Just The Facts, Ma'am.

It was a dark and stormy night. My dogs were barkin' after a long night of pounding the pavement. I guided my key into the keyhole, turned the rusty knob, and threw my trench coat and hat in the vicinity of the coat rack.

Suddenly, there was a sharp rap on my door. (dum da dum dum).

"Yeah?" The door opened. A tall lanky kid. 6'3". Freckles. Red baseball cap. Not much to look at.

"Message for a Mr. Butt. Are you Butt?" I cringed. People were always getting it wrong.

"It's BOOT, not Butt. Yeah. I'm him." I snatched the envelope from the kid's hand. His had remained outstretched. I dug in my pocket and fished out a few coins and some pieces of blue pocket lint. I dropped it all in his hand and sent him on his way. (dum da dum dum).

"Top Secret". That's what it said. The envelope was crumpled, crinkled. A coffee stain spread across the left corner like a birthmark the shape of West Virginia. I had been hopin' for a quiet night. Hot cup of coffee, ham sandwich from the deli down the street and the newspaper. Was that too much to ask?

I tapped the envelope against my temple. Hmmmm. I caught a whiff of something. Perfume. Some Dame. Great. They never stick with just the facts. They're always wanting something more. Always wanting to make more of something than what it is.

I ran my fingers through the file cabinet in my mind. Nothin. This envelope was startin' to itch me where I couldn't scratch. (dum da dum dum).

I grabbed the letter opener from my desk drawer and jabbed it under the flap on the envelope. Again, the smell of perfume punched me in the face like a back alley bum. Yeah. This was some dame alright. I stared at the photographs. Impossible. Dames. My life was about to change. Dames. (dum da dum dum.....dum).

Spontaneous Curiosity.

So i was sitting at home, debating what to do with myself one day when there was a knock at the door. Odd, I thought as people had to be buzzed into to this particular apartment building. Normally I'd let them knock all day, not because I was worried about who could be out there, but because well my RA days never really left me. It was always the same guy who locked his keys in his room usually at 3 in the morning, my RD had given me permission just to ignore him so maybe he'd remember to take his keys with him one day.
Anyway, Curiosity got the better of me and i answered the door. What I found on the other side boggled my mind. A woman who I had never met was standing there in a Navy colored skirt suit. Her blonde hair was done up in a bun so tight I thought it must be cutting off the circulation to her brain and keeping her face on. Anyway, she simply inquired if I was who I was, when I aid yes she handed me this manila envelope, nodded once, and walked away.
"NICE MEETING YOU!" I yelled as the door to the stairwell closed behind her.
Perplexed I opened the envelope and inside were papers. Very important legal looking documents. I continued to read them, and started packing immediately. Along with the documents you see was a plane ticket to Washington DC, as well as 10,000 in cash. My instructions were to get to the pentagon as quickly as possible and when I got there to give the person at the desk these papers. Well this should be fun.

"Quack, Quack, Quack, My Preciousssssss"

Come back with me and let us peer in the window together...A small girl-not frail, not fragile, just small-blond curly hair, cinnamon brown jumper over a crisp blue cotton shirt. She's sitting in the back of the room, alone.

Oh her head sits a contraption of gray and black metal that supports ear phones that are much too large for her first grade head. She looks like a medical experiment. But for the look of contentment and anticipation on her face, you would think this was a tortuous episode.

In front of her, on the wood grained formica table is a book. An old book. A book torn and frayed and yellowed. She gingerly, lovingly turns the pages, revealing the story bit by bit. Relishing the story time with Burl Ives and his deep, comforting fatherly voice. The little white duck. The lily pad. The bug. The mean old red snake. She shudders and quickly turns the page. All too soon the story is over. She removed her headgear. She picks up the book with care and hugs it to her. She gently places the book in its resting place on the shelf and whispers, "I'll be back."

