BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Such is the life of an author.  Sitting by the pool, sipping hurricanes and having a gorgeous assistant apply tanning lotion. We lounge and read high-brow literary endeavors penned by our colleagues, wax prophetic, say witty things for no apparent reason, then break for a leisurely dinner of lobster salad on a bed of mixed greens, all washed down with some manner of imported and unpronounceable blend of teas. We get cleaned up, put on our smoking jackets with the elbow patches, then head off (in a limo, of course) to yet another party being held for a charity no one has ever heard of, but that part really doesn’t matter because instead of investing the donations in the charity itself all of the money is being spent on caviar, crab puffs, Dom Perignon, and an open bar. I mean, after all, it’s a party, right? If you don’t give good party then no one will show up to donate money to finance the next party. But, I digress yet again… We laugh, we say more witty things in order to make other people laugh, and then we slip out to head home (in the limo, of course) and grab a few hours sleep before starting the whole process over again, plus maybe an interview with an editor from People magazine and a quick, on camera tour of our digs with someone from Entertainment Tonight. (Hopefully it would be Mary Hart… That gal has got some serious gams… but, we won’t go there…)

Ahhhh… The life of an author… It just can’t be beat…

Whoa! Did you hear that? Yeah, it was loud…What was it, you ask? Could it be the sound of the above fantasy shattering like a plate glass window?

Or, might it have been the sound of a distant yell followed by something whistling past your head then going “plooooop!” (gotta love onomatopoeia) into the pristine waters of the pool… But, we’ll get to that eventually. (I promise)

No, no, no… I’m not about to lecture you on how the majority of us authors are generally poor folks who work just as hard as everyone else (even though that’s true). Nope, I really and truly am going to go on about sitting by the pool. Well, maybe not sitting so much as standing…and walking around it…and, well, pushing the vacuum head around on the bottom of said pool with one of those extendable aluminum poles. But, like I said above, we’ll get to that.

Now, before you ask, the answer is no. I wasn’t a pool boy… Although, when the kid is having a sleepover at a friend’s house and we are all alone, EK and I sometimes play “wealthy lady and the pool boy“… JUST KIDDING. We don’t even have an inflatable kiddie pool so that one definitely is NOT in the repertoire…

Okay… so is everyone settled down? No more impure thoughts and all that? Wait…You in the back… yeah, YOU. Did you have something you wanted to share with the rest of us? Excuse me? Say that again… (sigh) No, we don’t play “wealthy lady and the gardener” either. Sheesh… Can we just get back to the topic at hand now? Thank you…

Now, before we can get to the pool – and more importantly, the loud noise – As usual I have to prattle on endlessly about some of the background. You might already have a head start on the background if you are one of those folks who reads the acknowledgments at the beginning of a book – obviously in this particular case, my books. If so, you have probably run across the honorific and name, “Sergeant Scott Ruddle, SLPD” in my litany of couldn’t have done this withouts. (Yes, in the earlier books in the series it was Officer, not Sergeant… Believe me, he points that out to me every chance he gets…)

So, in case you haven’t figured it out, this is another one of those dominos. I’m not quite sure what knocked this one over. Maybe it is just brain cells dying off and emptying memories into the ether as a final cry of defiance. Suffice it to say a line of the figurative, dotted, oblong hexahedrons went clickity-clack and we ended up here… go figure.

I also need to point out here that I really and truly do come from humble beginnings. I’ve rambled on about that fact several times before. Summers on the farm, work, values, etc.  (See the PB&J blog for instance…) However, I will admit that in my late teens things were looking up for our family, primarily because my father was frugal, had a Midas touch when it came to investing, and worked his ass off. At any rate, by the time I hit the tender age of 16 my parents had managed to purchase a very nice 5 bedroom ranch on an extra large lot, and it happened to be right around the block from the small cracker box of a home where we had been residing. The great thing is that they did this all without overextending themselves. And, as an added bonus, they sprang for a pool to be installed. (Not right away… that came a year or so later.) In any case, they managed to fit into the budget a 16X32, in-ground pool with a 3 foot shallow end, an 8.5 foot deep end, diving board, and a nice patio. It had a vermiculite-based bottom with a liner, as opposed to being poured concrete. This saved money, and it was still durable and looked just like any other pool.

