This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
The first sentence will be, “My dogs keep barking at the closet.”
Bill: “My dogs keep barking at the closet.”
Mary: “Did you get us another dog? And we don’t let her in the bedroom. I swear, John…”
“Hold on. I meant my feet, Mary. Last night? Trains, Planes, and Automobiles. We’ve felt so gloomy since the election, and John Candy always lifts the darkness.”
“I have felt lighter — no thoughts of the orange man all morning. And last night, after the movie, was lovely, Bill. It’s been a while.”
“When you said…”
“Those aren’t pillows. Thank you, John Candy.”
“Now, about that closet.”
“I know — new shoes for Christmas.”
“Meow.”
“No”
Note: Feeling down? Take two and call me in the morning.
John Candy’s “My dogs are barking” scene from Trains, Planes and Automobiles.
The random word challenge #339: Single and Heinous
Photo by the author
This Drabble was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.
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*
Inspector Clouseau: “I didn’t know you had a twin brother. Tell me what you saw.”
Santa: “I’d just put Jimmy’s train set under the tree when I looked out this window. Are we in France, Inspector?
“Iowa, USA. Please, I know it’s hard. What did you see?”
“It was horrible. They didn’t have a chance. By the time I got outside, Krampus stood over Dasher, laughing. Are they all — even Rudolph?
“Every single one. Heinous. Why Frosty?”
“He was always jealous. And with Global Warming, bitter.”
My father, who knew little about baseball, coached my Dad’s League team at the expense of a broken nose he earned while umpiring.
My mom managed my Cub Scout Den in our basement. She only lost one scout, and that was for an hour as she hopped in the car and found runaway Pat a few blocks away. He had gotten into a fight with his brother Mike.
I’m guessing you also have a family and personal history of volunteering.
If you’re an American, offering your time and skills for free seems in our DNA. Someone‘s counting, and about 40% of us provide the energy for 1000s of organizations. (source).
Of course, it’s not only us. My Romanian friend Alex, who lives in Reșița, Romania, rescues stray dogs and works to protect the pigeons that gather in the city center.
Yesterday, November 5th, was International Volunteer Day. Carole Olsen asks what kind of volunteering you do.
*
Every Tuesday, from 8 am to 10 am, I join this crew at the Decorah Food Pantry.
Photo by the author
Four days ago, fifteen of us unloaded, carried, opened, stocked, and recycled boxes for 6000 pounds of new and rescued food.
The new food arrives in this truck.
Photo by the author
Mike and Steve deliver the rescued food from local grocery retailers in their pick-ups.
This is the black-and-white of volunteer work in our northeast Iowa community of 8000.
The orange arrow indicates the number of family members served, and the red arrow shows the weight of the food provided.
Matt, the Director, shared this story from a pantry client on Tuesday: “Until we found the Community Food Pantry, our last week and a half of each month, we were surviving on pasta and butter.”
Matt added that this couple are both employed.
*
The Pantry runs on two paid workers, one full and one half-time, and 150 volunteers.
In other words, without volunteers, there would be no Pantry, just as I, growing up, would have had no organized baseball or scouting without my dad or mom.
The complicated stages of grieving over the re-election of Donald Trump
Photo by the author
This story was published in Medium’s Entertain, Enlighten, Empower. Everyone’s grieving is unique; not all are sad about this outcome. This is my story.
*
I loved our NOPE sign and was convinced it spoke the TRUTH.
It sat on our lawn for three months. Every day, I thought, It won’t happen again. America, my country, with all its tragic flaws, was better than him. Over his first term, it saw the self-aggrandizement, the deadly politicization of the COVID-19 vaccine, and THIS, January 6, 2021.
After the unexpected happened, I kept NOPE up for a day because I couldn’t accept that millions of Americans, including family and friends, voted for a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and someone who had incited this mob on January 6th. Nope became
DENIAL
Then, on America’s Thanksgiving Day last Thursday, I received a series of texts from a group of friends. Two texts referred to what a great year it had been and what a great country America is, followed with “Praise the Lord.”
There was no need to read between the lines.
Without a thought, I felt a familiar friend that hadn’t gone away: ANGER.
Photo by the author
The vitriol toward my Praise the Lord friends surprised me because I thought I had moved through anger and denial. But feelings are never simple.
The categories of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — are labels that name feelings. They help us anticipate what we will likely experience when something terrible happens. However, feelings have a mind of their own. They don’t know they’re supposed to be bit players in our drama. They move off stage, like my anger, and then burst back when triggered.
Now, I need to say something that’s probably obvious to you. The other side feels grief, too. The Praise the Lord crowd, I suspect, would not have their hands raised in adoration if Kamala Harris had won. Perhaps their Thanksgiving greeting might have nixed the Great Country stuff.
