Whiplash! – “U” better believe I’m going to need whiplash surgery after this.

Posted on November 1, 2019 by hdh

Whiplash: An injury to the neck caused by an abrupt jerking motion of the head, either backward or forward; And in the case of writing or speaking, can be caused by a rapid change of topic without prior notice.

Whiplash! – “U” better believe I’m going to need whiplash surgery after this.

It was unusual for Irwin to be out so late at night. His usual routine was to be home by six, dinner by 6:30, one hour of television, usually some sort of mystery program, then take out his law studies books and work until 9:30 before taking a shower, a cup of tea and go to bed. Clara knew this, so when Irwin was not home by 6:30, she was concerned. When she had not heard from him at all by 8:00, she was very concerned.

She thought of calling the police but knew they wouldn’t respond to someone only being a couple of hours late. Having tried his cell phone numerous times and getting only voicemail, she decided to call his co-worker and best friend, George.

George claimed he didn’t know where Irwin was and was sure that nothing was amiss. “Irwin will probably walk in the door any minute,” he said; but she knew he was lying. Something was up.

She didn’t know what to do; her only thought was to go out and look for Irwin herself. And so she did, which was unusual for her.

Whiplash!

Have you ever tried to ride a unicycle? Well, I have. I have yet to succeed. You would think that since I rode a tricycle when I was a kid, that’s just 3 wheels; a bicycle now, that’s just 2 wheels; How hard could riding a unicycle, which is one wheel, be? The answer, for me, is impossible.

The school I taught in had a circus arts program every year as part of their physical education curriculum. Unicycle riding was part of it. Each year as my 4th and 5th graders learned and excelled in unicycle riding, I would attempt anew to learn how to ride one. I did gain a lot of experience in ways not to ride one.

Nowadays I’m not in those schools very often and don’t get many opportunities to explore my unicycle riding prowess. I don’t even ride my bicycle very much anymore, though I probably should. It’s just another one of those things that age and my body have surrendered to. In this case, the unicycles still have the edge on me though I continue to enjoy watching other people doing their unicycle thing. Riding a unicycle is not on my bucket list.

Whiplash!

It was a unique opportunity. If this worked, he would be very rich and powerful. It required him to do something underhanded and unconventional, but he felt it was worth it. He confided in no one other than his friend and coworker, George. George often tried to dissuade him. After receiving the umpteenth phone call from George pleading with him not to go ahead, Irwin just stopped answering his phone. It was now or never, and Irwin chose now. This could get ugly.

Whiplash!

Irwin seems to be under a lot of strain. I hope he doesn’t underestimate the task before him. Unfortunately for us, we may never find out what the urgency is for this utterly, unshareable and unique plan. Unless…it involves a unicycle. What do you think?

Time continues to run down…“V” need to decide how to respond to all these snippets.

Posted in A to Z Blog Challenge 2019, Original Stories, Personal Stories, Writing | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Let’s get married

Posted on October 24, 2019 by hdh

Let’s Get Married

I was 21 when I met my first husband. He was a hiker. Every chance we had it was, “Let’s go for a hike.” It got to a point where each hike became more difficult. He was more into the hike than he was into me. He always led. At times it was hard to keep up. He didn’t seem to care. He kept pushing me to catch up. The last hike

was the hardest. The mountain road was treacherous. There were way too many vines on the ground that one had to avoid. And climbing up the side of that mountain, I knew something bad was going to happen. It was a long fall for him. I guess he was just too close to the edge. I’ll miss him.

My second husband was a traveler. He said it had to do with work. He would always send me gifts from his travels. I was having lunch with a friend of mine and she couldn’t believe that with all the money he makes all he sent me was a plain J. Crew sweatshirt. We laughed about how cheap he really was. It was sad he had to die that way. Some say it was bad wine that he drank; some say it was the stress of all his travels, which caused him to have a heart attack. We’ll never know. The car he was in was never found.

