Tag: short

The Challenger (A Napkin Note)

Zzzit’ck climbed the precipice until he stood at the ziggurat’s peak, and there he beheld Her.

“I have come, Titaness!” he bellowed. “Another challenger to bask in your glory and one who will defeat you! Many have fallen where I now stand, and I have taken the mantle of their number, their valor, and their memory. Now come, Great Lady, face me and reckon!”

And lo did the goddess, fierce and unknowable, strike down the challenger with unconquerable fury.

“Ugh, God,” Sarah grunted.
“Hmm?” grunted her husband.
“Every night I find, like, a single ant on my nightstand and I’m getting sick of it. Can you pick up more traps from work tomorrow?”
“Hmm,” he grunted again.

END

A Brief Discussion About JOMO

I’m not a hermit, I don’t play one on TV, but I do sometimes fantasize about being one.

Of course, when I say that, I’m sure I do mean “not a real hermit,” but a squishy kind. I fantasize about a cozy, far-away cabin, tucked away in the cradling arms of some distant mountain, where I could spend my days as I wished in pleasant solitude. Of course, in that daydream, that cabin also has central heating and WiFi.

But precisely what makes that a daydream is that that isn’t the real world. In the real world we have responsibilities, obligations, endure a constant barrage of attention-grabbing things and whatnot. In a world where we lead our lives in a seemingly increasingly faster and faster manner with so much going on, I’ve no doubt at least some of you have heard of the term FOMO: a Fear Of Missing Out.

If you don’t suffer from it yourself, I’m willing to bet you know someone who does. They always need the new thing on its release, or better yet they preorder it. They want to be a part of conversations they would/should otherwise pass by, and they anguish the thought of missing an event or announcement that’s got any degree of public interest. And sometimes, either feeling eroded by the anxiety of FOMO or being surrounded by those afflicted by it, it can feel like you’re on the outside.

Well, please allow me to enlighten you.

I’ve never really felt the pull of FOMO, but as I’ve gotten older (I’m 30 now, yeesh), I’ve it’s become even less so. I never would have thought to describe myself as a private person, but evidence builds more and more to the contrary. I love my friends, I love my family, I like going out and doing stuff – I do. But I also kind of love not. It makes me feel like a boring lump to say it, but dang, I enjoy quiet afternoons or evenings after work just spent at my desk, by myself in the kitchen, or on the couch. In the earlier paragraph where I described the cabin daydream as providing “pleasant solitude”, that was a careful word choice. Solitude, not isolation.

If this sounds like you at all, allow me to present to you the delightful cousin to FOMO-

JOMO: The Joy of Missing Out

Just as schadenfreude describes the tiny inner thrill at another’s pain, JOMO is the tiny inner thrill one might experience when plans get cancelled or postponed. Have dinner plans with a friend or for a beer after work with a colleague that fall through? Mmm, nice. Had plans to see a movie with your cousin but something came up and now you have the afternoon free? Cooool.

It doesn’t at all mean you didn’t want to do those things or that you dislike those activities or the people involved. You very much were happy to grab that beer, get that dinner, see that movie, socialize and all the rest, and for sure maybe there’s a pang of disappointment in there. Totally.

But that little breeze of freedom you feel now too? Aaaah, that shit’s JOMO.

So there, hopefully if you’ve felt the same way, or have wanted a way to express it but couldn’t quite find the way, now you have a word for it. And with words come power.

Go forth an enjoy life with the power of JOMO as you wish, you triumphant bastards.

Whoa, I’m Married Now

Wow. It’s been an eventful couple of months.

Since my last post – two and a half freaking months ago! – we’ve had a lot happen. My now wife and I ran off to Kauai to get married last week, and we decided to elope so it was just the two of us, if you don’t want to count our photographer and officiant. We’ve been really fortunate in that we’ve never really suffered too much pressure from family on either side, whether it was regarding a timeline to get married or what kind of an event we should have for ourselves.

And for us, elopement was the best possible scenario. After our little ceremony on the beach, we were too dang tired to think about hosting a hypothetical reception. It was a sunrise ceremony too, so afterwards we just got the rest of the day to go at our own pace and enjoy the day as we wished.

So, to anybody thinking about it, it gets a solid Thumbs-Up from us.

Now that isn’t to say that it was wholly without its drama. Before any of that could even happen, about six weeks before we were set to leave, a whole mess of compromising stuff took place. The first and certainly not least of which were the fires on Maui. Our original destination was Maui, in fact, and we were set to stay in Lahaina. We’re from California, and live in a place that has a desperately intimate history with wildfires of our own, so we did what we hoped was right, donated a part of our budget to relief efforts, and began repivoting our plans to Kauai. It was a huge disruption to our plans on such short notice, which is, again, to say nothing of the obvious tragedy to the residents of Maui, but not an obstacle that couldn’t be overcome.

