Topic: Video Games

Topic: Video Games

When my brother Chris informed our writing group that the topic for the week was video games, I thought to myself, “Well, that’s great.  Of course, he’s got something to say about that!” My husband who by his own admission owns more video games than he can ever play in his lifetime, thought the topic was a great one too.  He and Chris completed their entries in record time.  It goaded me all week.  I don’t even like video games, not really. 

Chris must have anticipated my reaction to the topic, because he privately messaged me shortly after posting it that before I tried to insist that I didn’t play video games, that I should bear in mind that “Words with Friends” is a video game.  Words with Friends (WWF) is an online version of Scrabble, a timeless and popular word game.  I contend that it is not really a video game, but a word game.  The online iteration of the game allows me to have 25 games going at once, some with people I’ve never met.   I am just a little bit obsessive about WWF.  I play every day and check to see if I need to make moves in any of my games throughout the day.  There is a limit to how many games you can have going on at once and I always push the limit.  I frequently get the message “you have reached the maximum number of games” when I try to start a new game.  If for some reason I am without internet service and unable to have my daily dose of WWF I feel a little lost, kind of like I am roughing it.  I mean if I am going to have to have a day without WWF I might as well just go camping.  If I can’t have my game I should just go sleep outside on the hard ground in a tent.  Both are equally unpleasant options for me to consider.

So, I get how my video game loving/obsessed family and friends feels about their games.  I can relate, but I can’t think of a single video game that I’d want to play every day.  In fact, with the exception of WWF, which I still say is a word game and not a video game, I’d be able to deal if for some cosmic reason I was told “no more video games for you, ever for the rest of your life.”   It wouldn’t be that hard. 

The only true video game that I’ve mastered or played with any regularity was Ms. Pacman, a popular arcade video game that I started playing in the eighties.  Back when I was in high school, class of 1983 to be exact, people went to arcades with fists full of quarters and played games for hours.  The lure for me wasn’t the games.  I went to the arcades because I wanted to go where the boys were.  And I got so good at this mindless game which developed my hand eye coordination and very little else that I’d invariably get the high score, and the game would play a little song and dance congratulating me after I got through so many successful screens.  But I wasn’t playing the game for any of that.  When I got the high score, it would draw the boys, the nerdy video gamers, to my side, which in turn opened up a nice window of conversation.  Now that I’m married to one of those cute nerdy guys with glasses I don’t need the game.  We stayed at a cabin in Tennessee this year for my birthday that had an authentic arcade style Ms. Pacman machine.  I played a few games, but then I was bored with it. 

I could think of at least a dozen other activities more compelling than playing video games.  Decorum prohibits an extensive and all-inclusive list of activities I prefer, but here’s a start:

1.        Cooking a meal

2.       Reading a book

3.       Talking on the phone to a friend

4.       Soaking in a hot tub

5.       Playing a word game-Boggle, Scrabble etc.  online or board version

6.       Working out-yes, I’d rather lift weights than play video games

7.       Sing

8.       Shopping for clothes or even for groceries

9.       Going for a walk or a bike ride  

10.   Rehearsing for a play

11.   Watching a movie or tv show

And the final activity I’d rather do than play video games. . .

12.    Write an essay about video games  

Topic: A Car

It was a bright red Plymouth Satellite. I don't remember what year, but it was a cool car. My dad bought it as a second family car before I was even old enough to drive. My mom drove it to work when she worked the night shift at the hospital. When she bought a new car, it was passed down to my brother.

Mark took the car in a new direction. He had the bottom of the car painted gray. He added something to make the car louder. I think they were called headers. I'm not sure how he sold these changes to our parents, but he always had a way of getting them to agree to almost anything.

There were rumors that he raced the car at a local racetrack. Rumors that turned out to be true. I never did see him race, but I know that I loved when he would drive me places in that car. Everyone stopped to look at us. The car was cool and by association, so were we.

I was thrilled when I was finally old enough to drive and I could get behind the wheel. It wasn't long after getting my driver's license that Mark joined the military. He went into the Army and was stationed in Germany, so I had the car to myself. I knew he loved that car, and so did I.

One Saturday afternoon, after dropping off some friends, I was on my way home. I was sitting at a stop light, looking down at my radio and deciding whether or not to change the station, when my face hit the steering wheel. I looked up into my rear view mirror to see what had happened. My mirror was facing the ceiling.

"Wow, someone must have been hit," I thought. It took me a few minutes to realize that I was the one who had been hit. I felt okay, so I got out and looked at the back of my car. It was smashed and something was leaking. The guy in the other car was bleeding a bit from his head. I told him that I was going to walk across the street to a deli to call the police-that was way before cell phones. After calling the police, the next call went to my dad who worked nearby.

It didn't take long for the police to arrive. The fluid that was leaking from my car was actually gas, so the fire department had to come to hose down the whole scene. Next came the tow truck. After information was exchanged, statements taken, a citation given, it was time to leave.

