Bat Mobile

It was Halloween. That is really the only explaination for what was to happen.

That Wednesday started as most do for me. I woke up to the "Morning Music Mind Bender" on 92.3 WTTS. I showered (best I can remember). I ate breakfast with my wife. I drove to work (I think that's how I got to work, although I never remember the journey – I just end up there). After a few shots of espresso, it is well established what I do at around 9:30 (if you don't know what I'm tallking about, see blog "Poo-pea". Then it's time to do a little work and start thinking about what's for lunch.

That's where the day started to become different from every other day of my existence. A couple co-workers (Jenn and Shannon) and I decided we were going for a driving lunch. Driving lunches are rare because I work downtown and when I'm not eating leftovers at my desk I am walking to one of the many nearby eateries. So, it's always a little extra treat to go somewhere just far away enough to necessitate a short little drive.

So, off we went. We hopped into my Mini and did a little "motoring." We went to The Abbey for lunch, which was lovely. Lunch was so lovely, that I was in no mood to return to work. So, I suggested we go up to Goose The Market for some gelato. Jenn and Shannon offered very little resistance. To the Goose we motored.

Mid-motoring Shannon says in a strained and slightly quivering voice, "Ryan. Please tell me the bat back here is fake! How does one respond to that? "Huh?," I said. "There's a bat back here, please tell me it's fake."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about," I said as I'm driving, trying to remember if a fake bat is one of the many random things that has found it's way into my car, and craning my neck to see if I can get a glimpse of this alleged bat.

At the next stop, I turned around as Shannon pointed into a side compartment/catch-all next to the armrest in the back seat. Sure enough, there was something dark and fuzzy in there.

With Shannon plastered to the back window opposite the bat we proceeded to the market but had nearly forgotten about why we were headed to the market. I had a flippin' bat in my car.

I had a hundred questions going through my head...well, just one. "How in the hell did a bat get in my car?" I lied, two questions. "How did Shannon find this bat buried beneath all the other junk that finds its way into that compartment?" I still have no idea on the first question. But, Shannon confessed that she was being nosy and looking through some receipts in the side compartment when she felt something furry.

We arrived to the market and I flipped the driver's seat forward to get a closer look. Sure enough, a bat. A dead bat.

I grabbed a paper towel and picked him up and put him on the side walk. A stranger came walking by and I stopped him saying, "Not that you care, but I just found a freaking bat in my car." He didn't say much, but I took his silence to mean that he was as stunned as I was. I left the bat on the sidewalk and went on to get some gelato. Had I known what good friends we'd become, I would have never left him on the sidewalk where anything could have happened to him. He forgives me now, but it put a strain on our relationship for awhile.

I happened to have a Ziploc® baggy in the back, and that seemed like a good home for a bat. So, he joined us for our trip back to the office.

At first, I just brought him back to exhibit him for all my co-workers. He did draw quite a bit of attention.

When I took a close look at him and saw that his little paw was wiping his eyes like he was ready to take a nap, not knowing he'd be entering his last deep sleep, he stopped being a bat to me and started being Alfred. Alfred, that's his name. I don't really know why. It just is.

Anyway, Alfred and I have gotten quite close. He sits by me everyday at the office. He comes with me to meetings. He's quite creative. We've learned alot about each other. He's learned that I don't like to be interrupted when I'm in a creative flow. And, I've learned that he loves green Skittles®.

I hope this story can help you open your mind to being open to friendships with people or things that may not look like you do, talk like you do, may carry diseases, may not be the same species or even have a heartbeat. Heck, they may not even like the same color of Skittles® (I like red...which is green's complimentary color. Coincidence?). My friendship with Alfred is a story of friendship succeeding against all odds, and it lives on to this day.

If you care to meet Alfred, he's here at my right hand M-F, 8:30-5:30. If you can't make it down to my office, this photo will have to do.

Poo-Pea

Here's the thing. I have this affinity for poop stories. I'm not crazy about poop itself for the same reasons most people don't like it (smell being the chief reason). But, I love a good poop story. Further, I love to tell a good poop story. Dog poop, people poop, bird poop ... I don't discriminate. My immediate family can vouch for this obsession. My brother-in-law will often bait me into getting on the topic because he knows I just can't stop myself.

