The Lavender Scented Armpits of Phillip's Mother in Fiji

The cool waters off the coast of Fiji lap at my knees as I survey the wreck. The sun is at its peak, threatening me with heat of its mid-day fury, but my skin remains cool to the touch. A slight breeze tickles my nose with tropical scents carried from the island, and I imagine a beautiful tan island maiden fresh from a waterfall shower meeting me on the beach, coconut drink in one hand, a fresh pineapple in the other.

I am shipwrecked and alone, but a firm confidence in my ability to stay clean, fresh, and alive settles over me. I smell so good…

“Waddya think, Phillip, is this the one your mother was asking for?”

The sudden appearance to my left of a lady wearing a plain purple pocket tee-shirt tucked into whitewashed hip-hugging jeans hitched up to her sagging bosoms jolts me back to the deodorant aisle of the local Walmart.

“What flavor does it say on the label?” Her shopping companion, apparently named Phillip, asks.

Flavor? She doesn’t eat deodorant, this mother of yours, does she?

I look to my right; Phillip is wearing a timeworn fly-fishing excursion tee-shirt, jeans that are far too short for his canoe-bowed legs, and a striped train conductor’s hat that has seen a lot of rail.

“Lavender.” Comes the reply.

“That’s the one she likes; it reminds her of springtime,” Phillip states by way of duty and explanation, without a hint of nostalgia.

I put the stick of Fiji scented deodorant on the shelf and take a step back so I can keep an interested eye on Phillip and his shopping companion while at the same time trying to choose a new deodorant.

Deodorant has always been a part of my life. The spicy odor of a colonial clipper ship on a hard tack likely entered my nose on the wind of my very first breath, as my father leaned in under the heat lamps and welcomed me into this world. That old and spicy wooden scent led me through childhood as I followed my father around, trying my best to mimic his manliness.

No wonder then, that when I began to offend my family with the pungent odor of my budding puberty and was asked to take measures, I chose the same reliable spicy scent for my own armpits. While my friends guarded theirs with the right choice for young and active teenagers, I did my best to smell like a weathered sailor fresh from a whaling trip.

Why is Phillip looking at disposable razors and shave cream? His beard is full and bushy…maybe his lavender-loving mother shaves her upper lip…

As a teenager I used deodorant in excess, hoping to smell fresh, clean, and romantically appealing to any member of the fairer sex that happened to cross my path within breathing distance. It didn’t work; my eager deodorant application seemed to have the opposite effect, chasing girls away like mosquitos from a pool of DDT.

I owned a single pair of Levi’s jeans in high school, and that was a problem, because I felt that no other pair of pants could better hide my scrawny white legs. Wearing them five days a week was admittedly gross, but wear them five days a week I did. In today’s world dingy denim seems to demonstrate a willful indifference to etiquette that wins hearts, but thirty years ago it demonstrated a careless aversion to popularity that won solitude and insecurity. I had on more than one occasion tried to sneak them into a secret wash cycle on their own, but my mother guarded her laundry machines with unmatched vigilance and getting caught with my hand in her detergent had proven to be punishable by angry and humiliating lectures. I took to showering in my jeans whenever they got really bad, but they never dried fast enough in the humid Connecticut climate to wear the next day without chaffing. I spent many days trying to walk casually from my locker to my next class as though my inner thighs weren’t greenhorn-in-the-saddle raw and painfully swollen.

On one particular morning, facing a day in dark brown corduroys, I employed deodorant to my cause, applying it liberally to the fabric of my dirty jeans. I was hoping the powerful anti-bacterial ingredients and sea-going smell would mask the odors that my hormonal and junk-food consuming teenage body emitted into my pants on a daily basis. I didn’t think about my body’s metabolic warmth, and the fact that it would soon melt the deodorant into a greasy film, darkening the denim and making it appear as though I had emptied a full bladder into my beloved Levi’s. It didn’t smell like I’d pissed my pants, but I did walk the halls of peer pressure with an extra measure of self-loathing that day, followed around by an eye-tearing potpourri cloud formed by the blending odors of strong chemical clean and slowly developing puberty.

Why are there so many choices, and why are they so poorly named? Legend? What the hell does legend smell like? Urban? Commanding man? Dark Temptation? Who named these? Will they make me take a manhood test at the register before they’ll let me buy any of these? Will I have to demonstrate hand-to-hand combat skills or build a fence without using tools? Will I have to break-dance, grab my crotch, and spit on the floor?

