The Hitchhiker - excerpt from an unpublished novel

Brent needed to just get away from it, all of it. He got in his car and drove. At first he drove toward the shopping mall on the north side of town. He had spent a few afternoons walking around and looking at all the things that he could not afford. But as he approached the mall he turned left, not right, and then right again, and drove to the northwest, and out toward Stephanie's neighborhood.

After a while, he decided that he did not need to talk to his friends as much as he needed to experience something new, breaking the routine of the past couple of weeks since Christmas. The thought of studying again well into the early hours of morning, taking a combat nap and then rushing down to campus had already gotten old. He had found that he looked forward to a cup of coffee in the morning to stimulate him back to coherency, and that scared him. He was becoming just like his parents.

He turned left, intending no particular direction, as he reached the western edge of the suburbs. He knew that if he turned right, he would not go far without finding familiar places, or at least sights he had already seen. He continued along a road that he had never before traveled until he approached a crossroad. There was a sign indicating the way to Lake Travis; he had never been there. In fact, whatever was west of the city was a great mystery to him, even if everyone he knew had promised him that beyond the large man-made lake there was vast emptiness.

The turn headed him south at first, then he turned to the west out toward the hill country where, as Tim had said, there was a 'whole lot of nothing except for cattle grazing'. Brent had never been sailing on Lake Travis even though he had heard that the lake was big enough. He had never even seen the lake until the moment that he turned to travel along the ridge that skirted it. He pulled over at an overlook where he could get out of the car. He stood amazed as the vastness of the man-made wonder. It was a triumph and marvel of the manipulation of nature. Somehow it felt appropriate that near the heart of Texas there should be such a monument, evidence of the need to warp the world to serve the immediate needs of all that lived in the vicinity. Ostensibly the lake, along with Town Lake that was downstream and separated the north side of Austin from the south, served as flood control on the Colorado River. Compared to Lake Travis, Town Lake was minuscule.

When he returned to his car, he continued to drive to the west, between fields that emphasized that Texas was certainly big enough to contain vast stretches of land that was not good for anything else than growing beaver tail cactus and a few head of longhorns. He drove for about an hour completely numbed by the vast monotonous scenery. until he decided that nothing was about to change anytime soon. He stopped, made a three-point turn on the road, and headed back the way he came.

Along the way of his return, he saw someone that he had not noticed before, but he had to have passed by him. After all, the man was walking or rather hitchhiking. Perhaps someone had dropped him off. But that also seemed unlikely. There were no other directions to go in the immediate area except east and west, and Brent had not seen a car or truck on the road for sometime.

The man appeared to be carrying his life's worth in a backpack. He had a long staff that he used to assist him in his efforts. Brent pulled over at the side of the road and tooted the horn as indication that he was willing to give him a lift. The man hurried toward the car and, as Brent leaned over and opened the passenger door for him, he peered into the car.

"Are you going to Austin?" He asked.

"Yeah, com'on. Get in."

He opened the door and put his backpack and the staff in the back seat and settled into the passenger seat. "I appreciate the help," he said.

"I was just out for a drive," Brent said. "It's funny. I was driving west earlier and I didn't even notice you. Maybe I wasn't paying attention."

"I suppose that is the story of my life," the hitchhiker said. "Anyway, in case no one else ever told you before, you notice only whatever you want to notice."

"My name is Brent."

"I'm Earl."

"I have a cousin named Earl."

"Everyone knows someone named Earl, or at least that has been my experience."

"Do you have business in Austin?"

"It is the next big city on the way," Earl said. "That's good enough reason to head there."

"Where are you going after that?"

"New Orleans."

"No kidding. I have been through there exactly once, but never really saw much of the place. My brother-in-law and I decided to detour down through there as we were driving back to Ft. Walton Beach, after helping move my parents to the Rio Grande Valley."

"That sounds like quite a trip," Earl said.

"It was. We drove straight through, taking turns at the wheel. We got to New Orleans around sunset and stopped in the French Quarter just to see what it looked like - we didn't have time to stay or do anything else."

"So you were just satisfying your curiosity, just to be able to say that you'd seen The Big Easy."

"Well, it didn't seem like we should just drive straight through Louisiana and not even see New Orleans. I mean, since we had the chance and all."

"So, did you like what you saw?" he asked.

"I guess so, but it was different than what I expected."

"Isn't that always the way of it? You can imagine all sorts of things that simply can't be," he said. "Of course, in New Orleans a lot of things are possible that would never be allowed anywhere else. I'm a friggin' genius when it comes to things like that."

"Really."

"Yeah, really."

"Are you from New Orleans?"

"Anyone who moves to New Orleans is instantaneously and magically transformed. They are suddenly and irrevocably made into natives of the city, regardless wherever they have previously lived. Who is there to say any different?"

Brent laughed. "I guess I'll have to go there sometime when I can spend a few days to really see the sights."

"What's stopping you from going now? Giving me a ride all the way there is a perfect excuse to spend some time."

"I have classes."

"Oh, so you're a college student," he said, but it almost sounded like a curse, or at least a form of summary judgment.

"I'm nearly done with school. I have three more semesters, Spring and two Summer sessions and then I am done!"

"I tried college exactly twice. The first time, I should have known better, and the second time, I guess I hadn't learned my lesson from the first time. The second time around I had volunteered for the US Air Force, trying like hell to avoid having to go to 'Nam. But, damned if the Air Force didn't find out that I'd been to college for a bit! The decided that maybe they could teach me a foreign language. They sent me to Syracuse University on their ticket and taught me Russian."

"Wow!"

"Yeah, wow!" Earl said. "It might have been the most useless thing I have ever learned, except that learning it so that I could do what I did in 'Nam actually allowed me to survive the whole insane experience of being there."

Brent frowned with his incomprehension, but did not comment, as he steered ahead.

