Season's Bleatings -- 2015

Consider the cow. Personally, I love cows. They're delicious. Hindus love cows, too, but in a spiritual way. They’re adored for their gentleness and tolerance… bovine role models for the rest of us. But the great majority of us loves them when they’re kaput, medium rare, and slathered in ketchup.  We demand them with such enthusiasm that great swaths of the planet have become devoted to their care.  What good are millions of acres of Amazon rainforest when they can be cleared for grazing?  But all those sweet cows fart and poop in such cataclysmic quantities that their discharges wind up melting glaciers and suffocating coral reefs. It's true. While there's an outside chance the world's governments can put a tourniquet on carbon emissions, there's NO WAY to thwart the ceaseless hordes from inching forward in drive-thru lanes to pick up quarter pounders with cheese. Hindus consider the living cow an honored beast. But now, thanks to a movie*, I can't stop pondering the world’s industrialized cattle, 1.5 billion strong, so darned delicious, swinging their cheerful tails to mooing melodies of a sinking Titanic. I didn't want to know this… my mind’s become infected as a rump roast tainted by E. coli.

Geez, sorry. That’s no way to start a Christmas letter. No, it's best, if you're upwind of the vast corrals of eastern Colorado, to consider the Spartans... not the Spartans of Sparta, but the mighty Spartans of East Lansing who are (drumroll)... IN THE NATIONAL PLAYOFFS! Our beloved team consists of brawny Rhodes Scholars, Hindus mostly, saints across the board, whose first mission is to swirl Nick Sabin's head (the traitor) in a toilet of crimson tide before advancing to bring home the bacon. Go Green!

My Christmas gift to Sue is to pay off her gambling debts. You would think that someone so prepared and organized would be more adept at picking winning NFL teams. In fairness, she has spent countless hours this football season piecing together exquisite quilts… TO GIVE AWAY.  If she would merely charge a fee for supplies, she could pay off her own damn debts. In her spare time, Sue watches endless reruns of NCIS and raises hell with her fellow retired dinosaurs, thus far avoiding arrest.

My Christmas gift to Brendan (32) is a cookbook of pheasant recipes. His hunting dog, Sadie, is expert at converting hidden birds into sitting ducks. Both Brendan and his wife, Jodi, have become seasoned foodies, and with all those fowl in the freezer, I'm sure they'll welcome some culinary pointers. My precious little boy has a receding hair line and loves his job at Fifth Third Bank in Grand Rapids.

Come to think of it, you never see a cow cast as a villainous cartoon character. They’re so irresistibly nice. But you also never see the livestock and dairy industries cast as bad guys. Hey, that’s the ticket: let’s show our grandchildren the devastating reality of our planet’s unsustainability on Saturday morning TV. Sponge Bob to the rescue!

My Christmas gift to Elizabeth (30) is a tune-up for her Subaru. She teaches English at Baker College in Cadillac, a long journey to and from the house in Traverse City she shares with her FIANCE, Levi, and his seven year-old daughter, Keira. That's a lot of miles for the old buggy. She left Austin in May for new adventures here in her old stomping grounds. She also assists a local travel writer and artist with her projects, so... Liz’s master's diploma in fine arts, once regarded as kitty litter lining, is paying dividends after all.

I’ll share a Christmas dream:  I dream that before every Republican debate, instead of the candidates doling out hollow introductions, we view a scene from Animal House: John Belushi is in a cafeteria assessing imminent chaos and with a mounting and crazed expression, screams "FOOOOD  FIIIIIIIGHT!!!"  

I continue to wander around northern Michigan in my social worker hat, plying the delicate service of infant adoption. For better or worse, the call for pregnancy counseling has dwindled.  As I stare down the barrel of Medicare eligibility and with the adoption phone mainly silent, I am happy to be semi-retired. Meanwhile, my fantasy football team has advanced to the playoffs and I’ll be glued to my laptop this Sunday as the points add up. Just think: I could win enough big bucks to buy a case of Omaha steaks. 

Okay, maybe we’re not so doomed, not doomed at Christmas anyway. Enjoy your turkey and cranberry sauce. We’re opting for prime rib, medium rare. Delicious.

* Cowspiracy, streaming on Netflix. Do NOT watch if you value sustainable human life or feelings of inner peace.

The White Hurricane

On a Thursday night, January 19, 1978, in Benzonia, Michigan, in the Crystal Lake Elementary School gym, I went up for a jump shot.  I know it was a Thursday night because in those days my friends and I always played pick-up basketball on Thursdays.  I know I played that particular night because what happened after that jump shot has affected me ever since. I know it was January 19, because I was on crutches the following Wednesday, the day the Great Blizzard of '78 ravaged the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley.  I was 27 years-old.

It wasn't a wise move, that jump shot. Jeff Forrest was on me pretty close as I went up for the shot on a full run.  Jeff went up with me, and when I came down, a pop like an ejected cork echoed from the rafters.  My right foot went sideways as I landed on his and I crashed down in a heap, screaming bloody murder. I tried to drag myself by fingertips as the others came to my aid.

I don't remember much about the ride to the emergency room, the x-rays, the doctor's gaze.  It was a badly torn ligament, they wrapped it tight, and sent me on my way with crutches, a small portion of pain killers in hand, and doctor's orders:  no weight on the ankle for six weeks.  I do, however, have a clear memory of an unopened bottle of beer on the back seat of our Pinto wagon.  My wife, Sue, was called and she transported me to the hospital in that car. As usual, I had stashed a quart in the back to relieve my post game thirst. But I feared the shame if I had told her I needed that drink in such a desperate time as that. So I stayed quiet and craving.

We lived then in a cottage near the north shore of Crystal Lake, a cozy and modern abode. In the winter it seemed somewhat remote as the tourist population had long since gone. I was a substitute teacher and often whiled away unemployed days in a fish shanty off of Beulah, jigging for perch and drinking beer. Jeff Forrest, a few other friends, and I had hauled a long-abandoned outhouse out of the woods, a roomy two-seater, set it on the ice, and equipped it with a small wood-burning stove and chimney. It became a clubhouse of sorts where we drank together in shirt sleeves, fed the fire and occasionally caught a fish.

Now on crutches, I hobbled around the cottage and finished off the painkillers. Marooned on the couch, I had gone an entire weekend drinking beer without the company of friends. No playing pool at the Ten Pin Lounge. No gatherings to watch college basketball on TV.  Those walls felt like a jail cell, and by Tuesday, feeling isolated and angry, I created a frozen silence against my wife.

But Wednesday offered a reprieve. That was the night we congregated on the ice, and against her common sense protests, I persuaded Sue that I could manage on crutches the snow-covered driveway and manage the icy path out to our shanty, all the while keeping my ankle hoisted and dry. "But there's a bad storm coming," she argued. "Not until morning," I argued.

Jeff picked me up at dusk. I managed to navigate the driveway but that two hundred yard trip out across the ice, with its sharp divots of imprinted boots, was very slow-going. Through the twilight, I could make out our distant destination with the lanterns inside shining through the seams. The sky above was a solid slate of fading gray stretching down to the western horizon.  But there, a band of black was rising, not the rising night of the east, but out over Lake Michigan, a great storm as promised. As I placed one crutch tip after the other, foot by foot, it began to snow.

My two other comrades sat astounded when I struggled through the door. I had come ice fishing on one leg! We hoisted beers to celebrate my escape, threw the empty cans down the two toilet holes, and topped it off with shots of Old Bushmill's. By God, this is what I missed, this is what I needed. But soon we heard a crescendoing rumble overhead. In silence we looked up, and through the low ceiling above, heard the moans of an oncoming roar. We reeled in our lines, threw on our coats, doused the lights, and started for home.

I soon lost my friends, or they lost me, but I stayed fixed on a lone house light near where we had parked, and half drunk, I poked a way forward in the face-stinging snow. But as the wind and snow gained momentum there in the dark, I lost sight of the light and inched ahead without bearings but with alcohol-fueled courage. But in a while I could make out the faint shouts of my name, shouted back in return, and headed in their direction. And finally there they were, huddled together near the lake's edge, wondering if I had lost a crutch and was stuck walking in circles.

Sue and I hunkered down while a 36-hour whiteout raged outside the windows. We were poorly provisioned, and over the next few days, ate all the food there was, except for a bag of frozen lima beans and a jar of candied watermelon rinds. The Michigan State Police declared that nearby Traverse City was "unofficially closed" and Governor Milliken declared a state of emergency from what became known as the White Hurricane. Many residents had to dig "up" out of their doors to reach the air. In some areas, only the roofs of single story houses were visible, and in Beulah, enormous drifts choked alleyways. I'll never forget seeing a basketball rim at ground level.

