Have You Seen my Shades?

“Where the hell are they?”

I had torn my mail truck apart. I’d pulled out or moved every package and tray of mail in there. I’d checked up on the dashboard, in the dash-mounted scanner holster, under the dash—both driver and non-driver sides (we aren’t allowed passengers)—and pulled all the stuff out from under my work shelf. I’d checked the left and right door wells, and behind my seat. I’d even checked the crevice between the seat and the seat-back, worming my fingers down into a space far too tight to hold anything larger than loose change. I had done all that, yet here I was, standing in the post office parking lot, rubbing my forehead with my fingertips in frustration.

I couldn’t find my sunglasses.

It was a bright, sunshiny day, and I was to spend the next six and a half hours out in it trying to read addresses from white envelopes: I was not going to make it without my shades. See, it was the day after my day off, so I hadn’t been the last one to actually drive my truck. My sunglasses usually live up on the dashboard when I’m not wearing them, and I leave them there overnight so there’s no chance of me forgetting them in the morning. On my days off, however, my floater (the person assigned to cover my days off) is in the truck, and she apparently doesn’t approve of sunglasses on the dash; I’ve come in after my day off to find them in all of the places I mentioned above except wedged down into the seat crevice—but she’s still my floater, so there’s still time.

Today, however, I couldn’t find them at all. I huffed an angry sigh, put my truck back together, and headed out to my route in the blinding sun. I’d decided I was going to have a talk with my floater, but for now I just needed something to get me through the day; halfway between the office and the beginning of my route, I hit the directional and took a hard left—straight into the parking lot of the local 7-Eleven.

It was perfect. The 7-Eleven was where I’d purchased the lost sunglasses, and there was another pair right there on the rack. I snatched up the replacements rather angrily, still frustrated that I needed to buy new ones simply because my floater didn’t like where I keep them, paid at the register, and slipped them on as I left the store. Ah! Much better. And now, I thought, driving to my route, when I get the other pair back I’ll have an extra pair, for the next time she does this.

I started my route, walking from house to house to deliver the first relay, then driving on to Farrell Court. Farrell Court is some elderly housing run by the local Housing Authority, and consists of a series of square, brick buildings with four apartments in each. The mailboxes for all four units are together, in each building’s foyer. Entering the first dimly-lit hallway after walking about in that bright sunlight, I couldn’t see a damn thing, especially wearing my shades. I shoved my new sunglasses up on top of my head—dislodging the “missing" pair of sunglasses that had been up there the whole time.

Yeah, this is the kind of embarrassing thing I do. The kind of thing that, though when it happens I say Thank God no one knows about this, when Monday rolls around again, and I need a blog post, here I am telling you all about it.

Damn.

Talk to you later.

THUD!

Greetings, WYMOP readers!

I listen to audiobooks. Lots of ’em. Podcasts too, but some of them are also audiobooks, just released in episodic form. Chances are, if you see me at work, I’ve got at least one earbud plugged into my head. And chances are, if that earbud is in there, that I’m having private story time within the confines of my own little skull.

Some days, it’s the only thing that keeps me from going postal.

So the other day I was listening to Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. I thought perhaps I had read the novel as a kid, but as I listened I found none of it familiar. Not in the slightest. So I settled in for what I’ve heard touted as one of the greatest ghost stories of all time, confident that I would enjoy it. And I did. I enjoyed it all morning in the office, and then while I was out on the road, straight on ’til lunch.

Even at lunch, when I usually pull out the chromebook and work on something writerly, I left the buds plugged in and listened. When lunch was over, I stayed plugged in while I crawled into the back of the truck and pulled some mail and packages up into the cab for me to deliver in the second half of my day; the whole time the narrator was telling me Straub’s Ghost Story.

If you haven’t ever read Ghost Story (or seen the film, I suppose), there are scenes where the individual characters are having nightmares. This was what was playing in my ears as I drove away from my lunch spot: one of the characters dreaming is in a building he doesn’t recognize, and there is something in there with him—something that has come to get him. He’s trapped in a room, listening to the thing work its way through the house, thumping and bumping along. The thing, whatever it is (he doesn’t know until the end of the dream) is brushing against walls, and thudding against the floor, and he can hear it getting closer . . . and closer . . .

