For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.performancepress.com.

Some people love to shop. I am not one of them.

Due to my shy and introverted nature, there are not too many people who expect me to buy them presents, so it usually works out OK. These days, I only shop for my wife and my son. She's easy to buy for because she understands my shopping ineptitude and will forgive just about any hideous gift, as long as it seems that I sincerely thought she'd like it. (Yes, I know I am a lucky bastard to have such a great wife. Believe me, I know it.) And my son is easy to buy for because he is a musician and computer geek -- and hanging around music and computer stores isn't really like shopping; I can handle that.

It wasn't always this way. I used to buy for every stinking member of the extended family -- even the ones that were really extended. And the ones who really stink. Distant cousins got colored tube socks, in-law types got spice-rack accessories, and siblings typically got things that could either be hurled, blown up, or played on our ultra-modern 7-disk stacking turntable.

(Nostalgic interlude: It was SO cool to be able to stack 7 vinyl LP records on top of the shiny silver spindle. It was magic when a record ended...apparently, rapid movement into the final groove signalled the unit that the record was over -- the arm would rise under its own power and move gracefully back to its resting place. Then the tiny center post of the spindle assembly would gently nudge the next record over bit by bit...until PLOP, it fell down on top of the previous disk. There was always the possibility that TWO disks would fall at once, but that was OK -- since the turntable had shock absorption springs. The turntable would bounce up and down for a moment after impact, and then there'd be that instant of slippage as the grooves were ground down while friction struggled to help the old record grip the new record. At that point, the magic tone arm would majestically glide over and drop itself precisely into the first spiral groove. Then, music would play... unless the needle missed the record and landed on the turntable pad, in which case your eardrums exploded from the noise of the highly-amplified needle trying to read the random bumps of the non-playable turntable surface.

Yes, even though it was a 7-stack turntable -- we DID experiment with 8 records on the spindle. The springs creaked and groaned, the slippage took years of life from the disk, and sometimes the needle would whack into the side of the stack instead of descending from above it. It was not pretty, but we were kids, and kids understand that labels are merely guidelines -- it is human duty to experimentally discover the edge of the envelope. It's a pity that kids today do not have the same learning opportunities -- you put the CD in the slot...it disappears -- where's the wonder and romance in that?)

Anyway, one Christmas season is especially memorable for the shopping opportunities it offered. I was working 3 jobs -- hey, a geek with no social life has nothing better to do, OK? One was a regular day job, handing out pencils and erasers in the Engineering Supply Room at Boeing. Another was working at McDonald's, and the third was picking up a few hours here and there at a local "Catalog Showroom" store called Ardan. With my degree in Radio/TV/Film, I was a natural to work in the Camera department, where most of my time was spent helping people decipher which size lens cap they should buy to replace the one they lost when they dropped it down the Grand Canyon while trying to take a picture of Aunt Edna holding that goddamn obnoxious crap-machine of a yapping miniature poodle she always had to bring along on otherwise pleasant trips. Sometimes I'd actually help a customer decide whether to buy a Nikon or a Pentax unit, but most of my time was spent hawking batteries or explaining that despite all logic to the contrary, Cabbage Patch dolls would not be found in the Photography Department...might I suggest you try the DOLL DEPARTMENT instead?

The great thing about working there was the fact that employees received a 30% discount on any purchases in the store. I'd had Calculus in college, so I knew that if you used that discount to buy 3 1/3 items, it added up to 100%. That means FREE, baby. Well, I know a bargain when I see one, so I put that discount to good use. No more socks for the cousins -- this year they get waffle irons. In-laws get 2-ton floor jacks or complete sets of patio furniture. Heck, I bought modular stereo systems, lava lamps, fondue pots, 14-piece Armor-All Gift Sets (with Holiday-themed chamois), and multiple copies of every album Englebert Humperdinck had ever recorded. For stocking stuffers, I bought Joe Namath autographed playing cards, musk-scented soap-on-a-rope, and X-Tra Powerful horseshoe magnets. I may have been a zit-faced engineering supply room geek, but I honestly felt like Santa Freakin' Claus, himself.

It was a great Christmas. The Joy of Giving turned immediately into the Joy of Being Liked Cuz I Bought People Cool Stuff. Despite having zero social skills, I was momentarily accepted as a valid member of the extended clan. It didn't last, of course, but for a day or two, people I barely knew were suddenly asking my opinion on which ASA film they should use, and whether a UV filter was a better purchase than a Polarizing filter. Or whether I knew if Englebert and Tom Jones were really good friends like they pretended to be on TV. Life was good.

It was over by New Years. As usual, I received no invitations to New Years Eve parties -- which was OK, since I can't stay up that late, anyway. I'm not one to waste time, though -- while everyone else was watching Dick Clark, I was putting the time to use by opening up the past week's mail. MasterCard, VISA, bank statements, etc.

Uh oh. As I absorbed the latest correspondence, it came back to me --- I had flunked Calculus. Perhaps something was flawed in the way I approached the holiday discount math. Instead of shopping for a bunch of FREE presents, it appeared that I was suddenly deeply in debt. I owed more on my MasterCard than I had earned in my entire Ardan tenure. Hell, the sales tax alone equalled the combined GNP of all South American countries whose names end in "guay". It would take many, many more hours of handing out rulers and erasers before I'd be able to buy anything new again. Sigh.

I eventually recovered. But I never enjoyed shopping as much after that. In today's world, I am a firm follower of those Christmas gurus who claim that personally-created gifts are best. Rather than spend money, I now write a special poem for each of my dearest loved ones. (They each get the same poem, but don't tell them that.) Cousins, in-laws, and anybody who's "twice-removed" or anything -- get squat. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Bah humbug. I could justify my cheapness by railing on and on about my disgust with the crass commercialism of the season, but you've all seen Linus give that speech to Charlie Brown. So I'll just leave you with these special words:

(Feel free to use them yourself -- you'll save a ton of money and headaches. Just write it on some card stock and draw some holly and crap like that around it. Works every time.)

