4th Child

A Google in Time Saves Nine

2008-06-10T16:16:00.000-07:00

Whenever she came through the drive-thru, whoever was at the first window would sing through the speakers, “Will, your monkey girl’s here!” and then everybody wired in would howl, whistle, and generally make themselves completely obnoxious while I would try to act cool and indifferent that the current object of my obsession was heading toward my window.
“Big surprise,” I’d mutter into my headset. “It’s nearly closing time. She always comes through before we shut down.” Then, I’d focus on quick-bagging the few orders that had come in before hers.
“Keeping track, aren’t ya, Tarzan?” they’d say then.
Or it might be George of the Jungle, Curious George, or even Speedracer after that movie came out. Once, one of the old guys called me Jane something, and when nobody laughed, he changed it to Cornelius. That guy was creepy. He used to volunteer to clean out the Playplace tubes – finally, the manager let him go. It didn’t stop the monkey jokes, but they weren’t such a big deal anyway.
Except for the banana ones. They made me mad. I almost got fired for shoving Lonnie one night for shooting his mouth off about whether or not I’d given a banana to the monkey girl. He didn’t really fall into the fryer like he tried to claim. His arm got a little scorched from the heat, but it didn’t even blister. Not much anyway. And at least the manager put an end to the banana comments. And the ones about monkeys jumping on the bed. With those out of the way, then like I said, the others weren’t much of a problem anyway.
Especially not when she got to my window to pay for her order, always a grilled chicken wrap – no sauce, no tomatoes – and a diet lemonade. She always paid with a five dollar bill, and I always had her change ready before hand. I knew that she liked a lot of napkins and not a lot of ice. And I always made sure that she had her spoon and an extra mint at the bottom of her bag. I tried not to make a big deal about it, but I know that she noticed I was giving her a little extra attention. At least, I guessed that she did. She kept coming back, didn’t she? And she always smiled so prettily at me and I liked to think that the hand contact we made when we exchanged money was made a little longer than necessary on her side of the deal.
But after she pulled away with her order, I was back at everyone’s mercy until we got too busy with closing duties to say much of anything.
Up until then, though, they always piled joke after joke on me.
“Will, wave bye-bye at the little monkeys!” someone would always yell. I’d snort in disgust, but I’d always try to sneak a quick glance out across the front counter through the side windows to see her Volvo pull away. The whole back window was filled with sock monkeys of every size and color.
“Did you see her plates, Will?” people would laugh and start chanting, “MUNKY4U! MUNKY4U!” I’d just turn down the volume on my headset as low as I dared and just focus on getting the final orders out of my window. A lot of people personalize their plates, so I didn’t see the big deal. I do wish I had some police friends, though. I’m not a stalker, but you can’t really find anything out from googling a license plate number.
“As far as you leaned out there to give her that order, I’m surprised you didn’t get your headset caught on all that crap hanging from her mirror. How many monkey keychains does she have anyway?” someone asked once.
“How should I know? Do you think I counted them?” I’d grumble. But I knew she had nine counting the ones on the mirror and the one on her key in the ignition, but not counting another I’d spotted one night poking out of her open purse.
“Bet you liked her shirt, didn’t ya, Will?” or “What monkey stuff she have on tonight, Will?” were part of the usual routine after she left. I never answered them, just shrugged and kept working. They were right though. She always had on something with a monkey print or sock monkey pattern – dress, t-shirt, halter top, whatever. One hot night last week, she even had on a swimsuit with sweet little monkey faces on her… anyway, that night was the one I shoved Lonnie for saying stuff about the girl and my banana. That night was a bad one.
Thankfully, I knew that when the monkey songs started it was almost over. “Brass Monkey” – “Shake that Monkey” – “Hey Hey We’re the Monkees” – I thank God that there aren’t too many monkey songs out there, at least not many that the crew I work with know about.
So after the jokes, the songs, then we’d get so busy closing up and shutting down and chasing off the last customers, that they’d all forget about it.
Until the next night.
Then it would happen all over again.
But…
tonight…
…was different.
She’d pressed the five into my hand a little harder than normal. She’d held eye contact a little longer than normal. She’d smiled a little brighter and a little wider than normal.
I didn’t figure it out until I counted my register at the very end of the night.
Then, there it was. Right there in front of my face. I couldn’t believe I’d missed it, and I was so glad that nobody after her paid with a big bill. I was so glad that I was going home then, because I don’t think I could’ve waited once I saw it.
Of course, I had to borrow a five from my boss, which meant agreeing to work doubles next weekend, but it was worth it to get that five from the till.
I know I could’ve just entered it into my phone or written it down on a napkin or even on my hand like I’d seen some of the guys and girls I worked with do.
But I had to have it. The actual five dollar bill that she’d handed me and that she’d written on in her own handwriting before she’d even gotten to my window.
The five dollar bill that said on its margins on both sides: Hi Will!! AIM!! --> munkygirl99 <-- Let’s chat!!
And best of all, in my opinion, she’d drawn all the exclamation points to look like bananas.

Burnt to a Google

2008-06-07T09:46:00.001-07:00

You ever gone through a drive-thru to order a burger?

Not a cheap value-menu burger or a kid’s burger, but a nice, big adult-sized burger. Maybe one with everything. Or one with double-meat or even triple-meat. This is America after all, and we Americans like our burgers. Especially when we’re super-hungry.

And super-hungry means that you’re starving so much that you’re not going to wait to get home or to get back to wherever you’re going. You’re going to eat that burger just as soon as possible. You’re even going to skip the fries and go right for the heavy stuff (except for the one or two fries that somehow leap from the bag right into your mouth) before you’ve barely gotten your change and receipt.

You’re pulling away from the window and pulling out that wrapped burger at almost exactly the same time. And by the way it feels in your hand, you know that it’s going to taste so good. You know it’s just the way you wanted. That it’s perfect before you even peel back the paper. You know because it’s all hot and fresh and heavy in your hand. Your fingers squish and crinkle against the wrapper that can barely contain the steaming, juicy double-handful of delicious goodness that’s hidden underneath.

Just like a loaded baby diaper that’s been left lying in the sun for a few days.

You ever picked up a dirty diaper that’s been lying in a roadside ditch after a hot week in mid-June? No? Well, have you ever pulled a fresh, hot burger out of a drive-thru bag? Yes? Then, you know what they both feel like. If you’re picking up roadside litter or if you’re pulling out a tasty burger, it’s virtually the same weight and sensation in your hand.

And if the diaper’s folded up the right way, it’s even about the same size, depending on the age and the franchise. Newborn doody diapers are about the size of Krystal or White Castle, toddlers make one that’s roughly a McDonald’s quarter-pounder or Wendy’s single (with cheese), and God help you if you come across something that looks and feels like a Whopper or a Thickburger.

God help you.

You’ll likely never pick up litter or order fast food again.

Dust

2007-12-23T09:45:00.001-08:00

...has...not...settled...choking me...

Hiatus, Sabbatical, Vacation,or Whatever

2007-08-08T15:32:00.000-07:00

The new school year is here. I shall honor/mourn its arrival by abstaining from bloggery until the metaphorical dust has settled.

Sticks and Stones May Break My Googles

2007-08-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

“Trust me. I’ve handled a dozen situations like this in the past two years. I know what these people are like. They’re only interested in the money.”

Lt. Jeffrey McKay leaned forward as he spoke and pressed both palms flat against the glass top wrought-iron coffee table separating him from the Shapiros. He sat opposite the young couple in the exquisitely decorated sun room of their home. Only in their late twenties, Bill and Leda Shapiro had already made a fortune through their exceedingly lucrative chain of skate park-cybercafé-pet salon-tea rooms. In fewer than five years, Fancy Flip’s Hotspot o’Tea Rooms had spread rapidly across the midwestern states and also overseas into Scotland and Italy. The Shapiros’ success easily paid for their $5.5 million home in Jolie Vachon, the most prestigious gated community in Charleston.

Their money had also made them a target. Earlier today, the Shapiro family had attended a birthday party at the neighboring estate belonging to Senator Jackson Colby. The party had been for his granddaughter, and the senator had hired extra security beyond that provided at the community gates. In spite of these measures, the Shapiro’s five-year-old daughter Margie had vanished during the party. An extensive search by police and federal agents had revealed two missing entertainers but nothing else. The investigation had expanded outside Jolie Vachon and was still in progress. McKay had been waiting with the parents for the assumed kidnappers’ initial demands. Two long hours had passed so far without any word of Margie.

McKay purposefully made eye contact now with both Shapiros. He continued his reassurance in as sincere and as confident a tone as he could, “Mr. and Mrs. Shapiro, these people are not stupid. Trust me. The absolute last thing they want to do is to hurt your daughter.”

“We do trust you, Lieutenant. And we are extremely grateful,” the missing girl’s mother said quietly.

Like her house’s décor, Leda Shapiro’s voice sounded elegant and feminine to McKay’s ears. Even in the face of her daughter’s abduction, she was fashionably dressed and coiffed. That same sense of style and taste had ensured the success of the pet grooming salon and tea room aspects of her and her husband’s business. However, to an untrained eye, she might have appeared cold and unshaken by Margie’s disappearance. A veteran detective, McKay wasn’t fooled. He saw clear signs of her anguish. The carefully-applied makeup didn’t completely hide the woman’s pallor. Her hands moved constantly also, belying her apparent composure. During their two-hour vigil, she had alternated between applying balm to her lips, smoothing the folds of her designer dress suit, and straightening the silk tassels on the sofa’s embroidered cushions.

Bill Shapiro had kept himself very still and thus far had let his wife do almost all of the talking. Nonetheless, the detective had found the father’s mood easier to read. The former pro-circuit skateboarder and nationally ranked cyberathlete was enraged over his daughter’s plight but was keeping that anger carefully in check. McKay had noted that Mr. Shapiro had kept his scarred hands balled into fists at his sides for the past two hours. The man’s jaw, too, had been tensing continually as he kept grinding his teeth together. A muscle repeatedly ticked on Mr. Shapiro’s neck as well, just above the portion of a red and black tribal tattoo visible over the collar of an expensive black silk buttondown shirt. He had only nodded grimly at McKay’s recent words of reassurance. All of this pointed in the detective’s mind to a father’s helpless rage at the unknown abductors.

McKay looked down at the notepad he held. Neat rows and columns of information filled eight pages but could do little to ease the couple’s current distress. He flipped back to the first page and looked at a photo taped there of a smiling, darkhaired little girl in a party dress. The picture was of Margie Shapiro, taken that very morning at the birthday party. She was obviously happy, having the time of her young life, totally unaware that she would be snatched away from the world that she knew. Even though the seasoned investigator’s experience made him believe the words he had just spoken to the Shapiros, his heart still ached for their daughter. Even if the abductors didn’t want to jeopardize any ransom by hurting Margie, they could still cause her a lot of mental trauma. McKay hoped that little Margie wasn’t too distressed by being forceably taken by the kidnappers.

He stared at the two figures standing behind Margie in the photograph and wondered if that could even be possible. A costumed man and woman knelt on either side of the little girl, hugging her gently with white-gloved hands. They were smiling broadly beneath their colorful wigs and gaudy makeup. McKay shuddered. These two were the missing party entertainers. Probably just minutes after the party photographer snapped this photo, the kidnappers had made their move and lured the little girl outside. They had left no signs of a struggle. Their gloves prevented them from leaving fingerprints. The makeup hid their real appearance. Their costumes let them pass through security at the estate and at the gates without any trouble whatsoever. It had been the perfect crime.

McKay studied the white faces of the two kidnappers, trying to imagine what each person looked like underneath. A cold feeling traced his spine like someone ran an icecube up his back. He shuddered. Clowns had always scared him a little, but this photo of two of them grinning and crouching on either side of their innocent victim nearly unnerved him.

One of the agents monitoring the Shapiros’ computers and phone lines suddenly hissed, “It’s them! Putting them on speaker!” Other agents bustled about their stations, clicking buttons and turning dials, tracing and recording everything that was happening.

McKay tensed. Across from him, Leda Shapiro tried to rub balm on her lips with hands that now visibly shook. At her side on the sofa, Bill Shapiro sat up straight and actually bared his tightly clenched teeth.

A jolly-sounding voice suddenly filled the sunroom. “Hiya, Shapiros! It’s me, Dr. Funny Bones! Don’t worry about Little Margie! She’s havin’ a blast right here with Mr. Chippy! At least, for now anyway! But if you grown-ups don’t play by the rules, then who knows what might happen!”
A horn honked. Something squeaked. There was a crash and a hiss. Then, the incredible sound of a little girl laughing and shouting.

Leda Shapiro started quietly crying into one of the delicate embroidered pillows. Bill Shapiro slammed both balled fists down onto the coffee table, shattering the glass and badly lacerating his hands. Agents rushed over to minister to his cuts. McKay sat quietly and unmoving, his skin crawling as he listened to the sounds coming through the speaker phone.

On the other end, somewhere, five-year-old Margie Shapiro was yelling between fits of giggles, “Do it again, Mr. Chippy! Please do it again! Please! Tell him to do it again, Dr. Funny Bones! Please tell him! Again! Again!”

Then, a horn honked, two clowns laughed loudly, and then there was a dial tone.

Dr. Funny Bones had hung up.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Google

2007-08-04T20:41:00.000-07:00

My package arrived at my apartment last night.

I’m pretty sure that someone delivered it between 9:15 and 10:00. That’s the time that I took a shower and checked the latest news on the web. I went through some emails, too. Several of my contacts had notified about their packages having arrived, so I had to delete them from my address book.

All that took about 45 minutes. I’d checked my security cams before that, and the only thing out in the hallway was my parents’ welcome mat. It was my good luck charm. Their porch had pretty much been the only part of their house left standing, so seeing it outside my door always calmed me a little, not much, but I think maybe it’s keeping me sane.

So at about 9:15 or so, the hall was empty. I wrote the time down in my security log, so I know that’s right. Then, at 10:00, right after I’d checked my email, I checked my cameras again, and there it sat. A rectangular package put square in the center of that old mat.

It looked just like the ones I’d seen on the news feeds. Not much bigger than a tissue box. No labels, addresses, or postmarks of any kind – no surprise there, the government had shut down the post office and all delivery services months ago. No visible tape, twine, or wires but still somehow wrapped neatly in newspaper. I zoomed in on the package with the security camera to identify the newspaper. It looked crisp and current, but I already knew what it would be. The Hatton Courier. March 12, 1975. My hometown paper. Issued on my birthday. My spine itched all the way up to the base of my neck.

I knew the box was my package. I’d finally gotten mine. I’d known that eventually I would, but I still felt my heart pound up into my neck. I felt nauseous staring at it through the vidcams installed on the outside of my door. I flicked the monitor off and closed my eyes. Even with them shut, afterimages of the box floated across my vision. Vertigo gripped me, making me latch onto the arms of my desk chair so that I’d feel anchored to something and not be sucked away.

Breathe! A tiny part of my brain reminded me. The rational part. I was surprised it had survived. You’re having an anxiety attack. Remember the government videos! Focus on breathing!

I know! But I can’t stop holding myself down! I’ll fly apart! I’ll get sucked away! I tried to listen to the voice but it spiraled away. I was spiraling, too. Not down, but out – out from my desk, out toward the hall.

Where the package waited.

Some twist of gravity twisted my stomach and lungs like I’d wring out a washrag. The face on my skin felt like it was pulling it away from my skull. Bile rose up into my throat, threatening to choke me. My fingers dug into the clothbound arms of my metal chair so hard that I felt two fingernails rip completely off. Blinding, white pain flashed through me and I opened my mouth to scream. When no sound came out, I realized I’d stopped breathing entirely.

I gaped like a fish ripped from the water. No air came in, no sound came out. I thrashed in my chair. Nothing. From somewhere, I got the strength to thrust my body backwards hard against the chair back. My head ground painfully into the headrest. Another fingernail splintered. I felt blood spray onto my arm. My legs spasmed as I struggled to get oxygen to my dying lungs. My body jerked uncontrollably like I was seizing. My right foot lashed out and struck something. I heard a loud crack. I felt pain and wetness. My foot was bleeding.

My eyes snapped open. I’d hit the security monitor with my bare heel, fracturing the screen and leaving a bloody smudge. The monitor had powered back on, though, and still worked. There sat the box, but for some reason, my eyes focused on the mat this time. I put all the energy I had left into forcing the shattered image of that mat on the screen into my fading brain. The package was there still, but so was the mat. The old worn mat my mom had put on the porch for my dad to wipe his work shoes on. The raised ivy border, most of it flecked away over the years but enduring as discolored, ivy-shaped blotches against the background. The wide, overflowing flower basket that had barely kept any color at all after cleaning so many dirty soles. The faded remnants of a fancy script that like so much else in the world had fragmented and lost pieces of itself. In a happier time the mat had announced Welcome to our Friends. Now it greeted my frantic, bulging eyes with this message: We_come to ___end_.

A racking gasp of air invaded my body. I shuddered. My back arched. I gasped again. Air filled my deflated lungs. My good luck charm had worked. Concentrating on the mat had saved me. The tiny voice came back. It whispered, Breathe! I breathed. I hurt all over. I bled. My head and heart pounded. But I breathed.

I lived.

I’d survived the delivery.

But I still have to open the package…

Sleep Tight -- Don't Let the Bedbugs Google!

2007-08-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

Three small black puppy noses popped up over the side of their broad yellow wicker basket.

Sniff!
Sugar smelled something good.

Snuff!
Snips smelled something delicious.

Snort!

Snails smelled something scrumptious!

Three tiny pink tongues slipped out of puppy mouths above the brim of their wide yellow wicker basket.

Lick!
Sugar was hungry.

Lap!
Snips was starving.

Slurp!
Snails was voracious!

Three little, sharp sets of white puppy teeth munched at the rim of their ample yellow wicker basket.

Nibble!
Sugar wanted a tasty tidbit.

Gnaw!
Snips wanted a mouthwatering morsel.

Chomp!
Snails wanted a delectable delicacy!

Three miniature, furry pairs of puppy paws appeared on the top edge of their extensive yellow basket.

Bounce!
Sugar hopped out the basket!

Spring!
Snips jumped out of the basket!

Leap!
Snails bounded out of the basket!

Three pint-sized, energetic puppy bodies raced away from the yellow wicker basket toward the wonderful smell.

Zip!
Sugar dashed into the kitchen!

Zoom!
Snips sprinted into the kitchen!

Whoosh!
Snails scurried into the kitchen!

Three diminutive, grinning puppy faces barked at the yelling woman burning food in the kitchen.

Yip!
Sugar asked the woman for some goodies!

Yap!
Snips begged the woman for some munchies!

Yelp!
Snails implored with the woman for a nosh!

Three miniscule, drooling puppy mouths swallowed hot chunks of scorched ham sandwiches.

Gulp!
Sugar bolted down up her sandwich!

Gobble!
Snips wolfed down his sandwich!

Glutch!
Snails scarfed down his sandwich!

Three teensy-weensy puppy tails shook happily at the smiling woman who loved her puppies.

Wag! Wiggle! Waggle!
Sugar, Snips, and Snails thanked the woman for sharing!

Between a Rock and Googly Place

2007-08-02T18:56:00.001-07:00

My life – it takes no wooded path
with a leafy roof to shade my head.
My road – it bumps over dirt and stone
on these wild hillsides I must tread.

My life – it offers no green embrace
on these treeless hills from rain or wind.
My road – it struggles up this earthen face
that crumbles and breaks and crumbles again.

My life – it changes, as brief as the dew
as quick as a whimper, as fragile as frost.
My road – it branches, and never in two,
more like shattered glass than merely a cross.

My life – it isn’t confined to white or to black,
it’s a chaotic palette that all choices defy.
My road – it diverges into so many tracks
that I must stare at my steps instead of the sky.

I've Got Friends in Low Googles

2007-08-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

I haven’t forgotten you! I know that you’re jealous of my computer, but I’ll always be a pen and paper girl at heart. You can count on that! Plus I have to tell you about last night.

It was awful! You know I finally got together with my local SWIBS forum. You know, the Singles with Irritable Bowel Syndrome group I post with online? I wasn’t sure about going in the first place, but I thought it might be cool. So anyway I went, and I was pretty tense about it. Remember how much I agonized about picking the right outfit? Well, the reality of meeting them in person was even worse than I ever could have possibly imagined.

First of all, the whole party was the brainchild of the moderator of our forum – his user name is AchyBreakyBrad. I’ve mentioned him before to you, but I never talked about how he was the one who put this whole holiday party together. He’s been posting about it since Labor Day (I went back and checked the archives to make sure). Well, anyway, he’s said all along that his work had a nice big meeting area that we’d all be really comfortable in. He got us all worked up and excited, talking about holiday decorations, music, a Stingy Santa exchange, and most of all getting to have a meal with other people who have IBS. That’s what finally made me decide to go. I hate going to all the other Christmas parties – work, church, even family – because there’s so much that I just can’t eat. And I never can take a date because they think I’m being stuck up for not eating or they’re stuck with me being in the bathroom all night. That’s not fun for anybody, but you know that already, don’t you, Diary?

Well, anyway, I went, and it was horrible. First of all, this grand meeting place that AchyBreakyBrad had lined up wasn’t close to what I imagined. The address he gave me was an ugly brick building with a big sign that screamed ELOM in green capital letters. I actually called him on the cell he gave out because I thought I had the wrong. It wasn’t though. The great meeting place he had lined up was the conference room at his work! OMG!! What a fantastic place!! Wow!! How did he ever get that reserved with all the holiday rush?!

Hey! Don’t get me wrong! I’m not a snob. If he had worked at a hotel or a country club or even a restaurant, I’d have been cool with meeting there. But turns out that ELOM is some kind of Information Systems Development company – in other words a place where a bunch of computer geeks worked. The “Festivities Room” as AchyBreakyBrad called it was a room with some long conference tables pushed together, and there was computer junk crammed all along the walls. There were charts and computer code mumbo jumbo written on white boards and paper taped to the walls. He thought it was cool because we were an internet group. He kept cracking computer jokes and calling our party a “holiday interface” and telling us to “sync” and “upload” snacks. I thought he was kinda funny online, but in real life? No way, I’d rather drink salsa than spend any more time with him?

So the room sucked. But decorations could have made it work. He said that he was going to take care of the decorations and music if we all brought the food. Cool, I thought, but listen to what he did. Well, he put some tacky little trees on the tables that looked like he’d taken them out of some business’s landscaping. He’d bought some red and green plastic plates and napkins. And the most exciting thing was that he made us wear little holiday hats that he bragged about buying in bulk from some party store online. They were cheap and way too small, probably made for American kids by orphaned kids in some foreign sweatshop.

I wore a snowman hat. It looked ridiculous. I felt like my head was eight sizes too big with that tiny little hat on. Not the best thing to be wearing when you’re meeting a bunch of people for the first time, let me tell you! Not that any of them looked much better. Why can’t any hot single people have IBS? Or maybe they do, but they have better things to do on the Friday before Christmas than meet with a bunch of complaining internet junkies.

Anyway, as if things weren’t bad enough, AchyBreakyBrad pulled out these nametags he’d printed off and made like we were the elves and had to wear them. I really wanted to leave when I saw that he written our user names on the tags. And that’s all! He didn’t put our real names on them! How stupid and lame is that! It’s one thing to type messages back and forth to FuzzySquirrelKiss, but when you find out FuzzySquirrelKiss is a fat middle-aged guy with really hairy arms and bad rosacea, you really would like to be able to call him Tom or Dave or something! He should have at least put our real names on the bottom of the tags or handed out a list or something. I made sure that I said something first when I talked to anybody. I kept sticking my hand out and saying, “I’m Tess!” so that people wouldn’t call me JDeppIsAhottie96. Diary, my user name just doesn’t seem as cool when it’s spoken out loud.

Now, here comes my take on the party music. It stunk! He had all the computers signed on to some music site that played Christmas MIDI’s. Enough said. They weren’t even all in sync. You can imagine how awful that was.

