Freedom, The French, and Old Orchard Beach
August 20, 2008 at 10:00 am (blogs, first car, first love, humor, love, puppy love, romance, writing) (author jody l. campbell, first car, first true love, freedom on wheels, french canadian, humor, long distance relationships, love, old orchard beach, puppy love)
If you’ve ever seen the movie The Patriot you might recall the opening line. It goes … “I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me, and the cost would be more than I could bear.” Ah yes … words of great wisdom indeed. Why I am recalling that line while deciding to write about my days of yore, could only mean I have something to confess. And to that poor, sweet lass, who has undoubtedly passed the test of time with flying colors and moved on with her life, I sincerely apologize. Now, where do I start after that opening line? From the beginning, I presume.
The summer of 1980. I had had my license for over a year then and had done my best to do what damage I could to Mom’s car and even my grandparents’ car. That was a malicious act with the intent that if I did enough damage to theirs, they’d consider letting me buy one of my own. I was a working lad, after all. I needed to get from to and fro and had to have transportation. It was the obvious choice. I don’t recall how we found her; a 1970 Plymouth Satellite with 23,000 miles on the odometer. The back seat still wrapped in factory plastic sheeting, with a slant six .225 engine. Oh … the glory days. It was the original “little old lady from Pasadena” story. Except this little old lady lived in New Hampshire and not California. Nonetheless, it had manual steering and she couldn’t handle its girth. After her husband passed away, it was stored in her garage collecting dust and awaiting a $750 cash offer from my grandfather to purchase it for me. My first love.
The symbolism of a car to a teenaged boy is simplistic in terms. It is freedom on wheels and hardly any man alive will argue this fact with me. Why we consider it this is beyond all realm of comprehension. It’s not freedom per se. You have to make the payments, let alone the insurance and dive into the unjust world of realizing just how screwed you get by the auto insurance industry just for being male. You also have to gas it up. Everything about the car is financially restrictive. So why do we consider it symbolic freedom? Well … the girls, of course. The girls love the idea that a guy has his own car. And we’re in the stages of playing exploratory baseball with girls and certain parts of their anatomy … having a car to use as a ball field is just an easier outlet. I mean … what else are you going to say to her? Hey, honey … wanna go out in the woods with me? Um … no. That never works. At least not with the kind of girls you’d want to bring home and introduce to momma.
So I drove the Satellite home and had all kinds of visions and adventures going on in my head. Summer was coming after all and after last summer at the beach, this year was going to be even better. Why? Because now I had my own ride! Beer, babes, and beaches, oh my! What a wonderful world we lived in back in 1980. Bad hair, music trying to escape the inevitability of changing from the 70s and, the residual corduroy bellbottom pants. We were entering the disco decade. Eh gad. Somebody hit the brakes! If I knew then what I know now … I probably would have knocked up some young lass and be in worse shape now than ever before. Thank goodness the world works in mysterious ways.
So … we’ve covered “Freedom.” Everyone understands that cars are freedom to young lads. Now … let’s talk about the French. My dear grandmother is French Canadian so let’s get that out in the open before anyone accuses me of racial slander. I have nothing against the French. Hell, I’m part French and I kiss French and I eat French Fries … so bite me if you think I’m a racist. Sorry. Obviously, I still have some pent up issues to deal with. To say what I’m about to will involve Old Orchard Beach at the same time as explaining about the French. In the summer time, at least from days ago, the French Canadians would flock to the stateside beaches of Maine and one of their favorite haunts was Old Orchard Beach. The previous summer, we had experienced this newfound treasure being Coasters of New Hampshire, by a fellow Freedom Driver a year older than us already equipped with his drivers license who opened a whole new avenue of unexplored territory in the female gender to us. French chicks in the thousands. Oo-la-la!
There was one particular week and I do not recollect who went and who didn’t. I may not even have driven that particular night … but I remember it was night time when I met her. Why I can envision her so clearly and not recall her name is beyond me … and you’ll come to understand why as I complete this tale. She was small framed but built well, with fair eyes of bluish green and long, light brownish, dirty blondish colored hair. I walked past her in a crowd and turned to see … her other profile …and was elated to see she was doing the same to me. I smiled the international language. She returned the gesture. I can’t remember if we talked right then or rediscovered each other again later. Too many years have come and gone, too many cobwebs cluttering the attic of my memory. I remember … suddenly sitting on the beach with this girl. She smoked Canadian cigarettes and she knew I didn’t approve. Although if she had had a Columbian cigarette, I would have toked with great earnestness. But her beauty, although maybe wouldn’t have won any pageants, to me she was drop-dead gorgeous … she spoke broken English … very broken and the only French I knew was the kissing kind. It was a match made in heaven … for the summer that is.
The next thing I knew, we had decided to walk the park again, and to anyone who knows what Old Orchard Beach is about … it’s an amusement park chock full of ancient arcades and a boardwalk and amusement rides. When you’re young, it feels so enormous. Getting older and revisiting it one day later on in my life, I couldn’t believe how small it actually was. How … divey it seemed to be … but the days of yore had ways of changing what you experienced. They were truly magical, those days. This beach is undoubtedly unchanged from the test of time, and yet the comparisons from then to now are worlds apart only by imagination. That’s magic, people.
Walking down a certain street, I suddenly noticed a young lad who appeared to be following us. She was perplexed with me and did not notice. Young love. I took notice and waited for the right moment. I could have been wrong, so I paid an ounce of extra attention and sure enough, this unknown creep was stalking us … maybe her. I will be her hero, I thought and waited for a target of opportunity. The stalker spoke. She did not hear. I did. We kept walking and she kept looking at me … why was she so engrossed with me? Hell … I was just an average guy and she didn’t even know I had a car yet! He said something subtle again and walked a little faster to catch up to us. Again, she did not hear him. Was she choosing not to? Was this her boyfriend from Canada? We did indeed suffer from a language barrier, but all we needed to really do was look into each others eyes, start kissing, and who the hell needed to talk anyway? Am I right? We both spoke French when we kissed, so who cared. Anyway … this kid, a glimpse from the corner of my eye … you see, I didn’t want her to think anything was diverting my attention from her … a helpless romantic … and she bought and paid every cent; plus tax where applicable … until he moved just close enough behind her, and I lunged her carefully into a storefront … closed for the evening, guarded her by standing in front of her, and grabbed this stalking little bastard by the neck of his T-shirt to let him know … he just made a huge mistake. She’s with me, bucko! Prepare to meet your maker!
“Daniel,” she said, but pronounced it Danielle. French people. She looked at me with the utmost affection for my heroic deed, but there was something else in her eyes … something I didn’t quite understand yet desperately tried to. Her mind raced to find the words in English to make my density comprehend her. “My brother,” she said finally in the most alluring French accent I had ever heard in my life. Daniel smiled a goofy smile and I think I caught him praying to St. Anne De Beaupre that he was still alive after the brief incident. I extended my hand and he gladly shook it. He said something to … her … why can I not remember her name and yet know what her brother’s name was? I didn’t French kiss her brother for crying out loud?! Weird. Nonetheless, they talked briefly in a foreign tongue that I did not need to understand and he bid me farewell and I him. The rest of the night was hers’ and mine. We sat on the beach again later, kissing under the stars while listening to the waves crash against the shore. Her mouth tasted of stale cigarettes, but her passion was undeniable. My effort of heroism to protect a girl I barely knew, even if it was to her smaller framed and obviously weaker brother, paid dividends and left this poor French girl reeling.
I had walked her to her motel and bid her farewell. I would never see her again, I thought. I’m not sure what she was thinking. Next thing I knew, me and my local homies were all regrouped and on our way home sharing our stories of conquest. For some reason, and this is a true testimony … they all witnessed me meeting her after all … but I remained humbly silent and told them I had a good time with her and left it at that. They were all so willing to kiss and tell their own stories, that mine was accepted and forgotten. She was gone … and she left this hollow pit in my stomach and after arriving home that night and falling asleep, I dreamt of kissing her and crashing waves on the beach in the darkness.
