Saying Goodbye to the Mustang

Wilmington, North Carolina. January, 2004

I buy the 2003 Ford Mustang with $12,500 cash and my trade, a 1995 Nissan pickup.

It pleases me that I do not have to make payments. It also pleases me that I am driving such a nice car. As a kid, I never thought I would have a car like a Mustang or a Camaro, but here it is. I can immediately tell that this vehicle drives heavier than my little pickup that I traded in. I will also have to get used to the size of the Mustang. Though it is a sports car, to me it feels like I am driving a huge Cadillac.



I bought the car in part because I hope girls will be impressed by it. I do get a number of compliments, but so far not any dates. Maybe that will change…

Carolina Beach, North Carolina. September 2004.

My Mustang really looks beautiful, sitting in its assigned parking space below. I look down on it from the balcony of my condominium, one row back from the beach. The curves of the body, the shining white paint job, the sleek decals, all give me a good feeling. I own that car, I think to myself. That is what I drive. It is a cool car, no doubt.

Mom and Dad and are vacationing at Topsail Island, to the north of the beach where I live. I go up and have a good visit with them. When it is time for me to leave and return home, I roll down the windows and turn up the theme to the TV show, “Knight Rider” on my stereo as I drive away. Dad laughs and gives me a thumbs up.

America. January 2006.

Due to upheaval in my employment, on a whim I decide to move from North Carolina Las Vegas.

It is my brother, Adam, and me taking turns driving the Mustang on Interstate 40 almost all the way across the country. Dad and my Uncle Ken follow behind in the Penske rental truck.

The trip out there is one of the most memorable of my life. We stop and eat at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Hermitage, Tennessee, take in the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, eat at a great Chinese Buffet in Van Buren, Arkansas, spend the night in Roland, Oklahoma, then Pizza and an overnight stay in Tucumcari, New Mexico, then the following night to Williams, Arizona and a little detour to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, then to the division between the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones at the Hoover Dam, and finally arriving at night at the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.



Once my family has left Vegas, flying back to North Carolina, it is just me and my Mustang out here in the Mojave Desert. I have come out here with no job, and eventually wind up as a salesman at a car dealership.

One morning as I am headed to work, one of the sales managers pulls up alongside me in his truck as we head down Sahara Avenue.
“Drive that Mustang!” he shouts at me. “Drive it!”

The apartments where I live have a really high crime rate. The zip code, 89109, is #2 in the country for stolen cars, according to my insurance company.

“Yeah, you’re not a real resident here until you’ve had a car stolen from you,” my neighbor tells me. “I’ve lived here for eight years, and I’ve had two stolen from me.”

I go to an auto parts store and by “The Club” to put on my steering wheel each night.



Almost every morning when I exit my apartment to start the day, somebody’s car has been damaged- a mirror or window smashed, tires slashed. My Mustang is just about the nicest car in the complex. To my amazement, no one messes with my car for the entire time I live in the apartments.

Alexandria, Virginia. October, 2006.

My Mustang rides me to work each morning at the Post Office- a miserable, stressful drive. I come home from work exhausted.

The weather is starting to turn cold, now, and I wonder if I am going to be able to keep doing this as I climb out of the Mustang around 10pm at the end of another long day.

I click the lock button twice on my key fob, to set the car alarm. The Mustang’s horn honks twice.

I have never known it to do that before. Normally, the horn just blows once to let me know the alarm is set.

I press the key fob twice again, and the horn blows twice in quick succession again.

Huh. That is puzzling, I think to myself. But I go on inside to my apartment.

Early the next morning when I go out to the car, ready to drive to the Post Office again, I see that I left the passenger side door wide open from where got out the Styrofoam to go boxes of buffet food.

To my surprise, no one has messed with the inside of my car. Now I know why the horn was blowing twice- to signal that a door was open.

Fayetteville, North Carolina. Spring 2007.

