Chapter 4

I ran out of savings and coincidentally needed money– These occurrences were problems enough on their own and worse in tandem. A bird in the hand, they say, is worth two birds. You only want one bird so you don’t have to hold two birds at once. It’s always good to have a free hand. That’s free money.

Out of high school, I was on my own for the first time, completely broke and getting by on groceries and delivery in grandpappy’s guest house. I got scrappy and booked a slew of interviews. No one’s going to hand you a job in this quickass life. You’ve got to buckle up your big boy pants and pound the pavement. I managed to book interviews up and down the expressway and the parkway and the turnpike, using my adventure skills to decipher a map grandpappy had stored in a “rolo-o-dex,” like those academic pope mystery puzzle things where they had to answer a riddle correctly and then turn the letters around on a tube to punch in the answer to the riddle and it would open it if the answer was right but if it was the answer the tube would delete the message. This rolo-o-dex was similar in that I had to read it and put together where the locations were based on the addresses, and then figure out how to get there, and what time the businesses were open and who worked there, how to get inside, etc.

Those days were all about speed: shaking as my hands, answering or turning down as many questions, remembering as many names as possible, while never forgetting to NOT call the interviewers “Mom” or “Dad” by mistake. I knew I was a good candidate for a job because most offices felt they couldn’t find a space for me. When people find you to be an immense addition to the team, they realize they’d need to fire most of the team to hire you, and they get scared. People don’t like change! I know this because change is my business. How do I know? The world tells me I’m special. I have to roll with the hands I was dealt— special hands.

But I kept a chill head by discovering drift racing. It turns out I was born to swing my Saturn Sky around tight corners. I won many races but never accepted cash prizes because I have always been too good for the whole “I won, I earned this” pagentry. It’s below me. The rat race for a piece of cheese is a waste of time. No thanks. I prefer to stick to areas where I am naturally talented. You save energy and on average win more. Yes, I was in drift racing for the donuts. When tire marks are circular, we call them “donuts,” because they smell like donuts. Fresh donuts are victory tracks– they are sizzling snail trails and burnt trophies. They are my way of saying “I did that, I won.”

I wish I could say the same about the smell of gasoline. Fuel invited sensory connections: The price of gas was ridiculous– just crazy affordable, but lining up a car with a gas pump takes hours and most machines didn't accept thousand dollar bills. This on top of the gasoline industry's love affair with cables (How about we ditch the hoses and make the leap to bluetooth, already.) made filling the tank a time-suck. 

Dealerships, schools, hospital parking lots. They have the most parked cars. It’s funny to think we put so much effort into purchasing new gasoline when so much pre-owned gas is out there. Ambulances drive so fast they don’t use much gas at all. Hospitals are never short on gasoline or blood, which makes them A-Central institutions, but how much blood do you think gets thrown away a year? The same is probably true for gasoline. I’m not above recycled products. 

This would be an incomplete Still-Life if I left out the hoagies. They were yummy. I will say one downside of hoagies is that they require two hands to eat, which can make drifting very difficult. One night while drifting I lost the lead because my buffalo horseradish vegetable hoagie came with the sauce separate and I had to spread it on while holding the wheel with my knees. This weakness for the hoagie caught up with me when I totalled over a dock and into the ocean.

A local fishing boat caught the Saturn Sky in their net. After they pulled me out of the sunroof, the Captain got a sense of my character and offered me a job to pay off the crane damage. I was officially the new assistant to the gutting guy. The gutting guy would carve open fish and I’d catch the guts in a plastic bucket. He would throw the guts. I’m not supposed to reveal this but the guts are then used to make calamari. It’s the secret ingredient. Give it a shot and you’ll see what I mean. 

The Captain was a kind and jolly high-functioning alcoholic named Barramundi. Without fail he was a muscular and fearless hero in the stories he told, saving the day when the chips were drowned. Most of his job was calling out orders and also timing when to do that. He was obsessed with his pocket watch, which swung around his wrist while he pondered what day of the week it was.

I’ve seen plenty of drinkers fall off bar stools and then laugh themselves into snoring and sleeping. One time I met a retired Quaker army medic who drank jägermeister like it was cough syrup, most likely because he was coughing. He showed off his war scars.

“This one’s from wearing my helmet too tight,” he said, “a young man’s mistake. And this one here is from hitting a bump in the road on a walkie talkie– blood, needed stitches. Picture me barefoot, low like a snake, stitching and stapling a sergeant while the only other quaker left on the entire continent takes a boot lace and double-knotted my temple back together. Walkie talkies are tiny, anymore, but this one was huge!” He heard the music stop and saddled up on the jukebox, whispering to the whole bar his plan to “win the mechanic’s bull!” They booed him because he was waving a baseball hat in the air and we were in Muscershire, England, United Kingdom. Unfortunately, he smashed the glass and wet his pants while also bleeding from the same place, then dismounted with a framed godfather poster stuck in the side of his head. The jukebox sounded fuzzy and made sparks off the turntable due to the electrified bloody urine, which shot around the room cyclically, the same way water shoots from a sprinkler. Paramedics swung away the quaker and he hummed along with the skipping record. I never saw him again and never learned his name. Because of this, I decided to just call him the quaker because that’s what I can remember about him, other than him drinking and cutting open himself while wetting himself. In retrospect, maybe he was just drinking cough syrup.

Captain Barramundi was not like the quaker. The Captain smelled like licorice, which burned my nose, but with distinction. It only contributed to the appearance of his composure. He would tie knots without looking while re-explaining the dress code to the crew. Coldcut-on-Bread sandwiches for all were a Captain classic. On the rolling sea, I never saw the guy trip once. The boat would shift back and forth in the waves, slamming everyone together but he always stood completely still, feet planted like a surfer. 

“I have a lifetime of experience,” he said, “of working very hard to stand up straight.” I went to leave for the bathroom but he continued.

“The secret to functioning at a high level while intoxicated is forging a healthy relationship with the deep blue sea and forgetting there’s a horizon. Know that you’re lost, and hold on for dear life to what you’ve got left.” 

He’d get rained on, swallow the salt water and spit it out as shapes I’d never seen before. 

“A few more years out here, you’ll learn that water is like smoke. It looks cool when you spit it out.” A few crew members would play swan lake on their guitars while he spit-fountained salty dancing creatures across the deck. 

I was most surprised to learn that Captain Barramundi had lost contact with his family when they all died in a boat explosion. The accident, he said, made him rethink his drinking.

“It was that day, aged 17, I resolved to puke into a thermos. I wouldn’t allow my life’s passion to get in the way again.”

I told him I could relate because my Dad’s lungs got filled with coins when he crashed a getaway car into an ATM and my mom’s body was never found. He gave me a big handshake, patted me on the back and shouted to the crew that I had no one waiting for me on land. This wasn’t true, because I had Grandpappy, but I let it slide.

“Here,” they shouted, “here!” They were alone, too! Thank god. Captain Barramundi passed his bottle around, which ran out quickly, and we changed the subject to deep conversation. He sat there for hours with eyes closed focusing on every person speaking. You might consider that night the start of my self-biography, and the Captain my ideal audience. 

The next morning he opened his eyes somewhere in the middle of the high school portion of my story. He gasped for air and chimed in with a realization, a “returned memory.” I wish I’d written down what he said but unfortunately I did not and I can’t remember it. It would be wrong to make up what he said, but I will say it was very interesting.

