Stress Education

Miami, Florida. Fall 2012.

Awake.

I get perhaps one second before the anxiety sets in, a weight that I can physically feel on my chest and my arms, pushing me into the mattress.

It is also like someone takes a syringe and injects some strange juice into my heart, as I can feel it begin to tickle in an unpleasant way inside my chest. The intensity increases in waves. It makes me wonder if my entire existence is part of some experiment by an alien intelligence.

“He’s awake now. Let’s see how he reacts to this…” the alien says… At this early morning moment, feeling the invisible but very real pressure on my chest and arms, that possibility seems as rational to me as any religious belief.

I lay there in bed for a few moments, then turn my head to the side and look at my alarm clock.

I exhale an expletive.

It is 6:14 am, one minute before my radio alarm goes off. This happens all the time. I rarely get the luxury of waking up, looking at the clock, and realizing that I still have hours to roll over and go back to sleep if I want.

Click 6:15 and Latin music comes on.

“Breathe in, breathe out,” I say to myself.

Somehow, I do not remember exactly when, the alarm clock gets turned off and I come to be standing beside the bed. I try hopping up and down on the cold, hard floor, to shake off the anxiety. It does not work.

I walk to my bathroom and flip on the light.

Now I am in the shower, the hot water pouring down on my face and chest. Still the anxiety is there, making it difficult to move and function.

“This is a war,” I say. “Every morning, now, it is a war to get going.”

I put both my hands high and flat against the shower wall, and I lean down to let the water pound on the back of my head.

“Breathe in, breathe out,” I say. “The first battle is to get through this shower. Then we shave, brush our teeth, and then we get dressed. Don’t look at your emails until you’ve gotten those things accomplished.”

As I shave, I study my face in the mirror. The crows’ feet are more prominent, I suppose, and underneath my eyes the skin is looking less taut and thinner. Also, it seems like I have more fat under my chin- like it has filled out compared to just a short time ago. I wish that I had a stronger jaw line.

Still, I think of myself as being 23 years old. It is depressingly shocking on occasion when I see myself in profile on store surveillance cameras and monitors. “Who is that…man?” I think. “That guy is not 23, no sir! Is that what I look like when I go up to girls at the bar? Jeez!”

I put on some pants and a white t-shirt, and study my torso in the mirror.

Just as disturbing to me as my face is my belly. I have a bit of a gut, now, made quite prominent by the tightness of the shirt. My belly sticks out farther than my chest, despite the fact that I do push-ups and go for three mile runs multiple times each week.

I read somewhere that stress alone can cause fat, and I think this is what has happened.

“I need to make a note of this,” I say out loud. “At the age of 35, my education in how to handle long term stress began.”

I power through the day. I power through the year in Miami.

Mom and Dad are the only people whom I tell about my daily battles with anxiety. I have taken to calling them every day, now, as I need someone to talk to. They tell me to make sure that I eat healthy, go to bed early, and keep exercising. Dad, a psychology major in college, encourages me to go see a doctor as well, to discuss the possibility of anti-anxiety medication. I take a pass on that suggestion, though. As much as it might help, and as much as I understand that many people need those drugs, I do not want to become one of them. To go on anti-anxiety medication would be a depressing admission for me- that my existence is so painful that I need to be drugged up just to get through my day.

“Dad, I really think it is just the job that is causing this,” I tell him. “I don’t remember feeling this way when I was in the courtroom in Kissimmee.”



***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Awake.

I can hear the birds chirping outside my window. I smile.

I roll over and look at my alarm clock. 6:14 it reads.

I exhale an expletive.

One minute before the radio alarm goes off. The mornings are tough. I have never been and will never be a morning person.

But the anxiety is gone, now. It is difficult to get going, but it is not an absolute war like it was this time last year in Miami.

Click 6:15 and talk radio turns on.

I roll out of bed, turn off the radio and check Facebook on my phone to see who has birthdays today.

There is no dread to my upcoming day. I have confidence in what I do, and I do not mind going into work.

Unfortunately, my gut is still there when I look at myself in the mirror, as is the fleshy part underneath my chin. My body is no longer responding to exercise the way that it did just two years ago. There is stress to this job, and I know there is no going back to the days when I was a student. Still, I am happy, and I know that I am lucky to be where I am.

Earlier this week, I finally got promoted to felony court. I have been ready for that for some time. I think I was ready before I even took the job in Live Oak, due to my year of experience with jury trials in Kissimmee.

Openings in this office tend to be rare, though. I am now one of only two felony attorneys for all of Suwannee County. My counterpart has been in his position for something like 15 years. The other two felony attorneys in the Live Oak office handle the outer counties of the circuit. They have been with the office for 30 and 20 years, respectively. So yes, I am lucky to become a felony attorney after only seven months in Live Oak. I hope to stay in this slot for a long time and to make a career here.

When I got the word this week that I am headed to felony court, I also received a warning from my colleagues.

The stakes are higher, now, they said. You’re going to be dealing with people who are going to prison for a long time. The level of emotion that they bring in these cases will be ratcheted up as well. Some people will be hysterical, others will be angry, others will be in denial. You know this…

I do know it.

My coworkers told me to make sure to take a day off every now and again. “Mental health days” is how one of my colleagues referred to it.

My life is about to get more stressful. But I take pride in being a felony attorney and getting the very serious cases. Stress has a long way to go before it reaches the level that I was facing in Miami or when I worked for the Post Office in Alexandria. One huge advantage that I did not have in Miami or Alexandria is that I know I am good at what I do. There has never been any indecision about how I should handle a case or a trial- at least not yet. These clients will want Nathan Marshburn on their case, if they are smart.

