There are quite a few branches there to be sure, of mismatched friends and who-not I’ve come to claim as family, but it starts further down, at the root, and trust me, it is one hell of a strong one.

Her name is GamVa.

Short for Grandma Virginia. Who isn’t actually my grandmother.

She’s not even really related to me. Not even a little bit. But that doesn’t make her any less “blood” in my eyes. She’s been as indelible a mark in my life as Blackburn molasses are to a sugar biscuit.

And as real as a thorn.

GamVa never had any children. Just a husband. Papa Leon. She spent several years abroad as a nurse, during World War II. I’m not sure what Papa Leon did, though, during the war. He had polio, and aside from a wry sense of humor and a very successful knack for financial planning, he did little more than drive his motorized ECV down the main street of Philadelphia (Mississippi, that is) as a way of asserting himself, I imagine.  He was also an avid collector of books.

A collection I inherited, I’m more than happy to say.

My only solid memories of him, he died in my tween years, was the green visor he wore at all times, an arguably unhealthy insistence that I read Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad “if nothing else, mah boy,” and his ability to hide any ignorance of a given subject, which was rare, behind a steady gaze.

He was a perfect match for GamVa, and after he passed, I melded his essence, if you will, into hers, who, in lieu of children, had U.L., Salathiel (which, by the way, is a name I didn’t have to make up), and a feist named Spanky.

On these three, she doted.

And her dotage began in full-earnest the year I turned nine.

She’d been around long before then, but after Tigi’s death, it seemed a natural move for GamVa to “assume” that place made vacant by Tigi.

Though they weren’t all that similar.

GamVa, having never had children, had little patience for them. I count it a blessing that I’d been brought up the way I had been, as I would rather have been in absentia, somewhere else in the house, reading any book I got my hands on, or pretending I was Lady Aberlin, than to be underfoot.

In retrospect, that seems to have been my saving grace. Because she always looked to me as “adult-lite.”

That’s not to say that GamVa wasn’t charming in her way. Through her, I learned the value of not just a hard-earned dollar, but what could happen with a well-placed dollar. What love she may have not naturally developed for children, she had in great, banded bundles for smart investing. And this is something she encouraged in me. She had all the patience in the world for clever conversation, stock portfolios, and bridge…which subsequently led to an obsessive habit she had of carrying several decks of cards, always, with her: stuffed in suitcases, her purses, the glove compartment (with her nerve pills), in every drawer of every room in the house.

She’s 93, today. And yes, there are days when she can’t remember what a refrigerator’s function is, or who I am, but she can, without hesitation, tell you where absolutely every deck of cards in the house has been stashed. She spends her days with U.L. and Salathiel (her boys) worrying over little more than a game of Gin Rummy or Skip-Bo and if she’s “had muh suppah yet.”

Incidentally, she eats constantly, if you don’t keep an eye on her, and half the time, makes you “go fish” in the middle of a game of spades.

I love her in an easy way, though, now, because I realized that all my life, she never placated. She never changed. She was giving, considerate, but fair and stern, and, like a human expectorant, didn’t abide by raucous behavior, filthy decorum, or laziness. That, though it may come across as a harsh representation of a woman I do truly love and deeply, is actually quite the opposite in my mind.

It is GamVa, as much as anyone else in my life, who instilled in me the absolute value of Real Character.

Here, in my small life which seemed to be continuously supplanted with rich personalities and then at such a young age, was a woman, once tall and sturdy, who had tended to the wounded as a war nurse abroad during the tumultuous 1940s when the world was against itself, who taught herself three languages, and who said what she meant, all the time.

That’s Real Character: owning the piece of ground on which you build your promise. No matter what.

This next bit won’t be the best story to make my case, but it’s the first of such cases she’s made in my life, so I’m going to share it with you.

1986. I’m nine. We’re at GamVa’s large, beautiful old house, an expansive, rollicking piece of competing architectural history, with its pillars of salt (that’s what I used to pretend they were), full of rooms no one ever used. The house is gone, now, sadly.

U.L., Miss Nickels, Salathiel, Papa Leon, GamVa, and another woman I cannot recall, are sitting in the back of the house, in an overlooked room GamVa turned into a “card-playuhs nook,” rustling cards over a green-felt table top. The edge of it was wood-lined, with cup-holders and trenches, I imagine for cards, but instead, they held thin dishes of cashews and olives and dips.

I was in the library, adjacent to this room, by myself, as I was most of my childhood…often by choice. I had been watching NOVA on PBS, one of a handful of television shows I was allowed to watch, growing up. The feist, Spanky, now long dead, was several feet away in front of the hearth, on his pillow.

Between us lay a chewed tennis ball.

I’d never really tried to like, pet, or remotely look in the direction of Spanky before.

I wish that I’d left it that way.

Instead, I chose to sprawl out on the floor, and being primed with an adolescent’s energy, plopped myself onto my stomach, in front of the television.

This proved to be a mistake.

Spanky, though fat, sprang to his jowls and shot, like a bullet, to my face, and before I could react, he had bitten me, on my bottom lip…and wouldn’t let go.

The odd thing is he wasn’t growling.

I, however, was yelling.

The room flooded with everyone except GamVa, who knowingly lingered to the last, standing framed in the doorway between the two rooms, a slight smile hanging on her mouth.

“Spaahnky.” He released his bite on her lilting calling of his name, and went back to the hearth and lay down.

U.L. was angry at the dog, but GamVa calmly said, “Noow, Larr-uh. This isn’t his fauuult. He’s a dawug. That’s what dawugs do.”

U.L. went to defend me, next.

“Ah’m not anuh angriyuh at Kris than Spaahnky. But, what we’ve loorned,” she continued, in my direction, “from this is that dawugs do what dawugs do, and people, people don’t.”

A pause, and then, “Try sittin’ in a chaiyuh.”

Heartless? Not really. Childhood-robber? Probably. I mean, what kid doesn’t like lying on the floor in front of the television? The point? Understood, loud and clear. There’s a time and place for all things, and when one of those things is where a child should sit, the answer is always in a chair.

The bite was more of shock than of pain; I needed no stitches. I certainly didn’t try to “warm up” to Spanky, after that, but I learned that afternoon that whether we realize it or not, who we become has a lot to do with where we lie.

Literally and figuratively.

See…I never told them that I’d teased the dog with that blame tennis ball, after I sprawled out on the floor. He had every right to come after me.  No, instead, I just sat in the chair and kept watching “Return of the Osprey” on NOVA, my two hands, firmly locked like a vice, across my stomach, my fingers tightly around that tennis ball, hidden beneath my knuckles.

And smiling.

Just like Gamva had been in the doorway.

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There’s a reason people get sick—the attention. But, I’ve discovered as of this morning, there’s a reason good friends drive their sick friends to the doctor and then spend the next two hours in the waiting room having their patience tested—the neighborhood.

Of course, this requires explanation.

It’s 10:03 AM, and I’ve brought Amanda to the Student Health Center. She’s been very sick to her stomach, and I felt she needed better attention than my telling her to “take it to the toilet” every hour or so.

Little did I know the call to action that I was unwittingly engaging myself in.

I found a seat, in the corner, and began my determined sit. I flipped through all the magazines twice. I checked my Twitter, my Facebook, my email.

Thirty minutes pass, and still—no Amanda.

I drew the line at Highlights.

