Paul R. May - Stories for Young Readers

Scaring Seventh Graders

2010-10-27T10:30:00.007-04:00

A few evenings ago I made four middle-school boys evaporate.

Actually, it was only three. The fourth boy stood frozen in the street with his arms over his head, grimacing with his eyes squeezed shut like he was waiting to get run over by a dump truck.

It was perfect timing. I just happened to be out on the back porch waiting patiently for the dog to do her business when I heard voices near the front of the house. Then I heard our mailbox open and close.

That’s weird… I thought. Why would someone be opening our mailbox at nine o’clock on a Sunday night?

And then I realized that it was a few days before Halloween, and that the kids were off from school on Monday. I had a tiny little moment, reminiscing about how much fun it used to be to sneak around late at night with my buddies, looking for trouble. Also, I have to admit I had a little bit of insider info about toilet paper artists on the prowl that night.

Then I just kinda kicked into autopilot. I grabbed a broom off of the back porch and held it in front of me like a horror movie chainsaw and started running as fast as I could toward the boys.

When I exploded out into the yard, appearing out of nowhere from the darkness between the houses, I let out a primordial Neanderthal kind of scream and held the broom over my head with both hands.

And that’s when the boys vaporized. By the time I was done screaming there was nothing left near the mailbox except three tiny little wisps of smoke. Oh… and the one boy who had prepared for death by standing with his hands in the air and grimacing with his eyes squeezed shut.

I heard feet stomping a few houses down and yelled “Happy Halloween,” and the kid in the street finally unfroze. He gave me a weak smile and said, "Hey, Mr. May..." and walked down toward the cul-de-sac, doing a good job of making it look like he wasn’t in need of clean underwear.

I'm not sure what they were doing with the mailbox. I was kind of expecting something nasty to be stuffed in there. It was a little disappointing to discover that it was empty.

Oh, to be a seventh-grader again and experience that thrill of sneaking around in the shadows with rolls of toilet paper, daring your buddies to knock and run… getting the living crap scared out of you by some middle-aged jerk with a broom…

Here are some of my favorite Halloween-ish blog posts from the past:

Mr. Hatchet and Killer Gar Fish:
http://paulrmay.blogspot.com/2009/10/mr-hatchett-and-killer-gar-fish.html

Scary Stuff for Halloween
http://paulrmay.blogspot.com/2008/10/scary-stuff-for-halloween.html

Graveyard Bunny Rabbit
http://paulrmay.blogspot.com/2008/08/graveyard-bunny-rabbit.html

Knick Knocking
http://paulrmay.blogspot.com/2008/06/knick-knocking.html

Refrigerator Maze Ninja Chickens, in Diapers: http://paulrmay.blogspot.com/2009/10/refrigerator-maze-ninja-chickens-in.html

Dobermans, Shotguns, and Caretakers... Oh My!
http://paulrmay.blogspot.com/2009/05/dobermans-shotguns-and-caretakers-oh-my.html

The Goodyear Blimp Bomb
http://paulrmay.blogspot.com/2008/11/good-year-blimp-bomb.html

Writing Status, Mental Status, A Writer Profile - Barry Louis Polisar

2010-02-02T15:34:00.010-05:00

Writing Status:
Last week I finished a monster month-long writing assignment for an educational publisher, and I’m so happy to be working again on my current middle-grade novel, 6.3 Million Dollars.

Mental Status:
(I sent this to a friend last week to cheer him up…)
Yesterday I went into the bathroom at about eleven o'clock after getting some early morning stuff done. I was taking a break to take a shower. I started shaving with my electric razor, but it wasn't making the buzzy/crunchy noise it normally makes. I turned it off and stared at it, thinking maybe something was wrong with the metal screen. Then I reached up and rubbed my cheek and realized that I was clean shaven, and that's why the electric razor wasn't making its typical buzzy/crunchy noise. Then I reached over and ran my hand along my bath towel, and it was damp. Then I realized that, in fact, I had already shaved and showered that morning. Then I walked out of the bathroom and went back to work, fighting the urge to Google "Alzheimer's disease."

A Writer Profile: Barry Louis Polisar.

I first met Barry when I was in the fourth grade. He came to my school with a guitar strapped to his back and did a big performance for all of the students and sang the absolute coolest songs my ten-year-old ears had ever heard. I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor and grinning at a friend of mine, both of us wide-eyed as we listened to Barry sing “My brother threw up on my toy stuffed bunny…” and “One day my best friend Barbara turned into a frog…” and “My brother thinks he’s a banana.”

Like so many other kids whose lives Barry has touched over the past thirty years, I was captivated by his quirky songs. They were songs we could identify with, songs about things no other adult ever had the guts to sing… like “Stanley Stole my Shoelace and Rubbed it in his Armpit.” Talk about identifying with your audience!

Right after Barry visited my school, I sat down and wrote him a letter. I asked him to send me the guitar chords for his songs, because I wanted to play them (and this was back in the Mesozoic Neanderthal pre-Internet days when you actually used paper and envelopes and stamps and stuff). Barry was nice enough to write back, and he sent me the guitar chords to some of his songs. He hand wrote the chords and lyrics, and I remember thinking even back then how cool he was to take the time to do that for some kid writing to him out of the blue. I wrote back and invited Barry over to my house for dinner.

My mom was running a children’s theater back then, so she and Barry knew of each other in the Maryland arts world. And one night he actually showed up for dinner, and he brought his guitar, and he and my dad and I played a bunch of his songs together, and it was so cool.

In addition to creating and performing his wonderfully wacky music, Barry has published a bunch of children’s books. They are all chock full of his deliciously dorky kid-centric humor.

Barry and I reconnected a few years ago, and it’s been wonderful to see what he’s been up to over the years. His most recent claim to fame is singing his song, “All I Want is You” in the opening credits of the film Juno, and a wonderful 2-CD, 60 song Tribute Album of his songs has just been released.

I think a quote from Tom Lehrer best sums up Barry Louis Polisar -- "A delightfully subversive antidote to Mr. Rogers."

Check out Barry’s website, where you can download his music and several free digital editions of his books (make sure to read the page with notes kids have written to him - hysterical!). If you write to Barry, I bet he'd still be willing to share his guitar chords with you, cuz he's cool like that.

Car Fire Through the Classroom Windows

2010-01-12T12:56:00.005-05:00

I taught writing as a middle school English teacher in Baltimore City back in the early nineties, and I always tell people there was never a time in my life when I felt more worthwhile about what I was doing.

While I considered myself a fairly efficient classroom manager, I affectionately referred to my teaching style as "organized chaos." I used a writing workshop method I'd learned reading Nancie Atwell's IN THE MIDDLE, which was a wonderful way to help kids learn to write while giving them ownership in their work and the freedom to get up and move around the room like an office environment.

Okay, maybe it wasn't like an office environment... maybe it was more like a shopping mall food court... but I'm a pretty firm believer that it is counter-productive to try to keep middle school kids attached to chairs and desks for more than thirty seconds at a time. If you didn't know I was running things that way on purpose, you might have wandered by my classroom wondering why kids were standing up on chairs rehearsing parts for a script someone had written, or putting their heads together in a critique group and debating writing issues (okay, maybe screaming at each other).

I got strange looks from teachers when they walked past sometimes, but the principal knew the chaos was good. (Except for that one time when I told a spooky story on Halloween and stepped out into the hallway to put on a scary mask and then jumped back into the classroom and screamed "Booga! Booga!" and half the kids fell out of their chairs and all of them screamed like the Titanic had just crashed through the classroom windows... I'll never forget taking that mask off, grinning at the principal (who had just run into the room thinking he was about to break up the fight of all fights...), seeing the warning look he gave me before leaving my classroom without saying another word... man... that's a blog story all on its own...)

Anyway, the reason I bring all this up is because I wanted to share a little memory of watching a car catch on fire from the classroom windows.

We were walking our students back to classes after lunch, and a couple of kids in my group saw the smoke through my classroom windows and ran ahead to see what was going on out in the parking lot. When they turned to tell their classmates that a car was on fire, the rest of my kids ran ahead to join them at the windows. I followed behind them, hearing a nearby teacher tell his kids out in the hallway that he didn't care what Mr. May was doing with his students, they would not be taking class time to watch a car on fire. I remember fighting the urge to turn around and stick my tongue out.

I'm mean, let's get serious here.

There's a car on fire, in the parking lot. These are middle school kids. They can see the black mushroom clouds of rubber tire smoke billowing up past the windows. And you're going to tell them to stay in their seats and not watch?

I'd love to say that I turned it into a teaching opportunity, that we observed the fire as a class and then did some kind of guided writing exercise about the experience. But we didn't. We just watched, and we talked about it. And it was one of my all-time favorite teaching memories.

Because time slowed down for a little bit in that crazy world. The teacher/student hierarchy evaporated, the peer pressure garbage was put in suspended animation, the ever-ticking clock lost its supreme power.

We just stopped everything we were doing and watched a car burn.

And burn it did. I'd never seen anything like it. No one was near the car, so no one was hurt. I never found out how the fire started, but I remember watching the way the flames burned inside of the car and then took over the metal frame, how the windshield blackened and crumbled, watching the tops of the door frame turn into molten metal and literally fall to the ground in large drips, the way the flames surrounded the wheels and how the smoke thickened and darkened when the tires really caught on. We stood there with our faces glued to the windows, and we watched, occasionally relaying observations to each other, sometimes looking at each other with wide eyes and excited grins.

The fire department eventually showed up and squirted water on what was left of the scorched and melted blob.

And we started class.

And somehow I felt closer to those kids after that twenty minutes of not-so-wasted time, and there was a lot less pressure in the room, and I'll never regret my decision to just stand there with them and watch something none of us had ever seen.

I wonder how many of those kids remember watching that car burn, the way the smoke changed from black to white when the fire hoses hit it, the way time slowed down for us just a little bit...

Winter Holiday - Pictures and Poop Stories

2010-01-05T13:25:00.015-05:00

We're back from a long, wonderful, high-calorie winter vacation up in Maryland, where we spent lots of time with family and friends. As usual, we spent most of our time eating and laughing and playing guitar and eating and playing games and eating.

It was great seeing all that family, but it's nice to be home with my legs kicked up, keyboard in my lap, and the dog curled up at my feet. Life is good.

Okay... pictures first, then poop stories.

This is Jerry seeing snow for the first time. We were all trying to be the first person to see snow during the drive from Florida to Maryland. My daughter Caitlin won when she noticed snow on the ground just after we crossed into Virginia. (See story below about Jerry's troubles with the snow later that night).

Here's a little Japanese maple in the front yard of Kathie's parents' house. Maryland got two feet of snow the week before we arrived, and it snowed another four inches just after Christmas.

Uncle Paul was seriously cracking up nieces Miranda (on the left) and Zoey (on the right).

A big get-together with friends. We had at least eight people playing guitar together. This is always something I look forward to.

And then, like every other weary winter holiday traveler, we came home and started sorting laundry.

Okay... the previously promised poop stories...

Poop Story Number One:

As you can see in the picture above, my dog Jerry was introduced to snow for the very first time this year. Jerry takes after my wife. She does not like to be cold. Period. Ever. She saw the snow when we stopped at a rest stop in Virginia, stuck her paw in it, took a little sniff, and then gave me a look that said, "That'll be all I need of that stuff, let's move on, thank you." As I said above, Maryland had just been hit with two feet of snow, so when we finally got there that night it was everywhere. Tons and tons of it. As Jerry jumped out of the car after our long drive, she took a few tentative steps on the shoveled sidewalk, walls of snow on either side of her covering the grass. Then she turned around and gave me another look. This one said, "You're kidding me, right?"

I gave Jerry a few minutes to get used to things in the house, and then it was time to take her out to use the bathroom. We walked out to the sidewalk and I patted my leg and said, "Okay, Jerry... let's go potty." She looked at the walls of snow on either side of the sidewalk, her back legs shivering, and she gave me another look, and this one said, "You want to go out and put your butt in that stuff, you go ahead buddy. Knock yourself out. I'm going back inside to plop down in front of the fireplace."

We eventually cleared off a space on the back deck that allowed Jerry to go to the bathroom without snow shoes and Arctic exploration gear, and over the next few days she figured out a routine. But I'll never forget the way she stared me down out on that sidewalk.

--------------------------

Poop Story Number Two:

In a very rare moment of downtime over the break, I kicked back on the couch at my in-laws' house and cracked open a book. As I was reading, my niece Miranda (about two) wandered into the room. Her arms were wrapped around a little picture book. I set my own book down and smiled at her. "Would you like me to read that book with you?" I asked, looking forward to a little quiet time with my niece. She gave me a big grin and nodded and handed me her book. She started her climb and was just about to crawl into my lap when she stopped and stared at me. With a very serious look on her face yet a sing-songy tone in her voice she said, "I have poop." Her tone was equal parts toddler triumph and warning notice. I said, "Well thanks for letting me know, Miranda. Why don't you go talk to your Mommy or Daddy about that." She shrugged her shoulders, said "Okay," and wandered off to get business taken care of.

Part of me was relieved to have dodged that bullet, but even more of me was excited to be introduced to such a wonderful new phrase. Throughout the rest of our winter vacation, I tried out my new phrase at different family gatherings. Like, for example, the dinner table. I waited for a quiet moment and then said, in a sing-songy kind of voice, "I have poop."

I'm looking forward to experimenting with this phrase in public places. Elevators perhaps, or maybe the dry cleaners.

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Here's Jerry proving that she is a thin-blooded Floridian.

Breaking Free From Writing Constraints

2009-12-07T12:06:00.003-05:00

When I sold my first story about eight years ago, I handed the check to my wife and asked her to pay the electric bill with it. This was a major milestone moment for me, based on Stephen King's book On Writing, in which he wrote, "...if you wrote a piece and someone published it and the check didn't bounce and you used it to pay the electricity bill, you're a writer."

I know it's not all about money. Trust me... after eight years this may be the very first year I've earned more than I've spent in this little writing career of mine. But when I held that first check in my hand, and remembered Stephen King's words about paying the electric bill, and for the first time actually made some money doing what I love... well, that was some kick-butt affirmation.

I just recently finished a monster freelance writing project - twenty stories for an educational publisher. The check will cover the mortgage this time, and I'm deliriously happy about that. Also, the project was a wonderful distraction to keep me from pacing around the telephone (and clicking Send/Receive in my email over and over again) while I wait to hear back from my agent about my YA novel, which is in editors' hands as we speak.

This is the second time I've done contract stories for an educational publisher. In both cases I was given pretty much full poetic license regarding topics, style, point of view, genre, etc. But also in both cases I had to stay within established guidelines and constraints. As stories that will be used in testing, the topics can't be too "sensitive." For example, a story about racism will carry an important message but at the same time could be disturbing enough to affect a student's performance on a test. Also, the stories had to fall within pre-established Lexile ratings and reading levels.

As a former English teacher, I've had experience with this stuff, so it's not too much of a hassle to tweak sentence length, choose more challenging words, etc. As a writer, however, I can sometimes feel like I've got my hands tied.

Probably the biggest example of this is with sentence structure. In my everyday writing, with novels I'm working on, short stories, etc., I tend to have a pretty relaxed way of throwing sentences together. I like to start sentences with "But" occasionally, or use a one-word fragment, etc.

Like this. Yeah.

Letting go of traditional sentence structure allows authentic voice to seep in. Really. And when you forget about all that "Conjunction Junction" stuff and just dump what's in your head down onto the page, it sounds real.

But when you're working on writing that has to meet Lexile ratings and reading levels, you can't get away with that stuff as much.

So what's my point with all this (he says, starting his sentence with a conjunction)?

Now that those stories are out the door and I'm back in the saddle with my current work in progress, I feel like my hands have been untied.

I can just tell the story. And that's incredibly exciting.

And I'll take all this a step further and share a dorky little secret about my manuscripts when I'm working on a novel. If you open up my current work in progress (a middle-grade novel about a kid who patents a science fair idea for free clean, green energy and makes millions of dollars but still can't figure out how to win over the girl of his dreams) you'll see, up in the header, the words, "Hey, Paul! It's just a big giant blog post!"

I added this a long time ago, because when I stop "trying to write," when I just let the words flow and kick back and have fun and tell the story (like I often do when I'm telling silly stories in here), then it works. It works well. It gives me goosebumps.

So, the moral of today's long-winded story... (ah, the ellipses... I do love me some ellipses...) Just write the story. Stop trying to be a writer... just write... open your heart and tell the truth. I used to teach English, so I know the rules of writing and grammar and sentence structure and all that garbage. I know the rules well enough to feel comfortable breaking them.

Yeah.

And now I will try to practice what I preach and jump back into my middle-grade novel (which is getting closer and closer and closer to being a finished middle-grade novel)

And I will try. I will desperately try not to sound like I'm writing.

Refrigerator Maze Ninja Chickens, in Diapers

2009-10-27T10:53:00.004-04:00

It's pretty much common sense... when your party guests are crawling through a refrigerator box maze in complete darkness, the last thing they want to do is stick their hand in chicken poop. But the occasional live chickens (in complete darkness) are an integral part of the Halloween party activity, right? I mean, duh...

So, it's Pampers to the rescue!

We were living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania at the time, so that would put me at about six or seven years old. It's funny how chickens in diapers can leave such a childhood memory imprint.

When it comes to fun and games (that usually involve people getting hurt in some way), I come from a family of big-time overachievers. The week before the big Halloween party that we were throwing for the whole neighborhood, my parents drove out to the local Sears and picked up a whole bunch of cardboard refrigerator boxes - perfect for taping together into an intricate maze down in the basement.

What an awesome "quality family time" project that was! When we were finished, the network of square tunnels filled every inch of floor space. We turned out the lights and took turns testing our new cardboard labyrinth.

It was sorta cool to be crawling around in the dark, feeling our way through the maze as we had to decide whether to go right or left. But, like we did with most things in my family when I was growing up... Well... we got bored.

It just wasn't cool enough! It needed something more, something unique, something that would truly represent the collective creative genius behind the May family!

So we tried leaving some surprises throughout the maze... a dorky stuffed animal here and there, scattered grapes so our guests might think they were squishing eyeballs with their knees in the dark, an occasional mound of shaving cream.

That made it a little more interesting. But still, we knew we just weren't quite there.

I don't remember who brought up the idea of putting live chickens in the cardboard refrigerator maze (for people to discover as they came around the corner... in complete darkness... no big deal, just a live chicken hanging out with you... in complete darkness...)

Nor do I remember how the chickens were appropriated. I just remember them being there, in the maze, and I remember thinking that I had about the coolest dang parents that ever existed.

So, the maze was complete... random dorky Halloween surprises around each corner, plus a couple of not so dorky surprises that were alive and would totally flip out in a pitch-dark-feather-frenzy when you got close to them.

But then, in a few more prototype testing sessions about an hour before the entire neighborhood was about to show up for the big May Family Halloween Party, we realized that our chickens were leaving little surprises of their own.

I remember running my hands through something goopy, and not making the connection until we'd climbed out of the maze and turned the lights on.

Ew.

So, in a flash of brilliance, my mom ran out to the store to buy some Pampers, my dad crawled through the cardboard maze with some paper towels to clean up the chicken poop, and before our first guest rang our doorbell, our refrigerator-maze-ninja-chickens were diapered up (I reckon duct tape was utilized) and released back into the maze. We were locked and loaded, ready for our unsuspecting guests.

This was such an early memory. I'm afraid I don't remember if our refrigerator-maze-ninja-chickens were well received by our party guests. Nor do I remember what my parents did with the chickens after the party. But I do remember crawling through that maze, encountering live chickens in complete darkness, and thinking, even at that young age, how fortunate I was to be growing up in my wonderfully crazy family.

Spelunking in Suburbia

2009-10-13T10:33:00.005-04:00

Okay... let me put forth the disclaimer that always comes up when I tell people about this childhood activity of ours. No, we were not crawling around in the sewers. We were crawling around in storm drain pipes. There's a big difference. Storm drain pipes carry rainwater runoff away from neighborhoods and streets so they don't flood. Sewers carry poop. Now you know.

We grew up in Columbia, Maryland, a pre-planned city that was in its infancy when we moved into our first house. There was construction going on all the time...

(Pardon me while I jump out to drop a note into my blog topic list to write about the time I started up a giant construction tractor and tried to blame it on my baby sister... Oh... and the firecracker fights we used to have on home construction sites... Yeah...)

Okay, I'm back...

So with all this construction going on for this gigantic pre-planned city, the storm drain run-off system had been very well-designed. The engineers that built all that infrastructure stuff were planning ahead for a monster community (rightly so, because it is has indeed grown into a giant city). But when we first moved in, most of the home construction was just getting started.

As a result, the storm drain pipes that were designed to support a gigantic community were brand spanking new, relatively clean (more about that later...), and big enough to create an underground travel network that was just screaming to be explored.

The coolest part of the whole storm drain network was this main junction point next to a pond near our house. Four big pipes from four different neighborhoods met at this one spot (keep in mind this is all underground). So I guess the engineers designed this one location to support a heck of a lot of water.

Because we could stand up inside. And that was so incredibly cool.

Think about it... three boys, ages seven, ten, and twelve... finding an underground pipe junction big enough to stand up inside. It was like we had discovered our very own underground fort.

We found this junction point fairly simply... we were hanging out near the pond, saw a storm drain pipe nearby that was about three feet in diameter, and wandered inside.

I tell you, it was like Christmas when we reached the end of that pipe and walked into that underground junction space... The three of us could easily stand next to each other, with room to take a couple of steps around... We were at least eight feet underground. I get goosebumps just thinking about how cool that was.

This picture is a fairly good representation of the kind of space I'm talking about (minus the dude).

So not only had we found this awesome storm-drain-junction-secret-underground fort, in which we could hang out and pretend we had our very own world beneath the world, but this storm drain junction had three more pipes, each ready for advanced suburban cave exploration.

I remember following one of the storm drain pipes as it went under the road toward the elementary school. What was cool, and then suddenly very uncool, was the way the pipe narrowed as we went further and further into the darkness. It started at about three feet in diameter... an easy crouching walk. Then it dropped down (giant concrete reduction couplings...) to about two feet... down to a crawl... (No, Mom... I don't have any idea about those gaping knee-holes in my jeans...)

Then it dropped down to about eighteen inches. And we had to crawl commando style... full flat on our stomachs, arms out in front, pulling ourselves along like slugs.

I remember it being pitch dark at one point, Earl in the lead as the oldest, Greg behind me... the three of us pulling ourselves along in the dark, reaching out and scraping our fingers along the concrete to move another inch forward, passing through occasional spider webs, feeling something wriggle past us every once in a while...

But what I remember most was reaching a point where I'd had enough. How it felt like if I went another foot forward the concrete tube would get small enough to prevent my lungs from expanding for my next breath of air...

And then we had to back up the whole way. It wasn't like we could just stand up and turn around real quick, right?

My dad gave us an old mechanic's sled (the kind they use to slide under cars), and we had visions of zooming through the bigger storm drain pipes at ninety miles an hour. I'll never forget how we dragged that thing into the storm drain pipes and sat down on it, all three of us, holding sawed-off pieces of broomstick in our hands in our fists to use to push us along at mach speeds.

We said, "Ready, set, go!" and dug into the sides of the drain pipe with our drumsticks. The mechanic's sled didn't even budge.

That was a rather silly, disappointing experience, but then we spent the rest of the day exploring and dragging our bodies through wet tunnels.

Now keep in mind this was up in Maryland. We ran into bugs and frogs and even an occasional garter snake. I would never go near a similar kind of storm drain down here in Florida...

Uh... no thanks.

Mr. Hatchett and Killer Gar Fish

2009-10-09T10:36:00.005-04:00

As we creep closer to Halloween, I figure I'll get back into scary mode a little bit... some of my strongest memories are from times when I was so scared I felt like my hair was going to catch on fire.

If you're interested in some scary/creepy/weird stories I've written in the past, check out the Terror link in the Labels section on the right (or just Click Here).

Camp King's Landing. I was probably twelve years old. Two weeks on my own with other kids my own age. Late-night campfires, horseback riding, nasty cafeteria food that produced wonderful song lyrics... It's so cool to get away on your own as a kid, to build up your self esteem and start to figure out that you are actually capable of surviving in this big world of ours.

It's all fun and games until the college-aged counselors start talking about Mr. Hatchett, and about the killer gar fish waiting for us in the river.

I remember sitting around a campfire, right on the water. Across the river sat an old shack. We could just barely make out the edges of the roof in the moonlight. The counselors told us that Mr. Hatchett lived there, and of course, he chopped up his victims, and probably ate them or hung their dead bodies from trees, or whatever they came up with to scare the living crap out of us.

What I remember most was trying to sleep that night. A typical camp cabin... just four wooden walls, bunk beds, stinky old mattresses, square holes for windows with nothing but a flimsy piece of screen mesh... no lock on the door, no dead bolts, no contract with Brinks Security.

The cabin was built up a few feet off the ground in case the river flooded, so it was high enough that Mr. Hatchett could easily slip underneath if he wanted to, dragging his axe next to him in the dirt.

It's the kind of terror that transforms your senses. Frogs sound like they're screaming to each other, the buzzing crickets invade your brain... But it's even freakier when the frogs and crickets quiet down for the night (and you know this has happened because you've been up for three hours, your fists clenched around the top of your sheet, the covers pulled up to just underneath your nose, staring at a dark spot above you on the ceiling... just knowing it's a big spider, praying it doesn't move...)

And then the silence kicks in... and when that silence is broken it's like an explosion... an owl's hoot can launch your heart out of your chest... a tiny twig breaking is a bomb going off... any movement conjures images of Mr. Hatchett underneath the cabin, reaching for a loose floorboard... Too afraid to breathe, afraid to move, afraid Mr. Hatchett will hear your heart beating so loudly and will therefore choose you for his first slice-and-dice of the evening.

Man... Them's some powerful memories... The hair on the back of my neck is standing on end right this very moment...

And then there were the killer gar fish.

We did some water skiing at this camp, zipping up and down the river. The same counselors who had told us about Mr. Hatchett were the ones giving the lessons, the ones driving the boat... the ones leaving us in the water for extended periods when we fell down.

And, of course, an important part of the introductory water skiing lesson was the lecture about the killer gar fish that were waiting for us in the river. Gar fish with gigantic jaws full of teeth. I'm not sure whether they were trying to encourage us to stay up on the skis, or just trying to scare the living crap out of us, or both... But I bought the whole story... big time.

We started out in the shallows. I remember not being too worried about giant killer gar fish when the water was only two or three feet deep. I learned how to keep my ski tips out of the water at an angle, let the slack in the line tighten up, and tense my legs so the boat could pull me up on the water.

I got up on plane pretty fast... loving it... seeing the white water rushing under my skis, leaning back, feeling the boat going faster... the counselor in the boat in spotter position giving me a thumbs up...

Yeah... I got this... this is so cool... flying across the water... maybe I'll lean a little to the right and see if I can jump over that wake... yeah... nice... got into the air a few inches... out in the middle of the river now... out in the deep water... way cool... let me lean a little left and cruise over to the other side of the wake...

SMASH... face hitting hard water, brackish salty water up my nose, slamming into the surface... water isn't supposed to feel this hard... skis exploding off of my feet, tumbling, flailing, spitting, coughing... life jacket turning me upright...

Cool... I survived... Giving thumbs up to the spotter counselor in the boat to let him know I'm alive... Awesome... that was so awesome... I can't wait to get back up on the skis again...

Reaching for the skis floating on either side of me... slipping the rubber gizmos over my feet... bobbing there in the water waiting for the boat to circle back for me...

Can't wait to get back up there on the water... just as soon as they circle back for me...
As soon as they circle back...

I see the rope handle popping in the water behind the boat... it looks like they're half a mile away now... they're circling in front of the beach, doing figure eights in the water... waving at some of the female counselors... the guy driving the boat is standing up and grinning... they're circling around again to wave at the girls in their bathing suits...

My first thought is that this is so unfair because I really want to get up on my skis again, zoom across the water again...

And then.... I remember... the gar fish...

The monster killer gar fish with giant gaping jaws and thousands of sharp teeth, like prehistoric predators that have been hibernating deep in the muck for thousands of years until this very moment when they awaken again for a delicious breakfast of traumatized twelve-year-old.

I'm out in the deep part of the river... hundreds of yards from either shore... murky brackish water... dark enough that I can't even see my hands beneath the surface...

It looks like the counselors are finally done circling in front of the girls on the beach... it looks like they're coming back for me now...

But I know it's too late... I know that any second I'll feel the first bite... The rubber gizmos on the skis might temporarily protect my feet, so the first bite will probably be the back of my leg, or maybe it'll tear off my knee...

There's probably more than one... maybe they travel in predatory schools... and with some dolphin-like pulse signal to each other they will attack like piranhas, shredding the skin and flesh from my bones. The water is so very deep beneath my legs.

The scream comes from deep within my body... a dark place I've never known.

Greg, The Cave People Are Coming

2009-09-30T09:28:00.007-04:00

Some day I’ll blog about the medieval war battles we used to fight when we were teenagers – foam rubber padded weapons, home-made tunics, burlap leggings, epic battles in the woods where we protected forts until our last dying breath…

Those are such wonderful memories. I remember how cool it was to escape into that fantasy medieval world, let myself really believe I had a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, get so fully into character that I could almost feel the pain when my arm was chopped off during a battle, scream in triumph when I killed an opponent and all that…

So I get it. I get the Civil War reenactment folks who spend weekends out on historic battlefields dressed in wool uniforms, shooting cannons full of gunpowder at each other. I get the folks who travel around the country working as court jesters and jousting knights and muddy lepers in renaissance festivals. I get all that.

But the Cave People? I don’t get the Cave People.

A little backstory…

This is yet another adventure that happened while we were hiking in the Catoctin Mountains. My brother Greg and I were up there on our own for a day trip. We were doing the fairly rugged hike up to Wolf Rock. It’s only about three miles or so round trip, but it’s straight uphill. The reward at the end of the journey is standing on top of a rock formation that looks down over hundreds of miles of treetops. It’s breathtaking, especially in the fall.

I love that I was raised in a family that spent so much time outdoors. Hiking and camping adventures are some of my earliest memories. When you spend a lot of time in the woods, you learn how to go to the bathroom in the wilderness. We are all quite good at it. In fact, there are books written about the subject, offering different approaches for various challenges… there’s the “grab a tree” approach… the “stack some branches” method, etc. My dad used to claim the frontier woodsman ability to simply squat in his chosen spot, smoke his pipe and contemplate nature. I’m happy to say that I was never given the opportunity to verify this talent. We had learned that number one and number two are part of nature; if you don't make a big deal out of them, it's not usually a big hassle.

We can all identify the kinds of leaves that you really don't want to use as a substitute for toilet paper, but Greg and I had planned ahead for this long hike and packed some toilet paper in one of our backpacks. We had things covered. No big hassle.

Well, it's not usually a big hassle unless the Cave People are coming.

Greg and I saw the Cave People on the way up the mountain. We figured that they must have been part of some kind of stone-age reenactment group. They were all wearing realistic costumes, and they were very much in character. A woman who was dressed just like Pebbles Flintstone led the group of about five people. Her hair was pulled into a Pebbles hairdo - a ponytail that stuck straight out of the top of her head. She was dressed in a rough-cut outfit made out of cowhide - mostly white with large black splotches. But the best part of her costume was the club that she carried over her shoulder. The thing must have been a buffalo femur. She looked like she was really working hard just to carry it, but boy was she ready for any oncoming woolly mammoths. Pebbles had a Bam Bam who was taking up the rear. He was wearing a furry brown tunic and home-made sandals, and he had some kind of dark make-up in his eyebrows. My guess is that it was an attempt at creating a Neanderthal protrusion effect. None of them spoke to us as they walked past. I heard a grunt or two. I was equal parts impressed with their commitment to character and freaked out by the creepy group of people we’d run into deep in the woods, by ourselves.

Greg and I had stopped to take a break, and we did a very good job of keeping straight faces as Pebbles and the Clan of the Buffalo Femur walked past us. After they were out of earshot, we had a pretty good laugh. We then did something really stupid. We just plain forgot about the Cave People.

Another twenty minutes of climbing brought us to the top of Wolf Rock. Greg and I skillfully jumped two foot wide but twenty foot deep crevices and worked our way to the rock after which the formation is named. We stretched out on our backs on the warm rocks and looked at the beautiful sky. It was so peaceful up there above the trees.

A minute or so later, Greg broke the silence and said, "I gotta go take a dump." I said "See ya," and turned back to gaze at the beautiful white clouds above us.

