Fisher of Words

I am a fisher of words,

Casting my net for fresh phrases,

Baiting a line,

Snagging a rhyme,

And hoping my writing amazes.

I am a sower of notion

Into the fields of commotion,

Planting a thought,

Weeding the rot,

And reaping what I set in motion.

I am a victim of edit,

Giving my words little credit.

Adverbs be wary,

Pronouns don’t tarry, 
If I share my mistakes, I’ll regret it.

Keeping Up

The mysteries of computer profiling baffle me. How is it that accidentally passing the cursor over a hair product now clogs my screen with advertisements for every means of straightening, curling, moisturizing, growing, and glowing my hair? Computer ads are the techno version of those annoying inserts that constantly fall out when I read a magazine. Or the telemarketer that calls at 5:30 every night as we sit down to supper.

According to the pop-up ads on my computer, fifty-three men from Burlington, NC, are searching for a woman just like me. That sounds suspiciously like a posse or an angry mob. I’ve considered hiring some personal security, but the ads say someone like me. Maybe there is another menopausal, middle-aged, married woman with four kids this band of marauders is seeking. Out there is someone just like me who is on the lamb, hunted by a posse of eligible bachelors. I hope when they find her, they treat her humanely. I know it’s not me these masculine hotties are searching for because, according to my email spam box, I can easily enhance my male parts by three inches. I can’t imagine those fifty-three Burlington men want to tangle with that hormone-testosterone concoction.

It could be my recent Google search of Angela Landsbury that sent me on this spiraling vortex of eligible bachelor pop-ups and male body part enhancements. I’ve seen her early work on Turner Classic Movies and she was not always the prim and proper Jessica Fletcher. I should check to see if there is an Angela Landsbury fan club where like-minded Murder She Wrote fans can gather. Maybe that is where my fifty-three man posse is hanging out in wait for my next cursor click.

I’ve also been researching serial killers for a class presentation, but no related pop-ups or solicitations have appeared on my screen or in my spam box. That seems a bit bias to me. What in my search profile is so domestically dull that it overrides serial killer related pop-ups?

Which brings me to another irrational pondering – I am sure that the powers that be are using my computer’s built-in camera to spy on me. The majority of my activities in front of the computer are mundane - using the reflective surfaces to check for stray nose hairs, sharing online pet videos with my dogs, retrieving bagel crumbs from my cleavage, using spittle to clean sneeze splatter off the screen - you know, normal stuff. But there is, on occasion, a moment of brilliance that I believe is then exploited to line the pockets of the already wealthy.

For instance, single-serve cottage cheese with a side of fruit…that’s me. Smuckers strawberry jam with a spoonful of small curd cottage cheese is totally my late night snack. And that stick Starbucks puts in their to-go cup lids so your drink doesn’t bubble out the hole as you walk to the car…me again. It was an invention of necessity that I affectionately call the stupid stick because every time I order a delicious hot beverage, I inevitably spill it out that tiny, little hole in the lid and chastise myself: “Stupid!”

For fun I’m considering conducting random searches on nonsensical topics, like “proportion of moose attacks in correlation to beehive hairdos.” Maybe I should ask my fifty-three bachelors if they would care to join me in this venture. Or are these just the ramblings of a bored, menopausal, middle-aged, married woman with four kids? I think not.

Houseboat Horror

Grandma Stewart had a flare for the dramatic. It most likely began as a coping mechanism to mentally escape a house full of kids upstairs and hungry diners in the family restaurant downstairs. Eventually her children (and her husband) left the upstairs and the restaurant closed its doors downstairs. Left alone, Grandma’s flare grew into a quirk and eventually developed into a full-blown case of reality separation. But in the early days, when it was still a flare, she would use its power to keep youngsters in line.

Grandma and Grandpa’s houseboat was legendary in Quincy, Ohio. Grandpa built a wooden cabin with a flat roof that served as a sun deck and placed it atop a metal barge he had welders make from scrap metal. (He also built the restaurant, an airplane, an airport, and countless other projects that were enjoyed by multiple generations of Quincy residents.) Sometime in the late 1950s he successfully launched his floating masterpiece onto the Great Miami River just above the Quincy dam. Painted a bright white with blue and red trim, it festively bobbed for the next 40 years before being permanently dry-docked on the river’s banks. Most Quincyite memories include at least one summer ride on the houseboat.