I’m not flaunting this fact. Really, I’m not. But, I have to say that it was really nice. I mean, not every high school kid gets to say,  “Hey, wanna come over and take a swim?” to his friends. But, that’s another story/blog. At this point we fast forward…(yes, we’ve made it to the pool, but we have to go somewhere else for a moment…I promise, we’ll come back…)

I met Sergeant Ruddle of the SLPD a few years before he ever pinned a badge onto a uniform. Well, a real one. I have no idea if he ever played cowboys as a kid and happened to take on the role of the sheriff or some such. As to what he and his wife do in the privacy of their own home… Well, I’m not even going to speculate on that because if I did and blogged about it he’d probably have me arrested and lose me in the system for a few days. Besides, it would be like thinking about your parents…well…you know… Wayyyy too much, “eeewwwwwww!” factor there.

Anyway, I met Scott and his lovely wife when I was working as a salesperson at a mall store called VideoConcepts^TM. Yeah, I was one of those annoying guys in a sport coat who talked your arm off until you gave me your credit card and I sent you out the door with a VCR/Big Screen TV/Stereo. To give you an idea of the time frame this was happening, Beta was a big deal and VHS was a relatively new format. High-end turntables for LP’s were the thing, MP3 was two letters and a number strung together in random order, and if you wanted to carry music with you the Sony Walkman radio/cassette player (or generic equivalent) was your only choice. I even have vivid memories of us all standing around and doing the “ooohh – aaaahhh” thing when the first CD player showed up in our store (which BTW had the following functions – play, pause, stop, & skip and it cost a “reasonable” $1299.95 <– No, that is NOT a typo.)

Moving on… Scott and his bride came into the store one random day in order to look at stereos. They lived nearby and were pretty much just window shopping at the old Northwest Plaza outdoor mall. I happened to draw a bead on them first and like any jacked up salesperson I went in for the kill. I have to admit, they did NOT leave with a stereo that day. They did, however, leave with an impression, some spec sheets on amps, and a giant load of information about the VideoConcepts^TM Movie Rental Club. Fortunately, the impression they took with them was a good one (How I managed that, I will never know…)

So, anyway, when my shift came to an end, like any average, single guy in his early 20’s I beat feet out of my place of employment and went in search of beer and women. If I remember correctly, I found beer (that was easy) but I think I struck out in the women department that evening.

Scott, however, returned to the store and purchased a membership to the movie club well after I had gone. SOP at the store was to ask a customer if they had talked to a particular salesperson so the commissions could be properly assigned. For whatever reason, Scott didn’t have my business card and at that point couldn’t remember my name, so he just said yeah, “some sandy-haired hyper guy.” (yeah, my hair darkened considerably as I aged – plus, I don’t have a pool anymore…yeah, we’re getting back to the pool…) So, the long and short of it is that I got my two bucks commission (or whatever it was) and when Scott returned his initial “hey, you just joined so have a free rental on us” movie, I happened to be working so we spent some time chatting and eventually became friends.

The process by which our actual friendship proper came about is a bizarre and psyche damaging history… And, there is plenty of blog fodder in there. Believe me. Maybe we’ll get into that at another time. Depends on the dominos…

Now, about that pool… (see, I told you we’d get there…well, almost)

At this stage in my life my parents had divorced, my sister was living with my mother, and I was renting half of that 5-bedroom ranch from my father. The way it was laid out, there were basically two wings each with its own bathroom, and the kitchen & living room nestled in between. There was even a door separating the wings that could be shut. So, it was kind of a bachelor’s paradise in a way. My dad traveled quite a bit when he wasn’t working, so I pretty much had the place to myself, and the rent was reasonable. It beat the hell out of a tiny little apartment with a huge price tag, even if it did still carry the stigma of “What?! You still live with your dad?” attached. The stigma, however, quickly faded whenever friends – or girlfriends – would see the place and realize that even when my dad WAS home, he was off in his own end of the house and you rarely, if ever, saw him.

