How I Met Your Fictional Mother

My son Franklin was sitting somberly on the edge of his bed when I returned from dropping my wife off at the airport for the weekend. She was on her way to visit friends in NYC and I had agreed to take care of the kids while she was away. I hadn't expected it to be a high maintenance job with the exception of your 12 year old daughter. I definitely had not been expecting it from my 17 year old son.


"Why the mopey demeanor, bud?" He instantly straightened up and and adjusted his dockers. He had begun hanging out with a bunch of different friends this year compared to last year. He had taken to wearing khaki pants to school with heavy metal t-shirts. 99.9% of these shirts are black, but Franklin's was blood red today. The cartoon severed head appeared as if it were bleeding all over the cotton. I suppose that's what the devil holding it intended.


"Nothing. I...nothing, dad."

"Go ahead. I'm here for you and your mother isn't around, so we can have man type conversations with her out of the house." Whatever that might mean.

Franklin or "Fdeath" as his buddies liked to call him hesitated. It was fairly obvious I needed to make a step towards gaining his confidence, so I went with the only thing I refused to do when his mother was around. "Come on, fuhdeath. You can talk to your buddy."

I didn't think a man's eye could roll that far back intentionally. "It's F-Death, dad, but thanks for trying. I'm just a little upset about something from school today."

"What happened, fuh...buddy. You know you can talk to me."

The pause was longer than I expected and I admit I had begun to fantasize about the pot roast Jen had left in the fridge for the kids for dinner. My son's voice shocked me out of my dream of juicy beef over garlic mashed potatoes. The fork was almost to my lips in my dream world before the source of my son's drama came out.

"Cynthia Crantz turned me down for the spring formal. It was embarrassing. All of the guys were standing by and saw it."


"I'm sure it wasn't that embarrassing. Could they hear what she said to you?"


"No, but they saw her dump that day's spaghetti over my head. It's lucky it was my red Braindeath t-shirt day." It was then that I noticed a couple of small, dried strands of pasta still staking claim to the fabric.

"I'm sorry to hear that. People can be cruel in high school when they think it will make them look better in the eyes of their friends. I remember going to the hospital at age 6 because John Fingus thought he would look cool if he jammed a full length blue crayon up my nose. To this day, I swear I know what blue smells like."

" What does that have to do with high school?"

"John was 19 and still a freshman. Some people are a little more desperate for attention than others. Maybe this Cynthia just wanted to feel like she had some edge over you because you have an obvious personality and relatively stable group of friends."

"She always seemed kind of cool. She was one of the few people that didn't mind working with me in bio lab or partnering up with me on English writing projects."

"It's not always easy to judge somebody's character at times. Your mother seems to have a knack for looking past all the personality quirks and bad decisions and see the actual person. How else would she have allowed herself to fall for me?" I realize now it is never good to ask questions you are not prepared to elaborate on in a conversation. This was one of them.

"What do you mean?" I had managed to gain his trust in talking about his awkward attempt at love. Lying may have made me look better in hindsight, but I really didn't want to lose his trust.

"I already told you how we met at a train station in Chicago, right?" Franklin nodded. "Well, it may not have been as simple as a chance encounter."

"So you managed to plan out a way to meet her?"

"No. This was definitely chance and most definitely not planned. I had broken up with Michelle who is now married to your Uncle Jake. Jake was my best friend at the time and we are still close, but it's always a bit strange to see a friend so happy with a woman that, at one time, tore you apart when she didn't want to be with you anymore." His eyes kept staring intently at me. I wasn't going to shake him by stalling with the details.

"Well, I had been alone for months and finally had begun to think about dating again. I thought I was ready when one day I saw a gorgeous woman already seated on the train from downtown. I had never seen her before but, as I stood next to her seat, we began to make subtle eye contact. It happens on occasion that you can see in someone's eyes how sweet and good of a person they are and begin to feel confident that they would never hurt you." Franklin nodded again as if he understood.

"We kept looking away embarrassed by the eye contact off and on until I reached my stop. I hadn't managed to say a word to her and had no guarantees that I would see her again, so I had to make a tough decision that affected the remainder of my life."

Franklin nodded as if he knew where this was going. "So you skipped your stop a kept riding with her, finally talking to her and asking her out, right? I'm sure I've heard this story before."

