Snow

With the word snow, my mind drifts to snow day. Waking up in the morning on a school day, looking out the window to see the white blanket on the road, and listening to the radio to hear the DJ announce the school district is closed for the day.

The time that stands out the most was sometime in the mid 1970's. I don't remember exactly how old I was, but probably around eleven or so. The neighborhood where I grew up was made up primarily of families. Our street was mostly flat, but at one end, there was a steep hill that went down. There were two cul-de-sacs that jutted off of it. The kids on my street, Barjo Lane, and one of the cul-de-sacs, or circles as we called them, Lakemeadow Court, all hung out together. We were often outside, even on these cold days, sled riding or ice skating on the pond in the woods nearby.

This time though, we didn't need to walk through the woods to get to the pond. All of the streets were covered in ice. The boys went into the circle and set up a net at the top of it so they could play hockey. The girls weren't interested in the game, even if theboys would have let us play. Instead, we skated up and down the streets. I'm not sure exactly how long this lasted, but in my memory, it seems like days went by.

During this time, my mom, who was a nurse, was scheduled to work. Many nurses and doctors were unable to get to the hospital due to the treacherous roads. When my brother and I went inside on one of our breaks from skating, our mom told us that she was going to be gone for what would be at least two or three days. She said that the National Guard was coming to pick her up to take her to work and that she would have to stay at the hospital in one of the empty rooms until the roads cleared enough for her to get home.

When the truck tried to get to our house, it couldn't get up the hill at the end of our street. Mom had to walk down the hill to get to it. For grade school kids, this was exciting. The whole neighborhood walked with her to the truck. We must have looked like a winter wonderland parade. Once the truck pulled away, we resumed our activities.

I don't remember exactly how long she was gone or how long it took the roads to clear, but I do recall that when the salt truck finally made its way down our street, everyone booed and yelled at the driver to go away. We had been having so much fun and we didn't want it to end. With the salt, the ice on the roads melted and the skating on the streets ended and within a day or two, we went back to school, but that is one snow day memory that has stayed with me.

Topic: The Nature of Creativity

Author: Chris Dunn

If you know me, I’m sure you assume my creativity was spawned by decades of role-playing games, getting my basic Dungeons & Dragons set at age 10 and delving into bringing all the fantasy books I’d been reading to life. And while it’s undeniable that D&D, along with countless other forms of fantasy RPG, have served to cultivate my creativity over the years, its roots run far deeper.

I associate the memories mostly with rain. In the age when TV shows only came in three or four flavors and only came on when they chose, a rainy afternoon was a child’s hell. Spinning the TV dial rapidly by the disturbing fair of daytime dramas and black and white westerns for the fourth time, I would sigh heavily before punching off the box and staring forlornly out the rain-spattered window. There were no video games, no cellphones, no internet. The library of welcome distractions that could lift a bored child out of the rainy-day doldrums, wouldn’t exist for years. While the rain fell, there was nothing to look forward to but hours of mindless sitting until eventually dinner would be served, then maybe a decent sitcom and off to bed. Another day wasted!

“Mom!” I would cry. “I’m So bored!”

Now, I don’t want this devolve into some finger-wagging meme, telling kids today how much better it was when we didn’t have as many options. Believe me, I LOVE all the options, and was one of the first adopters of pretty much every distraction that reality threw my way over the years. I’m merely relating the tale of how my brain was channeled, by my environment, to function the way it does today.

“Why are you bored?” mom would ask.

And I would wonder, “Can she not see the rain?”

But the rain wasn’t point. Sure, we couldn’t go out and run around. We’d get soaked and then sick, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t play. We could use our imaginations she’d explain, and with them, we could go anywhere and be anything, tell any story. A wooden spoon could be a sword. The couch could be a mountain. The storm outside could be a raging hurricane, and we a desperate family of rats living in the belly of a doomed ship on a storm-tossed sea. The world inside my head wasn’t subject to rain outs. I was as free as I could perceive, and my options as many as I could dream.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “That only worked because you were a kid.” And you’re half-right. My cynical teen self would look at this obvious manipulation and scoff until his bangs fell over his rolling eyes. Dreaming didn’t make the day any brighter. It didn’t bring out the sun. It was just an exercise in self-delusion and denying reality. And, yes, it was, but what made it work, what sold us on the experience, was that she’d get down there with us. Down on our level, walking the floors on hands and knees, sharing our stories, expanding our worlds and saving the day from the dreariness of reality.