As young children we rode many summers in the back of whichever van Dad happened to be driving at the time, making our way across the country to visit relatives we hardly knew for a few unforgettable days of genetically obligated awkward interaction. The summer sun stared down at us through any window our mother hadn’t coated with aluminum foil, doing his damned best to burn and broil us where we lay reading, napping, or playing. On one such trip I watched my older sister, who was physically mature enough to use deodorant, coat the backs of her knees with it, presumably to stop them from sweating. A few days later, under the assumption that the practice was something only women did for some feminine reason or another, I snuck into the bathroom and applied some of that same stick to the backs of my own knees. The initial cooling sensation gave way to an oily patina, which was soon followed by a dry chemical film that smelled like my sister and took a few frantic moments spent with soap and warm water to remove. I firmly believed that had my father discovered me there in the bathroom, the backs of my knees coated in feminine product, he would have spanked me silly and committed me to hard, manual, masculine labor in order to chase any interest in behaving like a girl from within me.

What the hell is oud wood? Is that a misprint, did they mean old wood? Who wants to smell like old wood dipped in dark vanilla?

I dry-shaved my armpits one year at summer camp, probably on a dare, but definitely under circumstances better left forgotten. The following morning I rubbed deodorant into that smooth, freshly scraped skin, and my screams woke the entire camp and anyone else within a four-mile radius. It was that same year that I retired the old standby deodorant with the clipper ship label and called up a new and modern scent made for a younger generation of upcoming men. At the time I wasn’t aware that there were stark differences between deodorant and antiperspirant, and so I didn’t know that I had begun clogging my pores each morning, stuffing metal and other chemicals into them with reckless and ignorant abandon.

Why are women allowed to smell like actual things? Coconut, Citrus, Flowers, these are things I can get my head and nose around. Wait, Macaroon scented? Isn’t that a kind of cookie? Hey, I want to smell like a cookie, why can’t they have chocolate chip deodorant for men? Or brownies, yeah brownies would be good.

Several years ago I decided that when I was in my sixties, I wanted to be able to remember not only my name and address, but my wife’s as well. I didn’t want my kids to feel they had to sew “If Found Call…” labels into my clothes, or tattoo my personal details onto my forearms. In the hope of preventing that from happening, I started using a more natural, less harsh, metal-free, and non pore-clogging version of underarm protection. As my armpit pores began to perform their normal sweating function once again after years of disuse, I hoped that no one would notice and then mention that I smelled different, and prayed that no one would notice and then say that I smelled worse. Self conscious, I walked around sniffing myself every few minutes, pulling at my layers of clothes and wondering if anyone would go home and thank their spouse for not smelling like the odiferous man they had been mis-fortuned enough to stand next to on the street that day.

Oh, deodorant, you are so much like prayer to me: on mornings that I remember to, I spin your dial, lift my arms, and coat my pits with your protective glaze, all the while wondering if your power over my bad odor will last the day.

And so passed several years of my life, with my insecurities reminding me to keep my arms pinned to my sides as much as possible and my brain reminding me that I was sacrificing olfactory confidence for its future sake. It didn’t help that I lived in New Hampshire, where the humidity in summer turns the best smelling armpits into cesspools filled with sweaty bacterial sludge.

The move to a drier climate in Utah helped, at least it did until a few weeks ago, when I must have hit some sort of man-o-pausal milestone. I suddenly couldn’t go ten minutes without wanting a shower and a clean shirt. I began sweating like I surely will on judgment day, and wondered if perhaps God had suddenly felt the need for a running start to his opening arguments against me.

I am tired of smelling like a sweaty patch of lemon grass that has been watered with the drippings squeezed from a Guatemalan factory worker’s tee shirt.

Phillip and his companion wander off down the aisle and out of sight. I am alone to face the many choices before me. I begin to wonder if there are deodorant sommeliers, experts on which brands and scents best fit with certain personalities or clothes. I picture a man dressed to the nines standing in the deodorant section of Walmart, his hair greased and parted tightly over his scalp, a pencil moustache under his long and upturned nose. Would anyone dare ask such a man for underarm advice?

A mother pushes her cart into the aisle. She crosses in front of me with a polite smile, delaying my decision for a moment longer. Her cart is loaded to the rim with food, and a happy baby drools in the seat. Three or four, or is it five kids follow behind her in a long line of chatty happiness. I watch as the woman reaches up and without breaking stride grabs a stick of deodorant, presumably for her husband, who has apparently summited Everest. She keeps on walking, her genetic train following close behind, and I am alone again.

