There I was, sit­ting across from Shel­ley at our table at Rocky Run.  If it wasn’t for the noise of drink­ing glasses and silverware-to-plate clink­ing, the uncom­fort­able silence would have been much more notice­able.  In the small con­ver­sa­tion we had made since plac­ing our food order it had become painfully obvi­ous that we had very lit­tle if any­thing at all in com­mon.  And I, for what may have been the first time in my life, was actu­ally speechless.

How did I arrive here?  Shel­ley was a co-worker of mine from the pizza restau­rant in Sev­erna Park, and we had only worked together for two shifts before I asked her out to din­ner.  I didn’t even make much small talk with her at work first.  I might have said two sen­tences to her at the drink sta­tion on two occa­sions, and it was prob­a­bly some­thing like, “Is the soup of the day writ­ten on the board actu­ally the soup today?” or “I think the Moun­tain Dew is out.”

I lit­er­ally knew noth­ing about her first.  I just saw her, and asked if she’d like to go out sometime.

I’m not even sure if a date that starts out like this can qual­ify as a blind date.  On a blind date, your friends usu­ally set you up, and they tell the both of you about the other one for a while until all that is left to do is meet face to face.  You have all of this infor­ma­tion, some of it infor­ma­tive, most of it not infor­ma­tive enough, except for what they look like.

So, based on that descrip­tion, when you ask some­one out based on looks, with­out any real con­ver­sa­tion or any inter­ac­tions prior, could that be con­sid­ered a deaf date?

Speak­ing of a deaf date, the silence had now forced us to begin draw­ing on the table.  Rocky Run cov­ered their tables in paper and left a cof­fee mug of crayons at every table so you could doo­dle while you waited for your food.  I always pre­ferred to doo­dle, but pre­vi­ous dates and friends that I have eaten with at Rocky Run have used the crayons and paper cov­ered table for every­thing from games of Tic-tac-toe, design­ing mazes for the other per­son to nav­i­gate, to show­ing the other per­son how they can write upside down.  One of the more famous things to do with the table paper was to write a mes­sage for the other per­son while they were in the restroom.  Then you would cover it with their plate, and let them find it when they move their plate to the side after they had fin­ished eat­ing.  This was where being able to write upside down prob­a­bly came in handy.

I wasn’t good at writ­ing upside down, so I always had to walk around and sit in my date’s seat to write them a mes­sage.  Fel­low patrons may have thought I was play­ing some solo game of musi­cal chairs or some ver­sion of the “Fire Drill” game although nobody ever openly ques­tioned it.  But if they ever did ask, I would’ve just told them directly, yet politely, that I enjoyed the warmth of other’s butt heat.

Some of the plate-hidden mes­sages I had received were, “I love you!” or “I want you!” while my mes­sages for dates were along the lines of, “You gonna fin­ish those fries?” or “The desserts here are excel­lent.” My date some­times thought that the wait staff had put it there as a sales pitch, or that I was just try­ing to be cute and funny; but in all hon­esty, I couldn’t have been more seri­ous.  I wanted more food.  While the cure for such prob­lems might have been a din­ner date to a buf­fet, I think tak­ing a date to a buf­fet is not only tacky, but in my case, with a pref­er­ence for full-figured women, could have unin­ten­tion­ally offended my date.

On this par­tic­u­lar date, Shel­ley and I were using the paper, but not for games, or notes to each other, we were just doo­dling to our­selves.  The date was going down the tubes fast.

Going into a slight panic, I think to myself, “How could I let this hap­pen?  I am a fun per­son to be with!  I’m the life of the party!  I’m usu­ally the first one naked!  Ok, maybe that’s more of a men­tal con­di­tion or some­thing, but regard­less, that’s not going to work here.  Come on Ben, think of something!”

I take a look around the restau­rant and that was when I remem­bered another kitschy thing about Rocky Run.  They had a ledge run­ning around the whole din­ing room with noth­ing but bot­tles of hot sauce on it.  Every hot sauce you could think of rested on this ledge, and while they were there to use on your food, I’m con­vinced their main pur­pose was to bring free enter­tain­ment as a cat­a­lyst for many a drunken dare.

I grabbed a bot­tle from the ledge behind my head.

“You ever try this hot sauce?”

She looks up from her doo­dle with a smirk, “No.  You?”

“I’ll try it if you will.”

“No way!”

“Come on!”

“No!”

“Alright, alright.  Well then, I dare you to smell it.”

