It’s almost August in Arkansas. That means it’s hot and the air is so heavy and stands so still I can lift a chunk of it in one hand and cut it with a knife.
How can someone who hates hot weather keep cool? She gets creative. In addition to tall glasses of sweet iced tea, sun dresses, and air conditioning cranked so low you could hang meat from my ceiling, I decided to pull out an old favorite: a book about dog sledding that I read a few years ago. There’s nothing like the thought of the Iditarod to put ice in one’s blood, now is there?
This isn’t a book review, although if you want to read more about the serum run the book I read is an excellent choice.
Pull up your chairs and settle in. Let me tell you a story about what really, truly happened one long wintry night in Alaska – where winter nights last for months.
Map of the January 1925 Serum Run along the Iditarod Trail from The Cruelest Miles
Prior to reading The Cruelest Miles, a fabulous book by Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury about the legendary inspiration for the annual Iditarod dog sled race, my own knowledge of the historic Serum Run was sparse. What little I knew came from modern-day news reports of the Iditarod race, most of which I ignored, and my son’s old videotape of the animated feature, Balto, which I watched and listened to ad nauseum when he was a little guy. Although I suspected that the children’s movie had taken liberties with the facts, I was compelled to buy the book because of that movie as much as by the chance to read another vignette from American history. And yes, the movie did take generous liberties with the facts. Apparently, so did the creators of the statue of Balto that sits at the Children’s Zoo in Central Park in New York City.
The 674-mile trek was endured by brave Alaskan dog-sledders to stop the Nome diphtheria outbreak in the dead of winter, 1925. The Salisburys’ book is altogether readable and informative not only about the desperate race against the disease, but also about dog-sledding, Alaskan topography and climate, and the personalities and temperaments of the sled dogs themselves. The characters who I most admired, though, were the score of determined men who accepted the challenge to risk their own lives to save a town full of dying children at the top of the world almost 100 years ago.
News reports of the day breathlessly followed the unfolding tragedy. As the men and dogs ran hundreds of miles in searing cold, suspense gripped the entire world. Reporters worldwide wrote about each leg of the desperate race to get the diphtheria anti-toxin to Nome in time to save the town. The book intersperses fascinating facts and asides which leave the reader hungry for more, but not impatient with the interruptions of the dramatic unfolding of events. The story has great flavor because of the fullness of its telling. As each team of dauntless dogs is hitched to their sled, the antitoxin’s epic journey is punctuated with the unfolding crisis back in Nome.
When an Eskimo family brought one of their four children to him in the fall of 1925, Nome’s local doctor, Curtis Welch, did not immediately suspect diphtheria, nor did he realize that he was seeing an epidemic in its infancy. He believed at first that he was dealing with tonsillitis, which is an inflammation of the tonsils and throat caused by a virus or bacteria. None of the other children in the family were ill, and the parents reported no other instances of sore throats back in their village, which was close to Nome. Since diphtheria is highly contagious, it was unlikely that only one child would be affected, and in the decades he had been practicing medicine in Alaska’s northwest, no cases of diphtheria had been diagnosed – at all. But the Eskimo child died the next morning. Welch first concluded the cause of death to be from tonsillitis, which was rare. After the cases of diphtheria began making themselves known, though, Welch changed the child’s death certificate to reflect diphtheria as the cause of death.
That fall and winter, Welch noticed an unusually high frequency of tonsillitis and sore throats. On Christmas Eve, he saw a seven-year-old girl with a severely sore throat. Her Eskimo mother would not permit him to examine her fully without the child’s Norwegian father present, and the father had left the area on business. The little girl died four days later. This was now the second death from tonsillitis. Deaths from tonsillitis do occur, but even in the days before antibiotics they were extremely rare. When news came that four other native children had died after suffering from sore throats, Welch began to suspect that something was seriously amiss.
Diphtheria is an airborne bacteria that thrives in the moist membranes of the throat and nose and releases a powerful toxin that makes its victims tired and apathetic. In two to five days, other, more deadly symptoms would appear: a slight fever and red ulcers at the back of the throat and in the mouth. As the bacteria multiplied and more of the toxin was released, the ulcers thickened and expanded, forming a tough, crusty, almost leathery membrane made up of dead cells, blood clots, and dead skin. The membrane colonized ever larger portions of the mouth and the throat, until it had nowhere left to go and advanced down the windpipe, slowly suffocating the victim. [The Cruelest Miles, p. 36]
On January 20, a three-year-old boy from Nome, Billy Barnett, displayed the characteristic gray membrane of diphtheria. Dr. Welch was no longer just guessing. Since the diphtheria antitoxin his hospital had on hand had expired, and the fresh antitoxin he had ordered during the summer of 1924 did not arrive before the Bering Sea froze completely that fall, Dr. Welch had no choice but to watch the tiny boy die. Then the day after Billy Barnett’s death, an Eskimo girl with obvious diphtheria died.
Dr. Welch understood the significance of the problem. During the influenza pandemic of 1918, the native population had attempted to flee the disease and instead spread it further. If a panic occurred, the disease would not be limited just to Nome’s population of about 1500. Diphtheria is highly contagious and the bacterium was capable of living for weeks outside a human host. Panicked flight from Nome would guarantee the spread of the epidemic faster and farther. Containing it, especially during northwest Alaska’s brutal winter, would be impossible.
The town council met and was informed of the dire circumstances. Nome had been devastated by the flu pandemic six years before, losing more than half its population. Of 300 orphans created by the flu pandemic in all of Alaska, 90 of them were in Nome. The men were well aware of the seriousness of the situation.
The decision was made to quarantine the town and to prohibit any group gatherings. Children, the ones most likely to be affected by the disease, would not be permitted to leave their homes at all. Two urgent telegraphs were sent. One went to the US Public Health Service in Washington, DC. The other was an all-points bulletin for the entirety of Alaska.
Nome’s medical care team was quickly overwhelmed by sick children exhibiting the same symptoms. Not only was a deadly epidemic spreading rapidly through the town and neighboring villages, but Dr. Welch’s medical facility, the best in the region, was cut off from the rest of the world by pack ice and the harsh arctic winter. While this might be good inasmuch as quarantine was concerned, no one would survive the epidemic to tell about it unless antitoxin got to Nome fast.
Keep in mind, now: it’s the dead of winter two degrees below the arctic circle. The sea is frozen. There is no rail service within 700 miles of Nome. Even today there are no roads in or out of Nome, and in 1925 truck transport over such a distance, without roads, was completely out of the question. The only available airplane was a World War I model with an open cockpit – this was 1925 – which would have been almost certain suicide for the pilot in the dead of the North Alaskan winter.
The only way to get the serum to Nome was by dog sled – if serum could even be found.
In May President Bush’s job approval ratings, at an average of 30%, hit the lowest of any president in a generation, and since then have kept dropping lower. In a poll conducted July 18-21 by American Research Group, Bush’s approval rating is 25%. A staggering 71% of those polled reported that they disapproved of his job performance, and 4% were undecided.
Of the 1100 people responding to the poll, 30% identified themselves as Republicans, 37% identified themselves as Democrats, and 33% identified themselves as independents.
Among the Republicans, 68% approve of the way Bush is handling his job and 26% disapprove. Of those claiming to be Democrats 1% approve and 97% disapprove. The Independents had 18% approve and 79% disapprove.
I would expect the people identifying themselves as Republicans to be predisposed in favor of the President, since he is a member of their party, and I would expect the Democrats to be predisposed against him. I was staggered by the fact that a mere 1% of Democrats were willing to say they approved, though.
The poll results don’t say whether the independents identified themselves with another political party or with no party at all. Nevertheless, I thought it quite telling that of that one-third of the respondents, 18% thought the president was doing well. It seems that the only people who like this president are the loyal members of his own party.
