Thank you Siggy and Grandpa for sharing your stories. 
Personal story, or stories
- Thread starter Grandpa
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Shasta
On his shell he holds the earth.
I'm getting caught up and all I have to say is - CURT LOST A LEG? Poor Curt. I did not see that coming.
Shasta
On his shell he holds the earth.
WHAT? Then he dies? 
It's pretty fantastic that you had a Curt, though.
It's pretty fantastic that you had a Curt, though.
Good evening.
May I ask all you wonderful authors/story tellers, do you ever break the fourth wall in your stories?
Why or why not?
I'm curious.
Peace.
May I ask all you wonderful authors/story tellers, do you ever break the fourth wall in your stories?
Why or why not?
I'm curious.
Peace.
Good evening, Sigs.
Why. Well, because at that point, it was less writing a story than sitting with a group of friends in folding chairs around our sunroom, or maybe on logs around a campfire, and talking about my youth and getting teary, wiping my eyes, and saying, "Excuse me for a moment." If there was dramatic punch in it, it wasn't intended. It was the moment.
In my other fiction and nonfiction writings, no. Why not. I guess because in the flow of narration, in the telling of the story, it doesn't even occur to me to step to the audience. I need to finish the story within the world that it's already in.
Hope that answered your question.
Sorta, and the one time I can think of is the one I just finished. And it might not count, because it's all first-person narration anyway, but when I wrote, This is tough to write, it was a departure for me in that I stepped away from the thread of narration to bring it to the instant. So in that sense, if I didn't break the fourth wall, I at least pushed it.
Why. Well, because at that point, it was less writing a story than sitting with a group of friends in folding chairs around our sunroom, or maybe on logs around a campfire, and talking about my youth and getting teary, wiping my eyes, and saying, "Excuse me for a moment." If there was dramatic punch in it, it wasn't intended. It was the moment.
In my other fiction and nonfiction writings, no. Why not. I guess because in the flow of narration, in the telling of the story, it doesn't even occur to me to step to the audience. I need to finish the story within the world that it's already in.
Hope that answered your question.
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In my circle of friends and clients and business acquaintances, just like with society at large, there's always sort of a Brownian movement where some people are continually moving in and out of the central mass. There was this guy, Rob, who had made a name for himself, but had some health and personal issues, got tired of the hustle, and decided to go out to the West Coast, set up a smaller-sized shop, and sail around and live on a boat.
Four or five years later, I'm in the circle and it's all males, and I hear from Bryson, "Did you hear that Rob died?"
No, the group hadn't heard it, and there were momentary clucks of sympathy before the talk of beer and breasts resumed.
"Are you sure?" I asked. "Pretty sure," was the reply. I was unconvinced.
So the next day, I've got a few minutes window in the day, and I look in my database for Rob's West Coast number and give it a call. Rob's sonorous, radio voice answers, which shows you just how relaxed he is, because back here in town, he never would've answered his own phone.
"Good afternoon. This is Rob."
"Rob! Good to hear your voice!"
He recognized me right off, and we talked about lives and loves and all that stuff. Finally he says, "Why'd you call? What can I do for you?"
Well, I can be candid. "There was a rumor you were dead. I didn't think so, so I gave you a call."
Hearty laughter all around. "Who'd you hear that from?" I got defensive. "Oh, I was in a conversation, and it got passed around. You can bet that I'll get the word out otherwise now."
Chatted a little more, and we hung up.
Soon after, I'm with Bryson and the group. "Hey, you said Rob was dead."
"Yeah, what about it?"
"He's not."
"How do you know?"
"I called him up, and he answered."
A pause.
"Well, did you ask him why he's not dead?"
I related this story tonight to Grandma. She shook her head. "You guys just speak a different language than women."
"What, you wouldn't call up a friend to find out if she was dead?"
She looked at me like I was growing a new set of nostrils.
"No."
Four or five years later, I'm in the circle and it's all males, and I hear from Bryson, "Did you hear that Rob died?"
No, the group hadn't heard it, and there were momentary clucks of sympathy before the talk of beer and breasts resumed.
"Are you sure?" I asked. "Pretty sure," was the reply. I was unconvinced.
So the next day, I've got a few minutes window in the day, and I look in my database for Rob's West Coast number and give it a call. Rob's sonorous, radio voice answers, which shows you just how relaxed he is, because back here in town, he never would've answered his own phone.
"Good afternoon. This is Rob."
"Rob! Good to hear your voice!"
He recognized me right off, and we talked about lives and loves and all that stuff. Finally he says, "Why'd you call? What can I do for you?"
Well, I can be candid. "There was a rumor you were dead. I didn't think so, so I gave you a call."
Hearty laughter all around. "Who'd you hear that from?" I got defensive. "Oh, I was in a conversation, and it got passed around. You can bet that I'll get the word out otherwise now."
Chatted a little more, and we hung up.
Soon after, I'm with Bryson and the group. "Hey, you said Rob was dead."
"Yeah, what about it?"
"He's not."
"How do you know?"
"I called him up, and he answered."
A pause.
"Well, did you ask him why he's not dead?"
I related this story tonight to Grandma. She shook her head. "You guys just speak a different language than women."
"What, you wouldn't call up a friend to find out if she was dead?"
She looked at me like I was growing a new set of nostrils.
"No."
I acquired a Segway, quite by accident (accident is the salient word here). And I loved that thing. (Alert readers will already note the past tense, and the nonalert are now alerted.)
Ever been on one? Here's the tip, if you didn't get enough instruction beforehand: Just stand. Don't try to balance. If you try to balance, the more aggressively you try, the more hilarious your failure will become. Just step up onto it like you're stepping onto a ... well, step.
I took to it right away. I was buzzing around buildings, around sidewalks, both amusing and annoying people. I did doughnuts. I went fast. I stopped in a heartbeat. I had everyone in the neighborhood try it. I took it to my friends, and they tried it. Most loved it. Some hated it (see the "hilarious failure" comment above).
At one point, I got the idea that I could take it to work, some miles away from the home. It turns out there are limitations to a Segway. If you run out of sidewalk and there's no ramp, you have to wrestle it to the street. It's not fast enough to run with the cars, it's annoying to zoom past people on the sidewalk, and it's a bit too slow for the bike lane, sometimes, top speed being 12.5 mph, and it will enforce that strictly.
(There's also the dork factor. Cue in Weird Al's "White and Nerdy.")
I rode it to work, I buzzed around downtown a little bit, being quite the conversation piece, even if most of the conversation was in my head. Then it was time to go home. After wrestling with curbs and suffering the sneers and glares of bicyclists, I decided for a different route going back. I took the bike/hiking trail that wends along the local river until I got to the arterial street that leads home.
Which all sounds like a good strategy, until you find out that the bike/hike path stops short of the street, and it's time to off-road. The Seg has nothing if not good balance. So I bounced around in the dirt and bumps, gaining speed, gaining confidence until I would get to a sidewalk again, because I was taking all these bumps with ease....
Except for the last one, and it's always the last one, by definition. The Seg lurched violently, I came off the foot platform and plunged down, my left leg hitting something unkwown to this day, except that it was a nuclear power plant full of electricity and pain, and it shot a bolt of agony across and into the thigh bone (femur), and up into my brain, where it registered as a sudden emergency for a hundredth of a second before turning into a thundering shriek of "OH, SHHHHH***********!!!!!" Which might have actually been me shrieking. Not sure.