This was the scene running through my head as I approached my first park point after lunch, and it’s a tense and detailed scene, I can assure you. So I was not in what one might call the best frame of mind when, just as I touched the brakes to pull over, a tremendous, truck-shaking THUD came from the back of my mail truck. And I did what any sane, sensible person would do in a situation like that: I felt my eyes bug out of my head as I shouted “Holy duck!”

Okay, I didn’t actually shout duck, but that D is only a couple of letters off, and come on, my mom reads this thing!

Hi, Mom!

So I bellowed some fowl language (haw-haw) and pulled to the side of the road. It only took me that long to realize what had happened, but it also took that long for my heart to start up again—and when it did, it was rapping along at triple its usual pace as if trying to make up for lost time.

When I’d pulled that mail up to the front of the truck, I’d had to move some other things around in the back to make room for me to work: I needed some space to shift the trays. One of the things that had been in my way was a long, wide, flat package, heavy enough that someone at the beginning of the mailing process had been so concerned as to actually plaster a few HEAVY warning stickers on it, and those stickers weren’t lying—the thing was damn heavy. Rather than lift it and shift it (I was kneeling back there, not in the best position to gain any real leverage) I had simply pried it up and stood it on end, freeing up some floor space to work in.

And then I forgot to lay it back down.

So, when I touched the brakes and my truck began to slow, the HEAVY package overbalanced and toppled, landing flat again with an immense, truck-jolting whap. This entire sequence of events ran through my head as I pulled into my usual parking spot for that point in my route, and I took a while to just sit, listening to my heart smash around in my chest and laughing fit to bust, both fueled by the metric-butt-ton of adrenaline that had just been dumped into my bloodstream.

Why didn’t that package tip when I accelerated away from my lunch spot, to fall quietly backward atop the trays of mail behind it? How did it come to fall right at the point in the story where a loud thud had potential to make me soil myself? I can’t say for sure, but I have a theory: God has a wicked sense of humor, and, occasionally, I provide great entertainment for Him.

Good one, God.

Talk to you later!

Everything New is Old Again. Wait—What?

Greetings, WYMOP readers!

Okay, I believe last week I mentioned something about writing a “Happy New Year” piece, discussing 2015, 2016, new resolutions, people wearing party hats and proving they could count backward, all that stuff, but I bailed on it in the eleventh hour and wrote something completely different. There’s a reason for this.

I don’t have any new resolutions.

I have to-do lists. Lots of them. I started making them way back when I realized I was forgetful. I’d write down this sweet little list of things I needed to get done that day, or that week . . . and then forget where I put it. I’d be cleaning my room a week or so later and find that lost list on the corner of my desk—right on top of the lost list from the week before that. Item #1 on both lists was find good place to keep to-do list.

Whups!

So now, though I still make pen-and-paper lists (that corner of my desk is really getting buried!) I also have a big whiteboard on the wall with a nice, updatable, hard-to-lose list. I have two lists on my computer so I can access them from my chromebook, tablet, or phone: a general to-do list and one titled To-Do: Writing Only. Would you believe that none of these three lists have any of the same stuff on them?

And mounted on the wall above my desk is a poster board with a fourth list, a writing t0-do list for the year. It’s a record of a half-dozen or so writing goals that I’d love to accomplish in 2016, and right there, at the top, in big black letters, it says:

TO-DO: 2015

Waitaminute! 2015? That can’t be right! And it’s not. Not really. Because if you could actually see this list of mine, you’d notice right off the bat that the five in 2015 is set higher than the rest of the numbers, directly above a thick black X drawn through the number four. It’s a list I wrote back during the opening strains of 2014, and there ain’t a thing crossed off. It kills me to admit it, but I’ve had that same list for two whole years and I haven’t made a dent in it.

