Saturday, December 22, 2007

The Gift (Synopsis and background)

I told this story to my son and his friend on the way to Judo. We've got a twenty minute drive to get there and lately they've been asking me to tell them stories to pass the time. I made this one up as we drove. When I finished my son said, "Dad, that story made me cry." To which his friend replied, "Yeah, sometimes things that make me happy make me cry." And my son said, "Yeah." So, there you have it, an endorsement from two young boys. (In case you need an adult's perspective, when I shared the boys' comments and the story with my wife, she said, "Yeah, that is good.")

I'm just putting the synopsis down right now, but will write the story after I finish my other story, "The Ill-Made Knight". (Unless I get impatient. Then maybe I'll write this one first and then finish the other.)

The synopsis is as follows.

There are two ranchers, both growing in wealth and power, living in a small western community. The one man, Duke, has a wife and a son. The other man, Joe, has a son and a daughter. Both men believe they have the right to graze a certain pasture. As they gain more animals, the conflict increases to the point that, late in November when Duke happens to come upon Joe's son trying to rope a stray steer belonging to him in the disputed pasture, Duke shoots him dead. He then enlists his right-hand man on the ranch to falsely testify that he was with Duke at the time to bolster his story that the shooting was justified because Joe's son was trying to steal his cattle. Naturally Joe is devastated and wants revenge.

Being such a small community, the town only has one church. Although neither man is particularly religious, both attend on holidays -- Joe because his mother was a religious woman and feels he ought to be more religious and Duke because his wife expects it. On December 24th, both men are in church. The pastor preaches a sermon about God's love as manifest through the gift of his Son. Joe, whose loss is so recent, can only think of his own son and how he was killed so young and so unfairly. Throughout the sermon he plots his revenge against Duke.

Unbeknownst to both Duke and Joe, Duke's son and Joe's daughter have fallen in love. Even though she has warned Duke's son to stay away, he wants to give her the gift he has gotten for her and makes a foolhardy visit to Joe's ranch. He manages to meet her in the dark and give her the gift. In the meantime, Joe is staring out the window into the dark, thinking about his son's death and the pastor's sermon. In the moonlight, he sees Duke's son crossing his land on the way home from his rendezvous and raises his rifle. Sighting down the rifle, he thinks of God's son and then his own, then finally lowers the rifle and says through tears, "Merry Christmas, Duke."

So there you have it. I hope to get it written soon, so check back sometime next month.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

The Ill-Made Knight

"The boy thought that there was something wrong with him. All through his life -- even when he was a great man with the world at his feet -- he was to feel this gap: something at the bottom of his heart of which he was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand."

- The Once and Future King, T.H. White


Lance lay on the cell floor staring up at the ceiling. The night guard coughed, then spoke without looking his way. "So, I hear tell you got caught traveling with a group of them mormon pioneers." He paused, then when Lance didn't respond, he said, "Given your history, I'd have sooner believed a traveling band o' demons than a buncha mormons."

"Believe whatcha want." Lance responded with derision.

"Awww, go ta hell." The guard drawled.

"Go to hell" - well, that he would, and probably at dawn if the town lawman had his way, but that didn't mean he couldn't help a group of good people get to heaven.

The night guard shifted on his chair, then got up from his post and walked outside. There wasn't anyone else except Lance in the old town jail. It would've been easy to break out of here if he'd been traveling with anyone from his old crew. This little town was hardly the kind of place where he thought he'd buy it. Well, he'd made his decision when he walked away from that group to help the pioneers. As much as he'd grown to love the mormons, it was unlikely any of them would be back to break him out. Even if they'd want to, he was certain they didn't have the experience to pull it off. Small as this little jail was, it still took a certain kind of expertise to break a man out. That and a willingness to kill if need be.

Lance stood up and walked to the barred window. The moon was bright and the stars looked like someone had pricked holes in the sky. Maybe his mormon friends were right and there was some kind of heaven away from all of this. Maybe that starlight was just heaven streaming down from those holes.

