Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Monday, June 10, 2019
Monday, April 13, 2015
Growing Up In the Race Divide (part 5a)
I was 15 when I started working at my church. It started out with small tasks, I suppose you'd say. I'd help in the kitchen, which was an easy job to get because, well, my mom was the cook, so, if they were shorthanded and needed someone to do the dishes or something, I'd get drafted. I mowed lawns for the building superintendent. Sometimes, I got the oh-so-fun job of cleaning the bathrooms. Things like that.
But I was good with kids so, somewhere in there, I transitioned to working in the various children's programs, and I spent the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school (when I was 16) working in the gym assisting the recreation director with all of the summer programs, including the ones for teenagers, which meant I was in charge of my friends. It wasn't a big deal. I mean, I never had to go get someone higher up to enforce the rules because people wouldn't listen to me. Not even when I was in charge of adults during the evening programs. And, as time went on, I was left in charge more and more often.
During my junior year of high school, the recreation director left to go somewhere else. The church didn't hire a new one; they just put me in charge of the recreation programs. Nominally, I was under the auspices of the youth director, but, really, it was just me. Basically, he just had to sign off on whatever it was I wanted to do, but he never said no. [This was a good deal for the church, by the way. We were in a decline, at the time, and they replaced a salaried staff member with an hourly worker. A minimum wage hourly worker, at that. I'm sure they pocketed at least $25,000 off of the deal.]
During my senior year of high school, I started teaching Sunday school. Not to little kids, to my own age group. Sometimes, I also taught on Wednesday nights, too, to the whole youth group. And, sometimes, I taught the college group on Sunday nights. These teaching gigs were not because they didn't have anyone else to do it. They were because the youth director acknowledged that I was the most qualified. To put this in context, any time there was a disagreement about anything in the Bible between my youth director (who also taught Latin, so a smart guy) and myself, when we got into it and did the research, he always had to come tell me that I was right. [This is not me bragging. This is me giving you the necessary contextual background to understand what's coming up.] The only thing he didn't fully concede to me was our disagreement on Revelation to which he said, "I'm not saying that you're right, but I am saying that I was wrong."
All of that to say that I was fairly integral to the running of things "downstairs" (where the youth stuff was located) well before I graduated from high school. But, then, I graduated from high school, and, then, I went away to college. During the summer after my graduation before I left, the youth pastor quit. It was very sudden, but he got a (much) better offer from another church in the city and, basically, just walked out the door. Sure, he gave, like, the standard two weeks notice, but that doesn't mean much in church work. Needless to say, I was pretty pissed at him for bailing, and we didn't exactly part on the best of terms.
Now, let's jump ahead a couple of years.
Where I went to college, although in another state, was only about an hour away from home. My mom didn't much like having me out of the house, but freshmen were required to live on campus, so that's what I did. As soon as I became a sophomore, though, she started urging me to move back home and commute to school. The thing that decided me to do that was that opportunity to become the acting youth director at my church, the church I had mostly not been to for the past couple of years (other than the summer between my freshman and sophomore years). Hmm... maybe "acting" is not quite the word I want. Technically, there was a youth director, but they had rolled a whole bunch of stuff up into one position, so he was about six different things: youth, recreation, college/career, education, and... well, I can't remember what else. At any rate, he wasn't much interested in teaching the youth, so he offered me a spot under him in which I would be over the youth (and, mostly, the recreation) program. I was still not on staff, though, and still being paid by the hour. [Yes, it's like the crummy deals that authors take from traditional publishers when they are first starting out because 1. they don't know any better and 2. they are just happy to be being published.]
Just to make this point clear, when I left to go away to college not quite two years prior to that first Wednesday night I walked down into the youth room to teach, we had been running 40-50 teens on a Wednesday night. But I and the youth pastor had both left at the same time, and he had been replaced with a guy who felt like the teenagers were a burden and didn't really want to have anything to do with them. I knew there had been deterioration, but, still, I wasn't expecting the sight I was greeted with: two kids. Two. Both of them middle schoolers. I didn't even know who they were.
Well, then.
[So, yeah, I know that this doesn't seem to fit into this series, but, trust me, it does. Just come back next week.]
