Topic: Autumn

Topic: Autumn

Miami University was made for autumn.  With its red brick buildings and tree lined walkways it looks like the movie set for every college film set in the Midwest.  In the fall of my freshman year, 1983, it was a particularly gorgeous fall day.  You didn’t need a coat--a sweater would do just fine.

 I was walking from my dorm to the dining hall for lunch in late October.  After lunch I was going to walk to the performing arts building for my weekly voice lesson.   I don’t know where I got the idea, but I thought I might sing better if I dressed up a bit for my lesson.  I wore a blue knee length cotton dress with small pink flowers and a broad white lace collar.  The skirt flared out a bit and it came with a belt in the same floral as the dress.  I remember checking my look in the full-length mirror we had hanging on the back of the door to our tiny dorm room, and thinking that the belt was a good touch. I thought it nipped in my waist nicely and gave me the hourglass effect I was going for.  Back then I had thick pretty reddish-brown hair with feathered bangs.  Before I headed out, I sprayed a little Aqua Net on my bangs and touched up my lips with Bonne Bell lip smacker Dr. Pepper flavor.  I smiled at my reflection.  I felt pretty.

To get to the dining hall I had to walk past the freshman boy’s dorm.  Some guys on one of the upper floors had their speakers in the windows blasting “Photograph” by Def Leppard.  I hummed along and stepped lightly in my blue flats.  I crunched some leaves intentionally as I walked.  I had struggled with feeling homesick since I had started college a few months back.  But on this day, I felt so collegiate, like maybe this was where I belonged.  It was fall and I was doing well in my classes.  The air was crisp, but not too cold.  I smiled at the world.

Then the music stopped and I heard one of the boys from the dorm yell, “Lose about fifty pounds.  Then you’d look halfway decent, bitch.” 

Who could they be talking to?  I looked behind and beside me and saw no one.  Then he repeated the taunt.  I didn’t look up.  I tried not to speed up.  I tried to pretend I didn’t hear what he said.  Then a different voice began to make sounds like a pig.  I felt a tear escape from my left eye.  Then a voice in my head, I think it was my mom’s, saying, “Do not let these motherfuckers see you cry.”  I kept walking and focused on keeping my pace as steady and light as before.  I crunched a few more leaves. 

“I know you hear me.  Yeah, I’m talking to you,” he called out.  I thought about yelling back or flipping him off, but I heard my mom’s voice again telling me, “Do not dignify any of this with a response.”  I made it past the back of the dorm and ate lunch.  I went to my voice lesson.  The next time I went to my voice lesson I wore jeans and a baggy sweatshirt.

I wonder if those boys remember this day like I do.  I wonder if they have wives.  Or daughters.  And I wonder if a perfect autumn day brings it to their remembrance. 

Autumn by Thom Dunn

Topic- Autumn (written by Thom Dunn)

 

I’m from New England. 

New England is a riot of color in the fall.

I ask my fifty-three year old daughter, “Have you been to New England in autumn?”

“No,” she says, “I’ve never been to New England in autumn.”

Actually, outside on Hollywood Avenue in Cincinnati leaves are turning in bunches. 

Down by the Cape after the homecoming dance Edna Tenney comes up to me.  “Feel me, “she says, her bathing suit dripping from a quick dip in Buzzard’s Bay.  I refrain. Dumb high school fool.  On the way back, Ralph and Madeleine get to play-fighting, and Ralph nearly runs into a tree.  I shout, “Look out, Ralph” in a sharp desperate voice.  It may be the most important thing I ever did in my life.  The laughter in the wagon goes on.  The moment goes on.  We continue to consume beer, no hard stuff.  Not I, of course.  As per a promise I made to my sister I never drink.  The year is 1956.  Looking back I find it strange that there is no marijuana, at least none that I ever saw in Milton High.  Oh, but there is the dance, and the Cape, more beer than Ralph should drink, Madeleine’s inattention.

We cruise past Hyannisport and into the miracle that is autumn, and beside me the miracle that is Edna.

“Feel me, “she says, “Feel me.” 

Topic: Vacation

Topic: Vacation

One of my late mother’s many gifts was her ability to make the mundane seem special.  My dad was a college English professor and she was trudging through law school with three kids under the age of ten.  I know now that she didn’t like being in the house by herself at night.  Back then when my dad had to teach a Wednesday night class she would declare that we would have a “Dad’s Not Here” party.  We got to stay up late and watch the Sonny and Cher show.  She’d make popcorn-on the stove-this was the early seventies so we hadn’t heard of microwave popcorn, or even microwaves.  She’d buy a one quart glass bottle of Coke that we’d split three ways between mom, my brother Chris, and me.  My baby brother Marty was too little at the time to appreciate what a rare treat it was for us to have soda.

Mom would “move” the leftovers in an innovative way.  She’d tell us to sit in the dining room and then she’d appear with an apron tied around her waist as she welcomed us to “Dee’s Café.” 

“Good evening, miss.  May I offer you a cocktail to start with?  We have milk, water, and apple juice.”

Then she’d list the chef’s selections for us and would jot down our “order” on a little notepad.  We loved it. 

She even made the task of cleaning my room seem exciting.  Mom’s angle was that we would pretend we worked for the Red Cross.  My room was the site of a terrible tornado and we had to get everything cleaned up and ready so “the people” could come back home.  I bought into her vision and cleaned with unusual gusto for an eight year old. 

Once a month she and dad would sit at the dining room table to balance their checkbook and pay their bills old school style.  They handwrote checks and stuffed them into envelopes.  They took their paper bank statement and reconciled it to their check ledger-stuff my kids no nothing about.  There were no ATMS, debit cards, or electronic banking. When I asked what they were doing mom said they were playing a game called “Oh Shit” and that only grownups could play it.  All I knew was that if my mom did it, I wanted to play too. 

But probably her greatest feat was making us feel like a trip to Peebles, Ohio and on up to Toledo, Ohio was a luxury vacation.  She started by talking up the big vacation weeks ahead of time.  She made a countdown calendar on the kitchen fridge.  I proudly told the neighborhood kids that I wouldn’t be available for the next few days.  I was going on vacation.  I never went to the beach or a resort as a kid.  I still haven’t been to Disneyland or Disney World.  I didn’t ride on a plane until I was in my thirties.  I was in my forties when I went on my first cruise, and it was just this year at age 53 that I finally traveled outside of the U.S.  Our big vacation involved all three of us kids and my parents traveling in a station wagon to the Indian burial mound in Peebles.  Then we drove up to Toledo and stayed two nights in Howard Johnson hotel, all of us in one big room.  We dined at the L&K Family restaurant and went to the Toledo Zoo and the Toledo Museum of Art.  I remember it as one of my favorite vacations. 

What made it great, what made so many of my childhood memories great was my mom’s enthusiasm.  No matter what crap was thrown in mom’s path she managed to make it into a party, a game, or an adventure.  Now that I’m older I realize money was tight for my parents during those days.  By a lot of people’s standards we weren’t well off.  But when I think back on my childhood, I remember feeling unbelievably rich.  

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.