My Dear --Insert special person's name here--:

You know that you are special...
For you mean so much to me.
I wish you lots of presents
Underneath your Christmas tree.

I want to give you something
That reveals how much I care.
But silly toys and trinkets,
Can't begin to get us there.

So all I'll do is mention
How I really care for you,
And wish you happy New Year,
And a Merry Christmas, too.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.performancepress.com.

One of the purposes of this blog site is to provide answers to questions that shy men have about meeting, dating, and romancing the women they are attracted to. Since it's fairly new, most of the world at large remains oblivious to its existence. Thus, I have not received many emails from men who have questions.

Yes, the number of porn site solicitations I've received is higher than Carl Sagan could count; but while I'm so very happy to learn that Tiffany and Amber are willing to perform with barn animals for my viewing enjoyment for such a reasonable fee, they really haven't asked any "shy man" questions. Therefore I shall use the space today to instead share some of the story of my journey from shy nerd social reject geekboy to World Famous Relationships Expert and Highly Paid Seminar Leader.

(The story of how I gained the relationships expertise will have to wait. This blog is about learning seminar skills. Sorry.)

When I was a kid, cereal boxes frequently offered merchandise in exchange for a few boxtops and a quarter's worth of P & H. (No, not Pianos and Harpsichords -- Postage and Handling, man. I always wondered, though, whether the people who handle the stuff actually get to keep the handling portion of the fee. And why should they get paid to handle my "super silly straw", when I have never been offered a single dime for handling anything. And while I'm on the subject, I've never seen a panhandler actually handling a pan...what's up with that?)

Anyway...sometimes you didn't even have to send in boxtops. One summer the boxes had Major League Baseball® cards printed right on the back of the box. They weren't quite as good as the ones you could get at the store, because they didn't smell like that pink stick of bubble gum and they didn't have the guy's minor league stats printed on the back. But they were of pretty good print quality for being slapped onto a medium whose original purpose was merely to keep the Crunch Berries® from escaping. I had 6 Mickey Mantle cards, 4 Roger Marises, and a couple of Yogi Berras. Today, I am pleased to say, my collection of these cards is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $27,000.

Well, it would be if I hadn't thrown the whole collection out when I needed to make room for my Authentic Cape Canaveral Launch Pad Set (complete with real spring-loaded rockets -- guaranteed to put someone's eye out!) I'm afraid that in a landfill somewhere in Kansas, a proud grubworm is currently telling his children about the time their great gran'pappy ate 6 Mickey Mantles in one sitting.

One time I sent away a half-dozen boxtops for a set of free "Tumbling Clowns". They were really pretty cool -- they were little plastic guys (about 4mm high) who tumbled down a little plastic ladder. Hours o' fun. The only problem was that my pre-adolescent handwriting had been misinterpreted by the order fulfillment house. The package that arrived was addressed to Terry Hemy, rather than Terry Heggy. I never saw the humor in it, but for the next 3 or 4 weeks, all the kids in the neighborhood would call me "Homo Hemy", and then laugh uproariously until someone else came along they could make fun of.

Anyway, this story is about how a wallflower like myself learned to stand before a large audience and present himself with poise and authority. The key to my success can be summed up with three words: "ball in vase".

It's a magic trick. A mystic secret of the ancient orient, the illusion is also known as "ball in cup", "ball and vase", and for people who think pretentious accents make them sound more sophisticated, "boll in vahzz". By dumping out the contents of six boxes of cereal and cutting off the boxtops, the trick was mine!

That nickle's worth of plastic allowed me to amaze and dazzle my friends. So -- I'll skip over all the work it took to fine tune my magical arts and get right to the heart of this story. On a fateful day about two years after I received my ball in vase, I had worked up a magic act with a friend and we had been hired to perform at the Wichita City Library for a bunch of underprivileged kids.

My partner's name was Jeff Hammond. Jeff went on to achieve great fame as a concert oboist, but at that point in his life was still working on his fundamental social skills, as was I. We were pretty good at the mechanics of magic (keeping the rabbit hidden until the hat was ready, making sure that the secret cards didn't drop out of the sleeve until needed, etc.), but we just flat sucked at using language and stage presence to keep our audience interested until the illusions actually happened.

We decided to start the library gig with one of our blockbuster tricks: Doctor Weird's Mysterious Box O' Plenty. The BOP was an illusion where the audience would see an empty box suddenly fill with bounty as the All-Powerful Magician chanted the mystic incantation. Our patter was that the Box originally came from prehistoric Mongolia, back in the days when a horrible famine was decimating the landscape and the poor people had eaten all the Yaks and Sasquatches and Snow Leopards -- they were starving. A shadowy monk named "Dr. Weird" emerged from his shadowy cave and descended into the miserable village. Rumors of his power had been heard within the village, so the starving populace heaped praise and adulation upon him, and never once did dare ask why a cave-dwelling Mongolian was named "Weird"...nor did they query from which University his medical degree was earned.

The instructions for the illusion advised using rice as the bounty which would magically fill the formerly empty box. But we didn't have any rice lying around the house. However, we did have the contents of six cereal boxes that had been cut up for boxtop redemption. So our Box O' Plenty was filled with Froot Loops® and Cap'n Crunch (with CrunchBerries®).

As Jeff told the eerie tale of Dr. Weird, I skulked around the stage flourishing my cape like some unholy cross between Jack the Ripper and Vanna White. As Jeff began to recite the ancient Mongolian incantation, I prepared to move the hidden mirror which obscured the waiting cereal.

"Oooga booga orka mooga," Jeff intoned. I got ready. "Rama Lama Alabama". Almost time. "Bippity Boppity BOO!" he shouted. I yanked, and then turned to watch the amazement appear in the eyes of our young audience.

Oh, yeah, I saw amazement. I also saw hope. Then greed. Then frenzied bloodlust... as every single one of those kids leapt up and charged toward me like a tidal wave.

