Mickey Hadick

One of the laptops in the house went cold a few weeks back, and it has made a significant impact on the dynamics of our family. At the time, it was the fastest computer in the house, and there was competition over using it. This loss made plain how lousy was the so-called family computer.

I made an executive decision to replace the family computer outright. That was its own set of frustrating tasks, and the family, dominated by young Americans that don't appreciate the shit their parents do for them, were not happy with the time it took to install it just so.

That should have been a clue as to how to proceed about the broken laptop. I should have offered condolences for the loss, recommended a purchase of a new one, and read a magazine until the problem was solved. In fact, I should have gone on a scavenger hunt to find the original Playboy from July, 1975, which first awakened my interest in naked women, and I should have read that magazine. I don't think I read any of the articles that first time around.

I decided to get that laptop repaired. I found a suitable replacement motherboard on eBay. It turns out crap shipped from China takes a long time to get to mid-Michigan. People here were crabby and complaining about the delay because the children were fighting over the new computer--no good deed goes unpunished, as we used to say in prison (the prison shower, to be exact).

After nearly a month of waiting, the motherboard arrived, and I realized how foolhardy it was to think I could replace the broken one. Laptops are the most ingeniously built things, and every single one of the components, stacked and layered in precise order, are sensitive and delicate. It's like playing Jenga with a pile of your own testicles--one false move and you're going to feel the pain.

I took the laptop apart. It wasn't easy, and I had to use more force than I wanted to use, but I don't think I did any permanent damage. Maybe I should have taken notes, or downloaded a repair manual, or done it earlier than midnight, but putting the new laptop in the case, and assembling the components back into something that resembles a laptop induced anxiety and near panic. All the itty-bitty screws blended together, and I couldn't recall from where they had come.

I was reminded of an episode of the original Star Trek series in which Bones tries to put Spock's brain back in his skull. Bones starts to panic because connecting the nerve fiber was overloading his system, and he was about to throw yet another hissy-fit when someone suggested connecting Spock's brain so that Spock could tell him what to do next.

I really wanted that laptop to tell me what to connect next as I tried to get the video, sound, and keyboard plugged into the motherboard. In the end, I had six of the itty-bitty screws left over, and the battery does not fit. The memory cover bulges like a pregnant Filipino prostitute; i.e., it just ain't right.

I am about to plug it in and test it. If nothing works, I'll cut my losses, forget about the money spent, and search eBay for that copy of Playboy. Maybe I'll try to find that episode of Star Trek. I guess I'm feeling nostalgic for simpler times.

Labels: story

I was driving past the entrance to a Target the other day, and I was annoyed. It was my intention to go past the Target to a different store, and was not interested in parking. However, I had to wait for the foot traffic to clear, and for the cars in front of me to choose the lane in which they would seek a parking space. It lasted approximately three minutes, but it felt like an eternity. I could have soft boiled an egg, typed 180 words, or been half way to orgasm, in that amount of time. With planning, I could have done all three.

When, at long last, I approached the crosswalk, a woman emerged from the store to delay me yet again. She pushed a stroller with a child in the stroller. It was the sort of stroller with the pram-like top that swivels to adjust to the elements, and the child's legs stuck out from the stroller. I noticed that his shoes were clean, black, patent leather oxfords. His socks matched his little trousers, and his trousers matched his mother's jacket. It was all just darling.

What is more, the shade of brown matched that of the suit worn by the Mr. Fox in "Fantastic Mr. Fox." The level of detail was actually what popped that movie into my thoughts, as the whole film depended on the use of detail aimed at subtle suggestion of story. I happen to enjoy that immensely, and so I thoroughly enjoyed "Fantastic Mr. Fox." It wasn't perfect, mind you, as Wes Anderson's quirky story telling provides wonderfully funny situations, but rarely offers a punch line to the jokes. You hardly know when to laugh. I tend to laugh at all kinds of stuff in those movies, much to the annoyance of those around me.

Which brings us back to my annoyance. The woman and her son, dressed impeccably in matching outfits, pushing a stylish pram, paraded before me along the crosswalk. There was dirty slush along the road, and it was a perfectly funny situation. All that it needed was a punch line to the joke, such as the woman being splashed by snow, or one of the other shoppers slipping on the ice.

I realize that it sounds cruel, but I'm telling my version of the story. If I had slipped on the ice, that would have been a tragedy; but if someone else had slipped on the ice, especially someone making me wait, then that would have been comedy. For the record, I was perfectly happy that the woman and her son advanced to her car unharmed, unsoiled, and sans punchline.

It's my own fault. If I was really in need of a punchline, I should have driven past Walmart.

Labels: story

I have a new Christmas letter up on the web site. If you're into Christmas letters, mine is not as offensive as most, or so I think. What is interesting is that, after twelve years, I can crank one out in a single sitting, whereas I used to struggle with them for days at a stretch, and argue with my wife about the content. Now I need to be reminded of a couple of things that happened during the year, but otherwise I just write it down.

Does that mean I'm good? No, I think it means I'm in a rut. I may try to write this next year's Christmas letter before the end of January. Meanwhile, read it here.

Labels: memoir, story

Our garage door has been a problem child for the past few years, moreso even than our problem children. In its defense, the garage door was abused as a child. It has been hit with the car several times. Also, it was born with a handicap: the builder of the house went cheapo on it, installing the weakest door possible, essentially depriving it of oxygen in the womb.

On the eve of Christmas Eve, it broke once more. A hockey stick fell and obstructed its path. A normal garage door would have simply stopped during its descent and reversed its course--a normal safety feature. Our garage door, however, couldn't take the stress and fell out of its track. It was like a teenager having a tantrum: loud, unexpected, and difficult to put back into its normal routine. What's different is that you can not walk away from the mess, lock the kitchen door, and decide to fix the problem the next day, which is what I did with the garage door. Had the garage door been an actual teenager, I would have screamed at it for an hour until one of us was reduced to tears; then, having forgotten how the problem started, I would have said, "Oh screw this; whatever," to claim the moral low-ground, and gone to my room to sulk.

In the morning I called the garage door guy listed in the Yellow Pages (come to think of it, I'm not sure it was the "Yellow Pages" but some other phone listing book that is dropped on our front steps twice a year, and I am so glad they quit competing for our attention with stupid commercials now that Google has claimed all the revenue anyway). He was an older gentleman with an Appalachian accent that, in his case, was quite charming. He said, "Yeh, I'll fix 'er," on the phone, and not much else, grunting in response to my explanation of where we lived.

It took him less than an hour to correct and repair what would have taken me a full day to accomplish, and I would have made the problem worse. His repair is still working smoothly a week later. He quoted me a price, but took a little less because I offered cash. That, to me, was just icing on the cake.

I will be replacing the garage door, per my new trusted, Appalachian accented advisor's opinion, as soon as possible. With teenagers, however, there is no replacement, and, really, no repair. They are not broken, only misunderstood; they are not stupid, just ignorant; they are not wrong, they are inexperienced. But oh what a bargain it would be if only eighty dollars cash could make them stay on track.

Labels: mistake, story

I volunteered to paint faces at the children's Christmas party hosted by my company. I enjoyed it, but it was strangely intense because the line of children never ended until the party was over, and, while painting, the parents scrutinize your every move. I also felt a mild competition with the other face painters who I was certain were more talented than I am. That combined with having to bend forward for two straight hours while painting a squirming child's face left me exhausted. I am not very good at it, but the children were, by and large, thrilled with the result.

Two children were not happy. One was just a toddler, and she became frightened when I drew close enough to touch her, and she screamed at the first flick of the paint brush. She acted as if I was the uncle who got drunk at family parties and said inappropriate things, but there is no way she could know that about me, so I don't think that was the problem; it was just a coincidence. The resulting candy cane was pathetic and resembled my finger painting work done in my preschool period.

The other was a boy, about ten years old, who requested a Batman cowl. When I showed him my progress, he realized I had no idea what I was doing, and also that he was screwed, because you just don't rub black paint off of your face and walk away like nothing ever happened. I offered to paint his entire face black like he was in a minstrel, but then retracted the idea with a casual laugh because I couldn't tell if his mother was cool enough to understand the uber-irony of the political incorrectness of painting an innocent child's face like he was in a minstrel.

In spite of those setbacks, it occurred to me that face painting would be an interesting power for a super hero. When someone needed to be cheered up, call on Face Painting Man. When there was a party that was doomed to boredom, call on Face Painting Man. When there was something you needed, but didn't know what, and thought that a small design on your cheek might help, and definitely wouldn't make things any worse than they already were, call on Face Painting Man.

Face Painting Man himself would always have a different design on his face, and so that would be part of his power. People in need would know that, if Face Painting Man showed up, it would be with a new and exotic picture, tightly integrated with his own features. The general public would look favorably on Face Painting Man because he was always making clever designs and executing them with care and skill, and almost never left a child in black face.

That's kind of how I was at the children's Christmas Party: Face Painting Man. Champion of the meek, defender of the pale, decorator of the undecorated, and dedicated to brightening the lives of children twelve and under using non-toxic paint and inoffensive designs. "No need to thank me, hot mom; making your boring child happy is thanks enough."