Screw it; I’m going to Fiji.

Dangerous J-Turn in the Rear-View Mirror

I’ve tried a Handbrake U-Turn while traveling forwards, but never backwards.

My father and I have suffered a great number of setbacks to our relationship. I moved across the country a couple of years back, and even before then we weren’t on speaking terms. This distancing was quite a shift from the way it had been for as long as I can remember, and the process was difficult for all the reasons that one would expect, but I don’t regret it, because stepping out from under his shadow has proved to be one of the best decisions of my adult life.

It is a very real possibility that I may never speak to my father again while wrapped in this mortal coil.

Still, there are some happy times in our history that I hold on to, in spite of any darkness that may have preceded or followed them. I may not wish to see or speak to him in the present, but I cannot and will not discount the positive moments of the past.

Enter James Garner as Jim Rockford. Watching The Rockford Files with Dad on Friday nights was a highpoint of my childhood. I was a bullied and emotionally broken kid by the time I saw my first episode, and television provided a much-needed temporary respite from the nasty villains that lurked in the shadowy halls of the local elementary school. With the ringing of Jim Rockford’s rotary phone at the opening of each episode, I became a wisecracking private investigator with an underdog complex that would rather see justice served than collect a payment for services rendered. I could take a punch and come back swinging and I always won the day, even if the winning sometimes took a week or two. I almost always got the girl, or at least a hint at getting the girl, but life with a girl would become too complicated for a free-spirited guy like me, and so I felt destined to wander alone, while enjoying the occasional moment with the softer company (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) but staying clear of the trappings that accompanied commitment.

After each episode, I would fall asleep hoping for vision-dreams of my future life in a trailer near the beach, flirting with beautiful women, arguing without anger against my father’s suggestion that I find a safer, more reliable source of income, and driving a sweet set of wheels capable of pulling a Handbrake U-turn while speeding in reverse (a maneuver performed by James Garner on the show that quickly became known as the “J-Turn”).

In truth, I’m not even sure how many episodes I watched with my dad; it might have only been a single season. Something tells me it was far more than that, but if my memory mis-serves me, what does it matter now? The shape and feel of those moments are soft and free of sharp edges, and although I can’t picture anything more than scenes of Jim Rockford driving his copper-mist colored Firebird, punching bad guys, or talking to beautiful women, I know that Dad was there beside me for it all.

James Garner died this past Sunday, and when my wife texted me a link which conveyed the news, I was sitting alone in the foyer of our church building (yes, I was skipping Sunday School). I stood and left the building as a flood of memories filled my headspace. I stood in the shade of a tree and found myself holding back tears over someone that was in all corners of reality a stranger to me. I pulled up Youtube on my phone, searched for The Rockford Files, and found a video accompanied by an extended version of the theme song, complete with some excellent guitar solos.

And what a theme song! I have it on my iPod, and sometimes I play it while driving a little too fast, with thoughts of chasing (or is it evading?) the bad guys running through my head at high speed. Maybe someday I will throw the car into reverse, slam the gas pedal to the floor, and then pull up on the handbrake as I spin the wheel for a J-Turn.

But life is too good right now to risk the J-Turn, so for now I’ll just watch Jim do it as I stream all six seasons on Netflix.

Rest in peace, Jim.

It Amazes Me

I saw an online article about John Denver's upcoming birthday (it would have been his 70th) and a dam burst somewhere inside of me, setting free a torrent of memories. This piece will be written without respect for continuity, because that's the way memories flow.

It amazes me.

My first memories of music are of John Denver’s “Back Home Again.” I was only four years old, but I remember. Mom would slide the album out of its sleeve, drop it on to the turntable, and slip the massive headphones over my ears as the music began. The rhythmic strumming of the title track would transport me to the cab of a big rig out on the open road, where I would ride alongside its driver, eager as he was to get back home to his wife, the light in her eyes, and supper on the stove. A montage of love and family would dance through my head as John sang of what it meant to return to the one you loved in the place you called home.

“Back Home Again” took me home, but “On The Road” drove me back out onto that lonesome highway, with my own father at the wheel of an old Mercury V8. It was just the two of us against the world, following the open road, searching for imagined love in the shape of a girl at a truck café. In a family of nine there were few moments that I spent alone in the car with my father, so I had to rely on John to provide me the setting for what I believed would be the greatest road trip I’d never take.

