The Coloring Contest

Wilmington, North Carolina. Approximately 1981-1983.

Mom and the other Sunday school teacher pass out the coloring sheets. Everyone in the class gets the same pattern- a large flower, like a daisy, with multiple petals.

While the other teacher, an old woman, sets the Crayola crayons in the center of the table for us all to use, Mom explains how the contest will work.

“We’re going to see who can give the flower the prettiest colors. There are only two rules about coloring. The center of the flower, the little circle holding all the petals in place, you have to color that yellow. The stem of the flower has to be green. Also, keep your eyes on your own paper. If you copy someone else’s idea, you won’t win the contest. When you are done coloring, turn your paper over, write your name on the back, and we will pick them up.”



The crayons are the basic eight colors: Black, brown, red, orange, yellow, blue, green, and purple. There are not enough crayons for everyone to use, so I wait for my turn to get yellow and green crayons to color the center and the stem before I begin on the rest of the flower.

A precocious little girl at the end of the table grabs some crayons and dives into the work, not waiting for yellow and green. She covers her paper with her left hand and arm and keeps her face lowered.

I am only between three and five years old myself, so I do not perceive her as precocious. I feel jealousy and uncertainty, looking at this girl at the end of the table from me.

Finally, I get a yellow crayon passed to me and color the disc at the center of the flower. Then I get the green crayon and color the stem. I decide to hold on to the green crayon, and color all of the petals green as well.

When I am finished, I see that the girl at the end of the table is still coloring. She takes longer than anyone else. When she at last finishes, Mom and the other teacher compare them to pick the winner.

It is the girl at the end of the table.

Mom holds up the picture for everyone to see. The girl has given each petal of the flower a different color.

Mom and the other teacher compliment her on her creativity, and she wears a smug look of satisfaction. An anxious sensation begins tingling in the back of my throat. I stand up and walk quickly over to Mom as she turns her back to us to put the boxes of crayons away.

My height is to just over her knee. I look up at her and protest that my flower was the prettiest.

“Green is opposite of yellow, Mom. I made it opposite, and then I matched it with the stem.”

Mom shakes her head that her decision is not going to change.

I feel betrayed.

It is one of my first lessons in how to handle defeat.

I make an adjustment, from this, however, and never lose a coloring contest again in my childhood. Every contest from then on, I use multiple colors. I can remember one contest I won where we had to color a picture of a boy in a shirt. I made the shirt a striped one, using several different crayons to create my own stripes.

Then the smug look of satisfaction was on my face when the teachers complimented me on my creativity.

***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Writing blog entries, writing a novel, writing cross examination questions and closing arguments, all of this writing has sparked a desire in me to try something else creative.

I am not a good artist. If I could draw, I would have created my own comic books from an early age. My handwriting is often illegible, even after I made the decision in high school to go to all caps to help people read it. Multiple times in my life, a pretty girl has told me that my handwriting looks like it belongs to a psychopath or a serial killer. I never know how to respond to that. That characterization came up even last year, when I was in sales in Miami and trying to draft a sign about the special deals on bar preparation courses.

Anyway, I need something simple to help me relax at night and go to sleep. Creative writing does not do the trick.

Coloring with crayons comes to mind. Like a craving for a certain food, I suddenly have the need to get a set of crayons and a coloring book.

It has probably been 25 years since I held a crayon in my hand. I hop in my car and head out to Wal-Mart at 10pm, for the sole purpose of buying crayons and a coloring book with perhaps some super heroes in it.

I walk up and down the toy aisles, but cannot find anything. At this time of night, there are very few employees around to ask. Eventually, I wind up in sporting goods where a lady is handling some shotgun ammunition to put under the glass case.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I say. “I know this is sporting goods and you may not know the answer to my question, but I’m looking for crayons and coloring books.”

She can see and hear the enthusiasm in my question and seems amused and delighted to help me.

“Sure, we used to have a display of coloring books up at the front, but I think they took that down. They’re all over in the stationary section, though.”

“Ah,” I say. “I was looking in the toy department.”

She walks me over to them. My face must light up when I see the familiar Crayola boxes, because she smiles with happiness herself.

“Jackpot!” I exclaim. “Thank you very much for your help.”

“Sure, it’s no problem,” she answers as she walks away.

As a young child, I can only remember having the basic box of eight crayons. I was envious of the kids who had the bigger boxes with colors like pink, spring green, gray, and white.



Looking at the boxes, though, I do not even see the basic eight crayon box anymore. The smallest box is 24 crayons. Maybe they have quit selling the box of eight.

Anyway, I am an adult, now, with a job and money in my pocket. I am going to buy the biggest box of crayons they have, just like I sometimes buy as many powdered doughnuts as I want.

A pick up a plastic wrapped box of 120 crayons. Beneath the crayons are the coloring books. They are all things I am not interested in, though- “Hello Kitty” or stuff for three year olds.

Then I find a Batman coloring book. Beautiful.



The crayons and the coloring book only cost a little over 10 dollars.

When I get home and tear into the box, the smell of the paraffin wax and Crayola pigment brings back a flood of memories, including the one about the coloring contest in Wilmington. I hold the crayons in my hands and remember what it felt like to break one in half, to tear the paper roll back as it got used up, to peel off all the paper to see what the plain crayon looked like, to mash down hard to make the crayon look like paint on paper. My hands were much smaller back then than they are now.

25 years.

The box of 120 crayons also comes with a crayon sharpener- something else that I did not have as a kid.

I find a great picture in the book of Batman and the Joker on top a building in Gotham, and go to coloring. Though I am right handed, I decide to color with my left hand. I like the sensation in my fingertips and my brain better, using my left hand…

I talk to my parents almost every night on the phone- something I started doing to help fight anxiety shortly after I moved to Miami in 2012. Now, I color as I talk to them.

I hope to find coloring books of World War II airplanes and perhaps Florida birds and flowers with instructions on what colors to use. That would help me learn to recognize various birds and flowers.

