The DAMM Truth

I’m fat.

We were all thinking it, I just wanted to get it out in the open so we can work with what we have, which unfortunately is a lot.  I have struggled with this since I was out of college and it hasn’t been pretty. 

I’m not huge, but technically I’m obese and nobody wants to be known as obese.  Obese sounds like you have a terminal medical condition.  Obese sounds like a game animal on the African Savannah that is extremely easy to kill, as in:  “Any luck shooting that lion on your hunt today Richard?” “No, but I killed these six Obese on the way back to camp.  No sport, but extremely flavorful eating!” I don’t want to be obese anymore and I certainly don’t want to be shot by some “C” level executive on a big game hunt.

I have given weight loss the old college try several times, but anyone who has seen my college transcripts will know that I didn’t try very hard at college (seriously, mom and dad, I did try.)  Each attempt to lose the weight ended up with more weight gain.  That wasn’t very encouraging.  However, a few things started changing for me in the last two years or so of my life and I wanted to share them with you.  Are you still reading?  I’m still typing.

Let’s run through some of the things that didn’t work:

Ice cream twice a day, everyday towards the end of college didn’t help.  I think this one is self-explanatory.  Ice cream is delicious but it should not be taken in as frequently as water.  Ice cream is not a meal, despite whatever fruits, nuts or other items Ben or Jerry may have put in it.  It’s not.  No.

After college I took a job that was only several doors down from a Trader Joe’s.  Trader Joe’s sell’s some amazingly healthy food, just the type of thing to build strong bones and clean arteries and I didn’t know about any of it.  What I did know was that their cookies were amazing and so was there candy isle.  GOOD quality chocolate for not a lot of dough.  I actually did buy some dough there too.  It was delicious.

But you’re thinking now, “Steve, these failed attempts just talk about foods you liked.  You didn’t mention any exercise.”  You’re right, I didn’t.

By this time, I was gaining a bit of a tummy.  It wasn’t pretty but I was sure it was manageable.  I cut back a little on the sweets, but that didn’t seem to melt the pounds away.  My diet plan was to not eat the last taco in the Taco Bell six-pack and to leave a few cookies in the bag.  The math worked in my head.

It was about that time my then girlfriend, who later became my wife, made a plea for me to stop eating meals at gas stations.  Well sure, when you put it like THAT it sounds disgusting.  But I looked at myself as a man constantly on the go.  I felt extremely efficient at grabbing a meal on the run and not wasting my time sitting down to a “proper” meal.  It was a harsh reality I had to face.  I ate at gas stations less, “a-few-cookies-left-in-the-bag” less. 

Next came the Adkins diet.  I would like to take this time to officially apologize to the public for my actions the two weeks I adhered to the Adkins, no-carb diet.  I lost a marginal bit of weight, yelled at everyone I loved, was convinced someone was following me home from work, hated everything and let people know it.  I don’t know what was worse, my headaches or people reminding me that the diet is great because if you like steak, you can have all the steak you want.  Toward the end of that little experiment I was verbally punching anyone in the throat that said that to me, or near me.  My relationship with the Adkins diet ended with me waking up next to a dumpster behind a Dairy Queen with a half-eaten ice cream cake in my lap.

I joined Bally’s gym.  I bought a year’s membership to go and swim early in the morning.  I found the morning swim crew extremely judgmental.  The first day, I completed a good number of laps and slipped into the hot tub for a minute before dressing and going to work.  One of the other swimmers that was doing fast turns around me in the pool addressed me.

“You’re new.  Did you just move here?” asked the swimmer.

“No, I just joined this gym, I live nearby.”

Nudging the guy next to him and shaking his head in disbelief he says, “Yeah, we’ll probably see him three or four more times before he disappears.”

Well that was rude.  I wasn’t going to let that go without making the guy feel like crap for a minute.

“The doctor told me to take it slow at first.  This is the first time I’ve been back to exercise since the accident,” I said with a tone that I had just been transported to a painful memory. 

The swimmer’s face went pale and slack, as if he had just realized he had insulted a dying man.  The rest of the people in the hot tub went silent.  Not one word was spoken for a couple of minutes.  Nobody got out to leave for fear of breaking the delicate frame of mind I appeared to be in.  I could tell the swimmer wanted to apologize but I just sat there looking solemnly into the frothing bubbles as he ran the tape of the mean thing he said back and forth in his head.  I just wanted to let that cook awhile. 

“Uh, what was the accident you were in, if you don’t mind my asking,” said a brave man sitting next to me.  I realized I was kind of holding all of them emotionally hostage too, AND it was a good setup for a joke.

“Oh, the accident!  Yeah, I accidently ate about 25 dozen donuts over a period of two years!” I said loudly.  The entire hot tub breathed a sigh of relief, or someone adjusted the bubbles, but I could see that everyone was off the hook including the jerk that was inevitably right about me only showing up to the gym four or five more times (three).

I’ve lost weight from stress, which is a lousy way to lose weight, though you get tons of compliments.  The problem is, whatever is stressing you out to the point of losing that much weight doesn’t allow you to feel good about the weight you’ve lost, so when the stress is over, you put even more weight back on. 

Fast forward through years of poor eating and good intentions and we come to a fat thirty-something husband and father with a history of heart disease staring down the loaded double-barreled shotgun of reality.  My doctor told me that I had the cholesterol numbers of three healthy men.  She explained that because I’m only ONE man, that those numbers spelled certain disaster for me.  In this case I’m substituting the word “disaster” for “death”.  She said if I didn’t lower my numbers by the next visit, she would put me on cholesterol meds and wasn’t this time because I asked her to let me try to lower it myself.

This happened to coincide with my son becoming what I call a “corndog vegetarian”.  He asked that the family stop eating meat for a month, so Wendy and I did.  He however didn’t quite grasp the rules he was asking us to follow.  There we would be at dinner, eating our beans and rice and greens and we would ask our son what he chose for lunch that day.

“I had salad, a cookie, some carrots, a corndog and some yogurt,” said the “corndog vegetarian”.

So I cut out the “walking meats”, chicken, beef, pork, goat, lamb, horse, dog or cat (who knows, I might have eaten some, I was eating at gas stations).  I stayed with fish though, because I didn’t want to go too extreme and I also felt like I hadn’t eaten enough sushi, having discovered it too late in life.  This meant that most fast food was off the menu so I just didn’t go.  I stuck to fish and grains and fruits and vegetables.  I felt better and that made the transition easier.

I went back to the doctor six or eight months later and she reviewed my results with me.

“What cholesterol medication did I put you on?” She asked as she flipped through my file.

“None,” I said. 

“No, you’re taking something, do you remember what it’s called?” the doctor asked again.

“Uh, no, I’m not taking anything, so even if you did prescribe something, I’m not taking it.” I assured her.

“You’re sure?” she asked again a third time.

“Well, if I am taking something for my cholesterol and I don’t know about it, I think I have bigger problems than my bloodwork,” I said with finality. 

“Well then this test isn’t right. It says your numbers dropped significantly from the last time we tested you,” she said.

“It might be because I completely changed my diet and I’m not eating animal fat or fast food,” I said, hoping that my Neanderthal grasp of modern medicine was enough to convince her that I may have moved the number on my own.

“Ahhh, that’s what’s wrong,” she said with a smile, “nobody ever does what I tell them to do so I don’t expect a change.”

“It was my understanding that death was involved,” I said to her, this time it was my chance to not believe HER.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter, they still don’t do what I tell them to do,” she said in a tone that was either too calloused to laugh or was a joke delivered so dry, a glass of water wouldn’t have revealed it.

THIS was the success I was waiting for.  I had lowered my cholesterol number by simply changing a behavior on MY terms.  It felt great!  Before my doctor left me to give quickly dismissed advice to other patients, she told me that if I began simple, regular exercise, I would be surprised how much I could lower my numbers even more.

At the same time, I was exploring my ADHD with a counselor and reminding myself of all the things that someone with ADHD has to deal with.  One of the big pieces of ADHD in some people who have it, is a problem controlling impulsivity.  We enjoy instant gratification.  It gives us a little hit of the hormone or chemical we need to be satiated enough to tolerate life.  Food is a big impulsivity thing for me.  I will rationalize myself to the bottom of a box of donuts faster than Atticus Finch at a trial of the wrongly accused.

I had thought about food as addiction, specifically sugar and salt.  I know they tickle the brain in a way that can bring me relaxation, happiness, euphoria… Not unlike how heroin might, but on a much smaller scale.  Understanding that sugar and salt are in most foods and that you need to eat three times a day and cannot control your urges and impulsivity, paints a pretty bleak picture of how you can kick the sugar and salt habit.  Drug addicts and alcoholics have a difficult time cutting those substances out of their lives and they don’t need them to survive.  But with food and impulsivity, it’s like asking an alcoholic to quit binge drinking but you must have three and only three drinks at three different times of the day.  Any program member will tell you that the next drink is the end. 

So what about foods vicious cycle?  If I look at food in the belief of addiction, how can I possibly beat that monster?  I think I have an answer.

