The Fucks After Midnight

1. Prologue

I was thinking about my old friend, the Troll, this past week.

I met him just shy of forty years ago. His real name wasn’t “Troll,” or even his real nickname. He earned the nickname by being large and strong enough to bench press the front end of a VW. And he was a pleasant enough fellow, but the things that made me think about him recently were his fondness for fantasy literature and gaming... and his incessant use of the word “fuck.”

Another of our acquaintances said, once, “The Troll only knows about a hundred words, and half of them are “fuck.” This was hardly fair. The Troll was as smart and articulate as anyone, and more so than some I could name... but he sure used the effword a lot. Even by the standards of a buncha foulmouthed nineteen year olds. Noun, verb, gerund, intensifier, interjection, and even adverb on occasion; the word “fuck” got a real workout from the Troll, particularly if he was irritated, angry, or even just excited.

I mentioned fantasy games. We played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons at the time (we had free time, and D&D’s cheap if you have the books already), and the Troll was a FIEND for the game, fucks and all. He invariably played an incredibly vicious fighter sort, a master swordsman, invariably with some magical talent as well, specializing in offensive spellcasting. Every time. Every character. He saw no point in clever thieves, wise clerics, or powerful wizards; he was a SWORDSMAN, dammit, with just enough magic to give him the edge. And fry you from a distance, of course.

And it was this that led us to the Night Of The Living Fucks, so to speak.

2. Fucks After Midnight

One particular game we played lasted some twelve hours, and finally petered out sometime after midnight when the Troll could play no more, and stretched out on the couch to rest his eyes. He was snoring within five minutes.

The rest of us weren’t quite so tired, and we turned on the TV with the volume down and discussed the game and drank our beverages and waited to get tired enough to stretch out ourselves.

...and at some point, the Troll muttered, “...fuck.”

We all stopped talking and looked at him. He was still asleep. He moved his head back and forth, and said, “Fuck,” again.

We looked at each other. We looked back at him. “Fuck,” said the Troll. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Well,” I said softly, so’s not to wake him up, “I don’t think he’s using it as a verb this time.”

“Or the command form,” said Rocket Boy. “He seems frustrated.”

“Definitely an interjection,” said Bobo.

“Fuck,” said the Troll.

This went on for a while, as we speculated as to what the Troll might be dreaming of, and the Troll continued to utter his favorite word periodically. We tried talking to him softly, asking him to tell us what he saw, to explain. The Troll wasn’t having any of that, and said nothing. Except “Fuck.” Regularly. Sometimes as often as twice a minute or more. Just that one word. Nothing more. Kind of like the uncensored version of Poe’s “The Raven,” you know?

And finally, Bobo leaned over and shook his shoulder. The Troll came awake, and growled, “What? I’m sleepin’.”

“Dude, what were you DREAMING about?” said Rocket Boy. “You’ve said the word “fuck” something like fifty times in the last fifteen minutes.”

The Troll fixed him with an irritated gaze. “Fuck you,” he said, and rolled over and went back to sleep.

We never did find out what he was dreaming about.

3. A Game Of Fucks

And time passed, and we grew older, and went our separate ways. Fantasy novels became a big thing over the past thirty years, and finally big fantasy films and even TV series, as Game Of Thrones became a colossal phenomenon after the success of Lord Of The Rings. And I was glad. I liked ‘em all. Where were they back in 1985? Well, better late than never.

And then, this past week, I was binging the new Netflix series, The Witcher, about the noble monster hunter Geralt, a master swordsman who also had a knack for magic, and in the first episode, he finds himself shoehorned into a situation he’d rather not be in... with a gang of thugs who think they have him right where they want him... and prepare to kill him.

Geralt is far too badass for them, though. And he knows it, but they don’t. And he doesn’t WANT to kill these idiots, but he knows he isn’t going to have a choice. And actor Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt, in a tired but irritated voice... says...

...”Fuck.”

And then in a whirlwind of flashing steel, he kills all the thugs within a minute.

I sat there in a daze. Who did this remind me of? Badass master swordsman who can also sling spells, hacks his way through bad guys like you’d mow a lawn, dark and brooding...but with a heart of gold, albeit a bit tarnished.

And for the rest of the series, every time Geralt finds himself in an irritating situation...

....”Fuck.” It’s his catchphrase. And by the end of the series, I couldn’t help but giggle every time he did it. Geralt, as played by Henry Cavill, is the epitome of every character the Troll ever built. It’s like someone captured the Troll’s very essence on film.

Troll? Wherever you are? This fuck’s for you, old friend.

Foreign Policy

The Bedlam family consists of myself, my eight brothers, and my six sisters. And my dad. My mother died years ago of overwork.

With so many of us in one house, politics and diplomacy were a way of life. The younger often deferred to the elders, except when things got out of hand, at which point group alliances and personal vendettas would result in anything from “the sugar in your tea was confused with the salt,” to “you awaken to find yourself tied to the bed in the middle of the night being beaten to a pulp with pillowcases full of Hot Wheels cars, amidst an eerie, searing silence.”

Alliances and conflicts were constantly shifting, often in regard to my elder brother, Bludtharst. Y’see, Bludtharst was an all right guy, aside from the fact that he was generally mean to people, was all.

My brother Shaitan could be a dick on occasion, sister Lilith had a sharp tongue, little Dionysus could be a tad psychotic when the mood struck him, and ghod help ALL of us if Lucrezia was menstruating, but Bludtharst was one of those people who just seems to need regular reminding that if you kick the dog, the dog can and will bite your leg off.

Other families have something like this, but usually on a lesser scale. You know, pranks involving spring snakes in little cans of mixed nuts, whoopee cushions, things like that. In the Bedlam household, however, this sort of thing was considered a warning. The endgame usually involved a trip to the emergency room or a quick hand with a fire extinguisher. This may sound extreme, but for a couple months afterwards, at least Bludtharst would keep a civil tongue in his head and pass the damn salt when you asked him to, along with “not tripping you down the stairs and laughing at your clumsiness while you’re on your knees, collecting your bloody teeth.”

From the outside, it looked like a barbaric armed camp. To us, hey, it was home. Business as usual.

Until that time the Shipp kids started up with Bludtharst.

They claimed that Bludtharst had straightarmed one of the younger Shipps facefirst into a locker at school, with a cheery “Whoa, watch it there, pal, looks like ya slipped!” At least that’s what I heard. It certainly SEEMED like something Bludtharst would do. And the eldest Shipp kid promptly coldcocked Bludtharst, the next day, right in front of the school building.

And as one, we descended on the Shipp kids with a righteous wrath not seen since the Israelites wiped out the Amalekites. Every one of us. Started with little Boadecia, still in diapers, biting the hell out of Mrs. Shipp at the day care, and ended when I walled up one of them in a construction project, an unfinished brick wall facing away from the street.

Still remember him, twisting futilely, trying to escape his chains, as I carefully mortared and placed each brick. And finally, as the last few bricks were ready to go into place, he locked his gimlet gaze on me and shouted, “Why are you DOING this? You hate him worse than WE do!”

“Beg pardon?” I said, laying down the last layer of mortar.

“Dude, your brother is a MONSTER! And YOU of all people KNOW that! What, you think the rest of us don’t SEE? One of your sisters has NO TEETH because of him, and your eldest brother walks on a peg leg because Bludtharst played a joke involving M-80s! And you’re all over US because ONE OF US decided WE weren’t going to put up with his SHIT? Why the hell aren’t you on OUR side?”

I stopped and thought about it. He did have a point. We durn near crippled Bludtharst after the trick with the M-80s, and this had been going on for years and years. And sure enough, after the LAST time we stuck it to him, Bludtharst would behave for about two or three months, and then he’d just perform some new atrocity, was all. He never learned.

But the mortar was drying.

“Well, he may be an asshole,” I remarked briskly, “but he’s OUR asshole. And if we let outsiders interfere in our business, where would we be?” And the last brick went into place.

**********************************

This is all bullshit, of course. I have one sister, no brothers, and all of my fingers. But I think this is as good a metaphor for Middle East politics as I can craft today...

Hate Pride

"So," I said, "what's the deal with the Confederate flag?"

"Hah?" said the guy with the truck.

"Why are you flying a Confederate flag from the back of your truck?" I asked. "I mean, are you a Civil War recreationist, or what?"

"Um... 'cuz I'm proud to be a Southerner," he said.

"So," I asked, "the Confederate flag implies a Southern identity, and you identify with that, and you're proud of it?"

"Um... yeah. If you mean what I think you mean," he said.

"Are you aware that to a lot of black folks, the Confederate flag is a symbol of how half a nation was willing to go to war to keep the right to own black people?" I asked.

"Huh?"

I repeated myself.

He thought about it for a minute. "Well, the hell with them," he said. "It's also about southern pride. And if anyone asks me, I'll say so."

I did not necessarily agree with his reasoning, but I did respect his willingness to admit that he might be offending someone... and that he did not necessarily care. At least, I respected it at the time.

***********************************************

"So," I said, "do you want to KILL black people, or do you just want to run them off?"

"Huh?" said the klansman.

I repeated myself.

"No, no, you've got it all wrong," he said. "The Klan is about pride, first and foremost. We also feel that we should not be forced to live with people we don't want to live with, regardless of race, creed, or color. We are against being forced by the government to share our communities with people we don't wanna."