"Not exactly, son. You are half right. I did miss my stop and I continued standing next to her as people left. Seats began to open up and I was getting farther and farther away from my stop. I was frozen and couldn't bring myself to speak to her in front of everyone so...uhh I kind of forced the situation a bit." I knew he was still watching me, but I was never very proud of my tactics and never wanted to tell me son about them. When I looked at him again, he was still staring at me expectantly.

"One part of the story I didn't tell you was that this woman was sitting in her seat so she wouldn't have to stand and manage the large HP printer box next to her on the ground. I don't know why I decided she might think it was romantic, but I grabbed the box at the next stop and ran out onto the platform. Like I expected, she came out after me, but I didn't expect she would have pepper spray or begin beating me with her shoe. I ran out of the train with the box and stood waiting for her for about 15 seconds before I recall her standing at the door of the train already spraying me. The next moment I was curled in a ball while she kicked me and started pummelling me with her shoe while I screamed that I had just wanted a reason to talk to her."

"The train stayed in the station while she beat on me as the conductor and the passengers cheered her on with criminal intent as far as I could tell. That's when your mother showed up. By chance, I had run off at her stop and she had come up in time to find the woman winding up for a kick that may have prevented us from ever having this conversation."

"What happened?" Franklin was trying not to smile. He really wanted to stay upset about that girl today, but I was making it difficult.

"Your mother tackled her. I saw a foot coming towards me and then I saw your mother ling on top of the woman. That's about the time CTA security came in and separated them. I was escorted out of the station and tended to for my eyes from the pepper spray. Your mother and I talked while she waited for me to be able to get my sight back enough to read street signs and walk home. She seemed endeared by my sad attempt at flirting and gave me her number. And that's how we met." He had a strange look on his face, but he definitely wasn't upset anymore.

"If it's alright with you, Dad, I think I'll wait for Mom to get back for advice on dating. I'm too young for a criminal record."

Dating tips from Dad: Do whatever it takes to meet her, just leave enough gap between your scheduled date and time of meeting to allow for time to pull together bail.

Welcome to the revolution...not really.

Imagine if you will a world where anyone can post their thoughts at any given moment for anyone in the world to read, ponder and decide "this guy is a moron." Welcome to the world of tomorrow, people. I've yet to find myself an inspiring project to rationalize the effort of consistent blogging, but let's see where this one builds too.

I've tried different types of writing projects that just wear down quickly. I tried to write a reverse story on livejournal and quickly abandoned it. It felt too much like building a puzzle and trying to make the connecting sections so obvious that it began to feel like I began each subsequent post with "Previously, on this failed writing project...". I also tried a shared blog also with livejournal to trade off on writing a story section by section with a friend which quickly became absurd. I have additional ideas that have not yet fully filled out like a story on a neighborhood coming from each house resident's past leading them to the mysterious style neighborhood. It feels like I'm trying to recreate Lost without having a hook for why anyone should care about the place, but someday it may come to me.

Additionally, I used the old pencil to paper method a month or so back and scrawled an outline for three chapters of a story that started to sound suspiciously similar to the Joss Whedon project "Dollhouse", so that idea still needs some work to make it feel original.

With all of that said, I will try and utilize this space to write original pieces and ideas that come to mind and, if anyone out there comes to find any of these ideas interesting and think they are worth of a full blown piece, I can revisit them. I shall call this the critics corner where everyone can tear my stuff to pieces and I will hopefully learn from it. Target centered. And go...

Chapter 2

Samantha had been sitting at the end of a long oak bar with scuffs and dings from 40 years of pennant races lost and super bowls unvisited. Broken glass would occasionally find it's way onto a freshly cleaned floor from bottle smashed against the underside of the bar weeks before. Despite the turmoil, Samantha sat at the corner or the bar with her back to the wall closest to the entrance. A glimpse out the front window over her left should was all she would allow herself as any break from her biology masters coursework she chose to study on Wednesday afternoons at Tadwick's on 3rd and Stratman. Tadwick's was known for it's middle ground draft beer pricing and less than adequate food quality. It also was a locals bar that few of the college crowd cared to visit even when Tadwick's extended it's last call a full hour past the other local bars.

