Dada: “Hey guys, I had a fun time at the pool with you today. And yesterday! I’m really proud of your good behavior.”
Liam: “Dada? Can we go to the pool usually, or can we go to the pool always?”
Dada: “Um, we can go to the pool… always?”
Liam: “Why?”
Dada:
Nate: “I see horses!”
I was dressed as a chicken. You… were dressed as a chicken. But not as regular chickens. We were each dressed as ‘Boyd’, the small finger puppet that came with our meal at an Arby’s drive-thru, years ago, on a trip I can’t recall, in a state I don’t remember.
We were on an elevator, and I may or may not have thrown my keys in anger, my feathers aflutter. I was facing you, and you were siding me. I may have been Jon Cryer, the actor.
We were leaving the party, the party that found us leaving it dressed as chickens. Not as chickens dress, but as chickens themselves. As Boyd. Matching white feathers and orange bills and royal blue, collared dress shirts and bright red ties. We were discussing something that may or may not have been important, but not important enough to remove our heads. Our emotions were elevated, in more ways than one. And they were not reflected by our round, black soulless plastic eyes, although the rest of everything was - The side of you in my fronts, and the front of me in your sides.
Our faces were frozen in sewn smiles, exaggeratingly happy. As happy as a small finger puppet, smiling up through plastic, and lying beside wrapped roasted beef and turned-over apples. As happy as a small finger puppet, hiding within my cupped hands as I run inside to tell you that I’ve just found a helpless baby bird sitting outside on the ground - do you want to see? As happy as a small finger puppet, smiling somewhere on the third floor, and waiting patiently to be discovered again. Waiting with the patience of cloth.
We stared and we smiled, and we went down and down. I had just thrown my keys, and we were in an elevator, and we were both dressed as chickens.
It’s 8:47pm, and it’s today, and it’s March 11th.
It’s 9:00pm, March 11th, 1994, and my sister goes into labor with her son Parker, who will be born the following day.
It’s the afternoon of March 11th, 2006, and my father gets married in his backyard.
It’s 9:00pm, March 11th, 2006, and Jill goes into labor with Nate, who will be born the following day.
It’s 10:00pm, March 11th, 2006, and Jill’s Gram Summerville passes away quietly in her bed, and she is 97 years old.
It’s 9:00pm, March 11th, 2008, and my father passes away quietly in his Hospice bed, and my sister and I are kneeling beside him.
Sometimes the string of time is tightly drawn, with one point lining up obediently behind the other, and sometimes it’s balled deeply between the twin fists of context and perspective, with both ends touching the middle.
And we cry, and we whisper into new ears or pressed against smooth pine, and we promise to love, and to know, and to never forget.
And it’s 9:04pm, and it’s today, and it’s March 11th.
Sir,
I don’t mind you banning me from your ‘little dancers’ Flickr group, which I joined months ago merely so that I could post a picture of my then 18-month-old son dancing in a patch of sunlight, and haven’t been back to since.
No. What I do mind is your pompous and self-righteous post in the group’s discussion area, explaining that you’ve conducted a group ‘review’, have banned anyone you’ve deemed ’suspicious’, and by way of your phrase, “banned and submitted to Flickr“, insinuated that I as one so banned have done something worthy of punitive action on Flickr’s behalf.
I had only to browse to page two of your photostream to find a posting far racier than anything I’ve ever put up. Should a man responsible for the highly-suggestive ‘Hot Rod’ advertisement really be administering a Flickr group featuring pictures of young children dancing? Probably doesn’t matter, but how does it feel to be judged because of it? I ban you.
May your boyfriend’s unibrow become furrowed as he grows to regard you with increasing disdain, before he eventually abandons you in favor of your far younger and lither dancing rival, leaving you alone but for your aged cat, in whose company you will find no solace.
Good day.
There’s a pizza place near our house that offers on its menu a pizza called the “Ballpark Special”. They call it that because it’s topped with mustard and sliced hot dogs. So I mean, what else would you call it? Or maybe they call it that because it’s what they hit that idea right out of when they thought of it! I’ve never ordered it, but look at this… here I am writing about it. That’s good buzz.