Wow.

Most of it is long projects. I’m known (if I’m known at all) for short stories. I’ve had people say to me  “You need to write longer stuff. You need to write a novel.” What these people really mean is that I need to publish a novel. I’ve written a novel. Hell, I’ve written two. And a half. And started another. But are they in any kind of shape to send to a publisher?

Oh, hell no.

My first finished novel is currently in two forms: a comb bound hard copy, so I can occasionally drop it onto my desk from a height of 12—18 inches and listen to the thunk (I find it soothing—thunk, thunk, thunk), and an electronic copy that’s been taken apart and spread out, like a mechanic who’s disassembled an engine, so I can try to see what’s wrong with it. My second rough novel is in better shape than the first, and has been calling to me in my sleep to work on it, as has a novella I also have down on paper. Both of them are pointing to that first disassembled novel with matching looks of fear in their eyes and saying We don’t want to end up like that poor bastard!

Well, they won’t. I look at that unchanging list from 2014, my new to-do list from two years ago, and I get extremely bummed out . . . until I actually look back on 2015.

In 2015 I started working with The Storyside, a small group of people like me, dedicated to writing the best stuff we can. I co-edited a fiction collection The Storyside put out in October, Insanity Tales II: the Sense of Fear, and it’s damned good. The five of us are running a blog over there that’s pretty impressive. I started writing a monthly review column over at Cinema Knife Fight called Monster Movie Madness, where I . . . yeah, well, that one’s pretty self-explanatory. I joined forces with my editing partner from The Storyside to form S&L Editing, and we recently had our first client—who was so happy with the editing we did on his novel he’s already talking about giving us another one. While I was doing all this I managed to get six short stories published, write and have published a 40-page novelette (yes, that’s it up in the sidebar), and write the second half of a 90,000 word story collection that’s due out at the end of February, Echoes of Darkness from Books and Boos Press.

When I look back on all that, do you know what I call 2015?

Practice.

Practice at being a working writer. Practice at being a working editor—which tends to make you a better writer. I just spent the past couple of weeks going over edits for that collection with my publisher, Books and Boos, and you know what? For the first time I haven’t convinced myself that what I’m putting out there in the public eye is terrible, or that I’m awful at this and that I should just stop wasting my time. I’m my own worst critic—lots of writers are—and I almost never think my work is good enough, or polished enough, or . . . enough enough. I usually manage to persuade myself that people who compliment my writing are just being nice. But for the first time I’m looking at a novel-sized mass of work—it’s thirteen different stories, but they’re all mine—and there’s this little wonder-filled voice in the back of my brain saying Holy shit, this is . . . this is good!

So that’s where things stand: I don't have any resolutions, and my new to-do list is really two years old—but this year I’m looking at it in a different way. I’m a little more experienced, a little more confident, a little more son of a bitch, I think I can do this! I think I’m finally ready to start knocking things off this list—not everything, but I have to start somewhere. I won’t bore you with the whole list, item by item, I will share the last thing on it, right at the bottom of the page. It’s the one thing I know I’ll never finish, even though it’s the one item I’ve been working on since before there even was a list:

Get better and better at writing. If I’m gonna be a word junkie,

and I am, then I want to be the best damn word junkie I can be.

Well, that’s it. Happy New Year. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take this Sharpie and climb up on my rickety, swively office chair and draw a big X and a small 6.

And then I have a lot of work to do.

Talk to you later!

Rocks in Her Head

Greetings, WYMOP fans!

I know we just had the New Year and all, and everyone's posting My Year in Review articles and making resolutions online, and to tell you the truth, that's what I was going to do as well. I was going to tell you some of the things I did with my writing in the past year, and how they were going to affect the next 361 days of my life. I sat down and started to do just that: I had a list, and pictures—all kinds of good stuff.

And then it all went horribly awry. Way off the rails. I think the technical term for what I did is that I "@#$%ed it all up." I mean big time.

