Third, First and Last

Well, yesterday, Friday, the verdict came down from on high. Okay, not really on high, it was delivered to me in a sterile doctor’s office the size of a walk in closet. My back has been broken. In two places at least. Small fractures really. And as the Doctor put it “If you have to have a broken back, then you are in the best case scenario.” When I asked him what he meant he informed me that there is no damage to my spinal cord and very little chance that it my spinal cord will be affected.

            I was more than upset to hear this news. You see, my dear reader, I was trying to get a note from him saying I was fully fit to go back to work. He said he would prefer if I took a bit more time off and let my soft tissue around my lower back heal as well as let my bones start to repair themselves a bit more. When I asked him how long, he said at least three more days. I wanted to punch him. Of course doing so would mean I would have to stand up, step down from the exam table, ball up my fist and try to twist my body at the waist to get my full body weight behind the force of my punch. Even thinking about that sort of action while sitting there on the thin paper covered table made my back throb with stabbing pain. Even though I was loaded up on pharmaceutical grade pain killers, the pain told me I would be unfit to perform that particular task. Lucky doctor.

            He then proceeded to examine my broken and bruised body. I did my best to not flinch, yelp in pain or rip his face off for touching the places that my steps so happily chose as their own punching bag. Given, the steps punched me only once, but once was enough to put me on my ass for a week.

            After the Doc visit, I went to my part-time job, I gimped down the aisle trying to ignore the stares of the customers in my direction. After all, it’s not every day you see a six foot tall, 190 pound, long haired biker stumbling through the door of a fine dining establishment. I’m sure my shambling caused more than a few diners to clutch a bit tighter to their purses. Hell, I even saw a few scoot away from the aisle I was making my way down.

            I ignored them and focused on the business owners who were standing at the back of the restaurant staring at me. The chef was grinning and nodding, his wife looked blankly at me. When I got to them I informed them I would miss another shift of work due to the fact my Doc would not sign off on my return to work slip. The chef then informed me that when I called and left my message that I would not be able to come in to work on Wednesday, he did not recognize my voice and that he had to have other people listen to it to make sure it was me. I laughed because I knew why I sounded like an alien being tortured at area 51. It was the pain I had been going through.

            When I left the restaurant I then went to my primary job. I informed my supervisor of my plight, he informed me I needed to get some paperwork from administration to have filled out. FMLA paperwork. Bureaucratic paperwork that makes going back to work more difficult. The one thing I want to do, work, requires me to get permission from others so that I can do it. I’m sure there is a reason for this, but I’m sure I’m not smart enough to understand it even if it were explained to me. It’s okay though, because I know I will do exactly what I need to do to get back to doing my job(s).

            By the time I got home, almost six hours after I left to go to the doctors to get a clean bill of health, my painkillers were wearing off, my gimpiness had gotten worse and I was exhausted. I made my way upstairs, climbed into bed while trying to not inflict more pain on my body and promptly fell asleep.

            When I woke up from my nap, almost ninety minutes later, a brief thought entered my mind that I may be wrong in believing I was ready to go back to work full time. I then told myself I was hallucinating and I couldn’t be wrong. Which is about the time I started to count down the hours and minutes that I actually get to go back to work. Which is about the time I started to fall asleep again. I’ve repeated this behavior for the past twenty-four hours.

            On the bright side of everything, I’m actually healing. My body is not in as much pain as it was a few days ago or even yesterday for that matter. The insanely blinding stabbing pain I’d been experiencing has been replaced with a less blinding stabbing pain. Also, truth be told, the meds are helping. But even without the meds I see small improvements not just every day, but every several hours. Not too long ago I couldn’t even put my own socks, pants, shirt and shoes. Now, can do all of those, true, not as quickly as I could pre-flight attempt on Tuesday morning, but I can perform these simple duties. Also, yesterday morning was the first time since the front step incident I was actually able to sit down in a chair, on a couch or even in my bed. Big success there. If you don’t believe me, try doing nothing but standing or lying flat on your back for three and a half days. It will drive you nuts and make your feet extremely tender.