I woke up. It was morning. Something still didn’t feel right. All I wanted to do was see her again. But even as small as Old Orchard Beach was, I would never find her again. I could never find her again. Could I? I ate breakfast … and thought of French. I took a shower … and thought of French. I told everyone in my house that I was going for a drive. I drove alone to Old Orchard Beach. I had to find her. I would find her. I knew where her motel was after all.
After arriving and parking my car, I made my way across the park and past it to the streets where the motels lined up on Atlantic Avenue. Route 1. I stood in front of her motel and the strangest revelation came over me. I wasn’t nervous. Every time before this when I had to call a girl on the phone, even if I knew she liked me, there was this odd sense that maybe I was wrong … that created this … fear of rejection deep, down inside me. But not now. I had only met her brother and if I knocked on that motel door, I was certain to meet her parents and other family members. But for some reason, I wasn’t nervous. All that was going on in my head was this undying urge to see this girl again … and when I knocked and her brother answered the door … and the door opened wide enough for her mother and father to see outside … to see me standing in front of their motel door … and smile at my arrival … knowing how excited their daughter would be to see me … knowing how excited she would be to see me there this day … man … my head was reeling! They had accepted me. They didn’t even know me. But she came flying out of the bathroom, freshly showered and her hair was still wet. She wore shorts and a white T-shirt with a bikini underneath. She kissed me in front of her parents … not French, but her parents smiled and were happy for their daughter. She told them we were leaving for the beach … in French … I didn’t understand anything. I was lost in a world of wondering what it was about this girl … other than her good looks that had me feeling this way … that had me accepted in her world. In their world. She must have carried on about me the entire evening because it was like they already knew who I was and how I had attempted to save their little daughter from the evil grasp of her … younger brother? I was going with the flow. My god … it felt like I was in love with her. Was that even possible? Did I even know what love was?
We spent the entire day together. Straight into the evening until just about the same time as we had the previous night. It was time to go again. I felt empty. Hollow. Lovestruck. For godsake, someone help me! We kissed passionately and I told her I was leaving and probably wouldn’t see her again. Maybe next summer. She was only there for the remainder of the week and would be going back to Canada. We were worlds apart. Long distance relationships didn’t work especially at our age and we both understood that. I left again. Again, I had this sinking feeling about this girl. Why? I can’t even remember her name for crying out loud! Shame on me for that.
This time I let a day go between us. After I awoke the next morning, I sat in the living room and watched an interview with Stephen King on Good Morning America. He was on some beach with Joan Lunden and it looked vaguely familiar. She asked him questions and he answered them. And then … right before a commercial break … she dared to say it. “Good Morning America, here with Stephen King live from Old Orchard Beach.” I screamed. There was no way I could make it … Not now! He’d be long gone before I got there … and then what? Her, you idiot! That’s what! I didn’t even really care about Stephen King. Maybe a little. But it was her and hearing those three words … Old Orchard Beach. Oh my god. I had felt like puking. I had to see her again. I couldn’t let her go. I hadn’t told her that I loved her. I couldn’t tell her that I loved her. That would not be fair to her or me. After all, inevitably, we could never withstand the test of time. Too much high school was still left. We lived worlds apart. I stayed home that day and simmered in a pot of my own self inflicted misery. I was depressed. I yearned to be with her and even though when we were together we spoke so little to each other due to our language barrier, it was our eyes and what we saw in each others’ expressions that truly was the only conversation that needed to be spoken.
I couldn’t take it. It was Friday when I woke up again and she’d be leaving in a day or two. To Canada until next year … and god knows if or when I’d ever see her again. I wanted one more day with her. I showered and skipped breakfast and drove straight to Old Orchard Beach. The same knock on the same motel door produced a mother who smiled again when she saw me. In a thick French accent she said, “She’s gonna be so glad to see you. She’s on the beach.” I thanked her and headed for the sands. She was sunbathing and unsuspecting. She looked so erotic … so exotic … so much like a tourist. I snuck up on her. I recognized the hair, the contours of her body, those lips … despite her donning sunglasses … she was stunning. Sweat and tanning lotion had glistened exposed parts of her body and I stood there and took in the few moments to navigate the scenery in silence before I announced my arrival. What an absolute dish. A sprig of parsley on the side was all I needed to garnish that entrée.
Within the ocean breeze and the crashing waves, I uttered her name … a name I wish for the life of me would return to my memory banks … did I just imagine this poor girl? She looked up and tipped her sunglasses down towards me. Her face was both in shock and happiness. I had seemingly answered her unheard beckon call. Maybe she had some spell over me … I don’t know. She was elated and leapt up from her beach blanket and embraced me. Stephen King had been sitting there with Joan Lunden 24 hours ago, I thought briefly to myself as I hugged her back … all slippery and sexy. Again, we spent the entire day together well into the late evening. This would be indeed the last time we got to spend together … at least that year, but our love for one another had grown from a mere passing and notice that we each were checking the other out … like window shopping at the mall if you will, and there He or She is and how good they would look wearing the them … into … this unpronounced love with extreme barriers and distance that threatened every ounce of its existence. It could never work. We were too young. It would never work. End of story.
Sitting on the darkened beach again that night, we stopped kissing in time for each to catch our breath … content with listening to the unseen waves crashing in the near distance and I saw her head flicker towards mine and she said it in the darkness. “I love you, Jody,” she said. I stupidly smiled and looked out at the ocean as if I could see it. She saw me smile. She knew I chose not to return her devotion. I did love her, there was no doubt. But I couldn’t seem to tell her so. The realization that our love would never last consumed my behavior and left me blank. She said it again to confirm I understood her in her accented English. I silently grabbed her hand and pulled her head onto my shoulders and embraced her … still not returning her devotion. What she must have thought of me that moment …
As time passed, the night grew old and it was time to go again. I had a long drive home alone and this by far was the best day that I had spent with this elusive French girl. We exchanged addresses. Pen pals. She gave me a puca-shelled necklace she had been wearing to remember her by. I took her to my car … (shut up) … I had to have something to return in gesture. I was always a writer of sorts … self proclaimed … whatever. My ex-girlfriend from last year had written a story and I had told her I would rewrite her idea and give it to her. She was not a writer … and had no qualms about not being one … her story was self proclaimed as “stupid.” It was kind of, too. But I rewrote it with her intent and she was somewhat offended that I might take her stupid story and do a better job with it. Women. And there that story was … all hand written out and crumpled up in my glove box where she made me put it after refusing to read it. It was right under my Aviator Ray Ban’s. I wouldn’t need those tonight … I thought with a sudden case of temporary insanity. Hey … I love you French girl whose name evades me, but those are Ray Ban’s, honey. Here … take these crumpled pieces of paper with a story on it and remember me. She did and expressed how thrilled she was. Had she even noticed the Ray Ban’s? Ah … too long ago.
I left and actually mustered the urge to cry over her that night on my way home. I would indeed never see this French girl again in my life. Not next year or the year after that. Never again. She was but a mere chapter in a book with many others written about my life and her existence was but three days worth of encounters long. She was lost …
Well … not exactly … quite yet anyway. School started, I met another girl … And the French girl wrote a pen pal letter. I responded nicely … somehow that feeling in the pit of my stomach when she wasn’t around … the way she would look into my eyes … the expression on her face when she did … had all dissipated in my memory … as obviously did her name … poor, little French girl. Heavily involved within another relationship … one of which I reached an entirely different base with another game of exploratory baseball, I had tired of the puppy-loved, long distance relationship with … whatshername.