*
Ye gads! I might have sent the same message if our side had won, but not Praise the Lord, as it doesn’t sound Catholic. But — Great Country — if two of our last four presidents were named Barack and Kamala, you bet.
Might I, too, have rubbed it on Turkey Day? Is the Pope Catholic? Of course, many American Catholics who supported Donald Trump think Pope Francis isn’t Catholic enough. And are probably okay with Praise the Lord.
You see what’s happening, don’t you? Even as I construct this story, I’m transitioning to BARGAINING.
And losing my anger. Dammit!
I’ve become distracted. Once I lifted my head from my biases — dressed up as judgment and truth — I saw the other side. I still believe they’re wrong in a way that may be disastrous for America and the world. And that my side is right. But the Praise the Lord crowd is part of the 76 million, nearly half the electorate, that voted against my side.
So, who or what am I bargaining with that dilutes my anger?
God?
I don’t believe in that kind of God, the type that can be lobbied to favor my candidate, my country, or my tribe. If there is a Creator behind all this worldwide diversity, why would it single out a favorite that also happens to be MY choice? Or YOURS?
No, I’m bargaining with Democracy or, more precisely, my vision of Democracy. How do 330 million people with different self-interests live together peacefully? Respecting differences within a system of regular elections where losers can win next time.
I know what many of you are thinking. That’s the very thing the election was about. One of my other yard signs read, “Save Democracy, Vote Blue.” We believe the other side is following a leader who refused to play by Democratic rules, as in the insurrection of January 6.
As I type, ANGER is shouldering aside BARGAINING in the same way Trump bullied past the Prime Minister of Montenegro for center stage at a NATO meeting in 2017. (source)
*
Mr Trump will become the 47th President of the United States. I can’t deny or bargain away my anger at this fact.
It will be a constant companion, as will DEPRESSION. I am not speaking of depression here as a diagnosable mental condition but as a lowering of mood as a result of external conditions. From my perspective, it is a rational response. He will do and say things I despise. His need to be center stage means I can’t escape him. Plus, he’s the kind of human who thrives on making enemies. There’s something about this moment in history that rewards politicians like him.
I feel down for a day or two when my favorite team loses. What if my team lost every day or almost every day? How would I cope? A few days ago, I ordered Jimmy Breslin’s Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?, a book about the 1962 Mets who lost 120 games. I’ve wanted to read this book for years.
Misery does love company.
*
In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt argued that it makes evolutionary sense for humans to adapt even to the worst events. He calls this habituation, which in grief language is ACCEPTANCE.
What does it mean to accept something? Acknowledging the fact of it, as in, my mother is dead. Or Trump did win the election.
Donald Trump’s utter incapacity to grieve helps explain his personality. It is both a cunning power and a vulnerability, as he will keep the 74 million of us in the opposition angry for four years.
However, each successive day since November 6 weighs less heavily on my shoulders. I can see it in the mirror. That’s what I mean by the title. I’ve gotten distance from denial and anger, especially.
What’s helped is, I believe, a form of bargaining. It comes partly from my former profession. I taught Politics to college students for 40 years. I want to know where Trump came from and why he won again. This distances the fact of who he is and his MAGA movement from my emotions.
However, there are still too many days when I want to
Photo by the author of a reproduction of Edvard Munch’s Scream
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
The story is based on this image.
Friday, November 28, 2024
To Laura, my Granddaughter:
Some Day!
Not someday, as in someday there will be peace in Israel/Palestine.
No. Some Day a woman will be elected President of the United States. I know this fact but not the date.
I realize this for two reasons.
First, the world is full of mysterious motion,beyond our immediate comprehension. When I was born, my mother could not have her own bank account. Unimaginable, isn’t it?
Second, Laura, the world will soon be yours. The road is long and hard. Begin to imagine what isn’t to make its absence unimaginable.
Old age is not a lot of laughs, particularly in public. (George Vecsey, Stan Musial: An American Life)
The Workout
Rebecca and I have been doing kettlebell workouts for about a decade. I’m 75, and she’s 73. The photo above shows the gym’s calm before the storm.
After greeting today’s coach behind the counter, connecting her phone’s music to the speaker, I hang my coat on the hook rack, take off my shoes, place the car keys and billfold inside one and look at the workout agenda.
Photo by the author
Gobbledygook for the uninitiated, which occasionally includes us if we’ve missed a few weeks and have forgotten the acronyms. For example, number two in column three, TRX JSL, translated means we will use the suspended ropes you see at the top of photo one to do jumping, squatting and lunging exercises.
By the way, our instructor used to teach first grade. Can you tell? When I’m at the TRX and have to look back across the room to see what we do at the next station, I’m reminded we don’t pay our elementary school teachers enough.
This workout included 36 seconds at each of the twelve stations, 12 seconds of rest four times through and a one-minute break in the middle, about 40 minutes of exertion.