Greg found a break in the rocks that was about six feet deep and wide enough to climb down. The bottom of the crevice curled under the large rocks. The perfect jiffy john. Greg did his thing, and then he yelled up to me that he'd forgotten the toilet paper.

I remember being annoyed that my beautiful moment with the clouds had been interrupted. I reached into Greg’s backpack to grab the toilet paper. Then I did something rather careless. Not wanting to lose touch with my relaxing moment in nature any more than I already had, I launched the roll of toilet paper toward the crevice that led to Greg’s jiffy john. It was a perfect shot. The roll unraveled slightly as it disappeared into the crevice… swish... nothing but net. I watched it disappear and figured I'd done my job.

I was just about to turn back to my clouds when I heard Greg's muffled cry. He had been waiting patiently, and he watched the toilet paper drop about five feet in front of him, ricochet off the edge of a rock, and drop down into another crevice. It was gone forever.

A string of obscenities followed Greg's muffled cry. I started to turn over, guessing what had happened and already feeling guilty for throwing the toilet paper. I pushed myself to my feet to go find him some leaves or something when I saw Pebbles and Bam Bam pushing through the pine trees that mark the entrance of Wolf Rock. They were less than twenty feet away.

I scrambled over to Greg’s jiffy-john crevice. As I looked over the edge, I could see Greg, pants around his ankles and eyes forming angry slits, and I began to realize how this situation had the potential to become extremely entertaining.

I looked at him for a moment longer, and then I spoke the words that made this story such a strong part of our family heritage:

"Greg, the cave people are coming."

I have to hand it to him. Even in that sudden moment of panic, Greg seemed to be able to find the humor in the situation. I could see a slight twinge of laughter in eyes.

We could hear them now, grunting at each other as they hopped over the crevices to get to Wolf Rock. Greg's face was a mixture of panic and mischief. He ducked back under the rock ceiling of his jiffy john and did what I thought was a pretty ingenious thing. In a matter of seconds, he pulled off his underwear, used it as emergency toilet paper, left it there under the rocks for the next cave explorer, pulled his shorts up, and started his climb up from the bottom of the crevice.

By this time, the cave people were right next to us. I reached to give Greg a hand over the edge and saw a look in his eyes that told me that he was going to try to end my life in the very near future. I made sure to keep a good ten-foot lead as we walked calmly to the pine trees.

Just after we left the rocks, I let out a howl of laughter, and Greg took off after me. I ran down that steep, rocky trail at about ninety miles an hour.

Decades later that wonderful sentence comes out every once in a while at family get-togethers.
“Greg, the cave people are coming.”

I love it.

Sock Fights

2009-09-02T09:38:00.006-04:00

Pushing away from a monster manuscript revision for a moment... I need to take a break, stretch my legs, maybe even step out of the revision cave for just a little while... Things are going well. Pretty big breakthrough last week as I crossed from the "trying to figure out what to do with everything" phase into the "actually doing, maybe even writing, sort of..." phase. Feeling good right now... like there is a chance I might be able to finish this.

But my brain is hurting, and the air is stale in here, so I figured I'd jump into blog world and goof around with some silly memories... give the analytical/problem solving/mr. fixit side of my brain a little break and take a few minutes to just let some words fly...

=======================

Sock Fights

There's part of me that wants to go in a much broader direction with this topic... Just call it "Fights..." but then I'd end up having to share stories about Greg cracking a large potted plant over my head, Earl pile-driving Greg's head into the concrete basement floor, Greg grabbing the cat, shaking it up so its claws popped out like mini-stiletto blades, and flinging it at me like a flying tasmanian devil furball grenade...

But those are stories for another time... I just want to take a break for a few minutes and then crawl back into my revision cave where I belong...

So... Sock Fights.

I'm not sure how the weaponry evolved over time. My guess is that one of us took off his shoes, stuffed one sock into the other out of boredom, maybe went to toss it into the laundry and realized (cue Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 Space Odyssey music... the chimps figuring out the sticks could be used as weapons) that the weight of one balled-up sock stuffed into another made it kinda sorta turn into a little medieval morning star weapon (and this was when I was a kid back in the seventies... no barely-visible anklet socks around back then... we were all about tube socks that pretty much stretched up to our knees... let's not bother to search for pictures...)

So my guess is one of us held that advanced balled-up-sock-stuffed-into-another-sock apparatus in his hands and thought, "Dude... I could hit someone with this."

And then it was on.

I have a wonderful memory of my dad coming down the stairs once during one of our battles. He was wearing this weird bathrobe my mom had made for him out of towels (there is no need to ask me why I thought this detail was important... it just is what it is... so... whatever...) He stepped into the living room with a tight-lipped look on his face, and for a moment I thought we were about to get yelled at for beating on each other (a fairly common offense...)

But then, like a terry-cloth ninja he pulled two sock weapons from behind his back, whooped out a medieval battle cry, and jumped into the frenzy.

We were outgunned, big-time... talk about tube socks. My dad was six foot two, so his tube socks were three feet long. Not fair at all, really. But we fought to the bitter end.

Earl and Greg and I, in our private battles, used to get creative with our sock weapons. It wasn't uncommon for someone to hold up his arms after nearly being knocked unconscious and say, "Hold up... time out! What the hell did you stuff into your sock weapon?"

And then the attacker (usually me, probably...) would have to fess up and remove whatever he'd stuffed into his sock...

These are some of the things I remember using for sock weapon enhancement:

- shoes... yes, a tennis shoe worked well... took a little effort to stuff it in there, and even more effort to keep it behind your back so you didn't get caught until the moment of impact... but quite effective

- kitchen utensils... wooden spoons could be hidden pretty well, as long as the handle ran parallel to the sock... nice impact sounds... good hollow thud against temple... I remember using an ice-cream scoop once, but only being able to get away with one good strike.

- television remote controls... again, they had to be positioned right in the bottom of the sock, but a great "crack" sound against skull... bonus points if you could turn on the TV on impact.

- various pieces of fruit... oranges always worked especially well... grapefruits were unwieldy but very much worth the effort

- crystal glass ashtray... I never really struck anyone with this one, but I remember stuffing it into the sock and showing it to Greg for laughs... If our country ever gets invaded or something, I know how to supplement the armories...

Like so many other wonderful genetic traits, sock fighting has become an active part of my children's lives... I love hearing that not-so-soft "Plop" sound when a high-velocity balled-up sock makes contact with one of my daughters' skulls as they battle throughout the house...

Some lazy rainy afternoon I'll have to introduce them to sock weapon enhancement techniques...
I'm thinking an old Barbie doll might work well, folded in half and concealed in the balled-up sock... or maybe we can think contemporary high-tech and stick an iPod or a Nintendo DS in there... I dunno... We'll come up with something...

Spectacular Seventh-Grade Stupidity

2009-07-22T12:31:00.005-04:00

I've written in here in the past about the fact that my muse is a short (and, uh... plump) version of myself in the seventh grade, standing there in navy blue corduroys and a Star Wars t-shirt.

I don't know where this comes from, nor do I know why the corduroys are navy blue. What I do know is that I've learned not to fight it. It is what it is.

Especially when I'm goofing around in here, just letting stuff fly, banging the keys and telling dorky stories about my past. When I close my eyes and breathe and try to remember some kind of significant (emotional, passionate, memorable) thing that happened in my life, I almost always reflexively drop back into middle school.

I think I'm still there, really... a forty-something-year-old with teenage daughters and a mortgage and all that... Down deep, I'm still hitching that school backpack over one shoulder and walking into Social Studies class, freaking out about my low social status ratings, gawking at girls I'll never touch, stealthily hiding boogers under my desk, dreaming of Mrs. Ashburn and her long blond hair as she swishes through the room...

Whoa... got lost there for a second...

Okay... Sing with me now... "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens..."

"These are a few of my stupidest things..."

(I smell a regular blog theme percolating... hmm....)

Columbia, Maryland - Dead of Winter

Let's say January, just for kicks. A school day. One of those days where it's actually too cold to snow.

I pack up my stuff in the winter-morning darkness, yell bye to my mom, and head out the door.

The cold air stuns my teeth and burns into my lungs. My wet bangs freeze into icicle wind chimes that bounce on my forehead as I walk to the end of my street. My friends Steve and Brian are at the stop sign waiting for me.

Steve is wearing a coat with a snorkel hood. I look at him from underneath my dorky red snow hat. I wonder if I'll ever be cool enough to own a coat with a snorkel hood.

It is so cold that I see billowing clouds of frozen breath come out of Steve's snorkel hood as he exhales.

As we walk, we gripe about having to go to school. We complain about having to walk to school. We talk about how much school sucks. And then, out of the blue, someone (probably me, but I certainly never admitted this at the time) says, "Hey. Let's not go. Let's play hookey."

We stop. Just before we are about to cross over the little frozen creek that will take us to another path through the townhouses and on to the big uphill climb to the back of the school.

Play hookey?

Dude.

I still remember that feeling. That heart-pumping thrill. The way it lit my ears and neck on fire and made my scalp tingle. That feeling of...

Being bad.

Brian grins at us, and Steve nods and exhales a big cloud of white steam from deep within his snorkel hood.

Game on.

Suddenly we are in stealth mode. Two seconds earlier we couldn't give a crap who saw us, but now we're being bad. We can get caught.

So we hunch down commando style and scramble into the trees that run alongside the frozen creek.

And we head for the lake.

At some point I feel the "being bad" adrenaline overtake me, and I can no longer fight the urge to run. We stay close to the trees, our sneakers crunching frozen leaves.

And then we get to the lake.

And then we're at the lake.

We're at the lake.

The three of us.

Dude. We're at the lake, and we're skipping school, and it feels so cool being bad right now.

At the lake.

Outside.

Approximately eight degrees Fahrenheit.

At the lake.

All three of us are creating those white clouds as we exhale. I feel the cold creeping into my tennis shoes now that I am standing still.

Next to the lake.

In the dead of winter.

We look at each other.

Dude. This is great. We're skipping school.

We kick around different ideas for what to do with our new found freedom.

We make a unanimous decision to sit down on a wooden bench.

Overlooking the lake.

The frozen lake.

In the dead of winter.

Fifteen minutes go by. I try to shift in my seat, and I'm amazed by the bench's ability to freeze to my thighs through my jeans.

Steve stands up. His voice is muffled. "I'm freakin' cold!"

Brian and I concur.

So then I come up with the idea of the century.

"Let's walk back to my house. We'll sneak through the trees in the back yard, slip into the basement through the back door, and just hang out there until school's over."

Steve looks like a periscope as he turns to Brian.

They concur.

We begin the Arctic journey back to my house.

Okay... switching POV here to my mother on the phone in the kitchen (this part of the story is based on total hearsay, and it gets wilder every time I hear it said).

Mom: Hello?
School: Mrs. May?
Mom: Yes?
School: This is the secretary at Owen Brown Middle School calling to confirm that Paul is home sick today.
Mom: (a brief chuckle) Oh no. It sounds like someone made a mistake with attendance. Paul is there at school. He left forty-five minutes ago. I'm sure there's just a mix-up.
School: Uh... we always double-check with homeroom teachers before calling. He was not in his homeroom class.
Mom: I'm sure there's some kind of mistake.
School: Is there a chance that he'd be skipping school, Mrs. May?
Mom: (laughs, pictures halo above my head) Paul? Oh, no. Paul would never skip school.
School: Okay, Mrs. May. We'll ask around and see if he's with another teacher.

(Movement in the backyard catches my mom's eye. Three semi-frozen adolescent Arctic explorers stumble out of the trees. One is wearing a distinctive red snow cap.)

Mom: Uh. Wait a minute. Can I call you right back?
School: No problem.

(Switching back to my POV)

There is no snow, but I feel like we're walking through a blizzard anyway. We are stumbling. Steve drops to one knee and Brian and I reach to help him up.

"Just a few more steps," I say. The basement door stands in front of us. "C'mon Steve. You can make it. It'll be warm."

Very little white steam escapes his snorkel. I try to remember the appropriate first aid actions for hypothermia.

And then I realize that we are standing in the middle of the back yard, and that the whole commando thing has been forgotten.

And I look up at the kitchen window.

And I see my mom on the phone.

And then she sees me.

And suddenly I don't feel so cold any more.

Pygmy Rattlesnake Ghost

2009-07-14T12:46:00.003-04:00

A quick status update...

- I clicked SEND this past Friday and sent a major manuscript revision to my agent (my young adult novel, The Basement Class). I was down in that revision cave for a couple of months, and it was a glorious feeling to climb out, dust myself off, and hold the finished book up in the sunshine. Some day, when I write the book about writing I've been drafting in my head for the past seven years, I'll dedicate a whole chapter to share what I've learned about committing to the astronomical amount of work that has to be done to turn an idea into a story into a draft into a manuscript into something that comes close to becoming a novel. I'm sure there will be many more revisions to come, but it sure feels like things are moving in the right direction with the book, and man does that feel good. I'm super excited about it right now.
- I'm working on a humorous middle-grade novel, hoping to have that out the door by the end of the summer (I'm about 175 pages in...) But one of the things I've really started to come to grips with is letting the writing process work itself out on its own, and just making sure I'm there to get the work done (rather than trying to push the process forward to make it work the way I want it to... yet another chapter in that book about writing :-) It feels great to be back in the first-draft phase of the process (directing traffic from the captain's chair) and done (at least for now) with that obligatory revision time (down in the dark bowels of the engine room, covered in oil, hitting things with wrenches...)
- I'm part of a fantastic critique group, and one of our writers (Linda Eadie) just recently went under contract with literary agent Mark McVeigh. She is still floating, and she deserved every bit of the big breakfast celebration we put together for her before our critique group meeting yesterday morning.

Okay, enough with all that writer status stuff... on to the Pygmy Rattlesnake Ghost...

One of the things I love about living in Florida is the wildlife, especially the birds of prey and the creepy crawly bugs and reptiles (which, we noticed when we moved down here, are all considerably larger than you might see in other parts of the country). Unfortunately, some of our critters are poisonous. Since we moved into our house in St. Augustine about three years ago, we've encountered three pygmy rattlesnakes (two on the front porch and one on the back... no big deal... just a rattlesnake on your porch... that's all...) and at least ten water moccasins (out in the road, back yard, etc.)

As I was pulling into the driveway Saturday morning I caught a little movement near the front door. I moved closer to see what kind of critter it was (secretly hoping, I have to admit, that it was in fact a poisonous snake, cuz the twelve-year-old-boy within me thinks they are so freakin' cool even though the father in me worries about his daughters stepping out the front door in their bare feet to walk the dog or something...)

It was, in fact, a pygmy rattlesnake (besides my mad Florida naturalist skillz, once you've seen these little rattlesnakes, you never forget exactly what they look like - a distinctive black-greeen with a shiny head and thin white lines, not to mention the little nubby at the end of his tail that looks more like a mealworm than a rattle).

I was just turning around to step into the garage and grab my shovel (my poisonous snake weapon of choice) when I saw the little sucker climb underneath the lip of the concrete stucco wall. I thought about trying to grab it by the tail to yank it out of there (Steve Irwin style...) but then I thought... uh... no. (I had this quick image of walking in to show the bite on my hand to Kathie, watching her shake her head back and forth as she picked up the phone to call 9-1-1)

I dropped down to the ground and peered up at the bottom of the concrete wall. Sure enough, there was an open section, only about a quarter inch wide, just enough to let that snake squeeze his way to safety (as well as, I'm sure, all sorts of other lovely critters).

So I went in and told Kathie that I'd just seen a little baby rattlesnake crawl up under the wall on the front porch. She replied, "What about the momma rattlesnake?" which cracked me up. I don't recall Kathie doing a lot of laughing at that point.

I went back out front and pulled the hose around to the front porch and spent a couple of minutes trying to squirt a jet of water into that opening under the wall. But that little snake must have hung on for dear life.

At this point, I was worried about him coming back out and surprising one of the girls later on, so I knew I had to take action. Kathie and I drove out to Lowe's, and I bought some Touch 'n Foam, and we came back and sealed up every little crack under that wall.

Part of me hopes he got out of there while we were out at the store, but my guess is that he's probably still in the wall.

I'm fairly sure that he has been entombed.

And I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about that little guy, wondering if he was going to turn into a pygmy rattlesnake ghost and do his best to haunt us until the end of time.

wooooo.... rattlerattlerattle..... wooooooooo..... rattlerattlerattle....

Seventh-Grade Pickup Strategies, by Paul R. May

2009-06-24T16:06:00.007-04:00

Pickup Strategy One of Two - The Orange Octopus

This is one of those memories that stays with you forever... kinda like writing it down on a piece of paper and then stapling it carefully to the side of your head...

A seventh-grade dance... some dorky underwater theme. The first thing I saw as I walked in was an octopus cut out of orange construction paper. Someone had cut out a hand-drawn snorkel and taped it to its face. I remember wondering why an octopus would need a snorkel... telling myself that maybe I could point this out to one of the girls standing on the other side of the gym... Yeah... use it as an awesome pickup line... "Hey there... do you see that octopus cut out of orange construction paper? Why would an octopus ever need a snorkel? Get it? Get it?"

I was so ready.

So I walked up to a girl I had admired and gazed at from the back of Social Studies class. She was part of that invitation-only-polo-shirts-with-the-collar-pointing-straight-up crowd. A long shot at best. But I had that great pickup line.

So I just kind of moved in front of her, taking a deep breath as I watched the mirror ball lights glide diagonally across her body. And I waited until I was able to make eye contact with her. And when I had her attention, I shouted, "So how about that snorkel?"

She gave me a look I knew well. The raised eyebrows, just a little curl of the upper lip, a dropping of the chin that simultaneously verified my social status and questioned my preposterous presence (damn, I like the way that sounds... not how it feels, but how it sounds..)

And she just stared at me like I was the remains of a recently squished slug stuck to the bottom of one of her brand-new Adidas.

I turned to point to the octopus, but it wasn't there anymore. Maybe it was still there, but neither of us could see it in the dark.

So then I came up with a brilliant follow up.

I said, "The octopus!"

She looked around, I assume to make sure she wasn't about to be caught communicating with me, and asked, "Huh?"

I dropped my arm, realizing that my amazing pickup line just wasn't going to bring about the desired result. And we both just kind of stood there and stared at each other.

So I went for it. I just said, "Wanna dance?"

And here's where she drove the bayonet home, jammed it in there and twisted it... She took a breath, doubled-up that look of disgust, and said, in a little sing-songy voice, "Yes, I do, but not with you..."

Oof... crashed and burned...

I walked away and went back over to my octopus. At least he wouldn't shoot me down, even though he was stupid enough to think he needed a snorkel under the water.

-----------------------

Pick Up Strategy Two of Two - The "Hey Gina!"

At lunch, a buddy of mine called out my name. When I turned to see what he wanted, my cheek ran itself into his finger. He'd been holding his finger right next to my face, so when I turned to answer him I ended up poking myself in the face with his finger.

Freakin' Hysterical! What an awesome trick!

I tried this out on a mutual friend of ours, positioning myself just out of sight, holding my finger so that it was only an inch from his face. When I called his name and he turned to say "What?" he ran his cheek right into my finger.

Laughter all around! High fives!

So later that day we're sitting in math class, and the teacher has assigned us some busy work after going over some dumb equation thing, and I'm sitting next to a girl that I've kinda liked for a while.

She's whispering to a friend on her left. I'm sitting on her right.

Oh yeah, I thought. It's time to employ that little trick I learned at lunch time. I'll call her name, she'll run her cheek into my finger, she'll giggle, I'll teach her how to do it, she'll try it on a friend, it'll go over swimmingly, she'll turn back and beam at me for my brilliance, and then I'll ask her to go to the movies with me, maybe tell her about the orange octopus who shouldn't really need a snorkel... all that stuff. I was so ready.

So I lined up carefully, took aim with my pointer finger, held it in perfect position about an inch from her cheek...

And I said, "Hey, Gina!"

Uh... oh... Paul is pulling out the old slow motion gimmick again... but it really needs to be here... work with me on this...

Slow motion... she turned her face toward me. I held my ground, waiting for her cheek to stop against my finger, already grinning for the glorious celebration and laughter...

The word "What" started to form on Gina's lips. She got the "W" during the first part of her turn, but to finish the word she had to open her mouth.

So, when she got to the "Whaa.." part of the word, her mouth was open, and my finger was waiting right there.

She never got to the "T" part of the word. Everything stopped right at the "Whaa..." part.
It all stopped because my finger ended up directly in her mouth.

There was just a fraction of a second where we both sat there in horror - Gina processing the fact that Paul May's finger was sitting in her mouth in math class, and Paul processing that once again his pickup attempt was crashing and burning... bad...

But then real-time kicked right back in and she pulled away from me and wiped her mouth in disgust and made gagging sounds and called me all sorts of names and raised her hand to tell the teacher that Paul May had just put his finger in her mouth.

And I just let my head fall on my desk with a thump, wondering what it would be like if all of the cinder block walls suddenly exploded and the entire school swirled into a funnel cloud that got sucked up by a black hole or something.

Dumbass orange octopus.

Blazing Saddles - Another Tribute To My Dad

2009-06-16T09:43:00.011-04:00

There is an expression used in theater (and often in fiction) called "the fourth wall." In theater terms, it refers to the imaginary wall at the front of the stage, through which the audience watches the actors. When the action on the stage (or in the case of this story, the screen) moves away from its normal location on the stage and into the audience, this is referred to as "breaking the fourth wall."

During a family outing to the movies in 1974, my father broke that fourth wall (and that's not all he was breaking). In doing so, he thoroughly enriched the viewing experience for every person in the audience.

Stephen King would have called it a "Total Fartorama..."

The movie was Blazing Saddles, one of the early films directed by Mel Brooks, and at the tender age of nine years old I watched (and heard, and... uh... smelled...) a little moment of history made in that movie theater.

We knew we were going to be in for a treat as we walked in with our popcorn and candy, and Mel Brooks didn't disappoint us. A big dumb guy (Alex Karras) named Mongo punched a horse and then spoke philosophically ("Mongo only pawn in game of life..."). Gloriously politically incorrect gags designed to shock people and make them cover their mouths and squirm in their seats. Mel Brooks is a genious (and, I'm certain, related to my family in some distant way).

And then came the scene after which the movie was titled. Nothing much more than a simple comedy improv really... A circle of cowboys sitting around a campfire, munching on big plates of baked beans. The camera pans across the circle and then zooms in on one of the cowboys. He takes a huge bite and then holds a fist up to his chest. He belches. A pause, another bite. Then he lifts up off his seat, squatting a few inches over the barrel he's sitting on, and launches a cowboy-worthy blaster. His face remains expressionless.

Then the camera slowly zooms back out, and the man to the left of the first cowboy stands and farts. A man across from him belches, the camera zooms out more, and then the symphony begins.

It was a grand finale of epic proportions... farts and belches, launched at seemingly random intervals, yet somehow there was a kind of pattern, a harmony, if you will...

And this... this is where my dad broke that fourth wall.

He was known for his infectious laugh. He'd get going on something and people around him would laugh without knowing what he was laughing about. It was one of the coolest things about him.

So he was watching this scene in Blazing Saddles (and you couldn't have picked something more up his alley... seriously...) and he got into his wonderful rolling uncontrollably infectious laughter.

And then he was laughing so hard...

That he farted...

This is true. I was there.

A big section of people in the audience were already laughing at my dad's laughing (I should say "with my dad's laughing" because it had that kind of power), and then they heard him fart, and as if it were humanly possible, the volume of the laughter doubled.

And that got my dad to laughing even harder, and then...

Yes... it's true... I swear... I have witnesses...

He did it again. He farted.

And that got another section of the movie theater going which got him going even more which got the audience going even more...

Until it felt like the actors in the movie were going to stop their scene and look down into the movie theater seats with their hands on their hips, asking what was so damn funny.

Another scene with dialogue (a different kind of communication, I guess...) started up on the screen, and the laughter in the audience died down a bit. But my dad's shoulders were still shaking, his chest heaving in big breaths.

And I sat in the darkness, keeping one eye on the movie and another on my dad, waiting to see if he was going to break that fourth wall again.

I bet if we asked around enough we could find people in Columbia, Maryland who remember that particular showing of Blazing Saddles. And to think they got that bonus smell-o-vision experience free of charge!

Some Tidbits... Red Fox, Biddy-Biddy Bow, Underwear Terror

2009-06-08T11:54:00.007-04:00

- Saw a red fox today while I was out on a morning bike ride. I came around a corner and he was standing right there in the grass. He darted into the woods, and I tried to follow him for a little bit in hopes of getting a picture. But he was true to his name and gave me the slip in about three seconds. One moment he was running, and the next he was gone. The trees and bushes and tall grass were silent and still. I bet he wasn't even ten feet away, camouflaged under low branches or something, snickering at the silly human scrambling for his cell phone camera.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Some kids were running around the neighborhood shooting toy guns at each other this weekend, and that got me to thinking about our gun battles when I was young. I was raised in a very anti-gun household, and I don't hold any grudges for being raised that way. But I do remember trying to participate in neighborhood gun battles when my brothers and I were kids.
We had to improvise. I would come flying out of the garage with a tennis racket under my arm, leveled like an AK-47 with the handle pointing forward. I was a force to be reckoned with.
Greg kept an old sneaker in the front pocket of his jeans, and he'd step around the corner and squint like Clint Eastwood, his fingers floating above the rubber sole, ready to blast some punk away. Earl would climb up to the roof of the van and hold the cardboard tube from a roll of wrapping paper in front of him like a SWAT team sniper rifle.

What we lacked in weaponry, we made up for in enthusiasm. My AK-47 assault racket had a never-ending supply of ammunition. I even remember the sound it made... "Biddy-biddy Bow!" Yes, that was the sound... "Biddy-biddy Bow!" (paying no attention to the raised eyebrows of the kids across the streets with their realistic rifles and pistols in green camo plastic... looking at us like we were a bunch of dorks or something... Let 'em try to draw against Greg and his shoe before Earl takes them out from his roof-type cardboard tube sniper position... we were badass...)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And finally, this is a tidbit that took some time to percolate down deep in my soul before I could find the strength to write about it. I jotted down some notes when I saw it... Here's exactly what I wrote in the "Tidbits" file I keep on my computer:

"That poor kid on Good Morning America’s Halloween show… dressed as Captain Underpants, Al Roker’s awkward smile, pushy dad, that scream, the terror… "

Let's see, it must have been October so that would make it like eight months ago. It took that long before I stopped being too sick to my stomach to write about it, I guess...

One of those dorky Good Morning America shows on Halloween week... where Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer and the other folks dress up in extravagant costumes that no one could ever afford and then laugh at each other and put on uber dorky skits. I think I remember Al Roker being Humpty Dumpty and having a little trouble sleeping that night...

One morning, I'm sitting there eating a bowl of Raisin Bran with sliced bananas and strawberries, channel surfing for some news while I finish my breakfast, and I come across GMA with Al Roker sitting there with some Halloween expert, and they're doing a segment about making inexpensive costumes for the kiddies. Cool... a nice little mindless few minutes while I finish my cereal.

So they show some little girl dressed as a princess, and another as a goblin... I don't really remember. What I do remember was a little kid dressed as Captain Underpants.

The spoon stopped about an inch away from my mouth...

I am a parent, and I worked as an English teacher for a number of years, and I grew up working with kids in a children's theater, so I've got some experience with youngsters. But anyone with half a brain could tell that the kid in the Captain Underpants costume was done with this whole experience... his eyes were wide, his lips tight, and he was clinging to his dad like he was standing on the ledge of a skyscraper.

But, of course, Al Roker gave everyone a big cheesy smile and the dad decided they were going to follow through with their big moment of being on television. And he basically dragged the kid up in front of the camera.

The kid was probably six or seven years old. Young enough that he probably wouldn't get beat up for wearing a Captain Underpants costume, but old enough to know that he had just made a mistake. He had agreed to dress in a round red unitard and put on a pair of his dad's gigantic underwear and then step in front of a bunch of television cameras surrounded by hundreds of New York tourists.

I felt for him. God, I felt for him. And if I could have reached through the television screen I would have smacked Al Roker and then this kid's dad.

The spoonful of cereal still hung in mid-air... a drop of milk fell back into the bowl.

And that's when the kid started to scream. First he whispered something into his dad's ear (probably something like, "Dad... I don't want to do this anymore, please Dad... please...")

But of course, Dad totally ignored him and turned him toward the camera, physically held him in place, forced him to face the crowds while Al Roker started the commentary... "And now we have a character everyone loves... It's Captain Underpants!" (cheers from the crowds... the dad grins even wider, turns to the kid with eyes that say, "isn't this wonderful! Yay!")

So the kid did what I would have done. Precisely. He just started screaming. At this point there was no more fear in his eyes... It had turned into anger... He was done. He wanted out. He screamed.

And still Dad held him there, his big hands on either side of the the kid's round red unitard, locking him in a vise that faced the cameras.

Ooof... I'm still having trouble with this memory... And to think of all of the kid's friends back home, sitting in front of the television waiting for his big moment.

Emergency Guinea Pig Surgery

2009-06-02T10:34:00.004-04:00

Thanks to some family friends for stirring up this old memory...

DISCLAIMER:

1. My dad was a doctor (a psychiatrist, actually... and usually when I tell people this they say, "ahh... now I understand..."), and while he did not specialize in Rodent OBGYN, he was acting in the guinea pig's best interest.

2. That is about the coolest disclaimer I have ever read/written. Seriously.

I thought about widening the scope of this blog post to include a brief history of all of the animals in the history of the May family, but I just don't have that kind of time today. Maybe some additional posts down the road. Suffice it to say my mom's house has always been affectionately referred to as "The Zoo." Yes, it is true we did own a skunk (a celebrity skunk with stage experience, actually) and approximately six million hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, mice, rats, rabbits, snakes, lizards, frogs, tadpoles that became frogs, dogs, cats, birds of all kinds, etc. Many of these animals were purchased at pet stores, rescued from shelters, etc. As I've said in earlier blog posts, lots of these animals were captured in the wild.

And quite a few of these animals just kind of showed up and decided to stick around. We'd have two or three guinea pigs and then suddenly there were a couple dozen. I still don't understand how this happened.

We seemed to end up with quite a collection of Peruvian Guinea pigs... and because they were Peruvian we figured we'd be cool and give them Aztec names, so we did a little research (back in the days of Encyclopedia Britannica) and gave our little pets all kinds of cool Aztec warrior names.

One of them was almost pure white, and he had mean little eyes and looked like he could kick some serious Aztec guinea pig butt. We named him Chollos. I don't remember the etymology behind the name, nor am I going to take the time to Google it (that is such a lie... I know I'll be looking it up later today...)

So Chollos was a cool little badass Aztec warrior guinea pig. He was pretty feisty... hung out in a corner of the communal cage, hissed and spit at the other guinea pigs when they tried to cross into his territory, spent a lot of time making little guinea pig spears and shields and stuff.

One day, Chollos started putting on a little weight. Not much we could do about that. We played with them a lot, often let them have the run of the house (it's fun to wake up with a guinea pig curled up on your head...), so they got a lot of exercise.

But Chollos started getting heavier and heavier, so we picked him up (carefully, cuz you have to remember that Chollos was a badass Aztec warrior, and he didn't let up for anyone) and took him to my dad.

After a brief examination, my dad informed us that Chollos was pregnant and about to have babies.

What? How did this happen? It was then that we realized that maybe Chollos was female. But this new information didn't make Chollos any less of a badass Aztec warrior guinea pig.

My dad chuckled at our reaction, but as he continued to feel Chollos' stomach, his smile disappeared. It turned out that Chollos had a pretty severe blockage of some kind, and she (I'll say she now, cuz we figured that out) was in distress.

The guy next door to us sold medical supplies, so my dad called him over, and in no time at all his workshop in the basement was set up as an operating room.

This was a very long time ago, so my memories are limited. I remember Charlie handing my dad these special operating room prep sponges with orange soap... my dad ripping open the package and spending forever scrubbing his fingers and hands and arms all the way up to his elbows. I remember him doing the math to figure out how much anesthesia to inject (my dad was so cool...)

And the rest of us gathered around the workshop table. We even had some friends of the family join us. We watched and prayed and held our hands up to our faces in anticipation.

Unfortunately, Chollos and the babies did not pull through. The blockage was severe enough that she'd gone toxic before my dad had even started. He was hoping to at least save the babies, but it didn't happen. Yet another example of the circle of life for us as kids growing up.

We were sad, of course, but I'll never forget that experience. At one point, my dad was listening to Chollos' heart through a stethoscope, realized she had no heartbeat, and pumped her chest with his finger while leaning down to give mouth to mouth resuscitation to a Guinea pig.

