The Man with X-Ray Eyes

"Looks like we got the Honeymoon Suite," said my co-worker.

"You're crazy," I replied. "It's just a nice hotel."

"Did you see the bathroom? It's see-through."

"First of all, that's a bad photo, and secondly, in what universe is a see-through bathroom sexy? You're insane," I said, resting my case.

My co-worker Matthew and I were rooming together at the American Library Association's annual conference in Washington, D.C. The W hotel was giving cheap rates, but that rate would be even cheaper with two thrifty guys sharing a room.

The week before the conference we'd crack jokes about the see-through bathroom, with me insisting that there was no such thing, and even if there was, no one would want a see-through bathroom anyway.

I arrived in D.C. first. I couldn't check in til afternoon, so I spent the day wandering through the Smithsonian. It was cool visiting alone because I could spend as much time as I wanted checking out certain things while ignoring boring stuff.

"Oh, the history of commercial aircraft? ZZZZZZZZZ. Hey, look! Spaceships and WWII planes!"

People had warned me about D.C.'s heat, but as a native Floridian, I didn't pay too much attention. Hell, I grew up in humidity and heat. Maybe I'd run a marathon up there just to show everyone.

They were right. August in D.C. is no joke. It didn't help that I was carrying around all my clothes in an overstuffed messenger bag like a homeless person.

So I was more than ready to check in to the W. And yeah, it's a super-nice place. Great bar up on the roof with a view of the Capitol Building so you can pretend you are in the beginning of an action movie, lots of amenities and ....holy crap. See-through bathrooms. Yep. There's a toilet, a shower, a sink, all out there in front of God and everyone.

Artist's Rendition.

Shit. Matthew was right.

By the time I was in high school, group showers were a thing of the past, which was just fine by me. In the years since I had seen more male anatomy than I cared to, thanks to tricks like Hanging Brain or the Minnesota Wristwatch . But these were parlor tricks performed by degenerates that an upstanding lady or gentleman could simply ignore. I was going to have to like, shower and use the bathroom in clear view of another human being for a whole three days.

I have a confession to make. While I am a fellow who appreciates occasional off-color or bawdy talk, I'm a total prude when it comes to bathroom matters. I close the bathroom door when I'm at home alone. That scene in Bridesmaids where everybody's all shitting in the street? Gross. The term "Brainfart?" Gross, and probably my most hated phrase.

I had no problem changing in front of another guy, or sleeping in the same bed with him, but having to sit on the toilet while he was a few feet away watching cable? I would rather run a marathon in the D.C. heat, provided I had a private place to shower afterwards.

"Well, I'll be damned.'" I said. "You were right." Looking at Matthew's face, I could tell that he didn't really want to be right.

Luckily, my roommate was as genteel and refined as myself, so throughout the three day conference we made elaborate plans to make sure the other was far away or deep asleep or roofied before showering or using the bathroom. Because we were very cultured, we never actually talked about this, we just sort of worked it out without resorting to anything as crass as communication.

We were able to survive the weekend, but the incident leaves me with questions. First, who thought that was a good idea? How many architects and designers and planners had to OK a clear bathroom? Were we really in the Honeymoon Suite? What new bride or groom wants to see that? Save some mystery, people. And more importantly, I wonder if the statute of limitations has run out on suing for emotional distress and how much can I ask for.

Return to the Sea

Years ago I received some advice from a wise old Native American. I had just moved back to Gainesville after spending a year in Atlanta delivering food and felt that I had basically wasted a year of my life. I didn't like Atlanta, but in truth, I didn't really give it much of a chance.

"Remember," he said, in a voice resonating with ancient wisdom, "Never live somewhere that isn't within a half hour of water."

Technically, that ancient Native American was really just one of my friends, and there was a very good chance that one or both of us were drunk on King Kobra malt liquor at the time, but I've remembered his advice ever since.

I'm no "Salt Life" guy, but I can't deny that the ocean has a pull on me, a calming effect, probably from growing up near it. Again, if I grew up in Nebraska, I'd probably be waxing philosophical about the meditative effects of wheatfields, so take my psychological musings with a grain of salt. It's one of my homemade therapeutic tools, along with punk rock and the healing power of a good drunk. 

The past few months, hell, past the year or so has been full of death and a strange, nagging feeling similar to waking up from a bad dream - you can't really remember what happened, you just know enough to realize you should feel bad or upset somehow. Then you wake up more and the feeling fades away.

A friend's dad had recently passed away. He was one of the few adults in my teenage years who treated me with respect and interest, even when that respect wasn't actually earned or deserved. Coming closely on the heels of losing another friend, this sort of seemed like a psychic last straw.

Since I am an unattached grown man who can take time off from work, I decided to take a trip. I didn't really have an idea as to where I was going, I just felt the urge to go somewhere.

I ended up in Bradenton. I didn't tell anyone, mostly because it wasn't planned, and partly because once I ended up there, I felt like being anonymous. Sure, I can be anonymous just as easily in Jacksonville, but it wasn't the same somehow.

I didn't shop around. I got a room at the first place I saw close to the beach. I bought some trunks and walked into the Gulf of Mexico. It was warm, and I could see little transparent fish swimming near the shore. It felt right. I felt like the kid at the end of The 400 Blows when he finally makes it to the ocean. Except of course, I knew all about the Gulf and that kid had never seen the ocean. Thinking about it, maybe I wasn't anything like that kid at all, and the only thing close to the French new wave were the European tourists gazing in disbelief at my pale, almost translucent skin.

The song "Drowned" off the Who's Quadrophenia kept running though my head in a loop as I swam and floated around for about an hour. 

Let me flow into the ocean. Let me get back to the sea.

I didn't think I was stressed, but floating out there in the Gulf I could feel the anxiety leaving my body and floating away in the water, probably out to Mexico.

