The Night The Ceiling Fell

I know that my parents have to hate getting phone calls from me sometimes.  They have to hate it even more when I'm with my best friend.  For some reason the most bizarre things seem to happen when we're together.  It's like Murphy's Law intensified.  That's why I know my mother hated getting the call the night the ceiling fell.

This night was just a calm night.  My mother and stepfather were at the local football game and my best friend and I were home from college and hanging out for the weekend.  We were sitting in the bedroom, enjoying a few frosty adult beverages, and catching up on everything that had happened during the last few weeks since we'd seen each other.  

Throughout our conversation I kept hearing a strange noise.  It sounded like something dripping.  I finally asked my best friend if she heard it and she laughed at me.  There was no dripping inside, I was just hearing things.  

So we continued to talk...and I continued to hear something dripping.  

As we sat there, the dripping that I was hearing in my head was getting louder.  Finally, something splashed on me and I looked up...it's not common to get rained on in your bedroom.  Sure enough, there was a tiny little drip of water coming from the ceiling.  I called her attention to it and we both stood there staring at it for a moment.

It's not everyday that there's water falling from  your ceiling.  I don't think either of us was quite prepared for what we were seeing, and it took a moment for either of us to figure out what to do.  

The first thing we did was move the mattress out of the bed, since the leak had started right over the bed.  The second thing we did was run downstairs and grab a pot to put under the leak.  

The real problem was that by the time we got back upstairs, the little leak had turned into a big leak...and there were more leaks.  There were a lot more leaks.  This was the first time I was ever appreciative that we had so many pots in the house.  

By the time we got all the pots arranged around the bedroom, it became evident that we had a slightly bigger problem on our hands than we first realized.  Now chunks of the ceiling were beginning to fall and join the water the pots were holding.  

It was time to call mom.

So I called mom and explained first that we had nothing to do with what I was about to tell her.  We were innocent bystanders.  Then I explained the problem of the water and the ceiling chunks.  She told me to go outside and clean something out that had to do with the air conditioner.  

So while best friend continued to carry pots up the stairs, I ventured out into the darkness to rummage around in the bushes trying to accomplish a task that I really had no idea how to do.  I didn't know anything about the particular item that I was searching for...or really how to clean it out...and it was dark and I couldn't see...and the flashlight I had must have been running on the same batteries since 1970 so I only had about an inch of visibility in front of me...and I was positive that ten thousand man-eating angry spiders were surrounding me.  It was not a good situation.  

Finally, having accomplished my task and having turned off the air conditioner, there was nothing more to do but wait for the parents to get home and handle the situation.  We would later find out there had been a problem with the air conditioner and the ceiling would later be repaired.

For that night, however, best friend and I did all we could and while we waited for the parents we spent the night rearranging and emptying pots and staring at the ceiling.  We learned a few valuable lessons from that situation.  #1: If you hear dripping, don't think it's in your head.  It's probably an indication that you're moments away from having your own indoor waterfall.  #2: Having a lot of pots may seem like overkill when you're preparing dinner, but you should probably have enough to cover the entire surface area of your floor.  Just in case you should have a growing waterfall.  #3: It's no longer possible to surprise my parents with the situations which occur around best friend and I.

How I Developed Maskaphobia

While thinking about this post, in the shower (where I do my best thinking), I realized that I have many phobias.  A little google medical search, however, assures me that it's common to have multiple phobias and that all of mine are fairly common and are diagnosed phobias.  So what that means is that I'm probably crazy, but at least I'm not the only one.  

I don't know where most of my phobias came from.  I suspect where a few developed, though, and I'm pretty positive about two of them.  Maskaphobia and coulrophobia.

Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns.  I was not always afraid of clowns, in fact I loved them at one time.  Then I had a traumatic clown experience.  I will not talk about that experience because it was that traumatic.  Suffice it to say that I now hate clowns.

