For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Yesterday, I made an appointment to return to the dentist to get a new filling. Or at least that's what I think I agreed to. The dentist actually said something more along the lines of "we need to do a minor restoration on the amalgam in number 29, with a medial lateral occlusion watch on the bicuspid hyperspacial transmogrification clavin...", or something like that.
I don't know what the hell they were talking about. Nothing in my mouth hurts at this point, so what's up? They told me I've been doing a good job with the brushing and the flossing and the cavity-fighting, and all that. But nonetheless, they scheduled me to come back in a month to have this "work" done. Well...OK. I guess.
Actually, I trust this dentist. He's a good guy, and his staff is very friendly and professional. And from past experience with him, I'd expect this appointment to be quick, efficient, and relatively painless. It's just that I'm not really fond of construction projects taking place inside my mouth.
I swear I'm not an anti-dentite, but... there have been times over the years when I've had murderous thoughts about members of this noble profession. The first dentist I can remember was probably a really swell guy, but I hated him. Getting my brother and sister and I loaded into the car for a trip to Dr. Rush's office was probably like, well, it was like pulling teeth. Oh, sure, this guy's waiting room had all the amenities -- a pile of building blocks for kids to play with, tattered copy of Green Eggs and Ham, and stacks of those delightful Hi-Lights magazines.
Remember Hi-Lights? My favorite section of the magazine was the Hidden Picture challenge, where they'd create a dorky drawing of a mutant boy riding a bicycle, and then sneakily place other objects around the picture as if they were part of the scenery. For example, one of the boy's shoelaces might form the shape of a fish hook, and a potted plant may contain a leaf hiding the Graf Zeppelin. There was sure to be a comb lying among the herringbone wallpaper pattern, and a Buck Rogers-style pointy-nose rocket ship lurking among the bicycle's spokes. It was always fun... unless some thoughtless bastard had used a pen to circle all the hidden objects. (Invariably, these morons would also circle a part of the drawing that contained NO hidden objects, but what do you expect...they're morons. I always hoped that people who drew in public access magazines would be punished by receiving gratuitous fillings -- sans novocain.)
This dentist's office had that smell that was probably partly from nightly hosings of antiseptic cleanser, and partly from vinyl furniture outgassing caused by overexposure to UV rays. But to me, it always smelled like cremation. When those 40-billion-RPM drills started whining, they just HAD to be generating enough heat and friction to vaporize teeth, jawbones, and any other nearby part of the poor victim's head. I mean, how do we know they weren't grinding away gum tissue -- we were doped to the gills on various concoctions from the dreaded "-caine" family. I figured the only reason the dentist wore a respirator mask over his mouth was so that we wouldn't hear his gleeful "Bwahh haaa haa ha!" as he watched our flesh and bone fragments being pureed into a fine organic mist.
Today's children have no concept of what it was like when we were growing up. My childhood visits to Dr. Rush all happened before the commies succeeded in fluoridating the water supply (for more details, refer to "Dr. Strangelove"). Heck, toothpaste didn't even have fluoride in it back then -- it was more or less just a mixture of ivory soap and marshmallow creme. And those inspiring posters that say "You don't have to floss all your teeth -- only the ones you want to keep" hadn't even made it to the "artists concept" stage yet. Therefore, it was pretty much expected that an annual checkup would result in the discovery of three, four, or even five cavities. My friends and I would keep score, as if the number of cavities you had was somehow a measure of your machismo. By the sixth grade, most of us had enough metal in our mouths to misdirect a compass, and to pick up Wolfman Jack on the occasional stormy night.
Since the world had not yet been through the hippie era, I still had no idea how to judge my tolerance for medications. Today, if there's even a hint that anesthetics are going to be applied, I immediately begin shouting "Small doses! Give me small doses!" I've learned that I'm highly susceptible to numbing agents -- perhaps it's due to the fact that I'm about half-numb to begin with...
Here's my story: It happened when I was about ten or eleven years old. For some reason, our parents had scheduled a family movie outing immediately after my dental appointment. Back in those days, family movie outings were rare indeed; mostly consisting of grabbing pillows, putting on our PJs and going to the Wonder-Vu Drive-In for a Dick Van Dyke double-feature. Perhaps our parents enjoyed the full shows, but we kids spent most of the time snoozing in the back seat, waking up only during the breaks so we could joyfully sing along with "Let's all go to the lobby...".
Anyway, as soon as I was released from the dentist's chair, we were actually going to the indoor theatre; the fabulous Orpheum (indoor and air conditioned!). They were showing the latest Jerry Lewis masterpiece, "Which Way to the Front?". My dad informed Dr. Rush of our timetable; and I guess the dentist figured that the faster he numbed me, the quicker the whole procedure could go. He swabbed my mouth with the jumbo mint-flavored Q-tip, then said "You're going to feel a little stick -- here -- and here -- and here -- and what the heck, let's do it here, here, here, and here, too."
I've never seen such operation-oriented enthusiasm. He was in there pounding and yanking and poking like he thought he was going to find Blackbeard's treasure buried deep in my jawbone. Eeeeeee-yeeee-EEEEEEE went the drill, and I could smell my tissues being vaporized. And despite the massive amount of narcotics coursing through my system, it HURT. But before too long, they'd poured the molten metal into the newly drilled holes and then hammered it into the desired shape. Stuffing my head full of a couple dozen cotton balls, they cheerfully told me to try hard to not swallow too much blood while I was at the movie theatre.
Then, as usual, we played out the end-of-appointment ritual -- the dental assistant brought out a little treasure-chest shaped box and allowed me to pick out a trinket, for being "such a good boy". I don't know why that was such a highlight for me, but I must confess that I always loved picking out my reward. They weren't anything special...just little erasers and cheap bracelet charms and microscopic plastic cars -- all too crappy to even be considered for Cracker Jack prizes...but I certainly cherished that moment when the treasure box opened up just for me.
Still, as I left the office, my face felt like a bundt cake, all swollen and misshapen. (Of course, it probably looked normal to everyone else, but the novocain made it feel like I was puffed up to at least three times the normal size.) I couldn't talk, and drooled continuously. But the worst part came at the movie theatre. Possibly due to the ignorance of youth, possibly due to the quarts of medications within my system, I was fabulously entertained by the Jerry Lewis movie. Though watching the same movie today elicits excruciating agony, at the time I thought it was uproariously funny.
Well, YOU try laughing out loud when your entire head is a numb as a mattress pad. It was horrible. Instead of hearty human laughter, I made Quasimodo-like noises and inadvertently flung spittle in every direction. And to top it off, for some reason, my eyes started watering profusely. So here I was, blinded, incapable of coherent speech, covered in drool, and feeling convinced that I would never again taste anything that didn't hint of cotton balls.
What should have been a joyous family outing became an exercise in misery and shame. I've never gotten over it. And to make matters worse, the numbness didn't wear off until about halfway through school the next day. My cheeks were punctured in multiple locations, since I hadn't been able to feel anything for so long. And I was embarrassed to speak in class, lest I blind the teacher with all the shiny new reflective metal gleaming inside my mouth.
Anyway, I hope my current dentist will understand, and not take it personally when I walk in to my appointment with a huge sign taped to my chest: "Small doses, please!"
Wish me luck, my friends,
Terry
PS. I guess I should include short comments about the one reasonably pleasant dental experiences I've had. It was when I had my wisdom teeth removed. I only had three of them for some reason -- probably a mutational side effect of commie water supply tampering -- but they were "impacted", which means they were buried under gum tissue. This meant major surgery, with the cutting and the bleeding, and screaming, and...
It was the coolest thing. First they injected me with Valium® and Demoral®, and then they stuck a rubber dam in my mouth. This "dam" was a thin latex sheet that actually had holes in it for all my teeth, and completely covered the rest of my mouth. I could still breathe, swallow, and keep my tongue moist during the entire hour and a half procedure. The surgeon just merrily worked away, while I sat in a drug-induced happy-zone, dreamily humming Johnny Cash songs to myself. Though the procedure involved actually smashing the offending teeth into tiny bits, and then somehow sucking up the shards, I was only peripherally aware of either the excavation or the vacuuming. I don't know if they used a hammer, or if they used miniature sticks of dynamite, but I do remember that the surgeon looked totally exhausted at the end of the operation. But I was still on a giant buzz. He asked how I felt; I was later told that I said "I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue."
On the way home, we needed to pick up some milk, so we stopped by the grocery store. My wife turned her back for a moment, and then spent the next several minutes trying to figure out where her husband and grocery cart had disappeared to. They found me with my face in the ice cream freezer singing something about a "burning ring of fire". Though she eventually got me home safely, I understand that I didn't make a coherent remark for at least the next two days. And while I must say that the effects of the Valium and Demoral were far more pleasant than those of the novocain, I still think the experience adds evidence to the fact that I'll still need my "small doses" sign when I go in for my filling, don't you think? :) T.
Monday, February 24, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
In April of 1981, I was assigned to be a part of Martin Marietta's "Micrographics Research Team". Our charter was to determine the best method for the Denver-based aerospace company to archive its engineering drawings. The current system consisted of making full-size blueline copies of the drawings, and locking them in a vault. But since creating these copies was expensive (closer to the old mimeograph process than to modern computer printers), the space required was immense, and retrieval was labor intensive, the company was looking for a more modern method. Our team was to review the various microfilm and microfiche vendors to decide upon the optimal method. The basic concept was that we would photographically shrink the drawings onto some sort of film (PCs, scanners, and hard drives had not yet been invented...) and then later be able to use some sort of robotic computer system to retrieve any drawing from the film archives.
I was the "engineering" representative. I was the greenest of tenderfoots (tenderfeet?), and could contribute nothing to the project...but somebody from engineering had to go, and I was the most expendable. It turned out to be a very sweet gig, indeed.
The first trip we took was to the 3M headquarters in Minnesota. We flew the 3M corporate jet, a study in luxury and pampering. The six of us had 2 flight attendants to share, and they had been instructed to keep us happy. (OK, not that happy, it wasn't "coffee, tea, or me", or anything. They were quite professional, but still very nice. They were still called "stewardesses" in those days, and physical beauty was still a job requirement. As a single 25-year-old, I was impressed.)
I sat next to a guy named Fred Korfhage. I forget what department he was with (Contracts, maybe?), and don't know much else about him, other than the fact that a couple of years later he fell out of a tree, landed on his head, and forgot everything about his life up to that point. Anyway, Fred was about my age, and was fun to talk with. The stewardess appeared with a huge tray of shrimp. She set it down in front of us and went off to fix drinks. When she returned a few minutes later, one of the guys in the row behind us asked if he could get some shrimp, too. She looked at the empty tray in front of me and her jaw dropped. "That tray was for everyone to share!" she said. Fred and I said we were sorry, but how were we supposed to know? We'd never been on a corporate jet before. Sheesh!
The 3M execs treated us very well, and we had a good time. I assumed that someone from our group absorbed some of the technical information that we'd eventually need as part of the decision making, but I didn't worry too much about it. The only thing I retained was the knowledge that I'd gotten one hell of a deal on 3M cassette tapes by buying them at the employee store instead of at K-Mart.
The next trip was to Orlando, Florida. Martin had a sister plant down there, and they'd already implemented a micrographics system for their drawing archives. Theirs used punch cards with a 35mm negative attached within a little window on the card. The giant IBM punch-card reader machine could sort and retrieve the cards with astounding speed. I assumed that it was also capable of going berserk and spewing cards at the attendants like a paper-loaded firehose -- but I never saw any evidence of this. Still, every movie that featured a punch-card sorter machine contained a scene about this type of berserker spewing, so I just knew it was possible.
At this young and innocent stage of my life, I was still too naive to look for hidden motivations behind corporate decisions. I assumed that this trip was simply the next logical step in our committee's well-planned project. It wasn't until much later that I began to suspect that the timing of the Florida trip to coincide with the very first space shuttle launch might be something other than coincidence.
We finished our business Thursday afternoon. The launch was Friday morning. We drove down to the Cape, secured some sweet beachside locations, and watched the sun rise over the sands.
I took pictures of everything. To this day, I've never been able to photographically capture a more spectacular sunrise. The orange ball on the horizon provided a fiery backdrop for the beach reeds, the gulls...and the news and security helicopters. The temperature was mild and everyone was in a good mood. We were probably 8 or 9 miles away from the launch pad, but we could see a tiny nib that we knew was the shuttle gantry. NASA had placed a giant countdown clock just down the beach from us, so we knew precisely how long it was until liftoff.
When I'd worked at Boeing, I'd been allowed to go aboard the 747 that piggybacked the shuttles around the country. It was a vast, empty space, since everything that wasn't flight-essential had been removed to reduce weight. And, since Martin built the shuttle's huge external tank, I had been exposed to a lot of information about the shuttle during my current job. You may not remember, but for the first couple of launches, the tank was painted white, making the vehicle gleam like some sort of pristine alien obelisk. (They later discovered that the paint provided no benefit, and added a buttload of weight to the craft, so they simply stopped painting the tanks. That's why they're reddish-brown today.) We knew the details of the two astronauts' mini-bios, and we knew how many heat-resistant tiles were glued onto each stubby-looking wing. We were hardcore fans of the space program, just about to witness the Space Program's greatest moment since the Apollo program had ended so many years before.
