Gifts and Curses CH 7 of Becoming Thuperman

Little league is designed to let everyone who tries out play some position. It's supposed to be more about participation than winning. Since everyone wants to win - because there is hardly a reason to play a sport if you aren't trying to win - the rule about everyone having to play has several unintended effects.

First and foremost, putting in a player who isn't good at playing causes a team to make more mistakes and possibly lose a game. Although the rule is intended to let everyone participate regardless of ability - which is a good thing - the bad part of it is that all the other players who are better at the sport ridicule the kids who aren't and wouldn't be playing at all except for the silly rule. It's especially wrong when a game is lost because of some mistake that ungifted kid made. Life becomes unbearable for the poor schlep. I should know.

Also, the participation rule isn't really preparing any kids for real life. Grown-up people - a.k.a. adults - face situations all the time where they aren't allowed to participate at doing something they want to do because they aren't very good at it. There's a difference between what people dream of doing and the reality of what can be accomplished. Childhood is probably the best place to learn lessons about failure. Participation rules fly in the face of that.

When I was eight-years-old, I dreamed a lot. Never once did I dream of becoming an insurance salesman like my father. Maybe that's what he wanted me to do in life. He made good money doing it - according to Mom. He got to travel a lot, which might be the only reason I'd want to do his job. But selling insurance kind of seemed silly to me. It's like making a bet with someone that they are going to have bad luck or something - like putting a jinx on them. I wasn't sure I wanted any part of that, no matter how much money there was to be made.

For a while, I wanted to be an astronaut, then a police officer, a fire fighter, or a truck driver. A couple of times I thought about being a doctor or a school teacher but after realizing how much reading and studying those professions required, I decided those were probably not well suited to me. Every time I watched a western I wanted to be a cowboy. When I watched sports on TV I wanted to play that sport.

It seemed like every day when I woke up I wanted to be something different than the day before. That's some of what makes kids different from grown-ups. Kids can get away with changing their minds about what they want to be. Pretty-much, adults have to be what they are because somewhere along the way they decided to do things like having kids, buying cars, houses and things to fill up the house.

It all comes down to gifts and living up to potential, though. Since that summer when I was eight, I've given a lot of thought about that. As a result, I've arrived at some ideas about how some of those things actually work. You see, as a baby each of us has more potential than anything else. It doesn't last forever though. It's like having food stored in the freezer. No matter how cold it is inside, eventually the food gets to the point it's no good anymore, what Mom referred to as 'freezer burn'. You have to realize your potential before it's too late to use it otherwise you end up just throwing it away - or you use it to feed the dogs.

Another thing about gifts is that they exist within individual limits. You either overcome, accept or ignore the reasons you can't do something and that's based on who and what you are. Also, it depends on how much you believe in yourself and overcome things like how small you are or how big, whether you're smart or stupid and things like that.

A lot of people think they can't do something even when they've never tried - just because other people tell them they can't. Why would anyone believe someone else about something he or she hasn't tried? How does someone else know how high you can jump or how fast you can run until you do it? If they've never tried they don't know those things about themselves, either. So what ends up happening is people see all the things they can't do, including those things they have been told they can't do, and they get it in their heads that instead of gifts all they were born with were curses.

Here's a pretty good example. Some people have great ideas for songs and are naturally gifted at writing music, but they can't sing very well. Not being able to sing shouldn't prevent them from writing a song, but sometimes it does. Occasionally people have music in them and it doesn't matter whether they can sing or not, because the music is what matters to them. It's like it has to find its way out of them so they can share it. Some of the music Mom listened to when I was eight was like that. The singer wasn't very good at singing - not in my opinion. And when I told Mom that, she said I needed to listen to the lyrics. So, I did; she was right. The words were pretty good and the meaning more than made up for the guy's gravelly voice who wrote the song.

Music was never one of my gifts. I never learned how to play any musical instrument. However, Sandra had gifts. She had a pretty good voice and her mother was making her take piano lessons - which she hated. She wanted to play guitar because it was portable. "It's hard carrying a piano around," she pointed out in her usual, practical way. How could anyone argue with that logic?

Still, Sandra and her mom argued a lot about the lessons. They were scheduled on Saturday morning at ten o'clock, smack-dab in the middle of cartoon day. That's some of the reason Sandra hated taking them. Sometimes, when I went to her house early on Saturday afternoon I'd overhear the discussion. In the process of listening in on those arguments, I figured out why parents make their kids do things like taking piano lessons.

"I always wished I'd learned how to play piano when I was your age," her mother told her. But it was what she said after - about being born with gifts - that really made me think. "After you grow up it's harder to learn things. You might be a great composer but you'll never know it because you didn't want to take piano lessons." Okay, so maybe that was a stretch for her mother, but it was Betty's logic which only occasionally had anything to do with reality where Sandra was concerned.

In Betty's world, Sandra was going to be a beauty queen, earn scholarships for college and become a famous actress and model. Although Sandra admitted those dreams were pretty good, they weren't really hers, but her mother's instead. Sandra wanted to do things her own way and her special abilities as a super-heroine tied into that directly.

It did no good arguing with Betty, though Sandra tried. "Maybe I'm supposed to be a great composer with a guitar."

"Composers play pianos," Betty insisted. "It's the best instrument of all for learning music. When you're older, you'll thank me for making you learn how to play piano."

Parents always say things like that to shut down a kid's arguments - like their superior experience trumps everything. With some things it does, but this time Sandra was skeptical and, of course, I believed she was right.

My dad had a favorite saying about sage - which is another word for wisdom. "It's three quarters age." There's no arguing with that. But I think the other quarter is what matters most because getting older is something you can do just sitting around and waiting for it to happen. That doesn't make you very wise or experienced at anything but being bored and tired. I think people are pretty good at being bored and tired without practicing any more than they already do - just saying.

