If there aren't any fairies, what about the quarters?
The little girl wasn't trying to just to start a conversation. Her question had been on her mind for several weeks. Ever since the day after she got money for a tooth that came out while eating an apple. At recess a boy that wasn't in her class that she didn't even like told her there was no such thing as the tooth fairy or any kind of fairies for that matter. Fairies are made up like God and Jesus. The boy's parents were librarians. Lot's of what the boy said was pure foolishness, but the fairy question vexed her.
When the constant interior debate concerning fairies became too much for her she decided to check with her ultimate source of all knowledge both good(Guess who's coming to visit?) and bad.(Your puppy probably didn't even feel it.), her father. His oracle-ness looked down at the little girl and said, "Princess what are you talking about? I can promise you that in fact not only do fairies exist, I even know at least one."
Her father worked for the government. He had explained to his daughter that his job was to, "think up stuff." When she asked what kind of stuff he pretended to zip then lock his lips and throw away the key. Top secret government stuff is what she figured. The little girl hoped it had to do with rockets or new inventions or maybe fairies. Anything would be okay with her as long as it wasn't government war stuff. Even at her young age she hated war stuff. Maybe her dad was working with fairies to see if there was a way to stop all the wars. Fairies could use their dust and their wands as anti-weapons and stop the wars. Her dad and his friends at work would get medals from President Kennedy for stopping all the wars. She'd never been to Washington, D.C. It would be a fun trip.
One night as the little girl's father was smoking his last cigarette before going to bed his wife asked him, "Honey, why would you tell Myra that silly stuff about fairies? I mean, I can't disagree with telling her they exist, but to say you know one, honestly."
He inhaled deeply, the tip of the cigarette glowing, and exhaled, playing with the smoke, inhaling it back through his nose and ending with a smoke ring blown through a smoke ring. "What would you say if I told you that I do know a fairy, that I work with one?"
She looked at her husband not quite comprehending his meaning. She thought she understood, but wasn't sure if she believed.
"Yeah, he's one of the guys in our pod. That's what they are calling our task groups now, pods. What a crock! Where do they get this junk? I think they must have another pod that is assigned to constantly create terms and acronyms just to keep us on our toes. When he transferred in because I'm his pod master... I'm kidding. It was a joke... Anyway I had to read his folder. It didn't say anything outright but at the same time it was pretty clear. I don't think anybody else knows and it doesn't matter to me. You'd never guess it. He seems just like a normal person. He's not swishy or anything. He's very good at his job."
"Who is it?"
"I'm not gonna say. It doesn't matter." He smashed the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray and got into bed. "See, I wasn't lying to her."
MORE TO FOLLOW
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
What do friendship bracelets really mean?
What do friendship bracelets really mean?
Another tale of dismemberment and love...
Many years ago I met a girl. At the time she seemed like the perfect girl for me. As I sit and type I can see her face as clearly as I could on the day we met. Emotions flood me that are no different from that day in Goodyear field. She gave me a friendship bracelet. It was a leather cord. The friendship bracelet had 2 turquoise colored beads about the size of a gum balls. Between the beads was a small bell made of cheap pot metal. It came from India. That's what she told me. The sound it made couldn't honestly be called ringing. It was more the sound of the clapper hitting the shell and sound stopping. When you would expect to hear the ringing tone of a bell you heard nothing but dead air. It reminded me of the sound a cotton ball makes when you drop it on a concrete basement floor. The girl told me she gave the bracelet to me to prove something. She never told me what that something was.
Looking back it seems unusual that you would find your soul mate in Goodyear field. Goodyear field was our field, our domain and why would anyone expect to find a stranger, especially a Catholic stranger that didn't go to public school in our field. It was a thing totally unexpected. It must be remembered that the girl haunted me then and still does today.
We lived on the west end of town. Our street ran east and west. To the east was the rest of our town. To the west was a handful of houses and then our street crossed the west most street in our community and dead ended at the fence to Goodyear field. The field went west down a hill to a pond and some woods and then up a hill and across a pasture where it ran into a dirt road and then rolled on toward the rest of America. Everyone in the neighborhood considered Goodyear field to be our playground. I was never sure who owned it. Most of my friends said it was owned by a Mrs. Goodyear. We had ever seen her or knew where she lived, but knowing she was out there, somewhere, made us behave and take care of her field, our field, as if it was our own. We didn't want her to put a better fence up that would actually keep us out. We didn't like to see kids in our field we didn't know.