Maskaphobia is the fear of masks.  I looked it up because I didn't know if it actually existed.  Apparently it does and it's very common.  In fact, it's actually considered part of a child's developmental stage and is not considered a phobia unless there is something (generally a traumatic experience) that makes it "stick".  Interestingly enough, many people who suffer from one of these phobias also suffers from the other.  Also, those who are maskaphobics vary greatly in what kinds of masks they are afraid of.  

I am afraid of all masks that cover the face entirely.  All of them.  Bunny rabbits, Barbie, Mickey Mouse, monsters, mascots, presidential candidates...all of them.  A hockey game or a carnival could potentially end my life.

The point at which it is  most likely that I developed this fear is the following story.  My disclaimer is that I was too young to remember the episode (or I blocked it from my memory) and therefore will tell it to you as it was told to me.

I was with my parents in a store near Halloween.  Of course we had to take a little trip to look at the costumes and other Halloween decorations.  Apparently, my father was playing in the masks and decided to put one on.

Let me give you just a little background.  My father can be an...um...intimidating figure due to his sheer size.  He's very tall.  

He once dressed as Frankenstein for Halloween (a very good costume) and, upon trying to help a little boy at the church carnival, nearly scared the child to death.  I'm sure somewhere that child is blogging about his fear of Frankenstein's monster.

The combination of my father's size and the rubber mask that he selected apparently terrified me. I'm unclear as to if he actually "Booed" me or if he just put the mask on without any intent of trying to frighten me.  It doesn't matter.  The damage was done...and I was screaming.  

I would not stop screaming.  Nothing would make me stop.  Even after he removed the mask I continued to scream.  My parents, of course, were frantically trying everything they could think of to get me to calm down since I'm sure this was causing a little bit of scene in the store.

Apparently I didn't care that I was causing a scene.  I just kept screaming.  

Finally, they tell me, they found a doll that calmed me down some.  

I loved that doll and named her "Yellow Baby" (she had a yellow outfit).  It would be years later when I would wonder where I got the doll and would be told the story.

Now I know where I got both Yellow Baby and an irrational fear of masks.  I'm pretty sure that my response probably caused my father to develop a fear of wearing masks...at least I have never seen him put one on since then.  On the other hand, that could just be out of respect for my phobia.  

And now you know why you're not likely to find  me out on Halloween night.  I'd much rather stay inside where it's safe and I will not potentially be caused to have a heart attack by an encounter with Batman on the sidewalk.  

Why I Don't Go To Haunted Houses

When I was young, we used to have my mom's family reunion on Halloween.  That meant that the kids were often dressed in costumes and each year a group of cousins would escape the family reunion to go to the Haunted House.  Like most people, they liked being scared on Halloween.  I am not like most people.

I'm very easily frightened.  There are two reasons for this.  One is because of a neurological disorder that I have and the other is because I'm a big ol' scaredy cat.

The neurological disorder causes me to have "a heightened startle response".  I'll explain it to you in very simple terms.  Most people, when startled by someone walking up behind them or toast in the toaster popping up, will jump slightly and respond according to the severity of the situation that has startled them.  Again...I am not like most people.  When put in the same situations I have to then very carefully peel myself off the ceiling.  This has caused a lot of laughter through the years and has led me to believe that my death by a massive coronary episode will very likely be caused by toast.  

For this reason I avoid scary movies and terrible things like Jack-in-the-boxes.  

But I wanted to be cool and go with the cousins to the Haunted House one year.  Everyone went to them and I was always going to be lame if I didn't learn to control myself and love being scared.  So one year I decided to tag along.

I'm still considering that to be one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in life.  

The trip was great, right up until we got to the parking lot and got on the hayride that would take us up to the Haunted House.  As soon as we pulled out people would pop out from behind trees with chainsaws all along the path.  I was terrified and trying very hard to hold it together, but I was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that I should have stayed at the family reunion and gorged myself on sweets.

When we arrived at the Haunted House, things began to get worse.  Now there were people with chainsaws running around while we waited in line, and on top of that there people wearing masks and wandering around to entertain people who were waiting.

I have a phobia of masks.  

