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Madman at the Wheel
The savage look in those eyes was enough to send chills down my spine; the kind of look one might expect to glare from behind the door of a padded room. From a birds-eye view, it must have looked like excited children playing with Matchbox cars, sending them into a chaotic frenzy, careening every which way. Cars were separating on the two-lane in front of us as if an invisible child’s hands were effortlessly pushing them to the left—into the highway median and into oncoming traffic in the other lanes, or to the right—straight into a steep embankment recently dug by heavy equipment. The driver of the old green car…
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The Best Things in Life are Free
When I allow my mind to sift back to a time I felt the pure, unrestrained bliss of a child, there are two events that easily stand apart from all the others. It was a time when life was uncomplicated and safe, with the ugly of the world still unapparent. We lived in a little red, two-story sandpaper-like sided house beside the kindest people I’ve ever known. I’m sure they were middle-aged, but Maggie’s sagging folds of wrinkles and Claude’s slow deliberate gait made them seem ancient. They had little in the way of material things and had no children of their own. We spent warm days and cooler evenings…
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My Sister Tried to Kill Me
It began like any other school day. We were both trying to hog the mirror from the other and tempers were beginning to flare. I’m sure it really wasn’t my fault. I had been the only child for four years and had gotten all the love and attention from everyone. When this tiny new creature came to live in my house, I noticed how everyone’s perspective immediately changed. “Isn’t she precious?” “Look at that perfect little nose!” “All that gorgeous dark hair!” And she was, dang it. She was a beautiful baby. I had been born bald and was wearing blue cat-eye glasses to correct a crossing left eye by…
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PEE-YEW!
Each time the stench wafted up my nose in an intermittent wave, I furtively sniffed around me. It had to be me. I was the only one sitting on that end of the couch. Once, twice . . . my nose quickly scanned each armpit as I reached up into a yawn or pretended to pull my hair back. My alarm didn’t go off, so arriving at my cousin’s house late for brunch was a given. There was no time to shower, pick out clothes, or put makeup on. I hurriedly scrubbed a toothbrush around in my mouth, put clothes on from the night before, and combed my hair…
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One Tiny Breath
The baby was battered black and blue and thrown on a table for dead. My mother always said thrown, but it must have been for effect; she wasn’t even there. Well, she was in the room, but she still wasn’t all there. My mother had been so heavily sedated, she missed all the excitement. When she woke two days later, she felt like she’d been hit by a Mack truck. The story was pieced together for her. She remembered going to Lightner Hospital to give birth to her second baby. The baby was not positioned correctly and was coming arm first. Many doctors and nurses were called to assist and at one point my father…
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What’s Your Addiction Affliction?
The TV show My Strange Addiction has certainly brought a lot of bizarre repetitive behaviors to light. I don’t believe mine has specifically been included in their menu of episodes, and since they haven’t called me to be featured on the show, maybe mine isn’t quite as bizarre as my friends and I think. The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Model of Mental Disorders), the Bible of mental disorders, the authoritative voice of health care professionals, has been updated to include behavioral addictions like compulsive gambling, stealing, buying, and sexual addictions, along with the nine more familiar substance use addictions. The reason for this is both philosophical and medical because there…
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Sexy L’Eggs
There are legs and a baton in this picture–it is hard to decipher which are which. Some adolescents try desperately to lose weight; I tried desperately to gain weight. Throughout junior high and high school, I despised wearing shorts and wanted to disappear every time we had to change clothes in the locker room. Name-calling and skinny jokes took their toll on any self-esteem not already destroyed by growing up in an alcoholic household. But the pity party ends there, because as the old adage goes, “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” It is also true that it will finally either fuel a sense of humor in you or…
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Work ‘n Roll
Foreshadowing was there from the beginning. About ten years ago, a new Asian buffet was getting ready to open in a nearby town and the humongous bright yellow sign out front boasted “Work ’n Roll”, instead of “Wok ’n Roll”. That should have been our first clue. It was unwittingly being established as either a place of hard labor, a comedy club, or both. And we were about to find out. After eating at the new restaurant, I felt like we ripped the place off–maybe we should have gone to the cashier and insisted we pay more money. For the entertainment. First, our son warmed us up by opening for…
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Life Isn’t Fair
It is basketball season again and it brings to mind a heartbreaking lesson my youngest son, Wyatt, had to learn. Wyatt was born with a baseball in one hand and a basketball in the other. His older brother was about to turn five when he was born, so he was always trying to live up to his big bro’s standards . . . a tough job for one so much younger. No one let him win at anything for the simple pleasure of winning. He had to work hard to learn how to compete at an early age, because his brother was athletic, an honor student, and wanted to be…
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Snow Days
Do snowy days make you introspective? They do me. Maybe because snow is such a novelty in our area of southern Illinois. Everything comes to a halt. Since our rural infrastructure (that seems an oxymoron) is not prepared to handle the slightest abundance of white fluff or ice, school districts, daycares, social agencies, churches, government, and colleges shut down. Many of us hunker down, drinking more coffee than usual, living vicariously through frosty windows, as birds seem busier working on seeds in feeders. Excitement builds as breathtaking crystals float together in harmonic conspiracy, to change the landscape and insulate sound. And it makes our hearts happy. I am a passive…
