Home of the Brave

What does bravery mean?

If you'd asked me that 20 years ago, I would have had some goofy answer regarding facing things that frighten most other people without fearing it yourself.  This is not bravery, however.  That defines stupidity, or at least a very poor understanding of mortality.

Granted, not all of us are afraid of the same things.  My wife is deathly afraid of spiders.  I don't like them either, and can relate to her phobia.  It's an irrational fear of something.  It's not rational for us to be so afraid of tiny creatures that don't really do much to bother humans.  Nevertheless, we are afraid of them and avoid and/or kill them whenever our paths cross.  But her fear is far greater than mine.

I'm an acrophobe.  I don't like heights; never have.  Roller coasters?  Forget it.  I can't even do Ferris Wheels, because my disdain for high places is so strong.  I freeze up if the ladder to get to the top of a house is too tall.  I could never hang Christmas lights on a house that was two-stories.  Heck, I may not be able to do it at all now, because as I get older, I'm even more cowardly.

But if being brave doesn't mean being unafraid when others might be, what does being brave mean?  I mean, most of us would never rush headlong into a blazing fire, but firefighters do it for a living.  They clearly seem unafraid of something that would make most of us soil our underwear, if we wear it.  So what is bravery, then?

I think, now, that bravery is doing what you have to do despite being afraid.

Each of us has our own private fears, things that make us cower and whimper and weak-kneed.  For some, it's some thing -- like spiders, for instance.  For others, it's some event or catalyst -- like public speaking.  For others, it's situational -- like being unemployed.  When we can face and understand our fears, they're easier to name and to label, box and package and maybe even address.  Some will say we "conquer" our fears.  I disagree ... I don't believe you can conquer all the fears welling up inside the human psyche.  I don't buy into the notion that exposure to something makes it less frightening, either.  I've had some pretty awful situations thrust upon me and my tiny little family, and while we managed to survive them and come out on the other side, we never "conquered" them.  If anything, I'm more afraid of them now, having been exposed to them, than I was before I had to face them.  That certainly wouldn't have gotten a passing grade in a college psychology class, but it's the truth, flat, bald, plain and simple.  I'm more afraid of something because I had to face them than I ever would have been without having experienced them.

And yet, in the face of our fears, we have to do things sometimes.  We have jobs that have to get done, whether that's a literal job, or place of employment, or tasks that face us, or something that has to be addressed during a time of great fear.  If you're in the middle of that blazing inferno and your child is screaming for help in the other room, you're going to find a way to overcome your fear(s) and get to the child or die trying.  If the spider can be dealt with no other way, you will find a way to squash/eliminate him somehow.  You have to do what you have to do, and doing that while you're afraid is the very definition of being brave.  At least I think so.

First responders rush up a building that's been hit by a jet plane.  That's bravery.  They didn't necessarily know the building would collapse on them, but they did know the jet fuel was burning like a crematorium and they went up anyway.  They did what they had to do even if they were afraid.  And I bet they were.

Bravery.  It comes in a lot of forms, in a lot of different acts and events every single day.  We may not always get to see it, because sometimes it's internal, but bravery is the heart of so many actions every day.

True enough, we aren't all "heroes" and go rushing into fiery infernos to save the lives of others.  Sometimes we just squash a spider.  Other times it's bigger, still others even smaller.  We do what we have to do even when we're afraid of the situation, the person, the circumstances or the thing.  Then we are brave, then we are courageous.

With those things in mind, I would like to tell you that I live in the Home of the Brave.  No, not the United States, though I live there as well.  The Home of the Brave, in this case, is the home that my wife has made for me and my children.

She is, without a doubt, the bravest person I've ever met.  She has faced more hardship and tragedy than any one person deserves, just in the last five years of our marriage.  It wasn't at my hands, but it wasn't anything I could prevent, either.  Time and again we were pummeled with situations beyond our controls, circumstances we could not escape, events unfolding around us we could not influence.  And in the middle of all of that, in the midst of a heart broken beyond reckoning, when it seemed even the least of our prayers would go unanswered, she moved forward.  She stayed at my side when she could have done something easier, something different, something less noble.  She chose to cling to me with every precious thing she had slipping away, being ripped from her fingers with no way to stop it.  She stood and faced the ugliness unfolding in front, behind and around her and she never once faltered, failed, slipped or collapsed.

She is the bravest person I've ever met.

I don't think that would have been my answer five years ago.  I don't know that I recognized her strength, her unwavering, unblinking courage, until very recently.  I don't know how many silent tears were shed under starry skies in solitude, how many times she gnashed her teeth and spat resentful curses at everyone and everything.  I don't know how much she wept alone in dark places away from prying eyes, where she would never have to explain.  But I never saw it even once.

I don't know what comfort, if any, she ever received from me during her hardest times.  I think I'm too shallow, self-centered and self-pitying to have noticed she needed it.  I was "dealing" with my own issues and feelings at the time, and God help me, I don't remember offering her a shoulder to cry on for her own solace.  I failed in every aspect as a husband in that time, and she never spoke a word against me.  She never once held a mirror to my weakness, to my pathetic whining and crying.  She did nothing but shoulder her burden without complaining and go on as best she could.  She never asked me for a single thing during that time, never asked me for a listening ear, never sought my understanding and caring.  She never did anything but be the supportive, loving spouse she's always been, the loving, caring, nurturing mother she's always been, and she was always the loyal, trusted, empathetic friend she's always been.

She is the bravest person I've ever met.

Now, the hideous head of our mottled, tumultuous past has reared again, and there she is, silent and stoic, facing her fears again.  She's doing what she has to do in the face of something that would probably reduce me to a quivering blob of nerves and worry.  Actually, it has done that.  She uttered not a sound, made not one groan of weary anguish.  All she did was sigh, and move on.  All she ever does is move on, and do the best she can.

She is the bravest person I've ever met.  The bravest person I've ever known.

The Home of the Brave?

Yes, I live there.

-JDT-

Technorati Tags: random thoughts, life, family life

Bill vs. the Wetter

When my brother Ryan was 5 or 6, and still relatively normal, he had a friend named Timmy who lived across the street from the cul-de-sac where our house was before we moved to Georgia.  Timmy's family was a nice one; he had a baby sister, his dad drove a big Lincoln Mark IV and his mom was a nice, blond lady named Nancy who stayed home just like our mother did.  Nancy and my mom became fast friends, and that's how Timmy and Ryan got to be best friends too.

So, when my best friend Bill came for his summer visit with us that year, he not only had to put up with Ryan's pestering parasitic presence, but he had to deal with Timmy tagging along from time to time too.

The neighborhood was relatively new and more and more houses were crowding around our pie-piece shaped tract lot.  Saplings were desperately struggling to take root and neighbors desperate to keep up with the Joneses were dropping in sod and sprinkler systems every weekend it seemed.  We lost access to a lot of the places we used to play as those open areas transformed into frames for houses and fences began springing up like ragweed on the sides of the rolling hills surrounding the sun-baked suburb.  We had to go farther away from home to find open areas to play in, and my parents were in an ugly battle with a Frenchman who bought the house behind them over the fence that needed to go up and the property line.

That summer Bill brought his bike with him, so we could take bike rides and get away from Ryan and Timmy from time to time.  Other times my mother left us "in charge" to watch Ryan while she was shopping or getting drunk.  We'd stay in the cool of the central air conditioning and play inside when she was busy, and the most fun game we had was torture Ryan.

We got back from my grandmother's house late the night before, so the next day was the first day that Bill and I were able to start enjoying his stay.  We had long, hot days to enjoy and it was always okay for us to stay up late when Bill was there.  We had to be quiet, of course, but we could stay up late.  So it was going to be fun.

First on the agenda was a trip to a tiny little candy shop positioned behind the Stop-N-Go just a short bike ride from the new development.  It was in one of the older parts of town, but the roads had been extended and wound up the steep hill to where our new houses were, so there was a line on the street where the old pavement stopped and the new pavement had been added just a couple of years before.  The old streets were pock-marked and pot-holed with years of abuse and disrepair, and the tinier houses from the past era were swarmed by large, mature trees that shaded the yards and made the sidewalks buckle from beneath as the roots pushed under them.  The steep hills that led down to Railroad Avenue from the side streets were a fun bike trip and we'd peddle down as fast as we could through the quiet neighborhood, whooping and yelling and being kids.

We'd be given an allowance for Bill's visit.  It was generally five dollars, which in the middle '70s was a lot of money for two kids under 12.  Naturally, we'd blow it all on candy, but it wasn't as easy to do then as it is now.  The miniature grocery store nestled in the bottom of an ancient two-storey stucco building had one of the best candy selections in town.  We bought a lunch-bag full of stuff and had spent less than a dollar.  Bill took those opportunities to tell me about all the new candy brands and types he'd tried since he last came, and pointed and said "Those are great, get some o' those," or "Aw, these are so damned good!"  It was always so cool when Bill swore.  I have no idea why.

So, the next trick was getting ourselves back to the house -- it was uphill all the way -- with our booty in hand.  Boys didn't have baskets on their bikes, of course.  And, to make it worse, the bike my parents had purchased for me had shock absorbers on the front and a dense, heavy metal frame.  It weighed about 10,000 pounds and scrawny, geeky-assed me had to peddle that son of a gun up hill for what felt like 10 miles.

By the time we got back home, I was exhausted, hot and sweaty.  We walked into my room and were greeted by Ryan and Timmy.

I knew by the look on Ryan's face that this was going to be his chance to show off in front of Timmy.  He had that little brother sneer that tells you right away he's going to try and push buttons and say things to tick you off, so that when you retaliate the scream for mom could be sounded.  And my mother, overly protective of Ryan since he'd been run over by a truck at two years old, would rush in and get in the faces of the older kids to leave him and his friend alone.  It never mattered who started it; it only mattered who was loudest.  That was Ryan every time, all the time, bar none.

"Hey, who's this?" Bill said, thrusting his chin at Timmy in greeting.  Timmy shied away, and Bill got a quizzical look on his face, looking to me for cues.

"It's Ryan's friend Timmy," I intoned heavily.  "He lives across the street.  What are you guys doing here, Ryan?"

"I live here too, JD!" Ryan said, his voice dripping with contempt.

"Yeah, not my choice.  Bill, let's get out of here," I said quickly.

"Why?" Bill said casually, dropping onto my bed and bouncing.  Ryan and I shared a room, and always had to my memory.  But when Bill came to stay, he and I would stay out in the living room in sleeping bags.  My mother always left the "spare" room for "guests" that never came.  She never once considered separating Ryan and me, and when Bill came, he didn't want to sleep there by himself.

