Topic: Lost

Topic: Lost

I lost my husband in the summer of 2016.  He was actually slipping away from me before that in subtle ways, but it became obvious that something wasn’t right with him or with us that summer. First, he stopped bringing home any money.  He’d leave for work every day in his truck, presumably to work his business of sealing driveways.  We hadn’t been married long, just three years  at the time, but in the first three years of our marriage every week he’d come home  with a big wad of cash, anywhere from one to two thousand dollars during the busy season.  He’d present it to me proudly, and I’d deposit it into our joint account and made sure all the bills got paid.  That summer week after week I’d ask if he had made any money and it was always some excuse like he had to pay Brandon or buy sealer or fix something on the truck.  It didn’t make any sense.  I’d come home from my work around 6 and he wouldn’t get home till after dark.  Was he really going to work? 

One night that summer it was after 11pm and he wasn’t answering his phone or responding to texts.  I called his work partner, Brandon, who said they had finished the job about 9 so he wasn’t sure where Jeff was.   I asked his partner if he had been acting strangely, and he confessed that Jeff had stopped helping on the jobs and seemed to have trouble keeping track of which job they were on.  When I told him Jeff hadn’t come home, Brandon went looking for him, and found him asleep in his truck at a truck stop near the job.  His phone was out of battery life and the truck was out of gas.  Jeff said he didn’t know what to do so he figured he would get some rest. 

I started to wonder if he was having an affair.  He seemed to have gradually lost interest in me, but I attributed it to his age, 63 at the time, and the fact that he had a physically stressful job that involved working in the hot son.  So one day when he was out in the yard I snatched his phone and looked for proof of infidelity.  Instead, I found multiple texts from unhappy customers-people who he had not followed up with, jobs started but not finished, and people threatening to sue him.  He didn’t have any money, because he wasn’t starting and/or finishing the jobs. 

He also lost interest in our friends and family.  During my nephews wedding reception he disappeared for over an hour.  Again, he didn’t respond to my calls or texts.  When he finally returned he told me it wasn’t a big deal, that he needed to buy a nail clipper and shouldn’t a man be able to trim his nails without being interrogated?! 

On the 4^th of July we went to a cookout at the home of close friends.  He left in the middle of the party without telling me and was gone for hours.  When he came back he refused to come inside.  I sat in the front seat begging him to come inside but he said these weren’t “his people” and he wanted to go home.   I got him to reluctantly agree to stay just till the fireworks were over, but he buried his face in his hands and said the fireworks were “so loud.”  We had gone to several fireworks displays when we were dating, and he loved them. 

I found him sitting on the roof one day after work.  It had enough of a slope to it that I feared he would fall off.  He said he needed to think. 

I was awakened at 3am to rustling in the back yard.  He was out there moving the yard equipment into some kind of pattern.  When I questioned him he bellowed, “I’m a man!  And I can do whatever I want!”

We had a cistern for our water supply and periodically we’d pay about seventy dollars to have it filled with fresh water.  He started “saving” water in the basement in dozens of containers of varying sizes.  I explained that I didn’t want to reuse the water and that we could afford the seventy dollars but he would not be dissuaded and became angry when I dumped out all of his water when he was napping. 
He lost his empathy.  I told him that my father’s cancer had returned, that it had metastasized and he looked up from his video game long enough to say “bummer.” 

I feared he was going to get himself, get us, in legal trouble because he had lost his filter.  He told sexually inappropriate jokes to total strangers.  He came out into the front yard wearing nothing but boxer briefs and we had an eight year old girl living next door.  He told me I was being ridiculous when I suggested that the neighbors might be offended.   We were at a fancy restaurant and he started talking loudly to a young couple sitting across from us.  He invited these total strangers to come back to our house and hang out.  They were beyond uncomfortable and declined.  I caught the young woman’s eye and gave her an apologetic look and mouthed “I’m sorry” to her. 

The police called me one night to say, “We have your husband here.  He was wandering around the neighborhood and we had some complaints.  He says he’s out of gas and didn’t know what to do.”  I went to the station to pick him up.  He was about 45 minutes from home.  His cell phone had died.  He had locked his keys inside his van and he was out of gas.  He hadn’t brought his wallet or any money with him.   After that he agreed to go the doctor for an evaluation.  He finally admitted to me that something wasn’t right.  He had a plastic bag full of various chargers and cables with USB ports on them. He didn’t have his keys or his wallet but he had half a dozen chargers.  He gestured into the mass of tangled wires and said, “That’s what my head feels like.” 

The final diagnosis was frontotemporal dementia with behavioral disturbance.  It took months later till we officially learned that there was a name for all this bizarre behavior.  There was a name for what had taken my husband away from me.   It was a relief in some ways because I could stop blaming him for anything.  He couldn’t help all of this.  I was facing life with a confused often petulant boy who couldn’t really be left unsupervised anymore and the crazier thing was that he happened to look just like the man I had lost. 

Topic: Involving a Pet

Author: Thom Dunn

I have waited a long time to tell you of Rubtub, a gentle monster brought here from the Outer Worlds. SO big and SO gentle was she that humans could not hold her in their laps and pet her......No,it was SHE would pet us stressed out humans, soothing grief, calming fears. There exists otherworld film of this remarkable pet (but of course we see it as digitally remastered). There she is, waddling along, guiding her many children in front of her and on both sides, lovely in her own way.

     She seemed happy despite the loss of her kids and her home environment. Literally, "Not a care in the world" and she had developed a seeming natural ability to avoid injury, whose effects she could not feel.

    Anthropomophising seems intent on sees her as a "good" human instead of the quiet, giant creature who in her own right is free of all that bothers us.

      I'm wondering, when the movie of her life comes out (She died last Fall, going to sleep and not waking up) will it put everyone to sleep ? !

Topic: Film

Green CD sleeve, "Final Draft 5: The Screenwriting Software," Dad brought it home from a computer expo. He went to a lot of those then. I wanted to hear every word. The screenwriting software was being hocked by the developers, and their "name," the guy who wrote Pearl Harbor. My trademark, 19 year old snark came out to play, "did you tell them their film sucked?"

Not long I was staring at a blank screen, much like this one. I had so many ideas. And then... nothing. Nothingness. No ideas. Not a logjam, an absence. My brain became the desert. All of a sudden, Pearl Harbor seemed daunting to equal.

So many times I look back on a project and think about deficiencies. I wonder why the pros get so much so badly. Surely there must be qualified personnel to show them the way. Then I think of the blank screen, the empty page. It waits, mocks, retaining its perfection until the first mark is made.

Sometimes it takes a prompt. "You have 10 minutes until you die." Flashes pop in my head. All of a sudden, I was back in another war film, All Quiet on the Western Front. The German mortally wounded a Frenchman when they came face to face in an artillery crater. The Great War at its greatest. 10 minutes until you die. 10 minutes left to live.

