S.E.E.

Isn’t it funny how our perception gets all distorted in times of change? My 84-year old mother-in-law fell and broke her hip and arm and during this S.E.E. (Significant Emotional Event) we had thoughts of confiscating her driver’s license, putting her in a nursing home, and … gasp … selling her house in a depressed real-estate market.

I’m happy to report that she is doing fine. She IS in a nursing home, but it’s not what you think—three to four weeks of rehabilitation and it’ll be business as usual. She’s already maneuvering the hallways with the aid of a crab-walker. In the meantime, my wife and I are cleaning her kitchen, living room, etc… so she’ll be able to get around her house better.

As for Charlie, her travel-companion-dummy, he’s an emotional wreck and misses all those road trips, especially those short jaunts to Canada. According to my mother-in-law, Charlie refuses to declare his citizenship. “Ma’am,” the Canadian border-patrolman will interrupt, “HE has to answer for himself. Sir, your country of origin?”

Thanks for all the well wishes. I hope to be traversing the blogosphere soon.

VOLE (FOR LACK OF A BETTER TITLE)

I was going to tell you about the traps I baited with peanut butter; how a vole got its neck snapped in my garage, but I never got around to it.

Then I decided I’d share the story about my student who threatened to kill himself last week; how he held a razorblade to his throat in contempt of a transfer notice. He was in the process of GED Testing and didn’t want to leave our facility. I’m not sure why I passed this up, why I failed to tell you.

I made myself a deadline—Saturday, February 21, 2009—I would do a two-for-one, I’d write about the vole and the student, my way of making up for lost time. I’d dispense this information like so many other bloggers—one detail after another.

Unfortunately the weekend has passed. So much for deadlines. Call it procrastination. I have my reasons. How about this one: Saturday night my 84-year-old mother-in-law tripped over a piece of duct tape on a dance floor, fell, and broke her arm and hip. My wife coordinated a 3-hour ambulance ride from a hospital in Clare, Michigan, to Detroit where my mother-in-law could have surgery closer to home. I cleaned out her refrigerator, stuffed five bags of mini-carrots, two rotten apples, some apricots, moldy pita bread, and cottage cheese down her garbage disposal. She’s not coming home any time soon. Rehabilitation will follow. “Don’t you put me in a nursing home,” she warned. I stayed out of it. My wife will handle the arrangements. It’ll probably be a 3 to 4 month ordeal.

Today I’ll retrieve her vehicle. I’m sure her senior citizen friends will miss their designated driver.

I'M A WRITER, YOU'RE A WRITER

More often than not, I’ve had killers at my doorway politely asking if they can enter my classroom. And for the record: I would never jeopardize the safety of my students. Yes, I always say “NO!”

Prisoners know better; If they go somewhere without the proper itinerary and ID card, they risk getting temporary “Out of Place” tickets. Too many infractions are bad, very very bad, in the eyes of the parole board.

One inmate in particular was determined to speak to me. “I hear you’re a writer,” he said.

My typical response goes something like this: “Yeah, I guess so. I’ve written a few school papers, letters, emails, memos…”

Next thing I witness: this particular killer’s gravitating toward my desk and trying to bond with me. “I’m a writer too.”

Yippee-Yippee-Yi-Yi-Yaaay … and I’m a convict teacher!

Sorry for the outburst. I read today’s Detroit Free Press and I just can’t get the same PR as this particular man who once approached me about writing. Here's the article: Parolee aims to keep students, and himself, on track. Hey, at least watch the video.

NANO FICTION

Wow! There are some heavy hitters in this issue of NANO Fiction:

Kim Chinquee
Randall Brown
Bob Thurber
Blake Butler

…and many many more.

I can’t wait to get my copy. Perhaps I’ll showcase my flash-fiction piece on YouTube. How about a simple coffee-house style reading?

Hey—it’s all about caring and sharing. Or am I bragging?

I apologize. I’m excited.

I don’t know; maybe it’s just me. I read in today’s Detroit Free Press about a mom who shoved her 4-year old daughter in the oven. “I’m sick,” she told the 31st District Court.

And rightfully so: She’d been cut off from her expensive antipsychotic medication and, in her daughter’s words, “tried to bake me like a turkey.”

As sad as this is, I don’t want to prejudge anyone. Instead, I want to talk about the controlled environment I work in called PRISON.

I had my first full week dealing with mentally disturbed inmates. I’m not sure exactly how us academic teachers are supposed to react, but given the circumstances, I think we coped fairly well.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not sure placing these inmates into our classrooms before their files arrived, before they’d had their orientation (if they’ll have one at all), was such a great idea. Maybe it’s just me, but I think I would’ve waited to make a more informed decision about enrolling them in school.

When my new students arrived, we were cautious. One student in a short-sleeved shirt, obviously a cutter, displayed his self-inflicted wounds, and smiling, pulled his skin taut with 10-inches of stitching along his rightside cheek. He lasted one day. Since I’m responsible for my students’ whereabouts and he never showed for Day 2, I wrote his name on the absence list. Here’s what I got back: Needs to be re-evaluated. Upon further investigation I found out that he kept pulling those stitches out of his face.

On my third day of class one of my heavily medicated new students fell out of his chair and had a seizure. My students made sure the tables and chairs were cleared away while I rolled him onto his side and made sure he had a pulse and could breathe. When the nurse showed up she asked me if he’d been known to have seizures. I’m sure you already know how I wanted to respond—Fuck if I know, he just got here—but I said nothing.

I could go on, but I won’t. It is was it is and I do get paid.

I GOT PANKED!

It’s not often I get two acceptance letters on the same story; Multiple rejections, that’s a given. I sometimes think my middle initial stands for REJECTION. This week, however, I received another acceptance message for “Adopted Behaviors” even though it’s under contractual agreement with Underground Voices .

Blame my crazy-ass system if you will.

Here’s why: I maintain a semi-organized logbook of my paltry list of submissions and pull stories once they’re PUBLISHED. I know what you’re thinking: I should notify the other editors as soon as I commit the story elsewhere. But for some reason “rejection” lingers like residual gun powder on my hands. What if an editor changes his or her mind? What if I give them the rights to a story and they don’t use it? One time, I submitted a story to the Wayne Literary Review, received a $200 writing award I never applied for, and did not; I repeat DID NOT get published. Go figure.

In the back of my mind I’ve always wanted recognition from literary magazines endorsed by institutions of higher learning. Michigan Tech certainly is such a place. Still, I must honor my commitment. Plus, I believe UV has a larger readership. I’ll be first to admit: bigger isn’t necessarily better; each publisher has his or her audience. Maybe I’ll get PANK(ED) in the future.

What do you think? Did I pull the trigger too soon?

THE THAW

With the steady influx of Window Lickers attending my classes—that’s what a few staff members call the mentally disturbed inmates—and with the ice-damming on my house, it seems as if I’ve had very little time for writing.

I shouldn’t complain. Chiseling two-feet of ice from my gutters seemed therapeutic, even though my hands nearly froze. Also, the fresh air did me some good, gave me time to reflect.

Now that the snow has melted from the roof and I’ve crawled around inside the attic surveying the damage, I’m hoping to get back into some kind of routine, some kind of rhythm. I’ve got these peculiar ideas scuttling about my brain, and if I can put words to paper, if I can push aside my own personal demons and record these events, then I just might get somewhere, I just might have something. Still, there's no sense in rushing things.

GOING UNDERGROUND

Film Director, Screenwriter, and Editor Cetywa Powell has selected my story "Adopted Behaviors" for the March issue of Underground Voices.