Another letter arrived and I ignored this one too but suddenly came up with a brilliant plan. Recruiting the assistance of my sister to respond a brief letter back to her in a women’s handwriting … I produced, directed, and starred in a brief eulogy of my own demise. We sadly reported to the French girl that I had been killed in an auto accident in my mother’s alleged handwriting. We told her how much I had mentioned and thought of her and how sorry (my mother) was and that she need not write any more letters … to a dead guy … and guess what? Uhuh … she mailed a frickin’ condolence card addressed to my mother … of course, which I had to explain. My mother wasn’t happy … and neither was the French girl, I’m sure … but I moved on. Or did I? I often think of that poor, French girl and the anguish of which I might have caused her. Did she cry over my imaginary death? Was that fair of me to make someone do? So … my past actions do indeed haunt me sometimes and I am truly afraid they will catch up to me … and the price is greater than I could bear. Please, French-girl-whose-name-evades-me, forgive an old man who was once in very much in love with you (although I couldn’t tell you at the time) and was young and foolish enough to make such a stupid decision. I’m sure you’re obviously better off without the likes of me and my conniving ways.
Jody Campbell
The Free Lunch Line; A Rant From My Past
August 14, 2008 at 9:53 am (blogs, children, kids, learning, social diversity, society, writing) (author jody l. campbell, children, elementary school, free lunch line, free lunch tickets, high school, kids, school, social diversification, status symbol)
A travesty. It seems when mankind is left with nothing to diversify or segregate to or from, he commits this travesty to his very own. I’m not sure if this still takes place in the schools, but I suspect that it does. I didn’t think much about it when I was in school and I’ll tell you why in due time. But the simple fact that it existed at all is a crime against young, innocent people, their dignity, and their developmental years.
So, my mother wasn’t exactly rich. She moved back home with her mother and father with us three kids in tow after divorcing my father who disappeared from our lives altogether for reasons only he can convey. We struggled, but my mom and grandparents did what they could for us. We led seemingly normal lives with a safe roof over our heads and three square a day. I’m thankful for that.
In school, however, it’s quite one thing to have levels of social diversity. The rich kids are going to hang out with the other rich kids that are being reared in their own neighborhoods. After all, even city ordinances allow only certain homes to be built in certain neighborhoods. You’re not going to find a double-wide in a neighborhood of estates, in other words. So there’s no big surprise that rich kids are snooty and poor kids are trash. It’s been that way for thousands of years. Me saying it in this blog isn’t going to raise eyebrows or change anything. So screw it. I’m not looking to reform social diversity here. There are all kinds of social diversities in school. There are the jocks; rich or poor … the heads; rich or poor, the nerds; rich or poor, the rich; rich or poor … and the reason I say that is because even the rich diversify from one another. Was the money family money or was it new found fortune? New found fortune is often scrutinized by family fame and fortune; those born with silver spoons in their mouths, for example. There are other social groups in schools and I’m sure they’re not called jocks and heads and nerds anymore. Who knows? I graduated way back in 1981. By the time I graduated, I had plenty of pent up frustration with the politics of school and how the system worked … or didn’t work. I guess that in itself set me up for the best education of the real world than all that time I spent sitting in all those classes learning mandated studies. There were teachers who had favorite students and passed grades accordingly. That was not fair to the others. There were teachers who hated their jobs and weren’t afraid to let you know about it. That was not fair to the students. I didn’t let any of this bother me too much. Well, to tell you the truth, it bothered me plenty, I just gave up caring about it. To me, it was nothing more than another social group. And me? I wasn’t a head … I wasn’t a jock … I wasn’t rich … I was poor … but I worked after school and instead of wearing the clothes my mother could afford to buy for me, I bought and paid for my own clothes to “fit-in” status symbol-wise to a couple of categories higher on the social status than I actually deserved to be. You had to wear Levi jeans to “be cool” at school. You had to have name-brand sneakers or hiking boots … or Timberlane work boots. Everything you wore had to have a brand name on it to be cool. And it couldn’t be just any name. The nerds didn’t care what they wore. That’s what made them nerds. Maybe they cared plenty, but were unable to do anything about it. Although, they spent more time on their studies and not so much wondering what the fluff they were going to wear, they passed their grades and probably are having the last laugh at the expense of the vanity of those of us who did care. My hat’s off to those that did so. I don’t know why it seemed important to me to be someone I wasn’t. I was embarressed to be poor. Probably because of the way it made me stick out in a crowd. Probably because I was an attention monger. A class clown. A trouble-maker in sorts. I would function in my studies. I did well for those teachers that appreciated my work. I also challenged the system to those teachers that found it necessary to point out their favorites. I exploited them and made their year as miserable as they made mine. It was a personal challenge of mine.
As mentioned, I wasn’t really a jock, nerd, head, or a social. I was all of them. In essence, I was none of them. I spoke and befriended anyone who would give me the time of day. It didn’t matter what society they belonged to. I experimented with the pot … but I swear I never inhaled … (yeah … right) and I played sports … and I wore the right clothes … and I fit in … because I financed the whole lie with my own earnings. My own blood, sweat, and tears. Don’t pity me. I’m not looking for that. It was my decision and I have no issues with how I was raised or what decisions I made during my school years. I harbor no pent up frustrations about that time in my life … well … maybe one.
It’s true I didn’t care much for teachers that didn’t care much whether they were really teaching or not. As mentioned, I had ways of getting even with them and I’m rather proud of the fact that I inhibited that quality to make their lives miserable for the short time they knew me. But the one thing about school that really just screamed exploitation in social diversity was “the free lunch line.” Has anyone ever heard of this? Do they still do this? What the fluff is that all about? A welfare line of sorts. In the cafeteria, two lines were formed for the lunch tickets to gather from students to eat the same exact lunch. There was the regular kids from normal hard working households … and the rich kids … and then there was a line formed for the kids that were not from families that made a lot of money. They fell under a program that offered their lunches to them for free. Well … not really free. There was one small price to pay. The large blinking neon sign hanging above each one of our heads telling the entire cafeteria and school population that we were dirt poor. Our families were on welfare. Our mothers and fathers were societal losers that stayed home all day and watched soap operas and bilked the system … that we lived in filthy double wides or trailer parks … None of which were necessarily true, but scenarios were certainly perceived by those who had to pay for their lunches with their parents money. The “normal” and the “rich” kids. If you got free lunches, you received a completely different colored lunch ticket. Although I was a white kid in a predominantly white school, suddenly I had a different color because I came from a lower class family income bracket. Suddenly, I was minority among my very own. This isn’t something the school could just work out by counting how many of the families were poor and give us the same colored lunch ticket at the beginning of the week? Mail them to us incognito? I’m sure there were thousands of different opportunities they could have created to make it a less embarrassing scenario for those of us that had to stand in that line. They simply chose not to. I stood in that line. I’m proud to say I did, now. Back then I wasn’t. Back then it ate at me daily. I didn’t always stand in that line, however. You see. I mentioned that I was a working lad and I financed my entire social status in school. That included paying for my own lunches, although my family still fell under the stringent guidelines of me benefiting from free lunch at school. I stood in the “normal” lunch line and pulled money from my own wallet that I had earned myself to be considered “normal.” Because my school made the conscious decision to exploit poor kids. To insure segregation from the rich. I understood this at a very early age and resented it from then on. I still resent it. If I could find a lawyer that chased ambulances part time and offered me restitution from this school for all the years of lunches I paid for, hey … why the hell not? It seems everyone else is litigious. And … I could use the money, too.