I got into the car with my dad. When I asked him how long he thought it would be until my car would be fixed, he told me that he didn't think it could be saved. That was when I started crying. Then I realized that I would have to break the news to Mark. He wouldn't be thrilled about it, that was for sure, even if the accident hadn't been my fault.

A few days later, after getting a neck brace for the whip lash from the collision, I began to write the long, sorrowful letter that would go overseas to the military base in Germany. The next time Mark would come home on leave, the car that he had loved and redefined would no longer be parked in the driveway.

Topic: Video Games

My history with video games dates back to 1972. I turned 15 in the fall of that year, and around the same time Magnavox released the Odyssey, the first commercial home video game console. Somehow I talked my dad into buying one. By today’s standards it was extremely crude. The play field was a black screen with short vertical white bars positioned to the far left and right sides of the TV screen. A small white box served as the puck or the ball or whatever it was called, and this bounced between the vertical lines. The controllers allowed one to move the vertical bars back and forth and up and down. The result was a form of electronic ping-pong, and this was commercially exploited by Atari later that year in the form of Pong, one of the first arcade video games.

The Odyssey was really limited. It came with various screen overlays to be taped to the TV screen, supposedly simulating soccer fields, football fields and so on but the game action never varied. My sister and I got tired of it pretty quickly. But a few years later Atari released its 2600 video game system. With this, one could play reasonable facsimiles of some of their arcade hits such as Space Invaders and Asteroids and Missile Command. I was hooked. I spent hours and hours playing Activision’s vertical scrolling shooter River Raid, to the point where my trigger button thumb stayed numb for days.

I stuck with Atari through the next iteration, the Atari 5200. By now the graphics were in color and more complex. Then I veered away from the console scene in favor of personal computers. My very first one was a Texas Instruments 99/4A. My favorite game was Tunnels of Doom, my first exposure to a Dungeons and Dragons type game. We loaded it onto the computer from a cassette tape. The price of a disk drive was WAY above my means at that time! My friends and I played this one for days on end. It was so exciting to find the stairway down to the next level of the dungeon and see what dangers lurked there. The graphics, again, were pitiful by today’s standards but our imaginations filled in the considerable gaps.

As the years passed I tried to keep up with the consoles and the computer scenes. I had a Nintendo Entertainment System, and an NEC Turbo-Grafx. Probably my favorite console of that era was my Colecovision. My favorite game on that machine was Mr. Do! We were playing this at my friend Larry’s house one day and I was on a roll —  my score was 250,000 (an all-time high) and I still had 9 extra lives. Then Larry’s dog Bogart ran across room, tripped over the power cord and unplugged the game. Everything was gone in a flash. It took me a long time to forgive Bogart for that. 

Then once again I switched to a computer — my beloved Commodore 64. I had a ton of games for it. I favored role playing games (RPGs), in particular The Bard’s Tale, Seven Cities Of Gold, and another one called The City, which I never got to finish because I accidentally formatted one of the game disks while trying to create a data disk. Other C64 owners will understand! I learned to program in BASIC on this wonderful little machine. I even tried my hand at programming my own shootin’ video game: Whirly-Beaver, which was an adult title, details of which I’ll leave to your imagination on the advice of my dear wife.

When I moved overseas in 1986 I sold everything but soon after I moved to Saudi I bought an Atari 1080 ST computer. My roommates and I played the brilliant Dungeon Master, an RPG with a revolutionary (for the time) pseudo-3D first-person perspective and real-time combat. It took us months to finish and we celebrated wildly when we finally defeated Lord Chaos.

In the early 90’s I got the Sega Genesis, and a ton of games for it as well. I was developing a pattern - I would buy a system, then buy more games than I would ever possibly be able to play. My pride and joy from this time was my SNK Neo Geo AES. The game cartridges for this system were at least as large as a VHS cassette and contained exact replicas of SNK’s arcade offerings. Interspersed among the years were various hand-held systems — the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Sega Game Gear and the NEC Turbo Express, for which I had the TV tuner as well.

Then my kids came along. I introduced them to video games, first the Super Nintendo and then the Nintendo 64. Next was the Game Boy Advance. My favorite game on this system was Golden Sun, another RPG. It had a sophisticated combat and magic system involving entities called djinn, which were various magical creatures one could attach to one’s character, altering one’s available spells and magical energy and so on. I finally mastered the system after playing a couple of weeks. Then I went on a cruise with the Game Boy Advance, Golden Sun, and Claire, my then five year old daughter. I was around 43 years old or so. She insisted on trying the game out. So I handed her the machine, confident she’d soon grow frustrated with the game’s complexities and the required amount of reading. But no — she had the whole damn system figured out in a couple of hours. She ended up loving it as much as I did and we literally fought over that Game Boy for the rest of the cruise. 

Nowadays I own an Xbox One X and a Playstation 4 Pro with the VR attachment. Keeping true to form I have way more games than I’ll ever be able to play. As video games have evolved their complexity has increased exponentially and unfortunately I no longer seem to have the motivation to learn all the minutiae of any particular game in order to be able to play it well. Current favorites include Cuphead on my Xbox and Skyrim  on the PS4. IMHO there’s a lot to be said for the simple gameplay of many of the earlier video games. Ms. Pacman, Frogger, Tempest -  simple to learn, hard to beat the high score on.