On a day when she found her focus constantly shifting to the sun peaking in through the half open shutters on the first temperate day in April, Glen was enjoying his first afternoon of the first job from which he had ever been laid off at 27 years old. His mood was hampered by a lack of alcohol flooding his veins and seeping into his brain. Samantha found herself unable to find a reason to return to her books after she observed Glen smoothly mimic a head count of the number of guys at a nearby table before ordering four shots of whiskey only to down them in a sixty second hell-storm by himself.

"Alcohol is a gateway drug to vomit, you know." Samantha had spent her high school life skipping parties with the boozing teenage crowds to get a full ride to the ivy league school of her choice. She continued this trend moving her way into graduate school debt free. Even as focused of a student as she was, every one has a slight draw to a Jerry Springer episode bound to unfold in person.

"I can afford vomit. I can't afford the drinks. That's why these are on their tab." Glen flicks his thumb towards the corner table of three men in their fifties with heads inches from the table and gaining ground with every nod of a head.

"Well, you should moderate at least or you'll load all of the alcohol into one shot through your blood stream. It could send your heart racing at a standstill which could lead to arrhythmia and possible heart failure. That's where the real beasts get into your life. I'm sure your current predicament can't be nearly as bad as that."

A beast is what she used to refer to health problems in the future. She had spewed a line of garbage with the hopes that she might convince him to not become a total jack ass before she could get a good story out him. "Beast" was the one word she should not have used. Glen would etch those words into his brain for the next five years as the last sounds he heard of normalcy.

The thing about being fired before lunch is that a lack of income cuts a man's hunger in an instant. Glen had not considered this before the influx of alcohol hit his empty stomach. Combined with a health threat running through his addled brain, the words he was now hearing sent him into a panic displaying itself as simple fainting. His head would have slammed into the ground had he not been sitting on a stool close enough to the bar for his feet to catch as he lurched backwards towards the floor. Nobody at the table noticed or made any indication they were anything more than bourbon scented decorations. Only Samantha came to his side to check on him. The cold ground was not a valid replacement for the bag of ice he would need later, but the heat from his head allowed a slight look of steam linger for a second before coming up to a balance of temperature.

Glen had his first unconscious moment with a skipped beat. Blakely had just entered the building.

Chapter 1

His heart stopped beating for a moment. One brief moment. Still it was enough to let the demons in. Glen's heart condition was a common yet rare one. Millions of people live normal lives without any knowledge that an occasional beat is skipped. There is no tingling in the arm. There are no chest pains. Just a slight pause before business as usual.

Glen is a bit analytic about his health at 32 years old. Not a hypochondriac, just analytical. He has spent his life learning the bare minimum about his body and making assumptions that have not caused him any damage. Not to this point in his thirty second year on the planet. Scrapes and bruises were not a big deal. Glen's immune system could handle those minor things as long as he wasn't rolling in toxic sludge or dining at Taco Bell on tainted lettuce or green onions.

Glen lived his life without much notice of his body until something did not function as it should. When he bumped his ankle on the coffee table at Trent's parents' house in the 7th grade, he couldn't recall if he had heard a slight pop or if he had felt a snap. He knew his ankle hurt but he could still walk on it. As long as he didn't let a diagnosis slip by his brain, Glen felt in control of his life. The first 27 were smooth. Smooth until Samantha came along. Before the old woman on the corner started pointing nervously as he passed, muttering to herself.

"That one dreams of demons, he does."

If only he could lose them again when he wakes.