After nearly forty minutes of pretending to re-read Diabetes Living and Prevention, I was left with my nothing to occupy me but my old standby: the Imagination.

That is, until other patients started wandering through the automatic double doors.

Everyone carefully chose their seats, and unpacked their belongings. Sort of like setting up their respective houses: jackets came off, laptops pulled out, backpacks emptied. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t in a waiting room.

I was in a neighborhood.

The rows of seats, were roads and streets. The people in their chairs, homes of single-parent households and displaced migrant workers.

What I was witnessing was a community in the making. The birth of a neighborhood.

Communities, I think, are made every day in thousands of small ways. Some last a long time; but most are temporary. Like this morning’s community. This one was built entirely on stress, and was destined to become a community in constant danger of eviction.

And this neighborhood, like anywhere else, had as much to like as dislike.

I appreciated, for instance, the severe economy of conversation on my particular street. A Hello here and there, a respect for personal space, and then that’s it. No more. I turned to my neighbor on the right to ask him where he got his shoes.

I wanted a pair; I really liked them.

“Don’t know.” He never even looked up from his iPhone.

No filigree, no dragging it out. No pretense.

More neighborhoods should be like this, I think.

And even though you might argue that it borders on the rude, I should remind you that despite the fact that most communities are driven by what I would term “self-interest,” at least in this community, we were given the option of a Suggestion Box.

It’s also a very clean neighborhood.

And to top it all off, most of us get validated parking and pills, when it’s time to “move on.”

II

It’s 11:36 AM and eight new people have moved onto my street. I should say three, since one is a family of five. If I were having to guess, out right, I would say that I think at least three of them are here to be surgically removed from their cell phones.

Or, perhaps, to discuss the cost of having smiles sewn back onto their faces, and, if there’s enough money left over, an extra neck muscle that would act as a reflex to force you to make eye contact.

Two of the new neighbors are children. What joy.

They immediately engage themselves in a contest of who is the best jumper; their shoes skid from tile to tile, between the sitting area and the water fountain.

They whisper, how well-trained,  until the boy decides he’s the winner. The girl then hits her head on the water fountain and begins to cry.

Gutsy move on her part.

The mother takes all the children with her as she bravely crosses to the “wrong side of the tracks.” In other words, the doors that stand directly behind a large free-standing sign that reads, “No cell phone usage past this point.”

Connecting you everywhere except Bangladesh and Nova Scotia.

Who would ever want to go to that side of town? The whole point of having a cell phone is to keep connected to the world around you without having to be connected to the world around you.

The father stays at home…three seats down from me. This is, I imagine, equivalent to his being on vacation.

How well-trained.

III
Returning from the bathroom, I see that my nicely shoed friend has moved. Disappeared. It was inevitable, I know, but I was hoping to ease him back into a conversation, enticing him to offer me at least three shoe store options for my own research.

I really wanted a pair of those shoes.

In his house now, sits a young woman, blonde and covered in what I would assume was every sweatshirt she owned.  She was patiently sitting, reading a book. I couldn’t see the title of the book and so therefore, it must have been a book about Scientology.

I was mentally preparing her a Welcome to the Neighborhood casserole when she began to cough without covering her mouth.

A nurse pops out from behind the No Cell Phone Usage sign and calls, “Emily?”

The blonde girl closes her book and coughs her way over to the nurse and slips behind the wooden doors.

The nerve.

It was going to be a really good casserole, too.

IV

12:00.

I feel fairly certain than Amanda has, at this point, decided to give her body to science. I’m going over What Steps To Take Next, in bringing this to the attention of her family when a rogue wheelchair carrying, magically, a large woman in it comes hurtling around the corner, down my street.

Closely behind it, lumber two equally large children hollering that they were “sorry, Momma! But Chelsea wouldn’t hold my Coke!”

I don’t know how that adds up to a runaway heavyweight, but it did.

I only stopped laughing because an emergency then occurred: a young man had been hit by a car, while making a left turn on his bicycle and didn’t know who he was, or where he was. He all but crawled up onto the receptionist’s desk while he waited to be admitted.

He was immediately ushered away.

I was glad for that. That kind of neighbor really depreciates the value of the whole neighborhood, you know.

I checked on him. He’s going to be just fine, so there.

Do you suppose if he never remembers his name that he’ll still have to pay?

V

Fifteen minutes after twelve, and Amanda finally emerges. Diagnosis: severe stomach bug, which if I had to draw a picture of it, would have the pinschers of a praying mantis, the head of a dung beetle, and the body of a lion.

Also, a beak.

She’s going to pull through. Thank goodness.

Opinions are like...oh, you know the rest.

As I start to pack things up, Amanda traipses over to the pharmacy to wait for her medication. I pass the Comment Box on my way out and decide to leave them a suggestion myself:

With the flu season on our heels, it might behoove you to consider creating a gated community within the waiting room.

Because the sick people are really needy.

Signed, Emily.

Oh, now. Don’t look so chagrined.

Every street has an Emily.

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I was comparing the prices of blood pressure monitors, and not for U.L. or a grandmother. I was purchasing one for myself.

It seems I stay in a constant state of Stage 1 Hypertension, according to my third doctor’s appointment in the last month.

This, almost more than anything else, means I am now a bona fide Adult. Nothing says Welcome to Life like high blood pressure.

I brag a lot about how healthy I am, but the truth is I’m only doing that as a means of psyching myself out. I know all too well what lurks in my family’s gene pool: diabetes, heart conditions, depression, cancer, and more mental disorders than are legally allowed by the APA…at least, outside of Canada.

I'd like to introduce you to my little friend.

As much as I love America, and I do love America, I do panic quite easily when I realize that part of this great land of opportunity is knowing that one thing we learn and learn well in elementary school is the meaning of the word plural.

Panic, by the way, is not conducive to lowering high blood pressure.

Here’s what I mean: Unless the LifeSource blood pressure monitor can insert the Netflix DVD of 30 Rock, Season 2, into the DVD player, in addition to helping me keep track of my fluctuating blood pressure, (which changes, the doctor told me, constantly), it really isn’t any different, functionally, than the generic Walgreens brand.

In other words, one type of monitor should be sufficient. Singular, not plural.

Or, so, I would imagine.

Yet, there were no less than two fully stocked shelves dedicated to nothing but competing brands of blood pressure monitors. 

Now, I’m new to medical problems (my own, anyway), and I’ve really not had a plethora of free time to research the reason for so many different BP monitors. I wasn’t aware that one had to do that in order to buy one.

So, I was forced to do my research on-site.

The higher the price of BP monitor, it seems, the more gadgetry is included in the product. Past the $40 mark, you no longer had to manually pump the sleeve; the machine would do it, for you. Also, the people on the box were both more attractive, and dare I say it, looked more assured of an accurate reading than did the people on the BP monitor box I purchased, which came in just under the $35 mark.

So many choices of one simple item.

I’ll be the first to admit it: in this country, we have a love/hate relationship with one of the very cornerstones of our Free Enterprise: choice. This means, essentially, we have a problem with the country itself. I know I do, at least, where Free Enterprise is concerned. My relationship with consumerism is much like I imagine you’d feel after buying yourself a mail-order bride – you know it’s wrong, but at the end of the day, at least you’re not alone in the house. And if you don’t beat them, they’ll even cook you breakfast…I’ve been told.

Don't leave home without them. We're talking about American Healthcare, here.

