Bolts and Screws

The little girl wandered into her daddy’s workshop even though she knew she wasn’t supposed to be there.  How is it that small feet so often find themselves in places they’ve been told not to go?

“What are you doing down here?” she asked the back of his head.

The daddy turned.  The little girl’s voice wasn’t big enough to startle him, but he was definitely surprised to see her in the basement.

“I’m doing what all daddies do in the basement,” he said.  “I’m making a monster.”

“Oh,” she said, and tried her hardest not to glance into the too-dark corners.  And then, after an uncertain pause she said, “A monster? Can I see it?  Where is it?”

“Oh it’s hiding down here in the dark,” he answered.  “But I’m not sure you should see it yet.  Monsters can be very frightening, especially to little girls.”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” she said, her eyes wide.

“No?” he replied.  “You know that monster that lives under your bed?  Where do you think he came from?  And the one in your closet?  And what about the one that peeks under your brother’s door after we turn off the lights?  (Well, to be honest, that monster was already in the house when we moved in.)  But those other ones I made down here, in the basement.”

The daddy carefully laid his hammer on his workbench next to a glass jar full of rusty bolts and screws.  The jar once held something like grape jelly, pasta sauce, or dill pickles, but now it was filled with a mismatched assortment of pieces and parts leftover after various projects.  Every workshop, it seems, has one almost exactly like it.

Noticing the jar, the little girl asked, “what are those for?”

“Those?  Oh, those are the bolts that hold the monster together.”

“They must be very special bolts if they’re strong enough to hold a whole monster together,” she said.  “But daddy, what if the monster is too frightening?  What if you make it too well?”

The father was good at building monsters, but he wasn’t a skilled question answerer.  After taking the moment his inexperience required, he said, “If you grow up one day and decide you’re tired of having a monster under your bed, or in your desk drawer, or creeping around the corners of your marriage, or wherever you decide to keep all the monsters I make, all you have to do is wait until they hold still for a moment and then take out their bolts.  Most of the time, they’ll fall right apart.”

“But how will I do that,” the girl asked.  “How will I remove them, and what if they’re screwed in too tightly?  And how will I make the monster stand still?”

But before the daddy could answer, a very old monster – one he had apparently neglected for quite a long time – jumped out of the shadows and gobbled him up in one big bite.

Then, after a loud burp, the monster ducked back into the shadows and left the little girl alone with her questions.

Location, Location, Location.

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.” – C.S. Lewis

1.  Sticky Side Down

She didn’t mean any harm.  She was just digging.  And isn’t digging what little girls do at the beach?  But her little brother didn’t like it, not one single bit.

“Look what you’ve done!” he shouted.  “Stooooooop!!”

To be fair, the long gash leading from the surf to the castle’s moat did look a bit infected.  It bubbled and foamed each time a wave attacked and retreated.  But each time the water emptied, the wound also seemed to slowly heal as the sides collapsed into each other and the bottom rose.  In fact, after a few more waves the cut would barely be noticeable as a faint scar on the wet sand.

The boy, visibly upset by his sister’s digging, asked their mother if he could get a band-aid out of the small “emergency box” he knew she kept in their bag.

“Why, sweetheart?” she asked.  “What did you do?”

But before he could answer, the boy had already pulled the paper back off the flesh-colored bandage and laid it carefully on the beach, sticky side down.

“There,” he said, gently pressing the band-aid onto the sand to make sure it was secure.  “Now, isn’t that better?”

Later that day, a teenage girl was drawing a heart in the wet sand with her toe when a soggy band-aid washed onto her foot. 

She screamed.

2.  Soup

Jesse and Sarah had been all over the city looking for something to eat.  Sure, they’d found a castoff crust here and there, but nothing substantial.  For them, as for many of their brothers and sisters on the street, hunger sometimes drove them to terrible places.  No trashcan was too smelly.  No crust too stale.  No offering too small. 

And then they saw it -- a bowl of fresh, undisturbed gazpacho.  The chilled soup was sitting on the corner table of a sidewalk café on E 57^th St.  The restaurant was one of those quaint spots where the city’s fashionable housewives pause during their afternoons of shopping to eat off of white clothed bistro tables in the open air.

Of course, there were also breadsticks on the table, but it was the pale red soup that caught Jesse’s attention -- a beautiful soup left unguarded while its fashionably dressed owner, who had spent the morning sipping over-priced vinti coffees, discretely used the restaurant’s ladies’ room.

Jesse and Sarah sat on a park bench across the street from the soup, trying to look inconspicuous.

“I don’t know,” Sarah protested.  “We really probably shouldn’t.”

“We probably shouldn’t?!” Jesse snapped.  “We also probably shouldn’t be eating out of trashcans… but we are.  We also probably shouldn’t be drinking leftover beer out of other people’s cups… but we are.  We also probably shouldn’t be following bratty kids around the park hoping their nannies will forget where Jr. set down his organic peanut butter and free range jelly sandwich… but we are.  So, you can stay here on this bench if you want, but I’m about to have some fresh $12.95 soup, all thanks to Mrs. Well Fed Rich Lady and her tiny bladder.”

Jesse lifted himself off the bench and crossed 57^th St.  He casually hovered around the cluster of tables, drawing not a few uneasy glances from the café’s diners, until we was confident the coast was clear.  Then, ever so carefully, he descended on the soup and took a long, slow sip.

The sweetness of the tomatoes… the rich olive oil… glorious.

Consumed as he was by the delicious broth, Jesse didn’t see the woman with the large sunglasses returning to her table.  He was lowering his head for a second drink when he heard her yell.

“Waiter,” she barked.  “What kind of place is this?!  I leave my table for two minutes, and you bring me a bowl of soup with a fly in it?!  Disgraceful.”

3.  Never Been Married

The reason she’d never been married was that she’d never been in love with a living man.  She’d been too busy loving Jesus, that long-haired boyfriend who never seems to call back, to find a boy that might one day want to lie with her.

And then Ken showed up.  He was clean and cut and they almost instantly knew which hymns would be sung at their wedding.  Six months later, those hymns were indeed sung at their wedding.  She wore a white dress, and even her best friends (who knew everything about her), knew the color was appropriate.

Not surprisingly, her brother thought it would be funny to decorate the getaway car with condoms.  For an hour, while the bridesmaids fussed over his sister, Dave and his friends tore dozens of square foil packages and got slippery lipped as they blew up the condoms they then tied to her car.  What better way to send his Disney princess of a sister into wedded bliss, he thought, than in a condom-covered car with a note under the windshield wiper reading “May Your Love Know No Barriers”?

Kate and her groom were halfway down Spring St. on that blessed Saturday afternoon before she paid any attention to the torpedo shaped “balloons” on the car.  When one broke free from the side mirror, she was mortified and said, “oh, I hate to leave that nasty thing on the street! What if a child finds it?”

Her Prince Charming smiled, but didn’t stop the car.  He wasn’t going to stop now – especially not for a condom.

***

Mrs Murphy lived in a house separated from Spring St. by little more than a narrow sidewalk and a slender rose garden.  The widow stayed on a constant vigil to keep her rose beds free from the beer cans and potato chip bags that blew into yard on a regular basis.

But on Saturday evening when she went to sprinkle crushed egg shells under the flowering bushes and found a limp condom hanging from one of the thorny stems, Mrs. Murphy’s disdain for “litter” reached a new high.  

Shaking her head, she sighed.  “…practically Sodom and Gomorrah.”

4. An Issue of Blood

In those days there was a man named Jesus, the son of a carpenter.  Because of his great love for the people, he walked from village to village feeding the hungry and caring for the poor.  And he taught them many things.

