BROKEN

     There are things that our parents said during our childhood, that are forever etched into our minds like letters chiseled into a fine granite slab.  One of those phrases was one that my mother seemed to scream at us with superior regularity.  “We just can’t have nice things!” she would bark, usually after an unfortunate turn of events, which saw one of her favorite lamps turned to a mangled heap on the floor.  Or, perhaps a rounded indention in the drywall, which strangely enough, had the same shape as my or my brother’s forehead, which would cause our exasperated mother to bellow that we couldn’t even have a nice home.  Apparently, history is repeating itself.
     Last week, after a day spent in the yard cleaning up debris from an especially hard winter, I decided that a short nap was in order.  I quickly entered the house and glanced at my watch, which told me that if a much needed snooze was in my future, I would need to hurry, as the troops would soon be home.  I tossed my dirty boots out onto the porch and positioned the pillows on the couch to my liking.  Finally, I gently and slowly lowered my weary body onto the awaiting cushions, only to sink like a rock in water all the way to the floor.  I laid still for a moment with my legs and chest nearly touching.  I felt somewhat like an accordion to be sure.  In the blink of an eye, I had been transformed from a happy nap taking soul into a pitiful old man stuck in an obviously broken couch.  After a bit of flailing, I was able to roll off onto the floor, and noticed that the cross brace, which spanned the width of the couch was broken and lying in two pieces amid the dust and debris which had collected in the darkness of the underside of the now broken piece of furniture.   “We just can’t have nice things!” I muttered to myself.  The rest of the evening was spent repairing the couch and interrogating the kids in a feeble attempt to find out who the perpetrator of such nonsense was.  Of course, the ghost that’s been breaking things in our home for years was at fault.
     I have adopted the motto, “If it ain’t broke, it ain’t ours.”  Nearly everything we own is either only partly working or broken in some fashion.  Recently, I noticed a large pile of clean clothes sitting in a basket in the laundry room.  Knowing how busy my wife can be in the evenings, I decided to fold and put away the heaping pile.  First, I lugged the clothing upstairs and then sorted it according to which room it belonged.  After the sorting, I grabbed the clothing that belonged in our daughters closet and galloped into her room, laid the clothes on her bed and opened the closet door.  There is a sinking feeling associated with having a bi-fold door, that upon the slightest touch ,  falls to the floor in a thunderous crash, all while the hapless victim tries to scramble out of the way and catch the door at the same time.  No such luck.  “We just can’t have nice things!”  I mumbled, from beneath the door, as the dog slinked away and out of sight down the hallway.  The laundry suddenly took a backseat to the repair job that was required to reinstall the door.  Naturally, the ghost had struck again.  Sidney, our daughter, had no knowledge of how the door came to be ripped from its track and nearly causing her pitiful father head trauma.
      My job often requires me to rise VERY early in the morning to make the long journey to work.   I have a routine.  My clothing is laid out the night before, lunch packed, wallet and car keys positioned on the kitchen counter, and I’m up and gone in less than fifteen minutes.  As you can tell, I’m a mild type-A person.  Once in a while, my routine gets turned on it’s head.   This past winter, I, as usual, arose from my bed, threw on my clothes, did my business in the bathroom, raced down the stairs, grabbed my wallet and keys and ran outside to my car.  Upon my arrival at the car, I opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat, only to realize that someone had been in the seat since I had.  Suddenly, my upper torso was hunched over the steering wheel and my knees pressed uncomfortably into the dashboard.  Not only was the seat up as far as it could possibly go, but the elevation of the seat was set in a fashion that would have dumped me faced first into the windshield had it not been for the steering wheel.  “No problem,” I said into the stillness of the morning, while reaching down to find the button to readjust the seat.  I pushed the button.  Nothing.  I pushed again.  Nothing.  I then pushed harder.  Nothing.  I began pounding on the innocent button.  Nothing.  Finally, I slid out from my sardine like predicament and noticed that the button and its surroundings were ominously rearranged.  “We just can’t have nice things!”  I whined.  I drove to work, and back, with outstretched elbows  and knees  pressed into the dashboard, while each turn of the steering wheel meant holding my breath to prevent the untimely careening into rivers, ravines, and other vehicles.  As usual, the ghost had struck again.  “Who’s been playing in my car!” I barked as I walked into the kitchen that evening.
     “Not me!” came the kid’s reply, in unison, almost as if they’d been practicing.
     I could easily go on for hours, but I won’t.  You get the picture.  If it ain’t broke, it ain’t ours.  So, as a result of my own destructive ways from my childhood, I will continue to be plagued with broken doors, malfunctioning car seats, damaged furniture and a myriad of other items that have been converted into something that doesn’t exactly perform the same function that it was intended to do.  But alas, the children, ahem, ghost, is growing up and someday they will surely experience the same frustration as their pitiful old man.  I can hear them now, “We just can’t have nice things!”