So, Sandra hated playing piano at least as much as I hated playing right field on the little league team, but whenever I pointed that out to her - and I did that a few times - she told me to shut up, saying it was different. It was different, of course, but only because one was about music and the other was about sports and it was about her and not me. What was the same about it was how it involved gifts or talents and how other adults were making good things seem like bad things to the kids. Gifts turned into curses just because parents and other adults wouldn't let a kid do what he or she felt naturally inclined to do.

In a way, Sandra was doing the same sort of thing urging me to try out for pitcher on the little league team. With total disregard for what I wanted to do or wherever my natural abilities might lead me, she was determined I would make it. I'm not sure why she believed in me, my talent or whatever, but she was convinced that not only I could do it, but also I should do it. We spent the rest of the afternoon in Sandra's backyard, from the time I returned to her house with my baseball and glove until dinnertime tossing a baseball back and forth.

One thing I noticed early on was that Sandra was a whole lot better at throwing the ball than I was. This was an update on my previous observations regarding almost anything she did that was sports related. She was better at basketball and football too. She could run faster, jump higher and - if she cared to - beat the crap out of anyone at school. It wasn't a surprise to me. So, I told her maybe she should be the one trying out for little league. Again we discussed her mother's idea of what was proper for a little lady and all that. That was Sandra way of telling me her Mom wouldn't let her do anything she didn't consider lady like.

Although I liked how Sandra looked when her mom made her dress up like a girl, it always struck me as something fake - almost like it was supposed to be funny. I mean, Sandra didn't usually look that way. Certainly, it made her uncomfortable. She was what my mom referred to as a tomboy. I'm not sure where that term came from but Mom used it almost every time she referred to Sandra out-doing me at anything athletic.

Sandra didn't like being called a tomboy. She asked me how I would feel if someone called me a sally-girl. Don't ask me where she came up with that term; it was one of her things. But I told her I didn't think I'd like being called a girl, no offense. I think what Sandra was saying was she was very pleased with being a girl just she didn't think it was fair to be limited in what she could do just because adults thought girls should do certain things but not others.

We talked a lot about things like that as we tossed the baseball back and forth. Then after we were both loosened up, we started what Sandra called pepper, throwing the ball harder and faster and doing it as quickly as possible, improving our reflexes and such. I was bad at that, but as usual, she was good. However, I got better at doing it the more we did it. That's why people practice doing things - not just the things they are bad at but also the things they are good at so they get even better at them.

By the time we were finished practicing for the day, dinner was ready. Suddenly, I remembered I hadn't really told Mom that I was eating at Sandra's house, but Betty told me she'd already called about it so, I was covered. Sandra and I took turns in the downstairs washroom cleaning up as best we could for dinner. Considering we had to take baths later anyway and after dinner there was more than enough daylight left to get really dirty again, about all we washed was out hands.

Bud was home by then; Spike wasn't. Apparently his band was rehearsing, which is what musicians call practicing. Anyway, the rest of us sat down together at the table, joined hands and Bud said grace like he always did every time I ate at Sandra's house. I guess it does it all the time, but I only know for sure about the times I'm there. Then we enjoyed my favorite meal, spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread and salad.

Afterwards, Bud told us a funny story, like he always did. That night's story was about a guy who came into his hardware store earlier that morning looking for the sort of lampshades you can clip onto bare light bulbs. He wanted a dozen of them but Bud only had six in stock, so he had to order more specially for the guy. But in talking with him, Bud asked the man why he needed so many shades. You see, the item wasn't all that popular so that made him curious.

"It's to get rid of my extra wire hanger problem, of course," the guy said.

Bud had to ask for an explanation of that. What resulted caused Bud to laugh. As he told the story he had to get up from the table and go into the kitchen to get a paper and pencil. When he returned he drew a diagram to illustrate exactly what the guy had explained to him was happening with his house's electrical system.

According to what Bud drew, which was a reasonable facsimile of what the guy had drawn in the store earlier, the man claimed that whenever a sock disappeared in the laundry it was transformed into an extra wire coat hanger in one of the closets of his house. The customer had determined, after giving it a lot of thought, the electric drier dematerialized the missing sock and its ions traveled down the 220V wires to the fuse box. There it was converted into 120V sent down the wires into the closets of the house where, through any bare light bulb, the sock rematerialized as a wire coat hanger.

"I figure the lampshades will interrupt the process," the guy told Bud.

Bud laughed so hard as he told the story that tears came to his eyes.

"I'm sure he wasn't serious," Betty said.

"Oh, I think he was, just he's crazy. But he wanted to buy dozen lampshades at five dollars each which I make a good forty five percent margin on, so who was I to tell him differently about his theory?"

When we finished eating, Sandra and I went outside again and we practiced baseball a little more, but mainly we talked about the Fourth Of July which was about a month or so away. Her family was having a big cookout in the backyard, sort of like they did every year. This year was going to be different, though, because her Uncle Ray, a.k.a Gasman, was coming all the way from Encino, California. Sandra was excited about that because he was bringing all his pictures with him so Sandra could see second hand what things looked like around where Ray lived.

Because I promised more so than I was tried and certainly more than I wanted to, before sunset I said goodbye to Sandra. I thanked her for keeping me company all day and helping me practice baseball. Like always we made plans to play together the next morning, and of course she told me to bring my ball and glove again, suggesting we could go to Tree Land, a.k.a the park. Then, I trotted off with my baseball and glove and returned to my house.

Afternoon At Sandra's CH 6 of Becoming Thuperman

In the absence of Dad, why was taking out the trash my job? Other than sometimes the trash can was heavy, it made no sense. Brenda and Linda were bigger and stronger than me, yet never once in all the times Dad was away on business had either of them done the job. They were using lame excuses. The menial task was far beneath them. Why, they complained about helping Mom clean the house.

It had nothing to do with being a girl, because Sandra took the trash out at her house. Once before when the subject came up I asked her why her brother, Spike, didn't do it? She revealed that he was conveniently never at home when it was time to do it, but she didn't mind doing it. The trash can was on wheels and she got an extra dollar a week in her allowance for doing it.