Grandchildren had the privilege of unlimited access to the houseboat. We would climb its ladders to battle pirates on the sundeck or host elegant teas for the queen in the kitchenette. And on very special occasions, such as birthdays, summer holidays, and lunar eclipses, we would sleep on the houseboat.

The special occasion escapes my remembering of the sleepover that featured Grandma’s dramatic flair. Grandma tucked us into our bunk beds for the night, and, as a special treat, she loosened the pier rope so we could rock to sleep with the current in the middle of the river and still be securely tethered to the dock. In hindsight, it may have also been a way to thwart any escape efforts.

If Grandpa’s talent was crafting grown-up toys for boys, Grandma’s talent was crafting tales. She could effortlessly stir a spoonful of fiction into a bowl of reality until a story was perfectly blended. And then she would spice it up with a personal anecdote that left our young brains believing everything exciting in the world happened within walking distance of Quincy. For our sleepover, she treated us to her version of Lizzie Bordon as told with Grandma flair.

“How about a bedtime story?” she asked, not really caring if we answered. “There once was a girl who decided she didn’t like her parents. So she killed them. But she didn’t just kill them. Nope. She killed them with an axe. According to the newspaper, she hit them with the axe over and over again until you couldn’t even recognize them.” She then went into her own melodic rendition of Lizzie Bordon had an axe. She gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.

Now there was only one newspaper that my grandma read and that was the Bellefontaine Examiner, a local newspaper that served all the small towns in the county. Since Grandma was selectively omitting certain facts - like the Bordon family lived five states away 100 years ago - it was a short leap for my young brain to surmise that Grandma read about some local girl axing her parents last weekend. And that summation was happening even before she added Grandma flair. 

"They never found Lizzie. She disappeared. Some people think that she got on a raft and started floating down the river." Grandma sighed and settled into her mattress. Her breathing grew heavy and she let loose a couple of guttural snorts, preluding the eight hours of snoring that lay ahead. In a soft, dreamy voice before drifting off to sleep, she added, "Did you kids know that all waterways in this part of the country are connected? Yep, Lizzie could be floating by right now." And then she snored herself into a deep contented sleep.

Child Abandonment

I eavesdropped on the following conversation in a local coffee shop:

My mom sang in the choir and Dad was a last-pew, recovering Baptist. His job was to keep me quiet for the entire service. I was a little tyke and one Sunday I fell asleep under the pew. Momma and Daddy were half-way home before they realized I wasn’t in the car, so they turned around and came back for me. I was still sound asleep under the pew. Momma wanted to wake me, but Daddy said “Nah, just let him sleep.”

There’s a shade of narcissism in me that makes me want to drop my cloak of invisibility when I am eavesdropping and share my own tales with complete strangers. My introverted inner nemesis quickly puts the kibosh on that idea and that is why I blog my narcissistic ponderings instead. Isn’t that why blogs were created?

I, too, have left a child behind. She’s recovered beautifully and rarely has episodes of abandonment paranoia, but the nugget of guilt still scars my otherwise flawless mothering career. If she were more of a conniving personality, she could easily use the incident for material gain – designer clothing, a new car, perhaps a pink pony. Fortunately for me, her sister was also there, so I can push some of the blame onto her and emotionally damage both of them. It’s parenting BOGO.

It was a late night volleyball practice. Brittany was playing, I was coaching, and 3-year old Jessica was fighting cockroaches for Friday night’s spilled popcorn and Milk Duds under the bleachers. After putting the equipment away, flipping off the lights and double checking that all the doors were locked, Brittany and I were a couple miles down the road before she said “Wasn’t Jessica with us?” My initial reaction was “No. I don’t think so” immediately followed by fist to the gut panic.

With squealing tires, I General Lee'd my Astro minivan on a narrow country road and floored it back to the school. With the two front wheels planted on the memorial brick path that leads to the gym entrance, I barely had the vehicle in park before Brittany and I flew out of the van and ran to the glass doors, banging and screaming at the top of our lungs, praying someone was on late night duty. After an eternal two-minutes, a very confused maintenance man came to the door.

“What you want?” he shouted through the glass.

“I forgot my daughter. I left her in the gym.”