Ryan was on his bed with Timmy standing next to him.  Timmy was a nerdy little kid at five or so; he had what seemed like a big head, with his platinum blond locks and ice blue eyes peering out of his milky white skin.  He had a mealy-mouse little voice that almost always whined, and a mono-toned laugh that was more squeal than giggle.  He was pretty well-spoken and a hell of a lot quieter than Ryan, but he had a pants-wetting problem that his mother was trying to figure out and solve.

"Because we don't want to be around these turkeys," I said, staring right at Ryan, knowing what he was up to.  "Turkey" was vernacular for jerk at the time, and Ryan was still sneering at me.

"Nah, they're cool," Bill said.  "Want some candy?"  He held out his open bag to Ryan and Timmy, and they hesitated only a second before diving in.

"Hey, just one!" he snapped, trying to close the bag as they tore into his stash like vultures.

"Mom says you have to share," Ryan snapped, getting snippy.  Here it comes, I thought.  Not even 24 hours and it's starting already.  I knew the shout for my mother wasn't far away now.

"I did share, you little prick," Bill snapped back, and I instinctively blushed at his foul language in front of Timmy.  I still thought it was cool, though.  It made Bill seem more "bad" when he swore, and his use of words forbidden from our own vocabulary always attracted me.

"Mom --" Ryan started.

Bill stood up quickly, menacing Ryan with one fist clenched over his candy sack.  "Shut up you little ass!  I did share with you, butterball."

Timmy was cowering between Bill and Ryan, who were squared off  between the beds in the room.  Mine was against one wall, with the foot of the bed pointing toward the door, and Ryan's was against the opposite wall, on the other side of the room with a window between them and the closet at the foot of his.  There were two nightstands between them and the ventilation register set into the floor. Other than that, the only thing separating the two was Timmy.

"I'm gonna tell my mom if you don't get out of here and give me some candy," Ryan threatened, sitting forward on the bed in defiance of Bill.  I don't think Bill was used to being defied by little kids, or even kids his own age.  Bill was used to getting what he wanted when he threatened other kids, and when he didn't, he followed through on his threats.  He'd grown up in a much more urban setting, in a much larger town, full of very different, city-smart and street-toughened kids.  White-bread suburbia was different for him, and Ryan was a spoiled little snot with a mouth like a foghorn who knew that his mother was going to intervene every time he mouthed off and got into trouble.

"I did give you some, you little shit," Bill spat, getting angry now.  "You didn't even say 'thank you' either, butterball."  He always called portly Ryan butterball.  He said he looked like one of those Thanksgiving turkeys you get at the store with his waddling girth and double-chin.

"I don't have to say 'thank you' -- my mom says you have to share, so you have to give it to me."

"Oh, I'll give it to you all right, you fat little punk -- right up your ass I'll give it to you!"

Bill had lost his temper, and he moved forward and gave Ryan a firm stiff-arm shove to the shoulder, sending him backwards onto the bed.

Unfortunately, timid Timmy didn't have the brains to get out of the way, and Bill's body pushed the twiggy little whelp aside and down onto his butt, hard on the floor.

"Oh, sorry, kid," Bill started, but it was too late.  Timmy wailed and tears gushed down his cheeks as he made the loudest sounds I'd ever heard him make.

Bill's face drained of color as he reached for Timmy's hand, but Timmy was sitting square on the floor with his head hung and his eyes closed, with that siren sound vibrating our eardrums and bouncing off the walls, rattling the window in its frame.

"Hey!" Bill yelled, trying to be heard, "Hey, it's okay!  You're okay, it's no big deal!  Calm down!"

"Here, Timmy, have some candy!" I shouted, holding out my open candy bag and trying to see down the hall, looking for that inevitable shadow of my mother rushing to murder us for making a child cry.

"Stop!  Stop crying!  It's okay!" Bill said, then looked at me helplessly.  "Is this guy some kind of sissy or something?" he asked.

"Well ... yeah, but ..." I stammered.

Bill had an idea.  He dropped his bag on my bed and picked Timmy up quickly and put him over his shoulders behind his neck.

Timmy was startled into silence.  "How about a ride in a helicopter, Timmy?" Bill said happily, trying to inject lightness in his tone to brighten Timmy more.

"Hey, put me down!" Timmy laughed, starting to giggle.

I started to warn him, "Bill, you don't want to do that, he has a prob--"

Too late.  Bill started spinning, with Timmy extended and stiff out on either side of his head, spinning like a helicopter's propeller.

"Here we go, getting ready for take off!" Bill said, and he spun a bit faster.  Timmy was laughing uncontrollably, loudly, and Bill started making what he imagined were helicopter sounds.

"Bill, I don't think you should --"

"Okay, let's get up some speed and really move now!" Bill continued, and Ryan was laughing and squealing loudly along with Timmy, who was absolutely shrieking and turning red with mirth.

"Bill, I really think this isn't a good idea, he's --"

"Look out, JD!" Bill said, "here it comes for a landing!"

I closed my eyes and shook my head, brushing my long, unruly hair out of my eyes and sat on the foot of my bed, trying to stay out of the way.  Gradually, slowly, Bill slowed the momentum of the boy and began to wind to a stop.  Then he bent down and flipped Timmy over his shoulders to set the little tow head down on his feet between the beds again.

"There!" he beamed proudly, "wasn't that more fun than ..."

He stopped mid-sentence, looking at me.  I had my hand on my forehead, a pained expression clearly stamped on my face, not looking at Timmy.

Bill's face sank out of his broad smile, and he turned to look at Timmy.

There was a large, dark wet spot between Timmy's legs, spread in almost a perfect circle out from the crotch.  In the exact spot where Bill had him perched on his shoulders.

Bill's eyes widened in horror.  "Oh my God!" he whispered.  "You pissed?? You pissed on me??"  He was completely incredulous.

Timmy looked calmly at Bill.

"Well, you were spinning me and spinning me and ..."  Then he shrugged with his hands outstretched as though there were nothing more to say, no more explanation than that needed.

Silently, jaw slightly agape, Bill strode out of the room and past the linen closet just outside our bedroom door, into the bathroom beyond.  The door closed and the lock clicked.

I looked over at  Ryan and Timmy.  They stood and moved quickly.

"Timmy's gotta go home and change now," Ryan said hurriedly.  "Tell mom I went to his house."

They raced down the hall and I watched behind them as they vanished into the foyer.  Directly down the hall, I could see my mother through the sliding glass door of the dining nook, puttering in the garden.  She'd never heard any of it.

A second later, the front door slammed shut.  An instant after that, I heard the shower running in the bathroom.

-JDT-

Technorati Tags: fiction, kids, family life

Bill vs. the Putter

Bill, I think, was the best athlete I've ever met. There just wasn't anything he couldn't do in most sports.

Bowling, baseball, soccer, football, track and field ... you name it, he probably did it, and did it well. So it didn't surprise me that he was good at miniature golf too.

Most of us don't think of miniature golf as a sport, and we're right -- it's just a fun family activity. But when you're as gifted physically as Bill is, nothing is very difficult, including dropping a little ball into an Astroturf-embedded cup. He'd get a semi-serious look on his face, look at the ball, line it up with that goofy little guide on the club head, and he always seemed to give it just the right amount of power to send the ball around its loopy, convoluted trip to the hole. He didn't get a hole in one every shot, but he almost never scored par, either. Always below -- always.

I can't tell you the number of times he'd stand behind me, giving me instructions, talking me through trying to sink that confounded ball. I got better, eventually -- but I never had the smoothness and the ease of doing it that he carried.

That stifling, sweaty northern California day, my mother -- not yet drunk -- decided we would all go miniature golfing. My father, of course, was working. My brother, Bill and I were all excited for the change of scenes and the chance to do something fun. It would mean a trip over the steep, car-killing grade of Kirker Pass into Concord, then up Clayton Boulevard to the miniature golf course just beside the A&W drive-in. Naturally it was our plan to connive her into getting us burgers and floats for lunch, too.

It was a weekday, but a fair number of people crowded the tiny golf course with its protruding spires of Disney-esque castles, a windmill with a slowly rotating 4-tine fan, a teeny stream running under gnomish bridges of false stone and gurgling into bubbling pools beside the fake grass. The little structures were more fun to me than the actual game, and we'd climb over the obstacles and peer inside the windows of the little cottages and shop fronts, only to be disappointed to see garbage and construction debris littering the hollow guts of them all.

The course became more challenging as it progressed. The initial holes were simple curves and bumps in the Astroturf that nearly guided your ball into the hole with no effort on your part. I, of course, was nerdy enough to screw a few of them up. After about the sixth hole, though, things changed dramatically.

The holes became very, very hard. Ryan actually had to be scored just for trying; at five years old, he had no hope of conquering some of the difficult challenges the course began to present. It was becoming clear why even high school students were attracted to this miniature golf course -- it was not easy.

But Bill was under par on every hole.

We came upon a monstrous gorilla perched on a plant-choked hill, beating his chest and issuing a tinny roar from the speaker at the back of his mouth. The goal was to go up the hill and under the gorilla, into one of three holes. The center hole would drop you safely into the hole for a hole-in-one. The other two were more unpredictable.

My brother's first shot didn't climb the hill. He tried about four times before he finally gave up and just dropped his ball -- close to the hole, naturally -- on the other side. My mother's shot ricocheted wildly off the concrete curbs up the winding ramp, but slipped under the ape's plaster rump and ended up about three feet from the hole. My shot cleanly climbed the ramp, but annoyingly bounced into one of the outside holes and ended up about six feet away from the hole. Being a sore loser, I was pissed.

Bill's shot went effortlessly up the ramp and never even touched the sides of the center hole under the primate's ass as it slipped past, and was dropped perfectly with a hollow "clunk!" into the cup at the middle of the green.

I just chuckled and shook my head.

The next hole was a majestic pink castle -- if a pink castle can be majestic -- sitting in the middle of what I imagine was the tiny moat surrounding it. The "moat" was actually a channel about two feet deep with jets rushing the water about. There were leaves and other stuff floating in the water, and you could see them get scooted along quickly by the rushing water. There was a long, suspended bridge, with NO rails to keep the ball from spilling into that dirty rushing water, that spanned from the edge of the moat through the middle of the castle. Inside that castle, a series of tubes would carry the ball through the structure of the pink palace and dump your ball according to where you'd hit it. In the middle, hole-in-one; left or right, no one knew.

