Terrified

I find myself nervous and scared. I'm having a hard time taking a step forward because of my fear.
Some dude put an ad in craigslist, saying that he was looking for musicians for a progressive rock band. And he lives in my town. And he's looking to do 3-part harmony.
I'm qualified for this job.
I emailed him, told him I was interested in finding out more about him.
He emailed back, wants to meet someplace or I should call him. ASAP.
And now I've got an almost irresistible urge to block him from my email, ever call him, slink away from this opportunity.
What's my fucking damage?
I've got all kinds of voices screaming at me.
Literally screaming in my head:

YOU'RE TOO FAT!
YOU'RE TOO MARRIED!
YOU'RE TOO FATHERLY!
NOBODY WANTS TO ROCK OUT TO A MARRIED FAT FATHER!
THEY DIDN'T WANT YOU WHEN YOU WERE THIN AND SINGLE!
THEY DON'T WANT YOU NOW!
ROCKERS HAVE HAIR, AND YOU DON'T!
YOU HAVEN'T DONE THIS IN OVER 4 YEARS!
YOU'VE LOST WHATEVER YOU HAD!
YOU'RE OUT OF PRACTICE!
YOU'RE GOING TO BE REJECTED BY A STRANGER!
YOU'RE FAMILY IS GOING TO SEE EVEN LESS OF YOU IF YOU GET THIS!
YOU HAVE TOO MANY RESPONSIBILITIES TO PLAY AROUND LIKE THIS!
YOU HAVE A JOB THAT YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON!
YOU CAN'T AFFORD PRACTICING TWICE A WEEK LIKE HE WANTS TO!
HE'S STUDYING MUSIC AND YOU DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT MUSIC!
YOU'RE A TOURIST!
YOU'RE A WANNABE!
YOU'RE A FUCKING HAS-BEEN!
YOU'RE NOTHING!
YOU'RE PATHETIC!
YOU'RE FUCKING WORTHLESS!
HE'S GONNA SEE YOU AND LAUGH AND GET UP AND LEAVE!
YOU'RE A MISERABLE PIECE OF SHIT AND DESERVE TO WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT!
YOU'RE AN IDIOT!
GIVE UP!
GIVE UP NOW!
THE LONGER YOU WAIT TO GIVE UP, THE MORE HURT WILL HAPPEN!
LET YOUR INSIDES DIE SO THE PAIN WILL STOP!
YOU'RE A FUCKING LOSER!
GODDAM LOSER!
FUCKING, GODDAM LOSER!
GIVE UP, LOSER!

And I could go on like this.
Even after all that, they're still yelling at me.
I'm just typing, and they're yelling at me.
I'm not even looking at the email he sent me, and my voices are screaming at me.
Usually I can type them out and get some relief.
It didn't work this time.

Looks like I gotta start all over or give up.
What was isn't now.
So do I take that step forward?
Will I get out of my own way long enough to take that first step forward?
I don't know.

The Turtley Squirrel -or- The Squirrely Turtle

So, I've got this idea for a story. It's not really a fully fleshed-out story, as I'm still working on it, but it goes a little something like this. Hit it:

There was this squirrel, and she was sad because she thought she had no friends. She went walking in the forest and nobody walked with her. Until this turtle found her, and she fell in love with the turtle and he fell in love with her. But she still wanted to have friends, and the turtle told her that she was likable, but she didn't believe him.

"If I was likable," she said, "then people would walk with me in the forest."
"They do walk with you," said the turtle, "you just can't see them."

The squirrel didn't like this answer, and climbed a tree to get away from the frustrating turtle. The turtle waited at the base of the tree for the squirrel to return. He tried to think of another way to tell the squirrel that which might help her, but tell her in a way so that she wouldn't run away from him. And as he sat under the tree, he fell asleep. The squirrel saw him sleeping and this made her more frustrated.

"If he really loved me, he would stay awake," she grumbled.