And it came to pass that as he passed through a certain village, Jesus encountered a young woman suffering from an issue of blood.  She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.

Trembling with fear, the woman fell at Jesus’ feet and asked “why are the sins of my fathers being visited upon me in this way?  If you only wished it, I know you could make me well.”

“Arise, my child,” he said.  “I have an uncle, a skilled surgeon, who lives just across the border in El Paso.  In his house there are many rooms.  I will go and prepare a place for you.”

And behold, it came to pass that Jesus did, in fact, prepare a place for her and provided for her every need.  The woman (who was called Angelina) healed nicely and lived in the US for the rest of her days, doing honorable work among her citizen neighbors.

But Jesus, having angered the local authorities by speeding in a school zone, was deported back to Chihuahua.  And there he fell among thieves, and his uncle heard from him no more.

Walls

The building at 439 Argyle St. had reached that awkward age before it could be called historic, when it was still simply run down.  The building and its neighbors formed an urban forest that families of tenants migrated through like birds. Sometimes these tenants fit together well and shared their walls without too much fuss.  But when they didn’t match – when the senior citizens got tired of smelling marijuana in the laundry room or the young professionals played their music so loud the writers couldn’t find their words – someone would eventually migrate to another building and make space for the next hopeful renter.

The new girl in apartment 3C rented the space “as is.”  She had just broken up with her boyfriend.  (Or maybe he had broken up with her?  Although she made the final proclamation, it seemed his tendency to share both his bed and his body with virtual strangers was an aggressively non-verbal way of saying “I think we should see other people.”)  In the end, it didn’t matter who euthanized the relationship.  The apartment was his, and that meant she needed a place to land.

And so, even though 3C’s brightly painted walls had not yet been covered with the requisite “apartment white,” she signed the lease, shook the hand, and thought, “It’s colorful and it has character.  I can make this work.”

But shortly after the furniture was arranged and the boxes unpacked, it became painfully clear to the woman that the red kitchen walls clashed with her curtains and her couch didn’t look great against the blue in the den.  None of her prints or posters worked on the green accent wall, and the bedroom was such an unusual shade of brown that she fell into sleep every night with the subtle (but very real) fear that she was being buried alive.

Despite her initial confidence that she could deal with a few minor color clashes, the woman soon realized that she needed the fresh start that comes with a blank canvass of white walls.  Thanks to her lying, cheating, bastard of a boyfriend, the past few months had been entirely too colorful.  She needed a clean backdrop against which she could re-arrange her life.

Excited at the prospect of “doing for herself,” the woman went alone to the hardware store to find a neutral palate for her walls.  There, under bright and dishonest fluorescent lights, she thumbed through the dizzying collection of white, off white, eggshell, bone, cloud, cream, and frost-colored paint chips. 

She had no idea starting over could come in such a wide array of almost-colors.

The next day, after moving her furniture, taping the baseboards, and covering the floor, the woman rolled clean white paint over the apartment’s too-colorful past, replacing red, blue, and green with calm, white neutrality.  The woman worked through the night, painting each room into something that resembled the inside of an egg.

Finally, when every hint of color was gone, she scooted each piece of furniture back to its proper place, always careful not to scuff her clean, white walls.

The problem started in her bedroom, as her problems often did.  While getting ready for work one morning, the woman looked up and noticed a patch of brown on the wall just above her dresser.  It seemed impossible that after an entire week of dressing and undressing in the small cloud-colored room she would only just now notice the unpainted brown square.  Puzzled, the woman made a mental note to “touch up” the spot when she got home from work.

That evening, when she walked into the kitchen with her arms full of groceries, she was surprised to find a similar problem in the kitchen.  Her white kitchen walls were turning pink – which clashed with the curtains even worse than the red had.  Further inspection also revealed a rash of green on the former accent wall and a line of blue bleeding through the white corners of the den.

“How odd,” the woman thought.  “I suppose I should have used primer.”

The woman spent the next weekend re-moving the furniture, re-taping the baseboards, re-covering the floor, and re-painting the apartment with three coats of a non-color called “Clean Cotton.”  Afterward, as she removed the masking tape, the woman carefully inspected her work to make sure she hadn’t missed any spots or patches.  Satisfied that her home was now thoroughly whitewashed, the woman cleaned her brushes and treated herself to a hard-earned beer.

Four days later, the color was back.  This time, instead of slowly creeping across the walls like sweat through a shirt, the color simply appeared.  When the woman went to bed, the walls were white.  The next morning, the white was gone.  She awoke in a brown bedroom, ate breakfast in a red kitchen, and watched the morning news in a startlingly blue den.  The woman rode to work that day in frustrated – and stunned – silence.

The next weekend, the woman invited several of her friends to her apartment for a “painting party.”  Her friends were gracious and hardworking people who were apparently willing to overlook the fact that painting and partying never actually happen in the same space.  Together the friends spread three coats of “Fresh Snow” on the stubborn walls.  But by the time they had ordered a pizza and drunk a few of the requisite painting party beers, “Fresh Snow” was already melting to reveal the red, blue, green, and brown walls beneath.

Having spent a small fortune on paint and brushes, the woman finally tapped into her vacation fund and hired a team of professional painters.  Two overweight Italian men spent most of the next Tuesday afternoon attacking the walls with several gallons of acrylic-based “Mother’s Milk.”  When the painters finished, the woman sighed and told them not to bother moving the furniture back against the walls.  She could already see the color creeping back through.

It seemed her walls didn’t want to be white.

Exhausted, the woman finally did what she should have done months ago - she called her mother.

“I hope you realize that every time you paint those walls, you’re making your apartment a few gallons smaller,” her mother said. “And besides… why do you want a white apartment?  My wedding dress was white, and so was your grandmother’s, and it was a lie both times.”

Her sister was equally as helpful.

“Is it so horrible if the walls don’t perfectly match your over-coordinated life?  You might be looking for something fresh and new, but that apartment’s not fresh and new. It’s been lived in, just like you have. Don’t you think it’s a little arrogant to walk into that old place and expect it to start over?”

And her best boy friend:

“Can you blame them?  After all, blank pages aren’t terribly interesting until you write on them.  I’d be pissed, too, if somebody came along and tried to erase all my interesting.”

The woman hung up the phone.  She walked through her red kitchen and sat in her blue den.  She looked at the green across from her and wondered...  were the walls being stubborn, or were they right?

Before she moved into the apartment and filled it with her furniture, books, and baggage, its walls had already hosted dozens of birthday parties, book clubs, and movie nights.  They had seen the arguments and orgasms of every family that had lived there.  Who was she to erase the history that seasoned these walls – the stories that would seep through even if she tried her hardest to cover them?

And so, instead of asking the apartment to loose itself under her relentless paintbrush, the woman let herself be its next tenant.  She threw away several unopened gallons of “Cresting Cloud” and bought a new bedspread that looked great in her bedroom.  She also found four striped pillows for her couch and decided that it was fine for her curtains to clash with the kitchen’s red.  A little conflict made dinner more interesting.

The woman grew to love her colorful and complicated apartment.  She even told a few of her friends that she couldn’t imagine why she ever wanted it to be white.  “White walls are about as interesting as sleeping babies,” she said one night at the bar.  “Sure, they’re new and beautiful… but they don’t have any good stories.”

Not long after, the woman came home from work and found that her spare bedroom, where she did most of her reading, writing, and singing too loudly with the radio, had become the same pale yellow as her favorite spring sweater.  

