Riffling through My Mind ... Again

I haven't really been keeping up with journaling; sorry about that.

I did some deciphering of my history today, and I have to say, I'm a little surprised at what I found. I was doing some chronological checking to make sure I wasn't off my nut doing my Georgia Kids Life blog stories, and I discovered that I've got an interesting time line of events running right through my life. Funny how I didn't notice any of them.

For example, the Vietnam war ended while I was in the 3rd grade. I don't recall any of it, really. I know it was the first broadcast war in history, and was on every night, and all that crap. I guess I was just shielded from it somehow. I never had really politically involved parents, and my father had already served his time nearly 10 years before the end of the conflict. I had an uncle in the military at that time, but he really didn't have a lot to say about it. He was on the USS Kittyhawk, so I don't think he saw much of the Vietnam that we've come to associate with that time. He wasn't in the jungles and surviving harrowing village scouting trips ... nothing exciting like that.

I do remember the oil crisis, but can't remember what year(s) that covered. It was in the Carter administration, so it had to be around '76, right? Or was it the Ford administration, which would have been between '72 and '76? My wife is much better at these things than I. I remember the bicentennial celebration of '76, and the tall ships sailing off New York (or was that DC?) on TV. I can remember things like Mark Spitz at the Olympics, and some of the Super Bowl games that were played (Steelers vs. Cowboys, Vikings vs. Raiders, Cowboys vs. Broncos, Redskins vs. Dolphins, crap like that in no particular order). I can remember movies ... Jaws, The Exorcist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Rocky, The Legend of Boggy Creek, The Hills Have Eyes, The Black Hole, Alien, Star Trek: The Movie (or Motion Picture, or whatever the hell the title was), The Godfather I and II. And I can remember some great TV shows too. Things that are part of our culture now, but were only a dim memory for me until I was older: The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Happy Days, Gilligan's Island, M*A*S*H, Night Gallery, The Night Stalker, The Love Boat, Love: American Style, The Greatest American Hero, Spider-Man, Kimba the White Lion, Speed Racer, Ultraman, Johnny and his Giant Robot, The Banana Splits, Laugh-In, Hee-Haw, The Lawrence Welk Show, Saturday Night Live, and the whole plethora of Saturday morning cartoon shows that were composed entirely of 7-1/2 minute shorts. Not a single half-hour show among them.

I can remember snippets of things from my childhood -- some of them good, some not so good. Most not so good, actually. I can remember wetting my pants in 3rd grade because I was afraid of the teacher. Her response to children asking to go to the bathroom, and insisting they do that at recess, always seemed unreasonable to me. And her name: Mrs. Smith. She seemed like a nice lady, but I guess that was a peeve of hers. I actually did it twice before confessing it to my mother. She then had a meeting with the teacher, who changed the way she responded to me from that day until the end of the year. I'll never forget her, because after that, she didn't seem so scary, even though she was a tall, imposing woman that towered over my mother ... and probably my father, too.

I can remember being spanked once in first grade by the teacher for being out of control and fooling around, making people laugh. Can you imagine such a thing now? Hoo-hoo, the lawsuits! But it was fine then. And I remember my parents gladly signing the permission slip to provide corporal punishment as needed when that became a requirement not long after that. I never got spanked again, but I did that once. I can't remember the first grade teacher's name anymore, but I remember her face. If you're still alive and reading this, thank you. It made me a better behaved child in school. If you're not ... well, there it is.

I can remember Mrs. Mac(Farland) in 2nd grade; she was a large, lump of a woman that was matronly and kind despite her troll-like appearance. Nothing outstanding there to recall, I guess. I can also remember Mrs. Malloy, whom I had for both 4th and 5th grades. She was a "pressure-phobe." She didn't want to teach fractions, or have us participate in Science Fairs or Spelling Bees, because her daughter was forced to be in a Spelling Bee once and nearly (or did) suffered a nervous breakdown. She was kindly, and sweet, but my education sort of started to suffer at that point. Other students in the school were better spellers and farther along in mathematics, and when I visited a private school in 5th grade -- which I attended the following year -- I was completely lost in the concepts they were studying. When I brought this up -- because I was made a spectacle of and asked about my "visiting day" when I returned to my public school -- her answer was "Yes, we should be studying fractions, but really, how often do you need that? How often, really?" I don't know, Mrs. Malloy -- daily, maybe? Go figure.