I don't know why it didn't occur to me that my startle response...which at this point was already making me feel like I might have a heart attack...and my phobia of masks...would make this adventure a bad idea.  I don't always think things through.

Still, I kept telling myself in my head that I could beat this thing.  I could make it through somehow.  I could close my eyes and plug my ears and survive the Haunted House with all my cousins.  I selected two of my older cousins who I thought could protect me and changed my place in line so that I could be between them.  

That was my second bad decision of the night.  Apparently, the cousin who was originally in my place is impossible to frighten and all of her friends worked at the Haunted House.  They had apparently counted to see where she was in line and had determined that somehow they were going to scare her tonight if it killed them.  Unfortunately, I was not her, but I was in her place...and scaring me would  not be difficult.

Most of the rest of the story is a little blurry.  I believe that was just because my brain  has tried to hide the trauma.  I'll tell you what I remember.

When we went into the house, I was first frightened by a person in a Barbie mask who was just standing there.  That's it.  I was terrified.  We progressed through the house and I tried very hard to keep my eyes closed and clutch the back of my cousin.  The second fit of terror came from someone wearing a skeleton mask who screamed in my face.  I was on the verge of losing it.  The third thing I remember, and what pushed me over the edge, was someone dropping from above me and grabbing my shoulders.

It was then that I could no longer breathe correctly.  It was also then that things became extremely blurry in  my mind.  

Somehow someone in the performance of the Haunted House became aware that I was not just like everyone else and enjoying my fright.  She crawled out of a casket and grabbed me.  Just imagine for a minute what this did to me.  I could hear her talking to me, but it had begun to sound like I was underwater and things weren't coming in too clear.  She told me not to be afraid, that she was going to get me out of there.  She buried my face in her body and the next thing I knew we were running through the house and she was screaming and hitting the tops of boxes and casket thingies.  "Don't Come Out!  Stop!  Get Back NOW!"  

I remember fresh air and lying on the ground.  I remember a lot of people around me and oxygen.  I also remember a lot of yelling of "You have to breathe!"  

Here's the real kicker.  The Haunted House was run by the Rescue Squad.  Yep.  The Rescue Squad.  Apparently they thought it might damage their reputation if I died lying there on the ground because of Barbie, a skeleton, and Batman.  

I do not know how long it took for me to begin to breathe normally.  I have no idea how I got back to the parking lot.  I don't even know if I went back to the family reunion or if I went straight home.  

I do know that I believe now that it's entirely possible to actually be scared to death.  I also know that I am not a Haunted House kind of person.  I'm a sit at home and watch heartwarming movies while drinking hot chocolate and thinking about unicorns and butterflies kind of person.  

We never spoke of the incident again, and my first Haunted House was also my last.  I have been asked many times to go, but my response to those people is always the same.

How Gum Taught Me About Justice

Little kids are funny.  Most of the time it's hard, as an adult listening to their breakdowns, to figure out why they get so upset about the things that bother them.  It seems like such the smallest things can throw them into complete meltdowns.  Things that don't matter, really, or at least not to adults.

That's because as adults we've already been through the trauma that those little things can cause us.  We've forgotten what it's like to be introduced for the very first time to some terrible truth.  At least we've mostly forgotten.

I remember one of those childhood breakdowns very well.  It was the very first time that I think I really understood the problem of injustice.  It was gum that taught me about justice.

I don't remember how old I was, but I know that I was very young.  Grandma was taking me to Granny's house to spend the day.  Everyone loved going to Granny's house.  It was a place of good food, all the sugary drinks you wanted, and a place where you heard beautiful words like "Yes, you can pick all the raisins out of the Raisin Bran box."  

But for some reason that day I didn't want to go.  I wanted to stay with Grandma.  

When we got to Granny's house, Grandma tried to persuade me to go inside.  She told me I'd have fun.  I still didn't want to go.  She told me she'd be back soon.  I wanted to go with her.  Then she pulled out her final weapon in her arsenal.  She dug through her purse and offered me a piece of gum if I'd go inside.  

