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#104: Picking cherries
Shem Opolot
January 17, 2025
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Happy Friday 🎉 Every time I have to leave my family, I cry. No matter how much I prepare for it. I started telling my three-year-old two days in advance on our morning commutes to school. In the middle of a game of “LOOK DADDY IT’S A DOG!” I inelegantly let it slip that I was leaving, and usually he’s unreadable, but this time, he asked me some questions about the plane I’d use and the toys I’d buy for him before he kept quiet. Then: “LOOK DADDY IT’S A BIG GARBAGE TRUCK!” But right before we pulled into the school parking lot ten minutes later, he said, “Daddy, don’t go to Washington.” I… 🥺.
LIFE.
Picking cherries.
Do you think you’re attractive?
Yes? No? When did you know for sure? And does it matter now?
One of my friends has been hot his whole life. It has been 30 years, but I still walk into rooms with my best pressed shirt on and my muscles doing their best dance under my shirt, only to become my friend’s secretary, misreading googly eyes meant for him and collecting phone numbers and chits on his behalf.
I even got a free lunch out of it once. Yes, someone took me out on a date...to talk about how I could hook them up with my friend. Fortunately, I love Indian food.
Me? I’ve got “You look like Omar Sy, some guy in Senior 3 when I was in S.1, some Orlando Magic basketball player, Stormzy…” and pretty much any tall, dark-skinned man with a beard and a slightly odd-shaped head. Then one day, at a basketball tournament in Seeta High School—a school oddly close to the main road and a finger wag to the many crimes of Ugandan architecture—I got Denzel Washington.
Once I heard Denzel, I stopped taking any more submissions from the gallery. I chose to believe that one. For me, that’s how I became attractive.
I know many people who have reinvented themselves so radically to the point of self-rejection. Another friend of mine, who was in my high school class, would rather swallow seventeen six-inch needles than admit to having attended our high school. He’s so committed to erasing that part of his life from his memory and history that he ignores everyone from that time who tries to flag him down on the street. I mean, he will literally walk past you like he hasn’t seen you. That period—to him—is incongruous with the kind of person he wants to be. I find it odd, but I respect it.
As you get older, you can choose your gods and your goblins. Your ills and your wills. Your potions and your poisons. Just pick good ones, squeeze tightly, and never let go.
THINGS.
A quote.
I have no opinion,’ she said, ‘but I’ve always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.
A picture.
Did I tell you I went for a walk with lions? Well, I went for a walk with lions.
WORK.
Making you a copycat.
You have data:
To find the total amounts, you multiply Quantity by Price in the first row and then use ⌘ + D to copy the formula down.
While ⌘ + D is great, it only works for copying a formula downwards. What if we want to copy a formula formula from left to right?
Well, we use ⌘+ R:
FUN.
The Friday Fix playlist
Shem’s picks
✅ Why your brain deletes your early childhood memories.
✅ Learn this to be a better public speaker.
✅ Click here if you want to be stimulated.
✅ 52 cool places to visit in 2025.
✅ Do you really need to walk 10,000 steps daily?
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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