Category Archives: Personal

A Bad Reputation and Too Many Pens

I spent part of the day at the 15th Annual World Fountain Pen Festival. Despite the temptation, I didn’t feed my addiction. I was more like an alcoholic walking around a bar picking up glasses and sniffing them.

For this addiction, I can definitely blame my father as he’s the first to slip me the drug. Someone had given him, I think as part of a set, a Cross Century fountain pen. He didn’t want it and I’d never tried a fountain pen before so I accepted it.

The first hit was free. (This is the replacement, though. It wasn’t free.)

It was love at first, er, write. (Something like that.) To use it, I was forced to do the thing that none of my teachers had been able to make me do: hold my pen correctly. I used to have a claw grip. Hold your pencil normally, then pull the tip toward your palm and write with the pencil vertical and the tip directly under your index finger knuckle. Feel free to grip the pencil as tightly as possible. Writing that way gave me impressive calluses on my middle finger and my little finger but didn’t do much for my handwriting.

Using the Cross was more comfortable and, for a while, although it would eventually become barely legible, my handwriting improved. I kept that pen longer than any other pen I’d ever owned but eventually lost it. I quickly replaced it and still have the replacement. Then, while I was in the Peace Corps, I bought a couple cheap Chinese Hero pens, that are direct copies of the Parker 51. I wrote a lot with them, but found the nibs too thin. I still have them and they still work. (Not bad for 15 cents apiece.)

This one's been used. The one in the box has never been taken out of the plastic.

This one’s been used. There’s one in the box that has never even been taken out of the plastic.

Then, while I was at Ole Miss, I bought an early Retro 51 fountain pen (200 series?). It had a thicker barrel and a bit more weight. I used it a while–and still have it, by the way–but then a friend introduced me to fountain pen crack: the Pilot/Namiki Vanishing Point. A fountain pen that acts like a clicky ball-point pen. There’s no cap. You just click it and use it. Let me say that again: you click it like a ball-point pen, but it’s a fountain pen. Genius. I used them so much that the barrels began to break. I still have them, but don’t use them. Instead I use a more contemporary version.

An okay pen that has always felt creaky when I used it. Nice weight, though.

They look like pens, but they are actually coated with a drug that makes you want more. And more. And more.

Unfortunately, about the time I got the Cross, I developed a sudden aversion to lending my pens to other people. Nothing wins friends and influences people more than having a pen in your hand and saying “No” when asked “Do you have a pen I can borrow?” The few times I did lend my fountain pens, the borrowers gripped them by the nibs and got ink all over their fingers. Oddly, they blamed this on me which neither won friends nor influenced people. (Although saying “Don’t ruin the nib you moron” might have contributed to that, too.)

I quickly learned to carry spare pens to loan to the unwashed masses lest they become inky and, well, forced to wash. This led to the spectacle of me holding a pen but saying, “just a minute, I need to find a lesser pen for you to use” (something like that) when asked “May I borrow your pen?”.

I then moved to Japan, which is the Mecca of stationery and pointy writey things. And, of course, I must try them so I can experience Japanese stationery culture, or something. This means I have roller balls and gel ink pens. Pens with glass tips. Pens with brush tips. Actual brushes, and an old brush and ink kit that looks kind of like a pipe.

Also, just about 40 years since my father gave me that first hit of Cross, I have several fountain pens, some of which actually work, with a couple more on order (damn you Kickstarter!) I also have several bottles of ink occupying space on my desk.

As for the pen show, it wasn’t as much fun as the Pointy Stabby Things show because everything was being sold by store clerks and not by the actual makers. (The one maker who was there was constantly busy and I never got a chance to talk to him.) They also didn’t seem keen on photography. Sailor Pens’ relatively famous custom ink blender was there, but there was no other ink for sale. I did get to try a bunch of pens but didn’t buy anything. I am, however, casually checking out the prices on the internet. Just for curiosity’s sake.

I can quit any time I want.

Note: Updated 8 March 2015 with pictures.

And Then Everything Changes and Nothing is Normal

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Three years ago today. Friday. I was wasting time at home as final grades weren’t due until Saturday morning. I was in post-marking malaise and already pondering asking someone else to check my marks so that I didn’t have to go in. At 2:46 in the afternoon we started to feel the tremor. We’d felt a big one two days before and, well, there were always big ones happening and we’d grown fairly complacent. We even tried to guess the size before the official news report.

