Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell Podcast (private feed for andy@afbray.co.uk)

The Flood Walk

Last week, I cancelled my plans because of the weather. It was a profound act of cowardice that I regretted immensely. Friday night, I had a rematch with Mother Nature. This time, I stuck to my itinerary, despite the dire forecast. I figured I was tougher than the elements. As with any time I believe in myself, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The result was a miserable experience, not just for me, but also for the people I care about the most. A valuable lesson was learned that day, not by me, but definitely by those who blindly followed me downtown. If I fool you once, shame on you. You already trusted me one time too many.My original plan was simple enough. I had already successfully taken each of my daughters to a mid-week Pacers game. That’s when tickets are dirt cheap because everyone else has to get up early for work. I also have to wake up early, but my burning desire to save a few dollars supersedes my need for sleep. My crowning achievement was when I got two tickets for three dollars each, which turned into $7.50 after arbitrary fees. The extra money was to tip the fully automated software for giving me such personalized service. Mae was the last of my kids to make the one-on-one trip with me to Gainbridge Fieldhouse. It was the fourth time I made the walk to the stadium from my distant free parking spot that I can still use courtesy of a former employer. It’s a long hike by modern parking standards but a short jaunt by the limits of human endurance. Napoleon marched his troops nearly a marathon a day. Asking my kids to hoof it for less than a mile was a modest request by comparison, even if their legs are significantly shorter than those of the average French soldier.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!Out of all four of those trips, the weather was only a problem once. Of course it was the time I went with Waffle. Disasters always follow her. The walk to Gainbridge was fine, but on the way back, we were met with a light drizzle. It was enough to create puddles the size of Lake Michigan. Waffle and I jumped the water where we could and detoured where we couldn’t. We made the walk back to my van in record time without getting too wet. That mistakenly made me believe we were immune to the weather. We could survive any and all atmospheric conditions for the fifteen to twenty minutes it took to get back to my vehicle. Once again, my self-confidence was severely misplaced. I’m the last person I should believe in.If you’ve been following the news, you might think rain is a solved problem. There’s a hot new product on the market called an umbrella. I wasn’t sure if those were allowed in Gainbridge. An extensive internet search didn’t provide any clarity on the issue. The warnings on the arena’s website, as well as on the signs at the gates, explicitly banned guns, knives, exotic birds, and, of course, ninja stars. That last rule has helped the fieldhouse maintain a perfect record of zero ninja star attacks. But the signs and website didn’t mention umbrellas. My greatest fear was that I would carry one all the way from my van in the rain only to be told that I had to throw it away. There’s no way I’d make an extra trip to my van to stash the umbrella and then walk back to the stadium. On one of my previous trips, I could have simply asked a staff member at the stadium if umbrellas were allowed, but that would require more human contact than I was ready for. Instead, I followed the time-honored tradition of uncritically copying the people around me. None of the fifteen thousand other fans ever had umbrellas. Either they knew umbrellas were banned or were too tough to need them in the first place. That many people couldn’t be wrong. In the event of rain, I would just have to walk faster. Nobody ever died from getting a little wet.Mae wasn’t the last girl I wanted to take to a game. As always, my wife Lola was the final boss. Unlike the kids, she couldn’t be tempted into going out simply by the offer of one-on-one time with me. If anything, that would be a disincentive. Like most married women with a house full of kids, the thing she wants most in the world is to be left alone. The thing she wants the second most is food. I could work with that. There’s an Indian restaurant not that far from the arena. We haven’t been there since our oldest kid was a toddler. That’s why we stopped going. If the two choices are to take a tiny Tasmanian devil out in public or to stay home, home will win every time. Now, the kids are old enough to stay home on their own. I proposed to Lola that we park at my distant parking spot, walk to the Indian restaurant for dinner, and then continue on to the game. As an added enticement, I invited our board game friends, Peter and Delilah. Going out with me is mostly a punishment, but hanging out with them could be a good time. Lola agreed to the outing, contingent on the weather. I checked the forecast and assured her it would be fine. It’s important to note that my guarantees are not legally binding.In my defense, I thought we’d get home before things got bad. After being overly cautious a week ago, I was willing to risk both my dryness and my marriage. Last Friday, we skipped an Indy Eleven soccer game because we didn’t want to stand in the rain. The Pacers play indoors. It’s the best thing about them. If the NBA ever embraces outdoor basketball, they’ll lose me for good. Instead of going to that soccer game last week, we watched TV. Well, TVs. We set up three of them in the living room and didn’t move all day. It was glorious. As fun as it was, I didn’t want to make it a habit. My goal was to go out in the world and experience things, albeit at a massive discount.I failed on that front. The only way we could make the Pacers outing work for Peter and Delilah was if we went on a Friday. That’s the same time most normal people want to do things, which kept prices high. We paid $22 per ticket, which nearly killed