life – DTyesthatDT

January 20, 2022January 21, 2022

Angels, Devils, and the Parents that formed them.

I lived in Eagan for a couple years when I was in Kindergarten and first grade. I had two friends who were essentially the real world manifestations of that little angel and devil that appear on the shoulders of cartoon characters like Tom and Jerry. Mike was the angel. Tim was the devil. (He even had red hair.)

My friend Mike lived about a block away in a cul de sac within sight of my house. Mike’s parents let me come over for dinner a lot and they always had dessert. Mike’s Mom brought us snacks and treats while we were playing and asked us if we were okay or if we needed anything. Their house was clean and organized. These were good people and Mike was a reflection of them. Always smiling. Always polite. Being Mike’s friend was easy and stress free unless Tim was involved.

Tim lived across the street and one house to the left. I got invited to dinner there once. His Dad was mad about something and nobody spoke. It was awkward. Tim’s Dad spent countless hours working on this Chevelle and very few working on his family from my impressions. He would meticulously color in the white letters on the Chevelle’s tires with White Out which was the liquid used to blot out typos on paper. Tim’s Mom was friendly to me and in hindsight I believe she was a little concerned for me. Tim rarely listened to her, but he obeyed his Dad out of fear.

Young David fell somewhere on the spectrum between Mike and Tim and, honestly, my family life was somewhere between Mike’s and Tim’s too. My Dad had mental health issues and swung between violent rage and doting Dad. My Mom was always kind to everyone and did her best to take care of us.

It was 1978 and Elvis was dead. “Keep on Rockin’ me, Baby” by The Steve Miller Band was my favorite song. Tim and I rode our bikes all over the place and explored in every direction as far as we dared to ride. Mike wasn’t allowed to go beyond a few block radius of his house.

On one hot summer day, Tim asked me to ride with him to the Tom Thumb convenience store down the hill and about a half mile from our houses. He said he wanted a Bomb Pop which was a frozen treat like a really thick and patriotically colored Popsicle, so I rode along with him to get one. When we got there, he asked me if I wanted one too and I told him that I didn’t have any money. He said that he didn’t either. As I stood there confused and trying to figure things out, Tim looked through the window to make sure the employee wasn’t looking, shoved the door open, opened the chest freezer by the door, and came back out with two Bomb Pops. He handed me one, tore his open, and jumped on his bike. I jumped on my bike too, but a short time later I told him that I had forgotten something back at the store and I secretly put the Bomb Pop back because I didn’t want to go to jail. Every moment that Bomb Pop was in my hand was terrifying.

Tim walked over to my house one summer day eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He wanted to ride bikes and I told him that I did too and I’d wait for him to finish his sandwich. He got a big smile on his face and then he turned and whipped the mostly uneaten sandwich up onto the roof of my parents’ garage. I was horrified and I wondered what would happen. I don’t think Tim wondered about anything. When I got back, my Dad was up on a ladder getting the sandwich off the roof. He asked me if I knew how it got there and I said that I didn’t. I’m pretty sure he knew.

Tim and I threw apples from our tree into the neighbors yard and against their house and I got yelled at for it.

Tim ate all of the frosting off a leftover birthday cake at his house after his Mom told him to leave it alone. He puked about fifteen minutes later and said that I should probably go home.

Tim asked me to help him mix together all of the chemicals in the laundry room at his house and from under the kitchen sink also. We poured a little bit of each bottle into bowls and mixed them up into a disgusting looking paste. Once we were done and he was bored with it, Tim picked up the two bowls and threw them into his bedroom closet. He shut the door and I never heard how that little experiment turned out.

Tim asked me if I wanted a glass of pop at his house one day and I said that I wasn’t thirsty. He came out of the bathroom with a smirk on his face and a glass in his hand a few minutes later and handed it to me. He said that he had decided to get me some pop anyway and I should drink it. It was yellow and quite warm. I’d guess it was about 98.6 degrees and freshly made. I didn’t drink it.

Tim and I had a lot of fun throwing darts at the dart board in the spare bedroom at my house. We missed the board a few times and laughed guiltily as we pulled the darts out of the wall. Then we started throwing the darts at the wall on purpose. We threw them at every wall in the room for a few weeks until my parents realized it and put a stop to our game. There were probably more holes than wall by this point. It took my Dad a few weeks to mud, sand, and repaint the room and he made his feelings about my actions quite clear, let’s say.

Tim and I collected pop cans because beer can collecting was popular at that time, but we were seven and weren’t allowed to do that. Tim asked me if he could have a few of my cans and I told him no. Then he suggested that we wash our collections in his pool, so we did that. Those cans that he had asked for, along with a number of others, were not with my other cans when I got home.

Tim wanted to show me something in his back yard one day and it turned out to be a ladder leading to the roof of his garage. He goaded me to climb up there and we both ended up on the roof. He had put a paper grocery bag up there earlier and when we both got up there he reached into it and handed me a lighter and some fireworks. I was confused because it was early afternoon and not July 4th and we live in a suburb, so it didn’t seem like the time to light off fireworks to me. Tim explained that he had called another kid, Steve, from down the block and asked him to come over to play with us. When Steve got there, we were going to ambush him with fireworks. I didn’t think that was a great idea, but soon Steve was in the driveway and Tim was hurling firecrackers and shooting bottle rockets at him. Steve said that he was going to call the police and Tim laughed at him. I got off the roof and had just started to head home when the police car pulled up. Tim and I ran and I hid in the garden shed in the back yard. I was pretty sure that I was going to prison for the rest of my life. The door creaked open letting a slightly cooler breeze into the stifling shed and a man’s voice said “I don’t see him in here. I just hope that boy realizes how dangerous all of that was and how badly he and those other boys could have gotten hurt.” That was good policing. I stayed in the shed for a really long time before sneaking out and around the block and back to my house by a circuitous route. I thought I had gotten away with it until our phone rang and it was Tim’s Mom explaining what we had done to my Dad. I didn’t get to buy the Star Wars X-Wing fighter that I had been saving my allowance to buy that week.

When we moved to North Branch, Tim rode his bike over to say goodbye and I remember waving to him through the back window of our red Impala as we drove away. My Dad made a comment about how he’d never seen that boy look so sad or upset before. I’ve always wondered what happened to Tim. When I wondered that out loud a few times, my folks both said that he’s probably in prison or dead. I hope he turned things around and put his energy into something good. And, I hope his Dad learned to love him more than the Chevelle.

Years later, I organized the theft of the North Branch town sign on Highway 95 one summer with a group of friends. We trained for the heist like a NASCAR pit crew and we each had our roles to play. We’d done our reconnaissance and we knew what size nuts and bolts were holding it on. We knew how high the sign was and that the guys with the sockets on one side and the guys with the wrenches on the other side would have to be held up by other guys to complete their work. We also figured out where to stash the sign until another guy with a pickup could come and fetch it a short time later. We rolled up in a car, jumped out, and did our work quickly and efficiently. Once we had it down, we realized how huge and heavy it was and that it would never grace anyone’s dorm room or family room. I never saw the sign again and it took whoever is responsible for that sign a few years to replace it. I heard that it ended up in somebody’s barn in Almelund and was eventually cut up for scrap.