"Because you hate them."

"No," he said. "We don't necessarily HATE anyone. We just don't feel we should be forced to live with them if we don't want to."

"So... who's forcing you to share your home with people you don't want to?"

"It's not just housing. It's communities. And schools. We are generally against racial and cultural mixing, is all, and we don't feel it should be forced on us by the government. Let other people build their own communities, and stay with their own kind, or join communities that want them. Don't force us to mix with them."

"And why the white robes and pointy mask things? Are you aware that black people in particular find this threatening and wildly offensive?"

"We're not threatening or trying to offend anyone. We're just standing up for our rights."

"And the costumes?"

".....tradition."

I didn't have much respect for this guy. I felt like he was trying to snow me. You can't wear a Klan outfit in a march with a bunch of other Klansmen through downtown Austin and tell me you're not trying to offend or intimidate anyone. I might have had some respect if he'd just said, "Yeah, we hate anyone who ain't white, and this is an effort to drum up enrollment and screw around with the black folks a little, tweak their noses. Ha, ha!"

Lie to yourself if you want, but don't piss in my face and then say, "It's raining!"

*************************************************

Had several discussions lately about Teh Ghey.

Gay folks seem to feel that they should have the same rights as anyone else. Legally speaking, it's hard to argue against this, justly. If they have the same responsibilities as me, they should have the same rights... or at least, that's my thinking. If they can't get married or own property, well, that's unjust. Maybe they shouldn't have to pay taxes or something... but the politicians won't go for that, so, fine, give them the same rights as anyone else.

A lot of people are arguing against that mighty hard. And a lot of the arguments are kind of weird.

"Gay marriage will destroy traditional marriage!" Yes, but no one seems to be able to tell me precisely how this will occur.

"Gays should be suppressed because most of them are child molesters!" This one seems to be a case of cherrypicking your citations. Every proof I've seen of this comes from church groups or wingnut websites. The federal government and the shrinks' organizations say it ain't so.

"BECAUSE GOD SAYS SO!!!!!" ....and this one, well, can't argue with faith. Tried bringing up the fact that Leviticus prohibits other things like shellfish and divorce, and ALLOWS slavery, but the churchy folks don't care about that -- it prohibits teh ghey, and God says it, and we believe it, and that settles it. Freedom of religion, and all that. No ghey, no ghey, no ghey.

In short, "My religion gives me the right to discriminate, and I am GOING to discriminate, ACTIVELY, and be an ACTIVIST for withholding gay rights, and the hell with you anyway."

I think I'd respect it more if anyone had the guts to put it that way, but you don't often hear that. I've tried pointing out how one interpretation of the Bible also says that black folks are the sons of Ham, who made fun of daddy Noah, and so God turned 'em black and made it okay to kick them around. For some reason, not a whole lot of churchy folks are willing to stand up for that interpretation, the way they did back in the early sixties. It ain't fashionable now, for some reason.

And when I bring it up, I am told, "No, no, not applicable. Totally different. NO parallels between keepin' the blacks down (which was wrong, and we don't do that any more) and keepin' teh gheys down (which is necessary and justified by God's Law). TOTALLY different thing."

No, it ain't. It's discrimination against human beings, period. Only difference is what you believe and what you don't believe. It'd be the same if it were discrimination against brown skin, blue eyes, blond hair, or color of socks. Although, in all honesty, one can change one's socks. Or hair color, for that matter.

"Well, they have a choice. They can stop being gay," I am told. And therein lies another can of worms. I've KNOWN some gay folks, is my problem. In particular, I have known some gay folks who took some MAJOR HEAT for being gay. You hear about teenagers killing themselves, because they'd rather be dead than gay, or because they simply cannot fade the heat any more.

Does this sound like they could just quit bein' gay?

I don't think so. And, therefore, I am told that I am not only wrong, but naive for my beliefs. To which, my response is "well, at least I went out and got my information from the source. How many gay people have YOU spoken to? How many gay folks have YOU gotten to know and understand as best you could?"

Most churchy folks -- and most racists -- don't do a lot of this. Perhaps teh ghey is catching, or something. I dunno. But I am a firm believer that you can't really KNOW a topic without going the hell out and immersing yourself in it. An hour on Google don't cut it. Reading up on it is one thing, but there is a hell of a difference between classroom and field. Perhaps some gay folks can suddenly undergo a conversion and be straight, but the vast majority seem unable to do so... and therefore would seem to have no choice but to be what they are.

So... do me a favor, okay? If you're this kind of person, just ADMIT it. "Yeah, I hate gays for bein' gay. I believe they are evil, sinful, poisonous people, just for being what God made them. I believe they should be suppressed, oppressed, repressed, and possibly gassed in death chambers. I am aware that in twenty or thirty years, they'll just be ordinary people, protected by law, same as anyone else, and I will look like a hateful old bigot, but I gots my pride, and I won't recant now. Maybe later, for the sake of not looking like a hateful old bastard in front of my grandchildren... but for now I got my pride."

I can't say I agree with you, but I can at least respect someone who doesn't lie to me.

Or to themselves.

The Tamale Lady

Christmas dinners vary, depending on where you are.

In Japan, after the war, they took a big interest in American culture, and adopted the whole "Christmas" thing because it looked like so much fun. Naturally, they got parts of it wrong. In Japan, the traditional Christmas dinner is a big bucket of KFC, because the Colonel spent a lot of money TELLING them that that's what Americans have for Christmas dinner. Now, if a Japanese wants KFC for Christmas, he has to reserve a bucket in advance -- that's how big fried chicken Christmas dinners are in Japan!

In Russia, on the other hand, they take their Christianity pretty seriously, and their traditional dish is a sort of wheat pudding with fruit and honey, each element of which has a certain religious symbolism.

Meanwhile, Americans dither about whether to do another turkey so soon after Thanksgiving, or maybe a ham instead?

Mexicans do tamales.

Maybe not ONLY tamales... Mexicans like ham, turkey, and grilled steaks as well as anyone else... but tamales are traditional.

I grew up only a handful of miles from the Mexican border, deep south Texas. Tamales are traditional there, too. I learned this when I was just a teener. The white folks will buy a turkey or ham at the HEB grocery, and the brown folks will order a bag of tamales from whatever restaurant suits their taste. And some of us did both.

I would have been around thirteen or so when the first Christmas came about with the Tamale Lady. There was a knock on the door. Since I was closest, I answered it.

Standing on the stoop was someone's abuelita, wrapped and bundled against the cold. All I could see was about half of her face, which appeared to be about three hundred years old. She smiled at me, revealing six or seven teeth.

"Le pido perdón," she said politely. "No quiero bother. ¿Quieres comprar unos tamales?"

I glanced past her. Behind her was a contraption whose ancestry included a little red Radio Flyer wagon. Upon it was constructed a platform of wood and brick, which contained a little charcoal fire, of all things. The rest of the platform was laden with foil wrapped packages. They smelled good.

"Um... cuanto cuesta?" I asked.

She smiled again. "Two daw-lors a dozen," she replied.

I paused. I like tamales just fine, and I had a couple bucks. However, I was thirteen, and living at home, and there was a chain of command to consider. "Um... un momento, por favor," I said. "DAAAAAD?"

And Dad came to talk to the Tamale Lady. And I felt bad.

Y'see, I don't want to say that Dad was the tightfisted sort... but, well, he made Scrooge look like a philanthropist when it came to money. He wasn't a MEAN man, or a GROUCHY sort, but any time there was a choice of whether or not to spend any coin, the answer was generally, "hell, no." In certain family circles, it is STILL talked about, the time he decided to save money by turning off the water heater at night. "Hell, all you gotta do is get up a little early and turn it on and light the pilot," he said. "You can still get a shower before you go to school. You just gotta get up a little early, is all."

Yeah. An hour early. And I note that he was never the guy who actually DID this. He finally gave in when the entire family was on the verge of mutiny that winter for want of sleep and hot showers in the morning. All to save roughly three bucks a month.

He wasn't much different with door to door peddlers, either. He did not buy band candy or encyclopedias, and if we wanted girl scout cookies, we had to hunt them down outside the grocery store, preferably when Dad wasn't around. So I felt kind of bad for this bent over little old lady with her little wagon and charcoal stove. Dad wouldn't be rude, but I was sure he'd send her packing in short order.

...and thus, my surprise, when I heard Dad call, "Kirk? Do you have any cash?" I turned around and went back into the room, and was stunned to see him standing there with his wallet in one hand and a twenty dollar bill in the other. I was so stunned, I dipped into my pocket and gave him the sawbuck I had on me.

Normally, I wouldn't have done this -- loaning cash to Dad was a crapshoot. He might pay you back, he might pay you back after you reminded him, or he might argue that he'd paid for something back in 1974 which exempted him from ever owing you money again -- but I was so stunned that he was buying ANYTHING at the front door that I went ahead and gave him the money. He promptly turned around and bought all the lady's tamales, which delighted her greatly.

I was then assigned the job of collecting the hot foil packages while they conversed on the stoop; it seems that she did this to make extra money to buy presents for the grandchildren, of which she seems to have had quite a few (she promptly broke out a wallet with an accordion foldy thingy with pictures of the entire horde.)