And it always would be. 

And that made her very, very happy.

Stay Away

It’s not uncommon to see people – men and women – rehearsing on the subway. Young white women hold scripts in their laps, whispering lines as the train rocks them toward an audition. Young black men stand in front of subway doors, looking at their reflection in the glass, watching themselves rap, imagining that the voice in their headphones is actually their own.

The woman got on the Q train at Canal St., shuffled into a seat, and sat with her knees pressed tightly together. Around her, tourists crowded together in clumps, hot with vacation sweat and proud of themselves for buying big, counterfeit purses in Chinatown. Those who noticed the woman might have wondered what it was like to be her – an Asian woman in the almost-foreign country of New York City’s lower east side. Most of the tourists, however, either didn’t notice the woman or pressed her so tightly behind several hundred other vacation memories that they never thought of her again.

In her lap, the woman held a small spiral-bound notebook. It was the kind of notebook little girls fill with stickers and the meaningless scribbles they pretend are words. In the pages of the notebook the woman copied and recopied the strange new English letters, training her hand to remember the way they felt. On its pages she carefully drew the vowels and consonants, stitching them together into something like language. Over it she whispered the clumsy new words that felt big and sticky in her mouth. The notebbook was her private rehearsal space, where she practiced the sounds she couldn’t yet say and studied the words she didn’t yet understand.

The man looked down and saw the woman’s opened notebook. He wasn’t spying. He was just noticing. When it’s been a hard day and the commute is long and your arm is tired from holding the chrome bar above your head, it’s natural to let both your chin and gaze drop. On days like that, it’s easy to let yourself look down and scan someone else’s magazine… someone else’s crossword puzzle… someone else’s cleavage.

On those days, it’s easy to notice the notebook in the small Asian woman’s lap.

There, on the blue lined page, printed in too-neat letters, he couldn’t help but notice that the woman had written:

I won’t let you control me anymore
You’ve made my life a misery
Do not telephone me
Stay away

The woman’s lips moved slowly as she studied the words. Like a child trying to read the Sunday Times to her father, she furrowed her brow in concentration.

Won’t let you control me… Life a misery… Stay away

Obviously, these weren’t sentences the woman learned in a language guide. They weren’t the rote “practical English for non-native speakers” phrases that are recited in dingy community center classrooms.

“No,” the man thought, “someone helped her form these thoughts. Someone helped her craft this syntax, this story.”

As he scanned the lines on her page, the man felt (what?) for her. Sadness? Regret? Pity? After all, these were phrases a person shouldn’t have to rehearse in another person’s language. These were phrases that should slip easily off the tongue like fire, hot and rampant. Unchecked. Yet here the woman sat, silently mouthing the words. Studying.

Control… Misery… Stay away

But the man understood… or he thought he did.

Like most people, he was familiar with the ache of not just speaking words like these, but planning to speak them. Rehearsing them. Anticipating them. He knew what it was like to sit in stammering frustration as the right words lodge stubbornly in your chest.

Do not telephone me

He guessed that in a week, or a month (or maybe more?), the woman would finally feel confident enough to step off the train and say those lines to someone. But to who? Who was the person she had apparently lived with in love (and then frustration) for so long that she could no longer bear being not understood? Who was this man she couldn’t talk to – this person she had been intimate with, without being intimate? And how long could she ride the train with that notebook in her lap, waiting to tell him?

Stay away.

The man turned his head and pretended not to see.

At 8th St., the train slowed to a stop, as it always did. The bell sounded. The conductor’s voice announced the station and reminded passengers where they would stop next. People pushed and shoved as tourists tried to enter the train before commuters had a chance to leave.

The woman looked up from her notebook and saw her friend board the train. The friend stood in the doorway for a moment, scanning the car, apparently looking for the woman. When she saw the woman, the friend tilted her head sympathetically. The woman’s eyes filled with tears and closed, pressing heavy drops down her cheeks. When she opened them, the friend was standing in front of her, looking down with both concern and an anger that’s the truest sign of loyalty.

“甜美的花，我不明白。那个混蛋对你说了什么”, she asked. (Sweet Flower, I don’t understand. What did that jerk say to you?)

“我不知道 “ (I’m not sure) the woman replied, and handed her friend the notebook.

The Man With No Number

Yesterday I was summonsed for jury duty. I’ve been waiting for this day for 17 years.

Call me crazy, but I don’t understand why people try so hard to get out of jury duty. Yesterday, when the clerk asked for anyone who thought they should be excused to form an orderly line, 50 people stood and queued to the left of the bench. None of them were dressed as if they would rush back to the office as soon as they were dismissed and put the final touches on their groundbreaking cure for cancer, finish drafting a pre-approved mid-east peace treaty, or tighten the last bolts on one of those anti-gravity hover cars I’ve been expecting since I was 7-years-old.

On the contrary, if they were excused, each of these men and women were planning to go home, turn off their cell phones, and waste the afternoon by watching television. Like me, they’ve all spent a significant portion of their lives sitting on a couch in front of the square-headed time eater. And what have they been watching?

2000’s: American Idol, a show where we watch young “singers” perform so we can responsibly cast our vote as to whether they’ve presented a strong enough case to stay and compete on the next week's show. Paula, Simon, and Randy are the judges. America is the jury.

1990’s: Law & Order, a show where the legal process in action – from arrest to prosecution – holds the attention of millions of people for 60 minutes (or up to 5 hours if you get drawn into a vortex of re-runs on TNT) every week… or, if you get caught in the previously mentioned syndication vortex, every day.

1980’s: The People’s Court. One of the earliest examples of reality TV, The People’s Court gave daytime television watchers a voyeur's seat at the legal system’s bedroom window. While we folded laundry and waited for Al Gore to develop the internet, didn’t we all try to guess how Judge Wapner would settle “The Case of the Overdone Underthings”?

Honestly, who hasn’t succumbed to the guilty pleasure of Divorce Court? Who wouldn’t recognize Judge Judy if they passed her on the street? What child of the 80’s can claim that he/she didn’t ask to stay up after The Cosby Show and Cheers to watch as Judge Harry T. Stone presided over his zany Night Court? What baby boomer doesn’t know how Perry Mason ended every week?

I’m sure Oliver North, Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and OJ Simpson each wish America wasn’t addicted to the drama of our legal system at work.

I’m also sure John Grisham is thankful we are. His book-to-movie fortune has been funded by courtroom junkies who love reading/watching stories with titles like The Firm, The Client, and Runaway Jury.

And yet, when given the opportunity to watch legal drama in real-life, 50 people lined up yesterday in a Brooklyn courthouse to say “No thank you. I’d rather not see the live show. I’ll wait for it to come out on DVD or maybe buy the paperback.”

Fortunately, as these men and women gave their carefully rehearsed excuses to the court clerk, I was sitting close enough to the bench to overhear many of their reasons for “why I can’t help protect the innocent (or punish the guilty, depending on whether your glass is more full or more empty) today.”

My favorite excuse? A middle-aged man handed his summons to the court clerk and asked (in a heavy Brooklyn accent) to be dismissed. The clerk, confirming that the man wasn’t an immigrant (despite his Brooklyn Forever! accent), politely asked “sir, where were you born?”

“I’m from Brooklyn,” the man said, barely hiding his pride that he’s never been above 23rd street.

“Then why didn’t you fill in your Social Security Number?”

“I was born here in Brooklyn,” the man confirmed, “but they never gave me one of those Social Security Numbers. They must’a forgot. Can I go?”