My last hope was for the gift exchange, but that bombed, too. I’ll have to say that this part wasn’t AchyBreakyBrad’s fault. I don’t know what he brought, but too many SWIBS had the same idea I did and brought Tums or Rolaids or Pepto for their gift. Needless to say, I went toward the end and there wasn’t much to pick from when I wanted to trade. So I ended up just bringing home the Nacho Libre poster I opened. I’m not sure if I was one of the lucky ones or not. I’ve never even seen that movie, so I don’t know if it’s funny, but I do know that Jack Black isn’t exactly eye candy in my book. He’s no Johnny Depp, but that’s obvious, right, Diary!!

Back to the party. To top it off and make the whole night even worse, I got deathly sick from the food. How sad is that? You’d think a bunch of people with IBS would be more careful about what they bring to a Christmas potluck meet and greet, but no, not the brainiacs in my SWIBS group. Some idiot even brought sausage balls. She said they were tofu, but I ate a bite of one and bloated almost immediately. I hid the nasty thing under a keyboard on one of the computer tables, but the damage had already been done. I left pretty quick – made up a story about having to meet my sister in Yahoo Group chat to talk about family stuff, pretty smart, huh? And just in time, too, AchyBreakyBrad started doing karaoke to the Christmas MIDI’s with this fat lady who looked a lot like my old bus driver back in elementary school. The lady’s tag said MissyKittenPie – I talked to her a little while while she was loading her plate up with everything people brought. I don’t see how anyone with IBS could eat that much! And I remember MissyKittenPie’s posts online – she always said that she was in her thirties and talked all the time about she could never eat. Yeah right! The only thing about her even remotely close to bein gin the thirties might have been her pants size! LOL! I’m so bad! Sorry, Diary!

Anyway, I left the party ASAP but didn’t even make it home before I had to stop! I felt that bad! I made it to a Krystal’s to use their bathroom – that’s how desperate I was! You know that IBS and Krystal just don’t mix. I’m surprised I even made it out of there, but that’s another story, and it’s getting late.

Bye for now, Diary! Thank your for listening!

P.S. Diary, you’ll be glad to know that I just signed off with SWIBS for the last time. I deleted my posts and everything. Now that some of the people there know what I look like, it’s just too embarrassing to talk about my bowels. Plus, I know what they look like, too. I read one post and got a really gross picture in my head of FuzzySquirrelKiss sitting on the toilet! Ewwww! I had to quit SWIBS right then. I just can’t talk to those people anymore. It’s just too embarrassing. I think I’ll go check out a group called ThePeople_of_SpasticColon_y – it sounds like they might be fun! TTYL!

Somewhere Over the Google

2007-07-31T11:13:00.001-07:00

If Ham had stayed where he belonged , he would never have found the rainbow.

He wanted to share his beautiful discovery, but no one would climb as high as he had.

So, he watched the gorgeous arch of colors all by himself. The rainbow didn’t stay long. Misty clouds above the rainforest dropped down and cloudy mists rose up from the foliage. Together, they hid the rainbow from sight.

Then, very slowly and very sadly, he lowered himself hand over feet, down through the treetops, to where his six brothers and sisters were waiting on a broad branch in the all-too-familiar canopy.

“You’re going to be in trouble!” his brother Rocky yelled out when Ham’s face popped out of the thick leafy ceiling over their heads.

“Mother’s going to be mad!” his brother Mooch shouted as he swung his body down through the leaves and dangled his feet just above their frowning faces.

“We’re telling!” sang his sisters Spark, Missy, Gee, and Little Doodies when he dropped down right in front of them onto their branch. Then, with a nasty laugh, all of his brothers and sisters leapt away, from branch to branch, in the direction of home.

Ham sighed. He looked up at the tangle of leaves and branches, vines and flowers. He cocked his head at the sound of twittering birds and buzzing insects. He flared his nostrils to absorb the rainforest smells – some sweet and fragrant, some stinky and rotten. He opened his mouth and pretended to taste everything on his pink tongue.

Nothing could make him forget. He missed the rainbow.

When he finally arrived home, he was very late. He had not leapt from branch to branch. He had not swung on liana vines. He had moved very slowly, pretending to be one of those odd upside-down animals who always ignored his questions and never laughed at any of his tricks.

His brothers and sisters were waiting on the branch just below their family nest.

“We told!” Spark, Missy, Gee, and Little Doodies giggled.

“Mother’s mad,” Mooch chortled.

“You’re in trouble!” Rocky sniggered.

Ham ignored them and climbed into his nest.

His mother pointed a long finger at him, “Your brothers and sisters told me what you did. Do you have any idea how mad I am and how much trouble you are in?”

Ham sat and stared at his feet. His tail wrapped nervously around his waist. He held its tip in both hands. “I wanted to see over the treetops.”

His mother threw her head back and howled once at the puzzle of leafy branches that blocked every bit of the sky. Their rainforest neighbors echoed her angry shout. Ham heard his brothers, his sisters, lots of other monkeys, all kinds of birds, and even what sounded like a jungle cat from way down in the shadowy understory. Ham gripped his tail tightly. He looked up into his mother’s fuming eyes.

She pointed at his chest. “What are you?”.

“A monkey,” he replied.

She nodded and gestured at the branches surrounding the nest. “Yes, and where do monkeys play?”

“In the canopy,” he answered softly.

She nodded and bared her teeth. “Yes! The canopy! Play there and stay there! Never go lower…”

Ham remembered the cat’s scream and nodded vigorously.

“…and never climb higher,” his mother warned. She stared at him as though waiting for him to nod. He didn’t.

“But monkeys climb trees,” he whispered instead. “And some trees go high, much higher than the canopy, way up into the clouds, up almost to the sky. If the trees go there, why can’t we climb all the way up, too?”

His mother arched her back and howled a second time, even louder than before. Ham wanted to cover his ears with his hands, but he just held his tail more tightly.

As the echoes died, she lowered her face close to his and hissed, “Why would we, Ham? There is no reason to go up there! We have everything we need right here in the canopy!” She waved at the nest around them.

Ham looked at the stockpiled of food his family had gathered. He looked at the plump greenish-purple figs, the funny-looking starfruits, the papayas, the heaped cacao nuts, and a even a few delicious beetles creeping about. He closed his eyes and thought about how fantastic all those things tasted. He remembered all the other wonderful things he’d seen and heard and smelt on the way back to the nest.

He opened his eyes and looked sadly at his mother. Behind her, he spied the eyes of his siblings peeking over the edge of the nest. He turned his back on them and covered his face with his hands. His mother had to lean in closely to hear his whispered words.

“But we don’t have any rainbows.”

Busy as a Google

2007-07-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

“Did you know my ceiling has exactly 5,384 stars, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao!

Tony lay on his bed the wrong way. His socked feet were propped on his pillow, and his head was resting on his linked hands near the scratched and dinged footboard. On the matching dresser by the bed, a black cat had flicked its ears forward and mewed at the sound of the boy’s voice. Now, it stood. It yawned and stretched, arching its back and showing a white patch the size of a hen's egg on its chest. It jumped down onto the bed when the boy lazily reached out his right hand. He stroked the cat from its forehead back to to the tip of its tail and repeated, “5,384 stars. How about that, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao?

Tony scratched the black cat under his chin. The cat’s yellow eyes closed to slits and loud purring filled the boy’s bedroom. “I know they aren’t really stars, but look,” he stopped petting to point at one of the cream-colored ceiling tiles. They had a rough texture speckled with a pattern of little holes. Each hole was about the size of a pencil lead. Tony pointed at them with one finger. “See all those dots up there, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao!

The cat swiped gently at Tony’s hand and rubbed the side of his face against the boy’s chest. Tony started petting him again. “See how they are all kinda in little groups of five? Well, if I draw lines connecting those five little dots, it’ll look like a star.” Tony rolled his head to side and stared at the black cat. “You know how I know that, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao.

Mr. Bailey rubbed his side against Tony’s face and turned around to rub his other side in the same way. Tony laughed. The cat’s fur tickled his nose. He scrunched his face and stuck out his lower lip to blow a puff of air up at his nose. His nose itched now, and he rubbed it hard with his knuckles. “Look over in the corner. By the dresser. You see it? That’s how I know. But don’t tell Grandma? Okay, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao?

The black cat only wanted to be petted. It didn’t care about the half-dollar sized star Tony had drawn in the room’s darkest corner. Earlier in the afternoon, he’d used a red crayon to make lines between five dots right by the crown moulding. “Now, if I drew stars like that all across the tile, there’d be forty whole stars and nine half-stars.” He held both hands up high to show his cat nine fingers. “That makes forty-four stars and a half. And that’s just on one tile, Mr. Bailey.”

Miao!

Tony held one open hand down in front of the cat’s face. The cat pressed his wet nose hard back and forth against the fingers until the boy started stroking his back again. “I only drew one star though. I counted the rest in my head. Grandma’d notice forty-four and a half red stars, wouldn’t she?” The loud sound of women laughing made the boy and cat both look toward the closed bedroom door. “Don’t worry, that’s just Grandma and her quilt party downstairs. She told us to stay up here and behave, but I think they’re the ones being too noisy. Don’t you think so, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao.

The cat licked his paw. Then, he circled twice, curled his back against the boy’s side, and started to purr. Tony could feel the vibrations through his whole body. He touched the cat’s nose with one finger. The cat licked the fingertip once and then started to gently gnaw it with its side teeth. Tony pulled his finger away and giggled. He locked his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “Now about the stars – where was I? I’d just told you about one tile, I think. Forty-four and a half stars on one tile. Just one tile. And look at how many tiles there are up there! I counted. Then, I just did the math. You don’t know the times tables, but I had to memorize them all, Mr. Bailey.”

miao

The mew was very quiet. Tony slowly rolled onto his side and curled around the black cat that was falling asleep. Yellow eyes flicked once to look at him but closed again after a brief yawn. “So that’s 5,384 stars on my ceiling. Plus a half, actually, but I threw the half away. Mrs. Fykes said that it’s okay to do that in math.” He lay quietly and still for a few minutes. Then, another noise from downstairs came muffled through the door. Tony couldn’t tell if it was laughter or something else. He yawned. “I wish they’d finish that quilt. After all that counting and multiplying stars, I can say I worked on school work and it’s not a lie. Then, I can watch my shows.” Another yawn claimed him. His eyes blinked slowly closed and then opened quick, only to fall shut again in only a second. After a third yawn, the boy whispered, “Maybe I’ll nap for a little while with you. Is that okay, Mr. Bailey?”

prrrrrrrrrrr...

Will the Google Be Unbroken?

2007-07-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

“Mom, what does that sign say?”

“Which one, sweetie?”

“That one over there.”

“The stop sign? It says Stop.”

“NO! The orange one!”

“Calm down, sweetie. Mommie’s driving and can’t look right now, okay? Wait until I stop.”

“It’ll be gone then! I want to know what it said! It looked like a warning sign!”

“It probably was telling everyone to be quiet and let Mommie drive,” the mother joked. She glanced at the back of the van through her baby rear view mirror to see if that satisfied her oldest child’s curiosity. It hadn’t. He was frowning.

“It DID NOT say that!” “What did it SAY!”

“Do not shout at me while I am driving! Calm down or we’re going home!”

She kept driving, trying to watch the road in front of her and the back seat at the same time. In the mirror, she saw her son flail a bit in his seat. Then, he started pushing his body up on his arms, using the arm rests of his booster seat like a gymnast’s balance beams to strain against the seat belt’s shoulder harness. His eyes bugged with the effort. His nostrils flared with each breath. He stretched his mouth into a wide line. His lips pulled back. His teeth ground together. The tendons in his neck popped out clearly on his skinny neck. His face flushed beet red. In the carseat next to him, a smaller – and for once infinitely calmer – version of himself slept peacefully, draped over the buckle straps like a little ragdoll.

“Calm down! You’re making yourself sick! And you’re going to wake up your brother!”

The van stopped at a red light. She turned and met her son’s eyes, matching him glare for glare. He almost looked like he was snarling, but he didn’t say anything. She checked her other son. He had flopped his head up and then back down again like his neck was made of taffy. He still slept, though, completely oblivious to the trouble brewing beside him. The light changed, and the mother focused on the road.

The mother worried more about her younger son waking up. From lots of experience, tantrums were highly contagious in the minivan. It didn’t matter who started it or what it was about. Soon, all three children would be bawling and screaming like tiny banshees. They didn’t even need reasons.

She flicked her eyes to the mirror. Her son was glowering at her, still flushed and breathing heavily. His jaw stuck out stubbornly. He was being quiet, but they weren’t out of the danger zone. She looked past him to the empty carseat in the very back of the van. She whispered a quick prayer of gratitude that the baby at least wasn’t there to take part in the drama. Her little girl was the lucky one, playing at home with the daddy, while she took the boys on a few errands.

Suddenly, she heard an ambulance siren coming from behind her. She slowed down to let it pass in the left lane.

“Oooh! Look, an ambulance! Do you think someone up ahead got hurt?”

Her son said nothing. She started driving again but at the next curve saw that traffic had stopped completely. She groaned in dismay but tried to distract her son again.

“Looks like there’s a wreck up ahead, sweetie. We’re going to be stuck for a while, I guess. Did you hear the siren?”

Silence answered her from the back seat.

Since the van was stopped, she looked around into eyes that still were full of a five-year-old’s fury.

He raised one hand threateningly. Sunlight from the passenger windows glinted off the shiny silver bottom of a toy car he clutched in one small fist.

“I’m gonna throw this car at you!” her son announced with all the grim severity of a judge condemning a guilty man to the electric chair.

“Throw it and you’ll be in deep trouble, mister!”

She turned back to the steering wheel and canceled her earlier prayer. If her husband had come along, he would have made up some crazy story about the sign. Her son would have bought the lie or he would have laughed at how ridiculous it was and made up something of his own.

The car suddenly whizzed by her ear. It pinged off the windshield onto the passenger seat.

“That’s it! I’m calling your dad!” She reached between the bucket seats into her purse and yanked out her cell phone. She flipped it open and hit 1 to phone home.

Her son let loose for real now. He started screaming loud enough to carry through the van’s closed windows. Drops of spit actually began flying around in the back seat as though he were a rabid dog. His brother sat up and looked around groggily for a second before he started to cry. The mother shrunk a bit in her seat and kept from looking at the cars stopped around her for fear that they could hear. She stared at the bumper in front of her and pressed her phone hard against her ear. She counted the rings. Three, and then the voice she needed to hear said, “Hey – whoa! What’s up? Sounds like you’re murdering somebody!”

“Your son’s trying to murder me! Throwing cars at me while I’m driving!” she hissed, not in the mood to joke around. She didn’t think it was possible but the screams got louder when she said that.

“Talk to your son!” she yelled into the phone. She stuck her arm back toward her oldest son. He slammed himself back and forth in the seatbelt and ignored her.

“Talk to your dad!” she screamed.

“I’m not!”

He shook his head over and over and yelled twice more, but finally he snatched the phone out of her hand. She expected him to throw it but he didn’t. He stuck it to his ear and listened for probably one second. Then, he wailed one long piercing “NO!” that vibrated the mother’s ear drums. Wincing, she focused on trying to soothe her three-year-old, who was crying but hadn’t gone full-power yet.

She had one chance with him – he had a bottomless stomach, especially after a nap, and she had a granola bar and half a bottle of water in her purse. She worked on getting him to open his mouth for a bite.

The older boy cried and snorted and slobbered. He would put the phone to his ear and then wave it around for a few minutes. Amazingly, he never closed it or threw it across the van. By the time his little brother started alternating deep sobs with messy bites of granola, he was actually listening to whatever the dad was saying . The mother felt a glimmer of hope for the first time. She also felt a twinge of jealous anger, though, and whispered another prayer. This time she asked God why he had to give the dads more power over the kids than their mothers.

Traffic still wasn’t moving when her son finally handed her the phone.

“Dad wants, to talk, to you,” he stuttered, not yet able to breathe normally after his outburst. He swiping his other arm across his wet, crimson face. It came away covered in snot and tears. He rubbed it onto his shorts. “I want, a snack, too,” he added quietly as she took the phone. He smeared both hands across his face and then rubbed his eyes. She snapped what was left of the granola bar in half and handed both boys their share. She faced forward.

Her husband was laughing when she got the phone to her ear. “It’s not funny!” she snapped, still frustrated. Then, too low for the boys to hear, she whispered, “He was awful! He nearly pegged me in the back of the head with one of his cars!”

“Yeah, that’s why I told him his cars were going to Goodwill for some other well-behaved boy to play with.”

The mother nodded. “Ah, so that’s why he let out that awful scream right at the first!” The bumper in front of her moved. Traffic finally was starting to creep forward. She sighed in relief.

“Yeah, it got his attention. Then, I just had to wait for him to calm down enough to tell me what started it all.”

“The sign.” She said too loudly. She flinched and looked at the mirror. Sometimes, a word would trigger a second round of fits. Both boys had bits of granola stuck on their faces and were poking around at the tangle of toys between their seats. They stopped as the van came level with the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. It was only a little bumper bender, but it got both of them jabbering with excitement. “Looks like whatever you told him worked. He’s over it now.”

“Yeah –you should have just made up something about the sign. You know he never gives up when he wants to know something.”

“Yeah, I wonder where he gets all that stubbornness from!” The dad laughed. “And for your information, Mr. Smartypants, I did make something up! I told him it said for him to be quiet and let me drive!”

“That’s such a mommy lie!” the dad laughed. “No kid would ever believe that!”

“Fine! You’re the better liar. I admit it!” she chuckled, feeling much better now that she was past the wreck and the tantrum both. “What did you tell him anyway?”

“Simple. You saw it near the park, right? I think that’s what he said anyway. It was hard to tell with all the crying. Well, anyway, I told him that he was right, it was a warning sign that told people to Beware of the Flautists!”

The mother burst out laughing. “And my lie was stupid? He actually bought that?”

“Sure he did! I had to explain it, of course. And flautists can be quite dangerous, you know. Especially at the park! If you drive or walk too close, they lash out with those metal flutes. Those things sting! They can break bones, too, or slash holes in tires. You really have to watch out for those flautists, sweetie!”

The mother shook her head even though her husband couldn’t see it. “You’re awful!”

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it? I just hope you guys don’t run into some real flautists today. It might freak him out.”

“Ha, that’d serve him right!” she giggled. “Little Sister’s being really quiet. Is she playing in her room?”

“Nah, she’s been asleep ever since you guys left. I was going to do some laundry, but I decided to play games online instead since you were out goofing around with the boys…”

The mother cursed and hung up the phone. Then, she prayed a third prayer, this time to keep her from killing her husband when she finally made it home.

Thirty Days Hath Google

2007-07-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

"Hey! Look at that!" Bernard said over his shoulder as they stepped off the ferry.

"How could I not? It's as long as the ferryboat almost!"

"Yeah, I know! I'm a little disappointed actually. I think it should be bigger."

"Keep it up, Mr. Bighead, and I'll switch to the other side!" Ann shoved him on the right shoulder just as he started up the steps at the end of the boarding platform. Bernard stumbled but caught himself on the railing with his right hand. His gym bag slipped off his other shoulder, making him fumble with that hand to catch it.

Ann didn't bother hiding her amusement at her brother's expense. She laughed loud enough that the three people that had shared the ride to the island turned around and looked back down the steps.

"Fine! Go ahead" Bernard said in mock anger. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a slim red phone. "And kill me too while you’re at it! Good thing that railing was there or I'd have fallen into the surf and been sucked away into the ocean and drowned!" He harrumphed loudly and spun on one heel.

Ann followed him up the steps, giggling. The ferry’s wake was still slapping the beach below. At most it was a two foot drop from the dock to the beach. "Drowned. Yeah, right. Whatever, Drama Boy. You’d have a better chance of knocking your brains out on a pebble down there than drowning."

“Hey, anything’s possible, traitor,” he said over his shoulder, still pretending to be mad. Then, he grinned. “Hey, I’m proof of that, right?”

The siblings had reached the top of the stairs now and were level with the parking lot. A white placard bolted to two concrete posts pointed to the North Hatton Island Visitor’s Center on their right. Dwarfing that sign, however, was what had caught their attention earlier. A long white vinyl banner, probably close to thirty feet long, was strung high between two of the parking lot’s light poles. On it was a message printed in blue block capital letters each three feet high: "THINK POSITIVE, ST. BERNARD! WE DO."

Bernard held up his cell phone and snapped a couple of pictures of the banner. Then, he turned and held the phone out backwards so that he could be in the foreground of the shots. After each click, he spun around and changed his facial expression into a different emotion. He went from happy to surprised to proud to dazed to nauseated in just a matter of a minute or so.

Laughing, Ann set down her bag and pulled out her digital camera. She started hamming it up with her brother. She alternated between taking backwards shots of herself with her brother’s welcoming banner in the background and snapping photos of her brother’s hilarious poses. When he jumped onto a bench and threw both his arms up directly beneath the ST., she shouted, “Work it, Miracle Boy!” like a runway photographer to a model. Bernard burst out laughing and fell onto the bench. Holding his sides, he waved her away as she kept taking more pictures.

“No, Sis,” he scolded, hugging his sides to try to stop laughing, “Don’t take pix when I’m down! It’ll ruin my image!”

“Ha ha! Can you say blackmail? extortion?” Ann cackled dramatically, still taking photos until he straightened and flipped his phone shut against his thigh. With his other hand, he also flipped her off, which to her delight she caught on camera. She danced around in a circle with the camera clutched to her chest. “Oooh! Pay dirt, brother! P-A-Y-dirt!”

Bernard jumped at her as though he were going to wrestle the camera away. Instinctively, she leaned forward and curled her body around it. All he did though was lock his right arm around her neck and rub his left knuckles briskly across her scalp. She squealed but didn’t drop the camera.

“Ha to you, Anna Banana!” He let her go and stuck his tongue out at her as he called her by the nickname he gave her that used to make her cry as a little girl. “The only thing you’ll get out of me will be more noogies!”

Ann was leaning on her knees laughing but still had her arms pulled close to her chest. She shuffled over to her bag like a crab guarding a morsel of food and stuffed her camera inside. Straightening, she grabbed her brother’s elbow and tugged him toward the weathered white building at the far end of the sidewalk.

“Come on, Mr. Saint Bernard, let’s stop playing and get to that Visitor Center. They’ll tell us how to get to this Cutie Pie Man you have to see.”

“Mercutio Pieta, Ann.” Bernard snorted. He fell into step behind her. “I am meeting with Cardinal Mercutio Pieta. Get it right. Cutie Pie Man makes him sound like some pedophile or goofy Pokemon collector.”

Ann raised an eyebrow and smirked, “There’s a difference?”

Bernard chuckled. “Just call him Church Guy if you forget, okay.” Ann nodded, and they walked a few steps in silence. As they neared the building, they noticed that a large crowd of people had gathered on a big veranda on its far side. The sidewalk they were following looked like it led right up to the crowd. The building’s main entrance had to be there.

“Do you think he’s meeting us here?” Bernard asked quietly as they approached the crowd. “I figured you’d have to go to a church to talk to a canonization expert, but I see a whole lot of people up there.”

At about the same time that Ann noticed that signs bearing Bernard’s name stuck on poles and hanging from the building’s roof, the people on the veranda started cheering. The cheer was obviously heartfelt but a little ragged since probably three-fourths of the crowd was quite elderly. Ann sighed. Ever since her brother’s powers became obvious, she’d seen crowds like this one many times. Her heart still ached for how eager they were though.

“It’s just talk anyway, Little Brother. If this ‘expert’ is here or not, these people have brought some work for you to do here first, I think.” Ann jerked her chin toward the waiting people. Her brother nodded, his young face suddenly very composed. His exuberance and goofiness of only a few minutes before had gone somewhere deep within himself, and a look of intense sincerity and caring had taken its place.

They neared the veranda, and she started counting crutches, wheelchairs, walkers, and even a stretcher or two. A few people who were more mobile had canes they waved, and Ann counted them, too. The faces of the hopeful but obviously healthy she ignored.

“Looks like we’ll be maybe an hour or two,” Ann whispered. “Unless more show up, that is. And it’s possible. I mean, obviously, you’ve got quite a fan club going on here. Who knew. I thought this island was an out of the way place.”

A grin flitted across his face, showing that her brother was still her brother, no matter what wonderful things he might be able to do.