Because of that, I never really grasped math. I think there was too big a leap for me somewhere along the way and I never fully caught up. I don't, of course, blame Mrs. Malloy for that, but if the foundations had been properly laid, perhaps things could have been different. On the other hand, my brother got the same opportunities I did, and the benefit of more years of private schooling than I did, and he's a dumbass, so maybe that had nothing to do with it. Anyway, I was very fond of Mrs. Malloy, and after that it was off to private school with me.

The concept of changing classrooms for different subjects, and having structured "periods", was odd to me. It took a lot of getting used to. After a time,of course, I didn't have to think about it anymore, because it was all dictated for you. Go to the room you're supposed to be in for your next class when this one is over, and that's it. High school was a new adventure in that, though. Despite the tiny size of the school, both structurally and in student body numbers, it took me time to figure out where I had to go and I always dreaded having to learn a new route to my classes. I guess, despite what I may have thought about myself, I've always hated and resisted change. I like my routines, evidently, and I don't like going new places, meeting new people and doing new things. Even today, I hate driving in a strange town or state, God forbid country, without at least someone to pass the time with or assist with road signs and map reading and such.

In 6th grade I made new "friends", which I supposedly had through high school, since a lot of us went to the same school as a logical jump to the next stage. Once a parochial school boy, always a parochial school boy. I found them to be nice, but things changed quickly for me after a short time. I was an outcast, and not widely accepted by most of the other kids. It wasn't as bad as it was in high school, where I was anonymous and sort of a loner in a school of only about 500 students, but it was always that way for me. I was just ... never able to fit it.

So many things ... so many. And yet, I struggle to find something to write in my blog. I think most of the problem is that I don't believe a lot of it's worth reading (maybe an audience would disagree, but I'm pretty boring overall). The rest of it is that I don't remember a lot of it clearly. I don't know if that's due to the chemicals I've ingested over my lifetime (I was a sickly kid and took no less than one experimental medication for it) or because I just don't want to remember a lot of it.

Hopefully, this post will spark something interesting. Tomorrow's the 4th of July, and so being off, maybe I can reflect tonight and let my fingers probe the darker recesses of my brain and see what I can find there that would be worth sharing -- and that I don't mind sharing.

See you all then, hopefully.

Common Trauma

It happens to us all at some point in our childhoods. That just doesn't make it any less traumatic.

In case you haven't gotten the picture yet, my mother's a real piece of work. My father moved us all to Georgia, and she let him know about how unhappy she was every chance she got. When she got a little lubed with liquor, which was pretty often, she'd let loose even more. He'd hang his head and suffer through it for some reason, and go on his merry way being spinelessly ignorant of his options. To get even for being forced to live in Georgia, she'd make him send us back to "visit" her family in California as often as they could scrape the money together. That wasn't often, but I don't think he saw his family more than a handful of times in my memory. If we made it back to California two or three times during our time in Georgia, that was a lot more than he got back to see his family, before we got there or after we returned.

One of those trips at least was during the summer. My brother and I weren't in school and the oppressive, thick heat of Georgia was dripping over everything like hot syrup. You'd sweat and never dry off. Our lean-to little shanty of a house didn't have any way to cool down except box fans, and those did a lousy job of it. When we got back, I don't think we were even unpacked completely that night. It was just too hot to do anything except spend time with our dad and go to bed.