The door is now open for the pursuit of other things as well, like becoming a board certified criminal trial expert and perhaps serving as second chair on some murder trials where the State is seeking the death penalty.

I look forward to the challenge. I think I will remain happy, and this will be another, less tense chapter in my education on how to handle long term stress.

Pain, Happiness and The Paper Chase

Tallahassee, Florida. The Summer of 2009

“You’ve never seen The Paper Chase?” the attorney asks me.

I shake my head no.

“Oh, it’s great. There’s a scene where one of the guys is trying to give his outline to his friends, and the wind takes it. He freaks out because his whole semester’s work gets scattered everywhere.”

“I’ll have to check that out,” I say.

“Yeah, it’s a great movie about law school.”

***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day

I use the DVR (Digital Video Recording) feature on my satellite TV subscription extensively. Pretty much all I watch now is sports and recorded movies. I enjoy being able to record a film off the Turner Classic Movie Channel at 2am, and then watch it at my leisure later. My DVR memory space is completely filled up with classic movies, so that now when I record one, I have to decide which movie I must delete in order to create enough memory space. It is a difficult decision.

Thanks to the DVR, I recorded and then watched The Paper Chase this week.

The attorney whom I worked for in the summer of 2009 was right, it is pretty spot-on as to what the first year of law school felt like.



Granted, the film is about Harvard Law School, and I went to Florida State University. Also, a big part of the story is a romance. I never enjoyed a romance in law school, not with a girl like Lindsay Wagner, not with anyone. Still, the brightest people whom I have ever met in my life were in Tallahassee during those three years, from 2008 to 2011.

John Houseman’s performance as the Contracts Professor was highly entertaining. My own Contracts professor ran his class much the same way. He was younger and more energetic than Houseman, but after watching the movie, I would bet my professor borrowed a few things from Houseman’s performance.



The movie stirred up some painful memories for me, though. The scenes with the study group and how the students divided up the outlines were particularly intense and accurate. I could actually picture specific students with whom I went to school saying some of the lines of the actors.

In the movie, I would have been one of the guys who got kicked out of the study group for failing to make a useful outline. Outlining was a key to success in law school, yet I never made a single one. I never figured out how to do it, or maybe my brain just did not work that way.

My first year of law school, I joined a study group with what would turn out to be some of the best students in my entire graduating class. I talked a lot that first semester in the study group, perhaps more than anyone in the group.

I remember arriving at the school library one night, to continue my studying. As I walked up the stairs, I saw the students from my study group coming down the stairs, carrying an empty pizza box. It was obvious that they had just finished a study session, and they had not invited me. It stung even more because I had some pretty strong affection for one of the girls in the group. They realized that they were caught, but they did not know what to say, so we kind of awkwardly passed each other. I trudged up to the library.



After the first semester, I really did not participate in study groups. I succeeded in large part by finding the student who booked the class (made the highest grade) the semester or the year before, getting his or her outline, and taking notes on top of it. Though using others' outlines is perfectly acceptable and widespread in law school, some of these students from whom I got the outline resented me a little, I think.

Most of whatever success I had at grades, though, came from hard work. I out-studied a lot of students who were smarter than me. In the end, I managed to graduate with honors, inside the top 25% of my class. I also booked three classes during law school. The number of students in those three classes were significantly smaller than our first year classes or the required course after the first year, Constitutional Law II, but I was proud of the fact that I did not use anyone else's notes but my own to achieve the highest grade those three times.

Overall, law school was a fantastic experience. I am glad that I went to Florida State University. The fact that I could not prepare a good outline, though, and the fact that I am not a great legal writer and thus failed to make the law review, foreshadowed that I would not be successful in a large swath of what constitutes law practice. As the dean of my law school said on occasion, the practice of law is a literary endeavor. Most lawyers spend their lives performing research, drafting and editing documents, and writing memos. What is more, they do this in measured, six minute increments called the billable hour system.

My brain cannot function in such a system. I tried it, and I was miserable living my life that way.

The highest point, and the most important single victory that I scored in law school, was the night that I made the Mock Trial Team. I have written about that experience before. It opened up an avenue of employment for me- that of a trial lawyer- and barring any unforeseen incidents, criminal trial law is what I will do for my career. The research in criminal law, at least at the trial level, is typically low hanging fruit. It comes easier to me than research in civil litigation. More often than not, too, the case is not won on legal research, but rather arguing the facts in front of a jury. There is more room in my mind to be creative in that kind of game.

Just as important, one can practice criminal law without use of the billable hour system, in either private practice or as a Public Defender or State Attorney. This was not depicted in The Paper Chase, though.

Unfortunately, The Paper Chase brought back the memory of the single lowest point in my law school years…

I worked as a mentor in a summer program for the law school, to help incoming 1Ls (first year students) adjust to what they would be facing. My fellow three mentors were some of the best and brightest at the school, members of the law review.

As part of the program, the mentors were to grade a mock law school exam taken by the incoming students. To make sure that we as mentors were on point with our grading, we took the exam first and had it graded by one of the top faculty members at the school.

I cannot remember all of the details, as I have actively tried to forget the incident in the years since it happened. But the next day after the professor graded the four exams, we came in and my three colleagues had theirs handed back to them by a staff assistant, along with their scores.

The staff assistant told me that the professor who graded the exams wanted to see me in private, though. So I left the room, with my friends looking on at me curiously.

Again, I cannot remember the exact dialogue, but I do remember the professor calling me on the carpet to basically question my intellectual abilities. He gave me a look like he was wondering how I ever got admitted to his school, and he told me to go off and review the copies of the other three mentors’ exams so that I might learn what an answer should look like.