I got out to get some food. Driving around the island (which is what we called the beach), I was struck by how many ghosts inhabited it now. That's where my first girlfriend and I used to go to watch the sunset and mess around. That's the channel where my dad and I would fish in. Both of them are dead. I was playing Quadrophenia and thinking how I had probably listened to this album on the same beach probably 25 years ago.

I ate middling fish tacos and listened to poor renditions of Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffet*, and Van Morrison while I drank a fruity drink and watched an angry sunset. I listened to the tourists and thought of ways to butt into their conversations just so I could insert some lie about being a tourist from the Midwest finally getting to see the Gulf.

See, I told you it was angry.

I came back hours later after the sun had set. The night was cloudy. The water was cold but I needed to get back in. I acclimated and started swimming.

I wanted to feel something. Something more than just the absence of stress from earlier. I wanted to feel my muscles burning, my lungs aching for breath, and hopefully avoid any Jaws or Kraken beneath me.

I swam out as far and as fast as I could, then stopped and treaded water. I panted in the cold water for a while, then dove as far down as I could before my sinuses threatened to implode or a Loch Ness Monster noticed me, then flew back up. I could still see the white sand of the beach, so I knew I was OK, even if I was starting to realize that maybe this wasn't one of my smarter ideas, what with the sea monsters probably starting to wake up.

In The Postman Always Rings Twice the protagonist wants to swim as far as he can in the ocean until he can't muster any more energy and just sort of let nature take its course in a sort of passive suicide. I didn't have anything that drastic in mind, and plus, I hadn't helped murder a diner owner to get with his wife, so my conscience was clear.

I swam back, walked to my motel and spent the rest of the night watching cable in bed, feeling worn out, both psychically and physically.

The next morning I got up early and drove home after a great night's sleep. Once again, I had stumbled on to a perfect homemade therapy - something to do with salt water, anonymity, and shark avoidance. Someday the American Psychiatric Association will recognize me for my services. I'm not sure where exactly my statue should be erected, but I have several majestic poses already picked out.



* Trick question! As a native Floridian, there are no good versions of Jimmy Buffet.

Sheer Heart Attack

I was in the back of an ambulance as a Florida State fan/paramedic tried to convince me that Bobby Bowden was the greatest college football coach ever.

My theories, that Bowden was a secret Klan member* and played in a wussy conference went unspoken, mostly because I didn't want the guy to put an air bubble in my IV. This is not how I thought my first official work physical would end up.

Things had started promisingly. I had a brand new library degree, I was freshly married, and I was living in Gainesville applying for jobs all over the country. Applying for real jobs was a new experience. With the exception of my job writing press releases for UF (which was really more of a starter real job), my previous job interviews went like this:
"Can you lift at least 30 pounds?"
"Can you work weekends?"
"Welcome aboard."

These interviews were a bit more intensive (although strangely they still asked those two questions). Most of them never made it past the phone interview, but I had my spiel down by now. This might have helped me land a job in the magical seaport town of Jacksonville.

Sure, I had to pass a physical, but that would be easy. I guess. When I thought about it, I realized I hadn't really had a physical since high school for track, which was pretty lackadaisical. What if they missed something back then? Or what if I had developed some sort of cancer in the years since? Not only will they not hire me, but I'll have to deal with the cancer. And I'm sure all these libraries talk - they'll tell everyone else I'm interviewing with and I'll end up homeless and cancer-ridden.
With these fears running through my head, I got up early and drove the hour or so to Jacksonville to get my health measured.

I had to have a hearing test first. That was pretty easy, mostly because I totally cheated. They lock you in this little closet and you hit a button each time you hear a beep come through a pair of headphones. What they didn't realize, however, was that if a patient were to crane his neck a bit, he could see a light flash each time a beep went off, no matter how faint the beep actually sounded.

After I convinced the doctors that I had super hearing, the real physical began. I had to pee in a cup and give some of my precious blood and was still doing OK. Then I had to take my pants off. The doc gave me that hernia check thing, which I think is probably just made up so they can play around down there and I started feeling funny.

Doc takes my heartbeat a couple of times, looks sort of puzzled and takes my pulse again. It was sort of like in Return of the Living Dead when the paramedics didn't want to tell the workers that they were technically dead.

"Call the ER."

Wait, what?

"Mr. Adams, you have an erratic heartbeat and your pulse is extremely slow. You might be having a heart attack."

"There's no way I'm having a heart attack. My pulse is slow because I'm all lightheaded. I pass out at doctors all the time. Then I wake up and everything's fine.Trust me, I've been through this before."

Doc was having none of it, and the next thing I know, I'm in the back of the ambulance while Cletus yaks about the genius of St. Bobby. I guess I probably could have just walked out of the office, but I was all dizzy and didn't think of that.

So I hang out in the hospital most of the day, even though my chart said "chest pains," which I always thought was like the golden ticket to hospital service. Possibly my chart that said "no insurance" cancelled that out.

It was pointed out that my heart was skipping beats and this could lead to serious problems down the road. This scared me enough that I didn't want to eat the wings that my father-in-law bought when he picked me up from the hospital.

It took a month or so for me to get an appointment with a doctor that insurance would pay for. In that time I quit drinking caffeine, which fixed my heart's beat so that it was as steady as ... I dunno, Buddy Rich. I was still a little nervous about the whole thing, so I asked him, "Hey, is there anything I should do or eat to help my heart?"

"Eh, don't worry about it," he said. "You'll be fine."

Of course, my doctor at the time had the physique of a beach ball, so I didn't really trust his dietary advice, but it made for nice justification when I would eat half a pizza for dinner.

Later I got a bill for $2,000, including $500 for an ambulance ride that I have since determined was about two miles long.

Upon reading the bill, I had a real heart attack and promptly died.




* I have no idea why I used to think that. I didn't really believe it or anything, but I would mutter it occasionally at the TV when I saw his stupid face on the sidelines. I'm sure Mr. Bowden is a wonderful, honorable man, and has friends from a wide variety of races and creeds.