And I’m grateful to have been alive when video games emerged and evolved. I really appreciate the fantastic graphics and sophisticated game play now possible but I find that now I enjoy watching younger players more than I enjoy playing myself. Maybe I'm jaded. There was a genuine sense of wonder that accompanied experiencing brand-new games with new genres and better graphics and unique plots and control schemes and combat systems and so on. Now I feel like I’ve seen it all. Speed and number of objects on the screen at once and so on will keep evolving with successive iterations of hardware. But it’s been a long, long time since a new video game has awakened my sense of wonder and sheer…possibility. Now I’m fortunate to be part of a live D&D game at present and I’m finding that as I struggle overcoming my innate shyness and feelings of inferiority due to my rudimentary knowledge of the rules, my imagination is starting to fire up again - way better than any hardware.

Topic: Video Games

Author: Chris Dunn

“Hyah!” my father cries as he thumps the flippers in perfect timing with some not-so-subtle hip English to nudge the ball to within that flipper’s reach. Rather than losing the ball, he sends it back to rattle among the bumpers, racking up more and more points. Crude caricatures of Fonzie and Pinky Tuscadero, gaze down from the glass of the 8-ball machine as the lights tally up the score. The gathered throng of smoky teenagers gape in wide wonder as this old man -pushing 40 - takes the high-score-to-date on his 3^rd ball and continues to add to his lead. “Damn!” I remember one kid shouting, “Channel 9 News is going to be here in a minute!” In the end, the clock is the ultimate decider, as the time to reunite with mom rolls around, and the game must end. With points still counting up and 5 free games won, my dad glances at his watch. “That’s it,” he declares to his gang of groupies. “You can have it.” And with that he turns, gathers my brother and I, and heads for the door. The crowd screams out for more, but there’s no time for an encore. One quick kid jumps on the controls, and the game carries on, as Marty and I march out on the arms of the conquering hero. It was my first ever “mic drop” moment, and it sealed my love of the arcade forever.

Now, I’ve played video games for as long as they’ve been around. Marty and I snuck out the Atari 2600 from my parent’s closet weeks before it arrived officially from “Santa”. We would play Lunar Lander and Pong for hours while my parents were at choir practice or enjoying a night out, then sneak it back to the closet when we heard their car in the driveway. Next came Nintendo and my Commodore 64 - hours of Mario, Jumpman Jr., Oregon Trail and Zork. We found the cheats to give you double fire at Space Invaders and learned how to edit the code to add dragons to Oregon Trail. The games got bigger and the machines got more powerful over the years, but they never really replaced the joy of the arcade.

I see the sad excuse for arcades in the modern mall – a few on-rails, shooters and some carnival games where you give away money in an attempt to win a stuffed Disney character. They sit empty in brightly lit corners of the food court - deservedly neglected for their lack of soul. If you want a closer idea to what arcades were like in the 70s, the modern creation of the bar-cade comes closest. They couple the draw of a powerful nostalgia to the promise of alcohol. If people were still allowed to smoke in bars, it would be an even closer replica.

Red Baron was the arcade at Northgate Mall. A dank, dark hole-in-the-wall crowded with teenage boys jostling around tiny screens, a mad cacophony of bings and bongs and an ever-present electric buzz you could only feel in your sternum. It was always the same. Mom would need to buy some clothes for work or some such, and dad would get tasked with watching over us. With a flourish he’s present a roll of quarters from his pocket and the fear of a dreaded day wasted trying on pants was replaced with the giddy joy of a trip to a magic land of aliens and laser blasters. Dad would ususally play pinball while Marty and I wandered around trying to find a machine we liked. Eventually Marty found and mastered Galaga. I was more of Gorf guy. Whatever you played, you tried to make it last. When your allotment of quarters ran out, the only thing left was to wander the maze of machine checking coin returns. You’d be surprised how often that worked. Hours would melt away but eventually both Marty and I would end the day at the sides of dad’s pinball machine, watching as he massaged the ball with his hips and wondering if he’d managed to fins anymore quarters since the last time we asked.

A few years back, Marty brought dad down to the Northside Barcade for his birthday, presenting the gift with customary roll of quarters. Even though all the video games there were free, the pinball machines did cost per game. Dad tried his hand at a few of his old favorites from the video game floor – Centipede, Asteroids and even Defender, but in short order he was over trying to make a go at the modern pinball machine - overly complicated with multiple tiers and complex themes. Dad concluded that they would take a bit too much time to learn the story and technique necessary to master them, but he called the night a success. I hope he enjoyed it. We owed him that for all the good times he gave us.