“Grandma’s Feather Bed” was always a fun break from sentiment, with its silly suggestion that it took the feathers of forty ‘leven geese to make it, and that it would hold eight kids, four hound dogs, and a piggy stolen from the shed. The images of laughing cousins, dozing beside the fireplace, and waking up in a giant heavenly bed still linger with me today.

My name is Matthew, and so is one of my favorite John Denver songs. It never fails to evoke memories that I have never lived, paint my mind’s canvas with landscapes that must be experienced, and promise reward in a lifestyle full of challenges that few can fathom. To be like Matthew would be to live a life worthy of a standing-room-only funeral. My father quoted the song when speaking to an audience about me when I was about to leave home for the first time at the age of nineteen. About to serve a two year mission in Paraguay, I was unsure of myself, frightened by all the uncertainty that lay ahead. To hear my dad say that I was made of joy was a rare moment in my life; hearing him suggest that I was something he could be proud of is something I have not forgotten. Indeed, the thought of it carried me through some rough moments over the following two years as I served others, and I was able to find joy in some of my darkest hours in a foreign land.

But the memories don’t end with the songs from “Back Home Again.”

The album “Poems, Prayers, and Promises” can be credited in great part for my propensity to think deeply at a constant clip, more often than not to a fault. As a young boy I hadn’t yet experienced most of what John was singing about, and so my mind was forced to stretch itself in order to grasp how sweet it is to love someone, to the point that their tears belong to you. My maternal grandmother was a member of the Blackfoot tribe, and so dancing about the house to the wild, angry cries of “Wooden Indian” meant something more to me than I could possibly understand at the time, but listening to it I knew that some great injustice had been done to her people. The mournful tones of “Junk” suggested that my father was not so misguided in his passion for antiques, and while we never owned a parachute or a sleeping bag for two, the belief that memories lived within the pieces he collected was not lost to me.

For many years and over many circumstances I considered my three brothers to be prodigal sons of the family, but the words of “Gospel Changes” have since suggested to me that as a firm believer in a higher power I should have been a better example of unconditional love. I hate to think it, but I know that had I been, my little brother might not have taken his life.

We all have heroes, and one of mine was a man named Pete. He taught me how to fire a muzzleloader, the art of a great campfire story, and what it meant to be a good man in spite of shortcomings. We lived in Connecticut, but his heart had never left his family’s farm down in West Virginia. I remember his eyes filling with tears and light whenever he spoke of that little plot of heavenly land. In the cassette player of his Jeep was a tape with “Take Me Home, Country Roads” recorded over and over again on both sides. I don’t recall any other song ever playing through those speakers, and to hear it now dredges up miles of memories that make me smile. I had the chance to drive through West Virginia last year, and in Pete’s memory I played the obligatory song on a loop as I passed through towns where time runs backwards in a good way.

The playlist of songs and the memories and moments they evoke continues…

My father was never a seamstress; he preferred hammer and nails over needle and thread. But I still have the shirt that he gifted to me one Christmas when I was a young boy with dreams of being like John Denver. The shirt looked just like John’s from the cover of “Spirit.” Dad probably pricked his fingers to the point of severe blood loss while embroidering the sunshine onto the shoulder of that little blue button-down shirt. It wasn’t quite finished, but I didn’t care, in my eyes it was perfect. I wore it for our family photos the following summer, and again when I was John Denver for Halloween. It took Dad more than a decade to finish sewing on that sunshine, but when he finally did, he wrapped it and gave it to me for Christmas all over again. Sunshine on my shoulder does indeed make me happy, and then again sometimes it makes me cry.

You know, I’ve always wondered just what a Berkley Woman is, and whether or not there would be hunger in my stare should I see one…

My maternal grandmother may have been a Native American, but that didn’t stop her from marrying a cowboy. My grandfather was the first in my short list of heroes. He slept with a six-shooter under his pillow until he died, wore a cowboy hat with authority, and understood what it meant to be a man. When I take his shotgun up into the mountains behind our home I can’t help but think of him, and in those moments I want nothing more than to be a cowboy, to ride the range, see the high country, and lay down my sundown in some starry field. All of these thoughts play out in my mind accompanied by John’s music, and his lyrics make me believe that my dream is not so impossible after all. Hell, I already live in a rodeo town on the side of a mountain, so the stretch to becoming a cowboy is not that far.

