Five Stories for Halloween

It’s that time of year again. Autumn is “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” according to Keats, but to me, it is the season of things lurking in the shadows under the eaves of forests, under tables and beds, and certainly in the back of our minds. To celebrate, I’m sharing five more short stories at this, my favorite part of the year: Scary Season. Each Thursday in October, I will be posting a brand new short story on my blog, Shadows Lengthen.

This year's collection is listed below. Read them and enjoy ... IF YOU DARE (insert maniacal laughter).

Punch Buggy

Two sisters embark on a tense road trip to visit their ailing grandmother, navigating sibling rivalry and the stresses of the journey. But as they near their destination, a mysterious vehicle with a single headlight looms behind them, turning their drive into a chilling fight for survival.

Improv Cats

When jazz prodigy Wen-Dawg unleashes haunting, otherworldly music from his mysterious silver saxophone, his amateur bandmates find themselves drawn into a mesmerizing world. As the power of the music grows within them, they must confront the cost of brilliance and the truth lurking behind the notes.

The Downfall of Roddy Merton*

Roddy Merton, once a feared school bully shaped by his own violent upbringing, finds himself haunted by the memories and victims of his past in a chilling reckoning that forces him to face both his former deeds and the darkness in his own soul.

*Sensitive themes include emotional and physical abuse, homophobic language, neglect, violence, and deep psychological wounds—reader discretion is strongly advised.

“On a Country Road”

A man walks a lonely country road. Another man stops to change a tire and finds that his fascination with the walking man is a deadly thing.

“Gancho’s Haul”

Gancho, an ancient imp, moves in the shadows of life, stealing what we lose and feeding forces beyond our understanding with our sadness and disappointment. Mischievous and older than time, he keeps the balance between order and chaos delicately poised—beware what vanishes, for it may mean more than you realize.

As always, if spooky short stories aren't your cup of Irish breakfast tea, please feel free to scoop back through the previous DRO essays you may have skipped or missed. Back to my regular fare, come November.

Happy October! 

The Prince and I

Author’s Note: Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare between 1599 and 1601, is his longest and one of the most influential tragedies. Its story is based on an ancient Scandinavian legend about Prince Amleth, first recorded in the 12th century by the Saxon historian Saxo Grammaticus. The legend tells of a prince who feigns madness to avenge his murdered father, a tale Shakespeare adapted and enriched with Renaissance humanism and Elizabethan political themes.

The play was likely first performed around 1600, during the late years of Queen Elizabeth I's reign—a period marked by political strife and uncertainty because Elizabeth had no clear heir, paralleling the play's themes of succession and legitimacy. Early performances include one at the Globe Theatre and, unusually, a documented staging aboard the East India Company's ship The Dragon in 1607. Hamlet remains Shakespeare's most performed and studied drama, deeply rooted in the cultural and political anxieties of its time and drawing on earlier Elizabethan revenge tragedies such as Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy.

While we were in London, during our England trip in 2017, we did see a play in the New Globe theater, but it was Twelfth Night and not Hamlet, more’s the pity. It was no less enjoyable, but I hope to get back there one day to see the Prince where he once was played. 

Also, the 2022 action drama film, The Northman, is the tale as it may have happened based on Saxo Grammaticus’ telling. Worth seeing. Those familiar with Hamlet will see the connections.

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Shakespeare, to most people, evokes a sense of someone who may have existed and written some plays and poems in another era. We typically have to read some of his works in school, but the language of the time feels full of thees and thous and references to things that make no sense to us in the modern era. He and his works don't feel relevant, may seem impenetrable, and are difficult, if not impossible, to read.

During my time in high school, we read Romeo and Juliet. I think it was chosen mainly because the “star-crossed lovers” are themselves but teens, and the “hectic in the blood” is raging with hormones and drama for us, too, so they seem relatable. Even so, despite the play's ability to make sense to students for this set of topics, it fails to really click with us. This is true of any of The Bard's plays. As I said to a friend of mine who expressed a lack of appeal in Shakespeare, mainly because it was hard to understand, you have to see the plays performed. They are meant to be acted, not read, and, if performed correctly and well by those thespians trained in the art of Shakespeare's genius, they come alive in a way where we cannot miss the themes and moral lessons built in.

I have always been a bit of a nerd, of course. I fell in love with Shakespeare in middle school, when a family member bought me a graphic novel version of Hamlet. It was suitably dark, gloomy, and with themes of betrayal, poisoning, vengeance, and ghosts that suited me right down to my Doc Martins, and it captured my imagination. It was abridged, as I would find out later, and it glossed over some of the best bits, but it was one of my favorite stories. This was when I began to understand the significance of that particular play, but also the Bard as a writer and genius generally.

When it came to learning Romeo and Juliet, in high school, Mrs. Hooven did the play justice. She managed, somehow, to make it relevant, but the sessions in class where we circled our desks and were assigned parts to read were intolerable. With no context, Elizabethan stage English is not the most clear. When we watched the Franco Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet film in class, which employed actual teenagers (and won several Oscars, as I recall), the story made sense and suddenly felt poignant and stirred emotions and other feelings, too.

That tiny glimpse of power was not felt again for me until the January term of my first year of college in Indiana, where I took a classic cinema course and we watched the 1948 Hamlet adaptation with the Prince of Denmark played by Sir Laurence Olivier. Again, my spirit was moved. Here was a tale that resounded in me. A son whose parent has died, expelled from his inheritance, and with a distracted, dramatic disposition, no self-confidence, and feeling lost and filmed moodily in deep shades of black and white. My situation wasn't exact, but it was close enough to feel a connection. Except for the “everyone dies at the end”, obviously.

This was when I started to become a Hamlet freak. I memorized the Yorick speech (“Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio”) that everyone remembers because the prince holding a skull is primarily what we think of when we think of Shakespeare. This may also be around the time when I started to feel more comfortable, more myself, like the prince, dressed all in black.

Later, I watched the Mel Gibson version, and secretly loved the atmosphere but hated Gibson's prince. He missed the nuance and the emotional anguish and, in place, gave a histrionic performance that missed even the most obvious rhythms of the iambic pentameter the play is written in. I must not pretend to have understood all this, yet. That came later, but I knew somehow it was wrong. Also, sadly, once again, the Gibson version cut out much of the original play. 

In school in Greensboro, working on my English degree (this was before I went back to my home country of philosophy), I signed up for a Shakespeare class, but two minutes in, I hated it. Here was a syllabus for dullards who had to take an English credit, not for those who respected the Bard. In a panic, because I needed the class, I asked another professor if I could do an independent study with him, about Shakespeare. Dr. Rosenblum assented and, for the next semester, we wandered the many hills and valleys of William Shakespeare's four best tragedies: Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth (or, The Scottish Play). I wrote four papers, read and watched each play done in various forms (it is the vogue now to set Shakespeare's plays in other eras), and found myself absolutely enamored of the brilliance not only of the Bard himself, but also of the many, many scholars and actors and directors—like Orson Welles, for example— who have managed to perform his plays with the true dedication and respect they deserve.

The BBC made a host of made-for-TV versions of the tragedies that were not abridgements. They combined the various available versions, from folios to quartos, to make a comprehensively accurate representation of the plays, using the same minimalist staging that would have been seen at The Globe Theater in London. The best version of Hamlet, at that point, was the 1980 version, called Shakespeare Tragedies: Hamlet, starring Sir Derek Jacobi as the indecisive prince and Sir Patrick Stewart as Claudius. I cannot remember much about Macbeth or Lear, but this version of Hamlet struck me dumb, and I watched it over and over on our old VHS machine. At three hours, thirty minutes, it captured, at that time, the most comprehensive performance I was aware of.

I passed the class with an A and suddenly, as Dr. Rosenblum had predicted, the play was lodged in my soul. Later, but around that same time, I bought a book with the play in it, which had a dramatized radio version of Hamlet on a CD in the back cover. I ripped the CD, so that I could listen to the performance while choring. This Naxos version is now my absolute favorite and, in my opinion, the best. It stars Anton Lesser as Hamlet and has excellent Foley theatrics, pacing, and honor of the music that followed the several songs in the performance. Around that same time, I bought a book at the Friends of the Library Bookshop, downtown, called The Oxford Shakespeare Hamlet, a complete and annotated version of the play with every historical reference footnoted, the music, the means and timings, and the various folios and quartos. 

I also have Dr. Rosenblum's four-volume series called The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare, the massive Globe Illustrated Shakespeare, with The Complete Works Annotated, and volume two of Shakespeare for Students: The Tragedies. The only other truly faithful performance of Hamlet, based on all of these various versions (and depending heavily on the criticism by authors like Harold Bloom and Isaac Asimov—yes, that Asimov—of which I also own several copies, is Kenneth Branagh's 1996 version. This four-hour symphony gets almost everything right, accompanied by an all-star cast. It's not perfect, but it is well done and enjoyable. Branagh, who plays the ghost-addled prince, is too old (as were Gibson, Olivier, and Lesser) to capture a believable youth struggling with “an antic disposition,” but it serves as an excellent teaching mechanism for those not familiar.

When Elliott was learning about Hamlet in high school, and struggling, I was able to quote several passages “trippingly on the tongue,” obeying Hamlet's instructions to the Player King to a ‘T’. He kept asking questions because the play didn't make sense to him. It doesn't seem like a big thing to us, these days, perhaps because we're not monarchical or pestered by ghosts, but there is, as yet, a deeply moving story and one that “hath been taught us from a primal state”.