But that week had more in store for us.

My mom has some health matters that I’ve mentioned on here before, and in the same few days we learned of the fires in Lahaina, her condition worsened. I would take some time off work to be her caregiver, and when we realized something bigger than myself was going to be needed, that would become a leave of absence as I searched for an appropriate assisted living facility for her.

It was a massively emotional undertaking that, if I’m honest, will stick with me for the rest of my life, and I’m going to seek therapy for when I’m able for a whole host of reasons; not least of which being that it meant we faced another question: Do we cancel our plans?

The question naturally came up a couple of times, but as I’ve put out there before, I’m a diehard optimist that can border on delusion sometimes, so my attitude was such that, in that first week, we either needed to cancel everything immediately and not waste the time and the hope, or forge ahead right away and make use of every second.

We opted for the latter, and as I sit here now, I’m supremely happy we did. It felt friggin’ impossible sometimes, there were set-backs aplenty, and at times I felt like my soul was being ground down to millet, but I tell you what…

We did it.

Mom’s in a safe and comfortable place where she’s stable and happy, my wife and I got to go get married and enjoy our honeymoon, and we did it all in time. Like, damn. It was an accomplishment in more ways than one.

Now that I’m not drowning in Life Stuff for the moment, I’ll get back to a more regular presence on here, and part of that will be going in-depth on our Kauai adventures (ziplining, surfing, snorkeling, hiking, shave ice, etc), as well as some old novel excerpting and that site design overhaul I mentioned looking into forever ago.

Otherwise, for now, it’s just good to be back. Ciao for now, y’all.

A Quick Thought on Spoon Theory

I’ve always sort of prided myself on maintaining patience as a virtue. Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t look back and see times when my patience failed (good God, my teenage years), but on the whole I regard it as a strength of mine. But now, as I prepare to exit my twenties, a decade in which a freakin’ lot has happened, just…damn.

I feel like it used to be a lot easier to be a patient person.

Nowadays most of us have heard about Spoon Theory, and if you haven’t, here’s the gist: We all only have so much battery life to us, and that’s in regards to different kinds of energy – physical, mental, emotional, social, and otherwise. And as will happen to all of us, given enough time, those energies and stores of them wear out, wear a little low, and need to be replenished.

Spoon Theory, as far as I understand it, basically represents that energy pool for socializing as a handful of spoons, and any time you might hang out with somebody in a social setting, it costs you some spoons. Everybody has a different amount of spoons on them at any given time. Somebody might have a whole drawer full of spoons, while someone else might be all tapped out, and the whole point to the thought exercise is that sometimes people just don’t have spoons to give out. It’s okay to not have the energy for something sometimes.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be imagined with spoons, I think that’s just a funny, palatable way of imagining it. But lately, I’ve come to realize something based off of something we’ve all probably heard somewhere: Butter makes everything better.

Potatoes, pancakes, toast, corn, Slip n’ Slides – everything.

And I think the same applies here.

I’m finally reading The Lord of the Rings after a long while of, well, not, and while spoons are well and good, Bilbo’s quote to Gandalf before leaving the Shire articulates the feeling the best: “’Well-preserved indeed!’ he snorted. ‘Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.’”

See? Leave it to Tolkien and a simile involving butter to accurately articulate the feeling of needing respite and the toll that regular, daily adult life can exact on the person living it.

Count your blessings, of course, and realize the Good Old Days you might be living through in the moment, but allow yourself the mercy too of recognizing when you just feel like some thin-ass butter scraped across too much of the Goddamn Bread of Responsibility.

No Rest for the Wicked

Sometime recently, I think I remember talking about the gift of gab, and my appreciation for the art of persuasion and rhetoric. To me, it’s a valuable art form that has a whole web of connected associated skills – it can help form you into a greater conversationalist, listener, or storyteller, it forces you to reflect on what something you will say can or will affect who you’re saying it to and thus affect your deliberate decision making, and so much more.

Here’s a quick story about a time where that network of skills laid a total egg and got me nowhere.

It was summer time in 2019, and for the last week I’d been on my hands and knees redoing the floors in my mother’s house as part of its renovation, all by myself. My wrists were sore, my knees were sore, as were my back, my neck, my shoulders and my goddamn will to live, but I’d gotten it done. And now it was Saturday, and I’d gone to a casino one town over to sit my ass down, have a beer, and watch a UFC event at their sports bar.

Weird thing about me: I like getting carded. I think it started when I was maybe twenty-two at a grocery store, and the clerk doing the bagging called me “sir.” When I get called “sir” or give my ID at a bar, I feel like a high-ranking government agent giving my clearance code to a classified sector or something.

Overblown, but how I feel.

Now, I had never been carded before going onto the gambling floor at this particular casino, but this time as I approach to make my way to the sports bar that is my destination, security fella by the name of Brandon, as I would come to find out, welcomes us and asks for our ID’s.

