The Department Meeting
As we did the month preceding
This the next department meeting
Time and time without a reason
To be present or to listen
For there’s nothing on the floor
Beneath us different than before
It was the last time that we met
As everybody knows and yet
Again we sit around the table
Top our seats but still unable
To understand why we should read
Another memo from the Dean
Of students who have never met ’em
Or her or maybe better, them
For whom the Chair is working under
Standing in the room, we wonder
How’d it ever get to this
Friday morning’s foolishness
Of faculty who should know better
Than to debate what doesn’t matter
That they’ll only misconstrue
The points they’re missing when they do
Interrupt each other speaking
Words better spent in classrooms teaching
Oops
I thought it was a support group.
They seemed SUPER cool
about the whole virgin thing.
Not like my friends at school.
Everyone wearing monochromatic
loungewear reminded me of
Kim, Khloe and Kourtney.
I felt immediately at ease.
I'd trust those three with my life!
When I told Katie I was still a virgin
she laughed and told the whole school.
When I told Cloud I was still a virgin,
I was given a throne and cake!
It wasn't until the throne reclined
to become an altar
that I became a bit suspicious
My attempt to rise from the altar
was stopped by Cloud and her sister wife,
Asthma.
I grabbed a piece of cake from my pocket
(which I had been saving for later)
and whirled it at the cultists heads.
Fleeing the campsite, I found my phone
and furiously downloaded Tinder.
I would not let this happen again.
(To me at least)
the role of the mediator
i feel like i've made myself to be a very neutral person, and as a result of that all sorts of people confide in me for their problems .i don't particularly have a problem with people confiding in me, in fact i think its quite nice to know that my friends trust me enough to tell me about themselves on a deeper level, but i don't believe i'm being confided in as a friend at the moment. i am being confided in as a mere listener who's sole job is to agree with whoever i'm talking to. i think i originally made myself like this as a mechanism to get people to like me more, but now i've found myself in a position where i'm a mediator for people who cant be mature enough to have a conversation as adults with each other. i find this very petty and prideful of both of them. I think if only they talked to each other then all this would be resolved and i wouldn't have to be a mediator. the thing about being a mediator is that your opinion isn't usually what people want to hear. the mediator tells people what they want to hear, and that's why both sides of the dispute confide in whoever the mediator is. nobody wants to hear the mediator's thoughts and suggestions, they want to hear them echo back their opinion and agree with them to feel validation, to feel as though their opinion isn't just utter nonsense. that's why people confide in them. because she is the people pleaser, and they are the people using said people pleaser to make up for their own lack of sense of self. that's what i've concluded from this situation. maybe i should be someone who restricts themselves more so that i'm not used as a tool for people to validate themselves. though now that i think about it, the part of me that's so neutral to everything must have been made like this on purpose simply for the sake of being useful to others around me. maybe i wanted this, maybe i wanted to be a person who would want others to like for purposes as shallow as that. but as i change and grow as a person i realize that maybe simple validation for the sake of upping my own self esteem isn't worth changing myself over. i've rambled quite a bit now, so i think ill stop here.
What My Therapist Doesn’t Know
It's a freezing day in December, almost Christmas. My breath puffs out like clouds of cigarette smoke in the clear night air of the motel parking lot. At the moment, I wish it was cigarette smoke because I can't remember being this nervous in a very long time. Maybe the Christmas Eve service twenty years ago, when a pushy grandmother shoved her mini-skirted teen granddaughter up to the piano in our little Baptist Church and plopped an unfamiliar piece of music before me, stating, "Missy is going to sing. Play this."
This wasn't our Baptist Church, and I wasn't about to play a difficult piece in front of two hundred people. It was a sleazy motel parking lot, and I was here to meet someone I'd fantasized about every day for the past year. Someone who was not my husband and someone twenty years my junior. I hugged myself to keep from shivering as I glanced around, almost hoping he wouldn't show.
