Our eldest, daughter Natalie, has sadly inherited a number of my foulest traits. Two of the worst: catastrophization and exaggeration.
Catastrophizing — my habit of turning every little problem into a world-class disaster. A light bulb burns out just as the dinner guests are due to arrive: cataclysm, nothing less. This is fear on steroids.
Exaggeration — expressing things more strongly than they’re worth, overstating descriptions. I do this all the time. In the previous paragraph alone, I exaggerated at least twice, maybe three times: Catastrophizing doesn’t mean you turn every little problem into a “world-class” disaster; a regular disaster will do. Nor does exaggeration necessarily mean turning “every” problem into a disaster; any little problem qualifies. Also: I don’t literally exaggerate “all” the time; I take breaths in between.
These bad habits are so easy for me, if I could monetize them, I’d be a millionaire by Thursday.
Natalie knows she takes it from me on the catastrophization and exaggeration fronts, and she does her best to rein herself in. (Exaggeration: she doesn’t do her “best.” She does what she can. She’s my daughter, after all.) So whenever Nat reports a disastrous situation, I always (not “always”: generally) chalk it up to our shared flaws.
Like, for example, last week. She visited for a few days from her home in upstate New York, and parked her red BMW at the end of our driveway. She relocated recently from Arizona, and her car still has the inky-black tinted windows (not actually “inky-black,” but still, way dark) which people install in that desert wasteland because if they don’t, they will die. (Not actually “die.” But close.)
A few hours after her arrival, Natalie went out to retrieve something from her car. She returned with a look of consternation.
“That bird is back,” she snarled. “My car looks ridiculous.”
In fact, she claimed, in each of her three visits to our house, her car had been creamed by that nasty stuff that comes out of our flying feathered friends.
I sagely recognized this as catastrophization-exaggeration syndrome: My daughter was clearly depicting an ordinary coincidence as a diabolical pattern.
“What is it with the birds around here!” she cried the next day, after another visit to her vehicle. “Attacking my car! It’s like a terrorist onslaught!”
Poor girl. I wondered if there’s medication available for this. For Nat, I mean, not the birds. (Honestly, if they come up with medication for catastrophization and exaggeration, I might ask my doctor about it.)
Soon, a third report came. “I think there’s a bird living in your tree,” she said — the sugar maple next to the driveway — “that just hates me.”
Uh-huh, I said to myself.
Finally came the moment of my own visit to our mailbox, adjacent to Natalie’s car, and as I approached, I was shocked by what I saw. (Not literally “shocked,” as in “electrocuted,” but, you know.)
Not only was the dark driver-side window of her vehicle splattered with an astounding volume of off-white gunk, worthy of a Jackson Pollock painting (art dealers might quibble with “worthy”), but a very large robin was flapping crazily, screeching in rage, repeatedly throwing itself against the glass.
And, it appeared, failing to contain itself gastro-intestinally. Involuntarily or deliberately, I couldn’t say.
Either way, Nat’s car was a mess — the robin could have gone in for a colonoscopy immediately; its tract was obviously cleared out — and I had to shoo the furious creature away just to rescue my mail.
I guess an Ipswich robin has rarely if ever encountered a glass surface tinted so dark that it reflects like a mirror.
Maybe our snooty robin thought a rival low-rent robin was trying to take up residence in the coveted sugar maple.
Or perhaps Natalie’s window was rightly understood to be a reflection, but our robin simply has issues with self-image.
Anyway, lesson learned. My daughter does not “always” exaggerate and catastrophize. Sometimes she tells the simple truth. S*** happens.
Doug Brendel coexists with the wildlife on outer Linebrook Road in Ipswich. Follow him, for his own safety, by subscribing at Outsidah.Substack.com.
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