I felt it first, as I was sitting down. My wife was standing it didn’t feel it until the ceiling lamps started swinging. Unusually, it got stronger and didn’t stop. As everything began to rattle in our first floor apartment we decided to head outside.

Idiot me didn’t even think of taking a camera. Or, for that matter, an emergency kit (more on that later). The large tree near our building was rocking back and forth and we could hear it cracking. The cars in the parking lot were dancing. The tin roof of the bicycle shed was rattling. I felt dizzy and had to hold on to a sign to keep standing. At about three minutes one of our neighbors joined us. She’d been on the third floor.

I remembered that, about four years before, after a big earthquake in Niigata, our in-laws had sent us an emergency kit. I couldn’t remember where it was. Finally, after four minutes. It all stopped and we went in to watch the news. Then we started to get the aftershocks; one was strong enough to send us back outside.

We watched news about the tsunami and then about Fukushima Number One. Telephones and cellphones were down, although data plans were still usable. Even though the internet was working, email was having problems. Oddly, Facebook was working, but in strange ways. One of my friends was stuck at school. Her husband worked in Tokyo. Each could contact me via Facebook, but they couldn’t contact each other. He eventually walked the 13 miles to be with her and escort her back home.

Japanese tv stopped showing commercials and started running Ad Council PSAs instead. This was creepy, especially as the “AAAAAA CEEEEEEE” jingle got stuck in everyone’s heads. (The jingle was eventually pulled, too, although the spots kept running.)

The emperor, who usually remains silent while the government operates, went on television with a quiet, yet surprisingly powerful “don’t give up” speech.

We learned, eventually, that the quake had literally moved the Earth by shifting it 4-10 inches (10-25 centimeters) on its axis. It had also moved Japan’s main island, Honshu, eight feet (2.4 meters) East and dropped the coast around four feet (1.2 meters). The sound waves from the quake were detected by satellites in low orbit.

We then entered a phase where the government was denying what was happening in front of our eyes (explosions at Fukushima) and the big shots at TEPCO started citing, in mumbles no less, incomprehensible technical bullshit that pissed off even the docile Japanese press. The anti-nuclear industrial complex started screaming, and have been screaming ever since, about how we were all going to die; in fact, we were already dead. All of the above have since been discredited and it’s no joke to say we trust the thousands of people who now own Geiger counters (including a colleague of mine) more than we trust anyone in an official work uniform.

The Japanese became a lot less trusting of government. They also discovered the absurdity of having incompatible electrical systems in the same country (Western Japan in on a 60hz system; Eastern Japan is on 50hz.) Back in the day, when I visited my friends in Niigata, there was a crossover point where the lights suddenly went out for several seconds as the grids changed. (Yes, that’s right, incompatible power grids in the same COUNTY.)

As for us, we were about as lucky as people could get. Our apartment is apparently in a geologic sweet-spot that limited much of the shaking (which is why we didn’t feel it at first.) Not even a single book fell off a shelf. We had ways to get food, but only because some transportation was still working. We avoided the rolling blackouts and the worst that happened to me is I had to walk home seven miles from school when rolling blackouts shut down our train line for 10 hours.

The hardest part was the aftershocks, which lasted the rest of the year. It was impossible to relax. I remember my wife and I talking about that and me saying “Nothing is normal, right now. Nothing is normal.”

This video shows the larger quakes that occurred two days before and three days after. It’s worth watching it all, but the real action starts at 1:18 or so. I recommend watching it full screen, so you can see the date and time:

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This video shows all quakes for the entire year. The real action starts at around 1:40. Note the line at the bottom that shows how rapidly the number of quakes increased.

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Finally, this video shows the quake and tsunami as filmed by a number of survivors:

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Now: The aftershocks ceased a long time ago and although we’ve been more diligent with our preps, we’ve started to slip back into complacency. I know where my emergency kits are now, though, and I carry one every time I go to Tokyo.

Last year, there was another tsunami warning, and the announcer didn’t mess around. He basically started shouting for people to get to high ground. His tone was “Do you remember 2011? Do you want to f&#%ing die?” which scared us, even though we live a long way from the ocean.

Only the oldest member of the Fukushima 50 has died, and that from esophageal cancer unlikely to have been caused by radiation exposure. (Thyroid cancer is more likely from radiation exposure.)

The government is still run by idiots who manage TEPCO in an idiotic way. Relief funds seem to have been spent everywhere EXCEPT the areas in need of relief funds. They’ve supported the whaling industry, Tokyo Sky Tree, fighter pilot training, wine and cheese events, turtle counting, and a contact lens factory.