Oh, it isn’t easy.  I’m not going to market this as some kind of self-help fat reducing program.  I’m simply sharing what seems to be working for me.

First of all, I got my meds right.  I took the time, met with professionals to get my depression and ADHD levels in check chemically, removing the depression eating and lessening the impulsivity binging.  This means nothing to some of you, but to my mental health suffering brothers and sisters… *WINK*

I figured I need to head off my impulsivity with a psychological blocker.  I can’t simply not eat food, and I can’t just cut out sugars and carbs and salts without it blowing back in my face.  But what I can do is determine how much I deal with on MY terms.

I know the foods that are bad for me and I know the foods that are good for me… finally.  I know I’m going to have to eat but some of the food is going to be a bad choice.  So psychologically I need to treat it like it is something I absolutely need to keep around and interact with, yet do not trust at all and limit my time with.

Now I treat food like a brother that I share duties running a family business with AND is the only one carrying a spare kidney for me in case I might need one (this is all make believe, my kidneys are pristine).  He’s a brother I need to keep around or the family business will crumble and my world will fall apart.  However, I have to create a scenario where I don’t want to spend too much time with him.  I need to despise him as if he is constantly trying to betray me by sleeping with my wife.  It’s all very “Mexican soap opera” (the very best kind) in my head.  I even have a very impressive mustache, while my brother, who looks just like me, is clean shaven.  Oh, I hate you Esteban Damm!  If it weren’t for the honor of our family business (we make extremely comfortable short pants), I would murder you for constantly trying to sleep with my wife!

In short, I’m blaming the food for my bad choices and impulsivity.  I’m projecting evil on to something that really isn’t, but it makes it easier for me to stay away from the thing I’m most tempted by.  It really works!

So that’s the food part.  The exercise part was easier.  I had already been encouraged by my doctor to continue lowering my cholesterol numbers and I had some momentum.  It turns out, we had a treadmill in the basement, so I started hitting that regularly.  It wasn’t easy but I made myself do it, and getting to watch movies and shows while I did really made the experience better.  Unfortunately, the treadmill is only one kind of exercise and in reality, due to drumming, my legs already look super-hot (ONLY my legs and mostly just my calves).

I hated going to gyms, because of people like that swimmer from above or other people that just want to come up to you and strut and be competitive.  I hate how SOME weight lifters scream at their partners to “PUSH IT! YEEEEEAH BABY!” or something similar.  I really just wanted to swim and do some machines for strength and tone.  I did not want to “get big” or expand my chest.  I wanted to go to the gym, not talk to anyone at all, exercise and then go home. 

My wife got me a membership for my birthday, AT MY REQUEST!  She’s not a cruel person, but she was excited that I asked for that particular gift and the transaction was completed in record time online by someone who has a hard time finding an address on the net.  Thanks again hon. 

My first time to the gym, I wandered into the weights and began doing some reps on a leg weight machine.  I don’t know what the machine is called but I understand the concept that if you do it a bunch, the weight that you have on the machine will feel lighter over time.

I’m immediately hassled by a guy who does not work for the gym who wants to show me how I’m “doing it wrong”.  He also starts talking to me about how I can take these supplements that will basically double the results of the workout.  I wanted to suggest to him that since he had been at the gym awhile, he should just take one of those and call it a day so he could leave me alone, but he was intimidating and I wanted none of it.  He followed me to a couple machines letting me know what I was doing wrong, talking about supplements and generally making all my worst fears of going to the gym true.

However! Despite the jerk from the pool and the supplements guy, I continued to go to the gym.  I even went twice a day when I could.  I would swim on my lunch break (I swim like a desperate walrus) and then do some strength stuff or running in the evening.  I started feeling great.  I actually belong to two different gyms now and go as regularly as I can.  I’m seeing results and feeling better.  But I’m not a zealot about it.  I’m not punishing myself.  I’m just making realistic goals and challenges and hitting them.  I’m working out alongside my wife, who loves the extra time with me (so she says).  I have shoes that I only use for exercising now (THAT was an awkward day at the gym in the loafers).   As soon as I get over this cold, I intend to go back.

I’m still fat, but I know which direction I’m going.  THIS time, with the help of a good gym routine and my imaginary evil Mexican-soap-opera-food-metaphor-of-a-brother, I feel like I’m going to continue this healthy trend and that’s the Damm truth.

As a human, I am a failure.  Every one of us is.  Name one human that has successfully lived forever.  There, see?  Everyone has failed at something, and I am a very successful failure. 

Every year about this time, people set themselves up for failure.  I’m speaking of course about New Year’s Resolutions. 

(I promised myself I wouldn’t write about ordinary topics this last year, seriously.  It appears I will be failing at this just under the wire.  #successfulfailure)

But this year, I have decided to set myself up for failure monumentally and in some instances, success.  If I do this with forethought, and I fail at all of these things this year, then I will ironically (actual irony, not Morissette irony) be successful. 

Let’s just jump into my resolutions for 2013!

1. I resolve to solve the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations before 12/31/2013.  JFK was killed by Marylin Monroe in the Billiards room with the candlestick, RFK by the Boyscouts of America (two were Eagle Scouts) and MLK is still alive.
2. I resolve to start smoking 3 packs of unfiltered cigarettes per day starting today.  Where does one purchase cigarettes?
3. As of this WORD, I resolve to no longer post anymore blog entries with grammer, spelling or punctushun errers
4. I resolve in 2013 to spend a little more time with my family on the surface of the moon.  (I know it is expensive)
5. I resolve to lose at least 20 pounds.  Crud.
6. Within the year, I resolve to read one Danielle Steel novel… (This isn’t even funny to me.  You could tell me that I would cure cancer by reading one, and I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.  I have nothing against her books, they may be fascinating, but I will never know.  Sorry cancer patients.)
7. 2013 is the year for me to have an extra marital affair with someone from either sex.  Whatever, I’m excepting resumes for my wife and I to review.  Just send them to my wife, she’ll have final say.  I’m not in a big hurry to get started on this one to tell you the truth.  You’ve heard of win/win?  This is fail/fail.  I won’t do it, or if I do, I will fail to like or be good at it.
8. I resolve to not judge anyone this year.
9. I resolve to not make any jokes at someone else’s expense.
10. I resolve to buy a very nice BMW.
11. I resolve to buy and hide a monkey from my family for a whole year before euthanizing it.
12. In 2013, I hearby resolve to learn the bagpipes and play them outside my office each morning facing Dublin Ireland, the land of someone’s ancestors.
13. I plan on finding Lindsay Lohan, or some equally troubled Hollywood star constantly in the news(nah, just Lindsay Lohan), sitting her down and convincing Lindsay to buy a house in Nebraska and to take a job in a cubicle somewhere away from the never ending cocaine and unfortunate-street-crossing-pedestrians.  I will take them away and teach them how to file papers and send emails to co-workers about forecasting reports.  I will teach her to wake up in the morning and go to work every day despite having to sit through a meeting with Delores every Thursday at 8:30 while she explains why it is important to not wear open-toed shoes in the workplace.  I will teach her how to shop with coupons and how to not fight anyone at a bar ever.  I will probably just teach her to stay away from the bar.  She will learn to never call anyone from her old life again.  Lindsay Lohan will just become “That Girl in Accounts Receivable that Always Wears Interesting Socks,” or “That Girl in Accounts Receivable that Always Wears Interesting Socks and I’m Thinking of Asking Out.”  Nobody will ever speak about her on the news again.  She will stay out of the limelight, out of the gossip and out of trouble.  Lindsay will live to the ripe old cocaine-riddled-heart age of 57 and we, the people will never have to think of her tragic life ever again.  Everybody wins.
14. Same as 13 only with Honey Boo Boo.  Replace “cocaine” with “sugar/Mountain Dew” and “unfortunate-street-crossing-pedestrians” with “Honey Boo Boo’s own family.”
15. I resolve to skydive this year.
16. 2013 will be known as the year Steve Damm went back to The Old Country Buffet.
17. Resolution number 17 is too personal to print.
18. Upon reading this, know with utter certainty that in 2013, that I will no longer be blogging in 2013.
19. I will only have 19 resolutions for 2013.
20. I resolve to write only blogs EVERYONE will like.  I will start by switching this to a political blog and writing only my opinions and not giving anyone a chance to write theirs.  I resolve to single people out on the blog and make them cry because I’m mean.  I’m a mean, mean, meanie and you are about to find out, and you will like it.  Everyone will because that’s my resolution.
21. I’m going to rob one bank a month.  Blood bank, food bank ditch bank, whatever, if you’re a bank and we are in a month, you might get robbed.  That’s 13 banks if you’re counting.
22. I swear to spend less time on the Facebook.
23. In 2013, I will apologize less.  I’m sorry, but it had to be said.  I have a tendency to feel remorse and responsible for negative actions of others that I have no control over and I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel. 
24. I resolve to stop using my tag line “and that’s the Damm truth,” because I realize how tired it is becoming.  I know people don’t care for it, so it has to go.  Never mind that I’m not-so-cleverly taking a moniker that sounds like a swear word and turning it into a little joke that let’s everyone know that I have a sense of humor about it, and “HEY! Don’t bother making a joke about my name, because I’ve heard it before and I took the liberty of letting you know I have by making the same kind of joke for you and…oh, you did it anyway…thanks.”
25. New Year’s Resolution number 25 is to collect all the Cabbage Patch Kid memorabilia I can and donate it to a hospital for chronically ugly babies.  Ugly babies should have ugly baby dolls so they feel just like you and me.  (If you think I’m being hurtful toward ugly babies, it means you are thinking of an ugly baby right now.  That means you have judged a baby on their physical appearance.  This is just a joke New Year’s resolution not aimed at any baby at all, but if this made you a little mad, it’s only at yourself, for knowing such an ugly, ugly baby.)

