RED FLAG, OR JUST BEING AN ADULT?

Who is quick to pull a red flag as often as possible?

The same people who whine the loudest when they get flagged.

If that’s you, let’s talk about flagmanship, red flagmanship.

 

Driving over 100 mph is a red flag.

What are you thinking, Red Racer. Just trying to crack the three digit barrier?

Or are you cruising down a long decline in the remote sections of the American southwest and you haven’t looked down at the speedometer until . . . “I’m going 101 mph and it feels like 90.”

Go ahead and back off before you get flagged over and ticketed for recklessness, dangerousness, posing a threat, and being an annoying driver who’s not paying enough attention.

Then it feels like this guy’s red flag:

It’s one thing with a dog in the car and the two of you rocketing down that lonesome highway like John Steinbeck and Charley.

Putting a wife in the car with you and the dogs takes it to a whole ‘nother level of bright red flagness.

Slow down and let the ride sink in.

There is a consistent theme of Steinbeck being lost in the story despite having multiple maps.

This shows that Steinbeck is speaking metaphorically about being lost; he is trying to show that America has become so unrecognizable to him that he feels lost and alone within his own country.

 

The ‘Where Am I’ Red Flag

One day you’re walking across the railroad tracks with your brother on the way to school.

The next day you’re married and your wife is in labor; the day after you’re teaching your toddler to count the number of dinosaurs on the table.

She counts and names every one.

In other words, time can be a whirlwind so strong you have to close your eyes against the sting.

Keep them closed too long? Red flag.

It’s more of a blink. And you still miss things in a blink of an eye. Ask anyone.

We forget things. Or, do we?

 

Portland is my City Of Memory.

It’s where I moved after an ill advised trek to live my years as an eastie, where I dropped out of college for a wedding date in Delaware.

Then I dropped out of the wedding date, moved to NYC with a cousin, and dropped out of that, too.

I was droppy, which autocorrected to droopy, which is probably more accurate.

From Brooklyn to Portland, I came back to my home state a new man.

If you’re not a new man after three days on a cross-country bus, what’s the point.

And what goes best with a new man? A good Portland woman, that’s what.

Then one of us dropped out. Can you guess which one?

I was a serial dropper, and here’s why:

Fear. I was afraid. There, I said it.

I was afraid of commitment, compromise, and communication.

Then I met over-commitment, over-communication, and over-compromise.

After that I knew exactly where I was.

 

The ‘Who Am I’ Red Flag

While Steinbeck shows a great deal of what America is lacking in Travels with Charley, he does show that America has a national identity that is unparalleled to anything that he has seen in his travels to other countries because in essence, America is a land of wanderers all merging together to become a new nation.

 

I wandered around enough to see what’s missing between people who want more from each other.

What do you do when you hear this:

 

“I don’t want to sleep with anybody anymore,” Evangelista explained. “I don’t want to hear somebody breathing.”

 

Your love doesn’t want to hear you breathing?

Buddy, maybe it’s your cpap machine, or your bipap. Or, maybe it’s your freight train snoring that needs a cpap or bipap.

What happens when your favorite lady takes a long look at you and says, “Enough.”

Why the ‘enough’ red flag?

 

It could be anything from chewing and talking with your mouth open.

 

What if you get red flagged for friends, or lack of friends?

 

“I think my red flags are like, a liar, somebody that projects their own issues on you and someone that doesn’t have friends,” she said in a June 2023 TikTok video. “You know what I’m saying? Like, you have no friends? Why? That’s weird.”

 

Having no friends does sound weird. At first. Bear with me here.

If you have no friends then there’s no one for your main squeeze to say, “We’re not spending another afternoon with your asshole friends.”

 

The New Flag

“If you had real friends they would help you like mine help me.”

It’s weird to have the same friends when you’re married as you did when you were single.

Single man friends like doing single man things.

Their buddy gets married and drinks after work turns into, “Hey man, you go in the door first. My wife is pissed and she won’t yell at you.”

But she does and your single man buddy drops you. As they should.

And so does every other flakey character you used to know.

Eventually you hear the wife say, “You don’t really have any friends.”

This is when you listen as hard as you can and resist blaming anyone.

No blame, brother, even when you overhear, “My husband doesn’t like my friends’ husbands.”

But, you like all of your wife’s friends husbands. They’re good guys.

Maybe you don’t gush about your friends?

Maybe you should. Otherwise,

I heard a joke. It was supposed to be a joke.

When I repeated it, not everyone laughed. Goes like this:

 

“Jimmy said he hasn’t talked to his wife in three months. I asked why.

He said, “I didn’t want to interrupt her.”

 

Guys have friends they don’t even know.

I like dropping into the local tavern tap house and listening in on the fellas.

These are early middle-aged guys, some divorced from the sound of them, some ought to be divorced from the looks of them.

A group of them enjoy each other’s company around a table. One time they’re working out child birth, the next it’s new gun law.

Sounds like a normal group?

I’m on the outside looking at lives on the red flag line.

 

Me: How’s it going?

Bar Dude: Not so good. I’m getting divorced and moving out tonight.

Me: Sounds bad. Was there another man?

BD: Yes, there was another man.

Me: I knew it. There’s always some scurvy limp-dick bitch preying on vulnerable women during a down day.

BD: It wasn’t her, it was me.

Me: Some fucking guy who knows nothing about relationships and red flags comes swooping in and breaks up another marriage.

BD: I met Franklin and we just clicked.

Me: You and Franklin? When are you bringing him in?

BG: In here? I don’t know how that would go.

Me: I do. It would go fine. If it didn’t, there’d be words.

BG: You’d speak up for us?

Me: I’d yell at these guys if they talked shit.

BG: Thank you.

Me: For what? For being decent? That’s not asking too much from anybody, even these losers.

BG: They’re not that bad.

Me: Yeah, I know. We’re one of them. Good luck tonight.