Yes, I live in the mountains nowadays, having left most of yesterday behind me. Every breath at altitude brings the high that John knew and sang about so well. My hope is that my children will look back and remember with fondness the paradise that we moved to when they were young, the place where eagles lived in rocky cathedrals, where they were free to shoot at empty pop bottles with their pistols, and where the days are all filled with an easy country charm. One of the greatest advantages to living in the west is that you can almost always see where you are going, even if you don’t always know where you are headed. Here in the mountains I have enjoyed the blessing of listening to God’s casual reply to my many questions, and I can’t see myself living or dying anywhere else. John’s music means that much more to me now, because I can drive through our valley and see his lyrics living all around me.

I moved to this paradise with my very own Darcy Farrow, whose voice truly is as sweet as sugar candy (most of the time). We have been married almost 21 years, pushing through a share of troubles and strife that are ours alone to know. Not long after our courtship began, Elizabeth discovered that I loved and still listened to John Denver. She later confessed that this fact further solidified her belief that I was the one for her. It does not embarrass me to say that she is my personification of Annie’s Song, and that the barely audible, comfortable sigh of contentment heard after the first line is reminiscent of the way I feel when I think of spending forever with her. I fear that should she leave this life before I do, I will be buried with her on that terrible day, because life without her is something in which I have no interest. I don’t have to experience it to know that it’s a hard life living when you’re lonely.

I started listening to John when I was just two feet high, and today I listen to him standing six feet tall. When I was five, my parents took me to see him perform. Mom still says it was the longest I have ever sat totally still, and that she marveled at how fixated I was on John as he sang songs that I had only heard amid the crackle of my father’s turntable. John’s music truly does make pictures, and for me it will always tells stories. Not one of his songs fail to transport me back through time, to moments when life looked more like a long and comfortable drive down a familiar country road than a four-lane highway congested by the heartbreak, responsibilities, and trappings of adult life.

As a child I would listen to John’s rendition of “It Amazes Me” over and over again. As the song climbed higher, louder, and faster, I would drop to all fours and buck across the living room like a wild bronco, much to the delight of my family. I have never ridden a real bronco, but that hasn't kept me free from the occasional bucking. The music to which I live my life has at times built itself into crescendos of wild wondering and untamed circumstance, and I find that I’ve gotten lost on my way, shouting “where can I hide?”

In moments such as those, I sometimes think that maybe that little boy in the sunshine-shouldered shirt turned out to be a little like John Denver after all.

In “Around and Around,” John confessed to hoping that once he was gone, others would think of him in moments when they were happy and smiling, and that the thought of him would comfort them in moments when they were crying.

I do, and it does.

Thanks John.

Chapter One

Chapter One of "Frogs Don't Wear Tights" (a working title), a book for kids (but fun for any adult that has ever been a kid).

"Boys don't wear tights!" Randolph shouted.

“Go to your room,” his mother said in her quiet, firm, gritting-her-teeth-and-trying-not-to-yell voice.

Randolph turned and headed for the stairs. He stopped and glared at his mother before raising one foot high into the air and bringing it down on the bottom step hard and loud, as if he were crushing a big, juicy bug. He did the same on the second step, and then the third. His mother stood with her arms crossed, watching without saying a word. Randolph turned and stomped his way up the rest of the stairs and down the hall, into his room.

He slammed his door and leaned his back against it, holding his breath and listening for the clunking of his mother's angry footsteps on the wooden stairs. Hearing nothing but the sound of his own heart drumming against his chest, he relaxed and walked over to the window. A thick, white blanket of fresh snow covered everything in sight, and the storm wasn't over yet. Randolph wondered how his father would make it home from the museum without crashing their orange station wagon. The roads hadn't been plowed yet, and they were sure to be icy.

Randolph hated winter. It was cold, dark, and annoying. It killed the green grass, made the roads slippery, and froze the water pipes in the basement. Doing anything outside in winter was a pain. You had to dress in tons of heavy winter clothing just to check the mail, and if you wanted to go somewhere, you had to shovel the driveway, scrape the car windows, and put chains on the tires so you wouldn't get stuck. Plus, if you turned the heater vents on before the engine warmed up, you got a blast of icy air in your face. Winter was too much work.

All of these were good reasons for Randolph to hate winter, but they weren't the reason he wanted it to disappear, taking the cold and snow with it, never to return.

Randolph hated winter because in the winter his mother made him wear tights. Girl tights.

But not just girl tights. Randolph's mother made him wear his older sister's hand-me-down girl tights.

Randolph was a boy, he didn't want to wear girl tights, especially Becky's tights.

"Boys don't wear tights!" Randolph would shout every year. He would cry, stomp his feet, and refuse to put them on.