It was obvious he was contemplating which authorities to call. If I were lying, he should call the cops and a paddy wagon. If I were telling the truth, he should call the cops and children’s services. Either way, he probably should have called the cops. But he didn’t. Instead, he disengaged the alarm, flipped through his thirty-seven keys and, finally, mercifully, opened the door. I pushed past him and rushed into the dark gym.

Sitting contentedly in the center of the painted Indian mascot on the gym floor lit only by the red glow of the exit signs was Jessica, cheerfully singing television commercial jingles. Brittany and I gathered her up, showering her with kisses and apologies. “It’s ok, Mommy. I knew you would come back.”

From the doorway, the maintenance man coughed and chuckled “Five more minutes and I wouldn’t’ve been here.” He shook his head. “Yep. Would’ve locked up and she woulda been sitting there all night.”

I often share this story at social gatherings that specialize in awkward silences and those little cocktail weenies soaked in barbecue sauce and each time I share it, someone will chime in with their lost, forgotten, or abandoned child story. Once we have bared our souls, we’ll smile knowingly at each other, for we are part of a very exclusive level of bad parenting.

I'm On Vacation

“Have you listened to your tapes?”

“No, I’m on vacation.”

“You’re never going to believe what I got from the Durham house. I’m sending you the audio file. Let me know what you hear.”

“What time is it? Jeesh, J, it’s like midnight. Ok, I’ll listen to the file in the morning.” I climbed back in bed, but of course I couldn’t sleep. J is not the excitable type, so this must be a really good EVP.

Instead of sleeping, I fired up my computer, connected to the internet, opened my emails, and downloaded J’s audio file. Slipping on my headsets so I wouldn’t disturb Tony – and to drown out his snoring – I fast-forwarded to the spot J had marked, leaned my head back against the headboard and closed my eyes in a comfortable, semi-conscious, on-vacation state of being.

And then I jolted upright, fully awake.

It was the second time our team had been called to the Durham location. The house is a new build, designed by the current owners. It sits at the end of a dirt road on a couple of acres. Other new homes are visible from the front porch and the back of the property gently slopes towards adjacent woods that eventually lead to Jordan Lake. A few hundred yards into the woods is an ancient log cabin that, from the looks of it, had been converted into an animal pen at some point. There is also a wrecked DeSoto rusting nearby.

Our first investigation yielded nothing conclusive, but the wife insisted something was targeting her. So we returned to the house to see if we had overlooked anything. J and I positioned ourselves in the basement, while other team members remained upstairs in the kitchen and the son’s bedroom.

Among other claims, a long-term houseguest staying in the basement said he was awoken by a dark mass that hovered over him menacingly before moving across the room and disappearing into a wall. When the dark mass appeared to him a second time, he moved out of the house.

The audio J sent me captures he and I chatting about the homeowner’s progress in building an aquarium bar, our opinions on new equipment, and a healthy dose of skepticism about the likelihood of a new house being haunted. Noises from above caught our attention and so I headed upstairs to see who was moving around.

While I was gone, J proceeded to run through the standard “If there is anyone here who would like to talk…” series of questions. On J’s audio you can hear me coming back down the steps and announcing my presence. Within the same breath of me finishing my comment, the most menacing, frightful voice I have ever heard clearly proclaims:

 I will kill you, bitch.

And that is what jolted me out of vacation mode in the middle of the night. I jumped out of bed and excitedly dug through my bags to retrieve my recorder so I could matchup the timeline with J’s to see if I had captured anything.

“What are you doing?” My burst of activity had roused Tony ‘Snoreman,’ who was now sitting up in bed looking like a man married to a crazy woman.

“You gotta hear this.” Plopping the headphones on his drowsy, tousled head, I cued the sound bite and hit play. I didn’t even need to ask him if he heard it; the expression on his face told me exactly when he reached the part with the menacing I will kill you, bitch.

He tossed the headphones onto the bed. “How do you sleep at night?”

Obviously from my current flutter of activity, not very well. Despite his insistence that I go back to sleep, I continued digging through my bags and promised to move into the living room as soon as I found my recorder so I wouldn’t disturb him.

“Who was with you on the investigation?” he asked drowsily.

“J and Jim and Steve. The usual. Why?”

With a snort, he rolled over, pulled the covers up to his shoulders and mumbled, “That means, you’re the bitch.”