Deep Dark Thoughts – Page 6 – Deep Dark Thoughts

A Bridge Too Far

As I sit at home bemoaning the fact that any travel plans I may have had over the past year have all been canceled, and any new trips I am currently considering may suffer the same fate, I find myself thinking wistfully back to the good old days when I could travel to other countries and the worst that might happen is that I get kidnapped and murdered.

Those were simpler times.

I was recently reminded of a trip I took many years ago when I was but a lad of 17. My school was sponsoring a trip to Europe. Five staff members from the school were assigned to escort 20 high school aged children through eight countries in fourteen days. My parents thought the trip sounded like an amazing opportunity for me to experience foreign cultures and new people, so they immediately signed me up for the journey.

This was only one of the many mistakes my parents made raising children, but it was probably near the top of their list.

In Summer of 1983, I packed my bags and flew to London, England. From there we boarded a hovercraft to get us across the English Channel and charter a bus to tour France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and two other countries I can’t remember because I am a common product of the American school systems.

Throughout our travels, minor tragedies occurred that constantly interfered with the adults well-planned itinerary: A few students were sneaking alcohol into the hotel rooms at night, two were caught with drugs and shipped back home, and one of our chaperones fell ill and had to fly back to the states. I steered clear of (most of) it.

My turn, however, came while we were visiting Italy. The tour group was staying in a hotel in Venice, enjoying the garbage laden streets, rats, countless alley cats, black market thugs in dark doorways, and endless snide remarks in broken English from Italian citizens that took a less than stellar view of foreigners.

During the day, we had placed all our luggage in our rooms and gone out sightseeing. When we returned, several of the rooms had been broken into and the luggage stolen. Our bags had been thrown out a window and were found in the streets below, broken open and ransacked. Money, cameras, and other small items of value were taken.

That night, after it got dark and most of the other tourists in our group had settled back into their rooms, I went out. To commemorate our ill-fortuned stay in the city, another student and I decided to go out on our own and get drunk.

The other student (let’s call him Joe, since his parents might still be alive and they don’t need to know about any of this) told me that there was no legal drinking age in Italy. As long as you were tall enough to look over the counter at the liquor store clerk, you could buy booze.

I said, “Prove it.”

He did.

We ended up buying something cheap and high octane since our budget was limited. The guy working the register didn’t bat an eye as he sold us the bottle of brown poison we had selected. We raced outside and cracked it open without delay.

An hour or so later, we were both standing at the top of one of the many tiny bridges overlooking the canals of Venice. I like to think that we were comporting ourselves with dignity and silent decorum, but I don’t think that was actually true as we immediately drew the attention of a local police officer.

The Italian polizia waved at us and said something I didn’t understand. I said, “What?”

He nodded as though realizing something he should have already known, and responded, “Ah, American.”

He then pointed at the alcohol bottle in my hand and told us that the legal drinking age in Italy was 18. I looked at Joe, who merely shrugged as if to say, “I was wrong. What are you gonna do?”

The officer then asked if we were 18.

My first thought was to run. The AK-47 assault weapon slung over the officer’s back made that thought dissipate as fast as it had occurred. Next, I glanced down at the canal below me, wondering if I could swim for safety. I spied a large rat, about the size of my head, dogpaddling along the edge of the canal looking for a good place to climb ashore. Plan B also faded from my thoughts.

I went with Plan C, and said, “Yes?”

The officer scowled. He clearly knew I was lying but for some reason he decided to let it slide.

“Do you have a hotel room?”

I nodded, and Joe reached into his pocket to pull out our hotel room key. He flashed the officer the name of the hotel on the plastic tag attached to the key.

The polizia told us, “Go straight there. If I see you again, you sleep in jail tonight. Yes?”

Then he pointed at the bottle still in my hand and indicated a nearby garbage can. I took the hint.

At a full run, we were back at our hotel about thirty seconds later, in our rooms and pretending nothing abnormal had just happened.

This is why I love travel. You never know what’s going to happen, and the stories you get to tell later always sound better when they start somewhere away from home.

Let’s be honest. Which story would you rather hear?

