Flat Stanley's Day of Horror

Last night Blooger wouldn't properly upload pictures. In the morning, I was delighted to see Horror on my computer. I had to wait for the plumber to get the hot water fixed, so I had me a little extra time to think this morning- and that's usually how I get myself in trouble- by thinking.
Well, maybe it's not the thinking that's the problem, it's the ideas and thoughts that come with thinking that mess things up. I started thinking that trying to make sense out of why people do what they do is about as easy and useful as trying to make a canoe out of mud. Just thinking about all that crazy uselessness made me want to do something crazy of my own. So I took Horror out on a Flat Stanley Day.

First, we had coffee and blogs."Look," squealed a giggly Horror, "I'm on TV!"

So what else is new? Fuck, I'm running late waiting for work because I had to wait for a shower- I'd better drive in and eat the parking costs...damn.

--

You know, by the time I pay for tolls and parking, I'll lose money by rushing to work. It costs almost twice as much to park for a day as I make in a hour- I'll save money by arriving at work later. I love this logic!
I opt for the noon bus. Honestly, I wasn't too keen on driving around with Horror, so the bus was kinda my excuse to keep Horror off the road, if you understand.


--
I'll give Horror credit for this : It can sell the motherfuckin' hell out of some newspapers. The last time I saw this box empty was after the Harvey family murders.

--

"No one likes me," pouted a petulant Horror as it sat alone on a cold metal bench.

If only that were true, I thought.

--



Usually, I relax and read on the bus, but today it was hard to concentrate with Horror looking at me like that.

--


Downtown Horror. It's not so bad really, except the clock in the tower Horror is leaning on has some chimes that are seriously out of tune.

It's horrible on the hour.

--


Well, here we are. There's nothing between me and the office except traffic and Horror.
That's pretty much the case every day.

--


I do not like elevators. They don't exactly fill me with Horror, but they do make me nervous. Going up?
Crowd me in with Horror and it's more like throwing up.

--


Horror likes a good cup of coffee but we don't have that kind here. I give it some decaf and hope it settles down. I have work to do and don't have time to busy myself with Horror.

--



Horror awaits me at my desk.

--


I guess all those newspapers Horror sold had to go somewhere.

--

I've seen a few training flicks about what to do in case of a mailroom Terror incident, but I'm really not sure what to do with Horror. My first impulse is to mail it somewhere very, very far away- like to the Sun. The hot part of the Sun.

--

I looked at our building's All-You -Can- Eat buffet with Horror and sorta lost my appetite.

--

A real Horror NEVER gives it away.

--
A little indoor garden of Horror brightens up the lobby.


---

And finally, home with Horror. It instinctively leapt from my hand and into my mailbox, which is where Horror customarily waits for me in the evening, nestled amongst the bills and pre-approved credit card offers.

----------

The really weird thing is I spent all day taking pictures of public Horror and no one- not my boss, no one- nobody at all even gave me a second glance or asked what was up with the Horror pics.

That's horrible.

The Doctor's Office

I have only mentioned this to a few people and never in public, but I've been feeling poorly lately.
Fatigued at mid-day.
Out of breath for no reason- jog up several flights of stairs, carry heavy loads etc, no problem...get up in the middle of the night to pee? I'm winded.
No pattern to it. I have a not-so hidden fear of illness, and heart disease is near the top of my list of medical phobias. I am so afraid of it that I have only mentioned my recent poor health to a few people- knock wood.

I have likewise been keeping mostly mum on my insurance woes - but today I finally got my health insurance. I called my doc right away.

When I mentioned shortness of breath, he said he wanted me to come directly in. So I did.

There was a new receptionist on duty, a middle-aged woman with a very sad face...as she weaved her way through my new insurance info she muttered something about insurance carriers. There was a peculiar, intense edge to her mumbled words that caused me to do a double-take:

"Pardon?"

"I said you've had quite a few carriers in the last several years, Mr. C.," she said, her voice now heavy with weary compassion.

It was a statement, not a judgement , but my reaction was defensive.

"Well, I've had a lot of jobs...and the ones I keep usually change insurance carriers every year. To save money, they say."

"Honey, we see this all the time ...all day...it's terrible. Do your premiums ever go down when they "save money?"

Aha. This woman had some sort of issue with The System, not with me. I felt like I could talk to her, so I did.

"No, of course my premiums never go down. I can barely afford my share, in fact. I've felt like hell for a month and haven't been able to afford a visit until today. It's absolutely shameful how our country refuses to care for it's citizens."

"If you were in prison, you'd get free medical."

Prison? Huh? Where is this headed?

"Excuse me?"

" The bastard -pardon my French- who killed my son. He gets free medical care. For life. He had an appendectomy last month and I was praying that he would die. He didn't. He killed my boy. My boy was only 23."