I undid the lid of the bot­tle and held the bot­tle in front of her as she looked at me with a grow­ing smile and a raised eye­brow.  She was prob­a­bly think­ing that I knew what this stuff was going to do to her, or that I was going to shake it into her face and make my break for the door while she was tem­porar­ily blinded.  She leaned for­ward and gave the tiny open bot­tle a light whiff, before let­ting out a yell and pinch­ing her nose.

“That was hor­ri­ble!  Now you’ve gotta do it!”

I gave it a whiff myself, and imme­di­ately my eyes watered.  We began to laugh at our­selves, which on top of our eyes already water­ing, caused me to barely be able to see enough to get that tiny lid back on the bot­tle, and in turn, caused us to laugh more.

We sat there and dared each other to smell about three more bot­tles, each one worse than the one before.

After I placed the last bot­tle back on the ledge, I turned back around to find Shel­ley smil­ing at me.  I guess I prop­erly broke the ice.  We started talk­ing again, only this time instead of feel­ing like we had noth­ing in com­mon, we asked ques­tions of each other.  We were finally hav­ing a much bet­ter time.  After a while, the hot sauce vapors, our laugh­ing, and the fact that I’m a 340 pound man in a crowded restau­rant on a Fri­day night, had caused my fore­head to become sweaty and I could feel my bangs stick­ing to it.  I didn’t want to blot my fore­head with a nap­kin like I’m the late Barry White and his hand­ker­chief thir­teen min­utes into a con­cert, so I just gave them a clear with my hand.

As we con­tin­ued to talk, I was feel­ing a bit uncom­fort­able.  Some­thing felt wrong.  Why was I in this pain?  It felt like my fore­head was on fire!  Then it dawned on me: I must have had some hot sauce on my hand from when I had trou­ble han­dling the lids to all of those bot­tles with watery eyes and now I’ve wiped it onto my fore­head.  My big, sweaty, with its open pores gasp­ing for cool air, forehead!

I looked down at my nap­kin and pick it up, when Shel­ley said, “I’m going to run to the restroom real quick.”

Excited that she was leav­ing so that I could take care of my predica­ment, but not try­ing to sound like it, I quickly replied, “Yeah, you do that.”

She gave me a per­plexed look before say­ing, “I’ll be right back.”

As I watched her walk away for the restroom, I was almost in tears.  Have you ever felt the heat of a pre­heated oven hit you right in the face as you go to place your food in?  Imag­ine that heat, con­cen­trated on just your forehead.

Shel­ley rounded the cor­ner into the bath­room, and I took that nap­kin in my hand, and shoved it straight into my glass of ice water.  And also in my pain-filled pan­icked mind, I man­aged to sink 2/3 of my fist into the glass as well, caus­ing water to splash up and over the sides of the glass, and soak­ing the brown paper table­cloth under­neath of it.  But I could not have cared in the least as I slapped that cold, wet nap­kin to my forehead.

Ahhhh, sweet relief!  As I felt the sting leave, I imag­ined steam com­ing off of my head like in an old Merry Melodies car­toon.  Then I looked down and noticed the mess that I had made.  I quickly looked up and saw no sign of Shel­ley just yet, but I knew I had to act fast.  I moved my drink to the other side of the table, grabbed the two lit­tle plates for appe­tiz­ers and moved them over the pud­dle on the paper.  Now all I’m left with is a soggy nap­kin that was falling apart.  I squeezed it out over my drink, and then threw it under my chair.  Our server came walk­ing by, and I stopped her and told her that I needed a new drink because I had acci­den­tally dropped a crayon in it.  She car­ried my drink away and as she moved from the table, I saw Shel­ley walk­ing toward me from the restroom.  She sat down at the table where we pro­ceeded to have a nice din­ner, and lucky for me, she was none the wiser of my hot sauce mishap.

After din­ner, we went to a club called The Depot in heart of down­town Bal­ti­more because she “wanted to dance”.  On the way up to the club, Shelly said, “This is club is more who I am.  Damn, I’m gonna feel out-of-place wear­ing this dress that I bor­rowed from my sis­ter, but screw it, I don’t care.”

The club was a very dark club with black lights, strobes, with peo­ple dressed in a lot of black.  And there was enough Indus­trial, Alter­na­tive Metal, and Elec­tron­ica music blar­ing to fill 10 sequels to “The Matrix”.