Hamlet, set amidst the looming stone walls of Elsinore Castle in Denmark, opens with a world unsettled by grief and suspicion. Prince Hamlet, reeling from the death of his father, is forced to confront a court reshaped by his mother’s hasty remarriage to Claudius, the new king, his uncle, and the suspected architect of his father’s demise. The supernatural makes its mark early: Hamlet’s late father’s ghost appears in the midnight gloom, urging his son to unveil the truth behind his “foul and most unnatural murder,” a command that changes Hamlet’s course and sets the shadows of revenge threading through the palace corridors.

As Hamlet grapples with the moral and existential weight of this revelation, the play becomes a study in delayed action and tangled emotions. Hamlet’s keen intellect and skepticism lead him to devise a play-within-a-play—“The Mousetrap”—meant to catch the king’s conscience, exposing Claudius’s guilt before the assembled court. All the while, the prince’s relationships fray: Ophelia, his lover, becomes collateral damage as Hamlet’s erratic behavior spirals and his trust in those closest to him—except Horatio—dissolves. As tension between outward appearances and inward truth grows, spies and double agents fill Claudius’s ranks, until nearly every character’s motives are suspect.

The tragedy explodes in the final act as the carefully set traps and grudges fester into violence. Poisoned chalices, rigged swords, and desperate confessions culminate in nearly universal destruction—royalty and innocent bystander alike. Hamlet, dying, finally enacts the ghost’s vengeance, but too late to save Denmark or himself. Amid the carnage, the play’s legacy sharpens: Hamlet’s struggle is both intensely personal and brutally political, highlighting the murky lines between action and inaction, justice and revenge, and the constant, restless search for truth in a world full of deception.

Like all of Shakespeare's plays, there are secondary and tertiary plots. After hastily—and accidentally—killing Polonius, while confronting his mother, Hamlet is set to be exiled to England, where he will be executed. Laertes, Plonius’ son and Ophelia's brother, returns from France in rage at his father's death and his sister's subsequent madness and questionable demise. Claudius and Laertes plot to kill Hamlet and make it look like an accident when he reappears on Danish soil. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, school friends sent by Claudius to spy on Hamlet, wind up on the chopping block in England, in the prince's stead. 

Meanwhile, the son of the king of Norway, in a posture of war toward Poland, invades Denmark under the cover of permission he had to cross the land, and usurp the Danish crown, but what he finds leaves him distraught, a hollow-eyed Horatio and the corpses of Laertes, Claudius, Gertrude, and, sadly, Hamlet himself.

The family is set up on a stage as a warning against all their sins, and so the play ends.

Despite the apparent differences in usage. Shakespeare's words from all his plays populate our language. His coinages are uncountable. We don't even know all of them. There are so many from Hamlet that I could write three essays, just listing them.

However, I feel compelled to share a few of my absolute favorites, and I encourage you to listen to or watch Hamlet again. Yes, I know it is gloomy, and everyone dies at the end (except Horatio), but you may learn something of value. And maybe, if you're lucky, you will find that it speaks to your soul.

Enjoy these quotes, but feel free to find ones that speak to you.

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt.”

“Sorrows come not in single spies, but in battalions.”

“Rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honor's at the stake.”

“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.”

 “Let the Devil wear black, I'll have a suit of sables.”. This one needs explanation: Hamlet is saying that the Devil may come ready for mischief, but that he (Hamlet) will be even more ready and better dressed in black fur.

“Seems," madam? Nay, it is; I know not "seems." 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe.” 

Esse quam videri about sums it up.

What Afterlife Will You Choose?

Author’s Note: 

Sometime in 2018 or 2019, I was accosted by a man holding a “Heaven or Hell?” sign while walking to get lunch at a local town festival. He was polite enough, but I’d had long years of preparation to answer his sign’s query. He didn’t like my answer. I quoted scripture to him, directly out of Jesus’s red ink, and he got rather peeved with me (the man, not Jesus). Later that day, police rounded up this man and his fellows because they did not have the proper paperwork to be at the festival, and they were made to depart. However, all of this got me thinking about what really happens after we die, and it is a topic I have returned to many times in the intervening years. 

The Scripture I quoted? It’s the one where Jesus tells people not to be performative with their piety. Matthew, 6:5: “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.” In this case, I’m pretty sure that reward is a reference back to one of the options on the man's sign. But who can know for sure?

I hope that, when the time comes for me to expire, I am surrounded by my loved ones. Nothing would please me more than to spend my final moments with the people I love most in the universe. If, however, that option is not left open to me, I have often fantasized about going out while doing something terribly heroic, saving lives or defending the innocent. I know that's not very likely, but I can honestly say, of all the possible endings, they both fit my philosophy.  

As Hamlet so eloquently points out, death is “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.” Over the eons of human history, our species has created millions of possible afterlife scenarios, all of which are based on no evidence at all that we know of. A recent book about the topic, the 2010 bestseller *Heaven is For Real*, is ostensibly about a little boy’s trip to Heaven when he briefly “died” from complications of appendicitis. The book blew up, and I remember people putting it on hold and complaining that we didn’t have enough copies. In the years since its publication, though, it received a lot of criticism, mainly by other Christians who called it “Heaven Tourism” and a “cash grab to pay medical bills.” There’s no evidence to suggest that the boy in the book was ever clinically dead. The whole thing seems like a ploy to exploit rubes, like all such books and stories, but people still read it all the time and probably believe it.  

It’s not just Christianity. I know of no monotheistic religion that has ever managed to believably prove its own version of the afterlife. Not that most of them have created an appealing afterlife to begin with. Some seem brutal, others unspecific, still others cannot seem to agree among themselves about what their own books say. Despite this, they proclaim to know without doubt what each of us can expect when we, again quoting Hamlet, “shuffle off this mortal coil.”  

Evangelicals have very strong feelings about heaven. Indeed, they use it as one half of a hammer-and-anvil combo intended to guilt people into belief. Problematically, Evangelicals claim to want everyone to go to Heaven, while simultaneously holding the incoherent belief that not everyone can be “saved,” as they put it. This goes nowhere in explaining the incessant Bible-thumping. Yet, specific questions about heaven are rarely forthcoming. I was told, as a lad, that we would get to see our lost loved ones, live eternally, and enjoy things that our fragile terrestrial bodies couldn't manage while living. When I dug deeper, though, I was put off by what I found.  

Heaven, it turns out, is not endless ice cream without tummy aches and soaring like an eagle. Rather, it is the mindless worship of a capricious and disturbingly self-absorbed deity, who demands constant adoration for all eternity. That sounds too much like the DPRK to me. Even the examples of heaven given in the scriptures that differ from this are dubious. References to mansions, pearly gates, and storing up treasures feel too full of avarice and greed to be anything truly heavenly. The message seems to suspiciously address the poor masses with an unctuous promise: “Just wait till you die and things will get better.” If one is living in a Hobbesian nightmare, like serfs in a feudal dystopia, then images of relief from pain, being reunited with lost loved ones, and eternal joy probably sound great. Still, to enjoy that one has to cease to live. It feels like a scam.  

As a child, I was told that I would be able to meet members of my family who had gone on before, so long as they had accepted Jesus as their personal savior. Of course, there was no real way to know who had agreed to this proposition. A question of this nature plagued my mother about her father's position in that afterlife for most of her own life. Since she could never know, it was a source of doubt and pain. He became, in essence, Schrödinger's father, and the only way she could ever know was to “wait and see.” She truly suffered and yet said little, because we were also told that longing to see our loved ones in heaven was akin to ancestor worship and idolatry and therefore, a sin.  

As bald-faced and tawdry as these doctrines appear in hindsight, they are specifically designed to hold people hostage by their legitimate grief and longing to be reunited with those who have died. Emotional manipulation and coercion seem a high cost for the proclaimed certainty of heaven. When I see proselytizers holding signs with “Heaven or Hell?” painted on them, I have an answer prepared that might shock them if they ever ask me which I’d choose.  

Judaism has a heaven, possibly borrowed from its ancient Hellenic or Mesopotamian traditions, where we might be able to commune with our ancestors or great ones from ages of yore. I admit that this is desirable to me. Judaism is less of a gatekeeper than a speculator, it is true, and places more value on legacy in its most temporal sense than on some paradise in the clouds. Those who don't rate that afterlife wind up in Sheol, a bleak and gloomy underworld, sometimes translated as “the grave.” Hey, at least there isn’t eternal torture.  

It would be interesting to be able to commune with Einstein or Spinoza in a Judaic heaven. Sadly, a cherem was placed on Spinoza by his coreligionists for his writings, which they believed he composed to disprove God. This excommunication was intended to deny him access, among other things, to his faith's afterlife. Pretty audacious, we might think, but this sort of thing happens all the time in monotheistic faiths. However, Spinoza was far too humble and never said a word against his accusers. I take pleasure in noting that we remember him and his incredible contributions to philosophy and human thought, while the greedy and dogmatic mammals who signed the ostracism order have long been forgotten.  

◇◇◇  

Buddhism and Hinduism take pages from earlier, possibly pagan religions far older than Christianity or even Judaism, and add ancestor veneration as a noble and expected practice rather than a sin. Both describe Nirvana not as a place, but as the final achievement of absolute emptiness after eons of purgatorial reincarnation. Loved ones who live good lives may progress from human to more noble beasts, but weak or evil humans could be demoted to bugs or worms or other vermin. Eventually, if one lives well enough, ultimate emptiness can be achieved. This afterlife, although the multiple-lives aspect seems absurd to me, has the merit of at least nodding at the most likely physical reality, to which I am coming.  