I also stole a beaker from the science lab in my high school and used it for a pen/pencil holder for about 15 years. Around that same time, I stole a metal sign from the ski resort I worked at in high school that read “Remove Pole Straps From Wrists”.

My daughter Abby asked me where I had gotten that sign one day when we were in the garage together doing a project. She was probably about the same age as I was when I put the Bomb Pop back in the freezer at Tom Thumb in Eagan. I have always been honest with my kids, so I told her the truth. After some discussion, we decided that the best course of action was to send the sign back to Wild Mountain with an apology letter. I told her about the beaker too and we ended up sending that back to the high school with a similar letter. The whole thing made for a good family discussion and hopefully a few good lessons for the kiddos. I’m sure it also confused and/or amused the people who opened the packages.

I thought that I was going to get arrested with my band mates at Mississippi Music Fest in St. Cloud in the summer of 1989. The bass player’s girlfriend had pretended to be our manager and lied to the promoter of this festival about our accomplishments and gotten us a slot to play five songs. When we rolled up in an old pickup and my Dad’s station wagon and started unloading our gear, the promoter had a change of heart and told us that, after all, there wasn’t a spot for us anymore. The singer and the girlfriend argued with him and he finally relented and said that we could play one song. I didn’t think that it was worth it to get all setup to play one song and the singer assured me that we were going to play our whole set. I got nervous.

After the first song, the announcer/promoter asked the crowd to give us a round of applause, but we just ignored him and launched into our next song. He protested loudly after that one, but we drowned his voice out with our amplifiers and drums and another song. After that one, he threatened to call the police and we just kept going. The singer told the crowd what was going on and the crowd booed the promoter which further enraged him. While we were playing the sixth song, the police showed up and started walking toward the stage. As they reached it, the singer said to the audience, while staring at the lead officer, “And for our LAST song, we’ll be playing Rock and Roll by Led Zeppelin.” The cops relaxed a little and let us finish. So we ended up playing seven songs instead of the original five which was way more than ONE. As we got off the stage, the officers and the promoter approached us and the promoter was shouting at us and the cops and telling them to arrest us. The singer and the girlfriend explained our view of the matter and showed the officers our contract. The lead officer said “It sounds like a personal problem to me. Have a good day.” Then they left with the promoter following and yelling at them. As we were just about to leave, the promoter came back and told us that we’d never play in St. Cloud again. He’d make sure of that. One of us said “Well, we’ve never played here before, so that works I guess.” He just walked away shaking his head. It was a good day and we had a lot of fun.

My life of crime has come to an end as of this writing and I’ve managed to raise four great kids who are also not criminals. I love them more than my guitars and amplifiers or anything else in the world (even Chevelles) and I think that makes the difference for most people. The singer is now a minister with a whole pack of kids and doing great things. Mike is probably the nicest guy all of his friends and family know. I hope that Tim isn’t dead or in prison and I hope he’s found the love he needed too. The rest of us have still not been prosecuted for stealing the North Branch sign and we’re still out here doing the best we can with the cards we’ve been dealt. Be well, my friends, and keep climbing.

January 19, 2022January 19, 2022

Wiener Dog versus The Grim Reaper

Like most other children, I desperately wanted a dog when I was kid. I begged. I made promises. I vowed to take care of it, etc. I don’t think my older brother ever asked for a dog and my parents never owned dogs that I know of. This would be Thomas dog #1.

There was a dog that lived in my Dad’s tent while he was fighting off the Soviet backed North Korean Communists with the rest of the U.S. Army in Korea in the 50’s. I saw a black and white snapshot of it once when my Dad was looking through his pictures. The dog was more of a puppy and it looked like something in a Hallmark commercial. It was happy and cute and playful looking and I’m sure it was a nice distraction from the death and horror that those guys walked with every day. The dog kind of belonged to my Dad and his buddies because they fed it and looked after it. They named it, I kid you not, Fartface. (I’m going to leave that right there for you to ponder and be as confused about it as I’ve been for the last 30+ years since I heard about it.) My Dad didn’t know what happened to Fartface when he left Korea. All that he brought home was a disability or two and some pretty wicked nightmares that allowed him to relive the war for the rest of his life.

My pleading payed off eventually and I got a dog for my birthday when I was about seven. After looking at four or five other dogs that day, I found one that my parents and I could agree on. The tag on the kennel door at the Humane Society shelter said his name was Bozo and his breed was identified as a “Doxie mix”. He was a little chunkier and a little taller than a purebred dachshund due to whatever other breed(s) he was mixed with. He had a 99% wiener dog head, ears, color, and face and I think, based on his life, he was probably mixed with an Army Ranger or Chuck Norris because he was pretty hard to kill despite numerous attempts.

My Mom decided that she should probably hold onto him on the car ride home instead of letting him run wild in the back seat with me. Without car seats or seat belts in the back, we definitely did run wild in those days. A few miles down the road he put his nose under the flap of her coat and seemed to settle down. My Mom was commenting on how he was relaxing and she kept petting him and telling him that he was going to be okay as we talked about what we should change his name to. Bozo was a famous clown from that era and he was that peculiar combination of annoying and creepy that only clowns can pull off. The dog needed a better name. Shortly, it was decided that Prince was a far better name than Bozo. Once this decision was reached, Prince promptly puked inside my Mom’s new coat. I watched him do it and watched her recoil in disgust as I hung onto the front bench seat to keep an eye on the dog. I believe he was very lucky that she loved her son more than she hated the new dog at that moment. She hadn’t really wanted a dog in the house to begin with and here was the first disgusting evidence that this whole thing was a bad idea. My Mom always kept a clean house despite the other three of us doing our best to mess it up and now this dog had joined our ranks against her.

That evening, my parents went out somewhere and left me and my brother at home with the dog. I was excited to play with him despite the fact that he had bitten my lip that afternoon when I was trying to play with him on the floor. When my folks left, the dog barked at the slamming door. Then he turned around and started barking wildly and growling at me and my brother. I was seven, my brother was 15 or 16, and we had zero experience with dogs. The poor dog was probably terrified in his new surroundings and just wanted to be left alone. When we approached him, he would charge us and bark and growl. This was new. Prince eventually herded us both into the living room and onto the couch where he held us prisoner for three or four hours until my parents got home. If we made any attempt to move, he went crazy and we got even more scared.

My Mom and Dad got home hours later and they were wondering what was going on as they climbed the steps from the entryway to the living room and saw us cowering on the couch. The dog barked at them too, but my Dad just laughed and picked the dog up while he asked my brother and I what was going on. We told them our tale of imprisonment and they thought that it was pretty funny that we were held captive by a wiener dog with an attitude.

