Reading Rainbow

Were your parents too cheap to buy you a Shogun Warrior when you were a kid? Did they not love you enough to shell out for a complete set of Strawberry Shortcake dolls? You're a grown-up now - head to the flea market or Ebay and fill that nagging hole in your soul! Who's going to stop you? Your spouse or significant other? Your financial planner? Why are they trying to keep you down? Do they hate your happiness and well-being?

As a kid I wanted anything associated with Star Wars, even more so than dinosaurs and Peanuts, my previous obsessions. Put a Star Wars sticker on a comb and I'd start negotiating: "Mom! Dad! You know how much I love combing my hair - please, please, please get this for me. I won't ask for anything else until Christmas, I swear. I'll brush my hair every morning please, please, please!" Then I'd get it, be a styling combed hair little kid for a couple days until I got bored and wanted a Star Wars pencil holder or trash can.

Couple weeks ago I finally recalled the name of a Star Wars book I had as a kid. The way I remembered it, it tied the movie in with its influences in westerns, war movies, and science fiction serials. There was photo of John Wayne from The Searchers, as well as that half guy from Freaks that I'd dare myself to look at. There was a chapter on Universal monsters which I was also getting into at the time. Even though it was a kid's book, it still planted the seed of an idea that a movie (or any artwork, actually) is more than what's on the screen, it's all sorts of previous influences and inspiration and can be a way to understand the bigger culture.

This meant that I was one of the few kids on the playground in Mississippi who was able to say with an affected sigh, "Yeah, Star Wars was OK, but it was better the first time when Kurosawa called it Hidden Fortress."

After finding the generically named The Star Wars Album on Amazon for three bucks (and 25 on Ebay - come on people, knock it off), I found that I was sorta right in my memories. The Star Wars Album is a quickie production with no author listed but manages to be better than it should be. The first twenty pages or so deal with the influences, then about a third of the book is taken up with movie summary, then there's info on the art and models and behind the scenes stuff.

Flipping through it, I remembered how many of the movie photos I tried to draw (and also remembered how I was sort of annoyed the book spelled out names like Artoo Deetoo.). And yeah, the picture from Freaks that fascinated and terrified me was there, ready to terrify me again.

This photo really  messed with me as a kid.

Funny how such an obvious cash-in held such a place in my memory for so long, and I'd suspect began my obsession to research and investigate my media tastes, from finding out all I could about the movies that influenced Star Wars (well, the monster and sci-fi stuff) to poring over Thank You notes on punk albums and noting what shirts my favorite bands wore to find more musical obsessions, the book started me down a collector nerd path of which I've only recently sort of stepped off of.

Years later (or between Star Wars movies) I was became obsessed with the Hardy Boys. I saved all my money to buy as many books as I could. I wanted a brother I could solve crimes with (I had a perfectly fine sister, but detectives seemed to travel in same-sex groups), and if I couldn't have that, at least give me a bumbling fat comic relief character who would blurt out something so stupid yet genius that he would help crack our case.

I had a friend who was equally obsessed, and we'd trade books after school in my mom's classroom, filling in the gaps in our respective collections. He had one book, however, that he would not part with - The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook. I don't blame him at all. Damn, did I want that book. I needed that book. He wasn't using it - he never told me about solving any crimes or tracking clues at all. It just sat in  his stupid house while crime ran rampant in Bradenton.

I did get to borrow it, and committed some of the techniques to memory, which is more than he ever did. In the years since I've forgotten most of it, but I did remember it had a glossary of criminal slang which I hoped I'd overhear some unsavory character use someday so I could tell the cops or my dad or something.

I figured while I was buying ancient Star Wars books, I should probably shell out for the Detective Handbook. Who knows, maybe it had as big an effect on me as The Star Wars Album did. Or maybe I can finally launch that detective agency this city needs, or at least learn some cool old-timey slang.

I had completely forgotten that Detective Handbook opens with a bunch of  chapter-long cases designed to illustrate different aspects of detecting to junior sleuths. Like one chapter would deal with making plaster casts, one would tell you how to dust for fingerprints, that sort of thing. Also, one chapter is called "The Case of the Shabby Shoes," which I think was Tim Gunn's first big case. These were kind of cool, but learning that criminals call the electric chair "pew" or a passer of counterfeit money is called a "queer shover" (at least whenever this thing was first published) is sure to repay the 2 dollars I paid for it in no time.