Here’s the rub. My driver’s license had expired, like, a week before this. But with the aforementioned renovating and back-breaking floor work, I hadn’t had the time or emotional fortitude to make it to the DMV yet. I don’t think it matters, but I know how the world can be. And sure enough, Brandon sucks in air through his teeth as he looks my card over and goes, “Ah, hey. Your ID’s expired.”

I play it off pretty aloofly and explain my situation with the floors and the DMV and broken spirit and such, and the whole time he’s nodding, knowingly and smiling sympathetically.

“I get it, man. But it’s still expired, and technically I can’t let you on the floor without a valid government ID.”

I laugh, pretty warmly I think. “Hang on. So, two weeks ago, I’m certifiably twenty-six years old. But now, half a month later, we just don’t know if I’m of age?”

He laughs with me and holds his hands up. “I get it, but dude it’s my job. I can’t. I’m sorry.” He laughs again. “Like, really. I am. But they’re the rules.”

“They’re dumb ones,” I chuckle.

“I agree,” he nods.

“Tell you what, man, I don’t- I’m sorry, by the way, Evan.” I hold out my hand to shake like I’m finally introducing myself, which he does and tells me his name is Brandon. “Hey Brandon. Dude, my back is f***in’ mush. I’m not here to gamble, I’m not here to even drink, I just want to put my flat, tired ass in a chair to watch the fights. Here.” I dig my wallet out of my pocket and hold it out to him. “Brother, please even, hold onto this as collateral if you have to. My butt,” I point to it, “just wants that chair,” I point to one maybe six feet behind him, “for the next two, trouble-free hours. Can you level with this broke-ass, tired-ass, tryin’-to-be-a-good-son-to-his-mother-ass bitch and let me have a seat? You can hold onto my wallet and watch me, hands on the table the whole time. That cool?”

He smiles and laughs with me the whole time, and by the end of my diatribe- well, he hasn’t exactly been won over, but he does level with me.

“Listen,” he says, “I really can’t let you through. I really could lose my job.” He takes a big breath. “But what I will say is that I go on my break in about ten minutes, and I’ll be walking away from my place here. And, like, from there, whatever happens happens, y’know?”
“You a real cool motherf**ker, Brandon,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

Now, of course, it doesn’t work. Like, it sounds nice in a conspiratorial sort of way on paper, but naturally as soon as he walked away his replacement fills his place like clockwork without room for me to slip past. So, I shrug, and start trying to work my magic on this guy.

No dice. And I throw the whole book at him: “Helping my mom,” “Ow, my back,” “Certifiably twenty-six,” “Here, take my wallet.” Everything. But Brandon must have turned his radio on while I was talking with him or something, because this dude (David, I think) just laughs and shakes his head the whole time like it’s a story he’s heard before – which he probably has, to be fair.

Well, shit. If my plan for the evening isn’t going the way I’d hoped, I’m gonna make some lemonade out of these achy, sore-ass lemons.

“So, hypothetically,” I say to David eventually after a long pause and my book of tricks has long-since failed, “if I tried to just, like, run past you, you’d probably have to stop me, huh?”

He laughs pretty good at that one, but nods his head. “Yeah, probably would,” he says.

“Would you tackle me, or, like, would you be nice about it?”

“Depends, probably.”

“Easiest just to tackle, huh?”

“Kinda, yeah.”
“Shoot.” Another long pause stretches between us, and he checks some other peoples APPARENTLY VALID ID’s in the meantime. “What if I just took that chair,” I point to the one I did earlier with Brandon, “and brought it out here?”

“Nah. Can’t let you do that either.”

“Hmm. Against the rules too?”

“Yep.”

“Fire hazard or something?”

“Yep.”

“Mm, sure. Well…shit.”

Now, I feel like I should mention that at the top of this when I said Brandon “welcomes us and asked for our ID’s,” it’s because Amanda’s been next to me during ALL of these shenanigans. While I’ve been finding it amusing, she has rightly hated the whole wasted encounter. And believe me, I tried using her as a bargaining chip more than once, like if she could be my chaperon or if I could just use the validity of her ID in the same way spouses share an insurance plan.

Shockingly, neither of those worked either.

My last gambit was to just lean against the railing and watch the screens from afar, since I was tall enough to do so without technically having my feet over the line of the gambling floor. I’d even joked with David about what he’d do if I stepped over the line to lean less far, to which he said he’d have to stop me.

Well, I’ll tell you one thing, after jabbering his ear off for the better part of half an hour, I did inch a couple toes over the line the lean more comfortably and he didn’t say a damn thing.

Boom. That’s the power of persuasion.

“You Are Absolved, My Son.”

You know the phrase “you get more with honey than with vinegar”?

I’m willing to bet you do, but I recently did a workplace poll on who had or hadn’t heard the phrase “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” and was astounded by how many people hadn’t.