And so, in addition to the ham that year, we had tamales. Dad froze a lot of them, and we gave packs of them to my grandparents and various friends. Scrooge had his Marley and the Three Ghosts of Christmas, and Dad, it seems, had the Tamale Lady. Who'd have known?

The Tamale Lady turned up every Christmas week after that, and Dad always bought her out. I suspected that she was going right back home and loading up more tamales for sale, but, hey, more power to her. The tamales were as good as any tamales I've ever had, and better than most, and at that price, why complain?

And now I live in Colorado, where I'd worried at first about finding tamales... but it turns out there's a family run Mexican restaurant around the corner, and they posted a sign earlier in the month, ORDER YOUR CHRISTMAS TAMALES NOW... and I did. And as I type this, I'm eating a plate of delicious beef tamales, coated in green chile sauce and slathered with melted cheese.

The chocolate Yule log is gone now, and we've beat up that ham pretty good, and most of the sausages, and the turkey breast... but the tamales persevere. And for all I know, in the little cow town in deep south Texas where I grew up, a little old lady still tows behind her a smoking contraption on a once-red Radio Flyer wagon, and makes the money for her great grandchildren's Christmas presents...

Merry Christmas!

The Thing In The Night

I woke up. My hip hurt from lying on my side too long, and I rolled over onto my back and pulled the fleece blanket further up to my nose.

And that’s when I saw the swirl of glitter.

That’s what it looked like... a swirl of glitter, way down at the foot of the bed. A little, distant whirlwind of silver flecks in motion. It sat there, atop the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, and swirled.

What the heck?

I thought about getting my glasses so I could see it better. My vision is awful; I’ve been nearsighted most of my life, although I do have very good night vision. I still wasn’t sure if I just wanted to ignore it and go to bed or try and figure it out, since I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or not, so I just lay there and stared down my nose at it.

The little swirl of glitter sat there and swirled. As my vision sharpened a bit, I realized that it looked less like a whirlwind, and more like a thing... a thing with little glittery motes orbiting it. And it seemed to have pointy bits on top... like horns, or something. I could see the glittery motes zooming up, and then sharply down once they were over the apex.

Ah. So tiny invisible glitter devil was watching me. Yes, I was certainly dreaming. I prepared to roll over.

The glittery shape responded by climbing up onto the bed... and approaching my head.

I froze. It froze as well... and then resumed its crawl up the fuzzy blanket towards me. And this time, I could feel its weight on my leg. Was I dreaming? Did dreams have weight? Would I know?

As it slowly approached, it grew brighter, and while the thing itself was still invisible, more glittery motes flickered around its invisible shape. I realized that it had two immobile points of light up front... below the horns... like eyes.

I froze even more froze than I’d froze before. But this time, it didn’t stop, continuing to crawl up the bed alongside my body. Off to my left, Berni continued to sleep, oblivious to the eldritch flickering abomination stalking up the bed between us. Was it... hissing?

It was up to my pelvis when I realized no... it wasn’t hissing... it was CRACKLING, making a sound like celery makes when you tear a stalk off the bunch. But it wouldn’t STOP making that noise, crackling and popping continuously as it stalked up the bed towards my head, those two points of bluish light focused hellishly upon me! And as it approached, I could see it more clearly, and yet not at ALL -- a shape like a devil, crawling on all fours, two pointed horns, two shining eyes, utterly invisible but for the reflection of the silver motes whizzing around its body at rapid speeds, flickering and twinkling...

I HAD to be dreaming. What was HAPPENING?

With each motion, it not only grew closer, but brighter... as it picked up more crackling white flecks, dancing about its invisible shape, like St. Elmo’s fire, flickering and sputtering in rings around it...

And the flickering invisible thing climbed up on my chest. It weighed more than you’d think it should, for a thing its size, and it sat there, staring at me, crackling and hissing and shedding near enough light to SEE by with the silvery motes that whizzed about its invisible shape!

And it leaned forward. The horned head came close enough that I could almost feel its breath... and it touched my nose.

POK.

“Mrrrowt!” The lights FLASHED like a flashbulb, and all the flickering lights went out, and the shape leaped off my chest and ran away.

It was Doom, the black cat. He’s invisible in the dark... same as any black cat would be... but he’d built up a static charge, wandering around on the carpet, and when he climbed up on the bed and began walking across the fleeces, he’d built the charge up to the point where sparks were literally flickering around on his fur!

He’d seen me looking at him, and decided to come see if I’d pet him, and had hiked up the length of the bed, building more of a charge and becoming clearer to my eyes as he’d got closer... and then he booped my nose, grounding himself and giving both of us a bit of a jolt! Startled, he’d run away.

I lay there for a while, completely bumfuzzled, while my heart rate slowed back to normal. Well, I hadn’t been dreaming....

Mailbox Baseball

I was reminded this morning of a rather shameful memory. I feel a little guilty.

In my teener days, I was once one of a mob of irresponsible hooligans who thought it was funny to drive up and down the rural routes and bash mailboxes with baseball bats.

I have no real excuse other than "it was a small town, we had nothing to do, and I was not properly supervised.” But the fact is, I was old enough to know better, and enough of a jackass that I went out and did it anyway. I regret this, now that I'm a graybeard with a lawn and everything.

I'm pretty sure we were responsible for at least two home projects on one rural route, both involving building brick cairns, in which mailboxes were embedded. Sure, we could have dealt with them, but dynamite's hard to get and tricky to use, particularly when drunk and driving at high speeds, right?

But I do remember one particular incident in which we went whizzing past the El Indio apartments. It was an apartment complex, out in the middle of nowhere, some two or three miles out of town. And they had a STRING of mailboxes, all mounted side by side on a two-by-four, mounted at the proper height for the mailman. We'd smashed several off the board at once, and my friend Loopy had a secret ambition of being able to clear the entire board with one big swipe as we drove by.

We'd necessitated the reconstruction and replacement of the mailbox frameworks twice, now. And still, we persisted. We only did this once every six weeks or so, and the idea of closed circuit cameras ... well, they'd been invented and were in use, but they were a distant, futuristic thing, in use to protect banks and government secret projects, not ratty little apartments in rural areas. We felt safe enough.

Until the night Candy went to bat.

Candy was a short guy, and had as clear a case of Napoleon Syndrome as ever I'd seen, and he swore he was going to clear that stinkin' board of every mailbox in one swipe. This would recharge his masculinity for at least two, three days, right? And of course, he was drunk as a lord at the time. He regarded Jack Daniels as man fuel.

We cruised past the apartments. The mailboxes were there. And they were still mounted on a framework that looked like a hitching post... but we noticed that the hitching post was now made of welded steel pipe as big around as my leg, and sunk into the ground in cement. But there was a long two-by-four atop it, with the mailboxes screwed down to the wood. We were still good to go. We drove a ways, drinking merrily all the way, and made our way back to that particular road... and then Loopy hit the gas. Thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour...

Candy climbed up and sat in the passenger window. The bat was ready. And the boy was quite spifflicated. I guess it says something that not a one of us saw any kind of potential disaster in this. Indeed, looking back, I am ashamed of our foolishness. We got up to about sixty, and Candy braced himself... and swung.

WHANG.

Candy vanished. It was as he'd been snatched out of the car by Godzilla, or blasted out an airlock. He was yanked out so hard and fast, one of his sneakers spun in the air, and landed in my lap. Whatthehell?

Loopy hit the brakes, but at that speed, we'd gone nearly a hundred yards before he could stop, reverse, and get back to where Candy lay in the gravel, beside the road, BEHIND the mailboxes. The mailboxes were completely undamaged. He'd gone flying. Whatthehell?

It was Lightnin' who figured it out. He opened the mailbox on the end, the one Candy had smacked. It was full of cement. We later found out that the owner of the place had got fed up, and after having the steel pipe framework made, had obtained a mailbox, drilled a hole in the bottom, inserted several rebars through it, filled the mailbox with concrete... and then inserted the rebars through a hole in the two-by-four and into the cement filled steel pipe. Smacking that thing with an aluminum ball bat must have been like smacking a brick wall. And Candy had done it at 55 miles an hour.... with all the drunken strength he could muster.

Amazingly, Candy was relatively undamaged; I'd have laid odds he'd have broken his arms or spine with the impact, or worse when he landed from a car traveling 55. We pondered calling for help; one should not move an injured person. So, like idiots, we grabbed him and stuffed him (and a noticeably bent aluminum bat) into the car as lights came on up at the apartment building, and we vanished into the night.

Candy survived just fine, although he wrenched his back real good, and his face looked rather interesting as a result of having landed on it fairly hard on a gravel shoulder. Astonishingly, his nose was not broken. He did report his arms feeling rather painfully noodly for days afterwards, due to a series of sprains that would have sidelined any footballer. I personally attribute it to his profound state of intoxication, as it's a known fact that a drunk can take an impact that'd squash a sober person like a tomato; I'm quite sure Candy was still idly wondering what had gone wrong as his face hit the gravel.

Mailbox Baseball kind of lost its appeal after that, and we meekly moved on to safer entertainments.

The lesson was clear: some folks can get sticky about their private property... and sometimes, karma bites back.

Take from this what you will.

The Hurtling Moons Of Barsoom

1978 was an interesting year. Star Wars came out the previous year... and was still showing at the TriplePlex at the mall in the town where my grandparents lived. I spent the summer with my grandparents while I went to summer school.