To this day, I see boredom as a challenge and my mind as the creative tool that helps me escape. This modern world doesn’t really require as much of those old ways but having trained in them at such an early age has shaped the man I am today, the way I approach life, and the nature of my creativity.

Topic: The Nature of Creativity

By Jill Jackson

There was a time when almost all of my creative expression was in the form of words. I would write stories -- mostly science fiction and fantasy.

There was also a time that I felt I wasn’t qualified to be creative with words because I didn’t study or major in writing in college.

It was some bullshit but, basically, there was this writing professor who was supposed to be “the shit,” who was the self-proclaimed arbiter of who was and wasn’t worthy to be in his class and, by extension, the writing program at Antioch.

I didn’t make the cut, and I internalized that bullshit.

It didn’t stop me from being a film major, and writing a film script, but it did stop me from thinking I could ever write a BOOK. You know, REAL literature as opposed to the mind-rotting drivel that was movie and TV writing.

I held that belief long after college; telling myself that I never learned how to be a proper writer, so I shouldn’t try.

At some point I woke the fuck up and got over myself, but I held myself back for YEARS.

I should add that, all that time, it didn’t stop me from thinking up stories and scenarios; it just kept me from writing them down.

Now I’m in a position where I want to write, and I can’t.

I take medication for depression and anxiety and it works really well for me. Unfortunately, I discovered that the part of my brain that jumps to the worst possible conclusion must also be the part of my brain that tells stories, because the ideas dried up like the Gobi Desert the minute the meds started working.

The interesting thing is that, while I can’t consciously call up images and ideas, my dreams have become more vivid and narrative. When I sleep, my brain is totally capable of telling interesting stories -- Sometimes they even stick with me when I wake up.

I’ve started writing them down, when I can, to see if anything sparks an idea for a story.

I also recently realized that, while the words and images for stories are hard to reach, I can be creative in other ways.

Take cooking.

I’m the one in charge of making most of our meals, and I find that I can get very creative with the dishes that I throw together – especially with the way I treat the main protein.

I’ve always been creative with food preparation, but I never really recognized or respected that type of creativity because…

Well, I really don’t know why. Maybe because it was so intuitive and natural. It was just something I did, often without much thought or effort.

I mean, everybody prepares food. What I’m doing isn’t so special. And then I joined this meal prep group on Facebook and something clicked.

On the daily, there are people posting messages listing ingredients that they have and asking for suggestions, and I realized that not everyone can look in their pantry and come up with something on the fly.

The plate is a valid canvas and the ingredients make an amazing palette.

I have also found that I can get creative with clothing.

I’m going to be getting a sewing machine and I already have ideas for tops that I can make to go with the jeans that I love to wear. I’m thinking about patterns and prints and styles that I can’t find in my size.

I’m no fashion designer, but I am inspired by the possibilities.

I used to think that my creativity was all dried up because I could no longer write the way I used to.

Now I’ve realized that I’m still creative, I just needed to open my eyes to the other ways that I express myself.

Topic: A Parade

Topic: A Parade

I love a parade.  Always have, always will.  Every Memorial Day growing up I’d march in the North College Hill parade with my Girl Scout troop and later playing the clarinet in the band.  I love the pageantry and the spectacle of a parade, the way it takes ordinary things and celebrates them, puts them on display.  When I was a young mom trying to get my kids to clean out the fridge before grocery day, I’d announce that dinner that night was “Leftovers on Parade”!  It made even week-old leftovers seem festive when I put them all out in nice serving dishes.  I guess it technically wasn’t a parade, but the kids bought it.  