The poll primarily targeted opinions regarding the economy. The numbers regarding the President’s handling of the economy are even lower than his overall approval rating. Only 23% of those polled approved, and 72% disapproved. The division among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents was similar to the division they demonstrated in the overall approval rating. Interestingly enough, more Democrats (3%) approved of his handling of the economy and of his overall job performance, whereas fewer Republicans (61%) thought he was doing well with the economy. Independents (11%) were likewise less enamored of his economic performance.
I confess I have superhero ambitions. I am attracted to anyone having the fashion sense and BMI to pull off wearing tights and a cape in public and I want to be just like them when I grow up. The consummate altruism that comes along with the costume is an ideal I can only hope to achieve.
I regret that usually I must look to heroes of a more mundane nature for most of my inspiration. When Isabel Allende wrote El Zorro, I knew I had to read it. Impatiently I waited for it to come out in paperback. Seeing it paraded in front of me constantly over the next few months, I broke down and bought it in hardcover, an honor normally reserved for books I plan to read over and over. It turns out that the investment was prudent. I recently reread this wonderful story. It was just as good the second time around.
The author herself is almost as interesting as her characters. Like El Zorro Diego de la Vega, Allende has noble roots. Her father was Chile’s ambassador to Peru and her cousin was Salvador Allende, the Chilean President deposed by Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-backed coup of September 11, 1973. Like Diego, she was essentially exiled to Spain as a young adult. Perhaps it was inevitable that she would write the story of the Fox.
As the daughter, cousin, and stepdaughter of diplomats, Allende traveled the world, sometimes leaving her foreign home precipitously when political or family crises demanded it. Her stepfather was a Chilean diplomat in Lebanon at the time of the Suez Canal crisis; her family fled to Venezuela when Pinochet deposed President Allende.
Educated in Europe, Lebanon, and South America Allende’s professional career began in journalism. Prior to the coup, she approached the Nobel winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda for an interview. He declined, saying she had too much imagination to be a journalist, and told her to write books. With encouragement like that, how could she not?
Her unique creativity revealed itself first in children’s stories and plays she wrote, then, after the coup while she was in exile, in the novels she authored. She has sixteen published books, and a seventeenth is due to be published in the fall. Even in translation, Allende writes beautifully. Although she lives in California, she writes in her native Spanish.
El Zorro explores the creation of not just a folk hero, but of the boy, Diego de la Vega, who grew up to become el Zorro. Spanning two continents and four decades, there is never a lull in the story. The swordplay is really cool, too.
Zorro’s parents meet at a Spanish Mission. His father, Alejandro de la Vega, is the brilliant young officer charged with the mission’s defense. His mother, Toypurnia, is the daughter of White Owl, a shaman and healer of the Gabrieleno tribe, and a Spanish sailor who deserted his ship and lived among the Indians.
Toypurnia is injured in an attack she leads on the San Gabriel mission. When the Spaniards discover that she is a woman, she is given medical treatment. Alejandro de la Vega is fascinated by her and often tends to her himself. She and Alejandro fall in love and rather than allow her to be executed as a captured enemy, Alejandro maneuvers Toypurnia into the protection of Doña Eulalia de Callís, the wife of the governor of Alta California, who, as a condition of Toypurnia’s pardon, turns her into a “Christian Spanish lady” newly christened “Regina María de la Inmaculada Concepción.” Alejandro and Toypurnia are married and inherit a grand estate when Doña Eulalia and her husband, Governor Pedro Fages, decide to return to Spain.
When Toypurnia seems to have failing health during her pregnancy with Diego, an unmarried pregnant Catholic Indian woman is sent from the San Gabriel Mission to be her servant. The two women give birth the same day, but since Toypurnia’s health continues to decline the servant nurses both Diego and her own son, Bernardo. Diego and Bernardo come to be more than milk brothers, though. They are the best of friends and when Bernardo’s mother is killed during a pirate raid on the family’s compound, they are raised as true brothers. Bernardo is so traumatized by seeing his mother murdered by the marauders, though, that he becomes mute.
Bernardo is the perfect foil for Diego’s personality. He is smart, strong, silent, sturdy, and unassailably loyal to his brother. Diego, on the other hand, is small, mischievous, brilliant, witty, and the instigator of most of the trouble the boys find.
Diego’s Indian grandmother, White Owl, exerts as much influence on the course of the boys’ lives as do the Spaniards who raise them. She takes the boys on shamanistic journeys of survival and character development. On a survival vision quest Bernardo finds his spirit animal, the horse Tornado, and Diego finds his totem, the fox. “Like the fox, you will discover what cannot be seen in the dark, you will disguise yourself, and you will hide by day and act by night,” his grandmother explains after the vision quest.
Diego is sent to Barcelona, to the home of his father’s best friend, to be educated. Naturally Bernardo accompanies him, ostensibly as a servant but in actuality Bernardo is educated the same as Diego. The Spanish household accepts the boys without reservation. He and Bernardo reach their adult growth there. As political intrigues permeate the Barcelona, Diego and Bernardo find themselves getting involved to preserve their own reputations as well as those of their patron. El Zorro, a masked and mustachioed liberator of political captives, is born due to the necessity of acting in secret.
The political climate in Barcelona becomes dire and Diego and Bernardo are entrusted with the safety of his patron’s beautiful daughters. They escape back to America, encountering the famous pirates Pierre and Jean Lafitte in the process. Their return to Alta California does not improve their circumstances. The political climate there is at least as bad as it was in Barcelona. El Zorro has a need to continue to act. The Zorro we are all familiar with becomes the legend we love.
Allende’s El Zorro embodies the melding of many different aspects of society into one conflicted and heroic personality. El Zorro becomes a legend because he has no choice given his integrity his complex background. Loyalties that should be divided find a simple resolution simply by doing what is right. Diego is of three worlds: Indian, Californio, and Spain. El Zorro cannot fail because of his wit and his friends and family.
The elements that make el Zorro a hero and a legend are the elements that create any true legend: mystery, physical prowess, masterful wit, and above all else, honor.
Recently I embarked upon a rant. It was not a particularly unique rant, at least not to me. It is a rant I have ranted plenty of times before, and no doubt it is a rant I will enjoy again. “Enjoy” is a dubious term to apply to this rant, however. I would like nothing more than to see the need for this particular rant to die a natural death because it is corrected and I never see its glaring existence ever again.
I have a pet peeve. My peeve has to do with written language. Most specifically, my peeve has to do with the written language of English in public places, or in a professional context.
I am not talking about IM conversations, emails, comments to blogs, or similar informal communications, where careless errors go uncorrected and largely unheeded. I can and do ignore grammatical and punctuation errors in that context. I make them myself. They are no big deal. These are informal, usually quick communications and typos and errors are common and tolerable. They fall in the category of “shit happens.”
What bothers me is incorrectly used written language that appears in advertising or in documents that should have been proofread before publication. Professionally written language intended to sell something to a targeted audience, or professionally written language meant for public consumption should be correctly written. If the words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages are written with forethought, presumably they are intended to convey correct information. Glaring errors in such written language are distracting at best and leave a poor impression at worst.
It comes down to this:
Apostrophes.
Yes, I’m on a tear against the misplaced apostrophe again.
If anyone out there is interested in seducing me, here is my notion of a dream guy: he will have a truck with a cherry-picker ladder, and will drive me around town in it. When we see a billboard or marquee with a misplaced apostrophe, he will position the truck just so and I will climb the ladder to the offending punctuation mark, dip my wide paintbrush into the bucket of red paint he is holding, and correct the error. We will do it in the dark of night and the world will awake to corrected apostrophes. Oh, the joy! Oh, the bliss! I’m getting all tingly just thinking about it!
Nothing looks so forlorn to me as an apostrophe hooked to something to which it should not be, or treacherously hung somewhere it just does not belong. The apostrophe seems to befuddle a large segment of the writing population. As a public service, I hereby offer a primer on apostrophes.
Pay attention, class. (You! In the back! Spit out that gum!)
