September 10, 2005

Innocence Can Never Last

Ever since I was small, certain moods and certain songs just seem to go together for me. When I was writing my first novel in high school, I made a mix tape of the songs that just fit the book. I did the same thing for the novel I wrote in college.
There's one song playing on the radio around here these days that just really feels particularly right tonight.

Green Day ... American Idiot ... "Wake Me When September Ends"

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends

Like my father's come to pass
Seven years has gone so fast
Wake me up when September ends

Here comes the rain again
Falling from the stars

Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are

As my memory rests
But never forgets what I lost

Wake me up when September ends

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends

Ring out the bells again
Like we did when spring began

Wake me up when September ends

Here comes the rain again
Falling from the stars

Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are

As my memory rests
But never forgets what I lost

Wake me up when Septdmber ends

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends

Like my father's come to pass
Twenty years has gone so fast
Wake me up when September ends

Wake me up when September ends
Wake me up when September ends

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:02 PM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

September 7, 2005

The Brain is a Fascinating Place

Why is it that as a society in the U.S. we'll believe in the repressed memories of Viet Nam vets ... and now we'll be understanding (or at least, more understanding) of folks who forget what leads up to a nasty car wreck or other trauma ...
but we have such a difficult time believing that someone abused as a child would or even that they could forget darn near the whole thing?

Is it because when we're thinking about Viet Nam vets, we're assuming there was one day out of 365 that they can't remember the traumatic events? Is it because if John Davies forgot the hour before and after his car wreck, it's still a pretty limited time period?
Is it because we find it hard to believe that someone could forget years at a time?

I'm just thinking out loud. I can see Private Duke forgetting about the day that everybody went nuts after no sleep and not even much in the way of MREs and everyone on alert for days and days at a time ... and then going psycho on a hut of folks who may or may not have been innocent. And really, in Nam, how could you tell who's innocent or not after a little kid blew up your best friend?
I mean, I can see the stress and lack of sleep and food just contributing to the shock of seeing (and doing) something horrific. I can see how you could forget under those circumstances.

And having been in a minor wreck or two, I can also see how you're just driving, doing what you're doing -- you're not consciously trying to recall how to drive and which street you're passing. So I can see where it would be easy to block out of your mind exactly what happened. I can see how it would be easy to completely forget the whole thing ... the shock would contribute to the "daily routine" aspect and it can be really hard to remember much.

But when we think about child abuse, the whole tenor of belief seems to change. First, we don't seem to want to believe kids who do say that something terrible has happened to them.
Is it because so many kids are so imaginative and live in their own worlds? Is it because we simply don't want to think that horrible things could happen to a kid we know? Is it because we don't believe the particular person the kid names could be capable of that? Is it because we hear on the news about all sorts of false accusations?

And then, when we add the concept of a repressed memory to the mix that we already want to disbelieve ... is this simply one step too far, stretching our suspense of disbelief to the breaking point? (And yes, I used a term normally associated with fiction on purpose.)

Is it because the events generally described in these repressed memories just seem too horrific to be forgotten? If so, how is this any different from some of the horrific Viet Nam repressed memories that have been corroborrated by other vets?

Is it because we simply can't believe that someone, some adult, didn't notice the event(s)?

Is it because we just don't want to believe there's that kind of evil in the world?

I've listened as an older friend talked haltingly about Viet Nam. And when he crept up on some of the recovered memories ... the shame in his voice ... the shaking ... the whole affect of his body language changed. He still hadn't fully dealt with those things ... even though he'd (mostly) recovered the memory. In some cases, he simply related stories that the other guys in his unit told him had happened because he still couldn't remember.

I've listened to friends after a car wreck. Again, the whole affect changes. If they still haven't recovered memory of the wreck, the affect often stays very "blank," for lack of a better word. They're reciting facts, cold and rehearsed. There's a tension behind that blankness and you can generally watch as muscles become tight. Or, a few people react with no emotional cues at all. These folks will relate a horrific wreck almost as if reading the grocery list -- no connection to the event at all.

And I've listened to friends who have always remembered childhood abuse and some who've recovered a memory. Those people I believed had the same range of emotional response: some shook, some changed body language, some recited without emotion, some tensed up, some sounded like they were back in the past living it again.