When I had executed the trick, something had snagged and sent the cereal flying. Instead of a serene Box full of vitamin-packed goodness, there was in its place the aftermath of a Level Five Crunch Berry explosion. Cereal was all over the Box, the table, and the floor. The library had become an unintentional smorgasbord.

They must have gotten the kids to come to the show by starving them and promising them some food after the performance. These brats were famished -- then suddenly there's tasty sugar-loaded breakfast food covering everything in sight. What else could they do but storm the stage and start shovelling it into their little mouths as fast as their little hands could shovel it? Their chaperones were shouting at them, Jeff was cursing them with additional ooga boogas, and I was standing there wishing I'd stuck to baseball cards and tumbling clowns.

Luckily, Dr. Weird's mysterious malfunctioning apparatus had apparently generated enough bounty to indeed satiate all the little mongolians. After several terrifying minutes, order was finally restored. The kids returned to their seats with glazed sugar-high expressions on their faces. Thinking that we were the best magicians EVER, they sat mutely transfixed for the rest of the show, probably behaving solely on the off chance that one of the Disappearing Hankies would explode into hailstones of 3 Musketeers bars. Jeff's confidence was at an all-time high, because after all, it was HIS chanting that caused the Crunch Berry eruption. And I was energized by the fact that I had stood eye to eye with a room full of hungry, mannerless rug rats... and had survived their charge.

After that, standing up in front of a room full of adults and speaking about success and motivation -- well, it's a piece of cake. (Well, not literally cake...I'm finished with food-oriented presentations. Let's just say, "It's easy".)

We did not see a monetary profit that day. Our magician's fee for that gig went back to the library to pay for cleaning the Crunch residue off the carpet. Dr. Weird's Box O' Plenty was ceremoniously chopped to bits and cremated during our next Boy Scout campout. Jeff did enjoy a brief acting career, and I think he tried really hard to become a normal person, but the lure of the oboe was too much for him to resist and he has spent the rest of his life under its uncanny spell.

As for me, the magic has never stopped. I received something far better than a cash fee that day. I learned about the power of giving, of sharing the plenty. Each time I share an inspiring story with an audience -- each time I share some tip or technique that gets a person a little bit further down their own path toward success and satisfaction -- each time I see the lights go on behind a listener's eyes...well, I feel like I did when I saw how those kids felt when the explosion of Berries satisfied their hunger.

It's a good feeling.

And I owe it all to boxtops. Enjoy your day, my friends.
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.performancepress.com.

OK, now that Thanksgiving is over, I shall complain about things I am NOT thankful for. (And if the "Fat People vs. McDonalds" suit is successful in enriching the obese morons, I shall soon be initiating class-action suits against anyone who appears in this article. Ka-ching!)

Let's start with the obvious: I hate religious fanatics. Anyone who blows up a bus, flies an airplane into a building, or murders a doctor in the name of their god is beneath contempt. I'm the first to confess that I do not know for certain the true nature of any gods that may exist (nor am I willing to concede that anyone else knows for certain, either). But if there even is such an entity, I gotta believe that the smart money is on there being a special place in Hell for the asswipes who try to force their religious viewpoint down the throats of others. I personally take much comfort in my own belief that such people will eventually be roasting in eternal torment. Really, really nasty eternal torment.

OK, on to the less odious (yet still completely obvious) things I'd prefer we didn't have to put up with. People who use cell phones in public places, with a double-pox upon those who do it loudly. Poor service in restaurants. Neighbors who have loud parties late at night. People who don't use turn signals, or who drive below the speed limit. You see, the problem with these offenses is that they are SO easy to correct. Any moron should be capable of basic courtesy; yet it's truly perplexing that there are so many people who don't seem to be.

(I would have included telemarketers, but thank goodness my entry on the No Call list finally kicked in, so I don't have to put up with these lowlifes anymore.)

Pop-up windows on the Internet. Ads that are folded around (or even attached to) the comics section of the Sunday paper. Football stadiums named after communications companies. Software that comes in giant cardboard boxes, even when the only thing in the box is a crummy little CD. TV commercials that I don't understand. (OK, maybe I don't understand them because they're aimed at a younger target audience; so maybe I should be griping about my own old age and unforgivable un-hipness.)

I am not thankful for the fact that none of my relatives are wealthy, with plans to croak and leave me a large inheritance in the near future. None of them even own TV stations where I could use my family influence to get my own talk show. In fact, in my entire extended clan, there isn't even one person who owns a professional sports franchise, or who is close personal friends with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hell, there are probably at least 7 or 8 degrees of separation between me and Kevin Bacon.

What else do I think the world could do without? Newscasters that annoy and harrass people who have suffered losses. The inexplicable fluctation in gasoline prices. France. People who tear down a mall just so they can build another mall on the same spot. The Oakland Raiders. PBS pledge drives. Poorly-timed traffic lights that make you sit and wait, even though it's 5:00 in the morning and there aren't any other cars around for miles. And especially those damned alien abductions and rectal probes.

You know, I think I'll stop now. Oh, sure, I could find more to complain about...but I'm really a pretty optimistic guy. I'd rather think about the things that are good in the world. They certainly outnumber the bad ones. So I'll shut up and let you get on with the great things that are happening in your life...as I get on with mine.

But always watch the skies, my friends. Take care.
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.performancepress.com.

What am I thankful for? (Other than the standard "my loving family", "the bounty I enjoy as a hard-working American", etc. etc. anyway.)

I'm thankful for the relentless march of technological progress. Seriously, can anyone even remember how horribly tedious it was to use a pencil to create a handwritten letter? Egads.

I am thankful for cinnamon. (And for spell checking, cuz I actually didn't know how to spell "cinnamon" until just this moment.) Naturally, I'm also thankful for chocolate...and I'm thankful for the thermonuclear devices we have to help us stamp out the godless heathens who don't like chocolate. Other food-related thanks simply must include pizza delivery, York Peppermint Patties®, and Ed McCaffrey's Jalapeño Mustard. (For best results, eat the mustard first, followed by the Patties.)

