Apple Of My Eye

In the fall of 2009 my friend Amber and I stopped in at a Best Buy, looking at laptop computers for Amber’s boyfriend. We made cursory passes by desktops, examining them in the way that all window shoppers do, when we came around to the computers adorned with little glowing apples. Before Amber went to the job of actually considering her options, she paused a moment at the Apple kiosk and stood there, as if dreaming.

The computers contrasted sharply with the simple, polished wood of their display table, which further set them apart from the rest of the brands. Everything else sat on black metal shelves, secured by black metal arms so that no one could pick them up and carry them away. The Apple notebooks had nothing keeping them there save for a thin white wire attached to a sensor. I’ve never attempted larceny, but I assumed that severing it would result in a lot of attention with loud sirens and flashing lights. Sitting that way, it truly felt like having one would be no more difficult than filling out a credit card application.

“My computer’s so old,” she said, tracing a finger along the lid of one of the shiny silver laptops. “I’d love to have a Mac, but…” She paused. “I don’t want to become one of those Mac snobs.”

I watched her finger as it followed the graceful curved edges of the otherwise rectangular lid, and I felt that familiar stirring, like heartstrings but in my back pocket.

Gadgets, to this day, are a big draw for me. As a self-proclaimed nerd, I have an eye for anything with glowing lights or blinking buttons, and the attraction is probably best described as “unhealthy.” Right up there with sugar and a mild self-loathing, technology could be described as one of my major addictions. Walking into an electronics store, I imagine that the sight of me is something like a kitten plopped into the middle of a room filled with yarn, if the yarn was dancing and the kitten hopped up on speed. God knows how much of my income I’ve squandered on technological trinkets that, really, are nothing more than flashy toys.

How, then, does one admit to already having become one of those snobs? I’d made the switch to Apple computers a year or so before, and I felt immediately uncomfortable in that moment, standing there looking at several overpriced products I had lying in wait for me back home. I went from feeling ashamed, then, to slightly defensive. I certainly didn’t think of myself as a snob, and as we walked away I ran through all my reasoning for wanting things like these and the justifications for already having them.

As a child, I loved toys that lit up and had switches and levers and made science-y noises. I would pretend that educational toys — things made of bright plastics that were supposed to teach a child how to count or multiply — instead made excellent controls for spaceships or a computer workstation at a distant outpost. Things didn’t even have to be toys. At my great-grandmother’s house, I would play with her melodica, a handheld musical instrument that looked like the result of a flute and a piano’s wild night in Vegas; the rows of black and white keys looked like buttons that would fire missiles or close a bulkhead against an advancing army of mutant soldiers.

Years later, in the middle of a camping trip where my mother and I seemed sentenced to boredom, she and I drove into town to look at the local shops. We were in the middle of a junk store, basically a glorified indoor garage sale, when I stumbled upon an entire computer priced at twenty-five dollars. The find felt like a prospector’s discovery of gold, and, without prodding, my mother asked if I’d like to have it. Never one to pass up a good deal, my mother, I think, overestimated the computer’s capabilities. When we got it back to our camper, we set it up on the foldaway dining table and plugged it in. From school and even at home, I was used to having a mouse and onscreen pointer to navigate things. But this thing was from a different era. All the monitor gave me was a black screen. That and a lime green cursor for typing commands in what I thought of as the old-fashioned way. At twelve years old and a child of the nineties, I had no idea how to work a computer that had possibly seen its prime during the Kennedy administration. So I was left typing little stories onto the screen, only to have no idea how to store or retrieve them when I shut the thing off.

The computer was a disappointment at best. Still, the sight of it, boulder-like and bowing the dining table, felt comforting in a way that got me through the rest of the camping trip. It even outweighed the fear I felt when using it, when the thought of it crashing through the table and crushing both of my legs covered me like a shadow.

In high school, when I got my first job, I passed up the opportunity to go to London on a class field trip so that I could buy my first real computer. The idea of going to another country felt promising in the way that adventure does when you’re a teenager and your departure date is still far off. Partly, it was my parents who diverted my desire to go. The trip was in the summer of 2002, not even a year after the events of September 11th. America had forced its way into the War on Terror, and being a U.S. citizen abroad — to my parents, at least — was like bringing a toasty roast beef sandwich into a bear cage.