So, I have a new story to share from today.

You can set a watch by my poop schedule. As far as regularity goes my pooper is the Big Ben of poopers. Predictably, I had to go to the restroom at 9 o' clock A.M. on the butt-on.

There was nothing extraordinary about the poop experience itself. Everything went as planned.

I stood over the stool as I flushed to ensure there were no stragglers. But, in fact there was a straggler. It was a perfectly shapen, toilet-washed pea floating in the bowl. It was so clean, shiney and looked good enough to eat. I marveled at its pristine condition, but knew I had to let it go. So, I pushed the lever and bowed my head in respect. The pea exhibited the kind of resiliency that allowed it to navigate my bowels without compromising its perfect shape and color by refusing to go down the chute. It just kept floating back to the top. I flushed and flushed until I started to feel guilty about forcing the issue. This pea clearly deserved to be immortalized in the Guiness Book of World Records – or something. This pea was a fighter. "Should I keep it?", I thought.

No, I couldn't possibly keep it. I wanted to remember the pea as I last saw it with its shiny green finish and perfect shape. I didn't want it to be remembered as a shriveled and brown chunk pinned up on a bulletin board somewhere.

Now that I had decided to let it go there was the matter of actually getting it to go down. So, I called on the problem-solving portion of my brain (small as it is) and decided that with a single square of toilet paper layed over the pea it might be just enough to send it on its way. Sure enough, the toilet paper wrapped itself around the pea and dragged it to its after-after life.

So, when you're sitting with friends sharing poo stories, please remember the "Poo-pea" and keep its memory alive.

Some Of My Favorite Things

I start these lists with the reader in mind. I want you to feel free to add to or augment in any way you feel appropriate. So here are a couple starter lists that strike my fancy at the moment. You may also start random lists of your own.

Favorite words to say for it's phonetic qualities only, not emotive:
Proposal – especially when said with a Russian accent
Instinct
Fancy
Chum
Lookie – ok, this isn't a real word. But I still like it.
Monument
Webbing

Favorite Shoe Brand Names:
Lotto
British Knights
Troop
Buster Brown Wildcats

I Dream of Jesse

The Setup: The night of August 15, 2006 I was Jesse James. I could see that night's events through the eyes of Jesse James, but also as the third person witness. But, the whole time I felt what Jesse felt. I was Jesse James. The entire dream took place with my knowing that I was going to die. I knew how I was going to die (gun shot wound). However, I didn't know the moment I was going to die, or who would ultimately kill me. It was as if I'd read the last page of the book, where I knew generally what was going to happen, but I hadn't read the whole last chapter. So, there was some mystery there. The entirety of events to follow were seen through this lens of not having anxiety of dying, but of just when it would happen and who would do it.

Scene One: I was in a cabin that sat on a prairie surrounded by thick woods. In the cabin with me were two women that I couldn't identify in a lineup. I started the dream in preparation for a group of lawmen coming to apprehend me because, well, I was Jesse James. I don't know how I knew they were coming, I just did. I began planning on how I might counter attack. I ended up sneaking into the woods as the lawmen were coming for me.

Scene Two: The lawmen came and I laid in wait. A series of gun fights ensued as I fought individuals wondering if this was going to be the guy that was going to kill me. I fought off most of them and retreated back to the cabin. After a brief moment of rest the lawmen brought reinforcements and began shooting at the house. It was becoming clear that I wouldn't escape, so I gave up. The lawmen apprehended me and took me to jail.

Scene Three: I am in prison. My cell is hardly a cell at all. It is all darkly stained hardwood walls and floors. There is a bench with a nice red cushion. There are no bars. The walls of the cell do not extend all the way to the ceiling. In fact, they were only about head high. I couldn't see over them but I could hear. The door was about two feet off the ground and was only about shoulder-high. Also, in the back of the room was a buffet of food (I mostly remember fruit). At the front of the room near the door was a desk with a desk lamp turned on.