THE BIG VACATION

     When I was growing up, my family seldom went on vacation.  The word seldom, could easily be replaced with never.  Our lack of travel in my youth was an inconvenient consequence of two things.  My mom’s hair, and my dad’s desire to ‘stay right here in these mountains’,  which inhibited my brother, sister and I from ever venturing very far from the old family homestead.   Mom always claimed that she would absolutely love to travel, but we knew that travel meant she would need to craft her flawless hairdo on the run, in hotel bathrooms, and without the luxury of being able to check the ‘do’ in her own bathroom throughout the day. 
     To be completely candid, we did take many short trips to destinations in the local area, but we kids yearned for a trip to the beach, or maybe Disney World.  Often, during the summer months, we would pile onto my dad’s old truck and head across the mountain behind our house to a spot on the river to swim, fish, and cook hamburgers and hot dogs on a tiny charcoal grill.
     “I’ll take this for mine, these people that travel off to all these far flung places don’t realize that we’re having just as much fun as they are.  It’s cheaper too!”  dad would say time and time again.  “Isn’t that right Neil?”
     No, it wasn’t right.  Maybe the cheaper part was right, but I personally had a deep yearning to travel to someplace and make the comparison for myself on which destination was more fun.  I always suspected the folks at the beach were having more fun than us.
     “Mom, why don’t we ever go on vacation?” I asked, as my mom stood over the stove preparing our dinner one evening.
      “Well, you know how your father is.  He’s a homebody and prefers to hang around here.  You know that I would pack up and be gone in a minute if he was willing,”  she answered, while staring at her reflection in the kitchen window and carefully touching each side of her hairdo with the palms of her hands.
     Dad was outside, sitting on the front porch reading the newspaper, so I thought that would be a good time to broach the subject of going on vacation.  I stepped out the front door and onto the porch and plopped down beside him.  “Dad?  Can we go on vacation this year?”  I asked in my most pitiful voice.
     “Now son, you know why we don’t go on vacation.  It’s all about your mother’s hair.  Besides, we’d rather be right here in these mountains.  Wouldn’t we?”  he said, never looking up from reading the newspaper.
     “Yeah, I guess,” I said, before I got up and moped back into the house.
     Mom was finishing up making dinner when I sat down at the table and rested my chin in the palm of my hand.  “You know, I bet if we incorporated baseball into a vacation, he’d go,” I said to my mom, who had returned to her spot in front of the window to check her hairdo once again.
     “Maybe,” she quipped.
     At that moment, I had begun to devise a master vacation plan.  We would make baseball the focal point of my scheme to do some traveling.  My father was and is an ardent baseball fan.  He’d played the game for years, and seldom missed a game on television.  He loved baseball more than anyone I’d ever known.
     Later, I pulled out my latest copy of baseball digest  and began to look at the schedules of teams that weren’t too far away, but at the same time, I looked at teams that played in cities that would require us to at least spend a couple of nights.  I settled on Cincinnati.
     “Dad, why don’t we take a little trip to Cincinnati?  The Giants are in town in July and it would be a great series to watch.  The Reds and the Giants are neck and neck in the National League West, so that would make it even better,” I said, as my dad’s ears perked up and he stared at me with a look that made me think that he was at least considering my plan.  “We could do a few other things during the day to keep mom and Carla happy, and then we could head to the ballpark in the evening.”
     “You know, that sounds pretty good.  Let me see the schedule.” 
     And just like that, we were going on vacation.  Sort of.
     I did most of the planning.  I found all of the information concerning the game tickets, and even mapped out the itinerary, which would take us through West Virginia and Kentucky, finally ending up in Ohio.  There was one little step that was taken rather lightly though…lodging.  We assumed that since Cincinnati was such a large city, hotels and motels would certainly be plentiful.  Our assumption would prove to be wrong.
     Finally, the day came for mom, dad, Carla and I to pile into dad’s long, dark green 1969 Ford Galaxy and hit the road.  Jarrett, our older brother, had finished school and was working, so he didn’t have an interest in making the trip.  That particular July day was a balmy 90 degrees and of course the old Galaxy didn’t have air conditioning.  So, we simply rolled the windows down and enjoyed the wind rushing past and around us inside the car.  “Roll those windows up!  There’s too much air on Carla and I,” mom barked from the back seat.  Dad and I rolled our windows up and within a minutes we felt as though we were being cooked from the inside out.
     “Look, we’ve got to crack these windows.  We’re roasting up here!” dad chirped, as he lowered his window slightly.  I did the same.  Soon though, the crack became a bit larger and before we knew it, the windows had been rolled all the way down again and the winds once again swept around the car like a tornado.  
     “Who’s hungry?” dad asked as he wheeled to car off the interstate in the direction of several restaurants.  We were all starving, and he couldn’t have picked a better time for us to eat.  That particular stop would prove to be a pivotal point in our trip.
     It’s important to note that my dad and I were in conversation about our baseball vacation up until that point, while  mom and Carla sat quietly in the back seat for most of the way.  There had been no reason for us to look to the rear of the car.  If we had, we surely could have predicted the conniption that was about to ensue.  I stepped out of the car and onto the pavement, all the while bending to release the seat so my mom could exit the vehicle which was equipped with only two doors.  Briefly, I thought that somehow my mother had been kidnapped and replaced with someone I didn’t know.  The woman who occupied the seat where mom had been bore no resemblance to her whatsoever.  The woman I was looking at in amazement had a head of hair that only God himself could create.  It was similar to what cotton candy looks like before it’s spun onto a roll.  Her hair was a mixture of several hairstyles.  There appeared to be a Mohawk running down the center of her head, while the sides appeared to making themselves into a rather large Afro.  Her bangs drooped to the edges of her eyebrows and one clump of hair stuck out from the side all alone.  Apparently the clump on the side was the last remnant of her Aqua Net hair helmet.
     “Whoa!  What happened to you!?” I said, trying my best to keep the laughter bubbling inside me contained.
     “Those blasted windows!  That’s what happened!  I knew this trip was a bad idea,” the poor soul moaned, while staring at her reflection in a tiny mirror she’d taken from her purse.
     “It doesn’t look that bad,” I said, attempting to quell the situation before a complete meltdown occurred.  Actually, it looked terrible.  She looked as though she’d just made a cross country motorcycle ride with no helmet.
     “Whew wee!  Mom, I’ve never seen your hair look so…full,” Carla said, while hiding all of her face except for her eyes below the roof of the car.  “Dad, open the trunk so she can get her makeup bag.  You can fix it in the bathroom.”
     Mom did indeed fix her hair, as best she could in a McDonald’s restroom, and that seemed to lift her spirits some.  But, within a few miles her head would be once again transformed into a swirling mess of hair that resembled that of a poor unfortunate soul who had somehow grabbed hold of a high voltage electrical line.
     So, this incident would be an ominous foreboding concerning the rest of our trip.  It was as though a dark cloud of doom floated over us at all times.  The car began to act up, resulting in a stop at a service station that consumed a few hours of our time.  After the car was repaired, dad decided to let me take the wheel and I promptly drove into a pothole that would have swallowed smaller cars.  The four of us bounced violently in our seats, while I stared straight ahead, careful to avoid eye contact with dad.  I could feel his eyes on me for a period of time, when I turned to him and asked, “What?”
     “Why don’t you turn around and see if you can hit that pothole again!  If you try hard enough maybe you can tear the wheels off this time!  Damn, did you not see it?” he barked.  Carla began giggling uncontrollably, and even my haggard looking mother cracked a smile. 