I am thankful for the immense talents of entertainers such as William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and Heather Locklear. I am thankful for the much-too-short career of Stevie Ray Vaughn, and for the fact that I am reminded of my wedding anniversary each year because it falls on Elvis's birthday. I am thankful for optical mice, velcro, and homogenized/pasteurized skim milk. I would be thankful for Taco Bell (cuz I like their tacos), but their service is so abysmal that I'm afraid I can't include them here.

The Simpsons. Bill Nye the Science Guy. Amazon.com. The amazing resources available at the local library. Having the right size of Hanes underwear. The US Constitution. The servicepeople who defend it. The excellent mental healthcare professionals who have helped me get over my dread of those awful Teletubbies.

Yes, I have many things to be thankful for. Every time I see images of the pilgrims at the original Thanksgiving, I am thankful that I've never lived in conditions like they had to, and that I've never had to wear such stupid-looking clothing. I am thankful that the truth about the Roswell incident has been kept under wraps (cuz trust me, you really don't want to know). I am thankful for my Fender Stratocaster, and the fact that I'm allowed to play it, even though my musical talent is invisible even to the world's most powerful electron microscopes. I am thankful for the general cleanliness of public restrooms, and for the fact that my male anatomy still makes it possible to find relief behind a bush if a clean restroom is not available.

You know, I could go on and on...but the fact is that I really do appreciate dang near everything I have in my life. It truly is a glorious and wonderful world, and I feel blessed to be able to live in it.

Still, I don't want you to dismiss me as a starry-eyed Pollyanna with no sense of reality. You may expect an upcoming blog about all the things that disgust and offend me. (It may be a long one -- cuz once I get ramped up, I can generate a lot of ranting and raving.) For today, though, I'll simply leave you with my best wishes for a wondrous Thanksgiving Holiday. Have a great one, my friends.

Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.performancepress.com.

I just saw in the newpaper that it's been 31 years since my first date. No, the paper did not have a headline saying "Heggy Finally Breaks Dateless Streak -- Read All About It!" Nor was there an announcement of a candlelight vigil to commemorate the event down at the local Burger King. Nothing like that.

It was one of those filler pieces they stick down in the corner of the page to make the columns come out even when the reporters simply CAN NOT think up 2 dozen more words to describe how much money sympathetic local residents raised for the lady who had 87 cats in the back of a van that ran out of gas on the Interstate. (It's probably a good thing they didn't write more. I don't even want to think about what that van must've smelled like. Oy!)

The piece I'm talking about said "On this date in 1971, Stephen Spielberg made his TV directorial debut with "Duel" starring Dennis Weaver as a salesman menaced by a mysterious truck driver." (Someday I'll subject you to my harangue about why "debut" should either be spelled day-byoo, or pronounced dee-butt, but I'll spare you that for now.) Anyway, "Duel" was one hell of a debut -- it's a great film. Thirty-one years later, I still get goosebumps thinking about it. Dennis Weaver is perfect as a normal guy who becomes increasingly freaked out as his never-seen nemesis torments across miles and miles of lonely highway. You cannot watch this movie without thinking, "Jeez, what would I do if something like that happened?" And the next time you're out on a lonely highway, you'll be looking in your rear view mirror just a bit more frequently. Guaranteed.

But I was talking about my illustrious foray into the dazzling world of dating. You see, there was a guy on my swim team named Nyberg, and he had a very cute, very smart, and very charming sister. I must admit I fell pretty hard for her. Anyway, after much mutual flirtation, we decided that we'd get together over at her house to watch some TV. She lived with her parents, so there would be chaperones, of course. (OK, so why isn't "chaperones" spelled "shapperones", huh? Crikey!) In any case, this being my first "date", I was still a LONG way from developing any "moves" to use on her, so adult supervision wasn't really necessary no matter how you cut it.

We did hold hands while we watched Weaver drive his piece-of-crap Dodge Dart down the highway as the Giant Evil Truck tried to swat him into the sagebrush. I think I was more frightened than Nyberg's sister, because I had actually been IN a Dodge Dart -- which is scary as hell even if you don't have the Smoke-Belching Semi of Death barrelling up your tailpipe.

I do remember that we both had trouble sitting still. Part of it was sexual tension (at least on my part), but some of it was due to Spielberg's mastery of emotional manipulation. It wasn't a particularly romantic evening (we saved those for later in the relationship), but I think we did form a tighter bond from the shared experience. For me, it is a very warm and magical memory. I'll always have a special place in my heart for her, and for Dennis Weaver. (No, wait, that didn't sound right. Scratch the Dennis Weaver part. Never happened, OK?)

Anyway, I'd be willing to bet that we all have a memory like that stored away somewhere. Something sweet and fuzzy from long ago that brings an automatic smile whenever we see the little newspaper blurb that triggers the recollection. Perhaps yours doesn't involve a homicidal highway jockey, screeching tires, and twisted metal...maybe yours is about standing at the lakeside in the rain listening to Deep Purple on the radio. Maybe it's about having an ice cream sundae at that funky little Ma and Pa shop that was eventually torn down to make room for a Toys R Us. Maybe it's about snuggling while listening to your parents' Harry Belafonte records on a beanbag chair in the basement. Whatever it is, you should take time every now and then to appreciate the fact that you were able to cherish those kinds of moments back before life got to be about finishing your boss's stupid sales report and then rushing to the store to get a Lotto ticket and some new wiper blades before the snowstorm moves in.

I'm sad to say that I don't know what Nyberg's sister is doing these days. When I went away to college, I broke up with her... because my stupid idiot friends told me to. They assured me that I'd be able to date thousands of super-hot erotic babes every single day...and therefore would forget about Nyberg's sister within a week. Well, it didn't happen; I've never forgotten her.

