The X Files

So every day I drive past the field pictured above and the three file cabinets that are inexplicably located in the middle of said field. Except now there are only two. Where did the missing cabinet go?

While I'm sure there is some boring, ordinary reason behind its disappearance, I prefer to imagine more interesting scenarios.

Perhaps the cabinets contain the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. The body parts are distributed among them. The missing cabinet contained the head, along with the only way to identify the remains of Hoffa - his teeth. So, acting on a hot tip from a double agent for the FBI, the field's owners had to quickly dispose of the tell-tale cabinet and dumped it in the nearby lake.

Wait, maybe it contained the complete findings of the Warren Commission, along with a film made from an alternate viewpoint than Zapruder. This film shows clearly that Bobby Kennedy was responsible for his brother's death. Oliver Stone hired ex-Delta Force soldiers to sneak to the field in the cover of night to steal the evidence. It is to be used in his next film, The File in the Field.

Or it most likely it contained unretouched photos and film of the faked Apollo moon landing. The owner of the field is a former cinematographer who was paid off by the government to help fool the country into thinking that man could actually land on the moon. NASA, fearing that the film would leak out, had the cabinet airlifted to Area 51, where aliens will assist in destroying the evidence completely.

Yeah, I know that the cabinet probably just succumbed to rust or had a hornet's nest in it, but I think my explanations are far more entertaining.

I remember the day I almost died. Actually, as bumbling as I was a as a kid, it was probably just one of many days I almost died. This one involves other people, so it stands out more, I guess.

It was the summer before 3rd grade, so I would have been, um, let’s see, eight. We had a real live swimming pool in our backyard, in-ground and everything. A girl I knew in first grade but who had moved away came over with her mother for an afternoon of swimming and fun. It became an afternoon of terror! Okay, maybe a little overly dramatic.

All started off well enough. We swam around the shallow end, played games, dove for coins. Then we decided to race across the pool. She knew how to swim, I swear she did. But she must have panicked when she realized her feet wouldn’t touch bottom. In her panic, she crawled on my back like I was going to become magically buoyant and float her back to the shallow end.

Instead, I sank. But on the plus side, I do think I had enough buoyancy to keep her head above water. Problem was, now mine was underwater. I remember thinking, I don’t think I can hold my breath this long. Then, boy, I’d love to take a breath right about now. Lastly, everything turning a really pretty cool shade of blue.

Next thing I remember is waking up in the lounge chair.

But many more exciting things had taken place between the pretty blue color and the lounge chair.

My mother, who couldn’t swim, jumped in thinking she could hold on to the edge of the pool while pulling my friend off me. She was wrong, and was pulled out to the middle of the deep end where she promptly sank.

My sister heard the commotion and being the trained lifeguard that she was, jumped in to assist in the rescue. Sounds good, but in reality she only came out to see what was going on because she thought we’d thrown her cat in the pool. I have no idea why she thought we’d do such a thing, but I guess it’s fortunate that she thought so little of us or otherwise she would have stayed inside watching “All My Children”.

My friend’s mom was a nurse, and she also jumped in, fully clothed. My mom says the main thing she remembers about that day is that the woman had just come from the hair salon and had to get her new hairdo ruined. Yes, that’s her vivid memory, not that her youngest child was dying.

Everyone was fished out of the pool, given mouth-to-mouth as needed, and I must have awakened and gone to the chair, although I remember none of that.

In my mother’s defense, as afraid of water as she is, she encouraged me to get back in the pool, and I did. I would probably have an incurable fear of water if I hadn’t. But I do have an incurable fear of being dunked, which was difficult as a teenager when flirting consisted of punching a girl in the arm and dunking.

What does this story have to do with anything? I not sure it does, but it’s my earliest memory of being in danger. It was something so scary that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. I’m sure if it happened now, I’d hide under the bed for days.

Granny and the Groundhog

In honor of Groundhog Day, I thought I’d present you with a story about my grandmother’s strangest pet, Squeaky the Groundhog. Yes, a groundhog. Hey, what is a groundhog anyway but an overgrown guinea pig and people have those as pets all the time, right?

So anyway, my grandmother was the quintessential mountain country grandmother. Toothpick perpetually perched at the corner of her mouth, beans growing in the backyard, fatback frying on the stove. My grandfather died before I was born, so as long as I knew her, she was on her own. She loved the TV and would talk back to it – not in a crazy way, but just in a general commentary way. She especially liked to talk back to evangelists and politicians. But I digress.

This story is to be about Squeaky. The story I heard is that Squeaky showed up as an abandoned baby, and she nursed him up to young adulthood, at which time he left home to find his fortune. She called him Squeaky because, like the aforementioned guinea pigs, he made a squeaking noise.