“Yeah, me too, Sis,” he whispered back. “You know, I was really hoping when I agreed to this canonization petition that it’d at least get us a trip to Rome. But no, we get to meet someone in an island in Maine. Ooooh! Whoopee!”

Ann had time to smother a laugh before they reached the end of the sidewalk. Then, arm in arm, the brother and sister stepped up onto the veranda into a sea of outstretched hands.

It Was a Dark and Googly Night

2007-07-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and stormy night. A perfect night for murder.

“Hey! Joey! Man, it’s way too dark back here!”

Well, almost perfect, Eddie thought as he turned to look at his partner. Why Mr. Lee wanted this to be a two-man job, I don’t know.

“Shut up!” Joey hissed. “You want to give us away? Blow the whole thing?”

“Nah, but can’t we move closer to the elevator? Light’s better there. Here, I can’t see my own hands in front of me.”

“You don’t need to see your hands – you only need to see the vick.”

“But by the elevator…”

“He’ll walk out, we’ll jump out. Surprise! Whammo with the bats! We'll take a few pics, send them to the boss, then go get some Starbucks and coffee cake! It's that easy!”

Joey set his the tip of his baseball bat between his feet to hold it steady. He peeled off his thin black gloves and flexed his long fingers. His knuckles popped. Waiting always made him tense. The partner Mr. Lee had assigned wasn’t helping matters either.

“You’re not listenin’, Joe,” Eddie whispered, leaning in. His breath smelled like the peppermints he’d been crunching earlier until Joey stopped him. “What I’m sayin’ is that we’d have more light if we waited by the elevator. I’d do a better job if I could see what I was hittin’.”

“What’s to see, Eddie? We have baseball bats! Hit the guy anywhere and he’s going down. Keep on hitting and the job’s done.”

Eddie was silent for a minute. Joey kept his eyes on the brightly lit square of the parking garage by the elevator. Their target would walk out of that elevator exactly eight seconds after its bell chimed. Joey knew because he’d been able to time it twenty-five times already. In the final seconds of the game, the two hit men had slipped past security to the team’s private level of the garage, five levels below the arena. The northeast corner held some maintenance equipment, storage bins, trashcans, and a sweeper mounted on a white Chevy truck.

Joey had decided that a spot next to the sweeper was dark enough to keep the players from seeing them even if they’d lost and walked out slowly. Plus, the spot was still close enough to the elevator that they could watch everyone leaving the locker rooms and getting into their cars. All but two spots were empty now – a red Honda and a bright yellow Hummer. They were waiting on the vick – the hockey team’s mascot, Pucky the Purple Pig. Or more specifically, the guy behind the pigskin mask.

And everything’s going perfectly! Two cars left, just like Mr. Lee’s email said, Joey thought to himself. We’re in the perfect spot. And the storm up top sets the perfect tone.

Even through three levels of steel and concrete he could hear the boom and rumble of the thunder. The rain hadn’t made it this far down, but the air was damp and heavy. His thin cotton ski mask felt like a wet bag pulled across his face. He pulled the neck up for a second and breathed deeply twice. The air tasted like exhaust. He grimaced and covered his face again.

Joey slipped his gloves back on and swung his bat up slowly to his right shoulder. He slid his grip up and down the wooden handle a few times. Finding the right spot took only a second or two. College ball hadn’t been so long ago after all, he reminded himself.

His knee made him stop playing, but obviously his hands hadn’t forgotten what to do. Grinning under his mask, he lowered the bat and tapped its tip gently against the soles of his Converse sneakers. They were all black, like his mask and his sweats. He’d even chosen black ash wood for the bat.

Perfect bat for slamming home runs. And perfect for slamming the head in on hockey mascots, too! This is turning out to be a perfect hit.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. The sound of teeth grinding hard peppermints brought him back to reality.

Almost perfect, he thought for a second time and turned to Eddie. The younger man was dressed just like Joey but had his ski mask pushed up past his forehead. He was unwrapping a green-and-white peppermint slowly, muffling the crinkling plastic somewhat . He stopped when he saw Joey staring.

“You don’t chew hard candy on a job! I told you that already!” Joey whispered, forcing all of his annoyance and anger into his eyes and into his voice. “And you’d better not be dropping any of those wrappers either! The last thing we need is a trail of candy wrappers leading back to us!”

“Course I’m not droppin’ the wrappers – I’m not a noob,” Eddie grunted as he shoved a handful of mints back into the front pocket of his sweatshirt. “Just don’t see why we have to hide in the shadows and dress in all black and use these stupid bats.”

The younger man kicked with one toe at the bat he’d leaned against the sweeper. To Joey’s dismay, he’d shown up at the assigned meeting place dressed like a college kid and carrying a cheap aluminum bat. Only Joey’s threats to text Mr. Lee made him reluctantly change and then cover the shiny barrel with tape on the ride to the arena.

Eddie kept griping. “This whole hit’s been a hassle and a waste of time, right from the start. I could’ve picked the vick off with my M40A3 from outside and avoided all this clichéd crap.”

“Dammit, Eddie! We talked about all this back at the gym!” Joey fought the urge to brain his co-worker with his ash bat. “If you want to call the shots, go freelance! Get a MySpace and advertise! Then, you can do it your way. Wear a clown suit and hit your vicks with a frying pan if you want! But for now, you have to do it the way the boss says!”

Eddie grunted, but the elevator chimed suddenly. Silencing both men, it reverberated off the concrete walls and steel pylons supporting the roof. Joey’s eyes snapped to the lighted area. Eddie tugged his mask down into place.

Eight seconds! Joey mentally began counting them down. He flexed glove fingers around his bat. He readied his stance. At his side, he sensed Eddie doing the same thing.

Seven seconds! According to the email, the vick would walk out with #71, the team center. The vick drove the Honda. The center drove the Hummer.

Six seconds! The vick and the center always left the locker room last so that no one would know they were dating. The center would be wearing a jersey. The vick would be carrying the mascot head.

Five seconds! Jealous spouse? Angry fan? Owner afraid of bad publicity if it leaks that the star center’s being gay with a purple pig? Joey didn’t know and didn’t care – his job was just to follow the boss’s orders.

Four seconds! The vick and the center would walk to the Hummer and make sure that no one was around. Then, the vick and the center would share a long kiss.

Three seconds! The kiss would be the best time to get to work. The vick and the center would be occupied and caught by surprise. Kill the vick and do whatever to the center. That’s all the orders had said. That’s all Joey needed to know.

Two seconds! Behind the closed doors, the elevator settled at the bottom of the shaft with a dull thud. Joey bounced slightly on the balls of his feet. He tightened his grip on the ash handle of his bat. A rush of adrenaline flowed through him. He felt like he was back at bat in the state finals.

One second! Joey heard muffled crinkles coming from his left. Ignoring it, he clenched his teeth. He had to keep his eyes on the elevator doors. Out of sight, gears began grinding. A metallic clang echoed as everything locked into place.

Open Sesame! His timing was perfect. The doors parted with a hum at that exact moment.

Out walked a tall blond-haired man wearing a red, black, and silver jersey emblazoned with the number 71. He was smiling and laughing.

The center! Joey breathed.

The second person walked out of the elevator. Just like the order emailed to Joey said, the vick was carrying a giant purple pig’s head. Much shorter than the center, the vick was laughing at whatever his boyfriend had said on the ride from the locker rooms.

Her boyfriend, Joey corrected himself as the couple looked around and then walked hand-in-hand toward the parked vehicles. She's laughing at her girlfriend. The vick's a woman.

Beneath the mask, he bit his lower lip. His thoughts whirled around like the gears grinding the elevator doors shut. Damn. I assumed it was a guy. Stupid to assume anything. I know better. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just a mistake. Mr. Lee forgot or got some papers mixed up – that’s all. Left out a detail on the order. It happens all the time probably. Just hasn't to me before. But nothing to get upset about. Easy to fix. Just got to talk to Eddie for a secong...

Eddie leaned over and pressed his face against Joey’s left cheek.

“How about that! The vick’s a girl! I had no idea! And she’s cute! Lucky us, huh, Joe? Maybe doing this up close won’t be so bad after all!”

With Eddie’s face pressed against his, Joey could feel the young man’s molars ever so slowly crunch down through a piece of candy. And even through both of their masks, he could smell the peppermint. Eddie chuckled quietly as he pulled back and looked at the couple. They’d reached their cars.

“Look! They’re getting’ ready to kiss! God, she’s hot! It's time. You ready for some fun, Joe?”

Joey exhaled and held it. He stepped back and set his weight on his right leg. With muscles trained by years spent on high school and college baseball teams, he swung his bat up and smoothly to the left. His speed was incredible – a decade spent pursuing his present career ensured that the younger hit man didn’t have a chance.

“Shut up!” Joey hissed as his muscles went through the familiar motions that had once given him the most joy in his life.

As he spoke, the tip of his hard ash bat connected with a solid thonk against Eddie’s left temple. The man dropped to the pavement without a sound. His legs twitched a few times but stopped after Joey slammed down another hit. He hit a third time just to be sure. It was kind of a tradition when he did a hit – he called it the Power of Three. It worked just as well with a ball bat as it did with a gun.

Satisfied, Joey finally inhaled. He straightened. He laid the bat down carefully and pulled out his phone. Behind him, the vick and her hockey center boyfriend broke their kiss and started getting into their vehicles.

By the time Joey finished his text, the Hummer and the Honda had left him alone in the parking garage. The storm still rumbled up on the surface.

It took him longer to text than most people. Refusing to use silly abbreviations, he typed out each word. He even put commas where they belonged. When he was done, he hit and started planning what to do with Eddie’s body.

A few seconds later, Thomas Lee received this text message during dessert with his wife and children:

Mr. Lee, I apologize for any inconvenience, but I did not finish tonight's project. I had not been told that the pig was female. You will remember that my application and my resume both specify my policy regarding females. I shall pay for wasted resources, time lost and also for company property I destroyed (ED). Also, this message is my two weeks’ notice. I’m considering pursuing freelance work elsewhere. Would you consider being a reference?

Happy Googles to You!

2007-07-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

Who knew that nature sucked?

I sure didn’t.

I mean, I knew that I liked being indoors. I knew that I’d miss air conditioning and the internet, but I thought nature would be all right. It was just for a weekend anyway – actually a four-day weekend, but I survive five days of school each week, so I didn’t think it would be a big deal.

I mean, four days of nature couldn’t be worse than school, right?

Wrong!

If I’d known how wrong I was, I would have told my mom I had a sore throat. I’d have come down with sudden violent constipation. I’d have faked seizures. I’d have done something – anything! – to have gotten out of this stupid field trip!

Trust me, national parks suck. I know that now. It’s too late for me, but if you find yourself with the choice of hiking to a waterfall or spending the day at school, pick school everytime.

Don’t go on the trip.

Trust me.

See, I didn’t know. No one told me. I fell for the hype: “Think of it, class! Two days out of school! A four-day weekend! You’ll get to share a tent with a friend and go canoeing! We’ll see the highest waterfall in the state! We’ll explore a cave with three species of endangered bats! You’ll reconnect with nature!”

Blah blah blah.

Mrs. K. might as well have added that we were going to dress like 1920’s flappers, smoke dried banana peels, and discover our animal spirit guides. I wouldn’t have cared. She had me hooked with the two days out of school.

Big mistake. School is so much better. Even right now – I’d be in Keyboarding, but I don’t care. That’d beat this by a long shot. I need some technology right now, even if it’s with Mrs. Crowell. That’s how much nature sucks.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against waterfalls or against nature in general. I’m not a tree hater. I don’t abuse animals. I always throw my trash in the trash can. I recycle when I remember to. I don’t start forest fires. I’m taking environmental science as an elective. I think nature’s cool.

In theory. From a distance.

But up close, in person, for an extended period of time? Trees all are looking alike. Kids are getting excited about chipmunks and caterpillars. Lungs are hurting from all the fresh air. Sinuses are itching from pollen and God knows what else I’m breathing. Brain is shutting down from inactivity. I probably going to slip into sleep mode and roll back down to the trailhead.

And the packed parking lot, let me add. That’s right – packed. And not with motorcycles or little cars either. We’re talking other school busses, tour busses, church busses, busses from old folks’ homes, SUV’s the size of busses, enormous hummers seating ten or twenty probably, ancient station wagons, minivans with campers – not a two-seater in the bunch. Some major car pooling was going on to protect the ozone, I guess.

It’s got to be all the stuff on the news about the greenhouse effect. Everybody’s rushing out to blow their CO2 on the trees and suck up all the oxygen while it’s still free. My sister’s really into all that conservation-ecological crap. She’s always bookmarking environmental sites and downloading signs to hang in her bedroom or on her locker. I have to fight to get time to level my Warcraft toons or download new music for my iPod.

Oh yeah, this is great trip, Mrs. K!

I’m really reconnecting with nature here! Yeah, me and about a million other people.

We’re all pitching tents and singing “This Land is Your Land”, snapping digital photos of anthills, and looking up the types of bark in our free field guides from the welcome center. What a fantastic wonderful time we’re having standing in line watching moss grow! We’re making memories that we can treasure forever!

I’m being sarcastic, of course. I can reconnect with nature way better in my bedroom. Link to the park’s virtual tour. Watch a Photobucket slide show. Eat some trail mix. Even read a book. All way better than standing for an hour on a nature trail just to see a freaking waterfall!

Stand in line for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Probably.

Stand in line for Guitar Hero III? Definitely.

Stand in line to ride the Kingda Ka? Of course!

Stand in line for Bloodhoung Gang tickets? Absolutely!

Stand in line for a waterfall? No way! We’re talking cruel and unusual punishment there! And probably against the Geneva Convention, now that I think about. Prisoners have rights, too, you know. I’ve read blogs about Guantanamo Bay.

But not Mrs. K, I guess. She’s oblivious, and here I am.

Me and just about a billion other people all here on the same day, all doing the same thing. All lined up down a nature trail just to watch what basically goes on in our bathroom showers. And back home, I only have to wait on my sister to get finished.

Not here though. Mrs. K woke us at seven, just so we could come here and wait. It’s been an hour. I can’t see the top of the trail. I can’t even hear the falls yet. My ankles hurt. I’m bored. But I’m stuck.

What other choice do I have? Run off the trail into the wilderness in search of civilization? No way – I’ve seen Deliverance. Email mom and dad? No luck – too many trees, no Wifi, and they were too glad I was getting out of the house. Fake heart trouble because of the rigorous climb? No chance – I wouldn’t get sent home. Mrs. K showed us the emergency first aid station at the campground, and I thought the ranger there looked like a serial killer. No one else agreed, but my luck’s not running so good. He’d say he was driving me to a hospital, but I’d probably end up down a well in his basement having to rub lotion on my skin so he can do his little kooky dance.

Nothing to do but stick it out.

And record everything. So in a few hours when I go Donner Party and start eating the kid in front of me, the police’ll find my Blackberry and know the reason why.

I was just reconnecting with nature, officers. Survival of the fittest. Circle of life. Nature of the beast.

Sucks, doesn’t it?

Just Sign on the Dotted Google

2007-07-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

Ham Shapiro had worked at Jackson Lampmakers Ltd. for a little over thirty-five years. In that time, he’d done lots of jobs, from starting out sweeping the assembly rooms to being one of the top assemblers in the factory. According to the chalkboard by the time clock, he currently held two records that the other line workers hadn’t beaten: The Most Consecutive Days Without Illness or Accident (312) and the ‘Catch-All’ Clear Line Award (62.4 inches).

The ‘Catch-All’ Award had to do with his working the very tail end of the Floor Lamp Base line. Only the best workers could be put in the last spot of any line. It’s what the foremen call the ‘Catch-All’ position. His job was to put the final twists and turns on all the bolts and screws that the workers in front of him had laid into place. If any were missing or crooked, he had to correct them, and at the same time, he had to lay the brass top plate on each lamp base in its exact position and set its fasteners. Only then could he slide the finished base to his right to switch it over to the next line. A lot of clear line between the Catch-All and the first worker of the next line meant that the Catch-All was fast and accurate. A fast Catch-All meant his line could move faster, and a faster line meant more units could be manufactured. The factory bosses gave the Catch-All’s incentives to move more efficiently – the key to the foremen’s lavatory and free meals in the canteen, not to mention the higher pay for more units produced. The line with the fastest Catch-All got daily bonuses also, so that motivated the workers to make few mistakes and to work faster themselves.

With over two yards of clear line to his right and nearly a year of perfect attendance, Ham Shapiro couldn’t be touched by anyone trying to beat his records. He was so good that there was even talk going around in the canteen about his name being moved from the chalkboard to a metal plaque. He was the factory’s golden child, people said. The foremen loved his speed and consistency, the workers on his line loved their bonuses, and the bosses loved the figures on their production sheets.

Add to those things these three facts that everyone at Jackson Lamplighters Ltd. knew about Ham: he never lost his temper, he never laughed at off-color jokes, and he always smoked a quarter of a cigar in the canteen at the close of each day’s shift. People also gossiped that he had studied with Prussian scientists at a university in his home country. Others reported that as a youth he had sworn secret oaths to the Kaiser and then fled to America just before the War ended. One or two Catch-All’s from other lines even whispered that he had a portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II in his apartment. But no one really believed those tales. They were too unlikely.

What people did believe were his work records and those three facts. Everything else people said about him was idle rumor. Ham always went straight home after his cigar, and always alone. He never invited anyone, and the few curious enough to invite themselves were always kindly turned away. Nosy people could never get him to say anything about his personal life either. If pushed, he would reluctantly talk about only two subjects – work or temple. Nothing more, nothing less.

So people thought that’s all there was to Ham Shapiro – just the factory and the scriptures. Even his landlady believed that was all there was to the quiet, middle-aged assembly line worker who rented the basement of her boarding house.

When he didn’t come to the factory on what would have been the 313th day, the foremen knew something had to be terribly wrong. When they telephoned his boarding house and heard that he wasn’t answering the landlady’s knock and had bolted his door, they feared the worst.

When men from the factory came to the boarding house to help break down the door on what would have been the 314th unmissed work day, they expected to find Ham Shapiro dead.

When the men discovered an empty apartment filled with a homemade forge and crates of metal tools and parts stolen from the factory over the past thirty-five years, they all scratched their heads and wondered why Ham needed all that metal.

When they learned that police had found strange chemicals and foreign schematics among the stolen goods and that federal agents had come in to investigate, they all remembered the rumors about Ham having sworn secret oaths to the Kaiser before the War.

When they read in the papers that the U.S. Government had confirmed that the basement apartment had been a bomb factory for at least the past thirty years, they wondered how where Ham had taken the bombs and how many he could have made over three decades.

When they heard on the radio that the discovery in Ham’s apartment had led federal agents to over a dozen similarly abandoned basement factories in cities across the country, they realized that Ham must have had many more connections that just at the factory and at temple.

When the explosions started a month later, they all realized that they hadn’t known Ham Shapiro at all.

How Much Is That Google in the Window?

2007-07-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Sparky’s tongue always got him into trouble.

He was just a puppy, but he knew that all the trouble couldn’t be his fault. It was his tongue!

Like today, when Sparky managed to pull snag the ice cream container out of the trash can. He wanted to show the master that he had thrown the tub away too early. He could smell cookies and cream stuck at the bottom. He was really careful and, even with his recent injury his tongue had caused, he hadn’t spilled any garbage on the kitchen floor. His tongue, though, wanted a taste, and that’s what started the trouble this time.

It was always his tongue that made Sparky misbehave. It made him break things. It created hopeless messes. It provoked the master and made him shake his finger at him. It even made the master call Sparky a naughty little dog! His tongue sometimes made Sparky feel so sad that he had to run and hide behind the big recliner in the master’s den.

However, even back there out of sight, he couldn’t get away from his tongue. The sneaky pink thing was always right there, right in his mouth, just behind his teeth. It even popped out of his mouth all the time, wiggling and drooling all over the place. No matter how hard Sparky tried, he could never keep it tucked away out of sight. It was always looking for trouble.

And trouble was so easy for his tongue to find.

Once, it found trouble in the kitchen when the master dropped an ice cube. Sparky just wanted to sniff it, to see what the cold thing smelled like, but guess what his tongue did?

It popped out, it touched the cube, and it stuck there! It wouldn’t let go!

Sparky shook his head until his ears clapped. He hopped in a circle. He yipped and yapped. Then, he ran all around the kitchen, shaking and hopping and yipping and yapping, but he couldn’t get his tongue to drop that ice cube. When Sparky knocked over his water bowl, the master yelled, and only then, of course, did his tongue finally let go. The ice cube fell right into his food dish where it melted all over his Nibbly Dibbles – Yuck! Sparky liked his dibbles crispy! Not soggy and mushy!

His tongue didn’t care though. It liked everything wet.

His tongue found trouble once when the master had company. Sparky hopped onto the bed just to wag his tail and say hello to the master’s friend. He wanted to show her the new trick his master had taught him. He just wanted to be friendly. He didn’t want to scare her and make her scream. His tongue did that. The master punished Sparky though. He shook his finger, called him a naughty little dog, and then locked him in the garage with the noisy crickets.

His tongue didn’t care about the garage. It kept trying to lick one of the crickets.
Another time his tongue caused so much trouble that Sparky had to visit the vet. The master was cleaning the hallway upstairs, and Sparky was having fun playing one of his favorite games – tag the vacuum cleaner. He was having a good time, and everything would have been fine if his tongue had behaved itself. The vacuum didn’t mind barking, the vacuum didn’t mind snapping, the vacuum didn’t even mind a little chewing, but Sparky found out that it hated wet dog tongues. Sparky rushed in to tag the machine, his tongue stuck itself out, and the vacuum bit his tongue right on its pink tip. Sparky yelped, jumped back, and fell right down the stairs. He hurt his back and had to ride in the car to the clinic. Sparky hated that place – the scary smells upset his stomach, and he was already hurting from his tumble downstairs.

His tongue didn’t mind getting hurt though. It didn’t even care that the vacuum had bitten it. It was still having a great time licking the strange thing the vet put around Sparky’s back legs.

Then, his tongue caused this latest disaster with the ice cream container. It just had to have a taste and got Sparky’s head stuck inside the plastic tub. The tub covered his eyes, it covered his ears, and his nose couldn’t smell anything except ice cream. He tried to bark, but the tub was too tightly wedged around his face. He wanted to roll on his back or run around, but he still had the vet thing on his back legs and couldn’t.

He could shake his head from side to side. The tub didn’t budge though. It was stuck on his collar, he thought. Then, he knocked something over. The trash can, he realized when he felt crinkly wrappers and slimy banana peels under his front paws. It made a big mess, he guessed, and something yucky had probably fallen into his Nibbly Dibbles, too. With what felt like wet coffee grounds stuck in his paws, he backed his way slowly out of the kitchen, whining for help the whole time.

It took Sparky a long time, but he finally found the master. The master had his friend over again. Sparky heard her laughing and knew that it was at him. He whined louder and shook his trapped head. The tub hit something, and there was a huge crash and a female screamed. Then, the master shouted the dreaded words – “Naughty little dog!” – and even through the plastic container, Sparky knew that the finger was shaking at him.

His tongue didn’t care about words or fingers though. It didn’t care about being stuck in a tub or knocking over trash cans or soggy dibbles or tracking coffee grounds all through the master’s house. It didn’t even care about loud crashes or screaming ladies.

His tongue did like ice cream though, and, no matter how much Sparky whined and tried to keep his mouth shut inside that ice cream tub, his tongue just kept licking and licking and licking…

Fe-Fi-Fo-Google

2007-07-23T17:29:00.001-07:00

My grand-dad is a quiet man. He always has been, for at least as long as I can remember.

But don’t get me wrong, he’s not quiet in the sense that he sits around and doesn’t talk to anybody. That’s not true about him at all – he’s always enjoyed joking around and telling good stories. What I mean by quiet is that he thinks about what he says before he says it. Looking back, I can’t think of a single time that he ever went off the deep end and yelled at me, not even when I broke the lock on his car trying to pick it with a piece of copper wire. Sure, he was mad, but he wasn’t loud. He was calm and in control, and that made me listen. His quiet way of dealing with things worked, and I really admire that now that I’m a dad myself.