Platforms

I sit quietly on the bench locating the one. The choices are palpable at 5:45 on a Friday evening. The numbers are astounding to the unfamiliar person. How could so many people fit onto one train? You might think that some get on the current train while the others wait for the next, but as the next is still ten minutes away, more will come to await the sardine-like ride home. More for the picking. I look without moving my eyes. Focused on the boards in the platform, one dark brown from moisture, the next lighter brown as if from a different time far before trains. I see shoes and pant legs scrape the ground. I listen for the voices, listen for the tone, listen to their words awaiting my cue. The key to my time here.
I don't need to catch this train. I've been here all day and have no plans to leave.
The man nearest to me grew up in the Soviet Union back when it was the Soviet Union. He's roughly fifty to fifty five with a leather hunters cap with wool insulation visible in the upturned ear flaps and bill. His deep Russian accent indicates years growing up in a country where everyone spoke the same words and the same dialect. The finer intonations and enunciation used in other languages never learned. A vocabulary stifled by a lack of early exposure to other cultures and other languages. Many Europeans understand many languages due to the close proximity of other nations with different languages spoken. The hunter here must have grown up a bit more central and not so border near.
"Come whenever you like. I am still on my way home. I am just giving you permission to enter my apartment. I smell gas." "Permission" comes out with difficulty like a trick question on the brain and a thick tongue. Another language learned later in life yet the accent stays the same. Assumptions made come quickly. Someone else must let this person in to fix the gas. He lives alone. Does he need someone to care for him? Someone to be thinking about him? Someone for him to be able to call and say, if you don't mind, could you let someone into my place? Here's a key. Keep it if you like.
It's rarer than I like today finding someone actually talking. The girl with the long brown hair in the mocha wool hat and multicolored scarf is talking to a guy with black hair, a leather jacket with far too many zippers and an earring that he wants to be seen. He tucks his tufts of uncombed black hair behind his ear every couple of minutes to avoid anyone losing sight of his rebellion.
"Every time I ride the train, I sit next to the same guy that seems to think he owns the raises section between the seat by the window and the one in the aisle. I wind up with half of a seat and get eyed suspiciously when I inadvertently rub shoulders with him like I caused the train to shift when it passed the Chicago stop and planned to take his wallet. He inevitably pulls his long wool coat closer around him like the train car just got colder and glares at me." Another swipe at the black hair that has fallen over his ear while he emphatically mimics the coat maneuver from his story. His audience giggles placing her mitten-ed hand up to her mouth and looks around trying not to be too noticeable with her laugh. She's flirting and he's being friendly. She doesn't realize he think of her as the same as the man that will, on today's train, do just what he explained to her moments before. A man with preconceived notions about people and appearances. The leather jacket is somewhat tattered despite being purchased a week prior. This is how it was in the store as well. Custom made for making people uncomfortable. Just as he liked. Just as he wanted. This coat and the earring are his test for admission into his life. She thinks she has passed the test, but he's not interested in someone that can only get past the differences in appearance for people she finds attractive.
I continue my search. They each have their place. A place they have chosen. A look, a mindset, a personality distinctly theirs. They don't need definition. They don't need guidance. They don't need a guardian angel. They just need themselves. I sit on the bench on the Purple Line side of the Quincy stop when I find her. That's the one, but she wasn't on the side I had expected. The purple line in the afternoon is the busier of the two meaning everyone rushes to one side because, at this stop, the purple line takes a direct shot out of downtown. The Brown line goes around the downtown are once more before heading out in the same direction. Some days I've sat on this bench waiting beyond the rain and wind. Beyond the pigeons wondering the tracks considering the Brown line side. It's a patient side. If you are heading out of downtown, the Brown line, at this point, is less crowded. Someone could easily wonder on at 5:30 in the afternoon and find themselves a seat before the end of the loop brings more travelers.
I can't imagine how it's taken so long to realize that I've been on the wrong side all this time. Three years riding this route and I had always chosen the side of quantity over what I now realize was quality. I begin to look up more as the train here leaves and catch her eyes while she was reading the side of the train. This train had a cola ad on the side. "If this is your train, this is your drink." I realize now, this is not my drink and this is not my train. Our eyes meet for a second and no longer. She looks away as soon as we meet. She does not fear my gaze, but she knows what it can mean. The gaze is not unwanted, but it can be unwelcome. In another time, on another train tine. The same look might bring fear. Today, however, I am not the only one hunting.
I look down tracking the different boards like one of them contains the secret formula for the antidote to a poison I have just been injected with. I need to think. I need to know how to act. How to react. I've been sitting and waiting for this moment, for these conditions, for this setting for six months now and never thought past this point. Panic sets in and fades. Life is not meant to be this difficult. When things are right, they are right. When they are wrong, they are wrong. That's all. I found her. That is right. She is on the other side. That is wrong. I fear I've jumped to a conclusion that is not correct. Waiting patiently, check. Eyes meeting, check. Devastated that things are not perfect, check. Stomach falling through the floorboards as I watch her train arrive before I can make any decisions, check.
An airline advertising more leg room owns the side of this train. I can see through the window as she stands as the train stops. Our eyes meet through the window and this time I look away first. I don't get to watch her disappear from the platform. I don't want to watch her disappear from the platform. I want to look up at my loss and see the bench empty so I wait. The train departs and there is silence. The hunter on the phone is gone. The leather jacket, the colorful scarf, gone. Silence between crowds. The platform is empty on both sides and I go back to my hunt.
A lonely practice, my time is precious to me. Patience is difficult, but it is my only weapon. I, too afraid to make any moves, am a hunter. I am seated stoically praying, pretending I have the power to bring about the end of these days. The end of this search. I sit...and hope.
A creaking door and a tap on the shoulder. Our eyes meet again, now on the same side. That was not her train after all.
When it's right, it's right. When it's wrong, you just need to work a little harder at it.

