Tagged: Blogging
Tara
He noticed the mask that was over his mouth and nose didn’t seal perfectly. Upon pointing this out to the bedside nurses, he was told, “Just breathe normally.”
He inhaled deeply before realizing that that wasn’t a normal breath. Then he exhaled and tried to think of something besides breathing. He thought about Tara. He wondered if she was dead or alive. He tried to remember first meeting her. It was one of his favorite days.
“Can you believe those guys?” he remembered her saying on the day they met as she stormed into the room after a shift in the containment pod. Her head fully forward, her finger pointing back to the door, a look of disgust covered her face. “They’re acting like this is a joke. One of these days they’re going to get us all killed.”
“What is that little bit of hair called that falls on a woman’s face again?” he tried to remember, the sleeping gas beginning to work. “A tendril. That’s it.”
A tendril had unintentionally dropped from her pony tail as she took off her helmet and oxygen mask that day. He was a sucker for tendrils. When he noticed that she had some fire in her to boot, he became weak in the knees. He would never forget her first words to him.
“And what the fuck are you staring at asshole?”
She asked him that question, she later told him, because he failed to heed her nonverbal social cues that told everyone that while she was used to being ogled, she was not in the mood at the moment.
Jim laid there, waiting for sleep and thought about women. For him, a woman needed to be so much more than a pretty face or a fit body. Like any man, he knew his preferences for exterior qualities, but unlike any man, he could also list all the internal qualities a woman should aspire to have. At the top of his list was a backbone. Tara clearly had one. Number two was a passion for living. He needed a woman to love all the nuances of life as much as he did. He needed her to fight for life. The gas taking effect, he chuckled at his word choice. “Fight for life. Yeah, that’s my girl,” he mumbled. “You better be fighting now woman. You can’t fly yet,” he said, only noticing the slip-up as it entered his ears. “Of course you can’t fly. No one can fly,” he said, laughing at his own joke. Then with a forced seriousness, he said, “People can die though. But not you. You can’t die yet,” he ordered, the last “t” not quite being enunciated. Finally succumbing to the anesthetic, his body was ready for the amputations.
I’ve Had More Fun – Part 2
Jim pounded more slowly now. The endorphins were wearing off, and his hands finally began to hurt.
He couldn’t stop watching her–watching them–lay there, likely dead. His tears ran dry and his wail fell silent as he let his forehead come to rest on the bloody glass. He shut his eyes and hoped to wake up from a nightmare. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to see the pink cloud rapidly ascending to towards the ceiling and then towards the two vents that were specifically designed to be used if there was a mishap. Not entirely the same as waking from a nightmare (though a close second), he saw the light over the door turn green and heard the familiar click of the door unlocking. Not waiting for anyone or anything to stop him, he opened the door and rushed to where Tara lay.
He reached for her suit and in touching it, he collapsed in immobilizing pain. The chemical agent was out of the air, but not out of the suit, it seemed. He kind of wished he hadn’t destroyed his hands as he stared up at the ceiling, becoming the sixth victim of the mishap. What can only be described as the friendliest looking firemen imaginable suddenly appeared. To Jim, who laid there in agonizing pain, they looked like a cross between his childhood mother and Kurt Russell from Backdraft, shaky cheeks and all. Jim counted at least fifteen of them as he was lifted onto a gurney and rolled from the room.
The last thing he saw as they wheeled him away from the danger was the glove-wearing rescuers cutting Tara and the others out of their protective suits.
I’ve Had More Fun
“I’ve had more fun in my life,” she said, attempting to rise from the prone position in her XB-2134 chem-warfare suit. She understood why it had to be so heavy, but at the moment, she couldn’t believe they never trained for this. She was on her back and knew she couldn’t sit up. That meant she needed to roll over. The trouble was that the arms of the suit were so heavy that the designers built into the suit a feature which took some of the weight off of the wearer’s shoulders. The feature prevented the arms from lowering past 45 degrees. In effect, they were sticking out, both to the side and front. Through her helmet’s face shield, she could only see a slight cloud of pink smoke thickening and the ceiling. “No more effing around, Tara, you have to get out of here,” she told herself.
Up until she found herself on her back, she had been working on a new chemical weapon and been payed very well to do so. Rocking back and forth, back and forth, she finally made it to her stomach. She was on her stomach, arms extended over her head. “I’m not sure this is any better,” she thought. For the first time since she was knocked off her feet she felt a pang of fear. And now on her stomach she couldn’t see anything but the floor. It was smooth cement. She had never really looked at the floor before. It reminded her of the skating rink where she used to play roller hockey with her brothers.
Deciding that perhaps her side was a better position to start from, she rocked and rocked some more, gaining more and more momentum. She did it. She made it to her right side and was able to use her extended right arm to keep her from rolling back on her stomach. It was then that she noticed no one had said anything over the suits comm system since she woke up. Scanning the room from her new vantage point, she saw her four co-workers struggling to stand back up just as she was. There was no noise beside her own breathing. And the pink cloud was not only thick now, but starting to attack the suit.
