I’m cat-sitting for friends while they’re out of town. I’m still new enough to Oshkosh that I don’t know the way there, so I opened my contact list on the phone to plug their address into the GPS. I actually have two entries for Dawn, one for her cell and one for the landline. My phone alerted me that I had multiple duplicate entries and suggested I merge them all to free up space.

When it was finished, I went through my list, hoping to free up more space by deleting contacts I no longer had any use for. The first to go was the real estate agent who helped me sell my house in Alabama.

As I scrolled through the list, I found several other entries for people I’ll never call or text again.

Like Decie.

I smiled when I remembered all the group emails we were both on, where people insisted on calling her D.C. I wonder what they thought those initials stood for. I invited Decie and her husband, Mike, to each of my quarterly dinner parties. Decie always got there early to set the tables, always bringing seasonal decorations and napkins.

When Mom’s multiple sclerosis progressed to the point that she needed help more often than she didn’t, Decie didn’t ask if she could help. She just assumed she could. She often came by to bathe Mom and change her diaper, giving me a much-needed break.

She was a born organizer, taking charge of every funeral at St. Francis Episcopal Church. They all went off without a hitch. During the lockdown, she cut my hair. If there was a need, Decie met it. Full stop.

When she was undergoing cancer treatment and required several overnight stays at the hospital, I often spent the night with her in her hospital room. She didn’t like being alone. Even though it was nothing compared to all the things she’d done for me, I was happy to repay her in this small way.

I was devastated when she died.

I need to remove her from my contacts.

Bill Yon was the associate priest at St. Francis and the financial guy at the Diocese of Alabama. I house- and dog-sat for him and Lib during the six weeks they returned to Namibia to visit the seminary they’d started there years before.

Bill didn’t always have a beard. I’ve seen photos to confirm it. A week or so after he quit shaving, a coworker asked, “Are you trying to grow a beard?”

Bill replied that he had to try NOT to grow a beard. No effort was required in letting it do its own thing.

When Lib was dying I visited with her and pointed to a photo of Bill. It was taken when his beard was such that he could pass for Grizzly Adams. “How can you stand to kiss the brute?” I asked Lib.

She laughed and said, “Sometimes you have to go through the bushes to get to the picnic,”

Bill was my surrogate father and my mentor. I’ve lost count of how many times he and I sat in his living room, wrassling over theological tenets, both those held by the Episcopal Church and those of other churches.

Bill was a social justice warrior. His methods were subtle, but effective. A Black family belonged to a church where he was rector in the 1960s. For years, they’d called the church camp in Winston County, asking if their children could enroll in whatever session of camp was being offered. Each time they were told to wait until the “colored” sessions.

One day the father asked Bill if it would do any good to call again.

Bill said, “No, so don’t. Just register and show up.”

When the children arrived at camp for the summer session, they weren’t turned away. Bill never took credit for integrating camp in fact rather than theory, but I can’t help thinking he played a major part in it.

When the rector at St. Francis fired me as the youth leader and Sunday school teacher. I’d been under strict insructions to never let the kids know I’m gay, and was finding that a hard edict to follow. It was hard to tell if I was more angry or hurt. It caused a rift not only between me and the rector, but within the congregation itself. Two families left the church over it. I refused to take communion from her, doubting the authenticity of any bread or wine consecrated by her.

It was a mess. We were both angry and resentful and avoided each other. At one point she told me I might be happier if I joined another church.

I replied that SHE might be happier if I joined another church, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted her to see her victim sitting in the pew every Sunday and remaining seated while everyone else went to the altar to receive the Eucharist.

It was Bill who acted as mediator and reconciler between us. If not for him, the situation would never have changed. Because of him, she was able to see beyond her homophobia. I was able to once again take communion from her. We aren’t as close as we once were, but we are friends now, and I’m grateful to Bill for that.

The first time I preached at St. Francis, Bill beamed at me after the service.

“Bobby, you missed your calling. I’ll ponder on your pondering and email you the encomium you deserve.”

I admit I had to look up encomium. I treasured his email.

Bill introduced me at all of my storytelling events. I felt a little lost the first time I told a story to a group of people and was introduced by someone else. It just wasn’t the same.

Soon after he turned eighty, Bill began to decline. I still came by the house to discuss both the ridiculous and the sublime, only now I also cooked dinner for us.

When Bill’s kidneys failed, I went to see him. I climbed into bed with him and cried while he, the one who was dying, comforted me. I went again the following day, but he slept through the visit. He died later that night.

God, I loved that man.

As much as I want to, I can’t call him.

I need to remove him from my contacts.

When I was young, I adored Aunt Vicki, Mom’s younger sister, and she adored me.

I don’t know what kind of relationship she had with my grandparents. I know she disappointed them more than once. High school pregnancies, affairs with married men. That kind of behavior didn’t go over well in her Southern Baptist home.

But from little Bobby there was no judgment, just unconditional love.

Some of my earliest memories are sitting with her on her bed, playing with her reel-to-reel tape recorder, listening to her 45s, and trying to emulate her when she smoked.

“Let me try!” I’d say, and she’d grin and hand me the lit cigarette.

I put it to my mouth but didn’t know to inhale, so I blew on it, which always made her laugh. The one time I did suck instead of blow and a stream of smoke exited my nostrils, she was in a panic.

“Don’t tell your mother!” she begged.

I never did.

I also was never given another one of her Pall Malls.

Unlike Mom and Dad, Aunt Vicki never left the Baptist church. I wasn’t sure how she would react when I came out to her. She’d come from North Carolina to visit Mom in Florida, and I stopped by. The two of us sat outside at the patio table, smoking while I worked up the nerve to tell her that I’m gay.

When I finally spit the words out, expecting to hear Leviticus thrown at me, she said, “I have just one question, and I want you to give me a serious answer.”

I took a deep breath and told her to go ahead.

“How do you get the taste of cum out of your mouth? I’ve tried Scope, Listerine, every brand of toothpaste, and nothing works.”

“Nice talk,” I said, stubbing out my cigarette. “See you inside.”

At that time, Aunt Vicki hadn’t been to church in years, convinced it would do no good as far as her immortal soul was concerned. A few years after that visit, she found God, but not a God I want anything to do with.

The church she joined was beyond fundamentalist. She was convinced in her heart that I was doomed to an eternity of torment, and it saddened her. Several times she tried to get me to change my ways. Eventually, I stopped answering her emails and letters, and we drifted apart.

Mom kept in touch with her, though. She was her only sister, after all. I kept up with her through Mom.

As much as I made her sad, she made me sadder. She believed in God with her whole heart; she feared the Lord God. But I don’t think she loved God, and she was certain that God didn’t—couldn’t—love her.

She was convinced that her past was more than God could forgive, no matter how many times Jesus died on the cross or how many times she accepted him as her personal Lord and Savior.

When Mom’s health reached the point that she had to go into skilled nursing, I started emailing Aunt Vicki and writing letters, something we did all the time when I was in middle school. We talked on the phone once in a while.

She called me in the middle of the day when I was in a meeting at work. I let it go to voicemail.

“Hey, baby. I just wanted to talk. Give me a call when you get a chance.”

I never got that chance.

She died that day in her bathroom. Neighbors found her body three days later.

I hope she found in death the peace she never found in life.

I can’t return that call. Ever.

I need to remove her from my contacts.

Sister was the first family member I came out to. I was in Okinawa at the time. I should have called her instead of writing her, but I was too nervous. If I’d called, she never would have replied to my letter, and her reply never would have been delivered to the wrong mailbox. The person who received it wouldn’t have opened it and turned it in to the captain, and I never would have been court-martialed and kicked out of the Navy.

Even so, I don’t regret telling her. She was so supportive. I wished I’d told her years earlier.

Mom’s relationship with reality was tenuous at best, even before her dementia. Sister had been an Army wife, therefore she was a staunch Republican. I didn’t dare discuss politics with her, lest it lead to an argument. Dad was an alcoholic, therefore Sister forced her husband to drink in the garage when he wanted a beer. She was a teetotaler herself.

None of that was true.

I finally broached it with Sister, and she was furious with Mom. She emailed me a copy of her voter registration card, clearly showing her party affiliation as Democrat.

When I moved Mom from her apartment into assisted living, Sister and brother Joe flew down from D.C. to help with the move. It was the first time I’d seen either of them since before I joined the Navy.

We had lunch at a popular eatery in the bohemian section of Birmingham. Sister was far from a teetotaler, having several beers with lunch.

When she and Joe were living in Alexandria—they both worked for the government and commuted to D.C. every day—I went up to see them a couple of times. Every visit included several cocktails at her house. We’d walk to a local Mexican restaurant, where she had a few drinks with dinner.

I told stories in Alexandria one year, and Sister and Joe came to hear me. As usual, cocktails were ordered and replenished frequently. When I look at all the photos of us, she always has a drink in hand.

It was Dad all over again.

The last time I visited was Thanksgiving, three years ago. About the time of her fourth drink, she asked about my gay dating history. I didn’t go into details but mentioned an Asian man I’d gone out with briefly.

“Dude!” She seemed delighted. “You’ve got the Yellow Fever!”

I’d only ever heard that phrase as applied to the disease, but it was easy to figure out what she meant.

Later in that same conversation, she was annoyed that I hadn’t eaten any of the almonds she’d put on a snack tray.

I told her I don’t care for almonds. She asked what nuts I do like, and I mentioned cashews, walnuts, and pecans.

“What about n****r toes?” she asked.

She laughed at my dumbfounded expression. I had to Google the phrase to learn it was a racist term for Brazil nuts. She mocked me for refusing to call them that.

“Dad said it all the time,” she laughed.

Maybe he did, but never in my presence.

That summer, I was watching the Olympics and a Japanese gymnast wowed me. I texted Sister and Joe, asking if they’d been watching.

“This guy is something else!” I texted. “And it has nothing to do with any so-called ‘Yellow Fever.’”

Her reply was instantaneous.

“Dude! I have many Asian friends and that’s racist. It’s as bad as saying the N-word.”

I reminded her that I’d never heard of Yellow Fever until she introduced me to it, and that she’d had no problem saying the N-word on my last visit.

“How drunk were you that you don’t remember that?” I asked.

No reply.

Instead, she blocked my phone number and then my email address. I’ve tried emailing her from different Gmail accounts but never get a reply. She’s not dead to me, but I’m clearly dead to her.

There’s no reason to keep her telephone number. She’s moved to Hawaii, and I don’t have her new address, so I can’t write her.

I need to remove her from my contacts.

I’ve known Ed since we were ten years old. He was my best friend in elementary and middle school. More than once, he protected me from bullies. We were inseparable.

When he came out to me in eighth grade, I was scared. Did he tell me he was gay because he sensed that I was, too? I’d been praying nightly to turn straight. I wasn’t a tenth as brave as he was.

I betrayed his confidence to the school librarian, who knew us both. She was of the same religious ilk Aunt Vicki eventually embraced, and she confronted him.

That was pretty much the end of our friendship. We went to different high schools, and eventually his family moved out of state.

When I found him via the internet after my discharge, I finally apologized, twenty years after I should have. I confessed that I’m gay, too, compounding my betrayal.

He wrote back the next day, assuring me that I hadn’t ruined his life.

“It sounds like this has caused you far more suffering than it’s caused me. I forgive you. Please don’t suffer anymore.”

That’s the kind of man Ed was.

After that email exchange, I went to visit him and his husband often in Atlanta. Ed was involved in community theater, and I never missed a play he was in. I also drove over to see him when there were no plays, just because. I was so grateful we were once again in each other’s lives.

Shortly before I sold my house in Alabama, Ed was diagnosed with cancer. I told him I wanted to go see him. But with the closing, the movers, and the move, I had to tell him I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d try to come down from Wisconsin once I was settled.

“I hate that you’re moving so far away,” he told me.

Less than a month after my move, Ed died.

I knew some cancers act fast, but I thought we had time.

When his husband told me Ed was gone, I learned that it’s not the things we do that cause us regret as much as the things we don’t do.

Why didn’t I make more of an effort to see him when I had the chance?

I know that if I were able to tell him how sorry I am, he’d say he forgives me and that I shouldn’t suffer anymore.

But I can’t tell him.

There’s no reason to keep him in my contacts.

I need to remove him.

Decie, Bill, Aunt Vicki, Sister, Ed . . .

It’s time for practicality to take precedence over sentimentality.

So, I’m going to delete them all.

Someday.

I’m working on a new post, but while I work out the kinks, here is a revised Oldie but Goodie. Since it includes revisions, it counts as new. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

In middle school one of my teachers asked the class, “What is the most impressive thing you’ve ever done?” Some kids talked about hitting home runs. Others bragged about getting the President’s Physical Fitness certificate. When it was my turn I said, “I’ve survived more assassination attempts than Gerald Ford, all because I was born without feathers.”

No one believed me, but I was speaking the gospel truth.

When my mother was pregnant with me she told Sister, “You’re going to have a baby brother or sister. Won’t that be nice?”

“No.” Sister said. “I don’t want a baby brother or sister. I want a duck.”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” Mom said.

A few months later Dad brought Mom home from the hospital and presented me to Sister.

“That’s not a duck. Take it back.”

Mom and Dad thought Sister was adorable. I’m sure Charles Manson was adorable when he was two years old. Mom said, “The hospital has a no returns/no exchanges policy.”

“Can I still have a duck?”

“We can’t afford a duck AND a baby.”

What Sister heard was, Get rid of the baby and quick as you can say Polly want a quacker, they’d forget this baby brother nonsense and come across with a mallard.

Like all good evil geniuses she bided her time, waiting until I was three years old. Sister had some Pixy Stix—paper straws full of colored sugar. Red sugar that supposedly tasted like cherry, purple for grape, and so on.

Sister poured some purple sugar into her palm and made a production out of licking it up. “Mm-mmm!” she gloated. “I looooove Pixy Stix! Too bad you don’t have any.”

“Can I have some of yours?”

She opened the red straw and poured cherry flavored sugar into her palm. “No! It’s mine!” then she licked the red sugar and smacked her lips.

I was crying when she left my bedroom. She came back a few minutes later and extended her palm which held a little pile of green sugar. “Even though you’re not a duck, and I hate you, you can have some of my Pixy Stix.”

She transferred the powder from her hand to mine. Instead of licking it I poured it into my mouth before she could change her mind.

It was Comet cleanser.

Sister was disgusted when Dad brought me home from the hospital the next day.

Mom thought Sister was just precious and hadn’t meant to hurt me at all. I’m sure Mrs. Hitler thought little Adolf was precious when he was five.

At that time, we lived in an apartment in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Once a week a garbage truck pulled into the parking lot. Mr. Zeke stood on a little platform at the back of the truck holding onto a safety bar. It was always a treat watching Mr. Zeke riding on the back of the truck instead of inside the cabin. He jumped down and emptied the dozen garbage cans into the back of the truck. He pressed a button and the truck ate the trash while he hopped back on the little platform and the truck headed to its next stop..

One week when the truck pulled into the parking lot Sister said, “I learned our address and phone number today. Now if I’m ever lost or kidnapped I can tell the police where I live and they can take me home. Do you know our address and phone number?”

I admitted I didn’t, but I wasn’t expecting to be kidnapped and told Sister as much. “You’re pretty stupid,” she said. “People like you get lost all the time. If you don’t know your address you’ll end up in an orphanage. I’ll be you’re too chicken to even ask a policeman for help.”

Mr. Zeke was halfway through the garbage cans. Sister said, “I bet you’re too chicken to even ride on the back of the truck with Mr. Zeke.”

“I am not! That would be fun.”

“Scaredy-cat!” she taunted. “If you aren’t chicken show me.”

I wasn’t lying. Standing next to Mr. Zeke on that little platform would dward the thrill of carousel. I ran out to the truck just as Mr. Zeke hopped onto the little platform. I climbed up next to him and the truck took off, leaving the parking lot.

Sister shouted, “Have fun living at the orphanage!”

She was disgusted when the truck stopped and Mr. Zeke lifted me off the truck and walked me to our door. When Mom opened it he said, “We appreciate this young feller’s offer to help, but he’s a little young to be a garbage man.”

When Mom told us that she was going to have another baby, Sister was thrilled. “I can’t wait!” she said. “I always wanted a baby brother or sister!”

“Hey!” I said.

“Shut up, not-a-duck.”

She doted on brother Joe, feeding him, singing to him, helping to change his diapers. They are still inseparable. I spent thirty seconds feeling jealous, but better she dote on him than try to kill me.

Turns out, she could do both. My family moved to Fort Lauderdale when AT&T transferred Dad to the booming little beach town. Sister started school soon after we moved.

A magician came to Sister’s school and put on a show in the cafetorium. I could hear the excitement in her voice when she told me about it. “There was nothing at all in the hat and then he pulled a real rabbit out of it! He turned a piece of clothesline into a bird that flew away, and he then he put a lady in a box and sawed her in two and then put her back together again!”

Her enthusiasm was contagious. “Really?”

“Yes, and I watched him do it and learned the magic words so now I can do it, too.”

“Nu-uh,” I said.

“I’ll prove it. Come outside and I’ll saw you in half and put you back together.”

I’d learned nothing from the Pixy Stix. I followed her to the patio and lay on the concrete as instructed. She took a rusty handsaw she’d taken from the shed and raised it over me. “It will take all day to saw through your middle. I’ll just cut off your foot and put it back on.”

“Okay.”

I was up and running before she finished the first swipe of the blade. Mom came outside to investigate the ruckus. The cut wasn’t deep enough to require stitches though I still have the scar. No sutures, but because the saw was so rusty I had to get a tetanus shot.

Mom blamed the school for Sister’s homicidal tendencies, which weren’t as cute and precious as they once were. Sister was taken out of the public school and enrolled in a parochial school nearby. It was a Catholic school, and we were Baptist, but Mom didn’t drive and St. Helen’s was close enough that she could walk Sister to and from school every day.

My friend Johnny and I were in his treehouse. Mom sent Sister to bring me home for supper. I wasn’t ready to stop playing yet. “I’ll be home in a little bit,” I said, hanging upside down from a branch.

“You aren’t honoring your father and mother,” she warned. “That’s a sin.. You should be like ne. I don’t have any sin.” Every Sunday at Thirteenth Street Baptist church it was drummed into my head that we all had so much sin it’s a wonder we didn’t have horns and forked tails.

“Everybody has sin,” Johnny said.

“I used to, but I don’t anymore. They took us to Confession today. Then the priest said if I said the Our Father, God would wipe away all my sins.”

She picked up a fist-sized rock and,being without sin, cast the first stone.

It hit the back of my head and I fell out of the tree. I ran home, keeping my hands on top of my bloody head to keep my brains from spilling out. I didn’t dare let go of my noggin and couldn’t open the door. I kicked the door and yowled until Mom opened it.

I let go long enough to hold my arms out to her. “Mommy!”

She saw my bloody hands, but somehow missed my even bloodier head. She dragged me to the bathroom and put my hands under running water, trying to see how deep the gash was. When she saw my intact palms she looked at me in confusion. By then the blood had seeped down my face and into my eyes.

Sister was disgusted when Dad brought me home from the hospital, stitched up, but still alive.

She might still be trying to kill me today, if she hadn’t finally got a damn duck.

One day she was riding her bike at the local park few blocks from our house. She often took a bag of bread that she’d bought with her allowance to feed the ducks at the lake in the center of the park.

Fort Lauderdale has a zillion canals and we lived near one of them. Muscovy ducks were as common as squirrels in the neighborhood. A couple of times Sister had tried to capture one, but the ducks weren’t having it.

The ducks at the park were often fed by folks. While theyt weren’t tame, they let you get close to them without going into attack mode.

Some idiots had bought their kid a duckling for Easter, apparently not knowing that it would grow up. Ducklings are cute. Grown Muscovy ducks are just poop machines. Once it hit duck puberty they were through with it and dropped it off at the duck pond in the park.

The ducks who were born and raised at the park were friendly to people, but were vicious to the poor Easter duck, chasing him out of the water, pecking at him, and keeping him from eating. The poor thing was hiding under a bush when Sister went to feed the ducks her Wonder Bread. It broke her heart when the duck tried to come out for a scrap of bread, onlyt to be pecked and chased back to the bush by the thug ducks. A park ranger told her the duck’s history.

.

Sister went to the duck which allowed her to pick it up. She chained her bike to a bench at the park and carried the duck home. We already had two dogs and a cat, but when Mom and Dad heard Duck’s story (Sister named it ‘Duck’) they said she could keep it.

Dad bought a plastic kiddy pool and put it in the back yard by the orange tree and filled it with water. For the first time in forever Duck was able to get in the water without being bullied. Mom said bread wasn’t a sufficient diet for Duck. Every day Sister and Joe went hunting for cockroaches at the neighborhood garbage cans. They stomped them dead and brought them home for Duck’s supper.

Duck joined the family about the same time I hit a growth spurt. Sister was still two years older than me, but I was now six inches taller than her. I thought that would make a difference in our hierarchy, but I was wrong.

She was always going to be the older sister, and thus, always the boss.

I was watching I Love Lucy after school. It was the Vitameatavegimen episode, which still makes me laugh today.

Lucy was about to take the first taste of the tonic when Sister came into the Family Room and changed the channel to the Trinity Broadcasting Network. She liked to make fun of Jan Crouch when she cried.

“Hey! I was watching Lucy!”

She held onto the remote. “And now you’re not.”

I stood up, looming over her with clenched fists. She laughed. “What are you going to do? Hit me?”

I wanted to. But she was a girl. You don’t hit girls. She was smaller than me. You don’t hit people smaller than you. I stood there shaking in impotent rage. She laughed again and put the remote down her blouse where I couldn’t snatch it away.

I said softly, but clearly, “Go fuck yourself.”

Until then neither of us had ever said so much as damn or hell in front of each other. I skipped those training swears and jumped right to the majors. Her reaction was all I could have hoped for. She looked as if I had hit her. The sneer on her face was gone. She looked stricken. I turned and went into my bedroom, pissed at missing Lucy, but smug that I’d finally gotten to her.

I heard Mom come home, then Dad. I stayed in my room, surprised no one summoned me. I’m sure she ratted me as soon as they walked in the front door. I was still in my room when they sat down for supper. I heard them in the dining room, but no one called me for supper. I didn’t feel like eating with them anyway. I called my friend and arranged to meet him for pizza.

My shoes were still in the living room. I’d have to face the family when I went for them. Mom said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going to meet Geoff.” I put on the sneakers.

Dad said, “You need to go to church, goddammit! I heard what you said to your sister. Now apologize, or you’re grounded.”

I finished tying my shoe. “If you want to hear me say the words, ‘I’m sorry,’ fine” I rolled my eyes and said, “I’m Sorry.” It was evident that I was as unsorry as one could be.

“Say it like you mean it,” Dad ordered.

“I can’t, because I don’t.” Dad opened his mouth but I went on. “You can ground me. You can take away my TV and phone privileges. You can give me nothing but PBJ to eat. And after a few days, maybe a week, I’ll come out of my room, looking contrite. I will deliver the apology to end all apologies. You’ll be so moved you’ll ask for a written copy to frame. It will be such a heartfelt, sincere apology it will bring tears to your eyes.” I hardened my voice. “And it will be a lie. You can make me say it. But you can never make me mean it. Never.”

A sob escaped Sister. “Make him mean it!” she begged.

“I can’t,” Dad admitted. “He’s right.” No one tried to stop me when I left to meet Geoff.

Sister and I didn’t speak to each other for the next few days. But at least she didn’t play the older sister card anymore. I could watch Lucy in peace.

Well, I could watch Lucy, anyway.

We were the only family on our street with a pet duck. Some of the other kids were jealous, but none more than Richard who lived four houses down. It had been nearly a month since I dropped the F bomb on Sister. We were speaking again, but mostly superficial stuff. Until she called my name one day, sounding worried.

I came out of my room. “What’s up?”

“Have you seen Duck? I can’t find him anywhere.” Lately Duck had been testing his wings, taking test flights from our back yard to the neighbor’s. Sister always hopped the fence to retrieve him if he didn’t come home in time for supper. He wasn’t running away, he was just exploring.

“Did you check the Pearson’s yard?”

“He’s not there. I’m afraid a hawk may have gotten him.”

“He probably found a house with a pool. He’ll be back soon.” She didn’t believe me. I didn’t believe me, either.

I said I’d be back in a bit and walked down the street. At the fourth house I knocked on the door. “Come in!” an unfamiliar voice said. I knew better than to just walk into the house of someone I don’t know. Even though I knew my address and phone number now, I wasn’t keen to get kidnapped, or murdered. Nevertheless, I opened the door and walked in.

The family was seated at the dinner table. The only one I knew was Richard. “What do you want?” the father said.

“Give me the duck,” I said, sounding braver than I felt.

“What duck?” Richard asked.

“That duck!” I said, pointing to Duck, sitting in the corner. I picked him up and left without a word. When I got home I knocked on Sister’s door and told her where I found Duck and handed him to her.

My family is not the Brady Bunch. Sister and I were not Jem and Scout. My family generally got along, but we are not demonstrative. There are some things we just don’t say in my family. The Byrd children might say “I love you” to Mom and Dad and our grandparents, but never to each other. We only apologized if we were ordered to. And we never said things like Thank You except for the automatic, polite thanks we exchanged along with Christmas presents. I’d have been suspicious if she’d thanked me for rescuing Duck.

As we grew up, and left home to start lives of our own, Sister and I became truly fond of each other. In my early twenties when I heard the F word in a movie or slipped and said it myself, I couldn’t help thinking of how stricken she dhad looked when I’d said it to her, how she sobbed when I’d sworn that any apology I gave would be worthless.

Each time I remembered that day I felt ashamed. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, truly sorry, but after my earlier declaration that no matter how sincere I sounded, any apology would be bullshit, I was afraid to tell her I regretted it. Would she believe what I said now, or believe what I’d said then? Was she completely over the incident and in no need of an apology? If I reminded her of it, would it make her feel better, or dredge up painful memories? Did I want to apologize to make her feel better, or to make me feel better?

In the end I decided to say nothing, rather than risk damaging the relationship we had now.

Sister has always had an ear for languages. We grew up in South Florida where there is a large Cuban and Puerto Rican population. Long before she officially learned Spanish in high school she was conversing with Latin merchants in their first language.

She speaks fluent Czech, German, and Arabic (and is now learning Mandarin). It was no surprise when the US Government hired her as an Arabic interpreter. Shortly after Saddam Hussein was executed Sister called me.

“I need a favor,” she said. It was the first time she’d said those words to me.

“Shoot,” I said.

“I’m being sent to Iraq. The army needs interpreters when they interrogate the insurgents and suspected members of Al Qaeda.”

“I see,” I said. “And you want me to take care of your children when you’re blown up.”

“I wouldn’t let you within a hundred miles of my children. You’d teach them to crack their knuckles or something.” She took a breath. “When I tell Mom, she’s going to worry herself sick. She already calls me every time CNN reports another suicide bomber or insurgent attack. I don’t want her worrying or trying to call me four times a day and then panic when I’m too busy to answer the phone.”

Dad had been dead for several years. Mom lived alone and Sister was right—Mom always assumed the worst-case scenario. “I understand, but what can I do about it?” I said.

“I’m going to tell her that I will be in the Green Zone, far away from the fighting and suicide bombers, where it’s perfectly safe.”

“And where will you really be?”

“I can’t tell you. But it’s not the Green Zone, and not far away from the fighting, but I still believe I’ll be safe, or I wouldn’t go. I need you to convince Mom that you aren’t worried, so she shouldn’t worry, either. Will you do that?”

I looked at the scar on my foot, still visible all these years later. I ran my fingers over my head, feeling the area hit by that long ago rock. I said, “Yeah, I can do that.”

“You’ve got to really sell it,” she insisted.

“I will. I’ll tell her that I’m not the least bit worried about your safety. I’ll be so persuasive that she’ll never doubt my sincerity. I’ll tell her I’m so unconcerned about you that I’ll have to be reminded that you’re over there at all. I will tell her with the conviction of an evangelist that I’m not at all worried that something might happen to my big sister.” I paused.