me. At my best, I could have gone to three games for that price. I hope the kids don’t mind that I cut into their non-existent college funds to cover it. I bought the non-refundable tickets the morning of the game. The forecast called for rain right about the time we’d be walking back to my van afterwards. I was optimistic the storm would come later than expected based solely on the fact that that would be more convenient for me. I’m pretty sure that’s how the weather works.Lola and I drove to Peter and Delilah’s house. After a few riveting rounds of board games, we headed downtown. We parked and walked to the Indian restaurant, which was roughly halfway to the stadium. The place looked exactly like it did the last time we were there twelve years ago. That was the best part of the entire trip. It’s nice to know at least one thing in this world isn’t changing. Apparently this particular Indian restaurant is known for its lunch buffet. Only suckers go at dinner time, when you have to order individual menu items. We were there for an hour and a half. In that entire time, only two tables were in use: ours, and one for a third grader’s family birthday party. Props to whatever parent talked their kid into that. The food was delicious. More importantly, there was too much for a normal person to eat. When the rest of my table tapped out, I got to finish everybody’s leftovers. It was that or throw them away. I love it when I can indulge my gluttony in the name of not being wasteful. With twenty minutes to go until game time, we decided we had stalled long enough. We paid our bill and walked the rest of the way to the stadium. The sky above us was ominously gray. I had a bad feeling about our return trip. I didn’t say a word. Being wrong could wait.The Pacers won big, but only after struggling for three quarters against the last-place Jazz, who had every incentive to lose. I should adopt their approach to life, or at least their excuses. When I fail, I’m not incompetent; I’m just tanking for a better draft pick. The highlight of the game was the halftime show, when a middle school jump rope team from Ohio put on a spectacle at center court. They should have been the ones making millions. Finally, the fun was over, and it was time to go home. We made our way to the exterior stairwell, which had windows. We saw the weather outside for the first time. It was going to be a very wet walk back to the van.This wasn’t a spring shower. It was the end of the world. It hadn’t rained this hard since the last time God decided to flood the earth and start over. Indianapolis no longer had streets; it had canals. Venice could have sued for copyright infringement. We had to walk through it for a mile to get back to my van. Everyone in our group was super happy with me. Many kind words of affirmation were said.We followed thousands of other people out to the rivers that used to be sidewalks. All of those fans were just as wet as we were—except for the couple directly in front of us. They brought umbrellas. Apparently they weren’t banned, contrary to what I had explicitly and repeatedly told my party. We walked behind them for blocks, slowly drowning in an upright position as they flexed their dry privilege. As we soldiered on, we slowed down. We were becoming waterlogged. I was wearing my heavy winter coat. It soaked all the way through. I had an entire lake’s worth of water in the goose down. Meanwhile, I was stepping in water up to my ankles. I was lucky. For Lola, that was almost up to her knees. We didn’t need umbrellas; we needed life jackets—or a flare gun. If only we could have signaled the coast guard.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.The walk should have taken us twenty minutes. In our soaked state, it felt like three hours. With every step, it rained harder. Finally, we reached the van. We jumped inside and slammed the doors. We looked like we had gotten out of a pool. It was a long, slow drive to Peter and Delilah’s house in the pouring rain. I could barely see out any of the windows. When we got there, we threw our coats and socks in their dryer. Lola also borrowed pants so she could dry the ones she was wearing. She must have fallen in a flooded pothole that went up to her waist. That was the last time any of them will go with me to a Pacers game, or anywhere else, really. Basketball will just be for me and the kids. They’re still young enough to think surprise swimming is fun. Better yet, maybe next time I’ll remember that flare gun.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

Breaking Spring Break

My kids are off this week for spring break. I have nothing planned. I thought that would make them happy. Instead, it was just a lazier way to disappoint them.My children’s main two interests in life are sleeping in and playing on their phones. The two are connected. On weekends, they’ll often ask me if they can stay up as late as they want with their devices. I almost always say yes. It’s to my benefit to have them out of the way for most of the morning. That’s when I get approximately everything done. By planning nothing for the week of spring break, I was giving them a chance to live their best lives for a solid ten days, counting weekends. That might have been true if it weren’t for their friends. Other people’s kids ruin everything.This year, our spring break lined up with the spring breaks in several nearby suburbs. According to the local news, the Indianapolis airport is absolutely packed with travelers flying off to exotic locations with their families. I’ve lost track of all the places my kids’ friends with better parents are going this week. The destinations include Florida, Puerto Rico, and Ireland. This seems like a new phenomenon, at least among our peer group. Everyone I know stayed home when their kids were young. Nobody wants to travel with a toddler. I didn’t realize that as families got older, you were supposed to do more elaborate and expensive trips. I had hoped things were trending in the opposite direction. Rather than taking my kids to a city where they didn’t want to be for activities they didn’t want to do, I was simply going to leave them alone for a week. My kids will enjoy that more, but it won’t give them a good story to brag about to their friends when they get back to school. Travel isn’t about the experience; it’s about the gloating.