Those I haven't believed? They've been few and far between, now that I think about it. There have been times when I've thought that something surely happened to that person, but perhaps not quite the scenario they related. After all, it seems like it might be easy enough to lead a child to think they've witnessed one thing, when it was actually a staged event. (I particularly think about all the little elementary kids who used to think that tv wrestling was a real athletic competition instead of a staged demo of moves.)

But, I've also heard the little twerps in the laundrymat or the grocery store who use the excuse of abuse to prevent their folks from leveling a justified punishment.

A knotty problem that I sure don't know the answer to and I'm not so sure anyone else does, either, but I'd love to hear your comments.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:12 AM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

August 29, 2005

C. McNair Wilson's Imaginu!ty Workshop

So, the workshop was a bust. I should have definitely Googled the guy before going. It's not that he was a bad speaker or anything -- he was quite entertaining. It just wasn't actually a workshop. As it turns out, C. McNair Wilson, according to his website, "lives his life at the confluence of faith and art," and while this was a group of folks from my church going to the seminar, I for some incredibly asinine reason didn't think it would be a mega-Christian seminar. Silly, silly me.

While some of the ideas were interesting, the whole thing was much more of a motivational meeting than any kind of workshop or even seminar. He talked about brainstorming with groups. Here's a link to someone else's site who did a nice write-up. It'll take you far less than half the time to read this than it did to sit through even just the brainstorming portion of the day.

Now, here's the deal: McFace (as one of the kids he knows likes to call him) is a great guy. But anyone who professionally motivates others drives me insane. I cannot take that much chipper, go-get-'em crap. One man stated during this seminar that he had always wanted to learn to fly, but it was just too expensive. Now, I have no idea what this man's finances are, and neither did McFace, yet he tells the guy that it can't be that prohibitively expensive and the guy should find a way or admit that he doesn't really want to learn how to fly.

And after each of his little "solve your issue in 60 seconds or less" pronouncements, he goes off into a story about someone at one of his previous seminars who had a similar issue and rose above it and did that thing they had always wanted to do. And that's fine if we're talking about a girl at a music conference who's always wanted to play guitar. Sure, by the next morning that girl, coached by about 50 guitar players at the conference, got up and played 2 songs in front of everyone, but what about those people who want to "make it" in a creative field? There's a certain amount of skill and luck that combine to get you and your work noticed so that you can "make it."

And, you may really, really, really want to be an actor, but you may also really, really, really want to stay in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and raise your kids there. How do you balance both? Well, in this case, it might be relatively simple to join the local theatre league in Kalamazoo. But there may not be a really easy answer for every situation.

I enjoyed McNair's stories of working with other creative folks - he worked for the Disney think-tank, the Imaginarium. And it's obvious that he's a very talented improv actor. (He calls himself a professional third grader.) If you need a kick in the butt to get started on being creative, then check out McNair's site and his books. He's entertaining and he'll help motivate you.

If you've already been bit by the creativity bug; if you're already creating stories, drawings, sculpture, music, whatever, then there may be better ways to spend your time than going to his Imaginu!ty seminar.

If you like amusing stories and a very animated speaker, go check him out. He's a stitch. He's also very Christian and goes off on Bible riffs and applauding Mel Gibson from time to time, so be forewarned if those aren't your cup of tea.

I used my time pretty well during the seminar. Since my scanner's absolutely refusing to talk to my computer, I'll see if I can take a picture of the sketches I did during his talk and post them tonight ....

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

August 23, 2005

Threat of the School Bus

Thinking of Aries Spears yesterday and thinking about the frickin' Klan reminded me that I haven't continued what I started in "Hall of Presidents" (used to be called "The Smile," but I hated that title so I finally got around to changing it).

Like I've said, I was raised primarily in Texas in the 70s. I started school in Austin and ended at a high school in Arlington (yuppie-ville between Dallas and Fort Worth).

At my first elementary school, Pillow, I don't remember ever seeing a black student. We had two students, twins, who were either atheists or, I think now, they may have been Muslim. I was in first grade when I first met Rex and the finer points of religion just weren't a big deal to me. After all, I'd met Jon Comb in kindergarten and he was Jewish and it hadn't been any big deal. Whatever. Seemed to me like there were 18 million different flavors of religion and they were all sure they were the right one. My opinion at the time was very child-simple: God was all-loving, so anyone who tried honestly to do good and right would eventually be all right with God.