My eyes lit up.  This piece of sticky goodness could be all mine, and all I had to do was go inside.  

I'm sure you understand, of course, that I could not pass up the priceless offer of gum.  To do so would have been completely unprecedented. I put the gum in my mouth and I went inside.

Granny told me that I could watch television, and I could watch whatever I wanted...at least until Older Cousin took notice and wanted to watch something else.

So there I was, sitting in the living room floor, watching television, delirious in a cloud of gum happiness, when Older Cousin came in the room. Older Cousin noted that I had gum, and she didn't.  Grandma hadn't sent her any gum, just me.  

She wanted my gum and I wasn't about to give it to her.  So, she decided what many children decide in those moments...if she couldn't have gum, no one could.  What she did next was almost unspeakable.

She tickled me.  

For me tickling is the worst kind of torture ever.  You're laughing, but you don't want to laugh.  I hate being tickled.  

Older Cousin tickled me until I swallowed my gum.  

My precious gum was gone!  I had been tickled and forced to lose my precious gum which was the only reason I had come to this place of torture.  I, of course, began howling and Granny came to see what was happening.  

Older Cousin told her version of the story while I cried.  I remember hearing it something like this: "She {lies...lies...lies} gum and I {lies...lies...lies} no gum and {lies...lies...lies}."  They were all lies, and even if they weren't lies, I had done nothing wrong.  I had been given the gum.  I was its rightful owner and had not been told I had to share it.  I was the victim and I had suffered the injustice of having my gum taken from me so soon after I received it.

To try and settle the case, my Granny dug through the drawer in her house where all things went when they had nowhere else to go.  She found a piece of gum.  There was just one piece.

Older Cousin said the gum should be hers because she had not had any gum.

I said the gum should be mine because I wouldn't be gum-less if it hadn't been for the obscene cruelty of Older Cousin.  

Then my dear, sweet, loving Granny did the unspeakable.  She turned into a dictator, a tyrant really, and not a very nice one.  She gave the gum to Older Cousin.  She told her she didn't have to share.  At the very least I should have been given  half.  There was no justice here...no justice at all.

Of course, watching my cousin pop the gum into her undeserving mouth was more than I could take and I began to wail.  Granny told me to go outside until I could control myself.  So I did.

I sat on the back step...thinking about the injustice that had been done to me and how Older Cousin was inside now enjoying her gum after having robbed me of mine.  The more I thought about it, the worse I cried.  

The neighbor, a nice old  preacher man, came over and asked me why I was crying.  I could tell him.  He was a preacher and interested in things like justice.  So I pulled myself together and told him my terrible story about gum and injustice.

He listened carefully, and then smiled.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out almost a full roll of Lifesavers.  He said he didn't have any gum, but if I would quit crying he would give me what was left of that roll of Lifesavers.  Furthermore, he said he would tell Granny that I didn't have to give a single one to Older Cousin and that I could eat them all.  He was a preacher, and Granny had to listen to him.

Now there was a man who understood justice...and apparently the breakdowns of small children.  

And THAT is how gum taught me about justice.

The Automatic Clock

I am not a morning  person.  In fact, that doesn't even begin to explain it.  I'm almost nocturnal, or I would be if people didn't insist on things being done during the day.  

I also have terrible luck with alarm clocks.  There are a million different ways that I've been late because alarm clocks failed to wake me up.  For now we'll just discuss one.

One year my dad got me a really great alarm clock for Christmas.  This magical alarm clock is automatic.  If the power goes out, the alarm clock resets itself when the power comes on.  It has a lot of other little interesting features as well...it knows the day and the date, you can set alarms to go off only on specific days, and it resets itself for Daylight Savings Time.

In theory...

For the first year that I had the magical clock, life was grand.  The clock took care of all my timing needs...but then something went wrong.

The clock began to get confused.  It didn't know what day it was...it didn't know what days I wanted the alarm to go off.  That I could live with.  I just set the alarms to off everyday and made sure to turn them off on the weekends.  That has never been much of  a problem.  The Daylight Savings Time, however has been a problem many times and it always happens pretty much the same way.  

