Internet morons to the rescue!

Like everyone who’s not a complete sociopath (you know who you are) I sometimes get down on myself over past mistakes. I’ve made my share of them, that’s for sure.

The first I can remember was the time I left my chocolate-filled Easter basket on the dash of my folks’ shiny new ’60 Chevy while we attended mass. A hot, sunny day. By the time the priest finally meandered around to my favorite part of the service (dismissal), my chocolate delicacies had melted into an unremarkable brown puddle, most of which had soaked through the basket and into the radio speaker.

I was unhappy. My old man even more so. The radio never sounded the same. On the bright side, the car smelled delicious for months.

That was a relatively minor mistake, though, notable only because it was my first. Since then, my mistakes have grown in both size and significance.

You’d think my most memorable errors would involve ex-wives, of which I have several. But I don’t consider any of them mistakes, per se. They were all nice women, really. I wouldn’t have married them otherwise. Things just didn’t work out. Sometimes due to my mistakes, sometimes theirs. More often, both.

But the marriages themselves were not mistakes. Or so I believe. Some of my exes might say otherwise.

Then there were the kids. I was more or less a single parent during most of their upbringing, at least with the first two. Anyone who’s ever been a parent knows the odds of screwing up parenthood are about one in one.

It will happen. It did. My kids, long since grown, say I was a good parent, but Lord knows I could have been better. Were I younger, I might give it another go just to prove it.

Despite my laissez-faire parenting style, my kids turned out great for the most part. Not a serial killer among them. Now they’re adults and making their own mistakes, mistakes they will one day regret and thus the cycle continues.

When I’m getting especially down on myself, I sometimes resort to the “misery loves company” treatment; for that, the internet provides ample fodder.

I’m thinking now of the guys from Arkansas who were recently charged with aggravated assault after cops caught them taking turns shooting each other. They were testing out a bulletproof vest.

Why? Well, drinking was involved (surprise! surprise!). And in all fairness to the marksmen, it was only a .22-caliber rifle, though one of the participants did report getting miffed when the bullet left a red mark on his chest.

I read something like that and all of a sudden, the time I tried to install my own toilet doesn’t seem like such a gut-wrenching comedy of errors.

Then there’s the guy who tried to dry a wet baseball infield by dumping gasoline on it and setting it afire. Twenty-five gallons of gas! That’s enough to blast a Yugo into orbit!

Oh, bless you, you moron with a gas can! And the 75 spectators who watched it happen while filming the incident on their cell phones. I no longer feel bad about walking off a pier into Lake Michigan during a yacht club party and being forced to swim (fully clothed, in a black suit and cowboy boots) a quarter-mile from the marina to the nearest occupied boat. That seemed really dumb to me at the time, but compared to the guy torching the ball field? Not so much.

My favorite, though, at least this week, is the guy in Fresno who shoplifted a chainsaw by sticking it down the front of his pants. I swear I’m not making this up.

The store video shows it wasn’t a small chainsaw, either, but a nice-sized, gas-powered job, suitable for large tree removal.

I feel about this the same way I do about cop shows where the hard-boiled detective stuffs his revolver into the front of his pants before jumping into a convertible and tearing after the perp. It’s almost impossible for me to not anticipate the “bang” that will signal the end of the detective’s parental options.

The chainsaw guy? Well, he’s one misstep away from being eligible for a 19^th Century boys’ choir. Waaaay dumber than anything I’ve ever done.

So thanks again, internet nitwits. Without you, I’d probably still feel embarrassed about the time I figured the ice on the lake would be more than thick enough to support the weight my girlfriend’s dad’s new Mustang.

There are changes swirling in the widening gyre

“Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call / Don’t stand in the doorway don’t block up the hall / For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled / There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’ / It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls / For the times they are a-changin’” – Bob Dylan

I remember the first time I heard that song, way back in ’64. I was just a kid at the time; girls, shaving and puberty were still years distant. I had heard the word “politics,” but had no idea what it meant. Even so, that song spoke to me on a level I couldn’t begin to understand.