I was in so much pain that I didn't even register the passing cars that were probably carrying hooting and laughing occupants. I just sat there with what I was sure was a broken leg, the Segway about seven feet away, and if I moved the leg a certain way, it was fine, but other ways, and that lightning bolt of pain would be saying in its sudden, less-than-gentle way, "Okay, let's not do that."
I lurched to my feet, finally, taking great care not to stand on the leg just so, but occasionally not so successfully, which made my leg remind me that I shouldn't be doing this. I walked over very carefully, but not carefully enough, sometimes, and checked out the Seg. It was fine, in a lot better shape than I was.
I pulled out the phone, called Grandma, and told her what had happened and she needed to come get me. This brought up an issue of its own. Grandma is directionally challenged, and I say that lovingly and understatedly. She once was in a subdivision, wanted to come home, which merely required her to leave the subdivision to the arterial street that our subdivision is also on but some miles to the south, and she called me an hour later from somewhere that made her quite upset because the sun was never setting. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea.
I was not really in a good place for a directionally challenged person to stop. I looked across the field, across the two lanes south, across the median, across the two lanes north, and saw a place that could be found easily for Grandma, and I gave her that location.
Then I got on the Segway, and ironically enough, the very machine that had pitched me to my doom turned out to be my salvation. Honestly, I could have never gotten to that place walking. But standing on the Seg, leaning as I needed and it rolling to my command, it was doable.
I got over there a few minutes before the Grandmamobile got there, a big SUV that could carry a soccer team of grandkids, and I love her for that, with a big ol' hatchback, which I loved her for even more at that moment.
But... we had to get the Segway in the back. It was over 100 pounds of very unwieldy weight distribution, and you won't believe this, but I'm the weightlifter of the two. She didn't know where to start. I braced my lightning-bolt-impulses leg as best I could and lifted the Seg into the back of the SUV. I wish I could tell you it was easy and painless, given all the circumstances, but I would be lying.
I hopped in the passenger seat... hopped? I made my way slowly and painfully, and when I hoisted myself up, it was kind of dragging the leg behind, with it shouting, "STOP THAT!"...."STOP THAT!!!!" in about three-second intervals.
To make a long story short less painful, on the way home, I told Grandma to divert the car to the local medical center to they could look at the leg, which alarmed her, but it I turned out not to have a fracture, although occult fracturing was always possible (which means it wasn't obvious, not that it was caused by Satan). A later MRI confirmed that I had a badly ruptured quadriceps muscle. My family doc told me it looks like someone took a baseball bat to my knee. I've already shown the pictures in the forum, so I won't repeat them here.
The Segway is in the garage. The tire went flat, and lemme tell you, the tire is not easy to get to. After not using it for a while, the battery doesn't want to charge again. It's a little frustrating, because I like it, but in its current condition, it's the most expensive paperweight ever, if we kept paper in the garage.
And there's a humiliating aspect to it. I rode motorcycles from the time I was 16 years old. Oh, I picked up a little road rash here and there and had some adventures, which you may have already read about, but no biggie.
And then a Segway takes me out. HU-miliating. Not even Weird Al envisioned that.
When people ask me about being on a Segway, I say, "Two pieces of advice. Don't go off-road. If you go off-road, don't go full speed."
Ever been on one? Here's the tip, if you didn't get enough instruction beforehand: Just stand. Don't try to balance. If you try to balance, the more aggressively you try, the more hilarious your failure will become. Just step up onto it like you're stepping onto a ... well, step.
I took to it right away. I was buzzing around buildings, around sidewalks, both amusing and annoying people. I did doughnuts. I went fast. I stopped in a heartbeat. I had everyone in the neighborhood try it. I took it to my friends, and they tried it. Most loved it. Some hated it (see the "hilarious failure" comment above).
At one point, I got the idea that I could take it to work, some miles away from the home. It turns out there are limitations to a Segway. If you run out of sidewalk and there's no ramp, you have to wrestle it to the street. It's not fast enough to run with the cars, it's annoying to zoom past people on the sidewalk, and it's a bit too slow for the bike lane, sometimes, top speed being 12.5 mph, and it will enforce that strictly.
(There's also the dork factor. Cue in Weird Al's "White and Nerdy.")
I rode it to work, I buzzed around downtown a little bit, being quite the conversation piece, even if most of the conversation was in my head. Then it was time to go home. After wrestling with curbs and suffering the sneers and glares of bicyclists, I decided for a different route going back. I took the bike/hiking trail that wends along the local river until I got to the arterial street that leads home.
Which all sounds like a good strategy, until you find out that the bike/hike path stops short of the street, and it's time to off-road. The Seg has nothing if not good balance. So I bounced around in the dirt and bumps, gaining speed, gaining confidence until I would get to a sidewalk again, because I was taking all these bumps with ease....
Except for the last one, and it's always the last one, by definition. The Seg lurched violently, I came off the foot platform and plunged down, my left leg hitting something unkwown to this day, except that it was a nuclear power plant full of electricity and pain, and it shot a bolt of agony across and into the thigh bone (femur), and up into my brain, where it registered as a sudden emergency for a hundredth of a second before turning into a thundering shriek of "OH, SHHHHH***********!!!!!" Which might have actually been me shrieking. Not sure.
I was in so much pain that I didn't even register the passing cars that were probably carrying hooting and laughing occupants. I just sat there with what I was sure was a broken leg, the Segway about seven feet away, and if I moved the leg a certain way, it was fine, but other ways, and that lightning bolt of pain would be saying in its sudden, less-than-gentle way, "Okay, let's not do that."
I lurched to my feet, finally, taking great care not to stand on the leg just so, but occasionally not so successfully, which made my leg remind me that I shouldn't be doing this. I walked over very carefully, but not carefully enough, sometimes, and checked out the Seg. It was fine, in a lot better shape than I was.
I pulled out the phone, called Grandma, and told her what had happened and she needed to come get me. This brought up an issue of its own. Grandma is directionally challenged, and I say that lovingly and understatedly. She once was in a subdivision, wanted to come home, which merely required her to leave the subdivision to the arterial street that our subdivision is also on but some miles to the south, and she called me an hour later from somewhere that made her quite upset because the sun was never setting. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea.
I was not really in a good place for a directionally challenged person to stop. I looked across the field, across the two lanes south, across the median, across the two lanes north, and saw a place that could be found easily for Grandma, and I gave her that location.
Then I got on the Segway, and ironically enough, the very machine that had pitched me to my doom turned out to be my salvation. Honestly, I could have never gotten to that place walking. But standing on the Seg, leaning as I needed and it rolling to my command, it was doable.
I got over there a few minutes before the Grandmamobile got there, a big SUV that could carry a soccer team of grandkids, and I love her for that, with a big ol' hatchback, which I loved her for even more at that moment.
But... we had to get the Segway in the back. It was over 100 pounds of very unwieldy weight distribution, and you won't believe this, but I'm the weightlifter of the two. She didn't know where to start. I braced my lightning-bolt-impulses leg as best I could and lifted the Seg into the back of the SUV. I wish I could tell you it was easy and painless, given all the circumstances, but I would be lying.
I hopped in the passenger seat... hopped? I made my way slowly and painfully, and when I hoisted myself up, it was kind of dragging the leg behind, with it shouting, "STOP THAT!"...."STOP THAT!!!!" in about three-second intervals.