While I wait to start a graduate program in history at Western Carolina University in the fall, I work again as a car salesman, this time Fayetteville. It is a Chevy Dealership, though we sell a lot of used Fords as well. It amuses me that in Vegas, many of the salesman were professional poker players. They sold cars during the day and played in poker tournaments at night in the casinos.

At this dealership, no one is a professional gambler, but some of the salesmen are also ordained ministers. One salesman carries two cell phones on his belt- a phone for his customers at the dealership, and the other for the members of his church.

Cullowhee, North Carolina. Fall 2008

I have always done better in school than in the work world, which is a bit frustrating. If academic success does not translate so easily to success in the real world, then what is the point of academics? But the lack of a correlation is not true for most people. I am going to see if I can mix the two worlds by making a career in academics.

Anyway, here at Western Carolina University, I am in the midst of the happiest year of my life, and I fully realize it.



I am actually getting dates, now. Girls are riding in the passenger seat of my Mustang on an almost regular basis, which was the main goal when I bought the car.

Tallahassee, Florida. 2009

“You have that nice Mustang, and you take the bus to school?” One of my friends asks me.

In my first year of law school, I use the Tallahassee transit system to get to and from the campus. During all three years in Tallahassee, my Mustang gets a bit of a break. I do not drive it that much. The main trip I make is to the grocery store with my classmate and neighbor from New Zealand, who does not have a car or a license at this point.

Kissimmee, Florida. Fall 2011.

I park my Mustang under an oak tree at my residence and walk to work. The tree dumps a lot of dirt and leaves on it in the coming weeks and months. Dirt gets into crevasses and linings in the car which are difficult if not impossible to clean. It is beginning to become an old car, I understand, now.

On a trip to visit my family in North Carolina, my brother washes the car and peels off the decals of the horses on the doors.

“It makes it look like less of a girl’s car,” he says.

Miami, Florida. Summer 2012.

I almost get into a major car accident coming out of Miami International Airport. There is a lot of construction there. It is nightfall and raining heavily, and I miss seeing a Yield sign posted amongst the orange and white barrels.

A taxi cab traveling at a high rate of speed taps the front of my car, as I pull out into his lane. But he keeps on going and I do not try to catch up to him and flag him down. At first chance, I get out of my car and survey the damage. We traded paint. Black and yellow is scuffed into my bumper, and it will not buff out.

This year in Miami, I really grind the Mustang, driving all over the city in stop and go traffic. The trunk, back seat and passenger seat are all stacked with boxes of books and other supplies for my job. It is not what the car was designed for, and I apologize to it and tell it what a great job it is doing on a daily basis.



Live Oak, Florida. 2013.

The driver side automatic window has stopped working. It costs approximately $500 to have a new window motor installed to have the problem fixed. A short time after I spend that money, the “Service Engine Soon” light comes on. I find out what the problem is. Though it is not an urgently needed repair, it will be another $500 to have this fixed. At times, now, the Mustang is also not driving as smoothly as it once did.

It is time to get a new car, I know, though I keep putting it off. I like the Mustang. It has been with me for ten years, ten turbulent years.

Lake City, Florida. April 26, 2014.

Today I must say goodbye to the Mustang.

When I bought it ten years ago, I thought that it would help me with women, help me get into adventures.

I have been on plenty of adventures with this car, though the passenger seat has remained empty for them.

I could buy another, brand new Mustang if I wanted to. But what is the point? It is sort of like buying a nice large house with lots of rooms, and then living in it by myself.

Instead, I buy a new Ford Focus. It has a moon roof and a trunk that will easily accommodate a bike rack, two things I want that the Mustang did not have. The gas mileage will also be much better. Perhaps I will have this Focus for the next ten years. I will get into adventures with this car, too, though I hope the next ten years are not as rocky as the previous ten.

Just as I am about to drive off the lot in my new car, I see my Mustang parked in a visitor space at the dealership, the license plate removed.

I get out of my car, go up to the Mustang, and put my hand on it. The emotion that springs up inside me is genuine.