“Jim! Jim, do you read me?” she shouted, hoping that anyone listening could hear her distress. She realized what part of the room she was looking at, and quickly decided to at least turn towards the containing door, with its one small window. She had to rotate clockwise about her right shoulder or else she’d end up back on her stomach. Feeling as foolish as she imagined she looked, she began to make progress. But not faster than the pink cloud. As she began to make out the hinge to the door, the chemical came nearer and nearer to eating a hole in her suit.
“Help! Anybody!” she screamed, totally aware of what was coming. She kicked her feet harder and harder.
Outside the door, Jim’s hands bled. It wasn’t until they smashed against the program director’s teeth over and over again that he even became aware of the blood. But now that he heard the squishy sound of pummeled flesh smacking against an immovable object, he realized the deep red substance that obscured the window he watched her through was his own blood. He frantically tried to wipe the blood away with his fingers. Making little progress, he saw Tara and the others speed up their movements the way ants walk faster on a frying pan over a flame. Then, just like the ants, everyone stopped moving at the exact same time. Everyone except Jim.
Winn the Great, Redux
“Of course he’s a doctor. Of course,” Pete thought to himself, the online search result’s reflection illuminating his glass’s lenses. As he thought back to first meeting Winn, now Dr. Winn, all those years ago, shame overwhelmed him. The poor kid had done nothing wrong, unless taking an elective math class two years earlier than normal was a sin.
He remembered seeing Winn sitting alone on the first day of statistics class. An elective, the class’s description and teacher only seduced enough students to fill just over half the seats. This made it all the more easy for the band of underachieving smart-ass seniors to gain the strength numbers offer so readily. More than in response to the layout of the room, though, these students acted in response to the primal fear of the unknown, a fear provoked by a spindly limbed, one-size-too-big-t-shirt wearing, buzz-cut sporting, wire-rimmed-glasses-at-the-time-of-contacts bearing pasty white kid who didn’t seem even remotely aware that he would always have the upper hand. He would always have the upper hand not because of his intelligence, though his brain always operated near-capacity notwithstanding it originated from a culture infatuated with lowering standards, no. It was because he was free. Free from posturing, free from politicking, free from maneuvering. While everyone around him struggled to fit in, he simply stayed the course. He embodied Mark Twain’s “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
Despite having to display his driver’s license to prove the spelling of his name to the groupthink, Winn never lowered himself to counter-attack. And his focus never faltered. Almost a machine, one day he was tasked by the seniors to further elucidate a particular problem’s solution. He approached the chalkboard as if unaware that public math was never good math, and proceeded to slowly draw a for-all-intents-and-purposes perfect circle with the chalk. The display silenced everyone, until the sound of two palms rapidly and repeatedly coming together overwhelmed the smack that accompanies jaws quickly dropping.
The highlight of that semester, however, came when Winn surprised everyone, including Mrs. Tietz, with a piece of mail. Antagonistic, he was not. Yet, when the opportunity came to prove that Nielsen ratings did not come from set families as she thought, but instead from invited and bribed self-reporting as Pete knew, Winn took the side of the truth. And in presenting the envelope, dollar bill still packaged within, he not only climbed the social ladder, but advanced hope. Long live Winn!
Winn the Great
A kid who could draw a perfect circle free-hand on a chalkboard deserved better. But we were bad and he was good, so he pulled it out for everyone to see.
Holding his driver’s license in his right hand, he said, “See. Told ya.”
Winn’s problem was not so much his weird first name, but talent. He had too much of it. As only a sophomore, there he sat in our senior level math class. This was high school. Applying oneself was never a good idea. I often wondered how many of us really saw how special Winn was. And I envied Winn for his patience with us, with the morons. But that didn’t stop me from seeing only a nerd.
The teacher, Mrs. Tietz, naturally defended him from any attacks. Little did she realize that rather than protecting him, her efforts only further marked the target.
This was a lady who publicly professed that using Rain-X eliminated the need to turn on windshield wipers while driving in the rain, a lady who believed the Nielsen ratings were gathered by specific families with special boxes hooked up to their TV sets which automatically recorded which stations were being watched.
How did we know these things about her? Because she didn’t like us any more than we liked her. And one day, for some appropriate reason I’m sure, I volunteered to the class that years earlier I had used the time my family got to submit our watching habits to help tilt the scales away from Rosie O’Donnell and towards Gargoyles and Batman: The Animated Series. After all, Nielsen would never know the difference. They just trusted that one dollar would acquire honest reporting.