And even though Chollos didn't pull through, it was yet another shining example of what an amazing person my dad was.

I mean seriously, tell me someone you know whose dad performed CPR on a Guinea pig. Top that! My dad was just as cool as those Azetec warriors... he was badass...

Renovations By Paul (A Lesson in Home-Based Electroshock Therapy)

2009-05-27T14:28:00.004-04:00

I did a lot of electrical work when I was in college. Therefore, I have always adopted an
"I'm-a-badass-electrical-dude-so-we-don't-need-to-turn-off-any-circuit-breakers" attitude anytime I do some kind of wiring project at home.

What this approach lacks in common sense, it more than makes up for in entertainment. Just ask my wife... she just loves it when I try to electrocute myself. It's that look I see so often on her face... the way she slowly shakes her head back and forth, closes her eyes for just a second and breathes, asks me if I'm okay and then goes on with the rest of her day. Yet another reason to pull out the old standby defensive statement... "Hey... you married me..."

Our very first house... an old fixer-upper townhouse in Columbia, Maryland... We lived there for about five years, during which I gutted and rebuilt the entire kitchen, two bathrooms, and the little rec room in the basement (I lovingly referred to this old fixer-upper as my "divorce in progress.")

In the process of gutting and rebuilding the kitchen, we decided to take out the hall closet near the front door and replace it with some additional kitchen counterspace.

Piece of cake. Just knock a couple of little stud walls, remove a built-in microwave oven shelf, clean up the walls, and install some new cabinets.

I got my buddy Chris to help me with the grunt work, and we went at the walls with hammers and crowbars and started making a beautiful mess (drop cloths... we don't need no stinkin' drop cloths...)

The previous owner had run an electrical outlet next to the built-in microwave shelf. Being the electrical guru that I am, I simply unscrewed the wires with an insulated screwdriver and then pointed them both up at the ceiling, so they'd be safe... you know, out of the way.

Chris, who knew me well at this point, had worked with me on stuff like this in the past, said, "Uh... don't you want to turn off the circuit breaker for that?"

I gave him a look like I thought he was a total dweeb when it came to this high-tech electrical stuff and said, "Nah... I'd have to go downstairs... that would take like thirty seconds. Too much time. I pointed the wires up at the ceiling. It'll be okay."

I did not add, "Trust me," because even at that young age I'd already worn out that statement in our relationship.

Chris rolled his eyes and went back to swinging his hammer.

We got one wall completely ripped out and then started working on the wall that had held the old microwave shelf.

The shelf was made from a big piece of plywood, and it had been nailed and glued into place. I tried to yank it out of the wall but it wouldn't budge. So I hit it with my hammer, just to show my dominance over it a little bit, and then I asked Chris for a hand.

We each took one side of the plywood shelf and started rocking it back and forth to try to break it away from the wall. We rocked it forward, rocked it backward, rocked it forward.... and then I took a little step closer to the wall so I could really get my arm under the shelf...

And that's when the wires (the ones that I'd said would be just fine... the ones that had been pointed up at the celing so they'd be perfectly safe) made direct contact with my temple... one on either side... like some kind of electroshock therapy back in the fifties... like something out of a horror movie.

I never saw it coming... One second I was putting all my weight on that stupid microwave shelf, the next second I'd been thrown to the ground by a lightning bolt. It really did throw me to the ground, or maybe my legs just collapsed underneath me. Regardless, I remember sitting there, taking a few seconds to figure out what had just happened, looking up at Chris with his hands on his hips, shaking his slowly back and forth like Kathie does...

He asked me if I was okay and helped me up. I gave him a weak smile and then reached up and pointed the wires a little higher... yeah, that was the problem... they just needed to be pushed up a little higher.

I reached for the shelf, but Chris stood there with his hands on his hips.

"What?" I asked.

"Go turn off the circuit breaker."

"Nah... it'll be okay..."

"Paul."

"What?"

"Go turn off the circuit breaker."

I said, "Maaaan..." and clomped out of the kitchen. Silly non-electrical-wizards...

When we finished taking the walls out and Chris had left for the day, I relayed the whole electroshock therapy story to Kathie, placing special emphasis on the way the wires had made direct contact with my temples and the way the jolt of electricity felt like it had thrown me down to the ground.

She was delighted with the whole story. The way she looked up at me with one raised eyebrow as she turned a page in her People magazine... the way she clicked her tongue and slowly shook her head back and forth. She was loving that story... I could tell...

Dobermans, Shotguns, and Caretakers... Oh My...

2009-05-18T11:48:00.007-04:00

The Actual Name:
St. Mary's College, an abandoned seminary off of Ilchester Road in Ellicott City, Maryland (which, I've been told, has finally been demolished after all these years...)

What Everyone Used to Call It: "Hell House"

I did a five second search and found a couple of photos (both from http://www.hellhouse.ellicottcity.net/) This one looks like it was taken after the big fire I heard about (and had nothing to do with... I swear...)

~~~~~

Let me close my eyes and try to breathe a little bit... falling back into the darkness of the hallways, creeping around the basement with its damp cinder block walls and giant oil tanks and sewer pipes... wandering into the old swimming pool room with dirty greenhouse walls and a couple of feet of black muck at the bottom of the pool's concrete shell, wondering what kinds of creatures might slither out of that murky decay, moving up to the third floor and watching through the window (from inside the building) as the caretaker walks up and locks the front door from the outside (true story), turning to my friend Chris and seeing the same terror on his face that is racing through my body.... thinking there is probably a good chance that we're about to get blown away by the shotgun the caretaker is carrying, or mauled by the two Dobermans walking with him (my brother wrote a fantastic story in a college writing class about squaring off with one of those Dobermans as we ran away one time, but I'm getting ahead of myself...) ... wondering if we were going to find a way out, or if the caretaker was going to find another way in first...

So many memories... so many wonderful, terrifying, heart-pounding, gloriously irresponsible, lucky-once-again-that-my-stupid-butt-is-still-on-this-planet experiences...

For me, it started during a late-night cast party after closing a big production when I was in college (University of Maryland, Baltimore County... a great theater department). We were standing around the parking lot, probably well after midnight, a big group of us looking for trouble. Someone mentioned "Hell House" and the myths and silly stories started flying about things that had supposedly been going on in the abandoned building...

- crazy cults with satanic rituals
- goat and lamb sacrifices
- people sacrifices
- crazy caretakers with shotguns, guard dogs
- ghosts, murders, demons, etc...

My response - "Dude, Let's go."

We piled into a couple of cars and drove into backwoods Ellicott City. Deep enough that city lights were only a faint glow in the distance, and if the moon was covered by clouds you could barely see your hand in front of your face.

So many memories... so much of it in pitch black darkness.

We parked on a dirt road near an old paper factory (which, I understand, has also burned to the ground, and I didn't have anything to do with that either, seriously...) and I was led to an ancient concrete stairway, almost completely grown over with weeds and thorn bushes, like something out of a Friday the 13th movie (in fact, just about every experience at St. Mary's was like something out of a Friday the 13th movie, you know, the stupid college kids wandering around, getting separated, backing up into dark doorways, etc... so many memories rushing out of me right now... Dear God, how did I survive those crazy years...)

These are the steps... a fantastic picture (from http://www.acurse.com/), exactly as I remember them, except always in complete darkness...

So... back to Chris and me up on the third floor (a different trip), seeing the caretaker walk up and lock the building, hearing the door slam shut... hearing a chain and padlock clicking...

We stayed very still, absolutely silent for probably three or four minutes. I remember trying to breathe, feeling my heart beating completely outside of my body, like I was going to need to grab it and try to get it to slow down and then somehow stuff it back inside my chest...

I think we were both waiting to hear footsteps, knowing that at any second we were going to hear the dogs barking, their claws scraping through the hallways to come after us...

I remember exactly what the caretaker looked like... a dirty white tank-top, bald head, big, thick arms, a scruffy beard... The kind of guy who looked like he'd fit right in on a ZZTop album cover...

We waited, and listened, and I remember realizing that I had to pee, really, really bad had to pee...

But, thankfully, the silence stayed silent, and Chris and I tiptoed down the steps to the ground floor. We found an unlocked window and worked together to lift it up just enough to allow our terrified bodies to slip out into the night.

I remember sneaking through the grass, tiny careful steps, watching the ground to avoid any twigs that would crack like firecrackers in the cool night air, watching the window through which we'd escaped, half expecting to see the caretaker's angry red face, always waiting to hear the dogs, waiting for the frenzy of fur and fangs to explode into the night...

We kept going like that, tiptoeing slowly toward that old overgrown stairway, until our hearts couldn't take the tension anymore and we both broke into a frantic, out-of-control-this-is-it-run-or-we're-dead-run-right-now-don't-stop-for-anything sprint for the stairway, stumbling down the old broken steps, not bothering to stop when the thornbushes caught our jean jackets, just letting them rip and tear and running and breathing the cold night air into our chests like fire and feeling the hair on the backs of our necks stand up and scream, pushing our bodies down into the dark, making it to the car, scrambling for keys, only feeling slightly safer once we were inside with the engine started, scraping up clouds of dirt road dust as we pulled out onto the road, keeping our heads down tight on our shoulders expecting to hear and feel the shotgun explosion as it blasted through the back window...

But, thankfully, the blast never came... and Chris and I let ourselves breathe as we drove the windy roads out of backwoods Ellicott City... just two stupid college kids who had been lucky enough to escape with their lives once again...

And then we went back.

Lots.

And there are so many stories to tell.

But I have to go work on other writing now.

So maybe I'll come back another time and share some more stories... like Greg's story about squaring off with one of the Dobermans (maybe I'll see if he's got that old college essay and see if he's willing to be a guest blogger for me), or the time Aaron and Marty were hanging from one of the cinderblock walls, trying to hide in the shadows as the caretaker walked right past them... or sneaking around in the basement, the crazy old oil tanks and sewer pipes and service panels in the dark, making us feel like we were down in the dungeons and catecombs of an old castle...

So many wonderful memories... so lucky to be alive...

~~~~~

Hey! A special shout out to people who are following my blog (from Facebook, Blogger, SCBWI, etc.)! Thanks for reading and posting comments!!

Crazy Late-Night Theater Games

2009-05-12T13:16:00.004-04:00

A while back I wrote a blog post about an epic theater techie Cap Gun Battle

Today I want to talk about riding office chairs down indoor car ramps, being launched into the air, and crashing through "Rydell High School" stage flats at the speed of sound.

The show was Grease.

Everyone knows Grease, right? Danny Zuko, Sandy, Kenickie... (and who can forget Olivia Newton John on that big screen, that Australian accent, that hair... that drive-in movie scene...)

Well Grease has a big show-stopper production number called "Greased Lightning," and it's about a car.

So how can you do Grease without having a car?

We spent a Saturday in a junkyard and found an old Pontiac Sunbeam that looked just like this:

(actually, it had been sitting dead in a junkyard for years, so it wasn't anywhere near as pretty as this one...) and we bought it and pulled the engine and transmission out and yanked everything we possibly could so it was just a shell on four wheels... all in an effort to make the car as light as possible.

And then we painted it with dorky racing stripes and flames and such and we transformed it into "Greased Lightning" for our summer production.

But let me back up a second here... I was going to write all of this because of a wonderful (and, uh... slightly fuzzy) memory of riding office chairs down indoor car ramps and crashing through "Rydell High School" stage flats...

But I just remembered... we had to turn that car on its side to get it into the theater... Honestly. We really did.

It was night (of course... when else do techies get anything done?) and there were about ten of us, and we turned a car on its side and basically dragged it through the front door of the theater, into the lobby.

How could I almost have forgotten this part? A police officer stopped on Main Street (this was in Ellicott City, Maryland) when he saw a bunch of high school and college-aged guys pushing a car on its side into a building.

I mean, go figure... if I were a cop, I'd probably stop and ask about an event like this... And don't forget... techies are the behind-the-scenes guys (and gals), and they wear black all the time... usually black jeans and long-sleeve black shirts... So, yeah...

As the technical director of the theater, I walked up to the police officer and explained that we were doing the show Grease, and that the show Grease has this great production number called "Greased Lightning" (perhaps I even sang and danced a little bit for him... go Greased Lightning you're burnin' up the quarter mile... think John Travolta with pointed arm) and that the car was from the junkyard and it wasn't registered and we'd removed the engine and the transmission, etc. etc...

I don't remember what the police officer said, but I do remember the look on his face... a look I used to see so often back when I worked in the theater...

He eventually got back in his car and left when he was pretty sure we weren't going to try to get any additional cars into the building.

So we got the car (on its side) through the door, flipped it back upright, and set it up in a corner of the lobby.

Then we built two ramps that would allow us to roll the car down the middle of the aisle steps and onto the stage during the big "Greased Lightning" production number.

I remember building those monstrosities - doubled-up sixteen-foot-long planks that spanned the theater steps.

As is fairly typical working in theater, when the techies finish a big project they like to find something to play with.

So in the wee hours of the morning we went down to the bottom of these giant wooden car ramp planks. We propped them up in the air on some wooden blocks, so they went downhill at a pretty steep slope and then ended at about three feet off of the ground.

And then we jumped into one of the office chairs, started out at the top of the ramp planks, and rode our own version of a ski jump.

Thank God YouTube didn't exist back then...

I remember building up speed, hanging onto the chair for dear life, leaving the end of the car ramp planks at mach speed, crashing down to the stage floor... hearing cheers as my head made contact with the stage, spinning out on the floor, splitting the knees of my jeans... and then getting up and running back up the stairs with the chair so someone else could have a turn.

Our buddy Aaron came up with the idea of crashing through the stage flats. For the opening scene in Grease, the Rydell High School football team came crashing through paper that was painted to look like a brick wall... pretty neat effect. To prep for the run of shows, we'd painted a gazillion large sheets of paper to look like brick. So we set up the flats at the end of the ramp dropoff (the ski jump, if you will...).

A couple of us stood on either side of the stage flats, holding the edge so Aaron could ride the chair down the ramps, launch off the ski jump, and crash through the "Rydell High School" stage flats.

It wasn't uncommon to see Ace bandages wrapped around ankles and the occasional arm in a sling come production week.

It's all part of the techie image...

I remember some pictures someone took the night we were working on getting Greased Lighting (on its side) through the front door of the theater. I'll have to see if I can find those next time I'm up in Maryland.

The Mantis Family

2009-05-04T11:00:00.003-04:00

A wonderful whirlwind weekend. We took a big group of teenagers camping to celebrate Caitlin's 16th birthday, got home Sunday, unpacked, took showers, and jumped back into the car to drive into downtown Jacksonville to see Wicked (which was awesome, and the girls already knew the show word for word, and it was hands down the best performance to come through the Times Union Moran Theater).

I'll probably do a separate blog post about the camping trip after I dump pictures down. Great kids, two gloriously wonderful parents that went with us, tons of food, five hours swimming in the lake, hiking and splashing in cold spring water at the bottom of a Florida ravine, everyone sitting around a giant campfire late Saturday night... zero injuries, zero hospital visits, zero law suits... life is good.

---------------------------

The Mantis Family

(That snake story I posted last week got me to thinking about this story, which has gotten a lot of mileage in my family over the years. As such, I cannot verify with complete honesty that every aspect of this story is one hundred percent accurate. Not that this happens with any of my other stories... never...)

It was 1979, which would have put me at fourteen years old.

There is a Denny's somewhere near Orlando where people probably still talk about us. It wasn't really our fault. They made us wait. We got bored. And looking back, I don't think we were all that bad, really. I don't see why that poor little assistant manager with her hands quivering around her stack of laminated menus had to say, "I'm sorry, but I think I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

I'll back up to the beginning - a couple of months before the Florida trip. One of us had found a sack of praying mantis eggs on a tree branch in the back yard. We broke off the branch, placed it in a vacant ten-gallon aquarium and, as a quality-time family project, waited eagerly to watch our pet mantises hatch. (yes, I just Googled "mantis plural" to confirm that "praying mantises" is indeed the plural of "praying mantis." Apparently "mantes" is an acceptable equivalent, but that just sounds weird...)

My dad was always into telescopes and photography and such, so he set us up with a wonderful contraption that magnified our tiny little bugs so we could watch them hatch.

The day they were born was an amazingly educational experience for us all. We spent hours taking turns at the telescope, watching each tiny baby praying mantis battle its way out of the egg sack.

There were thousands of them. I think they ate their egg sack for the first week or so of life, and then Earl brought some fruit flies home from his high school science class so we could get our little pets started on real bug food.

My sister Julie refused to believe that these tiny little bugs could possibly be quick enough to snatch up a fruit fly. She sat with her elbows on the table, waiting to be proven right. Earl set the glass tube with the fruit flies in the bottom of the aquarium, pulled out the cotton top, and quickly replaced the top of the tank.

Greg stared into the telescope as one of our baby praying mantises got curious about the little flying critter that had landed on a twig above him. My mom and I watched through the aquarium glass, waiting for our turn at the telescope.

Then it happened. Greg's hands shot up in the air and he shouted, "He snatched it! Scarfed it right off the twig!" We gathered closer as Greg continued his play by play.

"He caught the fruit fly with his front legs, kind of like he's holding it with a pair of scissors. Oh, man. He's going for it! He's eating his face!"

Earl pushed Greg out of the telescope seat and focused his eyes to catch the end of the baby mantis' feast. He saw the last speck of one of the fruit fly's wings disappear into the crunching mouth. He groaned, but he wasn't kept waiting for long. It was an all-you-could-eat fruit fly buffet, and our tiny little pets did us proud. We took turns at the telescope, yelping in disgust and cheering triumphantly as the mantises made short work of their fruit flies.

As our little pets grew older, and larger, we had to find bigger bugs to feed them. A good-sized moth was always worth five or ten minutes of entertainment.

Over the next few weeks, we began to see patterns in the methodical hunting behavior of the praying mantis. If he didn't snatch it out of the air as it flew past, the mantis slowly stalked his prey. Without making a sound, he crept up on the unfortunate bug until it was within striking distance. Then he sat and watched for a moment, contemplating the attack. Just before the crucial moment, he rocked back and forth on his hind legs, as if building up momentum. Then he flashed out his front legs, the ones after which they are named, and crushed his victim in his grasp.

And then, well then it got pretty gross. Like Greg said, they usually started with the face. No marinade, no minute or so in the microwave - just bug.

Our tiny pets came up in a discussion at the dinner table at home one night, and that's where The Mantis Family really got its start.

We were eating hamburgers that night. One of us started describing the strange hunting habits of the praying mantis. As the discussion continued, a silent, almost unconscious decision was made at the dinner table. The six of us brought our hands up in front of us in our best effort to imitate our pet bugs. We stared at each other without breaking the silence.

Julie, who was doing a remarkable job with the bug-eyes part of her interpretation, broke the tension. With the speed of a hungry insect, she stopped her methodical rocking and snatched up her hamburger. She brought it fiercely toward her mouth, going for the face first.

Dad remained contemplative as the melee began, slowly cocking his head to the right and left as he continued to rock backwards and forwards, staring at the helpless burger in front of him. Earl and Greg, in the fierceness of their strikes, captured only pieces of their prey. Hamburger buns flew across the table. Mom had her hamburger folded between her wrist and her forearm, violently pulling pieces of it off with her teeth.

Yes, this really happened. In fact, stuff like this happened fairly regularly. Still does, actually.

We remained in character throughout the rest of the meal, which, mantis-style, only took a couple of minutes. Afterwards, working together, it only took us half an hour to clean up the dining room and the kitchen, and the floor, and the ceiling.

Back to the restaurant in Orlando. Like I said, they kept us waiting. We had spent the day at the beach enjoying the Florida sun. We had eaten some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. By the time we got back to the motel, finished six showers, dressed, and drove to the restaurant, we were starving. We were tired, we were hungry, and they kept us waiting. It is not a good idea to keep my family waiting - at least without toys. It's kind of like peeing on a bee hive just to see what will happen.

The waitress greeted us nicely, took our orders, and bustled off to the kitchen. The restaurant was under-staffed that night. We talked about our plans to hit Disney World the next day and flung occasional sugar packets at each other. And we waited for the food. And we laughed at my dad's silly drawing on the back of the kids' menu. And we waited for our food.

Finally, we saw our waitress hurry out of the kitchen. She had a very concerned look on her face as she came up to our table. She was very sorry, you see, the cook had misplaced our order. He was just beginning it now, and it wouldn't be more than fifteen or twenty minutes, she promised.

Half an hour later, the table was scattered with ripped up napkins and sugar packets that had been folded into paper footballs. Greg was gently banging his head on the table as he hummed under his breath. Earl and Julie had let their boredom turn into bickering and were trying to push each other off of the vinyl bench they were sharing.

Dad was looking at his watch and gritting his teeth. My mom was staring at us with a look of panic, almost as if she knew what was about to happen.

When the food was finally ready the waitress brought a co-worker out with her to try and speed up the serving process. She apologized some more as the two of them placed our dinner plates in front of us. They walked away as we turned our attention to our food. We looked at each other, smiling weakly.

As hungry as we were, we sat quietly for a moment as we stared at our plates and at one another. Then a silent, almost unconscious decision was made at that restaurant table. Someone whispered "Mantis Family," and the methodical rocking began.

This happened thirty years ago. You'd think Denny's would eventually get over it and let that whole restraining order thing go. But no...

The Dump, a Snake, and my Wife - A (Rare) Non-Seventh-Grade Story

2009-04-27T09:44:00.006-04:00

I remember the mixed emotions... the high-pitched screams, the thrill of seeing this huge snake curled around my arm... wondering if maybe my wife was going to pack up her things and leave me forever...

My childhood home was within spitting distance of a wonderful lake, and I loved collecting all kinds of wildlife. I had glass aquariums in the garage and in my bedroom, and they always had some kind of creature living in them. Eastern painted turtles, box turtles, musk turtles, all types of frogs and toads, different kinds of bugs (I just remembered a great praying mantis story I'll share later...), and snakes. I particularly loved catching snakes.

Anything I could find... garter snakes, green snakes, hognosed snakes that would play dead right in front of you... I remember stalking black rat snakes right at the edge of the water, just barely missing their tails as they scrambled up into the trees or slipped into the lake.

I was wrestling with snakes in the cattails on the banks of Lake Elkhorn long before the TV world ever heard Steve Irwin say "Crikey."

So, years later, with a house and kids and a job and all that, and a wife that still temporarily loved me...

I was making a run to the dump. The truck was loaded up, middle of summer, grungy from whatever yardwork or garage clean-out project I was doing... big plastic cup full of iced tea... headed out for the dump to finish up those Sunday chores.

On the way back from the dump I saw a black rat snake on the side of the road. It looked like maybe it had been grazed by a car... it was moving slowly, dazed and confused...

The twelve-year-old in me pulled the car over without a second thought. I clicked on my emergency blinkers and walked up to the snake. The thing had to be at least six feet long - sleek and shiny and beautiful, and dangerously close to the road. Black rat snakes (they call them black racers down here in Florida - pretty much the same species) are notoriously fast, and this one was dazed and confused (and therefore, from the perspective of my twelve-year-old brain, much easier to catch...)

So, without much further hesitation, I just walked up to him and snatched him up behind his head (you grab them right behind the head, so they don't bite you... I got skills...) I used my left hand, planning on holding the snake with that hand and driving with my right (yes, I was thinking in advance that way... I was taking this prize home to show the family... what a great idea that was... yeah!)

He came to life a little bit and curled himself around my arm...coil after coil after coil of shiny black snake... ooh... won't the kids be delighted... look what daddy found!

So I drove home, checking every once in a while to make sure the snake was okay, holding him up so he had a nice view through the windshield and all that...

And I got home and parked the truck and opened up the car door by reaching my right hand across my body to get to the door handle, and I ran into the house and I yelled, "Hey! Check it out! Look what I've got!"

You see, the twelve-year-old was in full throttle... I just had a really cool snake to show off, and I knew the kids would love it... and I didn't even think twice about bringing it inside for everyone to see up close.

We had a big, open foyer in our house in Maryland... once you came in the front door you could look up to a little overhanging balcony that connected the bedrooms... maybe fifteen feet or so off the ground...

So I yelled for everyone to come see what I had, and Kathie was the first to reach that little balcony.

Okay... let me back up for just a second... First, Kathie had just stepped out of the shower... She had thrown a towel around herself when she'd heard me call... her hair was dripping wet... there was a little bit of concern on her face when she came out of the bedroom.

Second, I was holding my arm behind my back, because I didn't want to scare her with the snake (see... I didn't want to scare her... I was at least thinking that way a little bit!) I was holding my arm behind my back and I said, "Now don't freak out, okay?"

Kathie's interpretation, years later, when she was finally able to kinda sorta laugh about it maybe a little (but still I see the warning in the back of her eyes...) she says that she saw my arm behind my back and she heard me say "...don't freak out..." and she thought I'd hurt myself in some way when I'd taken the stuff to the dump (a fairly common occurrence...)

So she was fully expecting to see me bring my arm around to the front of my body, showing her some gaping gash infected by dump germs... She said she was already thinking about how she'd have to scramble into her clothes and grab her keys and drive me (once again) to Urgent Care.

I think "Slow Motion Kicks In..." is widely overused, in my stories and in lots of others that I read... but right now there is no other substitute.

Slow motion kicked in... I grinned at her, ignoring the fact that she was dripping wet, covered by only a bath towel, looking at me with fear and concern in her eyes, worried about seeing some gaping wound... fresh out of the shower, vulnerable... married to Paul... etc...

And I showed her the snake.

I can't remember where the kids were... I don't think they'd come out yet... It was just me... and Kathie... and a six-foot long snake... in her beautiful foyer... inside her home, while she was standing there in a bath towel... looking down to see how her husband had maimed himself this time...

Perhaps it was something about the foyer's wide open space, the acoustics of the giant open walls... but I remember the way the sound echoed...

I remember the piercing screams... the rapid-fire instructions... GET-THAT-THING-OUT-OF-HERE-GET-IT-OUT-NOW-OH-MY-GOD-GET-IT-OUT-OF-MY-HOUSE!

Even in the frenzy of that moment I remember appreciating the way her screams bounced from wall to wall in that open foyer.

I went full twelve-year-old, holding the snake a little higher... "I just thought you guys would want to see..."

GET-IT-OUT!-OUT!-OUT!
GET-OUT!
GET-IT-OUT-OF-MY-HOUSE!

She held the towel close to her body with one tightly-clenched fist, pointing with the other hand, her eyes narrowed, her wet hair hanging... reminding me for just a second of that last scene in Carrie... and I ran for the door, half expecting the walls and furniture to burst in flames...

So I went around to the back of the house and sat on the little hill behind the kids' windows and held my snake up for them to see. And then I let him go in the weeds near the pond next to our house.

And I sat outside for a little bit, figuring if I waited until Kathie was dressed before I went back inside she might actually talk to me again.

I remember being in the room when my mom was telling someone else this cute little story about Paul startling his wife with a giant black snake just seconds after she had stepped out of the shower... I'll never forget her closing statement - "... it wasn't one of the smartest things he's ever done in his marriage." I love it.

The Mercy Skate

2009-04-21T11:34:00.003-04:00

Specks and flashes of mirror ball light, the smooth wooden floor beneath my wheels, Styx songs pounding through the speakers ("... Laaaaaaady, when you're with me I'm smiling...") And the girls, the girls hanging out behind the waist-high cinderblock walls, their hands held out during the "Boys Only" skate song... Which girls would keep their hands out as I rolled past? Which ones would let me slide my palm across theirs in this strange tribal courtship ritual we called Skateland?

And which ones would pull their hands back just seconds before I reached them, a sneer in my direction, a look of disgust shared with the girls next to them...

Leaving me to drop my eyes to the wooden floor, my dejected hand hanging in space, lit by mirror-ball light for all to see...

(there is a fine line between writing about your adolescence and self-inflicted psychotherapy...)

I remember a particular Saturday night. A new girl had started at our middle school (yes, middle school... yes, seventh grade... no comment...), and I'd been lucky enough to meet her before she got to the "other" kids - the cool kids, the popular kids, the ones that would eventually set her straight about who to hang out with... who to let touch your hand during "Boys Only" skate...

I don't remember her name, but I remember her smile. Innocent, genuine... In school I had started up an easy conversation with her, had told her about Skateland, about how most of us went there.

I'd even mustered up the courage to ask if she'd meet me there, and maybe we could skate together some. That's how I said it... just like that... "... maybe we could skate together some..."

She had agreed, nodded at me with that wonderful smile on her face. And I went home from school a new man. A girl with a pretty smile was going to skate with me. I was thinking it was pretty much guranteed that she wouldn't be one of those girls who pulled their hands away in disgust during "Boys Only" skate, and I was even betting that there was a good chance she would actually hold my hand and skate with me during "Couples Only."

I remember getting ready for that Skateland night. Taking a shower, combing my hair, brushing my teeth for a record-breaking second time that day...

I imagine I probably wore that Star Wars silk shirt and tan polyester (swish... swish...) John Travolta pants... figuring I'd be a dancing-skating-hand-holding cool dude...

Oh, the pain at this age... The roller coaster build up... the fall...

So I got to Skateland and I looked around for this girl, but I didn't see her. I skated a few rounds, played a couple of games of pinball...

And then I thought maybe she'd be sitting on one of those dark benches that surrounded the skating rink, behind the cinderblock walls...

So I skated around on the carpet... I remember the feel of the carpet dragging me down a little bit, slowing the speed of the wheels, working hard to keep moving as people screamed past me on the other side of the wall...

And then I saw a little commotion in the corner. The cool kids. The popular ones. A couple of guys, but mostly girls - the ones who regularly dropped their hands and sneered at me during "Boys Only" skate.

Then I saw the new girl. She was hiding. Or rather, I should say she was "being hidden" by the popular girls. That "innocent, genuine" smile of hers had been replaced with a fairly good replica of the popular sneer.

Ah... I figured it out instantly. They'd gotten to her. They'd set her straight about my social status. Game over.

I don't know what kept me moving forward. Perhaps there was a little bit of hope still brewing deep inside me. Mostly I think it was just an attempt to try to save face. But I did move forward, I skated right up to her, held my hand out, ignored the evil giggles from the girls who flanked her, and asked her to skate with me.

I don't remember her words. I just remember her face. The sneer was pretty much complete by that point. I remember her eyes darting left and right, almost like she was checking with the popular girls to see if she was doing things correctly. They were up against her on both sides, so close it was like they were holding her down to the bench... Uh... no, Paul... she's ours. You may leave now...

God... thinking about this after all these years I almost feel sorry for her... Sorry that she let herself get dragged into that muck... wondering what she remembers about it...

So I stood there, having received my negative response, and I wasn't really sure what to do. The popular girls had already started to cover their giggles. I felt blood rushing to my cheeks, sweat forming on my upper lip.

I started to turn away when a girl a few seats over stood up from the bench.

I do remember her name - Christine.

She skated confidently past the giggling girls, right through their looks of horror, and she reached out and took my hand.

"C'mon," she said. "I'll skate with you."

I let her pull me out onto the floor. The lights had been dropped for that romantic feeling... more Styx songs... "... but I'll be lonely without you... I'll need your love to see me through...."

And we skated... no lovey-dovey staring into each other's eyes in the mirror-ball light or anything... we just held hands and skated together, grooving to the music.

And best of all, I couldn't even see that crowd in the corner anymore...

So thanks, Christine, if you ever read this. Thanks for having the guts to rise above the adolescent insanity...

Sorry to get deep and dark today... Normally I like to write funny stories about growing up, but every once in a while the horror of that time sneaks through. But that's okay... because it's real, right? We all remember similar horrors, I'm sure. Man, what a rough time in our lives.

When she gets home from school, I'm going to give my seventh-grader an extra hug :-)

Big News for Donna Gephart!!

2009-04-14T12:36:00.003-04:00

Super Duper Congratulations to Donna Gephart, who just won the SCBWI's prestigious Sid Fleischman Humor Award for her novel,

As If Being 12 3/4 Isn't Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running for President!

Donna will be flown to Los Angeles in August to accept the award. She'll also give a workshop at the national SCBWI conference about writing humor for children.

For more details about Donna's big news, visit her blog at http://donnagephart.blogspot.com/2009/04/dreams-do-come-true.html

I attended my first SCBWI conference in Miami about six years ago, and I didn't know a single person there. I'd met Janeen Mason online by falling in love with her incredible art work. Janeen took me under her wing and introduced me to several members of her critique group - Linda Marlow, Sylvia Andrews, and Donna Gephart.

I've had the pleasure of corresponding with Donna since then, and we have become good friends. Donna has been there to encourage and cheer me on, and she's been a fellow soldier in the trenches when this writing world makes me want to pull my hair out.