But what I mostly remember was the absence of beer. For several years, I had never gone more than a day or two without drinks, and when I did, it was from trying to recover from near poisoning the day before. This was different although a similar situation happened in 1974. I was living in a country house near the village of DeWitt when a February blizzard smothered southern Michigan. With no beer and no open roads to gain access, my roommate and I borrowed our landlord's snowmobile for the five mile trip into town and a prized case of Wiedemann. My roommate drove and on the way home loved to jerk the machine to the left or right in order to hurl me and the beer riding on my lap sideways into drifts.

But there was no way out of the forced sobriety of 1978. I had not prepared for the historic plunge in barometric pressure. It helped me to feed the fireplace and lose myself in a book (reading was a rarity for me in those days). I wasn't beset by withdrawal or cravings, but existed instead in an odd and unexplored dimension. This strange, new world was encased in a universe of dizzying white where all modes of escape stood guarded. I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

We were marooned for four days before we got a phone call from a friend. Carol and her husband, Craig, had been plowed out near Honor and they offered to drive over and rescue us if we needed anything or wanted to go with them to a party. Did we need anything? And a party? Did we want to go to a party? Oh, jubilation! But because of plugged roads, they would have to park on the corner of Alden Drive and Crystal Lake Drive, which would require, if I wanted to party, that I navigate through deep snow, down our driveway and then down Alden Drive, a distance of one hundred yards.

We soon heard the horn and through the window saw their van idling at the corner. The rescue was underway. Crutches were useless on that terrain as they disappeared down to their tops . So I crawled, or should I say, swam those hundred yards, my right foot held aloft, while Sue waded just ahead, holding my crutches on her shoulder, to carve out something of a trench.  Horizontal and inch by inch, snow grip by snow grip, breast stroke by breast stroke, I made it forward.

When the side door slid open, we met Carol's and Craig's beaming faces and with outstretched arms, they hoisted me up and into the open cab. As I sat back onto the seat, I saw lying on the floor a freshly-opened twelve pack of Miller High Life, cans with golden emblems waiting for liberation. Craig reached down, and without a word, handed me my salvation.

My ankle healed but left a permanent knot on the round bone there.  It is a constant reminder of an ill-advised jump shot and that inaccessible quart in the back seat. I remember pivoting on crutches over perilous ice to reach lost companions hundreds of yards out. I remember that accidental stretch of sobriety in a world without color, blinding white without and dark within. And I remember crawling like a parched and desperate man through that deeply drifted desert to reach an oasis of drink.

Perhaps it was the great blizzard that chiseled the first irreparable chink from my coat of armor. It brought on a new and painful consciousness. Many previous episodes of remorse came and went, like unconnected pieces broken but soon became repaired. But the storm always stayed with me. In a way, it marked the dawn of a new life to come, eleven years on.

Reflections on a Writers Group

We had a guest at our last meeting, a friendly, worldly, and talented woman, who provided me feedback about my Anna and Reginald story. We talked about the part (stolen) where I wrote, "When Anna tried to sing, she sounded like a walrus giving birth to farm equipment." I laughed out loud the first ten times I read that and shared that this was my favorite analogy of all. So I was surprised when our guest recommended that I delete it. I had noticed as I read the whole story aloud -- from the Thighmaster to the stubborn turd to the twinkling, snot-laced mustache -- that she never cracked a smile. She advised me to put the story away for six months, and then come back to it when I might try to relate better to the reader, in the way, for example, the great David Sedaris relates to his readers. This was a bit hard to swallow.

I've become a senior citizen, and I wish in some ways I was becoming more calloused with age. Sometimes I have a hard time separating my work from my ego.  And here again, my fault was that I took our guest's criticism personally. She was not to blame for how I felt. It's just that our guest didn't "get it", didn't get the high comedy of, say, comparing a ballerina's precise and delicate move to a dog lifting its leg at a fire hydrant. I'm sure she understood why the analogy was  supposed to be funny, but she didn't seem to feel it was funny. Our guest acknowledged that she didn't like the use of metaphors in prose. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. But that comment took me aback. I found  her abhorrence of metaphors strange and, well, kind of worrisome, too.

I keep coming back to the group, first, to keep me going, and second, to get help. This can be a risky business if the ego plays too big a part in the process, as though every word is sewn like a golden thread in a weave of self worth. But now that I've lived with Anna and Reginald for more than a month, and with the help of group members (and my daughter), I can see the story's many flaws. Mission accomplished: I wrote, I shared, I improved. And truth be known, it was mainly a fellow group member's enthusiasm for Part One that launched me into Part Two.

The point is: I experienced nothing hurtful in this discovery of flaws. For as long as help comes from a place of support, help is granted. The primal prerequisite for supportive criticism in any writing group, or any support group for that matter, is the mutual celebration of the writer's heart. All is well when criticism simultaneously adores the writer.

But when criticism is felt as rejection, creativity gets as backed up as an L.A. freeway during rush hour, as a public toilet in a, in a…  Anyway, I've thought long and hard about my wildly different reactions to criticism. We sensitive types can't abide when it feels like rejection, but we flourish when criticism feels like togetherness, as though we're all struggling bozos on this bus, the criticizer and the criticized alike.

After a meeting a year ago, I drove home feeling depressed. I had written a satirical piece following the Republican victory in the mid-term elections, and, well, the group was none too supportive. After I thought about it, I saw that their negativity had nothing to do with the writing itself or the seemingly clever way I structured it. Their negativity was a response to my own negativity. It's hard to support a voice that lashes out in anger and seems hell-bent on destruction.

It seems the only way I would have driven home happy that day is if the group had read my story, then had become so aroused by my words that they stormed onto Front Street with burning torches and chanted en-masse anti-right wing slogans. But no, theirs was an icy response to a fiery expression of outrage. Which is not to say, of course, that there's no place for outrage. But the writer, full of venom though he may be, has also to be persuasive if his writing is to "work". On the other hand, if our group consisted entirely of aged and disaffected radicals from the 60s, why, my work may have been hailed as an anthem for a lost generation.

Which leads me to the problem of compulsive masturbating. About two years ago, a man afflicted by this condition joined the group. His therapist had apparently recommended that he find an outlet for expressing and thus exorcising his pent up disturbances. Writing might do the trick. Oh, and how he did express them, I'm afraid, in vivid detail. It would not have mattered, it seems, if his writing spoke with the wisdom and eloquence of Dickens -- it was simply impossible for the group to cherish his heart when his words spewed forth in a torrent of pornographic violence. We're all in if we can relate somehow. And after one meeting, he was not so much rejected as kindly asked to seek help in a more appropriate venue.

Our group exists to help writers become better writers, not to unkink the knots of those with emotional malfunctions. The need for approval, that yearning for acceptance, the siren call of an unrequited ego -- if these struggles raise their ugly little heads, they're best dealt with on the long ride home. It is then that you counsel yourself: separate the work from the self, separate the work from the self. After all, they're just words. There's no blood in them.

Reginald

Reginald's plane soared northward as he gazed across the clouds from his window seat. The clouds looked like… they looked like…

"Blood-sucking vampires," Reginald muttered.

The man seated next to him looked up from his magazine. "Pardon?" he asked.

"Oh, uh, nothing. Sorry," Reginald answered, and scratched the back of his neck. He had been lost in thoughts of mosquitoes. Big, bad Bolivian rain forest mosquitoes. His mission trip had taken him to a remote town in the northeastern part of the country where birds looked like birds, monkeys looked like monkeys, but the mosquitoes looked like a cross between the two, like those flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. Reginald scratched the top of his thigh. It's hard to focus on the Lord's work when you're scratching your epidermis like a frenzied gambling addict rubbing off lottery tickets or you're slathered in anti-itch cream like a rack of spare ribs drenched in barbecue sauce.

By focusing on cloud formations, Reginald hoped he could distract himself from his recent memories of Bolivia. His mother, Lucille, had urged him to go after Reginald returned home to Kalamazoo from his first year at Michigan Tech.  To Louise, he seemed as transformed as a turkey carcass after Christmas dinner. Lucille wasn't used to her geeky boy lying on the couch for hours at a time, aimlessly clicking the TV remote like an insomniac performing data entry duties. Reginald refused to reveal the source of his pain as he clammed up tighter than a rusted out chastity belt. So, she suggested he get away from it all and join a mission trip organized by her church. Reggie had never been religious but saw the merit in "getting out of himself", like Harry Houdini extracting himself from a straitjacket before he drowned.

Little Reggie had been a perky youngster, at least until junior high rolled around. Poor Reginald's head was somewhat misshapen, like an overly inflated football, which gave his eyes the wide-set look of a goat. A posse of school bullies took one look and descended on him like a flock of crows to freshly-mangled roadkill. They made bleating noises when they passed him in the hallway and soon the whole 7th grade school wing joined in. Between class bells, the hallways resounded in a cacophony of farm noises -- cows, chickens, sheep -- like a symphony of livestock at the Iowa State Fair. The principal soon put an end to the hallway noise and was sympathetic to Lucille's pleas for help: he suspended the perpetrators caught taping to Reginald's locker a picture of a goat performing a sex act on a mildly distracted donkey.