The polytheisms and folk religions, generally, have no afterlife to speak of, but my favorites are those where the way one leads life determines their afterlife. The Norse mythologies depended heavily upon a fatalistic belief system. If one died in battle, a most desired end, one could be sent to Valhalla, to battle in the coming universe-ending cataclysm called Ragnarok. If one died at sea, one went to the realm of the sea god, Ran, and his wife, and ate roasted fish for eternity. A more underworld-like afterlife awaited those who died in bed because of illness. None of it is particularly attractive, but it says a lot about how people imagined that what they did in life echoed in eternity.  

The many natural religions, which are sometimes called heathen, pagan, or indigenous, seem to have a deeper respect not just for humanity, but for all life and the planet as well, and therefore, often feel like a more believable solution. In these faiths, after we die, our bodies go back to the earth to make something else grow. This seems a desirable form of eternal life and also puts the final, inarguable position into play: that we are made up of what makes up our planet, our galaxy, our universe, and that, in the end, we go back to it. As Carl Sagan so beautifully put it, “We are made of star stuff.”  

I find this deeply enchanting. It is likely the most reasonable and scientific reality as well, and as such, is the least problematic position. However, if one really feels the need for a defined afterlife, then I propose another option, which is that we make our own afterlife. And no, I'm not talking about consequences, as in Hell or damnation or reincarnation. Rather, I am suggesting that we literally compose our own afterlife, as we would like it to be.  

I'm not a fan of the traditional afterlife options, but I can take the best elements from some of them. I love the idea of huge tables of food, each surrounded with people one might wish to speak with. I would obviously choose Tolkien, Orwell, Lewis, Doyle, Churchill, the Cromwells (Thomas and Oliver), Socrates, members of my family that I have missed or never met. We could eat without getting full and chat without getting tired. We could even have debates, where I could continue to have the brilliant experience of learning and growing. I mean to say, why stop after death, right?  

Then, of course, there are the other desirable possibilities. I could imagine myself wandering the edges of a Scottish loch, dwelling in a deep pine forest on the side of a mountain, just sitting, listening, feeling, observing, never cold, hungry, wet, or tired.  

I could wish to see the progress of my children and grandchildren and other members of the family that go on without me. Since the one unbreakable rule seems to be that one cannot ever come back, though, it might cause stress or strain to wish to intervene, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, to the benefit of reputation or to aid in some way.  

Ironically, that brings me back to an aspect of the afterlife that has always fascinated me but which I find to be more daunting than any putative damnation. What if, when someone ceases to live, rather than passing on completely, they get stuck, unable to find peace, and wander in a twilight realm between life and death? Sounds too much like other silly ideas, like purgatory or limbo, to me. Still, it is a daunting idea.  

Speaking of Tolkien, his idea of Valinor, the Undying Lands beyond the western sea, has always been something I wished were true. The idea that death is not the end, and that we go on, is one that is a formative part of the way we see the universe. The hardest thing in the world is to imagine a world where one no longer exists in any way. This is impossible for a conscious mind to consider, specifically because consciousness cannot imagine no consciousness.  

The ancient works of Bushido, as written in The Book of Five Rings and Hagakure, both express the requirement of the human mind to contemplate death at every possible opportunity. This sounds morbid, but there is a point beyond the depressing nature of the topic. Thinking of oneself being burned alive, cut open, attacked with spears, swords, bullets, wasps, a gang of hoodlums, or even being rent to pink mush by a trampling rhino are all intended to get the mind used to the idea that we are impermanent. Life is fragile. None of us will get out alive.  

That thought is daunting. Our natural position is to fear death. We know at some very intuitive level that, to quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, a thing we don't talk about at parties, that we are not here for long. We manage to convince ourselves otherwise and live in a veil of self-delusion. This deception is compounded by the lies told by religions that pretend there is something else beyond the wall of death, which both cheapens and ultimately negates our behavior in the moment.  

This mindset is off-putting. Why should I only do good in life because of a promised reward after death? I also shouldn't behave in life because I fear eternal punishment when I die. Neither of those positions puts the onus on us to be our best selves in the moment for the right reasons. This is why it seems that some monotheists are miserable.  

Focusing on death may seem to be a similar motivation, but there is one difference. Understanding that we are going to die—must die—and that our end can happen at any point and with little input from us, means that we have to try to take advantage of living in the moment. Understanding our mortality boosts our morality. If we know that this moment is all we have, we tend to behave better in that slice of time.  

It also helps us to be less egocentric. I’m not the only one who suffers and eventually will die. Everyone else is experiencing those things as well. How can I help them? By telling them that things will be better when they die, or by showing them the compassion and empathy of solidarity in mortality? I know which one seems right to me.  

I know what my answer would be to the “Heaven or Hell?” question on that sign, and I have and will give it again. Neither. I certainly don’t want to be remembered for spending my Saturdays holding up religious signs by the highway. To me, focusing on what happens after we die cheapens the one real miracle most of us take for granted every day: we’re alive now. Since I don’t know if I’ll be here later, or tomorrow, or even in a week, I want to spend more time with the people I love now. That’s the legacy I want to leave behind.  

That’s the one thing that I think the Norse and Germanic folk religions get absolutely right. Our legacies are the part of ourselves that really do live on in the hearts and memories of those who knew and loved us. That is how we go on. Someday, when our grandchildren are old, they will look back, hopefully with joy, and remember me, and in that way, I will live on. When they tell their children and grandchildren about me, I will live on, just as my mother, her father, and my grandparents live on in my heart and mind. That’s the real afterlife. That’s the one that I will ultimately choose. Unlike other variants, the work starts here and now, and, it makes the most sense.

Jean Therapy

The best pair of jeans I ever had was in high school. They were dyed navy blue, had a button fly, and fit my skinny pins perfectly, which is always an issue, as I have—as Micki has frequently put it—disturbingly long legs. I won't speak to the density of my stockpile in those days, however. I may have had three pairs of jeans, twenty t-shirts, a handful of favored flannel shirts, and a teenager's penchant for (or lack of) self-care, but of all my clothes, that one pair of jeans was perfect.

By the mid-90s, they wore to the point of tearing. One of the knees blew out, and I retired them, a little heartbroken, to be used as choring wear. The thing is, I distinctly remember wearing those jeans even with a hole in the knee for chores, not because I needed them, but because I had become so attached. I loved them.

Despite my love of Grunge music, which was quite new in that era, I wasn’t Eddie Vedder or Kurt Cobain, so I didn’t wear torn jeans to public school. The rest of their style I adopted, but torn or shredded jeans is where I drew the line. I still have that same sartorial instinct. On a walk about the neighborhood with Micki, several years ago, I fell and tore out the knee of a pair of grey chinos that I loved. Aside from the pain of the skinned knee, we went straight home, and I tore them up for rags and put on something with full knees in them.

Today, torn jeans are the fashion. I hear myself writing this in my head, and I know that I sound old, but I’m not criticizing so much as remarking. On a recent dinner date at our favorite local sports-themed restaurant, I counted no less than nine people wearing jeans with whole sections missing. Thigh, knee, shin, just gone. One person (they were all females) had so many holes, they were more akin to poorly made shorts than jeans. Fashion, for me, has a great deal less to do with looks and more to do with practicality. A good pair of jeans looks good, yes, but they are also reliable at keeping one’s legs covered and protected, which is the point, right? Maybe not.

Morbid curiosity impelled me to look up what a pair of dismantled dungarees cost, and I was stunned to find that a good pair of fashion-forward holey jeans went anywhere from $60 to $160, depending on the retailer. Imagine paying that for a partial pair of jeans. Style is important—too important. Humans like to look nice, and at some point, trends and fads dominate our thinking so that, if we’re not wearing what the cool kids are wearing, we feel as though we don’t fit in totally. This ought to end a minute after it starts in middle school, but it lasts through the professional years, too. I just don’t see how shredded jeans, no matter how trendy, can ever really be useful. Other than large bits of thigh, shin, and ankle showing between tiny strips of denim, what do they do?

Now, I have to say this here: I own a pair of jeans that I wear for yardwork that have a pretty significant hole just below the fly. I noticed this one day while wearing them to a friend's house to clean up leaves and debris from a fallen tree. I hope I'm the only one who noticed. Other than this one failure of the fabric, they did yeoman's service for keeping my legs safe from saws and axes and flying chips and splinters. I only wear them now if I'm working alone in the yard. They aren’t appropriate for anything else. They only lasted a few years, too, which is unusual for jeans.

Actually, industry standards have fallen off somewhat in the last few decades. I wear jeans every day, and they lose their shape, their color, and their durability very quickly compared to what I used to be able to get. Also, it must be said, jeans in my day (ugh, that phrase!) were not woven with stretchy fabric. It took months of wear, maybe even years, before you got them just right. They were hard-wearing, though, and dependable, and unless you gained some serious weight, they fit just right for even more years. 

When I outgrew something, a common problem for a kid who reached six feet in third grade, my mother would bring me to the VF Outlets, as we called them, and stock me up. Jeans in those days were not what you would call stylish, at least not the ones I was getting. They were coming pre-faded, or “acid-washed”, but they were still like putting on cardboard. They required a great deal of stretching and bending. Early on, she would wash and hang them dry outside, which reinvigorated whatever fabric toughness they were woven with. They totally resisted prickles and thorns, were impervious to grass, mud, sand, grit, ice, snow (so long as they didn’t get soaked), and fire. They were easy to clean, relatively inexpensive, and, if I didn’t grow out of them too quickly, lasted forever.