More than anything, she has led by example, posting information about the hundreds of middle-grade and young adult books she reads, her journeys through rough drafts, clawing and scraping through revisions. And she has done all of this with one of the most wonderful senses of humor I've ever known. I have heard Donna's triumphant cheering in Miami from five hours north when she's sold manuscripts, and I have seen her grab new writers by the hand and lead them to others at the SCBWI conferences. I try to reach out to new people at the conferences because of what Donna and others have done for me.

There's nothing I like more than when good things happen to wonderful people. Donna deserves every minute of her happy dance right now. If you sit quietly and listen to the wind from the south, you can hear Donna cheering, jumping up and down, and telling really dorky jokes.

Here's Donna with Sid Fleischman

Paul's Blogging About American Idol??

2009-04-09T18:23:00.006-04:00

A gorgeous day today... cool, sunny, breezy.. I call this "pack up your stuff and move to Florida" weather.

The girls are on spring break, so we drove into downtown Jacksonville, rode the Skyway tram down into San Marco and back, walked around in the city a bit... very nice. We ate lunch at a deli, and I introduced the girls to their very first gyros (which they totally loved...)

Then we found a really cool used bookstore:

Peb's Paperback Book Exchange
1537 Cesery Blvd
(904) 743- 2778

and spent more than an hour browsing (and buying...)
Overall it was a wonderfully relaxing day trip in the city with my ladies... very nice.

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Okay... so American Idol?

In my blog I try to stick to posts about my writing journey... experiences, useful tools and survival techniques I've picked up along the way, current projects, crazy character bucket stories and tidbits about life. I also write wacky seventh-grade-type stories that are probably some weird kind of subconscious therapy...

But after what happened on last night's American Idol episode I feel like I need to break from the norm and share some personal thoughts... some triumphant thoughts about passion.

On last night's show, Scott MacIntyre got voted off.

Scott MacIntyre is blind.

There has been a lot of controversy (and accusations) about Scott making it as far as he did simply because he is blind... I've heard the term "mercy vote" kicked around.

Scott is an incredible singer, a fine musician who did all of his own arrangements, an all-around good guy, someone who looks like he has a wonderful sense of humor, and someone who refused to let his physical impairment stand in his way.

But when I closed my eyes and listened to Scott sing (especially last night, because he was clearly on the potential chopping block), he was good, but just not quite as good as the others. His voice just didn't have the "It" factor that oozes so freely out of many of the other contestants. Plain and simple - the other contestants are better singers, and it's a singing competition. Period.

So why am I bringing all of this up? Because he got the boot last night. He got the boot because it was time for him to go. His performances weren't as good as the others. Period.

And the fact that Scott MacIntyre is blind had nothing to do with it.

As much as I hate that Simon Cowell gets paid to be mean to people, I have to give him credit last night. Scott's blindness had absolutely nothing to do with Cowell's decision to vote him off. If you get past Cowell's intentionally caustic personality, you'll often hear that his criticisms are dead on accurate (rarely kind, often over-the-top cynical, etc... but still - accurate). Last night was one of those moments. Cowell was given the final say as to whether or not to use the judges' one chance to "save" one of the contestants, and Cowell told Scott (in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice), "Sorry, it's a no." (paraphrasing here...)

In this regard, since its inception I have seen American Idol transcend race, gender, and now physical impairment. I have seen the judges and the contestants care more about the passion they have for their music, their friendships, the life-or-death camaraderie as soldiers in the trenches during the competition... They care more about that passion than they do about race or gender, and last night I saw physical impairment join that club.

Personally, I think this is a major milestone. I can't speak for him, but my guess is that Scott wouldn't want things any other way. He got up there, worked his butt off, and made it to the final eight on American Idol. What an incredible accomplishment. And then he got voted off because his performances just weren't as good as the others. I'd bet a lot of money that Scott wants to be a singer-songwriter because he has all sorts of musical gifts and talents. I'd bet even more money that Scott doesn't want to be known as a blind guy who can sing.

I loved watching the other contestants help Scott around on the stage, how casual they were about it. No big deal... they grabbed his elbow, shoved him in one direction or another to lead him on the stage, etc... They helped him just like they would have helped one of the other contestants if he or she were carrying a big load across the stage... no big deal, let me carry a little of that for you. Same kind of tone, ease, casual approach. Grab an elbow... over here Scott... good. I got goosebumps last night watching this happen.

The hugs when they find out they're in the bottom three, the tears when a fellow contestant is voted out... Scott has been an integral part of all of that. I saw him reach out into the air with both hands and take an extra second or two to find a contestant who had just been voted off. And that contestant let herself be found, and she hugged Scott because Scott had become her friend, her fellow soldier in the trenches. That contestant did not hug Scott because she thought it would be a nice gesture to hug the blind guy.

As much as I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm caught up in American Idol's popular commercialism, I'm proud to be a witness to a shining example of passion overcoming social boundaries. And that's what it is. When we just don't have time for petty differences in race or gender or physical impairments, when the passion overrides all of that garbage, we get a chance to see how it has the possibility to happen in real, regular life.

So kudos to Scott for a job well done... I know he'll go far in his music career... he's mega talented. Maybe he'll make albums, maybe he'll write music. Like so many other American Idol contestants who get voted off toward the end of the competition, he's probably got agents and producers banging his door down, ready to set him up on a brilliant musical career.

But, because Scott just isn't quite as talented a singer as the remaining contestants, it was his time to be voted off. That's how the show works. And that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he's blind.

And man do we need more of that kind of thinking in our world!

It's about the passion. It's always about the passion.

Some Writerly Writing Process Stuff

2009-03-31T15:05:00.003-04:00

My Facebook Status for Today:

Paul R. May Three hours at Starbucks this morning (had to get out of the house...) Knocked out 2,400+ words. The twenty-something baristas always walk past me with a raised eyebrow. I wonder if they think I'm just sitting there pretending to be a writer. And then, of course, I wonder to myself if I'm pretending to be a writer. Then I tell myself to shut up and keep putting words on the damn page (which makes me a real writer :-)

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And that's really what it's all about. Getting your butt in the seat and putting words on the damn page. There's really no other magic solution. Butt. Seat. Words. That's it.

I've talked about Jerry Cleaver's Immediate Fiction in earlier blog posts. I particularly like his chapter "Hitting the Wall." A couple of days ago I pulled some highlighted sections out of that chapter (and a couple of others), typed them up against a Microsoft-ish blue background, and saved it as my computer's desktop. Now every time I turn on my computer (or close programs) I get hit in the face with stuff that helps me keeping putting those words on the damn page.

Here's what's on my desktop:

- Write an instant line...
- Write badly first...
- Write first, think second...
- Let it happen, get out of the way...
- Easier writing is better writing...
- Never edit in your head...
- Don't think your way out, write...
- Go where your energy takes you...
- The less you care, the better you write...
- Conflict, Action, Resolution, Emotion, Showing

There's so much more to the big writing picture, of course, but these are the little mantras that help keep me going. I've thought about hiring someone to follow me around the house, tap me on the shoulder (or better yet, punch me in the back of the head... ) and say "Hey Paul, put your butt in the seat and start putting words on the page..." and then read the entire list above to me, perhaps punching me in the back of the head after each line... That'll work. I'll put an ad in the paper for an intern tomorrow.

With that list above:

- Write an instant line...

This is a trick I use pretty much every time I sit down now. I force myself to write just one line right away. It breaks the ice... Tricks me into thinking that blank page tension has been released. I'll keep pretending I don't know any better

- Write badly first...

Anne Lamott (in her wonderful book about writing, Bird by Bird) refers to it as writing a "shitty first draft." For me there is no other solution. I have to get the words on the page. They are usually crappy, dorky, dumb words, and most of them I probably won't use.... but if you sit in the stream and sift through the silt day after day, every once in a while you'll find a little golden nugget.

- Write first, think second...

Thinking on the page... this works wonders for me. Any time I catch myself staring into space I shake my head, put my fingers on the keys, and start typing what I was thinking. I did this this morning... I wrote, "okay... I'm writing the scene where they get on the private jet and fly to D.C. .. what's the real conflict here... what does Alex want..." etc... Then (when things are working well...) my "thought writing" tapers off and suddenly I'm writing real stuff on the real page (again, crappy real stuff, dorky real stuff that I'll probably throw away eventually, but real stuff nonetheless...)

- Let it happen, get out of the way...
- Easier writing is better writing...

These two are so true, and a constant battle for me. Whenever I "try to write" it sounds like I was trying to write. Some of my coolest stories have been right here in this blog because I just let loose and go for it and have fun and see what happens... lots of ellipses... because I'm just making noise, telling funny stories, having fun... That's when it all works. That's when it sounds like a story and not like writing.

- Never edit in your head...
- Don't think your way out, write...

Same as I talked about above... "writing through the thinking..." Just additional reminders in different flavors...

- Go where your energy takes you...

This is a nice tip, especially when I get blocked on a certain part of a story. If I'm thinking, "Man... I am so locked up on this scene... really feel like I'm pulling teeth to get anywhere, and I would just love to finish it so I can get to the paintball battle scene..." Then I'm okay with jumping out and writing the paintball battle scene. I'll come back and finish the other part another time. One of the reasons this works well is because if you go where your energy takes you, you'll probably feel good about what you wrote (look! two golden nuggets!!), and when you get back to the difficult scene you'll be in better shape to tackle it (yeah right... I'm so utterly full of crap...)

- The less you care, the better you write...

This one's a little tricky... of course we care... For me, it's a life or death kind of passion... really... but I have to pretend sometimes like I don't care... just say screw it and let it fly, pretend I'm writing a dorky email to a friend, or posting corny jokes in Facebook comments... It all boils down to doing anything I can to get my butt in the seat and keep my fingers moving.

- Conflict, Action, Resolution, Emotion, Showing

These are the basic components of story, as Jerry Cleaver presents them. What does the character want and what's keeping her/him from getting it? What action is she/he taking? What is the outcome? How is the problem solved (or not solved)? What does the character feel? How does she/he change? Show this through dialogue and action (not through telling...) My own homegrown explanation for showing/not telling - Don't tell us the teacher's gone crazy. Have her pick up one of her students and throw him through the window!!

That's all I've got for today... I am worded out, baby...

Becoming One With the Seventh-Grader

2009-03-23T15:30:00.004-04:00

As much as I try to fight it, I can't seem to get out of seventh grade. I've been "writing through the thinking," just letting my fingers go... letting thoughts creep in and out, memories... some good, some funny, but most... from seventh grade. What's up with that?

I've said in earlier blog posts that I really do believe my muse is a seventh-grade version of myself, standing there with chubby red cheeks, dusty brown hair hanging in my eyes, wearing a Star Wars t-shirt and navy blue corduroys. It is this kid I turn to when I'm struggling... this kid that stands and holds his arms over his head in victory when the writing's working. This kid that accidentally rips out a loud fart in social studies class when the writing's not working...

I can't seem to get away from that seventh grader... and I have learned over time that I'm just going to have to embrace that little guy... learn to become one with him. Perhaps some day I'll sit down with some therapist and uncover the trauma, but until then I'll squeeze out every drop of material...

So, some seventh-grade free writing... some pre-pubescent stream of consciousness...

Kids making fun of me because I'd been wearing a pair of Sears Roebuck jeans (Wrangler?) all year long, and probably a favorite Star Wars t-shirt or two, trading off in the mornings, maybe washing them after every two or three days... running to my mom and crying and explaining that the kids were making fun of me because I wasn't wearing the cool new silk shirts and the trendy jeans... She took me to the mall (probably back to Sears... she always said that when she died she was going to leave us the house and the Sears Roebuck bill...) and bought me this way cool silk shirt with very faint Star Wars designs (yes, Star Wars... only the most loyal followers could tell that the designs were really x-wing fighters... yes... it was a way cool shirt), but then we also bought a pair of tan polyester slacks (listen for the theme music fading in... ah..ah..ah..ah.. Staying Alive, Staying Alive...) and a pair of clumpy brown dress shoes with inch and a half thick soles...

Dear God, what was I thinking, what was she thinking... the horror creeps back in... climbing out of bed, buttoning up that way cool silk shirt, thinking wait 'til they see me now... the swish-swish of the tan polyester slacks, slipping on those Bee-Gee shoes... walking into class, looking like I was ready to go out on the disco floor... Dear God... the looks, the raised eyebrows... images of the movie Carrie in my head as I stood there, wondering if I could use the rage in my brain, the blood rushing to my cheeks... use that negative energy to slam and lock the classroom doors and light the whole freakin' place on fire with my mind... the soccer team stars screaming like little girls... dancing the jive and doing John Travolta arm moves as they all burned...

Yikes... I told you it was freewriting... maybe there's more therapy in there than I thought there was....

But, on a happier note, I'll remember Kim, the girl who pulled me into the coat closet just after lunch one day. She didn't say anything. She just grabbed my hand (even that alone... the touch of her skin, her willingness to get close enough to me to touch me... that started the frenzy, set the hair on the back of my neck on fire...) and pulled me into the closet. I started to ask her what she was doing but then she pulled me behind the coats, into a dark corner. There was just enough light splashing across her face for me to see her eyes, the mischief, the excitement... and then she took my face in both of her hands and kissed me. And I couldn't believe she had chosen me... dorky chubby freaky Paul May, who was into weird drama stuff and wore John Travolta disco clothes to school the day after kids made fun of what he was wearing. She kissed me... no PG-13 stuff... just a nice, long, gentle press of her lips on mine... but what I remember the most was the way she held my face, one hand on each cheek, the way she pulled me close to her in that dark closet.

I imagine I probably pulled back after the kiss and asked her who her favorite Star Wars character was... but I really don't remember...

Okay... maybe seventh grade wasn't that bad...

They Stole My Damn Socks!

2009-03-11T08:50:00.004-04:00

I am back in semi-functional writing mode after a short hospital visit. I spent a little time last week with a neurosurgeon to repair a pinched nerve problem in my neck that I'd been battling for years. Things went very well, recovery has been very quick (too quick... I'm going crazy cuz I'm not allowed to do anything...), and a week later (to the day) I'm finally feeling like I might sorta kinda be able to do some (drug-free) writing... We'll see how things go.

Some of my wife's lady friends heard about my hospital sock mystery and put in a personal request to read about it on my blog. I've never had any commissioned blog stories, so I'm happy to oblige.

5:30 in the morning (yes 5:freakin'30 in the morning...) we had to sign in at the nurse's desk. We had to get up at about 4:15 to take showers and get out the door at five to drive into downtown Jax.

Overall, I was very impressed with just about every aspect of the journey. The nurses and doctors were attentive, engaging, good listeners. The private "day-stay" room had a very nice reclining lounger in which Kathie could kick back while we watched TV together. The only technical problem was that when we pushed the button on the bedside remote to turn the TV on and off it opened and closed the window shade (really...), but I thought this was so cool the problem with the TV didn't bother me at all.

They shot my hand up with a local anesthetic so the monster IV needle didn't hurt at all, the hospital gown and matching paper bathrobe would have received wonderful comments from Joan Rivers' pre-Oscar fashion review. Overall, we were very pleased.

But then there's the little bit about the socks. My socks. My socks that the hospital people stole from me and maybe put up on ebay.... who knows...

When the nurse handed me my Versace paper hospital gown and matching Dolce & Gabbana (I have to admit I jumped into Google for a second to look that up... it was so worth it...) paper bathrobe, she also handed me a pair of red hospital socks with dorky glued-on white rubber traction gizmos. She must have seen the horror in my eyes (I mean, c'mon, who wears Dolce & Gabbana with dorky glued-on white rubber traction gizmo socks... in RED?), so she said to me, "If you want, you can just wear your own socks.... you don't have to wear these... it's up to you."

So I was thinking, wow... what a wonderful place. They're not going to make me wear those dorky socks and I'll be able to wear my own... a little home comfort as they roll me back into surgery... won't that be nice.

So I thanked her, and Kathie stuffed the red gizmo socks into the giant ziploc baggie they give you to hold all of your street clothes.

Things went pretty quickly after that.... we met a zillion people, who all asked me my full name and birth date, had me explain the procedure to them so they knew I knew what was happening (this happened so many times I was tempted to start goofing around... tell them my name was Barack Obama or something.... but we were so close to Defcon 5 then I didn't want to risk doing anything that would bring the whole process to a screaming halt...)

The anesthesiologist came in and talked to us a little bit... then he said something about me having a little bit of a "deer in the headlights" look on my face (ya think?), so then he reached behind me and fiddled with my IV bag, saying, "... so I'm just going to give you a little something to take the edge off... okay?" I nodded, expecting an IV drip to slowly make me a little groggy before they pushed me back into the O.R.

But within seconds my lips melted off of my face, and I rolled my head toward Kathie to see that she had turned into a giant purple mushroom... (editor's note... Paul - where are you going with this? get back on track... remember your title... they stole your damn socks... omit needless words, Paul...)

Sorry...

So that's about all I remember until they shook me awake and fed me some ice chips and finally (Finally!) pulled the oxygen gizmo out of my nose and then wheeled me back to the day-stay room to see my beautiful wife waiting for me.

I was able to sit up a bit and they let me take a gloriously wonderful little sip of coffee... and the nurses and specialists came in and out and told me that as soon as I was able to eat and drink a little bit I'd be out the door.

Wonderful! I was alive... (that was the only part I was really worried about...), things had gone swimmingly (I love that word...), and we were going to be outta that place ahead of schedule. Hooray! Yippee!

But then I looked down at my feet and wiggled my toes. And I realized that I shouldn't be able to see my toes. My toes should have been snuggled up warmly in my own comfortable socks.

I looked up at Kathie.

"Hey," I said. "They stole my damn socks."

She put out her lower lip for me and said, "...aww... I'm sorry about that."

I was not happy with her response. I was looking for the "I'll-get-your-damn-socks!"-picking- up-the-recliner-and-throwing-it-through-the-window-with-the-nice-view-of-the-water-storm- out-of-the-room-and-start-throwing-nurses-around kind of response...

I munched on the graham crackers they'd given me... only to show them that I was capable of eating enough to get out of there... and I took another sip of the coffee, which didn't taste so great now that they'd stolen my damn socks.

And then less than an hour later we were outta there... Guess what I had to wear on my feet...
- think about it...
- think about it...

That's right... you guessed it... the stupid red hospital socks with dorky glued-on white rubber traction gizmos. I had them sticking out in front of me as the orderly pushed me in the wheelchair toward the hospital's front door... those stupid red socks, right out there, front and center, for everyone in the fashion world to see...

I'm not done with this. Not by far. Even as I write this blog entry, I am planning my strongly-worded letter to the corporate hospital dorks. I will open this letter with the following brief statement... "If payment has already been made for these socks, you may disregard this letter..."

and then I will go off... I will explain that these socks had tremendous sentimental value, that they were a family heirloom, that I had worn them only once, on that very occasion so that I would feel safe... that in fact Abraham Lincoln had once worn the socks while undergoing a surgical procedure...

I will also mention that the replacement cost of the socks will be commensurate with the astronomical costs of the surgical equipment they had just used in my procedure, and that my attorney and I have decided that a replacement fee of five-thousand dollars is more than fair, given the sentimental and historical nature of the socks in question.

Ultimately, I want the socks back. I betcha some over-eager ER intern probably whipped his emergency snipping shears out of his utility belt and cut them from my body... shredded them, casually tossed them in some bio-trashbag...

I can't believe they stole my damn socks...

Lizzie May's Amazing Singing Performance

2009-03-01T16:30:00.002-05:00

Ladies and Gentlmen, we interrupt these neurotic writer ramblings and dorky seventh-grade stories to provide you with five minutes of real entertainment.

Here is Ms. Lizzie May, singing Queen's "Somebody to Love" at her middle school's talent show last week.

(She gets all this talent from my side of the family, by the way...)

http://www.paulrmay.com/lizzie_may_talent_show_feb_2009.WMV

Some Tidbits

2009-02-17T11:09:00.005-05:00

I took the girls to a reptile store in Jacksonville not too long ago. We visit this store on a regular basis. We like to wander around and check out the cool lizards and African dart frogs and such... I particularly like the display of local venomous snakes.

I strolled along into the turtle section and saw a little note taped to one of the cages. It said, "Burmese Mountain Tortoise - very rare and super intelligent."

I looked through the glass to see the very rare and super intelligent Burmese Mountain Tortoise upside down on its back, desperately flailing its arms and legs in the air, scraping its claws against the bottom of the cage in its effort to turn itself right-side-up. I called the girls over, pointed to the little note and then pointed to the very rare and super intelligent Burmese Mountain Tortoise. I love how the humor gene is so embedded in their DNA, because all three of us burst out laughing. After a few seconds the very rare and super intelligent Burmese Mountain Tortoise finally flipped himself back over and went back to working on his doctoral dissertation.
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I recently overheard Maggie explaining to Caitlin how she had "sat around for two and a half hours listening to teenage boys talk with each other, mostly about poop."

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We went to Blue Springs this past Sunday, a beautiful state park about fifteen minutes west of Daytona. The park is famous for the manatees that swim in to lounge about in the spring water that stays seventy-two degrees year round. We saw alligators and giant gar fish and tilapia and all kinds of birds, but we didn't see very many manatees. There were a couple on the other side of the spring, but we weren't a hundred percent sure. They were shaped like manatees (large, oblong, fanned-out tails), but they were very still. So still that we started throwing out different theories. A popular opinion is that they were really blow-up manatees anchored under the water, so that the tourists wouldn't get too upset with the five-dollar entry fee. My theory was that there were a bunch of Department of Natural Resource guys dressed in manatee costumes, taking shifts under the water pretending to be manatees. But if this is the case, I still don't understand why they didn't at least try to swim around and swish their tails a little.

I think manatees are very rare and super intelligent.
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Fart Stories - An Epiphany...

2009-02-10T13:10:00.005-05:00

Yes, I said it. I said the word "Fart."

I was sitting here, tapping away at my keyboard... digging through old memories and trying to unearth yet another funny story from my childhood. I try to write through the thinking... randomly typing as I try to remember, getting the thoughts going, letting memories fade in and out. I do this a lot before I write.

And a couple of really good stories came to mind.

Fart stories.

And my gut reaction was.. Oh no... I can't write about fart stories. This is a public blog. There are people who actually read it. I write for young audiences. I can't use the word "fart." I can't write fart stories.

And then I had a little bit of an epiphany. I write middle grade and young adult novels. What am I thinking? Fart stories? Young readers? Are they not meant for each other? Is there any kid in this world, boy or girl, who won't laugh his or her butt off listening to a good old fashioned fart story?

This has been such a freeing experience. One basic bottom line I have learned about writing (from Anne Lamott, among others...) is that it's all about honesty.

So, here it is. I now open the door to let the fart stories rip. Here are the grand cheesy blasters, and a whole new open world of story topics for me down the road.

Today I'll share what I remember to be the absolute funniest fart story of my childhood (so far...) In the near future I'll share my absolute most embarrassing fart story of all time (so far...)

................................... I am so excited ..............................

My First Public Fart Story - "Earl's Rubber Shoe Fart"

Sometime in the seventies... Let's say Earl was fifteen, I was thirteen, and Greg was ten...

We were sitting in the family room with my mom, and she was trying to watch a movie.

Earl and Greg and I must have eaten something volcanic for lunch, because we were in rare form. The movie was some kind of old forties Casablanca kind of thing, and my brothers and I were trying to outdo each other by waiting for the absolute sappiest moments to add some... uh... dialogue of our own.

Earl was sitting at my mom's left. Greg and I were on the couch that faced the television, so my mom couldn't see us unless she turned completely around.

Our fart fest continued. Earl and I watched as Greg leaned slightly to his left, made a beautiful face that looked like he was squeezing out a cinder block, and launched something that would have made a Sumo wrestler cry.

............................... My God this is fun .........................

I think Greg is the most talented of us all. He has a great story about making a schoolmate yelp in pain as one of Greg's gaseous masterpieces floated past his desk.

After his contribution to the fart fest, Greg sat up straight, trying his very best to look like he knew nothing about what had just left his body.

Mom turned around with a scrunched up nose, slowly got out of her seat, and turned off the television. Earl's hands covered his mouth as Mom turned to us with her arms crossed.

"That's it. If I hear one more fart . . ." The word 'fart' coming out my mom's mouth made the three of us burst out laughing.

"I'm serious. One more time and I'm kicking you out of the room."

She turned the television back on and sat down. Earl and Greg and I shot glances at one another in a silent kind of horror. We knew it was only a matter of time before one of us gave in.

This is where the shoe rubber comes into the story. Earl's Adidas, more than a few months old, had begun to lose their rubber soles. They had rubber bottoms that came up over the toe of the shoe. This part of the bottom of the shoe had come loose, so a good inch and a half of rubber was hanging from the end of his shoe. They made a flap, flap, flap sound as he walked - kind of like one of those wooden ducks with rotating flaps of leather that you see at craft shows.

My mom had lit a candle and placed it in the center of the coffee table, probably in an effort to compete with our flatulessence.

Earl looked at Greg and me, making sure he had our attention. He stretched his legs out, crossing them on top of the coffee table in what seemed to be a very innocent change of position. He shot a quick glance at my mom, making sure she wasn't watching, and gently pushed the rubber flap of his left Adida to within a millimeter of the candle's flame.

Greg and I watched, wide-eyed, as a tiny edge of the rubber flap began to melt and then catch on fire. Earl, even then the scientist, looked over at us with a cocky look that said "Ha! I'm sitting a foot away from Mom, and my shoe is on fire." Greg and I turned to each other, neither of us sure how to react.

Earl waited until the exact second before the flame would get out of control and gently shook his foot. The flame disappeared immediately, leaving behind only a tiny wisp of black smoke.

He looked at us, again making sure we were a captive audience. He gave us a confident look that told us he was going to do something even more impressive this time.

Another shifty-eyed glance at Mom.

Then he gently set the rubber flap of his left Adida directly in the candle's flame. He pulled the flap out of the fire and held up his foot for us to see. Half of the perimeter of the rubber flap was on fire. This time he shook out the flame almost immediately. A dangerously large puff of black smoke drifted toward my mom. Earl tried his best to waft the smoke away from her without letting her know that something was up.

Greg and I focused our attention on the television, sure that Mom would smell the burning rubber any second. We waited in silence. Mom turned around with an accusatory look on her face to see her three angels quietly watching the television. The black smoke had disappeared, but a faint trace of the smell of burned rubber remained.

Something exciting started to happen in the movie she was watching, and she turned back to the television. In unison, Earl and Greg and I breathed out a silent sigh of relief.

Earl only waited a few seconds before going for round three. Greg and I sat transfixed as Earl pushed that slowly disappearing rubber flap closer to the flame.

I think, being a scientist and all, Earl would probably be able to explain why the entire front end of his shoe decided to spontaneously combust at that exact second. If I were to venture an educated guess, I would say that it probably had something to do with the temperature of the rubber. It hadn't been more than five seconds or so before he lit the rubber flap on fire the third time.

Earl was not prepared for the fire that engulfed the front end of his left Adida. I must hand it to him though, how he was able to violently try to shake the flames out without moving in a way that would make my mom turn around.

Well, this was just what Greg and I needed. It was exactly the right button to push. Earl, the scientist, in one minute so cocky and sure, was on fire, right in front of our very eyes. Greg and I lost it. We both erupted in roaring laughter.

Earl had finally shaken out the flames by the time my mom turned around. A whiff of black rubber smoke greeted her.

I always tell this story by saying that she thought the smell was another one of our farts, but I really should give her more credit. But I'm not sure how she missed the mushroom cloud of black smoke as she got up off the couch and stormed past Earl. She stood in front of Greg and me and pointed at the hallway. We couldn't even try to argue our way back into the family room, we were laughing so hard. Seemingly innocent, Earl remained on the couch, his arms folded and his feet on the ledge under the coffee table. He looked like he was very involved in the movie. Mom never noticed the trickle of sweat running down his left temple.

........................................ so much for my writing career ..............................

Maggie and the Beanstalk

2009-02-03T14:49:00.002-05:00

I was digging through some old pictures the other day and ran into this one...
(*** Wait to scroll down until you're finished reading***)

A few years ago the girls were being wonderfully creative and stitching together home-made stuffed animals and bean bags. I was working on something in the kitchen when Maggie wandered in and asked for some beans to stuff their projects. I dug around in the pantry and found an old bag of dried black beans.

"Will these do?" I asked.
Maggie said, "Perfect!" and ran back upstairs.

Later that day, in passing, Maggie mentioned that she had dropped "a few" of the beans down the sink.

"No big deal," I told her, and we both promptly forgot about the beans.

A few days later, I was doing something in the kitchen again, and Caitlin yelled down the stairs.

"Dad, one of the sinks is backed up," she said (she and Maggie had double sinks in their bathroom upstairs).

I thought about it for a moment, and in my regular way of putting off any kind of Mr. Fixit stuff until the last possible second, I said, "Just use the other sink for now, okay? I'll come fix it later."

A few days later (yes days, because I'd completely forgotten about the clogged sink upstairs, and I figure the girls must have gotten used to using the other sink), they came running into the kitchen, wide-eyed and giggling.

Maggie said, "Dad, you need to come upstairs and see this."

I followed them up to their bathroom, and this is what I saw. I thought it was pretty cool, actually... cool enough that I walked all the way back downstairs for my camera.

It turned out that Maggie had dropped a lot more than "a few" beans down the drain. To this day I still don't know what she was doing at the time (maybe filling one of their little stuffed animals and using the sink to catch spilled beans... I'll have to ask her...) But when I finally did take the time to unscrew the drain trap below the sink and shake its contents out into a trashcan, there had to be more than two cups' worth of beans... A nice dark, moist environment, occasional sprinklings of water... what a perfect way to grow bean sprouts :-)

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Watch This Video!

2009-01-28T16:34:00.001-05:00

Please take three minutes to watch this video.

What a cool kid!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBe8dj3GENw

Proud To Be Alive Today

2009-01-20T12:34:00.003-05:00

Wiping away tears after Obama's inauguration... a powerful, beautiful speech to the nation as the new president...

Thinking about what we have finally become as a nation... thinking about how much all of this would mean to my father if he were still alive to see this happen.

But mostly the tears are because my daughter Caitlin texted me just minutes before the inauguration. It was a simple conversation, but I know she won't know until she has her own children how much it meant to me that during such an important moment in history she decided to reach out to me.

She asked, simply, "You watching the inauguration? We're watching it in English class..."
I said, "Yup... I'm so glad we're alive to see this wonderful day... love you lots and lots..."

We chatted back and forth about how pretty the music was and how much fun it was to watch Obama's girls fooling around during the speeches.

I told Caitlin how glad I was that she was getting the opportunity to watch. I told her to think about how she'll be able to tell her grandchildren about watching this day live.

She told me she loved me.

I told her that I would tell her kids about how proud I was that their mommy was texting me at that very moment.

What a gift... a glorious gift to be alive right now.

Photographer Captures Rare Shot of Famous Author Paul R. May

2009-01-19T12:25:00.008-05:00

What a fantastic conference... wonderful presenters and workshops, so great connecting with good friends... I'm cleaning up email and to-do lists and trying to recover after being gone for three days. I'll write more about the conference soon, but for now I'll leave you with a picture.

My good friend Angela Maria Padron took this picture. I thought her caption summed me up quite niceley...

It said, "Paul May as... Paul May??"

Yes, indeed.

And here's another one, taken by Janeen Mason (I'm with Donna Gephart)

Miami SCBWI Conference

2009-01-15T17:23:00.004-05:00

Finished that newspaper story this morning. Man, it feels good to click Send when you've got a project finished and out the door.

Still scrambling to get ready for the Florida SCBWI conference. Heading out tomorrow morning.

Even in all the scrambling, though, I'm happy to report I've stuck with my thousand words (and more) every day, including today... That feels good too, knowing that I've kept with it, kept the characters alive.

So I'm heading out tomorrow. Here's info about the conference. It's the Florida Regional in Miami - I've been attending for the past five years. Great people, great contacts, incredible presenters and workshops. I always come back equal parts exhausted and energized.

http://www.scbwiflorida.com/jan09conf.html

Crazy Busy Swamped, But Knocking Out My 1,000 Words

2009-01-13T10:08:00.002-05:00

Running crazy this morning... rainy, yucky... just getting over a terrible cold, keeping me up at night... getting things together for the SCBWI conference in Miami this weekend... still need to get the oil changed, tires rotated, make sure girls are set for Friday... I have a newspaper article due ASAP and I need to get the interview done for that today... crazy busy swamped... crazy busy...