The picture of Batman and the Joker is almost poster sized, and it takes me over a week to complete it during the evenings as I watch a baseball game or talk with my parents. When I am done, I fold it up and mail it to Mom and Dad in North Carolina.

Mom puts it on the refrigerator.

The Next to Last

Names have been changed.

Monday, March 10, 2014. Approximately 5:15 pm. Live Oak, Florida.

I open the door to the salon. I see Cynthia, the lady who has cut my hair ever since I moved to Live Oak, working on coloring the hair of a woman. Several other women are waiting in chairs lined along the walls.

“Do you have time for me today?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Not until about six, if you want to come back, then.”

“I’ll probably try tomorrow,” I say.

“If you want to come during your lunch hour, that can work, too,” she says.

“Okay.”

“Excuse me,” another woman says standing just inside by the door.

I step out of the way to let her out, smile at Cynthia and close the door.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 4:40pm.

The sign on the front of the salon where I get my hair cut says walk ins are welcome and that they stay open to 7pm, but I know the ladies will sometimes close at 5 if they do not have any remaining appointments. I always just walk in.

The salon is only a block away from the office, and I intend to come back and work late after I get a haircut, so it should not be a problem for me to duck out 20 minutes before my own office closes to the public.

As I stand on the sidewalk, dressed in a suit, waiting to cross the street, a car slows to a stop in front of me and a woman gets out of the passenger seat. It is one of my clients, coming by for an unscheduled appointment. This is fine. I represent people who have a hard time finding transportation to my office, and sometimes cannot get time off from work. If I am not tied up, I will generally see a client who just pops in from the street. We head back in together, upstairs to my office.

5:00pm

Now I am done talking with the client, and I come back out and cross the street.

I have not taken ten steps up the sidewalk toward the salon when another car swings in and slows to stop in front of me. The window rolls down and I hear a woman’s voice.

“Hey!”

She is looking at me like she expects me to recognize her. I do not, but pretend like I do.

“Hey!” I respond. “How are you doing?”

I step to the car and lean on the passenger door. Now I know the female driver. It is Sonja, the Spanish interpreter from when I worked in Kissimmee. She translated in a trial that I did a couple of years ago when the client did not speak English.

Sonja is a beautiful, voluptuous Columbian woman, and I once went to a Latin dance club with her. I have never felt more like a white boy in my life than when I tried to fit in on the dance floor.

“Move your hips more,” she said to me then. “Feel the beat. One-two, one-two.”

But it was hopeless.

Sonja’s hair is longer now, and darker, too.

“Hey, wow. What are you doing up here?” I ask.

She tells me the reason, but I am so caught off guard by her sudden appearance that I blank out as I study her face and figure. I do not listen to her fully other than to hear that she is up in North Florida doing something for her job.

“You know, when I drove through this town, I thought I remembered seeing on Facebook that you lived in Live Oak, now,” she says. “And here you are. I saw a tiny Public Defender’s Office,” she laughs.

“That’s where I work,” I say with a smile and pointing to the building. “I’m one of only two felony attorneys for this entire county. I get half the alphabet, and handle whatever crimes come in.”

We talk for a while. I explain that I live only two blocks away from the office and walk to work each day, and that there are only about two bars in downtown and that I can walk to them, too.

“So this is a very different life for you than in Kissimmee and Miami,” she says. From her tone, I can tell this is not a place she would want to live.

“Yeah, I guess. But I like it just fine. Are you in town tonight? I’ll take you to dinner.”

She answers with the familiar refrain, “Perhaps some other time.” She also tells me that she will be back up to Live Oak, but she is not sure when.

“I’ll tell everyone that I saw you,” she says.

We leave it at that. I continue walking to the salon as she drives away.

Upon opening the door to the salon, I see a woman in the chair and a young girl whom I presume to be her daughter sitting off to the side. Cynthia is styling the woman’s hair.

“Can you take me today?” I ask Cynthia.

“It’ll be about 10 minutes while I finish with her,” she answers.

“That’s fine. I’ll just wait here if that is okay.”

“Sure, come on in.”

I go to a seat close to the young girl, who shifts her weight uncomfortably as I walk by. She is probably only 10 or 11 years old.

In the meantime, another customer comes in, a lady who looks to be in her 60s.

“Come on in, Ms. Dorothy,” Cynthia says. “This gentleman is ahead of you, but it won’t take me long.”

When Cynthia is finished with the woman in the chair, the woman asks her daughter to get the money out of her purse on the chair next to her. The girl does so, but then just sits there with it.

“Come here and give it to her,” the woman says.

The girl reluctantly stands up and walks to them, an uncertain look on her face.

The woman takes the money from her and hands it to Cynthia. “Don’t be so shy,” she says, but in an affectionate way.

They leave, and now it is my turn to take the chair. I take off my suit coat and hang it on a rack.

“You need me to take off my tie, too, right?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Cynthia answers. “So that I can wrap your collar and keep hair from going down your neck.”

I undo my tie, a Tommy Hilfiger one that was given to me in 2006 by my sales manager in Las Vegas. Then I have a seat in the chair, and Cynthia drapes the plastic apron over me.

“I’m trying to remember. Is it two?” she asks.

“No, four guard,” I say.

“Four,” she repeats.

“Is two shorter than the four?” I ask, already knowing the answer to the question.

“Yeah, a two guard would hardly leave anything left.”

“Glad you mentioned it, then.”

As she starts trimming my hair, it begins to fall on the apron.

I will have to stop getting my hair cut here, I think to myself with a smile. Whatever she is putting on the four guard is causing my hair to turn more and more grey or white.

“I noticed yesterday that your partner is not here,” I say.

Cynthia tells me that the other lady who works with her has had a medical procedure done and will be out a few weeks. They both own the salon.

“So you’re going to be very busy for a while by yourself,” I say.

Cynthia’s eyes get wide and she nods.