It didn’t bother me one bit, my choice of BP monitor, until I got home and started to take my blood pressure.

I was consumed (you’ll get the pun later): Did I make the right call? Did I buy the right one?

What if my desire to save a few bucks was compromising my health?  Sure it was $10 more, but what’s $10 for a longer life?  What if the monitor I bought didn’t give me all the information I truly needed to show my doctor, and in the end, as I lay there on the couch, waiting for the ambulance, clutching my chest as the impending infarction (I’ve been waiting a long time to have a reason to use that word) took over my breathing and nerves, and the only voice I recalled as I took a step toward the Light was that nagging one in the back of my mind which sounds a lot like U.L. saying, Don’t you wish you’d gotten the other monitor, the one that recorded clot potential?

The first bullet in the Instructions Manual that comes included with the monitor states: It is recommended that you do not attempt a blood pressure reading when under stress. It is best to be as relaxed as possible.

I almost stood straight up, put the thing back in its box, and returned my monitor to Walgreens, right then.  I was so far under stress, I should have proposed afterwards.

It took me several, long, agonizing minutes, but I realized I’d simply become a victim of consumerism, myself. It’s diagnosable. This is what happens to us, in this country, because there are sometimes, too many choices. That may be fine and well as a necessary component of the American dream but it’s competing with a declining literacy rate. And that’s hardly what they mean by Free Enterprise.

We take the easy way out when we’re faced with too many options. For the sake of argument, let’s say the LifeSource was a much better choice of a BP monitor than the cheap, generic one I bought. Few and far between are the consumers who are going to read about the differences between the two. When all is said and done (and every now and then, read), we almost always go for what’s cheapest.

And if this is a true democracy, then cheapest is all you really need. Basic functions of any BP monitor ought to include, if nothing else, the mere conclusion of This Reading Means You Need A Doctor, or You’re Fine…For Today.

My average, no-frills, run-of-the-Chinese-Factory BP monitor does just this.

I don’t get a lot of joy out of it, though, since I’m already seeing a doctor. (Not socially, mind you).

What we need to focus on, in my opinion, is a BP monitor that doesn’t make you feel your arm is about to fall off. Those cuffs mean business, let me tell you.

But, then, so does this economy.

We strive to offer the consumer whatever he or she needs. For instance, after struggling, and hard, against the ridiculous desire I had to suddenly purchase a Snuggie, leopard-print, I browsed a few other products in my search for the aisle where the blood pressure monitors were located.

He doesn't really look that warm, does he?

I found them, in the back, by the pharmacy, a few shelves above the DNA Paternity Home Test.

You heard me: a DNA Paternity Home Test.

At least I didn’t need to buy that, but I will say, as a form of mea culpa, I was glad I lived in a country that could give Maury Povich a job, while at the same time, giving us all an affordable reason to fire him.

That is, after all, what makes America, America.

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For instance, last Thursday when I drove up to Taste of China, because I prefer their cream cheese wontons over China Garden’s, I was determined to get out of the car and walk in the door and eat like a king.

Except I had left my wallet at the house.

Which then led me to this realization: I’d not had my wallet with me all day long. I’d driven over a hundred miles to and from work without money, ID, a license, that one piece of Wrigley’s I leave hidden in the pocket behind the checkbook “just in case,” nothing.

I had driven naked, essentially, the entire day. Because without proof of who I am, who am I, in the eyes of the law? I am nothing.

I am the self-appointed King of the Buffet.

I subdued my onset of sudden panic by stating the obvious – I’d made it back home without any emergency. Well, except for the fact that I was hungry and in the mood for Chinese and was in the parking lot, feet away from All I Could Eat of Tofu and Broccoli and Avocado Sushi.

Then, my panic was replaced by sheer anger.

I was so mad at myself because I had, unwittingly, put myself in a dilemma. Do I drag myself through evening traffic to retrieve my wallet, which I was sure that Lazarus, the hell-cat-though-since-entering-her-first-“heat”-has-turned-a-la-angel, had already knocked off the buffet and pulled under the couch to her nesting area where she’s begun collecting the things she kills, be that a wallet or the unfortunate lady bug, an infestation of which appeared overnight, it seems.

Or, do I just go home and cook.

Incidentally, I love to cook. I really do, but there’s just something so American and justified in saying, Not tonight, dear, I have a checkbook.

I drove home, needless to say, and punished myself for forgetting my wallet by staying home and not driving back to the restaurant. However, I forgave myself a few minutes later and ordered in, but still, the sting of my self-imposed punishment lingered well into my Egg Drop Soup.

I wish I knew why I was so rigid in my thinking as regards a simple turning around of the car and going back to get said item, or items.

It has a mind of its own.

But, wherever it came from, it’s deep in there. I’d rather drive off, (foolish, I know), and leave that one suitcase, that book I was wanting to read, the airline tickets, that winter coat despite going to the mountains in the middle of Christmas, or the directions to where I was going in the first place, than to simply stop and go back.

I guess I’m a real boy, after all.

Although, I mean, let’s be honest, a wallet doesn’t really fit in this category of What You Can Get By Without. You need your license. You need your money. And after class, today, I discovered there was something else you also need, according to our Modern Standards of Living: your cell phone.

I admit, wholeheartedly, that there have been two occasions in which I’ve forgotten my cell phone, and I did go back to get it, but in both situations, I’d not even turned out of the driveway.

This is just a slight aggravation. Not a reversal of events.

The student who missed class today, though, informed me that she’d gotten almost to the campus and remembered that she’d left her cell phone charging, and simply had to turn around and get it. I mean, what if she’d had car trouble?? (She’s on the cusp of having missed too much class, so she must have car trouble a lot, which certainly would raise the level of importance of needing a cell phone at all times, right)?

It was hard to argue with such logic other than to point out that being nearly on campus means You’ve practically made it, and will probably be fine!, but then turning around to drive back to get a cell phone on the off chance that you might not have made it, wouldn’t necessarily be the smartest thing to do…regardless of car trouble.

The problem in her logic, I’m afraid, runs a lot deeper than a dead car battery. Per se.

The issue wasn’t that at all, though, in actuality. It dawned on me during her explanation why she’d missed the entire class, which logically would lead you to assume she wouldn’t have risked if she hadn’t lived close by.

Don't leave home without them.

Yet, as is so often the case, logic and the educational system don’t like holding hands; they’re not that big into the PDA.  Especially when coming from the point-of-view of the student.

See, she was a commuter to the campus; she didn’t live in town, it turned out. (Nor do many others, but still). She came to campus only twice a week from a small burp down below Meridian, some tribal church community hidden in Lauderdale County.

Now, let me put that in perspective for those of you not familiar with Mississippi geography, though shame on you, all the same, for not being proficient in it – basically she drives over seventy miles, one way, twice a week, and today, gets nearly to the campus, before deciding she simply had to turn around and drive all the way back to get her precious cell phone.

And, of course, as you could guess, by the time she got to her house and laid hands on the phone (long enough to at least call me and explain herself),  “ the class was over and really what was the point of coming back at all, then?”

 She only had the one class on Mondays.

I told her to talk to me next week; if I had any sympathy to give, it’d be then.

She said, in all sincerity, “But…next week’s Thanksgiving. There are no classes.”

I told her I knew that.

Then, I wished her a good one and said, “Teetle.”

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I’m holding up four fingers, at this very moment, even though you can’t see them.

But, that’s it: four items. Four, random though purposeful, inconsequential items.

