I Don't Want to Fight

The young couple doesn't see it coming, their convertible top down and wrapped up in the warmth of the day.  My family and I see it, though.

We're waiting in a line of cars at a stoplight when half a dozen guys pile out of a car ahead of us, and it's clear they're up to no good.  Some of the men have wrapped their knuckles with thick chains, and others clutch empty beer bottles by their necks.  They're stalking towards the cute couple who haven't noticed them yet, and my stomach twists with realization.

My son-in-law, Bert, jumps out of the car before we can stop him.  My daughter claws at his shirt and tries to scream some sense in to his brain, but it's no use.  Bert's always had a strong sense of justice.  Either that or he doesn't put much value on his own life.

The light changes and the convertible speeds off before the thugs reach them, but their group is still looking for a target and they set their sights on the most likely target:  Bert.  It happens in slow motion, but it still happens.  One of the guys smashes his bottle over Bert's head and blood trickles in his face.

I don't want to fight.  There's three times as many of them as there are of us.  I'm not much of a gambler, but those odds aren't good, even with a firecracker like Bert on your side.  Like it or not, though, I can't leave him out there alone.  They'll kill him.  With a backward glance at my wife, daughter, and young son, I bolt from the car and into the battle.  I still don't want to fight.

Two-to-one.  If we survive this, I might kill Bert myself.

I don't see the guy until he's clocked me in the side of the head and I'm sprawled on the ground.  He brings the pointed toes of his boots to my face and kicks me over and over, sending spikes of pain through my jaw and behind my eyelids.  It's not enough to him that I am on the ground, that I didn't want this fight.  It's obvious that he won't stop until he's made his point clear.  As far as I'm concerned, the point of his shoe has done quite enough talking.

Elise flies from the car and launches herself on the back of my attacker.  On her way out of the car, she grabbed the closest thing in reach, a can of oil, which she now uses to hammer away at his thick skull.  She stuns him long enough to give me a chance to stagger to my feet, but I can't stop him from wrenching her free and kicking her in the face with those horrible, awful boots.

I didn't want to fight.

We drive ourselves, licking our wounds, to General Hospital.  Bert needs stitches, and I'm not sure what Elise and I need.  A uniformed officer comes to arrest us for beating up a group of men, but his mouth and the charges drop when he surveys our assortment of injuries.  

A couple days later our friend Benny takes in Elise's cuts and bruises and asks us to name names.  "You'll never hear from those guys again," he vows.  I don't doubt Benny one bit, and I appreciate the gesture, but I don't tell him anything.

Our bruises haven't healed up before one of the smaller thugs struts into the store.  He's alone and looking for another fight.  The tips of Bert's ears flame as he orders him off the property.  I keep an eye on the man as he slinks away toward the restaurant next door.  A wave of rage courses through me and I think how easy it would be to get my revenge on just one man, the runt of the bunch.  With a shake of my head, I turn away from the window where I have a clear view of him glaring over at us.

I don't want to fight.

Rear View Mirror

I expect him to pass her by.

He doesn't, and I should have seen it comin'.  My older brother, Joe, never missed an opportunity to tease me.  Then again, he didn't pass up a chance to flirt with a pretty girl, either.

"Cut it out, Joe!"  I growl through gritted teeth.  Heat creeps up from my neck to my cheeks, and the sprinkling of freckles there fade into red.  There's only so far I can shimmy down in the Model A's bench seat to hide myself from her sight.  I'd like very much to slug my brother for his fooling.

"Hey, Toots!"  He calls out the open window to the dark-haired girl walking behind our car.  "Want a ride?"

She doesn't even give him the satisfaction of looking our direction, which, in a way, makes his grin broaden.  Instead, she trains her deep brown eyes on the gravel immediately before her own two feet.  We all know that even if she wanted to ride with a troublemaker like my brother or mortified me, she'd have to pass it by her daddy.  Besides, she's nearly reached her destination and doesn't need our kind of help, if you could call it that.

I steal a peek in the mirror and watch her curls bob in time with her determined march.  If I wasn't so mad at Joe, I'd thank him for giving me more time with her.  Not that we ever really spent time together.  My brothers and I watched her walk past our house on her way to her job at the golf course all the time.  They watched, maybe, but I salivated.   Someday I'd work up the nerve to ask her on a proper date, but today wasn't going to be that day, thanks to my obnoxious brother.

Daniel the Draw-er Makes a Friend

“Did you make any new friends at school today?” Mom asks, smiling up at me as she wipes crumbs from the counter.  Every day it’s the same question, and every day I give the same answer.  They say adults are supposed to be smart, but maybe no one told Mom.