He sometimes tried to trick his mother by hiding the tights under his bed or in the closet under some toys, but she always seemed to know when he hadn't put them on. On those mornings, she would wait at the bottom of the stairs, and when Randolph came down for breakfast she would stop him and pull up his pant leg for a look.

"Go upstairs and put on your tights," his mother would say firmly.

Randolph would turn around, pounding his feet with every step as he made the trip up to his room to dig out the tights and put them on. Sometimes he was so angry he would punch his pillow until his arms ached, wishing it were the person that had invented tights.

"Olympic skiers wear tights," his mother would remind him as he left for the bus stop.

"I am not an Olympic skier," Randolph would mutter under his breath.

Wearing tights to school was dangerous, especially for Randolph. He was younger and smaller than the rest of the kids in second grade, making it easy for the other boys to pick on him. And pick on him they did; Randolph had been bullied since the first day of elementary school. That morning the kids at the bus stop had made up a song about his big red ears, and sang it to the tune of "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer." They changed the words to:

Randolph the red-eared loser,

had two very shiny ears;

and if you ever saw them,

you would laugh your way to tears,

Even the other losers,

used to laugh and call him names;

they never let poor Randolph,

join in stupid loser games! 

They sang the song over and over again at the bus stop on that first morning of school, and Randolph had tried to be brave, tried to ignore them, but the words were loud and they hurt. They sang it on the bus, and so Randolph curled up into a ball on the front seat, covered his big red ears, and cried until his head hurt. They had been singing that hateful song ever since, never letting Randolph forget that he was different, that he was a loser, and that he would never fit in. And the louder they sang their song, the redder Randolph's ears would get, because Randolph's ears turned red whenever he felt something. Happy, silly, angry, sad, or embarrassed, it didn't matter; if Randolph felt an emotion, his big ears would turn red.

And so Randolph knew that it was dangerous for him to wear tights to school. If even one kid found out that he was wearing girl's tights, the news would spread all the way up to the sixth grade by the end of recess. The teasing would start, and it would never stop. They would probably even make up a new song, a song much worse than "Randolph The Red-Eared Reindeer."

Randolph was very careful to never show his tights to anyone. He would pull his socks up as high as they would stretch, so that no one would see the white of his tights. He would go to the bathroom alone, and use the stall so that no one would see him pull down his tights to pee. Sometimes the tights itched, but Randolph tried his best to never scratch, because he feared that one of his classmates would see him scratching and wonder why.

Every day after school, Randolph would run straight home. He would crash through the front door, bound up the stairs, and run into his room. He would drop his backpack, kick off his shoes, pull off his socks, strip off his pants, and with one quick motion, peel off the terrible tights. Not until his pants, shoes, and socks were back on did he feel safe. He could breathe again, scratch again, and feel normal again. Well, as normal as a scrawny little boy with big red ears and a big round head could ever feel.

One night Randolph decided to tell his mother that he wasn't going to wear the tights, no matter what she said or did.

"Mom, I am not wearing tights to school tomorrow. Boys don't wear tights, and I am not an Olympic skier. I don't want to wear them, and you can't make me," he said, trying to sound stronger and braver than he actually felt.

"Randolph, you will wear those tights tomorrow, and that is final!" his mother said, gritting her teeth to let him know she was serious.

"I hate those tights, and I hate you! I wish that I had been born into another family, one where the boys don't wear tights because their mother loves them!" he shouted.

Randolph's mother looked down at him, surprised at Randolph’s angry words. He had never told her that he hated her before. After a moment of silence, she replied, "What a terrible and hurtful thing to say. I want you to go upstairs, brush your teeth, and go to bed. When you lay down, I want you to think about what you have said, and if it is really what you want. I know that you will feel differently in the morning." And with that, she sent him upstairs.

Randolph brushed his teeth, but only long enough to taste the toothpaste. He wasn't going to listen to his mother anymore. He slipped into his pajamas and climbed into bed, ignoring Harrison on the other side of the room. He decided that as long as he was hating, he may as well hate sharing a bedroom with his older brother. Randolph drifted off to sleep with wishes for new and perfect parents floating around inside his head.

He woke the next morning and saw that his mother had set out his clothes for the day. On top of the pile lay the dreaded tights. He sat on the edge of his bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and wondered what to do. He hated those terrible tights, but he knew that his mother would be waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs to pull at his pant leg and check that he was wearing them. He thought for a moment before making his decision.

He tossed the tights aside and started to get dressed. As he lifted his right foot to slip on his jeans, he noticed a small green spot on his ankle. He sat down on the floor in a panic, bending over to get a closer look at the green spot.