“Excellent job, Mustang,” I say to it. “You are the best car I’ve ever had. You have served me well. If there is a heaven, I would like to see you there with me. I will miss you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone walking toward me. It is the salesman who did the deal. I assume he is coming to move the Mustang to the back of the dealership and out of the visitor space, but he abruptly turns around and walks back inside when he sees me.

I am a little embarrassed. It probably looks like I am praying over my old car.

I tell the Mustang that I hope its new owner will treat it well. Then I hop back in my Focus and give the Mustang one last look before I head out on the highway back to Live Oak.

The 4am Hobby

Tallahassee, Florida. April 19,2014.

Live Oak is a beautiful place to work and reside. The rural landscape here is much easier on the eyes than in Kendall, part of south Miami, where I lived last year- though Miami is beautiful in its ways, too.

Here, I can walk or ride my bike to open fields with flowers and cows. For long term living, I like that much better than amongst a maze of crowded freeways.





The people in Live Oak are great, too. They are very friendly, as one would expect in a town in the Deep South. It can get a little quiet here, though. The most popular restaurant and bar in Live Oak is actually closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Friday night is the time to get into adventures there. There are a couple of other bars that I sometimes go to on Saturdays, but it is inevitable that I see the same people over and over again, at the bar and then at the grocery store and everywhere else.

Gainesville is not too far away. But that is Gator country, and it is a town with which I am unfamiliar. I went to Florida State for law school, so I am much more comfortable in Tallahassee and walking into places where there is a lot of garnet and gold as opposed to orange and blue.

Live Oak has Tallahassee beat for cost of living, traffic, peace and quiet, and rural scenery. I am a bigger fish in a smaller pond here in Live Oak than I would be in Tallahassee.

In 20 years, if I am in Live Oak doing what I am doing right now, I will probably say that it has been a happy 20 years.

Still, if I lived in Tallahassee, I would take advantage of what that place has to offer. I would try all the restaurants, attend the plays put on by FSU’s Theater Department, go to many of the sporting events, especially football and baseball, and probably audit a random evening college class each semester or each academic year.

So I have also begun reaching out the 80 or so miles to Tallahassee, trying to renew a connection there and recapture a bit of my days as a student.

The main vehicle so far is weekend runs in Tallahassee organized by the Gulf Winds Track Club. Every Saturday morning, there is a 5k or 10k race starting at 8am. Each week, it is in a different part of the city. I see some of my colleagues from law school at these races, and that is a good feeling.

The first of these races for me was the Springtime 10k/5k in downtown Tallahassee.



It was raining all night and into the morning leading up to the race. I set my alarm clock for 5am, and struggled to get out of bed and get going. I thought I would get to Tallahassee with plenty of minutes to spare. But by the time I negotiated the traffic lights and found a parking spot, I had to run to the registration tables to avoid missing the start of the race. The sky dumped rain on me the whole race, but it was a breath of fresh air to be in Tallahassee again and see some familiar faces.

Now, for the first time in my life, I am regularly running 10k (6.2 miles) during the week to be as competitive as possible in the longer races. It amuses me, the number of people in Live Oak from work- clerks, bailiffs or other court personnel, who tell me that they see me on the road, running all the time. I really do not train that much compared to the more serious runners in these races, but even people in the bar in Live Oak have told me that they see me out running.

The past two races, I have set my alarm clock for 4am on Saturday morning. This works for getting me there on time.

What this means, though, is that I cannot go out on Friday night, the best night to be out in Live Oak.

Today was the Red Shoe Run benefiting the Ronald McDonald House in Tallahassee. The course took me through the beautiful Southwood community, over rolling hills of large, new homes and open landscapes of fields and a golf course. It was the first time in my life that I have run a 10k race.



