Reasons Not to Seat Freedom in Your Lap

Tom and Hondo were driving the long road home in the old beat up Bronco that they commuted to and from work in. As they round a corner, their grill came face to face with a Bald Eagle that perched, well stood rather, in the middle of their lane. They slammed on their brakes to avoid flattening it. The bird didn't move. They sat there, and it was like on old western showdown. 


Hondo slowly climbed out of the Bronco, with Tom close behind, and approached the eagle. Even as the two large men came towards it, the bird didn't so much as rustle a wing. It was like a statue. Once close enough, Hondo reached out his and to touch the animal. Beneath his hand it still remained motionless. Concerned, Hondo looked at Tom who shrugged.


"Must be suh'em wrong with 'em."
"Well, there's a Fish and Game not far up the road. Maybe we should take him there?" Hondo said hesitantly.
After a brief moment, Tom nodded.


Inside the car, with the bird on Hondo's lap, the Fish and Game contacted, Tom drove on down the empty highway. Now, eagles are not small birds, and this one neck was craned even in the spacious room of the Bronco.The position had to be uncomfortable but the bird was keeping its pose. Hondo just stared into the birds unblinking eyes as Tom continued driving.


Then Hondo noticed as the eagle's head slowly turned, as its eyes slowly blinked. In that short moment their was no communication barrier between animal and man...the animal was pissed.


Its six foot wingspan shot across the cab as its talons dug into Hondo's fleshy thighs until they struck bone.


Swerving and unable to see, Tom yelled to Hondo, "Grab its head. It can kill you with that beak!! Its the beak you gotta watch out for." 


Hondo grabbed the head of the eagle and pushed it backwards and tried to pull its talons from his legs. It was about this time that Tom lost the road and they crashed through a ditch and into an open field. 


Coming to abrupt stop, both men flung open their doors and Tom made it safely out. As soon as Hondo's door opened, the Bald Eagle took off and flew away from them into the darkening sky. 

Jump Starting Levels of Awkward

We were in Hillcrest—the residential homosexual community of San Diego—and it was a backstreet crowded with cars parked in front of dozens of small houses and duplexes. My mother, my sister, my best friend and I stood in the middle of the street and watched as my father and my boyfriend—who had just met—tinkered under the hood of my dead silent, fusion orange, Chevy Colorado.

I had left my fog lights on, the Hispanics in the house facing the tuck told my dad. They saw me leave it. Why hadn’t they told me? They didn’t say, but I suspected it had something to do with me being a dumb white girl and them getting to witness, now, the spectacle of us trying to find a way to jump it when all the parking spaces next to it were taken and the hood was facing the sidewalk.

Speaking of the sidewalk, behind my dad—who was firing one question after another at my boyfriend who was sweating and not from the labor of reattaching my exhausted batter—was the forest green Hummer H3 pulled up on the sidewalk between a palm tree and a small blue Mazda, hood to hood with my truck. The black and red jumper cables ran from the battery beneath its lifted hood and the cables that should have been connected to the battery in my truck.

Now back to the Hispanics. When we arrived to try and get my truck running, I had noticed the Hispanics. They were somewhere between fifteen to twenty of them crowded on the porch of their tiny blue duplex, all standing, two of which were playing guitars and wearing large brimmed straw hats. When my dad maneuvered his vehicle onto the sidewalk they stopped playing their music and crowded their way down the stairs with large eyes and amused smiles. 

Down-Pour

There is a cliché that is particularly worn out in my family. It says, "When it rains, it pours." It means heartache doesn't generally fall with a single drop of rain, but rather with sheet after sheet of heavy down-pour.


It's pouring in Japan.


It started with an earthquake. But that's not when the rain ends.


The earthquake caused a tsunami that destroyed thousands of homes and washed entire families out to sea. Yet the rain still doesn't cease.


The tsunami caused a massive nuclear meltdown.
       The Rain continues...


Japan is still in turmoil. These disasters have caused hundreds of smaller tremors throughout the nation, some of which the repercussions we have yet to see.




--On the PLNU campus, we are undergoing major construction. The work has affected everyone on campus, and the school is buzzing with irritation at the increased struggle to find parking and the lack of hot water for showers and laundry.


Japan would be so lucky,
if their greatest turmoil was cold showers or
having no place to park.


In Japan, the skies
pour down
Heartache
like Rain.


 

The Way Ice Melts: The Things We Never Knew About Our Fathers...

There is a memory I will never forget. I have carried it with me all these years as a reminder of the price we pay for the decisions we make.

My neighborhood friend and I devised a way to break into a house without leaving any evidence behind and executed the plan just to prove it could be done. We shattered a neighbor’s window with a few cubes of ice, climbed in, climbed out, and left the ice behind melting our fingerprints. We weren’t criminals. We were scientists testing a hypothesis.

The police didn’t feel that way. Being a small community, they were pointed in our direction by surrounding neighbors and wasted no time in manipulating our confessions out of us. They took us to court and charged us both with felonies.  We were in the seventh grade.

As I said, our town was tiny. Everyone knew us and knew what we had done. They called us idiots, saying “they didn’t even steal anything, what were they thinking.” Our brilliant plan became our greatest shame.