But eventually, the squirrel came down from the tree. She struggled to wake up the turtle because he was a heavy sleeper and probably had some kind of sleep apnea that hadn't been diagnosed yet.

I don't know about this last part. A lot of people have sleep apnea, and it's kinda getting this reputation as a fat-person's ailment. But my mother has sleep apnea, and she's not a fat person. In fact, she's quite healthy. So maybe the turtle shouldn't have sleep apnea, as I don't want the reader to conjure the image of a fat turtle. And I also don't want the reader to think that the squirrel was grumpy. She was normally quite full of life, but this story deals with a time when she was fighting some pretty intense inner demons. Well, we'll get to that later... maybe... I'm not sure yet...

So the squirrel and the turtle kept hanging out with each other and they had lots of fun together. Until the squirrel started thinking about how she had no friends again, and then she got sad again. The turtle tried to explain a little more to her.

"You do have friends walking with you in the forest, but you don't see them because they're not close by," explained the turtle. He kinda spoke slowly, because he was a turtle. And the squirrel did a great job of letting him finish without cutting him off or hurrying him along, which was really hard for her, because she was a squirrel.

"If they liked me," said the squirrel, "they would be close by. What good are friends that don't stand close to me?"
"You have stickers in your tail," said the turtle, "and when you walk and run and dance, you swing your tail around and your friends get cut with the stickers." The turtle felt good about getting that all out, but then felt bad when he saw the pained look on the squirrel's face. She ran up the tree to get away from the turtle.

Up in the tree, she sat there, thinking about how horrible she was for having stickers in her tail. "If I was a good squirrel," she thought, "I would take better care of my tail. I would clean it on a regular basis. It wouldn't drive away my friends. My tail is a direct reflection of me. I am a dirty, filthy squirrel, and people are right to not want to be around me. I will hurt them if they were too close to me, and I suck." She tried to look up at her tail, but the way she was built made it impossible for her to actually see her tail. When she looked up, her tail moved back, just out of eyesight. She wondered why that was, as she knew she had a long tail. She should be able to see her tail. "I'm built stupidly," she thought again. "If I was built right, I would be able to see my tail. I can see other squirrel tails. I must be deficient because I can't see my own tail. I suck." Then, a new feeling of resentment came over her. "Wait a minute," she thought, "that stupid turtle is trying to make me feel bad. He told me I have stickers in my tail, and I probably don't! He can't even show me the stickers in my tail, which would prove that they were actually there! That fucking asshole!"

Not quite sure how I feel about her language there, as she's really a genteel creature, not prone to outbursts. But she's all alone in the tree, you see, and there's nobody around to offend, so she used the appropriate language to express her emotional state at that time. I think. I could be wrong. Anywhooo...

So the squirrel went back down the tree to wake up the asshole turtle.

"Wake up!" she yelled at the asshole.
"I am awake!" the turtle shouted back, startled by the sudden outburst from the fast squirrel that he didn't even realize was there.
"You were not awake," shouted the squirrel, "you were snoring!"
"I know!" shouted the turtle, trying to hold his own against this onslaught.
"And this isn't an onslaught," yelled the squirrel, as if she had known what the author had written. The turtle was reeling with confusion at this point, but he held on to the conversation well enough to manage, "I snore even when I'm awake because of some kind of sleep apnea that hasn't been diagnosed yet, and I don't mention it a lot because it makes me feel fat when I think about it even though my mother has it and she's quite healthy!"

I think this part gets a little too self-referential, and starts to blur the lines of reality, as it's making reference to something not in the story, really, but rather, something I had written earlier. So now the audience is left wondering if I'm the turtle or is my mother going to enter the story... or what. I'll have to edit this out later.

The squirrel stopped, as this had made sense to her. She smiled, because the turtle was really cute, and he was even cuter when he made himself vulnerable to her. She would do him later.

Now, I'm really planning on keeping this section, because it makes the audience think there might be a sex scene, and sex sells. So this is staying. So where were we... we had the squirrel getting mad at the turtle because he was trying to hurt her... she curses... yadda yadda yadda... oh yeah, she's about to tell him off for lying to her about there being stickers in her tail.