The first time putting on new jeans was always disheartening. They were stiff, and the creases could bite tender skin. They also had massive brass zippers that were the closure equivalent of a grinding maw near one's most delicate parts. It was best to never be in a hurry when zipping up, as that zipper could mangle like throwing a hot dog to a hungry Doberman. This is why I loved those button-fly jeans so much. It took longer to undo the fly (best not to wait until back teeth were floating) and a bit longer to redo them, but there was never any chance of damage to the male anatomy. 

Jeans in those days didn't require a belt. They were a bit longer in the loin area, and one could be assured that, bending or stooping, the pants wouldn't rip or slide down enough to reveal a partial view of foundation garments. This is one area where modern jeans have failed every test. I always wear a belt and have done so for years, but even with a belt strapped tightly across one's midsection, bending or kneeling causes the back of the jeans to slide down. They can pull down skivvies and untuck a shorter undershirt. Thus, I am forever pushing my shirts back in and hitching the jeans up. Anatomically speaking, I’ve got super long legs, as I’ve said, no butt to speak of, and a long torso. Because jeans are now made to fit the greatest common denominator, I have trouble finding long handles that fit my specific needs. They either come with absurdly short legs or absurdly wide waists or both. I’m not judging. I’ve been tubbier than in my whole life in the last eight years, but I never went above a size 38 waist. Now that I’m back to something more like when I was in my 30s, despite the normal changes to one’s body and the inevitably odd body shape that the universe granted me, buying jeans can be difficult.

Most styles are preshrunk, which is helpful. I remember getting a pair of jeans for myself, on one of my first forays into the world of buying clothes with my own money. They fit perfectly, looked amazing, and I remember feeling truly excited about them. I took them home and washed them to get out the sizing and that new clothes smell, and when I went to put them on the next time, I nearly broke my leg trying to get it through the pant hole. When they were finally on (not zipped or buttoned), I almost wept. They were, like the Grinch’s heart, three sizes smaller. 

Shrinkage of that sort is not common anymore. However, black jeans (which are what I like to wear for work) fade quickly. The sable beauty of a new pair of jeans begins to fade after just one washing. Soon enough, they are charcoal grey. They still wear well, considering all the emotional and stylistic accommodations I have to make for them, and they don’t shred at the knee quickly, which is nice. They’re Levi’s, which I never wore before, having always been a Lee man, but you gotta get what you can get.

My grandmother was a seamstress, and she, like the Animals song says, sewed my new blue jeans. Nana was amazingly gifted when it came to making clothes, and all of our baby and toddler stuff was of her vintage. One of her former coworkers gave her a bolt of truly traditional indigo denim, and she bought rivets and golden thread. Jeans of the true, deep indigo, are now popular again and can be seen worn by gents two decades my senior who can make casual look like a GQ cover. I'm not a fan, per se, but probably because of my earlier experiences.

Nana's jeans were hard. They were almost black, but the bright golden thread and brass rivets were fodder for my school peers to mock. They were straight-legged dungarees, but that is not what is meant today. Nana, bless her, cut the legs dead straight. If one could run in those jeans, excess fabric to either side of the leg continuously flapped against the other side. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I was already a laughing stock for this and the bright yellow twine, they actually made crinkling sounds when sitting or standing, and turned my legs blue. Jeans made from new sailcloth would have been more tolerable.

As a kid, it was almost impossible to say no to clothes from family, so I took them, and after begging to be allowed to not wear them, I only wore them when I visited Nana. On those visits, I was usually hanging with Uncle Dan, and not likely to cause hysterics with him, as he usually wore the same style. 

Jeans today come in so many shapes and sizes that it can be hard to find anything even remotely close to my “style”. I wear jeans daily, so I like to have multiple pairs of the same black color and style, which, like Einstein (and this is the only way I'm like Einstein), I only have to pull an outfit, not think about it. Saves time and mental power for other things, like walking into rooms and forgetting why.

Modern fabrics have all but made denim irrelevant in its former role as tough-wearing, resilient trousers for the hardworking cowpoke or welder of radio towers. I can buy a pair of pants made from fabric that makes them warm in the winter, cool in the summer, flexible, stain and moisture resistant (I sweat a lot), and essentially water resistant. As it happens, I do have some of these, and I like them. This style of lower-half coverings is great for hiking (jeans are not, and I'm getting to that) and packs beautifully in tight rolls. Many of them can also be worn more than once and resist odoriferous emanations caused by unavoidable flatulence or a day of hard, sweaty work.

Jeans are tough, resistant, and durable. They don’t keep you warm in the cold or cool in the heat. If they get wet and it is cold, you could be in the worst situation of your life. They are great for work, if you're allowed to wear them, and while they are perfect for just about any situation, from heavy labor to the GQ gent cover, they aren't welcome for most office dress codes (except for Fridays, if you've paid your dollar) and only for undercover police work. 

I'll never understand paying full price for a partial pair of jeans, but then, I'll never understand fads where people wear things because other people say it is cool. The chunks of missing denim fad is, I think, an attempt on the part of Big Fashion to see just how far they can take absurd ideas before the public says “Hell no!”. So far, the public hasn't uttered a peep.

Even so, I like jeans. They just wear harder. They really are the ideal fabric for tough, outdoor activities in dry, moderate weather. Given the chance, I would add jeans to a list of free, perfectly American things that anyone and everyone could order forever. 

The next time I blow out a pair of jeans, though, I can just cut chunks out of them and be really hip for a while, and I can use the squares of fabric left over to wave away mosquitoes, snakes, and maybe UV rays.

Half-Life Part 2 Sweet Home Carolina

Author's Note: This week, I will have met the requirement of living in NC for half my life. After this week, I will have lived here longer than anywhere else. While it has been hard to wrap my brain around this concept, it is a matter of life for me, for while I was flailing through my younger years, NC has given required order to my existence, as I hope I conveyed in the last part.

Like anywhere in the world, the South has its oddities and eccentricities, as well as its joys and celebrations. This week's essay hopefully covers both realities with respect and due reverence, as I explain my culture shock when I first got here and the essential experiences that a Northern lad has when he moves south and chooses to call it home.

Before I ever visited the South, my impression of it was based—like everyone else's, not from here—on the Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, USMC. Gomer was a spinoff of the former sitcom and brought Southern charm to the otherwise hardened Marine Corps. As for Andy Griffith, he lived in the fictional Mayberry RFD, ostensibly set in Griffith’s home state of North Carolina, and played a sheriff with excessive goodwill and bucketfuls of homegrown common sense. His dusty town had a brigade of colorful characters that gave humor to the rural landscape. Add Don Knotts, little Ronny Howard, and a laugh track, and you get solid hilarity that still doesn't capture the reality of life in the South.

To know a place, you've got to spend time there. I had no expectations when I got here, figuring that one state was the same as another except for sports team affinities and a few delicacies. I did expect the twang of the Southern accent, the sweeping farmland, and even a breed of that classic down-home Mayberryesque common sense. I wasn't surprised when that was my experience at first. However, the situation is far more complex after one has had proper steeping in the culture.

Pennsylvania, for all its mountains and farmland, nevertheless feels more industrial. The towns feel gritty. Steel towns and coal towns, and tiny communities like Schaefferstown, all have a slightly seedy feel to them. It doesn’t seem like a big deal if you are, like Hamlet says, “Native here and to the manner born”. This was my first real hitch when I moved South, because I thought that it would be essentially the same.

Not so. Even the most economically depressed villages have a quaintness and pastoral beauty that can be hard to ignore. I spent a lot of time wandering around my new county, and I couldn't ever seem to find that seamy underbelly feeling that Northern towns always have. Rather than a bar on every corner, as in PA, when I got here, Asheboro felt like it had a church at every intersection. Almost every breed of Protestant denomination was in evidence, and each church was, like some banks, the first. When there were two or more such churches of the same denomination, one was the first and the other had a geographical designation. For example, First United Methodist and Central United Methodist.

Speaking about bars and alcohol, Asheboro was the seat of a dry county when I arrived, and while some municipalities in the county sold alcohol at ‘package stores’ or grocery markets, there wasn't a bar anywhere, and you couldn’t get a beer or glass of wine with dinner, unless you drove to Greensboro, 25 miles away. Downtown was a ghost town except for the people who worked in the textile mills, so it felt to me. There was evidence of a once thriving economic center, but in 2001, it seemed to me that it was all but gone, except for a few shops and the antique store. I was from a busy, crowded part of PA, so even the smaller towns like Lancaster and Lebanon, dwarfed by Reading and Philly, had traffic, hundreds of pedestrians, and lots and lots of options for food and drink. I expected as much from Asheboro, but it seemed comatose by comparison.

In the suburban neighborhood cul-de-sac where we lived, life was quiet, almost idyllic. There was little traffic beyond the people who lived there. Everyone was polite, but intensely private. Neighbors didn't mean friends (at least for the adults), and though we lived in that house for the better part of a decade, we were never invited over to have supper with our neighbors. A block party was out of the question, I was told, which dampened my exuberant Yankee desire to sit in lawn chairs in the middle of the street, drinking cold beers or manning one of a series of grills churning out burgers and dogs, as we had in PA. For such fellowship, one needed to attend a church picnic, which was the same thing but with an ecclesiastical bent.