Bank accounts. Insurance forms. Tax returns. W4’s. 1099’s. Credit card applications. Marriage licenses. Certificates of divorce. All of these documents require a Social Security Number. Is it possible for a 40-year-old man to live in Brooklyn, USA his whole life without having a "Social"?

Did the man really expect the court to believe that the US Government, who uses this number to make sure every citizen pays every penny of tax they owe, simply forgot to issue him one? It would have made more sense for the man to tell the clerk he was waiting for Uncle Sam to issue him a new Social Security Number ‘cause his old one was broken.

The clerk rolled his eyes and told Citizen X to sit down and finish his paperwork. I laughed aloud, wondering again why people gripe and groan when given free tickets to this marvelous show.

Tomorrow, the man with no number will sit on a jury. Together with 11 other fair and impartial strangers, he will be forced to do in public what many of us voluntarily do in private – pass judgment.

I hope he’s more fair than he is clever.

There Should Always Be Dancing

A man danced during an earthquake and believed his steps shook the world. When his dancing stopped, the man saw what he assumed his joy had done, and swore to never dance again.

Foolish man. There should always be dancing.

What I Did During My Summer Vacation

Protected by the long shadows of tall buildings, my virgin city skin hadn’t seen the sun in many months. Imagine its surprise when I arrived in Florida, stripped my shirt, and asked it to gradually toast from flour white to a light, golden brown. I know I should have given it more warning. If I had, maybe it wouldn’t have skipped brown, paused only briefly at pink, and committed itself to a stunning shade of red in less than two hours.

At the time, exposing my skin to the roasting sun didn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to do. After all, even at its hottest, a summer day in Florida is seldom hotter than 100°. Although 100° is undeniably hot, it’s not technically “scorching hot.” An average oven in an average kitchen doesn’t even offer 100° as an option. The dials on most ovens start at a “warm” (and basically useless) 250°. Chocolate chip cookies refuse to bake if offered anything less than 350°. The bread in your toaster expects at least 400° before it will properly toast.

Why, then, was a relatively cool 95° day able to thoroughly burn my skin in less than two hours?

The answer, of course, is concealed by my clever cooking metaphor. Everyone knows that playing in the Florida sun has become less like playing in a conventional oven and more like playing in a microwave oven. Thanks to teenagers spraying Aqua-Net in the 1980’s, soccer moms driving SUVs in the 1990’s, and armies burning oil wells in the 2000’s, Florida’s summer sun can now scorch your skin quicker than ever before.

You may ask, “Why did you let yourself get burned, Bryan? Haven’t you been listening to Al Gore? Haven’t you been paying attention to global warming, the greenhouse effect, the hole in the ozone layer, and the dangers of UV radiation? Don’t you know that an afternoon at the beach is practically as dangerous as smoking a cigarette or eating out of old Tupperware? Why didn’t you wear sun-screen?”

Well… I did.

Before my first day on the beach, I carefully applied suntan lotion to every inch of my exposed skin. I even lotioned a few places that weren’t currently exposed, but threatened to be. Because I knew each body part would receive a different amount of sun, I covered each with a different strength of lotion.

Ears/nose/shoulders: 70. Face/neck: 50. Chest/back/arms: 40. Legs: 35.

When I finally walked onto the beach, my collective SPF (sun protective factor) sounded like a Master Lock combination.

And yet, despite my diligence, by lunch-time my shoulders and arms were already the color of a perfectly cooked filet mignon. (For vegetarian readers who might not understand this reference, I basically just said that “my shoulders and arms were hot pink and warm to the touch.”)

I spent the rest of my vacation swimming in a t-shirt, hoping that wet cotton has an SPF of “impenetrable.”

**

Like the best vacation, the good parts of most days pass too quickly. And like the bright summer sun, even nice things sometimes cause unexpected pain. The worst of these hurts are the ones that surprise us – the ones that come without warning – the ones we didn’t know we needed to protect ourselves against.

Friends too quickly become former friends. Lovers too quickly become former lovers. Jobs too quickly become former jobs. It’s so easy to get burned. Nobody is impenetrable.

I recently got burned, and it hurt. But after the hurt healed – after the damaged layers peeled away and the red faded into tan – I realized that my new, deeper color makes me more interesting.

Of course, getting burned also contributes to wrinkles, leathery skin, weird moles, and premature aging – but that’s not the point.

The point is – I got burned, but it got better.

Finding Your Seat

(inspired by the stories of Chuang Tzu)

A boy, traveling to meet his friend in the city, rode the subway,
constantly looking for a place to sit.

When his train stopped, an old woman stood.
So did a business man and a girl with her brother –
all in different parts of the car.

The doors opened, and they went shopping, to work, or to school.

The boy scrambled for each vacant seat,
but was always beaten by someone closer –
someone who stood still until the place in front of them was free.

The boy found his way to his friend in the city,
but the trip was harder than it should have been –
and his feet were tired before he got there.

He stood the whole way.

When We Were Young

There was a day when we were young.

There was a day when someone could run fast and someone could make us laugh and someone always smelled funny. There was a day when everyone had their place, even if it wasn’t the place they wanted.

There was a day when mothers brought cupcakes for all our classmates. On that day, when our friends sang “Happy Birthday to You,” we shared our cakes with the class as if to say, “no, happy birthday to us.”

And for the few minutes between Geography and Gym, it felt good to be a gift. To share.

When we were young.

Shadow Games

Gracie sat in my lap and wanted to play a game. This is a reoccurring theme that the distance between Nashville and New York keeps from reoccurring very often. I wish it could reoccur more.

This time, Gracie wanted to play outside. But after a weekend packed full with Easter eggs, bike rides, tickle fights, and birthday parties, I didn’t want to go outside. I wanted to rest. In a chair. Inside.

“Gracie,” I said, “maybe you should go outside and play by yourself for a few minutes while Uncle Bryan sits here and finishes his tea.”

Uncle Bryan sometimes speaks in the third person because it makes him sound like he’s doing a favor for someone other than himself.

“But Uncle Bryan, you have to come outside with me” Gracie whined, “I can’t play hide-and-seek with my shadow!”

She’s right, of course. There are a very limited number of outside games a person can effectively play with their shadow.

“Follow the Leader” – yes.
“Hide and Seek” – no.

Maybe that’s why childhood… and adolescence… and even adulthood have been so uncomfortable for so many of us. We’ve spent too much time playing hide-and-seek with our shadow, running from something that can’t leave, hiding from a part of ourselves that refuses to go away.

Instead of playing outside, Gracie and I sat at the kitchen table and drew pictures. Then we shared a piece of cake and built a spaceship with her brother’s Legos. It was a wonderful afternoon of playing games, telling stories, and spending special time together – all of which Gracie’s shadow was (and will always be) welcomed to join.

Zombie Playground

Last weekend, in an attempt to escape from the concrete and chaos of NYC, Jeremy and I took a day trip to Rhinebeck, NY. There, hidden behind a quiet antebellum church, we discovered a zombie playground.

If New York City is a Big Apple, Rhinebeck is an underdeveloped peach. Its downtown consists of a single intersection, the spokes of which are studded with a cigar shop, ice cream parlor, antique market, and four surprisingly good restaurants. The buildings in Rhinebeck are all short enough to loose a Frisbee on top of.

It took only two hours for Jeremy and me to walk through each of the town's hot spots, eat lunch, and talk with two shop-owners. Our site-seeing complete, we made our way to the suburbs, a three block hike out of town.

