Category Archives: Non-fiction

Non-fiction

Living Under Bigfoot

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Dear Upstairs Neighbor,

I’ve never met you, don’t even know what you look like. All I know is you love your music, that thump thump thump thump techno music. I didn’t think people still listened to that stuff outside of a nightclub, especially in the comfort of his or her own home, until I was living underneath you. I was never a fan of the genre, not that it matters what genre when the music is cranked at such a volume that it booms through my ceiling when I’m trying to sleep at night. It’s not so much the music as a whole as it is the bass. Of course I’m not you, but something about it appeals to you to want to blast it into the morning.

If I had to guess, you’re under the influence of something. Otherwise, how could you enjoy this behavior? Either way, I’ve lost too many hours of sleep thanks to you and your hobby, and I’ve been forced a handful of times to call security on you in the middle of the night. It’s a convenience to call that number on my refrigerator magnet, to hear a woman answer the call, and for me to report the disturbance.

Last time, she said she would drive here and knock on your door. If you didn’t answer, she would call me back for me to call the cops.

Well, lucky for you, I missed her calls because, believe it or not, my phone happened to be set to DO NOT DISTURB. By then, you’d turned that racket off for the rest of the night, and I could fall back to sleep. My guess was that she’d knocked on your door but you didn’t answer it. You must’ve suspected it was the cops or even me, so you turned it off and kept it off for the rest of the night.

That wouldn’t suffice since last night you persisted to do it again. The thump thump thump thump had begun around 7:30 pm and endured while I was in bed. I even tried a pair of earplugs, but still, the thumping broke through the sound barrier.

Months ago, I complained about you to the manager. Rather than confront you about the disturbance, he gave me this refrigerator magnet. It’s the only defense against your delinquency.

The defense wasn’t enough. Even when it isn’t the middle of the night, I still hear that thumping when I’m making dinner or when I’m trying to read a book. Imagine trying to focus on a Kafka story, about a man who turns into an ape, with that mindless techno crap thumping in the background, as if it were taking place in a nightclub built out of cocaine.

At that hour, it’s hard to complain because it isn’t past curfew, which gives you permission to pollute the air. That said, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care what you do up there as long as I don’t have to hear it.

The disturbances go beyond the music and its volume. Why do you have to walk around up there so often? Maybe it’s the way our building is constructed, but every footstep from you sounds like Bigfoot wearing cowboy boots. Sometimes, I’m jolted by what sounds like a bowling ball suddenly dropping to the floor when it could be your dropping a shoe. I can’t complain about that either. I guess I have to put up with you living up there.

One day, when I stepped outside to get the mail, there were scraps of paper littered near my doorstep. I looked around to see where they’d come from and picked up a few scraps to try and piece the puzzle together. On one of them was the number of your apartment.

I reported this to the manager, and he said that you owed the past rent and that you’d yelled at him about it. Never mind why he would divulge such information to me since it’s none of my business; that’s how he is. Yet you’ve made it my business by littering my doorstep with your problem. Too bad for me that it wasn’t an eviction notice. I’m waiting for that day to come.

There was even the night when I’d had enough of you and marched upstairs to your door with a pair of headphones I don’t use anymore. I left them there as a hint, a nudge, for you to wear them. They were quality headphones, the Sony WH-XM0004, one of the best wireless headphones on the market. Expensive ones, too. I don’t know what you did with them. Maybe you threw them away. You didn’t get the memo, though, since almost every night, I have to suffer through this thump thump thump thump.

I can only picture you lying in bed and living your version of paradise by playing what some people would dare call music. It certainly isn’t my paradise. Your paradise is my hell.

There will come a time when I call the police. I hope it sends the message so I can find my way back to harmony. Until then, I expect to hear this garbage tonight, tomorrow night, the night after tomorrow, and so on. What perplexes me for now, while I believe you’re closer to my age than you are a teenager, is what attracts you to playing this music so loudly when all you need to do is wear headphones. The whole purpose of them is to shield the rest of the world from your shitty taste in music.

Regards,

Benjamin

#PeriscopeCity #PeriscopeCityWhereTheLonelyGoToLiveAlone #BenjaminTalbot #Bookstagram #IndieAuthor #ShortStoryCollection #WriterThreads #IndieLit

Non-fiction

What Not To Do At a Book Festival.

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I was up for most of the night, thinking about this weekend’s book festival.