Up North, people are private, but there are close-knit communities where everyone gathers on weekends to cook out or play ball at the park. That sort of camaraderie was not evident to me in NC. The in-group mentality, while startling to me, is part of the underlying cultural structure of the South. Privacy and diffidence are the gold standards. Even people we are friends with keep boundaries in place. It isn't personal, just the way things are. The people we have visited with the most over the years are all former Yankees or married to them. Dropping in is unheard of. If someone asks you to stay for tea, you’re expected to decline gratefully, no matter how sincerely they ask. This was startling because, early on, I assumed that, if we had been invited, it was polite to accept. It didn’t take me long to learn the reality. Again, it isn’t about being rude. Quite the opposite.

In 2006, when the long and hotly contested alcohol referendum was passed and alcohol became available in restaurants, stores, and a few bars, the town began to sparkle, especially downtown. By then, as more and more people ventured downtown to new restaurants, the revenue helped to wake things from long slumber. Of course, anytime something beneficial happens, there are those opposed to it, and for years after the referendum improved the fate of our town, letters to the editor poured in as the writers hit the roof for a prolonged and agonizing period. In such a small town, though, each letter writer got limitless opportunities to submit their blather. If the editor of the once great Courier-Tribune refused to publish them, or if they edited the fare too much, the writers would go to the paper’s headquarters and browbeat them into complicity. This was alien to me. In the Reading Eagle or other papers near where I grew up, if someone wrote one letter that was their due for a year, or maybe longer. However, despite the doom and gloom prophets, our town has been booming ever since.

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Learning, as I did in school, that the Civil War was about slavery, and that the Civil Rights movement was about the horrid Jim Crow policies in the South, I fully expected that these scars would be evident, but I was unsure what they would look like. It was years later, after I started working at the library, that I finally got my full education about the situation, which, as I say, was complex. As they became evident to me in 2001, I struggled with the obvious artifacts of Jim Crow that can still be seen as part of the landscape. Segregation was long over when I got here, but Asheboro bears the scars of that era. Things are always getting better, and it would be futile to try to describe the things that shocked me now, but I was used to a much different reality.

It needs to be said, Randolph County has always been surprisingly progressive. The Underground Railroad ran right through our town. The anti-war and abolitionist movements were strong, largely because of the thick Quaker population. North Carolina was the last state to secede from the Union before the war, and that is in large part due to these facts. However, there are plenty of signs that, for some people, the Confederacy isn’t dead and the ideological battle isn’t over. It is sometimes hard to forget that we live in a former rebel state. A confederate monument displayed in front of the Old Courthouse and a handful of history buffs who still dress up in the confederate regalia at every occasion are just a few things that jar against the modern world. Discussions about removing the monument bring out shameful filial pride from people whose ancestors fought against the Union. As I said, it is complex, and it threw me when I first got here. It is still jarring today, though I’ve come to accept it, if not understand it fully.

As an observer of people, I had some issues getting used to this type of psychological difference. We are all Americans, and we all live in the modern world, but heritage plays a big role. Most people aren’t pleased about the nature of the bleak realities of the Civil War or Jim Crow. Some won’t fully admit that these eras were evil, but, like Churchill once said, a fanatic is someone who can’t change their mind and won’t change the subject. Every town has residents who live in a fantasy world, but when a man started writing letters to the editor about the steam whistle of the local textile mill disturbing the slumber of his Confederate ancestors, I wondered just how friends and neighbors could tolerate it. When this same person threatened and insulted my wife for a column she wrote in the local paper, I wondered how my fellow residents could ignore the abject and mean-spirited behavior.

As the years have gone by, I have learned that—personal attacks against my wife and family aside, but absolutely not forgiven—even the weirdos play a part in a community. At least the harmless ones do. This was one of the things that Andy Griffith got completely correct. There are a host of colorful people in each town who perform some kind of needed social balancing. To feel comfortable with a community like ours, there has to be a series of goofs who provide context. My eccentricities seem like nothing compared to the man who waves a Confederate flag by the side of the road in full regalia. There are a host of other ridiculous individuals who hang out downtown, or who call local businesses, or gum up the line at the gas stations. They are tolerated, even to some extent, revered. The community endures their depthless weirdness. They reside nowhere, seem to be everywhere, and though they are plain odd, they hurt no one. I work in public-facing service, so this may be where my Northernness shows up most. I have little or no patience for the eccentrics. We really did have a neighbor who was a mini Mussolini, and I was ready to have a real-life duel with him before he got very sick and passed away. Other neighbors knew his reputation and tolerated his nonsense, but I found that I couldn't. Maybe this is part of why I can never be fully assimilated.

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The most pronounced difference, though, is the Southern accent. I expected the twanginess and the sea of colloquialisms. To an outsider’s ear, every Southerner has a deep drawl. When I first got here, I found it equally enchanting and impenetrable. I learned quickly that the Southerner has a massive lexicon of agricultural references that are tinged with humor and local lore. The most challenging part was figuring out that some phrases are jammed together as one word, like “wallagoo” (a while ago), while other words are so drawn out that they feel like phrases. Here, I submit “shhheeyit”.

Given time, one learns that there isn't one accent. I’ve tried to document them, but there are too many. Everyone knows the rounded, aristocratic, softer accent, like Doc Holliday or Blanche Devereau. That is rare this far north, except for among older, large families that have been here for generations. The more common NC twang is fairly standard and ranges anywhere from nonexistent to a deeply “country” timbre that gives one visions of hay mows and fields of tobacco and alfalfa. Because the accent isn't uniform, it doesn’t follow any real rules. One half of my friend’s family pronounces the word ‘on’, like “own”, and the other half doesn’t, and he cannot explain why. Just like eye or hair color, accents brought to the family by parents from different areas create new strains that are unfamiliar to everyone, but that nonetheless sound like Southern English to me.

And yet, the blocky, staccato sounds of the PA accent (not including Pennsylvania Dutch, which we call “Dutchified English”) are dull, by comparison, but it takes some immersion to truly appreciate the Southern accent. I still find it irritating sometimes, but only when I cannot figure out what I’m hearing. The same would be true in other places where English is the main language, but the accent renders it impenetrable, say Scotland.

Because Southerners are born storytellers, a new arrival gets plenty of experience with the language. They are interested in heritage and they want to tell you about their history. Small talk is a big thing, but I learned right away that most serious subjects are off the table, except invitations to their churches, tales about their family history, the weather or college sports. Anything more than that is for close friends, but they are masters at keeping conversations going on thin rations. During the lockdown, depression rates in the region skyrocketed, as people who thrived on face-to-face connections were deprived of their favorite opportunities to chat.

Despite their friendly and gregarious nature, Southerners have hard and fast rules about those who come from elsewhere. I learned these quickly, though they were issued politely. One not born in the South will never be a Southerner. You may live here for decades, but you're never from here. It's not meant to be cruel or exclusive so much as a means of protecting and maintaining Southernness. This is an inbuilt mentality that grew out of the rejection of so-called carpetbaggers who invaded the South from northern states to make a profit on the Reconstruction.

Many of the stereotypes about the South are, in large part, true, at least to a degree. Southerners are charming, funny, easygoing, morally upright (generally), and friendly to a fault. They are intensely polite and have an unspoken but clear etiquette and express their expectations freely. They hate to be thought rude and despite a deep sense of privacy, they are supportive in a pinch and loyal friends. Every culture has its bad eggs, of course, but the ugly assumptions about Southerners—that they are sullen, shiftless, slow-witted, inbred or desperately poor yokels—are leftover propaganda from another age. There are hookwormy, dusty villages all over the nation, where these and other mean-spirited beliefs are true—especially in Pennsylvania.

After a few months of culture shock, I started to appreciate the pace of life, the leafy neighborhoods, the easygoing charm, and the polite interest in who I was and where I was from (I definitely sound like I’m not from here). There’s hardly any traffic by comparison to Reading’s sprawling suburban labyrinths of highways and roads. Every season has dribs and drabs of the previous and coming season in it, so that, again, like Scotland, the local idiom suggests that if you don’t like the weather, wait twenty minutes. North Carolina stretches from the Appalachian Mountains on its western border across lush piedmont to sandhills and thence to the coast. Every single square foot is gorgeous, whether you like hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, gardening, outdoor sports, boating, or just sitting out under the perfect azure “Carolina Blue” sky, North Carolina has what you're looking for. The region certainly won me over.

Sadly, all of it is slowly relenting to the influx of businesses and families coming here to work in industry or technology. The uppopping of franchise businesses like Starbucks and Chipotle to meet the frenetic consumer’s needs means more parking lots, more traffic and more people. It's not that bad, yet, mainly because most of our state is still very rural. Outside of the municipalities, one can still feel as if they are in the middle of another century. This might be off-putting to people who like traffic and crowds and high taxes and nosy township councils. The South is, by comparison, still quite relaxed, which is attractive. Every year, more Yankees are moving here and bringing with them their expectations, prejudices and assumptions based on mid-century television shows, but learning, quickly or slowly, that this is a wonderful place to live, whether or not you were born here.

There are some issues, of course. It is rare to meet someone from the country who isn't a little bit overbearing about their right-wing politics. It has taken me time to get used to the street preachers that pop up all over the place with dogma that is straight out of the most primitivistic doctrines. It can be daunting to know that politics is so important to your neighbors that, at one time, people wouldn’t use certain gas stations because the owner was a known Republican or Democrat or because they attended the wrong services. But this is usually tolerable, so long as one keeps their opinions to themselves. Recently, the national polarization has leaked into our world, but generally, aside from the occasional loony with a Trump flag mounted to the bed of his truck, it’s not been too bad.