It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life, and I am sure my face was bright red when I walked back into the room with the other mentors and we had to discuss our scores.

My dad later asked me over the phone how I did on that practice exam, and I snapped at him some angry response. Dad left it alone after my answer.

I suppose that anecdote could be humorous if told the right way.

All in all, though, I am happy with my life and career and what law school has done for me. I wish working as a government trial lawyer paid more money, but it is nice to wake up each morning and feel confidence in what I do.

Unlike the top students in my law school who enjoyed success at any number of activities, time and experience have taught me that there are precious few things in this world that I am good at. But trial law is one of them.

Though I suspect I will always battle butterflies and nerves bubbling up in court, I have no fear of going to trial. I have no fear of losing trials, though of course it is disappointing when it happens. I have no fear of who the other attorneys might be, I do not care who the other attorneys are, or if there is one attorney or twenty lined up against me. I feel like, given and equal set of facts, with the law and judge being neutral, I can beat anyone in the world in front of a jury. I do not care if that sounds arrogant. In front of a jury, I can beat the professor who thought I did not belong in law school. The courtroom is my room.

That makes me happy.

A History of Dog Bites

Lumberton, North Carolina. Fall 1998.

I drive my Nissan truck up the driveway of a home in the countryside of Robeson County. I know the house belongs to my old school principal. He is probably at work, now.

A white German Shepherd sits on the front porch of the house, quietly watching me, its ears perked up and alert.

I have no fear of dogs. I like dogs better than I like people, for the most part, and I certainly understand dogs better than I understand people. So I get out of my truck with no hesitation, I can see that the German Shepherd does not know what to make of me, its “fight or flight” instincts teetering back and forth.

“It’s all right, buddy,” I say.

The principal’s wife opens the door and steps out of the house as I get out of the truck. I hold up my identification card.

“Hello ma’am,” I say. “I’m working for the Census Bureau. I just need to verify the address of the house here.”

She comes down off the steps, and the dog follows her. He sits by her side looking up at me. I make a clicking noise at him, and his ears flatten for a moment in response. I assume he is satisfied that I am not a threat, now, because he casually walks off behind me.

The principal’s wife tells me the address to the home. I ask her a few more questions off my clipboard.

Suddenly, I feel a pinch on my Achilles tendon.

I turn and look down. The white German Shepherd has sneaked up behind me, very low to the ground.

“You bit me!” I say to the dog in disbelief.

The dog slinks away.



I look at the woman, and I am sure that the expression on my face shows her that I want an explanation. She looks back at me, her own expression a combination of shock at what her dog has done and concern over what I am going to do.

I decide not to make a big deal of it. Later that day, I look at my heel. There is redness and a small bruise, but it does not appear that he broke the skin.

***

Rochester, New York. June 2004.

The company that I work for is behind on its security clearance investigations in Rochester. As I am one of the few investigators who is single and without kids, I volunteer for these month long “details” in other parts of the country.

Part of my job as investigator is to go out to the places where the subject lives or has lived and find neighbors who will talk to me about them.

I knock on the screen door of a middle class home in a neat little Rochester community. A cute girl walks up from inside the house. I show her my badge and explain who I am.

She smiles at me and pushes open the door, holding it open with her hand.

I hear a dog barking inside the house. Suddenly, it comes flying out from inside, launching into the air, and biting me square on the left quad muscle above the knee. He bounces of and lands on his feet on the concrete.

“Oh my gosh!” the girl exclaims.

I am too surprised to react much. The dog and I exchange looks with each other, me looking down at him, him looking up at me. Then the dog simply turns and casually walks off, as if to say, “That’s right, I did it.” He disappears back into the house.

I am more amused by the whole situation than anything else, and I have to crack a smile. The young girl is too cute and friendly for me to get irritated.

Still, when I get back to the Strathallen Hotel, I look at my leg and see a neat circle of teeth marks. He broke the skin in a couple of places. I call my boss about a worker’s comp claim.

“I doubt anything will happen,” I say, “but I want to put you on notice, just in case I start foaming at the mouth.”

***

Western Carolina University. Spring 2008.

“Your legs are so skinny. Is that why you never where shorts?” asks a girl whom I’ve taken out on a date a few times.

She has a talent for making these off-hand comments that cut me down. It is strange for her to say this in front of everyone. She has seen my legs before.

“Well, you should know that my legs are not my best feature,” I answer.

She blushes.

It is a beautiful day, sunny and warm. It is also one of the last events of the school year for the Graduate Student Association. I have made a number friends and had some of the best times of my life with the people in this group.

We have a cookout going in the picnic area at the lower end of campus.

I toss a Frisbee with my insult prone girl friend and a couple of other guys.

One of her tosses goes wide, up under the picnic pavilion. I sprint to catch it and stop short on the concrete.
A young dog, not much more than a puppy, is tied up on a leash to one of the picnic tables. I can tell immediately that I have frightened it, and I can see the fight instinct welling up in its face.

This dog is going to attack me, I think to myself. But I cannot back up fast enough out of the range of the leash length.

A split second later, it snarls and lunges at me. Just like the dog in Rochester, it bites me on the quad above my left knee. I step off the pavilion.

“Wow!” one of the guys exclaims. “Did he bite you?”

“Yeah, he sure did,” I respond.

A different girl, the one who owns the dog, comes running up, a shocked expression on her face from what her pet just did.

This bite has broken the skin as well, and I have to wash it out in the picnic area restrooms.

It does not ruin the day or my mood, however.

The day is one of the best of my life, actually, and I am aware of that fact at that time.

***

Miami, Florida. Early 2013.

I walk between the buildings of my apartment complex, on my way to the Dadeland Mall next door and the food court to buy some dinner.