After the email she’d sent to all authors in attendance to promote their work, in which she explained this will be a “family-friendly” event, (so no descriptions or language that wouldn’t be allowed on network prime time), I’m gonna have to tell the organizer that I can’t do the reading.

How am I going to promote this book at a festival where families will be? How will I give a reading when I see a little kid sitting on her daddy’s shoulders? I assume all the other authors there have written children’s books. If not children’s books, then content just as safe. Whereas I’ve written something a tinge bit darker.

This is my first rodeo. Well, book festival. I’ve never even been to a book festival before. What’s it like? I’m picturing each author sitting at his or her own table surrounded by piles of books, waiting desperately his or her pad or phone to make transactions. I’m picturing me at my own table, watching everyone else interact without me. Maybe a handful of attendants will come and ask the dreadful question of what my book is about. At which, I’ll answer, “You know, it’s just this book, with stories and characters and like a setting and stuff.”

And then they’ll pick it up, open it, read it for a few seconds, as I watch their faces gradually curl up into snarls before they drop it back to my table and move onto the next table, never to return.

Come to think of it, I don’t know the last time I’ve been to any old festival. I’ve been to fairs, state fairs, where they sold funnel cakes and had rodeos (speaking of rodeos).

How scared will I be in front of those people, with the local media there capturing it on video and posting it on the evening news? Terrifying.

But it’ll be an experience that I can write about later. At least I can say that. Maybe I’ll even sell some copies. Which makes me wonder how the interactions will go with the consumers? This will be the first time when I won’t be the consumer but the supplier, of my own product, not someone else’s product, not the cutlery knives I used to sell when I was twenty-one (which were bought only by my parents).

I can’t begin to imagine how this is going to go. What if I get into an altercation with one of them? What if the POS I’ve just installed on my phone doesn’t work, and I get into a mess with someone who actually wants to buy my book?

What kind of questions will they ask me about it? What answers will I give? What if I have nothing to say? What if I just sit there stupidly with a completely frozen mind the whole time, with a crowd of thousands in front of me, a microphone pointed at my mouth like the barrel of a gun? What if some kid picks up my book and flips to a page to somewhere he shouldn’t? I’m not a children’s author.

Anyway, it’s still four days away. I still have plenty of time to freak out about it.

Non-fiction

The Wooden Bracelet

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I lost my wooden bracelet at the coffee shop. I lost it because I’d taken it off and left it on the table. It always interfered with my right hand as I was writing. Why didn’t I put it on my left arm instead? I was too entrenched in deep thoughts to remember it was there.

I got home and realized I’d left it there in the morning. Oh shit. Well, someone with a good soul will see it on the table and turn it in. Surely, the kind folks at the shop will keep it in the lost-and-found. Every store has a lost-and-found, does it not?

So I walked back to the store in good faith, believing in the chance that someone had turned it in.

I’d bought it from a vendor working the street in downtown San Francisco just two months ago. This racist selling wooden bracelets, ten dollars a piece. My mother had bought it for me as a gift.

On the walk back, I placed a mobile order for my favorite iced espresso about fifteen minutes ahead of time. I always do that.

Hardly anyone was in there. A young woman on her laptop at a table and two baristas, also young women. The one who was heavy with the tattoos was making the drinks.

I was expecting my iced espresso to be waiting at the counter, but it wasn’t there.

As she was making the drink, I asked, “Excuse me, but has anyone turned in a wooden bracelet? I seemed to have left it here this morning.”

She didn’t roll her eyes at me, but the way she looked at me, I could tell she was rolling her eyes internally.

“Uh, why don’t you ask her?” She nodded at the other barista standing at the register.

So I went to her and asked her, “Excuse me, but has anyone turned in a wooden bracelet? I seemed to have left it here this morning.”

She didn’t roll her eyes at me, but the way she looked at me, I could tell she was rolling her eyes internally.

“Uh, let me check.”

She moseyed into the backroom, and maybe five seconds later came back out and shook her head. “Nah, didn’t find nothing. Sorry.”

There went that.

I waited near the one with the tattoos for my drink.

A minute went by.

Five minutes went by.

Still no drink.

All the while, one customer after the next was grabbing his or her drink from the counter.

What was happening that day?

I got the sense that I was being brushed off.

After ten minutes of standing there right in front of Tattoos, as she was making one drink after another, she never once asked if I was waiting for something. In fact, she never once looked at me.