The day I met her I broke some of the field rules. I didn't make a fire or dig a hole or anything stupid that would get us banned from the field. I did show her stuff. I showed her the bike trail that ran through the park the old lady built. The old lady wasn't Mrs. Goodyear, but another lady, granny age, who had a fenced in garden next to an area with trees that was always well kept even though we never saw anyone mow it. We called it a park because that was what it reminded us of.
One day the summer before we were taking turns seeing who could ride a bike down the trail from the path that started behind the houses next to the field, across the dip and then down between several trees in the park and stopping just this side of the old lady's fence. On my third turn as I went at least twice as fast as anyone else, I looked up for a split second with a smirk of pride, which took my eyes off the trail and ended with my biking running into one of the trees I was supposed to avoid. They say that when I hit the tree my bike stood on one wheel as I was thrown off my bike up into the air only to smack the tree with my head over six feet off the ground. I left a mark. Dazed I landed on my back knocking the wind out of me. I was down for nearly 5 minutes. I stood up, vomited and walked home. I made my brother bring my bike.
I also showed her the woods that were near the pond. In the winter the pond froze and we rode a car hood down the hill hoping not to hit the tree trunk in the middle of the pond. What we called a creek ran from the pond into the woods. In the woods was a tree someone had tried to hollow out. They had started a fire in the trunk and scraped the burnt wood out. We didn't know when it happened. One kid who had old parents and big brothers out of college said it was there when his brothers were little. Three people could fit in the tree easy. Sometimes if we got cold skating we would go to the tree and pack as many kids as we could hoping to generate warmth. I can't say that it worked. It was fun mushing kids in though. She and I stood in the tree. We both fit and being in the tree with the girl that gave me the friendship bracelet was just about the best thing that had ever happened to me.
I told the girl about the time we thought we saw a flying saucer land in the field. Four of us set out early the next morning after we'd seen the lights in the sky. We trekked past the pond and up the hill and across the pasture that opened onto the west. We found no evidence. I even took her to where we found the hobo fort the summer before. We think a patient escaped from the VA Hospital and made a camp before he found his way to the interstate that he could have taken him to California. We found some newspapers and empty cans. They weren't very old. For the next few weeks we didn't go to the field alone and after dark we watched out for each other just in case he was still around. Some kids across the street and 3 house down thought they heard him knocking on the basement windows one night. We checked the window wells, but couldn't find any clues.
As we walked back toward my street I asked her where she lived. She told me an address closer to downtown near the university. She was visiting her mother's aunt who lived near my school. She walked to the field because she didn't have anything to do. She told me that as she walked she was certain there was a reason for what she was doing. I wanted to kiss her. I didn't. Maybe I should have in the tree. We were only in 6th grade. She had a green and gold striped jacket. I can still see it in my mind. As we walked toward the fence she held my hand. Before she let go I asked her why she gave me the friendship bracelet. All she said was. You'll never forget me. She ran off through Goodyear field to a faded pink house where an old lady with mean dogs lived.
She was right. I remembered her. I remembered her eyes and the smell of her breathing. I remembered what was like to stand next to her in a burnt out tree. That might have been the top thing for me.When I was 24 I fell in love with her. She didn't know it was me. I knew without a doubt that it was. I still have the friendship bracelet in my good luck box. I guess it worked. She was the most important woman in my life until I met my wife. I like to remember her in the field the best. That might have been the best day we ever had. If you don't count the day in the field we had about 1273 decent to good days together. No about, about it. I counted them once after I moved away. That was hard. We did some mean things to one another so we could be apart. Even when you both know apart is best it doesn't make the accepting any easier. I don't like thinking about the awful hateful things that happened back then. We were adults and should have known better.
I wish she had told me what a friendship bracelet should prove. I'm over 50 and still don't know.
Another tale of dismemberment and love...
Many years ago I met a girl. At the time she seemed like the perfect girl for me. As I sit and type I can see her face as clearly as I could on the day we met. Emotions flood me that are no different from that day in Goodyear field. She gave me a friendship bracelet. It was a leather cord. The friendship bracelet had 2 turquoise colored beads about the size of a gum balls. Between the beads was a small bell made of cheap pot metal. It came from India. That's what she told me. The sound it made couldn't honestly be called ringing. It was more the sound of the clapper hitting the shell and sound stopping. When you would expect to hear the ringing tone of a bell you heard nothing but dead air. It reminded me of the sound a cotton ball makes when you drop it on a concrete basement floor. The girl told me she gave the bracelet to me to prove something. She never told me what that something was.
Looking back it seems unusual that you would find your soul mate in Goodyear field. Goodyear field was our field, our domain and why would anyone expect to find a stranger, especially a Catholic stranger that didn't go to public school in our field. It was a thing totally unexpected. It must be remembered that the girl haunted me then and still does today.