I've learned a lot since then. It wasn't really my friends that were stupid. I was the stupid one. I should never have listened to them. When it comes to matters of the heart, the only source of advice you should pay attention to is... well, your heart.

I did run into her about a dozen years later. And I still felt those same sparks I'd first felt while holding her hand and thinking that if Weaver only had a Mustang he could outrun the truckin' SOB. But there weren't any Spielberg movies on the tube this time. We'd both moved on with our lives, and there was to be no replay of our earlier romance. (Sigh.)

Which is the way it should be, I suppose. My life has certainly had plenty of sparks and romance since then, and they occur with much higher energy and frequency today. But I'll confess I took a brief mental trip when I saw that newspaper blurb, and it was a very pleasant little journey. I'd like to think that wherever she is, Nyberg's sister might have seen the same article and might have taken a moment to smile at the memory. I really hope so.

Have a wonderful day, my friends.
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.performancepress.com.

Watching the Blair Witch Project on Halloween reminded me of the times I've been lost in the woods.

This particular story starts when I was in the Boy Scouts. Each summer our troop would leave the flatlands of Kansas and drive to our special campsite in the Medicine Bow National Forest west of Centennial, Wyoming. We loaded about 40 Scouts and 10 adults on a big yellow school bus and headed out I-70.

Since the troop leaders who were driving the bus could only endure 27 choruses of "99 Bottles of Beer" per day, we stopped for the night in Limon, Colorado. (I'll never forget the look on the face of the guy at the A & W when our Scoutmaster walked up and said "I'd like 150 hamburgers and 50 orders of fries".) We had arranged to stay in an abandoned Co-op warehouse. The owner simply asked that we sweep it out in return for sleeping on the concrete floor. Some advice for you: don't ever take 20 activity-starved teen-agers off a bus and give them brooms in a giant room full of the powdered residue of a dozen years of grain storage. Can you say "Depression-Era Oklahoma"? We may have actually gotten some of the dust to move toward the door, but the majority of it was simply kicked up into the air where it remained until it could be safely vacuumed up into the lungs of us boys as we tried to go to sleep.

The next day we finished the drive, stopping only to marvel at the sights in majestic Buford, Wyoming (population: 4). The campsite was in a spot further up the road called Carlson Park, which had the benefit of having a freshwater spring to supply us for the week. I have many stories to tell of the good times we had in Carlson Park, but I'll save those for later (including the story of how Odle and I stayed awake all night convinced that there was a bear outside our tent, salivating as he thought of the tender vittles he'd find if he just ripped the tent...right....THERE!) But THIS blog is about being lost in the woods.

From Carlson Park, it was possible to hike a rather pretty 3-mile trail up to the rim above Crater Lake. From the rim, it was another good half-hour of quad-busting legwork to follow the trail down the steep switchbacks to the lake itself. Legend had it that the lake was so deep that no one had ever found the bottom. We imagined it being inhabited by Nessie's cousin (or worse), and only the bravest of the boys were willing to venture a toe into its icy waters.

During our stay at the crater, we amused ourselves by skipping rocks, eating our trail mix, and throwing pine cones at each other. Since I had a brand new 3-inch format black and white Kodak plastic camera (the forerunner of the Insta-matic, only much crappier), I had the kids pose for a totally cool classic shot that I knew would be featured on the cover of Boy's Life Magazine. Each kid found a spot below the cliffs and arranged himself to look as mutilated and broken as possible. From high up on the cliff, it appeared that bodies had been strewn across the landscape after falling from the summit. Was it a horrid plane crash? Some lemming-like mass hysteria? Or were they all lined up along the edge when a strong gust of wind came along? No one would know, but the photo would show the tragic aftermath.

It was fun being a high-art photographer. And I'll admit that I took a little longer than was strictly necessary to actually take the picture. I chuckled to myself thinking about how uncomfortable the guys must be in their contorted poses. But finally I told them they could get up.

(I couldn't wait to get back to Kansas and have the film developed. Unfortunately, the picture sucked. In the washed-out black and white print, the crushed and mangled bodies of my oh-so-patient friends so far below my vantage point looked exactly like the rocks that occurred naturally all over the hillside. Ho hum. No covers credits for me with that camera.)

After the photo session, we enjoyed a pleasant and uneventful hike back to camp.

(WAIT A MINUTE! YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO TELL US ABOUT BEING LOST IN THE WOODS! WHAT GIVES?)

Uh, I was getting to that. You see, I enjoyed the hike to crater lake so much that I came back to do it again about 20 years later. I brought my brother along, who was on leave from his job as a highly-trained survival specialist in the US Marine Corps. We had compasses, topo maps, several canteens each, rain ponchos, and waterproof boots. My brother also had a holster belt with his Leatherman multi-pupose tool, a flashlight, water purification tablets, and his Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. We felt that we were prepared for just about anything.

We made it to the lake in short order. But rather than follow the trail back to the car, we decided to strike out across country. We had topo maps, after all, and we were both trained in orienteering.

You know where this is going, don't you? About 3.7 minutes after we left the trail, we had no idea where we were on the map. We knew we were generally headed in the right direction, but...

Actually, it didn't take too long to find the road. Sure, we'd had to walk through a lot more swamp than we'd intended. And we really didn't enjoy walking through the 2-acre moonscape full of jagged rocks that would neatly slice your jugular if you fell. And a .357 Magnum doesn't help a whit against 40 billion ravenous mosquitoes. But really, the hike back wasn't bad. As I said, we quickly found the road.

Well, it was "a" road, anyway. We came out of the woods near a particularly gnarly tree that we certainly would've remembered if we'd have seen it on the way in. Hmmm. There were a couple of roads on the topo map that possibly represented our location. We ruminated and cogitated, checked which side of the trees the moss was on, and then headed off that-a-way. On the map, it looked like about a mile to the road we could take to find the car.

Two hours later, we began to wonder if we might want to reconsider our route. We drank from our canteens, spent a few minutes ruminating and cogitating, and then resumed our previous course.