To make a long story short less painful, on the way home, I told Grandma to divert the car to the local medical center to they could look at the leg, which alarmed her, but it I turned out not to have a fracture, although occult fracturing was always possible (which means it wasn't obvious, not that it was caused by Satan). A later MRI confirmed that I had a badly ruptured quadriceps muscle. My family doc told me it looks like someone took a baseball bat to my knee. I've already shown the pictures in the forum, so I won't repeat them here.
The Segway is in the garage. The tire went flat, and lemme tell you, the tire is not easy to get to. After not using it for a while, the battery doesn't want to charge again. It's a little frustrating, because I like it, but in its current condition, it's the most expensive paperweight ever, if we kept paper in the garage.
And there's a humiliating aspect to it. I rode motorcycles from the time I was 16 years old. Oh, I picked up a little road rash here and there and had some adventures, which you may have already read about, but no biggie.
And then a Segway takes me out. HU-miliating. Not even Weird Al envisioned that.
When people ask me about being on a Segway, I say, "Two pieces of advice. Don't go off-road. If you go off-road, don't go full speed."
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Sounds like good advice about the Segway. I've never been on one. My wife wondered if we should rent Segways as she looked online at what they offered at some location we were planning on visiting for vacation...but we passed.
Crashed a motorcycle when I was sixteen. Bought a used Kawasaki 90 a year or two earlier, money saved from a paper route, working as a janitor, working for the old man who was a carpenter, too. Had a blast on the motorcycles I owned all on/off road. Late in the year, November 8th, I'm out riding...winter coming...I'm on M-26 passing through the Quincy mining village of Mason...a row of all white houses various color shutters on either side of the highway, several large gray metal mining buildings nearby. I decide to go out on the Mason stamp-sands, tailings from the nearby mills, sand they dumped into Torch lake. I passed around the cable hanging low over a dirt access road and rode out onto the sands barren of any kind of grass or weed.
The Mason stamp-sands didn't have any fun rows of hay-bales like the Tamarack Mills stamp-sands--hay-bales placed in some sort of engineered pattern designed to slow the sands from being carried into the air when the wind blew so you had these fun jumps. Anyway, I follow the shoreline to the south, boring and about the midway point I come across a klinker road. Klinkers are what is left from coal when it is burned and they had used the klinkers as a base to make a passable road...since the sands were difficult to navigate for any two-wheel drive vehicle. The klinker road headed back toward Mason so I turned onto it and began to shift up through the gears, picking up a little speed. Something twanged off the bottom of the Kawasaki and I looked down and back. Didn't see anything remarkable but when I looked back toward Mason I saw that the road disappeared, saw that it ended abruptly and the land there was twenty feet lower than the road I was traveling.
Too late to stop...I pulled the front brake lever w/my right hand, pushed down the rear brake lever with my right foot, and I think I might have stuck out my left foot Fred-Flintstone-style. And then I blacked out...or...that's my last memory before coming too lying on the sands. I recall rolling around somewhat, recall vague dream-like thoughts, raised up onto the palms of my hands, my knees, stood. The sun was just above the treeline, blue skies, and all those white houses of Mason a quarter-mile distant. Didn't have a clue where I was nor why I was there, did a double-take looking at the white houses, the sun, the tree-line. The only thing missing was the Munchkins. Things were so quiet. I lifted the goggles resting on my chest, the lens pulled from the rubber frame and hanging in two pieces, dried blood on the foam border. Looked at my motorcycle lying on its side, turned and looked behind me at the top of the road, a dimple on the line of sand where the tires had lost contact with the earth.
Picked the Kawasaki up, the handlebars twisted almost completely sideways, the taillight plastic gone, the headlight glass gone, the front fork bent. Swung a leg over the seat and sat down, thought about looking at my reflection in the mirror that was miraculously intact though twisted, felt my swollen lips, tentatively touched my nose that felt like it was on fire, and saw that the key was still in the on position. I pulled the clutch and kicked. The Kawasaki started, I knocked it down into first, and headed back, leaning over more than usual so my left hand could reach the left side of the handlebars pointed forward almost in line with the front tire, the right side almost but not quite touching the gas tank. Limped home along M-26 along the side of the highway trying to stay on the white line. Passed a few vehicles and I think at least one driver or maybe all of the occupants did a jaw-drop goggle eye but we kept going.
Nothing broke except the motorcycle. Bed-ridden for a week. Skin scraped off my nose and chin. Injured my ribs on the right side and that has followed me and lately when I do drywall...ceilings, mudding ceilings...or roof-raking in winter...I can feel a heaviness or a pressing on the right side. Had pleurisy once or twice, had a pint drained out of my right lung this once. Fun stuff...but the doc asked if I'd injured myself lately...they ran a bunch of tests looking for a virus or cancer, stuck me in the machine, lying down, and I fell asleep while my friend Mark took pictures. Seems like there were a couple machines...Mark did the one where he gets this...bottle, as I recall, and injects me with something...Ovaltine I think...radioactive Ovaltine.
Crashed a motorcycle when I was sixteen. Bought a used Kawasaki 90 a year or two earlier, money saved from a paper route, working as a janitor, working for the old man who was a carpenter, too. Had a blast on the motorcycles I owned all on/off road. Late in the year, November 8th, I'm out riding...winter coming...I'm on M-26 passing through the Quincy mining village of Mason...a row of all white houses various color shutters on either side of the highway, several large gray metal mining buildings nearby. I decide to go out on the Mason stamp-sands, tailings from the nearby mills, sand they dumped into Torch lake. I passed around the cable hanging low over a dirt access road and rode out onto the sands barren of any kind of grass or weed.
The Mason stamp-sands didn't have any fun rows of hay-bales like the Tamarack Mills stamp-sands--hay-bales placed in some sort of engineered pattern designed to slow the sands from being carried into the air when the wind blew so you had these fun jumps. Anyway, I follow the shoreline to the south, boring and about the midway point I come across a klinker road. Klinkers are what is left from coal when it is burned and they had used the klinkers as a base to make a passable road...since the sands were difficult to navigate for any two-wheel drive vehicle. The klinker road headed back toward Mason so I turned onto it and began to shift up through the gears, picking up a little speed. Something twanged off the bottom of the Kawasaki and I looked down and back. Didn't see anything remarkable but when I looked back toward Mason I saw that the road disappeared, saw that it ended abruptly and the land there was twenty feet lower than the road I was traveling.
Too late to stop...I pulled the front brake lever w/my right hand, pushed down the rear brake lever with my right foot, and I think I might have stuck out my left foot Fred-Flintstone-style. And then I blacked out...or...that's my last memory before coming too lying on the sands. I recall rolling around somewhat, recall vague dream-like thoughts, raised up onto the palms of my hands, my knees, stood. The sun was just above the treeline, blue skies, and all those white houses of Mason a quarter-mile distant. Didn't have a clue where I was nor why I was there, did a double-take looking at the white houses, the sun, the tree-line. The only thing missing was the Munchkins. Things were so quiet. I lifted the goggles resting on my chest, the lens pulled from the rubber frame and hanging in two pieces, dried blood on the foam border. Looked at my motorcycle lying on its side, turned and looked behind me at the top of the road, a dimple on the line of sand where the tires had lost contact with the earth.