On Apostrophes
Apostrophes are used in several contexts. In certain very limited circumstances they are used to make plural forms of words. They are used to make contractions of two words into one. Most frequently in formal writing, apostrophes are used to show possessiveness.
PLURALS
Apostrophes do not make a word plural. Ever. If you mean to indicate more than one of a person, place or thing, just add s or es to the word:
dishes
phones
pens
blogs
Sometimes we see numbers with apostrophes. Some sources approve this style, but the better practice is to avoid it.
The MLA Handbook, which is the Bible of American punctuation, instructs us not to add apostrophes to pluralize even numbers written numerically:
Olga Korbut scored unprecedented 10s from the gymnastics judges.
Music during the 1990s was unremarkable for the most part.
When the number is spelled out as a word, it is made plural just like any other word. Add only the letter s with no apostrophe:
She was dressed to the nines.
Throughout the nineties I listened to classical rock most often.
Even if it is the plural of an acronym or abbreviation, do not use the apostrophe to make a plural:
Both of us have IRAs.
He has PhDs in both English and Philosophy.
Please return the DVDs to Blockbuster.
This rule having been fully explained, I shall now confuse you by telling you that there are some authorities which say that using an apostrophe to make the plural of letters or numbers, as well as words referred to as words in the context of the sentence, is acceptable. Both formats are correct, so long as the writer is consistent.
There are no if’s, and’s or but’s about it.
There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Shakespeare wrote plays during the 1500’s and 1600’s.
Shakespeare wrote plays during the 1500s and 1600s.
Those size 14’s make his feet look like longboats.
Those size 14s make his feet look like longboats.
Jack had three C’s on his report card.
Jack had three Cs on his report card.
The bottom line is that no matter which method you use, be consistent. It just looks silly when we read, “Be sure to cross your Ts and dot your I’s.” The do’s and don’t’s of this alternately acceptable form might be confusing, I know, so a good rule of thumb might be:
When in doubt, leave the apostrophe out.
CONTRACTIONS
We can get the contraction rule out of the way quickly since, with one tiny exception, most of us don’t have a problem with it. The apostrophe takes the place of one or more dropped letters and the spaces between them. Thus, cannot becomes can’t and you are becomes you’re. Likewise, you all becomes y’all.
By the way, despite some uninformed pontifications to the contrary, y’all is NEVER singular. It is ALWAYS plural. Even if I only address you individually when I say “I hope y’all are managing to stay cool in this miserable summer heat,” what I am really saying is that I hope you and your associates and loved ones have air conditioning. You all is plural, and so is y’all. If a Southerner ever says y’all in a context that you think is singular, verify this. I will bet my Arkansas driver’s license that the Southerner will tell you he or she meant y’all in the plural form.
If the speaker is not Southern, his or her usage is suspect. This is one of the things we native Southerners groan about when we hear poorly imitated Southern accents on television or in the movies. In addition to the fact that non-Southerners just plain don’t pronounce the words right, the blatant misuse of y’all ruins the whole attempt at mimicking a Southern accent. Vivien Leigh managed it beautifully as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. Val Kilmer, as Doc Holliday in Tombstone, did not.
One contraction causes mass confusion. It really should not, because it follows the exact same rule as all others: the apostrophe substitutes for dropped letters. It’s is the contraction for “it is” or “it has.” The possessive of the word it does not have an apostrophe. And this is the perfect segue into possessives, where apostrophes are most frequently used.
POSSESSIVES
Personal pronouns are the pronouns that take the place of a person or the name of something. They NEVER get apostrophes. Personal pronouns are the words mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs, and its. That’s right: its (with no apostrophe) denotes possessiveness.
You don’t see mine’s, your’s, her’s, hi’s, our’s, or their’s. Written that way they don’t even look right, now do they? Personal pronouns never get apostrophes. They do not want them. They are apostrophe-deprived and they like it that way. Unlike nouns that don’t have people associated with them, personal pronouns are apostrophe snobs. Don’t ever give a personal pronoun, even an it, an apostrophe. You will be ridiculed and scorned by personal pronouns everywhere if you violate this rule.
Other than the personal pronouns mine, his, hers, yours, ours, its, and theirs, possessiveness is indicated by – you guessed it – an apostrophe followed by the letter s.
To wit:
Anne’s blog (the blog of Anne)
Wench’s Virgin Training School (the Virgin Training School run by Wench)
Aramink’s location (the location of Aramink)
If you can rephrase to say the x of y, then y’s x will need the apostrophe. It’s fine to talk to yourself while writing to double-check this. I promise. Practice it. As I explain the apostrophe rule further, I will show you how it’s done. (See how I just used the contraction it’s with proper placement of the apostrophe? Applaud me!)
When the noun having possession is singular, meaning that there is only one of that particular thing, the apostrophe followed by the letter s is an absolute, unbreakable, indefatigable rule. Always, always, always add an apostrophe and an s to indicate that the noun has something it otherwise would not.
One week’s time (the duration of one week)
One mile’s distance (the distance of one mile)
The pencil’s lead (the lead of the pencil)
The girl’s shoe (the shoe belonging to the girl)
Bee’s multiple personalities (each and every one of those delightful personalities that make Bee so much fun)
If you can rephrase the phrase as one thing of another, you have a situation on your hands in which you should use an apostrophe.
This is true even when the singular noun ends in the letter s. That’s right: add the apostrophe and the s even if the word ends in s, so long as the word is singular and not plural:
The goddess’s nectar and ambrosia (the nectar and ambrosia belonging to the goddess)
The princess’s jeweled tiara (the costly diadem of the princess)
The Dread Pirate Roberts’s ship (the ship upon which Westley sailed to make his fortune before returning to rescue Buttercup from the clutches of mad Prince Humperdick and the evil six-fingered Count Rugen, who killed Inigo Montoya’s father and should now prepare to die)
If the possessing noun is a plural, and ends in s, just add an apostrophe. The s is already there. The apostrophe does not separate the s that creates the plural from the rest of the word.
The dogs’ collars (the collars of the dogs)
The boys’ ball (the ball belonging to the boys)
Two weeks’ notice (notice of two weeks before leaving one job for another)
Five years’ duration (the eternity of some marriages)
The horses’ watering trough (the watering trough of the horses)
The twelve dancing princesses’ tattered slippers (remember that fairy tale?)
However, if the possessing plural noun does not end in the letter s the apostrophe and – you guessed it – the s is needed:
Children’s stories
Men’s ties
Women’s suffrage
And now I would like to have a word on the plural possessive of certain proper names. When a proper name ends in an s, and there are more than one of these proper names indicated in the context, the name is pluralized by adding es the same was other nouns ending in s are made plural. It is made possessive by adding just an apostrophe, the same as other plural nouns ending in s.
Here is an example of a proper noun ending in s in its singular form: “Bridget Jones’s diary was found on the coffee table.” The sentence means that the diary of one Ms. Jones was found in a scandalously public place. Please note that the diary is not of Bridget Jone, so the s remains on Jones and an apostrophe and another s is added to make the possessive.
When the name Jones is made plural, just as with any other noun ending in s, we add es. We then add an apostrophe but no additional extra s to indicate the possessive.
The Joneses live here. (Bridget’s mum and dad reside in this house)
The blue cottage is the Joneses’ vacation getaway. (That little house belongs to the entire Jones family.)
Welcome to the Joneses’ beach house. (All of the members of the Jones family welcome you)
Honestly, it makes me crazy when I see personalized items in catalogs that misplace apostrophes. Not only does the catalog not have the punctuation right, it is hawking incorrect punctuation to annoy others. In ignorance, an uninformed buyer will order the offending misplaced apostrophe and and display it proudly and publicly.
I cringe when I see signs like these:
Welcome to the Jones’s Yacht
Jone’s Bar and Grill
This is the Jones’es Party Barge
I beg you, don’t let these glaring errors happen to you.