With all joking aside, I would like to point out that if this procedure still takes place in schools anywhere … everywhere, that it should be STOPPED immediately and a way found to preserve the integrity of the developing children trying to grow up in society with limitless boundaries for the sake of their education. Does it really need to be announced to the school that any of the children are from poor families? Living in the neighborhoods they live in and the house they live in is all the social diversity a person needs. The clothes they wear will define their wealth or lack thereof. Making them stand in a separate line for free lunch is nothing more than exploitation. Find out what’s going on in schools and speak up about it. We’re never going to stop social diversification. The lord knows we need that … I guess. But what we can control, we simply should make an effort to try. It’s for the youth of our nation and their tender and delicate developmental years.
Jody L. Campbell
The Ninja Bug Assassin
August 10, 2008 at 11:12 am (authors, blogs, bugs, family, humor, insects, love, marriage, writing) (assassin, author jody l. campbell, bugs, dragonflies, family, grasshoppers, humor, lady bugs, marriage, ninja, spiders)
The other morning, I was making my infamous cup of gourmet coffee, still somewhat puffy eyed, and I was suddenly surprised to see a grasshopper in the inside sill of the kitchen window. It’s an early October morning, so I was thinking he must have hopped on one of us yesterday … perhaps the dog, to get inside out of the cold. I’m wasn’t sure really why, since it’s a relatively harmless little critter, the immediate sight of it somewhat shocked me. I am not afraid of bugs and I’m the hero of the household when it comes to “killing the infiltrating hornet” or “smashing the trespassing spider” or whatever quest assigned to me from my wife … who for all accounts and purposes is utterly terrified of insects. For the most part, I try to gather up the little breaching bugs and bring them outdoors where they are set free to potentially wreak havoc in someone else’s household … a last chance for them, if you will. That particular morning, I realized that the life of that grasshopper was in dire jeopardy. I remember considering trying to scoop it up with my hand and get him outside, but I was still half awake and if I missed, this guy was going to be jumping all over the place and I was going to make a ruckus in a quiet, peaceful and still sleeping household that would surely wake the other occupants. My wife, daughter, and dog were all sleeping soundly and that’s the way I wanted to keep it. On the other hand, if this critter wandered off … or I simply forgot about him … (you reach a certain age and your mind can start to … I forgot what I was going to say) … his fate was certainly doomed. You see … there is an assassin among us in this house. She is silent and does not scream or announce her swat of death. She is covert with lethal precision. And if she saw this poor little insect inside the walls of her home, she would smash this bug without provocation, without remorse, without a glancing thought, and then I will be the one that has to remove the carnage.
My wife is a gentle, loving, and nurturing woman. She is a wonderful mother and a loving wife. She is tender, beautiful, and passive. Except there is a dark side to my wife. She is a super hero to some … to others … mostly in the insect world … she is an evil villain. My wife has an alternate lifestyle. She has been trained in the ancient arts of the Ninja. She knows hundreds of ways to assassinate insects without cause, without provocation, without an ounce of consideration, and without a thought. It must have taken years of training and conditioning for this woman to be as effective as she is. She can assassinate a bug coming near her … not even really going in her direction … just near her and not even really notice that she just killed it … going on about her business as usual, while the dying bug writhes in the throes of death at her feet.
One day … not too long ago, my daughter, my wife, and I were in the back yard playing with our daughter’s toy golf set and I was trying to teach her the all important lessons of pars and teeing off and which club to use for which par. I don’t even like golf, but it seemed important for me to teach her what I know about it. My wife stood in the background and watched admirably as I fought to maintain the focus of the five-year-old with such stimulating techniques. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a small, harmless dragonfly flew near my wife. I’m not talking about the three to four inch variety of dragonfly that makes us all a little bit nervous when it invades our space with loud flapping wings and hovering to and fro in front of our face and over our heads annoyingly, I’m talking small. Like maybe just over an inch … maybe an inch and a half. He was just a little guy. And he wasn’t flying at her. He was flying by her. But he made a mistake. He flew into the international “Non-Fly Zone of The Ninja Bug Assassin.” Also known as INFZNBA. Without flinching … without even really looking, her arm extended out, swatted the crap out of the poor unsuspecting dragonfly… who for all we know was on his way home with a toy for his or her tots as he promised he would be … but as it ended up … not this day … not ever. He fell to the ground immediately dazed and confused. His wings were badly broken and his spine cracked in half. He would never fly again. But that didn’t matter because the assassin wasn’t finished yet. The bug was still alive. Without consideration of this bug or his loved ones, my wife, the Ninja Bug Assassin, lifted a foot and stomped on the poor bug. I would love to say he was dead instantly and felt no pain … that his pain was brief and he died immedietely. However, surprised as I was, my facial expression surely conveying that fact that I did not approve of the unnecessary slaughter I had just witnessed, I watched the long tail section of this bug curl and uncurl as it writhed in painful convulsions which led me to take my larger booted foot and disintegrate the insect to put us both out of our current miseries.
I looked at my wife. I said nothing, but my expression surely spoke volumes.
“What?” she asked in defense of her action. “It was coming at me.”
“No … it wasn’t,” I said shaking my head and reciting a brief eulogy for the deceased.
“It might have,” she tried to convince me.
The most horrific aspect of the whole assassination was the child seeing the entire ordeal. A future Ninja Bug Assassin already in training and not even realizing it. I could see the sparkle in the young girl’s eyes looking at her mother with awe and admiration.
I try to show my daughter which bugs you can pick up and which ones you can’t. Sometimes, I have learned new things about bugs myself. Like ladybugs can actually bite you. Don’t tell me otherwise because one of them little creeps did so once and I winced and said “OW!” to the utter shock and horror of my daughter. She hasn’t picked up a ladybug since that day … and neither have I for that matter. Probably another reason why she will become a skilled assassin like her mother.
The Ninja Bug Assassin style of killing does not exhibit the most choreographic executions to their intended target. It’s not always the most graceful or pretty sights to witness. Sometimes it can even be downright awkward. It can involve hopping around on one leg, while screaming … or running around in circles ducking and rising repeatedly like a chicken … or swaying to and fro with both arms flailing in the air or repeatedly circling around the hair and head of the assassin … as if trying not to drown … with no body of water nearby. Even a variety of these techniques can and will be used in many of the assassinations. The results are always the same. No matter what the poor bug does to escape the Ninja Bug Assassin, it winds up dead. It cannot escape from the lethal clutches of the NBA.
After the assassination, my wife returns to her lifestyle as if nothing happened without conscience. Almost as if humming a lullaby to herself it would seem. The body of the unsuspecting target will be dead or dying at her feet, a mere afterthought before she decides what to make for dinner … or perhaps what she’ll wear to work tomorrow … or ponders whether to fold laundry or do the dishes first. Something of that nature.
That morning, I’m looked at that grasshopper and told it in a whisper trying not to be heard, to stay still. I knew that I was going to forget to all about him when I was more awake and would have the speed needed to catch it and release it. If I tried to before I was fully awake, I would certainly miss and be running and crashing and stomping all over the house to try to catch it before … it’s too late. She would awaken, come out to see what the ruckus was all about … the grasshopper would mistakenly hop near her direction, and without a moment’s notice, even in her foggy state of emerging awakeness, she would strike with deadly results and the carcass of the grasshopper wouldbe squished against the fibers of the carpet and left for the “removal system” AKA … me to clean up the mess.
A happy ending that day, however, I’m glad to announce to all of you bug lovers out there. I didn’t forget about the little guy. Actually, okay … I forgot at first and I was in the office on the computer and heard my wife in the kitchen starting her cup of coffee and a bright amber warning light of memory flashed across the screen of my brain. Oh my God, the grasshopper! I must save his life! I leapt up and without trying to raise too much suspicion went into the kitchen as if to kiss my wife good morning. But the skills of the Ninja Bug Assassin go far beyond the actual executions to the unsuspecting targets. She was dubious of my intent and anyone could tell her sonar, radar, and any other ar she uses was on immediate high alert.