The following year, we moved from a suburb of Minneapolis to a rural area about five miles out of North Branch. Prince had many adventures chasing squirrels and meeting other dogs, cats, and strange neighbors. Since he was of German ancestry, the neighborhood men decided that he must like beer and they gave him his own bowl now and again at one of the many bonfires that my parents hosted. It turned out that Prince couldn’t hold his liquor, shocking I know, and the men enjoyed watching him stumble around as they themselves were also stumbling around. My Dad often recounted the story of one such evening where he claimed Prince ran into both door posts as he attempted to enter the house to retire for the evening.

After nearly being killed by my Mom’s disgusted looks after he hurled into her coat, Prince had many other brushes with death while we lived in North Branch. He liked to bark at the neighbor’s goats, for example. One day the neighbor, Melvin Hanson who was a semi-retired farmer with a thick Swedish accent, got tired of Prince harassing his goats and decided to shoot him with a 12 gauge shotgun. Prince evidently sensed Melvin’s evil intentions because he ended up with a lot of lead pellets in his rear end as he tried to make his escape. We arrived home to find him laying in the yard in tough shape. My Mom rushed the dog into town to the vet while my Dad controlled himself enough to talk to the neighbor without punching or throttling him. When asked why the hell he would shoot a ten pound wiener dog with a shotgun, Melvin insisted that the dog was going to kill one of his goats and that we needed to keep our “killer dog” away from them or this would happen again. My Dad made it quite clear to Melvin that he would share the dog’s fate if he ever did anything like that again. The dog lived and so did Melvin.

Fences were eventually mended and we ended up getting along just fine with Melvin and his bride Lila. Years later, Melvin actually beat me in a foot race. I was about 12 and he was 80. He came out one hot summer day to watch me and my friends play football in the field in between our houses. This was the same field where the wiener dog failed to outrun the shotgun pellets. Melvin was giving me a hard time about not being fast enough on one of the plays and I made a wise remark back to him about being old and slow. He didn’t take that well and started unloading his pockets onto the ground. Old guys have a lot of stuff in their pockets. Watches, wallets, pens, glasses, keys, knives, loose change, notebooks, coin purses, etc. I thought he was going to come and strangle me or put his fist in my big mouth, but he challenged me to a race. I couldn’t believe it, but I agreed and we marked the distance we’d run with some hats and the football. One of my friends said “Go!” and I tore off the line and headed toward the other end of the field to an easy victory, I thought. At one point, I looked over my shoulder and saw Melvin pumping his arms in his bib overalls and work boots and then he was past me and over the finish line. I got dusted by an 80 year old retired farmer. My friends were just about dead they were laughing so hard at seeing the way Melvin ran and also the fact that he demolished me in a foot race. Melvin, in between red faced wheezes and trying to catch his breath, talked some pretty good smack as he upbraided me for making fun of an old man. I’m glad my Dad didn’t kill him. He was a good guy. And fast. But, back to the hero of our story, the bullet-proof wiener dog…

Prince liked to chase squirrels and he also liked to chase cars on the dirt road in front of our house. On two occasions while doing this, he was hit by the car and thrown into the ditch. One was a sedan and the second was a pickup truck. The first time, he yelped all the way back to the house and was not quite himself for a few days, but he survived. The second time, he was knocked out as he flew into the ditch and we were sure that he was dead. My Dad saw it and ran down the yard to grab him, but Prince regained consciousness before my Dad got there and ambled his way back to the house. Again, he survived.

One summer, Prince surprised a dumb squirrel who got himself turned around and wasn’t quite fast enough to get away from the streaking wiener. After getting his face severely clawed and losing some blood, the dog survived and the squirrel lived to pillage our bird feeder another day.

The sound of the snow plow grinding down the frozen dirt road in front of our house in the winter enraged the dog also. He hated that sound. Wherever he was, he would run at top speed to confront the growling truck. Twice that we witnessed, he charged the plow head on and was swept into the ditch with the wave of snow like a twig in a tornado. I always wondered if the driver saw him and just laughed. The dog had guts. One of those times, my friends and I were playing and sledding in the ditch because we had a snow day off from school. We yelled at Prince to stop as he ran at full speed and barking toward the plow. We watched in horror as he was flung end over end into the snow pile in the ditch. Some of the guys lifted up their hands at the plow driver like they were saying “What the heck?!” Most of us ran to the spot where we thought the dog was buried. We dug frantically trying to find and, we thought, save him. He popped up about 15 feet from where we were digging, shook himself off, and trotted back to the house as though his work here was finished. The homestead had been successfully defended. He had survived.

My Dad wandered out to the kitchen each morning in his robe and started the coffee. One winter morning, he wandered with his bare foot into a pile of warm dog poop as well. (For years, he told people the detailed story and described how it felt to have warm dog poop squish up between his toes as he stepped down into it on the cold linoleum.) We didn’t need our alarm clocks that morning as we were awakened from blissful sleep by a raging torrent of foul curses and imprecations toward the dog. I got to the kitchen entrance as my Dad was finishing wiping the waste off his foot with a paper towel and grumbling. I was afraid to speak because I didn’t want to be murdered, but I was also afraid for my dog so I had come to this vantage point to see what was going to happen. Done wiping, my Dad walked over and grabbed the dog like a purse by the skin of his back and walked toward the door as the dog howled. I started crying and begging him to not hurt Prince. I don’t think he heard me in that state of mind. He flung the door open, kicked the storm door open, and walked out onto the frozen porch as he raised the dog into punting position. As he pulled his foot back for the dropkick, he slipped with the other foot, fell, and landed flat on his back on the frigid concrete steps. His grip on the dog was released and Prince landed on my Dad’s stomach. He quickly scampered out into the yard and completed his morning duty as my Dad groaned and managed to stand and hobble back into the house. Thankfully, the wiener dog was not punted that day and he survived yet again.

I came home from high school one day with my friend Karl and my parents met me at the door and said they needed to talk to me. They told me that they had learned from the vet that day that the reason Prince hadn’t been eating or acting like himself lately was that he had stomach cancer and needed to be put “to sleep” as some people say. I didn’t react as they expected because my friend was there and it wouldn’t have been cool to get upset over a dog, right? They asked me if it was okay to put him down so that he didn’t have to suffer anymore and I said that was fine. That evening and the next morning we said our goodbyes to Prince and when I came home from school the next day he was gone.

I’ve always thought that it was pretty unfair that having survived so many things in his life, Prince was taken out by cancer. My Dad, having survived many more horrendous things than Prince, was taken out by a fall in his garage. A friend of his died after stumbling while putting on his pants one morning. Life and death are strange and they seldom make sense, but I hope that you take the time to enjoy all of the squirrel chases and snow plow encounters in your life before cancer, heart disease, war, drugs, a car accident, or old age take you away from the ones that you love. Remember to not let the squirrel scratches and temporary snow burials distract you. Keep a smile on your face, be nice to people, and try to enjoy every minute of it like you’re a drunk wiener dog hitting both door posts on your way to bed.