Maybe if I got extra allowance for doing what was usually Dad's job, I would feel different, but if my allowance was increased, I know I'd just spend it. Four more turns at a video game was all an extra dollar meant to me. It wasn't like I knew how to save money.

In the course of the present conversation about such things, Sandra revealed that she saved nearly all of her allowance, usually four dollars of the six she received weekly, anyway. Since last Christmas she'd squirreled away over two hundred dollars which she kept in a secret hiding place so Spike couldn't find it. It amazed me that she had that much money saved because, as I mentioned earlier, I usually spent all of my weekly five dollars between Friday evening and sunset on Sunday.

After I took out the trash, we hung around at my house for another half hour, then Sandra and I headed down to her place. The first thing we did there was empty all the trash cans in her house and wheel the can out to the curb, parking it in the usual place beside the mailbox. While there the letter carrier pulled up and, recognizing Sandra handed her the family mail.

When we returned inside we went directly to the kitchen, where Sandra delivered the mail to her Mom and made good on the promise of a cold soda in return for my helping her collect the trash. Her mom asked, "Did you two enjoy your trip to Chicago?"

"It was okay," Sandra said. "Something to do. We played games along the way. It's not like we stopped or went into the airport or anything."

"Are you hungry?" she asked as Sandra handed me a can of Coke.

"Maybe a little bit."

"You didn't stop anywhere to eat?"

"We had hotdogs on the way back," Sandra clarified. "They were really good, too." But as that was now a few hours ago, of course, we were both hungry.

"There's some Jell-o""

"I saw it." She was already fetching some bowls from the cupboard.

"I don't want you two eating too much. It'll spoil your appetite for dinner. Will can stay for dinner, of course. I need to return his mother's favor for taking care of you."

I shrugged. It wouldn't be the first time I'd eaten there and hopefully not the last.

"We're having spaghetti," Betty said more directly to me, knowing how much I enjoyed her pasta dishes - all the more reason to stay. One of my favorite things, so it worked out perfectly. Betty's sauce was always homemade and really good. I liked Mom's sauce, too - whenever she made spaghetti - but hers was store bought, so it always tasted the same. Betty's was an old family recipe, and as her mother was Italian, that made it extra special. She always seemed to know how to cook anything with noodles and sauces to perfection. In fact, she always seemed to be cooking something anytime I was there. Now that school was out for the summer, she had a lot more time at home during the day.

After enjoying the mid-afternoon snack, the next thing Sandra and I did was go into her father's study to make a copy of the map/maze Sandra made at my house. As we went upstairs to her bedroom she handed one copy. For the first time I took a good look at it.

Although it was going to be a challenge to memorize it because of the maze, I was ready to do it. What was involved with all the turns and twists seemed kind of crazy in a way. "So we have to go the wrong way down this street to go over to the next street and then take that to the end to turn left instead of right""

"That's the fun part. Nobody will be able to follow us and know where we are going."

"Was anybody doing that before - following us?"

"I don't know, but if they were, they'll be confused now."

"You know what you didn't put on here?"

"What?" she asked.

"The park. It would be around here, right?" I pointed.

"That's the dot right there," she said as she indicated. "I just didn't name it because I couldn't decide whether to call it the park, the baseball field, or the swimming pool. And it would have been messy having all those things scrunched together when it's really all the same place."

"True. But you should call it something. I mean, we have been there many times, and we both like it there. So, according it your rules, it should be named."

"Well, everybody else calls it the park."

"But we're not everybody else," I pointed out.

"That's kind of why I didn't want to call it that," Sandra said with a smile. "I'll call it Tree Land."

"There are some trees there, but I think it's mainly grass, so maybe we should call it Grass Land."

"Just because a place has a lot of something isn't why it's named what it is. Some things have nothing to do with what a place is like. If that was true, Greenland should be Snowland."

"Or Iceland - oh...that one's already taken, isn't it?"

"Yes, and that also proves my point. I've seen pictures of Iceland and it isn't all ice at all. Maybe in the winter it is, but it's mostly green in the summer."

"We'll call it Tree Land, then," I agreed. "At least until we think of something better to call it."

"So, speaking of Tree Land, when do you start little league practice?"

"I haven't decided to do that. I'd rather spend time playing, especially on weekends."

"Baseball is sort of like playing, isn't it."

"Well it is, but it's not as fun as I thought it would be when I decided to play last year. I guess going to practice every night was what I least liked about it."

"But you got to play and usually your team won."

"If you can call playing right field for two innings a game, playing. I could sit on the grass out there and watch the game without affecting its outcome. No one hits anything that way unless they're left handed - like me."

"You got a lot of hits when you were batting, though."

"I got hit with pitches and walked a lot, because the pitchers weren't used to a southpaw batter - which is what they called me."

"What's it southpaw?"

"I'm not sure. It's something funny to say. No one calls right-handed people 'northpaws', do they?"

"I've never heard it."

"I went to every game," Sandra reminded me. "You hit the ball many times."

"I grounded out to first base a couple of times. Once I got on first because the pitcher was really bad about covering first base when the first baseman had to field the ball. And a few times I hit balls out to right field which the opposing players dropped. So, whenever I got on base it was mostly because I was left-handed - which was scored as an error not a hit."

"The times balls were hit your way you always caught them."

"Yeah." It was true. "But the few times it happened, it was like the other players and the coach were surprised or acted like it a fluke or something."

"If you don't like playing--"

"But I do like playing, just I want to be a pitcher, not an outfielder."

"Then tell the coach to make you a pitcher."

"It doesn't work that way, Sandra. I wanted to pitch last year but Coach Everett wouldn't even let me try out. He just stuck me in right field, like he assumed I didn't know how to play."

"Now he knows you do, right?"

"I guess so."

"Then he'll let you play somewhere else."