How did the 70-year-old church pianist and Sunday school teacher end up in this motel parking lot, waiting to keep all the promises she had unwisely made to this young man? What if my knee popped out in the middle of giving him, you know what? What if I broke a hip as he crashed into me during, the well, the thing? What if I had a freaking heart attack from the excitement even before we got into the room?
My wiser angels never weighed in on these tricky moments, so I stayed, shaking and chastising myself, "Fine Christmas gift for the hubs, girl. Meeting a lover for the first time ever. Forty years of faithfulness, and now this?"
This circumstance wasn't entirely my fault. When my husband retired last January, he suggested getting into swinging. I was shocked when he stated that was how he wanted to spend his retirement. His idea of swinging was to invite another woman to our bed. In trying to battle his penchant for watching me with another woman, I suggested we look for a man first. He reluctantly agreed and signed me up for a dating site,
orchestrating everything from what picture to post, what desires I had, and exactly what I was looking for, leaving out the cuckold aspect.
Being married for almost forty years had rendered me invisible. I was the kids' mom, and now I was a grandmother. I was my husband's wife, the retired piano player, and Sunday school teacher. Not exactly a sparkling Play Boy bunny resume. Plus, I was almost seventy. If a man had ever noticed me during those years, I would have suggested he try to locate his seeing-eye dog. Men's attention was something I simply did not worry about. There was none.
Within half an hour of my dating profile going live, I had over sixty requests for more information, messages, hearts, flowers, you name it. 'Hmm. Weren't there any women on this site,' I thought. It was a bit overwhelming as I tried replying politely to everyone while my husband tried to explain that I picked who I wanted and moved on. Ouch, that was a bit harsh.
We had settled on a sixty-plus age group, as he didn't want some young punk with his wife. You know how those fifty-year-old punks can be. One young man kept popping up in my feed, asking me why I didn't consider him. I explained that someone in their forties was much too young. I was sure he was joking when he told me he liked older women. Try as I might, he would not give up. I finally told the hubs he was the man I was interested in.
After an hour or so of explaining why that was a bad idea, hubby finally wrote the man a very explicit message explaining what he would encounter when we were together. He told him we would be having a three-some and that it would be a night the man would never forget, as I was one talented and sensual woman.
The man eagerly accepted the challenge, and then my husband withdrew the offer, pulling the rug out from under the young guy. I was mortified. This led to months of texts between him and me, with me almost deciding to leave my marriage behind at one point. Then, in the Summer, my husband had a near-fatal heart attack, and I had to get my priorities in order, leaving my infatuation in the dust.
Or, so I thought. Try as I might, weeks could go by without checking on my 'almost lover'. I would declare victory to my therapist, who never really understood my strange infatuation with this man anyway. Then, as soon as I heard a song that reminded me of him, I would begin pining for him again. My poor therapist was so distraught at my obsession that I was worried she might have a nervous breakdown over it. I finally stopped telling her about him. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.
Not that Jake was sweet to me. He was an angry, sullen individual who rarely said anything kind to me. He insulted me, called me a slut wife, and told me that I liked holding my marriage over his head. He constantly told me I did not try hard enough to meet him when he always backed away. It was like a game of cat and mouse, and I didn't know if I was the cat or the mouse. Yet, still, I persisted.
I can't recall a man I argued with more viciously than Jake, my texting lover. I never called my husband names or tore him up one side and down the other. The safety of hiding behind my phone screen or knowing I would never meet Jake in person made me bold. Once, I commented that if we ever met in person, a fistfight would break out after the first five minutes. He replied that, more likely, full-on animalistic screwing would break out.
Here I was, feet frozen to the frosty blacktop of this old motel parking lot, wondering if we were going to have a fistfight or a night of sexual pleasure so intense that I would never want to go back home. It was too late to rescind my Christmas gift offer of an evening of lovemaking to Jake. How many hours had I thought about him? How many times had I woken up, ashamed, from dreams of making love to him? How many imaginary conversations had I contrived, telling him how much I needed and loved him from our first real conversation?