“And it will be a lie. You can make me say it. But you can never make me mean it. Never.”

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds. Then Sister said, “I love you, t—”

I hung up the phone before she could finish.

There are some things we just don’t say in my family.

When I was in second grade, we learned about family trees and ancestors. My teacher, Mrs. Golding, never tired of telling us that she could trace her origins back to the Mayflower. At the time, I thought that made her more American than me; I could only trace my family back to my grandparents.

Our assignment at the end of the day was to ask our parents about our ancestors and be prepared to share the roots of our family tree with the class. The next day, I reported what my mother had told me: “My mother’s people were Croatan Indians. My father’s people were bootleggers and horse thieves.”

I was sent home with another in a series of letters from Mrs. Golding to my parents.

Both Mom and Aunt Vicki were proud of our Native American heritage. I was born in North Carolina, home to the Croatan Indians. My family always said Croatan, but in middle school history class we learned about the Lost Colony.

According to the familiar legend, in 1587, 115 English colonists settled on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas, was born in the colony.

Times were hard. The colonists were low on supplies, and relations with neighboring tribes had gone south. John White sailed back to England for supplies, but when he finally returned three years later, the colony was deserted. One of the clues to what happened was the word CROATOAN carved into a wooden post.

I’m not sure where history and family legend part ways, but I was raised believing that the mighty Croatan Indians didn’t like these illegal immigrants settling in their backyard. They sent the Indian Croatan Elimination (I.C.E.) squad to handle the matter.

Whenever someone boasted of being descended from the Cherokee, Mom and Aunt Vicki scoffed. “The Croatan never allowed themselves to be forced to travel the Trail of Tears. Cherokees are wimps.”

Soon, pride in our Indian heritage was part of my DNA.

Years later, when I was discharged from the Navy, I did not return to Fort Lauderdale, where I grew up. The telephone company had transferred Mom to Birmingham, Alabama. I intended my visit there to be a short one, but soon after I arrived, Mom was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I established roots in Birmingham to help take care of her as the disease progressed.

I got a job with the phone company, too. Mom and I worked in the same downtown building. She was on the 24th floor, and I was on the 26th.

I still smoked back then. The designated smoking area was in the basement of the parking garage. Three times a day—two fifteen-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch—a couple of coworkers and I went down to the bowels of the building to puff away with the other smokers.

We always sat at the same table. The table next to us was occupied by four to six Black women who played cards while they smoked. My grandfather taught me to play Rummy and Spades. I learned to play Canasta in college. Sadly, except for my grandfather, no one in my family had the card-playing gene.

Must be a Croatan thing, I figured.

I studied the women as they played. I was unfamiliar with the game. They took tricks, like in Spades, but the bidding was crazy. Four High would be followed by Four Low, or Four No. I stared at them the way a dog stares at you while you’re eating a pork chop.

One of the card players was Marion, who worked in my department. She took pity on me one day and asked if I wanted to learn to play “Bid Wiz.” I later learned the actual name was Bid Whist.

She sat with me the first few hands, explaining the bidding, helping me place bids, and teaching me how to work in tandem with a partner, which was perhaps the hardest part of the game for me.

Soon I was playing on my own with the women, losing nearly every game. My various partners were never angry at the boneheaded plays that cost us a hand. I still marvel at their patience.

In time, I was holding my own, and soon I won more than I lost. I loved partnering with Marion, my original mentor, and Theresa, who was the best player among them.

My proudest moment came when Marion bid Five Low, meaning we would take at least five tricks over the minimum, with low cards beating high cards. Her bid told me she had at least one Joker, a powerful card. When it was my turn to bid, I said, “Seven No Trump.”

I had not only jumped from five to seven, I’d also sacrificed her Joker.

She looked at me in shock and shouted, “Negro, please!”

That’s when I knew I was truly one of the girls.

Oh, and we made the bid.

After that, I was officially made an honorary Black woman, complete with a ceremony and framed certificate. It broke my heart when the certificate was destroyed in a house fire.

By then, I’d abandoned my former smoking companions. As soon as I got to the basement, I joined the Bid crew at my new table. Soon I was invited to after-work games at their homes. We also played at a local dance club. I was the only white person there. No one seemed to mind that we played cards instead of dancing.

As the years went on, it became clear that I was the only white person in the state who knew how to play Bid Whist. I’ve no idea why it’s such a popular game among African Americans. Because I fit in so easily with these women and had such an affinity for the game, I decided that sometime in the past, one of my ancestors had slept with a Black person.

Perhaps more than one.

I decided to find out.

I sent off for one of those home DNA tests. I spit in the test tube and mailed it back. A few weeks later, I got my results.

I am so white.

I mean Wonder Bread and mayonnaise sandwich white.

My DNA was 97 percent European, originating primarily in Great Britain, 2.9 percent Norwegian, and 0.1 percent Chinese. I’m still trying to figure out that point-one percent.

My first thought was that I’d wasted ninety-five dollars on a scam. But the test also revealed that Americans with my DNA were predominantly Appalachians in North Carolina, with a strong Moravian background. My people are from North Carolina, and my great-grandfather was Moravian.

Not a drop of Croatan blood flowed through my veins.

I was devastated. Everything I’d been taught about who I was was wrong. Being an honorary Black woman turned out to be just that: honorary. I’d been so looking forward to sharing the results with the Bid Crew.

I kept it to myself. Somehow, the game didn’t bring quite as much joy as it used to.

I know that’s silly, but try telling my psyche that.

After a couple of weeks, I bit the bullet and shared the news with the “real” Black women. They shrugged it off. I thought they were just being polite until one day I made another outlandish bid.

This time it was Theresa who exclaimed, “Negro, please!”

Screw Ancestry dot com and 23andMe.

Family isn’t determined by who slaughtered the Lost Colony. It isn’t determined by blood.

It’s who we can rely on, who we can be vulnerable with, who has our backs no matter the circumstances.

Family is who we love, and who loves us back.

I never had the heart to tell Mom she wasn’t descended from the Croatan.

The pride I’d learned to take in that faux heritage is dwarfed by the pride I have in being a not-so-honorary Black woman.

This week there was no Friday prep. Everything was done on Saturday: Sloppy Joes, baked beans, fresh fruit, coleslaw, chips, ice cream, and a drink. I showed up to help.

I could have asked to work the serving line, but instead I was assigned to be the bathroom monitor. This meant not interacting much with the other Loaves and Fishes crew, but for an introvert like me, it was a nice way to start out.

About half of the people who come head straight to the bathrooms before getting in line for food. The other half eat first, then use the facilities. There are two unisex bathrooms, each with a single toilet. One of my jobs was to keep an eye on the toilet paper and soap, replacing them if either disappeared. My primary duty was to make sure only one person at a time went into a bathroom. There had been issues in the past with people doubling or tripling up to share drugs. Others used the privacy of the bathrooms for, let’s say, fraternization.

I wanted to post on Facebook or text my friends, letting them know where I was and what I was doing. Look at me! I’m meeting people! I’m doing good work! I’m representing the Good Shepherd, feeding His flock! I was afraid that if I focused on my phone I might overlook some bathroom shenanigans, so I kept my virtuous good deed to myself. There would be time to brag later.

My post faced the stairs that led from the street to the food line. As people entered, I told them good morning. Some said it back. Some said it first. Some avoided eye contact altogether and were either silent or mumbled a reply. They arrived singly or in pairs.

Black, white, old, young, men, women, able-bodied and infirm—for half an hour or so, a parade of hungry people filed in.

Once they went through the serving line, they sat at tables. Some scarfed down the food so fast it reminded me of my friend’s dogs at suppertime. Once they finished eating, they left.

Others took their time, chatting with their neighbors. It looked like any church supper where friends shared a meal. My nervousness about interacting with this population” was for naught.

Then a man shuffled in. The only reason he didn’t stop at the bathroom first was because he’d already gone in his pants. When I was a new father, I heaved every time I changed diapers. I didn’t want to be the subject of a future therapy session, so I bought a gas mask from the army surplus store. Having a giant, ant-faced man change the baby would probably lead to even more intensive visits with a shrink, but on balance it seemed the better bet.

I wished I’d had that gas mask when the soiled man crept by me at a snail’s pace. I held my breath until it was safe to inhale. If his tablemates noticed the odor, it didn’t stop them from chatting warmly with him. I wondered how many times I’d have to hold my breath and wished I’d stayed home.

Under my watchful eye, no one tried to pair up in the bathroom, and no toilet paper or hand soap disappeared. For all I know, the results would have been the same if I’d been serving Sloppy Joes.

I took advantage of the easy work to pat myself on the back some more while trying to look at the diners without looking like I was looking at them.

My attention was diverted when a man in his thirties came down the stairs holding the hand of a little boy about four years old. I don’t know if it was their first time or if they were regulars. I’m told Loaves and Fishes has a lot of repeat guests from week to week.

The little boy stared at a closed classroom door.

“Daddy! Is that my new room?”

“No, son. It’s where they teach Sunday school.”

They walked past the closed classroom door to the supply room where the toilet paper and soap refills were kept.

“Is that my new room?”

The excitement in his voice killed me.

His dad told him that no, this wasn’t his room either. The little boy never expressed disappointment. He was too busy looking at the next closed door. It’s one thing to be aware of hungry and unhoused people, but it’s another thing altogether to be confronted with them.

I wished I hadn’t come. That kid’s going to haunt me for a while. Maybe a long while.

When they left half an hour later, the boy, cheerful as ever, was eating the banana that came with his lunch.

The kitchen was running low on food when a short, older woman with long white hair came down the stairs. She stopped at the bathroom first and was in there a long time. I wondered if I should ask one of the women in the kitchen to check on her, but she finally came out.

When I wished her good morning, she didn’t answer or avoid eye contact—she glared at me. My smile wavered.

She joined a table with three or four other people after she got her plate of food.

One of the first men to show up was also one of the last to leave. He slowly ate his Sloppy Joe with a fork, cutting off bits of bread and soaking them in the meat juices. After each small bite of bread, he put an equally small bit of meat on his fork. Then he moved on to the coleslaw. One small bite after another. Was he savoring his food? Was it difficult to chew? I didn’t ask.

His table was on the opposite side of the room from the white-haired woman’s table, but they finished at about the same time. They met at the garbage can. The woman glared at him harder than she’d glared at me.

She shouted, “Pull up your pants!”

To be fair, the waistband of his trousers was several inches below his hips. He held his paper plate in one hand and used the other to hoist up his pants. As soon as he let go, they dropped again.

“PULL UP YOUR PANTS! You look disgusting!”

I hadn’t been tasked with being a referee if fisticuffs broke out. I looked around for another volunteer to help, but I was on my own.

The man said softly, “I don’t have a belt. I can’t keep them up.”

“You look disgusting!” she repeated.

I wished I hadn’t come.

She went back to her table, either to finish her ice cream or to lodge a formal complaint about the state of his pants.

“Thank you for lunch,” he told me. “Have a good day.”

He was taller than I was, but about as big around. “I think your pants look fine,” I lied. “But would you like my belt?”

He didn’t blush exactly, but he hesitated. Before he could decline the offer, I unbuckled my belt and took it off.

“I have two more at home. It’s not a problem.”

So that made two lies I’d told him.

I handed him the belt, and he thanked me again. He put it on before heading up the stairs to the exit.

The exchange had distracted me from bathroom duty. I’d been told that toilet paper theft was 100 percent understandable. I wasn’t there to prevent it so much as I was there to replace any rolls that walked out.

I grabbed the waist of my pants to keep them from falling down and went to inspect the bathrooms. Plenty of toilet paper still there.

When I came back out, the white-haired woman was on her way out. She stopped in front of me.

“Pull up your pants! You look disgusting!”

I held up my jeans while she climbed the stairs, turning to glare at me after every third step.

I wish I hadn’t come.

I’ll be back next week.

English 1 was full of freshmen. They were strangers, but also fellow peons, which at least gave us something in common. But other classes, like biology, or Spanish, had a mix of grades. I shared a lab table in biology with a senior who never looked at me, never spoke to me, in fact his only acknowledgment of me was when he asked the teacher for a “lab partner whose voice had at least finished changing.”

Even the Seniors Are Assholes had an exception. I found mine in Drama. Seniors were cast in my first school plays: Our Town, As You Like It, Spoon River Anthology, and others.

These seniors were friendly and supportive, but two went beyond that.

I first met Bob Klaffky and Carol Collins when I had a minor part in Our Town. Bob played Dr. Gibbs and Carol played Mrs. Webb. Bob was much taller than me. I had to crane my neck to look him in the eye. Carol was only a few inches taller than I, at least at first. I soon caught up to, and then surpassed her, but I still had to tilt my head back when I talked to Bob. I don’t know why they adopted me as their pet freshman, but my life immediately changed when they did.

I’d been a musical theater junkie since seventh grade when I bought my first cast album, Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza in South Pacific. I kept up with the current shows on the Great White Way, buying cast albums for shows I’d never seen, and probably never would. New York was a world away from Fort Lauderdale. I saw a number from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas on the Mike Douglas show and ran to Peaches Records and Tapes (now an adult sex shop) to buy the cast album–on vinyl, of course. I didn’t have one of those fancy 8-track players that the cool kids had. When Patti Lupone performed on Merv Griffin, I rushed out to buy the Evita sound track, which was a two record set! Twice the magic.

I was content to enjoy the songs without any context other than the summary of the play that was printed on the record sleeve or album cover.

One day Bob said, “Carol and I are going to see Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! at the Miami Beach Theatre of Performing Arts. Wanna come?”

When I listened to my many cast albums, I often regretted that I was born too late to see Ethel Merman, Carol Channing, Mary Martin, John Raitt, Angela Lansbury, and other legends. The chance to see Channing in Dolly? Hell, yes!

We bought tickets for a Saturday matinee. I was only fourteen, so Bob did the driving. On the drive to Miami Beach, I told them about my lab partner and his comment about puberty. Carol said, “Speaking of puberty, I hope someone warned you that if you masturbate, the hair on your palms falls off.” The urban legend I was familiar with was the opposite, that jerking off would cause you grow hair on your palms.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“One hundred percent,” she said.

I was confused. Do people generally have hairy palms? I held up my hand to inspect it, much to Carol’s delight. “You just admitted masturbating!”

“Of course I jack off. Everyone does. Even Bob, right?”

Klaffky looked uncomfortable and changed the subject.

Before seeing the show we went to Wolfie’s for lunch. This was part of their regular routine, but I’d never been to Wolfie’s Delicatessen before. It was huge. We arrived as they were switching from breakfast to lunch. Each table had complimentary bowls of cinnamon buns and other sweet rolls. Servers were going to empty tables and swapping the bowls of sweets with big bowls of cole slaw. Several women, on their way out of the restaurant, stopped by two or three tables, emptying the buns into their purses. No one batted an eye, but it gasted my flabber. I pointed to one of the petty thieves and Carol just shrugged. “It’s a daily occurrence.”

We ate our lunch and paid the check. As we got up, I asked Carol for her purse. “Why?” she asked, eyes narrowed. Instead of answering, I took the purse from the chair where she’d draped it. Then I went from one empty table to another, dumping cole slaw into her purse. Anyone else would have killed me, but she thought it was a hoot. As with the women swiping breakfast breads, no one gave me a second look.

The following year we drove to Orlando to see the touring company for A Chorus Line. I was blown away. I was used to Lerner and Lowe, Jerry Herman, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin and Jules Styne. This new musical was eye opening, both for its non traditional plot, and the songs. I had my learner’s permit by then and Bob let me drive his car while he sat in the passenger seat.

“The trick to not getting a ticket,” he said, “Is to only speed in the right lane. Don’t drive in the left lane except to pass; that’s where all the speeders get caught. You can go seventy or eighty miles an hour in the right lane with no problem.” Years later I learned the hard way that his advice had holes in it. In my case, a $275 hole, but that’s another story.

On that two-hour drive Carol introduced me to General Hospital. I’d never seen her face so animated as when she explained the connections between the Quartermaines and the Webers. By the time we parked I knew all there was to know about Port Charles. After that trip I never missed an episode of the soap.

The Galleria Cinema started showing midnight screens of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday nights. We’d heard scary stories about the show. Audience participation, squirt guns (we brought sheets of newspaper with us to serve as umbrellas, along with everyone else in the theater).

I was more than a little nervous, but it didn’t last long. Such unbridled enthusiasm and joy, the costumes, the lip syncing, and dear lord, the drop dead gorgeous guys in their gold briefs and the guys in their corsets set my closeted heart aflutter.

We stayed in touch after they graduated. Bob was taking film classes at the community college. I can’t remember what Carol did after high school, but the three of us still hung out. By then I had several close theater friends. We had parties once or twice a month, taking turns being the host. One such party was scheduled at my friend Dwight’s house.

Instead of the usual sodas, snacks and chit chat, Dwight wanted to spice up this party. We decided to make it a bachelor party, complete with stag film. We cleared with everyone first–after all there were several girls in our group, including one who was a preacher’s kid. Once we had everyone’s buy-in, all that remained was getting the pornographic movie.

This was before the days of VCRs. If you wanted to watch X-rated movies at home, it was 8mm film or your imagination. None of us were old enough to go into an adult bookstore.

But Bob was. I roped him into our shenanigans. He drove me to one of the adult bookstores near the airport. I made it as far as the entrance when the clerk pointed, first to Bob and then to me. “You. In. You. Out.”

As I slunked out of the shop Bob cleared his throat. “Um, where’s the smut?”

“Aisle Take Your Pick” the clerk said. My back was to him so I couldn’t see the eye roll, but I heard it.

Ten minutes later Bob returned to the car with a small reel of film. He owned a movie projector and camera, all part of his classes at the college. We took the movie to his house and previewed it. I didn’t know “core” could be that hard. The guys would love it, but the girls...

“This is too much. I can’t let Debbie and Susan see this.”

“I can splice out parts of it,” Bob said. “Give them the sense of it without making their eyes explode.”

We ran the film through his splicing machine. At my direction he excised most of the boinking close-ups. At one point in the movie the randy couple is in the copy machine room at work, going at it. The door to the office opens and another comely secretary looked in. The camera cut to the rutting rabbits, and the rutting was laborious, imaginative, and graphic. After five minutes of demonstrating the Kama Sutra, the camera cut back to the secretary who giggled, and slowly closed the door, giving the love birds some privacy.

After we edited the film, the secretary opened the door, then immediately tittered and closed it again. All the sexual calisthenics were on the proverbial cutting room floor. We left enough sex in the movie to satisfy the guys (I hoped) without traumatizing the girls. In hindsight I don’t think they would have flinched had they saw the unedited version of the movie.

I borrowed Bob’s movie projector and took it to the party. We watched it three times. I had the movie in a lunch sack, since everyone knows that smut comes in plain brown packaging. After the third screening I took the discarded strips of film from the bag and passed them out to the guys. They held up the thin film to a lamp and got an idea of what they’d missed. They demanded I have Bob put the film back together again so they could see the “really good stuff.”

Bob moved to Ohio and we lost touch in those pre-internet days. With a third of our trio gone, Carol and I soon drifted apart as well.

Decades later I found both of them on Facebook. I sent them messages telling them how much the Okay Seniors meant to me, and how grateful I was for their friendship. Since I wasn’t one of their Facebook friends, I had no way of knowing if they ever received the message, but I assume not, as I got no reply.

Jump ahead to a month or so ago. I published a substack about my drama teacher, J.C. Ledford, and mentioned Bob in it. J.C. wanted to avoid confusion with two Bobs so she called me Robert for weeks. A friend in Oregon reads my substack. When he started that one he texted me before he finished it.

“You went to Fort Lauderdale High School? Do you know Bob Klaffky?”

It smacked me right in the gob. “Yes! I mention him in the stack. How do you know him?”

“I’ve done work for him before. In fact I’m going out to Ohio this week to do another job for him.” Norman gave Bob the link to the story, and the two of us reconnected. I can’t speak for him, but it was like no time had passed when we chatted. I asked about Carol and he told me she’d died a few years ago. I’m sorry I never got a chance to tell her how important she was to me. I didn’t mention it to Bob, either, as I didn’t want to sound like a Hallmark Card. He’ll find out when he reads this.

And just in case it’s not crystal clear: he and Carol were lifeboats to a lonely freshman lost at sea. I cannot imagine what my high school life would have been like, had it not been for these two seniors who ignored high school’s social norms, and welcomed me into their circle

A frequent guest on the Skipper Chuck show was Paul Diamond, a local magician. I loved his heavy New York accent and his amazing tricks, even if his stage presence could use some work.

Paul Diamond’s Magic and Fun Shoppe was at Searstown in Fort Lauderdale. I desperately wanted to go there, but my parents thought it was a foolish way to spend my allowance. How can learning to saw a woman in half, or turn her into a tiger, be foolish?

Finally, one day Dad took me and my brother Joe to Sears for back-to-school clothes. When the sales clerk assisted us — something they did in those days — she took out her cloth tape measure and wrapped it around my waist.

“Oh, you’re a Husky,” she said, referring to the children’s version of big and tall.

“And you smell funny,” I said.

It was bad enough being teased by my classmates. Adults should know better, or at least be more tactful.

After Joe and I had our new jeans and shirts, Dad said we could go to the magic shop next door. We spent half an hour there. Paul himself was manning the counter.

I studied every item for sale, from the ninety-nine-cent snapping chewing gum and itching powder, to the twenty-five-dollar linking rings, all the way up to the thousand-dollar disappearing cabinets.

In the end, I bought a whoopie cushion for a couple of bucks and a pack of magic cards. Joe bought a tin of sneezing powder.

Joe and I sat in the back seat of Dad’s Buick while he loaded our Sears purchases into the trunk. I tore open the card deck and began studying the instructions while Joe opened the sneezing powder and said to hell with the instructions.

If he had read them, he would have known to sprinkle a tiny amount into his palm and blow it into the face of his victim. Instead, he leaned over as if to smell the powder and snorted it like it was a line of cocaine.

It was spectacular.

He did more wheezing than sneezing for a few seconds. Then a string of snot escaped both nostrils.

I mean a STRING.

When Dad got into the driver’s seat, Joe was pulling at two nine-inch strands of mucus dangling below his chin, trying to extract them from his head. The world’s best mozzarella sticks never had a cheese pull like Joe’s snot pull.

I couldn’t stop laughing.

This was far better than making a woman levitate.

He managed to extricate the strand from his left nostril, but the right side just kept getting longer and longer, reminding me of the never-ending stream of scarves Paul pulled from his fist.

Joe was crying, I was laughing, and Dad was cursing.

“Stop it!” he yelled at Joe. “Just pull it out!”

“I’m trying!” Joe wailed.

“Goddammit!” Dad said, climbing back out of the car.

He opened the back door, grabbed Joe by the snot-free hand, and pulled him toward Sears.

“You, too!” he barked at me. “And stop laughing, dammit!”

“I’m trying!” I echoed Joe, though I wasn’t.

Inside the store, Dad led Joe to the water fountain by the elevator. He had Joe place his head in the basin, facing the ceiling, and used the ice-cold stream to flush out his nose, accidentally waterboarding him.

This only made me laugh harder. So hard, in fact, that I wet myself, eliciting another “Goddammit!” from Dad and even more laughter from me.

When Joe’s nasal discharge had been reduced to a reasonable level, Dad marched us back to the car. Before he’d let me in, he made me change into some of the clothes we’d just bought, right there in the parking lot. We hadn’t bought underwear, so I had to go commando.

He made me throw away my pants and briefs in the outside garbage can before allowing me ingress to the back seat.

Joe pinched his nose closed and wept quietly on the ride home. Every time another laugh threatened to escape me, Dad barked, “You better not piss yourself again or I’ll give you something to piss about.”

The whoopie cushion failed to elicit the guffaws I’d hoped for, but all I had to do was picture Joe pulling the magic mucus out of his nose and I was off on another laughing fit.

I went to high school out of district. While the friends I’d known since first grade went to Boyd Anderson High School, three blocks from our house, I went to Fort Lauderdale High School. Dad dropped me off on his way to work and I took the city bus home.

Fort Lauderdale High School was the oldest school in the city and was in the district where the wealthy kids went to school. We were firmly middle class.

I have always been introverted. I make friends slowly, and forever. The slowly part was hard on me at FLHS. My classmates had known each other for years. They chatted happily the first day of school while I sat at my desk, ignored, but not making any overtures to anyone, either.

English, Geometry, Biology, they were all the same. Thank God for Drama I. There were only 15 of us in the class, with a built-in common interest.

That first day Miss Ledford, all five foot five of her, took attendance. “Susan Lockmiller?”

“Here!”

“David Sokolov?”

“Here.”

“Robert Byrd?”

I was too shy to tell her I went by Bob. “Here!”

I expected classes filled with monologues, skits, improv, stage makeup and so on. Those first three weeks were murder. Lectures on Sophocles, Stanislavski, Strasberg; the different kinds of spotlight lenses (the only one I remember is Fresnel). Every day after answering to Robert, I took notes, studying them for the upcoming test, and regretting ever signing up for this class.

My classmates and I felt like we’d been ripped off. When we saw each other in the halls we groused and complained.

And bonded.

After the test, which I barely passed, the fun stuff I’d hoped for started. We learned how to mime, not just being trapped in a box, but walking in place that looks like walking down the street. We learned stage makeup. We were given practice scenes. “Robert, are you ready with your original mime?”

Because we’d all bonded over those torturous weeks, I had friends, not just people I went to class with. I was also more relaxed around Miss Ledford, but I never corrected her on my name. I’d been answering to Robert for over a month. I didn’t want to look like a jerk by only just now correcting her.

My other classes were still lonely, but people at least knew who I was now and one or two even spoke to me. Spanish class was fun, thanks to Bufano Boy and Gilbert Girl.*

Extracurricular activities were there for the picking, but none of the fruit appealed to me. Sports? Have we met? I thought about band, but didn’t believe I was good enough on the trombone that I played in middle school. There were clubs out the wazoo. I never did learn the difference between the Key Club and the Exchange Club. I also never understood how a high school full of kids of lawyers, doctors, and architects had such a large Future Farmers of America club.

You couldn’t join Thespians until you’d been invited, and you weren’t invited until you earned ten points. You’d get half a point each time you worked on sets. Two points for having a supporting role in a play. Four points if you were the lead, and so on.

Eight weeks into the semester and I had half a point after helping paint flats one Saturday. The same week I completed my first step to being a Thespian, the Key Club sold carnations. Everyone was excited. This FLHS tradition was new to me. Four or five times a year you could order a carnation from a Key Club member. You filled out the card to your sweetie, or whoever you were ordering it for. On flower day during 2nd period club members delivered the flowers to all the classes.

I had drama pals now but none that were worth two bucks. Even so, when a Key Kid stopped me between classes to ask if I’d buy a flower I parted with my lunch money. I filled out the card while he waited:

To Miss Ledford,

From Bob, not Robert-- Bob.

Bee, Oh, Bee, BOB

It took so long for the damn things to be delivered–weeks, not days–that I soon forgot about it, and continued answering to Robert. Everyone else in class called me Bob but Miss Ledford never noticed.

When the flowers were finally delivered during second period, I suddenly got nervous. Would she be mad? Think I’m weird?

She didn’t mention it when I walked into her classroom two hours later. She just nodded hello, convincing me my idea was a mistake. Once we were seated, she took attendance.

“Susan Lockmiller.”

“Here”

“David Sokolov.”

“Here.”

“Bob, not Robert, but Bob, bee oh bee Bob, Byrd.”

“Here!” I laughed, mirroring her grin.

I auditioned for the first school play of the year, Our Town. I was cast in a very minor role. I wasn’t disappointed, as I was still new enough that I was more comfortable in the background. Miss Ledford cast Renee Bufano, as the Stage Manager, which caused a few ripples I never understood. Even though there was nothing gender bending about it, having a female in the role was pearl clutching for some. Renee was Scott Bufano’s sister. I reached out to her after I learned that Scott had died of AIDS related complications. Years later she and I were talking about Scott and I reminded her that we first met in Our Town. “I have only fuzzy memories of that. I was high off my ass every night.”