You get to an age when you start becoming invisible. Not invincible (God, I wish) but invisible. I seriously started wondering if I was a ghost. Not a ghost in the literal sense, but like a social ghost. You acknowledge a parking sign’s existence but never once stop to ask how it’s doing today. Okay, so maybe not a social ghost but a parking sign. I’m a parking sign with nipples. And I just so happened to lose my wooden bracelet the same day. I also wondered if, one day, I would end up secluded in the mountains as a hairy Murine creature, muttering to himself, “My mama bought me that bracelet…My mama bought me that bracelet…My mama bought me that bracelet…” for the rest of my life. What horror.

And there I was, being treated like a parking sign.

At about the fifteen-minute mark, I had to say something. I was never one who blew up at workers. I always just wanted to spread peace and drink my espresso, maybe get help with my wooden bracelet.

But eventually I said to her, while clenching my teeth to muzzle my anger, “Excuse me, but where’s my iced espresso for Benjamin?”

She gave me a lost gaze as anyone would to a parking sign with a voice. She went over to the other barista, and I stood where I was, trying to cool down.

They checked their POS tablet for the mobile orders and saw the order. Tattoos started making it, while Miss Go-Fuck-Your-Bracelet gave me a card for a free drink. Yahoo. I was so pissed that I didn’t even thank her. She may have apologized, but I wouldn’t have heard her because I was listening to Your Old Droog in my earbuds.

Tattoos finally made my drink, and may have apologized as well, but I wouldn’t have heard her either. It’s best, in public, to wear your earbuds to block out the toxicity, like plugging your nose in New York City.

So I trudged home, an angry parking sign with nipples. Anger lasts for a long forty-five minutes before it simmers, and you play the scene over and over in your head the whole time. You try to look for ways in which you could’ve handled it differently.

An old friend once said, “You gotta ask for everything in this life.” It was after the Chinese restaurant hadn’t given him any forks or chopsticks. He had to stuff the lo mein noodles in his mouth using his fingers. Maybe a handful of times, you don’t need to ask for what you want; and those times are golden and sacred, some of the best times of your life. But other than that….

The second I’d entered that coffee shop and didn’t see my espresso waiting on the counter, I should’ve marched right up to Tattoos and demanded, “Where’s my espresso?”

She probably would’ve started making it right away.

That’s how the successful became successful. They didn’t stand around like a parking sign. Instead, like bank robbers, they walked into every room and demanded what they wanted.

I try to practice patience, believing what I want will eventually come. But in the case of the coffee shop, it proved false. Do I think I’ll change? Nah, not at this age. I’ll probably stay the same.

Non-fiction

The Show Vs. Tell Madness

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All these books repeat the same thing regarding showing versus telling. Someone posted their writing for critique for a writers’ group on Facebook and wanted to know which sentence worked best.

First Sentence: It was fucking cold.

Second Sentence: My bones chattered from the howling winds through my frosty open bedroom window.

Third Sentence: The howling winds brushed against my chattering bones as the midnight air bit through my peeling skin in a thunderous collision of war.

I rarely post anything on there, but I was really tempted, so I wrote: The first sentence for sure. This show versus tell madness is getting out of hand.

Sometimes, all you have to write is: It was too fucking cold.

I never heard truer advice as when someone said, “Write like you talk.” His name is Jack Grapes. I implore you to watch his three-hour interview on YouTube. It’s better to avoid sentences that begin with a participial phrase, such as:

Standing at the window, I watched the car roll by.

That’s not how someone talks. Maybe in the nineteenth century they did when eloquence was key. But nowadays, modern speech isn’t the same.

If I was telling someone, I would effortlessly say, “It was fucking cold.” Or “I stood at the window and watched the car roll by.”

People just automatically speak in subject-verb-object sentences. So when I read a story where sentences begin with participial phrases, it reminds that I’m reading something rather than experiencing it. Oh, wait. Someone wrote this. The less attention you bring to yourself as a writer, the better. It’s like if you were watching a movie, and out of nowhere, the film crew entered the frame. The director yells “Cut! ” and the scene ends.

We’ve been taught at an early age to write like a writer. It’s hard to unlearn. Unlearning it takes years of practice.

I also read a heated debate about insensitive language. This is something I’m afraid I can’t help. A frustrated writer expressed his thoughts about someone calling him out for using the word “handicap” in his story. He cried censorship. People in the group posted accusatory comments and called him an “old man yelling at the wind.” So it’s a matter of older people not understanding the rules of younger people. And what’s wrong with older men? Isn’t that offensive? I can agree that I can’t keep up with what words are insensitive these days. It seems there’s a new word that is deemed derogatory every hour. I wanted to make a comment as well, but I held back. If I’m playing golf, what should I say instead of “handicap”?