A Boy Named Sue

I was about 13 the first time I was sued.

Actually, sued is a strong word. More like threatened to be sued. But when you're not even in high school and words like attorney, legal action and collection agency are being thrown around, you tend to lose your grasp of the subtleties of the English language.

I liked making models as a kid. While my finished versions never really looked like the photos on the box, something about assembling and having a miniature tank or helicopter or whatever really appealed to me. And the end results weren't too important anyway, since I tended to blow them up with firecrackers or set them on fire, imagining the awful carnage I was inflicting on my 1/32 scale world.

Looking back, perhaps I needed some sort of therapy.

One day I saw an ad in a comic book for something called the Young Model Builder's Club. Sort of like the Columbia House Record Club, you'd pay a penny for your first model, then get a model each month that you'd either pay for or send back. I don't remember the price of the monthly models, I just remember the offer of a free model and sent in my penny.

I had previous experience with Columbia House, carefully picking out the 12 starter albums, then waiting forever until they arrived in the mail. I didn't even get to open the box when my parents intercepted and made me send it back, telling me what a scam the club was and lecturing me on fiscal responsibility. I was pissed, because I could see ZZ Top's "Eliminator" there on the top, just waiting to teach me about being a sharp dressed man.

Luckily, my parents weren't home when the model box showed up. I assembled an F-16, painted it, and then probably blew it up.

Couple weeks later, I got a car. Car models were just OK, because I could actually see those in real life and they didn't have guns or bombs on them. But it was something to assemble, and maybe it would help me learn about engines and stuff when I got older. Oh, there was also a bill enclosed. I think it was for like 8 bucks. I was going to pay, but things got away from me and I forgot all about it.

Weeks later, I got another plane, along with a letter explaining that the Young Model Builders Club really wanted their money. Problem was, I was a little short at the time, and since nobody was really looking to hire 13 year olds, I was going to have to let them slide for a while.

This went on for a while. The letters were piling up, and I'd get scared, but I'd also get another model, so I'd tear the invoices up into little tiny pieces and hide the pieces in a coffee can I stored in the back of my closet. I don't know why I had a coffee can in my closet, but it came in handy in those days before shredders.

For the most part I could put my growing bill out of my mind, but every once in a while I would get a wave of fear washing over me, especially after the more sternly worded letters arrived, but I'd focus on something else, and my fear would shrink away.

Then I got a letter from an attorney, written on actual letterhead and everything. This attorney said that if I didn't send the money immediately, there would be severe legal repercussions. I don't remember how much I owed at that point, I just remembered there was no way I could get it. And I couldn't tell my parents, especially since they had told me before that these clubs were a scam.

I remembered a little figurine in my Uncle Norwood's study: a little man with a huge nose looking disdainfully back at you with the caption "Sue the Bastards" underneath. Now I was the bastard getting sued.

This guy haunted my nightmares.

I had saved a little money by this time, and I thought that if I mailed what that, maybe they'd go easy on me. The problem was, I wasn't sure how to send it. My parents told me never to mail cash, and I didn't really want to ask them to write me a check.

So I waited.

A lot of kids were frightened of nuclear war in the '80s. This is why we grew up to become slackers and grunge musicians. I was probably the only kid in the '80s worried about getting sued before the Russians pushed the button. I would be eating dinner or watching TV and feel the waves of heat cascading through my body while my stomach tightened and gurgled. I was going to jail, or debtor's prison or the stocks, or whatever images I could conjure up from TV or half-remembered history classes.

This seemed to go on for months. Eventually I was able to put the bill out of my mind for the most part. Finally I noticed that I hadn't gotten any letters for a while. In fact, the last one was from the attorney's office and that was a long time ago. I didn't want to jinx anything, but I was pretty sure I was in the clear.

After a few months had passed with no more legal threats, I realized I had learned two important lessons. One, never start a business where your profits are dependent upon middle schoolers mailing payment.  And more importantly, if something is bothering you, the best thing to do is ignore it and hope it goes away. This lesson has come in handy many times since.

 Oh yeah - the other time I got sued. I was in a car accident in Atlanta and I got served papers at 6 AM months later. Once they found out that I was making approximately nothing, that case went out the window also, somehow reinforcing my lesson.

Computer Blue

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. I love that I can track down and download a song from some obscure band's 7" I heard once in 1986. I love the fact that I can find the answer to whatever question has been bugging me in a matter of seconds.

However, I have the tech skills of your grandma. I had to buy a replacement for my five year old phone recently and I had to listen to all sorts of stuff about coverage and 4G and 5G and Warren G and holy crap, I don't care anymore, here's my credit card just give me a phone.

That's how most technical conversations go with me. Just like when someone's giving me directions, after about the second sentence my mind checks out, except for a nagging thought saying, "Hey, dummy, you better pay attention to this, it's important," which luckily I can distract pretty easily.

Not only am I barely functional, technology-wise, but I have a deep distrust of our robot overlords, probably formed through my childhood exposure to science fiction stories where whatever it was that promised to make our lives easier was really going to enslave or eat us.

I don't think technology is going to enslave me, but I do think that my devices and websites have somehow learned just enough about my personality to understand how to send me over the edge.

Last month I was looking through my Ipod. Somehow I noticed that I was missing two songs, "You Got to Move" by the Rolling Stones, and everything but one song off that second Arcwelder album. This kept me searching for hours, wondering what else had disappeared. And these were songs I ripped from CDs I owned, not borrowed from work or ̶s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶n̶e̶t̶  totally paid for. Luckily, I still have the physical CDs, so I was able to rip them, and probably go months without thinking about them again.

I've also been having problems with Shelfari, this page that keeps track of the books you read. Since I read pretty fast and have a terrible memory, it's a good way to keep track of what I've read so that I don't pick up something interesting at work, take it home, then realize I've already read it. When entering what I've read, it also hipped me to the fact that I'll read just about anything about shipwrecks or people having to survive in shitty conditions, which I had never really noticed before.