And in the mid­dle of all of this dark­ness was me, the largest man in the club, wear­ing a beige polo shirt and blue jeans.  I must have looked like I was someone’s father, chap­er­one, or per­son who was hav­ing car trou­ble and was wait­ing it out inside for AAA to show up.  And Shelly thought she was going to look a lit­tle out-of-place.  I wasn’t sure how to dance to the kind of music blar­ing through the speak­ers, and I didn’t want to get too sweaty again and reac­ti­vate the hot sauce, so I mostly just sat in the cor­ner and split my atten­tion part-time between watch­ing Shel­ley dance, and watch­ing Tim Burton’s Bee­tle Juice, with­out sound of course, from two TVs mounted above the bar.  It didn’t sync up with the music play­ing like the “Dark Side of the Wiz­ard of Oz” but the “Day-O” scene was fun to watch with Prodigy blast­ing through the house speakers.

When I saw a tall, lanky gen­tle­man walk out of the bath­room wear­ing skin-tight vinyl, I began to won­der if I was hal­lu­ci­nat­ing from the Orange Habaneros that had soaked through my forehead.

To this day, I hon­estly am not sure.

But my ner­vous hypochon­driac ways still made me run to the men’s room in an attempt to wash my face, but they were out of soap.  How­ever, there was one thing this men’s room had that most didn’t: women.  One of them was hand­cuffed to her man who was reliev­ing him­self at the uri­nal, and the other one, well, I think it was a woman.  Then again I think Lady Gaga is a man, though every­one swears she isn’t, so maybe I’m not the best judge.

Finally, my “hot” date was over, and if Chuck Wool­ery were to ask if we would like to go out again, I’m bet­ting we would have both agreed that there would not have been a sec­ond date.  Prob­a­bly made even more obvi­ous as we pull up to my apart­ment where Shel­ley is drop­ping me off, because I was “between cars” at that time.

So while feel­ing like a com­plete loser with my lack of trans­porta­tion, I decided to try to say what we were both think­ing.  We had noth­ing in com­mon all night, and no real strong chem­istry that I could tell.  Instead, how­ever, I sim­ply turned to her and politely said, “Thank you for a great time.” And I meant it.  It might not have been the best time on Earth, but it could have been much worse.  I think she must’ve known every­thing I was think­ing behind my polite expres­sion of grat­i­tude, because we had our­selves a laugh after I said it.  As the laugh­ter sub­sided, she said, “I’m sorry if you had a bad time at The Depot.”

Before I could explain to her that it wasn’t a “bad time”, just maybe more of an “uncom­fort­able, yet inter­est­ing, time”, she grabbed me and kissed me.  After we broke away from the kiss, she explained, “I want you.  Not because of the date, but because I want sex.  I guess you could say I’m like a guy when it comes to sex”.

How would you fit a mes­sage like that under a plate?

And “like a guy” when it comes to sex? While she may have meant that she wouldn’t get emo­tion­ally attached, or want a rela­tion­ship, or some­thing along those lines, after see­ing a side that was “more her”, and the com­pany she keeps at “The Depot”, it also could have meant some­thing else.  Sadly, or per­haps luck­ily, I wouldn’t find out.  I guess I was lit­tle intim­i­dated by her forwardness.

A quick side note: Now that I’m a mar­ried man and a father I would gladly dump a jar of Orange Habaneros on my head at the mere chance of my wife being so forward.

But back to the car and Shelly, I mean, let’s face it: I was a 340 pound 22 year old, and sex, unlike food, was some­thing I was get­ting pretty infre­quently so there was also a big fear of being hor­ri­ble in bed with her and then hav­ing to see her at work on our next shift.  Some­thing like that could really change the drink sta­tion conversation.

“I think the Moun­tain Dew is out.”

“Yeah? Well maybe the syrup only lasts a minute too.”

Leav­ing all fur­ther pos­si­ble embar­rass­ment behind I said good­bye and remem­ber think­ing to myself as I walked from her car to my door, “Man, I really want to wash my forehead.”

It was the fall after my high school grad­u­a­tion.  After the cul­mi­na­tion of 4 years of hard work, I took that high school diploma and embarked into the real world.  A real world that led me to a retail nov­elty store named Spencer Gifts.

Spencer’s, as we called it, was a store that offered any­thing to make a party bet­ter.  And we could make any kind of party bet­ter.  We sold disco balls and smoke machines, black lights and strobe lights.  We sold incense and glow in the dark stick­ers, fla­vored motion lotion and vibrat­ing cucum­bers, for nov­elty only, of course.  We sold board games with sex­ual themes and fuzzy hand­cuffs.  From Bach­e­lorette par­ties to swinger par­ties to smoke filled base­ments, we had the accou­trements to make it a success.