The angry old man said he refused to be politically correct. Someone actually wrote, OMG, the term politically correct is so 1990s. I didn’t even know. So what’s the word they use these days instead?

Most of them told him he could write what he wanted, that no one was censoring him, but also that the readers had a right to hate his work, and that traditional publishers wouldn’t go near him. It was an all-out assault, but I understood his point. The appropriate words should align with the character. Euphemisms remove the poetry out of a poem. The purpose of one is to remove feeling from the meaning. If “handicap” is too offensive to use in literature, depending on the context of course, we’ll have to use “person with a disability.”

They said Stephen King had even apologized for his insensitive language in his past works. I wonder if someone forced him to apologize and if he really meant it, or if he internally rolled his eyes.

Non-fiction

bruxism and al bundy

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I sat in the waiting room of the dentist’s office early in the morning and fidgeted over mouth cancer while the office played “Jingle Bells.” To keep my mind distracted, I read post comments on Facebook. It had a writer’s group. Someone posted about a new AI technology that could critique your story. I had never used it before. Some people said it worked for them.

A hygiene assistant called my name and asked me to follow her to a room. She led the way and walked very slowly. When we got there, she asked me why I was visiting.

“I have a mouth sore that hasn’t healed for two months,” I said.

“Let me see,” she said.

I opened my mouth and showed her.

“I don’t see it,” she said.

“Your finger’s on it,” I said.

“Oh, I see it now. Please stand over here at this machine, so I can take your X-ray.”

It was a machine I had never seen. I stood in a chamber where I rested my chin. She left the room and flipped a switch several times while I wore a vest. She took pictures of the mouth sore and sent me to another room where the dentist would come.

Another hygenist came in with another.

“Good morning. I’m going to look at your teeth and gums.”

She sat over me while the other one sat at the computer monitor. The one over me checked each tooth and gave them numbers. Two and three were good. Four was bad. “Two, two, three, two, four, four, four, four…”

I began to sweat each time she said, “Four.”

When the dentist came in, she tested me for oral cancer. She held a device over my mouth. I said, “Ahh.” The device was round with blue lights and a handle. It looked like something at the checkout lane in a grocery store. I wondered how it worked. It might be outdated many years from now. She told me it didn’t find any cancers, and she didn’t even mind the sore.

After she left the room again, I waited for some time in the chair and read more Facebook. One of the group members asked if it was okay if his character complained about his wife to his friends. His son had told him it wasn’t funny. People in the comments mostly all agreed with his son. That character is a jerk. A lot of them said it was such an old trope. A few people claimed that most readers are between 18-30, and they didn’t like that sort of character: the husband who complained about his wife. A few of them compared him to Al Bundy, and some people even compared Al Bundy to Archie Bunker. At least the two characters shared the same initials. I used to love Married…With Children. It was one of my favorite sitcoms of all time. After all that negative feedback, I wondered what the writer could do with that character if he couldn’t complain about his wife.

I stopped reading that post. The dentist said my mouth looked pretty good before she told me everything that was wrong about it, and it was a listful. Most of it was dental terminology that only her staff would understand. But I found out I suffered from bruxism and would need to wear a mouth guard when I go to sleep. I have never worn a mouth guard. I’ll probably drool a lot.

They fitted me for it with a soft plaster. I bit down on it to form the mold. They said I would have to come in to pick it up next week. I also have to switch what kinds of toothpaste and stop brushing so hard. I had been using Colgate all those years but had to switch to Crest. The dentist had told me which Crest toothpaste to use, but I forgot what it was right after she’d told me. I left the office without a clue about which one to buy. Another doctor’s visit without any resolution.

Non-fiction

writing with your left hand

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I’m always into mental hacks, I guess they’re called, little things that get me ahead. A post on Facebook was about writing longhand and if it’s effective, and people left comments about the benefits, such as how you use your whole body to draw letters on a piece of paper with pen in hand as opposed to the automatic nature of typing. I didn’t know if it went as far as that, but I did know that after writing longhand for many years every morning that it definitely slowed my thoughts because it took drastically longer to write a word than it did to type.