A young woman has a miniature Doberman Pinscher out for a walk. It must be a female dog, as it is in a cute little pink harness. They both have their back to me, and it is getting dark quickly in these winter shortened days.

“Don’t let me scare you,” I say as I get close.

The girl turns and smiles at me.

The little dog, though, snaps around and snarls. It runs at me, pulling hard at the harness and the leash.

“Trixie!” the girl scolds.

Then the dog manages to wiggle and slip free of the harness.

Uh-oh.

“Trixie!” the girl gasps.

I could punt Trixie over a nearby fence if I wanted, but I decide not to. Instead, I attempt to hop over the dog as she rushes up to me, but it is no good.

Determined to get me, the dog keeps jumping until she bites me hard on the left thigh right below my buttocks. Then she runs over into the grass a few yards away and hunkers down.



“Trixie! Bad dog!” the girl says as she goes over to the MinPin.

Trixie cowers in front of her as she pops the dog on the behind. Then she picks up the dog. I see one of its eyes is blue with no pupil.

“Ah, it’s blind in one eye,” I say.

“Yeah…I am so sorry,” the girl says.

I reach out my hand part way as I consider trying to pet the dog, but then I think better of it.

The girl wants to get away, and I let her. She goes back to her ground level apartment, quickly shutting the door behind her.

I continue on to the mall and get a to-go plate. Once I get back to my apartment, I examine the injury. Yep, this one broke the skin in several places through my blue jeans. Over the next few days, a nasty bruise develops as well.

I tell my parents the story, and they keep telling me to go see a doctor. I never do, though, and it eventually heals up with no problems.

***

Live Oak, Florida. December 2013.

One of the best places to eat in town is the Brown Lantern Restaurant.

My coworkers and I arrive there for lunch, not long before the Christmas holiday. Lots of trucks are parked outside, far more trucks than cars.

In the back of a white truck is a black Labrador Retriever. I can tell when the five of us get out of the car that this is not a friendly dog. It wants to be left alone. This is rare. The breed is normally very friendly.

Nevertheless, one of my coworkers, an avid hunter, goes up to the animal.

“Hey, what nice looking dog you are,” he says.

He too, can sense the dog. “You’re not very sociable, are you?” he asks it.

He reaches out and lightly touches the dog on the back of the head. When that is okay, he begins petting the dog on the ears.
The Lab enjoys this immensely, closing it eyes and leaning into the man’s hand.

After a few moments, my coworker lets go and everyone continues walking toward the restaurant entrance.

Well, I want to pet the dog, too.

“Hey, buddy,” I say to it.

I stick my left hand into the bed of the truck for the dog to smell my scent. It does not sniff it, but stands with its head askance, which should have been another warning.

Keeping my hand low, I move to pet him in his side. Suddenly the dog snaps at my hand, putting a puncture wound in the top and an even larger puncture wound into my palm.

Two of my coworkers see this happen. One grimaces, the other bursts out laughing.

I have to laugh, too, at my own stupidity.

My hand is bleeding pretty well. The dog just stares at me, now, a determined “Take that” look on its face.



What else is there to do? We go inside and I wash my hand in the restroom sink. I can tell this is the worst dog bite that I have had. It is hard to get it to stop bleeding, and it hurts to move my fingers.

I go out and ask one of the waitresses if they have a bandage. She believes that they do.

I go and sit down with my coworkers, holding my hand in some napkins, trying not to ruin their appetite. My own appetite is gone.

One of the waitresses comes to our table with some band aids.

“I was told there is a guy in a suit who is bleeding,” she says.

“That’s me,” I say.

She gives me the band aids.

The Brown Lantern is my usual Friday night hangout, and I have settled into the bar numerous times since moving to Live Oak in June.

After the waitress leaves, I remark, “As many times as I’ve been here and as many conversations as I’ve had with these waitresses, I’m still just ‘a guy in a suit.’”

This draws a laugh from my coworkers.

“You know, dogs are supposed to be pretty good judges of character,” one of them says.

Back at the office after lunch, the secretaries hook me up with hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin.

The wounds heal with no problems and I can move my digits like normal, though the scars are still present as I type this blog entry.

Live Oak Bike Rides

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Several things have given me real pleasure since moving to Live Oak last summer. One of them is my mountain bike.

As small as Live Oak is, Wal-Mart is the only place that I know of to purchase a nice, new bike. Though I would have preferred to go to some locally owned bike shop in Tallahassee or Lake City, I drive a car with a rear spoiler, which is not conducive to a bike rack on the trunk.

The easiest thing for me to do was to jog the three miles down to Wal-Mart, wallet in hand, buy the bike, and then ride it back.

This is what I did. Only, I was riding through the streets of Live Oak on the way back to my house, I noticed that the seat felt like it was closer to the handle bars than what I was used to. My stomach, hips and knees were all more compressed. Also, the handle bars themselves seemed shorter, and I found myself wanting to grip the very outer parts of the rubber handles.

When I got home, upon reading the manual, I discovered that I had purchased a woman’s bike.

So I rode it back and exchanged it for the largest mountain bike on the rack, the Genesis TwoNiner. It has 29 inch wheels, larger than any bike I ever rode as I kid. When I stand up on the pedals, I am significantly taller than on the bikes with 26 inch wheels.



Though the Genesis TwoNiner does not coast as well as I would like, it has opened up a new world for me. That first Saturday with it, I rode for six hours straight, out of the city south toward Branford and the Suwannee River boundary for the county.

This place truly is rural. I can go in any direction from my house, and within short order be riding my bike down dirt roads, past cotton fields and horse or cow pastures. Not many cars pass me on these county roads.