I don’t know about you, but I think this plan is fool proof.  I can fail all of these miserably, though I will try to achieve/break that weight one.  That would make me an even bigger failure than what I hoped to accomplish, which makes me excited to see how successful I am at failing. 

It’s the end of the year, the beginning of a new one and I hope you find what you’re looking for in 2013, and that’s the Damm truth.

The following blog post will have several slight exaggerations regarding human behavior and references to specific groups of people making use of stereotypes and regions of the Pacific Northwest. If you choose to continue reading and take umbrage with my statements, either find a way to deal with your disappointment in an introverted way, or take comfort in knowing that I am correct and accept the reality that you are not. I don’t anticipate there being an issue though, so you’re probably safe to read on.

It snowed yesterday, not like it does in disaster films or cartoons, but the way you have always wanted it to snow. It snowed perfectly. The sky was overcast but bright, and began releasing cold, dry flakes that fell rapidly but built to a satisfactory volume. It was as if the weather wanted everyone to be aware of what was happening before the air became too thick with the falling crystals. Then it was snowing as hard as it was in the final scenes of It’s a Wonderful Life, not the part where George jumps into the river to save Clarence, but when Bert the cop finally finds George on the bridge and George threatens the safety of an armed officer, the same officer who may/or may not have taken a couple shots at him on a crowded street for simply not stopping when the officer said to stop. (Did anybody else think that was a bit irresponsible of Bert?) THAT amount of snow, or the amount of snow that appears when Bill Murray and Andie McDowell dance for the first time in the gazebo to Ray Charles in Groundhog Day, in my not-so-humble opinion is the perfect amount of snow.

It even snowed the perfect amount, which is three inches. This is extremely rare, as snow usually falls in depths of 2, 4, 6 inches or three feet. Three inches of snow, though rare, is perfect. Three inches is of dry powder is perfect for skiers making the first run on an un-groomed hill. Sledding is perfect on tamped down snow and unencumbered by three inches of fresh snow. Snowpersons are of a healthy shape when packed with exactly three inches of rolled, slightly wet snow. Pine trees look perfectly flocked with slightly more than two, but slightly less than four inches of snow. It is also rumored that Santa and his eight to nine reindeer believe that 3 inches of snow is the preferred amount for takeoff and landing of a sleigh full of toys (and coal, we all know it’s in there).

As beautiful as snow is at my parent’s house on the East side of the cascades, West of the mountains in Seattle, 3 inches of snow would or will cause a pandemonium equal to or greater than the events documented in the final chapters of the bible.

Three inches of snow in the Seattle Metro area creates a hysteria and panic that would make people question reality. Three inches of snow will actually melt IQs of absolutely brilliant people into that of the dumbest members of a Neanderthal clan. Nowhere in Seattle and surrounding areas is this more apparent than on the roadways.

To be fair, Seattle is built on some pretty wicked hills and has twisting roadways that could only have been designed to keep mass transit trains and trollies out of town (look it up, it’s fascinating). Seattle is not built to function with ANY amount of snow and ice. I ended that sentence with a period because that is the final word on the thought. This period is also where the fairness to Seattle drivers ends.

People of Seattle, here my plea. When there is snow or ice on the roadway, just don’t move. Stand still, shut up, and wait for the ALL CLEAR signal. None of you, NONE OF YOU, SERIOUSLY NONE OF YOU are capable of walking on ice let alone operating a motor vehicle. When it snows or there is freezing rain, every single one of you is a danger to yourself and everyone around you. It’s not your fault. Your hipster, brainy and overconfident demeanor that fits you so well the rest of the year really does you a disservice in the winter. Please understand that I am sacrificing great personal joy in the entertainment value of the spectacle you will create by giving you this warning. I love talking about and watching your dumb snow driving on the interwebs. I am willing to give all of that up, if you all agree to not be stupid the next time it snows. Search youtube.com for videos of Seattle winter drivers. Make popcorn, it’s awesome entertainment.

The first thing that leaves the brain-works of a Seattle driver is any idea of remedial physics. Mass, speed, weight, force, gravity or transference of energy do not have to be studied for the mind to be fully aware of their existence. This basic awareness of motion around the Seattle driver gradually leaves the operating system of a human as more and more snow falls. I’ve witnessed very smart people not understand that if they make their car move forward and they apply the brakes while the car is on ice, the car will continue to move until the car want’s to stop or is stopped by something bigger. Usually the person gets lucky and the car stops without incident. Immediately, the person tries the same action again and expects a different outcome. People have referred to this as the definition of insanity. I just think it’s a case of the stupids.

It doesn’t matter what you drive either. I will say that I see more people get into trouble in Seattle with SUVs and Four-Wheel-Drives. With these guys, it is absolutely a false sense of confidence that gets them into the most trouble. I worked downtown in a building that overlooked a particularly steep hill that leveled out into a rather busy intersection. At the top of the hill, the police had wisely set up a barrier so that no driver would attempt to go down the road of perfectly Zambonied ice.

We were positioned to be able to watch moron after moron attempt to drive down the hill, endangering the lives and property of anything between the top of the hill and the two blocks of poor suckers either walking or parked on the steep grade.

First up was a moron in a Range Rover. Not every owner of the $80,000 vehicle is as dumb as the person on this particular occasion, but I would imagine that if I paid that much for a car known for off-roading, I too would feel a surge of overconfidence.

As the person, not saying if it was a man of a woman, got out of the car to survey the road and to physically push the large police blockade out of the way so they could take a run at the Olympic level luge course in a 4500+ pound sled, the crowd at our window were all yelling things that would have been ignored even if the driver could hear them. Blockade out of the way, the Range Rover goosed the accelerator slightly to take the hill nice and easy.

Anyone watching this play out, would have equated this with attempting to drive over a river of lava. There was ZERO chance of success, ZERO. The driver would have had a better chance of opening the doors, laying them flat and trying to fly the Range Rover. And yet, hear we are, watching someone smart enough to get themselves into an $80,000 automobile attempting the impossible.

When Mean Mr. Gravity finally had the Range Rover in his clutches, he immediately turned the vehicle around so that any false sense of control that the driver may have had probably promptly exited out of their pants when they realized that there was a particularly unforgiving traffic light with a heavy volume of slightly less dumb drivers about to cross their path.

When the Range Rover started to pick up speed despite the driver attempting to accelerate in the opposite direction, most of us looked away. Wrecks are interesting but nobody wants to see a fatality. Somehow the Range Rover got stopped at the bottom of the hill… just in time for the sedan that didn’t see the blockade at the top of the hill to slam into the Range Rover sideways. I don’t blame the sedan, though if they knew Seattle, they should have known better than attempt that hill.

Fast forward several hours and there were no fewer than 8 abandoned cars at the bottom of the hill. Abandoned. Just left there at the bottom of a nasty hill to be collected sometime later. These cars had all been bashed up and had hit several other cars that were parked innocently along the street by people smart enough to not be driving, but unfortunate enough to live in Seattle during winter.

It’s like this all over the city, people just losing their minds. Folks getting out of their cars on the Freeway and walking away from them as if they just realized that driving maybe wasn’t for them and they wouldn’t be needing their car anymore. Like someone who tried tennis for an afternoon and might just leave their racket and tube of balls at the club for whoever else may need them, because they were through. Only this was with cars, and not one or two, I remember several snow “storms” where we would see dozens, maybe even hundreds of cars left in every lane of the Freeway.

SUV, Pickup, Subaru owners (of which I have a Forester), these rules apply to us as well. Seattle is not to be toyed with in the winter. Those friends of mine who truly know how to drive in the snow, know enough to not risk driving in the snow in Seattle. If your route has just one hill, then you are sunk. Your cars are not magic. They aren’t. THEY AREN’T… and neither are you.

And the media, OH THE MEDIA! SNOWMAGGEDON! SNOWPOCALYPSE! SNOWAPALOOZA! These are not words that should exist, and yet I know them. How? Because the news cannot wait to overhype snow in Seattle. The only thing the media should say when it starts to snow to the people of Seattle is: “People of Seattle, several hundred invisible alligators have escaped into the streets of Seattle and you should stay in your homes until they are all caught. The alligators have rabies and there are raccoons and rattlesnakes taped to their bodies and they are also invisible.” This would be far more effective at keeping people off the impossible Seattle roads in a snowstorm.