But one person commented that they wrote longhand with their left hand to activate the right brain, which therefore unearthed their repressed memories and their inner child. As someone who always wanted to find some new approach to my craft, I penned a page with my left hand the next morning.

What I found out at first was that my handwriting looked like it was from that of a four-year-old. The letters were very runny, like a busted yolk, almost like the objects in an abstract painting, and for the most part, illegible. And it took so long to craft each word that the sentences were overly simple. I spent a half hour composing a whole page, and the content was similar to the content I’d penned with my right hand. But what I found after that first morning was a sense of calm afterward. My anxieties were at bay. It felt like I’d just stepped away from a therapist, and I could go on with my day more confident.

Maybe it was a placebo. I googled research on left-handed writing and found mixed answers. Some people had blogged about astounding results in that they were able to channel creativity and their inner child with the use of their right brain. Other articles negated the unlocked power and said there was no scientific evidence of left-handed writing activating the right hemisphere and unlocking creativity. What a bummer. I do beg the question. Is someone who’s naturally left-handed fortunately more creative than someone who’s right-handed? Nevertheless, we can train ourselves to be ambidextrous regardless of whether the left-handed phenomenon is bogus. There’s no harm in that.

But I do believe the placebo is real. If a writer feels it works, it works. Writers can be superstitious as such that some of them wear the same hat when they write. Others keep a pet rock at their desk to invite their muse like it’s a plate of cookies for Santa Claus. After all, creativity and the imagination bloom when the writer handcuffs himself.

I once wrote a short story where I never used the letter k, so I had to be mindful to use words that didn’t contain that letter. That restraint allowed me to discover new ideas.

I’m fascinated by the Oulipo movement, which was a sixties movement of French writers who enforced such restraints. One of them, for example, was called N+7, where they took every noun from a poem, grabbed a dictionary, and chose the noun that was seven nouns down and replaced it with that. Some of the outcomes were absurd, but it was all part of the games the Oulipo movement played. One novel was completely written without the letter e. Don’t ask how that was accomplished, but I bet it forced the writer to form new ideas he’d never before imagined.

https://www.languageisavirus.com/creative-writing-techniques/oulipo.php#.X0GpOdNKhb9

Non-fiction

Journaling

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Journaling is an ancient activity. People have been doing it for centuries, yet nowadays, probably less than a percent of the human population does.

If I had a teenage daughter, and I told her, “Hey, Suzy, I want you to start journaling your thoughts and feelings,” she would look at me like I’m insane.

“Hell no, Dad. Give me back my iPad so I can play Candy Crush.”

The idea is terrifying. We’ve been taught unconsciously to avoid such a thing at a young age for whatever reason.

I first started journaling in my early twenties when my psychiatrist/therapist told me to write a page of my thoughts and feelings and bring it into my next session for those things to discuss, back when a psychiatrist and a therapist were one person. Now, a psychiatrist doesn’t want to deal with his patients’ feelings but rather just sit with them for ten minutes and ask if they’re experiencing any side effects before they adjust their medications and send them on their not-so-merry way. A therapist would need to talk with them for the allotted fifty minutes instead, which is a failing endeavor in the modern world. It has been years since I’ve paid anyone who’s any good. But that’s a subject for another day.

So I drove to the Santa Monica pier, hundreds of miles from my parents’ house, where I lived at the time, just to keep my thoughts and feelings as far away from them as possible. What I wrote was so morbid that I kept looking over my shoulder in case any beachgoers could see. I may have somehow gotten in trouble. But afterward, when I was done, the activity was deeply rewarding.

Once in a while, I’ll enter a coffee shop and notice a young woman with a pen in hand scribbling in her fancy little notebook, completely focused on her journal, and a tear will almost fall from my eye. It’s like that commercial from the seventies where the Native American was walking down the highway. A colonist’s descendant threw his trash out the window of his moving vehicle right at the Native American’s feet. Except these are tears of joy. Wow. A person is actually journaling.

It’s a therapeutic practice that occupies our minds from the fear of death, just like washing the dishes or hoeing the garden, like what we see in those prescription drug ads where people are overzealously flying a kite with their irritable bowel. They make me want to take the drug.

Anyway, I remember reading another how-to book for writers back when I read dozens of those books that preyed on a young writer’s insecurities. This one was by someone who wrote science fiction. One of the first rules was to throw the journal away because journaling was useless and rather to focus on the project at hand. I thought his advice was an insult. What’s the problem with journaling? Yes, most of it is garbage a writer would throw away. After all, Hemingway once wrote something to the effect that the first draft of anything is shit. But sometimes, a gem of a sentence is buried somewhere in the trash.