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!I’ve planned many activities in the past. I targeted days that are more inconvenient and thus correspondingly cheaper. I took my kids to an indoor water park on a random Wednesday in February when they happened to be off for a teacher in-service day while everybody else was still in school. That made the daily rate a fraction of what it normally was. If I were to attempt the same trip this week when everyone else is off school, I would have paid four to five times as much. Even so, the kids didn’t like our latest trip as much as when we went a few years ago. They’re older now and more easily bored. My fourteen-year-old, Betsy, lost interest first, followed shortly thereafter by her sisters in order of descending ages. We could have stayed until 8 p.m., but everyone was done with the water park by dinner time. They just wanted to be dry and on their phones. Without pools, I didn’t think there was any aspect of travel left that they actually enjoyed. I failed to realize the importance of flexing on their friends. I have much to learn about human nature.None of the girls have actually said they wished we were going someplace over spring break. They’ve just made sure to mention each and every destination where one of their friends is going. Even their relatives are on the move. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law Jerry and Alice took their two kids to Florida to spend the week with Jerry’s Uncle. He lives on the water and puts them up for free, making their only expense air travel. I don’t have any relatives in that direction. My extended family is all in colder climates. If my kids want to go somewhere that it will still be winter for another three months, I can hook them up. Nobody with my genetics will ever live in the sunburn zone. If my children want white sand and salt water, they’ll need to join another family.I thought I had learned from the past. Previously, when I would announce that we were going on a grand adventure, it stressed out everyone. That was especially true for my wife, Lola. She has to coordinate with her lab before she leaves town lest the place burn down without her. All of our plans are subject to the whims of the hard sciences. I should have taken it more seriously when she announced that she was using vacation days this week. By the time I realized she had a rare shot at freedom, it was too late to organize anything big. Lacking travel plans, I didn’t even take the week off work myself. That was for the best if we want to stay married.Lolo said she was content to stay around the house and work on long-term projects. That was my signal that I should stay busy with my day job and as far out of the way as possible. She intends to tackle the loose ends that fill her life with low level irritation on a perpetual basis. They’re also the things that I never notice and that cause me literally zero stress until they’re out in the open. For example, I could live to be a hundred and twenty and never once care that the second floor closet is messy. I open it, at most, three times a year to get something I need. The rest of the time, that closet simply doesn’t exist. Lola doesn’t view it that way. It’s always there, like background radiation, diminishing the quality of her existence. On the best day of her life in the happiest moment of that day, her mind would drift back to the second floor and think, “But what about that closet?” This week, she plans to answer that question. She’s going to pull out everything and organize it or throw it away. It’s a process that will make a bigger mess before eliminating that mess for good. For much of the week, it’ll look like that closet exploded. It will lead Lola to ask uncomfortable questions like, “Why is this in here?? and “Why didn’t someone do anything about it?” There is no answer to any of those queries that won’t lead to a fight. For the sake of household harmony, I need to stay away from Lola while she’s cleaning for the next week. Pray for that closet and anyone near it.That’s not to say there won’t be anything fun this week. Presuming Lola doesn’t completely disown us after she goes through that closet, she’d like to spend at least one day hiking as a family at a state park. The first time we did that, it was one of our best outings ever. The second time, half the kids had a total meltdown. We haven’t been back since. Enough time has elapsed that we remember the good and forgot the bad. That’s how nostalgia works. We’re ready to make the same mistakes again. The kids are a few years older than the last time, which will presumably make them better able to handle the challenge of walking moderate distances at a slow pace. It won’t make them any less hungry, which was the main problem last time. The way the state park is set up, we had to finish our loop on the trail before we could return to the picnic area to eat. Predictably, the kids became hungry at the farthest point out on the loop. They were twenty minutes of walking away from food, which put them in danger of starvation. This time, I’ll suggest that they take a few granola bars for the walk. I’m sure they’ll eat them in the first few steps and be just as hungry by the halfway point. The good news is, if they complain enough, it will be years before we have another family hike. I can’t avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, but I can delay them for a while.I have a few fun things planned for evenings this week, but it’s all stuff I do even when the kids aren’t on vacation. I’ve nearly completed my mission to take each one of the girls to a Pacers game. Only my twelve-year-old, Mae, remains. We’ll go on a weeknight this week when the tickets are once again less than ten dollars. This scheme worked out better than I ever could have imagined. Rather than taking all of the kids at once, I took them individually, giving us one-on-one bonding time. More importantly, it let me go to four games rather than one. I can do basic math when it works out to my advantage. The small trips proved to be more manageable than taking the entire group at once. I’m not capable of keeping all four girls happy at the same time. One of them always has to be miserable as a matter of principle. With single-child trips, I don’t have that problem. Each of these one-on-one daddy-daughter outings has been a delight. Now my kids even know what sport the Pacers play. It’s basketball—probably.