The DAMM Truth

Wendy is lucky to have me.  I’m just going to come out and say it.  Now, I am much MORE fortunate to be married to her and thankfully she has not come to the same conclusion about this tremendous inequality.  Landing a fish as excellent as my wife was challenging, but cleaning that fish and encrusting the marriage metaphor with bread crumbs was the real ordeal.

Because of sheer laziness, I’m going to leave that last paragraph the way it is, and instead of re-working it, I’m just going to acknowledge how wrong it is for me to compare my wife to a gill-breathing, edible sea creature.  Also, referring to marriage as an “ordeal” will not go unnoticed.  In the strictest use of the word, marriage shouldn’t be likened to an “ordeal”.  Marriage is life, so let’s just put that whole awkward first paragraph behind us.

Getting to marriage for me wasn’t easy, but it turns out it wasn’t hard either.  I had worked HARD to become Wendy’s boyfriend.  I put in the time, I learned the names of her family—thank you flash cards— and even learned what a charger is on a dinner table (hint: it is neither used to replenish battery energy nor is it the bitchin’ Dodge muscle car). I was fully vested in this relationship, to borrow a term from my non-existent financial advisor. 

Pulling the trigger on getting engaged, though the next step on the flowchart, was being scheduled on a calendar that I had yet to buy.  Although Wendy and I had been successfully dating for over a year-and-a-half, I just didn’t think I was at a place in my life where I was ready to pull another person into my chaos.  Wendy had her life and path together.  I was living in a state of perpetual uncertainty, with one foot in responsibility and the leg that foot was attached to, in addition to the rest of my body, residing confidently in a circus of the unknown.

The answer I had for most of my important life questions was “I don’t know.”  “Are you and Wendy going to get married?” I don’t know.  “Are you going to sign a record contract?” I don’t know.  “Are you going to get a real job?” I don’t know.  “Are you going to have the soup or the salad?” I don’t know.  These are all questions I have answered and right or wrong, I’ve accepted them.  In retrospect, I should have chosen more salads.

I was uncomfortable deep down.  Picturing a dark fork in the road, I didn’t feel comfortable asking a person who had their life incredibly together to venture down the direction of music and art with me, though she cheered me on to do so.  That should have been a clue.  But my family didn’t have Clue.  We were more of a Monopoly clan. 

The one thing that I was sure of, was that I loved Wendy.  Before I could really ever consider marriage, I felt I needed to make myself better.  She didn’t care about any of that, she only wanted to be with me.  But in the simple machine that is the male ego, I could not get the wheel to turn past not having my life together. 

Meeting Wendy’s parents was a bit intimidating.  Wendy, being an over-achiever from a family of over-achievers, wanted to show me off to her gathered clan.  I felt like she was an 8-year-old proudly showing off the garter snake she had caught in a pickle jar.  I imagined her mother, smiling calmly as one would do as a hostage at gunpoint, praying for the lid to stay on and visually measuring how big the air holes were vs. the size of the snakes head.

Of course Wendy had told me all about them and they were impressive and I wanted to make a good impression.  How would they accept a slacker simpleton into the ranks of straight ‘A’ town?

When I met Wendy’s father Tony for the first time, I was a little nervous.  I was the drummer in the beat-up jalopy who was currently dating his little girl.  He was a nuclear engineer.  No kidding.  I barely pressed together enough passing college credits to complete a communications major—a major that emphasizes the skills needed to pass information from one person to another like 99.9% of the world’s population does every day without a degree.  The communications discipline is one step up from having a degree in manners, and I’m going to shake—the possibly irradiated—hand of a man whose calculations keep reactions like you see on the sun in check.  (Speaking of “in check”, Tony’s chess skills make mine look like I’m playing marbles.  I could literally make the first move against him with any piece on the board and he’d cringe a little and ask me if I’m sure I would like to do that.)

Wendy’s mother Tish could have run a school, and has, on taking care of children.  She had raised four, and Wendy told me how organized she was.  On vacations each child, and I assume Tony, would have pre-packaged outfits for any type of weather.  The order in which she had arranged her home was so intuitive that ANYONE from all over the world could have walked in and found exactly what they were looking for in the cupboard on the first try.  For years she masterminded their community’s massive, multi-day bazaar at the high school seemingly single handedly.  A mind that organized was sure to see through any butt kissing I would bring to the table.

Luckily for me, the previous boyfriend had set the bar low enough for me to comfortably step over.  I didn’t know if it was the “please,” and “thank you” I said or if it was simply my lack of pony-tail, they seemed pleased with Wendy’s roster change and I began to get comfortable with Wendy’s family.  I could see much clearer that I would be able to spend the rest of my life with Wendy and therefore attached to her family. 

Wendy and I had many conversations about moving forward in our relationship, but I would make excuses.  They were excuses made from fear and thus inconsistent.  I need to get a better job, Wendy was still in school, then it was the band and finally I was just stonewalling.  I had finally got my own little apartment after spending a couple years living with my best friend Dave and his lovely wife Tessa, also my very good friend.  Despite me living with them for such a long time, they still didn’t have a problem hanging out with me and one day, Dave was headed to the mall and wanted to see if I wanted to tag along.

All was going well, we were talking about video games and walking through the main hallway when Dave stopped and immediately changed the subject.  “Steve, when are you going to ask Wendy to marry you?” he asked while planted firmly in the hallway.  He wanted an answer.

“I don’t know man, I just don’t think I’m ready,” floated out of me and I hoped it would be enough to just get us walking again.

“You’re never going to do better than Wendy.  She’s amazing.  What are you waiting for?” He asked, still planted in position.

“I… I don’t know,” and I heard my answer.  Indeed Steven, why don’t you know?  What is there to know?  I was starting to work it out.  Gears in my head broke free and the dust in my mind started to fall from the grooves and axels as my mind evolved and began to change right there in Bellevue Square, by the giant foam-ship play-structure that gave the entire East side of Lake Washington the flu every year.

“Well, the time has come Steve, either ask her to marry you or cut her loose.  Be a man,” he said, not in a mean way, but as the friend I trusted to steer me in the right direction if I ever lost my path.  He gave me a minute to respond, and when I didn’t speak right away, he flashed his eyes at me to remind me that he was waiting for what was in my brain to come out my mouth-hole in the form of English words concerning our conversation.

I felt a switch flick in my head, not like a kitchen light switch, but more like a giant handle switch you would ask your hunched-back assistant to throw to bring your crime against mother-nature to life.  Words began to form poorly on my lips and they spilled out of my mouth like too much ice from a water pitcher.

“I… I wiwl mewwy… I will marry her.  I will marry Wendy,” I had gotten it all out.  Once more with confidence, “I WILL MARRY WENDY.”

“Good,” Dave said as if we had just settled on a price for a breeding goat.

“And I want you to be my best man,” I said, smiling up at the person who may as well have cured me from leprosy. 

“No way,” he said flat out. 

“What?!?!” I asked, genuinely surprised.

“Do you see what it’s like when you want someone to do something important with you and they refuse?” Dave asked as we began walking again.

“You’re a jerk Dave,” I said, the irony not lost on me.

“Am I?” he asked in almost an existential tone. 

“So what’s next?” I asked, looking for Dave to direct us to the store he had come to the mall to visit.

“Now you buy a ring, and oh look,” he said gesturing to the entire mall, “we happen to be surrounded by jewelry stores.”

I don’t know if it was orchestrated.  I don’t think it was and frankly I don’t care.  Dave had given me an incredible gift that afternoon.  He had pushed my car from the snow-bank and gotten me back on life’s highway.  Wait, he had unplugged my toaster and removed the stuck piece of bread.  No, he slapped me across the face with the hand of courage.

So we immediately began looking for rings.  Luckily the subject had come up several times about what Wendy liked.  If I was going to spend two week’s salary on a ring, I wanted it to be what she wanted, and we had had the discussion enough for me to know what to look for.

I was dressed as a scrub.  I had fringy jean shorts and a vomit yellow t-shirt that had five cartoon children lined up on the front with the giant words: Safeway Kids.  The children all looked like they had bloody knees and they had rubbed the blood on their cheeks.  Had they not been cartoon children, I would have called CPS, because something was just wrong about them. 

This outfit was perfect to shop for big ticket items in.  Salespeople tend to prejudge how a person will buy based on how they look, and I looked one urine stain away from being homeless.  This tells a salesperson to not awkwardly start with jewelry that cost more than the value of the customer’s car, which in my case was worth as much as the gasoline in the tank.  I appeared as though if an engagement ring design could be settled upon, I would possibly attempt to barter for it with yard work and/or box tops.  When I walked in, I wanted them to look at me and then pull some of the higher end pieces off the floor and put them in the safe.

Mission accomplished.  I walked into Friedlander’s (who offer many quality products and employ many wonderful professionals) and saw several rings I liked.  The sales lady was helpful and I wrote down several models that I thought Wendy would really like. 

When I walked out of the store, Dave let me know what was going on while I had my head down copying numbers to the back of the business card. 

“Don’t buy there man,” said Dave.  He explained that a managerial person walked by about fifteen feet away from the salesperson and made eye contact with her.  They then lifted their head and nodded slightly asking silently if the sales person thought I might be a good buying prospect.  At that point Dave explained that the woman got a look on her face like the manager was crazy to even ask that question, pointed at me while my back was turned with one hand and gave him the thumbs-down while shaking her head in disbelief.  They then both shared a silent laugh at my expense.

Next up was Ben Bridge jewelers (yes, the name will be important later).  Dave and I went in together and we were greeted by Jaleh, a lovely professional who treated me with much more dignity than I deserved.  She was even a good sport about Dave and me joking around and had a good sense of humor.  I was pretty sure I saw the ring I wanted right off the bat, and asked Jaleh to hold it for me while I checked one more store.