Everyone thinks there was no looting after the quake and tsunami (there was) but the worst looting is happening now.

Note: Edited 3/11/2014 to add links to AC Japan videos.

The First Half is the Hardest to Reach the Full Pint

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In a recent comment on a recent bit of blather, my friend Steve Brisendine reminded me of our first trip to London which, naturally, has me thinking about beer.

For me, that trip was a big deal. At the time the farthest I’d been out of the United States was a trip to California complete with a foray to Tijuana, Mexico. Suddenly I was walking in places I’d read about in novels and history books and tracking down traditional English cuisine (fish and chips, curry and Chinese.)

While we were in London we saw lots of theater performances, old churches and random museums and adopted very weak English accents. (Steve is better at cockney; my specialty is upper class twit.) We also took a few walking tours, such as the Sherlock Holmes walk–which must be really annoying now with everyone wearing trench coats and going “Mind Palace” “Mind Palace” and “I’m certainly not a more Aspergery Doctor Who.”

The most difficult part, though, was trying the warm beer. After sticking with cowardly lager for a few evenings out, we finally decided to try a half pint of best bitter. (Best, at least in the mid-80s, meaning it had the highest percentage of alcohol; bitter meaning it was a pale ale.) I remember us staring at the half pints for a minute before trying them.

We were immediately smitten–it wasn’t actually warm and it didn’t lose its flavor as it sat on the table meaning it could be sipped slowly and thus conversation was possible at a lower price. Many full pints were quickly ordered and consumed and much feeling in our feet lost although we were able to stagger back to our rooms. We then spent the rest of the trip acting like drug dealing cult members trying to get the rest of our tour group to try the bitter. We bought lots of half-pints with promises to buy other drinks as necessary. (The first hit’s free. It won’t cost you anything.)

When I got back home, I immediately started experimenting with different dark beers which, while they were weak when compared to best, had the advantage of being the only beer no one in my fraternity house was likely to steal.

All By Myself I Wanna Be Every Now And Then

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There is one key thing introverts need to know about marriage. The vows are pretty straightforward: love, honor, cherish, obey, listen to as necessary, surprise with steak on occasion, warm your damned icy feet before getting into bed, for richer/for poorer, in sickness/in health, full of crap/not full of crap etcetera, etcetera till death do us part. (At least those are the ones I remember.)

The part that introverts need to pay attention to is the “to have and to hold from this day forward … till death do us part.” They need to realize that the other person will be around them for a very long time, in the same house, touching your stuff, sharing your stuff, questioning why you have so much stuff that runs on batteries, questioning why you want to buy more stuff. Add children into the mix and introverts are, well, having some issues.

From what I’ve read here and there, and things from here and there are always right, extroverts gain energy from social interactions. The more people there are around, the merrier the extrovert becomes. Introverts, on the other hand, expend energy during social interactions. The more people around, the more energy that’s spent. It’s no joke to say that introverts need time to recharge after extended social interactions, especially if karaoke and/or family are involved or an “interested and perky demeanor” is required. (For the record: I don’t do perky. Instead, my goofy is spot on. It’s quite natural, actually.)

This hit me a couple years ago when, for various complicated reasons, my three lovely ladies stayed home during the summer rather than heading off to the in-laws. Eventually, we traveled together to the in-laws where I had to interact with even more people and maintain an “interested and goofy demeanor”. In the past, I’d be working in the summer and would eventually make my own way to the Japan Sea coast, or just stay home and visit over the new year’s holiday. It was a nice break for everyone, especially this introvert. A couple years ago, though I found myself getting stressed and anxious and developing a kind of cabin fever where I couldn’t focus on anything for more than a short time. That feeling carried on throughout the rest of the year. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

I eventually realized that it was the first year since I’d started at university, that I hadn’t had had any time alone. I’d always had at least a week to recharge. This time, though, the introvert in me had spent all its energy and wasn’t getting the chance to recharge.

I explained all this to She Who Must Be Obeyed who recited the “full of crap/totally full of crap” vow (something like that) but accepted that even though I like my in-laws and love my family, I don’t always like being around them. Absence doesn’t just make the heart grow fonder, it makes the heart stronger, at least for a little while.

Everybody’s Culture Shocking

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One of the early side effects of living in a developed foreign country is that you are the happiest person in the land. You glow. You are imbued with a teenager level of knowledge and wisdom that lets you know everything about the country and lets you see things the old, bitter veterans have never noticed before and clearly don’t understand.