Alas, it was not to be. One of the sensors indicated a problem with the fuel cells, leading to launch postponement.
Well, since we couldn't watch a spectacular performance by man's latest technological achievement, we did the next best thing; Disney World.
Fred and I decided to take a guided tour, since tour participants got to cut in some of the lines and hear the real "behind-the-scenes" scoop. Sounded like fun. Plus, we could probably find a way to charge it to our company expense accounts...
Our guide was a delicious young lady named Janice. Though forced by the job to wear an unfortunately bulbous drum-major-type hat, Janice managed to charm everyone with her sweetness, quick wit, and vast knowledge of all things Disney. Fred and I sometimes had to shove the family types aside in order to maintain our proximity to our charming guide, but we were smooth enough to do it so that Janice was unaware of our maneuvering. By the time we'd seen haunted houses, animatronic pirates, and all those annoying small world singing dolls, we'd managed to get ourselves noticed. Janice confided that her father was the Art Director for the entire complex and was quite well-off. In fact, her whole family was having a fabulous water-ski day at the family's private lake on Sunday, and she'd be delighted if we'd attend as her guests.
Hmmm. An all-expenses-paid day of water skiing at a private lake with an incredibly cute rich girl...should we do it? Hmmm.
I'm not sure I've ever been more tempted in my life. But, if you came right down to it, there might come a time in the future where such an opportunity might re-appear. But there will NEVER be another first launch of the space shuttle. Sadly, we declined.
Years later, I ran into Fred at another company function. I said, "Freddy Baby, do you remember the hot babe who invited us to her lake for some private water skiing?" Fred said, "Dude, I fell out of a tree," and then wandered off.
Anyway, the launch wasn't until Sunday, so we decided to head to the beach on Saturday. Another member of our task force had grown up at the ocean, and enthusiastically volunteered to teach us to surf. His name was Gary, and he started the day with an impressive demonstration of Frankie Alalon-like skills among the waves. Cowabunga!
With my extensive swimming background, I figured that I'd have a pretty good head start on any type of aquatic activity. "Gimme the board, man," I said, and then paddled out beyond the breakers.
I was pleased to see that I could out-paddle the native surfers, which gave me confidence for the upcoming trial of my ability to hang ten. As soon as I got out to the right distance, I stood up on the board, shot underneath the curl of the gigantic wave, zipped back and forth just in front of the blue crush, and skimmed to the shore amid cheers from thousands of spectators.
OK, I'm lying. I unceremoniously fell off the board on my first attempt. I took a watery face plant on my second. I also spilled my third, fourth, fifth, and... well, you get the idea. To this day, I have absolutely no idea how anybody could ever stand up on one of those slippery bastards. I have the utmost respect for the amazing balance that surfers must possess, and I completely understand why Frankie was able to seduce a babe like Annette.
I spent the rest of the day body surfing, building sand castles, and attempting to flirt with the beach bunnies.
About mid-afternoon, I began to suspect that I had missed a few spots when I'd applied my sunscreen. Being a young, macho guy, I wasn't about to ask Fred or Gary to slather sunscreen on my back, and since I didn't know anyone else there, I did the best I could in self-application. And sure enough, there were telltale signs of pink starting to form on the unreachable Bermuda triangle in the middle of my back. Strangely enough, I was also getting pink on portions of my belly. Hmmm, I could swear I got that spot...
By evening, I was in full-blown agony. In addition to my back and belly (you could see the finger outlines showing exactly how far I rubbed the sunscreen), the tops of my feet were flaming red. I couldn't lie down (either front or back). I couldn't wear socks. And I was beginning to suspect that there was something wrong with my eyes, as well.
Trust me, you DO NOT ever want to suffer from sunburned retinas. ALWAYS wear sunglasses when you're at the beach. (Or skiing for that matter.)
I did not sleep well that night. I took pain killers, and soaked myself in various lotions. I couldn't open my eyes, but tears continually poured forth from under closed lids. If my whimpering kept the others awake, they were too polite to comment. But I felt absolutely miserable when it was time to head back to the beach to set up for the launch.
Fred led me around like a blind man (though I've never seen a real blind person who was as helpless and dazed as I was). He more-or-less dragged me to the beach, and pointed my head in the general direction of the launch pad. I had my 35mm camera, which I blindly held aloft in hopes of accidentally capturing the Columbia's leap from the bounds of Earth.
We weren't able to get as close as we'd been on Friday; Fred said it was probably about 10 miles away. But we'd still be able to see the flames and hear the roar...we hoped.
And so did over a million other people. The beaches were jammed with humanity for miles. By launch time, there was not a single spot along the road that didn't contain a spectator's car. There was not a square centimeter of beach that didn't contain a hopeful American who'd gotten out of bed early to be a part of history. Over a million excited souls all waited shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers who felt like brothers. All those eyes were pointing in the same direction, and all those hearts beat with the same emotion. All those lips were uttering the same prayers to whatever gods they believed in.
And you could feel it. The collaborative emotion became a focused, tangible thing. Perhaps my other senses were heightened by the temporary loss of my sight -- but I don't think so. I truly believe that each of us felt the same powerful thing. Perhaps we couldn't describe it (either then or now), but it was so strong that the mere memory of it continues to bring tears to our eyes decades later. "Godspeed, Columbia, " we whispered. "Go, baby, go!"
We saw the light before we heard the roar. Seeming to happen in slow motion, the barely visible craft rose majestically off its throne and levitated on a plume of gorgeous white smoke. Even at 10 miles away, the sound reached us with physical force. As we were slapped with the crackling snarl of the blast, we added to the volume with our own involuntary cheers. Over a million voices raised in a gleeful shout from the very depths of humanity -- no one who was there could ever forget it.
Peering through barely slit eyelids, I could see the Columbia climb skyward. I snapped photo after photo through the tears that poured from my injured eyes. Tears of pain, yes, but far more tears of joy. It was as if the entire million were joined in one thought, using the sheer force of our collective will to lift the shuttle toward the heavens.
I have no idea what I was shouting, but I know that my throat was hoarse for days afterward. As I squinted, I noticed that the ship was too far away to see, and then I couldn't even see the flames. The column of smoke dispersed slowly, a ghostly reminder of the spectacle we'd just witnessed. As the plume lost its shape, I gradually became aware of thousands of jabbering voices as people returned to individual consciousness.
The feeling of consolidated human thought was gone. But I remember thinking about how powerful that prolonged moment had been. It felt as if the force of human will could accomplish anything...if it was all concentrated on the same effort to bring about collective good. It felt as if there really was a God, and His power could be focused by people who believed in reaching for the stars. The tears I had cried represented the purest joy from the heart of humanity.
I cried again when Columbia died.
The brave souls killed by its disintegration deserve to be mourned by the entire planet. I am greatly saddened by their loss.
And I think of what Columbia represents to me. As the world sits on the brink of war, I think back to that soaring elation I felt as Columbia leapt into the skies for its maiden voyage. I think of how, for that one glorious moment, a million humans forgot about our troubles and united our minds to support the concepts of exploration, bravery, knowledge, and accomplishment. For one moment, I was bonded to each of those other souls in the light of love and joy, looking upward toward a future full of hope.
Bless you, Columbia. May your spirit live on.
In April of 1981, I was assigned to be a part of Martin Marietta's "Micrographics Research Team". Our charter was to determine the best method for the Denver-based aerospace company to archive its engineering drawings. The current system consisted of making full-size blueline copies of the drawings, and locking them in a vault. But since creating these copies was expensive (closer to the old mimeograph process than to modern computer printers), the space required was immense, and retrieval was labor intensive, the company was looking for a more modern method. Our team was to review the various microfilm and microfiche vendors to decide upon the optimal method. The basic concept was that we would photographically shrink the drawings onto some sort of film (PCs, scanners, and hard drives had not yet been invented...) and then later be able to use some sort of robotic computer system to retrieve any drawing from the film archives.
I was the "engineering" representative. I was the greenest of tenderfoots (tenderfeet?), and could contribute nothing to the project...but somebody from engineering had to go, and I was the most expendable. It turned out to be a very sweet gig, indeed.
The first trip we took was to the 3M headquarters in Minnesota. We flew the 3M corporate jet, a study in luxury and pampering. The six of us had 2 flight attendants to share, and they had been instructed to keep us happy. (OK, not that happy, it wasn't "coffee, tea, or me", or anything. They were quite professional, but still very nice. They were still called "stewardesses" in those days, and physical beauty was still a job requirement. As a single 25-year-old, I was impressed.)
I sat next to a guy named Fred Korfhage. I forget what department he was with (Contracts, maybe?), and don't know much else about him, other than the fact that a couple of years later he fell out of a tree, landed on his head, and forgot everything about his life up to that point. Anyway, Fred was about my age, and was fun to talk with. The stewardess appeared with a huge tray of shrimp. She set it down in front of us and went off to fix drinks. When she returned a few minutes later, one of the guys in the row behind us asked if he could get some shrimp, too. She looked at the empty tray in front of me and her jaw dropped. "That tray was for everyone to share!" she said. Fred and I said we were sorry, but how were we supposed to know? We'd never been on a corporate jet before. Sheesh!
The 3M execs treated us very well, and we had a good time. I assumed that someone from our group absorbed some of the technical information that we'd eventually need as part of the decision making, but I didn't worry too much about it. The only thing I retained was the knowledge that I'd gotten one hell of a deal on 3M cassette tapes by buying them at the employee store instead of at K-Mart.
The next trip was to Orlando, Florida. Martin had a sister plant down there, and they'd already implemented a micrographics system for their drawing archives. Theirs used punch cards with a 35mm negative attached within a little window on the card. The giant IBM punch-card reader machine could sort and retrieve the cards with astounding speed. I assumed that it was also capable of going berserk and spewing cards at the attendants like a paper-loaded firehose -- but I never saw any evidence of this. Still, every movie that featured a punch-card sorter machine contained a scene about this type of berserker spewing, so I just knew it was possible.
At this young and innocent stage of my life, I was still too naive to look for hidden motivations behind corporate decisions. I assumed that this trip was simply the next logical step in our committee's well-planned project. It wasn't until much later that I began to suspect that the timing of the Florida trip to coincide with the very first space shuttle launch might be something other than coincidence.
We finished our business Thursday afternoon. The launch was Friday morning. We drove down to the Cape, secured some sweet beachside locations, and watched the sun rise over the sands.
I took pictures of everything. To this day, I've never been able to photographically capture a more spectacular sunrise. The orange ball on the horizon provided a fiery backdrop for the beach reeds, the gulls...and the news and security helicopters. The temperature was mild and everyone was in a good mood. We were probably 8 or 9 miles away from the launch pad, but we could see a tiny nib that we knew was the shuttle gantry. NASA had placed a giant countdown clock just down the beach from us, so we knew precisely how long it was until liftoff.
When I'd worked at Boeing, I'd been allowed to go aboard the 747 that piggybacked the shuttles around the country. It was a vast, empty space, since everything that wasn't flight-essential had been removed to reduce weight. And, since Martin built the shuttle's huge external tank, I had been exposed to a lot of information about the shuttle during my current job. You may not remember, but for the first couple of launches, the tank was painted white, making the vehicle gleam like some sort of pristine alien obelisk. (They later discovered that the paint provided no benefit, and added a buttload of weight to the craft, so they simply stopped painting the tanks. That's why they're reddish-brown today.) We knew the details of the two astronauts' mini-bios, and we knew how many heat-resistant tiles were glued onto each stubby-looking wing. We were hardcore fans of the space program, just about to witness the Space Program's greatest moment since the Apollo program had ended so many years before.
Alas, it was not to be. One of the sensors indicated a problem with the fuel cells, leading to launch postponement.
Well, since we couldn't watch a spectacular performance by man's latest technological achievement, we did the next best thing; Disney World.
Fred and I decided to take a guided tour, since tour participants got to cut in some of the lines and hear the real "behind-the-scenes" scoop. Sounded like fun. Plus, we could probably find a way to charge it to our company expense accounts...
Our guide was a delicious young lady named Janice. Though forced by the job to wear an unfortunately bulbous drum-major-type hat, Janice managed to charm everyone with her sweetness, quick wit, and vast knowledge of all things Disney. Fred and I sometimes had to shove the family types aside in order to maintain our proximity to our charming guide, but we were smooth enough to do it so that Janice was unaware of our maneuvering. By the time we'd seen haunted houses, animatronic pirates, and all those annoying small world singing dolls, we'd managed to get ourselves noticed. Janice confided that her father was the Art Director for the entire complex and was quite well-off. In fact, her whole family was having a fabulous water-ski day at the family's private lake on Sunday, and she'd be delighted if we'd attend as her guests.
Hmmm. An all-expenses-paid day of water skiing at a private lake with an incredibly cute rich girl...should we do it? Hmmm.
I'm not sure I've ever been more tempted in my life. But, if you came right down to it, there might come a time in the future where such an opportunity might re-appear. But there will NEVER be another first launch of the space shuttle. Sadly, we declined.
Years later, I ran into Fred at another company function. I said, "Freddy Baby, do you remember the hot babe who invited us to her lake for some private water skiing?" Fred said, "Dude, I fell out of a tree," and then wandered off.