"Now, you may ask what in the Hell was I was doing in 'Nam and why did they need me to be able to understand and speak Russian. I wondered that myself. But sure as hell, they sent me smack dab in the most humid, stinky part of this world's groin. I might even tell you the truth of what I did there, except that it is still at least confidential and those people that I worked for are everywhere," he glanced at Brent. "For all I know, even you could be one of them."

"I assure you, I am not."

"Well, anyway the real reason I was there was to play the game. It was the special-edition, global version of chess that we call The Cold War. It was the place that the two most powerful nations on Earth had decided to set down the board and set up all their playing pieces, after having ended in stalemate the last time the board was tossed down in Korea. What did either of the two big guys care about 'Nam? No one cares about the real people who have to live in any strategically necessary place. Their armies and their people were trapped in between the two bullies who had just entered their block and taken up temporary residence. Through no fault of their own, the common people always end up suffering, and for what? Is it merely the accident of birth? They should have been born into a better life, into a country that was not so strategically important in the Superpower view of the world. But then, who has a choice in such things?"

"I couldn't say."

"We were moving our pieces and advancing our proxy's pawns, but at least we weren't doing it in our homeland, or throwing the substantial pieces of hell that each of the Superpowers possessed at one another's mother country. That was how I saw it, anyway. I was there to do my small part in keeping the Russians from invading America. Oddly, it occurred to me that I was also there to keep America from invading Russia. I know it makes no sense, because it is senseless by its very nature. After all, I'm American. But somehow and somewhere, I had become a part of the elaborate balance designed to produce no change in the overall status quo of the prevailing world order. I had been through all the training and had been fully convinced in the validity of what I was doing. I understood all the strange nuances of political intrigue in a very fundamental way that all of the politicians in the world could never possible explain to their representative masses."

"You fought there?"

"I did a sight bit more than fight. I interrogated people and then, usually I killed them. If I felt really benevolent, it was one bullet through the temple," He pointed his finger to the exact place for emphasis. "If they had been belligerent and seriously pissed me off, I cut them open from their sternum to their hoo-hoo and pulled their guts out and hung them in a tree close to where ever I was camped. That served very well to dissuade others from interrupting my naptime. That was my part of the game."

"So, you have actually killed people."

"Who was in 'Nam that survived and didn't kill?"

"Well, I don't know anything about it."

"Thank God or whatever you worship that you don't," Earl said, drawing a deep breath before continuing. "I knew what they knew about global policies, and that none of us understood that level of selecting the proverbial shit from the Shinola. In the game we were playing, the rules were pretty simple. If anyone got caught, you knew what would happen. You got pumped for the information you possessed and then afterwards, after all the torture that you never believed one human could put another human through and have anyone survive, you would spill your guts figuratively just to make the pain go away. That was where I fit in; me, the mean interrogator who would extract every possible secret through torture, then spill their guts literally, making the pain subside forever. It was a professional courtesy, one spy to another - that sort of thing. I knew it up front. They knew it as well. It was part of the code, the unwritten rules of international espionage. So, knowing that if I was ever captured, I was a dead man, I certainly and particularly avoided capture with a good deal of urgency. I became pretty damned good at hiding whenever I needed to."

"I'll bet. So, you were in the Air Force?"

"Yeah, well, they were the ones that paid me. I went through basic training and all that crap, but I was always in a special group who the Air Force had sent to language school on Uncle Sam's tab. I even went through survival training on the same ticket. After I was deployed, I was given civilian clothes to wear and told that I needed to blend in, as much as possible. They gave me press credentials!"

"They? You're telling me that you were a spy, like working for the CIA."

"No, I worked a time or two with those clowns," he laughed. "Don't get me wrong, one of those clowns saved my hide once, but the people I worked for, no one ever hears about. I was part of something essential to the peace and balance of the entire world, something that transcended national interests. I belonged to something euphemistically called The Program."

Brent's eyes widened. "I have heard of The Program."

Suddenly, Earl fell silent.

"What can you tell me about them?"

"Nothing," Earl said, curtly.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"You know enough about them already. If you know them at all, you know too much to be an outsider. Our conversation is over. I have already said far too much. You can drop me off here."

"Look, I'm sorry. It's just, I have received correspondence from them. I have heard about them from someone else, someone who lived in Asia."

"Then run away while you have the chance, not that it will matter much. If they have targeted you already, you have no choice."

"I can still tell them no."

"Yeah and you can believe that for now. So, you don't work for them, yet," Earl laughed. "Look, I appreciate the ride and all that. I really mean that. But you can let me out now. Really, it's fine. Anywhere that you want is okay. You go ahead and say no to them just for shits and giggles, and then see what happens."

"I have interviews coming up, one with the CIA."

"What in the hell is wrong with you?"

"I thought it would be a good practice interview."

"There is no practice about it. You start testing the water with your toe and suddenly the shark comes up out of the water and capsizes your boat and you're trying hard as hell just to tread water while the sharks keep circling around you, trying to decide where to bite you first, or waiting for your to shit youself because maybe we taste better that way."

"I have some other interviews scheduled with banks and an oil extraction company."

"And what makes you think that is not working for them all the same? If they like you, they are going to give you a cover job. After you go through the training, they always give you a cover job until they need to deploy you. Sometimes, the cover job is even in the military, which makes it very easy for them. Once they have identified you as someone with the gifts and talents that they desire, you have no choice but to work for them."

"I'm not sure I believe that."

Earl shrugged. "You're a good kid. I mean that in all sincerity. You were probably a high school hero of some sort. Maybe you were even some star athlete or something. I hate like hell to know what they are going to do to you, but I also know it is as inevitable dying. They will fuck you up so badly that you will believe in their causes, even when what they tell you to do is diametrically opposed to what they told you to do the previous week or even a day before. They will program you to be a perfect mercenary. It is how they achieve their goals. At the end of it all, when you are emotionally and physically spent, they will cast you aside and discredit you as a lunatic, just as they have done to me - just in case someone like me might shoot my mouth off to someone like you."

"How can they do that? I mean, isn't it llegal?"