May 16, 2021January 22, 2022

Everyone seems normal until….

This writing is for the amazing Erin Q. Last week, she said “Why haven’t you written any blog posts lately? Get on that. Your fans need more.” I didn’t even realize that I had fans. (What a bunch of weirdos!) Thanks, Erin!

You’re normal, right? Do all of the weirdos in the world think they’re normal or do they know they’re a little twisted? I’m sure, like everything else, there is a spectrum of weirdness and I also think that the most interesting people are weirdos. But, there are definitely times when you suddenly realize that you’ve crossed over your normal boundary into whatever you consider to be weird or just plain stupid. Those times seem to happen in sets of two for me. Am I a slow learner or hopelessly optimistic thinking that the outcome will be different the second time? Probably both.

In the early eighties, my parents bought a massive new RCA console television (WITH REMOTE!) and I somehow managed to talk them into letting me have our old TV in my room. I used this large box with a fake woodgrain finish and giant telescoping rabbit ear antennas to watch countless sporting events, Wide World of Sports, The Superfriends, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and a number of other programs on the five channels that we received. I remember jumping up to quickly close my door when Madonna premiered “Like a Virgin” on some Music Awards broadcast. I thought that my parents would be pretty upset to hear her openly saying the word ‘virgin’ on television while rolling around on the stage in her white wedding dress. Scandalous! I definitely would have been scolded for watching such a thing. I think I was 12.

For Christmas one year, I got a huge bag of red and green M&Ms. As I sat in my room watching the Viking’s game one Sunday afternoon, I was slowly wiping out that bag. I would eat one at a time. Three at a time. A small handful. Etc. At some point, I started putting a single M&M on the tip of my index finger and sucking them into my mouth. I would start the vacuum effect and then bring my mouth over to the M&M or I would bring the M&M over to my mouth until it encountered the suction and got sucked in. It was pretty amusing. Or, I should clarify, it was quite amusing until I sucked one of the candies into my mouth and onward into my throat where it lodged in my windpipe and cutoff my ability to breathe. You wouldn’t think that an M&M could choke a human to death as effectively as a deranged killer, but let me assure you that they’ve got a dark side. (Side note: I’m sure this homicidal M&M was one of the red ones because the green ones seem too innocent and positive to hurt anyone. It would be like Meg Ryan garroting Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally”. That may happen in the modern remake co-rewritten my Nicolas Sparks and Stephen King, but it would have been unthinkable in the original just like a world where green M&M’s are something other than innocent and pure.)

Eventually, my gagging, panicking, and writhing along with my good luck caused the candy to turn slightly and I was able to move it upward to a place where I could painfully swallow it. My red face normalized, I wiped my runny nose and eyes, and the air tasted pretty good. After a minute or so, I went back to watching the game and a short time later I went back to eating the M&M’s. One at a time, three at a time, a small handful, etc. At some point, I decided to try the suction thing again and, within minutes, I was choking on another, undoubtedly red, M&M. Really stupid. Twice.

As I thought back on this incident where I choked in my bedroom while the Vikings no doubt choked on the football field right in front of me, I thought briefly about the M&M slogan “Melts in you mouth, not in your hands.” That’s a filthy and dangerous lie.

My Dad’s army buddy Jim lived in a crime ridden neighborhood in the inner city of Indianapolis. As I was growing up, Jim and his two boys visited us each summer or we visited them. My Dad credited Jim with saving his life during the Korean War. In reality, Jim “saved his life” by giving him a Snickers bar and a can of Coke on the troop ship that they both took from San Francisco to Japan. My Dad had been seasick along with most of the rest of the soldiers on the ship for over two weeks and hadn’t eaten much until that candy bar and pop hit the spot. His life was saved and a lifelong friendship was born.

There were guns hidden and lying out in the open all over Jim’s house. He was a bit of a paranoid in addition to living in a tough neighborhood. There was a leather sling mounted under the kitchen table with a sawed off shotgun in it that I noticed as we were eating breakfast one morning. There were several rifles lying on the floor under the bed in the guest bedroom where I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor. Jim also had a Beretta pistol that he used to shoot two guys who were stealing his car stereo in his garage one night. He had microphones setup in the garage and a speaker in the house as a homespun security system, so he heard the robbers breaking in. One robber was taken to the hospital in an ambulance with several bullet wounds after being shot in the garage and the other was taken away in the back of a police cruiser because he only got winged as he was fleeing down the alley according to my Dad. Jim was not charged with anything and his car stereo was saved. Let’s just say it was an interesting neighborhood in an interesting state at an interesting period during the early 1980’s.

Jim also had two dogs. One was a small Shih Tzu, I believe, whose name I can’t remember because the dog was old and tired and never wanted to play with me. The other was a large Doberman whose name was Rodney. Jim introduced me to the little dog then he pointed at the Doberman and said “That’s Rodney. Stay away from him. He’ll kill you.” Rodney wasn’t a pet, he was a home security device and he was treated as such by Jim, but I thought he was the coolest dog I’d ever seen.

As my parents visited with Jim in the living room, I got bored and started wandering around the house. I ended up sitting at the shotgun laden kitchen table playing a hand-held Mattel Electronics Football II game that I had brought with me. Rodney walked into the kitchen and I could hear his nails clicking on the linoleum. When he saw me, his stub of a cutoff tail wagged and he turned and ran out of the room only to return a few moments later with a big rubber banana dog toy that squeaked. He bit up and down on it and it squeaked over and over again. Then he came over and dropped it on the floor in front of me. Rodney the killer dog wanted to play. My parents weren’t around and he didn’t look like he wanted to hurt me. I reached out for the toy and as I grabbed it so did Rodney. He was exuberant and I hadn’t realized that he liked to play tug of war more than fetch. Unfortunately, I had my index finger extended as I grabbed the banana and Rodney grabbed that along with the banana. Ouch. But, he didn’t notice the look of pain on my face and he started to play tug of war anyway. Tug of war with a large Doberman is hard enough without your finger being the object being contested. On top of that, I was doing my best to keep quiet so that my folks didn’t catch me playing with the forbidden dog. It was a difficult game. As he growled and snarled and shook his head and pulled and as I bit back the pain and tried pulling my finger out, I realized that I couldn’t win that way. So, I pushed instead of pulling and when Rodney opened his mouth a bit to take a better bite of the banana I was able to jerk my finger out of his mouth. I retreated to the chair at the table. I had tears in my eyes from the pain but also from the intense effort to stay quiet. I wiped those away and stopped the bleeding cut on my finger with a napkin from the table. Rodney was oblivious to my personal drama and kept wagging his stub and dropping the banana in front of me. When I just looked at him, he would pick it up and drop it again. Occasionally, he whined too. Now, you would think that having your finger bitten, cut, and bruised by a large Doberman who was playing tug of war with it would teach you to leave the dog alone. It didn’t. He was so cute and so insistent and I was so bored that I eventually decided to make a grab for the banana again. Of course I would be more careful and only grab the very end to avoid the teeth. It would be different the second time, right? No. It wouldn’t. And, as Rodney bit down on the same finger a second time I fully realized how stupid my plan had been. Instinctively, I tried to pull my finger out again and the game was back on. I had to use the pushing trick several times to get my finger free the second time because Rodney was smart and had learned from the first round. Each time I unsuccessfully pulled the finger out, he bit back down on it again. In the end, I retreated to the chair at the table again and grabbed a napkin to help stop the bleeding AGAIN. Really stupid. Twice. Decades later, you can actually still see the scar.