At that thought, he snorted. I'm turning into some kind of poet, he thought, quietly laughing 'til he felt a lump rise in his throat and a tear prick at his eye. Well, if this is what poetry did to a man, then he was glad he'd had less of it than most.

"Leave that to them mormons" he said without realizing he'd spoken aloud.

He lay back down on the cold cell floor and thought about how he'd come to be here. His mother'd be saddened to see him this way. Although everyone knew him as "Lance", his given name was Lancelot, a gift from his mother. Like most gifts, though, it was something the giver had wanted more than the getter. So many times she had told him the story of the noble knight Lancelot, how he'd fought like a lion to champion King Arthur's cause, how no one could best him at arms, how he'd struggled so long to be worthy to perform a miracle. Well, she'd gotten the arms part right. There weren't many men who could draw as fast or hit their target as well as Lance. Plenty a graveyard could attest to that.

He hadn't meant to end up this way. In the beginning, he thought he'd like to be a preacher. He'd only learned to shoot a gun because it was a necessity in the little town he'd come from. A little town not too different from this one, he thought, darkly amused by the irony of coming full circle. It's probably no different here. A man is expected to know how to defend himself and his family.

Well, Lance had been the man of the family since he was seven. His father had died young in a fight over water rights. Other men had wanted to be his father, at least they'd wanted to be with his mother, but by the time they came around he'd already learned the hard truths about being a man. About how sometimes you just have to do a thing because it has to be done, no matter what doing it does to you.

He thought then of the traveling preacher, unconsciously turning his thoughts away from his first killing.

Aside from his own father, the traveling preacher was the one man he'd loved as a boy. He hadn't wanted Lance's mother - although, Lance had wished to have him for a father - not because his mother wasn't worth wanting, but because the preacher was too good to ever take advantage of a poor widow, no matter how pretty or available. What he had done, though, was to teach Lance about the Bible, not the way his mother had, by reading him all those strange and formal "thees" and "thous", but by telling him the stories in words that breathed the fire of life into those dead old pages. Even now, he could feel their stories inside him like the history of friends he'd never known.

Daniel in the lions' den, that's me right now, he thought, stirring from his reverie. The night guard had come back in and sat whittling something from a stick. He paused when Lance stirred, looking at him for a moment, then went back to whittling.

Lance stretched, then rolled onto his side and went back to his memories of the preacher. Father Cartright was his name, but to Lance he'd always just been "Father". Father had shown up in town the year after Lance's father'd been killed. Men had already begun to gather round Lance's mother like dogs around a bitch in heat. When Father first showed up, Lance had hated him as he'd hated the others. It was filthy what they were doing, no matter how pretty their words were, and he'd sworn that none of them would unseat his father.

It was the night that two men killed each other over his mother that Lance realized Father was different. Prior to the fight, both men had shown up wanting to court "Miss Lake", as they'd called his mother, in spite of the fact that she hadn't been a "miss" in a long time. Father was already there, sharing a message about the comforts of heaven. He'd just finished the story of Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, when the men had shown up arguing at the door.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, can't we behave like brothers? This poor sister has suffered enough." Father had said, attempting to play the peacemaker, but the two men had already come close to blows and wounded pride is the wound that sometimes takes blood to heal. Neither of the men had stayed to court, probably out of shame at something Father had said to them outside the closed door.

Later that night, old Mr. Fischer shot the younger suitor, Dan Laramie, in the back. A dawn hanging took care of Mr. Fischer, but had done nothing to make the other men clear out. If anything, they behaved like that old story about the snake with so many heads: where two were cut off, four more sprung up to take their place.

Ultimately, though, his mother hadn't settled on any of the suitors. When they continued to come around, she began to talk about moving back east to live with her mother.

By the time Lance was twelve, she'd made arrangements for both of them to leave in the fall. They'd already begun to take down the old homestead that September when Father showed up looking concerned. The weather was unseasonably warm that day and he'd asked if he could speak with Sister Lake outdoors.

Lance was large for his age and had already established himself among the other boys as someone not to be crossed lightly. There were even a few men in town who hadn't come off so well against him. (Although, whenever the story was retold they always claimed to have gone easy on him "since he was just a poor boy without a father to teach him right.")