Sharpening my observation skills.

Overall, it's not as corny as I would have thought, and had I owned it when I was younger, many crimes might not have gone unsolved, or maybe I could have used my powers of deduction to free some innocent people. Instead, my meager detective skills were put to use investigating bands and records, crime continued to spiral, and we ended up electing a TV conman as President of the United States.

One of the great things about being an adult is that you're fee to use your wealth and discretion to fill up those nagging holes in your soul. So check that Paypal account! Hit the yard sales this weekend! Get on Ebay at work! You've got childhood trauma to fix!

Old Follks at Home

Bradenton, at least my little corner of it, was a strange place to grow up in. When my parents first moved there, there weren't many kids in our neighborhood for my sister and I to play with. There was also a prevailing parenting philosophy at the time that if kids weren't doing yardwork or domestic work, they should be out doing ...something or other until dinner time. That's how my sister and I made friends with a lot of old people.

Our street was full of elderly people - I remember at least two of them referred to as "The Colonel." You'd see them out watering their yards or smoking cigars and they'd talk to you. Somehow my sister and I decided to take our old person relationship to the next level.

I definitely remember us hanging out in a lot of sun rooms, Florida rooms, and living rooms (I sort of think all of these are the same room). Sometimes our elderly neighbors would give us cookies or candy, and we'd talk about...jeez, I have no idea. School? What else could we talk about? The houses were shaded by palm trees and you could see the quartz crystals sparkling on the outside walls. The rooms were heavily air-conditioned, so much so that you could almost see your breath indoors. You could also vaguely smell the residue of decades worth of cigarette residue on the walls.

Sometimes WDUV would be on lightly in the background, making me think now that we were part of the entertainment for cocktail  hour.

Funny thing is, I don't ever remember an invitation, I just remember going up to the door, like you would with an age-appropriate friend.


I do remember a couple of the old guys telling me some pretty cool WWII stories, but I've forgotten most of them, only retaining the impression of hanging out in the cold Florida living rooms while the ceiling fans whirred above.

I don't know what the old people got out of these visits - I guess they got to hang out with some little kids for an hour or so until we all sort of mutually decided our visiting time was up.

I also remember cutting through people's yards and gardens regularly - whether on our way to the bus stop in the morning, or just deciding to play in someone's back yard other than our own. There were lots of houses with landscaping full of ferns and palms dark enough that you could pretend you were in a jungle. There was also a family of wild parrots in the neighborhood that would screech occasionally to add authenticity.

We didn't have a strong concept of property rights, and luckily this is before Florida became synonymous with shooting people, and I guess nobody really minded a pair of kids trespassing through their property at the time. If they did, they never said anything about it.

Again, I realize that this is another of those stories that makes it sound like I grew up in the '30s or something, but if you think about it, culturally, the early '80s were still really the '70s. Then you have to subtract a few years for it being Florida, then another few years for it not being Tampa or Miami, and ....uh, do a little more subtraction, and you've ended up with 1964. That seems about right.

Elf Power

Nobody gives much thought to Santa's elves. Santa and his reindeer get all the love and recognition while his elven workers tirelessly churn out toys for ungrateful little kids day after day up at the North Pole and we don't even know their names.

I know what it is like to be an elf, for I have walked in those pointy shoes.


I went to an after-school art program when I was in second grade in Mississippi. It was on the first floor of a creepy looking two story-house with a wrap-around porch. The house was surrounded by weeping magnolia trees and majestic oaks dripping with Spanish moss. The class was taught by Mizz Elizabeth, a kindly but gnarled old woman who loved children almost as much as she loved her snuff and cursing the Yankees.

OK, so I made all that up, except for the two-story house with the wrap-around porch. However, my internet class, New Southern Writing: Hush Your Mouth is accepting applications.

It was actually taught by a college student. There were about 15 of us in there, and I was the youngest. We were making paper mache heads for the Starkville Christmas Parade, which apparently still exists. I don't know what everyone else was making, but I was going to be an elf.

