Boxes

Knuckles thought he had it all figured out—finally, the cure for a broken heart. It required a touch of anger, as he sealed his thoughts of her inside a box. He then imagined himself placing the box inside another, and secured it with a big rusty lock, in which he broke off an imaginary key.

Each time he sensed memories of her surfacing; he would toss the box inside another—layer after layer—and seal them all, sometimes with a blowtorch.

When the boxes were not enough, he carried them to the ocean and threw them into the water. When the boxes floated, he sealed them inside a safe, broke the combination, and watched it sink to the ocean floor. Memories, like bubbles would rise to the surface, and Knuckles imagined himself adding more layers around his box of memories. Nothing can escape, insisted Knuckles; not until this pain is gone.

Then, in a moment of silence, an angel whispered, “Which is better to harbor within thy heart? Pain, or anger?"

Gullible

I was a gullible little boy, sitting next to the coolest guy in my fifth grade class. Sometimes he took cheap shots at me; commenting on my raggedy shoes, or the clothes I had worn for the second time in one week. His timing was always perfect, and he only teased me when he had an audience.

One day, after one of his verbal jabs, I scanned him for discrepancies. His shoes were in style; with bellbottoms, a silk shirt, and Afro. Then I noticed that his fingernails had little white streaks. It looked odd to me, and I thought it was my one shot to get even with him.

“Well,” I said, “at least I don’t have white marks on my fingernails.”

He laughed at me, and then fired back. “These marks tell you how many girls like me!” he said, “How many do you have?”

A cloud then hovered above me, as I discreetly studied my nails for marks and found none.

Bad Hiding Places

It would be my last time to play hide-and-seek. It began with us sitting on the bench outside the Laundromat, Richard, Tyron, and me. We were bored, and waiting for Tyron’s clothes to finish. I don’t recall whose idea it was. One moment we were watching the cars go by, and the next, Richard and I were looking for a place to hide while Tyron counted.

Something compelled me to look inside the Laundromat while I counted inside my head, fifteen…sixteen…seventeen. When my time was nearly up, I noticed that the door to one of the large dryers was open. Tyron will never find me in there, I thought. “Nineteen! Twenty! Ready or not, here I come!” Tyron yelled as I closed the door behind me.

The dryer immediately turned me upside down and dropped me on my head, flipping me repeatedly while punching me all over with its steel ridges, designed to toss clothes. It was blasting me with heat the entire time, and then it delivered a hard jab to my ribcage, knocking out what was left of my air. Yelling did not occur to me, only disorientation and wanting to get out.

Between the stars, flashing lights, and falling clothes, I caught glimpses of the round window, turning while I took my beating. Then the door opened. Tyron had heard the machine tossing me around. It threw me out, and I fell hard to the floor. It was still a relief to be outside.

“You’re it!” yelled Tyron, laughing.

Why I Call Them Fire Ants

Growing up, I was always scheming up new ways to get rid of the fire ants in our front yard. Then—in the wintertime, while they remained inside their anthills eating the foods they had gathered all summer—I would somehow miss them. Springtime would return, and our bouts would begin again.

Round one went to the ants when I was five years old, sitting and playing near their anthill while countless numbers of them crawled inside my clothes. They waited until I stood up to leave before they began stinging me in unison. That began our rivalry, and over the coming years, many of my attempts at revenge would backfire.

There was the time one of them snuck inside my trousers while I was using a magnifying glass on their anthill. It climbed up to my inner thigh before striking. There was also the time I mixed every toxic liquid I could find inside the house: ammonia, Clorox, Lysol, rubbing alcohol, etc. I intended to pour it inside the anthill, but first, my curiosity wanted to know how it smelled. When I leaned over the toxic mix to take a whiff, before I could inhale, invisible vapors rushed into my nostrils and sucked all the air from my lungs. Desperate, ran around the room trying to inhale, but there was no air. Then I ran outside, walking in circles around the front yard. There was a cool breeze against my face and chest, but still no air for my lungs. I thought I was going to die. Then, near the end of my battle, my lungs; my tired lungs found a short painful breath; one after the other, and soon I was able to breathe again. The narrow escape temporally took away my desire to bout with the ants and I poured out the toxic mix.