I admire it even more when I think about how hard he worked back then. I mean, I work two jobs now to take care of my family, and my temper gets short, but I’m super-lazy compared to how hardworking he was and still is. I learned that about him first hand when I was nine and my mom and I moved in with him and my grandma.

He worked at the glass plant then, but he still made time to farm a couple of fields, keep a few cows, and get us all to church three or more times each week. And when he finally retired, he didn’t just kick his heels back and take it easy. No, he cut wood, bush-hogged fields, planted fruit trees, and took care of the house, the church, and all of us whenever we needed it. When he got sick a few times, he always bounced right back up and got right to work. When my grandma got really sick, he cut back on some things around the farm but worked extra hard taking care of her.

Now that I’m in my thirties, I look back and really admire how quietly and patiently he works at taking care of everything. But as a kid, I didn’t appreciate all that extra labor, especially in the garden – I was a city boy at heart, I guess, and enjoyed the air conditioning too much. I’d always sneak back to the house to cool off or play a quick game until my mom made me go back and help. I just didn’t understand back then why we had to do all that extra work. I sure didn’t mind the fresh corn on the cob and beans when my grandma cooked them though.

A lot of years have passed since then, and a lot has changed. I still like to eat, but we lost my grandma this year, and the garden’s not as big as it was when I was a kid. But this much hasn’t changed though – my grand-dad can still work circles around me and a lot of people who are only a quarter of his age. He never boasts about it though, and he never tries to make anyone feel bad. He just keeps moving along and getting things done.

I guess it’s a combination of his being quiet and always working so hard that makes me admire him so much. I have three little children that I want to be a good example to, and so did he when my mom was little. I know that it’s hard for me to work hard and then keep calm when my kids act crazy, so I think about him when I get really stressed.

I remember a story my mom tells me about my grand-dad getting mad at her when she was little. She’s the oldest and was maybe four or five at the time, my uncle was a couple of years behind her, and my aunt was only a little baby. My grandma had gotten the whole family going to church, and she and my grand-dad were both pretty strict about having their children behave during the services.

The church was a little building with a narrow auditorium made all out of wood. There was no carpet on the floor and no padding on the seats. My mom says that every little sound echoed in that auditorium. They had to sit extra quiet and not kick their heels on the chairs or play with little toys or do anything noisy. My grand-dad especially didn’t want them misbehaving and disrupting the services.

Well, on the day that my mom talks about, the preacher was in the middle of his sermon when a big swarm of termites buzzed in through an open window. My mom remembers sitting and staring at them, but a look from my grand-dad was enough to keep her in her seat and quiet. Then, the termites flew up and started hovering around the preacher, who just kept preaching the Word like nothing was happening. It was too much for my mom, who jumped up and ran out into the aisle to get a better look. She says those termites kept circling in the light over the preacher's head like a big halo. She pointed and jumped and called to her brother to come see the bugs on the preacher’s head until my grand-dad scooped her up and took her out. She laughs about it now when she tells the story at family get-togethers, and she has a few more like it.

What I admire though is that she always starts off the stories by telling about what she or my aunt and uncle did to get in trouble and then finishes with how my grand-dad corrected them. He didn’t scream, he didn’t lose his temper, he didn’t throw things or scare them half to death. He just quietly explained what they did wrong and worked at getting them to do better the next time.

I admire that about him, and I hope that I can work at being a dad and later a grand-dad that’s even a quarter of the kind of man that he is.

Seven Deadly Googles

2007-07-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

“Hey, Gret? Turned out to be a beautiful day after all! No rainclouds anywhere and a nice breeze so we won’t sweat to death! Told you there was nothing to worry about!”

Robin literally bounced into the junior bathroom to share this good news with her best friend. She was wearing a rabbit costume, but bouncing seemed to come naturally to this girl. She couldn’t stand still more than a second, hopping from mirror to mirror and wiggling her pink-painted nose at her reflection.

From inside the stall, Gretta wondered for the millionth time how her best friend since fourth grade could always be so full of fun and energy.

“You alive in there, Gret?” Robin yelled and jumped over to kick at the closed stall door with one big fuzzy foot. “Everyone else has already gone outside to line up!”

“Just fixing my costume!” shouted Gretta. “I’ll just be a second. And you’re right, I shouldn’t have worried!”

“Yeah, you not worry? Ha! I’m going to wait just outside, so hurry up! We can’t be late!”

Robin kicked again at the stall door and then bounced back out into the hall while her friend struggled to get ready.

Gretta sighed. She was already wearing most of her costume – the suit and the matching shirt and tie. The only part left other than a few accessories was the mask. It waited in the brown paper bag at her feet. Unable to stall any longer, she pulled it out and started wiggling it onto her head. It was a little difficult to get on, but that was how she had wanted. Hard to put on, hard to fall off, she’d reasoned while she was working with her grandmother to put everything together in the weeks leading up to Duggan Academy’s homecoming parade.

While Gretta didn’t have her friend’s energy, she did have more than enough creativity for both of them. With help from her grandmother only on the hardest bits of sewing, she’d made the shiny purple three-piece suit almost entirely by hand . She’d sculpted the paper mache lion mask herself and, for the mane, she’d attached strips of brown velour and felt with thin wire that let them curl and bounce the way she wanted. She’d even Scotch-guarded it all in case it rained on the parade day. For the final touches, she’d borrowed a her grandfather’s cane and her older sister’s yellow stiletto heels. Her family had loved the final product.

And Gretta had thought her costume looked really great, too. At least, that’s how she’d felt last night and even earlier this morning. Then, during first period, everyone started showing off their professionally-made or expenisve store-bought costumes. By second period, she’d begun to feel queasy and had asked Robin to check her iPhone to see if the weather forecast had changed. In the next class, she prayed during the whole biology lecture that a big storm would roll in and cancel everything. It didn’t though, because after lunch, the principal’s voice came over the intercom and told everyone it was the time to get dressed and line up with his or her classes,.

So, Gretta had hauled her bags to the bathroom and shut herself in the first available stall. She’d then lingered until everyone else had dressed and gone to the back of the school.

Everyone but her best friend, it seemed.

Gretta sighed and fiddled with the mask a bit more. Outside, Robin apparently had decided Homecoming Day was special enough that the teachers wouldn’t mind her singing at the top of her lungs in the hallway. The words to “Little Bunny Foo Foo” started to drift into the bathroom. In spite of her nerves, Gretta giggled.

“I’m the goon,” she said out loud, her voice echoing inside the mask. “Especially if I make Rob miss the whole parade because I’m hiding in the bathroom.”

With a final twist, she set the mask straight, eyeholes and everything lined up just right so that she could see and breathe at the same time. She pushed open the stall and looked at herself in the long mirror over the sinks. The lion face she’d painted sneered arrogantly back at her with downturned pipecleaner whiskers studded with tiny rhinestones. The brown and gold mane curled just right down to her shoulders. She twisted slowly, and even under the fluorescent lights, the purple lame suit and yellow sequined vest shimmered. In sunlight, she hoped it would be dazzling. She smoothed her yellow tie and straightened the matching handkerchief. She tugged on a pair of shiny yellow nylon gloves and pushed and pulled at a few more places until she heard Robin yell her name from the hallway.

“Coming!” Gretta shouted back. Her voice echoed a bit in the mask and sounded a little spooky. With a half-smile and clenched teeth, she slipped on her sister’s shoes and picked up her grandfather’s cane. She walked out just as she’d practiced, careful to keep her head and back straight so that the top-heavy mask wouldn’t slip. The three-inch heels didn’t help, but she’d decided that she could sacrifice a little comfort and balance for the overall effect.

It worked, too, because her friend squealed excitedly when she saw her.

“I knew you’d look awesome, Gret, but wow! Just wait until those seniors see us! We are so gonna win!” Robin bounced over and offered a big fuzzy paw for a high five. Gretta carefully slapped it with her gloved hand and then laughed when Robin turned and shook her fluffy bunny tail at her.

“Ha, Rob! You make the cutest bunny ever!”

“Of course, I do! All the boy bunnies are crazy about me, you know!”

Robin stopped bouncing long enough to strike a pose like those wannabe glamour shots that she and Gretta made fun of on MySpace. She pursed her lips, tucked her chin down, and fluttered her lashes. Then, she wiggled her pink nose and glued-on whiskers until the two of them burst out laughing.

Suddenly, the principal’s voice boomed over the intercom, telling everyone left in the building that the parade would get underway with or without them in exactly five minutes. Robin’s mood was contagious, and Gretta found herself squealing in excitement along with her.

As they moved down the hall, Robin leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “You know, my mom spent a lot of time online buying this. Nearly starved, it took her so long – thank God that we don’t have dial-up! And, Gret, she clicked her poor mouse finger to the bone! To the bone! And then, why, she even had to type in the credit card number herself. Herself!”

“Oh! However did she survive?” Gretta gasped in mock horror and dramatically placed the back of her right hand against her lion’s forehead. The two girls laughed.

Their friend Cameron was waiting near the exitdoor at the end of their class’s hall. Robin leapt ahead cheering, “Go Juniors! We’re gonna win! We’re gonna win! Go Juniors!”

Cameron was wearing a chubby paper mache snowman suit covered in glittery snowflakes, so she couldn’t jump. She was wearing her ballet slippers though, so instead, she spun a happy little pirouette and chimed, “Go Sophomores!”

She spun again as Gretta walked up and said, “Typical Gret craftsmanship! You look spectacular! Everyone’s going to love it!”

“You, too! I love the carrot!” Gretta replied. Cameron’s mom had cut an oval shape from the snowman’s face and powdered her daughter’s face stark white except for glittery eye makeup and lipstick that gave her a jolly smile. A big plastic carrot nose was the final touch. “How’s it stay on?”

“I know! Duck tape!” Robin giggled before Cameron could answer. Gretta laughed as the bunny and the snowman both pirouetted at the same time.

“You both look so great! Let’s go meet the others before the parade starts!”

The three friends walked outside toward the soccer field at the rear of the school. Robin moved a lot faster in her professionally made bunny costume, so she bounced up ahead and then back, sometimes circling her two more cautious companions. Gretta was feeling a bit more confident, so she prissed a bit on her heels and occasionally spun her crystal-tipped cane. Cameron gracefully walked en pointe along side her, pirouetting occasionally, and waving a candy cane that she’s pulled from somewhere in her costume.

A resounding chorus of oohs and ahs from their classmates greeted their arrival, and Gretta blushed beneath her mask. Her queasiness had vanished, and so had her worries. It was Homecoming Day, and she was with her friends. It was time to have fun.

“Thanks, guys! Everyone looks so wonderful!” she shouted as she joined her class. “But not as wonderful as I look, of course,” she added jokingly, puffing out her chest so that the sunlight dazzled off her sequin vest.

All of the girls laughed at her words. Those whose faces were visible stuck out their tongues. Robin turned and shook her bunny tail in mock anger. The whole while Gretta leaned on her cane and acted as though she was oblivious to the rest of her class.

“Well done, ladies!” a lively voice said suddenly. Gretta turned to see Ms. Tilton, her literature teacher and the junior class sponsor, approaching from farther down the field. The gray-haired woman wore her formal academic robes but was laughing just like her excited students. On one arm, she had a big wicker basket full of differently colored silk sashes. In the other, she held a brown leather clipboard bearing the school emblem. Gretta waved one gloved hand in imitation of a queenly greeting while at her side Cameron danced and Robin bounced.

“Well done, all of you,” Ms. Tilton repeated before addressing Gretta directly. “But I have to say, Miss Bassett, that I overheard your comment to your classmates, and it was the most arrogant, ungrateful, perfectly sinful thing I’ve heard all day! Well done!” As the juniors around them cheered, she removed a thin white sash from her basket. “And your choice of costume is so wonderfully appropriate! You never fail to impress me.”

The teacher handed Gretta the sash, which bore the letters P-R-I-D-E embroidered in gold thread, and added, “Although, technically, you are short a few lions, but we’ll let that little inaccuracy slide in light of this being Homecoming Day and a special occasion.”

Gretta laughed happily and curtsied as she took the sash. She was afraid a bow might knock her head off. While Ms. Tilton passed out sashes to everyone else, Robin helped her pin hers across her jacket and vest, which both almost blindingly reflected the bright sunlight. Once everyone wore a sash, the two best friends and their fellow juniors cheered again, loud enough this time, that the juniors must have heard it. A chant – “Seniors Rule! Seniors Rule!” – rolled in around the school from the front lawn. Gretta thought she could hear the sophomores shouting something, too, from the softball field. A tiny rumble from the rear parking lot meant that even the freshmen were getting into the spirit of the day.

Everyone yelled and laughed until they heard the sound of bagpipes and drums coming from the other side of the school. The junior girls quieted in an instant and looked to Ms. Tilton.

“Come along, my Little Vices! Fall in! Prepare yourselves! The pipers approach! Onward and outward after the Seniors, and not a second earlier!”

The girls waited, giggling and fidgeting as much as their costumes allowed.
The Duggan Academy Marching Band rounded the building first. Then, behind it, proudly marching and singing the alma mater in Latin, came the senior class. Their banner proclaimed their theme for this year’s homecoming – The Seven Holy Virtues – and they wore sashes over their costumes, too.

The juniors fell into step and sang like the seniors. Gretta pranced proudly right behind the banner proclaiming her class’s theme. Robin bounced along at her side, flapping her bright pink sash reading L-U-S-T with every leap. On her other side danced the most graceful paper snowman as Cameron spun with her candy cane – her sash spelling out G-L-U-T-T-O-N-Y. The rest of the Seven Deadly Sins followed along, all singing at the top of their lungs.

By the time, Gretta passed the sophomores – the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – and the freshmen – the Seven Dwarves – her throat hurt from singing, her legs ached from prissing on those heels, and her face dripped inside the hot lion mask.

But she couldn’t have possibly cared less, she was having that much fun. She laughed and pranced with her friends, pride personified.

It turned out to be beautiful day, she thought to herself as the parade marched down the school driveway toward the waiting town.

And we are going to win!

Can We Google It? Yes, We Can!

2007-07-21T09:18:00.000-07:00

The longest night has almost reached its end.

I stand at my first home and await my first true morning.

I stand firm, I have decided, but I have turned away.

I do not fear it, but I cannot face it.

I wait.

The day is stirring on the moors behind me, and I wait to feel the first rays of morning upon my naked back. My skin glows like the pale sliver of moon that still hangs in the distant west. My clothing lies discarded and forgotten along the path I tread alone. I stand as a newborn, unclothed and utterly open.

Chill autumn air wraps around me, but I offer it no embrace. Damp soil sucks at my feet like a corpse’s kiss, but I offer it no warmth of my own. Sharp granite stones bite into my soles, but I do not feed their thirst. Earth, water, and wind can take nothing from me, and they have nothing more to offer me. They are futile, and I ignore them.

Thus, I have returned to Bodmin Moor to find fire. Memories are here as well, but I have no need of them. I need fire, but not one kindled by human hands, nor one made by my own. Nor can I use those nature offers, whether they be forged in the bowels of the earth or thrust down from the heart of the sky. Time and again, those fires have proved to be as futile and as false as every other earthly thing.

No, I have returned to my first home to seek the true fire.

I have come to find my first true morning.

I have stripped, and now stand naked as a newborn to feel the sun’s fire.

My naked back trembles now as the hills in front of me climb up out of night’s shadow. Their tops brighten, and I see the ancient granite tors flashing against the retreating darkness. I remember them standing straight and new and know that behind them lies deep shadow. I am tempted, but like the tors I stand immobile. I know that the darkness they offer is only temporary, and I await a more permanent gift.

First light touches more of the landscape in front of me. I imagine dew on the rolling heather-strewn moors sparkling like stars. The thought calms me, and I search the western sky a final time. I spy the hem of night’s cloak on the horizon, a thin dark band where a few stars linger. The familiar sliver of moon still hangs there. I pretend it is watching me, and I feel comforted.

The skin on the nape of my neck suddenly tingles. The fine hair on my arms and legs prickle and stand erect. My flesh feels awake, engorged by the half-light that begins to surround me. The sun is rising, and the moors continue to brighten. On the heather in front of me, a dim outline is gradually taking shape. It is barely there, but I recognize it.

I have not cried since before I was driven from my first home here so long ago, but my eyes burn now as though they would try to force tears where none could ever be. I know the shape being born at my feet. It is my shadow, a harbinger of the dawn at my back.

Every inch of my skin has come alive. I relish the pain coursing hotly through me like blood did so long ago. I laugh with joy at the feeling. I stretch my arms out to the side as though I am about to fly from the edge of a precipice. My back no longer trembles. My legs are straight. I am steady now.

The first beams of sunlight touch my shoulders.

My true morning has come at last.

The fiery rays hiss into me like freshly forged iron blades thrust into water. The last thing I see before my body bursts apart is my black shadow lying upon the dew-strung heather.

Then, everything turns to light.

Pop Goes the Google

2007-07-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

On the edge of the village, right next to the deep forest, an old woman lived in a tidy little cottage.

Her name was Maigret. She had been married once, to a fine young woodsman, and they had two handsome sons. When a terrible fever raged through the village and snatched away her family, Maigret made a place for them in the center of her flower garden. Within a circle of tall sunflowers, their tombstones were there, wreathed in blue flowers and curling ivy, and so was a little wooden bench. Maigret sat on its worn seat every dawn and every dusk to tell her husband about her dreams and to sing to her children. Her only company was a fat toad that lived beneath the bench and a pair of doves that nested in the ivy. The creatures did not fear her. The toad would hop out and rest on her foot. The doves would fly over to perch on the stool beside her.

All the animals in the village and in the nearby forest loved Maigret. She was a gentle woman, and the beasts knew that she loved all living things both little and big. She never spoke too loud and frightened them. She never moved too quickly and disturbed their homes. She never shooed them away. When she learned that the rabbits and the deer were nibbling her lettuce, she planted some closer to forest just for them. When the mother crow nested in her chimney, Maigret ate cold meals and slept with an extra blanket until the babies could fly on their own. When the village miller tied up his mouser’s kittens in a bag and left them in the forest for the wolves, she rescued them and suckled them with a twisted cloth dipped in milk until they were strong.

The animals saw these things, and in their simple ways they returned her many kindnesses. The deer and rabbits let her garden grow unmolested, and the crows ate everyone else’s corn but hers. The cats, once full-grown, kept the weasels and the skunks from her chickens, and the grateful chickens laid their eggs right on Maigret’s porch. Her garden prospered more than any other in the village. She could have sold the extra vegetables and eggs at the market, but she always chose to share with her companions in nature. She had such a kind heart that she even set some eggs and vegetables far out in the woods for hungry creature too scared to seek near the village for food.

Other than her family, her garden, and her animal friends, Maigret’s other love was for weaving. Each night, she spun her own yarn from flax she grew in her garden, measuring it off click by click on her spinning weasel, and then by candlelight she wove blankets and fine linen fabric until her tiny bed finally called her to sleep. In the winter months, while the garden took its rest, she colored her cloth vibrant dyes she had made from flowers and berries and then sewed shirts, aprons, and dozens of other useful items. The only times she stopped her work was to sit with her family in the flower garden – not even the coldest winds and deepest snows could keep her from that daily visit.

And like the extra produce from her gardening, the fruits of her spinning could have made her a small fortune, but Maigret had no wish for profit of that sort. Some cloth she offered to the doves, to the other birds, and to the little mice and shrews in the wood to line their nests. Colorful rugs softened the wooden floor of the cottage porch for the cats, and even the fat toad had a little blue pillow under its wooden bench. The rest she would take late at night and leave on the village church steps for the parson to hand out as he saw the need.

Yes, Maigret had a beautiful, loving heart, and she was a blessing to her animal neighbors, who blessed her in return.

But Maigret’s beauty was all on the inside. Sixty years of bending and kneeling over her flowers and vegetable plants had hunched her over and left her crooked. Spinning and weaving had also bent and gnarled fingers permanently stained black from fabric dyes. Squinting at her sewing in candlelight had also changed her from the comely blacksmith’s daughter she used to be also. Her face now had as many wrinkles as the fruit she strung and hung to dry from her cottage ceiling. Her voice, too, after the decades of singing and speaking in all types of weather to her husband and children’s graves. Her speech was deep now, rasping and cracking, like the trees that creaked from root to branch tip on windy nights.

So, Maigret’s kindness and beauty was hidden inside a crooked body that seemed to twist in on itself like a briar. And like a briar as well, her voice scratched and scraped at her human neighbors’ ears. The villagers avoided her as surely as they would have if she had surrounded her cottage with a mighty wall of thorns. They whispered ‘witch’ and ‘demoness’ when her garden plants grew greener and bigger than any of theirs. They blamed ‘dark magic’ and ‘devil’s pact’ when the ‘forest vermin’ slew their hens, stole their eggs, but left hers untouched. They shunned her sewing, fearing it unless the parson spoke prayers over it first, and then wearing it only after washing out the fey colors. In their eyes, her cottage and its devilishly plentiful green garden lay far beyond the village’s edge rather than right on it.

So Maigret lived alone on the edge of her busy village, her human family long dead, the animals her only living companions. So it was until one evening, just after dusk, she didn’t get up from the bench after she had finished singing to the two smaller tombstones. The fat toad stayed on her foot and the doves on her lap until she fell to the soft ground. Then, they moved to her side, leaving room for the cats who came to curl themselves around her. The rabbits and deer came next, and with them silently slunk sleek weasels and skunks. Even a limping, gray-furred bear, too old to risk the villagers’ traps but fat from Maigret’s offerings of eggs, ventured out into her garden. The little creatures of the forest were last – crows, mice, shrews, and all the birds – and they scattered over their friend’s still form a shower of leaves, twigs, blossoms, seeds, and little slips of colored fabric pulled from their own little nests. By dawn, a sweet-smelling blanket of their gifts screened her entirely from the first rays of morning.

The sunrise called some away. Others left as hunger or other needs drove them, but they came back. The villagers wondered and whispered but never set foot past her gate. The parson wondered why the gifts of clothing stopped but busied himself with other pursuits and never visited the empty cottage. As weeks passed, they found it easy to forget her entirely and gladly watched weeds and ivy cover her bright flowers and neat vegetable rows.

Only the beasts and birds were true and loyal companions, the toad and the doves more so than any, visiting with her season after season, year after year. And when they passed, their children still lingered in the spot, finding that the garden still provided more than enough for their needs even with her gone. After many years, when the village had forgotten her completely, the deep forest itself moved in to separate the ruins of her cottage in a final leafy embrace. And when the villagers eventually packed their things and moved away, the forest pulled Maigret where she lay beside her family deeper into its loving embrace.

And today, hidden far within the forest’s shadowy edges, a tangle of heavy brush and berry brambles hides a ring of tall sunflowers. And inside that blossoming ring, three ivy-covered stones – one big and two small – stand next to a rounded mound covered in bright flowers of every kind found in the forest. If a person makes it to that mound and stands very still, he would hear something strange indeed. It is the sound of a new generation of toads and doves singing, in their own voices, the forest’s praises of a beautiful friend that hasn’t been forgotten.

Hotter Than Blue Googles

2007-07-19T17:19:00.000-07:00

“Mom! How much longer? I’m hungry!”

The little boy was shouting from his booster seat in the back of the minivan. He was five and wore a ball cap that was just a little too big since he had gotten his summer haircut.

“My hungry!” whined his little brother, who was three and strapped in his car seat in the middle of the van. He had brown hair like his grandma and tear streaks on both flushed cheeks from where he had lost a battle earlier with his mom about wearing sandals instead of green frog galoshes.

“Da-da-da!” yelled the youngest, a little girl just recently promoted to a seat where she didn’t have to ride everywhere backwards. Her hair was blonde and just long enough to start curling at the ends. She didn’t really care about being in the van so long, so long as she was buckled and could yell whenever her brothers did.

The children’s father stopped singing along with the Wiggles long enough to twist around in the front passenger seat and shout back, “Not long, guys! Not long!”

The dad wore mismatched tennis shoes to be silly and had, like the oldest child, a new summer haircut. He told everyone that the short hair made him look a little like George Clooney, but the truth was that he thought he was closer to a combination of Shrek and Peewee Herman.

“I’m hungry!” was the response from the back of the van, so the dad, when he turned back around, rapped his knuckles on his window. “Hey! Look at that big dump truck over there! Wow, it’s a big one? You guys see it? And hey! There’s a digger!”