The size of some of the farms that I ride past is very impressive, with big plantation style homes and fields that stretch almost to the horizon. Lots of people in Live Oak drive the huge trucks, Chevy Silverados, Ford F150s or F250s. Out here, the farmers put those vehicles to work.



I have been chased by a couple of big dogs during my rides through the countryside, of course. One dog was not that serious and let me outrun him.

The other, though, obviously just had puppies, which were running around in the yard. The fur and skin on top of the mother’s snout wrinkled up in a snarl and she locked eyes with me. I had to dismount and use my bike as a shield in a standoff until the owner came running out and retrieved the bitch.



After that incident, I purchased a small canister of pepper spray to carry in my pocket, though I would prefer not to mace a nursing mother.

Each time I ride past a cow pasture, all the cows in the field stop eating the grass and stare at me. A couple of young calves came to the electric wire fence to check me out as I rode by one afternoon. When I got close, I had to laugh as they took off running away from me.

One of the most beautiful sunsets that I have ever seen was from my bike as I rode here in Suwannee County, looking out over a pasture with cows and a stand of oak trees.

The days are much shorter now than when I first purchased the bike in the fall. So I bought some lights for my bike, a white head light for the handle bars and a red light for over the rear reflector, and now I am the Knight Rider. I got to see most of the Christmas light decorations in Live Oak in December, exploring the small neighborhoods after dark on my bike.

It occurs to me that many of my hobbies are solitary pursuits: Bike riding, star gazing with my telescope, jogging, writing blog entries and a novel. I usually go to the local bars alone as well.

Though I hope to be able to play softball again in the summer, which will of course be a team activity, I am used to being by myself. I do not get bored. I have said in the past that it would be nice to have a female for company every so often. But this is a pretty happy time in my life, and things are cruising along. My parents are in fairly good health, and I try to enjoy their company for as long as that can last.

As the sun begins to set later each day again, I will look forward to more bike rides through town and through the countryside of Suwannee County, watching more sunsets over fields, pastures and oak trees.

The Secret to Speed

Lumberton, North Carolina. Mid 1980s.

I can feel the air in the house breeze past my ears. I am running fast, faster than at any other time in my life. I go from my bedroom at the end of the hall to the living room in three seconds.

The reason I am able to run so fast is because of what is chasing me. For those three seconds, right at the back of my head, so close as to almost touch my hair and make my scalp tingle, is a sharp axe blade.

No one holds the handle to the axe. It floats in a dark vacuum of space. About a foot behind the handle, though, are two glowing red eyes. The eyes have no pupils, but they are focused on my spine and the back of my skull.



I reach base- the couch- and the axe and the eyes disappear.

This is all part of a game that I invented to motivate me to run faster. It only works for sprints, but sprints are all that I try to do as a child. I will not begin regularly running distances of more than a mile until 1990, when I am 13 years old.

Dad asks me why I run through the house like that, and I tell him the story of what is chasing me. He thinks this is amusing, and in turn tells me a story of when he was a kid. He imagined that there were little needles or pins sticking out from the heels of his shoes. The pins would pop him in the rear end as he ran, causing him to go faster, like a horse that is spurred.

***

It is Vacation Bible School week at my church, Hyde Park Baptist. I always hate these. I have just gotten out of public school for the summer, and now mom and dad are making me go to school again at the church, where we listen to Bible stories and have to make crafts out of ice cream sticks.

Late in the warm evening, while my parents socialize inside the sanctuary, I play hide and seek with the other kids of the church. Night has fallen, which of course makes it much easier to hide.

I can hear the boy who is “It” around the other side of the fellowship hall.

“Ready or not, here I come!” he shouts.

Base is on the other side of the fellowship hall, too- one of the columns on the front porch area. My plan simply is to sprint around to the front of the building, opposite the side from which the boy is coming. I need to be fast, so that if he sees me, then he will not have time to change direction, meet me at the front and tag me before I can touch base.

The axe appears behind me, along with the glowing red eyes. They fly toward me and I take off, sprinting as fast as I can through the darkness.

The axe blade can almost part the hair on the back of my head, but despite that pressing situation, I look to my left as I run, to see if there are other children hiding around the side of the building to where I am running, opposite of the boy who is “It.”

Turning my head to the side does not affect how fast I can run- or so I think.

To my shock, the red eyes catch up and karate chop me across the neck. I jerk to a sudden stop, my feet go flying up in the air in front of me. I land flat on my back, stunned, staring up at the stars.

What just happened? For a moment, I think I see the red eyes in the air a few feet above me, looking down. It was not the axe that hit me. The blow to my neck and throat did not feel like a blade. My head is still attached to my body, I think, though I lie very still for a few moments.

Finally, I sit up. No one saw me take the fall. I look around and see a steel cable, supporting a wooden power line pole for the church. The cable descends at a 45 degree angle from the top of the pole down to an anchor point on the ground. The cable is what clothes-lined me.



I rub my throat area and wow, it is sore. I immediately quit the game and go running to mom inside the church sanctuary to show her my neck.

“Nathan, what happened to you?”

I explain how I ran into the cable. One of the adults listening to the story is trying not to laugh.

“You’ve got a red mark on the back of your neck, too,” mom says. “How did you get a mark on the back of your neck?”

We come to the conclusion that I must have been running so hard that my head snapped around the cable when I flew into the air. But it all happened so fast that I cannot recall how I also got scraped on the back of the neck.

The red eyes won that round, and it turns out to be about the last time that I try to race the eyes or the axe.

Sky Toys and the Global Positioning System

Lumberton, North Carolina. 1986.