Mrs. Tietz wouldn’t budge. Believing me to be a liar, she maintained that there really were specific “Nielsen Families”. To this day, I don’t know why he did it. Maybe he saw through me. Maybe he didn’t like her, either. If push came to shove and I had to guess, I’d say that he did it because he was noble. He was righteous, in the purest sense of the word. So later that semester, when his family happened to be mailed the paperwork and accompanying one dollar bill, he brought it in to class the next day. And in doing so, he redeemed not only me, but hope. Long live Winn!
She Can Hurt You
Who are these men? Where do they come from? What forces form them? Is it nature? Is it nurture?
Is there a specific set of childhood variables that must exist in certain quantities in order to produce these men?
We must admit that one attribute that these men have in common is ignorance. As children, during the formative years, they must have been ignorant and unaware of situations where women hurt men. Oh sure, we’ve all heard of poor John Bobbitt’s pain, but, seriously, what man considers amputation a likely outcome that need be guarded against? In fact, there’s probably a man somewhere who has created some statistic which proves that the chance of a woman cutting a man is less than getting struck by lightning.
And men are proud creatures, the lot of them. And rightfully so. Is that it then? Can we point the finger at an adult man’s pride? (A father’s pride?) Is pride the causal factor? Is pride the reason that he wouldn’t share with young men that a woman had hurt him? Or maybe he, the adult man, had never owned up to himself that she had hurt him? Is this whole mess created by a simple lie? Is it created by simple denial? A virtual, “She didn’t hurt me. I wanted to break up. I hadn’t liked her for a while anyhow. I can do better”?
Whatever the causes, I haven’t been able to figure out what words would get through to these men–or as Heat puts it, “All you are is a child growin’ older!”–these men who rush into relationships with women. And no ‘mounta nothin’ cn talk ’em outta it–don’ matta who doin’ da sayin’. I know, because I was one of them. And then I almost repeated the mistake. And then almost repeated it again. And if I didn’t have such a hatred for patterns, I probably would’ve rinsed and repeated for the rest of my life.
Enter “old people”.
Turns out, they can hold their own in conversation. And they’ve got, by definition, no shortage of experiences to back up the talk. And I was looking for answers, ready to try anything.
So after a lot of listening, and a lot of thinking, the answer finally appeared. I believe that I am invincible to women. Or, rather, I believed I was invincible to women. No longer. Now, I know the truth. Women are just as capable of hurting men as men are of hurting women.
So fellas (you know who you are), I have broken down the (our) problem as simply as I know how. We need to acknowledge the simple, unbearable truth. This truth is captured by four words, though I think its most effective delivery comes with repeating the words four times in a row, emphasizing a different word each time.
She can hurt you. She can hurt you. She can hurt you. She can hurt you.
What’s the rush?
PS – As a reminder, hurt doesn’t feel good.
Entitlement
I first heard the term “entitlement nation” somewhere between 2005 and 2008. I can picture some article hanging on the wall somewhere at work. Or maybe it was the back page of a magazine at work. In any case, entitlement was about–so I thought–the general public wanting something for nothing. As in, people wanting money for not working, people wanting healthcare without paying for it, people wanting to retire without saving for it. Little did I know how wrong I was. Perhaps it is more accurate to say little did I know how small a part of entitlement those big social programs were.
Want to know what entitlement is? Entitlement is driving too close to a semi-truck that kicks up a rock that chips your windshield and believing the semi-truck should pay for the damage. Entitlement is believing that you should only have to stand in line a certain amount of time at a store. Entitlement is believing that your food should come out in a timely manner at a precise temperature, and if it doesn’t, the restaurant should pay for the meal.
Learning is defined as a change in behavior based on experience. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
By the time a person is old enough to drive he has heard stories of large trucks kicking up rocks which can chip windshields. Learning has not occurred when a person drives too close to a large truck. Learning has occurred when a 16-year old gives a large truck enough space for some other moron to drive too close to it.
By the time a person is old enough to be in a line at a store by himself he has to have seen the correlation between number of items and people and the length of the wait. Learning has not occurred when this person freaks out or allows his emotional state to change because he just can’t believe he has to wait so long. Learning has occurred when an impatient person stops shopping during the busiest time of the day.
By the time a person is old enough to be at a restaurant and pay their own way he has to have seen the occasional slip up by the staff. Learning has not occurred when this person demands their food be free and throws a temper-tantrum. Learning has occurred when this person pays their bill and never returns to the restaurant *or* returns but has lengthened the expected wait time and lowered the expected temperature of the food.
Learning is changing. Insanity is sameness. Entitlement is sameness. Entitlement is insanity.
Quit being insane people.
Why College? Veterans Know.
The reason to attend college is debatable. It shouldn’t be. Let’s clear the air.
College, if you’re lucky enough to go, is simply the place to finish out the “how to be human” training we began in kindergarten. It is not, nor will it ever prove to be, a kind of vocational training ground. But that is what a lot of people seem to believe it is. My question, the question this post asks, is why? Why is college now discussed as merely a part of our professional development, as opposed to our human development? Perhaps more important than that question is this one: what can be done about it?