I’d never guessed. I don’t know if it’s because I was naive, or because she hid it so well.

The role of Emily was played by Amy Spitzmiller, a sophomore. Her performance absolutely wrecked me in every rehearsal. In the funeral scene on opening night my tears were real, thanks to Amy.

Other roles were cast by seniors and juniors. It was obvious that some of them had been in several school plays. Those veterans called Miss Ledford, “J.C.” Miss Ledford’s first name was Julia. No one knew what the C stood for. She kept that a closely guarded secret. I was a freshman in my first play. No way in hell was I going to call her anything other than Miss Ledford. That changed by the next play, an original musical based on Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

We practiced every night. After Friday night rehearsals everyone went to Lums, a local restaurant. It was at those Friday night suppers that I felt like I was truly part of this magical group.

The cast party following plays were held at J.C.’s house, which was half a block from school. She had two dogs, Sam and Max that she doted on. Max took a liking to me, which annoyed some of the kids who’d known him much longer than I.

Two seniors, Bob Klaffky and Carol Collins, become great friends They took me to my first musical, A Chorus Line. We drove to Orlando to watch the touring company. I grew up on cast recordings of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, Jerry Herman, and Irving Berlin. A Chorus Line was an eye opener. You’d never hear,”tits and ass” in a Hammerstein lyric.

After I’d become comfortable calling her J.C., I asked her why she called me Robert for weeks when she knew everyone else called me Bob.

“Bob Klaffky auditions for every play. On the first day of school I knew you’d be as involved in drama class as he is. Two Bobs in the same plays could be confusing when I’m yelling at one of you; one Robert and one Bob would be easier to fuss at.”

After the first Key Club flower sale, I made it a point to buy a carnation for J.C. and for my friend Mary, aka Gilbert Girl, every time they were sold by different service clubs.

Toward the end of the year J.C. asked me to play Haemon in Sophocles’ Antigone. The FLHS Drama club was entered in a statewide competition. If you aren’t familiar with the play, here’s a quick summary:

After a civil war in Thebes, Antigone’s two brothers kill each other. One brother defended the city; the other attacked it. The new king, Creon, declares: the “good” brother gets an honorable burial and the “traitor” brother’s body will rot unburied outside the city walls.

Antigone says, “Screw that,” and secretly buries her brother anyway. Creon catches her and decides to punish her publicly. Just one problem: she is engaged to Creon’s son, Haemon, played by me. Blah blah blah, Greek Tragedy, yadda yadda yadda, Creon finally says fine, Antigone won’t be punished but by then, she has hanged herself. I’m so mad I try to kill Creon but I suck at fighting so I kill myself instead. My mother, Creon’s wife, hears I’m dead and SHE kills herself.

“What kind of play is this?” I asked. “I’m dead, my mother’s dead, my girlfriend’s dead–the only one alive is Creon and he’s been spiritually destroyed. Are we passing out the suicide hotline to the audience after this laugh-fest?”

“That’s why it’s called a tragedy, Bob. Not every story has a happy ending. But they still need to be told.”

Creon was played by a senior named Rollin Jewett. His face was all long lines and shadows–straight nose, sharp jaw, heavy lashes, all framed by wavy black hair. So not only was my “dad” responsible for the death of my girlfriend, he was responsible for me needing a cold shower before, during, and after every rehearsal.

During rehearsals J.C. took notes and after each run through sat us down to critique our performances. I accepted her suggestions with an attitude of “I have no idea what I’m doing in this doom-fest so I’ll do whatever you say.” Rollin was different. He took the mildest criticism or suggestion as confirmation of failure. He looked so downcast that my heart went out for him, even though J.C. wasn’t being even a little unkind.

After rehearsal one night Rollin and the other cast members drove home. I was fourteen and had to wait for Dad to come get me. Rather than leave me alone at school, J.C. waited with me.

“Rollin is really good,” I said.

“Yes, he is,” J.C. agreed. The look she gave me told me I might have been a little too effusive in my praise and I toned it down.

“I wish he wouldn’t get so sad when you review our scenes,” I said, avoiding her eyes.

“So do I,” she said. After a minute she said, “Some people are so good at pretending they are something they’re not when they’re on stage, because they’re so good at doing it twenty-four, seven. They’re scared that if people see through the pretense they’ll be rejected.”

I tried not to show my panic. Was she talking about Rollin, or me? She went on. “The sad thing is, they’ll never know they’re good enough when they’re not pretending.”

Dad pulled up to the stage door. “I gotta go!” I shouted, running to the closeted safety of his Impala.

The next year I learned that Drama 2, 3, and 4 all took place at the same time. In addition to the two drama classes, and the Debate class, J.C. taught two English classes, but everyone knew where her heart was.

I don’t think anyone in the advanced Drama class called her Miss Ledford. In addition to acting out scenes by established playwrights we were encouraged to write our own scenes and perform them.

We had to select a play and design a set for it. I chose The Crucible. I’d read it the year before in English and it stuck with me. My design was hackneyed and juvenile–what was a cross on the mantle in Act 1 morphs into a hangman’s noose in Act II, that kind of thing. J.C. was kind in the notes she wrote in the margins when she handed it back to me. The one I still remember is, “subtle can be stronger than In Your Face.”

Midway through my sophomore year, Sister, Joe and I were watching TV in the Family Room. Around nine o’clock, Mom and Dad came out of their bedroom. Mom looked grim. Dad was crying. This was before the family dog died and I’d never seen him cry before. He hugged Sister, me, and Joe while Mom explained that they were going to the Emergency Room.

Seven years earlier, Dad came home from work with bad heartburn, which quickly evolved into painful pressure. Both my parents dismissed the idea of a heart attack; he was only thirty-three years old. After several hours a family friend who was a nurse convinced them to go to the hospital. The cardiologist told them that if they’d waited any longer he’d probably have died of the massive coronary.

With this second heart attack he knew exactly what it was. They wasted no time in getting to the hospital (Dad had two more heart attacks but the only time an ambulance was involved was after he’d died). Dad didn’t expect to come home again. I can’t speak for Sister or Joe, but I was too afraid to cry.

Mom promised she’d call as soon as she knew something, put Sister in charge and they left.

They weren’t out the door more than five minutes when Sister called Kenny. He was her boss at Kinney Shoes. I haven’t changed any names, not Amy’s or J.C.’s or Kenny from Kinny’s. Sister had been working at Kinney’s for a couple of months. We were all sick to death of hearing about how great Kenny was. I didn’t know precisely what they were to each other but we all knew it went beyond Boss and Employee. Hanging out after work, the occasional dinner or going to the movies at the mall cinema when the shoe store closed. Sister was seventeen. Kenny was Mom’s age.

I retreated to my bedroom but when Kenny arrived, Sister insisted I join them in the family room so he could comfort all of us together. I suppose that was better than him comforting just Sister in her bedroom, but not by much.

I waved hello as I passed them on my way to the wall phone. The cord was long enough that I could take it into the garage for some privacy.

I didn’t have to look up J.C.’s phone number. I’d had it since Our Town in case I needed to call out sick for practice or something. Likewise, she didn’t have to look up my address. She’d taken me home from rehearsal before and had picked me up on Saturdays for set construction.

It was pretty late, and a school night to boot. It took a few rings before she answered.

“J.C.?” My voice quavered.

“What’s wrong, Bob?”

“My dad’s dying and I’m stuck in the house with a pervert.”

I filled in the blanks but before I could ask her to rescue me she said, “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Sister wasn’t happy when I told her I’d called J.C. “Mom put me in charge, and I’m not letting you go.”

Kenny said, “Glenda’s right, my man. You should stay here.”

If I hadn’t been so tense I would have kept quiet. “Sister may be your woman, but I am by no means your man. You’re her boss, not mine, so your vote doesn’t count.”

None of us was willing to continue the fight. Why hadn’t Mom called, yet? Joe, Sister, and Kenny sat on the couch. I was perched on a barstool at the kitchen island. Kenny patted Sister’s hand. I glared at him, Sister glared at me, and Joe just sat there looking scared.

When the doorbell rang Kenny leapt up. “I’ll get it!”

I was on his heels. “It’s not your house! I’ll get it!”

None of us got it. J.C. opened the door and stepped inside. She ignored Kenny and looked at me. “Are you ready?”

“Yes!” I said.

“No!” Kenny and Sister, who had joined us in entryway said together.

Kenny said, “I don’t think Bob’s parents would approve of an adult, twice his age, taking charge of him when they aren’t here.”

J.C. smiled and held out her hand. “Hello, I’m Ms. Kettle. You must be Mr. Pot.” She turned to me and repeated, “Are you ready?”

I followed her outside. We drove around while I told her about Dad’s first heart attack. We ended up at the Clock Diner. Lums had been closed for a couple of hours by then. The Clock, open twenty-four hours, was our backup.

She’d already gone from Miss Ledford to Miss Kettle. By the end of the evening she was practically Miss Van Gogh—I talked her ear off. Middle school, slash Puberty had been rough. Dad and I fought constantly. I was convinced he hated me. In hindsight I’m sure he was convinced I hated him. J.C. assured me we were both wrong.

When Mom and Dad left the house earlier I’d been too stunned to say anything, including, “I love you,” which I’d recently learned to include with every goodbye.* Between that, my fear, and the vivid memory of our prior screaming matches, I was in bad shape.

“What hospital did your dad go to?”

“I don’t know.” Dad had been at Holy Cross when he’d had his first heart attack. The nurses were all nuns and they wore the uniform of their spiritual profession, not their medical one. They gave Dad the willies. He said he couldn’t tell one penguin from another which made it hard to keep up with which ones were mean old bitches. “I don’t think it’s Holy Cross, though. Maybe Imperial Point?”

J.C. looked at her watch. “I expect you’ll stay home tomorrow, but I’ve got to get up for school. Are you okay to go home? I’ve done all nighters before so if you’re not . . .”

“No, I’m okay,” I lied. Putting words to my feelings had left me drained.

J.C. paid for our coffees and took me home, but not before making a detour to Imperial Point Hospital. I’d guessed correctly. Dad had been admitted to ICU. It was close to midnight now and the lights outside the double doors leading to ICU were dim.

I pointed to a sign on the doors that listed visiting hours, which ended about the time we pulled into the Clock parking lot. The sign also said that visitors must be eighteen or older. Even if we didn’t arrive three hours too late, I was still three years too early.

“Wait here,” J.C. whispered and disappeared behind the swinging double doors.

When she came back a couple of minutes later, a nurse was with her. “Five minutes,” the nurse told me. I followed her to Dad’s curtained off area. He was awake, and much calmer than when I last saw him. At the time I thought that meant he no longer had anything to be afraid of. Now I suspect it was the morphine drip.

When he saw me he broke into a smile. “Bob!” I ran to his bed but was afraid to hug him, lest I dislodge one of the wires on his chest or IV tubes in his arm and neck. “You just missed your mother.” He pointed to the nurse who’d bent the rules to let me see him. “No penguins. I can keep track of who’s mean and who’s not. That one’s mean.” He winked at her. With that Dad Joke and wink my own fears melted away.

He asked how I’d gotten there and I briefly told him about my night. He looked behind me. “Where’s your teacher?”

“Waiting for me in the hallway.” The nurse cleared her throat. “I have to go. I love you, Dad.”

“I love you too, son. Listen, tell Miss Ledford I said thank you and tell Kenny I have a gun.”

“You don’t have a gun.”

“Kenny doesn’t need to know that.”

Soon after Dad’s heart attack J.C. called me to her desk. “I want you to compete in the NFL.”

“Okay, as soon as I pitch a no-hitter at the World Series.”

“The National Forensics League,” she said. I mentioned earlier that she taught Debate. Our team brought home a lot of trophies.

My idea of a well reasoned counterpoint was, “bite me.” I raised my eyebrows and asked, “Debate?”

“Lord, no. You’d be disqualified as soon as you opened your mouth. I want you to compete in the Oral Interpretation and the Extemporaneous competitions.”

Oral Interp involved performing someone else’s material; Extemp required giving a short speech on a randomly assigned topic. To my surprise, I did pretty well at both.

I continued with the Extemp and Oral Interp contests the rest of the year, winning as many as I lost.

I had by no means abandoned drama. I auditioned for every school play, getting some meaty roles in a Thurber Carnival, stage managing Spoon River Anthology, the lead in The Taming of the Shrew, and my crowning achievement, the lead in the third act of Plaza Suite.

My friend Dan, whom I’d later go to London with, had recently transferred to FLHS. One day in class J.C. told us about him. I can’t remember where he’d come from but she was very concerned that he would be joining the class midyear. “You’ve already formed some solid friendship groups. I don’t want him to feel excluded. Some of you can be pretty catty, which is an asset on the Tonight Show, but not in my class.” Dan’s parents had just divorced. His Dad lived in England with his former mistress, now his pregnant wife. His Mom lived nearby with her “friend.”

J.C. worried needlessly. We took to Dan immediately. He still acts today. I often see him guest starring on shows like FBI and Law and Order. I was channel surfing once and came upon him just as a bad guy shot him in the forehead. Seeing that, with no context, was disconcerting.

Dan got to FLHS in time for the last play of the year. I’d never heard of “David and Lisa” and knew nothing about it. Except for my walk-on in Our Town, I’d only acted in comedies. (I was behind the scenes for Spoon River Anthology.)

David and Lisa follows two emotionally troubled teenagers in a residential psychiatric treatment center. David is brilliant but terrified of physical contact, believing touch can kill him. Lisa suffers from a severe psychological disorder that leaves her speaking in rhymes and shifting between two personalities. As they slowly form a friendship, each begins to break through the barriers that isolate them from the world.

Dan was cast as David. My friend Debbie played Lisa. I was cast as the chief of psychiatry, Dr. Swinford, with whom David has several scenes. The last scene of the play is pretty intense. David and Dr. Swinford arrive at a park barely in time to save Lisa from being raped.

Debbie was very pretty, and had a waif-like demeanor. The role of Lisa was made for her, or she for it. It was impossible to watch her scenes and not feel protective of her. Her setbacks were heartbreaking to watch. When she was attacked by the would be rapists everyone–on stage, backstage, or sitting in the audience held their breath.

When David and Dr. Swinford run in from offstage in the nick of time, all those held breaths were released in a collective whoosh that was part sigh, part Whew, part sob.

A week before opening night J.C. had us run this scene over and over. The physical altercation between Lisa and her attackers, and the reactions of Swinford and David, had to be exactly right. One wrong move could ruin the climax the play had been building toward. J.C. said, “You can make the audience believe anything, if you believe it yourself.”

We started the scene for the twentieth time. Usually Dan and I waited together in the wings until our entrance but this time Dan said he’d be right back and ran off to the costume room. When he returned he held two pink taffeta tutus. He handed me one and put on the other one. “This scene is too heavy. We need to lighten things up.”

I was torn. I wanted to get this right but I also had a minor crush on Dan. Even now he’s crushworthy. J.C. did say to make him feel welcome...I stepped into my tutu.

The faux rapists and Debbie were scarily believable. This was my umpteenth time in a row seeing it but this performance was raw. My heart sped up. On cue, Dan and I ran out on stage. We’d taken three steps when J.C. shouted, “Stop!”

Debbie and the ruffians were confused until they saw where J.C.’s ire was aimed. This was supposed to be a joke but no one was laughing. By now J.C. was at the foot of the stage. I’d never seen her so angry.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” She moved her glare from me to Dan. “Both of you?”

I stared at my feet.

“Sorry,” we mumbled.

“I don’t know what pisses me off more: that you think sexual assault is something to joke about, or that you think mental illness is laughable–” she aimed the glare squarely at me. “Or that you’re so afraid of being serious for half a minute, in case people might see what’s under all the jokes.”

I remember how miserable Rollin looked when she talked about where his performance needed work. This was different. It wasn’t about the work. Rollin had been ashamed of his acting; I was ashamed of myself.

J.C. canceled the rest of the rehearsal and sent us home to give us time to think about how committed to the play we were. Dad wasn’t due to pick me up for another hour. Debbie drove me home, but I wish she hadn’t. She had gone to places she’d never been to nail that scene and I made a mockery of it. I couldn’t blame her for being disappointed in me.

The next night we once again tackled the rape scene. After our fifth or sixth time J.C. exhaled loudly. “You believe it.” I knew she did, too.

We had the cast party at Holiday Park instead of J.C.’s house. I took my one and only photo of her that day. We played Improv games, but no oral interp. J.C. brought the burgers and charcoal. The rest of us chipped in buns and coleslaw and Cokes.

The next Monday after she took roll J.C. said, “I have some news. I’m moving back to Kentucky at the end of the school year.”

There were gasps and “No!”s and “Why?”s

She gave several reasons. Her family was there and not getting any younger. She looked a little wistful and said, “I left my boyfriend and my hopes of getting a PhD behind when I came here.”

Dan said, “You can get a PhD in Miami.”

Someone else said she could get a boyfriend in Miami, too.

“Bob, you’re usually the first one to speak up. Do you have any questions?”

“Please don’t go,” I said.

The day after classes let out some of us went to her house to help her pack. Bob Klaffky was in college now but he came to help, too. Soon after he showed up, she said, “Bob, will you help Bob-not-Robert-but-Bob-B-O-B-Bob bring the boxes from the attic?”

“Uh, sure?” Bob K was konfused.

Bob was well over six feet tall. It was easier for me to climb into the attic and pass boxes to him as he stood on the folding stairway. Then I climbed down and we carted boxes to the living room where J.C. supervised what went where: Pack, Toss, Donate.

In addition to the two boxes of books I carried, I balanced an old hatbox on top of them. I couldn’t see J.C. wearing a hat, unless it was a saucy French beret. Curiosity got the better of me and I opened the box. Inside was an old felt fedora with a cleaning ticket dated 1941. Did people have to get their hats cleaned?

J.C. saw it and got that faraway look in her eyes. “That was my Grandfather’s Sunday hat.”

“It’s beautiful!” I said.

“Do you want it? It’s yours.”

I asked her a dozen times if she was sure before accepting it. I wore it several times, always looking like an oddball or relic, until it was destroyed in the house fire.

There were still boxes in the attic so Bob and I went back for another haul. When I picked up the last box the bottom gave out. Dozens of letters, forms, legal papers, deeds, titles, and who knows what all, slid across the floor of the dusty attic. As I collected them I couldn’t help noticing the name printed on some of them.

Julia C____ Ledford, only the middle name was spelled out. It must be a family name of some kind. I’d never heard the name before or since, and you aren’t going to hear it from me now. I jerry-rigged the box so I could refill it with the paperwork, then toted it downstairs.

“The box broke. I think I got everything though. I thought you might want to seal this one up. I picked up an envelope with her full name on it. She saw it and raised an eyebrow. “I won’t tell,” I said. And I never have.

The next year Mrs. Jameson taught drama. She was a lovely lady, but she was an English teacher who’d been tasked with teaching drama. J.C. was a drama and debate teacher who’d been tasked with teaching English.

There were no more lectures about set building or spotlights. No more comparisons between the Stanislavski method and the Strasberg method of acting. No more school plays. Lots of charades and acting out scenes with each other in class. When I was forced to choose between Drama and English 3AP, both of which were offered only during 5th period, I chose English. I would have had a hard time choosing if J.C. had still been here.

The old gang was as tight as ever. We got together often. Pool parties at Dwight’s house in the ritzy part of town, and themed parties at my house–Halloween, Broadway, an election-themed party. At one of the parties I hosted I sprung a surprise on everyone. I’d called information and got J.C.’s new phone number in Kentucky. We called her and took turns chatting. It was good to hear her voice but she didn’t seem as excited about the call as we were. I got the feeling we’d interrupted something.

We tried calling her again a couple of months later at another party, but there was no answer. Voicemail hadn’t yet come around and not everyone had an answering machine. The next time we tried we got a recording saying the number had been disconnected. Had she moved again? Or was she closing the door on Fort Lauderdale? I missed life with J.C. but eventually we got used to life without her.

Jump ahead a few decades. The internet is a part of life now, which makes it easier to track down people with whom you’ve lost touch. A search of J.C. Ledford didn’t return any helpful results. I tried again using Julia Ledford and there was a notice of her retirement from Owensboro Community College. The piece referred to Doc Ledford, or just plain Doc. I was pleased she got her PhD.

There were glowing comments from faculty and students about Doc. I admit I was a little resentful that “Doc” had replaced “J.C.”

Since she’d retired, there was no longer a school email address for her. I emailed the Dean of the Drama department instead. I told him that Doc had been my drama teacher in 1978 and 1979, and how much she influenced my life. I said that I knew he couldn’t give me her contact info, but asked if he’d pass along my phone number and email address to her, and ask her to get in touch.

He wrote back, saying I was one of a thousand people Doc had touched and he’d be happy to forward my email to her.

That was a couple years ago and I’ve yet to hear from her. I am confused and sad. Had I offended her without knowing it? I had my arrogant, asshole-ish moments in high school; had one of those outbursts put me on the outs with her?

My first year of high school she was an oasis in a desert of loneliness. She made me feel seen, without making me feel like I was under a spotlight, Fresnel or otherwise. I’m pretty sure she saw beneath my heterosexual facade. She never asked me about it, but it was clear that if and when I was ready to bring it up, she’d be a safe audience.

I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t been there when Dad had his heart attack.

Why hadn’t she reached out? If I knew, I could try to make amends. She is the last person in the world I’d want to hurt or anger.

I haven’t reached out to the university again. I have no reason to doubt my message had been delivered. I’ve learned to accept that she’d prefer to be Doc and not J.C.

Not every story has a happy ending, but those stories still need to be told.

EDIT: a friend in Oregon forwarded this to his friend in Ohio—Bob Klaffky. I’ve been chatting with Bob and he told me that J.C. passed away 3 years ago.

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*

I remember it was a Wednesday because that’s when we always ate dinner at the NCO club. Neighbor handed his menu back to our server after ordering. When she left he said, “Friend, you won’t believe what I read in the Enquirer today.”

He always rifled through the checkout tabloids when we were at the commissary. He was particular about his tabloids. Anything with a photo of Bat Boy on the cover was deemed trash. Elvis sightings were maybe yes, maybe no. But his favorite was The National Enquirer.

“You’re right,” I told him.

“No, no, it’s true!” he insisted. “Some guy in Franklin found a potato chip that looked like the Virgin Mary.”

“And that made the Enquirer? I saw a cloud once that looked like J. Edgar Hoover. Shall I call CNN?”

“Let me finish. The local news showed it on TV and some idiot saw it and bought the potato chip for three thousand dollars!” These were simpler times. There was no eBay, no smartphones, and very few dumb ones. More people had wheelbarrows than home computers.

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I’ve heard of eyes that gleamed, but until his wide-open peepers lit up, I’d never seen it before. “Rudy had a turd once that looked just like an angel. If only I’d called Channel 5.”

“Your Uncle Rudy?”

“No, Mama’s cat, Rudy. I don’t think human turds count. Although… I should ask Granny to mail me her clay-working tools. If I can’t find a turd angel, I can carve one.”

I didn’t have to ask if he was serious; he wore his usual shit-eating grin, rather than a shit-carving grin. You may think this was hardly dinner conversation, and you’re right. But I worked in the ER and he worked in Labor and Delivery. It took a lot to flip our queasy switch.

“We buy chips every time we get groceries. God knows how many millions we’ve accidentally eaten.” He was half annoyed with himself, half wistful.

I had to work Thursday, but Neighbor was off duty. When I got home Thursday night, Neighbor was sitting cross-legged on the floor picking through hundreds of potato chips. Six empty Lay’s bags were on the kitchen table. He picked up a chip, inspected it, shook his head, and dropped it in the kitchen trash can, which was now the living room trash can. He paused on the next chip, rotating it a couple of times before adding it to the trash.

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

“Careful you don’t step on any,” he said. “I’m not done checking the ones by the door.”

I deliberately stomped on chips as I made my way to the bedroom to change out of my jumpsuit. “Friend!” he shouted in alarm. “My nest egg!”

By the end of the week, Mount Ruffles was getting out of hand. Neighbor promised not to buy any new bags of chips until we’d eaten what we had.

He gained seven pounds in two weeks. I reminded him that our twice-yearly Physical Readiness Test was coming up. Neighbor never had to struggle to maintain his weight the way I did, but scarfing down three or four bags a day was taking its toll. “Dude. Even your sweat is greasy. I’m cutting you off.”

We finally compromised on one bag of chips a day.

I wasn’t allowed to eat any chips myself unless he inspected them first. The exception was barbecue-flavored chips. Neighbor held up one of the seasoned chips and wiped the rusty-colored powder on his pants leg. “These miracle-seeking yahoos believe in blue-eyed, blond-haired Bible heroes. They won’t pay for a John the Baptist chip if it looks Middle Eastern. They want Euro John. The Southern Baptist. My daddy is the kind of person who’d pay for an angel chip, and everyone but the camel in his nativity set looks albino.”

“Is it a porcelain nativity set?”

“That’s neither here nor there.” He waved a hand, brushing the nativity set away.

It was fun to see how excited he got when he thought he’d struck Yukon Gold. “Tell me this doesn’t look like Batman! That ought to be worth fifty dollars, right?”

I had to get creative in the kitchen. Instead of panko, I rolled our chicken in crushed potato chips, but only after Neighbor inspected them first. I topped baked mac and cheese with them, stuck them in peanut butter sandwiches. At one point I poured boiling milk over a bowl of chips and tried to turn them into mashed potatoes.

Neighbor can’t stand broccoli, which I love, and I can’t abide mushrooms, which he’d eat 24/7 if he could. We agreed that each of the forbidden foods would be allowed one day a week. It was Broccoli Tuesday. Nothing fancy tonight, just pan-roasted in butter. Neighbor’s dinner plate was devoid of greenery, but I made him some black-eyed peas so he was happy.

I stabbed one of the broccoli spears with my fork. “Neighbor! Holy shit! We’re rich!”

“What? How?”

I held up the broccoli. “It looks just like that Joy of Painting guy!”

Last Christmas, Granny sent Neighbor a Super Nintendo system and a couple of games, which we soon supplemented with games we bought at the MCX on Camp Foster.

The easier games soon turned boring, and the harder games were sometimes frustrating, especially for me. I never made it to the final boss level. Neighbor didn’t have much trouble getting that far, but once there it might take hours before he beat it. Some of those games were real nail-biters.

We sat on the couch, a bowl of chips in front of us, munching between shooting aliens or driving in the Indy 500. We no longer ate them straight from the bag. Those in the bowl had been deemed Angel-Free.

Neighbor was playing a Predator or Terminator game and was trying for the umpteenth time to beat the boss battle. I cheered him on. When he lost his first life, I said, “You were so close! Next time’s the charm.” It wasn’t. When he died again and started the round over with his last life, I went to the kitchen to make a Better Luck Next Time hot dog, which is what he ate when others would reach for a tub of ice cream.

I heard him cussing just when I’d bunned and dressed the franks. I took them to the living room. He gripped the controller, raising and jerking his arms to coincide with the character on the TV screen. With a final whoop, Boss Villain was no more.

I presented the plate to him. “A regular hot dog is okay. A Better Luck Next Time hot dog is restorative. But a Victory Weenie is the Weenie of Champions!”

He grabbed one of the hot dogs and we toasted each other with them before scarfing them down.

A couple of weeks later, we went to the commissary to pick up the new Super Star Wars game. Before heading to the checkout line, Neighbor pushed the buggy to the snack aisle. I’d eaten so many potato chips I’m surprised I didn’t have one of those little green sprouty things sticking out of my bellybutton. Neighbor put three bags of potato chips in the cart. I reached for a bag of Cheetos. Not that “baked” nonsense, either—I got the good stuff.

Neighbor saw them and said he’d had a patient whose husband thought he had penile jaundice, but it was just a side effect of eating Cheetos while watching porn. “You’re on punishment,” I said, and put one of the bags of chips back on the shelf. He giggled and put it, and two more, back in the cart.