So anyhow, the point is we didn't have a whole lot of diversity in my school. I didn't really notice much. I had my good friend, Nancy, and she lived down the street from us. Her brother, David, was my exact same age -- we had the same birthday. I'd known them for ages before I said something to Nancy about wishing that my skin tanned so nicely like hers did. I have always had that pasty Irish complexion, complete with freckles. Nancy's skin was just a nice, tanned color -- not real dark, but not so glow-in-the-dark white either.

When I told my mom what I'd told Nancy, she just spluttered. "You didn't!!"

"Did. I do wish my skin would tan like that."

No one had bothered to inform me that Nancy was half Mexican. Once they did, I still wasn't sure what the BFD was. Great, you get a Mexican and a white person together and you get a built-in tan. Why don't all white people marry Mexicans? All white people want tans. Wouldn't it just be easier to marry a Mexican instead of trying to "cook" your skin into that color?

I really didn't get it.

And my mother was appalled with me.

Evidently there'd been some fuss in the neighborhood when the Tapias first moved in. The scandal! A mixed couple. (I thought that all couples were mixed - one man and one woman. Whatever. I thought adults were completely insane.) And I learned interesting new words, like wetback. But, everyone seemed to like the Tapias now, so I assumed that everything was all right.

But the real eye-opener for me was the first day of second grade. You see, we lived several miles away from Pillow Elementary. The Balcones Woods subdivision was probably a good 5 or more miles away. And you had to drive on the highway (always a big deal in my mom's mind), and you had to drive past an active quarry.

Despite the car pool, the parents complained about this drive constantly. They kept demanding a bus to take us to the school, but it didn't happen in kindergarten and seemed to be getting closer by the end of first grade.

First day of second grade, I walk into the school building and there's a table with a posterboard taped to it. The parent sitting behind the table has plenty of sheets of paper that the other parents are signing.

I was shocked. I turned to my mom and exclaimed, "But I thought we wanted busing!!"

Well, it's not like a second grader can tell the difference between being bused from our neighborhood into our school and "The Great Evil, Busing to Mix the Races" just from seeing a "Stop the Busing" sign!

My panicked mother was frantically trying to get me to shut up and at the same time explain to the other parents that we lived out in Balcones Woods. I was furious at being told to shut up and that I didn't understand. I knew how to read. I knew what the sign said. Why couldn't adults ever just say what they meant?

We walked into the cafeteria to wait for time to start classes and then Mom walked me down to my new school room. Now, Pillow, in my ever-so-humble opinion, had a good system going for teaching to a kid's level. They'd throw any 30 kids into a classroom and then the teacher would evaluate and place students into groups of 2, 3, 5, however many kids were at the same reading or math level. I knew most of the other second graders in my class already, so I'm running up to friends and getting ready to pick a seat and the whole deal. My mom was just kinda standing there in the back of the class, with some of the other parents.

Yeah. Our teacher was black.

Two weeks into the school year -- so fast that I literally remember nothing about second grade at Pillow except that first day -- I became a part of white flight. My mom pulled me out of the local public school and enrolled me at St. Louis elementary.

At the time I was terribly confused. Here we were about to get buses and now Mom suddenly wants to carpool. And I have to wear a uniform. And go to Mass ... was it every day or just Fridays? I think it was just Fridays. We had to go to this church that I'd never been to and go try on uniforms -- some green plaid jumper with a white shirt. Before I could burst into tears over the jumper -- we'd already had this discussion in kindergarten when I insisted on wearing jeans or pants every day -- Mom told me that we were buying one jumper and I could also wear a white shirt and green jeans. Now that's a progressive Catholic school for the mid 70s.

I hated it there.

I was utterly miserable the whole year I spent there.

And I don't think I saw a single black student there. Certainly no Jewish kids like Jon. Or atheist or Muslim kids like Rex. Just a bunch of pasty-white kids. And school was every bit as boring here as at Pillow. In fact, I was a bit behind where I had been in the public school.

I asked Mom years later about that. Why she had sent me to the Catholic school and avoided the public school. She had thought it would give me a better education. And, honestly, she was afraid of the busing.