But it was hopeless. Reginald continued to suffer the non-stop slings and arrows of adolescent barbarity. He sank further into a shame-infused depression, refused to go to school, feeling like a forgotten, dried up mushroom at the back of a refrigerator. The best course of action, all agreed, was to home-school the boy, and before long, Reginald transcended his trauma and tore into his on-line studies like a runt piglet scrambling for a teat. Lucille bought Reginald the best computer and latest software, and sitting before his keyboard and monitor, Reginald felt alive as never before in an infinite circuitry of information and unconditional acceptance.

Reginald was an only child and his father had never been in his life. He took one look at little Reggie when the boy was three months old and hit the road like a rambling man brainwashed by too many folk songs. Lucille had inherited a sizable sum from her grandmother's estate so never struggled to make ends meet. But she was afflicted with chronic attention deficit disorder and found it impossible to manage her son's academic program. At any task, she became as distracted as a hypochondriac in a leper colony. But Reginald reciprocated by taking charge: he made out the shopping lists, did the laundry, and kept her plugged into books and game shows. Lucille just adored Pat Sajak whom she imagined looked like the handsome pervert in Fifty Shades of Grey.

Reginald hardly left the house but made many friends on-line, especially in chat rooms that focused on computer code. Friends only knew him by his chat-name, "Bob Barker", and when he would enter a discussion, they would welcome him by typing in, "Come on down!" Reginald loved both the anonymity and his fellowship with his like-minded geeks. He felt fully embraced in this fair and anonymous world where it seemed everyone wore paper bags over their heads.

He soared in his studies, and after he mastered rote requirements, he begged his on-line instructors for extra credit and college level work. Reginald scored at the 99th percentile on his ACT and SATs, and his on-line teachers praised him in letters of reference that sounded like the pronouncements of used car salesmen. Reginald received full-ride scholarships from Cal Tech, MIT, and Michigan Tech, and ultimately chose the latter. College with all its social interactions scared him, and imagined he could find solace by retreating to an ice cave on the Lake Superior shore. He would think of himself as Nanook of the North, swaddled in a seal skin coat, alone and satisfied that a sufficiency of whale blubber had been stashed away.

Reginald had walked onto the campus in Houghton as anxious as a hemophiliac working in a glass factory, but he soon found that the social scene in college was as far from junior high as Pluto is from the sun. In a matter of weeks, he verily skipped to his classes and immersed himself into academia like a chunk of bread plunged into a pot of cheese fondue. Reginald got A's on tests, A's on papers, A's for attendance, and A's with extra credit. He gave himself an A for Attaboy! He made the dean's list and envisioned a power career in Silicon Valley. And in February, he and his roommate, Silvio, visited the ice caves on Lake Superior, and Reginald had to chuckle as he recalled an image of himself, hunkered alone within an icy room, like a freezing monk in a freezing monastery, wishing the outside world would just stay away.

April arose like a gentle crocus with its wisp of light blue hope that the glacier known as the U.P. would one day melt away. It also marked the day of the Fool. Reginald had an hour for lunch and took a seat at the busy Bunyon Cafeteria with his tray of sloppy joe's, buttered corn, and chocolate milk. As he munched away, a girl took a seat directly across from him with her tray of salad, crackers, and tomato juice. In a few moments, their eyes locked like two forefingers stuck together in one of those tubular Chinese finger traps. They stopped chewing mid-bite as though their faces had seized up in simultaneous power outages. From that moment forward, they became inseparable.

Was it love? Whatever it was, Reginald went from scholastic superstar to love-stoked earthworm. Before, he had never even had a date, and now he clung to this girl, Anna, like burnt honey-baked ham drippings to a roasting pan. They teased, they cuddled, and when apart, Reginald's thumbs ached from the non-stop texting.  And lord, how they screwed, as though they were the Kama Sutra creators, and performed for hours like a couple of conjoined contortionists in a carnival sideshow.

To say Reginald was a bit obsessed would be like claiming the only cockroach on the counter is the only cockroach in the kitchen. And how, alongside this new extra curriculum, did his schoolwork fare?  He quit going to class. He quit his assignments. In a single mouthful of buttered corn, he quit caring about college altogether. It's not that he gave up, but felt commanded suddenly by an all-consuming calling, like one of the dead pursuing human flesh in an episode of that popular TV series on Sunday nights.

At the end of the semester, with their summer separation looming, Reginald wrote Anna an impassioned poem of devotion. He entitled it, "Anna and My Banana". She was shell-shocked. Upon her second reading, she looked as though her emotional garden, so lovingly cultivated, had just been plowed under by a procession of water buffaloes. For Reginald to reduce their incredible love to crass images of cucumbers, zucchini and, yes, kumquats, well, she felt as crushed as a discarded baby stroller in a garbage truck. Anna tore up the poem, threw the confetti into Reginald's face, and stormed away.

Reginald felt as wanted as a stubborn turd that floats up after an unsuccessful toilet flush. He trudged up to his dorm room and buried his head in his pillow. Silvio soon returned from his last final exam, and seeing his roommate whimpering and all balled up on his bed, said, "Whazamata, amigo? Dot chica Anna, how you say?, she cut off ze balls of you?"

Reginald pulled the pillow from his head, peered at his roommate, and stammered, "S-s-s-si."

"Well, dot Anna, you know I always say, she's no good for you. And you write dot poetry all night. She doesn't like it?"

Reginald just stared up at the ceiling like a corpse prepped for an embalming.

"Well, amigo, here you go. You got mail. Maybe good news, yes?" Silvio said, and placed a letter on Reginald's chest.

It took Reginald a while to gather energy to open the letter. It was from the dean's office. It reported that he had flunked every class in his second semester and in order to continue at the university, he had to re-apply with a full explanation as to why he failed. This news struck Reginald with all the impact of a spitball trying to divert an asteroid careening towards Earth.

Anna Anna Analogy

Disclaimer: The reader will note that certain sentences and phrases in this story are written in italic script. These are not the author's original words. Rather, the italicized parts were taken from a random list of "bad analogies" published by the Washington Post in the late 1990s. All non-italicized analogies here are the creations of the author. The fiction below was inspired by the sheer badness of those borrowed analogies, and they are strung together here to make a story.

* * * * * 

Anna gazed out over Good Harbor Bay on this warm September evening.  The summer was gone, the tourists had left, and she had the beach to herself.  Even though she was now free in this glorious setting to, say, yodel or perform naked cartwheels away from public notice, she carried not feelings of liberation, but feelings of utter desolation. She felt like the last flea standing after a dog emerged from a flea bath.

Anna's footprints had signed this Lake Michigan beach a hundred times before. She had learned to swim here and in the summers of her youth you could see her head bobbing off shore like a soggy slice of banana in a bowl of Cheerios. But to Anna at this moment, the whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00, instead of 7:30.

Anna's dreams were blowing up like a man with a broken metal detector walking through an active minefield. She reflected back on those lost dreams. Oh, how she had longed to be an artist! Ever since she was seven years-old, she had wanted to perform -- to dance, to sing, to act! Her life became forever changed when her mother took her to a performance of Swan Lake at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Such beauty, such grace. Anna sat spellbound when the ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. 

Even though her physique was somewhat ill-suited, Anna attended ballet classes and took to the art like sea gulls flock to a city dump. She performed at class recitals and would walk down neighborhood sidewalks resplendent in her pink tutu and golden crown. But then in a few years, her dreamy bubble popped.  Her mother had adorned the refrigerator with pictures of Anna, including one of her smiling in her ballet costume while accepting roses after a recital.  Anna overheard her uncle Jim peering at the photograph and commenting, "Wow. Now that's one beefy ballerina!" Her heart imploded and she torched them all -- the pink tutu, ballet shoes, and golden crown -- in the backyard incinerator like Joan of Arc at the stake going up in smoke.

It was many months before Anna could shake her despair. But like a bright-eyed badger emerging from its winter hole, she awoke renewed one spring morning and vowed to resurrect an artistic life. She found out The Old Town Players in Traverse City were holding auditions for a production of Guys and Dolls, and Anna decided to try out. Over and over again, she watched the DVD of the old movie and soon she was singing along. Thus prepared, she took a seat in the theater's large audition room where the musical director and an accompanist called the contestants for their big chance at the limelight.

Anna heard her name and stepped forward. She had rehearsed Adelaide's Lament until the wee hours the night before and was delighted that it was chosen for her tryout. The piano began the prelude, Anna observed her cue, and boldly opened her mouth. The director winced, the pianist paused, and the collected contestants looked away and shifted in their seats. Truth be told, when she tried to sing, Anna sounded like a walrus giving birth to farm equipment.  She didn't get a part.