Now my third husband was a plant grower. We had one of the finest marijuana farms in the state. Of course, marijuana wasn’t legal at that time like it is now. We’d get high together testing out all of the products we produced. Then there were the affairs I found out about. It turns out that I wasn’t the only one he was married to. I chose to leave him. It was no surprise to me that he died of a drug overdose from tainted marijuana. I’m sure glad it was one of his other wives that had to deal with it.

Husband number 4 was a musician. Boy, could he play. I used to like his music. As time went on he kept playing the same songs over again. I smiled to appease him, but “God!” it was hard. And he made me sit through his playing each time. It drove me nuts. It turns out all that playing, made him deaf. I told him over and over again to get his hearing checked, but he just ignored me and kept on playing. I’m sure he didn’t hear the truck as he was crossing that street on his way to the music shop to get new strings for his guitar. 

So here I am in my 80’s. Living on a farm, doing pretty well considering the money I got from all my husbands. I love to grow flowers, which I gather and place on all my ex’s graves each year.  After all, I couldn’t have gotten where I am without them. 

Anyone out there looking for a good time and relationship with a lovely old woman, come look me up. I’m sure we’ll get along. I’ve had a lot of luck with relationships.

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Some people are like that…

Posted on October 17, 2019 by hdh

Some people are like that…

You have a concert to perform for kids. And parents are invited to stay. This is a talkative bunch. You get control and then you begin your story. Now the parents in the back believe that this is a concert only for children. So they continue to chat. Some people are like that.

At a pause between songs, the organizer of the event announces that the parents should keep an eye on their children and try to control them if they see them acting out or not paying attention. Some organizers are like that.

While you are performing, a parent comes up and stands right behind you. You do notice that there is a group of girls right in front of you chatting away, while you are singing. Your assumption is that the parent is trying to signal to her child to pay attention. Someone else in the crowd is taking pictures of you and after the event shares with you the picture of the parent that was behind you. The picture shows the parent with a camera in her hand trying to get the whole group of girls to look at her so she could take their picture… while you were performing. Some people are like that (luckily, not most people).

When you are invited to a class to tell stories. Some teachers decide that that is the time for them to catch up on all their paperwork and chat with colleagues that enter the room and assume that you are the disciplinarian for your performance. If you’re not modeling what you’re teaching, you’re teaching something else. Some teachers are like that.

Or when you’re playing music as students enter an assembly program to hopefully get the audience to come in quietly and listen, and the teachers and principals keep chatting and don’t think that musical interludes are part of the performance, so don’t control anyone. Some people are like that.

And finally some performers, choose to do what they are paid to do and perform for audiences no matter how attentive they are and perform for the people that came to listen and are listening, without letting the inconsiderate, disrespectful, people who have not been brought up learning how to be good and appreciative listener, affect what they are doing while they perform. I’m like that.

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Secrets

Posted on October 5, 2019 by hdh

masque_venitien_avec_plumes_de_paon

Secrets

My father passed away about five years ago. And here I am sitting at the bedside of my dying mother, holding her hand and telling her how much she has meant to me. As she drifts in and out of consciousness, her mind wanders. Sometimes she can be quite lucid and at other times she’s in a made up world of her own making. 

In the lines of her face I could usually read those flashes of memory. I usually could tell when she was telling me truth or fairy tale. Suddenly her face changed. The lines in her face became taut with concern. Her breath slackened. She stared directly into my eyes and in a voice so crisp and clear, she said, “He’s not your father. It was the dancer’s child. Find the box.” Her eyelids closed and she was gone.

 

I didn’t pay much attention to what she had said and just put it off to one of her fanciful ramblings. That was until a week later, when I was cleaning out her apartment with my sisters and there in the back of the closet I found an old jewelry box. The box was unlocked and as I lifted the lid a resounding “CREAK” met my ears as the rarely used box’s hinges rubbed against each other. In the box I found a plumed feather, similar to one you might see on a peacock or on Halloween mask to hide the identity of a lover at a masquerade ball. Its distinctive eye at the tip of its stalk focused solely on me. In a scrap of black velvet was a diamond bracelet, truly worth much money, with an inscription on it saying, “You’re my gem – our love forever” 

And then there was the note. 