So you can no doubt imag­ine my con­fu­sion when I had to take a drug test to get the job.

After the hol­i­day sea­son, I took my diploma and got a higher pay­ing job for a children’s fun cen­ter called Dis­cov­ery Zone.  Spencer Gifts tried offer­ing big­ger bucks to keep me, but I told them, “I worked for four years to earn a diploma in… high school stud­ies… and I should be mak­ing the really big bucks.”

I’m sure it went dif­fer­ently than that.  Truth­fully, I don’t quite remem­ber why I left Spencer’s.  Maybe it was over money. Plus the year was 1996, and the min­i­mum wage was $4.75 an hour.  Dis­cov­ery Zone could have lured me away with the promise of 5 whole dol­lars an hour!

But I would be will­ing to bet that it was some­thing far more imma­ture.  Some­one was prob­a­bly “being a jerk”, or I thought I had worked hard enough in 6 months of mall retail to exclaim, “I’m a tax pay­ing adult, and I deserve Fri­day and Sat­ur­day nights off, you know?”

Ah, to be 18 again.  It’s amaz­ing how much your pri­or­i­ties shift not even a decade later.  By 28, I was a hus­band and a father, and would laugh at myself back then to the point of nearly pee­ing myself.  Now into my 30’s, I know that if I laugh too hard, there is an ever-growing chance that I just might.

Nev­er­the­less, I was 18 years old, and the world was mine for the tak­ing.  I was off to Dis­cov­ery Zone to become a “kid coach”.  As a kid coach, my 3 main respon­si­bil­i­ties were sim­ple: Host birth­day par­ties in the “party rooms” in the back, make sure the kids don’t hurt them­selves while run­ning around in the Mega­Zone, and clean up the inevitable vomit.

If you think back, you prob­a­bly remem­ber that every birth­day party you’ve ever had, some kid threw up.  Heck, some of you read­ing this may not have to think back that far because in your later years your more alco­hol based par­ties still fea­ture that won­der­ful joy to every cel­e­bra­tion: The Party Puker.

Just be glad you didn’t host children’s birth­day par­ties like I did.  Dur­ing a good busy Sat­ur­day, there were at least 3 par­ties, which meant 3 Party Pukers!

Hav­ing worked these par­ties enough, I started get­ting good at pick­ing the Party Puk­ers out.  Usu­ally there were phys­i­cal traits, but I always looked deeper.

For starters, there was the lit­tle nerdy boy.  He wants to run around, and keep up with the other kids, but his car­dio­vas­cu­lar lifestyle of com­put­ers and PBS hasn’t got him quite up to par.  But man is he try­ing!  Because at a birth­day party, with par­ents around, every­one are equals.  The same kid who is going to be spit­ting spit­balls into the back of your head come Mon­day, is play­ing with you today and you’re not going to waste it!  If you can keep up, he might find you cool, and you could turn your life around!

Also, there was no telling what the nerdy boy may have eaten at the party that he may have a mild aller­gic reac­tion to.  That’s not to say that nerdy kids always have aller­gies, but, yes they do.

Next up, we have the fat kid.  Once again, this is a mat­ter of his prime car­dio­vas­cu­lar fit­ness level, cou­pled with the fact that he ate every­thing that was put in front of him includ­ing half of a Sty­ro­foam cup.  He’s huff­ing, he’s puff­ing, and he’s red in the face and sweaty.

For me, it was like look­ing in a magic mir­ror that makes you appear younger.

And lastly, there was the Asth­matic boy.  He would be run­ning around, laugh­ing, hav­ing the best time, and then he would stop in his tracks.  Is he just going to vomit right here?  Not even make an attempt for the restrooms?  And that’s when the boy reaches in his pocket, and pulls out an Asthma Inhaler.

Now this puts me at an impasse.  I under­stand Asthma to a cer­tain extent because my lit­tle brother was diag­nosed with it when he was 2 years old.  So, I can’t really be mad if this kid does vomit because he hon­estly can’t help it.  But I wish I could ask the par­ents why they were feed­ing the Asth­matic kid cook­ies, punch, cake, candy, and sugar, sugar, and more sugar, and then telling him to run around?  It’s called sci­ence!  And you know he’s just going to throw up in my ball crawl!  And if that unfor­tu­nate event ever hap­pened, you’d have to take all the balls out, and wash them in a machine, and then wash the bot­tom of the pit out by hand.

Oh, believe me, it was as much fun as it sounds.