Picked the Kawasaki up, the handlebars twisted almost completely sideways, the taillight plastic gone, the headlight glass gone, the front fork bent. Swung a leg over the seat and sat down, thought about looking at my reflection in the mirror that was miraculously intact though twisted, felt my swollen lips, tentatively touched my nose that felt like it was on fire, and saw that the key was still in the on position. I pulled the clutch and kicked. The Kawasaki started, I knocked it down into first, and headed back, leaning over more than usual so my left hand could reach the left side of the handlebars pointed forward almost in line with the front tire, the right side almost but not quite touching the gas tank. Limped home along M-26 along the side of the highway trying to stay on the white line. Passed a few vehicles and I think at least one driver or maybe all of the occupants did a jaw-drop goggle eye but we kept going.
Nothing broke except the motorcycle. Bed-ridden for a week. Skin scraped off my nose and chin. Injured my ribs on the right side and that has followed me and lately when I do drywall...ceilings, mudding ceilings...or roof-raking in winter...I can feel a heaviness or a pressing on the right side. Had pleurisy once or twice, had a pint drained out of my right lung this once. Fun stuff...but the doc asked if I'd injured myself lately...they ran a bunch of tests looking for a virus or cancer, stuck me in the machine, lying down, and I fell asleep while my friend Mark took pictures. Seems like there were a couple machines...Mark did the one where he gets this...bottle, as I recall, and injects me with something...Ovaltine I think...radioactive Ovaltine.
Anyone else gullible? Your willing suspension of disbelief not only willing but able to believe just about anything? I was reminded of this quality in my life after reading a link provided in another thread. I won't say where that is as I hope another is also as gullible as I am. I'm a great believer in the incredible. And that reminds me of this story that I've told before but it's worth telling again:
My friend, Kris, knew that I was a Great Believer and he had great fun with me. Years ago this is, sisters & I get dropped off at St. John's Lutheran Church there in Hubbell and we make our way up the concrete steps, walk down the aisle and find our classmates, I slide in next to Kris who is sitting by three pretty girls, a blonde and two brunettes, Janet and the two Lindas. We're in church so we're whispering, right? Kris is holding a small white box in his lap, one of those real small boxes, the kind that jewelry comes in. He has my attention, lifts the box and tells me he'd cut his finger off the other day. No! I'm horrified. Yeah, he says, lifting the lid and there's the tip of his finger resting peacefully on a bed of cotton. My eyes bug out and the one Janet and the two Lindas titter.
Whoa! Did it hurt! Kris is smiling so wide his teeth are reflected in the back of the varnished pew in front of us. Not too bad, he minimizes it. I'm staring at the tip of his finger, can't take my eyes off it, really. I've known people who have lost fingers...our second grade teacher, Mrs. Burge, who was a gunslinger sans two fingers on one hand, the result of a sewing factory accident, my old man, who only had the first digit of his little finger, the result of a band-saw accident...and now Kris...Can I touch it? He bursts out laughing as do Janet and the two Lindas. I sit back eyes squinting. He shows me the hole in the bottom of the box as he pulls his finger out, taa-daa! Whole. Oh man! You got me again!
My friend, Kris, knew that I was a Great Believer and he had great fun with me. Years ago this is, sisters & I get dropped off at St. John's Lutheran Church there in Hubbell and we make our way up the concrete steps, walk down the aisle and find our classmates, I slide in next to Kris who is sitting by three pretty girls, a blonde and two brunettes, Janet and the two Lindas. We're in church so we're whispering, right? Kris is holding a small white box in his lap, one of those real small boxes, the kind that jewelry comes in. He has my attention, lifts the box and tells me he'd cut his finger off the other day. No! I'm horrified. Yeah, he says, lifting the lid and there's the tip of his finger resting peacefully on a bed of cotton. My eyes bug out and the one Janet and the two Lindas titter.
Whoa! Did it hurt! Kris is smiling so wide his teeth are reflected in the back of the varnished pew in front of us. Not too bad, he minimizes it. I'm staring at the tip of his finger, can't take my eyes off it, really. I've known people who have lost fingers...our second grade teacher, Mrs. Burge, who was a gunslinger sans two fingers on one hand, the result of a sewing factory accident, my old man, who only had the first digit of his little finger, the result of a band-saw accident...and now Kris...Can I touch it? He bursts out laughing as do Janet and the two Lindas. I sit back eyes squinting. He shows me the hole in the bottom of the box as he pulls his finger out, taa-daa! Whole. Oh man! You got me again!
Long one and possibly not too politically correct.
Back in college, one of my roommates (the same one on the bike on the Bad Day, if you read the prior story) had made friends with a psychology professor. The professor was a popular teacher for those who wanted to take psychology, but I was not one of them. He garnered approval from a wide gamut of students, from shy to gregarious types all the way to the testosterone-driven and homophobic delinquent. All the students liked this professor.
“We’re invited to the professor’s house in the country,” my friend said.
“What’s the catch?” I asked.
“No catch. We get along great, and he invited me and said I could bring a friend.” I was dubious. “Come on! Try to expand your horizons!”
It seemed weird, and old insecure fears of being put in some embarrassing position rose to the surface, but I reluctantly acceded and that weekend was driven by my friend to, indeed, a remote country home. It was quite nice, with a large open living/kitchen/bar area, with a bedroom and office off to the side, and then a ladder leading up to a mezzanine level with a couple bedrooms.
But whatever I could call the subsequent experience would exclude the word “fun.” After serving us a very nice meal, the professor began hitting on us, starting with me. I rebuffed him. He offered us some alcohol. My friend had a drink, and being pressed, I finally accepted a beer, which I sipped very slowly and never finished. The professor did a number of things that were unaccountably strange to me, bringing out glossy 8x10 photos of musclebound men, undressed or nearly so, and pointing a few out to say that he’d, um, known them. During the course of the evening, I made a point, as part of saying “no,” of telling him about my girlfriend, and he merely furthered his propositioning, saying she’d never have to know.
At some point, he was out of hearing, in the bathroom or his office or something, and I bent my friend’s ear.
“You can drive me back, or I can start walking,” I growled.
“Oh, no, don’t be like that,” he said. “This is just a lonely old guy, having some fun. I had no idea he’d be like this, but I swear, he’s harmless.”
I ended up staying in one of the mezzanine bedrooms. The professor was a doughy, unhealthy-looking, rotund man. I discovered that the ladder to the mezzanine creaked under weight, and I really had no great concern about being accosted in the middle of the night by a guy who wasn’t agile getting up that ladder and whom I could pretty well take out anyway if I had to. The statement “no great concerns” is tempered by the fact that I slept quite poorly that night, waking up to each of the continual rasps and groans of the house.
We returned to the dorms the next morning. Later that week, I was approached in the school library by that same professor who said that he wanted to be sure that I understood that he was carrying on a psychology experiment, and he hoped I wasn’t hurt or offended. I didn’t ask about the results of the “experiment.” I said, Sure, I understand, no problem, and thought with utter conviction, Oh, man, you’re lying.
Back then was a completely different era of tolerating homosexuality, and by that I mean that it wasn’t tolerated. I had my personal aversion, admittedly, but nothing compared to the rest of society, and I expressed it no more than societal convention and the occasional manly posturing prompted. I felt then, and feel now, that adults’ consensual sex lives are their own business.
And now comes the moment that will leave you scratching your head, going, “Huh?” Because a few weeks later, my roommate said we’d been invited out to the professor’s again. The professor felt bad about making me so uncomfortable and wanted to make it up with a nice, normal evening.
I declined at first and then, yes, agreed to go. You may be wondering, “Why, for goodness sake?” That’s because you're reading this with a logical, rational attitude. And I’m not sure I can say why, except at that stage in my life, I was ready for a challenge out of the ordinary, and this time I knew the landscape going in, and you know what, maybe I’d just conduct my own little “psychological experiment.” Heh, heh.