I was sure that the ring at Ben Bridge was the one and by the time we made it upstairs to Zales, I was just about finished with shopping.  Dave and I walked in together with less than cheery dispositions.

“Can I help you sir?” asked a perky sales associate.  We were the only customers in the store at the time. 

“Well, I guess I need to see your cheapest engagement ring,” I said, as I shuffled up to the counter appearing to be there against my will.

The sales person, not breaking out of the script, “Ahh, you’re getting engaged!  Congratulations!”

“Yeah, whoopee for him,” Dave dripped sarcastically.

“Uh, great!” the salesperson said a bit confused, “Do you know what your soon-to-be-fiancé would like?”

“Well, she’s a big, homely, troll of a woman, I don’t have a clue what she wants and frankly I don’t care,” I start in a slightly bitter tone.  “BUT, she is carrying my baby so I suppose we should make it legitimate.”

The young associate couldn’t find a hint of a smile on my face but instead was met with an expression of bitter disappointment.  Dave jumped in on cue.

“We don’t know if it’s really your baby, it could be anybody’s,” Dave said, as if to try and stop me from making another mistake, “literally anybody’s.”

“Shut up Dave, she says she isn’t cheating anymore, let’s just get this ring and go get high,” I shot back at him.

I turned to the sales associate, “I really don’t need anything special but it will need to be a big ring.”

The associate looked nervous and had a hard time making eye contact with us.  The performance was holding, but I didn’t want to take it too far.  I scanned the cases nearest me and pushed my finger down on the glass, “none of these look like they’re going to fit her chubby little fingers.”

“Uh, well, um, do you know her ring size?” asked the sales associate, clearly flustered.

“Big, like big big.  What would you say Dave?  You’re familiar with my lady’s fingers,” I asked Dave who didn’t miss a beat.

Clad in shorts and sandals, Dave kicked his foot out and up onto the edge of the display case like a ballerina at a warm-up bar.  “There you go,” he said, pointing to and wiggling his big toe.

I leaned in to give Dave’s suspended foot a closer look.  “That looks close to the diameter it would need to be but her finger is a bit longer.”

“Well, that goes without saying,” Dave scoffed, “whose fingers look like big toes?”

“I’ve heard of some transplants for people who have lost thumbs, but I haven’t heard of any ring-finger/toe transplants,” I replied curiously, as if I couldn’t wait to stop by the library to see if toes had been swapped for other fingers.

“You,” began the sales associate, “you guys are messing with me.”  It was said as a statement but rang like a question.

“Messing with you how?” I stared straight at the associate with a face made of stone.  “Mess with you like an unplanned pregnancy with a woman who might be part ogre?  Mess with you like the shame of having that ogre woman cheat on you repeatedly?”  I then let my eyes glass over into a 10,000 mile gaze off into what surely would have been a troubling future—if any of it were true, which it wasn’t.  “So would any of these cheap rings be big enough to slide over my buddy’s big toe?”  I said as I came to.

Flustered, the associate took a long look at me, opened her mouth and then shut it.  She tried not to laugh at the painful picture I was painting of my life.  She narrowed her eyes trying to catch one final glimpse of the truth, which I had buried deep, deep inside me, just behind the duodenum.  “Something like that would need to be custom ordered,” She explained.

“No dice,” said Dave removing his leg from the case, “anytime you hear the word ‘custom’ you’re looking at over $30.”

“Yep!  Sounds too expensive,” I declared loudly, “Thank you for your time madam.  Dave, let’s go find a burrito or corndog or something.”

Dave and I turned and left as the associate called after us for one last shot at selling us an engagement ring sized for a gorilla.

We made our way back to Ben Bridge where Jaleh was waiting for us.  She had the ring boxed up and looking pretty.  “Did you find anything else you liked?” she asked of our trip to their competition.

“That last place was weird,” said Dave shaking his head, “they weren’t able to handle our request.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t like how Wendy was being portrayed,” I added.

“You were pretty harsh with all that ‘knocked up’ talk,” said Dave. 

“I thought your sandaled foot on their display case was a nice touch,” I said.

Jaleh looked from me to Dave smiling and shaking her head.  “I’m so glad you found what you wanted here and didn’t do here what I think you did to that last store.”

“Yeah, they didn’t deserve that,” I said, “but you only buy an engagement ring what, two, three times in your life?”

We did make it to the video game store.  I know some of you wanted to make sure we remembered.  We bought one of the Madden football games.

Walking through the mall with the ring felt good.  I could physically feel my life moving on to the next phase and out of a fog.  There was purpose and excitement.  The world seemed more vibrant.  Everything seemed better.  You know, as I passed the window of The Gap I could have sworn that the sign in the window had said 20 percent off of jean shorts when I had walked in, but now almost as if it were magic… 25 percent off!

“So how are you going to ask her?” Dave inquired while swinging his game disc around in its plastic bag.

“It’s going to be a surprise,” I answered.

“Really?  You’re not going to just have it sitting out on the counter for her the next time she comes over?” Dave asked.  He really is an artist, and although he makes his living with drawing and computers, his greatest medium has always been sarcasm.

“Alright, I’ll tell you how I’m going to do it, I’m going to need a little help,” I said.  And then I told him the plan that I had been quietly putting together ever since the day I met her.

 

 

To be continued in Part Two: The Setup

In Part Two:  A tiny ring is hard to hide, I talk it over with the families and paranoia sets in.

I feel a great deal of pride when I watch my son riding his bicycle down our street with his normally jolly face tense with determination.  Zach pedals with purpose and will, weaving in between bumps and stray rocks, careful not to go too fast.  Careening along in his shark-finned helmet with the feeling of freedom that short range transportation can provide, I can’t help but think one more thing about his riding.  He really sucks.

Don’t get me wrong, this is only by comparison of what I remember of kid’s biking skills and my own from my youth, and my son’s sucking is by design.  We’ve worked hard as his parents to terrify him of taking too many chances on the bike and watch him with every pump of his pedals.  At seven, he’s riding well, steady, with good stops and starts.  There’s really not much more I can teach him… No, that isn’t true, there is much more I could teach him, but it’s all stuff I don’t want him to know.

When Zach shows me a trick of taking his feet off the pedals for almost an entire second, I act as though he just did it on a tightrope over a swimming pool filled with rattlesnakes to show him how impressed with the trick I am and how dangerous I thought it was so he won’t do it again, or up the stakes with something more thrilling.  But the kid that lives in the back of MY mind is asking the parent part why I didn’t tell him the next step of the trick, which is to place both hands on the front of his seat to push his body up and off to let the bicycle glide until it crashes.

Things are just different now.  Every kid wears a helmet to ride a bike now, but if any of us from the old neighborhood would have ridden through the streets of Kittitas wearing a bicycle helmet it would have been greeted with confusion, then laughter and finally scorn, in that order.  As in: “What’s that on your head?” then while laughing, “you know you aren’t riding a motorbike right?” and before any riding with the rest of the kids would take place, “take that stupid thing off and don’t put it on again.”  This would be from the adults.

I didn’t know one kid that owned a helmet for riding a bike, in fact I didn’t even think there was a bicycle helmet in the Kittitas Valley apart from those for the bicycle motocross team in Ellensburg.  Those helmets were required by rules, rules we were sure were written by the manufacturers of bicycle helmets.  We felt sorry for those kids.  We’d say things like, “I’d join that BMX team in a second if I didn’t have to wear one of those dorky helmets.”

It is a wonder that none of us from the neighborhood ended up in a brain trauma center, drooling on half of an ice cream sandwich as we watched the People’s Court for the rest of our lives.  However, donning safety gear to protect the most important organ in your body wasn’t just a silly idea, it was just not done.  But now, in Seattle, I would imagine that Child Protective Services has been called about a child repeated riding a bicycle without a helmet.

(I just looked it up.  I didn’t find a story about helmetless kids and CPS in Seattle, but I did find one in Tennessee.  If there’s a news story about CPS picking up a kid for riding without a helmet in Tennessee, then it means it happens in pretty conservative areas of the country.  So it may be safe to say that in the so called “Nanny State” of Washington, I won’t find a news story about it because it is too common.  Just like you wouldn’t find a story about swearing in public in New York.)

I have often joined my son on a bicycle in our cul de sac without a helmet and my son looks at me as if I had started smoking.  “DAD! You don’t have a helmet on!” he’ll yell.  “What would happen if you hit your head?”

“Well, then I guess I’d still be dumber than your mother,” I’d say and then I would chase him around on the bike.  I usually don’t go into all the talk about how “in my day, we didn’t need helmets” talk because we did.  We needed a whole lot more than helmets some times.  What we really could have used was a giant pit filled with foam like you see gymnasts practice landing in.  Actually, my neighborhood could have used three of those pits.

Summer days were extra-long in Kittitas when I was growing up.  Today’s summer days are about a third as long as the days back then, because of inflation and probably climate change.  You get less of everything now.  If you don’t believe me, the next time you’re in a grocery store, check out a half-gallon of ice cream.  That half-gallon is now 1.78 quarts, if you’re lucky, it might be 1.5 quarts now.  Everything is getting smaller, and that includes the summer days.

Back then, the days stretched out and may have included two lunches, but we were able to fill them with all kinds of amazing activities, many of which included the use of our bikes.

Behind my parent’s house was my good friend Scott’s place.  He lived there with his mom June, his older brother Russ and Scott’s twin sister Sherry.  There was a dirt single-lane alley between our two properties that bisected the entire block and continued across 5^th Street and beyond the main highway that ran through the town, which was Patrick Avenue.  The alleyways in Kittitas were generally empty and often used by kids to cross the town relatively unnoticed.

