Tag: DPchallenge

Do I really get moved to tears?

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Now that’s a sensitive question. Despite how tough and rugged people must think I am, it turns out that I am quite a sensitive person. There are times when just some music will start to choke me up, but I will usually find the fortitude and manliness to fight it. For that reason it’s hard to say if something counts or not, so I will choose something of significance – something that I just cannot deny.

I remember…

I was moved to tears when my daughter was born. I couldn’t help it – everything was so intense! We were going to do it without drugs, but the doctor insisted on Pitocin and then my wife insisted on the painkiller that goes with it. We dodged the epidural, then my wife changed her mind when it was too late. Fortunately, my mother-in-law was there to help us through the delivery. She was definitely great for the moral support. I was supposed to cut the umbilical cord, and then because I was helping out at the top of the bed it came down to the doctor having to do it. Dang.

No matter how much I tell myself I’m not going to do it, I know I’m going to and there’s no escape. So I try to think of other things – baseball, parasitic wasps, foot-long hotdogs – can’t explain that last one, but it works. I’m pretty sure that I’m just coming off as really flustered. Really confused. Out of my element, as any guy should look when fully immersed in a woman’s demesnes of experience, even though I was fairly confident about what I was getting into; and of course, I had no clue about some of the particulars.

I cried many times after that, mostly out of frustration. My daughter appeared to respond to everything with the fear of a feral creature. We had given birth to an opossum. The first time I had her to myself for a couple of hours I thought I would go old-school, H.P. Lovecraft, I-just-looked-upon-the-countenance-of-Cthulu insane. My wife saw it the moment she came home.

Fast forward three months: the daughter is starting to smile and not screaming like a banshee as much. I was calling that progress. Another ten months later, my daughter is now over a year old, and I’m so proud of how awesome she is that I am almost moved to tears on a fairly regular basis.

Foot-longhotdogsfoot-longhotdogsfoot-longhotdogsfoot-longhotdogs…

What? No, I just got something in my eye, is all.

This post was prompted by today’s Daily Post prompt and their Weekly Writing Challenge.

 

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Am I really transported by smells?

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Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I am “transported” by smells – science would have us believe that the right scent can be an olfactory kick in the memory pants; however, there are certain smells I find to be more or less nostalgic for me: fresh tobacco; rainy day air redolent with humidity; the wafting flavor of almonds roasting at a fair; and of course bacon.

I remember…

Smells that have had a distinct effect on me: the smell of Play-Doh used to make me sick. Literally. It probably still would, but I avoid it like the plague.

Clean skin. Can’t explain it, but I love the smell. The closest match I can find is fresh-baked cookies, which I also think is just wonderful.

Okay, so now I’m blank. See, smells just aren’t that important to me in the big picture. I’m not a smell person, although I can tell you when something smells good or bad. Man I came in yesterday morning to work, and the guy who I follow – the guy who works my machine on the third shift – he smelled so disgusting, like a rank combination of sweat and BO and cigarettes and just nast. Guchh. And it didn’t help that I wasn’t feeling good; I was nauseous already, and we had a potentially vile situation on our hands.

I am more of a facial recognition person. My curse is that I can recognize a face after I’ve seen it – I would say 90% of the time. If I see somebody and I recognize them, and I don’t know from where – it will bug me all day long. Then I feel guilt when I realize where I recognized him from, and I probably should’ve greeted them or something like that… but, in the end I just have to tell myself “well they didn’t recognize me because they did not greet me. So no big deal.”

Yeah, I would say I am not a person to hop on the scent bus. I’m more like a guy who’s counting blue cars.

This post was prompted by today’s Daily Post prompt and their Weekly Writing Challenge.

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Do I really ever get bored?

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I remember. . .

I don’t really get bored all that much during the course of my life. And it’s not like I’m entertained by everything, or that I’m just claiming that I don’t get bored, but it’s really more that I can’t allow myself to be bored. Nowadays, that’s an easier thing to deal with than it used to be, because I’ve got a backlog of things that I want to do, and I have hobbies that I can engage in at any time, like running, reading, writing, yard work. . . among other things.