Two more hours later, we began to think about what we were gonna do if we needed to spend the night in the woods. We now both admitted that we were thoroughly lost, and were more likely to see Bigfoot than our little green Toyota. We weren't particularly worried, since we had plenty of survival tools, but it was vexing nonetheless.

Taking a deep breath, we turned around to backtrack the road we'd been following. I won't bore you with all the subjects we talked about during this time of sibling bonding, but I'm pretty sure we covered everything from who makes crop circles to why the French like Jerry Lewis to the very nature of God himself.

Finally...There! There was the gnarly tree. OK, now we can head the other direction and see if we have any better luck. We have about an hour and a half of daylight left. Maybe a Park Ranger will drive by. Maybe we'll see a trail sign. Maybe a vacationing millionaire will pass by in the Batcopter and drop us the Bat-ladder.

We started to walk. Literally (I'm NOT exaggerating) TWO steps past the gnarly tree, I could see my car. Two flippin' steps in the direction opposite the way we went. We'd originally come out of the woods about 40 feet from our vehicle...just on the wrong side of a big damn tree. On one hand, it was comforting to know that our original navigation wasn't all that bad, but on the other hand...damn, those mosquito bites itched.

Next time, I'm sticking to the trail. See ya. Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.performancepress.com.

Before I stumbled across the Secrets to Success with Women, I had severe problems trying to figure out how to impress girls. The incident I am about to relate happened in my teens, long after most boys grow out of the "pulling her pigtails shows how much you like her" phase of affection display. By then, normal guys have discovered that talking to girls, paying attention to what she says, and letting her know that you like her work much better than random acts of cruelty. But I wasn't a normal guy.

The girl in question was Lisa Pearce. Very cute. Very sweet. Long dark hair, and a smile that would melt your heart. She had always been nice to me. We'd even spent some time together baking 4-layer cakes for her mom's birthday. I liked her a lot. But she was popular, and always had plenty of boyfriends hanging around. I had never given her any reason to think that I liked her.

I wanted to do something to get her attention. Send her a card? No, too stupid. Buy her flowers? No, too gay. Talk to her as if we could possibly be friends? Yeah, right; I'm WAY too much of a nerd for that.

TP the crap out of her house? Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good plan.

At the next meeting of the neighborhood boy club, I suggested that we ought to think about a prank to pull for Halloween. Sure. Sounds good. Who should we get?

It helped that my sister was starting to hang around with Lisa's big brother, Mike. Mike was a big star on the Wrestling and Football teams, and loved to torment us younger guys. So when I suggested the Pearce's, it seemed a natural thing to do; it'd be revenge against Mike, and it would upset my sister. The fact that Lisa happened to live in the same house was just considered collateral damage.

We started planning weeks in advance. Normally, a good TP job consisted of a 4-roll pack of El-Cheapo toilet paper, and about 10 minutes worth of heaving the rolls toward the trees. We weren't planning to do a good job, though...we were going to do the Best Ever -- God, They'll Be Talking About It For Years job.

We made a shopping list. Lewis would buy 24 rolls of toilet paper. Kass would get a couple dozen gunpowder booby traps -- you know, the kind where you tie a string to the doorknob so that it pops when they open. The Ant would gather up a week's worth of newspapers. And Herbert the Pervert would save his family's grass clippings and hide the big bags behind his dog house until the big day arrived. My job was to coordinate the activities and smooth it over with everyone's parents so that we'd all have permission to camp out in my back yard that night.

Over the next week, the Ant and I made several post-sunset excursions from our house to the Pearce's and back again. We searched for the most effective route -- was there a route by which we could we stay hidden by shrubbery, avoid barking dogs, and not have to climb too many fences? We made maps and gave copies to each kid.

We rode our bikes past the Pearces several times, all under the pretext of going over to the elementary school playground to see how far our riderless bikes would travel if we got going really fast and then released the bikes by grabbing onto the playground horizontal bars as we went under. But we were really scoping out the best places to hide if we saw a car coming.

We made out a timetable. We assigned specific trees to each kid, with a specific number of TP rolls per tree. We plotted exactly the best way to handle the newspaper and grass clippings. We made sure everyone knew who would be carrying the duct tape if it was needed for attachment of the booby traps.

Halloween came. We participated in the usual trick-or-treat activities with our families, and then gathered in the back yard to pitch our pup tents. Each kid arrived, wearing the darkest clothing they had. We intended to sleep until 1:00am, which was the time when we figured the fewest observers would be out and about. But we couldn't sleep. So we talked about girls and how much we'd all like to actually befriend one -- and how impossibly distant that goal seemed to be. (Well, except Herbert the Pervert -- he always seemed to do all right with the girls. But if he knew the secret, he wasn't sharing it with us. And we sure couldn't figure it out by watching him.)

The annointed hour arrived. Smearing dirt on our faces, we crept from our makeshift campground and tiptoed along our behind-the-bushes attack route. We had to trade off dragging the grass bags, and Kass kept wanting to turn on his flashlight, causing frequent hisses of "turn that damn thing off, Kass!". But otherwise, it went exactly according to plan.

It was a thing of beauty. There is something almost lyrical about a well-thrown roll of toilet paper arching up over a grand cottonwood tree. And the clocklike precision with which each roll was recovered and re-thrown brought tears of pride to my eyes. It took about 30 minutes of rapid but quiet activity, which included two whispered "car!" warnings which caused an immediate dissolving into the bushes. At the end, every door handle on their house and car was booby-trapped. Every tree was smothered in white. Every window on the house was covered with newspaper so no one could see out in the morning. And the driveway was ankle deep in partially fermented grass.

We hated to leave. But the plan said to make it quick, so we did. We didn't sleep much when we got back to camp, though. If the high-five would've been invented then, we'd have been high-fiving until the sun came up.

Did this precision coordinated assault get me a date with Lisa? No. In fact, it was such a monstrous mess for their family to clean up that we all thought it wiser to remain hidden in anonymity. We even thought there was a possibility of lawsuits, juvenile hall, etc.