I'm sleeping peacefully until I wake feeling refreshed and ready to go.  My alarm has not gone off.   I roll over and look at the clock.  It reassures me that my alarm has not gone off because I still have (at least) an hour to sleep.  So I fall back to sleep.  Then I wake up again.  Something is not right.  I do not wake up on any day that I have to be somewhere without the use of my alarm and at least five rounds of snooze.  

I usually stare suspiciously at the clock for a few minutes.  This will make it uncomfortable and it will admit to me what's really going on here.  

Ok, so actually it never does admit to me what's going on.  I usually have to spend a few minutes waking up and thinking about it before I realize that something has definitely gone wrong.  I usually go in search of my phone or computer to check that my clock is not lying to me and that I have just magically woken up when I needed to.  It's usually my phone that gives me the bad news.

The sheer shock of seeing the time displayed on the clock gets me out of bed immediately...but you can be sure that any day that starts that way is downhill from there.  

This morning was one of those mornings.  Apparently the automatic clock decided that Daylight Saving's Time would start two weeks early this time around...oh...and this time it would start on Tuesday.  

Happy Hump Day!

Murphy's Law: Exploding Soda

I am a life long victim of Murphy's law.  If you don't know what Murphy's law is, I'll tell you.  It's the law that if anything can happen, it will.  I'm that person.

I've learned a lot through Murphy's law and one of the things that I've learned is that I don't have a lot of great ideas.  The second is that soda can and will explode.

I live on the third floor of an apartment building.  I'm also VERY, VERY lazy.  These two things don't work well together.  This means that if I go to the grocery store I aspire to be the one trip wonder.  I will do my best to carry every single bag up the stairs in one trip just to avoid another...I have no concern about the fact that it might make me dislocate both shoulders.

This Summer I thought I had come up with the greatest plan to avoid more than one trip.  I would leave anything in the car that didn't have to be refrigerated immediately and only come down to get that item when I needed it.  That meant that cat litter, toilet paper, and paper towels would always be available in my car, but I wouldn't have to make more than one trip up the stairs after shopping.

This was a great idea.  For the most part.

I'm a Diet Coke addict.  I drink Diet Coke like it's going out of style and should most likely go to weekly meetings.  I realized that it doesn't need to be refrigerated immediately so it should be good hanging out in my mobile storage unit.  Right?  Wrong!

I did not know that soda has a certain temperature at which it will explode.  If you didn't know this, now you do.

I go downstairs one day to get the boxes out of my car because I'm almost out.  There they are, all sitting patiently and waiting for me to take them into my home.

My plan was, of course, to pick up the two boxes, place them momentarily on the ground, close the car, and then carry them upstairs.

That's not how it happened, though.  

I put the boxes on the ground and then turned around to close the car. As I was in the process of closing the door, both cases simultaneously exploded.  Cans flew everywhere and I was showered in Diet Coke.  I stood there, for a moment, unable to say or do anything.  I was just dripping Diet Coke and trying to piece together what had happened.

One of my neighbors, who had witnessed the whole event, yelled to me to ask "How does that happen?" I just shrugged and accepted it as yet another example of Murphy's law in my life.

Just so you know...soda explodes when it reaches a certain heat.  It's valuable information.  Don't use your car as a soda storage facility or you too might end up wearing your favorite beverage.  

The Great Kool Aid War

The Great Kool Aid War began on a day that was like most other days in the Summer in the South.  My best friend was staying with me (like she typically was) and we were having a great time.  

The only problem was that we were about to die from the heat and were in serious need of some kind of refreshment.  As we normally did when we needed something, we went to Grandma's house.  Everything you need is at Grandma's house.  

When we got there and expressed our severe need to Grandma, she told us that she had these great new Kool Aid slushies in the freezer that would offer us just the cool down that we needed.  We were ecstatic.  When she fished them out of the freezer and showed them to us, though, it was evident that there was going to be a problem.