So, however extra (as The Kids are wont to say these days) it may be, it basically means that you’ll garner a more positive attitude and curry more favor with folks if you’re sweet and kind than if you’re kind of a mean, smarmy douche.

A few weeks ago, I accompanied Ms. Amanda (#fiance) to a colleague’s retirement party, and this thing was a bash. There were probably two hundred people at what was basically a hilltop mansion, enough food to feed a zoo, and a live band. Like I said, a bash. Maybe a bash and a half. And all of it for a retiring elementary school teacher.

This dude was be-love-ed.

Funnily enough, since I went to this thing expecting to obviously be a plus-one that was a fish woefully out of water (which is, uh, something you say when you feel out of place, #extra), I knew a number of people who were there. I guess if you live in a city long enough, the world can only really get so big. One of them was actually the host!

Here’s to you, Chuck. Helluva place you have, and it was good to see you.

Another was one of the band members. Standing tall and proud in his cowboy hat and blue button-up playing the stand-up bass was my old high school physics teacher, Mr. Davis. First, the wash of nostalgia and familiarity hit me, but second was the dawning realization that this was going to be a day of reckoning.

Back-story time.

See, the last time I saw Mr. Davis, I was a sixteen-year-old rapscallion and troublemaker. Like I said, he taught me physics in high school, and during the segment of the year we were studying sound waves, he comes into class with a shiny set of tuning forks – they’re the two-prong things you hit on something and they go “Biiiiiiiiinnnnng!” They have practical uses, but that was the extent of my interest in them: hit thing, go bing.

So at the end of class that day, I put one of them in my backpack. I nicked it. Absconded with it. Freakin’ stole it.

I’m ashamed of it now, but at the time I fancied myself some kind of cunning rogue.

At the beginning of class the next day, Mr. Davis comes into the class room, and you can tell he’s in a somber mood. Like, really sad. After the morning announcements over the PA, he addresses us:

“Hey guys. I, uh, I noticed that in the back there, some of my tuning forks are missing. (So I wasn’t the only one!!) And I, uh, y’know, the school didn’t pay for those, I did. With my own money, and I did it because I thought they would be a fun thing for us to get to use and learn with and- ah, anyway. Hey so, if I could just get those back, I’d appreciate it. Nobody’s in trouble or anything. I could even watch you put them back. I’m not gonna get mad or say anything, I’d just, ah, I’d like my things back because…well, anyway. Yeah. Please. Thank you. Ahem, anyway, today we’re going to cover…”

Y’all. I was heartbroken over what I’d done. I couldn’t possibly have focused that day. I was so wracked with shame at having stolen this man’s property. I was a dirt bag, and I remember (stupidly) telling a friend later that I’d have felt justified if only he’d come in with fire and brimstone. But he didn’t. He spoke softly, honestly, and sadly. Christ…

I put that tuning fork back in my backpack the second that I got home that day.

The next day, when I returned it, oooooo, the glares that I got from my classmates – and I deserved them. I did it while he was out of the room during announcements, but my peers did, and his plea had tugged at their heartstrings like it had mine.

And I carried around that guilt for thirteen years, until this retirement party.

I see that Mr. Davis is in the band, and eventually the musicians go on break to get some food. As they do, I get up from my seat and follow him, calling “Hey! Matt!” (I get to call him that because I’m an adult now.) He looks back at me with an eyebrow raised, but smiles too. We shake hands, he says he’s headed to the food tables, and I say I’ll join him. On our way he asks, sort of hesitantly, “So, um, how do I know you?”

I laugh and tell him that he taught me physics a lifetime ago, and we chit chat a couple of seconds over how life has gone and where it’s taken us, but them I tell him that, actually, I have a confession. And I tell him about how I stole one of his tuning forks, but what his plea did to my conscience, and how I returned it and all the rest.

No joke, in between scoops of potato salad, he stops, faces me, and performs the sign of the Cross over me saying, “You are absolved, my son,” and laughs.

I laugh with him, but then rightly tell him, “Hey man, this might have been a joke to you, but I legitimately feel lighter all of a sudden. I’ve been carrying that shit around with me for over thirteen years.”

And it was true! Like, there was a crick in my neck that’s gone now, I sit and stand a little taller with a straighter back now. I freakin’ feel like my conscience, at last, has been cleared.

By the end of the night we bumped into one another again, brought it back up, joked, and he friggin’ hugged me. It feels good, closing the loop on a thirteen-year quest for redemption you’re on for stealing from an honest man. 10/10, would recommend.

…

But….except- just, don’t steal.

#PSA

See you guys.

Professional Profiling

Some of, if not all, of my favorite characters in fiction are scoundrels. In the conflict of a story, I have a soft spot for renegades or independent operators that stand apart from the protagonists and antagonists with their own individual goals. They’re usually plucky, funny, clever, and come packin’ a pretty sharp wit.