But tonight, I will look out the window of this generally flat area where I am currently staying and enjoy the beauty of fluffy, powdery white landscape blanket that makes winter in this latitude so amazing. The snow has made this Christmas Eve, once again, a romantic dream of a holiday. I hope all of you that celebrate Christmas have a wonderful one, and that’s the Damm truth.

There are a multitude of subjects that I am able to speak semi-intelligently on and in turn, lull you to sleep with. I am (sadly) well versed in comic book lore, The Who, Star Wars AND Star Trek, electric cars, mythologies of many ancient civilizations, guitars, drum making, various conspiracy theories, benefits of Metamucil, historical events, hobbies of my wife, film, dog breeds, the entire catalog of Danielle Steele, skunk extermination and what living with ADHD is like. That Danielle Steele thing isn’t true. I just read my list and it looked fairly ordinary and commonplace for a man of my particular type. I thought the cottage cheese could use some chives.

That list is a little bland, yes, however the passion is real. I do love learning more about those subjects very much (I would even be open to reading a Danielle Steele novel…no, I don’t think I really would). There is one subject that I seem to obsess on just a LITTLE more than those others these days and that is the culinary preparation of popped corn. I LOVE to make popcorn.

“But Steve,” you would say, “Have we not reached the end of what humans can do with popcorn? Can we not put a prepackaged bag of our preferred flavored kernels into a microwave machine and explode the grain more efficiently that way? What could you possible do better than that?”

I would tell you to never, EVER again put one of those wretched pre-packaged poison pouches into the food zapper and to allow me to call a hazmat team to dispose of anymore that you know of in the area. I despise it that much. And yes, I believe it is that bad for you.

I’m not going to go into the possible health risks of microwave popcorn. That wouldn’t be any fun and for some of you it would break your heart. I’ve never been accused of being a heartbreaker…ever, and I’m not about to start today. You’ll have to look up all that junk yourself. I’m here with the GOOD NEWS. I’m here with a better way.

If you wanted popcorn without all the trouble of the chemicals of the microwave kind, you might …kind of consider maybe, …perhaps just buying an air popper… (cough). I don’t own one. Not that they are a bad way to pop popcorn, many consider it to be the healthiest way. I just don’t care for it that way. But if that’s what keeps you dear readers from nuking a bag of chemically enhanced sodium inside a thin liner that melts off the bag wall and onto food you will ingest into the soft inner tissue of your body, then pretty please, with sugar on top, get the air popper. Don’t bring it to my house.

If you want a truly enjoyable popcorn experience, read on.

When my father isn’t golfing, euthanizing skunks or chasing my lovely mother around the house, he is snoring in front of a television with an old western movie playing. When he’s not doing that, he’s making popcorn for the family before the nightly ritual of television. He has been doing this since before I was born and some of my earliest memories of family life included a bowl of popcorn. An artisan popcorn chef, who trained his entire life perfecting an oil based popcorn recipe, he is as careful as a brain surgeon when it comes to popcorn. At least he is as careful as a brain surgeon making popcorn.

That might be a little over the top. Dad keeps his popcorn in an industrial sized mustard tub and describes his popcorn making style as “making popcorn.” I believe his oil of choice is canola, though I know for a fact that he has used vegetable oil in the past. His flavoring of choice is table salt. If a person watched my father making popcorn in my parent’s kitchen, they would simply see a man throwing some grain in some hot oil and creating fluffy white matter out of a steaming steel portal as easily as a stage magician conjures a long eared rodent from a tall silk hat. But it is more than that. Despite his interest in the football/baseball/golf game and/or Big Valley rerun he is watching, his internal clock is set with Swiss precision to the moisture level and oil temperature inside his kettle.

I watched this, and how he shook the pot to move the kernels gently, but thoroughly around in the unbearably hot oil. I studied how he kept the lid on, so that when the grain became excited and finally exploded with all the unbridled enthusiasm of a science class experiment that required goggles, nobody was blinded and seeds didn’t shoot all over the room. Genius.

It was unacceptable for kernels to escape popping. Dad would often wait until the last corn would pop before allowing the group into the grey-flecked melmac bowls in which we served popcorn, and only popped corn. It was as if the man had counted how many individual pieces of grain had entered the kettle and then counted backward until he had heard every single husk wrapped seed morph into a beautiful, fluffy, white micro-cloud of carbohydrate and dietary fiber. Dad had an unspoken philosophy of no kernel left behind.

Carefully he would then distribute popcorn in bowls, strait from the cooking pot. He would season the popcorn with nothing but common table salt. Dad can look at you as you explain to him how you, say, forgot to turn in your homework that day, and properly season three medium-sized bowls of perfectly popped corn, all the while maintaining eye contact with you to convey just enough disappointment that you will turn that homework in on time the next go around. It was like watching the NBA look-away, give and go. Ron Damm makes popcorn as easy as you draw and exhale breath right now.

I was in my late twenties before I felt that my soul was prepared enough to learn the craft of cooking the popping corn. I remember rehearsing the request in my head, “I feel I am ready. Will you teach me about popcorn?” Seemed too formal yet it sounded like I didn’t respect the grain enough. “Father, I think I’m ready for the family popcorn recipe. Will you teach me?” Seemed weak. He would deny the request because he wouldn’t feel I was up to the task. “Popcorn is our statement to the world father. Will you show me your popcorn secrets?” Almost. This was very close, but it lacked weight and smacked of pride, which is only undetectable whilst being spoken. And then it hit me, the perfect way to make the request of the craft that I felt was my birthright.

“Hey dad, will you show me how to make that?”

“Yeah, okay,” my father said, “you can make the next batch. Just take some of that oil there and pour some into the pan… maybe a little more… okay, that’s enough. Turn the burner on to a medium heat.”

“A medium heat? Not 3 or 4, but just a vague medium heat?” I asked for clarification.

“Well, you know, enough to heat up the oil.”

“Okay, and how will I know when to put the popcorn in?”

“Well, you can put a kernel in and when it pops, it is ready”

“When it is ready, how much popcorn will I put in?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A couple scoops?”

“Are you asking me, Dad?”

“A couple scoops. Good sized, maybe a little more. I use the scooper in the mustard jar.”

Dad stepped away to check the score of the baseball game. I could tell he was watching me, or letting me discover on my own like he did when he let me sled down the logging road or when he let me make rubber band guns with the band-saw in the 5^th grade. Master and apprentice, together again to ensure the passing of another skill from generation to generation. He wasn’t going to make it easy either.

Dad left me to fend for myself at the burner as he conveniently disappeared to the garage, probably to wait quietly until I had a chance to sink or swim. Like any apprentice left alone with the Master’s work I admit that I panicked. I’m not so proud to suggest that I was a natural. That first minute at the sizzling pot full of cooking corn was heart pounding. What next? What was the next step? I tried to relax my mind and find a moment years ago that had my father making popcorn. Popcorn, day? Night? Movie? Movie theater popcorn? Yes! No! We didn’t make popcorn at the theater. Home. We made it in the kitchen where I’m standing, but Dad stood here and I stood… sat on the parquet floor by where the birdcage was. Duke! Our parakeet’s name was DUKE. Breathe in. Dad made popcorn before the Muppet Show. Hurry Dad! It’s going to start and it’s the one where Luke Skywalker is on. Shake the popcorn faster. Breathe out. Shake it. Shake it. I have to shake it.

I came out of my daze not knowing how long I had been under, and began shaking the corn over the burner. I started erratically moving the pot over the heat and focused on the memory. My moves became deliberate and I covered the corn to protect against the inevitable tiny, violent explosions.

The corn began to pop and the kettle started to fill. The force of the popped kernels was beginning to push the lid off the pot. Where would I put the fresh popped corn?

Three stainless steel bowls appeared in a triangular formation on the counter next to me. To my shame, the old man had stepped in to save the corn. I instinctively removed the lid over the individual bowls and filled them with snowy, white… disappointment. It was chewy. I made chewy popcorn and anyone who has made the mistake of chewing gum and eating nuts will tell you, it is unpleasant like that.

“Not bad,” said the master.

“Don’t lie to me,” said the apprentice.

As daddy issues go, this is pretty tame.

That was over ten years ago. I have experimented with hundreds of batches of popcorn. I’ve used different oils, learned secrets from others and tested different techniques against controlled conditions. The results have been …impressive, if I do say so myself.

So from these experiments, I would like to impart on you a simple recipe for pretty Damm good popcorn.

Popcorn is unstable. The second you don’t respect it, it will burn the crap out of you with hot oil or in any number of other ways (seven). The point is. Although my father has been able to pay attention to three different sporting events while tending to scalding hot oil and naturally occurring explosives, you cannot. I have tended to the corn and only the corn each time I have made the commitment to pop it. It’s ten minutes of focus that, if done right, will be unbelievably gratifying. End of safety lecture. Come on, you’re adults. FIRE HOT. NO TOUCH FIRE.