Lance's temper and his habit of fighting those who angered him, regardless of their size or age, were the reason Father had come to visit that morning. As Lance listened through the door, he'd heard Father say, "Miss Lake, I'm afraid I come bearing bad news. As you know I love Lance almost as though he were my own son. Given his short fuse, I thought you ought to know that it has come to my attention that ..." Here he had paused, then Lance had heard the rustle of petticoats and the crunch of dry grass beneath heavy boots as Father and his mother had walked further away from the cabin. Although he had wanted to sneak out to where he could hear them better, he was already ashamed of himself for listening through the door. Instead, he'd busied himself packing things until his mother had come back looking tear-stained and worried.

"Lance, I want to speak with you," Father had said. They'd gone outside

...

And so on. I've outlined the rest of the story below.

His father's killer is coming back to town. Father tries warn his mother to get out of town so that Lance doesn't do anything foolish, but the man shows up early. Father attempts to intervene, but is beaten and humiliated by the man. Lance witnesses the beating and kills the man in a gun fight, then leaves town on the run. Later, after becoming pretty hardened in the life of an outlaw, Lance encounters some mormon pioneers in trouble on the plains. Reminded of Father by their mode of living and their habit of calling each other "Brother" and "Sister", he leaves his gang to help them out, but is ultimately captured by the local lawman. Flashing back to his life now, he talks with the jailer about God. At dawn, he is condemned to hang. Standing on the gallows, he sees "Brother Parker" in the crowd, a mormon man he'd grown to love during his time with the mormons. As the noose is fitted around his neck, he sees Brother Parker transformed into Father, then he swings.

I'll be working on finishing this story over the holidays, if you want to check back in. I expect it will end up around 3000 to 4000 words before I'm done. I'd be interested to know what anyone thinks of it so far.

...

So the holidays are over, but this story isn't. So much for that goal. Happy New Year to anyone who might be following along. I've gone ahead and continued the story below. I debated whether or not to leave these comments right in the middle of the story and decided, why not, this is how the story evolved, so this is how I'm going to leave it.

...

to talk away from mother. When they'd walked a ways away from the little cabin, Father had turned to Lance and looked him in the eye.

"Lance", he'd said, "I know you've tried very hard to be a man since your father was killed, and I hope that some of what I've taught you has made you want to be a good man, too."

At that, he'd paused, as though uncertain how to continue. Finally, he had said, with a catch in his throat, "Your mother is going to need your help more than ever, son. It isn't easy to leave everything you know and start all over again."

Here he had paused again, then continued, "Promise me that you'll stay here today and help her pack, Lance. Don't go into town tonight. You can say your goodbyes on the way out tomorrow morning."

Lance had agreed; although, he'd felt certain that there was something more to what Father was saying. In the morning, he'd learned that he'd been right to think so. As they'd passed through town the next morning on their way out, one of the boys from town had seen him and gone running off down the dirty street. When he came racing back a few minutes later, a ragged tail of boys from town streamed behind him, their faces burning with excitement.

"Are you going to fight him, Lancie?" one of the boys had shouted as they'd caught up with the wagon. The question had caught him like a sucker punch and he'd looked around in confusion at the circle of eager faces surrounding their wagon.

"Fight who?" he'd asked, but his mother was already on her feet slapping at the town boys with the riding crop and shouting, "Get out of here! Get out! There'll be no fighting here today. We're leaving town! We're leaving!" There was something wild in her eyes and the boys had backed out of reach as she'd slashed the air with the crop.

"What are you talking about?" he'd asked again as the boys had fallen back from the wagon. At that his mother had turned blindly and struck wildly with the riding crop, catching him across the face. "Be still!" She'd been shouting, "Just be still!" He'd seen tears glinting in her eyes.

The boys were silent now and some looked ashamed.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Things I'd Like To Do Before I Die

So tonight I thought I'd list some things I'd like to do before I die. I'm making this list mainly because I'm curious to see how it changes over time. So here goes the list, in no particular order.