BUT

I am sitting down and knocking out my 1,000 words. I have to. I have to keep going, stay connected with my story, find out what my characters are thinking and saying and (most importantly) wanting... I have to keep with it. I wrote just under two thousand words over the weekend, seventeen-hundred yesterday... I have to keep going. I know that this is what it takes to keep the story alive, to stay in touch with the characters so that they don't fade away.

Also, as I said the other day, I feel like I'm in the groove right now, my muse's groove... like I'm back in middle school standing at the toughest video game in the arcade, punching buttons and killing creatures and a whole crowd of simliarly-dressed geeks is standing around me, saying things like, "Dude... he's good..." and I'm in the groove, pushing those buttons and racking up the highscore points...

BUT

I know that this video game brilliance is short-lived... that the "Insert Another Quarter to Continue" splash screen is coming any second... I have to play as hard as I can, keep the game alive, keep the story alive, the characters fresher and clearer and brighter and wanting more and more...

Okay... so that's my crazy busy swamped pre-1,000 words blog vent. Thanks for playing...

1,584 Words

2009-01-09T13:12:00.003-05:00

Knocked out 1,584 words for the day... feeling good about that. As I've said in earlier blog posts, I try to write at least a thousand words a day, no matter what. Anything on top of that is gravy... and when I get that initial thousand knocked out, it usually leads to more.

It feels so good when the tunnel is wide open, the words are flowing, typing as fast as I can for fear of missing one single thought... typing occasional notes in my outline and randomly dropping notes in the manuscript about different ideas, things to throw in later... plot points to connect, seeds to plant, etc... all at highspeed, not worrying about punctuation errors or things that need to be looked up and researched later... leaving myself little notes to think about later, rather than letting that question or idea or inspiration have any chance of stopping the flow... I have to keep going... have to keep the momentum flowing...

Grooving on this wave right now... savoring every moment while it lasts...

Mountain Flying (and "Wicked Serious Writing Mode" - copyright Laurie Halse Anderson)

2009-01-06T12:05:00.006-05:00

A wonderful trip up north for the holidaze... way too many calories... tons of fun with friends and family... an ugly four-hour backup driving through South Carolina on the way home... the delicious feeling of being home and back in my quiet cave by myself... my feet up on my desk, kicked back with the keyboard in my lap... just me and the dog and words and dialogue and images floating in my head... I'm back in the groove... back where I belong... butt in seat, clackety-clack... it feels good.

I think Laurie Halse Anderson said it best in her blog this morning... "I am back in wicked serious writing mode and loving it."

I can relate.

I've taken a fairly drastic step, and I've decided to follow some writing advice I've been hearing for years - "Write the book you're afraid to write..." More to follow (when I'm ready to open the door on that), but I will say now that I've found the strongest writing voice I've ever had... I can't write fast enough... I feel like the story won't wait for that tunnel-connection from my fingers, through my arms, through my heart, through my brain... the story is trying to work its way out of me, oozing from my ears, dripping from my nose... desperately trying to come out and come alive on the screen... the main character talks to me all the time, while I'm driving, while I'm spreading mayonnaise on a piece of bread for a school lunch sandwich... as I write this blog entry... I have enough experience now to know that I must relish this time... I need to continue to make time to allow the story to scream onto the page, because, for me, all this writing stuff is cyclical... This doesn't happen very often, when the muse is standing there waving a giant green flag, telling me to go ahead and punch the accelerator, to open up the throttle and let the words fly... These are the moments when I know I was put on the earth to write... when I know there is nothing else I could possibly do for a living that would give me this much satisfaction (but, of course, I've also been through this enough times to know that it won't be long before I'm moaning and complaining about how it hard it is to keep my butt glued to the seat through the revision process... whatever... I know... I know... it's all part of the process... )

But for now I'll ride the wave... I'll throw myself with complete abandon into the mosh pit while my muse lets me... (by the way... I know I mentioned it in an earlier blog post, but my muse is a seventh-grade version of myself... pudgy, wearing navy blue corduroys and a Star Wars t-shirt... I don't know how this happened... it just is the way it is, and I realized a long time ago that I can't screw around with that stuff... I just need to stand out of the way and let it happen... all the while desperately trying to keep my butt in the seat...)

Enough about all that.... I want to share a little memory... So much to tell, but it all revolves around one little feeling... my feet leaving the snowy mountain slope... high speed, jumping downhill, feeling like I was flying, knowing that at any second I could catch a tree root and break my leg, but running anyway, flying down the mountain...

The Catoctin Mountains... I've written about them in several blog posts. I even used them as the setting for a middle-grade mystery I wrote a few years ago. I love that whole area (about fifteen minutes north-west of Frederick, Maryland).

In my junior or senior year of high school, my friend Pete (of "Crazy Pete" fame... see previous blog stories) and I decided to do the Chimney Rock hike up the mountain... This was a fairly routine thing for me... I'd done the hike dozens of times... But this time it was the middle of January, and the mountain was covered with about a foot and a half of snow.

The trail that leads up to Chimney Rock is only about about three miles round-trip, but it's straight uphill... so the trail zig-zags back and forth. It's a fairly strenuous hike, but the reward is a breathtaking view of the Cumberland Vista... from the very top of Chimney Rock you can look down at the tops of trees for miles and miles and miles... When the leaves peak in fall, the view will take your breath away.

Pete and I made it to the top with no problem, breathing hard as we pulled ourselves up to the top ledge of Chimney Rocky. We hung out for a while, looking at the beautiful trees, marvelling at the way the snow made the forest world so quiet...

We started back down, but then I got an idea. I took out the trail map I'd picked up at the Ranger Station and figured out where we were in relation to our car parked at the bottom of the mountain trail.

I turned to Pete and said, "Hey... wanna try something crazy?" He said, "Yeah." (without having any idea at all what I was suggesting.) I showed him on the map how the trail zigged and zagged back and forth, and I ran my finger straight down the middle, from the top of the mountain to the bottom. "How about we just go for it... just pick a spot maybe right about here... " I pointed to a place on the trail that I thought would be the best starting point. "... and we just start running and hop our way down the mountain?"

Without responding, Pete turned so that he was facing down the mountain and jumped off of the trail. I'll never forget the "Whoop!" he let out, the way it broke through the snow-quiet trees.

I followed right behind him, and we just went for it, running full-out, straight downhill. Imagine standing at the top of an intermediate ski slope and just making the decision to run down to the bottom.

We were like bionic men... one running stride down the mountain turned into what felt like a twenty-foot leap. I remember truly feeling like I was flying, the snow-covered leaves taking most of the impact as we landed in various spots on the slope. Of course, as I said earlier, we were being crazy. It's a miracle neither of us caught a tree branch or a slippery rock and ended up in the hospital. But we never fell, not once. We flew down that mountain, whooping and hollering and feeling so alive and powerful.

We made it down to the bottom in a fraction of the time it would have taken us to follow the trail. We were both out of breath, cheeks flushed with the cold, our eyes wild with adventure and triumph...

I should be dead right now, but damn if I didn't have a wild childhood...

Some Tidbits

2008-12-09T15:53:00.003-05:00

Running around with the girls today, orthodontist appointments, grocery store run, drama club rehearsal, etc...

In the car we were talking about things the girls did when they were very little, and I told them this story...

(pardon me for a moment while I jump into Google and find out in which Olympics Michelle Kwan participated... okay, I'm back now...)

Caitlin was about five years old during the 1998 winter olympics, just old enough to appreciate the magic. She was particularly nuts about Michelle Kwan. I think we had Caitlin in a gymnastics class at the time, and she spent a good portion of her life running around the house pretending to be Michelle Kwan and/or an olympic gymnast (there were times when she was both, throwing a triple axel off one end of the couch right into her version of a cartwheel).

Kathie and I were downstairs in the living room one day. We heard a crash upstairs followed by a little yelp and then a rolling series of thumps and thuds down the steps. We both ran for the stairwell, terrified of what we were about to see. Caitlin, age five with a big head of black curly hair, staggered out of the stairwell, looked up at us, and said, "It was like I did the Olympics."

Caitlin (now fifteen, same head of hair, maybe not quite so curly...) had never heard that story, and about choked on her Wendy's Frosty when I hit her with the "It was like I did the Olympics" punchline. I know Kathie will remember that story, though.

-----------------------------------------

Another Caitlin story, probably at the same age, maybe even that same day, who knows...

Caitlin and her cousin Josh (a year older, so probably about six at the time) loved hanging out together, but Josh is pretty sharp too. By this time in their relationship, Josh had figured out how to push Caitlin's buttons, and on this particular day he was pushing Caitlin to her limit.

I'd heard Caitlin yell at Josh to stop this or that, and she'd come to complain once or twice. We intervened a couple of times, but for the most part figured it was best to let Caitlin fight her own battles (pun intended...)

Now... a tiny little of backstory before I continue. We had just purchased a new Barbie lunchbox for Caitlin. It was her pride and joy. We packed it every morning before kindergarten, and she had a special place for it on the kitchen counter. It wasn't the really old kind made out of tin, but it was a good solid plastic - the kind that could withstand some abuse and still keep her lunch from being squished... the kind that can be used as a weapon...

Sorry... back to the story...

Things were going along fine for a while when out of the blue we heard a piercing scream coming from the other room.

We all ran in to find out who was dying... here's the image I have burned in my brain...

Josh, hands out to his sides, palms open, mouth wide, eyes squeezed shut in pain, piercing scream not stopping...

Caitlin, her Barbie lunch box firm in her right fist, lips tight, eyebrows furrowed but confident, the tiniest bit of thrill in her eyes, an even tinier bit of fear of knowing she was in trouble.

The dialogue:

"Josh, are you okay?"
Josh opened his eyes, stared at Caitlin like she'd just turned into Saskwatch. "She...." shuddering breath, shuddering breath... "She... just... hit... me... with... her .... lunch box!"
"Caitlin, did you hit Josh with your lunchbox?"
Caitlin looked at me, no fear whatsoever in her eyes now, a confident nod, lips still closed together... she reminded me of Sally Field standing up with that "Union" sign in Norma Rae, and said, quite simply, "Yes."
I stared at her for a second and told her that she would need to sit in time out. She nodded at me again, no tears, no look of regret. She simply walked to the corner of the room, sat down, and began serving her sentence.

As a parent, I struggled. Part of me was a little concerned about this little five-year-old of mine who had just been found guilty of assault with a deadly Barbie weapon, but a much bigger part of me wanted to run up and hug her and say, "Way to stand up for yourself, Cait!"

Regardless, I'll never forget that look on her face. And guess what... I don't think Josh ever teased her again.

-------------------

Okay... last little tidbit...

Same car ride today... Maggie and I had just dropped Caitlin off back at her high school after the ortho appointment so she could go into her drama rehearsal. Maggie hit the radio power button and tuned in a radio station that has been spewing Christmas music since August.

I grimaced and grunted, which is what I typically do when I hear Christmas music, especially coming out of that one station that starts playing Christmas music in August (okay, maybe it's September...)

The song was "Feliz Navidad" and Maggie was grooving along... leaning back and forth in time with the music, snapping her fingers, drinking the Christmas koolaid... "Feliz Navidad...... FeLIZ Navidad.... "

"C'mon, Dad," she said with a sly grin, knowing that I would rather get hit by Caitlin's Barbie lunchbox than sing along to "Feliz Navidad." But she persisted... she kept singing as we drove, leaning closer to me... singing along, snapping her fingers, grinning a dorky Christmasy good-will-toward-all smile...

I kept up my grunting and grimacing, until the song got to the big chorus... you know... "I WANNA WISH YOU a MERRY CHRISTMAS.... I WANNA WISH YOU..."

So what I did, just before this part came out of the radio, I took a deep breath, and I sang, as loud as I could, with my face turned directly toward Maggie (road? who pays attention to the stinkin' road?) and sang/yelled/bellowed "I WANNA WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS..."

Maggie kind of melted into her seat, holding her hands up to defend herself.

But I have to admit, I did see a glimmer of cheerful Christmas glee in her eyes as she cowered...
Oh well...

Bryan's Mountain Tree Catapult

2008-12-01T10:44:00.003-05:00

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. My stepson Bryan flew down from Maryland to spend the week with us, and we had a slow, easy holiday. A friend of Kathie's joined us for Thanksgiving day, and we took our time getting things ready, working most of the day on a jigsaw puzzle. It was a pretty big departure from our usual run-crazy-and-get-stressed-over-the-holidaze routine. We actually got some rest :-)

Bryan's Mountain Tree Catapult...

I'm thinking Bryan was probably about twelve (he's twenty-five now... wow...), and we were camping in our favorite place in Maryland - Cunningham Falls State Park (just north of Thurmont, about fifteen minutes northwest of Frederick). We hiked up to Wolf Rock and Chimney Rock - two wonderful rock formations that reward you with breathtaking views from the top of the Catoctin National Park (about as close as Maryland gets to a mountain). I love that whole area and even used it as a setting in a middle-grade novel I wrote a couple of years ago.

Anytime we're hiking in the woods (especially up north, where real trees grow), we love to scan the trees for hanging vines, find one that will support our weight, grab as high as we can reach, run up the mountain and swing back down. If you get a steep enough slope and a long enough vine, you can get pretty high off the ground.

On the way up to Wolf Rock, I spotted a sturdy-looking vine, and my friend Lester and I tested its weight. Then we boosted Bryan up so he could go for a ride. Bryan was a mountain vine-swinging veteran of course, and he pulled himself up and locked his legs tightly around the vine. Lester and I worked together to carry Bryan further up the mountain so we could let him fly.

Like I said, Bryan was a veteran, so Lester and I were trying to get him as much height as possible. We worked together, sharing the load between us and grunting our way uphill. We kept going until we couldn't climb any further.

What we didn't notice was that the tree was fairly young, maybe only a foot or so in diameter. Instead of just pulling Bryan's vine back, we had been pulling the whole tree, bending it like a giant catapult. When we let go the tree lurched forward, sending Bryan into the air at warp speed.

Thank God Bryan was a veteran, because he had the sense (and strength) to hold on to the vine as it carried him probably about thirty feet into the air. Then, as he came back, he was headed directly for the tree. He was able to kick his legs out and bounce off of the tree as Lester and I looked on in horror and Kathie screamed "hold on!" while simultaneously glaring at me for nearly killing her son (not the first time I'd seen that look... certainly not the last).

Bryan rappelled off of the tree expertly and swung back down to the forest floor. His eyes were wild, his hair straight back from breaking the sound barrier. He wanted to do it again, of course (I mean jeez... who wouldn't?)

We decided once was probably enough for that hike, and resumed our climb up to the top of the mountain. Kathie kept Bryan within grabbing distance for the rest of the hike, and Lester and I took up the rear, our hands in our pockets, eyes down at our feet. But every once in a while we caught each other's eye and grinned. I know we were both thinking the same thing... maybe on the way back down we'd get a chance to ride that mountain catapult.

The Good Year Blimp Bomb

2008-11-13T13:34:00.007-05:00

One of my earliest memories... so vivid because I remember the fear, I remember trying to climb under our wooden porch to take cover from the giant bomb...

Going back in time, trying to do the math, I figure it was probably 1970, which would put me at five years old. We were living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. My dad had recently returned from Vietnam (an even earlier memory, I remember him walking to our car from the airport, carrying a pachinko machine in one hand... I remember being so impressed that he was able to carry it with one hand...)

I remember watching TV in that house and seeing newsclips of the B52 bombers dropping bombs in Vietnam, the giant balls of fire, the pictures of children running away, my parents' reactions to the horror.

I was playing out back... I still remember a secret fort my brothers and I had made in a little patch of pines in the corner of the back yard. The back porch was a short wooden deck, framed up enough so that we could just barely crawl underneath to look for creepy crawly things and hide from each other.

For some reason, I was all by myself. I remember a red cooler, partially full of water, sitting on one end of the wooden porch and tossing toys into that red cooler... I remember the splashing water.

Then I heard a grumbling motor above me and looked up to see what I thought was a gigantic bomb directly above my house. I thought it was coming right for my backyard, right for me.

Think about it... look at this picture from the perspective of a five-year-old boy...
I screamed... First it was just noise, probably an ear-piercing scream that got my mother's attention, but then I remember drawing a deep breath and screaming "Bomb!" over and over again. That's when I started trying to crawl under the porch. My mom came out and pulled me out and held me close and told me that no, it wasn't a bomb, and that everything was going to be okay.

It turned out that at that very moment, the Good Year blimp had just called in an emergency landing at a private airport near our house. It was having some kind of engine troubles, and it had lost altitude, and when it flew over our house it was only about fifty feet off the ground.

My parents were very cool about the whole thing... They packed us up and took us to the airport so we could see the blimp up close (though I had already done that...). I think we even got to meet the crew.

The story comes up every once in a while at family gatherings... always a reference to "Paul's blimp..."

But I remember the bomb. I remember that giant horrible thing nosing its way over our house, the grumbling sound of the motor, scraping the dirt with my fingernails as I scrambled to get under the porch.

Scary Stuff for Halloween

2008-10-31T10:19:00.004-04:00

I was a young adolescent when cable TV took over American suburbia, so I remember what it was like before we had access to movies on demand. I'll never forget a month or so after we got cable, coming downstairs one morning and seeing my sister eating a bowl of breakfast before school, watching "Terror Train" on TV, slurping away as if she were watching Saturday cartoons.

I also remember a few movies that scared the ever-living crap out of me as a kid...

The Exorcist... Linda Blair's purple face, the famous head-turn, the even-more-famous pea soup spew... the cold mist in the room, the monster voice that came out of that little girl... Still one of my favorite movies, and still scares the crap out of me.

Jaws... pre-cable, pre-VHS... the kind of movie you went to the movies to see... I remember that scene early on when the divers are looking through a shipwreck and the bloated, severed head floats out of a hole in the ship's hull. I screamed like a little girl (along with the rest of the audience... we all screamed like little girls...). But what I remember the most was when those giant barrels popped out of the water... and how I was so primed to scream that I screamed when those barrells (you remember... the ones attached to the shark, supposed to slow it down, but didn't...) crashed up on the screen... I remember people looking at me like, "Dude... that's not scary... you're not supposed to scream now..." but screaming anyway... screaming when the first girl got pulled under the water, screaming when the shark ate Captain Quint, screaming in the lobby when I slipped out to hit the bathroom... screaming during the credits...

But my screaming at Jaws wasn't as bad as my brother Greg's reaction to Friday the 13th. Now that was a fun experience... I remember during one of the particularly gory hack-em-up scenes looking over at Greg and seeing that he had literally wedged himself into the movie theater chair... you know, the way the seats used to fold up and down... he had squished himself down into the fold, enough so that he'd become one with the movie theater seat... his fingers were interlaced over his face, and he was peeking through a tiny hole, saying "Oh my God, Oh my God...." over and over again... I like that memory... I bring it up every once in a while at Christmas dinners and stuff... I get my kids to sit in a chair and pretend to be Uncle Greg at a scary movie...

But then again, I shouldn't talk, because that very night, after getting home late from seeing Friday the 13th, I dropped something on the floor in my bedroom, and it rolled under my dresser, and as I reached under the dresser to grab it my recently-escaped hamster decided at that exact moment to jump on my hand. I screamed like a little girl... I screamed loud enough that my mom came running into my room... I was still screaming when she left the room shaking her head back and forth... still screaming when I heard her yelling at my dad for taking us all to see horror movies... still screaming when I heard my dad laughing about the hamster....

Peanut Butter Cocoa Spheres

2008-10-24T11:54:00.004-04:00

Some Tidbitz:

Maggie and I zipped in and out of the grocery store last night to pick up some lunch and breakfast stuff for the rest of the week. We had to get out of there fast so we could get to Caitlin's performance in her high school's night of one-acts.

A conversation as we hit the cereal aisle:

Paul: What kind of cereal do you guys want?

Maggie: (scanning the shelves, laser target hits the Reese's Puffs, robot eyes instantly turn into cute little girl's as she looks up at me...) Can we get the Resse's Puffs?

Paul: (parental scowl) How many grams of sugar? (I established a house rule long ago that breakfast cereals have to stay under ten grams of sugar...)

Maggie: (snatching box, turning robot scan back on) Twelve grams.

Paul: (disapproving grunt) Nah...

Then we both saw it at the same time... the WinnDixie generic version of Resse's Puffs called.... called..... "Peanut Butter Cocoa Spheres"

Paul: Wow... check it out - Peanut Butter Cocoa Spheres...

Maggie: (giggling) That's funny... "peanut butter cocoa spheres..."

Paul: Yeah, and they're two for five bucks... that's way cheaper than the Reese's Puffs at four bucks a box.

Maggie: (seizing the opportunity to close the sale) Dad, we have to get them... I mean c'mon, they're called "Peanut Butter Cocoa Spheres."

If you look in our pantry right now, you'll see two boxes of Peanut Butter Cocoa Spheres, sitting proudly between the applesauce and the granola bars.

-----------------

A story sort of along the same lines...

Many years ago, driving Caitlin home from school... I think she was about nine years old.

Caitlin: (seeing the 7-11 sign down the road) Hey, Dad... can we stop and get Slurpees?

Paul: (confused) Today isn't Friday is it? What day is it?

Caitlin (sheepish) It's Wednesday.

Paul: That's what I thought... We get Slurpees on Fridays, not on Wednesdays (a tradition we started when we moved into a neighborhood that was spitting distance from a 7-11).

Caitlin: Yeah, I know... but I just really want one.

Paul: Sorry.

Caitlin: Hey... I got an A on a math test today.

Paul: Very cool! Way to go! I'm really proud of you.

Caitlin: So can we stop and get Slurpees?

Paul: No.

Caitlin: (brooding, looking out the window) You know what, Dad?

Paul: What?

Caitlin: I love you.

Paul: (smiling) I love you too, sweetie.

Caitlin: Can we stop and get Slurpees?

Paul: Nope.

Caitlin: You know what, Dad?

Paul: What?

Caitlin: I'm going to pick up my room today when we get home, get it cleaned up really nice.

Paul: That would be awesome.

Caitlin: So?

Paul: No Slurpees.

Caitlin: (long pause, then turns to me with a grin) Hey, Dad. We just drove past an orange sign with green writing, isn't that a reason to stop and get Slurpees? I mean c'mon!

Paul: (gripping the steering wheel hard, desperately trying to say no after being smacked in the face with incredible admiration for my daughter's strategic creativity, putting on the turn signal...) That, young lady, is a very good reason to stop for Slurpees.

Caitlin: (holding arms up in victory) Yay! (chanting...) I got my Slurpee... I got my Slurpee...

The moral of these lessons.... I am powerless over high-fructose strategic creativity.

Halloween Costumes - A Different Kind of Scary

2008-10-14T12:45:00.004-04:00

Yet another long ride on the roller coaster... this time a three-week long clackety-clack climb uphill as I fought through a monster revision.

But the revision is done, and I crossed the line from dreading the work to loving the story that came out of it. I clicked SEND a few days ago, and the manuscript is in my agent's hands, and now all I can do is try to keep writing and try not to carve a circle on the floor as I pace around the phone and click Send/Receive in my email over and over and over again...

So I'm not sure where I am on the roller coaster track right now... coasting a little, maybe ready for another highspeed ride... who knows... for right now I'm going to try to breathe, regroup, introduce myself to my family, see if the dog still recognizes me... that kind of stuff.

And, I will try to get back into my blog more often. I'm going to try to commit to at least one entry per week... we'll see what happens.

So, on to Halloween costumes...

The one I remember the most was when I cut up a refrigerator box and pasted tinfoil all over it and attached slinky-like dryer vent tubes for the arms and hit the trick-or-treat sidewalks feeling very much like something out of a sci-fi novel.

My futuristic fantasy lasted for about fifteen seconds - exactly the amount of time it took me to step out on my front porch, pillow case in hand, and fall down the concrete steps. I landed flat on my face (actually, scratch that... let's say "flat on my box...") and then I realized that there was a bit of a design flaw. I had cut the arm holes so my arms could fit into the dryer hoses, and it all looked pretty realistic, but from my position face down on the front lawn I couldn't reach the ground to push myself up.

Of course, my brothers and my dad, sharing the same serious problem of being members of the May family, couldn't resist the opportunity to let me stay there for a little while, face down in soggy October leaves, while they said things like, "Dude... check Paul out...." and "Dad! Dad! C'mere quick! Paul can't get up cuz he can't reach the ground from the arm holes he cut in his stupid robot box. Oh my God! Get the Polaroid!"

Eventually, someone helped me up, but I remember falling at least twice more... once right into someone's doorway as I was reaching for the candy bucket. But that was a different family, and they helped me up and made sure I was okay and said kind things to me about what a great costume I'd made and how I really did look like a Cylon Raider from Battlestar Galactica.

Another costume... this one's a little difficult to talk about, because it almost killed my father. A couple of months before Halloween my brother's gerbils had babies. They were the cutest little things, all pink and blind and naked and wriggly... Halloween came around, and I thought, "hmmm... I bet no one's ever gone out trick or treatin' dressed as a baby gerbil... look out Halloween world, here comes Paul the baby gerbil!"

So I found a pink sheet and tied it around my body and bunched it around my head and put on a pair of old gloves (not sure why I put on the old gloves... but I did...) and I found some pink clown makeup and covered my entire face with it. Then I jumped into the family room where my dad was sitting watching television with the Halloween candy bowl in his lap.

He saw me and raised an eyebrow. "So, Paul," he said. "What are you dressed up as?"
I gave him a Vaudeville response, opening my hands wide with a slight downstage bow as I announced, "I... am a baby gerbil!"

That's when my dad started choking on the Almond Joy and got to laughing so hard he had to spit it into a napkin, and when I was trying to explain how I'd gotten my idea, the whole theme behind the master project, my inspiration coming from the cute little baby gerbils and all that, he just kept laughing and laughing and laughing, until I said "whatever..." and walked outside to start banging on doors.

Now, you might have some concerns about my dad's seemingly unkind parenting skills, but I do need to say, in his defense, that I was about fourteen at the time... that's a true story. There I said it out loud, so I don't have to add that to the list of things to talk about with my therapist.

I feel better.

And I still feel like I could have kicked some serious Cylon Raider butt in my robot costume... I was bad-ass...

Inspiration

2008-09-15T10:34:00.005-04:00

Typing this from the library today... I come here sometimes just to get out of the house, to sit among people, but still be in the quiet.. I'm tucked in the corner, sitting at a little table behind the large print books.

I'm working through a monster revision, and I'm at the point where I have to keep reapplying the glue to keep my butt in the seat. I've heard writers talk about revision being their favorite part of the process... the time when they get to rework the puzzle pieces, etc... Hey, more power to 'em... for me, this is the part I have to really fight through.

I got to thinking this morning... in the process of stressing out about jumping back into this revision... I absolutely love the drafting process, the composition, allowing the story to simmer and bubble and swirl around and tunnel through my head and my arms and my fingers into the screen... I love it... it's what keeps me doing what I'm doing. The revision, however, is the real work... the part that takes the real discipline... and I got to thinking about this and I had a little epiphany... For me, the drafting is working on the inspiration... in fact, the continuation of the story is what inspires me... feeling character feelings, thinking their thoughts, using my words to bring them to life...

And even though I'm seeing the final product morph into an even better novel, the revision process doesn't give me that same kind of inspirational feel... so I got to thinking... maybe I'll spend a little time writing about things that do inspire me (before I start a revision session)... maybe that will give me a tiny bit more fuel to stay in the seat and keep cranking.

So... Disney World... we spent the weekend there with some friends this past weekend. They had a three-year-old with them, and I think if anyone really wants to get their money's worth out of the Disney experience, the best thing to do is to rent a three-year-old (they'll rent them to you... right next to the strollers and electric wheelchair scooters).

We were under the Orlando broiler the whole time, so we did a lot of shows in the air conditioning. Most of the time, I didn't watch the shows... instead, I watched Riley-Ann watch the shows. I saw the way she came alive when the Disney characters danced on stage, the way she clapped her hands together and yelled in all directions to alert everyone that they were there. I watched the way my daughter Caitlin pointed out Nemo swimming in and out of the big bubbles on the stage, and listened to the way Riley-Ann squealed "There he is!"

But even more than that, I watched the family right in front of us. They were from a different country, speaking Spanish, and I don't know how much of the characters' lines they understood... but I did see that they understood Riley-Ann. They were constantly turning around to giggle at Riley-Ann's reactions to the show. I even caught their teenage boy looking up at her with a smile on his face. For me, that's what Disney's all about. The highspeed roller coasters and yummy restaurants are a lot of fun, too... but it's all about the three-year-olds... If you watch them, you see the magic... and that's something that inspires me.

Gee... I'm so inspired now... I'm jumping up and down with joy about the revision I'm going to keep working on ... yeah... yee haw... that really did the trick... here I go... opening the file... duct-taping my ankles to the chair legs...

Ichetucknee Springs

2008-09-02T11:04:00.006-04:00

Ichetucknee Springs - (http://www.floridastateparks.org/ichetuckneesprings/)

These are stock photos from the state park's website, but they can give you an idea of how wonderful it is to float down this beautiful river. We've been to lots and lots of springs in central and south Florida, and we'd always heard wonderful things about Ichetucknee... so yesterday we got up and made it happen.

Located in Fort White, it's about a two-hour drive toward the center of the state (about twenty minutes below the intersection of I-10 and I-75).

Five bucks each to rent tubes at a place outside the park, five bucks each to get into the park, drop off the gear, drive down to the park's south entrance, take a shuttle van back, join up with the group, and you're on the water...

From the north entrance (which only takes 750 tubers per day), you can choose to do the whole run, which takes about three and a half hours, or get out an hour earlier.

While the first sit-down in the tube can be a little bit of a shock, your body gets used to the water pretty quickly (I was making jokes early on about not being able to feel my butt any more...). The water that feeds all of the state's natural springs is a consistent seventy-two degrees, but this mixes with the fresh water of the river, so it warms up a bit (a bit...)

Regardless, it's all so beautiful you quickly forget about the cold. The water is crystal clear, brilliant blues and aquamarine greens... overhanging trees and wildlife everywhere... we saw beautiful white egrets and ibises, approximately half a million turtles in all different shapes and sizes, giant carp swimming right under our feet (Caitlin swears she saw one that was more than three feet long), even a couple of snakes that stayed a polite distance away.

We splashed and giggled and snoozed and floated and screamed when we got hung up on spooky underwater reeds and roasted and squirted extra sunblock and for the most part just hung on to each other's tubes and stayed together on the gentle blue water.

Graveyard Bunny Rabbit

2008-08-29T11:34:00.003-04:00

Seventh grade... again... so strange...

A late Saturday night in the fall. My friend Andrew spent the night and we'd slipped out to find some trouble. We ended up sneaking around on the grounds of a church about a mile or so from my parents' house.

We snuck in and out of the shadows, not doing anything except feeling naughty for sneaking out late at night... Being on the church grounds when no one was there fueled the naughty even more.

Then we decided to check out the church's graveyard. At first there was just a basic fascination... the ornate shapes of the tombstones... some with crumbled corners that dated back to the eighteen hundreds... noticing some fresh flowers from a recent visitor... pushing fallen leaves aside with our feet to read letters carved in granite and marble.

I remember it being chilly... jean jacket weather, my favorite time of year... seeing my breath in the cold air... the foggy halo around a street light on the corner.

And then it got very quiet, and Andrew and I whispered to each other about the fact that we were standing on top of a lot of dead people... and that many of them had been there for more than a hundred years...

My chest tightened up, and suddenly it wasn't quite as fascinating... Every time I took a step I envisioned some horror movie creature reaching up through the leaves and grabbing me by the ankle, dragging me down into a coffin... I fought the urge to run... panic built up in my throat.

Then Andy took one more step forward, and as if he'd tripped a landmine, a rabbit shot straight up out of the leaves between us... we must have been blocking its escape routes, and its only defense was to go up like a bottle rocket... and it did, probably about three feet off the ground.

We took off (I don't remember screaming, but I imagine we probably were... that low, guttoral Wunhhhh! of an adolescent boy) running through the shadows of the church wall, crashing through bushes next to the lake path.. running and running until we'd made it all the way back to the basement door.

We slipped inside and crawled into our sleeping bags. I remember my chest feeling like it was on fire, so much cold air trapped inside that felt like it would never come out again. Pulling the top edges of the sleeping bag up against my face until there was nothing exposed except one eye.

And with that one eye I watched the swaying branches of dark trees through the window... the way they cast shadows on the cinderblock walls... I wondered if we'd run fast enough, or if maybe something had been able to follow us. At any moment I expected to hear the quiet scrape of long, dirty fingernails.