"No, he won't. Bobby Shaw is the best pitcher in town. And Tony, his brother, is second best. Everybody knows that. So nobody else tried out. And when I asked if I could, everyone laughed like they thought I was joking."

"So you just didn't say anything else, did you?"

"Let's say I allowed a lot of assuming."

Sandra shook her head. "This year you're going to try out for pitcher," she decided.

"I haven't been planning on playing. So, I'm all rusty from not throwing the ball around. I'll never make it. Bobby and Tony play baseball all the time."

"We can go in the backyard play catch if you want." Sandra was actually a pretty good ball player, but she never tried out for the team. Betty said it wasn't lady-like for her to be playing with a bunch of boys. I wasn't sure how it was lady-like for her to hang out with me all the time, but I guess it was okay, somehow. As I didn't want to call attention to it and risk her telling me I couldn't play with Sandra anymore, I never pointed it out.

As Sandra didn't officially have a glove of her own she used Spike's. She used it more than her brother ever did, which was seldom ever and only when she and I played catch. "You want to do that?" she asked.

"I guess. But I have to run down to the house and get my glove and ball."

"You could pretend to be a little more enthusiastic," she coaxed.

"I'll be right back," I offered.

"That's better. I'll be in the backyard waiting for you to get back."

While I ran down to my house to get my things, I was thinking about whether I really wanted to try out for baseball again. It was like giving up a large chunk of the summer for the sake of belonging to a team of other guys who I didn't like all that much. Sandra would talk me into doing it whether I wanted to or not, though, so I might as well just do it and not argue about it. Arguing isn't something I like anyway, especially with Sandra. She usually makes some sense and so she wins the discussion. That was one of her superpowers, almost always being right enough to win arguments.

One of the funny things about how superhero powers work is that everyone has them but, like I said before, some people wait a long time about discovering them - many people never discover them at all. That was one of the sad parts about discovering the gifts I was born with - knowing other people had them too but never realized it. You see part of my special powers were that I was left-handed.

Since most people are right-handed and I didn't like being seen as weird, I also learned to do everything right-handed. Dad said that made me ambidextrous. But I learned later on that I was born that way. I preferred using my left hand but I could do everything with either hand. Actually, when I wrote with a pencil or pen, it was more legible if I used my right hand. And people didn't laughed at me curling my left hand around in the awkward way of making letters or how everything slanted backwards like it was going to fall over.

Being ambidextrous was even more unusual than being left handed. So, of course, I didn't let on about it to anyone. It was bad enough that when I showed up for little league try outs a year before, I had a left handed baseball glove. I had to play baseball left handed because I was better at throwing a baseball that way. My left arm was a little stronger. But I had figured out how to swing a bat from either side and I was pretty good at hitting the ball either way.

The Publishing Adventure – Installment One:

When I received the final negotiated version of an eleven page contract, it arrived via email. It culminated a few days of questions and answers about exclusive rights and compensation for the development of an intellectual property, a book I wrote titled 'Fried Windows (In A Light White Sauce)'.

The process was straight forward - largely what I expected. This was the part where I was supposed to wake up and realize it'd been a dream, except I was awake. The important defining moment I'd waited for began ten days earlier with a congratulatory email. Not only had a publisher read the book I'd submitted only nine days before but also was interested in buying it. The world around me was finally changing for the better.

Having lost track of many times have I submitted stories and books for publication only to receive the usual, expected rejection notification a few weeks (sometimes months) later, I didn't know how to response. Naturally I read the email several times, checking to make certain it wasn't some cruel joke. It was real.

What was different was how quickly this response came. One acceptance compensates for a thousand or more rejections. Paraphrasing the late Jim Morrison, I've been down so long, it looked like up to me. Anything positive or encouraging would have been fine, though I'm not sure what my plans would be had this one been rejected, too.

The funny part about all this is the amount of desperation in my recent efforts and how serendipitous this seems, the answer to a lot of hard work and many prayers. After nearly a year and three months of walking on a tightrope above the shattered glass of broken dreams, something finally turned my way.

It took a leap of faith, quitting a dead-end job to pursue a dream, even though I couldn't afford it. Imposing on family to give me shelter, I became the burden to others I never wanted to be, unemployed, homeless and, worse, keyless. With fifty bucks and a handful of change to my name, my life became only about my writing and faith that if I stuck to it I would reach my goal, eventually.

Would I recommend others to do things this way? No, but everyone's journey is a little different. Some of the things that happened to me were necessary for my frame of mind and the proper perspective. There have been times when all I had to look forward to was writing – entering the fantasy world my mind creates for my characters to populate as they tell me their stories.

Foremost among the necessities was dealing with some health issues attending my over-consumption of alcohol. I don't drink anymore, which is a good thing. My writing has improved dramatically. Being rid of the baggage of the past, remnants of a failed marriage and the pressures of a thankless job, helped. Ties to others needed to addressed if not severed completely.

Determined to see this journey to the end, each day for the past year and several months, I've been getting up and writing from around five-thirty until ten. From ten to two I revise and edit things. These were the priorities. In April some of my writing was to the point of being ready to upload and offer for sale, mostly things I've submitted previously but received only multiple rejections from various publishers.

So, by the end of April, while in the daily routine, I decided to dress up a short story I posted on FanStory a year or so ago. Usually I deal with novels. It is my comfort medium. Although I write some poems and scripts, I don't do them often. Sometimes a great idea for a novel fizzles and produces a short story instead. That's where the majority of my shorter pieces come from.

Occasionally it happens the other way around, as was the case with 'Fried Windows (In A Light White Sauce)', a short story that bore a strange title, and got some decent reviews from fellow writers. This gave me hope and encouragement. Some suggested I write more of the story – which I did. But I submitted it almost immediately to a contest and later to a magazine. It didn’t win; the periodical's publisher rejected it. The fish weren't biting last summer, which has been the real underlying story of my recent life as a writer. I archived the story, figuring I'd look at it again in a few months, dress it up a bit and have a few more rounds with magazines. Yet there were always those other related short stories I posted after it, the same characters with a loosely connected story line.