“I have to get rid of a bug,” I confessed. Honesty is the best policy, they say.
Ninja Bug Assassin Mode went into automatic overdrive. She walked across the kitchen like Keanu Reeves in special effects of another Matrix film. Slow motion, yet ready, willing, and able to strike the “blow of death” at any second.
“Where is it?” she challenged in a demonic voice not her own.
“I’ll take care of it,” I promised. Her eyes scoped the entire perimeter of the kitchen and I knew then, this grasshopper’s time on this good green earth was limited.
“Please, Honey,” I pleaded for the innocent bug’s life. “I’ll take care of it. Get me a net from Jadyn’s bedroom.” She did without complaint. I had to be on high alert.
After handing me the net, she retreated back to the safety of the dining room where she watched in silence and … almost what I think may have been a slight degree of melancholy that she was not going to have the opportunity to kill. I scooped up the grasshopper and ran him outside before anything else could happen to him. He must have felt the tension. It was so thick inside, you could have cut it with a knife.
I tipped the net upside down and as he fell to the grass I could have sworn I heard him say … “Bless you, dear sir.” I stuck a finger in my ear and wriggled it all around and went back inside. But first I said, “You’re welcome, friend.” It must have just been my imagination.
All in a day’s work when you live among the Ninja Bug Assassin Association of America, or NBAAA … something our daughter is destined to join the ranks of.
Jody L. Campbell
“Thank You For Calling …”
August 8, 2008 at 9:47 am (blogs, customer service, humor, writing) (author jody l. campbell, customer service, humor, marketing, phone scripts, retail)
Is is just me or has anyone else called a place of business … as in a retail chain of sorts … or a restaurant … to find out certain information and is received with a bombarding 30 second or more greeting promoting sales that are of no value to you and are unintelligible because the speaker is talking faster than their lips can move? Why are they talking so fast? Because they have a lot to say in their scripted greeting and are most likely embarrassed about the content of the script even though they work there. I don’t want to hear all of this when I call someplace to find out the store hours or if they have a particular item in stock. Everyone reading this knows what I am talking about. Let’s try one out for size, shall we …
Two Girls in My Bed … Not Exactly a Fantasy
August 7, 2008 at 10:16 am (authors, blogs, children, computers, family, humor, kids, love, marriage, writing) (acorn, author jody l. campbell, blogs, cartoons, children, early morning, family, humor, kids, writing)
I woke up the other morning around 4 AM and there was this beautiful young girl in our bed between me and my wife. She was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and she smiled when I opened my eyes and she said … “Hi daddy!” Hmmm …
“What are you doin’ in my swamp?” I asked her in my best Shrek impersonation. This, as always, produced a smile.
“Sleeping,” she said.
“You don’t look like you’re sleeping to me,” said I.
Mommy, who was now awake, decided to try and return her to her own bedroom and that seemed to work, but I never got back to sleep. So, I tossed and turned for about an hour and finally relented at about 5 AM and got up. I crank started the dial-up connection and went to the kitchen to start a cup of coffee. In my mind, I was imagining the two tasks competing in a head to head race to see which would get accomplished first: the finished product of a cup of coffee or finally getting online through the archaic dialup and low KBs connection. To my astonishment, the computer won hands down. Adding the necessary ingredients into my coffee, I made my way towards the office, set the coffee on the desk, positioned the chair to a comfortable setting, and placed my hands on the keyboard. Ah yes, I can write … I thought, anyway.
Had I just heard something? A door creaking, maybe? I turned my back to see a fleeting glimpse from the corner of my eye speedily making its way towards our bedroom where I hoped my wife had not suffered the same fate as I had that morning trying to get back to sleep.
“Hey!” I hollered out. The figure’s pitter-pattering feeties stopped dead in their tracks, turned 180 degrees and bee-lined for the office.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
“Join the club,” I said. She tried in vain to tell me she was scared, but I could tell otherwise with her gorgeous, but lying eyes. She’s not a very accomplished fibber yet. It’s a work in progress.
“Why not lay on your bed with the door open for a while and I’ll protect you since you’re right next door to the office,” I offered.
“Okay,” she said excitedly. Too excitedly for me to think this was going to have any semblance of endurance. Sure enough … a few moments later, she emerged back into the office to tell daddy a really cool story. Of course it was gibberish and she was making it up as she went along. Gotta love her 5 year old imagination. I have no idea where she gets it. <whistles>
Now, if I was Mommy, I’d be making her get back into bed and saying … you need your sleep because I do not want you to be a cranky girl at Nanny’s today and high maintenance when you finally get home tonight. This would produce wailing and crying in protest, and that she was scared and that she wasn’t tired. But I’m not Mommy. And I didn’t want to hear either wailing or crying at this time of the morning. I don’t want to hear wailing or crying any time of the day. I simply do not have the fortitude my wife inhibits when it comes to such matters.
“Look Daddy!” she exclaimed referring to the predawn light coming through the edges of the mini-blinds, “it’s already morning time!”
“Uhuh,” I said, “but it’s still early honey and I want your mommy to be able to sleep.”
“Can I stay up?” she asked knowing I would let her. How does she do that?
“If you stay in your room and occupy yourself without waking up your Mommy.”
Off she went happily and I didn’t really think Mommy was going to get back to sleep in all honesty. She has an uncanny ability to lay there for hours trying, though. And, I used to get up early when I was young. And look at me … I turned out just … fine? … Hmmm … wait a minute!
“Jadyn! Go back to bed!”
“Waaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” Now … even the dog was wide awake. I clicked the red X on the upper right hand corner of the monitor screen and called it a day on the Internet.
This very morning, while I write … I have gone through the exact same routine as the other day, sans waking up to my wide awake daughter between my wife and me. I got a little bit further along in the routine this morning. I was already getting my stats on the preseason football games and the final roster cuts when I heard …
“Mommy!” being hollered out from her bedroom. Oy vay! 6:15 AM is what the clock displayed. Wow … she’s sleeping in, I thought to myself sarcastically.
“MOMMY!” She hollered even louder with more enthusiasm while I was deep in thought. One would think I’d be intercepting the hollers before they produced a wide-awake Mommy.
I went to her bedroom and opened the door. “What’s the matter, Honey?” I asked.
“I want my nut.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, Daddy,” she said with a degree of contempt and a dash of sarcasm. It’s a little early for that, wouldn’t you think?
“Um … NO! I don’t know.”
“The peanut.” I’m still clueless. “I think it’s up on the shelf with my ballerina puppet.” I moved the puppets and saw no peanut. “It’s the one I got out in the woods, Daddy!” Obviously, she finally realized her father still had no idea what he was looking for. “The squirrel nut! Hello!” Yeah, full blown sarcasm. I hate to admit she gets that from me.
Now I finally understood what she was looking for. She had found an acorn in the woods one time while she was hiking with her preschool class. I have not, in all honesty, seen this crazy acorn in several months and why I’m looking for this damn nut at 6:15 this morning when I could be writing a blog entry is quite beyond my realm of reasoning.
“There’s no acorn up here, Jadyn,” I said.
“Oh … okay. I thought it was.” Uhuh … sure you did. Conniving little … Man, I love her though.
As I tried to exit her bedroom and shut the door, I got the “I gotta go potty” routine, so I just knew she wasn’t going back to bed. I used to get up early when I was a kid. And look at me. I turned out just fine. Hmmm … wait a minute. Nope. I don’t want her wailing this morning. I just got an idea for a blog entry. How about petty bribery?
“Jadyn?”
“Yes, Daddy?”
“How about I put Tak and the Power of Ju-ju on for you and you stay real quiet and not wake up Mommy.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” she practically screamed. So much for keeping the house quiet, I thought as the dog emerged from our bedroom.