Now, as a part of my rent, I had certain duties. In retrospect, it was much like owning a home. Mow the lawn, do this, do that, and other stuff. Among those duties were the care and maintenance, as well as the opening and closing, of the swimming pool. If you have ever “opened” a pool in the spring or “closed” one in the fall, you know how much work this can be. (I will spare you a complete rundown of the details…)

The year was… Well… I dunno what the year was… suffice it to say it was a long time ago. I took a weeks vacation during the late spring/early summer in order to open the pool. Scott, having become one of my best friends – he was even my best man when EK and I married, but that came years later – took a week of his own vacation to come over and help me. Okay, so here’s the thing. Scott and I are the same age. He’s like 2 months older than me, so not much difference there…

Think about this… You have two guys in their early twenties, on vacation, and opening a swimming pool. Things are going to happen… Yes, there was much BBQ’ing involved while working. I mean, why not? We had to eat, right? But, we still worked our tails off. No kidding. We just found a way to make the work fun… But, think harder about the situation… A couple of twenty-something guys, a swimming pool, warm early summer day, and no worries… Yeah, exactly… Even more insidious than the BBQ’ing was the proliferation of fermented and hopped malt beverages served cold from a convenient twelve-ounce aluminum container with a small hole in the top.

Beer. That sparkling elixir… The potion that makes all things…well, blurry and uneven, but I digress…

Now, with all this work to do, we managed to go through quite a bit of beer. And, as will happen, we would, on occasion, run out. One day, right about the end of the week, we did. Run out, that is. We had run out before, but this particular day we had a nice London broil cooking on the grill, the pool truly was pristine and ready for swimming, and Scott’s wife was going to be over as soon as she got off work. We were going to kick back and enjoy the fruits of our labors for a change… But, we were going to need more beer. Scott, in his infinite wisdom, went to buy some more.

Now, before you get all excited, he wasn’t drunk. We were both sober at the time, which is what makes what happened next even more bizarre…

Yeah… Now we are back to the noise (see, told ya’…)

I was putting the finishing touches on the pool and Scott had been gone maybe 10 minutes at the most (there was a liquor store three blocks up the street). I hear this distant voice calling…

“Mmmmmeeeeeerrrrrrrppppppp!” (that’s what Scott and his wife called me…Seems I “looked like a Merp” to them. Whatever the hell a Merp looks like.)

I cocked my head to the side and listened. Silence.

Then again, “Mmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeerrrrrrrppppppp! INCOMING!”

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this until the noise met my ears…It was kind of a Doppler distorted whistling whoosh-pfffffffffbbbbbbbttttttt type sound, followed very closely by a loud KER-PLOOOOOOOMMMMMMPPPPFFF! This racket which brought up the rear of the whole cacophony was joined by the physical action of water splashing up out of the pool and all over me. This, of course, was followed by my reaction, which took the form of extreme surprise and me nearly falling into the pool as I attempted to jump out of my skin, run around the yard, then climb back into the aforementioned shed epidermis.