     “What pothole?” I asked, occasionally glancing in the direction of my father who had been staring at me for several miles.
     “What do you mean, WHAT POTHOLE?  Forget it!  Just drive!” and drive I did.
     Finally, there it was, Cincinnati, and all it’s high rise buildings, the Ohio River and it’s massive steel bridges and most wonderfully, Riverfront Stadium.  I could feel the excitement welling up inside me.  “Look mom, look Carla, there it is!”  I squealed.
     “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we see it,” Carla moaned with her eyes closed and her head wedged between seat and he roof support.
     “Now we need to find a place to stay,” dad said, as we crossed the river and headed toward downtown.  “Stop here, on the street.  We’ll walk and find a place to stay.  There should be plenty of places available.”  With that, we unloaded our suitcases and trudged down the sidewalk like a team of pack mules on the Oregon trail.  Dad sported blue jean shorts, which at one time were blue jean pants.  He also wore brown church shoes, and black socks pulled nearly to his knees.  His untucked plaid shirt flapped in the breeze.  My mom, complete with her light socket hairdo, wore matching green terry knit shorts and top.  The shorts were slightly lighter that the top.  Carla and I stood and looked at each other with scowling faces.  Thankfully we didn’t know anyone and they didn’t know us.
     Dad was right.  There were plenty of places to stay.  Nice Places.  I stared up at the collection of skyscrapers looming over us and noted that none of them resembled a hotel that would suit our needs.  For some reason my mom and dad were surprised that none of the buildings were labeled Motel 6 Tower, Econo Lodge Suites, or perhaps Super 8 Plaza.  “Let’s try this one, it looks very nice, maybe they have a room available,” mom said, as she began to dig in her purse.
     “What are you looking for?” Carla asked, confused.
     “I might have a coupon for this hotel,” mom said, brushing her bangs away from her eyes.
     “Uh, I don’t think you have a coupon for the Cincinnati Westin,” I said quietly, careful not to be overheard by the bellhop standing at the door.
     “Well, lets see if they have a room anyway,” dad said.
     We sauntered into the expansive lobby, and made our way to the front desk, where a nicely dressed man peered at us like we’d just arrived from another galaxy.  I stared up at the glass elevator, which was ferrying folks up and down, and also noticed that we appeared to be slightly underdressed compared to the other people standing around.  I didn’t hear what the man at the desk told my mother, but it must have been something she didn’t like.  She kept mumbling something about her arm and her leg.  With that, we headed back to the street to continue our search.
     “There, lets ask that guy,” dad said, while pointing to a man pushing a shopping cart across the street.
     “That’s a street person!” my mom groaned.
     “I know, if anyone knows of a reasonable place to stay, it’s him,” dad answered, while heading toward the man and his cart.  After a brief conversation with the man, dad walked back toward us and directed us to follow him.  “I told you he’d know of a place.  He said there’s a great hotel just a few blocks down, and the rates are very reasonable.”
     We walked and walked and walked some more.  The shiny glass and granite buildings slowly gave way to brick and mortar and eventually those buildings gave way to structures that only a wrecking ball could fix.  The people changed too.  Gone were men in business suits, and nice shoes.  They were replaced with men in more leisurely attire, to put it nicely.  “There it is!” dad exclaimed.  “The Dennison Hotel.  It looks pretty nice!  Lets check it out!”  he continued.
     My mom stood, staring at the dilapidated building, which had curtains flapping in the breeze from the windows and several people sitting on the window ledges peering down at us.  There was a huge sign that had been painted on the building which read, Dennison Hotel  120 Rooms With 60 Baths, Great Rates. 
     “I’m not staying here!” mom bellowed.  “Don’t you see that sign?  I’m not sharing a bathtub with a stranger!  Forget it!”
     “Uh, dad, I don’t think this is the place for us,” I said.  “Oh, and mom almost got mugged just now.”  Apparently, for some reason, we looked out of place and my mothers large purse looked a bit tempting to a man who took a half hearted grab at it.
     “Yeah, maybe we should find something else,” dad said, ignoring the statement about mom nearly getting mugged.  “Let’s park at the stadium and we’ll surely find something after the game.”
     So, we lugged our baggage back up the street to where the car was parked.  We were amazed that the Cincinnati police didn’t find any humor in where I had decided to park our old bomb.  I had felt that there was plenty of room for access to the fire hydrant in the event of an emergency.  Obviously, the police felt differently.  My dad removed the flapping piece of paper from under the windshield wiper, studied it for a moment, folded it and slid it safely in his shirt pocket.
     Dad carefully guided the old car into the stadium parking garage, which sat adjacent to the ballpark. Finally, he found a spot and stopped.   “Who’s ready for some baseball!?” he exclaimed, while opening the car door.
     “Where are our seats?  I hope you didn’t get seats in the nosebleed section,” mom inquired.  By that time, not only was her hair a mess, but her makeup had given up and wasn’t in the same spot it had been when our journey began.  She looked sort of like a blonde Ozzy Osborne.
     “Oh no, these seats are low.  Well, pretty low,” I said.  This was a huge series, and tickets were limited, so upper deck seats were all that were available.  But, there were a few rows above us, so my comment about the seats was accurate in comparison to the people at the very top.  I should also point out that my mom is terrified of heights. 
     We made our way to the concourse, and began the slow zig zagged walk up, and up, and up, and up some more.  Finally, we exited the tunnel and the view in front of me was nothing short of breathtaking.  I could see the players warming up on the turf field, and an ocean of red seats circled the place.  Anxious fans made their way to their seats with concessions in hand, ready for the first pitch.  My mom evidently liked the view also, as her eyes resembled those of a person who’d just seen a ghost.  “How do you like it mom?” Carla asked.  There was no reply.  She had a death grip on the railing and stood frozen, locked, unable to move.  Dad and pried her hands from the railing, and slowly guided her to where our seats were, and gently sat her down.
     “Are you  OK mom?” I asked, meekly
     “I’m fine.”
     Throughout the game, we would periodically look at poor old mom, clutching her armrests and staring wide eyed at the field below.  Suddenly, without warning, the heavens opened up and  began pelting us heavy raindrops.  Grounds keepers scrambled to cover the field, and fans raced to the concourse area, and my mom sat.  She sat, frozen like a statue, with rain running down all sides of her face and body.  She was but a dot in an ocean of seats.  She didn‘t look like Ozzy anymore, and I was amazed at how long her hair was when not in helmet form.  “Son, go get your mother,” dad simply said.
     Mom and Carla spent the rest of that game in the car, while dad and I enjoyed the remainder of the game. 
     “Now, lets see if we can find a place to stay,” my father said, happily, still thinking about the game.  “Neil, you drive.  It’ll be good experience for you in this heavy traffic.”  Good experience, maybe, but it meant that he didn’t have to try to navigate the car in an unfamiliar city among thousands of other vehicles.
     At long last, we made it out of the city and back onto the interstate.  We drove, and drove, until we noticed a highway sign stating that the Indiana state line was close.  “Why are we going to Indiana?” Carla inquired from the depths of the back seat.  We didn’t answer, and I simply exited the interstate and drove in the direction from which we’d come.  We finally found a more suitable place to stay, and luckily they even had a decent swimming pool, which would come in handy for Carla, since she and my mom’s ball game experience was now complete.
     We stayed for two more days.  Dad and I would go to the games, and mom and Carla would go to the pool.  Carla swam, and swam and swam.  “I’m sick of the pool!  I’m waterlog!  Let’s go home, this stinks!  It’s no fun for us!” she barked.
     We did finally go home.  Dad and I enjoyed our vacation very much.  Mom and Carla, not so much.  My mom’s humor did eventually return, along with her flawless hairdo.  Dad, as always, said, “You know, it’s nice to go places, but I’ll take these old mountains any day.”  And with that, our vacation came to an end.
    





