Tagged: short stories
A Short Dream and a Long Dream
What I am calling the short dream was initially not clearly a dream; this is because it happened upon waking. But the falseness of the reality I experienced has to put it in the dream category.
I awoke, as normal, to go to the bathroom. I was at work, and as you know, in a sleeping bag. The particular bag I use is a queen size (really, just two “adam and eve” bags zipped together) and so sometimes while on the twin mattress, I can get oddly wrapped up.
Keep in mind, it’s the middle of the night. And I’m tired.
So I start yanking harder at the silky outside of the bag and unfortunately I feel it tear. I finally make it out, and, glasses-less, zoom in close—in the dark—to confirm that it’s torn. Confirmed. Then the walk to the restroom and back is unremarkable.
As I am laying down to try to resume sleeping asap, I cannot help but look forward to getting a new sleeping bag. Luckily, the excitement abated quickly and I fell asleep again.
Lo and behold, in the morning there was no damage!
Obviously, to my thinking, this dream was unflattering evidence of some kind of addiction to perfectionist shopping—which I am told afflicts nearly all of us. The remarkable part, to me, was how I really couldn’t believe the bag wasn’t torn. Crazy. Moving on.
I’ll keep the long dream’s recap short.
I had pissed off an Indian I work with (feather) and he told his pals and they were coming to kill me. I knew they were coming to kill me because a really fat mutual friend, also a pow-wow Indian, told me. And this friend wanted to help me by arming me to the teeth.
The odd thing about this dream is, like the short dream, I awoke to go potty, knew that it was a dream, wanted to know how it ended, and then fell back asleep and picked it right up again! As it continued, the main action was concentrated on the fat Indian resignedly giving me all sorts of guns as I made small (and weak) talk.
I can tell you it felt real. Like I felt sick to my stomach while I was in the dream and in the bathroom over the fact that I had caused all this nonsense. I also pulled my own weapons cache into the dream and seemed to consider opening it—I’m talking about waking up and opening the gun safe—in case it wasn’t a dream. Powerful, dreams are, no?
Well, the other key feeling the dream was causing or bringing to light was a hefty resignation alongside confusion at the fat Indian’s actions because I knew I couldn’t win. Surely he had to agree, no?
This dream pulls in a lot of disparate parts of my life. The main theme, to me, obviously comes from back in college when I told the blacks that I had been hanging around that we whites told racist jokes and then inquired about any white jokes they might have that were worth sharing. Not a happy group after that. Nor unified. The ones who could take a joke clearly stopped the ones who could not from black on white violence.
Additionally, I have an Indian co-worker, who I have, this time unintentionally—I was trying to find common ground—offended. (Religion, politics, AND immigration are to be avoided at work. Also, the fashion combo of flannel and rat tails is generally not donned by hispanics. Lesson learned.)
Lastly, I am currently reading The Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. In them, he recounts a duel and offers his opinion that he would never let anyone known he was going to kill them—if in fact circumstances led him to conclude that he needed to kill someone. Conversely, if he ever so-offended someone that he learned they were out for his blood, he would do or say, within reason, whatever was necessary to make amends. (I think there was an implied “it could only be a misunderstanding” aspect to this.) My point being that this connects directly to the “resignation” and “sick feeling” part of my dream. Implied was that I knew that a group is unconsolable (different than an individual) and so they were surely going to get their kill—even though I knew in advance.
And obviously we’re all thinking about “do I have enough guns?” all the time. Hehe.
How about you, faithful reader? Anything odd in the head movies to recount? If so, don’t be a stranger. Post it and/or comment below.
On Cold Showers
It’s been a year and a half and only lately have I not held myself to perfection. I have to admit that I lost a little motivation when Wim made the news for allegedly disturbing behavior vis-a-vis his first marriage. But I still enjoy the challenge.
In the end, if I’m feeling like a warm shower, I take one. But if I am feeling like “not a cold shower!”, then I force myself to take a cold one. And cold showers all other days too.
Oh, the dread.
At the “work house” I have pleasantly avoided the dread twice now, in two distinct ways. The first time was like this. I didn’t check the faucet selector valve and so was shocked that the water came from overhead immediately. Normally there is a slight delay from “cold water – on” to “feet cold – confirm” to “here goes” to “water traveling up” to “AAAAHHHHH! FREEZING!” And this is followed by a song, often a broadway hit. So the day of this first dreadless experience, I skipped all the middle steps and went directly from “cold water – on” to “AAAAHHHH! FREEZING!” and song.