We raced all over town with our bicycles of varying sizes and shapes.  Nobody really judged you for the bike that you had.  You only needed to be able to catch up.  I had sported a green banana seat job for years, with a set of what Harley enthusiasts would refer to as “ape hangers”.  These are long handlebars that gave the illusion of better control but mostly just ended up impaling your stomach more thoroughly if you crashed on them.

But, in a town like Kittitas, a kid is going to wear every part of a bike down in just a couple years, and by the time I was ten, my bike situation was due for an upgrade.  My birthday always fell on a day about a week after school let out for the summer and although I never thanked my parents for conceiving me in late September, I really should have.  What better way to kick off the summer than with a celebration of your birthday?

For this birthday, I received a midnight-blue Univega BMX bike.  It was beautiful, had all the safety pads, which back then was all the safety a kid needed (not true), and I loved it.  It didn’t have mag wheels, which I preferred, but it was unique and a solid bike.  I loved it.  I washed it more than I washed my last car (eight times).

One afternoon, many neighborhood kids were out in the alley, constructing ramps for us to launch our bicycles off.  The engineering of these ramps had been painstakingly done through trial and error.  After a piece of my father’s good plywood was hauled from our garage, it was place against an un-split round of firewood, creating an inclined plane with which, if we applied ourselves enough speed, we could sail several feet through the air before landing triumphantly into all the glory your own mind could think up.  However, every ramp needed to be tested.

The way to properly test a ramp or “jump” as we called it, was that one of the older kids would lay the plywood on the big round of firewood and then enthusiastically look to the youngest and most naïve riders around, clap hands and ask, “Which one of you kids wants to try this awesome ramp first?”

A sucker volunteers and is selected and gleefully pilots his bike a good distance away, before being counted down by the older kids who have varying points of observation around the ramp.  The unsuspecting test pilot then rockets toward the ramp, hits the plywood and one, possibly two things go horribly wrong.

The board would break for one reason or another or it would buckle enough that the rider’s front tire would stop and all of the mass times speed business would need to be conducted at a different end of the bike, which meant the surprised rider would fly over the handlebars and onto the unforgiving gravel alley—if they were lucky!  And they usually weren’t.  There were several crashes involving the “chicken” effect as it’s called in kid circles, or what we adults know as “logical reasoning”.  That was when the kid’s brain matures just enough in the split second before hitting the ramp and sends a message to the rest of the body:

.9 seconds

“What the hell are you doing?” asks the brain.

“Being awesome!”  says the kid.

.6 seconds

“Listen, you gotta stop this… are you on a bike?  Is that a… Is that some kind of ramp?!?” the brain asks.

“I’m going to fly!” says the kid.

.4 seconds

“I don’t have the pathways in here for the type of complex mathematical equations needed to tell me if that ramp is going to hold or to calculate the odds of you actually coming out of this situation okay, I mean, I literally just activated in your head from all this adrenaline but this looks like a bad idea,” says the brain.

“GOOD IDEA!” says the kid.

.2 seconds

“I’ve got some pretty developed DNA in here with thousands of years of evolutionary data claiming that a situation like this is not going to end in your favor.  Also, selfishly, I would prefer to continue sending you new information and learning new things.  I just don’t see that happening if you go through with this jump.  You’re not even listening are you?  The ramp is getting closer and you aren’t stopping.  I gotta find some way to stop you from…  HEY DUMBASS!  LOOK OVER THERE AT THAT REALLY SHINY THING!”

“What?” says the kid missing the ramp with their tire and thus living to fly another day, like after THEY talk some poor bastard into testing a ramp.

But after the crash test dummy hits the ramp and inevitably wipes out, the older kids solve the ramps issues with reinforcements or a few simple tweaks.  Then it is generally deemed safe enough for all to use.  After all, who’s going to be stupid enough to test it after the first kid?

This particular day was no different.  The older kids included Russ, who was about four-to-five years older than my ten and another boy Russ’ age, Jeff, who was the son of the mayor of Kittitas, but we didn’t hold it against him.  They were definitely the leaders of the activities in the alley that day as we set up to do some serious jumpin’.

We had set up multiple ramps in the alley, so you could hit one after another and not have to turn around and keep hitting the same ramp.  None were nearly as big as the main ramp though.  At its zenith, the main ramp was probably twenty inches off the ground and we were measuring flights of 6 to 8 feet.  I think it was Scott that asked if I wanted to take the next logical step and lay my body down at the end of the ramp so that he could jump over me.  Well, of course I would.  Nobody was landing anywhere near that close to the ramp.

I watched Scott sail over me, and soon after I was sailing over Scott.  Then Scott was lying next to me, and soon his sister Sherry joined us.  There would be four of us lying side by side, tight against each other and as close to the ramp as we could get.

Someone had jumped 5 of us at one time and everyone was really impressed, until Russ verbalized what we thought was crazy.  “I want to jump everybody,” he said.  Meaning that he wanted to take to the air over as many neighborhood kids as he could and hopefully, land without crashing or rupturing anyone’s spleen with the descending wheel of a bicycle.

All eyes were on Russ as the stunt started to take shape in his head.  He held counsel with Jeff and then spoke aloud to the group.

“I’m going to make the greatest jump you’ve ever seen and I’m going to do it right here and right now in this alley,” Russ explained with great confidence. “I want to and can jump ten people and we are about 4 people short.  I need you guys to go find 4 more bodies.”

“Should we ask Mo—“ Sherry asked, before being cut-off by Russ.

“NO!” said Russ, “NO MOMS, I mean, DUH.”

I was back in five minutes with my unsuspecting eight-year-old sister Somer, who was friendly with Sherry, so she didn’t need much coaxing.  I got her a relatively safe slot after the ramp as well, from the ramp it would be Scott, myself, Somer, Sherry, and then the rest of the group.  Jeff, would spot at 5^th Street, in case one of the seven cars that would use the street that day would do so at the same instant Russ crossed it picking up the necessary speed he would need to clear 10 kids lying side-by-side.

Before taking our places behind the ramp, there was a last minute safety concern.  Russ had made the judgement call that in order to pick up enough speed to clear all ten kids, he would need the fasted bike to do the jump.  That meant he needed the nicest bike, or at least the newest.  Everyone had a good bike, but my Univega was the newest, had its safety padding and would be able to handle a jump that far.  However, I had only owned that bike for two weeks and I was certain that my folks saved up for that bike.  It would be a shame for my beautiful bike to suffer any consequences, and then for me to suffer similar consequences when I explained it to my parents.

Ultimately I think my bike was only chosen because it had new hand grips with no exposed sharp handlebar tubing to impale Russ.

I held out for several minutes but finally I agreed to let my Univega be a part of this exciting piece of history.  I just held my breath and took my place among the other nine.  So much could go wrong but only one thing could go right.

It was decided that it was probably safer to just cross 5^th street one time because of the freak chance of an automobile driving through, so there would be no trial run of this jump.  We would hear “GO!” from Jeff, and then hear the mad pumping of desperate teenager on a gravel alley, then the low “thump-thump” of the wheels hitting the plywood.

Everything slowed down as I saw my bike appear off of the ramp.  Russ was moving extremely fast and one could easily calculate that he was going to clear all 10 kids.  All of our heads moved to get a view of Russ’ landing, but he just kept flying.  None of us could have imagined he could have jumped as far as he did.  If we had imagined that distance, surely one of us would have moved the second ramp, which Russ was not planning to take, let alone land on, but unfortunately it was looking like the ramp was going to play into the last part of the jump somehow.

He landed hard about a foot from the next jump, the wheel of my bike, barely in control as the incline for the next ramp immediately began.  Did I say “barely in control?”  I meant to say out of control.  That second ramp wasn’t built to be snuck up on and when hit at the speed Russ was traveling at, fell apart.  Russ had landed the first jump, but the second ramp was too much for him and the cheering was quickly sucked back up and held tightly in our lungs until the outcome of what was surely to be an epic bike wreck unfolded.

Russ appeared to be thrown clear.  No ragdoll limbs heading in directions they weren’t supposed to and not much blood.  I liked to think that it was my bike that kept him safe through all of it.  It didn’t, but I still like to think that.

My bike took a nasty spill and flipped end over end before skidding to a stop on its handlebars, where it sustained the bulk of the damage.  The bike was fine.  It had some deep scratches but I was proud that my bike had made the jump.

That was the last jump of the day.  Jeff wheeled my bike back to me as would an excited official present a trophy.  Scott and Sherry led Russ through the congratulatory hands and praise into their house to dress his scrapes and road rash with Bactine and bandages.

We had days and days of these types of activities growing up on the pleasant streets of Kittitas, and I cherish most of those days with fond memories.  Thinking about the innovation and imagination we had creating those deathtraps and danger zones, I sometimes wonder if I’m constricting the life and possibilities out of my son’s young experiences.  But then I think of all the stuff I DIDN’T know back in my youth and I tell my son to grab his helmet, and I strap one on now too, and that’s the Damm truth.

 

In June it will have been twenty trips around the sun from the moment my classmates and I turned our tassels and exited high school with diplomas.  Twenty years come and gone, like a popup internet ad asking if you have test driven the new Corolla and letting you know that the 2.9% financing is almost gone.  Twenty years ago, we didn’t even have the internet, not at our school.  Our school feared the internet because we only had one theater when War Games was released and everyone went to see it.