“You could go to Europe,” my father said. “Or...you could get a brand new laptop.”

My mother chimed in, her voice masking her intention of me never leaving the country or even setting foot on a plane. “It’d be about the same amount of money. And it would last longer.”

All the wonders of the British Isles paled against the glowing promise of a shiny new computer, and in that moment, no matter how much I might have pretended to think about it, I was sold. As a family, we made the trip to a Best Buy, the nearest of which was almost forty minutes away, so that I could make my first foray into the world of zero percent financing.

In the way that these things go, the laptop ended up being outdated within eight months, and within shouting distance of its fourth birthday it quit on me, essentially retiring into the job of a thousand-dollar paperweight.

By this time I had a little better income, and so I purchased a new computer, an Apple laptop that I would turn around and resell less than a year later when a newer, better one caught my eye. I had no justification for doing it. I’d just finished paying off the desktop I’d bought, and there was nothing wrong with my laptop except for the fact that it lacked a few features of the shinier, slimmer models.

Standing there in the Best Buy, I had to wonder if I really was one of those Mac snobs. And not just a Mac snob, but a tech snob in general. What other reason could there be for my attitude toward technology? Should a man’s worth be measured in flashy gadgets, I guess I thought I might rank a few rungs higher than other people. But, as we walked away from the Macs and toward the other computers, perched on their demure black shelves reaching onward to infinity, it became clear that all my toys really are are testaments to the fact that I don’t have a life. While other people are out getting drunk in a friend’s cornfield or sleeping around in the backs of sports car, I’m sitting alone in a sea of glowing lights and blinking buttons, waiting for my next toy.

Big Deals at Small Prices

My childhood was lived in department stores. That's how it seemed, anyway, because my mother had a love for shopping that ranked just shy of her love for my brother and myself, and well above her care for our pets. The everyday memories of my mother do not take place in parks or at Bingo halls, but rather among racks of moderately priced kitchen textiles and aisles of crafting supplies.

While other children were off learning about the rules of baseball and football from their fathers, I opted instead to hang out with my mother. And so, while I cannot tell the difference between a field goal and a grand slam, I can find my way around a Walmart or a Target like nobody's business. If one of my friends in grade school had suddenly come up to me and said, "I wonder where I can find some glass champagne flutes at Big Lots," I could have directed him with ease. Or if one of my teachers sprang a pop quiz on me, asking me to close my eyes and describe the interior of a Value City, I would have passed with flying white and brown colors.

If anything, I might have considered myself a navigator of retail, something akin to a seaman and his frequented waters. Except my boat was a shopping cart, and my sails were made of plastic shopping bags. Had the other kids my age been competing with me for the title of World's Best Retail Expert, I would have feigned congeniality but secretly told myself, "You're the one, you're the one. You're a shoe-in for this. This is what you were born for. You know where the highest thread-count sheet sets are, and you can get from there to the paper towels in no time flat." If I couldn't join in a conversation about the St. Louis Cardinals, then I could at least convince myself that I might impress someone with my knowledge of department store floor plans.

By the time I was eight I was off exploring on my own. The toy department became my destination of choice, and every time my mother and I would go somewhere we would part ways. She would go through her lists and stashes of clipped coupons, looking for basics like toilet paper and detergent. She'd then make her way to the grocery sections to stock up on cans of peas and pork 'n' beans to join the ranks of other canned foods and gallon jugs of water waiting in our basement. Meanwhile, I would drool over $40 Lego sets and Star Trek action figures, oblivious to the coming nuclear armageddon intimated by my mother's cache of food and water. I found myself so enraptured by the toys that my mother would have to come find me when she was ready to leave, prying my fingers off of a set of miniature plastic spaceships or a Batman doll with a working utility belt. "Come on," she'd say. "We...have...to...GO."