It was another strange but this time more enjoyable evening. The professor fed us another tasty dinner and then once again hit on me, but instead of being defensive and rebuffing, I played it off as joking, and countered his entendres with dismissive innuendos. He enjoyed the repartee but gave up on actively pursuing me after a while, and then we did have some very nice discussions about life and its issues.
So with me now excluded as any viable target, the professor moved on. He turned his attention to my roommate, and Ol' Professor was a lot more aggressive to my friend than he’d been to me. And with a cruel humor, I just looked on, made humorous comments, and felt amused as the professor got more insistent with his new objet d'affection. Except for feeling a dark humor, I was unmoved. I don't say that with pride. It's just the fact. My friend had brought me to this lair not once but twice, and I uncharitably – really, rather meanly; like I said, I’m not proud – figured that he could reap whatever uncomfortable harvest came up.
I slept in the mezzanine bedroom again, this time much better. My friend and I left in the morning, and I never talked to the professor again. I sometimes wonder, back in the straightlaced and closeted world of the U.S. that we had then, if he’d ever gotten in legal or professional trouble or even suffered harm by making advances to the wrong persons, i.e., his students. But I never had the curiosity to find out. He was in ill health then and surely dead by now.
That roommate and I actually did have some genuinely fun times in college besides those Felliniesque side trips. I don't consider the aforementioned Bad Day on the motorcycle to be one of them. But we had some fun.
Back in college, one of my roommates (the same one on the bike on the Bad Day, if you read the prior story) had made friends with a psychology professor. The professor was a popular teacher for those who wanted to take psychology, but I was not one of them. He garnered approval from a wide gamut of students, from shy to gregarious types all the way to the testosterone-driven and homophobic delinquent. All the students liked this professor.
“We’re invited to the professor’s house in the country,” my friend said.
“What’s the catch?” I asked.
“No catch. We get along great, and he invited me and said I could bring a friend.” I was dubious. “Come on! Try to expand your horizons!”
It seemed weird, and old insecure fears of being put in some embarrassing position rose to the surface, but I reluctantly acceded and that weekend was driven by my friend to, indeed, a remote country home. It was quite nice, with a large open living/kitchen/bar area, with a bedroom and office off to the side, and then a ladder leading up to a mezzanine level with a couple bedrooms.
But whatever I could call the subsequent experience would exclude the word “fun.” After serving us a very nice meal, the professor began hitting on us, starting with me. I rebuffed him. He offered us some alcohol. My friend had a drink, and being pressed, I finally accepted a beer, which I sipped very slowly and never finished. The professor did a number of things that were unaccountably strange to me, bringing out glossy 8x10 photos of musclebound men, undressed or nearly so, and pointing a few out to say that he’d, um, known them. During the course of the evening, I made a point, as part of saying “no,” of telling him about my girlfriend, and he merely furthered his propositioning, saying she’d never have to know.
At some point, he was out of hearing, in the bathroom or his office or something, and I bent my friend’s ear.
“You can drive me back, or I can start walking,” I growled.
“Oh, no, don’t be like that,” he said. “This is just a lonely old guy, having some fun. I had no idea he’d be like this, but I swear, he’s harmless.”
I ended up staying in one of the mezzanine bedrooms. The professor was a doughy, unhealthy-looking, rotund man. I discovered that the ladder to the mezzanine creaked under weight, and I really had no great concern about being accosted in the middle of the night by a guy who wasn’t agile getting up that ladder and whom I could pretty well take out anyway if I had to. The statement “no great concerns” is tempered by the fact that I slept quite poorly that night, waking up to each of the continual rasps and groans of the house.
We returned to the dorms the next morning. Later that week, I was approached in the school library by that same professor who said that he wanted to be sure that I understood that he was carrying on a psychology experiment, and he hoped I wasn’t hurt or offended. I didn’t ask about the results of the “experiment.” I said, Sure, I understand, no problem, and thought with utter conviction, Oh, man, you’re lying.
Back then was a completely different era of tolerating homosexuality, and by that I mean that it wasn’t tolerated. I had my personal aversion, admittedly, but nothing compared to the rest of society, and I expressed it no more than societal convention and the occasional manly posturing prompted. I felt then, and feel now, that adults’ consensual sex lives are their own business.
And now comes the moment that will leave you scratching your head, going, “Huh?” Because a few weeks later, my roommate said we’d been invited out to the professor’s again. The professor felt bad about making me so uncomfortable and wanted to make it up with a nice, normal evening.
I declined at first and then, yes, agreed to go. You may be wondering, “Why, for goodness sake?” That’s because you're reading this with a logical, rational attitude. And I’m not sure I can say why, except at that stage in my life, I was ready for a challenge out of the ordinary, and this time I knew the landscape going in, and you know what, maybe I’d just conduct my own little “psychological experiment.” Heh, heh.
It was another strange but this time more enjoyable evening. The professor fed us another tasty dinner and then once again hit on me, but instead of being defensive and rebuffing, I played it off as joking, and countered his entendres with dismissive innuendos. He enjoyed the repartee but gave up on actively pursuing me after a while, and then we did have some very nice discussions about life and its issues.
So with me now excluded as any viable target, the professor moved on. He turned his attention to my roommate, and Ol' Professor was a lot more aggressive to my friend than he’d been to me. And with a cruel humor, I just looked on, made humorous comments, and felt amused as the professor got more insistent with his new objet d'affection. Except for feeling a dark humor, I was unmoved. I don't say that with pride. It's just the fact. My friend had brought me to this lair not once but twice, and I uncharitably – really, rather meanly; like I said, I’m not proud – figured that he could reap whatever uncomfortable harvest came up.
I slept in the mezzanine bedroom again, this time much better. My friend and I left in the morning, and I never talked to the professor again. I sometimes wonder, back in the straightlaced and closeted world of the U.S. that we had then, if he’d ever gotten in legal or professional trouble or even suffered harm by making advances to the wrong persons, i.e., his students. But I never had the curiosity to find out. He was in ill health then and surely dead by now.
That roommate and I actually did have some genuinely fun times in college besides those Felliniesque side trips. I don't consider the aforementioned Bad Day on the motorcycle to be one of them. But we had some fun.
Neesy
#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
Good story! Have you read NOS4A2 yet by Joe Hill? It features motorcycles and it's just a darn good book!
I hate to say this, but it sounds like you are a "glutton for punishment" yee-owch!
This is a warning shot across the literary bow.
I hope we've established that I'm not out to self-aggrandize. I hope. I mean, I've talked about public vomiting and tissue issues where the sun doesn't usually shine. I've written about my homely looks and pathological shyness. If there's anything cool you've gotten from me, it's that I'm a decent motorcycle rider when I'm not overdoing it, and I can be a cold bastard, which is probably not all that cool.
My next story, which I'm putting into place, has some "I'm so cool" stuff in it. I apologize in advance. It's merely what happened, but it did play positively on my ego. So I'm gonna share.
I hope we've established that I'm not out to self-aggrandize. I hope. I mean, I've talked about public vomiting and tissue issues where the sun doesn't usually shine. I've written about my homely looks and pathological shyness. If there's anything cool you've gotten from me, it's that I'm a decent motorcycle rider when I'm not overdoing it, and I can be a cold bastard, which is probably not all that cool.
My next story, which I'm putting into place, has some "I'm so cool" stuff in it. I apologize in advance. It's merely what happened, but it did play positively on my ego. So I'm gonna share.