000 Open Forum

It's strange how impulses come and go throughout a life. MSN had a story on how the brain works. The memory take a moment in your life and dissects it into the tiny insignificant details that make the whole.

You may not realize it at the time, but you see more than you can know. That first moment when you see the girl on the front porch of the house next door. When you chase down that certain someone that you deliver packages to. When you run a stop sign and hit a car that you didn't think would be there. All of these moments store in your brain. The brain doesn't assign one cell to the memory. It breaks it up. The braided tails of her hair hanging down. The sunlight and how you stopped breathing for a second. The scent in the air. The light in the hall. The eyes on the other driver's face. All of these things are stored in the bits of the moment that they are and get associated to a sense of the moment more than the actual moment. Sometime when it's sunny out and the wind is just right or you walk down another hall with similar lighting, you will expect to see her there. A flash in the neurons. A trick of nature. Everything is connected even when it isn't. In these moments, you find happiness and joy. In these moments, you find sorrow and mourn your lost innocence. In these moments, some things become clear.

Today, in this moment, I flashed through the things I had dreamt so hard about in my life. The wants, the attempts, the cowardice. The futile waste of time that is what I am now. I realize, in this moment, that I want nothing else but this feeling. The sense of doing something I truly enjoy. It's finding what you've always loved and getting to keep it with you.

001 The 11am epiphany

There never should have been an inch of snow on the sidewalk this week. I watched the construction over the weeks prior to the snow. Beige and red blocks of stone raised from the sidewalk on Adams next to the Sears Tower. The exposed underside of the sidewalk was compiled by a valley of empty stone with a trail of copper tubing to heat the blocks of stone and prevent any icy build up. The areas on Jackson and on Adams on the south and north sides, respectively, of the block that housed the Sears Tower consists of a low graded slope. Maybe 20 degrees. 30 degrees. They were enough of a slope for dangerous ice formation, but safe enough for walking on dry days.
The Ace hardware store on the opposite side of Adams would make most assume the tower would have sent someone across the street for a bucket of salt to add to the effectiveness of the heat coils. This would not occur to those in the Tower.
It was anticipated that rain would fall for most of the afternoon on that October day. The wind was brisk, but none expected the rain to freeze on the way down. For an hour, the rain pelted the ground on the downhill section of Adams. Nine thirty in the morning until ten thirty, the freezing rain lay its trap as the snow began to fall for half an hour after that. The camouflage cover would be timed perfectly.
The heating coils had not been preheated. The stone would reluctantly heat up after thirty or forty minutes, but not soon enough for the lunch rush. A thin layer of snow had formed on the ground before the operational procedures were started and thirty people began to walk up the hill on the trip for lunch. A handful coming from the Tower itself, all shared the walk toward the west for food on an unexpectedly cold day. Twenty feet up the hill, a woman in a red coat find the first trap set under the snow. She slips as she looks across the street hoping to have another option for lunch that does not involve more time spent in the cold. The man in the three piece suit next to her catches her arm and saves her from her stumble. The pack continues the rush up the slope and all have made it to the top except for that woman in the red coat and one other following her. Three steps from level ground, her left foot in the air to step is the off balance factor as the right foot precariously placed on a snow less footprint from walkers ahead that send her face first to the ground. Her left foot spins backwards in an ark and strikes the man following her square in the jaw. The man's head down gave the woman a push off point to save herself at the cost of this poor man without a coat on. This poor fool felt the press of the shoe off of his face. The muscles in his neck strained as the pressure on his head sent through the entire body causing him to tumble backwards beginning with a back flip that ended with his head catching the stones. The stones, roughly 30 degrees at that point in the heating cycle, would be completely clear of snow and ice by the time I would come to at the bottom of the block. Third person is the manner in which the story was told. Third person is the manner in which it is recollected. The footprint on my forehead would be the only clear memory. In first person.