I had many visitors coming by to meet Jesse James, the great outlaw. One by one, people came in and I tried to be amicable all the while wondering if this person was going to be the one to kill me. Eventually, a man comes in who I definitely sense is the one to kill me. He approaches the door and asks me to put my fingers in a device so he can cut them off. I tell the man, "No, you can't cut off my fingers." As we argue over whether he'll be cutting off my fingers the Sheriff comes and breaks the two of us up. He sends the man to the next cell, and visitors continue filing in. All the while, the man who tried to cut off my fingers is chattering and drawing all these parallels between my life and Jesus.

Eventually, the man who tried to cut off my fingers comes back and calls me to the door. I walk up to him and see him reaching into his pocket. It is then that I know this is it.

He pulls out a really small pistol. I put my hands out in an attempt to block the bullet. The bullet passed through my hand and into the side of my stomach. I remember thinking, "maybe I can survive this." The man who shot me then walked into an adjacent room and turned a Sanitation Dial to the lowest setting. He assured me that I would never live because the germs would cause an infection that I couldn't survive. So, I laid on the desk and waited to die.

Scene 4: As I'm waiting to die, one of the women that was in the cabin with me came to see me. She told me she loved me. Somehow I knew that she had never told me that before. There was no kiss or a real ending to the dream. It just ended as I was waiting to die. I didn't feel scared. It was a foregone conclusion I was ready for.

What's a blog?

So, here it is my first Blog. This is significant because it was only 6 months ago that I hadn't the foggiest as to what a Blog was. It was six months ago that I sat in a banquet hall with this pocket-protector-wearing guy who started telling me about his blog and others he reads. I didn't have the nerve to tell him I didn't know what a blog was. I was a confused little boy. The conversation felt eerily similar to sitting in the back of my parents station wagon while they had an entire conversation s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g o-u-t e-v-e-r-y f-r-e-a-k-i-n-g w-o-r-d.

Thankfully, as I write these words I can put all that behind me, and I can laugh at anyone else who doesn't know what a blog is.

I'm All Growns'd Up

So, many are probably expecting a tale of what has been coursing through my mind in such an event as turning 30. And while turning 30 certainly does make you think about a lot, the realization of my having "grown up" had nothing to do with the next click on my age-o-meter.

Something happened when my conscience went to San Diego. That is to say, my wife Sarah, went to San Diego. So, here I was in a familiar position of my conscience being away for days or a week at a time. My friends can vouch for me, any time my conscience has been away, disaster ensues (broken windows, trashed houses, drunks packed in boxes and left to be found by the police...I could go on.)

This time was different. Almost from the start. My conscience left on a Thursday morning. That Thursday evening I went to a pub with a friend of mine for a pint, then we went off to a prayer meeting in my neighborhood. The prayer meeting was closed. I went to bed.

This is when it gets eery*. What does a strapping 29-at-the-time young man do with a Friday night when his conscience is in San Diego. I'll tell you what a young man does (at least this young man), HE DOES HIS TAXES! Shitz. I did my taxes on a Friday night with no conscience in sight. Let me say this again just to allow it to sink in. I DID MY TAXES ON A FRIDAY NIGHT!

Saturday morning I wake up refreshed and ready to take in the day. Do I reach for the cereal box or instant oatmeal. Hell no. I'm doing oatmeal the old-fashioned way – on the stove top. I give it all the trimmings: Brown Sugar, raisins, dried blueberries and raspberries. I enjoy my concoction while reading the Indianapolis Star. Then I filled the pot with water to "soak" in order to shirk the responsibility of washing it until my conscience's plane was on the runway, right? No, I washed that pot til it shined. Weird, huh?

Weirder still is that I followed the pot washing by organizing my closet. By "organizing" I don't mean that I just picked up the huge pile of clothes and moved them to a less-conspicuous location. I categorized my clothes in the following categories: Jackets/Pullovers, Short-Sleeved Shirts (oxfords/button-ups), long-sleeved cotton shirts, long-sleeved button-ups, sport coats, suits, ties, and sports jerseys.

These short vignettes are just a microcosm of the week without my conscience. Those of you who read this and think "yeah, so" clearly don't know me well enough. I don't quite know what to make of the apparent change in me. I don't even know that I like it. But it is becoming apparent that I'm all growns'd up.

*-did you know "eery" can be spelled as I spelled it, or "eerie"...alternate spelling...interesting.