One of my favorite parades was a total surprise.  I was on the campus of the University of Iowa in the summer of 2001.  I was a 36 year old divorced mom of two.  My kids were back home in Cincinnati.  The man I was dating at the time was an alum, and he was showing me and his two sons, Scott and Justin, who were 11 and 9, respectively, around his old school.   We were just coming out of bar for a late lunch when I heard a marching band.  The sound of the drums and horns always gave me a rush.  We stepped out into the heat just in time to see a parade! 

And not just any parade, this was a pride parade.  

There were rainbow flags and floats with drag queens dancing on them.  Justin remarked, “Those ladies are really tall,” and I had to explain drag to him.  There was no RuPaul’s Drag Race yet to conveniently reference so it took it a minute for him to get the concept.  After the marching band passed, a group of public officials passed by while Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” played in the background.  We saw guys holding hands with other guys, and Scott asked me, “What do you think about that, Bridg?  Do you think that’s okay?”  And he asked the question in such a way that I felt it was a test of sorts.  

“Yeah, Scott, I think it’s just fine.  I think they look pretty happy.”  Scott smiled, and said, “Yeah, me too.”  Then a bunch of bearded guys in a pick up truck drove past and I tried to explain their banner which said “Iowa Bears Club” and that they didn’t mean polar bears or grizzly bears.  I remember thinking that I wish my kids had been there to witness this parade.  At the time I had only heard of pride parades.  I’ve been to several since then, but this was one was special because it was my first, and because we happened upon it so serendipitously. 

The highlight of the afternoon came when a beautiful young woman wearing a rainbow bikini and a red satin cape with the words “Power of the Pussy” emblazoned on the back trailed at the end of the parade.  

As we headed back to our car Justin asked me, “Power of the pussy.  What does that mean, Bridgid?”  Again, it felt like a test, and I was amused that these boys didn’t ask their father a single question throughout the whole parade experience.  I think my boyfriend was also amused and maybe a bit relieved that the boys leveled all the questions at me.  

“Well, Justin, I think it means that she’s proud to be a woman.”

“What about you, Bridg,” he asked, “Are you proud to be a woman?”

“Yeah, Justin, I’m pretty damn proud to be a woman,” I replied as we headed back to our hotel.  

Topic: SNOW

SNOW

There was a time when the promise of snow meant delightful anticipation.  My brothers and I would listen to WSAI for the school closings.  St Margaret Mary, our grade school, closed if the North College Hill city schools decided to shut down for the day.  I loved it when we knew the night before that the next day was a snow day.  We’d stay up late, drink root beer and eat popcorn, and watch Welcome Back, Kotter.  The next day we’d wake up without an alarm and go sled riding and build snowmen, and come home to hot cocoa with little marshmallows.  It was glorious.

When I started working in nursing homes back in the early nineties, all of those feelings surrounding snow changed.  It first hit me that there were no snow days in the nursing home when I was an LPN working nights in an Alzheimer’s unit.  The snow started about three a.m., and I couldn’t drive home at 7am, my quitting time, because the roads were impassable.  And it was a moot point anyhow, because my relief couldn’t get there.  I did the morning med pass, and then they let me sleep for a couple hours in an empty resident room before the noon meds were due.  I did my treatments and then slept some more.  Half of the 3-11 shift couldn’t make it in so I ended up working a full 24 hours-with breaks where I could grab them.  I was supposed to work the next night but by then the roads had finally cleared and they let me go home and covered my 11p-7am shift. 

When I got into management, reports of upcoming snow filled me with dread.  The weight of responsibility I felt as a nursing home administrator and as a director of nursing surpassed anything I had felt up till then and anything I have felt since leaving the provider side of long- term care.  It was my legal responsibility to make sure these residents were taken care of.  I had 100 or so lives in my hands.  We had to get really creative to make sure the facility stayed running during a snow storm.  There were plenty of days when I as the director of nursing was passing meds and the administrator was doing laundry or passing trays.  Lots of times we had staff who were willing to work but they couldn’t get out of their driveways or they relied on public transportation, which often wasn’t running in a blizzard. We’d usually have some of the maintenance guys who loved driving in snow running all over town in their trucks picking up nurses and nursing assistants and bringing them to work. 