"There is nothing illegal about it. They make the rules as they go, Brent. They always have. The system that you believe in is a government and the bodies of laws. All nations have that and some are even proud of the peace and stability that they credit largely to their constitutions and the strength of their governments and militaries. At times, there are some things fabricated to keep the masses under control, so that they focus on the guy who ran a stop light, or the jealous woman that 'offed' her husband after finding him in bed with the babysitter. All the while, the real players are concerned with geopolitical matters that have ramifications extending beyond anyone's lifetime."

They were nearing the lookout at Lake Travis, and so Brent pulled over and temporarily parked.

"This is as good a place as any to drop me off," Earl said. "Thanks for the ride, Brent. And best of luck with the bastards that will relentlessly hound you," he said as he proceeded to get out.

"Look, I still have some questions here. Maybe you know the answers. Let's talk for a bit."

"Me? I have no answers. I'm nuts, Brent. Hasn't that occurred to you? Look at me; I am you, only ten or twenty years from now. I;ve been stripped of my sanity but not my pride or dignity. Somehow, I salvaged a bit of that."

"When you came back from 'Nam, what did they do for you?"

"They did absolute shit. I was so fucked up in the head that nothing seemed real to me anymore. I checked myself into a hospital. I needed some help determining where I fit in with the world. This world made no sense to me, anymore. People didn't just capture one another, pump out the information and then get rid of the empty husk. What I learned in the hospital was that there were some people there who were more fucked up than I was at dealing with the world; some of them were orderlies, nurses and doctors."

"A mental hospital."

"Yeah, I was in the loony bin. That's what the future has in store for you, Brent: a lot of very well-meaning people telling you that you must have imagined everything that you ever did previous to you checking in and seeking their 'professional' help."

"You recovered. I mean they let you out."

"I told them I had recovered. I proved to them that I was sane enough to pass their silly fuckin' tests. I was good enough with the real crazies that they even hired me as an orderly. They assigned me to watch this guy named Dave. He was one scary son of a bitch, that for some reason, had become attached to me. He never fuckin' slept, so he had to be watched all the time. The orderlies took shifts watching him 24/7/365. He talked constantly. At times, I listened to his rants, not that I should have been doing that other than monitoring for the two key words that indicated he was about to become violent. Whenever he mentioned Jesus or Elvis, all hell was about to break loose."

"I can maybe see Jesus, but why Elvis?"

"Who the fuck knows? He was nuts!"

"Okay."

"One night. he was in rare form. I was paying attention to some of what he was saying because it was different than the usual fare. The guy pointed out some disturbing things at times that made you think that maybe he wasn't the crazy one after all. Then he started talking about a past life that he had, and so I violated the one hard and fast rule, never to engage a conversation with him. I immediately asked him if he believed in reincarnation. He turned and looked at me straight in the eyes in a way that he never did with anyone, and, then he smiled. Do you know what the sick bastard said to me?"

"No," Brent responded.

"He said, 'well you made it back now didn't ya?'"

A sudden and irrepressible chill ran through Brent."

"Anyway, his saying that really 'creeped-me-out' so badly that I knew I had to get out of there. After that, I put in my notice. When I was out of the hospital, I went to work for a contractor removing debris from a work site. He eventually figured out from talking to me that I had a pretty good education, and he let me do his books and such. It paid pretty well but I always had a pain that never quite disappeared. It was a self-destructive tendency that I even blamed on The Program. They make it hard for us to survive outside, and so I thought that maybe they even programmed me to self-destruct.

"I started drinking, smoking pot, doing everything that I could think of to kill myself short of taking an overdose, swallowing Drain-o or sucking on a the barrel of a loaded gun until deciding to pull the trigger. The Society just doesn't want complications lingering around. I have been defying them ever since I figured that out."

"Why not go back to work for them?"

"Fuck that! I'd rather be dead!. After all the shit I have been through, I would never even talk to them."

Brent started his car.

"Wait! I was in the process of getting out."

"Look, you need a shower and a place to sleep for a day or two," he said, as he backed the car away from the barrier and pulled back out onto the road and headed toward the edge of the city. "You can hang out in my apartment for a few days."

"I have never been to Austin," Earl admitted.

"It is a place that God had in mind when he was working on a prototype for Heaven."

"Yeah, I have heard nothing but good things about it. I had always wanted to come through this way just never had the chance."

"You are traveling far from the Interstate, aren't you?"

"A guy I worked with in 'Nam lives in San Angelo which is back up the road, a right turn or two and a left or three and you're there."

"Well, I think you should stay in Austin at my place for a few days, get to know the place. Hell, my roommate stays at his girlfriend's place all the time; you can crash on his bed or the couch in the living room."

"That's an awfully nice and unexpected offer."

"Consider it the one thing that someone did in gratitude for what you went through for this country."

Earl chuckled. "Well it isn't the only thing. I got a blow job once just because I was a vet."

Brent laughed. "I won't compete with that."

"I wouldn't expect you to. Besides you are not my type."

Going On A Road Trip - CH 2 of Becoming Thuperman

Dad, whose given name was Irving, Irv for short, was born and raised on a small farm near Normal. When he graduated from high school his dad insisted he go to college to learn everything there was to know about farming. So he attended Illinois State which was just on the other side of town from where he grew up. Somewhere along the way Dad decided to study business administration instead of farming. He also met Mom at college.

Mom, whose name was Eloise, though she cringes when anyone calls her that, was anything but a farm girl. Dad called her big city 'cause technically she was from Chicago. At least she was born there. In truth she grew-up in the suburbs on the northwest side of Chicago. Mom's parents, who I called Gram and Gramps, always called her Ellie. Dad and everyone else apart from us kids called her Lois.

Dad used to tell me crazy stories about Mom. In one she ran away from home and eloped with him. In another he said she married him because she didn't have bus fare to get back to Chicago after she graduated. He claimed Papaw and Mamaw, what I called his parents, gave them a place to stay right after they married so they didn't have to freeze to death out in the cold or anything. When I asked Mom if that was true she didn't exactly deny it, but she made it sound more like she felt sorry for Dad because he was a country boy and he always wanted to be a city boy.

