Topic: Shopping

Author: Chris Dunn

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a moment, pinioned by fortune with nowhere to run, where all you can do is concede and accept that you are trapped this time, and that the easiest way out is to take your punishment and try to recover? Sure, right... Many times, but each one leaves its particular mark on your memory.

I was a month or two into my first retirement somewhere in the early 00’s. Anderson Publishing had grown too big in its small pond and rather than allow the tiny upstart to make waves in the online ocean, LexisNexis had come swimming along and gobbled us up. The buyout price on shares of stock was substantial, and I had managed to negotiate a nice bonus for my tech team on top of that. By negotiate, I mean, I went to the Lexis partner in charge of the transition and told him, “Curtis is about to walk. I can’t do it without Curtis.”

“How much does he want?” asked the unnamed suit.

“Like $10,000,” I opened with. Curtis had initially thought the transition job was worth closer to $50,000, but we knew such high numbers were beyond the pale, so we agreed I should start at 10K and accept 8K.

“We can make that happen,” said the suit, adding on that we should likely make similar - though smaller - accommodations for the rest of the tech team including myself. Damn! I’m an awesome negotiator.

Anyway, along with cashing out my 401k, it added up to an estimated three year ride without needing to make another dollar. I was living in the latter days of my commune at the time and my monthly nut was in the low hundreds. I took it all as a sign. It was time to write my novel.

Back in high school, we did one of those, “Where do you see yourself at 35?” essays, and in addition to a naively optimistic view of my social life, I predicted for myself that I would be working on my “Second novel…” by then. As I at this time 33, and had yet to write the first one, I saw this as an issue. Remember, I was a math major at one point. But fate had intervened! A window was open, and all I had to do was jump out. What else was I waiting for?

I committed to the project. I already had an outline for an extensive fantasy series based around a campaign which had just ended. 150 pages of notes, places, and storylines surrounding El’aNac and his adventures. I’d write a page a day. In 300 or so days, BAM! I’d have a novel. It worked! It worked amazingly well. I had two novels done by 35, and 6 finished before I had to go find another job. They were some great, and productive years, but this story isn’t about that.

You see the downside to writing a page each day, is it doesn’t really fill up a whole day, more like an hour. All I was really doing was fluffing up the outline into a more cohesive narrative. My players had already built the characters. The major scenes were all set. They just need some dialogue and some framing material. Once the hour of work for the day was completed, what was left to do?

I decided to get in shape. I bought myself a gym membership at the local tennis club. Ostensibly, I had planned to build stamina playing racquetball. But after 20 minutes on the court left me gasping for air and clutching my chest, I decided I would need to work up to that. Fortunately, the tennis club had a gym, and a near perfect one at that. Lots of machines, free weights, treadmills and nearly nobody in sight. I never had to wait for my turn or reserve a machine. I could go from the elliptical to the treadmill to the weight bench, according to the whim of the moment. I stayed mostly on the treadmill. “Cardio, that’s the key. Build that stamina…” I told myself.

On most days my dad came along and walked on the treadmill next to me. He did wonders for my confidence and sense of productivity. We’d put in thirty minutes a day, three days a week and even at such a meager pace, it was beginning to show dividends. Each day, I found I could a little longer without walking breaks, and I began to even fantasize about maybe doing a 5K run that coming Spring. I wasn’t hoping to win, or anything, but I felt confident I could finish, and that was saying something considering where I had started in the late fall.

One winter’s morning, my father and I trudged through the slush in the parking lot headed to our latest exercise appointment. As usual, dad wore his exercise attire to the gym - his technique did not involve sweat, so he headed straight to the treadmills. I, however, was all-in. I had the gym bag and a key lock for the locker. I brought my own towel and a change of clothes. My method involved sweating so badly, I needed new socks at run’s end. But this day, after I found an empty locker and opened my bag, I realized, “Crap!” I had forgotten to pack my gym shorts.

