencing the way I mess around on the guitar these days. I’ve been leaving my pick in my case. Just thumb on the strings on a quiet porch. Nice and simple. I think I need more of that right now.
