Worst Teacher Ever

When I got out of the Navy after my enlistment ended on July 17th, 1998, I was excited about the prospect of going back to college. When the Fall semester began in September of that year, I had already enrolled again at Valdosta State University, ready to finish the English degree I had abandoned four years earlier only a couple of semesters short of graduating. Thankful to be back in school, I threw myself into my studies and made straight A's in college for the first time ever. Two semesters later, I had completed my English degree, but then had to decide what to do with it. I knew I wanted to be a writer, but also wished to pay my bills. With that in mind, I decided to give teaching a shot.

In my family, especially among the women, teaching has certainly been the profession of choice. My mother, both of my aunts, my grandmothers on both sides, and my sister all became teachers. So it didn't seem much of a stretch for me to become one as well. In hindsight, maybe I put a little too much stock in the power of genes. I should have thought more about my personality in comparison to the average teacher. I have never been accused of being an extrovert, and teaching is probably one of the most extroverted professions out there. On top of that, I decided to pursue secondary education rather than middle school or elementary thinking that although the students would be more challenging, the subject matter would also be more stimulating.

In spite of the fact that the idea of teaching terrified me from the beginning, I ignored my doubts, and pursued the teaching ed classes I needed with abandon. I made A's in all of them, but none, as far as I could tell, had much to do with actually teaching. They tended to address the theories of teaching, but little about what the profession would involve from a practical standpoint. I impressed my adviser, a little old lady named Dr. Strickland, so thoroughly with my top notch grades that she went well out of her way to help me get a teaching job at a large high school in Thomasville, GA almost as soon as I'd earned my teaching certificate. She was a well known figure in the area, and her shining recommendation to the school principal basically got me hired before I even interviewed.

I accepted the job even though I still had little confidence that I could actually do it. I even expressed my reservations to Dr. Strickland in an email a few weeks before the school year began. I told her that I knew there was a lot of difference between taking classes about how to teach and actually teaching, and that I was concerned about my ability to project lessons to students in the way that teachers are supposed to. She pooh-poohed my doubts and told me I was one of the best students she'd had come through her program, and that she believed I would make an outstanding teacher.

I tried to take heart in her confidence in me. I decorated my classroom to make it seem like a spirited and positive place in the days before the kids came. I made an outline of what I planned to teach throughout the school year. I read a large portion of the text book and brainstormed about creative ways I might present the material to my classes. I was assigned three "intermediate" tenth grade classes and two "basic" ninth grade ones. The intermediates were considered to be on the vocational track, and the basics were considered to be a step above special ed. The three tenth grade classes had about 25-30 students while the two ninth grade ones had about 15 apiece.

From the very first day, I knew I was in over my head. I remember standing in front of them doing my best to hide my nervousness, and trying to keep my voice from shaking. Nervous sweat rolled from my underarms. One of the students was moved to ask me, "Are you shy, Mr. Parramore?" "No, of course not, I lied."

I expected the kids to be loud and rowdy, but the extent of their loudness and rowdiness took me entirely off guard. The first few days, I naively allowed them to sit where they wanted in my class, thinking that happy students would be productive as well. But it quickly became obvious that this was a bad idea. They all sat next to their friends and made my classes their personal social hour. On the third day, I had them sit in alphabetical order, and they responded with hostility. Every time I turned my back, one would move back to the seat he or she preferred. I quickly grew tired of telling them to return to their assigned seats over and over, but didn't want to be the kind of teacher who spent all his class time haranguing students about their behavior. I tried my best to explain why a seating chart was necessary, and asked them to please work with me, but it was obvious they didn't care to listen to reason. They just wanted to sit next to their friends and have a good time.

From there, things only deteriorated. It seemed that the harder I tried to take control of my classroom, the more determined they became to prevent it. Their level of learning seemed as bad as their behavior. Their writing skills seemed more on par with fifth or sixth graders than ninth and tenth. There were a few who were barely literate. I felt that to teach them anything I would have to go back to very basic rules of writing and grammar. The only problem with that was that I was helpless to get them to listen to anything I said. Although it seemed a hopeless struggle, I toiled from the time I got up until the time I went to bed every day, and the weekends were spent grading papers that seemed to multiply in front of me.

To say they were disinterested in my class would be an understatement. Whether they made an A or an F on a paper seemed to hardly matter. I would overhear them talking about parties they were going to over the weekend and all the gossip about what so-and-so was doing with someone's boyfriend/girlfriend. I had at least three female students who missed time due to being pregnant. When they returned to school, they came armed with pictures of their newborn and any semblance of class would be impossible until all my students had properly oohed and ahhed over them. I also had a group of African-American boys in my third period class who would break out in spontaneous rap songs, and girls who thought nothing of making cell phone class. My fourth period featured a group of boys who specialized in shouting curse words when my back was turned and making high pitched animal sounds.

It seemed I spent half my class time telling students to stay in their desks and otherwise attempting to correct their behavior. I tried making behavioral contracts, giving detention to misbehaving kids,shaming them into behaving more respectfully, sending them to the office, even talking to them one on one after class on occasion. But nothing worked. My classes were a zoo, and unfortunately I wasn't some character out of Lean on Me or Stand and Deliver who possessed the power to change their ways.

I felt I had made a horrible mistake in my choice of profession, and began to dread the coming of every school day as if it were an impending appointment with a medieval torture device. When Dr. Strickland came to observe me about twelve weeks into the school year, I knew it was going to be a disaster, and that there was nothing to be done but grin and bear it. It went as badly as I'd feared. Dr. Strickland, myself, the assistant principal, and Mrs. Lewis, my so-called mentor teacher, who seemed to be wholly indifferent to my struggles, all met with me. The consensus of the meeting was that in an effort to gain control of my classroom, I would read some books about classroom discipline and management, observe some other teachers during my planning period, and begin wearing a tie to work so the kids might see me as more of an authority figure. I agreed to do all of these things, but knew it wouldn't help. My problem was not a lack of knowledge, but an inability to apply it. 

I did everything they asked, but nothing changed. I knew by Christmas break that there was no way I was coming back for another year even in the unlikely event they asked me to. Until then, I had worked myself to exhaustion to achieve nothing but futility. I stayed at the school until five or five thirty on many afternoons trying to plan things so they might go better the next day, and then went home to grade papers. During the Christmas break, I decided to change tactics. I would leave school as soon as possible in the afternoons, and not do a shred of grading after work. What I didn't finish grading would just have to go in the trash. I decided if I was going to endure a torture chamber for seven and a half hours a day, I would enjoy my life otherwise.

So that's what I did. I began a pretty strenuous workout routine no doubt partly fueled by my frustrations at work, and enjoyed it to the hilt. The second half of the year went slightly better simply because I'd taken the pressure off myself. The kids were still just as bad, but I began the policy of simply kicking them out of the classroom if they became disruptive. I knew sending them to the office did no good because they were sent right back with a note saying they'd been seen without any word of action taken. I decided to have no tolerance for behavior I didn't care for. It might not have been the best plan, but it was all I could think of, and it seemed to actually help.

I knew by the way the administration completely ignored me during the last half of the year that they weren't going to offer me a contract for a second year. This was a relief because in spite of everything, I knew it would be hard for me to tell them I was quitting if given a choice. I've always had a difficult time quitting anything, even when I know it's for my own good. Also, during the second part of the year, after I had given up, there were snippets of time when I almost enjoyed the job, and realized what people who liked teaching got out of it. These were moments when a student seemed to actually learn what I'd been teaching in spite of everything. But when the last day of the school year finally came, I have rarely been so happy although I had no idea what to do next. I figured I would think of something.

Only a few days into the summer, I received a call from the assistant principal at another school in the area. She told me Dr. Strickland had recommended me for an opening there, and wanted to know if I was interested. I wondered how in the world Dr. Strickland could possibly recommend me for another job after the disaster she had witnessed in my classroom. I thought about it for about five seconds.

"No thank you," I told her. "I'm not planning on teaching any more." I hung up the phone and went back to sleep without the slightest tinge of regret.


In spite of the fact that my one and only year of teaching was an utter disaster, a few good things came out of it. First of all, I knew for sure that teaching was something I did not want to do, so I didn't have to wonder if I did any more or not. It also gave me a perspective about the difficult lives many young people have growing up that I had never before appreciated. I can also tell anyone all there is to know about To Kill a Mockingbird, Julius Caesar, Greek Mythology, and pretty much everything else I taught that year. My students might not have learned much, I certainly did.

Ten years have passed since that year, and now as a mental health counselor at a state prison, I conduct various psycho-educational and therapy groups for the inmates there. I always feel extremely anxious about teaching these groups no matter how many times I do it. It reminds me a little too much of teaching. But once I'm there in front of them, things generally go well. I try to keep it as informal as possible simply because I feel more comfortable that way, and it's actually one of the parts of my job I enjoy the most. The inmates' behavior is usually infinitely better than the kids in my classes.