I grew up way out in the sticks. We did have a theatre, but the manager was so cheap, he wouldn't show movies until they'd been out a couple of years; they were cheaper that way. I was so hot to see Star Wars, it was pathetic.

The Sci-Fi Summer Blockbuster was still a very new thing, and no one seemed to know what to do with it. Tie-ins, merchandising, toys, and everything was still kind of blundering around; NO one had expected the kind of mass social frenzy that Star Wars seemed to kick off. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious why it did well, but at the time... well... jeez, NOTHING had ever done that well!

I was thirteen that year, and I had it bad. It was a sci-fi summer, for me, and I made the most of it. Tickets for the afternoon showings of Star Wars were only a buck, and I must have seen that movie fifty times that summer, with my friends, or alone. Again and again. We got to the point where we could spout the dialogue a split-second ahead of the actors, all the way through the movie. It was great. There had NEVER been anything like Star Wars before.

When I wasn't at the movies, I was reading more sci-fi. Y'see, the little bitty cow town I grew up in was a bit short of books. The school libraries were small, as befit the tiny school, and there WAS no public library. In short, if you wanted to read something that wasn't a Harlequin Romance or written by Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour, you were out of luck. My head was FULL of spaceships, robots, and intelligent shades of the color blue that summer. I'd been fond of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian fantasies, and I reread them all... I discovered Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" that summer... I encountered Larry Niven's Ringworld that summer...

...and I learned about reality that summer.

Reality came in the form of my grandfather, a big, broad-shouldered Irishman who looked more than a little like John Wayne. He had barely finished high school before marrying his sweetheart and going to work for the railroads, which at the time was a whole world of career opportunities for a poor man at the time, and he'd made the most of it. He was a firm believer in hard work, good connections, big bucks, and the American Way.

He hated Star Wars.

"Why the hell are you wasting your time with all this crap?" he'd ask me, upon seeing me thumbing through the comic book adaptation for the umpty-third time. "What good is all this nonsense? Buncha damn fairy tales, is what it is. If you have to be reading books all the time, why can't you at least read something worthwhile?"

I looked back at him over my book. "Like what?"

"Something that isn't a buncha garbage. None of this stuff ever actually happened. Buncha made-up nonsense."

"Could you be a little more specific? Name a book you thought was worthwhile," I said. I found his attitude irritating, sure -- nobody likes to be told that what you enjoy is a ripe steaming load -- but there's a limit as to how rude you can get with your grandfather. There was a phrase called "back talk" in those days that basically meant that anything other than "yes-sir-no-sir" could be construed as insolence, if the elder chose to view it that way.

"Well," he replied, thinking back. I think it had actually been quite some time since he'd read a whole book. "Gone With The Wind, now. That was a heckuva story."

"Gone With The Wind never happened, either, Grampa. Margaret Mitchell just made it all up. Pure fiction."

"Yeah, yeah," he waved his hand, irritatedly. "I know that. But it could have happened. It was based on real events, real places, people, and things. Not like that garbage," he said, pointing at I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov.

"What's the difference, Grandpa?" I said. "You're talking about a story that might have happened last century. I'm reading one that might have happened a century from now. They're both fiction, both just made-up stories. What's the difference?"

We never settled that point. It basically boiled down to the idea that any fiction taking place in a time before last Christmas was inherently superior to any fiction taking place in any setting other than Now or The Past... and when I asked him why, he'd get irritated with me. When I tried to defend my position, he'd get irritated with me.

...and it made me nuts. I knew that stuff like A Warlord Of Mars was pulp trash... but it was fun pulp trash... and I failed to understand why it was any trashier than Tarzan Of The Apes, which was frankly equally unlikely, written around the same time, more or less, and by the same guy!

Well... because Grandpa said so.

I shooda kept my mouth shut, but didn't. I debated with my grandfather. I argued that I, Robot was no less worthwhile literature than anything Louis LaMour ever wrote, and was arguably better. I challenged him to point out why Star Wars was any less worthwhile than The Alamo or Cahill, U.S. Marshall. He was a BIG John Wayne fan -- "He makes damn fine movies, and he's a great American," and he didn't much like at ALL the idea of his teenage grandson calling into question the value of stuff HE liked.

...and finally, he shut me down with a comeback that was older than either of us. "Sonny," he growled, "if you're so damn smart, why ain't you rich?"

I couldn't touch him there. It was his last bastion, his last fallback. He owned a house, some cars, some property. He had raised a family, and served his country during World War II. He had demonstrated his value to society, and the quality of his judgment. What had I ever done, that anyone should listen to me?

He had me. I could argue rings around him, but once he retreated into that particular bastion, the only argument I could use would be: And I should agree that you're totally right about everything, just because you're old and you've worked in a blue-collar job for thirty years?

...but that would have been stepping across the line into genuine insolence... and I knew better than that. So I shut the hell up and went back to my books. He continued to bug me about it. I ignored him as best I could. It was actually a learning experience -- I learned, that summer, that pestering someone endlessly about something doesn't necessarily change their minds… but it might just firmly convince them that you are a shithead.I was in the process of Becoming Who I Am, that summer, and my grandfather never let up.

Grandpa had a work ethic that would have shamed Cotton Mather. He enjoyed his weekends, but he worked like hell all week, too... and it bugged him to no end that I was all of thirteen, able-bodied, and unemployed. "You know, I could find you a little job, round the corner at the market. I know some people..."

I didn't want a job. I was going to summer school all day, I was spending my afternoons in air-conditioned splendor, making the regular 3:30 jump to hyperspace with Han and Chewie, and I was getting a weekly allowance mailed to me by my folks. What the heck did I want a job for? Hell, when did I have TIME for a job?

I tried talking to him about it. I think I've already made clear what discussion was like with the man. "Well... well, hell, son, what the heck GOOD are you if you don't have a job?" he finally growled, exasperated. In his mind, if you didn't have a job, there was something wrong with you -- you were lazy, or even a bum! Whether or not you needed the money, or felt like working was quite irrelevant -- "unemployment" to him was like "nakedness" -- something that happened occasionally, but only briefly, frantically covered up, and certainly never PUBLIC!

My grandfather and I kind of demolished our relationship with each other that summer. Before then, we'd never spent more than a week in the same house, and I'd been a child. Before, it had been easy for us to fall into the roles of Adored Grandpapa and Eldest Grandchild...

… but we spent enough time together in the summer of 1978 that we discovered we had next to nothing in common, and … well, we just didn't much like each other. He never let up bugging me about reading trash and about getting a damn job. At one point, in July, he started in on me about how he knew a fellow who'd take me on as a junior crew member, and I snapped back, "Grandpa, school's out in three weeks. I'm going home in THREE WEEKS! You want me to go out and get a job I don't need and don't want with some guy for THREE WEEKS?"

Grandpa looked at me, a little startled. "Well, HE doesn't need to know you're only going to be there three weeks," he replied.

The money was irrelevant. Grandpa simply could not like or respect anyone who so willfully remained unemployed at the manly age of thirteen.

Finally, the time came to go home. I packed my stuff. I'd accumulated quite a bit in my couple of months with the grandparents -- a LOT of sci-fi paperbacks, a few comics, and suchlike. They had… bookstores… in the big city, as opposed to the tiny li'l town where I grew up…

My grandfather looked upon my treasures... and pronounced them crap.

And what was worse, he said, was that I could have had three times as much crap if I'd been willing to go out and work for it, instead of sitting on my butt and just going to school (I kinda got the idea he didn't much approve of all this schooling, either, but he knew better than to say that).

"A whole summer," he muttered. "Spent a whole summer just goin' to school, and watchin' Star Wars over and over, and readin' crap. You coulda been out there makin' something out of yourself, boy, and gettin' paid for it. Instead you spent it all on crap, and didn't do nothin, and didn't make nothin', and didn't be nothin'. You'll never get rich at this rate."

...and again, I said nothing. It seemed preferable to saying something like, "Gee, you miserable old sonofabitch, I'd have gotten six jobs and sold myself into slavery to boot if I thought it would have kept your damn dentures together, but I know you well enough to know you'd just find something else to bitch about." Insolence to one's elders, after all, was just not acceptable.

Regardless of how big a shithead one's elder insisted on being.

I'd gone from "First and Eldest Grandchild" to "lazy bum" in one summer, in my grandfather's eyes. Even though I didn't agree with him, I still felt bad about it. It still hurt. That same year, I wound up getting an after-school job in the fall, so's to have some extra steppin-out money, and Grandpa crowed about that, when he heard about it that Christmas. "Finally! Got a job, did you? Finally felt the need of two coins to rub together? Gonna make somethin' of yourself? Gonna spend it all on rockets and paperbacks and spaceship movies? You'll never get rich that way!"

Grandpa died a while back. I'm still younger now than he was, when we shared that weird summer of 1978, but I'd like to think I'm doing pretty well, for a fool with a headful of rocketships and robots. I finished school. I've raised a family. I've made some money. I still haven't served my country in a world war, but I rest assured in the certainty that there will be one as soon as the politicians can comfortably arrange it, although I imagine I'll be too old for it when it finally gets here.