I’m comfortable with the psychological weight of twenty years passing.  Looking back, I only wasted like, nine of those years and the other eleven I filled with moderately productive stuff that I wouldn’t be afraid to list on a resume.  That isn’t a bad ratio.  I have learned that life isn’t measured accurately in money and junk you acquire, but your happiness and the people you surround yourself with.  Despite this lesson being shoved down our throats every holiday season, it still took me until 9 months ago to kind of figure that out. That being said, I wouldn’t say “no” to a Tesla S, or a solid gold toilet (long basin).

The only weight I am feeling now is the responsibility given to me to ensure a twenty-year class reunion takes place.  I’m supposed to set this shindig up, and I’m here to tell you, I am not doing a good job.  For one thing, instead of putting up the necessary organizational web-page, I’m blogging right now.  I could literally stop after this sentence and throw up a site…  I didn’t.  I’m still writing.  In fact, I’m going to hit return and start a new paragraph.

It will be a short paragraph helping me segue into the subject of reunion relevance.  I could choose to put a joke here but that wouldn’t allow for a short paragraph then, would it?

My question is: Are reunions even relevant anymore?

No, they aren’t, and that’s the Damm truth.

 

Wait, it isn’t over yet.  You need to hear the “why’s” and the proof.  There’s plenty of reasons not to have a reunion.  The largest reason is that they are a pain in the neck extending to the lower back with shooting pulses of discomfort and stinging needles, most recently and specifically, mine, as the organizer/chairman/Poo-Ba of the event.  And if it’s a pain in mine, it’s a pain in everyone else’s.

Another big reason is that reunions traditionally have been held for people to get together and catch-up with each other, find out how the group was doing collectively, or to seek out possible DNA samples for paternity tests.  In the past, it was incredibly difficult to maintain contact with so many people.  We don’t have that issue anymore.

We have social media and by that, I mean the Facebook.  With the Facebook, every classmate you had that you want to talk to is available for you to reach.  You see their family pictures, they see yours.  You know that they can’t stand Mondays and that they really like coffee, and that if coffee is available on Monday, then their life is a little easier.  Also, you know where they work, who they are married to, divorced from, dating or stalking.  You have so much information on enough of your classmates, you could probably guess their passwords in under fifty tries.

If they’re not on the Facebook by now, there’s a reason and it’s more than likely that they don’t want to be found.  OR it’s because they think that nanite robots are going to control their mind, and therefore we won’t be able to contact them anyway, because they don’t have a phone either.

What makes a reunion successful?  The interwebs tell us that if 10-20% of a graduating class returns for a class reunion, it should be considered a success.  If you have 30% turnout, you have a wildly successful class reunion.  If you have 30% turnout at the 60 year reunion, it’s a miracle.  This brings me to my next argument.

My graduating class hits these kinds of numbers all the time.  Sometimes we hit it monthly; for a while it was weekly.  You see, my graduating class is only 20 people.  That means if six of us show up to the same place, we have a “wildly successful” class reunion.

I was in a band with between 10-15% of my graduating class for years.  For another stretch of years I hosted a podcast with 10-15% of my graduating class.  There are weeks when I talk to 40-60% of my classmates.  Hell, I bet 30% read this blog post.  That’s not me being cocky either, that’s six people.  It still doesn’t make my blog “wildly successful,” but it does with my class.

Are there people I would love to see and shake hands with?  Absolutely.  I like my classmates, but there are many who live far away and I wouldn’t wish them the rough time of making it back to our hometown to reminisce about the glory days.  Trips with kids can be expensive, and would I rather they blow that hard earned money on a silly excursion to hear live the Facebook posts?  No, use that money on a trip to Disneyland or a museum for the kids.  Use the money on a hobby or that paternity test you’ve been putting off for 19 years.

Am I going to attempt to throw a nice little party for my class to get together and swap old stories?  Absolutely.  I like the idea of seeing all the old gang and hearing first-hand what has been going on in their lives.  But sometimes the people you want to hear from the most are the ones that will never come, and that’s the Damm truth.

I had to admit, the dress that the host of Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque student recital was everything a little cocktail outfit should be. It was elegant, burnt sienna, cut extremely low in the front—almost to the navel—but short enough to invite the raising of eyebrows from the moderately prudish. The small but stylish dress was coupled with a dangerous pair of stiletto heels, sparkly red and blue costume earrings that matched the seemingly overgrown false red and blue eye lashes. Perfectly applied ruby-red lipstick adhered to the borders of a mouth that sat just below one of the most magnificent mustaches I have ever seen grown on the face of a man after President Chester A. Arthur.

Weeks earlier I had seen a posted invitation to the performance on the Facebook by an old friend from high school in my old hometown of Kittitas, Washington. I’m not particularly close with her. I rarely see her in person and when I do it is usually a large function back home. However, the miracle of the interwebs gives us a window into each other’s lives and as she has kept up with my creative endeavors, I have kept up with hers.

By day, she is a successful advertising director for a serious player agency in the Puget Sound. I’m going to be a bit vague on purpose with any details, but picture her as the Don Draper of Seattle advertising, minus the infidelity, mysterious persona, two kids and self-destructive behavior.

You know what? She’s not anything like Don Draper. Forget I said that. She’s funny and cool with a touch of geek and she is incredibly creative.

The performance she was inviting her friends to was to be her final recital from the classes she had been taking from the above mentioned academy of burlesque. Academy of burlesque schools being the beginning grooming ground for burlesque prep schools. From there, I would imagine there are Jesuit burlesque universities (generally considered better than state burlesque colleges). And finally burlesque grad school, where you’ll earn a Ph. D. in sexy dancing and then compete for tenure as a burlesque professor at one of those lesser state or community burlesque colleges in an area of the country that you don’t want to live.

I had never been to a burlesque performance before, but I had been aware that the trend was picking up steam in Seattle so I wasn’t clueless about the art, and it is art. It is. Really.

Burlesque is a less-is-more type of stripping. Less is taken off and the provocative way it is done was to illicit more of a taboo temptation then to get one’s reproductive system kicked into overdrive. There is more flirting and teasing. Burlesque uses music and theater combined with the slow, subtle shedding of clothes to inspire the imagination. The art of burlesque is what inspired Thomas Edison to invent the electric light, so that he may have had more illumination to see exposed flesh.

Luckily, the performance landed at a time when I happened to be in town. With Wendy and Zach being away, it’s nice to have activities to go do lest I find myself wandering my home in my underpants wondering what else I can put in pancakes to make them better (by the way, not raisins). This seemed like a fun little bit of theater to take in, but was it too risqué for me to attend as a lonely middle-aged man whose wife is out of town? Probably.

(That thing about Edison two paragraphs ago is totally made up.)

My friend deserved support and asked for people to come watch her perform. For years, she has been dressing up with friends in different old lady characters and going out on the town—In character—and wreaking comedy havoc on the Seattle bar scene. I’ve seen the pictures. The idea is unbelievably hilarious and I’ve always wanted to see it in person. If my friend could bring that kind of show to a solo burlesque performance, I was sure it would be entertaining. However, technically speaking I would be seeing a friend of mine seductively taking off her clothes while unchaperoned. I needed to think of a way to make it less awkward, so I invited my sister to come.

After inviting my sister, I rechecked the math on the awkward equation and found that I had added instead of subtracted. The result was that when I told people what I was going to do on Saturday night, my answer was this:

“My sister and I are going to watch a friend of ours from high school take off her clothes.”

There are only two other words that could make that sentence more awkward and those are “mother” and “grandmother”.

Well, it turns out I was also going to be seeing the show with the mother of my dancing friend. That’s right, I was officially in over my head. However, I remembered that this isn’t plain-old, run-of-the-mill, airport district nekid strippin’. This was theater, choreography, teasing, keep-the-pants-on-and-the-nipples-covered creative expression. I was supporting the arts. I was supporting a friend who had supported me.

For all the years I have been performing, speaking, writing, singing, playing drums and making music, I cannot tell you how many times I have invited someone to come watch and nobody shows up. Now there have been plenty of times when EVERYONE shows up. I perform enough that I simply cannot expect people to continuously take time out of their incredibly busy lives to show up to watch me play. But my friend doesn’t perform nearly as often as I do, so in order to keep the ratio fair, I was going to do everything I could to show up, smile, cheer loud and fill a seat for what I was sure to be a fantastic performance. I don’t just owe her audience time; I owe everyone audience time. Can I help it if there was to be nudity?

Now yes, I will absolutely attest that there was nudity and sexy dancing but I cannot say that I was particularly aroused. In fact, the only thing hard for me that night was finding a parking spot on Capitol Hill.

For those of you not familiar with Seattle, Capitol Hill is the bohemian hipster hangout of every art school drop-out and geeky odd-ball in the city. Everyone that lives there is cooler than you, survives on only coffee and single malt heroin and has at one time owned a pre-1970 Volvo. They hate you, themselves, and pretty much anything that isn’t on Capitol Hill, but they’ll keep it inside so that you can see their suffering bubble out in slow frustration. They beg for you to stare at them so that they can angrily confront you about why you’re looking at them. Next to Disneyland it is probably the happiest place on Earth.

Somehow I find a parking spot in a 30 block area with only 7 spaces available for nearly 6,000 cars. I hung the only effective Capitol Hill car-theft deterrent on my steering wheel hoping it would be enough to keep my car from getting stolen from the shady-chic neighborhood. It was an orange plaid polo shirt I purchased from Target specifically for this purpose.

The theater was small but had a large stage. It had an elaborate light rig and a decent sound system. I immediately knew that I wasn’t dressed for this place. For one thing, the shirt and cargo shorts were unlike any of the custom made/antique/fair-trade/underground boutique clothes by which I was surrounded by. My whole body felt like it was sticking out like a thumb that had been struck hard twice with a ball-peen hammer and not in a craving attention good way. So I guess I felt normal.