"There are no stickers in my tail! If there were stickers, I would see them! And when you say things like that, you really hurt my feelings!"
"I'm really sorry," said the turtle, "but you do have stickers in your tail. You and I are perfect for each other, because of my shell. I was made for you. But the other creatures who are your friends aren't built like I am. They get hurt by your stickers. And you're not built like they are, which is why you can't see your stickers."

The squirrel was getting frustrated. She wanted to run up the tree again, because this stupid turtle was just blabbering on about whatever and such. But there was a part of her that believed that she was made for him and he was made for her. And it was not easy to hear that little part of her, because her head was filled with loud, angry voices all the time. "You suck! You have no friends! You're not deserving of friends! They don't like you because you're fat! You're hideous! You're ugly! You're not smart enough! You're not deserving of anything good or decent! You suck so bad! If you believe anything this stupid fucking turtle says, you're an even bigger idiot than you already think you are!" Most of the time, she wasn't even aware of the voices. Most of the time, these voices provided the foundation for her life. Most of the time she didn't think about it.

Today, she thought about it.

What if the turtle was right?

She fought really hard to not run up the tree.
"I'm a horrible person for having stickers in my tail," she said. And even as she was saying it, she didn't quite believe it. She heard the words she said, and she knew that she believed them... but when she said them out loud, they sounded... silly? Small? They certainly weren't as powerful as they were when they were in her head and could control her from inside that darkness where they fester and run unchecked. The turtle snuggled up to her, as she softly let some tears run down her cheek.

"If you want me to," said the turtle, "I could help you take them out."
The squirrel got mad again. The voices were telling her that she was dirty, unkempt, and did not want anyone to touch her dirty, filthy tail, and if the turtle knew just how dirty she was, he would surely leave her. And right now, he was the only creature who would walk with her in the forest. But she fought through these inner demons, just like she knew she was going to do from the beginning...

See... she's fighting some pretty intense inner demons.

...and she decided to listen to that tiny little part of her that kept saying...

"What if the turtle is right?"

So she let him touch her tail. And the turtle used the thick pads on his hands to pull the stickers out of the squirrel's tail. The turtle was really glad that he had finally found a purpose for those thick pads on his feet, which he had always thought were ugly and not very soft. But the thick foot pads were allowing him to pull the stickers out of the squirrel's tail without hurting himself and without hurting the squirrel.

The turtle held the stickers in his hand and the squirrel looked at them. She didn't quite know how to feel about them. There actually were stickers in her tail, and she didn't want to admit that there had been stickers in her tail. But if she didn't admit to the stickers in her tail, then she couldn't give herself credit for overcoming some really intense inner demons and fighting through it. But if she did give herself credit, then that would mean that she really was dirty. She didn't know how to feel, and so she silently looked at her turtle, who gently said,

"I love all that you are. Dirty and clean. Uncertain and certain. Afraid and brave. With stickers and without. With voices and without. With inner demons and without. I didn't leave you when you were whacking me with your stickery tail. I didn't complain because there was nothing for me to complain about. All of those things that you're thinking are in your head, and you can get rid of them if you want. And I'll be here when that happens. And if you want to keep the voices, I'll be here for that, too. So no worries. I love you complete with everything that makes you you."

And with that, the turtle kissed the squirrel's face.

Suddenly, and without warning, a fundamentalist church group rushed the forest and started beating the turtle with sticks and yelling at him.

"This is what happens when you let gays get married! First you let them get married, then they'll want to sleep with animals, and then the animals won't know who to kiss! Turtles and squirrels need to stay with their own kind!!"

I don't know about this last part, too. It feels a little extraneous and weird. Plus I wanna let people know that the turtle doesn't get hurt because he's got his shell and the sticks really just bounce off him. But I don't want people to worry about an errant stick hitting the squirrel, either, because they weren't aiming for the squirrel. It's, you know, just kinda, well, whatever. It's still a work in progress. So there's that.