Lucky for all of us, I have the answers: College became known as a place for professional development because the baby-boomers found out they actually had to work for a living, and the resultant anger they felt clouded their subsequent decision making. Poor decision making led to them not wanting to accept or own the fact that the America they grew up in did not happen by accident. The question about the future is, of course, one that I can and will answer, but it is one that we all have to answer for ourselves. Do things have to get worse before they get better? Some seem to believe that. Or can we just start making things better right now?
It’s a given that I had the least military bearing of any of my peers in the Air Force, but even I still recognized the value of “Integrity First, Service Before Self, and Excellence In All We Do.” I’m sure the other branches have some similarly applicable ideals to guide their decision making.
In other words, we should never forget that college is the place where we learn how to be human. Being human entails getting along with people who are different from us.
Veterans know what it’s like to not get along with people who are different from us, and therefore must accept the new duty of re-enforcing college’s mission. But there is more. Veterans must not shirk the responsibility of reminding the country of the value of values. Unfortunately for veterans, then, it seems the fight never ends.
High Class
“Do we have cauliflower?” she asked after he mentioned broccoli.
“Nope, just broccoli,” he answered.
“Why don’t we have cauliflower?” she persisted.
“Because I didn’t buy any,” he said, not giving in.
After finishing her broccoli, she watched as he slid the grilled chicken on to her plate. Together now, they began to eat.
“Oh,” he interrupted, “did you want barbecue sauce?”
“Yes,” she said, “the new sauce.”
“I know, I know. You didn’t like the hot stuff.”
“Hot stuff?”
“Nevermind. Here’s your sauce. And here’s my sauce.”
To the sound of silverware squishing into chicken, they returned to the task at hand. Suddenly, she let out a shriek.
“What?” he asked, fearful that even the new sauce was too hot.
Spitting out the chicken, she replied, “I don’t like the roasted ones. That one’s roasted.”
“Huh?”
“See daddy? Roasted,” she said, pointing at the grill marks on the chicken.
“Oh. You don’t like the burnt part. Excuse me, the roasted part. Okay, you don’t have to eat it,” he allowed. “High class H-, you’re high class,” he thought, pride swelling.
Why I Write
Actions speak louder than words. I really want that to be true. I remain unconvinced.
Growing up in a Southern Baptist church and having a healthy competition in me, I really soaked up the power of the preacher. I memorized bible verses better than my peers, took pride in reading out loud better, prayed better, and spoke more. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk–all in naïve earnestness. I walked the walk as well. It wasn’t a fear of hell, but more a genuine wish to show people it wasn’t that difficult to avoid sin as I understood it.
Of course I was sinning all the while (“making mistakes” if you heathens prefer).
Until I graduated from college I had never read for pleasure. Simply movies for me. And I was as evangelical about movies triumphing over books as I was about saving souls. Catch-22 fucked that all up. I fell in love with reading as quickly and madly as Yossarian fell in love with the chaplain. After the last word, I literally had the thought, “If this is how good reading can be, I wonder if there are other books like it?” Obviously, there were. One of them being Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. In that gem, there is a part about telling the truth to people vs. using flattery on people, and the point is listeners are awful picky about one while rather forgiving with the other. Given that I had the gift of gab, I made errors left and right that my listeners had no problem pointing out. My strong character and integrity-first approach to life seemed to bail me out of most situations when I strayed from the truth in large ways, but I slowly began to realize that writing might be a better outlet for my ideas than talking. With writing there is proofreading, and re-writing. As a writer (versus speaker), I have time on my side. So I started writing. This was 8 months ago.
There is something more, though. In the story that I tell myself to make sense of this crazy, crazy world there are some written words which have changed the world. Specifically, there are books that exposed how someone felt about life. Books that took courage. Upon publication, the reading public needn’t have said a word. They simply had to show their support through a purchase. And then life as we know it changed. I understand one of these moments to be the release of The Feminine Mystique. Within its pages, a woman wrote about an unnamed problem, that being women feeling unsatisfied as housewives, and it soon became clear she was right. I am shocked every time I contemplate that women back then could have been too ashamed to admit to each other how they were feeling about life. At the same time I am so hopeful. Consider what life might be like if enough of us shared ourselves via the written word. Maybe we could start doing this life we’re given better.
And so that is why I talk, and that is why I write. No one should have to live in shame. No one should be hiding behind social graces. For whatever reason I don’t mind if others find out I was wrong or stupid. It’s kind of exciting to me when it happens, as it is so rare.
In sum, I write first to reduce shame, second to reduce mistakes that happen when talking, and lastly, I write because people who read what I write tell me I write well and I am compelled to believe them.
Now you know.
Captain’s Log 