The one that starts out, “I was standing in the bathroom at home and the toilet started to overflow…”

“Me and my buddy were drunk and standing on top of a bridge in the middle of Venice…”

Because, honestly, I could tell either one of those tales, and I think I chose the correct one for today.

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Put It Back Where You Found It

As a kid, the garage in my home was always neat and organized. My dad had toolboxes, drawers, and shelves full of every kind of hand tool, power tool, screw, nail, washer, battery, car fluid, light bulb, wire, and other assorted bric-a-brac you can imagine, and he knew exactly where each little item was located without even looking.

He wasn’t one of those guys that taped little outlines of his tools on the walls so the garage looked like a second-grade jigsaw puzzle, but he believed strongly in the adage “A place for everything, and everything in it’s place.” Myself, I had no compulsion for such rigid structuring. I believed more in the “free range” ideology for inanimate objects.

Because I was a child with no concept of order or discipline, I frequently borrowed items from the garage then replaced them in the general area of where I believed I had originally found it. My memory was not always reliable, so I did the best I could with what little ability I had. This habit of pretty much random distribution of his stuff turned out to be quite irritating for my dad.

He would constantly tell me I was not allowed to touch his things if I couldn’t be reliable enough to put them back where I found them. I told him I did put them back sort of in the same place, but he insisted that placing them one foot away from where they belonged was the same as losing them completely.

I never understood that statement back then. If I took a hammer from the second drawer of his toolbox, why was it such a big deal that I put it back in the fourth drawer? It was still in the box.

Things change. I understand his frustration now.

I have kids of my own.

I have come to realize that if you look for something and it is not exactly where you expect it to be, it doesn’t matter if it is six inches or six miles away. All you know for certain is that it is gone.

For example, I keep the television remotes on the coffee table in plain sight and available for anyone who wants to watch TV. I have never once heard either of my children ask me where the remote is because it is always in the same spot when they want it. Yet, it never fails that when I want to watch TV, I have to search the entire house for a remote control that has seemingly been sucked into a black hole. They are never on the table when I want them. I typically find them buried between couch cushions, on a kitchen counter, under the TV, or on occasion, in the bathroom.

I’m not certain why anyone would need a television remote in the bathroom, but apparently one or both of my children have their reasons.

And it isn’t just the television remotes. Nothing in my house is ever where it’s supposed to be when I need it. Tools end up missing from the garage only to turn up under the bed in one of the kids’ bedrooms. Dishes magically relocate upstairs to sit on couches and tables for weeks on end. I have even noticed food containers disappearing from the pantry.

Recently, a bag of potato chips went MIA. I searched the pantry for it because I was feeling a bit peckish, but it was nowhere to be found. I discovered days later that EM1 had stashed it upstairs so she would have an available snack for herself whenever she went up to watch TV. She explained the reasoning for her actions by saying she didn’t want the chips to be gone the next time she wanted some.

I’m not sure she has a solid grasp of irony, otherwise she would have understood why her comment left me utterly speechless.

The reason things belong in one place is so everybody can find them when they need to. Otherwise, screwdrivers end up in closets, remotes end up under the couch, and the world is nothing but chaos and anarchy.

I can’t help but think back to when I was working for a police department. Can you imagine officers arriving for work in the morning, then spending the first few hours of their shift just searching for where the last person left the patrol car, the keys, the radio, and the shotgun?

(Although, I do recall working with a particular officer that kept the keys to his patrol car in his locker so no one else would drive “his” car. But that story might need to wait for another day.)

I don’t want to give the impression that my kids are thoughtless or inconsiderate. It’s just that… well, they’re thoughtless and inconsiderate.

I have tried explaining myself several times, but it continues to make no impact with them. I’m sure if my dad were alive today, he would find all of this very amusing. Every time I tell my daughters they need to put things back where they found them, I can hear him standing behind me, laughing.

I’m not sure how to fix this problem. I don’t think the girls are going to change their ways anytime soon. I have honestly thought about going around the house with a bag of nails and nailing everything down so it can never be moved from where it exists right at this moment.

There’s only one problem with that plan.

