I have to stay silent.
I crouch in the corner, tall walls of hedge surrounding me. This has to be a dream, who the hell can afford this much boxwood? Much less hire the help to sculpt it into a maze when you can barely find someone to install a deck correctly? This would explain why you only see boxwood mazes in the movies (Okay, fine. There’s one in Italy. Shut up and read the story.) I can hear the Minotaur, but I absolutely must rest for a minute, catch my breath. He’s around a few bends yet, his guttural noises still relatively quiet. A pause, and then I hear a growl, and an otherworldly roar thunders through the valley, making the hair on my neck stand up and my stomach go sour. I rise to my feet to flee the opposite direction before I can smell his foulness. I run. Left, right, down another corridor, right, right, but he has found me and soon rounds the bends and I hear him grow closer. My lungs burn, trying to stay ahead, and it happens.
I run out of luck. I see no telltale shadow at either side of the approaching wall of green.
Dead end.
My heart turns liquid as I realize my fate is sealed. I hear him approaching fast, and now I can smell the rancid breath, the dank odor somewhere between rotten food and middle school boy’s locker room…he slows with a series of malevolent grunts as he approaches… he knows I’m trapped.
In a sudden burst of desperation, I jump up, reaching between the leaves, grab branches and hoist myself aloft, climbing the hedge. It’s a bit tricky, but I’m light and able to pull myself higher, scrapes notwithstanding. I lumber up the twelve or so feet. I can feel the clipped twig ends claw my skin but am way too full of adrenaline to pay much attention. And then I am at the top, balancing on the meticulously trimmed boxwood. I immediately hurl my body over to the next one, and then the next. I am full of scratches, but I continue throwing myself over another break, then another. I dare a glance back and see leaves churning several rows back. I stop to catch my breath, still holding fistfuls of boxwood.
He’s following.
I see scrabbling, then more scrabbling, then it dawns on me…
He’s too heavy for the boxwood! HA! Suddenly my small size, which I have usually regretted in a moment of not being able to reach that damn box of Lindor truffles on the top shelf, is suddenly an advantage! In a moment of celebratory glee, my hands lose purchase and I almost slip back into the maze. I pull myself back up, balancing my weight carefully on the flat-topped hedge, and look around. I can still hear him scrambling, I have to move on before he figures out a way up.
I crane my head, a prairie dog popup amongst the sea of green, and as I squint my eyes in the dim light, like a magical ending, there it is. My God, it was only six rows away. I continue my scratchy journey across the top of the hedges and climb down the side to the OUTSIDE of the maze, finally collapsing into a pile of gasping humanity.
It was so easy to see the edge from the top. And then I immediately wonder…
Why, for the life of me, in the movies, do they never attempt to climb the hedge? Come on, Shelly Duvall. I mean, I suppose it would be a pretty short movie, and it’s most definitely not easy, and you get hella scratched up, but as any cop who has given chase can tell you, it’s absolutely possible to climb a hedge. When death is at your door, it’s incredible what your adrenaline-riddled body can accomplish. And that’s exactly what I did.
I’m climbing the hedge.
I’m going to find a way to advantage the opportunities in this adversity. They’re always present, you have to find them.
Have you ever heard of shorting the stock market? In the easiest laymen’s terms, it’s betting against a stock so when it falls you actually make money. The movie The Big Short (you really should watch it tonight) is about the market crash of 2008, and the very few who happened to see it coming. Most did not. This tiny handful of guys bet against the mortgage market, and made staggering amounts of money while most of the people involved lost their shirts, pants, boxers, and leg hair. It’s a great movie, but the bigger point I got out of it was this:
You can find opportunity in crisis, especially if you refuse to be paralyzed by fear. And make no mistake, fear rates right up there with diving headfirst into a one-foot pool for causing paralysis.
Is this taking advantage of others? No. The crisis doesn’t go away if you don’t grab the opportunity. During the mortgage crisis, had they not bet against the mortgage companies, nothing would have changed. In fact, they did sound the alarm, but no one wanted to listen.
What does this mean?
I’m going to short Covid.
All around me, I’m starting to see opportunity. I start calling it silver linings, things I couldn’t normally do, opportunities opening up all around.
I’m going to advantage this as much as I possibly can. I’m not working anyway, and have the rare commodity of time at my disposal.
For about a week at the onset of the shutdown, I binge Netflix and drink like a fish like everyone else.
Then I wake up. I don’t want to live this way, numbing my body and mind while the world and all its crises spin past…
I watch The BIg Short one more time, and during the somber ending, I see the gem.
I see the opportunity in the crisis.
I get up off the couch. I’m done wasting time.
In an effort to live out the concept of dressing for the job you want, I start by buying myself rockstar hair. I order toppers, hairpieces, falls…and finally settle on extensions, giving me this ridiculously long hair I can rat to the heavens and throw around onstage. It’s long, it’s black, it’s badass.
A few of the musicians I know hide out, but many do not, and we are still practicing and have gigs booked. I start some little acoustic groups, small enough to play for venues who are worried about too many people being around. With so many bands not playing at all, we are able to find places who need us.
Regarding my day job, I have been on an illicit speakeasy work tour of client’s houses, the word has spread and suddenly everyone wants me to do secret home visits so they can be rid of their pathetic plague-hair.
In the meantime, I’ve been looking for a private salon for literally years, they are as rare as a one-piece swimsuit during Spring Break in Miami. Unless, of course, the one piece is the lower half. But I digress. Because of the big bad buggie, a person who had rented a space IN THE SAME BUILDING I LIVE IN abruptly leaves the business, leaving her lovely private room in her wake. It is also a huge location, location, location stroke of luck. I swoop into this outdated 1975 beauty parlor and transform it into a debutante studio. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect.
It also would never have been available had this shitshow not happened.
Also, knowing that so many have little to do other than watch TV, I start writing this book, releasing a chapter at a time to the public. It is great timing. In a world where blogs can go totally unnoticed, I immediately gain a following. Millions are sitting home bored, I just kinda said hey, wanna hear a crazy story? And people listened.
I honestly don’t know when I ever would have gotten around to it otherwise. It truly was the perfect setup.
And here it is, and here we are.
I finish my draft of Chapter One: Start Here. I sit back, smiling, a glowing rocket on a launch pad. In my mind, I walk away from the labyrinth, and it gets smaller in my thoughts until it poofs out of my field of vision. My new life is thriving in the middle of a complete shitstorm.
I smile.
I glance at my phone.
I frown.
No fucking way.
Jackdude.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 