Some are born elves, some achieve elfness, and some have elfness thrust upon them. I can't remember if I chose to be an elf, or elfness was thrust upon me for being the youngest in the group. Either way, I was fine with it. Elves were an important part of Santa's village, and I was going to be representing them in the parade.

It took forever for the paper mache to dry. I remember we added layers and layers of the stuff every week, although I mostly remember getting Cokes from the old timey machine on the porch and wondering what was going to be our snack for the day.

I had a dentist appointment on the painting day. Well, sort of. It had gotten cancelled or something, so instead of painting my big elf head, I sat on the porch and waited for my parents. When the other kids came out of class, I jumped from behind a pillar and yelled "Boo" at them.

The teacher asked to see me. I thought this was a bit of an overreaction to a Booing, but she was actually upset that I had skipped class on the important painting day. That got me worried. Was I going to have an elf head that looked like it was mummified with the Starkeville Daily News? That was no way to represent elfdom.

She explained that she had actually painted my elf head, which of course turned out way better than anything my 7 year old hands could have done. This taught me a valuable Christmas lesson that has served me well in life. Forget about it, and someone else will always come along and fix it.

The night of the parade, I was dressed in my huge-ass elf head and the elf suit my mom made for me. I don't remember what everyone else in the class was, or where they were. Maybe they distributed everyone throughout the parade to ensure adorableness equality? All I knew was that I was a solo elf.

"Just follow the band," said my handler.

And I did. I followed the high school band all down the parade route. People were cheering and waving. I knew they didn't care about the band. They loved the elf. The guy that made their toys. The guy that put in the hours. The unsung worker toiling for Santa was finally getting his due.

I waved. I brandished a plastic hammer, demonstrating the old world craftsmanship one can only get from elves. I affixed a few people with a stare (I really couldn't do anything else, since my eyes were painted on), showing that it wasn't just Santa who knew who was naughty and nice. Little children were in awe of me. Working people identified with me. I was the hit of the parade.
 

I struggled to keep my apron on and my arm was getting tired with all my hammering. My feet hurt walking the parade route, but I was a trooper. I was Elf. 

After walking like what seemed like hours, the crowds started thinning out. "This part of town doesn't have much Christmas spirit," I thought, and I kept walking, following the band.

The band wasn't playing much anymore. I figured they were as tired as I was. I kept up my antics. I couldn't let down Christmas.

We reached the high school where the band members got into their parents' cars. I finally took my head off. I was alone. Someone asked who my parents were. I had terrible pronunciation back then, so when I said, "Charles and Marilyn Adams," they said, "Saws Adams?"

Finally, my parents walked up. Apparently I was supposed to have stopped walking about a half mile ago, but with my only direction being "follow the band," what else was I supposed to do?

Later I was able to see myself on TV. I was hammering up a storm, waving to children, and being the best damn little elf I could be. I had done it. I had achieved elfness.

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.

Echo and the Bunnymen

When I started this foolishness, I had a simple goal. I wanted to document some of the stories that had been getting laughs or gasps from astounded listeners for years before the ravages of time left me unable to pass these tales on to the next generation.

Along the way I discovered my destiny - to bring a divided nation together through the power of story. While you might not have had the same exact experiences, you likely had something similar happen, and through that we can drop our differences, mellow out and groove together, discarding our hangups like I threw away my suit and tie from my square, plastic nine-to-five gig.

Which is why it always feels so strange when I find what I thought were universal experiences are anything but.

For example, for years I've thought that everyone had the same experiences falling asleep in the car as a kid. You'd be in the backseat, fighting to stay awake, and as you get sleepier and sleepier, the songs from the radio would get bassier and more echoey. Certain songs can still recall that feeling, like "Life's Been Good" by Joe Walsh, "American Trilogy" by Elvis, or "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits. Apparently my parents' car had a faulty bass speaker or I was making my own dub versions, because every time I try to explain this phenomenon, people just look at me weird and walk away puzzled.

It wasn't just the songs, although those were the main catalysts. Sometimes it would be my parents gossiping on the way home from a family event or the TV set from the other room. Either way, things would get all deep echoey and bassy and I'd slowly fall asleep. Just like Dire Straits, the theme from "The Bob Newhart Show" will get me feeling sort of sleepy and spacey, especially there in the little breakdown when the organ starts. Hey, for a square psychologist, Bob Newhart had a pretty funky theme song, huh?