A lone set of headlights turned into the parking lot, zeroing in on me as they slowly approached. A deer in the headlights. A guilty woman in heels, stockings, and a short skirt with seductive, lacy underthings hiding beneath. I feared my age would now matter because we would be close together for the night. Afraid I wouldn't be good enough for him. Scared of being a disappointment, I slipped back into the driver's seat of my car, pushed the button, and slowly backed out of the lot just as he exited from his car, shrugging his shoulders at me, just like his favorite emoji when I spoke of my feelings for him. Good. I hope you feel confused, just like you made me feel for the last year.
On the way home, I stopped at an open store and picked up my husband's favorite fruitcake, with chocolate milk for him, and a big bottle of wine for myself. Then I drove home, sighing in relief, after blocking Jake's number.
Not tonight, Satan. Not tonight.
Tomorrow? Maybe. Shh. Don't tell my therapist.
Carve Your Name into My Heart
The 911 missing person call from the Sunnyside Nursing Home came in at 8:45 PM on Christmas Eve. My partner and I had signed on for the extra holiday shift because we didn't have a family waiting at home for us. We were just a couple of twice-divorced, bitter single folks counting down the hours to retirement, living on donuts, coffee, and adrenalin.
As we headed toward the outskirts of town where the nursing home was located, the heavy falling snow made the roads slippery, and visibility was low. There were better nights than this for a search and rescue operation, that was certain. The thermometer wasn't helping us either, as it was hovering at -2 degrees. My biggest fear was that the missing resident had decided to go for a walk in the nearby woods, probably dressed only in a nightgown and slippers.
"So, what do you think, Tucker? Senior Citizen flavored ice-pop?" I asked my partner.
Looking at me over his black-framed glasses, he just shook his head and replied, "Jesus, Smitty. You are the most vile woman I've ever met. Let's hope not."
"Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em. It's two degrees below zero, it's a blizzard, and the missing woman is probably half-naked."
Silently scanning the woods alongside the road, Tucker just kept his thoughts to himself as we approached the driveway to the home. The cruiser plowed through six inches of wet, heavy snow, and we pulled up to the front entrance as an employee waved us in.
After stomping the snow off our boots, the nurse ushered us down the quiet hallway that smelled of ammonia and lemon pledge. "Birdy seemed just fine at dinner. We had a special Christmas Eve meal with a lovely cake for dessert. She was singing along to the carols the high school chorus was performing. I don't understand it. She has been fairly lucid these past couple of weeks."
The nurse unlocked a door, and we entered "Birdy's" sanctuary. "We will look around, but I don't know if we'll find any clues. Have you contacted her family?" I asked, pawing through well-organized drawers and flipping through neatly hung garments in the closet. A sudden flash of familiarity went through my mind as I caught the distinctive scent of Muguet de Bois perfume. My Aunt Dolly had worn that daily, and it was one of her favorite Christmas gifts from me. A sudden feeling of connectivity overwhelmed me. I pushed that sucker back down where it belonged. I told myself that this was business, not a family reunion with ghosts.
"Oh, her family has all moved away, the ones she had left. Her husband passed away last year around this time, and we thought we were going to lose her too," the nurse explained.
Tucker piped up, "We will take a quick look around the property, but I think I will call the search and rescue team in case she has wandered into the woods. There's a creek running through just a few dozen yards from the property, and we don't want to take a chance."
"Oh, dear. That's not good. Well, whatever I can do for you, please let me know. Please don't hesitate to look in all the common areas. We've checked the resident rooms already," The nurse informed us.
Tucker, always more astute to the human condition than I was, commented, "You don't think she wandered away on purpose because she was thinking about her late husband, do you?"
"Naw. She was probably glad to not deal with his snoring and bad habits anymore. I'll bet she's shacking up with some hot, young orderly," I snapped.
"Never mind," he snapped back, rolling his eyes at me.