Oh, yes, I had set forth a mammoth juggernaut of well-oiled activity in honor of the fair maiden, but alas, she was never to know. Yes, I had much to learn about impressing women. Those stories are yet to come.

But I will leave you with one thought; I'm not sure what it means, though. But here it is: Lisa's brother Mike has been married to my sister now for over 25 years.

Makes ya think, doesn't it?
See ya. Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.performancepress.com.

Creating a Halloween costume is more challenging for an adult. When you're a kid, all you're doing in your costume is trying to scam some food from local shopkeeps and neighboring grandmas. Unless you're one of those weiner kids who's mom makes you a custom-tailored fairy outfit or something, you pick your costume from the bottom shelf of the crappola aisle at Walgreen's. If enough people have walked on it, you might even get a discount. Just choose something that's remotely cool and go for it. (Hint: Spiderman - cool. Pikachu - not cool.)

As an adult, you have the added pressure of being expected to put serious thought and creativity into it. At adult parties, you may even achieve recognition (or even money) for a wondrous costume that displays your brilliance and craftsmanship for all to see.

My crowning achievement in costumery came the year I dressed as the Incredible Hulk. I actually had a hulk-skin colored green shirt (hey, gimme a break, it was the 80s) and a full face latex Hulk-mask. I stuffed my clothing with wadded up socks to simulate Ferrigno-esque mass, and slathered green makeup upon every exposed bit of skin. Grunting incoherently, I managed to lurk around the party for a couple of hours without being recognized by anyone. I couldn't eat or drink because of the mask, of course, but the point was that it was a great costume.

It was even worth the couple of days I spent feeling nauseous from the after effects of breathing latex mask fumes.

The next year, I was not so successful. Due to the rising popularity of Bill Gates and the new American Nerd Power Structure, I decided to dress as a geek. Having spent many years as a dateless dweeb, I had most of the accessories close at hand. Broken taped thick glasses, pocket protectors with engineering pencils, pants that rode up way too high, white socks with thoroughly demoralized elastic, etc. The only problem I had was that I'd recently donated the last of my Brylcreem to Goodwill, so I had nothing with which to oil up the ol' hairdo. Frantically searching my apartment as party time drew near, I finally settled on Wesson Oil for my hair treatment. It looked great. I was one seriously hygiene-challenged dork boy.

It wasn't until I got to the party that I realized my mistake. The oil didn't want to stay localized within my follicles. It wanted to dribble down into my ears, eyes, and (shudder) the back of my neck. Within 20 minutes, I was a streaky, kitchen-scented mess. Of course, that's when the party's hosts decided we'd play the "wrap the mummy" game.

We each found a partner and then were timed to see how long it would take to wrap the other person head-to-toe in toilet paper. And not the scratchy kind of TP they use in the school gym toilets, either -- but the soft and absorbent kind that old pervert grocery store clerks like to fondle. Within minutes, I was covered in tattered oily toilet paper. I felt like I was the wick of a human Malotov Cocktail, and began to avoid anyone who was smoking.

The paper sucked the oil from my hair and evenly transferred it to every square inch of my clothing. Now I couldn't even drive home without staining the pristine two-tone upgraded upholstery in my brand new Pinto. The clothing was no great loss, but the rest of the evening will not be shown in my personal experience highlight reel, that's for sure.

The next year was not quite such a disaster, but it was still enough to make me seriously re-think this whole costume-party-effort thing. My date was going as Oprah Winfrey. So I applied a little "hideous acid burn - guaranteed to horrify" makeup, slipped a white plastic mask over my face, and donned a madman's cape (OK, so it was a vampire cape, but what's the difference?). I spent the next few hours lurking around my date, humming ominous and eerie classical music riffs and trying to look as if I might pluck her up and carry her off to the catacombs. I thought it was a clever bit, but nobody got it. One after another they'd come up and declare that I was a decent Phantom of the Opera, but nothing special. And I'd scream at them, "No, you Moron! -- I'm Phantom of the OPRAH!"

Some people just don't appreciate the creative genius. That was the last costume party I've been invited to. Heavy sigh.
See ya.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.performancepress.com.

My favorite halloween costume was Zorro. I was probably 7 or 8 years old, and the Guy Williams TV show was still being shown in reruns. The costume had a really cool cape (made of some highly flammable toxic polymer) and one of those cheesy plastic masks that cover your whole face and end up with snot all over the inside because you can't ever get the nose holes situated quite right. This particular mask imitated good ol' Guy (who later played the dad on that stupid show about the obnoxious family that was lost in space...what was that program called?). The artist must've created the design from a photo when Williams was posing for a publicity photo while wearing shoes that were two sizes too small -- cuz the grin on the mask had plenty of teeth, but none of Zorro's dash. It was closer to constipation than to swashbuckling.

The mask also had half a hat molded right into the plastic. From straight in front, I'm sure I'd have struck terror into the heart of the evil Alcalde, but from the side I looked like a big-eared crew-cut kid with a tiny strand of elastic alien tentacle attaching this hideous misshapen blob to my face. My swashbuckle factor was also decreased by the fact that I kept bumping into things that I couldn't see through the tiny snot-covered eyeholes.

But the costume was still totally cool -- because it came with a real Zorro sword. No, not a razor sharp length of steel that could put someone's eye out, but a long black dowel stick with a lovingly crafted hilt made of 100% "break-o-matic" crappy plastic. Oh, sure, you could put someone's eye out with this stick, but that isn't what made it cool. It was cool because it had a chalk-holder built into the end. Thus, I was able to leave the mark of Zorro thoughout the neighborhood -- wherever the downtrodden were being repressed. Zip zip zip -- ha HA! A magnificent white "Z" on the sidewalk. Zip zip zip -- another on the side of the garage. (My dad'll make me clean it up later, but there's no time to think such thoughts now...El Zorro is afoot!)