"I told you that you'd feel different in the morning," his mother's voice boomed out of nowhere.

Startled, Randolph looked up and saw his mother standing in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. She looked down her nose at him.

"I cast a spell on you last night while you were sleeping. If you don’t wear those tights, that spot will spread over your whole body until you become a frog," she said, then turned and walked down the hall to the stairs.

Randolph sat on his bedroom floor, listening as his mother's footsteps faded away. He looked down at his ankle, staring at it so long that he thought he saw it grow larger. He reached out with a finger and poked the spot. It felt like his skin. He pinched it, and it hurt like a pinch normally hurt. He rubbed his thumb over it to see if the green would come off. It didn’t; his thumb stayed thumb colored, and the spot on his ankle stayed green.

Randolph sat and thought about what to do. Ever since he could remember, his mother had told him that she was a good witch with special powers. He had never seen her use any of her special powers, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a witch. Why would she lie about being a witch?

But if she was a good witch, why would she threaten to turn him into frog for not wearing the terrible tights? That didn’t seem like a very good thing to do. Randolph was confused, a little scared, and very angry. But there was nothing he could do.

After a few minutes of angry silence, Randolph stood and pulled on the tights, then his pants, and finally, the tallest pair of socks that he could find. He went downstairs and ate breakfast with a scowl on his face, then grabbed his school bag and left the house without saying goodbye. He walked to the bus stop without saying a word, and if any of the kids on the bus sang the song about Randolph's red ears, he didn't hear them because he was too busy being angry.

Later that day Mrs. Diamond had the class sit on the floor while she read to them from a chapter book. Randolph listened carefully, his imagination painting pictures of dragons, knights, and beautiful maidens in his head. After a few minutes he felt something poke his ankle once, then twice, and then a third time.

"Are you wearing tights?" Johnny Palaki asked, a teasing sneer on his face, his finger pointed at Randolph’s legs.

"No, they're thermals," Randolph said, his voice little more than a frightened croak.

Johnny pulled on Randolph's pant leg to get a better look. "No, those are tights. Tights are for girls, are you a girl?"

"No, they are special thermals, like the ones that skiers wear in the Olympics," Randolph said, trying to explain.

"No they're not, there is no such thing. Those are tights, and that means you're a girl!" Johnny said, his voice loud enough for the class to hear.

Randolph felt his ears grow warm, which meant that they were also growing red.

Mrs. Diamond stopped reading at the sound of giggling. “What’s so funny?”

“Randolph’s wearing tights!” Johnny declared happily.

“No I’m not, they’re Olympic skier thermals,” Randolph croaked.

“Johnny, sit still and be quiet,” Mrs. Diamond said sternly.

Johnny muttered something about punching on the playground, and Randolph decided he would hide inside during recess.

After recess, Mrs. Diamond led the class down to the gymnasium for a special surprise. They filed in and sat in a large circle in the center of the shiny wooden floor. Randolph was excited and worried at the same time. He wasn’t very good at sports, and just being in the gym made him nervous. To make matters worse, Johnny sat down next to him with a menacing smile on his face.

A man walked in holding what looked like a folded red flag. He crossed the gym, then stepped politely between two students and entered the circle.

“Hello kids, my name is Levi, and Mrs. Diamond has asked me in today to teach you about parachutes,” the man said.

Randolph and his fellow students squealed with excitement as the man began to unfold the parachute. He pulled at the soft, shimmering cloth, stretching it out until it covered the floor inside the circle of students.

“Okay, I want you all to stand up, then grab the edge of the parachute in both hands,” Levi commanded from outside the circle.

Randolph and his fellow students scrambled to their feet, then reached down and grabbed at the edge of the shiny red cloth.

“Okay, everyone hold on tight. On the count of three, lift the parachute above your heads, and then kneel down without letting go,” Levi said.

"One, two, three!" Levi shouted.

The class raised their arms, and the parachute dipped low against the floor.

"Now kneel down everyone," Levi instructed.

The parachute billowed overhead like a red cloud as the class dropped to their knees. A rush of wind blew over Randolph’s face as the soft fabric circle collapsed slowly to the floor.

“Okay, stand up and do the same thing, and try to keep the parachute billowing for as long as you can,” Levi shouted over the happy laughter coming from Randolph and his classmates.

They played with the parachute for several minutes, under Levi’s loud but gentle commands.

“Okay, let’s sit down and talk about gravity, and why the parachute acts the way it does,” Levi said finally.