One of those items was a candy bar. A Kit-Kat, actually, and it was easily stolen because I used to run the “candy store” between class periods, at my high school. 

The smart kids got to do everything fun, especially when it involved cash handling.

What do you want from me? The Kit-Kat logo is copyrighted.

I only stole one candy bar and only the one time because I had convinced myself that morning that I was experiencing the onset of premature adult diabetes, which I think is how most people experience it…very suddenly.

I mean, it can’t take, like, what, about twenty minutes, tops?

I had my assumed hypoglycemic attack right before third period (World History), standing behind that booth in my maroon windbreaker and tight-rolled jeans and I didn’t want to walk all the way to my locker to get my money (rather, I couldn’t. Who would run the “candy store?”) so I just took the Kit-Kat and ate it, right then and there.

I never paid for it.

Then there was the time that I thought I’d stolen ice cream. But, it was at a buffet. So, there’s that. Shan dared me to do it, truth be told. We were returning from a church youth trip where we’d done some noble thing like sing hymns to the homeless outside Wal-Mart, something like that, and we’d stopped on the way back to eat at this restaurant called Quincy’s, now gone the way of the dodo. It was a country-style buffet, so naturally everything was included in the price, even the ice cream.

Still, I thought I was being a rebel. I was, let’s face it, not the brightest bulb in the tool box.

Oh, did they laugh at me.

What was I to do to get even except roll their yards.

During my formative years of high school (when most of my five-finger discount days were lived), there was something akin to an unofficial moratorium on rakish youth purchasing more than one package of toilet paper. Honestly. A policeman, Toby (as it was a small town, we all knew each other. Also, he went to my church) would patrol the aisles, but especially on Halloween and Valentine’s Day.

(Far be it from me to tell you why Valentine’s Day was the other hallmark holiday of choice for Those Who Rolled Yards).

This problem then, as you see, was what led to my next stolen item: toilet paper. Now, I wasn’t about to waltz into Piggly Wiggly and try to manhandle a suspicious amount of TP. I couldn’t risk the scorn come Sunday if Toby caught me.

No, I had to plan this out, accordingly. And it began with a sudden rash of sleepovers. I planned this crime spree out over three weeks, with my cousin Mikey’s help. It was a perfect cover. Who didn’t like a sleepover?

Ninth graders in my town, at my school, certainly did.

If you look closely, you can see better.

We all had freshly minted driver’s permits, which meant you could drive to one of three places, without much issue: Piggly Wiggly, Sonic, and the movies (and sometimes if you played your cards right, the First Baptist Church parking lot across from the funeral home…but let’s not push it). 

The sleepover came in handy because we didn’t all have cars.

So, under the guise of liking people I didn’t, I spent several long nights, “hanging out,” driving the “strip” about a million times over for some unknown reason – it always tickled me that I ever did the “strip.” I mean for crying out loud, I saw these people every day, all day, the whole week long.

This must be what they mean when they say that youth is wasted on the young.

Then back at the house of choice, as we all settled in for the night, I’d excuse myself to the bathroom and snatch a roll of their toilet paper; incidentally, you can tell a lot about a family from their choice of toilet paper. Anyway, I’d carefully hide it in my overnight bag, and after a few weekends of drivel and driving, I’d amassed a goodly pile of paper products.

The rest I stole from my own house, which, when all was said and done, was not the best of ideas.

Now…that’s what, like, three items, right?  Well, two, I guess:  the ice cream doesn’t count.

Nor do pens. I’m not sure if you know this or not, but it’s never wrong to steal a pen.

And it’s not always your fault, either, the stealing. I mean, I inadvertently stole one of Matt’s CDs, but it’s only because I borrowed it and forgot to give it back. And that’s been since…well, he moved to DC in 2001, so…oh whatever. Point is: that’s not the same thing as out-right stealing.

This is, though:  I stole a pair of sunglasses, once…again, from a friend. Well, sort of. I didn’t like her all that much.  But she was a friend’s friend, which is the same as being so far removed from my Zone of Concern that she might as well have been missing, and…I don’t know, I guess that’s why I took them.

They were beautiful, large, ovalled, with a beige undertone. I still have them, in my car.

But, here’s the kicker: I can’t even wear sunglasses. I never have. I’d have to spend a fortune to because I require prescription glasswear. However, she got a little too tipsy, one evening as we lay out at the beach, and my being bored coupled with my seeing an opportunity to be aggravating, I took them.

Gas Light (1944). Starring Ingrid Bergman. It's also Angela Landsbury's first film role.

I spent the rest of that week gaslighting her. Making her think she was losing her mind, but trust me, she was no Ingrid Bergman.

To be sure, I am not claiming to be a kleptomaniac; I’m far too anxious a person for that hobby. Though I did know a former preacher’s wife who was one.

For years, I thought a kleptomaniac was someone who stuttered.

And I was amazed that she was being called one by the ladies at church. She spoke crisply and well. When one of these ladies’ purses ended up in the backseat of this woman’s car, though, the picture came a little more into focus for me.

Of course, that particular lady of the church was always losing things, come to think of it. Her keys, her patience, her lipstick, her older daughter. And I don’t really think that the former preacher’s wife stole all of those things. She only drove a Toronado, after all.

All I know for certain is that I didn’t steal them, either. Because that’d make eight items.

And I’ve only ever stolen four, like I told you, but – and here’s where you’ll be disappointed – I cannot for the life of me, right now, remember what that fourth thing was.

Hm.

Imagine that…

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And this is what my small (though at one time it was) visual delight consists of:  a faded tent, no doubt purchased “as is,” from some desperate funeral home, I imagine. Beneath the tattered green fabric sits a cheap a la Fred’s-Giving-Away-the-Store-again! plastic table precariously atop four brittle fold-out legs.

Adorning this table is a wide array of accoutrement which might slip unnoticed to the average passer-by were it not for the handmade markered poster that is taped over where I assume the name of the funeral home would be, in the middle of the awning.

The sign says in multi-colors: Christian Things.

I take this as Improvement. The first time I came across this dandy jewel of self-enterprise, the sign read: Christian Stuff.  And was written only in black magic marker.

Use this on paper, not in your nose.

I used to love smelling those when I was in fifth grade. I don’t know why. They certainly didn’t have the odor of authenticity that the “candy” markers did. I may well have had a slight addiction to the purple one through most of my junior high years.

Grape is as grape does, though, right?

Anyway.

So dead is what’s left of Scooba that I take perverse pleasure in driving past the nine storefront buildings that comprise its Main Street, though it’s not named Main Street. It’s named Railroad Road, no lie. This is because only one side of the street has buildings; the other side is, as you might guess, a railroad.

Though I’ve never seen a train.

I’ve never really even seen people on that street. Other than this once, I saw two kids throwing rocks at one of the empty storefronts, but as soon as I turned fully onto the street, they took off, running.

I often drive down Railroad Road out of a morbid desire to get lost somehow on my way to the office, which is simply not possible to do. That’s a real indicator of how small or dead a place is if you can’t even get lost in it.

There are, to date, only five ways to get to my office, after you turn off Highway 45. Only five. Just so you know.

If the truth is to be told, I was for the better part of this semester, merely an average passer-by, myself. I’d see this earnest man under his funeral tent, several times, with his various and sundry accoutrement, and I’d drive a little faster, to be honest.