The salon has not been open that long- only right about the time that I moved to Live Oak myself last year.

“When I first started coming here,” I say, “maybe I’m wrong, but I got the impression that business was good, but that you guys were actually busier than you wanted to be.”

Cynthia nods again. “It was a bit overwhelming, compared to what Bonnie and I had been doing before. I’m getting ready to turn 50, and it’s a lot of work.”

“Wow,” I say. “I would not have guessed that. I would say you were in your early 40s.”

“Thank you for that. Would you believe I’ve been cutting hair for 32 years, though?”

I nod and smile.

“Yep, I started right out of school,” she says.

“The toughest part of that would be staying on my feet that whole day,” I say.

“I’ve got good shoes, so that really doesn’t bother me too much. It’s my shoulders. After standing all day, my shoulders really hurt.”

I nod my understanding.

“Also, I’ve got carpal tunnel,” she says. “Any activity you do repetitively, you’re gonna get carpal tunnel.”

Cynthia begins blending my hair with scissors.

“I’ll be glad when Bonnie gets back. I’m tired of 98.1 Country,” Cynthia says.

For the first time, I notice the country music playing on the speakers in the salon.

“Bonnie has I-Heart radio. This station just plays the same songs every hour.”

“What, does Bonnie have a special radio or something?” I ask.

“Uh-hm. She gets it through her I-phone and she can play it here.”

I think about this for a moment. “What is the difference between I-Heart and Sirius?” I ask.

Cynthia does not answer for a moment. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Are they both satellite radio?”

“Yes, they’re both satellite.”

She continues cutting my hair.

“How’s your other job coming?” I ask her.

“Fine, if we could get rid of this cold weather.”

Cynthia has a part time job with the State that lets her receive some benefits such as retirement. She stands outside as a school crossing guard.

“How is your job?” she asks. “Are you done with work for the day?”

“No,” I say with a smile. “I’m done seeing clients, but I need to go back to the office for another hour and…”

“And do paperwork,” she finishes for me.

“Yes. I have court on Thursday, and it’s all about making that day run as smoothly as possible. You don’t want to be unsure about how you’re handling a case when you’re standing in front of the judge.”

The other, older woman waiting her turn looks up and takes note of me at this last comment.

Cynthia finishes my hair and asks me how I like it.

“It looks good,” I answer, “but don’t my sideburns look crooked to you?” I ask.

I can see plainly in the mirror that they are lopsided and not cut evenly across.

“Hold on a minute,” she says, and puts her index finger on one side of my head. After close study, she see it, too and fixes it with the clippers.

“I have a floating eye,” she says, “and I have to look at it really close sometimes. It’s been a long day and my eyes are tired.”

“I understand,” I say.

She dusts me off and I stand up.

“How much is it again?” I ask.

“Ten.”

I hand her a twenty dollar bill. “You can give me seven back.”

She gives me a five and three ones. I hand one of the bills back to her.

“You gave me eight back.”

“I gave you eight. Thanks for checking,” she says.

“See you next time,” I say.

She does not respond to that. Her attention is on what I presume is her last customer of the day.

“Come on up, Ms. Dorothy.”

I walk out of the salon. The air feels good on my neck and scalp.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014.

I learn that yesterday evening, not long after I left the salon, Cynthia died in a single car accident on her way home. She hit a road sign and a stand of trees on the driver’s side of the vehicle, and she was not wearing her seat belt.

Stunned, it occurs to me that if I had not met my the client at 4:40pm but continued on to the salon, this would have mixed up the timing of Cynthia’s day as to when she left the salon and got into the accident. She might still be alive.

Or if I had a longer conversation with Sonja and been able to convince her to have dinner with me, then I would have skipped the haircut and again, the timing of Cynthia’s drive home would be different and she might still be alive.

I think about her tired eyes and wonder if that played a part.

When I bring these things up with my coworkers and friends, they seem a little uneasy and do not want to talk about it.

I suppose they are right. What is there to say about death? The whole thing can be mentally unhealthy if I dwell on it. To be truthful, though, due in part to a devoutly religious upbringing, I have been dwelling on death since I was a child. And I still have no answers.

But I will stop writing about it, now.

The end of the month means more jury trials for very serious crimes, and I probably will not write a blog entry next weekend.

Cynthia, Bonnie, Dorothy, Sonja are not the real names, out of respect for privacy from internet searches… I am sorry for the loss to her family.

I walk past the salon after work on Wednesday. It is closed. A white wreath with a black bow hangs on the door, along with a sign saying that she will be missed.

Bangs, Shimmies, and Instrumentation

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

From the movie, Apollo 13:

GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR - WHITE)
- One at a time, people! One at a time! One at a time!
EECOM, is this an instrumentation problem or are we looking
at real power loss here?

SY LIEBERGOT (EECOM - WHITE)
- It's reading a quadruple failure. That can't happen. It's
gotta be instrumentation.

JIM LOVELL
- Let's get that hatch buttoned. The LM might have been hit
by a meteor.

JACK SWIGERT
- Yep!

FRED HAISE (to LOVELL)
- The tunnel's really torquing with all this movement.

FRED HAISE
- Houston, we had a pretty large bang there associated with
the master alarm.

FRED HAISE (to LOVELL)
- Shit, it's main bus A!

ANDY (CAPCOM - WHITE)
- ... main bus A undervolt?

FRED HAISE
- Houston, we have a main bus A undervolt now, too... It's
reading 25 and a half. Main bus B is reading zip right
now... We got a wicked shimmy up here.

ANDY (CAPCOM - WHITE) (under KRANTZ)
- Stand by one.

FRED HAISE (under KRANTZ)
- (intermittent voice with static)

GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR - WHITE)
- EECOM, GNC. These guys are talking about bangs and
shimmies up there, don't sound like instrumentation to me.



Here is a link to the scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAmsi05P9Uw

Scenes and quotes from movies are often running through my head. They can help me deal with real life situations.