As is sometimes necessary, mentally I disengaged from the story and went on to writing, editing and revising other projects. Stepping away from the story for a while is often the best thing a writer can do for improving it, because when you come back to it you see to with fresh eyes. Reading it give you new ideas. Eventually, I wrote other chapters and explored new scenes with the characters, giving the previous collection of short stories a theme and several threads of continuity. Gradually I built a plot, subplots and conflicts.  It all connected into several other stories I'd written with the same main character. So, in a way, the quirky story about a lady living in a house with no windows became an entry point into a broader world about a guy who straddles the divide between worlds of fantasy and fact.

Odds were stacked against me ever getting to this present point with my work of fiction, which makes the events of the past few days all the more remarkable and humbling. Feeling like I did nothing special other sticking with it, not giving up, I'm ecstatic to arrive at the threshold of the promised land of publishing a book. I wrote a strange story – though certainly not the strangest one I've created over the years. It bears an attention grabbing title and the story is engaging. It required the editing assistance of a friend to bring out some of the strengths of the writing. I've learned to always listen to criticism when it is offer constructively. In writing it must be about the art, not the ego. A writer who can't take criticism will never improve his or her craft.

Between shock and euphoria, I was still waiting for someone to tell me this is a belated April Fools Day prank, but I just read through an eleven page contract one last time before signing it in the three required places. Afterwards, it didn't evaporate or crumble to dust. It was real after all. Upon scanning it into a digital file to transmit via email back to the publisher, I waited for the confirming 'welcome aboard' email, just received. Now, I begin this novel adventure, one I hope to repeat multiple times – as many times as I have manuscripts. We'll see. For now, let's do one book at a time.

In the next installment I'll cover some statistics on the publishing business and some thoughts on how social media and modern technology has changed the industry.

Hotdogs and Homeward Bound - CH 5 of Being Thuperman

Leaving the airport, Mom headed back down Cicero Avenue. It was approaching noon so, she asked if we were hungry. Two eight year old kids are almost always going to be hungry. Why did she bother to ask? The only times I could recall ever being unable to eat anything more were the usual suspect holiday celebrations of gluttony, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

She suggested we stop for hotdogs, a place she'd taken me before. I wasn't sure Sandra knew the place, but I promised her the hotdogs were amazing. Mainly I think she wanted to stop somewhere to say she'd really been to Chicago, as in setting feet on the ground. In the days ahead I'd learn she didn't feel she'd been somewhere until that happened.

Upon stopping at the restaurant, the first thing all of us had to do was hit the restrooms. Even if we hadn't needed to go as badly as we did, Mom would have insisted, as she always did, that we wash our hands. When I emerged, I waited for Mom and Sandra to emerge from the ladies room. Again, I reminded myself to ask Sandra why it took girls a lot longer than boys to use the restroom? By the time the ladies came out, I'd forgotten all about asking, though. Already, I'd decided I wanted chilidogs.

Over the years I've heard people say some bad things about hotdogs, especially what ends up being put into them. But it's hard to mess up cooking one, unless you burn it on a grill or something. I'm not sure why but the dogs that day tasted better than any I had ever had up to that point in my life. Each of us ate two. Mom said I wolfed mine down which conjured an image that made me smile. I pictured a cartoon character – a wolf – licking his chops after consuming something tasty. I could imagine my tongue slapping my eyebrows.

"You happy now?" Mom asked.

As I finished chewing the last bite I nodded. Then, after swallowing, I confirmed, "That hit the spot!"

Sandra thanked Mom for lunch and agreed the hotdogs were good. Maybe it's just we were that hungry. When my belly button felt like it was stuck to my backbone, little else compared to something as quick and satisfying as a hotdog. Although she said nothing directly, I figured Sandra was in similar straights after driving for over two and a half hours. She never ate a big breakfast.

On the way home, Mom switched the radio to her kind of music, which, as I said before, didn’t interest Sandra or me. We played with our handheld games for a while, until once again I started getting a little car sick. Then, Sandra continued playing Punch-Buggy, extending her considerable lead in points. Although she didn't punch my arm all that hard, it was hurting from the multiple impacts of her fist. Not that it ended the game, I conceded she'd win.

While she continued to watch the oncoming traffic, I picked up her map which I'd left open on the seat between us. It seemed different to me, just a little. After what Sandra said about her rules and all, I had tried to commit it to memory. Some things seemed changed. The more I looked at it, the more I was certain of it. I started to point those out to her when she diverted my attention, pointing out particularly funny billboard graffiti regarding fast food with an arrow pointing to a sign next to it about weight loss. We both laughed. And so, for a while we continued playing Punch-Buggy while we also looked for funny signs.

After riding in the back seat all the way from the hotdog place to my house, I really needed to go to the bathroom again. Sandra called dibs on the downstairs washroom. I ran upstairs. Afterwards, Sandra came to my room and we continued talking about her map.

"I was thinking," she started. "A map can be sort of like a maze, right?"

"I suppose so."

"What if I make the map into a maze and only you and I are the ones who can figure out."

"That would be really cool," I said. "But I think other people will still figure it out."

"Yeah, but it will be hard for them, unless they're as good with mazes as we are."

"Or know the trick you showed me. That's the only reason I'm good, now."

"It's a perfect way to make a treasure map," she said.

"Do you have treasure you need to bury somewhere?"

"Not yet. Do you?"

"I have fourteen cents." I admitted with a smile. "I'm keeping the four cents I found hoping to find another penny so I can trade that for a nickel - cause pennies are useless otherwise."

"Yeah, they are. I have six dollars and fifty-six cents. If you give me your pennies I'll give you my nickel."

"I'll own you a penny, then."

"We'll find one eventually, you can give me the next one you find, unless it's laying heads-up, of course."