However, Shelfari will occasionally drop books from my list for no real reason. To me, this means that if I caught one or two, there's probably more that I've missed. So I'll think of authors or titles, and spend hours trying to fix my list.

Then recently Facebook decided to drop people off my friends list. I had no beef with these people, but after I noticed we weren't friends any more, I figured the problem was with me. I understand I'm sort of an acquired taste, and some squares just can't handle my telling it like it is.

Once again, I spent hours entering friends' names, wondering who else got dropped, only this time having to deal with the anxiety of wondering if they think I hate them now.

Look, I realize that we're moving into a post-ownership world, where everything is going to be on the cloud, and the simple joys of looking through a friend's music, movie, and book collection to silently or not so silently) judge them will soon be a thing of the past. That's probably a good thing, in that it cuts down on plastics and hurt feelings.

But for those of us with just a tetch of the OCD and who like repeated assurances that our stuff (or data) is still there, it can be a trying time.

A Horrifying Glimpse Into the Future

Back at the old Main Library we had a number of regular downtown residents we encountered on a regular basis. Some we liked, some we tolerated, and some you went on a break and tricked someone else into covering the desk when you saw them.

Kinks Guy was a little of all three. He was a short, stumpy guy with a sunburned face and a big beard who was obviously homeless, and even more obviously, a little off.

He got his name because he would constantly come up to the desk and ask for printouts of '60s groups. He must have asked for the Kinks a lot for the name to stick.

He would go to each floor on the library getting as many printouts as he could, then end up on our floor, the Arts Department, which became a second home. He always wanted information on '60s musicians, which was easy enough to find for him, even if we had a sneaking suspicion he wasn't really reading all those Allmusic.com pages he would glance at then stick in his Santa Claus-sized trash bag.

He quickly went through the major '60s bands, and would ask for more obscure psychedelic groups, usually muttering snippets of criticism while we searched.

"Rable rable "Forever Changes" was clearly influenced by Spanish music along with the brilliant wordplay of Arthur Lee," he'd mutter, while we gave him his allotted three pages.

"You know you can only get three pages a day, right?"

"Mumble mumble mumble The Who's early stage shows were influenced by auto-destructive art. The Incredible String Band was a major bridge between folk and psychedelia. The Kinks' British whimsey mumble mumble mumble."

Kinks guy scared me.

Not that I thought he was dangerous or anything. He scared me because listening to his spiel reminded me of stuff I had said when drinking with friends or writing record reviews, just from different decades.

Who was this guy? A fellow reviewer who went off the deep end? A rabid music fan who ingested too many chemicals during the music's heyday?

Whoever he was, I saw a potential future in him. Was I doomed to follow in his footsteps? Would I show up at a public library sometime in the late 21st century muttering to the employees about music from my heyday?

"Argle argle The Wedding Present's guitar tone was totally influenced by the Smiths. The Jesus Lizard had an amazing rhythm section that combined with David Yow's stage antics for one of the best live bands ever. Tar had aluminum guitars. The Mummies dressed in mummy costumes. Homina homina."

Kinks Guy eventually got kicked out for some sort of infraction, but the memory of him still haunts me. I figure I have another good 10 years or so before I'm jabbering about Man or Astroman or the Minutemen somewhere before I'm led away to be roommates with Kinks Guy.

I guess that's just the price you pay for promo CDs and getting on the guest list.

Quicksand! Dang, Now We Are In Trouble.

Growing up I thought quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be.

OK, I totally stole that line from an ecard thingy my girlfriend posted on the facebook, but truthfully, I was fascinated and terrified of quicksand as a kid. It took up a large part of my fears - probably a smaller part than getting eaten by a shark (we lived in Mississippi. The chances were pretty slim.), but still something to look out for.

It seems a large portion of entertainment geared towards kids had people sinking slowly into quicksand, generally British explorers puffing on pipes and uttering something like, "Oh, bother." Quicksand was everywhere in cartoons and old movies - if you were outside, chances were pretty good, at least according to TV, there was a pit of quicksand just waiting for you to fall into.

These old movies also taught me that gorillas and skeletons were somehow the most terrifying things ever back in the old days, but that's another story.

I asked my parents what quicksand was exactly, and they told me it was just water and sand. TV was right! The stuff was all over the place.

A few months later, I had an enemy. I can't remember exactly why we were enemies, just the usual little kid stuff, I suppose.

Wait! I remember! He totally called bullshit on my cyborg story.

See, during this time, "The Six Million Dollar Man" was was a popular television show. The hero was an astronaut who almost died until the government implanted super-strong robotics in him so he could solve crimes and beat up Bigfoot.

Cashing in on that popularity, I had half-convinced a group of kids that I too, had robotics in my arm. Luckily, nobody asked me to lift anything heavier than my 6 year old muscles could handle. Maybe there just wasn't anything heavy enough for me to lift to impress them with, or maybe I got out of it because, hey, kids are dumb.

But this one kid wasn't buying it. He wanted proof. I explained that peeling back the fake skin on my arm and revealing my circuitry would cause an explosion that would kill us all, but he was skeptical. Worse, I could see the other kids were losing faith in my robotics, also.

I don't recall how I got out of my lie, maybe my timing was right and everyone had to go home to eat before I had to whip out my circuitry, but I could sense that the crowd had turned against me.

I couldn't eat my dinner that night. Who the hell did that kid think he was, ruining my story and calling me a liar? The nerve! And he turned all my other friends against me! How dare he slander me like that! I had to get back at him, but how?

I had the answer. Quicksand.

I was able to get out after dinner and run to the back of his apartment building. There was a sandbox outside. I set a hose into the box and turned on the water.

I got the quicksand to a good consistency then went home in the dusk, secure in the knowledge that I was gonna make that kid pay for doubting me. Like a mini Walter White, my enemies would perish due to my knowledge of science.