The prior stories featured real names of real people. What follows are fake names of real people, and on the presumption that you make it through this, I think you’ll understand why I’m keeping it a bit more surreptitious.
I did some drinking in college. I know, that’s a shocker, right? We got a bit of a little drinking group going on, consisting of a core group of two girls - Maribel and Sally - and me, with any number of other people involved on any given night. The girls were slight, slender things, and when the three of us wanted to party, which was frequent, somebody besides me, because I looked about 14, would buy a couple six-packs of beer. We had our drinking down to a science. We would slam two or three beers in 10 or 15 minutes, then sit and have a belching contest (I didn’t necessarily win; they were amazing), and then feeling happy and warm, we would spend the rest of the evening sipping at the optimum rate for a controlled buzz maintenance. Hey, we were in college, we were oh so smart, and we addressed decadence with good analysis.
The parties could be legendary, because we were young and fearless. But the big memory I'm going to talk about is the night I tried tequila for the first time, in addition to the beer we were drinking, so we were off the buzz maintenance routine. We were in Sally and Maribel’s room, and it was the tried-and-true take the shot, lick the salt, and bite the lemon. It tasted horrible, but we had so much fun, the joy of disregarding rules and caution and convention. We weren’t very good at pouring shots, because all we had were odd assortments of Tupperware glasses. There were a couple others with us that night, a boy and a girl. I don’t remember their names. That is to their benefit, I'm sure.
We did those awful rounds of shots and joked and laughed uproariously. It was a warm but wet night, and we went for a walk. It was raining pretty hard, but that just added to the fun. Tequila was a very effective discomfort remover, at least for the short term. We were at the top of the parking lot, which was on an incline, and I looked down the rows of painted parking spaces, which were neat and straight and aligned, and I wondered when I was going to start to feel buzzed, and then those ordered lines took the sudden twists of a frenzied anaconda, and I figured I was there.
We got to the bottom of the hill, and the third girl decided to go swimming in the pool of rainwater that had collected there. It was only a few inches deep, but she had fun trying, splashing with her arms and legs, doing both freestyle and backstroke, and we had fun watching her and urging her on. Finally, survival instincts overrode lack of sobriety, and we went back to the room to warm up and dry off. The other boy wandered off to his own room.
We got back to Sally and Maribel’s room, the four of us, kicking off our wet footwear, and then realized we were getting seriously cold. Someone mentioned that if we’re gonna be wet anyway, we might as well be warm, turned on the shower, and clothed and barefoot, we crowded into the shower, warm water cascading over us, trying not to step on each others’ feet, and talking (yelling) and laughing. Ain’t tequila great?
The third girl finally gave up, or maybe got a sense of self-awareness, and went to her room. I got out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and left the bathroom, drying off as best I could. The other boy came back to the party, having gotten dried off and changed in his own place. Sally and Maribel were still in the bathroom, the door was cracked open, and it was obvious from the sounds of it all that they had attained a level of attire more suited for a shower.
“Let’s go in,” the boy said. He was excited.
“No,” I replied. I was unwavering.
He pressed. I resisted. I was ready to protect my friends’ honor. He gave up. Now, for all I knew, one or the both of us might’ve been welcome, but that’s not where my intentions lay nor, for that matter, any shred of confidence with my self-image, even if I had been so inclined, which I wasn’t. But the self-image got a little boost moments later.
Sally and Maribel came out after a bit, dried and clothed. By this time, I was starting to feel decidedly cold again. “Girls, I need to get rid of this wet shirt.”
They said I could take off my shirt, dry off, and sit around without a shirt. They didn’t care. I declined, feelng fearfully shy, even vulnerable. Or I could go back to my room and change. That didn’t sound so good, either, because I’d miss some of the party, and they’d be left with the guy who had wanted to break in on them while they were naked, although I didn’t actually voice that concern. Maribel finally took me to their closet and invited me to see if I could wear anything. I found a gray shirt that was button-down with a collar. “Can I try this?” They said sure. I peeled my shirt off, very self-conscious, quickly toweled off the torso, and slid their shirt on. It was tight, but it was stretchy, and it worked without me feeling much like a transvestite, even with the buttons on the wrong side.
At that point in my life, I wasn’t eating much for the simple reason that I couldn’t afford much, beer money being more important than food money, so my body fat was at an all-time low. Although I didn’t really work out, I did do some pickup sports with other students and wrestled my motorcycle around a fair amount. And being young and resilient, I still had muscle bulk and definition left from weight training in football and wrestling in high school, and after all the frustrating seasons of nonachievement in those sports, the training I’d had with them finally granted me a measure of ego benefit in that room...
.. because I was buttoning up the shirt, and I looked at the girls, but they weren’t saying anything. Their mouths were open just a little, and their eyes were fixed on my chest and shoulders. We were just the best of platonic friends and spent a lot of time together, but they’d never looked at me like that before. I finished buttoning, and the party continued, and they didn’t say a thing about it, but I had never felt so complimented in my life up to that point.
High school, with the exception of times with Curt and the blonde, was a time of mutual rejection and revulsion between me and the rest of society. College, on the other hand, was a time of social expansion and learning to actually enjoy life with others.
So Sally and Maribel, wherever you are: Thank you for the silent but sincere affirmation that night. It actually had a positive effect on my self-esteem and my life.
Y'know, I understand why some people try to be professional students.
I did some drinking in college. I know, that’s a shocker, right? We got a bit of a little drinking group going on, consisting of a core group of two girls - Maribel and Sally - and me, with any number of other people involved on any given night. The girls were slight, slender things, and when the three of us wanted to party, which was frequent, somebody besides me, because I looked about 14, would buy a couple six-packs of beer. We had our drinking down to a science. We would slam two or three beers in 10 or 15 minutes, then sit and have a belching contest (I didn’t necessarily win; they were amazing), and then feeling happy and warm, we would spend the rest of the evening sipping at the optimum rate for a controlled buzz maintenance. Hey, we were in college, we were oh so smart, and we addressed decadence with good analysis.
The parties could be legendary, because we were young and fearless. But the big memory I'm going to talk about is the night I tried tequila for the first time, in addition to the beer we were drinking, so we were off the buzz maintenance routine. We were in Sally and Maribel’s room, and it was the tried-and-true take the shot, lick the salt, and bite the lemon. It tasted horrible, but we had so much fun, the joy of disregarding rules and caution and convention. We weren’t very good at pouring shots, because all we had were odd assortments of Tupperware glasses. There were a couple others with us that night, a boy and a girl. I don’t remember their names. That is to their benefit, I'm sure.
We did those awful rounds of shots and joked and laughed uproariously. It was a warm but wet night, and we went for a walk. It was raining pretty hard, but that just added to the fun. Tequila was a very effective discomfort remover, at least for the short term. We were at the top of the parking lot, which was on an incline, and I looked down the rows of painted parking spaces, which were neat and straight and aligned, and I wondered when I was going to start to feel buzzed, and then those ordered lines took the sudden twists of a frenzied anaconda, and I figured I was there.
We got to the bottom of the hill, and the third girl decided to go swimming in the pool of rainwater that had collected there. It was only a few inches deep, but she had fun trying, splashing with her arms and legs, doing both freestyle and backstroke, and we had fun watching her and urging her on. Finally, survival instincts overrode lack of sobriety, and we went back to the room to warm up and dry off. The other boy wandered off to his own room.