We made the rounds of the dining room, kitchen, and physical therapy rooms with no luck. Tucker pulled his watch cap on over his thinning, gray hair. "Time to go for a walk in the snow. You coming?"
"Do I have a freakin' choice?" I whined.
"Nope," he declared with a smirk.
"I didn't think so," I glumly concluded as I pulled my cap and gloves on, following him out into the frigid night air, my nostrils sticking together with every breath and my cheeks prickling in the cold wind. "Sheesh, I hope she was dressed warmly, this is brutal out here, even with our winter gear," I opined.
"Chances are she was in a nightgown and bedroom slippers, Smitty. I'm gonna call in the search and rescue team and grab some blankets and a first aid kit from the cruiser."
He handed me the emergency blankets and kit while he radioed in the call. Once we knew the team was en route, we began a careful search of the property, looking for footprints, which were hard to find with all the fresh snow that had fallen. Having no luck in the parking lot or yard of the home, we began walking down the road twenty feet in either direction, looking for any hint of our "Birdy".
Nothing to the South, so we turned around and headed North, carefully brushing snow away as we trudged through tire ruts so our footprints wouldn't cover up the missing person's prints. About twenty-five feet down the road, we found a pair of twisted and bent wire-framed glasses that had been crushed into a tire rut.
"What do you think, Tuck? Abduction? Rescuer?"
"Hard to say. I don't see any signs of a struggle near the glasses. Maybe it was a good Samaritan, and they took her to the hospital? I'll radio it in to check hospitals," he told me as he touched the radio on his shoulder that buzzed into life.
I walked forward about ten paces and could barely make out the outline of a small, bare footprint highlighted by my flashlight in the crystalline snow. Oh boy. It was worse than I thought. She wasn't even wearing bedroom slippers. How on earth did an eighty-year-old woman walk this far in this weather barefoot?
"Tuck, Tuck! I found footprints. You aren't going to believe this, but our Birdy is barefoot in this howling storm."
This missing person had become "our Birdy" in less than half an hour. This is why cops can't leave their work at work. Our work is all about human beings. Whether we arrest or save them, they infiltrate our souls with their troubles and seep their pain into our hearts, whether we want them to or not.
Birdy had grabbed a hold of my heart as soon as I smelled that familiar old-fashioned French perfume my Aunt used to wear. For Tuck, it probably happened as soon as he heard the call. He's like that, always trying to hide his tender heart under a gruff exterior. But he can't fool me. We'd been riding together for seven years, and not much gets past me. Tucker had held me together and kept me employed while recovering from my second divorce. It was messy and sad and took me forever to get over. He listened quietly, never offering to fix me. That was all I needed: an ear.
Tuck knelt down in the snow beside me to examine the footprint. Running his gloved hands down his face in frustration, he turned to me and said, "This just keeps getting worse. It's a long way to walk barefoot in this weather. She must be one determined lady. Let's stay close to the ground and see if more prints show up."
He found the next set of prints: one bare foot and one with a slipper still on. At least she still had one slipper. We were hunched over, practically crawling on the hard-packed snow, while the storm kept barreling down, relentlessly blasting our faces with bitter, stinging, icy pellets.
Tuck looked up at me with concern. "Smitty, you holding up? You need a break?" he said, pulling a handkerchief out of his uniform pants pocket for me.
"Thanks, yeah. I'm just worried about our Birdy. She's not going to be okay, is she, Tuck?" I asked, wiping the tears and snow from my face.
"I can't even think that far ahead. We're thirty years younger, dressed for the weather, and struggling. I just want to find her, is all."
Flashing red lights lit up the snowbanks and danced off from the whirling snow, causing us to move to the side of the road as the search and rescue teams approached. I flagged them down and told the lead team they needed to search the wooded area behind the nursing home to rule out the danger of Birdy falling into the frigid waters of the creek. Once they were on their way, Tucker and I resumed our painstaking search for tiny footprints.
