Work experience It’s the spring of seventy-seven. I am employed at K Mart. I’m not getting paid because I’m there to get experience. It’s called work experience and for one week I worked in the garden center. I figure since I’m not getting paid, to play hide and seek instead. I can hide behind pretty much anything: a shelving unit or a pile of peat moss. Unfortunately, they find me and put me to work. The hardest part of my unpaid job is loading peat moss into old ladies’ cars. Have you ever seen a walking peat moss bag? That was me. Stick a name badge on me.  Pete Moss is at your service . Hiding in the weeds My next adventure in outdoor education takes place at a house on Arthur Road. The upper apartment is small and filled with smoke. The song Urgent by Foreigner sends sound waves through the skunk cloud. Little did we know, the song would fit the moments to follow. Stone kids are pigging out on Whoppers and fries. Suddenly, there is a pounding at the door . ...

A Little Ketchup I hadn’t change too much. I am still four feet nine inches tall and eighty-nine pounds. I expand my high school horizons. I am now first clarinet in the school band. I play a wind-up nutcracker in the school play. Mr. Robinson the gym teacher needed someone to represent the school in my weight class asked me to join the wrestling team. So, I did and while I am not the most skilled, I win most of the matches in my weight class. There is one other kid, and I win every match when I face him. That is until one day. The day elastic grandma came over for a visit.  Hold The Relish Foot long hotdogs were like cocaine for grandma, and when she came to visit, she wanted her fix. My mom says Be a good boy and get your Meme’ (grandma) some lunch .   I tell her I have a match at school . She convinces me that I had enough time. Hi Ho, Hi Ho off to Hi Ho I go.   I had enough time to run to the restaurant get the dogs and hi tail it back to school. I get the dogs, d...

Chilling out with class The drama classroom is carpeted, has a small stage, and our seats are throw pillows. Before class begins there is a short meditation. The teacher has a record player and LPs with the sounds of nature playing in the background. We are instructed to lay on our backs and just breathe and listen. I breathe and I sleep. I’m not alone. It was like being in a lush forest with the sounds of water gently flowing downstream. The birds are chirping. Suddenly, someone starts cutting down a tree. There are a few trees being cut down. Sleeping was allowed if we tried to meditate. We slowly regain consciousness and are ready to learn. Send in the clowns We sit on our pillows and watch TV. Marcel Marceau is clowning around and after watching we are encouraged to do the same. One kid pretends he is standing on the ledge of a building. Another is walking a tightrope. I want to push them both off, but I decide to get caught in a windstorm instead. With my torso leaning forwa...

Theories   I was taught how to hold the clarinet.  And how not to make it squeak. I make it squeak. Boy, do I make it squeak. My first thought was clarinet blows.  I had already had a theory about music. I took musical theory when I learned how to play guitar. My theory was that I didn’t need to know what the theory was.  I took one guitar lesson and decided I could teach myself, this was before YouTube when you had to buy guitar books or sheet music instead. I bought Roy Clark's big-note guitar book. I had seen it advertised on Hee Haw and luckily, I found a copy at Coles in Tecumseh Mall. It was a songbook filled with the greatest hits of country and folk music. The best part was that it came with stickers. Why were these stickers so great? Every basic chord had little circle stickers. My first guitar was a Vantage. It wasn’t anything special. But it worked and so did the stickers. The whole fretboard was filled with stickers. I learned quickly and removed them a...

What I saw driving down the road today. The animal farm of North Rear Road.  The animal farm on North Rear Road is flooded. The pond is usually on the small side but because of last night's rain, it has turned into a small lake. Now there is a small mud trail clinging to the fence-lined banks. There are many animals on the farm. There are goats, chickens, donkeys and a variety of ducks. All are walking in a clockwise fashion around the watering hole. Every animal is covered in mud except for two ducks. These two didn't want to swim in the muddy water. They didn't want to walk on the muddy bank. Instead, these two ducks went for a ride on a donkey's back. I never saw how they got there. Whether they landed or jumped off the barn roof. Around and around they went. I don't know if the Uber donkey eventually dropped them off at the trough or if they were sightseeing. I drove away and thought I should have taken a picture nobody is going to believe this .  Metaphorically...

You know the drill I'm lying back on a long white lounge chair. It looks comfortable but it really isn't. There is a headrest its job is to keep my head in place. My head is not the problem. It's my neck or rather the pain in my neck. Today is just a cleaning. It should be quick. At least that's what I tell myself. The hygienist is a sweet girl and she wants to talk. I am wearing dark glasses. Strangely, there are two complimentary things they give you at my dentist:  A TV to watch and glasses that make it almost impossible to watch. I politely engage in conversation until she sticks a little mirror in my mouth. I wonder what's going through her mind. "Holey plaque Batman this going to take a while" I stop talking but she continues for my listening enjoyment. The is a TV hanging from the wall.  A renovation show is on. I'm looking through glasses once worn by Roy Orbison and wishing I could find the remote to either turn the TV up or turn her off. I fi...

Measuring up It’s the fall of nineteen-seventy-five.  And like every fall our mother is measuring us up, probably to see if she needed to buy school clothes. There is a door frame next to the kitchen etched with our measurements. The door frame where our young lives are marked up with lines and names.  I’m looking at the measurements. Mine and my brothers. I am hopeful but I know they have hit my mark and are way past it. My mark is stalled. My mother tells me to straighten up and stand tall, but four feet six inches only goes so far.  She balances a ruler on my head, and with a pencil, marks the spot.  Next to the spot, she writes my name. Only she doesn’t have to because nothing has changed. Writing my name at this point is for lack of a better word, pointless. Everyone knows the lowest mark is mine.  She convinces me that my growth spurt will come. I, like I always do, shrug it off. I had another worry on my mind. High school. I was wondering about measur...