The second time happened just tonight. While I had learned a valuable lesson from that first mistake, I apparently have not worked out all possible kinks—again the work house with its rotating occupants is tricky. Tonight I didn’t think to check where the shower head was pointed and so in the aforementioned sequence went from “feet cold – confirm” to “GAPING CHEST WOUND! FREEZING” as I immediately and simultaneously shrank down to take the brunt of the impact on my skull (the preferred option) as I reached to adjust the angle of the cold demon’s barrel.
Crisis averted.
And a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! to you, faithful reader.
God Bless the Master of this House
And Its Good Mistress too
And All the Little Children who round the table goo
And all your Kin and Kindred who dwell both far and near
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Knowledge Is Irresistible; It Defies Rebellion
Come close, ya stiff-necked supercargo. This one is important. This is a story about laundry. It is a story about power. It is the story of knowledge.
It may come as a surprise that pilots, especially military pilots or their veteran counterparts like me, spend many nights of each year in sleeping bags. As an Eagle Scout who knows the true value of a quality sleeping bag, I remember being very proud when I heard that our deployed commander used one instead of sheets while in Iraq. You see, I was no longer alone. To this day, I spend about 1/4 of the year’s nights in a sleeping bag—not including camping trips.
Naturally, this level of commitment leads to the need to wash a sleeping bag, and wash it with more regularity than your own sleeping bag laundering habits have ever included. In fact, you’re likely thinking this very moment, “Where is my sleeping bag?”
Washing a sleeping bag is an adventure of its own. Not just the washing, but the drying as well. For any ground-pounding, civilian pukes who never have spent a night under the stars (let’s not forget the boldly illiterate hippie camping community), there is a tag right on the bag that says, “Only dry in commercial dryers” or some similar wording that forbids the pilot from his perfect dream of living as an island.
(I have laundered my sleeping bag(s) many times at home and never had a problem. This post is not about rule-following.)
So the other day, despite both cars revealing mechanical issues almost simultaneously, I learned at night that the dryer stopped heating. (LORD? You watchin’?) It made the same noises and tumbled as surely as any other day—even longer when on the “automatic” setting; but the clothes wouldn’t dry. I tracked down that they weren’t getting warm either.
Enter YouTube.
There were two probable issues. One was that a thermal fuse on the heating element had tripped/blown. The other was the heating element itself had broken.
I tracked down an appliance parts guru in town who loved to chat on the phone and he assured me it was the fuse. But I forced him to concede it was worth ordering both just in case his foresight proved dim. During this back-and-forth, he said something like, “It’s all about airflow. The air has to blow the heat from the heating element into the dryer and then that air has to find its way past the clothes, past the lint trap, and through the vent all the way to the outside world. If any part of that path is blocked, the heat will remain and eventually blow the fuse. You may never know why the path got blocked. Could be stray article of clothes got caught in the wrong spot or maybe someone washed too big a comforter. But it’s all about the air.”
Fasten your seatbelts.
“Only dry in a commercial dryer,” the tag reads. Any warm-blooded human says, “Huh?” And we proceed to rebel and possibly damage the dryer.
But…
“It’s all about airflow. If the sleeping bag blocks the incoming heat, the fuse will blow—which is annoying. If the fuse doesn’t blow, the heating element could potentially overheat and cause a fire—lots of variables in that one,” the facts are. And any warm-blooded human says, “Okay.” And then assesses the risks and gets on with their decision.
The passive, uninformed warning fosters rebellion, and well it should. Instinct informs us to demand respect! “Don’t boss me! You have my attention. Now treat me like a man!”
But the knowledge is irresistible and fosters sound judgment and good decision making. “Hmm. Good to know. I’ve dried many things of similar size in this machine and so I’ll risk it.” Or whatever.
What is knowledge? Knowledge is irresistible. It defies rebellion.
Go get some.
PS – It was the heating element. And Speed Queen dryers are super easy to work on—should they not live up to their name.
PPS – Yes, I have gone back to the original name of my blog. I do want to use the fact that I stare down death for a living to get your attention. Whether I can keep it is the thrill.