I started journaling routinely after reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. She suggested morning pages, which are three pages of journaling every morning. Writing is a practice but also therapy, like an activity of any other, unless we’re actually writing about our fear of death, in which case we’re dealing with it head-on and making it less threatening on paper.

I think everyone should journal. It feels as if young people are taught to avoid thoughts and feelings and be good little worker bees. The activity no longer scares me after doing it for so long. I’m not in the mood most mornings, but I force myself to do the lifting before doing anything else, like physical exercise. Anyone who does it for the first time might be full of trepidation. That’s okay. Their thoughts are so raw that they’re brave enough to write them on paper. I’m not saying it’s mandatory, but it’s useful. Writing longhand instead of typing is even better. Drawing each letter is comparable to drawing a picture in that it further connects the mind.

Some have argued that writing isn’t therapy at all, with which I strongly disagree. I don’t care what the person writes. It could be a textbook on kinesiology. The subtle act is enough to distract his mind from the fear of death. No matter what we worry about, it all comes down to that basic fear. Aren’t we all just sitting in the waiting room anyway, biding time before it calls our names?

Non-fiction

Black Friday Sale

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My Brooks walking shoes had holes in the toes. I showed my parents.

“Let’s get you new shoes,” Mom said.

Didn’t want to go shopping. Hate shopping. Would’ve rather done something else. But went with them anyway. Assumed long lines would be at the stores.

We drove to the electronics store first to look at the new Xbox. My parents are old school, or just old, and still worry about saving money. Will go to great lengths to save fifty dollars on something. If something is so greatly expensive, what’s fifty dollars? The electronics store had a sale on the console. Its original price was over four hundred dollars, but on Black Friday was on sale for fifty dollars less with a game for thirty dollars less than its original price as well, the disc version, not the digital download version.

Dad threw a fit at the counter. The console didn’t have a DVD drive for the disc, so I would have to download the game instead. Was fine with that, but he wasn’t.

“How can we make this work?” he asked.

The store employee didn’t know.

I would’ve paid the extra thirty dollars to download the game. Wasn’t a problem with me, but to Dad it was.

“Show him the game,” he said to me.

So to cool him down, I led the associate to the Xbox section in the store. Came to find out there was no such coupon of any sort for a digital download. Didn’t bother me, but it bothered my dad.

“Let’s try another place,” he said. He had to save money on the game.

Would’ve been nice to just buy the damn thing and get it over with.

We went shoe shopping at the same shopping center. I tried on a few pairs of shoes. Didn’t like spending copious hours shopping anywhere. No more than an hour, tops. Most of the shoes were ugly. Running shoes typically are. They have those long, thick, white sides at the bottom that aren’t very attractive. The most attractive ones, ironically, are the least comfortable ones. Tried on a pair of green Adidas running shoes, not for running but for walking. Felt fine except they were size 13’s, and my heels slid when I walked around. Too big. Would’ve caused a blister. So I tried on a pair of size 12’s. A little too small. My big toe bunched up against the end of the shoe. I have weird feet. They’re average size, but my large toe is abnormally long compared to my other toes. My feet would probably fit in a size 10 without my big toe. If I could chop it off, I wouldn’t have as much trouble trying on shoes. My ideal size is 12 1/2. They make such sizes, but they’re not common enough. Would have to specially order them. Who wants to do that? Just wanted to buy the shoes and get out of there, which I did. Didn’t care too much about the discomfort of walking around with bunched-up toes.

“Why don’t you get two pairs?” Mom said.

“Two pairs for what?” I said.

“For when the other pair gets worn out. You can get the green pair and this blue pair.”

The blue pair was navy blue, not as attractive as the green pair, but it depended on what clothes I would wear them with. The green pair wouldn’t match all of my clothes. Assuming the blue color matched more clothes. I went with her suggestion.

We checked out at the front. Each pair of shoes cost about sixty dollars. A deal since most shoes today cost around a hundred.

We walked back to their car in the parking lot. When we got there, I sat in the trunk of their SUV, put on the new pair of green Adidas, and stuffed my old pair of black Brooks in the new shoe box.

“Here, I’ll throw it out,” Dad said.

I gave him the shoe box. “If you see a homeless man, why don’t you give them to him?”

“Ah, we’ll see,” he said.