Like everyone else who commutes to this den of education, when my classes were done and my office hours met, I wanted to get the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks-That-Couldn’t-Find-The-Puck-If-It-Was-Glued-To-The-Blame-Stick out of town, too.

The other day, I had a different feeling about it, on my way home. And I can tell you exactly what that feeling was: guilt.

That happens to you a lot down south. You see the word “Christian”, attached to anything, and the very guilt you tried to drink into oblivion rears its ugly head and you’re compelled to pull in by the defunct fire house and get out and “peruse” his wares.

It’s time like these that you should remind yourself that God is God because He keeps quiet. Man isn’t because he wants to make a dollar.

The Other Almighty.

Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s just my own personal upbringing, but it’s impossible for me to continuously drive past any sign that has the word “Christian” written on it and not feel guilty if I don’t try and contribute in some way. In this case, I was under the pretend-impression that the man was an out-of-work Jesus Freak trying to support his wife, three kids, and her sister, recently recovering from an addiction to both deadbeats and ham.

So, I pulled in. I got out of my car, thinking I’m doing a good thing here. Not even two steps toward the tent and I realize I’ve been had…or I’ve gravely misunderstood what constitutes a Christian Thing.

I was confronted, as it were, not with back-ordered Bibles, as I’d thought, or Witness Wear, a popular form of T-shirt in this buckle of the Baptist Belt. I wasn’t offered multiple copies of old Carmen CDs or the latest from Sandi Patti. There wasn’t even one of the gajillion books written by Bishop T.D. Jakes available.

No, what this man was passing off as Christian Things included several inflatables of Dora the Explorer, alligators, and what I think was, at one point, a skeleton, as well as several vinyl records, one of them from Grease, which I would have bought had I not already stolen my sister’s years ago; there were also several assortments of novelty salt-and-pepper shakers, and postcards.

Not all of which were from Mississippi.

There were, to be sure, T-shirts for sale. But they were emblazoned with 1980s tours of Whitesnake, Poison, and get this, the Oak Ridge Boys, from a concert they gave, oddly enough, in Jackson, Mississippi, one of three concerts I’ve ever attended in my life. Off in the corner of the fishing line, on which they hung, was a Tupac shirt; they seem to be ubiquitous.

Not one item was Christian, in the least. Not one thing for sell was even remotely “of the Lord.”

I don’t know if I was feeling brazen or just gleeful that the day was over and I was headed back to normal people, but I asked him where the religious paraphernalia was.

Faith is still free, right?

“What?”

I should have realized that paraphernalia might not have been in his vocabulary. I should have just assumed.

I took a breath, “Where are the actual, you know, Christian Things? Do you have any Bibles, or I don’t know, hymnbooks, or something?”

“Nah, I don’t have anything like that.”

“But, this is called, I mean, you call this, Christian Things, right?”

“Yeah, I know. My name’s Christian…and these are my Things. If you want, I’ll give you Dora and the alligator for one price?”

I politely refused, but it wasn’t that easy. I’d forgotten, Christians, both in faith and namesake, are a haggling breed; I should know.

I managed to get away inflatable-free, but the damage is far from done.

See, he’s right off Highway 45, the one turn I have to take, regardless of which of the five ways I drive to my office.  And this naturally, makes it less of a delight to see, on any given morning.

I’m afraid this battle has just begun.

And so, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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It’s true. But, no worries, I’m not perfect. For instance, I have a cowlick.

100% Natural Cow Lick

No, what I’m referring to is my “curse.” I have one. (I probably have more than one, but I have one that is simply prevalent, at all costs, regardless of any personal demographic).

I never forget an injustice.

Ever. As a matter of awkward fact, I could go for years without seeing you, or thinking about you, and not even a second after a re-introduction, or a chance meeting, I immediately am reminded of That Thing You Did.

I can’t help it.

Once, I was at The Pig to buy some veggie dogs, and, because as always happens in the grocery store I simply cannot leave with only what I went there to buy, I’d decided to get some Fig Newtons, and as I turned the corner, there stood a person I’d not seen (hadn’t really wanted to run into, either, to be honest) in over a year, holding a bag of potato chips, the real good kind.

“Well, Kris, I’ll be…how on earth are you?”

I was so hoping I’d not been spotted. I was shoulder-level to a row of canned squash (perish the thought) and of course, I pretended to need four cans of it, announcing that I was in quite a hurry, and how good it was to see them (it wasn’t good to see them – we’d never been that close), and how was the family, and blah, blah, blah.

Ahem. You’ve been there, before, I know…you’ve filled your buggy with cans of squash a time or two, I’m sure.

I should have been nicer, more southern, I knew better, I did, but I couldn’t look at them without recalling that time (and this was back in high school!) that they’d stolen two candy bars from the Store (we sold candy in between classes to raise money for the annual) and then blamed me for it.

No one believe it, not for one hot second, of course, but still…I had not forgotten. I hadn’t remembered that I’d not forgotten until right then, but you see my dilemma.

This raises an interesting question within my Articles of Faith, you understand.

If I can’t truly forget what you’ve done to me, for whatever reason (and I’m sure a few were warranted), then can I truly forgive? 

I hate to sound petty and trite about this, but I am a little worried. Why does my subconscious care so much?  Have I somehow given such absolute weight to every grievance done to me? (And is this a reciprocal action?)

Godspell.

I mean, Lord knows, I’ve not gotten hung up on your wrongdoing in my daily life, or routine, but why should your “mistake” (let’s call it) be the first thing to crop back into my mind, the moment we run into each other again?  I accept the fact that I’m human, and thus, flawed. Fine.

But, what else lies down there in my psyche? 

I had no idea you could carry a grudge and not feel it, not know it…

What’s the point of anger, in that case?

It’s even a little embarrassing. I try to make light of it, to joke about it, but it still sits there, right under my eyebrow, there I am sitting at the bar with you watching you sip, sip, sip your G-a-T; or, there I am, elbow-to-elbow with you in the audience enjoying a play, a musical, a concert; or, there I am passing by you in Wal-Mart, pretending I’m not recalling that time you stood me up, didn’t pay me back, spread a lie about me, left me off the invite list, whatever – it never has to be a big thing, you know, doesn’t have to be a major event.

Probably, I could argue, that it’s the smaller ones that hurt the most, that my psyche clings to.

But, get this, it’s not even that I care that much about it, or that I’m usually that offended by the oversight…the kicker is that my mind thinks it is. Heck, if I kept a list off all the things that overlooked me, the times that stood me up, the unpaid debts, and so forth, I’d go missing.

What I hate is that the moment we reconnect, this is the first thing I think of. I go straight to it. And so, I have to re-evaluate my dialogue, in that conversation, because you’re probably not thinking of that stray moment, either…and I don’t want to bring it up, necessarily, myself.

I’m just not sure how to work through it. I swear, I don’t really keep a tally. (Maybe I should, though, maybe that would alleviate this need I have mentally to “judge”).

It’s a horrible thing to discover that about yourself, that you judge others, when you really, truly, didn’t think you did. It’s like discovering those sebaceous pimples – the kind that hurt, that bump up, but they never break the surface, so no one else really believes you have a pimple.

Oh, but you do. You do. And you know you do.

I’m not even sure therapy would help. I tend to think of the subconscious as being this massive sieve, and all day long it sweeps through the murk, the mud, the mess and collects all those moments, issues, feelings, etc. that you couldn’t deal with and its first attempt comes that night, through your dreams. (This is why I’m a vegetarian).

