Starlight

http://theserenitylost.blogspot.com/2011/06/starlight-ch-1.html

I posted my the first chapter of the fan-fiction Starlight in the Serenity Lost series. Please read and review.

Also, you might want to follow, once I sent it up.

Thanks, James.

Tail # 9 Ashley

  I once had a free range rabbit named Ashley living under foot. Not that she came to her name or even liked me for the matter. I had bought her at a pet store of all places and before I went to the trouble of a cage; I saw her make her business on a newspaper. I thought that this gave me on idea and I began to train little Ashley. She took to it really well and before long she learned to potty on the paper.
  For months she hopped around my house without really making a fuss or bother. Until one day I noticed a smell in my room. It was like a cat box but worse. I followed my noise and found what was causing the foul smell easy enough. She had found a dark place under my water bed to make the before mentioned practice. It was bad and I needed it cleaned up. I went about draining my bed and pulling the bedding clear.
  After a few hours work the room smelled better and my life continued. I was surprise at how much little Ashley had gotten away with by the simple fact that I had not paid attention to her. I blocked the holes and thought it would help.  She just found another place to potty and then stopped using the paper all together. She started to look for lack of a better word, depressed. I went to the pet store and asked the woman behind that counter for some advice.
  She said, "Ah, I see your problem, I have just the thing that you need in the back."
  I followed her down the aisle and into the back where she stored some cages. She stopped and pointed.
  "But I like her to be free," I answered the unspoken question.
  The lady said, "Sir, she is a rabbit. She thinks your home is her home and in fact it is nothing but a larger cage."
  What that woman said had stuck with me over the years. I released little Ashley behind my apartments. She never came back to me, but I saw her a few times hopping around enjoying her life.  She liked the freedom and I like the clean smelling house.

Lee stole my grandpa's truck

  My dad and grandpa were working on a fence one day.  This was back in about 1971. My brother was around six and I was still in cloth diapers crawling around somewhere. Probably not from my mother. Regardless of were I was I was only told the story no less than 101 times as I grew up.
  My brother in that same summer had disappeared and found in a kitchen drawer. (story of the Disappearance of Lee in same blog) It was late in the summer and the fence needed to be finished. They worked hard into the heat of the sun and Lee play near my father in the yard. He was always an explorative child and got into trouble for his curiosity on most days.
  He disappeared for a few minute and my father stopped what he was doing to look for him. He was like that; he could multitask with the ease of will. My dad soon found Lee in the cab of my Grandpa’s truck. Going back to work my father never would have guessed what would have happened next. If he would have he would have spanked the little boy just for the notion.
  Lee played for a few moment, making truck and transmissions sounds. The laughed when he noticed the key in the ignition. It didn’t take him long to do as he had seen his father and grandpa do many times. He shut the door, started the truck and through it into gear.
  My dad heard the engine and was already running along side the truck as it picked up speed heading down the hill in front of my parent rented home in Prosser.
  My brother was oblivious to my father’s taunts and concentrated on steering my grandpa’s pride and joy. From what I understand by all that witnessed that it was quite the special. My brother standing in the seat steering still making the transmission sounds with his mouth and my father run along side the truck.
  The truck stopped and no harm done and Lee was off exploring the yard again. Many stories like that exist, but this morning I sit drinking my coffee wondering just how many have been lost and will be lost. Every story does have to a moral. Every story doesn’t need to be remembers. However, just remember don’t leave you keys in your car especial around my brother Lee. I always thought he seemed a little shifty.