“Cool!” yelled back the oldest, pressing his face against the window as they passed another construction site. The other two didn’t say anything. The other boy, who was a little past three years old, was looking out of the wrong window, and the little girl was too busy trying to take off her shoes to even look.

“There,” sighed the dad. He reached over and pinched the mom’s elbow. She tried to slap him with one hand, but he jerked away too quickly. He laughed, “Now, that gives us about a minute before they start thinking about food again. How much farther is this place anyway?”

“The next light is the road it’s on, so not far,” she said. She had blonde hair, like two of their children, and a little spattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her shoes matched, but she didn’t mind that her husband mixed his colors up on purpose. She also liked his haircut and didn’t agree at all with the whole Ogre-Peewee thing.

They made the turn not longer after that and hadn’t gone very far, when the dad said, “Hey, this is the road the quarry’s on. Are you sure the restaurant’s this way? There’s nothing really back here that I remember.”

The mom frowned at him and turned the Wiggles’ volume down a bit. “You never listen, do you? It’s new. That’s why we got the coupons stuck on our door.” She reached down and dug between the front seats until she found a bent flyer. She waved it at the dad, but he wouldn’t take it.

“Okay, I remember now, but I’ll get sick if I read it. Did you forget that? Huh?” He poked her in the side with one knuckle as she stuck the coupons up behind the sun visor on her side.

“Stop it,” the mom laughed. “Anyway, the kids eat free and we get buy-one-get-one free. We can’t get beat that anywhere else. Plus, the ad said that it had a play land, so the kids will like it.”

“Cool.” The dad started biting his nails and then stopped. “What was it called again? Furry Chickens?”

The mom rolled her eyes and grinned. “No, Goofy. It’s Safari Chick’s – it’s supposed to have a jungle theme – monkeys, giraffes, elephants…”

“Ellies!” yelled the youngest suddenly. She liked elephants and had several stuffed toys lying all over the place back home.

“Yes! Ellies!” echoed both parents happily.

“Ellies!” everyone shouted.

The little girl threw both her arms up and yelled something else utterly unintelligible. She let go of her left sandal – which she’d been holding ever since she finally un-Velcroed it from around her ankle – flew into the air and hit the brother next to her right in the side of his head. He screamed the high-pitched distress call only a three-year-old can make, flailed his feet against the back of his dad’s seat, and lashed out with a little fist at his sister. He popped her right on the forehead. She let out a shriek like the raptors on those Jurassic movies. The dad felt his eardrums buzz with feedback. The mom swerved slightly but stayed in her lane.

“No hitting! It was an accident!” The dad shouted. “An accident, okay? You’re all okay! Stop the drama!” He twisted around his seat and tried to separate, calm, and console all at the same time. It didn’t work. The two toddlers just screamed and smacked at each other like two crazy raccoons. Then, he spun back to the front and turned the volume knob on the radio up a few spins. Over the crying and blaring kids’ music, he yelled, “Hey, the Wiggles! Let’s sing! That’ll be fun! Hey there! Shaky Shaky!”

Gripping the steering wheel with both white-knuckled hands, the mom screamed louder than anyone, “I’m turning the van around and going home if everyone doesn’t shut up! You too, Dad!”

The dad stopped singing and switched off the Wiggles. The two youngest children stopped crying and just sniffled. The oldest boy all the way in the back looked up from his action figure that he had just beheaded and made eye contact with his mom in the rear view mirror.

“Mom! Are we there yet? I’m hungry!”

Home Is Where the Heart Googles

2007-07-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

“How ‘bout ya play somethin’ we know, Checkie!” someone yelled from the back of the old warehouse depot. I couldn’t see who, but it sounded a lot like Eightball.

“It’s Czechie, ya igmo!” I yelled back. “Ya gotta get your tongue all up ‘gainst the roof of ya mouth to say it right! Cizzz-ZHECK-ee! Like that – did ya hear it?”

A bald, grease-smudged head popped up from behind some wooden pallets that we’d stacked up to block some of the wind comin’ off the lake. Just like I thought, it was Eightball. He had his ugly face all pinched up like he always did whenever he got mad. I knew he didn’t see me right away ‘cause he didn’t say nothin’. He just blinked his big eyes at Czechie, who stood on some rocks just outside the shelter on the lakeshore. Czechie didn’t see him and probably hadn’t heard him either since he kept on playin’ that same foreign tune on his trumpet. I was sittin’ a little off to the side, up beside one of the rusty supports for the depot’s shingled roof, with my legs dangling off the side into the weeds. I had to wave to get Eightball to see me.

“How ‘bout I stick my foot ‘gainst the roof of yer mouth? Huh, Ajax?” he yelled, spraying spit all into the air ‘round him. “How ‘bout that, huh? I weren’t talkin’ to ya noways, so why don’t ya keep yer big mouth shut!”

I snorted and leaned back on my palms. I didn’t look at him, just stared straight up at the sky through one of the holes in the roof, and said, “Ah, go wash yer bald head, ya filthy monkey!”

Eightball cussed, and I heard him hock up a big mouthful of snot. I twisted and looked just as he reared his skinny neck back like a copperhead and spit at me. The big glob of yellow snot spun in the air but barely cleared the pallets. It didn’t get nowhere close to where I sat, and I just shook my head sad-like.

“That was just sorry. I’m shamed to have ya as a brother if ya can’t spit better than that,” I said, tryin’ to sound like I remember our dad’s voice bein’ when he was mad at us.

Eightball cussed again and ducked back behind the pallets out of sight.

Maybe half a minute later, he shouted from back there, “Whyn’t ya go wash yerself! Ya stink, ya dirty gorilla!”

I couldn’t help but bust out in a big laugh. Growin’ up, my brother never had been good at tradin’ insults, and now that we was out on our own, he still stunk at it. He must have heard me laughin’, even over Czechie’s foreign music, because he started bangin’ around and bein’ all noisy with somethin’ back behind those pallets. He probably had his collection of plastic bottles stashed back there. We took most to the ‘cycling plant to get money, but Eightball always liked savin’ the green ones for some reason or other. When winter came, those’d have to go with the rest.

I probably sat and laughed for five minutes, banging both my heels against the crumbling concrete the whole time, before I got real bored. I had always enjoyed makin’ Eightball mad, at least ever since he got old enough that Mama didn’t care when he cried anymore.
I was hopin’ that he’d come back out to yell at me some more, but he was still poutin’or maybe he dozed off.

That just left Czechie. He’d been livin’ with us in the old depot for nearly a year but kept to his part of the shelter most of the time. He was a lot older than me and my brother, but I didn’t mind him much. He’d been a lot of help, collectin’ food and addin’ old plywood and boxes to keep the wind and rain out of our place. It seemed no one but us cared ‘bout this place ‘cause no one ever came ‘round and messed with it. I was glad of that, but it did make life pretty borin’ most of the time.

Czechie’s foreign music was getting’ me pretty bored, too. I felt like I wanted to sing somethin’, but I couldn’t sing to what he was playin’. It was too foreign for me to even try to make up words, too. I needed somethin’ old and familiar to really get my voice movin’ and my blood stirred up. It was almos’ time to go down the lake and walk the fencerow to see what people tossed out on the overpass.

“Hey, Czechie!” I said, sayin’ it right and sayin’ it loud in case my brother might be awake after all. I cupped one hand on the side of my mouth and said it again even louder. “Hey, I’m talking to ya, Czechie!”

I had to yell a third time before he stopped playin’ and looked at me. I waved and drummed my heels against the concrete as I made my offer.

“Czechie, I wonder if ya can play ‘Oh Say Can You See’ on that goofy foreign trumpet? I’ve got half an orange I’ll give ya if ya can play it good and loud.”

The old man licked his lips a few times, then hocked and spit something brown into the weeds off to the side of where I sat. He cocked his head and rubbed the grey whiskers on his cheek with one hand. He looked at his horn, and then he looked at me.

“This,” he said, cradling the instrument in one hand like it was made of gold ‘stead of tarnished and dented, “This is not trumpet – this is rozhok … like me from Czechia … and my name is Bretislav Svoboda …not Cizz-sheki as you try to say … and as for your ‘Say Can You See’ song…”

He looked away and lifted his horn to his lips. I heard snickerin’ from back behind the pallets. I opened my mouth to say somethin’ smart but didn’t get out a word before the song started. Oncet the first note played, I couldn’t do nothin’ but sit with a dumb look on my face until the whole thing was over. Blamed if the foreigner didn’t play the song better than I’d heard at any ball game or parade in my whole life. I didn’t even mind when Eightball came out and sat down beside me to listen.

A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Google

2007-07-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

Stories about the creatures began popping up all over the Midwest as early as November last year. Photographs and video were next – spreading the rumors of alien visitation all over the world via Youtube and Flickr. Experts scoffed, sci-fi fans rejoiced, skeptics laughed, some religious groups cried armageddon.

Then, five hikers in Arizona’s Ramsey Canyon Preserve used their wits – and a large waterproof blanket – to end the controversy. And in so doing, they laid claim to the find of the past two millennia.

Like the rest of us, these five students from the University of Arizona had heard the stories. They’d read the news feeds. They’d squinted at the pictures online, trying to see what the captions claimed was there. They’d laughed at Jay Leno’s take on the whole alien scenario. They’d laughed at David Letterman’s monologue about alien visitation. Two of them had even blogged about the ‘alien nonsense’ on Facebook.

But when they woke up on the second morning of their trek into the national park, what they saw put them among the ranks of the believers. What they did set them apart.

“I probably blinked a billion times,” says Andrew Ragnarris, 20, from Phoenix, the first of the group to awaken just before dawn on Tuesday, April 2. “We had camped on top of a little bluff, and I woke early to watch the sunrise. I looked down and couldn’t believe that I was awake and seeing what I was seeing. It was RC – real and right there below our camp.

RC is the nickname the vacationing college students affectionately give to the creature whose capture put their names and faces in newspapers and feeds around the world . Ostensibly, the initials stand for Ramsey Canyon, the location of the capture, but also for ‘Radical Creature’ and ‘Recreation Crasher’ according to the five friends who delivered it alive to stunned park rangers with the help of a summoned Newschannel 9 helicopter Tuesday afternoon.

Ragnarris describes his initial reaction: “I kept seeing it – big, green, furry – similar to the pictures and sketches I’d seen on the net, enough to tell me that some of those stories must be true. But others are way off. RC didn’t have spines and alien battle armor and the rest. It was totally alive and alien, but just moving around, poking at plants and rocks, just below where we’d slept. More like ET than Alien,” he says, referencing the Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott classic alien encounter films. RC was right there, plain as day. And it had no idea we were there.”

Ragnarris credits their lack of discovery by the alien to his father, a seasoned hiker and camper whose love for the wildlife and landscape of Ramsey Canyon Preserve inspired the group of friends to spend their Spring Break roughing it instead of on the beach.

“Dad dared us to really go back to nature on this trip. I mean, it’s not the typical spring break, but we were stoked about it. We brought our cells in case of emergency and our cameras, but that’s about it. No mp3 players, no PSP, no GPS. We planned on becoming part of the canyons. We even brought jerky and dried fruit so we wouldn’t need to have fires. We really were trying to blend in, which is maybe why RC didn’t see us. It gave us enough time to think.”

His friends also have another meaning for the alien’s nickname: ‘Ragnarris’s Conquest’ – but Ragnarris insists on sharing the spotlight. According to him, all five college students played crucial parts in humanity’s capture of the world’s first alien life form. However, he admits that he was the first among his friends to spot the creature.

Plus, he had the presence of mind to do what others who claimed similar encounters failed to do. He quietly awakened his friends rather than clicking away on his digital camera. He explains his actions this way: “I knew that pictures weren’t enough – I mean, it’s just way too easy to edit photos now. I didn’t want to end up being another wacko on Letterman with blurry pictures. No one trusts pictures anymore,” he says, “I knew I wanted my friends to witness what I was seeing, and I knew that I needed their help.”

Tracey Swain, 19, from New Castle, Montana, was the first awakened by Andrew. “Of course, I didn’t believe him until I saw RC. Then, it was surreal. I kept looking around for cameras. I felt like I was on Punk’d or one of those prank shows. But it was real!” She immediately helped rouse their sleeping companions.

Maggie Carpenter, 19, from Bradsford, and Chas Dierra, 20, from Carlsbad, woke next. Dierra describes his excitement: “I’m a huge Stargate fan, and I know it’s cheesy, but I love Star Trek, too – I’ve watched every episode of every series, even Enterprise. I play all the games, so I’m a sci-fi geek, I guess, but for fun only.” The third year Accounting student with a 4.0 average claims that he had always kept his leisure interests separate from his real world plans. “Up to the second, I looked down and saw RC thought the whole alien visitation business on the news was a load of crap. It was all fiction and fantasy to me before that. Seeing that the alien was real was a shock, but in a good way! It kind of brought everything together – the real and the unreal. It was wild!”

Carpenter describes a very different reaction upon seeing the alien for the first time. “I was terrified,” she admits. “Complete paralyzing terror. I’d read some of the crackpot attack stories and laughed at them, but when I saw it was real, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I was that scared. I wanted to call the Army or FBI right away.”

Her friends, however, calmed her down and changed her mind. “Maggie was really freaking out!” reports Dartanion “Gouda” Waggon, 21, from Mylers Point, AK, the oldest of the group and the last to be woken up. “She was shaking and almost in shock. I know she was close to screaming, but we got her back down to reality. We reminded her about the government conspiracy spin on the aliens and brought up lasers and satellite tracking. She’s a Psych major and into the whole Green Party things back on campus, so that made her forget about calling anybody and get serious. That’s when Andy told us about his plan.”

High school wrestling captain, third-year Corporate Business major, and amateur rodeo bulldogger, Andrew Ragnarris based his plan on what he knew best – incapacitating and controlling something larger than himself. “I knew that we had to act quickly and not act scared,” he says. “That’s key to any struggle, physical or financial – don’t let the opponent psych you out.”

When asked about whether or not he was scared, the college junior responds, “I’ve wrestled bulls and even a few guys bigger than this thing, but I wasn’t sure what it was going to do.” He adds, “But being scared inside and going on is different from being scared all over and just running away. I knew we had a one-time shot at something huge, so I wasn’t going to let us run. I needed to find something to give us the edge we needed, and we had it thanks to Tracey.”

He is referring to an item brought by Zoology major Tracey Swain that inspired Andrew’s plan and guaranteed the group’s success. “I wanted to sketch some of the rarer species in the canyons, like the lemon lily and the elegant trogon, and I didn’t want my pads and pastels getting wet,” she says, explaining why she brought a waterproof blanket in addition to the small but weather-resistant tent each hiker had in his or her pack. “My dad actually uses it to protect his motorcycle when he hauls it to races, so it’s pretty big plus it’s tough. Gouda and Chad made fun of me the whole trip because it takes forever to unwrap my art supplies, but I wanted my drawings protected in case there were flash floods or something.”

She didn’t count on confronting and capturing an alien being when she packed that blanket, but that is exactly what her friend Andrew’s plan called for. Just a few short minutes after awakening his fellow students, he led them in a surprise attack that rendered the alien they dubbed RC unconscious, completely immobilized, and unhurt. Carpenter then used her cell phone to report their find, not to park officials, not to the military, not even to the government. She sent some phone pictures of the victorious group with the swaddled alien to a sorority sister with an internship at KSAZ - FOX Channel 10. In little more than an hour, a KSAZ helicopter arrived to carry the students and their exotic cargo to a press conference at the Ramsey Canyon Preserve Welcome Center.

Although it was ultimately Ragnarris’s planning and Swain’s preparedness that gave the five university students what they needed to capture the alien they dubbed RC, the group also had Andrew Ragnarris’s wrestling experience (with both humans and steers), Gouda Waggon’s strength (he plays nose tackle for Arizona Wildcats), Chas Dierra’s strategy (he ranks among the top PvP players in Star Wars Galaxies online gaming, Swain’s knowledge of comparative anatomy (she used the alien’s body type to decide how to safely incapacitate the creature) and Carpenter’s willingness to support her friends (she credits Ragnarris’s confidence as inspiring her to overcome her fear). This unique blending of humanity’s diverse skills and abilities gave these young hikers the edge that has put their names in the world’s history books.

A Penny Saved is a Penny Googled

2007-07-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

The first time Professor Wilson ended class early, we all thought it was a joke.

It was spring semester, not long after midterm in our Literary Criticism class. Every other time our class had met, he’d kept us right up until the last minute, so we weren’t prepared for him to break tradition the way he did.

On that particular day, he had embroiled us in a debate about Walt Whitman’s poetry for about twenty minutes when someone quoted a line from “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer.” I don’t recall who quoted it or what point it was supposed to prove, but I remember a strange look come across Professor Wilson’s face. The next thing we all knew he was packing up his leather book bag and telling us that we’d continue the discussion at the next class. He went to the door, stopped to tell us to continue the assigned readings on the syllabus, and then left.

We all laughed quietly but stayed in our seats. You have to understand something about our class. Most of us were seniors, and all of us were English majors. We’d been trained by all of our teachers, Professor Wilson included, to look for meaning everywhere. So we sat and waited for him to return to class and make his point. I fully expected him to stroll back in and somehow connect what he said and did to Whitman’s work. In fact, I remember racking my brain, trying to figure it out myself. After five minutes, I was still trying to remember the rest of that Whitman poem when someone got up to see if he were waiting out in the hall.

He wasn’t in the hall. Someone checked outside. He wasn’t on the stoop or on the benches. Someone got up the nerve to call his office. He wasn’t there either. We didn’t know what to do. Someone suggested calling the dean – I don’t remember who – but the idea was shot down. Finally, after about fifteen minutes, even the most studious and suspicious of us decided that he actually wasn’t coming back. He had actually meant for us to leave when he did, but we had stuck around. We’d been conditioned, someone said, comparing us to a bunch of dogs needing a bell to tell us what to do. We left, laughing at ourselves and trying to guess why he had stopped class over an hour early. You see, we still were seeking meaning, looking for symbolism – we just couldn’t help it. I told everybody that he would probably explain it all to us at the next class and probably assign us an essay about it. Everybody laughed. Then, I headed over to the library to get a head start on the reading.

Professor Wilson didn’t explain it though. I expected someone to ask, but no one did. Maybe they believed me about the essay and were afraid to. Or maybe they didn’t want him to know that they couldn’t figure it out. I wanted to ask him, but I didn’t want to look stupid in front of everybody. So we all just let it drop.

Then, a week later it happened again. This time, we were talking about Emerson and the transcendentalists. We’d reached the halfway point of class, when he usually had us get up and stretch to get blood flowing up to our brains. Instead, he looked at us strangely and started packing up. He told us the same thing he had before and left just as quickly. A few of us went to the window this time. We saw him leave the building and walk across the Drill Field, in the opposite direction of the cafeteria and the faculty offices. Where he was going, we had no idea, but he walked briskly and didn’t look back even once.

We still waited. For about ten minutes, we laughed and talked about class ending early again. We made up reasons, most of them silly and many of them pretty scandalous, so I’m glad that Professor Wilson didn’t walk back in that day. Then, we all left, calling out a few late corny jokes – I didn’t want to waste the time, so I went to the library again to read.

The third time he left early was the very next class. We had barely started analyzing a Dickinson poem when he packed up, said goodbye, and was gone. We did the same as the last time. We watched him walk away, we waited ten minutes, and then we left. But we didn’t laugh or joke around though. Most of us used the time to read. A few whispered to each other, but that was it. It was really weird. And when the first of us got up to leave, the rest of us followed out quietly. I went to the library again, but I didn’t stay long. I just couldn’t concentrate on nineteenth century poetry.

I mean, the whole thing was just odd. At least, that’s how I felt. I had no idea why he was doing this, stopping class early all of a sudden. I remember instructors and grad students doing it all the time in the core classes I had back in my freshman and sophomore years. But upper level lit courses didn’t work that way – at least none of my other ones had, and I’d even had Professor Wilson for Modern English Prose and Poetry last semester. He’d worked us to death and had been entirely predictable and efficient.

So why the change? I had to admit that I had no clue.

I dreaded the next class. I didn’t know what to expect. I read the assigned poems and stories on the syllabus but really couldn’t remember much. I hoped that he wouldn’t call on me, and part of me was kind of expecting him to not even show up. He did show up though, and he did call on me. I embarrassed myself, but I didn’t care because as it turned out, he stayed for the entire class. I was relieved. I could tell everyone felt like me– we all seemed to hold our breath whenever he got near his book bag, but he didn’t pack it up until the very last minute of class. I felt mentally exhausted by then, so I decided to break routine and go back to the dorm to take a nap instead of studying at the student union.

The next class went well, too. And the next. He kept us debating and criticizing, wearing us out. Everything had returned to normal. I just chalked up his eccentric behavior to the professorial equivalent of spring fever and figured that it had run its course. We were approaching the last month of the semester after all, so it was buckle down time for everyone.

Then, it happened again. This time during an essay exam.

He’d given us all these quotes and asked us to incorporate them into an essay about one of the themes we’d discussed in class over the past week. I was barely halfway into it when I noticed him fidgeting at his table in the front of the room. When he started pacing, I really had a hard time focusing on my exam. I noticed a few other people frowning, too, and I wondered if anyone would be brave enough to say something. When he went to the window and began drumming his fingers on the sill, a hand – not mine – did go up to get his attention. He didn’t see it – he was looking outside – so I faked a cough to get him to look around. He didn’t. He kept drumming his fingers and looking outside.

Another hand raised, this one closer to him. Someone else coughed. I scuffled my feet. The girl next to me sneezed. A pencil tapped on a desk. He was oblivious. Then, someone behind set off a cell phone – a risky move since Professor Wilson had named them as his number one pet peeve, but effective because he spun around instantly before it had more played than half a second of “Sexyback” by Justin Timberlake. Whoever had played the ringtone shut if off, but I expected the professor to be mad. A few more hands went up, but he ignored everything.

Instead, he went right for his book bag and told us he needed to leave. He made it to the door before someone asked about the exam. He gave us a strange look and told us to slide it under his office door or bring it to the next class. Then, he was gone.

Stunned, I acted on impulse and stood up, shoving my exam into my own book bag. “I’m following him,” I announced as though that were the only logical thing to do. “Anyone with me?”

It was a small class, only fifteen of us, but I’m still surprised that they all came with me. I imagine that we looked pretty silly, too, our whole class trying to follow our professor and make it look entirely natural. We spread out a little so that we weren’t all bunched up and noisy, but I know we looked weird. I led the way. I had no idea what I was going to say if he turned and confronted me, but I felt compelled to know where he was going.

We trailed him all the way across campus, past the book store, past the dorms, past the faculty parking garage (which was a relief), past the courtyard and fountain that some prankster always filled with laundry soap. Finally, he stopped at the edge of campus, near the Agricultural Fields. A Civil War memorial stood there, a low stone wall and pillar built from the debris of a hospital that had been a precursor of our campus. I’d been there a few times, had read the plaque, had even researched it once for a freshman orientation paper. I hung back now and watched Professor Wilson. The rest of the class did the same.

He put his book bag down and took out a few notebooks. My first thought was he was going to do some writing or maybe catch up on some grading, but he surprised me again. He set the notebooks on the low wall and then climbed up onto it himself. Then, he lay down in the sun on top of the wall with his legs outstretched and his hands clasped behind his head. The notebooks were his pillow, I saw.

And I saw that he knew we were there. He craned his neck to the side and winked at us. The closer elbow beckoned, so I walked up to the wall with the class not far behind me.

He had a huge welcoming kind of smile on his face. His eyes squinted because of the bright April sun.

“I wondered if you all would ever show up. Now find a spot. I’d like to hear someone recite that Whitman poem. Anyone up for it?” he said cheerfully.

Someone was. Me, surprisingly. And we all managed to find a spot, some perched on the wall, some on the ground, one brave person even scaled the pillar while I spoke Whitman’s words and we finally picked up where we’d left off.