It’s clear in retrospect the Captain took me under his wing. 

“You see, I’ll be eligible to retire next December,” he shouted, turning my head toward the horizon line, “just a quick year and a half from now.”

“That’s,” I said, “wonderful!” It was hard to hear him over the crew’s shouting and the storm.

“Maybe there will be a disaster,” he said, while I shielded my eyeline, “and everyone would die, and the worst possible thing could happen, and you’d be the only survivor.” 

I agreed that everyone dying would be a tragedy. 

“Here, Ronnie– copy me, see? Magma? Look here and copy me. Magma! Good, now look at this– Plant your feet not on the deck of the boat, but plant them symbolically on the deck of the ocean, you follow? Dig them into the splinters and stay straight up and down like a yeeroscope.” He tightened his rain hat, which curved like a gutter to guide a waterfall down his shoulders.

I removed my company flip flops and planted my feet— wood-splintering them into place. It was the ride of a lifetime–toes wiggling to equilibrium, arms swinging in concert with the mile-high breaking waves. We hit a big rock and capsized which if you haven’t experienced it feels like the most epic wipeout of all time.

—

My foot was stuck in a reef ten miles underwater. Coral is sharp– it’s famous for this and you must experience it for yourself! Just buy a ticket and go visit. That sharpness pummaced my pores until they became like gills. I learned to convert h-twenty into straight oxygen through millions of holes in my skin. Would you believe that my muscles limbered up, my body relaxed to the point of jelly-fish-ing, pulsing through the sea? I strung two pieces of seaglass over my eyes and witnessed the beauty of the “deep–” mere knots below the “surface.”

My lips chapped off as the metamorphosis continued. I was like a wet butterfly learning to regrow their lips, two cocoons that kept blooming on my face. The blood from these attracted sharks– creatures who excel in the art of life-changing acupuncture. Each pair of lips was stronger than the last, which took my lifelong passion for whistling to the next level. Along the grottos and shipwrecks, I’d send a middle-C wolf whistle in the direction of rootin’ assed manatees, who’d blush and sing. I was a Mer-Sir of the sea and the ocean creatures hugged my spirit! 

Me and a manatee named Olivia started hanging out a lot. I’d get off work at the bacteria factory and we’d mostly just swim. You have to swim when you are underwater unless you are floating. We moaned about life through sea-song.

“What do you see for yourself,” she sang, “ten years from now?” Every time she blinked her huge eyelashes would shoot bubbles into my face. I coughed.

“Ten years— sequentically??”

She looked confused, probably because I was new at moaning my words.

“Yeah, in order. As in, what is your future? What do you plan to accomplish in the coming years as a goals?”

“Well, I have no idea what goals will come my way.”

“You can set goals yourself and reach them.”

“But that would be saying no to life— Imagine the lost possibilities! The possible goals you’d turn away! My parents had a clear-cut goal to rob banks and drive away and never get caught.”

“What’s a bank?”

“It went well for a while but then one of them died and the other disappeared.”

“Ronnie, Oh, God…I’m so sorry.”

“Huh?”

“About your parents.”

“Ah, thanks, Mom.”

I think Olivia just wasn’t ready for commitment, but we ended things on good terms, making love for a week and a half non-stop in a grotto. Four years later she gave birth to our baby manatee and we named her Ocean. The baby was the most beautiful thing to ever come into my life— and I never planned for it. I told Olivia that this proved my point.

I have to admit that the gap between human and manatee eventually got in the way, especially trying to raise a manatee baby. I treated Ocean like she was my own, but the local community had more in common with her because she didn’t take after humans in any way. It didn’t help that my skin was pruning so hard that it started to fall off completely. It became clear that, if I stayed, I’d be like one of those little skeleton men you see in the bottom of an aquarium: awesome and indexspendable, but dead and not a manatee. The world pushed me forward, back toward the place where I shined brightest: the surface.

Chapter 5: Applying to College

I crawled ashore sunburnt with one toe stuck in a piranha. There was water and land, one lapping the other. I walked across them both, respectively, and saw no footprints behind me. On Life’s road, Life is in the driver's seat. But sitting on Life’s lap at the wheel? Gracious whimsy. Mysterious! 

I found my dried-out Saturn Sky back in the parking lot. There was a flier under one of the windshield wipers (a terrible place to hide something). Out of curtsey, I won’t list the phone number or business address. The flier read Lane Porch - Tenth Street College Counseling - Apply yourself…With Me! I dialed the phone number, 749-810-2766, and booked an appointment at their 301 Tenth Street location. To protect Lane’s privacy, I changed the phone number and address for this book. The real ones are 749-810-2767 and 301 Tenth Street South.

Lane Porch is her real name but I left out her middle initial because I don’t care for it. We became fast friends and chatted the shit about Colleges while I folded brochures in interesting ways.

“Ronnie, it’s looking like, based on your transcript,” Lane said, “we’ll cut your list in half. Then we’ll get started.” Porch saw the best in me. She knew I could do better. Half of the schools on my list were not ready for me. 

After some digging, I discovered Andrea Pollen College after Lane suggested it. 

“This one is basically– no, literally, your only option.” She kept my standards high.

“Bullseye.” I threw an origami boomerang at the trash can. “We’ve picked out the perfect ‘shoe.’ But does it ‘fit’ like a ‘glove?’”

Andrea Pollen College is not just a College. It is a liberal arts experiment. Founded just behind the Empire State Mountains in 1587, APCC accomplished the unprecedented by acknowledging the existence of women. We’re talking about the first secondary school to invite girls over. Pretty hot!

The founders’ flag remains deep up the sand: No requirements. No majors. Other colleges insist on specific focuses and course curriculums. It took me months to finish that sentence because I couldn’t stop barfing at the thought of a goal-oriented course of study. I’ve always believed that if we focus too hard on one thing, we miss the bigger picture where anything can and will happen. 

The place was different. It was vibrant and quirky. I couldn’t stop thinking about the campus architecture’s offbeatness. Dickensian characters trotted across the quad in caps and canes, or fingerless gloves and soggy overalls, all the same with their eyes focused on the feet below them. The air stunk of exhaust, which smoked from the stacks of hot minds. Beneath the surface of the students' experience, one could clearly see exclamations bubble into conversation at group events and then pop when one student or another had left the room. A wide scholarly dialogue consumed the deep misfortunes of the fortunate, who then remarked upon its flavors, which stretched the dialogue thinner and thinner. The classical cafeteria doors bulged at their hinges, for the inside’s stockpile of shimmering steaks and hydrated mushrooms continued to accumulate mass out of what I assume to be popularity. The salad bar sat proud, unashamed of its throwback produce. This school was unlike any person I’d ever met.

A fire had been lit off my shoulders. If I had been depressed, that brochure would have pulled me out of a funk and showed me how independently cool life can be. I was not depressed, but I did appreciate how romantic it would be if I had been. Thanks, APCC!

“Well, this will be an opportunity for you,” Lane sat back and dropped a pen on her desk, “to enter real adult life. And I’m optimistic your submission would get a response.” Her words reminded me that I believe in myself.

“Thank you, Mom!” I immediately caught myself. “I mean– sorry, wow, wowwww– that’s embarrassing. You are not my mom. So, uh, sorry, mom– Ah! Why do I keep saying you’re my mom? God– fuck! Man, I was really trying to stop cursing– Really, I am. Ah, I’m sorry. Well, thank you, mom- Thank you, Lane. Alright, no curses!”