That Star Wars game was a beast. Usually Neighbor ripped right through the first few levels, but he was starting level five for the sixth time. I knew better than to even try, at least not while he was home to tease me.

While he played, I started supper. It was Mushroom Monday. At Neighbor’s request, I made chicken tetrazzini, swallowing my principles rather than swallowing fungus. After we put away the dishes, Neighbor finally beat level five.

It was hard to tell which obsessed him more by week’s end. If he wasn’t working on defeating Darth Vader, which had proven impossible so far, he was sweating over potato chips spread all over the dining room table like a jigsaw puzzle.

When his frustration got bad, I’d holler, “Enough Star Wars! Go hunt for angels!” or “No more chips! Go kill Darth Vader!”

Friday night I sat next to him eating Cheetos while he waved his arms around, pushing buttons, toggling joysticks. “I think I figured it out, Friend. I was trying to duck when I should have jumped. I’ve got him now!”

He did seem more confident. There was less cussing and more A-ha! I grabbed a handful of orange corn snacks and picked them one by one from my palm, popping them into my mouth.

I picked up the last one and paused to see how orange my fingers were.

Cheezus Christ looked back at me.

Angels were for amateurs! I held our Lord and Savior in my palm. Not just his face–the crucifixion. Cheeto Cross with Cheeto Jesus. I could even see a Cheeto beard.

“Neighbor,” I choked. My throat I had gone dry. I took a sip of café au lait, careful not to get the holy doodle wet. “Neighbor!” I said, louder.

He didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “I see him! I got this! Hush now!”

“But Neighbor!”

“Hush!”

Would we make more money selling it outright or charging people to get some Jesus dust on them to cure their leprosy?

I jerked my eyes from the Cheeto when Neighbor screamed, “HELL YEAH! I knew I should have jumped!” I looked at the TV screen. Nintendo Han Solo, who never wielded a lightsaber in any film that I’d seen, was dueling with the Dark Side’s lightsaber whiz kid… and kicking his ass.

Twenty seconds later it was over. Triumphant music played while the video game’s closing credits scrolled up the screen, Star Wars style.

He turned to me, grinning. Now that I had his attention, I said, “Look!” and handed him the Cheeto.

He stared at it for half a second and then turned back to me. “Friend, this is no ordinary Cheeto.”

“I know!”

“It’s a VICTORY CHEETO!”

He tossed it in his mouth and chewed. His teeth were orange when he grinned again. “And a Victory Cheeto is the Cheeto of Champions!”

“I daresay it’s almost spiritual,” I said.

He tossed the joystick aside. “I’m feeling lucky! Let’s go grab a bag of chips.”

Buy Me a Coffee

Share That Reminds me of a Story

Auntie Beverly was a professional model. It wasn’t unusual to see her smiling at me from a magazine ad.

She had a gig lined up for a magazine shoot. Her agent told her the sponsor needed a young boy to appear in the ads and asked Auntie Beverly if she knew of any. “I have just the boy!” she told him.

After a brief interview with an agency rep, I was hired to model for Scotts Lawn Care Products Corporation. After the rep gave me the good news, he asked Auntie Bev, “Now I just have to find another couple of kids who can pass for his siblings.”

I said, “Can’t Sister and Joe pass for my siblings?” They were hired on the spot, sight unseen. In hindsight, I suspect the whole thing was done as a favor to my godmother, who was in cahoots with Mom to ruin my life.

Part of me wants to go into great detail about the shoot, which took place on the lawns of various McMansions in Fort Lauderdale. I had three different Moms and Dads posing with me at the different yards. I will mention only one detail. The photographer told me and Dad #2 to point to an ugly section of grass. “Dad, I want you to show Junior here the damage that chiggers can do to an untreated yard.”

Ten-year-old me crossed my arms and refused to cooperate unless the photographer stopped using bad language and called these phantom pests Chegroes. Everyone got a good laugh at my expense, but I got an entomology lesson out of it, which wasn’t an entomology lesson at all, as chiggers are mites, not insects.

It was a long day, and we were all tired and borderline cranky when we finally finished. Back home, Sister and Joe and I discussed our financial situation and planned how to spend our riches.

When the riches never arrived, we were furious. Sister led our parade to the living room, where Mom and Dad were reading on the sofa. “Crooks!” Sister shouted.

“Robbers!” I echoed.

“They’re making me do this!” Joe added.

We accused Mom and Dad of stealing our millions. Dad explained that since we were minors with no Social Security numbers, our paychecks were made out to Mom. “The money is yours; we’re just taking care of it for you while you decide how to spend it.”

Sister said, “We’ve already decided.” Then, with one voice, the three of us shouted, “Disney World!”

“That sounds like fun,” Mom agreed. “But at the end of the day, all you’ll have are memories. Wouldn’t you rather spend it on something you’ll have the rest of your life?”

“We’ll buy souvenirs. We’ll keep them the rest of our lives.”

Mom grinned at us all, like she was about to share good news she’d been holding back. “I think what you really want are piano lessons!”

“You think wrong,” I said.

Sister said, “You only think we want piano lessons, but we know that we want Disney World.”

Mom looked disappointed. “Are you sure?”

The three of us nodded, looking as sure as we could.

“All right then,” Mom sighed. “It’s decided: you’ll use your modeling money to buy a piano, and your father and I will pay for the lessons.”

And that was that.

A few days later, we returned from school to find a black, upright Kimball piano in the living room. Six-year-old Joe barely glanced at it. I sat down and banged on the keys a couple of times without knowing what I was doing. Two years earlier, Sister had taken accordion lessons for three months. She showed off by playing the melodies of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Happy Birthday” until she grew bored.

Mom held up Joe’s hand and spread his tiny fingers apart. “No lessons for you until you grow into your hands.” Sister and I glared at him.

Our pastor’s daughter took piano lessons and gave Mom the name and number of the teacher they used. Julio Ruas was an older man from Portugal. He had a baby grand piano in his living room. Between his Portuguese accent and Mom’s Southern accent, they barely understood each other. Sister acted as interpreter. Mom insisted on calling him Mr. Ross, unintentionally mangling his last name.

One piano lesson was cheaper than two. Mr. Ruas agreed to give Sister and me lessons at the same time. At our lessons, he sat in the middle of the piano bench. I sat on his left and Sister on his right. I soon learned to hate that seating arrangement, but more on that later.

Mr. Ruas used the John Thompson piano lesson books. Sister and I shared the first-grade book. I was in fourth grade at Lloyd Estates Elementary School and I resented the academic demotion.

He also gave us a music notation notebook. Each page had musical staffs. At that first lesson, before we sat at the piano, we joined him on the sofa in the same order: me, Mr. Ruas, Sister. He wrote down the notes for the C major scale. We joined him at the piano, where he showed us how to find Middle C, and we played the monotonous scale ad nauseam, learning not only how to read and locate the notes, but also the proper fingering.

As far as the lesson book went, for each new lesson he played it first, then helped us play it, and finally we played it on our own until we’d mastered the lesson. We never mastered a lesson in just one week. On week two, we played the first two songs in the John Thompson piano book. Mr. Ruas drew a single diagonal line at the top of the page, which indicated we hadn’t passed. When we played it to his satisfaction, he added a second shorter diagonal line at a 45-degree angle, turning the slash into a check mark.

I lived for those check marks.

Each day after school, Mom sat us down in turn at our piano. She set a kitchen timer for thirty minutes and placed it on the piano. “Practice until the timer goes off. No argument,” Mom told us.

Our entire repertoire consisted of a scale and two songs that lasted fifteen seconds each. I think one was called “To and Fro,” and it had maybe three notes in it. That’s what we had to play over and over and over again, half an hour at a time, six days a week (we got a break on the days we had lessons with Mr. Ruas).

We hated it.

We begged Mom and Dad to stop making us take lessons. It became a nightly argument at the dinner table. Finally, Dad said, “Stick with it for a full year. If you still want to quit then, you have our blessing.”

It wasn’t the solution we wanted, but it was a compromise we could live with.

Thanks to Sister’s accordion background, she had a head start at reading music. I was stymied. Thank God the notes in those early lessons had little numbers written under them. They were intended to show which finger should hit the note—thumb, index, etcetera. For me, the numbers were the notes. Sister played C, E, G, F, D, G, C. I played 1, 3, 5, 4, 2, 5, 1. I got away with it until the sixth lesson, where only some of the notes had number notations.

Sister played “To and Fro” like she’d been doing it for years. I had to look at the note on the staff and count up the lines and spaces from Middle C, the only note I consistently recognized. Then I’d stare at the keyboard and count the keys from Middle C before finally striking the note. It’d take me about forty-five minutes to play the Minute Waltz.

Sister came up with the idea of covertly moving the timer ahead five minutes during our practice sessions. Mom didn’t notice, so the next day I moved the timer ahead ten minutes. Again I got away with it. I should have quit while I was ahead; I kept inching the timer forward until the day it went off before I finished playing the first scale. After that, Mom had custody of the timer. Sister still hasn’t forgiven me.

John Thompson must have known how bored children would be playing one darn lesson after another. Make no mistake, they were lessons, each designed to teach a different skill. He tried to fool us by calling them songs, even writing lyrics for them.

My favorite was “Uncle Benny.” Not because I enjoyed it, but because the lyrics drove Mom and Dad bonkers. Each time I played it, I sang along:

You can sing “Uncle Benny” 128 times in thirty minutes. And I did, loudly and with gusto. I was disappointed when Mr. Ruas turned the slash into a check mark, ending the daily living room concerts.

Mr. Ruas was amazing. When he heard a song on the radio that he liked, he sat down and transposed it. One week, Mr. Ruas asked to keep our music notation book for the week. The following Tuesday, he had turned “Lara’s Theme” from the movie Doctor Zhivago into a duet for Sister and me.

Since Sister sat on the right side of the bench, she got the melody. Sitting to the left of Middle C, I got the accompaniment. Sister played soaring melodies. I played BUM bum-bum, BUM bum-bum, BUM bum-bum for the whole song. This pattern repeated itself with every duet he created for us. It never occurred to me to ask to swap roles with Sister. At home, I never tried to play her part—I had too many lessons with numberless notes to get through, and when that practice timer was done, so was I.

It’s no surprise that Sister started getting check marks while I was lagging behind with my slanted lines. I was more discouraged than ever. I never went to the piano for fun, only to serve my time.

We were with Mr. Ruas for our weekly lesson. I still hadn’t caught up to Sister. When Mr. Ruas turned the page for the next John Thompson agony, I had to blink. I may have gasped. Before he could play it for Sister’s benefit, I pointed to the first note. “That’s an A.” I turned to Mr. Ruas. “Right?”

Sister said, “Duh,” but Mr. Ruas beamed at me. You’d think he was Henry Higgins and I’d finally stopped dropping my aitches.

“What’s the next one?” he asked.

“D,” I said. I no longer had to count lines and spaces on a page or keys on the keyboard. It was as if I’d been struggling to learn a foreign language I suddenly spoke it fluently.

I couldn’t wait to get home and practice. I mastered my slanted-line lessons and, without waiting until next week, started practicing Sister’s new lesson. Before long, we passed and failed lessons at the same time. Then one day, after we’d taken turns playing some Chopin etude, Mr. Ruas said, “Very good, Bobby.” I never should have let Mom introduce me that way. It would be years before she finally called me Bob.

Mr. Ruas added the extra line, turning my slash into a check. Below that, he drew another slanted line for Sister. “You’re nearly there,” he told her.

It was the first time I’d bested her at anything.

One night, Sister brought her Osmond Brothers 1972 calendar to the dinner table. While the rest of us ate, she flipped from one month to another. Each day had a big black X marked over it. She stopped at today’s date, uncapped a magic marker, added the final X, and said, “I’m quitting piano lessons. You may now return to your regularly scheduled dinner.”

Mom failed to hide her disappointment. Dad looked at me and said, “What about y—”

“I’ll stick with it a little longer,” I said.

Mom no longer needed to force me to practice, and half an hour wasn’t nearly enough.

My mother had been a stay-at-home housewife in our single-income family. She joined the workforce when I was in seventh grade. Instead of getting a ride to and from piano lessons I rode my bike.

With Sister out of the picture, Mr. Ruas devoted the entire hour to me. Now when he transcribed songs from the radio, it was a solo piece.

By now, the lessons were no longer simple scales and chords. Uncle Benny gave way to Uncle Beethoven, and the other masters. True, they were simplified versions, but it was nice to play Beethoven’s Minuet in G instead of Country Gardens—scales pretending to be songs.

One Tuesday, as our lesson finished, Mr. Ruas said, “I want you to listen to this.” The music he placed on the stand wasn’t something he’d transposed—it was real sheet music. He nodded the tempo, then began to play.

It was the first time I’d heard the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

There was no way in hell I would ever be able to duplicate such beauty.

Mr. Ruas handed me photocopies of the four pages. “I want you to try this on your own this time. Next week, we’ll work on it together.”

He’d always sat beside me—correcting my fingers, helping me find missed notes, deciding whether to back up or keep going. Not this time.

When I got home no one else was there except our little mutt Buttons.

I sat down at the piano and placed the Moonlight Sonata in front of me, took a breath, and struck the first notes.

It was the only time I ever played a piece perfectly the first time.

When the last, haunting minor chord died away, I sat there for a moment before turning to Buttons. “Did you hear that?” I whispered. “I did that!”

It was hard to believe Mom once had to force me to play the piano. Now I had to be told I’d played enough for one day.

I continued through John Thompson’s second and third books. Meanwhile, Mr. Ruas supplemented the lessons with more sheet music. When I mastered the jazzy notes of Harlem Nocturne it became one of Dad’s favorites. He asked me to play it nearly every day.

There was “Bumble Boogie,” a boogie-woogie version of “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Other pieces you may not know: “The Edelweiss Glide,” “Cumaná,” “The Baby Elephant Walk.”

One especially challenging piece was Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, better known as the Sonata Pathétique. I couldn’t pronounce it the way Mr. Ruas did, so I called it the Pathetic Sonata—and the way I played it, it was.

Nineteen pages long, with several “go back and do it again” sections. I was practicing it in the living room after supper while everyone else watched TV. I had the first few pages down, but there was one phrase I kept messing up. The more I got it wrong, the more frustrated I became, and the more frustrated I became, the more I got it wrong.

Each time I hit the wrong notes, I backed up a few bars and tried again.

And again.

Dad had been patient for nearly an hour, but I hit that wrong note one time too many.

From the other room he shouted, “Will you stop making that damned noise? Jesus! Will you ever get it right?”

I did, but it took another week. Dad was the first to congratulate me.

Mr. Ruas continued to supplement John Thompson’s lessons with other music. I also bought my own music, mostly songbooks featuring Broadway songs or Americana. I taught myself to play Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Just after Mr. Ruas signed the certificate at the end of John Thompson’s Fifth Grade Piano Book, he said, “I have something to tell you.”

Nothing good ever follows those words.

Someone had offered to buy his house, which wasn’t for sale. It was next door to this guy’s parents and he was motivated. Mr. Ruas turned him down but he kept raising the offer, until he made one Mr. Ruas couldn’t refuse. He and Mrs. Ruas were selling the house, which would have been merely inconvenient for me. It became a tragedy when he added that they were moving to Connecticut to be near their son.

At the end of my final lesson a month later, we exchanged sad smiles. “Bobby, I have had many students more skilled than you. But I have never had a student who enjoyed music more than you. You don’t play to win prizes or show off at recitals. You play because it gives you joy.” Okay so maybe I had to wipe my eyes. He opened the glass door on his music bookcase and took out a set of six leather-bound music books. “My teacher gave me these books in 1935. His teacher gave them to him in 1890. And now I’m giving them to you.”

At first I was afraid to open them. They were too special, maybe too fragile, to risk, like inherited fine china that collects dust until someone else inherits them. Mom said I was being silly and the best way to honor “Mr. Ross” would be to play the music, not idolize it.

I taught myself several of the pieces, but I missed his tutelage. I continued to buy whatever music appealed to me. I’d never mastered playing by ear, as Mr. Ruas had.

When I left home to attend Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, I went through serious withdrawal. One day I was wandering the campus of the small liberal arts college, checking out the island chapel, the student art gallery and . . . the piano practice rooms!

There were six of them. Any student could sign them out, not just music majors.

I knew only a few pieces by heart, but I played them over and over. I drove home that Friday to collect the huge green Rubbermaid tub that had all of my music. I brought the Tub O’ Music back to Eckerd. I had studies to keep up with, but I managed to work in a couple of hours in one of the piano rooms three or four days a week.

At the end of the term, I carted it back home again. I was grateful for the piano rooms at school, but it was nice to be back at the Kimball.

When I came home at the end of my sophomore year, the first thing I noticed was the big blank space where my piano was supposed to be.

“Mom!” I shouted in a panic.

“In here!”

I found her in the kitchen reading the back of a Hamburger Helper box. “Well, that can’t be right,” she muttered.

“Where’s the piano!” My panic hadn’t subsided.

“Oh, I sold it.” She said it so casually, the way you’d say you bought a new toaster. “A coworker wants her daughter to take piano lessons, but they can’t afford a new piano, so I sold her our piano.”

I was livid. “You sold her my piano! I paid for it!”

She glanced up from the box. “You paid for one third of it,” she reminded me. “There’s no use arguing about it, what’s done is done.”

And that was that.

A better person than I am would have forgiven her by now.

I continued to avail myself of the pianos at Eckerd. I don’t know if the loss drove me mad or what, but at the end of the semester I dropped out to marry my future ex-wife. The Tub O’ Music collected dust in a hall closet.

It changed closets when I moved after Gwen and I divorced. And again when I went to Camp Lejeune, and later Okinawa. When I was discharged, the box and I ended up in Birmingham, Alabama.

I had some folks over for an impromptu after-work gathering. The Rubbermaid tub was dragged out of the bedroom to serve as an end table for folks to place their drinks and plates.

A friend said, “Bob, why do you keep all this music if you have nothing to play it on?”

I shrugged. “Who knows? I still may buy a piano someday.” Sure I will. And someday I may flap my arms and fly to the moon to pick wild stars.

A couple of years later I was at church. I can’t remember what for—a potluck or an adult-ed something or other. When the evening was wrapping up, one of the other men said to the priest, “Rebecca, we bought an electric piano for Matt to take lessons, but he’s still too young. It’s not getting any use yet. Could the church use it in one of the classrooms until he’s old enough to start lessons?”

“Church, smurch,” I butted in. “Instead of storing it here, why not keep it at my apartment?” I didn’t try to hide my eagerness.

“Okay,” he relented. “But remember, it’s only for a few months.”

He dropped off the piano the next day. For the first time in twelve years, I opened the Tub O’ Music.

What should I play first? I knew better than to try the Pathetic Sonata or Bumble Boogie. I placed Harlem Nocturne on the music stand, hoping I hadn’t forgotten how to read music.

My eyes recognized the notes, but my fingers had forgotten how to find them. I constantly darted my eyes from music to keyboard. The slinky, sexy notes I remembered were disjointed and clumsy.

I put Harlem Nocturne aside and reached for “The Edelweiss Glide,” which had been my show-off piece. It wasn’t that hard, but it had lots of flourishes and glissandos. I missed more notes than I landed.

Moonlight Sonata had been the only piece I’d mastered the first time I tried it. I reached for the yellowed music. I was still on the first page when a voice from the open window shouted, “Will you stop making that damned noise!”

Another voice—this one in my head—said, “Jesus. Will you ever get it right?”

I’d been overly ambitious starting with sheet music. I ignored John Thompson’s Fifth- and Fourth-grade books. I opened the Third Grade book at random and tried again. More shouts from my neighbor.

I tossed the Third Grade book aside. I wasn’t confident in my ability to play anything from the Second Grade book. I skipped it and went straight to the First Grade book, working my way backward until I found something I could play.

When Uncle Benny

Gives me a penny . . .

I made sure the windows were closed when I sat at the piano, struggling with songs I once played flawlessly. All too soon my friend told me Matt’s fingers were big enough to start lessons. I put the music I could no longer play back in the Tub O’Disappointment.

I don’t know why I continued to give that Rubbermaid bin space in the closet.

A few years later, we had a new priest at church. People had apparently been donating pianos left and right behind my back. There were two in the parish hall and two in classrooms. That’s about three pianos too many. I summoned my courage and asked Fr. Neil if I could make a donation to the church in exchange for one of the spare pianos.

“I have to check with the vestry first, but I don’t anticipate any problems.”

The vestry refused to sell me the piano.

Instead, they outright gifted it to me.

It was out of tune, and two of the notes didn’t work at all. It was scuffed and scratched. As far as I was concerned, it was the Stradivarius of upright pianos.

I set a kitchen timer for thirty minutes and sat down to relearn the piano.

The Pathetic Sonata is as pathetic as ever when I play it. I make more than my share of mistakes with Harlem Nocturne, but by golly, you can tell what it is when I play it.

And when the last minor chord of the Moonlight Sonata fades away, I know how it feels to fly to the moon and pick wild stars.

I considered leaving out this epilog, but it’s no secret that a few years ago my house burned down. I lost the piano, the music books Mr. Ruas had given me, the lesson books–everything. There was no way to replace the music, at least not the set of books. I couldn’t see the point of replacing the piano. If the universe keeps telling you you’re drunk, lie down.

I doubt I could play very much if I tried today, but don’t feel bad for me. Seriously.

Nothing can destroy the joy I felt when I picked wild stars.

Okay, so you know why I was thrilled to be attending one of his week-long storytelling workshops in Utah, following the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. The festival was founded by Karen Ashton, whose husband Alan created WordPerfect. Per the email I received from Merle, Donald’s wife, the participants would be staying at Karen’s “summer cottage.”

I pictured some rustic Lincoln Log bunkhouse next to Camp Serial Killer in the woods. If that four-story, twelve-bedroom mansion with a restaurant kitchen, elevator to the Peter Pan nursery, and movie theater is their summer cottage, I guess Downton Abbey is their main home.

Our lunches and dinners were catered by festival volunteers. Not surprisingly, the majority of them—well, all of them—were members of the LDS church. I live in Alabama, and my contact with Mormons has been limited to ogling the cute missionaries I sometimes see in Walmart or riding bicycles. We ate well that week.

I wasted no time making an ass of myself. The woman who checked me in was named Anne. She noticed my disappointment when she introduced herself and asked if anything was wrong.

“No. I was just hoping your name would be Ethel.”

She gave me a quizzical look and apologized on behalf of her mother for naming her Anne.

I’m an introvert. I’ve told stories to audiences of 1,200 or more. I’m in my element talking to crowds. Put me one on one and I shut down. It was an effort for me to make small talk with this group of strangers, so I let them carry the conversation that first day.

One of the volunteers came in to prepare supper. I greeted her and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but are you LDS?”

She smiled warmly. “I am.”

“Your name isn’t Ethel, is it?”

She laughed. “No, it’s Sarah.” I tried to hide my disappointment. Sarah addressed the group at large. “Any food allergies or preferences I should be aware of? I warn you, I have a heavy hand when it comes to garlic.”

Before anyone could answer, one of the workshop participants, an older Black man, said, “Garlic saved my life in Vietnam.”

All eyes turned to him.

He went on. “I was a Marine and got separated from my platoon. I was alone in the jungle making my way back to base camp when I noticed Charlie was on my tail. I knew I had to ambush him before he ambushed me. Lucky for me I had a bulb of garlic in my pocket.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Everyone knows Charlie can’t resist garlic. I placed it at the base of a banyan tree and crouched in the bushes fifty yards away. Sure enough, the Viet Cong soldier stopped, sniffed the air, and detoured to the banyan tree in the clearing. Once he leaned over to pick up the garlic—BANG!—I took him out.”

There were gasps of wonder and awe along with comments of “How did you know that about garlic?” and “I’m glad you’re okay!”

He wasn’t done.

“I was about to collect the garlic and Charlie’s ear for a souvenir—” more gasps. If I hadn’t been surrounded by Mormons I’d have said WTF—“when I heard more V.C. coming. They’d picked up the scent of the garlic. When the next gook—” the gasps this time were different—“went to the tree I shot him, too. Then I heard more rustling. Before long there was a pile of bodies by the banyan tree. That’s how I got my Bronze Star.”

Some people were still amazed at his heroism and excused his slur by remembering the context of the war.

I said, “Didn’t the tenth soldier hesitate when he saw nine bullet-riddled bodies?”

He shook his head and said simply, “Garlic.”

One of the women said, “That must put them in a helluva dilemma if they’re ever bitten by a vampire. That’s like me craving strychnine.”

“Or Axe Body Spray,” I added.

Donald and his wife Merle joined us a few minutes before Sarah set platters of food on the table. They were staying at a separate, smaller lodge next door to the cabin. It was the first time I’d seen him without a bow tie.

Dinner was simple but tasty. The Frog Eye Salad sounds a lot worse than it is.

After dinner we gathered in the massive living room. Donald encouraged us to go around the makeshift circle and introduce ourselves.

The Black man said, “I’ll go first. My name is Gordon Montana. I live an hour away. I was the nation’s first Black DJ for a country-music radio station.”

There were appreciative murmurs from the rest of us.

We continued around the circle.

“I’m Barbara Jean, but everyone calls me BJ. I’m from Pennsylvania.” BJ was the only out-of-state Mormon in the workshop.

“I’m Bob Trianski,” another man said.

I interrupted him. “That won’t work. I’m Bob too, and my contract states that I’ll be the only Bob in the room. I’ll call you Billy.”

“You can, but I’ll only answer to ‘Bob.’”

“Fair enough, Billy,” I said.

There were Deb and Karla, two locals who had been involved in storytelling for years. Karla and Donald were old friends. My friend Marie came with me from Birmingham, but she missed our morning flight and didn’t arrive until dinnertime. Diane was a seventy-ish woman. She was the no-nonsense kind of dame that makes you want to call women “dames.”

The Dean of American Storytelling spoke for a couple hours while his acolytes drank in every word. He then gave us a couple of exercises which I still use regularly. Then he asked if anyone had a story they wanted to workshop.

Without raising his hand or waiting to be called on, Gordon jumped in with a tale of his childhood.

He grew up in Detroit. Diana Ross—who, by the way, is two years younger than Gordon—was his babysitter.

“My daddy was strict,” he said. “He had a lot of rules, too many to follow.”

Every day Gordon disobeyed one or another of them to show his independence.

He was seven years old at the time of the story. Which would make Diana Ross five when she babysat him.

“Every day when Daddy came home from the stockyards I bragged about the rules I’d broken that day. My confessions were followed by the same punishment. He took me up to the attic and chained my legs to the rafters. While I hung upside down he hit me in the side of the head with a cast-iron skillet.”

Donald had asked us not to interrupt until the storyteller had finished, but I couldn’t help myself.

“You were hit like a piñata?” I said. “Every day? In the head? With a cast-iron skillet?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“Why aren’t you dead?”

“I’m hard-headed.”

Donald reminded me to save questions until the end of Gordon’s story, which was a doozy.

After four years of daily skull-cracking he’d had enough. He secretly rented a storage unit and filled it with furniture.

“How did you afford furniture and a storage unit when you were eleven years old?” I asked.

“I had a part-time job at the candy store.”

Anyway, once he had enough furniture he rented his own apartment and got away from Daddy.

Donald asked the group, “What else do you want to know?”

My hand shot up.

“How does a permanently brain-damaged child get a job? What kind of old-timey candy store pays eleven-year-olds enough to rent and furnish an apartment? Can you get me Diana Ross’s autograph?”

He had answers for everything, but you could say the same thing about a Magic 8 Ball. At least that tells the truth once in a while.

When we were done with Gordon, Karla told a touching story about her son and how his leaving the LDS church affected the family dynamic. She’d always dreamed of him being married in the Salt Lake Temple.

When she finished Donald once again asked the group, “What else do you want to know?”

During the week that was the first thing he asked after every story—not “What did you like?” or “What didn’t you like?” as I expected.

The answer to that question told us what needed to be added or clarified, what could be left out.