The Good, the Bad, and the Google

2007-07-15T19:01:00.001-07:00

Initial Crime Scene Report
Detective Richford, lead investigator

Date: Saturday, 2/20/06

Weather: clear, cold, temp at 38 F

Arrived on scene at 9:21

Responding: Deputy R. Hatton, Deputy M. Trice, Deputy S. Williamson; Detective L. Rebecca, Ambulance from Deerpoint Med Center, arrival 9:04 to 10:15

Location: Grapevine Apartments, Apt D2, Duggan St, two story, red brick and steel building (four units), second floor apartment, interior courtyard entry, private stair, black steel door with red trim, 1 living room, 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 1 kitchen, 1 window on stair landing, 1 window in bedroom on north side facing street

Situated: north side of city, 1.1 mile south of I25, 5.6 miles west of Locke Overpass

Summons: cell phone call from neighbor, Lamont Ragdell, Apt D4, at 8:49 to 911 reporting screams from D2

On scene at first response (Hatton and Trice, 9:04): Lamont Ragdell in interior courtyard; Apt D2 door ajar, body of Steven Bradley discovered in kitchen area by deputies

Witnesses: No eyewitness known. Ragdell only resident present. Heard screams but saw no one enter or leave location.

Homicide Victim:
Steven Bradley, dob. 1/6/84 (22 yrs.), approx. 5’10”, 150 lbs., black hair, light build, found lying on right side in apt kitchen, head facing window. Stab wounds from unknown weapon inflicted to right cheek, lower left ribcage, back left shoulder, left side of neck. No exit wounds indicate weapon had short blade. Neatness of wounds indicate weapon was not serrated. Extensive pooling of blood around body on kitchen linoleum. Blood trail and spatter indicates victim was first stabbed in living room by cloth sofa, again in hallway, and finally in kitchen. Victim appears to have fallen and bled freely where discovered. No injuries apparent other than stab wounds. No bruising and no damage to furnishings to indicate physical struggle. White fragments and yellow fluid in victim’s hair discovered to be a smashed egg from victim’s refrigerator.

Body still warm to touch. Deputies report no movement of the body when discovered. No pulse found when checked at neck by Hatton and victim declared dead on scene at 9:07.
Victim is wearing light blue boxer shorts and white sleeveless t-shirt, no shoes, no socks. Faded brown and red stains on front of shirt and boxers. Similar stains on cloth sofa and prevalence of Hot Pocket wrappers on coffee table indicate stains on clothing to be irrelevant to victim’s death.
Manner of death appears to be homicide. Murder weapon is small caliber pistol. Await analysis of bullets. No murder weapon found on scene. No weapons registered to victim.

Coroner Philip Epson, MD arrived on scene 10:12, removed victim at 10:50 to Deerpoint Med Center morgue. Preliminary opinion, homicide due to severed cartoid artery, time of death estimated between 8:50 and 9:00.

Measurements:
See crime scene sketches.

Search of house:
Entry door ajar. Refrigerator door found ajar. Lights off in all apartment rooms. Apartment is disorderly but appears to be due to victim’s lifestyle rather than to vandalism or robbery. Door does not show forced entry. Computer on coffee table is on, connected to cable modem. Victim still logged into MMORPG (World of Warcraft) at deputies’ first arrival on scene. Deputies took photograph of scene before server connection was lost at approximately 9:11: gnome rogue, level 17, name Trickjunkie, located in Westfall, Saldean’s Farm. Character was marked AFK and was not grouped or chatting with any other player. Guild affiliation noted as Wee Ninjas.

Evidence Collected:
Blood samples collected from pool. Photographs of spatter on apartment walls and furnishings.

Fingerprints taken from entry door, computer, and refrigerator. Three sets apparent, one matching victim. Awaiting analysis.

Photographs of footprints other than victim in blood trail. Very small size boots, low heel, no brand apparent.

Six eggs, medium-sized, from egg tray in victim’s refrigerator. Numbers and letters written on each egg in black permanent marker. Meaning undetermined. Handwriting on eggs matches writing found in notebook on coffee table and writing found in victim’s wallet on dresser in bedroom. Awaiting analysis of shattered egg in victim’s hair to determine possible match. Notebook and wallet taken into evidence.

One medium-sized kiwi found in sixth space of egg tray, presumably in place of smashed egg found in victim’s hair. Single word written on kiwi in red marker: “NOOB” in all capital letters. Handwriting on fruit does not appear to match handwriting on eggs.

Photograph of initials discovered after victim’s body was removed. Initials “WTF” were written in victim’s blood on linoleum beneath victim’s right hand.

Victim’s computer taken into evidence.

No additional evidence removed from house.

Scene secured by Detective Richford at 11:24 AM.

Google Like a Rock Star

2007-07-14T09:24:00.001-07:00

“Meredith’s mom throws the coolest parties, don’t you think?”

I looked at the red-headed girl on my left and smiled weakly. Everyone had just finished singing “Happy Birthday,” and we were waiting on the cake and ice cream now.

“Yeah, this is the greatest,” I said with what I hoped was convincing enthusiasm. The girl giggled at me, so it must have been.

Of course, she might have been laughing because my eye patch slid down onto my nose while I was talking. I reached up and adjusted the tape as best as I could with only one hand. I winced as it ripped out part of my eyebrow. My right arm wiggled and itched in its temporary cast, but I knew better than to get it out of the sling. Meredith would see and pout and then probably post all over myspace how I ruined her whole birthday party.

The redhead giggled again. Her patch didn’t move at all. Not even when she cocked her head at me and shook her ponytail over her left shoulder.

“A trauma party! Isn’t that the neatest idea?” I didn’t say anything, so she asked, “Did Meredith do your patch?”

“No, her little sister,” I grunted. Talking and trying not to move your face muscles at the same time was hard. No one else was having any trouble. They were all just chattering away. I felt the girl staring at me, waiting for me to say something, I guess.

I asked her, “Um, who did yours?” Each party guest had an eye patched when we showed up at Meredith’s church rec center. Mine was on my left. The redhead’s was over her right eye.

She giggled and brushed her patch self-consciously with her fingertips. I noticed that her nails were painted pale green, the same color as her shirt. I also saw that both of her arms were free, and I was jealous. After the eye patch, we had to reach inside a medical kit and draw our next trauma. I drew the “Wiped Out While Skateboarding – Broken Wrist” card. I tried to get Claire to wrap my left arm – I’m right-handed – but she insisted it had to be the right. I argued until Meredith came over and told me to play nice. I’d been a sucker for her ever since we moved next door to her family, so I went along with the whole thing.

I know I was set up though. She knew I was nervous about not knowing anyone here, and she wanted to mess with me. She had an evil sense of humor sometimes. Just like having her mom assign me as the only boy at a table full of girls from Meredith’s private school. I knew that she did that on purpose just to embarrass me. And her sister insisting that the thick bandage “cast” cover my right arm? Probably just her wanting me to make a fool out of myself eating cake left-handed and one-eyed in front of these girls I didn’t know.

“No, one of the real EMT’s did mine,” the redhead was saying, gesturing at one of the uniformed men helping pass out cake to one of the other tables. “He did the IV, too.”

The girl waved her left wrist in front of me and giggled again. She giggled a lot, I had noticed. The IV line, though, I hadn’t seen until now. Its tubing only went to her elbow, so it really didn’t really stand out like my bright blue sling or the more obvious traumas of the other girls at our table. There was an athletic girl in shorts with one leg heavily bandaged and propped up on a chair, a short-haired girl had a head injury of some kind judging by the strips wrapped neatly around her forehead, and the one on my right beat us all by wearing a freaking neck brace. It didn’t bother her, though, because she’d been yapping the whole time to a fake burn victim at the next table. She looked anorexic though like most of these private school girls, so she probably wasn’t worrying about cake anyway, I thought ungraciously.

“He did a really professional job, I think,” the redhead was still talking. I looked at her wrist, pretending to care. I had to admit that Meredith’s mom did go the extra step to make the party memorable. How she got a real ambulance and real paramedics to attend was beyond me. I just hoped people weren’t bleeding to death somewhere because these guys were here entertaining us.

“I drew the Dehydration card. See my big bottle of water?” The girl pointed next to her chair at a liter-bottle with tubing taped to its cap. It had a little clip on its end where it was supposed to hook onto the IV tube. “I guess I’m lucky that I don’t have to carry that around, huh?” She giggled.

What was that now? The third giggle? Yeah, lucky you. You won’t have any problem eating cake, will you? All you have is a bit of plastic taped on your wrist. And it’s taped neatly on, too, with just a few little strips, I grumbled in my head.

I remembered Claire gleefully ripping off a huge strip to tape on my eye patch and imagined her wrapping tape around my forearm. I shuddered. The girl saw and raised the one eyebrow that I could see.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I lifted my bound arm slightly. “Well, I was thinking good thing I drew a broken wrist. It’s just wrapped with cloth bandages, but Claire would’ve used so much tape sticking on an IV that I’d rip out all my arm hair just getting it off.”

I felt myself blush. I didn’t mean to say so much. I was just irritated with Meredith and the whole party theme thing and not getting to sit close to my friends. I looked down, and the cotton wadding of my patch slid across to the center of my nose.

For the first time, the redhead didn’t giggle. She laughed for real.

“Stupid eye patch!” I groaned disgustedly and reached up with my free hand to adjust it.

“Here, let me do that, so you don’t jerk the tape.” Still laughing, she scooted her chair closer to me. She reached up with both of her hands and slowly began peeling away the tape from my left eyebrow.

Her movements were quick but gentle. It didn’t hurt at all. Or maybe it did, and I didn’t notice. She talked the whole time that she worked, so I focused on her words rather than what she was doing.

“Claire did use too much tape. And she used too much padding, so the patch is too heavy. See? That’s why it keeps slipping. I’ll take a little bit out, and it should be fine.”

Dangling from her left arm, the unattached end of the IV tube arm tickled my neck a little. I stared at her wrist with my good eye. Her skin was very pale and smooth with just a light freckle scattered here and there. The tube tickled my neck again. I heard a giggle and blushed when I realized it was me.

“There. All done. You should be able to eat some cake now without being afraid of going blind.” She leaned away and smiled. I noticed for the first time how pretty she was, and I felt my face get really hot. I was glad I wore my hair shaggy because I knew that my ears were blood red.

“Um, thanks. You’re really good at that … I mean, the way you touched me was good … I mean, it felt good the way you touched it … Crap … I mean the bandage … the way you fixed the bandage! It didn’t hurt a bit when you pulled it … Claire had to pull it five or six times, off and on, off and on, like it was really hard … um … not hard … I mean, difficult … the tape … I mean, the tape was difficult …”

I was rambling. I stopped. The other girls at the table were looking at me now. They were all laughing, too. Even the girl in the neck brace. The redhead – I really needed to find out her name – was laughing the most. I looked around the room frantically.

Where was Meredith’s mom with the cake anyway?

Cry Me a Google

2007-07-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

“Harold, I gotta admit I thought you was crazy, but I was the one with a loose screw in the head! You had the right idea the whole time, you old rascal!”

Shawn Gosden had to talk a bit louder than usual so that his good friend of the past forty-some-odd years could hear him above the rock song blaring from the loudspeakers overhead.

Harold Tetter leaned both elbows on the counter and winked at his buddy.

“If it was such a good idea, then why ain’t you out there skating, huh?” he jerked his head toward toward the polished rink floor.

Shawn laughed and just shook his head. “Hey, I get around well enough in these work shoes without having little wheels stuck on them.” A hand calloused from decades of farm work motioned at the pairs of multi-colored skates strung up from the rafters over the front counter. “In my book, moving that fast is just asking for trouble.”

Harold laughed, a deep laugh from way down in his belly, and slapped one worn hand on the counter. “What you mean is that Becky’d skin you if you broke something and she had to take care of you all laid up in the house every day!”

It was Shawn’s turn to laugh then and pound the counter then. Harold picked up a dust rag and some Pledge and got to wiping the spotless wood counter. A lot had changed in the past eight months since he decided to retire and sell off most of his family farm. For one, his checking account was filling up much faster than it ever had with soybeans and calves. That’s why his old buddies kept coming by – to see for themselves what had the Tetters driving a new brand new, top-of-the-line truck to church every Sunday and eating at the Greenwood Theater House every Thursday night.

Harold kept shining the countertop and let his old friend look at what he’d done to his barn.

Shawn and his boy used to help him work on on his rundown John Deere tractor right in this same spot where Harold and his wife rented out skates. The fine red dust barn floor, hardpacked with decades of boots, hooves, and tractor tires, now had gleaming slick wood planks from wall to wall. Some of the forty years of tools and fencewire still hung on the walls and overhead but shared the space now with speakers, neon lights, and even a slowly spinning disco ball his nephew had bought from an antique mall two towns over. The feeding troughs and the cattle stalls in the back were now bathrooms and a snack bar his granddaughters were fighting with each other to run. The barn his grandfather had built was air-conditioned now and watertight and even had a brightly lit fire exit that led out to the parking lot where the chicken house used to be.

It’d cost more than he even liked to think about now, and he’d made so many changes to the old barn that his dad and granddad would have had strokes if they weren’t already long gone. The town had thought he was crazy, just like Shawn had said a moment ago. Crazy for giving up farming. Crazy for selling off his family farm. And crazy for turning his barn into a skating rink. But Harold didn’t care. His wife was glad to be done with canning, and she knew that farming hadn’t been good for the past twenty years, even if none of their old friends wanted to admit it. Why else had all the younger people gone to work in the city or in the factories springing up all around? Harold’s sons, though, came home to help with blueprints and building codes, and each field Harold sold off paid for the next piece of work the barn needed.

Now that it was, the Skate Barn was paying the bills, and not just for him, but for his sons, who had stayed on and quit their own jobs. The granddaughters, too, were getting to pay for their cell phones, and even the boyfriends were signing on to get date and gas money. Plus, he was going to bed each night, still dog-tired from a day’s hard work but not dog-tired from worrying over the family’s finances. The Skate Barn was a good trade for a farming career, he had decided, even one that had been in the family for three generations, and it was a good thing for the town, too, he figured. People came in every night and packed it full on the weekends, even two months after its grand opening. He couldn’t help grinning at his reflection in the shiny countertop as he kept polishing.

Shawn must have noticed because he laughed all of a sudden, saying, “Yep, Harold, you’re a smart one, you are. Why didn’t none of us come up with an idea like this, I wonder? Maybe I should turn my barn into one of those miniature golf resorts. This air conditioner sure beats running behind a haybaler!”

Harold laughed along with his old friend. A line of six locals skated by. They were all mostly in their thirties, all children of people Harold went to school with, and all working at the blue jean factory that had been built on the other side of town. They were skating the bunny hop and shouting along offkey with Joan Jett about how they loved rock and roll. Harold kept shining and grinning. He didn’t know about rock and roll, but he knew that he loved his new job.

Every Rose Has Its Google

2007-07-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

“Always pass on yer left and always tip yer hat. Yer luck’ll be out, boy, if ya’s don’t!”

Old Gerd’s warning still rang in my ears even after I’d left my village far behind. The farmer had raised up from weeding his cabbage rows and leaned on his hoe as I drove my da’s cart past his farm. When I was nearly at the stone marker at the village edge, the old man had shouted his words at me. I had laughed and waved at him, but just before I was out of earshot, I heard him shout once more over the clopping of Dozie’s hooves on the hardpacked dirt road.

“It’s yer only life, boy, so don’t fergit it!”

I had laughed again and joked with my da’s old mare about the superstitious old folks. The sun was bright and the birds were chirping then, and Dozie had just chuffed and clopped on like there wasn’t a worry in the world. And there wasn’t then. True, it was my first time on the Town Road by myself and my first time delivering my da’s skins to the tanner at the Market, but I didn’t have nerves any more than Dozie did, no matter what Crooked Gerd hollered out over his cabbage heads.

Then, the Town Road drove into the Forest. Sure, I’d been through it with my da’ before, but the treetops seemed to block out more sunlight than I remembered. And the birds didn’t sing as much as I would have liked. I remembered squirrels and rabbits hopping about, too, but all I could see today was a dead crow lying feet up next to a bank of thorn bushes. I heard a fox bark once, but it cut off real quick and I never heard it again. I tried to joke with Dozie, but she just kept clopping and didn’t even chuff anymore.

So I tried singing one of my da’s songs, but it just seemed too loud, especially when the fog set in just before sundown. The forest wouldn’t last much longer. I had to be getting close to the other side, and I’d never heard any tales about bandits or bears or anything happening between our village and the Town. The only strange thing at all was the Grave, and that was just a made-up story old folks used to scare people who had more important things to worry about. I had a load of skins to deliver, and coins to collect from the tanner that would buy all the things we needed until the next visit.

And that’s why Old Gerd’s warnings just wouldn’t stop rattling around in my head, I guess. And that’s why I pulled the reins and brought Dozie to a stop when the wagon turned a sharp curve and the road split. It came back together after forty feet or so, making a little island of sorts in the road, a peculiar thing anyone would admit, and more so because a single old walnut tree reared up in the dead center of that grassy island. Beneath it was a worn, faded tombstone in a semicircle of tumbled, mossy stone markers. The Grave. The forest’s edge was less than a quartermile past it, and the Town just a shout farther.

Dozie was restless, but I let her stand idle for a bit more, just to rest her hooves, I told her. I needed to go over my lists once more anyway. I had my mother’s long one for the goods vendor and my father’s order for the blacksmith as well as the routine tanner business. That was a lot to keep in my head, especially when it was my first visit to the Town on my own. My da’ thought I was ready, and my mom said she was proud, so they knew I could do it. I’d ridden this Road a dozen times with my da’, and even if I hadn’t, I could close my eyes and let Dozie do it like she had going on for six years now. I mean, it sure couldn’t matter that much if I passed the Grave on the left or the right, could it? Of course not. How could it make a difference? And the tipping of your hat? How could that matter? What if a traveler didn’t even wear a hat? How could he tip it if he didn’t have one in the first place? Come to think of it, my da’ always did wear one when we traveled to the Town, and hadn’t my mother made sure that I had my hat on straight before I left? Where was it now? I didn’t have it on. I’d gotten hot, I remembered. Just before we’d come into the forest’s shade.

Dozie chuffed suddenly, making me jump and jerk the reins. She clopped forward. The Grave grew nearer, and I felt the mare veer slightly to the left all on her own. I relaxed a bit and remembered I’d tucked my hat under the wagon seat.

I tucked one hand up under the bench as the Grave came even closer. I only felt bare wagon boards. No hat.

Dozie kept plugging forward, drawing even with the tips of the walnut’s longest reaching branches. I twisted in the seat until my shoulder almost touched it. I stretched my arm every which way. Just more boards and no hat.

Dozie clopped on. I started to sweat.

Old Gerd’s final words boomed in my ears: ““Always pass on yer left and always tip yer hat. Yer luck’ll be out, boy, if ya’s don’t!”

The wagon passed the spot where the Road first split. The tumbled stones were right next to us. I clawed at the boards beneath my seat. A splinter dug beneath one fingernail. I kept reaching and twisting and stretching. My heart beat in my throat almost drowning out the farmer’s voice.

“It’s yer only life, boy, so don’t fergit it!”

The Grave was almost right alongside us. I saw the strange letters on its front. The pitted stone. The clinging moss. We were almost past it.

Then cloth hit my fingertips! My hat! I snatched it up and smacked it down on my head. I tipped it, just as Dozie drew the wagon past. I heaved a sigh and looked quickly back.

Before the walnut tree blocked it, I caught a glimpse of theGrave’s stone back. Something was there, a carving or some words. I couldn’t be sure.

But the Town waited. I straightened in my seat and sternly clucked at Dozie to pick up her pace. I flicked the reins a bit and kept my eyes fixed firmly ahead. Night was falling fast, and I still had work ahead of me before I could get room at the Town’s inn.

“No time for foolish superstitions, girl, we’ve got business in Town,” I said to the mare’s bobbing head. “It’s getting a little cool, I think I’ll keep my hat on for now,” I added, and Dozie rolled her head back, chuffed, and kept clopping on.

Jeepers, Creepers -- Where'd You Get Those Googles?

2007-07-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Ranger Tom,

I’m ten years old, and three years ago my family built a house near Hatchifac Lake. Every spring, our yard gets full of these cute, tiny black frogs. You can see how little they are in the pictures my mom took for me. The frogs come out of the lake, I guess, but they only come to our yard and they stay all spring. They’re all over the place – but especially in the grass. Whenever my dad has to mow, I run around and try to get all the little frogs out of the way, but I know that a lot of them get sucked up in the mower. What’s the best way to save them and still get the yard mowed because my dad says he has to mow every week even if it kills the frogs? Help!

Friend of the Frogs
Hatchifac, Michigan

Dear Friend of the Frogs,

I am so happy to see that you care about your little neighbors in nature! Many young people would not think twice about squishing those tiny frogs and would probably even offer to mow the grass just to watch them get chopped into a billion microscopic pieces. Ranger Tom and his Critter Scouts are very proud of you for taking a stand!

The only way, of course, to safeguard the lives of those little amphibians would be to preserve their habitat. From your description and the photos that you sent us, I believe that your home is built on the natural breeding ground for the Michigan Teeny Peeper Frog (Peepus Minimus). As an endangered species, the Teeny Peepers are protected by international law, and your lawn, therefore, becomes a wildlife sanctuary for the duration of the Peepers’ visit. That means that everyone in contact with these animals is legally prohibited from endangering the lives of the tiny creatures. On the basis of your letter and the photographs, you and your family should expect contact from the International Wildlife Protection Agency within the next twenty-four hours.

Therefore, my answer to your question is simple. Your father must maintain the lawn in its natural state. He cannot mow the grass until the last Peeper leaves the habitat, which must be officially documented, recorded, and filed by an official habitat specialist from the IWPA. If your father insists on mowing, you are legally bound to advise him that he is violating IWP Law #2678 Section 80.4C (Endangerment and Extermination of Protected Species 7823). You then must immediately contact your local IWPA office, who will take your father into custody. Since damaging a protected habitat and destroying endangered animals are both class E international felonies, he will either pay a fine of $150,000 or face eighteen months to three years in international prison. If you fail to notify the agency and surveillance reveals habitat destruction and species deaths, then you become an accomplice and will be brought into custody with your father until the IWPA makes a decision regarding your prosecution as a juvenile and your own possible imprisonment or remandment into state custody.

As you can see, the Peepers’ presence in your yard is a serious matter. In fact, based on the evidence you sent us, several subsections of the international law mentioned above have clearly already been violated by your family. However, since you and your father were allegedly unaware of the species’ endangered status, imprisonment is unlikely, but a fine will definitely be collected for each breeding season affected by your family’s presence and for each amphibian potentially destroyed by father’s lawn mower. Other family members and neighbors may also face legal consequences if they were aware of the frogs’ presence and did nothing to intervene. Seizure of your home and surrounding property during the spring months could become a possibility, depending on the number of frogs the IWPA observes in the habitat. Ranger Tom and his Critter Scouts hope that your family’s homeowner’s insurance policy includes an addendum for loss of home and property due to endangered amphibian preservation. Otherwise, your eviction could prove to be quite costly during those spring months.

In any event, thank you for your letter and for being such a concerned friend to wildlife! Your free Critter Scout t-shirt and stuffed Ranger Tom and Rocky toys will arriving in your mailbox within seven business days. Keep Caring, and Remember that Nature is your Nicest Neighbor!

Sincerely yours,
Ranger Tom and His Critter Scouts

Googlier Than a Wet Hen

2007-07-10T16:17:00.001-07:00

Of course, the drought would have to end on the day of the big sale at Kohl’s. And it wouldn't end with a nice, pleasant summer shower. Of course not. That wouldn’t have been dramatic enough, now would it? No, and a little sprinkle wouldn’t have interfered that much with Karen’s day, would it? And after all, the world is out to get Karen, isn’t it? If you’re not sure, just read her blog – she has lots of proof that she gets dealt more than her fair share of lousy days.

Take today for example. She’d known about this big sale before most people, all thanks to her friend Ann. That’s lucky, you say? Well, sure, but of course, she couldn’t take the day off from work like she wanted because the Small Breed Showcase started the same day at the fairgrounds. Her boss at the grooming salon said it was going to be a “high-volume day” and “invaluable expertise with Pomeranians” would be needed to “fully satisfy the clients.”

