Snake in the...Huh?

Not that I'm setting out to do a series on pesky critters...but here's another tale. Some of you have heard it before, but I was recently reminded of the circumstances, so I'm agonna tell it again.

My last job before I hitched up the wagon (read: mini-van full of books, instruments, and cats) to head out west (read: Fort Collins, Colorado) was as a computer support tech for a small state college nestled in the Vermont hills. We maintained the computer labs, set up PCs for faculty and staff, and provided helpdesk support for students and employees alike. It was a fun job, for the most part. We certainly kept busy, and...well, let's just say academia's reputation for eccentricity isn't entirely unearned, or at least it wasn't there. Quite a few interesting characters and situations.

The campus itself is a hodgepodge of some pretty distinct "characters" as well, architecturally speaking. The core of the main building was originally the estate of the first president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and is classic brick (and as I recall, was rumored to be haunted, at least in parts, by a certain past college president). Other buildings were spliced to it over the years: for example, a theater, a student center, and a concrete and glass monstrosity (my opinion only) of a "modern" library, built in the 70s. It includes an outdoor staircase made up of steps too short (in height) and too deep for anyone to maneuver without looking like a drunken gimp.

The campus also encompasses a few old farmhouses. The alumni relations department was--at least when I was there--situated in one such house: desk and printers and file cabinets packed in willy nilly through what had once been foyer, dining room, etc. Not exactly ideal modern office space, but it had its cozy charms. They did have to get a little creative when it came to stringing network and power cables around, especially since for the most part the furniture wasn't made for computers either, but they made it work.

One day I was on helpdesk duty, and a call came in from one of the alumni relations gals. They were trying to hook up speakers to one of their computers in order to watch a training video, but couldn't get any sound to come out. I ran through your usual basic troubleshooting, but to no avail. So I opened a ticket and headed up for a first-hand look. (Ah, the luxury of doing on-site support!)

When I got up to the house, I first did what any self-respecting tech would do: went to check if the speakers were actually plugged in correctly. I traced the cable down into a messy wad beneath the desk and was giving it some gentle tugs to help figure out where it was going when...one of the other cables moved. And not because I'd pulled it. And then it put out a bright-eyed little head and flicked a forked tongue at me.

Now...I realize garter snakes are helpful critters and all that. I realize they aren't exactly major threats. When I was a kid, we'd actually go off and search for garter snakes on purpose, turning over logs and seeking out the places they liked to sun themselves. We were pretty good at catching them, holding them right behind the head so they couldn't flick around and bite. Thus safely restrained, it was fascinating to feel the softness of their back scales, their armored underbellies. (I'm sure this was much more enjoyable for us than for the snakes.) I did get bitten a few times, but the bites were rarely worse than a needle stick--albeit a needle stick that Completely Freaked Mom Out.

Point is, they didn't really alarm me as a kid. However, somewhere along the line a sort of latent instinct (irrational but uncontrollable) activated itself, and now...the adrenaline kicks in before my brain can even fully identify "snake!!!" So when the "cable" revealed its true identity, I let out something between a whimper and a yelp and in about two seconds flat had propelled myself up onto the nearest chair.

Apparently this instinctual reaction to snakes isn't an isolated case. When I chair jumped, heads came up throughout the front rooms, and the instant I stammeringly made known the situation, I had company atop the furniture. A conference ensued. "You catch it and throw it out." "No, you do it." Ultimately one of us called someone from maintenance to come deal with the problem, and we did the best we could until his arrival.

This, I could mention, is something never accounted for in books. In fairy tales, when the princess is awaiting rescue from the dragon, the focus of the story is always on the action: the prince riding across league after league of hostile wasteland as he comes to her aid. No one ever details the awkward small talk of the rescuees and how they handled the tension of waiting. Someone should provide more guidance, srsly.

But eventually our prince arrived, in the form of a bemused middle-aged maintenance guy. He retrieved the snake (all scant 12 inches of it) and threw it outside.

And there was much rejoicing.

And then I fixed the sound issue (a driver or some such thing, I believe), and headed back to the office, where (it being a small and gossip-prone campus) news of my exploits had already spread. You'd think I'd get some credit for doing my duty in hazardous circumstances, but noooo. For the rest of my time there, I could count on the occasional not-quite-innocently-asked, "So, seen any snakes lately?" *shudder*

On the other hand, I imagine it was an even more alarming day for the snake...

Vignette #13 - Visitor

Figure I might as well finish them out, since I only had a few more to go to complete the #15.  OK, so I'm nearly three weeks late and it's really a little too long to qualify.  Oh well.

I think this one may grow into a short story.