But I was good with kids so, somewhere in there, I transitioned to working in the various children's programs, and I spent the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school (when I was 16) working in the gym assisting the recreation director with all of the summer programs, including the ones for teenagers, which meant I was in charge of my friends. It wasn't a big deal. I mean, I never had to go get someone higher up to enforce the rules because people wouldn't listen to me. Not even when I was in charge of adults during the evening programs. And, as time went on, I was left in charge more and more often.
During my junior year of high school, the recreation director left to go somewhere else. The church didn't hire a new one; they just put me in charge of the recreation programs. Nominally, I was under the auspices of the youth director, but, really, it was just me. Basically, he just had to sign off on whatever it was I wanted to do, but he never said no. [This was a good deal for the church, by the way. We were in a decline, at the time, and they replaced a salaried staff member with an hourly worker. A minimum wage hourly worker, at that. I'm sure they pocketed at least $25,000 off of the deal.]
During my senior year of high school, I started teaching Sunday school. Not to little kids, to my own age group. Sometimes, I also taught on Wednesday nights, too, to the whole youth group. And, sometimes, I taught the college group on Sunday nights. These teaching gigs were not because they didn't have anyone else to do it. They were because the youth director acknowledged that I was the most qualified. To put this in context, any time there was a disagreement about anything in the Bible between my youth director (who also taught Latin, so a smart guy) and myself, when we got into it and did the research, he always had to come tell me that I was right. [This is not me bragging. This is me giving you the necessary contextual background to understand what's coming up.] The only thing he didn't fully concede to me was our disagreement on Revelation to which he said, "I'm not saying that you're right, but I am saying that I was wrong."
All of that to say that I was fairly integral to the running of things "downstairs" (where the youth stuff was located) well before I graduated from high school. But, then, I graduated from high school, and, then, I went away to college. During the summer after my graduation before I left, the youth pastor quit. It was very sudden, but he got a (much) better offer from another church in the city and, basically, just walked out the door. Sure, he gave, like, the standard two weeks notice, but that doesn't mean much in church work. Needless to say, I was pretty pissed at him for bailing, and we didn't exactly part on the best of terms.
Now, let's jump ahead a couple of years.
Where I went to college, although in another state, was only about an hour away from home. My mom didn't much like having me out of the house, but freshmen were required to live on campus, so that's what I did. As soon as I became a sophomore, though, she started urging me to move back home and commute to school. The thing that decided me to do that was that opportunity to become the acting youth director at my church, the church I had mostly not been to for the past couple of years (other than the summer between my freshman and sophomore years). Hmm... maybe "acting" is not quite the word I want. Technically, there was a youth director, but they had rolled a whole bunch of stuff up into one position, so he was about six different things: youth, recreation, college/career, education, and... well, I can't remember what else. At any rate, he wasn't much interested in teaching the youth, so he offered me a spot under him in which I would be over the youth (and, mostly, the recreation) program. I was still not on staff, though, and still being paid by the hour. [Yes, it's like the crummy deals that authors take from traditional publishers when they are first starting out because 1. they don't know any better and 2. they are just happy to be being published.]
Just to make this point clear, when I left to go away to college not quite two years prior to that first Wednesday night I walked down into the youth room to teach, we had been running 40-50 teens on a Wednesday night. But I and the youth pastor had both left at the same time, and he had been replaced with a guy who felt like the teenagers were a burden and didn't really want to have anything to do with them. I knew there had been deterioration, but, still, I wasn't expecting the sight I was greeted with: two kids. Two. Both of them middle schoolers. I didn't even know who they were.
Well, then.
[So, yeah, I know that this doesn't seem to fit into this series, but, trust me, it does. Just come back next week.]
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
How Doesn't Your Garden Grow? (an IWSG post)
We were late planting our garden this year. There were issues with softball, softball that I've been mentioning on and off since March and which started in February, softball which still has two weeks to go.
That's a picture of my daughter hitting a double.
Basically, since March, we've had no weekends, so the garden didn't get planted when it should have. We had the last weekend of May and the first weekend of June, the interim between the spring season and the travel ball season, and that first weekend in June is when we finally got everything planted, a full two months late.
Some of you are probably wondering what would be the point, at that point?
It's a good question.
I mean, here we are in August, and our garden still really hasn't started producing. I didn't pull the first tomatoes from it until July 23.