There would be two other face painting super heroes: Face Painting Woman and Face Painting Boy. Face Painting Woman and Face Painting Man would admire each other, and respect each other's work, but their relationship would remain strictly professional because to give in to their attraction for each other would put the public at risk. Face Painting Woman would also be really hot, and would sometimes paint her costume on her body, and she would be so good at it that you'd have to get really close to her to realize she wasn't wearing any clothes. But of course no one ever would get that close to Face Painting Woman. Even the children she painted would be totally oblivious. The dads would fantasize, but they're going to do that whether she's wearing clothes or not.

Face Painting Boy would be this quirky kid that always admired Face Painting Man, and couldn't wait until he was old enough to leave home and help defend the pale, etc., because he thought Face Painting Man was the greatest thing since sliced pickles. (The kid is quirky, right?) He might go astray sometimes, and try his hand at graffiti, but Face Painting Man would be all patient and understanding, and would help bring him back around to serving the public good, rather than hiring himself out to gangs to mark territory on the side of buildings.

I realize Face Painting Man is serving only a very small of society that has a very specific need, and would therefore not compete well against the traditional superheroes with all their strength, speed, and ability to fly. (Well, he'd still be better than The Green Hornet, but I don't want to get bogged down in that argument.) The prime directive of super heroes is: "First, do no harm." Assuming that Face Painting Man never poked a child in the eye with his paint brush, I think he would have a legitimate claim to serving the public good.

Labels: standup, story

Ten years ago, I made the mistake of buying a used, rear-projection television. It was forty-six inches from corner to corner, had a fuzzy picture, and was soiled and dirty from misuse. At some point in its life, judging from the crusty stains on the pressed wood cabinet, this television must have been owned by an unkempt consumer of pornography. Nevertheless, I welcomed it into my home.

The first challenge was bringing it home, and I borrowed a friend's pickup truck. I took great care in strapping it down. I have seen the remains of televisions, kitchen tables, and children's play structures along the median of highways, and I didn't want to have one of those stories to tell. But oh how lucky would I have been if all that I had to say about this big screen TV is that it fell and shattered somewhere along 127 South, and I raced away to avoid cleaning the mess.

The next challenge was carrying it over the threshold. I begged help from three of my neighbors, and it was like marrying the daughter of a Somoan king: carrying that bitch into the house nearly herniated all of us. And what is worse, I wanted that 500 pound monster in the basement.

I was certain that one of us would be killed during the descent. The drywall in the stairwell has the scars to prove that it happened, but I really don't know how we made it. Those stairs have two turns, and what I recall is that we were all struggling, breathing heavily, and sweating like pigs. One of my neighbors grabbed one of my breasts while adjusting his grip, and I swear his hand lingered just a moment longer than it should have, but I was too worried about dying to complain of being groped.

But once installed and powered up, the television actually worked. For three months, that is, it worked. Then sparks flew out of the control panel, it hissed and sizzled, and a small puff of smoke wafted forth. It was reminiscent of my career.

I paid a technician to attempt to repair it, but he could only suggest a $300 component without any guarantee of success, so I paid him the diagnosis fee and chased him away. The stupid television cost $50. In a sense, the fondling from my neighbor was worth that, so I just left the broken TV lie quiet and unused.

Ten years have passed, and hardly a day has passed that I didn't wonder what I was going to do with that thing. I suppose there are numerous alpaca farmers who hoped to cash in on the alleged craze for wool that have a similar problem as my own, but at least I haven't been feeding my television and cleaning up after it as it pooped in the basement; then again, they can always sleep with their alpaca to stay warm on cold nights.

Hearing me lament my fate, my brother suggested tearing it apart bit by bit, and I have finally started this new project. It reminds me of The Shawshank Redemption when the prisoner spends fifteen years tunneling out of his cell. It doesn't remind me of that because I'm going to be dragging the pieces out of the basement through my sewer line, but rather because I am disassembling it, and removing a single screw can takes several minutes. The pressed wood is glued together as well. And the projection component has shielding around it like the solid steel door you might have in solitary confinement. This Mitsubishi TV is built like an impregnable prison.

As God is my witness, I will tear it all down and escape my fate. And once I'm free, I'll move to Mexico and perhaps find a neighbor to fondle me once again.

Labels: mistake, story

The Trap is a story about men on a fishing trip to the northern woods, who wind up on a hunting trip instead. This was the first in a short series I wrote based on stories heard from other people. Aspects of this story are true then. It's not like it's a particularly shocking story, and maybe that's its flaw.

This story was written at the end of my golden age of short stories. Shortly after this was completed, I made some life changing decisions, and my writing, reflecting the effects those decisions had on my brain, became different; I am dealing with the other consequences of those decisions in many ways.

My father was one to take an annual fishing trip to a remote location, but I have never done so. This story is the closest I've ever come to such a trip.

Labels: memoir, story

Fall is an iffy season for me. I enjoy the apples, and the smell of leaves, and the skies can be far more beautiful than at any other season. But it means that winter is around the bend, and it's going to get darker, and so there's a chance that days will pass without my seeing daylight. But I think it's important to be explicit about what I enjoy and why, lest it passes me by.

I really enjoy the fall colors, especially on a bright, breezy day. That's a bit much to ask here in Michigan, but I can dream. I especially like the very breezy days when the leaves start to fall. It reminds me of Hemingway's story, "Three Day Blow," which is not a particularly cheery story (it's about the sadness and confusion after a breakup) but I enjoy reading Hemingway, and that story is set in Michigan (well, the U.P.) and so the whole big mess is jumbled up in my head and it's all part of why I enjoy the fall colors.

I enjoy the rituals of football. The high school games on Friday nights, college games on Saturday, and so on. I actually don't watch that much football, but I enjoy it when I do, and I would enjoy it more under the right circumstances. I find it comforting to know it's there and happening.

I also enjoy the smell of leaves. On a dry day, when they're being raked into piles, the smell is concentrated, and it's conjures memories of jumping into leaf piles as a kid, having leaf fights with my brothers, and being ordered by our father to pick up the damn leaves. My father was a task master when it came to fallen leaves, and he instructed us in particular and preferred methods for stuffing the maximum possible leaves into a plastic bag. I have to believe that our city landfill is stuffed to the gills with bags of leaves, now dry and preserved by their plastic wrappings, and waiting to be discovered by scientists in the far future who will wonder with amazement what primitive people spent so much effort shoving leaves into plastic bags and burying them en masse. Well I was one of those primitive people.

My secret pleasure is in burning leaves. It's messy and unnecessary, but I've done it a few times, and I would do it again, at least once, if I thought I could get away with it. I learned the hard way that I wasn't supposed to burn leaves in this town.

The first year we moved here, we had a severe leaf problem. I attached a lawn sweeper to the tractor, and began gathering the leaves together in piles. I thought burning would be a great solution, and a coworker, Doug, joined me for the afternoon. As I carted load after load to the pile, he raked them into the fire, and we had a really smooth operation going. Then the fire department showed up to put out the fire, and explained to me in no uncertain terms that one simply could not burn leaves. Spoil sports.

A final side note is that Doug, who was a very good friend to us, passed away that winter at the untimely age of 48. I do enjoy the pleasures of fall, but it also reminds me that winter is not far away. I don't dread either one because of Doug's passing. If you live long enough, you bury enough friends and family that every season, every month, and every holiday becomes associated with the loss of a loved one. I don't condemn the season with the loss; only the moment. The moment passes by to make room for the next moment.

If your heart is strong enough, there is love and pleasure available to you in those coming moments. You just have to be ready to accept it, and keeping aware of what I love, I hope, makes me ready.

Labels: memoir, story

Another of the short stories I wrote two decades ago, a time I am nostalgically referring to as my golden age of writing (golden because, at the time, I believed I would figure out how to do it), was "The Penny Box". It was inspired by the neighborhood in which I lived at the time, and the older generation I saw around me in those small homes. The house itself was inspirational: it was cute and cozy, but it could also feel dated and cramped; so much depends upon attitude.

Like my other stories, I spent months on this fine tuning the words and rhythm. I fretted over the plot and the situation. I dutifully sent it out to magazines and journals. I then added to my collection of rejection letters.

I have written dozens of stories that I never quite figured out, and which, upon reflection, I simply don't like. This is one of the stories I've always enjoyed. Now I wish I'd written more like this, if only for myself. If you don't like "The Penny Box", I understand completely. It may seem simple and deep, but it may also seem insipid and pointless; so much depends on attitude.

Labels: memoir, story

My first job out of college was interesting, but like so many things in life, there were good things and bad.

I was on a small team colloquially known as "fly and fix". If there was a problem with one of our computer systems that could not be handled by the local technicians and experts, my boss was expected to show up and fix it. I was being trained, along with another young man, to do the same sort of thing. When he flew in, he didn't leave until it as fixed, and worked around the clock to solve the problem. He had a long history with the company's mainframe computers, and was an expert troubleshooter. When I joined him, he was transitioning to being expert in the company's new line of powerful desktop computers.

Because of this odd and demanding constraints, he worked out of his home at a time where that was very rare. His basement was stocked with several of the new computers, every manual created on the system, and every possible peripheral. These computers generated so much heat that he had an air conditioning unit installed just for the basement. So for the first eighteen months of the job, I reported to this guy's house for work, and sat in his basement studying manuals.

I was able to dress casually, kind of rare for the day, and I brought a suit in case we had to visit a client. Three times I had to rush home to pack for a week. So the good part was dressing casually, not being in an office, and the excitement of rushing out to solve a problem. I also enjoyed learning the computer systems. That was the good.