    
    
    
    
    

THE FIGHTERS

It has often been said that if we forget the transgressions of our past, then we are surely doomed to repeat them.  Well, I have remembered my transgressions, and will not repeat them.  But, what if you’re a child and don’t have much of a past?  There’s no possible way to right a wrong due to the fact that a young child has only been on the Earth for a short time.  Another little snippet that has been laid on many expecting new parents is the old, ‘kids don’t come with owners manuals’ remark.  Really?  I briefly thought my wife didn’t push hard enough and the said manual somehow wasn’t ejected from her body.  Seriously though, I understand that folks mean well and they are just  trying to communicate to inexperienced parents that you sometimes just have to operate on the fly.
     A perfect example of this observation comes in the form of sibling rivalry and the ensuing fight.  My brother, sister and I fought regularly.  I can still hear my mother’s exasperated yelling to this day.  “Would you please stop this incessant fighting!?  I swear, you three are going to put me in the nuthouse one day!  Now stop it!”  she would scream, to no avail.  “I hope you have the meanest kids in the history of the world, then you’ll see what you’re putting me through!”  she finished.
     You see, we simply had no way of knowing that what we were doing would one day haunt us like a mind altering, chain rattling ghost.  We grew up, and matured, and hence were unable to correct the shameful deeds of our childhood, which nearly sent poor, old mom to the loony bin. 
     Our two children fight constantly.  It never ends.  They wake up fighting, they eat lunch fighting, they ride in the car fighting and fight a little more before bedtime.  I honestly believe that they dream of fighting.  One of the earliest fights I can remember came when Sidney, our daughter, was but an infant.  “Stop it, you little mean thing!” Ryan, our three-year-old screamed, surely unable to articulate what he really wanted to say.  The four of us were lying on our bed watching a children’s show on television.  My wife and I formed a barrier on the outside edges of the bed, while the children laid under a blanket between us.  The baby kept tugging and pulling at the blanket, which was also covering Ryan.  “Can’t we take her back?” the boy asked, trying to recover his part of the blanket.
     As the years have rolled on, the fighting has gotten more and more intense.  I am convinced that my mother has cursed us in some strange way, and I can imagine a smile creep across her face each time she witnesses my wife or I refereeing the two yelling, screaming kids.
     They fight about the most ridiculous things.  “Daddy, would you spank Ryan?” Sidney squealed, as I stared blankly at her tiny four-year-old face.
     “What’d he do this time?”
     “He called me a juggernaut!  I’m sick of him!”  she stammered, with clenched fists.  I learned early on  that the parent can never, ever laugh during such a heated debate, no matter how comical they can be sometimes.
     “Do you know what a juggernaut is?” I asked, trying my level best not to crack a smile.
     “No! But it doesn’t sound like something I am!”
     “Ryaaaaaan!  Stop calling your sister a juggernaut!” I yelled, at the top of my lungs, to the boy who was now standing at the base of the stairs looking at me.  I decided that an attempt to clarify what a juggernaut was to a four-year-old was futile.
     “Well, tell her to stop calling me a big boose!”  the boy barked, while gritting on the little girl, who had inched ever closer to me.  Big boose? I thought.  What the heck is a big boose?
     “What’s a big boose?” I asked, with my face pinched.
     Ryan piped up and answered before Sidney had the opportunity to open her mouth.  “It’s big MOOSE!  She thinks it’s BOOSE.  She heard it on one of our movies and now she keeps calling me that!  You need to spank her!”
     A logical person would think that even the worst fighters would call a truce in the house of the Lord.  Not so.  For years, my wife and I have had to sit between the children to head of an all out war in the pew during preaching service.  We learned this early in our journey down the road of parenthood.
     One Sunday, the four of us headed upstairs after church school in search of a pew that would accommodate us and all of our bags, papers, bottles, diapers, toys, etc.  We plopped down on a suitable pew, and promptly guided the children to a spot between us.  Immediately, Sidney reached for her bottle, while Ryan began to color on the back of the bulletin with crayons, which he’d apparently swiped from his class downstairs.   We exchanged pleasantries with an elderly couple in front of us, as well as a man who sat directly behind us.  Finally, the pianist began to play, and everyone settled into their seats.  Then, the minister stepped up and began the weekly announcements, while all eyes  stayed glued to him.  Briefly.
     Suddenly, without warning, Ryan spoke.  “Sidney pooped,” he said, in a normal tone, which caused everyone to abandon the preachers announcements, and stare at us.
     “Shhhhh,” Kristi, my wife said, red faced, trying to smile slightly, and trying to look cool.
     “She stinks,” the boy said, still coloring a picture on the bulletin.
     My wife grabbed the diaper bag and the stinking, giggling child and exited the sanctuary.  In a few minutes, they returned and once again settled into their seats.  Ryan had become distracted by a musical number that the choir was belting out, when he noticed that his work of art was slowly being destroyed by the wayward hands of his little sister.
     “Get your hands off my picture!  You ruined it!” he said, slapping her tiny hands away from his crayons and his masterpiece on the bulletin.  “Daddy, will you spank me if I kill her?”  he moaned.  With that, the elderly couple whipped their heads around and stared, with stern faces, at me.  I had come to learn that most folks automatically assume that I look like the sort of father who would indoctrinate their children into the dark world of murder.
     “Pipe down son.  No you can’t kill her!  Now, be quiet and don’t say another word.”
     My wife, who was growing ever more embarrassed, began to dig into the bag that she carried everywhere we went, and produced a pack of snack crackers and a squeezable container of apple juice.
     “Here, give this to Ryan.  Maybe it’ll keep him occupied until we get out of here,” she whispered.
     I poked the little straw through the opening in the pouch and quietly unwrapped the crackers and handed them to the squirming child.  “Daddy, I need to pee!” Ryan said,  as  he squeezed the little, foil pouch and sent a stream of apple juice flying through the air, which rained down on the elderly couple in front of us.  Despite the panic from my wife and me, I fought the laughter welling up inside me as I stared at the tiny yellow river of apple juice running down the old man’s neck.  Surely they didn’t think a four-year-old could pee with such power.
     “Sorry, so sorry,” my wife whispered to the frowning old couple, who had produced handkerchiefs and were wiping their necks, heads and hymnals.  “It was apple juice,” she continued, trying in vain to convince the couple that our boy hadn’t urinated on them.
     “I’ve got a good mind to spank your bottom young man!” I growled, while keeping a watchful eye on the sticky, irritated couple in front of us.
     “Sidney made me do it!  She was reaching for my juice and I was trying to get it away from her when I squeezed it like this and…”  Suddenly another stream shot up and over the pew, hitting the old man squarely in the back, causing a sound similar to rain hitting a plastic bag.  Ryan stared at me with wide eyes and a gaping mouth, unable to believe that he’d just shot the poor old fellow again.  I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed either.  The old man turned once again and stared  ominously at us for a period of time, before turning halfway back around.  Apparently, Sidney didn’t want to be left out of the growing fiasco, and promptly sent her pacifier hurtling over the pew, which ricocheted off the old lady’s shoulder and into her lap, which prompted her to turn once again and glare at us.  Thankfully, she was kind enough to hand the slobber covered binky back to us, but I noticed that she was extremely careful to avoid much contact with the slimy thing.
    “Let’s get out of here,” I said to Kristi, who was already gathering up the mountainous mess that had been strewn around the pew, and on the floor.
     We finally made it to the car, and Ryan, who was sure that a severe punishment was going to be handed down, had already begun to blame the whole travesty on Sidney.  “Dad, can we get someone to adopt her?  All she does is sit around pooping, and she’s the one who caused me to squirt those old people!”  he whined.   Sidney sat quietly, smiling at Ryan with an ominous face, while sucking on her pacifier.   “See?  She’s laughing at me!  I’m sick of her!”
     Did I mention that they also find a way to fight at athletic events?  Well, they do.  They even fight at events in which one or the other is actually participating in.
     One summer, Ryan was in the midst of his first year of tee-ball, which was quite an undertaking due to the fact that we had to dress him in his uniform almost daily, and Kristi had the daunting task of containing Sidney, who was a very active three-year-old.  She has always been a very active child.  VERY ACTIVE.  I got roped into helping coach the team, so my time was spent on the field, while my wife chased our little curly headed daughter all over God’s green Earth.
     Sidney was always chomping at the bit to get onto the field.  Did I mention that she was very active?  Kristi was forever having to snatch her up, at the last second, before she crossed through an opening in the fence and ran onto the playing field.  Then, there was the day that the child achieved her goal.  I was standing along the third base line, encouraging the kids, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my wife motioning to me to come to the fence.  “What’s up?” I said, slightly irritated that I’d been distracted from the game.
     “Somebody had a little accident in their shorts,” came the reply.  “I’m going to take her to the car and put dry clothes on her, so I didn’t want you to wonder where we were if you didn’t see us,”  she continued. To be honest, they could have been gone for the entire game and I wouldn’t have noticed.  I don’t notice much, especially during a baseball game.
     “Oh, ok.  Where is she?”  I asked.
     “Oh snap!”  Kristi exclaimed.  At some point in our brief conversation, our little bundle of energy had stripped ALL of her clothing from her body and raced like miniature Carl Lewis toward the dugout and was on the verge of making a grand entrance onto the field.  Kristi raced to catch her, but she was too late.  The child had made it and was racing toward second base, which is where Ryan was standing, staring, googly eyed and wide mouthed at his little naked sister, who was sprinting across the dirt infield. 
     “Time!!!” the umpire bellowed, while removing his mask and staring in amazement at Sidney, Kristi and I, as all three of us sprinted across the field.  The other players giggled uncontrollably, while parents stood and gawked at the scene unfolding before them.
     She finally reached second base while Ryan was heading toward right field, surely in an attempt to get away from his tiny, streaking sister.  My wife and I finally caught up to Sidney, who was laughing all the way.  Ryan had begun to slowly walk back to his position, as Kristi, with our wayward child in her arms, had retreated to the safety of the dugout.  “Dad, can’t we leave her home next time?  The other kids are laughing at me,” Ryan whined.
     When the game was over and everyone continued to laugh, we finally made our way back to the car and sat quietly for a moment, when Ryan spoke.  “I hate her.”
     “Now son, that’s no way to…”  I attempted to say, as a melee broke out in the rear of the car.
     “You embarrassed me, you little twerp!  Now all the kids are going to make fun of me for the rest of the season!”  the boy barked.  Sidney stuck out her tongue and made a face at her brother, who had tiny veins bulging from his neck.  “Creep.”
     The fighting goes on, and on, and on.  Occasionally I dream of giving their inheritance to a worthy cause, like a study of how often  Gray Squirrels mate, but then I always back away from those plans when they occasionally take a break from the fray and I don’t have to be a referee.  But, without a doubt, I will again over the years, consider surprising them when the reading of my will commences.  I smile when I think of the expression on their faces when they find out that I’ve left all my Earthly belongings to a bunch of squirrels.
     Now, I think I’ll search the internet for that manual.  It’s never too late.
    
    
    

DOG DOO

                                                                 

 