...am I rich, though? Good question. Grandpa died owning quite a bit -- he was a firm believer in "whoever dies with the most toys wins", and he certainly had enough toys. I don't think he ever actually even used that Jet Ski; ghod knows why he felt the need to buy one.

...so what have I got, in comparison? Well, I had quite a bit before the divorce. A house full of books, most of which Grandpa would dismiss as trash. A fair number of toys, to be absolutely honest, although my toys tend to be a lot cheaper than his were ... I collect toy robots and dragons, among other things, and leave the Jet Skis where they lay.

...but I've also made the 3:30 jump to hyperspace with Han and Chewie more than fifty times, now.

I've walked the steppes of ancient Hyborea, sword in hand, working for an obol a day, plus plunder.

I've studied Martian under Valentine Michael Smith, and learned a thing or two about religion and man and the human heart.

I've crossed the width of the Ringworld once, and seen the mysteries of the Ringworld Engineers.

I've held conversations with Mesklinites, with Bolos, with Berserkers, and with Dorsai, on a hundred different worlds.

I've encanted the Ritual of Saii'ed with the Atlantean wizards Klarkash-Ton and Ech Pi'el, and glimpsed secrets that have made weeping jelly out of lesser men.

I've beaten an earth-pig born at Diamondback... twice.

...and I've lain in the darkness of the dead sea bottoms at night, and watched the hurtling moons of Barsoom whirl by overhead.

…and I try not to judge a chap by what he reads on his off time.

Tell me, now, who's a poor man.

Notes:
1. To this day, I can't sit through The Alamo, which is not only wildly inaccurate, historically speaking, but not one of John Wayne's better efforts. There's better John Wayne movies, and better Alamo movies… but as far as my grandpa was concerned, The Alamo was the final word on the subject. Because it had John Wayne in it.
2. Barsoom was the word for Mars in Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter Of Mars books.
3. Hyborea was the name of the continent Conan spent all his time adventuring in.
4. Mesklinites, Bolos, Berserkers, and Dorsai: the critters, machines, and people of four classic sci-fi works I discovered that summer (Mission Of Gravity, by Hal Clement; the Bolo series, by Keith Laumer; the Berserker series, by Fred Saberhagen; and the Dorsai series, by Gordon Dickson. Worth reading.)
5. Klarkash-Ton and Ech Pi'el were fictional characters in the works of Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft… get it?
6. No, I wasn't going to summer school to make up a class. Dad actually wanted me to take freshman English ahead of time so I wouldn't tangle with the freshman English teacher at my high school... he was a counselor there, and knew quite well that the English teacher and I would mix like fire and gasoline...

Don't Mess With A Classic

When I was very little, I scared the crap out of my mother by getting sick and almost dying. I don’t remember the incident -- I was very young -- but I am told I was very close to death. Afterwards, I refused to eat anything but Chinese fried rice for several days. This apparently gave my mother some ideas about “sick people food.”

And so, for the rest of my childhood, whenever I got the snurfles, I would be tucked into bed and fed on a variety of selected viands, notably Canada Dry Ginger Ale and Campbell’s Chicken And Stars Soup. NOT chicken noodle. Chicken noodle was for a quick workday meal or convenient Saturday lunch. Chicken noodle was ORDINARY food.

Chicken and Stars was for SICK people. At least, that was my take away from it. And because I am a creature of habit, when I feel ill, Campbell’s Chicken and Stars is a thing that comes to mind. Not because I’m wild about canned soup, but because Mom served it to me when I was little and didn’t feel good. Comfort food. And for most of my adult life, I have kept a can sitting in the pantry for those occasional days when I don’t feel good.

A few months ago, I got a bug, and I was not well, and there was no soup in the pantry. My dearest went out and obtained the necessaries, and as she prepared to heat up the soup, I noted that the can was wrong. The label as I saw it is shown above.

In my youth, the stars were tiny flecks of pasta, barely identifiable as stars, drifting as a nebula in a yellow sea of chicken stock, interrupted only by the occasional chunk of carrot and floating asteroids of chicken meat. It was familiar and comforting.

THIS stuff, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any chicken asteroids... and rather than tiny, distant stars, the stars were big cookie cutter chunk things. This soup looked nothing like what I was used to. But my baby had gone out to get food for me when I was sick, and bein’ a grownup now, I kept my mouth shut... and ate the soup.

It was awful. It tasted wrong. They’d changed the broth recipe, and it tasted coppery and wrong. The stars were too big, and the wrong consistency, and there was no loose chicken meat. What the hell WAS this dreck?

When I felt better, I checked the store. Campbell’s had indeed changed the recipe. There was no other “Chicken And Stars” style soup. This was all there was now.

And I frowned and shrugged inwardly. Another part of my childhood, like Fizzies and moon landings, had passed into legend. Lousy corporate bastards. Grr.

...and I promptly got on with the rest of my life. So it goes.

And this past week, I got SERIOUSLY sick, came home from work, and went comatose for the rest of the day. I felt wretched. That’s what I get for not getting a flu shot this year! Urrrgh! And Berni had it too, and we spent a couple of days home from work, right before Christmas, apologizing to each other for being so disgusting...

And after a couple days, I felt that I could manage getting a few things at the grocery store. I wanted soup. Beef and barley! Mmm! And I went and picked up a few things, worked my way round to the soups, got some beef and barley...

...and noted that the cans of Campbell’s Chicken And Stars seemed to have reverted to their previous labels... complete with pictures of the old soup and stars... and, this time, a big “ORIGINAL RECIPE! It’s BACK!” joining it on the label.

I examined a can. It LOOKED like the old soup. But the bastards had disappointed me. They’d denied a dying man his last request! Still... maybe they’d realized their mistake. Perhaps I wasn’t the only person out there who needed Chicken and Stars when they were sick...

I bought a can. I heated it up. I ate it. It was indeed as I remembered it when I was five. It was not at all the weird copper flavored giant star noodle crap they’d tried to sell me last time. I also thought it was interesting that the giant star noodle crap was nowhere to be seen at the store any more. No, apparently, Campbell’s has decided that classic was the way to go.

I wonder: am I the only one who eats Chicken and Stars when they’re sick? Was I the only one who felt betrayed, and prepared to give up Campbell’s? Did Campbell’s have a New Coke Moment, there?

(PROPER Chicken and Stars Soup, seen here)

Christmas Spiders

Submitted for your approval, just in time for Christmas: an inspiring true story, 20 years old this month. Occurred during the final days of my internship and teaching certification process...

I am in my last week of student teaching. I'll be certified, soon, to teach in our public schools... but I found another reason yesterday that I don't wanna teach elementary school.

You see... there are four men in this particular school building, most school days. Me, an elderly math teacher, and two custodians.

Yesterday, during my lunch hour, I'm settin' up the next week's materials, surfing CNN, and bitterly cursing the District Computer Nazi, who feels that access to message boards and outside email sources should be blocked, right?

And a woman I barely recognize bursts into the classroom, jabbering and gibbering. I vaguely remembered her from the last faculty meeting; she was a teacher there. She knew ME, though, as my own last name was the only thing she was saying that made any sense. It seemed extremely important that I should go with her, though.

As we hustled through the empty halls -- all the children were at lunch -- I wondered what could be so screwy as to drive this poor woman into hysteria. Fire? Terrorists? Bomb threats?

Hmmph. Shooda known.

We arrive at her gaily decorated classroom. Sitting in the large open area towards the front... maybe fifteen feet away from where I stood in the hall... was a large cardboard carton marked XMAS.

The woman, whom I will call "Mrs. Tulip," became even more incoherent at this point, but pointed furiously at the box, and indicated that I should go and do something with or to the box.

I ambled into the room, glancing around for bombs or Alan Rickman with a submachine gun, or something. Nothing was on fire. The box was open. I sidled up to it and glanced inside.

Ah. Christmas decorations. Atop it all were three large stuffed toys -- a bear, a penguin, and Santa.

And perched atop the bear's belly was a spider. A HUGE frickin' spider.

Dawn broke over marble head. Ah. THIS is the emergency. But... something didn't look quite right. The spider was posed rather oddly, legs bunched together, front and back, instead of legs spread around her, ready to leap or run. And... her abdomen. Spider that big should have a butt the size of my pinky tip... but... it looked... scooped out, somehow.

That's when I realized that this was not a spider. This was a molt. The spider had shed its exoskeleton in the process of getting bigger... and was, possibly, still in the box somewhere. Furthermore, the only non-tarantula spiders in this hemisphere that get THAT big are female. A female spider in a cardboard box in someone's shed or garage has only one reason for being there: it laid eggs. Down Texas way, spiders' eggs hatch between September and late November. It was now December. There were potentially hundreds of spiders in there.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of saying all this out loud.

Mrs. Tulip's reaction was kind of interesting. She, like wriggled, and kind of looked like she wanted to turn herself inside out, then and there. She jabbered some more, and indicated that I should do something about it.

"What do you want ME to do about it?" I said. "Uggh," she replied. "Eeegh...yecch... you're a MAN," she gagged. "Do SOMETHING!" Um-hm. That's right. Oppression via imposition of traditional gender roles. You read it here first, folks.

I turned back to the box. Carefully, I fished Bear, Penguin and Santa out, one by one, and flicked them to the floor. They did not erupt in a seething mass of arachnoid horror. The dead molt fell to pieces with the impact. Mrs. Tulip wriggled and vibrated.