The first time my mother didn't come to find me was an experience, and a real eye opener. We were in a Target store and, somehow, I exhausted my desire to browse, so I set off to find my mother, thinking, I guess, that that would be the end of our stay there. As each department came and went with no Mom, a growing panic took hold. It's funny how rational though can escape a person when their age is eternities away from double digits and their height's rivaled by a yardstick. Oh my god, I thought, my mother has abandoned me. She finally got fed up with my neediness and my always wanting that Space Enforcer Lego set and she's taken off, and now I'm going to have to live in this Target store until I'm old enough to hitchhike back home.

After what felt like anywhere from three to seven trips around the store, passing families with their kids in tow, I started to reevaluate my pride in thinking I knew how to make it on my own in places like this. Sure it was nice being able to go look at toys I wouldn't be able to afford until I was well into my twenties, and it was something of a relief to say I had a skill that few of the others my age had (even if that skill was at finding discounted hand towels and dish soap on clearance endcaps). But what was it worth when you couldn't find the one thing that mattered?

All the dish soap and towels in the world wouldn't do me any good, and neither would Legos unless I could somehow build a giant, pedal-powered dune buggy that would drive me home. But, judging by how long it took me to follow the step-by-step instructions for sets as simple as the police station or the underwater sea lab, my Lego idea was a no-go.

Ultimately, by the time I came around to the toys once again, I was on the verge of tears. The thought of going up front, of asking strangers for help, made me lightheaded. It was the last option I had, and I was just about to take it when I saw my mother turn a corner up ahead and start making her way toward me. The weight of my relief felt like a quilt, heavy on my chest, and I walked, nearly running, to her and the fully-laden cart whose plastic bottom sagged like an overweight dog.

With a cursory once-over to make sure I wasn't bleeding or clutching something I hoped she'd buy, she said, "Well, I think I'm about ready. Did you see anything you liked?"

I started to speak, but I couldn't think of anything I'd looked at. Instead, I just said, "Not really," and, pressing myself close to her, we made our way up front.

Can We Stop For Tacos On Our March On Washington?

Never in my life have I been much of an activist. I've always been fascinated by the dedication and drive protesters bring to their beliefs, but for the most part I just can't summon up the energy to rail against the status quo. Things have come and gone for which I've had one feeling or another, but something that would spur me to get up out of my chair would have to be a rally for free tacos or a demonstration involving drinking pina coladas. Indoors. On lounge chairs.

To say that I am a lazy person, I feel, is a bit unfair. True, I don't march on Washington or take part in sit-ins. Whereas some people organize their next rally against homophobic politicians or a war taking place in a far-off land, I take pill bottles and outfit them with construction paper and googly eyes, transforming them into cartoon characters. To me, this is a productive use of my time.

Still, that's not to say that I've never been involved with demonstrations.

My friend Amber is more politically inclined than I am. She and her boyfriend Andy display a motivation that would inspire those looking to make changes in the world. Their level of commitment is such that I can only describe it as "overwhelming," something I can attest to since I was with the two of them for the first rally I ever attended.

Together we were protesting the suspension of a former English teacher of ours for his classroom use of an article exploring the element of homosexuality in the animal kingdom. The article at its worst was timid (nothing more than what a person might read in National Geographic), but from the furor that a single parent raised after reading it, one might have believed the article was an excerpt from a Jackie Collins novel. And so our teacher, Mr. DeLong, had been suspended, and on the night on the school board meeting to determine whether or not he would keep his job, a small army of protesters gathered outside the building to show their support.

My decision to go was based on the emotional connection I had with Mr. DeLong. As a former student and someone who had once imagined himself becoming an English teacher, it felt even more unfair that he should be chastised for encouraging his students to think outside the normal bounds of small-town Midwestern life. As a homosexual the fact that someone would make a fuss over her child having to learn about the inevitabilities of gayness among peacocks and turtles made me angry.

While the motivations behind my going were sizable, the protest itself felt a bit underwhelming. In my head I'd conjured up scenes of people boasting signs and making catchy chants. People would throw bottles in fits of rage. And might it be too much to ask that someone set themselves on fire, like in those schoolbook pictures of Buddhist monks during the Vietnam War? What I got instead was a crowd of maybe seventy people, all of whom were in favor of Mr. DeLong's reinstatement. There were no angry counter-protesters. No screaming mobs. Nothing but a group of students and middle-aged parents standing outside a converted house in the middle of a field.