Embarrassing as it is for me to admit it I was gullible enough to believe Dad's stories – for a while anyway. After I got older I heard the real truth. I understood that some of what Dad told me was correct just he slanted it a little in his favor. You see, Dad was shy. In college he had two friends who sort of set him up to meet Mom at a party. Apparently, Mom did most of the talking. Dad must have liked her a lot because they ended up married.

If Dad had a special power, it was being quiet. When he did talk, you probably needed to listen because usually he was mad about something. Most of the time he let Mom do the talking, though. Mom seemed to be okay with that because she loved to talk.

It wasn't only Dad's stories I fell for. My sisters tricked me, too. Pretty much anyone I trusted took advantage of me. What did I know? I was easily duped.

When I was only six I still believed in a lot of things people lie about - including Santa, the Easter Bunny and most of the special offers advertised on Saturday morning cartoon TV cereal commercials. Brenda, my oldest sister who was the first person I knew so far who actually went by her given name as it was on her birth certificate, enjoyed being the source of my disappointment telling me whenever someone had lied to me. Whether it was done as a joke or not, it was not right to lie to a little kid – just saying.

Whenever Brenda made fun of me, my other older sister Linda, whose real name is Belinda, laughed and teased me because of how stupid I was. It was what older sisters were supposed to do to their baby brothers – at least to their thinking. Yes, revenge would come when I got older, but that's getting ahead of the story here.

Mom grew up an only child not too far from Lake Michigan and only a few minutes from Wisconsin. She lived in this really big house with a swimming pool in the backyard where just Gram and Gramps live now. Gramps was an executive of some kind who worked in one of the tall buildings in Chicago. Gram did a lot of charity work. To me it seemed like they had a lot of room for just two people, but I guess they didn't have to worry about where everyone was going to sleep whenever we came to visit them, which we did about once or twice every summer and usually for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Going there for visits was great, especially when we piled into the van and headed for the beach. Not that I complained, but I wasn't sure why it was necessary to go to the beach if all we were going to do was swim – which we could have done in the backyard in their swimming pool. The lake was more fun, I guess. There were other things to do there.

Oblivious to all the warnings about over exposure to the sun, especially when there was playing to be done, going to the beach meant sunburn. Spending an entire day out in the sun, even with sun block on, was extremely dangerous for me, due to my fair complexion. Mom used to say, I could walk past a picture of the sunset and get burnt. That wasn't far from the truth. She knew. I took after her having red hair, freckles and extremely white skin. Because I generally was outside whenever I played, I stayed in the shade as much as possible. Even so, wherever my skin was exposed turned red before, maybe eventually, turning tan.

One summer day when both Sandra and I were eight, my dad was going up to Chicago to fly out on a business trip to New York. Mom was driving him to the Midway Airport. Dad hated flying out of O'Hare because of the confusing, spaghetti-like freeway system around it – not that he ever drove when he had to go there. Mom served as his chauffer anytime he had to go anywhere in Chicago because she was from there originally. Somehow, despite all the things that changed about the city since she last lived there, Mom never seemed to get lost when she drove. Dad learned that a long time before I was born.

Other than taking Dad to the airport, there was nothing planned that day. Of course, when Mom asked if I wanted to go I was ready and rearing to go. Even at age eight, I understood Mom needed to take me along because my older sisters wouldn't pay proper attention to me in her absence. Brenda was thirteen so she was self-impressed at being a teenager – though just barely. Linda was ten, impressed in her own way at having reached double digits – which she claimed sort of made her like a teen, somehow. Neither of them paid a lot of attention to me, which was generally a good thing except for when Mom wanted them to watch me. I could die and they wouldn't know it until they came looking for me in response to Mom's car pulling into the driveway. To her credit Mom knew that. A trip to Chicago and back would take a huge chunk out of the middle of the day, around five hours, which was too long for her to leave me with my mostly evil sisters.

Mom didn’t like me hanging out at Sandra's house for most of the day either. Mom always worried I'd wear out my welcome. I asked Sandra's Mom about that and she told me I was like a part of the family. Family can wear out their welcome too, I suppose, just it takes longer. Except for the excitement of the idea of a road trip, I might have preferred staying behind just to be at a Sandra's house because she had some really cool things to do at her house, like all her video games, but Mom insisted in taking me along. That meant the trip there and back would take six hours because we would stop somewhere to eat and maybe have to stop a couple of times going and coming for me to use the restroom. Also, Mom hated driving alone, so having me to talk to was better than nothing.

For me, going anywhere was better than just hanging around our neighborhood. But since I planned everyday around spending time playing with Sandra, we kind of always had plans already. When I talked to her on the phone the night before, Sandra told me she was working on a special secret project. She hadn't told me what it was yet. So, not wanting to miss out on finding out what she had been working on, I asked if she could come along on the road trip. At least that way I would have her to talk to and do other things with on the way to and from the airport. Of course, my request started a chain reaction of questions beginning with my Dad asking, "Why?"

"Because I'm sure she'd like to go, too," I replied. Wasn't that obvious? What kid would refuse a road trip?

A minor discussion ensued. At the end of it Mom told me I needed to call to ask her for her parents' permission. It seemed silly to me. It wasn't like Sandra hadn't gone places with us before. I mean, getting permission once for something should be enough as long as nothing bad happened before, right? I knew better than to argue, though. As required, I called, except when Sandra's Mom answered the phone, I seized the opportunity and asked her directly.

"Can Sandra come with me to take my dad to the airport in Chicago?"

The result might be expected. Her mom yelled, asking Sandra if she wanted to go. Now, Sandra was kind of already on her way out the door to come to my house anyway, so I knew what the answer was before I heard her confirm it with her mom. Why was all that asking and answering necessary?