I was twelve when the ants and I had our last bout. It was summertime, and the grass in our front yard was dry. I figured that gasoline and a match would do a lot of damage—to the anthill. They swarmed when I poured gasoline over their bed. Then I sat the can beside me. It didn’t occur to me to close the gas cap before striking a match. It also didn’t occur to me to note the tiny trickle of gasoline leading from the anthill to the gas can.

The moment I touched the lit match to the anthill, the gasoline canister erupted in flames. I then panicked and started kicking the gas can away from the fire, not realizing that flaming fuel was spilling out with each kick. I was nearly twenty feet away from the anthill when I turned around and saw that half our front yard was in flames.

My parents were away, so while I stumped at flames, I yelled for my brother and sisters. They came rushing outside moments later and helped me put out the flames, leaving eighty percent of the front yard charred black.

“Man you’re gonna get it,” said Richard, “I’m glad I’m not you.” He is right, I thought to myself, looking out at the yard. The fire ants were still swarming the anthill, over and around the ones that the flames had killed, while I thought for a solution. Then I convinced my siblings to help me collect green grass from the backyard to spread over the burnt areas. After nearly two hours of plucking and transferring, the yard was still ugly; and nothing was going to get rid of the charred smell. The best I could hope for was that Daddy would arrive home after dark.

I got lucky, and Daddy arrived home late that evening. He didn’t notice the burnt grass until the next day. Then, to my surprise, he didn’t make a big deal about it when I told him what happened. As for the fire ants, we called it a draw.

Betrayal

In this dream, I'm narrating, as, on a sunny day, a small group of teenagers and their high school science teacher are walking through a peaceful meadow. Up ahead, the teacher notices a beehive. It stands approximately 7 feet tall and resembles a building. The teacher is excited, rushing over to the hive as the students follow behind him.

“Wow!” the teacher says, “This is really cool.” He touches the hive, as the busy bees move about, unconcerned by their excited visitors. The bees have never seen a man before, so they have no fear. Neither has a man ever seen such bees, as fat as strawberries and as tame as kittens.

The teacher picks up one of the bees, allowing it to play on his palm; but he is concerned that it will sting him. The teacher then thoughtlessly turns the trusting bee upside down, exposing its thin black stinger. Then he plucks out the stinger and allows the puzzled bee to fall to the grass.

Betrayed, the plump bee springs into the air and flies back to its hive. Within three seconds, the entire colony of once friendly bees then swarm up from the top of the hive like a tornado and then angrily rain down on the teacher and his students, furiously stinging them as they run frantically through the once peaceful meadow.

The Attic Window

One day, a fellow Marine named Shaffer shared a story with me. It was something he had seen as a young boy. According to Shaffer, Miss Jones was an elderly woman who lived near him and had a reputation for being eccentric. She lived alone in her large house and could sometimes be seen from the street, peering out from her attic window at passers-by.

When Miss Jones passed away, rumors soon began to spread among the neighborhood kids that her house was haunted. One afternoon, months after Miss Jones had passed away, Shaffer and four of his friends were gathered in the street in front of her house. The doors and windows were partially boarded up, and the louvered attic window was in clear view. “That’s where her ghost is,” said one of the boys. “She's probably watching us right now.”

They looked over at the window as Shaffer laughed, “You sissies! There’s no such thing as ghosts!” Opinions were then tossed back and forth until Shaffer finally announced that he would prove it by entering the house. The four boys agreed to accompany him. They entered the yard, went around to the back, and pulled boards way from the kitchen door to gain access.

Inside, they made their way through the kitchen, and through the living room which was crowded with sheet-covered furniture. Up the stairs, they found a rope that when pulled would lower steps that led up into the attic. They climbed the steps and were soon standing in a dark attic, dusty and filled with cobwebbed boxes of whatnots, where beyond sat the old rocking chair at the louvered window.

“See! I told you!” one boy announced, “That’s her rocking chair.” Motionless, it sat where Miss Jones had left it, shrouded by shadows, cobwebs, and streaks of sunlight that peek in through the window.