I had trouble sleeping that night. What if that kid didn't know not to struggle against the quicksand and drowned? There were only about 7 inches of the stuff, but who knows how powerful quicksand is? Maybe it ate a hole in the bottom of the sandbox or something.

What if some other kid went in the sandbox? What if a baby crawled in there? I only wanted to punish my rival for his slander, not kill any innocent babies. And I didn't even really want to kill that kid, just sort of punish him a little. I might have gone a little overboard with my revenge.

My stomach was really churning now, but it was too late for me to go back and fix my trap. All night I was haunted by thoughts of innocent people drowning in my quicksand trap. One after another, they all fell in - a mailman, my parents, my sister, my teacher, friends - who knows how many people would die before the sun came up and I could fix things?

As soon as I could make an excuse to get out of the house, I ran over to the sandbox. In the light of the day, my quicksand trap didn't look all that lethal. In fact, it looked like a bunch of wet sand in a plastic sandbox. I might have poked around just to be sure there were no babies trapped in there, but everything seemed OK.

Walking home I reflected on the beauty of human life, the futility of revenge, and more importantly, the importance of always being honest in storytelling. This was going to be a new start.

OK, not really. I was like 6 or 7 years old. I had a lifetime of revenge fantasies, lies, and exaggerations to go. But I did learn a vital lesson. If called on my bullshit, I could totally whip up some quicksand.








P.S. When doing a Google image search for British explorer in quicksand, about half of the images were cartoons of scantily clad ladies up to their chests in quicksand. You people are weird.

Mama Said There'd be Days Like These

You know those mornings when you wake up and can already tell that it would be better if you went back to sleep, took a pass on the day and just tried again the next day? I had one of those Thursday.

I don't know what I was doing in my sleep the night before, but I woke up tired, not the best way to start things off. But who cares! I was only working half a day because I was finally getting a doctor to take a look at my ankle. I'd be home in time to take a nap in the afternoon. Yeah, have fun at work, suckers.

The day started with mandatory training about employee/management relations. I was daydreaming about going home early when the trainer mentioned that supervisors need to pretend to care about employees, even if they don't, or something like that. I have always ruled my departments with a firm, yet gentle hand, so I felt I didn't need to pay attention at that point, until I noticed she was looking at me.

Crap.

If there's one thing I hate about training, it's group activities or having to talk. Why can't it be like the old days when someone talked and we just took notes or doodled until the class was over?

"What's your name?"

Aw, man.

"Uh...I'm Scott."

"Hello, Scott. And do you have any hobbies?"

What? I thought this was supposed to be about managing. When did this turn into an inquisition? Hobbies? Geez, I don't know. And I don't really want to share anything with my co-workers. I don't know why, but I always feel strange about letting non-friends know about my interests and activities.

"Uh..uh..um, no. No."

"Oh, come on, I'm sure you have something you like doing."

"No. No, not really."

Everyone was laughing. This happens a lot, usually in situations like this when I'm not trying to be funny.

"He rides his bike," said the teen librarian.

This led to more questions about bike riding and if I went out the previous weekend and it was terrible and crappy and it felt like an intervention or something and why can't I just sit here quietly? Funny, I have no problem speaking in front of crowds, which I do at least twice a week, but ask me about my personal life and you're gonna get a whole bunch of this:

After that terribleness, it was doctor time. Insurance switched my doctor to a place closer to my house, which was nice. The day can be salvaged after all. I fill out the paperwork, and notice that the place is pretty swank looking. Then I go in the bathroom and notice this:

I realize this is a crappy photo, but I wanted to prove that I wasn't making this up.

The author asks for $20 for 20 minutes. I thought it was funny that they wrote "asshole" and scratched that out to rewrite the less offensive "butthole." Hey, kids might see it. I felt a little apprehensive that my new doctor's restroom resembled a truck stop, but when I got out some CNN health show was talking about Roky Erickson and mental health, so that took my mind off the fact that my new doctor catered to perverts.

I didn't get a chance to watch too much when I was called back. I got weighed, which proved that, yes, four weeks of almost no exercise and a diet designed by Henry VIII and a kid allowed to buy whatever they want at the store will make you fat.

Then I waited about 3 years for the doctor to show up. 

The doctor was younger than me and sort of brusque, not even commenting on the long, grey beard I had grown while waiting. He asked me about my habits and medical history after I told him about the ankle, but it seemed like he didn't really believe me.

"Do you smoke?"

"No."

"Do you smoke?"

Hey, John Grisham, I've never smoked. And if I did and was trying to hide it, you think you asking it twice would trip me up? This is when I started to think my new doctor was kind of a dick.

"Well, I'd like to go ahead and give you a full physical today."

When I get terrible or anxiety-triggering news, I have a tendency to lose the ability to speak.

"Whu? Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah dah oh ah ah ah n..n..no. No. No. No. I thought we were just looking at my foot?"

"I think we need a full physical first." 

"Whu? Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah dah oh ah ah ah n..n..no. No. No. I just had one. Last year. Everyeveryevery Everything's fine. Just want to get the foot looked at."

You can't just drop that on somebody. I need time to get prepared for a physical. I came in with a hurt foot, I didn't plan on getting naked today. He seemed even more brusque after that, probably because he wanted to see my pee-pee, then sent me to get x-rays and come back to his house of horrors.

He came back after another 7 years and said that it looked like tendon damage and he would refer me to a podiatrist.

"So, is that bad?"

"I'm referring you to a podiatrist."

"Is there anything I should be doing for it?"

"I'm referring you to a podiatrist."

Fine, be a dick, see if I care. I asked him another medical question that I had mentioned to the receptionist when making the appointment.

"I thought we were just looking at your foot."

Jeez, this guy was really upset about not being able to make me pass out. I guess I'd be upset, too, if I had perverts advertising their services on my bathroom walls. Anyway, he gave me a prescription and wanted to do blood work.