I guess, in a way, it's good that nothing got out of hand. But a part of me had to wonder, where's the fun in this? If I'm giving up my free evening, can't I get a little excitement in return? After all, the November air was chilly, and my feet were on the edge of a mild discomfort from standing for an hour and a half.

The more professional protesters, the ones who do this kind of thing all the time, might vilify me for that kind of a statement, and so it seems like a fair thing to say that it's a good thing I am not involved in many demonstrations. All in all, I make for a pretty poor protester. This being no more evident than when, at seven-thirty, I told my friend Amber that I was leaving to go to a birthday party. In all fairness, I'd made the commitment long before I agreed to come to the rally, but I did feel slightly guilty when I learned later that Amber and Andy and a good group of the protesters were there, showing their silent support, until a little after midnight.

So maybe it's a good thing that I don't make it a priority to involve myself in political demonstrations or rallies against injustices. After an initial bout of shame, I'm coming to terms with the knowledge of my place in the grand scheme of things. When I imagine myself at any of the great movements in history – Vietnam, D.C.'s civil rights marches, the 1969 Miss America Protest – I cannot help but hear my voice among the chants of civil disobedience, dampening their power, saying, "Hey, I thought there were going to be pina coladas! And where are the lounge chairs? Well, can we at least stop for some tacos?"

SCATTERSHOT Blog VS. The Westboro Baptist Church

Back in March, I first actually saw the nutcases from the Westboro Baptist Church live and in person. My wife and I were attending An Evening With Kevin Smith out in Kansas City. Unfortunately for Smith (and us) K.C. Missouri is much too close to Kansas, which is where these vermin hail from.

There were quite a few of them, as I recall, holding their "God Hates America" and "God Hates Fags" signs. They were protesting Smith because of his film DOGMA I guess.

See, that's the first problem I have with these people at the Westboro Baptist Church--their message is so random. It's almost like a child, or someone with a child-like mind, put their whole message together.

For example, they've recently added a sign to their protests that feature a drawing of the Gulf of Mexico with a giant oil blot on it that reads "Gods Wrath" or "Thank God for His Wrath." I don't recall exactly what it says, but the point is this: the BP oil spill is God's way of punishing us.

Yikes. And what is "He" punishing us for? Well the gays of course. Don't you see? Doesn't that make complete sense?

Yeah, I don't get it either. I don't get the whole "Thank God for dead soldiers" either. So, our boys in the military are dead...and it's all because we're not locking people for being gay? I mean, last I checked, this country isn't exactly the most open-minded/progressive when it comes to sexual orientation.

OH MAN!!! Imagine the oil spill we'd get if DID legalize gay marriage! I bet God would make it RAIN oil. Hmm...maybe we should do it just to solve this pesky energy crisis. But I digress...

So I'm a closet Lady Gaga fan. Even though I freely admit to liking a wide variety of music, Gaga (when she first came out) was a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. Now that she continues to put out interesting music and music videos (not to mention have wacky-ass fashion sense) I can be a bit more open about my feels for Gaga. She's not a one-hit-wonder but more of a cultural force of nature.

Lady Gaga, however, made one fatal mistake--she doesn't hate the gays. So Fred Phelps and his hate mongers decided to stage a protest at her July 17 St. Louis show. Because I didn't have a job for so long, we couldn't go to the show...but my wife found out about a counter-protest that sounded interesting.

I've never been one to shy away from confrontation, so of course I wanted to go. One thing that really bums me out about the Westboro nuts (or any nuts really) is that they ARE A VERY VOCAL MINORITY. I truly believe that most people are inherently good, and are repulsed by their "God hates Fags" rhetoric. Which is why a counter-protest is actually very important: it lets everyone know (for sure) that there are more decent people in the world.

I contacted my co-author, Mike, who agreed to join us outside the Scotttrade Center to protest the protesters. Early in the afternoon, Mike and I went to Walgreens where his "freedom debit card" purchased four pieces of "free speech poster board." Two neon green. Two neon pink. Then we went over to one of Leah's social work friend's house to make our sign. I initially wanted to just let Leah make my sign...but then I thought about and decided to do the right thing and put my creative mind to good use.