I remember playing “Let’s Make a Deal” every time it snowed.  I’ll give you next weekend off and a $50 gas card if you stay over and cover 11p-7a.  We let staff stay overnight in empty rooms sometimes if we knew a bad storm was coming.  We’d feed them out of the kitchen and give them the best bonuses our regional directors would let us give.  Somehow, we got it done.  Everybody got fed, and medicated and bathed and dressed-nothing fancy.  We weren’t giving back rubs and manicures, but we all survived. 

Now I work as a surveyor of nursing homes, and if it snows too bad, I can use some of my personal time and stay home, warm and dry.  I don’t have to come in no matter what like I did back then.  I know nursing homes aren’t the only business that never has a snow day, but it’s what I know.  It’s what I lived with for about 25 winters or so.  I still have a visceral response, that tight feeling in my stomach, when I hear there’s going to be a bad snow storm.  And then I remind myself that I don’t have to worry about it like I used to.  But I haven’t forgotten and probably never will forget the awesome responsibility it is to be a nursing home administrator or DON. I have nothing but respect for all of those nursing home workers who don’t ever get a snow day. 

Topic: A Parade

Author: Chris Dunn

The exhaust pipe of the car grew hazy as my vision funneled down the drain and the scorching asphalt rose to meet my face. Mercifully, my collapse was arrested by the streamered handlebars of my banana-seat Schwinn. People talk at me, their voices sounding miles away. I just want to lie down and take a good long nap, but we’re in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a parade. Plus, I was promised pizza at the end. Sure, I was in the advanced stages of heat stroke, but it’s insane what a 10-year-old will put up with for a free slice of pizza.

It had sounded like fun, riding my bike in the parade with my cub scout pack. I don’t remember what patriotic holiday or civic event we were honoring with our circuitous march through the tiny town of North College Hill. Does it matter? I remember we were to gather in the Ontario parking lot with our bikes decorated red, white and blue wearing our full-dress uniforms. Then we would ride along the parade route waving to the throngs clogging the curbside. At the end there would be pizza and Coke! That had sealed the deal. Sure, it might be a long ride, but for the promise of pizza and soda, I could endure anything. Or so I thought…

I showed up on time – even at age 9 or so I knew to be punctual – with a few loose tassels dangling from both my handlebars and the inverted U-shape which supported the back of the long seat. It was a token effort, but good enough that no one said anything as the others in my pack began to assemble. One of the den mothers -- now just a blurry, maternal placeholder in my memory – gathered us all together and found our assigned spot in line of floats, cars and bands. She went over the parade route, but we paid little attention. The car ahead would pull out, we’d follow it, when we reached the terminus at the local high school there would be pizza. “Pizza.” Got it!

As we stood in the parking lot waiting for the parade to begin, a hint of trepidation began to gnaw at my happy mood. You see the thing about parades those who’ve never been in one fail to realize is, they’re slow -- slow to start, slow en route, and slow and long to finish. The sun which beat down on the – let’s say – fourth of July day was brutal. The temperature was in the middle 90s. And the thing about the cub scout dress uniform is that it’s long sleeves, long pants and navy blue. If that’s not enough, let’s tie the top off with a neckerchief. By the time we pulled into the street, I was already drenched in sweat, and that’s when the true horror hit.

You see, the prospect of zipping along the parade route for an hour or two on my trusty two-wheeler only worked if we were free to roam, but we had an assigned slot we were told to maintain. We weren’t riding our bikes in the parade, we were walking them, slowly, at a pace that would bore a snail while the accordion effect of any long line of people jerked and faltered to a stop continually and the car in front of us hosed us down in a pre-Nader level of exhaust fumes. We weren’t so much riding our bikes, as carrying them the length of the parade. It was agony, sheer agony! Every time we heard the marching band strike up their parade piece and we came to a full halt for the song’s duration, I howled in internal anguish. Would this day never end! Where was the pizza?