"How does blood work have anything to do with my tendon?"

"It can show overall blahblahblah and underlying blahblahblah and I really just want to poke you with needles."

"Yeah, maybe next time. I'll get a physical this year, I promise."

It was too late for a nap when I got out of there. I did get some cool x-rays, though - check 'em out:

There's gotta be something I can do with this for Halloween.

Next time I wake up tired, I'm calling, and getting back under the covers. Nothing good can come of a day like that. I've learned my lesson.

Death Will Come on Swift Wings

I have some weird friends. Actually, most of them are nuts. I'm sort of the normal, all-together one of the bunch.

I don't say this as an insult; I love all my friends' quirks and eccentricities. It keeps things interesting, especially their obscure fears, anxieties, and hatreds.

My own fears are more grounded in reality, so it's nice to listen to them rant about their more esoteric frights. And sure, a big portion of their fears might be affectations or schtick, but I appreciate the effort. At least they're being entertaining.

One of my friends is afraid of aliens. He read that "Communion" book post-high school in one sitting and was then terrified that the aliens were gonna capture and probe him. I have another friend who is scared of Egyptian curses. I'm not sure exactly where this sprouted from, but one of his "proofs" was this '70s book on strange phenomenon that he picked up at a thrift store.

From what I recall, these archaeologists found the mummy of an ancient Egyptian princess and ignored the curses placed upon her, as archaeologists will do.

All the members of the excavation met swift death, courtesy of vengeful Egyptian gods. After decimating the scientists, Anubis went after regular people in the way - a worker transporting the coffin to the British Museum got hit by a car or something, and a cleaning lady who disrespectfully dusted the coffin's face ended up dying in agony.

Also, visitors heard screams coming from the sarcophogus as the princess...I dunno, howled out to Osiris for vengeance or something.

As the death and injury toll rose, the director of the museum finally had enough. He found some suckers in America that would take the cursed princess, so he loaded the sarcophagus up on the next ship headed across the Atlantic. A little ship ... named THE TITANIC!!

The book laid out this scenario in the familiar  "Can you prove it didn't happen" style '70s books and documentaries would use when discussing poltergeists and Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle. It was effective, since I remembered the story after all these years, and I wasn't even the one afraid of curses. Sometimes at night while falling asleep, I could picture this mummy case in the hold of the Titanic with an eerie green mist creeping around it, angrily summoning an iceberg to send the meddling humans to the bottom of the ocean. Sure, killing thousands of innocent people seems like overkill, but that was my friend's point: you don't know what those Egyptian curses are capable of, so it's best just to stay away.

In the spirit of investigative journalism, I decided to unearth the truth once and for all. I wouldn't rest until I had combed every bit of Titanic and Egyptology arcana in the...Oh. Huh. One 0.28 second Google search and I of course found out that it was a hoax, although a creepier story than I remembered.

I knew it was a hoax when noted Titanic historian Rudy Ray Moore didn't mention the mummy case

In a way, it's a shame that I can find an answer so quickly now. When we first heard about the curse, we had to take it on faith from the author. What were we going to do, research the Titanic's cargo records? And even though we realized the story was pretty far-fetched, it was creepy enough to resonate all these years later, enough so that every once in a while I'll think of a sarcophagus lying on the ocean floor among collections of wine bottles and plates, waiting patiently for someone to retrieve it to bring down the wrath of Egyptian gods on another generation of humans.

Just like I don't really need to know how much my friends are really terrified of Egyptian curses, babies that look like old people, or aliens, I think I was better off being pretty sure that the Titanic mummy story was made up, but not really caring that much as long as it made an interesting story.

I would close with an Andy Rooney-esque rant on how computers and the increase in available information has taken away something from our storytelling and the mystery of life, but while I was writing this nonsense I downloaded two albums I had been looking for for years, and found my grandmother's address online that I keep losing, so yeah, who really needs mystery?

And even with the mystery of life pretty much swept away, thinking about the aquatic mummy is kinda creeping me out now, even though I know it was made up and I wasn't the one with the fear in the first place.

Head Games

You know when you get an idea stuck in your head and it rattles around in there like the chorus to a catchy song and you can't get it out no matter what you do? This happens to me fairly often.

Lately I've been thinking about head injuries.

I'm not really scared of getting hit in the head, really, it's more like I have this idea that sometime when I get older I'll get a stroke or dementia or hit in the head with a coconut and have a complete personality change.

I'd like to think I have a fairly good disposition at the moment. For whatever reason people seem to like me, so I guess I'm doing something right.

But all that could change with one future accident.

Would I become belligerent? Racist? Would I turn into one of those guys waving misspelled placards and screaming about the government? The worst part would be overhearing people say, "Yeah, Scott's kind of a dick now, but he was a great guy before that coconut fell on his head."

And that's the greatest tragedy of my future personality change; nobody I'd meet since my accident would know how awesome I was before. It's pretty sad when you think about it.

Of course by then I would have alienated all my friends and family, and would only have the staff at the poor people nursing home to scream at.

The funny part about all this is that I know that the odds of something like that happening to me about equal to winning the lottery or getting eaten by a shark, and I realize that this is one of the dumber things taking up space in my head, but it still bounces through my head every once in a while like the chorus of a classic rock song.

And again, I'm not actually really worried about this happening, but if I'm wearing a helmet the next time you see me, try to understand.

Taste the Floor

I was seven years old the first time I passed out. My sister and I had ear infections and the doctor examined her first. We were both in the room at the same time. I know that sounds strange, but it was the seventies. I'm surprised the doctor wasn't smoking at the time.

He stuck some gross machine in her ear and she started screaming. I started freaking out. Then, at least in the way I remember it, an Evil Dead like geyser of blood shot out her ear all over the office and I went from feeling scared and nervous to floaty and peaceful. It was sort of like I was being carried away on a pleasant little cloud. Then a nurse waved an ammonia pack under my nose and I was back in the House of Pain.