Now you may won­der why the exam­ples I’ve listed were all boys.  Well, it’s quite sim­ple.  If you were a girl at a birth­day party and you didn’t feel well, you sat by a par­ent, or your par­ent, and took it easy.  Then if you were going to throw up, some­one would have an empty cup, or they could get you to the restroom on time.  So I never really had to clean up after the girls.

Not the boys!  They would just ignore all signs, all stom­ach pains, all ver­tigo, and keep play­ing!  Don’t you worry guys, I’m sure some­one will gladly clean up your stom­ach con­tents.  And I was sure that some­one was going to be me.

Alright, I will admit that maybe it was a lit­tle creepy of me to be stalk­ing these boys while drag­ging a mop and bucket behind me.  But in my defense, I was try­ing to stay pre­pared.  Some­times the best defense is a bril­liant offense.

Also, I was hop­ing that one day I was going to hear the pre-vomit cough, and be able to kick the wheel­ing bucket under the kid before the splash hit the tiles.

I hear a female’s voice ring out over the loud speaker, “Code 10 in the Mega­Zone, Code 10 in the MegaZone.”

The Mega­Zone was the main play area of Dis­cov­ery Zone, which resem­bled a giant ham­ster cage, com­plete with multi-colored plas­tic habi­trails.  All we were miss­ing was a giant upside down water bot­tle with a mar­ble in the end of its metal spout.  And what was the “Code 10” about?  Well if you have a child or remem­ber being a child, then you know that if you say puke, vomit or throw up in a room full of 8 year olds, you’ll start a riot you can’t con­tain with­out your local S.W.A.T.  team.

I stood there look­ing over the whole Mega­Zone, and that’s when I saw him.  It was the fat kid.  My chubby lit­tle dop­pel­ganger was in the plas­tic inter­sec­tion bub­ble, cry­ing and fog­ging it up.  I felt bad for him for a sec­ond, but then I started to smile when I thought about some­one hav­ing to crawl in there to clean it up.

The voice rings out over the loud speaker, “Ben to the Mega­Zone, Ben to the Mega­Zone.” Wait, that was not who I had in mind.  Mostly because I men­tioned at the past two staff meet­ings, that I was 6’2” and over 300 pounds, and I didn’t fit in those tubes.

The loud speaker squawked again, “Ben to the Mega­Zone, Ben to the MegaZone.”

“I thought we dis­cussed this!  Get Christy to do it, she’s a crack­head, you know she can fit!” I squawked back.

“Ben to the Mega­Zone.” She taunted again.

“Okay!  I hear you…” I yelled, before mum­bling a ‘ya bitch.’ under my breath as I headed to the sup­ply closet to trade up my mop and wheel­ing bucket for “the gag bag”.

“The gag bag” was a duf­fel bag with a pair of gloves, a spray bot­tle of all pur­pose cleaner, another spray bot­tle of dis­in­fec­tant, a small han­dled bucket with a dozen rags in it.  It was the per­fect kit for this sit­u­a­tion.  I grabbed “the gag bag”, gave a hug to girl behind the prize counter and asked her to “Send my love to my girl­friend, if I shan’t return.” And then I embarked for the twist­ing tubes of the MegaZone.

Once inside, I was met with a con­fus­ing mix of emo­tions.  First up was hap­pi­ness because I actu­ally fit through the entrance way.  Maybe run­ning around with these kids had taken a cou­ple of pounds off.  Then, I was grate­ful that wasn’t claus­tro­pho­bic, because I exactly took up every avail­able inch of space in those tubes.  After that, I was offended by the oppres­sive smell of urine and feet.  And lastly, I was afraid because with every move for­ward in the tube, my shirt cov­ered love han­dles dragged the walls of plas­tic, and in turn began to build a sta­tic charge around me.

The sta­tic had every hair on my body stand­ing up and I swear I felt my eye­brows tin­gling.  That’s when I looked down and saw the metal zip­per on “the gag bag” and began to imag­ine the charge hit­ting the metal and the spark being so big that it shot me out of the slid­ing board like a mus­ket.  At 19, I was far too young to die, and def­i­nitely not like that.  I always imag­ined I would die under­neath of Eliz­a­beth Shue’s gyrat­ing naked body, not lodged in a claw machine after shoot­ing out of a slid­ing board in a freak sta­tic accident.

I quickly tossed the bag ahead of me, and was met with yet another emo­tion: sad­ness.  Sad­ness over the fact that “the gag bag” bounced off of the side of the tube and slid down the spi­ral slid­ing board and plopped on the mat cov­ered floor below.