Bell Avenue is dark at night. Really dark. There was only one street lamp that I can recall, and it was far enough away from the house not to do anything helpful. Even if it could, there was a terror of a bush standing higher than the roof of the little crackerbox house that sprawled like a Kraken threatening to drag down a ship, and it was positioned between that pathetic, weak light and the front of our house. We lived in its shadow in the day, and at night it shrouded the house in a blanket of pitch that was impenetrable. Add to that the pea-soup humidity that moistened everything, and the light had no hope of making a dent in the blackness.

Waking up in the night, then, got pretty interesting. The room my brother and I shared had two windows in it: one that faced into the belly of that beast of a bush -- and we couldn't see any light through it in strong sunshine -- and was shielded by it; the other was on the wall adjacent and looked down the gradual slope of Bell Avenue to the north, toward the Tennessee border of State Line Road. There were lower, less dense bushes around that one, but if you looked out the window, you could see the dim candle of a lamp standing in the street a few houses down. It did nothing to light up the inside of the room, but you could see it.

Waking up at night is something I've always done. I have no idea why to this day. I wake up probably two or three times a night on a regular basis, and I always have. At 12 years old, waking up in the night meant one of three things. Either I had to go to the bathroom, I was having an asthma attack, or I was hungry.

Having to get out of bed for two of those three things became something of a chore living in that tiny asbestos block. The first thing you have to do is let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Even though your eyes have been closed, I guarantee whatever backlighting your brain uses to show you your dreams was brighter than the light that managed to pick its way through the murk of the Georgia night. It was like living in a black hole. Whatever light there was got sucked into a void and couldn't escape.

That first night back from California, with its brightly illuminated San Franciscan suburbs and busy streets, took some getting used to. It was quieter on Bell Avenue than anywhere I think I've ever slept before. When you grow up with the background noise of a more urban area, the quiet's unnerving a bit. Waking up to the soot blackness and the morgue quiet made you sit up straight in bed, afraid you've died.

When I woke up that night, I had to figure out what woke me up. Instantly, I knew it wasn't asthma. I was breathing fine, and was getting stronger every year in my resistance to it. I listened quietly in the stillness for that familiar rumbling that would let me know if my stomach, seemingly always empty regardless of how much I threw down my gullet as my teen metabolism began to fire up and burn calories faster than an American V8 burns Arabian oil, was the culprit.

Nope. Not the gut. But I could've used something to eat, I noted.

That only left one cause for my bout of consciousness: my bladder. I waited for the signal ... and there it was. Gotta pee.

So now, adjusting to the darkness and the stillness of the cemetery-creepy night, I drew a heavy sigh and resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to plod over the leaning house and into the single bathroom between my parents' room and the dining room.

I waited quietly, hoping to go back to sleep and that my urinary tract would forget what it wanted. No suck luck.

I had to pee and it wasn't going to wait until morning.

For some reason, I had the covers on. Normally, I wore the standard kid uniform of sweatpants and a T-shirt to bed. But at 12 years old, I also still slept under my covers. I can't recall now whether those constituted a blanket or not, but it seems goofy to me now. It was so hot, I really didn't need anything. I had to kick them off me, though, and then I lay still for another couple of minutes to muster the energy to make the walk to the bathroom.

It was a real problem. When I got there, I'd have to turn on the light to see the damned toilet so I didn't whiz all over the floor or whatever else was around the commode. That meant burning my retinas, and turning the light off would leave me next to blind for a few minutes. Throw in the fact that rhinos have better eyesight than I do, and getting back to the room to bed usually meant a bunch of stubbed toes, wall-bumping and walking around like Frankenstein's monster, arms outstretched and lumbering to avoid breaking a foot or nose crashing into stuff.

I heaved myself out of bed, dreading the walk. I could finally make out the dim shapes and shadows that constituted my world at night without my glasses, and started to make my way toward the bathroom.