I can’t find the damned hammer.

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It’s Never Simple – Part 2

The saga of things going wrong in and around my house continues. Old problems are not going away, and new problems have sprouted up to join the old ones.

Since we last met, in addition to a broken water pipe under the driveway, no internet service, and an endless parade of service tech’s showing up at my house, I now have a non-functioning car to add to the list of things turning my hair gray.

Okay, more gray than it already is.

The car is one of those gas/electric Toyota hybrids that is supposed to save the owner money on gasoline. Well, given that I can’t get it out of the garage, the statement is true. I am saving a bundle on fuel costs.

I should have stayed away from the hybrid cars since I’m pretty sure the word “hybrid” is just Latin for “all kinds of shit can go wrong with this thing.” The vehicle is only five months old and it’s already having more problems than the fifteen-year-old Volvo it was bought to replace.

It’s currently nothing more than a great big paperweight in my garage that I can’t get rid of.

Why is it still in the garage instead of at a dealership somewhere getting repaired? That’s a very good question. And I have a very good response: I still have a massive hole in my driveway that would prevent a tow truck from reaching the car to tow it away.

(If you are unsure as to why I have a hole in my driveway, I assume you did not read last week’s rant … I mean, blog. You may want to take a moment to read it and catch up with everyone else. Go ahead. We’ll wait.)

So, moving on, that broken water pipe that got fixed, didn’t really get fixed. I waited a couple days for the mud to dry out so I could put new rock over it, but it never dried out. Oh, no, indeed. In fact, it got wetter. After two days, there was a puddle of water marking where the mud used to be.

You see, the repaired water pipe was now leaking just as badly as the original pipe. By the time I realized the problem was getting worse, not better, it was the weekend. I called Plumber Jeff, but he was on his days off and could not get back to my house until the following Monday.

EM2 suggested that we just leave it alone and maybe by summertime we would have a new pool to swim in. She saw the reaction to her statement on my face and asked, “Too soon?” Then wandered off to her room laughing.

I’m glad someone could see the humor in the situation. I sure couldn’t.

When Plumber Jeff arrived on Monday, he told me if the leak was from the work he had previously done the repairs would be free, but if it was a new leak, he would have to charge me for his time again. I told him I didn’t have any more money, so if it was a new leak he could have the brand new Toyota in my garage as payment. I figured it he managed to tow that piece of garbage away I could kill two birds with one stone.

Or rather, solve two problems with one plumber.

The leak turned out to be part of the job Jeff had done earlier, so I still have the car.

I have mixed feelings about that outcome.

The leak is now fixed, but the dirt in the hole is still more liquid than solid. I can’t repair the driveway until the mud is dry. A tow truck can’t get in my driveway because it can’t turn around and hook up my car without the entire driveway available. I can’t get my car to a dealership without a tow truck, because the entire electrical system is completely fried and it won’t move out of the garage. I can’t get the car fixed until I can get it to the Toyota dealership.

Here’s the fun part. Are you paying attention?

Because the car isn’t working right now, my wife has been driving my truck to work every day. Not normally a problem since I work from home and don’t need to go anywhere most of the time. However, I do need the truck to get a load of rock to repave the driveway. But I don’t have the truck, because my wife is driving it, which means that hole in our driveway isn’t going anywhere.

And now we have come full circle. I gave the damn mouse a cookie and he threw it back in my face.

A leaky pipe has brought my entire world to a screeching halt.

The only thing that could make this whole ordeal worse would be if our internet stopped working at the same time.

Oh, right. Did I mention that our internet stopped working?

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It’s Never as Simple as it Looks

I recently ran into a cascading series of personal failings that reminded me of the old kid’s story, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Except that my story was the adult version with swearing and whole lot more disappointment and depression.

One morning I was standing in the driveway, staring at a puddle of water bubbling up out of the ground about five feet away from me. Out of curiosity, I grabbed a shovel and started to dig. I suspected there was a cracked pipe among my watering lines, and I hoped that after a few minutes of digging I would find the problem.