It slowly came to me, heavily inspired by Erich Remarque. Two soldier facing their mortalities together. Enemies. 10 minutes. I started typing.

Months later and in another time zone, I'm watching actors bring the story to life. Everyone was crying by the end stage direction, "They die," the actor paused, looking at me, "together."

Topic: The Kitty and the Crack Head

Br, Jill Jackson

I never thought that I would get mixed up with a crack head, but there’s a first time for everything.

It was the late 1990s and I was living in a basement apartment up on highland. I’d had this upstairs neighbor, that I’d made friends with, who had since moved out.

She was your standard-issue young urban professional: well-dressed, well-spoken, and she really seemed to have her shit together.

So when she told me that she had this friend who was selling some furniture and moving out of town, I didn’t think anything of it.

I was in the market for a waterbed and this woman had one for a good price. I got her contact information and made arrangements to go by and look at the bed.

She lived in a cute little attic apartment with an adorable Snowshoe cat named Bandit. The entire time I was there, Bandit was all over me and never left my side. While we were hashing out the details of the bed purchase, she let slip that she was also selling the cat.

Now, at that time I had three cats and wasn’t in the market for another. Also, all of my cats had been free, so the idea of shelling out $100 seemed excessive. Especially since she had adopted him as a stray.

But there was something about this cat. Something about the way he latched onto me, and even something about her willingness to sell such an adorable animal, that spoke to me. So I decided that I would pay $200 for the bed and that she could throw Bandit in as part of the deal.

Since I am an animal lover, and know how much I would miss one of my cats, I gave her my phone number, and my address, and told her she could call me any time to check up on him.

She also asked me if I could give her a ride somewhere because her boyfriend had her car. Call me naïve, but I didn’t think anything of it. After all, she was a nice, seemingly stable, older lady with grown kids. Boyfriends borrow cars, and shit still needs to get done.

So I ended up driving her down to Northern Kentucky to the check cashing place. Throughout the drive she told me about her adult son and how excited she was to be moving out west and starting a new life.

The trip to and from Northern Kentucky was uneventful and, when we got back, I was able to take Bandit home with me.

A couple of days later, I was able to get a truck and move the water bed to my house. By then she had pretty much cleared out and was in the process of turning her keys in to her landlord.

The following evening I was at home when my phone rang. It was her. Apparently she was at her parents house somewhere out in east bumfuck. She was agitated and not very coherent, but the gist of what she was saying was that her parents weren’t letting her see her boyfriend, they wanted her to go into rehab, and could I please, please come get her.

She had already made arrangements for her downstairs neighbor to let her into her old building, and from there she would find a way to get into her old apartment.

Say what now?

I told her that I didn’t think that was wise, and that I was pretty sure it was breaking and entering since she had already turned in the keys.

She was insistent. She was going crazy at her parents house and couldn’t stay there one moment longer. She absolutely HAD to get out and I was her only hope.

I told her that I had to think about it and that she should call me back in 10 minutes.

When she called back, I didn’t answer.

Instead I called our mutual friend and told her what happened.

Her response: “Oh yeah, she and her boyfriend are crack heads.”

Say what, now?

I was so pissed off that this person I considered a friend would introduce me to someone like that. Or, at the very least, that she wouldn’t WARN me. I mean, if I was just buying a few items and going on my way, that would have been fine. 

I had just given an unstable crackhead my phone number and she was asking me to help her break the law. Not only that but, SHE KNEW WHERE I LIVED!

Not cool.

Luckily, the crack head never called me again. More importantly, she never showed up at my house. I assume that she went into rehab, or that she found someone else to help her break into her old apartment.

After that little encounter, I was glad that I had rescued Bandit from that environment.

I learned from this experience that appearances can be deceiving. This woman seemed to have it all together. She had a cute little apartment. A cute little cat. She came across as totally normal when I hung out with her.

If she hadn’t called me, possibly going through withdrawal, and asked me to do something illegal, I never would have known.

So, anyway, that’s how I got my cat Bandit.

Topic: Film…

Author: Chris Dunn

Watching the latest supers movie on my 4K Ultra HD, extra-chewy flat screen, I found myself wondering why I didn’t do this more often. The film was only a month out of the theaters and, rather than paying upwards of $50 – what with popcorns and drinks – why not just sit here in the comfort of my home and enjoy the picture with as many people as are around for a mere $5. I can get drinks out of my fridge, and my popcorn doesn’t cost $10 a bucket. The picture quality with and HD download is nearly exact, and the sound bar delivers everything but the chest-battering bass of good theater surround. Why do I waste the money? Why do I insist on buying the expensive concessions, when I can plainly see I’m being ripped off. “Oh, only a dollar more for a large, and it comes with a free refill I’ll never use. Well, I’d be a fool to pass that up.”

Long gone are the days when my mother would smuggle popcorn and sodas in her purse. We’d pop it ahead of time and then divvy it out in little baggies once the lights had dimmed. Wait until the loud music starts over the swirling-color intro to open the can of soda. Mom was really worried some of our seat neighbors would call the cinema police on us. Nowadays, I justify paying the exorbitant prices as supporting the venue. If you like the reclining seats and the wall high screens, pony up for the shake-on popcorn seasoning. Otherwise this place will fail like so many before it. And really, the price of the beer they now provide is on par with what you’d pay at a bar.

Further back, we would all pile in the car and drive the mile or so to the Mount Healthy Drive-in theater. That was an event! We would load up Debby, our ’65 Ford Mustang with the trunk painted white (another story), with all manner of snacks and sodas, find a working speaker to clip onto the window and crane our necks from the back seat for a double feature. “This time I’m going to stay up for both shows!” I’d declare, certain this time I was old enough for it to be true. Some people brought lawn chairs. Some people ran around outside their cars. I found out later, that some people just came to movie to make out! The worst thing was when the sodas would fill your bladder and you had to wander through the lot to the concession stand and use what amounted to a trough to relieve yourself, getting chastised for not going before the movie by whichever parent had to escort me, the random sights and foul smells, the choke of idling cars and the bite of the cool night air, all the while trying to follow the movie from the hushed snippets coming from other’s speakers as you passed. So many times, I fought as the cobwebs covered my eyes and the droning dialogue of whatever “adult” movie numbed my attention. What are they talking about now? Is it spies or divorce? I feigned interest. I fought sleep. But inevitably, I’d wake in my father’s arms being carried to bed, curse at being foiled yet again by the blandness of movies for parents – What the hell were they thinking?! – and then let my eyes fall again. Next time…

By the time I was old enough to stay awake through two whole movies, the drive-in was no longer a thing. We’d still have movie nights, but they involved schlepping out to Showcase Cinemas Springdale. The Northgate Mall movie plex had fallen out of favor, and only served as a place to dump us kids while mom shopped. She’d give us enough money for tickets and one large soda we had to share. The movies is where I learned to order my coke without ice. “It’s already cold enough and this way you get even more.” Sometimes things would get contentious with the cashiers who insisted they had to put ice in the cups, but it was always worth it to ask. Or better yet, get Bridgid to ask, she handled confrontation so much better than I did. Eventually, she would want to see different movies than Marty and I, but we’d make it work.