Today is a field trip for my third grade class to the Robeson County Planetarium.

The planetarium is one of the most fascinating buildings that I have ever been inside in my young life. As we sit in our theater styled chairs, the lights go out and the domed ceiling becomes the night sky. A narrator tells stories behind the history of the constellations. The Egyptian Pyramids, Greek and Roman gods appear overhead as we hear what the ancients thought about the heavens. I crane my neck, looking all around the ceiling and trying to take in everything that is going on. But it is too much.



When the program ends, the lights come back up and the man who runs the planetarium gives us a talk about Halley’s comet. It only comes by Earth once every 75 years, and this is the year. I really would like to see the comet. The lights dim slightly and he explains to us how to find it in the night sky, using a flashlight and pointing to certain grouping of stars that appear on the ceiling. He has lost me, though, and I feel the frustration welling in the back of my throat.

“So now, this may very well be a once in a lifetime chance for you to see the comet,” the man says. “Does everyone understand how to find it in the sky?”

All of my classmates shout, “Yeeeessss!”

I alone say, “Noooooo!”

“Does everyone promise me that they will go out on the first night it is clear and take a look at Halley’s comet?” the man asks.

“Yeeeesss!” the class responds.

“Nooooo!” I say at the same time.

The man either does not hear me or chooses to ignore my response.

In looking up at the night sky, I never do see what I know to be Halley’s comet. I later learn that 1986 was the worst viewing of the comet in thousands of years for people in the northern hemisphere, due to its positioning with the sun. It is difficult to spot with the naked eye in 1986. The next time it comes around, if I am still alive, will be in the year 2061, when I am 84 years old.

Western Carolina University. Spring Semester, 1996.

My favorite college course that I ever take at Western Carolina University is Astronomy 101. I enroll for honors credit, and I also take the night lab, which means it is a four credit course.

As part of the honors extra assignment, I have to write a research paper. The professor lets me compose a short story on an asteroid striking the earth. After I submit it, he tells me it is a “good read” and gives me an “A” for the course.

During the night lab, we set up enormous and expensive telescopes, and I see some pretty amazing stuff- the moon up close, Venus, the Orion star nebula, and the remnants of a supernova to name a few things. I also learn some constellations. As part of our assignments, we have to track the setting sun on the horizon each week throughout the semester. I go to a hill just above Graham Infirmary and watch some beautiful sunsets against the Great Smoky Mountains. My drawings of those mountains and where the sun disappears behind them each week is not the greatest work of art, however.

Unlike the fascination but then frustration that I felt at the planetarium, the class ignites a curiosity in me about the stars and the universe. If I could major in astronomy , I would. There is no such degree, however. What is more, after the basic 101 course, astronomy becomes the study of physics. The astronomy professor has a Ph.D. in physics, and his graduate student assistant, Ben, is a nice guy pursuing a degree in physics. I do not have the mind to comprehend the mathematical concepts of that subject.

Still, I always think back with fondness on that time in my life, the professor, the assistant, and a girl whom I knew in the class, Amy.

“Stop referring to what you are talking about as those three stars that form a triangle!” Ben tells Amy during the night lab. “Any three stars form a triangle!”

Amy and I laugh.

Wilmington, North Carolina. 2004.

I have just rented a place at Carolina Beach, one row back from the ocean. On the balcony outside, I can see many stars out over the water as I listen to the sound of the waves… I think I want to buy a telescope to get a better look at the celestial objects just outside my door.

After a trip to a hobby store and a $350 payment, I am the proud owner of an Orion refractor telescope with a German equatorial mount.

The scope is strong enough for me to see the color bands of Jupiter, along with four of that planet’s moons. I can also clearly see the rings of Saturn. The Orion nebula is a beautiful sight in my scope as well.



***

“Aaaahhhh!”

I hear the woman’s shriek and look up from my eyepiece. One of my neighbors in the beachfront condominium across the street sees me as she climbs the exterior stairs.

It takes me a moment to realize that she is shrieking at me. I am on the balcony in the complete darkness, and evidently, she believes that I am spying on her with my telescope.

I have been able to observe some ships out on the horizon with my instrument, but even if I wanted to be a “Peeping Tom,” her place is way too close for the telescope to be useful. From hers and other’s reactions, I learn that people are often leery of a single fellow, living alone, when they see that I own a telescope.

August 2005.

Some things have happened with my job that are beyond my control, and I have to move away from the beach. Unknown to me, I will not live in a place conducive to setting up a telescope for another eight years. I disassemble it, along with the equatorial mount, and pack it away at my parents’ house.

Tallahassee, Florida. November 2010.

I am winded and sweaty from having just run a 5k about as hard as I can go. One of my friends ran the race with me. She has recently become interested in the sport and trains for marathons. She crossed the finish line well ahead of me.

3.1 miles is not enough exercise for her, though, and she asks if I am interested in running longer.

“Sure,” I respond. She is cute and smarter than me, and I enjoy her company.

We proceed to run another five miles after the race is over and everyone has cleared out. Eight miles is the most that I have run since high school when I was on the cross country team, and I am pleased that I keep up with her pretty well.
During the run, she seems to know precisely how far we have gone and where to stop for the total of eight miles.

I ask her about that.

On her wrist, no larger than a watch, is a Global Positioning System device. Designed specifically for runners, I suppose, it lets her know exactly where she is on the planet and keeps track of the mileage she covers.



It is a rather amazing device. I have seen the Christmas television commercials for the “Garmin,” a GPS system for cars, and GPS navigators were built into some of the vehicles at the dealerships where I worked, but this is the first one I have come across for individuals to wear on their wrists.

She looks at me a little strangely. Perhaps the wristwatch GPS has been around for a while and I am behind the times.