I grab the carton of milk and take a gulp before she notices, then wipe away my milk moustache with my sleeve.  Today I feel dramatic, so I puff up my chest and place my hands on my hips like a superhero before booming, “Annie is the only friend I need!”  

If I owned a cape I would make sure it flapped in the breeze behind me the whole time, but capes weren’t on the shopping list for school clothes this year.  Mom looks disappointed.  I’m disappointed, too.  Capes are cool.  Not as cool as samurai swords or skateboarding dogs, but still pretty awesome.

“Daniel.  Annie is a nice girl, but it’s not healthy to have only one friend.”

Parents always said stuff wasn’t healthy for you.  Candy bars weren’t healthy.  Staying up all night watching t.v. wasn’t healthy.  Now being friends with Annie wasn’t healthy?  Unless Mom meant the time Annie sneezed right in my face and I ended up sick in bed for two days, I didn’t understand how having a friend could be bad.

“Really, Daniel.  What if Annie moved away?  Then you wouldn’t have any friends.”

“She’s not going anywhere.  She told me so.”

Her face grows serious.  “Promise me you’ll try to at least talk to the other kids.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I roll my eyes, but make sure I turn my back to her first.  Mom hates it when I roll my eyes.  Only she can roll her eyes and get away with it.  “What’s for dinner?”

“Meatloaf, your favorite!”

Gross!  I stick out my tongue and make a gagging noise.

“I was going to warn you that Tommy’s in the living room waiting for your sister, but since you’re being a smarty-pants, maybe I won’t...”

Tommy.  Ugh.

My sister Lila’s latest boyfriend was the worst one yet.  He plays in a band and has just enough hair on his chin to make it look like he’s super-glued a caterpillar there.  Tommy also likes to call me “buddy” and punch me in the arm.  I figure he can't remember my name.  When we first met, Tommy called me Fritz for an entire day before Lila finally put a stop to it

I tiptoe down the hall past the living room door, but knock into the coat rack with my backpack.  Like a hungry lion, Tommy pounces, jumping over the back of the couch and directly in front of me.  Great.

“Bud-dy!”  He punches me in the arm, as always.

“Ow!”  I whine.  Before he can hit me again, I slip off my backpack and hide my arms behind it like a knight with a shield.  

“What’s up, big guy?”

I try to answer him, but it’s kind of hard since he’s put me in a headlock, his skinny forearm pressing into my windpipe.  Up close, Tommy smells like microwave burritos and cat litter.  He rubs his knuckles on the top of my head and I yelp.  When the torture portion of our meeting ends, he lets me go and acts like nothing ever happened.

“Lila says you’re a draw-er.”

I’m pretty sure he means artist, but my head and arm still hurt so I keep my mouth shut.

“Uh, I guess so,” I shrug.

Tommy smiles, making the caterpillar wiggle.  “Well, keep practicing, buddy.  Maybe if you get good enough you can draw a cover for Revenge of the Lunch Lady.”

I back around him so I can keep an eye on his hands.  “Yeah, okay.  Thanks.”

Like that’ll happen.  Revenge of the Lunch Lady was the name of Tommy’s band, and their biggest show so far had been at the bowling alley.  No one had been able to hear them over the thumps of bowling balls and crash of falling pins.

The rest of the way to my room, I think about Mom’s words, What if Annie moved away?

It’s impossible to imagine life without my best friend.  While all the other girls at school dress in pink and smell like flowers, Annie always smells like peanut butter and wears her brother’s old jeans.  Back in kindergarten she ate an earthworm and that’s when I knew she was the one.  

The other kids tease us and say we’re going to get married when we grow up.  They make kissy noises when we walk past together, but that’s gross.  I don’t want to kiss Annie.  Annie eats earthworms, after all.

Mom’s being silly.  Annie’s not leaving.

Once I reach my room, I sit down at my table and get to work.  Dad put my table in front of the window so I could look out and draw nice pictures of trees and birds, but mostly I use the window as a launchpad for paper airplanes and plastic parachute men.  Instead of trees and birds, I draw animals and monsters and super-awesome machines nobody else has thought of yet.  My favorite was a robot named Pi-zzabot that could bake a pizza and do my Math homework at the same time.  I drew a toaster that could tie shoes and smear peanut butter on bread for Annie, too, but I still think Pi-zzabot is better.

Today I want to finish the animal I’ve been working on for a few days.  I mean, I guess he’s an animal.  His head is round and soft like a teddy bear with shiny black eyes, but he’s no ordinary teddy bear.  The rest of his body will have long tentacles like an octopus--once I finish.  