I begin with a pot that will hold at least 8 quarts, and begin to heat it at a medium temperature on a burner. You will add your choice of oil immediately. Don’t leave an empty pot heating on the stove. Make sure you have a lid that covers that particular pot. Don’t put the lid on the pot yet because when you go to put the oil in the pot, you’ll just pour it on the lid and make a huge mess.

Choose your oil carefully. Make sure it is a COOKING OIL. You can use canola oil, vegetable oil, or others but many are looking at mono-fat types of oils like olive or peanut. An are considered by half the health profession as being “healthier”. Still some people use coconut oil, which this week may be considered healthy and you cannot eat enough of it, and next week considered to be worse for you than handling uranium rods. I use peanut oil as I like the way it cooks. It has a high smoke temperature and leaves a nutty aftertaste for some reason, some think it’s because it is peanut oil and peanuts are considered to be nuts. Duh.

If you want to get a little smoky flavor to it, add just a slight splash of sesame oil. Maybe not this time. Forget I said this.

In the 8 quart pot, I pour about 2/3 cup of peanut oil into the pot and let it heat up. It may require slightly more or slightly less, but the important part is that there is enough oil to sit at the bottom of the pot and come up to over the middle part of the kernels you are about to add. You can always add a little oil at a time until you’re happy with the level. Don’t over pour because it is harder to get the scalding hot oil out of the pot, than the cool oil in. Let the oil get nice and hot. Throw in a couple kernels and see if it sizzles. If it does, the oil is hot enough. If not, increase the temperature slowly until it does get a little sizzle.

Now it’s time to add about a cup-and-a-half of decent popcorn. I have been leaning more organic with the grain. Non-GMO, but hey, baby steps, I’m just glad you’re trying this out. Seriously, are you? I hope you are.

You want the kernels to cover the bottom of the 8 quart pot completely and add enough so there is about half as much more resting on top. There should be enough oil to nearly cover the bottom layer of kernels.

Now roll those kernels around slowly with the lid OFF every 15 to 20 seconds or so, keeping the temperature down to “low” or a “3” or something. I don’t know your stove, hopefully you do. Just keep rolling the corn around as they sizzle. Let the corn brown up slightly but evenly. Golden brown, more gold than brown is what you’re shooting for.

Now turn the heat up to “high” and put the lid ON. Leave it there as you continue to roll the corn around and shake it slightly to allow each kernel time on the heated surface of the pot. You should soon be hearing pops.

Where are you going to put the corn once it’s popped? Well you better figure it out. That corn is popping. Scream for someone to get you a big serving bowl or two. Probably two, I didn’t tell you this, but you just made way more popcorn than you probably need. You need at least two big bowls RIGHT NOW! AND KEEP THE CORN MOVING! WATCH THE LID. DON’T BURN YOURSELF!

As the popcorn moves to the top of the pot, remove the lid, set it aside, being careful that the super-hot oil doesn’t scorch something on your counter top or the counter top itself, because that’s not gonna please any housemate. I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO GET BOWLS! I guess a newspaper will work in a pinch, or a clean or mostly clean dish towel. You really do need to get some bigger bowls. Pour the popcorn out of the kettle evenly into the serving receptacle of your choice, in this case a funny cat calendar from two years ago, and get that very heavy and hot eight quart pot to the sink. Hopefully you don’t have any dishes in there.

Now you need to salt it to taste. A little goes a long way, and they make very good popcorn salts that are shaved much thinner and the salt crystals melt into the hot popcorn sealing to it. But this is all up to your taste.

Some people put a little hot sauce on it or grated cheese. I’m a simple salt guy. Now you have a lovely snack that you may find to be tastier than the over-oiled sodium bomb that is most movie theater bags of popcorn.

I’m into different types of popping corn and varieties, yes there are many. There are small red varieties, medium blue corn that carries less of a husk. Some are crunchier with more husk. I recommend trying… wait.

Did you turn the oven off? You should do that.

I think you can see that I care far too much for the activity of preparing and eating popcorn. But if you’ve made it this far, it means maybe you do to. I hope you give THIS a shot and you give up that nasty bag of pre wrapped junk. If you still feel the microwave is the best option for you. Just put your own kernels into a brown paper bag and do it that way. You don’t want to get popcorn lung. It’s a real thing, and that’s the Damm truth.

Why do some of us put so much pressure on ourselves to outperform ourselves? Why isn’t it good enough to just create something beautiful or fun and not worry if it is better than the last thing we did?

The answers to both of these questions respectively are: “Because you’ll die if you don’t,” and “if it’s not better, you might as well not do it at all and just take that barista job.” (Apologies, but if you’re barista-ing at the moment, we both know there’s something else for you that you are NOT doing.)

Right this moment, I am in a heated battle with my own ego over one-upping myself. I’m not talking about the blog by the way. I love doing this, but I don’t believe anything I do here is going to be a grand statement of who I am or a benchmark for others to measure me. Sorry.

What I’m talking about is getting my Christmas cards done.

(…)

That’s right. One of the more important artisitic statements I will make in my life is how our family does our Christmas cards. This year, the pressure is beginning to mount. Last year’s card was very good, but in my humble opinion, not as good as two years ago, and I REFUSE to backslide any further.

People talk to us all year long about our Christmas cards and how much they love them. When cards start rolling in at the end of November, many people remind us to send them one of ours. “Don’t take us off your list!” is a common desperate plea to make sure one of our cards has their name and correct mailing address on it. I’m not saying that we have to cut people every year, but I am saying that we have limited amounts we are able to create and send as now they have become rather cost prohibitive.

I guess this started with my mother, Sharon Damm and her annual holiday newspaper, The Damm Gazette. The Gazette is an annual holiday letter in the form of a newspaper and arranged into articles with pictures and bylines. Unlike many newspapers in this day and age, circulation remains rather steady and only dips when a subscriber dies. There’s very little advertising, so it only comes out once a year, but it is always filled with at least two or three full belly laughs (the equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize in the world of holiday letters). Several of us family members contribute stories and one year there was even a comic strip. The only time the Gazette was ever in trouble of folding was when the ancient computer program my mother used to put the paper together became unusable due to the computer containing it getting decommissioned and put on display in the Smithsonian Institutes technology wing between the abacus and electric adding machine.

It has always been brilliant, but when it came time for my young family to begin our own holiday letter tradition, my wife and I needed to do something different. Not better, the Damm Gazette is a Christmas classic like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” or “The Muppet Christmas Carol”.

Our solution was to do different themes each year and find a fun way to inform our friends about our fabulous lives while being creative and clever. It started out extremely enjoyable and still is, but now there’s this pressure to get the product to the people and now it is crunch time. Actually, a week ago it was crunch time. I can’t believe I’m typing this right now and not finishing up the project before we hit our Wednesday deadline for phase two of Damm Holiday Card 2012. In fact, pardon me for a few hours…

Yeah, I’m still not done. It has to happen though. We face incredible odds, but it WILL get done.

It has become rather taxing, coming up with fresh ideas. One of our first crazy cards was a four panel number of the family on the beach. The theme that year was “corporate annual report” with each quarter of the year addressing stockholders of our “Corporation” about what effected the “stock price”. The stock price was loosely based on household expenditures, like adding a new roof would be an investment in the infrastructure that would move the stock price down temporarily with hopes of future gain in the long run. Now that I read what I just wrote about the card, I hate the idea and I’m sorry I troubled you with it. It could have been so much better.

The next year, our brilliant idea was to do a broadway style playbill, with three acts to represent different parts of the year. We listed the players of course, and a brief synopsis of each act, and we listed song titles and who would perform them. Looking back, I like the idea, but again our pictures were at the beach and it doesn’t exactly fit the theme. We really should have done it right and rented out the Paramount for an afternoon and built a couple sets behind us that were family specific. It could have been so much better.

The next year we tried our hand at re-writing T’was The Night Before Christmas with some staged photos with Santa that had us with various playful poses with the Jolly Old Elf and now I laugh at the poem in spite of myself.  It could have been so much better.

The next year we went a little bonkers and created a holiday Christmas card that looked like a piece of junk mail from a credit card company complete with logoed envelope and cheesy marketing tossed in. We had little credit card sized magnets that we had our picture on and we affixed them to the “offer letter” as per mega-bank marketing play book dictates. The irony being that if anyone put those magnets near real credit cards, the real ones would be erased. Also, when you make your Holiday card to look, feel and smell like junk mail, people tend to treat them as such. I don’t know how many of our cards were thrown away that year, but in some cases, the joke definitely was on us. I still remember stuffing those envelopes and laughing about how crazy people would think we were when they opened them. I giggled like a ticklish hyena that night.

Last year we put together a large photo of the three of us with about twenty objects representing notable items from our year. Oscar and Gracie, our miniature dachshunds even floated above us to represent the ghosts they went as for Halloween. There were skateboards and drums and books and all kinds of things with little labels for each one. But that wasn’t the shocker.