My saliva dried up, my mouth instead exuding a thick pasty foam, the cheers from the crowd turned from supportive to hateful mockery, and I ceased being able to see anything but the bumper of the car before us. Each time I fell, I picked myself up and pressed onward, there seeming to be no other way out. It was a parade after all. You can’t just leave a parade. When I sagged against the handlebars outside city hall as the mayor droned into the third paragraph of his nonsensical jabbering, I felt a concerned hand on my shoulder. The next thing, I was in a car being driven home while I sucked on some ice chips. “You know, you’re supposed to stay hydrated…” Her generic, maternal voice chided me. No. I didn’t know. The vast space between my imagined universe and reality was now abundantly clear. Someone probably should’ve been looking out for me and my fellow scouts. I didn’t even get to have any pizza.

Topic: Snow

Author: Chris Dunn

Mittens over gloves, thick denim pants, three pairs of socks stuffed into boots, three shirts under a sweater and a bulky winter coat, and hats with earflaps, or better yet, ski masks. All this, and even so, “Don’t stay out too long!” Properly armored we charged out into our snow days giddy with all the frozen promise blanketing the outside world. Running, digging, throwing snow, it didn’t take long before your double-insulated hands were drenched in sweat. When we returned home and stripped off our gear on the small linoleum patch that kept the living room carpet safe, our skin was either damp and clammy where covered or dry and cherry red where exposed to the wind. This was I expect from winter.

In ’78, the blizzard dumped so much snow on the Miami River Valley, that the Ohio River froze over. The snow drifts were six feet high against the hill which rose to meet the high school football field. We hollowed out tunnels and bunkers against the express order of our absent mothers whose stories of trapped children suffocating under collapsed roofs rang hollow before the wonder of our construction. IF, the worst happened, we could dig our way to freedom, surely. After all, It was only snow. So much snow!

And sledding! “This hill is called the Devil’s Backbone!” friends bragged as we carried our various plastic conveyances through wooded trails passed smaller, unacceptable hills. Some sleds were round hard plastic with handles to the sides, certain to capsize to any horizontal energy. Others were more traditional, long and thin with the front curved up and backwards toward the driver. Some kids just made do with a piece of cardboard, but the hours spent thundering downward as the wind blistered your cheeks and snow found every gap in mother’s meticulous defenses were the very definition of bliss. Struggling to climb to the height of the slippery slope, hampered by our limited mobility and heavy, plastic burdens, we’d race down in two’s and three’s – more bodies meant greater speed – only to grind to a halt at the bottom and then repeat the process until our legs finally gave out.

The fortress took hours to construct using a bread pan to make bricks of snow and then stacking them row upon row until the curved barrier stood between us and the enemy fortification some ten to fifteen feet away. Once our ammunition supplies were deemed sufficient, we would commence bombardment at an official signal. At least, that was the plan. Inevitably, someone would get antsy and strike out prematurely at an easy target gathering ammo outside his fortification. Such a cheap shot could also the herald the commencement of hostilities but resulted in conflicts of increased vitriol due to stinging cheeks and hurt feelings. Blows would be traded back and forth until one of two things happened: Someone got hit in the face and started to cry, or; One side ran out of ammo and in a desperate, final measure charged across no-man’s land and battered down the opposing structure like some mad titan.

These fond memories of my youth, are now just the sad stories of an old man talking about how it used to get cold, “back in my day…” I scoff at people when they speak of snowfall and complain of cold temperatures, confident that I can endure the worst this state has to throw my way – certain I have already done so. But the other day, I drove passed one of our old sledding grounds and noted with some measure of doubt that the slope was slight at best and the range no more than a small, handful of yards. We would have been hard pressed to get up any real speed on that thing, and yet in my mind I can still feel the whip of the wind against my cheeks and recall the thrill of the rapid descent. Outside today, a six-inch blanket of ice calls to my inner child, but I doubt I could find there the joy I once knew. Instead, I’ll stay where it’s warm and toast red wine to the fond memory of winters past.