     Several years ago, my father called and asked if I would mind accompanying him to a funeral for one of his old friends.  I had nothing pressing to do that day, so I told him that I wouldn’t mind at all.  Besides, I had always liked Fred, who had occasionally come to our house over the years.  He and my dad had grown up together and often sat around sharing stories of the old days and their youth, and  I enjoyed listening to them.
     On the morning of the funeral, which was in mid-July, I had enough time to mow the front yard and jump into the shower before my dad was due to pick me up.  The temperature was a balmy  90 degrees and I had hoped that dad didn’t want to attend the whole function, including the graveside service.  While waiting for him to arrive, I patrolled the yard picking up the occasional stick and making sure I hadn’t missed any spots after I had finished mowing.  Soon, I could hear my dad’s truck rumbling down the road toward our house.
     “Hi son.  I’m running a little late, but we should have plenty of time,”  dad said as he wheeled his old truck to a stop in our driveway.  “You’ve been busy this morning.  The lawn looks nice.”
     I hopped into passenger’s side and off we went with the windows down due to a lack of an operational  air conditioning  system in is truck. 
     “I’m guessing there’s going to be quite a crowd.  Old Fred was well liked by many people.  He and I grew up together, you know?”  he continued while, driving onto the road in front of our house.  We made small talk on the way, discussing Fred and his death and baseball.  Mostly baseball.
     Sure enough, there was a large gathering at the chapel which sat adjacent to the funeral home.  Fred hadn’t been a regular at any church that I knew of, so his family elected to use the facilities at the funeral home instead, which had very limited seating.
    “Dad, we may just have to stand at the back, there’s a horde of people here.  I don’t think we’ll find a seat,”  I said, as we walked toward the crowd which had gathered at the front door of the little building.
     A very large and boisterous fellow approached us and shook my dad’s hand and mine.  “Of course you’ll be able to get a seat.  Fred wouldn’t want to see his old childhood friend stand at his funeral!  Come with me,”  the big guy said, hurrying away toward the throng of people.  I decided that the man who led us into the chapel must be the funeral director by the way he ushered  us right up to the front with authority, and pointed to two empty spots on the end of the second row of pews.   I assumed that my dad knew the man, since he addressed him by his first name, but honestly, my dad seemed to know everybody.  Whether or not we were just lucky, or the seats were saved for us, we weren’t sure, but we looked at each other and smiled, glad to have somewhere to sit.
     We sat quietly, studying the paper bulletin that we had picked up off a table by the door,  reading about the dear old Fred’s life and occasionally glancing up to where he lied in his open casket.  The family and pall bearers were seated in the front row, only a few feet from the deceased. 
     “Whew!  It’s hot in here.  I guess the air conditioning isn’t working here either.  I hope they make this thing short and sweet, I’m dripping over here,” my dad whispered quietly to me, close to my ear and careful to not be heard by the family.  I too was feeling rather warm, and neither of us were accustomed to wearing suits, especially not on a day as hot as that.  We were squeezed in like sardines at the end of the pew, with an elderly gentleman seated directly in front of me while several old ladies sat across the narrow isle in the other row of seats.  Beginning to sweat myself,  I adjusted,  trying to create a little more room, by lifting one leg over the other in a crossed fashion and sitting caddy corner in the pew.  Suddenly, the old man in front of me looked left and then right with flared nostrils and leaned over the isle and whispered to the old lady closest to us, whom I assumed must have been his wife.
     “When did Fred die anyway ?” he said as quietly as possible, trying not to be overheard by others close by.  I surmised that he had neglected to grab a bulletin  when he came in, or maybe he was from out of town.
     “A week on Thursday, I believe,”  came the reply from the lady leaning slightly toward us  with a hand  over her mouth.
     “Did they embalm him?” came another question.
     “Well, I reckon!  What kind of ignoramus question is that for heaven’s sake?”
     “I smell something.  Things are gettin’ kinda ripe over here,” the old man said with a pinched face.
     “Oh good grief George!  Just pipe down, they’re closing the casket now!  What’s wrong with you!?”  the clearly frustrated and embarrassed lady asked.
     George was right.  There was a very rancid aroma floating in the vicinity of where we sat, waiting for the service to start.  I had no idea where the noxious odor was coming from, but it appeared to be gaining strength.  Maybe they did forget to embalm Fred and the July heat had begun to take his toll, I thought.
     My dad leaned over to whisper something in my ear just as the minister began walking toward the podium to speak.
     “Poop,” he said, quietly.
     “Poop?” I mouthed back at him.  What an inconvenient time for him to have nature call, and now I was beginning  to wonder if  he was the perpetrator who had unleashed  the stinking, invisible cloud floating around us.
     “No, Dog poop!”  he said again, barely audible, while pointing toward where my shoe was dangerously close to touching his trousers.  Sure enough, there it was.  A big, brownish blob of  gooey scat that my wife’s little dog had so cleverly deposited in our yard for me to step in.  I knew I shouldn’t have gone back into the yard!
      I lowered my foot to the floor beneath us, in a futile attempt to contain at least some of the fumes and trying in vain to prevent putting to much pressure on the shoe so as not to soil the carpet.  Throughout most of the service, the invisible cloud had enveloped most of the front two rows of pews.  Occasionally some of the pall bearers and family members would carefully look themselves and the casket up and down and at those around them, trying to find the source of the very offensive stench.  Even those who were mourning loudly had stopped crying and turned their attention to trying to pinpoint where the awful, powerful odor was coming from.  Several times the old man in front of me leaned forward, looking toward the casket, sure that Fred had prematurely began his transition back to ashes and dust.  Thankfully, the preacher wasn’t long winded and we didn’t have to endure the smell or the heat for very long.
     We passed George and his wife outside on the sidewalk, and he was still trying to convince her that either Fred hadn’t been embalmed, or something else had died in the chapel.  “I’m telling’ ya Rita, it was terrible.  I’m just glad to get some fresh air! I don‘t think old Fred was the only thing dead in there!”
     We finally made our way back to the truck and did indeed have a good laugh at my untimely misfortune, although I would have rather not had that particular laugh, especially at a funeral, surrounded by the grief stricken family.  If we’d only stood in the back, I could have easily stepped out and cleaned my shoe.  When we arrived at my house, I bid my father farewell after a brief laugh again in the driveway and headed to the  picnic table with twig in hand and began to pick the now drying manure from the treads of my shoe.
     This unfortunate incident is a perfect example of what I have dealt with for over forty years.  For as long as I can remember, I have had the uncanny ability to unknowingly step in dog poop no matter where I go.  Why couldn’t I have been a famous athlete, or maybe a world renowned surgeon?  No, I seem to be famous for sucking clean, breathable oxygen out of a room with my dog poop smeared footwear.  Oh, occasionally everyone has had the misfortune of taking that untimely step, but with me it happens with superior regularity.  I’ve dragged  the stinking stuff into people’s homes, the grocery store, church, doctor’s office, schools and just about anywhere else life takes me.  Heck, I haven’t been invited back to read to my daughter’s elementary school class, because her teacher doesn’t think I bathe regularly.  The stench was just too much for a bunch of giggling, squirming fourth graders.  My wife thinks my misfortune is due to my constant piddling in the yard.  I happen to think that I’m cursed in some way.  I’ve always felt that it was quite possible that I  could have changed the course of history because of my pathetic claim to fame. I can only imagine the panicked radio transmission had I been aboard the Apollo 13 spacecraft.  “Houston we have a problem.  Our oxygen tanks just exploded, and worse yet,  Neil has dog poop on his boot! We’re in bad shape up here!”
     So for the foreseeable future, I will continue to calculate each step, like a soldier walking through a minefield.  Surely this may help some, but one thing is certain.  For me there will always be that little, brown missile lying in wait for me to transport it on the bottom of my shoe to places far and wide.  My picnic table will always be there for me to sit, with a twig in hand ready to scrape my shoes free of that stinking, nasty dog doo.

STRIP FISHING

                                                                       