We lived on the west end of town. Our street ran east and west. To the east was the rest of our town. To the west was a handful of houses and then our street crossed the west most street in our community and dead ended at the fence to Goodyear field. The field went west down a hill to a pond and some woods and then up a hill and across a pasture where it ran into a dirt road and then rolled on toward the rest of America. Everyone in the neighborhood considered Goodyear field to be our playground. I was never sure who owned it. Most of my friends said it was owned by a Mrs. Goodyear. We had ever seen her or knew where she lived, but knowing she was out there, somewhere, made us behave and take care of her field, our field, as if it was our own. We didn't want her to put a better fence up that would actually keep us out. We didn't like to see kids in our field we didn't know.
The day I met her I broke some of the field rules. I didn't make a fire or dig a hole or anything stupid that would get us banned from the field. I did show her stuff. I showed her the bike trail that ran through the park the old lady built. The old lady wasn't Mrs. Goodyear, but another lady, granny age, who had a fenced in garden next to an area with trees that was always well kept even though we never saw anyone mow it. We called it a park because that was what it reminded us of.
One day the summer before we were taking turns seeing who could ride a bike down the trail from the path that started behind the houses next to the field, across the dip and then down between several trees in the park and stopping just this side of the old lady's fence. On my third turn as I went at least twice as fast as anyone else, I looked up for a split second with a smirk of pride, which took my eyes off the trail and ended with my biking running into one of the trees I was supposed to avoid. They say that when I hit the tree my bike stood on one wheel as I was thrown off my bike up into the air only to smack the tree with my head over six feet off the ground. I left a mark. Dazed I landed on my back knocking the wind out of me. I was down for nearly 5 minutes. I stood up, vomited and walked home. I made my brother bring my bike.
I also showed her the woods that were near the pond. In the winter the pond froze and we rode a car hood down the hill hoping not to hit the tree trunk in the middle of the pond. What we called a creek ran from the pond into the woods. In the woods was a tree someone had tried to hollow out. They had started a fire in the trunk and scraped the burnt wood out. We didn't know when it happened. One kid who had old parents and big brothers out of college said it was there when his brothers were little. Three people could fit in the tree easy. Sometimes if we got cold skating we would go to the tree and pack as many kids as we could hoping to generate warmth. I can't say that it worked. It was fun mushing kids in though. She and I stood in the tree. We both fit and being in the tree with the girl that gave me the friendship bracelet was just about the best thing that had ever happened to me.
I told the girl about the time we thought we saw a flying saucer land in the field. Four of us set out early the next morning after we'd seen the lights in the sky. We trekked past the pond and up the hill and across the pasture that opened onto the west. We found no evidence. I even took her to where we found the hobo fort the summer before. We think a patient escaped from the VA Hospital and made a camp before he found his way to the interstate that he could have taken him to California. We found some newspapers and empty cans. They weren't very old. For the next few weeks we didn't go to the field alone and after dark we watched out for each other just in case he was still around. Some kids across the street and 3 house down thought they heard him knocking on the basement windows one night. We checked the window wells, but couldn't find any clues.
As we walked back toward my street I asked her where she lived. She told me an address closer to downtown near the university. She was visiting her mother's aunt who lived near my school. She walked to the field because she didn't have anything to do. She told me that as she walked she was certain there was a reason for what she was doing. I wanted to kiss her. I didn't. Maybe I should have in the tree. We were only in 6th grade. She had a green and gold striped jacket. I can still see it in my mind. As we walked toward the fence she held my hand. Before she let go I asked her why she gave me the friendship bracelet. All she said was. You'll never forget me. She ran off through Goodyear field to a faded pink house where an old lady with mean dogs lived.
She was right. I remembered her. I remembered her eyes and the smell of her breathing. I remembered what was like to stand next to her in a burnt out tree. That might have been the top thing for me.When I was 24 I fell in love with her. She didn't know it was me. I knew without a doubt that it was. I still have the friendship bracelet in my good luck box. I guess it worked. She was the most important woman in my life until I met my wife. I like to remember her in the field the best. That might have been the best day we ever had. If you don't count the day in the field we had about 1273 decent to good days together. No about, about it. I counted them once after I moved away. That was hard. We did some mean things to one another so we could be apart. Even when you both know apart is best it doesn't make the accepting any easier. I don't like thinking about the awful hateful things that happened back then. We were adults and should have known better.