It would take me over thirty minutes to go home and get new ones. By that time, my dad would be finished and wondering whatever happened to me. I could go tell him, take him home, but that just seemed like a hassle. WAIT! This place is a tennis club. They’ve got a shop that sells all kind of gear. I’ll just go buy a pair of shorts. I needed a new pair anyway. Sure enough, though the place was little more than a 10 x 10 room at the front of the facility, they had plenty of shorts to choose from, and in my size as well.

“Okay, if that’s all,” said the attendant as she rang up the garment. “That’ll be $43…” And some change, I’m sure, but my mind was stuck on $43! For a pair of shorts? I didn’t need special tennis shorts with some animal logo, I just need a pair of drawstring, sweat-catchers to avoid the scandal of running in my boxer briefs! $43?!

“Fine,” I said, hoping my face did not look as stunned as my mind was. “Can I charge that?”

I still have those shorts, mind you.

Topic: Sailing

Author: Chris Dunn

I’ve had lessons, several lessons, and once or twice I piloted a sunfish under the supervision of the Boy Scouts, but I wouldn’t arguably call myself a legitimate sailor. Sometimes I wish for a catastrophe or an emergency that would put be to the test. “We’ve got to get this medicine through, but the hospitals on the other side of this narrow stretch of river. Can anyone pilot this already-outfitted, fairly small watercraft?!” I bet I could make it, or at least I could do better than most people. Sure we’d end up several miles downstream and have to walk the serum home, but that still counts.

I’ve never been on a powerboat, nothing greater than a rowboat with an outboard motor anyway. I have no stories involving water skis, but I’ve been sailing – dozens of times. Growing up, my family owned a sailboat – a twenty footer we stored at one of the local lakes. Two or three times a summer we toss the family into the car with a cooler full of sodas and sandwiches and labor down to the dock. The tricky bit was to make sure we didn’t forget the winch handle. Now where did we leave that last time…? The whole enterprise failed without the winch handle. It controlled the mechanism which lowered the boat into the water, and raised it back out when were done – a huge monstrosity of wood and steel that we had constructed at the water’s edge before pitching off the dock into our assigned mooring space. I remember wondering why somebody wouldn’t just come by and steal our boat once we were gone. Of course, they couldn’t do squat without the winch handle.

I don’t know how to speak in the appropriate glowing terms to describe my father as a boat captain without risking defaming him onshore, in comparison. Let me try by first saying, I love my father above all men and would ask for no other father on land or sea, but that being said, on the water he’s a different guy – confident, authoritative, knowledgeable and quick. For the few hours we were on the water, my mother would take a rare back seat and leave everything in his capable hands. Under his command, no one was ever struck by the boom, no sailor shirked their life jacket, and even still, not one child was ever lost overboard. Back and forth and around the lake, as the sun baked our skins and the sandwiches got soggy from cooler condensation, we would sail for hours. We each took our turn at the tiller or controlling the boom. I learned how to measure the wind and spot a luffing sail.

Eventually the wind would die, or our flesh would lobster, and still as excited as the moment we raised sail, we’d be forced to make for the dock. The downside to sailing – outside of a day with zero wind – is that when you’re done sailing, your day is FAR from done. Dock the boat, winch it out of the water (make sure you don’t misplace that handle!), stow the ropes, tie down the mainsail, haul out the cooler, and numerous other little chores and duties your suddenly exhausted limbs scream at. I think I slept through every car ride home, only to awaken to the resumption of old roles and family structures.

In time the dock fees took their toll, and other activities pressed out the weekends available to make paying said fees worthwhile. The boat was sold and the winch handle passed to new owners. I wonder if that boat still sails, spraying some other amazed youngster with its wake as it glides along atop the water, propelled by wind alone.

It was probably the early 90s, the last time my father and I were on the water together. It was either a Father’s Day gift or a treat for his birthday. We went out to the lake, and I rented us a Sunfish for a couple of hours. The winds were light and the boat was small, but still he managed to find enough wind to skip it along the water for our allotted time. We had some laughs, and we made a promise to do it again – maybe next year, or sooner. But like many such Harry Chapin promises, seasons passed with only the occasional, “remember that time we…” to mark their passing.