Being ill and a right of passage

   I don’t knowing if anyone noticed, but I took that last few days off from my life. I checked out, I ended up playing the Xbox game 'Farcry 2'. It took my mind off of being sick. I had a headache last week, and my stomach churned with every meal. My wife pressed me to go to the Doctor to see what the matter was with me. I wrote an earlier post on this Blog and in I made a statement that may have bothered her. I felt ill, but I really didn't feel like it was God's finishing blow. If I had never been sick before this would have worried me.
  It turned out that I would worry about something else instead. My son took sick on Friday.  With a lite fever and cold he laid on the couch most of the weekend. On Sunday, he got worse and the fever went to 103. We worried about what to do, buying over the counter fever reducer we banked my son's heath on the claims of the packaging. I had made up my mind that if he wasn't better by morning he was heading to the hospital.
  About ten in the evening he awoke screaming and we ran to his aid. He was soaked in sweat and confused. His bed needed changed and the fever was gone. I held him then. I felt better even if he didn't think he was better. We both showed signs of mending.
  I can remember getting ear infections when I was little, and taken with a high fever. Staying awake was the worse form of torture. The pain of an ear infection would keep me awake for days, along with a fever and cold to boot. It became the perfect storm of sickness. I can remember my dad picking me up and holding me in his arms. I must have been ten, and he rocked and consoled me.
  It is funny were your mind goes when you hold you sick child. It races to all directions, you figure out what needs to be done, check. You figure okay how sick is he, check. You figure is he getting better, check. What would my father do, check?
  What would my father have done? He would have called my aunt and asked her what to do. I really didn't have that option; do to circumstances beyond my control I am forced to deal with these matters on my own. We had phoned a friend about the treatment of fever and had chosen the fever medication based on what she had told us, but what to do when your child is still sick. It placed us being parents in a whole new light.
   The next morning he claimed to be sick and I was tasked with finding out the truth. Yes, my son a normal child that really doesn't seem to lie about anything. But will push this practice when it comes to matter involving him going to school. He stood in front of me. He coughed.  I felt for his head and it felt normal. He coughed harder. I felt for his stomach and it wasn't clam-y and for the most part felt normal. Then he coughed louder.  I almost laughed. He was good at faking but his eyes were a little red and as he stood there his noise draining onto his upper lip.
  I asked myself would I want to stand outside for hour and half in the cold just after getting over being ill myself, because I send him to school he would have to go out and play in the cold. The answer was no and he got to stay home.  Truth was he could fake a lot of things but he could fake the runny nose and red eyes.
  So back to me or as least in my direction, my father used to be in pain for days and I often wondered if he would hit his thumb with a hammer to forget about the pain in his leg, because this is really how this weekend turned out for me. I came into it with emotional baggage and sickness of my own. I turned out worrying about my son. I forgot about the trouble and sickness I felt. I forgot about my stomach for the most part. But am I better? I will let you know once I have eaten my first meal and held it down. I will let you know once my head clears from the morning funk. That I find myself, more and more, since I passed the 40 years mark. I will let you know when I know and not a moment sooner.

Cheeseburgers and chocolates

  Life was simple back in high school. Oh, I can remember thinking that each day was to end all days. I can remember feeling like it was just enough to get through the day without someone picking on me.  I hated most things about school. I did my best but I was very self-conscious when I was younger. I tried to do my best but when I failed I felt all eyes upon me.
   Why do we go through life believing that?  That failure means everything and fear what people will say. I can remember my parents saying not to where red on Thursdays. If I did it meant I was telling everyone that I was gay.  It was a hold over from the 50's. This happened so offered I stopped wearing red all together.
  I can remember in my high school, if a guy wore an earring on the right side he was saying to the world look at me, I am gay. But what does that tell my about myself. I was just as bad as everyone else. I would have been first to point out a right earring wearing peer.
  Now life is different. I am not that self-conscious about anything but maybe my weight. I go to work and do my best to please my employers. I follow the laws of my community. I help with my family and try to help my friends as much as a can help.
  Tom Hanks in the movie Forest Gump said it best, "Life is like a box of Chocolates, you never know what you are going to get." My life has been like that, I have been to the other side and looked back. I have been homeless, I have been alone, and it changes nothing. I have bit into my box of chocolates and choked on what I found.
  I guess what I am getting at if I wouldn't have taken that first bit of chocolate I would never have left Sunnyside, I would never have gone to the city, never have went to Central Washington University, never did everything that needed to be done. So I could meet the love of my life and have a great child. So I could live in a great house, literally my dream house. We went to a real-state agent and described a house and this was the house that she picked out for us. My dream home was a beautiful house in a nice neighborhood across from a park. Will I live here for the rest of my live? I might or I might not. I don't know what my next bite of chocolate will bring. Will it be a lovely favor or a nasty concoction? I don't know.
  All I know is life is too short to swallow cheeseburgers every time life gets stressful. I will work on this in the future and maybe just maybe, call a doctor if I do have a heart attack. (Read Cheeseburger on this Blog)

Working late at my dad's

  Last night was a very busy night. I got dressed for bed and ended up in my dad's shop. He was planning on going on a trip soon, so he needed me to help him work on his trailer lights.  We rewired it and even wielded new mounts for the tail lights. Once that was done we tested it and it still didn't work.
  "Crap," he said.
  "What does this mean?"
  "The trucks lights plug is bad, and it doesn't really matter the trailers lights needed reworked anyway."
  So an hour past and we got the lights on the truck to connect to the trailer and it made me feel good to help him once again.
  "I know it is late, James but can you help me clean up the shop."
  "Sure," I answered, even though I wished nothing more than to go to bed.
  We brought the tools inside and started wiping them down. I was like a robot picking a tool up, examining, cleaning it to a shin, and then returning it to it place on the bend. That was where he hung most of his tools. We even painted them pink at one point so we could tell that they went above the bench.
  The shop as clean and soon I was saying goodbye.
  I awoke then, I tried not to cry, I both love and hate that dream. I miss him especial days like this. God rest his soul.