That tiny house was too small to house all of us and all our crap. I don't remember if the room my parents had never had a door, or if my genius old man took it off. Either way, the decision was made that they'd open the bathroom door all the way and it would block their room, acting as a door of sorts. That's how small the house was -- one door, two rooms. The tiny bit of light that spilled from the bathroom window behind the chipped, ancient tub and shower gave me something to aim for as I shuffled through the abysmal dark to relieve myself. My room was adjoined to the living room, and those windows faced away from the light, so the biggest hazard was getting through there without breaking a bone or falling. Once you made it to the kitchen, abutting the living room through a narrow doorway, it was relatively smooth sailing.

When I got through the living room without getting hurt, and got onto the cool linoleum floor of the kitchen, I figured I was home free -- at least until the way back.

I was dead wrong.

I felt my way through the opening that led to the hallway with the bathroom straight ahead of me. I took hold of the door to my left ... and I heard an unfamiliar sound.

I thought my parents were awake. But it was the middle of the night, and I was sure my father had to work the following day. What would they be doing awake?

I poked my head around the door.

I bit my tongue to keep from screaming, my eyes bulging so wide they nearly fell out of my skull. I wish they had.

My mother's legs were wrapped around my father's torso and the bed clothes were strewn all over the place. What I thought were words being spoken were guttural, carnal grunts and moans.

I couldn't move fast enough. I slammed the door shut behind me and never turned the light on. I ripped my pants down furiously and the urine stream began to flow, far too slowly, so I pushed it with all my might, trying to force it out of my body like I was giving birth. I made as much noise as I could to alert everyone to my presence -- I turned on the faucet behind me and rinsed one hand while I pulled my pants up with the other, and then flushed. While the toilet was still sucking water loudly down its throat, antique pipes slurping and clanging with the effort, I crashed through the door like a charging bull, and banged it back into place, bolting like a chased gazelle through the kitchen and living room, recklessly ignoring any potential for injury, running with my feet pounding hard against the floor boards as I sprinted for my room. I dove, crashing the bed springs and bouncing, clutching the bedding for dear life. When I landed I pulled the covers over my head, eyes squeezed shut as tight as I could, weather and humidity forgotten. I waited for someone to come up and check on me, to make sure I was all right. I jumped at every creak and groan the old house made as gravity tried to pull it to pieces. Thankfully, no one ever followed up.

No matter how I tried, though, that image was seared into my brain like a brand on a cattle's hindquarters. I couldn't clear it from my memory no matter how I tried to distract myself with thoughts of sports, girls, food ... nothing worked.

It still doesn't, frankly.

-JDT-

Technorati Tags: Fiction Writing Kids

Oh, the Pain ... The Pain of it All!

As any of you that read my gibberish know by now, I like to fancy myself a bit of a creative soul.

I can draw ... some. And I can write ... a little. I'm not a giant in any field, naturally, but I feel that I have some creativity to offer the world and I think I tell a good story. When I can actually get someone to read what I've written, I get nothing but rave reviews.

Now, it's entirely possible that those are just polite indulgences. Most people aren't going to rudely tell you what they actually think of your stuff unless they're close to you. (I don't know, sometimes they're the ones that blow sunshine the worst.) But, even when I ask relative strangers to read and give me their thoughts, they end up telling me the things they read that I've written or drawings I've made are "good."

I don't know exactly what "good" means. Not evil, I suppose. Not bad? I don't know.

Anyway, that brings me to my point. There are certain websites where EVERYone thinks their stuff is good. Whether it is or not, they believe it is. I've written things that don't get very much public exposure. Very few people read it. But I've never written anything, and published it for public viewing, unless I was satisfied with the product. I proofread it, I ask for another set of eyes to read it (my wife's -- very good eyes indeed), and I make sure that when I finally put it out there for the world to see, it's ready for that scrutiny.

