Crystal

A petite red head, Crystal is all of five feet tall, no more than 98 pounds. She's a regular at Planet Fitness. She looks 14 but is 32. A married mother of an accomplished 13-year-old daughter who adds a sparkle to Crystal's eyes when she speaks of her. 

Crystal has MS, her muscles don't do what her brain tells them to. She came to PF about two years ago in a wheelchair, extremely overweight and unable to walk. She works out every day. Now, two years into it, she has lost 80 pounds and gets around with only the help of a cane. I often see her on one of the machines, eyes closed, not sleeping but rather, willing. Willing her muscles to relax, to end the horrifically painful body cramps that seize her without warning. She lives with pain every day and although in the long run, her determination and hard work at PF has transformed her, it is an unending struggle. Working out hurts more, much more, than sitting still, but it gets results over time. If she stopped, she would cramp up permanently and be a twisted mess in that wheelchair for the rest of her too short life. So she comes in for a daily dose of excruciating pain, every day, with a smile. 

Crystal never complains when we talk, but I see it when her eyes are closed, sitting alone at one of the workout stations as if in prayer, willing the body to relax and behave, willing the pain to take a back seat, just for now. 

Last week she was laboring along in front of me, wobbling slowly forward, her cane shaking with each step. An invisible switch was thrown, and she crumpled to the ground, a marionette whose strings were cut by an unseen evil. Rushing to her, a friend and I helped her up. She was all smiles as I lead her over to her next battlefield, a leg machine. It was a leg day for her. Helping her onto the machine and adjusting it to fit her tiny frame, she spoke of her daughter with pride, she spoke of having to finish up soon to meet her husband who was coming to pick her up, she didn't say a word about her fall. 

Walking away, as I looked back, Crystal was sitting still, eyes closed, the sweat on her forehead glistening under the harsh florescent lights, willing...

The Chicken Herder

The ever encroaching suburbs flooding out to the West from Washington D.C. washed cow pastures clean and left behind huge McMansions that lined streets with names reminiscent of what they had just replaced...“West Pasture Way or Dark Horse Drive”. Teams of undocumented house framers ran shirtless along high beams unencumbered by safety harnesses, driven by cash at the end of the day to put up houses for the feeding frenzy riding the incoming wave. Houses appeared as if by magic, so close together that owners could reach from a side window to give each other a high five at their cleverness for buying almost identical homes with which to impress each other.

Carla and I tried to stay ahead of the Tsunami moving from Alexandria to Reston on to Ashburn and finally to Lovettesville. I worked on “K” Street in downtown D.C. Commuting all that way by car was insanity, and that intensified as we moved farther out, but the train made all the difference. I caught it in Point of Rocks. Maryland, four miles from our house, and rode it down to Union Station where I could jump on the Metro and ride the two miles more to my “K” street office. That was great.

Catch a nap, read the paper, plant your face in a palm and catch some Zzz, or maybe just sit back and watch the world shoot by at 55 miles per hour, enjoying that lull in between home and work. A peaceful respite with no agenda and no demands on your time.

I especially enjoyed watching the conductor do his thing, punching tickets up and down the isles, answering questions, calling everyone “Sir” or “Mam”. A heavy man in his mid 50”s, a good old boy from West Virginia where the train originated. Born and bred, a country boy. And as indicated by the medals and pins that competed for space on his left lapel, he was a train lifer. His worn dark blue uniform, black shoes, white cotton socks, those pins and that essential round cap with a brim, clearly identified him as such.

Over time, I heard him speak of the buck he shot, its head now adorning his rec room wall at home. His vegetable garden, tomatoes, the wife, his grown kids, Donny Jr and Constance June, now producing “grand-babies” for him to watch on Thursday afternoons. His church and Pastor and chicken dinner Sundays. Damn communists and hippies. Often speaking as if in soliloquy, his volume had been cranked up after competing with 40 years of train noise.

As I sat in my suit and tie among a train full of suits and ties, I admired his Independence, his direct approach, his inability to sugar coat or be politically correct. And there was no question that he put his train full of yuppie passengers on the same scale of importance as pond scum. He could see no value in people who worked in an office all day “pushing papers around”. He herded us every day and seemed to think that we weren't even on the same level as his chickens, just as stupid but unable to lay eggs.