The Contradiction

  My first year in college was a time for change and growth. I left the small town way of life behind and in braced the city of Seattle. Compared to cities back east, Seattle is still a small town. But the lessons I needed to learn wasn't from the fact it was large but it was far away from what I considered home. That first year noted changes in my life that could have only have happened that far from home. I saw love and cruelty; I saw sadness and hope at every turn. Evil and good made their home on every corner and I lost myself somewhere along the way.
  Someone smarter than me once said that in order for a boy become a man he must kill his father’s image that he holds up to the light. Now, I am sure he didn't mean to kill my father, but he did mean for me to forget that my father was an all powerful man.  When we are small we look up to our parents as man looks to God. They give us everything and ask little in return.  I got away from my parent early and grew years beyond from the way I was when I left. I learned more about the world in the first 6 months in Seattle than in the first 18 years of my life.
  I picked up a hooker once. I was driving and this woman was hitch-hiking on highway 99, just over the boarder to king county. She wore tight shorts and a bikini top. Just the kind of girl you wouldn't take home to your parents. Well, long story short my passenger announced she was a working girl and I asked her how far she wanted to go up road before I dropped her off. I wasn't mad at her, I was mad at myself for not seeing just what she was doing standing on the side of the road in the middle of the night.
  Then there was the guy that wanted to go into the woods at night with me.  Never took him up on that offer and I am glad I didn‘t.  He claimed to be looking for Meteors. I just didn't trust him. Something was wrong about him. I laughed at this the day he was picked up by the police for assault.  Never heard anything else about him but I wondered for years if I would have every stepped from the woods if I had walked into the secluded spot with him as he had wished.
  Once I was standing at the entrance to a library and met up with a friend. He introduced me to a group of six of his friends as they filtered out of the double doors. One looked at me and said, "He looks harmless enough."
  I told her my name was Todd, Todd Bundy.  Only one of the seven understood what I was saying. She became my girlfriend of the month. I had peaked her curiosity and she liked to live dangerously as I soon found out.  Watch the movie, Blind Date starring Bruce Willis.  Our dates were a lot like that movie, fast and dangerous.  What was I expecting from a woman that wanted to go out with a serial killer's relative?
   Then there was the Goth crew I tagged along with, today they would have been considered Emo, but we didn't use labels back then. We just hung out at dance clubs and Denny’s restaurant all night. I loved the music the most. It was loud and probably the reason I have a little hearing loss today. We listened to heavy metal and punk while enjoyed each others company. When we were together I wasn’t depressed and wasn’t sad. I was me.
  I liked to dress in black; it really fit my mood about life.  I like the music and the group as a whole; they let me hang out with them excepting me almost from day one. I can only remember faces today and this makes me sad. There was Robert our leader and Pete he liked to play the air drums, but for the life of me I can’t think of the rest of their names. I get flashes of their faces and that is all. Like young it is probable best that I don’t jump into those memories very long.
   I met my crew at a club up from my apartment. It was called 'Tuneups and Beats’ or ‘turn up the beats.’ For six months I would go there and hangout with my new friends. Night after night, I would go out and be myself, a depressed young man in a room full of depressed teenagers. My parents called them death-mongers. They were referring to the fact that they believed that my new group of friends were a bad influence and promoted death. I liked them all the same, they understood me, or at least I thought they did. I wore black clothes with no labels, untied boots and always a hoody. I wore chains around my ankle and used one as a belt. Yes, I was back to my same old ways that I had introduced to my school years before.  I would wear my hair long in the front and hide from sociality.
   I started to use stiffing gel on my hair and going to college dress that way.  I quickly learned that people judge you on how you presented yourself.  I was surprised that I failed a class. Going back I figured out that she (The Teacher) was using her power of grading to punish me. I never understood that. She believed that she thought she knew what I was and that I was something that she didn't approve of; she may have been right but what business was it of hers.
   What I wore didn't define me. I had learned this in college and high school. I also learned that you can’t please everyone. Wearing black doesn't make you want to kill yourself and wearing pink doesn't make you gay. Acting grown up doesn't make you an adult. (That lesson took the longest to learn.)
   I learned a lot that year. I learned that people are cruel and unforgiving when you thought they should they would be kind and then I are surprised at the people that I thought were mean were really nice.  I told a story about a chess match the other day. There was more to the story, trust me there always is more to the story. I didn't mention that I was dressed in all black and angry at the world. I sat there dressed in Goth, with a chain around my ass playing chess by myself. I was a contradiction in terms. I did mention that I was depressed and I guess that is why it was so easy for me for fall into a group as with the crew. We were a band without instruments, each had a part to play in our concert we called life.