After Driving for 4 Hours with Them On, Merrell Moab 3 Shoes Are Amazing
I wouldn’t normally judge shoes based on non-use, but I do a lot of sitting as a rule. So why not judge them in their environment?
Truth be told, I inserted my Red Wings $60 insole as soon as I took them out of the box. (What’s another $60 towards Red Wing when spending $250? Wouldn’t want to discover the $250 isn’t comfortable, would ya?)
Anyhow, these Merrell Moab 3’s are amazingly comfortable for driving. Like slippers but an added assurance of stability.
Why I Can’t Adopt MLK’s “Content of Character” Line
“Is that okay to say these days?”
“Probably not. To be sure, ‘No.’ But they’re my kids, and I like mulatto best. Haha.”
****
Mulatto has a certain clarity of meaning beyond just the fact that they are the product of me and their mom. Don’t you agree? Yes, it means white and black parents. But it also conveys, in 2024, “You’re kinda barking up the wrong tree already, stupid.”
Sure, I admit this is a bit harsh. And as such, I have not been using it exclusively. But my wife and I’s two kids garner enough attention, or I should say, my wife and I’s two kids’ hair garners enough attention that I needed something “full Pete” to say in response to all comers. In other words, I needed a line. But mulatto wasn’t cuttin’ it.
Naturally, MLK’s “not by the color of their skin” line is accurate, but as everyone has seen, it is also terribly ineffective. At the least, it is tired.
In having and using a “line”, I also am arming the two kids with their own “line”. Cuz, despite my general optimism in life and even my new line’s particular contribution to that hope, the problem ain’t going away. So I have been wanting to come up with something worthy of my progeny, for my progeny. And I have.
Again, they’re mulattos. Through and through. That is a fact. But while that word is funny to me and folks who know me well, it is unintelligible to Ethiopians and taboo to Yankees.
Here’s my solution. It starts with the fact that “mixed” is kinda en vogue. So, picture with me, say, a Home Depot parking lot. On a Sunday. Got it? Heavy foot and vehicle traffic. Sunny blue sky. Wind that negates low-talk.
I have J- in the cart, An- is at the car, and Ag- is about to help An- into her door when a dude, older, and a mix between homeless and Colorado Native, says to his partner—wife or fellow bum—and loud enough for all to hear, “Oh those are two beautiful babies.”
I smiled and thanked him politely.
Then he randomly re-appeared and continued as if never having left the area—but he and his companion had left—“I have some mixed grand-babies and they are just the most beautiful kids. You are lucky to have them grand-babies.”
I informed him, good-heartedly, that they were my own children, to his shock, and then he doted some more before leaving.
Mixed? Hmm. Mixed.
Eureka!
Next time, here’s my response.
“Mixed? Oh, look kids! A purebred! In the flesh! It is a pleasure to know you. Good day, Sir.”
****
That is my new Full Pete “line” and I believe it accomplishes everything I want it too and probably a teensy bit more at no additional charge. It has bite, but is not record-stopping like mulatto. It is at least as memorable as “content of character”, if not more so. And most importantly, it can carry the fire of truth forward into future generations.
Mixed?
We have to stop the nonsense, folks! Who’s with me?
“Mixed? Oh, look kids! A purebred! In the flesh! It is a pleasure to know you. Good day, Sir.”
The White Devil
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made…And the serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“Come on!” he smiled mischievously, “Come on, just tell me. It’s not like we don’t know the nickname. I just want to know it in your language.”
“Oh, no,” the brown mohammedan said, head-shaking, embarrassed and uncomfortable. “It is not right.”
“Seriously, just tell me. How much have we shared with each other so far? I only want to know it to make people laugh. It’s not like I mean any harm to anyone. It would make me betam yetek’eburu if I could whip out that phrase when appropriate. Ehbakahin? Please?”
The mooslims are different in this respect. They are Old Testament in their belief in the power of utterances. The man wouldn’t budge.
“Oh well. Here comes another,” he said to himself. “Hey!” Pointing back down the hall towards the man he just left, the same smile still on his face, he said, “Abdi there won’t tell me how to say White Devil. How about you? I need it for purely social reasons. Please?”
Stonewalled again, and this time by a Christian no less.
That was six years ago.
Today, he knows the real meaning of White Devil. He had always assumed it had to do with brown people being more “spiritual” on the whole and white people being less “spiritual” on the whole. There also was the ever present, at least in recent centuries, technological advantages inherent to the (renowned as white) West that surely must have bedazzled outsiders into believing them to be derived from the dark arts.