An unusual glint caught my eye as we crept along, searching for clues. I shone my light on it and was rewarded with a broken gold necklace with a locket hanging from the twisted chain. I held it up in the air, and Tucker pushed himself up from a crouch with a groan and shuffled over to take a look. I wiped the slush off the locket and pried it open with freezing fingers. On one side was an oval frame with a tiny photograph of a dapper young man with dark hair combed into a duck's tail. On the other side was a similar photo of a pretty girl with short, blonde curls neatly tucked into a pink chiffon head scarf. A perfect fifties couple who probably did the twist and listened to Chubby Checker together. Maybe they went to the malt shop and high school hops.
Birdy was now more than a memorable scent or an elderly missing person to us. She was real. A person who had lived a life and deserved to be found so she could keep living. We stayed on the trail until the little footprints disappeared into a snowbank at the side of the road.
Tuck reached out and steadied me as I climbed the bank, wondering at the agility of our little Birdy. I had all I could do to not wipe out in the two feet of snow, even with help from Tucker. Once settled at the base of the hill's incline, I helped Tuck keep his balance on the slippery slope as we climbed. A fresh wind blew the powdery snow aside, revealing more tiny prints that had previously made it up this mound.
"Where was she going?" I asked Tuck, troubled that this woman would have ventured out in the storm on some mysterious mission that only she understood.
"Beats me. But I don't think she was out here wandering. I think she knew exactly where she was going. Just a hunch." He replied.
We slipped and slid to a small tree stand in the middle of an old farm field, bordered on two sides with haphazard rock walls that stood two feet high and were covered almost completely by the storm. An unnatural lump was evident in the snow near an old apple tree. A sick feeling began in the back of my throat and traveled to my mouth as I retched up my last cup of coffee.
"No! Birdy, we're here, we're here. Don't give up!" I yelled as the blizzard winds stole my words, rendering me voiceless.
Tuck reached out and took my arm gently. "Smitty, Darlene, we've found her. But she's not alive. Okay? Look at me. It's Okay. We did what we could, and we'll take her back home. Give me the blankets. You stay here."
"No. I don't want Birdy to be alone. I'm coming with you. I'm all right. I want to be there with her, Tuck."
Shaking his head, Tucker knew not to argue with me. We approached the lump under the snow with caution and gently brushed the accumulation off from our dear Birdy, who had died with a brilliant smile on her face and her eyes open and shining happily in the glow of my flashlight. So untroubled and young-looking was she that I immediately could tell she was the pretty girl in the locket.
We placed the blanket over her, rolling her over so her body was completely shrouded and protected from the frigid cold and wind. I called in to dispatch and told them to send the search and rescue home, as Tucker and I had found the missing person deceased in the snow. I gave them the last known location before we left the road, and dispatch would send the coroner's vehicle to that location.
As always, Tucker was more aware of his hunches than I was. Before we hefted Birdy's little body between us for the hike down the hill to the road, he walked closer to the apple tree where Birdy had spent her last moments on Earth. Brushing away the windswept, caked snow from the trunk of the gnarled little tree, Tucker waved me over.
'Jimmy
Forget Me Not
My father disappeared years before my coming of age without leaving a trace to his whereabouts. At that time, my regent gave me the keys to the entirety of my father’s estate. In the basement of his laboratory, I spent my formidable years remaining quiet and learning to unlock the secrets of his research. I encountered new words and ideas I dare not share with others, so as to provide clues to my intentions. Exhausting his notes, even by a cursory glance, would take years. A detailed examination may cost the entirety of my life. Daunting as that may seem, I stood affirmed in my resolve to succeed.
And succeed I did.
In a mere eight years, I not only translated, but comprehended 90% of my father’s manuscripts. He called his invention, the Forget Me Not. Its purpose was singular. The wearer could relive any pleasurable experience from his past as if experiencing it for the very first time. The Forget Me Not (FMN) functions as follows:
The device maps the user’s brain (while the user thinks about the memory) to discover the exact location of the experience.