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.I’m also going to drag Lola to a Pacers game this week. She’s rejected all my previous attempts with the excuse that she has work the next day. She made a critical mistake by letting me know about her vacation this week. She still doesn’t want to go to a Pacers game—and she especially doesn’t want to sit a thousand feet in the air in the terrible seats I get for pennies on the dollar—but she does like food. There’s an Indian restaurant within walking distance of the stadium. I convinced her that the two of us should go there with our board game friends Peter and Delilah and catch a game afterward. We’re also going to go to a trivia night at a nearby brewery one day this week. It’s not exactly a foreign vacation, but it’s slightly more fun than what we would do in a normal work week. All of this presumes that we’ll still be on speaking terms after she goes through whatever is in that closet. I honestly don’t know what she’ll uncover, but whatever it is, it will be my fault. That’s in my job description as a husband.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

The Appliance Shark

I’ve restarted this newsletter three times trying to get the opening right. I’m too filled with intense and conflicting emotions to waste any more energy on the preamble. Instead, I’m going to abandon all pretense and jump straight to the good part. Let’s talk about the Appliance Shark.While waiting for a re-airing of a Pacers game on a niche streaming service I paid entirely too much for, I clicked on a live feed of a UFC knockoff. It was the kind of promotion where the total production budget is forty dollars and the fighters are paid in free nachos from the concession stand. Only the winners get cheese. The streaming service was buffering and had the resolution of a potato. Through that grainy blizzard of pixels, I saw two fighters enter the undersized octagon. One had the physique of someone who murdered people for fun. The other looked like he just finished his shift bagging groceries at Kroger. I thought the fight would end with a complimentary funeral at the dumpster behind whatever county fairgrounds building they rented out for the fight. Then the grocery bagger turned around and everything changed. He wasn’t a man. He was a walking billboard.The flurry of pixels cleared up enough for me to see what looked like a shark on the grocery bagger’s back. In case there was any doubt, the image was literally labeled with the word “shark” underneath it. I’ve never seen someone caption their tattoos before. That showed a profound lack of confidence on the part of the tattoo artist. He knew his work wasn’t good enough to be understood on its own, so he had to add explanatory text. Then I noticed there was another word above the shark. It had a lot of letters, but the bagger turned around too quickly for me to catch them all. You’d think I’d be better at reading than that. Rumors of my literacy have been greatly exaggerated.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!“Did that say appliance?” my wife asked. I thought she had to be mistaken, even though she’s never been wrong about anything in her life. Well, other than when she thought it would be a good idea to marry me. That error is entirely on her. Despite Lola’s track record, “appliance” seemed like the least likely word to be connected with “shark.” It sounded like the random combination a website would offer when you ask it to suggest a new password. Of all the words in the English language that might be on that guy’s back, I would have bet my life savings that this one had nothing to do with fridges or washing machines. Then he turned around again. We saw the words “appliance shark” clear as day. The living room erupted in pandemonium.My mind scrambled, trying to make sense of the chaos in front of me. This had to be a sponsorship situation. A business must have paid this fighter to tattoo the name of their company on his back. It wasn’t just any company name, either. It was the worst business name of all time—or the best. There could be no middle ground. Naturally, we googled the name of the company, so the advertising worked. It’s an appliance store in Kansas, a state that isn’t exactly known for aquatic predators. The marketing genius behind the branding isn’t running some plain old appliance store. He’s running an extreme appliance store at the top of the food chain. I assume he workshopped the name with a focus group of kindergarten boys at recess. I hope that same focus group gets to name more companies. I look forward to doing business with Plumbing Cheetah and HVAC Falcon. Beyond outright coolness, I’m struggling to come up with a rational reason why a landlocked appliance retailer would have “shark” in the name. Maybe it’s for the potential slogans. “We take a bite out of high prices.” “Our deals have teeth.” “If our inventory stops moving, we die.” Then again, maybe all the good names were simply taken. We’ve reached appliance store saturation. The only way to start a new one is to use a random word generator until you find a combination that hasn’t already been trademarked. I can’t offer too much criticism on that front. I do business under the brand name Exploding Unicorn.The owner of Appliance Shark didn’t take out a banner ad on a website or run an email campaign. After evaluating the pros and cons