So I bailed on it. It was 11:00 on the night the damn blog was due, and there was no way I could fix that hot mess in time. It's 11:45 now, and I just banged out the little story you see below. Honestly, if I didn't work with some highly amusing people, I would have been screwed. Ready?

True story—

I was sitting in the break room this morning, writing for a while before I clocked in, when I heard all this commotion from the workroom floor. Now, I couldn't see what was going on, but I could identify the voices, and it sounded like one of the women I work with was just all kinds of excited.

"My son got hit in the head with a rock! He was gushing blood all over the place, and I didn't have a phone! This is one of the rare times when I don't have a phone. They were playing a game, see, and this neighborhood kid wanted to cause a distraction or something, so he picked up a rock and threw it at this fence. It's one of those metal fences, you know? What are they called . . . chain! He biffs this rock at this chain fence and it bounced off and hit my son in the head! He was gushing blood all over the place! And I didn't have a phone—this is like the one time I don't have a phone, right?"

Things went on like that for quite a while, I'd say five minutes of full on exclamation points, before someone thought to ask "Well, Jesus, was this right before work?"

"No," she said, just about out of breath. "Yesterday afternoon."

They established that, though she was completely worked up about it all over again, it had actually happened more than twelve hours earlier, and her son was just fine. Something occurred to me, and I chuckled. I kept right on chuckling as I put my writing stuff away and clocked in; then I went over to the guy who works right next to her—the one who'd asked the question.

“Hey,” I said, loud enough for the people about us to hear. “Did you catch that thing on the news this morning?”

He gave me a blank stare.

“You didn’t hear?” This elicited a shake of the head, so I continued, turning slightly toward the excitable woman and including her in our conversation. “There was this thing in the news this morning about women in this country—mothers—who are beating their kids with stones.”

“What are you talking about?” said the excitable woman.

“It was on the news. These women, see, they’re throwing stones at their own kids. It’s a mental thing.”

“My kid was hit with a rock—” she started, but I rolled right over her.

“Yeah, but these women, they’re hitting their kids with stones, then blaming it on neighborhood kids.”

Her eyes lit up, her mouth opening again to comment.

“And then these women get all yelly and arm-flappy about it the next day, because they like the attention.”

Now she was giving me the blank stare, though the guy working next to her was grinning.

“It’s this new mental thing they’ve discovered. They call it Munchausen by Rocks. See?”

The guy burst out laughing, while she slapped me on the arm and called me a bum, and though she knows me and usually gets my sense of humor, she had a low opinion of me for the rest of the day. But that’s okay.

The punster is the lowest form of human.

Happy New Year! Talk to you later.

I AM Santa Claus

I am Santa Claus.

I am. I’ve just downsized.

Rather than worrying about all of the children in the world—good Lord there are a lot of them, you know—I focus all of my attention on one very special little boy. All right, maybe he’s not that little, but he sure is special—because he’s mine. And as far as he’s concerned, I am Santa. I have all of the qualifications—the ones that really count, anyway.

• I see him when he’s sleeping
• Sometimes when I go in his room to say goodnight before I head out home, he’s already crashed out, curled up in bed, his slightly sullen teen-aged face relaxing in repose to once again form the lines and curves of the angelic face I remember from when he was a quarter the size he is now. I do enjoy those moments.
• I know when he’s awake
• More accurately, I usually know when he’s been awake. If I go over there at 11:30 or noon and he’s still sound asleep, with no signs of waking, then chances are that the night before, when I saw him go to bed, it only lasted until I was safely out of the house and on my way home. As soon as the Mini’s tires were on the road, my little red car following its headlights through the night toward my own bed, that boy was up and on his computer, logging into game servers and talking to friends he has around the country. I was thirteen once too, remember, and though I was usually up half (if not all) the night reading books (people just didn’t have computers when I was thirteen), the final effect was the same: bleary eyes, a pale face, and a tendency to nap at the drop of a hat. I’m a father, not a fool.
• I know when he’s been bad or good
• That’s my boy: of course he’s been good. There’s no question. You come to me with unsupported accusations that he hasn’t, and chances are you’re going to go home with all the bits of you I consider unnecessary carried in a sack: teeth, testicles, and something a little more internal if I’ve got the time.
  