In case no one ever told you about lucky pennies, here it is. If a penny is head's up when you find it, you keep it for the good luck. Head's down, you give away immediately, like to the next person you see because the luck will only work for them.

Anyway, it was a deal, so afterwards, I had fifteen cents and she had six dollars and fifty-five cents.

Mom called upstairs to ask if I could give her my dirty laundry. Of course, I had to scramble to pick up the things that needed to be washed. As she sat at my desk, Sandra laughed at the sight o me running around, getting down on all fours to look under my bed and opening my closet.

"You could help," I suggested.

"I don't want to touch your smelly socks and dirty underwear!"

"They aren't that bad."

"Maybe not to you."

"Don't ever ask me to help you then."

"When have you ever been in my room and it wasn't clean?"

I shrugged.

"'Never' is the word you're looking for."

"You clean your room everyday. I clean mine once in a while – mostly whenever Mom reminds me."

"She shouldn't have to. It's easier if you clean it as you go."

"Well, I'm lazy, I guess."

"I've noticed. You're a lot like Spike," referring to her teenage brother.

"I'm nothing like him."

"You are as far as being lazy."

Having stuffed everything into the laundry that hung by its string from the bed post at the footboard, I snatched it up and ran it out into the hallway and dropped it down to Mom's awaiting arms. "Did you make your bed?" she asked.

"I'll do it."

"How can you invite Sandra into your room when it's all messy?"

"She's sort of used to it by now, Mom."

When I returned to my room, Sandra was laughing.

"I feel like I'm trapped between you and my mom telling me how bad I am. It's just I have other priorities."

"I know," Sandra said as she was drawing a new map.

"That's a new one?"

"I'm making it into a maze, like we talked about," she explained. I didn't dare look over her shoulder while she worked. She hated that. So, I went ahead and made my bed and put my toys in the toy box because I figured Mom would come upstairs to inspect in a few minutes – as soon as she put the dirty clothes into wash.

Anytime Sandra was in my room, Mom came upstairs to check on us. Sandra said it was to make sure the door was open, like her mom did whenever we were there and especially when Spike had a girlfriend over. Both of our moms made it seem like she was checking on something else, but really she was making sure we were playing normal stuff, not doctor. I had no interest in becoming a doctor and Sandra didn't want to pretend she was sick.

Sandra finished the new map and held it up for me to look. It looked really complicated until she showed me the trick of solving it. Then, it was pretty easy to figure out. So, already I knew how to find my way through it.

"Wouldn't it be cool if we could build a maze exactly like this?" I asked.

"You mean a world where the lines on the map are walls?"

"Yeah."

"This is a map for a world, remember?"

"Yeah? What's the world called?"

"Sandra and Will's world. I get top billing because I drew it."

"It was kind of my idea, though."

"You can all it Will and Sandra's world when you talk about it, then."

"What will other people call it?"

"Whatever they want to call it. I don’t care. I'll call it what I want to call it," she said defiantly. "Anyway, only people I know and like are going to know about it, so they'll probably call it what I call it, right?"

"A map of the new world that's also a maze," I said, then suggested calling it 'Amazing World'.

"That's a pun."

"Is it?" I asked.

"Spike doesn't allow me to use puns. He says they’re the lowest form of humor."

"So, is Spike going to be in on this world?"

"Not necessarily," she said. "So far, only you and I know about it. We could keep it that way, I suppose. So, we can call it Amazing World for a while, at least."

"Maybe we don't have to tell anybody about the world forever." For a long time, that's how it worked out.

The map started at the middle. As was the case with the other map, that was the faerie castle in her bedroom at her house. My room was also on the map, of course. Then, as the maze progressed further from the center, there were the arcade and the convenience store on the way to our school – which thankfully was out of session for the summer. Past the school building there were the other kids hangouts in the neighborhood, like the Patrick's Pizza Parlor – I'm not sure what prompted an Irish guy named Patrick Duffy to start a pizza place but it was a pretty good place to eat - and Jerry's Big Burger which was directly across the street.

Further out on the map was downtown Normal where Bud's Hardware was. Sandra and I went there sometimes. We'd park our bikes in the rack out front and lock them together so no one would steal them. Once inside, sometimes we'd do chores, like sweeping the floors and taking out the trash. Sandra's dad would pay us because we were helping him out doing things he hated doing.

Toward the edge of the paper on which the map/maze was drawn was the edge of town. Pointing out the maze exit was exactly where one of the roads led away from the city toward my grandparent's farm, I said, "We really have to make it over on bigger paper, and maybe make the lines on the maze smaller."

"Not really. It will move along with you."

"How's it supposed to do that?"

"That's the magic part. Once I make a copy of this with dad's copier, it will be transformed like the other one was."

"That's how it works?"

"Yeah," she confirmed with a smile. "You see, the faeries have to be able to use it, too. So, when I shrink down to their size, it has to come along with me, right?"

"I guess."

"It has to be magic, then. Otherwise, that wouldn't work at all."

"What about the other map? What are we going to do with that?"

"This is the same as the other map, just I put a maze around everything."

"We have to find different places as we solve the maze, then?"

"Exactly."

"I like this." I patted her on the back. "This will be fun."

As if on cue, Mom arrived at my door, checked my bed and ensured I hadn't hidden any piles of dirty clothes in the closet or under the bed. Fortunately, I hadn't. Since the last time I got caught and was grounded, I hadn't done anything like that. "You need to take out your trash." She observed.

"It’s not full yet."

"It doesn't have to be full to empty it."

"I'll bring it down later."

"What are you two up to?"

"Sandra's making a map/maze."

"A what?"

"I'm making a map of the world and drawing a maze over it." She handed the map to Mom.

"This is really creative, Sandra."

"It was kind of Will's idea, too."

"So you can pretend you're in the maze when you're going places around town."

"Sort of," I confirmed.

"I kind of got the idea from some of the video games I play," Sandra explained.