We got back to Sally and Maribel’s room, the four of us, kicking off our wet footwear, and then realized we were getting seriously cold. Someone mentioned that if we’re gonna be wet anyway, we might as well be warm, turned on the shower, and clothed and barefoot, we crowded into the shower, warm water cascading over us, trying not to step on each others’ feet, and talking (yelling) and laughing. Ain’t tequila great?
The third girl finally gave up, or maybe got a sense of self-awareness, and went to her room. I got out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and left the bathroom, drying off as best I could. The other boy came back to the party, having gotten dried off and changed in his own place. Sally and Maribel were still in the bathroom, the door was cracked open, and it was obvious from the sounds of it all that they had attained a level of attire more suited for a shower.
“Let’s go in,” the boy said. He was excited.
“No,” I replied. I was unwavering.
He pressed. I resisted. I was ready to protect my friends’ honor. He gave up. Now, for all I knew, one or the both of us might’ve been welcome, but that’s not where my intentions lay nor, for that matter, any shred of confidence with my self-image, even if I had been so inclined, which I wasn’t. But the self-image got a little boost moments later.
Sally and Maribel came out after a bit, dried and clothed. By this time, I was starting to feel decidedly cold again. “Girls, I need to get rid of this wet shirt.”
They said I could take off my shirt, dry off, and sit around without a shirt. They didn’t care. I declined, feelng fearfully shy, even vulnerable. Or I could go back to my room and change. That didn’t sound so good, either, because I’d miss some of the party, and they’d be left with the guy who had wanted to break in on them while they were naked, although I didn’t actually voice that concern. Maribel finally took me to their closet and invited me to see if I could wear anything. I found a gray shirt that was button-down with a collar. “Can I try this?” They said sure. I peeled my shirt off, very self-conscious, quickly toweled off the torso, and slid their shirt on. It was tight, but it was stretchy, and it worked without me feeling much like a transvestite, even with the buttons on the wrong side.
At that point in my life, I wasn’t eating much for the simple reason that I couldn’t afford much, beer money being more important than food money, so my body fat was at an all-time low. Although I didn’t really work out, I did do some pickup sports with other students and wrestled my motorcycle around a fair amount. And being young and resilient, I still had muscle bulk and definition left from weight training in football and wrestling in high school, and after all the frustrating seasons of nonachievement in those sports, the training I’d had with them finally granted me a measure of ego benefit in that room...
.. because I was buttoning up the shirt, and I looked at the girls, but they weren’t saying anything. Their mouths were open just a little, and their eyes were fixed on my chest and shoulders. We were just the best of platonic friends and spent a lot of time together, but they’d never looked at me like that before. I finished buttoning, and the party continued, and they didn’t say a thing about it, but I had never felt so complimented in my life up to that point.
High school, with the exception of times with Curt and the blonde, was a time of mutual rejection and revulsion between me and the rest of society. College, on the other hand, was a time of social expansion and learning to actually enjoy life with others.
So Sally and Maribel, wherever you are: Thank you for the silent but sincere affirmation that night. It actually had a positive effect on my self-esteem and my life.
Y'know, I understand why some people try to be professional students.
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In boot camp, I was sent to the gas chamber. Actually, we all were.
I can't say there was ever a fun day in boot camp, but this episode made many of others a stroll through a carnival midway.
One day, we marched to a big Quonset hut. We had already been somewhat trained in the use of gas masks, but this time the training was more emphatic. Then we lined up outside of that Quonset hut and were instructed what to do once we went inside with our group. We would count to three, remove our masks, and sing the first verse of the Marine Corps Hymn. Then we would put our masks back on and march out.
That was the theory.
As we stood in line, waiting, we talked about what it was going to be like and how manly we’d be in persevering through it. We were all blissfully ignorant, but both the ignorance and the bliss would soon come to a tragic ending.
I was in the back of the pack, and as it turned out, life’s bad timing struck again. The front of the pack was the place to be, because every time a new group went through, the instructors inside, dressed in what looked like radiation suits, would open more gas, so by the time the last few groups got in there, the fumes were pretty thick.
We marched in, masks on, and arranged in a circle around some cans that vented the gas. Everything was dim, otherworldly, Dante-esque in the faint light, in the fumes and streams of the gas, the full protective suits of the instructors, and our own insect-like head apparel.
We got yelled at, we counted to three as a group, and removed our masks. The giant fist, made of of flaming acidic hornets, that grabbed our chests immediately and violently squeezed all the machismo right out of us. I simply could not breathe for a moment, I felt my gorge rise, fought it back down all while bending over quite involuntarily because my stomach had contracted into a small, tight ball of lead, and then getting hit, in addition to the gas, with the full scent of the deposits right at my feet of someone else’s weaker stomach, which I’d failed to see until I was bending over it.
The room had immediately transformed from an orderly group of gas-masked Marine recruits to a flailing, wailing, hacking mob.
“You can’t get out of here until you sing the Marine Corps hymn!” one of the instructors bellowed, although a bit muffled through his suit, not to mention the sonic miasma of the crowd. A ragged chorus started up, “Frub duh haws…”and then degenerated into coughing and spitting.
Somehow we did what we needed to do to appease our dungeon masters, and then once ordered to depart, crowded through the back door, pushing and swearing at each other in our panic to get out, and then burst out into the sunlight and fresh air, with comet trails of spittle, tears, emesis, and streaming mucus in our wake.
Such was the glamor of boot camp. It wasn't quite the proud Marine Kodak moment.
I can't say there was ever a fun day in boot camp, but this episode made many of others a stroll through a carnival midway.
One day, we marched to a big Quonset hut. We had already been somewhat trained in the use of gas masks, but this time the training was more emphatic. Then we lined up outside of that Quonset hut and were instructed what to do once we went inside with our group. We would count to three, remove our masks, and sing the first verse of the Marine Corps Hymn. Then we would put our masks back on and march out.
That was the theory.
As we stood in line, waiting, we talked about what it was going to be like and how manly we’d be in persevering through it. We were all blissfully ignorant, but both the ignorance and the bliss would soon come to a tragic ending.
I was in the back of the pack, and as it turned out, life’s bad timing struck again. The front of the pack was the place to be, because every time a new group went through, the instructors inside, dressed in what looked like radiation suits, would open more gas, so by the time the last few groups got in there, the fumes were pretty thick.
We marched in, masks on, and arranged in a circle around some cans that vented the gas. Everything was dim, otherworldly, Dante-esque in the faint light, in the fumes and streams of the gas, the full protective suits of the instructors, and our own insect-like head apparel.
We got yelled at, we counted to three as a group, and removed our masks. The giant fist, made of of flaming acidic hornets, that grabbed our chests immediately and violently squeezed all the machismo right out of us. I simply could not breathe for a moment, I felt my gorge rise, fought it back down all while bending over quite involuntarily because my stomach had contracted into a small, tight ball of lead, and then getting hit, in addition to the gas, with the full scent of the deposits right at my feet of someone else’s weaker stomach, which I’d failed to see until I was bending over it.
The room had immediately transformed from an orderly group of gas-masked Marine recruits to a flailing, wailing, hacking mob.
“You can’t get out of here until you sing the Marine Corps hymn!” one of the instructors bellowed, although a bit muffled through his suit, not to mention the sonic miasma of the crowd. A ragged chorus started up, “Frub duh haws…”and then degenerated into coughing and spitting.