I would never in a thousand years say that I truly have a gift of gab, but have moments of inspiration where, if you squint, it kind of looks like I do. When my social battery’s nice and full, I love small talk, vigorous discussions, and volleying a string of jokes back and forth with someone. And I usually credit my love of fictional scoundrels as what I’m subconsciously trying to emulate in those moments.

Take for example a random Wednesday night about eight years ago. My fiancee got an invitation in the mail from a local car dealership in the form of a kind of lottery ticket. The gist of it was that it was a scratcher ticket, and if you felt so inclined, you revealed the numbers and went down to the dealership to see if they matched and collect your prize.

Of course it’s just a way to fish for new customers, get them down to the dealership, and once they’re there in person, start trying to sell them on the shiny showroom floor models. But Amanda asks if we can go, see if maybe we won a prize, and since we had nothing more significant going on in the evening, I relent. We make our way down there and naturally the salesman starts working us on whether or not we’re happy with our current vehicles, all but ignoring our “lottery” ticket.

“Fine,” I think to myself, “if this guy is going to waste my Wednesday night, I’m going to waste his.”

I start to play a game with the guy. I figure just as he’s trying to spin the conversation however he can to the subject of buying a new car, I’m going to, at every opportunity, guide it away from that topic. I take note of the time and decide to see how long I can keep us purely dancing around with light conversation and small talk.

“What’re you driving now?” he asks. “What color’s your current vehicle?”
“It’s a black Sebring,” I say. “It works for me, y’know?”
“Sure, black’s good. Any new car you might get going to be black too?”
“Don’t see why not. I know it shows dirt a bit more, but that’s fine. Only really gets dirty when I take it camping. Oo! You ever go camping? Make your way out to Salt Point or Doran?”
“Heh, I don’t think I have,” he chuckles, then prepares another car question.
“Ah, you should,” I follow quickly. “You have any siblings? Big family?”
“Sort of big,” he answers, but masks his irritation. “Only a brother though.”
“Older or younger?”
“He’s the older one.”
“Ah, cool. I’m an only child. Any nieces or nephews? It’s a good spot for kids with the beach so close.”
“I bet.” He pauses a moment, calculating. “You take your sedan to a camping place near the beach? Wouldn’t an SUV be more fitting?”
“Nah, why not? The trunk’s surprisingly spacious, and I only make it out there maybe once or twice a year. And I mainly go to fly my stunt kite. You ever fly a kite as a kid?”
“Not really, no.”
“Dang. Ever hear of stunt kites?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Shoot, dude. Alright, next time you’re heading out to the coast, there’s this little shop called Candy and Kites. I swear, check them out and….”

Rinse and repeat for about the next hour or so. I say “or so” but I’m not perfectly certain we made it a full trip around the clock, but I’d like to think I did. My poor fiancee stayed mostly quiet during these exchanges, so I do ultimately have to reconcile the fact that there was some conversational collateral damage in boxing her out like that.

But, that said, it was because of her that we got the golden nugget that, almost a decade later, we remember that night for. Eventually, probably sensing that she’d been mostly quiet up to about the half-hour mark (and likely truly tired of my meandering small talk), our salesman turns to involve her in the conversation.

This is also a good point to mention that we were about twenty-one years old when this took place, and our salesman was GREEN at the job, maybe our age or a hair younger than us. So he’s somewhat fresh out of high school and now in a charisma-driven job trying to handle a bored jackass with no business there (me). That became relevant and especially noticeable with what came next, since I will forever remain positive that what he said was straight out of his salesman’s handbook.

“And how about you, miss?” he asks, turning to Amanda. “What do you do for work?”
“I work at an artisan meat and cheese distributor,” she said delightfully.
“Ah, you look like someone who works with artisan meats,” he replied.

…

…

Um, what?

I will not be convinced out of my certainty that that guy was going off of a template, “Ask Question A: ‘What do you do for work?’, and plug their answer [X] into Response B: ‘Ah, you look like someone who does [X].'”

This guy was expecting- nay, praying for something like Teacher, Nurse, Secretary, Banker, Waitress, f*cking Dispatch Operator. Literally anything other than “artisan meat and cheese.” There was a palpable beat the moment after he said it, and his eyes were glued to his computer screen after he did, so I’m guessing that he gave the B-side of that response by reflex and the inside of his head sounded like this: “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” etc.

I don’t remember how we reacted, but I’d like to think that it was with polite silence. I know that if we were being open and honest, our response would have been, “Yeah? You just have that profile in your head? Firefighter. Accountant. Mechanic. Nurse, or Teacher. Like, those are stereotypes I can understand having a picture of in your head already. But I go diving for the mental file on Artisan Meat and Cheese Lady, and I’m sad to say I don’t have that one on record already.