My sister had informed me that due to unforeseen circumstances she had to cancel, so this added to my creepiness. I sat patiently out of place, waiting for my friend’s character, Miss Splenda Sugarbottom, to take the stage.

I anxiously texted my wife, telling her about what I was seeing and letting her share in the excitement of what I was about to see.

“Enjoy! I am out for the night” she replied. I guess taking in a burlesque pre-show isn’t as exciting when you are two hours ahead and your only connection is through the crystal clear medium of text messaging. “OMG!!! U shud C his dress!” If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the exchange rate for texting characters?

Splenda’s mother arrived just before curtain, and long enough for me to greet her with an awkward hello, and a look that I tried to convey that it didn’t have to be weird that I was about to watch her daughter disrobe. IT’S ART DAMMIT! This would have been so much easier if my sister would have shown up.

The lights dimmed, the curtain parted and the rather tall, lean, completely bald man wearing the scrumptious tiny dress, stepped out to the cat calls of adoring fans. His incredibly huge mustache demanded the audience’s respect, but the way he wore the dress thanked you for that respect. His name was Waxie Moon, and he was fabulous cubed.

Please understand; for years we have seen male comedians grabbing an easy laugh by costuming themselves in traditionally female garb. I have done it myself. It’s a big easy laugh when done right, and by that, I mean a man attempting to understand the complexities of what it is to be a modern woman, and failing miserably at it in front of people. Not making fun of women, not making fun of men who prefer to dress in traditionally female clothing, but men sucking at really understanding women from the most superficial representation.

Waxie Moon was NONE of these things. Waxie isn’t a man in women’s clothes. Those are Waxie’s clothes. Waxie is a man. Therefore, if those clothes are Waxie’s and Waxie is a man, then that dress he was rocking is a man’s dress. That is logic 101. Waxie Moon owned that dress mentally and physically and he used it to command that room in a fun and entertaining way all night long.

Waxie, as it turns out, is senior faculty at Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque. Although he did not state this to the recital’s audience, I would wager that he holds a PH.D. in “working it,” a dual major in “bump and grind,” as well as “the tease” and absolutely no minors allowed.

One could tell by how he spoke with the crowd and cherished each performance that he was the kind of mentor that sculpted his students from the inside out rather than the outside in. You could tell, because each student was unique and drew their scene and character from within themselves. They then developed their outfits and props from what they discovered in Waxie’s process. Holy cow, this would make an amazing movie! Nobody write it. It’s mine.

Each act came out and gave a meaningful and revealing performance, with none of the performers appearing nervous to be baring PG-13 parts of themselves to perfect strangers. IN FACT, every one of these performers appeared to be more empowered during and after their performances. These ladies were taking something back. I have no idea what it was, but they were there to collect said mystery thing and reclaim the ownership with a bill of sale and all future claims to property related to or derived from.

Intermission hit and Splenda still had not graced the stage with her unique scene. I casually spoke with Splenda’s mother and she told me that Splenda was coming up right after the break. Also, any awkwardness that I had perceived about watching a woman’s daughter take off her clothes appeared to be all in my imagination. Or was it?

The lights once again dimmed and Waxie Moon emerged once more from the curtain with more excitement and another surprisingly understated but glamorous outfit. This one was a scandalous red mini dress with a sheer red covering that reached down to the floor. How can this guy look better in dresses than I look in anything? I don’t know the answer to that, but I couldn’t see Waxie sporting my outfit, and why would he?

It was the moment I had been waiting for. Waxie gave a pitch perfect introduction and the stage opened up to a soft pink sunset glow of the incorrigible Miss Splenda Sugarbottom. She sashayed out onto the scene in a pink polka dot dress with matching head scarf and long pink silk gloves. The crowd roared their approval as she began her precisely timed routine, but there was nothing ROUTINE about it. This may have been the first time she had done this dance or the thousandth, you’d never know, because she was in absolute control up there.

As she executed the story and the teasing and the metamorphosis occurred, you could tell that Splenda was eating up every minute of the show. Her smile was so bright that at times, you would think it would burn right through your corneas if you looked at it straight on. She owned the stage, made her way around the elaborate props, told the story and made the crowd fall in love with the character of Splenda Sugarbottom.

I don’t know much about burlesque. I’m not an expert, but Splenda took the show up a notch. I didn’t think I was at a recital for a burlesque 101 class, which I was. I thought Splenda’s act could have played at any hall in town. It was that entertaining. She was beautiful, funny, technically proficient and positively electrifying.

Here’s a major spoiler about how her act finishes: Awesomely and with huge applause. I’m not going to give her act away. Get out there and catch one of her shows.

That night, I went home and wrote Splenda Sugarbottom a fan letter, telling her how amazing she was and how I would love to catch another show. I told Splenda that I wanted to bring my wife out and have her witness the craziness of Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque when she gets back in town. I really couldn’t stop gushing, because all of that positive energy that had been emanating off of my friend and the other performers had infected me with the excitement of a life worth living.

It became clear to me that Waxie Moon, hadn’t taken these ladies through the motions of some mere dirty dancing, stripper classes. This was Waxie’s way of teaching these ladies how a man can rock not one, but two fantastic dresses, and how you can take off your shirt for strangers and leave shame and self-doubt at the door. You can do all of these things and still maintain one of the greatest mustaches this side of the 19^th Century. Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque is one big master class in confidence.

These performers came from all walks of life, but what really united them, was their willingness to take a leap outside that warm, cozy comfort zone and into the unknown of possibilities…positive or negative. They pushed themselves to grow and try something out that might re-ignite a fire that has been stifled inside of them. But the fires were burning bright that night on Capitol Hill and I think their light was extremely inspirational for everyone present, and that’s the Damm truth.

I’m not going to lie to you; some bad stuff went down last week. However, I am apparently going to try to get away with using a semicolon in the first sentence of this post. Then apparently I’m going to tell you that I DID use a semicolon and then after that I will consider whether it is a good idea to use the word ‘apparently’ two times in consecutive sentences. Technically, I used the word ‘apparently’ three times. Now I guess it’s four.

The above paragraph is symbolic of how last week went. It didn’t go anywhere and seemed to chase itself around until nothing happened. It’s also why I need an editor, which I kind of have, an excellent one actually. But I never send my stuff to her because A) I don’t get my stuff to her on time and 2) I’m embarrassed of my work. It’s like not getting a housekeeper because you’re afraid they’ll find out that your house needs cleaning. I wonder how much my shame stifles what I could actually accomplish. Also, like the above paragraphs, my house is messy too. I’ll be contacting both my editor and my housekeeper this week. (My housekeeper? More like a fine I pay for failing at basic home hygiene.)

I do feel as if I owe everyone an explanation as to why there was no Damm Truth last week. Not that any of you were demanding it, but I feel like I must hold myself accountable for missing my self-imposed deadline. The sadists and cruel hearted will be happy to know that I have denied myself popcorn tonight as punishment for last week’s lack of post. (I may have some later, let’s not kid ourselves.)

The damn truth about the Damm Truth last week is that the site was being moved. That’s right, I hired a team of movers to show up and pack up all my blog posts and data and move it from the free confines of the WordPress servers to my own hosting solution. It wasn’t as easy as I expected it would be.

The movers showed up late, packed my stuff wrong and then got lost on the way to the new facility. Then, when the truck showed up on Monday, you guessed it, EMPTY. There was nothing inside, not even the crappy post about New Year’s resolutions. So I had to call the company’s customer service and see what the holdup was.

So naturally, while dealing with all of that, I didn’t have time to prepare our typical Monday night party and entertain. Granted, I still had access to my free WordPress site, but the problem there was that I had already done the data move, so any post on the old site would have been lost after the new server was up and running.

All of this was extremely frustrating and I traded technical support time for good writing time. Had I written anything last week, it wouldn’t have been funny, you know, like this week or the week before last week.

Oh and people were mad. It started out with a drunken voicemail from Ira Glass from This American Life. He left it at about 4:30am EST on Tuesday morning. It started off pretty sloppy with Ira explaining how the voicemail was going to go. “Part One: Steve Misses His Deadline. Part Two: Ira Doesn’t Have Anything To Read This Morning. Part Three: HEEELLLOOOOO?!?!? Part Four: David Sedaris Talks About The Time He Forgot To Give Ira A Story.” I didn’t know he was such a fan. It also sounds like Ira is a fan of gin.

The trouble continued the next day when I got a fruit basket from Ellen Degeneres wishing me well and hoping I get over whatever is keeping me from writing. It was nice, there were mangoes in it and I still don’t know how to peal those things.

I got several emails from Henry Winkler, Josh Groban, Vanessa Williams, Lester (from Willie Tyler And fame), Kobe Bryant and George Takei asking why I didn’t post last week and also why I had never mentioned them in a previous post. I politely responded with why I couldn’t possibly post last week and assured them that at some point I would mention them in my blog. I honestly think I will someday.

It was early afternoon that I received the call that made my heart skip a beat. When you hear the words, “Please hold for the White House…” after you answer the phone, it is hard to not feel as if you have been serving your country. I wondered what I would say to the President. If he or the first family were fans of my work or if he just believed what I had to say each week was encouraging the country to new heights. The voice on the telephone continued “Please hold for the White House, Black Market sales associate to receive 10% off your next purchase.” I guess Wendy wrote down my phone number on their customer list instead of hers. They do have nice stuff. The new color for the season collection is very nice.

My sister called and asked why I didn’t “like” more of her pictures on the Facebook, but I don’t think that was related.