The above scene from the film, Apollo 13, came to mind last week when I was in the courtroom, in trial.

***

Things at trial unfold as I anticipate, and we have come to probably the single most important moment of the entire two day event. I can feel my heart pumping hard as I sit at counsel’s table. In another couple of minutes, I will need to address the jury.

It is not a pleasant sensation going on inside my chest. The intense throbbing and pumping actually feels isolated, like a singular small valve going crazy with a tickling sensation, and it also seems like that valve is about to explode. My arms go a little weak.

So I start taking deep breaths and keep my facial expression calm. When it is my turn to speak, I stand up, and everything is fine. The throbbing goes away, and I am able to perform like I want and say the things that I need to say in the way I need to say them.

***

In the 24 jury trials that I have done thus far in my young career, it was the first time that a feeling that intense came up on me. There are reasons I can identify for it, but I will not discuss those here...

One of my favorite comedic writers, Harold Ramis, died the same week that I was in trial. He was also the actor who played one of my favorite characters as a kid- Egon from Ghostbusters.



I probably already think about death more than most people, but Ramis’s passing combined with my experience in the trial made me realize that the odds of my own death coming by heart attack, and coming in the saddle, have increased significantly.

And there is nothing to be done about it, really.

I am 36 years old, so I trust that I have quite a few years left before my system gives out. But I have no misgivings- my system will give out one day. The pressure from this job will not decrease. I am preparing myself now to handle the murder cases and the worst of the worst crimes. In a county and office this small, I already am tasked with going to trial solo on first degree felonies punishable by life in prison.

Which is fine. I am good at it and ready for these cases.

If I have to work for a living, then this is a job that I want. The pressure that I feel is actually easier to handle than in the jobs I have held in the past, and the days fly by.

The other thing that I have been pretty good at in life and that was not too stressful was being a student. But unfortunately, I was never smart enough to be paid to go to school.

So, this is my lot. I can feel the roots in my brain sinking deeper into this job, to the point where if I was one day uprooted and forced to do an entirely different sort of work from criminal trial law, it would be an extremely difficult adjustment.

My brain can handle the stress and challenges of this career with no problems, but my heart might be another story. It protests at times with the shimmying and tickling inside my chest. I have no answer for it, though.

Two more movie scenes come to mind at this. One is again from Apollo 13, where Houston is trying to get the astronauts back home with a dying spacecraft:


GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR - WHITE)
- Hey, hold it. Let's hold it down. Let's hold it down,
people. The only engine we've got with enough power for
direct abort is the SPS (Service Propulsion System)
on the Service Module. What, Lovell has told us it could've
been damaged in an explosion, so let's consider that engine
dead. We light that thing up, it can blow the whole works.
It's just too risky. We're not gonna take that chance. And
the only thing the Command Module is good for is the
re-entry, so that leaves us with the LM... which means free
return trajectory. Once we get the guys around the Moon,
we'll fire up the LM's engine, make a long burn, pick up
some speed, and get them home as quick as we can.

RETRO - WHITE
- Gene, I'm wondering what the Grumman guys think about
this.

GRUMMAN REP
- We can't make any guarantees. We designed the LM to land
on the Moon, not fire the engine out there for course
correction.

GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR - WHITE)
- Well, unfortunately, we're not landing on the Moon, are
we? I don't care what anything was designed to do, I care
about what it can do. So, let's get to work. Let's lay it
out, okay?

Here is a link to that scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmLgi5mdTVo

***

The other scene is from the German movie Das Boot (The Boat), about a German submarine or U-Boat in World War II.

Shortly after going to sea, the captain commences a drill and submerges the U-Boat quickly under the waves, deeper and deeper into the dark ocean. As the pressure increases with the depth, the captain and the crew begin to hear the hull popping, creaking and moaning.

One of the crew looks to the captain in fear. But the captain continues the dive. He gives the man a wry smile and studies the space around him.

"Deeper... She must take this depth," he says.



Here is a link to the a dubbed over version of the movie, which is never as good as the original language with subtitles. The scene that I am talking about begins at 21:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iMWb8nEOG4

***

So my answer to that valve in my heart is, “I don’t care what you were designed to do, this is what you have to do. I will try to help by exercising when I can, cutting down on the cholesterol where I can, and getting rest when I can. But this other stuff- the hours that I put into the job each day, the intense trials and battles with the prosecutors, the rulings of the Court, and even the client at times- this is what I have to do to survive. So you have to take it, heart valve, you have to hold.”

All this is not any different from most people’s lives, I know, even going back to cave man days. It is also not on the order of what the crew of Apollo 13 or the German U-Boats had to face.

The Neighbors Below

Wilmington, North Carolina. 2002

There is this nagging cough that has been with me for months, now, and also the sensation of a small balloon inflating inside the left part of my chest, just above the heart.

I cannot exhale smoothly. When I get to the last instant where I try to push all air out of my lungs, I go into a spurt of coughing.

It is to the point where I go to see a doctor about it. He cannot figure out anything wrong, though.

“We can run tests on you ‘till you turn blue in the face,” he says to me. “But that is going to be very time consuming and expensive. I’m not sure that I would recommend it, but it’s your choice.”

I decide to hold off on all the medical tests and just deal with the cough and sensation. It does not affect me that much. I can still run as fast and hard as I want and do all the things that I am used to doing.

What is causing this problem, though?

My parents think it might have something to do with the apartment where I live. There are strange smells at times that seem to come out of the walls. Dad speculates that a prior tenant could have been cooking up meth in there.

I hope that is not the case. It is a fairly nice apartment, but not luxury. My rent is $545 per month for a two bedroom, one and a half bathroom unit. Most of the tenants are young working people like myself.

Downstairs below me is a unique family. The husband is a short, thin Mexican with a mustache. He is balding on top, but grows his hair out long in the back. Probably only 5’5” or 5’6”, he speaks broken English.