But, if it doesn’t get a chance to release them then, it just throws them into a back room until later. Later, by the way, usually manifests as aggravation, anger, frustration, irritation, divorce, diarrhea, headache, bankruptcy, and suicide. Sometimes, the only symptom is mild discomfort, but you should still consult your phys — wait, wait, wait. I’ve gotten this confused with Levitra.

Doctor Feelgood isn't in. Ever.

What I mean to say is, probably that’s the basis of my Mistake Retention. I’m just projecting onto something within my control that stems from something that isn’t or wasn’t. Maybe that’s the whole reason we make the mistakes we make in the first place. We just haven’t cleaned up, on the inside. All that clutter gets in the way and the next thing you know, we’re operating under the Best Intentions Rule.

If best intentions were money, we’d have no poverty left in the world, would we? I haven’t met a soul yet who doesn’t have them.

The trouble is, we just don’t know how to spend them.

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I miss the Ramones.

Someone, a long time ago like before I was born probably, once said, “Times, they are a-changin’.”

This person was either buying a new watch, replacing the battery in an old watch, or just given to random outbursts of speaking the painfully obvious.

Also, they might have been Bob Dylan.

Whoever it was, I tip my hat to them, and secretly, I call them a Philosopher. (Unless that person is Bob Dylan; I don’t call him a Philosopher since his Oscar win).

My deepest wish is that Time had a NASDAQ code.  Because it is, I believe, the only thing on this earth that is consistently circular; that makes it a safe bet.  There’s nothing Time can’t change; there’s nothing Time doesn’t affect.

It’s like an oxymoron. (But don’t ask me how, not yet).

I mean, look — Time “waits for no man,” “heals all wounds”; is “of the essence,” is always “marching on”; is “money”; and if you stitch with it, you save nine people, or something like it.  I’d say that makes it quite similar to a daily miracle.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Time is where it’s at.

But, don’t be fooled; it doesn’t have ticker, or a stock profile…not through S&P, NASDAQ, NYSE… No, the symbol you’re thinking of refers to Time Warner.

And I wouldn’t invest in them.

It’s not all fun and games with Time, though. One thing I particularly dislike is when Time sneaks up on you. And does the unthinkable.

This has happened to me twice since last Sunday.

When I was growing up, it was just me, U.L., and your three basic TV channels. Four, if the weather was good in Meridian. I saw plenty of PBS, a soap opera or two (when I was sick and stayed home and Daisy would let me because Lord knows she couldn’t miss ”Loving” to save her life or fix me some soup). Once I saw half of an episode of ”The Tonight Show” starring Johnny Carson before U.L. woke up from the chair and realized I was still awake.  I was mostly addicted to ”Dr. Who,” to be honest, which U.L. didn’t understand. So, he didn’t interfere.  But, you get the point: aside from the annual Macy’s Day Parade and Miss America (if Mississippi made it to the Top 10), there wasn’t a lot of variety.

That’s my stock, so to speak. I come from the Time when all contact lenses were hard and dangerous, and you couldn’t get cable if the actual cable wasn’t long enough to reach your house. No lie.

I fully expected things to stay like that, to not change. I sort of counted on U.L.’s house not to find the 21st Century (or the 20th, for that matter) because Time stood still way out there on Route 5. And I liked it that way, just fine.

It never was long enough.

But, lo and behold, shocker of shockers, last week I went to visit U.L., and what should I spy on the eave of the carport but a small, concave-shaped disc. A “satellite,” I believe the young folk call it.

DSL. Broadband. The Works. The Whole Nine Yards (but better than the movie). 

I was shocked.

I ran into the house, decrying his betrayal of my childhood. He responded by admitting NOT that he was sorry, but that he was now, terribly and embarrassingly, addicted to FOX News.

I died a little bit, right then, when he said that.

As if it weren’t enough to discover that he’d finally gotten ”cable,” now that I’d moved away — the one thing I begged for as a child, the one thing that would have ensured my undying devotion and love to him when he got old (and I was contemplating a nursing home), the very access that I dreamed of, as a child, that would be my portal to Fraggle Rock and the dreamy Atreyu…why on earth would he want ”cable” now?  To torment me?

If that’s so, then, Well played, U.L., I thought. Well played. 

But, I had no socially acceptable way to respond to this obsession he now had with FOX News. 

I didn’t know what to do: rip out the cord and throw the box away?  Climb onto the roof and kick the heck out of the satellite dish? I was rather immobilized as I tried to find a safe and humorous way to diffuse the awkwardness of his admission in front of Amanda. (You know, she went to Wellesley).

He was laughing about it, though, as if that would throw us off. Please.

FOX News viewers have a scent. It smells like scorched truth, the next morning, right after the scab has first gelled.

Yuck, that was gross.

Anyway…so, yeah, he’s got cable now, and can watch just whatever he wants…which is apparently just FOX News…all the time.

Oh, and the second thing is I have a new job. Theatre Director, small community college (small in other places, also, unfortunately)…it’s not been the best week for me, getting my feet wet and re-learning the joys of a Necessary Paper Trail. I’m trusting that things will get better.

They have to…because, right now, I feel like I’m teaching junior high. And I really hate that feeling.  It’s so restrictive, isn’t it?  And many of the faculty are reminiscent of a Stepford Wife/Male Escort, and not from the right side of the railroad tracks, either.

On top of that, I have to drive fifty (50) miles each way.  (But, I’ll reserve that hatred for the Economy).

Sigh. The Time Sneak wasn’t the job, per se, but the unforeseen amounts of paperwork that was not mentioned during my interview a month ago…suspicious minds, indeed.

I miss you, too.

So, now, I’m sitting here in my office, and I want so much to say that I wish for a simpler, kinder, gentler Time, but I’m afraid that’d just mean sleeping.

And really long baths.

God, I love a bath. When I take a bath, Time stops. I don’t care what’s happening beyond that bathroom door; I slide into the tub (per my ritual of heating the sides of the tub before getting into it), pour myself a glass of — you know, let’s save my strange bathing rituals for another blog.

The point is: I can’t keep an hour from itself, but I can certainly waste one.

And I think that’s exactly what I’m about to do.

I’m going to slip out of my office, through the back door, and drive a full, fast hour home…to the only thing that loves my body, without comment…the tub.

The current time is 12:19 PM.

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Caffeine: my new frenemy.

I guess it’s just “what I do” before I teach class, to get in the “zone,” with today’s youth. I think that’s what I tell myself: it’s caffeine; you’ll need that. These students have never lived without computer access. Email was “old-hat” by the time they were born. You’ve got to keep up with them. Caffeine is your friend. 

But, I rarely get the kick I need from the caffeine in a Diet Coke. Mostly, I just get gas.

Today, right in the middle of my lecture on trochaic feet in poetry, I burped. It was so long it was almost a sentence.

It was also loud. I had no idea I had it in me to sound “like one of the boys.”

I do.

I scared myself, though. I didn’t sense a burp coming, ahead of time. I mean, somehow, this entire summer term, I’ve managed to drink a Diet Coke, every morning, and control the acquired gas that often accompanies the carbonation.

That changed, at 8:49 AM.

And so did something else: my belief that every person in this country is full of good intentions. (Well, to tell the truth, they didn’t happen at the same time. I was just being dramatic. To be more exact, the change in “my belief that every person in the country is full of good intentions” occurred, closer to, like, 7:50 AM).