And, of course, there was Reginald.  Dear, dear, long lost Reginald. They met at Michigan Tech last Spring as by chance they sat across from one other at a campus cafeteria. Their gazes met and held. Her eyes twinkled, like the moustache of a man with a cold. His eyes were like the stars, not because they twinkled, but because they were so far apart.

Physical appearances of others held little significance for Anna. The once beefy ballerina trimmed down when she bloomed through adolescence, but she could not evade verbal assaults from haughty and insensitive sorts. In high school, a boy told her she was like a magnet: attractive from the back, repulsive from the front.

But Reginald, with those gecko eyes and uneven complexion, like a stucco facade at a Mexican restaurant, often complimented her looks and manner. He murmured that her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. He, too, raved about the beauty of her posterior, and kindly refrained from any comments about her lazy left eye that seemed to scan the terrain like a lighthouse beacon. Out in the community, he preferred to walk two steps behind, which embarrassed her, yes, but thrilled her all the same.

College life became all about constant texting and sleepovers. In a short time, their love burned with the fiery intensity of a urinary tract infection. And how Reggie made her laugh! Once while sitting in the House of Flavors, he inhaled with a straw a swallow of his strawberry milkshake up through his nostril. She roared with her deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes before it throws up. 

When the semester ended, they parted ways with wet cheeks and an embrace as close as a pair of two-by-fours plastered together with a nail gun. They promised to text, to call, and to visit. Anna returned to Leland, Reginald to Kalamazoo. But then, nothing. Complete silence. She texted and called a hundred times. She pleaded for an answer, and at last for her dignity. She wanted to call the police. It made no sense! She suffered in a chaos of feelings, like the chaos of an ancient African ant colony just disrupted by cherry bombs. For Reginald had grown on her like he was a colony of E. coli and she was room temperature Canadian beef.

His absence had poisoned her summer, a summer meant for love, and now Anna just sat with toes immersed in the Good Harbor sand like little sausage links buried in an egg casserole. She hadn't the heart or mind to return to school, and to make ends meet, robotically punched her timecard five days a week at the Leland Mercantile.

A mosquito lighted on Anna's thigh, but she hadn't the emotional strength to brush it away. She watched as it engorged with her blood, like a water balloon at a faucet. But she found focus in the gloaming: she tried to forgive herself for her many missteps and to forgive the many insults over the years that had pummeled her pride. She recalled a beautiful ballerina from long ago, a melody from Guys and Dolls, and a thick pink liquid running up Reginald's nose. Anna allowed a weak chuckle, and just when she happened on a moment of peace,   her lazy eye glimpsed a hand, a hand like a flyswatter from the heavens, that slapped down on her thigh and ruptured red the bulbous mosquito that had squatted there. Anna screamed. Her eyes rolled back and she made that high frequency squeal that pigs make when they're hoisted up by their hind legs. 

She jumped to her feet. "Reginald! Oh my God! But how? And where? And why?" She gasped for breath. "Reginald! Reggie! How could you!" She lunged at him.

Reginald held and subdued her as Anna pounded his chest the way a butcher tenderizes a large cut of tough beef. He explained that he was sorry to startle her but he needed to save her from that vampire mosquito before she lost all her blood. And he explained that after he got back to Kalamazoo, he flew to Bolivia on a Mormon mission where he could focus his faith and think through their relationship. He was sorry that his silence had hurt her in such a nasty way, the way a swarm of angry bees puncture human flesh and leave the skin as blistered as a chronic case of herpes. Through those long South American weeks, he came to realize that he would love her forever. He rushed north to Leland as soon as his plane touched down in Grand Rapids.

"But why didn't you tell me you were leaving?" Anna pleaded through a torrent of nasal mucus.

Reginald's jaw dropped like the barometric pressure of a typhoon. "Oh my God! Before I left, I wrote you a  twenty page letter from deep in my soul. I asked my mother to put it in the mail! You mean you never got it?"

So this was the missing link. Reginald's mother was as absent-minded as a lobotomized mental patient trying to fill out a medical form.

Anna at last dissolved in his arms like two tablets of Alka Seltzer in cold water. They were together again and that was all that mattered. And when all the tension finally lifted, Reginald asked Anna, for old time sake, to turn around, and like a cattle rancher at an auction, he made a careful inspection.

All was well on Good Harbor Bay. And the sun sank below the watery horizon, like a diabetic grandma easing into a warm salt bath.

                     
  

Dear Diary

It's been a while. I started a "journal" in 1973 when I was airborne on Icelandic Airlines en route to my third Great European Backpacking Adventure. I promised myself I would daily chronicle the journey so that later in life I could reflect back on how I was sure to be shaped by such a transcendent experience.  But that was before I visited the duty-free shop at the Reijkevik airport, purchased a pint of Jim Beam, and got good and drunk before touching down in Luxembourg.

Let's just say I've been a bit sidetracked, more or less, since then. So, Diary, sorry it's been so long, but no time like the present, eh?  Thought I would bring you up to speed on the latest.

First, let me tell you about yesterday. Three cronies and I went out to Sundance Golf Course, overlooking beautiful Torch Lake, for our regular Tuesday outing. I was looking forward to it. To further tantalize, here is a description of the 17th Hole on the Sundance website:

 "A magnificent setting with an eighty-foot drop to the green. A breathtaking view is yours from a tee complex that overlooks the shimmering Caribbean blue waters of Torch Lake and the pristine beauty of the forested horizon surrounding it. Below you, surrounded by deep bunkers and aggressive heather, the green awaits as a rose among thorns."

There was nothing magnificent about Torch yesterday, or should I say nothing visible, blinded as we were by driving drizzle in low-slung cloud cover. We slogged around the front nine with our golf balls splatting down on saturated fairways and squirting chaotically on super fast greens. I wore light gray Docker trousers that wound up heavy and dark gray from the knee down as water continually seeped up and through. Even so, I hit the long ball fairly well, but my short game lacked any common decency. After I four-putted the sixth hole, a depression emptied me, fathoms below the plunging barometric pressure. The strain, for me at least, is always compounded by the competitive spirit of the group, as gambling for precious quarters torques the pressure. I was losing and I was wet and I was pissed.

There's nothing new, dear Diary, about my moping around the links as though I just lost a wallet full of cash. The relevant thing is what happened on the 11th green. I snaked in a long and (heretofore) impossible par putt that not only won the skin, but bested my opponents by several strokes and put me squarely in the driver's seat to win, win, win! When my ball found gold at the bottom of the jar, it was as though the finest strain of Prozac found traction in my brain. Despite the added weight of my soaked shoes and socks, I found a sudden lightness in my step, a grin emerged from the abyss, and I even found love for my freshly flattened friends. And in this fresh momentum of joy, I did go on to win the match, collected a few dollars, and on the drive home, felt a refreshed hope against the wicked ways of the world.

Today Diary, as I retrace those soggy steps, I marvel at the sheer shallowness and smallness of it all. To be plunged headlong into frequent despair, and then by a blind squirrel putt to become at once resurrected by victory, I admit to feeling ashamed that I am thus afflicted. Those down and up feelings weren't guided by beliefs or values, but, let's be honest, by the knee-jerkiness of a needy ego.

How do I let go of ego on a golf course, Diary? How can I meditate when so much personal worth is at stake? But never mind. I have another six days before I battle the inner golf demons again.

Instead, let me tell you about a second happenstance. My infant adoption work has dwindled over time.  Yes, there have been ebbs and flows, feasts and famines, and flurries of activity here and there. But over time, the number of mothers who choose to place their newborns from families in our adoption pool is diminishing. Maybe that's a good thing. But it's a relatively new and different thing.

So, lately as I sat there twiddling my thumbs, I pondered our recent annual picnic where adoptive families and birth families from recent years come together to eat, drink (lemonade), and be merry. There was joy and a belonging there among the picnic tables. I wondered how to keep the connections going beyond that once-a-year congregating. How to expand the network? How to keep our program alive and in the air?

Well, duh… get thee to Facebook, go!

Therefore, I created a page for all those interested in us, either near or on the fringe. Picnic pictures have been posted, others have posted, and a few days ago, I posted this:

CHS Open Adoption

Hey there, friends! Our FB launch has gotten off to an amazing start! It's great to see so many "liking" and sharing as our page already has reached hundreds!

Here's an item from our program's Statement of Beliefs: "We believe that dynamic adoptive practice engenders a spirit of community. We strive to promote adoption fellowships where experiences and common values are shared."

That's what we're talkin' bout! The more we all participate here, the more dynamic (and fun!) it becomes.

Please share your stories, pictures, thoughts, concerns, feelings, questions… anything at all that contributes to the great collage of our community.

I hope I've created a friendly thing, vibrant and free-wheeling. And I sure hope it finds its legs, like a newborn foal props itself on wobbly knees before kicking up dust. Or, like a golf green awaits as a rose among thorns. 