If I owned a pizza parlor, I’d offer a pizza with one piece missing, and call it the “Pac-Man Special”.
The Pac-Man Special would even have some banana peppers lined up in the box or on the pan like a line of glowing dots, right in front of the missing triangle. Wonka-wonka!
Maybe I’d even I’d even have a ‘Mrs. Pac-Man’ version, which would be exactly the same as the regular Pac-Man, but without sausage. Think about that.
Best of all, this revolutionary idea wouldn’t involve any special culinary skills or oddly-shaped pans. I’d just be making regularly-shaped round pies (In the pizza business, we say ‘pie’ instead of pizza) and taking one slice out!
“But Bill,” you’re saying, “You’d have all these single slices left over. What would you do with them? Your plan is silly.”
Really? Then you must think that mad profits are silly, because for every eight Pac-Man Specials, I’d have enough left over for a-whole-nother pie! Just piece all the slices together and BLAM! I have an extra pie to sell that cost how much to make? How much?
Nothing!
Who would want to buy a pizza pie made out of eight different slices, all stuck together like that? Well, only everyone, if I jammed in a ninth piece and called the whole damn thing “Frankenstein’s Monster!”
And in all the advertisements, I could use lightning. Or, I could have a bunch of villagers with torches and pitchforks and stuff standing in line… all clamoring for the Monster. Or… Or! Maybe a begoggled black and white Dr. Frankenstein could be leaning against a giant lever, looking at one of the patchwork monster-pies and screaming, “It’s a deal! A DEEEEAAALL!”. Regardless of the name, I’d resist the urge to add sliced hot dogs onto Frankenstein’s Monster, because that’s already been done.
I’d also hold a contest that would make people line up and try to suck melted cheese through straws. I don’t know how that would relate to the ‘Pac-Man Special’ or ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’, I just think it would be fun to watch.
The runaway success and minimal overhead of these initial offerings would enable me to branch out into new areas that are currently untapped in today’s pizza markets. Areas that include:
I’d still have to work out a few details, but that should give you the ballpark idea.
We were planning on staying here at the beach until tomorrow morning, but tropical storm/hurricane Hanna has other plans. Everyone who’s not currently posting on this blog is engaged in packing a week’s worth of life in the beach house. Well, Randy’s listening to DJ John on his MacBook Pro. And Dameon’s cooking. And Liam and Nate are eating pizza in front of ‘Bob the Builder’. Okay, so hardly anyone is actually packing. But we’re all supporting those who are packing, even if only peripherally.
My sister, Leah, just left with her two boys, Parker and Alec. She claims that she travels with a black cloud, and whether you believe her or not, it was raining when she arrived last Saturday, and didn’t start again until roughly the time she began packing her car to leave this morning.
Soon, we’ll be eating the late lunch that Dameon’s fixing, and then we’ll all take a step back toward our individual lives in Maryland, DC, and in my sister’s case, Georgia. Although she’s already stepped.
Yesterday, I sat in the late-afternoon sand as Jill threw Wheat Thins (reduced fat) over my head to the hovering seagulls. The boys, Nate especially, laughed and clapped and chased the birds, which always seemed to be able to stay at least one wing ahead of them.
“I need to run back to the house and get my wide-angle lens. These are some good pictures passing us by.” I said, already heading towards the angled stairs up the dunes.
“Right,” Jill remarked with a wry smile, “Because you can’t take them tomorrow, when we’re back out here.”
“Tomorrow is promised to no one!” I called back jauntily.
And then this morning, the forward edge of Hanna arrived, bringing with her heavy rains, and sending the gulls to wherever gulls go during tropical storms that may or may not develop into hurricanes.
Dameon’s lunch was excellent, and at the end of it, there was warm-from-the-oven pumpkin pie topped with Breyer’s, which went over very well with the boys.
During those dark days in March when my sister and I sat in our father’s room in Hospice and said our long goodbyes, one of the things we talked about was this trip. And now Senior is gone, my sister is on her way home, and our time at the beach is almost done.