of all possible options, he decided he’d get the best ROI by paying an up-and-coming cage fighter to have the company’s name tattooed on his back. (I keep referring to the company’s owner as “he.” I’m not being sexist for assuming any business owner must be a man. I’m being sexist for assuming only a man would think this plan was a good idea.) When I first saw the tattoo, I wanted to believe it was temporary, but that would involve way too much forethought. What are the odds that Middle-of-Nowhere, Kansas, has a professional temporary tattoo artist? If they have any tattoo artists at all, it’s the regular kind who inject permanent ink. Besides, a guy who names his business “Appliance Shark” doesn’t do anything by half measures. This sponsorship was for life.That raises the important question of how much he paid to have another human being become a walking advertisement for the rest of their days. If I were a betting man, I would say the total price didn’t reach four figures. I can’t stress enough how little these fighters get paid. In the UFC, which is a multi-billion dollar company you’ve actually heard of, the salaries for most fighters are controversially low. Only the stars who move pay-per-view numbers make millions. The men and women at the bottom of the card would get paid more if they worked at a warehouse rather than getting punched in the head for a living. The low-budget promotion I was watching on the blurry stream was not the UFC. It had three letters, but if you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you what they were. I’m guessing one of them was an “f” for fighting. When I said the fighters were paid in nachos, that wasn’t much of an exaggeration, especially given concession stand prices. There’s a good chance the two fighters in the ring were risking significant bodily harm for five hundred dollars or less. Getting paid for a tattoo could have easily doubled the grocery bagger’s income. All it cost him was permanent skin disfigurement—or permanent skin enhancement, depending on your point of view. Perhaps advertising tattoos are sexy in a way I’ll never understand. For all I know, that ink made him quite popular with the ladies of Kansas.There’s an alternative explanation that would totally change the meaning of this story. Perhaps the guy with the back tattoo is the Appliance Shark. It could be his company, his brand, and his entire identity. Instead of being an act of financial desperation, getting that tattoo could have been the ultimate expression of entrepreneurial self-confidence. He embodies everything about his brand in a way that others could never hope to emulate. Like a shark, he’s relentless and fears no one. Like an appliance, he’s sturdy and reliable. That might be what’s been holding me back all along. If I had “Exploding Unicorn” tattooed across my back, perhaps I’d be a New York Times best-selling author with multiple movie deals rather than a dad with a day job who writes about other guys’ advertising tattoos on nights and weekends. I’ll never be a shark, or an appliance, and it shows. Only the truly bold are cut out to win in the cage match of life.As a symbol of dedication, the tattoo makes sense. As advertising, it does not. I can’t imagine there’s much overlap on the Venn diagram of people watching that fight on TV and people who need a new appliance and also live in that particular part of Kansas. It doesn’t help that the numbers were so small. If I hadn’t turned it on while waiting for something else, the fight’s total viewership might have been zero. The most successful part of the advertising campaign is that it got me to write about it. I’m nobody from nowhere, but I do have readers, plural, for some unknown reason. I guarantee you that more people read this newsletter than saw that fight. Monday morning, the owner of Appliance Shark is going to be delighted when the traffic to his website increases tenfold. That could really happen. I fully expect his daily page views to go from one to ten.Even so, it was a risky strategy. It’s a bad look for your company if the guy with your name on his back gets killed in a cage. I really thought the tattoo guy might die. He was tall and lanky and looked like he had never been in a fight. His opponent looked like he took steroids like breath mints. I expected a short fight. It was, but not in the direction I predicted.The bell rang. The two fighters closed. Punches flew. Steroid guy went down. The referee jumped in. Back tattoo guy sprang onto the side of the cage, victorious. The power of the Appliance Shark coursed through his veins. He was unstoppable. Long would the world remember his name.I don’t remember his name. It might have helped if we weren’t watching the fight on mute. Maybe the commentators also explained the tattoo.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.I can’t name the fighter, but I did name the real company here. I don’t normally do that because I don’t want to give out free advertising or be sued. In this case, I have to use real details to convince myself it wasn’t all a fever dream. You could search the internet all day and never find the fighter, the fight promotion, or the tattoo. Go ahead and try. This newsletter usually goes out around 11 a.m. on Mondays. You’ve done enough work for the week. Slack off and do some Googling. I imagine Appliance Shark the business has to sell at least three fridges to break even on the whole tattoo situation. If you’re in need of one and live in that extremely specific region of Kansas, this is your chance to be a hero. Maybe Appliance Shark the fighter will even personally deliver it to you. Whatever you do, don’t challenge him to a cage match. He might look unintimidating, but he fights with the fury of a great white mixed with a dishwasher.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

The Cancelled Campout