Actually, I don’t think anyone really cared that I didn’t post last week. That’s okay. Obviously it isn’t stopping me from posting THIS week. Hopefully… Perhaps this didn’t make it to the page or the link didn’t work. Perhaps you aren’t even reading this at all. If that’s the case, I’m sorry I’m wasting your time with words you cannot read.

Why? Why go to all this trouble to move to my own servers, I wish you would ask but I’m going to answer even if you don’t? Because I’m trying to play with the big boys. I’m starting to evolve this blogging thing. By controlling my data on my own paid server, I’m building my brand away from WordPress and taking control of my domain name thedammtruth.com.

Being on my own paid server will allow me to do some fun things and offer some new services. I’ll be able to add options that would allow me to fund this hobby a bit more. I’ll be able to choose who to advertise and how much. So I will have a few ads on the site from time to time. Not many, but also not the ones that were showing up on the free site.

I’ll have a few affiliates that I will choose to rotate on to the page. The affiliates I choose won’t be those that simply make me the most money, but will offer the services that I like and use myself, like Audible.com and Amazon.com.

I’ve wanted to offer my own T-shirts on the site for quite a while now. At the risk of making everyone look as bad in clothing as I do, you’ll have several simple designs that I love and wear myself, but also tell the world that you read the Damm Truth and you’re not to be trifled with. My shirts are trifle free, or will be when I offer them.

This will be the place you tell all your friends to go to buy my upcoming ebook, whenever I decide to put THAT together.

So I wish to thank you all for putting up with my silly behavior and overlooking last week’s mishap. There may be more, but there will also be more stories as well. I sincerely appreciate the time all of you have put into reading my junk, and that’s the Damm Truth.

 

One of the first times I went over to pick up Wendy for a date in our early courtship, I was feeling pretty good about how I looked.  I was in college and hadn’t begun to put on weight.  My hair wasn’t thinning and I had just received one of my confidence-building haircuts from my stylist, Traci, which meant I was only going to look and feel decent for another 48 hours.  The walk from my apartment door was short, but I felt so good about how I looked that I was concerned about being swarmed—zombie style—with women before I reached Wendy’s unit.

What about Wendy?  Would it be fair to subject her to such wild animal handsomeness and charm wrapped together in a dapper and elegantly robed male in the prime of his life?  Did I believe that I was coursing with enough stylish, machismo energy that she could possibly become pregnant just by looking at me?  Indeed, what would Wendy do when she opened her door?

She laughed…  Hard.

“Oh My!” Wendy exclaimed after letting out several large bursts of glee saturated air.  “Did you dress yourself tonight?”  She asked in a sing-song motherly tone that when spoken to a man in such a way implies sarcasm more concentrated than a tube of frozen orange juice.

During my fall, I had lost count of the number of pegs I had been knocked down by Wendy.  Apparently when falling that great of a distance, the human body tends to black out.

When the laughter ceased and Wendy realized I did not dress up to make her laugh on purpose, she became a little concerned.  I could tell that she was working something out in her head.  Was my clothing choice and sense of fashion going to be a deal-breaker?  I did not know, and what was worse, I thought that in my wardrobe, this outfit was THE BEST I could do for THE ONE girl I wanted to impress.

When she came to the realization that she was still interested in eating dinner with me, she marched my denim and denim ensemble down to my apartment to do a little turd polishing.  Unfortunately, while gazing upon the available threads in my closet, the task wasn’t easy.  Wendy is brilliant and loves a good puzzle; but as she tried to put together an acceptable outfit for her life-sized Cabbage Patch doll, she was shaking her head and sighing as if she was faced with a three-dimensional sudoku puzzle.

My closet was a perfect storm of bland, baggy and benign.  Somehow I had managed to put together a collection of clothes from different eras, color schemes and social occasions, none of which could be worn together in any combination.   Well, technically they COULD be worn together, but doing so would in the least case cause confusion and to the extreme, vomiting.

We did get close to an acceptable outfit that may have allowed us a chance to dine in public together, but ultimately the idea was scrubbed because the shirt was teal.  What I didn’t know then but do now is that the color teal only belongs on only two things:   tuxedo cummerbunds and nothing else.  So if you’re wearing teal right now, you may not understand the problem I’m trying to explain in this post, or you had better get back to your wedding/jazz choir/prom.

After an hour or so, I think Wendy and I just ordered pizza…  Wendy answered the door.

…

This has been a running issue through my life.  I simply do not understand fashion.  I’ve tried, but it seems every single time I find a style that works, it changes after a few years and then I’m stuck again.  Fashion rides a fast horse, and I always seem to be chasing it on a three-legged donkey.

Here’s a kind of evolution of the fashion cycle I appear to be in:

Phase One:  A designer cut shirt with diagonal stripes is all the rage in New York, Milan, Paris and Tokyo.  Every clothing company mimics the fashion and variations on the style hit the streets in a month.  At this point I am about 9 months from the first time I notice the appearance of the style or hear what it is called.  I immediately wonder how those models that wear the shirts think they can “pull it off”.

Phase Two:  18 months after the shirt style hits, all of my friends are sporting it and it looks good.  I still don’t believe that I have the body type or confidence to “pull it off” though.

Phase Three:  36 months after the design has been available to the general public, the shirts appear at Target on a clearance rack.  Since they are now priced at 3 shirts for $25, I figure I’ll take the risk, finally feeling the confidence that if everyone else can wear it, maybe I can in fact “pull it off” as well.

Phase Four:  36 months and one day after the design has been available, I put the shirt on to impress my wife as we get ready to go to a social event together.   “Pull it off,” she says, “nobody wears that anymore.”

I know what you’re thinking.  “Wow, how has he gotten through life like this?”  I wish I could give you the definite answer to that.  The truth is, I may never understand.  There is one point in my life where I could see my sense of fashion getting derailed.

When I was ten or eleven, parachute pants were all the rage.  Not the pants that MC Hammer wore in the 1990’s either, but the Early 1980’s style of parachute fabric stitched together with a dozen pockets and unnecessary zippers everywhere.  They were expensive and a luxury to my family and I waited impatiently to receive them.  I immediately wore them to the skating rink, fell and put a hole in the knee, proving that I could not be trusted with synthetic clothing.  I believe this disappointment led me down the chosen path of function over form.

I did not like clothing with large designer labels emblazoned upon them for all to see.  For one thing, I thought it was ridiculous that these clothes were so much more expensive than the ones without the labels.  I thought that people were actually paying more to advertise the clothes they were wearing.  The way I saw it, if I was going to wear those clothes and everyone was going to be reminded of the brand, they should be paying me to wear it.  That’s the way I felt then.

These days I can understand why a company would want me to pay a whole lot more to allow me to wear their name.  The way I look when I wear designer clothes, could be a pretty big risk the companies are taking.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if people like me (fashionably unpleasant) are taken into consideration by the marketing finance people when pricing items across the data of who is going to wear the clothes.  Having me tromp around town wearing a mismatched ensemble including your brand, is going to keep people from wanting to purchase your clothes.  It will require a financial adjustment to recover any losses sustained in the areas of the country I am seen in your clothing line.

For example:  Let’s look at what goes into the pricing of a Ralph Lauren T-Shirt for $29.

(Extremely rough and uninformed estimates)

After sweatshop cost of material and shipping from the 3^rd world:   $1 per shirt

Add the Ralph Lauren name and profit:  $15 per shirt.  (total = $16)

Steve Damm may purchase and wear one in public: $6 per shirt.  (total = $22)

Retail markup: $7 per shirt.  (total = $29)

 

It isn’t as silly as it sounds.  The 4^th quarter earnings report for The GAP was much better in the years before word got out that my sister buys me a sweater from there for a Christmas present.  It isn’t her fault that I wear them inappropriately.  She just wants me to have something warm and harmless.  I still manage to mess it up though.

And it isn’t just what I’m wearing either, it’s HOW I wear it.  Pants pulled up, or riding down?  I guess that one wrong every time.  Shirt tucked in, or pulled out?  I need a shirt UNDER this shirt? What color?   It needs to be a “v” neck?  What’s a “v” neck?   Why not a crew neck, at least it would match my socks?  Are there “v” socks?  How far do I button up the shirt?  That seems a little revealing, can’t I do one more button?  Why can’t I do one more button?  What about the collar?  I thought the collar up was “in”.  Not for me, it isn’t?  Should I roll up my pants?  Because they are too long.  I thought I was taller.  No, I didn’t try them on at the store.  My other pants are in the washer.  YES, I only have two pairs.  Who am I even talking to in this paragraph?

Another big piece of this fashion puzzle is how I value clothes in my life.  I seem to believe that for just about anything else, spending the extra money is worth every single penny but when it comes to purchasing clothes, the cheapest clothes that have not been worn by others are the only way to go.   I’ll think nothing of dropping fifty bucks on a rare comic book or the last hand dipped corndog at the fair, but when it comes to a shirt, nine dollars is about my comfort zone.  I might go twelve on a sweater, because of the sleeves.

The shirt, or top as I will never call it, must only display the images of items or people that have my seal of approval or none at all.  Printed T-shirts with comic logos or characters are fine, but only the ones that I like.  Captain America gets tons of play in my wardrobe, while the Flash’s logo, though iconic, makes no appearance in my closet or hamper (unless it happens to be on a shirt with other Justice League members).  Stripes and plaid are fine, but there should be little clue as to who manufactured the clothing.  Baseball sleeves are my favorite though.  Multiple colors and plenty of space on the front for my own stupid musings fill me with joy.  They’re also cheap and last a long time.