I’d never noticed this before. I guess I was always more interested in putting money in the vending machine (again, it’s not really an interest of mine as much as a necessity if I actually intend on getting the Diet Coke). But, I rarely looked at the slot where your coins go other than to make sure I wasn’t dropping coins on the floor.

Because that’s a real hassle, isn’t it?  Never have I loved a nickel so much as when it has rolled out of reach, under the behemoth that is the Coke Machine in the lounge.

For some reason this morning, though, I paid a bizarre amount of attention to my ritual of depositing coin after coin down Herman’s throat. (Herman, that’s his name, I pretend I’m feeding him, and that he doesn’t like anyone else but me. I get mad when others feed him, too – it’s the little things that get me through my day. God knows, I owe Herman).

Anyway, so when I’d placed my last coin, it was a dime, into the slot, I noticed a flashing sign, if you will, underneath the slot. Right below it. Black screen with those menacing red dots that light up, you know?  I hate those flashing signs the most.

They are never consistent, those flashing signs: sometimes their shapes are a jumble of lower-case and capital letters. That drives me crazy. And sometimes…sometimes! they look like the shapes of numbers that are trying to “pass” as letters. We used to do that on our calculators, in sixth grade, on the old interface that calculators used to have, remember? You could type in 55378008 and spell “boobless.” Mrs. Cotten was never amused at that. I only did it once and never again. I couldn’t; she took my calculator. She probably still has it, too.

Yeah, she's looking at you. And she's not happy.

Now, here I am, twenty-some-odd years later and I’m standing in front of a flashing sign, with those red lights, making me think of fifth grade, which I didn’t appreciate.

It read: “Press.” I was intrigued, but not shocked.

Then, immediately after, it read: “Bend down.”

I wasn’t entirely sure I’d seen that last part. Because I wasn’t even sure what it meant, exactly, so I bought another Diet Coke, and sure enough, after the last coin, this one was a nickel, was inserted…there flashed the “instructions.” Again.

I figured out that that must be what they were. Instructions. Telling me to press and then bend down.

Press and Bend Down.

I don’t know if it was the heat (it was over 90, again, today, and we’re still a week or two away from True Summer), or if it was the fact that I’m actually adjusting to teaching at 8:00 AM in the morning – perish the thought – but I was immediately offended at this vending machine. (Herman, why?)

I know how to get a blame Diet Coke out of one, thank you. I don’t need to be told to Press and then Bend Down.

My first thought was this flashing sign was the result of some lazy idiot, one afternoon, who stood around trying to think of a way to squeeze a few dollars out of our lawsuit-riddled capitalist economy. Though, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how one would go about suing Coke for “negligence for withholding liquid despite the obvious.” I mean, surely to god, they’d know how to retrieve a soft drink from a vending machine.

They’d hear it roll down the chute if nothing else. They’d have to be deaf not to.

That’s when I finally got the full foot all the way into my mouth. Obviously, this is why the machine flashes a sign. Right? I told myself that as a means to explain away the ridiculousness of having a sign flash at all, on a vending machine.

And it doesn’t matter that we have no deaf professors in that department, either.

I unscrewed the cap off, took a long, satisfying sip, and sat down to finish grading a few papers. But, I couldn’t push my first thought far enough to the side of my brain, and trust me if you’ve already gotten idiocy on the brain, grading Comp. II papers isn’t going to help you much.

Because I knew, I had convinced myself, already, that there was another, probably more genuine and legally-bound reason for such “instructions” to be progammed into a vending machine. Poor Herman, the number of idiots he must have to put up with everyday. The ADA was just a cover; what Coke was disclaiming was the fool who would think he’d been robbed because he paid for a Coke but couldn’t find it.

There are dumb people all around us, and somebody somewhere would have found a way to take advantage of this had a flashing sign not been ready and waiting to alert the consumer that it would take just a little more than one arm’s elbow grease from putting a few quarters in the machine to get their Coke, or Dasani water.

They were going to have to bend down, too. (Is knee grease a term, as well, or is it just disgusting to think about?)

Other signs own up to this testament on every product. I know you’ve seen them. They’re both a sad commentary on the state of affairs in America today, and also, they’re funny.

Board games like Life and Monopoly, are forever warning us that game pieces are for the game not our mouths. Coffee filters are constantly reminding us that the plastic wrap around the filters is “not a toy;” toilet paper’s kind enough to tell us this, too, and further, that if we put the plastic wrap on our heads, we will probably suffocate to death. 

Baby seats are doubling up, more than ever, on their duties to make sure we read on the box that “children have to come out of the car” with us by “unbuckling the straps that have been securely placed under the child’s arms” when we get to Wal-Mart; they can’t stay in the backseat, alone, even if you’ve got a portable DVD player. Hair dryers are absolutely dead-set against the idea of blowing your hair into a perfect Farrah Fawcett, or chicken wing, while bathing. 

A hair style and supper.

My favorite, still to this day, is the simple, age-old phrase: Some assembly required. (I like it so much because it’s an equal-opportunity instruction…found on boxes ranging from Big Wheels to Lego castles to Target bookshelves that look like ladders when assembled - and it’s also a little sweet in the way it offers its suggestion. Only “some” assembly is required; it’s like they attempted to take a small amount of pity on us, the consumers, and put some of it together, but then gave up after a few minutes. Just like we do when trying to learn how to program our DVR).  

I’m not the first to ask this, I know, but I bet I’m the first to put it the whole question in bold: Where did “common sense” go?

You get 5 bonus points if you guess Corporate America…and 5 more, if you say it’s in the top desk drawer of that little man in the back corner whose job it is to design the Warning labels about the plastic wrap, game pieces, and hair dryers.

And I bet his name is Herman. It’s just a feeling I have.

Or, maybe that’s gas, again.

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• The very idea of texting your mother…
• Lazarus and his "Transferring to the Banana."
• He'd just always wanted a hearse, he said.
• After that, I ate my chocolate cobbler in silence.

Yet, I was terribly, awkwardly naive. A bookworm straight out of the solid core of a ripe apple, I didn’t read people as well as words, not until I was much older – and oh how I wish you could shut people up the way you do a book, one flick of  your wrist and back they go on the shelf. 

But me, no, I never questioned authority, and let me tell you that came to backfire on a lot of children in my generation, in the mid-1980s; pedophilia was nearing an epidemic – remember when Snuffleupagus finally became “real?” There was a sad reason for that  - still, I respected my elders, continued to watch Sesame Street, and…

…I never, never put my elbows on the table.

But, as tends to happen, things change.

First, we had a bumper crop of babies in the family.  And as they continue to grow older, some things must necesssarily fall to the wayside (last Sunday, Wynn Chandler, 1.5,  and Connor, 3,  threw a wooden banana back and forth across the dinner table until it hit A.K.’s, 4, very full plate of spaghetti, causing it to fall into his lap and set off an alarm of some sort, a siren, buried in the back of his gut. Poor A.K., who for once wasn’t causing trouble, screamed loudly enough to make up for it). 

But, for years, it had only been me, in my adopted family. I was the baby, I was the absolute center of the universe. Careful attention was given to me, like alms and written prayers offered at the Wailing Wall. And I responded to this positive reinforcement.