One day, about three years after my teaching debacle, I had a job working at an amusement park to help pay my way through grad school. I was walking back into the park after my lunch break and heard someone yell, "Hey Mr. Parramore," from about a hundred yards away. I looked up and saw a blond kid walking towards me with a couple of other guys. They were landscapers working on the grounds around the park, and I had no idea how the kid knew my name until he was a couple of feet from me, and I recognized him as one of the more mischievous kids in my ninth grade class during that Hellish year.

The kid introduced me to the guys he was with and said, "Mr. Parramore, did you know you were the nicest teacher I ever had?"

I could only smile and feel more touched than I probably should have. "Thanks," I said. "I had no idea."

I might have been the nicest, I felt like telling him. But I was also probably the worst.

The Young Man's Last Tale

"In my world," the Young Man began.

He opened his mouth to say more, but when he looked at those gathered at the vast round table, he found himself unable to speak. He blinked back tears and studied their faces. They waited patiently for him to continue. He felt truly young for the first time among them. In the past, he'd sometimes behaved arrogantly and rude towards them, not respecting the wisdom they had gathered through their many millenia of experience. Now, he was humbled.

Most of them had seen so much more than he. Their experiences had shaped them so that they never seemed too high or too low. But he had never felt lower than he did now. He felt it to his core. He wondered if he'd ever find the neutral place of most of his elders, and even if he really wanted to. He'd always taken pride in his passion, and felt that to abandon it for stability would be to lose himself completely. But perhaps that was how they survived.

They met like this every million years or so although none of them knew exactly why, and the meetings were never planned in advance. But the time would come, and they would find themselves here again, seated at the round table, speaking or not speaking as they chose. In the past, he had crackled with an energy that was the envy of everyone. They were drawn to his boldness, his imagination, and the sheer vision he'd created for his world. He'd shown them the life he'd made there--the way his plan had allowed it to thrive in such abundance across his world, the endless variety of his creations and how they multiplied until they covered nearly every inch of it. Even in the deepest caverns below the darkest oceans, life flourished. Even in the highest peaks of the coldest mountains, it persisted.

From the beginning, he'd had a grand vision for his world and patiently waited for it to evolve into his expectations. At first, it had been little more than a seething, boiling, freezing rock where cataclysmic collisions with celestial objects were a constant occurrence. But in time, it cooled. The collisions slowed to a rate that allowed his world to achieve the stability it needed to flourish.

He remembered how he'd watched so breathlessly when the first vestiges of life formed deep within a hypothermic vent of that prehistoric ocean. He'd held his breath watching that single cell replicate into another. He'd known it wasn't much compared to the awesome abundance of advanced life created by many of his peers, but this was his world. This was life on his world! He'd set it all up so meticulously in anticipation of this event, and yet still when it happened...it seemed like a miracle.

From that single cell, life spread not like wildfire, but like a swarm of wildfires. It was the most ambitious, single-minded, tenacious thing he had ever witnessed. He knew he had been the one to set the variables in place, but had not anticipated its power. In a few thousand years, that single replicated cell had changed the landscape of his world from a drab, dusty place into one of a maelstrom of colors, where creatures of all shapes and sizes flew, ran, slithered, crawled, and swam across its surface.

The Young Man had been content and satisfied with his world for billions of years before something happened that attracted his attention like nothing else before it. He watched as a new kind of life took hold of his world. This too had been part of the vision of his original design, but like life itself, it seemed a miracle to witness it taking shape. From furry creatures that swung from the trees of thick jungles, they changed into hairless beasts that walked the land on two feet. They had hands able to manipulate their environment, and brains with the ability to adapt and thrive in the harshest of climates. In time, these creatures developed the quality he had been waiting for.

Consciousness--the ability to be aware of themselves as nothing else on his world had before. They used this talent to master their environment to a level that no other creature before them had ever approached. In time, they emerged from the shelter of caves to form villages and later towns and cities. As they progressed, they accomplished amazing things the Young Man had not foreseen. They were creatures of unparalleled productivity, but at once, even from the beginning, he saw their powers of destruction were at least as great.

As the technologies they invented became more and more powerful, as their tools evolved from stone axes into telescopes capable of seeing half the Universe and flying machines that could take them around the world in a few hours, the Young Man was at once amazed and terrified by this creature he had, by his own hand, set into motion. He wanted to warn them to slow down. There was no need to hurry. They could be the masters of this world forever. There was no need to destroy one another over petty differences. He wished they would follow the examples of some of his other creatures. They were content to be where they were. They simply took life as it came with no worries for the future and no particular dissatisfaction with their lives.

But he also knew these "humans" as they called themselves were simply following the blueprint that made them great to begin with. He was often tempted to help them get along with one another more harmoniously, to try to convince them of the foolishness of many of their actions. But he could not. It was understood that none of his kind ever interfered after they had set their world in motion. They were watchers, and most watched their creations with detached interest. But the Young Man was different. He loved his creations. He felt they were extensions of himself, and he experienced their joys and sorrows as intensely as his own.

His humans soon became so numerous they could barely sustain themselves. The gases released from  many of their production plants clogged the atmosphere in a blanket so thick, the world began to suffocate beneath its own stored heat. At the same time, numerous bloody wars broke out between the humans' nations as the resources needed to sustain them dwindled because of their sheer numbers. There were those among the humans who stepped forward to try to end the violence and to suggest ways they might share their resources without fighting or killing. These were wise men and women whom The Young Man applauded, but they were inevitably shouted down by the rabble who only wanted things to return to how they used to be, and believed they were entitled to it because their race, religion, or nationality was superior.

In spite of everything, The Young Man believed until the end that his humans would adapt. They always had before. When problems arose, they found solutions. That had been the human way from the beginning. When the melting Arctic glaciers caused flooding in a place called New York City that drowned nearly a million people, and when one of the most powerful typhoons in all the worlds' history, fueled by the overly warm Pacific Ocean, destroyed Tokyo, and when the countries called Pakistan and India were annihilated by nuclear bombs, he thought they would cease the violence. Rationality would prevail and mankind would rise above its violent nature once again in order that it might survive and continue to prosper. And for a time,  it did.

A single governing body was formed to guide mankind through its greatest crisis. A brilliant, wise, and kind man was named President of this government, and he began to take authoritative steps to put the world back on the right direction. People heralded him as the Great Peacemaker, and after all the warfare and man-created natural disasters, it appeared that all the nations of the world were finally ready to come together to solve their problems. But the tenuous hopes of mankind were so fragile that when the President was assassinated by a mentally unstable zealot, everything he had built fell apart like a house of cards. The wars began anew, and soon the entire world became enveloped in conflict. Nuclear detonations and deaths on a scale never before witnessed in human history became a daily occurrence.

When the violence finally spent itself, the human population was drastically reduced, and many of those that were left died slowly of radiation poisoning, epidemics of every description, and starvation. The few million who were left eventually fled underground. All the technology they had gathered for centuries was lost. All the art and beauty created by human imagination was destroyed. The ruins of their cities were poisonous, smoking wastelands where nothing stirred in the day, and only the heartiest predators emerged at night. The civilization mankind had taken thousands of years to build was obliterated in less than a decade. Those humans who were left were forced to burrow underground to survive.

Watching them, the Young Man knew he had been finally right after all. His humans, the creatures of whom he was the most proud, whom he loved like himself, had survived in spite of everything--even in the face of their own penchant for self-destruction. He watched his survivors grow in strength and numbers as the years passed. A century went by before they dared to live on the Earth's surface again. They formed colonies and their numbers began to grow once more, slowly at first and then exponentially faster.

New cities began to appear in the world. They lacked the grandeur of their predecessors--humble buildings made of stone and hardened dirt--but cities just the same. The sight of them filled the Young Man's heart with more hope than he'd felt in a very long time. Perhaps the violence of their past was only a stage--like a tumultuous adolescence followed by a responsible adulthood.

But then the new human colonies began to feud over the boundaries of their land and who should control the still meager resources of their scorched world. The feuds erupted into wars, and before the Young Man's disbelieving eyes, his humans were killing themselves again. It was then that he finally understood that these people would never learn. They were eternally flawed, and he could really blame no one but himself. If he'd only set those initial variables up a little differently, then surely the outcome would have been different. If they could have only retained the tenacious, ingenious qualities that had made them masters of their world without the selfish, entitled, self-destructive streak that was their undoing.