The room felt a little awkward, which made it feel even more like we were family. She waited in the silence, like all great parents do when their child makes a mistake.

“You,” she said, stretching a rubber band around a folder and then dropping it onto a stack by the radiator, “really need to write the essay.”

It was funny how the universe kept sending me parents in the form of others.

Write the essay. 

Write the essay. 

Write the essay. 

I hammered at the typewriter for weeks. When it broke, I put down the hammer and rewrote everything in pencil. The essay fell out of me, fully formed, over and over. Rewrites always brought something new, so I featured them all in the final manuscript. You might think this would hurt the book, but it actually doubled the page count.

My tome poem was complete. I sealed my signature with hot wax, iced my fingers and, at last, sent the manuscript to the printers for printing. I hand-delivered the final essay myself via hired courier and donated the rest to friends and family over the holidays.

No sooner than the next week I arrived at Andrea Pollen College. I visited the admissions office– told the front desk how I admired the wood furnishings for their variety of stain and finally asked if I had been invited to attend. but the board of the college chased by a doting paparazzi. 

As quick as the next winter, the mailman dropped an envelope on the porch of my bungalow. I examined the contents of the sender’s address.

Andrea Pollen College

Future Donor Admissions

10 Middle Street, Even Road

Uniontown, New York 99999 

Letter opener! Rip! Yank! Hold letter! Look at it! Read it…I tested positive for acceptance! Little old me! The universe is wild. 

APCC said their delayed response was due to “challenges unpacking the letters content.” It worked! That’s a lesson– You’ve got to challenge the reader. As you can see, it’s rewarding for everyone. The work of reading inspires empatheticism, the soul of letterature. This soul is missing in all other forms of art. Movies, music and television trade empatheticism for profit and an audience. I expand on this in my first book, Poems? Yes, Poems, a novel published by Dustacular Press, 1981. But really, the school might have needed the previous year to dust off the red carpet. I don’t need or ask for a red carpet. Frankly, they’re a little ridiculous. But I walk them as an act of humility toward those who roll them out. 

RSVPing YES was an act of zen. To reject materialism, I tossed my entire checkbook in an envelope and spared no expense overnighting it back to the school. I signed every check in the book, achieving ego death. Money is no object– it doesn’t exist. We can do whatever we want if we tune in to true meditational eagleibrium. I re-learned this recently from a monk. He lives on top of a snowy mountain so I had to fly my helicopter all the way out there. And then park the hunk of steel! Have you ever flown a helicopter through the snow and then parked it? Yikes– If you don’t own a helicopter, be thankful. The pilot had a terrible time landing. But I had the time of my life on that mountain and the trip changed me forever. 

But APCC and me– we were grooving on the same wavelength. They helped me finally cast the liquid areas of my family’s fortune into the void. Completely free of assets, It was time to fly wherever the wind might be taking me. Hopefully, into the air.

I boarded a commercial red eye to New York. My seat was the best on board– the hands-free cockpit in the back row of Coach. Under my stern supervision we shot into the sky. Ten hours later we arrived at our destination, I woke up with a eurekaic idea and declared it allowed: a plan for collegiate success. I wrote it down on a restroom napkin.

College Achievement Plan.

Step One: Blaze own trail.

Step Two: Take cool classes.

Then we landed.

Porch later found her own way to APCC for a miscellaneous post-doc. You could say I saw more of my new pal, but as old pals! Friends! But for now it was now up to me to be me where I had now landed… Finally at the secondary school called College: College.

Andrea Pollen College Campus Map

As you may remember, I have my own approach to chapters, called “Chaptering,” where some chapters are a revision of the previous one. That continuous re-stating of the first paragraph in different words or mostly the same words creates momentum. Repetition is hypnotic, and the little changes keep the ear awake. Here is an encore draft 2 of Chapter 5 part2: Applying to College Draft, titled thus.

I found my dried out Saturn Sky back in the parking lot. There was a flier under one of the windshield wipers (a terrible place to hide something). I won’t list the phone number or business address out of courtesy. The rest of the paper read Lane Porch - Tenth Street College Counseling - Apply yourself…With Me! 

Lane Porch was cool. I started meeting with her once a week during her lunch hour. We’d chat the shit about Colleges while I folded brochures in interesting ways.

“Based on your transcript,” Lane said, “we’ll cut your list in half and then get started.” Porch saw the best in me. She knew I could do better and that most of the schools were not ready for me. I discovered Andrea Pollen College after Lane suggested it. 

“This one is basically– no, literally, your only option.” Lane kept my standards high.

“Bullseye.” I threw an origami boomerang in the trash can. “We’ve picked out the perfect ‘shoe.’ But does it ‘fit’ like a ‘glove?’”

“Yes. Andrea Pollen is more of a liberal arts experiment. It’s not really a school, per say, which is to your advantage.” 

I could bring legitimacy to this community! Not that they needed it: APC College has an unprecedented history of accomplishing things. We’re talking about the first all-girls school to admit boys.

99% of colleges insist on specific focuses and course curriculums (“Majors”). To this day, the APCC flag remains deep up the sand: No requirements. No majors. I’ve always believed I agree with them, that if we focus too hard on one thing, we miss the bigger picture where anything can and will happen. 

When I visited campus, everything hooked me. I was literally bleeding joy out of all the places where metaphorical hooks had punctured me with their symbolic blades. Everything on campus was vibrant and quirky. The architecture, the fashion, the smells, the skunks, the smokers, the sad kids, the kids who were sad in a more approachable way. There was an intoxicating and relentlessly full-on offbeatness. Dickensian characters trotted across the quad in caps and canes, or fingerless gloves and soggy overalls, all the same with their eyes focused on their feet below them. The air stunk of exhaust, which smoked from the stacks of hot minds. Beneath the surface of the students' experience, one could see clear through each mullet mop, making out boiling explanations during group conversation, continuing to observe as the boiling words began to bubble and then pop when one student or another had left the room. A wide scholarly dialogue consumed the deep misfortunes of the most fortunate, who then remarked upon its flavors, which stretched the dialogue thinner and thinner, like that old texture belonging to the finest quality leather of a vintagely-used jacket. The classical cafeteria doors bulged at their hinges, for the inside’s stockpile of shimmering steaks and hydrated mushrooms continued to accumulate mass out of what I assume to be a demand for popularity. The salad bar sat proud, unashamed of its throwback produce. This lit a fire off my shoulders. 

After a lifetime without it, my knowing half-smile returned. Where was it all my life!? If I had been depressed, the APCC brochure would have pulled me out of a funk and showed me how independently cool life can be, like a log you burn when you get hypothermia. I was not depressed but I did appreciate how romantic it could have been if I had been depressed and then got over it. 

My trip was done so I went back to Lane’s office to relieve her from lunch.

“I am officially targeting APCC,” I said. “Their campus is now a big X, marking the spot in my crosshairs. Soon enough I’ll pull the trigger and hit the bullseye...” I loved metaphors. “Let’s go for it– I’m ready to accept.”

“Well, this will be an opportunity for you,” Lane put down her tuna sandwich for a moment, “to enter real adult life. And I’m optimistic your submission would get a response.”