I did not find a cracked water line. I didn’t find any pipe at all. Instead, what I discovered was a trickle of water flowing underground and leading back toward the driveway. I chased the trickle for about three feet before I realized that the leak I was searching for was actually UNDER the driveway. I gave up, realizing that this was going to be much too large of a project to do on my own.

Going against every instinct I have as a man and as a husband, I called a plumber.

The plumber was out the next day, which was nice. He couldn’t find the leak, which was not so nice. He (let’s call him, Jeff) billed me $200 and then handed me a business card with someone else’s name on it.

He said, “This guy is really good at finding leaks. He’ll be able to find it, no problem. Have a nice day.”

With no other recourse, I called the number on the card. The new guy (We’ll call him, John), came out three days later. He parked his truck on my driveway, then took out some scientific looking equipment that I guessed was once used to find German submarines during World War II. With a set of headphones and a stick, he walked around my driveway for about an hour like a geriatric treasure hunter combing the beach with a metal detector.

“Aha!” said John. Then he pulled out a can of spray paint and painted a square on my driveway. “The leak is somewhere in this area.”

“Can you fix it?” I asked him.

“Oh, I don’t fix leaks. I just find them. You’ll need to call Jeff back to dig it up and fix it. That will be 250 dollars, please.”

Two days later, Jeff was back. My driveway is paved with gravel rather than concrete or asphalt, so digging wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. Still, it took Jeff two more days to find the leaking pipes and dig a large enough hole to have room to fix them. The pipes turned out to be four feet under ground rather than the traditional 18 inches in most homes. I don’t know why the original builder felt he had to go so deep. Maybe he was burying a dead body and decided, “while I’m down here, let’s put in some plumbing.”

Regardless of the reason for the ridiculous depths, Jeff was able to fix the damaged pipes. He dumped the mud back into the hole he had made, put away his tools and charged me an additional $1300. He then told me that repairing the driveway was not part of his job and walked away, leaving me with a four feet wide, four feet deep, mud puddle.

The hole still had so much water in it that the ground was more like quicksand than dirt. I stepped on it to pack it down and was almost pulled in. If I had been foolish enough to put my full weight on it, I would have disappeared without a trace, and my wife would currently be vacationing in Tahiti with the insurance money. When I told my wife what happened, she had an odd wistful look on her face. I think she might be a little disappointed I escaped.

I decided I needed to add more dirt to the hole to dry out the ground before putting new rock down over it. As it was, any car driving over that hole was going to lose a tire. I live on a five-acre piece of property, so finding dirt is not a problem. I grabbed a shovel and my wheelbarrow out of the garage.

Unfortunately, I have not used my wheelbarrow in quite a while, and I discovered that the rubber wheel had gone flat and rotted. It would not reinflate when I tried putting in air. So, instead of filling in the hole in my driveway, I put away the shovel and drove to the hardware store to buy a new wheel for the wheelless barrow.

As I sit here at the computer writing this blog post, there is still a large mud puddle in the middle of my driveway. In addition, I have also discovered a new irrigation pipe that has cracked and needs to be repaired or replaced. I can’t afford to call Jeff back to fix it, so I have decided that I can live with the new puddle for a while.

Just to add some fun new twists to my life, during this whole ordeal we had a brief power outage. We were only in the dark for about 30 minutes, but when the power came back on, our internet and house phone both stopped working. They are still out, and we are waiting (not so patiently) for the internet company technician to come out next week to fix it.

2021 is not starting out so great for the Wilbanks family. I’m trying to find the silver lining in all of this, but all I can come up with so far is I have a new wheel on my wheelbarrow. It isn’t much, but it’s what I’m clinging to at the moment.

I’m going to go pour myself a drink now, then go outside and stare at my shiny new wheel until I stop thinking about burning down the house and moving to a new place. Preferably one with no running water.

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I, G. Allen Wilbanks

The following blog post was originally published as an essay in the collection, I, The Writer. This book, published by Sweetycat Press, was an assortment of essays by authors on why they chose to become writers and the impact the decision had on their lives. I thought you might enjoy reading my contribution.

Enjoy!