THAT was a fun Halloween! "Hand over your candy or be slashed with chalk marks!" Just like the original Zorro, I took from the rich and gave to the, er, I mean I took from the rich and ate until my belly was full of Butterfingers, Three Musketeers, and Candy Corns. (I did have the charity to donate the carameled apples and popcorn balls to the underpriviledged -- my sister -- cuz who wants to fill up on stuff that might actually have a valid nutritional component?)

Unfortunately, my chalk-stick sword disappeared shortly thereafter. I have no evidence, but my theory is that a half dozen of the local mothers dropped by after my bedtime and threatened my parents with Neighborhood Justice if my cruel weapon of vengeance was not surrendered. Cursed cowards that they were, my parents gave in. The neighborhood no longer lived in fear of waking up to find chalk marks laughing in the face of crosswalk signs and fire hydrants. And to make things worse, I accidentally sat on my cheap plastic mask and split it right through Guy Williams' bicuspids.

For the next few Halloweens, I sequentially mutated into your standard skeleton, black cat, six-gun sheriff, and freightyard hobo. Each successive costume became less elaborate. By the time I was a hobo, my preparation consisted of wearing my holiest pants, putting on a moth-eaten stocking cap, and looking for shoe polish to rub on my chin to create the appearance of a three-day beard. I couldn't find any shoe polish, so I smeared my jaw with Elmer's glue and emptied the pepper shaker over my face. It was actually a pretty good look...and with my constant sneezing I'm sure that the homeowners I visited were convinced not only that I was a real hobo, but that I was in the final stages of consumptive pneumonia and would likely expire at any moment. "Here, take your candy and move on quickly. We don't want any corpses rotting in the flowerbeds...it would clash with the freshly-planted marigolds."

My last effort at trick or treating took place when I was in high school. I pulled my cap down over my eyes so no one could tell how old I was. I shrieked "Trick or Treat" in my best imitation of a grade-school falsetto, and sold the concept by getting down on my knees to appear to be of the appropriate diminutive stature. It worked...I actually received candy! I couldn't believe I had actually fooled anyone.

Looking back from my current level of wisdom and maturity, I now understand that no one could've possibly been fooled. They gave me candy because they thought I was probably dangerously insane, and a handful of rock-hard Bit-O-Honey was a small price to pay to get the masked weirdo to move on. I'm probably lucky they didn't release the hounds to rend me limb from limb. Of course, that would've caused another corpse-in-the-marigolds problem, so I suppose it made more sense to just cough up the sweets.

In the next posting, I'll talk about going to costume parties as an adult. Scary stuff. See ya.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.performancepress.com.

Greetings. Everything was going smoothly yesterday until about 11:00am. Then I noticed a slight raw feeling in my throat. By noon I was in the grip of a full-blown winter cold. Sore throat, headache, weakness, diziness, and general inability to keep my eyes open. I went home and slept until 5:00.

I was able to eat a bit, using my illness as an excuse to avoid my wife's patented "leftover crap 'n tofu" crockpot stew. (Hmmm, maybe I got sick as a pre-emptive measure against that. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study relating early morning sightings of a crockpot on the counter vs. evening nausea?)

Then we settled in on the couch to vegetate. (The Boy went into the office to surf the Internet for Nintendo cheat codes, and the cats wandered in and out trying to maximize their opportunities to annoy someone.) Since we had two Netflix DVDs waiting, we decided to skip the baseball game and go for a movie.

We chose "The Others" with Nicole Kidman and Fionulla Flanagan. It seemed to be a pretty straightforward entry in the "creepy old house full fulla odd and possibly brain-damaged English people" genre. Though I can't recall the circumstances, I had at some point in the past decided that I really disliked Kidman, but she wasn't too bad in this flick. It was creepy, though nothing to cause nightmares. And I was taken by surprise by the big "twist" toward the end. But it was more of the "hmpfh" variety of surprise, rather than the "Oh my God!" type.

A movie like that should at least make an attempt to have one or more characters who are a little bit likeable. And I'm wondering why it always has to be a creepy old Victorian type house. Has there ever been a creepy horror/ghost film set in an ultra-modern apartment? (OK, maybe Ghostbusters, but I can't think of any others.)

Anyway, I rather enjoyed the film, even though I really didn't care who got eaten by ghosts or buried under the leaves in the back yard. And I guess I still don't. I won't recommend it... but if you got nothing better to do, you could probably sit through it.

We checked the score in the ball game, and it looked like SF had it well under control, so we threw in another DVD. "Charlie's Angels". We both expected to hate it, since it just looked SO stupid and had gotten abysmal reviews. And I am pretty sure that my wife's expectations were met.

I was pleasantly surprised. I actually rather enjoyed it. Perhaps I was OD'd on guafenisen and dextromethorphan hydrobromide, but I smiled quite a bit throughout the film. It was stupid, no doubt, but it was stupid in a slightly amusing way. I still don't like Drew Barrymore, and I can't say that I'm a big fan of Cameron Diaz...and this movie did nothing to enhance my opinion of Lucy Liu, either. But I really enjoyed seeing Crispin Glover as the oil ninja-trained bad guy, and Bill Murray is always watchable. I also enjoyed Matt LeBlanc's small part. It was fluff, but it was better fluff than I'd been led to believe it would be. I was never able to suspend disbelief, but that was OK, cuz it was just a stupid movie about a stupid TV show. I wish I could come up with a better reason to say I liked it than "It didn't suck as bad as it should have", but I can't. It was what it was. Take it or leave it, I guess.

Not sure what's next on my movie viewing schedule. I'm teaching at CompuSkills tomorrow and Sunday, so I'd better be feeling better by morning. I'll probably take lots of drugs, so don't be surprised if you hear that students were told that Excel is small oriental bird with a habit of nesting deep within the tropical Pepsi and french fries on a lawnmower. Purple monkey diswasher.

Wish me luck. Hopefully I'll be healthy over the weekend. Don't forget to set your clocks back.

See ya,
Terry