After cry­ing incon­solably for a good 4 min­utes, I thought, “For­get the gag bag, let me just find the fat kid.”

Ten min­utes of Army crawl­ing later and I finally reached the inter­sec­tion where the fat kid… was.

Yes, I said “was”.  And not only was he not here, but nei­ther was any vomit.  Now I’m the one sit­ting there, stuck in the plas­tic inter­sec­tion bub­ble, cry­ing and fog­ging it up. That’s when I reached my final emo­tion of this expe­ri­ence: anger.  Angry because I went through all of that for noth­ing, angry because I just had to laugh at the scene in “Willy Wonka” with Augus­tus Gloop when I was a kid, and even more angry because as I looked through the fogged up plas­tic bub­ble to the floor below, I saw the lit­tle fat kid, the nerdy kid, and the Asth­matic kid.

And they were point­ing up at me and laughing.

“Look Mommy, the fat man is stuck in the tube!” the fat kid hap­pily cried.

That was when my high school diploma got my lower pay­ing job at Spencer Gifts back.  Let’s just say Dis­cov­ery Zone frowned upon the flip­ping off and the cussing out of 8 year olds, and I always thought I was much more at home amongst edi­ble under­wear and elec­tronic fart machines anyway.

            My mother, my sis­ter Liz, and I lived with Dad and Gabriel in the sum­mer of 1995.  It was a weird sit­u­a­tion to say the least, con­sid­er­ing that Mom and Dad sep­a­rated when I was 5 years old and Liz was 3, and then were legally divorced when we were 7 and 5. Gabriel was a half-brother to Liz and I, from Dad’s sec­ond mar­riage that he was sep­a­rated from.  And as if it couldn’t get more confusing, here we were, all together in a 2 bed­room, 1 bath cot­tage on the Magothy River.
            The rea­son for this reunion was not out of rekin­dled romance, it was more out of con­ve­nience.  I have no idea how it all tran­spired, I can only imag­ine that after my step­fa­ther kicked Mom, Liz and I out, Dad must have said, “Well you guys can stay with Gabriel and me.”
            How noble, right?
            “No, that’s ok, we’re going to look for an apart­ment or some­thing, but thank you, that was really sweet.”
            I wish that last sen­tence had hap­pened.  Because though it would later prove to be a tem­po­rary thing end­ing before the sum­mer did, when our step­fa­ther would let us move back in, those few months were some of the worst of my life.
            Gabriel how­ever, absolutely enjoyed the liv­ing arrange­ment.  Then again, he was 6 and didn’t know any­thing about the last time the rest of us lived together, or my not-so-pleasant mem­o­ries that would play at ran­dom dur­ing this unnec­es­sary reunion.
            I do remem­ber that Gabriel really enjoyed that Mom, “Miss Gwen” as he called her, who was our “fam­ily bar­ber”, had cut his hair into a “cool” Mohawk.  While I’m sure it looked “cool” to Gabriel, I couldn’t get used to it though.  My lit­tle brother was already a tiny, pasty pale white kid with freck­les.  And now all of that was accented with a blond Mohawk.
            Look­ing back, there really was no harm in it; it was a sum­mer hair­cut that would grow out by the time school started, although at the time I thought he looked just like Tweety Bird. And I reminded him of this, often.
            If there was one, and only one, plus to liv­ing there that sum­mer, I would have to say that it was liv­ing on a river.  When I say it was on the Magothy River, lit­er­ally, the Magothy was in the back­yard.  We even had a pier, albeit a rick­ety one with ran­dom nails stick­ing up all over it that you wouldn’t walk bare­foot down unless you had two Tetanus shots, in the past 8 min­utes, but it was a pier.
            That pier, and the lit­tle beach and water of the Magothy River around it, became an escape for me from the awk­ward­ness and repressed mem­o­ries wait­ing for me back inside the house.
            Now because I liked to stay out­side, for rea­sons already explained, and Gabriel was a 6 year old boy who didn’t know the mean­ing of “stay­ing indoors”, he and I became really great friends that sum­mer.  So now I will take back what I said ear­lier; there was more than only one plus to liv­ing there that sum­mer.
            It was a beau­ti­ful breezy sum­mer day that we decided we were going to go fish­ing.  Gabriel and Dad had their own fish­ing rods on the back porch, so the two of us grabbed them up, and headed down for the water.            
            Halfway down the back­yard, I real­ized we didn’t have bait.
            “We don’t have bait.” I said to Gabe, dis­ap­pointed.
            After a few sec­onds of silence, he emphat­i­cally replies, “We’ll use worms!”
            “Well, we don’t have worms.”
            “They’re under the table!” he gig­gles out.