The morning train usually stopped for the early crowd on the fourth car from the rear. That's where the conductor would dismount, put the stairs down and yell “All Aboard!”. He stood inside the car as the line of suits and ties came on board and turned left, toward the front of the train. These kinds of things puzzle me. Why does the engineer stop so that the crowd boards at the fourth car? Why does everyone turn left when they board? It was always the same dance, the window seats went first, isle seats second. Some riders tried to suppress their rising panic, looking wildly up and down the isle rather than confront the fact that they may have to sit in a center seat. But throughout this process, as the seats began to fill, the Conductor repeated his mantra, calling out in a loud voice over and over: “Plenty of seats in the rear folks, plenty of seats in the rear”

One morning I couldn’t suppress my curiosity any longer, wondering why everyone turned left when there were “plenty of seats in the rear” so I stepped back into an empty seat across from the conductor to ask. Of course I was thinking of traffic flow patterns and more efficient ways to direct it. Maybe stop the train at the last car so everyone had no choice but to head toward the front? Maybe send every other person in opposite directions from the fourth car? But why was that necessary? I had to ask.

Standing directly across from him, I looked the conductor straight in the eye as he finished calling out:

“Plenty of seats in the rear folks, plenty of seats in the rear” Yelling back at him, “Why is that?”

Looking puzzled, unhappy for one of the chickens to ask a non-chicken question, he sputtered back: “What?” I continued: “Why are there plenty of seats in the rear? A look of total amazement came over him, his eyes widened at the sight of the stupidest coat and tie chicken he had ever seen. Wishing he was back home, away from this carload of idiots, he managed to yell back at me the obvious: “CAUSE AIN'T NOBODY SET IN THEM YET!”

I could see that it had taken the last of his strength to get that out, wondering how a guy like me could even dress himself or take a bath... much less draw breath while doing it. He was disgusted that it was his job to take train loads of us idiot chickens into town to run things from air conditioned offices filled with Fluorescent lighting. He knew it was a sure sign of the decline of civilization as he had know it.

He was just glad that his fifty years were almost up so he could go home forever with his pension under his arm and herd nothing more than his his own chickens, happy in knowing that at least they lay eggs and none of them wear a suit and tie.

Mr UPS man, we still need to talk...

When you pull up into the front yard of a rural old home and a young, twenty something woman comes running at you dressed in a white T-shirt to the waist and two hands full of a Stainless Steel Mini-14 with a 30 round clip, it gets your attention. The UPS guy had good reason to be concerned. A week prior he had pulled up too close to the log cabin. He had taken the liberty to drive on my lawn right up to the front door. That's where Ohio, our trusted Shepard mix and protector, challenged him. She told him that he was too close, to back off, not to fuck with Carla or the girls. But the UPS guy maced my dog. And Carla, pregnant Carla, got maced too. She told me, and I wanted to fuck the guy up, of course. But time and talk intervened and all I did was to call his supervisor and tell him what happened. I also requested that he send the guy back again so I could break his nose and squirt mace up into his open and damaged sinus cavities. I know that would sting. There have been many times over the last 20 years when I wished for the opportunity to hold that guy to the ground with my knees and put stuff up his nose....you know, bathroom cleaners and things like that.

I'll Have What They're Having...

Although I savor and appreciate my independence, living off my SS and cutting back on bullshit that I never needed in the first place, certainly I could ramp it up. But for what? To sell more big silly homes on small silly lots? Middle America is programmed what to ask for and they are mostly good students. “We want granite counter tops, premium kitchen appliances., a two story foyer.etc, etc. God, please save me from mediocrity...I fled the North to get away from too many McMansions 10 feet from each other in what once were farmers’ fields complete with cow tenants. That's all gone but I still like the people, the interaction... but about the product? Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn...

Views from the Corner

People so want to believe. UFO'S, Bigfoot, ghosts, Nessie, all kinds of paranormal activity, more felt than seen out of the corner of our collective eye. Conspiracy theories are spawned by the same lust, something to allow us flights of fancy beyond our own matter-of-fact existence. The Kennedy assassination, a fake moon landing, 9-11. We seek it out of escapist need, like drugs and alcohol or a nice Pentecostal Church. Carry me away from here, get me high on the possibilities. When we run with a pack of the like-minded, we may never have to face the fact that the emperor has no clothes and Santa isn't real.

Florida Road Trip

Driving South on US1 yesterday, heading down to Bunnell for an appointment, we expected to see “Old Florida” along the way, but it had been erased. Up until recently, US1 was a crumbling secondary road, long neglected by folks in a rush to get to somewhere other than here. They're speeding up and down I95 now. 