Nana, for instance, was merciless in her insistence that I be well-bred, especially at the almighty dinner table. Each week I was taught with precision and focus a rule of etiquette. I could set a table for six, for a five-course meal, with formal attire and RSVP’ed regret cards (food allergies to be listed in the space provided on the back of the card) in under ten minutes. When it came to grace and civility at the dinner table, I stood alone. And above. All others. Well, at least other children.

The test came every Sunday. If I mastered the rule from the previous week: placement of water glasses, descending order of forks, the importance of balling a napkin, especially linen, at the end of the meal, as opposed to folding it (a sin!) and laying it in the center of the plate, etc. I would receive a dollar bill, magically slipped under my plate in the interim between the meal and dessert (in my family, we have a sort of digestive purgatory during this interim where we offer coffee and discussion before actually getting to dessert – well, we used to before the, you know, babies. The last time we did this ended up in a clotted mess of coffee, Berber carpet and mashed potatoes).

This went on for years, this Dollar Bill Incentive.

And I can, to this day, clearly remember the Sunday that I Decided I Would Showcase All Rules of Etiquette Learned Ever. I made a huge to-do about it, as well, telling everyone from that Wednesday night on, that Sunday would be the day. I would get absolutely everything right. That table would look ripped from the pages of Southern Living. 

We were never served pizza. So, this is a pure lie.

As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t just be set with the Sunday china, or the crystal tea glasses, it would be set with Intimidation. They might not even be able to eat, so crisp would be the napkins, so pristinely placed the plates. Instead, I told them, it might “behoove” them (yet another word I’d picked up from Aunt Maudy) to bring cameras.

Oh, how I practiced in my bedroom, drawing out diagrams, using flash cards – I know, it seems like a lot of unneccessary subterfuge just to set one table, and I know it is, shall we say, for something so truly insignificant in the greater scheme of things (like surviving a recession) but times were different then, and I was a lonely child, so cut me some slack.

I wasn’t entirely innocent, though.  No, I had a plan.

I wasn’t just diagraming the etiquette rules I’d been taught by Nana. I was busy inventing new ones, cleverly cloaked in similarity to real, authentic rules.  They’d never be the wiser, and when all was said and done, under my plate, that Sunday, would be well over $50. I was about to become the richest 12-year-old in the Wess Chapel community.

That morning I was at church so fast, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d taken a bath.

And God, how church dragged on and on…finally, we stood up for the Benediction. I knew my patience was wearing thin; I could barely, just barely, make it through this, I told myself: the song was “Just As I Am,” the uncut version, and I could already tell we were going to sing every last verse of it. I sat there praying that no one would take the altar.  I didn’t have time for that, they could just go find a closet, like the Bible said, and pray on their own time…I had a table to set. Much to my chagrin, two women, the Usual Suspects, strode down the aisle. I thought, fine, get it over with, lay your sins at the foot of the pulpit and get back to the pew…but the heavier of the two women, the one who was solely responsible for introducing Tupperware to the Social Ladies League, did a sneak-around and went to the pastor instead.

The Lord! I thought, This is going to take forever. You don’t walk down the aisle to speak to the pastor, during Benediction, to ask him how’s he doing, or where he got his suit. No, you’ve done some horribly guilty thing if it requires pastoral counseling at a quarter to one, in a Baptist church.  I was hoping it’d be about the Tupperware, personally.

I'd pray about Tupperware, too. For forgiveness of it.

You could have cut the tension in that church with a communion wafer – of course it’d have to be on the fifth Sunday of the month, that’s the only time we do Communion. Point is, everyone started praying for that woman, right then. And not in a good way. She was all the time taking advantage of the altar, something that is frowned upon at the church unless your aging mother whom you put in a nursing home even though you knew better has recently died, or your husband has left you for Brenda who up until last Monday had been the secretary at the elementary school, or your neighbor is that crazy woman who everyone knew “drove her husband to the grave with her constant migraines and other things always said in a whisper around children” had started sneaking out to her car, in her own driveway, and kicking the back fender in, and then calling the police and blaming you for it, poor Ms. Ada Lee – she had a walker for crying out loud…those were the only acceptable reasons to take the altar. 

Anything else just got you bad-mouthed.  They weren’t praying for her, they were praying about her: mainly to shut up and sit back down.

Finally, I guess, the Good Lord took her call and she got what she needed, and if not, we all knew she’d be back next Sunday. Although one time she took the altar on a Wednesday evening service, which just looked bad…no one ever did that, and also she’d worn knee-highs. The minute she kneeled to pray, it was, well, plainly unfair for the rest of us to have to look at that.

I was already out of my seatbelt, the car rolling to a stop, U.L. hollering at me “to quit doing that every blame time until he was fully stopped,” I could see him mentally adding yet another thing to the List of Bad Habits With Which He Blamed My Mother For. It was a long list and I knew, in time, it’d break him and he’d find himself at the altar, too.

I calmly stepped into Nana’s house and began the task that would make me rich and able to ruin the lives of all other children in my grade; so few at my school could afford the food in the cafeteria at the Academy. Which wasn’t really good food anyway.  But, after today, I could buy chicken baskets and shrimp boats and pizza slices for everyone.

Dinner passed by quietly, a few stunted mumbles of approval. I could tell that I’d done it, I’d pulled it off, this great heist of etiquette. Not a fork misplaced, not a napkin ring turned over, no water glass unfilled. I could barely eat, even though it was meatloaf, which was, like, number 7, in the secret diary I kept, where on the cover in glowing, loops of letters I’d written in the black magic marker: Favorite Things In Life. Coffee Time couldn’t come quickly enough, but come it did, and as we waited, and waited, so did dessert.

I got up and left the dining room, as was the customary method by which the money fairy would come; she didn’t like to be seen, and I can understand that. I walked into the front den and down the hall to wash my hands, something we all did before dessert (I like to think we did it before the meal, as well). I came back, nonchalantly, not as if I were expecting anything, and took my seat.

I don't know where Heaven is, but I know what ingredients you need to make it.

Dessert was Scotch Chocolate Cake - in my diary, it was number 11.

This was the moment. I picked up my plate, One slice please, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and I could just about make out the corners of the at-least-fifty-dollars that I knew was lying under the plate. I could see those corners of that money flat through my eyelids. That’s how sure I was.

I opened them and there was not one single dollar bill laying there. None.

I couldn’t hide my disappointment. I looked at Nana, just shy of pitching a fit the likes of which had never been thrown in this family since Pam got a speeding ticket for missing her curfew (she had curfews; they were well deserved) in front of the old Buckstove in the front den. That was a fit for the record books.

But, I bit my tongue and asked, “What did I do wrong? I thought I did it all right.”

Nana, with those large, Merle Norman eyes, said, “You did, honey. It was perfect.”

“Well, then, where’s the money?” I mean, why beat around the bush, at this point.  And in that way that all the wizened women in my family have, she put forth a small smile that had both love and understanding and sternness in it and said,

Kris, you’re almost thirteen. You shouldn’t do things because you expect something in return. You should do them because it’s the right thing to do. You should learn to just be good for nothing.

It was a slip of a cliche, probably not intended. But, when she caught herself, she laughed, a beautiful laugh, and then we all laughed, and it was all ok. It was a good lesson to be learned.

And, it’s a lesson that’s stuck…because I’ve been good for nothing ever since.

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• Because hands can do everything but lie.
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• That’s how we bring up all children in our family: by ear.
• He'd just always wanted a hearse, he said.