While this was a pretty cool effect for the few minutes I could keep consciousness, it's one of the reasons I don't like falling asleep to music or TV now. My dub versions are relaxing, but in the back of my head I feel the struggle to stay awake which can be distracting and a little stressful.

So I put the question to you, loyal readers. Was this the universal experience I thought it was, or was this just a weird little kid who was somehow channeling Jamaican record producers, and if so, why didn't I make any money off this phenomenon?

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.

You've Got Grit

"Alice" was a popular TV show back in the '70s and '80s. From what I can recall (hey, this ain't IMDB), Alice, the star of the show, moved from ...somewhere. She moved from the rat race, I suppose, to start a new life out west with her teenaged son. Once there, she took a job as a waitress in a diner where she learned many important lessons about life and love and the importance of following your dreams. I guess. I haven't watched the show since I was a kid.

Actually, they show reruns here in Jacksonville on one of those channels you only get if you don't have cable. A friend of mine saw it for the first time and was telling me how depressing he found it, which I found strange since the show was a comedy.

"No, it's terrible," he claimed. "She's got this kid and they live in this crappy little apartment and she works this shitty job with a screaming boss and weirdo customers. There is no way that show is funny. Maybe in Russia or something."

Keep smiling and they won't notice how depressed we are.

I had never considered how time alters our perceptions. Sort of like when I noticed a Dave Dudley 'best of' comp at work a few years ago. He was a country star back in the '50s and '60s, probably best known for "Six Days on the Road," a song about a trucker driving around 'taking little white pills' and racing home after a delivery. Dudley also had some drinking songs, like "Two Six Packs Away," a funny song about the troubles a drinking man can find himself in.

Of course, that's how it played back then, when America had a much lighter view of substance abuse and drunk driving. Listening to it now with 21st century ears, you think, "That poor man. He's causing himself so much trouble. He really needs to stop drinking."

Damn, country singers looked a lot cooler back then.

But back to "Alice." Alice worked with another waitress named Flo. Flo was sassy. When their boss said something Flo disagreed with, Flo would answer back with her catchphrase, "Kiss my grits."

This phrase would absolutely slay the studio audience, and was featured all over the place back then; T-shirts, bumper stickers, whatever wasn't already plastered with "Who Shot J.R."

This was all very confusing to a young me.

I mean, I got the gist of what she was saying, but it still didn't make sense. I knew what grits looked like, and they didn't look like any part of the body. If her phrase was "kiss my melons," or "kiss a hot dog" I would  have understood, but grits? I had sneaked enough peeks at Playboy to know there was nothing naked ladies had that could be confused with grits. And I certainly didn't have anything like that. So what was she talking about?

I knew it was somewhat dirty, so I couldn't ask my parents. And because it was dirty, I couldn't ask my friends. You couldn't just mess up your rep as a sophisticated elementary schooler by asking your friends what Flo was talking about. As with other dirty jokes I didn't really understand, I had to just laugh and pretend I got it.

 I kept that silent confusion up for many years. In fact, if I'm being honest, I still don't exactly know what she was talking about, other than using grits as an acceptable way to say "kiss my ass" on TV.

These are the problems that faced a generation of children back in the '70s and '80s. Some call us the Greatest Generation. I am inclined to believe them.

Better Homes and Gardens

I spent a lot of time dreaming about my future house. Before falling asleep, or during long rides in the car, I'd fantasize about all the different rooms and passageways the adult me was going to enjoy.

This was in the old days before smartphones and back-seat DVD players, so I had a lot of time to design my future digs. Come to think of it, even if that stuff had been invented back then, most parents would probably have banned them on the theory of, "Why should I be bored driving when the kid gets to watch his Space Wars foolishness?"

While I admired the all-around design of the Addams Family house, or Disney World's Haunted Mansion, I felt my house should be more normal looking on the outside, only to BLOW VISITORS' MINDS once they got inside. Plus, a big creepy, Psycho-looking house might give people the wrong idea. I didn't want to be a villain or a creep, just a dude with an awesome house.