Pants, I’m a little less frugal with.  I’ll do ten bucks a leg, but any amount after that and I expect to get no less than ten years or 2000 wears out of them.  And pockets, oh how I love pockets.  Cargo pants can’t have enough pockets in them and those pockets cannot be deep enough.  My wife complains about how bulky they look on me after I’ve filled those pockets with the essentials.  She complains until we’re out somewhere and someone desperately needs an aspirin, diving mask or garlic press and I whip one out of the old cargo pants/shorts to the awe of everyone but my wife.

Shopping for my clothes is even sadder than the clothing choices themselves.   My first choice for clothes shopping is Costco.  I can get entire outfits at Costco from shirts to shoes, khaki slacks and cargo shorts (naturally), undies and socks all for super cheap and I’m not expected to try anything on in a creepy little dressing room.

Seriously, how does anyone feel comfortable disrobing in a dirty little nudity box where any number of bare-asses have sat on the bench while trying on swimwear while strange children peek under at you and aggressive sales people try to hand you crap you don’t want to wear through the door?  There are pins in the floor, there are cameras everywhere and not a sanitizing station to be found.

I’ll shop at Ross.  However, the chances are pretty good that whatever you’re buying, has been on the floor of that store for hours at a time.  Apparently centuries ago a custom began at the very first Ross, Dress for Less store, where if you pick an article of clothing off the rack to look at it, you either choose to purchase the item or you simply drop it on the floor.  Never mind that the hanger is still attached and the rack where the clothing came from is a staggering fourteen inches away.  At Ross, the proper etiquette is to simply release the clothing from your hand, let it fall to the floor and then run over it several times with your three-wheeled shopping cart.

Target?  Clearance rack only.  I’m not made of money.

So by now, you are getting a pretty clear picture of my fashion predicament.  I dress like a color-blind five year old.  I’m thankful that my wife isn’t cruel about my choice of clothes.  Like the children she taught in special education, I get lots of redirection and rewarded for making good clothing choices.  She has an overflowing reservoir of patience when it comes to helping me put together combinations that are socially acceptable.

She has directed me to stick with black, as I will have a harder time mismatching that color with itself.  This is hard for me because I love color.  I love orange, but Wendy has sat me down with a cup of hot chocolate and delicately explained that no matter how much I love orange, that the feeling from orange about me is not mutual.  Orange has just been using me as a fool.

Black is the first step, which means also, no white socks with black pants and shoes.  I informed my wife that it worked for Michael Jackson on his “Off The Wall” album cover.  Wendy reminded me that it was not 1979 and I am no Michael Jackson.  I’m not even Tito.

Then I thought, “I can do this.”  I can wear black with confidence then maybe work in some slick fitted shirts and pants that don’t look like I spent an afternoon at Denmark Pond.  Black worked for Johnny Cash for the same reason it will work for me.  He had a hard time with clothes too.  If black is good enough for Johnny Cash, it’s good enough for me, and that’s the Damm truth.

By: Oscar the wiener dog

When Steve asked me to write this guest blog, I was hesitant at first. I’m not in the habit of writing more than a few words at a time for my twitter persona (@oscardelawiener), because being a dog, typing can be tricky. Most keyboards aren’t set up for paws, let alone paws as little as mine are—although I am pretty good at the long bar that makes a space. You would have thought that by now, someone would have invented a suitable canine letter-board for us to step on, but it just confirms what I have thought all along: humans don’t really want to hear what we dogs have to say.

Please forgive me if this tone isn’t what you’re used to reading from this blog. I consider myself a pretty funny dachshund and wouldn’t mind keeping things light. I know Steve probably just writes about things that I’m always hearing from him. Let me guess; you hear lots of blogs on topics like: “Potty Outside,” “No! Drop it!” or “Who’s poop is this?” Yeah, I imagine you do. Sometimes I feel like that’s all he knows how to talk about.

I don’t mean to say Steve is a total jerk. He very well might be to humans, if that’s all he talks to you about, but he has his good moments too. Would it surprise you to know that Steve sometimes tosses me an extra piece of his scrambled eggs sometimes or an occasional marshmallow? Well he does. Could he drop a little more? Yes he could, and I strongly encourage him to do so, but the point is, he’s not the cold hearted bastard that all of you think he is. Sometimes he’s very sweet.

I’m getting older now and in my golden years. It’s about time my story gets told. This blog will be a good exercise for me as I start my memoirs.

Here’s how I imagine the book would look like:

The Autobiography of Oscar Damm: The View From Five Inches Off The Ground

By Oscar Damm (with Irving Manchester)

Acknowledgements: Wendy, Steve, Gracie and the boy. Thanks to the music of Chopin for getting me through hours of writer’s block and the geniuses at Pup-Peroni for all they do.

Chapter 1: Everything

It sucks.

The End

About the Author:

Oscar divides his time between two gigantic houses in Washington State and Kansas. He lives with his family and Gracie the wiener dog. He enjoys eating and napping and will always regret being neutered.

I’ve never been one for flowery prose or fluff. I figured that book will say everything I want to convey. The word “it” meaning everything I have experienced and the word “sucks” meaning how everything generally turns out. I’ve already said too much.

I don’t see why I should go to all the lengths necessary to explain what it is like going through life with the challenges I have. I’m not the alpha dog in the house. So what? Yes, there have been times when I’m embarrassed by my lisp. I live every day of my life with a dangerous addiction to green bean casserole. Like we say in our meetings, we take it one food-oriented-religious-holiday at a time.

I didn’t always live with Steve. Oh, didn’t he tell you that? I’m adopted. Gracie came from a respectable breeder and knew her mom until she was passed on to her new one, Wendy. As I understand it, they had a lovely year together just as the three of them. To hear Gracie tell it, you’d think that she preferred life that way. She makes it sound like all the laughter stopped when I joined the family.

When I was adopted out of the dachshund rescue program to the Damm family, I asked that my history be changed. No family would have touched me with the kind of rap sheet I had rung up. You see, in the year or so before I met the Damms, I was living a life of crime with my owners as professional bank robbers.

I’m not proud of it. Sure, I could blame my actions on youthful, puppy energy, but the truth was that I knew what I was doing, and I liked the thrill. Ultimately, I think the arresting officers couldn’t believe that a dog my size could have been part of the crimes I was involved with and that made it easier for me to get away. It’s hard to think about that time and not be ashamed.

Here’s how most of the heists would work: I would find a way into the bank through the front door. I would limp to the center of the floor gathering as much attention as possible, then fall over on my side like I was having a seizure (I still do this sometimes when I feel like I’m not getting enough attention or to make Gracie mad). Everyone, and I mean everyone in the bank would come out to help me, leaving the counter and silent alarms unattended. Bingo! Lisa and Amber would run in with the gun and tie everyone together in the middle of the room. Lisa covered the crowd and Amber worked the cash drawers. We never messed with the vault, stuck to the plan and got away with a load of cash every time… almost every time.

We lived fast from town to town, avoiding towns with feds and stuck to areas that didn’t ask many questions. I was spoiled. I had the best treats and the fluffiest toys. Amber and Lisa let me do whatever I pleased yet took very good care of me. They had chosen me BECAUSE I was the runt of the litter. They would tell me over and over that they knew what it was like to be treated as outcasts and that the three of us were going to show the world that THESE two ladies and their wiener dog lived by our own set of rules and heaven help anyone that got in our way.

My last day with them, I could tell something was a little off. The bank didn’t seem right. Nothing seemed right. An off duty police officer standing at the counter made me from the police sketches and my tell-tale bald patch on my right side. I caught his eye and froze.

Lisa and Amber walked in behind me much earlier than usual and the police officer turned and saw them too. I could hear my heartbeat through my chest as the world became a slow motion blur. The off-duty cop signaled the guard at the door and pressed the silent alarm behind the counter. He yelled, “Stop!” to Lisa and Amber but they just kept coming.

I barked a warning to them to run away, leave me and come find me at the shelter later, to save themselves. They didn’t understand, or maybe didn’t WANT to understand. My tail had tucked completely between my legs and my eyes grew large in their sockets as I saw Amber leap towards me and Lisa reach for the gun. Lisa’s single-shot flintlock buccaneer style pistol was no match for the modern handgun the Police officer carried. It was an impractical choice for bank robbery, but Lisa said it made her feel like a true outlaw… a pirate. As Lisa lay wounded on the floor, Amber had made it to me and was sobbing a gentle goodbye. We both knew this was the end and the law would never let us be together.

Lisa and Amber were arrested and sentenced to thirty years in a medium security prison. You know? I was supposed to break them out if I got free. Oops.

I promised myself two things that day: I would never rob another bank and I would stop wearing my tiny bowler hat.

I came to live with Steve and Wendy about two weeks later. Those two weeks were awful and by the time I met Steve, I literally would have gone home with anybody. You would go home with anyone else too, if the people you were staying with stole YOUR testicles.

Steve and Wendy treated me very well. I hardly thought about my old life as a bank robber (hence the fact that my former owners are still locked in the clink). They gave me plenty of food and some very nice blankets to sleep on. They always take me on adventures, sometimes to the beach (Yay!) and sometimes to the vet (the opposite of yay).

Gracie is good company sometimes, but just because we’re both brown dachshunds, it doesn’t mean we’re just going to be best friends. Instead, we’re kind of stuck in a state that most resembles the second act of a buddy cop movie. We are two opposites thrown together by the captain because he doesn’t know what to do with us. Our personalities clash but we are starting to realize the importance of the other. Gracie and I have never really gotten to the third act where my daughter’s character is kidnapped by drug lords and Gracie has to fight Gary Busey on a wet lawn… That about sums it up. I’m getting too old for this.