I'd like to go skydiving. I'm curious to find out if I could actually jump out of an airplane. And if I could, I'd like to know if I'd have the courage to just relax and enjoy the fall or if I'd be hyperventilating the whole way down. Either way, I figure that, unless I plummeted to the earth and exploded like a watermelon a la a Gallagher comedy routine, I'd be really happy to be back on the ground.

I'd like to publish a children's story. I've already written one that I really like. I wrote it in college. I even started illustrating it. Unfortunately, I've never completed illustrating it. Perhaps I'll make the time to finish it next year.

I'd like to get a black belt in judo and compete in tournaments. To be honest I don't even care how good I am or if I win consistently. I'm more interested in two things:

- Developing a better sense of my own body. I'd like to develop a better intuitive sense of my physical presence in the world and come to grips with my physical strengths and weaknesses.

- Doing something that requires some physical courage. There isn't a lot that happens to me anymore that requires me to show some physical courage, and for some reason, I miss it. I really don't know why because I remember how I used to feel the icy hand of fear gripping my stomach every time I got in a fight or thought I was going to get into one. Nonetheless, I miss it. Not the fighting, the ability to tamp down my fear and do what's gotta be done.

There's more to the list, but I'm running out of time tonight. Maybe I'll continue it later this week.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Stinkoman!


How I love to waste time at www.homestarrunner.com! This week's episode of Strongbad Emails has an easter egg that lets you create your own Stinkoman comics. (http://www.homestarrunner.com/stinko_comic.html) Check mine out below.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

"Dude", a Badge of Love

So this morning my daughter came up to me with a sticker that says "DUDE" and said, "Here, daddy, this is for you." She then pressed it to the front of my dress shirt with a look of satisfaction on her face.

When I got to the train station to get on the MARC, I considered removing it, but then I remembered how happy she looked putting it on my shirt and decided I could wear it for just a little longer.

By the time I got to work, I'd forgotten that I still had it on. My supervisor looked at me quizzically and asked, "Why do you have the word 'DUDE' on your shirt?" I looked down, remembered my daughter's smiling face, and said, "Because my daughter wanted to give me a sticker this morning."

The world may see "DUDE", an oddly incongruous sticker, but I see a badge of love.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Women's Lotions

Has anyone else noticed that women's lotions and shampoos have more to do with food than they do with skin care or cleanliness? The other day I came home and my wife was slathering her hands with something called "Watermelon Essence & Mint Jelly"; earlier that morning she'd washed her hair with "Extract of Apple & Lime" -- When I walked through the door, I thought we were having fruit salad for dinner.

Seriously, though, I figure it's either got to be that women have taken this whole "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" thing waaay too far or they're just really hungry. I mean, why else would you cover yourself in food? Mmmm, Janice have you tried the "Essence of Caramel with Chocolate Extract"? It's divine -- Don't eat it, though! There's just something wrong with that.

Speaking of which, I tried drinking some of the stuff the other day -- WHOO-WEE! It DOES NOT taste as good as it smells!

I've decided that they can't be doing it for us men, though. If they were, they would NOT be using extracts of fruits and vegetables. Mmmm, honey, do I smell barbeque sauce and ribs? Now THAT would be something a man could appreciate. A beautiful woman and a grill, that's pretty much a man's paradise.

I guess I should be grateful that they're not doing it for us, though. The problem is, when I smell barbeque, I want to eat barbeque. Too much of that might turn into a beautiful woman ON a grill. I don't know, officer, she was slathered in barbeque sauce -- things just got out of hand. The sad thing is, he'd probably understand. That's alright, I've done it once or twice myself. Mind if I try a rib?

Yeah, it's got to be something to do with how diet-conscious women are. If I can't eat it, at least I can wear it.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Love is a Stranger (a work in progress)

Here is a short story I started working on several months ago.

"Love is a Stranger"

Mrs. William Schaeffer was in the garden weeding when the man approached from the field. The day was hot and the whistle of the noon train still echoed in her mind's ear. The man came from the direction of the depot. As he drew nearer, she stood and wiped the grimy sweat from her brow.