The drive in, the Hollywood, the Movies downtown, so many of the places I used to go are gone, replaced by mega complexes with better sound, bigger, clearer screens, and yet somehow the same old “butter-flavored” topping. Still, I go, once, maybe twice a month. I pony up the extra cash for 3D and IMAX. I shell out whatever they’re charging for popcorn with a rueful laugh, as if to say, “Is this what it takes to maintain these places?” Now every minivan is a rolling drive in. I can arrange devices around my living room for a slightly out of sync surround sound experience. I can DVR, and stream, and binge watch until the Fast and Furious cars fill my home theater with exhaust fumes. But, it’s not the same. And even though the mega complexes aren’t the same either, they’re still close. So I go. I pay up. And I almost never fall asleep.

Topic: Gods and Monsters…

Author: Chris Dunn

Gifts from the grande dames in the family were standard, five bucks – five dollars from Grandma Dunn, five dollars from Grandma Donnellon, five dollars from Aunt Helen. Not much in today’s money, sure, but at the time the combination, fifteen smackers, felt like a fortune. Christmas would be over, but then would come second Christmas when we take our wads of cash to the store and waste it on toys and games, none of which I can even recall today. Still, it was more than an expectation, it was a certainty, 15 bucks to fill in any gaps in my Christmas haul. So, it was with some confusion and trepidation that I looked at the colorfully wrapped box in my hands.

“I decided to try something new this year,” said Grandma Dunn. “I actually went shopping.”

Now, I loved my grandmother. She was family, and she laid out a good holiday spread each year. Sometimes she lacked a bit of tact, like the time she told me how pleased I was becoming “one of the round people”, but she always meant well. Still, I didn’t hold out much hope for the contents of the box. Seriously, old lady, I’m ten. I think I know what I want better than you. Had she even looked at my list?!

But, I knew the drill. My parents had taught me proper gift receiving etiquette after the embarrassing First Communion debacle, when I tore open my Aunt Lee’s card and – finding no check inside – quickly discarded it, unread, declaring, “Pfft… Nothing!” Everyone had laughed, but later that day my mother told me about disappointing people, and how – though they might not show it at the time – my actions could hurt. So I painted on my best, practiced, gift-smile and tore into the package.

“I asked the man at the store what he had for a bright, young boy?” she explained.

I assume she offered the explanation because of the confusion showing plainly on my face. A large reptile with an almost human face stared through an open archway at a pair of men, one wielded a bow and was clad in armor while the other brandished a sparkling wand and wore hat covered in stars. The conflict here was obvious. These men had come for the pile of gold the creature was sitting on, and he was having none of it. This wasn’t some grandma gift, some hook-a-rug craft kit, some nerf football, this was…. I had no idea what it was.

The banner read “Dungeons & Dragons”, but in 1978 this meant nothing to anyone. My grandma went on talking about her trip to the local game store “Wanna Play?”, and her encounter with the proprietor, who had recommended this game in answer to her query. So, it was a game! I opened the box but couldn’t find the board just a set of strangely shaped dice and a couple of large soft cover books. I thanked her with a nod and the gift giving moved on to one of my siblings.

I liked that she thought I was bright, and as the evening continued, I pulled out the box periodically and flipped through the densely packed pages. So much text! A few brief comics and the occasional illustration, but for the most part the books were packed with information and impenetrable jargon. I was in over my head, but didn’t want it to show, so I flipped the pages slowly as if I was reading while putting the book down now and then as if to reflect on my reading.

Lucky for me, my mother didn’t let it go at that. She took the time, read through the dense manual of rules, and took me on my first adventure. I think we all got killed by yellow mold, but that was all it took, and I was hooked. Forty years later and we’ve gone from that basic set, to Advanced D&D, 2^nd Edition, 3^rd Edition, 3.5, and now Pathfinder – along with dozens of similar fantasy games and competing genres. I’ve never stopped playing. Outside of vacations and holidays, I don’t think a week has gone by that I haven’t run or played, and even when I’m not actively playing, I’m thinking and plotting, building worlds in my head, worlds filled with gods and monsters.

Thanks, Gradma!

Topic: Lost

Something has been lost to my soul for a long time and I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m not even sure what to call it. 

While I was growing up my parents always wanted me to become a physician. But I had musical tendencies - I studied piano, then organ from a wizened little old nun of whom I was terrified. It turned out that years and years later some of the exercises she drilled into me were directly responsible for procuring me some very nice gigs as a keyboard/synthesizer player. But that’s another story.

So I was talking these lessons from first through fourth grades. Then band instruments were introduced and I became fascinated with the saxophone. I switched to it for a few years but finally recognized that I wanted to be a drummer more than anything else. This was in 9th grade or so. I was going around the house beating on anything that sounded somewhat percussive and my dad finally bought me a snare drum & said it was ok to quit the sax and start learning drums. 

This was around the time The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their album Are You Experienced. Listening to this under the influence of…certain herbs and other substances, shall we say, burned those tracks deeply into my synapses and I knew Mitch Mitchell was the kind of drummer I wanted to become.

I practiced and practiced every possible waking moment. I had an overwhelming yearning to get in a band and go on the road. But I was sort of like the bass player John Wetton if you’re familiar with him - every band I joined fell apart shortly after I joined just as Wetton seemed to taint King Crimson, Uriah Heep, Asia and so on.

At any rate I eventually got a gig at age 19 playing for an Elvis imitator. I played professionally with him for 3 years. The material was admittedly a far cry from Hendrix but hey, I was playing for a living! Then I learned how difficult it really is to make a living as a musician and I finished school, at first getting a degree in Medical Technology. I played drums for a really fun gospel group while getting that degree. I’m not particularly religious but it was a gig and I still had this overwhelming desire to play in front of people.

My job took me to Saudi Arabia after a couple of years, in 1986. When I arrived there weren’t really any drum sets available to buy but synthesizers were pretty easy to find so I reverted to keyboards and played for a couple of rock bands, ultimately switching back to drums after a few years, when more Western musical equipment was available. We played a lot of big parties for companies like British Aerospace and a lot of parties at the American, Canadian and Australian embassies. 

But then Desert Storm hit. I decided to go to medical school at age 34 because job security in Riyadh suddenly seemed very shaky. In med school I joined a heavy metal band. Our bass player was also the lyricist and he wrote songs like Anal Birth and Dead Girls Don’t Say No. He went on to become a psychiatrist - true story.

After finishing medical school and taking a job in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I joined a classic rock band. This is when I began losing…it. I was losing the burning need to play out in public. 