My middle two daughters spent days preparing for their campout. They planned the menu at BSA Scout meetings and packed their supplies at home. At the last minute, my wife, Lola, took them on an emergency shopping trip for rain gear. The forecast called for storms, but that was no match for a brand new raincoat that was three sizes too big. Only rich people buy things that fit right now. Lucy will be able to wear that raincoat until she’s thirty. The girls packed their gear and left it in the front room, where it would be waiting for them when they got home from school Friday. They were ready for anything, except for the one thing that actually happened: The campout was canceled.Their scoutmaster had an unexpected family situation that she had to take care of. That’s life. Everyone has occasional non-medical emergencies. That’s the entire theme of this newsletter. Actually, I write about life-threatening situations, too, but I’m done with those. Now that my appendix is gone and that abscess has been dealt with, I plan to live forever.The problem with the scoutmaster’s absence was that she didn’t have a backup. The bench was one deep. There are special rules governing girls’ BSA troops. One of the scout’s grandpas serves as the assistant scoutmaster, but he couldn’t take the troop alone. There had to be an adult female on site to lead the expedition. More importantly, it had to be an adult female who had already filed paperwork and passed an extensive background check. That narrowed the possible candidates to two people: one of the other girl’s moms, and Lola.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!Lola had never planned to lead a campout when she submitted her paperwork. She only did it because she was specifically asked to. The scoutmaster has sons in every possible activity. There were times when she would need to leave an all-weekend campout for a few hours to see one of them at a big competition or game. She needed a grown woman who could swap in and hold down the fort until she got back. Lola figured she was up to the challenge. She doesn’t have any experience setting up tents or identifying wildlife, but she could make sure nobody got in a knife fight or set anyone on fire. Most of the time, keeping kids alive just requires eyes and a driver’s license. If you can see that someone is hurt and get them to the emergency room, you’re more than qualified. BSA disagreed. They had an extensive online training course Lola had to complete before she could watch her own child plus a few extras. It’s good that the organization takes child safety so seriously. The chances that a career criminal or even someone with bad table manners could get through were virtually zero. The downside of that tight security is it weeds out a lot of qualified people simply by being too long. Neither Lola nor the other mom was able to drop everything to save the day. The campout was doomed.Lola is kind of a big deal at her lab. As her responsibilities have gone up, her free time has gone down. She’s always working, even when she’s not. Actually, especially when she’s not. It’s not a date night if she doesn’t answer at least three urgent questions from her subordinates after 10 p.m.. With proper notice, she could get them to leave her alone for a full weekend, but she couldn’t pull it off at the last minute with virtually no notice. Besides, she doesn’t have much outdoor experience. She’s camped before, but as a kid when her dad was in charge. Lola’s main responsibility was roasting marshmallows, which shouldn’t be taken lightly. Many a child has lost their eyebrows in pursuit of s’mores.She could learn the necessary skills, of course. The bigger issue is that she doesn’t want to. We’re not outdoorsy people. In the twenty-one years we’ve been together, we’ve spent zero nights outside. Like the other mom who passed the background check, Lola was willing to fill in for a few hours in a pinch. Staying with the girls overnight or all weekend was another matter entirely. The scoutmaster’s sudden family situation made Lola question how much she could do, and how much she was willing to do even if she could. It was a lot of guilt to work in with her normal job responsibilities on a Friday afternoon.I was spared from all of that. My help would have been unwanted even if I had offered it. Gender discrimination worked out in my favor. Ironically, I’m fully qualified to lead a troop, but only on paper. As an Eagle Scout, I allegedly have the necessary skills to keep myself and others alive on any camping trip. In practice, I barely made it through scouts. I hit the minimum requirements, often on technicalities, and got out as quickly as I could. After attaining scouting’s highest rank, I literally never camped again. I also didn’t encourage my kids to join. BSA is a fine organization, but it’s not for me. The great outdoors aren’t as great as staying indoors with electricity and plumbing. I consider myself to be roughing it if I have to use a bathroom without a bidet.My kids are tougher than me. All four of them got into scouting. My oldest daughter, Betsy, eventually left because she was overscheduled with other things, but the other three girls are still going. My twelve-year-old, Mae, is especially enthusiastic. BSA scouts is her main activity, and it’s where she made her closest friends. Recently, she was joined by Lucy, who made the transition from Cub Scouts to BSA. There was a formal ceremony at a banquet where kids walked across a bridge in front of their former pack and future troop. Lucy missed it thanks to a stomach bug she got from me. Don’t let her tell you I never give her anything. She was so disappointed. She had personally helped plan many of the pig-themed games and decorations in honor of her patrol, the Powerful Pigs, which she also named. The scout leaders came to the rescue. At her first BSA meeting, her old pack leader showed up with the bridge and held the whole ceremony again just for her. We owe the organization a million favors. We just didn’t know how many of those favors equaled one full weekend of camping.When the scoutmaster first notified us by text that she couldn’t go camping, it wasn’t clear if she was out for the weekend or for good. That really got our wheels turning. If she