My mother's first shot nearly went off the bridge. She cried "Noooooo!!" and twisted her body, trying to somehow control the ball as it barely edged across the bridge and dropped into the far left hole at the castle's "gate." She exhaled loudly through her flapping lips and moved aside. Ryan's shot went directly in the drink, do not pass go, do not collect the ball. We actually had to go ask for another one. My first shot went right, and ended up on the green about three feet from the hole.

But Bill's shot went straight and true, dead-on center, and dropped easily in for a hole-in-one.

I just chuckled and shook my head. "Man!" I exclaimed. "How'd you DO that??"

He thought for a moment, and shrugged. "I dunno. I just ... look at where I want the ball to go, point the line at that spot, and hit it." He shrugged again.

"You should think about turning pro," my mother said stupidly.

The next hole was an anthill type thing, where you have to hit the ball up a mound with a depression in the top where the hole was; there was only one way to do it right. Miss it, and the ball rolled down the hill and you'd have to get it up that hill somehow, and around all the plaster toadstools and crap strewn over and around the ramp. My shot went in on the first try. Ryan hit his too hard. My mother hit hers too soft.

But Bill's shot went straight up and into that cup effortlessly.

The next hole was a weird one. It looked like we'd come to a driving range. There was a huge -- and I mean huge -- ramp, with a net over it that extended some 20 or 30 feet into the air. The whole thing was maybe five yards wide. There were dozens of holes for the ball to fall into. It was a monstrosity, and it took us a minute to figure out what the hell we were supposed to do.

"I get it," Bill piped up. "We have to hit the ball up the ramp. If you get to the top of the ramp, there's a little gutter-thing that drops the ball into the hole. If you don't get it to the top, you'll hit one of these other holes and you'll get on the green."

"Ohhh," we all said together, nodding slowly with the understanding.

Ryan teed up his ball, whacked it, and it rolled weakly off to one side and down into the gullet of a hole that spat him about 10 feet from the hole on the "green". My shot was similar, but not quite as pathetic. My mother's ball found a similar fate.

But Bill's shot went straight and true, up the ramp -- and died about two thirds of the way up.

It rolled straight back down and he stopped it with the bottom of his sneaker.

"What the hell?" he said, confused. I always thought he was a bad-ass when he swore, and my mother never corrected him. He was too bad to be corrected, I assumed.

"What happened?" she said blankly, even though she'd seen what'd happened.

"It didn't make it up," Bill said. "Not even close."

His face grew a bit more determined, set in that concentrating way he had. He set his shoulders, gauged his shot, and hit it again, harder.

His shot went perfectly straight, right up the ramp ... and died about two-thirds of the way to the top again. It rolled limply back down and he stopped it with his foot.

"Dammit!" he cursed. "This is tickin' me off now."

He adjusted his stance, lined up his shot, set his shoulders and hit the ball again. Once more it went dead-on target, but only climbed about two-thirds of that steep L-curved ramp. He stopped the ball again with his foot when it sped down to him.

"Sonuva ... what's the frickin' problem??" he stormed, getting steamed now. He wasn't used to being frustrated like this.

"I guess you gotta hit harder," I said, concerned with his growing anger.

"I did hit it harder," he said. "The bastard won't go up the ramp. Is there something up there stopping it?"

I placed my hand over my bottle-bottom glasses to shade out the powerful California sun, peering to the top of the ramp. "I can't see anything," I said.

He focused too, staring at the top of the ramp. "Yeah, me either," he agreed. "It's just Astroturf."

"I guess you're just not hitting it hard enough," my mother added again. "Just give it a little more whack, that's all."

Bill shrugged. "What the hell. I'm already going over par even if I get a hole-in-one now. Might as well."

"But make sure you can tag it good, though," I said. "Lots harder than before. I think the ramp is steeper at the top than down here."

"Yeah," Bill said, "don't worry. I'll tag it."

He settled in his stance, just as a pro golfer would, watching the position of his feet and the guide on the club. He carefully set his shoulders, then took a look up the ramp and gauged his putter's guideline. He took a couple of half-swings to ensure the club head ended up where he wanted it. Then he settled in again.

"Okay," he whispered to himself, "this is goin' up."

I expected Bill, with his magnificent body control and athleticism, to be able to apply an infinitely adjustable range of power to his hits. He probably could, but he'd lost interest in that. He was determined to get this ball in the hole now, and to do so by using that little channel at the top of the ramp. He would not be content to use the other holes in the field.

So he tipped that little club back like a driver, arced his swing down and ripped the hell out of that ball like Tiger Woods at the Masters. His swing followed through all the way, and his little colored golf ball launched off the tee area mat and shot up the ramp like it was blown out of a cannon.

We watched agape with shock as the ball roared as fast as our eyes could follow up that ramp, cleared the top, and took off into open air. It soared with no sign of slowing down as it cleared the top of the net designed to catch the ball in just such a case. Up into the air the tiny ball receded, and I put my hand over my eyes again to try and watch the trajectory as it whistled away into the crisp cerulean sky.

My mother cupped her hand over her mouth. "Oh my God!"

"FOOOOORRRRRRRE!!" she bellowed ... and she can bellow.

Humanity buzzed out of nowhere. People boiled out from behind that ramp like hornets from a burning nest, hands held over their heads, running low and trying to avoid whatever catastrophe was falling on them. Girls screamed, men ran with fear, and all the while I watched that ball finish it's parabola and begin to fall back toward terra firma.

"Here it comes!" I shouted, "LOOK OUT!"

We all four darted for cover as the screaming ball whizzed out of the air. It crashed soundly into the top of the ramp, hopped up another 20 feet, came down and bounced again, and then struck the net behind the ramp. The net killed all of the ball's momentum instantly, and it rolled helplessly down the ramp.

And it dropped gently into the channel at the top of the ramp. Bill's ball rolled down the channel and was deposited nicely into the hole.

We all stood there staring, amazed.

In a moment, Bill spoke again, clearing his throat.

"So ... was that four strokes or five?"

-JDT-

Bill vs. the Popcorn

You should've seen the look on his face. It was priceless.

That summer was especially fun for me. Bill was there visiting, as usual, but he was a bit older, a little wiser, more ... I don't know. Worldly, I guess. He was just somehow cooler.

And I knew that meant that, by the time he went home, I'd be cooler too.

Bill had that indescribable ability within his person to bring you to his level. He was a born leader. He could get you to do things you didn't think you could do, try things you wouldn't normally try. He made me believe in myself by believing in me. He knew more about what I could do as a person than I did, and he had that part of his nature that called that out, egged it on and made you a better person in the end for it.

I knew when he left I'd be more than I was when he got there. I was always, secretly, looking forward to it.

That summer was coming of age in independence. It was the summer that I learned to do things for myself without the input or assistance of a parent.

That night was a shade different. We became more or less nocturnal when summer rolled through. There wasn't any reason to get up early and get going. School was out. With no routine, we fell into that kid pattern of uselessness and wiling time away with meaningless preoccupations we called “fun”. Or we'd bitch about being bored. Whatever.

The difference was, my parents were gone. They didn't have much of a social life, but every time Bill came around, they managed to find things to do and places to go. It might have been shopping at the large mall over the hill from our town, a half-hour trip by any route. Or it may have been going out to dinner, something that was a lot easier without kids in tow. Wherever it was, they were out relatively late that night, and it'd been a long time since we'd eaten anything.

That was the trigger for a lot of events. Bill was a growing boy, with his hormones ramping up to carry him through his teen years. Being more active and athletic than we were anyway, he ate more. A lot more. And whenever he was around, we ate with him. He seemed to always be hungry, and there was nothing different about this night than any other.

It had to be around 11 o'clock. The windows were pitch black and reflecting like mirrors. The soft blue glow of the TV was the only light in the family room, which butted against the dining nook. The nook was separated from the kitchen by the peninsula counter overhung with cabinets, and both were floored with that tract home linoleum so prevalent in the 70s. We dressed in our sweat pants and t-shirts, the sleepwear uniform Bill brought to us and that we wore religiously. The sleeping bags were unfurled in the living room, ready for that wee hour when we finally ran out of things to do and went to bed.

I couldn't have been more than 11 at the time, but I think I was more like 10. Bill was a year a month and a day older than me. I don't remember if this was the same summer as the toilet war, but it may have been. All I do remember is that Bill got hungry, and he decided to find something to eat.

He padded away to the kitchen and I followed. That was me – always following him. He opened the floor-to-ceiling pantry and stuck his nose in, moving things around looking for that snack that would scratch the itch in his belly. He fished around for a minute, moving some cans, the bowl of sugar stored there, a couple of boxed food items, then whirled around to me with something in his hand.

I was under another section of the counter, rummaging through boxes of cereal. “Want some Lucky Charms?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said definitively. “How 'bout this?”

I looked up and saw the jar of popcorn he held in his hand.

“Oh,” I said, disappointed. “I don't know how to work the popcorn popper.” Working the corn popper wasn't brain surgery, but I'd never been shown or allowed to work it, so I had no idea how. It was one of those domed affairs with a hot plate element at the base. You'd add a touch of oil and put a pat of butter in the top section of the lid so that as the inside of the dome got hot with the popping corn, the butter would melt and run down through holes to coat the pop corn. It was an electric one, and my brother and I hadn't been allowed to use it.

Until Bill got there, and then it didn't matter anymore.

“We don't need a popper,” he announced confidently. “I know how to make popcorn.”

“You do? With no popper?” I asked, eyes wide with amazement.

He chuckled. “Duh. We don't even have one at my house. It's easier in a pot.”

“A pot?”

“Yeah. Do you have one? I'll show you how.”

I was in awe as I dug through the cupboards where the cookware was. “What kind of pot?”

“Well,” he said thoughtfully, taking on his teacher's voice, “it should be one with a lid. Just a regular one, you know, like for spaghetti or somethin'.”

I, of course, only had my mother's cooking as the experience to draw from, so I pulled out an old silver pot and its lid. It was a stock pot I know now; I had no idea what it was then. What he wanted was a sauce pan, but he didn't know what to call it. Even if he had, I wouldn't have known what it was.

“How's this one?” I said, looking at him expectantly. “Is this too big? Mom uses this one for spaghetti, I think.”

He narrowed his eyes and knit his brows, considering the offering. “No,” he said with great finality. “It's perfect. I'm starving, and that'll let us make more. Good thinkin'!”

