Frogs in Boiling Water

We are the frogs in this analogy.

Saturday night post-vacation doom scroll. Frogs being slowly brought to boil in a fetid witch’s brew. Eye of newt. Wool of frog. Ear of president. The GIFs of old men falling down the stairs, pro wrestling conspiracy theories, and sanctimonious think pieces copied, pasted, deleted, then pasted again into group texts. Three dots winking into and out of existence like particles in a moral vacuum. What’s the right tone here? Is there a word for being horrified and yet, to be honest, pretty disappointed? Some of the memes are pretty good though. Gotta admit. It's great fodder for the WhatsApp with the college guys.

Up way too late watching CNN replay grainy iPhone videos on a flatscreen 8K television. There's irony in there somewhere. It's disorienting and intoxicating. The wine, the edible, or the existential dread? All of the above. Didn’t get the dosage right. Four years and countless hours spent right here on the couch. Flicking through the debased feed with sighs and eye rolls. Deleting fundraising texts. Glancing smugly at the Fidelity app while the water got hotter. Now it’s bubbling over the sides of the cauldron and getting the kitchen all full of shit.

Sunday morning try to shake it off. Take the kids swimming and get some air. Put on the sunscreen and ignore the record temps and tyrannical humidity. Try to ignore the other dad donning that notorious red hat, the white hot flash of anger. Focus on the shallow blue of the kiddie pool. Feel a bit better when he drops his chicken fingers at the concession stand. Smile when the punk preteens point and laugh at him. Know it won’t ruin his day, or change the trajectory of this electoral death march. But at least it ruined his lunch. Appreciate the little things. After all, the hat isn’t the problem. The rapacious multinational conglomerate that slaughtered the poultry has probably done far more damage than the octogenarians yelling about golf. But chicken fingers are delicious and convenient. Order a four piece to go.

Head home, unpack, restock the fridge, sort emails. Keep the trains running on time. Watch the Mets lose. Some normalcy in abnormal times. Google “collective action problem”. Have a beer and try to solve it. Come up hollow. Switch to Sudoku. Bedtime stories, kids asleep, avoid the news, Seinfeld reruns on a flatscreen 8K television. This show premiered six presidents ago.

Tomorrow, get the hamster wheel rolling. Feed the Fidelity app. Laugh at the memes with like minded coworkers on Slack. Cringe when the boss says “he looked like such a badass, so presidential”. Cross off about half the to-do list in a daze. At lunchtime, use an app to ask a stranger to leave a salad on the front porch. Try to write something funny. Come up hollow. Switch to Sudoku.