The years sped by beneath the nightly televised specter of Vietnam as I edged ever closer to the age when I, too, would be required to register for the draft.

Was I scared? Hell, yes, I was scared. I did not want to return home in one of those flag-draped caskets I saw on TV every night. I did not want to die for a cause that made no sense to me.

Neither did a lot of young men; some died anyway, including some I called friends. Others protested, raising their voices against a war they saw as senseless. Because of their voices – in part, at least – the war in Vietnam wound down just as I was reaching draft age. I registered but was never inducted.

I later joined up on my own. I liked the military but was never particularly good at being a soldier. I just wanted to serve my country, like my old man, my Uncle Ray, my grandfather, my great-grandfather; all served at one time or another.

But even during my time in uniform I remained thankful to those protestors. The kids gunned down at Kent State, the 100,000 who filled the streets of Washington, D.C. in ’67, the millions more who gathered across the nation … it’s possible I – and a lot of other guys my age – are alive today because those protestors made their voices heard in a way that would not be silenced.

Don’t get me wrong, I never sided with the idiots who spit on our returning troops or screamed “baby killer” from the cozy safety of the sidelines. Too many of my friends and relatives were among those in uniform and I knew them to be good people.

To this day, our Vietnam vets don’t get the respect they earned and deserve, though things are improving. Still, too little, too late, in my opinion.

And now this country is swept up in another polarizing storm. This time the war’s in our own backyard, in our schoolyards, classrooms, hallways. Though the venue has changed, the body bags remain the same. The tears, the televised sobs of parents who will never again see a son, a daughter; the ineffectual, corrupt politicians who extend hopes and prayers rather than meaningful legislation.

For those of us who lived through the Vietnam era, it’s all eerily familiar.

The kind of folks who mistake Facebook memes for wisdom claim that out of every bad thing a good thing comes. I’m not sure that’s true. All the protests over Vietnam, the war itself, the civil rights movement that was happening at the same time; it could be argued they helped birth a better nation than the one we had before; more tolerant, enlightened, equal.

But it was a painful, bloody birth. Was it all worth it? Historians may know; I do not.

I just know it did my heart good to see the recent news photos of those young protestors in Washington and around the country. They’re mad as hell and they should be. To borrow from Yeats, there’s a rough beast running loose in this country and for too long nobody’s done a thing to stop it. Maybe this is the start. Maybe this is the loosened pebble that will grow into an avalanche.

Again, I don’t know. You could fit all the wisdom I possess into a thimble and still have room for your thumb. I don’t know any more about politics now than I did back when Dylan wrote that song.

I own guns myself and not the sort one uses for hunting. But just like in the sixties, I’m sick of seeing body bags. Something’s got to change.

If our leaders lack the courage to make a stand, maybe it’s time history repeats itself. For the first time in a long time I think I feel the ground beginning to swell beneath me.

A change is coming.

MTaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 745-9530

Sometimes, it’s the little things that go unnoticed, like a bullet

I've been to some great parties in my day; hosted a few, even. One luau in particular was epic, and there are probably still a few folks sleeping in the bushes behind the house I moved out of last summer.

But none of my wing-dings compare with the one attended by Tracy Durham, of Peoria, Illinois late last week. During the course of that party, at some point, Durham was shot. And didn’t notice it.

In fact, Durham didn’t figure out he’d been shot until the following day, when a neighbor asked him why he was limping.

Now, one has to wonder exactly how one gets shot and fails to notice it. The key, I think, may be found in a line from the Associated Press story reporting the incident.

“The Peoria man (Durham)…heard a pop as he took a drink from a bottle of whiskey,” reads the article.

Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere. If you’re sucking back Jack Daniels straight from the jug, chances are you’re past the “social drinking” phase of the evening and well on your way to hollering “Yahoo!!” from the back of a pickup truck bumping down a country road.

Apparently, the shot was fired by one of Durham’s buddies after Durham commented on the fact that the aforementioned buddy’s girlfriend was somewhat less than alluring. “Ugly” is the word Durham used.

Due to the nature of the incident, some might guess Durham to be a relatively young guy, but nope, he’s 48. So there’s no “wild and crazy” kid element happening here.