I remember, the Red Baron Arcade was named after a particular machine that held a prominent place in the original layout. A very crude, pre-video, video game, Red Baron featured an actual tape reel of planes in flight. The player sat in a cockpit, maneuvered a set of crosshairs onto the enemy and fired his guns by pressing a metal crossbar. If the target was hit, the reel cut to a quick shot of the plane catching fire or exploding before another enemy appeared. I would sit on my dad’s lap and lean on the bar that fired the guns while my father worked the crosshairs. One day, we got a perfect score – 21 for 21. We were supposed to win a cheap plastic medal, but none fell from the slot. I felt robbed at the time. We asked the kid who managed the place, but he could only shrug in indifference. “Oh well,” my dad said. “We know we got it. We don’t need a little token.” I was heartbroken at the time, but now I realize he was right. I don’t need a token. I have my story.  

Topic: Car(s)

Author: Chris Dunn

“Mr. Dunn, name a car.”

Doris the Dodge Dart. A ’65 Mustang. The Bandit’s Trans Am.

“You mean to say you can’t think of a single car?”

A Woodie station wagon. The DeLorean. A dirty white van covered in rust spots…

“Seriously? Not one?”

I could see what Mr. Carey was doing. He was trying to make a point about description in writing, that simply saying, “the man drove a car” wasn’t sufficient, because everyone thinks of a different car – or, in my case, several different cars – but I was mute. Nothing would come out of my mouth. His terrifyingly intimidating eyes did nothing to help draw the images in my brain to my lips. What if they laughed – the other students? What if my answer wasn’t cool enough, good enough, right? Worse still, what if he, Mr. Carey found my answer insufficient? As dozens of cars plucked from media, my family history and just casual observation, tumbled through my mind, my tongue swelled in my mouth and refused to speak. This was high school and the Demon of Worthiness had me by the throat.

This wasn’t my first run-in with this particular Demon. Years earlier my father had gifted me his old manual typewriter, the kind with the belt of ink and the carriage return that goes bzzzzzt-DING! You had to be extra careful because each mistake meant going back, retyping the letter while holding a corrective tape dangerously close to the slamming key, then typing the correct letter over the top. People can brag about their typing speeds nowadays, but how do you really stand up to the days of manual. Still, I loved the thing. I was going to be a writer and this was going to be my instrument. I sat in the basement at the covered bumper pool table in the “red room” and banged away for hours, slowly correcting each mistake as they arose, planning out the end of each line lest I run out of space, waiting for the paper to pop lose to inform me I had just completed another page of my great novel. I think I had maybe four pages done when I brought it to my mother, she read it and smiled. She said it was great, but I pressed her, “What do you really think? You can be honest. A writer has to learn to take criticism.”

“Well,” she added hesitantly. “It’s a little derivative of a lot of stuff…”

CRUSHED Like a weight dropped from a passing fighter jet landed smack dab on my head. I tried to shake it off, but the story never saw another page. Derivative? I didn’t know then to say, that everything’s derivative. There  are no truly original ideas particularly to a young writer. We start writing what we know, and we struggle to find our voice along the way. What’s original about my writing is me. But no, I’d failed. I wasn’t worthy. I heard the demon cackle in my brain along with his close companion, The Demon of Outside Validation, and committed to working harder next time, but also to never showing anyone my work until I knew it measured up to an impossible standard.

Eventually the ribbon ran out and the typewriter was retired in favor of a word processor that stored my papers on tiny discs for editing and eventual typing out as if a ghost banged on the keys for me. Until it was ready for print the text appeared on a tiny screen about the size of a pager’s read-out. The process was type, print, edit, correct, print, then repeat until acceptable. But be very careful, one misspelling was a C, so was one run-on sentence, one faulty subject-verb agreement, one comma out of place. Two and you failed, regardless of content. High school English was brutal

So, is it odd that I felt that there could be a wrong answer to a question that asked my opinion? And let us not forget, I’m a Freshman, sitting in a class of all boys, all ready to mock and tear down each other at the first sign of weakness, difference. And in that moment where I sat frozen and mute in my chair before the Mr. Carey’s glaring eyes and the sniggering chorus of my classmates, it all mattered so much! Their approval, my validation, my inclusion in this new community. The safest answered seemed to be, say nothing. Don’t commit. And so, I didn’t.

This is what this blog is all about, putting the sword to those demon voices of doubt that keep us from sharing ourselves with the world. You were blessed with a perspective. That makes you worthy! Don’t let any voice tell you differently.

A red, Ford coupe…

A green, convertible with a clown horn affixed to the rearview mirror…

A 1992 manual transmission, red, Nissan Sentra with no AC and a non-functional tape deck...

Kit from Nightrider…

James Bond’s Aston Martin with an ejector seat…

Ben…

Maximillian…

A midnight, powder blue Ford Escort…

A Wedding

A wedding should be about the couple getting married. It should be special and unique to them. The wedding that I felt fit this description the most was my son Evan's wedding.

Evan has been a theatre person since his freshman year of high school. While we thought he would be perfect for the stage, he found his passion behind the scenes, working on the Stage and Building Crew and the Running Crew. He went on to study theatre in college, where he met his wife in of course, a theatre class. At the time, both of them were in other relationships, but one fateful night at a Halloween party, they reconnected.

