Anger Management

Dear Jared,

It’s been seven years since you killed yourself. This past year has been emotionally tougher for me than the past few, and I have struggled with keeping my own life, so deciding how to mark this seventh anniversary has proven more than a bit difficult. I have spent hours staring at blank paper with tears in my eyes and heavy blood in my heart, sitting in the library, at the cabin, in bed, and in parking lots, wondering what I could possibly write that would make sense of everything I feel, persuade others to get help before they abandon all hope, and relieve some small measure of the mighty grief and pressing guilt that plague me to this day.

I considered writing a piece on the things I have learned over the past seven years about suicide and its impact on survivors, but everything I wrote sounded selfish and insensitive. For a few days I considered recounting my own emotional struggles over the past several months, but again, selfish and insensitive, with a touch of melodrama. I thought I’d write a short story about searching the shallow waters of the Lamprey river for your James Dean watch, the one that fell off your wrist during one of our canoeing adventures, but I found myself lost and alone in a canoe made for two, riding a tidal river of memories and paddling without success against a thick and salty current of regret.

I was told in therapy a long time ago that I would one day be angry with you, and that only then would I be finished mourning your loss and be able to move on with my life. A week or so ago I fell apart and wondered if that time had come. I spent some time alone in the woods, recklessly chopping down tall trees, shooting invisible targets with Grandpa Bond’s shotgun, and driving higher and higher into the thinning air on roads and trails that were not meant for careless drivers.

But I’m not angry with you, not yet. Maybe it would close some doors if I were, but for now they remain open, and I suppose that I am glad, because inside those rooms I can sit and visit the rawest of my emotions, the ones that remind me I am alive. In recent weeks I have caught myself seeking sensory overloads. Standing naked and sweating in the hot sun, banging my head against my fist, and staying awake until my head hurts have provided stark reminders of what it is to be alive, and a strange, cooling relief from everything burning inside of me.

Don’t fret and worry yourself over my situation, however; these frantic moments are few and far between. I have Elizabeth and the kids, and with them in my life I remain a fair distance away from that dark line, the one that you stepped over, the one that you crossed and kept walking away from until you were lost into a place from which you couldn’t make your way back. If only you had found someone like Elizabeth, someone to cling to, someone who you couldn’t bear to leave behind…

So, the kids are good…

Caleb is determined to write professionally, and that makes me smile. It helps that he is blessed with talent, more than I ever possessed at his age. He will improve with time, experience, and practice, and the world will know his name for it. He talks about you a lot, telling me what he remembers about you, and stories about my life after you died, but from his perspective. Caleb inherited so many of your mannerisms and ways of thought that I sometimes have to gulp at the air around me when I see you in him. I don’t think he minds when I call him by your name, a mistake I have made often, because he loves you, and because he know that his resemblance to you is that strong.

Hannah is a can of gas thrown on a gas-fueled fire, with gas raining down on it from a gas cloud above; she can’t stop, she won’t stop, and the world better stay out of her way. She won’t be completely happy until she is eating fruit and doing yoga in Bali, and I hope to someday visit her there and try my hand at both. A couple of weeks ago I shaved her head (at her request), and she looks beautiful. Being an independent teenager, she doesn’t allow much physical contact, and the time spent with my hands on her head and my fingers tangled in her long hair was like water to a withered sprig. She is so much like me that I feel a heavy guilt to think that I may have cursed her future, but I know that she will do better than I ever will at life.

Solomon is my sea anchor, stabilizing my worn and swaying vessel in white-capped stormy seas. The kid makes me laugh and pulls my lips into a wide smile on even the darkest days. He has a quick wit to accompany his scampy charm, and is loved by anyone who gets to know him, except for his school principal, for whom the boy has little if any respect. Solomon has smooth criminal moves fueled by a confidence that I would kill for, and yet he lacks any hint of pride or malice in his heart. He draws, he writes, he dances, he loves, and he jokes, all of them well, and I can’t wait for the world stage to throw wide its curtains for his one man show. Fortunately for me, he has made a conscious decision to stay young for the time being.

Elizabeth misses you. She is soft and quiet about you, holding her Jared moments close to her chest. I often wonder what my life would have been like had I embraced you without conditions from the moment I met you, the way she did. I admit to being guilty of stealing the limelight when it comes to grief over your loss, but she has never once accused me of being selfish in my emotional hijackings. She is patient with me, believes in me, and has permanently hitched her wagon to my sad, stubborn, aimless and weather-beaten mule, expecting a sudden strengthening of muscle followed by a frightening burst of speed towards the starting line of success. Her confidence in me fuels my greatest fear, which is that I will let her down.