Before I could even begin to speculate as to the planetary origin of the meteorite that had just crashed to earth before my eyes, another came whistling past my head and repeated the loud KER-PLOOOOOOOMMMMMMPPPPFFF! and splash. This time, while not entirely prepared, I was a bit less surprised. Instead of trying to climb out of my skin, I simply turned around three times while inside it, then spent a minute or two adjusting my bellybutton back where it belonged due to the twisting. (I never have managed to get that thing centered correctly since)…

The Whistle filled my ears one more time, but instead of being followed by KER-PLOOOOOOOMMMMMMPPPPFFF! it was punctuated by a horrendous sounding KRUNCH-CLATTER-CRASH-GRONKKKKKK-Hisssssssssssssss. This was combined with an object cartwheeling backwards (relative to its earlier trajectory) through the air as it expelled some manner of liquid propellant in a violent spray. A split second later it plummeted into the water and continued to spew and bubble.

A couple of short minutes passed by with nothing else falling from the sky.  As I stood watching a pair of 12 ounce cans bobbing up and down in the pool, while another slowly worked its way toward the bottom, I heard a deep chuckle coming from the sliding doors leading out to the patio.

You see – and I’m sure you figured this out already – it seems Scott had been standing in the middle of the street in front of my house, lobbing full beers over it to test his “marksmanship”.

“So, did I hit the pool, white man?” Scott finally called from the doorway. (yeah, just like Ben Storm.)

At that point all I could think of to say is, “I think we’d better add some more chlorine or something.”

Yeah, and now he’s a cop.  Welcome to my world.

More to come…

Murv

Nope, not the pizza. They make okay pizza, I guess, but the truth is I got kind of burned out on them quite a few years back. You see, during my college years I had friends who worked at Dominos and we were all the time ending up with pizzas that hadn’t been picked up, or pranked deliveries, or simply an employee discounted “pie” as they called them. We were eating Dominos pizza all the time, so I pretty much had my fill. I mean, I’ll eat it if it’s there, but given my druthers, I’d rather have a Saint Louis Style (thin, crispy crust with provel cheese) from Imo’s or one of the local mom ‘n pop pizzerias.

But, like my usual self, I’m off on yet another tangent. I didn’t come here to talk to you about pizza today. I also didn’t come here to talk to you about the little rectangular tiles with the dots all over them either.

Well, yeah, I guess actually I did plan to talk about the dotted rectangles, but only metaphorically, and just at the beginning. Are you following that? Good, because someone has to. I’m starting to get lost…

Anyway, on with the metaphor. You know how when you’re a kid – or even an adult – you tend not to actually play dominos the way the game is meant to be played? Instead, you spend hours painstakingly lining them all up in intricate patterns, with specifically prescribed distances between each, and then after all that hard work you knock the first one over and watch the 30 second (if you’re lucky and have A LOT of dominos) chain reaction. Go on, admit it. We’ve all done it. Sometimes we even do it with boxes of Hamburger Helper and crap like that you find in the cupboard. Well, at least I do… But I guess we won’t go there…

So anyhow, memories are like that too. You knock one over and the next thing you know there is this whole cascade of memories rattling around in your brainpan. Some good. Some bad. Some funny. Some, not so much. Well, that’s what happened this morning. I was sitting here, minding my own business, taking care of the morning email – well, the night’s email that I was just then seeing in the morning, but…yeah…digressing again – So…There I was… Minding biz… Doing email thing…

That’s when it happened. A particular email from a friend sparked a memory about my wife’s maternal grandfather (now long deceased). It’s kind of a cute memory, and a story I’ve told to many folks to illustrate a point about aging and reality. But, as with Dominos the pizza, and dominos the game, it’s not the actual memory I intend to share today. Yeah, it basically went clack, knocked over another memory, then another, and the next thing I knew there was this other memory left standing – improper spacing of the dominos, I assume, which means I must be having gaps in my memory…but, we won’t go there either…

So… I have absolutely no clue if I have told this story here before or not, but I’m going to tell it again anyway. Why? Because it’s funny and besides, this is my blog so I get to run off at the mouth in it all I want. So there. (hmmmm…wonder why they don’t have just a plain old “sticking tongue out smiley” on this blog interface…)

Okay… On with the tale.