Norman was waiting for Amanda when she got home, sitting on the bottom step with his knees drawn up and the old blue coat she'd given him last time pulled tightly around him.  The coat was much the worse for wear: filthy, the edges of the cuffs hanging in ragged, sodden tatters.  Duct tape patched a hole in one sleeve; greyish stuffing spilled out on one side where the tape had pulled loose.  He jumped up with an open grin as she approached, revealing a new gap--one of his top teeth was missing.  "Heya, sis!"  For a moment, he seemed about to embrace her, and she drew back involuntarily.  A shadow crossed his face; he held out a rough, black-nailed hand instead, and she grabbed on, swallowing her disgust.
"Norman," she said.  "It's been awhile."  His hand was not only dirty but also cold as ice and clammy.  It took all she had not to pull away immediately.  "I gave you gloves," she said.  "Two pairs."
He shrugged.  "I get by."  Which meant, of course, that he'd given them away.  He always did.  It was a wonder he still had the coat.  Probably no one else wanted it.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
He looked away.  "Just wanted to see you."
"Really."
He raised his head to look at her, his grey eyes thoughtful, but said nothing.  She sighed.
A neighbor pulled up in the drive next door; the woman stared at Norman with alarm as she climbed out of her car.  Amanda felt her face flush, and felt simultaneously angry with herself for her shame and with Norman for shaming her.  She managed a weak smile and a wave.  "'Afternoon, Marie!" she called out.  Marie smiled back uncertainly, and hurried up the stairs and inside, glancing back over her shoulder, her face pinched.
"Thinks I'm going to mug you or something," Norman whispered cheerfully.  He knew--that was the worst of it.  He knew, and yet...
Amanda pursed her lips and turned away.  "You'd better come on in," she muttered.  She stepped past him up the steps, unlocked the door and banged it open, switched on the light, dropped her keys with a clatter in the tray by the door, and went into the house, Norman following silently at her heels.  They'd done this often enough to have a sort of ritual, she thought bitterly.  No words were needed.  Norman waited with his hands folded in front of him while she dug out some clothes she'd picked up for him in the interim; he took the shirt and pants, underwear and socks, pulled a plastic grocery bag from the bin by the laundry room, and went up to the upstairs bathroom to clean up.  Always the same thing.  And as always, when he came down, shaven and scrubbed, carrying his dirty clothes in the grocery bag, she asked her usual question: "Have you eaten?"
And as usual, he tried to make light of his situation.  "Depends on what you mean by that.  I couldn't possibly have arrived at my current age and state of being if I'd never--"
"Norman," she said sharply, "are you hungry?"
The half-smile faded and something like sadness flickered in his eyes for a moment.  "Yes," he said quietly.
"OK, then."  She slammed the refrigerator door open and started taking out containers of leftovers, banging each one in turn down on the counter as Norman stood silently waiting in his clean clothes and his stocking feet, blinking a little at each impact.  Why was she being this way? she asked herself.  To punish him?  For what, exactly?
When the last option was set out, she turned around, leaning back against the counter with her arms folded and demanded, "Which one?  And don't say it doesn't matter.  That doesn't simplify anything.  There's chili, tuna casserole, turkey for sandwiches, or I can heat you up a burrito or make an omelet.  Which?"
He gazed at the containers, swallowing.  "Chili," he said finally.
"Fine."  She snapped the lid off, set it loosely on top, and shoved the container in the microwave. "And sit down, why don't you?" she said, pointing at a chair.  "You're making me nervous."

Vignette #8 - Sharp

Since I've slipped into poetry, and while I'm in revealing-my-dark-side mode...I present another not altogether cheery piece...

Vignette #6 - Spat (and now for something completely different...)

Total fiction this time around, and right at the edge of what I'm comfortable with writing.


I may expand this into a short story some day. I'd like to know who these people are, and...maybe not so much redeem them as set them off on the road toward redemption.

Vignette #5 - The Big Old Tree

I sat down and read a bunch of definitions of what a vignette should be, and I think I'm more confused than ever. I'm not sure most of my previous blurbs qualify, and I'm equally unsure about this one, but it's what I wrote, so it's what you get...



Awful lot of repeated phrases and words and other such things, but this being a typecast...what you see is what you get.

Cult Au Jus

So...in my defense, the story in that last post seemed a lot better at five-thirty or six in the morning than it did a few hours later when it was too late to pretend it never happened.  I'll do the next best thing and move on quickly...to something equally silly.  I just never learn, do I?

Thursdays are French Dip day at the deli downstairs at work.  And it is a seriously popular choice--sometimes seems like half the building lines up for some.  I usually pack a lunch from home, but every now and again, I have to resort to buying lunch downstairs, and I admit, the French Dip is good...but the nonconformist in me is bothered by following the crowd, even when the crowd *could* be right.