In the end, given the choice, with all respect and affection to my father and my brother, and other northern family, I wouldn’t and have no plans to move back to PA. I’ve been able to—have been welcomed to—start my adulthood here, and I’m grateful. I’ve been to other places and found remarkable people, hikes, views, and even accents, but in the end, I’m always glad to be home. Something about not being born here appeals to my outsider mentality. I’m just weird enough as a Yankee to get and appreciate the Southern loquaciousness. I like a good chat that says much, but shares no real personal details. The food is splendid, and the weather is, if hot and humid, much more tolerable than up north. Hey, at least we still have fall and spring here.

It took me a bit to get used to the South, but that was, in part, what made me so grateful to call it home. If there wasn’t a challenge up front, I don’t think I’d appreciate it as much. And, if I do spend the rest of my years here, I can honestly say that in that time, I’ve made good friends, built a family, a career, and a community. For the welcome and the opportunity, I’m eternally grateful.

Half-Life Series: Part 1 Moving to North Carolina

Author's Note: This essay, and the one after, are about my journey from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in August of 2001. There's some of what happened before, some of what happened after. You’ll also find a little peeping into the family cupboard at a few skeletons—though let me be clear: the point isn’t to expose or accuse, but simply to state.

On the 31st, I will have lived in North Carolina for exactly half my life. Moving here saved my life. It deserves more fanfare. While it’s not unusual to leave one’s home state and start over somewhere new, this move was, for me, the most important thing I’ve ever done—short of marrying Micki. Soon, I’ll have lived here longer than anywhere else. That feels worth recognizing.

On June 29th, 2001, I met my future wife and her three young sons. I’d read about love at first sight, seen it in movies and on TV, but that day, in Pennsylvania, I experienced it for myself. Two months later, I packed everything I owned into my midnight blue 1989 Dodge Dynasty and drove from Milford, PA (where I was staying—I won’t call it living) to Asheboro. I had to get back to the four people I loved most in the world.

Until then, my life had been defined by being cast aside or pushed away. As a marriage counselor put it later, I spent a lot of time feeling in the way. My arrival—twelve years after my brother—was not an accident, but a surprise. Three years later, my parents split, and we flailed until my mother met my stepfather. Moving in with him, I learned quickly that my stepbrothers saw me as an intruder. I never fit in. Too sensitive, too imaginative, too rebellious, too talkative. I didn’t do my homework, refused to get up for church, and did mostly what I wanted. Teachers wrote on my report cards: “David talks too much and doesn’t pay attention.” The only adults I didn’t frustrate were my grandmothers, Uncle Dan, and, on the Bare side, my Good Aunt.

When my mother got sick, school kept me from joining her in Texas for treatment. Left to my own devices, I wasn’t a frustration to anyone for once. After my mother died and I moved in with my father, any stability I’d previously felt in their house on weekends was gone, along with their marriage. I only stayed a brief time, maybe three years, but tensions grew every month. When I needed love and support—I felt like an inconvenience, not family. Eventually, I moved out to be closer to old friends in northern PA.

As for romance, I only had friends, though sometimes I hoped for more. My only serious relationship, in my first year of college, ended mainly because I wasn’t from an “unbroken” home—and because I wasn’t settled. By 19, I was rough-hewn, world-weary, lonely, and a little needy. That girlfriend became engaged before actually breaking up with me, which convinced me I wasn’t made for relationships.

My friends started replicating their parents’ lives. I wasn’t on that track. As they drifted toward domesticity, I felt left behind—our common ground slowly disappearing as early adulthood put distance between us.

Living in Milford, PA, I took an internship at the local church, convincing myself I wanted to be a preacher. In hindsight, it was the belonging I craved—the feeling of respect, appreciation, and community. Preaching let me feel those things, though in the rest of my life I was chain-smoking and hanging out with characters from Chaucer and Dickens (the odd, fringe variety) and drinking too much. I kept up appearances for those who mattered, but I was living a lie. I was miserable. Maybe that’s why Raskolnikov—and Dostoevsky generally—resonated. I read Notes From Underground over and over in that Siberian stretch of my life.

Meeting Micki and her boys that June changed everything. For the first time, someone accepted me—warts and all. I didn’t have to change. My hopes, struggles, and even my quirks weren’t inconvenient. We bonded immediately, and the boys won my heart with a feeling I can still summon. Hope started flickering again. Maybe, just maybe, I was redeemable. Micki said I was an “old soul.” That made me feel like a modern-day Hegel. By then, even the ebullience of my youth had begun to gutter.

That Fourth of July weekend, I got a glimpse of my future. Micki’s family was welcoming—accepting—and for once, I didn’t feel judged or not good enough. I didn’t know it then, but some of those faces would soon be called “family.” People were laughing, playing games, having fun. That’s what family was supposed to be, and it made me realize what I’d been missing.

Over the next few weeks, Micki visited, and our bond grew deeper. In early August, her aunt drove to NC to visit, and I went along. Her aunt left after a few days, but I stayed. Micki drove me back the next weekend. Somewhere along that drive, I knew I couldn’t face the future without her. The closer we got to Pennsylvania, the more I realized my future wasn’t there.

I had to tell my brother and father my plans. It felt Herculean. They actually joined forces to convince me not to go. Nearly everyone said it was a bad idea. Oddly, their opposition only strengthened my resolve. Maybe they meant well—looking back, I’m grateful they cared—but I was never going to be stopped. At twenty-four, with more baggage than I had in my car, I left Pennsylvania that Friday and started an adventure that continues to this day.

I’m fascinated by the multiverse theory that suggests every decision creates new realities. Somewhere, in another dimension, there’s a Dave who never left Pennsylvania. That thought fills me with dread. I don’t believe in fate, exactly, though somewhere in my bones it felt like destiny to move to NC and start a family with Micki and the boys. “Fate” and “destiny” don’t feel like the right words. In old Anglo-Saxon, the word is wyrd—”to become.” That fits best: that choice helped me become the man I am.

There were plenty of challenges after relocating—some internal, some external. My stepmother reported my car stolen. I quit smoking on September 1st and spent a month cranky and sick with a lung infection. A week after I arrived, the Twin Towers fell. Micki’s ex-husband was not happy about me staying with his kids. It was all a lot to process. Yet, they didn’t seem like roadblocks—more like victories.

The world was in turmoil. We were heading back to war. People were scared. I saw the first flickers of Islamophobia and far-right menace. But in my own life, I was happy for the first time. We got married that October and started building a life. I became an NC resident; my dad’s girlfriend sold me her car, which I totaled a year later while calling him the day after his birthday—my first (and only) wreck here.

I had serious culture shock for a few months, but the boys lit up my days, and Micki stood by me through my flaws and the pains of transition. Like any newlyweds, we struggled, but I never felt unloved or unwanted. I had a lot to learn as a father and husband, but I kept at it. I have regrets about some things, and I don’t want to forget the past or close the door on those struggles, but we made it.

For the past 24 years, I’ve experienced something I didn’t know was possible—I could live my own life, not shackled by old ideology or other people’s doubts and fears. I found freedom, love, and my own family. These mean more to me than anything else.

Moving South, as a Yankee, was sometimes like crossing into another country. Despite open borders, the South has its own culture and identity—you can’t expect to ever be “from here.” By Southern standards, I’ll always be a northerner. But I’ve been here so long that it doesn’t matter. With Micki’s devotion, I’ve found community, calling, home, and belonging—things Pennsylvania just didn’t hold for me.

Like newlyweds, North Carolina and I had to get used to each other’s quirks. That takes time. Any time we leave the state, I’m relieved to come back—that’s the surest sign that this is home.

I’ve written lovingly about North Carolina—its trails, flora and fauna, culture, people, food, and quirks (both best and most frustrating). Like kudzu, North Carolina has grown into my heart. Sometimes I wish my brother and father could break the north’s hold and find the same enchantment here that I have.

This is my life. One of the best realities is that I’m an NC man. My family, pets, home, career, and purpose are here. So, too, is my healing. I’ve been cured of my Victorian childhood, my self-doubt, my addictions, and the strange dependence on pseudoscience and evangelicalism that still haunts my northern relatives. I’ve found peace and acceptance. The love of my wife and children has carried me through my pain. They loved and supported me at every stage. I’m far from whole—I still have scars, but they don’t dominate my life.

I’d be remiss not to clarify: I’m on good terms with Pop Bare and my brother. Their role in this story is to explain the alienation I felt. I don’t blame them. I was in a bad place and needed something different.

In Part 2, I’ll talk more about living in the South, the culture shock, and how some former annoyances are now my favorite things.

Heretic: A Philosophical Review

Author’s Note: The movie Heretic focuses on Mormonism, but the script puts the faith in its place as coming after Islam as yet another revelation. The film uses the vehicle of Mormon missionaries going door-to-door as a way to broach some bigger questions. I have a soft spot for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, not only because we have some Mormon friends, but because I have read the 1945 book, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, by Fawn Brody. This biography is essential reading for anyone wanting to know about the beginnings of a faith created by an obvious huckster and sex fiend. The story is fascinating and upsetting in equal measure.

Several Mormons that I have had the honor to call friends have admitted to me that, underneath their outward profession of faith, they are essentially unbelievers, but to proclaim such would be to lose lifelong friends and family forever. To me, this is a testament to the evil undertones of Mormonism, but also any faith that maintains such strong in-group biases. Of course, sending children out into the dark world to make converts is horrible, dangerous, and deeply manipulative, but then, the virtues of any faith are apparent in what their followers are expected to do to win converts. 