Anyway, the launch wasn't until Sunday, so we decided to head to the beach on Saturday. Another member of our task force had grown up at the ocean, and enthusiastically volunteered to teach us to surf. His name was Gary, and he started the day with an impressive demonstration of Frankie Alalon-like skills among the waves. Cowabunga!
With my extensive swimming background, I figured that I'd have a pretty good head start on any type of aquatic activity. "Gimme the board, man," I said, and then paddled out beyond the breakers.
I was pleased to see that I could out-paddle the native surfers, which gave me confidence for the upcoming trial of my ability to hang ten. As soon as I got out to the right distance, I stood up on the board, shot underneath the curl of the gigantic wave, zipped back and forth just in front of the blue crush, and skimmed to the shore amid cheers from thousands of spectators.
OK, I'm lying. I unceremoniously fell off the board on my first attempt. I took a watery face plant on my second. I also spilled my third, fourth, fifth, and... well, you get the idea. To this day, I have absolutely no idea how anybody could ever stand up on one of those slippery bastards. I have the utmost respect for the amazing balance that surfers must possess, and I completely understand why Frankie was able to seduce a babe like Annette.
I spent the rest of the day body surfing, building sand castles, and attempting to flirt with the beach bunnies.
About mid-afternoon, I began to suspect that I had missed a few spots when I'd applied my sunscreen. Being a young, macho guy, I wasn't about to ask Fred or Gary to slather sunscreen on my back, and since I didn't know anyone else there, I did the best I could in self-application. And sure enough, there were telltale signs of pink starting to form on the unreachable Bermuda triangle in the middle of my back. Strangely enough, I was also getting pink on portions of my belly. Hmmm, I could swear I got that spot...
By evening, I was in full-blown agony. In addition to my back and belly (you could see the finger outlines showing exactly how far I rubbed the sunscreen), the tops of my feet were flaming red. I couldn't lie down (either front or back). I couldn't wear socks. And I was beginning to suspect that there was something wrong with my eyes, as well.
Trust me, you DO NOT ever want to suffer from sunburned retinas. ALWAYS wear sunglasses when you're at the beach. (Or skiing for that matter.)
I did not sleep well that night. I took pain killers, and soaked myself in various lotions. I couldn't open my eyes, but tears continually poured forth from under closed lids. If my whimpering kept the others awake, they were too polite to comment. But I felt absolutely miserable when it was time to head back to the beach to set up for the launch.
Fred led me around like a blind man (though I've never seen a real blind person who was as helpless and dazed as I was). He more-or-less dragged me to the beach, and pointed my head in the general direction of the launch pad. I had my 35mm camera, which I blindly held aloft in hopes of accidentally capturing the Columbia's leap from the bounds of Earth.
We weren't able to get as close as we'd been on Friday; Fred said it was probably about 10 miles away. But we'd still be able to see the flames and hear the roar...we hoped.
And so did over a million other people. The beaches were jammed with humanity for miles. By launch time, there was not a single spot along the road that didn't contain a spectator's car. There was not a square centimeter of beach that didn't contain a hopeful American who'd gotten out of bed early to be a part of history. Over a million excited souls all waited shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers who felt like brothers. All those eyes were pointing in the same direction, and all those hearts beat with the same emotion. All those lips were uttering the same prayers to whatever gods they believed in.
And you could feel it. The collaborative emotion became a focused, tangible thing. Perhaps my other senses were heightened by the temporary loss of my sight -- but I don't think so. I truly believe that each of us felt the same powerful thing. Perhaps we couldn't describe it (either then or now), but it was so strong that the mere memory of it continues to bring tears to our eyes decades later. "Godspeed, Columbia, " we whispered. "Go, baby, go!"
We saw the light before we heard the roar. Seeming to happen in slow motion, the barely visible craft rose majestically off its throne and levitated on a plume of gorgeous white smoke. Even at 10 miles away, the sound reached us with physical force. As we were slapped with the crackling snarl of the blast, we added to the volume with our own involuntary cheers. Over a million voices raised in a gleeful shout from the very depths of humanity -- no one who was there could ever forget it.
Peering through barely slit eyelids, I could see the Columbia climb skyward. I snapped photo after photo through the tears that poured from my injured eyes. Tears of pain, yes, but far more tears of joy. It was as if the entire million were joined in one thought, using the sheer force of our collective will to lift the shuttle toward the heavens.
I have no idea what I was shouting, but I know that my throat was hoarse for days afterward. As I squinted, I noticed that the ship was too far away to see, and then I couldn't even see the flames. The column of smoke dispersed slowly, a ghostly reminder of the spectacle we'd just witnessed. As the plume lost its shape, I gradually became aware of thousands of jabbering voices as people returned to individual consciousness.
The feeling of consolidated human thought was gone. But I remember thinking about how powerful that prolonged moment had been. It felt as if the force of human will could accomplish anything...if it was all concentrated on the same effort to bring about collective good. It felt as if there really was a God, and His power could be focused by people who believed in reaching for the stars. The tears I had cried represented the purest joy from the heart of humanity.
I cried again when Columbia died.
The brave souls killed by its disintegration deserve to be mourned by the entire planet. I am greatly saddened by their loss.
And I think of what Columbia represents to me. As the world sits on the brink of war, I think back to that soaring elation I felt as Columbia leapt into the skies for its maiden voyage. I think of how, for that one glorious moment, a million humans forgot about our troubles and united our minds to support the concepts of exploration, bravery, knowledge, and accomplishment. For one moment, I was bonded to each of those other souls in the light of love and joy, looking upward toward a future full of hope.
Bless you, Columbia. May your spirit live on.
Friday, February 14, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
OK, I'm finally ready to talk about the Space Shuttle Columbia. I was there when she took off on her maiden voyage in April of 1981. America had not had a space launch for quite a long time, and I was certainly privileged to be among the folks lining the shores across from Cape Canaveral when the shuttle program first took to the skies.
Here's how I happened to be there: In the late summer of 1980, I was working for the Boeing Military Airplane Company in Wichita, Kansas. The job was OK, and I really liked the people I worked with...but despite having lived there most of my live, I hadn't really bonded with the city of Wichita. So, when I was invited to Denver to participate in a friend's wedding, I decided I'd use the trip to scout out other locales.
I'd be staying at the groom's apartment, and my only obligations were to show up for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding itself -- commitments totalling no more than a few hours altogether. That left plenty of time for sightseeing in Colorado. At that time of year, such a trip positively screamed to be done 'a la motorcycle'.
My Wichita roommate was also a rider. We called him "Harp", and though he had this irrational prejudice against comfort on a 'cycle, he promised me that he'd be able to handle the long drive on his drive-shaft powered Suzuki. My bike was a Yamaha 750DX, also a drive-shaft machine, with comfy swept-back handlebars, a cushy bucket seat, and a fully outfitted Windjammer fairing to keep the wind out of my face. I had a stereo (with speakers and/or helmet-mounted headphones), a backrest, footpegs, and cruise control. With the ultra-smooth 3-cylinder Yamaha engine, I could ride all day in absolute relaxation...while Harp was hunched over his gas tank, with a wind-battling death grip on his ridiculously square handlebars, spitting out the bugs that so dearly love to commit suicide on the highways of western Kansas.
The ride to Denver was wonderful. I had Blue Öyster Cult on the headphones, beautiful blue skies overhead, and miles of amber grain waving at us as we passed. It seemed that we met friendly bikers at every rest stop we made. And let me tell you, there are very few sights as inspiring as that first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains as they seemed to magically solidify in the distance. After ten hours on the road, we were still invigorated with the excitement of the gorgeous drive as we pulled into our Denver destination.
The rehearsal dinner was a spectacular event. It was in a fancy restaurant sitting near the top of the Denver skyline. Now, I'm not generally into fancy meals -- after all, with my unsophisticated taste buds, it just seems like a huge waste of money. But I enjoyed watching the groom-to-be, and had a great time interacting with his family. The only problem was that it was obvious to everyone that the bride was a flaming bitch from the bowels of hell.
Well, obvious to everyone but Steve, the groom. Actually, I think he knew, but was afraid to do anything about it because a) he was afraid no other woman would ever marry him, and b) he was afraid the bitch-bride would cut off valuable parts of his anatomy if he so much as looked at her crosswise.
It sucks being the best man at a wedding that you know is bound for failure. Your dear friend is about to plunge himself into the abyss of a marital nightmare, but you feel as if you have to support him. "Yeah, she's great," you say, while secretly hoping that there will be a large scale pipe organ disaster that will cause the bride to be decapitated in some sort of spectacular Dr. Phibes-like way. You want to scream, "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!", but instead you meekly hand him the ring that will forever symbolize his pain and misery.
(Yes, the marriage did end badly, six months later -- with one of those awkward boyfriend-in-the-closet moments. And though I'm not sure how this relates, you probably should know that I had similar feelings a bit later when I was best man at Harp's wedding. Another six month marriage punctuated with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The good news is that both of these gentlemen have since found the women they were meant for, and are wallowing in oceans of marital bliss.)
After the wedding, Harp and I posed for some photos, looking spiffily tux-clad, astride our motorcycles. Then we changed and headed for the mountains.
The first stop was St. Mary's Glacier. Just up the road from Idaho Springs, St. Mary's is a snow & ice field that never melts. It's stuffed into a rift between peaks, and features a perpetual snow slope leading down to one of the most beautiful mountain lakes you will ever see. We put on our snow suits and hiked up the side of the glacier, just for the pleasure of leaping over the precipice and cascading down the slope on our butts. Human sledding at its finest. What the hell, we figured, and did it again.
After butt-skiing, we got back on the bikes and took off again, with no particular destination in mind. We planned to find a rest stop somewhere and spend the night snuggled in our respective sleeping bags. But we were enjoying the ride so much, we didn't want to stop. As the sun went down, we were treated to a sunset that brought new meaning to the phrase "purple mountain's majesty", and later saw the moon rise into a starkly pristine sky. At one point, we stopped at a roadside pullout overlooking a little mountain lake. We were at just the right angle to see the moon reflected off the water's surface, and I remember thinking that if God were going to build a house on earth, he'd surely choose Colorado as his building site.
Though the ride was truly awe-inspiring, we did finally begin to tire out. Harp and I decided that we'd pull over at the next rest area and crash for the night.
In hindsight, we were obviously too picky about which rest area we would settle on. Too small. Bathroom too smelly. Too many creepy trucks with "Ax Murderer On Board" placards in the windows. Let's move on.
As we left the mountains and headed back down Highway 50 heading for Kansas, it started to rain. We each owned some half-assed rain gear. Harp's was a yellow slicker jacket to cover his torso and a couple of hefty bags to lash onto his legs. Mine was a one-piece Texaco-style grease monkey coverall that had been liberally coated with Scotchgard®. Of course, we were both soaked through to the bone inside of 15 minutes. It's dark, we're not equipped with visor-mounted wiper blades, and we're creating a pretty fair wind-chill factor by travelling 65 miles per hour. We're pulling over at the next turnout, no matter what.
A KOA "Kampground" sign lit up the night like the proverbial grail-shaped beacon. We pulled in. It was around 2am at this point; there was no attendant on duty. We picked a couple of covered picnic tables and promptly fell asleep, still wearing our clownish and sopping rain gear. We were too tired to even mess with sleeping bags.
At about 5:45, we both woke up and realized that we were supposed to pay for having used the kampsite. As young, motorcycle-riding rebels with microscopic bank accounts, we decided that our soundest strategy would be to hit the road before the park attendant came 'round asking for fees. After all, we hadn't really spent the whole night there...
Though the KOA had actually been in the state of Colorado, it was in the eastern part, which is really indistinguishable from Kansas. As our ride resumed, though, we found ourselves crossing the border in short order. Even though it was 1980, the sign still said "Welcome to Kansas, Home of Debbie Bryant, Miss America 1969". (Later, they changed it to a more generic "Home of Beautiful Women", and still later, the somewhat perplexing, but still vastly more appropriate "Land of Ah's".)
Within 5 miles of crossing the border, my front tire went flat. Fortunately, I was able to limp into the bustling metropolis of Larkin, KS. We grabbed some OJ and donuts from a greasy spoon where the waitress smelled like damp fungus, and the silverware had last been washed when LBJ was in office. By the time we finished breakfast, the gas station had opened, and I was able to get the tire patched. Back on the road.
The next indignity was a speeding ticket issued by a state trooper whose pantleg creases could slice tomatos. By the time I was finished writing a check for about 15 times the amount that was actually resident in my account, the sun had risen to its full summer fury. I rolled up my shirtsleeves and pantlegs to relieve some of the stifling heat.
And, of course, no more than two minutes later, the newly bare flesh of my leg met the tail end of a slow moving bumblebee as my bike was going about 70 mph. Let me assure you, you do NOT want to have a bumblebee stinger plunged into your body at highway speeds. Thank God I didn't crash, but I'm sure they could hear me screaming all the way to Topeka.
I stopped as quickly as I could, and used my nail clippers to tear a bloody gash in my leg as part of a heroic attempt to remove the poison-tipped insect carcass. After a prolific bout of gory hacking and mighty cursing, I was finally able to contemplate getting back on the road. Leaving a dotted trail of hemoglobin on the highway, I was seriously looking forward to the end of the trip.