Exposure to kid mystery shows and books made me realize I needed hidden chambers behind bookcases and hidden passages to different rooms. Ideally, the house would also be over a secret cave I could firepole down to and ... I dunno, plot and stuff.

I didn't really see the need for those oil portraits with the eyes cut out where you could watch people, but figured I had to have them as part of the overall decor. Plus, I'd probably get a deal on them if I installed a firepole.

I definitely wanted a secret laboratory, even though I didn't really know that much about science. I would have to keep a gorilla down there, since based on old movies and comics, gorilla brain transference operations were pretty routine in secret laboratories.

I'd probably want a Tor down there as well.

But while secret chambers and labs were cool, what I really wanted was an outdoor room.

I have no idea how I came up with this plan, but I really wanted a bedroom that was full of grass with a pond in the middle. Maybe some boulders scattered around, also. To make myself fall asleep at night, I would concentrate on the carpentry and stuff I'd have to do to accomplish this.

I'd have to saw the door about a foot from the floor, then make some sort of liner to accommodate all the dirt. I was also going to stock the pond with fish, so I could catch some every once in a while, or maybe just look at them while relaxing in my outdoor room. I think I might have actually written some blueprints for this room at some point.

While the outside room was going to be my home's shining architectural achievement, I had a second act - an upside-down room, where all the furniture, outlets and everything would be up near the ceiling. While the outside room would have been functional (sort of), this would have been just for weirdness' sake. When friends came over I could casually say, "Oh yeah, you can stay in the room down the hall," and watch as they caught a debilitating case of vertigo.

I thought about this stuff for years. When I got older I didn't think as seriously about having an outdoor room or an upside-down room, since that stuff seemed sort of outlandish, but I did fantasize about having a living room that was a huge half-pipe, as that was much more grown up.

I think a lot of this came from hearing about the Winchester House, with its stairways leading to nowhere and false doors and ghost traps and whatnot. Plus, a lot of TV shows at the time, like Real People and That's Incredible celebrated weirdos who lived in crazy houses or drove cars covered with lightbulbs or whatever. So I was really sort of in tune with '70s culture.

I never got a chance to design my cool house, but there are places in my hillbilly shack where you'll probably go through the floor if you stomp, and my ancient windows let in about as much heat or cold as standing outside, so you could say I'm fairly close.

The Earl of Eatin'

Who doesn't love a sandwich? Got some meat or a piece of cheese that's been sitting in the refrigerator that you're not too jazzed on? Put it between two slices of bread, slap some condiments in there, and it instantly becomes exciting!

The Earl of Sandwich, with the original sandwich recipe.

I've eaten my share of sandwiches over my life - day after Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches, exotic treats like the banh mi or the torta, reubens, Cubans, and grilled cheeses galore. Put it between some bread, and I'll probably take a chance.

I've noticed that some of  you aren't as adventurous as I am, however. In fact, just the mention of one of the sandwiches I grew up on is enough to nauseate many of you.

I speak, of course, of the banana sandwich. Not the peanut butter and banana sandwich of Elvis fame (although I've had a lot of those, even if they were unfried), I mean the other banana sandwich, the one I thought my mom made up, just based on people's reactions through the years.

Basically, you take a ripe banana (and who can eat those brown mushy bananas? Ugh.), cut it into sections, sort of like big coins, spread mayonnaise on two slices of white bread and arrange your banana coins on one slice of bread. Slap the other slice of mayonnaise bread on top, and you have the banana sandwich.

Through the years, so many people have expressed so much disgust at this recipe that I began to think that my family and I were the only people in the world who experienced this treat. But now with the internet, I see that it even has a Facebook page. I don't exactly know if it's a Southern thing or what, but it's nice to see that other people have eaten them.

I think the main thing holding people back from enjoying a banana sandwich at their favorite restaurant is the lack of a striking name. How about Tropical Surprise? Mayonana? Ape's Delight?

I haven't had a banana sandwich in years, and I can't say that I miss it, but every once in a while I'll think about one. Trust me, once you've had an Ape's Delight, it will lodge in the pleasure centers of your brain.

The Old Man and the Sea

As a kid, most of my favorite books discussed scientific facts about dinosaurs. One of my absolute favorite books, however, was titled "A Little Old Man," which sounds like a title slapped on right before the book went to press.