Yeah, that was the first of our harvest, all five of them. There was one very early and overly ambitious pepper, back in June, right after I planted it, but there haven't been anymore since then, but they're working on it. This year, I'm also trying watermelons and pumpkins for the first time in my experimental garden area. I think I missed the watermelon window. That or the birds keeping eating my baby melons, because they keep disappearing. The pumpkin has become a monster.
Here it is a week after I planted it (that's it in the lower right):
And not long after that:
And now:
And you might think that looks great, and it does... except that everyone else already has orange pumpkins. And we haven't had our tomatoes, which are a big thing for us during the summer. Tomatoes everywhere. All of which brings me back to the question: Why bother with the garden at all when we started it so late?
Fortunately, the area of California where we live has a long growing season. I think I was still pulling tomatoes off the vines in October, last year, so, even though we planted late, we should still actually get a pretty decent harvest. Eventually. Not that that makes it easier to look at everyone else's gardens with all of their abundance of produce. I mean, I actually accepted tomatoes from someone else last week, something I've never done before because we've always been overflowing with tomatoes at this time of year.
All of this is how I sometimes feel about my writing career. That I planted it too late. My sales are like those few little tomatoes in the picture. I'm just hoping I prove to have a long growing season like the area where I live!
Basically, since March, we've had no weekends, so the garden didn't get planted when it should have. We had the last weekend of May and the first weekend of June, the interim between the spring season and the travel ball season, and that first weekend in June is when we finally got everything planted, a full two months late.
Some of you are probably wondering what would be the point, at that point?
It's a good question.
I mean, here we are in August, and our garden still really hasn't started producing. I didn't pull the first tomatoes from it until July 23.
Here it is a week after I planted it (that's it in the lower right):
Fortunately, the area of California where we live has a long growing season. I think I was still pulling tomatoes off the vines in October, last year, so, even though we planted late, we should still actually get a pretty decent harvest. Eventually. Not that that makes it easier to look at everyone else's gardens with all of their abundance of produce. I mean, I actually accepted tomatoes from someone else last week, something I've never done before because we've always been overflowing with tomatoes at this time of year.
All of this is how I sometimes feel about my writing career. That I planted it too late. My sales are like those few little tomatoes in the picture. I'm just hoping I prove to have a long growing season like the area where I live!
Monday, June 2, 2014
June Bugs!
The new issue of Indie Writers Monthly is out! It's Volume 1, Issue 4 even if it says Issue 3. That was just a goof that I'm sure will be fixed at some point. At any rate, it looks like this
and, right now, it's FREE! So you should totally go pick yourself up a copy. It's full of all kinds of goodness. For one thing, there's an interview with me, but there's also this story I wrote that you can only find in its pages, and you don't want to miss that! Well, and there's stories from some other people, too, but there's a story by me! So go now and get your copy while it's FREE! Wait, did I mention it's FREE!? Because it totally is.
What?
You need even more convincing? Fine! Here's the first little bit of
Go get yours NOW! Just follow the link.
What?
You need even more convincing? Fine! Here's the first little bit of
The Day the Junebugs Came
Charlie
knew that summer had come the day the Junebugs arrived. It didn't
matter to him that his mother told him that that wasn't necessarily
true. It didn't matter to him that his father told him that it wasn't
true. And it even didn't matter to him that his teachers told him
that summer always started on the longest day of the year.
Usually,
some time in May, the Junebugs would start arriving in little groups.
He didn't know where they came from or why, just that they would
start showing up. He'd go out in the morning on the way to school and
there would be two or three hanging on the screen of the screen door
and three or four hanging on the screen of the front window and five
or six hanging on the screen of the screened in part of the front
porch. For a few days, there would be a few more everyday. Then, one
day, he would open the door, the hard door, and he wouldn't be able
to see through the screen of the screen door because it would be
entirely covered with the little honey-colored scarab beetles. He
knew, too, that they would be coating all the screens – like beaded
curtains – but not just the screens; there would also be a layer of
them across the porch itself and even some hanging from the ceiling.
That
day each year was the day summer arrived.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
School and "The Kitchen Table"
Well...