Maybe people just feel it's necessary to talk even if all they do is ask silly questions and receive equally stupid answers. To me, it was something my Mom could have answered with a simple, okay and been done with it. Now, since I've graduated to thinking something like an adult, I understand the necessity of letting Sandra's parents in on the plans, but back then, it seemed pretty silly to both Sandra and me.

There wasn't a big deal about Sandra tagging along for the ride or anything. Mom liked Sandra. Dad did too, but he never came right out and said it. Dad was friends with Sandra's dad. Our moms got along well too. Dad worried a little about me hanging out with a girl almost all the time, but he understood the situation. She lived a few doors down. The guys on my street were mostly younger or older. The few who were my age were not the kind I wanted to be around. For the most part, they weren't the sorts my mom and dad would approve of anyway. So, Sandra was my best - and pretty-much only - friend throughout that period of my life.

For both Sandra and me, the idea of going to Chicago for any reason was exciting. It was reason enough to make the otherwise dull trip up the Interstate. If you've never experienced a ride anywhere in the Midwest, let me explain. Flat and boring landscape with barns and silos here and there along with a few trees. When storms roll through and lightning strikes, it hits the tallest things. In the Midwest those things were trees, barns, silos, houses, or whatever was above the grass. Many times an overpass on the Interstate looked like a hill from a distance. Some places really tall towers carry electricity across the countryside and in others there were relatively new windmills that turned wind into electricity. Unfortunately birds flew into the spinning blades maiming or killing themselves.

Overall, in the countryside around where I grew up there was more 'nothing to see' than 'anything to do'. Without Sandra along, I might have fallen asleep while staring out the backseat window as the humdrum landscape passed by. The one or two interesting things to see along the way were exceptions Mom or Dad might have pointed out in the past to prevent me from missing them, but, considering I was eight, I had made the trip enough times that I was on my own as far sightseeing. Sandra felt the way as I did about the scenery. So, as we sat together in the back seat, mostly we talked to one another. That way Mom and Dad could pay attention to driving and their own conversation in the front seat and not be bothered with entertaining us.

Mom offered us coloring books and crayons for entertainment along the way. Dad handed us a legal pad and two pencils. But we were bored quickly with both and broke out our handheld games and went at it in head to head competition until motion sickness got the better of me. Settling back in the seat with a headache, I apologized to Sandra. She shrugged it off, saying she was tired of beating me anyway. I suggested we talk some more instead and for a while we did that until my headache went away.

When Two Artists - A Poem

When two artists...

Inspire one another:

With fluid motion scribing digitally,
Her words affect my heart and soul.
She inspires me.
So I continue to create amazing visions.

Maybe I do something like that for her.
I don't know because in mystery she remains.
The current muse of my present moment,
A strange symbiosis began
When old souls met anew.

We are two artists, who share respect,
For one another and the written word.
We do what we need to do.
It is what has to be.

It is life.

It is breath.

It is purpose.

It is us.

Never fear the spark of inspiration
Ever to fade.
It was intended all along.
Believe that.
Move on without question.
Create your visions,
While I create mine.

Independence Day Salute

As we celebrate Independence Day let's not forget all those who have made this year a special one for us to observe. When you are outside in your backyard or where ever, lift your head and look aloft and give a 4th Of July salute to the surveillance satellites so that our government knows how much you truly appreciate what they are doing. You may use as many fingers in that salute as you wish but just remember, they know where you are and what you're doing.

E

The Art Of Zen Lawn Mowing - Humorous

I wake up with the fear that my children may be late again for school. This is the only thing that prevents me from rolling over and resuming the dream that the alarm clock has rudely interrupted, even though again and again I keep hitting 'snooze'. Why would anyone invent something to wake you up and then put a button on it that allows you to override it and go back to sleep for five minute intervals? The snooze button has to be one of the stupidest inventions ever! Having said all that, I use it, too; so, that speaks for itself.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, I am in such a peaceful dream. A cool breeze lifts my hair as I run down a hill and take to wings of flight. It is a recurring dream in my hit parade of a dozen or so. I will have it again, I'm sure. It is just that I do not remember ever having made it to an ending. The alarm has always interrupted it. It would be my luck for the dream to end with me plummeting to my death like the ill-fated Icarus.

I believe that if I am ever to dream the complete dream after crashing to Earth I will awaken in a panic only to the realization that I am on an airplane that is spiraling uncontrollably toward an imminent crash. I think there is more than enough irony in the world for such a thing to happen.

I don't know why I dream of flying; I hate flying. Even when I was in the Air Force, I hated flying. You might ask why I would ever want to be in the Air Force if I hated flying. Well that is not the only time I have ever done something that doesn't make any sense. I'm sure it won't be the last.

I digress.

I hate it when people say that, "I digress." In this instance, though I really do digress.

Wait! Have I nodded off again? I roll over, glance at the clock. "No!" I launch from the bed with flailing arms and sprawling legs. I fling the covers in every conceivable direction - whichever way they want to fly and to whatever resting place gravity eventually recovers them. I rush to awaken my children, immediately infecting them with my panic.

"We are late. I'm sorry. I overslept!"

"Not again, Dad!" they complain, and rightly so as it is the fourth time this week and it is Thursday - at least I think it is Thursday.

"I was up late, writing." I resort to using the truth as an excuse while I stand referee over the bathroom, allowing equal access and time for my daughters while permitting my son to use my bathroom. "You know how I am when I stay up late," I offer as a further explanation. "Anyway why don't you set the alarm clocks that each of you has?"

"Dad! You're supposed to wake us," my eldest daughter said.

"Yeah, but we know how Dad is, so it's our fault that we are late. We trusted him how many times this week and he has failed how many times to wake us?"

I had been almost ready to embrace my son for his kind understanding until that last bit about my failure. It wasn't that he was wrong just that I felt like it was me I was talking to just then when I said, "Never accept the blame."