The bad was being in a basement with two geeky men talking computers. Another bad part was traveling at odd times, long car trips, flights to weird places, and eating in lousy fast food restaurants on a daily basis. I would spend 18 to 20 hours with the same guys, talking about very little except the problem at hand. For my boss, this was the pinnacle of his career, and he loved every minute, especially the fast food; not so much for me.

But the absolute worst was the coffee situation. When we were in his basement, the coffee was in the kitchen, courtesy of Mr. Coffee. He had an odd policy about coffee, and would brew only weak coffee. He would then immediately turn off the burner. If you wanted hot coffee before that pot was empty, you had to warm it in the microwave. I hated that coffee.

Eventually, I hated that job. I hated that basement, and I kind of hated those computers. They led me down a technological dead end. All the things I learned from that of value were entirely tangential from the systems.

So what did I learn? That coffee is meant to be fresh. Oxidation begins soon after brewing, and no microwave can reverse that tragedy. For some people, their job is their life, and these people can be difficult coworkers. And that no matter how bad the coffee at a greasy spoon in Jackson, Missouri, reheated coffee, at least for me, will always be worse.

Labels: memoir, story

I went for a jog with my daughter today and it was chilly. I thought we should wear long sleeve shirts, but she wore a plain, short-sleeved shirt so I felt to do the same. I couldn't be shown up by my daughter.

It was cold. The wind was blowing stiffly, and there was the threat of rain. By the time we were at the football field, we were both freezing, and our fingers were hurting. We both had to swing our arms to get the blood flowing.

Near the midway point, she began rubbing her arms and I said, "Rub your trunk; your arms will take care of themselves."

It was a quote from "Batman Begins". Henri Ducard is coaching the vulnerable and misguided Bruce Wayne after having fallen through the ice during battle. And what would I do, who would I be, without modern culture?

I'd be vulnerable and misguided, that's what. And susceptible to crazy ideas.

Labels: story

My house is on a wooded lot. It was a mess of cherry, ash, maple, and thick underbrush. The only way to get through it was to crawl through the poison ivy. The neighbors from the adjoining subdivision had taken to dumping trash and dog poop in the low area at the back. It was so thick I would not have been surprised to find the remains of a Union soldier from the Civil War.

The landscaper during the building process recommended that we pay someone to clear the entire lot and choose trees that we wanted, and add the necessary twenty grand to our mortgage. "Trust me," he said. "You'll be happier." I laughed at the prospect, and thought that I could do the job myself in my spare time. Two young children pretty much take care of themselves, so I would have ample time. For the next ten years, I peeled away at the mess, and twice I paid an arborist to chop down dead and dangerous trees. The remaining trees were mostly cherry and ash. Cherry, it turns out, are more trouble than they are worth as they leave a mess of inedible fruit, and, once they grow tall, they are weak in the trunk and a threat to fall. After all my efforts, it is still an unsightly mess.

The emerald ash borer wreaked havoc on the ash. I called back the arborist to cut down 40 ash trees a couple of years ago. We piled the wood in three main "stacks" in the backyard. Now those unsightly piles are far worse: the wood is rotting, there is poison ivy flourishing at the edges, and it now seems like more wood than I can ever cut, split, and burn in my life. Somehow, I had convinced myself that we would have a fun campfire each and every weekend, and the family would sit and talk and share stories. We have had two, maybe three such campfires.

Our yard still has a couple of dozen trees. One in particular annoyed me. It was an apple tree that had grown up with its trunk wrapped around the other. Part of that apple tree also grew down to the ground. It wasn't a bad tree--not in my yard, where everything is a mess--but it simply annoyed me. So I cut it down.

A twenty-inch chain saw can be a frightening thing. I haven't cut down any significant trees, so the wedge and cut method meant nothing to me. Besides, this apple tree was wrapped around an ash, so it wasn't going to fall no matter how many times I yelled "timber."

I basically scared myself pretty thoroughly trying to fell it. It stood on a slight rise on soft ground, and I had to raise the chain saw up to eye level where I needed to cut it. It's a great shoulder workout that way, in the same sense that being chased by a mugger can be aerobic.

I needed an ax to finish the job, and as I swung, I kept thinking that it was even money that the trunk was going to crash down on me. I once played Babe the blue ox in Mrs. Perkins' fifth grade production of "Paul Bunyan". Working with Nick, our performance was well regarded. That's about as much woodsman training as I've had in my life. Handling the chainsaw and swinging an ax has been self taught since that time.

One final, mighty swing cut through the apple tree, and the weight of the tree drove the severed trunk several inches into the ground. It happened in the blink of an eye, before I could move a muscle. Now I know why lumberjacks have trouble securing workers compensation insurance. If gravity and the friction of the ash tree had so deigned, that apple tree could have broken my foot, shattered my leg, or crushed my chest. And it's the last of those options, crushing my chest, that would have hurt the least, because my heart would likely have stopped in just a few seconds.

I chopped up what remained of the apple tree, and added the wood to my unsightly wood piles. I split a few logs with the hope that I might, someday, have a campfire in the back yard.

Labels: mistake, story

This past weekend, I spent the better part of Sunday at a soccer field. Not just a soccer field, but a soccer complex with eight large fields. As part of a tournament, my son was sideline judge for six games. I drove him there before eight A.M.; instead of going home to just wait to come and get him again, I decided to stay.

The weather was beautiful. That was one of the attractions. I could either spend an extra hour in the car going back and forth, or sit in the sun and read magazines and books while drinking coffee in a comfortable chair as the cool breeze wafted over me. It had every opportunity to be a wonderful day except for one small thing I overlooked: Soccer Parents.

The tournament was for younger kids. I had forgotten the insanity that takes over the minds of parents as they cheer on their children. Their voices rise and fall with the bounce of the ball. When a goal is scored, half of the parents scream in delirium; the other half groan in agony.

Heaven forbid a boy is not paying attention. The parents exhort and cajole, encourage and chastise. In one game in particular, the parents of the team from Fowlerville were berserk. By my estimation, every single one of them was crazy. They screamed for the coach to bench their own children. They coached from the sidelines, moving players back and forth. They threatened their own children while on the field, during the play of the game, for not paying attention to the game.

I struck up a conversation with another dad who was waiting for the next game. We shared a glance as the shouting became frenzied amongst the parents when a goal was surrendered for no reason other than a child's lack of drive and initiative. He blurted out, "I'm an older Dad, so I cherish all these moments. But I try not to get too wrapped up in it."

I admitted that I had cheered mightily in the past, but I didn't remember ever cheering like this, yelling at the kids for not performing, or berating the referee. In fact, just a couple of days before, I stumbled on a team photo from one of my sons early teams. It was at least eight years old, and I had been the coach. At that time, urging six and seven year olds to play took quite a bit of effort from the parents. I was fairly certain that out of those twelve children on that team, only my son still played the game.

There's nothing wrong with kids trying out various activities until they find something they really, really like. To find passion in life is what gives life meaning. For so many parents, their children, and whatever the child happens to be doing, is the passion for the parents, and it's very easy to lose sight of an appropriate perspective to the situation. The child is competing against other children; if they are better than the others, there's hope that this might be a thing in which the child is gifted. Or the talent pool may be so shallow that, in fact, everybody stinks at it. You don't know that as a parent; you only see your child struggling, and your blood begins to boil.

I played hockey in my youth. I really, really loved it, and even dreamed of playing professionally. I got fairly good at it, but at the age of nineteen I quit and never played again. It has crossed my mind occasionally, and mostly out of curiosity, to play again; but what once seemed like everything in the world to me I lost.

Before that happened, however, my mother sat through numerous games, and I saw a side of her I had never, ever seen before. Hockey brings out the very worst in parents. They scream at the players, they scream at the referees, and they scream at each other. I would not be surprised to hear one day that the fans watching a hockey match became so enraged at each other that a hockey match broke out in the stands. My mother understood little of the game, but she understood that her son loved playing, and that other boys were trying to smash his skull out on the ice. I received stitches to the face (scary) and stitches to my inner thigh (very scary). I had the wind knocked out of me several times, and even had a stick broken over my helmet in anger. It seemed I might be severely hurt at any moment, but the most surprising thing was that my mother survived without having a nervous breakdown.

I'm not happy or proud that I lost hockey. It's a great game, and I would have done well to have made the effort to keep at it. Maybe it's not the game itself, but the exercise and the comradery I miss. I hope that my son, if he takes nothing else away from soccer, takes the feeling of team play with him, and continues that yearning desire throughout his life. We are mostly a social animal, and my life has not been social enough.

Back at the soccer field, the older dad took up a position on the sideline to watch his son play. I was still enjoying the sunshine and the cool breeze. I was also enjoying the sound of children at play, and their parents cheering the game. At one point, the older dad's son misplayed a ball, and the dad did not yell, but he did complain to the person sitting beside him.

The boy misplayed another, and the dad could not contain himself. He shouted to him without anger. A few minutes later, though, the older dad seemed on the verge of losing that control, and he walked away to watch the game from farther away, lying on a grassy hill, away from the chatter of the other parents. His son's team was out matched, and would suffer a 10-1 loss.

I am not holier than thou or thee. When my son was that age, I shouted, cajoled, and cheered. I struggled to contain my anger when his teams played poorly, and was giddy with delight when they won. I offered the older dad a knowing smile in the hopes that he and his son would both find the correct perspective for that game. It was, after all, only a game; and it was a beautiful day, regardless of the score.