In the years to come I would pass out or come close in most of the doctors' offices I visited. The ammonia capsule would get waved under my nose to bring me back, and almost 90 percent of the time the nurse would tell me some lie like, "Oh, we have big construction workers and football players who faint as soon as I take the needle out" to make me feel better.

It wasn't always doctors that did it. Once I was sitting in a McDonald's with some high school friends. I took a big sip of Coke and thought, "Hey, that feels like it's caught in my throat." Before I could say anything, everyone's voices got all bass-y and echo-y, like my friends' conversation had been remixed by Lee Perry. Next thing I knew, I was floating back to Cloudland. I woke up confused with one of my shoes a few feet away. I wasn't sure how much time had passed.

Naturally, my friends thought I was just being an attention-seeking high school punk rocker, which honestly, was a pretty safe bet.

Sometimes I wouldn't even need needles or killer Coke bubbles. I once passed out at my desk after watching a particular gross film in health class. For the rest of the year the coach who taught the class swore I was on the dope.

Somehow I've gotten better; it's probably been over 20 years since I've passed out in a doctor's office. Actually, the last time I remember passing out I was sitting comfortably in my Gainesville apartment.

A friend called me with a problem. I don't remember the whole story, but he had started lifting weights and was having ....well, he was having male problems. Somehow this new weight lifting regime caused his balls to become swollen and painful. He was telling me how he had to walk down to the clinic and ....Hey. Someone was messing with the Earth's volume. Everything was going in and out and sounding all "whuhwhuhwhuhwuhwhuh." I was flying again.

I woke up sprawled across my mattress. I wasn't sure how long I had been out, but long enough that my friend had been asking if I was OK. I said I was and hung up.

A little known fact about passing out is that it's actually kind of pleasant afterwards. Your skin is all clammy and you're sort of light-headed, peaceful, and calm. Probably because all that adrenaline used for freaking out has been burned up. It generally lasts for about 20 minutes or so.

I walked down to the porch to get some air and try to figure out what had just happened. A couple of the guys from Less than Jake were on the porch. They thought I was on the dope, also. I didn't let that bother me. People were talking and drinking, as they usually were. I sat on the swing and stared out into the night, with my post-fainting calmness washing over me.

Then I probably bought some King Kobra and acted the fool.

Golden Shower of Hits

I don't know how many of you are familiar with public men's room design (I'm thinking about half of you), but a lot of bars and restaurants place little ads or public service announcements over the urinals. The thinking is, you're standing there with an ad at eye level so even if you don't actually read it, it will stick in your head so you start to think, "Hey, maybe I shouldn't get a DUI," or "Man, nachos sound good right now."

So I'm in a restaurant Saturday night. Before sitting down I go to the bathroom. I see some ads and a couple photos on the wall to my right so I follow over and unzip. in the collection is a photo of three people, I guess a trivia team, called "He shoots, she swallows."

"That isn't very nice," I think. "I wonder if this woman knows she's in that photo above a urinal with that caption. Well, I guess she probably knew the team's name beforehand, so she knew what she was getting into. Hey, this urinal sounds funny."

Many of today's handless driers are actually less sanitary than paper towels.

I looked down. For the past few seconds, I hadn't been using a urinal at all, but a handless air dryer. Conditioned by advertising, I had followed the ads to where I had been trained to see them. I think that whole Black Friday had something to do with it, also.

I have heard stories of this happening to friends and family for years - where the person was either drunk or half-asleep or in a different house and ended up peeing in a chest or closet or something. But I was wide awake and sober.

Luckily the door was locked. I finished up my business in the real urinal and started gathering water and soap in my hands and splashing it over the urine-soaked dryer. I figured that would at least dilute it a bit. Now that I think about it, that probably wasn't the best idea I've ever  had, but I was panicked. I thought the next guy through the door would know that I had peed on the air dryer and ...
well, I'm not sure what they'd do. Probably force me to wear a big scarlet P for the rest of the night while I was shamed in the public stocks.

Luckily, no one was the wiser, and hopefully the puddle of water around the dryer discouraged others from using it for the night. Actually, it might have short circuited if anyone used it, what with all the liquid and soap.

I didn't say anything at all through dinner, and truthfully I kind of forgot about it until we were walking to the car and the girlfriend mentioned something about how cool looking the space-age hand dryers were.

"Uh...yeah. About those handdryers."

So gentlemen, the next time you find yourself in a public restroom, take a second or two to orient yourself to your surroundings. Also, you might want to skip the fancy handdryer and just use some paper towels or the back of your pants.

What, Me Worry?

This might come as a surprise to those of you who know me now, but I worried a lot as a kid.

I worried about everything. Grades, scary older kids, angry dogs, you name it. This time of year was especially tough. I was never sure if I had been good enough for Santa. I thought I was pretty good, but good enough for presents good? Good all year? And who knows what exaggerations and lies my parents told him if they talked? Consequently, I was such a ball of nerves that I ended up throwing up every Christmas Eve night. This probably forced my parents to tell me the truth about Santa much earlier than they wanted to, but it was either that or clean up puke every December 24th.

I remember having some Star Wars science book where publishers tricked little kids into learning by having C3PO and R2D2 explain scientific facts. At some point C3PO describes how the sun will eventually burn out, taking out the earth and everyone you love with it.

Well, I'm sure it was phrased differently, but that's what I got out of it. I was a nerdy kid (again, I'm sure that surprised you), so I had already heard this fact and knew that it would take billions of years for the sun to explode. Still, having C3PO relay this fact made it seem much more real. I mean, if you can't trust a fussy golden robot, who can you trust?

My parents were teachers, so to calm me down they explained that a billion years was a very, very long time, and by that time I would be long dead and forgotten, along with all my friends, family and pets.

I'm sure they explained it much better than that, but that's what I took away from our talk.