Writing Exercise: Mickey, A Teddy Bear With Soul

I called him Mickey: Mickey Bear; the corollary to Mickey Mouse, of course. My Dad's sister made him for me when I was a baby: a vaguely bear-shaped pillow made of two pieces of velvety beige fabric sewn together, and a face made out of bits and pieces of felt, and felt marking his paws and the inside of his ears. She did it all more or less freehand, which meant his proportions were distorted and uneven. He didn't match left to right, his ears were too long and his head too big, he had no neck to speak of, and his legs were tiny stubs almost smaller than his ears. I called him a bear, but he could just as easily have been claimed as a dog or a pig or rabbit. And he was at least as big as I was, so I couldn't carry him in front of me without tripping over him, instead often opting to drag him behind me by an ear.

I adored him. I had other toys, of course; prettier toys, more realistic, more polished. But Mickey Bear was special. I slept with him, dragged him around with me, wandered through the house calling his name if I misplaced him.

Years went by. The felt making up his face, never very sturdy, became pilled and worn. During the course of our move from Portland, OR to St. Johnsbury, VT when I was about four, my brother picked out the center of the black portion of his eyes, leaving just the thin black rim under the thread. It gave him a crazed look that frightened me until I got used to it. As more time passed, he began to wear through in places and split at seams. I would lie in bed at night, thoughtfully tugging out chunks of the chopped-up foam bits he was filled with, then stuffing them back in. Mom repaired him I don't know how many times, leaving him with puckered Frankenstein's monster scars. And eventually, he got to the point where the fabric was just about too deteriorated to keep repairing. Horrors!

Faced with this crisis, Mom decided to--more or less--reupholster the old guy. We picked out fabric more or less similar in texture and shade to his original stuff, and Mom traced all the way around him, cut out the fabric and made a new face, and then we dressed him, pretty much, in a new Mickey suit. He was by necessity a little bigger than the old Mickey, as if he had grown with me. Like the torn eyes, this new incarnation took some getting used to, but it helped to know that the old, true Mickey, my forever friend, still existed inside the new. As Mom put it, he was the only teddy bear with a soul.

And then, right after I left home, tragedy struck: someone (the suspect has never fully confessed) threw Mickey away!!

He was in my closet with some of my other things for safe-keeping, since I couldn't take much with me to boot camp, and when another sibling claimed the room and cleared out my things, he was apparently disposed of. I was furious and heartbroken. Still am, to an extent. It's a relatively small thing to forgive in the grand scheme of life, but...grrr. In any case, there was no going back.

Once I was over the initial shock, Mom proposed a partial solution: together we would build a new Mickey. One day when I was home on leave from Germany (and yes, an adult, who should have been well beyond all this...) we went to a fabric store and together, slowly and with great deliberation and much reminiscing, we picked out a micro-suede style upholstery fabric for his body, fake fur and felt for his face and paws, thread, needles, stuffing. Working from memory, I cut out the heavy fabric and painstakingly stitched it together. Mom--always far better at art than I--helped me with assembling his face. And in addition to the polyester stuffing, we filled him with an article of old baby clothing that I'd worn once upon a time and kept and used heavily for my dolls over the years; a slightly silly nod to the "soul" contained in the Mickey of old. It was the best we could do, and in the end, with the work we put into him together, he's just as special as his predecessor.

Mickey the second is even more exaggerated than the original. In addition, in attempting to recreate the bear I remembered, he ended up being made far larger this time around. He is awkward looking, ungainly, even grotesque. He certainly won't win any beauty contests. But he'll always have a place in my heart and home.

Vicarious thrifts

The conversations I overhear around me at Goodwill make me feel hopeful for the human race. These are true descendants of pioneers: plucky, resourceful, optimistic people who make the best of every situation, who thrive on adversity.

"This would work great, don't you think?" says a woman in faded jeans and a threadbare t-shirt as she holds up an unidentifiable monstrosity of twisted metal and wood for her friend to see. "We'd have to trim off this part, of course, and angle it some..." Her eyes shine as the dream takes shape in her mind's eye, cast off junk transforming into something wonderful, though I've missed too much of the story to hear just what, and looking at the thing, I can't imagine. A coatrack? Something to prop up a plant? An organizer for cords in the garage?

Other people are obviously gathering supplies for art projects: transparent bags filled with odds and ends of old yarn, rags, odd little bits and pieces from the bottom of bins at the ends of the home decor aisles. They talk excitedly amongst themselves about glue and fabric and other crafty things, and I try to imagine how the components they carry could possibly come together. I long for craftiness of my own, and then resignedly poke through the bin full of rejected stationery and unused thank-you cards: the closest I'm likely to come to art.