If anyone has any questions as to the proper placement of apostrophes, or exceptions to the rules I may not have listed, please ask. I’ll be glad to enlighten you. If you think I’m wrong about something, feel free to say so. I’ll look up the answer and if I have erred, I will issue a correction.
For those of you who are curious, I do indeed own all of these books, and yes, I refer to them regularly. For a highly entertaining book about proper punctuation, I can’t recommend Lynne Truss’s book highly enough. It’s a fun read despite what really ought to be a dull topic. Get it. Really.
“Katie, you’re supposed to be drawing a picture of your friend!” Emily’s voice was a shrill, plaintive, tattle-tale whine that crawled under Miss Simpson’s skin and set up housekeeping.“Emily, let me handle any problems, please,” she said, moving quickly to Katie’s desk. Emily’s words had already cut poor Katie, though. The tiny redhead had quit drawing and her face was scrunched into a fierce scowl. Her thin arms crossed, then uncrossed stiffly, then crossed again tight against her little chest as she hunched protectively over her drawing. She didn’t look up when Miss Simpson reached for the paper.
“I told you!” Emily trumpeted as the teacher’s eyes fell on the drawing.
“This is a very good drawing, Katie,” said Miss Simpson. “Emily, keep your eyes on your own work, please.”
“Well, she’s not doing what she’s supposed to!” protested Emily.
“That’s really no concern of yours, now is it? And if you don’t mind your own business you’ll sit in the hallway for the rest of art period.”
Emily sniffed audibly and glared at Katie. What a perfect victim the brat makes, thought Miss Simpson.
At time for recess, Katie was slow to leave her desk and even slower to pull on her jacket. Miss Simpson bit her lip, then made a decision.“Katie, would you talk to me for a moment before you go outside?”
Katie turned slowly and walked woodenly over to Miss Simpson’s desk.
“That really was a good drawing,” Miss Simpson said with a smile. The child’s eyebrows knit together and her frown became, if anything, darker. She stood to the side of Miss Simpson’s desk glowering at a mote perhaps two feet off the ground and somewhere to the left.
“It really was okay for you to draw a picture of a friend other people can’t see.”
This time the little girl cut her eyes at Miss Simpson. “Other people see him,” she muttered.
Miss Simpson sighed.
“Katie, I’m going to ask Mr. Carson to spend some time with you, okay? And you can talk to him about problems you might be having with Emily or with the other students, or even at home. He’s a really nice man and he’s a good listener.”
Katie shrugged. The motion was exaggerated, defensive. The mote had moved another foot to the left, and the child took a half step toward it, still glowering.
“Go ahead to recess.” Miss Simpson watched the child slowly stomp out of the room.
“Miss Simpson showed me the picture you drew of your friend. Why don’t you tell me about him?”
Mr. Carson’s cajoling tone seemed not to penetrate Katie’s sullen mien. She sat tight-lipped in the molded plastic chair kicking her feet alternately toward the metal waste can. The school counselor’s cramped office could barely hold the two chairs, his desk, a file cabinet, and stacks of papers, files and books that littered every available surface. Mr. Carson allowed nearly two full minutes of silence before he spoke again.
“I’m going to talk to your parents,” he commented decisively. Katie shrugged her exaggerated shrug and swung her feet harder.
Mr. Carson rang the doorbell at the house on the edge of the small town. A baby cried somewhere behind the closed door. Footsteps pounded rapidly closer and a boy about ten years old and as red-haired and freckled as Katie threw open the door. “Mom!” he bawled over the staccato barks of a terrier when he saw who the visitor was. A man dressed in a sleeveless undershirt came from what appeared to be the kitchen.
“Mr. Holden? I’m Fred Carson.” The counselor held out his hand for a shake and Katie’s father led him to a sofa covered with unfolded laundry. Thrusting the clothes into a plastic basket sitting next to the sofa, Mr. Holden waved at the counselor to sit. A moment later they were joined by Mrs. Holden.
“It isn’t abnormal for a girl Katie’s age to have an imaginary friend,” began the counselor.
“Tishapus isn’t imaginary,” said Mrs. Holden.
Mr. Carson cleared his throat. “What I mean is that children often create playmates when they feel isolated among their peers.”
“He’s not her playmate,” said Mrs. Holden.
Mr. Carson shifted uncomfortably on the couch. “Perhaps you don’t understand. Katie insists that she has a friend who looks like a faun, or a satyr – like Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I assume that’s where she got the idea, anyway.”
The Holdens exchanged a look. Mrs. Holden nodded slightly to her husband, and Mr. Holden rose. “Please excuse me a moment,” he said. Mr. Carson gestured permissively.
As her husband left the room, Katie’s mother turned to face the school counselor directly. “Mr. Carson, we don’t expect you to believe Katie. We hope you will believe your own eyes, though.”
Before he could respond, Mr. Carson’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened. Accompanying Mr. Holden back into the living room was a creature about five feet tall which looked for all the world like it had the legs and haunches of a goat, the torso of a man, and wickedly curved horns on its head.
“Mr. Carson, meet Tishapus,” said Mr. Holden.
Detective Dennis P. O’Leary banged the empty coffee mug down so hard it should have broken. The sharp sound bounced off the bare walls of the interrogation room. The stranger on the other side of the table winced just slightly at the noise, then his expression smoothed out again.
“I told you, we don’t take to vagrants here in my town,” O’Leary barked. The stranger’s wide-eyed stare didn’t betray fear. Inexplicably, he only seemed curious, his head cocked slightly to one side.
“Why not?” asked the stranger in his odd, lilting accent.
“Why not? Why NOT?” blustered O’Leary. “Because we don’t!”
The stranger nodded thoughtfully. O’Leary had the notion the stranger was filing his response away to study later.
“What do you tolerate, then?” the stranger asked. His words were mild, not at all confrontational.
“What do you mean, ‘What do we tolerate’? We tolerate law-abiding citizens and visitors who know their place!”
“What place is that?”
O’Leary’s eyes narrowed as he leaned across the table, his out-thrust chin close to the stranger’s long goatee. “Are you getting smart with me, boy? Because if you’re getting smart with me you won’t be leaving my jail until a judge says you can.”
The stranger’s expression showed confusion for just a fleeting flash of a moment, then rearranged to display detached curiosity. “I am trying to become smarter, yes,” he answered. “Will you share your knowledge with me?” He held up his oddly deformed hand and reached toward O’Leary.
O’Leary slammed his big fist on the table so hard the empty ceramic mug jumped. The stranger jumped slightly, too.
“Boy, your mouth is getting you in deeper,” warned the burly policeman.
“Deeper?” This time the stranger’s confusion lingered in his expression for more than a split second. “I do not understand ‘deeper.’ Can you explain it to me in other words?”
O’Leary spun on his heel and banged on the locked door, which opened almost immediately to admit a smaller man who nodded to O’Leary as the policeman left the room. The new man took the seat O’Leary had vacated. He was silent for almost three full minutes, just studying the stranger through frankly appraising eyes. Then he cleared his throat.
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
“You are Doctor Will Handy. I remember you.”
“The police need your real name,” Handy said.
“I do not believe they will be able to pronounce my name. They may call me Tishapus, like the others do.”
“The police need your real name,” Handy repeated.
The stranger was quiet for a moment, then Handy’s head spun as a whisper of sound, emotion, and images assaulted his mind. Even seated solidly in his chair the psychologist nearly lost his balance.
“Tishapus is a good name,” the stranger explained.
“No, I need your name,” Handy objected. Again the feelings, images, and unrepeatable tones washed over him.
“Really, Tishapus will have to do, unless you prefer to use a different word for me.”
Handy’s head swam, but this time from understanding. “That’s your name?” he whispered. “How did you do that?”
The stranger peered intently into Will Handy’s eyes for several long moments. “My language works differently than yours,” he finally said. The statement was so obviously true, and so obviously impossible, that Dr. Handy’s mind reeled.