I needed a gimmick, something that would startle people into reading my sign, but at the same time parody the religious idiocy the Phelps crew use to justify their hate. I knew I was wearing my Viking hat to the protest, because Leah said I could (and she never lets me wear it in public). And thus, after a few minutes of thinking...and protest sign was born:

We drove downtown and found the streets choked with people. A Cardinals game and just let out (which the Phelps people also protested, apparently). By the time we got to the arena, we were sure both protests would be well under way. Gaga's fans (dubbed "little monsters") were out in droves.

But where were the Phelps protesters? We actually walked all the way around the arena before finding them. There were, just as I thought, more counter-protesters than Phelps-people. Now here is what pisses me off--leading up to the show there were many stories written online in the local media about the "Planned Westboro Protest." The media are more than happy to give these fuckers a platform to stand on. What is NEVER reported is how few of these people actually show up (unless the event is nearer to Kansas). There were only SIX people holding signs across the street, behind a little police barricade.

Leah's sign was simpler and more to the point.

What was also cool--Mike and I ran into our old friend Colin who was running one of what turned out to be two counter-protests:

Two protests? And only six people on the other side? It was pathetic. It was basically no contest, Westboro was out gunned (there were around 100 on our side). My sign got the reaction I wanted (a few head shakes, many requests for pictures) which made me happy, but the fact that so few people actually showed up to protest a pop-singer made me happier.

Can you even see them?

This man's sign beat mine in the "WTF?" category. But I still won for best headgear.

Here's a video that you HAVE to watch covering the event. We all made "the cut" as it were...and so did my little SCATTERSHOT advertisement (special thanks to Mike for finding this one online):

I was also filmed from afar (with Mike) in this random clip Leah found on YouTube:

Parfait

I've never been very coordinated. I don't know if it's my clown-sized feet or the fact that my legs are abnormally long (two details which make me think that, should I ever be shipwrecked, I could find a sizable piece of driftwood, cut off my legs, and use my oar-sized feet to row myself to safety).

From grade school games of kickball to high school requisite dance classes, I've always been the one to demonstrate his complete inability to be graceful. The latest in my ever-growing list of examples comes from a experience I had while working.

It was time for my lunch and so I opted for a drink and one of the fruit and yogurt parfaits sold at the little snack bar. After purchasing my items I headed upstairs, where our break room is. In less than five minutes, I would no longer be wearing my shirt, and I would have nothing to eat besides the basket of free Jolly Ranchers sitting next to the communal toaster oven.

As I made my way upstairs, I was moving quickly, practically skipping up the stairs, when my foot caught the lip of one of the steps. As I reached out for the railing to catch myself with the three available fingers holding my parfait, the two holding the little plastic cup squeezed, sending yogurt and mixed berries all over my shirt and face and covering the stairwell in a sticky red, white, and purple mess.

I stood there for a moment after it happened, wishing and hoping that, somehow, this was all a huge misunderstanding, as if I were dreaming or I'd somehow ingested some bad mushrooms and was now hallucinating one of the most mortifying experiences of my life. Unfortunately, as the yogurt dripped down my face in fat little globules, I realized that this was no dream. No bad shroom trip.

My first instinct was to try and cover up what had happened. I'd been alone in the stairwell, and so I thought that if I could just find some paper towels, everything might be fine. But as I searched my bosses' offices, I could find nothing. And so I had to swallow my pride and walk into the break room, where three of my coworkers were sitting.

It took them a second to realize that, despite my usual shabby appearance, I looked a little more shabby today, seeing as I was wearing a food item like one of those rejuvenating masks often seen on women in television shows. Their reactions ran the gamut from compassionate ("Oh no! What happened?") to crushing (a bark of laughter), and finally to the outright cruel (the camera shutter sounds of a cell phone taking pictures).

I cleaned myself off, and thanks to the ingenious invention of the undershirt was able to go downstairs, past the scene by the stairs that looked like a deleted clip from a homemade horror movie, and go buy another shirt for work.

So, I am clumsy. I am uncoordinated. I am never eating one of those damned parfaits again.