I smiled. I hadn't thought about it at all. I just grabbed a pot.

“Okay,” he said, moving back to instruction mode, “now we need some oil.”

“Oil?”

“Yeah, you know ... cooking oil. Vegetable oil or somethin' like that.”

“Oh!” I pointed to the pantry. “It's in there.”

He turned and went back to the pantry, and after a second or two of rooting around, he produced a bottle of Wesson. “Awright,” he said, “got it.”

He moved to the stove without shutting the pantry and put the stock pot on the biggest forward burner. “So, whatcha do is, you put some oil in the pot.”

Uncapping the glass bottle, he poured a tiny stream of the golden fluid into the bottom of the pot. He eased up after a moment, waiting for the viscous fluid to spread over the stained aluminum surface. When it didn't completely coat, he poured in another stream. Still unsatisfied, he poured in a bit more.

“Okay,” he said finally, “that's enough. That'll make a bunch.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to take note of each step. “Now what?”

“Now we turn on the stove,” he said authoritatively. “The oil's gotta be hot. So, we throw a couple o' popcorn things in it and when they pop, we add the rest.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Okay.”

He tried to open the jar of dried corn and found it firmly sealed. He grit his teeth and wrenched harder on the lid, but his knuckles turned white and the lid didn't budge.

“Damn,” he swore, and I got a giddy little thrill. I always did when he swore. It was “bad” -- which of course was “cool”.

“Get me a towel, willya?” he said. “I got oil on my hands and can't open the jar.”

I pulled a kitchen towel out of a drawer and handed it to him. He wrapped it around the jar's lid and torqued on it with all his might, his face turning radish red with effort. Still the lid wouldn't give.

“Damn!” he said through gritted teeth. “Still can't get it!”

“Let's hit it with a knife!” I injected happily. “I saw my grandma do it. You knock the lid with the knife until it gets loose.”

“Awright,” he said, and he started opening drawers looking for silverware. I opened the one that had it for him and pointed to the butter knife array.

“So I just hit the lid with the knife?” he said, dubious.

“No, no,” I said, “you hit the lid with the back o' the knife thing, but hit it the way it has to go.”

“Oh, like this?” he said, and he soundly smacked the lid with the knife, leaving a tiny divot on the edge of the metal lid.

“Yeah,” I said, “only don't wake up Ryan or he's gonna want some.”

He clipped the edge of the jar again, and again, and again. One last swing and the jar popped open, the lid skittering across the slick linoleum and spinning on edge to drop in front of the pantry.

“There!” he said. “Got it!” He beamed proudly and approached the open pot.

“Okay,” I said, “what do we do now?”

“Once those pop we pour in the rest,” he said. We both stared into the pot, watching tiny boiling bubbles start to cradle the floating kernels in the oil. They shook and danced in the hot fluid, and at long last, the first one burst open in a fluffy white cloud, jumping up high toward us.

We both started hard and stepped back, looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Awright,” he said, “now we pour in more.”

“How do you know how much?” I said, watching as he carefully poured out kernels into the pot.

“You just guess,” he shrugged. “It's not that important.”

The kernels bounced and slid over the bottom of the pot. He had a flat, even layer in it, and he screwed up his face in doubt.

“Is that enough?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said, pouring again. “I'm gonna eat a LOT. How 'bout you?”

“I can probably eat a lot, too,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, tipping the jar over again. He inspected the contents once more, then poured a third time. The kernels stood over the oil now, the bottom of the big vessel hidden under the mound of brown little pods.

“There,” he announced. “that should do it. We can always make more if we want.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, smiling. “Now what?”

“We just wait. In a couple o' minutes, they'll start popping. Then we get to shake the pot and make sure they're all popped.” He took a last look then dropped the lid in place on the pot.

He started out of the kitchen, and I followed blindly, trusting fully he knew what he was doing. We headed back to the family room and dropped in front of the TV on the couch to watch the rest of Wonder Woman. Lynda Carter held our attention rapt until a hollow, metallic ring caught Bill's attention.

“It's popping,” he said, getting up. “I'll go shake it.”

“Okay,” I said, still ogling Lynda.

I watched for a moment or two, waiting for Bill.

POP! POP POP! POPOPOP! POP! The kernels burst in rapid succession, and I heard the sound of the aluminum scraping over the electric stove element as Bill shook the pot to settle more kernels into the hot oil.

POPPOPOPOPOP! POPOPPPOPPPOPOPOPOPPPPOPOPOPPP! POPOPOPPOPPOPPOPPOPOP!

More shaking.

POPPOPOPPPOPOPPOPPPOPOPOOPPPPOPOPOPOPPPOPOPOPPOPOPPOPPOPPOP!

The sound was getting loud. I couldn't hear the television anymore, and the sound of the shaking pot grew more aggressive, then became constant.

POPOPPOPPOPPOPPPOPOPPOPPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOP! POPOPOPOPOPOPPPPOPOPOPOPOPOPPPOPPOP-POPOP-POPOP-POPOPOP!

The shaking of the pot went from constant to frantic, and quickly deteriorated to desperate.

POPPPOPOPPOPOPOPOP! POPOPPOPPOPOPPOPPOPPOPPPOPPOPPOPOPOPOPOP-POPOWPOWPOPPOPPAPAPAPAPOWPOPOPPOWPOPP!

“JD, get a bowl! JDGETABOWL!!” The cry was more pleading than commanding, and I turned and looked over the top of the couch into the kitchen.

The lid to the stock pot slowly was rising on a column of fluffy, oil-coated popcorn, and those light morsels started spilling over the sides of the pot onto the stovetop like a rockslide. Bill was frantically slamming cabinets, looking for a serving bowl, but he kept trying to shake the pot, forcing more of the kernels to spill and scatter over the stove and onto the floor. Popcorn was flying out of the pot now, the lid sliding off and to the side, clattering like a cymbal onto the counter.

“JDHELPHELPGETABOWL!!” Bill cried, oily puffs of popcorn fog rolling over his hands, down the front of the stove, across the smooth floor, over the counter.

I jumped over the back of the couch and raced to help my friend, but as I skirted around him to get into the galley kitchen I nudged him into the pot and it spilled a mother-lode of popcorn everywhere. Each tiny kernel was caked over with oil, and the linoleum was getting coated with it. White rain fell like water out of a fountain, coming faster and faster. I tore open the cabinet with the serving bowls and pulled out my mother's ancient green Tupperware bowl, the one she always used for potato and macaroni salad and popcorn. Bill snatched it from my hands and I saw his cheeks, puffed like a squirrel's, packed with popcorn, eyes wide as dinner plates and panic stamped comically over the top of it all. He swept the counter with his arm, trying to push the multiplying popcorn into the bowl, but the pot behind him kept swelling and overflowing with endless mountains of creeping, swarming, slippery kernels of invading snack food.

“Get another one!” he muffled through his full mouth. “Eat it! Eat it!!”

I tried to shove popcorn in my mouth, but it was like trying to drain the ocean with a teaspoon. With my cheeks packed and stretched, I dropped onto my hands and knees and grabbed fistfuls of the food and tossed it into the bowl. It was filling up fast, and the avalanche of popcorn kept coming from the pot, kernels leaping down on us to bury us beneath their weight.

I tried to stand, but the oil on the linoleum made the slick floor hazardous and I slipped. I reached my hand up into the open pantry and tried to grab the shelf, but my desperate fingers wrapped about the rim of the sugar bowl and it snowed down over me, the popcorn, the oily floor and splashed out in a graceful fan over a three-foot area.

The cacophony of popping kernels gradually began to die, and the avalanche began to subside. Bill was still shoving popcorn in his mouth, and putting more in the overflowing bowl, as I crawled over the mounds of white to reach the serving bowls again. I pulled another out, and another, and Bill was throwing popcorn into it furiously, sliding and slapping his hands down through the piles to find the floor. He still had his cheeks puffed out with food when he stopped.

“Whaffatmell?” he said through the mouthful of popcorn.

“Huh?” I said. “Hey, what's that smell??”

We both looked up to see smoke rising out of the stock pot in a white, thickening column.

Bill gasped loudly and leaped to shut off the stove, but his oil-slicked hands passed uselessly over the knobs on the range and his face smacked solidly against the oven door, ringing it like a Chinese gong. He cursed through his mouthful of mashed popcorn, and pushed the pot off the element with his bare hand.

He instantly grabbed his wrist in agony and tipped his head back, a guttural cry smothered under the mush in his mouth. I watched wide-eyed and helpless for a moment, but managed to reach and extinguish the stove.

And just then, the door leading into the garage opened. Mom and Dad were home.

-JDT-

Bill vs. the Toilet

We were hard sleeping on the floor of the sunken living room, the torture session having gone long into the night.

The subject of that session, of course, was my brother Ryan. That's what older brothers and their best friends do -- they torment younger siblings over summer vacation. There are tons of reasons, but in this case it was just plain fun to do. No one could scream like Ryan, and no one could go to complete hysteria from pure frustration faster. His wails of anger and helpless fury only egged us on, and we loved it.

"We," of course, was the tandem of me and my best friend Bill. Bill is a year, a month and a day older than I am. That meant he was 11 and I was 10, or thereabouts. Every summer, we'd spend as many weeks together as we could get permission for. Most of the time, it was two weeks, but as he got older, that changed.

I lived in a suburb about an hour away from Bill. It was a journey that seemed even longer when we were going down to my grandmother's house, in the San Francisco suburb of Daly City, Land of Perpetual Fog. Bill lived directly across the street from my grandmother, so every time I went there, we got together and had a ball. And, once a year when school was out, Bill would come and visit us for a couple of weeks and we'd have even more fun.

This particular year, my brother was an especially difficult pest to control. He wasn't as malleable as he'd been when he was younger. He was five then, and already well on his way to becoming the manipulative, lying jack-ass he is today. He already had a weight problem, and was probably psychologically scarred by my mother's constant alcoholic-fueled abuse mixed with overly protective tendencies and over-indulgence. He'd been hit by a truck when he was two and was riding a Big Wheel. Mom felt she should've stopped him from going to a friend's house so young. She compensated, when she wasn't drunk, by being overly mothering to Ryan. Hell, she even stopped my father from disciplining him ... not that stopping my father from doing something was any great challenge.