Anyway … Mommy’s still in bed (wide awake, I’m sure) and my daughter is laying on the sofa watching her TiVo’d television show. And that gave me the opportunity to write this blog writing exercise. Thank goodness!
Jody L. Campbell
The Flower
August 6, 2008 at 9:14 pm (authors, blogs, children, family, humor, learning, love, writing) (author jody l. campbell, daughter, family, flowers, flowers of fortune, free flowers, gifts, humor, lilies, tiger lilies)
I don’t try to over-think things. Maybe that’s my problem. I don’t know what my problem is actually. Here is a true-to-life scenario, my reaction to it, and the inevitable outcome. The common denominator is that I’m a shmuck, but at least I admit it.
“Daddy! Look! Flowers! Can I pick one for momma?” She was so excited about the silly flowers.
They were the same stupid tiger lilies that grew in the back yard every summer. I looked at them and saw that at least ten unopened petals were attached to the same stem formation that had a completely sprouted blossom of brilliant orange. If we picked it now, thought my dense incapacitated mind, the rest of the petals will surely die and we will lose all those flowers. Does it make a difference, really? In the long run? Does it? What do I do with these flowers and the large jungle grass plant part of it after the lilies have passed? I mow it down. And what happens the following year whether I do anything about it or not? They grow back. Without effort. They’re there every year. Let her pick them my mind said.
“If you pick a flower,” instead my stupid mouth butted in, “we will lose ten others.” Is that something that seems personal to me? No. So what’s the big deal? Just looking to ruin a six-year-old’s fascination with flowers. A seemingly perfect opportunity to give her mother something thoughtful that cost me … what exactly? Ten other blossoms? What did those cost me? Nothing. They came with the stupid house.
To defend my pathetic character … let me rephrase that. To … defend my … oh to hell with it. I can’t defend anything about it. It’s stupid. Let her pick the damn flower. Why didn’t I just say yes? Well … I did, so get off my back. But getting back to defending myself … or at least why I wanted to try to pathetically. I wrote this stupid story a couple years back. It was called Flowers of Fortune and it was about orange tiger lilies and for some reason after I wrote this stupid story, the tiger lilies in the back yard became … sacred ground, I guess. I wanted to count them and see if perhaps my story would inevitably become prophetic. Do you want to know what happened to the protagonist of the story? He died. So why in the hell would I want to see if my story would become prophetic? Do I want to die? Not really. The flowers would grow a new amount of blossoms each day and the main character would dream about the new number of them and decided to play the lottery and won. Except he never got to enjoy the money … or even the knowledge that he won, because he was dead long before the lottery drawing. Now that I blew the ending for you … in the event you haven’t already read this tale of mine, does that make sense to you that for some reason, these stupid flowers became some sacred ritual for me to watch grow and count annually? No. It doesn’t make sense to me either. I should have said … “Absolutely, honey. Let’s pick a bunch of them,” but there was something else niggling me. It said inside the narrow minded container of the interior of my brain that we would be wasting precious flower life if we picked it prematurely and teaching my daughter the importance of wasting and not wasting … seemed … pathetically important? I’m trying. It’s weak, I know. But picking and getting to see one blossom for one day before it died and losing ten other potential blossoms seemed wasteful to me at the time.
At least she won. She had that same injured look she gets from her mother. It’s both adorable and irresistible at the same time. Damn that curse on her side of the family!
“Alright,” I gave in. I watched her try to yank one out and I cringed as she almost pulled three square feet of earth and roots up from the ground with her petite but determined hands. “Go get the scissors for daddy,” I suggested. “But don’t run with them!”
“Okay,” she exclaimed excitedly and I worried thinking maybe I should have just gone in and got them myself. Do I worry too much, maybe?
She came back out and I grabbed the scissors and thanked her for the chore she completed. I aimed them strategically at the very stem she had tried to excavate on her own behalf a minute or so ago and cut it on an angle. One opened, brilliant, orange blossom, and ten other wasted sprouts never to open I thought. How dense am I?
Pretty dense I found out. Some people that have green thumbs and have picked tiger lilies before can probably already assume the purpose of this writing of mine. I had no idea. We did not indeed waste any flowers at all. As a matter of fact, we picked that flower about four days ago and have enjoyed three different blossoms sprouted and there’s another one on the way … most likely to sprout and enjoy for tomorrow. They are the flower that keeps on giving … as long as they’re in water, I guess. One blossom opens and the next day, it closes for good and begins to wither away. With the death of that blossom, it seems to send life to another sprout and begin a life cycle anew. We’ll undoubtedly have this one particular stem in our house for well over ten days and have exactly that many days to enjoy that many blossoms.
Today, I have learned an important lesson from my six-year-old. Actually, I’ve learned a lot of lessons from my six-year-old today. I’m glad she’s going to be around to teach her ignorant old man that it’s okay to pick the flowers sometimes. It’s okay to waste a little bit from time to time … especially if it was free to begin with. It’s okay to experiment. It’s okay to be six-years-old … at heart … and want to discover new things.
Thanks darling. I have an idea. Let’s go pick some more of those flowers before they pass their lifespan in the ground out back. Let’s fill our house with the blossoms everywhere. Then I can mow the jungle grass down that much quicker and we can still have some beautiful looking flowers in the house. She may only be six-years-old, but she’s a great teacher and my favorite flower.
Jody L. Campbell
The Ant and the Coffee Maker
August 5, 2008 at 3:12 pm (family, humor, love, marriage, writing) (ants, coffee, coffee maker, columbian coffee, confession, household pests, love, marriage, wife)
It’s a catchy title for a story. It reminds me of one of Aesop’s Fables where there will be some lesson instilled in young minds who endure reading it. That’s probably not going to happen in this tale. Although, somebody might learn something from my mistake. That’s only a mere theory with no statistics to back it up whatsoever.
It started out just like every morning. I go to the bathroom, wash my hands, turn on the computer, and then I go make my cup of coffee. Once the coffee maker is started, I return to the computer to crank-start the ancient phone-line modem and connect to the Internet.
The coffee maker chugs and churns on the kitchen counter. It’s a two-cup model and it does just about the perfect job of brewing our favorite gourmet blend coffee. One of our few lavish luxuries. I brew one single cup, which is rather large … about 14 ounces … and when it is ready, I set the machine up for my wife. This way, when she get’s up, all she has to do is push the button. That’s love, people.
Once I finally got connected to the Internet, I assumed that the coffee machine must be pretty close to finishing. It’s sad that our dial-up takes so long, but that’s the undying truth to the matter. Just in case, I began the process of checking out all of my favorite web sites, to obtain my sports news and stats, check the weather, and of course, my own personal author based web sites data. Now, surely the cup of coffee is complete and only awaiting the perfect amount of sugar and cream to be added and consumed with delight.
On that particular morning, I abandoned one particular web site and left the home office to retrieve my much anticipated cup of coffee. To my surprise, I heard another unfamiliar chug emanate from the machine as I approached it. What on earth could have slowed this process down, I wondered? Okay, the fact was, I knew it could probably stand to be de-scaled … you know … the old white vinegar and water treatment that cleans the sediments out of the insides of the machine. Aren’t those the exact same ingredients of a Massengill douche? Is that fact just odd to me? It was a fairly new coffee pot and, to my own chagrin, I realized neither of us has taken the time to exercise the important maintenance procedure in our quest to obtain the perfect cup of coffee on a daily basis.
I gathered that it was a little too early in the morning to start such a cumbersome task and promised myself that once my wife’s cup of coffee was brewed, later when she finally got up, that I will undertake the procedure personally.