The cinematic universe rarely delves into the realm of philosophy and religion; when it does, it is hard to think that what is made will be in any way intellectually engaging. Some of the fare is blatant evangelical nonsense, like “God’s Not Dead” and its abhorrent sequels. Movies like this ply viewers with saccharine plots about unbelievers who lost their faith when something bad happened to them. We are expected to watch in abject credulity as the hard-hearted protagonist finds their faith again, after their grief is used as an expedient to foist born-again dogma on them. These “movies” only meet the definition of ‘cinema’ in the loosest sense. Badly scripted and horrendously acted, they are glorified ad campaigns—bankrolled by wealthy evangelical groups—and are transparent cheese fests. Only a simpleton (presumably, those for whom the movies are made) wouldn’t see through the hucksterism and casuistry of the same old con done up in cinematic lights.

Other religious films attempt to adapt parts of the Bible for the silver screen. Done less as an attempt to win converts than as blatant cash grabs on stories everyone is already familiar with, they are no less cheesy, but usually not so preachy. We might mention The Passion of the Christ, Noah, The Ten Commandments, and The Greatest Story Ever Told as notable examples. Hardly more watchable than the aforementioned straight-to-DVD ad campaigns, mainstream productions don't touch the depth of personal belief so much as exploit stories for box office success. Whether assuming, (as it used to be) that everyone is Catholic, or making the born-again characters in a story the butt of ongoing jokes in the script, all of it is enough to keep evangelicals in fits of foam-flecked rage. None of it gets to the foundational questions of faith in an objective or rational way.

I was hopeful about The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis,  despite the garish “untold” part, which everyone who knows anything about Lewis already knows. It is true that Lewis was an atheist and came back to faith with support from his friends, among them J.R.R. Tolkien. The movie skimps on the details provided openly by Lewis and never gets to the quality of his real battles with faith. If I had heroes, both Lewis and Tolkien would be on the list. I’ve read everything I can get my hands on by or about both men, including collections of their correspondence. The movie unfairly dramatized what were friendships based on literature, language, and writing, rather than faith. The viewer will either think that Lewis’s atheism was not sincere or that his faith was thin and insipid. Neither has the merit of being even close to the truth.

Then, I came across a movie that had a little fanfare but seemed to cause discomfort with viewers beyond its ‘horror/thriller’ genre because it allegedly asked serious questions about religion and faith. Heretic (2024), starring Hugh Grant and written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, appeared to finally be a movie willing to dissect the religious impulse and challenge belief structures, at least based on the trailer.

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The story centers around two Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes, as they go about their routine movements of daily mission work. They discuss visiting the home of a prospective convert who agreed to have a chat about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at an earlier time. After a brief debate, they finally decide to visit Mr. Reed (Grant), in obviously destabilizing weather. As they wait for Reed to answer the door, the viewer gets the sense that the opening scenes have all the hallmarks of Hansel and Gretel wandering into the forest and foolishly knocking at the gingerbread house. 

At first, Reed outwardly professes to be very interested in the questions of faith. In what may be unintended nods at M. Night Shyamalan or Alfred Hitchcock, the tone darkens quickly, and the viewers are made to feel immediately as though something is off and nothing is as it appears.

Reed is welcoming, appears genuinely interested in the discussion, and eases their discomfort about being in a home with a male without another woman present by telling them that his wife is baking a pie, but is feeling a bit shy. His initial disarming and friendly demeanor takes on the slightest edge as he proves that he knows much about the beginnings of the faith. He asks hard, probing questions about the most problematic parts of their faith. The more Reed goes on, the more uncomfortable his visitors become, and when he leaves the front room, ostensibly to get his wife at their request, they try to leave. Realizing that the key to their bike lock was left in their coats, which Reed took for them, they decide to leave the bikes and walk the few miles back to their church. The nervous sisters find the front door locked and realize that their only way out is through the house.

As the tension and mystery build, Reed invites them into the “kitchen” to meet his wife. Hesitating, they fake a phone call and tell him they are being demanded to return to their church. Reed admits that the front door is on a timer and cannot be opened until the next day and invites the missionaries to leave via the back door. They are ushered through a dark corridor into a library that feels very much like the sanctuary of a small church, and where Reed informs them that there is metal in the walls and ceiling that blocks phone signals. 

The walls of the second room are covered with religious iconography, and behind an altar set with candles, there are two doors. Reed goes on with his college-level discourse dismantling monotheism, describing how each subsequent variant from Judaism through to Islam and then to Mormonism, are iterations of the former, each more tawdry and harder to believe.

After a compelling rant, in which Reed also dismantles the idea of Jesus as having been based on previous historical and mythical beings with similar powers, he writes a message on each door. On one, he scribes Belief and on the other Disbelief. The missionary sisters are then compelled to choose one or the other based on how his message has shaken or reinforced their faith. Having gazed into the space beyond the doors already, when trying to leave, they are confused and frightened and well aware that they are more like flies in a web than unwary visitors in the home of an eccentric.

Here is where the movie drops its pretense and moves from a theological thriller to a ‘horror’ movie. I won’t give away what comes next, because I believe that it is worth seeing at least once, if one has the intestinal fortitude to withstand the disappointment. Yet, as the film transitions, the intellectual game of the first part starts to feel strained, then abstract, and finally disintegrates into something more tedious than harrowing. By the end, everything that we’ve heard and witnessed feels like cotton candy in the rain.

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Despite being well crafted and even well written, Heretic makes several mistakes that cause the film to feel disingenuous. Behind the intellectual rigor of the first half lies a film that is about a final girl escaping the clutches of a madman. It pretends to have equal depth at the end but perpetrates a kind of cinematic bait and switch. By subtle hints and clues, it shows itself for what it is, even from the beginning. It turns out to be no less tropey (and sometimes hokey) than any other selection from the genre. Proof that the movie producers think we, the viewers—perhaps like those who fall for televangelists—are imbeciles. 

The sister missionaries in the film, who are outwardly naive and innocent, are shown as more worldly than they let on. Reed, despite his outward appearance of wanting to have a chat about faith, is openly nefarious, barely keeping his devilish glee under wraps. At several points, the camera shows the viewer lovingly—almost lingeringly—where Chekov’s pistols are in the first few moments of the movie, so that we will know that the item is of importance to the progress. Discordant plot notes clumsily underscore the entire affair, but never so much as when, wet with freezing rain, the two sister missionaries debate departing before Reed ever answers his door.  This kind of hand-holding in script writing is why people are disappointed with movies these days. 

I watched the film with a desire, I think, to find something truly mindblowing at the end; to have learned a lesson, or to have had strongly-held beliefs challenged. I thought, at least at first, that the plot would reveal that Reed had churned up some ancient and therefore foundational mysteries and, like a character in a Lovecraft story, would say the archaic spell and bring up some horrible chthonic deity from out of space and time. Cosmic horror would have been an ideal climax for a movie that seeks, at least initially, to poke holes in grounded faith and belief. Hugh Grant as Reed perfectly captures the manic and obsessed antiheroes of Lovecraft, especially as he systematically dismantles the outward edifices of religion. 

My hopes were dashed.

The movie swings too hard from mystical topics to an unbelievable tale about a serial killer who has fallen for his own ridiculous religious delusions. Finding that his research inevitably leads him nowhere, his need to find meaning from nothing causes him to lose his mind. Thus, he kidnaps two young women to force the illusion of his own unbelievable faith on them in a bizarre reversal of their missionary work. 

As an analogy for the worn-out apologetics for the silly supernatural claims of religion, the film clearly shows to what level some people will take their belief to keep finding justification to believe it. Faith of that kind—that depends upon miracles—is merely self-delusion in a form that is palatable to the general public. As with any such dance, the effort gives diminishing returns. In that way, Reed exemplifies humanity's tendency to invent increasingly irrational beliefs as past faiths are exposed as man-made, rather than turning to embrace rationality and reason. This is the realm of madness, carefully composed under the fake calm of falsely modest piety, just waiting to find an excuse to kill in the name of its new god or revelation.

Like religious dogma, any horror movie where the young female protagonists fall into the clutches of a madman, the characters must obey certain immutable rules. At some point in the script, it is obvious that only one of them will survive. In Heretic, it was clear almost from the outset which one it would be, but even so, the writers did try to throw the viewer off the scent.

Between them, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes are not so much friends as merely thrust together by the rules of their shared faith. Sister Paxton is timid, naive, even a little immature, whereas Sister Barnes seems to have a little worldliness tucked under her prim black jumper. With worldliness, though, comes the rough backstory that is intended to make the audience think she will crack under Reed’s onslaught of logic.

The movie got the doe-eyed innocent part for Mormon missionaries right, but what it also did, as they wandered through the nightmare of Mr. Reed’s labyrinthine house, was show how faith becomes a choice rather than an obligation. The missionaries are trained to proselytize at their targets (marks?) until they choose to join Mormonism. One of the flaws of religion is that when one chooses to leave the faith—becomes an apostate in their former faith group—one loses their community. The sisters in the film, had a choice to enter Reed’s house, but the choice to leave was fraught with brutal consequences. 

My thoughts on this film are mixed. As the final scene goes dark with collapsing scenery, nothing is resolved. Cinematic symbolism, ever immutable, shows that the storm that trapped them is over and the sun is shining, but the butcher’s bill has yet to be tallied. By ending on somewhat of a cliffhanger, this movie skates free of the consequences of its actions, but does so with intent. How many times have we seen televangelist preachers shown for the greedy monsters they are, but all too soon, they are back on TV hoodwinking others? Quite often. Religion, for all it professes to be a force for good in the world, is guilty of unthinkable disgraces, supporting genocides, authoritarian leaders, murder, hatred, bigotry, misogyny, and war, and yet, we blink and look past all that because we like the sense of fellowship and belonging to something bigger than ourselves. That blinking is a choice, too.

