Mom wakes up in a panic. She believes she has fallen on the floor, and is screaming for anyone to help her up. She had just woken up from another oxycodone-induced dream. My dad tries to walk to her, but the pain in his back and hips make it difficult. My sister is indifferent, and I try to awkwardly help her, while trying to not engage in a conversation with her, as I have done throughout my life. Even when she was the victim of a stroke, she still has to be nosy, she still has to diagnose me based on nothing but vibes, and she still tries to emotionally control everything in my life. This is just another Wednesday night in my house.
I don’t pretend to be the next great leader of the world. A person who could make things right what once went wrong. Closest I’ve ever gotten to that was my idea for a political party; one whose main goals was abolishing DRM and directing federal funding into making more episodes of Tuca & Bertie. (It was called the Tuca & Bertie party, we would’ve been called Berties. It would have been glorious, I tell you, glorious!) I don’t even like being the center of attention. I often like to imagine being in some sort of band, but usually not the person singing, although I do have my fair share of that. I’m usually imagining myself is one of the guys in the back. Instrumental to the formation of the band, but content with giving the spotlight to someone more talented while I’m in my little corner, caressing and banging at my bongos. (I heard you snicker, Jeff.) Honestly, I spend more of my time procrastinating in my mind about a better life, than actually working towards a better life. Don’t get me wrong, I am getting my life in order. I’m working towards my driver’s license, I’m cleaning up my house, going to therapy and practicing better eating and exercise habits. But the mind is often a lot trickier than it looks. I try and keep up a schedule, but my brain is just black ice to that concept. Often times, my actual schedule just consists of feeding my cat, helping my mom with whatever whenever she screams, and trying to sleep my fatigue away. As a 24-year-old college graduate who is still trying to get back on their feet after COVID, it honestly feels pretty pathetic.
Of course, when you feel pathetic, it often adds into the downward spiral of mood that you get with depression. I don’t think I need to introduce what depression is, but for those who don’t know, it’s a mental disorder characterized by low energy, low moods, low self-esteem and spirals of hopelessness. One has to wonder, however, if my hopelessness is due to my brain being bad, or if it’s because I have to take care of my anxiety-ridden narcissistic mother, or if it’s because I have to live in a place that is currently supporting a mass genocide not seen since the genocides in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with anybody calling them out on it being criminalized, beaten by police officers, and villianized by the media and both of the two main parties in American politics, all of which sounds like the prelude to the complete acceptance of Fascism and the United States becoming a Police State, no matter who you vote for. It’s enough to make anybody go insane. I can’t really deal with all this authoritarianism, I gotta drive home and possibly pick up some McDonald’s to sadly scarf down in bed.
You know the quote from Mr. Rogers, right? “Look for the Helpers.” A quote that, with all due respect to Fred Rogers, is probably not good advice for adults. It’s great advice for kids, because he loved giving advice and showing neat things to kids without talking down to them. For adults, it seems to contribute to a sense of complacency that permeates in the text of a lot of the liberal tweeters out there that are currently yelling at leftists for daring to criticize Biden. I feel like a more fitting piece of advice would be to actually BE a helper, in your own way. Now, this doesn’t mean dragging bodies out of the street, of course not, but…well, I always find solace in finding other people who won’t treat you like a Milton. Someone who you can have fun with, and also talk about serious issues with. Someone who will wisecrack with you, but also not be afraid to chew you out when you screw up. Basically, I, and I feel a lot of other people, need a Nosedive.
For the 99.991% of people who don’t know what I mean when I say “Nosedive”, let me explain. You know about The Mighty Ducks, right? The franchise of 3 Disney movies about a peewee hockey team in Minneapolis? Well, that ended up being part of the driving force behind Disney just randomly starting up an NHL franchise called The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, in Anaheim, California, the city that Disneyland basically built. (Well, most of the driving force behind the team starting up was actually just Bruce McNall, then owner of the LA Kings, wanting an extra $25 Million, as Disney would have to pay that much to McNall to split the hockey market in the LA Metro area. Not a joke.) Anyway, once the Ducks were on the ice and exceeded on-ice expectations (winning 33 games in their first season, which back then was unheard of), they basically became a merchandising juggernaut. Like, on the same level as the Maple Leafs and the Canadiens. Naturally, Disney needed to go all-in on this new golden duck, and used Wildwing, the Ducks’ mascot both then and now, who looks like he accidentally permanently grafted a Jason Vorhees-style goalie mask to his face, as the basis. Yes, they made a cartoon that turned Wildwing into a part of a band of local Anaheim superheroes, who were also anthropomorphic ducks. In layman’s terms, Disney produced a cartoon based on the mascot of the NHL team that was based off of a series of movies starring a peewee hockey team that was nowhere near where the NHL team was based. Every atom of the 1990s in North America can be found in the cels of this cartoon. Although, sadly, it wasn’t really appreciated at the time, considering that due to a number of factors that are surprisingly way too complicated to get into right now, the show only lasted from September 1996 to Mid-January 1997.
“Ok, smart bird, you explained the origins of a cartoon that lasted a little more than 4 months, where the hell does the term “Nosedive” come in (in a term that is not related to ratings)?” Well, fair enough, and I’ll tell you. Wildwing, which isn’t the same Wildwing as the mascot Wildwing because this Wildwing had the last name of Flashblade and the mascot Wildwing doesn’t have a last name at all, but whatever, was joined by a former thief (named Duke L’Orange…get it?), a military woman (Mallory McMallard, a name that I cannot say without stuttering), a big guy who is both Zen and voiced by Brad Garret (Check “Grin” Hardwing, wait, his real name is “Check”?), a mechanical inventor genius who constantly sounds like the offspring of Rocky Balboa and Clarabelle the Cow because of her allergies (Tanya Vanderflock, also hashtag relatable) and the best character on the show, and I will fight you over this, Nosedive Flashblade.
Nosedive is Wildwing’s younger brother, and like most younger brothers on television, he’s a bit of a lovable, laid-back goofball. He’s what TVTropes calls the “Kid-Appeal Character”, which sounds absolutely horrifying when put that way, but in practice, he’s seen as the youngest and more immature member of the team, like Michelangelo of TMNT, or Rev Runner of Loonatics. Funnily enough, I discovered him through a YouTube video titled “Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series – All Fourth Wall Breaks”, of which the video was pretty much 80% him. While this made him fun to watch, especially during one episode where he literally produces the script to the current episode to confirm an alibi. A move that I feel is just straight out of Freakazoid. Hell, He even apologizes to the viewers when a line sounds too much like it was plagiarized from the Magic School Bus. (Which was a crack at the then-new E/I regulations that Clinton had recently signed into law.) This kind of gives the character a sense of grounding to me. Like he knows that the show isn’t the most pressing issue in the grand scheme of things, but he still has a lot of care for what he does, and how it impacts other people. He knows, while his place in the world isn’t big, it’s still important to others, and maybe he knows that the world would be a worse place without him than with him.
I feel like that’s what the world needs now more than ever. Even though the powers of the world are uniting to screw the proletariat even more than it usually does, we need that one person who can keep the optimistic streak alive. That one person who can keep cracking jokes even everything and everyone is cracking around them. That one person who can confide themselves in knowing that their part is small, yet important. That, to me, is what a Nosedive is. That’s, honestly, what I try to be, despite my medication and therapy sessions. Damn you, American Healthcare System! Even so, I have my limits, as does everyone. But despite my mom waking up at four in the morning from another painkiller-induced nightmare, and despite doing everything in her increasingly limited power to control my life, I’m still gonna try and find something pathetic to laugh at.
DC Solar Writings 