Being a technical theatre director, Evan had the connections to pull off their theatre-themed wedding. The ceremony took place in a high school theater. The ceremony was made up of monologues and songs from musicals. The lights, sound, and filming were run by his former students. The stage manager, also a former student, flew in from New York where she was working professionally, just to assist with the day. From a stuck zipper on a bridesmaid's dress to a broken boutonniere to wasp stings to keeping everyone on time, we kept her busy and she kept everything running smoothly. After all, rehearsals do not prepare everyone for everything that can and will happen on the big day.

As with many days, this one was happy, yet I was sad. I kept thinking of the people who should be there, but weren't. Three important people were missing. My parents helped me raise Evan. I was a single mom for his first seven years. I lived at home. Evan was the first grandchild and held a very special place in their hearts, as they did and do in his. Both passed away within eight weeks of each other in 2006. Somehow it didn't seem right that they weren't with us at this important event. They would have been so proud of him.

The other missing person was my birth mom, Dee. She was also a theatre person and would have loved this wedding. She had passed just a few months earlier. Although we only had ten months from the time I met her until her passing, she had attended one of Evan's shows in the very theater where Evan was getting married.

I knew that Evan was also missing his grandparents-and not only those three, but his paternal grandparents as well. My in-laws were in poor health and in their 90's and couldn't attend. Only my birth mom's husband was able to attend. Evan was so pleased that he would be there and made sure that he had a special place to sit.

The day before the wedding, I had given him a medal with all six of his grandparents' initials engraved on it. He wore it around his neck.

After the ceremony, I had a moment that I will remember forever. It was the first time that all of my siblings were in the same space. My older brother Mark, who I grew up with, was finally going to meet my birth siblings, Bridgid, Chris, and Marty. I knew that it might be the only time I would have all of them together. After quick introductions, I asked everyone to pose for one photo. Other families have many pictures of all of the kids, but not me. I just wanted one. My sister-in-law took the picture in the back of the theater. To this day it is one of my most treasured possessions.

The reception was a typical open bar wedding reception. We closed the five-hour reception with some family and friends singing together on the dance floor. Luckily there was a shuttle back to the hotel where we spent the night. The next morning while the newlyweds headed to Log Heaven in Gatlingburg for their honeymoon, the rest of the family got in a van and drove to Orlando for a much needed vacation.

Topic: A Wedding

Topic: A Wedding

It wasn’t the first time for either of us.  It wasn’t even the second time for me, but we both were determined it would be our last one.  We had dated several months when he proposed to me on New Year’s Eve.  I guess technically he proposed on New Year’s Day 2017.  He had made reservations at a nice hotel and we had gotten all gussied up, had a fancy dinner, and listened to some live jazz in the hotel’s penthouse bar overlooking the city.   He later told me he was going to try to propose in some grand public gesture, perhaps involving the band leader, but it never felt right.  Jan is a physician, one of the smartest men I’ve even known.  He is soft spoken, but he has made me laugh out loud at least once a day for as long as I’ve known him.  This kind, nerdy quirky man had quickly become my favorite person on the planet.  (Still is.) 

About 1am we made our way to our hotel room.  I flopped onto the bed and tossed off my shoes and almost removed my wig.  I have alopecia, so I wear wigs in public most of the time.  I was glad I had kept my hair on my head once I realized what was happening.  Jan, my boyfriend, was on his knees beside the bed digging through his suitcase.  He walked over to me on his knees and presented me with a white gold Claddagh ring with an emerald and tiny diamonds. 

He tentatively asked, “So, you wanna marry this crazy doctor?”  

I was 52 and he was 59 on St. Patrick’s Day 2017, our wedding day.  It was one of the top ten days of my life, right up there with the births of my children.   What I remember most of about it was my level of happiness and peace and the unblinking, unfaltering feeling of hope.  Some day when I’m a very old woman living in a nursing home, I will remember the day and it will comfort me. 

It wasn’t like we spent a lot of money on the day.  The biggest expenditure was a new wig for me- a long wavy reddish brown human hair piece.  I got my dress on eBay for under $100.  It was knee length and lacy with ¾ length sleeves to cover my tattoos.  It came with a stiff slip under the skirt that made it flare out.  This would have been perfect if I were going to be having a first dance and I’d need it to flare out as I twirled in front of our guests.  But there were no guests.   We decided that this time around we would strip things down to the essentials.  Me. Him. A minister.  Okay, and a sound tech/photographer/videographer person. 

We went to this little chapel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  The night before we checked into a cute little cabin in the Smoky Mountains with a hot tub, a big screen tv, and a porch swing.  Jan wore a three- piece suit with a tie with green stripes and a jaunty matching pocket square. I wore green jewelry.  These nods to the holiday were the closest we came to a theme/color scheme.    

We drove together to the chapel at 3:30. My dress was in a garment bag and they had a little dressing room for the brides.  I remember the minister was in his seventies with a soft southern drawl.  He kind of resembled a shorter meatier version of Colonel Sanders.  I don’t remember the vows or too much of the words he said to us. 

