Extra Pedestrian

When I was thirteen years old, a pair of hurricanes struck my hometown merely two months apart.  The first, a relatively weak Category 2 storm, hit in such a way that I was able to stand on the front porch with my dad and uncle (my mom, brother, and sister were out of town at the time) as the winds and rain came over from the back of the house.  We ate snacks as we watched the iridescent glow of electrical bursts coming from the transformer station just beyond the reaches of our neighborhood.  We comically ruminated on the pronunciation of "debris" while branches fell from nearby trees.  I lamented all of the yard-cleaning work that lay before me in the coming days.  With all due respect to the dangerous situation that a hurricane can be, as well as an understanding that this was not truly an event to celebrate, I do remember feeling rather excited about the opportunity to witness such a storm up close.  If you're in a safe place when nature flexes some muscle,

Convincing myself it was a courtesy, I scraped the head of the match against the coarse side of the box, my eyes widening with pyro-maniacal joy as it sparked to life; the initial, hissing flare ultimately settling into a more subdued and silent flame. --- We had guests -- long-time family friends, currently seated on the back patio, chatting with my mother.  The concrete patio, covered in the flaking green paint applied by a previous homeowner, spread out to the right from the back door in the kitchen, nestling into the corner of the L-shaped home, a large sliding glass door on the adjacent wall.  Azalea bushes of varying size and shape isolated the patio from the otherwise sizeable backyard that lay beyond. Immediately to the left of the backdoor was a slight drop-off to ground level -- only a few inches lower, really, but a decent spot for laying pavers beneath the outdoor faucet and connected hose.  This side of the patio, near the drop-off, was typically reserved for the

I've been told I have a great memory, and to a large degree, I believe it. I see very vivid images and feel very powerful emotions left over from endless childhood, teenage, and adult memories, many of which still drive many of my peculiar habits, fears, likes, peeves, and so on. I can recite, often in great detail, things that happened in my life as far back as my Spy Era -- which, as I so often do in regular conversation, I must now make an abrupt 90-degree turn to explain. I read Calvin & Hobbes comic strips and books religiously as a child, and likely into my early teen years. I could spend a lot of time talking about the brilliance of this particular corner of the comic strip world, but the internet is already full of information on, praise for, and philosophical waxing about young Calvin and his pet tiger, Hobbes. While a large part of author Bill Watterson's genius resided in his ability to bring legitimate philosophical ideas into such a medium, he was al

I keep trying to think of how I should preface what's to follow, but each attempt has turned into what would better serve as a spin-off post regarding the enigma that is the office bathroom. There is so much to consider on this topic -- office size, coworker demographics, stall/urinal etiquette, the baffling lack of white noise, any number of ruminations on timing. It's overwhelming, really.   But for today, we'll skip ahead a bit, to an idea typically kept quiet, except among the most trusted of coworkers -- the hidden bathroom. Now, I say hidden, but this is usually a misnomer. To my knowledge, there are very few cases wherein an office bathroom is concealed by a bookcase-operated rotating wall, like some sort of Holy Golden Toilet (band name alert!), discoverable only by Indiana Jones and his Nazi rivals (questionable band name alert). Rather, such a bathroom is merely isolated, whether by frequency, demographics, or location. Perhaps your hidden bathroom is

I should warn you in advance:  There is absolutely no point to this story.  But I'm telling it anyway.   One day, when I was in elementary school, my friend, Paul, and I ran into one of the older kids in the restroom. I’m guessing he was a 5th grader, and that we were in 3rd or 4th grade at the time.  I don’t remember his name – assuming he ever divulged that information in the first place – but we’re going to call him John, primarily because this story is undeserving of anything better.  And John was about to lead us temporarily astray.  To clarify, by “us,” I specifically mean Paul and myself, as John would slither away undetected by those in authority.  As far as I know, he lurks freely among the general public to this very day, and is quite likely a very, very big a-hole.  Among his later transgressions, I suspect, were black market arms dealing, the inexplicable (and wholly insufferable) rise of Florida Georgia Line, and every time you've ever burnt toast.  Of course, I

What follows is, in a word, ridiculous.  But it's also kind of telling.    The New Goat Day 'series' was piloted in April of 2015, thanks to twelve photographs of goats climbing Argan trees in Morocco.  Some genius (even I'm not sure if I'm being facetious here) organized these twelve photos into a wall calendar, making the first day of each month just that much brighter for a goob like myself.  Goats are funny animals.  Doubly so among the treetops.  I couldn't help myself, I had to share.  And I had to be bombastic in how I did so.  So things grew increasingly ridiculous right off the bat.   But within a month, I had started to develop an idea, whether or not I really wanted to acknowledge it (I did not).  I was going to give legitimacy to the absurd monthly display by tying the goat photos to whatever we were all collectively experiencing at that time, be it here in the Dallas area, or nation-wide.  Backed by pictures of tree'd goats and face-palmi

No.  Not one more guy walking down the street. This isn't about that.  That's a superfluous sequel to a horror movie about a murderous hitchhiker, or another warm body hustling down a New York City avenue.  Or perhaps an unpublished verse to that terrific James Taylor song.  This is not that sort of extra pedestrian.  I'm aiming for the other definition, the one more self-deprecating.  Wildly mediocre. Especially ordinary.  Markedly uninteresting. Spectacularly... meh. For years I've had myself convinced that writing is one of my strong suits.  And it may very well be.  Or it may also be a study in self-delusion.  Either way, I've decided to start keeping better track of the occasional stories I've told, the hours I've killed behind a keyboard -- a record of all of the time I have wasted, a little of yours, scores of mine.  There will likely be some underwhelming material, and occasional expanses of difficult-to-follow passages diverting away from