Sessions always include a combination of cardio and strength stations.
Adaptation
Five years ago, during a Saturday workout, I experienced what my doctor labeled sinus tachycardia. My heart beat faster to supply my needy muscles with oxygen and blood, causing me to feel lightheaded, so I sat down for a few minutes before resuming the workout.
A couple of weeks after the worrying event occurred, my doctor told me there were likely two causes: too much caffeine and too much cardio early in the workout. After checking out other possible causes, he assured me it wasn’t a problem but that less caffeine is better for many reasons, including this one.
Despite his reassurance, I’ve tempered my cardio work. Take burpees — please, number three in column two. It’s a continuous movement that includes jumping. For me, the take-off is fine; the landing rattles, everything.
As the source link above describes, this exercise “puts your ticker to the test.” Instead, I do high knees, a fancy term for walking in place, interspersed with balancing for ten seconds on each foot.
Strength training comes from wielding the kettlebell. In column one, there’s a Press L and Press R. In a press move, I grasp the bell with my left hand, bend my knees, drive my feet into the floor and thrust upward.
My grasping, bending, driving, and thrusting are not what they used to be, even with a 15-pound instead of a 20-pound bell. Yesterday, I hauled four 40-pound bags of salt pellets down our basement steps for our soft water heater. A few younger guys in our group grasp, bend, drive, and thrust 40-pound bells.
Sigh!
The Psychology of Belonging
In his terrific biography of baseball great Stan Musial, Vecsey writes about how difficult it can be for an athlete known for physical prowess to grow old and diminished. Imagine a 75-year-old Caitlin Clark.
What about ordinary people like us, huffing and puffing with a younger crowd? Are we accepted? Are we comfortable? In other words,
Do we belong?
At this 8:30 AM session, there were 15 regulars aged 25 to 75, with most 40 to 50. Only Jackie, at 69, is close to our age. I’m now three years into adaptation, meaning I often modify the movements by slowing down, using a lesser weight or substituting.
Sometimes, I look into that mirror pictured in the first photo to observe what others are doing. To my surprise, there are always more differences than similarities. Some are age-related, others are weight-related and for newcomers, they are experienced-related.
Last Monday, Rebecca and I arrived late, five minutes into the workout — the music was blaring, and the leader was shouting instructions. We glanced at the board and looked around to find an open station. A young man pointed to the free TRX.
I’ve never felt a you don’t belong with us vibe. I know we make a big deal about how our differences drive us apart in America, and that’s true in our politics. But that’s a galaxy away from how most of us live.
Rebecca and I just returned from Romania, where we reconnected with Alex, a former student of mine. Four years ago, we met Alex’s family: Gabby, his mother; Marius, his father; Cosmina, his sister; Mina, a stray dog they adopted; and Alex, around their kitchen table in Reșița, Romania.
Photo by Rebecca Wiese
After Rebecca told a story of how one daughter, Emily, converted to Judaism a decade after marrying Aviv, an Israeli Jew, Marius, looked at her and said,
That could never happen here. You Americans are thirty years ahead of we Romanians.
With all our deep divisions, more and more Americans are comfortable with differences, and the younger, the more at ease. 15% of new marriages are interracial (source), and 40% are interdenominational (source). Emily and Aviv are not alone.
Racial and religious differences don’t matter to many young people. Not like they did to their parents and grandparents. So, why would they care about a few geezers joining their exercise groups?
But what about Rebecca and me? Do we feel we belong with a younger cohort?
A few years ago, we visited a friend who lives in an Arizona retirement community. For the week we were there, everywhere we went to swim, golf, hike, learn and converse, we were with older people like us.
Honestly, that’s how we live in our two Iowa communities. We hang out with other boomers and a few of the Greatest Generation.
That’s why our kettlebell workout is so important. We like being around younger people. I could write it keeps us young, but that’s not what I mean. We’re old and getting older. Soon, even the 15-pound kettlebell will be too much.
No, I mean the sense that we are part of a world bigger than us. That’s one reason we travel: Romania two weeks ago, Mexico in January, and, we hope, Namibia in May.
This Drabble was written for Medium’s Fiction Short.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
The first sentence will be, “I am an invisible man,” from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
*
“I am an invisible man. That’s what my father taught me. It was the only way to survive in the 1950s.”
“What did that mean, Grandpa?”
“Never look a white person in the eye, especially a white woman. Keep your head down. Always defer. Never demand.”
“I’ve watched you all my life. You look everyone in the eye. You stand erect. You don’t seem intimidated by anyone.”
“I’m a man, John. So are you. That white fellow over there. So is he. It’s the organic truth of nature and God.”
This story was published in Medium’s Six Word Photo Story Challenge.
Help make America Be America again.