Labels: memoir, mistake, personal growth, story

I splurged on myself once, and spent a week in Iowa City at the Iowa Writers Program Summer Workshop. Very different from the famous one, but it was very good, and the class was led by Robley Wilson, then editor of the North American Review.

The workshop was about a dozen people, and it was fairly diverse. Working people, a doctor, therapists, and a guy from Ireland. The common factor was that we all had a screw loose, and were trying to doing something about that with our writing.

One of my co-workshoppers made it kind of big. Abraham Verghese went all in the following year. He didn't just return to the workshop, he got a job nearby and applied for The Writers' Workshop program at the University of Iowa; he was accepted, and, frankly, he's been notably successful ever since. You know that saying: it's not enough to succeed, but your friends must also fail? Well, he should have kept me close, because I'd be making him really happy about now.

The first time I stumbled upon his name while reading The New Yorker, I was like, "Wow, cool; I know him!" The most recent time, when his new novel was briefly noted and mostly raved, I was more like, "Come on already; this sucks being me."

While at the summer workshop, I really liked him. I really liked everything about the workshop, especially the chance to write within a community of like-minded people that cared about literary art forms. That week, I wrote this story. I was never able to do anything with it, but there's a certain something about this story that I love above all the others.

I hope you enjoy The Cardboard Box, which is inspired by aspects of my own childhood.

Labels: memoir, story

The first short story I ever got all the way through and kind of liked was "When It Rains". I had written a few others before then, and even entered one of them in the Hopwood Awards annual contest at the University of Michigan, but I didn't win. At the time, I was very hopeful: Arthur Miller had won that contest many decades before I tried, and I thought that it would be a great way to break into the business, by bursting onto the scene from the College of Engineering. Now they limit the contestants to those taking a course in writing.

I had to settle for the engineering degree. My final semester at Michigan, I took a course in creative writing at Washtenaw Community College. It was cheaper than taking a similar course at the U of M, and I could not take such a thing as an Engineering student. I was allowed to transfer the credit in, however.

I spent the better part of that summer writing this story, along with the other exercises. It appeared in Passages North, the journal of Washtenaw Community College, but was not officially published. I submitted this story to many other journals, and it was rejected, with prejudice, by all of them. You may now be the judge.

What I got out of that course was a great friendship with Brian, and this story. I still love them both.

Labels: memoir, story

When I was but a boy, the West Side Market in Cleveland was a place of great mystery. My mother spoke of it in hushed awe as if it were sacred, or at least nearly sacred. The vendors there carried the run of the mill produce and meats of any market, but also some of the more exotic combinations that reflected the Eastern European heritage of many of Cleveland's neighborhoods. Kielbasa, Blood Sausage, and Head Cheese, to name a few items, were the things that made my mother's eyes sparkle just a bit.

She did not go to the West Side Market very often when we were young, and so its status grew in my mind as my mother schlepped herself to the A & P, and had to make do with the butcher there. She told stories of how her father, during the Depression, would take the cable car from their neighborhood of Tremont to the the market, and bring home a live chicken. Then her mother would pluck it in their tiny cellar so that she could cook it. There would be feathers, and blood, and filth all over the cellar and the kitchen, and her father would sit proudly in his chair smoking and reading the paper because he had done his part in bringing it home.

I remember going to the West Side Market once and seeing a whole pig in the glass display of the butcher. It looked far bigger than me, and probably was, given that I was only eight or nine. I had never seen such a thing. Eyeballs, snout, ears, and curly tail—it was all there.

The next time I saw such a thing was thirty years later when my neighborhood wanted to have a block party. We wanted to "do a pig roast", and I was naive and foolish enough to retrieve the roaster because my van had a hitch on it. I was immediately promoted to chief cook considering that I lived on the cul-de-sac and we wanted to have the neighborhood party there, as well.

We started the charcoal briquettes at 6:30 in the morning, and the pig arrived at seven. I didn't take time to marvel at the poor beast, but I should have, because I doubt that I'll ever be foolish enough to roast another pig. By 7:10 A.M., the pig was settled in the roaster, and I sat in a chair on the lawn with two of my neighbors and we began to drink beer.

Less than an hour later, disaster came to visit. I had put too much charcoal in the roaster (our crime scene investigation revealed), and the pig caught fire. When a pig catches fire, it's like something out of a movie. Flames fly out of the roaster like napalm, and the heat forces you to cringe and back away. Near panic, we tried to lift the pig out of the roaster, but no one could maintain their grip long enough to carry it to safety. We considered hosing the damn thing down, but instead one neighbor pulled the charcoal tray out of the back. We snapped the lid down, and hoped the flame would extinguish itself.

It turned out to be only a minor blemish. Part of the flank was charred. There was worry that more of the pig may, in fact, be ruined, but not having a lot of options, we decided to tone down the heat and see what happens.

Eight hours later, the pig was fully roasted. Having been snacking and drinking all day, I was fully toasted. I don't think I even tried the pork. I wasn't hungry.

Labels: memoir, story

I have never had good luck playing practical jokes. They generally backfire, and I feel awful. I feel awful right now.

When I was four years old, my mother took me along shopping. I thought it was great sport to hide from her while she shopped. I would duck in and out of the clothes racks, crawling along as she moved through the ladies department. One day, I stayed out of contact too long, and I frightened myself. I burst out from under a rack and directly into the path of a middle-aged woman. She tripped and fell on me, and we both were banged up a little.

This particular day, my paternal grandmother was along. She was quite a feisty woman, in her mid-fifties, and she gave that poor woman a great deal of grief for having tripped over me. I felt quite bad, though, because it was totally my fault. I didn't tell that to grandma, but let her tear into this innocent woman instead.

Not long after that incident, I decided to hide from my mother. This was before I had started school, and so she was a stay-at-home-mom at that point. I hid in the living room underneath one of the end tables next to the sofa. I thought it was rather obvious, and that I'd be discovered shortly. I also thought it was funny that she enlisted my brothers and the ten or so other boys in the neighborhood to find me.

I had no idea how frightened she was for my sake, and that somehow she imagined me drowning in the creek that flowed through the park behind our house. When the search party didn't find me, she started to cry. I became scared. Now I was worried that she'd be mad at me for causing such a stir, and now I didn't want to reveal myself.

However, when my mother phoned the police, I could no longer contain my emotions, and I began to cry. I still did not crawl out from where I was, but instead sobbed and cried out for help like the pathetic, naughty boy that I was.

When I was twenty-five, I went to a restaurant with my father and mother. We had to wait for a table. While we waited, I noticed that someone got into a car exactly like my father's. It was parked just three spots from his car—same make, same model, same year, same color. I thought this was funny, but what I said to my father was: "Hey look, someone is stealing your car."

My father, being a former jet pilot, feared little. Even at the age of fifty, he was going to stop this crime. It took all my strength to restrain him, and I had to shout to get past his rage and make him understand that it was just a joke. He never laughed at that one.

Today I noticed that my next door neighbor had a new television in the back of his pickup truck. He had pulled up close to his house, but had not unloaded. I went in for a closer look and saw that he also had a new sound system to accompany the nice, fancy television. The door of his truck was open, so I knew he had just stepped inside before unloading. I thought it would be funny to hide the box with the sound system.

I placed the box on the side of his garage out of sight. I then sneaked back to my house and waited near the door for him to discover that it was missing, planning on sharing in a great laugh. However, my daughter needed me at that precise moment, and called me away. I then forgot about my little joke.

Poor Tom, unfortunately, thought that somehow the expensive component had bounced out of the truck, and raced off. I am lucky that his wife discovered the missing box a few moments later, and luckier still that Tom did not get hurt during that wild goose chase.

I should really just get myself a very comfortable chair, sit the hell down, and never get up.

Labels: memoir, mistake, story

I am no longer a fan of water bottles purchased by the case, thrown in the shopping cart as an afterthought, and left in the trunk of the car just in case someone gets thirsty. I am not interested in the fact that the walls of said bottles are really thin, and thus use less plastic. I care even less about the recuperative powers of artisan spring water, considering that the supposed spring water is pumped from city water supplies in factories, the water being drawn from Lake Michigan. I know I have peed in Lake Michigan more than once, and I don't swim there very often. And I think fish pee there as well.

Using my own family as the basis of all my research, we as a society have gotten lazy and stupid about drinking water. Hydration is important, but not important enough to remain a part of the insanity that is the bottled water industry. It's marketed as being important and affordable, but when they started adding vitamins, as they did with Lucky Charms, to make it seem healthful, then they are turning back on the original premise of bottle water being more pure than tap water.

When I was a kid, my brothers and I often got thirsty in the car when driving around with our parents. We would complain. My mother would tell us to hold up our cup, and she would press the imaginary button on the non-existent fountain in our car, and she would make a hissing sound intended to remind us of water poring into a cup. But we didn't have a cup. The cup was imaginary, just like the fountain and the button. Her worry and concern for our thirst was also non-existent. We didn't have water in the car, so we were going to have to wait. The only things we had were thirst, sarcasm, and my mother's bad sound effects.

We survived, though, in spite of these deep hardships. Granted, we as a society spend more time in vehicles. We also use seat belts more regularly than when I was a child, so there's an increased chance that we'll survive a crash, especially one where the car rolls down the side of a ravine and is not found by rescuers for several days. In that scenario, it is important to have fresh water with you, preferably by your side in case you are pinned into your seat and unable to access the trunk where there is a shrink-wrapped case of water bottles at the ready.