What made my grandmother call me was the fact that we decided to put ourselves on the immediate inside left page without any clothes on (seemingly, it only appeared that we were nude as our shoulders up were bare and we had very surprised looks on our faces). She had received the card while her bible study was having lunch at her home and she wanted to show them all how clever and fun her grandson’s family could be. Little did she know she was about to show her respectable bible study some rare softcore holiday pornography. I’m lucky my grandmother had an excellent sense of humor or else that card may have given her 90-year-old ticker a reason to quit beating (I knew she had a pacemaker so we would probably have been safe, and we were).

To wrap up last year’s, we had the pose with all of our stuff set up and done in reverse, making it appear that my family just exists in a never ending realm of white backdrop. We don’t by the way, we’re people just like you. Just like you, only our Christmas cards are better. Perhaps I should say WERE better.

This year’s card still isn’t done and it’s our most ambitious project yet. As I paused from this blog to work on the project, I found myself giggling again. It’s a holiday giggle that tells me all the drama and work we’re putting into this is going to work. We’re going to get it out on time despite the work and intricacies. Next year I’m hiring an art director.

So no matter how egotistical or shallow you think I am for wanting to make our cards better every year, and you may have a point, it is our way of celebrating the holidays. If we didn’t love our friends and family so much, we wouldn’t spend so much time on the cards to make them like awesome little gifts that surprise you in the mail.

This is the NUMBER ONE thing that gets me in the holiday spirit. The idea that people we may not have spoken to all year, reach out and share their story or photo with us and we share ours with them, is a wonderful thing. It’s the caring and communication, the hug through the mail that lets people know that you still mean something to them. It’s that, and my family loves to make people laugh… and we’re ultra competetive with ourselve

My grandma would have loved what we’re cooking up for this year’s elaborate gesture. If I would have known last year’s card would be the last one she got, I might have saved the nudity for this year and gotten her this year’s card last year. I’m sure she would have redeemed herself to the bible study group.  I miss you Grandma and that’s the Damm truth.

Labor Day was big where I grew up in Central Washington. Every first weekend of September was the benchmark of not just the end of summer, but also the beginning of the new school year for the local education system. It was the time when everyone in the Kittitas Valley came together at the local fair and rodeo to share experiences, talk about the coming sports season and see whose canned goods would take home the blue ribbon for the least amount of Botulism.

I remember the fair fondly and loved its three-and-a-half days of unbridled kid action. All my friends would be there in new school clothes that we couldn’t wait to put holes in. Three months of summer can change a kid quite a bit, so it meant some of us were bigger and some of us watched our friends grow while we bided our time until our bodies told us it was time to sprout. Every inch counted at the fair, because each year we wanted to see if we met the height requirement for certain carnival rides… the good ones.

I don’t know how the local fair contracted out for the carnival that they brought in, but my first guess would be by “low bid”. I say this because the people that run the fair do an excellent job putting it on every year with a limited budget and every year the carnival looks sketchier than a police artist’s doodle pad. This meant that they could keep the prices down for everyone coming to enjoy the fair and if the carnival ever complained, the fair could say the carnival had more than enough safety violations to void their contract. (I seriously doubt if any of this is true, but I have to move the story along.)

My twelfth year brought me just enough vertical currency to start to ride the bigger rides at the carnival. I had my favorites of course. I enjoyed the Tip-Top, which I would now label as “The Spinning Bathtubs on a Catapulting Puke Platform”. The only reason it isn’t actually named the former is that it is too costly to spell it out with light bulbs, but that’s exactly what it is to me now. But when I was twelve, it was just called fun. I would ride anything at the carnival as long as I didn’t go upside down. Upside down was off limits and that should be all the reason anyone needs to keep me upright.

I knew I couldn’t go upside down because only a few years before when I was eight, I had been given permission to go on a small Ferris Wheel type ride that allowed one to push a lever out and flip the cage you were sitting in over. I was allowed to go in it with a girl about my age because two kids that don’t meet the height requirement equal one kid that does.

I had let the girl riding with me know that my preference was to not go upside down while in the metal cage, despite having the option to do so. My understanding of the ride was the same as the idea of riding in a convertible car. Just because the top CAN come off, it doesn’t necessarily have to come off. She agreed that once we were locked in to the mesh cage and hastily secured with a nylon strap, we could just keep the unit level as we went around in the big circle.

Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have bit her. I don’t know if it was the panic of being upside down, the pain of the betrayal of trust, or the rage I felt that she laughed at me about it, but I did what any eight-year-old would NOT have done and sank my teeth into the flesh of her small adolescent arm. You know, I think it was actually the rage, because I needed her to stop laughing and understand I was deadly serious about her keeping us level. She didn’t deserve the bite. She deserved to get to ride the ride with a kid that wouldn’t bite her. When people ask me if I have any regrets from my life, that’s one that comes to mind first. I’m sorry Jill. I’m happy to spring for a tattoo around any scarring to turn a sad memory into a regrettable choice.

At twelve I was in a much better place emotionally and I felt ready for bigger rides and bigger thrills. When it came to rides, none were bigger than the Skydiver. It was almost twice as tall as the Ferris Wheel the carnival lugged around and far more interesting. The Skydiver was a ride that was in production from 1965 to 1979 making the one at our carnival, at best, seven years old and at worst, 21. It’s a simple wheel design, equipped with the enclosed cabs of Soviet Eastern Block era economy cars that because of a coal shortage, had to be sold to a carnival ride manufacturer. The car bodies were mounted around the diameter of the giant wheel in the direction of the curvature. Each car had a big steering wheel in the center that allowed the riders to rotate the car around the axel a full 360 degrees. Looking back at the design and craftsmanship, I would bet that the one at our carnival was the one made just before the prototype.

This was the year my best friend Dave and I would conquer the Skydiver together. The two of us had the combined strength to turn the wheel just right to keep us from going upside down and we would have the thrill of a lifetime. Our logic and plan was sound, we needed to only get in line for the chance to slap fate across the face.

The carnival operator gave Dave and I the critical glare of any equipment engineer that held the precious lives of young people in their hands… or he was trying to determine which of the six of us he would seat first before sneaking another sip from the flask undoubtedly hidden in the one functioning pocket of his grease stained overalls. He loaded Dave and I into the cab of an Easter egg yellow buggy and slammed the mesh gate shut. The carnival worker then secured the door with a hairpin shaped clip the size of a slightly larger hairpin. I immediately realized my mistake.

Have you ever toured or walked through an abandoned prison or mental institution built before the 1930s? Have you ever stood in the rooms and just felt that bad things have happened in there and you just need to get out, whether you use a door, a window or non-load baring wall? Looking at the stains and claw marks inside the cracking fiberglass shell, I got the immediate feeling that this would be the last fair Dave and I would ever go to.

“So, this will be fun. Yeah! Are you ready buddy?!?!” said Dave. I don’t know if the encouraging words were for me or for him. His eyes betrayed him. He knew we were just as doomed as I did.

“Grab the wheel!” I said as the buggy moved up one to remove the remains of the last riders and make room for new victims. “If we keep control of this now, we can keep it from turning over.” Because the next time the wheel moved, our buggy would be free to turn on its own if we didn’t stop it.

Sure enough, on the next move, the buggy unlocked from the upright position and immediately swung upside down despite our best efforts to hold the wheel steady. The wheel was heavier than a diabetic elephant listening to Led Zeppelin.

Understand that the story that follows contains none of the details that the two gentlemen in the story have agreed never utter to another soul. No one will have ALL the details of what went on in the cab of that carnival ride. I will not break that vow here. We are bound by both honor…and shame.

Although I cannot share with you the interactions between Dave and myself, I can tell you that tears were shed, prayers were said, bargains were offered and refused. I can reveal that love, fear, anger and blissful joy all come from the same place, and if you find yourself in that place, you will find that visiting once is all you need. Lines were crossed and then backed over and crossed again. Madness exists on a paper thin plane that is accessible to even twelve-year-olds on an amusement park ride and that plane bisected the buggy Dave and I were trapped in. I saw the edge of Dave and Dave saw the edge of me in that tiny tireless car.

To this day I am convinced that the time spent on that ride rewired the neural pathways in my brain as to change my destiny. My adrenal response mechanism has been dulled permanently by my experience. Danger doesn’t make me run like it did before the Skydiver, it simply makes me welcome the possibility of death.

Dave and I started to bond with the inanimate buggy we were in. It was the only thing keeping us from plummeting 8 stories to our deaths and from the dented parts and creaking pieces, clearly our buggy was the abused one. The moving parts, visible from our window looked like they would come apart and send us speeding toward earth if someone so much as sneezed. The chicken wire covering the upper opening of the door was coming loose. It had been tacked on hastily and with poor craftsmanship, probably because they lost a “rube” out of the opening six towns over. That chicken wire wouldn’t even have slowed our descent if the strap clip holding us in were to come undone. As we hung upside down, the jerry-rigged lap strap and buckle clip looked like it was assembled in a factory before child labor laws. Part of the strap was leather, part was nylon and I could not determine how the two were connected. I could also not decide which of the materials I trusted less. The leather would be unrecognizable to an anthropologist and the nylon strapping was fraying with every sickening rotation of the Skydiver.