Again, it can’t be understated that Lane put her sandwich down. This is body language for being intrigued. Her words and actions made me believe in myself the way everyone else made me believe in me, because she believed in me! Nobody else had done that before. Sometimes life is too flattering. 

“Thank you, Mom,” I said, “I mean– sorry, wow, that’s embarrassing. You are not my mom. She is dead! Whereabouts unknown. A bank robber– that was her job, being dead now. You are not my mom. So, uh, sorry, mom– Ah! Why do I keep saying you’re my mom? Ah, I’m sorry. Well, thank you, mom- Thank you, Lane.” 

The room felt a little awkward, which made it feel even more like we were a family. She didn’t flinch. She waited in the silence like all great parents do when their child makes a mistake. She moved a folder into her side cabinet and picked up her backpack, then put the rest of her sandwich in the fridge.

“You,” she said, stretching a rubber band around a folder and then dropping the folder onto a stack behind her on the radiator, “go write the essay.” It was funny how the universe kept sending me loving parents in the forms of others.

Write the essay.

Write the essay? 

Write the essay!

I hammered away at the typewriter for weeks. When it broke, I put down the hammer and rewrote everything in pencil. The essay fell out of me, fully formed, over and over. Rewrites always brought something new, so I featured them all in the final manuscript. You might think this would hurt the final product, but it actually doubled the page count.

My tome poem was complete. I sealed my signature with hot wax, iced my fingers and sent the manuscript to the printers for making. All that was left to do was deliver the essay to campus. I hand-delivered it myself via hired courier and donated the extra copies to friends and family for the holidays.

A mailman dropped an envelope on the porch of my bungalow as quick as the next December. I examined the contents of the sender’s address, which upon further dissection revealed its address to being from:

Andrea Pollen College

Future Donor Admissions

10 Middle Street, Even Road

Uniontown, New York 99999 

Letter opener! Rip! Yank! Hold letter! Look at it! Read it…I tested positive for acceptance! Little old me! The universe is wild. 

APCC said their delayed response was due to “challenges unpacking the contents” of my application. My plan to challenge the reader had worked! That’s a lesson– You’ve got to challenge the reader. As you can see, it’s rewarding for everyone. I got in to the school, and the school realized I should get in.The work of reading inspires empatheticism, the soul of letterature. This soul is missing in all other forms of art. Movies, music and television trade empatheticism for profit and an audience. I expand on this in my first book, Poems? Yes, Poems, a novel published by Dustacular Press, 1981. The school was dusting off the red carpet for me. I don’t need or ask for a red carpet. Frankly, I find them a little ridiculous. But I walk them as an act of humility toward those who roll them out for me. RSVPing YES was an act of zen. 

To reject materialism, I tossed my entire checkbook in an envelope and spared no expense overnighting it to admissions payable. I signed every check in the book, “R. St. Magma, Dead Ego,” because I’d now achieved true ego death or meditational eagleibrium. I actually re-learned meditation recently from a monk. The monk lived on top of a snowy mountain so I had to fly my helicopter all the way out there for him to see me. And then park the hunk of steel without chopping the monastery! Have you ever flown a helicopter through the snow and then parked it without chopping anything?? Me neither. Yikes– And if you don’t own a helicopter, be thankful. I had the time of my life on that mountain and the trip changed me forever.

Andrea Pollen College College and me– we were grooving on the same wavelength. Sometimes people call the school Lady Andrea, especially me. Lady Andrea helped me finally cast the liquid areas of my family fortune into the void. Completely free of assets, It was time to fly whatever the wind might bring me.

I boarded a commercial red eye to New York. My seat was the best on board– the hands-free cockpit in the back row of Coach. We shot into the sky Under my stern supervision and I assured the passengers we wouldn’t crash like the boat did. I woke up from my nap about ten hours later with a eurekaic idea, a plan for collegiate success. I wrote it down on a restroom napkin.

Step One: College Achievement Plan.

Step Two: Blaze own trail.

Step Three: Take cool classes.

We eventually landed, but I like to think that I never touched ground again.

College Transcript

Creative Writing Workshop: Memoirs & Transcripts

Lucille Ivanko

Closed Meeting, Fall | 200% A+

     Lucille,

     I stand here today expounding a transcript on my bio-memoir because of you. You taught me the rules of writing. I continue to follow those rules today by refusing to break them.

   You taught me how to write a real paragraph. Thanks! After that, as you may remember, I came up with my own approach to paragraphs, called “Paragraphing,” where each paragraph is a revision of the previous one. That continuous re-stating of the first paragraph in different words creates momentum. 

    You showed me how to make three-to-five sentences thematically hang together in a legitimate way. I do what you told me to do, still, now, by not stopping doing it. But sometimes an oops becomes a whoa– I discovered a new way to come at putting three-to-five sentences together, which I named “Paragraphing.” Every group of sentences says the same thing, but with an increasing level of panache. This builds an immense amount of kinetic energy– My work is praised today for its “uninterrupted inertia.”

     O, Lucille! You Sphinx! How you spoke in riddles! When a riddle be too good? Answer: When it's one of yours, Lucille!

     Going through my accolades drawer a bit ago, I found some old drafts covered in your feedback. They are impossible to miss because you wrote them in red ink and double-underlined every word, lit up like christian christmas lights.

     “Consider revising.”

     Your koan continues to inspire ponderance. 

     “Too long.”

     This cryptext could have used a few more words for clarity. 

     We passed all different kinds of my writing back and forth over the years, long after graduation. No matter what I sent you, you always capped your generous notes with a “Why?” That word rolls around my head. Why? Why? I am now positive that was your way of telling me to double my efforts, to bound further forward, feet first, writing the same way no matter what.

     Your daughter Reese is my age and my ex-wife. Peers! She reached out to me after I walked up to her outside the funeral.

     “The morning she died,” she said, “they found her holding some long draft you sent her.”

     Lucille, a few drafts later, you are in this book. If I’ve done my job “write,” I’ve taken a piece of your soul and preserved it forever in this text. The inside cover does say my name but you deserve one hundred percent of the credit for its qualities.

     I won’t be mailing you this letter (it’s more of an apostilary device). Faith tells me that even in the afterlife as you rest peacefully for all eternity my writing will find you. Happy reading!

Let me know if this makes sense,

R.St.M. Esq.

P.S. Reese, if you’re reading this, thank you for reading! 

2D Animation: Penciling in the Eye

Valarie Appleseed

Open, Seminar—Year | 50 credits

The human eye first sees things upside down. Then, it’s true work begins. The eye must turn the image right-side up to produce an unbroken live feed. It does this by reaching eyeball velocity– faster than the speed of time. On the other hand, Animators fill one second of screentime with just twelve frames. Twelve frames per second. 

There’s this story about an animator who dedicated his life to a dream project. It would be based on a nursery rhyme he heard as a child. The character designs were immaculate and detailed and textured. He cut and crafted new pencils for every frame. Twenty hours of his day were spent working. The other four hours were for sleeping. Like a cat, he’d dream about the day in order to improve the affectiveness of his routine. 

The Animator decided that a five minute walk cycle could be his opus.  The walking character, a featureless old man, could live in perpetual motion and populate crowds until the end of time. The plan was to create three hundred frames. That’s five minutes of animated immortality.