Wall Drug, the tourist trap somewhere in South Dakota, exploited the no-water-in-the-car mentality with cryptic, intriguing signs placed along interstate 80, encouraging children to nag their parents during road trips to go drink the "free" water at Wall Drug. The venerable bumper-sticker slogan, "Where in the World is Wall Drug" can be reasonably replaced with "Who Cares About Wall Drug" simply because every middle-class car in America has a three day supply of bottled water in the trunk just in case of a roll-over accident.

So what's my point? I am now using a more permanent water bottle, one with a wide mouth that should be easy enough to clean. I keep it hanging around the house for those moments when I'm going for a ride, and I think I may want to use the trip for hydration as well as travel. If I'm truly around the house, I use a glass and maybe crack a little ice into it for style.

If given the chance, Nestle, or whichever greedy corporate entity it is that has set up water bottling factories in the Great Lakes States, would likely pump every drop of water out of the Great Lakes, and send that water, one bottle at a time, to whoever is willing to pay for it. If that happens, the land bridge between America and Canada will be established, and we'll be at risk for invasion by the Canucks. Although that nightmare scenario is unlikely, I'm still tired of paying more for water than I do for gasoline when I stop at Speedway.

I know my mother would have brought water along if it were socially acceptable back in the 1960s. She did her best, and the lousy sound effects distracted us enough that we forgot about our thirst for the moment. My mother, God rest her soul, did take us to Wall Drug. Once there, we had a cool drink of water. It was yummy, perhaps because we had waited, and had the opportunity to anticipate what that water would be like. She also bought the bumper sticker.

Labels: story

In light of the recent "Beer Summit" I told a story from my past that resulted in a similar settling of differences over beer. This one is posted to my articles section, and is itself called "Beer Heals All Wounds." It's about me, the cherry tree I climbed as a child, and a dispute with a stranger that resulted in a fist fight.

Many years ago, men frequently settled disputes with fisticuffs. That doesn't happen nearly as often. I'm not saying we should have a Fight Club or anything, but maybe we should have a "Raise Your Voice and Bare Your Teeth" club; we are primates, after all.

Labels: memoir, story, toastmaster

Thursday evenings are trash night for me, meaning that I have to gather up trash from around the house and put the trash dumpster out on the curb. Trash is picked up on Friday mornings, and they claim the right to pickup starting at seven a.m., and you don't want to miss it.

In the past, these evenings--"trash night" as I call it--has been a moment of contemplative solitude for me. I am alone and performing an ordinary, rudimentary task, allowing my mind to wander a bit. It is not a form of meditation, but it is calming for me, marking the end of a week. I handle our trash with my hands, and I have a sense of the proportion of our activity. If we have had a party or friends staying for the weekend, there will be more trash than usual. If I have been in the mood to dispose of things (and there is much need for that mood) there will be large bags stuffed with now useless toys or household goods. It helps record in my mind what things have been like for me during the week.

On occasion, I've realized that there was not much in the dumpster, and so I've questioned myself what has happened that the amount of trash is down. I worry that I left the laundry room trash can unchecked, or that maybe there are things lingering in the corner of the garage that perhaps could be discarded.

The most interesting dumpster story happened many years ago, back when my Poobrador, Blue, was still alive (a Poobrador is a Poodle-Labrador mix--my own invented name). I was taking him for a walk late one trash night. I carried two bags of kitchen trash out to the dumpster and then continued on into the night with Blue on a leash.

When we returned, Blue began barking at the dumpster. He would not quiet down, and would not relent. He focused on the dumpster as if he were a drug-sniffing canine, and Scarface himself was in the dumpster.

I began to suspect there might be a rat inside. It was garbage, after all, and rats have to eat something and somewhere. I gathered my courage and flipped open the lid of the dumpster. A raccoon was inside the dumpster, and raised his head and stared at us. Sometime during our walk, he must have gotten inside, drawn by one of the bags. Blue, of course, went berserk.

This week, early in the evening of Trash Night, I noticed that one of our trash bags had been left out next to the garage, and the bag was shredded and our kitchen refuse, egg shells, wrappers, and spoiled food, was now scattered across our lawn. Whoever the culprit, they must have taken the bag with the intention of dropping it in the dumpster, but failed to complete the final three feet of the journey.

I did not rush to clean the mess; instead, I treated it as a crime scene.

My wife had no memory of carrying out a trash bag and leaving it short of its destination. But neither could she account for her whereabouts on Sunday evening which, by my examination of the refuse is when that bag made its way outside (there was a blueberry yogurt container amongst the mess, and I recalled eating blueberry yogurt Sunday morning). The easiest thing would have been for her to blame our son, but she didn't recall asking him to take out the trash.

I next interrogated my son. He claimed to have not taken any trash outside at all in several weeks. I believed him. For him to do anything resembling work, it requires an amount of nagging that makes it impossible to forget, and it is extremely unlikely that he would remove the trash from the kitchen and take it outside without being asked to do so.

Our daughter does not even know where the dumpster sits, such is her lot in life that she does not deal with garbage.

I was suspicious once again of my wife. Is it possible that she took the trash out with good intention, but was distracted in her task and left it in harm's way? I brought her to the scene of the crime, and pointed out in particular the yogurt container that suggested to me that this was trash brought out no earlier than Sunday, and likely no later than Monday (we generate about one bag each day). There was a wrapper from a Nestle Crunch bar, an empty cream cheese container, coffee grounds, apple cores, banana peels, school papers, plastic ware, and scraps of food, all of which scattered in the section of yard next to our garage. Our dogs had had a field day with this, I assumed, but there was the possibility of a raccoon making the mess during the night.

My wife clung to her story of not remembering having taken out the trash and leaving it in the yard. I was forced to let her go. As often happens on Law and Order, I did not have sufficient evidence to press charges. I put on work gloves and picked up the trash, bagging it in a new, fresh pull string bag.

There is, of course, the slim possibility that I left it there, but it is my habit to take trash directly to the dumpster, and not linger or explore. I hate to think I could do such a thing to myself, creating, indirectly a mess that I would have to clean. Truth be told, however, I couldn't account for my whereabouts on Sunday evening either.

Labels: memoir, story

The theory of circadian rhythms is that we have an observable pattern of behaviors we experience each day, the two most obvious of which are being awake and being asleep; being sleepy during your wakefulness is part of that, but not as obvious. There are also rhythms to our sleep: we go through, or attempt to go through, multiple three-hours cycles of dozing, light sleep, deeper sleep, R.E.M. sleep, and then back to light sleep. If you wake up in the middle of the night, you probably just came out of one of the cycles, and you'll repeat it if you allow yourself to fall back asleep.

I have recently been getting by with six hours, or less, of sleep. It's been going on for a while, and I'm not particularly sleepy during the day, so I believe it's enough for me. I've been able to put this to a more controlled test because I am traveling and sleeping in a comfortable bed without distractions, and I have consistently woken up before my alarm in under six hours and feeling awake and refreshed. I am also not waking up in the middle of the night.

But what if some internal alarm is awaking me, and I'm not consciously acknowledging it? What if I simply have to pee, and although I don't wake with a strong urge in place, my bladder is quietly signaling my brain that this is going to have to happen soon, and you may as well stop sleeping now, rather than go for a third cycle?

I'm in a hotel room. I have exact control of the room temperature, and it is comfortable--exactly the way I want it. I have a large, comfortable bed, and a pillow I would fight to keep. The room is dark (although I do leave the bathroom light on, and the door closed, so there is a small amount of light at the crack of the door along the floor; it's basically a night-light--I don't want to get scared). I requested an interior room away from street noise, and there are no obnoxious, drunk salesmen on the floor with prostitutes throwing parties (or if there are, I wasn't invited and they are quiet about it).

At home my sleep is assaulted by the following: my spouse using her laptop, her discomfort with the covers/pillow/temperature, the dogs moving about, the cat climbing on top of me, the dogs barking because a car drove past, the temperature out of whack because the kids adjusted the thermostat, or the kids themselves dealing with bad dreams by waking me up. For now, all of that is eliminated.

What's left is the reality that a few minutes after I wake up, I need to pee.

Well what of it? The only way I can imagine removing this from the list of possible interruptions is to insert a catheter and a drain bag. Those items can't be terribly expensive, but inserting the tube might be a trick (note to self: check YouTube for video on inserting catheter).

Even if I could eliminate the bladder issue, there are other, natural biological needs that might also signal the brain to wake me up because the inevitable is going to happen; as far as I know, there is no equivalent catheter for that. (Note to self: do not, I repeat, do NOT check YouTube for a video on that subject, because I'm sure it's there!)

I think I'm okay with six hours of sleep. I don't think I'm risking heart disease, and I'm not staggering into traffic, and my cognitive performance seems fine (but, then, how can I trust myself to judge that if my thinking is clouded?). My only dilemma now is sneaking the pillow out of this hotel.

Labels: personal growth, story

Longtime readers know that I've been teaching myself to swim. This continues, and is improving. I almost feel like I can swim, now. But that's only part of the reason to go to the pool.

There was a life saving class underway this past weekend while I swam. Twenty teenagers were there for the lesson, and went through various exercises rescuing their instructor.

I happened to finish my training around the time that they finished. I went directly to the showers, while some of the young ladies in the class gathered in the hot tub.

