Phluke

“Stop saying stupid sh*t.”          

--loving girlfriend, we'll call her Garlie Cotlieb

This has become a fairly regular refrain around either of our Dallas apartments. Don’t worry, she doesn’t say it in the mean way. Usually. It just tends to come out when I talk about Faithful, a screenplay that I’ve been working on for way too long (coming to 4-D holographic screens everywhere, Fall 2062!) and say things like, “I would only need about a $2 million budget to make Faithful a genuine career-starter. Can’t wait to watch it at Cannes next year!” or “When I write with Christopher Nolan on his next project…” or “When I have a leer jet piloted by a Victoria’s Secret model, I can work in both Nashville and L.A. Won’t be long now…” She says her new catch phrase with an understandably exasperated tone that conveys, “Normally your child-like ideas and naïve conviction that they will actually happen are adorable, but seriously, you’re being an idiot.”

Carlie is always excited and encouraging when I have a real idea and share it with her.  When I have been perpetuating scenarios in my brain that make less sense than Nancy Grace competing on Dancing With The Stars however, she's not afraid to call me on it.

SIDE NOTE: What kind of world are we living in when Janet Jackson, during one of her more attractive seasons, brings on heavy fines and gets banned from the super bowl for life by slipping out of her clothes, but when Nancy Grace does it, no biggie?!?

Seriously?

Right, where was I? Every now and then, Carlie and I’s very different brains collide in a perfect storm of probability vs. slim possibility, sensibility vs. high risk, Dunphy vs. Dunphy (see: Modern Family), and the results are typically hilarious to one of us and aggravating to the other. It's like a rigged carnival game that she can't win because the carney operator doesn't know the rules. Speaking of Modern Family, Carlie recently donned me with the nickname Phluke because my brain is a perfect mix of Phil Dunphy and his son Luke, which is simply to say the three of us have the same brain, we’re just different ages. Sorry parents, try to convince yourselves it’s not true while watching this clip. You can’t do it.

Carlie’s the one who immediately sees risks and so-called “consequences,” and I’m the one who helps her turn her brain off with nonsensical stories when she keeps herself up worrying that she isn’t getting enough sleep and talking about how little sleep she's getting. She gets me out of the grocery store alive. I save her from excelling at everything all the time and keep her laughing, preferably at my expense. It’s a give and take. We’re like two sides of a coin. Carlie’s side is on a coin that someone used to aid in the fulfillment of a goal, and my side is on a different coin of equal value that someone dropped in the crack between the driver’s seat and the center console that's just living for the ride and will eventually be there when you need that extra change at Chik Fil A.

Miraculously, all of these differences make us truly complementary. That’s the only possible way we could have dated happily for SIX YEARS! That’s more than 25% of our lives….wait…25/6….yep, the math checks out. That and we’re totally photogenic (see below). As we face the monster of long distance yet again, it’s easy to worry we’re moving backwards. Ok, it's a little easier for Carlie since I refuse to learn how to worry. Tough as it will be, I think being apart for my first months in Los Angeles will put things in perspective for us and remind me that I can't take my time getting places in LA the way I have in previous endeavors (learning to ride a bike, learning to read, giving up wetting the bed, graduating from college....all the major milestones). People like me need people like Carlie to stay grounded and focused, and people like Carlie need people like me to keep from being too grounded or focused. I'm sure we can keep helping each other with a few states in between us, but hopefully we won't have to for long. As you can see, we're going places:

On segways.