"I...."

"Your new co-pay is $20. It was ten. They need the extra money so they can give free medicine to the man who killed my son. They plan on keeping that man alive forever. In prison."

As she said this it was clear that she considered the murderer's incarceration to be her own, that her life would always be stalled at that moment , the moment that she learned her son was dead. In her heart, as long as her child's killer had a future, she herself did not.


"I...I think I know...," I stammered, but I don't know, so I shut up and listened. This woman's anguish was compelling.
I am strong.
I am powerful.
I am helpless in the face of a mother's grief for her murdered child.

I have been told a little about this sort of justice and how it feels.
Told by someone who wasn't quite murdered and by someone who was.
But that's all I can know.
Because I wasn't there. It didn't happen to me.

It wasn't my son who was killed.

It wasn't my son who grew up wanting to be a soldier just like his Daddy, only to drop out of West Point because he was broken-hearted over what had happened to our military. It wasn't my child that returned home without any dreams left, and it wasn't my kid who lost his life just because he wanted to help his mom by taking out the trash.

It was her son who wanted to be a soldier and it was her son who was shot in the heart while dumping the garbage for his mom. He died in the alley a few seconds after his parents heard the shot.

He was murdered as part of a gang initiation. When apprehended, the killer explained that it was nothing personal, just that "somebody had to die that night and he was there"...as the woman told me this story, I could picture this inhuman creature as it calmly explained how sure, "it wasn't personal - we just murdered your son because it's better than being bored..." and I KNEW that this animal would never, not once, have even the slightest touch of remorse over what it had done.
In fact, the creature didn't seem to think it was treated fairly.
After all, someone had to die. It wasn't personal- why was everyone so upset?

That is how the animal thinks. It wasn't my son in her story , but I have met the animal.
I know others who have and not a single one of us is better for the meeting, but we have survived the encounters, with varying degrees of success.
Nietzche was wrong.
Not everything that fails to kill you makes you stronger.

I managed to choke out a few words about two friends of mine who fight this animal war every day but I couldn't get it out properly. I could tell from my voice that I was about to burst into tears and I wasn't sure I would be able to stop if I did.

"I'm sorry...I'm not used to talking about this. I didn't mean to bring all that up...", words that could have been spoken by either one of us, but in this case it was her to me.
And I'm not used to it. I'm used to writing about my feelings; I am not used to talking about them.
There is a huge difference.

" No," I said, " it's OK. Most people don't talk about this sort of thing. We hold it in until it kills us because that is easier than talking about it."

She reached through the sliding glass window and squeezed my hand.

"People should talk more often," she said and handed my paperwork back to me.

By the time the doctor saw me I had almost finished crying.




My doctor is an extraordinarily kind man and I've been seeing him for almost ten years. He has seen me through a (temporarily) crippling neurological illness; my first panic attacks and a nearly fatal addiction.

He has never seen me cry.

But he understood.

Now. What seems to be the matter?

I described my symptoms.

Hmmm...I haven't started smoking cigarettes have I?

No sir, just marijuana.

No alcohol?

Not a drop.

Mind if I look?

Go ahead, please.

(Note to alcoholics who think that they can fool their doctor: You can't. He can look down your throat and tell if you are a drunk. If he can't , you need a new doctor- not that drunks practice much preventive health care. It's almost always a sudden ER trip that gets them)

My doctor is very proud of my sobriety. He tells me that the chances of me doing what I have done are almost impossible, yet here I am.
I am not ashamed to admit that I needed to hear that.
That I do need to hear it from time to time.
That I will probably always need to hear it.

He used his ears and a stethoscope- still one of Medicine's finest tools- I took breaths until I nearly hyperventilated. Through the nose. Now the mouth. Nose. Mouth.
Dizzy.


Well. I was sent to have some precautionary X-rays, but the doctor seems to think that I have developed an allergy- my heart and lungs sound fine, but my sinuses are draining and seem obstructed.

He believes that I have developed an allergy or twelve and it is causing mild asthmatic attacks. This , I was told, is not nearly as bad as a heart attack.
Cool.

So I was given an inhaler.
I have to laugh.
It fits.

See, despite all the hype, I'm really just a nerd who likes Dungeons and Dragons, comic books and record collections.
I'm not even cool enough to wear horn-rimmed glasses- only cool geeks get those...but now I do have an inhaler!

I'll keep it in my Pocket-Protector, next to my Bic pens, my d20 and my Texas Instruments math machine.

Right above my heart, which seems to doing fine.

Man, I was really worried and was afraid I'd have a stroke any second or something...asthma?
The inhaler seems to work.

I am literally breathing easier!

Now, will my new sleeping pills be enough to counter the speedy feeling from the inhaler?

Bright Future

Have you ever microwaved a 60-watt lightbulb? It glows like a mother-fucker.