A Morning Prank

One of my coworkers just stopped by my cube. He wanted to stand on one of my chairs, allowing him to poke his head over the 5-foot-tall walls and talk to my neighbors without going into their cubes. It's not as weird as it sounds. We all do this sort of thing often. It's fun and breaks the tedium.

However, this coworker, upon hoisting himself up onto my chair, farted. Stinkily.

I don't mind if you use my cube for jokes and fun. And I understand that everybody toots. But if you're gonna let one rip in my cube, either make sure that it's one of the odorless ones or that we're good enough friends to withstand the turbulence of your nasal warfare.

Not cool, dude. Not cool.

Wouldn't It Be Nice

...if chocolate cake had a significant amount of vitamin C?

...if there was a workout regimen built around sex?

...if cars were fueled by imagination? We'd really know who to pay attention to, then!

...if nobody was rude? Ever.

...if all sleep was restful and you never had to wake up with an alarm clock?

...if our politicians could do what is best for us and the country without having to worry about appeasing a political party that gives them money? When I was in kindergarten, teachers told me "do what's right", not "do what's right unless you get paid to do what's wrong".

...if you could parent your children in the way that you know is best for them without concern about your ex taking you back to court because you want to teach your teenager about safe sex and how to protect himself?

...if we could accept each other for what we are, including all our silly beliefs about religion?

...if you had a personal cook who made your food for you at home and you didn't have to pay him at all?

...if your parents didn't screw you up?

...if your kids didn't think you screwed them up?

...if you had a one million dollar bill in your wallet right now?

...if we were older, then we wouldn't have to wait so long? And wouldn't it be nice to live together in the kind of world where we belong?

...if we all worked to make tomorrow better than today? Just one little step every day?

...if we said "yes" rather than "no"?

...if we all decided to be nice to everyone today?

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning To Breathe Free

Calvin sat at the family’s home computer, excitedly reading about the riots. Various sources on the Internet were reporting thousands of people had taken to the streets around his house, but as Calvin spun around to look out the window, he couldn’t see anything that looked like a riot. He listened for some kind of stirring, but the world around his house was eerily quiet. Spencer sat on the couch in the living room, not really monitoring Calvin’s Internet usage, but more just spending time in the same room with his son.

“I’m gonna go,” said Calvin, as he got up from his chair.


“Can you tell me why?” asked Spencer.

“Why what?”


“Can you tell me why you’re going to go?” Spencer made eye contact with Calvin. There was no anger or animosity between either of them. If anything, there was an excited eagerness in Calvin’s face, as he knew there was a right answer—something that Spencer wanted him to say—but now he had to figure out what the right answer was. But it wasn’t coming fast enough, so the boy blurted out the first and most honest answer.

“There’s a riot out there, Spencer! It’s cool!”


“It’s not cool to destroy other people’s belongings. You wouldn’t like it if somebody broke into our house and stole your stuff. Is there another reason?”

Heather came into the room, drawn by the tone of her eldest son. She didn’t quite know what was going on, but she knew that she wanted to be around for whatever it was. She took a seat by her husband and snuggled into him. Spencer put an arm around Heather without taking his eyes off Calvin. Calvin continued, shaking his hands with his growing excitement.


“Because they’ve got Molotov cocktails and they’re burning buildings and smashing TVs! The big kinds with big screens! And they have guns and I want a gun!” Calvin struggled to remember the facts that he was about to spit out to substantiate his point. “It’s my Second Amendment Right!” He wasn’t corrected by either his mother or father. He had gotten it right, and Spencer smiled, knowing that Calvin was trying hard to justify joining the riot outside.

“Yes, people of age have the Second Amendment Right to keep and bear firearms. You are not of age.”


“But I will be in a year! Spence, there’s no time for this!” Calvin was getting frustrated. Heather made a subtle shift to rescue him, to save him from this uncomfortability of trying to find the right words to allow him out the door and join the mob of rioters, but she resisted. This was a good moment for him. He would learn to find the words or not. And if she saved him, he would not learn. Spencer was calm.