     There is an old saying that goes something like this-- Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.  Well, it has been my experience that this clever little phrase could be amended slightly.  Something more like-- Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.  Attempt to teach your young son to fish and you’ll stand around in your underwear all afternoon.
     Years ago, my family and I were returning from a trip to my mother and father-in-law’s home in West Virginia, when as usual, everyone was suddenly hit by excruciating hunger pains only minutes after pulling away from their house.
     “Why didn’t you eat before we left?”  I asked the obvious question, since my father-in-law always had a hearty breakfast prepared for us before we hit the road.
     “We weren’t  hungry then,” came the reply from the back seat. Normally we would stop off at a fast food place near the halfway point  to quell the hunger until we arrived home.  But, this time the pains hit miles from our usual stop off point.   Due to my yearning to make the best drive time possible, I was able to hold off stopping for a couple more hours.  Finally my passengers couldn’t stand it any longer and begged me to stop.
     “There aren’t any places to eat here,”  I stated, obviously irritated that we were about to wreck a world record time for the trip.
     “Well, I’m hungry and so are the kids, we need to stop,”  Kristi, my wife, shot back, glaring at me for putting my record time ahead of our hungry offspring.
     “Oh, ok,”  I said, still staring at the clock on the radio.  “There’s a fine little spot  right up the road.  See it? That should suffice.”
     “I’m not taking MY children into a strip club for lunch!” my wife barked, clearly using the word ‘my’.
She often referred to our kids as ‘her’ or ‘my’ children in times like this.  When they misbehaved or set something on fire, they were ‘your’ kids.
     “Hey, the food is usually very good in those places!”  I explained.
     “How do you  know how the food is in THOSE places?”  she snapped.
     “I’ve heard.  I mean I’ve never personally eaten in one of those places, but I’ve been told.”
     “Whatever.  There.  Pull into this little diner.  It looks, well, kinda nice.”
     I wheeled the car into the gravel parking lot of a place called Granny’s Kitchen.  Obviously the lunch crowd hadn’t shown up yet, as our car was the only one there. Apparently, the maintenance man hadn’t shown up yet either, if ever.  The little porch was a bit rickety, and the screen door had seen it’s better days, and a neon sign blinked ‘cash only’ in the window, but there was a very pleasant aroma wafting through the dusty screen.
     "Are we going to die?" Sidney asked, starting up at me as I inched slowly toward the door.
     "No honey, we're not going to die," I replied, wondering the same thing.
     As we carefully advanced into the little diner, with me in front (Kristi always makes me go first in uncertain situations), I was pleasantly surprised at how homey the little dining room was.  There was an assortment of odd tables and chairs sitting around, a few animal heads on the wall and many pictures that had most certainly been hanging in their spot for years.
     We took our seats and a charming little old lady whom we assumed must be Granny ambled over, smiled, and took our order.  After she happily walked away, heading toward the kitchen, I began looking around more closely at the décor, when a certain piece of artwork caught my eye.  I stood up and walked over to peruse the picture more closely.  A man and a very young boy were fishing along a bubbling brook, which gave me a sense that my son and I could be that man and boy.  Both figures held a fishing rod, and  the man, whom I decided must be the boy’s father,  had one hand placed gently on the boy’s shoulder.  Peaceful.  Serene.  What fathers and sons should be doing, I thought.
     We finally finished our lunch and set out to complete our journey  home.
     “Ya know, I think Ryan is old enough to take fishing,”  I said, staring straight ahead to avoid the look my wife sometimes gives me when she thinks I’m about to do something stupid.
     “He’s not yet five.  Maybe in another year or so.”
     “Nonsense.  I started around that age, and  I did fine,”  came my reply, purposely omitting the fact that my older brother had to have a hook surgically removed from his calf due to my ‘being ready to fish’ at that age.
    We finally made it home and straight away, I went to the garage and began taking inventory of my fishing gear. 
     “Looks like all I need is a few minor items like a couple rods and reels, lures, line, stringers, bobbers, hooks, sinkers, tackle box, pliers, and maybe some other insignificant trinkets and we’ll be set,” I told my wife as I entered the kitchen, where she was already unloading suitcases.
    “You don’t have anything,”  came the wry retort.
     “I did.  I used it just last summer.  Remember the cookout at Sherando Lake?  I used it then.  I just can‘t find it.  I do wish you would leave my stuff where I put it.” 
     “Oh yes, I do remember.  When you loaded the car, you placed all of your fishing junk on top of the car.  Remember?  Those little clanking noises we kept hearing every few miles on the way home? Then when we pulled into the garage it suddenly dawned on you that you had left all your stuff on top of the car. Remember?”
     “That was planned.  I knew what I was doing. Besides, you kept hassling me about getting home,” I replied, placing the blame where it should be.
     “Your plan was to have your fishing gear scattered all over the road for twenty miles?  Good plan,” she teased, while heading to the laundry room with a load of clothes.  There is no way to win with her.
     I went to the outdoor store and bought all of the tackle, rods, reels, etc. that had to be replaced due to my old fishing gear being lost as a result of my plan from the year before.
     On the day that my four and a half year old son’s fishing training was to start, I put new line on each reel, and loaded my shiny, new tackle box with all of the necessary items need to train a young lad to fish.
     “Where we goin’ daddy?”  questioned my little boy, dressed in blue jeans, a tee-shirt and new boots.
     “We’re going fishing.  It’s time you learned about the great outdoors.”
     Ryan sat quietly until we pulled into a worn spot along the dirt road that ran parallel to the river that I had thought most resembled the one in the painting I’d seen in Granny’s Kitchen.
     “Go ahead and get the poles out of the back, I’ll call your mom and let her know we made it.”
     “I don’t think I’m big enough, dad.”
     “Here, hop over the seat and get the poles.  Of course your big enough, you’re my big boy.”
     I began to punch the numbers in to get my wife on the phone, and before I even finished, a mighty ruckus arose from the far back of my SUV.
     “What’s wrong buddy?”
     “The hook is stuck in the seat!  I can‘t get it out!” Ryan barked, while tugging hopelessly on the fishing poles.
     “Oh. Ok.  Well don’t rip the fabric! Stop pulling on it!”
      I hung up the phone and exited the car, hurrying to the rear, to open the back hatch.  The ‘hook’ was a artificial minnow which had all three barbs dug deeply into the back of the seat. 
     “Are you mad?”
     “Of course not.  These things happen.  Just stand back and I’ll see if I can get this out.”
     “Daddy, I need to poop.”
     “Can you hold it for a minute while I get this hook out?” 
     At that point a very rancid aroma enveloped the rear of the car like a fog off the ocean.
     “I couldn’t hold it,”  came the simple answer from the red faced child.
     We each carried our respective poles down the grassy path to the river, complete with  Ryan and his Batman pole and shorts full of, well, you know.  This unfortunate incident caused him to walk sort of like Wyatt Earp heading to a gunfight. He followed me as I stared at my pole, which had a patch of seat still dangling from the lure.
     “Go ahead and strip off everything from the waist down.  You can wear your pants without undies.  I’ll wash out the underwear in the stream,”  I directed my son.
     “Daddy, it’s in my pants too.”
     Now, I’m a very quick thinker during these kinds of  predicaments,  even ones that involve poop.  Poop had been a major part of my life for almost five years., and to be honest, poop had in some way been a part of everything we’d done since our little boy was born.  Poop in church, poop in the grocery store, poop in the car, poop everywhere.  If he wasn’t pooping, our daughter was.                                                         “Oh.  Tell ya what.  Strip, and I’ll wash out your underwear and pants in the river and then you can just wear the wet underwear until the pants dry.  No problem,”  came my cool, calm directions.
     So while the little boy stood buck naked in the weeds, I bent down to wash the tiny clothes in the river.  The water was a foot or more below the edge of the bank where I attempted to wash out his shorts and jeans,  so as a result, I had to balance myself on a small, earthen cliff that jutted out over the water due to erosion from the constant flow of the river below.  Suddenly without warning, the bank gave way and in I went with a thunderous splash.  Thankfully, I was able to go in feet first and keep my balance without being fully submerged in the swirling, muddy water.   Ryan laughed uncontrollably while I thanked God that the lapping waves only came to my crotch.  After much scratching and digging, I was able to claw myself back up to dry land, although my pants and boots were caked with mud and grass.
      After a evening of enjoying some quality father and son time in the great outdoors, which included two more trips into the river to retrieve his fishing pole, and one additional poop in the weeds in which I used my sock to wipe his rear end, I heard voices advancing toward where we stood along  the river.  Suddenly a man and little boy appeared from the weeds carrying fishing poles and a tackle box.  I couldn’t help but notice the bright yellow and green fishing lure, firmly embedded in his shirt, dangling from the mans shoulder, complete with a short length of line still attached.
     “Had any luck?”
     “Naw, haven’t had a bite.  She’s all yours.  We’ve had our fill for one day, good luck,”  I answered pleasantly as I gathered up all of our gear and began our walk back up the grassy path toward the car.
     As we climbed into the car, Ryan stared at me with a quizzical look on his face as young boys sometimes do.
     “Daddy, do you think that man and his son thought it was funny that both of us were fishing in our underwear?”
     “Not a chance son, not a chance,”  I answered with a smile, staring at the small, broken end of a fishing pole still lodged between the door and the frame of the man’s car.
     I didn’t catch the name of the artist that created the picture in Granny’s Kitchen, but one things for sure.  The next time we go through that area, I will stop and get his name.  With any luck, I can find him and maybe he can shed some light on just how that feat in the painting was pulled off.  But in the meantime, I will continue to take my son fishing, and I’ll be sure to take some extra clothes.