couldn’t run the troop anymore, who could? It was an important reminder that the world depends on volunteers. Capitalism is all well and good, but without people working for free out of the kindness of their hearts, society would cease to function. The scoutmaster didn’t just put in Monday nights for meetings and certain weekends for campouts. She also spent countless hours planning in between. It was basically a part-time job that paid zero dollars an hour on top of her normal family responsibilities. None of us were ready to take that on. At the same time, we didn’t want to let down the kids. I already disappoint them in enough other areas of their lives. Mae loves camping, and Lucy is eager to get started. More importantly, we had already paid in full for summer camp. If the troop collapsed, we weren’t sure if we could get a refund.To our relief, the scoutmaster clarified later in the day that she would continue to lead the troop. She just needed more backup. She said she was able to recruit a few other adult women without kids in the troop who agreed to begin the necessary paperwork and training. In the future, if something comes up, they should be able to step in and keep the campouts going. That was ideal because it didn’t require me and Lola to become outdoorsy. I know only Lola’s assistance would be requested, but I have to imagine I’d get roped into the process somehow. The first rule of a successful marriage is to always drag the other person down with you. There’s no way she’d leave me with three bathrooms at home while she was relegated to the bushes.In the meantime, Mae and Lucy weren’t overly sad to miss this particular campout. It stormed all weekend, just as the forecast had predicted. When the wind knocks down trees, it’s nice to be protected by four walls and a roof rather than just some nylon. For a long time, Mae had a phobia of storms. She also had a track record for attracting them. Her first time at summer camp coincided with the worst gales ever at the campground. Perhaps Mother Nature was trying to help her conquer her fears. She’s been through so much bad weather while living out of a tent that she’s learned to deal with it. That doesn’t mean she wants to hang out outside in storms if she has a choice. She was okay with avoiding the worst of it this weekend. She’ll be ready for the next campout, hopefully with clearer skies.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.That campout will be more likely to happen now that the scoutmaster has some help in the pipeline. I’m glad she was able to find women willing and able to fill the role. They’re the real heroes. If they have family situations at the last minute that make them unable to help out, that won’t make me any less grateful for their service.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

Changing Schools

Waffle was crying. Earlier in the day, her teacher gave her the news. A portion of her class would be changing schools. It was the first time she’d heard of rezoning.The school corporation had been talking about redrawing the districts for months. They’d sent out charts with multiple plans to cover all possibilities. I didn’t pay much attention. I don’t have the bandwidth to keep track of future problems. I have enough trouble keeping up with current ones. My suburb was a victim of its own success. After more than a decade of watching new subdivisions sprout like weeds in other outlying areas, the phenomenon had finally hit our community. No one has ever been able to explain to me where all these new people are coming from or where the empty houses are that they’re leaving behind. I assume there are entire ghost towns abandoned by people in distant states who realized they’d rather work in a windowless Indiana warehouse by the interstate. It’s like a gold rush, but infinitely sadder. The people coming here travel light. They leave their hopes and dreams behind.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!I’m painting too bleak of a picture. As always, this is all sour grapes. The houses in these subdivisions that appear overnight are all much nicer than mine. Unlike my hundred-year-old dwelling, they feature luxuries like right angles, level floors, and doors that close. They’re also huge. Each one is big enough to house half a dozen children. Not that any modern parent would ever cram in that many. Each single family structure will feature no more than 2.2 children: one boy, one girl, and two-tenths lizard person. It’s a modern phenomenon to think you need three to four thousand square feet for a dual-child household. Everything takes more space these days. It’s the same reason it’s no longer okay to cram lions and elephants into tiny metal cages at the zoo. Each animal needs a habitat big enough to roam around. Likewise, it’s no longer acceptable to stack children on top of each other. Each kid needs their own room with a walk-in closet. That’s not the way I grew up. When I was in fifth grade, my parents moved us into a two-bedroom house with four kids. It was a race to expand, both the house and the family. Today, that same house has five bedrooms and the family has seven kids. The renovations never could keep up. Kid number six spent a few years sleeping in my closet. It wasn’t quite a zoo cage, but it was close. My parents were at least kind enough not to lock the bars at night.Modern schools have adopted similarly indulgent space requirements. Gone are the days when you could make overflow kids watch the teacher through a window from outside the classroom. All these new two-kid households required extra indoor learning space. In this community, that meant a new school. The school corporation’s plan was to close the oldest and smallest school and replace it with a bigger one. Then kids would have to be shuffled around in accordance with the latest population growth. One of those kids was likely Waffle. As with everything else in her life, she was right on the line. Depending on the exact cutoff point, either she’d be moving or some of her geographically closest friends