Now, to be fair, I'm a bit anal. Most people, especially on sites like the ones of which I'm speaking, are just having fun and don't necessarily obsess for perfection like I do. But, when you publish something to a massive site with millions of submissions, I've got to believe you want someone to read it. And if that's true, why wouldn't you take the time to make sure it's legible? That it flows? That there's a story to read, and the language to read it? It seems that proper punctuation and spelling are beyond most people. Typos? Of course, we all make them. I have plenty of them in my posts, I'm sure. But between the two sets of eyes, we usually find them (even if not immediately) and fix them, and that's only AFTER the piece has undergone a spelling and grammar check through my friendly neighborhood word processing program. Take your pick, they ALL have them -- even Microsoft Works. And yes, it is sufficient to catch most of them.

Instead, the sites are flooded with badly written, poorly structured and horribly misspelled "literature" (if you can call it that). In addition, the topics don't seem to change very much. It's like most of the stuff out there is written by angst-ridden teens or kids that define themselves as "emo" (I didn't even know that word existed, never mind what it meant, until I looked it up on the 'Net after seeing the Mac commercial where the PC has to go download it), is all written from that whole razors-and-mascara perspective, and just generally isn't any good.

Then, they can't figure out why no one will read their writings. It's pathetic.

Enter dorky me. I have no clue what goes on on these sites, so I happily enter and start hanging my drawings up for folks to see. I don't draw anime, and I don't animate my art. I'm only average at best, and never claimed to be anything other than that. So, I didn't get too offended when I didn't get many page views on my art. The few people that did stop by were intelligent, thoughtful and easy to talk to, and they offered me some great insight.

But then I started writing. I rather fancy myself a writer of sorts. I'm a better writer than I am an artist, and that's likely because I work at it a bit more. I decided, some time ago, that I wanted to change my style of writing a bit and start posting stories from my childhood. I had a stable of some pretty amusing stories to share, and I wanted to get them out there and see if I could emulate the style of writing of Chris Kimball. He's the editor of Cook's Illustrated magazine, and the host of the PBS show America's Test Kitchen. He's a brilliant writer though, and his writing captures a feel and a tone from a time forgotten -- a time when kids wore denim and Keds and plaid short-sleeved shirts with crew cuts, or pig tails and eyelet dresses, and they played games like stickball and kick the can, and had clubs and rode their bikes to buy trading cards.

Get it?

So, I tried to inject some of that into my writing. I felt I was pretty successful at it, too, and so I posted some of those stories on an artists site so that others who write (supposedly -- NOT suppose-of-ly) could see it and maybe offer me some direction to make the work stronger.

Nothing.

When I stop and think about how deeply buried in CRAP the good stuff gets (anyone's, not just mine -- there are other good writers out there), it's no wonder no one reads the literature on the site.

I got to thinking, then, that maybe sex sells. I notice that if you publish naked photos, or draw sleazy, sexy comic women, your page got loads of page hits. So I thought I'd try and experiment to see if would work for me, too.

I started an anonymous account with a pseudonym, and I wrote some erotica. What do you think happened?

Absolutely nothing, that's what.

So, no matter what I try, if I'm not writing homosexual stories of existing anime or manga characters, or "furries" (whatever the fuck THAT is), no one's interested. I mean, the erotica got more initial interest, but the same thing happens. It gets buried under a lot of garbage cranked out by horny teens who think that characters with fur, tails and unpronounceable Japanese names are "literature". And after it does, no one reads it anymore, because it would require effort to find it and cipher through the tripe to get to the gems out there.

It's really disappointing.

I don't mean to be disparaging of someone else's work; I know we all feel our creativity deserves a view by the world, and even emo teens feel they have something to say. All I ask is that you make it worth reading for the REST of us.

Anyway ... I'm finished ranting. If you like good writing, you can read my fiction on this site and others around the 'Net. If you don't like my writing, that's fine, but don't tell me it's because I'm not any good at it or that the story isn't well-structured or constructed. It's because you don't like the material or the subject or the style, but not because it isn't well written. Sounds arrogant, doesn't it? <Chuckle!>

What about any of you Internet readers? Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Opinions?

Shout out and be heard -- even if only by one madman.

-JDT-

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-