In our hurry up culture there's little time to slow down for a look at a time eroded farmhouse with surrounding scrap piles that had once been outbuildings. Gone are the remnants of country stores, imploded and covered in a blanket of Kudzu. Even the alternate route 1 South had been updated. No rusted gas pumps dying slowly in front of abandoned stations plastered with tin urging travelers to chew Red Man tobacco. Now it's four lanes separated by a landscaped median and flanked by twin bike paths, all of it like a highway golf course, pristine and sterile, stretching out to the horizon. 

Heat snakes still danced up from the hot asphalt. That hadn't changed.

Bunnell itself has plenty of character though. It's liberally sprinkled with churches for the born again and bars for those who only see the light on Sunday. Pawn and gun shops compete for space with junkyards that call themselves auto body shops. 

Ruth called and told me of a dog she so wanted to rescue, the questionable product of a bitch impregnated by her son and the resulting bitch by her own brother. The pup had severe problems. Several locals managed to drag themselves past our front bumper when we stopped at the light in the center of town, themselves the seeming products of dark family relations. I told her that I understood her hesitancy to adopt.

When our appointment was over, we asked Siri to find some seafood, a good lunch spot. She sent us 20 miles due East where the Atlantic demands that traffic turn North or South. We wound up sitting in a booth at The Flagler Fish Company. Soothed by a Pandora station spinning familiar folk tunes, sharing a perfect Cesar Salad. Glasses of real sweet tea with lots of lemon were in a cold sweat, drenching napkins that now doubled as sponges on our pitted wood table. Asiago potatoes accompanied Lobster rolls stuffed with buttery chunks of warm flesh that only moments before had been the claws and tail of a dark green crustacean sleeping in a shaded corner of the lobster tank pressed up against a wall opposite our table. Although I find most restaurants disappointing, there are those rare times when the atmosphere combines with great service and food that is exactly right. This was one of those times. 

Sitting reflectively after we cleaned our plates, Carla covered my hand with hers, like a blanket from the chill. We shared a wordless smile, an appreciation for the moment, and for the good fortune of our lives themselves... as James Taylor sang a song about Mexico.

Home School Kids...

Even back when Ruth and Hannah first started to home school, there were many different curricula to choose from. But mostly Carla just took the kids everywhere, showed them everything, and let them ask 1,000 questions. She would take them to various businesses and ask the owner to show them what he does, and how. People generally loved to help. Carla had the kids handle the money in a check-out line and know what the change should be. She mentored them. But there was almost never a time when she said: “OK, it's 3PM, time to study math” no such structure. Yes, the state did monitor and test periodically. No, they didn't “have to” take the GED, but both aced it on their own. In fact, Ruth tested in the top 1% in the entire country for language skills. Partially, that is due to the fact that when Carla first raised the idea of homeschooling to me, my only issue was that they become good readers and writers. I figured from there they had the tools to do anything they choose to do. We intentionally had no TV when they were growing up other than a VCR to watch tapes from the library, so they read to entertain themselves and got very creative with arts & crafts for the same reason. Carla spent many hours in the early years nestled in a booth with the girls at “Friendly's Ice Cream Parlor” sharing book reading duties, and on the floor of the local “Goodwill Store” reading through books there as well. Most people were delighted to have a young mother and her two little girls engaged in those activities in their store, even when it was on the floor in a corner of the room. As far as socialization goes, there was plenty of that for the girls as they grew. Local home school groups organized various activities and there were many clubs and opportunities aside from simply spending time with friends. Living in the country, we were big on visiting family farms, going to dairy farms to collect eggs from the hen house...many activities more enjoyable than the enforced boredom of a study hall...

For me personally, I got the best education from my parents, both well educated, articulate people. So I believed the kids mostly did the same with us. Are there gaps? Sure. Ruth jokingly claims that she doesn't know how to read an analog clock. But then, I've never used the Latin or trigonometry I learned and would have been better off learning people skills, how to be a good husband and father, or how to build a raised garden. Of course, that's where reading comes in...

The whole world seems to be very locked in to the idea of the necessity of a “formal education” and I found that to mean an inordinate amount of “sit down and shut up” time...in public schools that are more about crowd control than learning, much like minimum security prisons.

I believe the very best rational for home schooling is the absence of peer pressure. The kids never felt the need to wear certain clothes, behave in a certain way, nor share the attitudes or assumptions of a peer group. That was huge. They both had the chance to figure out who they were, what they stood for in this world, before the winds of social conformity tried to blow them in one direction or another. By the time those winds finally had a chance to try to blow them around, both girls were already very self-confident individuals, well anchored, secure in their own paths. The determined winds of conformity never had a chance...