The psychologist rose shakily and paced the room. He returned to the chair, sat down, sat silently for a moment, then rose again and stood across the table from the stranger.
“Where are you from?” he asked Tishapus.
“The children call it Heaven, but it is not the heaven of your culture’s religious belief system.”
“The children are right,” Handy said it almost to himself, but the stranger heard and nodded.
“The young always accept notions foreign to them much easier than do fully grown creatures,” agreed the stranger. “In this case I believe they have imposed a familiar idea onto their new knowledge. It most likely makes the new knowledge easier for them to talk about among themselves and with others.”
Will Handy nodded thoughtfully.
“Where will you go if the police release you?” he asked after a few moments.
“Katie’s playhouse is comfortable for my present purposes,” the stranger said amiably.
“You understand that Mike and Beth Holden say you can stay in their home, don’t you?”
“Yes, but my studies will best be conducted if the local population has better access to me. Although it would probably be the best place for my research, Mike Holden said that I could probably not stay in the gazebo in the park.” The stranger hesitated. “Who could give me permission to station myself in the park gazebo?”
“You’re actually serious,” Handy said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Of course,” the stranger – Tishapus – said.
“And you have no money, so you can’t get a room at May’s boardinghouse.”
The stranger shrugged. “Money is a concept I had not planned upon when I came to study your species.”
“My species? Not my society or my culture, but my species?”
Tishapus nodded. “We must understand the basics of your species before we try to study your social structure in great detail.”
“You’re telling me there are more… people … like you?”
“You did not expect this to be true?” the stranger’s demeanor radiated cool amusement. “Interesting.”
Handy stepped back from the table. “Excuse me, please, Tishapus.”
“Of course.”
In the hallway outside the interrogation room Handy conferred with Detective O’Leary and Captain Mitchell. “I’ve not encountered anyone like him, that’s for sure,” he began.
O’Leary snorted. “Fellow’s crazy, ain’t he? We need to call the State Hospital and have him committed.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Handy disagreed.
“You don’t really think it’s okay to let him go back to that little girl’s playhouse and camp out, receiving guests like he’s visiting royalty, do you?” the big detective sneered.
“Come on, Detective. This is something different than a regular stranger in town. You have to recognize that. You recognize it, don’t you, Tom?” Handy asked the captain.
“He’s not in a costume, that’s for sure,” Mitchell replied.
O’Leary rolled his eyes. “The hell he’s not!”
“Dennis, for Pete’s sake. His knees bend the wrong way. That’s no costume.”
“Prosthetic legs. And he’s deformed. He’s as human as you or me. His mama was on drugs or something when she was pregnant is all,” O’Leary stated flatly.
“Detective, did you ask his name?” Handy inquired.
“Yeah. He wouldn’t say. He just kind of whistled at me.”
“Whistled at you,” Will Handy echoed.
“I’m saying we should take him up to the State Hospital and have him worked over by the docs there. Not that you aren’t a doctor, Doc Handy, but you know what I mean.” O Leary’s communication skills were better suited to interrogation than to diplomacy.
“No, Dennis, he’s done nothing wrong and the parents of those kids aren’t worried about him being a danger. The Holdens have even invited him to stay in their home. No one will say he’s a danger to himself or to anyone else, other than Dave Hernandez, that is, and you know he’s never happy about anything. We can’t have him committed unless we think there’s some problem.”
“Being delusional isn’t a problem?” O’Leary demanded incredulously.
“If the delusion isn’t harming him or someone else, then no, it’s not a problem. And to be honest, I’m not so certain he’s delusional.”
Captain Mitchell nodded at Dr. Handy’s words. “I’m going to release him, then. The Holdens are waiting and want to take him home with them.”
“Wait a minute,” objected O’Leary. “What if he’s a child molester? We can’t just let him go.”
“Detective, I have interviewed the fellow, and so has Dr. Jenner. Aside from possible eccentricity, we find no delusions that we can verify as delusions. The guy isn’t human. If he is, then he’s the next step on the evolutionary ladder and we can’t verify that there are similar mutations anywhere in the world. In short, he’s not from around here. We have nothing to indicate he is a threat.”
“Not only that, but if we lock him up then we’re going to have some angry citizens to deal with,” added Captain Mitchell. “Bill Costello has drafted a habeas corpus petition that he’s going to file with Judge Miller if we hold this fellow much longer. And Judge Miller’s kid is one of Katie Holden’s friends. She’s been playing with this … Tishapus. With her daddy’s permission, I might add.”
Detective O’Leary threw up his hands in disgust. “Fine,” he snapped. “But this won’t be the end of it. I can promise this fellow’s going to be trouble sooner or later.”
“The Bradford County Cantaloupe Festival is apparently getting off to a good start. We’ll check back with our weather team shortly and get a live update on weather conditions for the weekend. In other news, an event of a different sort seems to be going on in the small community of Pleasant Ridge. Candy Olsen is on the scene and will tell us more.”
The red light on the camera let Candy Olsen know she was being beamed live into the living rooms of television viewers across the region. She smiled directly at the red glow and began speaking.
“Thank you, Frankie. I am waiting at the home of the Holden family of Pleasant Ridge for an event that may be monumental indeed. The being that calls itself “Tishapus” has agreed to give Channel 8 an interview, and in a few moments I hope to be sitting with him at the picnic table you see behind me. There is a festival atmosphere here. It seems the entire town has turned out to observe the interview. We’ll be broadcasting the interview on the late news tonight.”
The red light blinked out as the anchor on the set, an hour’s drive away, resumed reading from the teleprompter.
The petite blonde television news reporter settled herself uncomfortably at the child-size picnic table in the Holden’s front yard. Despite her cheerful assertion, the little house on the edge of the middle class neighborhood on the edge of the small town didn’t really seem festive. Sure, people milled around everywhere, but their faces were solemn, guarded. No festival ever seems to be protectively distrustful of television cameras. When the lens would swing in their direction more often than not the people of Pleasant Ridge frowned and looked away. Candy Olsen was certain that people attending the Bradley County Cantaloupe Festival were grinning as they ate their melons and danced in the street. She was fairly certain people there would pose for the cameras and act silly. There was no foolishness or gaiety at the Holdens’ home, though.
A commotion by the small frame house drew the attention of the people milling about the yard. Indistinct voices hummed in a higher pitch of excitement and a knot of movement crossed the 30 or so feet toward the picnic table.
The creature had been described to her, but the reporter was not quite prepared for actually seeing it in reality. In one corner of her mind she was aware that she was staring stupidly and that her gaping mouth was being caught on film. She couldn’t pull her wide eyes away from the creature, though.
Its face was vaguely human, but the planes and angles were wrong. The face looked like one of those Photoshop images of the sheep-child that periodically appear on the cover of the sillier supermarket tabloids. The face was too narrow, too long; the cheekbones too high; the beard – no, there was no beard, except for the white tuft the grew in an elegantly thick corkscrew curl from the creature’s chin. Sleek silver-gray fur covered the creature’s torso and face, then became curly ginger brown at the crown of the creature’s head. At waist level, the ginger fur reappeared, longer, curlier and denser. What was it called when dogs had that kind of coat? Wire-hair. The mouth, almost a snout or a muzzle but not quite, curved upward at the corners. She wanted to reach out and touch the horns. Were they densely matted hair, like the horn of a rhinoceros? Were they light and woody, like the antlers of a deer, or bony like those of a ram?
Candy Olsen rose from her perch on the bench of the picnic table. Tishapus walked gracefully toward her. His knees bend backwards, went through her mind. Those aren’t hooves. I thought he had deer hooves, but those are pads, or paws. No, they are hooves, they just don’t look like any hooves I’ve ever seen. Her observations of the creature’s physical characteristics fled as she felt a nudge against her mind and the sensation of amusement, not her own amusement but someone else’s tickled the edges of her consciousness.
Tishapus stopped nearly three feet away from her and bowed slightly. She saw what she thought was a stubby tail tipped with a copy of his goatee. She started to say something, then wasn’t sure what to say.