I liked this so much that years later when I took a graduate creative nonfiction class, whenever it was time to critique whoever was being workshopped that week my comments always began with, “Here’s what I want to know:”

We took a break. Then I told a story in progress about being forced to take piano lessons as a boy. As part of the story I mentioned that Eckerd College had piano rooms you could sign out. It was just a little throwaway line to segue to another part of the story.

When I finished, Donald asked the group, “What else do you want to know?”

BJ asked, “When did you attend college?”

“1981 through 1983.”

She looked excited. “Did you know Professor Nancy Carter?”

“Do I know Nancy Carter? I took a class from her every term! When the semester ended and we were thrown out of the dorm I couldn’t drive home until I hocked my TV for gas money. Nancy and Howard let me stay in their spare room. How do you know Nancy?”

“She’s my sister.”

If I hadn’t said Eckerd College we’d have never known how the universe loves to play with coincidence.

We adjourned for the night.

Donald and Merle watched Jeopardy! because their neighbor was one of the contestants. After the show ended Donald invited us to the kitchen where he made bread dough to rest overnight in the fridge.

The next morning he baked bread for breakfast.

Breakfast was the only meal that wasn’t catered, and somehow I got elected chief cook and bottle washer.

Before that day’s workshop one of the volunteers gave us a tour of the building. After confirming that she was LDS I said, “I don’t suppose your name is Ethel?”

She laughed. “It can be if you want it to.”

“At last!” I yelled. “Ethel Mormon!”

Everyone stared at me.

No matter. I’d been waiting days to say that.

The tour was much more than a simple walk-through. The history of the summer cottage was a story in itself. I took tons of photos, but the Ashton family asked us all to remember that this is their home, and hoped we wouldn’t post any photos online. Speaking of photos, a poster-sized Ashton Family Photo hung in the entry way. Karen and Alan were in the back row. In front were their children and kids-in-laws. Then the grandkids. Then the great-grandkids.

Over seventy people in the photo—proving that Mr. and Mrs. Osmond were amateurs.

After the tour we gathered in the living room with coffee and pastries (those volunteers spoiled us). Donald lectured for an hour or so and then turned to Deb and asked her if she had a story she wanted to tell.

“I’ve been trying to decide which one to tell.”

Gordon said, “Oh, if you don’t know then I’ll go ahead and tell one.” Before anyone could object, he was off.

Over the next few days I learned a lot about Gordon:

When he was a cowboy (the first black cowboy in Utah, of course) the other ranchers were angry with him because his mustangs always won more prizes in the mustang contest than theirs did. It got so bad three ranchers showed up at the house one night with rifles and hand grenades. That’s why he had to get out of the Mustang businesss.

He the manager of the largest restaurant in Detroit.

When he was fifteen he stole a candy bar from the candy store (he didn’t say if it was the same one that financed his move). He flouted the store owner, waving his stolen Hershey bar at him as he sauntered out of the store. He was halfway down the street when Officer Skippy zoomed up on his motorcycle. Skippy chastized him, told him how much potential he had, how proud he’d always been of the lad. “That’s when I decided to be a cop when I grew up.”

I thought he was a country western DJ-US Marine-Cowboy–Restaurant manager when he grew up. “I cried a little bit and told Officer Skippy I work off the candy bar for Mr. Storeman.” Yes. Mr. Storeman. “I asked Officer Skippy if he was going to take me to jail. He said, ‘No, that wouldn’t do any good. I’ll have to punish you myself.’ Then he scooped me up and put me on the back of his motorcycle and drove out to a construction site and beat me with his baton until his shift was over. I never stole another candy bar again.”

He was the first Black Game Warden in Tallahassee, Florida where he was assigned to the poaching division. His fellow game wardens were also members of the “Klu Klux Klan” and were determined to shoot Gordon dead when they were in the Everglades–which are nowhere near Tallahassee, by the way, and pretend a poacher had done it. Gordon was too smart to partner up with one of those rednecks, insisting he go on patrol by himself. When he caught more poachers than the rest of them put together, they were more determined than ever to kill him.

They sent him to arrest the Dawson Boys, the most notorious poachers in the state. No one had ever been able to bring the Dawsons in. Every warden who tried had disappeared. “I drove a school busto their hideout. Between Ol’ Bill Dawson and his sons and nephews, there were twenty of them. I got out of the bus twenty rifles cocked. I never drew my weapon. ‘My name is Gordon Montana and you’re all under arrest!’ Ol’ Bill Dawson said, ‘I like you, Gordon. You got moxie. Lower yer weapons, boys, we’re all under arrest!’ then they went into the bus single file.’” When his racist co-wardens saw the bus full of Dawsons pull up they’d had enough. For the second time that day he heard a bunch of rifles being cocked, this time by his comrades. Ol’ Bill Dawson declared that the scoundrels wouldn’t get away with it. Dawson clan opened fire on the Game Warden Klan. When the shoot out finally ended Gordon was the first black man left alive–I mean the only man left alive.

Mitt Romney saw Gordon at a campaign stop when he was running against Obama. He insisted Gordon join him for dinner. The campaign manager reminded him that he was already late for an interview with CNN. “Cancel it!” Romney said. “I’m having dinner with my friend Gordon.” Over the meal Romney confessed that he was worried about losing the election. He appealed to Gordon for help. “I gave him a list of thirty-one things he had to do, but he ignored all of them. On Election night he called me right before he called Obama and told me if he’d only listened to me, he’d have won.”

This time when Donald asked us what else we wanted to know I said, “Here’s what I want to know: are you high?”

By the fourth day there were no more lessons; we just workshopped stories.

Each morning Donald would say, “Who’s got a story?”

Then we’d wait for Gordon to finish before anyone else could go.

By the end of the week he’d told seven—or fifty—stories.

Deb had told one.

The rest of us had told two or three.

I said, “Deb, I have a story to workshop but I’ve gone twice already and you’ve only told one story.” I paused to glare at Gordon before going on. “I wonder if you have another story you’d like to share.”

She told a beautiful story about one of her students overcoming shame and feelings of inadequacy. When she finished several of us reached for a tissue.

Before supper we all drove into town to hear Donald tell a story at the local library. It was a story I’d heard before but this time it was much shorter. If it was your first time hearing it you’d never know you were only getting a condensed version. On the way back to the cottage asked him about it. “Sometimes I haves forty minutes to tell a story and sometimes I have fifteen minutes to tell a story. Instead of having prepared stories of certain lengths, sometimes I’ll edit as I tell to make the story longer or shorter to fit the time constraints.”

“What do you do when your time is up but you haven’t finished the story?”

“One fella I know says, ‘That’s the news from Lake Woebegone’and he sits down.

That night Gordon disappeared after supper.

“Maybe he’s smoking a cigarette,” Karla said. “I’ll go look.” She stepped out onto the stoop and peered out into the twilight at Gordon’s pickup twenty or so yards away. “He’s not there,” she said.

“Sure he is.” I said.

She looked again. “No, really he’s not.”

Debra: “Did he go for a walk and get lost?”

Other Bob: “Are there mountain lions out there?”

Marie: “I wonder if he’s hurt.”

Me: “He’s in his truck.”

Karla insisted she hadn’t seen him. I said, “You only looked from the porch. Go up to the truck and look in the window. He’s see him hiding in the floorboards.”

“Why on earth would he do that?”

“So we’ll all worry about him and forget that I called him out for being a story hog. See, when you’re convinced he’s bear food you’re supposed to blame me and then fawn all over him when he miraculously comes back.”

Karla said, “I’m not going there in the dark. Why don’t you go look, Bob?”

“When I find him he’ll have to admit defeat and come back inside. I’d rather he claim victory and stay out all night.”

Twenty minutes later the door opened and in he walked.

“GORDON!” everyone cried.

“I don’t know why you were worried,” he said. “I was just in my truck smoking.”

I coughed a quiet “told you so” into my elbow.

Someone made the mistake of asking him why he’d been in his truck for over an hour.

“I’m just a selfish jerk! I don’t deserve any happiness. I’m ready to get in truck and drive off a cliff. I’m too worthless to be part of this workshop!”

“At least you recognize the problem,” I said, “They say that’s the first step in overcoming it.”

On the last day Donald asked what we were taking away from the workshop.

Of course Gordon went first.

“I’m taking with me the love of my fellow participants.”

A bullshitter to the end.

It’s no accident my Substack is called That Reminds Me of a Story. That’s how I get “my ideas,” something I’m often asked. Dinner with friends, visiting Mom, talking to coworkers, leading yoot groop—someone says or does something and I lift an index finger: “That reminds me of a story.” Then I tell it. If it lands, I’ll work it up and either tell it on stage or write it down.

Once, after I told the yoots a story they’d reminded me of, one of them asked, “Is that really true?”

“I would never deceive you,” I said—and I meant it.

Everything I’ve written about my best friend Olivier is true, except his name isn’t Olivier. I changed it to protect his privacy. I’ve written about my ex-wife “Gwen.” I changed her name so she doesn’t sue me for libel. The problem is, I’m terrible at making up names. Sometimes I’ll scour the closing credits of a TV show until something usable jumps out at me. If I can avoid naming a character at all, I do.

Back when I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, I wrote short mysteries for fun. My detective was an older schoolteacher I called Mrs. Delvecchio. Her son—a cop—would come home for supper and complain about a case that had him stumped. Over dessert, “Mama” would solve it. She never needed a first name.

The ICU corpsmen and nurses loved those stories, especially because I cheated: when I needed names for suspects or witnesses, I used my coworkers’ names. They loved seeing “themselves” end up the murderer. One nurse, Lillian Rivera, begged me for it. “C’mon, Mr. Byrd—make me the killer again!”

If you’re wondering, Lillian Rivera is her real name. I figure she won’t mind seeing it in print again even if she doesn’t kill anyone.

This was my first duty station after Corps School. Lillian mentored me—corrected me, really—until I became useful. My first week in the unit, a bedside monitor shrieked. I saw the flat line and panicked.

“Should I get the crash cart?”

Lillian pointed to the patient, sitting up in bed, grinning. He’d pulled off the leads to go to the bathroom.

“Treat the patient, not the machine, Mr. Byrd.”

A few weeks later we admitted a Marine who’d graduated basic around the same time I did. He’d been in a car accident. He was my first chest-tube patient after a collapsed lung—a good training case. Lillian supervised while I measured drainage and inspected the site and documented everything. I’d barely started when he began to cry.

“Did I hurt you?” I asked.

He shook his head and kept crying while I kept charting. I looked to Lillian for my attaboy and saw disappointment instead. She sent me to the nurses’ desk and stayed alone with him in the room.

When she came out she said, “Mr. Byrd, if you don’t remember anything else you learn here, remember this: patient care is more than shots, blood draws, and chest-tube care. Treat the patient, not the diagnosis. He got a Dear John letter before the accident. I asked him if the accident was really an accident—or if he was trying to hurt himself. Then I sat with him while he cried.”

“He’s eighteen,” I said. “He’ll have a dozen other loves of his life.”

“He’s distraught, Mr. Byrd. It doesn’t matter whether he’ll forget her next week or never get over it. Treat the patient, not the disease.”

That lesson followed me. A year later, I was lead corpsman in ICU. I worked with every nurse, but I loved being paired with Lillian. When she was on, patients were in good hands.

We were together the day Lucia Fioriti was admitted.

Long before I arrived at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, there’d been a notorious mix-up on the med-surg floor: two patients with the same rank and last name—Lt. Susan Hagood and Lt. Michael Haygood—ended up nearly harmed by a procedure meant for the other. After that, hospital policy required confirming a patient’s first and last name on first contact and before meds or labs, even if you’d just done it ten minutes ago.

So before I even looked at Mrs. Fioriti’s chart, I introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Bob. I’ll be taking care of you. You’re Lucia Fioriti?”

“lu-CHEE-ah,” she corrected.

Thirty years later, when Ryan Seacrest tells a Wheel of Fortune contestant she’s going to St. Looshya, I still yell at the TV: “loo CHEE ah!” In truth, it didn’t matter. In my head she was always Mrs. Fioriti.

She was a widow. Mister Fioriti had died years earlier, after retiring from the Marines. She still had dependent benefits. Years before, she’d received a blood transfusion after a hysterectomy. The blood was contaminated with Hepatitis B. It caused no symptoms—just quiet damage over time. Then she contracted Hepatitis A from contaminated well water, and the added insult pushed her liver past recovery. Hep A tipped her into acute failure; Hep B took full advantage.

Hepatitis B is serious and easily spread through contaminated body fluids. To protect staff and visitors, Mrs. Fioriti was placed on Contact Isolation. Before entering her room we donned disposable gowns, gloves, and face shields. So did the doctors. So did her four sons.

The room looked like a scene from a chemical-warfare thriller—paper “hazmat” instead of rubber and glass, but the vibe was the same. Some visitors were genuinely afraid their thin gowns weren’t enough, as if I might slip on a banana peel and dump anthrax on them. I wasn’t worried for myself. Corpsmen were vaccinated, and my titers said I was covered.

The ICU itself is hard to describe. Picture a horseshoe with the nurses’ desk at the center and patient rooms along the curve. One room was a true airborne isolation room with a pressurized anteroom—an airlock. Mrs. Fioriti’s Contact Isolation room had its own little vestibule too, separated from the unit by a curtain, with a bright orange biohazard bin that practically said abandon hope.

Other patients eyed that curtain with trepidation.

Mrs. Fioriti, meanwhile, was cheerful and chatty. She always apologized for “not having my face on.” No makeup allowed. Her pale tangerine hair was thinning, but she still had fifty times as much as I did.

Jimmy, her oldest, visited every shift—sometimes alone, sometimes with brothers. They gowned and gloved and masked without complaint. They were good sons.

I was off the next day. When I came back, Lillian and I were assigned to Mrs. Fioriti again. We gowned up and went in for the standard head-to-toe assessment—one of those repetitive rituals patients love to hate.

“I just did this with the other corpsman,” they’d protest. “Why again?”

Because the purpose isn’t a checklist. It’s change. Trends. Patterns. The moment something turns.

Mrs. Fioriti never complained. Jimmy was there. “Hi, Bob. Hi, Lillian,” he said. “Enjoy your day off?”

“I did.” I turned to my patient, and even though it felt silly now, I followed policy. “Are you still Lucia Fioriti?”

She smiled when I pronounced it correctly.

I won’t bore you with everything we checked, but one part matters. I waited until Lillian checked the urine bag and then I dimmed the lights. I took my penlight and shined it in Mrs. Fioriti’s eyes.

“Lillian—can I borrow you a minute?”

“Is something wrong?” Jimmy asked, his voice tightening.

When Lillian saw the whites of Mrs. Fioriti’s eyes, we exchanged a look.

Mrs. Fioriti was jaundiced.

We were disappointed more than surprised. The yellow deepened over the next couple of days—Crayola-yellow sclera, skin catching up. With her tangerine hair, she began to look like a decaying clown. We still chatted, but our conversations grew shorter.

One day I came in to draw blood. No needle—just the IV port. As I worked, she grabbed my gown-covered forearm, then released it quickly, startled by her own touch.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want to infect you.” I assured her that it was fine. After a pause she said, “Will you tell me the truth?” Her eyes were wide, frightened.

“Of course.”

“Do I have cancer?” she whispered, as if the word itself could summon it.

She told me about an aunt who’d had cancer when she was younger—how the family kept it from her, how only the doctors knew. I’d heard that kind of story from older patients before. In some families, cancer had been treated like shame.

“No,” I said. “I promise. You’re very sick, but it isn’t cancer.”

She fought her emotions and lost. I handed her a tissue.

“No one will touch me,” she said through tears. “I feel so dirty.”

Treat the patient, not the disease. Screw it.

I’d been vaccinated. My titers were good. I took off my gloves and held her hand.

She gripped mine and cried harder. I was surprised by her strength—how much of her was still there, still fighting, even as her body failed around her.

Once per shift we were supposed to change bed linens. I could do it alone, but it’s easier with two. Lillian knocked and entered, already gowned and gloved, carrying sheets and pillowcases.

“Mr. Byrd!” she said when she saw me holding Mrs. Fioriti’s bare hand. “What are you doing?”

“What you taught me,” I said.

She froze for half a second until it registered. She still looked scandalized. Then she nodded once. Permission granted.

While we changed the sheets, Mrs. Fioriti asked, “Did I get you in trouble?”

I laughed—real, spontaneous. “Mrs. F, I stay in trouble. You were just lucky enough to see it happen.”

When we finished, we dumped the linen in the haz-waste bin and washed up. I scrubbed longer than usual. Lillian handed me a paper towel.

“I don’t know if this is new,” I said, “or if I’ve just never noticed it with gloves on, but her sheets are damp.”

“I hope it’s sweat,” Lillian said quietly.

Her urine output had been robust from all the IV fluids. Lately it had been darkening. Orange-brown today.

The next day, Mrs. Fioriti was listless. The sheets were damp again—more than yesterday. I had my own method of keeping the bottom sheet tight: no hospital corners, just a big knot under the mattress at the head and foot. Mrs. Fioriti’s bed had an egg-crate foam pad under the sheet, great for preventing bedsores and terrible for tying anything.

When Lillian and I changed the bed that day, I noticed the familiar knot. Either another corpsman had copied my trick—or no one had changed those sheets since I’d done it.

I tried not to show my frustration in front of Mrs. Fioriti and her sons. After we finished, I wrote the date, time, and my initials directly on the sheet.

I’ve always worked to make sick people well, but in the ICU you learn early that “well” is not always on offer. Years later, in a diocesan committee meeting full of godawful icebreakers, the man beside me introduced himself: “I’m Steve, and I’ve been drunk more times than all the rest of you combined.” When it was my turn I said, “I’m Bob, and I’ve seen more people die than all the rest of you combined.” Take that, Mister Recovering Alcoholic.

I was off for two days. I was sure Mrs. Fioriti would be gone when I came back.

She wasn’t.

Her urine output was much lower now—more brown than orange. When I changed the sheets, my initials from Monday were still there, faded but readable at the foot of the bed.

I was livid.

I rushed through my notes and fired off an email blast to the entire ICU. I accused the unknown caretakers—using ten times more words than necessary—of negligence bordering on malpractice. Leaving her on damp sheets for two days? She must have been miserable and either too polite or too out of it to complain.

That was horrible judgment. I didn’t understand then what I understand now: emails live forever. God forbid her sons had filed a malpractice suit against the Navy, my message would have been Exhibit A.

An hour after I hit send, Commander Tomlin called me into his office.

For more than a year I’d impressed my peers and superiors with my skills. I wasn’t used to being chastised. But Commander Tomlin reamed me out, and he was right to do it. There’s a chain of command in the military, and I’d skipped it to play sheriff.

If anyone wonders: yes, you can be angry and humbled at the same time.

After threatening me with a lifetime of cleaning bedpans on night shift, he sent his own email to the unit. Professional. Controlled. Still sharp: no skimping on routine chores, because in ICU nothing is routine.

Two days later Mrs. Fioriti looked like she’d gained twenty-five pounds. The day after that was worse. She looked like the girl in Willy Wonka who turns into a giant blueberry—except Mrs. Fioriti was a giant lemon. Her skin was stretched so tight I’m surprised it didn’t split.

Her kidneys were shutting down. She was still on IV fluids, but her body could no longer eliminate them, so the fluid began to weep through her pores. That was what Lillian had feared when she said she hoped the damp sheets were sweat.

There was nothing we could do to keep her from dying. But dammit, she wasn’t going to die on soggy sheets.

At the end of my shift I changed her linens again. I told the oncoming crew that if Mrs. Fioriti died overnight, to call me and I would come in and do Care of the Deceased.

I won’t list everything that entails. It’s enough to say there are things you do before the family comes in, and before the body goes to the morgue. I’d supervised plenty of new corpsmen through it. I understood the coping benefits of gallows humor, too—kids making jokes because they don’t know what else to do with a dead body. I was determined there would be none of that at Mrs. Fioriti’s expense.

No one called.

I was stunned when I came in for my 3 p.m. shift and she was still there. If anything, she was more bloated. She was practically comatose. All four sons stood vigil.

At this stage my assessment wasn’t interactive. I checked her vitals and spoke quietly with the boys, careful not to fill the room with chatter while they waited for her to die.

The monitor alarms went off constantly—nothing to do with loose leads. After consulting with Lillian, I turned the machine off. The beeps and dings stopped, and the room finally went quiet.

I said to Jimmy, “I’ll be right outside if you need anything. I’ll try not to intrude any more than I have to.”

Five hours later Jimmy stepped out. His paper gown was wrinkled, and the shoulder seam had torn.

“Bob?” he said. “I think she’s gone.”

That wasn’t a determination Lillian or I could make. You aren’t legally dead until a doctor says so. I paged Dr. Shoenfeld and stood with the Fioriti boys.

“He’ll be here soon to make it official,” I said. My voice cracked. I’d long since given up trying to stay detached the way they taught us in Corps School. I cleared my throat. “I’m so sorry.”

Jimmy hugged me. “I know you are, man.”

When he started sobbing into my shoulder, his brothers joined us. Jimmy transferred the hug from me to them.

When a patient dies during a code blue, family isn’t allowed in until we’ve finished care of the deceased. Post-code rooms can be overwhelming—wrappers on the floor, tubes everywhere, sometimes the patient is naked. But there was no need for that with Mrs. Fioriti. She had a Do Not Resuscitate order. It made no sense to toss her sons out for an hour only to invite them back in.

I left them alone with their mother.

After an hour, Lillian gently told them we had to move her to the morgue to prepare her for the funeral home.

After they left, Lillian asked if I needed help. I told her I had it under control. I know how cheesy it sounds, but that last hour with Mrs. Fioriti felt sacred. I tended to her and escorted her to the morgue in the basement.

This essay doesn’t do her justice. She was my patient for nineteen days—longer than anyone before or since. When people ask who my most memorable patient was, I never have to think about it.

Mrs. Fioriti taught me what Lillian had been trying to drill into my thick skull from day one: treat the patient, not the disease. She taught me to advocate, even when it got me in trouble. She left a permanent dent in my heart.

And somewhere along the way, the nameless schoolteacher in my mystery stories finally found her full name.

Lucia Delvecchio.

I have a love–hate relationship with my time in the Navy. I loved the work I did in ICU and the ER, and I cherish the people I met and worked with during my enlistment. I hated the way my service ended. In hindsight, though, all the good that came from my time as a sailor outweighs the bad.

I loved caring for critical patients. I still regret not becoming a nurse when I left the Navy—especially when I think about some of my more memorable patients, like Gunny Fairchild.

After twenty-four years as a Marine, Gunny retired to Jacksonville, North Carolina, home of Camp Lejeune.

Our patients generally fell into three categories: active duty service members, dependent spouses and children, and retired veterans. Most of the vets landed in ICU after heart attacks or complications from chronic illness. Active-duty patients usually came in with injuries.

I was working second shift—3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.—when Gunny was admitted. I preferred being paired with one of the civilian nurses, all of whom I had good rapport with. That night I was paired with Lieutenant San Giovanni. He was a big guy; I often wondered how he continued to meet the Navy’s weight requirements, something I struggled with even back then.

Hospital corpsmen working elsewhere in the facility wore Navy uniforms and had to look inspection-ready at all times: no wrinkles, sharp creases, perfect appearance. In ICU we wore scrubs. I kept my uniform in the locker room and put it on only long enough to report for daily inspection. Once that was over, I took it off and hung it back up. Five minutes a day. Never needed ironing with that kind of use.

Even in scrubs, as an enlisted sailor, I still caught the occasional nitpick: Byrd, your name tag is crooked. Byrd, are you overdue for a haircut? That was one reason I resented Lieutenant San Giovanni. Another was that he once rewrote my nursing notes because he didn’t like how I described a seizure a patient had while in the unit. He thought it made us “look bad,” so he tore my notes out of the chart and replaced them with his own.

I was the caregiver of record, and I was terrified it would come back on me if the patient declined because the seizure hadn’t been accurately documented.

I was so upset I went to another ward and used their phone to call my favorite Corps School instructor, Lieutenant Davidson.

“What do I do?” I asked.

She told me I was in a bad spot. San Giovanni outranked me and had more time in rate. If it came down to his word against mine, I’d lose—unless I had documentation. At her suggestion, I printed several ECG strips from the bedside monitor and kept my own notes, separate from the official chart San Giovanni had to sign.

The main reason I resented him, though, was simpler: I got flack for wearing an O.R. gown like a housecoat, and this guy went commando.

In scrubs.

Not only was his junk perpetually on display, he was forever scratching and adjusting himself, with no regard for the patients or staff forced to witness it.

I won’t spend much time bragging—who wants to read that?—but when it came to patient care, I knew my shit. The more complicated patients were usually assigned to me. Admissions were normally distributed evenly, so when I was told I’d be getting Gunny instead of HN Mallory, who was next in line, I knew this wasn’t going to be a routine heart attack.

All Lieutenant San Giovanni told me was that Gunny hadn’t urinated in thirty-six hours and his bladder was dangerously distended.

He skimmed the admission orders. “Byrd, before you do your assessment, Gunny needs a Foley.”

A Foley catheter stays in the bladder to continuously drain urine, as opposed to an in-and-out catheter, which empties the bladder and is removed. By then, I was proficient with both.

“Oh, and there’s an order to wash his feet,” he added.

“I can’t do it with my hair like Mary Magdalene, but I’ll get it done.”

“Hey. A little decorum, Byrd. Some of us are Catholic.”

And some of us wear underwear, I thought.

I grabbed a sterile catheter kit and gloves and went to bed six. I introduced myself to Gunny. He was grossly underweight. If he hadn’t been carrying around all that urine, the HVAC vents might have blown him out of bed.

Despite clearly being miserable, he was unnaturally cheerful. Most patients recoil when told I’m about to insert a rubber tube into their penis. Gunny just smiled.

“Do what you gotta do, Doc.”

(All Marines called Navy corpsmen “Doc.” It was practically an honorary title, and one I loved.)

I began explaining the procedure, but he waved me off. “This ain’t my first rodeo, Doc. Have at it.”

I lifted his gown.

I stared at his crotch for a full five seconds before looking up. Gunny was grinning.

“Excuse me one second,” I said. “Wrong glove size. I’ll be right back.”

At the nurses’ station, Lieutenant San Giovanni raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong, Byrd? You’ve only been in there a few seconds.” He adjusted himself under the desk.

“Yes,” I said. “This man has no penis.”

He smirked. “Byrd, dig yourself. He can’t help it if he’s not as endowed as the rest of us.” Tug.

“Lieutenant, I didn’t say he has a tiny dancer. I said he has no dancer.”

He sighed and stood. “Show me.”

Back at bed six, he introduced himself. “Hello, Gunny Fairchild. I’m the nurse supervising HN Byrd.” I needed supervision inserting a catheter as much as Alton Brown needs supervision boiling a hotdog.

Gunny beamed. I lifted the gown to his chest.

San Giovanni’s eyes went full Chancellor Gowron—I hope you get the reference.

“Dude!” he said. “What happened to your dick?”

“Lieutenant!” I said. “Decorum. Some of us are, I dunno, Catholic or something.”

Gunny was having the time of his life. “It got infected, so they lopped it off two years ago. Doc said the penis is for recreation, procreation, and elimination. I don’t want kids, and I’m too old to screw, so I said goodbye to Private Fairchild.”

He lifted his pendulous scrotum, revealing a tiny black dot on his perineum. “They rerouted the plumbing. Had to move it to my taint so I wouldn’t piss all over my balls.”

San Giovanni turned to me. “Now you know where to catheterize him.” He adjusted himself and left.

I figured it wouldn’t be much different from catheterizing a female patient—if you ignored what remained of his naughty bits. Unfortunately, I couldn’t.

I explained the problem to Gunny. “Gravity is not our friend.”

“Neither is whiskey,” he said.

I pointed to his crotch. “The joy boys are blocking access to your urethra. I’m going to have to move them out of the way, which means I need them to be sterile. You’ll feel cold when I swab on the iodine.

That wiped the grin off his face. “You’re not swabbing nothing on them. Damned if I’m walking around with orange balls.”