See how Karen’s luck turned for the worse? Well, her boss wasn’t completely heartless. “How about an early lunch?” was the peace offering, and Karen gladly took it. Of course, her car wouldn’t start on that particular morning – seems she’d left the overhead light on, and the battery had lost all of its juice. An elderly neighbor offered a jumpstart, which she eagerly accepted, but his eyesight was bad, and he connected the cables wrong. After the paramedics left, Karen was able to get a ride from the tow truck guy, so she was only a half hour late to work. Her boss was completely understanding and said she could still take that early lunch and even promised to drive her. Of course, just as nine o’clock came around, a lady brought in not one, but two miniature puggles, and who was the only person in the salon with any real puggle experience? Karen’s boss, of course. She offered to let Karen borrow her Beamer, but Karen couldn’t drive a stick.

“Kohl’s isn’t that far,” Karen said hopefully and set off on foot, determined to make it to that sale before all of the good stuff was gone. Anyway, her friend had said that on certain items, like some designer shoes Karen wanted terribly, Kohl’s was even offering rainchecks.

Maybe that was what brought on the storm. And the flash flooding. And the tornado. Karen didn’t stop though, not even when downed power lines made her climb down an embankment and scale a chain link fence just to make it to a safer route. Or when that safer route turned out to be a flooded and closed to through traffic. It wasn’t closed to pedestrians, she decided, so she just took off her heels, rolled up her pants legs, and waded on. And you know what? She got there. She made it to Kohl’s just as the storm broke and its power came back on. And she actually managed to snag the last pair of shoes in the exact color she wanted, and they were her size! Her friend Ann had even tucked away some jeans and a top – in her size! The bad weather had scared away everyone else, it seemed, and Ann had lots of free time to show her more great deals.

Karen couldn’t have been happier or luckier, especially when the mechanic called her cell phone and said that the damage to her engine had been minimal, and all still under her warranty, so there was no charge. He was even going to drop off her car at Kohl’s for her, since his garage was empty and he was bored. Her boss called and checked on her, too, and told her to take the rest of the afternoon off. Turns out the Showcase had been postponed and the Pomeranians had all rescheduled. Her luck was turning finally, she thought.

Ecstatic, she took all of her great bargains up to the register, just as a wave of shoppers burst in from the wet but now drivable streets. They snatched up all the rain checks and eyed her cart jealously as the cashier rang her up.

And that’s when the world had its final laugh. You see, she’d never noticed but she’d ripped the side out of her purse on that chain link fence. Not the side with her cell phone – no, that was still intact. It was the side where she kept her wallet, and it had fallen out when she’d waded that last street and floated right down the sewer drain while she’d persevered on to Kohl’s. Ann was Karen’s only hope, but of course, her friend had left as soon as the news came that her apartment building had been hit by the tornado.

She had no alternative. The cashier was sorry, but “store policy doesn’t allow us hold items for customers on sale days.” The other shoppers were sympathetic, but they snatched up everything once it went back on the rack since “you have such wonderful taste and are just my size, too!” The store manager was quite apologetic, but the rush after the storm cleared “caught us totally by surprise and cleaned out every last raincheck, can you believe it?”

See how much the world hated Karen? How fate just had it in for her? Not convinced yet? Well, Karen trudged out of Kohl’s, downcast and dejected, when her cell rang again. Her boss. “The Poms called. Showcase starting first thing in the morning instead of next week. I need you after all!” Sighing, Karen said sure and looked up just in time to see the mechanic’s surprised face as he hydroplaned on the wet parking lot, lost control, and ran her down with her Honda Civic.

What's Good for the Goose is Good for the Google

2007-07-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

The first time I went back up the holler after our Ma died, my aunt Loo set me down at the old kitchen table and plunked a big plastic box in front of me.

“I know you’ll wanna go through these. Mom always said she was gointa put ‘em in an album, but she never got round to it,” Aunt Loo said. She sniffled and got real busy around the coffee pot. I sniffled a little too, hearing the words ‘before the cancer’ floating in the air even though my aunt didn’t say them.

The old house was a lot quieter without Ma’s joking around and her constant loud laughter, but at least the smells were all the same: Ivory soap by every sink and fresh coffee perkin’ on the stove. Ma drank coffee like other folks drink milk – even if you got up in the dead of night when you were visitin’, you could find her sippin’ a cup in the glow of the night light all by herself. “My throat needed somethin’ warm,” she’d laugh and then go straight back to bed and be snorin’ away in no time at all. Coffee just couldn’t keep up with her, I guess. She just kept herself too busy…before.

Aunt Loo turned from the stove and set down a big brown cup with the local electric company logo on it in front of me. Just like Ma, she’d already stirred the sugar and milk into the coffee, and I smiled at the coffee like a loony before I took a sip. It was way too hot and a little sweeter than Ma’s had been, but that was okay. It was still good coffee. I sipped again and burned my tongue.

Aunt Loo clucked her tongue as I squawked a bit. “Take your time. You’ve got lots of good photos in there to look at, so your coffee can cool a bit. Plenty more in the pot, too, so you don’t got to rush.”

“What kind of pictures are in here, Aunt Loo?” I asked as I popped the top off the big flat box. It looked like the kind that you might have shoved under your bed. Like she said, it was full of pictures – all sizes, some color, most not – but I also saw a lot of greeting cards and ripped envelopes all shoved crazy like in with the stacks of photos. It was really more like layers really rather than stacks. Other papers were stuck in there, so I wondered what Ma might have stored in this box. “Pictures of me when I was little?”

“Older than that mainly. Mom always stuck the ones of you grandkids up on the wall or on the dressers, so a lot of these are ones of me and your daddy when we were small. Some I remember seeing out when I was a girl, but some are older than that according to the dates Mom wrote on the backs.” My aunt had a cup of coffee, too, but she hadn’t drunk any yet. She just kept stirring it round and round with one of Ma’s pineapple-handle spoons. She’d always just looked like Aunt Loo to me, but I thought she looked old right at that moment, sitting there in Ma’s quiet kitchen. With my dad gone and now Ma, I guess Aunt Loo was feeling pretty alone. I felt sniffly again, so I hid my face with a long drink of coffee.

When I set the cup down, I reached into the box and shuffled a bit through the contents. The photos were old, like my aunt had said – smaller and odd-sized with crinkled edges and silvery handwriting on the back that looked about to fade away as I looked at it. One of the first ones I pulled out was of a young guy that looked a lot like other pictures I’d seen of my dad when he was my age. He looked a lot like me, I thought. He was kneeling outside this very house by a tree that wasn’t there any more with a big black dog close at his side. The back just had one word and the year 1946 written in Ma’s familiar handwriting.

I flipped it around and asked, “This is my dad with the dog, right? Was it his? It says ‘Gander’ and the year on the back but nothin’ else. ”

My aunt stopped stirring and took a drink finally. I held out the picture a bit closer to her, and she squinted at it. She smiled at me around the rim of her coffee cup.

“That’s Gander alright, but he was your granddad’s dog, not your dad’s. Your dad was just a baby back in ’46 and way too little for your ma to let play with any dogs as big as ol’ Gander. He wouldn’t have hurt a hair though. Not Gander. Your granddad loved him – the only time I ever saw him cry was when that dog got hit by the phone company truck. You ought to take that one. You always had dogs growing up yourself.”

I looked at the picture of my granddad and his dog a bit longer, sipping slow at my coffee. I looked like him, just like I looked like my dad, but had never known it till now. I only remembered Pa propped up in his bed, chewing his tobacco and making me sit on those scratchy wool blankets while the rest of the family told stories and cracked jokes. I remembered now that Pa had always asked about my dogs and how were they, but I had no idea that he’d ever had a dog he’d cared about enough to pose for a picture with. I felt warm all of a sudden, like the coffee went too deep and too quick. I set the picture of Gander off to the side near where I’d laid my keys and dug into the photo box again.

Gander was the start – I’d never known it but that dog had always been there. He’d been in that box under Ma’s bed, in my aunt Loo’s head, in my dad’s and probably my mom’s memories, even in my own as a kid sitting on Pa’s scratchy blanket – I’d just never heard him or if I had it didn’t stick in my head. That dog had been in my life all along, and I’d never even laid eyes on him until today.

Nearly two pots of coffee later, I had a sandwich-size stack of pictures and a kind of dizzy feeling behind my eyes. Gander was the start – but there were cars, cats, toys, fishing trips, birthday parties – so much that I discovered through Loo’s stories and my Ma’s silvery writing. I felt like I’d been squinting through some binoculars and spinning that focus wheel back and forth trying to get a good look at something that just wouldn’t stay still. I don’t know that I ever got a close look, but my aunt wrapped that bundle of photos with Gander on the top in a brown grocery sack and let me take ‘em.

I drove that winding road out of the holler with my right hand steadying that packet the whole way so it wouldn’t slide around. I didn’t want anything to get bent up or ripped, not when Ma had kept them tucked away for so long. I couldn’t help wishing that she’d drug them out one of those nights when I’d spent the night as a kid. My dad never was able to tell me about most things I saw in that box, and as busy as she was, Ma never got round to it either, before the cancer came and took her.

I needed picture frames, lots of them, and some paper to write everything down, so that my kids would know about all these things from the get-go rather than from the other way round. I wanted them to say mornin’ and good night to Pa and old Gander every time they climbed up the stairs. I patted the bundle of photos next to me and swore that what I got from that afternoon at Ma’s kitchen table wouldn’t get shoved to the back of somewhere in a drawer or box. My kids wouldn’t need binoculars to see these parts of themselves. I was going to put them right in front of us all.

Snap, Google, and Pop

2007-07-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

Today, students at Orange County Culinary Institute proved that anything is possible with the help of a determined teacher . . . and forty truckloads of chocolate.

The challenge started two weeks ago when Chef Willa Torres brought her Advanced Baking class to a vacant lot here at Disney MGM studios in Orlando. It was there that she revealed her students next project – to recreate the famous Cinderella’s Castle as a baked good.

It’s been done, you say? Did we mention that Chef Willa’s students were instructed to bake the Disney landmark to scale?

Needless to say, Torres, a twenty-year veteran of teaching and a renowned pastry chef, had to overcome many obstacles in order to achieve her dream. Orlando city ordinances, recent heavy rainfall, and frazzled nerves threatened the completion of the cake version of one of the most-loved structures in the world. “Chef T is a genius,” described Yolanda Nimmons, an honors culinary student from Calista, GA. “Getting this massive cake to stick together in the heat and still be edible and at the same time follow all the building codes would be impossible if it weren’t for her expertise and her energy. I am truly learning how to be a better pastry chef and chocolatier from this experience.” Another sixth-year student, Michael Pansy said, “Chef T totally pwnz the dessert world and Cakezilla Castle proves it!” Cakezilla Castle is the nickname tagged by the Orange County Culinary Institute students onto the massive pastry, a name that has caught on in the local community. Airbrush It, a nearby printing company, even donated t-shirts, chef’s hats, and aprons emblazoned with C4 – Cakezilla Castle Construction Crew – to express their fascination with the project.

The original beloved theme park icon took eighteen months to complete. Chef Torres and her students put the final touches on the clock tower spire of its edible twin this morning, after two weeks of non-stop, around-the-clock baking, as an enthusiastic crowd of over two thousand well-wishers and dessert lovers looked on. With the help of Consolidated Crane and Scaffolding Corporation and Duncan Hines, the finished cake stands 189 feet tall, exactly the same height as its mode at Walt DisneyWorld, and required more than 400 gallons of chocolate icing to coat its exterior.

The giant pastry will be open for MGM Studios ticket holders until July 9th. At that time, the massive cake will donated to the city’s homeless shelters and children’s homes.

South Beach Google

2007-07-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

“Forget about diets. If you really want to get rid of the weight, then it’s all about portion control.”

Max had written those words on the back of his check-out form as soon as he got inside his car.
When he got home, he took down the Chinese delivery menu from the fridge and stuck the doctor’s advice in its place with a Papa John’s magnet.

“Medically obese,” he said solemnly to the sink full of dirty dishes.

He stared at the bigger heap of dishes on the counter and intoned, “Health risks.”

He took stock of the cryptic Styrofoam boxes in the fridge. He counted the mostly empty boxes of cereal and the dusty cans of random vegetables in the pantry. He noted the trash can full of coke cans and fast food bags. “Cholesterol and trans-fats!” he said to the room at large.

He walked out of the kitchen and down the hall.

In the bathroom he stood in front of the mirror, first straight on, then in profile, then straight on again. He stuck a thumb below his belly button and into the waistline of his jeans. He tugged. “Magic Button Pants Expander!” he shouted at his own reflection.

In the den he spent a few minutes fishing his scale out from under the entertainment center. Finding two working batteries for it took even longer. Finally getting the LED display to light up, he put it down next to his bedroom door but didn’t step onto it. Instead, he walked back to the kitchen and stared at the doctor’s words he’d stuck on the fridge.

“Portion control,” he whispered to the folded piece of paper.

At his feet, his dog, who’d been patiently following him the entire time through, whined.

Max smiled and leaned to scruff the dog’s head. “Not for you, Sharkey. Just me.” The dog whined again and cocked his head at the mention of his name. “In fact, buddy. You’re getting ready to have a buffet. One of those taste adventures – food from just about every restaurant within driving range.”

Sharkey wagged his tail and barked even though he didn’t know what Max was talking about. But when the take-home boxes started coming out of the fridge and lining the floor, the little mutt’s tail just couldn’t keep still.

Cleaning out the fridge was the easy part, Max learned. Avoiding fast food and sit-down places was much harder, since not eating out meant cooking at home and cooking at home wouldn’t happen without clean dishes. Max tackled the counters and sink next, before he even thought about going to the grocery to make some healthy choices. Only after the counters were clean and the dishes were put away did he sit down to make a list, with the help of the internet of course. After every thing else, shopping was a breeze.

Cooking, he discovered, wasn’t that bad either. Sharkey was always willing to eat whatever he made, and as it turned out, eating at home really was a lot cheaper. He had extra money to spend on cook books and more exotic recipes. The weight started to slip off. The Magic Button retired to the top of his dresser. The Papa John’s magnet disappeared, and a cooking measurements one took its place.

All in all, Max was a changed man. From time to time, though, when he fumbled with the miniature cooking equipment that he had to special order from the dollhouse manufacturer, he would shake his fist at the words still stuck up on his fridge and curse, “Portion control!”

Kittens Who Googled Their Mittens

2007-07-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

“Can you believe it? Just when things were looking good for Kitten and Scout, the Stones go and mess it all up! They always do that! God, I hate that family! I can’t stand watching it when it gets like this.”

“Then don’t Tivo the show!”

That’s what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t that mean. Or that brave. So I settled on something more diplomatic.

“Well, you could always watch something else or maybe get online and –”

“Watch something else? You’re kidding, right? I grew up watching Burning Bright! I never miss an episode! I can’t just stop watching! I mean I can remember when Kitten was born and the doctors accidentally switched the…”

She went on about all the horrible complications of being born into the affluent Hart family of North Hatton Bay and about how they suffered daily from the evil machinations of the corrupt Stone clan. I switched the phone to my other shoulder and turned the volume up on my computer speakers just loud enough to hear my game.

I had been in the middle of a quest when she called, and I really needed to finish it before it got too late. I tried to keep playing without her knowing. If she thought that I wasn’t listening, she’d pout until I apologized at least five times and then she’d start the whole story over again.

Now, if only somebody would come up with a caller ID that told you what the call was about in addition to the who! Maybe pop up some general phrase beneath the name about the subject of the call – like “Mom – Invite to dinner” or “Jerry – talk about movie” or “DirectCast – pay your bill” – something to let you know if there’s a good reason to talk to whoever’s calling. I mean, normally, I loved talking to Tina – she was my girlfriend after all, but if I’d have seen “soap opera” on the ID box, I sure would have let the machine get it and pretended to be in the shower long enough to get this quest done.

After I had moved my guy to a safe spot, I focused on what Tina was saying.

“—and Storm’s back from Iraq with horrible burns across his entire body. Of course, they had to do total reconstructive surgery, so now no one recognizes him, not even his sister, who really needs his kidney so that…”

“I thought his sister was dead,” I interjected. I’d learned that asking a question was always more convincing that periodically grunting “uh-huh” – and assuming someone was dead was always a safe bet. Most of the people on that show had died at one time or another. “Sleeping with” was my second favorite, followed by “arrested for” and then “kidnapped” – apparently, life in North Hatton Bay was pretty complicated, even with all the champagne and dinner parties.

Mentally, I imagined Tina’s brain shifting gears as it started down a different storyline.

“No, silly! She’s not dead – I mean, not anymore. They found her in that cave, remember? I bet you’re thinking of his cousin Shelby. That was last month when she took all those sleeping pills after she was paralyzed in that plane crash – and right before her wedding to Tonio! He disappeared, and I cried for a week. And their poor baby! Left with only that coldhearted Pearl Stone to raise her. She is just so vile! I hate the Stones! And now they’re …”

I glanced at the clock. I should have enough time to do the next leg of this quest line without tipping her off. I killed a few monsters, found what I needed behind a fallen log, and then looked at the time again. Six minutes. I’d been quiet for too long, but Tina hadn’t noticed. She was still going strong about the Stones.

“…and you know the labs under their summer house? The ones where they cloned Willow and gave Onyx those experimental drugs? Well, that’s where they have the body of Kitten’s ex – well, just the head and shoulders really, but it’s cryogenically frozen, so the Stones are going to thaw him out and then force Dr. Julie to transplant him onto that homeless guy that Nemo found...”

I jumped in when she took a breath. “Hey, isn’t Nemo sleeping with Dr. Julie?” I held my breath.

Tina made a gagging noise. “Yeah. It’s so gross. She’s twice his age, and he’s just using her to make her do what his uncle wants. And he’s the one who kidnapped her to boot!. Can you believe it? I hate the way she’s betraying the Harts. And she basically is a Hart, you know. Her aunt was Kitten’s grandfather’s twin sister, and she was even married to a Hart for a while. Spade. He was strangled by that serial killer while they were on their honeymoon in the Caribbean. The Stones were part of that, too, of course. They wanted his shares of…”

Tina’s voice continued in my ear. I shifted the phone to my other shoulder, my brain registering the names as I clicked my way closer to finishing my quest. Only a few more bars to go before I hit the next level!

“…and now Scout’s been arrested because the police think he kidnapped Tonio’s baby, but it’s really Ivy because she she hopes to bait the Stones into revealing where they’re keeping Dr. Julie and Trick’s frozen body. Torso really. Or bust, I guess? Whatever. Anyway, it’ll never work because the Stones have figured out that Onyx and the ambassador are really…”

Googling By a Thread

2007-07-05T18:50:00.000-07:00

“This study session today is going to suck,” I’d told my roommate this morning.

“Then don’t go,” he’d said without even looking away from his game. I couldn’t see the screen but knew from the way he was hunching his shoulders and clicking furiously on the mouse that he must be deep in some battle.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘don’t go.’ That’s easy for you to say – you’re already failing all your classes. I actually got a chance in this one if I do well on the exam.”

He just grunted and kept clicking, so I grabbed my chem. notebook and left. For April, the day was really hot, and I started sweating as soon as I stepped out of my dorm. I worried a bit on the walk across campus if the shirt I’d grabbed a shirt was too dirty and kept sniffing my shoulders in a way that I hoped wasn’t too obvious.

What am I doing? I asked myself finally. This is a study session, not a date. If I stink, I stink. All these guys care about are grades anyway.

Still, though, I stood for a few minutes in the thankfully air-conditioned lobby of Duggan Hall before I signed in. No harm in airing out a bit, I thought, as I waited for one of the eggheads to come down and get me. The girls’ dorms always required an escort for male visitors and had even given me a lanyard with the word blazoned across it. A safety precaution that made sense to me, but it kind of rankled that the guys’ dorms followed an open door policy. Maybe admin figured us guys might be happy if some crazy woman barged into our room. Hmmm. Maybe they were right.

I was smiling at my own thought when Alicia stepped out of the elevator. She sat in the row ahead of my in chem. class, but I’d only gotten to know her in the past week. For an egghead, she was actually kind of cute. She had her blonde hair up in a ponytail and wore white sweats cut off just at the calves and a gray thin-strapped tank with a faded maroon football across the chest. Her figure was nice, and she had a way of bouncing when she walked that was distracting, but I knew she was all business. All I’d ever heard her talk about was class work, grades, and the library. Not my type at all, but my type would more likely be at a frat party than a study group.

After clearing me with the stern-faced RA behind the front desk, she waved me into the elevator. “We’ve already started. But you really haven’t missed much.” She hit the 4th floor button and crossed her arms. I noticed that she smelled really good – kind of like oranges or something citrusy. Mentally, I cussed myself for not at least putting on some cologne.

“Cool. I mean, um, sorry. For being late. I didn’t mean to be. It’s really hot outside.”

Like that was a reason. God, I’m an idiot around girls, even dumb ones. And Alicia wasn’t. She’d done well on all the chem tests – I knew because I’d heard her squeal with delight when we’d gotten each one back. Last week, I’d finally stopped rolling my eyes behind her back and instead leaned forward and asked her how she did it.

“A great study group!” she’d gushed. That’s when I literally begged for the invite. I had to pass chem or I couldn’t get into the Early Entry program. Pre-Vet was a tough major, and I’d been too lazy this semester. What can I say? I’m a typical college freshman, at least typical for my circle of friends – most had already broken the bad news to their parents about grades and scholarships. One had even signed up for the Marines already.

Not me though. There was some light at the end of my tunnel. I had some hope, but I needed to ace this last chem. test.

That’s where the eggheads came in.

“We’re in Tally’s room. She’s in our class, but she says you don’t know her. I know you’ve seen her though. Dark hair, pretty, tall? Sits up front?”

“Sure,” I nodded, watching the lights on the panel tick slowly from number to number. Great. Probably that skinny girl with big eyes. Or the fat goth chick. They both sat up front and looked like they’d be in a study group. Always answering the professor questions or worse asking him stuff. They just made class last even longer than it had to. I wouldn’t say that either of them was pretty though, but in nerd circles, who knows?

“Anyway, Tally’s leading the group today, since my roommate’s got her boyfriend over. We usually meet in my room over in Hamlin, even though Tally’s room is bigger. I’ve got better snacks.”

“Cool,” I said brightly just as the elevator light dinged on the number 4 and the doors slid open.

Alicia laughed and waved me through first. I stepped out and immediately stopped worrying about my shirt stinking.

There was such a cloud of incense, perfume, and something that could only mean someone was cooking Chinese food that a dog could have taken a dump right on my foot and I couldn’t have smelled it. I followed Alicia down the spotless, carpeted hall -- another difference between girls’ and guys’ dorms that I’d noticed. Each door was heavily decorated with ribbons, flowers, and all kinds of cutesy signs , and from behind I could hear the mixed sounds of music, tvs, and muffled laughter. Of course, we stopped outside the one door that was the least feminine. It had only a whiteboard with “Tally” neatly written on it in cursive and a little tray holding markers and an eraser. An RA placard hung just above that. The reason for the private room, I noted. Alicia kept talking rather than knocking at the door, which I thought was strange, but chalked it up to her being an egghead.

“Anyway, Tally’s leading the group. She’s aced every test. Every class actually. 4.0 average.”

I hid a grimace behind what I hoped was an eager smile. You’ve got to pass this class, I told myself, and if it means spending time with Big-eyes or Gothzilla, then that’s what you’re going to do.

“And you already know Roger of course.” I nodded. The gay guy who sat next to her in class and listened to her go on about her grades. “And you’ll meet Jess and Susie – they’re in a different section but same prof. They all know you’re coming. Just remember that we move fast, so you’re going to have to ask questions if you’re serious about doing well on this last test. We’ll help, but we aren’t going to feed it to you.”

She looked me dead in the eyes, hesitated noticeably, and then added, “Don’t let yourself get distracted.”

“Okay. Ask questions. Don’t get distracted.” I parroted back, wondering why she tagged that last bit on. She nodded approvingly, not knowing that I mentally added, ‘Stay awake,’ as she turned to knock on the naked-looking door.