There were two slushies, but they weren't the same flavor.  One was cherry and the other was grape.  Neither of us liked grape.  I, myself, have always considered grape flavored products to be one of the most disgusting things on Earth.  They in no way taste like grape, just like artificial sweeteners mixed with chemical nastiness.

Grandma had somewhere to go and left the two of us alone, staring at the slushie pouches on the counter.  One of us was going to have to drink the grape.  We waited a few minutes, each silently wondering what the other would do.  Something primal was brewing inside us.  This was serious and a fight to the death was going to be the only way to handle it.  

Having size to my advantage I did what any rational person would do.  I grabbed the cherry, blocking it with my body and started to run through the house.  What resulted was a wrestling match where, at some point, I'm pretty sure my best friend was riding me through the house like a miniature pony while I tried to keep the cherry pouch out of her reach.

Finally, from sheer exhaustion, the fight was over.  I had the cherry and it looked like she was going to accept that my sheer size gave the me the upper hand in this battle and she was going to have to drink  the grape...but she didn't have to be happy about it.  I, of course, had to gloat over my victory for a few minutes before partaking of my delicious, icy, cherry goodness.

Finally, after a little gloating, we decided to make up and try to enjoy the refreshment promised.  We assumed that all we would need to do was pour the slushie into a glass and enjoy, but then we read the directions.  

The slushies weren't slushies.  They were powder to mix with water and make slushies.  The first note of interest is that my Grandma had been freezing Kool Aid powder.  The second is that the cherry pouch would make enough slushie for the entire neighborhood...but it was going to take forever.

We were impatient and the fight had taken up most of our energy.  We finally just left the pouches on the cabinet and decided to go home and watch television.  There would be no slushie for either of us.  

Rude Awakenings Part 1

Rude Awakenings: Part 1

Life with Gus can never be boring.  He was refrigerated as a kitten and I'm convinced that it gave him some sort of brain damage.  That's really the only way that I can explain my cat.  He's got severe brain damage.

My parents also suspect that he is not a cat, but rather a rabbit/cat hybrid because he has unusually long rabbit feet in the back.

I too often doubt he's a cat.  I suspect he's a perpetually drunk baby hippo with springs strapped to his feet.  That's the only possible explanation for the level of chaos and destruction that he's able to cause.

Gus does not think that he is a rabbit or a drunk hippo.  

This is more how he sees himself:

His self-image is not entirely correct, but he'd still insist that all I could tell you about him would be lies.

Gus doesn't like for me to sleep.  Ever.  In fact, he hates it more than anything in the world.  As a result, he does his best to keep me from sleeping.  It's just that we have different visions of the bedroom.  I see it as a place to sleep, but he sees it as something that's a little like Disney Land.  

Here's Gus' version of my bedroom...that way you'll understand a little better the story I'm about to tell you.

Now that you know what my bedroom looks like, you can understand a little better the events of this morning's rude awakening.  

At about four in the morning this series of events begins.  It happened very quickly.  Gus, who usually likes to chase shadows on the wall all night and typically ends up landing on my head two or three times a night, must have seen a particularly menacing shadow above the best dresser ever that he simply had to stalk.  He launches himself off the launch pad hard enough that he moves the entire bed.  That's when I started to wake up.

His oh so graceful baby hippo landing clears nearly everything off the top of the dresser and rearranges anything that didn't hit the floor.  Apparently frightened by the crash, he then leaped to what he perceives as a jungle gym but what is actually a rack for drying clothes.  

Under the pressure of the landing, the jungle gym broke to pieces.  I was showered by wood shrapnel but still didn't get out of bed.  You have to understand that this is not all that unusual.  

Apparently afraid of the explosion of his jungle gym, Gus then dives into the bookshelves that he loves, but does so with such force that the shelf can't take it and falls crashing to the floor.  That's when I rolled over to get up and inspect the damage.  At that moment Gus was already sitting on the bed by my head, looking at me like he was just as surprised as I was.  