Diary, here's the the final news for today: I've joined a writer's group. Last summer I got wind of it, made application, and the members, all women then, seemed very generous and let me in. However, I later learned that I was the only male applicant who didn't write obsessively about his fantasies during non-stop masturbation sessions. I think the ladies were so relieved to see that my prose lacked (so far, at least) the jerk-off angle, that all at once I became a unanimous shoe-in. 

Every few weeks we sit at a round table in a lovely library that has power window blinds. There's fresh coffee and a spotless bathroom upstairs. The other five are fine writers, and are working on projects to hatch later on. They bring in for review their newest drafts so that the piece will bolster their literary concoctions. Their patience and endurance are remarkable.

I, on the other hand, offer nothing but a mish or a mash. While the others timely slave away, I delay  writing until the day before our meeting and usually have had no idea what I'll write about. Yes, these words right here shall serve as my excuse and fodder for my next presentation. I hope you don't mind, Diary. But my offerings are impulsively generated, like expulsions from a boiling cesspool. There's really no rhyme or reason or common thread to them, other than my claim to amass random renderings into something called a "blog". And how, you might ask, are my creative spewings received by my fellows?

Imagine you are seated on a stiff pew during a quiet church service on a typical Sunday. The sermon has been low key and uninspiring, a few of the older heads have begun to nod, and some of the God-fearing have begun to look at their watches. Then suddenly and without warning, a wild and unattractive man, completely naked, explodes from the side of the alter, and howling like a madman races at top speed down the aisle and out the front door. The skirmish lasts only ten seconds. Behold now the faces of your Protestant brethren. See how they are bewildered and stunned. Those, dear Diary, are the same faces I encounter after I've read aloud my mishmash. Those are the faces I will encounter after I have read this.

As I said, they are a generous lot. They are compassionate and helpful, but bless them, I always leave them at a loss for words. But in their and the world's defense, what possibly is there to say?

That's all for today, Diary. I'm sure I'll come back to you again and again as my ideas run dry. 

Donald Trump Press Conference

92nd Street YMCA, New York City, August 20, 2015


Before I begin, let me give you a moment to adjust to my new appearance.  You weren't expecting this and it may come as a shock.  Yes, I am, in fact, bald.  Please let this sink in, if you can, before we continue.

(Pause)

My Fellow Americans. The world's most spectacular combover is gone. This is fitting as it represents what brings me here tonight.  The masquerade is over. I stand before you now as my authentic self, without pretense and without malice, and with only good cause. I stand before you as both a bald and honest man.

My fellow Americans, the last thing in the world I want, or ever wanted, is to be is President of the United States. Well, I guess that's not completely true. When I was in fifth grade, my classmates and I had to give an oral report on what we wanted to become when we grew up.  My first sentence was, "I want to be President of the United States." It was not meant as a joke, but there was such an immediate eruption of hysteria that I couldn't continue.  Even my teacher, Mr. Shonkweiler, was dabbing his eyes with Kleenex. The humiliation was intense and I vowed over the next months, as the recess bullying continued, to exact revenge on all who doubted me. That I went on to ruthlessly amass a filthy fortune in real estate is traceable, one hundred percent traceable, to that anguish born in fifth grade.

But I was not a man without conscience. As the millions rolled in, I became aware of a sick self, the glamorous persona of Trump, who became an expert at playing the game.  More and more, I despised that self, but also felt entrapped in that robotic, ego-driven drive for business success. I mowed down competitors, obsessed about my net worth, but felt like hell.  I rode in limousines and a private jet, starred in my own TV show, but still felt like hell. I was so angry, and deep-down, I guess I was afraid, afraid that my driving fear would show.

The final straw happened last year on the 18th hole at Trump National.  Fifty thousand dollars was riding on a four-foot putt that I made a thousand times before with my eyes closed. I had my opponent by the throat. But when my putt lipped out, I convulsed like an epileptic and hurled my putter twenty yards up in the air before it nearly landed on a Mexican maintenance worker standing nearby. He sheepishly brought me the club which I snapped in two over my knee and threw both pieces into the greenside pond.

Then the worker, "Ezekiel" according to his unform, started to laugh. I turned on him glaring, and even though he tried to stifle, Ezekiel collapsed right there on the green and doubled up with great bellows of laughter. "You're fired!" I screamed, but he could not contain himself. On and on he howled. I kicked him in the gut where he lay, but still he laughed.  "You're fired!" I screamed again. Ezekiel finally whimpered to silence and brought himself to his feet, clutching his stomach.

"Don't you know who I am!" I demanded.

Ezekiel looked down at my feet and said in a soft voice, "Oh yes, sir. You are a crazy, crazy man. Would it help, sir, if you would kill me?" And he turned and headed slowly to the maintenance barn, and I could hear him laughing to himself as he walked away with a limp.

I felt defeated to the core, like I was in fifth grade again, but this time I had no taste for revenge, only a need for salvation. I had been brutalizing Ezekiel and countless others one way or another for years. Millions despised me, perhaps thousands admired me, but all that mattered was that everyone bow down to me.  Was I the embodiment of American success?  Was mine an American persona to be worshipped?  I was ashamed that my false self not only bought into the madness but that I had let it get this far.

Now at the turning point, I asked myself how I could best serve my country by righting these wrongs? How could I best use my experience and expertise? Then it dawned on me: for the good of the nation, I would trumpet my Trump megalomania to expose the whacked values that drive too many relationships and too many leaders. Greed at the expense of justice. Egomania at the expense of peace. Privilege at the expense of equality.

There was no better arena to get this done than performing in the Republican presidential campaign.  A million free sound bytes and wall-to-wall news coverage with all the bright lights of planet Earth bearing down. It was perfect. And so I unleashed a non-stop torrent of low-minded absurdity, racism, and bloated ego. My growing celebrity was assured as long as I held to this one common theme: "Just look at who I am!"

My friends, I spoke not a word about policy, but spewed endless insults and posed like Mussolini on a Roman balcony. You heard me. You saw me. I tried with all my might to be my former imbecile. I proposed to build a Great Wall of the Rio Grande to thwart a horde of Mexican rapists. And then I went down to the Mexican border wearing my golf shoes, for crying out loud. Could it have been more obvious? I tried to arouse such massive outrage at my ignorance and whacked values that a coming together would happen. Right wing and left wing. Rich and poor. White and non-white. I hoped a popular sentiment would proclaim, "We refuse to listen to Trump and all that he stands for! We're damn mad and we're not going to take it anymore!"

But in spite of it all, support for The Donald only grew. At this, my fellow Americans, I am utterly astounded. I expected so much more, but got far, far less. My God, what would it have taken to get you to turn against me? A demonstrated compassion for others?

This is why I appear before you tonight. The gig is up. The charade is over. The emperor wears no clothes or a hairpiece. I come to you now as I truly am: bald and honest.

I was a bullied boy, but today I am no longer that boy. I became a career bully, but that career is over. Please, please, please, my fellow Americans, I implore you: reject those that beat their chests. Fall in line behind true peacemakers.

I would take your questions, but I have an overdue appointment to keep with Ezekiel and his family.

Thank you and God bless you.

When Ya Gotta Go

I first met a jellyfish off the shore of the Turkish Black Sea in August of 1973. I was encamped there on a beach near the village of Akcakoca with my fellow backpacked wanderers, Paul and Dan. I had seen jellyfish from boats or washed up dead from the ocean, but never met one face to face.

The night before, we had gotten drunk on wine while dining on swordfish kebabs at a local restaurant. We then stumbled back to our secluded spot on the sea and laid out our sleeping bags for a long summer's nap. During the night heavy winds blew in and the lovely lap, lap, lap of the waves crescendoed into a violent crashing of cymbals. At dawn, Paul, Dan and I woke to find ourselves submerged and pulled out to sea. We dragged our soggy selves and saturated bags to higher ground and laughed our hungover asses off. Paul, though, got pissed when he learned his sandals were swept away forever. While our sleeping bags lay in the sun that day to dry, I had the greatest day of bodysurfing in my life.

When one wanders for weeks, out and about, come what may, it's can be hard to find a good place to poop. On the Black Sea that day, with all that bodysurfing and great portions of swordfish the night before, I worked up a mighty need to go. You didn't find friendly facilities off the beaten path (or in Turkey at all generally) so I cast my eyes out to the harmless sea. I decided to do my business beyond the breakers and swam out some fifty meters.

As I treaded water there, with the swells lifting and lowering, I removed my underpants and prepared to purge. I noticed a translucent umbrella of white floating a ways away, right on my path to shore, and knew that I had better get to it fast as jellyfish give off a nasty sting. So (forgive me) as I was pushing and forcing the issue, I noticed another translucence a ways to my left and yet another to my immediate right. They seemed lazy and unhurried, but by God, they were closing in. I did an immediate about-face out to the open sea to surmise an escape route, out and around, but five or six more were easing in to greet me. Completely encircled, I panicked and released my underwear. Viewed from high above, I would have looked like the yolk of an enormous egg frying and shrinking on the Black Sea surface.