The man walked as though he carried a great weight, but he carried nothing. Seeing Mrs. Schaeffer, he bent his the trajectory of his walk toward her like a stone falling back to earth, his face hungry, like a child's face when it sees its mother. His clothing bore the dust of many roads.

Seeing him, Mrs. Schaeffer thought that he looked a sad figure. He seemed smaller than he was, as though the weight of life on the road had shrunk him into something smaller than he was meant to be. Thinking of life on the road, she remembered her husband and felt her heart stiffen. The man was a bum. There was no point in romanticizing him out of proportion. She bent back to her work.

A few minutes later, the man was at the fence. He drew his worn hat from his head and coughed to get her attention. Mrs. Schaeffer lingered a moment longer at her work, then stood and said, with steel in her voice, "What?" Her eyes met his and she saw that they were clear, but tired. So he was human, she thought to herself, and not just another dog from the road.

"Excuse me, ma'am, I'm looking for work. If you have something for me to do, I'd be much obliged." He spoke softly, but it was clear that his voice had once been strong. She looked at him a moment longer, then looked away. She wondered if her William wasn't somewhere, hat in hand.

"Well, there is the garden to be weeded. If you'll do that, I'll make you lunch; I'm a widow, though, so I can't pay more than that." She looked at him again, the steel back in her heart.

"That suits me fine." The man said, and he took off his coat and came through the gate.

After he'd gotten started, Mrs. Schaeffer gathered some of the riper vegetables and went into the house. The kitchen had a big picture window that looked out over the garden. She washed the vegetables in a basin and watched the man working. He made steady progress. After a time, he paused, removed his hat, and wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. He stood for a moment, then stretched his back, and bent back down to his weeding.

Mrs. Schaeffer thought of her father. How he had loved to farm! She remembered him tall and strong, glistening with sweat and coated with a fine covering of soil, smiling as he raised the glass of cold water she'd brought him from the house. Men these days were weak, dry as tumbleweeds. They rolled where the wind took them and didn't know what it meant to have roots.

And that is as far as I've gotten.

The general gist of the story is that the main character, Mrs. Schaeffer, meets a stanger, a drifter who reminds her of her husband, a man who has also turned to the road and who she resents. At the same time, the drifter reminds her of her father, the first man she loved and admired. The drifter stays on to help her out and eventually she comes to love him. After he moves on, her husband returns and, thanks to the thawing in her heart brought on by her experience with the drifter, she is able to see him in a new light and love and accept him again.

Now, if I can just find some free time, maybe I will finish it.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Bad Jokes

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Reading this post may lower your opinion of me.

If you know me, but don't know that I have a juvenile sense of humor, well, then you probably don't know me all that well. My wife likes to say that when it comes to humor, I'm a 12-year old trapped in a man's body.

So, with that to recommend me, here are a few jokes I've made up recently.

1. Here's one you'll never find in Reader's Digest's "Life in These United States":

I knew things were going to be a little crazy when the new test lead stated that he couldn't bring both his testes to the meeting.

"Testes?" I asked with some hesitation.

"Yeah, testes -- you know, the guys who test stuff." He said.

Riiight, those testes. At least now I knew he had two.

2. And now one that you might:

Recently I was out walking my pet weasel, as I do every night. We'd just stopped by our favorite mulberry bush when my neighbor's pet monkey burst through the window. "All around the mulberry bush ..."

3. Now for some vocabulary:

dotcommunist: (noun) A true believer in technology as the solution to every problem.
Sample sentence: "I tried to convince my boss that the problem was with our policies and procedures, but he's a hard-line dotcommunist; now we've got PeopleSoft."

mommunist: (noun) Children who prefer their mother to all other adults including their father.
Sample sentence: "When I walked into the kitchen, the mommunists were clinging to my wife's legs like marxists to a defunct ideology."