Everything about your new home is better than your old, decrepit country. It’s cleaner, healthier, nicer, safer, cooler, more beautiful, more cultured and, in general everything is just more awesomer. Anything that’s bad is, just, well, that’s just something you’re going to have to get used to–it’s not YOU it’s ME–and it’s probably just your lack of language ability causing a miscommunication.

This lasts about three months.

At that three month mark all those niggling little annoyances become big annoyances and full blown culture shock. Suddenly the country you’re in is the most ass-backwards, low-life, 19th century wretched hive of scum and villainy you’ve ever had the displeasure of living in. It’s not ME it’s THEM idiots. Everyone is racist and all those people you thought were cool are just racist metro-sexual scumbags who’ve been lying to you and withholding the truth from you the entire time. You’ve been making all these efforts to communicate with your new language skills but clearly the racists and their racist ears can’t hear a foreigner, however brilliant, speak.

This feeling lasts two to three months and then suddenly the country you’re in isn’t that bad again. It’ll never be as cool as it was, but it’s pleasant. A few months later, the culture shock comes back, but not as bad. That cycle goes on and one, with slowly leveling swings between happy and culture shocked.

Even after all these years, I still experience bouts of culture shock. Normally, it doesn’t bother me that when I’m at the front of a line, especially at a train station, no one in Japan believes that’s the right line. I’ve even seen station masters look confused about which line was which when they saw me. I also find that Japanese are hyper-sensitive to little pronunciation mistakes. When I say the name of the school I work at: Rikkyo, I get lots of puzzled looks. This is because the pronunciation has a slight pause “Reek-kyo” and the “o” is long. If either of those features is left out, puzzled looks ensue, even though there’s no other school with a similar name. It’s like saying “I work at Princetown University in New Jersey” and having people go “where?” even after you’ve pronounced it several times.

However, when I find either of these things making me angry, I know I’m in culture shock. I usually try to relax at home and, whenever possible, try to watch a US news program. Several minutes of suffering that vapid and superficial emptiness, especially if it’s CNN International or NBC, usually reminds me that things could always be worse and I start feeling better. At least until the next time.

Who What Where When Why Which Whore Wine-Whine Merger

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Because I’m still in the middle of marking exams, and because I’m collecting a fourth batch tomorrow, English teaching has been on my mind.

Even though, as mentioned before, I’ve lost most of my native accent, the one vocal quirk I’ve kept is the one vocal quirk I shouldn’t have.

When I was attending Edison Elementary School in Hayden, Colorado, I remember one of my teachers–I think it was Miss Trimble when I was in, maybe, 6th grade–explaining that the “wh-” in words like “what” and “where” should be pronounced as “hw” making them “hwat” and “hwere”. This was done in order to distinguish them from “watt” and “wear”. This is the reason words such as “who”, “whole” and “whore” have an “h” sound and aren’t “woo”, “wole” and “wore”. (For the record: she probably didn’t use “whore” as an example.)

Although I ignored and then forgot most of the useful things I was taught in elementary school, like, say, math, for some reason I retained that and incorporated into my way of speaking. A sentence like “Watch where you wear those clothes lest your father whine and wail and drink a bottle of wine before butchering whales in Wales” is to me “Watch hwere you wear those clothes lest your father hwine and wail and drink a bottle of wine before butchering hwales in Wales”.

Now it turns out that this was the way most of the English speaking world once said these words. However thanks to something called the “Wine-Whine Merger” (which could be the name of a country music album) most of the English speaking world now pronounces those words the same. (For me, “white wine” is pronounced “hwite wine” or “pinot gris”.) There are a few pockets where the “Wine-Hwine Merger hasn’t been completed, mostly across the US Southern states–although I don’t remember anyone speaking that way when I was at Ole Miss or visiting friends in Georgia–and, apparently, large portions of Scotland, but I’m from Kansas and grew up in Colorado so I shouldn’t speak this way at all.

Oddly, only a couple students have ever called me on this–one of them a couple weeks ago– and asked “Why do you speak like a complete fool?” (Or something like that.)

I, of course, took full responsibility for the way I speak by blaming my Miss Trimble.

When That Was The Greatest Most-Evilest Evil Ever

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Because movies are usually half-price at most Japanese theaters on the first of every month, I was going to go see the latest Peter Jackson Hobbit movie today. Unfortunately I got sidetracked by both miserable weather and miserable tests to mark.