            So, in conclusion, I’m on the mend, I’m bored, and I’ve written way too many blogs about this one incident. But, I needed to do something, after all, I’ve read books, watched movies, television shows, played video games and driven the people in my life batshit crazy with my stubbornness of not asking for help and not allowing them to help me. Why? Simple, I don’t really like to ask for help, need help or want to be helped which is a principle I’ve had for years. A principle I do believe at this point in my life I need to reassess. I don’t want to, my pride screams inside my head every time I even think about asking for help. It is no secret that my pride has been a problematic issue in the course of my life. Hell, I’d say that my pride is most likely the primary culprit in all my previous fights, arguments and disagreements.

            All of this brings to mind a night not too long ago when I was sitting in a truck, smoking a cigar, drinking a sprite and talking to a good friend who told me I need to put my pride to the side. That my pride is my biggest weakness and if I didn’t get a handle on it, I’d be falling a long way down. He, of course, was right. So right now, so many days and hours after my accident I finally understand what has been said to me over and over again in not so many words. Let others help you, get out of the way of your destiny. Get out of the way of Gods plan in your life. Just do what you can and let others help.

            The platitudes go on and on, but the message is always the same and when I seem to lose sight of it, I end up taking more steps backwards. So, okay, I’m giving in, I’m raising the white flag in surrender. I give up. I’m setting aside my pride and I’m now just going to do what I can and try not to work myself into exhaustion anymore. I’ll let my future unfold in the manner that God wants because if I don’t I know I will end up right back here, flat on my back staring at the ceiling and wondering how in the hell I got here once again.

            Have a great week… again.

Trapped Humanity

Yesterday I went to the hospital. Not that I had much choice in the matter. My warden/nurse/wife made it abundantly clear that I had absolutely no say in the matter. When I was informed of this decision made on my behalf without my insight or consultation, I thought if I just lay like a lump on a log there would be nothing anyone could do to get me to move out of my bed. That is when I was threatened with an ambulance ride in my pajamas. I refuse to be one of those types of invalids. You know the kind, rolling around Wal-Mart at all hours of the day in a motorized scooter, wearing their food stained pajamas and worn out house slippers. Not that my PJ’s are food stained and as for the slippers, I don’t own any. Still, the thought of looking that disheveled is quite an unappealing thought to me.

So I did what any self-respecting injured person would do in that situation. I accepted my fate, got dressed with help and went to the hospital. Once there, I proceeded to wait almost three hours in the waiting room standing up. You see, my injury to my lower back makes it almost impossible to sit down. I’m okay if I’m lying down on my back or standing upright. The pain from sitting is almost unbearable. Okay, that may be a bit of an understatement. Imagine if every time you tried to move in any position that there were twelve very angry monkeys with flaming hot dull knives standing behind you stabbing you right next to your kidneys… then multiply that by a million. You take in so much pain that your vision blurs at the edges only to leave white hot pin pricks of veiled reality at the center. But the center is miles away, and you know that is where the pain originates from. You want to reach out with your shaking hands and trembling arms and throttle the pain into non-existence but it is too far away. You can’t reach its physical drowning in the tunnel that is quickly filling up with liquid agony.

Once there, we were told the computer admissions printer was broken and the check-in administrator was as present as bigfoot so all the paperwork landed upon one woman in a small, semi-private room with a computer an no printer. There were three people ahead of us in the queue. Me standing and trying to ignore all the bad television being broadcast to an almost full waiting room by trying to figure out what was ailing the people in the five hundred square foot enclosure. We waited and eyeballed the vending machines, two filled with beverages and one filled with snacks. One machine had the “Out of Order” sign on it. Glad I wasn’t starving.