Back in the Saddle

2008-08-26T12:28:00.002-04:00

Well, "Back in the Saddle" is a little cliche at this point, cuz that's what the other writers are saying right now in pretty much every other blog that I follow... but it's true.

Summer swallowed us up completely, and we had a blast, but now the girls are back in school and the house is quiet and the dog's sprawled on the couch with a look on her face that says, "Dude... that was a great party..." and I really am back in the saddle.

In the past two months we've been camping and swimming and travelling and golfing and eating and surviving tropical storms, and it's all been wonderful.

I've read about five books since my last post, and I'll post info about them all, but I wanted to mention Freak the Mighty, by Rodman Philbrick, as one of the most beautiful stories I've read in a long time. More later...

So, I'm back... working on a revision of The Basement Class, trying to get back into a regular writing routine... cleaning out the cave that used to be my office... scraping my way back to my seat... remembering that the only way to make it all happen is to keep my butt in the seat... keep my butt in the seat.

Back with more soon...

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A brief tidbit:

Caitlin has been going through a stage where her most common response is "Your Mom."

A couple of weeks ago we were walking somewhere pretty, just the two of us. I put my arm across her shoulders and smiled at her and said something about how much I was really enjoying walking with just her, how nice it was to be together on a peaceful walk, how beautiful it was, etc...

Caitlin turned to me and said, "Your Mom."

She's such a May.
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One more tidbit:

On the morning that Tropical Storm Fay finally made landfall here in northern Florida, I took the girls to the beach to see the crazy waves. The storm swell turned the ocean into a wall of turbulent water. The foamy waves crashed all the way up to the dock, and the rain went sideways and stung our faces. Maggie picked up a piece of driftwood to use as a pretend microphone, and we made our own little news clip:

http://www.paulrmay.com/video/newsclip.wmv
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The Foam Rubber Fat Lady Bathroom Story

2008-06-30T12:44:00.007-04:00

I did a presentation for the Florida Writers Association this past weekend about writing for children. It went very well, and I met a lot of new writers in the area. It's nice to see that the FWA is going strong here in Northeast Florida.

One of the topics in my talk was about finding ideas with which young readers can identify. I talked about remembering some of the horrors of middle school and high school... those memories that haunt us and give us a chuckle at the same time... There's part of me that knows that by reading these stories kids can identify and learn that they will survive, because others before them have survived those tough years, but more than anything I think it's all about the funny story... Stephen King says that when he doesn't feel like he's scaring his reader enough, he'll go for the "total gross out." Me... I'm mostly after the laugh.

Which brings me to......

The Foam Rubber Fat Lady Bathroom Story...

I've mentioned earlier that my mom ran a children's theater. As such, I grew up in theater world... a basement and garage full of props and costumes, shelves stacked with broadway musical scripts, things constantly put off until we got "the next show" open, etc.

In one of our earliest shows, I played "the fat lady" in a skit called "Weirdos on a Train." I think I was probably about twelve years old. My costume consisted of a very, very large dress, a sofa-size piece of six-inch thick foam rubber, some bungee cords, and a wig. (I'm sure there was makeup, but I've probably repressed that part... it will eventually come out in therapy, along with the leprechaun costume from the seventh grade, etc...)

I remember thinking that the costume was pretty cool. With a little assistance from my brothers, I simply rolled myself up in the foam rubber, bundled everything up judiciously with the bungee cords, and had someone lower the giant dress over my head. Throw the wig on top of my head and Presto!... one "fat lady." (This was back in the seventies... long before having a "fat lady" character would be way politically incorrect.)

The show went well, the skit was a big hit, got a lot of laughs... my acting was superb (drawing on the Stanislavsky method... believing that I was the fat lady... being the fat lady...)

Then we found out that the local TV station was doing a story about us, and we were going to do our skit on TV! (I even remember the station... Channel 45 in Baltimore, WBAL).

We arrived about an hour before our time slot (I think we were going on live TV... maybe a PBS affiliate? I can't remember...), a big group of excited kids trying to keep quiet in the back of the studio. We giggled and tried to practice our lines... and then it was time to get into my fat lady costume. No problem... roll the foam rubber around me, apply the bungee cords, drop the dress, adjust the wig... Presto!

Everything was going along swimmingly (Kathie and I have been watching the new NASA "When We Left Earth" series on DiscoveryHD... wonderful stuff about the missions to the moon, etc... I was just joking around last night about how the astronauts would tell mission control that everything was going swimmingly... so I'm going to start using that a lot in daily speech... sorry for this tangent...)

So... we were all set... the stage manager came out, pulled his head phones off and said, "...five minutes, kids... and you're on... is everyone excited?" We jumped up and down and giggled... five minutes until we were going to be on live TV!

And then I realized that I had to go to the bathroom. Bad. Suddenly, things weren't going so swimmingly.

I ran (well, wobbled, I guess...) up to my mother and told her about my crisis.

"You'll just have to wait," she said.

"I can't," I answered, the crisis doubling the pressure on my bladder. "The skit's like twenty minutes long. I'll pee myself on live TV, Mom!"

"Fine," she said. "Earl, Greg, quick, take Paul into the bathroom and help him out." They both looked at her like she'd just casually asked them to grow a second head.

"Now!" she said, pointing at the door.

We ran for the bathroom (they ran; I wobbled... a quick, bouncing kind of wobble...)

There were no urinals... only toilets in tight stalls.

We knew there wasn't time to take off my costume. We'd have to improvise.

So Earl got on one side of me and Greg got on the other, and the three of us squeezed into one of the stalls. They each grabbed one side of foam rubber and pulled up, practically suspending me in the air over the toilet. I don't remember much of the particulars (even if I did I'm not sure I'd be going into a lot of detail anyway... let's just say mission accomplished). I do remember both Earl and Greg's faces... how they were grimacing with the effort of lifting up the foam rubber while being squished up against me in the stall... their faces turned away, eyes closed, holding their breath...

We made it back into the studio just in time for my grand entrance. And, being the refined stage actor that I was, I was able to shake off (pun intended) the previous crisis and jump right into character.

And yes, after that, everything did go quite swimmingly.

Knick-Knocking

2008-06-20T14:56:00.005-04:00

Been a while since my last post. The girls finished up their school year and started the very next day at a cool drama camp in Jacksonville. We're finally back in the groove a bit with our routines, so I'm trying to jump back into the blog a little more regularly. We get home from the drama camp at about three, and if the Florida afternoon thunderstorm clouds are not looming, we head for the pool. Life has calmed down a bit, and that's good.

I'm waiting to hear back from my agent about The Basement Class. More than fighting through ugly revisions, more than battling a rough bout of writer's block, more than any other aspect of writing... it's the waiting that kills me. Waiting, wondering, trying to keep writing, pacing around the phone, clicking Send/Receive in my email over and over again, stalking the mailman... Anytime anyone asks me for advice about writing I usually start out with, "... just try really hard not to go crazy."

I do, however, have a wonderful network of other writers who go equally crazy and who are there to talk me down from the roof of the Fine Arts building when I need it, so that helps, a lot. And I was smart enough to marry a wonderful woman who understands my neurotic writer behavior but helps me stay grounded at the same time.

One thing I've learned... it's all part of the process. It's part of the game. The wait, the stumbles, the occasional triumphs... The people who get published are the people who never, ever give up.
So, like my dad used to say, I'll just keep on keepin' on...

So on to Knick-Knocking...

What a gloriously stupid activity - a favorite with preteen boys... a regular part of my bizarre childhood.

Simple instructions: Sneak up to someone's porch, ring the doorbell a few times (or you can try an advanced, even more daring technique of banging on the door with both fists really, really hard) and run away.

So... the run away part... it's good to have a plan of some kind, like a general idea of where you're going to run, or a place to hide, like some bushes, etc. Because it's a lot of fun to be able to see your victim(s) come outside and stand with their hands on their hips, look around the yard, mutter something about those wild teenagers these days (and an occasional "... probably one of them damn May boys...")

But part of the thrill for me was not knowing what was going to happen until the second you rang the doorbell. Every once in a while Greg and I (and usually some friend who was spending the night... typically a previously innocent person who we'd decided needed some spice in his life) would sneak up to someone's front porch. Greg would start the conversation.

He'd stand on the porch and look at our surroundings. "So here's what I think, guys," he'd say. "We can either run for that big line of bushes over there, or just head right down the street, or maybe we can hide around the corner of the garage and run if they come out."

And I'd say, "I've got an idea..." and I'd turn toward the door and bang on it with both fists really, really hard. And Greg (who, I have to say, even in the moment of total panic, had the ability to see the humor in the situation) would smile and say, "Damn it, Paul!" and start to run. One of us would always have to grab the elbow of whoever was spending the night with the Mayz that night, cuz he was usually struck stupid, his finger pointing at me and at the door, his mouth trying to mouth words that wouldn't come out (knowing that all the time he was trying to say, "Dude, Greg was just coming up with a plan and you just banged on that door really, really hard, and someone is going to come to the door really, really ticked off at us, and I think we need to run, but I think I need some new underwear, and why did I think it would be fun to spend the night at the May house?")

We'd work our way around the neighborhood, hitting houses with nearby woods. Sometimes we ran like crazy; other times we'd hide and watch the people come out on their porch. I have a vivid memory of hiding in the bushes of a house next door when the people in the house we'd just knick-knocked let their dog out. Fortunately for us, the dog thought it was all great fun and just went bounding around the yard. Greg and I were probably twenty feet away from it at one point. I'm not sure what we would have done had the dog found us.

Thirty-some years later... someone knick-knocked our house a month or so ago... It was pretty late on a Saturday night... the doorbell rang three or four times in rapid succession... I swear I recognized that pattern. I knew from the moment I got up off the couch that it was some kids playing around. I opened the door, and there was no one out there except frogs and moths... I looked around a bit (I had to play along at least a little...) in the quiet darkness, wondering where they might be... if they were around the side of the house, plastered flat with their arms spread against the wall, hiding in slivers of shadow, their hearts beating three feet in front of their chests, eyes wide with fear, someone covering his mouth to cover a laugh, their legs braced to run... their bodies tense, so very much alive.

A Backpacking Trip Memory

2008-06-02T10:42:00.007-04:00

A Backpacking Trip Memory

A club trip in ninth grade... We pulled in late after a van caravan ride, somewhere in West Virginia, I think. We'd set up a hodgepodge communal tent with painter's tarps, and it rained and rained and rained. I remember waking up with the bottom half of my sleeping bag under water.

Our guide, a long-haired guy who said "Dude..." a lot, cooked breakfast - pancakes that he flung at us from his little camp stove. We caught them and ate them with our hands. I was disappointed that there was no syrup, or even a plate or fork, but I loved the warmth of the hot pancake in my hands. Goosebumps covered my skin. My bare feet were wrinkled from their all-night rainwater soak.

We hiked for three or four days round trip. Once I'd dried out I remember loving it. Being deep, deep in the woods, miles away from televisions and McDonald's drive-throughs. Cell phones didn't exist back then. We were truly on our own. There was a tiny element of fear out there, of course, but, for me, it was overpowered by a sense of freedom that kept me going on the trails, stepping, stepping.

We came up on a pool of mountain spring water, and our guide stripped down to his shorts and jumped in. A few of us joined him. I remember the ice-cold water taking my breath away, scrambling out of the water as fast as I could, wondering how anything this cold could come out of the earth. Scooping up a handful of spring water during a particularly hot part of the day, the way it tasted like it had come right out of the fridge, crystal clear, cold all the way to my stomach. Being warned not to drink too much but still walking away with a Slurpee headache.

We had a kid with us who was a diabetic. At one point on one of our hikes, he and one of the teachers and I were bringing up the rear. We'd slowed down to look at something, and when we started back up, he staggered a little bit and then sat down hard on the trail. I saw a little panic in the teacher's eyes. We both knelt down next to him (I think his name was Mark). His eyes rolled back slightly and he shook his head, like he was working hard not to pass out.

"I'll be okay," he said. "I just need to catch my breath."

But then his eyes rolled again. The teacher looked at me, and I could tell what she was thinking. We needed to get him up and catch up with the rest of the group.

I grabbed one arm and pulled him up, and the teacher got on his other side. Working together we helped him along the trail. He tried to step along, but toward the end we were almost carrying him. We eventually caught up with the group, and our guide gave Mark some saltwater and some kind of high-sugar food. He perked up right away (I can't remember if he needed insulin or anything, but I do remember his almost instant transformation after he'd eaten some sugar).

Ninth grade was a rough time for me. I was right on the edge - a good kid starting to hang out with the wrong crowd, desperately trying to be accepted by the other kids, but only finding that acceptance with the crowd that hung out in the parking lot.

I remember walking through the hallways back at school after the trip, still in a funky cloud, dropping in and out of trouble, wandering, trying to find my way through the social nightmare... I saw the teacher from the trip. She caught my arm in the hallway and pulled me out of the cattle run.

"You really came through for Mark during that trip, Paul," she said. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't been there."

I gave her an awkward smile. I hadn't really thought that much of it. We'd just helped him walk a bit. That was all I remembered.

I think that moment with Mark, and the five seconds it took for the teacher to say something to me about it... that may have been a turning point for me at that awful time in my life... it might have been a little buoy floating in the water, steering me for just that moment in the right direction.

I ran into that teacher in a restaurant several years after high school. She brought up that trip and told me once again how impressed she'd been with me that day, how she thought that maybe we'd saved Mark's life.

I gave her a hug. Maybe some day I'll track her down and tell her that she might have done the same thing for me.

Books on CD - My Magical Process

2008-05-27T11:33:00.004-04:00

Maybe it's just magical to me (most teenagers would probably respond, "like... duh...") but I think it's about the coolest system in the world.

Probably the most magical part of my system is that I discovered our county library's "Books by Mail" service. All I have to do is put in a request online for a book (which includes books on CD) and they'll drop it in the mail to me. When I'm finished, I simply take it back on my next trip to the library. It's wonderful. When I want a book right away, I'll reserve it through the regular process to have it held at our local branch, and then I'll go pick it up. But when I have time to wait for a book, I'll choose "Books by Mail" and they'll send it right to my mailbox. It's like Netflix with books, except it's free!! I've been having books delivered by mail for several years, but I just recently figured out that they'd send books on CD as well.

So, on to the next part of my magical books-on-CD process... I used to listen to the books on a portable CD player. Most of the time I'd have to hold on to it as I walk with the dog in the mornings... and I always had to remember to carry an extra CD with me, because the current CD always seemed to run out before I had turned around to come home. Also, it was a pain because if I wanted to continue to listen to the story in the car, or at home, I'd have to remember to take the CD player with me, swap CDs out, etc. All doable things (and I've been doing them for a long time), but kind of a pain, especially when you're at an exciting part in a story and you realize you forgot to put the CD player in the car.

So I got to thinking... my cell phone is a smart phone... a Windows Mobile 5 PDA complete with an MP3 player. I'd already purchased a two gigabyte miniSD storage card for storing writing files and pictures on the phone (if any of this confuses you, talk to a middle schooler for clarification).

The key part about this is that the phone is always with me, always in my pocket, wherever I go.

So I jumped in and made it happen. I used Windows Media Player to copy the tracks from the book CDs to my phone, and now I can listen any time I want. The headphones I use have a long cord so I can keep the phone in my pocket as I walk - hands completely free to let the dog walk me. I delete each track as I listen, which clears up the space on the storage card and helps me keep track of where I am in the story. I use Windows Media Player, but I know iPhone and iPod users can use iTunes exactly the same way (I know cuz my girls can do it with their iGadgets).

So right now I am just finishing up Sara Dessen's Just Listen (which is wonderful, by the way...), I have Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak already copied to my computer, ready to dump to the phone when I finish Just Listen, and I have Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why on reserve in the Books-by-Mail system, and that should arrive in the next few days. I try to stay at least a book ahead in the reservation system. The other cool thing is that I can dump the CD tracks down to my phone to listen to later, and then return the CDs right away... no renewals, no overdue fines, and, most importantly, no having to return the book before I've finished listening!!

I'm sure there are people out there who, like me, think this is about the coolest thing in the world. To have books on CD dropped in my mailbox, free of charge, to be able to listen to them any time I want (and I do... grocery shopping, waiting in a school pickup line, folding laundry, cleaning the kitchen, etc.) It's glorious, magical...

All this cool stuff aside, I still prefer to curl up with the book in my hands, feel the pages in my fingers as I turn them, see the way the words work together on the page, the paragraph breaks, etc. But I love the convenience of having someone tell me the story any time I want.. it's magical.

Cassius Cassowary

2008-05-19T13:46:00.003-04:00

I thought about writing this story last week... surfed the net a little to find pictures of cassowaries so I could include one... But then I got hung up in some of the stories on some of the sites about cassowaries, and I got to thinking about how stupid I'd been... how I was taking my life in my own hands that day... Who'da thunk squaring off with a big technicolor dinosaur bird could have cost me my life? One website had an account where a teenager had been split open from "throat to abdomen" by an angry cassowary's claws. Yikes.

So, I had my week to let all that sink in, and then I thought, "Ya know.... it still was a pretty funny story..."

Catoctin Mountain Zoo - a wonderful little place just north of Frederick, Maryland. We used to camp near there a lot, and I'd driven past the zoo a zillion times, thinking it was probably some Mom and Pop kind of place. But we finally decided to go check it out one day, and we were delighted with the number of animals and how clean it all was.

The cassowary caught my eye. What a magnificent creature it was... strange, shiny colors, the size and weight of an emu or an ostrich. They have giant, prehistoric toes and a strange bone-like crest on top of their heads. The picture below doesn't give you a good sense of the bird's size, but I like it because it definitely shows that these creatures have plenty of attitude.

The friends we were with walked ahead, and I stayed back to stare at this creature some more. It was eating from a large bowl on the ground, and I stepped closer to take a look at its food. It almost looked like it was eating small pieces of chicken, with the bones and feathers still attached. I moved closer, and that's when the giant bird stood up to its full height.

Now I can explain this next part fairly easily by saying that I was a young twenty-something - bold, daring, obnoxious, stupid (not much has changed twenty years later)... but I do feel I have to share my experience with swans in the past... I used to take bread down to the lake to feed the ducks as a kid, and the swans always tried to muscle in past the ducks. They tried to muscle in past you, too... and they'd snatch the whole bag of bread out of your hands if let them. So, over time, I learned that if I stood up tall, swelled out my chest aggressively, and stepped right toward them, they'd back off a bit and let us feed the ducks.

So this is what I did when the cassowary stood up tall to defend his food. I swelled up my chest, tried to look big and bad, and took a step closer to the chain-link fence between us. To this day I have no idea why I did that. I think I was just trying to be a cave man and express my dominance over all other creatures. Little did I know that it very well could have been the last stupid thing I'd ever done.

The cassowary stood up even taller, to a point where his head was just about as high as the top of the fence. And then he charged me, slamming his whole body against the fence with enough force to make the whole thing shudder. I yelped and fell back, and I watched the cassowary's dinosaur feet scramble for the fence, almost as if it were trying to climb, to jump over the fence and open up a can of whoop-ass on this tourist punk for messing with his food.

Kathie and our friends behind us heard the commotion and started laughing. Without knowing any of the details, they knew I'd been up to something stupid.

I heard them laughing, but I didn't dare look back. My eyes were on the giant dinosaur bird that was about to jump over his fence and eat me. I couldn't believe how this ostrich-sized thing had just grown into a six-foot velociraptor with a major 'tude.

So I backed away, and the cassowary let its feathers deflate back to normal, and I got up and joined the group and looked at some bobcats or tortoises or something... I stood in the back of the group for the rest of the trip, wondering if my cassowary was going to be waiting out in the parking lot at closing time.

Tidbits

2008-05-12T12:38:00.003-04:00

Caitlin's friend Summer shared this wonderful haiku with us:

Haikus are funny
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

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Maggie and her friend Esther took third place in the Florida State History Fair with their humorous skit about Galileo. We spent a long but wonderful weekend in Tallahassee where sixth-graders Maggie and Esther went up against eight-graders from around the state. They won for their grade, their school, their county, and then third place in the state! They did an awesome job.

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Caitlin and her ninth-grade team won the St. Johns County Battle of the Books. What a wonderful event that was. High school teams read books from the Florida Teens Read list and then battled against other schools to answer questions about the books. It was really cool to be in a room filled with kids and teachers and parents who love to read as much as we do. What a great group of kids. Caitlin and her teammates took the first place trophy back to their school!

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A joke...

What's green and fuzzy and has four legs and if it drops on you out of a tree, it'll kill you?

A pool table.

An HD DVR Remote for Life Experiences

2008-05-08T15:02:00.005-04:00

About a year ago we took the plunge and ordered a High Definition Digital Video Recorder. I love, love, LOVE the ability to fast-forward through commercials, pause a show to take the dog out, automatically record our favorite shows, etc. I won't get into my concerns about how much TV we're watching nowadays... that's a whole 'nother blog post on its own.

We were watching television one evening last week when the dog whined at the door. I pressed my trusty PAUSE button, jumped up from the couch, and led her out to the back yard. I hung out with her near the trampoline while she did her thing.

Ever since she was a puppy, we've given the dog a treat every time she goes outside to go pottie. It has been done so often it's almost like it's been stamped into her doggie DNA. In her little brain she thinks, pee, poop, treat. No exceptions.

So we're outside, she finishes up, and, like usual, she darts back to the house like a furry bottle rocket. The only problem on this particular evening was that neither the dog nor I realized, until just the very last second, that I had pulled the screen door shut.

Evening... twilight... a bright bulb on the back porch... the glow of the TV in the living room... all these factors added up to the screen door's invisibilty factor.

A state trooper would have clocked the dog's speed at impact at about eighty-seven miles an hour. There was a moment of horror when I realized what was going to happen, just a millionth of a second before she slammed into the screen. There was nothing I could do. I remember lifting my hand for a brief moment, as if I would have been able to stop her trajectory with a quick command, even if she were a hundred feet away from the door. Remember... she was going in for her treat, and she's half beagle. Ain't nothin' was gonna stop that dog.

She wasn't hurt... she just bounced off of the screen and landed back on the porch... she shook her head and breathed out some hard sniffs. To be honest, I'm not even sure she realized what had happened. She just wanted that treat. She ran around in a little circle and then looked up at me with a look that said, "Dude... just open the stupid door... please... there's a treat in there... don't you know... a treat..."

Now, here's where I run the risk of offending the PETA and ASPCA crowd... But, as a writer, I know that it's all about honesty... and here's my honesty....

It was at that very moment that I wished that I had an HD DVR remote control that I could keep in my pocket all the time... so I can pause life, back it up, watch something really cool again, back it up, show it to other people, save it to watch later, etc.

The dog was fine, but I have to admit that at that moment I would have paid a lot of money for the ability to back up her rocket launch toward the screen door, pause it just a split second before impact, and then page through frame by frame so I could see her hit the screen, become one with the screen, push the screen almost to its breaking point, and then get flung back onto the porch. I wanted to be able to save that little clip and show others... maybe send it over the Internet to my brothers or something... perhaps set it to music.

Dogs are so cool.

Marshmallow Fights

2008-04-21T11:58:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure when the official tradition began, but one day, many years ago, a marshmallow was thrown. It hit its intended target (probably someone's forehead, cheek, adam's apple...) with a pleasing PLAP! sound and a smoky cloud of sugar powder, and someone said, "Dude..."

And then it was on.

Gigantic projectile battles were a regular thing in my family (still are), and I'm not sure why the marshmallow fight became such a regular tradition. But it has, and it's a tradition we've shared with others. Every once in a while I hear about marshmallow fights happening in other places and I wonder if maybe we started that seed long ago.

I grew up in Maryland, and when Kathie and I were married we started a tradition of hosting a New Year's Eve party every year. Just after the stroke of midnight, before the "Happy New Year!" yells had time to echo, we pushed everyone outside and threw ten bags of marshmallows into the crowd.

We loved it when we had newbies who had no idea what was going on. There's the initial terror... the marshmallow battle veterans scrambling for plastic bags, shredding off corners with their teeth, dumping handfuls of ammunition, running for cover. But the newbies usually pick it up pretty quickly... you kinda have to figure it out when someone pegs you in the eyelid with a marshmallow. At that point it's either run inside or grab a handful and start flinging.

One thing about those marshmallow battles up north... Our battles were held at midnight in the middle of winter. When marshmallows were flung, they landed on frozen ground. Within seconds they firmed up, solidified. If a marshmallow wasn't picked up for more than a minute or so, it became a totally different kind of weapon. Those of us in the advanced ranks have a natural instinct for picking up the frozen ones. We know, because we've been hit by them. A frozen marshmallow traveling at a couple of hundred feet per second can about knock out an opponent. Personally, I think it's one of the very few drawbacks of living in Florida.

The first year after we moved to Florida we started our New Year's Eve party tradition in our new neighborhood. We talked about the upcoming marshmallow fight... advertised it a little bit. The response from the general public was that it would be a cute activity for the little ones. Won't that be nice... what a unique idea... that'll be fun to watch.

Oh no... they didn't understand.

12:01 a.m. - people rushed out of the front door and spilled into the street. My kids, being marshmallow battle veterans (of course), immediately started ripping open bags, zinging marshmallows at their friends across the street. The kids, of course, picked up on the battle immediately. For them, it was on.

Kathie and I jumped in, and for a minute or so the battle continued.

But then I noticed that most of the adults were standing off to the side, arms folded, nodding to each other... aww... look at the cute kids throwing the marshmallows... what a wonderful quality-time neighborhood family event this is...

Oh no... they didn't understand.

I stopped, scooped up a big handful of marshmallows, and I walked up to Tim, a neighbor across the street. He saw me coming up to him and gave me that half-smile, half-nod that you see when someone doesn't want to get up and dance. "Nah... you go ahead, have fun with the kids."

And I pegged him in the forehead, hard. The marshmallow plinked straight off of his head and landed between us. He stared at me for a second, caught off guard. The battle continued behind me, and I felt a couple of marshmallows bounce off my back (I always try to wear a black t-shirt, cuz of the wonderful artwork that can be created by the white dots of marshmallow impact).

Tim stood there staring at me. So I threw another marshmallow at him. This one hit him in the chest, again bouncing straight out from his body and landing between us.

He still didn't move, so I glared at him and raised up my hand to throw again. This time I was going to let him have it with a shotgun shell of about nine marshmallows at once. Finally, he darted to one side and ran for the middle of the street, where he scooped up a handful of marshmallows and began to defend himself, flinging marshmallows at me as hard as he could. The kids (seeing another adult in the mix) were on him in a second.

Kathie ran after another family, flinging marshmallows at some of the ladies.

And then the magic happened. Something clicked on Tealwater Place that New Year's Eve. Without warning, the adults suddenly realized that it was okay to do something totally stupid and have fun.

And then... by God... then it was on.

The battle went on for at least half an hour, until the kids could barely throw any more and the adults were sprawled across their lawns, heaving for breath.

But man... that was one heck of a battle.

We always work together to pick up and throw away the marshmallows (we don't want the deer ending up with big dental bills).

Maybe just for fun one year I'll throw a bag or two of marshmallows in the freezer a few minutes before the battle. Yeah... I like that idea.

Stay With The Boat!

2008-04-11T10:52:00.004-04:00

A lazy Sunday afternoon, paddling with my father on the lake near my childhood home. The peace and serenity of the nature around us warmed our souls, filled us with life energy to take on the oncoming week. We paddled quietly, watching Eastern painted turtles slip quietly under the surface of the water. Butterflies danced in and out of the cattails along the banks. We enjoyed this moment together, embraced the opportunity for spiritual healing.

And then, as most often happens in my family... well, then we got bored.

My dad saw a swan picking a fight with a duck on the other side of the lake, and he shouted, "Let's get him!" Both my dad and I knew we had no chance of getting anywhere near the swan, but still we jumped right into character... fierce members of the duck rescue brigade, paddling in precision, going into battle.

We were in our little ten-foot sunfish sailboat, but we had just carried the boat shell down to the lake for some simple paddling. No mast, no sail, and, most importantly, no center board (the part that sticks out of the bottom of the boat, down into the water, preventing it from sliding sideways across the water and preventing it from... umm... capsizing.)

So we paddled and roared like Vikings toward the swan and its innocent duck victim. The swan took one look at us coming and swam away from us, turning into the safety of a nearby stream.

My dad and I didn't stop. We kept paddling. Our battle cries carried across the lake. We hit the little stream at top speed and used our paddles to push tree branches out of our way. The swan was a quarter mile away from us now, but still we stayed in character, crashing our paddles into the water, heaving the boat forward.

Then the stream took a sharp turn to the right and we both leaned into our paddles to make the turn.

A collage of memories... mucky brown water rushing into the boat, the cold, the panic... thinking of all of the snakes and turtles I'd captured near the banks of this very stream... wanting to reach the bottom, but terrified of what I'd feel with my bare feet when I did... the swan stopping and turning around to watch, looking at us like we'd gotten what we deserved.

But the most powerful memory:

The stream in which we capsized was no more than fifteen feet wide. The boat itself was about six feet wide. Which means when we tipped over I could almost reach out and touch land. My body swam in that direction until I reached the bank, but then, almost instantly, my head overruled my body, and I remembered one of the basic rules I'd learned about water safety... no matter what you do, if you capsize, stay with the boat... stay with the boat... (since then I've learned that if you are able to reach out and touch land, the "stay with the boat" rule does not apply). So, instead of climbing out of the water I turned around (really) and swam the four feet back to the boat. I clung to it, assumed the pose of a water emergency victim, and started watching for the coast guard helicopters.

Now, my dad... My initial memory of this moment was sheer terror. Because he was gone. In the time it had taken me to do my stupid little swim to the shore and return to the boat routine, he still hadn't surfaced. Was he under the boat? Was he knocked unconscious? I was just getting ready to take a deep breath and dive down to look for him when he surfaced right next to me.

"Deep!" he said, wiping water away from his eyes. The word "deep" instantly made me think of bigger snakes, snapping turtles with monster jaws... My dad was a sinker, and when the boat capsized he just went straight down to the bottom. To this day I wonder if, even in that moment of panic, he had the peace of mind to let himself drop to the bottom in the interest of lake exploration... he was that kind of guy. "My God," he said. "It has to be fifteen feet!"

So here's my dad recovering from a recent catastrophe at sea, and he's talking like Jacque Cousteau.

It was about an hour later, when we'd tucked the sailboat away in the garage and returned to the same stream spot with fishing poles and fat nightcrawlers that I understood his enthusiasm about the water's depth.

Deep, deep water in a relatively small amount of space... we call that a hole. And down deep in those kind of holes live big monster catfish. The kind that will drag your canoe around when you hook into 'em.

We walked the path around that lake when we were home for the holidays this past Christmas. I pointed the exact spot out to my kids. Dark, swirly water, brown leaves floating on the surface. I could almost hear our Viking battle cries echo from across the lake. I remembered the terror of the initial dump into the murky water, the monster catfish, the thrill in my dad's eyes

"Hey, Charlie, Wanna Go in the Bucket?" 2 of 2

2008-03-30T13:42:00.008-04:00

If you walk up to any of my kids, or my nieces, or nephews and say, "Hey, Charlie...." they will respond with "Wanna go in the bucket?" It's one of those family stories that will never die. The line will come up at a holiday dinner, or an evening of playing games. Out of the blue, someone will just look up with a reminiscent smile and say, "Hey, Charlie, Wanna go in the bucket?" And then Greg will squeeze his eyes closed and grin and shake his head back and forth.

It was another stealthy fourteen-year-old commando maneuver... I was up in my bedroom and I heard Greg yell "good night" to my parents. I darted out of my room, ran down the hall, and slipped into his bedroom closet.

Again, I waited for the perfect moment. He walked into his bedroom and started clearing stuff off of his bed. He set his alarm clock. I was just about to throw open the closet doors with a glorious "Bahhhh!" when our cat, Charlie, wandered into the bedroom.

Greg (remember, in Greg's world he is all alone at this point) leans over and picks up the cat. He strokes his head. The cat purrs.

For some reason, there is a bucket in the middle of the floor in Greg's room. And, in a real matter-of-fact tone of voice, Greg looks down at the bucket, looks back at the cat in his arms, and says, "Hey, Charlie, wanna go in the bucket?"

At this point I lost it and started laughing so hard that I basically fell out of the closet. He was startled, but nowhere near as freaked out as he would have been if I'd been able to maintain my full-on "Bahhh!" attack.

Greg, being the good-natured person he is, was able to recognize the humor in the situation right away, and therefore did not try to kill me.