Some time after that, our sales guy goes “to get our prize” (it was a [probably counterfeit] $2 bill), and comes back with an older gentleman that looked like a senior salesman–probably our guy calling in the cavalry. And this guy’s veteran savvy showed through immediately:

“Hey, evenin’ guys,” he says.
“Hello hello,” I beam back.
“You two interested in buying a car tonight?”
“Ah, no sir, I don’t think I am.”
“Anything I can say to change your mind?”
“At this point it time, I don’t think there is.”
“Mm, well you two have a good night.” Then he nodded politely enough and walked away.

What a pro.

It wasn’t long after that that we left, but the legend of that guys endures to this day, and Amanda and I together have long joked that we should get t-shirts made. Not totally sure what the design would be, and we’re halfway joking anyway, but I imagine a black tee with a Dork Tower art style salesman on the front saying, “You look like you work with artisan meats!” Or maybe just plain text in a goofy font. Nonetheless, the joke would be for us.

Unless…

If we were to bump into that guy out there, in this wild, wild world, and he recognized us…

Because, as a point to close this story out today, I recognize that all of us, every single one, puts our foot in our mouths occasionally. But I do sincerely hope that that guys, wherever he might be, thinks back to that interaction every so often and shakes his head in shame. Just a victim of circumstance, that. And maybe he’s gone onto become a super salesman, or became a famous drummer, but regardless, it’d be a reunion for the ages.

Ciao for now.

Chicken and Waffles Almost Changed my Life

There’s another universe out there, parallel to this one, where I became a millionaire as a teenager.

As I think I’ve mentioned on here at some point or another, my first job out of high school was as a lot assistant for a car dealership. It was an absolute circus of colorful characters and some outrageous personalities. And as is tradition for a first job, it paid like crap but acted as a wellspring for interesting stories I still get my jollies by telling today.

One that I remember I didn’t find interesting at all when it happened, but that I caught myself recounting a couple of days ago and made my jaw drop when I realized what I was saying, is as follows:

I was nineteen at the time, and Amanda and I had just started dating. I’d been at the job for about a year, but I was the lowest possible part of the totem pole, obviously. But of course – again, being nineteen – my year’s tenure meant that I felt firmly established there. We were going to take a trip down to Los Angeles for about a week to get out of town for a little while, and being that my job paid like crap, I was short on cash to actually help make that happen. To be clear, the trip was Amanda’s brainchild, planned by her, using her car, and all else. I was just happy to come along. But I still wanted to be able to contribute something other than a weakly charming smile.

So I went to the owner of the company and asked for a loan.

Oh, to be naively optimistic as a teenager. I should mention that this dealership was huge, not just somebody’s corner lot. It sprawled over multiple acres of paved parking lot, with several buildings, some thousands of vehicles, and remains a somewhat prominent part of the city. I still remember walking to the administrative building where the owner and president of the company had his office, asking his receptionist if he was in, and the confused look on her face when she let me in. Looking back, I’m sure she thought either I knew something nefarious that she didn’t or that she was looking at the beginning of some kind of lawsuit she would get to gossip about later. After all, I was a peasant boy requesting audience with the king.

But goddammit, it worked.

I walked in, shook his hand, and explained my situation, that I was going on a trip with my new girlfriend but was short on cash, wondering if I could get an advance. And remembering it now some ten years later, I feel I can better interpret the “Sure, let me understand you clearly” look on his face I saw at the time now more appropriately as, “Who the fuck is this kid, and is he being goddamn serious?” But by what I’m guessing is some combination of sympathy for a young buck just trying to do right by his lady, and a shade of respect for the sheer freakin’ brazenness of who was naively asking who for what here, he took out his wallet and handed me a hundred dollars of his own money, saying, “This isn’t an advance. This is a loan, and I expect to be paid back.”

It was a bonding moment.

And I did just that. I paid him back in full soon as I was able when we got back, and I mentioned it in passing to my manager maybe a week later. He went white as a sheet and asked me to clarify. When I simply repeated that I went to the owner of the company for a cash loan, his voice changed to the nervous tone of one who just missed a bullet whizzing past his head. “Just…uh, you know, uh, in the future, just- um, just come to me with that sorta thing.”

Now, again, to stress, I think it only worked because I was an adorable, dumbly innocent kid. I tried that kinda crap now, no way it’s working and nobody’s feeling bad for me.

Another brief adventure was getting lost in San Francisco. This was before GPS in phones really took off in any sort of a reliable way, and my phone was a cheap toy anyway. I was delivering a courtesy vehicle to a customer about an hour south of the city (the dealership is located an hour north of the city, so it was a day with a lot of driving), and when I asked them directions for the best way to get home, they started listing off a whole bunch of complicated turns and routes. “Yeah, you’re going to want to take this highway to this junction, then merge to this other junction, then turn here to merge back to this, to that, to this” so on and so forth. And so the whole time in my head I’m going, “Right. Take Highway 101 the whole way back.”