It was now over 104°F. Time for the wind to pick up. I was surprised to learn that while a breeze supplies a cooling effect when the temperatures are below 80°, it acts to intensify the perception of heat once you reach a certain level of hellish heat. What had been a pleasant ride while we were in the mountains, now resembled a guided tour through Satan's own blast furnace. I began to suspect that heavenly powers were at work, trying to communicate this simple message: COLORADO IS WONDERFUL. KANSAS SUCKS!
I finally reached my apartment in Wichita. I had forgotten to cancel newspaper delivery, so there was a pile on my doorstep. I picked them up and headed inside, grumbling about how I should be in Colorado rather than this sub-tropical stink zone. The first priority was to take a long-overdue leak (hmmm, maybe that's what they mean by "Land of Ah's"...) Then I returned to the kitchen to "catch up" on what had happened while I was gone.
I picked up a newspaper at random, and flipped it open to a randomly selected page. As I read the contents of that page, I knew that I had indeed been receiving a message. the ad in the paper said, "YOU SHOULD LIVE IN COLORADO." OK, I thought...you've got my attention.
It was a double-page ad for Martin Marietta, wanting to hire engineers to work in the Colorado offices of their aerospace company. They had a recruiter in Wichita who would be accepting calls the next day. Needless to say, I wrote down the number.
When I called the guy, the first thing he said was, "We're looking for engineers. Are you an engineer?" I told him I was not. "Well, I'd like to talk to you anyway," he said. Hmmm. I figured they must be desperate.
After talking with the guy for an hour, I realized that while we had indeed talked a little about my employability, we had spent a much larger segment of our time talking about our enthusiasm for running. I knew what races the guy had coming up, what his fastest 10K time was, and what type of running shoes he wore. What I wasn't so clear about was whether I had said anything that would merit a call-back. But sure enough, two days later I got a call from George Dallas, who was in charge of Martin's engineering procedures group.
"So, Terry," he said, "you write procedures?" Yup. "I assume you're an expert with MIL-STD-100, then, right?" Huh? Never heard of it. "Well, then you must be working compliance with DOD-STD-1000, right?" Uh, no...sorry. "Experience with schematics?" Nope. "Drafting practices?" Well, I took a drafting class in the eighth grade. All I really remember is that a kid named Ronnie threatened to beat me up if I didn't show him how to find the 3-inch mark on a ruler. (No, I'm not kidding.)
"Hmm," George said, "I was kinda hoping for some experience with standards." He took a deep breath. "Oh, well, when can we fly you out to meet with you in person?"
Like I said, they were desperate. But the bottom line is that a couple of plane flights, a screening of "The Empire Strikes Back", and two weeks later, I was packing up all my earthly possessions to move to Denver to start my new job with Martin Marietta.
OK, so I still haven't talked about why I was in Florida to watch the Columbia take off on the first ever space shuttle mission. Stay tuned for the next blog.
Happily corresponding from Colorado,
Terry
OK, I'm finally ready to talk about the Space Shuttle Columbia. I was there when she took off on her maiden voyage in April of 1981. America had not had a space launch for quite a long time, and I was certainly privileged to be among the folks lining the shores across from Cape Canaveral when the shuttle program first took to the skies.
Here's how I happened to be there: In the late summer of 1980, I was working for the Boeing Military Airplane Company in Wichita, Kansas. The job was OK, and I really liked the people I worked with...but despite having lived there most of my live, I hadn't really bonded with the city of Wichita. So, when I was invited to Denver to participate in a friend's wedding, I decided I'd use the trip to scout out other locales.
I'd be staying at the groom's apartment, and my only obligations were to show up for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding itself -- commitments totalling no more than a few hours altogether. That left plenty of time for sightseeing in Colorado. At that time of year, such a trip positively screamed to be done 'a la motorcycle'.
My Wichita roommate was also a rider. We called him "Harp", and though he had this irrational prejudice against comfort on a 'cycle, he promised me that he'd be able to handle the long drive on his drive-shaft powered Suzuki. My bike was a Yamaha 750DX, also a drive-shaft machine, with comfy swept-back handlebars, a cushy bucket seat, and a fully outfitted Windjammer fairing to keep the wind out of my face. I had a stereo (with speakers and/or helmet-mounted headphones), a backrest, footpegs, and cruise control. With the ultra-smooth 3-cylinder Yamaha engine, I could ride all day in absolute relaxation...while Harp was hunched over his gas tank, with a wind-battling death grip on his ridiculously square handlebars, spitting out the bugs that so dearly love to commit suicide on the highways of western Kansas.
The ride to Denver was wonderful. I had Blue Öyster Cult on the headphones, beautiful blue skies overhead, and miles of amber grain waving at us as we passed. It seemed that we met friendly bikers at every rest stop we made. And let me tell you, there are very few sights as inspiring as that first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains as they seemed to magically solidify in the distance. After ten hours on the road, we were still invigorated with the excitement of the gorgeous drive as we pulled into our Denver destination.
The rehearsal dinner was a spectacular event. It was in a fancy restaurant sitting near the top of the Denver skyline. Now, I'm not generally into fancy meals -- after all, with my unsophisticated taste buds, it just seems like a huge waste of money. But I enjoyed watching the groom-to-be, and had a great time interacting with his family. The only problem was that it was obvious to everyone that the bride was a flaming bitch from the bowels of hell.
Well, obvious to everyone but Steve, the groom. Actually, I think he knew, but was afraid to do anything about it because a) he was afraid no other woman would ever marry him, and b) he was afraid the bitch-bride would cut off valuable parts of his anatomy if he so much as looked at her crosswise.
It sucks being the best man at a wedding that you know is bound for failure. Your dear friend is about to plunge himself into the abyss of a marital nightmare, but you feel as if you have to support him. "Yeah, she's great," you say, while secretly hoping that there will be a large scale pipe organ disaster that will cause the bride to be decapitated in some sort of spectacular Dr. Phibes-like way. You want to scream, "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!", but instead you meekly hand him the ring that will forever symbolize his pain and misery.
(Yes, the marriage did end badly, six months later -- with one of those awkward boyfriend-in-the-closet moments. And though I'm not sure how this relates, you probably should know that I had similar feelings a bit later when I was best man at Harp's wedding. Another six month marriage punctuated with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The good news is that both of these gentlemen have since found the women they were meant for, and are wallowing in oceans of marital bliss.)
After the wedding, Harp and I posed for some photos, looking spiffily tux-clad, astride our motorcycles. Then we changed and headed for the mountains.
The first stop was St. Mary's Glacier. Just up the road from Idaho Springs, St. Mary's is a snow & ice field that never melts. It's stuffed into a rift between peaks, and features a perpetual snow slope leading down to one of the most beautiful mountain lakes you will ever see. We put on our snow suits and hiked up the side of the glacier, just for the pleasure of leaping over the precipice and cascading down the slope on our butts. Human sledding at its finest. What the hell, we figured, and did it again.
After butt-skiing, we got back on the bikes and took off again, with no particular destination in mind. We planned to find a rest stop somewhere and spend the night snuggled in our respective sleeping bags. But we were enjoying the ride so much, we didn't want to stop. As the sun went down, we were treated to a sunset that brought new meaning to the phrase "purple mountain's majesty", and later saw the moon rise into a starkly pristine sky. At one point, we stopped at a roadside pullout overlooking a little mountain lake. We were at just the right angle to see the moon reflected off the water's surface, and I remember thinking that if God were going to build a house on earth, he'd surely choose Colorado as his building site.
Though the ride was truly awe-inspiring, we did finally begin to tire out. Harp and I decided that we'd pull over at the next rest area and crash for the night.
In hindsight, we were obviously too picky about which rest area we would settle on. Too small. Bathroom too smelly. Too many creepy trucks with "Ax Murderer On Board" placards in the windows. Let's move on.
As we left the mountains and headed back down Highway 50 heading for Kansas, it started to rain. We each owned some half-assed rain gear. Harp's was a yellow slicker jacket to cover his torso and a couple of hefty bags to lash onto his legs. Mine was a one-piece Texaco-style grease monkey coverall that had been liberally coated with Scotchgard®. Of course, we were both soaked through to the bone inside of 15 minutes. It's dark, we're not equipped with visor-mounted wiper blades, and we're creating a pretty fair wind-chill factor by travelling 65 miles per hour. We're pulling over at the next turnout, no matter what.
A KOA "Kampground" sign lit up the night like the proverbial grail-shaped beacon. We pulled in. It was around 2am at this point; there was no attendant on duty. We picked a couple of covered picnic tables and promptly fell asleep, still wearing our clownish and sopping rain gear. We were too tired to even mess with sleeping bags.
At about 5:45, we both woke up and realized that we were supposed to pay for having used the kampsite. As young, motorcycle-riding rebels with microscopic bank accounts, we decided that our soundest strategy would be to hit the road before the park attendant came 'round asking for fees. After all, we hadn't really spent the whole night there...
Though the KOA had actually been in the state of Colorado, it was in the eastern part, which is really indistinguishable from Kansas. As our ride resumed, though, we found ourselves crossing the border in short order. Even though it was 1980, the sign still said "Welcome to Kansas, Home of Debbie Bryant, Miss America 1969". (Later, they changed it to a more generic "Home of Beautiful Women", and still later, the somewhat perplexing, but still vastly more appropriate "Land of Ah's".)
Within 5 miles of crossing the border, my front tire went flat. Fortunately, I was able to limp into the bustling metropolis of Larkin, KS. We grabbed some OJ and donuts from a greasy spoon where the waitress smelled like damp fungus, and the silverware had last been washed when LBJ was in office. By the time we finished breakfast, the gas station had opened, and I was able to get the tire patched. Back on the road.
The next indignity was a speeding ticket issued by a state trooper whose pantleg creases could slice tomatos. By the time I was finished writing a check for about 15 times the amount that was actually resident in my account, the sun had risen to its full summer fury. I rolled up my shirtsleeves and pantlegs to relieve some of the stifling heat.
And, of course, no more than two minutes later, the newly bare flesh of my leg met the tail end of a slow moving bumblebee as my bike was going about 70 mph. Let me assure you, you do NOT want to have a bumblebee stinger plunged into your body at highway speeds. Thank God I didn't crash, but I'm sure they could hear me screaming all the way to Topeka.
I stopped as quickly as I could, and used my nail clippers to tear a bloody gash in my leg as part of a heroic attempt to remove the poison-tipped insect carcass. After a prolific bout of gory hacking and mighty cursing, I was finally able to contemplate getting back on the road. Leaving a dotted trail of hemoglobin on the highway, I was seriously looking forward to the end of the trip.
It was now over 104°F. Time for the wind to pick up. I was surprised to learn that while a breeze supplies a cooling effect when the temperatures are below 80°, it acts to intensify the perception of heat once you reach a certain level of hellish heat. What had been a pleasant ride while we were in the mountains, now resembled a guided tour through Satan's own blast furnace. I began to suspect that heavenly powers were at work, trying to communicate this simple message: COLORADO IS WONDERFUL. KANSAS SUCKS!
I finally reached my apartment in Wichita. I had forgotten to cancel newspaper delivery, so there was a pile on my doorstep. I picked them up and headed inside, grumbling about how I should be in Colorado rather than this sub-tropical stink zone. The first priority was to take a long-overdue leak (hmmm, maybe that's what they mean by "Land of Ah's"...) Then I returned to the kitchen to "catch up" on what had happened while I was gone.
I picked up a newspaper at random, and flipped it open to a randomly selected page. As I read the contents of that page, I knew that I had indeed been receiving a message. the ad in the paper said, "YOU SHOULD LIVE IN COLORADO." OK, I thought...you've got my attention.
It was a double-page ad for Martin Marietta, wanting to hire engineers to work in the Colorado offices of their aerospace company. They had a recruiter in Wichita who would be accepting calls the next day. Needless to say, I wrote down the number.
When I called the guy, the first thing he said was, "We're looking for engineers. Are you an engineer?" I told him I was not. "Well, I'd like to talk to you anyway," he said. Hmmm. I figured they must be desperate.
After talking with the guy for an hour, I realized that while we had indeed talked a little about my employability, we had spent a much larger segment of our time talking about our enthusiasm for running. I knew what races the guy had coming up, what his fastest 10K time was, and what type of running shoes he wore. What I wasn't so clear about was whether I had said anything that would merit a call-back. But sure enough, two days later I got a call from George Dallas, who was in charge of Martin's engineering procedures group.
"So, Terry," he said, "you write procedures?" Yup. "I assume you're an expert with MIL-STD-100, then, right?" Huh? Never heard of it. "Well, then you must be working compliance with DOD-STD-1000, right?" Uh, no...sorry. "Experience with schematics?" Nope. "Drafting practices?" Well, I took a drafting class in the eighth grade. All I really remember is that a kid named Ronnie threatened to beat me up if I didn't show him how to find the 3-inch mark on a ruler. (No, I'm not kidding.)
"Hmm," George said, "I was kinda hoping for some experience with standards." He took a deep breath. "Oh, well, when can we fly you out to meet with you in person?"
Like I said, they were desperate. But the bottom line is that a couple of plane flights, a screening of "The Empire Strikes Back", and two weeks later, I was packing up all my earthly possessions to move to Denver to start my new job with Martin Marietta.
OK, so I still haven't talked about why I was in Florida to watch the Columbia take off on the first ever space shuttle mission. Stay tuned for the next blog.