I had been a popular kid in school, but after that we were lepers—festering sores in the town’s complexion. The humiliation consumed my friend and he killed himself. His father was retired military and so a gun wasn’t hard to come by. He shot himself in the head, and his family never forgave me for it. It had, after all, been my idea. 

At his funeral my friend’s father and brother approached me as the black clad audience somberly dispersed. His father spoke in clipped words to me, “Next time you..” but I never heard about the next time. I couldn’t bear to hear what he had to say and I ran away crying.

I find myself wondering, from time to time, what he had been about to say. But questions like that will never be answered. It wasn’t a moment exactly, this experience, but it was the most embarrassed and ashamed I have ever felt. I have never committed a crime since, and I will never forget that my friend paid for ours with his life.  

Dragonball Z Kai!

Noah, nine, and Charlie, six, lounge on the couch in their father’s music studio watching Nickelodeon. Noah sits cross-legged and yammers excitedly, “Dragonball Z Kai is my favorite Cartoon!” His younger brother Charlie sits bolt upright and yells in his high pitched voice with eyes closed tightly and gap toothed smile, “It is awesome!” He bounces back and forth against the back of the couch with his excitement. Noah, more calmly explains, “Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT are ok but Dragonball Z Kai is the best! I love Goku! It is so awesome when they are training for the invasion…”

“YEAH!” Charlie jumps in. “It’s like swoosh” he gestures his hand one way, “boosh,” he slams his hand together, “and, then, BOOM!” His voice grows shrill and he jumps into the air off the couch with his eyes rolled back and arms spread wide. Noah rolls his eyes and turns his attention back to the screen which happens to be playing the latest episode of Dragonball Z Kai as Charlie crumbles onto the couch in a fit of uncontrollable giggles.

At the "Bitter End"

I had nothing left. I crouched crumbling locked in my closet, lights off, in the fetal position. As if pulling my knees as close to my body as possible would hold me together. My breaths were short, ugly, gasping squeaks. I couldn’t make them stop. Cool, sticky snot streamed from my nose and leaked into my grimacing mouth and mixed with the salty tears flooding from every aqueduct of my swollen, blurry eyes.

I couldn’t find his ring. The ring he had put on my finger on our first date, right before our first kiss. My room was in ruins from my frantic search. It was the only piece he had of a father he hadn't seen in nine years and I had lost it. I had lost him. What had I left?

A knock came on the bedroom door. I froze mid wail, “Aims? It’s dinner time honey.” I swallowed hard on the rock lodged in my throat and desperately wiped at my salty, clammy face with a worn shirt sleeve. I unlocked the closet door and slid out.“Aims?” Mom’s voice came again, concerned.

“Okay. I’ll be out in a sec.” I called back with as steady a voice as I could manage. Her footsteps faded down the hallway and I put on my brave-face to bear the world.

The phrase “to the bitter end” originates from ropes tied to “bitts” or posts on the deck of a ship. Once these ropes were completely extended and there was no more rope left, or until the end of the bitts, the ropes were said to have extended to the bitter end. Today, the phrase has come to mean sticking with something unpleasant to its end. 

Driving the Caged Elephant Isn't As Easy As it Sounds

Bwomp, bwomp, bwomp. I can feel the base through the skin in my hands that grip tightly on the leather of the circular object in front of me. I can feel it in my ears and it causes vibrations between different panels on the door. The black rolling hill-like plastic stretches out in my immediate vision. After that, I am looking through glass at what seems like hundreds of pairs of red lights. I can feel the rubber tires gripping the pavement underneath me. I can see buildings and a tree or two blurring past in my peripherals. I hear honking through the crack between glass and metal frame and someone hollering. I look to my left Where Nicky is sitting beside me singing along with Cage the Elephant. I look through the steering wheel at the glowing gages and then over at the glowing clock. My Arm rests upon the center counsel, but I can’t really say how it feels. I am absorbing my surroundings, taking everything in on a purely sensory level when suddenly Nicky yells in panic,

“Amy! Amy! They’re breaking!” I look up in time to see the brake lights in front of me and reflexively slam my left foot onto the brake pedal. My mind is ripped back into the realization that I am supposed to be driving.

Jeremy

Everyone chattered loudly as we waited for class to begin. A man about my age pushed his way into the empty seat beside me. He caught his bag on the door handle, bumped a girl in the head with his elbow, and slammed his books down with such force that everyone stopped talking for a moment to stare at him.

His skin was very pale. His eyes and hair were nearly black. Thick arching eyebrows overwhelmed his face in an almost frightening way. But his eyes seemed kind so I smiled at him politely before turning away.

A moment later I looked over my shoulder to find him staring at me. Instead of looking away quickly, he asked me, “What’s your name?”  The question itself was friendly enough, but he said it with such severity and excited aggression that I was caught off guard. Several awkward moments passed before I responded, “I’m Amy.”

“I’m Jeremy.” His hand jutted out like a pocket knife and startled me, causing me to jump a little, before I realized he was looking for a handshake. I took it hesitantly.

“Nice to meet you Jeremy…”