His wife, or at least the woman who lives with him, is a white lady, an American. She must weigh close to 300 pounds. I hardly ever see her. She rarely comes outside their apartment. Both of them are most likely in their late 30s or early 40s.

They have a beautiful little daughter, an olive skinned child with big brown eyes and shiny dark, straight hair. I have a hard time guessing the age of children, but I would say she is three or four years old. She can walk, and she speaks a little.



They are nice people. I only find one thing about the situation that is annoying. The man works construction, and five days a week, unless it is raining, I am awakened in the morning by the sound of his boss man blowing the horn on a diesel pickup. I look out my window and see the dually truck, full of construction workers. The Mexican man comes out of his apartment each day and hustles to climb in. Off they go.

The horn is irritating, but I do not hold it against my neighbor. It probably is not a pleasant sound to him, either. It is a tough job that he has.

In the evenings, I see the Mexican man take his daughter by the hand for strolls outside our apartment complex, checking out the Bradford Pear trees when they are in bloom.

The little girl waves to me whenever she sees me, and I nod to the father. He smiles back at me, very proud. It is obvious that his daughter gives him the most happiness out of anything in his life.

One day, another of our neighbors walks his dog- a big, muscular pit bull. The dog has a sort of spotted pattern that makes it look pretty vicious.

The Mexican has his daughter out for a walk. The pit bull actually stands just as tall as her. And they come face to face. The pit bull strains at the leash, all its muscles flexing, and the owner has to use both hands to hold it back.

The little girl is delighted by this. She laughs and reaches out her hand to try and touch the dog on the nose. The Mexican man smiles, too, oblivious to any danger.

I cannot get a read on this, what the dog is trying to do. I cannot tell if the owner of the dog, a tall skinny white guy in his 20s, is concerned. The dog makes these strange guttural sounds with its mouth closed. It very obviously wants to get at the little girl, but I do not know if it wants to play or attack.

Anyway, the owner manages to pull the dog back, and the Mexican also pulls his girl away and they continue their walks, with the little girl looking back over her shoulder at the dog and smiling.

Sometimes on the weekends, the family downstairs has a lot of people over. It is always other Mexicans. I can hear the brass instrument music coming from the radio and smell the ethnic cooking.

One such weekend, as I am coming down the exterior staircase, the man steps out of his apartment to smoke a cigarette. He sees me.

“Music too loud?” he asks.

“No, you guys are fine,” I respond.

“You are a good neighbor,” he says. “Much better than people before you.”

“Is that so? What were they, big partiers?”

The man lights his cigarette and begins puffing, which is a reason for me to end the conversation and move on as quickly as possible. I do not like cigarette smoke.

The Mexican nods his head. “Yes, very loud. Boom, boom, boom,” he laughs, pointing up. “Also, they do drugs,” he says.

“Really?” I respond.

“Si. I go up to ask them to be quiet. The door was open. I see a brick of cocaine on the table. I come back down.”

“Wow, is that so?”

“But you good. You very good.”

“Thanks,” I respond. “You are good neighbors, too.”

***

Today I decide to come back to my apartment to eat lunch. There is a U-Haul truck parked at the entrance to my apartment.

As I walk past it, I see the 300 pound woman, standing at the back.

“Hello,” I say.

She gives me a quick hello back, but then returns to her task of loading furniture. There are other people helping her. Other white people. The little girl is outside, too.

“You guys are moving out?” I ask.

“Oh, no,” she answers without looking me in the eyes. “We’re just getting rid of some furniture.”

“Huh. Okay,” I respond, and head upstairs to my apartment.



From inside, I watch them through a window. They are moving fast, taking things out of the apartment and literally throwing it on the truck, with no thought to packing the stuff neatly. Chairs, headboards, lamps are piled haphazardly all over the cargo space. I eat my lunch, a leftover carry out plate from Golden Corral Buffet, and then head back out to work.

When I return in the evening, the U-Haul truck is gone.

In the days that follow, I see the Mexican man, but not the woman or their little girl. I learn from talking to him that the woman has taken all the belongings and their daughter and left him. He has no idea where they have gone.

In the weeks that follow, I never see him smiling anymore. Instead, his eyes are bloodshot and dark.

One evening, he is standing outside his door, drinking a beer with another Mexican friend. I nod to them both.

“Hey guys,” I say, and head up the stairs.

I hear the friend of my neighbor say sarcastically in a low tone, “Hey…man.”

Then my Mexican neighbor turns to me and yells in a strained voice, “Hey!”

I stop on the stairs, turn and look at him.

“Are you talking to me?” I ask.

Now, the other guy is nervous and won’t look at me.

“Let it go,” he mutters to my neighbor. “Just let it go.”

I walk back down to them. The Mexican man steps up to me and gets right in my face, his blood-shot eyes even with my nose. I can smell the alcohol coming off him.

“If you have problem with me, tell me,” he says. “Just knock on my door and tell me. You don’t have to go to the office and complain.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask him. “Did someone complain about you?”

Now, I can tell by the look in his eyes that he wants to fight me.

“You complained about the noise, and now they take my apartment from me.”

This really surprises me.

“It wasn’t me that complained. You guys are good neighbors. I’ve never complained.”

“Right,” he says sarcastically.

The situation is only going to escalate if I stay here. I step back.

“You can believe what you want to, man,” I say as I turn and walk up the stairs. “I did not complain to the office about you.”

Both men watch me as I key into my apartment.

As the night goes on, I hear them talking outside in angry tones. Then I hear a bottle get busted against the wall.

After that night, I only see the Mexican man a couple more times. We pass in the hall, him carrying a bag of laundry. The look in his eyes is that he believes me, now. His eyes are sad, but not drunk and angry.

Then he is gone, and new neighbors move into the apartment below me.

I wonder if he ever sees his daughter again. I hope so.

Close Calls

Names (and nicknames) have been changed.