Topic: A Stranger

Topic: A Stranger

This is hard to admit, but about twenty years ago I let a stranger into my home.  I not only let him into my home, I married him after an embarrassingly brief courtship.

Ismail was 30 years old and had recently come to the United States from Jordan.  Arabic was his first language but he did speak English surprisingly well.  He was not the usual type of guy I went for.  There was a strong physical connection between us, although when we first met, I thought the attraction was one-sided. He told me I was beautiful and FAT.  When my eyes teared up and I started to leave the restaurant, he backpedaled and insisted he meant the “fat” comment as a compliment.  Fat meant he liked my womanly curves and that it was a sign of wealth and prosperity according to him.  I don’t know if he was giving me a line, but I choose to believe that he might it in a nice way.  I was already weary of the dating scene that I found myself thrown into as a divorced mom in my thirties.  So much had changed since I first married at age 22. My dating motto at the time was “what’s love got to do with it” so when Ismail proposed I saw it as a win-win.  He had a bachelors degree in computer science and a good job, but his time in the US was limited unless he got a green card.  What was in it for me? We didn’t have much in common.  But he was smart, well-mannered, and would help pay the bills, take out the trash, mow the lawn, shovel the snow, change the oil in my car, provide security and companionship on the nights my kids stayed with their dad and their new stepmom.  And I could check out of the dating scene- for a time.

There was a popular movie in the nineties called Green Card in which Andie McDowell plays an American and Gerard Depardieu, a French man who get married for purely utilitarian reasons. The story was much like ours except in the movie they ended up falling in love.  One scene that I found to be true to life was the immigration interview, in which immigration services determines that you’re really married and living together as husband and wife.  After Ismail and I got married we had to go through the same rigorous process to verify our marriage was legit.  They asked questions ranging from what brand of cat food we purchased to how many times a week we had sex.  They asked for wedding photos and were careful to interview us in separate rooms so there could be no “helping” each other out. We passed. 

Our marriage was not without struggles.  The language barrier was huge. We didn’t like the same movies, books, tv shows or music.  The only American movies he liked were low on dialogue and relied on action and lots of violence.  His creative use of English amused me.  When he became impatient, he would resort to Arabic and raise up his hand saying “halas” which mean “enough.”  He tried to substitute halas with American slang one day with a raised arm saying, “Talk it to my hand.”

He was very literal.  I played The Police song “Roxanne” for him.  It’s about a prostitute named Roxanne and the main lyric is “Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light, walk the streets for money, you don’t have to sell your body to the night.”  I had a cat named Roxanne and I found him singing the song to her with the lyrics paraphrased in his heavy accent, “Roxanne, you don’t have to fuck around.” 

He claimed that he wasn’t a fan of my cats, but once when I returned home from a business trip, he told me he had taken my cat, Mohican, to Blockbuster Video with him.

“You mean you took the cat inside the store?!”   

“Yes,” he replied, “Everyone was astonished,”   

I liked how he used words like astonished in casual conversation.   But he didn’t get the concept of having a pet and treating it like a member of the family.  When my cat broke her leg and her surgical repair cost me over $300, he was the one who was astonished.  He thought I should have had her put down.  She was just an animal, he reasoned. 

He didn’t understand my life’s work in nursing homes.  I was a Director of Nursing at a nursing facility and was working on my master’s degree in health administration and getting my nursing home administrator’s license when we were together.  “I do not understand this,” he said, “You take all of your old people and you make them live in one house away from their families?”  I didn’t like the way he put it, but I could see how it could look that way.  He accused “you Americans” of treating animals better than the elderly, and I had to admit there was some truth to that.  As much as he criticized Americans though, he desperately wanted to be one. 