Those years were the height of my mother's alcoholism. We were beaten on a fairly regular basis, and when we weren't being beaten, we were being told how we'd never amount to anything, or maybe being pulled aside so our mother could tell us she was going to commit suicide later that day, or maybe we were just asked to hit our father over the head with a heavy object so he'd get off of her after she physically attacked him and he had to sit on her and pin her arms down. These were pretty regular occurrences in our house.

They were far, far reduced, and far less severe, when Bill came to visit. The appearances had to be kept up as much as possible. That was part of the reason we loved having him so much. He was my friend, I know, and I would have loved him like a brother even if he WEREN'T our only rescue. But the fact that he was made him all the more dear to us. Bill was the only one that wasn't afraid to say "no" to my mother, or to argue with her in our defense. And, when he had to, he stood in solidarity with us and took his lumps just like we did. To this day, he's a hero to me.

Bill is athletic and well-muscled, and always has been. He was a strong kid, and he always treated us like siblings. I looked up to him then, and over time, he functioned as more of a father figure than my own father. He was strong, masculine and secure in himself -- something we didn't see much from our own father. Even at 11, Bill was a football player and played soccer too. Later, in high school, he was a track and field standout along with everything else he did. The only thing he wasn't good at was academics. He'd lead you to believe he was a dummy, but that's not the case at all. He just didn't do well in school. He's now a shrewd, if not retired business man, with a house in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and set for life with investments and real estate. There's nothing dumb about Bill, and there never was.

He loved my parents and thought the world of them. They, in turn, felt the same about him. So, it was great for all of us to have him around. They never objected to him being there, and they never realized that our motives were as much selfish as caring for the company of a friend. So he visited most every summer, and this particular summer, Ryan was a terror.

Ryan, for his part, had learned that certain possessions were prized by older kids. For us, it was small, grocery-store toys. Often, my mother took us to the grocery store where we'd find an aisle of toys. We were particularly drawn to the rubber animals and insects and things of that nature. On one trip, Bill picked out a rubber skeleton wearing zombie rags and dangling from a gold elastic band. I probably picked out the same thing -- monkey-see type of thing. I wanted to be as cool as Bill, after all. My brother Ryan, being younger, would have followed suit. But his toy would have been destroyed or lost or both a couple of days later. So to avenge our torment of him, Ryan would target our stuff. The cunning warrior attacks neither the body nor the mind, but the heart.

We were at least a few days into Bill's visit by then. It wouldn't have taken long for Ryan to get on our nerves. We lived in a relatively new neighborhood, in a new house with a sunken living room and three bedrooms, a galley kitchen and a formal dining room. The house had a long central hallway that had the living areas at one end and the bedrooms and bathrooms at the other. The main bath was right at the end of that hallway, and the formal living room where we were sleeping was near the opposite end. Ryan and I shared a room, for reasons that I don't to this day understand, and there was a guest room. Bill never slept in the guest room though. He always slept in the living room in a sleeping bag so we could be away from Ryan and do "guy stuff." It was the coolest thing ever.

We slept the sound sleep of children. In those days, the mid-seventies, it was okay for you to leave kids alone in the house. You taught them not to burn it down, and how to contact police, and you did your best not to do it often or for very long. But for jaunts to the store and such, it was no problem. Somewhere in the dimness of the morning that Saturday, my parents had gone out and left Bill and me to watch over Ryan. Without letting us know.

Ryan was an early riser. He got up well before we did; we'd stayed up late playing and talking and trying not to wake my parents. At some point during the night, we'd get something to eat. It was a tradition, a ritual we went through every visit. The goal was to do it without alerting anyone. We were exhausted and near comatose come morning, though. So Ryan had that time, awake and alone, to plot his vengeance.

The sound of a toilet flushing won't wake you up when you're a kid. The sound of a child screaming will.

"HEEEELLLLP! YOU GUYS, HELP MEEEEE!!!"

I told you, Bill was athletic. He was up and out of his sleeping bag in a single feline motion, and bolting toward the end of the hall before I could wriggle out of my sleeping bag. By the time I reached the hallway, Bill was darting through the bathroom door.

He hit the door with his shoulder as he turned the knob and it flew open. Bill took a single step into the bathroom in his stocking feet, and both his legs shot from beneath him. His legs shot over his head and he splashed down in what looked like an inch of water standing over the vinyl flooring. Ryan was laughing maniacally and standing on the edge of the tub directly across from the toilet, safely out of that water.

Toilet water. Not fresh.

I got to the bathroom just as Bill was putting together what happened in his head. His eyes bulged in horrified helplessness at me, his mouth contorted into a twisted grimace of disgust.

"AAHHH, JEEEEZZZ-UZZZ!!" he bellowed. Water continued to flow out of the toilet across the floor, threatening the hallway carpet and having already swallowed the knitted wool area rug my mother had in the bathroom. Bill's long hair was floating in the cesspool under him and he couldn't stand without getting even more drenched with the septic fluid. He stretched his hand toward me, eyes pleading, and I took it. I pulled with all the strength in my puny body, desperately trying not to step into the puddle of waste water, and he slowly rose up out of the quagmire. Bits of toilet paper and assorted flotsam were floating all around us.

He tip-toed with his arms extended to his sides and legs akimbo to the other side of the sopping area rug and grabbed the end. "Grab it!" he called. "Throw it in the tub!"

Impossibly the water kept coming. How long did a stupid toilet run anyway? Over the lip of the bowl it slid, relentlessly pouring onto the impervious surface and scatter ever-closer to the hallway carpet.

"How do we turn it off??" I wailed, fear and panic erupting in peals of hysterical laughter.

"I don't know!" Bill yelled. "Just grab the rug and get it in the tub!"

I had no choice ... I plunged in, my socks immediately soaked through as I went. I grabbed the rug and it nearly gave me a hernia as we hefted with all our might. The woven fabric soaked in what felt like gallons of water and seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds. We grunted with exertion and the heavy rug flopped sodden into the bathtub. Water quickly rushed in to replace it, and as we watched, we realized what we'd done.

The rug was the only thing soaking water up.

"Towels!!" Bill shouted, trying to take charge and handle the situation. "Get towels! Where are your parents??" he whined.

I danced the please-God-don't-let-me-slip dance to the linen closet just outside the bathroom door, and pulled out what my mother called the "old" towels. They were ragged, faded and worn, but they mercifully soaked up the cesspool as I threw them over the floor, reticent to re-enter the lagoon.

Bill's back was to me when I looked at him again, and I saw his entire height from head to heel was plastered with the hideous liquid of death. His mouth was turned into a disgusted frown, just as anyone working in a sewer against his will would wear, when he turned back to me.

"How do we stop the water??" he asked, trying to understand why the toilet didn't shut off by itself. That tiny Niagara continued pouring out of the bowl at a steady, alarming pace.

"Where are Mom and Dad??" I demanded of Ryan, who was now in the hallway barefoot.

"They went to the store!" he whined. "They said they'd be right back!"

More water spilled forward, the hissing of the running water in the tank working against our nerves like ... well, like Chinese water torture.

"What do we do??" Bill said, not sure of himself against the plumbing.

"Open the toilet thing," I said, "maybe we can find out how to turn it off!"

Bill hefted the tank lid off and stared into the tank. "Oh my God," he whispered. "I can't believe this!"

"What?" I said. "What is it??"

He reached inside and pulled out a wrist band. The terry cloth-covered elastic bands used to wipe sweat from the brow during physical exertion. It was, at the time, fashionable to wear them around. This one, however, was especially stylish because it had a red stripe, a white stripe and a blue stripe. It was patriotic and stuff. It was EXTRA cool.

Oh, and it was Bill's.

It had wedged between the stopper inside the tank and the opening so that the water was continually running. The flood stopped once he pulled it free and the rubber plug inside the tank fell back into place. A few seconds later the bowl spill slowed, then stopped.

"That little bastard," he muttered in stunned disbelief. It always struck me as very "bad" -- which meant "cool" -- when Bill swore ... and he swore a lot. "He threw my sweatband in here. You little bastard!" he roared, turning to Ryan. Who was already gone.

"Bill, my parents ... we have to clean this up somehow ..." I whined.

"Crap! Help me!" he said, and he started gathering wet, heavy, slogging towels from the floor, still cursing Ryan as he worked.

He started to rush down the hall, back toward the garage where the laundry machines were. As he turned the corner from the hall and started toward the service door, it opened, and there stood my parents. Ryan was clinging to my mother's leg.

It took some time, but the adults cleaned the mess up. While the sweatband explained the constantly running toilet, why the water didn't go harmlessly into the city sewer system was a mystery. That is, until my father took the toilet out of the bathroom to clear the S-trap.

Deep in those mysterious caverns of porcelain, he found a rubber skeleton, dressed in zombie rags, trailing a gold elastic band from its head. It was covered in feces and used toilet paper, smelled like an outhouse, and it had to be thrown away once it was recovered from its watery grave.

Oh, and it was Bill's.

-JDT-

I Owe, I Owe, So Off to Work I Go

There are so many things in life I hate. I wish I could list them all for you, and then you'd get an idea of why I'm the miserable old bastard I am.

I pulled out onto the road leading out of the campus where I work today at 4:45 p.m. The first half mile of my trip was normal; nothing thereafter was, however.

I came upon a line of traffic backed up at the light on the first intersection with a road that didn't go into another campus in the commercial area. The miniature river of red tail lights winked at me in defiant mockery. I hit the brakes and rode them the rest of the way to the intersection. I was greeted there by another, slow-moving inchworm of traffic that snailed its way down the winding, two-lane road. About another half mile up, the traffic ceased movement altogether.

I've dealt with nasty traffic on this particular stretch of road before. It slaloms through the swank Riverwoods area and is patrolled often and well by police eager to raise revenues and keep wealthy homeowners from complaining. The 35 mph speed is best observed, particularly at high-traffic times. A pull-over not only costs the one being pulled over time and money, it can stop or delay the movement of the road for miles in both directions.

I let my foot off the brake a few times and realized I wasn't going to get home early, after all.

I thought, initially, that perhaps the additional flow was due to holiday-seekers sneaking out early to jump on their four-day weekend. A huge number of people will take the Friday before a three-day weekend off (or the Monday following) and extend their leisure. Still, the traffic was thick and crawling in BOTH directions ... highly unusual. I let up and the brake, crept 10 feet, and stopped again. I heard a sound and realized I'd LOUDLY sighed in resigned exasperation. Then I heard another sound.