One woman, thin and tall with several kids was angry, bitter and snapping at her kids with almost hostile words. Another woman, elderly and quiet was taking care of a small baby. The baby cooed and waved at anyone she saw. Quite adorable. An elderly gentleman hobbled along on crutches and my wife helped him get a wheelchair. He promptly fell asleep right next to another woman who was sleeping in a waiting chair when we arrived and looked as if she were in a coma. The woman who came in ahead of us sat in a chair with a vomit bag in her lap and scrolled through her phones apps. Every now and then she would get up and make a hasty retreat to the bathroom only to emerge a bit paler and less steady on her feet. Then there was the elderly couple who came in behind us, the man attending to his sick wife who could barely walk. He fussed over her and she allowed him to do so. He would gently push her hair back and whisper to her, offer her a drink every now and then and he even got up and talked to the security guard for a few minutes.

I kept my head down, focused on not being in pain and tried to play video games. It sort of worked. I just couldn’t get comfortable. Hell, I even tried to sit in a wheelchair but that experiment lasted about twenty seconds before I got up. I knew if I had stayed in that damnable contraption I’d have passed out from the photon torpedoes being shot into my lower back. I think Luke Skywalker was using my back as the death star trench. Uncool Luke, uncool.

When I did get a room, it was one filled with four chairs, three were recliners and one was a plain old plastic chair. No bed but there were five crash carts which is good to know in case I was about to die. I paced, no, I hobbled the room back and forth. My wife sat in a chair, read and checked her phone. I tried to explore the inner contents of the crash carts but they were locked so I started to root through the shelves near the sink. I found nothing of interest except infant sponges. So I decided to play with the nitrile gloves. No latex apparently in the hospital.

Right after I finished goofing off with the gloves, and my boredom was approaching the level of my discomfort the Nurse Practitioner showed up and started to interrogate me. I willingly complied. She then ordered x-rays.

I won’t go into the Battan death march to that room of torture the likes Torquemada only dreamed about nor will I go into the fact it took three grown adults to contort me into various stress poses just so they could take black and green photos of my junk and my butt. I just hope none of you have to go through what I went through. But I hope they do.

By the time I made it back to my room, my wife/warden/nurse had gone to a nice fast food place and picked me up a juicy bacon cheese burger. I’d like to say I enjoyed every morsel of that square burger and supped with the dignity of a king. Nope, I devoured that thing as if it were the last burger in the world. Ate it in record time too. Less than a minute from opening the bag to throwing the bag away. In fact, I managed to even eat some of the greasy paper the fried meat was wrapped in. Which gave me pause long enough to think…. I wish there were a bacon wrapped cheeseburger where the buns were actually made of bacon. I expressed this thought to my wife/warden/nurse. She was non-plused. I still think it’s brilliant. Just bacon, cheese and burger, no veggies at all. I’d eat it.

That’s when a new nurse came in pushing a large cart. She told me she was there to give me a shot. Of what I asked. Deluded she answered. I proposed to her immediately.

Thirty minutes later, the Nurse Practitioner had us signed out, me on a bed rest and no work chit as well as a prescription for some pain killing opiates. I went home. Sort of. We made a couple of quick stops, and once home, we stood on our porch and enjoyed the almost seventy degree weather. I informed my warden/nurse/wife I had renamed the front steps to F/U 1 through F/U 5. She laughed and said the drugs must be working.

I won’t lie, they were.

Now, I’m pretty much relegated to my bed. I have at least one more day to lie here. I’m not a good patient. I don’t like being immobile and I don’t like people doing things for me. Yet as I sit here, the weather now turned back to shitty ice and rain, the porch freezing over again I can’t help but wish I were doing something else besides being an invalid. My body is not healing fast enough for my taste. However, it isn’t really about me and what I want is it? I mean, I was doing an experiment where I slowed my life down and just as it ended a large roadblock was thrown in my way. A roadblock that literally put me on my back. Is a greater power trying to teach me a lesson? Is God saying I’m too old to continue my youthful zeal for responsibility and life? Am I to not be the one who is always going somewhere, doing something and giving the answer?

Am I human after all? Is that my lesson?

If it is, then I understand. I don’t like it, but I definitely understand.

Have a great week.