Beneath the stuffed toys was a mass of plastic pine needles. The rest of the box contained a disassembled artificial Christmas tree.

Ghod only knew what might be hiding in there.

Mrs. Tulip sat and stared at me, chewing her nails. I looked at her. She looked at me. I sighed and turned back to the box. I COULD have simply refused to do it. It wasn't MY classroom, or my Christmas tree, or my problem. On the other hand, I'm still a student teacher, and I'm going to be DONE with this in a week. All I have to do to get my certification is not screw up ...

...and it occurred to me that as wacko as this woman was acting, there was no way she was setting foot in this room until all materials in this box had been examined for spiderlike presences... and, considering where my classroom was and where Mrs. Tulip's was, she had probably gone rampaging all over the school looking for custodians before finally remembering that I existed.

It was noon. The custodians were across the street at Fatso's Barbecue, having lunch. They wouldn't be back any time soon. If I didn't do something, this woman was going to be standing in the hall gibbering when her children returned from lunch. And how would my evaluation go if I went on record as saying, "Hell with you, lady, this ain't my problem?" Sigh...

Steeling myself, I fished one of the tree stand's legs out... and carefully picked out one of the branches. I whacked the branch a few times with the tree stand leg. Three dead crickets fell out of it.

I did it again with another branch. Nothing happened.

I did it again.

And again.

And again.

I noticed that about every third or fourth branch had a dead cricket or two in it. Each seventh branch seemed to have a LIVE cricket in it, which always evoked a horrified ejaculation from Mrs. Tulip, still in the hallway.

...and the eighteenth branch had a live SPIDER in it, a good-sized specimen, who came scuttling up the branch to rip my hand off. I flicked him off the branch with the tree stand leg and stomped on him. Mrs. Tulip immediately did this... amazing... thing... with her whole body ... that would have done any contortionist proud, except that Mrs. Tulip did it out of sheer horror.

I was not happy. That spider was nowhere near big enough to be the one who'd left that molt on top. That was one of the kids.

The twenty-ninth branch had ANOTHER molt on it. An even bigger one. How long had that mama spider been IN this box? And was she still HERE?

Mrs. Tulip wobbled and writhed and made weird noises some more, by way of assistance and moral support.

I kept plucking branches out. More dead crickets. A few live ones. Jeez, there'd been a whole ecosystem going on in this woman's Christmas decorations...

And in time, I came to the bottom of the box. Well, almost. The only thing left was the top of the Christmas tree, a largish cone of stiff wire and fake plastic pine needles. There was no way in hell I was sticking my hands in THAT thing. I could beat it with the tree stand leg until the toads came home, and the entire Bolivian army could still be hiding in there.

Perhaps jostling it would provide some information. I carefully knocked the box over. The tree top rattled and rolled out.

And Mama Spider came out, erupting from between the branches like a little snake monster ripping through a spaceman's sternum in a horror movie.

Now, in truth, that spider wasn't THAT big. This was Texas, after all. I've certainly seen tarantulas that were bigger. On the other hand, I've also seen tarantulas that were SMALLER, which gives you some clue as to how fraggin' BIG this thing was. I raised a foot to step on it, and hesitated. Man, this thing was BIG! What if it... didn't... DIE? What if it grabbed my foot and threw me across the ROOM, or something?

And then, Mrs. Tulip screamed, a sound like a fire engine might make if it were giving birth to a Toyota.

I leaped on the spider with both feet.

Mrs. Tulip had very good lungs, though, and continued. The same scream, too. She only screamed once, but it went on for a while. I heard the patter of feet, as people came running to investigate.

Many of them were children. Fourth graders, as I recall.

...and abruptly, Mrs. Tulip snapped. It was amazing. One second, she is in the grip of total pantswetting hysteria, and the next, she's perfectly calm, and herding children around. It was like someone had found and pressed her RESET button, right there in front of ghod and everybody.

I casually cleaned up the dead spiders and the scattering of cricket husks, and tossed 'em in the garbage. I then checked the tree top. It was clean. Not that anything alive would have willingly shared quarters with Mama, anyway. Upon erasing the remnants of madness, I strolled away back to my classroom. Mrs. Tulip smiled and gave me a nod, still herding her students, as I passed.

And I betcha my certification won't even have any mention of my heroism or my goin' the extra mile, here....

Christmas Decorations

When I was six or seven, I remember a great activity and burst of industry at the Bedlam household. We were gonna decorate the house for Christmas!

In previous years, this had taken the form of putting the Christmas tree facing out the front window, and/or stringing Christmas lights around the front of the house. And we did that the year in question, as well... and more. Y’see, it began with the purchase of plywood, paint, and brushes, and Mom brought home a roll of butcher paper... and began designing these four foot tall figures on the paper. When the designs were done, Dad transferred them to the plywood, and went to work with a jigsaw... and when he was done, we painted them in bright holiday colors, and we had Christmas elves wrapping presents in the front yard! Big as I was! What a Christmas!

And Dad put a spotlight out there so you couldn’t MISS the elves. And strung lights all over the house. And the carport. And then rigged a stereo speaker on the porch, over the doorway. And for the month of December, we blasted Christmas music all over the neighborhood. I still have memories of riding in the station wagon, coming back from the grocery store, and knowing we were coming home because I could hear “Carol Of The Bells” in the distance, growing closer....

And I remember that year, my dad’s parents came over to OUR house, instead of us going to visit them, and how impressed Grandpa was that Dad had gone all out with the Christmas decorations, and how they chortled over the elves and over the Christmas music. And Grandpa decided to give Dad an early Christmas present. And oh, how they laughed!

And I, of course, was curious and wanted to see what it was. An album of Christmas music, by the.... Singing Dogs? This wasn’t real, was it?

My grandfather assured me, with much snickering and chortling, that it was. And he asked me where the stereo was, that was connected to the speaker on the front porch....? And I, being a good and helpful little boy, promptly directed him to the stereo and showed him where the switch was that switched the music from indoor to outdoor speakers. And he cranked it WAY the hell up and let the record spin.

At this point, I ask you to rightclick the link, and select OPEN IN NEW TAB, and play the video. Go ahead. I’ll wait. And you can come back to THIS tab and keep reading while the Singing Dogs regale you with “Jingle Bells”. Might even improve the story, who knows? I’ve never worked in multimedia, before.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdqupRP7UNk

Anyway, when I heard the song, I laughed, too. Funny! And Grandpa and I shared a laugh and then went into the kitchen to see what there was to eat, and the family celebrations began with gusto. And continued for quite some time, as snacks were eaten, eggnog was drunk, football was discussed, and fridge artwork and graded papers were proudly shown off. My new baby sister was brought out and duly gooed over...

...until my mother rather archly called from the living room for my father and grandfather to get the hell in there and get a load of THIS.

And we all trouped into the living room to see what Mom was so het up about. She had a look on her face that was somewhere between mild irritation and bemusement, and she hooked a thumb out the front window.

So Grandpa, Dad, and I all went over and looked around the Christmas tree.

There must have been thirty dogs in the front yard.

Dogs from all over the neighborhood, listening to the music with expressions ranging from “interest” to “confusion.” (I will point out that I did not actually COUNT the dogs, and that I may be misremembering, not least because in years to come, I’m sure that each time my grandfather told that story, the dog count jumped by at least five. I can remember one time when I was in college, he told that story, and I’m sure that Alfred Hitchcock had fewer birds in his famous movie than my grandfather had dogs in our front yard. But I saw it, and across the gulf of nearly half a century I do remember there being a hell of a lot of dogs... and did I mention that we didn’t have a dog? These were all OTHER people’s dogs...)

Grandpa burst out laughing. My father stood there with his mouth open. My mother saw her husband’s expression, and suppressed a snicker. Grandma covered her mouth and looked nonplussed. And I asked if we could keep them, and all hell broke loose, of course.

And I wasn’t allowed to take them treats, because they might hang around, and I rightfully pointed out that when carolers came over, we were supposed to offer THEM treats, and why not the dogs? Wasn’t this impolite or something? I mean, we DID sort of INVITE them...

And while my father tried to explain to me the difference between stray dogs and Christmas carolers, and my grandfather worked himself up to a laughing coronary between listening to the conversation and glancing out at the yardful of confused canines... my mother quietly walked over to the stereo and lifted the needle from the record. And there was silence.

And gradually, the puppy chorus in the front yard dispersed to seek other entertainments. To my great disappointment. Awwww! And my father’s great relief, although he did wind up going out to clean up the yard afterwards; a number of the dogs had left offerings to remember them by.

The plywood elves lived in the garage after that, to come out each Christmas for years to come, and the lights went back up each year, and even the porch speaker was heard to croon Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” or some choir’s “Ave Maria”....

But my father, I don’t think, ever put the Singing Dogs back on again. In fact, the one time I did, he reacted rather badly.

But Grandpa continued to tell THAT one until the day he died....

Chicken And Chocolate: An Easter Story

The Easter toys are in the stores now.

I bought a little plastic chicken the other day. It came equipped with a bunch of little plastic eggs; when you push down on the chicken's back, it flaps its little plastic wings and lays a plastic egg. It's not good to think about how you have to get the eggs in there in the first place.