“Hello.” That was inane, she thought. What a great first impression I’m making. She mentally shook herself. She wasn’t there to make a good impression. She was there for an interview.
The reported indicated the picnic table. “Shall we sit? I’m Candy Olsen.”
The creature bowed again and moved to one end of the table. Rather than sitting on the bench he sat on his haunches. He leaned forward and crossed his arms on the table.
“Please you will excuse me,” he said softly, “But it is not comfortable for me to sit on a bench or chair the way your kind does.”
“N-no, I suppose it wouldn’t be comfortable,” she replied, unable to take her eyes off the creature.
“You have questions you would like me to answer?” She heard his voice in her ears and in her mind at the same time. She wasn’t altogether certain that his spoken words were what she really understood.
“Yes,” she said, and nervously consulted her notes. The interview began.
“Candy, we can’t use any of this for the playback on the late news. You’ll have to summarize what he said.” The frustration in the editor’s voice dismayed the reporter.
“None of it? But he was eloquent and answered the questions beautifully! What do you mean you can’t use it?”
“Have you listened to the tapes?”
“No, why would I? You are the editor. I just do the interview.”
“Candy, the creature didn’t speak. He sang. Or, it sort of sounds like singing. And he didn’t use words. I don’t know how you talked with him.”
“What do you mean, he didn’t use words? He spoke plainly and clearly. Everyone there heard him!”
“Watch the playback, Candy. Just watch it.”
Sighing with exasperation, the reporter nodded to the cameraman. He began the playback.
Moments later, Candy Olsen stalked away to create a summary of her interview with the creature. No one had taken notes. It was all being captured on camera, so there had been no need for notes.
“I’m going to miss you. I wish you wouldn’t go.”
“I will miss you, too, little one.”
“Why can’t you stay?”
“When I left my home no one believed I could come here. I have learned about your race and now I need to go back home and tell my people about you.”
“Who’s going to tell other people here about you, though?”
“The ones here who saw me and knew me will tell. They will tell the people they encounter, and those people will tell others.”
“No one believed you were real until they saw you. Once you’re gone no one will believe in you, either.”
The creature looked at the human child with sadness. “Whether or not the people who hear of me believe, those who saw me do. They know. You know.”
The little girl sighed. “What if your family and friends don’t believe you about us?” She felt Tishapus’s wry amusement.
“They probably won’t. Creatures with no tails? And intelligent creatures without horns? And the odd way your bodies are constructed? They will laugh at me and call me crazy.”
“Then why tell them?”
Tishapus thought for a moment.
“I will tell them because knowledge is good, and if our races ever meet for trade my people should understand you people’s customs.”
Katie was quiet. Then she asked, “Is that why so many of the grown-ups are going with you?”
“Yes. They want to know how to get to my people. And I think some of them still don’t believe that my people exist or that my home exists.”
“I want to come with you, too.”
“I would like that. When you are older, perhaps you can be the ambassador from your race to mine.”
Katie smiled. She hopped down from her perch on the swing and hugged Tishapus. He hugged her back.
The vehicles had been left behind when the road ended. A group of eight men and women hiked the mountainous trail with the creature called Tishapus. Mike and Beth Holden, who had hosted him, Bill Costello, who had defended him, Candy Olsen, who had interviewed him, Dr. Willard Handy, who had examined his mind, and Dr. Emma Jenner, who had examined his body were the friendly people along for the trip. Dennis O’Leary, who had never stopped doubting him and Freddy Carson, who had reported him as a suspicious vagrant to the authorities, were there to represent those who refused to believe what was plainly in front of them.
They were above the tree line and the terrain had become more difficult. As the group crested a ridge, there was an area that was fairly flat before a cliff face rose again. Tishapus headed for a cave opening in the cliff.
“I thought we might camp here for the night,” he explained.
Detective O’Leary snorted. “You’ve brought us all the way up here to camp out. How nice.” He had grumbled and complained the entire trek.
Bill Costello shook his head. “Give it a rest, O’Leary,” he said in disgust. “You’ll get your proof in the morning.”
Talking quietly among themselves the group began making camp.
After eating their dinner, the Holdens, Costello, and the two doctors sat near the cave entrance and played cards. O’Leary and Carson sat off by themselves talking quietly. Tishapus had wandered away from the campsite to the open terrain. Candy Olsen fidgeted with her camcorder, then walked the short distance to the creature.
“I hope I can film the city better than I could film you,” she said as she seated herself next to him.
Tishapus glanced at her and again she felt his amusement wash over her. His melancholy mood dampened it somewhat, though. “That will be a difficult experience to explain to my people,” he said.
Candy snorted. “It was difficult to explain to mine,” she agreed.
They sat quietly for a time, gazing at the flood of stars that just couldn’t be seen from populated places. “Do they look the same where you live?” The reporter asked.
“The stars are the same,” nodded Tishapus. “And they are just as difficult to see from my city as they are to see from yours.”
“I suppose that is a price civilization must pay.”
“One of many prices,” agreed the creature.
“What do you believe is the steepest price we pay to live in a society?”
“Is this another interview?”
The reporter laughed softly. “I seem to have a habit of asking questions.”
“Yes. But they are good questions.” Tishapus fell silent and Candy contented herself with soaking in the sounds and ambience of the night. An hour passed, then two. She was content to sit silently beside this strange creature.
“Acceptance,” said Tishapus.
“Excuse me?”
“Acceptance.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The steepest price we pay to live in a society. We give up acceptance.”
Candy thought for a moment. “Acceptance of what? Acceptance by whom?”
“Giving up the acceptance of what our senses tell us.”
Candy looked at Tishapus quizzically. “Who rejects what they see and hear?”
Waves of sadness washed over Candy, and she knew it was a projection from Tishapus.
“How many of your people who saw me accepted me immediately?”
Candy hesitated. There were so many who had claimed Tishapus was wearing a costume or that he was a trained animal performing for his handlers. Twice Tishapus had been asked to travel with a carnival because his “costuming” was so good. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not™ offered him a lifetime billeting as a permanent attraction at its main museum, with travel benefits and luxury accommodations when he would travel to its locations worldwide. Tishapus was a freak, a sideshow attraction. Very few people believed he was a member of a real species. At worst they referred to him as a mutant. At best, they called him deformed.
“It’s hard to accept what is strange to us, what we’ve never before seen,” she said aloud.
Tishapus nodded. “When we live in a group the group’s opinion matters. If the group thinks something is odd, wrong, or somehow unacceptable, then the individual will adopt the same opinion. It makes learning new things very difficult.”
“Do your people act this way, too?”
“My people will not believe me when I tell of my visit here. They believe that creatures such as yourself are the creatures of myth.”
“I wonder if it has always been this way.”
“I believe it has not. I believe when both of our species were younger, we accepted strange and unusual things with curiosity, not disbelief. I believe that we once accepted things more easily.”
“It’s a shame our civilizations have advanced so far, then,” Candy remarked. “One voice cannot change minds.”
“The individual’s opinion matters for nothing unless he can convince the group to agree. I cannot imagine that this is anything new. Even in a primitive society, the individual needs the cooperation of the group in order to survive.”
“‘No man is an island,’” quoted the reporter.
“An apt description. No, no individual can really survive alone. Our species are both very social species. So despite the evidence the individual sees, he must sometimes reject what he knows to be true in order to be accepted, or he risks being ostracized from his society, shunned or ridiculed for his nonsensical beliefs. He rejects the proof and reality of his senses for the acceptance of the group, because that is how individuals survive.”
Candy didn’t respond immediately.
“You’re talking about acceptance on many levels,” she finally said.
“Yes,” agreed Tishapus quietly.
When she sun’s first rays flooded the floor of the high ledge, Tishapus leaped up with a glad cry. Candy Olsen, who had fallen asleep sometime during her vigil with the creature, opened her eyes to a flash of brightness that was gone almost as soon as she sensed it, but which left behind an impression of golden minarets against a turquoise sky.