The religious difference was huge.  He was a devout Muslim.  He had a call to prayer on the computer that was in our bedroom and it loudly let us know in Arabic that it was time to pray.  He got up round the clock, laid his prayer carpet thing (can’t remember what he called it), faced Mecca, and said his prayers dutifully even in the middle of the night.  I had to respect that.  I was raised Catholic, and I wasn’t nearly as observant.  He never tried to convert me.  My biggest faux pas was when he brought his friend Raed over during Ramadan, a time when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, and I made them tea.  I thought they just fasted food, but no, these guys were serious.  They didn’t even drink water all day. 

We stayed together for a little bit after we passed the immigration interview.  What ended it for me was when I discovered he was corresponding with a young girl and she was sending him salacious photos via email.  “Sexting” and even texting wasn’t a thing yet.  I found out the girl was at least over 18, but barely.  He defended his actions.  All they were doing was corresponding.  She lived in Cleveland. When I suggested that I start a similar correspondence with a young man of my choosing he was staunchly opposed.  That wouldn’t be right, cause I’m a woman.  That was when I sent him away, and he didn’t argue.  He got what he wanted.  The last time I physically saw him was at our dissolution hearing in early 2001. 

The last time we spoke was shortly after 9/11.  He called me and said, “I want you to know I did not do this.  I am not a terrorist.  I just wanted a green card.  What happened is not right, and it is not the way of Islam.”  He said that the air travel required by his job had gotten next to impossible.  He was almost always detained because of the way he looked and spoke.  He shared that a bunch of teenagers tried to beat him up just for walking down the street, but he outran them.  He told me he might end up going back home if things didn’t get better.  And then he thanked me and said he could never repay for what I’d done and how I’d helped him.   I wished him well, and then just like that the stranger was gone. 

Topic: A Stranger

Author: Chris Dunn

No offense meant to my present employer, or to any of the publishers who’ve given me work over the years, but my favorite job has always been 3^rd shift at Kinko’s. I worked most shifts alone with a stack of projects to be finished by morning. My shifts ran 10 hours with 4 days on followed by 4 days off. Every break was like a mini-vacation and each work week was a hectic blur. I still got to hang out with the normal 9 to 5 people, just when they were getting up, I was going to bed and vice-versa. We could share a meal and then they would head off to work while I went to sleep, and then we’d meet on the other side, share an evening and then reverse the work/sleep paradigm. The job was great, too. Each day presented a series of puzzles to be solved using the variety of tools at hand. Get the big copy job running on the utility machine while you scan the photos into the docutech. Once that’s done, start the docutech job and the second print job on the utility, while you bind the original utility project. If you time it right, you drop the bound project on the finished table on your way to snatch the docutech pages and take them over to the booklet maker. If you were good, and I was, you got to spend an hour or two loading machines and shelves with paper, and then spend the final hours before morning reading a book or plotting your next campaign. Sheer bliss, for the most part. The only thing that ever caused disruption to this paradise was, oddly, the customers.

Now think for a second. What kind of people do you see coming into a copy shop at 2 in the morning? My clientele wasn’t the daytime parade of businessmen seeking business cards or snooty Hyde Park women shocked to find that their hand-scanned, twenty-page booklet couldn’t be completed immediately. I didn’t get the hopeful graduates needing 30 copies of their empty resume on off-white linen. No, as was once intoned in song, the freaks come out at night.

Sure, there were some students, usually design students desperate to finish their project to an exacting standard before the start of class at 8 am, but they were the exceptions. I heard more than my share of grifter sob stories, each alike in detail, just needing a few dollars for the bus or a taxi. Their sick children waiting at home for their medication… The stupid car that broke down at the worst time… Then there was the guy who demanded precise color copies of his hand sketches of ballerinas typically drawn from particularly risqué angles. Lots of personal projects with hours at the self-serve machines followed by further hours spent with x-acto knives giving them the perfect finish. For the most part these were harmless and kept to themselves. The only worry was how loud I could pitch my music when they were in the store.