            

Icy Repercussions

            This morning started off like any other morning. I woke up at five a.m., tried to not get out of bed before five-thirty, cleaned up and headed out the door by six a.m. That is when my day changed.

            You see, since we here in the heart of the south are suffering a cold blast filled with snow, ice and basically nothing but non-motorcycle friendly weather, I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the weatherman said it would be in the forties today. I was dressed in my riding leathers, helmet and boots. When I stepped off my porch I immediately found myself staring up at the stars of the morning sky and my feet. My arms flailed uncontrollably and when I landed, five steps lower with the lower half of my body on the concrete, my lower back on the knife edge of the last step and nothing but white hot noise in my vision, I tried to breathe.

            I don’t know how long I lay there, sprawled out like a chalk outline at a crime scene, but I do know I was gasping for breath when my neighbors walked up and started to speak to me. I don’t recall what was really said, something about hospitals and spouses. I shook my head, mumbled negative comments and something about getting to work all the while trying to do an appendage assessment. Right arm and hand, check. Left arm and hand, check. Head, check. Right leg and foot, check. Left leg and foot, insane pain. Torso, lower back, blazing white hot pain, shut it down.

            I tried to move. In my mind I was moving like an acrobat, in reality, I was more like a flopping fish out of water. My neighbors pulled me up into the seated position, then tried to get me to my feet. I managed to get a semblance of balance then stumbled, pulled and willed my almost two hundred pound frame up the icy steps and to my front door. I assume my neighbors went to work thinking I was an utter lunatic. (Who am I to argue?)

            My daughter, seeing my gimpy entrance, greeted my pained facial expressions with horrific concern of youth. I assured her I was okay and made my way slowly upstairs to where my wife was. Halfway up the steps, dragging my left leg and foot over each step in a slow, deliberate manner in an attempt to cause less pain and if I were seriously injured, less of that too, I realized I might not be able to ride my motorcycle to work. After all, my left foot was for shifting gears and I could barely lift it let alone think about utilizing all my facilities to operate that beautiful and complex machine.

            My wife, hearing me stumble up the steps, came out from our cave of solace took one look at me and asked what happened. I told her I fell. She then wanted to take me to the hospital. I tsked tsked that notion. She then offered me a ride to work. I took her up on that offer.

            Work was an interesting evolution. Tasks which normally take me forty-five minutes took me twice that time. My normal speed of movement was cut down by almost seventy-five percent. Fortunately for me the museum is closed on Monday and while it is my normal day off, the other technicians set up everything so all I have to do on Tuesday mornings is make sure all monitors are turned on and the exhibits work. It should have been an easy task. It was not. I spent most of the rest of my day trying to sit comfortably in my office chair and figure out how I’d work my part time job.

            I worried, I plotted, I worried, I planned, I worried and I schemed.

            Around noon I hobbled out of my office for a few minutes and when I returned I discovered I had a visitor. My wife. She gave me an ultimatum. Go home or go to the hospital. I chose home.

            When I informed my co-workers and managers, they all seemed thankful for my wife’s interference in my hard headed life of non-stop go. Also, they seemed relieved I would not be scarring the children with my Quasimodo-like movement from point A to point B inside and outside of the museum.

            I informed my part-time job of my affliction, folded myself painfully into the jeep and rode home where I soon fell asleep in an almost corpse-like position. I awoke hours later to silence. I ate more BC powder, tried to get out of bed and discovered the pain I had earlier experienced which had been absent while lying still, was still there.

            So now, I’m lying in bed, surrounded by comic books, regular books, electronic devices, cookies and beverages. I’m not happy about it. I’d rather be working. I’d rather be doing something productive, but I can’t. My body says I can’t and it sucks. So what do I do? I write a blog about the wonderful nature of our soft, fleshy and easily wounded corporeal vessels which we are given for our short span of life.

            Makes me want some type of robotic armor like in Robocop. I can’t see Robocop being hurt by slipping on some icy steps. Nope, he’d probably slip, fall, and then torch the whole porch. Then he’d go on to take out all the ice in the city. Yeah, that’d be cool and safe for the citizens.