“Do you see? Do you see?” Bill Costello’s excitement was met by a gasp of “oh!” from Beth Holden, who walked dreamlike toward the rising sun, and by exclamations of “yes!” from Will Handy and Emma Jenner. Mike Holder said nothing, but in three strides had caught up with his wife, grasped her hand, and joined her eastward movement.
Then Tishapus was gone.
“I didn’t see anything,” announced Dennis O’Leary.
“Me, either,” groused Freddy Carson. “Let’s have breakfast and head back down the mountain. I guess Tishapus ran off in the night.”
Am I conservative in my world views? Am I liberal? I am conservative when it comes to my money and what I think taxes ought to pay for. I also believe that society tends to take care of its own. That makes me more libertarian, I suppose.
I have a fairly liberal way of looking at the world in a lot of situations. I believe some of my attitudes could be considered progressive. I’m compassionate to the disadvantaged and I take social issues to heart. I value equality and appreciate diversity.
I believe each of us has a moral obligation to aid someone else who needs it. I subscribe to the “Pay it Forward” philosophy. Karma comes around for us all, and our “savings” of good deeds will make us more likely to benefit from someone else’s good act as well. Luck is a state of mind as much as it is effort. When I see someone who makes an effort but can’t quite get to her goal, I’m more inclined than not to give her a boost over that last hurdle if I can. And I will go out of my way to do it – especially if going out of my way isn’t a big deal.
Look at the couple who had no children, but with the help of a friend or even a stranger was able to adopt. If we could help the girl who, before she was 18, was kicked out of the house by her mother’s boyfriend, will we miss the money? Will we regret the hours spent on the telephone listening to a teenager cry as yet another foster mother tells her she has to leave?
The common thread here is family, and children. A teenage mother, thrust into the foster care system and astounded that anyone could buy groceries without food stamps; an abused and neglected child who only wants to be accepted for who she is; a loving couple with more love to give than they are allowed by nature to share. These are the people who make up our world. These are the people who shape the present and the future, and the present and future of every single person who comes into contact with them. And each one of them is worth the extra effort.
I wish more people would subscribe to the “pay it forward” mentality. The world would be a better place.
Tragic factoid about this Wench of Aramink: her skin is so pale it’s translucent, and she’s never had a suntan in her life.
It doesn’t bother me until someone says something like, “Dang, girl! Didja just crawl out from under a log or somethin’?” Or, “You need a little color to look healthy.” Or, “Put on some pantyhose. Those legs are blinding me!”
Every year I let myself get bullied into going to the beach the week after school breaks for the summer. It’s not hard to bully me into it – I love the smell of salt water and I like to snorkel. In fact, I like swimming so much that I’m going to put a pool in my back yard. The plans are drawn and the bids are rolling in! I feel a little inadequate next to the already-tanned sun worshippers surrounding me. Slathered in sun block I play in the surf and then I hide in the shade under the beach umbrella to read my book. Since even the reflection from the sand can give me a burn, I can’t stay out long. I head to the condo and read some more, and sleep, and feed my 360 addiction.
Sometimes I just feel a little silly spending money for a week at the beach when I can’t be in the sun more than a couple of hours a day without getting second degree burns. Even with SPF 5000 I can only stay out an hour or so at most without painful results.
I have ended up in the hospital with second degree burns from the sun on not just one but two occasions. For that reason, I am really, really careful.
The first time it happened I came down to Fort Walton Beach, Florida, with a couple of friends from college over spring break. It was my sophomore year of college. From Hamilton, New York, we drove first to Arkansas. These two friends of mine were from Auburn, New York, and Springfield, Massachusetts, and had never been in the South at all. We stopped in Memphis and went to Graceland, which had just been opened to the public for the first time. We toured the Sun Records studio and went to Beale Street, home of the blues. Then we crossed the Mississippi River into Arkansas.
Several things of note happened to my friends in my hometown. They ate fried catfish and tasted okra for the first time. They were surrounded by southern accents and for a change it was their way of speaking that make people say “huh?” And they met Bill Clinton. It was primary season, and after losing the office two years before he was running again for his second term as governor. My dad was a rather influential politico even though he never ran for office himself, and Clinton stopped by my parents’ house while we were eating pizza. He joined us and we had a great visit talking about the difference between college life in the Northeast and real life in Arkansas, education, and what we all wanted to be when we grew up. Not surprisingly, Bill said he wanted to be president.
Ten years later when Clinton won the New Hampshire primary, one of the girls who had come home with me that year for spring break called me. “Isn’t that the same guy we ate pizza with?” she asked.
“That’s the one. Remember he said he was going to be president someday?”
“Yes! I didn’t think he really meant it, though!”
“Oh, he meant it. He’s always meant it.”
But I digress. On with the sunburn story:
From Arkansas we headed due south to New Orleans, another one of my favorite places in the world. I showed my friends what live oaks look like when their spreading limbs are hung with Spanish moss, and what Bourbon Street sounded like before the street musicians were banned. We rode the streetcar down St. Charles Avenue and strolled in Audubon Park. We saw cockroaches so big they sounded like 747s when they flew at your face. We went to Cooter Brown’s to sample some of the exotic beers. Then we headed back east along the coast for some quality beach time.
We bypassed the Mississippi and Alabama gulf shores and headed across the border into Florida. We stopped about 40 miles into Florida and pitched our tent in a state park on the beach. I showed them what sea oats were so they’d be sure not to pick them. They were amazed at the whiteness of the sand and at the whiteness of my skin.
We hit the beach early our first morning there. We only had two days to spend in Florida before we had to head back to school. The ground back at Colgate would be white, too, but with snow, not with sand made of quartz crystals. We wanted to make the most of our time.
After about four hours on the beach, we decided to find food and a movie. I changed from my bathing suit into shorts and a t-shirt. I was a little pink, but not red. By the time we finished eating I was shivering. By the time the movie was over I was nearly crying with the pain. We went to sleep in the tent and the next morning I woke to see a blister the size and shape of a baseball had grown on my upper left arm.
The three of us spent that morning in the emergency room of the local hospital. Every inch of my exposed skin was bubbly with burn blisters. After declining the doctor’s invitation for me to stay as his guest in the hospital, we decided to head back toward Colgate a day early. We stopped in three more emergency rooms on the way back. Each time my skin was punctured, drained, smothered in salve, swathed in bandages, and treated as gently as possible. Each time I was granted stronger painkillers. Each time I was advised to check in for an extended stay. Each time I declined.
We got back to Colgate in the midst of a blizzard. Clad only in my bathing suit and unable to put on shoes, I limped from the car to my apartment through the wind and snow. I missed a week of classes and finally went to the campus medical clinic. Once again, I was punctured, drained, smothered in salve, swathed in bandages, and treated as gently as possible. This time I was given antibiotics as well as painkillers. My entire body was puffy and swollen from the burns.
After another week I was able to put on clothes and go to class. I swore I was done with the sun. Anything that could hurt me that much was to be avoided. I came out of the experience with lots of new freckles and a permanent hypersensitivity to the sun.
I didn’t remember for long, though. The summer between my junior and senior year in college, my friend from Auburn, NY and I loaded a couple of backpacks and headed to Europe with our Eurail passes and our passports. On the Amalfi coast of Italy, near the Island of Capri, I did it again. My friend and I had separated to travel with different people we had met along the way and were going to meet up again at Brindisi, Italy, where we’d cross into Greece. I sent her a telegram at the American Express office, the place we had agreed would be our contact point: “REMEMBER FLORIDA STOP I DID IT AGAIN STOP MEET YOU IN VENICE TWO WEEKS STOP”
No, I don’t mind all that much that I don’t have a suntan.
Since we’re at the beach, topics related to the beach are naturally the topics of discussion. (Imagine that!)