However, this got me thinking about evil and the things that have been the biggest, baddest most dangerous evils in my lifetime.

The devastating new drug that was unlike any other drug and so dangerous that just looking at it made an addict doomed to die in less than a year has been heroin, then cocaine, then crack cocaine, then “huffing” random substances from cans, then methamphetamine. Lots of time and money and news reports were spent on these evils but, eventually, a new evil was brought in to keep people scared and keep anti-drug money flowing to government to keep police employed and anti-drug ad money flowing to the media to keep anti-drug reporters employed.

I remember being offered meth on two different occasions back in university and was surprised to discover it had recently become the newest evilest thing. (For the record: I never tried it.) Now, however, with Breaking Bad finished and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s untimely death, it appears that heroin is destined to be cool and evil again.

However, this isn’t the evil that the Hobbit got me thinking about. When I was growing up, especially as I was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church, the biggest evil was the game Dungeons & Dragons. Playing it, especially if we chose to be magic users/wizards, would make us yearn to commune with the Devil in order to gain special powers in our real lives.

It didn’t help that players could align their characters with different flavors of evil with Chaotic Evil being the most fun and Lawful Evil being the oxymoron. (Yes, you picky, picky geeks, I know what Lawful meant in the game. I know, so there.) If we played too much we would eventually lose touch with reality and begin to think we were our characters. A young Tom Hanks would then play us in Mazes and Monsters while Wendy Crewson played the lovestruck girl who pined for our lost sanity.

Of course, it didn’t seem very evil as Derek, Bobby, Shawn and I ate pizza and Doritos on lazy summer afternoons and pretty much figured out ways to get our characters into fights so that we could get stuff. (The more Bobby parlayed, the more likely the fight.) Magic was only useful for healing good guys and making bad guys blow up. The Magic User was usually the guy who ended up wreaking the most damage to his own party so we kept him at a distance.

In the end, I think we mostly turned out okay. At least I think I did.

Granted, in my real life I did develop the power of Resounding Voice and have learned to raise the dead. I think that has more to do with becoming a teacher than playing D&D, though.

I also still have lots of funny shaped dice hidden away somewhere. You could never have too many dice.

Raise Up A Child In The Way

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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a great place to raise a child is a crappy place to be a teenager.

This gets worse and worse the smaller the town is and the longer you’ve lived there. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. Everyone has strong opinions about everyone else’s business. Everyone is easily dragged into everyone else’s business. If you are a geek, that fact is pretty much well known and that makes it hard to do the most basic step involved in dating (lie and/or make a good first impression). Everyone knows who you are and there’s not much you can do to break out of that.

In fact, it’s fair to say that living in a small town is only one step removed from being part of a crazy dysfunctional family not able to leave their own yard.

Even here in Japan, I’ve encountered such things. When I was teaching on the Sea of Japan coast, one of my schools served a small town that was almost literally squeezed between the beach and the highway. All students seemed to share one of a few family names and all of them also seemed to share years and years of bad blood.

One week, even though it was technically illegal for me to conduct a class by myself, I suddenly found myself solo-teaching while Mr. Oguma, my Japanese English teacher, was off doing something he hadn’t bothered to tell me about. The students pretty much considered it to be free time and I found myself getting slowly frustrated and then completely frustrated.

After a couple bad classes, I finally confronted Mr. Oguma about it and he very apologetically explained that he was having trouble organizing the girls in his homeroom into rooms for the class trip. It seemed that their families had hated each other since the girls were in kindergarten and that hatred had followed the girls into junior high school. Family A refused to let their daughter room with girls from families B and C while Family D didn’t want their daughter associating with Families A, B or C. Family E was right out. Mr. Oguma was in the middle of a tense negotiation to try to find an acceptable formula.

What still strikes me about this is Mr. Oguma is a former punk rock musician who is almost as tall as I am and has an intimidating physical presence. He actually aspires to work in troubled schools, including one where a student was killed during a bullying incident, and I’m sure if we dropped him in any troubled school in the USA, he’d thrive. He remains one of the best teachers I’ve worked with. Suddenly he was negotiating with teenage girls to get them to leave school for a few days and he was having a hard time.

He assured me he was making quicker progress than their 1st grade homeroom teacher had. It had taken him three weeks of negotiating to get the girls to room together for one night on a ski trip. When I asked why he didn’t just say “You have 10 minutes to get your name on this room list or you’re not going” he assured me it was impossible as the trip was part of the girl’s education and they had to go.