The moment I saw you on the dance floor I knew you were the one for me. The hours and nights we’ve spent together have meant the world to me. But I must go now to my other life and family and you to yours. Remember what we had and never forget. Until we meet again in the great beyond. R.M.

OH MY GOD! Who? What? Where?  

There are some things that you are never destined to know, until it’s too late. I guess this will have to be one of them. 

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Weekends…an evolutionary treatise.

Posted on October 3, 2019 by hdh

Weekends…an evolutionary treatise

I’m not sure if you would say that the changes in how you spend your time on weekends are a product of your age and/or maturity, or it is just the way it is.

The year was 1973. We were part of the merging of two school districts, Wading River and Shoreham. It was the first time that the 6th grades from both districts became one group as part of the now, Shoreham-Wading River Central School district. There were 7 of us. 

This was a time before schools were overwhelmed with the State-mandated curriculum. Most of the curriculum that the State gave to you was a recommended curriculum. So we had leeway as to what and how we were going to teach. So here we were, 7 teachers, in a brand new Middle School, in a brand new district, ready to create an exciting curriculum for kids. And we did. 

We were a dedicated bunch. At that time we met about 10 hours a week planning new things to do. It was the time of the Open classroom, so we had this large open space that could hold 4 classes. We designed the program so that during mornings my class and two others occupied that open space and in the afternoon, we swapped places with three of the other 6th grade classrooms. There was one hold out who stayed self-contained all day. 

A new reading program had us reading countless books and creating activity questions for each of them. There were field trips to plan and units in science, social studies and math that we had to coordinate. On top of the time we spent meeting and planning during school days, there were weekends. 

A lot of my weekends were spent doing school work. This went above and beyond the normal amount of time teachers usually spend. For me, this weekend work lasted years beyond those first two years of creating a school. As our teacher’s union became more involved in controlling in-school time used for curriculum and professional development, those long hours of planning in school diminished but not the work done at home.

Then came the mandated curriculums which required more time learning new material and coordinating with everyone else about what and how you were to teach. My weekends were packed. I was not much of a social butterfly, and one of the few that was still unmarried with no family to take care of, so I didn’t understand the impact teaching and free time had on others in my profession. 

It was many years later when I found myself getting tired, and overwhelmed with all the work that I was doing that I decided that I wasn’t going to work 7 days a week, which is what teaching was. I made a point to take one day of each weekend totally off from thinking about school. I used that time to relax, read, play sports, go to events, and unwind. It made a big difference. In school, I became more focussed and began to enjoy what I was doing more. I was able to tap into my creativity and try new things, like storytelling and new technology. I even chose to leave my classroom position and teach other subjects. It was a positive change. Weekends were more productive and more fun.

In 1985, I met the woman that I was destined to fall in love with, marry and have a family with. She was a scientist, first working on and attaining her doctorate in geochemistry and then continuing to work ,after our son was born, as a geochemist.

Scientists, for the most part, work on their own, even though they interact with their colleagues and supervisors, their job entails doing lab work and generally work independently. 

Teachers on the other hand work in a social institution. They are constantly interacting with people during their workday, whether it be children or adults. 

When you’ve been working with gangs of people for 5 days straight and you finally get two days off, what you want to do is not do anything, or at least not have every day scheduled for you to go out and do something.  A scientist, on the other hand, has not interacted with many people at all and when they get two days off, they want to do things with others. Go out, go to movies and events, get together with others and do things with their family.  Weekends now became a conflict of needs. We had no problem resolving both issues. Having a young child makes a lot of those issues resolve themselves as to what to do. School stuff still had its priority, but so did family and downtime. Weekends were times to accomplish needed and fun things.

And then comes retirement, especially when one person continues to work full time. Now I’m the one with a lot of free time during the week to do what I want. I still teach, I still read and I’m doing a lot more writing. My wife, the scientist, still works. Weekends are together time. I am much more inclined to do things and go places with my wife than sit at home and do nothing, though that also works when we both choose to do that. I don’t have the pressure, most of the time, to have to accomplish something at that moment as I did those first few years. I look forward to our time together.