In Finding Nemo, an ocean native named Gill observed that all drains lead to the ocean. On his Discovery Channel show (Man v/s Wild), Bear Grylls taught that all trails eventually lead to water. As a small town explorer, I would like to add that – depending on your feelings about organized religion – all sidewalks eventually lead either to or past a church.

Jeremy and I weren’t looking for a church, but that’s where the sidewalk led us.

The white, wooden church that sits three blocks from Rhinebeck’s only red light is probably older than most of the trees in Manhattan. The bell in its steeple has been Rhinebeck’s alarm clock since the days when men set their pocket watches to its hourly toll. Its long wooden pews are polished smooth from ten generations of weddings, Easter celebrations, and Sunday morning services. In its backyard grows a cemetery the congregation started planting in the late 1700’s.

Up from the seeds of the church's death and grief have sprouted several dozen antique tombstones. Each stone marker records dates of both joy and pain (Benjamin Cooper: born 1790 died 1843). Many have inscriptions to help mathematically challenged mourners (aged 53 years, 4 months, 8 days). Some even give a brief biography (drowned in the bloom of health) or a frightening last thought for loved ones who might attempt to move on (as I am now so you shall be, prepare for death and follow me).

Excited by our morbid discovery, Jeremy and I walked through the people-garden and took pictures of the head stones. I wanted a shot framed with the church in the background and the graves in the foreground, a (probably too obvious) comment on the hope that religion – and especially Christianity – gives its dead.

That’s when I saw the playground. Nestled against the back corner of the church, surrounded by a short chain-link fence, stood a cedar play house, four swings, a sandbox, and a green plastic Playskool slide. It isn’t unusual to see a playground behind a church. It is, however, unusual to see a tombstone poking out of the sandbox. Most churches put their playgrounds on an out of the way corner of unused land. Very few build them on top of their cemetery.

A closer look at the playground confirmed that sticking its head out of the sandbox was a short, moss covered tombstone (In Memory of Mary). Two taller stones (Eliza Ann Williams 1779 – 1810 and Leah Bergh 1769 – 1843) stood immediately beside Mary’s in the sandbox, casting long shadows across a yellow Tonka truck. Two additional stone markers, whose inscriptions have been worn smooth, stood watch over the playhouse and swing set.

At some point in the church’s fairly recent past, a middle-aged man apparently stood in the back corner of the cemetery, looked at Mary’s eternal resting place, and thought “This. This is the perfect place for a kid to dig a hole.”

And then he built a sandbox.

From Mary’s perspective, being buried under a playground probably has significant advantages. Although her neighbors get to rest peacefully on a quiet hillside, they’ve all finished decomposing and have nothing left to do. They’re probably bored to death. Trees don’t really grow quickly enough to provide much entertainment.

Planted under the sandbox, however, Mary (debatably) has the best plot in the yard. Every day she gets to watch castle construction from the ground up. She gets to listen to giggling children play their games and tell their secrets. She even gets to feel the soft patter of little feet running through the dirt.

Unfortunately, she’s also forced to look up at the not-so-pretty end of neighborhood cats who use her sandbox as a toilet. Every time they make a deposit, I’m sure Mary wishes rolling over in her grave was really as easy as the living seem to think it is.

While Mary quietly wonders why Jesus is taking so long to come back, neighborhood children spend their days sitting on her grave, digging in the space between life and death. I hope they appreciate the incredible opportunity they’ve been given. After all…

How many kids get to dig for treasure and actually feel their shovel hit a buried wooden box?

How many kids get to schedule regular play dates with their great, great, great, great grandparents?

And how many kids know that on Sunday morning, when their Sunday School teacher asks the class if they know where they’ll go when they die, that they always have the best answer?

“Yes,” they can say with confidence. “I’ll go to the playground.”

**

To see pics of the playground, click the epitaphs in the story ("In Memory of Mary", "Eliza Ann Williams 1779 – 1810 and Leah Bergh 1769 – 1843", "Two additional stone markers"). You can also click here to see pics of the playground.

Epilogue.

This is what it says it is… an epilogue. If you would like to read what it’s an epilogue to, check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

In the years since John, Kyle, and I made our trek up the mountain and through the woods, much has happened. Kyle moved to California to study a scientific discipline I can’t even spell. John finally looked over his shoulder and saw an amazing woman standing there who will soon be his wife. I returned from Yosemite unaware that over the next few years I would navigate a car-sickening ride of life, career, and geographic changes.

It’s been a big five years.

Re-reading this story has made me realize that I need to go back to the mountain. I need perspective and grounding. I need to dangle my feet over a ledge and remember that sitting on the edge of something uncertain, while terrifying, can also be beautiful and exciting.

Of course, I also need somebody to pay for the plane ticket. Interested?

Toothpicks

While this post can stand somewhat steadily on it’s own, it’s much more stable when supported by Part 1 and Part 2. If you haven’t read them yet, maybe you should do that now...

After an hour on top of Half Dome, Kyle, John, and I headed back down the trail toward camp. Down may be a faster direction than up, but both force your muscles to fight the mountain. And when your muscles fight the mountain, the mountain always wins. And when the mountain wins, you muscles are always sore losers.

It was dark when we finally got back to camp. Each of us went our separate ways to shower and apologize to our aching legs. I started a fire so we could heat some canned beef stew, but was overly generous with the lighter fluid. The resulting campfireball almost blew us into the trees. Fortunately, when you’re primitive camping and there’s no TV, a few small explosions are welcomed entertainment. John, Kyle, and I sat around the blaze for hours, staring into the flames, eating our stew and contemplating how much our muscles would hate us in the morning.

On our way out of the park a few days later, after our legs had forgiven us, we stopped at one of Yosemite’s redwood groves to walk through the giant trees.

The redwoods in these ancient forests are so broad that in 1895, a group of industrious settlers carved a tunnel through one of them. Forrest fires burned a tunnel though another one. The tunnels are large enough for a Honda to drive through without scratching its bumper. The park’s forest rangers don’t like it when you drive Hondas through their trees, though. Apparently it distracts the elves from putting fudge stripes on their cookies.

These beautiful redwoods have been alive for (literally) thousands of years. Before Jesus had skin and cooed in the manger, back when the earth was still flat and MTV actually played music videos, these giants were standing. Growing.

In the 1860’s, however, nearsighted lumberjacks walked through the Yosemite Valley and couldn’t appreciate the majesty of a forest that was planted when Cleopatra swam the Nile. They stood in the woods and had no respect for trees that would one day rise twenty-nine stories into the sky. They measured trunks that circled ninety-two feet and were somehow unimpressed. They saw branches as thick as a man is tall and continued walking with their hands in their pockets and their minds in their wallets.

These lumberjacks missed the majesty and saw only a challenge, an arm wrestling match with nature. They didn’t see ancient beauty in the branches or hear the voice of God rustling through the leaves. With necks bent back and faces pointed toward the sky, they saw only profit. They heard only the whisper of their own ambition. And so, these short-sighted men started chopping.

They stood beneath monstrous trees that had outlived fifty generations of men and cut them with saws and axes and other tools that would rust and dull. And when the mighty trees fell, they shattered. Instead of landing whole and complete, the trees cracked under the force of the fall, broken into four foot sections.

Sacrificed to ego and ambition, the pieces of these once-giants were too short to cut into lumber for furniture or houses. Wasted, the fallen trees were chipped and whittled into toothpicks and pencils, splinters of their former selves. Ancient pillars that survived two millennia of fire, earthquakes, ice, bugs, and birds were reduced to fifteen seconds of picking corn out of somebody’s teeth.

What a shame.

In 1878 people picked their teeth with giants.

Unfortunately, they still do.