Lumberton, North Carolina. Mid 1980s.

Wal-Mart has come to Lumberton. It is not the 24 hour Super Center store that, in the mid-1990s, began sprouting up all over the country. This Wal-Mart does not sell groceries.

It is one of the biggest events in this town’s economic history. Later, when I am old enough to understand and care, I will learn that Sam Walton himself was there for the Grand Opening.

I have never liked shopping that much. Often, I instinctively tell my parents that I prefer to sit in the car and wait while they go inside whatever store it is and buy what they need to buy.

This evening, I am riding back with my Dad from somewhere. He needs to make a quick stop at Wal-Mart before we head to the house. When he parks in the lot, I tell him that I will wait in the pickup truck, a navy blue Chevy S10, while he runs inside.

So I sit quietly, watching people coming and going. Night has fallen.



I look to the back of the parking lot, farthest away from the store and from the fluorescent lamps.

There sets a huge, shiny transfer truck.

Many young boys want to be firemen, policemen, or athletes when they grow up. I have some thoughts of becoming a professional baseball player, but even at a young age I realize that I do not have the talent for it. A more serious thought is that I want to be a truck driver when I grow up. The idea of life on the open road, seeing the country, eating at restaurants or truck stops all the time, is very appealing to me.

What is unusual about this transfer truck is that it is pink in color. I have never seen a pink tractor trailer truck before, and I want to get a closer look. I clamber out of Dad’s pickup and walk to the back of the lot.

Whoever drives this truck takes real care of it. The chrome of the wheels and bumpers is polished. It is very clean.

Why is the truck pink, I wonder.

“Would you like to see the inside?”

I turn around, and a man is standing behind me.

“Sure, that would be neat,” I respond.

The man steps up on the running board and opens the passenger side door.

“Step up here,” he says. “I will go around to the other side.”

I am too short to see much of the inside of the truck from standing on the running board, so I climb up into the cabin.

The man is already up in the driver’s seat.

The inside of the truck is covered in dark red leather. I am fascinated by all the gears and instruments on the panels. It also has a sleeper cabin. The man tries to explain to me what the different knobs and gauges are for. As he points to things, his hand comes a little close to the scruff of my neck.

This sets off warning bells in my head. That is not something people usually do with me, not even my parents.

“I’ll start up the engine so you can see how it works,” the man says.

“That’s okay,” I say, and hop down out of the truck as quickly as I can.

I do not shut the door, and hustle back toward the front of the store and Dad’s pickup.

When I get to the pickup, I turn around and look back at the pink transfer truck. The man has cranked the engine, and the big piece of machinery is slowly rolling off the lot, probably toward Interstate 95, which is just a couple of miles down the road.

Perhaps the man was okay, but it was unusual for me to suddenly feel a warning like that.

When Dad comes out of the store, I tell him what happened. He gets angry with me.

“Don’t ever do anything like that again!” he says. “That man could have driven off with you, and I would have no idea what happened to you.”



***

Mid 1980s.

I am standing outside Allenton elementary school at recess, talking to my friends.

Suddenly, I get hit from behind and go to the ground.

Punching me is George, a fellow sixth grader whom everyone picks on for some reason. George makes low grades, misses school a lot, and I think his home life is not the best situation.

Maybe even I have talked about George behind his back, though I have nothing against him. If I have said things, it is because everyone else does it and I want to fit in with the group. This is probably why George has tackled me and is now hitting me. He and I are both small for our age, and he figures that he can take me on in a fight.

I am able to push him off me, though, and quickly get to my feet. While he is still on the ground, I kick him as hard as I can in the ribs.



He gets up and stands in my face.

“Kick a man while he’s down, do ya?” He mutters to me, nose to nose.

I really do not want to fight, and I can tell he does not, either. We let other students separate us.

Word gets back to the teachers about what happened. Rightly or wrongly, George gets punishment of some sort. Nothing happens to me, though, as I am an honor roll student and did not start the fight- at least I did not physically start it.

Later that year, the fight forgotten about, one of the janitors asks George and me to help him empty some trash into the dumpsters behind the cafeteria after lunch. This will make us late going back to class.

As the janitor slides the metal door open to the dumpster, George pukes.

“I’m sorry,” he says to the janitor. “That smell. I can’t stand that smell.”

This worries the janitor, and he realizes that he has probably asked us to do something we should not.

“Y’all get on back to class, now,” he says.

I can barely understand his thick Robeson County accent.

We both have to answer to the teacher for why we are walking into class late, and I believe that the janitor gets into some trouble, though I know George has also helped him with his work in the past.

***

1990.

The school systems of Robeson County have just merged. I am in 8th grade at a school that has only about 600 students combined for grades 7 seven through 12. Next year, though, I will attend a much larger junior high school. I am not looking forward to that experience.

Mom is a school teacher, so instead of riding the bus home, I wait for her after school.

One of the janitors of the school is a squat balding man with a mustache. His nickname is “Toad,” and I do not know what his real name is. Though I am short for my grade level, I am still taller than Toad.

Toad is friends with some students better than others. He has taken an interest in me, now that he knows I wait after hours for a while before I go home with mom. He has conversations with me, usually about Duke and UNC basketball or Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

One day, I am sitting on the wooden fence railing outside after school. He walks up to me, carrying a mop with a wooden handle.

He starts giggling as he jabs and pokes at me with the end of the handle. I smile and laugh at first, but it gets annoying when he keeps doing it.

“Cut it out, Toad!” I say to him.

He holds the mop end of the handle close to his hip, and it occurs to me that the whole thing is way too amusing for him. I bat the handle away with my hand.

“Cut it out!” I repeat. He stops and walks away.

Another day, I am walking down the hallway of the school after hours. I go by the supply closet, and Toad is inside.

“Nathan, come in here!” Toad says to me.

“Why ?” I ask.

“Just come here,” he says. “I need your help with something.”

I ignore him and keep on walking.