For centuries, he'd watched them destroy themselves again and again, and every war was like a fresh barb to his soul. Even after they'd reduced their world to rubble and poisoned it nearly beyond repair in the process, they still could not move past their impulse to fight and murder one another. The Young Man felt rage building within him and was overcome by a desire to punish his creations--to do more than punish them--to annihilate them so thoroughly he would never have to watch them repeat their pathetic pattern of self destruction again. In his rage, he found a very large asteroid floating harmlessly in the reaches of space, and he flung it with all his strength at the world he loved.

The asteroid struck somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean with the force of a million atom bombs. A shock wave flowed from the impact, destroying everything in its path for thousands of miles in every direction. The most powerful earthquakes and tidal waves the world had ever experienced rocked the land in the aftermath of the explosion. Great clouds of dust and ash rose into the sky, blocking the light from the sun so thickly that the Earth became a frigid, icy place where only the most few organisms could possibly survive. Humans were not one of them. Their revived civilization was utterly destroyed, and as the new ice age persisted, they went from an endangered species to becoming completely extinct.

As the Young Man watched the last human on his world die, he grieved as he had never grieved before. Why had he let his anger get the best of him? he asked himself. He'd broken his vow to never interfere with his world, and in the process, he'd destroyed the beings he'd come to love. He tried to tell himself it was for the best. They were impetuous, impulsive creatures who could never get out of their own way. They were doomed to doing nothing but destroying themselves over and over again. He had only put them out of their misery. But he knew he was fooling himself. He couldn't reconcile his actions. How could he have done such a thing? Why had he let them anger him so much that he'd broken a sacred vow to punish them?

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

He gathered himself, blinking away his tears and prepared to address the round table again. But the expressions on their faces told him they'd already seen everything that had happened in his mind. Some regarded him with pity while others stared at him with accusing faces. But the faces of the oldest were inscrutable.

The eldest of them, the one they called The Old Man, pronounced his punishment in two terse sentences. "You have broken the vow," he said. "You will no longer sit among us." He rose to leave, and was quickly joined by many others. To the Young Man,  they all looked so bored. It was their boredom and not the pronouncement of his exile that angered him.

He stood and yelled at them "What would any of you have done?" he said.

"Nothing, of course," one of them answered. "That is what we do. We set a world in motion and then we let it go." Bewildered by the question, the man shook his head and left.

"But it's not enough!" the Young Man roared. "Can't any of you see? It's not enough!"

A very old, but still beautiful woman sitting next to him placed her hand on his shoulders.

"Can't you see, Young Man?" she said. "The fact that you destroyed your humans only proves you share their nature. You loved them so much that you became just like them--full of energy and passion, but also with anger and the capacity for self-destruction."

The Young Man opened his mouth to protest. But then he knew she spoke the truth. It was so obvious. How could he have not seen it before? But the insight offered him no comfort. He began to weep, and the old, beautiful woman held him against her chest.

"Don't despair, Young Man," she said. "We've all made mistakes. You will learn from this, and in time you will become the Man you aspire to be. "Go back to your world. Start over. But this time, let your passion guide you, but not rule you. Do you understand?"

"I think I do."

She held him until he'd cried himself out, and the round table emptied until only the two of them were left.

Amoebas to God...and Beyond

The other night as I was trying to get to sleep, I was thinking about a book I read a year or so ago called The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. In it, he says that the reason humans seem so suited to their environment here on Earth is because we have evolved through time to fill this particular niche. But this niche is one of an infinite number of niches, and there are few others that humans would feel well designed to exist within. He goes on to say that, through our senses, we perceive the world a particular way because we have evolved to see and feel our world in this particular way. A rat or an insect or a cow views the world in a different way because evolution has given it a different viewpoint.

This idea, which makes sense to me, got me thinking about how I would view the world if, say, I was an ant, or even a virus or a paramecium. I assume that none of these creatures have any self awareness about the lives they lead. I suspect they're simply born, live their lives doing the things ants and viruses do, and then they're dead. They simply are until they aren't anymore. To the best of my knowledge, the same holds true for most higher level animals as well. We love our dogs and cats, and I think most of us would agree that our pets appear to possess emotions as well. But they also seem to lack a sense of self-awareness. They just do what they do. As far as I can tell, dogs and cats don't fret much more about what they're going to do with their lives than ants and viruses. As far as we know, humans are the only creature on Earth who are self-aware and have the capacity to make purposeful decisions about how to spend the time we're allotted to live, although I do suspect that certain animals like dolphins, elephants and chimps are probably a lot closer to having this ability than we suspect.

But my point is that humans appear to be the only species on Earth who possess the ability to not only shape our lives, but to also shape the world on which we live. As far as humans know, we are the most highly functioning creature in all the Universe. Many of us are even arrogant enough to believe that the entire Universe was created for our benefit. But I wonder how creatures like ants and viruses perceive the world. If they had the capacity for self-awareness and consciousness, would they believe they were masters of the Universe based on the incomplete observations of the world their limited viewpoints provided them? Would an ant be able to see a human for what it was, or would it believe it was some natural force that tended to wreak havoc on its ant existence? Would an ant go on to believe that in all the universe, as far as it could tell, there was nothing superior to an ant? An ant would likely believe it ruled the world, and quite possibly God Himself created all the universe for his benefit.

So perhaps we're not so different than this hypothetical ant in our observations of our world and the universe as a whole. Of course one could counter that ants don't have telescopes or microscopes or any of the science that humans have developed to understand our surroundings more accurately, but I think it's also true that just as an ant is limited in its understanding because of its antness, humans are similarly limited by their humanness. We can't comprehend what is beyond our comprehension. For example, if no one could see, how would people have any conception of sight? Doesn't it seem possible that some other sense exists out there somewhere that we cannot comprehend simply because we have no reference from which to understand it? When I was in college, I remember a professor once saying that it is impossible for anyone to imagine something that is totally different from everything we know because we cannot imagine anything that is foreign to our point of reference. We can imagine amalgams of things, but not of entirely new things.

Similarly, if there is something as much more advanced than us as we are to an ant, how would we have the ability to conceive of that thing's existence? To go a step further, perhaps that being which would seem godlike to us is still only another rung on the hierarchy. Perhaps there is something above it, and in turn another being still above that one. Perhaps it continues on ad infinitum like one of those Russian nesting dolls. Perhaps this applies in both directions as well. Maybe the lowest form of life we can conceive of--some single celled amoeba or something, is not the lowest sort of life form that exists. It is only the lowest that we are able to detect from our limited perspectives as humans.

Of course, all of these thoughts simply evoke more thoughts such as what is at the top of this theoretical hierarchy? Is it God after all? If so, it would likely mean that He was so far beyond our comprehension that we could not even begin to conceive of Him with the limited capacities of our human senses, and it seems laughable that this being would have even the slightest concern about our human affairs--no more than we would have for paramecium probably. Perhaps this being would possess the knowledge of why all this existence was put into motion in the first place. Maybe such a thing would be as simple as two plus two for Him, and He would be contemplating other mysteries that we could not even imagine to conceive of. And even writing about the simple-minded questions that I seek answers to as a human betrays my limited perspective as I can only contemplate questions through the limited means of my human perspective and intelligence.

It also occurs to me that pondering questions for which no answers exist is a bit pointless. Maybe I'd be better served to get to sleep so I could be a bit more alert in the morning times. But then I realize that even thinking this is a symptom of being human, and like any other creature here on Earth, I can do nothing but be what I am until I am no more.

Kookookachoo

            Walruses are wise and fearless...so I've heard!





I wanted a walrus disguise because walruses are wise and fearless. I didn't know how to make one so I searched on Craigslist for someone who could do the job. I found Frances Staciliski. She lived in Northern Minnesota. I called her.

"A walrus disguise, aye?" she said. "Why on Earth would you want to be a walrus?"

"My life is boring and sad. A walrus' life is better."

"Oh yeah? How do you figure?"

"That Beatles song says so. The one with kookookachoo."

"I don't care if you're crazy. How long do you want the tusks?"

"Foot and a half sounds about right. Pure ivory of course."

"Of course. Ten grand will cover it. Give me six months. Meet me here with the cash."


One hundred eighty-two days later I flew to Minneapolis. I rented a car and followed Ms. Staciliski's directions to a dirt road. In a blizzard, I made out the snowmobile she said would be there. I drove it ten miles through the woods. I was wondering if she'd led me on a wild goose chase for kicks when I had to slam on breaks to keep from crashing into her cabin. I was happy to see she'd cleared a path to the door. I walked right in. She was a blur until I got my goggles off and she'd placed a steaming cup in my hands.

She was ugly. Her nose was unnaturally long and two curly hairs jutted from her chin. She wasn't so much fat as lumpy. She wore a shawl that might have been sewn with camelhair in the middle ages. She looked like she'd stepped from the pages of Hansel and Gretel. Did I smell a stew cooking or a brew full of newts and babys' fingers?

"Show me the cash," she said. "And I'll show you the disguise."

I dug the Benjamins from my coat. She made them disappear in her shawl or the lumps beneath. She retrieved the costume from the brew. The tusks were sharp as daggers. It smelled like a walrus as much as looked like one. She dropped it at my feet. Steam poured from it in waves.

"Put it on," she said. "Or did you come all this way to gawk?"

I put it on.


The next thing I recall is lying on a piece of glacier ice in some place even more remote, cold, and snowy than Northern Minnesota. The disguise was more than I'd bargained for. It was warm and slippery, and flapping my flippers seemed so natural it was like I had no arms underneath. I was hungry, so I dove into the water to find fish. A moment later, I speared a salmon with a tusk and ate it raw. Delicious!

Later, sunning on the shore, and peering about the frozen wasteland around me, I wondered how I'd ever get out of this disguise. It was a good thing I didn't want to.

Frances Staciliski had earned her money. Kookookachoo!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r58pkRJTlTg

Christmases Past at the Brown House

Every Christmas, from the time I was born until my grandfather died when I was about eighteen, my mother's side of the family always got together at my grandparents' house in Tifton, Ga. To me, Christmas wasn't Christmas until then. Since that period of my life has ended, Christmas, for me. has never been the same. What made those get togethers special, I believe, more than anything else was the presence of my granddad. He was, as anyone who knew him could attest to, one of the most original people ever. He was well known in Tifton, and almost anyone who knew him described as quite a character, but also one of the kindest, most humorous, gentlest people they'd ever known. He seemed to relish the Christmas season.

One Christmas, he got his picture in the Tifton newspaper when he sat up a giant blow-up Santa Claus in a helicopter on his roof. Another year, I vaguely remember him dressing up in a Santa Claus suit and greeting me at the door when I arrived there with my mom and dad. That was a wondrous and confusing experience for me because I had no idea that it was my granddad under the suit, and in spite of the thrill of meeting Santa, I wondered where he had gone when I stepped in the house. When I learned later that it hadn't been the real Santa at all, but only my granddad playing the part, I seriously wondered if maybe Granddad was the real Santa after all. To me, they seemed to possess the same qualities.

On yet another Christmas, when I was five or six, he wrapped up a pair of shiny, white tap dance shoes for me. He told me I should put them on and begin practicing immediately because it was something that not many people could do. If I learned to tap dance, I'd be on the road to being rich and famous. Tap dancing was not something I was even remotely interested in, and I turned up my nose to them. For years and years, they sat unworn at the back of my closet. Writing this now, I wonder what would have happened if I'd taken him up on his offer. Maybe life as I know it would have been completely different.

Granny B. also made Christamases in Tifton special. She was actually my step-grandmother who my granddad married a few years after my mother's mother died. They got married the same year I was born. She was a retired school principal, and it was easy to see that side of her. She was as disciplined, refined, and exact a woman as you could ever hope to meet, but also equally sweet and kind. She treated all of us as if we were her family by blood.

For years, she always let the children in the family open a small gift upon our arrival to take the edge off our giddy anticipation of opening the real presents under the tree. One Christmas, I opened my introductory present with great anticipation to discover that it was a small wind-up turtle. From my expression, Granny B. could tell I was less than impressed with this gift, and being eleven years old, I didn't hold my tongue about it. "All it does is crawl," I said. "Shouldn't it do something more fun than just that?"

Every year after, Granny B., who always called me her "Junebug", told this story as if it were one of the most amusing incidents she'd ever witnessed. Granny B. lived into her nineties, outliving my Granddad by ten years or so, and she always displayed a commonsense, positive attitude towards life. I've always considered her and my granddad to be two of the best people I've ever known, and Christmas brought out the best in them.

My mother's two twin sisters, Gay and Kay were also there at Christmas. They were only sixteen years old when I was born, and they always made a huge fuss over me. For the first six years of my life, I was the only child present at these gatherings, and naturally the recipient of all the toys and attention. Gay and Kay were definitely two of my favorite people. They both had long, very straight, very blonde hair, and vivacious personalities. They always made me feel like the center of the Universe, and they tended to hold adult conversations in my presence. Flattered by their non-condescension, I always hung on their every word.

Even after my sister was born and my aunts got married and had children of their own, Christmas in Tifton continued to seem like the real Christmas to me. There was nothing really special about what we did there. All the usual things: dinner, presents, and singing Christmas carols in most years. It was just the feeling I had when I was there. To me, everyone always seemed so happy and enthusiastic at those gatherings. I don't ever remember any family squabbles or tension. Everyone seemed to genuinely like each other. It always seemed to be everything Christmas should be about.


But those days are over now. My grandfather and Granny B. both died over ten years ago and strangers have been living in the house they owned for just as long. Sometimes when I drive through Tifton, I go by their former house for old times' sake. It still seems wrong to me that people besides them should be living there. My grandparents are also not the only ones who are gone. My mother's side of the family seems to be unfairly singled out for tragedy as if they were cursed by some ancient gypsy. My mother died of breast cancer like her mother when she was thirty-six, and her twin sister Kay died of the same disease two years earlier when she was thirty-two. My granddad, who probably died of heartbreak as much as anything, passed away sitting in his house in his favorite recliner a little over a year after my mother died. All the deaths effectively ended Magical Christmases at the Browns' house forever.

But the last Christmas before Granny B. passed, she told all of us who were left that she really wanted the family to continue to get together at Christmas after she was gone. I think it's a testament to how much we  respected her that that has actually happened every Christmas since although we rarely speak to one another the rest of the year. In recent years, the reunions have seemed much more awkward than magical, and I sometimes wonder if there's any point to it at all.

It makes me sad to think about how much has changed about Christmas for me since I was young, and sometimes I think one of the main reasons I'd like to have children is to have the opportunity to make it magical again. When I was a child, I took those gatherings for granted and assumed the holiday would always seem as unthinkingly wonderful as I considered it to be then. But time marches forward and, at least in my case, cynicism follows. I've come to think that Christmas is really just an arbitrarily set date when we're also supposed to be joyously happy and go out and buy stuff for others and ourselves that will be set aside and forgotten once the new has worn off.

But when I was a kid who believed in Santa Claus and feeling all the Christmas joy and love in the world at my grandparents' house in Tifton, I didn't think that way, and sometimes I think that's a shame.

Working In the Hole

At Valdosta State Prison I work as a mental health counselor for the inmates "in the hole" or as it's more properly termed--the inmates who are housed in the isolation/segregation cells. There are a couple of ways they come to be here. About two thirds are there because of disciplinary reasons that can range from anything to assault on staff or other inmates to one of their favorite tricks of exposing themselves to female staff. The other third have placed themselves voluntarily because they do not feel safe in the general population. In a cell by yourself or with another inmate also housed on "protective custody" there's less chance of being stabbed with a shank or taking a shot to the head with a lock in a sock.

I'm charged with seeing all the inmates in segregation/isolation who are on the mental health caseload once a week. In J Building, where I work, there are usually between sixty and seventy inmates housed there in a given week. I walk around the building pretty much daily and speak to them through the door of their cell and if it's called for, I might have an officer take them out to see them in a cage where there's more privacy.

A typical interaction might go like this:

I knock on the cell door and open the door flap that is usually latched over the window of the cell.

"You guys doing okay?" I say. I peer inside and flip on their light. Usually the two inmates are lying in their bunks. Most of the time they don't want to be bothered to talk, but they've learned I won't leave them alone until they at least give me an indication they're alive.

"We're alright," they might say or they might flash me a peace sign or offer a thumbs up. If one is in a particularly surly mood they might say something like, "Get the Hell away from my door." When this happens I generally oblige them.

I always carry word puzzles like sudoku, crosswords, and word-finds to the hole with me and you would think they were as valuable as gold by the way the inmates beg for them. I also will sometimes throw in some literature about cognitive/behavioral therapy or something philosophical or thoughtful I've printed off online just in case they happen to be interested. I figure that if you're "in the hole" you have a lot of time to think and read if you choose to use it.

Another all too common interaction I have with the inmates in lockdown goes something like this:

I open the window flap and the inmate is standing in front of me either with a sheet tied around his neck or showing me a small piece of a razor blade.

"I can't take this shit any more," he says. "Get me out of here or I'm going to kill myself."

"Okay," I say. "Tell me exactly why you want to kill yourself."

"I already told you. Get me out of this room or I'll do something and then it's going to be on you. I ain't playing games."

But I've come to learn that they almost always are playing games. Generally it's the same group of inmates who engage in this kind of behavior. If I know the person and his pattern of behavior, I handle this situation much differently than if I don't. If I'm not familiar with him, I'll take the safe route. I'll immediately call one of the prison psychiatrists and tell them about the situation. The psychiatrist almost always orders that the inmate be placed in the crisis unit in a paper gown without any property that he might use to harm himself.

But the problem with this intervention is that in most cases the inmate does not genuinely want to harm himself at all, but is angling to be moved out of lockdown. Even though they're still restricted in the crisis unit, many of them prefer to be there for a number of reasons. They get to be in a cell by themselves there. They also have more contact with the female nurses, which is a strong motivation for many of them, and generally get a break from the rather oppressive environment that is endemic to being "in the hole".

It's not that I have any real objection to the inmate getting a break from his environment once in awhile, but there are only a limited number of crisis beds, and in my opinion, they should be saved for inmates with a genuine mental health related crisis rather than those who have learned to manipulate their environment by engaging in negative behaviors. It's always a judgment call and generally I'll still speak to the psychiatrist about it just so we're all on the same page, but if I think the inmate is pretty much just jerking my chain, I'll say something like: "Do you really want to kill yourself or are you just trying to get out of lockdown?"

Sometime they'll come clean at that point and admit that's exactly what they're trying to do. Other times they'll get angry that I've called their bluff and curse me up and down telling me how he's going to sue me, his family's going to sue me, and how I'm generally the most uncaring, horrible human being he's ever come into contact with. Or they might then claim that they are floridly psychotic. They are hearing the voice of their dead grandmother telling them to "go ahead and do it" or the walls are closing in on them and blood is pouring from them. What am I going to do about it?

In cases like these I'm generally less than impressed and I walk away. Mind you, I only do this is I'm completely confident the inmate's behavior is strictly manipulative. If I have the slightest suspicion that they're genuine, I take the appropriate measures. It's a fine line to walk sometimes but it's necessary. If every inmate who made bogus claims of suicidality were allowed to go to the crisis unit, the security officers would hate me and it would result in all kinds of chaos in the lockdown unit as the inmates would take advantage of my gullibility or chicken heartedness and constantly be claiming they were about to do themselves in.


The condition of many of the inmates in the hole is downright pitiful. There are some that stay locked down for over a year on protective custody or because they present particularly difficult disciplinary problems. They are allowed to stand outside in the "rec cages" outside the unit for up to an hour a day, but many choose not to even come out of their cells for that length of time. After such a long period of time existing behind a locked door you can see the color of their skin become more and more sallow and their general physical and mental well-being slowly deteriorate.

The inmates in lockdown often have all kinds of trouble getting basic things like clean clothing or a toothpaste at times. A prisoner there was recently punished by having all of his clothes and property removed for a day because he was screaming and kicking his door constantly while the warden was inspecting the unit. When asked why he was doing this, he said that he was just trying to get the warden's attention in hopes that he might be able to finally get some clean underwear from laundry.

Often when they speak to me through the crack in their door, their breath almost knocks me over, and there's no way it could be that bad if they were brushing their teeth at all regularly. Many tell me they don't brush because they can't get a toothbrush or they've run out of toothpaste, and haven't been able to get a new tube in months. There are certain inmates who also never take advantage of "shower call". They begin to exude a pungent odor after awhile that can be detected by my nose when I'm still two or three doors away from them. The lack of hygiene is also a factor in the constant problem of staph infections that is always present in the lockdown unit.

Speaking of a lack of hygiene, another one of the inmates' favorite tricks to force staff to pay attention to them is to flood the unit by jamming a shirt or a jumpsuit in their toilet, and then flushing it repeatedly until water flows under their door and throughout the entire unit. Once when I was there and this was occurring, I watched as several solid pieces of feces floated by my foot.

Speaking of feces, I am reminded of another occasion when I was sent to evaluate an irate inmate and found that he had spread this fragrant substance so thickly over his cell door window I couldn't see inside. Trying to hold my breath as I spoke, I asked him if he could kindly tell me why he was engaging in this behavior and could he take a moment to speak to me. This fellow did come to the door and with his finger, he traced the words FUCK YOU on the window. I saw through his letters that he was standing there naked and covered from head to toe in the stuff.

On yet another occasion, I was called to see a fellow and found him lying prone and naked on the concrete floor of the outside rec pen also covered from head to toe in his own feces. He began to tell me how aliens had invaded his body and the only way he could expel them was to cake his body in such a fashion as I now witnessed. In the midst of this explanation, another neighboring inmate's smart crack of some kind caused him to suddenly double over in laughter and lose his groove. When I accused him of faking, he said, "hey man just get me out of this hellhole alright?" Amused, but convinced the man was more actor than schizophrenic I left him to his devices.

Working in the lockdown unit on a daily basis as I have for over two years now has become a bit tiring and tedious and I often wonder if I'm really helping people at all by being there. It's certainly not a place conducive to accomplishing meaningful therapy. But on the plus side, it is always intriguing because you never know what's going to happen there and in some ways it's like taking a short walk to a third world country where an entirely different sub-culture exists. I also like to think that I do bring a little humanity to an inhumane place from time to time and do my best not to become jaded and insensitive in the process.


All in all, I suppose it's an interesting way to make a living.

To Write or Not to Write

When I was a kid, I loved to make up stories. I'd come up with tales off the top of my head about monsters, aliens, and magical creatures for my mother's entertainment. She seemed to enjoy hearing them and would tell me what an imaginative little boy I was for being able to think of such things. I loved to hear her praise and the more she praised me, the more stories I wanted to make up for her. I was in the first grade the first time I wrote one of my stories down for my mother's review, and she encouraged me to write down stories to my heart's content. I also began to notice that it wasn't just her praise that made me want to write stories. It was also the essence of the story itself that inspired me. I loved the act of bringing something to life that had not existed before I set my pencil to paper. It seemed like a magical process, and remains so to this day.

When I was in the second grade, I won a school-sponsored county wide contest for creative writing for a story I jotted down in about five minutes. The story was about a fat pig named Cloney who loved to eat jelly until he was warned by his friend Bony that the farmers were fattening him up with the jelly so they could make bacon out of him. With that revelation in mind, Cloney inspired his friend to help him invade the farmer's house, run the poor fellow out of town, and steal all his jelly.

I was doubly surprised to learn I'd won this contest because I had thought it was just an assignment from my teacher. I had no idea it would be entered into a contest.I reveled in the attention this award brought me from my teacher and the school in general. It made me feel like someone special, and caused me to identify myself as a writer. It seems to me that winning that award should have propelled me to making a career for myself as a writer. I should have written stories in a mad rush from that day to this. But that hasn't happened in spite of the fact that I still love writing stories as much as I did when I was a little kid, and that I take the craft of writing very seriously. Writing is one of my favorite things to do and an activity I consider almost sacred. In spite of this fact, at the ripe old age of thirty-eight, I still have not become the published writer I've dreamed my whole life of becoming.

I have had a few of my stories published on science fiction and horror fiction web sites, and have placed a lot of my writing on a site called fanstory.com, but overall I certainly don't have an impressive writing resume. I've never even completed a truly novel-length story although I have written some 150,000 plus words of one called The Legend of Dreaming Eagle. But I've abandoned that story recently because it reads so juvenile to me now although I haven't entirely given up on it. It's a story I've thought out so thoroughly in so much detail and the characters still seem very alive to me. It's just a matter of figuring out how to fix it up and being re-motivated to do so.

Getting discouraged and abandoning my work at certain points has become a pattern for me. Sometimes I think the idea that I could possibly write a story well enough to get an agent to represent me who would then be able to convince a publishing house to pay me for my writing seems like a far fetched dream, and that I'm deluding myself to believe otherwise. Every book I've read about writing declares in no uncertain terms that publishing a book is hard and that a writer should expect setback after setback before he experiences success, so who am I to believe I would be the exception to the rule--the one who was talented and dedicated enough to succeed where so many others did not? But on the other hand, I'm not always wowed by published books and rarely have the feeling that the quality of a book I'm reading would be beyond my ability to create.

I think the obstacles that have prevented me from fulfilling my writing potential are all within myself. I've always been a little embarrassed to even let people know that I write because it seems like a pompous statement somehow--like you're saying you're this dreamy person who claims to have this authoritative knowledge about the human condition or something. Then the person wants to know what you write, and then when you're forced to explain you write fiction and haven't published anything except for in a couple of obscure e-zines, I imagine people wonder how you even call yourself a writer with a straight face. But I do think a key for me in really becoming a writer would be able to make this statement with confidence and to not be so self conscious about revealing my work. I always feel like I want people who read my stories to feel the same passion for them that I do, and if they don't, I feel discouraged although I know logically that people's opinions about my writing should not matter so much, and that I, as much as anyone else, can benefit from constructive criticism. It's always a catch-22 for me. I want people to read my writing, but at the same time I feel very self-conscious about letting them. I've always felt that if I could actually publish something that would appear in a physical book, I would feel validated enough about my writing to be able to declare myself a writer without hesitation.

But I also realize that writing to get published is not the best reason to write. The best reason to write is for the story itself. I've come to discover that I have to keep this fact in mind if I'm going to write as regularly and with as much discipline as I should to accomplish my goals. I have to forget about writing for anyone but myself. If it sounds right and true for me, I should go with it, and if it doesn't, I should change it. I also have to remember that good writing is always about the story and the writing itself. It's really no different from when I was a little kid making up stories for my mother. I believe there are many unwritten magical stories residing in my imagination just waiting for me to let them out. I just have to have the faith and the discipline to let them be. Hopefully everything else will take care of itself, and if it doesn't--if I'm never the published writer I'd like to become, then at least I will have let stories come to be that would not have existed otherwise, and I believe there's something mystical and wonderful about that even if few people ever read my work and I know that the greatest failure would not be in failing to be published, but in failing to write at all. 

Walking The Razor's Edge

I've been thinking lately about how we all live on a razor's edge. It seems that our lives and our world are so fragile. One minute, we can be walking around relatively happy and satisfied, and then something can happen completely beyond our control to change everything. Right now, for example, things seem to be going okay for me. I'm happily married. I have an okay job that gives me enough money to get by. I have the freedom and time to pursue my writing to some degree. I have a few good friends and things are okay with my family. But I know that all of that could change so quickly. I could find out that I or someone I'm close to has a serious illness. Some natural disaster could come along and knock my whole life all kilter. I could have a car wreck, lose my job, or become the victim of a serious crime. There's really no limit to all the disasters that could befall me without the slightest warning, and knock me off the razor's edge I currently walk upon so complacently. And what's more, it's not a question of if this will happen, but when.

This is something I find myself thinking about often as I try to go to sleep at night. I often worry that if I become too happy I will jinx myself and cause something bad to happen. I wish I knew some kind of ancient Chinese secret or Jedi mind trick to keep everything bad away from my life. I don't want any part of it. I want things to stay good for me forever. But of course I know in my rational mind that it can't happen and that dreading a tragic, disruptive event occurring in my life is a little like dreading a workday Monday on a Sunday afternoon. I have no control over it coming. I only have control over how I will react when it does.

Of course I haven't been entirely insulated from tragedy in my life, and knowing what it's like probably contributes to my worry that it will come again. When I was fifteen, my mother died of cancer after a year long battle with it, and I can confidently say that it was the pivotal event of my life. I have no idea how my life would be different if it hadn't happened. I only know that it would be. I can also say that when it happened I certainly had no strategy in place regarding how to deal with it. I just kept going, and tried not to worry about it too much although there was no doubt it profoundly affected me regardless of how I tried to pretty much ignore it.

I wonder if I would do the same thing now in similar circumstances, or if growing older and more mature has given me the tools and the wisdom to deal with such events more ably. I don't know and hope I don't have to find out any time soon. I suppose that dealing with tragedy and suffering is traditionally the province of religion, and there's no doubt that it's given great comfort and relief to people throughout history although it seems that different religions have different ideas about the ways suffering should be dealt with. Buddhism and other Eastern religions, for example, teach that the root of all suffering is desire. We suffer because we desire what we can't have, and even satisfying our desires temporarily only leads to more desire and thus more suffering. Therefore a human is better served to quell his desires not by resisting them, but by accepting whatever comes without questioning.

I recall a story I heard somewhere about a Buddhist master who lived in a small, isolated hut in a remote region. One night, a thief breaks into his hut and steals all of the simple possessions that the Buddhist master owns. The master wakes up and catches the thief in the act. The thief is frightened and prepares himself for a fight, but instead the master removes his coat, hands it to the thief, and asks if there is anything else he can give him. Confused, the thief flees into the night. When he is gone, the master goes outside into the cold night, looks up at the moon, and smiles.

The lesson, of course, is that the thief could steal all the master's possessions, but he could not steal the inner peace the master possessed inside of himself. I think this same lesson is also illustrated in some of the teachings of Jesus such as when he tells us to turn the other cheek if we are slapped, and in instructing the rich young man to give all of his possessions to the poor. Jesus, like Buddha, seemed to believe that we did not need possessions or material things to make us rich because true richness only exists within, not without.

Also, the entire appeal of Christianity, it seems to me, is in the story of the horrible suffering that Jesus endures on the cross. The way He handles His pain and fear is what resonates so strongly with people in the world throughout time. It is the reason that Christianity has become one of the world's greatest religions. If Jesus had not suffered in his death, would people have been moved to the same extent? I don't think so.

But I notice an important difference between the Christian way of handling suffering and the Buddhist way when Jesus is resurrected. The resurrected Jesus has transcended the suffering that is such a constant part of the human condition. He no longer feels pain and is no longer at the mercy of the slings and arrows that all mankind is subject to. So, to me, this illustrates that the ultimate way a Christian gets through suffering is to endure it with the knowledge that something better and greater is waiting for us when this life of pain and sorrow is completed. This is in contrast to Eastern teachings which tell us to look inside of ourselves to relieve our suffering without any explicit promise of anything better after death. In some ways, this way of seeing things is more optimistic than the Western way which seems to say there is really nothing to be done to relieve our suffering in this life, but we can look beyond ourselves to a paradise in the next one.

As for me, I simply have no confidence that any afterlife exists at all. Perhaps it's a lack of faith on my part, but the idea of a Heaven or a Hell seems more like wishful thinking to me than anything that is real in the tangible sense of the word. Therefore, I am more inclined to look inside of myself in the here and now as a way to cope with the suffering and the hardships that none of us, as humans, are immune to, and I believe strongly that the way you view things that happen to you are much more important than the things themselves.

Having said that, I certainly am under no illusions that I have any idea of how I will handle real tragedy or misfortune if and when it comes to me. I suspect when it comes down to it, I'm not that much different than my fifteen-year old self who simply did the best he could to deal with a life changing tragedy the only way he knew how. So, in the meantime, I will enjoy the good life I currently have, and keep on walking the razor's edge as carefully as I am able.

A Feline Has His Say--Oliver James Speaks Out.

            The humans call me Oliver James or "Ollie" for short.

 
So Charlie the Human has kindly stepped aside today to allow me to blog for myself. It was really nice of him to loan me this forum, especially considering he has so very few regular readers--next to none that I know of. Maybe he thought I could give him a jump start. Kind of sad to be leaning on his pet cat for a popularity boost don't you think?

But I really shouldn't be so hard on him. He's got his flaws, but isn't a bad guy as people go. He's pretty good about keeping my food bowl filled, empties my litter box on a semi-regular basis, and picks up those pesky hairballs up when I cough them up without too much complaint. He's also got a soft lap and mad skills as a chin-scratcher. I could do without the guy forcing me into a pet carrier and driving me to the vet from time to time, but I think his heart's in the right place even there. The truth is I love my humans--Charlie and Maria. Without them, I might still be languishing in a shelter somewhere putting up with annoying kittens and horrible dogs.

But the reason I wanted to guest blog today isn't to prove that a cat can type and write coherent words, or to help my owner improve the popularity of his blog. What I want to do instead is set the record straight. To amuse themselves, my humans have invented this whole mythology about me based on nothing but their imaginations. I don't fully understand why they feel the need to contrive these fictions. Why can't they let a cat just be a cat? The truth is that I'm nothing more and nothing less. Admittedly, I have a few peculiarities. I prefer ice cubes to meat of any sort for example, and I do enjoy running to the door to greet my humans when they come home from work much as a canine might, but these are only personality quirks, and not evidence that I am somehow fundamentally different than the other millions of cats out there.

The humans come up with these stories off the top of their heads and then elaborate on them like they just discovered a new kind of catnip or something. I'm sure as soon as I refute these myths, they'll come up with fresh ones and I'll have to come back in a few months and try to salvage my reputation all over again. I do my best to curl up into a tighter ball in my sleeping place on top of the couch and pretend I don't hear these wild tales at all, but they still get to me sometimes in spite of my best efforts, prompting me to finally speak out today to let the truth be known.


First of all, you might have heard I'm quite the music fan, and that I especially enjoy progressive funk groups like TV on the Radio and Kings of Leon. I have nothing against these musicians and I'm sure they make great music, but the truth is that I have no special affinity for them. I'm greatly annoyed when the humans play their songs for my benefit and make a fuss over how much I'm supposedly enjoying them.

I want to take this opportunity to let the humans know that I am not enjoying it, and would rather snooze the day away than to ever hear a note of it again. In other words, Charlie, My Sex is NOT on Fire for that song. Do you understand me? And no, I don't care about a band full of nerdy looking black guys like TV on the Radio either even though the lead singer of that group does sound like a female in heat when he hits a high note. If you insist on making me listen to music, I'm much more partial to the cacophony of a shaking treat bag.

I also do not especially abhor the Mumord & Sons hit Little Lion Man as the humans claim. It's a catchy enough tune as far as I'm concerned although you have to admit it's a little overplayed and the way the guys in the band dress remind of those annoying air-condition repairmen that showed up at my house uninvited one day. Tried all day for a simple head scratch from one of those characters, and they tried to act like I didn't exist. Didn't care for the cut of their jibs at all. It's no wonder they grew up to have a job with their name on their shirt.

Speaking of names, the humans are also always wondering if I know mine. Of course I understand they refer to me as Oliver James based on a song they like by Fleet Foxes, and I do relate to the appropriateness of the lyrics as they apply to my situation:

Oliver James. 
Washed in the Rain. 
Nooo loooonger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41HarInmUxk

It's a pretty song I must admit. But what the humans don't understand about names is that their name for me is insignificant. Would I expect them to respond if I made up a name for them? Certainly I could make a distinctive cat noise up to represent each of them, but wouldn't I be guilty of a fair amount of arrogance if I started making such noises and expected them to come running whenever I did so? Coming when you're called is fine for dogs I suppose, but it's not for me. I've got a little more pride than that.

The humans have also perpetuated the myth that paints me as a sort of surly, contemptuous, cynical character. They get this idea because of my natural expressions. Sometimes I do look at them with an eye half open or with an are-you-serious smirk on my face, but this has nothing to do with feeling they are somehow clueless, exasperating, disgusting, or just plain stupid. Their interpretations of my expressions are completely false. It's just because I'm a cat, and that's how my face looks. I can't help it. I actually possess quite an angelic character, and am possibly the kindest, most tolerant kitty any of you have ever seen. If the humans were a little brighter and not quite as full of themselves, they would realize as much.

The last misconception I want to clear up is also the most ridiculous. Both of my humans have invented and discussed at great length my fictitious love for alpacas. The truth is that I was not aware that any such animal existed before they began the salacious rumor that I feel a strong sexual attraction for these creatures. Furthermore, they have accused me of being involved in an on again-off again, emotionally destructive relationship with an especially wooly and superficially charming alpaca called Albert. Apparently Albert and I have quite a torrid relationship. We can't live with each other, but simultaneously we can't stand to be apart.

Where did such an abominable idea come from may I ask?? As far as I can tell, alpacas are just goofy looking furry creatures that aren't too far removed from goats. If one ever appeared in my house, I'd crawl right under the bed and refuse to budge until the nasty thing had left.

Well...I say that, but I guess they are pretty cute from the photos the humans have shown me thinking that the mere sight of one would cause me to drool uncontrollably and preen in front of it or something. I'd prefer a glass of ice water and a couple of treats of course, but alpacas have a certain charm I suppose...

It occurs to me as I try to wrap this up before Charlie the computer hog gets too impatient that the reader might see my very ability to write this as proof that I am quite an extraordinary feline in spite of my protests to the contrary. Well maybe I am, and maybe there's quite a story of how I got this way as well. But I'm not telling any of you. A cat without its secrets isn't much of a cat. That's what my mama used to tell me back when we lived on that reservation in South Dakota with that old shaman...but that's already saying too much.

If you want to know how an ordinary cat like me learned to read, write, and express his thoughts so clearly to humans, you'll just have to use your imaginations...kind of like my humans do.

                                                 

I Hope It Was A Dream

Inspired by Halloween season and recently seeing Paranormal Activity 2, I was trying to remember the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. I drew a blank at first, thinking I've lived a pretty unscary life for the most part. I've grown up to be a pretty hard-headed rationalist who tends to scoff at the idea of ghosts, goblins, demons, or other monsters stalking humans. That side of me believes these things have no basis in reality are nothing but remnants of humankind's unenlightened, superstitious past. 

But another part of me is bored by skepticism and becomes rapt with fascination when it comes to things that go bump in the night, thrilled with the idea that the rational side of me is wrong, and that perhaps a supernatural world that follows different rules exists alongside the one we see in our everyday lives.

The closest I've ever come to perhaps having an encounter with that world occurred when I was only four or five years old. My mom, dad, and I lived in a trailer park in Valdosta, Georgia at the time. In my bedroom there, I was cursed with many bad dreams. Perhaps this was because I had only recently been weaned from sleeping with my parents. There were some nights when I would still try to sneak in their room, but these efforts consistently ended in failure when they forced me out again. My efforts were so persistent that they took to locking me out, and I would protest by carrying a pillow and a sheet down the hall, and laying down to sleep in front of their door. But this tactic ultimately proved unsuccessful because the discomfort of the location would soon outweigh my desire to sleep with my parents, and I would slink back to my room to try to make the best of things.

The worst nights were the ones when I was sent to bed while my parents stayed awake. I felt painfully excluded on these nights. I could hear them talking and laughing, and it bothered me that they could seem so happy without my presence. I would lie in bed determined to stay awake until they went to bed themselves so that the following morning I could tell my mother that there was no sense sending me to bed early. I could stay up as long as they could if I wanted. But invariably I would fall asleep before the house went dark, and would wake up hours later after a nightmare to a silent house. These were dreams that did not dissipate in the morning. Their effects would linger into the following day, and being the contemplative sort, even as a child, I spent a great deal of time thinking about them.

The nightmares were recurring, and of three different types. The first, and least terrifying although still oddly scary, was of a pack of miniature black puppies with beady red eyes. They would suddenly pour from my closet like a swarm of locusts and bound onto my bed. I would stand up and try my best to throw them off, but it was a hopeless cause. The ones I removed from the bed would only jump onto it again as soon as I set them down, and others would leap onto it as I did so. This would continue until my bed was completely infested with the things. Eventually I would wake up with my heart pounding, sweating and panting.

While this dream was disturbing, I did not feel threatened by the bounding puppies. It was only that I did not wish to share a bed with hundreds of them. I have sometimes tried to figure out if this dream held some sort of Freudian or symbolic message, but I have drawn a blank on what it might have been.

The second and more frightening recurring dream was of a hoboish looking overweight witch who would appear in the doorway of my room and come to stand at my bedside to peer down on me. She didn't speak, but I understood somehow that she wanted me to go with her back to wherever she came from. I would stare at her, paralyzed with fear as she placed a hand on me. As she did so, I would find myself transported to what I understood to be her world. I stood in a long hallway walking beside the witch who held my hand against my will. Against the walls on either side stood armless puppet-like creatures with sunken in cheeks and beady eyes. On their heads they wore hats of all types. The hallway was dimly lit, as if by candlelight, and I did not know where we were going, or what the puppets wanted from me, but I also did not want to find out. My fear would finally get the best of me, and I would flee from the witch. This would prompt a cacophony of noise from the witch and all the puppets surrounding me. The entire mob would chase me down the corridor as I fled. But running is hard in dreams, and within moments, the witch's gnarled hand would take hold of my arm. Then I would wake up, finding myself safe in bed, immensely relieved I had only been dreaming.

This dream was terrifying to me mostly because of how real it seemed in the moment and its linear nature. I wonder now if I've filled in the blanks after the fact, but I don't think that was the case. It was just an exceptionally scary dream that recurred more times than I care to recall.

But it still wasn't the scariest dream. There was a third one that, thankfully, didn't recur as often as the others. I believe it only happened three times, but the third one was the worst of all. It was the dream that seemed to end them all...if it was a dream at all.

In this dream, I would be laying in bed on the verge of sleep when I would hear something beating on the wall that my bed was pressed against. I would look to see what was there and see one of the witch's puppets banging its head against the wall and staring at me. It did nothing else...only stared and after a moment it would pound its head against my head and stare at me again. In the first two dreams of this type, there were two puppets. One appeared at the foot of my bed, and another at the middle. The one in the middle wore a derby hat while the other wore a straw one. For some reason, the middle one seemed the most sinister. I literally feared for my life when I had this dream, and dreaded its coming.

The third and final time that I had this "dream" is one of the most vivid memories of my childhood, and I sometimes wonder if it was truly a dream at all although I have no other explanation for it. It happened on one of those nights when I was sent to bed early. For some reason, I was even more upset than usual about being forced to bed early. Feeling very angry, I attempted to stay awake until after my parents went to bed as usual. But, also as usual, I failed. I was rudely wakened sometime later by an awful racket of something hitting the wall the bed was pushed against. I already knew what was happening before I turned to see. The puppet thing had come to get me. I saw it glaring at me in the dim light of my nightlight--an armless figure pressed between the wall and the bed staring at me with beady eyes and a malevolent grin. It wore a crumpled derby hat and the remnants of a ragged shirt. For a moment, I could only stare at the thing, unable to move or speak. Then it slammed its upper body against the bed in two sharp motions. I heard the bed springs squeak from the impact, and screamed for my mother. The alarm in my voice must have been evident because she came running. She came to stand beside me and asked me what was wrong. Too terrified to speak, all I could do was point to the other side of the bed at the thing I could still see grinning at us.

She told me there was nothing there. Determined that she must be right, I turned away from the thing and begged her to let me sleep with her and Daddy. But she said my dad would simply not allow it, and I said there was no way I was staying in my room alone tonight with the scarecrow puppet thing. Finally, she agreed that she would sleep in my room and that I could sleep with my father. I worried that the thing would get her, but something told me it was only interested in me, and I left her there alone.

The next morning I was extremely relieved to see she had survived the night. Over breakfast, I told both of my parents about what I had seen, and also about the other two types of recurring nightmares I often had. My mother seemed concerned about my nightmares, but she assured me that the thing I'd seen against the wall had only been part of a dream and nothing more. I accepted this, but wasn't so sure she was right. My father believed that all my dreams were just an imaginative ploy to convince them to let me sleep with them.

In any case, I never had any of the dreams again after that. It wasn't long afterward that we moved out of the trailer park onto a piece of isolated land in the country. Although my room in the trailer remained the same, something about moving away from the trailer park made it less menacing, and I was no longer so afraid to sleep alone. But for many years afterward, I made it a point to never look to the wall side of my bed. I believed that if I did the scarecrow puppet thing might appear, and even now a ghost of that fear exists for me.

I've convinced myself now that it was only a dream, but every now and then there are nights when I'm not so sure.

Confessions of a Late Blooming Serial Monogamist

I was a late bloomer when it came to dating, and I'm not sure "blooming" would be the accurate term for how my evolution in that venture progressed. But somehow, my dating life had a happy ending considering I'm very satisfactorily married to someone I adore, and who appears to return the sentiment.

In high school, I did manage to bring a date to my junior and senior proms as well as a homecoming dance, but in all three cases, I was more of a convenient ride to the activity than an object of even the slightest romantic interest. I also can't blame my slow dating growth on lack of interest. Starting from about the sixth grade forward, I've found myself extremely interested in the opposite sex, but also extremely unwilling to let my interest be known. All through junior high and high school, I harbored secret crushes on various girls in my school that I did not dare disclose to anyone because I considered them out of my league, and felt I would be ridiculed if my interest in them was known. In hindsight, I might have been right to keep these feelings to myself because the truth was that I did march to a different drummer from most of my classmates. I felt like a zag among a school full of zigs, I existed so quietly and deeply inside my own head whereas it seemed that everyone around me seemed to be of quite the opposite nature. I was a pretty good athlete, a pretty good student, and not the ugliest guy around, and should have been fairly popular among my peers on the face of it, but because I was so shy and withdrawn I wasn't.

Another reason I found myself stymied when it came to dating was because I became hopelessly enthralled with the girl who lived across the street from me. She was three years younger than me which would not have mattered in later years, but then it did considering the whole thing started when I was about fifteen and she was about twelve, and probably didn't completely end until my dad married her mother when I was a Freshman in college. Thankfully, by that time, she had moved in with her father, and we were never forced to co-exist in the same house. If that had happened, it would have been downright torturous for me, and I probably would have stayed away from home as much as possible.

To this day, I'm not sure how much my obsession with her was one-sided or how much she returned my feelings. It seemed to vary from day to day when I would come to see her at first on the pretense of visiting her little brother to play Nintendo games, but later without any pretense at all. We both went to the same private school, but she did not acknowledge me there, and seemed to become angry if I made any move to even speak to her. I found the situation hopelessly frustrating, but no matter what, I couldn't seem to change my feelings for her even though I knew it was highly unlikely that we would ever be the established boyfriend and girlfriend I dreamed of us becoming.

To truly delve into the dysfunctional dynamics that seemed to be in play when it came to she and I would be a separate entry in itself, and not one I'm willing to currently explore. Suffice to say that my hopeless infatuation with her put a damper on the possibilities of me having a more productive dating experience with someone else. 

In college, my dating woes continued for the most part except for a few isolated incidents when I could have and should have put my virginity to rest for good. One of these incidents occurred in my sophomore or junior year when I met a girl at a party named Sheila. Aided by alcohol, I broke out of my oppressive shyness for a bit, and wound up spending the night at her apartment. Things became very sexual, but I couldn't seem to get past my anxiety to follow through on what was asked for. It didn't help that the girl completely freaked me out by talking about meeting me as being a sign from God, and saying she was going to arrange a trip to Disney World for us. After that night, suffice to say, I did not seek out her company again. But the incident was very significant to me because it was the most sexual experience of my life, and made me long--or should I say lust--for more. Sometime during my Junior year, I ran into a girl named Stacey who halfway became my girlfriend for the better part of a month or so, but the truth was I wasn't enamored of her at all. I just found it thrilling that she was so willing to help me explore my sexuality for a short time. However, in this case as well, I was plagued with anxiety issues when it came right down to sex, and this fact no doubt led to my encounter with her being so brief.

In 1994, I joined the Navy, and was still pretty much a no-go when it came to women until my fateful meeting with a girl from West Virginia named--I kid you not--Bonnie Jean. I met her at a country bar in Virginia Beach on a night when I had gone out only out of sheer boredom, and told myself I would drink a single beer, and then return to exile myself to the ship that doubled as my home. Halfway through the beer, I was unexpectedly served another. The bartender told me that the drink was courtesy of the two girls sitting nearby. After a minute, I gathered the courage to speak with them, and was soon deep in conversation with Bonnie Jean whose sister had ordered the drink after Bonnie had apparently expressed a favorable opinion about my appearance. Things progressed and she invited me to her home where I promptly spent the night. I still had problems with anxiety on this occasion, but this time, Bonnie Jean had the patience to help me work through them. I was twenty-four years old, and the night marked a landmark for me.

I was hot and heavy with Bonnie Jean for a little over two months until my ship left Norfolk for a six month cruise. I never saw her again after that, but she did write me a few letters during the first couple of months I was gone. When the cruise ended, and my ship returned to Virginia, I called her number, and reached her sister who informed me Bonnie had gotten married to a Marine while I had been gone. I was neither surprised or particularly heartbroken by this news, and was actually somewhat relieved. She hadn't exactly been my soul-mate. But being with her and sleeping at her house had certainly been better than flying solo all the time. I suppose the experience with Bonnie should have given me the confidence to propel me into a woman chasing frenzy, but it did not. In fact, I had nothing resembling a girlfriend again until after I finished with the Navy in 1998 although I was guilty of engaging in a random hook-up or two along the way. Not becoming involved with a girl was also somewhat by design as I didn't want anyone or anything to prevent me from returning home to finish college when my enlistment was over.

I was only out of the Navy two months before running into Carrie, a friend of the much younger girl my uncle--Super Bob-- was dating. One thing led to another, and I wound up being in a relationship with her for the better part of a year. Delving into this thing too could also be its separate entry, but in the final analysis, I can't say it was a negative experience. Carrie was pretty nuts with her over-dramatic presentations and extreme possessiveness, but she was also kind and fun in her way. She only broke up with me after honesty finally compelled me to admit I didn't see myself ever marrying her. We were living together at the time, and about three days after that revelation she moved away to parts unknown, and I have never seen or heard from her again.

It was during my post Navy time that I became what my wife terms a "serial monogamist." After Carrie came Angie who I dated for three years, and became engaged to, but in the end we went our separate ways, and I moved to Savannah for a job after graduating from grad school. There I met Karen, who I had an awesomely fun time with drinking in half the bars in Savannah, and spending almost every weekend at the beach. This lasted for a little over a year before she suddenly moved back to her home state of Connecticut after being offered a job there.

Shortly after that, I ran into she who shall not be named except for the appelation of Crazypants. Of all my relationships this was the only one that could accurately be described as unhealthy. Poor Crazypants was madly jealous and irrational on many levels. She seemed to have no limits in what she would do to keep me with her. Things with her dragged on for the better part of three years before I finally disentangled myself from her. I assume she is living in Savannah now, but I have no idea where she is or what she is doing, and am happy and relieved that that is the case.

Shortly after she was mercifully gone, I met my wife, and knew early on that I didn't ever want to date anyone else ever. Thankfully she felt the same way, and now we are happily married and living happily ever after. Prior to meeting her, I used to spend a lot of time analyzing the reasons for my rocky and hit and miss dating life. I suppose it happened just because it was how my life has played itself out. I'm just glad I don't have to be a serial monogamist any longer although except for the experience with Crazypants, I don't really regret dating any of my former relationships although I certainly stayed in some of them much longer than I should have. In the final analysis, I'm happy that the very winding road I took led me to where I am now.