            Okay, enough rambling. Have a great week.

Inconclusive Results

            Today is the last day of my experiment in working less, resting more and enjoying life in my own fashion. I’ve been relaxed over the past couple of months. So relaxed in fact that I’ve literally felt almost normal. Well, as normal as one can in this day and age.

            Oddly enough, I’m at a loss as to if my experiment was a success or a failure. I’d like to say it was a success but on this last day of my reprieve all the stress, angst, pressure and bleak outlook as to what the upcoming weeks of endless work, sleepless nights and bodily pains have crashed back down upon me with the vengeance of a scorn lover. Meaning, I’m in deep doo-doo.

            I don’t know if I will be able to go back to the way I was, I don’t know if my body can handle the abuse. I hope it can, I hope I won’t buckle under the endless pressure. If my past is any indication of my future, then I won’t… for a while. Hopefully by the time the unseen breaking point draws near I will be in a position to step back once again.

            Which is kind of funny, you see, over the past two weeks, here in the South, we’ve had unprecedented amounts of snow fall which has basically shut down my entire city. Schools have been closed for seven full days. Most businesses were shut down for at least one day each week and adults across the seven cities with children have shown great restraint in not locking their offspring outside just for a few moments of peace and quiet.

            Me and mine went for walks, shoveled snow at our house and our neighbors. We tried to stay busy. We cleaned, laughed and talked. We also watched endless hours of television. At one point in time, they were watching a film about a kid who could travel in time, a talent which he apparently inherited from his father. I wish I could remember the name of the film, but I can’t. Anyhow, at the end of the film, the dad is dying and the son is spending time with him, then he travels back in time to spend more time with his dad. It’s odd, because I don’t have a relationship like that with my father so I was a bit jealous and confused by this sort of action. But I went with it, simply because it is a movie, it’s make believe and I was bored.

            The last conversation the dad and son had the father tells his kid the secret to being happy in life and how to deal with the gift of time travel. Basically he said live each day through to the end. Go through all the stress, strife, anger and disappointment without trying to change anything or anyone. Then, relive the day but this time enjoy the day, the small moments, breathe in the life of all things around you because you already know what is going to happen, you can just live in the moment.

            That is brilliant. Also, I wish I were a time traveler so I could do this. Instead, I end up just living in the initial moment. Taking in all the bad shit, processing the bad shit, and then spewing out more bad shit. Computer geeks call this phenomenon “GIGO” otherwise known as Garbage in, Garbage out. It’s odd, I’ve known this phrase for years yet this is the first time I’ve seen it applied to life and I’m the one who is applying it to my life. Least I’m trying to. All the smart people I know, all the uncertified genius’s, crazy creative folks and plain old common sense savants. None of them in all of our conversations and run ins have ever made a connection between the two. Which is odd but not surprising.

            Sidetracked…

            I guess what I’m saying is this;

            While I’ve enjoyed the break in my hectic life over the past two months, I believe it has come at a cost I’m not really prepared to pay. Not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, mentally and financially as well. I suppose it’s like when you were a kid standing at the edge of a river and you pick up a rock and toss it in the water. You see a huge splash, then the ripples start out large and slowly fade. Or do they, do the ripples disappear in time? Or do they leave behind small shadows of their effect on the fishes lives that make their living in the water.

            That is how I feel. Like I took a rock, threw it into the pond of my life without looking at the damage it may cause and not really giving two cents about the repercussions. Now, looking into the abyss of my near and not so near future, I’m not filled with regret for not doing everything I should have but I am unsure of what to expect from my journey into the next ten months. I wish I did. But I’m not a psychic or a time traveler. I’m just a Polak in a snow bound southern state with debts, worries, problems and concerns.

            In other words, I’m just like you. Only in a different place and time.

            Have a great week.