"Hey, Charlie, Wanna Go in the Bucket?" 1 of 2

2008-03-28T11:01:00.004-04:00

In addition to a million other forms of abuse, I made it a personal challenge to scare the living crap out of my younger brother on regular basis. Waiting at the top of the stairs, sneaking around the corner of a building, anything that gave me the opportunity to jump out with monster hands and a loud "Bah!"

The goal, of course, was to make Greg totally freak out. He had this wonderful scream (probably still does... I'll have to find out...) - a low, guttoral "Whuh uh Uh!" ... such fond memories.

(I have to admit that my girls do this kind of stuff to each other on a fairly regular basis and I get mad at them and tell them that they should be kinder to each other... hmm... I'll just let that go for now, I guess.)

So.. two little scare stories:

The first was the best, the ultimate Boo! of all times. I was about fourteen (making Greg eleven), and I had gotten home from school early one day. I had the house all to myself for about fifteen minutes, and I saw Greg through the living room window, walking toward the house. I darted away from the window and slipped into the hall closet, closing the aluminum folding doors in front of me.

I savored the moment, giving Greg some time to come in the front door, drop his stuff on the kitchen table, rummage around in the kitchen to make himself a snack. He thought he was completely alone.

Then I began my stealthy attack. Very gently, very quietly, I dragged a fingernail across the horizontal slats of the aluminum hall closet doors. This made a faint pinging sound, almost like a wind chime. I heard Greg stop what he was doing and walk toward the hallway. I could see him through the slats in the door, but I had pushed myself into the back of the closet, and there was no way he could see me in the dark. I waited, trying not to breathe, prolonging the moment.

He raised an eyebrow for just a second, but then he turned away and went back into the kitchen. I heard him open a cabinet and open up a package of bread.

So I did it again, a tiny bit louder, my fingernail flicking over the metal slats... ping, ping, ping, ping...

This time Greg came around the corner and walked right up to the hall closet. He stared at, confused. He reached out to open the doors and that's when I went for it. I screamed "Bahhh!" and slammed my fists rapidly against the closed metal doors. Greg about jumped out of his skin, and that trademark "Whuh uh Uh!" scream of his filled the quiet house. I opened the doors and said something cheesey, like, "Hey, there, Greg," and then I ran for my life.

I need to get to work, so I'll share the "Hey Charlie..." story tomorrow.

Some More Tidbits

2008-03-18T09:39:00.003-04:00

A conversation with Caitlin:

Caitlin: (fuming about something at school, pacing kitchen, throwing Tupperware containers)
"Miss XYZ drives me crazy. I wish she would just die!"

Paul: "C'mon Cait... let's not say we want someone to die."

Caitlin: "Fine, then I wish she would be mortally wounded!"

-----------------------------

A conversation with Maggie:

Maggie: (goofy grin, telling me about a recent sleepover) "... and then we decided to play a game, because that was funner than watching stupid movies."

Paul: "I'm sure I'm right in assuming that you know "funner" is not a real word, and you're just saying funner because it's funner to say, right?"

Maggie: "Of course, Dad. I'm only saying it because it's more funner."

Paul: "Precisely."

--------------------------------

Two jokes we've been kicking around:

---

What do you call a cow with no legs?

Ground Beef

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Little Nancy was in the garden filling in a hole when her neighbor peered over the fence. Interested in what the little girl was up to, he politely asked, "What are you up to there, Nancy?"
"My goldfish died," replied Nancy tearfully, without looking up, "and I've just buried him."
The neighbor was concerned, "That's an awfully big hole for a goldfish, isn't it?"
Nancy patted down the last heap of earth and then replied, "That's because he's inside your stupid cat."

---

Osprey

2008-03-10T14:15:00.001-04:00

We had some crazy wind this past weekend. Trees down, a neighbor's gas grill knocked over, watching our trampoline out back tremble like the space shuttle about to launch (fortunately, it didn't take off).

At one point during the day Friday, I looked out back and saw a red-tailed hawk hovering in the trees behind our house. The wind was so strong that the hawk was able to stay in one position, hovering like a hummingbird right in front of a tree (perhaps surveying it for nesting possibilities).

I've always been intrigued by birds of prey, particularly by osprey (commonly called fish hawks). Here in Florida we see them pretty regularly. I love seeing an osprey flap its giant wings and circle around a lake, watching, hunting. You can tell just when it begins its attack. A sudden change of direction, wings close in, and the hunter drops out of the sky onto its unsusupecting prey. A huge, violent splash, snagging the fish with giant talons.

When we lived in Tampa (in a neighborhood called Fish Hawk Ranch, as a matter of fact...) I watched an osprey land in our backyard carrying a fish. I think it was landing to get a better grip on its prey. I'd never seen an oprey up close like that, and I was shocked by its size. It was at least two feet tall.

Not long ago Caitlin told me she'd learned somewhere that an osprey will turn its catch face-forward, for a more aerodynamic flight.

I've never been sure about the whole reincarnation thing... it's always sounded like something that would be fun to believe in. But if I do come back in another life, I want to come back as an osprey. I want to zoom across the sky and float on the wind and drop into the water after some giant fish.

Yes, that would be way cool.

Some Tidbits

2008-03-07T11:32:00.005-05:00

A quote from Caitlin, as she was finishing up her chores:

"I can't wait until I have children so I never have to vacuum again."

------------------

A conversation during a haircut (why do I seem to have such strong "writer moments" when I get my hair cut? What's up with that?)

Hair Stylist (finishing up): "Would you like these hairs on the back of your ears trimmed up?"
Paul (awkward swallow): "Uh, please. Yes."
Hair Stylist (picking up the trimmer): "I was just saying to my boyfriend the other night, 'I see
some hairs growing on the back of your ears... you must be getting old.' "
Paul (no further comment)

------------------

Our cat got out one night last week and came back in with a bite on his chest. We took him to the vet, who thinks he was bitten by another cat. We've been tasked with giving him two antibiotic pills a day. This means that two times a day my house explodes.

I did a Google search for "give cat pill" and learned a neat trick. If you grind up the pill and mix it into a little butter, or even peanut butter (haven't yet tried that), you can smear it on the cat's leg, and he'll lick it off. This is a great method, except then I saw the dog following the cat around, so I've gone back to the two explosions a day method. We have five more days to go.

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Bionic Earl and a German Shepard Named "Wolf"

2008-02-28T08:52:00.004-05:00

My brother Earl was nice enough to write a comment after my blog post yesterday, so that got me to thinking about him, and that made me remember this story...

We were in our early teens, and we were playing a run-and-chase-and-hide-and-tag-each-other kind of game with some neighbors. Greg and I were sitting on our front porch, taking a break. Earl was still playing. He was sneaking up on a kid across the street. The kid had just run behind his house. Earl was tracking him, stalking him. He had his back against the side of the kid's house, his arms out to his sides, his palms flat against the wall, trying to be seen as little as possible. He side-stepped quickly toward the back of the house, but he had to stop when he reached the fence that enclosed their back yard. It wasn't a very tall fence - not much more than waist high. Earl stepped on the bottom rail and swung his legs over. Then he went right back into his commando stance.

When he got to the back of the house, Earl didn't waste time on a quick peek around the corner. He just went for it. Greg and I, mildly interested, listened for the kid's reaction.

We did not hear the kid's reaction.

It was fascinating... hearing the German Shepherd's three muffled barks before we saw Earl come flying back around the corner of the house. Hearing the sounds before we saw Earl in flight gave the whole scene a different kind of perspective.

If you've ever seen the "Six Million Dollar Man" you might have a chance of capturing the image a little better.

Though the whole event took less than two or three seconds, Greg and I both have frame by frame slow motion movies in our minds forever.

On the old seventies show, Steve Austin would use his bionic abilities to run at hundreds of miles per hour and leap incredible heights.

In that wonderful moment between the muffled barks and Earl's highspeed appearance around the corner, he transformed... he became Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. And Greg and I were sitting there watching it happen, enjoying it, wishing we'd brought a couple of sandwiches.

Now I know that writers sometimes embellish their stories, and I'm willing to admit that some of mine would have trouble holding a whole lot of water, but I am telling you in all sincerity that Earl cleared that fence with a foot or so to spare. Just after we heard Wolf's three barks, we began to hear Steve Austin's theme song.

Ba da da daaaaah . . .

We saw Earl, his eyes wide with terror, his hair plastered back with the wind. He seemed to float in the air, as if he were rigged to fly on a stage - kind of like Sandy Duncan doing Peter Pan.

Fuh-na-nuh-na-nuh-na-nuh-na

Wolf's jaws closed within inches of the seat of his Levi's, and for just a second we thought Wolf was going to jump out after him. Earl didn't slow down until he reached the porch. He didn't even bother to look for cars as he flew across the street. After the initial shock was over, Greg and I spent the next half hour or so rolling on our backs on the front lawn. Earl just sat on the front steps, trying to catch his breath.

Donna Gephart's Book Released!

2008-02-15T16:53:00.004-05:00

Donna Gephart is part of a group of writers in Southern Florida who adopted me at my first SCBWI conference. They were kind enough to show me around and introduce me to other writers. Since then, we've become great friends, and I look forward to seeing them every year at the conference.

Donna's novel just came out on February 12th, and I couldn't be happier for her.

The press release is below. Take a moment to check out Donna's blog, as well as this wonderful interview about her journey into publishing her first book.

Congratulations Donna!!

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AS IF BEING 12 ¾ ISN’T BAD ENOUGH, MY MOTHER IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT GOES ON SALE TODAY (February 12th).

Here’s a review from Publisher’s Weekly:

As if Being 12 ¾ Isn't Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running for President Donna Gephart. Delacorte, $15.99 (224p) ISBN 978-0-385-73481-3
Even though her breasts are “the size of cherry pits” and her widowed mother—the governor of Florida and a frontrunner in the Democratic presidential primaries—is rarely around, wonderful things are happening for seventh-grader Vanessa Rothrock. She wins the school spelling bee, and love notes from a secret admirer appear in her locker. Vanessa is proud of her mother's political success, but she grows weary of receiving motherly advice via telephone, e-mail and hastily scribbled notes. First-novelist Gephart adds a good degree of tension as Vanessa accidentally finds hate mail addressed to her mother; Vanessa is sure her mother is in imminent danger, but her mother—who happens to be meeting with Governor Schwarzenegger—explains that she receives dozens a day (“You should have seen the ones I got during the budget crunch,” says Gephart's Schwarzenegger. “Half the state wanted to pummel me to death with oranges”). Soon afterward, Vanessa begins receiving threatening letters at school from someone who wants her to pressure her mother into dropping out of the race. Gephart maintains the humor even as the stakes rise; she also successfully captures life in the public eye. She delivers a diverting story that also gives readers an intelligent look at primaries, caucuses and nominating conventions. Ages 8-12. (Feb.)

Milton's Garden

2008-02-12T10:46:00.001-05:00

He reminded me of Mickey Rooney... this little old guy who used to waddle his way to the bus stop in front of the senior citizens' center.

I think I was probably about eleven years old. I'd zip past him on bike on my way to and from the grocery store. He always looked up and tipped his hat at me.

He wore old khaki pants held up by suspenders, a grubby white t-shirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He was plump, but solid, and he always had something in his hands. Occasionally I'd see him whittling as he sat on the bench and waited for the bus.

We got to know this old guy. I think my mom probably introduced herself once at the grocery store. We'd drive by and one of us would see him and say, "There's Milton." We'd wave as we passed, and he'd look up and give us a smile and tip his hat and keep on waddling toward the bus stop.

One day I was walking in the giant open field above the lake behind our neighborhood. I was following a stream, just kicking through the weeds, climbing an occasional tree. The field ended at a road, and I saw a bus pull up at a stop. The bus started back up and I recognized old Milton's waddle. He had just finished tipping his hat at the driver, and he was crossing the street, heading for an open area of land designated as community garden plots.

The land was set up for people who lived in condos and apartment buildings. For a small fee they could reserve a little plot of land and come out and grow whatever they liked. I always thought that was a cool idea.

I jumped down from the tree I was in and walked over to the garden area, following Milton as he waddled to one of the plots. He held a small white bag in one of his hands.

I crossed the street and walked a little faster to catch up with him, but by the time I reached his garden plot, he'd completely disappeared! Gone, vanished. I walked around, scratching my head a little bit. There were some other folks there, weeding, digging. They hadn't even looked up.

I walked to the other side of Milton's garden plot, and then, out of the corner of my eye I saw his old work boot. I walked up closer to see what Milton had done with his garden plot.

He had dug a hole in the ground, big enough to hold an old lawn chair. He'd even dug a trench leading into the hole so he could easily walk in and out. Next to the lawn chair he'd build a little table out of old cinderblocks and a piece of plywood. Above him he'd set up some slats of corrugated roofing material... kind of a combination of a roof and and a lean-to. He had a couple of jugs of water and a stack of newspapers within easy reach. He even had a little welcome mat and a broom leaning up against one of the dirt walls.

I stood with my hands on my hips and stared at what he'd built. I instantly thought about Sam Gribley's house-in-a-tree in My Side of the Mountain. Milton had the coolest hideaway fort I'd ever seen.

"Howdy," he said, tipping his hat at me.

He opened the little white bag he'd been carrying and pulled out a big dill pickle wrapped in paper. He flattened the bag out on top of the plywood table and put the pickle down. Then he leaned back in his deck chair to reach into his pocket, producing an old Swiss Army knife.

He cut the pickle with confident hands and offered me a piece. I'd never been big on pickles, but sitting there with old Milton, in his cool hideaway fort dug into the ground, in the middle of a public garden plot... that made the pickle taste great.

And now anytime I eat a dill pickle I think about old Milton and his hideaway fort in the garden plots. I'm sure he's long gone by now, but sometimes when we're back up in Maryland and we drive past that area, I wonder if his hideaway fort might still be there.

(re: word counts... finally finished character notes for the new novel I'm working on... finally broke screen on the draft... cranking along... feeling good...)

Playing Lighthouse

2008-02-11T14:40:00.000-05:00

A long time ago I invented a game to play at the beach. I call it "Lighthouse."

I got the idea from that famous photograph of a guy standing on a lighthouse as gigantic waves crashed around him.

To play, you wade out into the water and find a perfect spot to stand. You have to spend a little time playing with the waves to figure out exactly where they're crashing. Then you plant your feet in the sand underneath the water, stand up as best you can (fighting the undertow), positioning yourself for maximum wave impact (face level is best), and stand still and scream as the wave hits you. The idea is to try to stand solid and withstand the force of the incoming wave. What happens most of the time, however, is that the wave knocks you back and upside down, forcing saltwater up your nose at high speed, slamming your back into the sand and rocks at the bottom, swirling and flipping your body over to your chest, and slamming your chest into the sand and rocks at the bottom. Then you stand up, pull your bathing suit back up and retie it, gasp for breath, check to see if there's excessive blood from the scrapes across your chest, and wade out to that perfect spot in the waves and do it all over again.

I love this game. Been playing it for years.

A proud, shining moment in my life was when my young nephew Jack went running up to his Aunt Theresa to show her the scrapes across his chest. He was about nine or ten years old at the time. Theresa was sitting in a beach chair with a book in her lap.

"Look, Aunt Theresa!" Jack said, pointing at the scrapes across his chest, turning slightly so she could see the raw skin on the back of one elbow. His hair was caked with little rocks and beach foam, his bathing suit sagged down with sand. "Uncle Paul taught me how to play Lighthouse!"

Theresa stared at him for a moment and said, "Jack, I have told you before. Do not play Uncle Paul's games."

It was a fine moment in my life. Yes, a fine, fine moment.

Miss Ashburn - Yet Another Seventh-Grade Memory

2008-01-30T11:19:00.000-05:00

Perhaps some day a therapist will explain to me why most of my memories, most of my writing material, most of my current level of maturity... why it all seems to center around the seventh grade. For now, I will just ride the wave and accept that my muse may very well be a pudgy curly-haired twelve-year-old wearing a Star Wars t-shirt and dark blue corduroys...

Miss Ashburn... for those of you old enough to remember, picture Bailey from WKRP in Cincinnatti... For a more contemporary image... consider a morph of Tina Fey and Ali Larter... a bookish, sultry smile behind black-rimmed glasses...

I sat in the center seat in the second row in her Social Studies class. I could paint you a picture from the memory burned into my frenzied adolescent mind. She towered over us and walked past our desks like a runway model as she handed out papers. Her long, dusty blonde hair fell past her shoulders, and she had this way of gently throwing her head back to one side to clear it away from her face. She wore large glasses, and as she spoke about the Magna Carta I pictured her on a Jamaican beach, flinging off those glasses and holding my hand as we splashed into the warm blue waters. Every once in a while she'd catch me staring at her with my mouth hanging open, and she'd smile and throw her head back and that beautiful wave of hair would fall away from her blue eyes.

So one day I decided to draw a picture of her.

It was a pretty cool picture. I worked on it all period. I watched her carefully, I tried to capture the way she moved, that hair, her Amazonian features... I leaned back a little in my chair and gazed at my final product. Not bad, for a twelve-year-old artist... not bad at all.

So I showed it to the guy next to me.

And he grinned and snatched it out of my hand and held it up in the air and shouted, "Miss Ashburn, look!"

So I jumped on him, and tackled him out of his seat to the floor. The class went nuts, and Miss Ashburn shouted, "Paul, get off of him! Stop it!"

I was throwing punches with my right hand and trying to get the picture back with my left. The kid on the floor underneath me was looking at me with a combination of fear and determination... He knew I was out for blood, but for some reason he wanted Miss Ashburn to see that picture.

I felt Miss Ashburn's fingers brush against my neck as she pulled me back by my shirt collar... even in the frenzy her touch gave me goosebumps. In the last second I was able to snatch the drawing away from the kid on the floor.

"He drew of a picture of you, Miss Ashburn," the traitor shouted. "Look!" He pointed at the paper in my hand.

I turned to face Miss Ashburn, my cheeks warming, tears welling in my eyes. I met her gaze and crumpled the paper slowly in my fist.

"Give it to me, Paul," she said. Not in a I-want-to-see-it-because-I-know-you-love-me-and-I'm-ready-to-run-away-with-you-to-Jamaica kind of way... more in a you're-a-little-punk-and-you're-in-big-trouble kind of way. The vision of warm white beaches and blue water was quickly replaced with a premonition of sitting in the principal's office, my mom walking in with her car keys, saying, "What did he do now?"

Time slowed down... Miss Ashburn glared at me, holding out her hand... the guy I'd tackled was still on the floor, still pointing at me... girls giggled behind me... the second hand on the wall above the chalkboard clicked, clicked, clicked...

So I stuffed the drawing into my mouth and started chewing.

"Paul!" Miss Ashburn shouted. I chewed.

She pointed at the door and told me to go to the principal's office right now.

I nodded, turned for the door, chewed.

Trouble was coming... I knew that much... phone calls, parent conferences... I figured it would all result in being grounded for a while... all that I could handle.

But my Miss Ashburn... she was gone... those moments we shared... the way she used to smile at me... the Jamaican blue waters.... chewing... chewing...

Pierce's Voyage

2008-01-24T10:08:00.001-05:00

A nice walk this morning... listening to Sarah Dessen's YA novel The Truth About Forever on CD... early morning fog soaking my shirt and misting over my glasses so I couldn't see... but that was okay, because the dog knew where to go... strolling past longleaf pines and swamp trees pushing out of the water... scaring up little minnows at the water's edge... very nice.

About a year ago my friend Pierce and I were reunited after not seeing each other for more than twenty years. We were good friends in middle and high school, and within five minutes of meeting again it was like we hadn't even left each other's side.

I grew up near Lake Elkhorn, in Columbia, Maryland. The lake was my playground... I spent countless hours fishing in deep catfish holes, pulling big bluegills and bass out of the water, trying to catch turtles, climbing trees and building forts hidden in the tall weeds.

There is a wooden dock with a boat launch at the lake's front entrance. The boat launch is a steep ramp that comes up out of the water. Pierce and I used to jump into the water (hanging our t-shirts on the No Swimming sign), swim underneath the dock, and then come up beneath the boat launch. It had been built like a deck, so there were support rafters that we'd climb up onto. It was great... like our own little secret hangout. People would walk on the dock above us, and they never even knew we were there.

I'd love to say that the lake wasn't nearly as polluted then as it is now, but I remember getting some nasty earaches...

The wooden dock had a lower area which was made up of three giant wooden platforms on the water. They were anchored to the main dock, but they were not connected to each other. I'm pretty sure this was done so that they could flex up and down when the lake froze over in the winter.

Pierce and I figured out that if we worked together we could turn those floating platforms into a kind of amusement park ride. We'd start out standing right in front of each other and straddle one of the seams between two of the giant platforms. Working in tandem, we'd transfer weight to the right leg, then slowly back to the left, then a little harder to the right, etc... Eventually, we'd get the seam between the two giant platforms to open up, and if we kept at it, we could bounce the platforms in and out of the water, and ride them as if we were standing on the bow of a ship as it bounced through a squall with ten-foot waves. I've taken my kids out to that dock, and we've straddled the line and stepped together and made the platforms splash in the water.

And then I told them this story...

I was walking along the path one day, fishing pole in hand, when I heard a yell in the distance. A long sound I couldn't quite make out. I looked out in the middle of the lake and there was a tiny speck of movement... what looked like someone in a white t-shirt, standing there in the middle of the lake. He was way out there.

I walked closer and the image started to come into focus a little better. It was a boy, and he was waving his arms. I started to understand that he was yelling "Heeeeeeeeelp...." and I picked up my pace.

Within a couple of minutes I was close enough to see that it was Pierce. He was standing on one of the dock platforms. He waved at me frantically, a look of relief on his face, like I was a helicopter circling around his SOS sign and signal fire.

"Pierce," I yelled, already starting to laugh. "What are you doing?"
"I was bouncing the dock, you know..." I nodded, because I knew. He was yelling to me through hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone. "And all of a sudden there was a big crack and before I even knew what had happened the platform broke off and I was out in the middle of the water."

By this time I was laughing too much to hear anything else he said. I looked at Pierce's location in the middle of the lake and glanced back at the boat launch. He had floated more than a mile away from it. I wondered how long he had been out on the water.

I yelled at him to hang on and ran home and got my dad. We had a little sunfish sailboat, and we paddled out and rescued him. I remember paddling for the shore, glancing back and forth between Pierce's red face and my dad's hysterical laughter. I thought about asking Pierce if he and Huck Finn had been able to stay clear of Injun Joe, but I let it go.

What a great memory... I don't know if I'll ever be able to use that story of Pierce's voyage in a book... but that hideout under the boat launch, accessible only by swimming under the dock... yeah... I know that'll end up in a story for sure...

Equal Parts Exhausted, Energized

2008-01-22T08:51:00.000-05:00

Just now starting to recover after a whirlwind weekend...
The five-hour drive down to the Miami SCBWI conference took me almost seven hours (tons of construction, trying to get to the hotel, etc.), but I'm glad I made it down for the conference.

Saturday was filled with speakers... among many others - Lee Bennett Hopkins, Sid Fleishman (Newberry winner for The Whipping Boy), Adrian Fogelin (Crossing Jordan) and a number of agents and editors.

I attended three workshops on Sunday. First was Adrian Fogelin's "Writing Realistic Fiction for Middle Grade and Young Adult Readers." I liked how she talked about really listening to kids (she told a quick story of hearing one boy say to the other, "You are so lactose intolerant!" and using it in one of her books). The second workshop, "Wearing Multiple Hats, Self-Promotion for Authors," was led by Nadia Cornier, a NY agent who offered some great tips. The last workshop I attended was "Free Money: Finding and Winning Grants to Propel Your Career to the Next Level," led by Donna Gephart. Donna did a great job with this and had a ton of grant info to hand out. I'll be applying for one of the grants before February 15!

My mom flew down for the conference. We're making it a yearly tradition. On Friday, she attended the Writer's Intensive led by Joyce Sweeney, Alex Flinn, and Molli O'Neil. My mom said she felt like she definitely got her money's worth out of the day-long intensive.

So I'm fried... twelve hours of driving and two solid days filled with information, but at the same time I feel like my batteries have been recharged. I'm back in my seat, feet up, dog underneath me, typing away...

That's the formula... butt in seat, clackety-clack... I guess the dog is optional...

Florida Regional SCBWI Conference

2008-01-17T12:14:00.001-05:00

Packing stuff up today to head out for the Florida Regional SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) conference in Miami. I've attended every year since we moved to Florida. It's a fantastic conference, and I always leave with my batteries recharged.

I'm driving down during the day tomorrow (about five hours from JAX/St. Augustine).

Here's a blurb about the conference:

"There is still time to register for the 2008 SCBWI Florida Regional Conference starting Friday, Jan. 18 and ending Sunday, Jan. 20. Speakers include famed poet Lee Bennett Hopkins, Newbery winner Sid Fleishman, teen romance writer Cheryl Zach, National Book Award Nominee Nancy Werlin, Caldecott winner David Diaz, Cartwheel Books Executive Art Director Daniel Morton, agent Nadia Cornier, Bowen Press (a new imprint at HarperCollins) assistant editor Molly O'Neill, Simon and Schuster Editor Alexandra Cooper, and Adrian Foglin, the first Florida Book Award Winner for YA. We also have First Page Critiques, door prizes and the Nautical Ball. We will be taking a field trip to Books and Books where all of our published authors will have the opportunity to do book signings and meet with teachers and media specialists interested in scheduling school visits.
The conference includes a first books panel, a Writer's and an Illustrator's intensives, three sets of hands-on workshops on Sunday. The workshops feature all of our speakers plus Elaine Landau on Writing Biographies. You can see the schedule and download information from our website, http://www.scbwiflorida.com/. "

Say this phrase...

2008-01-16T11:51:00.000-05:00

I heard someone say the following words on NPR this morning... At first I thought maybe it was a previously recorded interview and they were having problems with the recording... it almost sounded like a CD was skipping, but then I repeated the phrase out loud and I realized it was just all the S sounds together...

Give it a shot...

Say, "Help us as a society." Don't rush it or slow it down, just let the words come out naturally...

Consider this an amazing event in your lifetime.

Life as a Puggle

2008-01-16T10:59:00.002-05:00

Jerry is a Puggle. She is a designer mutt - half pug, half beagle. I spent a lot of time researching dogs when we decided to get one. I had always loved pugs, but they don't do much except love you a lot and slime their faces all over your couch. I was looking at beagles, too. I happened to see some pictures of puggles, and I read about them, and I knew I had found the right kind of dog for our family. All the love and spunk of a pug, without the respiratory problems from their flat faces, and the wild outdoorsy nature and loyalty of a beagle. After we decided on the breed, we started looking around. I really didn't want to buy a puppy from a pet store, so we looked at some rescues and shelters and I hit pay dirt with a pug rescue in Tampa. There she was on their website (named "Lucy" at the time)... a tiny puppy with big ears. We fell in love and did the two hour drive to go pick her up. It turned out that she was a purebred puggle (purebred pug on one side, purebred beagle on the other... I can't remember which one was Mom or Dad.... I have the paperwork somewhere). Within six months we started seeing pictures of celebrities in People magazine walking around with their new puggles (I remember Jake Gyllenhall having one...) and seeing them advertised in pet stores for more than a thousand dollars. We love knowing that we got Jerry from a pug rescue... and we always tell people that we had our puggle long before it was cool to have a puggle... We named her Geraldine (Jerry for short, after my dad).

A quick picture of Jerry as a puppy...

Yeah... she's a cutie...

So... some Puggle observations...

We crate-trained Jerry as a puppy, and for the first nine months of her life she slept in her crate at night. When we were comfortable that she wasn't going to chew up everything we owned in the middle of the night, we started letting her sleep with us.

At first, Jerry did great. She found a spot near the foot of the bed and curled up into a ball. But then she started being a bed hog. She loved worming her way between Kathie and me on the bed so she could get maximum body heat on both sides. This was kind of cute at first, but then she started to grow a bit more and it felt like you were waking up with a sandbag nudged up against your body. Every once in a while Kathie would lose it in the middle of the night and scream "Aaargh!" and kick her legs out to release herself from the bag of sand trying to suck up her body heat. The dog would go flying in the air, and I would crack up, and Kathie would growl and roll over, and the dog would look at us like, "Dude... what I do?"

So I worked with Jerry for a few days, and I trained her with a "Feet" command. When she started to worm her way up between us, I'd say "Feet!" and she'd give me a sad look and slowly make her way to the foot of the bed and curl up in her little ball. Worked perfectly.

This went great for a few days until Jerry started being sneaky. She'd go to the foot of the bed when commanded, but then she'd sit there and watch me, and when she thought I wasn't looking she'd sneak over to the other side of Kathie, and curl up against her back. Kathie didn't mind for the most part, but still, every once in a while, she'd freak out from the doggie claustrophobia and kick her legs out and scream "Arrrgggh!" and send the dog flying. It finally got to a point where I would say "Feet!" and Jerry would just get up and walk to Kathie's other side and curl up and go to sleep. I thought that was hilarious.

After a few more weeks of Jerry's bed hogging, we finally gave in and bought a little dog bed at Costco. We put it down on the floor and I trained her to jump into it and curl up to go to sleep when I said "Bed."

Worked great the first night. The second morning I woke up and looked down at the doggie bed and noticed that it was empty. I scanned the room until my eyes fell on a little sandbag-sized lump under the covers, between Kathie and me. The little punk had snuck under the covers in the middle of the night.

Now we've pretty much given up. Jerry will continue to sleep with us, on top of us, beneath us, between us... until once again Kathie can't take the creepy doggie sandbag pressure any more and explodes in the middle of the night.

I wanted to talk about how cold it is outside in the mornings when I take Jerry out to go to the bathroom this time of year and how we step outside and she looks up at me and I can read her face word for word... "You want to put your butt on that cold grass, go ahead, buddy... " but I've already spent way too much time on today's blog.

Here's one more picture I took when I was playing around with my camera's depth of field...

Glaring at Caitlin

2008-01-15T16:22:00.001-05:00

We were sitting at the dinner table last night, giggling about something, and all of a sudden Caitlin looks up at me and says, "What?"

I said, "What? What?"

She said, "Why were you glaring at me, looking at me like I just did something wrong or something?"

I honestly hadn't meant to glare at her and had no reason to, and I said just that. She let it go, and we went on about our dinner.

But then a couple of minutes later I glared at her, on purpose, just to mess with her.

"What?" she shouted. I said, "What? What?" She pinched her lips and furrowed her eyebrows at me, but I could tell she was trying not to laugh. I'm pretty sure she could tell I was trying not to laugh as well.

Then, another couple of minutes later I went for it again. But this time I didn't notice that Maggie was watching me out of the corner of her eye. During a lull in the conversation, I glared, and then Caitlin caught my eye and shouted "What?"

Before I had a chance to say "What? What?" Maggie called me out.

"I saw him!" she shouted, pointing a finger at me. I knew I was busted. We all had a good laugh.

Kathie and Maggie and I stood up to start clearing the table. Caitlin was finishing up and stayed at the table by herself. Kathie and Maggie and I put our dishes in the sink, and then in silence I tapped them both on the shoulder. I pantomimed, pointing to the glare on my face, pointing at their faces, and then pointing at Caitlin. The three of us stood next to each other, perfectly still, all three of us glaring at Caitlin.

There were a few delicious seconds of anticipation, and Caitlin turned around to see why everything had suddenly gone quiet.

She saw the three of us glaring at her and instantly burst out laughing.

It was a good Monday night family moment.

Sometimes I wonder... part of me thinks it's great that my kids are being brought up in the May family... part of me worries about them.

The Cap Gun Battle

2008-01-14T10:44:00.001-05:00

The Cap Gun Battle

As I've said in earlier posts, I grew up working in a children's theater. In late high school and some of college, I worked as the theater's technical director.

One summer my brother Greg and our friend Chris and I were invited to compete in a Chick-Fil-A sandwich-eating contest. I think it was a fifteen-minute time limit. Greg took first place with seven sandwiches, I took second with six, and Chris took third with five. The fourth guy in the contest was clearly out of his league.

Among the three of us, we collected prize money totaling a hundred and fifty dollars. We were already in a mall, so we went on a shopping spree, buying stupid stuff that we thought would be fun entertainment back at the theater, things that could be used as projectiles, etc. We found a toy store that was going out of business. We had already spent about half of the money – I recall a pretty cool tabletop pool table that Greg had found. But in this toy store we found a cap gun section. Everything was marked down by eighty or ninety percent. We couldn’t believe our luck.

That summer we were doing a show (I think it was Pippin) that required a very large stage crew of more than twelve people. Chris and Greg and I used the remaining prize money to buy about fifteen cap guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. These weren’t the cheap guns with the caps that came in the piddly red paper rolls. They were the good ones, with the caps that came in red plastic rings. The loud ones – the ones that sounded real.