Like so many gymnasiums and YMCAs, this facility has a gang shower that one must pass through in order to gain access to the pool. The idea is to encourage bathers to shower. (Is that ironic? No! Well, maybe.) Guys are coming and going all the time, some stay to shower, some keep moving. Some come naked, others undress while they soap up. Some guys bend over and irrigate their behinds like they are panning for gold. I thought I'd seen it all (a recurring theme) and then, this weekend, there was something new.

I was alone in the shower. While I shampooed my hair, one of the young ladies walked into the shower, mistaking the men's for the women's locker room. The poor girl, probably aged 15, covered her face, screamed "Oh my God!" and left the way she came.

The only other thing I can think of about the incident is that the poor thing would probably blog about it very, very different than the way I have.

Labels: story

My efforts with Total Immersion swimming are slowly paying off. The number of strokes it takes to go 50 yards is down by half, and I can actually feel the thrust, with little effort, when I get the mechanics correctly. People are still a little curious why I'm doing this now, at my age, and how it is I never learned to swim properly before if I had the interest. So a little background.

The Jungle That Is Our Youth

There were a few boys my age that were physical specimens starting in sixth grade. Their testosterone came early, or there was something in the water on their street, that gave them manly features while I still sported a pudgy belly and a double-chin. I ate a lot, and a lot of ice cream to boot, so I understood why I was the way I was. But two boys in particular, Terry B. and Danny V., had muscle definition and a chiseled physique. They were ripped. And it wasn't just being skinny, but there was muscle development.

One day in sixth grade, there was rain and so our recess was held downstairs, in the basement, and it was a crowded, raucous affair. At some point, Terry B. got a hold of an empty masking tape roll (i.e., just the cardboard ring) and slid that up his arm until it was snug on his bicep. He then flexed his muscle until that cardboard ring tore open. I was astounded. To this day I'm astounded.

Swimming with Sharks

The city pool was in the park directly behind our house, less than two hundred paces from our fence. We heard the shouts and screams of kids splashing in the water every day in summer. My mother was nervous about us venturing there, but we did go, and without ever taking a lesson, I could navigate the water fairly well. I stayed in the shallow end, but I could swim underwater, and was very comfortable, and splashed and played with the roughest of them.

There was a boy a year older than me, Jeff W., who had the same chiseled physique as the two my own age. He was something of a prick, and had a reputation for being tough, and so I generally avoided him. I was there, in the shallow end, with him one day in summer.

I was swimming under water, and apparently kicked him as I passed. When I came up for air, he jammed my head back under, and I took in a great gulp of water into my lungs. I still recall the feeling of panic vividly, and how I gripped at the edge desperately as I coughed it out.

I coughed and coughed until I spit blood. He was a little concerned, but mostly about what might happen to him. The life guard had him sit out of the pool until after the next Adult Swim. I made my way back home, shaken and unnerved.

The Best Revenge is Living Well

I did not return to that pool for five years, until I had learned to swim with my head above water. I don't like any kind of horseplay in the water, and I panic quickly as I lose air, or if water goes up my nose or in my mouth. I'm kind of a wreck.

But I am now, finally, gaining a bit more ease in the water. Breathing is my biggest problem.

You'd think I could have overcome all of this earlier, and without so much internal drama, but that is a kind of metaphor for my entire life. I'm trying to be a late bloomer, before it's all too late.

Oh, and that Jeff W. guy? Well, if he tries to befriend me on Facebook, I'm going to ignore it. So there.

Labels: memoir, personal growth, story

I thought I'd seen everything in the shower at the YMCA. In fact, I thought I could handle most anything in a gang shower because I've seen the HBO prison series "Oz", and, more importantly, I survived the hazings in the gang shower on the hockey team when I made varsity as a freshman.

You see all manner of body types in the shower at the local YMCA. It is strange what time does to the human body, and stranger still how some older men believe alternately sitting in the sauna and then showering is a form of a workout. They parade back and forth in complete nudity, apparently having made peace with their body.

I believe I've mentioned in the past that some men like to blow their nose in the shower. That really grosses me out. I saw a man without a single hair follicle anywhere on his body (but he was incredibly fit). I've seen a few things that are inappropriate even for this blog. I thought I had seen it all.

Yesterday, a gentleman walked into the shower after a basketball game fully clothed. He was barefoot, but had all of his clothes on--sweatshirt, t-shirt, sweat pants, shorts over the sweat pants, jock strap, and a do-rag. He stood under the water for several minutes getting soaked to the skin, and then, finally, disrobed. I'm not sure how he managed his wet laundry, as I decided to leave.

Labels: story

The Polish of this world have made Galumpky almost synonymous with Cabbage Rolls, but I knew them as Kapusta, which is the Slovak word for the same thing. Of course the recipes might vary wildly. In my mother's Slovak World Congress cookbook, there were no less than six different recipes for cabbage rolls. The point is that wrapping meat in a sturdy, boiled leaf has broad appeal, and should not be claimed by any one ethnicity. No matter who made the cabbage roll, the gas you pass later on will smell just as bad as that produced by someone else's cabbage roll.

Possibly the greatest contribution ever made to the popularity of cabbage rolls was made by the Schmenge Brothers, the famous Leutonian Polka Band on SCTV. Stan and Yosh were both tireless and selfless in their gratitude for the cabbage rolls made by one of their loyal fans, and mentioned it in every episode. And the coffee.

On the other hand, cabbage rolls have never gone mainstream; if they had, you'd be able to get them at the county fair—deep fried and served on a stick—but cabbage rolls nevertheless.

Labels: story

I am in the process of learning to swim. I taught myself to swim when I was 14, and did a very poor job of it. In fact, because of an incident at the city pool, I have a very strong aversion to getting my face in the water, and that has hampered me forever.

I swim by keeping my head above water, like a dog or a horse. So it exhausts me to swim, and I don't do it very often. I heard about this new technique for learning (well, not brand new, but new to me) from Tim Ferriss. So A week ago I began.

I first read the book. But not one of those nice, new ones from their store, but an old copy from the library. It's well written, but I couldn't quite figure it out. I then bought one of the DVDs, and that is definitely the way to go. The DVD breaks it down even more simply, and I am able to mimic their behaviors.

I have one thing to add to the great canon of learning about Total Immersion swimming. I followed Tim's advice to buy serious goggles and trunks. I bought the knee length Speedos, and love the feel of them in the water. Much better than baggy trunks. The goggles kept fogging up until today, when I remembered a trick I used in my youth. I spit in the goggles and rubbed that into the inside lens. For whatever reason, it prevents the fog.

Labels: story

I never got around to telling this story about the cabbage rolls and my father's intestines. As I've said earlier, for family events, my mother would prepare cabbage rolls by the dozen. It was usually a major production for her, but she never asked for help. She prepared it all herself, creating dozens of them at a time.

Great big bowls of ground meat were mixed with rice and paprika. A large pot boiled heads of cabbage to loosen the leaves. And an over-sized roaster sat waiting to accept the cabbage rolls. She usually do all of this in our basement, where we had a second kitchen. She'd descend for an afternoon or evening, and not surface again until it was complete.

I don't recall the specific occasion, but my father felt ill late at night, after the event. The next day he checked himself into a hospital. Back in those days, if you got into the hospital, they kept you a while to run tests. Now you spend far more time waiting in the Emergency Room lobby than you do in a hospital bed (if you're lucky), but back then, they admitted you to run tests, and strictly enforced the visiting room hours.

He was in there a couple of days, having complained about chest pains. He was in his late forties, so the assumption was a heart attack, and that's what the tests were trying to determine. But test after test came back negative, and so they reviewed other factors. The truth finally came out that he had consumed an inordinate amount of cabbage rolls; the doctor immediately went with a diagnosis of indigestion. He probably prescribed an enema, but I don't know if it was ever administered.

I never really worked with my mother on those cabbage rolls, and I don't know if I have the recipe, so I'll be trying various combinations until I hit on something pleasing to my taste buds and my memory. I just hope I don't kill myself trying.

Labels: memoir, story

While driving to work the other morning, a car raced past me and tried to merge into my lane in front of me. The driver, a woman, made the mistake of signaling before merging, as if asking my permission. I said no, and would not slow down to invite her in.

There was no room for her to merge. There was just barely a car length space between my car and the car in front of me. Here is the weird part: if she had just done it, merged dangerously in front of me without signaling, without there being enough room, and without even giving me a thank-you wave, I would have been fine; I would not have ever mentioned it again, because people do dumb things in their cars and I watch out and drive accordingly.

But to ask to be allowed to do something stupid is unforgivable. I simply won't allow it. So I did not back off at all, and the driver declined to merge. She did, however, speed up and tried to merge three cars ahead; however, there was even less space there, and so, with here blinker still blinking, she braked and tried to merge again in front of me.

This time she started to merge, but I closed the gap and braced for a collision. She blinked, and veered back into her lane. She waited a few seconds, and merged behind me. It turns out she wanted to get on the other side of me altogether, and was able to do this. Once there, she accelerated hard to race past me on the other side and blew her horn at me as she did.

Well the same to you, lady.

Labels: story

I spent this past weekend with a head cold, stuffed up sinuses, and sniffling and sneezing. What bothers me most about being sick is the lack of energy, and feeling tired, but not being able to sleep, but not being able to try because sometimes (most of the time) life goes on. I was at soccer games and music recitals, drove the kids to other appointments, and went visiting.