The little girl moved on from THE LITTLE WHITE DUCK SITTING IN THE WATER to many more books. But one day, an extraordinary book stopped her. A book by which she would, for many years to come, judge other books. The book captivates her still today...

...I remember being in the third grade. Library time was the highlight of my week. I remember the librarian saying, "Are you sure that book won't be too hard for you?" I shook my head no. I remember choosing THE HOBBIT for two reasons: the way the weight of it felt right in my hands and the curious title. What is a hobbit? From the first pages where I met Bilbo Baggins and joined him and Gandalf for all those delicious cakes (he always had enough!) I was hooked. Then came the elves and trolls and goblins (OH MY. And the creepy yet endearing Gollum. And the devilish, fiendish Smaug.

For the first time, I experienced what a book could truly offer--travel to another land where wonderful, magical adventure could happen. Suspense. Humor. And...friendship. The characters and I became fast friends and mortal enemies. (I have, do date, not seen any of the big screen movies of Tolkien's trilogy. The characters are so real in my heart and in my head that no one can do them justice. To see another person's interpretation would mean a betrayal of sorts to the ones I hold in my memory.) The animism and the coming-of-age theme of THE HOBBIT struck a chord in me. Tolkien's straight-forward yet casual storytelling in which he mixed danger and humor intrigued me. (Granted I didn't know those terms nor could I put voice then to what I had really loved about this story).

Only in recent years have I discovered Tolkien's inspiration for THE HOBBIT and his trilogy: BEOWULF. Tolkien was a BEOWULF (and Anglo-Saxon) scholar and used the epic to inspire the creation of his characters and battles. So it is to THE HOBBIT then I suppose that I owe my love of other British Literature because, after all, isn't that what good friends do: affect us for the rest of our lives?

"Tomorrow I shall put away my fuss and feathers and be perfectly good again"

When I was younger I always judged books by their cover. I choose to read the pretty books with the vibrant covers and cute characters plastered on the front over the old worn and dull books. That being said, the fact that I ever even gave the plain and shabby olive green book sitting on the public library shelf a second glance was a wonder on its own.

Little Women. It seemed like a slightly unusual, yet cute name for a book. I read the inside cover and despite the book’s appearance and musty smell, I decided to give it a try. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I discovered this book, probably in the 5^th or 6^th grade, but once I started reading it I remember not being able to stop. I couldn’t get enough of the adventure, love, and interaction among the March sisters throughout the story. I loved the oddness a girl being named Jo, and the boy next door being named Laurie. I never could wrap my head around the fact that Laurie, Jo’s soul mate, never ended up with Jo, but instead her bratty younger sister; however I eventually learned to accepted it because, after all, Jo ultimately found love and success in the end. I figured if that was good enough for Jo it would have to be good enough for me.

While this was the first time I read Little Women it wasn’t the last. I checked that book out every summer for the next few years and eventually purchased my own copy to read whenever my heart desired. Not only did this become my favorite book for years to come, but it also taught me a very important lesson. It made me wonder how many great books I had missed out on because I passed them over. As cliché as it may be, reading Little Women taught me to never judge a book by its cover.

A Very Good Place to Start

After some pondering on all the wonderful things I read as a child - and I read anything - I decided to start at the very beginning. It may not be my favorite book anymore, but it is a very important book in the history of me. It is the beginning of my passion for words.

You can ask me about it, Dr Suess's ABC. Any letter. Go ahead. Q? The Quick Queen of Quincy and her Quacking Quackeroo (a very fun hangman phrase. But now you know my secret.)

L? Lions licking lollipops.

B? Barber, baby, bubble and a bumblebee.

Y? A yawning yellow yak with Yollannnnnda on its back! (emphasis on Yolanda is, of course, mine. And that is exactly how Mom said it, too.)