Happily corresponding from Colorado,
Terry
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
The President's State O' the Union address made it clear that there's a-gonna be a war soon.
Makes you think about the extreme levels of commitment and courage one would have to possess to be a member of the military. My brother served as an officer in the Marine Corps, and I couldn't be more proud of him for doing that. As for me, well, I thought about joining the Army at one time, I didn't do it. (See my blog of 1-17-03 for details.) I support and admire the brave folks in the service, but for some reason, it just wasn't meant to be for me.
Why? Well, maybe it has something to do with growing up. Back then, we had no video games, of course, so learning military strategies by blowing the heads off of electronic orcs and splattering Nazi blood pixels across your computer screen were not available options. We had to use imagination...and plastic army men.
I never had a GI Joe. Joe was cool because you could bend him into all sorts of positions. My buddies who had this "First-ever Action Figure" never seemed to put him in fighting stances, though -- he was more likely bent into scandalous and embarrasing poses with Barbie (if he was lucky) and sheep (if he was not). Needless to say, witnessing these unlikely contortions did not advance my developing personality toward a military career.
We didn't have very many plastic army men, so when it was time to create imaginary battle scenarios, we had to recruit plastic cowboys, farmers, and jungle animals. They weren't all the same size, so in hand-to-hand combat, giant plastic Zorro could handle 5 or 6 bayonet-carrying plastic soldiers without working up a plastic sweat. And though "Grill" the gorilla was actually smaller than Zorro, he was a freaking ferocious gorilla -- so he could shred through the army as if they were tissue paper.
Grill was my favorite plastic toy. I hadn't ever seen a real gorilla at that point, so I didn't realize that his body proportions were closer to an NFL lineman than to an actual jungle denizen, but that's OK. He stood upright with one arm raised menacingly, with his face perpetually in a molded snarl. It was much more fun to imagine him leaping from a tree to dismember an unsuspecting soldier than it was to mentally plot elaborate human battle campaigns.
Perhaps it was because of the toys...or perhaps it was simply an indicator of my own mental orientation, but my playtimes became more and more oriented around monster attacks than around war games. Heck, with his cape and hat, Zorro could easily be seen as an Alien Spaceship Commander. Monsters from the jungle, berserk maniacs from space -- well, the Army men had no chance.
It might have been recognition of my non-earthly orientation, or it could have been an attempt to bring me back to reality -- but Santa Claus showed up with a different kind of toy the very next Christmas. I received a complete "Cape Canaveral Launch Pad Set". It had a large plastic sheet with labels showing heliports, launch pads, blockhouses, and even parking lots. It had 101 pieces, including a couple of jet planes with spring-loaded missile launchers (the kind that could "put your eye out"), and a helicopter with a spring-loaded propeller blade. The 'copter could actually fly a couple of feet if you wound up the launch spring tight enough. Unfortunately, its flight-capable lifespan didn't last long, because in our quest for longer flights, we wound the spring too tight. Sproing! More opportunities for ocular dismemberment as tiny shards of shattered spring went zinging across the room.
The set also contained a phonograph record imprinted on a paper-thin sheet of plastic. (For younger readers, a phonograph record was a prehistoric ancestor of the CD. You played it by placing it on a rotating platter and sticking a needle into the spiral groove that contained bumps for reproducing the music. No lasers. No G-shock buffers. But they were quite able to reproduce sound. Or at least until the dust bunny that collected behind the needle became too large, causing the needle to skip. Or until repeated refusal to return the record to its protective paper sleeve rendered it so full of scratches that it sounded like a crackling campfire.)
Anyway, my "floppy" Cape Canaveral record contained tracks such as jets flying by, fire trucks responding to a landing mishap, and, of course, the sounds of an actual launchpad countdown. Even though the countdown was delivered in a valium-induced monotone, there was nothing more exciting than hearing that "Five...Four...Three...Two...One" chant. The cat would run hissing from the room as my brother and I contorted our mouths to make the loudest possible blast-off noises, unintentionally flinging spittle across all of Cape Canaveral, and onto the drapes, lamps, and wallpaper.
Some days, the launches would go flawlessly. On others, the hapless space vehicle would never make it into the sky; led by Grill the Gorilla, hordes of plastic masked swordsmen, riflemen, and farm animals would swarm onto the launch pad. Accompanied by more mouth-made sound effects, the battles would rage until every building and vehicle at Cape Canaveral lay overturned and embedded in imaginary flames.
These scenarios led my imagination toward dreams of space travel and alien encounters, and probably greatly influenced my becoming a writer. Still, as I've grown up, I've had just enough experience in the real world to have a sense of what's at stake in the Persian Gulf right now. I know how devastating real war can be. Unlike Grill and Zorro, real soldiers don't have the ability to rise up after being shot...they can't just go back in the toy box to attack the bad guys again the next day. Unlike my plastic soldiers, the real ones have families who care, and loved ones who suffer during each moment they're not at home. Unlike the buildings of my Cape Canaveral set, real buildings, vehicles, and lives can't simply be turned over and set upright to restore things after a battle.
It's too bad we can't enlist plastic gorillas to fight our battles for us. We can't. Yet at the same time, we cannot ignore the threats to our land that renegade maniacs may mount against us. As I hear the stories of how our brave servicemen and women are marching off to hostile lands, I find myself wondering what toys these folks played with when they were kids. It would be interesting to speak with them, and to ask what games they played, and how their toys influenced their current choices.
And if I had such a conversation, there would be one more thing I'd want to say... I'd say, "Thank you," to those courageous souls. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Terry
The President's State O' the Union address made it clear that there's a-gonna be a war soon.
Makes you think about the extreme levels of commitment and courage one would have to possess to be a member of the military. My brother served as an officer in the Marine Corps, and I couldn't be more proud of him for doing that. As for me, well, I thought about joining the Army at one time, I didn't do it. (See my blog of 1-17-03 for details.) I support and admire the brave folks in the service, but for some reason, it just wasn't meant to be for me.
Why? Well, maybe it has something to do with growing up. Back then, we had no video games, of course, so learning military strategies by blowing the heads off of electronic orcs and splattering Nazi blood pixels across your computer screen were not available options. We had to use imagination...and plastic army men.
I never had a GI Joe. Joe was cool because you could bend him into all sorts of positions. My buddies who had this "First-ever Action Figure" never seemed to put him in fighting stances, though -- he was more likely bent into scandalous and embarrasing poses with Barbie (if he was lucky) and sheep (if he was not). Needless to say, witnessing these unlikely contortions did not advance my developing personality toward a military career.
We didn't have very many plastic army men, so when it was time to create imaginary battle scenarios, we had to recruit plastic cowboys, farmers, and jungle animals. They weren't all the same size, so in hand-to-hand combat, giant plastic Zorro could handle 5 or 6 bayonet-carrying plastic soldiers without working up a plastic sweat. And though "Grill" the gorilla was actually smaller than Zorro, he was a freaking ferocious gorilla -- so he could shred through the army as if they were tissue paper.
Grill was my favorite plastic toy. I hadn't ever seen a real gorilla at that point, so I didn't realize that his body proportions were closer to an NFL lineman than to an actual jungle denizen, but that's OK. He stood upright with one arm raised menacingly, with his face perpetually in a molded snarl. It was much more fun to imagine him leaping from a tree to dismember an unsuspecting soldier than it was to mentally plot elaborate human battle campaigns.
Perhaps it was because of the toys...or perhaps it was simply an indicator of my own mental orientation, but my playtimes became more and more oriented around monster attacks than around war games. Heck, with his cape and hat, Zorro could easily be seen as an Alien Spaceship Commander. Monsters from the jungle, berserk maniacs from space -- well, the Army men had no chance.
It might have been recognition of my non-earthly orientation, or it could have been an attempt to bring me back to reality -- but Santa Claus showed up with a different kind of toy the very next Christmas. I received a complete "Cape Canaveral Launch Pad Set". It had a large plastic sheet with labels showing heliports, launch pads, blockhouses, and even parking lots. It had 101 pieces, including a couple of jet planes with spring-loaded missile launchers (the kind that could "put your eye out"), and a helicopter with a spring-loaded propeller blade. The 'copter could actually fly a couple of feet if you wound up the launch spring tight enough. Unfortunately, its flight-capable lifespan didn't last long, because in our quest for longer flights, we wound the spring too tight. Sproing! More opportunities for ocular dismemberment as tiny shards of shattered spring went zinging across the room.
The set also contained a phonograph record imprinted on a paper-thin sheet of plastic. (For younger readers, a phonograph record was a prehistoric ancestor of the CD. You played it by placing it on a rotating platter and sticking a needle into the spiral groove that contained bumps for reproducing the music. No lasers. No G-shock buffers. But they were quite able to reproduce sound. Or at least until the dust bunny that collected behind the needle became too large, causing the needle to skip. Or until repeated refusal to return the record to its protective paper sleeve rendered it so full of scratches that it sounded like a crackling campfire.)
Anyway, my "floppy" Cape Canaveral record contained tracks such as jets flying by, fire trucks responding to a landing mishap, and, of course, the sounds of an actual launchpad countdown. Even though the countdown was delivered in a valium-induced monotone, there was nothing more exciting than hearing that "Five...Four...Three...Two...One" chant. The cat would run hissing from the room as my brother and I contorted our mouths to make the loudest possible blast-off noises, unintentionally flinging spittle across all of Cape Canaveral, and onto the drapes, lamps, and wallpaper.
Some days, the launches would go flawlessly. On others, the hapless space vehicle would never make it into the sky; led by Grill the Gorilla, hordes of plastic masked swordsmen, riflemen, and farm animals would swarm onto the launch pad. Accompanied by more mouth-made sound effects, the battles would rage until every building and vehicle at Cape Canaveral lay overturned and embedded in imaginary flames.
These scenarios led my imagination toward dreams of space travel and alien encounters, and probably greatly influenced my becoming a writer. Still, as I've grown up, I've had just enough experience in the real world to have a sense of what's at stake in the Persian Gulf right now. I know how devastating real war can be. Unlike Grill and Zorro, real soldiers don't have the ability to rise up after being shot...they can't just go back in the toy box to attack the bad guys again the next day. Unlike my plastic soldiers, the real ones have families who care, and loved ones who suffer during each moment they're not at home. Unlike the buildings of my Cape Canaveral set, real buildings, vehicles, and lives can't simply be turned over and set upright to restore things after a battle.
It's too bad we can't enlist plastic gorillas to fight our battles for us. We can't. Yet at the same time, we cannot ignore the threats to our land that renegade maniacs may mount against us. As I hear the stories of how our brave servicemen and women are marching off to hostile lands, I find myself wondering what toys these folks played with when they were kids. It would be interesting to speak with them, and to ask what games they played, and how their toys influenced their current choices.
And if I had such a conversation, there would be one more thing I'd want to say... I'd say, "Thank you," to those courageous souls. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Terry
Monday, January 20, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
This story takes place in the year 0002 BD (Before Dating). I was about 20 years old, and still completely clueless about what sorts of wonders were available to those lucky men who actually had the nerve to ask women for dates. Oh, sure, I had looked at Playboy, so I had some idea what delights were available to satisfy one's lust -- but was still a long way from any personal experience in that area.
Needless to say, no women had ever seen me naked.
Well, they were about to get their chance.
It was the summer of "streaking". It had become somewhat fashionable to run around naked, preferably at well-attended public events. Woodstock and free love were still fresh enough in people's memory to give a modicum of legitimacy to this pastime -- but I think everybody really knew what it was really about... disrupting events and making a spectacle of yourself. Some sort of such behavior has always been the moral obligation of young adults everywhere. The Ray Stevens song had not been released yet, so the "sport" still had a bit of life left in it.
Well, I may have been nerdish, socially-impaired, and clueless about women, but I knew an opportunity when I saw one. No one would ever know who I was, but by performing a streak, I could somehow make a statement about my uniqueness, creativity, and individuality. (How? Don't ask me...but it seemed to make sense at the time.) Who knows? Perhaps by making this bold gesture, it would somehow set me on a trail toward social legitimacy. Perhaps being seen naked by a horde of bystanders would propel me toward a life which could even include successful dating. Perhaps I'd feel so empowered by my courageous public display that I'd overcome my deadly fears of women, and might even ask one to go out with me.
Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?
Well, after weeks of planning, I had my streak planned down to the last detail. The KU Women's Synchronized Swim Team was giving their annual water show at Robinson Natatorium. It was "Parents' Weekend" for the sororities, which meant that the house would be packed with proud moms and pops who'd come to watch their lovely daughters perform. For a $2.00 admission fee, you could watch girls with slicked-back hair and noseplugs gracefully submerge in time with Perry Como songs, and then burst upside-down from the water to wave their pointed feet in the air. It was very beautiful, very athletic. There were colored lights and everything.
There was even one number where the young ladies would be assisted by the stalwart young men of the swim team. The boys didn't have to be graceful; they just had to do an occasional Vanna White waving gesture, and then lift the girls up at the proper moment when the music crescendoed.