The "went visiting" part is probably the dumbest, because I've shared my germs with the world when, in that moment, I didn't need to do so.

The best part was the legitimate excuse to drink Dimetap elixr. It's the purple drink for children that is both anti-hystamine and decongestant. It works wonders for me, but makes me a little on the drowsy side. I love the taste. To me it's grape Kool Aid, and I believe it would be the perfect basis of a mixed drink, like the Flaming Moe.

However, I get very strange dreams when on it. I can't describe them, but suffice to say that I was overwhelmed with a creepy dread. It's funny that I'm surprised that pouring chemicals into my body might have an effect on my mind.

Labels: story

My son is not big on projects. It is not the way he learns, and he hates the idea of them. For the most part I agree with him, but it's something that has to get done.

My son is big on talking, watching television, and arguing. He especially likes arguing about what's on television, especially when he can use the DVR to prove a point through the miracle of pause and slow-motion. These things don't help get a project done.

Labels: memoir, story

This afternoon, a clock I've had for twenty years fell off the wall and broke. Shattered glass was all over the carpet, and the wooden body of the clock snapped in half. There was no good reason for it to fall when it did. The hook and nail were still in the wall. It had somehow been bounced off, but there was no particular bump when it happened. I would have blamed the cat, who has leaped at the pendulum before, but the cat wasn't home at the moment (out visiting friends).

I guess I don't mind if the house is haunted and the ghost is going to play pranks to mess with me. What I worry about is that the ghost may be watching me when I do very private things in the bathroom that I'd rather not have any one see. What if it's the ghost of my grandmother? I really, really don't want her seeing what I do in the bathroom.

Of course, grandma was never a jokester, so the ghost is probably not her. My father wouldn't do that either; he'd get right in my face and tell me how I was screwing up.

What I regret about the clock is not seeing it fall. It's a smallish clock and the pendulum is non-functional (i.e., it just swung back and forth but didn't regulate any gear movements). It hit the curio cabinet below it and then fell face forward to the floor. Shattered glass was sent into a three-foot kill zone and the pendulum remained on top of the curio cabinet. It wasn't bad to clean up—I put the larger chunks in a cardboard box and then vacuumed. It gives me the opportunity to install our cuckoo clock where the old one used to hang. If the ghost also knocks down the cuckoo clock, the joke will be on them because it's already broken. Maybe looking at the broken clock (which is correct twice a day) will motivate me to fix it.

What I know for sure about this ghost is that the jokester owes me a new clock. But if they simply don't tell everyone what I do in the bathroom, then we'll call it even.

Labels: story

I went to a Scotch tasting event in Ann Arbor yesterday. My friend is a connoisseur of wine and Scotch, and I was excited by his invitation. There is a world of flavors that I know nothing about, and I thought this would begin my journey.

My first lesson is that Scotch Whisky does not have an "e". Everything else, like Jack Daniels, is Whiskey.

Vendors set up tables along the walls and displayed various bottles. For our admission, we were given a sack full of twenty polished stones, and we profferred one polished stone for a taste. Some of the vendors were more generous than others, but whatever they gave was plenty—I could not drink all of my polished stones anyway.

The names of the various Scotch Whiskys were unpronounceable. My friend is a scotsman, and he rattled them off like a native. I tried to match his brogue at first, but gave up quickly. I would just point to the bottle hold out my glass, and offer a stone.

I have tried Scotch in the past, and didn't like it. This event did not change that, but I did appreciate many of them. I could almost imagine enjoying them. However, I probably won't.

The highlight of the evening was a toss-up between the two "Jack Daniels" girls and the handsome woman serving absinthe.

The Jack Daniels girls were young ladies in very high heels, very short skirts, and tight T-shirts emblazoned with the Jack label. They stood talking to each other the entire evening near the Jack Daniels vendor, and occasionally got themselves some food from the buffet. The event was dominated by men, and I'm sure these two were the highlight for many others. It was almost cruel, in fact, because the men there were mostly nerdy, clumsy looking middle-aged guys (like myself) that were more interested in getting their money's worth out of the booze and the buffet than making time with the young ladies. I think they could have been there naked and had no more, and no less, effect on the men. I may suggest that for next year.

Absinthe is a foul drink, notorious for destroying the liver and driving people insane. So I had some. If it was good enough for Hemingway, then it's good enough for me. It was incredibly like black licorice, and had no kick to it at all, until this morning. I woke up with a headache, but wasn't otherwise bothered with a hangover. I got up and moved around a bit, and realized I had to vomit. What came up was a green glob of bile that I can only think was that absinthe sitting in my stomach all night, waiting to annoy me.

Labels: story

There were two spit takes in my life in the past week that are worth relating as they reminded me of what I consider to be one of the better spit-take stories ever.

The first one happened in my cubicle. Someone stopped by to chat, and they happened to be eating something at the time. I was seated in my chair, and they stood over me telling a story while they chewed on some trail mix. While pronouncing a "t" sound (titillating would be nice, but, alas, it wasn't that word) a small crumb of chewed food was expelled from their mouth, and landed smack dab in the middle of my left eye glass lens. I was startled, but didn't draw attention to it lest I embarrass my visitor. I took the glasses off and rubbed my eyes; once they left me (the now forgotten story over) I cleaned my glasses.

The second was in a meeting and the person across from me was speaking. The late afternoon sun streamed in from the window behind their head, and I was able to see their spit expelled during the oratory. One droplet, reflecting the light, fell in a long arc from their lip to the middle of the conference table like a meteor streaking across the night sky. The unhygienic aspects of the spectacle aside, the sparkling droplet of spit was quite pretty. It made me smile.

The best spit-take story I heard happened in a training classroom for a computer system. One of the students, an older gentleman, called to the instructor and complained about the quality of the monitor. There were sparkles all across the cathode ray tube (CRT) that were bothering his ability to see the computer images. The instructor had never seen such a thing, and none of the other monitors exhibited such a bizarre effect.

As she struggled to diagnose the problem, the student sneezed. He failed to cover his mouth, and sneezed straight ahead, spitting all over his computer monitor. The screen lit up with dozens more sparkles, as the spit caught the light.

Labels: story

I tore into a brand new box of Lucky Charms and ate them out of the box. I'm not going to apologize for this behavior, but neither am I proud of it. Those charms are not just lucky, but they are also magical. I think they could be called "Magical Charms." I'd still buy them, but instead of a leprechaun as the mascot and spokesman, you'd have to have a midget-wizard, or maybe an elf.

I find them magical because of the aftertaste that lingers on my tongue and in my throat. I enjoy the aftertaste more so than the actual taste. There is something about the chemicals they use to create the marshmallows that coats my throat, and prolongs the flavor and the release of sugar. I find it intoxicating and delightful.

They coat the cereal things with some bland frosting, but I don't even notice those. They are just in the way, but I wouldn't want to eat just a box of marshmallows—that wouldn't be right. In truth, there is a fine interplay between the two ingredients, cereal and chemically-created marshmallow, that makes it work. I wouldn't change a thing. I don't even mind that they keep creating new shapes to include, but at some point in the future they are going to run out of cute things and someone in their design department, feeling desperate and having a very bad day, will suggest that they make a poop-shaped charm. I believe that that idea should be rejected. I don't think Lucky the Leprechaun can add "brown dookie" to his brag list of charms inside the box and sell cereal.

When I was but a mere child, I was careful to separate the marshmallows in my bowl of Lucky Charms, and save them for last. They would begin to melt in the milk, and a sugary scum formed across the top, but oh how proud I was of myself to have upwards of two dozen marshmallow charms remaining in my bowl, clinging to each other because of what I would later learn was surface tension in the milk. I thought they were friends, having fun in a white, sweet pool, or survivors of a boating accident, desperate to live, thinking they've been rescued by the great big spoon from the sky, only to realize they were being devoured by their God.

Now I just eat them out of the box.

Labels: standup, story

Yesterday, while working in the yard, I had an incident that demonstrates my own fault and folly with immaturity, and my relationship with my wife. She had done some pruning in one of her gardens, and loaded the refuse into a laundry basket. The laundry basket, overflowing with dead vegetation, was left at the side of the garage, presumably for someone other than herself to take it to our mulch pile in the backyard.

I could have been the person to do that, for I walked past that laundry basket everyday for a month making the exact route prescribed, from the garage to the backyard. It would have only taken a moment of thought to complete the transaction. But I have a fault in that I don't like cleaning up messes created by someone else. It's childish, I realize, but it's no sillier than other childish belief systems, such as the Unitarianism, Dewey Decimal, or Social Security.

I finally broke down yesterday and decided to take the laundry basket to the mulch pile. Of course, the laundry basket is a story in itself because it had fallen into disuse, I threw it away, and my wife retrieved it out of the trash. So I had plenty of resentment against this laundry basket before we even started.

On one of my many trips around the house while raking leaves, I bent over and grabbed the laundry basket. I noticed a foul, fetid odor. It reminded me of the mice nests whose stench I often find in our shed, so I held the basket away from me with some trepidation that a mouse (EEK!) might still be nested within. I felt something wet on my pants leg, and heard water pouring. At least I thought it was water, and in my mind imagined that basket sitting through rain storms and water gathering in the bottom. All that changed in an instant.

The foul, fetid stench gained strength. I looked at the water spilling from the basket in my hands, and noticed it was not clear like rain water, but tinged with yellow. The dogs had been urinating on the basket for weeks, and their pungent pee had been gathered there, and was now soaked into my pants and shoes.