This puzzled me immensely, because that need had always been such a hugely important part of my psyche. I began to wonder why that was. I’ve always had self-esteem issues, which worsened when I became a full-blown alcoholic at age 19, around the time I started playing with the Elvis imitator. And since I was considered a pretty good drummer I think performing was my way of saying, “See? I’m not a TOTAL piece of shit, here’s something I can do well.” Then, after becoming a physician I noticed that people (particularly those that didn’t know me!) were treating me with a sort of deference or something. I theorized that I no longer had anything to prove, that I was worthwhile in and of myself.

Lately, however, I’ve begun to suspect that the real reason is actually much more mundane - with age I simply no longer felt like fucking with hauling all that stuff around. So maybe I haven’t lost anything but youth.

Topic: Lost

Somewhere, Sometime

Wheels -- a name that he hadn't used for a long time, who even knew what wheels were anymore -- glanced out at the ground, still featureless from this height.  It looked a lot of red and brown, barren because of the lack of water.  At one point, the man he knew later to be his father-in-law had found a way to pipe water from underground to turn a small patch of this nothing green.  Or greenish.  It worked well enough to raise some cows, a few goats, and a small number of chickens to keep a family going -- provided someone was there to shoot the dingoes and keep the water flowing in the gardens, of course.

Had it really been nearly a thousand years?  One downside of near-light and time-phased travel across the stars was that dates really didn't mean much.  He'd been to so many places across the galaxy, coming back to the place where he was first born seemed so... He couldn't place a word that expressed what he felt.  How many new worlds, and how many new bodies again?  Whatever, wherever, he was here.

The single-person craft he took from the orbiter quickly fell through the atmosphere towards another red patch, or brown patch.  Even as details emerged, there wasn't much to see, but the AI chirped happily that he had arrived.  It was odd, he thought.  When he first left his mother planet, he'd assumed that he'd never be back.  The Rules said you kept going out, never back.  Finish a life, get a new body built, transfer in hibernation, and wake up somewhere out.  Away.  Never back.

Never back.

Also odd, he thought that progress would just keep going in the old place.  He never imagined, nobody ever imagined, that so many people would lose interest in staying Home that progress would reverse.  If there was anything living near what used to be this farm in what used to be Australia, it was just the wildlife that the old man used to shoot.  A thousand years probably re-wilded anything that was once domesticated.

Yet still, there was a rough rectangle of broken rock and once-solid material, barely noticeable unless someone knew that the view to the distant hills looked like... maybe that?  No there.  There was where the old house used to sit.  Any old gardens and fences were long gone.  But it wasn't that hard to start from the rear corner that always had the nice view through the grove of trees also long gone.  But... there.  Or maybe there.

He remembered all too well the walk he took from that back corner that last time.  When she'd died, he'd given the farm to the caretaker and her family.  His only two requests were that her ashes be buried along her ma and paps, and that they keep the graves there as long as they owned it.  When he'd made it back to orbit at the old marble of a world, he was surprised that the records were still there in the AI, even if it took longer for them to be loaded from the archives than it did to actually find the trace once they were.  The property had lasted for three generations in the new family before being abandoned by the last remaining girl, who'd left for Away.  After that, it was returned to whatever still wanted it.  Not human.  What human wanted to be here?

He stood, looking at the distant hills, knowing that she... MacKenzie, was still here, at least in the dirt.  He irrationally thought that he should use the systems to look for the brass urn.  Before they'd sealed it, he'd dropped her wedding ring in the urn, too pained to still possess it.  Maybe find the urn.  maybe find the ashes. Maybe remember what the ring looked like.  Maybe.

No. It was there.  He didn't need to see it.  Any of it.

After a thousand years, why had those seventeen years stuck?  Why was she still so vivid?  The wind blew hard enough that he thought he could blame it for the tears.

"I still miss you Mac," he said to the wind.  The hills didn't answer.

Topic: Lost

A short set of shorter vignettes:

One:
"Damn sock."

Two:
As the airplane touched down, Joey switched his phone to transmit.  The carry-on under his first-class seat and the roll of cash in his front pocket were all he needed for the weekend, at least now that the two Jack's had settled nicely into his stomach and consciousness.  He smiled one last time at the flight attendant, who he could see facing him near the cockpit door.

A few screen motions later, and he knew the car would be waiting on the upper level.  He felt a strange pride that it would be on the Arrivals deck... he'd ARRIVED.  Two more texts and a response let him know that his buddy was already checked into the casino.

He glanced once more at the stockinged legs facing him.  "Man, this is going to be a GREAT weekend," he thought.

Three:
"Eh, what's it matter that my phone's about out of juice?  I can get to her house on time, no problem."

Four:
It still felt good to have a real book in my hands.  I don't know about all those moderns who want some gadget with a screen to tell them a story.  This is MY book, and MY time.

Geez, I'm tired.  Might as well go to sleep.  Hmmm, must've left the bookmark out in the other room.  That's okay, I'll remember where I left off tomorrow.

<closes  book>

Five:
Jorge was feeling the music all evening.  It was almost magical, how tight the band was hitting it.  He took a brief pause on the frets with his left hand to grab the beer next to him and take a swig.  Wow, wouldn't it be great to use the bottle as a slide?  Oh, yea, that'd be real rock.  He was already starting into the solo in his mind.

Then he realized that everyone else in the band was looking at him oddly.  Shit, what song were they playing again?

Six:
...

Seven:
I HATE MONOPOLY!!!

Topic: Lost...

 Thom Dunn

Quick salvation credit actually goes to Kaiser, the SNIFFER. He had
been 20 feet away from C3 and had no trouble following the gunpowder
trail to the door. A single bark from this German Shepherd had then
alerted Phyllis, the WATCHER at the C bank of doors.
      Phyllis in turn needed less than a glance to show her the
miserable figure of Theo, the potential SHOOTER approaching the school
diffidently with a long bulge under his great coat. A slam on the C3
button had trapped Theo in a bullet-proof cage. The press of a second
button had activated the school lockjdown protocol causing kids and
teachers to barricade themselves behind specially constructed
classroom doors. A third button had called out the RESPONDERS to whom
now she spoke: " Potential SHOOTER contained at C3. Very likely has
concealed long gun under grey greatcoat."
       The situation was anything but dramatic. Poor Theo had gone to
ground, weeping, shoulders heaving, gun (an AK 47) now visible, the
entire tableau sprawled on the floor of C3, a sad figure in early
defeat.
       Meanwhile, all RESPONDERs , all five of them, had now made it
to several of the gun safes left hanging open while they proceeded to
C3 on the dead run. Against policy, several PARENTs had made their way
to cars and were now gunning their engines.
       And now, Sean reached the scene first to act as NEGOTIATOR, the
only priority left after Theo had been neutralized and the police
notified by Phillis on a special 911 channel.