With every pass of the control panel we begged to be let out. Yet every pass, we continued on. At first, I thought that the man at the controls just couldn’t hear us. Then I thought he actually could hear us but was unclear as to what we were saying. But then, on a pass where Dave and I slowly yelled loud and clear to “STOP THE RIDE,” I looked into the eyes of the man in control of our lives and he looked into mine. He saw my weakness and his lips parted in a checkerboard grin as I realized this was no man, this was the Devil.

“Don’t bother yelling at the guy on the next pass Dave. I think he’s the Devil,” I said rather rationally, because the operator really was the fallen angel Lucifer back to claim the souls of two proud tweens.

“I thought so,” Dave said as he tried again in vain to turn the wheel and add some sanity to the terror box.

Carnies get a bad rap, because they should. All carnies are terrible people and if there are any carnies out there that are genuinely decent folk, don’t try prove it to me with an act of kindness. Simply find and murder the guy that did this to us. Light them on fire and bury the ashes in equal portions at the four corners of the globe and you will have earned my respect back.

Do you think I’m overreacting? Do you think that’s too much and I should just calm down? This happened 26 years ago and I should just tell this as a fun anecdote? No. No I’m not and no I will not. Here’s why.

He made us ride it again. That’s right. He delighted in the screams of horror of two boys not quite through the clutches of puberty. I don’t know if he was abused as a child, or if hearing the terrified screams of innocent victims gave him some level of arousal, but he clearly let everyone else off the ride and loaded car after car of new riders on board and made us endure the whole experience over again.

The sounds of the gears beginning to fail and the unwelcomed bumps of ill-fitting machinery didn’t get more comfortable over time. The fear didn’t lessen. The only thing that was different was my outlook on man’s inhumanity to man and how cruel and evil people could be. My innocence was taken from me by that man, for the cost of my Pay One Price admission ($8.50, not a bad value back then), I was shown the dark side I had read about, but never experienced. It was the cruelty of the early chapters of Jack London’s classic: The Call of the Wild and the calloused way Indiana Jones slapped Short Round in the Temple of Doom all in one instant, only this time it wasn’t a work of fiction. It was my life.

Finally, the time came when the bastard that ran the machine opened our cage door and let us out. We fooled him into doing it by being quiet long enough for him to bring our cart into the load position. By the time he realized it was us, it was too late, we had sprung out of the buggy like we both had kung-fu wire harnesses attached to us. Dave laid into the guy with minor swearing, as there were other children present, calling him a “butt head” and “poop for brains”. I just watched the guy for sudden moves with a dirty look on my face. Who knew if he still wanted to kill us? I wanted to punch the carny, but even I knew that if you touch the Devil, even when you punch him, you turn to stone or something.

The only thing good to come out of the Skydiver incident, was the tempering of the friendship between Dave and myself. We had many adventures together and still do sometimes, but that night in that buggy of death and destiny, Dave moved up from being my best friend, to my best man. He’s my best friend at least, other than Wendy…Hi honey. He’s my oldest and best GUY friend. I don’t think I’m his best friend though. I’m fine with it…really.

Oh, and here’s a little tip to the intelligence and counter terrorist agencies of our country. Forget waterboarding. Buy an old Skydiver ride. You won’t get any fuss from the Geneva Convention and you can interrogate detainees thirty at a time. You’ll get all the information you ever wanted and all you’ll have to do is put them on a carnival ride and that’s the Damm truth.

I have not always been so cool and desirable with the ladies.  For one thing, I sometimes still refer to women in general as “the ladies”.  This is both disrespectful and inappropriate.  What I mean to state, is that my general demeanor while interacting with heterosexual females could be described as unconscionably pitiful.  That is, my attempts at wooing specific female companionship invites pity from all that would witness it.  This should only be mentioned so that you will truly understand the difficulty of my task of hunting and live capturing the heart of a woman as wonderful as Wendy.

I have been fortunate enough to have been romantically involved with several amazing and UNfortunate women.  These women, out of pity or sheer curiosity of how I could exist, took some time out of their lives to allow me to attempt to court them.  Each person helped to teach me something about myself.  Ultimately, though we might not have worked out as a couple for whatever reason, these women prepared me for the pursuit of my wife.  I could not have pulled this off, without those lovely women who had the unfortunate job of educating me on the dos and what-the-hell-do-you-think-you’re-doings of romance.  For this, I will always be grateful.  So if any are reading, I’m sorry for the thing(s) I did or said, and thank you very, very much for your time.  Your efforts were not in vain.

After the class that Wendy and I shared was over, we went our separate ways.  She was studying an actual discipline and I was learning how to speak in front of people.  I still held hope that I would be seeing her in another class, perhaps media studies or non-verbal communication.  The odds were slim, but being a communications major with no math requirement, I couldn’t possibly calculate them.

Wendy sightings were rare on campus during the winter months, but I asked around about her and heard little bits and pieces.  “Yeah, I heard of her, she’s amazing,” “she is incredibly nice,” “Well, she’s definitely out of YOUR league,” were some of the general statements I got.  But the best piece of information I got during that time was: “Her boyfriend is a pilot, oh, and he has a pony tail.”  The weak spot of the armor had revealed itself.

The fact that her current boyfriend attempted to rock a pony tail, not sport long hair mind you (totally acceptable), but a PONY TAIL.  His long hair tied back in a rubber band or ribbon as to negate the purpose of growing one’s hair out in the first place gave me hope for two reasons.  This meant Wendy did not have perfect instincts and/or good judgement when it came to men (necessary for me to even qualify).  It also meant that eventually Wendy would  realize that she was dating a guy whose head was stuck in colonial America of the 1770’s.

A pony tail has a timeline in a relationship.  A girl might see it and think it is exotic or daring, maybe even mistake it for badboy charm, but it wears out like the batteries included with your television remote… fast.  I had a ticking clock on this relationship as long as the pilot didn’t get a haircut.  However, the clock stopped on weekdays when the pilot was away and Wendy wasn’t forced to look at the silly, hairy ghost bobbing up and down behind his head.

There was the miniscule chance that he was growing his hair out for the purpose of donating it to a charity that gives hair to cancer survivors.  If that were the case, I was sunk.  There would be no way I would steal a girl from a guy who would grow his hair out for sick people out of sheer principle.  I would simply have to cut and run and NOT hope that Mr. Samaritan Pilot got hit by a bus.

Alas, this was not the case.  The ponytail was “decorative”.

Spring came, and with that, a new batch of classes and new possibilities that Wendy would be trapped in a room with me for maybe 3 to 5 hours a week.  And BINGO, it totally happened!  I hadn’t seen her in maybe a month or two, but I was silently blown away with what walked through the door of our first class.

Wendy had cut her hair.  She didn’t chop it off, but shortened it to just above her shoulders.  Gone was the tight spiral perm she had going down her back and now here she was with a bouncy, wavy, gentle curl that surrounded her face, framing it perfectly in the sickly glow of the fluorescent lighting of the classroom.  She had a smile and head of haircut straight off of the nose of a World War II B-17 bomber.   You could replace this entire paragraph with: VA-VA VOOM!

She sat behind me.  And I made no outward appearance of happiness or surprise.  I hadn’t spoken to her since our brief talk fall quarter and I was going to use that to my advantage.  I calmly squinted my eyes as if trying to recollect a far off memory as I looked at her.

“Uh, wwww-ww, wwwwweh-ww,” people tend to want to help other people when they think they can.

“Wendy? HI! Steve right?” she said with a big friendly smile that I only wanted for myself but she was giving it to everyone in the room!  That meant I wasn’t special, because when everyone gets the smile, that’s the same as no one getting the smile.

“Correct, my name is Steve, this guy next to me is Matt, he’s here to learn,” I said while indicating my table mate, who I later would inform at the end of class that he nor anyone but Wendy would be sitting next to me for the remainder of the course.

“And you AREN’T here to learn?” Wendy said with a funny puzzled look on her face.

“We’ll see,” I deadpanned.

I was always the first into that class and I always set my books next to me as if the second chair at the two person table was taken.  There was no seating chart because communication majors always had a hard time keeping it straight from class to class.  Often I could arrange it so that Wendy would be forced to sit next to me.

One day, Wendy came through the door rather frustrated.  Of course, I had the only open seat next to me so I moved my things.  In the minute before class started, she explained to me that she had all these words on pieces of paper that she had to cut out for a project due in a real class in an hour.  She had planned to use her scissors but had forgotten them or they were stolen or whatever, but she didn’t have them and felt sunk.

I’m not implying that Wendy was not prepared.  She had everything for her presentation ready to go save for these pieces of paper she needed cut.  Wendy has always had far too much on her plate.  Her metaphorical plate looks like my actual plate when I am in a buffet line at a wedding (I put the dinner rolls in my pockets to free up valuable territory for fish or pasta).

She was clearly not going to get this done in time unless a minor miracle occurred.

“What specifically do you need cut?” I asked her.