would. She wasn’t ready for that level of upheaval. I didn’t appreciate until that moment just how stable her life had been before.I’ve always thought of us as a family of vagabonds. By the time I was Waffle’s age, I had lived in four houses in four different cities. Those numbers jumped to six houses in four cities by fifth grade. We moved three years in a row as my parents struggled to find a forever dwelling that could be infinitely expanded to accommodate infinite children. Lola’s childhood was similarly mobile. She topped out at a mere four houses over the course of her childhood, but they were in four different states. She always has to one-up me. My kids have had a totally different experience. They’ve only ever lived in one house. The closest they’ve ever come to moving was when they were big enough to relocate from my room to rooms of their own. They’ve also only ever known one elementary school. It’s a place they never want to leave. Ironically, it’s a place we tried hard not to send them in the first place.Indiana technically has open enrollment, which means you can send your kid anywhere if they have space. Not being locals, Lola and I checked the internet to find out about what was available in our new suburb. That was a mistake. According to the loudest complainers in cyberspace, the school we were zoned for was metaphorical and literal dumpster fire that would turn our kids into career criminals. At least they’d have careers. Dishonest employment is employment, too. That contrasted with a smaller elementary school we weren’t zoned for, which internet commenters claimed would turn our kids into philanthropic millionaires. They didn’t specify which kind of philanthropy, but I assume it would involve cloning dinosaurs for the benefit of all mankind. Anything less and you might as well not be a millionaire at all. We applied to send our oldest daughter, Betsy, to the millionaire dinosaur school. We didn’t hear anything from the school corporation until the night before the first day of school, when we received a terse email denying our request. Betsy would be going to the career criminal school with all her fellow hoodlums. We were disappointed, but we made the best of it. Future mob bosses need educations, too.To the surprise of no one, the internet was wrong. The alleged career criminal elementary school was a complete delight. The kids had wonderful teachers and more resources at their disposal than I ever could have dreamed of. For reference, my poor Catholic school was built during the Eisenhower administration and received its most recent computers at about the same time. We sent all four of our kids to the local school we had tried to avoid. One year, they were all there at once: Betsy was in fifth grade, Mae was in third, Lucy was in first, and Waffle was in preschool for the second time. That last part isn’t as bad as it sounds. She wasn’t supposed to be allowed to start four-year-old preschool until she was four at the beginning of the year, but her old daycare abruptly closed. I’m told that closure had nothing to do with Waffle, but I’ve also heard that some of her former caretakers are still in therapy. The preschool program at our appropriately-zoned elementary school let her join in the middle of the year when she turned four. She then did the curriculum again the next year when she was the right age by the deadline. She loved it both times. You can never get too much practice with the color wheel.Waffle is now a nine-year-old third grader. She’s been going to that school for five years, which is the majority of her life. When you consider just the parts she’s old enough to remember, it’s effectively been her entire existence. The thing about putting down roots is that they grow slowly and below the surface. You don’t know they’re there until someone tries to pull you out. Lola and I might have been transplants, but all the flowers in our garden were local and deeply dug in. The last thing Waffle wanted was to be replanted anywhere else.Luckily for her, I’d received some good news before she even knew the status quo was in danger. Earlier that day, the school emailed out the final rezoning lines. We were spared by two blocks. Waffle was relieved. So were the rest of us. We adore her school. The millionaire dinosaur building that we once desperately wanted our children to attend ended up being the one that closed. Granted, it was rebuilt bigger and better a few blocks away. Now those dinosaur millionaires will be dinosaur billionaires. Regardless, that’s not for us. Waffle just wants to stick with the teachers she knows and the friends she loves. Unfortunately, some of those kids will end up dinosaur billionaires after all. Waffle might never hear from them again.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.On the other hand, changing educational venues isn’t what it once was. Back in my day, if a kid switched schools, they might as well have died, especially if they were out of bike riding range. I remember writing actual, physical letters to friends I left behind or who abandoned me. I composed it with a quill on parchment and sent it via the Pony Express. No wonder all correspondence stopped after one message back and forth. It’s a different experience today. First of all, nobody in this suburb is more than a five-minute drive away. Even the most distant kid is within range of a playdate. More importantly, Waffle has a phone. She can do a video call with any friend at any time, night or day. Ask me how I know. There’s a reason her phone now locks automatically at bedtime. If anything, the threat to Waffle’s generation is not losing connection, but being overly connected. And if all that fails, they’ll see each other again in middle school. All the elementary schools funnel into a single building. Forcing kids to change schools now is disruptive, but it’s far from life-ruining. Waffle can let those roots keep going deeper until no one can pull her out. She just might stay in elementary school forever.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe