Yeah. That. Courtesy of Wollongong, Australia

“Face it: you’re a town guy. You NEED people around you, neighbors to steal coffee from, people to shoot the bull with.”

Of course, she was right. People that know you generally are, especially when it comes to your defining characteristics. I was heading down an off-ramp of isolation, about to be compounded by a 24-hr. flu. My eyeballs were sore, my body ached and my mindset was all knotted up. Living as we do, out on 5 acres and surrounded by relatively xenophobic neighbors, you must get used to your own company, and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up with a borderline Amish personality.

We’ve been out there about 6 years, and that which I loved so much has turned into a lonely landscape, especially this time of year, leaves off the trees and a bitter wind coming out of the west most days. Without the old excavation company to justify needing so much flatland, the big shop and wide open spaces, it is a reminder of a business gone; and, like the neighborhood feels when your lifelong friend moves away in the fourth grade, it’s that much less fun to live on that street. But mostly, I miss people.

Surely the need to be in contact with my fellow man is a thwarting mechanism for dealing with latent issues of abandonment, or some other psychological malady occupying the walls in my head. And, at the rate the therapist charges, you feel the need to consent most wholeheartedly. But there’s a part of me that prefers the wisdom of my friend in the coffee shop, she responsible for that quote above. I DO like people. I find them fascinating, their stories weaving character into our lives, so much more interesting than watching my weeds wither all winter long. I find a calm with people that I never would used to have, back when I acted so much older, a 65 year old in a 30 year old body, bitching nonstop about the errant ways of others.

Whether it’s at CrossFit, down at Patton Alley Pub, the ice rink or the firehouse, we all need some community. We need to belong to woodcarvers guilds and historical societies and fraternities of one stripe or another. When we leave those communities we tend to cast about, rudderless fools adrift in chum-laden chaos. And I LIKE chaos, just minus the chum.

I’m glad she recognized that fact; when we get down in the mouth it feels good for a friend to reach out and say “hey, jerk! Come back to your community. You may be an ass, but you’re our ass.” And sometimes that means a change of address.

I hope the future neighbors have coffee.

s'not funny.

Once in great while, I get to time travel. I don’t need physics or machinery or even a white lab coat. It’s much simpler than that; I just go and work as a Watchdog Dad at one of the Heathens schools. This program is designed to have positive male influences present at schools throughout the day so as to deter kids from becoming filthy drug dealers and tax cheats. We help out in classes and eat barely cooked meals with the kids so as to re-live the torture of grade school. But the real trip back in time? That takes place on that playing field where hierarchies are established, hearts are broken and gravel is shoved up into the nostrils of the weak: The Playground.

Today I tottered out there, dizzy from trying to keep up with kids adding “9′s” and “6′s” and subtracting “3′s”, eager to shake these mathematical puzzles from my brain. As the children of 2nd and 3rd grade came tearing out the halls, ready to unleash yet even more crazy from their bottomless wells of boundless energy, I quickly found another adult; it would be necessary for there to be witnesses if any of these psycho-monkeys decided to band together and beat the monitors to death with red rubber balls and rocks.

Quickly they segregated: the boys kicking footballs and shoving their enemies into trees, while the girls quickly banded into packs of 3 or 4, apparently bound by various shades of pink or sparkle. And suddenly I was 8 again. I was the last kid getting picked for the pickup football game, left behind with a kid who insisted on being called “Punker Joe“, his only defining quality that I can remember being twin trails of snot running from his nostrils to his mouth. I can’t seem to recall my own children’s birthdays, but as vividly as getting hit by a bus, I can repeat the names of Shea Morenz, Bodine French, Austin Prince and Adam McLean, the Lords of Vieja Valley grade school in the early 80′s.

Their chatter left me devastated: “let’s leave Emily alone, we’re not with HER!“, “you SUCK!” and “Parker put a booger on my butt!!” I could handle that last one, but I was dazed by the collective effort to ostracize the loners and kiss the asses of the popular. Nothing’s changed since 1983. Attitudes are getting better or worse, depending on who you talk to, parents are acting like friends to their kids, Western society is on the brink of collapse, all that, but the pecking order on The Playground is the same.

Brittany, Brit’ney and Kylie are gonna prance like princesses declaring who’s in and who’s uncool; Riley, Jesse and Corbin are looking for chances to kick someone (literally) off the monkey bars and that weird group of kids will be off in the corner trading Bakugon ninja-jedi cards, twin trails of snot streaming down their upper lips, their eyes looking at me knowingly, silently inviting me to join their band of lovable losers.

The nose knows

I’ve recently become injured by way of stupidity. Long story longer, I was lifting some heavy weights, got excessively macho one day, went back the next day for another round of lifting. I drove home in minor pain, thinking that some good stretching would help solve this dilemma. I was wrong. I hobbled to the bedroom and collapsed on the carpet, my back devolving into what was later described as a “bulging disc” and a “pinched nerve” condition. These declarations were made after one chiropractic visit, some drugs, one ER visit, an MRI and some more, better drugs.

In all my life, through broken bones, some burning of the earlobes and skin, nasal laser surgery and a chance encounter with a cyst in my chest cavity, I’ve never experienced pain like that which I felt curled up on the floor, unable to move at all. In between high pitched screams and thoughts of “this is what dying feels like”, I was left on the section of carpet that, at one time, the dog decided to urinate upon. I thought we’d done a thorough and true cleanup of the carpet, which we were planning on replacing this month anyways. Again, I was wrong. Nose down in the ghost of piss, I was going beyond humiliated pain. My children were witnessing tears rolling down my cheeks, muffled choking noises as I rolled like an upside down tortoise, begging for mercy. Scared and scarred, they chose to leave the room as I howled.  Finally, I crept up onto all fours, thinking I was alone in my state. Wrong.

MoJay, our illustrious Boxer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jonathan Winters, had been observing this whole scenario. Head cocked, he looked at me as if to say “man, that is the worst impression of Charlie Sheen going through a drug withdrawal I’ve ever seen, and I watch alot of daytime television.” The look also indicated he wasn’t really sure who I was, even though we’ve lived together for well over a year. There was only one way to find out. So, as I wheezed out choking breaths, on all fours, he decided to drive his nose into the back of my pants to verify, sending me down on my elbows with another round of screeching.

“It’s me, dammit, MoJay! You worthless, no good, blind as a bat, piece of…… DAMMIT! (sobs)”.

He didn’t seem convinced. Trotting off, the arrogant bastard went to find someone else in the house to lavish affection upon him, and I began the slow crawl on my forearms toward the bathroom. And then I hear the clicking on the wood floor. He was back.

And he wanted to check, again.

There is nothing quite as degrading as having a dog make sport out of sniffing your ass, while you’re helpless to defend yourself, cursing and crying all at once. The deep underlying fear was that, if this little game ceased to amuse him, perhaps he’d jump it up a notch and try to assert dominance. Who does that to a broken, partially disabled bastard like me?

My dog does.

Fearing non-consensual aggravated canine sexual assault made me temporarily forget the crippling pain for half a second. I careened onto my back and bellowed even louder as the pain set in.

He wagged his nub of a tail, a twinkle in his eye, relishing my fear.

How We Do

I pulled up to the stoplight the other day. It was an ordinary stoplight, an ordinary day, in an ordinary town, as ordinary as life has been made to seem these days.

So ordinary, in fact, that I was driving my wife’s minivan. It’s white. It’s got coffee stains on the cloth interior. It has almost 100,000 miles and one of the doors opens with the touch of a button. It’s not paid for, not just yet. It’s screams mild-mannered and is just so damn sensible. It would be the perfect robbery getaway car here in the Midwest, since it looks EXACTLY like every third vehicle here, minus the ubiquitous “Bush 2008″ sticker we don’t have. It’s fuel efficient. It pulls slightly to the right when braking, since she tends to drive like a meth-fueled Nascar racer, going through brake rotors at an alarming rate. It’s air conditioned. It smells of leftover breakfast things and hockey gear and quietly desperate suburban living.

It kills me.

Back to the other day. I roll up, windows rolled down to let the smell of unkempt homeless guy/ farting children out. My lovely, delightful boys were engaged in some sort of Star Wars games on their personal electronic devices, so as to keep us from actually interacting. They weren’t fighting each other, so I was feeling like Father Of The Year. I was happy to crank some tunes on the factory-issued 6″ speakers that came with our beloved minivan, plugged into my own electronic device to which I am a slave, thereby marking me as a hopelessly middle aged wannabe technophile. The music? Well, it was a gangsta-rap kinda day, and I was in the mood for some Snoop Dogg, because I can, in no way, relate to anything about the lifestyle he’s living, so of course, I love it. I love it, but I’m a semi-responsible parent, too, so I had it on the radio-edit version. I really don’t feel like explaining to my children that we don’t refer to women that way, we don’t use the n-word like that, we don’t pull our gats out and perform drive-by shootings in the name of respect. At least, not in the minivan.

So there we are, thumpin’ to the beat (or, I am) waiting, wondering if I should be a rebel today and order an iced coffee WITHOUT my requisite 2 packets of Splenda when we drive through Starbucks; I’m basically living the dream. In the distance, I hear a high pitched whine approaching that can mean only one thing: a horde of crotch-rocket sport bikes was rapidly descending upon our same stoplight. Three or four of them throttle down, pull alongside us, kick it into neutral and rev their engines several times to assert dominance over one another, and more specifically, to annoy everyone around them. And there she was.

Perched on the back of one of these Road Rockets Of Most Assured Death At High Speed, she sported low-rise jeans with the inevitable “tramp-stamp” style tattoo just above the crack of her backside, a long flowing ponytail billowing out of the back of her helmet and, get this, stiletto high heels. The helmet was a full face model, thereby leaving my imagination to fill in the blanks as to just how beautiful she most certainly was, hands clutched around the driver, who would no doubt be sporting too much Axe Body Spray and a backwards hat, if not for his helmet. As he gunned the throttle up and down, she turned her head to the side and our eyes locked. I recognized the look in those eyes. Not lust. Not love. Not like.

Pity.

Here she was, poised to take off to 115mph. in a matter of moments on a city street, looking at me, getting 18 miles to the gallon at 5mph. under the speed limit. I represented, in that moment, everything she and her sleeveless-shirted boyfriend weren’t: they were careless, carefree, willing to die in a hail of asphalt and bumpers and look damn good doing it. She was wearing STILETTO HEELS for godssakes. She probably thought I was wearing mid-calf-high socks with Teva sandals, which for the record, I wasn’t. “Wow,” she was probably thinking, “look at that poor, nasty old sap, listening to that old hip-hop with his kids in the Toyota Grocery Getter. Gawd. Who wants to live to be THAT old? Wind that throttle out again, Ricky, you stud.”

Just like that, the light went green, and they roared off to the next frat party or sports bar or cocaine-flavored techno club. “But wait, “ I feebly protested, with my fist in the air, “I have a mortgage. Health insurance. I recently lowered my cholesterol, and I make a mean piece of sourdough toast.”

Too late. She was gone, our love never realized. It never would be. She will continue to seek thrills at high speeds in high heels, and I will be in bed by 9:36pm after a nice hot cup of tea. She has no idea what she’s missing; very little can match the exhilarating feeling of knowing you can seat 8 semi-comfortably.

Just for the hell of it, I purchased that coffee without Splenda. Because, beneath this khaki exterior, beats the heart of a bad boy. A bad boy with good cholesterol and a white minivan.

The Aftermath

The image, like the flash of a lightning strike, is both instant and gone.

He stood there, stooped over, head in hands, looking over what remained of his possessions among a pile of rubble, a pile of what used to be his home. He stood alone, on the slab of a foundation, and I don’t know what he was looking at amongst the detritus. A family heirloom? A photograph of his parents? The last place he saw his wife? I’ll never know.

He was there alone in that moment, and as our fire engine rolled by on the way to another search, I caught a glimpse of him. I caught a glimpse of his personal toll, his destruction, his world collapsed. He looked sad and lonely and broken, an old man with little time left on this planet; his place, his history, his world, now destroyed like everyone else’s living in the path of that deadly torrent of wind and rain and fury.

I don’t know his name, I never will. I don’t know the name of the street, and it doesn’t matter, really. As a fire response unit assisting the victims of the tornado that touched down in Joplin, Missouri on May 22nd of this year, our job was to try and help locate victims and recover bodies of the deceased and whatever needs the command structure deemed prudent. The EF-5 tornado has claimed at least 132 lives as of this writing, and the final toll won’t be known for quite a while, if I had to guess.

There is no way to describe the scope of this furious outburst. I’ve been down there a few times now, and once you cross the line from normalcy to the path of the tornado, you feel as though you’ve stepped way out of the bounds of reality. Google “Joplin tornado” and see if the images can bring an idea of the chaos into comprehension for you; then know that the images aren’t even close to what it’s like to drive for miles with nothing but shredded homes, trees, lives as far as you can see. I cannot compare it to anything I’ve ever encountered. Overwhelming in it’s presentation, depressing in it’s effects, it is a stark and saddening reminder of the frail grip we have on control of our lives. We may hold dominion over all sorts of creatures great and small, but in the end we’re links in the chain ourselves, our position no more assured than that of any other. And that’s of little comfort to those who’s lives have been ripped apart in one angry swipe of furious winds.

Silently, with lights flashing so as to help us navigate the traffic snarls a little faster, our fire engine hastened from site to site whenever canine units got hits on the scent of human flesh, each an exercise in futile optimism. We scoured the high school, an empty and shredded cavern of what was supposed to be a safe haven from the troubles of this world, natural and otherwise. We fruitlessly searched several commercial establishments, trying to locate what may have been missed in the moments and first hours after the rage.

But I kept coming back to him in my mind. The old man there, on the foundation of his home. His eyes, in the moment that I caught them, glassy and confused and lost. What good are three firemen in a yellow truck going to do him? We can’t bring back his house, his life, maybe a loved one. We aren’t going to be able to rebuild a lifetime of memories with brick and framing and new windows. We can’t even stop to offer him solace as we’re in a hurry to get to the next call; it wouldn’t matter anyways, since people were lingering around each and every remnant of a home, each taking stock in their losses. Something about him really hit me hard, though. I wanted to stop the rig and throw an arm around the guy. I couldn’t rebuild his life in that day, nor any amount of time. I’m not from Joplin, I won’t be there months from now when he’s still trapped by the memories of that destruction, helpless against the storm. I don’t even know what he was looking at, or for. None of that matters, though….in that moment, he’s another broken human, maybe in need of comfort and solace, and I wanted to give that to him. It reminded me of why the fire service is such an incredible vocation. For the briefest of moments, we can help make a terrible situation just a little less terrible, we can connect with people who need help, need comfort, need a helping hand.

Maddeningly, we couldn’t help this man. As we sped off through the intersection, and I kept my eyes on him, my soul ached for him slightly. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you have had to endure this, sir. There’s nothing I can offer you except a heart that’s willing to offer some solace, and even that’s limited – they’ve called us over there, and you’re over here, and I have to go. I’m sorry. Later on, back in Springfield, when no one is around and life is seemingly normal, I’ll wonder about you and be overwhelmed by sadness for your loss. I’ll hope someone has thrown that arm around you and comforted you and helped you to begin to pick up the pieces. I wish that someone was me, that we’d been able to stop right there for you. I’m just so sorry.

The 3rd grade teacher implicated in the prostitution ring looks NOTHING like this. Just thought you should know.

What with everything going on with Charlie Sheen and a one Mr. Muammar Gaddafi, there’s just so much material. SO MUCH MATERIAL. And there’s only one small problem with that: EVERY ONE HAS BEEN THERE. Those two are the village bicycles at this point – everyone’s had a ride. I’m out here busting my hump, trolling the internet for worthwhile mindless fodder, such as John Edwards hiring Obama’s old lawyer, the necessity of fighting in the N.H.L. or the live sex classes going on at Northwestern University. But it turns out we don’t need to go to the dark ends of the intarwebs, or Illinois, even, to find nasty news of the weird. We need go no further than the Queen City of The Ozarks, our very own Springfield, Missouri to find the salacious dirt that is grist for a mindless mill. Really, we are leaders in so many ways here in the Show-Me-State. It’s not enough that we “enjoy” the lowest taxes on smokes in the nation (psst- we could double that tax and still be 49th, haters), that we’re arguably leading the nation in meth lab incidents, and that  our county is first out of 114 in the state in child abuse/neglect cases. No, we have a new slice of gossip pie right here in the city that boasts of being home to the worldwide headquarters of the Assemblies of God: we got us a good old fashioned prostitution ring running wild. By “wild”, of course, I’m talking about “involving 5 people”. But how do we ramp up a scandal involving the world’s oldest profession? We infuse it with potential harm to children; we find out that it involves a local school teacher! The alleged acts of ill-repute took place in a basically derelict old building in our downtown, and I took the opportunity to satirize it in a blurb on Fair City News. (In case this is your first day on the internet, all of the text in blue indicates a link to the issues). But really, there was no need, since this kind of comedy is intrinsically humorous without needing to dress it up. It leaves us, the public, three ways to look at it:

1. Relax, already. Consenting adults, we assume, are exchanging cash for pleasure. I, too engage in this; it’s called “drinking a beer down at the Pub and paying cash for it”. It’s also known as “going to the movie theater, handing them cash, and them pleasuring me by entertaining me with 2 1/2 hours of cinematic delight.” At this point it’s perfectly legal for a single young male to meet a single young female, flirt with her shamelessly and find themselves engaged in the business of freakiness. But as soon as money trades hands - BOOM! – you’re breaking the law, buster. Perhaps instead of outrage, we should spend more time on Craigslist as a method of keeping our panties out of a collective wad.
2. We should be even more outraged. In a section of the country that touts family values, God-fearin’ and all as a selling point, why do we have such high rates of crimes against kids, super cheap cancer sticks and outrageous cases of meth mouth? One way that Springfield tries to draw in businesses and people is to sell its low cost-of-living and affordable housing. The dark side of that reality is shockingly low wages, a relative dearth of cultural attractants and an environment that fosters cyclical trash. Think Winter’s Bone, which is the rural version of what we deal with on the north side of Springfield every day. While it provides for great material for fire department stories and continued employment, it really is a bleak tale.
3. They really just don’t pay teachers what they’re worth. As a way of using mockery to highlight a serious issue, I say this with the tongue out of the cheek. Spend a day in your kids kindergarten, especially you dads out there, and marvel at how those teachers don’t spend their free time shaking babies. While the wonderment of a child learning is awe-inspiring indeed, most of the time they’re shrieking and trying to burn the building down. And when they get to high school and really know all there is to know? How those teachers don’t choke the ever-loving shit out of those kids is a miracle in and of itself. Whatever they are making, it’s not enough, despite how much conservatives will screech about how easy teachers have it. They’re responsible for educating our future leaders, and somehow we feel that middle to lower class wages is “spoiling them”. No wonder they have to resort to offering more lucrative business opportunities. Remember, when in doubt, it’s ALWAYS a union’s fault, as is evidenced currently in Wisconsin, where I hear there is a life size portrait of Bernie Madoff hanging in the governor’s mansion.

I’m sure as the details emerge, we’ll act shocked, as fair citizens should, but it’s not as though this game is new to the world. I’m more shocked that this is still in issue in today’s society. The banner under our local newspaper reads “Tis A Privilege To Live In The Ozarks”. Apparently, those privileges extend beyond the realm of mega-churches and cheap housing; you just need to look in the right section of Craigslist.

Commence With The Invasion Of Hoth! / photo copyright © 2008 sean dreilinger

February is just a few days from being dead now; the epic and annual battle against the winter blues is in its final throes for the season, and there is no shortage of casualties on the battlefield. Speaking of which, when measured against the sentence our military folks are serving in that hell-hole of a desert theatre, it seems more than a little trite to bitch about the weather. I can’t help but notice, though, that right now, it’s not just me. It seems like most people I know are one more cold and cloudy day closer to dragging scissors across their wrists as a method of mundane entertainment.

Complaining about the weather, or, for that matter, fundamentalist religious folks, in the buckle of the Bible Belt is akin to moving to Utah and decrying the abundance of Mormons. Chances are the weather and the spiritually engaged were in their respective locations when we decided to inhabit their locales. They were here first, and if you don’t like it, then why don’t you move back to communist Russia, you son of a…..wait, I got sidetracked there for a moment. Where were we? Oh yeah…

February. Brown and cold, like this stale cup of coffee in front of me. I tell anyone who’ll listen how much I prefer the cold of winter to the Vietnam-like summers we get in Missouri; you can always put on more clothes when it’s cold, but in August, when you’re chewing the air and making body-sweat soup, society will only let you get so naked before they call the cops. It’s a real bummer, I tell you.

Missouri is the Show-Me-State, which sounds deliciously perverse until you realize what that means is that they’re a skeptical lot, prone to demanding evidence before they’ll accept anything, aforementioned spiritual endeavors notwithstanding. But really, the name should be changed to the “I Want Something Else State” or the “Short Attention Span State”. Whatever weather is coming up we get all giddy about, be it the tornadoes of Spring or the 3 inches of snow that may, or may not, hit us whenever. Then, when it gets here, the local news goes predictably apeshit over a serious fog pattern and immediately we’re irritated by it. Facebook and other outlets for us get clogged up with declarations of righteous fury over the climate and our eager anticipation for the NEXT season. We’re worse than spoiled kids on Christmas morning.

I’ve decided to join this particular Complain Train this time, though. This time of year always reminds me of the freezer-burnt section of the fridge. The meat is of indeterminate origin, but it’s brown and cold and icy, and even the dog turns his nose up at the prospect. Like the natives around here, I’m anxious to see the lawn green up, enjoy the mating rituals of the firefly and spend our evenings cowering in the hallway while another tornado rumbles through. We’ll enjoy lazy floats on swollen rivers, cheap beer and impulsive flashing being our entertainment, all while complaining about the heat and anticipating the fall colors and football.

But no one is looking forward to February; of this I am sure.

Wrong Hooker, but you get the idea.

Let’s face it: it’s a tough economy out there. We’re all struggling to make ends meet, even while those who control gasoline production insist on bending us over their barrels of sweet, delicious crude oil. Cities everywhere are determining that public safety should be valued on a risk/reward system, whereby it’s perfectly okay to close fire companies that are, you know, just a real drag. I’m perfectly aware of this, and while I’m grateful as can be that I still have a firehouse to call home, there may come a time where our fair citizens demand even lower taxes on their cigarettes (despite our state having THE lowest tax rate on coffin nails….read here) and I’ll be shit out of luck. If that becomes the case, I’ve decided that prostitution will become my next career advancement. I have many reasons why, but here are the top ten:

TOP 10 REASONS I’D BE A GREAT PROFESSIONAL HE-HO

1. I’m really quite unremarkable. Ladies, the last thing you need when you hire an escort is for it to be obvious that you’ve paid to have some massively strong and good-looking dude-hooker accompany you to fancy functions. Lucky for you, no one will suspect you’ve spent a dime when you show up with me on your arm, and you can claim we just “met on the internet”.
2. No middleman. Pimps have a bad reputation, and they’ve earned it. As such, my self respect demands that I do not employ said dealers in pleasure, and I can pass the savings right on to the customer. Plus, no weird canes or obnoxious hats and tricked out Monte Carlos with gold-spoke rims to contend with.
3. I can do the dishes. This is a quality that plagues many an otherwise harmonious relationship. So, for a very reasonable fee, I can come over to your house and suds up those pieces of dining ware that you’ve been leaving in the sink. There is a three day maximum waiting period on that one though, cause then we’re dealing with some gross stuff, and I just don’t get weird like that.
4. I’m a fireman. Now, before you go dreaming up someone who might be in a calendar, I mean this in a totally different way. Firemen gossip worse than hens on a fence, so maybe you need to talk some trash about that skank at work who’s clearly slutting her way to the top. I’ll not only completely understand, I’ll probably be able to contribute some completely salacious, and utterly fabricated, commentary about her clear lack of morals.
5. I have a horrible short term memory. This will come in handy when we run into each other at a local coffee shop and you’re in the company of your family. I can barely remember my kids’ names, so there’s no fear of awkward social encounters or the need to explain how we know each other….chances are I won’t recall a thing.
6. No need to be self-conscious. As The Wife informs me on a regular basis, I’m no prize; therefore, there is no need for you to feel bad about any aspect of your being, either. Worried that you may have a bit too much of a mustache for it to be considered socially acceptable? Pfffftttt….I can grow one of those things in three hours. There’s beauty everywhere and in everyone, and I’m guaranteed to see it.
7. I know how to change a tire. Do you have a long road trip that will take you along poorly paved highways, or are you worried about being car-jacked in the city? Then you should consider hiring me. I’ll bring the Funyuns, and we’ll listen to the music of the REM, and claim how we got Michael Stipe before anyone else did, thereby making us “better” than everyone. I’ll even bring a set of tools for changing a flat tire or intimidating the hell out of roadside thugs. It’ll be great.
8. I don’t hunt or fish. This is mainly a regional issue, but here in Midwest, there are many, many sportsman’s widows. Their hubbies get their goatees trimmed up, break out their finest camo and disappear into the woods or onto the lakes for days on end, all vying for machismo rights when they kill something with brains no bigger than a housecat. I could care less. So, when the fall and spring are here and you’re abandoned for the company of some other guys who smell like deer piss, give me a call. We’ll go eat some overpriced sushi and grab some Starbucks, head back to your place and burn all of his shit on the front lawn.
9. I’m tax-deductible! Apparently, for many years, The Wife has been claiming me on our tax statements under the category “financial sink-hole”. I’m not sure what this technological jargon means, but I’m 72% sure you, too, can claim our rendezvouseseses as a deduction of sorts. It’s like you’d be throwing away money NOT to engage my services; be diligent about your fiduciary duties, already.
10. I’m NOT a Craigslist Killer. I just thought I oughta put that out there.

Here For Your Soul. And Brains, Too.

On our way home from a hockey tournament lately, a friend of mine mentioned an irrational notion that he had: he said that for some strange reason whenever he travels and is at a large, international airport, that somehow, he’ll run into his ex-wife. He said he has no idea if she travels internationally, but it concerns him, nonetheless.

Several weeks later, I thought about my many irrational thoughts and I, too, have an eccentric fear, borne of ignorance: I’m scared shitless of the Amish undead.

To make sense of this, we need to travel back in time. In late 1999, when I was applying for the Springfield Fire Department, it was necessary for me to fly out here for the interview process. Up until that point, I’d only lived in California and Alaska, so I knew nothing about life in the Midwest, much less that there was a large contingent of Amish living in Missouri. So I flew out, staying up in Northeast Missouri at the ex-in-laws place which happened to be a Christmas tree farm surrounded by Amish neighbors. I found their stares and glares unnerving, not taking into account that I was the outsider, I was the curious one.

My lodgings for the trip consisted of sleeping in the enclosed porch area of a log cabin, with a good and full view of the perfectly abandoned house on the property. This abandoned red dwelling had a fruit cellar, another regional oddity that, while described as “quaint” by many, really came across as a creepy portal to all things terrifying. After enjoying a local delicacy billed as a “Pig-Hip Sammich” (technically, a fried pork tenderloin on white bread) at the local bar/pool hall/gatherin’ place, my then-mother in-law informed me that there was a storm rolling in, and we’d best be heading back to the farm.

I’m from California. We did not have real lightning and thunderstorms on the Central Coast. Forked lightning was a phenomena best reserved for horror flicks with disemboweled zombies, or, apparently, Missouri in the month of May. We headed down the gravel roads and I took in all the homes of the Amish that were merely outlined by flashes of lightning; this made me really second-guess the wisdom of spending the night out here. Let’s face it: I was coming dangerously close to realizing what a damn pansy I really am.

And that’s when it got somewhat hairy. After being left to my own devices on the enclosed porch, my mind began to cast near and far for reasons why with each thunderous clap that shook the cabin, I came close to pissing myself. This was nothing other than science in motion. I lay on the makeshift bed, family dog locked in a head clamp, chastising myself for being scared of weather. It was not lost on me in the least that I’d flown here to apply for a job where I was supposed demonstrate how NOT to be such a candy-ass. But fear and imagination are funny bedfellows, and if you’re unhinged like I am to start with, no good can come of what I later learned is referred to as “a real toad-strangler” of a storm.

Nerves on edge, dog growling from being held in a death-lock, it hit me: I was positively sure that with the very next flash of lightning, I’d see in the porch window, pitchfork in hand, an Amish Zombie. I could’ve sworn that, as the abandoned house was lit up, I saw movements near the damn fruit cellar. It was upon me. I was the only one who could see that the fruit cellar was the portal through which the Amish Undead travel, looking to feast on the brains of chicken-shit Californians who dare trod in their sphere. Only a couple of ghouls at first, but as soon as they realized I was in that porch area, they’d moan out to one another, and next thing you know, every window pane would be filled with a ghoulish, bearded harvester of souls. I had no idea that storms could last as long as they do out here.

Come morning, with no sleep to claim and one very pissed-off dog, I gazed in puffy-eyed disbelief at the house across the way, amazed that I’d made it though the night. I vowed to do my best to come up with a plan to annihilate this plague of the Amish Undead. Little did I know that within a year, that abandoned red house would become my first residence in the state of Missouri.

I lasted there less than a month.

More Leg Than I'm Comfortable Showing

As I casually surveyed a collection of friends  around our age, I found out that most of them had no plans to leave their homes for New Year’s Eve. We all apparently have kids and no burning desire to get a DWI, so it makes sense, I suppose. But after several years of turning in around 10pm after enjoying a SpongeBob Marathon, The Wife & I took up the offer to celebrate the occasion with some friends and a bunch of strangers at a costume party.

Normally, and up until our 30′s, this would not be an attractive option. When gathering in large groups, people like to enjoy the company of others that they already know; hanging out with strangers leads to many a party you attended in younger days being categorized as “lame”. We sullenly stand around, the girls all looking as though they’d rather be anywhere else in the world but here, the boys glowering at those they don’t know, silently sizing up the others’ capacity for violence, should a fight spontaneously break out. The tension is not broken by the cheap beer, at least until there’s a common rallying point: the cops get called, someone breaks a bone, there’s a loud and emotional breakup taking place in the kitchen. Then we left before anyone took the time to get to know one another, always in search of that elusive party featured in most raunchy teen comedies, the party that never happened.

So what do we do?

We stick with our own, then we grow up and have kids and focus on the merits of letting The Wiggles into our daily lives. Pretty soon, it’s just easier to remain home and reminisce about parties which were, quite frankly, lame. As people barreling towards our forties, we now consider two pints of beer on a Wednesday night at home really cutting loose, which is a tragic waste of potential, not to mention the ability to purchase quality alcohol, finally.

When the people started to gather at this party, as expected, segregation of the various attendees ensued. This time, though, something was different, and I think it comes with age. Instead of  than being deterred by this, we chose to look at it through a different lens. Rather than rolling eyes and looking for an exit, we let the vodka swirl in our tumblers a little longer, we took tentative steps into the kitchen full of strangers, and the casual prediction was made that after another round or two, we’d all end up friends for life, if not the night.

And it pretty much went down, just like that. I’ve sworn to keep the details secret to protect the not-so-innocent, but it was fun behaving even more immaturely than usual.

THIS is one of the few joys of aging: wisdom borne of experience, of heartbreak and failure and, most importantly, patience. Wikipedia (the most trusted source of the lazy) defines panache as “a word of French origin that carries the connotation of a flamboyant manner and reckless courage”. By simply combining patience with some reckless attempts at courage and ridiculous costumes, we’re finally able to bridge that awkward stranger-gap that has characterized just about every party I’ve attended since my first bonfire on the beach in 1988. That’s all it took to take a casual party up to the next level of memorable.

That, and a decent vodka.