Insane Earthlings

The assignment from my first day of Freshman Composition was so easy I couldn’t believe it. Ha! This was college? I thought college was supposed to be difficult. The teacher had said to write a paragraph. Paragraphs were my strength. Just write five or six sentences, throw in some big words, and maybe even get fancy with some poetic devices, instant B+. And even more unbelievable she had said we could write about any topic. In high school I had to fight tooth and nail with my teacher for her to allow me to write my research paper on American poets about Jim Morrison.   I was so excited. College was way better than high school. I went back to my room and quickly dispatched with scrawling out several sentences comparing eighties heavy metal to protest songs from the sixties. I was writing about Rock and Roll and the professor was going to be blown away. Hell, since I would turn it in on time, it would be an easy A! I eagerly delivered it to her mailbox. Everyone had al...

Glassy. That’s the kind of water we wanted to ski on. My friends and I were teenagers and lived on a lake with miles of shoreline. Hundreds of long fingers of water that led to other fingers. We could wait until the weekenders had winched their boats onto trailers and headed back to the city. The choppiness of the water created by the criss-crossing wakes of frenzied part-time boaters would dissipate faster than you might think. The lake was soothing and healing itself just as we would cut a seam straight down its middle. The best coves were hidden deep into long channels and around a bend, invisible behind thick tree lines that covered the shoreline. The mirror-like surface would come into view. We throttled back, killed the engine, and drifted. I absorbed the quiet. The perfect surface tension resembled solid ice. On top of the water, the ski made a skittering sound across the white water being churned by the propeller. The wake opened into a V shape on either side. I ...

Oh, say can you see With perspective and light How profoundly we failed At the morning’s first gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars Gave the slaveholders’ right O’er the oppressed while we watched Via Facebook live streaming? And the bullets’ blue glare Lives vanishing in air Gave proof by the night That our flag was still there Oh, say will that star spangled banner yet wave O’er equality All free and all brave? Copyright filed 9/25/2016

I'm just imagining a scene. I'm sitting in my car in front of my house reading a book and waiting for my daughter to get home. I may or may not have a gun in my car. It would make no difference. The police would wave as they drove by. I'm white and in a middle class neighborhood. They are here for crime prevention, not crime fighting. But if I let my imagination go a little further, I can see some other scenarios. Let's say I suffered lingering effects from a traumatic brain  injury. I had just taken my medicine that makes me a little despondent. Some police drive by on their way to serve a warrant on someone that lives up the street. They think that I seem strange. They think that I might have a gun. They call for back-up. As back-up arrives, my wife walks out of the door and yells to the police that I have a TBI and had just taken my medication. I can clearly see in my mind just how one officer would fall back and respectfully approach my wife. He would ask for more i...

Thomas was never on time for work. There were days when he would call in to say he was running late, and then never actually make it in. And as time went on, there were days when he did not call or show up for work at all. I was the Director of Manufacturing at the medical device plant where Thomas was employed. I know what you are thinking. And believe me, everyone who worked at the company was thinking the same thing.  Thomas should be fired.  But none of us wanted to do it. His absenteeism became chronic. He started making up excuses for why he was late or why he had missed the last day or three days. Or the last two weeks. There were times that he missed work for so long that we assumed he had quit. Then he would show up with some cockamamie story about why he had not been able to make it or get in touch. We should have fired him by every reasonable and objective measure. But we didn’t. Thomas was a nice guy. I know that sounds lame. He was nic...