It's true -- I think communists are funny. Those wacky Reds! They actually think everyone should just want to share stuff without getting anything for it -- Wait, I think those are parents; communists just want everyone to share the means of production. Oh, well. Whatever. They're both crazy ideas that don't work.

Ba-dump-bump! I'll be here all night.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Dan, I hardly knew ye

I've copied below the body of an email exchange I had recently with one of the guys where I work.

All,

After close to 6 years at Vecna I have decided to move on. It has been a great time, and I feel privileged to have been able to get to know and work with many wonderful people. During this time Vecna has experienced great growth and success, and I am sure will see that success continue in the future.

My last day will be Thursday, Sep 6.

I will remain in the DC area and so hope to see many of you around, and wish everyone the best.

- Dan

Dan,

Man, it's hard to believe you are leaving! You're one of the last of the elder statesmen of Vecna engineering. Well, I can't claim that we were close, but I have appreciated the technical expertise and experience you've shared and the guidance you've given to the projects I've managed. Thanks.

Good luck in your new endeavors.

Mike


Mike,

Thanks! i think that's the first time i have been called an "elder statesman". kind of frightening - but i'll take it as a good thing :-) . it was a pleasure working with you also on the few occasions we did, and good luck in the future.

-dan

So why does this exchange mean anything to me? At first brush, it's just a pleasantly mundane email exchange between two coworkers, one who's staying and one who's moving on.

Now for some back story.

When I first met Dan, I didn't really know what to make of him. I was just another new guy while he was clearly part of the engineering "in" crowd. I got the impression that he had important things to do and didn't really have the time to talk to someone new and relatively green like myself. As time went on, I never really made any inroads into the engineering "in" crowd, but luckily for me, I had other friends in the company that I knew prior to joining the company, so I managed to get along in spite of that handicap.

The thing is, in the early days when I joined Vecna, it wasn't the kind of place where a loner or introvert was likely to succeed. Getting into the "in" crowd wasn't just something to make the work day brighter, it was necessary to keep your job. Your daily work life was ruled by three big realities:
  1. The "Free Market System" (FMS),
  2. Your "Minimum Billable Requirement" (MBR), and
  3. The fact that Engineering was king.
Now, in a lot of startup IT companies, the third reality is well-understood and is just taken as a given; however, the first two realities were both new to me. Having never been a lawyer or a consultant, I'd never experienced first hand the joy of trying to track every minute to one client or another in order to meet an imposed minimum number of billable hours to be generated each week. Furthermore, in spite of my general familiarity with and support for free markets and capitalist economics, I'd never lived with them as a daily reality.

But that changed when I joined Vecna.

You see, at Vecna, at the time that I joined the company, everyone had to shoulder the responsibility of ensuring Vecna's continued profitability by making their MBR every week. If you missed your MBR too many weeks in a row, you could expect to have an uncomfortable talk with the company president.

And how were you to meet your MBR?

Well, at the time I joined the company, you did it by participating actively in Vecna's FMS. You see, in the FMS, all employees are peers and free agents who make contracts with each other for work that they need completed. So how do you get work (so that you'll have some that needs to be completed)? You market your skills and experience to someone who has work that needs to be done. Assuming that they accept your offer, you've got work, and, if they don't, well, every hour that you spend hunting for work is non-billable and counts against you meeting your MBR. Oh, yeah, and the FMS -- it's completely unregulated, pure laissez faire economics.

So I think you get the picture:
  • If you don't meet your MBR, you're out of a job.
  • To meet your MBR, you've got be hustling every day in the FMS, competing against people who have already established their presence in the market place and can leverage their personal relationships.
  • The engineering "in" crowd rules the FMS.
Now, imagine having that reality dawn upon you at about the same time that you realize that you are never going to be a part of the engineering "in" crowd. That was me about three or four weeks into the job.

So why am I telling you all of this when this post is supposed to be about me and Dan, a coworker who's now leaving the company and with whom I was never really all that close?

Here's why:

About that time (three or four weeks into the job), something happened that ensured I would never be all that close with Dan.