Toy Story

Although I’m nearly halfway through living my twenties, I have yet to grow up. I say this because, as anyone who knows me can attest, I have few of the qualities that grown men exhibit. Not only might I reach my middle-age living out of the same bedroom in which I grew up, but the majority of my income goes not to health insurance premiums or electric bills, but rather to things that entertain me.

Aside from the standard fare of movie ticket stubs and video game discs, my purchases occasionally can go a step further into rather embarrassing waters.

Take, for example, an instance not long ago when I was walking around a department store. I’d originally gone to pick up replacements for several tattered pieces of clothing with split seams and stains I’d somehow convinced myself were still good enough to wear. I walked in with every intention of marching straight to the men’s department, but thanks to my cat-like curiosity and the insatiable need to look at things I have absolutely no reason to buy, I wound up snaking my way around the store, ending up in the toy department.

It was a couple months before the release of the Star Trek motion picture directed by J.J. Abrams, and the merchandising was out in full force. Not only were there colorful graphics placed above the aisle sections dedicated to tiny plastic phaser-wielding figurines, but entire endcaps had been erected in honor of what had been one of my all-time favorite childhood shows.

As a youth, I would fantasize not about scoring a winning touchdown in a Superbowl game, but rather I’d imagine myself commanding a spaceship, fending off an alien invasion and saving a distant planet. One of the main elements of my dream future was the spaceship, and so when I stood before the endcap and saw that there was a plastic replica of the iconic spacecraft from the movie, I had to have it.

Picking it up, however, I only stood there, considering myself. Here I was, standing in a toy department, well into my twenties and about to buy a toy rather than some much-needed clothes. Was I crazy, I had to wonder, for being stuck on such a choice?

My friend Michael shares a passion for collectibles, especially those of the science fiction kind. He once told me that, upon finding a toy that caught his eye, he decided to buy it. When his cashier bagged the item up and announced his total, she asked, “Did you need a gift receipt with that?”

“No,” Michael answered firmly, as if he were making a stand. “No, I don’t.”

I thought about him as I worried the box with my hands, wearing away at the edges of the packaging like a nervous thief. My feet shuffled back and forth, as if toeing an imaginarily line between justification and utter madness.

So what? I thought finally, and I walked up to the checkouts.

To this day, I have nowhere to move. I have no savings to speak of. All I have is a plastic light-up spaceship sitting on a bookshelf. That, and the hope that, if I can’t one day fly through space, defending alien civilizations, I can — at the very least — grow up.

Chatterbox

While nothing in terms of inventions from the past couple centuries can really compare to the first telephone, I've never really taken to the device. Recently, the term "phone" has come to refer more to mobile devices than the landlines that were once so prevalent throughout American homes, but still the notion of talking into a plastic handset, big or small, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

In this day and age, I'm more inclined to use the text message to communicate. Some people say it's impersonal and others toss it off as only speciously more convenient, but I prefer it. A handful of letters, a quick tap of a button, and my part's done. What puzzles me is the insistence I get from other people, the ones who swear by conversation, that the lengthy interaction the way to go. Maybe it's just because I like my alone time to be distraction-free, but also, holding a little plastic handset up to the side of my face has never gotten me anything but a headache.

Take my friend Michael, for example. When we were in high school, he and I would talk on the phone several nights a week, although really I guess phrasing it that way is sort of misleading. He would talk, and I would sit there listening. Usually our conversations would start out about simple things like computer games and then we'd turn to school. Homework assignments and the like. But shortly after we'd exhausted everything about when the latest science paper was due, the topic would veer off into what I considered a more banal territory. Namely, World War II.

I have nothing against the Second World War, and neither do I have anything against my friend for being so interested in it. What I do have against the topic is being held prisoner to hearing about it for nearly two hours. Worse still is the feeling of being trapped, and it would never fail that, in the middle of a story about storming the beaches of Normandy, I would have to pee.

My friend Michael is an excelling history buff, and if I were ever to find myself on a game show, stumped on a question about the Panama canal, Michael would be the person I call. That, in my mind, is an example of a good time to talk about history, not so much when when bedtime is looming and you've waited until the last minute to write a paper on the aspects of innocence in Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye. I'd sit there, listening to details of battles fought and the life line of the Panzer tank until the sun was just a distant memory, like my free evening: gone.