"Wait a minute, Terry," you must be asking..."Weren't you on the swim team? Why didn't you participate in the water show?" Ah, if you had known me then, you would not have needed to ask. Not only was I socially impaired, but I wasn't all that great in the "feats of strength" department. Oh, sure, I could swim reasonably well, but all I had to do was pull my own skinny frame through the water. While the thought of putting my hands on a sexy woman's hips and lifting her over my head was indeed an appealing proposition, alas, it was not meant to be. I might have been able to lift a six-year-old, but sadly, there were none on the college synchro team. Sigh.
So perhaps I harbored some sort of grudge because I was unable to participate. Perhaps I chose that venue because I knew a lot of the people there, and could therefore count on multiple reports of the impact I made. Perhaps it was because the pool was right next door to the dorm I was living in, and I could get home quickly if something went wrong.
The day before the show, I spoke with the guy who'd be running the spotlight. Pat was a great breaststroker, and was easily strong enough to have participated in the water show, but he had chosen to help behind the scenes. "Dude," I said, "right when they start the Frog Prince number, shine the spotlight at the side door."
"Whafor?" he asked. "You'll see, man. You'll see." He still looked puzzled. "Just do it, man," I said. He nodded, in that sort of goofy way that breaststrokers do when they're still trying to figure out what the hell you're talking about.
The fateful night arrived. I grabbed my streaking gear, a spare pair of shorts and an extra T-shirt and then headed over to the pool. I stowed the extra clothes under a bush near the pool exit door, where they'd be easy to grab and put on after my performance. Then I walked around to the other side of the building and proceeded to wait until the proper musical cue could be heard from within the pool.
I was nervous. I couldn't see very well. (My eyesight was pitiful, but I'd left my glasses in the dorm room, cuz I didn't want to have to mess with them during my run.) I put on my face-covering stocking mask first, so no one would know who I was when I started stripping. It was a classic red and black ski mask, with eyeholes and a mouthhole. I suppose it was designed to keep you warmer by keeping your nose covered, but on a warm evening like this, all it did was make everything smell like wool. And even though it had eyeholes, they weren't quite big enough -- so I had no peripheral vision at all.
I stripped off my shirt and dropped my shorts. That's when I heard a noise behind me. I turned around and saw a guy and a girl, probably just walking home from a late class together. "Far out," the guy said, "are you a streaker?"
"Yeah," I replied. "And I kinda need to get going."
"Far out," they both said in unison.
It was time. As soon as I heard the Frog Prince music, I yanked open the pool door and did a dramatic leap onto the pool deck. Pat was alert and immediately hit me with the spotlight. I could hear the collective intake of breath from all those scandalized moms, and a few "lookitthat's" from the guys in the crowd. The watershow stopped dead.
I jogged as casually as I could, trotting from one end of the pool to the other. I waved at the crowd, and even took a moment for a kind of shuffling bow. As I reached the far door, I even heard a smattering of applause from somewhere in the crowd. I pulled open the door and sprinted outside.
Though I had done a leisurely jog across the pool deck, I was hauling ass as soon as I got out the door. Next -- rip the stocking cap off. Under the bush for the clothes (shorts on first, naturally), then blast around the building to pick up the clothing I'd shed at the start. Then, since there seemed to be no panic, no alarm, and no police sirens, I turned and walked slowly back toward the dorm. My heart was pounding at about 200 bpm, but my pace resembled an average joe out for an evening stroll. No one watching would have any clue that I had been the masked streaker who had scandalize the oh-so-proper water show.
I later learned that after a few minutes of murmuring within the pool area, the music was re-started and the show continued as planned. No other disruptions happened, although one of the guys did muff a lift. I guess it was pretty comical, since he dropped the girl onto the next guy, who then dropped his girl and started a domino effect all the way down the line. I was sorry I missed it.
About two hours later, I did saunter over to the "wrap" party. All the swimmers were there, as well as a goodly number of the parents. I was curious to hear the gossip about the mysterious stranger who ruined their show. I figured I'd spend the evening lurking around and eavesdropping, with a possible knowing snicker thrown in here and there.
But it didn't work out that way. As soon as I walked in the door, everyone turned toward me and started clapping and making catcalls. "Good job, streaker dude", someone said. "Hey, where's your mask, butthead?", said another. "What the hell's wrong with you, Heggy?", etc.
Wha? How'd they know? I asked one of my buddies. "C'mon, man," he said, "we've all seen you run during our dryland workouts. You got that weird, bowlegged, spazzy hand nerd shuffle. Nobody else runs like that." Uh, gee, thanks for the thoughtful form analysis.
Needless to say, I left the party quite early. The good news is that I received no disciplinary action for my little deed. And, in fact, it probably did serve to enhance my popularity, at least briefly. No dates resulted...but at least none of the girls made fun of my anatomy either. I'm not sure if there was any lasting impact on my life as a result of my well-viewed public nudity, but at least it gives me something I can tell the grandkids, eh?
I think we're all glad that fad's over, aren't we? Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.
But next time you attend a water show on parents' weekend, think of me for a little bit, OK? Thanks.
Enjoy! Terry
This story takes place in the year 0002 BD (Before Dating). I was about 20 years old, and still completely clueless about what sorts of wonders were available to those lucky men who actually had the nerve to ask women for dates. Oh, sure, I had looked at Playboy, so I had some idea what delights were available to satisfy one's lust -- but was still a long way from any personal experience in that area.
Needless to say, no women had ever seen me naked.
Well, they were about to get their chance.
It was the summer of "streaking". It had become somewhat fashionable to run around naked, preferably at well-attended public events. Woodstock and free love were still fresh enough in people's memory to give a modicum of legitimacy to this pastime -- but I think everybody really knew what it was really about... disrupting events and making a spectacle of yourself. Some sort of such behavior has always been the moral obligation of young adults everywhere. The Ray Stevens song had not been released yet, so the "sport" still had a bit of life left in it.
Well, I may have been nerdish, socially-impaired, and clueless about women, but I knew an opportunity when I saw one. No one would ever know who I was, but by performing a streak, I could somehow make a statement about my uniqueness, creativity, and individuality. (How? Don't ask me...but it seemed to make sense at the time.) Who knows? Perhaps by making this bold gesture, it would somehow set me on a trail toward social legitimacy. Perhaps being seen naked by a horde of bystanders would propel me toward a life which could even include successful dating. Perhaps I'd feel so empowered by my courageous public display that I'd overcome my deadly fears of women, and might even ask one to go out with me.
Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?
Well, after weeks of planning, I had my streak planned down to the last detail. The KU Women's Synchronized Swim Team was giving their annual water show at Robinson Natatorium. It was "Parents' Weekend" for the sororities, which meant that the house would be packed with proud moms and pops who'd come to watch their lovely daughters perform. For a $2.00 admission fee, you could watch girls with slicked-back hair and noseplugs gracefully submerge in time with Perry Como songs, and then burst upside-down from the water to wave their pointed feet in the air. It was very beautiful, very athletic. There were colored lights and everything.
There was even one number where the young ladies would be assisted by the stalwart young men of the swim team. The boys didn't have to be graceful; they just had to do an occasional Vanna White waving gesture, and then lift the girls up at the proper moment when the music crescendoed.
"Wait a minute, Terry," you must be asking..."Weren't you on the swim team? Why didn't you participate in the water show?" Ah, if you had known me then, you would not have needed to ask. Not only was I socially impaired, but I wasn't all that great in the "feats of strength" department. Oh, sure, I could swim reasonably well, but all I had to do was pull my own skinny frame through the water. While the thought of putting my hands on a sexy woman's hips and lifting her over my head was indeed an appealing proposition, alas, it was not meant to be. I might have been able to lift a six-year-old, but sadly, there were none on the college synchro team. Sigh.
So perhaps I harbored some sort of grudge because I was unable to participate. Perhaps I chose that venue because I knew a lot of the people there, and could therefore count on multiple reports of the impact I made. Perhaps it was because the pool was right next door to the dorm I was living in, and I could get home quickly if something went wrong.
The day before the show, I spoke with the guy who'd be running the spotlight. Pat was a great breaststroker, and was easily strong enough to have participated in the water show, but he had chosen to help behind the scenes. "Dude," I said, "right when they start the Frog Prince number, shine the spotlight at the side door."
"Whafor?" he asked. "You'll see, man. You'll see." He still looked puzzled. "Just do it, man," I said. He nodded, in that sort of goofy way that breaststrokers do when they're still trying to figure out what the hell you're talking about.
The fateful night arrived. I grabbed my streaking gear, a spare pair of shorts and an extra T-shirt and then headed over to the pool. I stowed the extra clothes under a bush near the pool exit door, where they'd be easy to grab and put on after my performance. Then I walked around to the other side of the building and proceeded to wait until the proper musical cue could be heard from within the pool.
I was nervous. I couldn't see very well. (My eyesight was pitiful, but I'd left my glasses in the dorm room, cuz I didn't want to have to mess with them during my run.) I put on my face-covering stocking mask first, so no one would know who I was when I started stripping. It was a classic red and black ski mask, with eyeholes and a mouthhole. I suppose it was designed to keep you warmer by keeping your nose covered, but on a warm evening like this, all it did was make everything smell like wool. And even though it had eyeholes, they weren't quite big enough -- so I had no peripheral vision at all.
I stripped off my shirt and dropped my shorts. That's when I heard a noise behind me. I turned around and saw a guy and a girl, probably just walking home from a late class together. "Far out," the guy said, "are you a streaker?"
"Yeah," I replied. "And I kinda need to get going."
"Far out," they both said in unison.
It was time. As soon as I heard the Frog Prince music, I yanked open the pool door and did a dramatic leap onto the pool deck. Pat was alert and immediately hit me with the spotlight. I could hear the collective intake of breath from all those scandalized moms, and a few "lookitthat's" from the guys in the crowd. The watershow stopped dead.
I jogged as casually as I could, trotting from one end of the pool to the other. I waved at the crowd, and even took a moment for a kind of shuffling bow. As I reached the far door, I even heard a smattering of applause from somewhere in the crowd. I pulled open the door and sprinted outside.
Though I had done a leisurely jog across the pool deck, I was hauling ass as soon as I got out the door. Next -- rip the stocking cap off. Under the bush for the clothes (shorts on first, naturally), then blast around the building to pick up the clothing I'd shed at the start. Then, since there seemed to be no panic, no alarm, and no police sirens, I turned and walked slowly back toward the dorm. My heart was pounding at about 200 bpm, but my pace resembled an average joe out for an evening stroll. No one watching would have any clue that I had been the masked streaker who had scandalize the oh-so-proper water show.
I later learned that after a few minutes of murmuring within the pool area, the music was re-started and the show continued as planned. No other disruptions happened, although one of the guys did muff a lift. I guess it was pretty comical, since he dropped the girl onto the next guy, who then dropped his girl and started a domino effect all the way down the line. I was sorry I missed it.
About two hours later, I did saunter over to the "wrap" party. All the swimmers were there, as well as a goodly number of the parents. I was curious to hear the gossip about the mysterious stranger who ruined their show. I figured I'd spend the evening lurking around and eavesdropping, with a possible knowing snicker thrown in here and there.
But it didn't work out that way. As soon as I walked in the door, everyone turned toward me and started clapping and making catcalls. "Good job, streaker dude", someone said. "Hey, where's your mask, butthead?", said another. "What the hell's wrong with you, Heggy?", etc.
Wha? How'd they know? I asked one of my buddies. "C'mon, man," he said, "we've all seen you run during our dryland workouts. You got that weird, bowlegged, spazzy hand nerd shuffle. Nobody else runs like that." Uh, gee, thanks for the thoughtful form analysis.
Needless to say, I left the party quite early. The good news is that I received no disciplinary action for my little deed. And, in fact, it probably did serve to enhance my popularity, at least briefly. No dates resulted...but at least none of the girls made fun of my anatomy either. I'm not sure if there was any lasting impact on my life as a result of my well-viewed public nudity, but at least it gives me something I can tell the grandkids, eh?
I think we're all glad that fad's over, aren't we? Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.
But next time you attend a water show on parents' weekend, think of me for a little bit, OK? Thanks.
Enjoy! Terry
Tuesday, January 07, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Seeing the "Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers" movie brought back memories of when I read that particular book. Nineteen hunnert and seventy six, it was. Jimmy Carter's cat had not yet crapped on the White House lanes. Bill Gates hadn't even bought his first Rembrandt. Bachman Turner Overdrive were still stuttering on top 40 radio stations, b-b-b-baby. And I was wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life.
Our family's mantra during the 60's had been "to get a good job, you need a good education". Repetition had firmly cemented this axiom into my skull, but my youthful optimism had somehow transmogrified it into the statement "if you get a good education, you WILL get a good job". I figured that a sheepskin from a school like KU would open so many doors that I'd have to hire a CPA to sort and analyze all my job offers. (I later realized that for some strange reason, KU's tradition of basketball excellence did not necessarily translate into worldwide respect for its academic programs. Oh well...)
Not only did my degree NOT generate any job offers, but it wasn't even on a sheepskin. It was forty pound bond paper at best, and the Dean's signature looked suspiciously like a rubber stamp. Still, I displayed it proudly; I had a B.S. in Radio-TV-Film, and I wanted the whole world to know. Of course, about 90% of the people who learned this fact promptly responded by saying "Hey, my gramma's got a bustid TV set -- kin ya fix it?"