Because it is a frequent enough occurrence, they know the drill. I prepare bagels and cream cheese to eat on the way toschool and hastily make their lunches. When they are dressed we hurry outside and into the Jeep. I try to make it to the bus stop in time. I don't know why I even bother. All week long we have been too late but on the off chance that the bus is also running late, maybe that is the thought process; maybe I am still not awake enough to have rational thoughts. The kids so seldom ride the bus that I bet that when they do make it to the stop on time the driver thinks they are new in town.

Having confirmed that there are no kids waiting at the bus stop, we turn and head a more direct route to school. Breaking speed limits, I drive them over the two bridges of the Pineda Causeway and out onto the beach-side where their schools are- middle school for the girls, high school for the boy, arriving just in the nick of time. Then, having wished each of them a good day at school, I slip back out of the panic mode. I take deep breaths, calming down.

On the drive back home I stop by the convenience store for a cold soda. I don't do coffee in the morning. I don't especially like coffee. I have to add ample cream to make it palatable and to me it just seems pointless to drink anything that I have to amend that much to be able to tolerate its taste. So I prefer to drink a soda. I like the taste of soda.

By the time that I return home the sun has fully risen to illuminate my small, almost insignificant parcel of the Florida landscape. Suddenly I remember that today was the day that I promised I would mow the lawn.

It does no good to ignore it. I have tried to convince myself that eventually if let be, the grass would grow so tall that it would even stop growing. Of course that would by far exceed the standards of the deed-restricted community. The home owner's association would protest and levy fines and do all sorts of wicked, nasty things in the name of preserving sacred property values. I could have let the lawn die, but who wants to live in a house surrounded by a brown yard...or white gravel for that matter. Already, I have had enough run-ins with the homeowner's association, so I opt not to push my luck; I consent to mowing the lawn regularly. The only part of the covenants of the home-owner's association that I really agree with is that no one can turn their yard into a white gravel landscape.

I mow it, knowing full well it will take at least a whole hour to accomplish. As this is one of the most mundane tasks a person can possibly do, it is the source of frequent and self-renewing dread. It is the worst hour of my life. It is something revisited about every week and sometimes even more often provided the number of decent natural rain storms and whether I bothered to fertilize back in the spring.

I engage in the ritual filling of the lawnmower's gas tank. Afterwards, I check the oil. As I have already broken a sweat under the hot spring sun, I sit back and relax for a bit. When my period of rest and recomposing ends, I make sure the blades are still attached to the bottom of the mower. My dad's friend, Stubs always warned me to never check the blade unless the mower was turned off. Always I have heeded his warning for the intervening years.

I take deep, cleansing breaths then release them slowly to reach a near trance-like state as I perpetuate my pseudo-productive procrastination. Then only as a last resort I make sure that the engine still starts. If there is an unsatisfactory result in the ritual blessing of the mowing equipment, I have the perfect excuse to delay the mowing for yet another day.

However, the usual case is that everything is in fine working order and unfortunately without further excuse or delay, I must now set about mowing the lawn. At this point, my trance has attained a Zen-like state, so that while I am methodically, even mechanically performing the routines of back and forth, turning at this end or that, I can direct my mind to think of anything else, pushing the excruciating agony of mowing the lawn to the darkest recesses of mental storage for such experiences while I engage in a sort of self-hypnosis that I am doing anything else but experiencing a physically demanding endeavor, outdoors in the heat of the Florida sun.

Gratefully, the process of the Zen lawn-mowing usually does not significantly damage the ornamentals. If the lawn has been sufficiently prepared in advance there are effective borders to barricade the celebrated flowerbeds and honorable sensitive shrubbery from an inadvertent, errant overrun after a poorly executed turn.

See 'The Art of Zen-Landscape Design' for further instruction.

Normal - CH1 of Becoming Thuperman

Special powers notwithstanding, I wasn't a likely candidate to ever become a superhero - not even a regular hero, if there was such a thing. All I had to do was open my mouth and no one took me seriously. You see, as a result of a playground accident when I was six involving a teeter-totter, a pretty girl named Judy, a bully from the fifth grade named Jake and my chin, I bit the end of my tongue off. It required seventy-four stitches but ever after I have spoken with a lisp.

Because of the speech impediment, sometimes people have trouble understanding me. Generally, I hang out with people I know to minimize the confusion. Otherwise, I don't talk much, especially to strangers.

Another thing wrong with my superhero potential was the name of my hometown, Normal, Illinois. No kidding, it really is named that. Kind of ironic for someone who has made a life of being abnormal. I suppose it's better as a place of origin than some fabricated somewhere no one could ever visit like Smallville or Gotham. If I ever become famous, maybe they'll erect a statue of me somewhere in Normal. I'll have that one up of any superheroes from fictitious places.

Sometimes, Normal is a little too real for those of us who actually grew up there. Oddly, a lot of people I grew up with still live in Normal. Some do so by choice, other have no choice. For the rest, who knows. Mostly it's just you have to be from somewhere, I guess. There are probably worse places to be from.

Anyway, except for being accident prone, susceptible to childhood diseases and having two big sisters who bullied me badly until I was around thirteen, I had a fairly average go of it as a kid. There were the requisite number of run-ins with tough kids. They picked on me before the accident with my tongue. It only grew worse afterwards. At first, I got pissed at my so-called friends when they ran off leaving me to take a bully's thumping. But after a while, I realized I'd better hang onto the few friends I had because they were hard enough to come by. No point in losing any of them along with my lunch money. As far as being bullied, all I can say is, if only I knew then...famous last words, right?

My vivid imagination survived everything every adult authority figure in my life tried to do to it. By the time I reached the age of being sort of grown-up, I wasn't too mature to believe my strangeness derived from coming from another planet. That wasn't really the case, but it was the best I could come up with for an explanation of my difference from everyone else. It just happened I was a human in a fringe kind of way.

There were girls I liked before I was supposed to. You know, boys and girls aren't supposed to connect until maybe fifth or sixth grade at the earliest. It was fine that I noticed them, though, because not that many of them noticed me. So who knew but me? But that's normal, too - for me anyway.