Jack and I are here with friends. Three adults, a couple of teenagers, a toddler, and a newly minted first-grader. Guess who dominates the TV? SpongeBob SquarePants. Yup. More beach stuff. Hey, it’s a theme vacation.
In keeping with the theme, the conversation over breakfast turned to buried treasure (whether or not a 6-year-old was likely to find any) and Spanish doubloons (the popular piratical medium of exchange due to the fragile and somewhat messy nature of sand dollars).
“What, exactly, were ‘pieces of eight?’ Gold doubloons?” wondered the father of the rugrats (another cartoon sure to be on the TV at some point during this vacation, but not beach-themed, so irrelevant).
“Spanish money, cut into eight pieces,” supplied my kid, who does his best to flunk out of school but whose mind is otherwise a steel trap for useless information. (If only his diligence in remembering things extended to remembering to do and turn in his homework, we wouldn’t be so worried about whether he’d actually make it to college. But I digress.)
“They actually cut their coins?” asked our 17-year-old friend.
“Yeah. It was before they minted coins worth less than a full unit of their money.” Where does Jack come up with this stuff? Since I was sitting in front of my laptop feeding my Yahoo 360 addiction, I flipped over to Google and looked it up.
The phrase “pieces of eight” did indeed refer to the fact that the Spanish dollar (yes, in the Americas it was called a “dollar”) was cut into eight pieces. Why eight pieces? Other than the relative ease of dividing the coin into eight pieces, the coin itself was worth eight reales, or royals. So calling it a “piece of eight” is similar to referring to the American gold coin as a “twenty-dollar gold piece.”
The Spanish real was minted in different denominations, though. There were 2, 4, and 8 real pieces. The coins were cut in half or quarters, or even into eighths to make smaller change.
Reales were always silver. The Spanish gold coin was called the escudo. The coin worth eight escudos was the famous Spanish gold doubloon, which was 22 carats pure. It was also cut into eighths, for the same reason as the silver real: to make change.
The Spanish reales and escudos were the first world currency. The purity of the gold and silver were dictated by Spanish law, and because of its colonial expansion in the Americas gold and silver were plentiful for the Spanish government. Even China, which had never been keen on accepting anything other than gold, was willing to accept reales. Sometimes the Chinese placed impressions of their own on the Spanish coins to indicate that their own tests had been conducted as to the purity of the silver.
Have you ever wondered why a quarter is referred to as “two bits?” It goes back to the divisions of the Spanish 8 real coin. This coin and its pieces were legal currency in the US until 1857, and it’s why the American stock exchanges valued stocks in increments of one-eighth of a dollar until 1997.
More reading for those two or three of you who wish I’d spent more time on this blog instead of rushing out into the sun and sand:
Tomorrow: Destin’s white sand beaches and clear emerald waters.
The last time we went out of town for a week there was an accident of rather unsettling proportions just four days before our departure. I’ve held my breath this time. So far, so good. With less than 24 hours to go, no unscheduled holes have appeared in my house. You have no idea what a relief that is.
The Sunday before we left for England over Spring Break, Jack was pulling my car out of the garage when disaster struck. Well, the car struck and disaster resulted. Now I have a better understanding, though, as to why this child with such a high IQ has such terrible grades. It seems that he has a reading disorder that had been undiagnosed all these years. As often as the kid has his nose in a book, I was completely fooled. I learned about the reading disorder at the scene of the accident.
My driveway has stone walls on either side. Backing out of the two-car garage can be something of a trick, especially as big as my car is. Jack calls my car “The Mother Ship,” a name that’s actually pretty accurately descriptive. A fleet of Mini-Coopers and Smart Cars escape every time the pod bay doors are opened.
On this particularly auspicious day, Jack was at the helm of The Mother Ship when he came out of the garage just a tiny bit crooked. That meant he was very close to the tall stone wall on the driver’s side of the car, and dangerously close to scraping paint.
He pulled forward in an effort to get away from the stone wall. Then he needed to back up again to get out of the driveway.
In addition to stone walls on either side, my driveway is also a steep slope down from the street to the garage. So, naturally, when he went to reverse and hit the gas, and the car rolled forward, he hit the brake.
“Jack, whoa,” I said. I was calm. I knew that yelling at him would only make him mad.
He ignored me and immediately gave The Mother Ship a tad more gas. Again, the car went forward.
“Jack, whoa,” I said, this time more forcefully.
He gave me a look of exasperation. “I know what I’m doing, Mom,” he snapped, hitting the gas again. The car rolled forward a few more inches before he stepped on the brake.
“Whoa, Jack!” I said, very strongly.
He hit the gas again. When the car rolled forward, he knew it had to be the steep slope behind him, so he gave the car a lot more juice. This time the car shot through the wall dividing the two doors of the double garage.
Yes.
THROUGH the wall.
“WHOA!” I yelled.
The car came to a halt about four feet inside the garage. I reached down, shifted the car into reverse, then said, “Okay, NOW back up.”
My son looked at me. He gave The Mother Ship some gas. Magically, it backed up.
Once the hood of the car cleared the former wall of the garage, Jack shifted into park. He lowered his head to the steering wheel, banging it a few times for good measure.
“Oh, god,” he moaned.
“Um, Jack, when I kept saying ‘Whoa,’ that meant you should stop,” I offered hesitantly. It was probably my word choice that had confused him, right? My fault. All my fault.
He banged his head a few more times on the steering wheel, then hid his face deeply in the crook of his folded arms.
“Mom, I broke the fucking HOUSE,” he informed me in a shaky voice.
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t even be upset at his word choice.
“Well, son, I now understand why your grades suck.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, not raising his head.
“You can’t read. You don’t know your D’s from your R’s.”
His shoulders started to shake. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying. I think maybe it was a little of both.
My insurance agent is my brother’s best friend. Within 24 hours, I had a new wall where one of my garage doors used to be, and within a couple of weeks of our return from England I had a brand new garage door that stretched across where both old doors and the wall between them used to be. Having one door rather than two makes it MUCH easier to negotiate The Mother Ship out of the garage.
I’ve included a few pictures of the scene. The picture at the top of the blog? That’s the sum total of the damage to The Mother Ship: two scratches. Oh, and the “bonnet leaper” was twisted.
On that Friday morning I was up early to pack. As soon as we could close the office and the shop, we wanted to be on the road. We weren’t sure where we’d head, but we had at least determined how we’d make the decision when the time came.
Richard and George were already gone to the shop by the time Desiree had her first cup of coffee. I dragged my duffle bag through the kitchen where she sat in her ratty bathrobe, yawning.
“We should close an hour early so we can go for last minute things like ice,” I suggested.
“Geez, Ara,” she said a little crossly. “You’d think you’d never been on a weekend trip before.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded. I hadn’t had any coffee at all yet, so I was a tad testy. Then again, it was easy to be testy around Desiree, who seemed to have the knack of finding fault with pretty much everything she encountered.
“It means chill out.”
“Yeah. We need ice to chill. And if we’re going to get somewhere decent before dark, we’ll want to leave just as soon as the guys can close the shop.”
After that prickly exchange I was a little gratified when Rich called the office mid-morning and told his wife that he and George had decided to leave the body shop in Derek’s capable hands around lunchtime. I recorded an “away” message for the office answering system and when the guys got home we loaded the bus and were ready to head out.
I opened the big Rand-McNally Road Atlas and flipped through a few pages. Following the agreed upon procedure, I held the atlas at arm’s length by one corner. Richard slid a finger between two pages somewhere in the middle of the book, and at the same time Deisree said “left.” We opened the Atlas and looked at the left-hand page.
“Hawaii?” snorted Richard. “We can’t drive to Hawaii!”
“Hawaii’s not the only thing on that page,” I pointed out. “Look at it. There’s a map of Atlanta, too.”
George, the designated driver for the first leg of the road trip, shifted the old bus into gear. “Hot-Lanta, here we come!” he grinned.
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