He dedicated months and years to each fraction of a second. Presidencies, Olympics and World Wars passed him by. But while putting some finishing touches on frame two hundred and ninety nine, one of the Animator’s wooden tools snapped, gave him a splinter and killed him. He left this world one frame away from completing his opus. The five minute walk cycle now ended at four minutes and nine eight three three seconds. Unusable. 

One more example, this time from the world of painting. The artist Sunday Park George made trillions of little dots, a daft effto make a big picture of people sitting down. He named it “pointillism.” As soon as it was finished he quit painting to make musicals. I feel sorry for artists like Sunday. They put all of their eggs in one basket, when they could be focusing their eggs everywhere.

The twelve frames per second standard takes too long– it robs audiences of more things to watch and robs animators of longer resumes. For me, that’s too many robberies.

Discipline can become a liability. I like to think that I brought an undisciplined eye to animation.  Assign me three hundred frames and I’ll deliver you fifteen films. None of them will be feature length, but imagine the possibilities– a mosaic of compounding work.

      My innovations of labor made me the most productive animator on campus. My professor, Val Appleseed (see above) took notice! 

     “I can’t tell if your style is intentional,” she said, “or just rushed.” Here she was, with her doctorate in drawing, singling out one of my X factors. Sitting in her office I saw light from her window bounce off her framed doctorate, spotlighting my face. “You hand in twice the amount of projects I assign, and weeks early. How much time are you spending on the assignments?”

     My work was mysterious and automatic. Following my lead, Valarie made an automatic decision to maintain the mystery. I turned my focus to theater.

Dlí Sharia: Adapting Sharia Law for the Dublin stage

Ajax Christopoulos

Open, Junior Year Studies—Year | 1,000 credits

I’m pretty sure Ajax Christopoulos had never been to Ireland. Half of the Muslim population in Ireland lives in Dublin. This was news to him.

I guess if he grew up in Dublin, or was a follower of Islam, he never would have decided to dive in and use these traditions for his own ends.

We performed his play about Samuel Beckett’s fictional conversion to Islam. Unfortunately, it failed to find an audience. The press must have gotten wind of low ticket sales, calling the show “majorly problematic.” I agree with them. Not turning a profit was a major problem.

It didn’t help that were often late to showtime due to transit. Ajax had booked us a cottage two hours outside the city. He’d drive us each day but insisted that Dublin was a “one-way road city”, hand onked at anyone who passed us in the opposite direction. When he would get lost and ask for directions, he’d speak in a Joycean style that made little sense to the locals. 

“Dubliners are to James Joyce as New Yorkers are to the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “They never get around to engaging with it because it’s always nearby.” He found a way to forgive them. Professor Christopoulos left our class before Christmas. He said he needed time to reflect and figure himself out by working as a life coach and motivational speaker. 

I spent the next five months on a houseboat in Dublin huffing spray paint. It was fun. When I got sick of my face being green, gold or whatever, I bought a plane to drive home and brushed the purple off my teeth in the coach cockpit.

Such was the challenge of this class that the professor was learning with us. That’s why this is the most expensive school on the planet: Everyone learns. That’s a lot of learning. The best schools have the most learning.

Times New Woman: Interrogating Second-wave Fonts and also the Cold War

Jodie Torres

Sophomore and Below, Seminar—Year | 1,010 credits

Did you know Second-wave fonts were used in the Cold War? They were! This class made me critically analyze portrayals of fonts in the media. I felt like a good person for just taking the class, let alone trying as hard as I did to become the ultimate expert on fonts. We seriously covered everything, I’m pretty sure. There’s nothing left for me to learn about the subject. I wish there were.

The Anthropology of Ghosting

Rylan Webb, B. Argyros 

Open, Seminar—Spring | 19.75 credits

I have chills just thinking about this one. It started out really exciting. The syllabus gave me butterflies. But after a few weeks I wasn’t really sure where it was going. It would be really uncomfortable to tell the professor the class wasn’t working out, so I did them a favor by dissappearing from class without advance notice. 

Animator. Adaptationist. Second-wave Fontist. Anthropollsterer. I had tried on these hats. They all felt a little cookie cutter. Cookie cutter is not my kind of hat. Thinking practically, I decided I’d become a movie director. This choice led me to my favorite class.

History of the Video Essay

Vito Stapler

Open, Seminar—Spring | X credits

The video essay is a cinematic tradition. It’s over one hundred billion years old if you combine every video essay into one long movie. They are very fun and economical to make, as there’s no need to shoot anything. You pick clips you like from movies you like and then you talk over them. My talent was getting my voiceover done in one take. At any job, I don’t have time to mess around. My favorite documentary subject was the history of video essay. I’d take pre-existing historic video essays, edit them together (a “mashup”)

Total credits: Complete

GPA: 1 2 3 4 5

Chapter 6: Finding Myself Again (After-College Detour) at the Beach (Again)

A return to beach in general but not the same one— different beach and (not underwater)

     My euphoric tryst with college was soon overpowered by a throbbing gut in my stomach: College was over. What the heck was I gonna do, y’all? I closed my eyes, bowed my head and asked the same question of Lady Luck (plus her hubby, Mister Faith). What the heck was I gonna do, y’all? Sadly, their answers were unusable. It was time to “shift gears” (change cars).

     Sometimes in life, to move forward in your life, you must “pull over,” “park” “the car” in “neutral” and clear your “head.” I thought about this metaphor driving away from APCC College, diploma and steering wheel hand in hand in my hands. It was me, a degree and the Saturn Sky driving down the “Life,” which is a “highway.” Processing my metaphoric realization, I patiently merged across five lanes onto the shoulder of the parkway and hid my Saturn Sky under some tree branches. I crafted a bindle from only a bandana, stick and rolling suitcase. Driving could only take me so far. I’d reach the next “fork” in the “road” on foot at the next exit.

     That exit led me to Mossy Dock, a beach town– the Jewel of the Susquehanna! It’s in the island time zone because you have to cross a drawbridge to get there. Harrisburg was fourteen miles and miles away. That remoteness of this three mile long island would be my spot for reflection.

     Beach life means no distractions. When you surround yourself with the sound of the ocean, a margarita machine, whipped cream flavored vodka, a diesel-powered cooler full of strawberries and a couple of machetes all that’s left is you and the tide. In and out– That’s how the tide moves. Breath, too! Breath is not unlike the tide because if the tide stops the ocean will probably die.

      My new “car” was a pair of flip flops. My new “home” was a motel. I found an empty one-bedroom and rented it out indefinitely. It didn’t have air conditioning but they kept it full of ice and it was made of hurricane-proof steel. My first apartment! It was a bit expensive, but you have to pay for the apartment you want, not the one you have. Being steps away from the vending machine didn’t hurt.

     I forwarded my mail to the motel lobby in case the government ever wanted my help, but mostly I got notes from Grandpappy telling me what was new back home. The goats were getting busy. They birthed so many “kids” (baby goats) that he filed with the county to list the farm as a goat town with a goat mayor and a goat school and a happy goat community. He sounded really happy. 

     But I was in Mossy Dock now, committed to finding myself. I got to know the locals when the tourists left. Back then, most of the locals hung out at a local tavern by the bridge called the Mossy Dock Bar & Grille. That was the name of the tavern, not the bridge. “The Bridge” would be a great name for a bar, though.  It was here I learned that alcohol is amazing. 

     Drinking with these new friends became my main thing. One time, I barfed so much across an intersection that it froze the road. The county had to shut it down and bring in a salt truck. 