“So!” said Shaffer, “That’s doesn’t prove anything. There’s nothing up here.”

They soon began looking through some of the boxes and drawers. One of the boys even moved the rocking chair away from the window so he could see outside. After twenty minutes or so, they became bored and went back out to the street. That’s where Shaffer reminded them that they were a bunch of sissies.

“Since you’re so tough, let’s see you go in there at night,” one boy said. Without hesitation, Shaffer said that he would go there anytime; day or night—and they agreed to meet in front of the house at ten o’clock that evening.

That night, no one would volunteer to accompany Shaffer inside the house. Its electricity had been turned off so there would be no lights. It looked spooky even to Shaffer, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

“There’s no way I’m going in there,” one boy said, looking up at the window. The four boys agreed to wait in the street. Shaffer would prove himself by waving at them from the attic window. The window was illuminated by a full moon and striped with shadows from a nearby tree.

The boys watched as Shaffer entered the yard and disappeared into the darkness. Shaffer found the boards still pulled away from the backdoor and he made his way inside. That was stupid of me, he thought Shaffer, realizing that he had forgotten to bring a flashlight. Luckily, some moonlight peeked in through the boarded windows, through the cracks, enough that Shaffer was able to make his way through the shadows, up the stairs, and to the base of the attic.

He pulled on the rope which lowered the steps that led into the attic. His anxiety thickened as he climbed, and then peeked inside, scanning the darkness for nothing in particular, as dust particles floated on the moonbeams that poured in through the louvered window. Let me get this over with, he thought to himself, stepping fully into the attic. He paused to gather his senses; then began creeping towards the window. Something was wrong; he halted in his tracks, scanning more intently. The chair had been placed back in front of the window.

He tried to calm himself with the notion that someone was possibly playing a trick on him, but it didn’t work. He scanned the room once more, and then looked back at the chair. It had a high back, and it was facing away from him, outwards towards the window. He took another step, tilting his head to the right for a better angle—not wanting to believe that someone was there. Then, no sooner than he thought it, someone stood up from the chair and turned towards him.

His mind went blank, staring at the figure as it began to creep toward him. It was an elderly woman, and her face showed no emotion. Her eyes stared into Shaffer’s eyes, coaxing him not to run as she inched even closer. For a moment, Shaffer was in a trance. He then came to his senses.

The moment he thought about running, the woman’s expression turned angry. It was as if she knew that he would try to run, so she attempted to get between him and the exit. Shaffer was out of his mind with terror, darting as fast as he could, so quickly that he stumbled and fell down the hatch.

His body crashed hard into the floor below; then he continued running, stumbling, tripped and falling down the stairs. When he landed at the bottom, he quickly spun around, expecting the ghostly figure to be there.

The woman was standing at the top of the stairway, peering down at him. She didn’t come down after him, but it didn’t matter to Shaffer. He quickly shook off the fall and continued running towards the kitchen, crashing out the backdoor, convinced that the woman was right behind him. He fell out onto the porch, sprung up and ran around to the street where his friends were waiting. None of them believed his story—but as he told the story to me, there was a tear in his eye.

The Sweetest Ride

When I was twelve, Stephan was one of my best friends, though we sometimes had our difficulties. I don’t remember what it was he said. It had something to do with my bike, and I was offended. Stephan sugarcoated nothing. In fact, sometimes he could be downright abrasive, blurting it out with his hands on his hips.

“Well,” I said to him, “Since you have a problem with my bike, you’ll never ride it again.”

“Fine,” he answered back, “I don’t like your ugly bike anyway.”

Over the next few months, Stephan and I remained friends. We hung out together all the time, but my bike stayed off-limits to him. Some days he would test the waters. He would watch as I allowed other boys to ride. Then, when he thought I was in a good mood, he would ask for a ride. My answer was always, "No."

Sometimes the other boys would ask what was going on. Neither Stephan nor I ever told them. In fact, I had forgotten what Stephan initially said to offend me. All that mattered was that I had given my word, and I was standing my ground, whether it was rational or not. Stephan, however, continued to pick happy moments to ask his question.

“Can I ride your bike?” His question was always the same. So was my answer.