Here we are at the beginning of another school year. It seems like the summer has just burned away like early morning haze. One moment it's there, the next it's gone. Not that it's not always like that, but, this summer, it was even more so, because we did so much stuff. As a family, we took two trips this year, which is two more than we took last year. Or the year before that. Or the year before that. You probably get the picture. In fact, in the last nine years, these were trips #2 and #3 for the family, so, I suppose, that means we are averaging one trip every three years.
My younger son took an additional trip to scout camp which was his first time to camp and his first extended trip without us. He got to kayak, which, surprisingly (to me, anyway), he loved. That's really the only thing we've been able to get out of him about the trip other than that, yes, he did earn his swimming merit badge. And he got to cook one of the meals which everyone complimented him on.
My oldest son is off, right now, on a trip to Maine with his other family, but he often gets to do travelling that we don't. The perks of two families, I suppose. Last summer, he went to El Salvador.
Anyway...
Somewhere amidst camping, Disneyland, the fair, fireworks, sleepovers, and, well, everything else, I managed to get some writing accomplished. Not as much as I would have liked, but, still, it wasn't a wasted summer on the writing front. I finally got all of my hand-written material into the computer, made some progress on Brother's Keeper, made a lot of progress on Shadow Spinner, got parts of Shadow Spinner ready for serial release, and wrote an entirely new story that's part of a long term project I've had bouncing around for a while. It's about... well, that would be telling. It will be coming up soon enough.
Now that school is starting, I should be able to focus a tad bit more on writing.
Goal #1: finish Shadow Spinner
I'd like to have the whole book out by the end of the year at the latest.
Goal #2: Brother's Keeper!
I have so many people asking me when this is going to be ready, so, as soon as Spinner is finished, I'm going to be concentrating on BK until that's done.
With school starting back up and the fact that I'll be reading The House on the Corner in another class this year (by request and not one that one of my kids is in (for the very first time)), I'm sure the "when's the sequel coming out?" questions will be bombarding me again.
Of course, there will also be blogging and my creative class, so, when I say concentrating, I don't mean concentrating in the strictest of senses but only as much as I can between whatever else is going on. I have hopes, though... I do have hopes.
Speaking of Shadow Spinner, "Part Two: The Kitchen Table" is now available! You can pick it up FREE today and tomorrow.
Here's the update:
"Part One: The Tunnel" got over 200 downloads during the three days I had it available for FREE! That was enough for it to peak at #26 on the contemporary fantasy free chart. It would be really great to get "The Kitchen Table" even higher, so let everyone know that they can get it for FREE on August 13th and 14th.
Now the catch:
Once you've downloaded "Part Two," please click the "like" button, and, once you've read it, please leave a short review and a rating. It would be a great help. Also, if you picked up "The Tunnel," it would be great if you'd hop over to that page and do the same. With over 200 downloads, it only has 4 reviews.
The future:
"Part Three: The Bedroom" will be available August 27th.
"Part Four: The Cop" will be available September 10th.
"Part Five: The Police Car" on September 24th.
Remember "Part Two: The Kitchen Table" is FREE today, August 13th and tomorrow, August 14th! Pick up your copy today!
Oh, and stop by and let Rusty know what a great job he did on the cover! Man, I can't wait to show y'all the cover to Part Five!
Here we are at the beginning of another school year. It seems like the summer has just burned away like early morning haze. One moment it's there, the next it's gone. Not that it's not always like that, but, this summer, it was even more so, because we did so much stuff. As a family, we took two trips this year, which is two more than we took last year. Or the year before that. Or the year before that. You probably get the picture. In fact, in the last nine years, these were trips #2 and #3 for the family, so, I suppose, that means we are averaging one trip every three years.
My younger son took an additional trip to scout camp which was his first time to camp and his first extended trip without us. He got to kayak, which, surprisingly (to me, anyway), he loved. That's really the only thing we've been able to get out of him about the trip other than that, yes, he did earn his swimming merit badge. And he got to cook one of the meals which everyone complimented him on.
My oldest son is off, right now, on a trip to Maine with his other family, but he often gets to do travelling that we don't. The perks of two families, I suppose. Last summer, he went to El Salvador.
Anyway...