Somehow we did what we needed to do to appease our dungeon masters, and then once ordered to depart, crowded through the back door, pushing and swearing at each other in our panic to get out, and then burst out into the sunlight and fresh air, with comet trails of spittle, tears, emesis, and streaming mucus in our wake.
Such was the glamor of boot camp. It wasn't quite the proud Marine Kodak moment.
She was our best dog ever, and when we talk about her now, we do so by allusion or out of the presence of the one in the house now, because we don't want to make our current furry friend feel bad.
Way back when, about 30 years ago, a friend had rescued a litter of six puppies, their eyes still closed, before a rough, angry man bagged them and threw them into a lake. The friend was in a no-pets apartment and couldn't keep them. We said we'd take them.
.
It was like having babies all over again. The late-night formulas, the 2:30 a.m. bottle feedings, except that now there were six high-pitched series of whining. It was like bad Christmas lights in reverse. One goes on, they all come on. Our kids had promised to help us, of course, and of course we weren't going to get them up in the middle of the night. Here, puppy, suck on this and shut up.
Unaccountably, all six lived. We started shifting from bottle to solid food and put an ad in the paper for free puppies. They started disappearing from the house, because they sure were a cute bunch. The kids begged to keep one. I was adamant: No. Finally we got down to the last two, and the kids' entreaties escalated, sometimes to near-hysteria, and then we got down to the last one, and I caved.
I believe that since we were the only family she ever knew, she bonded completely. We were her family She didn't need a fence any more than any other kid. She would wander out the front door and stay in the yard, wagging her tail at the neighborhood kids and eying passing adults with suspicion.
She learned that although she was part of the family, human meal time was not her time. When we started setting the table, she'd ask to be let out. When we started picking up the dishes, she scratched to be let in, and would immediately go to the floor around the youngest kid's chair.
She loved to go on car rides, because that was just more family together time for her. She had her own seat in the minivan, and one day the kids noticed just how smart she was. When I'd come up to a turn, she'd watch the turn signal up in the panel, see which one was on, and start bracing the correct way against the upcoming turn.
In the allotted space here, it's hard to relate 14 years of daily love, friendship, and family. She was sister to the kids, mother to the cats, faithful companion and source of comfort to the parents, and was never so happy as when the kids were all home, everyone was gathered, and the family was complete.
But after those 14 years, the end loomed. She was suffering, and we took her in. She had a tumor that wasn't inoperable, but to remove it would degrade her quality of life to a point we couldn't accept. The kids, who had grown up with her, gathered for a prolonged and tearful good-bye. The next day, I took her to the vet, and at the stairs leading up to the office, she stopped. She didn't like going to the vet anyway, and she simply refused to go forward. I don't like to think that she knew why she was there, and I felt entirely traitorous as I picked her up and carried her in, saying soothing, loving things. She passed painlessly and peacefully. I maintained manfully at the office and held off my weeping until I was back out in the car.
For me usually being such a cold, unsentimental slob, it might be worth noting that her collar and the box of her ashes sit in my office still, which was her customary place when I was working.
Someone sent me the Rainbow Bridge story, which is charming and comforting. But whether or not people and pets ever meet again is beyond my knowledge. I just know that our lives were enriched by this smart, alert, sweet-natured, fiercely protective, and always-happy-to-be-around-us adoptee to our family. We loved being with her, cried when we said good-bye, and 15 years later, we still talk about her, the memories still fresh.
A decade and a half is too long now to repeat some sentimental, sappy good-bye I might've written back then. But we all miss that sweet girl still.
Way back when, about 30 years ago, a friend had rescued a litter of six puppies, their eyes still closed, before a rough, angry man bagged them and threw them into a lake. The friend was in a no-pets apartment and couldn't keep them. We said we'd take them.
.
It was like having babies all over again. The late-night formulas, the 2:30 a.m. bottle feedings, except that now there were six high-pitched series of whining. It was like bad Christmas lights in reverse. One goes on, they all come on. Our kids had promised to help us, of course, and of course we weren't going to get them up in the middle of the night. Here, puppy, suck on this and shut up.
Unaccountably, all six lived. We started shifting from bottle to solid food and put an ad in the paper for free puppies. They started disappearing from the house, because they sure were a cute bunch. The kids begged to keep one. I was adamant: No. Finally we got down to the last two, and the kids' entreaties escalated, sometimes to near-hysteria, and then we got down to the last one, and I caved.
I believe that since we were the only family she ever knew, she bonded completely. We were her family She didn't need a fence any more than any other kid. She would wander out the front door and stay in the yard, wagging her tail at the neighborhood kids and eying passing adults with suspicion.
She learned that although she was part of the family, human meal time was not her time. When we started setting the table, she'd ask to be let out. When we started picking up the dishes, she scratched to be let in, and would immediately go to the floor around the youngest kid's chair.
She loved to go on car rides, because that was just more family together time for her. She had her own seat in the minivan, and one day the kids noticed just how smart she was. When I'd come up to a turn, she'd watch the turn signal up in the panel, see which one was on, and start bracing the correct way against the upcoming turn.
In the allotted space here, it's hard to relate 14 years of daily love, friendship, and family. She was sister to the kids, mother to the cats, faithful companion and source of comfort to the parents, and was never so happy as when the kids were all home, everyone was gathered, and the family was complete.
But after those 14 years, the end loomed. She was suffering, and we took her in. She had a tumor that wasn't inoperable, but to remove it would degrade her quality of life to a point we couldn't accept. The kids, who had grown up with her, gathered for a prolonged and tearful good-bye. The next day, I took her to the vet, and at the stairs leading up to the office, she stopped. She didn't like going to the vet anyway, and she simply refused to go forward. I don't like to think that she knew why she was there, and I felt entirely traitorous as I picked her up and carried her in, saying soothing, loving things. She passed painlessly and peacefully. I maintained manfully at the office and held off my weeping until I was back out in the car.
For me usually being such a cold, unsentimental slob, it might be worth noting that her collar and the box of her ashes sit in my office still, which was her customary place when I was working.
Someone sent me the Rainbow Bridge story, which is charming and comforting. But whether or not people and pets ever meet again is beyond my knowledge. I just know that our lives were enriched by this smart, alert, sweet-natured, fiercely protective, and always-happy-to-be-around-us adoptee to our family. We loved being with her, cried when we said good-bye, and 15 years later, we still talk about her, the memories still fresh.
A decade and a half is too long now to repeat some sentimental, sappy good-bye I might've written back then. But we all miss that sweet girl still.
Neesy
#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
Y'now - that story built up to a wee bit of suspense - thanks for the tease Grandpa! (Cue the 70s porno flick music).
Well, this IS the SKMB so only family friendly G-rated stuff appears to be allowed now! (Mr. King can get away with the swear words but he is the ultimate writer and it is expected of him). (Perhaps I am digressing here?)
Anyway I used to think that if I had the money I would love to be a "professional student" and just keep going to university and learning, simply because I love to learn and when I was younger I had an insatiable thirst for knowledge.
Great story - keep 'em coming!!
Neesy
#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
In telling that tale over the years, I've had one guy ask me why I'd bother to tell a story that featured showering with coeds with all our clothes on.
Neesy
#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
Sorry - hubby is up North in Nunavut - perhaps my hormones are acting up again!
in answer to your question/comment - I think it was a more innocent time and people did not just jump into bed with anyone (or maybe you were just a shy guy, which probably made you even more appealing to those girls!)
p.s. re the other post - I have been in the gas hut too - not a very pleasant experience - pee yew!