There was always Sandra, though. She was a little different in a lot of the same ways I was. She never liked to dress up like a girl unless her mother made her do it. Then she looked about as silly as I would wearing a dress. Yes, I did that once. Only once and it was on a dare. It also happened to be one of the few times any of the girls in school noticed me.

At the time, when Sandra and I were seven or so, I didn't think of her in the same way as I did everyone else, especially the girls. You see, she was one of those special people you meet in life who you just know you're going to like being around most of the time. So you end up being around them a lot and feeling pretty comfortable with the situation. I guess she felt the same way about me back then. I never asked her, but since we're still best friends, how could it be otherwise?

Sandra and I hung out nearly everyday - except for when one or the other of us was sick - which happened a lot for me - or grounded - which happened a lot more often for her than me. She was into games, the arcade ones - not like playing the kinds of tricks girls do on guys. I never understood why girls think it's funny to make guys look like fools which, granted, isn't all that hard to do. Never once did Sandra string me along or lie to me. In return, I never was anything but totally honest with her. I guess that's why we're still close friends.

All day Saturday, except for the aforementioned times when we couldn't, we spent hanging out at the arcade. Whatever my best score was on my favorite machine, she came along and trashed it - cold, without ever having played the game before. That was one of her special powers, I think, though she never admitted it. Like me, Sandra was superhuman in particularly unusual ways even for a superhero.

By the way, have you ever noticed how the female of hero is heroine but the female of superhero is not a word, but the hyphenated super-heroine. Why is that? Are the political correct police sleeping on the job or what? Fair is fair.

You'd think it'd be a bigger issue, but I guess a lot of superhero types out there don't realize it for a long time, if ever at all. You see, we all have special powers, just most of us don't ever realize it - or if we do it happens kind of later on in life. Like my great uncle Carlton. People used to call him Carguy, which also became his superhero name. He could make anything broken work but his true talent for which people knew him best was his ability with automobiles. So, naturally, his cover was being a mechanic, which he did for forty-five years, until he retired. Then Uncle Carlton became a legend, patrolling the road in his pickup helping motorists when their cars break down - usually for free, unless someone refused to accept no for an answer and paid him anyway.

Sandra also has some superheroes in her family tree, though the traits appeared most often on the female side. Her Aunt Flo could hold her breath for a very long time, which she claimed was a talent she developed from growing up around her brother Raymond who was particularly flatulent. Ray, of course was known as Gasman. His cover was talking with a fake - and very bad - Australian accent easily mistaken for an equally bad British accent. He claimed to be the 'foul wind from down under' - the entire reason for the fake accent in the first place. But in truth, he was from Encino, which is somewhere in California. I've not cared to go there because Ray's still around and probably his legend precedes him.

Aunt Flo's superhero name is Proud Mary. Not sure why. Her talent is being ignored, which comes in handy a lot, I think. She has a slightly different perspective on that, especially after the number of times she has almost been struck while crossing the street.

Sandra was the one who taught me everyone has something they are good at and that can be turned into a superpower. Take my uncle, Jon. He's the one who gave me the talisman I wear with my superhero costume, not that he ever needed it anyway. He was really good at sneaking up on people. People accused him of being able to turn invisible - which is not to be confused with being ignored. Since no one ever caught him doing it, though, there was never proof. When you think about it, it's hard to catch someone being invisible, you know? But that's getting way ahead of where I need to be in telling this story.

Back to Sandra - on any given day she could look like she was someone else. Really, it was kind of creepy, in special sort of interesting way. She decided I should call her Sandy or Sand, just so we could keep her different appearances straight. Occasionally, she was Cassandra, which was her real, official birth certificate name. She told me she was named after some mythical Trojan princess, who was psychic and stuff. Interesting story to tell a kid of eight. I asked her how she knew all that. Her mother and father told her, sort of as justification for what they did to her saddling her with that name. You see, normally she didn't like being called Cassandra. It made her sound too old, she said.

She found out later that she had a great aunt by the same name who was very mysterious - like she was into witchcraft and occult things. I could see why her parents never told her about her namesake when she was a kid, but it never made sense to me why they would go ahead and name her after a relative hardly anyone knew and fewer yet liked all that much. Sandra told me it was an obligation. She didn't explain; I didn't ask. Eventually, you find out about obligations in the course of your life.

Maybe her folks told her about the Trojan princess thing as a cover for their obligation to her great aunt. That makes more sense than just naming her that for 'what the heck', you know?

Namesakes can be a problem. For example, I'm named Wilson, like the last name expect it's my first name. That always starts off things on a confusing note for me. You see, I always go by Will because I don't want to even start the explanation about Wilson. But people sometimes want to call me Bill, like I'm named William - which I'm not. If I tell them my name is Wilson, usually they stare at me for a couple of seconds and feel obligated to make some comment, usually innocuous, but sometimes kind of offensive. Something along the lines of, "Isn't that unusual."

Yes, it is unusual. My grandfather thought it was, too, but that never stopped anyone from naming me after him. It's a family name. Yeah, well, it was a mistake that has been perpetuated ever since - as mistakes are often prone to do.

So, I could totally relate to Sandra's thing with her official name. I hardly ever went by Wilson, and she hardly ever went by Cassandra, unless she was being very serious - in a funny, overly formal and dramatic kind of way.

When she got a little older, she told me it was really her secret identity, as if she were a spy. That was kind of cool. We played like we were spies a lot when we were kids - always a fun thing to do. It became good practice for what was to come in our adult lives. It's not a coincidence how the play thing works with kids, by the way. The more you play at doing something, the better you are at those things later on in life. It's like playing sports and becoming a professional jock just because you've got the necessary practice time in from an early age. So don't ever tell a kid not to play.

Sandra decided her name was very useful for having secret identities without really having to change her name all that much. She could be Cass, Cassie, Sandra, Sandy or Sand. Each one was a different persona for her. I knew them all and had no real preference. Any one of them was immense fun to be with.