Yep. I have it memorized. It's been some 19 years since I last had this book read to me (mom went on strike after a while) and I can still recite every word. She also had it memorized, which was fabulous for her. I'd drag it to her as early as I was allowed and I'd turn the pages when I knew the pages needed to be turned. Her eyes would stay closed, and I have suspicions she was actually still asleep, but she would recite the book dutifully. I had it memorized, too, but there was nothing like hearing Mommy say "Yolanda" to send giggles right up my spine. She probably was closer to awake by then, because she only had the zizzer-zazzer-zuzz, as you can plainly see, left to go.

I need a new copy for my own little one. Given the above tale, you might expect that mine is in absolute tatters. You'd be correct. The mice in the moonlight no longer exist, because I was apparently offended by the nine new neckties on the nose. I let the nightshirt survive. My x-ray and xylophone were scribbled on at some point. The binding is also a sad, sad sight. Yet, I know exactly where you can find this bit of over-read paper. My mother has it in a drawer, with a rock I gave her for mother's day when I was three and pictures I drew for her throughout elementary school. I think that means she finally forgave it for all those wake-up calls.

A Childhood Book: The Beginning of the Beginning

If I had to make a guess I would say that right about now, I'm somewhere in the beginning of the middle, I think.  Mind, I don't have to make a guess.  And even so, it's really nothing more than my hope and wish.  I could be closer to the end of the beginning than I think.

That would be a bit discouraging, though nothing I haven't handled before.  I'd prefer not to think about it.  Besides, this isn't really about where I am now.  No, not at all.

It's about where I was then.

Mrs. Hannah's fifth grade class went by remarkably quickly in my memory.  We had only one new student that year in our grade, and I barely remember much more than the numbering system she used to try to keep us in line, and that I gave a report about Leif Erickson, who was one of the best explorers ever.  Or so I thought.

But two events stand out in my mind from my nine months Mrs. Hannah's fifth grade class, intellectually speaking. Realistically speaking, I believe that was the year my brother assaulted me and blamed his bruised knuckles on an unfortunate trip into brick wall outside of school wall.  I should have never thrown his treasured X-Men hat into the water.

He should have waited for our sister.

No, that year marked the beginning of the beginning.  I read Gary Paulsen's THE RIVER, sequel to THE HATCHET, though they're basically the same book.  It gave me all the tools I believed I needed to survive the end of civilization.  And it was a good read, to boot.

I also read THE ORIGINAL FREDDIE ACKERMAN, by Hadley Irwin.  I probably would have never found and read it on my own, even though my appetite for any kind of text was much more voracious then than now, but Mrs. Hannah informed us that the author was going to be in town in a few weeks.  We were going to go for a visit!

Hadley Irwin was actually two someones: Lee Hadley and Ann Irwin. Two teachers from Iowa working on a collaborative project that, now, boggles my mind.  Writers don't work well together, not usually.  More often than not, our own ideas are the most important ideas, and to let anyone tinker with something that, to us isn't broken, well, you may as well stomp on our toes and call us dummy-heads for as much as that will please us.

Unfortunately, only one of them was going to make the visit; the other was a bit ill.  I think it was Ann Irwin who made the journey, but the mists of time have obscured the recollection exactly.  (Ms. Hadley died in 1995, though, so I think that makes sense in the grand scheme of things.)  This was a chance to actually talk with someone who wrote books - books that we should read!

So we all picked out one of Hadley Irwin's books, and I got the one about Trevor Freddie Ackerman, one twelve year old boy forced to live with his two eccentric aunts for a summer.  It reads a bit like a Middle-Grade version of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," in which the main character's boredom with his mundane life forces him to create a super-alter-ego version of himself.  But it was a splendid book.

I loved reading it.  I loved how the plot wound itself to a satisfying ending.  And I was mesmerized by meeting one-half of Hadley Irwin.  I got my copy signed that day, of course.  I still have the book, somewhere.  The day remains firmly etched in my memory.

After all, that was the day I decided I wanted to be a writer.

A few months later, in the sixth grade, I wrote what I think was my first short story.  I also soon began work on my own first novel, primarily in notebooks, when ended up a 40,000 word romp about a young man forced to live with his cousin and family for an entire year.