Why did I buy this plastic chicken toy? To commemorate a memory. My late grandfather was terribly fond of little plastic gewgaws, and used his grandchildren as an excuse to buy them -- and yes, he always gave them to us to keep after he'd played with them for a few minutes. The guy was vice-president of a bank; he had to hang on tosome dignity.

Anyway, one Easter, he took us out and bought all sorts of Easter toys. I believe the year was 1971 or so; I would have been around seven, and my sister was around two. Her big thing that year was an inflatable Easter rabbit that was bigger than she was. My great joy was the Aurora dinosaur models. Still, I remember that silly plastic chicken...

It didn't lay plastic eggs; instead it came with some gumballs you were supposed to stick up its ass, then push down on the chicken's back to make her lay "gumball eggs". I did, and gobbled them down as fast as she laid them. Eventually, there were no gumball eggs, and I experimented with other small egg-shaped objects, including jellybeans and chocolate balls. Eventually, I lost interest and went in to assemble my Pterodactyl (with optional Battle-Damaged Wing) and made it soar menacingly across my grandparents' living room...

It was still Easter. We'd been up hunting eggs by 7 a.m., breakfast by 8, rolling in toys and candy by 9, and by late afternoon, I was bored. My pterodactyl had attacked and eaten entire tribes of imaginary cavemen by that time; I was terribly interested in seeing how he'd come out against my Allosaurus, but that model was back home; a grudge match would have to wait. What to do?

That was when I remembered the chicken. Make it lay some more eggs to eat. I began looking for the chicken, which was nowhere to be found -- until I remembered it was out on the patio. I trotted outside and discovered all the adults sitting around in lawn chairs making adult-talk; nothing to concern me. I looked around, spotted my chicken, still sitting next to my Easter basket...

(At this point, I feel obligated to point out that the geographic location was deep south Texas -- some forty miles east of the Mexican border, on the northern part of the Rio Grande Valley. They call the place the "Winter Garden" because of its short, mild winters. My point here is that although it was barely spring, it was hot by early spring standards...)

I ran over and picked up the chicken. Ahh, plenty of heft -- no need to load it. I put its little orange feet on the pavement and pushed down on its back.

Nothing happened. Instead of the brisk clickelick of the spring mechanism unloading an egg, I got silence -- and a feel of mushy resistance. I frowned, perplexed. No jellybean? I let up, let the mechanism relax, then pushed again. Nothing happened. Irritated, I pushed harder.

It seemed that I'd left the thing loaded with those little chocolate balls, not the jellybeans. Chocolate balls. In the hot sun, all afternoon. A wonder the ants hadn't found it. Anyway, the chocolate hadn't had enough time to melt, per se -- not really hot enough -- but it had softened pretty well, not enough to leak out, but soft enough to be forced out under the proper circumstances. When I pushed down, the chicken finally excreted a thin tailing that, upon reaching the pavement, coiled brownly up in a little pile, like--

I was completely blown away. Here I'd just expected that a jellybean egg was stuck in the chicken's clockwork bowels, only to discover that my plastic poultry could produce a plurality of biological functions.

"Hey, NEAT!" I cried gleefully. "My chicken just POOPED!"

All four adults sharing the patio with me abruptly looked up from their conversation. I noticed this, and mistook it for interest. I put the chicken down again and pushed; it obligingly repeated the phenomenon. "Didja see?" I cried. "Didja see?"

Looking back through my memories through a child's eye, the expressions on their faces still kind of amuse me. My grandmother's face indicated that her entire brain just kind of locked up on her from sheer shock. My father, on the other hand, had his mouth hanging open and looked kind of like he wanted to laugh, but was wondering whether or not he should swat me for appearances' sake. Mom got a firm set to her jaw and glared at my grandfather -- (did YOU buy him that thing?), and Gran'ther looked most confused of all -- partly amused, partly shocked, and partly like the captain of the Exxon Valdez preparing to meet with the press --"Well, it wasn't supposed to do that..."

I can correctly interpret these expressions only now, as an adult. As a child, at the time, I simply assumed that they were as blown away by the magic of the phenomenon as I was -- as if Pinocchio had become a real boy, or the Tin Man of Oz had suddenly needed to take a leak or something. Merrily, I proceeded to hop my little plastic chicken around the pavement, leaving little piles of confectionary crap in its wake. Just as the adults were regaining the power of speech, it occurred to my sister, who was sitting nearby, that the chicken's leavings ... were edible.

I leave it to your imagination what the reaction was by the Old People to a cute bediapered infant happily scooping up and sampling ersatz chicken turds.

I was not punished. Upon explanation, it became clear that I had not planned the event, didn't know any better, and wasn't even exactly clear on what all the foofaraw was about. My sister and I were washed (a little too vigorously; milk chocolate comes off skin fairly easily), as was the chicken; when it was dry, I got it back, along with the rest of the jellybeans. The chocolate, I was told, was no good; ants had gotten into it, and let this be a lesson about leaving your things outside.

I knew, of course, that there were no ants in the chocolate, but I kept silent; I was young, but not stupid. Chalk it up, I decided, to the weirdness that creeps in during the metamorphosis from child to grownup as the brain petrifies. No telling what their problem was. I mean, even the baby knew it wasn't real poop...

Things That Crap

In the living room, atop the piano, is a row of things that crap.

"So let me get this straight," Berni said, "that little yellow chicken there is forty-three years old?"

"Yup," I said. "And strictly speaking, it does not crap. It lays eggs. But it crapped like crazy in the Easter of 1971."

I will not repeat the story. It's posted in NOTES under the title "Chicken and Chocolate: An Easter Story." But yes, for a brief time, a little plastic chicken, like Pinocchio before him, was a REAL bird, and did what real birds do: crapped all over the place.

And ever since I published "Chicken and Chocolate," something like thirteen or fourteen years ago, a tradition has begun: people send me little plastic toys that crap candy. I don't mind this; truth is, I find it kind of sweet and flattering. It has, however, caused me to wonder whether people send Stephen King horror memorabilia, or whether people send George Romero dead bodies or something. Nevertheless, I still find it flattering. I've made people laugh to the point of snarking their coffee on their monitors across oceans and continents away. I'm quite proud of that.

Even worse, it's become a tradition. There is now an entire box marked CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS devoted to the Candy Crapping Menagerie, that must come out and be placed each Christmas.

The most recent addition, however, made me think.

Berni and I were at JoAnn's last night. We're bad about that. With her, it's quilting stuff and fabrics; with me, it's wood items and stuff that can be used in miniatures work. JoAnn's, Michael's, Hobby Lobby... these places are to us what a strip club is to college guys: an expensive source of temptation.

And last night, they were having a sale at this one. Everything on the table, half off. And there were some crapping candy toys. Naturally. They're a lot more common now than they were once.

"Got a penguin?" Berni asked. "How about a reindeer?"

"Got 'em both," I said. In truth, internet friends had sent me both of them years ago. I've actually BOUGHT very few of the items in the picture; most of them were gifts.

...but then, I saw the gingerbread man. A gingerbread man that craps candy. I couldn't resist. And this morning, I dug him out of the bag. He had to be field tested before he could join his brethren on the piano. I loaded him, wound him up, and turned him loose on the counter.

Berni sipped her coffee and looked at him critically. "He WALKS?" she said.

I nodded.

She sipped her coffee some more. "Great," she said. "A gingerbread man that lurches along plopping candy turds behind him. I can see why this is a trend."

I looked over the packaging as he toddled along the counter, pooping colorful little candy balls behind him. There was a catalog inside the torn blister. I looked at it. "Good lord," I said. "It's not just for holidays any more."

"?"

I showed her the catalog. "Crapping zoo animals, crapping pets, crapping monsters, crapping football players..."

"Holy sh--," she said, and then caught herself. "It's a whole industry."

And it all started with a silly little innocent plastic chicken... that wasn't even supposed to crap in the first place...

Letter To A Friend

Sigh.

A thing I learned early in life is that some people really, REALLY enjoy kicking you in the nuts.

The WHY of this is not important. Sometimes it's because of the sense of power. Sometimes it's sheer gleeful sadism. Sometimes it's because they think you deserve it, and the universe will give no justice to the wicked unless they themselves jump in there and start kicking. The WHY is unimportant.

The important thing is categorizing. There's people I trust, and people I don't. Everyone starts out at the default point of "stranger." And from that sliding scale, you can travel up or down, any direction, into or out of the trust zone. Everyone in my life does this.

But there is a zone on the sliding scale that I pay attention to. It is the zone I reserve for people who repeatedly, willfully hurt me. Or at least go out of their way to try.

Remember: the WHY is unimportant. You might think otherwise, but ultimately, it boils down to this: are these people doing me any good? Can I do THEM any good? Is there any possible solution, here? Can I simply ignore them? Any resolution other than "bend over, here it comes again, whenever they feel like dishing it out?"

Because when I find myself dealing with someone whose only actions towards me are "neutral" or "kicking me in the nuts," with NO other reactions? That's when they go on that zone on the sliding scale.

Note that I don't have to hate THEM. Far from it. Or act against them. Or attack them. Or ANYTHING. If someone is in that zone, it's because I literally cannot put them anywhere else. It is because they and I cannot share a space in peace, at all. If I am in a room with them, they start kicking. If I am near, and they know it, they will seek me out, move into my proximity, and begin kicking. Maybe because they just hate me that much. Maybe because they LOVE me and want to HELP me. Maybe it's to encourage me to act in a manner they find more productive or acceptable to them. Or maybe because they think I deserve it, and God Almighty Himself cannot be trusted to deal me the justice that they think I deserve.