In a country where we’re obsessed with all things organic and eco-friendly, too many giants are still being sacrificed for a lesser good, cut down in their prime, whittled into toothpicks of their former selves. If you’ve been listening, you’ve probably heard some of them fall.

California couples like the artist and the architect celebrated their love through marriage until one day voters candidly informed them that
**Chop**
equality was meant for everyone else.

Millions of hardworking Americans watched as talking heads on the nightly news claimed that
**Chop**
they haven’t yet earned the American Dream… or the right to affordable healthcare.

An entire generation of young Africans disappeared in under-reported genocide while wealthier nations
**Chop**
fought each other for revenge, ideology, and oil.

Ponzi schemes were built, mortgages were sold, and bonuses were collected by wealthy men willing to
**Chop**
**Chop**
**Chop**
sacrifice the financial futures of men and women who now fear words like foreclosure, downsize, and retirement.

I wonder, though, if the lumberjacks among us would still swing their axes if they stopped obsessing over:
whether oaks should be allowed to marry maples,
whether the forest should offer free fertilizer and subsidized rain,
whether foreign seedlings are taking root in domestic soil,
and whether or not it’s fair to ask bigger trees to care for smaller ones,

and stop to watch God dancing through the leaves.

Which He is.

(I’m sure the poetry of idealism has blinded me to its impracticality. But still, I wonder.)

To Be Continued…
Click here to read this story's epilogue.

It's Not The Fall That Kills You

Every life-inspired story is essentially a peek into the past. Consider this a peek into mine. This is part 2 of story about a hiking expedition I embarked on with my friends John and Kyle. If you know me well (or even casually), don’t be thrown by phrases like “I live in Nashville.” This was originally written several years ago. Check out Part 1 of the story to catch up.


With muscles aching and joints screaming, my friends and I made the summit of Half Dome at 3:00pm, just as the sun lit the valley for postcard views. While John explored and Kyle took pictures, I sat on top of the mountain with my legs dangling over the edge, tempting gravity to steal my shoes. Sitting on top of Half Dome made me wonder how the Earth must have felt during its ten million year labor, giving birth to this mountain of stone. Pushing it through miles of earth and air. Enduring contractions that shook the planet.

Looking down into the valley made me question how this mountain must have felt when it was a moody geological teenager and a glacier bullied its way through the rocks, tearing away at Half Dome’s face and digging a valley between he and his friends. It was a glacier that clipped the mountain’s rounded top and gave him the nickname Half Dome.

What a cold, hard thing for a glacier to do.

But building up and tearing down are the verse and chorus of nature’s song, the synopsis of God’s story. These mountains are human history in slow motion. They remind us that we are creation, cracked and scarred, yet beautiful beyond belief. They tell us that this is life, both majesty and pain, each serving a purpose. They encourage us that our struggles, while important, are seldom eternal.

I had only been on top of the mountain for a few minutes when two guys crept up behind me and peeked over the side.

“I can’t believe you’re sitting that close to the edge,” one of them said. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll fall?”

I smiled. “Well, it’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the two guys that sneak up and startle you while your legs are dangling over a 4,000 foot ledge that kill you.”

The two men laughed and produced a peace offering of dried fruit. I accepted and returned a handshake, inviting them to join me on the ledge.

As they sat, a hawk made a soaring pass in the space just under my feet. We looked down on the bird as it flew 4800 feet above its unsuspecting dinner. When the hawk turned and its wings caught the wind, I felt like the chorus of an old Bette Midler song.

Together we sat on the edge of a mountain, looking down on the world from a rock that has enjoyed its view for ten million years. We chatted. I asked the obligatory questions of “where are you from?” and “what do you do?” They were from San Francisco. One was an artist, the other an architect.

Although it was a brief biography, the word “we” was used frequently enough to safely establish that these two men were in a relationship. The rainbow pin on the architect’s backpack hinted that it might be a romantic relationship. So did the fact that they were holding hands.

The architect offered me a piece of mango jerky.

“Where are you from,” he asked.

“Nashville, Tennessee” I answered.

The architect sighed a lungful of mountain air. San Francisco sits on the west coast and is known for its famous bridge, hill topping trolleys, and homosexual community. Nashville is in the south, where the Bible buckles its belt. If there is stereotype surrounding what it means to be a homosexual from San Francisco, there is equal preconception of what it means to be a Christian from the south. While people in San Francisco cross the Golden Gate bridge and eat good seafood, Nashvillians go to church on Sunday and enjoy a diet rich in southern fried Christianity.

The architect sighed, and with a smirk that obviously masked something like frustration or hurt or betrayal, he said, “don’t worry. We’re not really as bad as Jerry Falwell would have you believe.”

Jerry Falwell is a televangelist who, until his death in 2007, led a conservative movement known as the “moral majority.” In 2001 Falwell blamed gays, lesbians, abortionists, and other “pagans” for the terrorist attacks in New York City. “You helped this happen,” Falwell said, implying that homosexuals in the World Trade Center served as lightening rods for God’s judgment. In a moment, on national television, this influential preacher presented Christianity to the world as a faith of finger pointing and hatred.

And the world was watching.

I paused so the architect would know I had heard what he said and had taken it seriously. Then I smiled. “I’m of the opinion that nobody is as bad as Jerry Falwell would have us believe.”

He smiled back.

But then, to continue the conversation, the architect asked another question, harmless and ripe with possibility. My answer would either intrigue my new friend or infuriate him.

He asked what I do for a living.

I had two correct answers for his question. I am an author, but I am also a preacher.

To tell the architect that I am an author would likely have given us ten minutes more to talk about. Telling him that I am a preacher, however, was likely to produce an awkward silence and hasty retreat. Being an author would safely establish me as an open minded artist. Being a preacher would associate me with Jerry Falwell.

I’m not embarrassed by my faith. I’m not ashamed of my Christianity. But I am sometimes ashamed of other Christians. That’s why I told the architect I am an author and quickly changed the subject.

In retrospect, I made a poor choice.

What I should have told him was, “I’m a preacher, a Christian. And we’re not as bad as Jerry Falwell would have you believe either.”

I wonder if he would have smiled.

To be continued...
click here to read Part 3.

Nature Needs an Elevator

Several years ago, when I was still traveling as a speaker for youth events and still had hopes of publishing a second book, I went on a hiking expedition with my friends John and Kyle. I recently brushed the digital dust off of what I wrote after the trip and edited it into a four part blog post. This is part one…

I know heaven doesn’t float in the sky and hell doesn’t bubble and burn beneath our feet, but when you sit on the top of a mountain, you can’t help but feel closer to God. The mountain gives you perspective. It lets you rise above the earth while still standing connected to it. The mountain is grandeur and grounding. It is both powerful and broken.

I wonder if that’s why God often brought his favorites to the top of a mountain when he had something important to say.

Abraham. Moses. Joshua. Peter, James, and John. They were all changed by what God showed them on a mountain. On the mountain he gave them new perspective. He said, “Let me show you how to rise above this life while still staying connected to it.”

I recently hiked to the top of Yosemite’s Half Dome with two friends from college. Together we climbed 4,800 feet, higher than almost four Empire State Buildings, over the course of a nine mile hike to the summit. The two men I hiked with were an unusual and eclectic mix. John, Kyle, and I are old friends who share a love for movies, the outdoors, and everything sarcastic.