I, G. Allen Wilbanks

Where do writers come from? Are they born, or are they a product of their environment? I have no idea, and I’m fairly confident the following information will offer absolutely no enlightenment to the question.

My writing career started at a very early age. I was in first grade when the elementary school I attended decided they wanted to compile a book of drawings, poems, and short stories created by the students at the school. At just six years old, I composed a poem and submitted it to the reading committee.

The poem was quite advanced, and the school staff could see right away that I was a prodigy whose work of creative genius absolutely must be included in the school publication. The poem was about a bunny, named Sunny, who was very funny, and other similarly complicated verbal imagery. I was quite proud of it and felt its inclusion in the book was an accomplishment of the highest magnitude.

It wasn’t until a few years later that my mother explained to me that any child in the school who could stop eating paste long enough to drag a crayon across a piece of paper was going to get published. Absolutely nobody who submitted was rejected. That disappointing bit of information came much too late, however. The first stone had already been firmly set to pave the path that I would follow from that day forward.

All through high school, I read books voraciously, and I wrote my own stories during any free time I had between studying and hanging with friends. I wrote fantasy, science fiction, and horror, as those topics interested me the most. When I graduated from high school and was accepted into college, it therefore seemed only natural that I should major in computer science.

You see, my parents thought writing was a hobby, and weren’t about to send their child off to college to study how to improve his skills at wasting time. So, instead, I spent my first two years almost failing out of school because I drank too much and rarely went to classes, a very writerly thing to do.

When I convinced my parents that I had zero interest (or ability) in the field of computer science, I was finally allowed to change my major to something more fitting to my personal interests. I changed my major to … genetics.

At least it was an improvement, as I did find the subject to be interesting and worth attending classes to learn more about. I graduated with a B.S. in genetics a few years later and quickly discovered that there was absolutely no job market in my field for anyone with less than a Master’s degree and five years previous experience. I was stuck.

So, what did I do with a college degree I couldn’t use and a lifelong love of writing? You all know what comes next, so say it with me: I went into law enforcement and got a job as a police officer.

What? You didn’t see that coming? Well, neither did I, really.

I spent the next ten years of my life honing my writing craft by creating little gems of prose that went something like this:

“The RP stated he last saw his vehicle parked in his driveway at 10:45 PM the night before. At 5:15 AM this morning, he discovered his vehicle was missing.”

Or:

“While traveling northbound on Ralston Avenue, V1 failed to stop at the posted stop sign, entering the intersection of Ralston Avenue and Hayne Road. V1 struck the driver’s side, rear quarter-panel of V2 who was traveling westbound on Hayne Road.”

It was riveting reading. All my supervisors told me so.

After many years of focusing solely on my current career, I finally started writing fiction again on my free nights and weekends out of boredom and a desperate desire to stay sane. I am not sure it worked. If you ask my family, they would advise you that my sanity is an ongoing work in progress. I did find some limited professional success however, getting a few of my stories published.

I decided to publish using my middle name while I was still working as a police officer. I made the decision because I didn’t want to use a pen name, but I still wanted to separate my writing from my job. I didn’t want anyone to confuse my fictional life with my work on the streets.

I could imagine being in court and having an attorney question me about a recent arrest.

Attorney: “Officer, you arrested my client because you say you found a gun in the pocket of his coat?”

Me: “That’s correct.”

Attorney (holding up a magazine in his hand): “Officer, did you write the story in this magazine about a police officer that planted a gun in the pocket of an innocent man in order to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit?”

Me: “Uh…”

Fortunately, that particular nightmare never came to life. Mostly because I was publishing very few stories at the time rather than from my clever attempt at altering my name.

In 2016, I finally took the plunge. I retired from real life and decided to live full time in a fantasy world of my own making. I am happy with the change, and I believe I made the right decision. To date, since retiring from law enforcement, I have published two short story collections and two novels, as well as another two hundred short stories in magazines, anthologies, and online venues.

I believe six-year-old me would be proud of what we have accomplished.

Or not.

He might be more concerned with whether or not he got a cookie in his lunch that day. I really have no idea how a six-year-old thinks.