MUSIC

    There’s nothing in this world, as far as I‘m concerned, that can bring a sense of peace and tranquility to a person like a well played piece of music.  Unfortunately, in my childhood years, peace and tranquility were not very abundant in our house.  Music, despite all it’s wondrous effects, can also cause one to periodically miss the evening news.
    My older brother, Jarrett, my younger sister, Carla, and I, all made attempts at learning to play an instrument.  It should be noted that my brother and I are still unaccomplished in music, while my sister has become quite the expert pianist.  But, in the early years, even she could send even the most ardent music lover in search of a set of earplugs.
    I have to admit, the recorder was the only instrument that I have ever attempted to play with any  seriousness.  Jarrett, briefly took a stab at mastering the trombone, and as I mentioned before, the piano was Carla’s instrument of choice.
    “I think it would be wonderful for you to join the school band,” my mother said, as she read over a copy of a sign up sheet that the school had sent home with my fifth grade brother.
    “Oh yeah, I’m definitely going to do it.  I love music and can’t wait to get started next year.”
    He may have loved music, but he hated math class.  Once a week, the band director would show up at our elementary school, and attempt to pass on his musical skills to a bunch of rowdy, unruly kids, who took band just to be excused from class for an hour.
    “Now look son,” mom said from her seat at the kitchen table, “if you’re going to do this, then we’ll have to buy you an instrument.  So, you need to take this seriously, because musical instruments aren’t cheap.”
    Even as a second grader, I knew his intentions well.  They had absolutely nothing to do with learning to play an instrument, and everything to do with skipping class.  “He just wants to get out of class,” I said, thankful that I sat on the opposite side of the table and had mom and dad there to protect me.  I had learned the hard way to never smart off to him without my body guards nearby.
    I sat quietly as my mom attempted to talk some sense into me.  “Look, if he wants to learn to play an instrument, then he’s going to get the opportunity.  You worry about second grade, and let me worry about him.”
    During the summer before the following school year, my mom was able to locate a used trombone which was being sold at a very good price.  The haggard looking lady who sold the slightly dented piece of brass to my mother, seemed unusually ecstatic to see the bellowing thing gone from her life.  “Oh we’ve had years of enjoyment from this trombone.  I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.  Good luck,” she said, before slamming the door in our face.  I thought I could see she and her husband dancing and giving high fives through the porch window, but I wasn’t sure.
    So began the Fix family’s journey down the musical road, which was very bumpy, and wouldn’t smooth out for years.  Every evening without fail during the following school year,  Jarrett would pull his trusty trombone from it’s worn case and blow incessantly for hours, while my father attempted to watch the evening news.  “Does he really have to practice that darned thing while I’m trying to watch the news!” dad would say, irritated that the onslaught of noise would begin promptly at six o’clock.
    “He needs to practice,” mom would answer, in defense of her 11 year old antithesis of Louie Armstrong.
    “He’s not getting any better, in fact, I think he’s getting worse!  Do you know what Arvil asked me the other day?  He wanted to know when we got a dying elephant for a pet!”  dad exclaimed, as he shut off the television and disappeared to quieter regions of our property.  Arvil Welcher was our older neighbor.  His children were grown, so apparently life at his house was a bit more tranquil that life at ours.
    Soon, my brother had mastered the trombone, although it was in his own special way.  “I’ve figured this whole thing out.  There are several other trombone players in our band, so I just PRETEND to play.  I just move the slide back and forth and nobody knows the difference.  I don’t even have to practice anymore!”  If that philosophy was adopted with concerns to baseball, my father would have had none of it.  But, with the trombone, he was all for it.
    That philosophy served him well until he was given a brief solo part, in which the rest of the band stopped playing, and required him to actually blow a few notes alone.  But, I must admit, he stuck to his guns.  During a concert, in which the school gym was packed with eager onlookers, he put his new trombone playing philosophy to work.  During the first number, the band stopped, and he silently moved his slide to and fro, without ever emitting the slightest sound.  He even continued to tap his foot slightly on the floor, and swayed his head from side to side, all while he faked his part. He had guts.  This was accomplished in front of an auditorium full of anxious families and school faculty members, who stared in wonderment at my parents, while they sat deathly still and never allowed their eyes to stray from the stage.  The following year, his band experiment would be finished.
    I never played in the band, but, as all fourth graders do, I was charged with learning to play the recorder.  Some people think that the recorder isn’t actually an instrument, but since it does have the capability of multiple notes, I prefer to think it was.  I have always been the kind of person who lets certain things worry me.  Sometimes my worry would be due to fear of embarrassment, or, well, that’s it.  Just the fear of embarrassment.   Toward the end of my fourth grade year, we would be forced to play several songs solo, as well as a few pieces with the entire class.   The group songs didn’t bother me much, but the solo parts had me very concerned.
    “Mom, I need to make sure I have these songs memorized.  I’m worried that I won’t learn them, and Mrs. Deaton is pretty rough at times,” I said, with a deeply troubled look on my 9 year old face.
    “You’ll need to practice,” she replied.  “Finish your other homework and then each day, you can spend a little time with the recorder.  You’ll have it memorized in no time.”  Usually, by the time I had finished my homework, my dad had come home from work and had settled into his easy chair to watch the evening news.  He had enjoyed two years of uninterrupted news viewing since Jarrett had retired from playing the trombone, but as always, all good things must come to an end.
    “Does he really need to practice that darned thing every time I attempt to watch the news!  I swear, those boys couldn’t carry a note in a bucket!  It’s awful!  Do you know what Arvil asked me the other day?  He asked me why I refused to change the battery in our smoke detector!  I told him the detector was fine, it was the middle child responsible for all the chirps, beeps and chimes he heard.”  With that, he exited the house, surely to seek solace from the screeching recorder.
    I did make it through the fourth grade, and thus my musical career came to an end.  But, there was one more child left to delve into the complicated world of music…my little sister.
    One evening, my mother made the announcement that kindergarten would be a fine time for Carla to begin taking piano lessons.  “I think we should go ahead and get Carla piano lessons.  The sooner the better, you know?”  she said, excitedly.  Dad, who was sitting in his favorite chair reading the newspaper, suddenly lowered the paper, and peered over the top, with his eyes darting around the room.  His head reminded me of a submarine’s periscope, breaking the ocean’s surface, scanning the seas for danger. 
    “Uh, whatever you think,” he said.  I could see the look on his face by that time, and it surely was a result of my brother’s and my earlier attempts at making music.  “I don’t know, look how it turned out for the boys.  Maybe we should leave well enough alone,” he continued.  I figured that he was worried that once again, he’d be left out in the cold concerning world events, sports, politics, etc., due to missing the evening news at the hands of a noisy piano.
    Bling, blong, dong, ding, pling, came a barrage of noises from our living room, soon after Carla began taking piano lessons.  In the early days of her attempted mastery of the piano, she became quite capable of imitating the sounds of many a great piano player.  Unfortunately,  those sounds were surely after a night of the great ones immersing themselves in the finest liquors known to man.  Every evening, without fail, she would rise from the dinner table and head to the piano to begin banging out notes like a concert pianist.  Of course, concert pianists had the advantage of performing in very cavernous assembly halls and auditoriums, very different from the comfy confines of our home, where the irritated father was attempting to catch up on the latest news.
    “Good lord!  What’s she doing in there?  The windows are shaking!” my exasperated father exclaimed as he once again headed out the back door to a quieter existence.
    “She needs to practice,” my mom quipped, as she had done years before, trying to defend the fuzzy headed Fats Domino in the making. 
    After a few years the blings, pings and bongs, turned into rather enjoyable music.  Carla soon began playing weddings, funerals, church gatherings, and many other events.  She had become a very good pianist.  My brother and I still haven’t mastered a musical instrument, but one thing is for sure.  In our brief foray into the world of musical instruments, we made a lasting impression on our father, and Arvil, the neighbor.  But at long last, he has been able to watch the evening news, uninterrupted, for years.