“These words in the different sized boxes on these sheets of paper, why do you have scissors?” She asked hopefully?

“Not exactly,” I said as I pulled out my perpetually razor sharp Swiss army knife.  Without another word, I put down the drumming magazine I was reading as a pad for the desk and started carefully cutting out each word individually.  All through the lecture I worked, pausing intermittently to show the professor I was paying attention and even answering a question to satisfy his need to know that even as my hands flew across sheets of paper with a tiny, deadly blade, I was paying attention, which I was not.

Wendy was surprised and elated that this was getting done.  As we all got up to leave, Wendy began to thank me.

“Thanks to you and your little knife, I’m going to get this in on time,”

“Don’t mention it.  I have a feeling that if I were in a similar predicament, you’d do the same for me,” and I turned to leave, the old Steve would have hung around wanting more praise, but I needed Wendy to know that I was doing it as a random act and not to try to impress her.

“Can I buy you a new magazine to replace the one you ruined?” She asked before I made it to the door, “You’re a drummer?”

And Matt, the guy I had kicked out of my seat said the best possible thing he could say, “What? Steve doesn’t need that!  Don’t you know what band he’s in?”  Matt had completed the trifecta: Good deed, humble and complimentary and tiny town famous rock star.  Now that I think about it, I should really send him some kind of gift basket.

I had built a solid rapport now and Wendy saw my value less as Subject K311192 for Research Study 790031-C6 and more as a friendly, non-threatening personality around campus.  It was a solid next step and one that I would be able to build trust with.  There would have to be a conscious effort on my part to not act interested in Wendy in any way romantic.  From here on out, I could feel free to approach her as someone I was comfortable saying hello to but making sure that I only spoke to her too briefly.  I had to add something to her life of value, like helpful information or some solid laughter, but I had to cut our interactions shorter than normal to make her wonder why I was leaving so soon.  I had to leave her wanting more of Steve Damm and not hang around her until she got enough Steve Damm or worse, too much Steve Damm.  This requires extreme concentration on my part.  I wouldn’t even approach Wendy if I hadn’t taken my medication.

I was constantly on the lookout for Wendy as I slowly patrolled the campus on my way to classes.  If I saw her, I would run two quick checks in my head before I would act.  Would I be missing a test if I were to ditch class to walk with her a few hundred feet (maximum, remember, no overkill), and am I medicated enough to keep eye contact and my mouth in check.  If I had the correct answers to both questions, I gave myself the green light to approach her, quietly and unassumingly from the front so that she would recognize me first.  The benefit of being on a bike was that if she looked away and missed me as I passed, legitimately, I could quickly loop around and approach again.

(Mom, Dad, I can imagine that you must be disappointed that I cut a few classes to cultivate a relationship with any girl.  I do want you to keep in mind however that if I would have missed ANY of these interactions, you might not have the grandchild you are constantly wanting time with.  Also keep in mind this was a far better reason for me to cut class than when I did it in my Freshmen year to play Street Fighter or my Sophomore year to play Mario Cart.)

These interactions with Wendy on campus were quick hits.  Like a fighter jet strafing a target.  I would ask her unobtrusive questions about herself and comment with a few quick jokes that illustrated that I was listening to her and interested in what she had to say.  As soon as she gave me the big laugh, I was gone.  GONE.  This made her wonder where I went, but even more, WHY did I leave.   This made her a little more eager to talk to me each time we would “accidentally” meet.

The most amazing moment was when I ran into her near my apartment and I wondered why she was there.  She foolishly told me.  As it turns out, she lived across the courtyard from me, not more than a one hundred and fifty foot zip line ride from my door.  Apparently we hadn’t noticed each other because she was working two jobs and getting dual degrees while I had arranged my academic schedule around CHiP’s reruns and gigging with two different bands.  This was going to make the spying and plotting sooooo much more convenient.   It certainly shortened the timeline I had laid out by almost three months.  I immediately leveraged the situation.

Knowing that one of the six majors Wendy was interested in was school psychology, I knew I could gain points by letting her find out that I volunteered with high school leadership camps in the summer.  I hatched a quick plan, watched at my window until I saw her enter her apartment, waited an unbearable twelve minutes and headed up to knock on her door.

“Oh! Hi Steve.  What’s up?” She asked with a friendly, helpful smile.  Typical.

“Wendy, I’m so glad you’re home, I need to ask a huge favor of you and I hope I’m not imposing.” I said with muted, faux desperation.

“Sure! What is it?” she asked.  I knew I wouldn’t be refused.  Even then I knew that Wendy was the type of person who would find a way to hold your car up for you while you changed a tire if you just asked her.

“I’ve been called out of town for a week and I need someone to watch Elmer for me.” I explained as I held out a small potted plant.  “Just set him aside and give him a little water until I get back?”

“Elmer?” she asked as she took the plant.

“Elmer.”

She took him in to her living room and found a space for the plant near the window.  “How much water should I give Elmer?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“You don’t know?” She asked quizzically.

“Half a cup, two times a week,” I quickly corrected. “Thank you so much, I should be back to pick him up on Sunday of next week.”  I turned to leave, as I could hear her quietly drawing breath to take the bait.

“Wait, where are you going?” Hook.

“Oh right, I’m volunteering for a Washington State student leadership camp for a week.  We teach leadership skills to high school students.  Are you familiar with the program?” Line.

“Yes, yes I am.  Wow, that’s great!  Have you done this often?” SINKER!

I’m pretty sure I had her at the word ‘student’.  “Since high school, I really like the program and it’s a chance for me to… It’s fun, I have fun.”  I had said everything I had planned to say and started back down the stairs thanking Wendy for watching my plant.  I had left her with a personal sentence that I wanted her to wonder why I wouldn’t share or complete.  So now, to Wendy, a person who completes everything on time and leaves no stone unturned there’s this unfinished puzzle.  If I leave enough of them, she will be forced to finish me, and I wouldn’t make it easy.

She watched me go as I headed down her stairs.  I was careful to not expose my left hand, lest she spot the price tag of the plant I had just purchased not 90 minutes before that was still stuck to the back of my thumb after hastily removing the sticky paper at her door.

None of this was a lie.  I really was going to camp and the plant was really mine and I really named it Elmer.  Not an original idea, but effective.

My next interaction with Wendy was during Summer classes.  I had picked up a few courses to bump up my GPA and Wendy didn’t even know the last quarter had ended.

Wendy approached me quickly late one morning as I was arriving back at my apartment from a class.

“Steve! My computer isn’t working and I need to fix and print off a paper before my class in two hours.  Do you have a computer?”

I sure did, and she sure could if it wasn’t located in my apartment.  For although I had built up a tolerance and immunity to the conditions in which I lived, my apartment was not at that moment in time, safe for humans.

“No problem, just give me ten minutes and I’ll get my computer up and running, then you can come on over,” I said as a bead of sweat began to form on my forehead.

“Oh, it will take me at least that long before I have all my materials together, that sounds great.” She said as she began walking to her place.

I was maybe 90 feet from my door and although I knew I was wasting precious seconds by walking the distance and not sprinting, it had to be done to keep the charade up.  The charade being that I’m capable of taking care of myself on even a basic level.

I shut the door gently behind me as I surveyed my apartment and how I would make it slightly presentable.  Fire was the most practical approach, but there wouldn’t be time to dry and sweep the ashes out.  I concentrated on what would be “line of sight” between the front door and the computer in my bedroom.

I threw away things that I shouldn’t have thrown away.  I jammed my closet full in a way only possible in cartoons.  I hid things behind my shower curtain in the bathtub and remembered how to clean a toilet.  Clutter was removed with little discrimination and replaced with fanned books and magazines.  I found my vacuum cleaner and pushed it to its limits.  The kitchen was wiped and the floor cleared.  Anything in the stove went in the cupboard and anything in the sink went in the stove.  I just had to take my chances on the fridge staying closed.  For the finishing touch I found an old bottle of lemon pledge that had been left there by tenants before me and sprayed an invisible trail of citrus from my front door in to my computer into the carpet.

Sweaty and gross, I answered the door and quickly pointed Wendy to the computer.  She told me it smelled nice in the apartment and I thanked her.  By golly, it worked.  As long as Wendy didn’t open a drawer, closet or shower curtain, the subterfuge would hold!

I had her in my apartment and she was going to stay for at least an hour, so I did the smartest thing I could have done.  I left.

Explaining that I had an appointment, I grabbed my bike and my backpack and I went down to my friend’s place two buildings over to scream into a pillow that the most amazing girl ever was in my apartment.  If I had stayed even one more minute, I would have said something that could not be unsaid.  Plus, I had to remain the unsolved puzzle.

Upon returning, I found a note thanking me for the use of my printer with her phone number attached in a friendly way offering if I ever needed to be bailed out, please call her.  But it turned out that I didn’t need to use it.

To be concluded in Part Three of The Time I Outsmarted My Wife

In Part Three of our story, you’ll see the noose close, witness the splendor of a plan completed and learn what it takes to write a really good love song…