When I was about 3, Squeaky reappeared. Like many children who find the world too big and scary, he returned home to the warmth of the space under my grandmother’s kitchen sink. Because it was an old country house, he was able to come and go as he pleased through this sink portal.

My single memory of Squeaky is an unpleasant one. I remember holding him and feeding him something, and then out of nowhere he bit me on the wrist. My sisters were present and vouch to this day that I did nothing to provoke him. Maybe like many animals that aren’t used to small children, a sudden movement startled him. Or maybe the fact that he was a wild animal finally caught up with him. Whatever the reason, it was a big mistake on Squeaky’s part.

As the rest of the story has been told to me, Granny heard the commotion, and upon finding out what had happened, immediately lit out on him with a broom. She beat him back to the kitchen and under the sink, yelling colorful and often invented insults at him. All day long, if Squeaky so much as poked a whisker out from under the sink, out came the broom and the whacking and yelling resumed.

I suppose she eventually forgave him, but I don’t remember ever playing with Squeaky again. When I was in second grade, we were talking about wild animals and I mentioned that I had been bitten by a groundhog. My evil second grade teacher (didn’t everyone have at least one evil elementary school teacher?) called me a liar in front of the whole class because, as she said, “If you had been bitten by a groundhog you would be dead because they carry rabies”. I went home in tears and told my mom, and she sent me to school the next day with the above picture. I don’t remember the teacher ever apologizing, but I got my satisfaction.

Impulsive, compulsive, insane?

Lately Tom Cruise has been running his mouth about psychiatry, specifically stimulants and anti-depressants. See, according to Tom he was diagnosed as AD/HD and dyslexic, but has now realized that psychiatry is a crock and the principles of Scientology are all he needs to control both conditions. America was able to witness just how well-controlled Tom’s ADHD is when he was recently on the Oprah Winfrey show. His jumping on the couch was a product of his overwhelming love for someone he just met (which is not in the least impulsive), and not due to hyperactivity (because Scientology cured his ADHD). And now he has decided that he needs to enlighten all the rest of us poor slobs who are just trying to make it on a handful of uppers to get going in the morning and a handful of downers to put us to sleep at night (to paraphrase Tom). Tom is going to fix all that.

I am glad that Tom feels at peace with his learning disorders. I wish the path for the rest of us was that easy. If I was making $5 gazillion per movie, I might feel a whole lot better about my life, too. Who needs to worry about ADD when you can just pay people to keep up with everything for you? He doesn’t have to worry about leaving his leather coat at a restaurant, because he can just go out and buy another. Lost track of your bank account and bounced a check? No worries for Tom. He can just dip a little further into his bottomless pit of money.

Okay, so maybe I’m a little bitter. But living with undiagnosed ADD most of my life, I think I earned the right to bitch a bit. When I was finally diagnosed with ADD I went through a sort of mourning. I think I always thought that I'd get my act together; if I could just get organized that everything else would fall into place and then I'd be happy and everyone would be happy with me and we all join hands and sing “Kum-ba-yah”. But then here was this doctor telling me that I would never really get my act together, and that was okay, but that I needed to learn to live in this constant state of feeling one step behind or to the side or in front of everyone else. That I would always be listening to a different radio station than most of the world and that it was okay, but I needed to decide and learn for myself that it was okay. And that made me sad and angry and frustrated.

But slowly I've learned that it is okay. And people who think I'm weird or abrupt or flaky just need to learn to see the person and not judge on appearances. It's still hard, but I've learned where my weaker spots are and try to compensate. And I try to appreciate that it is a good thing that I look at things from a different vantage point - even when people in a meeting look at me cock-eyed and say things like, “Well, that’s certainly an interesting perspective”. Sometimes I still feel buried under all the things I’ve forgotten to do or lost or broken. I really try to not use it as an excuse, but more as a reminder to people that if you ask me to do something, make sure you seen me write it down.

So I just want to tell Tom to be a little more sympathic. Just because you were fortunate enough to find a career where your ADHD is actually an asset doesn’t mean the rest of us are misguided drug addicts. Try to look past your own nose every once in a while.

Do you like scary movies?

I love scary movies, yet daily life causes me all manners of irrational fears. Why the seeming paradox? Some say that movies allow us to face our fears, even if in only a symbolic way, and work through them. I sometimes think I watch these things to see what kinds of mistakes the characters make so I can better prepare for my day ahead. I mean, doesn’t everyone’s car contain a flashlight, cell phone, jumper cables, garlic, silver bullet, and ax (for zombie head-chopping)? A girl never knows.