Somewhere amidst camping, Disneyland, the fair, fireworks, sleepovers, and, well, everything else, I managed to get some writing accomplished. Not as much as I would have liked, but, still, it wasn't a wasted summer on the writing front. I finally got all of my hand-written material into the computer, made some progress on Brother's Keeper, made a lot of progress on Shadow Spinner, got parts of Shadow Spinner ready for serial release, and wrote an entirely new story that's part of a long term project I've had bouncing around for a while. It's about... well, that would be telling. It will be coming up soon enough.
Now that school is starting, I should be able to focus a tad bit more on writing.
Goal #1: finish Shadow Spinner
I'd like to have the whole book out by the end of the year at the latest.
Goal #2: Brother's Keeper!
I have so many people asking me when this is going to be ready, so, as soon as Spinner is finished, I'm going to be concentrating on BK until that's done.
With school starting back up and the fact that I'll be reading The House on the Corner in another class this year (by request and not one that one of my kids is in (for the very first time)), I'm sure the "when's the sequel coming out?" questions will be bombarding me again.
Of course, there will also be blogging and my creative class, so, when I say concentrating, I don't mean concentrating in the strictest of senses but only as much as I can between whatever else is going on. I have hopes, though... I do have hopes.
Speaking of Shadow Spinner, "Part Two: The Kitchen Table" is now available! You can pick it up FREE today and tomorrow.
Here's the update:
"Part One: The Tunnel" got over 200 downloads during the three days I had it available for FREE! That was enough for it to peak at #26 on the contemporary fantasy free chart. It would be really great to get "The Kitchen Table" even higher, so let everyone know that they can get it for FREE on August 13th and 14th.
Now the catch:
Once you've downloaded "Part Two," please click the "like" button, and, once you've read it, please leave a short review and a rating. It would be a great help. Also, if you picked up "The Tunnel," it would be great if you'd hop over to that page and do the same. With over 200 downloads, it only has 4 reviews.
The future:
"Part Three: The Bedroom" will be available August 27th.
"Part Four: The Cop" will be available September 10th.
"Part Five: The Police Car" on September 24th.
Remember "Part Two: The Kitchen Table" is FREE today, August 13th and tomorrow, August 14th! Pick up your copy today!
Oh, and stop by and let Rusty know what a great job he did on the cover! Man, I can't wait to show y'all the cover to Part Five!
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Peanut Butter and Peppermint
It was a rare summer morning that my great-grandmother did not cook a huge breakfast. Often, there would be a dozen or so of us packed around the table covered with bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, sausage, sometimes pancakes. I formed a lifelong love of biscuits and gravy at that table. But that morning, there was no breakfast.
My cousins, Becky and Sam, and I didn't really mind, as much as we loved those breakfasts, because that meant we got to have cereal. Cereal was something of a treat down at my great-grandmother's, because there wasn't often an occasion to have it. My aunt kept it around, though, just in case. I'm sure I was having something with those fake marshmallows in it, because my mom would never buy those kinds of cereals for home. Probably Boo-berry. The adults were all gone off somewhere, so it was just the three of us.
"I wonder if cereal would be good with ketchup on it," said Sam as we were sitting down. To put this statement in context, Sam ate everything with ketchup on it. Well, everything except cereal, evidently. Ketchup on his mashed potatoes. Ketchup on his eggs. He would literally trail the ketchup over everything on his plate for things like Thanksgiving dinner. It was kind of gross.
Not that it was entirely his fault. As a baby, in order to get him to eat baby food, my aunt would mix ketchup into it, so it was a flavor he couldn't separate from the idea of food, and, at not yet 10 (he was three years older than me), he certainly didn't have the willpower on his own to try. Heck, he was still eating everything like that when he graduated from high school.
Becky gave him an immediate response, "It would be gross."
"I'm going to try it."
"No, you're not."
"Who put you in charge?"
"I'm the oldest." And, indeed, she was. By a few months.
"So. You're not the boss of me."
"That's gross. You can't put ketchup on your cereal."
Sam turned to me, "Do you want to try ketchup on your cereal?"
"No way!"
"Well, I'm going to."
Becky was getting mad, "No, you're not!"
"You can't stop me!" And Sam got up from the table to fetch the ketchup bottle from the kitchen.
"If you put ketchup on your cereal, you're going to eat it!"
"Of course, I'm going to eat it. It's going to be great!"