But still, at the rare times when the question arises, I like to call myself a sailor – son of a sailor anyway…

Sailing

Thom Dunn

You might not think of Detroit as a place for competition sailing, but the Detroit River runs past Wayne State, host of a college sailing team regatta. The course (this is a river, remember) was a single straight line from one buoy to the next a mere 100 yards upstream. I saw the only shot as getting over to windward, giving way as need be, and then coming about onto starboard and going straight for the upward mark. (We could not afford to come about while reaching for that windward mark). We (Ken Engler was my crew) squeezed past the mark along with several other boats that read the odd course correctly.

The challenge then was to shift full out, wung out wing and wing. In addition, we held our windbreakers open to catch a bit more breeze.

We didn't win, but we got a lot of cheers from the shore. Downwind we didn't move in the boat, but we took on water steadily until going past the finish line we were on our way down. In a play for gallantry we held our course and held our wing-out stance, sinking just as we crossed the finish life. What cheers ! what applause ! This was the most satisfying race we had ever run, coming in second in all the many races in the Midwest Sailing competition.

'Time of my life.

Mother: Acetobacter

He peered into the bottle.  "What the heck is that?"

"Well, most people think it's a fungus, but it's really a form of cellulose and bacteria. Perfectly harmless, and actually quite beneficial if your wine isn't that good to start," he replied.

"Well," said the first, "I suppose every dog has its day, so to speak."

"I suppose you pay extra for it these days."

"Indeed."

"Well, at least the salad should be tasty."

"Indeed."

Mother

I was conceived Catholic, probably during the third week of March. 1968. Which gave my zygote a front row seat for my parents nuptials that 25th of May.

I would be followed into this world on a fairly regular schedule over the next 16 years by seven other little miracles. You see my Dad was Catholic and a hypochondriac who was convinced that regular sex was necessary for prostate health. He was also terrified of Hell, where a succession of pontiffs had decreed he would be headed if he used prophylactic interventions. The onslaught only ceased when Mom got her tubes tied after the arrival of Andrew. The baby machine was closed

After Dad’s untimely encounter with mortality, a blessedly quick affair involving Newton’s laws of motion and an out of control minivan intersecting his morning walk, we discovered the existence of my older sister given up for adoption before my folks hooked up.

Nine little humans were gestated in Moms uterus, an organ that eventually had to be removed entirely simply from the wear and tear.

It takes a certain orneriness to have that big a family, something Mom inherited from Grandma Brinkman, a battle scarred veteran of 12 births who nevertheless made it almost to the century mark. Brinkman ladies are hard to take out. Aunt Pat is celebrating her 9th decade this summer.

It takes its toll though. Mom is now heading into her mid seventies and she’s had two medulla strokes, type 2 diabetes, and a myocardial infarction that probably would have killed a bull moose. And despite all that she’s still kicking, if a little slower than before.

I don’t recommend a family of ten to anyone, it was a farm family crammed into a suburban house. Too many idle hands. Mom and Dad didn’t always handle it well and we certainly weren’t as helpful as we should have been.

But despite the twists and turns and sudden tragedies she is still with us. Not everyone I know has that privilege, I don’t take that lightly. Let’s keep it that way for awhile.

Topic: Mother

Author: Chris Dunn

The band is hammering into the latter-half of their set, and at this point the crowd is on their feet, dancing and hopping in a way I’ve only witnessed at a SHADOWRAPTR show. I down the last of my beer and start a debate with the sensible side of my brain who cautions once more against ordering another.

“It’s late and they’re almost done and you’ve already got a good buzz on. Why spend another six bucks?”

“Yeah, but… Party!” The pro-beer side of my brain does lack a certain eloquence, but his voice is louder. Screaming about good times and happy vibes and hippy children crowd surfing in a tiny backroom bar, he drowns all arguments of reason, until.

“Yeah, but what about mom?”

Shit! This good point cuts throat all the haze, loud music and distortion – strikes right to my core and wakes me up. Mom is here! Somewhere in this sweaty press of bodies a 70 year old woman is lost and alone! Having worked her way down the hill to see her grandson’s band perform, having waited patiently through opening bands and house delays, having removed her hearing aids due to their unnecessary ineffectiveness – Dee Dunn is still here, at the Tavern, at half-passed one in the morning. At least, I think she is… I go in search, but it doesn’t take long. Two steps away, crawling over the back row of people, I find her sitting calmly at our table a fresh glass of Dewar’s resting before her and a contented smile on her face.