Wrong on both points.
His own culture lauds literacy and learning. The greatest shame is an unexpected and unavoidable public display of illiteracy. If one can’t read, they hide that fact from everyone—and if it happens that they come to a moment when they decide to learn, upon taking that step, the choirs of the West rejoice more joyfully than the heavenly hosts when a new believer is baptized. Who, then, wouldn’t want to learn how to read?
But that is the White Devil describing itself, the White Devil marveling at its reflection in precious stones. As described by illiterate cultures, the ones who are lauded today for having “oral histories”, the White Devil is the absolutely ignorant and unfounded fear of what these cultures do not yet understand.
The truly ignorant are not the West’s unwanted newborns put outside to die by exposure like our own illiterate, no. He now sees that the truly ignorant are Adam and Eve, shortly after getting the boot from the garden. They know something is different. They know there is another power. They know they don’t have the power. And like Adam and Eve, they conclude those that do possess the power must be the enemy, the adversary, ha-satan. Or, plainly, the White Devil. And the only idea that populates the uninhabited landscape of their brain is to tell their children the story of the crafty serpent.
Today’s My Birthday
My mother-in-law is currently living with us. Five days in. Hasn’t been terrible. I have chosen the strategy of pointing out every time I do something that husbands/men/fathers typically don’t do. (She doesn’t speak English, so my wife has to translate. It’s fun.)
Just now I started to wash my favorite La Creuset pan, their 11×13 attempt. I told my wife to tell her mom that on my birthday I still do the dishes. My wife responded that she had already told her mom that this was my favorite dish and that’s why she used it to make breakfast.
I said, “Ha. Probably shouldn’t tell her the real truth. The truth that I trust no one with my stuff. The truth that I have been hurt before, and so I wash my own dishes.”
I have been hurt before, and so I wash my own dishes.
Sounds like a pretty great opening line to a novel, if you ask me.
I’m Twelve. And I Believe Exile is Worse than Death.
My wife responds to my news, with barefaced contempt, “Because he’s black?”
“No. I didn’t say he brought the gun to school because ‘he’s black’. He did it because he’s stupid,” I clarified. “The reason I said he is black is because your son thinks all things black are right and cool, which itself is stupid, but the main point is I want to know what your son, A-, has told you about it. Because it is important that he agrees with me that this kid did something truly stupid.”
“He told me it was stupid.”
“Really?” I wondered, in blunt disbelief.
****
“Hey. How come you didn’t tell me about W- bringing the gun to school?” I asked A- nonchalantly as we drove home from school ball.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I don’t understand why he would be expelled for bringing it.”
“Did you mention it to your mom?”
“On Monday I told her about it, but I thought it was a toy gun then.”
“Did you ever use the word ‘stupid’?”
“I may have said that I thought it was stupid that he was in so much trouble.”
“Okay,” I said. (I knew the boy would not react, ‘W- did something stupid.’ Check.) Then I took a father’s breath. “Here’s the thing. The most famous school shooting happened when I was a senior in high school. That’s over twenty years ago. And they have been happening regularly since then. For someone to bring any kind of gun to school at this point is absolutely, totally, and irredeemably stupid. Understand? Guns destroy. School, in theory, is about creation. The two will never mix. He was stupid. Or his decision was stupid. I don’t really know him.”
“Okay.”
****
“Well,” I answered my own 12 year old, H-, that night on FaceTime, “one of A-’s teammates brought, like, a bb gun to school. He’s probably gonna be expelled. So that’s causing some drama amongst the kids.”
“Expelled!!”
“Why is this shocking?”
“I can see suspended, but expelled? From the entire district?”
Drawing enough air to fill a sermon, “Guns kill people. Kids have been killing people in schools for twenty years now. What are we even debating, my daughter? So what if the kid has to go to another school. His parents maybe should be forced to move and try to live another way somewhere else. What they’re doing so far has failed. No person alive can suggest that ‘they didn’t know’ to NOT bring a weapon to school. How are we even talking about this, H-?”
“Okay, geez.”
“Tell me that your father thinks it is absolutely stupid to bring a gun to school and that it is absolutely fair to expel a kid who does.”
“You think-”
“-No, say, ‘my father’,”
Oh, the glare.