Sam sat down at his bowl. I stopped eating to watch him. This was before the days of squeeze bottles, so he had to wait to for the ketchup to slowly make its way to the lip of the bottle. The three of us sat there watching, waiting, until finally a blob of ketchup fell onto the cereal. He slowly circled around the bowl, making a red ring. By the time he returned from putting the ketchup away, his milk had turned pink.
Becky and I were finishing up our bowls of cereal as Sam spooned up his first bite.
"You're going to eat all of that!"
"I already said I am!" and he popped the bite of cereal into his mouth.
But he didn't swallow it. He did that thing that people do when they put something too hot in their mouths but don't want to spit the food out. Trying to hold it in their teeth so that their tongues don't get more burned. But it was cereal, and that didn't work. He couldn't get his tongue away from it. Or the pink milk he'd created.
"Swallow it," Becky commanded.
But Sam's face came down over his bowl, and the glob of cereal fell out of his mouth into his bowl.
"I told you it was going to be gross," Becky smiled. "Now, you have to eat it."
"I'm not eating that!"
"Yes, you are! You agreed!"
"I'm not eating that! It's disgusting!"
"Well, you're not leaving this table until you eat it!"
"Says who?"
"Says me!"
"You can't make me!"
Becky squinted her eyes at Sam and gave him a hard look, "Yes, I can."
And she could, too. Sam and I both knew it. There had been an... altercation... proving it not all that long before. But Sam was my idol. Not that I didn't also look up to Becky. After all, she'd beaten Sam up in my defense, but I spent the whole summer with Becky every year and saw her on holidays and other times besides. Sam, I only saw a few times a year, so he automatically went up in esteem due to the limited time I had with him. Not to mention that he was also a boy. But I was backing Becky all the way on this one.
After all, the conditions had been clearly set at the outset, and Sam had agreed to them. It was only right that he eat the cereal.
So we sat there, the three of us. A battle of wills between my cousins, and me growing more and more bored by the minute. I wasn't good at bored. But, then, what 6ish year old is?
In the end, Becky and I left Sam sitting there at the table with the admonishment not to leave until he'd eaten that cereal. Under threat of "telling." But I no longer cared; I just wanted to go play.
I'm not sure how long he sat there at the table staring at that bowl of pink milk and the soggy substance within, but he did eventually join us. That meant a trek back to the house so that Becky could verify the truth of his statement that he'd eaten the cereal. There was no sign of it, and a search couldn't turn it up. She even looked under the table. Ironically, Sam had actually hidden the bowl under the table as he told me later, but in the time it had taken Sam to find us, someone else had found the cereal and dumped it into the tray for the dogs outside.
Let me just be clear about this: the dogs would eat anything. They got all of the table scraps all the time, and they always ate everything. Including boiled okra. But they didn't eat that cereal. Much later in the day, Becky and I found it in the dog tray. Hours and hours later. Stinking in the heart of a summer day in East Texas. Flies buzzing all around.
Sam was lucky that day. He'd had to leave for some reason that I don't remember, which is why he wasn't with us when we found the cereal. Becky would have pounded him if he had been. She wanted to remember to beat him up later, but, by the time we saw him again, she'd forgotten.
My oldest son and I were at the grocery store recently when we were both overcome with a desire for peppermint bark. I love peppermint bark. Actually, I just love peppermint, especially with chocolate. Most mornings, I have peppermint cocoa or a peppermint mocha as my morning beverage. However, buying peppermint bark wasn't really an option as we have a fairly firm prohibition in our household about buying candy. Especially when the kids still have buckets of the stuff from Halloween and more coming at Christmas. But! The conversation about how we both wanted peppermint bark lead my son to decide that he needs to invent peppermint and peanut butter as a "thing."
I had an immediate flashback to the above story about the cereal and ketchup which I then related to my son. He was unimpressed and maintains that his idea is going to be "Epic!" "Awesome!" and, even, "Epically awesome!" I remain skeptical.
Which is not to say that I don't think he should try it. After all, I imagine that there were people who were skeptical about the first mixture of peppermint with chocolate or peanut butter with chocolate. Which is his whole rationale behind this madness. If both of those items, peppermint and peanut butter, are good with chocolate, it must be true that they will be good together. My taste buds are already recoiling at the thought. (But we don't have any peppermints in the house, at the moment, so he hasn't been able to try this atrocity. Yet.)