As I wrote about previously in The Poop Mound blog entry, I worked at Wild Mountain Ski Area when I was in High School. There were many long nights of sheer boredom sitting in lift shacks on the side of the “mountain” watching skiers get on or off the lift and stopping the lift now and then as one of them fell. One particularly boring night, I was operating the main chairlift right in front of the chalet with another guy named Wade. He and I took turns sitting in the shack or helping folks get on the lift by holding the chair briefly for them as they sat down. We switched about every half hour to keep from freezing to death. As I was sitting in the shack I started looking at the large, industrial looking control panel for the lift and I noticed that there was a big red light bezel with the word ON underneath it. The light was not working even though the lift was obviously powered up, so I unscrewed the glass bezel after tapping it a few times and I found that the bulb was broken. I tried to tap it and I tried to unscrew it and it just spun because the glass part was broken off from the metal base of the bulb. I pulled the bulb glass out of the hole and looked inside. The metal part was still in the socket, so I reached into the hole with my thumb and index finger in an attempt to unscrew the metal base from the socket. I kept my fingers as close to the outside of the hole as I could so that I wouldn’t get shocked. As the electricity hit me, I jerked back in my chair and made a noise like I would imagine an extremely constipated 100 year old man makes trying to push out a particularly difficult and painful stool. I ripped my fingers out of the hole and held them with the other hand as I processed what had just happened. Wade ran over to the window of the shack and looked in at me, looked down at the open socket in the control panel, and then looked back at me holding my tingling fingers. He said “Did you stick you fingers in there?! What the hell are you doing?!!” I explained that I was trying to get the broken bulb out of the socket and he told me to just put it back together and leave it alone which I did.

Soon it was my turn to go outside and assist skiers. 30 minutes later, I was back in the shack staring at that socket again. I knew that if I just kept my fingers closer to the sides of the hole, I wouldn’t get shocked. Years later I realized that the socket and the bulb base were both metal and the base was electrified so there was no way to touch the base without being shocked, but that realization was far too late to save me from my second attempt. When the electricity hit me, I made my approximation of the noise an extremely constipated 100 year old man makes while trying to push out a particularly difficult and painful stool for the second time in the same day. Again, Wade ran over to the window and looked in at me and the control panel. This time, he summarized the situation perfectly by simply saying “You’re stupid!” So, here again, I was really stupid. Twice.

I had an alarmingly similar encounter with electricity while trying to fix an Alpine home air purifier about 15 years later, but all that needs to be said about that incident is that I was quite stupid. Twice. And, as a side note, it’s good to unplug electrical items BEFORE sticking your hand into them twice or even just once.

I’m not much of a meat eater other than some chicken and occasional fish, but everyone else in my family is somehow related to the Tyrannosaurus Rex so I end up grilling from time to time. The igniter on my grill wasn’t working on one of these occasions, so I got a book of matches and decided to drop one into the grill to light it. This didn’t work after several attempts, so I thought that maybe I would have better luck if the lid was closed. I tried sticking the match into openings at the bottom of the grill, but that didn’t work either, so I opened the lid about an inch and stuck a lit match in there. That worked. What I hadn’t considered, though, was that this whole time the gas had been building up inside the grill. There was a big WHUFF sound and as the lid blew back away from me, I was surrounded by a thin sheet of flame that shot out of the narrow opening I had made to stick the match in. I jumped back as the lid slammed down again and the flames dissipated. There was a really strange smell and some white stuff on my arms that I soon realized was the smell of burnt hair and the burnt arm hair itself which fell off as I rubbed my arms. My wife came running to the door after hearing the WHUFF and asked if I was okay. I said that I was, but that I had burned off about four inches of arm hair on both arms.

I turned off the gas because I had just been trying to see if the grill would start at all after sitting for a long time. We didn’t want to grill quite yet, but soon enough I was back outside to light it again. I must have just let the gas build up in there too long, right? If I lit it sooner while holding the lid slightly open, I wouldn’t have the same problem. Again, incorrect. And, again, I did something really stupid. Twice. More arm hair lost. More head shaking from my wife. More explaining to the children what had happened. Etc. Interestingly, the arm hair in those two spots grew back a lot thicker. It’s a regular reminder of the rule of two’s in my life.

The most painful incident in this category was when I dislocated my knee playing basketball in Montana. Twice. I was at a camp and I thought that I would show off to my girlfriend and dunk the ball. I twisted somehow as I was jumping and my knee popped out of the joint. It went back into place as I hit the ground with a thud. Everyone was laughing because they thought that I had just slipped on the court until they saw me grabbing the knee and writhing around like a flopping South American footballer. A friend helped me stand up and I asked him to help me get back to my cabin as my knee swelled rapidly. He suggested that I get on his back and he would carry me up the hill to the cabin. I thought this was a terrible idea because I’m 6′-5″ tall and about 200 lbs. and he was much smaller, but he convinced me citing some things he had done in the military which seemed legitimate. About ten yards into the journey, he stumbled and lost his balance and I started to fall off his back, so I stuck out my leg to keep from falling and dislocated the same knee again. This time it stayed out of joint for probably two or three minutes and I almost passed out from the pain. I was seeing stars. A doctor who was also vacationing at the camp saw this debacle and ran over to help. As I rolled over to try to sit on my rear end, the knee went back into place with a thwack and the pain hit me like a falling piano. I said “ARG!” quite loudly and drew a bit of crowd. I was trying to remain conscious and trying not to puke. Thankfully, the doctor was literally a giant and he knelt down and picked me up like a child and carried me back to the bed in my cabin where I spent the rest of my vacation to Hungry Horse, Montana. The train trip home on the Amtrak was not pleasant as the train rocked from side to side and my knees kept bumping into each other until I managed to get a pillow to put in between them. In short, I was stupid twice and suffered for it yet again.