Now Randy’s just left, and it’s almost time for us to go too.
Everything ends… parents and trips and time with friends and even ice cream, sitting on the top of warm pumpkin pie.
Note: While we’re all on vacation this week in the Outer Banks, we’ve secured a very special guest poster. He’s skinny, half bald, and is counting down his remaining months in the Marine Corps with barely-restrained glee. That’s right, it’s Bill, circa 1993.
This was a paper for an English class in which the assignment was to write an essay using an analogy. I should point out that this was years before anyone not named ‘Wachowski’ had ever heard of “The Matrix”.
It was hard not for 2008 Bill not to edit or reword 1993 Bill’s work, but it is presented here, in all its original glory.
***
A revelation struck me several weeks ago, and I don’t think that I can ever look at life in the same light again. It all started with a simple trip to the airport. Yes, I think that’s when I finally saw through the smoke screen that’s been thrown up to hide the truth.
I stumbled upon the truth innocently enough. I didn’t set out that morning to purposefully alter my perception of reality, but it happened all the same. I was driving my coworker Ted to the airport so that he could catch a flight to Korea. While he droned on and on about his upcoming trip, I stared idly out the window at the passing scenery.
People, trees, drugstores.
Early afternoon Okinawa. I phased out the monotonous sound of Ted’s voice and gave the car a little gas.
Peopletreesdrugstores. Trees. A vending machine. A bike shop . . .
My eyes flicked back and settled on the vending machine. There was something about it. Some half-formed thought struggled in my mind to make a connection. It was only a vending machine. Just one lone machine. There were thousands of others just like it flanking countless streets all over Okinawa. No sir, nothing out of the ordinary here. Yet there was something . . . something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on . . . suddenly the half-thought made its connection with an almost audible click and it hit me.
For all the thousands of vending machines here on Okinawa, I had never seen one being serviced, stocked, or emptied of money. Surely the number of vending machines aboard Okinawa would require at least a small army of maintenance personnel. But where were they? Why had I yet to see them? There had to be an explanation. Perhaps the Japanese, in their industriousness, had devised a revolutionary new process concerning the management of vending machines. Maybe each and every machine was interconnected via an intricate network of vacuum tubes, not unlike a drive-through bank back in the States. Or perhaps each machine contained a small Japanese man that escaped each night, his pockets bulging with change, only to return each morning before sunrise with a sackful of Jolt cola, sparkling spring water, and iced coffee. I paused, perplexed. I prepared to present Ted with this interesting development, but as he was still talking, I thought it best to not interrupt him. I drifted back into my silent reverie.
Vendingmachine vendingmachine vendingmachine smallJapaneseman vendingmachine vend
Suddenly, my mind seized upon a much greater truth: could it be that I had happened along and uncovered some sort of deception? But was I possibly missing the greater meaning in all of this? Why stop with just the vending machines? Could they in fact indicate a much larger deception? Suddenly, the final piece of the puzzle dropped into place, and I had the answer. It was all so painfully clear.
The answer, of course, is that reality as we know it does not exist. We are no more than caged animals, sustained with life only to provide a kind of idle amusement for some unknown higher power, and items such as the vending machines are just pieces of some elaborate prop. My car, my office, my English class, this entire island . . . it’s all a facade: put here simply to maintain continuity and goad us into mindless complacency. There are no vending machine personnel because someone or something forgot that there needed to be. Someone or something didn’t think that anyone would notice . . . but someone did.
To a fish in an aquarium, the inside of the fishtank represents an entire world. There is nothing beyond the glass. The fish inside may be able to peer from the confines of his world and into ours, but his mental abilities are limited comparatively, and he is thus unable to recognize what he is seeing. Given this line of thinking, our perception of reality could be no more than an underwater scene printed on paper and taped to the back of our collective “aquarium”. We are as mindless fish, lazily floating not in water, but ignorance. I alone have seen through the chink in armor, the ripple in the fishtank paper!
However, I could of course be completely mistaken.
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