Still, how often do we find that things we don't think will go together actually meld quite well. Like the accidental discovery of a friend in high school that french fries are really good in vanilla ice cream (seriously, he was just playing with his food, and trying to gross everyone out at the table when that discovery was made). That became a thing with us at McDonald's after that. And I had a friend in college who loved thousand island dressing on pepperoni pizza (I couldn't get behind that one, but he loved it). Or, you know, science fiction and fantasy. Who'd a thought, you know, before it was actually done the first time.
So... even though I foresee a disaster approaching of the magnitude of "Don't leave that table until you eat every last bite of that," part of me wants it to be good. Because it's trying things that don't seem to go together that makes life interesting.
[It's Thursday again. Man, these things just keep happening, don't they? The new Tib chapter is posted up there in the Tiberius tab (or you can just click here). This one is called "The Cop." Next week will be the first appearance of the man with no eyes in the chapter that will be called "The Police Car."
Also, I only have a few copies left on hand of The House on the Corner, so, if you want a signed copy in time for Christmas, order now! I'll be ordering more copies soon, but I'm not sure if they will get here in time to be sent out before Christmas.]
My cousins, Becky and Sam, and I didn't really mind, as much as we loved those breakfasts, because that meant we got to have cereal. Cereal was something of a treat down at my great-grandmother's, because there wasn't often an occasion to have it. My aunt kept it around, though, just in case. I'm sure I was having something with those fake marshmallows in it, because my mom would never buy those kinds of cereals for home. Probably Boo-berry. The adults were all gone off somewhere, so it was just the three of us.
"I wonder if cereal would be good with ketchup on it," said Sam as we were sitting down. To put this statement in context, Sam ate everything with ketchup on it. Well, everything except cereal, evidently. Ketchup on his mashed potatoes. Ketchup on his eggs. He would literally trail the ketchup over everything on his plate for things like Thanksgiving dinner. It was kind of gross.
Not that it was entirely his fault. As a baby, in order to get him to eat baby food, my aunt would mix ketchup into it, so it was a flavor he couldn't separate from the idea of food, and, at not yet 10 (he was three years older than me), he certainly didn't have the willpower on his own to try. Heck, he was still eating everything like that when he graduated from high school.
Becky gave him an immediate response, "It would be gross."
"I'm going to try it."
"No, you're not."
"Who put you in charge?"
"I'm the oldest." And, indeed, she was. By a few months.
"So. You're not the boss of me."
"That's gross. You can't put ketchup on your cereal."
Sam turned to me, "Do you want to try ketchup on your cereal?"
"No way!"
"Well, I'm going to."
Becky was getting mad, "No, you're not!"
"You can't stop me!" And Sam got up from the table to fetch the ketchup bottle from the kitchen.
"If you put ketchup on your cereal, you're going to eat it!"
"Of course, I'm going to eat it. It's going to be great!"
Sam sat down at his bowl. I stopped eating to watch him. This was before the days of squeeze bottles, so he had to wait to for the ketchup to slowly make its way to the lip of the bottle. The three of us sat there watching, waiting, until finally a blob of ketchup fell onto the cereal. He slowly circled around the bowl, making a red ring. By the time he returned from putting the ketchup away, his milk had turned pink.
Becky and I were finishing up our bowls of cereal as Sam spooned up his first bite.
"You're going to eat all of that!"
"I already said I am!" and he popped the bite of cereal into his mouth.
But he didn't swallow it. He did that thing that people do when they put something too hot in their mouths but don't want to spit the food out. Trying to hold it in their teeth so that their tongues don't get more burned. But it was cereal, and that didn't work. He couldn't get his tongue away from it. Or the pink milk he'd created.
"Swallow it," Becky commanded.
But Sam's face came down over his bowl, and the glob of cereal fell out of his mouth into his bowl.
"I told you it was going to be gross," Becky smiled. "Now, you have to eat it."
"I'm not eating that!"
"Yes, you are! You agreed!"
"I'm not eating that! It's disgusting!"
"Well, you're not leaving this table until you eat it!"
"Says who?"
"Says me!"
"You can't make me!"