Sorry, I couldn't fix your TV set. Nor your damn transistor radio that you used to listen to Yankees games on back when Whitey Ford was pitching. But, you know, I'd be happy to direct a movie for you. Sure. Anything. Preferably something with a title like "Attack of the Well-Endowed Cheerleader Bimbos" or something.
Alas, none such offers appeared.
I was faced with the decision to take some crappy hamburger stand job, go back to school and attempt graduate studies, or... join the armed forces. Well, I was a college grad-u-ate, for gawshsakes, I didn't want to be flippin' burgers. (I did a few years later, and actually enjoyed it a lot. But that's a different story.) I had pretty much run out of gas academically, too; I'd taken as many athletic electives as they allowed (tennis, weightlifting, fencing, lifesaving, etc. -- I'd have taken advanced fencing, cuz the teacher was a total fox, but I'd already suffered too many chest cavity puncture wounds in the beginning course. Reflexes? I don't got no steenking reflexes.). I sure as hell didn't want to take your standard graduate classes such as "Man's Inhumanity to Man -- a Study of Feminism in Classical Literature" and "Freudian Symbolism in Mongolian Architecture". (I briefly considered signing up for "The Tao of Steve McGarrett", but decided not to when I saw the obese teacher. He was, like, whoa, fat. -- Get it? Har har har.)
So it's the Army for me. I suppose I could've opened the yellow pages and found out where the recruiting centers were for the other service branches, but hey, I already knew where the Army office was. Besides, it was their dazzling "Be All You Can Be" television commercial campaign that had given me the idea in the first place. You get to go to cool places, play with cool toys, and make tons of money. Beats the hell out of listening to some grad student talk about Gauss's theorum, lemme tell ya.
The recruiter wasn't quite sure what to do with me. I got the impression he'd never had a college boy walk into his office before. He kept saying things like, "Oh, yeah, the Army'll make you tough. With a couple months practice, you'll be able to whip any of those Navy punks in a bar fight." He also told me that chicks dig a man in uniform, and that with a little luck, I might even find one who had all of her original teeth.
"Gee, that's swell," I said, "but didn't the commercials say that with the All-Volunteer Army, I can pick whatever job I want?" Why, shore you can. Hell, just last week we had a feller what picked 'engine mechanic', and he's already got so much grease under his fingernails that he cain't even pick his nose without the boogers falling off.
Lovely. "Uh, I want to be in the film crew, or maybe a photographer." Why, shore. But it might be more fun to be in the infantry, doncha think? Shootin' a gun's way more fun than shootin' a camera, ain't it?
Well, of course it is, my good man. But that's not what I wanted to do. After another half hour of verbal wrangling, I got the Sarge to admit that he wasn't really the one with the authority to designate my personally hand-picked job assignment. First I had to take the written test to see if my IQ was high enough to kill people; if it was, I would then go to Kansas City to see if I could pass the physical exam. If all was well at that point, I'd talk to the Guru of Army Jobs and pick out my dream career.
As a suburban son of an upper-middle-class aerospace engineer, I'd let a somewhat sheltered life. Oh, sure, my dad would occasionally attempt some misbegotten wordworking project (someday, I'll tell you about the gargantuan wooden kite-string winder he made) or endanger the neighborhood by trying to hang his own Christmas lights...but for the most part, we hired people to change our oil, sharpen lawn mower blades, or unclog the drains. I had never lost a fingernail under the hood of a car. Therefore, I was quite dismayed to find that the majority of the Army's written test questions had to do with auto mechanics. Sheesh!
Though not at all confident in my answers, I turned in my test to the Sergeant. He told me to stand there while he graded it. He had only looked at a dozen answers or so when he began to mutter under his breath. "Lordy," he said. "Good Gawd Awmighty!" and finally "I'll be double-damned." OK, I thought, I flunked. No biggie, I can still go back to school. Maybe I can take some classes on the "Genius of Buster Keaton" or perhaps a religion study on whether Calvinism is better than Hobbesism.
Finally, he wiped his brow from the exertion of grading my paper and looked up at me. "Boy," he said, "this is the highest test score we've ever had at this recruiting station." He stuck out his hand and said, "You're going to make a fine soldier, son."
Now, you'd think I'd be proud of my outstanding test performance, wouldn't you? But quite frankly, I found his statement and compliment, well, scary. I didn't know shit about cars, but I'd blown away my competition on a test concentrating on that very subject? Man, I thought, this does not bode well for the general level of competence within my peer group for this job.
Nonetheless, I got my bus ticket to Kansas City. This is where the Tolkien connection comes in. (Thought I'd forgotten that, didn't you?) By car, it was about a three-hour drive from Wichita to KC, but by bus it took seven. The bus route stopped in every Kansas town that was big enough to claim its own mud puddle, and at each stop the driver got off to smoke his Benson & Hedges 100s. I finished "The Two Towers" and got well into the final book in the series before we reached our destination.
Maybe it was the environment. Perhaps it's simply not possible to enjoy a book during a 7-hour ride next to a guy with Tourrette's syndrome who smells like the pig parts that weren't good enough to make it into Spam. It might have been the fact that most of the bus's exhaust seemed to have been re-routed into the passenger compartment and the fact that my seat seemed to be half rock, and half sponge. I was tilted to one side, eyes tearing up from the particles in the air, and more than a little annoyed with my odiferous seat-mate. Made it rather hard to enjoy the reading experience.
But then again, it just might possibly be that Tolkien is a crappy writer. I was unable to see what the heck everyone got so worked up about when they praised these books. Far too many pages of description of imaginary places that had nothing to do with the story. Droning on and on about who's related to whom and how many different kinds of crap happened in the past which has nothing to do with the current story. I dunno, I just found it boring. Oh, sure, I can get into bloodying up a few orcs and following the occasional mutant swamp creature around for a bit, but at some point, you gotta just end this thing, all right? Frodo, et al, take about 6 weeks to do what McBain could've handled in 1 hour and 50 minutes.
Anyway, we unloaded the bus at the fabulous Hotel President. At one time, this was probably a 5-star establishment, but the roaches had eaten most of those stars back in the 50s. We had to elbow hookers out of the way in order to gain access to the lobby, and I never was really sure whether the guy I had to step over was breathing or not. Let's assume so.
Now you might think that a 20-year-old virgin with a libido larger than King Kong would appreciate the ready availability of Ladies of the Evening. Well, you'd be right, if it weren't for the fact that these particular soiled doves were of the same quality as the hotel. Old, run-down, and smelly. Even though I felt as invulnerable and immortal as all 20-year-olds do, I was absolutely convinced that I would catch something fatal from these scags if I so much as let one breathe on me. I felt nothing but relief to be safely locked in my room with nothing but the rats and roaches.
For all I know, this hotel has since been restored to its former glory, and is currently hosting guests as rich and famous as Eric Estrada and Sally Struthers. But in 1976, I had trouble sleeping because of the vision that at some point during the night, the claws on the bottom of the bathtub would re-animate to creep over to my bed to smother me in a porcelain nightmare. Despite the horror stories I'd heard about how many rectal probes the Army physical involved, I was actually glad when morning came and I could throw myself on the mercy of the Army doctors and their cold steel insertions.
Prior to the exam, we were all herded into what had once been a ballroom, but now more closely resembled a warehouse. About a hundred young military hopefuls lurked about, each waiting his turn to be verified Grade A. Every branch of the Service would receive new recruits from this collection of nervous newbies. Some kids formed small conversation groups. Some fell deep into introspection. Some mumbled to themselves about how they had wasted an entire bus ride reading a piece of crap about some stupid hairy midgets and a telepathically evil piece of jewelry. Virtually everyone lit up a cigarette.
From the time my grandfather died of lung cancer caused by his smoking habit, I had possessed NO desire to ever smoke, or to hang out with people who smoked a lot. Yet here I was, surrounded by heavy smokers. I thought, "Hmmm, these guys are going to be my Army roommates. I'm going to smell like smoke continuously for years. No, not the good kind of smoke smell, like when you're roasting marshmallows over a pinewood fire in the mountains...but the kind where everything stinks like the time my brother hid his army men in the oven right before Mom decided to bake salmon cakes. Did I really want to spend the majority of my 20s hanging out with these guys?
The other thing that puzzled me was the general wimpiness of the group. I had always thought that only the most macho guys would enlist. In fact, before I had boarded the bus, I had assumed that I'd be the most candy-assed twerp among all the recruits. But as I waited and looked around the room, I honestly thought I could probably whip most any guy there. One guy was 6 foot 3 and only weighed 130 pounds. The ink in his tattoos weighed more than his flesh and bones did. The doctor told him to go home and start eating, and to come back when he'd gained 20 pounds. My opinion of the Army had already begun to change.
Now, don't get me wrong. I have the utmost respect for the members of America's armed forces. It takes tremendous character, guts, and fortitude to do what they do. I am in awe of what our military personnel can accomplish, and of what they are willing to tackle. But at that moment in time, my young eyes were beginning to see things in a slightly different light.
Finally, it was my turn. The physical exam was not nearly as horrible as I had expected. Step on the scale. Cough. Breathe deeply. And again. Any known brain tumors, missing kidneys or leprosy? No? You didn't touch any of them hookers, did you? No. All right, son, you pass. Now you can go talk with the job counselor.
Whoopee! I'd made it. I was now mere moments away from embarking on my dazzling career as a cinematographer. In a few short days, I'd be directing training videos on how to destroy an enemy squadron with nothing other than your pocket comb and a gum wrapper. I'd be telling guys when to dramatically leap off the cliff, and if the shot didn't work...I'd tell them to do it again. I'd soon be... all I could be.
The job counselor seemed like a nice guy. "Impressive test scores," he said. "A college boy like you should be in the Intelligence Corps. You're a natural-born code-breaker." He pushed some papers my way. "Here, just sign this, and we'll get you all set up."
"Sorry, sir," I said. "I want to be an Army filmmaker."
"No such thing, son. Don't worry, you'll love the code-breaker units. They always clean up in the bar fights. Just sign here..."
"You don't understand, sir. I want to make movies."
"Well, I'll have to look at what all is available. We can get to that as soon as you sign the paper."
"With all due respect, sir, I'm not going to sign anything until you confirm that I'll be making films...you know, like the 'Be All You Can Be' commercials."
"Hell, boy, we hire some damn ad agency for that crap. Ain't no jobs here for filmmakers. Besides, you've been to college. You'll wanna do college-type stuff. Ciphers and such."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "I guess I'll just head back to the bus station."
At this point, the nice man became an upset man. "What! That damn Wichita Sergeant told me you were all ready to sign up. He guaranteed me that I'd have me a top-notch code man. What in the eight levels of hell is going on here!"
"I'm sure that I don't know, sir, but I'd like to respectfully request that you take the Wichita recruiter and the entire code corps and shove them up your butt!"
OK, I didn't really say that. I politely expressed my gratitude for his time and quickly backed out of the room. He was still cursing the pinheaded moron of a dickbrained recruiter from that scumsucking podunk hellhole town...or something like that. I really didn't want to listen to much more. As quickly as I could, I returned to my room, brushed the silverfish off my suitcase, grabbed my Tolkiens and boogied to the bus station. I had a bit of a wait, since my ticket assumed that I'd have finished the recruiting process and would only be returning home long enough to kiss my non-existent girlfriend goodbye.
The hookers at the bus station were far more appealing than those at the hotel, but still reeked of ptomaine and lungpox. I avoided them and hunkered down in a corner and warily watched the seconds tick by until my bus was ready to depart. Luckily, I was able to procure a window seat, and didn't have to sit next to anyone. The woman behind me spent the entire trip doing and re-doing her lipstick, complete with obscene smacking noises, but even so, it was a much more pleasant trip than the first ride had been. My seat actually had a functional cushion, and while I had to face the thought that my failure to enlist had disgraced me and my entire family...it was still more pleasant than thinking about evil lord Sauron and his frickin' orc armies and mountains of fire.
I knew that Sergeant Barfight would be waiting at the bus station to ream me a new one for bailing out of his well-laid plans to transform a perfectly good filmmaker into a hardcore spy supporter/infantryman -- so I pulled the emergency bell wire when the bus got as close as it was going to get to my house. I walked the two miles home, had a Hershey bar and a Dr. Pepper, and wondered anew what the hell I was going to do with my life.
The following Monday, I went down and got a summer job filling cans of Coleman fuel. When summer ended, I went back to KU intending to get a Masters Degree in Film History. I figured that I'd write my thesis about how Popeye was more important than Mickey Mouse in the grand scheme of cinematic art. But that, my dear friends, is a story for another day.
Keep smiling. Terry
Seeing the "Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers" movie brought back memories of when I read that particular book. Nineteen hunnert and seventy six, it was. Jimmy Carter's cat had not yet crapped on the White House lanes. Bill Gates hadn't even bought his first Rembrandt. Bachman Turner Overdrive were still stuttering on top 40 radio stations, b-b-b-baby. And I was wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life.
Our family's mantra during the 60's had been "to get a good job, you need a good education". Repetition had firmly cemented this axiom into my skull, but my youthful optimism had somehow transmogrified it into the statement "if you get a good education, you WILL get a good job". I figured that a sheepskin from a school like KU would open so many doors that I'd have to hire a CPA to sort and analyze all my job offers. (I later realized that for some strange reason, KU's tradition of basketball excellence did not necessarily translate into worldwide respect for its academic programs. Oh well...)