Miami, Florida. June 2012.

I just bought a Garmin GPS to help me locate some apartment complexes in Miami, where I will move later this month to start a new job. My cell phone rings, and I see it is the lady I am replacing here in Miami calling me. I need to talk with her and set up place to meet. Sitting at a stop sign at a busy intersection is not where I should take her call, though. I glance behind me. There are no cars, so I will simply back off the road onto the grass. I answer the phone.

“Hey April, can you hold on a minute? I’m going to back off the road so we can talk.”

As I move the car in reverse, I hear an awful crunching sound. My Garmin guided me to this street, but it could not warn me about a low concrete pole protecting a fire hydrant.

Sure enough, I get out of my car to find the rear tail light is busted and the bumper is crushed inward. The pole was below my line of sight, which irritates me. I had no chance. It was just bad luck that I got the call right at that moment.

As much as I do not want to acknowledge it, this incident feels like an omen of what is to come in Miami.

The GPS will prove very valuable too me in navigating this city, though printed maps give me a better feel for exactly where I am and where other things are in relation to me.

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

The anxiety and stresses of my experience in Miami are behind me, now.

I rent a house with a fairly large backyard here in Suwannee County. For the first time in eight years, I can use my telescope again. Mom and Dad bring it from North Carolina, and to my pleasant surprise, no parts are missing when I assemble it.

The Orion nebula, along with the colorful bands of Jupiter, are back for me to view. I use a red lens flashlight to study my star charts in the backyard.

***

Browsing the internet, looking for some possible new eyepieces for the scope, I stumble across something called “The Celestron Personal Planetarium Sky Scout.” After watching a video on how the device works, I am sold. I order it immediately.

When it arrives a few days later, it is even better than what I hoped for. The Sky Scout uses a GPS system to identify my location on the globe. Once that is locked, I can point it at any object in the sky and it will tell me what I am looking at, often through audio narration. What is more, I can punch in the object that I want to observe, and arrows will light up on the device to guide me to where the object is in the sky.



It has made my backyard astronomy experience much more enjoyable. Often I do not use the telescope at all, as the Sky Scout can educate me about plenty of things in the night sky visible to the naked eye.

“Have the knowledge of a professional astronomer in the palm of your hand,” is one of the advertising slogans. It is true. The device brings back memories of some of the things that I learned in Astronomy 101.

I am a bit of a Luddite. I admit that. But I also have to acknowledge that GPS systems can be pretty cool. The Sky Scout in particular has given me access to a lot of information that I never would have been able to figure out on my own.

A Day at the Post Office, Part 4

Alexandria, Virginia. October 2006

5:30 pm

One good thing about route 52 is that I have carried it before.

I remember this set of four doors in a cul-de-sac, all of them red, each to a very nice townhome.

These four addresses receive lots of mail on a daily basis, but one home in particular gets lots of clothing catalogues and magazines. The mail slot is very small.



As the sun begins to set, I slide and shove the catalogues, one by one, through the slot.

Suddenly the door opens, and there stands a young woman, probably slightly older than me, with dirty blonde hair pulled back from a pretty white face. She is barefoot, wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt.

“I thought I would save you the trouble of putting all that through the slot,” she says.

“Oh, thanks,” I say.

The woman has a remarkable figure, and it is obvious that she is wearing no bra. Similar to the European lady whom I encountered earlier, she has just seared herself permanently into my brain.

I can feel my face begin to heat up, to turn red. I hand her the stack of mail, which she holds against her stomach. She sees my embarrassment and cocks her head to the side with a quizzical expression. Then she understands, and a cute little smile forms on her face.

I think I am in love.

“Is that everything?” she asks.

“Yes ma’am. I believe so.”

“Thank you,” she says.

As she moves to close the door, she deliberately arches her back and sticks out her chest, smiling at the power that she knows she has over me.

The door shuts, and I hang my head for a moment. “Why do women do that?” I think to myself. I feel a pain in my stomach, a loneliness that pierces through the physical discomfort of the job.

As I walk back to the LLV, I find myself muttering, “I really wish you would not do that. You are very beautiful and I would be very good to you, but please don’t tease me unless you are serious. If you are not serious, then I wish you would just leave me alone.”

She has made quite the impression on me. For the rest of my time with the Post Office, I will ask each morning for the opportunity to carry route 52, and I will get to carry it multiple more times. I always look for her and even knock on her door when I have a stack of magazines for the address. But she never answers, and I do not see her again.

***

When I lived in Las Vegas and applied to take the Postal exams, first in California, and then in DC as those openings popped up on the internet, I envisioned the job of mail carrier to be a rather leisurely one, with pleasant walks outside. I would get off work at a reasonable hour and have time to write. It did not occur to me that I would have to wear a head lamp on a daily basis.

The sun has gone down, now. Before I gather the mail from the back of the LLV for the next block of homes, I turn on the light of the head lamp and put the band around my head. Both the metal parts and the elastic are a bit grimy from the previous days’ sweat. It is not long before I feel the batteries begin to heat up in the center of my forehead. At least I can see the addresses on the mail, though.



10:00 pm

My cell phone rings. It is Gary, the evening shift supervisor. Raj has long since gone home.

“Marshburn, where are you at?”

“I’ve got some cluster boxes left on the final leg of route 52,” I answer.

“Do you think you’ll be back to the station in the next half hour?” he asks.

“In the next half hour? No, sir. This last bunch will take me at least an hour to deliver. It’s a lot of townhomes.”

“All right,” Gary says. “I’m sending Melvin out to you. Where exactly are you at now?”