If you enjoyed this essay and are curious about the other authors in this collection and their writing journeys, you can find the book on Amazon at this link.

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Managing Expectations

2020 is almost over, and as we prepare to flush this year into the septic tank of history where it deserves to be, I find myself cautiously optimistic about the coming year. I’m eager to see what 2021 will bring, but at the same time, I also know that I don’t want to get my hopes up too high only to see them dashed if 2021 turns out to be as big of a dumpster fire as its predecessor.

If nothing else, 2020 has been a major learning experience in managing expectations. I don’t know if anyone told themselves in December, 2019, that this next year was going to be amazing, but I’m pretty sure nobody was planning to spend twelve months hiding at home, stocking up on toilet paper and disposable masks, and blaming politicians for being incompetent in the face of crisis (which is a lot like blaming fish for swimming). For this reason, as the clock ticks into the new year, I am keeping my resolutions and plans at a reasonable level.

For example, in 2020, I had planned to take an Alaskan cruise during the summer. That was cancelled. I had reservations for a writing convention in Sacramento that I was going to attend with my friend Wes Blalock. That also was cancelled. I also had purchased tickets to fly to Hawaii and spend a couple weeks in Kauai. Surprise! Also cancelled.

So, for this coming year, I am keeping my goals simple. For example, I am making a few new year’s resolutions that I think will be much easier to keep than the traditional ones. Instead of telling myself that I will eat better, exercise and lose some weight, I am simply going to try not to eat and drink so much that my heart ends up exploding in my chest. I am pretty sure I can keep this resolution. The good news, however, is that even if I can’t, by the time I realize I’ve failed to keep it, I will only have to live with the knowledge for a few seconds at most. I believe this is a winning strategy.

I am also planning on spending less time watching television during 2021. This should be an easy resolution to keep given that I think I set a record in 2020 for sedentary behavior. The couch has a permanent indent in the cushion from me sitting on it sixteen hours a day for most of the past 52 weeks.

The same will be true about my travel plans.

This year, I am no longer setting my sights on vacations and conferences. My expectations will be a tad lower. In August next year, I am scheduled to attend a writers’ conference in Louisiana. After the parade of shattered plans last year, I have decided this year that instead of telling people that I am going to fly to New Orleans, I will simply say that I am hoping to get out of the house. If my trip actually happens, that will be a bonus, but I won’t get my hopes up. If the flight is cancelled as everything else in my life over the past twelve months has been cancelled, I will instead step out into my backyard and walk until I reach the back fence. I can then announce to the world that I have successfully gotten out of the house. It is a low bar, true, but it is a goal I believe that I can reasonably achieve.

Overall, I have managed not to become too excited about the coming year. I have never really had a great outlook on life in general, and it isn’t just the big, world-wide, life altering things either. My life for the past several years has been an ongoing parade of minor events telling me that I need to lower my expectations.

Recently, we had a very nice casserole for dinner. The leftovers went into the refrigerator and I had planned to enjoy a second helping for my lunch the next day. Unfortunately, by the time the rest of my family had finished with late night snacking and breakfast the next morning, when I opened the refrigerator the following afternoon, there was nothing left for me. I made the mistake of getting my hopes up, and disappointment was the predictable result. I should have simply told myself that whatever I found in the fridge was going to be lunch. That way, after eating the last few olives out of a jar and munching on a slice of American cheese that had fallen out of the packet and slipped to the back of the crisper drawer, it would merely be sad. It wouldn’t also be a disappointment.

With a constant barrage of little reminders like this one, I am getting better at accepting the reality of my existence. I no longer hope that the two new cats in my house will stop tipping over the garbage can and scattering garbage all over the kitchen floor. I no longer expect that when I get takeout from any of the local restaurants that the food in the bag will be anything close to what I actually ordered. I have even stopped wishing that my children will grow up to be productive and contributing members of society. I just want them to get out of my house.

And, finally, I don’t need the new year to be a complete return to normal life. I would settle for it being marginally better than 2020.

Whatever your goals may be for 2021, big or small, I hope you achieve them, and I wish you a happy, and slightly less abnormal, new year.

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