Heretic is not like other films, in that it really does try to break down religious belief into something that is clearly man-made, but it proposes nothing in its place. Because the players are, in essence, all deluded to some degree, the idea that rationalism, skepticism, and reason are options for them is a foregone conclusion. In the end, this movie boils all strong beliefs down to the marrow of madness, but whether we continue to break bones to feast on the marrow is not obligatory, but a choice. The movie broke some tropes, at least at first, by being willing to confront these questions, but it didn’t go far enough to resolve or answer the final queries it made. I like to think this is because the final questions that we face are also not resolved. However, for all its initial bluster, Heretic faded to something silly and unrecognizable, but then, maybe that is a final analogy of religion and faith, too.

Summer Colds and Some Are Not

 We've all been there. Sinuses packed with cement, but the nose is still trickling. Ears clogged. Head throbbing. Hoarse as a raven. Crackling cough. The woozy, dizzy, wobbly feeling that one's head weighs a thousand brick-filled pounds. No appetite, or odd, specific cravings. Waking with the arid Sahara in the mouth. All oomph departs. We shuffle along, the walking unwell, trying to focus and survive, just counting down until our immune systems manage to kick out the offending virus.

600 years ago, the common cold, as carried by the conquistadors who landed on the Yucatan Peninsula, likely wiped out ninety percent of the indigenous population of North and Central America. Today, we still get symptoms, but only the immunocompromised are seriously threatened by a cold. For those who still get colds now and then, it can feel pretty unpleasant, just not likely to cause viral genocide.

I can empathize with people who suffer upper respiratory infections. I spent the early decades of my life fending off almost every kind of bug and illness. I had walking pneumonia five times as a lad. One time was so bad I wound up in the hospital, dehydrated and taking breathing treatments. I caught strep, ear infections (though my brother suffered those worse, and more often than I did), head colds, and chest colds, and developed allergies to dust, dogs, cats, horses, hay, grass, and leaf mold. 

When I moved to NC, I soon found that, as my lungs cleared (I spent the previous decade smoking), the inundation of alien (to me) pollen, dust, spores, molds, and fungi in the air left me gasping. Within the first month after quitting cold turkey, I developed a double lung infection and had to take cough syrup laced with codeine, steroids, and antibiotics. That is when I learned officially that I am an asthmatic. Since everyone around me smoked when I was growing up, second-hand smoke likely contributed both to my asthma and my breathing problems.

When I worked in the schools, surrounded constantly by runny noses and germy little paws, I caught everything that came along. I have a memory of a case of bronchitis so bad that I started hacking around Labor Day and was just clearing my lungs of it as I put up Christmas lights on Thanksgiving weekend.

And then, as if I were injected with some odd immunity pill or vaccine, I stopped getting sick. Oh, once in a while, I get a very mild case of the sniffles, or I might get the stomach bug that is going around, but generally, I rarely get sick. Other people around me drop like snotty, phlegmmy flies, yet I remain untouched. 

From July of 2011 until this essay hit the Web, I have only been “sick” with a cold three or four times. One of those times was in December. The most recent was last week.

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When one becomes immune, one gets used to not having the symptoms and then tends to forget how awful having a cold can feel. After a few years, it can be hard not to mistake immunity for genetic superiority. I mean, how hard is it to be healthy? It seems to take no effort. Everyone got COVID, but I never did. The delusions of strength gained from the Earth's yellow sun can be quite strong. 

No, I'm not from Krypton. I know where my immunity came from. No one can work with elementary school kids for the better part of a decade and not be dipped into the most crawling, slimy, contagion-ridden environment in the world. Children are harbingers of disease and viral infection. When the pandemic was blasting us, the main instructions were to give one another space, don't touch one's face or anyone else's, and wash hands regularly and thoroughly. Go to an elementary school and you will see every one of those rules (and several more) not only flagrantly dismissed, but joyfully, ecstatically, lavishly broken. 

Exposure to that level of epidemiological inferno is enough to make even the most ironclad immune systems clatter to the ground like Grandma's good China plates in an earthquake. It can also, in cases like mine, give one's body a list of antibodies so long that one slowly becomes like a supernova of immunity. Just let a virus or bacteria land on my skin, and white hot lasers erupt and vanquish it. All I have to do is wash my hands, and I'm good to go.

Now, I won't say that I am smug about my immune system. That would be to convey the wrong attitude. I don't think less of those around me who still suffer. Not really. I just thought people were impressed because I never get sick. However, what I thought were looks of admiration for my lack of susceptibility to colds were expressions of distaste and jealousy. It is hard not to brag about one's wellness when others are yarking up a lung all day for weeks on end. A word of advice. Don't tell your friends or family that you never get sick. It is just not the done thing.

Those glares of jealousy didn't start for me until I was working more commonly with people from the younger generations. I don't know what happened when they were small and got sick, but every tiny snuffle or ache must have been treated with the urgency of a medical emergency. One cough, sneeze, or headache, and the kids go running to Google for a diagnosis, then to the doc-in-the-box for meds.

My generation spent whole years alone outside, exposed to every kind of bacteria, germ, virus, cootie, and bug. We dutifully brought them home and got the whole family sick. I sometimes think that's why we were expected to stay clear of our folks; so they wouldn't catch what we had. All of us always had something yellow or green dripping from our mucus membranes. As I mentioned, I tended toward a Victorian level of frailness.

All the illnesses we caught doubled in intensity when adolescence flooded us with exuberant hormones. Stinky, pimply teens necking in the hallway were literal walking vectors, passing communicable diseases from host to host as the romantic impulses rose and fell with the hormonal tides. I remember at least two epidemics of mononucleosis where whole grades were leveled by the kissing bug and they canceled school.

Yet, we prevailed. We clung to life, like snotty-nosed special forces operators. Our parents sent us to school even when we were sick. My mother invited kids over to play when I got chicken pox. If I was sick on Tuesday, I was back in school on Wednesday, sinuses draining, coughing my damned head off, but so were the other kids. We learned to keep going even when we were worn and cadaverous by whatever ailment was “going around”. 

By comparison to our parents’ phlegmatic reaction to our arresting lack of health, my younger colleagues and friends fold like cheap beach chairs at the first sign of sinus pressure or a runny nose. I once had a coworker who had the uncanny ability to sense when they were likely to get sick within a fortnight and would just stay home, waiting for the onset of symptoms. For these delicate ones, anyone sneezing around them can send them into hysterics. They might not be sick at all, but if there’s even a chance, they will not mess around.

While we were spooning dirt from under the porch into our mud pies and then tasting them and getting tummy aches from eating ‘the red berries’ when we were kids, these children were being surrounded by hypochondriacal parents. I seriously once heard a former colleague say, after they had to clear their throat, “Oh gosh. This is probably cancer.”

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Catching a cold for me is so rare that, rather than dread the symptoms, I secretly revel in them. It is a novel experience to blow several tablespoons of mucus into an overburdened tissue and then gaze in to see if there is any sign of infection. It's been so long since I have been phlegmmy or had a chest cold, that the crackling cough and the subsequent expulsion of what we used to call a Rocky Mountain oyster, feels interestingly pleasant. My colds never stick around, though some people in my town have illnesses that last for weeks, and one lady, who—and I’m not making this up—works at a local big brand pharmacy and has had the sniffles since I first moved here. 

Plus, and let's face it, it can be fun to purchase over-the-counter meds. There are a whole host of nostrums, ointments, medicines, and tinctures to aid with the symptoms of a bad cold. One $30 bottle of pills promises the end of chest congestion in just two days. One zinc tablet, if taken within hours of symptoms, can end a bad cold up to five days sooner. If one has the provender to afford them, the selections are endless. I have to carefully remind myself that there is no cure for the common cold. It just has to be gotten through.

My own ailment is all but past, though I’m now convinced it wasn’t an actual cold. I foolishly mowed the grass on a dry, dusty day and filled my nose and lungs with all kinds of monsters dwelling in the chaff of previous mowings. My suffering began immediately after that and lasted several days. A mask will be essential next time. I did develop a cough, but as an asthmatic, this is fairly common with environmental allergens. Never did the expectorations from my upper respiratory system take on a sickly yellow or green tint. Anyway, I'm medicated for my asthma. I foolishly poked the hornet's nest of my reactionary immune system, causing an overproduction of histamine. I'm convinced this is what happened in December, too. If anything, these minor, piddly “colds” were from being out in nature, not from the actual rhinovirus.

Meanwhile, my younger friends treated me like I was a leper. To them, from a distance, of course, I was dying. Each cough or clearing of my throat meant that I would soon be a phantom. My suddenly raspy Kris Kristofferson-like baritone meant I wouldn't survive without 24/7 care from a trained ICU team, and even then, it would be touch-and-go. They were kind, from 20 yards away. One even asked me if my diagnosis was grim.

I don't mean to castigate them for being weenies. I mean, they really seem to care when someone gets ill, which is unusual to those of us born before the 1980s. If our parents had cared about us being sick, I would also take any accumulated sick time to rest and recuperate instead of working through whatever this was, croaking like a crow for a week. Meanwhile, I would have missed a whole week of emails, deadlines, and other things that I'm not going to let the sniffles put me behind on. If the young ones want to shudder and scamper when I sneeze, that’s on them. I’m not sure you can catch asthma, but I dig sounding like Kris Kristofferson, so I guess it all balances in the end.