Kyle and I lived together in a retirement community for a year just after we graduated from college. At the time, Kyle worked for the government and investigated sources of radioactive activity. Obviously, working with radioactive elements is sensitive work. Our elderly neighbors sometimes thought it odd that their lights got brighter and their hearing aids whistled every time Kyle walked into the room. I got nervous every time Kyle found an odd rock in his pocket or came home from work with a bigger bald spot. We owned a microwave oven, but never used it. For dinner I set my macaroni and cheese in Kyle’s lap for 45 seconds and enjoyed a hot meal.

John and I were roommates and best friends in college who did all the ridiculous things college friends do. We set flame to our farts and stole shoes from the bowling alley. I have pictures of the two of us so covered in mud we look like we’ve both been iced with earth chocolate. In a time shortly before cell phones and just after smoke signals, John and I installed CB radios in our cars so we could talk and tell dirty jokes across town. John is a professional actor now. While Kyle glows in the dark and cures cancer, John connects with his inner child and uses his Hollywood good looks to date beautiful women.

Our hiking trip up Half Dome wasn’t simply a reunion, it was the set up for a really bad joke. A scientist, an actor, and a preacher were camping in the woods . . .

To Be Continued...
Click here to read Part 2...

Let Her Eat Cake

During Christmas, Gracie crawled into my lap and announced that we were going to play a game.

“Great. What’s the game?” I asked.
“I don’t know, silly,” she said. “You have to think of one.”

Fortunately, I once taught a class at How to be a Great Uncle School about impromptu stories and games-on-the-fly. Halfway up my sleeve I found exactly what we needed.

“Gracie,” I asked, “if you could open MiMi’s magic oven and find any treat baked inside, what treat would you find?”
Without thinking, she said “Chocolate Cake.”
“Not peanut butter cookies or a roasted buffalo?”
“No, Uncle Bryan, (smiling) Chocolate Cake!”

MiMi is what Gracie calls my mother, her grandmother. MiMi didn’t invent chocolate cake, but she might have perfected it. She bakes chocolate cake well and often – especially when her grandchildren are spending the night.

“Gracie, if you could open the magic closet in MiMi’s bedroom and find an exciting something hidden behind her clothes, what would you find?”
“Chocolate Cake!”
“Not a house for your Barbies or a dress made of diamonds?”
“No, Uncle Bryan, (with a giggle) Chocolate Cake!”

Other than pizza and peanut butter with honey sandwiches, chocolate cake is the only thing Gracie eats voluntarily. Everything else is consumed under duress and only to earn a reward, often of chocolate cake.

“Gracie, If you could open MiMi’s magic backdoor and go anywhere in the universe – even if it’s an imaginary place nobody has ever been to – where would you go?”
“Somewhere that has lots and lots of Chocolate Cake!”
“Not Sesame Street or a pineapple under the sea?”
“No, Uncle Bryan (losing control), somewhere with Chocolate Cake!”

Squirming with laughter and lost in her own silliness, Gracie begged for more. “Ask another one, Uncle Bryan, ask another one!” How could an uncle resist?

“If you could pick up MiMi’s magic telephone and talk to anyone – even someone who’s not real – who would you talk to?”
“Somebody who knows how to make Chocolate Cake!”

“If you could dig a magic hole in MiMi’s backyard and fill it with anything you can imagine, what would you fill it with?”
“A whole ton of Chocolate Cake!”

“If you could climb into MiMi’s magic bed and dream about anything in the world, what would you dream about?”
“Eating Chocolate Cake!”

Every time Gracie said “Chocolate Cake,” a smile spread across her face and into her eyes. The letters of her words were all mixed with laughter. Her love for the cake is loyal and strong.

***

Gracie is a creative, clever, and genuinely funny girl whose six-year-old imagination skips across ideas like a rock across water. That’s why, when our game started, I expected her to travel through space, talk to the tooth fairy, and swim in a pool of marshmallows.

Apparently, I underestimated Gracie’s imagination. It takes a very powerful love – and a very clever girl – to find cake in every question.

One day, however, Gracie will discover the beauty of things like new books, old movies, the sound of her mother’s voice, the touch of her lover’s hands, cold lemonade, and fresh snow. All these things will eventually find homes in Gracie’s heart – but she will always love chocolate cake.

When stupid boys make fun of her glasses, Gracie’s mother will sit with her on the couch and there will be chocolate cake.

When boys stop being stupid and one finds the nerve to ask Gracie on her first date, her best friend will squeal with delight and there will be chocolate cake.

When she graduates from high school, and college, and feels hope in her future, there will be chocolate cake.

When the economy plummets and she can’t find a job, there will be chocolate cake.

When a man asks her to marry him, there will be chocolate cake.

When she fights with the man and they say hurtful things to each other and she thinks about leaving, there will be chocolate cake.

When she sells her first painting or gets a promotion, there will be chocolate cake.

When her babies have birthdays, there will be chocolate cake.

When the biopsy comes back negative, there will be chocolate cake.

And finally, after enjoying a life full of flour, sugar, and cocoa powder, Gracie will sit at a kitchen table with her grandchildren… and there will still be chocolate cake.

**

If Gracie is as clever as I think she is, she will eventually realize that Chocolate Cake doesn’t really answer every question. The most important questions are better answered with words like “love,” “my family,” “God,” and “I don’t know.”

And if Gracie is as smart as I hope she is, she will also learn to exercise. Otherwise, her love for chocolate cake is going to make her very, very fat.*


__________________________

* For the record, “fat” is a terrible word and is used here only because Uncle Bryan suffers from an adolescent infection to his sense of humor. Gracie is a perfectly sized six-year-old, and unless her doctors tell her differently, whatever size she grows into will always be exactly the right size.

** Gracie, if the internet is still alive when you’re old enough to read archives of your uncle’s blog, give me a call. I'll tell you silly stories about your brother, we’ll eat cake, and together we can laugh at my receding hairline.

Santa is a Fraud

When the batteries snapped into his back, Capt. Awesome suddenly became aware of flashing lights and Christmas music in the living room. His tiny AAA heart beat faster.

And then a middle aged woman set him on a coffee table – a COFFEE TABLE! – and took a huge bite from the cookie.

“What the ****,” he thought. “You’re not Santa!”

As the woman stuffed him into a red felt stocking, the reality of Capt. Awesome’s situation set in.

He wasn’t built in Santa’s workshop... he was bought in a store! He was a bastard toy! And like all bastard toys, his life expectancy would be that of a house-fly. Even if he didn’t break before his batteries ran out, Capt. Awesome knew that no self-respecting child was going to choose him over a genuine North Pole toy.

He was doomed to life under the bed.

Eventually, the woman turned off the lights and went to bed. After working for hours to build a bicycle and set up something called a “Barbie Tropical Water Park,” she looked exhausted.

“Why would she go to that much trouble,” Capt. Awesome wondered. “Santa will be here any minute.”

Capt. Awesome spent a sleepless night peering over the white-furred edge of his stocking, waiting. To pass the time, he counted the presents under the tree. There were thirty-four. Four red boxes had gold bows. Two red boxes had green bows. Three blue boxes had silver ribbons. Eight boxes didn’t have bows or ribbons. Six boxes were wrapped in green, five had paper with pictures on it, and one little box was silver and shiny. Most of the presents were square-ish, but three were strange shapes that crumpled the paper. Tucked in a corner were two gift bags with white tissue paper erupting from their tops.

Shortly before 6:00am, Capt. Awesome heard tiny voices telling sleepy parents it was time to wake up. An old man, probably the grandfather, scooped coffee into a pot and made noises that sounded like they belonged outside. A few minutes later, a little boy ran down the stairs and shouted when he saw a shiny blue bicycle.