I give him the location. Unlike Raj, Gary is a former mail carrier. I get the sense that he would rather return to mail carrying. The stress of being a mid-level supervisor, of being chewed on from both ends, is not making him happy. He was once one of the guys, but now he has to deal with the carrier union as if he is an adversary.

Melvin is one of my favorite people at the station. He and I were hired at the same time. Melvin has a cool and friendly personality, and is much better adjusted to this job than I am, I think. He is an African-American with a short, stocky build. Individuals with these types of physiques- thick legs and thick arms- seem to be among the best mail carriers, male or female and regardless of race.

The last part of route 52 is a maze of expensive townhouses. The mail for these homes is delivered to a set of cluster boxes that set at various locations. It is part of the sorting game to figure out which mail tray goes with each box, and then to find where that box is hiding.

I use my master key to unlock the box I am at now, and with the aid of my head lamp, I distribute a tray and packages.

These townhomes are interesting. They are very nice. One of the residents told me that that each sells for at least $600,000. But only railroad tracks divide them from the projects. It is strange to me that someone would pay that much money just to live a few feet away from project housing and, ostensibly, a high crime rate. Also, Reagan International Airport is very close by, and the sound from planes taking off and landing is substantial.

Melvin pulls up in his Post Office mini-van.

I give him half of my remaining mail. What takes some time, though, is that I then have to go and unlock each of the remaining cluster boxes on the route, as I have the only key. After driving around all the roads to accomplish this, I return to the spot where Melvin first pulled up. After we are done, I will have to drive around again and lock all the boxes that Melvin worked.

At one point, he and I are working at boxes within a few feet of each other. A train barrels down the tracks, blowing its horn incessantly. The noise is incredible, rattling windows and my ear drums. It takes a few minutes for the train to get by.

After the commotion has passed, Melvin and I exchange looks.

“Man, that train was off the chain!” Melvin exclaims.

“Can you believe people pay $600,000 to live like this?” I ask.

Melvin shakes his head, the light on his own head lamp flashing back and forth.

11:00 pm

Melvin and I pull back into the station and back our vehicles into the appropriate spots. I take the load of outgoing mail inside.

“Thanks for the help, Melvin,” I say.

“No problem, man,” he answers. “I know you would do the same for me.”

“Yes, I would. But you never seem to need it.”

Inside the station, Gary is waiting for me. The place is very quiet again under the bright fluorescent lights. No one else is here except for a few of the night shift mail clerks at work, putting unsorted mail tubs at the various routes. Finally, my day is done and I can go home.

“Marshburn, you missed carrying out a guy’s mail today,” Gary says.

My heart sinks. “What?”

“He’s had his mail on hold for a couple of weeks, and today it was supposed to go out. He called here this evening, asking about it.”

I see that Gary has a tub with the mail setting beside him.

“I’m sorry. I did not know. Can’t it go out tomorrow?” I ask.

Gary shakes his head. “Post Office says it has to go today.”

I sigh, resigning myself to the fact that I have to go out on the street again.

Gary sees the expression on my face. He thinks for a moment.

“Go on home, Marshburn. I’ll take it out.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yeah. Go on home.”

Exhaustion and hunger keep me from arguing with him.

11:30 pm

I do not want to eat fast food again for my late dinner. Those are the only restaurants open at this time of night.

Beside my apartment complex is a buffet restaurant. Though not a chain, it is very similar to Golden Corral or Ryan’s. If it is still open when I get off work, I have learned to go in and load up. I get the Styrofoam “To-Go” trays, four or five of them, and pile each one with as much food as it can hold. The restaurant charges me by the pound.

I key into my apartment and head straight for the refrigerator. Without taking off any part of my uniform, I grab one of the to-go trays from inside. I do not bother to warm it up. The grease has congealed to white globs on the roast beef, but I do not care. I sit down in my recliner and eat and eat. Meat, potatoes, vegetables.

Eventually, there is enough of a bottom on my stomach that I can stand up, take off my uniform and step into the shower to wash off the dirt from the day.

After the shower, I go back to the refrigerator eat some more from the trays, this time warming it up in my microwave first. It is well after midnight when I collapse on my bed.

Like a ceiling fan on high speed that has just been turned off, I keep spinning in my sleep, gradually winding down. I dream of sorting mail for most of the night.

6:30 am

My radio alarm clock goes off.

I awake to annoying DJ chatter and a strange, metallic taste in my mouth. I shake off the dreams of sorting mail to realize that I have another day of the real thing ahead of me.

7:30 am

I clock in and begin walking down the long, concrete floor.

Dillon, the other morning supervisor, is coming toward me.

“Marshburn, I have you putting up and carrying route 63 today. You will also need to carry part of route 12.”

“Is route 52 available?” I ask.

Dillon gives me a steady look. “No, I’ve got 52 covered.”

As I take my position at the sorting bins for route 63, I hear Rodney on route 15 sing out:

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life! So let’s make this the best day of the rest of your life! Yesterday was the future, tomorrow is the past, so let’s get to it!”

In addition to Rodney’s chant, I am thinking of some lines by Stephen King from his work, Storm of the Century. In it, a mysterious character, Andre Linoge, speaks to one of the residents of a small island town in Maine. Linoge is later revealed to most likely be the Biblical demon, “Legion.”

“That is what Hell is all about- repetition.” Linoge tells him. “I think in our hearts, most of us know that… Remember what I said, Robbie. Hell is repetition.”

As I sort the mail on route 63, I think about the woman I saw yesterday on Route 52. I have fantasies about seeing her again, asking her out and even marrying her. The pain of this existence is overbearing, though, and I am glad that I do not have a family.

No, even with her, I do not think that I want to bring children into this world.