We went to great efforts to have the right music for our tiny ceremony.  Jan made a recording of himself playing a piano piece by modern Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi.  It was called “Il Due” or “Two Rivers.”  He did a flawless job and the piece was over four minutes long, but I wanted to walk down that 20-foot aisle to some beautiful music even if he was the only one who really cared to see it.  I walked to the meet Jan and the minister by the time the first few measure of the piece were played.  So, we just joined hands and looked at each other.  And then we both started to cry-happy tears. 

We had to pay extra because the next song that was played lengthened our ceremony to over 15 minutes.  I had gone to a recording studio and sang a cover of “Love Song” by The Cure with an accompaniment track.  These recordings were our wedding gifts to each other and neither could hear the other’s recording until the big day.  We cried some more. 

The sound tech lady took a few professional pictures of us afterwards, but my favorite wedding picture was the selfie we took in the car before we drove to downtown Gatlinburg for our “reception.”  We had dinner at The Melting Pot, a chain restaurant that serves a five-course meal consisting of various fondues.  We parked in the community lot and walked through all the tourists, the line for the sky lift, the shops that sold fudge and air-brushed t-shirts, in all our wedding finery.  People clapped for us and gave us high fives as we walked past. 

We kept saying things to each other afterward like, “Wow, we did it.  We really did it.  We’re married.  This is so cool,” and “I love you so much.”  And now a year and a half later we’re still saying them. We were supposed to receive a video of the ceremony, but something went wrong, and we didn’t get it.  It’s okay.  I much prefer the video of my favorite day ever that I play and replay in my min

Topic: A Wedding

Author: Chris Dunn

Las Vegas airport thrums with potential even at 2 am. As I wander the halls and ride the moving sidewalks, lights everywhere beckon to me offering one last chance to gamble away any few coins I might have managed to hold onto would I were a gambler on this trip. Lucky for me, all I want to do at this point is stay standing until my flight arrives in an hour. I’m dead on my feet having been awake for nearly 40 hours at this point. Every muscle and fiber urges me to just find my gate, sink down on a bench and rest my eyes, but I know that game. I know that sleep is my foe, and that until my ass hits seat 22a, I’ve just have to keep moving. Another red-eyed traveler passes me in the hall, and we exchange nods and expressions which seem to ask, “And how did you find yourself here?”

A little over 48 hours ago my phone rang, “Okay, you’re going!” Drew voice is excited, but years of knowing that voice reveal a hesitancy before he even continues with. “Now, the thing is…”

The thing was, Kit was getting married. Kris Gates, one of our oldest and dearest friends had finally found a woman willing to put up with him on a day-in-day-out basis - though that alone wasn’t sufficient to necessitate marriage. Both Kit and Laura, his beloved, were both anti-establishment, hippy-types who for the first years of their joining had never seen a need a to “get the State involved”. But recent medical troubles had demonstrated how much extra red tape the State can put in your way, if you’ve never taken the time to have things set down officially on paper. Rather than continue to deal with this plastic hassle, Kit and Laura sent out the invites. Save the Day, two weeks from now, in Vegas!

Both the location and the timing were a major impediment. Everyone wanted to attend, but given the short warning time, and my then current state of unemployment, we contented ourselves with throwing them a monster wedding shower. Frank rolled out a major sound system, a thorough invite list of all their friends and a surprising display with fire dancers. It was a thing of beauty and something to remember, and all I thought I would see of their nuptials. That is until I got Drew’s call.

I listened stunned as he lay out the details. “I’ve got you booked in at Luxor, but only for one night. You’ll need to check out the day of the wedding, store your bags with the bellhop, go to the wedding and reception, then book it to the airport once the festivities are over. I paid for you flight and your room. You don’t need to pay me back. You just have to go since I can’t. Your plane leaves tomorrow.”

It all seemed like such a rush, and a lot of effort, most of which I would endure alone. “Why?” I asked.

“Because, one of us has to be there!”

He was right. We’d known Kit too long. We’d heard the chimes at midnight together more times than we could count. The thought that his marriage - even one largely out of bureaucratic necessity – would go down without a single Pit member present… It was unconscionable. “Okay,” I resigned. “I’ll do it.”

And that’s how I found myself wandering the halls of the Luxor while the wedding party did prep and pictures. I had no room and all my things were stowed except for a single book, I carried with me. Unemployed, I had no money to gamble, and Vegas offers very few places to sit quietly and read. In the end, I settled for the spot playing the least annoying, loud music and tried to focus on the words of my book hard enough to stay awake.

Mercifully, the event finally began. It was much more elaborate than I had envisioned. No Elvis impersonator. No drive-thru. They walked down a short aisle in formal attire. Laura had a full bridal gown. For all the times I’d heard Kit scoff at the institution, when it came to be his time, they didn’t shirk. I was coaxed into giving a brief toast at the reception and threw together some thoughts I’d been mulling over that day covering all the random events, decisions and people that had brought the two of them together. I can write a very thorough and detailed paper explaining how they owed their happiness directly to the presidency of George Bush. We all laughed and toasted the happy couple, then it was off to fetch my bags and wander the airport.