The final phase of the weekend evolution will occur when my wife joins me in retirement. In theory, then every day will become a weekend. How we plan to use that time is yet to be determined. But I’m sure it will be time well spent.

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Like Heroes Often Do

Posted on September 26, 2019 by hdh

Like Heroes Often Do

It’s been a long day. Being a hero is hard work. First of all, there is being on call 24/7. There are days when I don’t get any sleep. Try to be in top form when you haven’t slept for 48 hours. 

And then there is the laundry. Did you ever notice that all superheroes always wear the same costume? You may not notice, because we only video the clean scenes, but our suits do get dirty. And after 48 hours of nonstop rushing from here to there, fighting crime or should I say grime, let’s just say you don’t want to be in a closed room with us. Suffice it to say our superpowers after 48 hours of sweat are more like stupor powers if you get too close to us. 

So lucky for us, there is a chain of Super Laundromats located throughout the city. Basically you drop your suit off in a plain brown bag, you are given an encrypted number,  and it is returned to you within minutes. No names are taken, there are no cameras, no retina scans needed. It usually works pretty well. I only had one mishap when there was a big rush on cleaning due to this catastrophic event in Central City. There were just too many of us that wanted our suits cleaned at the same time. With our ID numbers randomly assigned, it turned out that, by chance, two of us were given the same number. 

All I can say is that I don’t fit well in Wonder Woman’s costume. It took us half a day to sort it all out since no one actually knew who we were.

Of course, as your typical superhero, I have a day job also. Everyone needs one to maintain the secrecy of their identity. My job – I’m a school bus driver. Talk about needing superpowers. Only the bus dispatcher, knows my secret identity, which is good for when I’m needed to save the world. She arranges for another driver to take over my route at the nearest bus stop. I’m surprised that none of the students ever question, why their bus drivers keep switching during bus runs and at different places. But then again they’re high school students and for the most part, they are all locked into their phones and tablets on headphones and have no clue what is happening around them. 

That’s how my day goes. Be a hero here, be a bus driver there, get my clothes done when I have to, like all heroes often do.  And don’t get me started about bathroom breaks.

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The Stray

Posted on September 19, 2019 by hdh

The Stray

The name is Snow…Thunder Snow. You may recognize me, I’m a cat, white and smooth with patches of dark black like a thunder cloud. People say I might be part Siamese. I live in your neighborhood. I’m a bit skittish, so you may want to stay out of my way. I may look cuddly, but you’re never going to get near enough to me to find out.

I was minding my own business in my old neighborhood when I was caught. I guess I was yowling too much and wasn’t paying attention. Whoever took me wrapped me up in a towel, threw me into a car and drove away. It was a long drive, or seemed that way; though I was scared, I did what cats do and once I realized my life wasn’t in immediate danger, I just slept.

The next thing I know I’m let out and whoever captured me disappeared. So now I’m in your neighborhood. I’ve learned from my mistake. I will never utter a sound again.

It took me a while to get my bearings and find myself a shelter. It’s well hidden and no one knows where it is. I also found a local feeding station. There’s a couple that lives in the area that even built me a feeding box. Every morning and evening I go there and there’ll be food waiting for me. They leave me water all year. In the winter it is even heated. I’ve got them trained well. They’ve tried to entice me into their house a few times but I’m smarter than that. If the food is in the doorway, I might step in to get a bite, but no way do I stay if either of them comes near me; after all, I’m Thunder Snow. I control my own destiny. 

 

 

There are times when I look in through their glass doorway and imagine myself resting quietly without the hassle of barking dogs and food/water stealing raccoons, but I still don’t trust them. It’s only been three and a half years here, I gotta’ make sure they don’t have any evil plans afoot. Besides I’m a stray. I’m feral. Domesticate me and then where will I get all my fresh live meat? No–I’ll stay outside. I’ll keep to myself. As I long as I let them keep hoping that I’ll be their cat, they’ll keep feeding me and I can be myself, Thunder Snow the Silent.