"Okay." Mom returned the map to Sandra. "You have quite an imagination - both of you."

"Can I go down to Sandra's house?" I asked. Not that Sandra was in any way ready to go, but I was getting ready for later on.

"You need to be back before dinner."

"Mom will want Will to stay for dinner since you fed me for lunch."

"Can I, Mom?"

"It's may I."

"May I?"

"You need to be home before dark, then. Before eight o'clock so you can take a bath and be ready for bed. And make sure you take the trash out first. Tomorrow is collection day. So, since Dad's away, you need to take it out to the curb."

"Yes, Mom."

For My Friend - A Poem

When nothing was done,
Who was there left to do it?
T'was you and me, my friend.
But now, you struggle,
In pain, recovering.

As best they could,
They repaired you,
But you're not the same.
I've been there, too,
My friend.

It's hard and harsh
the frigid frustration felt,
You may never return
But know you are loved,
admired and respected.

I believe you will make it,
I have faith; you're stubborn.
You're a lot like me, my friend.
Everyone asks will you make it?
What kind of question is that?

I don't know the answer.
Neither do you.
So, I say all I can,
It is contained in hope,
And answer to our prayers.
How better can anyone respond?

Skyrocket To Obscurity - Composing A Rock Opera

The anticipated private rebellion came on schedule. It was borne of the not-so-strange but uniquely teen combination of a near mature body, almost mature mind, wide mood swings and erratic hormone levels. I don't think my dad and mom understood me. I know that it is the mantra of all teen angst, but my parents REALLY did not understand me.

I saved some money from my allowance and from helping my dad on the farm. I borrowed some from my sister and a few bucks from Mom. There was a bass guitar and amplifier offered for sale in the want ads of the Springfield Sun. Mom drove me there.

The guy who was selling the equipment lived a few blocks from a Baptist church my family used to attend. We learned from talking to the man that the Fender Precision Bass guitar and Univox amplifier and speaker cabinets were only a few months old. He'd been the bassist for a Gospel band that played at the church we used to attend but the band broke up and he could no longer afford to make the payments ont he equipment. So he was selling them for what he still owed. It was perfect.

First, I learned whatever I could from musicians, kids I knew who played in the high school orchestra. Mike, a friend I made the first day I transferred to the high school, played bass in the school's string ensemble. He also knew piano and a couple of other instruments. I had some experience playing alto saxophone when I was in junior high. I already knew the principal difference of a bass guitar was that it had frets on the neck, which would make it easier to make notes.

As a member of my school's a'capella choir, I was accustomed to reading sheel music. During one of my study hall periods, my instructor, Miss Grimes was teaching me how to compose music,  something I really wanted to do. In addition to this sort of instant immersion method of learning music, I suffered through several bass guitar lessons in a music store at the Upper Valley Mall in Springfield.

In time, word got out that I was a bass guitarist. A small garage band that two brothers formed asked me if I would audition for them. Borrowing my dad's pick-up, I loaded my equipment and went over to their house. Along with Chris, the band's rhythm guitarist and personal friend of both brothers, we jammed as a quartet. We played some songs that each of us knew. In the course of the audition, they learned that not only could I play bass well enough to be in the band, but also I could sing while playing. When you are playing from the bass clef, singing lead vocals from the treble clef is a bit of a challenge.

Afterwards, every weekend we would practiced, whether it was at Dave and Rick's house, Chris' garage or the vacant house that we were restoring on my dad's farm. As I was the only one in the bad with a driver's licence and a car, I was often the transportation between houses. Whenever the guys came over to my place, I had to borrow my dad's pick-up to haul all of our equipment. The guys brought changes and clothes and sleeping bags and spent the weekend. If we weren't rehearsing, we did a lot of things farm kids do that boys from the suburbs know little or nothing about, like skinny-dipping in a deep pool of the creek that ran through my dad's farm. Sometimes we'd climb up into the haymow and use a rope to swing down from stacks of hay, pretending to be Tarzan. Other times, we took turns riding my horse. When the need arose, we peed on trees and bushes. Over the course of a Spring and Summer, we bonded as a band and as friends.  

Anytime we practicing at Chris' place, it was a drag. After a while, the neighbors would complain and we would have to move all of our equipment down to the basement. What was nice about play in the garage was all the neighborhood's girls that were our ages or a little younger were dancing in the driveway as we attempted to play some of their favorite songs.

Mainly, we practiced at Dave and Rick's house. It was where Rick had his drum kit set up nearly all the time. Rick hated tearing the kit down just to take it somewhere to practice for an afternoon, but it couldn't always be avoided. Dave and Rick's mom didn't mind if we practiced at the house as long as she wasn't home. Chris' mom was even less tolerant. That was one of the reasons we used the vacant house on my dad's farm.

Dave and Rick shared that room with all the amplifiers and the drums. After the first time auditioning there, I never again hauled my bass amplifier and cabinet to Dave and Rick's for a practice. There was no room. I plugged my bass into Dave's amp. Even though it was less than ideal, it worked well enough for practice. The only time we ever played with my amp was in the house on my dad's farm, or on the rare occasion that we performed some live venue.

Early in the fall of my junior year, my sister, who was the president of her sorority, hired us to play for a party. We got paid, which technically made us professional musicians. We set up outside in a garage next to the chapter house. With garage door open wide, played for about three hours. We played everything we knew, even some things I had written but we had never really practiced all that much. We played several requested songs, most of them numbers The Beatles or the Rolling Stones recorded. We continued practicing and performing whenever we could arrange for a gig. All the while we were not only improving as individual musicians, but also in tightness of our synchroniation. Sometimes we would pool our resources and purchase something to improve the band's public address system. Other times we'd upgrade out ownindividual equipment.  

Our performance schedule schedule the summer before my senior year was busy. My sister got us into an arts festival at Wittenberg University, where she attended college. We performed two songs, our best, before an audience of perhaps a hundred, no one out ages. They didn't seem to be there to hear our musical 'combo' - as they called us.