In the middle of drawing Octobear’s third oozing tentacle, my pencil lead snaps off.  I growl and fling my wounded pencil out the open window before I realize that was my last pencil.  

Lila’s in her room with her door open when I stomp by.  She leans in close to the mirror on her dresser and dabs at her eyelashes with a tiny black brush.  Girls are weird.  You’d never catch me poking myself in the eye with anything to make myself look pretty.  

I peek my head in her room.  “Hey, you got a pencil?”  

She stops and looks at me with the brush hovering near her eyeball.  I flinch and look away.  Even though Lila is my sister doesn’t mean I want her to become a cyclops or wear a patch over her eye.  

“No, Daniel,” she replies.  “I do not have a pencil.”  

Who died and made her an English teacher all of the sudden?  She probably needed to help poor Tommy out, not me, since he couldn’t even come up with a better word than “draw-er”.  I stalk away, taking back all the nice things I’d ever said about her, which weren’t that many.

I want to ask Mom about pencils but Tommy and his fists still lurk in the living room.  Octobear needs more legs, but if Tommy punches me one more time my arm’s going fall off.  Without my arm, it’ll be hard to draw.

The only other place to look is the attic.  I’m not really supposed to snoop around up there because Mom says I make a mess.  This one time I found a bunch of brand new action figures Dad hadn’t even opened yet.  His face turned purple when he found me playing with them a few days later.  Since then, the attic has been off-limits for me.  Octobear needs me, though.

It takes a while, but I find a box of old art supplies buried under a fake Christmas tree and a bin of my old baby clothes.  The stuff inside the box is mostly junk.  I push aside a stack of paper with brown water spots and small containers of dried-up paint until I feel something smooth and wooden.  The wooden thing ends up being a case, and when I open it up there’s a half-used pencil wrapped in green velvet.  Yes!  Why anyone would put a plain old pencil in a box like that, I don’t know, but Dad is weird and keeps his toys in boxes, too.  With a shrug, I toss the box to the side and hurry back down to my room.

I finish drawing the last of Octobear’s limbs and start on a cat who will have a jetpack on his back - I’m saving that part for last! - when Mom calls me down for dinner.  The meatloaf is extra dry tonight and Dad talks for a whole ten minutes about some market on Wall Street, wherever that is.  As soon as I choke down the last awful bite, I run back to my room, ready to send a cat into orbit.

Only one problem.  There’s a cat on my desk and he looks kind of familiar.  

The cat stands up and puffs his snowy fur.  “Hey, pal,”  he says.  

I rub my eyes and blink, then look over my shoulder towards the stairs where the rest of my family is still talking about James Bond or something.  I knew this day would come--Mom’s meatloaf had finally driven me insane.  

“Not gonna answer me?”  He closes his yellow eyes and shakes his head.  “That’s fine.  But do me a favor, kid?”

My mouth hangs open.  If I try to speak, the words get stuck inside of me.

He turns to the paper lying on the desk next to him and I see an empty space where his back should be.  With his paw, he pats my cat drawing on the page.

“Finish drawing me.”

I slam the door behind me and run downstairs as fast as I can.  Mom said she wants me to make new friends, and I guess I had.

Disconnect.

I've been struggling for a while trying to make sense of things. Purpose. Relationships. Life.

Before you get all worked up, nothing's going on. Not even once have I been tempted to buy a convertible or hire an exotic pool boy even though I'm speeding head-long into that age bracket. Observing the lives of those around me reveals those tales usually don't end well. Besides, I don't even own a pool. Details, details.

This post probably won't make a lot of sense, but they rarely do. This blog is about working things out. I see it as a bonus if I write something and it happens to mean something other than random words on a screen.  Of course, I welcome your ideas and feedback if you dare to leave a comment.  Contrary to the title of this blog post, I really do wish to connect with those of you who take the time to read this nonsense.

Back on point.

I spend a lot of time thinking through scenarios, especially when I'm in plotting or writing mode for a novel.  Characters take shape within my mind, and I assign to them a host of flaws and (usually) redeeming qualities.  They act, they react.  They show compassion, they show contempt.  It's an undeniably odd way to spend one's day, creating people and then watching them take over and navigate their triangles, circles, and various other geometric designs.  I do not envy God.

My real life is no less strange than those I craft.  If I were at liberty to share even the roughest outline of my family's past, you probably wouldn't believe most of it.  If I asked for your family's story, complete with cobwebs and skeletons, I'm sure it would be just as sordid.  No one is immune from controversy and conflict.  If we were, we probably wouldn't have many true, close friends.  Stumbling and falling and then picking yourself back up again, especially with the help of others, tends to plant the seeds of empathy.  It allows our ears to remain open and our mouths to stay shut.  It makes us more than just human, it makes us alive.