Becky squinted her eyes at Sam and gave him a hard look, "Yes, I can."
And she could, too. Sam and I both knew it. There had been an... altercation... proving it not all that long before. But Sam was my idol. Not that I didn't also look up to Becky. After all, she'd beaten Sam up in my defense, but I spent the whole summer with Becky every year and saw her on holidays and other times besides. Sam, I only saw a few times a year, so he automatically went up in esteem due to the limited time I had with him. Not to mention that he was also a boy. But I was backing Becky all the way on this one.
After all, the conditions had been clearly set at the outset, and Sam had agreed to them. It was only right that he eat the cereal.
So we sat there, the three of us. A battle of wills between my cousins, and me growing more and more bored by the minute. I wasn't good at bored. But, then, what 6ish year old is?
In the end, Becky and I left Sam sitting there at the table with the admonishment not to leave until he'd eaten that cereal. Under threat of "telling." But I no longer cared; I just wanted to go play.
I'm not sure how long he sat there at the table staring at that bowl of pink milk and the soggy substance within, but he did eventually join us. That meant a trek back to the house so that Becky could verify the truth of his statement that he'd eaten the cereal. There was no sign of it, and a search couldn't turn it up. She even looked under the table. Ironically, Sam had actually hidden the bowl under the table as he told me later, but in the time it had taken Sam to find us, someone else had found the cereal and dumped it into the tray for the dogs outside.
Let me just be clear about this: the dogs would eat anything. They got all of the table scraps all the time, and they always ate everything. Including boiled okra. But they didn't eat that cereal. Much later in the day, Becky and I found it in the dog tray. Hours and hours later. Stinking in the heart of a summer day in East Texas. Flies buzzing all around.
Sam was lucky that day. He'd had to leave for some reason that I don't remember, which is why he wasn't with us when we found the cereal. Becky would have pounded him if he had been. She wanted to remember to beat him up later, but, by the time we saw him again, she'd forgotten.
My oldest son and I were at the grocery store recently when we were both overcome with a desire for peppermint bark. I love peppermint bark. Actually, I just love peppermint, especially with chocolate. Most mornings, I have peppermint cocoa or a peppermint mocha as my morning beverage. However, buying peppermint bark wasn't really an option as we have a fairly firm prohibition in our household about buying candy. Especially when the kids still have buckets of the stuff from Halloween and more coming at Christmas. But! The conversation about how we both wanted peppermint bark lead my son to decide that he needs to invent peppermint and peanut butter as a "thing."
I had an immediate flashback to the above story about the cereal and ketchup which I then related to my son. He was unimpressed and maintains that his idea is going to be "Epic!" "Awesome!" and, even, "Epically awesome!" I remain skeptical.
Which is not to say that I don't think he should try it. After all, I imagine that there were people who were skeptical about the first mixture of peppermint with chocolate or peanut butter with chocolate. Which is his whole rationale behind this madness. If both of those items, peppermint and peanut butter, are good with chocolate, it must be true that they will be good together. My taste buds are already recoiling at the thought. (But we don't have any peppermints in the house, at the moment, so he hasn't been able to try this atrocity. Yet.)
Still, how often do we find that things we don't think will go together actually meld quite well. Like the accidental discovery of a friend in high school that french fries are really good in vanilla ice cream (seriously, he was just playing with his food, and trying to gross everyone out at the table when that discovery was made). That became a thing with us at McDonald's after that. And I had a friend in college who loved thousand island dressing on pepperoni pizza (I couldn't get behind that one, but he loved it). Or, you know, science fiction and fantasy. Who'd a thought, you know, before it was actually done the first time.
So... even though I foresee a disaster approaching of the magnitude of "Don't leave that table until you eat every last bite of that," part of me wants it to be good. Because it's trying things that don't seem to go together that makes life interesting.
[It's Thursday again. Man, these things just keep happening, don't they? The new Tib chapter is posted up there in the Tiberius tab (or you can just click here). This one is called "The Cop." Next week will be the first appearance of the man with no eyes in the chapter that will be called "The Police Car."
Also, I only have a few copies left on hand of The House on the Corner, so, if you want a signed copy in time for Christmas, order now! I'll be ordering more copies soon, but I'm not sure if they will get here in time to be sent out before Christmas.]
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