With a huge gulp of air, I dove down, straight down, in twenty feet of water. With saving adrenaline coursing through my veins, like spinach to a cornered Popeye, I swam under and away from that horrible siege, breaking water speed records en route. I believe I could have swum underwater all the way to Istanbul. And soon after my harrowing escape, I sat naked on the beach, hunkered under my sleeping bag, teeth chattering.

That, I'm afraid, was not my first brush with disastrous shitting. Five years before when I was sixteen, my family went camping at Lake Abant which lies in beautiful forested mountains a hundred kilometers west of Ankara. True to Turkish form, there were a few rustic campsites but no restroom facilities at all. By the second day I couldn't put it off any longer. I really had to go.

Armed with a roll of toilet paper, I sought a spot of seclusion. We were tented near the lake with campers around and all solitary paths only led up. So off on a vertical hike I embarked, straight up the mountain, crossed a sidewinding dirt road, then further and further up I climbed, just me and my toilet paper. Finally out of breath, I arrived at a fine spot on the slope which afforded a magnificent view of crystal blue Lake Abant far below. As I stood there in the open sun, I knew I had found pristine privacy. No eyes could spy me way up there. I had worked hard to seize this reward and felt quite glad.

I dropped my drawers to my ankles (forgive me yet again) and with careful adjustments, I managed to squat. My feet became somewhat footed as my left hand grasped a pine sapling while my right held the toilet paper. I was ready to roll. Just then, I noticed some movement on the dirt road a hundred meters below. Three Turks escorted two slow water buffalo that pulled a wagon loaded with logs. I panicked that I might be seen in this embarrassing state and tried to right myself, but in so doing, I accidentally dropped the toilet paper.

As I squatted there, the toilet paper began to roll down the hill. And as it rolled it picked up speed and the paper unfurled and in its unraveling painted a white stripe straight downwards right at the loggers beneath me. Strange, but I mustered the memory of being at Purdue football games and how the fans would throw toilet paper rolls after Purdue scored a touchdown and how a hundred paper streams made a glorious show of celebration there in the stadium, like fireworks.

But there was no papery celebration that day. My toilet paper, now descending at top speed, hit the road in front of the man in front, bounced a time or two in the crossing, then continued like a meteor on its way to the bottom. The logging crew came to a halt and stood there slightly stunned. In unison three heads slowly and silently followed the white line upwards to its original launching pad.

Nothing prepares you for a moment such as this. As I squatted there, my pants around my ankles, I had no words. I suppose I could have shouted, "Iyi gunler arkadashlar! (Good day, friends!)" But I just waved a sheepish hello. They didn't respond, but finally spoke among themselves. Rural Turkish people were not familiar with the concept of toilet paper, let alone the sight of a fair-haired boy so strangely disposed on the side of their mountain. They gawked for an interminable time until, finally, onward they trudged. But I kept my position as it was, awkward as it was, because they looked back at me as they made their exit from sight.

Now five years later my comrades and I hiked back into Akcakoca to catch a bus for Ankara. Along the road, we saw women in brilliantly colored bloomers raking out hazelnuts on flat roofs to dry in the August sun, the Black Sea in the background spread out to the northern horizon. Paul was excited by the scene, and while Dan and I waited, snapped dozens of photographs. Sitting there in the shade of a tree, I noticed that my chest was scraped and raw from the constant pounding earlier when crashing waves beat me dizzy against the grey sand. The pain arose and yet I felt fully glad. No jellyfish had punctured me.

Atlanta

My family lived on the northern frontier of Atlanta in the late 1950s where my father taught at a small college. I went to Jim Cherry Elementary School a few blocks off of Peachtree Street. I could have walked to school through the woods and made it there in ten minutes, but like all children I rode a yellow bus to school through neighborhoods shaded by towering Georgia pines. The school was located across the street from a dirt poor African-American neighborhood, and of course, none of the children from there attended all-white Jim Cherry. I never saw the people who lived there.

My second grade teacher, Miss Moore, was an ancient, unsmiling, skeletal woman. Our desks were arranged in perfect alignment and there were portraits of Southern generals on the classroom walls. She kept us cowering with slaps and by threatening that the principal would remove his belt and lash us if we disobeyed again. She always draped herself in black and even shaded herself with a black umbrella during recess where she presided over the playground with grim disinterest.

Those were the years of nuclear attack drills, and when the sirens sounded, we ducked under our desks and crouched into fetal positions until the sirens sounded the all-clear. I had a friend named Jerry Craddock in that class, a hyperactive boy with rotten teeth, who loved the bomb drills. One time when the drill ended, Jerry looked out the window to across the street and shouted, "Them niggers is gonna get blown to smithereens!" Miss Light rushed over, grabbed his shoulders with both hands, and shook him like his neck would break. She scolded him, "It's NEEgroes, Jerry. Say, those NEEgroes will get blown to smithereens! NEEgroes."

"Yes, ma'am," sounded Jerry, his eyes wild and wet.

Courtesy and Southern gentility were stressed at all times. Miss Moore always said that we should grow up to act as "fine ladies and gentlemen", and a deserving boy and girl were designated each week as the class's "master and mistress." It was a great honor on a Monday morning to be thus dubbed as masters and mistresses got to be first in line, were seated first at the cafeteria table, and led the prayer at lunch. Masters and mistresses monitored proper table manners and if a classmate failed to wipe jelly from their mouth or laid an elbow on the table, the masters were entitled to deliver a sharp rebuke. No one could rise and leave the table until their masters did so. Jerry, of course, never became a master, but was often left alone after lunch to scrape trays into the garbage.

Whenever I witnessed a teacher hitting or shaking a child, as in Jerry's case, my face flushed hot and I became sick to my stomach. Sometimes I couldn't hold it and would puke on the classroom floor and be sent home after a visit to the nurse. With time I learned that vomiting could keep me safe. Every morning after breakfast, I would retreat to the bathroom and gag myself into regurgitating breakfast down into the toilet and call for my parents to witness the evidence of my illness as scrambled eggs or oatmeal floated there.

For several days, I was able to stay home until that fateful morning when my father walked in on me with my fingers down my throat. He dragged me off to school in spite of my screams and I took a seat at my desk with my face buried in my arms. Jerry soon acted up, and Miss Moore sent him out into the hall. She grabbed her pointer stick, exited the classroom door, and a beating echoed down the hallway. Later when her back was turned, I slipped out the classroom, exited the outside door by the cafeteria, and ran all the way home through the woods, gulping tears. I burst through the front door where my mother was having coffee and a cigarette with our neighbor. 

My parents were able to put two and two together, and in a few days I was transferred to the other second grade classroom where the kindly Mrs. Howe never raised her voice. During recess from then on, I would see Miss Moore under her black umbrella, staring at me from across the playground without expression.

I was seven years-old. In those woods between home and school, the Cohen twins and I would strip naked and smoke cigarettes two or three at a time and dance around like marionettes with our butts sticking out. In summer, cicadas screamed bloody murder in those woods, an unyielding background noise when we got chigger bites and ticks and tore up our hands picking wild blackberries. We built lean-to forts from pine limbs, dug holes in the red clay dirt, and stabbed at bugs with sticks. I don't remember feeling oppressed by that southern summer heat, although I do recall huddling by the window air conditioner after emerging from those woods, filthy and parched.

One afternoon, I encountered an enormous snake slithering along a fallen log. I hadn’t realized it was a rat snake until after I barged through our front door hysterical with fright. My father took out the "S" volume from the World Book Encyclopedia and my family gathered around the pages showing pictures of different snake species. I recognized the bright yellow rat snake as the one I saw, but I stayed silent after my father said that the rat snake wasn't poisonous. But when we came to the copperhead and he identified it as very, very poisonous, I announced with a shriek that I came a few feet from that very snake, the deadly copperhead, which had come at me. My little lie was worth all the attention and allowed me to tell a tale about a close getaway for weeks to come.

On a summer day when I was six, I was following the lead of my older sister and brother as we marched through the woods at our yard's periphery. Those were piping hot and eye-squinting days, and my custom was to play the day away in a pair of baggy shorts, barefoot and shirtless. We marched along entranced by my sister's directorial imagination when we came upon a large box turtle which startled and withdrew into its yellow-checkered shell.  The turtle became somehow incorporated into our play's ever-changing narrative, and I, Tommy at the Rear, was commanded to hold it, keep it captive, and whatever I did, not to drop it.