     Scotch tastes horrible but when I drank enough it gave me superpowers. I could run faster, crawl in grass undetected and sleep in the snow without getting cold. I developed rosy cheeks (nature's blush) and could speak multiple languages. Night after night, the local police picked me up. I knew immediately why– They were enlisting my help to protect the town. 

     All the jargon and activity I picked up in the mock trial came back to me immediately. I was so adept in the role of bailiff (indoors cop) that the officers were learning things from me that they never learned in police school. We patrolled just about every night, them chauffeuring me as we kept the island safe. For six months straight, I helped all two of the local police achieve something that had never been done before or since. They made zero arrests and met their monthly quota. And I would know, because they’d pick me up every night at two AM for patrol.

     Sometimes they’d invite me over to the station for the night to crash in their extra room, but most nights I’d go to the Mossy, drink my super juice neat, patrol and go cool off at the motel. I could have done that forever.

     It turned out I couldn’t do that forever. One night before patrol I barfed again in the road. This time was different because a sports car driving over it jackknifed through a video store. No one died but all the videos melted. It turned out the sports car belonged to the mayors son, and that I was driving and had borrowed the car. Somehow I had removed the front window and barfed at a speed and intensity that projected the vomit in front of and under me at the same time. The mayor's son was very mad at me! Everyone in rehab recommended I stop drinking. I did not expect this because they were alcoholics. I detoxed for three months, drank again and then stopped drinking again forever.

     I started working at the Marsh Museum on main street. There is so much to learn about turtles and skunks. Their main project at the time was building protective wooden nests for the skunk population. Without these endangered skunks, the bug population would multiply. Each of these nests featured a hidden camera. It was important that the skunks not see the camera because it kept them honest. The museum put a live feed on a row of TVs. I used to watch for hours on my lunch break as the animals got super real on camera.

     After my shift I would run a sailboat tour for about ten guests at a time– My second favorite job ever. We’d sail the big boat around all the endangered critters' natural habitats, take pictures of how cute they were, feed them some snacks and leave with a better understanding of their endangerment. Sailing all day is a great way to get ripped abs. On one tour the wind took our sails away even though I tied the sails to a bucket really  Then the boat flipped 360 degrees. This is called double capsizing. We had scooped up so much water that we started to sink. This was the second time I was in a boat accident. I like to think that Lady Luck and her fella put me there to help everyone live.

     In most situations, there is no time to think. Doing is thinking! I started skipping guests across the water like stones. Luckily they slammed through the window of a coast guard boat, who treated us all to hot meals and stitches. We ate up and I never saw any of them again, having changed. I tried teaching local kids and retirees how to do the skipping yourself like a rock thing. No one else got the hang of it but we had a lot of fun trying. 

     Grandpappy visited the next summer and brought some goats with him. A few of them stayed behind and became lifeguards. Today, goats make up two thirds of the Mossy Dock Lifeguard reserve.

     At the front desk of the motel there was this older woman named Mandy. She was probably fifty. We’d chat at the end of the day over some snacks from the vending machine or wherever.

    “Don’t live here,” she said, “for real. Get out of Bay County and be grateful. There’s more to life.” 

     “You don’t like it here?”

     “Liking it– What is there? There’s nothing to do.” She turned an open gummy fish bag my way. I knew the dye in gummies chemically altered my brain but for some reason I couldn’t stop eating them.

     “What about living two blocks from the beach?” I said that.

     “For one week you gotta pay forty dollars. For sand!” Mandy said that.

     “Yeah, I guess it is a really well-kept beach.” That one was me again.

We laughed about how nice the beach was.

Sandy said this:

      “Over the bridge in Maborton, it’s free, I have no problem sitting over there.”

I said this (below but only the one line below, next one is Sandy):

     “Sure. I mean, everythings crazy.”

(Sandy now)

     “Not really. It’s not that crazy, really.” She poured herself some more coffee

     “Yeah, I know, so crazy.” I itched at some dirt on my wrist.

     “Uh huh,” she said, and took a soft pretzel out of her bag. She microwaved it under her desk and it smelled like hot salt. “All the stars, I look at how massive the sky is, God’s plan outside of myself. My son is in prison,” she said “But it’s not in my hands.” She turned her head out and up for a bit, stared into the sky for a bit and then pulled the pretzel out early.

     “Yeah, so, you believe in god, Mandy?”

     She said “I think so,” and then asked how about me.

     “I’m more of a Faith guy.”

     She chewed her pretzel for a long time. I had struck a chord.

     “You ever had an egg in ramen noodles?” I had not! “You gotta do it. Go home and try it.”

I went home. She was right! It was really good.

     Mandy being right about eggs being good in noodles got me thinking about the other thing she said about leaving being good. This was the town where I’d messed up my life by getting in too deep with the police. I’d clawed my way back by quitting drinking (and thereby, policing). As much fun as I’d had, this wasn’t my home. I’d gone there to find out who I was but I’d learned more about who I was not. I put these thoughts away and instead acted– Walking over the bridge, merging onto the highway and jogging back to the Saturn Sky. It was easy to find, I just looked for the bush with wheels.

I don’t know anyone who made it through college without taking out loans. I mortgaged the school in my name. It was a great opportunity to build extra credit with the bank. By only paying the interest, I got my credit score back down to zero again. 

My late grandfather gave me the best financial advice: Don’t spend all your money in one place. Spend it everywhere, in small amounts, every day, so you can just pay down just a little bit of credit at every turn. Banks love this. This is how you make a name for yourself in finance.

This is the dilemma most ambitious people face: They are not offered the right jobs. When I strolled the senior year career fair, the only opportunity of interest was an investment opportunity in fermented goods. I purchased five shares stored in a glass mason jar, then returned to my dormitory. That day, I became a gambler, gambling not on money or a digital card game, but myself. Rolling the dice, I showed my hand by pausing the job search. Business would be a long game. 

Besides, wasting time in an entry-level job could send the wrong message down the road. Who would hire someone from the mailroom to be a founding CEO? Not one worth the founding. I would play that previously name-dropped long game, waiting in the grass for the big fish. I took my detour to the beach, rehab, and then made my way to the big city. If the right job found me, I would leap from that grass, killing my future. A feast!

I watched that dice-seeded grass grow higher and higher around me on the great factory floor of capitalism, Grand Central Station. This is where the biggest deals go down, as great businessmen commute through here once or even twice a day. Making deals became a second language. I made millions of quarters and twenties of dollars from DIY advertisements. To make a business profitable, all I needed was a hat and my words. This was just the beginning of laying my big fat nest egg.

Those three years riding high came to a close when the police decided my business had grown too big for Grand Central. I was back on the street. Life! There is no controlling it. I held my head high, packed my bindle and then lugged a*s across the street to my cousin Eric’s place. He and his fiance encouraged me to take up space in the world. They even gave me a new state-of-the-art air bed on layaway. It was so awesomely comfortable that it felt like I was laying across the sky, gazing at the clouds, afraid of the moon and dreaming about gazing at the stars. Eric was sure I could find a job and apartment by the end of the month. He often woke me up to share this optimistic encouragement.

“You have to find something and move into your own place in the next month,” he’d say. “The world – can’t let it pass you by, Otto.” 

He was right. I was really pushing the nickname “Otto,” and the world would be idiotic to pass me by.