    Everywhere people were in a flurry of activity, running fumbling,
hiding, heart-pounding unwary of how quietened Theo had been, how
bereft of any ability to take even his own life and how thwarted in
his attempt to achieve suicide-by-cop.

    Theo had had vague hopes of being a SHOOTER but presented himself
now simply as LOST.

Topic: Involving a Pet

Author: Chris Dunn

I can’t recall her name, but I remember she had red hair and was wearing a green dress. Mark, one of my college roommates in our apartment on Arrowhead had offered to let her sleep on our couch and then abruptly went to his room to pass out. He didn’t care. The house had only one communal space, and I was currently occupying that. He didn’t care. This girl had never met me or any of our three other roommates. He didn’t care. Sure the others were all out or asleep, but their presence wouldn’t have increased her conversation options. I had a night of video games planned in lieu of studying, but did he care? No. “Here Chris, take care of Miss Bzzzt while I go catch some sleep. Oh, did I mention, she’s got an iguana?”

That’s right! Perched upon her shoulder, shivering in fear, but desperate for the warmth of her body, sits a tiny, baby iguana. Nearly invisible against the green of her dress, Bzzzt strokes it periodically with her hands to ensure it stays put as we talk. And we talk…

I’ll admit it was the iguana that drew me in, at first. I had always fancied the notion of an exotic pet. As a child, I dreamed of owning a hunting falcon, then a boa constrictor, maybe a tarantula. Okay, not that last one, really. I put on a brave face, but those furry legs really freak me out. I can’t say an iguana was on the list before this night, but afterward, it moved to near the top, not for the creature’s own merit, mind you. It was the girl.

The night which started out with the standard iguana questions: “Where did you get him?” “What does he eat?” “How do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” Quickly morphed into a very different discussion. “Are you going to school here?” “Are you and Mark… No?” “How long will you be staying in town?” And more than that, she was fascinating. The kind of girl who would buy an exotic lizard and hang out discussing it with a total stranger for hours. Sure, I hadn’t been planning on going to class the next day anyway, but that didn’t matter. She was laughing at my jokes, responding to my gambits, sharing funny bits of her own. I would’ve stayed up talking to her all night, and did.

With the morning come the trains which thundered through our backyard. “Oh my god! What is that?” she exclaimed, clutching the lizard tightly to her shoulder, though he didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word panic.

“What’s what?” I asked honestly. If you live next to a train for more than a month, you cease to hear it. It’s amazing what one can get used to. “Oh! The train. Yeah they come by about six times a day. Don’t worry about it.” But it was too late, the spell of the night had been shattered. With the interruption, Bzzzt noticed the light spreading slowly outside the window. Morning was coming on. She decided to call her friends, see if someone can come get her. They can. We talked until they arrived, and then she, and her lizard, were gone.

I’m certain at the time, that I will see her again. Mark will invite her by, or she’ll call to tell me how her pet is doing settled into its new home. The idea that we would only have that one perfect night, feels like tragic poetry, but so it is. Mark tells me, he doesn’t really know her all that well, and throws in some disparaging language to boot. For a while hope lives, but school crushes in. Days become weeks, and before I know it, she’s a 30 year-old anecdote, and I can’t even recall her name.

It would be years before I’d have my own iguana, and it wasn’t even really mine. Technically, Rex belonged to my friend Karl, but he had fucked off to California and left the lizard to the tender ministrations of The Pit. We did what we could. Tony built her an amazing cage and correctly determined her sex as female. We changed her name to Regina and cared for her, until necrosis got into her tail and she wasted away. During that time she did little but sit on a stump, sun underneath the heat lamp, eat candle and leave an amazing number of tiny poops to clean up. Needless to say, the dream of owning a lizard turned out to be far more pleasant than the reality.

Topic: Luck

Thom Dunn

      Lady Luck, once the Goddess Fortuna, has appealed to many
through Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, though many thrilling to Fortuna
Imperatrix Mundi do not all realize that the God of All had once
allowed the Roman Goddess Fortuna to rule over our Earthly habitat. A
kind of compromise: with the swerve to unbelief she had remained to
become Vegas-style roulette wheels to the Wheel of Fortune.  He
thought of this, popping the last of his four ant-cancer capsules this
evening. He admitted to himself that though he could no longer believe
in an omniscient, omnipotent God he had many time prayed to him.
Sometimes out of desperation. Sometimes just for Luck.

Topic: Lost - Super Short Entry

Of all the things that I have lost, I miss my creativity the most.

It’s a side-effect of the drugs that help me function. On the one hand, I miss it terribly. On the other, I jealously guard my functionality.

I haven’t completely lost my creativity. I can still come up with ideas, but I can’t run with them the way that I used to.

I think that the part of my brain that would jump to the worst possible conclusion, and then LIVE THERE for days on end, is the same part of my brain that’s prone to flights of fancy. So, when I turned off one, I turned off the other.

What I really need to do is find a way to tap into other types of creativity. I used to be a pretty good amateur photographer. I still have my eye, I could still take photos.

I’m also a pretty decent cook, and can still get creative in the kitchen.

But words. I’ve lost my words, and all of the wonderful little movies that used to play in my brain 24/7.

Everything is so concrete. So REAL. I used to daydream and now my imagination is a barren wasteland.

I’ll zone out and Chris will ask me what I’m thinking about. The answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Seriously.

It’s all static.

All that clearing of the mind that people try to achieve with meditation and ascetic diets, I have achieved with one 40mg pill every night at bedtime.

I have to PPPUUUULLLL words out of my brain.

I hate that it’s gone, but not as much as you’d think.

Maybe it’s another side-effect of the meds, but I am mostly ok with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love it. But it’s not the heartbreaking loss that it should be.

I’m… chill about it.

Like, intellectually, I understand what I have lost. But, emotionally, it’s not that deep.

I do wish that I could somehow have the best of both worlds, and I envy those who can create without being clinically insane. I wish I could.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get back what I’ve lost to the meds. The only way to know is to stop taking them, and therein madness lies.

I feel like the meds have made me intellectually smarter, but emotionally dumber.

But I do miss the days when characters would tell me their stories all day. It was like having my own personal cinema in my brain.

I’d find the blank spots in my thought unnerving, if I was easily unnerved anymore.

Let’s face it, there’s a part of me that’s dead inside, and the rest of me is walking around the corpse pretending that it doesn’t exist.

That’s not cool.

But I’m not really sure what to do about it. I tried to do things to stimulate that part of my brain, but they didn’t really work. It’s like trying to tie my shoe one-handed.

I got these coloring books and paint by number sets, thinking that if I stimulated my brain with color it would do the trick. It was fun, at first, but I hit a wall.

I lie in bed at night and try to think about old stories that captured my imagination, but the images jump and slip around in my brain like hyperactive fish.