“HAH! Take that sensible-head!”

“Fine, fine, get another beer then.”

If there’s one thing you need to know about my mom, she liked to party. Cast parties, birthday parties, holiday parties, derby parties, Indy 500, Superbowl, Final 4. You name the occasion, she’d throw a party. That was the thing, she didn’t just like to go to parties, she had to plan them - prepare, cook and throw them. Guest lists, menus, place cards, party favors, party games, mixers, events planned down to the matching, themed drink stirrers. She did it all, and she did it up right. The years I did time as a vegetarian, she made sure to include menu items for me. Even afterward, when I had seen the but-bacon-tastes-good light, she continued to make sure there were options for my friends whose enlightenment took slightly longer than my own. She wanted everyone to have a good time, to feel welcome and included. And then, she wanted to be in there with them. She’d close down every Christmas party, see you to the door on New Year’s Eve checking you were good to drive, and even hit last call with the millennials.

The late, great comedian, Bill Hicks once said, “I never stole to buy drugs. I worked to buy drugs! That’s how it’s done. You work to make the money, then use the money to buy the drugs.”

Mom once shared a similar sentiment which will always stick with me. It was Thanksgiving. That meant, turkey, onions, mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, cranberry sauce (both canned and fresh), rolls, all the trimming with hors d’oeuvres and every kind of drink option you can think of. She’d planned for weeks and cooked for days, made sure we had enough place settings and chairs for all, even room for a bit of overflow for those times when a plus one came out of nowhere.

I’d arrived early to see if there was anything she might need help with. After all, she wasn’t a young woman any longer, the effort had to be taxing. Typically she put me to work gathering up my father’s sprawl. He has a switch in his brain that cannot suffer a clear, horizontal surface  to exist and considers a pile of boxes to already be “put away”. (More on that Sunday June 17^th) But when I arrived the house was already prepared. The kitchen was alive with cooking smells, and there I found her, staring at the oven. I inquired, and she informed me that things were almost ready. There was nothing for me to do. “Well, can I at least get you a drink?” I asked. “Is it about scotch-time?”

“No, no,” she said. “It’s not scotch-time, yet. I need to finish the potatoes first, then it’ll be scotch-time.”

Such simple, pure wisdom. Do your work, do what is required of you, but remember to enjoy yourself. Don’t forget what all that hard work is for.

Next time you’re at a party, and you know you’ve earned it through your hard work living this life and taking care of your fellow human beings, think about Dee Dunn and be happy. But don’t waste your time trying to find her, she’s in the joy all around you.

Topic: Cheating

Thom Dunn

No question about it: I had cheated, taking a small poem for some use in an English theme. But Miss Ballard, our 9th grade English teacher found out about it and called me on it. Here's how she called me on it. In class while we were all seated she shouted at me:

"Blah, blah, blah....that YOU CHEATED ! AND NOW THE WHOLE SCHOOL KNOWS YOU'RE A CHEAT !!!.”

Shouting was her common mode of upbraiding students and she did it a lot, and so, curiously, few took notice of what she said.

[ I want to interject here that copying a single poem does not per se make me for all time A cheat. ]

Poor, aging , single, apoplectic, heavy Miss Ballard. I recall she gave her "cheat" one more chance during a spelling bee (bea) calling from the back of the auditorium that "kindergarten" was spelled with a "t" and not a "d". I spoke into the stage mic: : "I did say "d" at which point someone in the audience opined, "Well at least he's honest" So what think you, reader: Half a cheat ? The occasional cheat ? Still wholly a cheat ?

Now, in 1953, Miss Ballard had not been allowed to marry. (One woman was discovered to have had a secret marriage and was immediately fired. ) So it was that when her father died that year, her father for whom she was the sole care giver, she was bereft. She stood in a fine blue dress in the corridor staring at the floor, hands clasped in front of her while the school kids flowed around her and (once out of her sight ) stared at one another and made inquisitor faces.