Both are absolutely terrible.  Still, I'd have never written them if I hadn't read Hadley Irwin's book, I think.  It's possible some other great piece of literature would have spurred me on to greatness.  Maybe THE GIVER, some time later, or TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, THE WESTING GAME or CATCH-22.  I'd like to think one of those would have got me started.

But I began at the beginning a bit early.  And I have Hadley Irwin to thank for that.

Right Place, Right Time

Is it possible to be in the right place at the right time?

Who decides this right and wrong business, anyway?  One might suggest Abraham Lincoln was in the wrong place when he entered the Ford's Theater that night, but what if he was in the right place after all - just a day early?  What if John Wilkes Booth had been caught that night, sneaking around with a gun and a half-baked plot?

I mean, I know I've been in the right place at the wrong time.

I was a day late to the airport in Chicago when I was 22.  Or 21.  Either of those ages sound perfectly fine, so either could be right, but I was certainly wrong when I tried to fly out of Midway after a weekend with my girlfriend's family.  If only I'd been there at the right time, I might've saved myself the cost of a ticket-readjustment fee: roughly 150 USD and my pride.

Oops.

Years later, I was at the wrong place when I tried to help my wife get her driver's license renewed, a fateful fiasco that ended in tears: our failure to locate the DMV jumpstarted the series of events that lost her license, social security card, and birth certificate to the nethers.  If only I'd been at the right place over my lunch hour, we'd have made it through okay.  (Sometimes Google Maps really isn't the best.)

I was at the wrong place again after having written a short story for a national Fine Arts competition.  I only found out months later that the piece I wrote won fifth place, nationally.  I celebrated quietly, but I celebrated alone and with little fanfare.  It had certainly been the right time when I won, but I was at home.  Oblivious.

But what about being in the right place at the right time?  Perhaps it's just as possible. Put yourself in my shoes, and consider:

Viewing the Fourth of July fireworks from your balcony with your sweetheart after you've moved to a new town and you don't know anyone or anything - not even where else to go watch the sky light up.  Renting just the right video game on a whim, because whoever heard of playing a game about farming, anyway?  Standing up in front of people you'd only known for a little over a month and successfully convincing them to elect you as one of their representatives.

Sometimes it's difficult, in light of otherwise mundane affairs, to understand the depth or breadth your actions today will have on your life tomorrow, but you press on even when all the signs say you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You draft another novel.  You move to another new town.  You spend another month wondering when your family will grow a little bit.  You laugh with your brother over a silly joke you might barely remember in the morning.

Maybe I'm in the right place at the right time, right now.

Right Place, Right time.

It was a day just like any other. Okay you caught me, it was a day unlike any I had expierienced before. it didn't even start out normal. My grand day started out with me peeing in a film container. Remember the old days when cameras actually used film? Yeah I woke up and peed in a container of film, minus the film.

At this point everyone reading this asks, 'Dustin, where are you going with this?' Just wait, I promise there's a point. So I nearly successfully peed into this wee container, getting only a little on my hands when I sleepily realized the container would not contain all that I had to give. Whatever, soap is a grand thing. I put the lid on the canister and washed my hands thoroughly. I mean c'mon it would be gross if i didn't.

The best part about this is I then got dressed and put said container in my pocket. Then it was off to town with Mom and about an ounce of urine in my jeans pocket. It was 'Physical day.' Ah yes, the day once a year where boys and girls are poked and prodded and asked very embarassing questions about themselves. "Do you use drugs? Are you sexually active? Blah blah blah." These questions are made even more embarrassing when asked by a female nurse/doctor/whatever she was.

There are other people who herd you along like cattle, pressing on your arms and legs, checking muscles and joints for strength and even making you do 'the duck walk.' The Duck Walk is a creation made up in the minds of doctors to further humiliate adolescents. One must squat down, walk forward with your arms tucked in, in the manner of a duck. I suppose this is to test balance or some such, but people still get to see you through the only slightly closed curtain.