The Time We Were Almost Murdered By A Psychopathic Ax Murderer

The Time We Were Almost Murdered By A Psychopathic Ax Murderer

My best friend and I were house sitting one night for the Figment and his wife who had gone on vacation.  (You'll learn more about the Figment later, for now it's of no importance.)  It was late at night and we were enjoying his stereo and his large collection of CDs.  We didn't have a care in the world.  

Everything was going great and our own little personal concert was wonderful.  We were amazing singers and very likely going to form our own rock group when the night was over.  Then we noticed something unusual in the living room.  One of the Figment's decorations was not where it usually was.  It was on a different shelf.  I remarked to my best friend that I thought it wasn't there earlier in the day and she agreed.  Then she noticed that something else was out of place.  

Suddenly we both realized that the only logical explanation was that we were not alone.  There was someone or something in the house that had moved the decorations.  It could be a murderer.

Now I know why people in scary movies do stupid things.  When faced with a possible scary movie scenario your ability to reason or think rationally shuts down completely.  In this situation the best thing to do would have been to leave the house, or to call my parents or grandparents (both of which are neighbors of the Figment).  That's not what we did though, that's not what anybody ever does when they're about to be murdered by a psychopathic ax murderer.  

So we did what anyone would do in that situation and we found weapons.  Regardless of the fact that the Figment has any number of available weapons that would be great if one had to fight a psychopath with an ax who announces his presence by moving household decorations around, our choice of weapons was (now I see) questionable.

I had a steel pipe that I found outside the house and she had a broom.  

With our questionable weapons we started down the long, dark hallway in the Figment's house.  I, like any good friend, made her go first with the reasoning that I would be able to back her up because I had the pipe.  She has never let me live that down, and she probably never will.  Next time, she says, she gets the pipe.  

We quietly snuck down the hallway looking in all the rooms for the killer.  I think we were hoping to surprise him, but I'm not sure.  When we got to the final room the tension was ridiculous.  We were prepared at any moment to be brutally slaughtered.  We came into the room where the remnants of the packing the Figment and his wife had done earlier were scattered around the bed. On the bed there was also a book, a single book.  The killer had obviously left it there for us to find.

We examined the title.  

It was at that moment that our sense came back to us.  We turned and ran down the hall, flew out of the house, dropped our weapons in the yard and ran as hard as we could back home.

Ok, so we weren't nearly murdered by a psychopathic ax murderer, but we thought we were.  Someone had come to clean the house earlier and moved the decorations.  The book was one that the Figment's wife was going to pack and then decided against.  There was no ax murderer and we weren't the heroes of a horror movie, but it sure felt that way.  

The Time I Learned I Couldn't Climb A Fence

The Time I Learned I Couldn't Climb A Fence

Everyone has seen people climbing fences on television and it looks like there could be nothing more simple in the world.  People are like Spiderman in the movies.  They see a fifty foot fence and they're over it in three seconds flat.  I had never climbed a fence in my life, but I was certain that I could do it if I ever needed to.  I found out one night, that I was wrong.

I was dog sitting for my dad and his wife.  It was cold and rainy.  It was almost time for the Beasties to go out for the night and I surveyed the back yard to make sure everything was ready for them to be comfortable and happy for the evening.  I realized that Hyper Beastie had drug the blankets out of the dog houses, so I thought that the proper thing to do would be to put them back in the doghouses so that the Beasties would be warm and happy.  

I slipped out of the house without my jacket, because I was only going to be out there for a minute.  I left the Beasties in the house and left the door cracked.  I made one fatal mistake, though, I didn't check to see if the door was locked.  As soon as I was crawling around inside doghouse number one, I heard the overexcited Beasties jumping around in the kitchen with excitement because they knew I was outside.  Then I heard one of the Beasties bang the door shut.  When I tried to get in, the door was locked.  So here I was, stuck outside in the cold and the rain, with no jacket and no cell phone.  What's worse is that the backyard is fenced in and the fence was locked.    For a moment I became depressed.  I felt like I was in a really sad movie.  I was in prison and I was going to die in the backyard and no one was going to find me for days.  