With my name, I didn't have any real options. Dad called me Sonny, which was also what people called grandpa when he was young. But Sonny always seemed generic to me. People called me Willie when I was little. That didn't work any better than Will and kind of irked me. So, mostly I went with plain old Will and was done with it.

Sandra grew-up just as a nerdy as me. We were soul mates before I knew what that term meant. It means a lot more than how it's commonly used, though. You see, part of my special abilities involved always being able to find her, no matter where she was in the world. We weren't always born in relatively close proximity in our past lives. - Yes, I believe in  reincarnation and you should too because you made it back, after all. It just happened that, in this particular lifetime we came to share, we were both from Normal. Two of the most abnormal kids ever in the history of being kids, and we were born a few days apart in the same hospital in a small city in Illinois.

If you've never been to Normal that's understandable. You may not know where Normal is, but you probably have at least heard of Illinois. If you weren't good with geography in school, think of the map of the United States. Find the middle, which is actually a place called Lebanon, Kansas. That's a piece of trivial knowledge for sure, but it comes into play later on, which is how I know about the place. Anyway, move your finger kind of northeast from there, toward Chicago. Normal is on the way, north of Bloomington, which is just about smack-dab in the middle of the State. That's where my story and Cassandra's begins.

Becoming The Moron In Oxymoron - Humorous

'Seriously funny' were the words used to describe a presentation I delivered when I was in college. Of course, I understood what the spontaneous critic meant, despite the oxymoron. I took it as a compliment.

It's true. Sometimes, I play the fool. I know that people may think I am really that way, a complete moron. But what difference does it make? I have fun whenever I can.

I'm not a comedian. I don't think I'm naturally funny. Occasionally, I see the irony in situations, though. Sometimes there is humor clinging on for the ride. If you flip the irony over, like the slime clinging to the bottom of a rock, you will find some humor. There are few serious situations that are without irony. I'm convinced irony is the mysterious invisible force that holds the universe together. So, there is a good deal of humor available, even if you have to dig a little to find it. And if you can't find anything to laugh about, make something up. Be creative!

Why do I look for irony and humor? No one else I know seems to be doing it. If they were, I'd gladly sit back to listen and watch someone else playing the fool. Some things just need to be done, though. Without levity in life, what we have is the same old conditional gravity that makes the world a cold, emotionally starved place. Life is desperately difficult for most of us. Lighten someone's day, lessen the load and make them chuckle. What does it cost? What can it hurt?

Say something unexpected and completely off subject. See another's eyes twinkle as they realize you've just temporarily eased their burdens. Try it out. Do it even if you have to resort to a little event shaping. Help someone to laugh and make the drudgery of the day go by a little faster.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. I have a friend who plays golf every weekend. Let's call him Lance. That's not his real name but I won't tell if you don't. Sometimes when the weather is nice he kicks out of work an hour or so early. He forwards all his calls to his cell phone, just in case there is a sudden outbreak of work demanding his personal attention. On his way home from the office, he takes in a quick nine holes. Yeah, he has the golf addiction.

Now, Lance knows I have never been a golfer. Over the years, Lance has often offered to teach me the game. That would certainly be an ego trip for Lance. He often brags that he could have gone pro. He has a low handicap. If it weren't for work, he could have made a living at it, eventually.

It takes a lot of faith to pursue a dream. It is walking across the economic tightrope of reality without a safety net.

A while back, Lance took some grief from his wife. He bought a new set of professional quality clubs. He tried to sell his old clubs in advance of the purchase to help offset some of the expense, but no one was interested in paying the price he asked. As you can imagine, his old clubs were pretty good. He took very good care of them. They were probably worth more than the bargain hunters were willing to pay. Then again, I am no expert.

Finally, he decided not to sell them and used the excuse of saving them for his boy, which sort-of - temporarily - got him out of the proverbial doghouse and back in the living room, even if it was only to sleep on the couch. At the time, his son was five years old and at least eight years away from using adult clubs. So yes, the excuse was a bit of a stretch.

I have to hand it to him, though, awarding extra points for quick thinking.

Note the genius of the concept Lance employed. He instinctively used an ages old male survival technique. If a man ever does anything selfish and/or childish while married, he needs to make it look like he did it for completely unselfish reasons.

Using the kid was brilliant. I must warn you, though. What he did will not work a hundred percent of the time. Still, it may lessen the severity and duration of the solitary treatment. It may garner a blanket for sleeping downstairs. Then, after a night spent alone in the living room, buying some flowers, taking the wife out for a night of dancing or cooking dinner for her - whatever seems to work best - will re-establish some harmony in the marital universe.

Just don't overwork this technique. It wears thin quickly. With some wives, it may work only once.

Anyway, knowing that Lance had an extra set of clubs, I called him up and asked if I could borrow them.

"What for? I thought you said putt-putt was challenge enough for you."

"Hey, hey. Can you negotiate that windmill, really?"

Lance chuckled. "Seriously, you are going to play golf with someone?"

"I am going to the amusement center to play a round of putt-putt."

"Why do you need a set of clubs? They have their own putters."

"Look, Lance, I'm serious. I want to walk up to the booth and ask for a caddy."

Lance laughed for several moments. "God, I would love to see you do that."

"Then come along, hide and savor the moment."

"I can't. I got the kid thing tonight. It's the wife's night out."

"Well, you're going to miss a memorable event, as long as I can use your old clubs?"

"Yeah sure, just bring 'em back whenever. They belong to the boy, you know."

A few days prior to that, I had gone to play putt-putt with my wife and three kids. It was a special family night out and fun for all. I pretended to let my wife beat me. Really, she was playing better than me. But you understand. It's a male ego thing. My son suggested that I was letting Mom beat me. Immediately, I seized the concept. "Now, why would I want to do that?"

On the way out, we had to wait for the attendant to get a very unprofessional and completely public bawling-out from his supervisor about something inane. I don't care what someone does; it never deserves public embarrassment.

I decided that on my next day off, I was going to give the kid a laughable memory. I really did walk up to the counter with a bag of golf clubs and ask for a caddy.

I'll bet he still remembers.