The device stores the memory exactly as the user remembers it. The storage device digitizes all five senses and the user’s perception. The memory capacity is greater than normal computers by a million fold.
Upon activation, the FMN temporarily blocks the synaptic pathways that permit the user to forget the experience.
Then the FMN downloads the memory, experience, and perception back to the user.
The machine may record the entire experience for posterity and repeat it as often as necessary.
With my increased time in the lab, I began to lose track of the day-to-day affairs of the estate. Offering the position to the only person I knew would accept, I found my regent and made the proposition. As if he never forfeited his previous occupation, my regent agreed to my terms. In doing so, I continued my research and my regent found his new employer mostly absent. Thus, both parties returned to what they did best.
Two more years of work and I began my first trial run. Using no other than myself, I set the FMN to scan and copy only. I thought of eating my first ice cream cone. The FMN took only three minutes to scan and three milliseconds to copy. If I remained attached to the FMN, I might be experiencing that memory exactly as I did as a child. I decided to postpone that decision until the end of the week.
Unusual to my normal routine, I began a brief audit of the household books. My regent did his due diligence and kept them accurate and timely. I did not find any discrepancies (the regent saved receipts), but I did find the food budget larger by half than what I would budget. I made a mental note to speak to him of this at a later date.
By the onset of the upcoming auspicious week, I made arrangements not to be disturbed for the duration of the day. I was both curious and determined to activate the FMN for a full scale test. The previous night, I chose my last memory of my father. That day, that beautiful sunny day, we walked to the park together to watch the sunset. He held my hand as we climbed a small hill.
With no distractions, nor words, we saw the sunset on an amazing day. I felt warm. I felt happy. Most of all, I felt my father’s love for me. No day since has rivaled that day. Most likely, no day hence will.
D-Day came and I went to the lab to greet destiny. I sat in the chair and attached the FMN. I set the control to automatic before I sat back and let the entire program run its course. Within seconds, I saw the Sun from that day. I felt my father’s hand. His stride was larger than mine. To compensate, I had to trot. I felt my pulse increase to accommodate. I even felt a bead or two or sweat run down my forehead. I kept the lab at 62 degrees, but my memory swore it was 92 degrees. As if on cue, I saw growing shadows of other park patrons as they moved toward home. I even smelled the lingering odor of my father’s aftershave. The Sun set on time. The sky turned from orange to red to dark. My father squeezed my hand when it was time to go. The FMN worked beyond my wildest expectations. If I could do it all over again, I would.
That day, that beautiful sunny day, we walked to the park together to watch the sunset. He held my hand as we climbed a small hill. With no distractions, nor words, we saw the sunset on an amazing day. I felt warm. I felt happy. Most of all, I felt my father’s love for me. No day since has rivaled that day. Most likely, no day hence will.
D-Day came and I went to the lab to greet destiny. I sat in the chair and attached the FMN. I set the control to automatic before I sat back and let the entire program run its course. Within seconds, I saw the Sun from that day. I felt my father’s hand. His stride was larger than mine. To compensate, I had to trot. I felt my pulse increase to accommodate. I even felt a bead or two or sweat run down my forehead. I kept the lab at 62 degrees, but my memory swore it was 92 degrees. As if on cue, I saw growing shadows of other park patrons as they moved toward home. I even smelled the lingering odor of my father’s aftershave. The Sun set on time. The sky turned from orange to red to dark. My father squeezed my hand when it was time to go. The FMN worked beyond my wildest expectations. If I could do it all over again, I would.
That day, that beautiful sunny day, we walked to the park together to watch the sunset. He held my hand as we climbed a small hill. With no distractions, nor words, we saw the sunset on an amazing day. I felt warm. I felt happy. Most of all, I felt my father’s love for me. No day since has rivaled that day. Most likely, no day hence will.
The regent called the doctor to move my shell of a body adjacent to my father’s in the laboratory alcove repurposed for an occupancy of two. He made a mental note to increase the food budget by another half again as he locked the laboratory, possibly for the last time.