Later we performed at the Clark County Fair. It was free, outdoor concert. Still, it gave us a lot of necessary exposure. It was also the very first time I wore a white satin suit my mother had made for me. My parents, friends, one of my sisters and my nephew were there to witness the performance. I personally felt that we sucked horribly, but everyone in the audience was polite. We couldn't have been that bad. A few people asked for our contact numbers and we got a few gigs playing at parties.

There is a monumental difference for a live band performing outdoors as opposed to performing indoors. If you think about it, the acoustics are completely different. The ambiance is strange. Even though we were technically outside whenever we were performing in a garage, the building behind us lent some support to the sound. Any musician who has ever performed outdoors can tell you it just sounds weird. The feedback of the echoes is missing. Everything about the music feels flat and dead.

During my senior year, Chris' mother got us a gig at the Clark County Children's Home. I considered my sister paying us for the gig at her sorority as charity, the Children's Home was really our first paying gig. It was a very big deal for the band.

We played two hours and every one of us performed a solo piece. Mine was a bluesy riff I was working on for a rock opera called One Thane. I was composing it for my Senior English class. Why Senior English? The composition was based on the epic poem, Beowulf. A portion of the finished rock opera was to be sung in the original Old English, as I had set the lyric to music.

When we played out our scheduled time and exhausted most of the songs we knew, the children cheered for us to return to play something else. We gave them two more songs. Then the home's administrators took charge. It was getting late and, anyway, we needed to be on our way.

It was a strange evening for us as a band, in a good sort of way. We really clicked, perhaps for the first time. We sounded damned good. It was almost as if we awakened in a future time when we were seasoned veterans of the road.

The children were incredibly appreciative of our music. They were dancing, singing along, cheering - some of them were even hovering close to the stage watching our every move, as if we were stars. I have to admit, at first that felt creepy, but when I realized the kids were into us, it felt great. That sensation could become addicting enough for someone to leave home, friends and family for months at a time to continue feeding the need. Before that concert, I didn't understand the motivation of stars to perform live.

For the first time ever, some of the audience asked us for autographs! We signed a couple dozen. Maybe they were just an overly appreciative audience. Regardless, it was a night of many firsts for the band.

From that point on, I believed we were destined for greatness. We began rehearsing the songs I had written for One Thane. It was hard at first. The arrangements were strange for Dave and Rick. The beat was clearly not typical of Rock and Roll. It was more like Jazz with a smattering of Blues.

I was doing the project with my friend, Brice. He wrote the percussion portions of the pieces. I did the lyrics, the bass lines and the lead guitar. The rhythm guitar played off the lead lines for the most part, with some room for the rythm to become a counter to the lead guitar work at times. There was a place that could have used keyboards, but we didn't have a piano though we probably could have persuaded a friend to play the piano pieces separately and overdubbed it later.

Throughout the winter, the rehearsals continued, every Saturday afternoon and sometimes Sunday as well. A few times we huddled in a room in a very large and nearly restored farmhouse on my dad's property to play it with every instrument cranked up to be louder than everything else. The resulting cacophony was nearly ear splitting. But it was fun to see how loud we could be with every potentiometer on our amplifiers and public address turned to 'ten''

Then, in the last throes of winter, on the second weekend of March, we holed-up in the house where we had often practiced. The purpose was to record at least a portion of One Thane.

From a few friends and some fellow musicians I met over the previous couple of years, I borrowed some state of the art equipment. We had a mixer board and a four- channel, multi-sync reel to reel that was capable of recording overdubs, effectively making it like a sixteen-track recorder. We already owned some very sensitive microphones, most of them picked up in a cardioid pattern. We borrowed one with a very narrow directional pattern and two others that were were bi-directional. We experimented with the use and placement of the microphones in recording different takes of the songs.

Brice was supposed to perform a couple of the songs on Rick's drum kit. One of the lessons I learned in producing One Thane was it not wise to ask a drummer to let another drummer play his kit. Rick was not happy with the arrangement. We discussed it in private for several minutes. Despite his personal feelings, it was a senior English project and Brice needed to be a part of it. After some initial sniping at one another, Rick and Brice actually started working together and eventually became friends out of some level of mutual respect. Rick was more seasoned at playing in a band and maintaining the beat while interspersing rolls and such. Brice seemed to best Rick at counter rhythm. What Brice could do drew immediate attention to the percussive element in the music.

After a good deal of discussion, Brice and I agreed that he should bring his drum kit from home to the house and we record his parts that way. What resulted were really two drummers trying to one up one another at times. It was interesting, perhaps, but much of it was eventually removed in edits to the master recording.

When we had finished the recording most of the raw material for the project, we all listened to the tracks. Each one of us thought we could do better. After some rest, we decided to play the entire work through live from start to finish. What emerged was a reference track that Brice's friend, also named Rick but we all called him Flea Head, would use to make the best possible recording of each song, then record the final mix to a cassette tape.

In early April, the culmination of hours of practice and work was ready to be presented to my senior English class. Brice and I set up the tape deck, speakers and amplifier for the performance. We used a little ZZ Top track at the intro to get the sound balance right for everything. Then the rock opera began.

It was an amateur production from the outset, but we had used some pretty good equipment to capture the recording. In the process of post-production, Flea Head mastered a fine sample of what we intended to do. It was far from perfect. Perhaps if we were working with people more professional than us, more experienced than high school students, we could have pulled that miracle off as well. Still, everyone was impressed. It wasn't that Brice and I had created a rock opera. We performed it and it was actually something that you could listen to and find things in it that you liked.

Does that tape still exist? My mother had a copy of it somewhere in her things. If it still exists, it was so long ago that I doubt it is even playable. Flea Head kept the master, and Mrs. Hiles, my Senior English teacher received a copy of the tape as well. So who knows?

As hard as Brice and I worked on that project, I'd like to think that there is still some evidence.