Then I had an idea.  I would just climb the fence.  Simple enough.  I'd hop right over it and be free in  no time.  So I tried to climb it, and that's the moment I realized that I couldn't climb a fence.  I couldn't even get off the ground.  I was going to have to be creative.  

So in the dark (and deathly afraid of spiders), I tried to find a solution to the problem.  Suddenly I had a great idea.  On the porch there were several lawn chairs, the kind that have the plastic straps across the seat and normally have cushions in them.  These didn't have cushions, though, but I still thought they would work for my plan.  

I put one chair on each side of the fence and began my great escape.  The goal was to balance on the strap on one chair, throw my leg over the fence and then climb onto the other chair.  The end result would land me in the front yard.  From there I could simply go in the house because the front door was open.  It was an ingenious plan and I was more than a little proud of my reasoning skills.  So I started the great escape. 

And it would have worked...

Except there was one fatal flaw.  I didn't know that these particular lawn chairs were stacked up the way they were because they were old, and rotting, and needed to be thrown out.  I got as far as throwing one leg over the fence and searching for the other chair with my foot when the strap from the chair I was standing on snapped and I fell.  

The cruel irony of the situation was that if I was going to fall off the fence it wouldn't have been so bad if I had fallen into freedom, but I didn't, I fell back into captivity.  So there I was, lying in the mud, in the cold, and in the rain.  I had fallen through the chair, the fence had scraped my leg on the way down, my pants leg was stuck to the top of the fence, and I was still in the back yard.  

I did what any reasonable person would do.  I cried and tried to come to terms with the fact that this was likely how I was going to die.  

When I finished indulging in self pity about my hopeless, miserable situation, I had another idea.  I only wish it had been the first idea.  I just started yelling at the neighbor's dog, making it really annoyed with me so it would bark.  

"Bark, you dog you, bark!"  

And it did bark.  It barked so much the neighbor came out, and when she came out I started yelling at her to come over.  When she did, I explained my situation and she very kindly went through the house and let me in the back door.  The Beasties, of course, were not apologetic and seemed like they didn't really care about my suffering at all.

Now I never go out of that door without unlocking it...and I've learned that climbing fences is nothing like you see it in the movies.

About Me and This Blog

Hi there.  This is me and my cat Gus.  

Ok, so that's not really what we look like, but I'm not an artist.   I have way more hair than that and I'm generally dressed.  You get the picture.  

So for ages people on the grand Book of Faces have been telling me that I should write a book about my life.  I have never really been sure of what to do with that.  You see, my life is pretty boring...but then again it's not.  

I'm a professor.  

What that essentially means is that I get paid very little money to hold students hostage in a room and torture them on an hourly basis with information that they don't care about and activities that they don't want to do.  It also means that I get an entirely new cast of characters in my life each semester.  Some of the experiences are good, but some of them leave me questioning most of my major life choices.  

I'm also a grad student.  

This means that I have no real life.  Everything I do revolves around some book or a stack of papers.  If I'm not reading or writing, I'm grading.  If I'm not doing any of these things then I'm probably feeling guilty about it. 

Other than that, the cast of my life is made up of the people that I work with in the great ivory tower of education, the never ending cast of crazy neighbors that move in and out of the three story apartment building I call home, some really great friends that I have made along my journey through life, and a loving (and sometimes crazy) family.

I've been described as weird, crazy, clumsy, clueless, and a whole slew of other things.  Most of these are probably correct.  

What I have learned along the way, though, is that you have to learn to laugh at yourself and laugh at the situations  you find yourself in.  Nobody makes it out alive so what's important is to just love each and every part of the journey for what you can find in it to be thankful for.  Laughter is truly the best medicine and nearly everything can be funny if you just adjust your perspective.  That's what I'm going to try to do.  I'm going to just tell you the everyday little stories and hopefully by laughing at myself you'll get a little giggle for your day.

I'll try to post regularly, but I don't know how regularly.  I hope you enjoy the little things as much as I do!  

Please note that, with the exception of Gus, I won't be using anyone's real name.