I’m about done with this guest post, and the keyboard is pretty slimy from me poking my nose on it. It’s very gross. But
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple wiener dog master peeves (yeah I said it, “MASTER peeves”)

I can’t tell you how many times I have been stepped on by a human. It hurts. Would it kill you to look down once in a while? I’m standing by you because you either have food, or I’m scared. Take it as a compliment and don’t tread on my tiny paws.

I don’t have thumbs. I can’t get some things for myself, you’re going to have to be a little more attentive or put items closer to the ground.

Yes, oddly enough I do prefer what you’re eating to the dried up survival pellets you feed me. I know you buy “better” food than “normal”, but it’s still terrible compared to those breakfast burritos I see you make. You know what? It’s terrible compared to EVERYTHING you eat. Share. Everything. Always. Do you remember that embarrassing day where you caught me eating my poop in the backyard? Well, that’s because I can’t tell the difference between THAT and what you feed me. I know it’s disgusting. Fix it.

Steve, you need to scoop the yard more often. If you expect me to use the yard as my toilet, you need to either clean it more, or make it flushable for Gracie and me.

Steve, your sister Somer needs to visit more. She is kind, shares food and can match me nap for nap. She is delightful in every way. Make it happen.

Enough with the fat jokes already. You know I have an enflamed liver. It’s not funny.

I’m not going to do tricks for treats. Look at that last sentence. I’m not a prostitute. I always deserve the treat. I have yet to see any of you roll over in order to eat desserts and I’m not going to either. It’s a principle. If you need a reason to give me a treat, remember that I DIDN’T bite your face last night while you slept. It’s always a possibility. Treats, randomly and often please.

Now the vet tells me that I have Cushing’s Disease. They say it makes me hungry and have to pee all the time. Well, I have always been this hungry and have always had to pee. Maybe Cushing’s just makes me less polite. But thank you for getting the meds for me, they are delicious.

I take pills now and have a cream that they squirt in my eye every day. So this is what getting old is like?

And Steve, I know you’re worried about me passing away soon. I know you asked me to write this guest post as a way to learn more about me before I depart. I just want to tell you that we have some time left buddy. I can’t chase the ball as well as I used to, but I still enjoy watching you throw it for me and then you going to get it yourself when I don’t. It amuses me.

You and Wendy don’t have to worry about me. I’m tough, and I will last longer than you think. Let’s just spend more time together doing what I like most: napping and eating. Who knows, maybe I’ll teach you a thing or two about life.

Looks like this post got heavy toward the end. I didn’t mean to drag all you readers into Steve’s and my personal stuff, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to hold my nose on the delete key long enough to delete any of it.

If you ever see me in the real world, remember I don’t mind having a gentle scratch behind the ears. Don’t ask me about my bald patch. Please come say hi. I love people, some of my best friends are people (that’s not species-ist). Definitely come say hi if you plan to share a bite of your food, you will never be turned away by Oscar the wiener dog, and that’s the dog Damm truth.

Hey everybody! How’s it going? You’ve been coming here for about 18 months now, reading the drippings from the barbecue of my mind and I realized something kind of important.

We never really get a chance to talk, you know? Just sit down together, maybe share a bottle of premium soda, and discuss life! I realize I’ve been rude, with all my: “I remember when I was a kid…”, “This one gig had a chicken…” or “My wife is hot and I’m unattractive…”. Nobody likes a Tommy-talks-a-lot, and that’s exactly what I’ve been.

I thought that this week it might be fun to see what you readers have to say. I thought we could just talk about whatever is on your minds. What has been going on out there on your side of the fence that you can enlighten ME with? This is your chance, I’m a great, good, listener. What do you have for me?

…

Anyone?

…

Well, it appears nobody is willing to share, OR nothing happens unless I see it. I can only assume that you would prefer that I go first and then perhaps you would follow up in the comments section or something. Although I really would have preferred you speak up back there, I’m going to assume your window of opportunity is now closed (or cracked open slightly if that helps you sleep).

Since nobody spoke up, I’ll talk a little about the significance of March, and to be specific, March 20th. March is a pretty good month for me, from an important milestone point of view. We adopted a very special dog, I joined an amazing band and last year began a spiritual journey into prescription drug use, all on the same anniversary day.
“Big whup!” you say? Well, perhaps to you they are insignificant trivialities that sum to a big zero on the excitement-o-meter, but they are all pieces of the Steve Damm puzzle that have taught me more about myself. I celebrate them.
Although each of these events deserves and will get their own elaborate posts, I figured I would make this more about the significance of March, than anything else. Let’s start with the oldest and move forward from there, because my writing is organized and meticulously sculpted for chronological order.

Oscar came to us on March 20, 2003. We had been looking for another dachshund to keep our princess, Gracie, happy when we weren’t home. The other toys weren’t terribly interactive, so we went searching for a companion. Writing this paragraph, I’m suddenly disgusted with the idea that I would get another living creature for not so much as a pet, but as an appeasement for the other dog. Of course he grew into a family member, but this is a dent in my moral compass that I’m just finding as I write this. Thanks for being here so that I don’t have to go through this alone.

Oscar was the perfect addition to our family. Where Gracie was a serious, proper dachshund with a pedigree and a long sleek form that she often shows off by standing still in different poses until she is noticed and praised, Oscar has a different approach to life.

Oscar works a room like a popular politician. He loves to be picked up and doted upon, but never stays with one person too long, preferring to make sure everyone gets a little “Oscar time”. Gracie may be the more formal dog, but Oscar screams casual lifestyle with his round tummy and love of snacking. He’s content with Gracie acting as the Alpha dog, taking power away from her by appealing to everyone else in the room.

Oscar is a model of friendship and loyalty. The dog to human translation of this metaphor is a little hard to bridge sometimes, but after a decade with this little wiener dog, I’ve learned patience, kindness and to keep any and all possible edible material on a surface at least three feet tall and away from any object that might be used as a stairs or climbing apparatus to reach the food. I’ve thought about putting that sticker on the side of him for others to read.

I believe I mentioned this in last week’s story, but March 20th, 2007 was my first show with my band Vote for Pedro. What a magical musical experience that first show with them was! They were a fun band, with fun songs and they didn’t recognize right away that I was a charlatan of a drummer. Lucky me.

VFP has had many adventures as a unit and we often play with guests. We have two members on a long leave of absence but there’s never a strange feeling when they want to come back and play. That’s the thing, once you’re a Pedro, I have a feeling you’re always a Pedro. The group is THAT accepting of everyone. In fact, one of the coolest things I saw the band do when I played with them the first night, was to quickly share the stage with an audience member who wanted to sing.

First of all, they started the spy-master guitar lick of “Secret Agent Man” which is immediately recognizable. It’s kind of a cool tune that I had never heard another band do. A high school math teacher visiting Seattle with his colleagues did a double take toward the stage. He caught Nabil, our guitar player’s, eye before the guitar player started singing and quickly pointed to himself asking if he could sing.

Without any hesitation, Nabil took the progression around again giving the teacher time to hop up on stage. The idea that you just let a random guy get up on stage and croon a song with you was extremely foreign to me. What if they stank? What if they don’t know the words? What if they damage our gear?

The math teacher rocked that song. He was great. All his friends and co-workers got to see him perform, and perform well, to a packed house. I guarantee you that those teachers still talk about that night. “You know Ken, Algebra II and Pre-Calc? Yeah, he’s a rock star. He’s crazy, he jumped up on stage with some rock band when we were in Seattle a few years ago and brought the house down. Oh and did you see the t-shirt the Mitchell kid was wearing? Yeah, he’s a punk.”

The thing about letting people up on stage that VFP helped me realize is that taking the time to create these moments, not only makes the gig more interesting, but it can create truly awesome memories for many people. That Teacher sang a song that was under three minutes long and now can look upon that evening from time to time with fondness. VFP showed me that music is a shared experience. That doesn’t mean that every experience has been stellar.

The band’s official attitude is that if you think you can hang, and play with the band, hop on up. We’re happy to oblige. We’ve already proved whatever level of playing the audience judges us to be. If a person steps to the microphone and stinks, we’ll do what we can to help you, but the audience knows, it’s YOU that is sucking, not necessarily the band. But luckily, we have many more positive experiences than negative, though there was this one guy…

Last year on March 20th, I wrote a post called The Big Plunge. It was about my struggle with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I opened up a little about how I was making an adjustment to a new medication approach. Many readers were curious and very supportive of how I managed. I plan to write extensively about the experience as there was quite a bit to it.

I take more pills now, and that kind of makes people uncomfortable in the break room, probably because I tell everyone that asks, that I’m taking the pills for a different reason. “It makes the hurting go away,” “Baldness,” “To make me tiny,” “It’s for rage,” “It’s supposed to stop me from playing with matches,” “I have chiggers,” “Well, it seems my mission is complete,” “Diarrhea,” “Constipation,” “To keep President McKinley from stealing my car,” “I’m not taking anything,” “Toenail fungus,” “Thicker eyebrows,” “To make me forget,” “It turns my frown upside down” or my personal favorite, “Isn’t it amazing how this one little pill keeps me from killing everyone in the building?” Nobody ever laughs at that one.

The results have been extremely positive. I feel like a new person and I cannot wait to elaborate on the how’s and why’s to give you a little more clarity. I have had some pretty large changes happen in my life. Challenges, opportunities and truly beautiful experiences have taken place between March 20th and March 19th. The experience wasn’t easy but there is no denying that my life is better inside my head because of the choices I’ve made this year. Yes, MY head.

So I understand this is a bit of a departure from my usual narrative style and I appreciate you making it all the way to this sentence. I sincerely hope you do leave some comments about how your last year has gone. One thing is for certain, I have big plans for this blog in the next year, and that’s the Damm truth.