WE NEED TO TALK

    Few words in the English language penetrate and bring a sense of doom  to a man like the words, “we need to talk.”  Those words, spoken by wives around the world, have struck fear in even the most manly of men, causing them to recoil in fear and attempt to slink away before ‘the talk’ begins.  Immediately and quickly, upon hearing that dreadful phrase, I begin to replay in my mind, every single event that took place over the last week, or longer, trying in vain to figure out where I went drastically wrong.  Of course it’s no help if you do know what you’ve done wrong at that point, because then she’ll want to know why you didn’t address it yourself, without her having to point it out.
    Early in my marriage, obviously, I was extremely inexperienced in how to handle those four ominous words.  “Sure, what’s on your mind?” I’d say, with an ear to ear smile upon my face, which would soon be replaced by a very lowly frown.  Over the course of time, I have learned to NEVER utter that question, as there would never, ever be anything remotely resembling the ‘we’ in our discussion.  The talks always involve me nodding my head, occasionally, mumbling the words, “You’re right, and I’m sorry.”  Usually, when the ‘we need to talk’ phrase is launched in my direction like a Tomahawk Missile,  I have forgotten to do something, or remembered to do something, but didn’t do it right, or maybe I was simply aloof concerning something I should have taken notice of, but one thing is for sure, the missiles just keep on coming.
    Over the years, my wife, much like I have, has gained experience in when to spring the need to talk upon me.  Usually, she ambushes me when I’m under something and can’t escape.  The other day, I was attempting to unclog the kitchen sink drain, which required me to wiggle almost half my body under the cabinet. I felt a sense of impending doom sweep over my body, when she slid a chair across the floor and plopped down, letting out a long sigh.  Now that I‘m a professional sigh recognizer, I have come to know that particular worrisome exhale as the one that will somehow turn the clogged drain into the least of my worries.  Again, I  know that under no circumstances do I ever start the conversation.    That’s like asking the leader of a firing squad, “what‘s on your mind?”  There is always a glimmer of hope that the kids will provide a diversion, or the phone will ring, or perhaps an airplane will crash into the house.  Either way, I never, ever start the conversation. 
    “We need to talk,” Kristi said. 
    “Man, this thing is plugged all the way out of the house!  I’ve been fooling with this for hours!  I may have to call a plumber.  My knuckles are bleeding,” I groan, pretending not to notice her words, and hoping for a sympathy diversion due to my current predicament.  I’ve also noticed that she not only prefers me to be under something when the urge to talk arises, but she seems to like me to be flat on my back.  I guess it’s similar to a dog in the submissive position.
    “Did you not hear me?  I SAID, we need to talk.”  When she puts special emphasis on the words, ‘I said’, I know that it is then that I’m doomed.
    “Sorry.  What’s on your mind?” I continued, suddenly thankful for the plugged drain, and not having to make eye contact with her.
    “Did you even notice that I got my hair cut and colored?  Yesterday evening I came in, excited, and you didn’t even notice.  You never said a word, and things like that are important to me.  The occasional complement wouldn‘t kill you.”   She was right, I hadn’t noticed.  I don’t notice things like that.  She could have walked in with a purple Mohawk and I wouldn’t have noticed.  Maybe if she would stroll through in a sheer outfit from Fredrick’s of Hollywood  I’d notice, but a haircut?  Please.
    “I’m sorry, I’ve got a lot on my mind, but that’s no excuse.  Your hair looks beautiful,” I replied, hoping to head off something even bigger.  Truly, I did have a lot on my mind.  I had been hoping that Payton Manning would get one more shot at winning another Super Bowl.                                                 Sometimes, wives are very cunning.  They’ll start with something trivial, like the haircut, and progress to what is really bothering them, softening us up before the final attack. 
    “I feel unappreciated.  I feel like you and the kids take me for granted.  I mean, when is the last time you didn’t have clean clothes in the closet when you needed them?  Do you know what Ryan just said?  He said that the work you do is harder than the work I do.  Can you believe that?”  she asked, bending down, trying to see if I was paying attention.  Honestly, I could believe that, but would never say it under any circumstances.  I wiggled a bit further under the cabinet, in hopes that I could squeeze my entire body in there somehow and hide.  Ryan and I had recently spent a very cold day in the mountains, cutting wood in the snow, and had somehow miraculously avoided getting frostbite on our fingers and toes.  It was then, that he made the observation that folding laundry was much easier that cutting wood.
    “Dad, it’s no wonder men usually don’t live as long as women.  Men work harder.  I mean, you can’t tell me folding laundry is as tough as this.”
    “Keep that thought to yourself,” I quipped, sure that he wouldn’t.  “Here’s your first lesson on women and marriage.  I don’t care how much you think you’ve done, or how hard you’ve worked, you haven‘t done diddly squat in their eyes.   I mean, you could pave Interstate 81 from Winchester to Bristol with a wheelbarrow and a shovel in 100 degree heat, by yourself, and you still haven’t even scratched the surface of the amount of work you’re wife will do before lunchtime.  Got it?  Just keep your mouth shut and live a good life and one day Heaven will be better, as far as I know, God‘s a man, so he‘ll understand our plight.”
    “OK,” he said, solemnly, while holding his frozen fingers in front of the truck’s heater vent.  “Maybe when I get married, I’ll let my wife cut the wood, and I’ll do the laundry.”
    That thought had crossed my mind many times over the years, but I had learned to never put most of my thought to words.  “No, No, No,” I said.  “Never, and I mean never say that.  You’ll certainly find out what doing without means,” I finished.  He would find out soon enough that his old man wasn’t kidding.
    I finally managed to dislodge the clog from the drain, and slowly emerged from underneath the cabinet.  Apparently, bacon grease solidifies when it comes in contact with cold surfaces, and husbands melt when they come in contact with angry wives.  “I’m sorry you feel like we don’t appreciate what you do.  I know we don’t always say it, but we do appreciate what you do.  I know you work very hard, harder than me, that’s for sure.  Why don’t we continue this discussion over a nice dinner out somewhere,” I said, pulling my tried and true dinner diversion on my frowning wife, and staring at the criss crossed, bleeding scratches on my hands.
    “Yeah, that sounds good, I could use a break from cooking dinner.” 
    Another time, I slid under my SUV to change the oil.   I had just unscrewed the oil plug, and the thick, black liquid began running into the bucket I had stationed below, with the first little bit drowning my hands and wristwatch.  Suddenly, and without warning, a pair of feet appeared in front of the car.  First, I heard the sigh, followed by a slight tapping of the fingers on the metal above my head.  I explained the sigh earlier, but the sigh, coupled with the finger tapping, meant that things were WAY bad.  “Do you have a minute?  We need to talk,” Kristi said, in a tone that made me want to live the rest of my life in a prone position underneath the car.
    “Gosh, it’s tight under here.  My hands are covered in oil, and there’s no way I’m going to reach that oil filter.  You know, if one of the tires were to suddenly blow, do you know I‘d be crushed to death?” I moaned, using my most sorrowful voice.
    My wife was now tapping the toe of her shoe on the concrete garage floor, almost in unison with the finger tapping.  Apparently the possibility of having a flattened husband meant nothing to her, based on her ignoring my comment.  That meant that my immediate attention was required, and would require my sliding out from under the car to meet face to face.  So, I slid out, while the oil drained, stood, and stared at her.
    “We’re doing something wrong!  Ryan and Sidney are out of control.  Do you know what she just said to me?  She said that just because I’m a teacher doesn’t mean that I know everything.  Would you have ever said that to your mother?  I know I wouldn’t have,”  she said, with the intensity growing in her voice with each new word.
    “Why did she say that?” I asked, knowing what was coming.  When our kids won an award, or were recognized for something good, it was most assuredly due to her hard word and dedication as a mother.  When they veered off the straight and narrow, or broke something, it was due to something they had surely learned by observing me.
    “I was trying to explain to her about how electricity in a house works, and she said that she’d rather you explain it to her.  Can you believe that?”  she exclaimed.  Actually, I could believe that.  The kids had seen  me repair, remodel, and rebuild almost every room in the house, and new wiring had always been part of my work.
    “The nerve of that child,” I said, with a most incredulous look on my face.  “I’m going to have a talk with her as soon as I finish the oil change.”
    The finger tapping continued and then the true bombshell was dropped, sort of like the principal attack after the shock and awe.   “She also cussed,” she continued, tilting her head in a downward position while wrinkling her brow.  Those particular facial expressions mean that she’s waiting on me to admit something.  In this case she was attempting to pry an admission of guilt concerning our cussing ten-year-old daughter.
    “What’d she say?”
    “Damn.”
    “Where did she possibly hear that?”  I asked.  I knew the possibilities were endless.  Television and all it’s trashy shows, other children at school, or perhaps in a magazine she’d read were some examples of where she could have heard or seen the word.  But in my wife’s mind, there was only one source of such heinous profanity.  Me.  She didn’t need to actually accuse me of indoctrinating our child into the dark world of bad words, but her face told the tale.
    “Look, I’m not especially worried about the fact that she said the word, damn.  It’s just that she said it so nonchalantly in conversation with me,” she said, while softening her face a little.
    “I’ll talk to her.”  With that, she turned, and walked back toward the house.  I was thankful to crawl back under the car and finish with the oil.  Later, when I had the opportunity to correct our daughter, I made it short and sweet.
    “Mom said you said damn.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Don’t say that anymore.”
    “OK.”  With that, the conversation was over.
    The dreaded ‘we need to talk’ barbs will continue to fly, but I, in my infinite wisdom, will continue to deflect and dodge, and just keep on crawling under things.  I will wait, like the condemned soul waiting for the leader of the firing squad to give the command to commence firing.  And, alas, I always admit my guilt, even when I haven’t the slightest clue as to what I’ve done.  There will be no doing without for me, but for my son, there will surely be a few lonely nights on a lumpy couch.  But, just as I have, he will learn, and master the art of admitting guilt for the sake of keeping he peace and to keep the home fires burning warmly.