  Of course, if you come to me with some sort of proof he’s been bad, well, that’s a different story. Then he’s likely to be carrying the sack—metaphorically, anyway. There is that thing about being good for it’s own sake, and he does that, don’t get me wrong; but he’s also good because if he isn’t, it’s his ass. Merry Christmas.
• Shouting, crying, and pouting
• We shout. We’re an excitable people. We shout when we’re excited, we shout when we’re upset, we shout for simple emphasis. At times we just feel the need to project our words all the way to the back row. There’s no harm in that, and if there’s no harm, then no foul, right?
  
  We cry. We’re an emotional people. You think I’m going to tell my kid he can’t cry when every time I watch the movie RUDY (1993) I start to blubber at the end? I begin to well up right about the time the boys are all laying their jerseys on the coach’s desk, saying “This is for Rudy, Coach,” and by the end of the movie I’m a sniveling, snot-nosed, teary-eyed mess. If my boy feels bad enough about something that he starts to cry, then I feel bad, too. I wish like hell I could take away whatever it is that’s causing his pain, but I’m not going to tell him not to cry. Tears are a little like bad gas: better out than in—though you may want a little privacy.
  
  We do not pout. Period. I’ll go along with the shouting and crying, that’s all fine; but if you have a problem and you want to sit there pulling faces about it, well you damn well better be ready to tell me what the problem is and try to do something about it if you can. I’ll help, if you’ll let me. There’s only one situation where pouting is tolerated in my house: when I want to do it.
• I’m coming to town
• Yup. Early Christmas morning, before the sun has even thought about getting up, there I am buzzing along with my cargo of prettily-wrapped presents for the boy. No, I don't have a red sleigh and eight tiny reindeer: downsized, remember? I consolidated the whole thing into one tiny red car, the rear seats folded down in my shoebox-sized Mini Cooper to accommodate more than you think should fit—sometimes more than you think could fit, somewhat like that mythical bigger-on-the-inside sack I’m supposed to carry.

In the end, all of it comes down to being the guy sneaking the presents into the house—though if you think I’m having anything whatsoever to do with that chimney, you’ve got another think coming. I go in through the front door, shushing the dogs as I do. I arrange the gifts in a way I hope will please the eye, piling the smaller items on top of the larger, forcing him to open them in ascending order, hoping at least one of the damn things will inject my hulking, surly teenager with a bit of uncontrolled cheer. For instance, this year, though he asked for some bits to help him upgrade his desktop computer, we had a bit of a whip ’round and simply bought him a new gaming computer. The result:

Mission accomplished!

Ho, ho, ho . . .

In the interests of full disclosure, some family members helped pay for the thing (thanks Mom, Dad, and Sis!) and Handsome's mom picked it out. All I did was order it, wrap it, and sneak it into the house. Just like Santa . . .

Happy New Year, everyone! Talk to you later.

~ ~ * * ~ ~

If you haven't read my post titled Carol of the Bells, please give it a look. I'm selling a holiday horror story for just 99 cents on Amazon, and every sale helps out someone in need. For details, check out the post.

. . . and if you're not interested in the details, but you'd like to spend less than a dollar to receive a terrific novelette and know the proceeds were going to a good cause this holiday season, just click HERE to go right to Amazon and give the story a try. You get a story, someone gets some help they need, and we all get to walk around with a good feeling inside.

Where's the downside?

Happy holidays!

Forced to Run Errands

Greetings, WYMOP fans!

Knock-knock.

“Yeah, Dad?”

I opened the door and stuck my head into the boy’s bedroom. “I’m going to need you for a while.”

Blue eyes turned my way, and the big, retro headphones, pulled askew for the purposes of having a quick conversation, came all the way off with a sigh. “What?” he said. “Why?”