As I grabbed my cup of coffee, I noticed despite the amount of water I had put in, the machine had not yielded it all back. Although the automatic shut-off switch was no longer illuminated, only a half of the cup was filled with coffee. I pondered putting some more water in the well after I lifted the cover to see if there was any left inside, and to my surprise there was none. Where did it go? Did it evaporate? Was that the foreign chugging sound I had heard the machine make just a few moments before? Had it steamed off the water that was supposed to go into my cup of coffee? I inspected the counter-top to ensure that I hadn’t actually spilled the water when pouring it into the well. As I noticed the dry surface of the counter, I realized that I was in denial that the coffee machine just needed a simple cleaning and resolved myself to my newly brewed cup of … espresso, I guess. No amount of sugar and cream would make this gourmet blend of coffee the perfect cup on that morning. It was too strong, obviously because the proper amount of water had not brewed and filtered through the heaping ¼ cup of grounds placed in the filter trap.
I like cappuccino, so I settled for the strong coffee that morning. As usual, before returning to the computer, I set up my wife’s cup so all she has to do is hit the start button when she decided to finally get up. Love, I say.
The coffee was pretty strong, but tolerable enough for me. I resolved in the fact that I would be making another cup later on to take on my commute to work and the machine will be de-scaled for that cup, therefore, it was not a complete loss.
I returned to the computer and browsed more sites and gathered more data and statistics. Soon my mind was finally submerged in thought and the coffee machine de-scaling became low on the thought process of things to do. That is, until I would take another sip of my coffee and grimace down the mouthful. Hey … it would wake me up proper, right, I tried to convince myself.
A little while later, my wife woke up. She stealthily approached me from behind, trying to adjust her sleepy eyes to the bright monitor of the computer and ensure that I was behaving myself on the Internet, and then she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and neck and placed her head next to mine for our first “good morning” kiss. Satisfied with the fact that I didn’t quickly close one window and was startled by her attack, I offered to get up and go push the button to the coffee machine. We have a joke … sort of. She tells me that I make a better cup of coffee than she does, so I tell her it’s all in the way I push the button. I’ve extended this joke to the way I stir the cream and sugar in the final product. Counter-clock wise for several swirls and then one final clock-wise stir to slow the whirlpool of hot coffee down. It’s the one clock-wise stir I insist to her is the flavor stir. I tell her and she smiles, certainly never buying into my theory.
I pushed the button to the coffee machine again and listened to it come to life and begin the process all over again for her cup. Returning to the home office, I kept a watchful ear out on the chugs and churns to make myself aware if she was going to endure the same problem I had earlier with mine. Much to my pleasure, when the cup was done brewing, the perfect amount of water had filtered through the machine and she now had a perfect cup of coffee sitting below the cone. Lucky her. I added her cream and sugar and did the whole counter-clock wise/clock-wise procedure, which produced yet another smile from her sleepy face and I handed her over the cup. She happily walked to the living room to sit on the couch with her coveted coffee mug and awaited for the caffeine to kick in.
I told her about my less than perfect cup of coffee and the fact that we needed to de-scale the machine. She told me the manual for the coffee maker was conveniently inside the cupboard right above it where we also keep the mugs, the grinder, and the coffee. To my horror, there were several procedures to de-scale the darn thing. It’s not rocket science. It’s repeating the same process over and over again and letting the machine cool down in between. I had to leave for work in just over an hour and now my second cup of coffee of the day had a threatened existence. I fervently began the process, but before I did, I decided to unplug the machine and run water through the well and just tip it back out in the sink.
Now, considering the title of this story, I’m sure the reader is just waiting to find out why I chose to call it what I did. You can imagine what I discovered when I tipped the machine full of water over. There, at the bottom of the sink was a large, black ant. The big ones that grow almost an inch long. He had been sitting on the bottom of the coffee maker well and I had mistaken him for some sludge of some sort since he had been boiled for God knows how long and how many times. He was dead, of course.
Suddenly, my mind screamed out. I must tell my wife to stop drinking her coffee and I’ll just make her a new cup! Then, the rational part of my brain spoke up. My wife is totally “bugged” out by bugs. Pun intended. She had certainly already had a few sips off of her morning coffee. And this ant is undoubtedly the cause of the machine acting up incorrectly when it brewed my cup earlier. Maybe the ant was trying to drink as much of the water as it could so it wouldn’t burn so badly. Who knows? Only the ant and maybe God and neither one of them were talking to me. Listen, J. I said to myself. If you tell your wife that you just discovered this ant inside the coffee machine, not only are you going to ruin her first cup of coffee of the day, she’s also not going to be able to enjoy the next one or the one after that. All she’s ever going to remember is that the machine was breached by a bug once and it will never leave her. And it’s not exactly like I was feeling any adverse effects from the ant. I felt okay. It’s not like the ant was crushed and ground up in the coffee grounds and then brewed. It was inside the fresh water well. So we weren’t exactly drinking ant-flavored Columbian coffee. We were drinking filtered ant-enhanced Columbian coffee.
Not telling my wife was a dilemma to me. She not only suggests that I be completely honest with her, she demands it. By not telling her about this grotesque discovery, I was lying to her. “Shut up” screamed the rational part of my brain. “You’re not lying! You’re simply omitting the truth! And think of the repercussions she’ll suffer with all of her future cups of coffee! By omitting this one minute detail, you’re actually saving her and she will be able to enjoy drinking coffee for many years to come!” He was right. Swallowing down a large lump of guilt, I decided to keep my mouth shut. I had drank the coffee. And I had felt fine.
I cleaned the large, black ant out of the sink with a paper towel and threw it in the trash. I then set up the de-scaling process of the machine and by the time I went to work, I had just about the best cup of coffee ready that the machine ever made. I did check the well after it brewed. Nothing. The perfect cup of ant-free Columbian coffee. Yumscilly!
Of course, since there is an ounce of grotesque humor in this tale, I decided to write it and in case you’re wondering, my wife reads everything I write. Therefore, this is more of a therapeutic confession to her for me then it is a humorous essay on rational behavior. So my secret won’t be secret for very long. Once she discovers this piece (and she will discover it because she finds everything!) she will confront me and ask me if this is true.
The dilemma, people … by writing this essay, I have forsaken my own choice to conceal the very thing I made a rational decision to hide from her. The quality of her future cups of coffee are now at stake and it’s all because of me and that stupid, lousy, suicidal ant. Of course, I can be satisfied with the fact that this took place a couple of weeks ago, so at least she was able to enjoy all those cups of coffee in between without wondering what other foreign objects may be filtering through our home brewed coffee. She will add a daily ritual of checking the coffee maker well to her obsessions. Not so bad, really.
Now, I am stuck on what to write about in my next essay. The mosquito and the spaghetti sauce, or the spider and the underwear drawer. Another confession and another dilemma are just waiting to unfold.
Jody L. Campbell
To Write or Not to Write … That is a Question?
August 5, 2008 at 9:58 am (authors, blogs, humor, writing) (authors, ice spiders, jody l. campbell, literary agents, mansquito, novel manuscripts, sci-fi channel, Season of the Sand Devil, traditional publishers)
Perhaps not as poetic as Shakespeare could have … would have eloquently written it … but I ain’t exactly William. The good lord knows I’m trying. Not to emulate William. To exemplify myself. I have no idea how many query letters this makes. How many rejection letters to counter our efforts. My wife is a driving force to be reckoned with and the labors of her hard work are merely squandered by the lack of empathy in this business. The business of writing. Writing for your life, if you will. Because when all is said and done … that’s what I’m really doing.