A woman in a minivan trying to turn onto the crossroad to my left was yammering at me. "Does this Portwine street go to Lake Cook Road??" her irritatingly grating voice intruded into my solitude. "I have no idea," I sneered, knowing full well it didn't. She rolled her eyes in frustration and let her ham hock of a paw drop hard onto her steering wheel. She'd know soon enough, and the very road she was turning from was the one that led to the street she sought. What am I, I thought, Tom-Tom? 411? Get a frickin' MAP, I thought, and called my wife.

The kids were screaming in the background. She put the phone down and I heard a bellowing, followed by a few seconds of silence behind it like a boat's wake. But before the conversation resumed, the clamor started again.

More bellowing. A threat is issued. A few seconds of quiet. Phone conversation continues. Cacophony in the background a few seconds after that.

I let the brake off and crept some more. I wondered how far I'd gone. It appeared to be less than six miles. It took me nearly forty minutes.

My wife told me she had a headache. More caterwauling in the background. Another threat, followed by a shouted imperative to get off the bed. Reiteration of the headache. I offer to pick up dinner and immediately regret my offer. In two days, I've spent a total of three or four hours with her and the kids. I ask if they want to go with me and offer to pick them up, then creep some more. Not really, she says. See you when you get home.

I hang up, trying to have some mercy on her. I know from headaches; I get migraines triggered by sinusitis. It's a joy. If she's got a headache, and the kids are out of control ... well, I can only say it was God's grace that it was her at home and not me.

Let the foot off the brake. Creep. Stop. Wait. Creep. Stop. Wait. Wait some more. Still more. Creep ahead.

Nearly an hour in the car now, and I haven't gone even seven of the TWENTY miles I have to traverse to get home. The weather was warm, much warmer than I wanted, but the wind was blowing stoutly without becoming that obnoxious, uneducated and uncouth wind so common in the Chicago area. With both windows down, I didn't need the non-existent air conditioner ... thank God.

I blew air through pursed lips and listened to them slap together, effectively giving a raspberry to everyone that cared. I heard a man speaking over his hip-hop into his cell phone declare that he HAD come from [Route] 60, and where the fuck is he now?? I wondered who was on the other end of that conversation. Spouse? Co-worker? Mistress? Drug dealer? Then it came to me -- I didn't care.

Let the foot off the brake. Move a whopping 20 feet this time. Then again. Hmm. I'd rounded a bend in the road and from my vantage point at the crest of what passes for a hill in Illinois I could see the red and blue flashers blazing far distant from me. They appeared to be in the middle of the next major intersection, cutting off westbound traffic and forcing cars to go either north or south ... onto the very street where I was slugging my way home.

It took me another twenty minutes of inching along to finally reach that intersection. A few seconds before I did, two police cruisers floated lazily past me going south. The first had his window down, and all I could hear was the cackling laughter spilling out of his mouth and into the cars of the people he was passing. I wondered what could have been so funny. A maiming in the accident that had traffic blocked? A death, perhaps? Or just the idea of the rest of us being stuck in the mess while he can turn on his lights and rush to Dunkin' Donuts for another dozen? Then it came to me -- I didn't care.

Two hours and twenty-three minutes later, I finally walked into my house. I was greeted by my glass-eyed wife and, when his video game permitted, by my son. And soon, it's off to bed. So despite leaving twenty minutes early, I was nearly two hours later.

Just one of the things on that long list of things I hate. Traffic.

It's probably near the top.

-JDT-

Hidden Treasures

Having just arrived in Georgia, I really didn't know anything about the flora and fauna. That proved to be a problem immediately.

As a kid of about 12, I was happy about the move. I knew the circumstances surrounding it had to do with my mother's drinking problem, but not much beyond that. Years later, I got a half-assed version from my father, but it doesn't make much sense based on who he is and what I've seen of him over the years. So rather than try to figure it out, I just don't care. Anyway, I'm sure most kids would be really upset about being pulled out of school and away from friends at the end of the sixth grade year, but for me, there wasn't a lot of angst about it. First, I didn't have many friends. I was sent to "visit" the school one day in fifth grade, and I met some people that I thought were really cool. I even went so far as to think we were "friends." Well, I didn't see them again until the following school year. During that time, they'd pretty well forgotten me. Couple that with the fact that the group of them had been friends since kindergarten, and I'm on the outside looking in. Kind of the story of my life.

So when it came time to move, it was no big deal to me. I was going to have to make new friends, but maybe I'd have more success in the south than I did on the left coast.

Anyway, I didn't know anyone in Georgia except some of my paternal family members. A couple of cousins, to be precise, and my grandmother. No one else. I met Chubs that summer, and his prissy little sister Missy; their dad and mom, who I thought were cool until much later when I realized differently; and that was about it. Some guy named Calvin, who Chubs' dad called "Cahvin", helped us move out when we left Georgia nearly two years later, but I don't remember when I met him. So, for the rest of the summer between my sixth and seventh grade years, I had my brother Ryan and occasionally Chubs and Missy for company.

I didn't know any of that when I got there, though. My maternal grandmother traveled with us on the plane. She was the "adjustment period" to help us get used to living in a new, unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people. She and my father's mom always seemed to like each other, though the language barrier between them could be a comedy gold mine. My mother's mom is from El Salvador and has a thick accent; my father's mom was from the general area where she lived (God only knows exactly where) and she had a thick accent. A simple statement of greeting could last five minutes.

Anyway, I really didn't know anything about the place. I'd visited before, but only for a week or two at a time on family vacations. Those were small concessions my father received from my mother during their marriage, I guess. So, that bright, sunny day sometime after we moved in, my brother and I were getting the lay of the land and running all over the yard, looking in the new "house" (if you want to call it that) and just being kids, trying to get a feel for the new homestead.

Our parents had gone ahead of us to make ready. My father already had a job by the time we got there. He's always been lucky like that. There were a couple of cars in place: a gold 1968 Oldsmobile Cutlass with a black Landau top, and a baby-blue 1971 Olds Cutlass with a white Landau top. The furniture was all in place; the stuff that didn't fit in the house, evidently, was discarded somewhere. The only thing for my brother and me to do was get settled with whatever clothes we had with us and start having fun.

The yards were strange to me. Having grown up in California, I wasn't used to yards without fences. The neighbors where I grew up made sure to mark their territories immediately and often with 6-foot tall wooden walls between their property and the next nearest human being. Interestingly, they'll wave at each other in the driveway and sometimes visit with one another over the top of the fences, but God forbid we leave the fences down. "Good fences make good neighbors" was always the motto.

Here, there was exactly one fence in sight, and it was between my grandmother's lot and the lot behind hers. It was a fence of heavy-gauge wire in a mesh pattern, but not chicken wire. The "posts" of the fence were about three feet high, maybe four. It was overgrown with a tangle of greenery thick with leaves and flowers which I later learned was honeysuckle. The shrubbery was so dense, I couldn't even see the fence wiring beneath it.

And that was the problem. I didn't know anything about the wildlife in Georgia, and I couldn't see the fence. See the problem?

So my brother and I were racing around the yard, whooping and yelling like chimps escaped from their keepers, and we get a load of that fence. My grandmother's there, talking about a section of her yard near it, showing my other grandmother that particular little piece of dirt she called a garden, but I wasn't really interested in that. There was something on the other side of the fence that got my attention, and so Ryan and I darted over to have a look.

We were excited and wound-up, making a ruckus such as the neighbors probably hadn't ever seen. Everything was fascinating to us -- my grandmother's gravel driveway (never saw one of those next to a paved road before); the thick greenery in the middle of summer (that doesn't happen where I grew up); the spacious, rolling lawns (it looked like they just grew wild, as though no one planned and landscaped the yards); the sky that wasn't quite blue; the ancient, green lean-to and it's weird, coiled-snake-in-the-wall electric heaters; the fact that the old shack was held up on the back side by a stack of cinder blocks; the huge apple tree and the swing hanging from one of it's branches. You name it, we were amazed by it.

I ran toward that fence all gangly and awkward with my thick glasses and long, unkempt hair and my ultra-cool desert boots and jeans. I went thundering down the slope of the lot and raced to the honeysuckle, putting my hands out in front of me to stop myself from crashing into the wire beneath, never knowing it was camouflage for a predator waiting to spring on the innocent, unsuspecting children new to their territory.

I was looking over that fence and wondering about the other side, whatever it was, when I felt something between my index and middle fingers on my left hand.

Suddenly my hand burst into flames and the agony shot up my arm and all the way into my brain.

Okay, not literal flames, but the closest description I can give you to the sensation I had was like being burned. It was so intense and hurt so bad the hair on my body stood up immediately. I pulled back my hand, confused and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I stared down at my hand in horror, panic gripping me like the convulsions of a heart attack.

There was a large, winged insect with piercing, black eyes and a yellow-and-red striped abdomen writhing between my fingers, jabbing at me with it's ass as like it was trying to copulate with my hand. The brownish-red wings beat angrily in the air as it struggled between my digits. My finger, pulsing and red, told me this was obviously some sort of stinging insect, and clearly it wasn't going to die after stabbing me with its venomous dart.

A shiver twisted up my spine and I felt the adrenaline rush flush my cheeks. I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming and clenched my fist as tightly as I could, crushing the buzzing, creeping, undulating miscreant and severing it at the needle-thin waistline.

I shook the corpse from my hand and clenched my wrist; the pain would NOT subside. It just kept pounding and pounding, and my finger was getting really, really big now.

I looked at the fence where I'd put my hand, and all I could see was the dense leaf canopy of the honeysuckle bush. Carefully stepping forward, I moved a couple of leaves aside.

Under that blanket of innocent, cool greenery, was a pulsing, humming network of papery tubes and yellow, buzzing monsters. Just like the one that tried to kill me.

A wasp's nest. A big one -- bigger than the span of my hand. It was alive with motion and sound as the pissed-off inhabitants geared up for a more massive counter-attack on me.

I back-pedaled so fast I almost tripped, and then took off like a bolt of lightning toward the house where my parents were still unpacking sundries. Somewhere there was a sound, a constant wail that sailed like a stream of wind through the air, and it was only after I crashed through the storm door into the tiny green asbestos-coated cabin that I realized it was me, yelling in pain and fear.

There was a few minutes of coddling by my mother, who gasped when she saw my ever-enlarging finger, which eventually swelled so large the folds of skin on the backs of the knuckles actually turned inside-out, becoming ridges. There was a chiding about not bothering wasps from my hayseed, hick-reverting father, despite my protestations that I hadn't bothered them and didn't even know the damned nest was there. There was an ice pack, which did nothing, whatsoever, and then the hours of vigilance by both parents to make sure I didn't have an allergic reaction and go into anaphylactic shock (I didn't).