The plane to Cincy was nearly empty, and I stretched out across all three seats, but sleep wouldn’t come until I was all the way home, so I lay there listening to the thrum of the engines, dozing in and out, as I reflected on how glad I was to have made it for what turned out to be such a special day.

Topic: Church

Author: Chris Dunn

I don’t remember the kid’s name. He was only with our class for a year, and maybe not an entire year at that. At the time, he seemed slow and angry, the kind of boy I had learned it was safer to avoid, so his name didn’t stick, only his face – and barely that. He might have dropped fully from my memory to languish in the bin of forgotten classmates who’s faces now stare up at me tauntingly from grade-school yearbooks, except for one bizarre exchange we had during church. For the purpose of this story I’ll call him Steve, since there were never any Steves in my grade school years. Not that I remember anyway…

Seating in our church at St. Margaret Mary was very easily regimented. The kneelers were spaced so that each would comfortably support a pair of students. If you don’t know what a kneeler is, you’ve obviously never been to a catholic mass. Stand, sit, stand, kneel, sit, kneel stand, sit. There was a script to follow and corresponding blocking that we were all taught at a young age, and the kneeler was the cushioned, fold-down bench provided to keep us from cracking our knees against the hard stone. Now some kids found that it also provided a comfortable place to rest ones feet either during long periods of standing or as if kicking back on the world’s lamest recliner during the few seated periods. This was strictly forbidden by the nuns! And while I never held much truck with the actual mass, the one thing I could do was follow rules. There was a particular joy I found in adhering to regulations my peers chose to flaunt. It made me feel good in oh-so-superior, hall-monitory type of way. So, “No standing or resting your feet on the kneeler” – No problem.

I see now that I must have seemed like quite the little suck-up. My classmates had their sly moves down, loudly replacing the kneeler after use only to ease it silently to floor with an extended foot once seated. Looks of admonishment did nothing to dissuade their quest for comfort and rebellion, and once down, the kneeler was easy to hold in place with a firm foot. I needed a better strategy and it came it the form of a simple machine – the wedge. In this instance, the wedge was my foot, placed between the raised kneeler and the bottom of the pew. Once so inserted, no amount of casual effort could dislodge it. My classmates would glare at me, and I would smile back or ignore them, wrapped snuggly in my blanket of smug, self-righteousness. No one liked sitting next to me. This became the game. Could you get the kneeler back down, quickly and quietly before I could get my wedge in place? And of course the Catholic mass affords several rounds of game play for the players to first – learn there’s a game on – and then to develop their strategy to thwart me. Since I was paying very little attention to anything but the game I had created, few could challenge me.

Then Steve came. He arrived at church late that day. Either he was in trouble or came from outside the diocese. I’m nearly certain he wasn’t catholic. I don’t think he took communion, and he never sang. Mass was well underway when he dropped into the pew next to me sparing me one of his, “don’t mess with me glares” before leaning back with a look of annoyed disinterest. As the mass moved through its paces, and I sat back after the post-communion kneeling period, Steve tried to place the kneeler on the floor. Mass was almost over, it was time to truly kick back and give it the full blow-off, but I was there ahead of him, wedge in position. His casual effort thwarted, Steve glared at me, screaming daggers in the silence of the reflection. “Give it up!” his gaze demanded. “What’s your problem?” he wanted to know. But he knew the rules, knew he was technically in the wrong. He just hadn’t known he was playing my game.

If you know me, you know that I enjoy nothing so much as winning. His angry glares were like cheers from the crowd. I wasn’t about to back down. The Steve did something no other student had had the audacity to try. He bent down and gripped the kneeler in both hands and pulled, pulled with all his might, pulled until I feared he’d break every bone in my foot. This violated the decorum of the church and all the rules of the game. I would have gladly yielded the point to his out-of-the-box strategy, but there was one problem, my foot was stuck. There was no way to dislodge now, not with all the pressure he was applying. All I could do was stare in disbelief and pain. And he stared back, in rage! He seemed so mad, and suddenly I didn’t feel so smug. When he released the kneeler, I thought for sure it was free his hands to deck me. Punch me out, right there in the church. But instead, he snorted like an angry bull, jumped to his feet and left.

I sat there stunned. “You can do that?” Just leave church… I never would have thought to. As I eased my foot out and wiggled my toes to see they were all still present and functioning, I felt a weird regret. Sure I had won, but why? Steve was such an outsider and this faith meant nothing to him, why did I take such perverse pleasure in enforcing a rule I didn’t even agree with? In that moment he seemed very angry, but he also seemed lost. Kind of sad and alone. He left school soon after that. I’ve always wondered what demons he was fighting that day. I’ve always wanted to apologize for not realizing my brief victory wasn’t worth denying him a moment of respite from the fight.

Church

 Church seems to be more about perceptions and misconceptions. I was baptized and raised Catholic and identify myself as such. While I don't agree with quite a few beliefs of the church, I do believe in  God and Jesus. To me, church is so much more than a building or a place of worship. Church is about the people. It is finding God in other and all places.