“My father thinks it is stupid to bring a gun to school and fair to expel anyone who does.”
“Good.”
****
Please, dear reader, lament with me. You already know how much I loathe public school. To hear that both my not-so-bright step-son and my I’d-like-to-believe-has-paid-attention-at-least-once-in-while daughter believe that expulsion or exile from the community is worse than being killed by a school shooter only feeds the fire.
Education is supposed to liberate, not indoctrinate. It’s supposed to turn the brain on, not off. Create, not conform.
Choose life, kids. Especially if it means alone.
People are stupid.
I’ll Say It Again, Trump Should Use Bird Signs This Time Around
The first bald eagle I saw this morning was orbiting dangerously close to traffic on the two-lane highway upon which I drove home after my night shift.
I’m telling you, the bald eagle has no fear. A glorious bird.
Then, I first saw what turned out to be the second bald eagle of the day from a much greater distance on that same drive. Here I confess though, with shame, that I didn’t immediately recognize the feathered sentry. But I have to believe that mistaking him for a large bird’s nest is fairly flattering in its own way. Like you, for most of my life the description “he’s as big as a house” has been reserved for use on only the strongest of us humans.
Add to this fact that in my own front yard, the fall season and the resultant leafless trees had revealed a rather large bird nest near the top of one of the trees and you’ll understand why at first—only for a second really—I didn’t recognize the winged friend for what it was. I figured, “Oh, a nest just like at home.”
But I was wrong. It wasn’t some random, unused, and derelict bird’s nest. It was a living, breathing, and rather chesty member of the stately, all-seeing protector of America.
Now as I approached I did my best to make eye-contact by leaning forward at just the right moment to briefly look up—while not losing control of the car.
I can’t report with integrity that we made eye-contact, but I can report that I saw the end of the slightest nod signifying “carry-on citizen” as he moved his gaze from analyzing my approach in particular back to the Minnesotan horizon in general. And I can definitely report that my heart warmed.
Your inescapable delight in reading the above over any other journalistic drivel is what ties this post to Trump. I like that he wants to be successful and wear the American countryside while doing it. All I’m suggesting here is he should model his campaign after this post and the rhetorical archetype itself, if he wants to seal the deal this election. It’s a gimmick, surely. But what isn’t in contemporary politics?
Finally, and with more than a merely temporal connection, I want to include that on this self-same commute, I was listening to a podcast in which I heard avant-garde writer Yuval Noah Herari exclaim, “What will the future history student’s answer be to the question, ‘What was America’s second civil war about?’ I mean the difference between the two ‘sides’ is nearly non-existent.”
I shook my head and thought, “Obviously this heady, wannabe-De-Tocqueville Mr. Herari hasn’t seen a bald eagle. The two sides are as clearly defined as sky and earth. Any true American knows this.”
But I can admit to my readers now that it seems that this vista only becomes apparent when one of these birds is in view.
Guilty Pleasure on A Friday Afternoon
The piano tuner came over today—at my request. He doesn’t have as much personality as my last one, but he is taller by an inch or two.
Picture the scene with me—I open the door. Having only spoken on the phone, and lightly at that, we exchange cordialities and I invite him in. He knows to remove his shoes. But it’s what he did next that I latently long to see—not that I’d ever admit it to anyone. Usually I like to be in control. Usually I like to command the action. But every once in a while, I derive immense pleasure from watching. And today he didn’t disappoint.
He touched…the body of the piano. Mind you, he didn’t just reach out and raise and lower the fallboard. It wasn’t merely—and gently—sliding the music rack in and out. No. He rested his body against its body—nonchalantly. Like he couldn’t hurt her. Like he knew she didn’t mind.
He removed the music rack completely and laid it aside. Then he even rested a tool or two of his on the pins that he would soon twist and turn intelligently.
Understand me here. It’s as if he and my piano were old friends. Intimate friends. As if they had a history. In a sense, you could say that I became an unwitting voyeur. And I loved every minute of it.
You see, I could never do to my piano what he did, no sir. She means too much to me. I treat her perfectly. I only touch a few spots of her body, and delicately at that. I play on her keys ferociously, but that’s what they’re there for. Sometimes I open her lid, but usually I keep it closed. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to do more, to go further. But it feels premature. And there’s a mutual respect that comes with waiting. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like to watch when I get a chance on a Friday afternoon.
Captain’s Log 