As for the world, it marches on in your absence. Technology is outpacing thought, greed has all but broken the spine of necessity, and discussion is losing ground to contention. I love so much about this world and all it offers, but a greater and greater part of me wishes I had long ago followed my teenage dream of heading into the Alaskan wilderness to homestead. I hope that I have succeeded in teaching the kids (and in the process remind myself) that in the end, no amount of wealth, gadgets, knowledge, faith, or possessions will be counted when it comes time to determine whether you were a good person or bad.

I wish you were here to see the happier moments and share in the bouts of laughter when they come, because on most days they outnumber the sad. But you aren’t, so I will do my best to live well until we meet again. Fortunately, I am blessed to have a small but able crew that is willing to push me forward through the storms and the darkness. I will be forever sorry that I could not, that I did not, that I would not, do the same for you. It is my great regret, and I cannot truly make amends for it. Perhaps the best thing I can do is to find some measure of anger towards you in this life, so that our next time around can be as sweet, fun, loving, and thrilling as the first one should have been.

Tonight I will spend some time up in the mountains, hoping to see the bear that has taken to visiting the cabin in search of something sweet to eat. I spent a few nights up there alone this week, and I watched him the other evening as he lumbered through the green. I felt no fear as he came closer to me, only a reverent thrill at seeing him in his wild habitat. Free from any other care but that of achieving the happiness that would come from filling his belly, his innocence reminded me of your simple and sensitive desire to be nothing more than happy, filled with love from others.

This letter has been a bit heavy, and I don’t know how to end it, other than to say that I wish things were different. I wish I was writing you about our upcoming road trip through the southwest, and how we are going to chase tumbleweeds, climb colored mountains, and meet weirdos in strange and beautiful places.

But things are not different, and they never will be.

You know what? That kinda makes me angry…

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.

Burning, Man

The chainsaw bayonet roared as I cut through the heavy double doors. Splintered chunks of wood fell to the floor, leaving me exposed to the enemy. A hailstorm of bullets puckered the woodwork around me.

"Can I interest you in a replacement door?" I shouted over the sound of my return fire.

“Throwing frag!” Caleb yelled, then threw a grenade into the room.

I tucked and rolled backwards to escape the blast. I could hear the panicked scrambling of our humanoid enemies as they tried to avoid being blown back to hell.

The explosion slammed against my chest armor, sending me onto my back. After a few moments the shock subsided, and I began to take stock of my limbs. My most important bits accounted for, I suddenly noticed that my shoulder was shaking.

I rolled to one side, and heard Elizabeth’s voice in the form of a hissing whisper.

 “Matty, I think someone just pounded on the front window!”

The battle for humanity came to an abrupt halt as I passed from dreams to reality. I wasn't a cog in the gears of war after all, but rather a middle-aged husband and father dreaming my way through the night.

Oh well.

Wait, someone pounding on the front window? An intruder? A home invader? The dreams of war returned. Awake and alert, I jumped from the bed and stood beside it, listening for sounds of infiltration.

Silence…

I looked through the dark towards my grandfather's shotgun, and my mind traveled back to a dark night and an even darker house that I had cleared room-by-room for a frightened neighbor who had come home to an open front door. Turning tight corners quickly and getting the jump on any potential intruders had proved to be a difficult task with the long barrel.

I really need to get a pistol.

A minute later, fully dressed but without my unwieldy shotgun, I made my way quietly to the front door. Peering out through the smoky glass, I could tell that something wasn't right; a dark and solid looking mass stood just outside the door, and beyond it moved a large blur of white. I turned the lock, grabbed the doorknob, and yanked the door open, ready to fight…

A big grey garbage can. It stood on our front porch, right up against the doorstep. Harmless. I looked beyond it at the moving blur of white.

A butt-load of toilet paper hung down from every tree in our yard.

Elizabeth spent a moment laughing at the scene before returning to bed. I however, knew that sleep was not an option. I grabbed a BB gun, donned my coat, and stepped outside to watch and wait behind a bush for the culprits to return. After several minutes of patience and no sign of the enemy, I decided to start the cleanup.

The first order of business was to gather the collection of garbage cans that our late night guests had placed around the yard. They must have stolen them from other houses, because ours was still in place at the side of the garage. I lined them up at the side of the road, making them easy to spot by their owners should they come looking for them in the morning.

The easy work completed, I looked up into the trees and chuckled. Our front yard boasted more white than a Klan rally. As much as I wanted to shoot the perpetrators in the butt with that BB gun, I had to smile at their handiwork and the memories of my own prankster days that it evoked.