Some runners talk about experiencing a “high” as they pile on the distance. Between miles two and four I was feeling pretty good. It had everything to do with the novel scenery around me, though. I doubt it will inspire me to train for a marathon. My runs of the same distance down familiar roads in Live Oak are just something for me to get through at this point. I would much prefer to bike them. The newness of what I was seeing today is what made the run very pleasant.

All of this is an effort- a new hobby that requires me to wake up at 4am on Saturday. It was cold, windy and misting today. I was shivering when the starting gun sounded.

Today, too, I saw no one from the law school other than a girl whom I asked out a couple of times when we were students. She was running with her new husband, and I let her be.

So there was no one I knew, and I ran alone.

But today, the overall experience was enjoyable enough for me to keep skipping Friday nights out in Live Oak, waking up at 4am, driving to Tallahassee in the dark and running these races by myself.

We will see if my resolve remains a month, two months and more from now.

David and Goliath

Wilmington, North Carolina. Approximately 1981 or 1982.

One of the rooms in the church has a door with a small, square window so that adults can look inside.

Of course, it is much too high for me to see through. The door is heavy and metal, and the window glass looks to be pretty thick. The window is crisscrossed with pinstripe black lines that look like they have been etched on.

Mom explains to me and the other kids in the class that the window on that door is the head of Goliath.

The height of us children and the height of the window is a relative comparison to the height of David and the height of Goliath as described in the Bible, Mom says.

The goal of the class today is to kill Goliath the same way David did it- with a sling shot and some rocks.



There is a sling shot on the table in front of us, but it is not like one I have seen before. The sling shot that I am familiar with is wish bone shaped, with a leather pocked tied by elastic bands to each side. I would put the rock in the pocket, pull it back until the bands are taut, and then let it fly.

This sling shot, though, is simply a strap of leather with a pocket for the rock. It is similar to the one David would have used. We are supposed to whirl it around our heads and then launch the rock at the head of Goliath.

The “rocks” are actually balls of aluminum foil, which we make ourselves from sheets that Mom gives us. Just as David carefully selected the stones he would use, we make our own balls of foil.

No one comes close to hitting the window/ head of Goliath. I cannot even get the ball of aluminum foil to go in the general direction of the door. How the sling shot is supposed to work has befuddled me. Another frustration is that I only get one try before I have to pass the sling shot to the next kid in the class and wait at the end of the line for another turn.

I am fascinated by the window, though, the etching on it, and what might be seen on the other side. I keep bugging Mom to lift me up to the same height as Goliath, so that I can see what he sees.

After everyone is finished with the sling shot, I finally get Mom to hoist me so that I can look through the window. I want to touch the etching, but Mom does not want me to get fingerprints on the glass. All that is on the other side is the barren hallway wall.

Still, I enjoy the view from up there.



***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Life is pretty good right now. This morning, I am recovering from a night at the Dowling House, one of my favorite places to eat and hang out in town.

Yesterday, I ran a 5k race in Tallahassee and saw several of my classmates from law school. We had breakfast at Jim and Milt’s after the race, my first time ever going to that restaurant…

Last week, I wrote a bit of a dark entry about this feeling that I have that there is not much longer for me to live.

That feeling is still there, despite how much I am enjoying myself now.

But what I dread much, much more than my own death is the death of my parents.

I hope they live for many years to come, but it is an inevitable fact that most of our time together has passed, unless they live to be over 100 years old.

This is something that I am incapable of thinking about for long, and I only note it here to balance out my last blog entry.

I worry how my mind will react when one or both pass away. I expect it to snap in some fashion, just as my cousin admits that she has to fight back insanity when she thinks about how her dad/ my uncle died unexpectedly of a heart attack when I was in law school.

My mind has snapped before- in 1997, the darkest year of my life. I was a student at Western Carolina University. I recovered on my own after dropping out of school for a year, but I never looked at the world the same way again. It was a new world with new rules.

A friend with whom I went to Western Carolina University lost her mother a few years ago, and I gather that was an event that changed her.