I want to conclude, as God is my judge, that I took no satisfaction at that moment, or since, in her obviously crushing grief. This was bigger than any cheating, too big for vindictiveness. SHE had not cheated and now she was left alone in age, something I know about.  She was more, it turned out, than a battle axe, as I claim still to be more than a cheat.

Topic: Cheating

Author: Chris Dunn

Remember Trouble? I’m not talking about lower case “t” trouble, which is little more than a synonym for difficulty. I mean the real deal, capital “T”, voice weighty with its dread import, Trouble. As in, “Awww…. You’re going to get in Trouble….” When those words were said, and their reality sank in, you knew it was true. The world was over, or at least your place in it had run its course. You had transgressed, and you had been caught, and now Trouble would find you. It seemed all mirth vanished from the world as a black pit of emptiness consumed joy, feeding on its carcass to fatten itself and replicate.

This was the pit where I found myself, deep within the belly of Trouble. I should’ve studied. I should’ve cared about religion class. I should’ve just failed the quiz and taken my lumps, but Noooo! I had to go and try to cheat. It all seemed so innocent and easy. A quick look, the briefest of glances at Doug Bruns’ paper to catch a few keywords. Even back then, before I had earned my degree in the fine art of bullshit, the gift of gab was in me. I knew if I could get just get the vaguest idea about what to say, that the I could fill in the rest with boilerplate and buzzwords. It might not be 100% correct, but it would at least look like I had opened the book or skimmed the contents and bold type (neither of which had happened, btw). I had NO idea what this question was asking, and a blank was a zero! I couldn’t have that. Just a quick look.

“Mr. Dunn! That little look just bought you a day of jug!” Brother Mike declared loudly before the entire class. He sounded so smug and pleased with himself, like he’d just foiled a kidnapping or saved a child from a burning building. Jug was what the Friars at Roger Bacon called detention. There were many theories as to how it got that nickname, short for “justice under God” being most prominent. But in that moment none of that mattered. I had cheated. AND, I had been caught! I was in it. T R O U B L E! In my household, cheating was worse than failure, purportedly. And detention… I felt cold all over, and I was having trouble breathing. I wanted to wake up, a do-over, to plead my case and explain this was all just an innocent misunderstanding.

But there was nothing for it. It was done. Slowly I came to the realization that I was breathing, that time was still flowing in a forward direction, and that the quiz was still going on. I put my pen to the paper and used the work to banish the thoughts of dread. Detention or no, the glance had actually proved quite fruitful. The insight I’d gained, was enough to fill in the space provided with enough detail and verbiage that I could at least avoid looking completely ignorant.

And time continued it forward march. Despite the fact that I’d been killed in the middle of the quiz, they were collected. We went on to our next classes, my friends finding great humor in my demise and sparing no opportunity to inform me of the Trouble-state in which I now found myself.  I slogged through the thick muck of the day, waiting for my heart to realize I’d been killed and so stop, until slowly a light began to dawn. I was not dead! In fact, I had gotten off quite lightly. According to the school rules, cheating was grounds for suspension! AND, I’d probably passed the test because of it. AND, unless Brother Mike took the time to actually call and tell my parents why I had detention that day, no one ever needed to know about the cheating. I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t even really in Trouble. Sure I had detention that day, but I’d done nearly nine days in my freshman year, one day was a joke. I’d won!

Thirty plus years ago, and now it all seems like fun. I can openly tell anyone who cares to read, that, “Yeah, I cheated on a religion quiz. And you know what, that wasn’t the only time.” Most times I got away scot free, sometimes I would get in trouble. Did it go down on my permanent record? Did it wreck my college aspirations? Did it crush my dreams? Pfft! Please… It was high school. The only point is to get through it, which I did, unapologetically doing the least work I possibly could while enjoying the things in life I found truly worthwhile - reading and gaming, in abundance.

On a side note, Brother Mike was later defrocked amid accusations of sexual misconduct involving his students. Sure, he got in Trouble, but it probably should’ve been a lot worse…