This is like going to the doctor, I told myself. It’s not going to be fun, but I have to do it if I wanted to pass… I kept preaching these things to myself as the door opened and Alicia bounced in, announcing that she’d found me and that I’d even brought my books, which must have been a surprise.

I didn’t have time to feel insulted because I knew that I was screwed the second I walked into the room. I knew now why Alicia had added the ‘Don’t get distracted’ warning to her little pep talk.

“I’m so going to flunk this class,” I murmured to myself as Alicia introduced them to me one by one, even Roger whom I’d already met. I barely even noticed the two girls from the other section – I wouldn’t recognize them again if my life depended on it. And Roger and Alicia pretty much fell off the face of the earth. My earth anyway. And so did chemistry and the big final and even the basic things, like sitting down and opening a book.

That is, until she said my name and patted a spot on the bed next to her. Her bed. Her. The girl I’d been fantasizing about all semester instead of listening to the chem. lectures. The tanned, dark-haired goddess in the sundresses that breezed into class late and was always texting in her lap where the prof couldn’t see. She was an egghead? The gorgeous babe that was surrounded by all the jocks as soon as every class ended? She aced every test? Every class? My world flipped not only upside down but inside out and sideways. I eased down onto her bed and looked everywhere but at her. I think I even held my breath, but somehow I inhaled some of her perfume. Vanilla.

She pulled her legs up onto the bed, grazing my leg with one bare foot. I thought I was going to faint.

They started talking chemistry right away – elements and catalysts and moles. Tally knew her stuff, but all I could think about was how sexy her voice sounded. And about how I could still feel the heat on my leg where her foot had touched me. I couldn’t look at her, the rest of the group didn’t exist. I looked at the Monet posters over her bed and the mostly naked guy tacked on the back of her door. I looked at the desk covered with tidy stacks of binders and notebooks and the dresser littered with lip gloss and lotion bottles. I looked at her bookshelf full of fashion magazines and textbooks. I looked at her laptop with the volleyball background. I looked at the chain of high-heel sandals and boots cleverly strung up from the ceiling. I looked at the closet overflowing with string tops, jeans, and – God help me – sundresses. I even looked at my chem. book.

I was staring at it, when an orange highlighter plopped down onto the open page. Startled, I picked it up and looked up into her blue eyes for the first time.

“Don’t just sit there. Start highlighting!” Tally scolded and smacked me on the shoulder playfully. It stung just enough to make me jump. I suddenly noticed the rest of the group staring at me like I was the weirdo, and I opened my mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say.

The goddess laughed and suddenly leaned over to snatch my book out of my lap. I sat open-mouthed, as she flipped through the near-mint condition book with a scowl on her perfect face. She shook her head sadly at me and then waved my book in front of the others. “Look, guys! Can you believe it? Almost finals, and his book’s still a virgin! Not a mark in it!”

The rest of the study group laughed, as she sadly patted my book like it was some kind of pathetic reject. I started to say something that I hoped would be witty just as she chucked the book back down in my lap. She tossed it hard, and I wasn’t ready. Somehow, I managed to keep from curling up in the fetal position.

“See what happens when you don’t pay attention!” She warned with a friendly laugh echoed by the rest of the group. To take away the sting in her words, she poked my thigh with her foot again. Gently though, and she held it there a second longer before she pulled it away.

“Yes, m’am,” I gasped between clenched teeth and uncapped the highlighter. I shifted a little, trying to get more comfortable and felt my thigh touch her foot again. She didn’t pull away, and even through my khakis, I could feel the heat radiating from her skin.

“Um, what page are we on again?” I mumbled.

Her toes wiggled a bit against my leg as she laughed and told me the chapter. Then, the study group began in earnest. They talked, and I highlighted like a crazy person. When I stopped them to ask a question, Alicia tossed me a pen and Tally wiggled her toes again. I made sure to ask a lot of questions after that, being sure to scribble down the answers because that earned me an extra long wiggle.

When one of my questions started a heated debate in the group, Tally leaned over to pat me on the shoulder and cheered, “You got ‘em stirred up! Way to go, Egghead!” She wiggled her toes slowly against my leg for a long time after that.

You know, this study group thing just might work after all.

With Liberty and Google For All

2007-07-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

No one believed me until I brought back the antlers.

Then, it was question after question. I just smiled and nodded and said what I’d been saying all along: “My tool shed is a doorway to another world.”

It all started when I bought an old mower at an estate sale down in Humphries. When I brought it home, I dropped the tailgate and backed my truck up to unload it at the tool shed back of my house. I didn’t gauge the distance right and put my tail gate right in themiddle of the shed door. It split right open. Well, after I got the mower situated, I did a quick fix with some scrap wood I had in the junk pile. It didn’t look pretty, but it would do to keep out the elements. Satisfied, I went on and did a few more things that needed doing around the property, so it wasn’t until the next day that I came back to the shed to try out the mower.

Now, I don’t know exactly why or how, but when I opened up that patched shed door, my tool shed was gone. The insides anyway. The roof and walls were still there. I remember stepping back to check. The work bench, the shelving, the mowers, the tools – everything I had squirreled away in that 8 x 10 shed was gone. And in their place? A forest. An actual forest with all the noises and smells and everything that told my senses that I wasn’t having a stroke or falling for some buddy’s practical joke. This was the real deal.

Well, I’d read all those books when I was a kid. You know the ones about magical doors to other worlds? I didn’t remember anything about toolsheds, but I remembered something about wolves and witches, so I ran up to the house to grab my hunting rifle and some supplies. My wife thought I had gone crazy and called 9-1-1 on the phone. She followed me down to shed, the whole way calling our kids and everyone on the cell phone. I kept laughing and telling her to wait and see, but wouldn’t you know it though, when I got back to the shed and opened it up, everything was back to normal. There sat my new mower, right next to my old one. Work bench, tool racks, weed eater – everything was back. I was so upset that I had a hard time convincing the paramedics that I was okay. They actually made me go in to the hospital and get hooked up to all kinds of machines for some “observation.”

I wasn’t too happy about all of that, especially when the observation turned into a few days. Turns out my blood pressure was too high and I had some blockage. The doctors fixed it all though, and once I stopped talking about the forest in my tool shed, everything started to quieten down. I checked the shed first thing when I got home, even though my wife fussed about me pushing myself too hard. To my disappointment, the inside was just a shed.

Nothing magical happened for several weeks. First chance I got, I hid my rifle and some hunting supplies in a storage bin down by the shed without my wife knowing. I was going to be ready the next time. But the shed stayed what it was supposed to be, and things slowly got back to normal. I kept busy with the yard and the garden. My wife started canning and putting up vegetables. Then, one day, right after I’d finished weedeating along the fence row, I slid that patched shed door open and saw that forest again. I could smell the pine and the musky moss smell of the deep woods just as thick as though I were up on a trail in the Smokies.

I didn’t waste any time. I snatched my gear, popped in the shed fast as I could, and slid the door closed behind me. When I got back, I was filthy and dog-tired, but my wife wasn’t none the wiser. I knew that next time, I needed more gear, maybe even a tent, so I snuck some more stuff down to the shed and waited for chance.

It came again in a few days, and this time I stayed in my forest for over a week. I came back, scared a little of who my wife might have called, but everything was fine. It was still the evening that I’d left. Time just didn’t act the same once I was through the shed, just like in those stories I remembered as a kid.

I moved more stuff down by the shed. I even built a little garage of sorts next to it, so I could keep my four-wheeler handy. My wife and even my kids came down to see what I was doing but didn’t see any harm in it, I guess. They just shook their heads and asked why I hadn’t bothered to fix that shed door yet. I told them it was on my list but I had bigger fish to fry just yet. They laughed and left me alone then.

They didn’t laugh though when I showed up one evening a few minutes late to family dinner with three of the biggest rabbits they’d ever seen, four giant wild turkeys, and a whole mess of trout. I’d been gone for over a month and smelled to high heaven, but they said that they’d just seen me in the garden not half an hour earlier. They dialed 9-1-1, of course, once I started in on the forest, but they couldn’t explain where all the game came from. They even called the police – guess they thought some hunter was poaching on our land, and I found his secret cache.

The doctors gave me a good bill of health. They even praised me, they said, because I must have exercising and eating healthy to get my pressure and cholesterol so much better. My wife and kids just couldn’t understand what was going on. All their watching meant that I couldn’t get all the gear together the next time the shed opened up, but I still came back with a huge raccoon, the biggest, according to the taxidermist, ever found in these parts. I just laughed and put it in a place of honor in our living room.

Well, I finally got my four-wheeler gassed up and plenty of supplies squirreled away in its trailer, so the next chance I got, I popped into the shed and was gone. From what I’ve heard, my wife and kids scoured the whole property and even had the neighbors out looking for me. After I’d been missing for a day, the police showed up, and then I popped out of the shed, right in the middle of all this hoopla, with a load of skins, fresh game, and a full beard to boot. To say they were floored would be an understatement!

They could explain away the meat and fish, even though they were bigger than anything ever found around here, but the beard almost cinched it. I just kept laughing and hooking my thumb back at the shed. The police called the gamewarden and walked all inside the shed, shaking their heads and taking pictures of everything. They opened and closed that shed door probably a million times. What really got them was the giant antlers. The police swore that it couldn’t be from any deer native to this state. They called in an expert, and he came all the way from the university once he saw the picture they sent him, said something about Ireland and Megalosasomething. If I could have bagged that big white stag that shed them, they would have passed out, I’m sure. I hit it once in the shoulder with my rifle, but it had just cussed at me and bounded away. I chased it all over the forest till my four-wheeler got low on fuel and made me head back. I found the antlers though and thought they’d make a nice trophy till I got the ones the stag was wearing.

I needed a bigger gun though, and more gasoline for the four-wheeler, and some powerful ammo. That’s why I came back so soon. Might be nice to get some building material, too – make something a little more permanent than the lean-to I’d put together over there. If only these policemen and wildlife agents would stop asking me questions. And the paramedics going on and on about how fit I was and my wife crying and looking at me all strange. It was all just too much of a distraction. I had to get back to the woods and get that stag. I’d seen some wolf tracks, too, on the other side of that river from where I caught the trout, and heard what I thought had to be some bears singing off in the distance one night. Their voices were much deeper than the raccoons and they were singing about berries and trout, so it had to be bears. What I wouldn’t give for a nice bearskin rug!

Now, if only these people would stop with their foolish questions and let me get my stuff together! Lord knows I don’t want to take too long and show up in the wood in the dead of winter. Maybe I could even talk one of my sons into going . . . but then again, they’ve got jobs and responsibilities. They wouldn’t be much fun…

Google is the Magic Number

2007-07-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

I was glad that the house hadn’t changed. So much in the town had disappeared. Farms, fields, entire streets – all razed and replaced to make life easier and faster for the people who still lived here.

I’d moved away. Not by choice, I’d loved this house – it looked like one of those that had a magic wardrobe or a secret room under the staircase. I’d never found one. I’d never seen a ghost either, but I was still looking when my father announced that he was taking a job in another state. It wasn’t our first move – by the time I was in high school, we’ve lived in eight different neighborhoods – but this time was the first that made me go to my room and pound the pillows and fight back tears.

As I looked at the house now, I remembered how awful I felt seeing it disappear from the back of my mom’s van. My mom had sensed how I felt and stopped at the Dairy Queen to get me a cone. As I’d eaten it, she’d told me how I would make lots of new friends at my new school and about how sixth grade was going to be so much fun. She didn’t know that my quiet tears were all about the house. Friends pretty much were the same from town to town, and schools all were pretty much alike. Different faces, different names, but they all felt the same to me. This house, though, was different. I felt something here. Something that nagged and gnawed at me over the years and made me seek it out now that I didn’t have to follow my parents across the country.

I was here now, and the house was the same. It didn’t seem smaller or older or any of the things that had annoyed me about the rest of the town as I’d driven through. It was exactly the same, and it made me feel exactly the same as it had ten years ago.

I was home.

Big Girls Don't Google

2007-07-02T20:13:00.000-07:00

From the very first moment that our little Melanie ripped away the ribbons and tissues and saw the pink and blue Crystal Cottage DreamTube TM , we knew that we had scored with the best Christmas present ever.

“Beebee!” she squealed and smacked both hands together over and over in such a cute frenzy that we couldn’t stop smiling at each other. She knew what it was. Even though it wasn’t activated, she recognized it from the commercials.

“Beebee! Beebee!” She just kept clapping and jumping and shouting. She had forgotten already about all of the other presents that she had opened. She didn’t care about the wrapping paper or the ribbons or even on the plate of still-warm cookies.

“Beebee!” Melanie banged her hands on top of the little house and tugged on it – it was no higher than her knee but much too heavy for her to lift. “Beebee!” she yelled and banged on the roof a few more times. Then, she looked at us with a cute little frown. “Beebee?”

Cooing at her comfortingly, we jumped up from the sofa and moved all the earlier presents aside. Her newest toy, we put in a place of honor on the coffee table. Melanie squealed in excitement even louder and would have climbed up on the table with it, but my wife pulled her into her lap and motioned for me to start videoing again. I moved around to the other side so that I could zoomed in on the present and get Melanie’s face at the same time. I wanted to make sure that I caught her reaction when my wife pushed the switch.

The Crystal Cottage DreamTube was a perfect miniature of our house, but done in translucent pink plastic. Exquisitely filigreed blue ridges on the plastic traced the doors and windows and even suggested the stucco exterior and textured shingles and skylights of our rooftop. Below the plastic, multicolored bits of glitter floated and sparkled in a thick pink liquid, slowly forming recognizable shapes – our kitchen, our dining room, the family room. Melanie squealed loudest when an image of her bedroom took shape in the crystal cottage. My wife and I laughed happily.

The manufacturer had done a marvelous job with the specs and image files that I had sent in with the order back in the summer. The little house was perfect, and very durable, too. Strong enough, according to the Sugar & Snips Labs website, to withstand even the roughest toddler. We were glad of that. Melanie had broken a few things around the house since she had become so confidently mobile, and we didn’t want this broken and the contents spilled all over the place. It would be much too messy to clean up, not to mention expensive and time-consuming to replace, if Melanie pitched a fit over it.

So we didn’t flinch while Melanie happily pounded on the little house. My wife and I just smiled at each other, proud to have made this Christmas so special for our little angel. I hoped that the contents would prove to be as well-crafted. I’d had to send the samples in for that even earlier than the architectural data.

“Go ahead, Mommy. Turn it on so Mel can see ‘Beebee’!” I finally said in a mock gruff voice that startled Melanie and made her stop pounding and stare quizzically at me.

“So we’ve found a name for it already, I see?” My wife laughed as she leaned over and thumbed the charming little doorbell three times – twice down, once up – to deactivate the interior décor simulation. The glitter stopped forming shapes and spread. Once it was completely diffused in the thick liquid, it slowly began to flow clockwise. So far, it was working exactly like it was supposed to. I sighed in relief. There had been no time to test it when the techs delivered it yesterday.

“Not found, dear. Given, by our little angel, right, sweetie?” I focused the cam on Melanie, but she didn’t look up at me. All she cared about was what was inside of the house, not visible yet, but she knew it from watching her videos.

“Beebee!” she yelled and poked a chubby little finger at the cottage door, trying to do what my wife had done but not knowing the proper sequence. The viewing mode had already been activated anyway, and she didn’t even have time to fuss before the glitter started to swirl rapidly, round and round the insides of the house. The sparkly motes began to spread apart and the pink liquid lightened, becoming clearer. A bubbly little lullaby began to play.

Our daughter yelled in joy. The tune was just like the one in the ads. She knew it instantly and pressed her little face against the plastic, her nose right against a tiny front window. The glitter was settling now. The liquid was such a faint pink that the house’s contents were almost visible. She started squealing “Beebee” over and over, so jammed together that it would have sounded like gibberish to anyone but us.

We knew what she was saying, and when the contents finally came into view, I heaved a sigh of relief. It looked fine, at just the right stage according to the instructions. A little more time in the DreamTube would accelerate its growth to just the right stage for Melanie. Right now, floating there in its crystalline incubator, it looked perfect – a perfect six-month old fetus, exactly like the sonograms in our baby book, just much smaller. It would be exactly the right size when it was ready to release. I heaved another sigh in relief and smiled as I let the cam record the moment.

Everything was perfect. Melanie was babbling and hugging the little house as hard as she could.

“Just think, Mel! A few more days, and you’ll be able to dress it and rock it and feed it its very own little bottle! What do you think, Mel! Do you like it?”

“Beebee!” she squealed and pounded the cottage. At its center, her InstaTwin PlaymateTM fluttered its eyelids and clenched a tiny fist around its UmbilicordTN a few times as the glitter slowly stopped swirling and settled to a stop.

Where's the Google?

2007-07-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Bernice was waiting when Edwin came down to the kitchen.

“Morning, lazybones! I thought you were going to stay in bed all day.” Her smile was wide and cheery, but she didn’t get up from her chair at the counter. She had a bunch of vegetables and ingredients laid out in front of her but obviously hadn’t done any cooking yet. The only smell to the room was the coffee brewing next to the stove. It was what had lured Ed downstairs in the first place.

“You should feel all rested and ready to take on the world,” Bernice continued, still with that same broad smile. She laid her right hand on the counter next to a bottle of cooking oil and tapped her fingers too loudly. Her smile got even wider.

Ed grimaced but didn’t say anything. He moved toward the coffee, filled his favorite cup, dropped in the sweetener that wouldn’t cause cancer. For the spoon, he had to crowd her to get it out of the silverware drawer, but he didn’t say a word about the set-up on the counter. When he carried his cup to the fridge and opened the door, he stood there for a long moment. He moved a few things around, juice, milk, bottles of water. Looking back at his wife, she still was smiling and had both hands tapping on the counter now. Finally, he had to break his silence.

“Where’s the good creamer, B?”

“Early bird got it, Ed – hours ago,” she laughed as he grunted and closed the fridge. “There’s the powdered kind in the cabinet. You like the hazelnut. It’s in the brown wrapper. And I’ve already added creamer to the grocery list.”

“I know, B,” he moved to the cabinet and shoved stuff aside until he found the brown plastic jar. It was brand new, of course, so he had to set down his coffee to rip off the protective seal. He wanted to use his teeth to get a good grip but knew that she would fuss. Finally, he got it off and glared at the dust inside. He needed to get a new spoon but decided to just pour some of the powder in. He poured too much and cursed under his breath.

“Ah, ah, Ed! You’ll have to put a quarter in the cuss jar!” She laughed and scooted the kitchen chair closer to the counter. The legs squeaked loudly against the yellow linoleum. She giggled and grinned just like she did back when they were dating. As he stirred the lump of creamer around in his cup, she started shifting the vegetable arrangement on the counter with busy little movements that brought wrinkles to his own face, but on his forehead instead of around his mouth and eyes.

The first sip wasn’t entirely satisfying, but he let out a long sign anyway. She looked up, winked at him, giggled again, and kept moving things around. He banged his spoon around in the coffee and took another sip. It was getting better.

“Hazelnut’s not too bad,” he grunted. He leaned his back against the far counter and took his third sip. He stared at his wife’s white hair as she pretended to be busy. He remembered when it was brunette and curled on her shoulders. She caught him looking and winked a second time.

“Okay, B, what’s with the vegetables and the oil? You setting up shop?”

She laughed. A full-on laugh that shook her shoulders and closed her eyes. Their grandkids liked to play grocery when they visited and would spend hours in the kitchen shuffling cans and produce back and forth. Ed knew that she loved that time with the kids. He liked to sit on the deck and listen to their fun when they visited. Tom had taken the family to Florida though, so he knew that wasn’t it.

“Not shop, Ed,” Bernice said, still laughing. “Even better – it’s Soup Day! And I want you to take the pictures!”

Ed covered his grimace with another sip of coffee. Now, the whole day was shot. Darn Bernice and her Cooking Blog!

Rain, Rain, Go Away! Little Johnny Wants to Google

2007-06-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

I wasn’t going to pay two bucks to get beaten in chess. No way. Especially by some little kid. I don’t care if she is some kind of freaking chess genius at age 8. I’ve got better things to do with my money than spend it on losing to a little girl.

These other idiots though, they just keep lining up and giving her their cash. What does she give them? “Lessons,” she says in her piping little girl voice. Lessons? Bah. Maybe a lesson in losing their money and their pride at the same time. I mean, just look at that old guy she’s playing right now. He’s probably been playing chess since before that kid’s parents were even born. Yet she’s kicking his butt all over the board. What kind of lesson is she teaching him? That all those years of chess matches haven’t made him good enough to beat some kid who doesn’t even have to wear deodorant yet. That’s a really valuable lesson, isn’t it? That’s the kind of lesson that’ll make a person pack up all the chess pieces and shove them way back in the closet. He started out laughing and shaking his head, but now he won’t even look at her. He just keeps staring at the pieces he has left like they’ve betrayed him somehow.

And the girl? The chess master? She’s all bouncy and happy on her side of the board, just like you’d expect a little girl her age to be. She’s laughing and smiling at people who stop to watch, even striking a cheesy pose for some fruit loop who wants to take her picture with his digital camera. What’s her deal? How can she act so hyper, like she’s about to fly out of her seat, and then move so quickly when it’s her turn? And it’s always a good move, too. I’m no chess expert, but whoever she’s playing always sits for a really long time before picking up another piece.

Nah, I’m not giving any of my money to that kid. She’s some kind of alien, or maybe it’s some kind of scam. Where are her parents anyway? And why’s the mall let her set up in here anyway? This is the food court, not some casino. Bah. Enough of this. I’m going to go get some ice cream.

Not Easy Being Googled

2007-06-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

Rollin Great-Granma out to the porch wasn’t hard, but sittin with her was a chore that I didn’t look forward to.

Now don’t get me wrong. I loved Great-Granma, and I never once complained or even thought about makin some excuse for Mama to make Brother sit with her instead of me.

He wouldn’t do it right. He’d just sit and sulk, or worse he might whittle on that lump of wood he said was goin to be a bear once he was done and ignore Great-Granma completely.

No, he wouldn’t be good company for her. Not at all. So I never complained. I just let Mama think that I enjoyed the time on the porch every morning. And I made myself sit still and I made myself watch her. From time to time I made sure to ask her how she was or what she thought about the day, just like Mama did when she fed her meals. She’d just breathe kinda ragged or flutter her eyelids, so I’d ask again or tell her something Brother had done or some news Daddy brought back from the store. Sometimes if I felt real brave I’d reach over and hold her clasped hands, gently though and not for too long. The skin felt so smooth and thin that I feared it might split if I held on too hard. Doin that always made me shake inside, made me tremble like her hands used to when she’d reach out to kiss my cheek when I was little. She never did that anymore, but I always made sure to kiss her on the forehead when the sun got too hot and Mama called for us to come inside.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved Great-Granma. I just didn’t like sittin with her on the porch every morning. It was a chore, just like pullin weeds or feedin the dogs. It was something I dreaded, but I went out to the shed and cried that day when Daddy tied that chair up beneath the barn loft.

Something Google This Way Comes

2007-06-28T17:15:00.000-07:00

The glowing screen was his campfire, and like the ancient hunters, he stared into its light, seeking stories, searching out meanings for the world that slept and moved outside and around.

He though was not moving. He was still, silent, and sitting closer to the light than he needed to. He sat closer than even was comfortable. A real fire would have blistered him, pushed him back a little, but the glowing screen pulled him. It kept him close, kept him connected, kept him crouched over the keyboard as though he watched over something valuable and secret, something that he feared losing if it slipped outside of his sight.

The ancient hunters had the crackling embers, the chirruping crickets, the wind beyond the walls of hut or tent. Even the cave dwellers of Plato’s tale had the voices of those passing to and fro in front of the firelight. But he had only the clicks and scrolls of his mouse and the gentle hum of an unseen fan that cooled circuits so that his fire would not burn out.

Sunrise or sleep would break the fire’s gaze for those ancient hunters too afraid to close their eyes, and even those in the cave sometimes broke their shackles and ventured out. This modern man, though, had no need of those things. He could stare into the glowing screen indefinitely. It stretched on forever, regardless of sun, moon, shackles, or passers-by. He had an artificial night that surrounded him, never-ending shadows of text and images that danced on the screen in front of him, and a glowing light that led him farther and farther away.