My grandmother on my mom’s side died in 1995 right after I graduated from high school. Mom talked about that as the single most challenging moment in her life to keep her faith, to believe in a heaven and in a god that loves us as she looked at Grandma lying on the hospital bed after her heart and her breathing had stopped.

I am not sure if there is a useful point to writing this part of my blog entry. Maybe when the dreaded event actually comes to fruition, I can go back and read this and it will help me.

But I doubt it. I imagine my mind will snap again, though in a way probably less severe than in 1997. I will recover, I hope, but it will be a new world again, with new rules for me.

In the meantime, I am doing the best I can to enjoy my life and the time with my parents. I talk to them almost every day on the phone.

Jumping a River, Sliding on Records, and an Evening Nap

Wilmington, North Carolina. Approximately 1981-1983.

In Sunday school class, Mom and the other teacher lay out a light blue blanket on the floor. It represents a river, from some story in the Bible where the people of Israel or something had to cross.



All of us children in the class line up to take turns jumping over it. Some of us make it, some of us do not and land in the “water.”

I am one of the ones that cannot quite jump over the entire “river,” try as I might. Making it over the water is a very real thing in my head. Failure is scary and disappointing.

This game is so popular that the kids want to keep doing it the following Sunday as well. In the week in between, Mom has the blanket at home. I practice in the living room, doing my best to clear it.

“Your heels still land in the water,” Mom tells me.

Some of the older and larger kids in the class can jump over the blanket pretty easily. The next Sunday, Mom and the other teacher take children’s books and line the edge of the blanket, pretending this is also water to make the river wider and more challenging for these kids.

But when it is my turn again, there is only the light blue blanket.

I line up against the wall, giving myself as much room to run as possible. Staring at a spot beyond the far edge of the water, concentrating on it as the place I need to reach, I sprint as hard as I can and then leap…

“Did I make it?” I ask mom.

“You made it,” she says. “Your feet completely cleared the water.”

I pump my fist in the air.

The other Sunday school teacher, an overweight, elderly woman, immediately bends over and begins slapping down a line of books against the blanket for my next try.

Mom must see the disheartened look on my face at this. She tells the woman, “No. He’s done well enough.”

The lady gives Mom a bit of a surprised look, but then picks up the books.

So I jumped over the sky blue river. Victory.

***

Wake Forest, North Carolina. 1983.

We are living with Grandma Carter while Dad searches for a job. Mom is working as a substitute teacher at Millbrook K-12 school.
Of course, at my young age I do not comprehend the stress and strain that is on my family right now.

One day, I am listening to children’s stories and songs on the record player in Grandma’s living room with my younger brother.



I stand on the couch, and the records are laid out on the floor. I do not like sitting or standing in place for very long while I listen, so I take a running jump off the couch and accidentally land on one of the glossy cardboard record sleeves.

To my surprise and delight, I go sliding across the floor standing on the sleeve.

“Wow! Adam, did you see that?”

I quickly line up the sleeve to the spot where I landed and hop back on the couch.

Adam watches carefully as I do another running leap off the couch and again slide some distance.

Soon, he and I are both doing this, and we also quickly learn that we do not need to jump off the couch. Getting a running start on the floor is even better. We scoot across the carpet, riding the record sleeves like surf boards.

The ones that have the record still in them slide much better than the empty sleeves.

Neither my brother nor I are big enough to reach the record player and change it when one ends. Mom comes into the room.

“Hey Mom, watch what we can do!”

Adam and I both give her a demonstration.

“Stop that!” Mom instructs us. “You’ll tear up the records.”

Sure enough, we have put some significant creases in the cardboard and stomped on some of the faces pictured on them.
Fortunately, Adam and I are both light enough that we did not actually break any of the records. Maybe the sleeves are pretty strong.

Later, I ask mom for an old record sleeve that I could use just for sliding. She begrudgingly gives me an empty one. Perhaps I wear it out, or perhaps it definitely needs the record inside it to work, but I never get the one she gave me to slide very well.