            The “table” that he is refer­ring to, was a giant wooden spool that used to old cable or power lines that now served as an out­door table under the tree in the back­yard near the water’s edge.  Dad was a pack rat and a half, whether it was giant spools, old sofas and chairs, or day old bread from the dump­ster behind Won­der Bread in Glen Burnie.
            Nowa­days I believe they’re called, “Free­gans”, but what­ever you call it to make it sound less like a scav­enger rodent, it is called pack rat­ting, and Dad was a pro­fes­sional.
            How­ever, being 17 years old, hav­ing a pack rat father always embar­rassed me.  So it’s need­less to say, I never had any friends over to Dad’s if I could help it.  Espe­cially after I heard come­dian Jeff Fox­wor­thy say, “If you have a giant spool for a cof­fee table… you might be a Red­neck.”
            I walked over to the “table”, tipped it over on its side, and under­neath, in the wet dirt where the grass couldn’t grow was more worms than I had ever seen in my life to that point.  Gabriel dug in with both hands grab­bing worm after worm, and putting them in a lit­tle empty mar­garine tub.
            “That’s a good one!  Oh, that’s a good one!  Look at that one, that’s a big one!” Gabriel shouted as he unearthed the slimy crea­tures.
            “Bet­ter him than I.” I thought.  I was never a kid who played with bugs, aside from the occa­sional Potato Bug, or Roly Poly as we also called them.  Gabriel, on the other hand, was fear­less when it came to bugs.  I remem­ber that Dad used to rip the pinch­ers off of pincher bugs so that Gabriel could play with them and not get hurt.  No lie.
            If han­dling creepy crawlies was a “passed down” trait, well it skipped me com­pletely.
            We grabbed up the worms and rods and headed down the planks of lock­jaw that was our pier, and sat down in the two chairs wait­ing for us at the end of it.
            The breeze that was com­ing off of the water felt amaz­ing, and as I type this I can smell the water of the Magothy like I am sit­ting out there right now.  Gabriel looked up at me, his lit­tle blond Mohawk fly­ing side­ways in the wind, “Can you put the worm on my hook?”
            I freeze.
            I had never even touched worm in my 17 years on this earth, and now Gabriel wants me to stab one through with a hook?  I try and play it cool as I ask, “What, you can’t do it?”
            Gabriel squishes his face up in dis­gust, “Ewww, no way.”
            I didn’t want to do it, but some­thing in me told me to.  As I look back, I want to believe that deep down I might have known this would be the only time we’d fish together, and that this would be the last sum­mer he would be alive, but really there was no way that I would have ever thought that.
            I grabbed the hook on his fish­ing rod, and he handed me a worm.  As the worm slith­ered around in my hand, I was flip­ping the hell out on the inside, but was keep­ing it cool on the out­side.  After all, I “gotta be the big brother”, you know?
            I stabbed it onto the hook fast like I was pierc­ing someone’s ear, and as odd as it may sound, I actu­ally expected a scream.  Once the deed was done, I thought, “That wasn’t too bad.  Well, for me any­way.  I bet it sucked for the worm.”
            I handed Gabriel his fish­ing rod back, and decided to cast mine out with­out a worm because I just didn’t want to stab through a worm again any­time soon.
            As we sat there fish­ing, Gabriel struck up a con­ver­sa­tion.  And as usual, our con­ver­sa­tion would be about girls.  Gabriel asked me, “You ever kiss Kayla?”
            “Yeah, all the time.”
            “I never seen ya.” he shot back.
            “Well I have.” putting an end to the con­ver­sa­tion.
            I didn’t have the heart to tell him, nor would he under­stand that the rea­son why he had never seen me kiss her was because he was run­ning for his life after I said, “That did it!”
            When I asked him if he kissed any girls, he gig­gled as he said, “No!” But he did con­fess that he liked this one girl in his class at school named Emily, and that one time he had kissed a tree to make her laugh.
           I made fun of him for kiss­ing a tree for a girl, when truth be told, he was more my brother at that moment than he would ever know.  Let’s just say, I had kissed a few trees myself.  I also ate mud pie, leaves, and took many a dodge ball to the face, all for the girls.  I wished I would’ve told him that right then and there, although he might not have under­stood.
            After an hour of con­ver­sa­tion and no fish, we made our way back to the house.  While we walked back up the pier, I looked to my left and as the water gets shal­low toward the shore, and in turn, more clear, I spot a fish!  I grabbed the rod and stepped to the edge of the side of the pier and casted it out before every­thing went upside down and dark.