“No.” Then we would continue playing.

One day, several of us were jumping ramps in front of Stephan’s yard, nearly six months had passed since I had announced my bike off-limits to him—and he hadn’t asked his question in almost two months. He approached me in the middle of the laughter.

“Can I ride your bike?”

“Yes,” I answered.

He did a double take. “Did you say, yes?”

“Yes,” I said.

The biggest smile came across his face as he ran over to the boy who was sitting on my bike.

“Junior said I could ride!” Stephan announced, excited. Indeed, my bike was ugly; but it was a big deal to Stephan. I watched him as he climbed on and started riding. He rode that raggedy bike as if it was the best ride of his life, sitting high in the seat and smiling the entire time.

Sanctuary Revisited

I was twelve when I first began to practice meditation. It was my private way of relaxing. I imagined myself on a secluded tropical beach, barefoot, and walking across the sands. The crystal blue ocean was calm, and on its surface, amid shimmering sky-born lights, were reflections of distant places old and new. The sands gently massaged the soles of my feet, and as I entered the waters, they sank from warm to moist. Its waves lapped against my ankles, as slanted sunrays rested across my chest. My legs and thighs committed to the waters as I softly inhaled heavens mist. Then I submerged. Underneath the waters’ blanket, I had left all my earthly concerns behind. The perfectly warm waters gradually cooled as my body fell to deeper depths. They were still the perfect temperature when I found—against the seawall—the entrance to secret caverns. I entered them, where I found magical underground shores, more tranquil than those above. There, I had found my sanctuary

Even as they Smile, Even as they Cry

Knuckles ponder, “Perhaps I don’t deserve happiness.” He believes that his purpose is to suffer; and that he might as well accept his misery with a big fake grin. He smiles invisibly, as inside he embraces his most loyal companion – pain. Adversary or friend, Knuckles wonder if pain is intelligent. That if Knuckles becomes content to suffer, would pain then become his friend. Would they share secrets and laugh at the misfortunes of others? Would pain eventually lower its guard that Knuckles might sneak away; or would pain keep an ever-watchful eye, even as they smile, even as they cry.

Hmm, Thinking...

The remarkably talented Melanie, and Jennifer have nominated my blog as a Thinking blog.

I am both honored and flattered - and I would like to pass this honor on to three people that have inspired me.

1. Susan is an incredible writer, versatile and highly creative. It was Susan who first encouraged me to begin writing a blog; and she has inspired me every since.
2. Mella is one of the most talented writers I have known. Visit her page and see for yourself. Her work speaks for its self.
3. Cath is a writing machine; and I am amazed each time I visit her page, at how diligent and creative she is.

Thank you again, Melanie.

Crocodile Tears

One day, my cousin John and I were goofing around in the backseat of the car while our grandfather drove. I was ten years old, while John was a chubby eight. “Shut up!” Granddaddy suddenly barked, “And stop moving around back there!” I could tell that he was serious, but John giggled in mischief. “I said shut up!” Granddaddy warned once more, “Or I’ll give you a backhand knuckle-slap in the mouth!” John finally got the message and tried to behave. “Hmm,” I thought to myself, “I’ve never seen a backhand knuckle slap before.” Then I silently reached over and took some of John’s thigh between my index finger and thumb, pinching him as hard as I could, twisting and meanly digging my fingers into him. John tried to push my hand away, but I was too strong. Finally, he cried out; but before he could finish the first note, granddaddy -without looking- swung backwards and gave John a hard backhand-knuckle slap in the mouth. “I told you to shut up!” granddaddy yelled. John cried, holding his mouth as if he had lost a tooth, while I silently had a hard belly laugh, so hard that tears rolled down my cheeks.

Nemesis

From where rest I have sought, came rejection, “I shall teach ye suffering; not in words, but in deeds. All, and as bitter tea ye shall absorb.” Where I would resist, circumstances insist, “You will learn, one way or another; and that I no longer care; your past, your present, and your future; it matters not what ye do here.” Where I would beseech, deafness greets my charge, “Ye not swift of wit; how pathetic ye are.” Then shall I smile, be met with doubt, “What be ye grinning about?”