“It’s probably going to be a while,” I said gesturing toward the computer he sat behind. “You might want to tell your friends. I need you to help me with something for Grandpa.”

Handsome sat up straighter in his chair. “What? Why?”

“I just got off the phone with him,” I said, moving into the room to lean on the bed’s footboard. “He has some big stuff he wants to get upstairs into his workshop, and he asked if we’d help him. I don’t know how long it’ll be, but I assume you won’t be home for a while—we even have to make a side-trip to Home Depot on the way there to pick up some two-by-fours to use as runners on the stairs.”

“What are we moving?”

“I’m not sure. Grandpa tried to explain on the phone but . . . well, it’s my dad.”

He shot me a look of understanding. His grandfather—my father—is not the most communicative of men. Then he pointed to the computer. “But I was—we were . . .” He paused a moment, then sighed. “Fine.”

I knew what the issue was: I’d ordered him go to the store with me earlier, to do some grocery shopping and run some other errands. He’s thirteen now, and ordering him is one of the only ways to get him to spend time with me anymore. He’d been pretty good about it then, and we’d had a fine time; but now he was online with his friends, and here I was interrupting him again.

“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how long we’ll be, but hurry up and get some shoes and a jacket and I’ll try to have us back as soon as I can, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, turning back to the computer to let his buddies know he was leaving for a while—maybe for the night. “Fine. I’ll be right there.”

A bare minute later he was out of his room and moving fast. He’d gotten his sneakers on in record time and was wrestling his way into a big red-and-black hoodie as he led me out to the car. I hustled around to the driver's seat and got us rolling.

“We have to stop at Home Depot, like I said.” I took a right without slowing, trying to just get where I was going and get it done. “I’ll stop in the one at the mall, ’cause it’s on the way.”

“There’s a Home Depot at the mall?”

“Yep,” I said. “But I never use it. I hate going to the mall in general, and less than a week before Christmas the place is going to be a madhouse. But it’s the one on the way, and I’m trying to have you back home as soon as possible so—”

We exchanged a glance.

“To the mall!” I said.

Four minutes later we were in the mall parking lot and circling.

“I hate this,” I said. “Tell you what: I’ll just park far away and we can walk in, okay? I’ll just try to get close to the entrance nearest Home Depot.”

I yanked the Mini into a spot and we hopped out and started hot-footing it through the parking lot. We got to the entrance and I pulled the door open letting the boy lead the way into the back of the AMC Loews theater that's attached to the mall. Going through this door, you have to cross the corridors leading to the theaters, where the ticket-takers sit, then go through the lobby and out past the ticket booth to enter the rest of the mall. The boy blew past the ticket-takers and was halfway across the lobby already when I whistled him back.

“What?” he said, throwing a thumb over one shoulder, toward the waiting Home Depot. “Don’t we have to—”

“I give this to you, right?” I said, holding my smartphone out to one of the ticket-takers. “Two online tickets to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens?”

He took my phone to scan the QR code on the screen, and his machine spat out our paper tickets. He handed them over and I looked at Handsome, who had dropped the thumb and was squinting at me in dawning comprehension.

“You told your friends you were gonna be a while,” I said. “Right?”

Because that’s the other way to get the boy to spend time with me now: lying, deceitful trickery. I should probably feel bad about lying to him like that, just to get him out of the house. Part of me does, I think.

Halfway down the hall to our theater he gave me a quick hug, and said “I love you, Dad.”

I changed my mind. I don’t feel bad at all.

Talk to you later!

~ ~ * * ~ ~

If you haven't read my post titled Carol of the Bells, please give it a look. I'm selling a holiday horror story for just 99 cents on Amazon, and every sale helps out someone in need. For details, check out the post.

. . . and if you're not interested in the details, but you'd like to spend less than a dollar to receive a terrific novelette and know the proceeds were going to a good cause this holiday season, just click HERE to go right to Amazon and give the story a try. You get a story, someone gets some help they need, and we all get to walk around with a good feeling inside.

Where's the downside?

Happy holidays!