When he walked off, Mom and I waited for him to come back. But after ten minutes, he was still gone.

“Where the hell is he?” I asked.

“Who knows?” she said. “Probably lost.”

Wouldn’t have been a surprise, given his age, that he did get lost somewhere in the shopping center. I’d watched the news just the other night and saw a story about an old man missing somewhere in Thousand Oaks. Some of them just wandered off and forgot where they were.

So Mom and I cruised the parking lot in the car in search of him but couldn’t find him.

“Why don’t you call him?” I asked.

Mom had her phone connected to the dashboard.

“Not a bad idea,” she said. “Hey, Siri, call my husband.”

“Calling your husband,” Siri said.

The phone rang over four times. He finally answered.

“Where the hell are you?” she said.

“Behind the store,” he said. “Couldn’t find a decent trash can.”

I saw one at the store entrance. Maybe he didn’t see it.

We drove behind the store and found him without the shoe box.

Mom pressed the button for her window to go down. “Get in,” she said.

He climbed into the backseat and groaned from his sciatica.

“What took you so long?” she asked.

“Couldn’t find a trash can big enough to fit the shoe box,” he said.

The way he thought, a trash can had to fit the shoe box perfectly not to damage the box. If I’d done it, I probably would’ve taken the shoes out of the box, ripped the box up until it would fit, and thrown it in with the shoes. That’s just me.

We waited at a stop light behind other cars to leave the shopping center. A surprise that there weren’t any lines at the stores, yet no surprise in the age of online retail. People are wise enough not to drive to these places anymore when they can have the products delivered to them.

I remember my father and uncle used to camp out in front of stores before the sun came up on Black Friday. Over twenty years ago. Sometimes, things change for the better, but not most things.

Non-fiction

State of the Turkey Address

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My parents took me out to dinner for Thanksgiving at a bistro filled to capacity. We sat outside on the back patio among several other customers and ate a three-course meal, which started with an appetizer, followed by an entree, and lastly the dessert. I had to choose which appetizer first and almost decided on mushroom soup but went with the lobster ravioli instead. The odd thing about their special Thanksgiving menu was the lobster ravioli was an appetizer while the squash ravioli was an option for the entree. Seemed redundant. I wondered if anyone actually went with that combo.

When it came to the entree, the description of the oven-roasted turkey outmatched that of the short ribs because it was served with sprouts, gravy, green beans, stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, and whipped sweet potatoes. No other entree lived up to that mixture of food. Everything sounded lovely, but the turkey. As much as I couldn’t stand turkey, I thought it couldn’t be too bland. After all, we were at a bistro, not at home, where the turkey could’ve been overcooked. So I ordered that.

The lobster ravioli came first after I’d gorged on three sourdough dinner rolls with butter. Three ravioli pouches stuffed with lobster were sitting in a lobster bisque with corn on top and three oval cherry tomatoes. It was unexciting, not as lively as its description, so I was a little disappointed.

I was nosy and peeked over at the table next to us as we waited a long time for the entrees to come and noticed the large plate of turkey and such that a young fella was eating, and I was starving for it.

The waiter came back to us. “Are you folks ready for dessert?”

We all looked at each other, confused since our entrees had never come.

“We haven’t had our entrees,” my father said.

The waiter looked lost. “I’ll check on it now,” he said.

We were nervous after he walked away.

“I don’t think he ever put our orders in,” I said.

“You could be right,” my mother said.

But he had to have since he’d brought our appetizers. Like I said, it was very busy there. Waiters rushed by us with plates of food across their arms. New waiters whom I’d seemed not to see before hurried past our table as we kept waiting, a new waiter every minute.

Our entrees finally came after an hour of sitting out there in the cold. We’d all ordered the turkey dinner. Our plates looked identical and beautiful like a Thanksgiving dinner should. The turkey meat didn’t look as plain and boring as Thanksgivings past, picturesque, not white but brown meat like thick filets of steak dressed in dark brown gravy, over a hill of mashed potatoes with a small dollop of bright orange sweet potatoes, a little cup of cherry red cranberry sauce, a few emerald green sprouts, and a green bean here and there.