I wish I knew the source of my free-floating anxiety. Given enough free time, I can concoct the most elaborate of scenarios in which my cat Fez cause a Rube Goldberg-like chain of events that ends in his sister Lucy being impaled on a pair of scissors that I stupidly left out. Veggies don’t taste quite right? Must be rife with botulism - salmonella isn’t deadly enough; I have to jump to the big guns. I have never been seriously ill. I’ve never been in the hospital, other than a few trips the ER for stitches and broken bones. Is that why I’m so paranoid? Perhaps I think I am way overdue for some tragedy.

When I was in middle school, a girl I knew was abducted from her paper route one morning, raped, and dumped on the sidewalk. She recovered and was even able to testify in the court case (seems Einstein was wearing his work shirt that happened to have his name on it). Her name was never released, but I came from a fairly small town and word got around. There were of course some cruel things said, but I always felt bad that anyone would think less of her because of the horrific crime a stranger committed.

After we all graduated and went on about our adult lives, I lost track of her. But then I saw that she had posted contact information, including an internet link, on our high school alumni website. I visited the link, and saw that she is married, has 2 children, and looked great.

What does this have to do with fear? I wonder how her experience has shaped her. Has she grown into a woman that takes whatever is handed her because she knows first-hand that you can’t control everything in life? Or has she become scared for her children, watching their every move to and from school? I would suspect the former, and I find that utterly amazing. How someone who has lived through one of our worst fears, and she can accept the uncertainty of life.

I hope that I can convince myself to learn from that. I don’t want to have to go through the tragedy. I want to know that for all my worry and fretting and trying to control, that I can’t control it all and that’s okay. I think my heart already knows this, but I really, really want my head to learn it too.

I fall to pieces...

I hate that new Gatorade commercial. You know the one – various people participating in various athletic endeavors until suddenly, presumably because they have a lack of Gatorade in their bodies, they crumble. It is just an unpleasant image to me. Perhaps because I am starting to feel like I am crumbling myself.

I know it is part of the natural aging process. Parts wear out, just like my car or the VCR or the washing machine. I guess I didn’t prepare myself for it, or perhaps it is the mounting list of things that no longer work properly that has me somewhat overwhelmed. I would say it started after 30, but that is not entirely true.

In college, my foot started hurting. The quack at the infirmary suspected a stress fracture, but x-rays showed only an old healed fracture. Seems that nasty spill on the bunny slope the first and only time I went skiing caused more than a sprained ankle. And now I had my first arthritis site. Isn’t that special? I hate snow.

But the list does grow more impressive as I fly quickly out of my thirties. My eyes have dried up; I suppose this is the first step in becoming old and dried out. My skin is drying out, too. I could single-handedly keep the lotion industry in business.

My shoulder, tired of working for so many years at low wages and no benefits, went on strike. It required the mediation skills of physical therapist to get it back to work, but it is a lazier less flexible shoulder. But at least I can lift my arm high enough to shave my pits again.

And don’t tell me a really funny joke if I have to use the restroom. I won’t elaborate on that one any more – just let your imagination run wild.

I suppose healthier food, more rest, and regular exercise would serve as the extended warranty on my body parts. Alas, it is probably too late for that. So I am thankful for all the parts that still work in somewhat the same way they are supposed to, and praise the defective ones when they try really hard. But as long as I can keep the pits clear, it can’t be all bad.

See, Rock City

For as long as I can remember, trips anywhere included passing by at least one barn with the command that I needed to “See Rock City”. If I went to Rock City, I could See 7 States. Barn after barn along I-40 and I-81 in Tennessee and Virginia were littered with these painted roof advertisements.

Actually, my earliest memory is of just that, when we went and saw Rock City. My family claims that there is no way I remember the trip, I couldn’t have been 3 years old yet. But I remember. Well, I really only remember one part, but it was a doozy. I remember going into a cave. It was dark, but along the way were rooms we could look into. In these rooms were the most wonderful, scary, awesome sights. Elves, fairies, little mills, all illuminated by an unnatural glow. Then we came across the room where all my Mother Goose tales lived. They did exist! Well, sort of. They weren’t moving, but they looked real to me. And more than a little scary, if I must admit. I can just see myself, eyes as big as saucers, clinging to Dad’s hand with all my might, as we wandered through this strange drug trip turned family attraction. Needless to say, these eerie glowing images were forever seared into my brain. They are probably responsible for my fear of the dark, come to think of it.

I read on Roadside America that the founder of Rock City also invented miniature golf. That’s quite an impressive resume. I do have to wonder, however, what exactly that man put in his pipe. Special home blend, if you get my drift. A man with a very vivid imagination and apparent fascination with mythical figurines.

There aren’t many barns left on the interstates. Most of the ones that do exist are so dilapidated that a strong wind would knock them over. But every now and again, if you look hard enough, you can catch a glimpse of the familiar black roof with the giant white lettering beckoning you to See Rock City, the World’s 8th Wonder!