It Froze Over

            Well, winter has officially come to Virginia. The thermometer is registering in the single digits and there is snow and ice on the ground. Across the area cars, trucks and SUV’s are stuck in ditches due to over steering, understeering and hazardous road conditions. Men, women and kids are holed up in houses and apartments with their heaters set to “Hell”. Just to keep the chill out of their bones.

            The school age kids have had the entire week off and have been doing their best to drive their parents totally insane during these days. Video game and movie distractions have long been set to the side and forgotten. Parents who are ill-equipped to deal with endless hours of attention needing offspring are at their wits end. Personally, I don’t have that issue. My offspring is more than capable of keeping herself amused for hours with youtube and internet fangirl sites of her favorite boy-bands.

            This being said, I’m happy to enjoy an extra day or two at home relaxing. Although shoveling snow, cooking, cleaning, laundry and helping neighbors get their cars unstuck from an icy snow bank is not really relaxing. However, it is a very nice reprieve from the daily routine and ritual of my everyday existence.

            Yet as I sit here, writing in sub-freezing tempuratures I can’t help but think there may be something more important that I’m missing.

            Is it the family time? The down time from work? The daily life of maintaining the world around your comfort zone? I don’t know. What I do know is that I like sitting under a blanket and watching mindless television with people who are close to me. What I like is the fact that I don’t have anywhere to go, no responsibilities and no desire to do anything responsible for anyone in my life other than the people who I know are bound to me outside of the workplace.

            Have a great week.

The Horror of Love

            It’s Friday the thirteenth and horror movies abound my viewing habits. It is also the day before Valentines. An odd mixture if you ask me. Blood and gore adorn our insatiable media affliction yet in the stores, red and pink flowers and hearts bombard our senses. Tomorrow, lovers will give each other chocolates and gifts. Then, they will express their undying love to the special someone in their lives.

            Some of these revelations will be accepted, some not. Which in a way is quite fitting considering what today is and what it represents. Seems to me, the Fifteenth of February should be the day dedicated to horror instead of the thirteenth. But, that’s just my opinion. This blog is an odd mix of the two… so enjoy.

            A long time ago, in the mid 1970’s I met a girl. Her name was Laura, she had glowing blonde hair, pale blue eyes that reminded me of the afternoon sky and she always smelled like strawberries. Maybe the smell was her perfume or a type of shampoo, I don’t know. I do know she had bright, shimmering lips. This was due to the fact she loved lip gloss. Heavy doses of it too and every time she pulled that little glass bottle out of her pocket and applied it, I had to struggle to not stare at her. From the first moment I saw her, I was intrigued, mesmerized, lost in her glory… I was twitterpated so to speak. I was also helpless to control these feelings. Hell, I was only nine. What does a nine year old know about these things? Nothing… absolutely nothing.

            When I expressed my longing to my oldest sister she immediately told me I should do something about it. Bring her flowers, chocolate and let he know how I feel. Especially since Valentine’s day was just a few short days away. I told her I didn’t have any money for flowers and chocolate and as far as talking to a girl about feelings… well, that was strictly off the table. Especially since my only real interactions with girls were my sisters and my mother. Also, all the guys I knew had no clue how to talk to girls let alone what to do with one if they ever wanted to be alone with you.

            Once again, my sister came to the rescue. Over the next few days, we made a dozen roses out of egg cartons, pipe cleaners, tissue paper and construction paper. We then made some caramel corn and homemade chocolates. Okay, so she did most of that while I tried to make a card for Laura. After a couple days, we had a mighty nice collection of love and adoration put together. I was happy for the help and the outcome. I was also scared shitless of bringing this load of affection to school where everyone would see it and possibly be the brunt of many cruel jokes by my pals.