Growing up, the telephone was a common element in our household, as if my parents had hired an interior decorated with secret ties to Southwestern Bell. Not only was there one in nearly every room of the house, but it seemed to be a permanent fixture for my mother's ear. As the operator of an in-home daycare, my mother never really had the opportunity to escape our house. The monotony of my mother's weekdays was broken by her little cabal of friends, regular talking buddies who would call and chat for hours on end. In essence, the telephone afforded her what books offered me: a means of leaving this place behind. I'd come home from school and find her sitting at our dining room table, leaning back in one of the chairs with one hand running through the slightly harried waves of her brown hair, the other cradling the black plastic brick of our cordless phone.

I often wondered, How on earth can you enjoy that?

I suppose my initial dislike for telephony stems, like with all things, from when I was young. In the third grade, I was the unfortunate object of a crush from one of my classmates. Not that having someone doting on me was a bad thing, it was just that this person was a girl; and if there's one thing I've learned in my time alive, it's that girls are complex, scary creatures. This particular girl's name was Melissa, and although we shared a great many interests, talking over a landline was not one of them. I'm not entirely sure how she set her sights on me (maybe it was the proximity of our two desks, or maybe it was the universe's cruel idea of a joke) but regardless, one evening while I was sitting at home, our phone rang.

It was nothing unusual for my mother to get a call, and so the little electronic laugh of our kitchen line often disappeared among the more engaging aspects of my home life: the sounds of a tiny red-suited plumber jumping over chasms, say, or the latest efforts to thwart global destruction by the ethnically-diverse Power Rangers. But when my mother called for me, I looked up at her with something akin to alarm. Who could be calling me? I wondered. It certainly wasn't one of my numerous friends, seeing as I could count them on one hand run over by a lawnmower. When I took the receiver from her, it felt heavy in my hand. The phone, to me, was one of those adult objects, like a butcher knife, something kids weren't supposed to play with. Having had no real experience with the phone aside from picking up the receiver and being mistaken for my mother, I spoke into it, reluctant, cautious, as if the person on the other end might respond with, "No, I'm sorry, I was looking for Michael. Your son."

The voice on the other end was familiar, and soon I placed it as Melissa's. At school we'd talked a fair amount, but never about anything substantial. We'd never shared our opinions on pressing matters of the day, like the quality of the lunch meals in the cafeteria, or whether or not it was time for the school to get a new jungle gym. Our conversation waned early on, and for the most part I cannot recall what we even talked about. But when we eventually hung up, all I knew was that this had marked the end of an era: the time when I would be left alone.

Melissa's calls became more frequent over the next couple weeks, but still their substance was lacking, and I often found myself wandering off to think about other things while she talked about the art project she drew for Mrs. Brown, the school art teacher, or the grade she got on a multiplication test. It came to the point where i dreaded the ringing of the phone. I suppose it would have been simple just to ask my mother to intervene, but that seemed rude, and if there was something more distasteful than the thought of getting back on the telephone, it was certainly being rude. Near the end of our time talking, Melissa would call and we'd just sit there for ten minutes. Neither of us would say anything, and I'd listen to the hiss of empty phone line, playing a waiting game that I wasn't entirely sure I would win.

Ultimately the phone calls came to an end when, in the middle of a stretch of silence, I announced into the speaker, "Look, Melissa, if you don't have anything to say, then why do you keep calling me?" I was in my parents' bedroom with my mother while she folded clothes, and she gave me a look that was equal parts shock and understanding. Melissa's response was calm and, looking back, maybe even a little calculated; "I know you're angry," she replied, and I had to wonder what the point of calling someone to not say a word could be. Still, immediately after hearing her response, I felt like a bully. It's not much of a surprise, but our phone calls stopped after that.

To this day I'm reluctant to get on the phone. While friends of mine will make mention of long conversations with new boyfriends or girlfriends, my experience with the telephone has taught me to be cautious. And while my friends pick up their mobiles, answering those little bricks of constant connectivity, I'll pause and think, as if it's reflex, What will you do if you have to pee?