The one thing I do have is my dreams. They are still interesting and creative. They give me hope that that part of my brain isn’t completely cut off. That, maybe, there is some way to tap into the good parts without triggering the bad.

But I have mostly resigned myself to living without that part of my brain.

I am much calmer now. I am much more functional. I’m not so exhausted with the mere act of existing. I don’t want to give that up.

So I put up with the loss. Because I don’t know if I could handle the alternative.

Topic: Luck - Musings on Mental Illness

A few weeks ago I watched this documentary called “32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide.”

I’m a sucker for a good personal documentary, and the more personal the better.

32 Pills… follows the story of a woman going through her older sister’s stuff after keeping it in storage for something like six years after the older woman’s suicide.

Throughout the documentary we learn how brilliant, talented, and creative her sister was. We also learn how troubled she was.

Older sis had some serious mental health issues. So serious, in fact, that she was on hundreds of different medications over the course of 10 years. There was one scene where the documentarian set out all of her sister’s prescription bottles on one of those long folding tables. The bottles took up the entire table, and there were still bottles left in the giant tub that she was pulling them from.

There was some debate as to the true nature of her illness. Bipolar, borderline, no one knew for sure. What they did know was that the medications, many of them generic and name brand forms of the same thing, didn’t work for her.

They didn’t stop her from checking herself into Bellevue multiple times. They didn’t stop her from making 20, or so, previous suicide attempts. And they didn’t stop her from making that final, successful, attempt.

So what does this have to do with luck?

Well, I have mental illness. I AM mentally ill. For me, it started sometime around Jr. High, but the years leading up to it were no picnic. I don’t know if the years of bullying I endured caused the anxiety and depression, or if they just laid the foundation for a building that was in progress long before I ever took my first breath in the world.

I do know that my mother has, what my grandmother called, a nervous disposition. I know that her anxieties often had a profound effect on my life. But I also know that we never talked about my mother’s anxiety, and still don’t talk about it to this day.

But anyway, I have anxiety and depression, and a touch of seasonal affective disorder, and that makes me lucky.

Why?

Well, I have been on meds for the past few years. Actually, let me go back.

When I was in my 20s I was diagnosed bipolar. With the type of mood swings I had, and the way my anxiety would manifest as hyperactivity, that seemed to fit.

I was put on lithium and Zoloft, and took it faithfully for 10 years. It seemed to help a little, but I think the biggest thing those drugs did was give me a sort of security blanket.

In 2000 I went off all meds, and stayed off until around 2015.

So, for 15 years I went unmedicated. Well, sort of. I was on depo-provera, which seemed to help a lot with the anxiety. I don’t really know how that worked, but I suspect that my brand of mental illness is directly tied to my monthly cycle, and that my body has a love/hate relationship with estrogen.

Around 2015 I realized that the depo-provera wasn’t really doing it for me anymore. Plus, my doctor felt that I had been on it for too long, so I switched to something else.

I was also going through a serious rough patch in my life, and my anxiety was working overtime.

Way back in 2000 I had promised myself, and my doctor at the time, that if I felt that I could no longer cope without meds that I would go back on them. I decided to keep that promise to myself and got help.

I ended up going back to the doctor who had originally diagnosed me as bipolar (a long story for another time), and was put on Zoloft again. He also put me on a new drug called Latuda. An antipsychotic that was approved for use with bipolar depression.

Latuda was like a godsend. It completely nullified my anxiety, and did so within days of using it. It worked better than anything I’ve ever tried.

It worked so well that I was, and am, able to drink coffee without losing my shit.

It’s that good.

And here’s what makes me lucky.

First: my brand of mental illness is fairly mild. I COULD survive without medication, but that’s an exhausting proposition. Still, I am a good 80% functional without it. Ok, maybe 70%. And I’m reasonably ok at faking it for that remaining 30%. The years that I went unmedicated weren’t easy, but they could have been so much worse. There are people that are so much worse.

Second: I found medication that works. I was lucky that I didn’t have to play medicine roulette. Sure, I had to make a few adjustments, try a few different things. But the Latuda was the first new drug we tried and it worked right out of the gate. The only reason we tried anything else was because of insurance.

Third: I have a good job, with insurance, and a partner who has the financial means to help me out when I need it. Last year I switched to my employer’s insurance, which had $1,500 deductible that I had to meet before coverage would kick in. Chris was able to help me meet that deductible so that I could continue taking my meds (Latuda is $1,000 a month without coverage) and get my coverage started.

Hearing stories of people with mental illnesses worse than mine, I sometimes feel like an imposter. Like I’m not nearly sick enough to consider myself among the ranks of the truly mentally ill. That I’m too functional and too stable.

Sure, I have trouble in the darkest days of winter, and Christmastime is the worst part of the year for me, but I still manage to get up and function. I barely function, but I function. I know that there are people who can’t even get out of bed during that time of year.

But then I have to remind myself that I am medicated, and that does make a difference.

I also have to remind myself that my luck in the mental illness lottery doesn’t make me any less sick. It just makes me sick in a different way.

Topic: Lost

Author: Chris Dunn

Perhaps it is my angle as I stare from a safe distance, or the overarching canopy of the trees all around us, but the square hole in the building’s free-standing foundation seems to allow no light to penetrate – a yawning black abyss of unknown. The stone slab is the closest thing to civilization I’ve seen in hours, a sure sign that at least at some point people had to have been here. That hope drew me in, but there is no salvation here other than what might lie undiscovered below. On shaky knees, I inch closer and closer as Curiosity duels with Fear until Reason finally wins out.

Reason: “What good thing could possibly be down there? A working phone? A helpful, kindly hermit? The best you can hope for is a disappointing nothing. Just say that’s what you found and move on. Don’t forget, you’re ten years-old, and you’re lost in the woods.”

Turning away, the forested hills surrounding me don’t offer much better in the way of options. They are a bland map of repetitive and aimless certainty.

Curiosity: “Pick a direction and wander. They’re all the same when you’re lost. The hole is at least unique. Surely, whatever is down there is superior to continually roaming about. And can you bear not knowing. Just a quick peak…”

I turn back to the stygian rectangle.

Fear: “Spiders, snakes, killers and foul odors. A bear. A bobcat. A pool of brackish, stagnant water. Any kind of wild animal!”

Back to the hills and brush.

Reason: “These woods are filled with your fellow campers and councilors. If you keep moving, you’ll eventually have to find someone. Someone is surely looking for you. You’re a kid for christ-sake!”

The game is called foxes and hares. Half the kids are prey and half predators. We, prey animals, were given a ten minute head start to hide somewhere in the vast woods that surround the camp, and then on the whistle the foxes were loosed and the hunt was on. Pretty straight forward, sort of a primal variation of hide and seek. Those of us who complained about being hunted were assured that the next time, we would switch roles. Then the clock started and Panic supplanted Reason.

Panic: “Mustn’t get caught!”