I was staring down at this peculiar box when its hatch opened and its nose appeared. I had not known that I was carrying the animal in reverse, that its tail now pointed forward with its eyes taking an interest in my navel. I supposed that was natural. My belly button is an outie, and to a turtle, it must have resembled a curled worm poking from a hole. The head withdrew and began to extend. Its neck stretched from its shell as slow as warm tar and the head got closer and closer. The thing had me mesmerized and as I stared down, the head now extended by a full four inches, it came to face my bare stomach skin. The beak began to open and with a sudden lunge and snap, bit into my belly with all it could hold.

I howled from the bottom of my lungs and a red trickle ran down to my pants. The beast would not release. My sister flayed about in a frenzy, my brother stood agape, I pulled and shrieked, and yet the beast would not abate. With the shell in my outstretched hands, and turtle jaws anchored to my gut, I ran across the yard and up stairs onto our porch. My father bolted out the door and for a moment stood bug-eyed and helpless at the sight of his hysterical child with reptile attached. He grabbed at the mouth and he squeezed at the neck, but the turtle was cemented in its lock. He dashed back into the house and returned with a pair of pliers which he applied to the head, but what could he do? He couldn't twist or squeeze or yank without tearing away a chunk of flesh.

He withdrew again and this time returned with a screwdriver. He jammed it between the animal's jaws until finally, as his wedging force pried apart the crackling grip and with blood drenching the surgical site, the turtle surrendered. And with a thunderous grunt, my father hurled it high from that elevated porch and it bounded in slow motion like a ball into the tall weeds down below.

A nuclear strike never blew Atlanta to smithereens, but I fled the violence at Jim Cherry School. I learned the rat snake is benign but not so the jaws of the box turtle. 

Bohart Seeks His Powder Puff Reward

(Author's Note: Much of what follows is true. Some of what follows is partly true.  And some of what follows is outrightly false. All of what follows is intended for entertainment purposes only.)

By IRV HANSEN, JR.

WENATCHEE, WA -- Robert "Bobo" Bohart sat alone in a darkened corner of the Big Apple Bar and ordered another White Russian. He had summoned this reporter, he said, "to set the record straight and get my just reward."

Bobo lifted his Zippo, lit a Marlboro, and blew smoke at the tabletop. "I'm a patriot. And I'm a competitor. I grow sweet American cherries. I'm an ordinary guy. I pay my taxes. I don't need to stand on a pedestal. But when a man serves his country as I have, he deserves some recognition."

He had not made eye contact and stared at the ashtray, lost in thought or lost in images from long ago.

Bobo is 63, a slender, strikingly handsome man whose voice has dropped on octave, he said, from all those Marlboros. When told that he bears a strong resemblance to Dick Van Dyke, he responded, "Oh, please, I've been told that a thousand times. Once when I was walking down a street in Seattle, an old lady asked for my autograph. She said, 'You were so wonderful in Mary Poppins!'"

It was long ago in 1969 when Bobo attended the American high school in Ankara, Turkey, where his father, a colonel in the Air Force, was base commander at a military installation there. Some 400 American students attended the school, mostly dependents in military families.

Bobo said, "Before we went to Turkey, I went to school in Spokane where I was a standout wrestler and played football. I loved it. I weighed 125 pounds and played tackle. But there was none of that in Turkey. Kids just hung out at the base, usually at the snack bar, listening to music and playing pool."

Bobo was a senior at the American school and had a classmate by the name of Debbie Sapenter. They were friendly if not close friends. They rode the school bus together from their homes in the city out to the secure military base several miles east of town.

One morning, as he tells it, the bus stopped at Debbie's apartment building per usual, but she was nowhere around. The driver waited, but no Debbie. The bus pulled away and soon was barreling down Ataturk Boulevard. Bobo was sitting at the back and happened to look out the back window.

"I'll never forget it," he said. "Debbie was chasing the bus and gaining on it. I swear we were going thirty miles an hour, but still, she kept gaining on us. Man, she was fast! The driver wouldn't pull over, but when we finally stopped at an intersection, Debbie caught up and started banging on the door, mad as hell. I had never heard a girl swear like that. She never missed school and she wasn't going to miss that day either."

Bobo allowed a slight chuckle and shook his head. "Man, she was fast."

You might wonder where this was leading. What relevance did a fast-running classmate have to "setting the record straight?"

Bobo made eye contact at last. "Powder puff, man. Powder puff."

By the fall of 1969, Colonel Bohart and his subordinates had become concerned that the teenage dependents on their watch were overly bored, sedentary, and disillusioned as they sat for hours in the snack bar, smoking cigarettes, and listening to "Hey, Jude" on the juke box. While life in Turkey provided fantastic opportunities for travel and learning, many Americans considered Ankara a "hardship post" and counted the days until they were transferred out. And it was widely rumored that American kids were increasingly involved in drugs, especially buying and smoking hashish, a very dangerous activity in that foreign land.

Against these worries, the brass decided that a football field should be built behind the high school. Equipment was ordered, lines were chalked, goalposts were raised, and aluminum bleachers were erected. Boys were divided into four teams, and clad in their helmets and pads, made Saturday battles on the gridiron as the American community cheered them on.

"I didn't play," Bobo explained. "My best friend talked me out of it. His name was Tom Bohnhorst. In looking back, I can see how disturbed he was. He thought the spectacle of a bunch of Americans playing football behind a barbed wired fence on a Turkish hillside was an insult to the natives. 'An obscene gesture of American imperialism,' he called it. Bohnhorst preferred to poke around in old Ankara alleyways and drink tea with the locals. For some reason I loved the guy, but he was a crackpot."

Bobo drained his drink and lit another cigarette. "Bohnhorst started the student sit-down strike when the moon astronauts failed to visit the school during their world tour. He made me write something for a so-called "underground newspaper" which was secretly distributed to the student body. Full of left-wing nonsense. It was called RIPT as a siren call to all the American kids who were always getting ripped on dope, and believe me, there were a lot of them."

"I was torn," he continued. "I wanted to play football but I didn't want to betray my friends. I was no radical. Bohnhorst cast a manipulative spell on me. But then one day at school, while Tom was out changing the world somewhere, it happened: Debbie and her friends collared me in the hallway."

Bobo's dour mood lifted. He extinguished his cigarette and fiddled with his lighter.

"The girls were pissed," he continued. "They said the boys had everything. They had a basketball team and now they got to play football. The girls wanted to play. They wanted to play in a flag football game, seniors against juniors, on a Saturday just like the boys, with everyone there watching. Most of them didn't even know the rules, let alone how to throw a football. They wanted me to show them how to play, to be their coach. And that's how a Powder Puff football game came to be played in Ankara, Turkey, in 1969.

"We had a practice beforehand, and I showed them formations and the basic rules, gave them positions. I must say, they were quite enthused. So, we get to the big day, the bleachers are full, and everyone's excited, a lot of noise. We get the ball after the kickoff and my team huddles up. And stays huddled, and stays huddled. They never broke for the line of scrimmage, and they're arguing, everyone talking at once. I called timeout and ran out onto the field.

"My quarterback was a short girl named Nancy Bilderback. And when I got to the huddle, all the girls were intense and got quiet, staring at me. Nancy's was the lone and scared voice. She looked at me and asked, 'What do I do?'

"It was then I remembered sitting at the back of that school bus when Debbie Sapenter sprinted across the city to catch up. So this is what I told Nancy: 'Just hand the ball to Debbie. Get the hike, and just hand the ball to Debbie. Every time, every hike. Just hand the ball to Debbie.'"

Bobo's eyes widened. "And that's exactly what Nancy did. Debbie grabbed the ball and shot like a bullet around that cluster of girls and became a blur all the way to the end zone. The world was on pause while Debbie was on fast forward. The bleachers sat in stunned silence. It seemed like a mass hallucination. And on every possession, Nancy gave Debbie the ball, and every time, Debbie ran like a demon possessed all the way to the end zone. The crowd went nuts. She must have run for 800 yards with nary a finger touching her. Not even close. We never had a second down. I don't remember the final score, but we, or should I say, Debbie, beat the juniors by a hundred points.

"Debbie was carried off the field on her teammates' shoulders and when she was set down, she ran to me, and grabbing me by the shoulders, cried, 'I couldn't have done it without you! I didn't know I had it in me!' She embraced me and cried. Never seen a happier person my whole life.

"It may have seemed like a small and sweet thing at the time. But how was I to know that my short-lived career as a powder puff football coach would change lives and American history forever?"

After graduating from high school in Ankara in 1970, Bobo wound up a cherry farmer near Wenatchee, married with two small children. "I was sitting on top of the world. Literally," he mused. His orchards, in the Bohart family for generations, grow atop a mountain overlooking the Columbia River valley.

Harvest comes in July when workdays extend from dawn to evening. The harvest in 1976 was no exception.

"I remember the night like it was yesterday," Bobo said. "I was dog tired, and I sat down in front of the TV with a cold one to watch the Olympics in Montreal. As the Fates would have it, it was the night of the women's track and field events. It came time for the 4X400 relay finals and they introduced the teams. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I spewed beer across the living room and nearly shit myself."