Right. That would be what made him stand out at the gym.

“Excuse me, Gunny. I’ll be right back. I’ve got the wrong size gloves.”

“Again?”

I went back to the nurses’ desk. San Giovanni asked if I’d figured it out.

“I figured out that I need you to hold his scrotum out of the way.”

“Nope. Not holding his nuts.”

Lillian, one of the civilian nurses, said, “I don’t know why. You can’t keep your hands off your own.”

When I returned to bed 6, I brought a roll of five-inch foam tape.

“What’s that for?” Gunny asked.

“Ball hammock.”

I taped his scrotum up and out of the way. He protested loudly. “You’ll rip the ‘nads outa me when you take that off!” I assured him it wasn’t duct tape, which only calmed him down a little.

Now I could see the urethral opening. It was barely larger than the period at the end of this sentence.

“Excuse me, I’ll be right back. Wrong glove size.”

“Again?” he said.

The smallest catheter we had was neonatal. Still too big.

Eventually, San Giovanni called the urologist.

Dr. Schoenfeld arrived furious. He’d performed Gunny’s penectomy and plumbing reroute. He cussed Gunny for poor hygiene, noticed the tape, and demanded to know who did it.

I raised my hand.

“Why didn’t you sterilize the area?” he asked.

“He didn’t want orange balls.”

“Don’t sterilize me!” Gunny said. “I might change my mind about kids.”

“You remember that procreation thing Dr. Schoenfeld told you about?” I said.

“He’s not crazy,” Dr. Schoenfeld said. “He’s just a noncompliant pain in my ass.”

Gunny grinned.

Dr. Schoenfeld produced a needle the size of a harpoon and aspirated Gunny’s bladder. Dark yellow fluid poured out.

“I don’t know how he’s still alive,” the doctor muttered.

He then threaded progressively larger wires into Gunny’s urethra—twenty of them—until a catheter could finally be placed.

Afterward, I removed the tape and updated my notes. San Giovanni reminded me about the foot-washing order.

Gunny was wearing hospital booties. I assumed they were to protect his feet from the floor.

They were to protect the floor from his feet.

The bottoms were coal black, layers deep.

“When’s the last time you washed your feet?” I asked.

He grinned. “Can’t remember, Doc.”

It took ninety minutes of scrubbing. I got no satisfaction from it; I knew they’d be filthy again within weeks.

Once his plumbing was flowing, Gunny was discharged with yet another referral to Social Services.

A few years ago, after a particularly rough month at work, I booked a solo retreat cabin at an Episcopal church camp—free, quiet, deep in the woods.

That night, sitting by the fireplace, I crossed my legs and noticed the bottoms of my feet were filthy, thanks to the cabin floor.

I went to the bathroom.

Not to wash my feet.

To make sure I could still pee.

It’s Just Stuff

I’ve written before—A Tale of Two Turtles—about Curious George, the stuffed toy who became integral to my well-being when I started therapy and Al-Anon meetings after my father’s death. I’d never dealt with his alcoholism while he was alive, partly because I was naïve. Or maybe I was in denial.

A few weeks after Dad’s funeral, I talked to Mom. For the umpteenth time, she went on and on about his drinking and how angry she was—if he’d only stopped, he’d still be alive. I resisted the urge to remind her that he’d been a two-pack-a-day smoker since he was eleven, and that he’d had three heart attacks before the fourth one killed him. Instead, I offered the occasional mm-hmm or yeah, I bet.

Legally, you can’t libel the dead, but I was getting fed up with what felt like baseless accusations. I should point out that even then, Mom’s relationship with reality wasn’t as strong as her devotion to Drama—with a capital D.

I called Sister to complain, expecting sympathy. Instead, she hit me with reality.

“Dude. Dad was a drunk.”

“He was not!”

“Don’t you remember…?” And she proceeded to list a catalog of missed school events, hangovers, fights—everything tied to his drinking.

The scales fell from my eyes. I was lost. The man I’d been grieving wasn’t really my dad, at least not the version I’d believed in. I needed help to adjust. I found a therapist who sent me to my first Al-Anon meeting and introduced me to John Bradshaw’s inner-child work.

Enter Curious George.

I won’t repeat everything from A Tale of Two Turtles here, but you should know this: although George didn’t go with me to boot camp, he did go with me to Disney World, Corps School, Camp Lejeune, Okinawa, and finally Birmingham. When the church made a photo directory, George was with me in my picture

.

I’ve written so much about Neighbor that if you don’t know who he is by now, that’s on you.

We both worked at the Naval Hospital—he in Labor and Delivery, me in the ER. One day, when he was off, he drove me to work. Instead of dropping me off, he came inside with me. I was assigned to the trauma beds that day and, as usual, started my shift by checking equipment and the crash cart in Trauma One. In all my time in Okinawa, Trauma Two was used only once, which I write about in I Know Something You Don’t Know.

Part of my checklist was making sure there was EKG paper in the bedside monitor. Neighbor and I chatted while I worked. I can’t remember which of us had the idea, but there are three leads on a heart monitor: one on the upper left chest, one on the upper right, and one on the lower left abdomen. I put one lead on my chest, one on Neighbor’s, and we held hands, cupping the third lead between our palms.

I turned on the machine.

We expected gibberish. Instead, an honest-to-God heart rhythm appeared on the screen. The “patient” was clearly in need of a pacemaker, but it was a legitimate EKG. I printed the strip showing our conjoined hearts and put it in my wallet.

For several years, I was the youth minister at church. The youth group was officially called EYC. I never did know what the C stood for. I assumed the E was Episcopal and the Y was Youth, but who knows. I called it Yoot Groop and referred to the kids collectively as yoots. I may or may not have just seen My Cousin Vinny.

Jack was fifteen when he joined the Yoot Groop. He was an extraordinarily gifted artist—art is how he makes his living today. One of the female yoots, Lisa, clearly had a crush on him. Her flirting made him uncomfortable, but he was never unkind. He treated her like a kid sister.

You’re not supposed to have favorite kids, students, or yoots. Jack wasn’t my favorite—but I did feel protective of him. All my yoots were good kids, yet I was ready to step in at the first “you’re so gay” comment aimed his way.

When Jack was seventeen, he invited me to help with his Eagle Scout project. He was creating a mural in his mother’s church, painted over a collage of sheet music. We started by gluing the pages to the wall. He would do the actual painting.

It was a big project. By late afternoon, everyone had left except the two of us. We worked into the night. Twice his mother came back—once with fast food, once because…who knows.

While we ate, Jack came out to me.

We talked a long time. The details are between him and me. He did tell me that coming out to his mother had gone badly. Her repeated returns, he said, were because she didn’t trust me. Maybe she blamed my gayness for his. Maybe she thought all gay adults preyed on teens. I don’t know.

Later, Jack asked me to be the keynote speaker at his Eagle Court of Honor.

He went on to the Savannah College of Art and Design and shared his work with me. I was stunned—especially after a year in Europe, when he showed me paintings he’d “forged” in the styles of the great masters. The kid had serious talent.

After graduation, I received a small package from him. Inside was the gold honors sash he’d worn over his gown, along with a note. At SCAD, honors graduates dedicate their graduation to the people most responsible for getting them there. Before donning the sash, they write to those people explaining why.

I know how this sounds. No one likes a Substack that reads Aren’t I great? But the note credited me with far more than I deserved—some things I didn’t even know I’d done. The TL;DR version was this: I was an example of a happy gay adult.

I’ve changed Jack’s name to protect his privacy, but the line that floored me was this: he’d contemplated suicide in high school.

“The reason I didn’t do it,” he wrote, “is because of you. I knew the shit in my life wouldn’t last forever, and that there was joy on the other side.”

A few months later, he gave me his favorite painting—and mine. It hung above the fireplace. On the mantel below it sat the folded graduation sash

.

I’ve never written a Substack about my cat Kingsford, but I should. Just as you’re not supposed to have favorite kids, you’re not supposed to have favorite pets. I loved all my animals, but Kingsford—damn her—was my favorite.

I adopted her and her sister Heidi after my neighbor’s cat, Mehitabel (not her real name, but some of you know why), fell for a smooth-talking tom and came home pregnant

.

The cats were senior kittyzens by the time Mom moved in with me—between assisted living and skilled nursing. All was well for a few months but then she declined faster than I expected. Her multiple sclerosis progressed until she couldn’t walk the ten steps from bed to bathroom, even with a walker. Soon she was bedridden. I brought her meals, changed her, changed the sheets—everything. I worked eight-hour days; if she soiled herself while I was gone, she had to wait until I got home.

Every time I told her she needed more care than I could provide, she cut me off.

“Please don’t put me in a nursing home,” she cried.

Kingsford was failing too. Her kidneys gave out. She lost weight. She was miserable. I had her put down—one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I sobbed uncontrollably at the vet.

Two days later, Mom went completely batshit in a matter of hours. She lay in bed, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, repeating, “Goodness gracious!” I couldn’t make her understand me, and God knows I didn’t understand her.

“Mom,” I said, “I’m calling an ambulance.”

That snapped her back for a moment. She refused to go by ambulance. If she told the paramedics no, they’d have to honor it.

So I half carried, half dragged her downstairs and into the car. When I pulled into the ER ambulance bay, a nurse came out to tell me I couldn’t park there.

“My mom’s in the car,” I said. “She’s immobile. And half naked.”

Mom was wearing a T-shirt and Depends. The nurse summoned help. They got her into a wheelchair.

It turned out she wasn’t in dementia overdrive at all. She had a UTI. In MS patients especially, urinary infections can cause severe altered mental states. She was admitted, and I knew she wouldn’t be coming home. I began the process of placing her in skilled nursing.

When I came home the next day, I started upstairs to change Mom—and then remembered someone else was doing that now.

Poor Heidi. First her sister disappeared. Then Mom, whom she adored, was gone. She sat on my lap, rubbing I-Love-You snot all over my arm for nearly an hour.

“I have to eat,” I told her, gently nudging her away.

I took a Swanson’s lasagna for one out of the freezer. The microwave over the stove had been broken for months. The working one sat on the dining-room buffet.

It was mid-March, and spring had called in sick. It was bitterly cold. The furnace had broken the week before. YouTube helped me diagnose the problem—an easy fix for someone who knew what they were doing, which was not me. I couldn’t afford a repairman.

Mom had a space heater and an electric blanket. I had a space heater by my recliner.

The heater and the microwave weren’t on the same circuit, but they both drew a lot of power. If I ran them together, the breaker tripped. Usually I remembered to turn the heater off.

That night, I didn’t.

As soon as I started the microwave, I heard a loud POP! The house went dark. Heidi ran upstairs to hide.

Cursing myself, I walked toward the garage to reset the breaker. My shadow danced along the hallway wall.

That’s weird, I thought. If the lights are off, what’s making a shadow?

The flickering glow came from the living room.

Flames. They’d started at the heater outlet and spread to the carpet and a newspaper by the recliner. About the size of a campfire.

I ran for the fire extinguisher I’d bought years earlier. It was buried behind twelve-packs of soda. I wasted precious seconds digging it out.

By the time I returned, the campfire was becoming a bonfire.

I squeezed the handle. Nothing. After ten years, the canister had no pressure.

The fire was now too big. I grabbed my wallet, keys, and phone and ran to the garage. The power door was dead, so I released it manually.

I’d picked up my piece-of-shit Prius earlier that day after paying $1,700 for what felt like its hundredth repair. After that ransom, damned if I was going to let it burn. (In hindsight, I should have. I might’ve gotten a better one. Side note: everyone I know who has a Prius loves it. I got a lemon. An extra-tart one. A mechanic once asked me, “Did you know the plural of Prius is Prii?” I said, “I thought it was crapmobiles.”)

I backed the car out, then called 911.

“My house is on fire.”

I confirmed my address. She told me to stay on the line, but I had neighbors to warn.

The young couple next door was already outside, demanding to know what I’d done. I ignored them and ran to the other neighbor’s door, pounding and calling Cathy’s name. She finally answered in a nightgown.

By then, the fire department arrived. There was nothing to do but take pictures, which I did

.

I prayed Heidi had succumbed to smoke before the flames reached her. I rubbed the I-Love-You snot still drying on my arm. The fire chief asked if I wanted them to bring her to me. I couldn’t bear it. I told him to please find her—and take her with them.

It was thirty-something degrees, and I wasn’t dressed for it. Neighbors gathered. A woman across the street wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and side-hugged me.

“Thank God your mother wasn’t home,” she said. “You never could’ve gotten her out. The rest is just stuff. You can replace stuff.”

She meant well. I nodded as we watched the fire consume my home.

I imagined Curious George burning on the dresser. I pictured my only photos of Neighbor and me, and the yellowed EKG strip showing two hearts beating as one, turning to ash. I ached at the thought of Jack’s painting and his sash.

My neighbor meant well.

But some stuff cannot be replaced.

I decided when I was twelve years old that New York City was the greatest city in the world. I see no reason to change my mind now. I first visited in 1992 and have been back several times since.

On two of those visits I was lucky enough not to need a hotel. The first time, I slept on a friend’s couch. The next time, General Theological Seminary was on spring break. A friend of mine was a seminarian, and he and his wife opted to stay on campus. One of their classmates was going home for the break and offered to let me stay in her dorm room.

I told all this to Mom, who was in Assisted Living at the time.

“Well, there’s no reason I can’t use another dorm room,” she said.

She hadn’t graduated to a wheelchair yet and was still using her walker—but brother, she relied on that walker.

“No reason except no one offered you a room. Oh, and the woman whose room I’m using lives on the fifth floor and you can’t do stairs. Oh, and you can’t afford the airfare and I can’t afford two plane tickets.”

“But I want to go! You won’t even know I’m there.”

I’d fallen for that argument once before, when she convinced me to take her with me to my favorite storytelling festival. I spent the entire weekend as her full-time caretaker. Fool me once and all that.

I was definitely on the Bad Son List when I left for the Big Apple.

Not only could Mom never have handled five flights of stairs, I wasn’t sure I could either after lugging a carry-on and a full-sized suitcase up to my room.

The dorm was co-ed: men on floors one through three, women on floors four and five. There was only one other woman still in residence, also on the fifth floor. She knew who I was and why I was there. The women’s toilet and shower room was two doors down from my temporary lodgings. The men’s facilities were in the basement.

The ground floor would have been bad enough. Adding an extra flight of stairs every time I needed to pee or shower was asking too much.

I held out for two days, then decided to hell with it. I consulted the woman sharing the fifth floor. She had no problem with me using the women’s bathroom—as long as I didn’t leave the seat up.

Mom had made me promise to call her every night and tell her “all the shit you’ll be doing without me.” I called, but I never gloated about the Broadway and Off-Broadway shows I’d seen. I stuck to high-level summaries.

“I walked all over Chelsea and Times Square and Chinatown.”

“Since I can’t buy any souvenirs myself,” she said, “I expect you to get me some from all those places.”

She liked kitsch, though she’d never have called it that. Postcards, Statue of Liberty bottle openers—easy enough. I bought her more than I bought myself. When I did find something for me, I told her about it.

“I was at a huge bookstore at Union Square! I found an autographed autobiography of Bennett Cerf!”

That kind of thing thrilled me and bored Mom, which made it safe to mention without her demanding a duplicate.

One day, when I left the Seminary, I detoured to the gift shop, which was open despite the break. There were books—some Mom already had, others she’d love—but the price tags were hefty.

There were also Anglican rosaries (I bought one for Mom), crucifixes, and crosses. One crucifix stood out. It was as tall as the others, but much narrower.

A placard explained why.

Soon after the Church of England broke from Rome, Catholicism was outlawed in the UK. In Ireland, Catholics who clung to their faith were imprisoned. Rosaries and crucifixes were contraband, and punishment for possessing one was severe.

Enter the Penal Cross.

It was narrower than a standard crucifix so Catholics in the Penal Colony could hide it in their sleeves. I loved the history. I loved the simple, almost naïve depiction of Christ. It cost more than I’d budgeted for souvenirs—but I bought it.

When I called Mom that night, she started by asking what shows I’d seen that she had to miss—West Side Story, and oh my God, it kicked my ass—then where I’d eaten while she choked down the mush force-fed to her at Assisted Living. You’d think she was a goose being raised for foie gras.

“I ate at a bodega,” I said.

She kept asking me about Asian dishes, which confused me. I told her I’d had an Italian grinder, which confused her more.

Turns out she thought bodega meant pagoda.

“Forget about dinner,” I gushed. “I’ve got to tell you about the Penal Cross I bought.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

She’d demanded every detail of my days, and now she didn’t want to hear about this? Mom was much churchier than I was. I tried again.

“But you’d love it! See, on the Penal Cross Jesus—”

“Just stop it!” she snapped. “You’re my son and I love you, but you’re taking this gay thing too far! Throw that in the trash where it belongs and get a damn cross where Jesus is wearing a diaper like a civilized human being.”

“Jesus was incontinent?”

“Call it a loincloth, then. It sure wasn’t Fruit of the Loom.”

I promised I’d never show her my “penile cross,” and I kept my word.

She did, however, curse me out later for not getting her one of those wonderful Prisoner’s Crucifixes when she finally saw it.

Crazy Naked Man

I’d taken a couple of cruises from Mobile to Cozumel. The second one was nice, but it suffered from a serious case of Been There, Done That. I enjoyed cruising, but I needed a new destination.

I booked a Caribbean cruise sailing out of Miami. The ship departed at 10:30 Tuesday morning. I left work early on Monday and headed home to change into my plane clothes and grab my luggage.

I rented the main floor of a vintage house. The other tenants were at work when I parked on the street out front. The house had a good sized front porch with columns. Usually I parked in the back alley but I was just there for a quick in and out so I parked on the street in front of the house.

I saw him when I got out of the car.

He was sitting on my front stoop, smoking a cigarette. He looked about my age—thirty-something. He wore a hospital bracelet.

And nothing else.

Which immediately made me wonder where he’d gotten the cigarette.

I got out of the car and walked as far as the stairs.

“Hey,” I said.

“Get off my yard!” he screamed, throwing the cigarette at me.

“I think you’re lost. This is my house.”

“It’s MY house!” He stood up.

I am many things, but I am not suicidal, so I got back in my car. The kindest thing to do would have been to call the psych ward at UAB Hospital and tell them I’d found whoever was missing. Kindness takes time, though, and I had a plane to catch.

I dialed another number.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“There’s a crazy naked man on my porch, and he won’t let me inside.”

“Inside of him? Sir, being naked does not imply consent.”

“Inside my house.”

I don’t know if she meant to imply she was eight pounds of stupid in a five-pound bag, but that’s how it landed.

I lived in Southside Birmingham. My neighborhood was bohemian. Pride flags flew from porches and windows. My neighbors were old hippies, young college kids, and everything in between. A hemp shop and a New Age holistic healing store were within walking distance.

When I got out of the car to greet the cops, they took in the rainbow sticker on my back bumper and the naked man on the porch. Officers Heckyl and Jeckyl exchanged knowing glances.

“Lover’s quarrel, guys?” one of them said.

I reminded myself that I needed their help and resisted the urge to say something snarky.

“Hardly. I have no idea who he is or where he came from,” I said. “I only know he’s a crazy naked man who won’t let me into my house.”

“MY house!” Crazy Naked Man hollered from the porch.

Deputy Dawg shrugged. “He says it’s his house.”

“And I say it’s my house. And I’m fully dressed, unlike certain crazy naked people.”

“It’s your word against his.”

“I have a key to the front door; He’s a crazy naked man. I have a driver’s license in my pocket that says I live here; He has no pockets because he’s a crazy naked man. There are bills in the mailbox addressed to Bob Byrd; Nothing in that mailbox is addressed to Crazy Naked Man.”

Chief Wiggum turned to his partner. “Maybe it is his house.”

“IT. IS. MY. HOUSE!” Crazy Naked Man shouted.

He abandoned the porch and charged toward me, arms outstretched, roaring like a constipated dinosaur in heat.

I ran around the other side of my car. He gave chase. The two of us ran repeated laps around my little CRX while the cops stood off to the side watching.

On my third lap, I yelled, “Get him!”

“Can’t,” one said. “Our gloves are in the car.”

“Then shoot him!” I yelled.

I have nothing but sympathy for people suffering from mental illness. Being crazy isn’t illegal, but surely chasing someone while nude violates something. You’d never know it from the actions of Birmingham’s Finest.

“Look,” Barney Fife said as I ran past again, “he’s off your porch, so you can go inside now.”

Crazy Naked Man abruptly stopped. “My porch!” he shouted.

Then, without warning, he grabbed his willy, took aim, and pissed on the cop.

Suddenly gloves were no longer a concern.

They tackled him mid-stream. While they wrestled cuffs onto him, I dashed inside. I didn’t bother changing into plane clothes. I just grabbed my suitcase. When I came back out, one cop was still struggling with Crazy Naked Man while the other unholstered his taser.

“Dude! Show some restraint. You’ve got him!” I said.

“Ten seconds ago you wanted me to shoot him!”

“Yeah, but then it was him or me. Now it’s him or you.”

They managed to cuff him and get him back on his feet without zapping him. The cops—none too gently—loaded him into the back seat. One leaned in to fasten the nudist’s seat belt.

“Hey!” the cop shouted. “Are you shitting in my squad car?”

“MY squad car!” Crazy Naked Man said, bearing down again.

They were too occupied to notice me getting behind the wheel.

I made it to the airport with minutes to spare.

My ex-wife was jealous and possessive. I couldn’t mention a female coworker without being accused of sleeping with her. When I felt that same insecurity creeping up around Neighbor, I recognized it for what it was and vowed never to do to him what Gwen had done to me.

That vow was tested.

I’ve written before about the off-base club that functioned as a regular bar most days, but once a month became a gay bar. Admission required a membership card. The only way to get one was as the guest of someone who already had one.

One of the few coworkers I was out to took me there and vouched for me. By the time I returned to the barracks that night, I had my own card.

After I met Neighbor, I didn’t stay in the barracks. We shared an apartment in town. When we first met, he lived in a one-bedroom, but he later moved to a two-bedroom to preserve the fiction that we were just roommates. I’m not sure how many people it fooled. Only one bedroom had a bed. The other held his karaoke equipment and my word processor—cutting-edge then, museum-worthy now.

We went to the Club once a month. We always had fun, but it was hard for me when other people hit on him or bought him drinks. Whenever someone handed him a beer, he accepted it with extravagant thanks—always winking at me, always wearing that shit-eating grin. Then he’d turn to me and say, “Friend, you don’t have to buy us drinks. We can share this one.”

So yes, I hated it when other guys danced with him or touched his arm—but I knew who he was going home with.

Neighbor’s parents divorced when he was a teenager. His dad discovered TV preachers around the same time his mom discovered she was a lesbian. She left his father for another woman. Her side of the family was relieved to see the “Jesus freak” gone. His father’s side was scandalized by how this Jezebel Sodomite had abandoned her husband and son.

I spoke to his mother only once. I spoke to Granny—his mom’s mom—every week.

Neighbor rarely mentioned his paternal grandparents, except to note that they were as fluent as his father in speaking in tongues.

We didn’t always have the same days off, but we were often on the same shift—days or nights—at the same time. A few months after I moved in, we were on nights. Neighbor had Tuesday off; I was on duty in the ER. He worked in Labor & Delivery.

I got home late that morning after stopping at Camp Foster to pick up breakfast.

We hadn’t finished eating when the phone rang. Granny always called Fridays after supper. Friends called, but never that early.

I heard only Neighbor’s side.

“Konnichiwa.” Eye roll. “Hi, Dad… What? When? Okay. Okay. I don’t know. I said I don’t know. Okay.”

He hung up and looked at me. “My grandfather died a couple hours ago. He wasn’t even sick.”

I didn’t ask which grandfather. Granny was already a widow.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He looked lost. “I have to get home, but I’m working the rest of the week.”

The command wouldn’t take his word for it. Officially, the Red Cross had to notify him, then notify the CO—assuming someone remembered to notify the Red Cross in the first place. Neither of us trusted that his father had.

“Even if he did,” he said, “I don’t know how to get home.”

“Naha has daily flights to the States,” I said.

Relief flickered, then vanished. “I don’t have a passport. And what if the ticket costs more than I have?”

“We have,” I said.

We hadn’t done laundry yet—Thursday’s chore. “Wash some clothes and pack your seabag,” I said. “I’ll be back soon.

In the ER, when a patient died, the first call went to the Red Cross. Their office was in the hospital. I’d spoken to the Mrs. Crowley on the phone many times. I went to her office.

She listened, nodded, and said, “You aren’t the first person to need help with this. Not even the hundredth.” She opened a steno pad. “What’s your friend’s father’s phone number?”

I didn’t know. I called Neighbor.

“That was my phone number for twenty years,” he said. “Why can’t I remember it?”

“It’s okay,” I said. I still had Granny’s number from conspiring over his Christmas present.

It was a little after eight in Louisiana. Matlock was on. Her irritated Hello turned to concern when she realized it was me.

“Frien’, is my boy okay?”

“His grandpa died. I know he’d appreciate a call from you. But do you have his dad’s number?”

“Probably filed under Sorry Sonuvabitch. Hold on.”

I wrote it down as she read it off.

“Thanks, Granny. He’d really appreciate hearing from you.”

“You sure he’s okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll call after Matlock,” she said. “You’re a good frien’, Frien.”

“And you’re a good granny, Granny.”

When I got back, Neighbor wasn’t in the apartment. The washing machine and hamper were empty, so I climbed to the roof. He was hanging clothes on the line.

“The Red Cross is on it,” I said. “Go downstairs in case they call. I’ll finish this.”

While we waited, Neighbor called JAL. There was a flight in four hours, but the ticket cost more than we had.

He stayed by the phone waiting for the Red Cross to call and I went to Navy Relief.

Once everything was confirmed, they didn’t lend him the money—they bought the ticket outright. No repayment. They also told me his military ID would serve as a passport.

Neighbor and the hospital got the official notification while I’d been out.Three hours later, I dropped him at the airport. I had just enough time to report for my 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. ER shift.

That night I was assigned to the Beds—the busiest section. I told Dr. Treffinger I hadn’t slept since the previous shift.

“I don’t think sewing people back together on no sleep is ideal,” I said.

He frowned. “You knew you were on duty.”

I explained the day, referring to Neighbor as my roommate.

“We’ll adjust,” he said. “Go take a nap in the duty room.”

It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was empty. “Take as long as you need.”

I slept four or five hours, then joined the others.

I wasn’t there for what happened next. This is how Neighbor told it.

His dad picked him up at the airport and immediately asked if he was going to church.

“Still no.”

The lecture began—eternal torment, Jesus Christ as personal—

“I assume he was headed for ‘Lord and Savior,’” Neighbor said, “but the tongue-speaking kicked in right about then. I used to think he was having a stroke when he did that.”

I laughed. “What did you do?”

“I can’t speak in tongues so I spoke Japanese, which was close enough.”

He knew about as much Japanese as I did. “What did you say?”

Neighbor hee-hee’d. “I told him I was sorry but I had to massage his uterus.”

They stopped at the funeral home, then went to the house Neighbor grew up in. The proselytizing continued for hours.

Eventually, Neighbor announced he was going to the convenience store.

He returned with two six-packs.

“Don’t drink that,” his dad warned. “That’s sinful—spitting in God’s eye.”

I imagine that shit eating grin flickered on his face. “Look at me. I’m going to Hell.” He chugged the beer and belched—window-rattling. He opened another. “I don’t think I’m going fast enough.” He took a swig. “Whee! Going to Hell! With beer on my breath and cum on my chin!”

That’s how Neighbor came out as bisexual to his father.

I said, “Wait—we’re thousands of miles away. Who painted your chin?”

He giggled. I missed him.

We talked trash for a while—none of which you need to read; the chin comment was already a bit much.

Five days later, I picked him up at Naha. He hugged me and said, “God, it’s good to be home.”

I still felt a twinge when other guys hit on him at the Club—but only a twinge.

I was more than the person he came in with.

I was his Home.

“If we can’t get this under control, you’re going to die.”