There are number of other incidents, of course. Dangerous situations in 1990’s New York City, juicing too much garlic to ward off a cold, taking too much of a natural health supplement for colon cleansing, falling off roofs while shingling, slipping on the same icy steps or sidewalks repeatedly, crashing my friend’s motorcycle, the list goes on.

As I’ve gotten older, the stupid things seem to be getting less terrible at least. I step in the same puddle of water and get a wet sock twice. I spill the same drink twice. I buy the same record or guitar pedal twice. I call people the wrong name twice. All of these types of things are annoying or embarrassing, but not as painful as burning or dislocating something.

I’m hoping that you’re smarter than me and that you only do something stupid once or not at all. I also hope that as a country we aren’t stupid enough to repeat the mistakes of history. Sadly, many of those have happened way more than twice. I hope that the pandemic is a one shot deal. (Obvious vaccine joke.) And, I hope that these blog posts continue to entertain you and that they continue to trend toward humor rather than rants about all of the craziness we’re all living through at the moment. Have a good year, people, and remember as you’re grilling this summer that propane is combustible.

April 12, 2020

The Walk

I went for a walk yesterday. At the beginning, I stopped to stretch on a granite bench next to a monument to a little girl who had died in an accident. She was a student at Dassel Elementary School at the time of her death. I think she was nine. There is a beautiful stone with her name and a thoughtful verse carved into it along with the bench and some nice landscaping in a small courtyard on the east side of the school near a side entrance. There is a giant oak tree that overhangs the courtyard too. It’s really nice. I live across the street from it and I can see the bench and stone from my bedroom window where I have my home office during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As I stretched I looked up and saw another entrance farther down the block that brings you into the old gymnasium that doubles as a stage and theater like many older schools had. It’s a lot like the former middle school gymnasium and Orwall Auditorium in North Branch where I grew up. I like the old schools with their humble facilities a lot more than the richer campuses that our tax dollars and levies build these days that produce far poorer results for everyone except the administrators and unions in my opinion. Why are the teachers and students the ones who seem to suffer? Aren’t they the reason for the school being there in the first place? I think we’ve lost focus on what we should be prioritizing and spending our time and money trying to accomplish. This isn’t my overall point and I apologize for the side track. I’ll get the wagon back in the ruts now.

Two of my daughters played basketball in that gym when they were little. It was really fun and really hard to watch at the same time. I so much wanted them to do well, but I also wanted them to have fun and be okay with whatever the outcome was. It was hard to listen to the other parents whose children weren’t living up to their expectations. It was worse when they yelled at them or coached them from the stands. It was also hard to listen to the parents who didn’t pay attention at all or the ones who displayed their lack of care by playing with their phones the whole time. There were also the parents that criticized other people’s kids and talked about how much better their kid was.

I sat behind a lady who criticized and made fun of my daughter one afternoon. Four of her kids had worked for me at my restaurant at one time and I had a good relationship with three of them. I fired the fourth one for stealing and generally being lazy, among other undesirable habits, after giving him many chances to redeem himself and this is why the lady hates me and my kids. I’m sure she knew I was there and she took the opportunity to take her petty revenge. It was really hard, but I kept my mouth shut and let her do her thing. I still struggle and go back and forth between despising her or feeling sorry for her and her family. Few things make me happier than seeing good parents who pay attention to their kids and really care about them and few things upset me more than bad parents who don’t realize how much they’re damaging their kids. We all do it in one way or another, but some of us are trying really hard to avoid causing damage while others only see themselves.

I thought about all of these things as I walked past the playground that was barricaded to enforce social distancing recommendations, the people at the park and a nearby house who were having a party or family gathering of some type in spite of the social distancing recommendations, and the people who I met on my walk who, like me, aren’t completely sure what to do when they encounter another person in public at this point. It’s complicated. I walked past people walking, running, biking, and driving with and without masks on. Should I have one on? The answer depends on who you listen to or who you believe or trust.

Things like grocery shopping and putting gas in your car have gotten complicated also. What is the etiquette? Nobody really knows. Each person, store, and situation is different and has different expectations and beliefs. The CDC and WHO and different politicians and doctors all have their recommendations which seem to change weekly or even daily. There is a lot of judgement, complaining, and criticizing going on also and plenty of social media platforms to do it with. This goes for opinions and advice too. Again, it’s very confusing and a little stressful even for someone who does’t get overly anxious about things. I can only imagine what the poor folks with actual anxiety issues or hypochondria are going through right now.

I feel fortunate, blessed, lucky, or happy (however you want to say it) to be healthy and to still have a job that I can go to even if it is in the makeshift home office that I hastily put together a few weeks ago. Many people do not have their health or a job to be thankful for. I have two old computer monitors sitting on a Nike shoe box and a Quaker oatmeal box hooked up to my laptop and I’m okay with that. My back and hands hurt a little from the bad chair and desk along with my bad posture habits, but I’m okay with that too. An old herbalist that I listened to years ago said that we should be thankful for pain because it reminds us that we’re alive and trying to heal.

I thought about all of these things on my walk and as I finished the loop and walked back to my house past the elementary school I thought about the little girl on the stone again. Mileka the third grader. I never met her or even heard of her until she died. I didn’t know she existed until I read her obituary in the local paper. I had another Ecclesiastes-like moment as I thought about the vanity of life and how arbitrary it seems at times.

Why did their girl die while my girls got to play basketball in her school? My oldest daughter is about to get her doctorate, my son is about to get his bachelor’s degree, and my two younger girls are working hard and advancing in school too. Why did I get to watch them play basketball, stack rocks on the shore of Lake Superior with them, listen to their fears about what the Corona virus outbreak means for their futures, drink coffee and eat pancakes with them, make homemade pizzas with them, play badminton and go for walks with them, argue about differing opinions with them, clean up after them, get annoyed by them, and show them love every day, and her Dad doesn’t get to do any of that with her?

Why is anyone alive or dead? I don’t know. You don’t either. It’s unknowable. My kids’ degrees and careers and schooling are being disrupted and delayed which is causing some pain and upset, but the pain means they’re alive and struggling. I’m thankful that with all of the chaos and uncertainty across the globe presently, I am alive and struggling. I’m thankful that you are alive and hopefully struggling to some extent too. Whatever pain and anxiety your are experiencing right now proves that you are alive and that you care and those are good things. Be grateful for the struggle, my friends.

And, on this Easter Sunday of 2020, be thankful, also, for the one historical figure who beat death like a rented mule. He’s the guy who our calendar is still numbered for 20 centuries later. He’s the guy who, as C.S. Lewis said, is either a liar, lunatic, or Lord because He claimed to be God. He didn’t just claim to be a generic god, either, He claimed to be God with a capital G. He claimed to be YHVH, YHWH, Yehweh, Jehovah, the great I AM who talked to Moses and the Prophets, or however you want to represent it. Jesus claimed to be the God of the Old Testament, the Creator, in the flesh, so either He was lying, He was insane, or He really was. There are a lot of opinions about this topic too, but this one is worth your time to objectively and honestly look into for yourself. Memes and jokes and one liners aren’t the best way to form your views of this topic. It’s quite a bit more important than who “wins” The Bachelor or the Superbowl. This is another great opportunity that you have because you are alive, so take advantage of that and struggle with it like I do.