"You still don't have a title? What's this book about? A little old man? Done. Roll the presses!"

Holy crap! I actually remembered the title and plot accurately!

Not much happened in the book. This little old man lives on an island by himself, does some chores, catches some fish and endures a hurricane. A boat washes up on shore after the storm, and he hangs out in the boat, finds a cat who has kittens and that's pretty much the end of the story.

I don't know why the man was marooned on the island, but he seemed happy. In fact, I really wanted to live on the old guy's island. He seemed to have everything he needed, he could catch fish when he got hungry, he got to explore an abandoned boat, and even had a pet cat.

When I read this book, my family didn't live anywhere near the water, but it seemed very peaceful and relaxing. Although why I wanted to relax as a kid is sort of a puzzling. What the hell was I looking to get away from?

This is where I wanted to retire to after another stressful day of being seven.

If the old man's island seemed interesting, the abandoned boat was even cooler. Several pages were devoted to the man exploring this boat before finding his cat. I was mesmerized by those pages. Maybe my later love of discarded, neglected items owed something to vague memories of the old man exploring this abandoned boat. Or perhaps the little guy finding and keeping a boat would inspire a lifelong affinity for scams in which I could get what I wanted with little or no work

Years passed and I forgot about the old man and his kick-ass solitary life. I was in college but back in Bradenton for Christmas Break. I had been in town for about a week, along with my friend Curt, and we were both planning to leave Sunday afternoon.

Curt called me early on a cold and rainy Sunday morning.

"Get up and come to my house."

As a twenty-something male, you could not ignore a message like that. Many adventures started from such a simple opening, and you certainly didn't want to miss out on any possible excitement.

So I got dressed and drove down to Curt's parent's house where he directed me to the DeSoto Memorial, a series of nature trails where Spanish conquistador, explorer, and Indian torturer Hernando DeSoto possibly landed hundreds of years ago.

"I was walking the dogs this morning and I found something," he said.

I knew better than to ask. It could be anything. Pirate gold, old Penthouse magazines, a secret trail to Crazy Nathan's* house, anything.

We parked the car and walked down the grey beach.

"Check it out," Curt said.

He gestured to a partially submerged houseboat about ten feet out in the river. Holy crap! Just like the little old man!

"The Law of the Sea says that if we occupy the boat, we own it."

I wasn't sure how Curt knew so much about maritime law, but this was intriguing.

We could totally fix it up, I thought. Screw going back to school. We could sail around the world, gaining knowledge of the seas. We'd catch fish when we got hungry. Dock in exotic ports all over the world. Maybe we'd even have a cat, like the old man.

"We could use my dad's canoe to get out there," Curt said.

"Yeah, that'd work," I replied, even though the thought of getting out on the swelling, cold river was taking some of my enthusiasm away.

"Yeah, we could do that," Curt said, his inflection matching my loss of enthusiasm.

After a couple of minutes we realized that we weren't going to occupy the houseboat, so we chucked some rocks at it and walked back to the car.

Like most ideas you have in your twenties, it made a much better idea than reality. My childhood dreams to own an abandoned houseboat would have to wait.

I still don't have my abandoned boat, but I'm constantly on the lookout. 





*Crazy Nathan was a crazy guy who we were somewhat obsessed with. It's a long story. I'll tell you some day.

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.

Tiny Treasures

It seems like we visited my Great Aunt Tiny and Uncle Norwood a lot when I was a kid.

I wasn't complaining - they had this awesome house on the outskirts of Fort Myers that Uncle Norwood designed and built.

The house was on a natural dam by Lake Orange. There was a family of alligators that would come up on the bank in the afternoon, which I thought was the coolest thing in the world. The house was on a lot of land, so you could spend the day fishing, playing in the lake, exploring the woods, or driving the golf cart across the dam in the afternoon to feed the cows or visiting a little hollow in the woods that Aunt Tiny called her "laughing place."

Most of their house was dark and cool with some of the creepiness around the corners that fascinated me as a kid. There was a little pond out front with these scary tiki statues that I was drawn to, but afraid to look at too much. There was also a novelty bathroom trashcan in the shape of a huge stick of dynamite that absolutely terrified me.