***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

This afternoon I went for a six mile run. It was my third six mile run in less than a week. I am trying to get in shape to keep up with some friends from law school who enjoy doing races in Tallahassee. 18+ miles is more than I have run in one week since I was on the high school cross country team in 1994 and 1995. I can do these six mile runs on flat ground in Live Oak in comfortably less than an hour, but I need to be able to do it over hills in Tallahassee in about 45 minutes if I am to keep sight of my friends in a race. That is a tall order, and I am already starting to notice little tweaks, aches and pains.

But I am motivated. These are people I would like to be around, that it would be healthy for me to be around. So I hope it works out, that they enjoy my company and want me to keep coming back for these runs.

The uptick in the distance I run causes carry-over fatigue when I get home from work. A couple of days this week, I collapsed in my recliner after walking in from the job and went to sleep almost immediately.

If a baseball game is on television, I will set that to a low volume and then drift off to sleep. If there is no baseball game on, then I play a movie.

One of my favorite movies to go to sleep to is Blade Runner. I saw it for the first time in college, and did not think much of the film then. As I have gotten older, though, I have come to enjoy the world it creates. Two of the scenes in the movie are among my all-time favorites. And though it is uneven in parts, particularly with Harrison Ford’s narration, overall it is one of the best science fiction movies ever made, a terrific futuristic film noir.



I had a vivid dream during my evening nap this week, while Blade Runner was quietly playing.

I dreamed that I was back in law school, that I was a permanent student, having seen many three year cycles come and go. I am no longer young, but actually 37 years old. I sit alone at a table at a Student Bar Association event. It is at a nightclub of some sort. The law school students are all crowded around the bar, ordering drinks with their backs to me, except for the newly elected SBA president, who stands in profile at the end of the bar.

I watch him and marvel at how young and full of life everyone is. Then there is a pain in my chest, and I have the distinct feeling that I am about to die.

The thought that goes through my mind, that I know will be my last thought, is that I did my best to enjoy this. I did my best to enjoy being young. A stern religious upbringing , severe acne well into my 20s, and what was referred to as “autistic tendencies” were obstacles that impeded me, especially with girls, but I did the best I could once I understood myself better.

There is no feeling or fear that I am about to be judged by someone or something on the good and the bad things that I have done or on the beliefs I hold. There is only my hope that I did the best I could to appreciate the life that was given to me.

I know that I cannot rewind time, that I cannot be young again. I am not a part of this group who stands around the bar. I say out loud, “I did the best I could with the circumstances as I understood them.” But no one is paying attention.

Then there is a feeling of reluctant acceptance that my time is over. A pop in my chest. I exhale and die.

I literally die in my dream…

And then I wake up from my nap. The pain in my chest is very real, and I struggle to sit up straight in my recliner and shake the cobwebs from my head.

Over the past few weeks and months, I have had the uneasy feeling that I am going to die very soon. Of course, I hope it is all just nonsense and that many years remain to me. I am guessing that the feeling partly comes because I have settled happily into Live Oak and this job. Never in my adult life have I stayed in one place or kept the same job for very long.

I have been in Live Oak less than a year as well, but this feels like a place where I could live and a job that I could do for the rest of my life if I am lucky. It feels like a sort of last stop. I think perhaps my body and brain do not know how to react to that. And I probably never will trust this to last long, based on my other experiences.

Anyway, one of my all-time favorite scenes from any movie was coming up in Blade Runner when I awoke…

Roy, a type of superhuman clone gone rogue, has arrived at the last minutes of his pre-programmed four year life span. He has developed his own emotions and questions about the meaning of it all. Roy decides to spare the life of Deckard, the man trying to terminate him for the danger he presents to humans, and these are Roy's last words:

Roy: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

On the written page, it does not seem so powerful. Performed by Rutger Hauer, though, in a setting from Ridley Scott, it takes on potency. Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw

Perhaps in the future, I should just try to sleep without a movie playing in the background.

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.