What I didn’t know is that Highway 101 in California goes through San Francisco where I was. And that the turn to remain on 101 was reeeeaaally easy to miss if you didn’t know it was coming, because the sign telling you so is reeeaaally small. So I suddenly find that I’m utterly lost in the city in a big expensive truck that’s low on gas and no sense of where I am. That being the case, I channeled my inner D&D nerd and put together a survival plan.

“What do I know about San Fran?” I asked myself. Well, it has a lot of hills and there’s water by the Golden Gate Bridge (which was what I was trying to find as my way home). So, I figure, I’ll just use a hill to go up high, find the water, then drive towards the water where I’ll find the bridge.

Which friggin’ worked perfectly. I felt like an old school explorer, like Francis Drake or Ferdinand Magellan.

But what crowned them all, probably, was the situation that inspired this post’s title.

Maybe a few months into the job, a friend from high school, Austin, also got hired on for the same position. Now there were two of us (a number that would later grow, but that’s irrelevant here). He and I are getting lunch one day from a nearby deli, and he picks up a bag of Lays potato chips to go with his sandwich. We get back to the lot and are eating in the break room when he takes a look at the back of the bag.

“Huh, check this out,” he says, and points to a spot on the back of the bag promoting a contest that Lays was having wherein people could call in with ideas for new flavors of potato chips. So we start bouncing ideas back and forth before ultimately falling on Chicken and Waffles. We agree that one’s a winner, and Austin calls the number on the bag, putting the call on speaker. A little bit of menu-hopping later, we’re connected to a representative for Lays. She asks us for our chip flavor, we give our genius suggestion of Chicken and Waffles, to which she tells us that that’s not an applicable flavor and ends the call. We shake our heads about how she’s kind of a donk (we used different words, though) and go about our day. That is until a couple of months later, when Lays unveils their new chip flavors and contest winners (and million dollar recipients).

Among the chosen flavors: Chicken and Waffles.

Austin and I are close to rioting, when the winners’ details are also revealed, and apparently a lady from Illinois had submitted our own genius flavor hardly a week before we had. I remain convinced to this day, however, that that lady doesn’t actually exist and that the game was rigged from the start. I’d bet a bag of chips that the woman on the phone with us that day experienced that phone call like this: “Hello, Lays’ chip flavor contest hotline, what is your suggestion? Ahuh. Ahuh. I’m sorry, that flavor isn’t applicable.” <hangs up phone, begins scribbling on a notepad> “Chicken and waffles, hot damn. That’s a good idea. Gonna go to the boss with this one.”

But my hare-brained Big Chip conspiracy theories aside, yeah, bottom line is that Austin and I were apparently just a few days separated from being potato chip millionaires.

Ah, what could have been.

Ciao for now, y’all.

The Legend of Eagle Grandpa

A couple of years ago, I told the story of when I learned not to be “That Guy”.

The short version is that I was standing at an ATM when someone was hit by a car, and being EMT certified at the time, I was going to finish up my transaction and go attend to the gentleman – basically hold him still and ask questions while someone called 9-1-1. In the couple of seconds it took for me to retrieve my card and turn around, there was already another fella doing exactly that, in as calm a manner as I could have or better. So, looking around to see a light crowd already forming, I figured it was best to leave rather than further congest the scene. However, there was one dude, who was hellbent on involving himself. He had long hair, sandals, and a loose backpack, and he was throwing himself at cars on the insistence that traffic in the area needed to stop. He even tried chasing one down the road in those dorky-ass sandals to get his point across.

Moral of the story: If there’s no meaningful way you can contribute to the resolution of a situation, then the best thing you can do is not get in the way. But whatever you do, don’t be that guy.

Well, a couple of months ago, I mean a new Guy.

We were in Texas visiting my fiancee’s parents, and one of our days there was spent going to her cousin’s college basketball game. Now, I’d been to basketball games before – heck I’d been in a couple – but they had all been high school level or lower. I didn’t really see any reason why a collegiate basketball game would be any different.

Boy howdy, was I ever wrong, sorta.

It was a home game for Amanda’s cousin, and as the visiting team is getting introduced, it’s a pretty ho-hum affair. “Introducing first, Point Guard for the Wherever They’re From Raptors or Something, #5, Jimmy What’s-his-Butt.” You got a weak smattering of applause from what sparse crowd there was, and this repeated for the other four starting players. But when they started introducing the Home team…

Damn.

The lights when down, spotlights began tracing the arena, music blared, and the announcer turned their mic way the hell up. It was like we got teleported straight to the middle of an NBA scrimmage game or something, and the announcer’s bias was…well, he wasn’t hiding it.

“Now, welcome to the court – he’s lean, he’s mean, he’s a divine blend of American steel and sex appeal, hung like a horse and has got a bright future – your Point Guard of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Cruuuuusaaaaadeeeers, #11! Johnny “God-Given” Griffin!!”