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Lost and Found

Posted on September 14, 2019 by hdh

Lost and Found

It was a cold winter day. There I was lost in the woods. Though I was dressed warm enough I could feel the chill in the air, like an icy hand pressed against my face, trying to find its way to my inner peace, trying to capture the last bit of my soul, my security, my drive. But I would not let it in. I was sure someone or something would find me and guide my way home. 

So I found a clearing. I found some wood and brush and built a fire. As the fire grew it shattered the icy tendrils pressing against me. I could see images in the flames arming themselves against the windy onslaught of cold and lashing out to act as a barrier, against my foe. “Frost, you will not have me today,” I cried. “I will survive!”

And then it came. I could see it in the distant sky; first a dot, then as it flew closer it took shape. It was a majestic eagle, broad wings gliding over the trees, regal head, and deadly talons. Its eyes were focused on me. Friend or enemy? Only time would tell.

As I looked at the fire, there standing within its flames was the shape of a dragon. It appeared to be calling to the eagle, spewing colorful flames of orange, yellow and blue. And the eagle came. It landed about a foot away from where I was sitting. It stared intently at the dragon flame and then at me. The eagle rose again into the air and hovered over my position beckoning me to follow. So I did. 

The cold tried to follow also but the fire dragon held it back with its fiery breath and crackling laugh as the eagle led me through the woods, to the river where I would find my escape and path home. I was safe.

As the eagle flew on and glided over the river, it dipped its wing to me, let out a loud triumphant sound and disappeared.

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What you remember…

Posted on September 12, 2019 by hdh

What you remember

My wife and I were talking yesterday about memories. What do we remember? What makes events in our lives memorable? Why is it that I can remember a specific incident that happened when we went out to eat 12 years ago and she can’t? And the same with her. It might have been a minor dining experience, yet some little thing happened like it was the meal my favorite tie got ruined in the soup I was eating; Now I can remember the whole dinner. The tie was trivial to my wife but it was a trigger event for me.

So yesterday we were remembering 9/11 and where we were. I remembered I was teaching fifth grade. It was early morning and my class was in P.E. I was wandering the halls after leaving my class off, as I tended to do when I passed another 5th-grade classroom; Paul, their teacher, also on prep, came rushing out to me and said that I had to turn on the news. I went back to my room and needless to say, continued to follow most of what happened throughout the day without letting the students know.

An emergency meeting of the staff was called at lunch. We were informed not to say a word to the students. A number of parents picked up their kids early either out of fear or because a family member was connected to the event. There was only one student in my class that left early. Some parents even picked up their kids after school rather than let them ride the bus.

I called my wife when I found out and let her know what was happening. My son was in third grade at the time in the same school that I worked in. We walked home after school and I didn’t say anything to him about what had happened.

The staff had another meeting before school the next day to discuss how to proceed with students. We knew that some students would not have been told what had happened (my school was a 2nd-5th grade building, so the feeling was a number of students would not have heard due to their parents wanting to protect their young children) so we were to be open to talk individually with students that brought it up and school counselors would be made available to those students or staff that needed to talk, but we were not allowed to bring up the topic ourselves with the whole class. We knew that wasn’t going to work since the students who had been told about it were sure to share that knowledge with others in the class.

In fact, when my son came home the next day, he was upset that most of the people in his class had seen all the images and videos on TV and he hadn’t. We may have talked about what happened with him the day it happened, but chose not to share the visuals with him.

So now it is 18 years later. There are a lot of triggers in my mind that makes me remember that day. I also think about other tragic and horrific events, some of which I wasn’t even there for. When 9/11 happened every comic published had some reference to it. Yesterday, I counted 2. When did we stop remembering as a nation and in school systems about Pearl Harbor? the Holocaust? the Kennedy assassination? the Challenger disaster? The students in school right now weren’t alive during 9/11; where is their connection, their trigger that makes those remembrances meaningful? And I don’t mean to limit those memories only to bad events; the same goes for good ones.