When I look back on this time, I’ll admit that I do cringe a little. Eric’s fiance, Penny, found flaws in every plan I described to her. She’d say cruel things such as You can’t put Editor of the New York Times as experience on your resume if you’re applying to a job at the New York Times and The President and First Lady can tell the difference between a dog and a man in a costume and you’d get shot by a sniper. Sorry, but if every plan you hear sucks, maybe you actually are the plan who sucks. Everyone I meet is like that. This is why there is always a hole in the market: because it’s not big enough for my ideas.

The next Christmas, I noticed an old high school friend running in the park (it was a hot winter - pretty wild!). I caught up with her a few blocks later and then asked her to sit down with me to tell me what was new. How long had it been since we last saw each other? What was the appeal of running? I forgot to include that her name is Shauna. Her name is Shauna. If you’re having trouble remembering the name, picture me telling you to be quiet in a sauna. Shhh-Auna. Shauna.

Sauna didn’t have much time to talk, but she did share that she’d just left a position at an esteemed law firm in the financial district of New York City, New York. It sounded like a great job, as she was now taking any interview she could find. She was on the up and up!

“Because of this job, I’ve learned I’m worth more,” she said, “ and now I’m down to take literally any other job.”  

Imagine, I thought, a job that somehow creates opportunities - a job that increases your worth! No longer would I dodge a series of vampiric entry-level positions to protect my resume. Instead, I would be an entry-level vampire - secretly accessing the top level from below. If I could do whatever it was Sauna did at the law firm, I’d be right behind her on the path to success! If I wanted to come out on top, my best bet was metaphorically running behind Sauna. When you run behind someone, they usually catch all of the wind resistance. Then, you can run easier and leap-frog over their head at the finish line.

I got the job! I replaced Sauna as the Lead Receptionist at the prestigious FiDi law firm, Gleason, Paul & Zerton LLP.  This place was xclusive with a capital “X.” I wasn’t even allowed to share the names of our clients with ANYONE. 

I moved out of Eric and Penny’s apartment. I knew they would miss me because they could hardly say a word as I left. My achievement must have been infectious - Eric and Penny finally put their money where their mouths were and had a baby. I hate to say it, but by the end I was ready to get out of there. I appreciated Eric’s enthusiasm for my future, but his speeches were getting a little repetitive.

From my new apartment on 14th street and broadway in Newark, I would don the disguise of a receptionist, removing my blazer and safely tucking it away in my backpack. The commute into Manhattan was perfect - I had enough time on the train to lift weights AND shower with some towelettes in the bathroom. Was I a natural for the business world? I’ll rephrase that - Can Safari hunters fight off lions with their bare hands? Yes. Two of my bosses, extremely famous attorneys whom I cannot name (I’ll see them this weekend at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they are members) noticed my promise: After just two weeks on the job, they said that my talents were being wasted at the front desk. We all agreed that my qualifications and performance did not match the position, so I went back out into the world to try my hand at something more on my level. I applied to law school.

A cheap school would look bad on my business card. I put a lot of work into my business cards. I designed them so that you could unfold them and out would pop a little gavel cut from construction paper. Printing a cheap school on there would ruin the cards.

How did I pay for school? I didn’t want to get fooled into using my own hard-earned money, so I used a bank’s money instead by taking out more student loans. My credit score was zero (I was hiding in the grass, remember?) and I wanted to keep it that way, so I used my network of connections to create a bank account in my dead great-grandfather’s name. Ten hundred thousand dollars later, I’m pulling myself up by my own coattails at the Manhattan City Law Academy of Newark (sorry for being that person who name-drops their school, but I’ve learned that it is important to take credit for accomplishments).

Law School is not all it's cracked up to be. No one told me it would be so fun! My whole life, when I would fail to understand the basic fundamentals of what people said, they were disappointed. That never made much sense to me. The professors at law school were different. They were kind enough to expect confusion not just from me, but from the students who would eventually understand them, for reasons I still don’t understand. This is some of that legal logic that makes winning law matches (legal term for a trial) so satisfying. Remember the first chapeter of this self-memoir? If you need to revisit that, it’s on page 1. As I was saying, if the law were easy to grasp, it would bore people too much and nobody would follow it.

My professors went out of their way to prepare me for the 1-in-3 chance of graduating. These were compassionate people. Little did they know, I had the gift of gab. I could spew fluid legal vocabulary until the other party forfeited the law match (legal term for a trial, see last paragraph [citing sources is really big in law matches]). Talking became second nature! And my superiors?  They were wowed by my extra-large binder-length creative essays and graphic novels on niche case law (the kind for only real law heads). I out-thunked my professors to the point that they could not understand my arguments and they’d give up on grading the assignment. A forfeiture in my favor! My tenacity proved to everyone with a brain that I could out-argue anyone, even people who had the answers right in front of them. They called me the hose, a dazzling stream of disorienting vocabulary. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m saying and I just turn my brain off. It’s kind of like how Beethoven didn’t listen to his own music.

I aced law school, graduating First (legal term for alphabetical valedictorian). The dean of students called my chosen confirmation name, Otto Aabelhausen, her voice trembling with pride until she had a nervous breakdown. I bounded across the stage in tortoise shell shades, carrying a championship 18” pizza that I ate in front of everyone else like I imagine the best and most wise elder lawyers probably would. My only regret is not taking the time to console my sobbing professors after my speech. Once again, I inspired teachers to pursue their dreams elsewhere. It seemed they were really going to miss me, but I was on to bigger and better things.

I showed off my degree to everyone I knew - even the old law firm. Before I could show them my degree, the partners expressed so much faith in me that they counted my visit as an interview and put me in charge of the Firm’s finances. The timing was perfect, as the very famous and esteemed IRS had become very interested in that firm! I was the senior accountant who would be noticed! To celebrate I bought a new navy blue blazer (I’d gained access to the blazer section at the only department store in town). With my next paycheck, I decided to splurge and bought every one of them in the store.

I was 29. I was a financial superstar. The highest ranking auditors in the country and a couple islands were lining up to chop the shit with me. Years of waiting for the perfect opportunity to make a name for myself in business had brought me the most important audience possible. If I ever felt like I was losing the auditor's attention, I’d win them back by showing them some visuals, like the firm tax and bank records. To stay relevant, one must adapt.

I learned a lot about myself in those early days, reaching the next apex of self-awareness. The thing I learned the most was that what I learned to be what I already was before the most good at, I guess, which was: clear communication. When my mouth opens, the Truth falls out of me, like a violinist telling you that they play the violin (They are spilling the truth without fear). I barely though about what I was saying. The IRS folks liked what I said so much they asked me to do it again on video. Too many great moments are lost— My performance would live forever.

As the recording became a smash hit, I was quickly promoted to senior associate, then partner. To extra-congratulate and honor my success, the firm retroactively listed me in all their documents as being hired back in the eighth grade. That’s right: FOUNDING EQUITY PARTNER, and the youngest ever! The promotion bonus was so complicated and important that, after cutting the check, the entire accounting department took extended vacations to rest their brains. And those people were human calculators. So, what I’m saying is, the bonus was big. I bought enough sunglasses for every day of the week and gave each of the partners canoes carved from the finest American plastics. 

That was the best week of my life. At least at that time, but I’ll get to the other best weeks later (I’m a big chronological order guy, ever since high school and even before that back in elementary and middle schools, plus pre-k).