*
America was never America to Langston Hughes, an African American born in 1901. That’s why he wrote one of the most famous American poems, Let America Be America Again, in 1935.
O, let America be America again —
The Land that never has been yet —
And yet must be — the land where every man is free
The land that’s mine — the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME —
who made America
*
Yesterday, I walked along the Upper Iowa River that runs through our northeast Iowa community burdened by last week’s re-election of Donald Trump and his promise to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
Suddenly, I spotted a Bald Eagle, a symbol of my country, taking flight. After a few seconds, it disappeared.
Was the America of my 75 years fading away?
I’m a fifth-generation Irish-American born in 1949.
Even before John Kennedy reached the pinnacle, American public school kids joined their Catholic counterparts in eating fish sticks on Friday.
From paddy to breaded fish to President in a century.
Unlike Hughes and millions of others, America has always been America to me.
Full of promise and possibility.
*
Throughout my lifetime, my country has inched closer to Hughes’s “every man is free” ideal. This included welcoming millions of newcomers from south of the border, many doing jobs Americans won’t.
This is MY America — the imperfect place defined by its equality aspiration.
At this moment, America is in retreat from its most admired ideal.
This story was written for Medium’s Fiction Shorts.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
I just don’t understand it. The sun refuses to indulge my despair.
*
Since November 6th, he has gotten up at 4 am.
Three hours before the event.
This ritual calms him.
Eight ounces of water, one scoop of coffee, his white coffee mug, and Rebecca’s for later.
Three presses on the thermostat.
He pees and washes his hands and face.
With his right hand’s thumb and forefinger, he grasps and pulls down the nub that opens the east-facing window blind.
He opens his Macbook Pro and looks at the previous day’s Medium notifications.
Enough time to finish one story.
Intermittently, watching to see if it will happen again.
Carole Olsen asks Are you a kind person? On this National Kindness Day.
*
Her prompt reminded me to fill out the Alt Text field for the first photo. Isn’t that interesting? Carole nudged me toward a small act of kindness for those who could not see the picture. Occasionally, an editor will do the same, as if to say, “Come on, Paul, it’ll only take a minute of your precious time.”
Kindness is more than a feeling. At its core is action. Unsurprisingly, the late Mr. Rogers captures it’s essence:
I hope you’re proud of yourself for the times you’ve said ‘yes,’ when all it meant was extra work for you and was seemingly helpful only to somebody else.
Kindness requires that I extend myself to you.
Photo by the author
Most of the time, I don’t want to. Instead, I act in my self-interest. It seems that is how most humans are.
Unless you’re a member of my family when the arrows naturally point outward.
I’ll bet you’re the same. Imagine your worst fear. Mine is this.
I’ve been claustrophobic since I was a kid. When my friends and I snuck into a drive-in theater, I refused to take my turn hiding in the trunk.
Yet, if I needed to crawl into this tunnel to rescue my son, I would, unhesitatingly. The same would be true for my partner, Rebecca. So, it isn’t just about a blood tie. I’m unsure I could do it if my first cousin Jim, who I like, needed help: “Jim, hold on, the rescue team is on the way.”
My good friend Ed and my favorite Medium writer would also have to wait.
And you, even if you give me 50 claps and an “I love this story.”
*
Acting kindly toward others often depends upon who the other is and how difficult the action is.
My tunnel example is an outlier. Usually, an act of kindness does not require facing our scariest fear.
For example, a friend, Maggie, was a student in a Lifelong Learning course on the 2024 American Presidential election I taught in September. Our class decided to meet again on November 6, the day after Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris. I wrote a little story about this session here.
Most of the twenty-two who showed up last Wednesday were deeply disappointed. Several emailed me saying they couldn’t face talking about what they considered a tragedy for America. Honestly, I probably would have stayed home.
When the mike was passed to Maggie, she said, “I came today because Paul is a friend.”
That was an act of kindness because it required Fred Rogers’ “extra work.” Maggie sacrificed her desire to stay home for me.
*
It’s difficult for humans to extend themselves to others, especially those outside their immediate family.
I’ve noticed something inside me since Mr. Trump won re-election. I first felt it last Wednesday morning as I settled into the shock of the Trump win. Anger, sadness, fear, anxiety, frustration, hopelessness, embarrassment (for my country), and guilt, every negative feeling is banging around inside me.
But the primal scream is not all there is.
Photo by the author
There’s something else I can only describe as kindness — a need to look out for others.
Trump’s America is an unkind place, particularly to those who don’t look like me and Donald, white males.
It’s almost as if my 75-year-old body grabbed and directed those red arrows outward.
I find myself, more than ever before, scanning my little world to see what I can DO to make life easier for others.
Trump has taken so much from me, from us.
I won’t allow him to take this.
To save myself, I’ve got to do what I can to help others.