He comes out of the supply closet, holding the mop again, a big grin on his face. He takes a few steps toward me.

This is weird, I think. I am literally ready to run from him. He sees this.

“Nathan, do you think that I would ever hurt you?”

“Yes, I do,” I say without hesitation.

The smile disappears from his face.

“That hurts me, Nathan,” Toad says. “That hurts me to my bones.”

“Sorry,” I say.

I walk off, not caring much if I really have hurt his feelings or not.

Not long after that incident, Toad disappears from the school. I notice that George is not around anymore, either.

I later am told that Toad has been accused of sexually molesting George.

Whether that is true or not, I never see Toad or George again.

***

Present Day. Live Oak, Florida.

This has been a rather morbid blog entry. I am not sure why these memories came to mind this morning.

I feel sorry for George, as he was a victim of his surroundings. My own life would probably have been a very different thing, if I had stayed in that transfer truck any longer or if I had not caught on to Toad’s strange behavior.

Of course, it is just as horrible a thing to be accused of crimes like that when you did not commit them.

Next Monday, the 24th, I dive into trials in felony court. I have three jury trials scheduled for that week. So next weekend, I doubt that I will have time to write a blog entry, as my mind will be deep into thinking about how these trials will play out.

I look forward to the challenge. The stress is there, to be sure, but I am much better suited to handling it than a day at the Post Office, believe it or not.

Acid Trips

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

There are plenty of ideas for blog entries that come to mind.

A problem, though, is whether or not I want to put myself through the ordeal of trying to remember what were some very intense emotional experiences.

I just ordered Chinese takeout from a fairly new restaurant here in Live Oak, stuffing myself with sweet and sour shrimp, fried rice, and an egg roll. It was tasty, but totally unhealthy. Everything was caked in fried batter. I can already feel the queasiness setting in. Unfortunately, I will not be making many trips to that restaurant.

Now I sit down at my computer, with the intention of writing a blog entry about the dogs in my life: Mosey, Wagger, Hard-Head or Twiggy, Molly, Betsy, LuLu, Snout, and Squirt. I have some wonderful memories of them. But they are all dead, now, and the way some of them died is extremely painful to recall.

No, with this food settling uncomfortably in my stomach and the Winter Olympics in Sochi muted on the television behind me as a distraction, I do not think I will write about the good times and then the demise of my dogs. Not today. It is the same reason I have for rarely writing about my experiences at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. Those memories are just too vivid and intense. To do the memories justice in writing about them would require fierce concentration and large amounts of energy.

Instead, I will write about my acid trips.



I have lived alone for just about half of my life, now. When I return to North Carolina to visit my family, it is always an enjoyable time. I rarely get any writing done, though. There are just too many distractions: Dad and my brother watching basketball on television, my nephew running around the living room and playing with toys, neighbors coming over to visit, full meals prepared by mom, snacks throughout the day, and so forth.

In my regular life, though, there is a lot of quiet time, a lot of alone time. Sometimes, when I step outside to take a look at the stars, or just to get my mail, the air hits me and triggers a memory. The same sometimes happens when I am sitting in my recliner, watching a movie or a ball game, and I am just about to drift asleep.

These memories are unlike others that I have, though. It is a sensation in my body and mind that I cannot adequately describe with words. Smells and feelings wash over me like I am right there again, feeling a certain way in a certain place that I have not experienced before up to that point. They are very brief, and the sensation that comes with them is fleeting. I cannot recreate the sensation once it is gone. I only have the knowledge that I felt it.

To be clear, I have never dropped acid. I refer to these memories as acid trips because I imagine they are somewhat similar to the flashbacks people who have used LSD must experience when a bit of the drug seeps out from their spine, years later. Some of the places to which I am transported are not even memories. I am not sure what they are. It is very real, though. If I have not been there in my past, then my mind has created an extremely realistic scene drawn from something, somewhere.

I have had a number of such trips over the years. Here is a listing of a few:

1) I am a young boy, perhaps a teenager, standing in the parking lot of an amusement park in Wilmington, North Carolina. It is summertime, late afternoon, but not overly hot- at least not to me. I am waiting for someone. Perhaps it is a family member, coming out of the amusement park to meet me in the parking lot. Ice cream. There is ice cream, somewhere. There is the faintest scent of it, combined with the burned rubber and gasoline smell coming from the go-kart track inside the amusement park. It is actually a pleasant combination to me. I like the smell of gasoline in the summertime. I smile.



2) I am in my early 20s, walking on the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Red brick buildings are everywhere. It is an overcast, autumn day, but not cold. People are in short sleeved shirts, still. I go inside one of the buildings, an administrative building, up to a counter, and tap the bell for service. Now, I notice that there is a young and attractive African-American woman standing to my right and slightly behind me. I am aware that she knows who I am, and that she came here with me. I am wary of her for some reason.

She is trying to play matchmaker with me and the girls behind the counter.

“Not that one,” she says, referring to a red head in sandals behind the counter, walking away from me. “She is too much noise.”

I see a quiet, plain girl in glasses, her blonde hair pulled back from her face, writing on a tablet.

“Now her, she would be suitable for you,” the African-American girl says.

I laugh and think to myself, my match-maker has no idea what I find attractive.



3) I am in an all-white room, covered in tile, with sparse furniture. Two of my favorite girls from law school appear, S. and T. They wear the exact same clothes for some reason. It is wonderful, because they are both very interested in me on this day. They sit down on each side of me. They know that conversation is hard for me, so they are content to talk to each other, fully aware that they are putting on a show. I love watching them and listening to them. I can smell their clothes and their shampoo.