A year later, during the sports day events, one of the mothers involved would directly confront one of the girls involved and call her names in front of pretty much everyone. That girl stopped attending class, even though she still went to school. She simply studied in a room by herself.

The sad part is, having grown up in a small town, I kind of understand all this.

Fingernail Flesh So Juicy Sweet

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Today’s an odd one and, perhaps, a gross one, so let me apologize in advance.

Anyone who’s ever roomed with me or shared a train compartment with me or sat next to me when we were watching television knows that I’m not only a hard-core nail chewer, I’m a particularly noisy one as well and have a repertoire of slurps, smacks and squeaks that, oddly, do more to annoy than to entertain. One friend reportedly kept telling herself “He doesn’t know he’s doing it. He doesn’t know he’s doing it. He doesn’t know he’s doing it.” during a long train ride to keep from, well, she never actually said what she’d have done if I’d known I was doing it. (Which is not a very comforting thought now that I think about it.)

At least I was that way until December 3rd of last year.

Along with establishing what I hope is a good habit–posting here every day–I’ve also been working on getting rid of a couple bad habits (partly to give myself something to write about). Inspired by the stories of a couple students of Leo Babauta of the often useful and interesting, occasionally annoying and pompous website ZenHabits, I decided to focus on curing one of my longest running bad habits, gnawing my fingernails bloody.

This was not my first attempt. I’d tried everything from slapping my fingers when I caught myself chewing, to slathering bitter chemicals all over them to slowly poison myself and stop once and for all forever. Nothing worked–especially, thank goodness, the slow poisoning.

However, on December 3rd, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I managed to make the new habit stick. I started practicing deliberate breaths whenever I caught myself engaging in autocannibalism. I’d inhale for five seconds, hold the breath for five, exhale all the air in five seconds (or so) and hold for five seconds; and then do that two more times.

Somehow it worked. It also let me be more aware of when I got that urge to gnaw, so to speak. (Not surprisingly, the internet, boredom and time-wasting were usually involved as much as stress.) I’ve slipped a couple times but not more than that. As near as I can tell, the deliberate breaths act as a kind of pause. Once I’ve got my own attention, so to speak, I can get back to work, or get back to being lazy without snacking on my eponychium. (Yeah, I looked it up. So what?)

I’m now approaching three months and want to move on to attempting to cure other bad habits. Next is, well, I’ll put that off for now and tell you about it another time, if I ever get around to it.

So Smart So Unsmart

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One of the guilty pleasures of having kids is that on occasion you get to mock them. This is especially true when you have a teenager in the house as teens are so thoroughly convinced of their own brilliance that it’s kind of fun to see them stumble a bit. (This also applies to adults who act like teens.)

Last week, while She Who Must Be Obeyed was out, my oldest, Sara, was assigned to cook ramen noodles for supper. She chopped the cabbage and ham and washed the bean sprouts and managed to fry it all up without burning down the house. She then set about to boil the noodles, which according to the instructions required four minutes of boiling time. Being better at math than her father (which, for the record, is true), she quickly deduced that three packages of noodles required 12 minutes of boiling time.

Being the dutiful father that I am, I ate all of what seemed like several pounds of mushy yet tasty noodles and encouraged her to be more careful in the future. I then went to my desk and started giggling a bit.

That said, I’m hardly in a position to judge.

When I was 15 or so, the most grown up thing I could legally do was ride my bike from our house in the Golden Meadows subdivision to a grocery store I vaguely remember being called the Hayden Mercantile.

I remember one occasion where mom told me she wanted me to go the store. I grabbed my bike and started racing down the hill, wind in my badly styled, bowl-cut looking hair. Right near the elementary school, mom’s car suddenly swept in front of me and halted my progress in a move straight out of a police drama.

She pointed out two fatal flaws in my plan. One: I didn’t actually have any money to buy the things she wanted me to buy. Two: I didn’t actually know what she wanted me to buy.

If I remember correctly, I received money and instructions and bought all the required goods and delivered them as instructed. It wasn’t as much fun as it should have been, though, as mom had also pointed out something along the lines of the entire point of sending me was that she wouldn’t have to drive, which my haste had kind of required.

Even my teenage brain could understand that. But then again, as a teen, I already knew everything.

(Luckily for this blog, I’m sure I have a few more moments of brilliance like that hiding somewhere in the back of my head.)