At first we flee in packs, Instinct tells me that this is sound strategy, safety in numbers. Each fox can only capture one hare, as long as we outnumber them, the odds are in my favor. This proves fun and profitable for a while, but as the game wears on, and our numbers dwindle, my tiny “pack” of four feels like slim armor against a pursuing band of three. This is where Logic comes up with his great idea.

Logic: “Ditch them! The same math that guarded you when the pack was large, will work in reverse now the pack is lean. Why should the foxes break off and chase a lone hare down into a ravine, when the main pack was still on the trail. They’ll chase the bigger meal more certain to catch something.”

I drifted toward the back, waited for the foxes to close, and then cut sharply downhill. Off-trail the going is rougher, footing less certain, but my plan proves sound. No longer feeling their breath on my neck, I pause against the brace of a tree to look up and see my former pack mates getting overtaken. No pursuit comes my way. I am safe. And alone…

Doubt: “And that how you got us in this mess! You and your big ideas. Win the game, but get eaten by bears. Good going, Logic!”

Hunger: “We’re going to starve out here.”

Fear: “What happens when night falls?”

A whistle was supposed to sound to call us in after a half hour of this fun, if brutal, activity. I haven’t heard a whistle, or another human in what feels like hours. The trails crisscross and backtrack over the hills in a maze of confusion. Reason and Intellect try to keep me going in a single direction, arguing that to be the most sound plan.

Doubt: “Unless you started off picking the wrong way, then you’re just getting further and further from help. Don’t you think if there was help in this direction you would have found it by now?”

Reason: “Turning around will take twice as long just to get back to where we were.”

This silences Doubt.

Hope: “What’s that sound!”

Hurrying toward the noise, the forest thins at a chain link fence. Beyond it stands a two-lane highway followed by a mirror fence and more forest. Hope dances in my brain. Reason counts off the various blessings this means.

Reason: “Roads mean civilization. Roads mean people. Fences mean containment. We can’t have wandered too far…”

Doubt: “You can’t climb this fence!”

Fear: “Your pants will snag on the barbs, and you’ll die suspended by your ankles!”

Doubt: “What are you going to do? Flail your arms to flag down a random motorist. Hope they stop to aid in your plight.”

Fear: “Strangers are dangerous.”

Reason: “There aren’t any cars coming anyway. We’ll just follow the fence as best we can. It’s the closest we’ve come to civilization since the hole.”

Curiosity: “I wonder what was in there….”

The thick and random nature of virgin forest doesn’t allow for me to keep the fence immediately at hand, but I wander as close as possible keeping it on my left side, the road beyond like a river which must eventually lead me back to life. Cars are sparse. As each one passes, Doubt and Fear argue pros and cons, though they keep switching sides. My legs ache, and burs cling to my clothes and hair in the hundreds, but in the end, it is Stubbornness who wins the day. One of my oldest and loudest voices, he often poses as Confidence.

Stubbornness: “I will find my way out. I don’t need any help. I will keep moving forward and everything will work out.”

And he’s right! Eventually the forest thins. To my right I see building through the trees and take the chance to leave my blacktop river behind.

Fear: “But strangers!”

Fatigue: “Fuck that! Let them eat me.”

Coming around the first building I not only find people, but MY people. Amazingly, my cabin mates are right there, sitting at picnic table doing some inane craft project. They spot me as I wander out of the woods. I am certain I look like Grizzly Adams after my lost hours in the wild, but they know my face and greet me with wonder. “There are people looking all over for you.” “Where have you been?”

“I was lost,” I tell them. But never alone.

Topic: Luck

           It was a Thursday night and my parents had choir practice at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Newport, KY. My sister was only a couple years older than me so we couldn't be left home alone. Thus, we attended all the masses, choir practice, and church events. We were very accustomed to the church life. We were a church family; a catholic family. My dad actually had Pentecostal roots. That's one of those churches where people speak in tongues, dance down the isles, faint from the miracle of healing, and become possessed by demons and alternately are exorcised by the preacher. Women didn't cut their hair or wear pants. All the women wore long skirts or dresses, had ornate fixtures on their head that was their hair. We had left such a church only a couple years earlier. Much to my Mother's relief, Dad converted the family to Catholicism. She felt like she was returning home to the faith of her upbringing; perhaps only then understanding the extent of the madness she'd been participating in at the Pentecostal church as she walked through the stone passages, cathedral domes, and detailed carvings of the crucified Jesus Christ, and the sacred heart of Mary. Such carvings were displayed in this sanctuary on this particular night. 

     It was very dark and the street in front of the building was a busy one. Cars would speed by most times of the day. The inside of the church was cavernous and quite long in length. If I remember correctly there was an odd green carpet running from the crucifix all the way to the double doors which opened to the street outside. 

     Choir practices seemed like an eternity. To keep ourselves entertained we usually brought along a sizeable Crayola tin full of broken crayons of every color. Jungle green, cayenne, violet, and fuchsia to name a few. Sometimes we played cards or tic tac toe. My sister almost always won. 

       On this particular night we sat in the seventh or eighth pew from the front where my dad conducted choir practice. While Dad waved his hand through the air to lead the vocalists, my sister and I colored on blank sheets of white paper. Ali colored in a Little Mermaid coloring book while I created my own race of purple and green monsters. 

       I remember being tired that night. The drone of the choir and the organ had a sedating quality the way it reverberated through massive stone structure. My eyelids grew heavy as I scribbled on the paper and before i knew it I was unconscious. I don't remember what position I lay in, but my head was likely resting on the seat of bench with legs on the kneeler. I went into a strange dream. The church was dark and I was alone. Sitting in the front pew. The statues of saints and the crucifix looked eerie in the silence of God. I then saw a light beckoning to me. It flowed softly from the back doors. I stood up and proceeded to follow the light in a slow, reverent manner. In a processional, I arrived closer and closer to the light and it grew brighter and brighter until it began to envelop me and saturate my vision. My fear came to an apex and as my heart pounded. Then the floor disappeared and I went into free fall. And just when the feeling was too overwhelming I opened my eyes. My dad's face was only a few inches I front of mine and he looked terrified. The sounds of passing cars could be heard all around as my dad shook me further awake. It was then that I realized we were outside, standing in the street. I began to cry. My mother rushed forward and put her arms around me. That wasn't the first time I had sleepwalked. This time i nearly walked into traffic. My parents would later tell me that they observed me walking around the sanctuary toward the backdoors. In the middle of one of their hymns, my Mom said she had heard a voice compelling her to go check on me. By that time I was walking through the back door. Choir practice was halted immediately as my parents rushed to fetch me. Had my mom not noticed me and had she not heeded her premonition...

    There were many more choir practices to attend. Many more nights of sleepwalking, falling asleep in the dark of midnight mass; many more prayer services, funerals and weddings of strangers, passion plays of the crucifixion, reconciliation, and glowing candle-lit vigils in the ghostly streets of town as the congregation would chant "Lord Hear Our Prayer." 