4) I sit alone in a tavern in a village outside of Philadelphia. Though I am in my mid-twenties, I am not sure what year it is inside the tavern. It could be anywhere from the 1960s up to the present. My waitress is beautiful, with soft white skin and dark hair. She wears a small navy blue shirt that sort of looks like a football jersey. It has the number 06 on it. I drink an ice cold mug of root beer. The tavern is busy. I sit at a table some distance back from the bar. My order of the house special hamburger and mashed potatoes is on the way. The inside of the tavern looks like something from Colonial times with high, dark wooden walls. The tables and chairs are made from thick wood as well. The chandeliers providing electric light are dimmed, as light from the overcast day shines in from the windows at the front of the tavern.

I wander outside. The city cannot be seen from this tavern, but I know it is close. It is late summer or early autumn, and all the leaves are on the trees still. It feels great to be outside.

How long have I been here? I know that I can wander into the forest surrounding the tavern and walk and explore for as long as I like.

I like this place, and I hope that I am invited and have the money to stay here for a long time...

These trips are usually pleasant experiences for me. Sometimes one hits that takes me back to an unhappy episode, though. Perhaps I will write about those another day, or perhaps I will not.

The Pattern and The Page

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Though I am now past the midway point of my 30s, I continue to learn major lessons about the course my life will take.

You would think someone my age could make enough sense of the world and of himself to have more direction and certainty, but that has not been the case.

Prior to law school, I had dreams of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. I wrote a number of screenplays, and even moved west to Las Vegas in the effort to be close the entertainment business. I should have gone all the way to Los Angeles, but the cost of living in that city scared me, and looking back it was probably a wise choice not to go out there with no job and no family or friends, the way that I did it in Vegas.



I never really came close to a break in the movie business. And I understand now that even with a break, that arena is so competitive and cut-throat that it would an unpleasant challenge to survive and thrive in L.A., no matter what stage of life I am at.

So I gave up on writing and ultimately ended up in law school.

In my early 30s, in law school, I thought that I could graduate and become a corporate lawyer, making over $100,000 a year. I learned through the experiences of law school and summer clerkships, though, that even if I was smart enough to be hired by the big firms in the big cities, that would be a miserable career for me.

I actually turned away from the practice of law a bit and focused on the idea of becoming a businessman. In law school, I worked as a student representative for a company that sold courses to students to help them pass the bar exam in various states. I worked hard and did well at this job as a student rep, with the idea that it could be an employment opportunity after law school.

In fact, this opportunity did arise. I became the Regional Director for the company in South Florida. I was in charge of all the law schools in the Miami area. It was like running my own business, and I supervised well over 100 people.

I thought that running a business would be fun, and the game of making money would be something that I could learn and continually get better at. I was a great salesman in law school, after all.

The job of regional director was very different than what I anticipated, though. The company was great and provided a vital service to law school students. For a guy with the right sort of extroverted personality, working with this company could be a great career. I learned, though, that I did not need to be a salesman to be successful- I needed to be a sales manager, delegating to others and motivating them to work for me. None of this came naturally to me, unfortunately, and it was one of the most stressful chapters in my life trying to figure out how to turn one dollar into two in that business.

It cured me of any desire to own a business or hang out my own shingle as an attorney.

So what next?

As I wrote in my last blog entry, I am pretty good at trial law. I am not passionate about it, but I am good at it.

I was lucky enough to land a government job as a trial lawyer in North Florida, where the cost of living is good compared with the salary that I receive.

So now, trial law on a government salary is how I pay the bills. I do not mind the job, and I work hard for my clients. At this point in my life, I have learned that if I find a job that I do not mind doing, then I better try to hang onto it and not go looking for greener pastures elsewhere. The percentages are that the grass is not greener on the other side.

Instead my passion, if you could call it that, is once again creative writing. Now, I am focused on finishing a novel, as opposed to a screenplay. My goal is to write a page per day during the work week, or about 20 pages per month. Often, I am exhausted from my day job and do not feel like churning out a page when I get home. But I also feel like if my life has any purpose at all in the grand scheme, writing that page, working creatively, is an important thing.



What is different this time about writing is that I do not expect to make money from it. Lawyers turned novelists are a dime a dozen. Even if the book is good enough to publish when I finish, I do not have hopes that I will be anything other than a trial lawyer for the next 30 years. And if I am able to keep this job that I have for the next 30 years, then I think they will be a happy 30 years, regardless of what happens with my writing.

I can remember in high school and college, my female English teachers swooning over the poetry of John Donne or the works of Milton and Shakespeare. My college English professor, especially, was an attractive woman.

I thought, “Wow, if I can be a good writer, then I can get women, too.”

Hah.

Nothing I have ever written has gotten me so much as a date, much less that other thing that, even now, means it all when it comes to women.

At one point in my late 20s, I thought that girls just did not go for writing. Letters or creative writing was just not a way to connect with them. It was all about the face to face interaction and being smooth and cool.

One of my friends, who is a real ladies’ man, makes good use of texting and Facebook messages when communicating with girls. I saw a text that he sent to a beautiful girl that he got to show up at the bar.

It read: “Yo where u at?”

But I also have to accept the fact that I am just not that great of a writer. I do not produce things that females want to read. It is highly unlikely that I would ever be able to pull off a series as charming for them as say, The Harry Potter stories.

But I will keep writing that page per day, no matter if anyone eventually reads it. As I have said before, I have discovered by trial and error that there are precious few things in life that I am good at.

Now that I have reached a happy medium in life here in Live Oak, I am wary of major changes. I work hard Monday through Friday, and often on Sunday. Friday nights I go out and try to have a good time. It is a relatively pleasant existence, compared with what other people have to go through.

Marriage and raising kids are not goals of mine. I have no confidence that I would be good at them. And once I head down that road of starting a family, unlike a job, it is not so easy to switch gears and leave if things are not going as planned. I could not leave if there were kids. My life would no longer be my own. It would have to be all about them.

I like living alone, the peace and quiet. It makes writing easier. I like trying to get into adventures on Friday night and then leaving those adventures there to resume the work week until the next Friday night.

The pattern that I have settled into- work, play, writing the page, is a good existence. I hope it lasts a long time.