Now, this is a true story. I am telling you that because as you read it and visualize it, you are going to be imagining an episode of The Benny Hill Show or Monty Python going through your head. But, I’m here to tell you this really happened, and there were a whole host of witnesses.

Back when EK’s grandparents were still alive, but most definitely in their waning years, they resided at a very nice assisted living facility. On holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc – the family would gather out there for a big dinner in the dining room, then retire to their apartment for visiting, etc. This all went on early in our marriage, so EK and I were young and spry back then (trust me, that factoid comes into play later)… Anyway, time marches on and eventually folks pass away, cross over, kick the bucket, expire, or whatever euphemism you wish to apply. In the case of EK’s grandparents, her grandmother went first. Now, as one would expect, and as statistically happens, her grandfather began a steady decline following her loss. After all, his wife of almost 75 years was gone. He ended up moving out of the apartment proper, and into the attached nursing facility. He didn’t last terribly long after that.

Yeah, I know, I said this was a funny story and the above is not funny at all. I realize that. But, we are getting to the funny part and it has nothing to do with death. Well, maybe a little… It actually has to do with life in the face of impending death.

Right around 1 year before EK’s grandfather simply gave up altogether and allowed himself to die, we gathered out at the assisted living facility for Thanksgiving dinner. What with grandma being gone it was a much more somber celebration than it had been in the past, but it was still very nice. At this point, grandpa didn’t move around so good. He could walk, but not a great distance by any means. So, since it was a nice day, as is often the case with Saint Louis around Thanksgiving – fairly cool, but with the sun shining and not bitterly cold – the family decided a nice walk around the “lake” in front of the facility would be in order (actually, where I come from it would be called a pond, but here in Saint Louis they think it is a lake, so I just go along with them). So, with grandpa loaded up in his wheelchair, we set off for a liesurely afternoon stroll.

Now, as much as the family tried to lighten the mood, the tone was still very somber. After all, grandma hadn’t been gone all that long, and holidays were kind of her thing. In fact, she used to “save up” their dining room “meal tickets” so that the family could gather with them. And, from the stories I have heard, grandma used to cook up a storm and put on a hell of spread during the holidays. I met and married EK a bit too late in life to have enjoyed those particular family gatherings, but the get-togethers at the facility were still wonderful.

So anyway, back to the story… We made our way down the hill on one side of the small “lake” then came around the end, and started up the hill that banked the other side. The path itself was a concrete sidewalk so the going was smooth, and the direction we were heading would take us right back to the nursing center, and grandpa’s room. All good. Well, we made it about halfway up this side when everyone decided to stop for a bit to “smell the roses”. Admittedly, the scenery was nice and serene, and we all thought it might be nice to just rest a moment and look out over the “lake”.

We all turned to face the tableau and drink in the splendor of nature. Some geese were flying overhead making geese noises, there were a few wispy clouds in the blue sky…the crisp autumn air was filled with the loamy smells from the carpet of leaves that had fallen off the trees in the small, urban wooded areas at our backs. We were all gathered together, enjoying it as a close knit family unit. It was pretty much “Norman Rockwell Family Postcard Perfect” as we stared out across the glassy water at the bottom of the somewhat steep, grassy incline before us.

It stayed perfect for about 5 seconds, because then I heard the screaming…

Yes, screaming. Well, maybe more like a yell than a scream. In any event is was somewhat weak, but still quite audible and filled with maybe a bit of fear, but mostly what sounded to be complete surprise. And, it seemed to have started nearby, but was now moving away from us…

Wondering what was going on I brought my gaze quickly downward and saw, much to my horror, grandpa, still seated in his wheelchair, arms flailing as he rolled ever faster down the bumpy, grassy hill toward the lake. You see, it seems that my brother-in-law (who shall remain nameless, and I have several so it will be easy for him to remain anonymous) had neglected to set the brake on the wheelchair. Due to our position on the rise, and the fact that he had turned grandpa toward the lake so that he could see what everyone else was enjoying…well, to put it simply when he let go of the handles to point at something, gravity took over, as it tends to do.