By the time a man reaches his late forties, he should able to notice when he’s been shot, even if he lives in Peoria, over two hours from Chicago where people get shot all the time and are more or less used to it.

At any rate, once Durham figured out he had a bullet in his leg, he visited a local hospital to have it removed. Doctors there notified police, who questioned Durham at length.

Durham “declined to identify” the buddy that shot him. That’s loyalty. Or stupidity. One of the two, I can’t decide.

Point is, Durham took the bullet like a man; a very, very drunk man, and didn’t tattle about it later.

I can’t help but wonder why. Is he afraid he won’t get invited to any more parties where shootings are going on? Does he genuinely feel remorseful over calling his buddy’s girlfriend ugly? Or was he still feeling the effects of the previous night’s whiskey at the time of the police interview?

Seems if the cops really wanted to catch the shooter, all they’d have to do is round up the folks that attended the party and see which one has the ugliest girlfriend. Of course, with beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all that, this investigative technique might be inadmissible in court.

Personally, I figure if Durham is willing to let bygones be bygones, the county prosecutor shouldn’t waste tax dollars pursuing the issue. There are too many people who really mind getting shot. The cops should go after their shooters instead.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

I swear I never meant to shoot the guy

I once shot a man.

Boy, when you come right out and say it like that, it sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? Of course, there were extenuating circumstances. The guy was robbing me. The shooting was an accident. And the offending projectile was not a bullet, but a six-inch long arrow.

Maybe I’d better start at the beginning.

I was 19, living in a third floor efficiency apartment in a less-than-hospitable section of Detroit. I made a passable living as the bassist and token white guy in a blues band playing various clubs up and down Telegraph Road. Live music was the thing in those days, and we played five, sometimes six nights a week, so most evenings, my apartment was empty until well after 3 a.m.

On this particular night, however, I had called in sick with a terrible case of the flu. By 10 p.m., I was in bed, heavily sedated with over-the-counter flu meds, and sleeping like a baby—a sick and drugged out baby.

It must have been around midnight when I first noticed the light slanting into my combination living/bedroom from out in the hallway.

Being “Nyquil-ized,” I rose to wakefulness slowly. It took a full minute before I realized I wasn’t alone in the room. Someone—from my perspective only a dark shadow silhouetted against the hall light—was riffling through my dresser, methodically opening each drawer, inspecting its contents, then moving on to the next.

Like most folks living in the neighborhood, my apartment door sported the Detroiter’s vertical line of deadbolt locks. In my drug-induced haze, I had forgotten to engage any of them, and the guy currently checking out my underwear and socks had simply waltzed on in.

Because of the questionable geniality of the neighborhood and my desire to live beyond my teen years, I always slept with a small, pistol-type crossbow secured between my bed and nightstand. It had all the stopping power of a BB gun, but I somehow felt safer knowing I wasn’t the only resident in the apartment complex sleeping unarmed.

Moving slowly, as quietly as possible, I wrapped my fingers around the crossbow’s pistol-grip and pointed it in the general direction of the intruder. It was—I swear—my intention to point only, and use my manliest voice to bark out something like, “Do you feel lucky punk? Well, do ya?”

It never got that far. Nervously raising the crossbow, I exerted just a touch too much pressure on the trigger. Thwap! The tiny arrow flew, passed through the intruder’s left cheek (the cheek south of his beltline), and thwunked into the opposite wall.

Emitting a yowl I can only describe as a cross between a deranged yodeler and a bobcat snagged in a barbed wire fence, the intruder grabbed his backside with both hands and bolted out the door.

Though positive I was going to wind up doing hard time at Jackson, I called the police anyway. The two cops from Detroit metro who showed up half-an-hour later took the report, giggling like schoolgirls throughout most of my narrative.

“He should be easy to find,” said the older officer. “We’ll check the emergency rooms for a guy with an arrow hole in his butt.”

That was the last I heard about it. This was Detroit in the ‘70s and the cops had bigger fish to fry.

I left the arrow stuck in the wall as a reminder. Sick or not, I never again forgot to lock my door.



More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.