Topic: Luck

     When I was in first grade at Goodman Elementary school in Cincinnati, Ohio we had a magician come to our school.  I don't recall why we had a school-wide magic show, only that the year was 1971, and it was a typical school day.  At the conclusion of the big show each of us got a pencil with stars on it that the magician told us was a magic pencil and that the pencil would bring us good luck. 
And even though it was a standard number two pencil with no apparent magical or lucky characteristics, I believed him. 
     As I walked the half mile or so home to our apartment I dreamed of what having good luck would mean.  I had a crush on one of the boys in my class.  Perhaps, with my lucky pencil I would write him a note, and he would start liking me back!  I wanted a new bike for Christmas.  I had my eye on one I had seen at Sears a week before.  It was purple with a glittery banana seat.  Maybe when I wrote it on my Christmas wish list with my lucky pencil it would be mine.  I knew it would take luck or magic, because my mom had told me it was way too expensive. 
     As I neared the apartment I reached for my pencil.  I wanted to have it ready so I could show my mom.  It wasn't there.  I scoured my book bag and even turned it upside down but the lucky pencil was gone.  I saw a small hole in the bottom corner of the bag where it could have fallen out.  Tears welled up as I turned back and retraced my steps all the way back to the school and back home again.  By the time I had done that I was seriously late-and I still hadn't found my lucky pencil.  My mom was pissed.  I told her she shouldn't be mad because I had a good reason for being late. I just knew that once I explained about the lucky pencil she would understand. She didn't. 
     "I don't believe in luck, " she told me.  When I told her about the boy, she said luck and magic didn't enter into it.  "If he doesn't like you, it's his loss.  He's the unlucky one," she added.  She reiterated that they still couldn't afford the bike, and that if I really wanted it I should save up my money and buy it myself.  Then she told me to dry my eyes, wash my face, change my clothes, and do my homework. 
     My mom meant it when she said that she didn't believe in luck.  She did believe in hard work and determination. I knew my parents' money was tight.  My dad worked as a college professor and she had three children under the age of ten.  To make extra money she put an ad in the paper and sold handmade Barbie doll clothes.  I remember her charging $5.00 for a Barbie wedding dress-that seemed like a lot of dough at the time.  She wasn't waiting for luck or fortune to smile upon her. 
     When I was in second grade, 1972, mom got her driver's license and decided to go to law school at night.  None of my friend's moms went to law school.  I don't have many memories of my mom sleeping back then.  When I awoke for school she was up and dressed and getting ready to head to her part time job at a legal publishing company.  If I woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream I'd find her in the dining room poring over law books and legal pads covering the entire surface of the table.
     Luck didn't enter into it when she graduated four years later, passed the bar exam on the first try, and soon was running that legal publishing company.  I don't think she ever bought a lottery ticket.  And if she threw some cash into a Superbowl pool, bet on the horse with coolest name at the racetrack, or bought a raffle ticket at the P.T.A. meeting, she never put up more than she could afford to lose. 
     After losing the lucky pencil I tried to adopt my mom's attitude.  She taught me that the only thing we can truly control in this life is ourselves.  Good stuff happened and horrible heartbreaking stuff happened, and it all seemed and still seems so arbitrary and capricious.  But what I did with my time and my energy and talents--that was up to me.  About a year after losing that pencil I bought that  purple bike from Sears and my parents sent me to a new school, the Catholic school that at that time served grades 2-8.  And it was there that I had my first requited schoolgirl crush.  Lucky me. 

Topic: Luck

Grenn did not know fear. Blood and fury, gore and death, these things he knew well, he had made them his constant companions. Fear had left him years ago, lost on some forgotten battlefield. Fear was a thing for children and women. Grenn was a mountain of meat and rage and only the foolish stood in his way. One such fool did so on this day. He would not be there long.

The fool did know fear. His village was lost, it’s defenders scattered. Their homes burned as Grenns raiders pillaged and robbed. Yet he was brave. He held sword and a shield at the ready, he would not run. Perhaps his futile stand would give time for some few of his charges to flee to the hills, his life traded for a child, a mother, a family. Grenn could respect that. With a grunt and a glance he signaled his men to give them space and hefted his battle axe. The fool’s sword only wavered slightly as Grenn strode forward.

With a ferocious roar Grenn wound up for a two handed roundhouse swing aimed at the man’s shield, anticipating the crunch of metal as the blow connected. He was already preparing the backhand his foe would stumble straight into, seeing it played out in his mind as so many others had fallen before him.

*THUNK*

Confused, Grenn felt the shock of impact as his axe met with a decidedly unmetallic substance.. His foe (who had closed his eyes in anticipation of his impending doom,) opened them and both of them stared dumbfounded at the axe, buried in the trunk of a stout tree.

“Where did that come from?” thought Grenn. The villager, just as surprised, failed to take advantage of the opening as Grenn wrenched the weapon loose.

Mentally scolding himself for careless overconfidence, Grenn switched his stance, making some probing swings that forced his opponent to dance back. With reach on his side it was only a matter of time before he connected. After a few tense moments he saw his opening, a brief stumble left his opponents shield low. With speed belied by his size Grenn sprang, aiming a devastating chop at the man’s exposed neck. It was a killing blow that often ended in a spectacular decapitation.

*Thud*
*Oof*

Grenn briefly saw stars as his skull hit the paving stones. His axe skidded away. Looking down, saw what he had tripped on, a root from that damnable tree had ages ago pushed up under the pavers just enough to trip the unwary.

As he was making a mental note to have his men burn that damn tree to the ground he was reminded of his opponent, who had recovered his wits enough to press his own attack.

The blows were frantic and unpracticed, most glancing off his armor as Grenn  scrambled to his feet and retrieved his axe.

“Time to finish this,” he thought as he spun to face the man again. Grenn towered over him and raised his axe, preparing to split the poor youth in two like a rail. The villager finally quailed, his courage failed and he turned to run, Grenn barked a savage laugh and without lowering his massive weapon moved to chase the coward down.

*Crash*

He was sprawled face first in the street when he looked up he saw the brave young man and a surprising number of fellow villagers escaping to the south. As he tried to rise he felt suddenly chilled in a rather sensitive area. Looking back he realized that his pants had fallen down and tangled his feet. At some point in the desperate flurry of blows that had failed to even scratch him the bastard had sliced clean through Grenn’s belt.

All around him his men, hardened raiders all stood gaping. First one smirked, another tittered. Soon the whole company was guffawing as their commander struggled to his feet and and wrestled his dignity back into place.

Finally, as his foe escaped into the hills and laughter taunted him from all sides, only then did Grenn remember. Only then did he remember fear.

(This has been a story about rolling ones.)

Lou Doench