I wish she had told me what a friendship bracelet should prove. I'm over 50 and still don't know.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The reason they cut my eyeball out
The reason they cut out my eyeball was because I got it stuck on a coat hanger. I know that sounds painful and it is a frightening image but it wasn't all that bad. True, it was the pointy end of the thing that got me but at the time it jabbed my eye everything else had already knocked me out so I didn't feel it. I don't think?
Folks need to remember to never mess around with fertilizer and diesel fuel. I wasn't , but my stupid neighbor, Donnie Johnson was. Donnie was 17 at the time of his death. To be fair he really wasn't that stupid as he could follow directions when he wanted to.
He'd read in a book from the library how to fill a bag of fertilizer from Wild Willie's( a midwestern precursor to Wal-Mart) very slowly with diesel full to create a bomb. The only time that Donnie Johnson ever followed any instructions was the time he copied them painfully and slowly from a book at the library. It was a place he seldom visited except to look at pictures in medical books on the shelves almost hidden by the stairs.
If he could have rushed even a tad I might still have an eyeball and Donnie Johnson might still be around. Instead he read the instructions with focused intent, multiple times, I'm guessing, and he paid special attention to the section on the fuse or cap or whatever cause it to ignite and blow up. If he hadn't I might still be watching 3D movies in 3D. Even with the new digital 3D one eyeball just doesn't cut it.
Donnie followed his instructions, created his bomb and placed it between our houses. What he did next makes it hard for me to forgive Donnie. He lit the bomb or whatever it is called that starts a bomb doing its thing, but he failed to run away. One can only guess he wanted to watch it go bang which is really something best heard blocks away. When the bomb, bombed, it blew a hole in our wall and then sent me flying along with most of the stuff in my room. I was knocked out by the concussion or the blast or the flying toilet, and luckily blown up enough that I didn't feel it when the pointy part of the coat hanger snagged my eye.
Donnie ended up all over. Lots of him landed in the sycamore tree in our front yard. For a week the ravens and other carrion favoring birds roosted in the tree feeding on globs and bits of Donnie. I don't know how much they found of him. It was a closed casket and besides my vision was only half as good as it had been before his last science experiment a few days earlier. Over the years I've wondered what Donnie might have become if not for the following those instructions that summer. It might have become a doctor and fixed my eye so I could judge distances better at night. It's something to think about.
Folks need to remember to never mess around with fertilizer and diesel fuel. I wasn't , but my stupid neighbor, Donnie Johnson was. Donnie was 17 at the time of his death. To be fair he really wasn't that stupid as he could follow directions when he wanted to.
He'd read in a book from the library how to fill a bag of fertilizer from Wild Willie's( a midwestern precursor to Wal-Mart) very slowly with diesel full to create a bomb. The only time that Donnie Johnson ever followed any instructions was the time he copied them painfully and slowly from a book at the library. It was a place he seldom visited except to look at pictures in medical books on the shelves almost hidden by the stairs.
If he could have rushed even a tad I might still have an eyeball and Donnie Johnson might still be around. Instead he read the instructions with focused intent, multiple times, I'm guessing, and he paid special attention to the section on the fuse or cap or whatever cause it to ignite and blow up. If he hadn't I might still be watching 3D movies in 3D. Even with the new digital 3D one eyeball just doesn't cut it.
Donnie followed his instructions, created his bomb and placed it between our houses. What he did next makes it hard for me to forgive Donnie. He lit the bomb or whatever it is called that starts a bomb doing its thing, but he failed to run away. One can only guess he wanted to watch it go bang which is really something best heard blocks away. When the bomb, bombed, it blew a hole in our wall and then sent me flying along with most of the stuff in my room. I was knocked out by the concussion or the blast or the flying toilet, and luckily blown up enough that I didn't feel it when the pointy part of the coat hanger snagged my eye.
Donnie ended up all over. Lots of him landed in the sycamore tree in our front yard. For a week the ravens and other carrion favoring birds roosted in the tree feeding on globs and bits of Donnie. I don't know how much they found of him. It was a closed casket and besides my vision was only half as good as it had been before his last science experiment a few days earlier. Over the years I've wondered what Donnie might have become if not for the following those instructions that summer. It might have become a doctor and fixed my eye so I could judge distances better at night. It's something to think about.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Hello and Welcome
As part of my duties here at JT Doode & Associates I've been working to enhance communication. Luckily for me that means looking at lots of cool things in the cloud. All of the Web 2.) apps get me excited about access for students and everyday people, or folks, as we call them around here. Many of the programs floating about here could give lots of power and voice to anyone you can hit the Internet. Any who, I think I have finally found the medium I might choose to use to disseminate the information I want out there. I intend to share it all before it is over. Be prepared. Many things will be explained.
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