The sunny day had melted most of the snow, and the exposed grass crunched beneath my feet as I gathered the easy to reach toilet paper from bushes and lower branches. I imagined myself to be a farmer harvesting a bright white crop that only grows by starlight. After gathering the lower hanging fruit into a pile on the lawn, I stopped and surveyed the long strands of white still hanging from the uppermost branches of every tree in my front yard, wondering how I was going to get them down. I had already tried pulling gently on a few of them, but each time the paper had snagged in the tangle of branches above.

Frustrated but not defeated, I stared up into the night sky and brainstormed. It didn't take long before thoughts of ladders, long sticks, and tree climbing gave way to sudden inspiration.

I snuck inside the house and made my way to our bedroom. Elizabeth hardly stirred as I tugged at the drawer of my nightstand, the drawer that always sticks. I managed to open it just enough to reach a hand inside and feel through the darkness until my fingers closed around my beloved Zippo. The chrome felt smooth, cold and welcome against my skin.

I had bought the lighter on a whim a few years ago, simply because I had always wanted one. Flicking it open and shut had become a nervous habit, born out of grief and a need to keep my anxious hands busy. The high-pitched metallic ”ping” of the lid flicking open had served to break up the lonely and heavy silences that often descended upon me in those days.  I carried it around with me for months, until my restlessness had calmed to the point that I no longer felt it necessary to keep in my back pocket.

Back in the front yard, I stood beneath the tallest tree, flicked open the Zippo with a satisfying ping, and lit it up. The familiar smell of butane filled my nose, and the warmth of fire crawled comfortably across my hand. I grabbed the nearest strand of toilet paper and paused, as if about to cut a ceremonial ribbon.

“I hope this works,” I said aloud with a laugh.

It did.

Soon the tree was burning without being consumed. Fire climbed each of the paper strands, turning them into smoke as it crawled along their white paths, snaked around branches, and wandered higher up into the tree to light the dark night. I dashed around the yard, setting every papered tree alight. The lawn danced with shadows, and little plots of snow glimmered with orange light as the flames ascended.

The absurdity of the moment took hold of me, and suddenly I was laughing out loud and leaping about beneath the flaming trees, staring up at the flames like a little child captivated by a fireworks display. I felt tribal, and had it been any warmer I might have stripped down to nothing and painted my body with mud. I wanted to run from house to house, wake the neighbors, and with joyful shouts invite them to take a happy part in my late night festival of fire.

Soon the paper had all burned away. The fun was over. My once bright and cheerful yard became a dark and lonely place. I turned to go inside, and noticed the pile of toilet paper that I had harvested earlier. A thought occurred, followed by a smile...

Ping!

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.

Missed Moment

“Two bobs left, two bobs right, then one left, one right, one left, and then it starts all over again, but from right to left,” Jared explained.

I watched, dizzied as my little brother bobbed his head from side to side in perfect rhythm.

“And you're always telling me that it's my turn to move, when I wonder what could make the needle jump the groove,” Amiee sang to the beat.

Jared’s head danced while I waited for the right moment to join in, like a little girl watching for her cue to leap between whirling double-dutch jump ropes.

My head bobbed left twice, right twice, and then back to the right for a single bob, just as Jared had instructed. I was feeling pretty good about my chances, and went left.

For two bobs…

Jared laughed as I tried to correct and catch up to his easy going movements. It was too late; my head frenzied back and forth in a seizure-like loop as Aimee sang on.

“Acting steady always ready to defend your fears, what's the matter with the truth, did I offend your ears?”

“Kid, it’s not that hard,” Jared said.

“Maybe for you it isn’t, but my head has a mind of its own,” I replied in jesting defense

.

“Just follow me,” my brother said, ignoring my protest. His head began to bob.

Aimee ignored us both. “Now I could talk to you till I'm blue in the face, But we still would arrive at the very same place, with you running around and me out of the race…”

I followed Jared’s example, and he nodded with encouragement as my head bobbed for one complete, correct, and rhythmic cycle.

“You got it!”

I grinned, and the multitasking center in my brain flickered under the sudden load. My head threatened calamity with a feint to the left, but just then a synapse fired, sending my head to the right, back in sync with Jared’s.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around Seattle to carpet-cleaning appointments, rewinding the tape and playing the song over and over again, our heads bobbing in unison to the rhythm of Aimee’s counsel.

“You're like a sleepwalking man, it's a danger to wake you, even when it is apparent where your actions will take you,” Aimee sang.

"That's just what you are..."

--

Happy Birthday, Jared. I hope you know that I am no longer a sleepwalking man; that's just not who I am...anymore.

Aimee Mann's "That's Just What You Are"

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.”