Sometimes we forget how to put ourselves in the shoes of others. We must not forget.  To forget that others need to connect with us is to forget how to truly live.

My brother stopped by a few days ago.  He and his wife are involved in a network marketing-type endeavor which focuses on self-help and coaching (good things, certainly). One of the recorded talks he listened to applied to me and my writing path, and he asked if he could stop by.  As we sat on my front porch, rocking on my rocking chairs and trying to ignore the mayhem inside the walls of my house, he shook his head.

"I've been trying to let God talk to me in that still, small voice," my brother confessed.  "He usually has to shout at me."  He felt God laid that particular CD on his heart, intended for me, so I could tell him our sister was in the hospital and scheduled for surgery in the coming week.

"What is wrong with our family?"  He asked, voicing a thought that has rolled around in my head frequently.  All I could do was shrug.  If I knew the answer, it would be fixed already.

A minute later, I asked how his step-daughter, a freshman in college, was doing.  

"She's sick.  They have her running... But, anyway, I really wanted you to listen to this CD."

And that was that.  I love my brother.  I'm as guilty of this as he is, or just about anyone else.  We ask to be let in while simultaneously slamming the door.  We disconnect ourselves from others, and for what? I'm sure whatever is on the CD is interesting, possibly even life-changing; however, it cannot rival the genuine sharing of struggle and concern.  A sister struggling with health issues.  A niece burning her candle at both ends trying to figure out a new stage of life.  Someone else enduring the day with a difficult spouse or an unwell child.

I am guilty of this.  The guiltiest, maybe.

And I wonder...  Is God sitting, pen in hand, considering the plot to our story and wondering about story elements--conflict, story arc, resolution? Though He knows the end to our novel, does a twist or turn ever surprise Him?  Does He write our characters together, only to have us change the lines and the scenes into something unrecognizable?

Lightning Crashes

This morning Mr. Ohboy was in the kitchen while the boys got ready for school.  I chose to hide in the bedroom, mainlining chocolate chip cookies for breakfast.  I tried to ignore their conversations as I hadn't stumbled my way to the coffee pot yet.  Then I heard my husband telling our children - the very same children who insist upon wearing noise-canceling headphones during rainstorms - about his grandfather who was struck by lightning on two separate occasions while sitting in a recliner in his study.

He clearly hadn't thought this one through.  The kids already practically burrow beneath our skin when they hear the slightest rumble of thunder.  If there is no longer safety indoors, thanks to Great-Grandpa Ohboy's magnetic legacy, I'm not sure of our next move.  Fall-out shelter?

"STOP!" I yell.  "DON'T YOU DARE TELL THEM THAT STORY!"  Mr. Ohboy can't hear me or he's become immune to the distinct frequency of my nagging.  Perhaps he can't hear me because I've deafened him over the years.  Whatever the reason, he finished his story (and the kids added their own gems about tornadoes ripping off your skin.  Boys!).

On Fridays I visit my grandparents and clean their house for them so they don't have to.  We chat a little as I work, and then talk more when we sit to eat lunch together.  Today I mentioned my family's desire to record some of their stories so we would be able to hold pieces of them long after they leave us.  My grandmother furrowed her eyebrow and declared that it sounded like a lot of work.  Besides, she and my grandpa remembered things differently.

Of course you do, Grandma.  You're married, after all.

Somehow conversation turned to my husband's grandfather, the human lightning rod, and then to my friend's mother who was struck by lightning while milking a cow (is that where fried cheese curds come from?).

"That happened to my mother," Grandma announced.

Before my grandmother came into the world, her mother miscarried another baby.  With no little one to feed, her chest became engorged to the point where fluid gathered in her legs.  They referred to this as "milk leg", and they believed the swelling in the legs was the milk running down and filling up the lower extremities.  My great-grandmother was advised to wear some kind of rubberized stockings, likely some sort of compression stocking, to help with the swelling.

A storm blew through soon afterward, and she ran outside to bring one of the cows into the shelter of the barn.  Lightning filled the air with electric charge and stung the ground at her toes.  Great-grandma's rubber socks saved her life.  In the years following, she would conceive and give birth to a fiery baby girl, my grandmother.

The more I think about the lightning strike, the compression stockings, the baby lost, the branches of the family tree that may have never sprouted, I am amazed.  And this is why we tell our tales - the good, the bad, the seemingly boring.  In the telling and retelling of our stories, we reveal the everyday tragedies and miracles that affect us all.

But, still, Mr. Ohboy probably needs to keep that whole lightning striking indoors thing under wraps.