It was nuts.

The game was pretty great, too. Fast, competitive. A fun affair all around.

But the whole time the teams battled back and forth, I couldn’t help notice one guy. He was a spectator like us, older, and was sitting courtside beside one of the hoops in a fold-out chair with a straight posture and his arms crossed in front of him the whole time. He must have been someone’s grandpa or coach or something. Maybe he had a lot of money riding on the game, I don’t know, but he was less watching the game for fun and more examining the game with the intensity of a diving eagle.

Good thing he was, too, because while the offense was on his side of the court, a pass went wide and rocketed his way. And when I say “rocketed”, I do mean that this basketball crossed space with the speed of a bullet, and it flew straight at Coach Intense Eagle Grandpa.

This guy…doesn’t even flinch.

And he probably does kung fu.

This basketball flies at his face with enough speed to challenge the sound barrier, and in the half-moment it takes for the ball to reach him, his hands are out in front of him catching it a few inches from his nose. It was like when the hero in a cheesy martial arts movie catches the sword between their palms. It was rad. He does this, holds it for a quarter-second, and bounce passes it back onto the court like nothing happened.

THAT’S the guy you want on your team, giving you advice, or setting an example when the shit hits the fan. When a situation arises, don’t be a Loose Backpack. Be an Eagle Grandpa.

News and Blog To-Do’s

Well’p, it’s about that time once in a while where I crawl out from under my rock and fulfill the promise to myself to write on here again. That means it also comes with my usual disclaimer that it isn’t that I don’t love this little slice of internet that I get to call mine – I think I’m just lazy. Also I’m a bit of a firm believer that one should most be heard when they have something to say, and I…just kinda haven’t, lately.

But, I am alive, and that’s kind of cool.

In the meantime, I also swear to myself every time that I’ll get more punctual about announcing this sort of thing when something cool happens, but since I haven’t learned my lesson yet: News dump!

It’s been a busy month of fiction publications, writers’ meetings, and fun newspaper shenanigans, and about a week and a half ago I got to check an item off my Bucket List that I didn’t wholly realize was a Bucket List item until I did it – I did a book signing!

The short version is that a little bit ago we made a regular visit to a local game store Goblin Bros, and I noticed that they stocked an anthology series I was about to have work appear in. My fiancee had more wherewithal than I can ever lay claim to and actually mentioned it to the fine folks working there, wherein they were gracious enough to invite me to do a signing for a few copies.

I felt like royalty for an afternoon. (Who am I kidding? Almost two weeks later and I’m still riding that high.) And special thanks need to go out to Amanda and my good friend Dylan for being my emotional support people and keeping me in line while I made my squiggles.

The folks at Flame Tree Publishing were super cool to work and cooperate with, and same goes for the editing team at Crow & Quill for my other work that they helped join the literary world (I might just keep trying to do this stuff thanks to Tiffany’s kind and uplifting words). My story with FTP is a (dang fancy) reprint of my first-ever story “The Sixth-Gun Conspiracy Letters”, and C&Q’s anthology ‘Rituals and Grimoires’ now has my story “Speaking to Shades”, which is one that I’m really proud of, so I’m glad it’s found such a worthy home. (Ye can find it here https://thecrowshoppe.com/…/rituals-grimoires-gothic… if ye was interested.)

I know I started this post with the ritual “It’s been, like, six weeks (again), but here I am”, but I’ve also been considering doing a bit of a remodel on this whole thing. When I started it, I think it’s pretty well evident that not a whole lot of design philosophy went into the aesthetic. I just kind of slapped it together and was like, “I’ll make it yellow. Yellow’s a happy color.”

And I’m right about that.

But it only takes maybe a gram of honesty with myself to see that it’s lacking – earnest, simple, and modest, but lacking nonetheless. So in the next couple wee- okay, no. There will be an eventual remodel of sorts so this can be a halfway respectable slice of internet. A proper About Page, Contact Me, a list of Published Works, a Gallery or some junk – I don’t know, but more of what good, respectable, upstanding websites of internet society have.

I’m also going to take it back to its roots juuuust a little bit. The whole mission statement of this blog was in its namesake: The Light of Day, ie “that thing most of my work will never see.” I definitely have fun just ranting on here and thinking out into the void over just sharing scrap notes, but I think I’m going to piece out an old half-a-novel I had in the works from some years ago. Like the beloved work of the great Patrick Rothfuss and the monumental George R.R. Martin before him, the aforementioned project is hella unfinished. And it’s definitely without any plans to carry it forward into full literary life, but this is as peaceful a resting place / chance at second life I can think of to offer it with how blessedly busy I find myself these days.

Anyhoozle, Christ Almighty, that’s WAY more than enough of me talking about myself, so please continue your lives in just as awesome a manner as before I interrupted it.

You da bes’.

Ciao.