Here is where the young and spry comes into play… Quite obviously we were all terrified. Here we have a somewhat frail, 90 year old man, hurtling toward a “lake” in a wheelchair, down an incline, on a crisp autumn day. The water in the “lake” wasn’t exactly warm as you can guess. So, while some gasped and screamed, others of us sprang into action, running headlong down the hill after the wheelchair.

Well, as it turns out, grandpa had way too much of a head start on us, so, weak cry, arms flailing, and everything you can imagine from an episode of one of the aforementioned comedy shows later, he hit the water. Now, grandpa was a very practical and intelligent man, so rather than allow himself to be catapulted across the “lake” when the front wheels of the chair struck the muddy edge, he stuck his feet straight out in front of himself and held on. This manuever saved him from taking a chilly swim, however, he still ended up “wading” so to speak as he slipped down in the chair. When all was said and done, the water ended up at about his knees as I recall.

So, as one could expect, a bit of minor panic ensued. My mother-in-law was extremely concerned for her father, my brother-in-law was concerned – and completely mortified, EK wasn’t far behind me coming down the hill, and my father-in-law and one of my other brothers-in-law who was there that year were neck and neck with me in our race to save gramps.

Arriving at the edge of the “lake” and trying to avoid falling in ourselves, we dragged grandpa out of the water. My father-in-law and brother-in-law got on either side of him and more or less carried him back up the hill as I raced ahead with the wheelchair and soaking wet blankets. When we all reached the top of the hill they deposited gramps back into the chair and he assured us that he wasn’t hurt, but that he was getting cold from being wet, naturally. So, while the rest of the family straightened themselves out and started regaining composure, I lit a fire under my own ass and pushed gramps in his wheelchair as fast as I could up the sidewalk and into the nursing center where we could get him changed and warmed up.

Now, at this point, my own heart was racing and I was deeply concerned. I mean, after all, the man was 90 years old, he was soaking wet up to his kees and damp elsewhere because of the water splashing all over him. It was 45 degrees outside, his blankets were pretty much useless since they were cold and wet, and we were still about 100 yards from the nursing center at the top of the hill.

After we had traveled maybe twenty yards, I started hearing this odd noise coming from gramps. I dug in and pushed faster as I asked, “Are you okay, grandpa?”… I was CPR certified at the time, but really wasn’t in a hurry to put it into practice if you know what I mean. At this point, instead of getting an answer, I noticed that the noise was just getting louder and the wheelchair was starting to vibrate. It was then I realized that grandpa was laughing his ass off. Downright belly laugh guffawing…Almost to the point where he was going to risk not being able to catch his breath… I couldn’t help but start to laugh too. When he was finally able to stifle the laughing for a few seconds he said, “That was fun. Can we do it again?”

With that, we both burst into laughter yet again. We were still chuckling like a couple of wingnuts when I got him into his room and the nurse on duty starting helping him change into some dry clothes.

When the rest of the family arrived only a minute or so behind us, they were still in the concerned mode, and rightfully so. I think perhaps grandpa and I must have appeared to be total idiots to the rest of them because we were still grinning ear to ear, and whenever we looked at each other – or at the brother-in-law who let go of the handles – the chuckling would start all over again. But, he and I knew the reality… In that moment, he felt alive.

It might have been brief and I’m sure it was scary. I know I would have been a bit terrified if it was me in that chair, even at 30 instead of 90, but it still made him feel alive.

That was the one and only time I had seen the man laugh, or even really genuinely smile, since his wife had died. And, the memory of it seemed to be the only thing that made him smile for the year he lived aftwards.

Well, that and a glass of smuggled in Port Wine, but I’ll save that for a different blog, because we have now come back around to the beginning of our chain reaction – a joke about “smuggled booze” is the original domino that sparked my telling of this whole story…

More to come…

Murv