Not only did my degree NOT generate any job offers, but it wasn't even on a sheepskin. It was forty pound bond paper at best, and the Dean's signature looked suspiciously like a rubber stamp. Still, I displayed it proudly; I had a B.S. in Radio-TV-Film, and I wanted the whole world to know. Of course, about 90% of the people who learned this fact promptly responded by saying "Hey, my gramma's got a bustid TV set -- kin ya fix it?"
Sorry, I couldn't fix your TV set. Nor your damn transistor radio that you used to listen to Yankees games on back when Whitey Ford was pitching. But, you know, I'd be happy to direct a movie for you. Sure. Anything. Preferably something with a title like "Attack of the Well-Endowed Cheerleader Bimbos" or something.
Alas, none such offers appeared.
I was faced with the decision to take some crappy hamburger stand job, go back to school and attempt graduate studies, or... join the armed forces. Well, I was a college grad-u-ate, for gawshsakes, I didn't want to be flippin' burgers. (I did a few years later, and actually enjoyed it a lot. But that's a different story.) I had pretty much run out of gas academically, too; I'd taken as many athletic electives as they allowed (tennis, weightlifting, fencing, lifesaving, etc. -- I'd have taken advanced fencing, cuz the teacher was a total fox, but I'd already suffered too many chest cavity puncture wounds in the beginning course. Reflexes? I don't got no steenking reflexes.). I sure as hell didn't want to take your standard graduate classes such as "Man's Inhumanity to Man -- a Study of Feminism in Classical Literature" and "Freudian Symbolism in Mongolian Architecture". (I briefly considered signing up for "The Tao of Steve McGarrett", but decided not to when I saw the obese teacher. He was, like, whoa, fat. -- Get it? Har har har.)
So it's the Army for me. I suppose I could've opened the yellow pages and found out where the recruiting centers were for the other service branches, but hey, I already knew where the Army office was. Besides, it was their dazzling "Be All You Can Be" television commercial campaign that had given me the idea in the first place. You get to go to cool places, play with cool toys, and make tons of money. Beats the hell out of listening to some grad student talk about Gauss's theorum, lemme tell ya.
The recruiter wasn't quite sure what to do with me. I got the impression he'd never had a college boy walk into his office before. He kept saying things like, "Oh, yeah, the Army'll make you tough. With a couple months practice, you'll be able to whip any of those Navy punks in a bar fight." He also told me that chicks dig a man in uniform, and that with a little luck, I might even find one who had all of her original teeth.
"Gee, that's swell," I said, "but didn't the commercials say that with the All-Volunteer Army, I can pick whatever job I want?" Why, shore you can. Hell, just last week we had a feller what picked 'engine mechanic', and he's already got so much grease under his fingernails that he cain't even pick his nose without the boogers falling off.
Lovely. "Uh, I want to be in the film crew, or maybe a photographer." Why, shore. But it might be more fun to be in the infantry, doncha think? Shootin' a gun's way more fun than shootin' a camera, ain't it?
Well, of course it is, my good man. But that's not what I wanted to do. After another half hour of verbal wrangling, I got the Sarge to admit that he wasn't really the one with the authority to designate my personally hand-picked job assignment. First I had to take the written test to see if my IQ was high enough to kill people; if it was, I would then go to Kansas City to see if I could pass the physical exam. If all was well at that point, I'd talk to the Guru of Army Jobs and pick out my dream career.
As a suburban son of an upper-middle-class aerospace engineer, I'd let a somewhat sheltered life. Oh, sure, my dad would occasionally attempt some misbegotten wordworking project (someday, I'll tell you about the gargantuan wooden kite-string winder he made) or endanger the neighborhood by trying to hang his own Christmas lights...but for the most part, we hired people to change our oil, sharpen lawn mower blades, or unclog the drains. I had never lost a fingernail under the hood of a car. Therefore, I was quite dismayed to find that the majority of the Army's written test questions had to do with auto mechanics. Sheesh!
Though not at all confident in my answers, I turned in my test to the Sergeant. He told me to stand there while he graded it. He had only looked at a dozen answers or so when he began to mutter under his breath. "Lordy," he said. "Good Gawd Awmighty!" and finally "I'll be double-damned." OK, I thought, I flunked. No biggie, I can still go back to school. Maybe I can take some classes on the "Genius of Buster Keaton" or perhaps a religion study on whether Calvinism is better than Hobbesism.
Finally, he wiped his brow from the exertion of grading my paper and looked up at me. "Boy," he said, "this is the highest test score we've ever had at this recruiting station." He stuck out his hand and said, "You're going to make a fine soldier, son."
Now, you'd think I'd be proud of my outstanding test performance, wouldn't you? But quite frankly, I found his statement and compliment, well, scary. I didn't know shit about cars, but I'd blown away my competition on a test concentrating on that very subject? Man, I thought, this does not bode well for the general level of competence within my peer group for this job.
Nonetheless, I got my bus ticket to Kansas City. This is where the Tolkien connection comes in. (Thought I'd forgotten that, didn't you?) By car, it was about a three-hour drive from Wichita to KC, but by bus it took seven. The bus route stopped in every Kansas town that was big enough to claim its own mud puddle, and at each stop the driver got off to smoke his Benson & Hedges 100s. I finished "The Two Towers" and got well into the final book in the series before we reached our destination.
Maybe it was the environment. Perhaps it's simply not possible to enjoy a book during a 7-hour ride next to a guy with Tourrette's syndrome who smells like the pig parts that weren't good enough to make it into Spam. It might have been the fact that most of the bus's exhaust seemed to have been re-routed into the passenger compartment and the fact that my seat seemed to be half rock, and half sponge. I was tilted to one side, eyes tearing up from the particles in the air, and more than a little annoyed with my odiferous seat-mate. Made it rather hard to enjoy the reading experience.
But then again, it just might possibly be that Tolkien is a crappy writer. I was unable to see what the heck everyone got so worked up about when they praised these books. Far too many pages of description of imaginary places that had nothing to do with the story. Droning on and on about who's related to whom and how many different kinds of crap happened in the past which has nothing to do with the current story. I dunno, I just found it boring. Oh, sure, I can get into bloodying up a few orcs and following the occasional mutant swamp creature around for a bit, but at some point, you gotta just end this thing, all right? Frodo, et al, take about 6 weeks to do what McBain could've handled in 1 hour and 50 minutes.
Anyway, we unloaded the bus at the fabulous Hotel President. At one time, this was probably a 5-star establishment, but the roaches had eaten most of those stars back in the 50s. We had to elbow hookers out of the way in order to gain access to the lobby, and I never was really sure whether the guy I had to step over was breathing or not. Let's assume so.
Now you might think that a 20-year-old virgin with a libido larger than King Kong would appreciate the ready availability of Ladies of the Evening. Well, you'd be right, if it weren't for the fact that these particular soiled doves were of the same quality as the hotel. Old, run-down, and smelly. Even though I felt as invulnerable and immortal as all 20-year-olds do, I was absolutely convinced that I would catch something fatal from these scags if I so much as let one breathe on me. I felt nothing but relief to be safely locked in my room with nothing but the rats and roaches.
For all I know, this hotel has since been restored to its former glory, and is currently hosting guests as rich and famous as Eric Estrada and Sally Struthers. But in 1976, I had trouble sleeping because of the vision that at some point during the night, the claws on the bottom of the bathtub would re-animate to creep over to my bed to smother me in a porcelain nightmare. Despite the horror stories I'd heard about how many rectal probes the Army physical involved, I was actually glad when morning came and I could throw myself on the mercy of the Army doctors and their cold steel insertions.
Prior to the exam, we were all herded into what had once been a ballroom, but now more closely resembled a warehouse. About a hundred young military hopefuls lurked about, each waiting his turn to be verified Grade A. Every branch of the Service would receive new recruits from this collection of nervous newbies. Some kids formed small conversation groups. Some fell deep into introspection. Some mumbled to themselves about how they had wasted an entire bus ride reading a piece of crap about some stupid hairy midgets and a telepathically evil piece of jewelry. Virtually everyone lit up a cigarette.
From the time my grandfather died of lung cancer caused by his smoking habit, I had possessed NO desire to ever smoke, or to hang out with people who smoked a lot. Yet here I was, surrounded by heavy smokers. I thought, "Hmmm, these guys are going to be my Army roommates. I'm going to smell like smoke continuously for years. No, not the good kind of smoke smell, like when you're roasting marshmallows over a pinewood fire in the mountains...but the kind where everything stinks like the time my brother hid his army men in the oven right before Mom decided to bake salmon cakes. Did I really want to spend the majority of my 20s hanging out with these guys?
The other thing that puzzled me was the general wimpiness of the group. I had always thought that only the most macho guys would enlist. In fact, before I had boarded the bus, I had assumed that I'd be the most candy-assed twerp among all the recruits. But as I waited and looked around the room, I honestly thought I could probably whip most any guy there. One guy was 6 foot 3 and only weighed 130 pounds. The ink in his tattoos weighed more than his flesh and bones did. The doctor told him to go home and start eating, and to come back when he'd gained 20 pounds. My opinion of the Army had already begun to change.
Now, don't get me wrong. I have the utmost respect for the members of America's armed forces. It takes tremendous character, guts, and fortitude to do what they do. I am in awe of what our military personnel can accomplish, and of what they are willing to tackle. But at that moment in time, my young eyes were beginning to see things in a slightly different light.
Finally, it was my turn. The physical exam was not nearly as horrible as I had expected. Step on the scale. Cough. Breathe deeply. And again. Any known brain tumors, missing kidneys or leprosy? No? You didn't touch any of them hookers, did you? No. All right, son, you pass. Now you can go talk with the job counselor.
Whoopee! I'd made it. I was now mere moments away from embarking on my dazzling career as a cinematographer. In a few short days, I'd be directing training videos on how to destroy an enemy squadron with nothing other than your pocket comb and a gum wrapper. I'd be telling guys when to dramatically leap off the cliff, and if the shot didn't work...I'd tell them to do it again. I'd soon be... all I could be.
The job counselor seemed like a nice guy. "Impressive test scores," he said. "A college boy like you should be in the Intelligence Corps. You're a natural-born code-breaker." He pushed some papers my way. "Here, just sign this, and we'll get you all set up."
"Sorry, sir," I said. "I want to be an Army filmmaker."
"No such thing, son. Don't worry, you'll love the code-breaker units. They always clean up in the bar fights. Just sign here..."
"You don't understand, sir. I want to make movies."
"Well, I'll have to look at what all is available. We can get to that as soon as you sign the paper."
"With all due respect, sir, I'm not going to sign anything until you confirm that I'll be making films...you know, like the 'Be All You Can Be' commercials."
"Hell, boy, we hire some damn ad agency for that crap. Ain't no jobs here for filmmakers. Besides, you've been to college. You'll wanna do college-type stuff. Ciphers and such."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "I guess I'll just head back to the bus station."
At this point, the nice man became an upset man. "What! That damn Wichita Sergeant told me you were all ready to sign up. He guaranteed me that I'd have me a top-notch code man. What in the eight levels of hell is going on here!"
"I'm sure that I don't know, sir, but I'd like to respectfully request that you take the Wichita recruiter and the entire code corps and shove them up your butt!"
OK, I didn't really say that. I politely expressed my gratitude for his time and quickly backed out of the room. He was still cursing the pinheaded moron of a dickbrained recruiter from that scumsucking podunk hellhole town...or something like that. I really didn't want to listen to much more. As quickly as I could, I returned to my room, brushed the silverfish off my suitcase, grabbed my Tolkiens and boogied to the bus station. I had a bit of a wait, since my ticket assumed that I'd have finished the recruiting process and would only be returning home long enough to kiss my non-existent girlfriend goodbye.
The hookers at the bus station were far more appealing than those at the hotel, but still reeked of ptomaine and lungpox. I avoided them and hunkered down in a corner and warily watched the seconds tick by until my bus was ready to depart. Luckily, I was able to procure a window seat, and didn't have to sit next to anyone. The woman behind me spent the entire trip doing and re-doing her lipstick, complete with obscene smacking noises, but even so, it was a much more pleasant trip than the first ride had been. My seat actually had a functional cushion, and while I had to face the thought that my failure to enlist had disgraced me and my entire family...it was still more pleasant than thinking about evil lord Sauron and his frickin' orc armies and mountains of fire.
I knew that Sergeant Barfight would be waiting at the bus station to ream me a new one for bailing out of his well-laid plans to transform a perfectly good filmmaker into a hardcore spy supporter/infantryman -- so I pulled the emergency bell wire when the bus got as close as it was going to get to my house. I walked the two miles home, had a Hershey bar and a Dr. Pepper, and wondered anew what the hell I was going to do with my life.
The following Monday, I went down and got a summer job filling cans of Coleman fuel. When summer ended, I went back to KU intending to get a Masters Degree in Film History. I figured that I'd write my thesis about how Popeye was more important than Mickey Mouse in the grand scheme of cinematic art. But that, my dear friends, is a story for another day.
Keep smiling. Terry
Friday, December 13, 2002
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.)
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.
Thursday, December 05, 2002
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
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
Monday, December 02, 2002
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
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
Wednesday, November 27, 2002
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
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
Thursday, November 14, 2002
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
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