July 21, 2019January 20, 2022

The Danise Setup: Betrayal and Near-Fatal Embarrassment in Mankato. (Including an accidental elevated mooning.)

Why do people get embarrassed? I don’t get embarrassed much if at all anymore. I think that’s probably not normal. Is it something that fades with age or does it demonstrate some hole in my character? Is it an achievement? I’m not sure.

On a fishing trip to northern Saskatchewan years ago, a friend from Nebraska half-jokingly told me that my utter lack of reverence for anyone was my only redeeming quality. It’s not that I hold most people in contempt. On the contrary, I respect most people and even if their lives or beliefs or choices upset me, I can talk with them or spend time with them and I would honestly like to see everyone happy, healthy, strong, and safe. I usually wonder how people got to where they are and what has brought them to this point. In other words, I have a hard time hating anyone or holding a grudge.

I had one of the most embarrassing moments of my life on that trip also. Our cabin was full of mice and I think that I would rather spoon with Hitler than be surrounded by mice skittering around me all night in the darkness as I’m trying to sleep, so I got up REALLY early the second morning of our trip and drove about 40 miles to the nearest town, Creighton, to buy a bunch of mouse traps. (I caught tons of mice every day and we ended up putting them on a boulder next to the cabin and watching the bald eagles swoop down and grab them.) On the drive, I hit seek on the radio in my Suburban and there were zero, count them, ZERO FM stations within range. You could say this was a sparsely populated area. I flipped to AM and hit seek and landed on a local news station that was talking about corn and wheat prices, so I hit seek again. The radio swept all the way around the dial and came back to the hog report on that same station. One AM station. So, I listened. Part of the news in that area is a charming segment called “The Bear Report”. This isn’t a person’s name like Sheila Bere or Herbert Bare. We’re talking about the large mammals here. There are so many bears in this area that they have a regular segment on the news about sightings, attacks, and general bear mischief. As I was listening, the reporter almost casually reported that four people had been killed by bears recently and he described how a mother with two children had been attacked at a park while having a picnic and that they and a runner who had seen the attack and attempted to help them had all been killed by a grizzly. This nightmarish bit of news radically changed my pooping plans for the duration of the trip.

I am very regular and we were in an extremely remote part of the world and the previous day I had asked to be dropped off at the shore of the lake where we were fishing so that I could eliminate some waste. To get some privacy, I walked WAY out into the woods and did my duty. I even covered it up in case there were bears in the area because the smell is said to attract them. News flash: THERE ARE BEARS THAT KILL PEOPLE ON A REGULAR BASIS IN THE AREA. Consequently, I decided that I would not be venturing deep into the woods anymore, so the next day when I asked to be dropped off my plan was to stay somewhat close to the shore and find a secluded nook.

My obviously constipated boat mates were disgusted with my regularity and had made a stink (he he he) when I asked to stop for a toilet break, so they pulled up to the side of an island that was nearly a sheer rock face and told me to climb up there if I needed to go so badly. Well, I enjoy rock climbing anyway and I really did have to make a deposit, so I climbed. The other side of the rock face was a little steep too and I ended up sliding down part of it and getting a little disoriented, but I eventually found a little ravine to fertilize and I grabbed a small tree to steady myself and leaned over it and did my business. Done, I found my way back to the rocky part of the island and stood on top of it looking down at the boat and my friends. They were not fishing. Or eating. Or relaxing. They were all just silently staring up at me. I said “What?” with my palms facing upward. They just stared. “What’s going on?”, I said. “Just get in the boat”, one of them said. I thought they were still upset about the interruption to their fishing and that I had taken too long. When I got in the boat I asked again “What’s going on?” and my minister friend said “You know what!” and added “You’re really something else.” as he shook his head. I was confused and continued to question them and get no answers, so I just went back to fishing and forgot about it.

That night at supper with about 15 guys sitting around a large banquet table, we had finished eating and were enjoying a drink when my friend sat back in his chair and said to the whole table “Well, I saw something pretty disturbing out there on the lake today. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to wipe the memory of it out of my brain.” What was he talking about? I was confused. I had been with them all day and hadn’t seen anything disturbing. He went on to tell the group about how I had asked them to drop me off to poop and that they were annoyed with me because I pooped so often and wasted their fishing time. Where was this going? My friend went on to describe how I had climbed the rocks and gone off into the woods. A few minutes later, while they were fishing and minding their own business, one of the guys had spotted something white through a small clearing in the woods and called their attention to it. “We didn’t know what it was at first and then we realized that this weirdo was mooning us. And then it got worse. Much worse!” This is the point at which the embarrassment hit me like a large safe dropped from a plane. I protested earnestly that I hadn’t meant to do it, that I had just gotten disoriented in the woods, that I was afraid of bears, that I wouldn’t dream of mooning them OR pooping at them, that I never even saw them, but it was a lost cause. I had mooned them AND pooped while doing it and it had been intentional. That was the narrative in their minds and I’m pretty sure that they all believe that to be the truth to this very moment. In this case, let me assure you, I was embarrassed.

With his “utter lack of reverence” comment, my friend was referring to the fact that I don’t hold anyone up above anyone else. Maybe this is why I don’t get embarrassed much. I don’t worship celebrities. I see people as people regardless of their occupation or income. My Dad sometimes talked about his cousin’s husband who was fabulously wealthy, but he treated “a bum on the street the same as the President” he would say. I always remembered and admired that. We don’t choose our birth circumstances or genetics or a lot of our inputs, right? Of course, I like certain people more than others and I admire some of them and dislike a few, but you get the point. My friend is a very successful minister and has written many books and spoken to countless people all over the world for decades. His knowledge is vast. He is a dedicated, kind, generous, interesting, and funny guy and I respect him a lot. He’s one of the better people I’ve ever known.

However, on the day before he commented on my one redeeming quality, he was acting like a jerkface. I’ll spare you the details, but the bottom line is that he was being inconsiderate, a little arrogant, and pretty annoying. And, it ticked me off. As we were eating at a KFC in Flin Flon, Manitoba, I reached my boiling point and I partially released the Kraken.