One thing that I find stressful, even as an adult, is going to mass. I'm not sure why since once I'm sitting in a pew, I find a sense of peace. For some reason the thought of getting ready and actually going to mass gives me anxiety. Nothing tragic has ever happened during church or while I attended mass, so I cannot explain why I have these emotions.

This carries over into my job. As a Catholic school teacher, I have to take my students to the weekly mass. The priests always want the kids to participate in the liturgy. On these occasions, I feel more like a watchdog. Trying to make sure that everyone is acting accordingly takes away from my own experience.

When I'm not with my students at mass, I do find a serenity sitting there. I will admit that as hard as I try, it is difficult to focus on what is being preached. Often I find myself thinking about life instead. Maybe it is one of the few places I can go and be alone with my thoughts.

A few months ago, I had to go on a one-day retreat for my job. Again, I dreaded going. There were talks given by a priest and in between these, everyone had time to reflect. We could take a walk, go into the chapel, or find a priest for reconciliation. I chose to take walks.

In the afternoon, we sat in the chapel for over an hour for adoration. Adoration is when God is supposed to be physically present in the church. There is prayer and there are some songs, but then there is time to sit quietly and pray.

As I sat there, I asked God to help me decide what I wanted and needed to do with my career and in my life. Signing the Archdiocese's contract was difficult for me. I don't agree with many of the items included. When my good friends, Michele and Leslie, got married and my daughter sang at their wedding, I couldn't post anything on social media because it is against my contract. While I don't use social media to discuss my political views, it annoys me that I can't do it if I want to because someone may think that my more liberal views go against my contract.

As time passed, I realized that I needed to teach one more year because I had made a commitment to a friend to be there for her kids. After that, who knows what will happen. Another realization that came to me was that I needed to start writing again. When I was younger, I always wanted to be a writer and had even written for some newspapers as a free lancer, but I hadn't done it in years. I had lost my courage, but I needed to fight back and just do it.

Probably the most important epiphany I had that day was to embrace life. I have to stop being afraid. I need to say yes to new experiences and not  mentally beat myself up over past experiences. I don't want to have regrets in life.

Even though when I think of my church or finding God, I think of taking a walk in the woods, standing in front of the ocean, or being surrounded by the mountains, I guess sitting quietly in a church can and did have a profound effect on me.

Topic: Church

Church

1965 was a big year for the Catholic Church.  They started saying Mass in English and Vatican II, a group of church leaders aiming to modernize things, came to a conclusion.  And when I was a few months old my parents had me baptized at The Church of Annunciation in Cincinnati, Ohio.   I was an infant so I don’t remember it much, but they have the pictures to prove it.  I’m wearing a white gown, and mom is in a dressy skirt and blazer combo.  I was taught early on that church was a place of reverence and quiet.  You didn’t talk or chew gum or even bring in a cough drop.  You dipped your fingers in holy water and made the sign of the cross when you entered.  You knelt before you sat down in your pew.  And it was God’s house, I was told, so you’d better show some respect. 

In 1968 my younger brother Chris got baptized at the same church.  I don’t remember this baptism either, but my mom retold the story so many times I feel like maybe I recall a bit.  Mom says that as we bustled around the apartment getting ready for Chris’s big day I kept repeating these words to myself:

“No saying gok.  No saying gok.  No saying gok”

Mom didn’t ask me what I meant by this or why I was repeating this mantra.  Apparently, I continued in the backseat as dad, mom, Chris, and I drove to the church.

 “No saying gok.  No saying gok.  No saying gok.”

I was three, a precocious, outspoken inquisitive three year old in a fancy dress, black patent leather shoes, and little ribbons in my hair.  We entered church in silence.  I already knew the drill.  I did the sign of the cross and genuflected before we slid into a pew way up front.  We got a special place because it was Chris’s baptism.  Relatives had come to the big event, and they filed in the pew behind us.  I’m sure I was thinking about the party we were going to have back at the house.  On the menu were cake and punch, and probably some beer too, for the grownups. 

At some point in the Mass, which I’ve now learned is about an hour long, it was time for the Baptism.  When I was little I thought the Mass was surely 2-3 hours long every time.  The godparents went up with my mom and dad.   The godparents mom later told me had the task of ensuring the child would be raised Catholic if anything should happen to the parents.  I remember asking mom, “Like what?  Like what is going to happen to you guys?  Are you going to die?”  And then I started freaking out and mom had to talk me down. 

Chris had a white gown too of some kind.  I think mom made it, but it was more boyish-looking.  No lace or frills.  It kind of looked like a priests robe or something.  At the big moment when the priest was pouring water over my brother’s head and saying the magic words, “I baptize you, Christopher Parnell Telemachus Dunn” in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” I loudly interrupted.  I had to steal his moment.

“GOK! GOK! GOK!” I exclaimed, and then began laughing at my own joke. 

My parents shushed me, but they were too amused to be mad.  Mom asked me multiple times over the years what “Gok” meant, and I had to tell her I had no idea.  I still don’t.  I wasn’t punished.  At the end of the day Chris’s baptism still took despite my outburst.  And we all had cake.