I dove right into the turkey first on top with my humungous fork and couldn’t believe how good the meat tasted. Turkey had never tasted so good, not bland at all. Maybe the thick gravy gave it such a rich flavor. I couldn’t stop eating it and had to eat all of it, about a pound before I could get to the mashed potatoes, which didn’t taste all that great. Many other restaurants I’d been to had served much better mashed potatoes. It wasn’t buttered or anything, not even whipped, but a little chunky in parts. The sweet potatoes equaled the turkey in flavor. I wished there was more of it. Most of the plate was of the turkey. I was spoiled last night and left most of the plate empty.

They took the plates away, and we waited for the dessert. I ordered the peach cobbler. The last time I’d eaten any peach cobbler was last Fourth of July. My mother had bought it from Trader Joe’s, and it was rich and sweet. I really recommend it. The cobbler last night, however, tasted as if it was for a diabetic, a fake sweetness with a burnt crust, not at all delectable like the one at Trader Joe’s, with very little vanilla ice cream. I was very disappointed after eating possibly the best turkey in my life.

But all in all, my dinner at the bistro was enjoyable, better than any attempt at home cooking simply because I ate something by a professional chef, so artistry was expected. I left with my stomach full, went back to my parents’ house, and went to bed. The weather was very cold, but it was clear outside without any harsh winds. I was able to have a good night’s sleep.

Non-fiction

Thanksgiving Dinner

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It’s that day when I sit around and do nothing except feast on carbs and watch football. The league has pitted teams I don’t care about. It seems like they do every year. This time around, it’s two teams with a losing record who suck. But because they’re teams in large markets, the league expects the largest audience to watch. Maybe they’re right, but it doesn’t make for watchable football. They should’ve known these teams would be bad before the season started.

Anyway, my parents understand I don’t like turkey because it’s bland. I’ve never liked turkey since I was a boy. The only time I might enjoy it is for leftovers when I can make a sandwich. My mother, who would keep pounds of turkey meat after Thanksgiving dinner, would have a dozen or so everything bagels to make turkey sandwiches. I used to eat them with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and mayonnaise, enough ingredients to mask the turkey. I would stick a sliver of meat into the sandwiches enough to make it non-vegetarian. But we won’t this year because we’re going out to eat at a restaurant that’ll serve a three-course meal, and it’ll offer several other options than turkey. Whatever I order will taste better.

I have different taste buds from my parents. When it comes to pizza, consider me a snob. I used to live in LA, where several pseudo-New York-style pizzerias coexisted. In case you don’t know already, New York style is thin crust, and they tend to burn the mozzarella enough to form brown spots all over it. My parents aren’t too familiar. They’ve lived in the suburbs for most of their adult lives. New York style is naturally more urban. I can tell when I drive through the suburbs where I live. Mostly corporate pizza chains are the options around here. Some such places try to mimic the style but don’t come close.

My parents wanted to order pizza a few months ago on Sunday when we watched football. There aren’t many places around here for quality pizza unless there’s a mom-and-pop that I don’t know about. I suggested my favorite corporate pizza chain.

My dad went to order from his iPad and struggled with the website. It took him close to a half hour to get to the order page. We had to help him out.

“Seventy dollars for two pizzas?” he said. “Are you kidding me?”

That was after all the delivery fees.

“No way,” he said. “We’re ordering from somewhere else.”

“Where?” I said.

“From our regular place. I’ll pick it up.”

Their regular place was a grocery store, not just any grocery store, but one that offered food at a cheaper price. I was skeptical but more peeved that they wanted to order from a place that wasn’t known for its pizza, let alone a grocery store. My pizza snobbery made me throw a fit, but I stayed polite and kept it internal. They ordered from there, and my dad went to pick it up.

He returned with a pizza without any pizza sauce but a garlic ranch sauce. The pizza wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. I was on the fence about it and still wished we would’ve ordered from the corporate pizza chain. As corporate as it was, it still would’ve tasted better than the pizza from the grocery store. I don’t trust grocery stores when it comes to a deli or pizza in this case. But they continue to order from there and say it’s their favorite pizza. I just don’t understand.

But I gotta hand it to them. They reserved a table at a nice restaurant tonight. I’m sure it’ll be better than plain old turkey in which I would’ve smothered in gravy. It used to be all about everything but the turkey on Thanksgiving–the yams, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, the pumpkin pie. I used to sit with my extended family, and we would play Trivial Pursuit later after we’d stuffed ourselves with tryptophan and pull our names out of a hat to see who would buy whom a Christmas present on a fifty-dollar budget. Those days are gone. My parents live hundreds of miles from the rest of that side of the family. Thanksgiving dinner isn’t the same with only three people, so we might as well go out to eat.