“This” was my diabetes. I’d been losing the battle since I was first diagnosed thirty years ago.

A few months before that diagnosis, I was still in the Navy. When I turned thirty and reported for my annual physical at Camp Lejeune, a series of tests raised red flags. After reviewing the results, Dr. Tourigny said, “You’re too young to have numbers like this. The best thing you can do is quit smoking. If you do, you could live another thirty years.”

Great. Quit smoking now and maybe make it to sixty.

“The first thirty years haven’t been all that great, Doc,” I said. “You’re going to need a better incentive than more of the same.”

Dr. Tourigny shook his head. He told me it was my funeral.

Five years later, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. I was sent to a nutritionist and handed dietary guidelines: no sweets, eat this, don’t eat that. I tried—sort of—but the truth is, I liked to eat. I cooked constantly. I chased novelty. One night it was a plate piled high with chicken wings; the next, shad roe mousse. So much for the new diet.

The doctor prescribed oral medications: 2,000 mg of metformin a day, plus a daily non-insulin injection. I don’t remember the name—it was years before Ozempic and Mounjaro—but I remember it didn’t help.

Meanwhile, I kept eating everything put in front of me, and plenty that wasn’t.

It took three tries, but I finally quit smoking in 2005. I’m embarrassed to admit it had nothing to do with my health and everything to do with the price of cigarettes. I missed the ritual—the hand-to-mouth motion—so every time I wanted a cigarette, I ate instead. My weight ballooned.

At my next appointment, the doctor looked defeated. “You need to go on insulin,” he said. “I hate to do it. You’re going to gain even more weight.”

The idea of injecting insulin twice a day scared me enough to switch from regular soda to diet. It didn’t help. By the end of the year, I’d gained another fifty pounds.

I checked my blood sugar twice a day. The numbers were sky-high despite the insulin. I moved to three injections a day, then four. Still too high. I was referred to an endocrinologist and switched to high-dose insulin. My glucose levels finally came down—but not nearly enough.

Then came The Cheesecake Factory.

I was at a work lunch when the food arrived and I started feeling… off. “Funny” is the only word I have for it. Nothing hurt. There was no pain or pressure—just a growing sense that something wasn’t right. I still ordered dessert with everyone else.

Halfway through my chicken, it got worse. I handed my boss cash to cover my lunch and left before dessert arrived. I don’t know who ate it, but I hope it didn’t go to waste.

No one goes to the ER because they “feel funny.” I went home and lay down. I already had an unrelated doctor’s appointment scheduled for the next day.

I mentioned the funny feeling to Dr. Carlisle as she was dismissing me. Her expression changed. She told me to wait, then returned with an EKG machine. After running a strip, she said, “Mr. Byrd, you had a heart attack.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “There was no chest pain. No elephant on my chest. No arm pain.” I’d worked two years in ICU and two in the ER. I knew heart attacks.

She reminded me that diabetics often have pain-free heart attacks.

She scheduled a cath and referred me to cardiology. When I arrived the next day, the procedure was canceled because I’d taken a medication I was supposed to skip. No one had told me. I was sent home and told to stop it for three days.

By then, that funny feeling had become my constant companion.

Four days after the heart attack, I showed up for the rescheduled procedure—only to be told I was at the wrong hospital. They insisted I belonged at Cooper Green, the indigent hospital.

“I have insurance,” I said.

It took hours to sort out. By then it was too late for the procedure. I was told to come back the next day.

The arteriogram confirmed the damage. Instead of sending me home, they sent me straight to cardiac surgery. The surgeon reviewed the results and scolded me for waiting so long. I bit my tongue.

“You need heart surgery,” he said. “Three bypasses. One artery is 85% blocked.”

“When?” I asked.

“You’ve waited too long already. Day after tomorrow.”

I spent a few minutes furious that two years after quitting smoking I’d had a heart attack. Then I spent the next twenty-four hours convinced I would die on the table.

The scar down my chest is a membership card to an exclusive club. Other bypass patients spot it in the grocery store and silently unbuttoned the tops of their shirts, showing their own scar. Sometimes we traded war stories. Mostly we just nodded or exchanged a thumbs-up.

Meanwhile, my insulin needs kept climbing. I routinely ran out early and spent hours each month begging my insurance company for early refills.

Then I changed jobs—and insurance. My doctors were in the UAB network; my new plan preferred St. Vincent’s. I changed primary care doctors, cardiologists, and endocrinologists.

My new primary care doctor was Dr. Smith. The cardiologist was Dr. Jones. I became convinced they were in witness protection.

“Hello, Mr. Byrd,” they’d say.

“Hello, Dr. Smith—if that’s your real name,” I’d reply.

My new endocrinologist was Dr. Sona. I stopped calling her that after our first appointment.

She reviewed my records and said, “You have serious health problems, Mister. How serious are you about dealing with them?”

“Very,” I said.

She didn’t look convinced.

She adjusted my insulin immediately and prescribed a continuous glucose monitor—one of those devices that sticks to your arm and streams your numbers to your phone. No more finger sticks. I soon learned it also sent the data directly to her.

It wasn’t unusual to get a call.

“You listen to me, Mister. Your numbers are too high. Did you take your 8 a.m. insulin?”

I’d admit I hadn’t yet.

“You’ll take it right now, Mister.”

Soon my goal wasn’t controlling my diabetes—it was getting through an appointment without being Mistered.

My weight had been steady at 280 pounds. Then one visit, the scale read 320.

She didn’t Mister me. She pulled up a chair.

“If you believe nothing else I ever tell you,” she said, “believe this: if we don’t get this under control, you’re going to die.”

I’d been warned for years that smoking, diet, and inactivity would kill me eventually. This was different.

“I don’t mean someday,” she said. “I mean within a year.”

I started crying. “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to,” I said—and it was true. “Do these medicines even work? The metformin might as well be sugar pills.” I could no longer pretend I was making progress. “I’m going to die,” I said, defeated.

“If we can’t control the diabetes,” she said, “let’s see if we can cure it.”

She believed that if I could get my weight from 320 down to 160, my diabetes could reverse. I said, “As long as I’m on insulin I’ll never be able to lose half my weight.”

“Not without help,” she said. “I want to refer you for weight-loss surgery.”

“That isn’t covered by my insurance.”

“Leave that to me.”

She sent me to a surgeon, Dr. Schmidt. We discussed gastric sleeve versus gastric bypass. The sleeve was reversible. The bypass was permanent—but more effective at reversing diabetes.

I chose the bypass.

The final two weeks before surgery I was on a liquid diet. I was starving. I lost eighteen pounds by pureeing cans of Chunky Lasagna Soup to the nasty tasting Protein shakes. I still haven’t found one that doesn’t make me gag.

My A1C in mid-February was 8.3.

On February 24th, my mother died. It’s also my sister’s birthday—and the anniversary of my father’s death. I’m writing this in January, and my superstitious side already dreads that date.

“Yes, but your sister was born that day,” people say.

I said what I said.

My surgery was scheduled for March 1st. We postponed Mom’s memorial.

I wore snug sweatpants to the hospital. I still have them.

When I woke up in recovery, the nurse said, “You’ll never need insulin again.”

“Starting when?” I asked.

“Starting now.”

I haven’t taken insulin in over three years.

After surgery, I stayed on liquids for two weeks, then moved to a soft diet. Pudding and mashed potatoes tasted like ambrosia.

No one warned me about the post-op bowel chaos. I barely left the house for a week, terrified I’d have an accident in public. Dying of diabetes would be awful, but not as embarrassing as shitting myself in Target.

Thankfully, it passed.

I limited weigh-ins to once a week. Dr. Mister suggested weekly selfies instead. She was right.

I now divide my life into BWLS and AWLS—Before and After Weight-Loss Surgery.

BWLS:

A1C: 8.3

Weight: 320 lbs

Waist: 50 inches

Shirts: 6XL

Life expectancy: questionable

AWLS:

A1C: 5.1

Weight: 148 lbs

Waist: 31 inches

Shirts: Medium

Still here

There are trade-offs. Bread and rice swell in my egg-sized stomach and crowd out protein. Overeat, and I pay for it.

BWLS, I was probably going to die within a year. That was nearly four years ago. I’m on half the medications now. My cardiologist is thrilled.

My only regret is that I moved two months after surgery. Dr. Mister never got to see skinny Bob.

I fixed that by sending her selfies.

When she wrote back she didn’t Mister me once.

I started hanging out in the library after school in seventh grade. I adored our media specialist, Miss Costello—we’re still friends. One week the shelves were pushed around to make room for a big, round, modular office that appeared overnight.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“We’re getting an Occupational Specialist,” she said. “That’s her office.”

“So middle schoolers are going to learn to feed and dress themselves?”

She eyed my plaid shirt and striped pants. “In your case, no such luck. I’ll let her explain it to you. The office opens next week.”

Every day I tracked the build-out: a desk, a microfiche reader, shelves of skinny books with titles like Real Estate Agent, Funeral Director, Lawyer, Teacher. Apparently an Occupational Specialist specialized in…occupations. Took me longer than it should’ve to get there.

Monday the door was open. After school, Miss Costello introduced us. “Bob Byrd, meet Mrs. Bobby Jackson.”

Mrs. Jackson was a thirty-something Black woman with her hair in a neat bun—the hairstyle Lillith Crane would later borrow on Cheers. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, and I watched Wonder Woman every week.

We’d interrupted her pulling a contraband hot plate from her desk drawer. She jumped and squeaked. I also have an exaggerated startle response. Instant bond.

“I’m sorry!” I blurted. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Miss Costello said, “Your secret is safe with Bob.” Then she left us.

Mrs. Jackson relaxed, winked, and said, “Let’s make it our secret. Have a seat.” She took two packets of Lipton Tomato Cup-A-Soup from the drawer and set a kettle on the hot plate. I hadn’t planned to stay. Also, I was loyal to Campbell’s with my grilled cheese, and this rusty powder didn’t look promising.

I searched for small talk. “Is Bobby short for Barbara?”

“It’s not short for anything,” she said. “My father wanted to name his firstborn son after himself. He had a daughter instead and stuck to his guns. I’ve been Bobby ever since.”

“I’m named after my dad, too.”

“We’re practically twins,” she said. The kettle whistled. We poured the powder into mugs and added water. It wasn’t creamy, but I didn’t care. I felt very grown up having an after-school snack with a teacher.

It became our ritual. I didn’t want to be a freeloader, so I spent allowance money on tomato and chicken noodle packets. Every day after the final bell I showed up, she put the kettle on, and we talked about our day—mostly me talking about mine.

“What does an Occupational Specialist do?” I asked that first afternoon.

“You pick a career you might be interested in,” she said. “I help you research it—education, salaries, the real work. Then I arrange a job shadow. You get a day off school to spend with someone doing the job.”

I’d known two things since I was seven: I had to be straight, and I was going to be a lawyer. I don’t remember being especially argumentative, but Mom did; she’d say, “You should be a lawyer, the way you like to argue.” Dad joined in. Even Memaw, who’d clearly been chatting with Mom, told me I’d be the first lawyer in the family.

Other kids met with Mrs. Jackson an hour at a time, twice a week. I did all my research after school, one cup of instant soup at a time. We learned a lot about each other. She was married—hence “Mrs.”—with a kindergartner at home. She was losing a war with the weeds in her flower bed.

She learned I had an older sister, a younger brother, and one living set of grandparents. She also sussed out that “lawyer” was more my family’s dream than mine. “If you don’t enjoy arguing for its own sake—and I haven’t seen that in you—I don’t think you’d love being a lawyer,” she said. “As you see”—she tapped my notes—“lawyers do a lot more than squabble.”

I didn’t tell her I’d already failed the straight part. One disappointment at a time; I had to deliver the lawyer.

She also learned I could be a grade-A jerk. I lacked argue-lust, but I made up for it by being an asshole without provocation. I referred to a math teacher I never had as Banjo Eyes. My social studies teacher, Mrs. Isabel Clark, had a very prominent nose. I complained about the C I got on a half-assed report about Betty Ford (the assignment was Gerald, but Betty was more interesting). “Even though my report was two pages longer than it had to be,” I told Mrs. Jackson, “ol’ Izzy Streisand gave me a C!”

She couldn’t hide her disappointment when I said things like that. I’d behave for a day, then go back to making fun of hair, clothes, intelligence, hygiene—everything. If I keep this up you’ll hate me and unsubscribe; here’s the context: I was the designated target at Lauderdale Lakes Middle School. I was teased, hit, and called every version of Lardo and Homo. I didn’t dare say to their faces what I wanted to say, so I said it about them instead. None of which excuses expanding my cruelty to kids who weren’t bullies at all. I thought I already knew what I needed to know about people.

When we finished the research, Mrs. Jackson arranged a day for me to shadow a prosecutor at the Broward County Courthouse. Mom was thrilled. Dad dropped me off on his way to work.

I was expected, but no one knew what to do with me. People were kind but busy. I watched a paralegal do research—torture—and had a brief Q&A with a staff attorney. We ran out of things to say because I wasn’t that interested. After lunch (paid for by the district attorney—very nice), they parked me in a courtroom for a drug trial.

During a recess the defendant—thin, wiry, pockmarked, with a goatee—turned and waved me closer. I checked for the bailiff and slid into the row behind him.

“Whatchoo doing here?” he asked, curious, not angry.

I explained the job shadow. He nodded and said the law was a noble profession, “no matter which side of the case it represents.” He pointed at the prosecutor’s table. “I’m not mad at him. He’s doing his job. I’m mad at me. I didn’t run fast enough.” He grinned. I was fascinated by the gold on his teeth.

I told him he was the first person I’d admitted to that I didn’t actually want to be a lawyer—it was my family who wanted it.

“Then don’t,” he said. “There’s lots of noble work. Whatchoo gon’ do when your mama and daddy die and you still got half your life to live being a lawyer? Who you gon’ be doing it for then? A lack of choices is what brought me here. You got choices. Make the right ones.”

“All rise.” The judge returned. I wasn’t surprised when the jury found him guilty, but I was sad. I liked him.

The next day, over soup, I told Mrs. Jackson about the courthouse. She was annoyed at their lack of planning. I told her about the man during the recess.

“You wanted to avoid him because he was a drug dealer,” she said, “but I’m hearing respect and compassion.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “His mother kicked him out at fifteen. He dropped out. It’s not like he had a lot of options.”

She took a sip. “So you judged him—until you knew his story. Bob, knowing why will take you far.”

Because job shadows meant you skipped a school day, we were allowed only one. Mrs. Jackson suspected the law wasn’t it for me. “What do you think you might like to be? Not what you’ve been told. What would bring you joy?”

“Can I get paid for watching TV?”

“Give it a real think. I’ll ask your guidance counselor if we can bend the rule.”

Detour. When we moved from D.C. to Fort Lauderdale, our first house had no air conditioning. Mom did housework in an orange bikini while a box fan roared in whichever window she’d balanced it on. She played albums: Dean Martin, Nat “King” Cole, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck (say it out loud), Al Martino, Tony Bennett. After we moved to a house with central air, my friends went FM rock on Y-100; I stuck with Mom’s AM station—the music she vacuumed by.

My favorite DJ was Terry Gross—not the NPR interviewer, but the 6–10 p.m. guy. Every night he signed off: “This is Terry Gross reminding you to be kind to little people and always remember one thing.” He never said the one thing. It haunted me.

The station ran a contest: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Write your favorite DJ and invite him, explain why you should be picked. I wrote Terry: “You always say to be kind to little people, and I am a little person. I’m only 11.” A few days later the phone rang.

“Hi, this is Terry Gross. Can I speak to Bob?”

I screamed, “MOM! It’s Terry Gross! He’s coming to dinner!”

“Not tonight, he’s not!” Mom screamed back from the living room. “And who the hell is Terry Gross?” Mom never listened to the radio after Dad got home from work and was unfamiliar with the night talent.

Terry and his wife showed up that Saturday with a new grill and enough steaks for all of us. The grill was ours to keep. I quickly ran out of things to say, but the adults chatted and cooked.

Back in the OS office, Mrs. Jackson told me the counselor wouldn’t approve a second day off.

“What if I don’t miss a day? What if I job shadow at night?” I told her about Terry and that his show seemed like a fun way to make a living. “I want to be a disc jockey,” I said.

She called the manager at WFTL, 1400 AM. When I finished the DJ module, she said, I could shadow Terry on his evening broadcast.

It was miles better than the courthouse. I sat in the booth while Terry explained PSAs, paid ads, the playlist, how to cue records so they started the instant he stopped talking. He let me read a couple PSAs on air. He explained my presence to the audience.

When he and his wife had come to dinner, she was pregnant. On air, he showed me a photo of their new baby. “Doesn’t he look just like Richard Nixon?”

“Not really,” I said. “His fingers aren’t crossed.” My first ad-lib. During the next record the station manager burst in, laughing, shook my hand, called me a natural. My ego levitated. Calls came in asking to talk to me; the call screener said no. Still—this felt like my job.

Even after I’d wrung the OS program for all it was worth, I still visited Mrs. Jackson after school. Our school field trip to Disney World came around. She was a chaperone, but said she couldn’t watch both the students and her son. “If you’ll stick with him, I’ll pay for your trip.”

I was proud she trusted me. I still hung out with my friends; we just had Jr. Jackson with us, and we spoiled him rotten.

One day my social studies class was in the library. Another kid was in Mrs. Jackson’s office. I half-heartedly looked up an ancient president while watching her door. When the student left and Mrs. Clark looked away, I slipped inside.

Mrs. Jackson seemed pleased to see me. The hot plate was hidden; no soup this time. “Am I rescheduling, or do I get two visits today?”

“I’ll be back after school,” I said. “I’m here now because ol’ Izzy Streisand has us doing a report.”

Her face changed. “Close the door.”

“Can I be on the other side when I do?” Her look was my answer.

When I sat again, she said, “I like you, Bob.” She waited.

“I like you, too.”

“I think I’ve let my affection for you get in the way of teaching you.”

“I learn more from you over soup than I do in all my other classes,” I said. It was true.

“I’ve heard kids call you names,” she said. “I don’t think you’re heavy on purpose. I don’t think Mrs. Clark has a prominent nose on purpose. Think about how you feel when they call you names. Do you think Mrs. Clark doesn’t hear ‘Izzy Streisand’?”

“No,” I muttered.

“I don’t think you’d mock someone with cancer,” she said. “But you’re comfortable calling Mrs. Steiger, who has glaucoma, Banjo Eyes.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, defensive and small.

“That boy you said smells bad. Why do you think that is?”

I shrugged. She waited. “I dunno.”

Through the window I saw my class packing up. “I have to go,” I said, standing.

“Sit. I’ll handle Mrs. Clark. You don’t know if that boy doesn’t realize he needs deodorant, or if his family can’t afford it. If you knew his family lived in a car, would you tease him for being poor instead of for his odor? You showed more empathy for a convicted drug dealer than for your classmates.”

I had as much chance of convincing her I was innocent as the defendant had with the jury. We were both guilty.

She wasn’t finished. “The boys who bully you are cowards. They bully you to your face. You bully by proxy. Some cowardice is just closer to the surface.”

The bell rang. I bolted. “I’m going to be late for science.”

“Sit,” she said. “If you were any other student, I’d be angry. Because I’m fond of you, I’m disappointed. I thought you were kinder.” She wrote an excused-tardy slip and handed it to me. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Next week? It’s Tuesday.”

“I know. I’ll see you next week.”

I tried not to crumple. I clung to the hope this was soup detention, not expulsion.

The rest of the week I wandered after school. Wednesday I drifted to the library. When Mrs. Jackson saw me, she looked sad but firm and closed her office door. I wish I could say I felt bad about everything I’d said about people. The truth: I was miserable because I’d hurt her.

Monday in the cafeteria she leaned down and whispered, “I have chicken noodle today.” I wanted to hug her. Our soup chat was awkward at first, but by Tuesday we were back to normal. I know it made me happy; I think it made her happy too. I’d missed her.

After that, I tried not to judge people—less because I’d absorbed the lesson and more because I couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing her again. Of course I still did it when she wasn’t there.

The last week of school, the hot plate was out but the kettle wasn’t. A small saucepan of homemade vegetable soup simmered on a little fifth burner.

“Fancy,” I said.

“I thought we deserved something special.” Usually my mug sat next to hers on the shelf. Today only one was there. She caught my glance. “I have sad news, Bob. I won’t be back next year. Not enough interest in job shadowing here. They’re sending me to another school.”

“I want you to stay,” I said, smaller than I meant to sound.

“When Jane and Michael didn’t need Mary Poppins anymore, she opened her umbrella and let the east wind take her where she could do the most good,” she said. “If you ever needed me, you don’t anymore. I’m opening my umbrella.” She took a wrapped package from her file cabinet. “You were a bright point in my day as often as you were a thorn in my side.” She winked.

Inside was a big soup mug, much larger than the ones we used. She filled it and then poured some into her smaller mug. “A spoonful of soup helps the medicine go down,” she said, clinking mine.

This was pre-internet, pre-Facebook, pre-cell phone. After school ended, I lost track of her. Each afternoon when I got home, I made Lipton Cup-A-Soup and sipped from my mug while I watched I Love Lucy.

In my early twenties I went to two twelve-step meetings a week. Wednesdays: Adult Children of Alcoholics Al-Anon. Saturdays: V.O.I.C.E.S. (Victims of Incest Can Emerge Survivors). I was comfortable sharing at ACOA. Attending muy first V.O.I.C.E.S. meeting took nerve. My friend Trish, a longtime attendee, came with me. We smoked on the sidewalk while I worked up the courage to go inside. An unkempt woman walked up: hair a rat’s nest, no makeup, Frida Kahlo brows with a touch of Klingon, a plain burlap-colored dress.

I won’t tell you what I thought. I’m ashamed. I no longer announced my judgments out loud, but I still had them.

“Hi, Sarah,” Trish said. “This is my friend Bob. First time.”

Sarah smiled easily. “Welcome. If this is where you need to be, I’m glad you’re here. I’m going to grab a snack before Jerry’s are gone.”

When the door closed, Trish said, quietly, “She was fifteen when it started. She thought if she looked ugly enough he’d leave her alone. It didn’t work. She decided she wasn’t ugly enough and worked harder. After thirty years it’s hard to stop.”

I finally understood.

There was still no internet, so Monday I started calling. Lauderdale Lakes Middle School didn’t remember a Bobby Jackson or know where she was. I wrote the school board. No luck. I ran out of leads and had to give up. I wanted to tell her she was right—that I knew it now—and to apologize for being such an ass. Some itches can’t be scratched.

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At twenty-nine I worked at Waterbed City. I started in Accounting, banker’s hours, but everything moved to an automated system. Each night our twelve showrooms transmitted sales electronically—cutting edge then. My job became babysitting the computer overnight, and it needed a lot of babysitting. I spent hours on the phone with our lone programmer, slogging through his thick Colombian accent while he walked me through fixing his code. Remote login wasn’t a thing yet.

One morning after work I stopped at Food Giant for eggs, bread, and milk. One checkout lane open. I joined the line. A construction guy wheeled up behind me with a cart stacked with cases of Budweiser and Honey Buns. The weight pushed him forward; the cart bumped me, and I bumped the woman in front of me. I fumbled the milk and eggs; the bread hit the floor. I caught the breakables.

“Sorry!” the guy said. The woman in front of me smiled. “Well done. I’d have dropped them.”

I handed an apology to the guy behind me. “No harm done, friend.” The woman in front picked up my bread and handed it back. I looked at her and said, “Do you know how many years I’ve been trying to find you?”

Her smile cooled but held. “Do you drop bread a lot?”

“Aren’t you Bobby Jackson?” I asked.

“Not anymore. I’m Bobby Weissman.” Her eyes widened. “Bob Byrd!” She hugged me, and I hugged her harder, crushing the eggs between us.

“Why were you looking for me?” she asked.

“Do you have time to talk?”

“There’s a twenty-four-hour diner down the street,” she said. “We can have a cup of soup.”

The mug she gave me went with me to Camp Lejeune, to Okinawa, to Alabama. I lost it when my house burned down in 2017. Friends brought clothes and gift cards. The replacement mug I ordered myself.

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I don’t believe in ghosts.
Upon reflection, that’s like saying fish don’t believe in water.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but seriously--ghosts?
They’re on the shelf with zombies and the Tooth Fairy.

Still . . .

When I was a kid, my world was confined to playing with friends, riding my bike, Gilligan’s Island, and going to school. TV news was packed with coverage of the wind-up of the Vietnam War, the introduction of school busing, the vice president resigning, Watergate, the Wounded Knee occupation, and the Roe v. Wade decision. I was oblivious to all of it. Walter Cronkite was something to endure until Sanford and Son or The Waltons came on--much like church sermons were background noise until we got to the cookies and juice at coffee hour.

I tuned out the boring news my parents insisted on watching, but I loved the documentary specials they made us watch. We never missed The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (did you know he invented SCUBA tanks?) or the National Geographic Specials. One night there was a special on the tenth anniversary of some civil-rights legislation--the Voting Rights Act, maybe? I don’t know. Programs like that were everywhere during the school-busing debate.

This was more like the boring news than a Jane Goodall special. I barely paid attention, but one scene caught my eye: firemen aimed water hoses at a Black man who tumbled down the street ass over teakettle. To my ten-year-old eyes, it looked like a scene from The Three Stooges or The Little Rascals. I remember laughing at the slapstick antics.

Mom was livid. I couldn’t understand why she was so angry--I’d laughed at a comedy. She and Dad provided the context for what I’d just seen. The next clip on the program showed police dogs attacking protesters. I felt like scum for laughing earlier. A couple of months before, I’d invited two Black classmates to my tenth birthday party. Would the police and fire department do the same thing to Emmanuel and Martin?

The Petrelli family sent their kids to parochial school. Everyone else in our neighborhood went to Lloyd Estates Elementary for grades one through five, then on to middle school and high school. When I started fourth grade, Sister moved up to middle school.

The summer between fourth and fifth grade, I learned I wouldn’t be at Lloyd Estates in the fall. School busing had come to Fort Lauderdale. I was assigned to Rock Island Elementary--on “the other side of the tracks.”

My parents were nervous, and not without reason. An honest-to-God race riot had broken out at the high school next to Sister’s middle school. My former babysitter, a junior, was dragged down the hall by her hair. It would have been easy for my parents to get caught up in the race-baiting. Some of their friends did nothing but complain about the “inwards.” That’s what Mom and Dad said when they shared what our neighbors said to each other. It wasn’t until two years later that I realized they’d been saying “N-words” when quoting the neighbors.

So yeah, they were nervous when, only a few months after the riot, I was being bused to what used to be one of the “colored schools.” I was too naive to be worried. I was looking forward to riding to school instead of walking. I didn’t yet know that the bus stop was farther from our house than Lloyd Estates was.

I loved my teachers and classmates at Rock Island. That’s where I met my oldest friend, Phil, who’d attended a different elementary school.

If I ran late and missed the bus--or if the weather was especially bad--Mom drove me to school, though it was clear she’d rather be home in her bathrobe nursing a second cup of coffee. If I had a doctor’s appointment, she picked me up; otherwise, she left it to the school board to get me there and back again. After a couple of months she stopped worrying I’d have to choose sides in the “inevitable” race war that was turning out to be pretty evitable after all.

Mom was a new driver. Mrs. Pearson down the street had taught her how to drive and taken her to the DMV to get her license. She still lacked the confidence for interstate driving, and don’t even say “stick shift” unless you want to give her the vapors. I don’t know if it was her inexperience or the school’s location, but she really didn’t like driving to Rock Island.

On the last day of school I hugged my teachers goodbye. Miss Martin told me not to join the line at the buses. “Your mother’s picking you up today,” she said. “You’ll go to the drop-off area instead.”

Earlier that day the local news had cut into The Edge of Night with breaking news. Two high schools had experienced violent, racially motivated outbreaks that morning. Since then, three other schools had reported similar incidents. The violence was, so far, limited to high schools, but authorities feared blah blah blah. Mom pulled Joe out of Lloyd Estates, picked up Sister at middle school, and then headed to Rock Island--saving the best child for last.