There was also Uncle Norwood's study, full of old copies of  my Uncle Bruce's old comic collection  which included a ton of horrifying EC comics about people coming back from the dead to avenge murders or getting killed gruesomely in ironic twists. I also found a bunch of Playboy joke books that went completely over my head, but hey, they had cartoons of naked ladies in them.

I don't remember Uncle Norwood too much - maybe he was annoyed with the kids running around and tried to stay away from the house on our visits. And now, with the ravages of age on my memory, there's a lot I'm forgetting about Aunt Tiny.

Tiny wasn't really her name, of course. It was just a nickname that stuck. I mostly remember her telling me about St. Patrick every St. Patrick's Day, which is strange, since our family wasn't Catholic. I also remember the rainy days when we would paint.

Aunt Tiny loved buying stuff at flea markets and yard sales. One of her specialties was old paintings.
When it rained, she would let me help her improve them.

Like, say she originally had a painting of a field. She might decide it needed brighter grass. So we'd repaint the grass. Then with the grass that bright, the sun and sky needed to be redone. And the original artist really missed the boat by not adding any clouds, so we'd have to put some in there. And hey, how about some bunnies in the field, or a flock of birds flying around? Can't have an empty, boring field.

Birds in a big field of green

And after adding all that stuff, we had really done more work than the original artist. What gave him the right to keep his lazy name on it? So we'd paint over the name and paint our own on there.

Three bunnies meet an owl. I don't know what that grass curtain on the left is.

Sometimes the paintings would retain most of the original work, with our improvements enhancing whatever the now-anonymous artist had originally done, other times there was so much paint on the that they became completely new works, like the two paintings here that I've had for ...holy crap, probably over 35 years.

Our big mistake was not publicizing this stuff. I mean, an untaught senior citizen and a little kid manipulating other people's art? If we had thrown around enough bullshit and two-dollar words, we would have been the kings of American postmodernism.

So today when I see art repurposing someone else's original work, my first reaction is usually, "Eh. Aunt Tiny invented that stuff."

The Mall Has It All

I have about a 20 minute window for shopping. Too much longer than that and I get sort of dizzy and bored and holy crap, why didn't I just order pants on the internet like a normal person instead of driving all the way out here on my day off.

This, of course, does not apply to the countless hours of my life I wasted digging through record and DVD stores, looking for that elusive catch that would make me a more well-rounded individual and, more importantly, the envy of my fellow nerds.

I didn't used to be this way. In fact, when I was in middle school I loved going to the mall. Loved it. In fact, the summer before high school a friend and I would spend almost all day there, even though we didn't have any money. I'd give the guy's name, but I haven't heard from him in years, and I don't want to sell him out in case he's running for office or something, you know? Me, I've got no prospects, so I don't mind implicating myself.

We would walk or ride our bikes there, which from what I remember was quite a trek. We almost always had less than five bucks between us, so we'd have to plot the best way to stretch it to last all day.

That was hard because we were addicted to video games. We'd usually start out in the arcade, which would take a couple bucks out of the pot right from the start, but what were we gonna do, not play Gauntlet?

We could usually go to a couple of the stores in the mall with single games and say the machine took our quarters and get a refund. The managers didn't really believe us, but we'd usually be able to get 50 cents out of that which was enough to keep the video game shakes from returning. If that didn't work, or we felt we had gone to that well a little too much, we could always play the video game systems in Sears, but that was a desperation move, sort of like alcoholics drinking vanilla extract.

Far away from Bradenton, in a wonderful land called California, the Summer Olympics were taking place. The commie countries had boycotted the games, giving America a huge advantage. Why did this matter to two kids in Florida? Well, McDonalds had a scratch off game where you'd win free food whenever America won an event. We'd buy a drink or small fries and almost always end up winning something else - thanks Carl Lewis! When people talk about missing the Cold War, I know exactly how they feel.

After our meal, it was time to hit the movies. We would hang around the outside of the theater until we found two ticket stubs on the ground, which was fairly easy, as nobody cared about littering back in those unenlightened days. We'd show them to the guy at the front, telling him we left to play video games if he ever asked, which hardly ever happened.

Once we got inside, it was relatively easy work to get into whatever R rated movie promised gore or nudity.