            My sister had an answer for that as well. She put everything in a brown paper bag with my name on it and off to school I went. I knew I wouldn’t see Laura until lunch so I kept the bag with me as I traversed from class to class. When lunch time finally came and I made my way nervously into the lunch room. By the time I got there, a fifty foot walk from my classroom that felt like a thousand miles, I was sweating, stumbling and having a hard time recognizing the images of my fellow classmates. I made it. Barely. As soon as I crossed the threshold of the cafeteria and saw Laura sitting at her regular table with all of her friends my fear grew exponentially. But then I focused on her hair and her eyes. I used them like a tractor beam and made my way towards her as fast as I could. In that moment however, I felt as if I were walking through molasses and my legs were filled with lead. It couldn’t have been more than a thirty second trip but it felt like an hour.

            When I got to the table, I stood at the head of it, right next to where Laura was sitting. The table was filled with the most popular and pretty girls in school. Their chatting and laughing stopped as they realized I was invading their space. Laura looked up at me and said “What do you want?”

            I stammered, unable to make out any coherent words and realizing my mute plight I just opened the brown paper bag, reached inside and pulled out the flowers and handed them to her. She looked at them and then at me. The look on her face was one of horror and embarrassment. As if I were handing her a fistful of snakes. She didn’t take them so I set them on the table in front of her tray of food. I then reached in and pulled out the cellophane wrapped candies and popcorn and tried to give them to her. Her arms made no move towards the treats as well. I placed them next to the flowers and quickly fished the home made card out of the bag and tried to hand it to her. I can’t say she shuddered in horror but she pulled away from me and leaned into her friend next to her. I dropped the card tried to talk again and realized I had somehow blown my chance at pre-pubescent love. Which is to say, holding hands with a girl I liked and having someone I like, like me in return.

            I walked away in shame with my chin on my chest and fighting back tears. I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach by not one horse but a whole heard of horses.

            The rest of the day, I didn’t talk to anyone. Not my pals, not my teachers and definitely not any girls I saw. The minutes in class passed like hours and when the final bell finally rang I moved as fast as I could to be the first one out of the school doors. I wasn’t successful but I did manage to avoid all my friends. I made my way quickly towards home.

            When I got home there was a stranger sitting on my front porch. It was a girl I’d seen around school a few times and had even played on the same kickball team with. I’d also occasionally run into her in the library, yet I didn’t know her name. When she saw me walking up the yard she stood up, smiled and waved. I gave a half hearted wave back. “Hi Skip.” She said.

            “Uh… Hi….”

            “Karen. My name is Karen.”

            “Hi Karen.”

            “I wanted to tell you that I thought what you did at lunch today was really cool.”

            I just nodded and tried not to look at her.

            “And I wanted to ask you something?”

            I looked at her then down at the ground. As my gaze was traveling towards the bushes under our windows I noticed there was a brown paper bag sitting next to her school books. Poking out of the bag were some brightly colored tissue paper as if it were mocking me.

            I looked back up at Karen, the skin on my neck and cheeks burning with embarrassment. I could also feel tears welling up in my eyes from pain emitting from my recent wound.

            “I wanted to ask if it was okay if I kept your gift. I mean, you really went to a lot of trouble to make all this stuff and I like you and….”

            My pain seemed to fade a bit with her words. Confusion seemed to be taking its place. I looked at her through glistening eyes. Her hair was reddish brown, short and curly, she had freckles on her face, her lips were thin and her body was all angles and edges. Yet there was a look of vulnerability in her pale brown eyes. I felt a smile creeping into the corners of my mouth and a sense of acceptance and relaxation start to spread through me. I nodded.

            “Ya… If you like them you can have them. But, uhm, the card was written for Laura so you may want to throw it away.”

            “I read the card. You write real nice. I just wish someone would write that way about me.”

            “I’m sure someone will someday.”

            “You wanna hang out?”

            I looked at her, she didn’t seem so tense since we started talking and I didn’t feel as bad as I had been. “Sure.” I said and sat down on the porch next to her feeling like I was the richest man in the world.

            Have a great week and Happy Valentine’s Day and Friday the Thirteenth.