There, running for Team USA, stood the one and only, Debbie Sapenter.

"Actually, I think I did shit myself," Bobo recalled.

The East Germans were the prohibitive favorites, and they set a new world record by coming in under three minutes and 20 seconds.  But the Americans, with Sapenter running the first leg in 51 seconds, grabbed the silver.

"She shot out of the blocks like a greyhound," Bobo continued. "The whole world was watching. But my memories filtered the TV screen. All I could see was Nancy Bilderback handing Debbie the ball, and Debbie making the long turn around the juniors and racing for the end zone again and again and again. And her crying on my shoulder, 'I couldn't have done it without you. I couldn't have done it without you.'

"And then there she stood with her teammates on the podium, with their silver medals hanging from their necks, and the flags hoisted in the air -- oh, my God, the flag! -- the whole world watching, the U.S. coming in second, way up there, wedged right there between East Germany and the Soviets. What a moment in my life.

"And okay, let's just say it for the record: The USA should have won gold. Those East German women had five o'clock shadows and sang baritone. Testosterone, man. Hormone injections. But hey, what a moment."

The Big Apple Bar had become quiet. The regulars had left and the juke box was silent. Bobo blew smoke at the ceiling.

A minute passed before he asked, "Does it really matter whether you're running for your country or running for the seniors in a powder puff football game? The emotions are the same. Tears of joy are tears of joy.

"I will carry to my grave these questions: If Debbie hadn't missed the school bus on that morning in Turkey, if I hadn't settled the confusion in that huddle that Saturday, if Nancy didn't do what she was told, if I hadn't broken free for a few days from bad influences… well, would history have turned out differently?"

Couldn't Bobo acknowledge that without his tutelage and powder puff prowess, Debbie would still have come to discover her God-given talents for herself, that it was her discipline, dedication, and hard training that paved the way for an Olympic triumph?

"Impossible to know," he said. "Debbie deserved all that she got. But I wonder when she takes her Olympic medal in her hands and remembers the glory of those days, that she might also remember how it all began, on that glorious day when the seniors routed the juniors on a plot of fresh grass just outside Ankara, Turkey. And if it occurs to her to whittle a small shaving from that silver and send it my way, well, I would understand why."

Counseling! Get your counseling here!

There are a lot of worried and dejected people out there who carry inner demons the size of large capacity refrigerators.  There's anger and confusion.  There's an epidemic of teeth grinding and sales of antacids are through the roof.  Antidepressants are mere fingers in the dike against a sea of despair.  Inner peace is in short supply.  Let's face it:  we have bred a new generation of narcissists whose images in the mirror long for impossible complexions.  We are spoilers and we have spoiled them.  Yes, the American world has become a wicked place where the emotional wiring short-circuits and our modern goddess is perfection.

Therefore, armed with an advanced degree and a stack of unexpired certificates, I am striking out on my own, to start a new counseling agency.  My aim:  to iron out the wrinkles of bad behavior, to puff up the sags of deflated egos, to instill hope to those with expired parking meters, to eradicate the mold of poisonous thinking with my therapeutic power washer.  When people walk out of my agency, they will feel empowered, like they just mowed down a herd of zombies in The Walking Dead.

But what to name this new beacon of hope?  What to scrawl on my shingle?  The brand should jump out from the counseling crowd like a Hooters ad on a billboard.  I have some thoughts about therapeutic approaches and jazzy names, and so far, I've narrowed the possibilities to these contenders:

Tom's Counseling and Live Bait   Many clients feel more comfortable when minnow tanks bubble in the waiting room and crawlers cool in the fridge.  Our shiners and chubs are sure to grab the attention of smallmouth, walleye, and steelhead alike, cheap at $3.99 a dozen.  Our night crawlers come handpicked from Canada.  Before heading out to the lake, clients can catch some counseling with our angling staff who are well-versed in talk about the local fishery.  Serious "issues" are to be avoided at all costs.  Relationship "issues" can walk the plank.  Whining and blaming can take a hike, because, and let's face it, there's no better therapy than to be outside with a line of hope in the water.

Awesome Therapy  How did the word "awesome" ever gain such widespread traction over such a long haul?  I remember way back in 1969 when I told a high school friend that I managed to swipe a joint's worth of dope from my older sister's stash.  His response: "Totally awesome, dude."  (And now that I think about it, it did turn out pretty awesome.) That was nearly fifty years ago and "awesome" since then, in this age of attention spans as short as the first line of Moby Dick, has become the go-to describer for everything mildly positive to mildly interesting to news of fairly good fortune.  Moreover, "awesome" has become the consummate conversation finisher as it encapsulates all that has preceded it.  When a listener finally responds to a happy-ending story with, "That's so awesome!"… the discussion is officially closed.   Besides that, no one ever second-guesses a proclamation of awesomeness.  Once something rises to the quality of awesomeness (which seems like most everything), it becomes an edict from God. Therefore, when my shingle is out there on the street, swinging like a pendulum in the wind, and proclaims that this is the place, right here, where Awesome happens, well, people will flock in like sheep, sheep of every cloth and mental health diagnosis.

Randolph Street Collision and Counseling   Many of today's businesses have discovered that fiscal survival depends on partnership.  It turns out that my favorite body shop has a spare storage room and the owner would be willing to merge our interests on their signpost.  There is no better counseling venue than the body shop waiting room, where motorists traumatized by fender benders and exorbitant repair bills convene.   Many suffer through grief issues as they witness their favorite Buick or Mazda getting sandblasted to the bone.  These people need a sympathetic ear and a good heart to heart.  There's hope in surviving the near-fatal crash.  Clients' self esteem can be bolstered as they gaze at their images reflected in a shiny coat of new paint.  Besides, all those body shop fumes medicate customers' frayed edges and prime them nicely for therapy and willing payments for services.

Hair o' the Dog  Two words:  Labrador retriever.  Nothin' says lovin' like a devoted Lab. And let's face it: the great mass of the emotionally afflicted, deep down, just need a hug, just need to belong.  Every human being bursts from the womb in need of a prolonged embrace, and somewhere along the way, at the most crucial time, what they needed most they didn't get.  A Lab, of course, knows nothing about broken pasts, only that she wants to lie next to you with her head resting on your knee.  At Hair o' the Dog, the corridors swarm with therapy dogs, all Labs, canine companions, who will spend two solid hours per session with the depressed, the angry, the fearful, and the lonely.   Treatment plans are simple:  Goal 1 - Take dog to lake with stick.  Goal 2 - Recline with dog on couch while watching TV.  Goal 3 - Introduce dog to family and/or friends.  In the therapeutic relationship, human beings always fall short.  Labs always exceed expectations.  They are incapable of anything but unconditional positive regard.  The only reason clients would leave treatment is they wind up getting their own dogs.

Innovative Therapies, Inc.  My agency would offer a smorgasbord of helping tools. Imagine the sufferer walking into an office for the first time and being handed a glossy, plastic-shrouded menu by our smiling receptionist.  Take your pick from an assortment of therapeutic "entrees" at very competitive prices.  For example:
     
          Meep! Meep! -- A great antidote to chronic fear.  Our tattoo therapist will inject into your forearm an inky image of Road Runner.  Then every time the sufferer encounters a fearsome situation, a glance down at the arm will remind him of exactly what to do:  Spit out a road runner "meep" and run like hell.

          The Noogie -- When you're having a good day or, say, you remembered to take your meds, come on down to counseling!  Nothing extols a personal triumph like a therapist's supportive knuckles scrubbing across the scalp.  No appointment necessary.

          Turn the Tables -- You're not alone.  Let's face it:  deep down, everyone's a douchebag, including, yes, your therapist.  Especially your therapist.  Our staff stands ready to provide you a full inventory of their annoying character flaws.  Give 'em hell about their anal retentiveness, how they pad expense sheets, and their porn addictions. Let 'er rip!  You'll walk out feeling you're not so bad after all.

          Keep It Simple -- For the drug and alcohol dependent, talking is counterproductive. Walk into your therapist's office and try to get a word in edgewise.  It won't work.  Every time you open your mouth, your counselor will glare into your eyes and cut you off.   They always say the six magic words:  "Shut up and go to meetings."  Sessions last the full fifty minutes.

          The Laughing Buddha -- Nothing cries out in the present moment like a noisy fart. Your counselor will equip you with a recording device and a diet rich in legumes. Homework consists of recording your gaseous expulsions, one by one, as they thunder along in the days to come.  Every two weeks, play back the tape in session and see what happens. Your life, and the life of your counselor, will be filled with joy.  As you develop a keen awareness of your body's gaseous movements, you become encamped in The Now. After a year with The Laughing Buddha, play your "musical" tape whenever men and boys gather, and you'll make friends for life.