“There’s always time to think.”


“Dad, the riot’s gonna be gone soon!” And with that, Calvin made a break for the door. Before he got to the knob, he found Spencer’s hand there, lightly slapping it away. As a knee-jerk reaction, Calvin tried to backhand his father. Spencer was a trained fighter, though, and blocked Calvin’s attack. Even as Calvin tried to hit his father with repeated punches, he knew he wouldn’t land a single one. It was an attack borne out of frustration. Calvin threw punch after punch, and Spencer easily blocked all of them, throwing Calvin off-balance with each swing, which only made Calvin more frustrated. Spencer was careful to not hurt Calvin as he continued to press him.

“Why do you want to join the riot?”


“Because they’re letting out their anger, and I want to let out my anger, too!”

“You’re doing that now!” Spencer’s voice was quiet, yet it thundered in Calvin’s head. “Punch me and let out your anger more, unless you can tell my why you want to go out there!”


“Because!” Calvin threw a right. “They get to do what I want to do!”

“What do you want to do, son?” It was like his father’s voice massaged him in the right way and made the words fit together. Calvin's brain relaxed, and the words flowed out without effort.

“I want to make a difference! I want to be heard! I want to stand up for myself and not be bullied anymore! By anyone!”

Spencer grabbed both of Calvin’s arms in one of his meaty, father-sized fists and pulled his son’s face closer to his.


“That’s the right answer.” Spencer spun his son around and gently pushed him towards the front door. Calvin ran outside as Spencer grabbed a bat from the corner of the room and started for the door. Heather got up and went after her husband.

“Where are you going?” she asked.


“I’m going with him. I’m not letting him go out there unprotected.” He held out his hand at the same time that Heather responded.

“Well I’m coming too!”


She took his hand and they went out the door after their son.

The Lemmings

“Good morning, Mrs. Patterson,” the grade school class said in unison.

“Good morning, children,” Mrs. Patterson responded, almost by rote. “Are you ready to learn today?”

“Yes, Mrs. Patterson!” All the children answered together, smiled and sat up in their desks.

“Today, we’re going to learn about lemmings,” Mrs. Patterson announced. “Many people have a misconception of lemmings.” She wrote the word “misconception” on the board and then turned to face the children, all of whom were taking diligent notes. “Many people believe that lemmings commit mass suicide. This is not true. Lemmings do not throw themselves off cliffs or voluntarily drown themselves in rivers! That would be ridiculous! None of God’s creatures are that mindless!” The children laughed together, as it was certain that there would be little point in making a creature that would be so stupid as to promote its own death. Especially a creature God had created! “No, when lemmings migrate, they migrate together. With their families, their neighbors, their community friends, their schools, all the people around them. They all travel together. And when the population density becomes too big,” she stopped. “Can we all say ‘population density’?”

“Population density,” the children said together.

“That’s right, when the population density becomes too great, many of the lemmings will fall off cliffs or drown in rivers as they’re migrating. “


“Oh,” the group of children responded, as if they had all understood the information as one collective.

“And even though it’s sad for the lemmings, their behavior can teach us some valuable lessons. For example, if all of your friends decided to jump off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff with them?”


“No!” shouted the children in horror.

“That’s right, you wouldn’t! Would you follow you friends into a river if you were going to drown in that river?”


“No!” the Voice of the Children replied.

“That’s right, children! And it’s important to remember that when you get out in the real world. There are going to be people making many bad decisions, and it’s important that you do not follow them off the cliff or into the river. It’s important to think for yourself and decide to make good choices!”


The children clapped together.

Mrs. Patterson felt that she had taught the lesson on lemmings well. She might write a letter of praise to the textbook company that produced the book from which she taught. After all, most of the schools in her area taught from the same book, so she felt comfortable teaching what those around her were teaching. On second thought, perhaps she wouldn’t write a letter of praise. With everyone else teaching what she was teaching, somebody else surely would have written a letter of praise before now. She didn’t want to bother the company with another piece of mail that they didn’t really need.