During my first job, my brother, who is just a year younger than I am and who matters a great deal to me, gave me a toy monkey. Nothing big, just a monkey with a banana on a string attached to the monkey's belly. It's made of plastic and is about two inches tall and an inch in diameter, and if you hang its banana over the edge of the desk, it will walk to the edge off the desk and fall off. Not all that valuable. Except to me.

Every job I've gone to since, I've taken that monkey with me. I've even given him a name - Mao. For a while, a coworker and I in my first job had a running joke about Mao. "Bow to the Moa!" We'd say to each other whenever anyone would call us for help and then we'd chuckle. We even took pictures of Moa, blew them up, and made a poster.

So you see, Mao was a big deal to me.

When I joined Vecna, they'd just recently moved to a new building and set up a cube farm on the second floor. Dan and I were assigned cubes in the same aisle directly across from each other, an arrangement that would seem insignificant, except for this fact: his desk was the closest desk to my own that wasn't blocked by a partition.

Why does that matter?

One morning, I came into work to find Mao broken in pieces on Dan's desk.

Well, you can imagine for yourself how I felt about that. Here he was, an accepted, even venerated, member of the "in" crowd who couldn't even be bothered to talk to me on most days, who had just assumed he could play with my monkey and now it was broken. AND HE HADN'T EVEN BOTHERED TO HIDE THE EVIDENCE!

I was fuming. All morning long, I thought about it. At this point, I was very familiar with my precarious position in the organization. But I couldn't let it go. HE HAD BROKEN MOA! Finally I dashed off an email telling him to leave the things on my desk alone and sent it before I could talk myself out of it.

Then I never heard a thing from him about it.

Now here's the trick of it all: One morning, a few months after I'd finally gotten established, I was watching the President's children playing in the office. It wasn't uncommon for them to be there because he is the President and his wife is the CEO, so the company and its offices are just an extension of their family home (something that was literally true when the company was first founded). Anyhow, as I watched one of them grab something from someone's desk, I suddenly realized I'd been totally wrong about Dan. He hadn't touched my monkey at all. I felt a great sense of foolishness mixed with shame.

But there was nothing I could do about it.

He had never called me on my accusations and he still hardly spoke to me, except when absolutely necessary. Suddenly, I could understand why. No doubt, I'd come across like some kind of paranoid lunatic, someone best to be avoided as much as possible.

And so much time had passed. I didn't really know how to broach the subject, and, besides, maybe he'd already forgotten the whole incident. I didn't really know. In any case, it seemed best just to let it be water under the bridge.

Except, of course, that you can't actually do that.

Every interaction that I had with him from that time forward was always colored by the fact that I'd once accused him of something he hadn't done and had never apologized for it. Eventually, as you can tell from the email exchange, we came to have a functional working relationship, but we never became friends or even just friendly coworkers.

So, you see, in a way, my email to him is an attempt to say "I'm sorry" and to acknowledge that I know he is a better person than the kind of person I accused him of being. I hope he saw it in there somewhere, hiding inside the mundane well-wishes of one employee who is staying on to another employee who has decided to go.

Good luck to you, Dan. I wish you well in your new endeavors.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Land Shark

So, tonight I thought I'd write a little bit about why I call my blog "Candy Gram".

Growing up, I heard bits and pieces about a Saturday Night Live skit involving a land shark. My parents weren't regular viewers, but they'd watch SNL from time to time. Anyhow, at some point they'd seen one of the land shark skits and were talking about it one evening in my presence. Being about 5 or 6 at the time, the idea of a shark on land wasn't as funny to me as it was to the adult world. Even after my parents had reassured me that there were no such things as land sharks, I remember being scared that they might be wrong and I could wake up one night to a shark hovering over my bed.

Well, obviously that never happened.

What did happen is that I got older and realized that rather than being a threat, a land shark is pretty funny. In fact, as I got older, I started to realize that a lot of things I'd been afraid of weren't so bad. Looking at them from the other side of childhood, I began to see them as silly or ridiculous -- like a shark, hunting on land. Anyhow, in some way, as I matured, "land shark" came to represent the bogarts that inhabit the silly, irrational, superstitious part of my inner world: more funny than frightening when you see them for what they really are.