            Not think­ing about the popped up nails in our death­trap of a pier as I stepped to the edge, two planks that weren’t secure had flipped up, and dumped me into the water head first like a trap door.
            I popped up out of the water, and looked over at Gabriel who screams, “Oh shit!” before he took off like a bolt of light­ning for the house.  I didn’t clock him, but I’d say he was mov­ing slightly faster than aver­age “That did it!” speed.
            I felt bad for the lit­tle guy run­ning his heart out because he was con­cerned about his brother, but he took off before I could tell him I was alright.  I was a lit­tle embar­rassed, and a lit­tle wet, but I was alright.  And yes, I said “a lit­tle wet”. 
           Appar­ently, when I flipped off of the pier and into the water, I landed head and left shoul­der first into about 2 feet of water.  How I didn’t break my neck is a mys­tery, but also how I was only wet on 1/3 of my body might have been a big­ger one.  Seri­ously, it was a diag­o­nal line across my upper body, like every­thing from where a pageant sash would go upward was wet and every­thing down from that was dry.
            As I walked out of the water I thought, “Great, now he’s going to tell my Mom and she’s going to run out here mak­ing a fuss.“
            I stopped when I reached the sand and took a dam­age check.  I could move my head all around, my arm was ok, and every­thing in my pock­ets was dry.  And now I’ve real­ized there’s been no sign of Mom.  Sure, I didn’t want her mak­ing a fuss, but at least a, “Ben, are you alright?” out of the back door would’ve been nice.
            As I started walk­ing up the back­yard toward the house, I looked down and real­ize that Dad is going to be so pissed because there’s now sand packed all in the cas­ing around the reel on his fish­ing rod and now it won’t turn.  I planned on try­ing to fix it before he got home, but that was not what was impor­tant at that moment.  What was impor­tant is why nobody cared about where I was at; I could’ve been drown­ing right now!
            I’m about 15 feet from the back door when Mom and Liz finally came rush­ing out in a full-on panic.  “Oh my god, are you okay?!  Are you hurt?!”
            “I’m fine.  I’m fine.” I told them but deep down inside it still felt good to be fussed over a bit.
            After we got inside, I couldn’t help but ask, “What took you guys so long to check to see if I was alright?”
            As it turned out my lit­tle brother Gabriel ran all the way up and into the house, got inside and into the liv­ing room with Mom and Liz, and then he calmly sat down.
            “Bet you I know some­thing you don’t know.” He calmly states.
            “What’s that?” Mom asks.
           “You have to guess.”
            “You caught a fish.”
            “No.”
            “Ben caught a fish.” Liz chimes in.
            “No.”
            “What is it?” Mom asks.
            “You have to guess!” Gabriel shouts.
            After about another minute or so of guess­ing, Mom’s patience had run out, “Well I don’t know, what is it Gabe?”
            “The pier broke and Ben fell into the water.”
            Now I under­stood the panic as they ran out of the house.  After I heard what hap­pened inside that day, I remem­ber think­ing, “Thanks a lot lit­tle bro.  Remind me to never ask you to call 911 for me.”
            “911, what’s your emer­gency?”
            “You have to guess.”
            But in my later years with­out him, I under­stood why he did it.  And it’s funny, because what I mis­took for worry about his big brother wasn’t so.  He watched me rise up from the water so he knew I was alright, which means that the, “Oh shit!” was less a, “Oh shit, Ben’s hurt!” and more of a, “Oh shit, they’ll never guess this one!”
            And look­ing back I really can’t blame him.  He was 6, about to turn 7 years old, and his whole life to that point was peo­ple teach­ing him things and telling him what to do.  How often at 6 years old do you know some­thing that nobody older than you does?
            He more than likely took off run­ning so fast because he knew I wouldn’t be far behind, and if he was going to get enough time to make a decent game out of his new infor­ma­tion, he needed to act swiftly.
            Now, when­ever I look back, I laugh at the fact that a lit­tle acci­dent that could have been tragic turned into a cute and funny mem­ory for the rest of my life.
            Unfor­tu­nately, things would not be so cute and funny when Dad came home and said, “What in the hell hap­pened to my fish­ing rod?!”
            And I said, “Bet you I know some­thing you don’t know.”