Simon And The Drought

A village was trying desperately to stay alive during a great drought. They held a meeting where all the leaders of the community got together to try to figure out how they were going to deal with the crisis.

“The problem is the motor operating the pump in the water well,” said the village plumber. “The pump in the well isn’t pulling the water to the pipes. If we can get the pump motor to actually run, it will pump the water into the pipes, the pipes will carry the water to the village and we will all be saved!”


The village leaders tried desperately to find somebody who could repair the motor. People came and took a look at it, but no one could figure out how to fix the broken motor. Some of them said that it was a gearing wheel that needed to be replaced, but when they replaced the gearing wheel, the motor still didn’t work. Others said that the motor was broken due to brittle gasket heads. But again, when the brittle gasket heads were replaced, the motor still didn’t work.
Simon had been working on an idea for a ventilator for his home. Because of the great drought, his home had become incredibly hot, and Simon was building a system in which the hot air would be sucked out of his home. He had hoped that this system would allow him to feel some relief from the heat of the world. He had been working in secret in his basement, not telling anyone about this idea. When he had first come up with the idea, he had told his friends about it. They had laughed at him and made fun of him. What in the world was he thinking—sucking hot air from his home. Why didn’t he just buy an air conditioner? That would be the best solution, they all mocked. Simon had mentioned his idea to some people he worked with at the village mail office, but they all laughed at him, as well. One lady had actually choked on her turkey sandwich, she was laughing so hard. “That’s what an air conditioner is for, stupid! You’re idea is to invent an air conditioner that doesn’t make things cooler?! How ridiculous!” But for some strange reason, Simon couldn’t let the idea go. He felt compelled to build his ventilator, but silently, without notice, so as to minimize derision.

He had completed the ventilator, and it worked quite well, but upon hearing about the well pump, Simon wondered if his ventilator would work to solve the drought crisis. Alone, in his basement, Simon constructed a small version of the village well, along with pipes and water, and attached his ventilator where the well pump would go. Simon then turned on the ventilator. It sputtered for a moment, then, almost silently, the ventilation system kicked in and the water from the well was brought to the surface pipes and drained all over Simon’s basement floor. It worked! Simon grabbed the ventilator and ran out of the house.


He found the village gathered in the local tavern, the only place that could afford to purchase an air conditioner. Simon proudly carried his ventilator to a table where to local leaders were sitting, enjoying lukewarm ale. But before Simon could say a word, one of the leaders noticed the ventilator in his arms and let out a scoff. “What, did you invent something else that has already been invented?” The table erupted into laughter. Simon tried to get them to listen to him, but he was interrupted again. “Maybe you’ve invented a chair for you to sit on! Did you invent a chair to sit on?” And with that, one of the leaders pushed Simon to the floor. “Look boys,” said another leader. “He’s joined us for a mug of ale but he’s got nothing to drink. Let’s help him out!” And they all took joyous turns pouring their warm ale all over Simon’s mouth and nose. Simon shook his head from one side to the other, trying to find a place where he could breathe air into his lungs, rather than ale, but his ventilator was heavy on his chest and he couldn’t move very much. The leaders continued to pour their ale on Simon, until, finally, Simon had drowned on the floor of the tavern.

The leaders and the patrons stared at Simon’s lifeless body, lying on the floor. They hadn’t really intended to kill him, but now that he was gone, they didn’t really mind. He was a crazy man with crazy ideas, and he wasn’t really helping anyone in the village. Their moment of silence wasn’t all that long. Simon didn’t really deserve a long moment of silence. Just enough to let everyone know that his death was an accident, not intentional, and above all else, no one was to blame for his death except for Simon.


As they pulled his body out of the tavern, they took notice of the device he was carrying. They decided to throw the device away with Simon. It would be as useless as his body. After all, what good is a silly man and his silly ideas?