When my anger subsided and the chore was done, I went inside the house. My daughter reeled at the smell. It turns out that massive amounts of dog urine is an effective family repellent.

Labels: mistake, standup, story

My father bought one brand new vehicle during my childhood. It was a 1976 Ford Econoline van burnt orange, and void of any accessories or options. It was bare metal inside, and came with the absolute minimum of two seats. His dream was to customize that van for a trip we took as a family to Yellowstone National Park. This was the age of customized vans. He was not attempting to put wall to wall shag carpeting and a water bed in the back so that he could score some serious tail (as far as I know); he was trying to make more of a recreational vehicle that would sleep a family of five.

My father was an engineer, designed things, and took the van customization very seriously. He spent weeks sketching out his ideas, to scale, on graph paper. His optimal design called for a bed across the back that could be expanded, two captians chairs in front, and a bench along one side that would convert to a mini-kitchen. There were storage cubbies everywhere. He also planned to install an AM/FM stereo with eight track tape deck and six speakers and a citizen's band radio.

Dad was also a bit paranoid--perhaps rightfully so given his upbringing--so the very first thing he installed was a kill switch disguised as a headphone jack. I suppose there were people that would steal an unfinished, oddly colored van. The next thing he did was have Sears install an after market cruise control. The switch was attached to the turn signal, as they are today, but this one stuck out like a sore thumb, and had wires hanging from it. It was novel and cool to me, though.

The deadline for the trip approached far too quickly, and the only customizations my father accomplished was the wooden frame for the bed, the captains chairs up front, and the new stereo. I think that is how much of life goes, with grand plans going wildly astray, and coming up short. But we took the trip, and rode in that van.

Mom and Dad sat up front, and my brothers and I either shared the bed in back, or sat on a lawn chair resting in the middle. I don't believe there was anything like a seat belt in that van. It was bare metal, unfinished lumber, and us. If there had been an accident, my brothers and I would have been thrown forward in free fall, waving our arms as we screamed in terror before splattering our brains on the dashboard. Those were the good old days for travel on our nation's highways.

During that first trip, we broke down in Omaha, Nebraska, and the transmission had to be repaired, and we all learned to hate Omaha. Our intention was to sleep in a tent in Yellowstone, but often, because of bear warnings, we had to pile into the van, and there we shivered in cold, uncomfortable, cramped quarters.

All of this is leading up to my very worst memory of that van. A few years later, I was riding with him in the van on a hot summer day. I was sixteen or seventeen at the time, and, for whatever reason, I didn't really want to be there with him, in that van, doing whatever we were doing. I was sitting on the cooler in back (we came to keep a Coleman cooler in the van for extra seating) when the van overheated and my Dad pulled it over.

He popped the hood and steam was escaping from the radiator cap. He decided to allow that pressure to escape, and he loosened the cap. It exploded in a burst of steam, scalding his face, eyes, hands, and arms. He backed away in pain, groaning and waving about anxiously.

I was bored by the whole episode, and I had already planted my ass in the lawn chair in the shade nearby to watch the proceedings. I could see he was in pain, but being a selfish, stupid teenager, I did nothing and hardly cared. Dad stood for a confused moment, not sure what he should do to help himself, and looked at me.

I said, "There's some ice in the cooler if you want it." But I didn't get up to help him, or ask about his injuries, or much of anything. As I said, I was a stupid, selfish teenager.

My son is fourteen now. I think I'm due to get a taste of my own medicine.

Labels: memoir, mistake, story

I went shopping the other night at Kroger's. Ostensibly, it was just for a few things: Bananas, Bagels, and Milk. The banana display stand was almost empty. Just a few scattered bunches, many spotted brown, and with three or four bananas in each bunch. They were picked over.

I once was at a training class (for OnBase, the document management solution, of all things) and sat next to a guy from Costa Rica who worked for Chiqita in Cincinnati, Ohio. He explained that Americans prefer buying nearly green bananas, and only like to eat them when they are a golden-yellow color, and unblemished to boot. We are picky and lousy customers. Europeans, being smarter(?) know that the brown spotted bananas are ripe and flavorful.

I happen to like the brown ones, a lot, but the rest of the family likes them ala American, golden-yellow. To serve them when they are that color, you pretty much have to buy them green yellow, and hope for the best.

An interesting thing happened, though, at that banana display. There was one other woman looking over the meager selection, and we began to compete for the bananas. She took a bunch with three green and one yellow, so I grabbed a bunch. She took another, so I did too. There were only a few bunches remaining—brown spotted, the way I like them—and she dared to take one of those. So I took two bunches of brown spotted. These bananas, by the way, were huge, like they were straight out of a South East Asian porno movie. Eventually she backed down, and left the display, but we had nearly picked it clean.

I think I broke my own record for most bananas, and I've been eating four huge ones a day ever since. If it's possible to overdose on banana-supplied potassium, I'm on my way.

Labels: mistake, story

I have placed a few of my movies on this site, under the stories section. This was done specifically for Dennis's benefit, but others may get a laugh.

Labels: administrative, story

Back once again is the short film I created two years ago with friends about a failed internet millionaire who is hoping to regain his glory, but his family and his housekeeper are not helping.

It's here on this site, under the stories menu. Soon, I hope to have all of my stories there, at which time I'll rearrange that part of the site.

All Others Pay Cash - Episode #1: Death By Chocolate

Labels: story

In Cleveland there are two main highways that lead into the city, and both of them stay high above the Cuyahoga River. That area, the Cuyahoga Valley just south of downtown, is an industrial wasteland where steel mills and chemical plants operate — not like they used to, of course, but they belch smoke into the sky, and burn off noxious fumes from their chimney stacks sending red, orange, and blue flames into the night. Riding on those highways, Interstates 71 and 77, is the closest thing Cleveland has to offer that compares to the "It's a Small World" ride at Disney World. In the span of five miles, you see the tops of buildings that once were the pinnacle of American industrial society, creating wealth for a few lucky ones, providing jobs for tens of thousands, and creating deadly pollution that damn near killed the entire region. Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers found work in those industrial mills, started families that thrived in Cleveland, and ultimately created me and my brothers.

I lived with my brother for eighteen months while I was going to graduate school at Cleveland State. He had a house in Parma, and I commuted from there to CSU, which was downtown. I took I-77 and never grew tired of the surreal view of the vestiges of Cleveland's glory. Being a city college, CSU only offered evening classes for graduate courses, and so I also had the advantage of commuting into town when most drivers were fighting to escape. My brother was also getting his law degree at CSU's Marshall College of Law, so he was there most evenings as well.

One day, my brother and I had reason to commute downtown together late in the afternoon. It was between four and five P.M., and traffic was heavy but not thick. We found ourselves pinned in behind a truck pulling a flatbed trailer, and on the trailer was a large industrial machine we couldn't quite identify. We were behind it for a couple of miles on I-77. Because traffic was slow, we had quite a few minutes to wonder what that machine might possibly be.

The machine was made mostly of stainless steel and absolutely filled the flatbed behind the truck. It had a large arm that hung over a massive round body. It was oddly familiar, but neither of us could quite place it.

That particular stretch of highway is rough and abused. The speed limits are not really necessary because the potholes and half-assed repairs keep only the most insane from going over 50. As we approached downtown, we noticed that the shaking from the bad road had caused the massive round body on the strange machine being transported ahead of us to spin on its axis.

As the Terminal Tower and BP Oil building came into view, we recognized what was before us: an industrial sized mixer, and the massive round body was its enormous mixing bowl. The spinning gave it away. Here was a machine capable of making enough dough to bake a loaf of bread the size of a Buick. Of course such things had to exist, for how else did ten thousand loaves of Wonder Bread appear on the shelves of A & P and Krogers each morning if some huge machine did not spit out ten thousand balls of dough? If you saw a leprechaun or a unicorn in the morning mist, you would believe; so it is with industrial sized mixers being dragged above the smelly wasteland of Cleveland: once you see it, you believe.

As we neared our exit, East 9th Street, the mixing bowl spun faster. It warbled and rocked, and before our disbelieving eyes, that mixing bowl spun off of its trailer just one hundred feet in front of our car. It bounced a good six feet off of the pavement, and bounced again still spinning.

My brother eased off of the accelerator, but because of the traffic we didn't dare slam on the brakes. For a brief moment I know we both thought that the stupid giant mixing bowl was going to bounce onto our car and crush us. It was a funny feeling that did not induce fear. We were going to die, but in such a bizarre way that it wouldn't seem like dying, but merely suffering the ultimate prank — the bucket propped on the door, filled with paint, but that also chops off your head, or the electric buzzer in your palm intended to shock you but which instead stops your heart — and so the story explaining what happened would obscure the fact that you were dead and never coming back to this world.

When it hit the pavement the second time, now less than fifty feet before our car, the spin of the bowl took it out of our lane. My brother hit the gas and we surged forward. The bowl bounced again in the next lane, and then slammed off of the cement barrier dividing the highway. We tore ahead and took the exit.

I did turn back and saw the huge mixing bowl bounce back across the highway, and somehow, as if guided by the practical joking hand of God, it missed all the other cars as well. We spun down the ramp, down to the level of the city, and began making our way past the abandoned storefronts, the condemned apartment buildings, and the empty warehouses, and we said a quiet prayer of thanksgiving. Then we began to laugh.

Labels: story