It's probably not a very smart thing, this microwaving of lightbulbs- (or shiny-side up CDs for that matter) but it's incredibly bright visually, the bulb turns into a laser show- so many colors...and that crazy excitement of wondering how long is too long to nuke a lightbulb is one of the purest, sweetest adrenaline rushes you can find in your kitchen...

Anyway, don't go off and zap your bulbs- I was just using the nuked bulb as a way of expressing how bright and unruly the future can be.

I'm sort of at an impasse at work- they haven't given me the money or insurance I was promised and what's worse, this is the second time they have done this. They did it to me the last time I worked for them. It took me three months longer than it should have to get my insurance in 2005, during my first stint at the Firm.

I allowed it to happen. I went backwards and going backwards is never a good idea for me.

Last year, shortly before Thanksgiving, I quit my current job and started my 'dream job', which turned out to be a nightmare and lasted three days.
By Christmas I was nearly broke and by 2007 I was only a few months from eviction, so I went back to my old job, which is now my current job again.

It's like going back to an old lover after a long separation- in their absence you start remembering the good things...so you make that call...and before long you suddenly remember why breaking up was a good idea in the first place.
Only now you have to go through it all over again.

Well, my recent dating experiences have been about as successful as my last job hunt- either settling for going backwards or settling for nothing at all. Sounds bleak, but it's just because I didn't meet anyone who really, truly got me going, who turned me on. Same with the jobs. No excitement, just a paycheck.

No sparks.
A drained relationship or a dead-end job.
But that doesn't mean anything about the future.
The future might explode.

It's a longshot, but I took a chance and applied for what really would be my dream job. It's in radio, NPR to be precise, but I don't want to count my fetal chickens until they are frankfurters* , so I'll be oblique with the details- but it would involve moving very far away.

I put a lot of time and thought into it.

Am I ready to pack up and leave everything behind just to follow my dreams?

Yes. Hell yes.

I am somewhat content here, but that's out of complacency, not satisfaction. I love my radio, but it doesn't pay- and I hate my job , and it barely pays...I have no kids...no band...no girlfriend...just my own fear keeps me here. If I had a guaranteed radio job with decent pay, a good environment and full insurance, I'd move almost anywhere and the rest will work itself out.

I thought this out and decided to apply.

It's a very specialized position and I just happen to have the variegated and somewhat arcane skills required- and the offer was sent directly to our station's volunteer manager from their station's manager...did she know anyone interested? (Indie radio is a small world) She Fwd the email, which I got this morning.

Well, I am interested. I am fascinated. Radio has literally saved my life and a career in public broadcasting really appeals to me.
A lot.
It's not glamorous or high-paying or anything, but it's what I want to do.

So I sent a nice cover letter , a list of utterly awesome, yet true ,things about me and my resume to them.

Nothing may come of it, but I wouldn't know unless I tried.

I tried. Now I wait.

Wish me luck. I need it.





*Yes, that is what chicken franks are made with.

Kathyrn

I was idling at a red light, enjoying the cool evening air, when Kathyrn and some dogs I didn't recognize crossed in front of me. Damn, I haven't seen her for at least six years - she still looks great; I swear she looks younger, but that doesn't surprise me.

She always seemed happy and healthy, even when times were tough.

That's when we met- during tough times. Kathyrn owned a small novelty shop next to the comicbook store that I managed from 1990-97. It was in a not-good part of town, but near enough to campus to get college business and rent was cheap enough to make the location seem plausible for retail...
Her store was called 'World of Mirth' and sold everything from boxing nun puppets to exploding gum.
Need some fake vomit? Check!

A glossy hardcover coffeetable book of WWII pin-up gals? Roger that!

Little capsules that turn into dinosaurs when you drop them in water? Yep!

How about a wind-up mechanical rat? Got it!

We weren't really friends outside of our shops, but we did share a certain shopkeeper camraderie - we both ran stores on a block that was pretty bad- the local college had been (still is) waiting for all businesses on it to close so it could purchase the land for pennies- the area was left to rot and was known for it's beggars, dealers, muggers and transvestite hookers.

Sometimes we'd grab a drink 'round the corner bar and "talk shop".

Usually we'd drink tequila and talk about what a shitty location our stores were in.

She moved her store to a better street after a year or so, but I digress...back to this evening...

I smiled at her and waved through the windshield- I was certain she'd say 'hello' at least, but she just smiled, shrugged and held up a tangle of leashes.

My hands are full of dogs, she seemed to say.

Oh well.
She sure does look good.
I know that she's my age, but she looks ten years younger.

Time has been very kind to Kathyrn, I thought.

The light turned green and I drove about a mile before I remembered that Kathyrn, her husband and their three children had been murdered at the very beginning of last year.

Time is a son-of-a bitch, I thought.