Negative Memories

            Have you ever sat in a dimly lit room, curtains drawn against the bright light of day that is trying its damndest to claw its way into the room to reveal all the secrets that may be lurking there? Then, as the golden glow of the light starts to succeed you close your eyes so that darkness may envelope your vision, help quiet your thoughts and even still your soul so that you may just sit there in the moment and try to enjoy living in that moment? Yet when you close your eyes there is no true blackness. Instead portrayed on the internal screens of the inside of your eyelids there is an image in stark grays, blacks and stunning whites. But the image is wrong, completely wrong. Not just in the absence of Gogh like colors but some strange negative image colorization that your brain decided to replace with your normal colorful vision. This image, so disturbing in nature that you quickly open your eyes to make sure what you are seeing with your eyes closed meet what is real. This type of action makes you question your sanity. Sitting in a room quickly opening your eyes after only closing them for thirty seconds. Then, you sit there and question what is real and what is not and those thoughts then drift to the details which you believe your mind is leaving out. Soon, you are down the rabbit hole of what makes up reality and what your brain perceives as reality.

            Yeah, I’ve never done this either.

            If I had, then I’d have to wonder why this isn’t a regular occurrence. Why our brain waits until the light is perfect, when you are trying to stay in a moment. A perfect moment. A moment you don’t want to lose. A moment that is quite perfect and all you want to do is relish in that moment so that in the future, a future where you are old, feeble and your brain has been turned into swiss cheese and there are people with large arms and even larger frowns who are standing in your room getting ready to change your fully loaded and leaking adult diaper. And since your brain has been hijacked by tricks of light and… well… itself, your memory, that joyful and blissful moment you’ve been trying so hard to etch into the marble slates inside the recesses of itself, you lose it.

            You lose it like a wallet, or a watch or that one sock that never makes its way back to your sock drawer from its sojourn to the washing machine and dryer. It’s gone, not permanently, just gone enough so that when you look back upon the memory, it is not quite as perfect as you believe it should be. Or as perfect as you wanted it to be. Nope, it’s tainted not by any impurity of the moment, but by your own brain playing its crazy tricks on itself.

            Where does this leave me? You? Anyone?

            I have no idea. It’s life I suppose.

            You see, somewhere in the vast expanses of our brains there has to be some sort of rubbish bin or recycling bin. Only in my case, it has to be a dumpster the size of Manhattan.  Even at that size, it has to be overflowing into the Hudson River and all I want to do is some major dumpster diving. Root through all my forgotten moments, lost seconds, missing sights, sounds and words I’ve said.

            Sure, other folks remember, but when you or I try and draw forth these moments… nothing but blackness. Which is when your brain really gets creative. See, the brain then decides to form your forgotten memories from the gleaned, over heard stories of others. When your brains finds a conflict or hole in the story, it takes the best and easiest explanation and inserts it into the canon of your life regardless of whether or not it fits. Square peg in a missing hole of your memory. Then, you move on with your life because your brain tells you to and you have no clue this actually just happened.

            So, when you or I find ourselves in a moment where we are trying to hold onto a memory or thought and our brain is playing its slippery slope games with light and shadow in an attempt to distract us like an ADD teen in a video game parlor, I focus. I focus on one particular spot with my eyes wide open. Then I take in all the smells, sounds and slowly write those into my brain so I never lose them again. (Of course this may not actually work. Only time will tell.)

            This is what I have to do. Only because I spend most of my time on auto-pilot. Meaning I just float through my daily life because I have to do specific things at a specified time to ensure I not only get paid but maintain my employment and thus my life. My life has become so routine that I feel at times I’m just a robot or a paid space monkey. I go through my life in a haze and my brain disengages from what it should be paying attention to in an attempt to come up with fancy games and tricks to make me feel as if I’m losing my mind. Or maybe it’s just trying to make my life a bit more interesting.

            Which I guess is my brain trying to tell me to not be more interesting, more involved but to pay more attention. To live in the moments that have become basic recitations of daily activity. Hmm, maybe that is what the negative colors are trying to represent. The mundane and unsalted life I’m leading. Maybe the seasoning is really there and I have to figure out a way to suck the marrow of life from them?

            What do you think they mean? How do you maintain your memories?