I waited at the pickup area until Mom pulled up in our eggshell-colored station wagon. Sister sat next to her in the front seat. I opened the door behind Mom, and Joe slid over to make room for me

.

We pulled out of the parking lot onto the residential street that led to the main road. When Mom picked me up for doctor appointments we went down that street at a good clip, but today the traffic crawled. On either side of the street, people stood in their front yards shouting. Some raised fists. Others looked like they were trying to wave us back. Mom gripped the steering wheel so tightly I finally understood the phrase “white-knuckled.”

“Why are they shouting?” Sister asked.
“What are they shouting?” Joe added.
“Hush! I’m trying to concentrate!” Mom snapped.

I rolled down my window, hoping to make out what the people were saying. Just as Mom told me to roll the window up right now, mister, something slammed into my left side. Joe was on my right, sitting behind Sister. The only thing on my left was the car door. We were still creeping along at about ten miles per hour. No one was near enough to reach through the open window. Whatever it was, it hit me hard enough that I fell sideways on the bench seat. My head landed on Joe’s thigh.

“Cut it out!” he yelled.

Then we were all yelling.

Someone had thrown a brick-sized rock through the open window with enough force to leave an ugly bruise on Joe’s shoulder.

If I hadn’t been knocked over a millisecond earlier, the rock would have hit my head.

We couldn’t speed away; we were still stuck in the slow-moving traffic. Even now, my stomach knots remembering that slow crawl--waiting for the next rock, which fortunately never came.

When Dad got home we all started talking over each other, telling him what happened, even though Mom had already called him. Mom’s focus was on her fear. Joe’s was on his shoulder. Sister’s was on the person who threw the rock. Mine was on the people who’d tried to protect us by waving us back toward the school. It was easier to talk about that than what had really protected me.

But what had protected me? When Mom told her best friend about it, Mrs. Smith said, “That’s always been a bad spot. Last year some high-school boys drove up and down that street busting up mailboxes with a bat. Someone ran out to confront them, and the boys treated him worse than the mailboxes.”

“I remember,” Mom said. “How long did he linger--a week? Two?”

“I thought it was just a few days.”

If I believed in ghosts, I’d wonder if the man who died after being struck in the head saved me from a similar fate.

But I don’t believe in ghosts.

Jump ahead a few years. Gwen and I were newlyweds living in Lake Wales, Florida. Our first apartment was one of ten in a small two-story complex owned by a cranky but affectionate older couple, Harvey and Margaret--”Harve and Marg,” they insisted.

I worked as an assistant manager at an Eagle Family Discount Store, making barely more than minimum wage. The place wasn’t fancy, but it was clean and affordable.

Four months after we moved in, I wished our apartment was on the first floor instead of Unit 202, right next to Harve and Marg. Carting groceries upstairs, hauling laundry up and down, dragging trash down the stairs--I’m no Sherpa, dammit.

It was the middle of the night. I slept on the right side of our queen-sized bed. Gwen was snoring on my left. A burning pain tore through my right hip, jolting me awake. Something was holding my leg, pulling me out of bed. I tried to break free but found myself sliding ever closer to the edge of the mattress. And the pain! It felt like my leg was being yanked out of its socket.

My screams woke Gwen.

“Help me!” I yelled. My leg extended over the bed at a slight angle, as if whatever had hold of me was taller than average. Gwen grabbed my arm and pulled. I was a rope in a tug-of-war I never want to play again. Her grip loosened; she doubled her effort, now using both arms to keep me in bed. It was for nought. I slipped from her grasp and hit the floor.

I need to be very clear here: I wasn’t having a nightmare--unless Gwen and I shared it. The only thing we shared was that we both liked guys, but she didn’t know that. I did not fall out of bed. I was pulled out of bed. For three days I walked with a limp.

We didn’t go back to bed. Gwen refused even to enter the bedroom. I had to fetch her clothes the next morning.

I spent that day at work scanning the classifieds for another apartment. Once I was able to walk normally again, we broke our lease and moved out. When my in-laws asked why, Gwen said she wasn’t staying in a haunted house built on an ancient Indian burial ground.

I felt bad for Harve and Marg, but they were probably used to sudden departures. It was low-income housing; tenants came and went.

It was hard sneaking out of apartment 202 when the landlords lived in 201. Greg lived in 203 with his roommate, but they were both at work. We made too many trips down the stairs carrying all our belongings, including furniture. Each time we passed Greg’s apartment, I noticed the bright yellow eviction notice taped to his door: Three days to pay or vacate. Looked like Harve and Marg were about to have two new vacancies.

That night, Greg beat Harve and Marg to death with a hammer. He doused the apartment in kerosene and set it ablaze, thinking the fire would cover his crime. It didn’t.

The fire spread from 201 to 202. If we hadn’t moved out that day, would we have been bludgeoned like the landlords? Or burned to death? Those questions pale next to the main one: What the hell pulled me out of bed three nights earlier, ensuring Gwen and I would be far away from the carnage?

I don’t know. I put as much credence in guardian angels as I do in ghosts--and even if I did, I’d have to wonder why mine uses assault as its rescue of choice. That shelf was already crowded with zombies and tooth fairies. I may run out of room to keep ghosts on it, too.

A kid smart enough to get a 1600 on the SAT should also be smart enough to choose a college based on its majors, its location, and its ranking in those glossy magazines that come out every spring. Not me. If the letter started with Dear National Merit Scholar, I threw it in the trash unread. If it started with Dear Robert, I kept reading. Even then, I didn’t focus on academics or geography. I looked for exclusive schools, the kind where a score of 1400 would get you laughed at. I wanted small, private colleges, not giant universities where you’re just another face in the crowd.

How can someone who aced the SAT be such an idiot?

I applied to only one school: Eckerd College in St. Petersburg. It checked all my boxes. They took the time to learn my name when they offered me a scholarship (though it wasn’t the full ride other universities dangled in front of me). It’s a great liberal arts college. The first female Rhodes Scholar came from Eckerd. They were happy to have me, and I was happy to be had.

Eckerd was a waterfront college. My dorm faced Old Tampa Bay. I’ve lost track of how often we saw dolphins playing in the water. The shortest route from Fort Lauderdale to campus took me over Old Tampa Bay via the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

Several months earlier, a freighter had slammed into the southbound bridge during a heavy storm. It was morning rush hour. Several sections of the bridge at its highest point broke off and fell 150 feet into the bay. Tragically, several cars and a school bus went down with it. ECSAR—Eckerd College Search and Rescue—were the first on the scene, beating the Coast Guard and police.

The southbound span was closed permanently. Instead of repairing it, the state opted to replace the Sunshine Skyway with an even scarier bridge. In the meantime, the northbound span (a two-lane bridge) was converted into two-way traffic. When I drove over the Skyway the weekend before classes started, traffic slowed to a crawl, and I was stuck at the apex of Mt. Everest with a perfect view of the southbound span and its missing chunks. I already suffered from a severe fear of heights. The condemned twin of the bridge I was on only made it worse.

Before going to housing to get my room assignment, I met my mentor to plan my schedule. Alan was a middle-aged, retired Presbyterian minister who taught Western Civilization and religious history, both global and national. Eckerd used to be called Florida Presbyterian College, and several professors were retired clergy. Alan and I picked out my classes, most of which were required for all incoming freshmen.

The dorms were clustered together on Dormitory Row. No fraternities or sororities at Eckerd. Each dorm was two stories. Most were single-sex, but a couple were co-ed—women on the second floor, men on the first. Two rooms in each building were designated for single occupancy; everyone else had a roommate.

Alan told me I was in room 110 in Freeman House, smack in the middle of Dormitory Row. I went upstairs to see the singles room on the second floor. The R.A. had a room to himself. On the first floor some guy had a “single,” but his girlfriend lived there too, unofficially.

I knocked on the R.A.’s door and introduced myself. He had Joe College written all over him. He looked like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, but dressed like Fred—minus the ascot.

“Hi, Bob. Let me get your key. Kinda sucks to be in room 110. You’re closest to the payphone, so get ready to take a lot of messages from parents and girlfriends. Follow me and I’ll make sure the key works and everything is set.”

He left his room unlocked and we headed for the stairs. Before we got there, the building started thumping. I didn’t know speakers that big even existed. The bass sent nauseating pulses through my stomach.

“Can you do something about that?” I shouted.

“WHAT?”

“CAN YOU TELL THAT GUY TO TURN DOWN THE MUSIC?”

He gave me the side-eye and yelled back, “I’VE TRIED. MAYBE YOU CAN. IT’S YOUR ROOMMATE BLASTING THE DEATH METAL.”

Great.

Andrew didn’t hear us come in. He couldn’t have heard the toll of doom over the six-foot speakers on either side of his desk. He didn’t notice us until Shaggy tapped him on the shoulder. I would have screamed and jumped; Andrew just slowly turned his head and grinned.

“Sup?”

Shaggy turned off the stereo. “Andy, this is your roommate Bob.” Bloodshot eyes probed me. “Don’t turn that up past 5. I’m tired of telling you.”

The only reason I didn’t turn around and go home was because it meant driving over the Sunshine Skyway again—or what was left of it.

Andrew grinned at the R.A. and saluted. The second the door closed, he cranked the volume back up. He pointed to me, then to the unmade bed. He’d already claimed the other bed, which was also unmade but covered in LPs, cassette tapes, a cored-out apple (a homemade hashpipe, I would later learn), and what looked like a dead bat with its head bitten off—though it could’ve been a pair of socks.

I was deaf before I’d put the top sheet on. I had a pounding headache by the time the last pillow was cased. There was no point in telling Andrew I was leaving. I just pointed to myself, then the door, and waved.

He picked up the apple, struck a match, and put it to one of the holes. I didn’t yet know it was a pipe and wanted to see what he’d do next, but that would have to wait. I left to explore campus.

I ignored the Rec Center and the library. I walked by the little island where the campus chapel was located. I didn’t stop until I got to the housing office in the admissions building. I needed a new roommate, dammit.

It was standing-room only. A bored campus cop handed me a numbered ticket and I joined the other sixty-four people who also needed a new roommate, dammit. The line moved fairly quickly, which wasn’t surprising. We were offered neither sympathy nor new roomies. It takes only a few seconds to say, “Nope. Next!”

When I got back to Freeman House, Andy and one of his friends were wrestling in the room. Apparently, they had accused each other of Bogarting the doobie. I didn’t ask. Andy broke free, ran out to the fire extinguisher in the “In case of fire break glass” box, and came back blasting. He hosed down his friend, my bed, my desk, his bed, and his desk.

When the tank was empty, we all looked like snow sculptures in an igloo. I was resigned to a semester of hell.

Three days later I finished lunch in the college cafeteria—still, umpty years later, the best mac and cheese I have ever had, though I’ve never successfully duplicated it. I wrote home, waxing poetic about that mac and cheese. I got a letter back from Mom saying it was clear I was neglecting my studies and that I should stop fooling around and get to work.

On my way back to Freeman House, I saw the parking lot blocked by Campus Security and St. Petersburg Police cars, lights flashing. A small crowd had gathered. I asked a stranger what was going on. In answer, two cops escorted Andy out of the dorm in handcuffs. I didn’t know or care what he’d done—it was the most glorious perp walk of my life.

He was charged with dealing drugs out of the dorm room and expelled the next day. I was briefly looked at as a possible coconspirator, but my friendless nerd personality shut that down before it went too far.

Monday my new roommate moved in.

Yasuhira Aga was a Japanese exchange student enrolled in Eckerd’s ESL program. His English was limited to “Hello” and “Okay.” My Japanese stopped at sayonara. Sam, a bilingual Asian student in my Western Civ class, had been tasked with taking Yasuhira under his wing. He was with my new roommate and handled the introductions.

Yasuhira smiled and said, “Hello.” I smiled and said, “Sayonara.” We shook hands, and I pointed to Andrew’s old bed against the wall. He smiled and—unless I imagined it—bowed. I bowed back. Sam said something in Japanese; Yasu replied in kind. Then Sam told me he’d see me in class and left.

Yasu and I sat in silence, smiling awkwardly when one of us caught the other looking. At five on the dot I mimed eating and left for the cafeteria. Sam and Yasu showed up a few minutes later and sat together.

I smoked in those days. So did Yasu. I used the free matches that came out of the cigarette machine with each pack. Yasu was fancy—he had a Zippo lighter. Every time he refilled it, he splashed fuel all over. I could always tell when he’d topped it off by the smell in the room.

I was surprised he smoked. He was such a germaphobe. In all the time I knew him, his bare feet never once touched the ground. When he woke up in the morning, he slid into rubber Bugs Bunny shower shoes before getting out of bed. Then he’d light a Salem, take a single drag, and place the cigarette on top of his dresser with the cherry hanging an inch or so off the edge. After that he got into his Bugs Bunny bathrobe and headed down the hall to the shared bathroom.

When he came back, he picked up the cigarette, which had by then burned almost to the filter, took a second drag, and dropped it into an empty soda can. While dressing, he slipped his foot out of the shower shoe just long enough to thread it down the leg of his pants. As soon as it emerged, it went right back into the shoe. When fully dressed, he swapped the shower shoes for socks and his Bugs Bunny sneakers, careful never to let a naked foot touch the floor—apparently crawling with American germs.

1940s Bugs Bunny is my role model. He was a smart-ass, a dumbass, and a pain in the ass, and I loved him more than the vaudeville shtick of the later versions. That first morning I tried to mime that I liked Bugs Bunny too. This rattled Yasu, and he fled the room.

There were four wall-mounted, aimable cone lights in the room—two over each desk. I never touched Yasu’s. I aimed one of mine at the desk itself and the other at my bed, where I read in between homework and studying.

One day I came back from class to find all four lights aimed at Yasu’s side of the room. I was relegated to the shadows. The language barrier kept me from confronting him. I was a little miffed, though. I re-aimed my lights, only to come back the next day and find he’d re-re-aimed them.

I asked Sam to tell Yasu to go nuts with his lights but leave mine alone. It did no good. I didn’t have time to learn Braille.

I had just discovered public radio. The Miami station I’d grown up with mostly played classical music, with very little NPR programming. One Saturday night I tuned in for the first time to The Prairie Home Companion just in time to hear a song about how nasty the singer’s litter box was. I was hooked.

Yasu had a portable cassette player and tapes of various Japanese singers. It was all noise to me. There were no earbuds back then, but there were headphones—which Yasu refused to use. It seemed silly to have dueling speakers in the room (my radio didn’t even have a headphone jack), so I assumed we’d take turns. I waited until he’d played both sides of a tape, and when he took it out, I turned on the radio. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk. I thought an hour each was fair.

Yasu felt differently. He shoved in a fresh tape, hit play, and cranked the volume to maximum. I smiled at him and cranked my volume to maximum. My radio was louder.

He slammed off the cassette player, and I lowered the radio to normal. If looks could kill, I wouldn’t be writing this. He so badly wanted to curse me out but didn’t have the English vocabulary. He sputtered, jammed his feet into his Bugs Bunny shoes, and pointed a trembling finger at me.

“Freddy Kruger!” he shouted, and stormed out.

“Godzilla!” I shouted after him.

The next morning Yasu woke up, lit his Salem, took a drag, balanced it on the dresser, and left for the shower. I lit up too, but one drag wouldn’t get me out of the fog.

I finished mine, stubbed it out, stripped, wrapped a towel around me, and grabbed my shower kit. Just as I reached the bathroom door, it opened. Yasu came out, towel around his waist, wet black hair slicked down. We nodded curtly at each other. I stepped aside; he stepped past.

After my shower I dried off, wrapped my towel back around, and headed to the room.

[INSERT SUNBATHING PIC HERE]

Let me remind you: Yasu saw me go into the bathroom wearing only a towel. No way did he accidentally lock our room door on his way to breakfast or class or Miami or wherever. But I didn’t have time to wait for him to return. I trudged upstairs, and thank God Shaggy was in his room. He used the master key to let me back in.

As Bugs Bunny would say: Of course you realize, this means war.

The next day, I didn’t bother with a shower. As soon as Yasu traipsed off to the john, I left for breakfast—locking the door behind me. Then I went to class, hung out with friends, ate lunch, and returned to find him standing outside our door, still in his towel. He wasn’t exactly shivering, but he was not a happy camper.

I didn’t mean to trap him in the hall! Why didn’t he ask Shaggy to let him in?

That cured us both of the lockouts. I also learned to take my key with me even if I was only heading to the water fountain.

There was a coin-operated washer and dryer in the dorm—fifty cents to wash, twenty-five cents for each ten minutes of drying. I was a starving college student. Any spare quarters in my pocket were fed to the cigarette machine in the Rec Hall which regurgitate a pack of Benson & Hedges Menthol Deluxe.

So I didn’t do laundry until there was absolutely nothing fit to re-wear. Then I’d cram two and a half loads into one machine. The clothes in the middle didn’t even get wet, let alone clean. It took so long for the overstuffed dryer to dry that it cost me more than if I’d just done weekly loads. One time it overheated, tripped a warning buzzer, and half the dorm thought there was a fire.

After that, I still waited until it was either do laundry or go to class naked, but at least I broke it into normal loads. Live and learn.

One Sunday night I took the last load out of the dryer. I didn’t own a single hanger, so I folded everything into drawers. Yasu’s dresser was piled high with books, papers, and Japanese comics. One day while he was out I flipped through one. I couldn’t read it, but from the manga-style drawings it was either soft-core porn or a robot superhero. Maybe both.

As space on his dresser ran out, he struggled to find new resting spots for his cigarette while he showered. He’d run out eventually and be forced to clean.

Monday morning after my smoke, I stripped off my underwear and tossed them over the edge of my open dresser drawer. I grabbed my shower kit and key. Yasu slid into his Bugs Bunny shoes and reached for his Zippo and pack of Salems. He flicked the lighter several times without result. He reached for his bottle of fuel as I reached for the doorknob.

I’d been up very late the night before with laundry. Normally I took a scalding shower, but that morning I set it cooler, letting the spray hit my face to wake me up. Yasu was singing two stalls down.

I skipped shaving, put in my contacts, and headed back.

I opened the unlocked door to find black smoke rising from my underwear drawer. Yasu must have run out of space on his chest and had set his cigarette on mine instead. He’d misjudged how much of the cigarette to leave over the edge and how much to leave on the chest. Instead of burning down and leaving a black mark I’d get billed for, it fell into the drawer—onto every pair of undies I owned, freshly splashed with lighter fluid.

Some were singed. Others smoldered. Two were on fire.

I dropped the towel and ran for the fire extinguisher, but the case was still empty from when Andy turned me and his buddy into snowmen.

Back in the room, the flames were spreading. I grabbed an empty Big Gulp cup from the waste basket, sprinted to the sink, filled it, and dumped it on the fire. Refilled. Dumped again. Lather, rinse, repeat until the flames died.

I was catching my breath when Yasu returned. For once I knew how he felt when he wanted to curse but didn’t have the words. I sputtered, pointed to the charred Fruit of the Looms, then at him.

“HIROSHIMA!” I shouted.

“PEARL HARBOR!” he shouted back.

For the next several days, I went commando.

Yasu was rarely in the room after that. He spent most of his time with Sam.

Years later—okay, three months—the term ended. When Sam came by to help Yasu move out, I found out new roommate requests were finally being accepted. Yasu and Sam would be rooming together from then on.

When the next term started I had a new roommate, a sophomore named Raul. He had a Che Guevara haircut and facial hair. It was more of a fashion choice than a political statement. Raul kept to himself. I didn’t bother him, and he didn’t bother me. Neither of us forced the other to endure our music for more than half an hour at a time, and no one fiddled with the wall lights.

We got along fine by mostly ignoring each other. I had only one request of him: Please turn off Letterman when I have a test the next morning. He had only one request of me: If there’s a sock on the doorknob, don’t come in.

We had the cleanest doorknob in Freeman House. Not because the sock wiped the dust off, but because it was on so often dust never had a chance to settle. I honored Raul’s request for a week.

One night I had homework to do and the library was colder than a ten-inch dick up a snowman’s ass. I knocked on our door, pulled off the sock, and put my key in the lock. I knocked again and opened up.

There was a flurry of sheets as Raul and his girlfriend scrambled.

“Don’t cock-block me, man!” Raul shouted.

“Nuts,” I said. “Boink in her room for a change.”

“I can’t. She’s got a roommate.”

My eyes bulged like Ricky Ricardo’s. “Hello? I’m not the butler! Doesn’t she have any socks?” I pointed at the blushing girl hiding under the sheet.

I stepped into the hall long enough for her to get dressed. She rushed out mumbling an apology. I steeled myself for an argument with my third roommate and went back in.

No argument. Raul was contrite. We worked out a new arrangement. Three times a week I’d honor the sock rule. After that, I’d knock, count to ten, and then unlock the door.

The compromise worked. Raul and I weren’t friends, not really, but we were good roommates. And after the drug dealer and the arsonist, “good roommate” felt like Ivy League.

When a friend asked me where Moe and Curly were, I knew it was time to get a haircut.

I no longer went to pricey salons. It takes two minutes to run clippers over my head. These days, I shave my head myself, down to the scalp. I wasn’t quite ready for that back then. I still wanted people to see what hair I could still grow, so I kept it trimmed—but no buzz cut for me.

My cuttery of choice was Super Cuts, next to the supermarket where I bought my weekly groceries. When I got there, every chair in the waiting room was occupied. The little TV screen where you sign in said, “If you sign in now, your wait time is 45–60 minutes.” I couldn’t see the sense in waiting an hour for a two-minute haircut. I left without signing in and drove to Head Start, next to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet where I was a regular. Nowadays “all I can eat” is 75 cents worth of corn. If I’m being honest, I miss those buffets.

At Head Start, the waiting room was empty. There was only one stylist working. Fabio’s clone was in the chair, and she was just starting on him. Even with all that hair, the wait would be shorter than at Super Cuts. I signed in and sat down.

I’d just picked up the ten-year-old copy of People magazine but before I could open the cover the bell over the front door jangled violently. A fleshy woman jerked it too hard as she came in. Even as she was rushing inside, she was donning her Head Start apron.

“It’s only four-oh-one!” she shouted to the other stylist. “That doesn’t count as being late!” She looked over the waiting room, empty save for me. “Who’s next?”

I felt silly raising my hand, but raise it I did. She ignored me. What if the person who was really next had just gone to the bathroom and I was trying to cut in front of him? She went to the sign-in sheet, where mine was the only name written down. She gave it a glance and then looked at the room again.

“Bob?” she called out, scanning the space. I raised my hand again.

“Are you Bob?”

I admitted it, and she beckoned me back. She pointed to the three empty barber chairs behind her.

“Have a seat while I put my purse away.”

“Which chair?” I asked.

“The one at my station.” I could hear the eye roll in her voice.

“Um, which one is your station?”

She glared at the other stylist and said, “The one with the mirror missing from the drawer that nobody should be messing with.”

I had a one-in-three chance of guessing correctly, and by golly, I picked the right chair. I placed my glasses on the counter next to the combs and blade guards floating in Porta-Potty blue goo.

The stylist came over and looked critically at the mirror.

“We’re way too close. I won’t have room to work. You need to get up and move the chair back some.”

Until then, I’d assumed barber chairs were bolted to the floor. I got up, but let her move the chair, which didn’t win me any points. Seated again, with the sheet draped over me, she asked what kind of haircut I wanted. I told her to put a #2 blade on the clippers and go nuts.

Fabio’s stylist didn’t turn around but said, “Don’t tell her to go nuts. You’ll only regret it.”

I laughed politely and told my stylist to put on a #2 blade and stay sane.

She gave the other stylist a dirty look and then transferred it to me.

When I was a Hospital Corpsman stationed in the E.R. I had a drunk Marine as a patient. He’d gotten in a fight and had a gash in his earlobe. When I injected the syringe with lidocaine into his ear lobe. He hauled off and punched me.

I told him I’d be back after he passed out. My shift had ended when he woke up and discovered I’d sewn his ear to the pillow. Piss me off, will you?

I couldn’t help thinking of that when it became clear I’d pissed off the stylist. I forced a smile. “Ha ha. Just kidding. Go as nuts as you want.”

That seemed to satisfy her. She took out the clippers, fished a blade guard out of the blue goo, and snapped them in place.

Every barber since I was old enough to need one has always “mowed my head” with clippers, treating them like little lawn mowers for the weeds on my noggin. This woman didn’t trust the blades to do the job on their own. Instead of using them like a lawn mower, she treated them as a scythe. She hacked away at my head like she was making sure my bleeding scalp wouldn’t try any funny business.

“I’m Jan,” she said in between jabbing the clippers against my scalp. I lied that I was pleased to meet her. “I’ve been working here for two weeks.”

I grimaced at the next jab. “You don’t say.”

“It’s true. I graduated from cosmetology school last month.”

I think she wanted to show off her many hair-cutting skills. She abandoned the clippers and switched to scissors.

“I’m new, so I’m trying to build up my clientele.” She glared at the other stylist again. “But I guess you already belong to Denise.”

Remembering the ear sewed to a pillow I said, “No, no! It’s my first time here. The wait at Super Cuts was nutsy cuckoo. That’s where I usually go.”

“Not anymore. This is where you usually go now. You’re my first regular customer. Be sure to ask for me next time you need a haircut.”

I made a noncommittal noise.

She asked what I had been doing all day, and I made something up. She said, “I went to get an apartment, but the landlady said I needed a month’s rent in advance. So I figured I’d better come to work. The hourly wage here sucks. My paycheck covers only half my bills. I’m going to need to make some good tips to come up with that first month’s rent.” She smiled coquettishly at me.

I made another noncommittal noise.

“That’s why it’s important to have regular clientele. They always tip ten dollars or more when they’re satisfied with your work.” She stopped clipping and pointed the scissors at me again. “You’re gonna be real satisfied with your haircut today.”

I’d never been the victim of a barbershop shakedown before. Ten dollars in addition to the Eighteen bucks for the haircut came out to $840 an hour. My usual standby response of “bite me” wouldn’t do—those scissors were still within stabbing distance.

“Do you want me to do your eyebrows?”

I get this done every time I get a haircut. I don’t want to look like a Klingon.

I said “Yes, please” without thinking. Invariably, the stylist takes a comb and fluffs up the eyebrow. The comb acts as a guard, lest the eyebrow be completely removed. When the wayward hair peeks through the teeth of the comb, the stylist grazes the comb with the clippers to tame the woolly beast.

I’d forgotten Jan used the clippers like a hatchet. She took the comb and, instead of lifting the eyebrow hairs, used it to push the rest of my head back.

“HEY!” she yelled. “Relax your face! Why are you scrunching up?”

“It’s hard to relax my face when you’re pushing my eyeballs out the back of my head! I thought you only did that kind of thing when people missed a tip payment.”

She continued to smash my eyeballs with the comb while she trimmed my eyebrows, then announced she was finished. She handed me my glasses.

“How do you like it? Best haircut ever, right?”

All I could see were white spots floating and bursting in front of me, so I had no idea what I looked like. I assured her it was just what I wanted and got out of the chair before she whipped out a straight razor.

She led me to the register.

“See? I knew you would be super satisfied. Cash or charge?”

I tossed a twenty at her—which included a two-dollar tip instead of my usual 20%.

“Charge? I wouldn’t let you within a hundred yards of my credit card. My next statement would have First, Last, and Security on it from Mafioso Apartments.”

She was too busy scowling at the twenty to hear me.

“This is my tip? You’re my regular clientele!”

She was no longer armed.

“Regular clientele? The only way I’d come back to see you is to pick you out of a lineup! You’re a freaking menace! Who taught you how to cut hair—Torquemada? Who’s the boss here, Johnny Sack? Little Carmine? You want a tip? Here’s a tip: If you really want to cut hair for a living, do it at a funeral home—your customers won’t care if you hack their heads like a lumberjack!”

That seemed like the mic drop to accompany storming out in a huff. I huffed, but before I could storm, she said:

“Wait! The back isn’t even. Sit back down and I’ll fix it.”