That was my first memory of living in Georgia permanently. Welcome to the country, city-boy.

-JDT-

Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet ...

Waymond, I decided, was an idiot.

Yes, his name was Waymond, NOT Raymond. I figured his father was Elmer Fudd; that’s why he was such an idiot.

I was never a brilliant chess player, but I was okay. I learned some from my father. One day, when I was probably nine years old, I was being baby-sat by someone, and the man showed me a way to put someone in checkmate in four moves. It was pretty simple, provided the player didn’t know jack about the game. Once you do, of course, it’s an easy strategy to stop, but if you’ve never seen it before and don’t do something instinctively to stop the set-up, it looks amazing.

It’s easy to do; move the pawn out of the way so that the queen and the bishop on the other side of the king can be positioned diagonally in front of the other player’s king. When the time is right, move your queen in front of the opponent’s king and bang! Checkmate. If the king is moved to take the queen, the bishop you’ve positioned is there covering so the game is over.Like I said, it’s a simpleton’s trick, and it’s easy to stop. If you don’t know it’s coming, it looks like voodoo.

So, when my dad came home that night with a guy he worked with at the M&M Mars plant in Cleveland, TN, I was introduced for the first and last time to Waymond, idiot extraordinaire.

He was a tall, dark-haired man with an accent so thick I found myself saying “huh?” almost every time he spoke. Poor bastard must have repeated himself about a hundred times over the course of the night. I couldn’t take my eyes off the tiny stump of bone that poked up through the stubbed off thumb on his right hand. I wanted for all the world to ask him how he lost the first segment of that digit, but I knew it'd be rude. I just couldn't tear my stare from it for long. The flesh on that finger was drawn back from the bone, exposing about a quarter of an inch of the dark gray skeletal support like a barbequed pork rib.

We talked and my parents laughed with Waymond over dinner, and afterwards. He was, from all appearances, a likeable, funny guy. Like I said, though, I couldn't understand a word he said. It was no big deal; I could tell from my mother's laughter that she either wasn't able to figure out what he was saying, or was only laughing to be polite most of the time. My father seemed to understand him better if not completely. He laughed in all the right places and all the right ways, which only made Waymond talk more. Waymond got louder when my father started laughing, so that told me the story being relayed was intensifying and he'd get a funny smirk on his face as he waited for the appropriate howls from the audience. I just stared at that creepy finger bone and wondered how much it must have hurt to lose it.

I can't really remember how it came up, because I was like 12 or 13 and wasn't really interested in the conversation going on at the time. That, and there was that language barrier happening for me. So I started zoning. But, at some point as the evening dragged on painfully, someone mentioned "chess."

My ears perked up when I heard the word. "You play chess?" I asked him, suddenly sitting upright in my chair. Waymond smiled and drawled something like "A little bit, yeah."

I smiled too. "Wanna play?"

He grinned deviously. "You bet. Got a board?"

I refrained from making a comment regarding why I'd ask if I didn't have a board and pieces to play on and went to get mine. It was a magnetic one, with a metal board on the outside of a box lined with foam that had the little cut-out shapes for each of the pieces to go in. The little plastic pieces had a magnet in their bases and the bottoms were felt-covered to keep those magnets inside. It wasn't nice, it wasn't fancy, but it had all 32 pieces and I liked it because they wouldn't get lost. So I darted off to my room to get the set and from behind me I heard my father mutter, "Now, the kid's pretty good, Waymond."

As Waymond was saying something unintelligible, I returned to the kitchen with my set in hand. I sat opposite him at a tiny table in our kitchen, and I had the pieces out and set up in just a couple of minutes. I was listening to Waymond turn his r's into w's and wondering how he'd do in a spelling bee until I finally looked up and said, "What color do you want to be?"

Waymond patiently looked at me and gently said, "Tell ya what, you go 'head and be white. I'd rather go second anyway."

I shrugged. It didn't matter to me. "You sure?"

"Yep."

"Okay," I said, and I popped my king's pawn forward one space.

Waymond wasn't paying too much attention as he moved a pawn and continued talking to my father. I moved out my bishop as I always did. He moved a pawn on the other side of the board, trying to flank my positions. None of the power pieces were moved. I wondered what he was up to and went ahead and called out my queen. When I did, he moved a pawn forward, which is exactly what I didn't want him to do. He'd stopped the maneuver without even paying attention to what he was doing.

I was rattled. Waymond stopped yammering, sensing that I was uncertain of myself. My father and mother were silent. For some reason, everything focused on me at that point. I needed to actually take the time to assess the board and decide what my next move would be.

The quiet in the room was unnerving me a bit. I watch Waymond over the rim of my glasses, trying to casually assess his face and see if he'd betray his next move somehow. All he did was wink at me, which kind of pissed me off.

For a moment, that guy that showed me the four-move maneuver flashed through my mind. He set me up real casual like and seemed very pleased to beat a young boy at an adult's game. I wondered, just for a moment, if Waymond was like that too and was sandbagging me. I couldn't tell, but I didn't like that wink.I moved a pawn just to kill some time, see where he was going. He chuckled. The sound got under my skin and tightened my sphincter. I gritted my teeth and tried to smile. I don't think it worked. He moved a piece, a bishop I think, out onto the board and I was carefully considering what to do next. Waymond took that opportunity to go back to joking and teasing with my father and laughing.

He had a pawn squarely in my way. If I took the pawn with one of my own, I'd have the board set to pull the maneuver again. It would take more than four moves, but I could still do it. I wondered, briefly, if he knew what I was doing. I decided I couldn't worry about that and took the pawn with one of my own. Now I was going to have to move that pawn to clear the path I needed.

Something happened. Waymond stopped chuckling and joking around with my dad. He went silent and sloooooowly leaned forward toward the board.

He moved a piece somewhere over to my right. I figured he was moving toward my queen, but it would be a couple of moves before that would be able to happen. I was watching the center of the board carefully. I wanted to make damn sure he didn't put anything in the way of my next move, which would be the fatal blow. Since he hadn't, I wondered what else he may have had in mind. I knew what I was going to do, but I wanted to make sure I didn't have something else to watch for. A surprise now would be unpleasant. If I lost that queen, I lost the game. The instant someone took my queen I was pretty well dead in the water. Like I said, I wasn't brilliant at the game.

I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye.

Waymond was rubbing his forefinger and stumpy, bone-exposed thumb together.

I was absolutely riveted by that motion. The sight of that dark protrusion rubbing against his finger was fascinating in a groteque, horror-movie sort of way. It was impossible for me to tear my eyes from that motion. He'd rub them together, just over his rook to my left, and then his hand would go still. Rub-rub-rub, still. Rub-rub-rub, still. I fought a shiver from running up my spine, but I couldn't take my eyes from his hand.

Slowly, deliberately, I moved my pawn forward.

I jumped out of my skin when he shouted "You fell for that?!?"

I blinked at him, blankly.

"I cain't buhleeve it," he drawled thickly. "You fell fer thuh oldest trick inna book!"

I was in a panic. What had I done?? What had I fallen for?? What had I missed?? I was watching the board carefully, but I'd been beaten before by not seeing a move that was as obvious as the nose on my face -- AFTER it had been executed. It was what separated me from the really good players; they seemed to be able to see the board from all angles, see every eventuality, cover all their bases. Me, I was lucky when I could see a couple of moves ahead. For the most part, I wasn't able to do that for some reason. That makes the people that know me best now laugh and scratch their heads. They can't figure that one out, because that is most decidedly not how I am now ... except in chess.

"Man, I got you lookin' over here on this side," he said, "so you ain't lookin' over here at this side!" He laughed as he moved one of his bishops out to take a pawn from in front of my other bishop, which still hadn't been moved.

I felt the hot flush of blood that raced up my cheeks when he scared the hell out of me with his outburst subsiding, and my heartbeat was down to about 300 beats per minute by then. I nearly laughed aloud when Waymond sat back in his chair and cackled loud and long to the ceiling, rattling the tiny house's frame with the audio waves gushing from what I'm sure was a halitosis-laden maw. He put his hands over his gut and I again was staring at that bare-boned thumb, wondering again what had happened but now sure that it had been due to his own stupidity.

I seized my queen and slammed it down in front of his king, knocking the pawn aside roughly and shouting "CHECKMATE!!" as I leaned forward over the board to emphasize the point.

He dropped instantly into silence as he snapped his head down to stare wide-eyed at the board.

I folded my arms across my chest and watched his face as he leaned closer and closer to the board. The room was silent again.

After a moment he leaned back, running his fingers through his hair. "Well, I'll be damned," Waymond muttered.

"Like I said, the kid's pretty good," my father chuckled at him.

I don't know if I ever won another game of chess. And frankly, I don't care.

-JDT

Better to Have It and Not Need It ...

My wife has an expression she's used from time to time, and it absolutely drives me nuts when she does:

"It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it."

God, I hate it. Whenever she starts to say it, I interrupt her, loudly, demanding that she NOT finish that (insert expletive here) tripe in my presence.

She used to say it to me in response to my queries about why her purse was always so large, and so friggin' heavy. She'd go through a brief inventory of what's in there, and shrug at me. And when I asked why she'd carry so much crap, she'd say it. "It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it."

Ugh!! I'd grit my teeth and walk away mumbling about platitudes and crap-ass old timer "wisdom" that had absolutely no relevance if the human being saying it would just use their God-given brain for a change.

Not that long ago, I was carrying my lunch to work with me in my backpack and to save hassle and noise, I decided to drop the items directly into the cavity rather than put them in a bag or lunch carrier and then throw it in there. I was having egg salad, ready-made from our grocery delivery service's inventory, and some crackers to top it off. Off to work I went, happy it was Friday, and then down into the computer lab where I've been doing most of my work for the last several weeks. Lunch time rolled around and I opened my backpack to discover that my egg salad container, which was still sealed and unopened, had leaked like a colander all over my backpack. Arrrghh!! Whatta mess!!

I wiped it out the best I could and took it home to my loving spouse, who promptly emptied the contents into a grocery bag, washed it and threw it in the dryer for me. The following Sunday, I was ready to reload it and take it back to work with me on Monday.