So what's all of this got to do with my blog's name? Well, the most well-known skit of the land shark has the land shark trying to get a woman to open the door by pretending to deliver what? That's right -- a candy gram.
[Scene: A New York apartment. Someone knocks on the door.]
Woman: [not opening the door] Yes?
Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Arlsburgerhhh?
Woman: What?
Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Johannesburrrr?
Woman: Who is it?
Voice: [pause] Flowers.
Woman: Flowers for whom?
Voice: [long pause] Plumber, ma'am.
Woman: I don't need a plumber. You're that clever shark, aren't you?
Voice: [pause] Candygram.
Woman: Candygram, my foot. Get out of here before I call the police. You're the shark, and you know it.
Voice: I'm only a dolphin, ma'am.
Woman: A dolphin? Well...okay. [opens door]
[Huge latex and foam-rubber shark head lunges through open door, chomps down on woman's head, and drags her out of the apartment, all while the Jaws attack music is playing.]
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landshark.

What's that? I've got to go. I think I hear someone at the door.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Inaugural Address

So, here it is -- my first post. My internal editor is going crazy right now. It doesn't help that I'm not sure what I hope to accomplish with this blog. Am I going to try to be funny? Serious? Am I writing this for an audience? For myself? I don't know. I guess I'll work it out as I go.

I just reread that first part (internal editor, remember?) Man, this is going to be boring crap! So I guess at least one thing is decided -- I'll be writing for myself.

So anyway, I've been thinking lately about what it means to be alive.

Recently, my family and I took a long vacation and traveled across the country visiting friends and family. Everywhere we went we did things fairly spontaneously. (If you knew my wife, you'd know why I felt like I had to add the qualifier -- she's definitely an organizer, even on vacation.) We spent a lot of time outside and did more things in that one month than I normally do in a couple of years. We went four-wheeling, boating, rafting, swimming, and hiking. We visited national parks, museums, and local attractions. I read six books, just because I wanted to, not because I needed know what was in them. I took some risks just for the thrill of it -- minor things, sure, it's not like I'm Lee Majors (that's right, I'm old enough to have watched "The Fall Guy").

Coming home, I realized how arid my emotional life has become. So much of what I do in my life, I do just because I have to. It needs to be done. So I do it. Look, I know life isn't supposed to be all fun and games. And, besides, that is not really what I'm getting at. I know I lead a blessed life: I live in a country at peace; I've got a beautiful wife and four wonderful, creative, exasperating children; I've got my health; I've got food to eat; I'm well-paid; I don't have to beg on the streets -- I could go on forever.

The thing is, I want it all to mean something. Emotionally, I mean.

I'll be upfront with you. Metaphysically, speaking, I do think it all means something. I don't think this world is all there is. I believe we're down here for something. I believe there is a God who sent us here and who watches over us as our lives unfold. But believing that doesn't mean I always feel like it means something. A lot of times all of the high-minded ideals I keep trying to make a part of my life just feel like another checklist of things I've got to do.

Go to work - check.
Read with my kids - check.
Serve in my church - check.
Try to be more helpful around the house - check. (Well, sometimes, anyway.)
Serve a stranger in need - check. (Alright, I guess if I'm being honest, more often than not I'm more like the overly busy priest and Levite than I am like the Good Samaritan.)
Be a better person - check? uncheck? (How do you know?)
Take out the garbage - check.

Sometimes they get done, and, as you can see from my comments, sometimes they don't.

I guess that's the thing. There are so many things to do in this life, things that have to be done, that really don't matter all that much, they seem to crowd out the things that do. I mean, I wonder if that priest and Levite weren't just too busy to stop and help. They probably muttered under their breath as they walked by, "I'm sure he'll be fine. Somebody's bound to stop and help him. I'd do it, but I've got to get to the temple and burn things."

Going on that trip made me realize that I don't want to be that guy anymore. I want to do things that matter. I want to stop living my life based on the things I have to do and start doing the things that matter to me.

The question is, will I?