When I was a kid, I didn’t get very bored at all either, because I always had something to read. And when I wasn’t reading, I was out getting in trouble with my friends. I remember one time, just for kicks and grins, I got my friend Nathan to go with me to the local elementary school, where they were digging out part of the blacktop behind the school for – I don’t know – some sort of underground entrance. All I wanted to do was dig tunnels through the huge pile of dirt there and make a fort.

What ended up happening was quite different: I ended up getting trapped in the mountain and Nathan had to dig me out because the tunnel collapsed. I remember that I could barely breathe, and I was trying to just stay in control, and I was yelling at him to dig me out: “use the shovel!” Then I thought about how that would go. “Don’t use the shovel!!”

Nathan dug me out, and we went back to my place and I washed off in the swimming pool. My Dad mentioned how much dirt was on the bottom of the pool as if it were my fault. Like, seriously? Anyway, Nate saved my life that day, because I would have happily gone myself. I don’t forget things like that.

And I learned a valuable lesson: dirt don’t hurt unless you’re buried in it.

This post was prompted by today’s Daily Post prompt and their Weekly Writing Challenge.

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Is there a “never again” for me?

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I remember. . .

I would totally be the kind of person who would say “I’ll never do that again!” If I did something new that I thought would be the same hassle time and time again, but more likely I’d have some idea of where it went wrong and I’d be open to doing it again. I can’t say I’ve been in that situation very much though – at least, not that I remember.

The one time I remember, my wife and I were swimming in the river. This is before we got married. I think we swam downstream a ways, and then we had to come back upstream and we had to walk through this slippery, rocky area beneath one of the bridges and it was so treacherous that we had to hold onto each other to keep from killing ourselves, and I was like, “let’s not do that again.” Needless to say, she agreed.

Then we went to this Chinese buffet in town and they always have the most horrible food – obviously the last time we were there was not the first time – but the last time was the last straw. I said, “I don’t know why we keep coming here. The food is disgusting. The meat in the stir-fry bar is obviously old, don’t bother. I swear, don’t ever ask to come here again, because I never want to come back.”

As open-minded as I can be, I can definitely hold a grudge, too. Let that be a warning!

This post was prompted by today’s Daily Post prompt and their Weekly Writing Challenge.

Pieces of paper change lives every day

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I remember:

Pieces of paper that have changed my life: report cards. I remember that I got pretty good grades in school quite consistently until the sixth grade, when I earned a D in algebra. I cried when I saw that, because I had never gotten a D before, maybe not even a C. I ended up having to go to a summer school for math that summer, but it was pretty easy compared to regular school, so thankful for small favors, right?

Books. I was such an avid reader as a kid that there were times when I was reading a different book every day. And my favorite – the one that made me want to start writing – was The Thief of Always by Clive Barker. Every page of that book changed my life.

Bills. I got under water when I was younger. Call it a witches’ brew of irresponsibility, Michigan’s poor economy, an unfaithful live-in girlfriend, and general inexperience with keeping money straight. I learned the hard way how to keep it tight, and eventually I was able to wrangle another piece of paper that chanted my life: a bankruptcy. The kind where your debts are charged off.

A marriage license: my wife and I went to the courthouse in Steele, one of the larger of the small hamlet towns of
rural North Dakota, to get that. Of course, it was a breeze. After the wedding ceremony the pastor signed it, my Dad and my wife’s friend Trish signed it, and it was official – my life was changed. That led to another piece of paper that changed my life: my daughter’s birth certificate. Both the marriage license and the birth certificate are of the utmost importance, because they represent the best part of my life: my family, Clan Ross.

None of these were found on the ground. Nothing discovered like that could ever change my life, not the way I imagine it going. I hate finding fake money that turns out to be a religious tract. That being said, I don’t keep track of every piece of paper in my life, just the most significant ones.

This post was prompted by today’s Daily Post prompt and their Weekly Writing Challenge.

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