I must interrupt my thoughts for a moment to tell you all this. I’m online right now … I was going to say … write now, but I didn’t want anyone to think I typoed without it being on purpose. Come on … I have sperl chek. Anywell … whilst online and deciding to write about this in my blog … a familiar voice emitted from the speakers of the laptop announcing the fact that “I have mail.” It not only broke my concentration and made me ponder why in hell I even attempted to write while I was online … what was I thinking … obviously, I wasn’t! Hello … how ya doin’ nice to meet ya! Reluctantly, since my concentration was already broken, I opted to check the email and see who the hell had the gall to bother me while I was writing. Another agent query reply. Oh joy. Another rejection? Should I have just deleted it and saved myself the pain? I opened it … because for crying out loud Jiminy Cricket … you never frickin’ know! I read it. What? I rubbed my eyes and read it again. Did she just say she was interested? Come on. I read it again. And again. I was just about to give up all hope and I’m sure I’m not even near surface of what some other writers have endured before getting accepted. It’s just such a thankless industry. I read it again just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating from the heat index and the humidity. Gall darn … it’s in black and white. She said she’s interested. Somebody pinch me. Ouch! You know … I meant that figuratively … not literally. That frickin’ hurt! Let me read that one more time. OMG … she is … she really, really is. She wants me to snail mail her the stuff and I may have to wait several months. But … she’s interested.
What am I talking about? I assumed you understood. Sorry about that. I have written one book and appeared in two other anthologies. I want to be noticed by my peers as an author. I want to obtain the fruit of my labor. I don’t want to get filthy, stinking rich. It’s not like that. It’s just a little notoriety I’m looking for. Someone to read me and say … yeah … that was alright. He’s not bad. Maybe he’s not Stephen King … maybe he’s not Edgar Allen Poe … hell, I could use the opiates for something to write about lord knows, maybe he’s not Grisham, Rice, Benchley, Hemingway, Lovecraft, O. Henry, Straub, Koontz … but he’s got something. Maybe even if it’s a little something … he has a gift to entertain his audience. He has something to captivate his audience and make them feel the plight of the characters he chooses to write about. He has something. I don’t care how small it is. Do any of you watch the Sci-fi channel? No … this is not true confessions. I don’t really care for that matter. Truth is, I don’t watch that much. I watch Ghost Hunters and some reruns of the X-Files because I was a fan of it when it was on syndicated television. I actually envisioned Gillian Anderson to play the part of Rhonda Lary in my manuscript if they ever made a movie of it. Of course, if you tell her this, I will deny it through my teeth in a state of star-struck awe. But … anyway … the movies they make on there. Is it me? Are there some people out there truly entertained by the movie Mansquito? Half man, half mosquito, all blood sucker. Are you serious? Just the trailer to this movie was bad! Is there someone out there in this world that actually watched that movie and are hoping for a sequel?
Really? People. I got some bad news for you. If you’re one of the ones sitting at home that I just described … half man and half mosquito shouldn’t be sucking anything. First of all, female mosquitoes are the blood suckers of the species. So to be politically correct, the title of the movie should have been Womansquito, not mansquito. The male mosquito simply supplies the sperm to the females who then require a meal of blood to develop the eggs. Male mosquitoes simply eat-slash-drink nectar from flowers and inseminate the female species . Ohhhh … now that’s scary! Maybe if I’m a frickin’ tulip or a daisy! I didn’t watch the movie. I saw the trailer and said to myself … the only thing worse than them making a movie about something this stupid are the people that actually watch it and think it was kinda good. The ones that can’t wait for “The Return of Mansquito.” And then it wasn’t long after this … I saw the trailer for another movie on Sci-fi channel. Now wait a minute before you go accusing me of spending all my time on this channel to begin with. I don’t … and my wife will vow testament to that. I told you the shows I watch on there … and they happen to have commercials … but this trailer I actually saw on “The Best Week Ever” or “The Soup” and they made fun of this movie and exploited the fact that not only was it on the Sci-fi channel, but it was also written by the same guy that wrote … yep … you guessed it … Mansquito. It was called Ice Spiders and it was about giant florescent green spiders that attacked a community of skiers on the slopes of a ski resort. Hey … if this is what you people want … I can write that stuff. I just happen to choose something that I think would be a little more … shall we dare say … entertaining to the mass populous.
So I write these stories and I write these blog entries and I feed-slash-suck off the nectar of my feedback from my friends and my family and I strive to become better at what I do. I belong to Internet writing-slash-author communities where we can all go on and review and rave and bash each others work and say it’s because we want to be better at what we do … and blah, blah, frickin’ blah. No one wants to hear the story they just sat down and wrote sucks. No one. I don’t care who the frig you are. On the flip side of that, people … no one wants to hear that everything they write is “awesome” or “good” or “great.” We all need areas of improvement and when you send out your material to only your friends and family … because they’re the only ones you don’t seem to have to hold a gun to their heads to get to read it … although I have to email them all every now and then and remind them that I have a web site and I’m a writer and I’d appreciate it if they’d read it or I’ll go get my gun … you’re going to get a more partial and biased review than you are if you send it out for an unbiased and neutral community of self-proclaimed writers and authors to review. Some of them may feel challenged by your stuff. Some of them may offer some inspirational advice. Some of them may sabotage your work because they think they’re better than you. Maybe they are. But that wasn’t the reason I put it out there to be reviewed. Nor was that the reason they put their own work out there. It’s just the way they are and maybe the fact that they were not breastfed as infants. I don’t really know all about that nor do I care. I just want to write and be noticed. So instead of the self-publishing avenue this time, I have written a full length manuscript entitled Season of the Sand Devil and I think it’s good enough to be made into a movie that Sci-fi channel could finally be proud to show on their network. I am seeking representation from an agent for this manuscript to get it published by a traditional publishing house.
Can I write? I don’t know. I love to write. That’s what I know. I can type fast like a son-of-a-gun and I don’t even do it the right way and my wife is still envious of how fast I can type. She took all those classes and has worked in the administration field. My typing experience comes from one simple personal typing class in high school and writing on a typewriter, then word processor, and now a computer my whole life. I have a broken right hand for crying out loud and my fingers are a bit gnarled and I can still type pretty darn fast. Typing fast doesn’t make you a good writer. I realize this. What comes from the typing defines whether you have the talent to entertain people or not. Most people that have read me … friends, family, and even the Internet writing communities, all say that I inhibit this talent. Maybe I’m not the greatest. Certainly not the kind of writer that will have a Pulitzer Prize on his mantle. I’m okay with that. But, I’m not the worst writer, either. To give the guy that not only wrote Mansquito another opportunity to go out and write Ice Spiders and then make movies of both his ideas has this insidious way of mocking me. I don’t want to take anything away from this guy. But he’s had two movies made of his writing. (that I know of) I’d give me eye teeth to see my stuff on any channel with the opportunity to finally get noticed for what I am striving to be. A writer. Should I write or should I go? If I write it could mean trouble … if I don’t … it could be … double. Don’t sue me The Clash. I couldn’t help myself and hey … you just got some free advertising because anyone that knows that song of yours has it ringing in their head for the rest of the day, so bite me and you’re welcome.
Is it a miracle that when I sat down to write this, my intention was to express my frustration in this industry, trying to get an agent to represent me to finally notice me … and before I was done writing my first paragraph, I actually had one say via email … they were interested? I don’t know. What are the odds? I don’t really believe in miracles. I believe in hard work and ethics paying dividends. Just because she said she was interested doesn’t mean I’m in. I have a coupla other irons in the fire and lord knows we have a plethora of unreplied queries on the back burner simmering. Hopefully, anyway. If you know me and you love me … clap you hands … no wait … that wasn’t what I was going to say … so much for The Clash song tinkling around in my head … I was going to say … keep your fingers crossed for me. I need some inspiration in this industry right now. It does a body good. Maybe not a body, but a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Unless you’re Edgar Allen Poe and can write under the influence of opiates and pull it off successfully. Now … if you’d all excuse me … I have to go plagiarize the sequel to Mansquito … so I can get frickin’ noticed!
Jody L. Campbell