My enemies are the people who MUST try to hurt me, and will NOT leave me alone if they can reach me, conveniently and with little fear of consequence.

I don't have many. A few. And they tend to be relatives. Very few strangers ever developed a pressing need to kick me in the nuts, for some reason. Perhaps I am not such an evil poison thing, after all.

But some people, usually people who loved me, or claimed to, have moved into the Zone. And their motives range from "benign" to "utterly and completely justified in their own minds." That's why I say that the WHY is unimportant. Because it boils down to either "I kick you because you deserve it," or "I kick you to make you behave in a manner I regard as proper."

There was a time when I tried to make the kicking stop. I learned from this that the kicking does NOT stop; it merely takes other forms. Remember, either you deserve it, or you must be what they want you to be; deviations are unacceptable, and will result in kicking. KICKING IS THE NORM, for some folks.

Well, perhaps you have seen where I am going with this. Note that I'm not talking about YOU; I'm in no position to observe, much less judge. I'm just sayin' I have people in my life who would control me, punish me, torture me, if I allow it, that's all. Toxic people who cannot stand to see me live my own life, my own way. I understand that other people have folks like this in their own lives, too, or so I'm told.

I understand you had a bad moment, today, and that you did a thing what needed doing. And that it cost you. I know you well enough to know what it must have cost you. But it was the right thing. I know that if I allow those around me to dictate who and what I'm gonna be (or they won't be happy!)... well, that's just another form of kicking.

And blaming me because other people's lives didn't go the way they wanted? Kicking.

And blaming me because of things I could not control? Kicking.

And blaming me for anything that ever went wrong? Kicking.

And no matter how I loved those people, there comes a point where, for my own sanity, the kicking must stop. And if I have to walk away, and if I have to cut ties, and I have to just let those people go to hell in their own way, well...

You know I love you. Holler if you need me, or just want to talk.

A Great Man

I knew a Great Man, once.

He was not a politician. I’ve known a lot of politicians, and even some I liked, but they don’t seem to become Great Men (or Women) until after they’re safely dead.

He wasn’t a Captain of Industry, or particularly wealthy. At least, not that I knew of.

He wasn’t famous. Nor did he do any Great Deeds of which I was aware.

The main reason I found out he was a Great Man is because he told me so.

“I am indeed a Great Man,” he said, taking a long pull at the bottle of amusing fruit flavored wine substitute product.

“You don’t say,” I said, waiting for him to pass it my way.

“Indeed,” he repeated. He looked at the bottle neck, as if wondering whether to screw the cap back on. “I am, in fact, among the greatest human beings to walk the earth. A paragon in human form, a monolith among my fellows.” He glanced at me and realized I was waiting for the bottle, and didn’t put the cap on; instead, he passed it to me, for which I was grateful.

There was silence for a moment while I worked the bottle, and then it was my turn to realize that HE was waiting. Precisely for what, I didn’t know. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Were you waiting for me to acknowledge your greatness, or to inquire about its source?”

He held out his hand, and I passed him the bottle. “Some are born great,” he said, pausing to pull at the bottle, “and some earn greatness through their deeds. Some, though, have greatness thrust upon them.” He handed me the bottle back.

Truth was, I was not hugely interested in his greatness. I was more interested in trying to figure out what flavor the wine flavored fruit alcohol delivery fluid was supposed to be. This particular brand didn’t have names that suggested a fruitlike origin; rather, it had flavors like “Mellow Nights” and “Steppin’ Out,” and left the rest to your imagination. I drained the bottle while the Great Man kept talking.

“I am SO great,” he continued, “that unlike certain other Great Men I could name, I can afford great forebearance... tolerance... and charity.”

“Mmhm,” I agreed, taking another bottle out of the cardboard box. If nothing else, he could indeed afford a whole case of quasi-fermented fructose and corn syrup ciderlike stuff. I unscrewed the bottle cap and handed it to him, and he took a a long pull... and handed it back to me... and looked up at the night’s stars.

“The truly great human beings,” he said, looking skyward, “can be like that. They are so great, they can truly share of themselves. They got it to spare. I have it to spare. Magnanimity. There is no greatness in keeping it all to yourself, you know. Whatever it might be.”

I murmured agreement. Definitely not apple, I thought. There was a vaguely strawberryish note to the flavor, but a sort of darker, denser overlay. I wondered if it were possible to ferment prune juice into wine. This bottle was labeled “Sky of Stars,” and I wondered, am I drinking prune wine? Is this what they do with the prune juice that doesn’t sell?

“I am SO great,” he continued, eyes still pointed skyward, “that I take it a step further: I encourage other men to adopt the delusion that they are as great as I am. Or even greater, still, than I.”

This got my attention. I tried to hand him the bottle, but he was still looking up at the sky. “Why would you do that?” I said aloud.

“It’s like I just said,” he said, reaching out and taking the bottle without looking. “I am great, and I am magnanimous. I am generous. I give freely of my time and my effort and my resources to all I deem worthy, and you sorta kinda got to work at being unworthy, in my eyes.” He paused to tilt the bottle to his lips, and I waited. A moment later, he handed me the bottle back.

“And,” he continued, “a Great Man... who understands this... and lives by it... would realize this himself, wouldn’t he? Appreciate it? And would he not, in his delusion of Greatness, try to be magnanimous and generous, forthcoming and forgiving, standing tall and strong and living for others, as well as himself?“

I stopped for a moment and thought about it. I was younger then, and far less cynical than I am now, and it made a weird sort of sense. But I didn’t know what to say, so I took a pull at the bottle.

“I think he might,” the Great Man said. “I think that knowing himself to be great, he would BE great, as far as noblesse oblige to those less great than himself. And if he took it to the next level, he would encourage others... as I have... to adopt the delusion that they, too, are great, and can afford great generosity and forebearance and all that MAKES one great.”

And he turned and he looked at me. I didn’t know WHAT to think at that point; the conversation seemed to have sorta jumped the rails. So I handed him the bottle. And he took it, but did not drink. Instead, he looked up at the sky again, and this time, I looked, too, and we stared at the Milky Way spread across the sky for a minute.

“Can you imagine it?” he said. “A world where the order of the day is kindness, forbearance, and generosity, because we are all of us just that damn good?” And he took a deep pull at the wine.

And stopped and looked at it and examined it critically.

“Is it just me, or does this taste like prune juice?”

Sick Day Hockey

This one time, many years ago, I got sick.

Not HUGELY sick, but snuffly, runny nose, not feeling great, drink lots of liquids, skip work, stay home, and stay in bed sick. A cold. Minor flu. The sniffles. Whaddever you call it. Not sick enough to seek out a doctor, but sick enough that a day or two in pajamas and lots of OJ and chicken soup seemed called for.

I lived alone at the time, with two cats, Faust and Chaos, in a small apartment. The bedroom was also the living room, and the main trash can was a large box at the foot of my bed. This made it convenient; sit up, blow nose, toss tissue in box, lay back down. Lather, rinse repeat.

Until the moment when I blew my nose... and Faust leaped up onto one of the footposts. And looked at me expectantly. And when I tried to toss the tissue into the trash box, he promptly slapped it back at me. Took me three tries to outsmart the cat and get it into the box.

Tissue after that, he slapped it AWAY from me, onto the floor. “You! Shall! Not! Pass!”

I should have been irritated. I was not. If you’ve ever stayed home sick from work, particularly before cable on demand and streaming movies, you might remember how dull daytime TV was, and this was actually a welcome diversion. Fake the cat out, feint left and throw right, feint high and throw low, and whoops, the cat overbalanced and fell in the trash box. A moment later, he struggled out and promptly took his position on the footpost again.

Got to the point where every time I blew my nose, the cat came running. By that evening, Chaos had joined Faust, and getting the tissue into the box on the first throw was a serious challenge. Little white rosettes decorated the floor around the bed everywhere. I developed a strategy where, if I could get a cat to fall in the box, I would then toss the tissue on THAT side, so the remaining cat couldn’t get to it to slap it out of the air, and the cat in the box was too busy to react.

The next day, I tried that. Chaos stumbled, and fell into the box... where I found she had figured it out; the tissue went into the box, then got slapped into the air, where Faust promptly swatted it into the living room. They’d learned to cooperate. The only way to get it into the box after that was to shoot for the exact middle of the footboard, where neither cat could reach if he or she was sitting on a post.

After a few shots like that, Faust began suddenly leaping off the post onto the footboard, just to slap those middle shots down. After a few more, Chaos began doing it too. And after about the tenth center shot, BOTH cats leaped, collided in the middle, and fell into the trash box. And I laughed until it hurt, while both cats clambered out of the box and took their positions on the bedposts like irritated furry gargoyles, waiting for the next pitch.

This went on for a Friday and a weekend, and by Monday, I felt well enough to return to work, to the cats’ dismay. But for the rest of the time I lived in that apartment, blowing my nose was always a call for the cats to come running and leap onto the footposts...

I miss those cats. I think it may have been the only time in my life when I remember fondly a time when I was sick, thanks to them...