After all this it's time for the 'big show.' Everyone knows about the 'big show.' Boys come out of the doctor's room with that horrified look on their face, well at least the first-timers do. Those who have been there before show mild irritation. Of course the 'big show' is hernia check time. Sure we all shower together and the like, but exposing yourself to someone so they can poke and prod is obviously something of another matter altogether. i dare not even imagine what happens to the girls.

This not being my first rodeo I proudly hand my vial of urine to the lady who seemed perhaps slightly too eager to receive it. I then continued to the pokings and proddings and the questions all the way to the end. The 'big show' was quite different this time, afterwards the Doctor asked me if I came with a parent. I told him yes, and I was then asked to go get them.

As I walked down the hallway to the waiting room I couldn't help but think how abnormal this was. No Doctor had ever asked this of me, it was something that, ironically, got my heart beating a little faster. I went out to the waiting room where Mom seemed to be in a lively conversation with some other ladies, presumably waiting for their children. When I told her the Doc wanted to see her everyone had the 'uh-oh' look on their faces. At the time I wasn't too worried. i was going to be a sophomore in high school, what could possibly be wrong?

The rest of this part has gone fairly blank for me, I just remember the doctor pointing at my chest and saying some words which really seemed to bother Mom. From there he let us go with a nod and a wink.

Well I played basketball that year sat on the bench most of the year, as I was not as agressive as I needed to be. Whatever I still loved it. Every minute of being part of that team. We had a miserable season but we all had fun. That it turns out is really what mattered. That summer I played at 'the court' with Eric and Brian, working on skills determined to at least sit Varsity that year. Then I was told we were going to Bismark for a visit to a specialist. Great.

I remember lying in a dark room with this really attractive tech chick, taking pictures and measurements of my Aorta. I could almost swear she could feel how fast my heart was beating. Anyway! The Echo-cardiogram was done and we waited for the doctor to view it. Talk about agony, minutes ticked by like days. Then we were called back to the first room we were in. That's when the fecalation collided with the rotary oscillator. (You get the idea, if you don't look up the words you don't know.)

I was at that point told I had Marfan's Syndrome, which is a whole mess of stuff that basically says any active lifestyle you once thought you'd have is now kaput, done, finished. I remember being so angry all that could come out was tears, because knocking out a Physician is generally frowned upon.

Now the reader asks 'How does this put you in the right place at the right time?!' Well here's the thing. I could have continued down the path I was headed for, playing basketball the rest of my high school career, more than likely joining the military. I also could have died tragically on the Basketball Court my Junior year and never again been able to bring the joy to people that I do today. I mean where would the world be without my witticism or takes on the mundane in life? Boring that's where the world of my loved ones would be. So because of that fateful 'peeing in a film can' day I am here, alive, well, to love, be loved and to be terribly witty, to the amusement of all.

Right Place, Right Time

Because I don't believe in fate, only the hand of God in my life, I know that my right place, right time incidences have been orchestrated by Him. My list is strewn with seeming accidental occurrences : standing outside the brick wall during lunch recess to see a red-haired, freckle-faced boy with black heavy glasses ride by on his red bike; attending a Lowell Lundstrom revival meeting where I had my first altar call; opening my computer and viewing a pop-up ad for a National Endowment for the Humanities invitation to attend Yale University; signing up for free tickets to an ice capades of Cinderella and being chosen as the winner; signing up for a free NASCAR jacket and winning the SWEEPSTAKES trip to Charlotte; defending a thesis and being asked to teach a graduate class. My list could go on to more and more "coincidences" but I believe they were all ordained. I can't wait to see what other "right place, right time" rendezvous appointments HE has in store for me.

Prompts Away!

So, who's going to offer the first prompt? Should we take turns? Should we set a day for the new prompt?

Kinda plain, don't 'cha think?

Hi everyone!

This is a test... I might need to change my font.