And the mid '80s were a glorious time for teen boys at the movies - Porky's rip offs, slasher movies, barbarian movies - you pretty much couldn't lose.

Like all good things, our Celebrated Summer at the mall had to end. One day the theater changed ticket colors,  so when we walked through, the ticket taker called the manager.

We were told to sit in a chair and wait for the manager. Naturally, as soon as ticket guy's back was turned we split up and took off running. I thought I had it made until I felt a tightness around my neck. Ticket guy had some good hustle and caught up to me, grabbing me by the back of my collar and throwing me to the floor.

I was hustled off to the security office and my parents were called. I was banned from the mall for a year. I'd like to think I didn't rat out my friend, but I don't really remember, so who knows. I probably told my parents it was all his idea.

I'd also like to think that this scare taught me that you can't get something for nothing, and scamming free food and movies was no way for a man to live, but that wasn't true at all.  In fact, in just another three or four years, my mom would get a call from the cops telling her that I had been arrested for stealing a pizza with another friend. But that's a story for another time.

Man, was I a shitty kid.

Dance Fever

I had been hanging around the record player with my friends for most of the seventh grade dance. After discussing the finer points of Rush and Eye of the Tiger, and wondering why the girls kept requesting Michael Jackson when we had plenty of perfectly fine Van Halen albums to play, I decided the time was right. We only had the room for another half hour or so, and I had been dragging my heels long enough. I was finally going to ask my crush to dance. I had never really danced before, actually, I don’t think I’d ever even really touched a girl before, but it looked pretty easy – just sort of hug her lightly and sway back and forth. I could do this.

And this was a true awkward middle school crush. I rode my bike in front of her house constantly (which was like 3 miles or so from my house) on the off chance she’d walk out and …I don’t really know, actually. See me and decide we needed to make out on her driveway, I guess.

Joan Jett’s “Crimson and Clover” was playing as I approached her. The lights were low (as low as Catholic middle school would allow) and the dust from the art room filtered through the light from the windows.

“I’ve got to do this,” I thought.

I had been working on my approach at home for quite some time. In rehearsals I was pretty suave, giving off a mixture of both smoldering seventh grade bad-boy sexuality, with a hint of sensitive, artistic guy along with a studied air of indifference, just to seem hard to get. She was going to melt.

She was standing with her friends. Joan Jett was wrapping things up as I got closer. “Shit,” I thought. “What if she shoots me down in front of everyone? I’ll have to pretend to be sick Monday. And I’ll have to find a way to get my desk moved away from her. No more secretly staring at her neck (and sometimes getting a glimpse of bra strap, which was pretty exciting.) God, she smells so nice, and I’m going to have to give all that up after this public humiliation. I’ll have to find a new girl’s house to ride my bike in front of. I wonder if my parents will let me transfer schools. Maybe I could say I’m getting bullied.”

Should I look at her? Yeah, I mean, I had to look at her, right? But I don’t want to look at her too much, that would be weird. God, haven’t they heard of air conditioning in this place?

Well, I’m here. I have to do it now.

“HeyumCatherineyouthinkyoumightwanttodancetothenextdance? Um…With me?”

“Sure, I’ll dance with you.”

Man, this was easy! I could have been asking girls this whole time, dancing like a … I don’t know…dancing MTV guy!

Joan Jett finished and the next song came on. Journey. Don’t Stop Believin’ Hell yeah.

I put my arms stiffly around my dancing partner’s waist (I had a dancing partner!). Her arms were around my neck. We were swaying to Journey’s tale of lonely small town girls and city boys. I could feel her breathing under my hands. I couldn't really look her in the eye, but I could smell her hair. It smelled sort of like fruit. Beautiful, beautiful fruit.

It would make a much better story if I wet myself or freaked out when the song picked up, but I did pretty good, even if my arms were sticking straight out in a stiff 90 degree angle and I was swaying back and forth like a retarded robot. Of course, I never really talked to her that much afterwards, since she still made me nervous, and it was much easier to fantasize about being cool around her than actually, you know, having a conversation.

Years later my wife would express amazement that my first slow dance was to Don’t Stop Believin'.

“But you can’t slow dance to that song,” she’d say.

“You can if you’re a superstud,” I’d reply.

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.