In another aisle, a young couple surveys the most hideous dresser you could imagine. It is a pale green color, with a top covered in water-stains, and on the front, there are stickers upon stickers: smiley faces, flowers, foil stars, cartoon children, the dirty back layer of what were once puffy stickers. All are sticky and blackened, scuffed, peeling around the edges; the dresser looks diseased. Only one drawer still has a pull knob. On the others, there are only blank holes with vague circles around them where a knob once spun; the empty spaces with the screw-holes in the middle look like eyes dilated in fear or anguish.

The woman bounces her baby on her hip. "We could clean it up," she says, " sand the stickers off if they won't scrub up. And then we could paint it blue or red--something bright. And put white knobs on it." She smiles into the baby's uplifted face. "We could even stencil something fun on it, huh?" she says to him. "We could put your name on it, huh, Jack? And maybe a doggie."

"Goggie!" Jack shrieks, waving a well-loved plush hound, its ears flapping wildly.

"Shh!" says his mother sternly, but she is smiling. She looks to her husband in appeal. "What do you think?"

He grins lopsidedly and shrugs. "I'll bring the truck around front. Better see if you can find someone to let us use a dolly."

Her face lights up. "We could stop for paint on the way home."

"Sure."

He strides off toward the front of the store and out, and she lays a wondering hand on the ugly dresser, her face lit up with the thrill of ownership, before heading off in search of a Goodwill employee. I smile for them, tuck the pair of shoes and stack of books I carry more firmly under my arm, and head for the check-out counter.

Nothing Ever Happens to Me: A Writer's Lament

Write what you know: it's one of the most harped upon aphorisms when it comes to writing. And as a result, I sometimes feel I should restrict myself to writing kids' stories, or fantasy, or very soft sci-fi. In fantasy worlds, the "what you know" is all in one's head. No risk of getting in over one's head.

Because...in the real world, how can I compete? I've had a boring, peaceful life, really. I come from a big but fairly average middle class family, my parents got along very well, no one had any major vices or addictions, we had no serious long-term illnesses or family skeletons, I was home-schooled for much of my education and therefore missed out on high school drama, I've never been to college, never been drunk out of my mind at a bar, never committed any crime worse than speeding on my way to church, wouldn't have a clue how to obtain illicit drugs or pull off any grand larceny - well, you get the idea.

And sometimes I think, what business do I have writing? So many of the books out there are filled with experiences I can't even begin to fathom.

But then again, not only do we all have extraordinary moments in our lives, but many of the ordinary moments in our own lives are far outside the ordinary for others. Not only that, but good writing is able to take this one step further, and find the extraordinary even within the ordinary.

So I've been daydreaming. Remembering.

I remember speeding down the hill on a steel-runnered sled, over and over, sometimes deep into the twilight hours with our runners striking sparks wherever ground was exposed, and the cold making my face so stiff I smiled just for the way it felt to smile. I carry the memory of rolling down a grassy hill, spotted with dandelions - and last year's cow pies, dried now to clean grassy pucks we could pick up and throw around to gross each other out. I remember hunting garter snakes on sleepy summer afternoons when the air was heavy with bees' buzzing and humidity. I remember turning over stones and old boards, and startling the living daylights out of myself when I did find a snake. I remember picking raspberries in the big field behind our house, pushing one inch further and one inch further after the really big berries, until there wasn't a bit of my legs left unscathed by those darned prickers.

I remember a warm May night in Lourdes, France, when for a few hours, I walked hand in hand with a beautiful Italian boy who spoke as little English as I did Italian; and before that, another night in Biloxi, Mississippi, where I fell in love with a rather nerdy English guy, and -



I know what it's like to watch the sun come up behind the Bavarian Alps on a frosty day in early spring. And I've seen the sun go down in a blaze of glory behind the evergreens on a shimmering night in the Pacific Northwest with the temperatures a record breaking three digits.

I know of a spot in Monroe, New Hampshire where every Friday night, people from all walks of life - characters all - cram into a big old work shed to play music until the wee hours of the morning. I've been there nights when it was too crowded to get inside, and I stood talking with other outcasts in the cool, sweet night air, with music spilling out of the windows and the sky so clear the whole of it glowed: stars beyond stars beyond stars.

And, of course, there are the more everyday things: a baby's smile, the smell of chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven, daffodils blooming year after year, the herd of corgis next door going completely bonkers because they see a bird, or a leaf, or hear me slam the oven door....

All of these memories and thousands more I carry with me. There are stories in them for the seeking.

There are many stories I could never write. I could never write gritty crime novels, for example, at least not without a major life change and/or a tremendous amount of research. But maybe - just maybe - I can be a writer all the same. It is, I would say, all about not only knowing your limitations, not only accepting them, but embracing them: digging deep into what you have seen and heard and felt, seizing on those things that are beautiful and true and all too often overlooked. I may only be able to write about the everyday, but perhaps I can be the one who makes someone out there stop and see those everyday things for the first time in a long while.

A toast: to the ordinary. Long may it live.