I worried about the sun all summer long. What if C3P0's calculations were wrong? What if it burned out next month? Or tomorrow? It seems pretty hot today, you don't think the sun is getting ready to explode today, do you? And this whole dying thing opened up a whole new avenue of worry.

I was smart enough to realize this stuff was actually pretty stupid to worry about, so I kept my thoughts to myself, which is a strategy I would continue to employ up to the present day.

I continued to worry about stuff, but not as much after I found a medication that suited me (a combination of gin and tonics and ignoring problems until I blew up once a year), and am now the cool, calm reasonable person you know and love.

In conclusion,

Thanks for ruining my childhood, dick.

Drivin' and Cryin'

I used to be someone. I had promise. I had a Porsche. No, seriously, I owned a Porsche for about a year. Actually, I guess technically my ex-wife did.

My dad had a hobby of buying old cars and restoring them. He'd be driving around and see a wreck with a for sale sign on it or start talking to a guy at a yard sale and end up buying a car and then spending months fixing it up. How he did this on a teacher's salary, I have no idea. All the way from a Model A to an MG like the one he used to have as a swinging single to a 1981 Porsche 924, he'd be obsessed for a while, then move on to another car.

About the time my ex-wife and I were first married, he had finished restoring the Porsche enough that he could drive it to work occasionally or drive it around the neighborhood now and then. We were down in Bradenton for something and he offered it to her as sort of an extra wedding present.

Well hell, who were we to turn down a free Porsche? I think we had just gotten rid of her car, a Geo that was on its last legs, or maybe we got rid of it after the Porsche offer. Who cares! We had one reliable car and a piece of German engineering, something that was befitting of our new life as one of Jacksonville's power couples. And it was a convertible, too!

I soon discovered there was a big difference between driving the car two or three miles every other day and depending on it to safely transport your wife to her job about a half hour away, especially in the days before cell phones. Well, at least before we had cell phones.

Here is a transcription from memory of about 87 calls I would get pretty frequently:

"Hey, I'm at Publix. The car just stopped. I can't get it started. I hate this car."

I can't even remember all the mechanical problems that car had. We were brand new in Jacksonville with no friends and had no idea which mechanic to trust. We called around but the only place that would take it was an import place, and because of the age of the car, they couldn't find parts half the time.

I did like the smell of the car's interior, though. It had the same smell those old VW convertibles used to give off - a mix of plastic that suggested the action figures I had as a kid, as well as a fresh bag of plastic fishing worms or brand new cassette tapes, mixed with just a hint of gasoline fumes.

Oh yeah, those gasoline fumes were probably bad.

That car was a major source of friction in the early days of our marriage. It didn't help my relationship with my parents, either. If I mentioned the problems we were having with it, I could feel my dad getting more and more upset. I mean, shit, he gave us a free car, you know? And his ungrateful son was complaining about it all the damn time.

I had (and still have) a tendency to grasp onto the smallest pebble of a problem and through a combination of worrying and anxiety, transform it into a house-sized boulder that crushes me down until I can't sleep or do anything but worry about the most ridiculous possible outcome. So when there's a real problem, say a car that we've dumped over $3000 into that we didn't really have, I've already planned my future in the poor people's nursing home, where I'm mistreated by hateful minimum-wage immigrants while my friends are enjoying their mansions and yachts, while they mention every once in a while between bites of caviar, "Hey, I wonder whatever happened to Scott? Eh. I'm sure he's alright. More champagne, Jeeves."

I don't remember when we finally decided to cut our losses. It might have been after we figured out how much we had spent on repairs. It might have been after we finally couldn't afford to fix it any more. I remember it sat in our apartment's driveway for a long time. I'd look down at it occasionally, sitting down there mocking me.

We finally ended up donating it to some charity, something I only though rich people did. Like I said, we ended up paying over 3 grand in repairs over the life of the car. Sure, it would have been smarter to take that money and use it as a down payment for another car, but it's not like we ever had all that money at one time.

We were a one-car family for a long time after that. That had its own set of problems and stresses, but at least I didn't think my wife was going to die every time she went to work, and even waiting for the bus for over an hour was much less stressful than waiting to hear from another mechanic as our checking account took another hit.

So if anyone ever offers you a free sports car, run far, far away.

High Anxiety

I've always been a worrier. I've also had a pretty healthy dose of anxiety. I was really relieved when the Santa Claus myth was confirmed by my parents, since it meant I didn't have to spend another Christmas Eve throwing up after getting all worked up wondering what Santa was going to bring me. That whole "he knows if you've been bad or good" business wasn't helping matters any, either. I guess I'd been good, but had I really been good enough to trick the jolly old man for another year?
So yeah, anxiety is nothing new, but lately I've been nebbishing around like Woody Allen in between therapist visits. It didn't help that we went to a wedding where I didn't know anyone at all a couple weeks ago (my wife knew the bride's mom or something) and with no bar, I didn't have any antidepressant juice to help me out.
Then we had this training thing at work which was a little too much talking about your feelings and goals and stuff for my tastes. As we went around the room, I had a flashback to middle school as I counted down in terror as the next person spoke, realizing I had to come up with something smart, quick, but when my turn came I blurted out whatever popped in my head, making me seem like a smartass, when I wasn't trying to be at all, and why can't we just have training where someone talks and we sit and take notes and draw pictures and then we take a test or something and get to go home early? I mean, shit, we're a bunch of clerks and librarians, none of us want to speak in front of people. If we did, we would have been actors or newscasters or politicians. What's with all the getting in groups and talking about yourself stuff? Can I blame this on the Baby Boomers?
Well, at least I have a three day weekend starting tomorrow and I'm seeing George Romero talk about "Night of the Living Dead" while I eat nachos and drink beer Saturday night, and I've got some ebay/amazon treats coming so I should be alright. Just as long as I don't have to talk about my feelings for a while.