Capt. Awesome was exhausted. He stayed awake the whole night. Santa never came.

It was the parents. It was the parents the whole time. Every box. Every bow. Every toy and foil wrapped chocolate was a fraud. It was all carried home in a sack. None of it rode in a sleigh.

And the parents let it happen. No, they didn’t just let it happen. They made it happen. Every year they filled their poor, empty-headed children with stories about a fat man – a stranger – who loved them so much and thought they were such good little boys and girls that they deserved presents.

Capt. Awesome was furious. “Wrapping a lie in red velvet,” he thought, “doesn’t make it right.”

Three weeks later, Capt. Awesome sat on the kitchen table while the mother wrote checks to pay credit card companies for the Christmas presents they had bought. Capt. Awesome thought she should forward the bills to the North Pole for reimbursement, but he decided not to mention it. At the moment, the mother looked too fragile to take suggestions, even from a superhero.

Capt. Awesome was sure that before Christmas both the boy and the girl had written letters to the North Pole asking the non-existent Santa for everything they wanted, including a bicycle and a Barbie water park. To their credit, the boy still rode his bicycle and the girl hadn’t yet forgotten about the pink water park in the corner of her room – not that she could. On December 26, however, their markers suddenly went dry. Every day they played, but they never said thank you.

Ungrateful kids.

During the months that followed, Capt. Awesome spent most of his time in the van. He went to soccer practices and swim lessons. He waited in the backseat during dance recitals and birthday parties. He endured the agony of family vacations and once almost won his freedom in a Burger King parking lot. He probably would have gotten away – or at least might have been picked up by a new boy in a new van – if the boy hadn’t shouted for the mother to stop. Apparently, bastard toys aren’t as expendable as Capt. Awesome once thought. Damn.

Capt. Awesome eventually overcame his nausea from the van's stale french-fry smell. He also learned to ignore the endless repetitions of something called “Finding Nemo.” He even taught himself how to mentally dissociate when the boy forced his head through the van’s cracked window as they rushed down the interstate. Capt. Awesome couldn’t tolerate it, however, when he got wedged between the back seats. The horrors he saw in the depths of that dark and sticky hell were more than even the bravest toy could endure.

Capt. Awesome soon learned that the boy’s name was Daniel. The girl was Kris. The mother was usually called Mom or Mommy, except when one of the men was in the van. Then she was called Susan. Capt. Awesome got nervous when the mother became “Susan,” especially if the boy and the girl were staying with a babysitter or sleeping at their grandparents’ house. On those nights, when the mother was in the van alone with one of the men, he sometimes heard things that made him wonder if Susan might be the reason Santa didn’t stop at the Cooper house.

In November, the mood in the van began to change. The boy and the girl, who seldom sang along with the radio, started requesting songs about Frosty the snowman and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Finding Nemo was replaced by a movie that referenced a disturbing place called the “Island of Misfit Toys.” The mother also began asking the boy and the girl awkward questions about elves and what kind of cookies Santa likes.

Soon it would be Christmas, the most dishonest time of the year.

Early one morning, the family piled into the van already arguing about their day.

“I get to go first,” said the boy. “I’m older so I get to go first.”
“But it’s my turn,” the girl protested. “Daniel got to go first last year. It’s not fair!”
“I told you, it doesn’t matter who goes first. You’ll both get a turn,” said the mother. “Kris, what are you going to ask Santa for?”

The girl didn’t even have to think about her answer. “I want an American Girl doll, a bike like Daniel’s with a pink helmet and a white seat, and a white fairy princess dress.”

The boy also had his list memorized. He wanted a chemistry set and a microscope like Brendon’s “so we can do experiments together.” He also said he was going to ask Santa for a remote controlled car and something called a DM3.

The rest of the way to the mall, the mother was obviously working to keep her lips from moving while she rehearsed their lists. Capt. Awesome couldn’t believe the boy and the girl didn’t see it. Sure, they were only kids, but how weak did your batteries have to be to not see the mother memorizing every word they said?

American Girl. Pink Helmet. White seat. Princess dress. Chemistry set. Microscope. Car. DMSomething.

A week later, the mother drove back to the mall without the boy and the girl. She stayed inside for several hours. When she came back to the van, Capt. Awesome could see a chemistry set in one of her bags and the white sequence of a fairy princess dress in another.

“Christmas,” he thought, “when deception disguises itself as goodwill.”

After last Christmas - his first Christmas - Capt. Awesome was convinced that Santa was a great manipulation, and nothing more. He was a fraud built by the collective imaginations of adults who regularly spanked their children for lying. Capt. Awesome was sure that by perpetuating the Santa story, the parents were digging their own graves.

Did parents really think the world leaders these parents were raising would find solutions for the fossil fuel crisis when they honestly believed magic elves spent twelve months a year making everything people asked for?

Had the parents actually convinced themselves that the global economy would be stabilized by a generation who thought an overweight saint slid down their chimneys to deliver toys?

And who did the parents think would care for them in their old age? What possible motivation would their children have for giving selflessly to another person when they believed a 1400 year-old fat man existed for no other reason than to give them presents?

It was all so absurd.

After the kids sat on Santa’s lap, the van was filled and emptied four different times. The mother brought home rolls of paper and hid department store bags under her bed. At the grocery store, she bought two bags of the candy she used to help fill the kids’ stockings. Capt. Awesome remembered it from the year before when he stood on it through that horrible sleepless night. At the toy store, the mother asked a handsome young man wearing a blue vest to help her load a bike-sized box into the van. The young man smiled weakly when the mother handed him a dollar and wished him Merry Christmas.

Long before Christmas morning, Capt. Awesome knew that not only was the boy getting a chemistry set and a microscope from “Santa,” he was also getting a basketball and two new shirts.

The girl would love her fairy dress and would probably spend most of Christmas afternoon riding her new bicycle. But Capt. Awesome knew that “Santa” was also going to surprise her with a shiny chrome bell for her handlebars.

The kids had no idea what was happening behind the Christmas scenes. Every afternoon they rode home in the backseat of a grey Astro-Van that secretly doubled as Santa’s sleigh. If they knew that Santa poured their cereal and drove them to school every morning, they would go absolutely mental.

On the Saturday night before Christmas, the mother dropped the kids off at their grandparents’ house and picked up the man who was her current favorite. On their way to dinner, the mother and the man talked about Christmas and which child would like which present the best. “Susan,” the man said, “You’ve kinda gone overboard this year, haven’t you? Can you afford all this?”

“Not really,” said the mother.

And then she started to cry.

After Christmas, the man helped the mother tie a brittled Christmas tree onto the top of the van. After they dumped the tree in a pile near the playground in their favorite park, the man announced he was taking everyone out for pizza to celebrate the new year.

On the way, he turned to ask the boy and the girl if they had a good Christmas.

“Sure did,” said the boy. “Santa got me a microscope and a cool chemistry set and a DM3!”
“I got a silver princess dress and a pink bicycle with a bell on the handles,” said the girl.
“That’s great,” said the man. “What did your mom get you?”

The boy and the girl looked at each other blankly.

“I don’t remember,” the boy answered. “Mom, what did you get me?”

Capt. Awesome couldn’t believe his ears. If he had any muscle control – if he had any muscles at all – he would kick the boy in the lap.

“Santa,” he wanted to scream, “is just a front man your parents use to launder their own generosity. He’s a puppet crafted to give you the clothes you need and the toys you want and let somebody else get the credit. I can’t believe your mom sits in the shadows while an overstuffed fairy tale steals her glory.”

Ungrateful kids.