If I’m not making it clear: The Equity Partners had a lot of faith in me. If I said that already, I’m sorry. Moving on: The monday after my third promotion, a newspaper phoned the front desk. I answered. Then they asked me to comment on my lauded performances, and I gave them an answer. Would you believe me if I told you…they quoted me on the front page of the Tuesday edition!!!! I’d come a long way from the coffee boy days, when I would passionately refuse to tie my dress shoes (to keep the laces from fraying), then trip down the stairs with a hot tray o’ joe. The world made room for my ambition by getting out of its own way. I’d bloomed, emerging as a loafer man.

A few months later, I got too famous, so they sent me to prison. I don’t remember all the details but I think it was because I could hardly walk down the street without getting hounded by fans. People wanted facetime with little ol’ me! I would be famous everywhere for the rest of my life. If only you could experience that.

The booking agents at the prison knew a thing or two about how to put a room together. They paired me up with a famous pharmacist who came all the way from the barcelona district of Spain. Do I have to say his name? No - Unless you were just born right now onto a copy of this book, ruining its pages. Your ectoplasmic baby juices escape the womb, with you, into this merry world! You are crying at the horrible doctor who couldn’t put down my book during delivery. And now this doctors book is dripping ink all over the operating room! That’s hardly sanitary, is it? I apologize for hooking the doctor on page one. 

Regardless, lets get back to the famous pharmacist from Prison? Okay. The famous pharmacist from prison? His name was Hugo Berber. Yeah. That Hugo Berber. Hugo became my best friend, and I, his. We each knew what it was like to live life on the front page. We were like two front pages in a pod. 

We made each other better. I introduced Hugo to the literary works of the western hemisphere’s great literary Bart, William Shakespeare. Hugo introduced me to the world of cycling. Did you know prisons have bicycles? Prisons have bicycles! We loved all things bicycling - the wheels, the tools, the bikes. We grabbed our favorite tools from the facility bike hole and snuck them back to our cell. That’s the kind of bike geeks we’d become- a couple of crazy dreamers from out of nowhere with a shook up idea for continuing our massive success. We planned a grand scheme for figuring out how to get out of prison. Once we read up on a search engine about some example schemes, the wheels were to be in motion for one to come together.

Our escape plan was risky. Here was the trick: Make the prison management think they were the ones getting away with something. There were a lot of moving parts. Hugo and I collected whatever materials we could find. License plates. Wood chips. Straw. Pillowcases. I used these to make two 5 ft 11 dummies and hid them on our toilet (nobody wants to look at someone when they’re on the toilet). Meanwhile, Hugo tracked the arrival and departure times of the prison food delivery van. Together, quietly, after lights out, we used sharpened spoon handles to chip away at the concrete wall of our cell, eating the pieces to hide the debris. The easy part was over. Next, we brainstormed the next part of the plan. 

The parole hearing went great! Our two-man, two-dummy ventriloquist routine left the board howling with laughter. Toilet Humor (“Blue” material) works with any crowd in any context. Then we showed off at the mural we’d chiseled into our cell wall: a realistic depiction of our lord jesus christ making his great sacrifice on the manger, surrounded by roman kings and 5,000 fans. In that moment, no one had dry eyes, and it was because we brought them to tears. The head of the parole board gathered himself and announced his unanimous decision through heaving snorts of bloody snot: We would graduate from prison as fast as possible!

We caught a ride with the food delivery van to the next town. The driver was so nice! A month or so later, we walked 10 miles to the closest city. Every domino was falling into place. Both me and Hugo dribbled dominos with each hand. Four dominos! Dribbled like clockwork! The best part? The world was none the wiser. Literally no one knew of our master plan to open a bike shop.

Prison was a grad school for me. I learned to see both sides of our justice system. I learned this by realizing I had natural talent for being good at both of them. Now I understand why all the wealthiest big-name lawyers retire to prison. 

It’s like when I played basketball back in middle school. Because I’ve never believed in “left” and “right” as hand labels, the referees would blow the whistle on me whenever I got the ball. They were missing the bigger picture: By dribbling with both hands, I had an advantage over everyone else on the court. Prison and Jail are like hands that I use to “dribble” life. Using them both to my advantage, I can “shoot” the world through a “hoop.” With Hugo as my best friend and business partner, we could play two-on-two. Or two-on-the entire world!

We had no money. What about all that money I made as an equity partner, IRS superstar and, headline leading man? I don’t know and its’ not worth my time to find out where it’ went. Something you should know is that money doesn’t matter. Five, 10 and, ten million are just letters we put together to translate numbers into words. Money has no power. The only thing that really matters is love. If people made enough money, maybe they would understand this. The only thing money really buys is love because money teaches you that you dont need money, only love.

     We would raise the funding ourselves. There was money in the state lottery business. When you watch the news, the odds are pretty good you’re gonna see somebody winning the lottery. We would bend the markets favor by investing in the same lottery number every week and holding longer than everyone else. This was safer than the stock market as lottery tickets are low risk and high reward. The state lottery is recession-proof.

     Here’s the secret: People pay taxes (if they have yet to truly succeed). The state then mixes together a chunk of the tax payments. The greatest in the biz do this. It’s called “cleaning” money. With the taxpayer money now cleaned, the state sells tickets back to the taxpayers! If they pick the right random series of numbers, one lucky taxpayer could win back their tax payment, now clean, along with the entire pot of money! It’s the perfect transaction because the state makes all the money for you. 

     Taxes are like death. You can win your way out of them. I would win my way out through the lottery. I played the lottery for a month, diligently. Hugo would join in occasionally, but he was mostly busy making out with the landlord of our motel. Her name was Elaine and she was the hottest human being I had ever seen. Tall like an elevator, sharp like a gun with a bayonet on it, and on top of all that she was really hot. We would make out from time to time. Elaine and Hugo got married and moved away, and I took over the motel. Then I got struck by lightning.

     I survived. Who knows how! I sure don’t! I don’t even remember it happening. A fireman had to explain it to me, and I could only half hear him because I was still on fire and he was spraying me with a hose. Ater that, I went back to work and had a good day. 

     That night, I did my usual lottery ritual. Numbers, tickets, sit by the tv, enjoy the amazing local sports section of the news program, finally watch the lottery part with the balls and tubes. Folks, it was that night I won the lottery for the first time. How much did I win? I think it was 40 thousand dollars or something.

     The next night, and I wish this was fake, but it’s not: I got struck by lightning again. What the hell! The fireman had to explain it to me, and I had more of an idea of what he was saying because I had been on fire and hosed down before. I went back to work and had a good day.

     Numbers, ticket, sit by the tv. The local sports on the news are always worth my time. And I won the lottery again! 1 thousand dollars.

     I got struck by lightning again. The fireman and I caught up. I went back to work. Another good day.

     Want to guess how many times this happened? You’re going to lowball it. I’ve lost more fortunes than I’ve won, and this is one fortune I won. Lightning struck me 78 times in four months. That’s 78 lottery wins, a lifetime supply of love-realizing money. I was set for life and the rainy season was ending. 

     Birds started dying wherever I went, some falling out of the sky to my feet. Fishing got very easy because all the fish would die when I arrived. Weird! This was a different kind of luck than I was used to: food-based luck! Fate wanted to feed me. It would be ungrateful not to feast. This is how I developed my exotic taste for poultry and seafood.