Let me just say here that I don’t get mad very often or quickly, but when I do get angry it’s generally pretty bad. Long fuse, big bomb. There was no atomic blast at the KFC, but I did raise my voice and loudly mock my friend as I imitated and pointed out his behavior in front of everyone. Not my finest hour, but I did make my point. He asked me if he could speak with me privately outside and I raised my mock-shaking hands and said “Oh, no. Are we going fight?” in a quavering/mocking voice. He said, “Please stop. Can I just talk to you outside?” So, we went outside and he said that he didn’t appreciate my behavior and I mentioned that I didn’t think his was so great either. We chatted about it for a few minutes and he ended up apologizing and saying that I was right, but that he didn’t like the way I had pointed it out. I also apologized for losing my temper and we metaphorically kissed and made up. On the way back into the restaurant, he said “You’re something else, you know that?” This is the guy that was a professional bull rider, carries a bottle of Tabasco sauce in his coat’s breast pocket, and has a glass eye. Anyway, he explained our discussion to the others, apologized to the larger group, and changed his behavior. It ended well and he thanked me for having the guts to confront him because apparently a lot of people don’t do that due to his perceived status or celebrity in certain circles. This was the setting in which he told me that my utter lack of reverence for anyone was my only redeeming quality. I sincerely hope that I’ve developed some others since then. And, maybe this lack of embarrassment trait is one of them.

My path in life has been a fairly bizarre one. My intention as a youth was to be an English teacher. I love words, creativity, books, poems, passion, theater, art, music, and reflection. (Today, I am a supply chain analyst. Words, books, poems, passion, and reflection don’t visit me on a daily basis at my job other than through my VanGogh desktop backgrounds, although there is some creativity involved. I am also a former owner of a few restaurants, production supervisor, printing press operator, carpenter and home renovator, husband, steel tubing bundler, chiropractic assistant, cult member, conspiracy theorist, and overly dogmatic Bible thumper. Former is the key word here.) When I was in High School, my future English teacher self was asked to join Academic Decathlon which is like Speech on steroids and meth at the same time. We competed with other schools by giving speeches, taking timed tests in various subjects, extemporaneous speaking, interviews, etc. There were ten separate events, hence decathlon. We met after school and trained for these events and we practiced both in and out of school. It was challenging, but we did really well one year and qualified for the State Academic Decathlon competition in Mankato which was quite an accomplishment to us at the time being from a town of 1,200 souls. I think we finished third or fourth.

On the trip, we stayed at a Hilton or Marriott in Mankato and shenanigans were planned by my friends and teammates after the lone chaperone retired for the evening. Uncharacteristically, I declined and argued that we should all go to bed early and get a good night of sleep for the competition the next day. The concensus was that we were going to get crushed by the larger schools anyway, so why bother? We argued and I was denounced as being lame, but I ended up going to bed. There were three other guys staying in my room ‘s two queen beds and I staked out my spot, stripped down to my white Fruit of the Loom briefs, and crawled into bed. To this day, I usually fall asleep in about five minutes and this particular night was no exception. It did take slightly longer, as I recall, because of the strange pillow/bed, my nervousness about the next day’s competition, and my guilt for not running around and terrorizing Mankato with my friends. Regardless, I was asleep shortly after going to bed.

Some time later I was partially awakened by the door opening and whispering voices. I vaguely heard footsteps and some muffled laughter and I tried to ignore it. Moments later someone climbed into bed with me and I kept trying to relax and fade back into darkness. Then a slow hand and arm moved over my side and stomach. What the heck?! Suddenly, the top sheet and comforter were violently ripped off the bed and the lights came on along with a barrage of flashes. I looked around in dazed horror as my eyes adjusted and I realized that I was in bed with a beautiful young girl wearing something like lingerie. Her name was Danise and she was another member of our team and a friend. I further realized that the bed was surrounded by my friends and, worst of all, the girl who I was infatuated with and awkwardly trying to date at the time. And, several of them had cameras. The flashes were from camera flashes that were flashing regularly. I think I was 16.

I have a pretty good memory, although memory can play tricks on you and events can be slowly twisted or distorted or embellished over time, but I honestly have no memory of exactly what happened next. I remember Danise becoming very embarrassed too which the pictures that circulated around our group and around the school would also testify to. I don’t think she had thought the whole thing through completely. I didn’t see all of the pictures because I think the takers were afraid that I would attack them, take the pictures, and destroy them. I also vaguely remember lunging for the covers and having a tug of war with someone over them and then wrapping myself in them very tightly. Regardless, for a young boy with self-esteem issues to start with, this event produced nearly fatal embarrassment. Most of my close friends and most of the girls that I had crushes on had just seen too-tall, super skinny me with bed head and in my underwear. Since then, I’ve had years at a time where I’ve not recalled this event and then I’ll see a picture from that era or a reference will be made to Mankato and the memory will pop up in its tighty-whiteys like a thin white apparition with a mullet. Memory is a labyrinth.

Back to the initial question: Why do we get embarrassed? I believe it’s at least partially because we’ve done something or had something done to us that we feel will result in a loss. Loss of status, hope, control, something desired, respect, something we cherish, etc. In Canada, I felt that I had lost respect and that people thought I was someone other than who I am. In Mankato, I probably felt that I had been betrayed by my best friends while being humiliated and possibly losing the chance to marry and enjoy a lifetime of romance and bliss with Stephanie or Danise or Melanie or anyone else within a 50 mile radius of North Branch. Mankato upset me much more than Canada because I could handle the slight loss of respect of some guys that I cherished as friends much more than I could handle the loss of hope for an idealized life filled with love and joy. Of course, my teenage self had massively overblown the situation, but the point still stands.

I dated Stephanie off and on for three or four years in High School and my first two years of college. She was a great and highly intelligent person and I hope she’s happy now. Even in this age of social media, I have no idea where she is living and what her life has become. I have to laugh when I think of how awkward I was and how frustrated she must have been with me. Sitting in my car in her parent’s driveway, Stephanie asked me while we were having one of our many deep conversations on a date the year following Mankato “What are you the most scared of?” I thought about it and eventually said “Being alone.” I still don’t know where that came from, but she put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled me in for a tight hug and said “You’ll never be alone, David.”

In some ways she was right because I have a Super Mom, four wonderful children who I am very close with, and some great friends too. But, she was wrong when it comes to romantic love and that closeness that comes from completely giving yourself over to another person. I tried it twice after Stephanie and I quit seeing each other and both cases ended in damaged hearts all around. It remains to be seen whether Stephanie’s prophecy is ultimately true in that regard.

I believe that we all have the same needs whether we know it or acknowledge them or not. Just like our bodies need their vitamins, minerals, fiber, hydration, exercise, mental stimulation, etc. to thrive, I think there is a primal need for reciprocated love, touch, and acceptance in our lives. Sometimes people try to fill those needs with harmful things that are temporary, like eating spiritual junk food, but it never works or fills them up. I hope that you have your needs met and that you can help others too. This is the definition of being rich and living a good life in my eyes.

My unsolicited advice, for whatever it’s worth:

1, Wear some pajamas if you sleep in a communal hotel room.

2. Survey your bathroom sites carefully and stay out of the deep woods before proceeding with elimination.

3. Seek real love in all of its forms and, if you’re blessed enough to find it, hold onto it with everything you’ve got.