Then there was this one guy… He came in a lot! And he was weird. Tall and heavy-set with his hair shaved close to the skull. He spoke in a mumbled, mushy slur and would often join me on smoke breaks, regaling me with anecdotes from the home where he was staying. I got the distinct feeling this place was an institution of some sort. He always wore sweat pants and a baggy t-shirt, arriving – typically at 2ish – and departing come morning, always by taxi. He would spend those hours copying, cutting, reducing and pasting up the results with determined precision, pouring over a collection of political thrillers he carried in a weathered, green military backpack. Until finally bringing me his creation of the night. “Can I get this laminated?” he’d ask.

The first time, I stood before the laminator waiting for the heating element to warm up, and I looked down and realized what I was holding, I was faced with a bit of a moral quandary. What my mysterious stranger had made was a fake CIA badge with his own picture placed in the corner and his personal information spelled out next to an official looking seal and some carefully arranged detailing. What was he going to do with this? Nothing good, probably. And if he does try to do something… odd with it, does that make me an accomplice? Official work policy is that we do not look at customer copy. That’s an invasion of privacy. but what if he tried to use this thing to gain access to some government facility, or worse?! This was pre-911, so terrorism didn’t enter my mind. I was more afraid of something John Hinckley-ish. Did I need to do something?

In the end, I decided that any government building or official that could be bypassed with this obviously hand-crafted forgery deserved to get taken. Yeah, this guy had spent hours putting it together, but even his best effort still could only yield a toner-flecked, slightly crooked mock-up. This wasn’t the movie scene where the hero waits for hours in a dank basement for perfect forgeries made by a man who refused to allow his face to be seen. This was made under bright lights at 2 in the morning by a guy with obvious learning disabilities. I logged him in my memory and rang up the sale.

For the next few days though, I told the story and watched the news wondering if I’d see a, “Ohio man attempts to gain access to Fort…” story with my nocturnal forger’s mug splashed on the screen, but none came. He continued to come periodically over the next few months, and I made him several such ID’s for many different government agencies and buildings. He was harmless. I’m pretty sure. I mean, everybody needs a hobby, right?

New Year's

As 1999 was drawing to an end, many were afraid of what 2000 might bring-or not bring. The news reporters were broadcasting that computers would not be able to make the conversion to the new year. Airplanes could just stop midair. Banks could lose all of the money. Could bes and maybes were endless. I didn't and still don't understand what everyone was really worried about and I decided not to worry too much about it unless "it" happened.

My father-in-law on the other hand bought into all of it. He was a WWII veteran. A man who had survived the Battle of the Bulge, getting shot, and having partial paralysis during his time in the service, he wanted to keep his family safe. He wanted all of us to be prepared and he lectured us to take these warnings seriously.

In the summer of 1999 he began stocking up on certain items at the grocery store. One of the main items he bought was two liters of Coke products. He loved Coke ever since his brother worked for the company many years earlier. Every time we visited, he would send us home with 5-10 plastic bottles of all varieties. He did this for each of his 6 kids. We made a spot in our basement for the sodas.

Another task he assigned us was to save old milk jugs, clean them out, and fill them with water. We did this to ease his mind. With four kids, it didn't take long for us to acquire 20 plus jugs.

We stocked up on canned goods and other nonperishable foods. The final gift that he provided was a propane camping stove with several extra bottles of propane. We were ready if this big event occurred.

As we made plans for New Year's Eve, we weren't very concerned about what was going to happen at the stroke of midnight. After pondering over the options, we decided to attend a dance that our kid's school's athletic association was hosting. Did we feel guilty not spending what could be the end of the world with our kids? Not really. We believed if anything really did happen, they would be well off since they were spending the evening with their grandparents. If we were prepared, my father-in-law was ready for anything.

We partied through the night with a large group of friends. At midnight we toasted the new year and waited. Nothing happened. We called our kids and wished them Happy New Year. They were safe. We were safe. Nothing happened. There were no computer glitches stealing away our money or downing planes. Life went on. We survived the perceived catastrophe. The party went on.

The stockpile in our basement went down gradually. We drank the sodas and ate the food. We watered plants with the water and recycled the empty jugs. Most New Year's Eves are just a blurred memory, but 1999 was definitely very memorable to me.