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Some Days in the Life - April 24, 1999

 April 24, 1999

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It is a bright, sunny day outside. But cold. Far too cold, and it's windy, too. And naturally, it isn't raining.

The wind makes it worse -- wind leeches what water we have left from the ground and trees, and encourages little sparks to grow into greeeeeeeeat big fires. Just what we don't need.

I got into a somewhat better mood after work yesterday, climbing into my car. I needed to go down the street and pick up my laundry, but then I decided to find someplace where I could get a cup of coffee and do some writing. A simple enough prospect, or so I would think.

The problem is, Wolfeboro is short on traditional cafes. In fact, I have yet to find a real, honest-to-God greasy spoon diner in New Hampshire. So I started driving. And driving.

It was sunny. The sort of sunshine where you get reds and golds in the clouds even two hours before sundown. Lots of high wisps of cloud, too -- and the hills of New Hampshire are gorgeous. I lived in Seattle long enough to like the idea of mountains. Nice, big, constant things, mountains are. But rolling hills with rivers between them forming valleys, and the White Mountains in the distance... I think I like that better.

My quest for a cafe took me to Tuftenboro, which is the next town over. And through it. Nothing there, that I could see. A couple of full out restaurants, but that's not the same thing. I went through it to Moultonboro, where I found the same deal. Then I curved around to North Moultonboro and down into Tamworth. From Tamworth I briefly went through Sandwich, then Meredith, and back to Tamworth. Just driving and listening to National Public Radio.

The radio had a story about the Colorado shootings I remember in particular. They were following one family's trek through the horrors of the day, as well as an Emergency Room doctor and a few others. The mother and father had gone to the two places where the rescued children were being brought, and they kept in touch by Cellular Phone. The boy hid in a Chemistry lab as his friends were murdered around him.

It was an excellent story -- the kind of story where you get a feel for the tragedy without the tabloid journalism of Hard Copy or other yellow journalism broadcasts, like the NBC Nightly News. One thing in particular stuck out in my mind. The boy and his friends in the Chemistry Lab were finally found by the SWAT team... who proceeded to scream at them to keep their hands up and behind their heads, don't move, back out slowly, get your damn hands back up! All with rifles pointed at them. The kid said it was pretty frightening.

I can understand the SWAT team needing to be paranoid about accomplices and weapons and the like, but to treat shell-shocked teenagers like terrorists after the most terrifying experience in their lives seems somehow wrong to me. This kid lived through gunmen shooting people all around him, and wondering if he would be next. He was in the target population -- a weightlifter and jock -- so his fears were justified. But the really scary thing he can remember is his rescuer pointing a gun at him and shouting.

I wonder if that scene will make it into the inevitable movie of the week about this? The heroic SWAT team screaming at the kids and aiming high powered weaponry at them. No, I doubt it will. I expect there will be a handsome SWAT team member who calls into the classroom. "Anyone in there?" "Who are you," a terrified young girl will call out. "Police, ma'am -- you're safe now," he'll say, and the kids will come out and embrace the SWAT team members, sobbing with relief and grief. Music up, cue F.T.D. florists ad.

I was driving along Route Sixteen back towards Ossipee, when I saw a place called the Yankee that looked cafe-like, so I stopped there. I was wrong. Smoke filled, and surrounded by men about as overweight as I am eating huge amounts of barbecued pig. It looked like something out of a funny horror movie, where at the end everyone discovers they've been eating human flesh and decide they like the taste.

I ate there -- an inexpensive, too spicy but very good bowl of chili. But I didn't write. Pulling a powerbook out and writing would have been as out of place there as dropping your pants and dancing to the Dukes of Hazzard theme music at the Metropolitan Opera.

However, I did see that the largest desserts on the planet were there. They had a brownie sundae with at least half a tub of vanilla ice cream piled atop it, and whipped cream on that. I'd estimate it was a mound of dessert eight inches in circumference and at least six inches high, not exaggerated. I didn't get dessert. That much dessert would frighten me. I climbed back into the car and drove home, getting there somewhere around eight. The Humble Farmer was on Maine Public Broadcasting. It's an almost surreal show -- jazz music with a DJ speaking in a downeast Maine dialect and telling "stories without punchlines" as he puts it. He's soothing, after you've eaten smoky pig based chili.

Last night I felt like crap. I had forebrain fatigue -- the kind of tiredness you get right behind your eyes, when the rest of you just isn't tired. I couldn't think or focus. I hung out at my usual online haunt, but I was pretty worthless to everyone there. I tried to watch cartoons or do something to snap out of my fugue, but even tea couldn't help me. So I went to bed around twelve thirty. Cartoon Network's replaced the first hour of their homage to "we're twenty-four hours a day, but literally no one is watching from midnight to six am on Saturday" with actual programming -- Gumby's been taken off, and the first hour's now Batman followed by Dragonball Z. The Gary Coleman show follows that, so I imagine that the rest of the crappy shows -- the Super Globetrotters, Devlin!, Fangface, the Funky Phantom and so on are all there in their mid-seventies glory.

It's a pure night of TV, watching the crap late night Cartoon Network stuff. It's like washing your brain out. But I was too fatigued last night, so I was asleep before Gary Coleman even came on. It's scary to me that I regret that.

I don't normally work Saturdays, but Parent's Weekend is different. You always have to be available to the parents when they come by a Boarding School. I'll have a few more worked Saturdays, as my Saturday worker is leaving at the end of the Academic year and doesn't want to do it in the meantime, which I can understand. So I'm alternating them with Eileen, my Systems Administrator. Though I'm also working next Saturday as I have a friend coming up the weekend after and we're going to gad about a bit. Well, it means I'll get journal entries in at least, since I have no desire to actually do work while I'm here. I'm here so that students with computer problems can bring them in.

Fran, my computer technician, came in too -- I think he's keeping me company, since he certainly didn't need to. His daughter's a student, so there's an element of Parent's Weekend in it too, except I don't think he feels the great need to be here. Shadow Gorrill just stuck her head in and declared I look adorable, as I'm wearing a crisp white shirt, blue and red tie and have suspenders on. She thinks that's adorable. I think that I look like Larry King, except with the blue sportcoat on. Then I look like a fat, bearded Clark Kent.

Which isn't quite true -- the only cartoon character I really look like is Bluto from Popeye. Which may be why children are scared of me. I tap into the communal subconscious, and Bluto has become an archetypal figure.

Over a hundred hits to the journal pages, which is really cool. Someone's reading this stuff. Well, hi there. Pay no attention to the mess.