We came back to the theater for a tech rehearsal. We had already made arrangements to have the crew stay after the kids left to work on some particularly tricky scene changes. When the kids were gone, we sat everyone down at the big table in the lobby. We shared our great news about the sandwich-eating contest. Greg showed off his cool little tabletop pool table.

Then we pulled out the bag of cap guns. One of my favorite parts of this memory is that there was very little discussion. The bag was opened, the guns were distributed, large handfuls of cap rings were stuffed into pockets, with a huge bag still remaining on the table.

We all pushed our chairs back, standing slowly, opening the packages, inserting the rings of caps. Then everyone was locked and loaded. There was a moment of calm as we stared at each other, about to embark on something that had never been done before, certainly not to this extreme.

I don’t remember who made the first move, but the lobby exploded. A dozen dorky teenage boys scattered, diving behind the concession stand, taking cover behind office chairs, screaming down the steps past the theater chairs, sliding across the stage floor.

What was really cool, though, is the amount of time we stayed in character – and these were the techie guys – the guys who normally made fun of the fru-fru acting stuff.

There were no arguments, no defined rules. When someone was in close proximity to you and pulled his trigger before you got a chance to pull yours, you were dead. If it looked like you only got shot in the leg, then you held a hand on the spurting blood and kept fighting. If it was a direct shot to the chest, or the head, then you died, with wonderful dramatic flair, sprawling awkwardly over theater seats, screams of pain. I have this great image in my head. I was sprawled dead on the stage steps, facing the lobby. Cap gun smoke hung in the air, the explosions still rang in our ears. The round had almost ended. Chris was whimpering as he dragged himself, trailing blood across the stage floor. Marty was holding his cap gun sideways, walking up to him, slowly raising his gun to finish him off. Above Marty, Greg was hanging half out of the spotlight booth, dead, his gun hanging from a very still fingertip. Just before Marty took his shot, John came flying out of his hiding place in the front row seats. He leaped in front of Chris, firing rapid shots at Marty. Blam! Blam! Blam! Marty clutched at his own throat, a look of betrayal in his eyes, and dropped first to his knees and then face down onto the floor.

At least that’s how I remember it.

Then we got up and did the whole thing again. Over and over again until the caps were gone. We were exhausted. I remember getting blisters on my finger from pulling the trigger so many times.

January Tidbits

2008-01-11T13:43:00.000-05:00

Some tidbits...

--------------------
In the car with Maggie just after school the other day:

Paul: So... what happened cool at school today?
Maggie: (looking up from her book) I got this really cool book that I really want to read.
Paul: Oh. Okay...

--------------------

Standing in line at a McDonald's with Caitlin... she nudges me and nods toward the assistant manager behind the counter.

"Dad," she whispers. "He's got a bar code tatooed on the back of his neck."
I waited, watched. The guy turned around to scoop some french fries. Sure enough, he had a bar code tatooed on the back of his neck. That led to a wonderful discussion in the car on the way home. We wondered if maybe it was a rite of passage for the assistant manager position at McDonald's.

"Well, we think you've done great over the past six months, so we're going to pull you off the hamburger grill and up your salary to $12.50 an hour. Oh, and by the way, we're going to need to tatoo a bar code on the back of your neck.

What is it, some kind of McInventory? Does he walk past a neck-level barcode scanner in the mornings? When he has to do a manager override for a cashier, does he bend over and scan his neck over the credit card machine?

What happens when he makes manager? Does he get some kind of CPU McImplant?

-------------

The girls both got "Nintendog" games for Christmas this year. The game allows them to create virtual pets on their handheld brainsucker video game doohickeys. I was doing something in the kitchen and I looked up to see them both sitting on the couch, playing "Nintendog." They were teaching their new puppies tricks, pushing buttons to reward them, helping them learn to respond to voice commands. Caitlin called me over to show me how her virtual puppy was able to retrieve a frisbee. Maggie showed me how she'd taught her puppy to lift its paw for a handshake.

I looked over at Jerry, our not-so-virtual dog. She sat on the couch on the other side of the room, watching the girls play with their virtual dogs. She had her head down on her paws, a half-interested eyebrow raised.

I just thought that was a funny moment.

My Slide of the Mountain

2008-01-07T14:00:00.001-05:00

We're back home from our trip to Maryland. We went skiing while we were there, and that reminded me of this true story...

I guess it was about ten years ago... We were skiing at Wisp, a wonderful resort in Deep Creek, Maryland, about three hours west of Baltimore.

I was coming down an intermediate slope when I noticed a young girl off to the side. She sat in the snow, crying, trying to snap her boot into one of her skis. I looked around and saw that she was all by herself, so I stopped to help.

If you've skied before, then you know that skis have these little doohickeys that pop out when your boot comes out of the binding. They're like tiny little outriggers off the center of the ski, designed to grip the snow and keep the ski from sliding all the way down the mountain and impaling someone at the bottom.

When I stopped to help this little girl, I popped off my skis so I could walk up next to her. I tried to cheer her up a little bit, helped her to her feet, snapped her boot into her ski, and patted her on the back. She gave me a weak smile and snow-plowed down the mountain. I turned back toward my skis, feeling warm and fuzzy about my good deed for the day.

There was only one ski. I turned around, looking frantically for the other. I peered down the ski slope, and I tried to see the bottom, but it was a long run - probably well over a mile. I had a brief image of some ski patrol guy at the bottom of the hill staggering around with my ski sticking out of his head... I hadn't even seen (or heard) the ski take off. It had just silently escaped.

So... there I was a the top of a pretty difficult run with one ski. I'd been skiing a few times before that trip, so I wasn't a beginner, but there was no way I would be able to get down the hill on only one ski. I'd have to walk.

Those who have skied know that ski boots are designed to pitch you forward, which doesn't work well for walking down a steep, icy hill. So it was very slow going.

Then I got an idea.

Why couldn't I just sit down and slide a bit? I was wearing waterproof snow pants... they'd slide okay... I could just start out slow, drag my poles in case I picked up any speed. That was the ticket... I could just slide my way down the hill and retrieve my ski.

So I did just that. I sat down. I pushed myself forward a little bit. I started to move, very slowly, but I was moving, and it beat the heck out of walking in those snow boots. This would be fine... yeah, just perfect. I'd be down in no time, snap my skis back up, and catch up with everyone else at the top for another run. Yeah... that would work.

As I slid, I heard a voice above me.... some lady yelling down to me from the passing ski lift.

"I wouldn't do that," she said. "It's really icy there, by the terrain park." I looked up and waved, and I gave the lady a confident smile. I knew what I was doing. I had things under control. I was steering just fine with my little ski-pole outriggers. I didn't need any advice from the peanut gallery on the ski lift. (By "terrain park," by the way, the lady was referring to a steep section of the hill with jumps, moguls, a halfpipe... things for the expert skiers and snowboarders to play with.)

So then I started going faster. I'm not sure when I realized I was out of control, but I do remember dropping the ski poles pretty quickly. I have no idea when I let go of my other ski. What I do remember was a snowboarder up on the lift yelling down to me, "Dude... that's really icy down there. Don't go in there..." Even in my total loss of control, starting to spin now so that my back was downhill, I waved up at the snowboarder, giving him a confident grin and a thumbs up... no problem, Dude... done this millions of times... old school stuff, really...

Like the guys who used to go over Niagara Falls in barrels, the current swept me downstream, right into the icy halfpipe (which, I learned later, had been closed to the public because of icy conditions).

By this time I was trying to take action. I had rolled over onto my stomach, still spinning, and I was trying to drag the toes of my boots into the snow. Then I flipped over onto my back and tried to do the same with my heels. Then I went back over onto my stomach and tried to scrape my fingers into the ice... nothing would grip... I kept sliding, and spinning, and sliding. I had suddenly become part of a Mr. Bean movie.

And then I hit the moguls (this is a true story...)

Moguls are bumps on the slopes... lots of fun for advanced skiers... quite the challenge to fly through them... When you are sliding and rolling and spinning down the hill in a total freefall, however, the moguls become launchpads. I am not exaggerating when I say that my body completely left the ground and then slammed into the ice... more than once... I hit the ground so hard it knocked the wind out of me.

I heard someone laughing above me, and even then I tried to lift my hand to give a confident thumbs up, but I was too busy trying to scrape at the ice with my fingers.

Another set of moguls... Swoosh! right up off the ramp and into the air, spinning a hundred and eighty degrees in the air before I landed flat on the ice, gritting my teeth just before impact...

Finally, mercifully, I slowed down and slid to a stop at the base of the mountain, a few feet from the ski check area. Above me, I heard people on the lift cheering and applauding... and laughing hysterically.

I stood and brushed myself off. No problem... been through that lots of times. Ready to do it all again... Just need to find my skis, and my poles...

Christmas Travel

2007-12-28T14:35:00.000-05:00

An uncontrollable journey through high-calorie complex carbohydrates... garlic mashed potatoes, cheesecake, cheesecake, cheesecake, pecan pie, chocolate bread pudding... up until two am, sleeping until ten, waking up and cutting another slab of cheesecake...

But on top of it all lots of family and laughter... laughing late into the night, so much that my stomach muscles ache in the middle of the night.... people we haven't seen in years dropping into our lives... five seconds of hellos and then we are together as if we'd never been apart... laughter, cheesecake, pecan pie...

Early morning fog as we left for the twelve-hour drive... very low visibility for the first couple of hours (left at 6:30am for the drive from St. Augustine to Maryland)... About three hours of rain in the last leg of the drive, but overall a bearable journey.

Listened to two books on CD with Kathie and the girls as we drove up... the first was Homeless Bird, by Gloria Whalen, which Caitlin and I had read, but we all loved listening to it. A story of love and personal triumph and glorious independence and finding "that thing" in your life... Whalen's writing is paragraph after paragraph of poetry. Then we listened to The Silent Boy, by Lois Lowry (The Giver, Number the Stars, etc.)... a gut-wrenching story about looking past the surface to see what people are really made of... beautiful setting in 1910, daughter of a doctor, an autistic boy who loves animals and tries to help.

We have five more books on CD to listen to on the way back... Joan Bauer's Hope Was Here, a couple of Sharon Creech novels we haven't read (not Walk Two Moons or Ruby Holler... wonderful books we've already read...), Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, and another one I can't remember... love listening to books on CD as we drive... makes the time go so much faster, and it always leads to good family discussions about the books.

Back to another holiday party... maybe I'll see if I can find some cheesecake.

Greg's Tissue Box Mukluk Shoes at the 7-11

2007-12-21T09:58:00.000-05:00

My brother Greg is a clown... really. He travelled for a number of years with Ringling Brothers, and now he runs his own clowning business. I could write nothing but Greg stories and never run out of fuel, but that's something we've been bugging him for years to do on his own.

This is my absolute favorite Greg May story. I actually wrote it into a novel manuscript a few years ago... I may dust that off and see if I can make something happen with it some day.

Greg and our friend Chris and I were in our late teens, all working in the theater together. We were pulling an all-nighter to finish some scenery (pretty standard practice when you work in theater). We took a break at like two in the morning to go get something to eat. The only place open was a twenty-four-hour 7-11.

As kids, we May boys loved to run around in bare feet. Earl and I eventually started wearing shoes (you know, to like, drive... date women, etc...) but Greg was in his early twenties before he ever started wearing them regularly.

So, it was no surprise that when we jumped out of the car to walk into the 7-11 at two in the morning, Greg's bare feet were slap-slapping their way across the parking lot.

The old guy behind the counter snagged him right as we were walking through the door.

“Sign says no shirt, no shoes, no service, Boy. ‘Less you can’t read."

Greg didn’t respond. He just walked slowly out of the store, staring down the guy behind the counter as he went.

Chris and I giggled a little bit, and we spent a couple of minutes looking through the shelves of junk food. I figured we'd just grab something for Greg and meet him back at the car, but then we heard the front door of the store open.

Greg walked through the door and took two clumping steps toward the counter. The old guy was busy ringing up something for another customer, but he peered over the counter at Greg, who was standing there in front of him with his hands on his hips.

There were no words. Greg had a look on his face that said, Go ahead, say something about my shoes.

I heard Chris bust out laughing, and I looked down at Greg's feet. He’d gone out to the car to build himself some shoes.

He had wrapped an old towel around one foot so that it looked like a cast for a broken ankle, or maybe one of those Eskimo mukluk boots. He had tied it off with big pieces of twine, and his heel and toes were completely covered.

That was pretty funny, but his other foot took the prize. He had stepped into an old tissue box and used the same twine to tie that on to his foot in big loops. Greg walked around in a small circle. The clomping sound of the tissue box alternated with the soft pad of his homemade mukluk. Then he stopped and glared at the guy behind the counter.

The old guy’s eyes went from the makeshift shoes to the hands on Greg's hips, to the challenging eyebrows on Greg's face. The customer at the counter asked the old guy if he had any maps, and he took a while to respond. For a second, I thought he was going to kick Greg back out of the store, but then he gave up and turned to answer the question.

Greg had a victorious look on his face as he clomped over to join us in the snack aisle. Chris was laughing so hard I thought he was going to die.

A Cookie in the Darkness

2007-12-17T12:06:00.000-05:00

My first year of college. I can't remember the class... maybe Communications. Once a week the instructor would have some kind of audio/visual presentation, and she'd ask students to bring in snacks for the class, just for fun.

One day the instructor was setting up a movie (the kind that we used in the Jurassic period, with reels and flickering lights) and one of the students was walking around with a tray of freshly baked cookies. She reached my desk, and I thanked her, grabbing two cookies and chomping one of them in half before she walked away.

The instructor was fiddling with the film projector, so I watched that tray of cookies. I saw the tray being offered to a young woman in the next row. She was big... probably about two of me put together - that kind of big. When the cookies were offered, she smiled graciously and reached out gently to pick one up. She held her pinky out the whole time... polite, well-mannered. She said thank you and brought the cookie to her lips. She took a tiny bite... a nibble that barely cut into the cookie's curved edge. Then she put it down on a napkin and gave it a little pat with her fingertips. Cute, dainty... saving it for the movie.

From that moment on, my eyes never left her. I watched that cookie, I watched her face, her eyes. I thought about that dainty little bite. I knew that cookie was about to be vortexed. I knew it. I couldn't wait to see it happen.

The lights went out and the film projector chugged into motion. Images flickered on the screen.

My eyes had just barely adjusted to the darkness when I saw her reach for the cookie. Her hand moved quickly, methodically... there was no longer any hint of a dainty pinky.

I watched her eyes. They closed into robotic slits, and she scanned the room with a quick glance to the left and then back to the right.

Then in one fluid, violent motion she shoved the cookie in her mouth. I was torn... part of me almost felt sorry for the cookie - it was like watching some animal get captured and eaten in high definition on the Discovery channel. But a bigger part of me wanted to jump up and cheer. I had predicted it. I had seen that dainty little pinky nibble, and I had thought, "yeah, right... like that cookie isn't dead meat the second the lights go out." And then I watched, and it all paid off!

I love that memory... and it's been burned into a sick part of my brain for more than a quarter of a century. The darkness, her serial-killer eyes, the old film projector flicking images... the poor, innocent cookie.

The Luray Caverns Burp

2007-12-12T16:37:00.000-05:00

This is a story I wrote about ten years ago. It's part of a collection of family stories I may dust off one day... maybe clean them up and add some more and try to make something happen with it. But this is one's my favorite...

The Luray Caverns Burp

Five hundred feet below the earth's surface rests a world of ancient beauty. Millions of years' worth of natural artwork surrounds each visitor. It is cold, and you can't help but wonder what might happen if for some reason the entrance caves in. The May family had decided to visit Luray Caverns, near Shenandoah Drive, somewhere in Virginia. I think I was probably about sixteen years old.

After visiting the cute little souvenir shops and checking out the displays that explain the history of the place, we were led, ticket stubs in hand, to a door which looked very much like the door to a rest room. But as we pushed through it, a cold, moist waft of air greeted us. It was an ancient, earthy smell. We could feel the temperature drop as we went down the steps.

Then the people in line gasped, one by one, as they hit the first stair that brought the caverns into sight. It was amazing. I remember thinking about Injun' Joe almost immediately - wondering if Tom was off in one of the shadows, holding Becky close and telling her that everything would be okay.

Random sculptures, millions of years old, surrounded us. It was like an entire world molded in plastic - a life-size dribbled sand castle. Drips of water plucked and plopped like members of a secret choir. Pools of water, some perfectly still for thousands of years, made exact replica reflections of the rock formations above them.

We were overwhelmed by the beauty, and each of us took on a silent respect for the miracle of nature that surrounded us.... probably for as much as ten minutes.

We'd been on line to climb down the stairs into these caverns for over an hour. The initial exposure to the incredible world beneath the earth's surface was a moment none of us will forget. But after fifteen minutes or so, if you'd seen one sand dribble, you'd seen 'em all. We'd oohed and ahhed at the stalactites and stalagmites as we first walked in, and then, well then we got bored.

If you think about it, taking the May family a few hundred feet underground with a bunch of innocent bystanders for more than twenty minutes or so really isn't a good idea at all.

As our tour guide was pointing out a rock formation that had taken millions of years to look just like an egg cooked sunny side up, Dad decided to show his only daughter some fatherly love.

Without taking his eyes off the tour guide, he bent down, placed his lips a half an inch from Julie's left ear, and let out a quiet but resonant belch. Not a big deal in the May family - usually an action that would earn a quick elbow in the ribs and a "Jeez, Dad!" But I must remind you, it was quite dark in this underground cavern.

He turned to Julie, certainly looking forward to a reaction to his display of affection. But Julie was not Julie. Julie was standing on the other railing, next to Mom.

The Julie-sized woman returned my Dad's look with one of horror. Without even taking the time to wipe her ear off, she glanced to the right and left, slowly backed away from Dad, and spent the rest of the tour trailing behind the group.

Dad wasn't quite sure what to do or say. He decided to just act like it never happened. What was he going to say: "Sorry, I thought you were my daughter!"?

Later that evening, we saw Dad's burp victim sitting at another table in the restaurant where ate dinner. Dad tried his best to scrunch down in his chair and go unnoticed.

Colin Firth's Wet White Shirt

2007-12-10T12:01:00.000-05:00

A few years ago Kathie and Caitlin were watching Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth as Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Kathie's always had a thing for Colin Firth... I can handle that. What I couldn't handle was my then twelve-year-old daughter sharing that thing for Colin Firth. They sat together on the couch, watching Jane Austen's love story unfold, munching popcorn, their heads cocked to one side, eyebrows arched, loving smiles on their lips. They turned to each other every once in a while to breathe out a longing sigh as Colin Firth's dorky face entered a scene.

While they appreciated the classic love story, Kathie had an ulterior motive behind renting the movie. She'd read somewhere that there was a scene where Colin Firth falls into a lake while wearing a white dress shirt. And he comes up out of the water, dripping wet, the white fabric pulled tight against his dorky gorgeous chest, sure to make their heads loll to the other shoulder, those silly smiles, glazed eyes...

We were renting all our movies from Netflix at the time, but there was a problem. Apparently the movie was split over two DVDs. Colin Firth's famous dorky wet gorgeous chest scene was on the second DVD, and Netflix had only sent the one DVD! Kathie and Caitlin totally freaked out.

"What?" Kathie shouted. "What about that scene? That scene where he gets up out of the water wearing that wet white dress shirt? How could Netflix do this to us?" She was standing up in the middle of the living room, shaking a fist at the TV.

Caitlin's hands gripped the rim of the popcorn bowl, looking like she might launch it at any second.

"No fair!" she shouted.

I knew I had to get involved.

I ran into the bedroom and I found a white dress shirt. I put it on quickly, leaving the top three or four buttons undone for maximum dorky gorgeous chest exposure. I ran out into the living room, threw open the sliding glass door that led to the pool in the backyard, and jumped into the water.

When I climbed out (leaving the sticky wet shirt clinging to my chest as much as possible) I strutted back into the living room and stood with my hands on my hips, lifting my chin up in my best attempt at nineteenth-century British arrogance.

When Kathie and Caitlin finally stopped laughing, Kathie smiled and patted my back. She said she appreciated my efforts and asked me to go change because I was dripping all over the living room floor. I spun on my heel and exited the room, keeping my chin up, flexing my muscles as I walked.

Colin Firth... what a dorky name. I bet he got beat up a lot in middle school.

"Stupid" the Cat and Maggie's Wooden Spoon

2007-12-07T17:11:00.000-05:00

We gave Caitlin a kitten for her sixth birthday, and Caitlin named her Jessica. Jessica was wonderful for about six months, and then something happened. I'm not completely sure... maybe she got into some fertilizer in the lawn, or snacked on some cleaning chemicals... or maybe it was just genetic. But Jessica went from cute and fuzzy to fat and stupid. Kathie's brother has a good expression... he says "... it's like someone went and hit her with a dumb stick..." That about covers it.

Our son Bryan nicknamed Jessica "Speed Bump" because of the way she would run in front of you (often on the stairs... often while you were carrying something) and just lie right down on the floor (or on a step) and look up at you. When we did step on her (which, unfortunately, happened pretty often) she'd give us an indignant look, but she'd just sit there... there was very little learning going on.

Jessica got bigger and dumber every day. One day she stole a Pop Tart directly out of Maggie's hands (Yes, a Pop Tart). Maggie was only about four at the time, so she was wailing her head off after being mugged, and I ended up chasing the cat all the way upstairs to the master bedroom, where she tried to sneak under our bed with the Pop Tart... but she was too fat to fit underneath. She was able to get about two-thirds of her body under the bed but her butt stopped when she wedged it up against the bedframe. I pulled her out and she'd already taken two big bites of the Pop Tart.

As part of our morning routine, we'd get up and get Maggie in and out of the bathtub, and then while everyone else showered I'd set up Maggie with a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. One morning I heard her yelling and I came downstairs to discover that Jessica/Stupid had jumped up onto the kitchen table. She had nudged Maggie's hand away from her cereal, and she had her face straight down in the bowl, lapping up milk as fast as she could.

I shooshed the cat away and calmed Maggie down. We talked a little bit and I told Maggie that all she needed to do was says "Pssst!" loudly when the cat jumped up on the kitchen table, and that would scare her away.

The next morning, I set Maggie up with her cereal, and I walked around the corner toward the stairs, but I stayed there, peeking back, watching the cat.

Jessica saw that I was gone and jumped up on the table. Maggie did as she'd been told. She said "Pssst!" and the cat jumped right off the table.

Problem solved.

Until the next morning. Another wail from Maggie. I ran down the steps and saw the cat with its face buried in Maggie's cereal bowl. Maggie was sitting there saying "Psst! Pssst! Psssssssssst!!" and the cat wasn't even flinching.

So I said, "Here, Maggie. Watch this." I banged the palm of my hand hard on the table, and Stupid looked up, milk dripping from her face, and jumped off the table.

Problem solved.

Another wail the next morning. Stupid's face buried in the cereal bowl, Maggie crying, slapping her hand on the table over and over again. So I chased the cat away and scratched my head for a moment. Then I reached into a kitchen drawer and pulled out a wooden spoon. "Here," I said. "Smack this spoon on the table hard, and that noise will scare the cat away." Maggie gave it a shot and smiled. That would do the trick for sure.

The next morning I set up Maggie with her cereal and her wooden spoon and kissed her on top of the head and walked toward the steps. I pretended to walk up a few steps but then snuck down and peeked around the corner. Right on cue, Stupid jumped up on the kitchen table. Maggie grabbed her spoon and brought it down with a sharp "Whack!" right next to the cat's feet. She jumped right off the table.

Problem solved. (are you detecting a pattern here??)

Next morning.... I heard the wailing and the smack of the wooden spoon on the kitchen table... over and over again as I ran into the kitchen. Stupid's face buried in the cereal bowl... Maggie smacking the wooden spoon right next to him... "Whack! Whack!" Stupid wasn't even phased. She just kept right on slurping.

So... I scratched my head some more, and I said, "Okay... next time just smack her right on her butt with the wooden spoon. That'll chase her off." Maggie nodded.

Next morning I watched... the cat jumped up, Maggie smacked her on the butt... the cat jumped off.

Problem solved.

The next morning I heard the wailing, along with some laughter, along with some whacking sounds (a little more muffled whacking sounds).

I ran into the kitchen. Maggie was standing up next to the table. The cat's face was buried in her cereal bowl. Maggie was pulling her arm back, full swing, hitting the cat on the butt with that wooden spoon over and over again and the cat kept slurping. She'd look up from the bowl every once in a while and watch the spoon come down... then she'd turn her face back down and start slurping again.

Maggie kept swinging... smack... smack... smack. I finally stopped her and we had a good laugh. Even at the age of four, Maggie had the sense to recognize the humor in the situation.

I honestly don't remember what we did after that. Maybe we just gave up. But I'll never forget that stupid cat's face, looking up as she received the smacks on the butt, a look on her face that said, "I think someone might be hitting me, but Dude... this is some good milk..."

Banana Spiders

2007-12-05T15:04:00.001-05:00

Down here in Florida we have woods full of what the locals call "banana spiders." They are spiky-legged giants, mostly black with a yellow abdomen and yellow stripes that form rings around their legs...

(just had a thought... I could spend a lot of time describing them, or I could go to Google and type in "banana spider...")

Presto!

That's one right there... with some crazy guy holding his hand right behind it... and yes, they get that big around here...

Right after we moved to Florida I found a wonderful little state park about five miles from our house. Longleaf pine trees and live oaks surrounded a glimmering lake, horse and hiking trails had been cut deep into the woods... a beautiful place.

I showed up there with my fishing pole one day, and I tried to find a good spot on the side of the lake. Trees and bushes grew in dense patches along the water, and I saw an opening that looked just big enough to squeeze into and maybe be able to cast a line. As I walked through the tall grass I noticed a banana spider web just to left of the place I wanted to fish. This was late August, maybe early September, so they were everywhere. I wasn't comfortable standing shoulder to shoulder with that big old spider while I fished, but it was a good spot... I pulled in a couple of catfish and got a nice strike from a bass.

Then I cast my line out and it went a little higher than normal. I watched the end of my line finish its arc into the sky and fall into the water, but the fishing line stayed up in the air. I realized that I had cast right over the outward strand of a spider web. I was fishing deep for catfish that day, so I had some weight on the line. Still, the spider web was so thick and strong that I had to really yank down hard to break my line through it.

So I had Joe spider on my left, all the while wondering if he could take me, wondering how many months it would take to consume me... and I had just cast my line over a line of spider web with the strength of a piece of aircraft cable. Needless to say, I was suffering from a severe case of spider wheebie-jeebies.

Then I cast one more time and caught my line in a tree branch above me. That's when I looked up and realized that there was another spider web directly above me, with another monster banana spider sitting right in its middle, looking at me, leaning back and forth slowly, looking like all it needed was a "ready, set, go!" before it would jump directly on my face. Honest to God, I think it was only about three or four inches over my head. I have no idea how I hadn't noticed it in the first place.

That did it for me. Like a big old wimp, I bit through my fishing line and left it hanging there, a nice Carolina rig with a fresh worm caught up in the tree. I probably could have pulled it out of there with one good yank.

But them spiders... they were going to eat me, they wanted to. I think they were communicating with each other in some way... planning the ambush. They were just waiting for the park ranger to get in his white pickup truck and drive off. They didn't want any witnesses.

Dirtballs and Spider Terror

2007-12-04T20:00:00.000-05:00

The memory is fuzzy... we still lived in the Maryland townhouse, so I couldn't have been more than eight or nine. Running through weeds that reached as high as my shoulders... they sometimes swallowed me completely. A pond that came out of nowhere in the middle of the weeds, catching sunnies twice the size of my hand... they'd bite at anything - corn, worms, even shiny bare hooks.

A friend of mine and I used to run around in those weed for hours, chasing each other, running full out in the middle of summer... so fast that when we broke the outward strands of a giant garden spider's web we didn't have time to slow down... we'd punch right through, a sticky, intricate pattern three feet in diameter pressed high-speed against our sometimes bare chests... the terror, screeching to a halt, frantically pulling the spider webs off of us as fast as we could, watching for the spider, where was the spider...

One day we decided to throw dirtballs at cars. I remember thinking that my mom was under the impression that this particular friend of mine was always getting me into trouble. I remember trying to work that angle, but I think she knew the truth. Most of the real trouble was usually my idea.

We were crouched down in the weeds, a perfect ambush position - just out of a driver's line of sight, but close enough to the road that we could hit the cars as they drove past. We'd built up stockpiles of ammunition - broken pieces of dried-up mud from a section of the pond that had evaporated away weeks earlier.

Wham! Those hard little squares of dirt left our hands at high-speed, timed perfectly to collide with an oncoming car's passenger door... explosions of mud and dried dirt, smoke-like dust, our hearts pounding in our chests as we dove for cover.

One of the cars screeched to a stop after we launched an attack. We were frozen there for a moment, struck stupid as we watched the car's back end slide sideways during the driver's violent stop. We dropped our remaining dirtballs and ran.

I remember the combination of terrors... afraid of the screaming guy who was chasing us... but also knowing that it was mid-summer and close to dusk and that the spiders would be out in the middle of their webs, waiting, hunting...

We ran and ran, and I remember feeling my chest burn, my thighs aching, running, running, tearing through the weeds.

We stayed together and ran until we found a spot near the pond, a particularly dense section of weeds... I remember crushing cattails underneath me as I scrambled into the high grass.

We waited, our hearts pounding, afraid to breathe but having to take deep, gasping breaths to fill our lungs, listening, wondering what was beneath me, wondering how many spider webs I'd run through, how many sticky strands were stuck to my t-shirt, where the spider was, where the spider was...

We stayed quiet for a long time, and then I found the courage to ask my friend, "Is he gone?"

A booming voice came from directly above us, and I heard his words as I felt his hand scrunch up the collar of my t-shirt, directly behind my neck, lifting me off the ground.

He said, "No, I'm not."

I don't remember much after that. I remember getting yelled at pretty bad... the guy didn't hit us (though we certainly deserved it). I do remember that we gave him fake names when he asked. I remember him walking back to his car, still in the middle of the road, the driver's door open, a bell dinging to remind him he'd left the keys in the ignition. He stopped at the passenger door for a moment and ran his fingers across a dirty scratch in the paint. He turned back and glared at us one more time, shaking his head back and forth as he got back in his car.

My mom used to tell my teachers that she was worried about my health. They'd give her a concerned look and ask why. She'd say, "Because I'm going to kill him."

Grandpa Sam Presents - The May Family Yowser Tradition

2007-12-03T10:07:00.000-05:00

My Grandpa Sam moved close to us when I was in my early twenties, just a few years before he passed away. We'd grown up with very little in the way of an extended family, and it was a treat for us to have him nearby.

He joined us for several Christmases, and we began to notice a trend in his gift giving. While he was always extremely thoughtful and full of Christmas spirit, his gifts were pretty bizarre. I'm not sure if he shopped at thrift stores or garage sales. We could never really figure out the source of his gifts. But it wasn't uncommon for one of us to receive a set of salt and pepper shakers, or an old AM radio with a wrist strap, or a gently used ice scraper for our car windshields. He was all about Christmas, though. He labored over each package. I can picture him in the little apartment he rented, tearing off pieces of scotch tape with shaky hands. The gifts were strange, but he always came through, and we were old enough to appreciate how lucky we were to have him in our lives.

Grandpa Sam was famous for saying "Yowsers!" If you gave him a gift he liked, or told him an interesting story, or if he particulary liked the roast beef we were eating for dinner, he'd sit back in his chair, rub his hands over his great big belly and say "Yowsers!" with a delightful smile.

I can't remember how soon the tradition began after Grandpa Sam passed away, but one year my brother Earl showed up with an extra bag of gifts to put under the tree.

I remember finding a crinkly little gift with too much scotch tape wrapped around it that said, "To Paul, Love From Grandpa Sam. Yowsers!"

I peeled the paper away to reveal a small sewing kit in a plastic box... spools of thread in various colors, a tiny pair of scissors.

Earl and his wife had come up with the wonderful idea of carrying on the tradition of Grandpa Sam's bizzare Christmas gifts. A quick stop at the dollar store did the trick. They've been doing it every Christmas since then (I've even offered to chip in, as our family keeps growing and growing... at some point it's going to get expensive).

So one of the girls will open up a package from Grandpa Sam to reveal a brand-new toilet plunger and my wife will open up a glass candy dish shaped like an octopus and my mom will open up a package of silly straws.

And we all laugh, and we all say "Yowsers!" a lot, and this is how Grandpa Sam stays with us.