The red silk fluttered gently to the ground as the students sat to listen.

“Who can tell me what gravity is?” he asked.

Randolph wanted nothing more than to raise his hand and answer Levi’s question so that Levi would notice him.

But Randolph didn’t, because Randolph couldn’t raise his hand; he was too distracted by the puddle that was growing on the floor around Johnny Palaki's bottom.

Johnny Palaki had sprung a leak.

“What are you looking at, red-ears?” Johny hissed.

“Um, I, Um, I,” Randolph muttered.

“Stop looking at me,” Johnny managed to say, as his eyes filled with tears. His voice was no longer the hiss of a bully. It was more like the squeak of a mouse.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Randolph said softly.

“Shut up, red-ears,” Johnny blubbered quietly.

“What’s going on over there?” Mrs. Diamond interrupted loudly.

“Um, there’s some water on the floor, and Johnny sat down in it,” Randolph explained quickly.

“There must be a leak in the roof,” said Levi.

Randolph looked up at Levi and nodded. “Yeah, I think so,” he agreed.

Levi winked at Randolph, and followed it with a broad smile.

“Johnny, do you need to go to the bathroom and dry off with some paper towels?” Mrs. Diamond asked.

“Uh, sure,” Johnny answered, his voice bubbled with snot.

“Randolph, I want you to go with him, and then the two of you can go to the office and tell Mr. Winters that he needs to send a janitor down here to mop up the water from a leak in the roof.”

“Yes, Mrs. Diamond,” Randolph replied.

The walk to the bathroom was quiet and awkward. Johnny had stopped crying, but his face was still red and his eyes were puffy. Once inside the bathroom, Johnny entered a toilet stall and closed the door.

“Hey Randolph?” Johnny said from behind the closed door.

“Yeah Johnny?” Randolph replied.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” Randolph said softly.

“I’m sorry I told everyone you wore tights,” Johnny said.

Johnny flushed the toilet and opened the stall door. Randolph stood and watched as Johnny washed his hands, then dried to dry his pants with a paper towel.

“Hey Johnny?” Randolph said at last.

“What?”

“They’re not tights, they’re Olympic skier thermals.”

Mr. Tights Is Not A Frog

Call me Mr. Tights, all of my son's classmates do.

When I was in first grade, my mother made me wear white tights to school. Being a boy, I didn't want to wear tights, especially my older sister's hand-me-downs. One night I protested a little too much, and my mother sent me to bed with a warning that I would feel differently come the morning. I woke up the next day with a green dot on my ankle, the result of my mother having "cast a spell" on me as I slept. She told me that if I refused to wear the tights, the dot would spread over my body and I would become a frog.

I wore the damn tights.

It's a funny story (now), and I am using it and other childhood stories as the inspiration for a book that I am writing for 10-11 year olds. The book will be about a red-eared boy named Randolph, and while inspired by on my own childhood, there will be a measure of creative license included. I read the first chapter (about the frog that never was) to my son's fourth grade class a couple of weeks ago. To my great joy, they loved every word of it.

And immediately took to calling me Mr. Tights.

Which brings me to this morning. I spent it at the elementary school, assisting with the third and fourth grade Field Day. I decided to wear my kilt, because we live at 6500 feet, and so I think that Field Day can be looked on as a sort of Scottish Highland Games.

The kids had more than a few questions about why I was wearing a skirt, but they forgot all about it as soon as the events began. We had a great time out in the sun, playing a number of games and eating freezer pops.

After the games, we headed inside. Along the way, a bunch of the kids stopped in the hall to sip from the water fountain. They lined up, and I stood by to wait for them. One of the girls stood in line beside her father, who had also come to help with Field Day. She pointed at me.

"He wore tights when he was a boy. He told us a funny story about it," she said.

Another student chimed in, "Not just tights, but his sister's hand-me-down tights."

I stood there in my kilt, feeling my ears grow a little red.

"His mother did some weird things to him when he was a kid," added a third student.

"That's why we call him Mr. Tights," the girl concluded.

I smiled and said, "You tell these kids one little story about your childhood..."

Her father laughed politely. He looked as uncomfortable as I had in first grade, wearing my sister's tights. Had he been offered a hole to jump into, he probably would have taken it.

I looked at the kids and asked, why didn't you call me Mr. Frog?"

One of them laughed and said, "You didn't turn into a frog, because you wore the tights!"

Their sips of water finished and the point taken, we walked back to the classroom.

I think I'm going to like being called Mr. Tights.