Time moves on as memories fade. Memorable events are connected to trivial and meaningful triggers in our individual minds. Hopefully, we can keep those memories alive in the stories we share with others, generation to generation, that place those same triggers that we have in our minds in the people we share them with. Only then will we truly remember.

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Summer Saturday!

Posted on August 29, 2019 by hdh

Summer Saturday

Summer Saturday, my day off; the day I get to relax and do whatever I want to with no issues to deal with; a time to have fun.

Did you ever wake up in the morning and realize that you forgot to do something the night before?

I woke up ready to embrace the day when I realized I had no clothes to wear. I remembered putting my clothes in the clothes washer the previous night but couldn’t recall if I ever put them in the dryer. I went downstairs, put my damp clothes in the dryer, turned it on and decided to have a leisurely morning breakfast at home in my PJs. Luckily the paper is delivered to my front door so I didn’t have to go out in my nightwear.

Did you ever get a different newspaper delivered to you than the one you subscribe to? 

Picking up the paper I noticed that it was the National Enquirer, not Newsday.  Well, at least my morning reading would be more interesting than the usual tripe. Time for some real news.

I took out a couple of eggs from the Fresh Farm Eggs carton in the fridge and put them in a pot of water to hard-boil them. Raw eggs are not supposed to float, are they? After testing out the rest of the eggs in the carton, I chose to have cereal instead. By the time I was done with breakfast and the paper, my clothes were dry. 

Did you ever take clothes out of the clothes dryer and realize they were too hot to wear immediately, so you put them in the freezer for 10 minutes? 

Getting dressed was a new experience. My pants and socks were warm, yet my shirt and underwear were quite cold. 

I decided that it would be a good time to drive to the city and see the new exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. It took me a while to find parking, but I was lucky and found street parking, so I wouldn’t have to pay for a garage. I was looking forward to seeing the new dinosaur exhibit. 

Did you ever get stopped from entering a museum because you were holding a pocket knife in your pocket?  

I wasn’t allowed in until I got rid of the knife and they wouldn’t hold it for me. It would have been a long walk back to the car, so I decided to bury it across the street by a tree in the park, where I could recover it later. 

After getting into the museum I immediately went to the new exhibit. It was amazing. The dinosaur was a Bambiraptor. It kind of looked like a bird, but it was a dinosaur. I was intrigued at how realistic they made it look. I decided it would be cool to take a selfie next to the Bambiraptor that I could share with all of my friends. Not the best idea on my part.

Did you ever have your camera confiscated and then be thrown out of a museum for ignoring the NO PHOTOS ALLOWED and DO NOT TOUCH THE EXHIBIT signs?

Once the guard personally escorted me from the museum I was given my camera back after he watched me delete the photos that I had taken. There was nothing much left to do but to retrieve my knife and head back home. 

Did you ever notice that one tree in the park looks just like many others? 

I searched for a good 30 minutes trying to find where I had buried my knife when a very polite policeman, who had been watching me dig holes throughout the park, asked me to follow him out of the park after making sure that I wasn’t an international terrorist. All I could do was to give up my search and return to my car empty-handed. I was pretty sure I was at the spot where I had parked my car, but it wasn’t there. 

Did you ever notice that if you leave your keys in your car when you park it in the city, there is a good chance someone else will avail themselves of them?

After more time with the police, I was left with either calling a friend to pick me up or riding mass transit back home. The police at the station allowed me to make a call to my friend to pick me up as I did not have enough money for the train.  Lucky for me, my neighbor had a spare key to my house so I could get back into it. 

The rest of the day was quietly spent sitting by the phone waiting for the call that would tell me my car had been found, which never came. 

I decided to go down to the local pub and get myself something to eat and drink to celebrate the fun summer day I had had. 

The waitress looked familiar to me. She might have been a woman I dated in the past and dumped me because I cheated on her. I’m not sure. I smiled at her as I ordered a bacon cheeseburger with a side of onion rings and a salad. She handed me the drinks menu and asked me, “What’s your poison?”

Did you ever notice that sometimes when someone uses an idiom or catchphrase, they literally mean what they are saying?

 

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