As I went through the items, I realized how much junk and sundries I'd accumulated in the couple of months since I got the backpack. I had stuff in there like cold medicine, because I'd been so sick so often this year; glasses cleaning cloths; some lens cleaning fluid which doesn't work very well; a Tide-to-Go pen for those annoying and unexpected stains; a pocket-sized Bible; a tiny 3" x 5" notebook for those inspirations that come out of the blue; my migraine kit; a couple of pencils and pens I'd forgotten about; a few USB flash drives (I don't leave home without them); and a lint "brush" (which was really a roll of inside-out masking tape cut into toilet paper-like squares).

As I looked over the junk in the grocery bag, I decided I wasn't going to put everything back in. I left out a couple of the USB flash drives; I took out the cold medicines; I dumped the lens cleaning fluid; and I left out the lint brush. I didn't need that crap; most of it was sitting and collecting dust anyway. I didn't use it, and the stuff I was left with, except the Bible, I did use most days. Satisfied that I'd pared down to the bare essentials, I loaded the backpack and went my merry way on Monday.

Today, a week later, I'm at work and slaving away over a network that doesn't connect, and I'm waiting to acquire an IP address from the company LAN, and it's not happening. I look down, and what do my eyes behold?

Lint. A ton of it. All over my nice, bone-colored pants.

Jeez, I groan inwardly, how long have I been like this? Who saw me looking like a damned dryer filter?? This is so embarrassing!

Mortified but alone, I decide to reach for my lint brush to get it cleaned off.

Just as I start to unzip my backpack, a strangely mocking voice rolled through my head, giggling and lilting a tease through the recesses of my mind.

Better to have it and not need it ...

I couldn't help myself -- I burst out laughing aloud, alone in the echoing lab, with only the humming, non-functional computers to witness the toll of irony on my mind and soul. I wiped the tears from my eyes when I could finally control myself, and laid my head down on the table where I was working to ponder how the universe conspires against me at every turn.

The lint brush is going back into the backpack tomorrow, of course.

Aerial Attack

“Kee-yum on,” she cooed in her annoying, cloying baby-doll voice, “kee-yum on an’ get some!”

She was holding a handful of shelled walnuts, the kind you get in the baking aisle at the grocery store. She hunched over in what she imagined would be a position of invitation, staring up into the tree with her wide, bug-eyes and toothy smile, and watching intently as the observer above her cocked his head from side to side, measuring up the situation.

“He’s not gonna come down with you standin’ there,” my father drawled lazily. It was interesting, but when my father was doing “country” things, his Georgia drawl got heavier. When he was in our company, he spoke more like we did, with little or no trace of a drawl.

“Oh,” she groaned, “all right. I’ll put it down at the bottom of the tree.”

She, of course, was my mother. I sat on the ancient, tired concrete slab that was our front porch, and watched as she padded over to the huge tree overshadowing our tiny front yard and poured the nuts out onto the ground in a hollow between two tentacles of root matter that webbed throughout the yard just beneath the rich soil. He, being the one to whom my father referred, was a big, fat, well-fed gray squirrel. He was at the top of the trunk of the tree, just beneath the canopy’s umbrella of that great and self-impressed tree, clinging to the bark and skitching his irritating little squirrel screech at us.

My father slowly dragged on his cigarette, and shook his head.

Somewhere up above the squirrel, the blue jays began their ruckus too. “Hush!” my mother admonished them, “You’ll scare him away.”

“They’re not going to scare him,” my dad patronized.

It was an interesting conversation, believe it or not. My mother worked most of that morning to try and coax that squirrel down. She set out the nuts and the squirrel would stare at them until she came back in the house. Then he’d skitter down and snatch one and then scamper back up the trunk of the tree.

And the blue jays would come in and take the rest.

“He doesn’t get any of them!” Mom protested, “They keep taking them!”

I chuckled. The autumn was fading toward winter, and the skies got heavier and heavier as the humidity began to clear the air. Every morning a dense layer of frost settled over everything to warn us of the impending slumber of the earth, caking over grass, rooftops, car windshields and what was left of the leaves on the towering trees. It would vanish with the sizzling caress of the sun every day, but came again at night, silent as a stalking cat, swooping over all the unsuspecting landscape like a bird of prey. It was a busy time for critters like squirrels and blue jays; they were readying for the months of lean to come with scarce food and frigid nights, or were preparing for their long winter’s sleep in a warm, dark den or burrow. So, if there were walnuts left lying around on the ground, everything within striking distance was going to take them.

In this case, they were squirrels and blue jays.

I think it’s funny that my mother hated rats, mice and shrews, wasn’t all that fond of hamsters and guinea pigs, but adored squirrels and rabbits. What the difference was, I can’t tell you. For some reason, the squirrels were “cute” and the mice and rats that occasionally shared our home with us were “ugly” and “creepy”, eliciting violent shudders as the “willies” shook their way down her body. So, she didn’t have a problem feeding the squirrels that took up residence in the tree over our yard. But the blue jays weren’t welcome to what she set out for them.

I think they knew that, because they tormented her relentlessly. Whenever she came out of the house they’d scream at her in their raking, rasping caws like miniature crows disguised as beautifully colored birds. They followed her to the car and crapped on it. They came from all the other yards to harass her, and would settle in what seemed like clouds on the limbs of the great knotty guardian of our house and shouted their bird obscenities at her.

Just like they were doing now.

She came back and sat beside me on the porch to the chorus of yells from the caterwauling jays – which quieted when she sat down – and watched the squirrel.

He eyed her carefully, moving in those jerking, jittery motions that low-on-the-food-chain animals use to make sure nothing’s going to eat them before their next meal. She sat huddled with her balled hands in her lap; any weather below about 70 degrees was cold to my mother. She hunched over her legs and watched the twitchy rodent take a couple of short, rapid half-jumps toward the food.

Then the jays came down in a single-file line and each one picked off a mouthful of nuts in a swooping arc that came down then back up again, vanishing into the leaves of the tree to laugh their midget-crow laugh as my mother wailed at them. The squirrel skittered up the tree again, then turned and twitched his tail a couple of times with his head toward the ground, watching what was left of the nuts.

Every time he moved toward the nuts, the jays would strike, a neat and organized line of fighter pilots performing at an air show, darting at high speed to the ground to gather the walnuts and then swooping gracefully up into the tree, each to their own branch, and burst out laughing in their wicked bird-laugh.

Finally, the squirrel twitched and the jays swooped like a gang of hoodlums, taking what they wanted in their looting raid, a group of airborne Vikings pillaging the walnuts nestled at the bottom of the tree, and my mother couldn’t take it anymore. She charged them, waving her arms at them futilely, moving with all the dexterity of a sand-barred flounder and shouting “Shoo! Stop it! Go ‘way!”

They burst out louder than ever, mocking her, raising a cacophony that actually echoed down the street in their mirth and taunting of her. She stood at the base of the tree and stomped her foot in frustration, putting her hands on her hips.

That’s when the rock came dropping out of the tree and plunked down just inches from her, zipping just past her nose and making her jump back, startled.

She stared at me wide-eyed and incredulous. “Did you see that?? That bird tried to hit me with a rock!”

I was dumb-struck – no easy feat, just ask anyone that knows me well. I was astounded; the birds had launched a counterattack against her, and even gathered weapons to do it. Clearly, these were no ordinary birds; they were the avian mafia, angered over her attempts to cut in on their action. The message was clear: butt out or sleep with the chickadees.

“They’re smarter’n you think they are,” my dad drawled. I had to look and see if he was chewing on a hay stalk and wearing overalls.

“That’s impossible,” I spat. “Birds can’t use weapons.”

“They’re smarter’n you think,” he reiterated, and leaned against one arm propped on the front door jamb. “They’re damn smart.”

“Yeah? We’ll see,” I said, and stood up. “Put down some more nuts, Mom.”

I braced myself, straightening my pants and tussling my hair out of my eyes. I watched my mother as she again approached the tree – much more gingerly this time – and set out another handful of the oily bait. I got ready, hunching down in my running back’s stance as she retreated hastily from the tree with the bag of nuts in one hand and the other held over her head.

As soon as that squirrel moved, I knew the birds were going to drop out of the tree, and when they did … I was going to be hard on them and get one of ‘em.

I was tensed and ready, the squirrel assessing the situation, the jays quiet and positioning themselves on the branches above.

The squirrel moved. The jays launched. I sprang.

It was a blur, a flurry of motion and noise. I cried out like an Apache warrior, hurtling myself forward at break-neck speed on a perfect trajectory for the line of jays as they floated down toward the fresh pile of booty. They hadn’t counted on my sneak attack; they were busy watching my mother and didn’t see me coming.

I knew I had them.

As I raised my arm to swat the leader out of flight he turned up his wings, hitting the air brakes, and twisted his deft tail to one side. His body pitched sharply and lightning fast to my left and he arced over my shoulder, leaving me flailing and beating empty air as he casually picked the pile going the opposite direction. He wound up the tree on the other side and vanished into the tree’s canopy above me.

But I wasn’t done yet – I hit the brakes and turned quickly in my black wallabies, charging the other direction, roaring as fiercely as a 13-year-old boy can. As I approached, limbs flailing and beginning to lose what little control I had over my gangly, about-to-hit-a-growth-spurt adolescent body, they banked smoothly as one to my left and arced down just ahead of me. I tried to accelerate and they stayed barely, maddeningly, frustratingly out of the reach of my fingertips as they picked the pile of walnuts cleanly from the ground and spiraled around the massive tree trunk up to the safety of the branches.

I couldn’t adjust.

The smooth bottoms of my shoes slid like I was on ice, and I flailed my arms trying to regain balance. I toppled head-first forward, shouting not with rage but fear now as my feet each went their own individual ways and my head pulled my body over my center of gravity forward. In a panic, I dove, trying like hell to avoid the wild bramble of a rose bush that grew just beside the porch, and fortunately I made it … and smashed the top of my head against the unyielding, immovable asbestos stalwart of the house.

I was jarred immediately backward onto my rump, all the air whooshing from my lungs in a furious rush that left me gripping my ribs in agony and writhing on the dirt, grass and leaves of the lawn.

There was a gasp from my mother, who stood up to see if I was all right, and a burst of hissing, wheezing laughter from my father. As I got up, the uproarious racket of the jays, laughing and teasing louder than ever before, rained down on me for minutes. It died down about the same time I got my breath back.

“Are you okay, son?” my father chuckled.

I nodded, ashamed to meet his eyes.

“I guess they’re smarter’n you think, ain’t they?” He smiled at me. I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Yeah … yeah, I guess they are.”

And then a rock dropped just inches from my face.

-JDT-