She knew me well enough to know that whether other kids were bused in or I was bused to another school, I'd be in the middle of the trouble. You see, I was always the kid who was looking to smooth things out between everyone, the peacemaker. I had declared with the frequency of a kid who has NO idea that she is in the middle of the South in the 70s, that I wished I had been able to work with the civil rights movement. I declared frequently with no notice of the rednecks around us in Shepler's that I thought blacks were just the same as whites and how stupid did people have to be to try to make them use a different water fountain? And why couldn't they sit in the same lunchroom?

Mom told me that she knew before I even entered a new school or before the new kids entered ours, I would be right there, trying to make friends with the new kids and getting mad at anyone -- including adults -- who made racial comments about anyone else. She told me she was afraid I'd get hurt.

She was probably right that I would have been in the middle of things and that I probably would have gotten hurt.

But she was wrong to take me out of public school for that reason. And I have to wonder if her real reason wasn't what she saw in my classroom on that first day of school: a black teacher.

I wish I remembered that teacher's name. I'd apologize to her for my mom's fears. It probably sucked for her that year, knowing the racial tensions that were rampant in the school, in the town. I doubt I was the only kid who was pulled out of school and that kind of extra tension on a teacher is an immense load.

to be continued further ...

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:38 AM | Comments (4) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

August 19, 2005

The Haunted House

Since I was a tiny, little thing, I've been determined to meet a ghost. Well, actually, I misspoke: I wanted to see a ghost. That still hasn't happened, but I have met a few.

As a kid, I did not understand AT ALL, how people could be afraid of ghosts. What's the big deal, I thought way back then. They're not physical beings, so they can't possibly hurt you.

I was misinformed.

Okay, I would STILL love to see a ghost. But I don't ever ever ever ever want to live in the same house as one any more.

1144 E. Corby Blvd. is a haunted house.

I lived there from 1994 until 2001. And at first, I didn't notice anything at all odd about the place, other than the fact that South Bend has some of the tiniest homes with the most oddly teeny-tiny little rooms that I've ever seen.

Between my various roommates and I during this time, we had anywhere from four to six cats in the house. Cats notice odd things, right?

It was ultimately the way the cats would act when one of us was already noticing something odd that finally let us start talking about the possibility of ghosts. I mean, no one actually ever saw anything odd happen. But you would be sitting alone in the house and you could hear people talking. Get up, look out the windows, nope, no one was near the house. Stand in the doorway to the basement -- bingo! The conversation stopped. Hmm.

The corner of the living room where I sat when I heard those conversations was the one corner every cat who ever entered the house would try very hard to avoid. Double-hmm.

Again, sitting upstairs, I would hear a kid giggling. Now, as I've said before, I collect old Fisher Price Little People. And at the time, I had a bookcase in the far corner of the basement which was filled with all the old playsets: Sesame Street, the old garage, the children's hospital, a couple of houses and so on. Well, I would hear a kid giggling and that distictive clink/thunk of a little Fisher Price car rolling off the bookshelf and hitting the astroturf floor. (I don't know, this house was the landlord's "party house" back in his college days. I guess astroturf is easy to clean up after wild parties.)

I'd look around upstairs. Every one of the cats was up here with me. Go down to the basement: sure enough, some of the pieces had been moved around and there was a car on the floor.

Well, okay, so what. The floor's not perfectly level down here and, as it turns out, we live close to a fault line which occasionally rumbles a little bit. Just a little fault line, the North/South continental divide. (Who would believe there's a fault line that close to Notre Dame? I keep waiting for the earth to just up and swallow that place!) Anyhow, things fall over. But what's with the giggling?

If this had been all there was to it, I would have totally ignored it. Maybe a ghostie, but probably just the house settling and those little earth rumbles. (But what about that giggle?)

But there was also a really nasty, nasty bad ghost living in that house. Got the distinct impression it was a 'he,' but who knows.

If you heard a serious thud from the basement, you could freaking feel the bad ghost at the same time. It was one of the creepiest times of my whole life. And the weirdest thing was that I would go downstairs and look through the whole basement -- and I couldn't find anything that had been knocked over. But the whole time I was downstairs, I could just feel that malevolence issuing from the basement. Feeling a bit stupid, I'd just head back upstairs (a little hurriedly, of course!). Again, the cats were NEVER in the basement when this would happen and they'd stay out of the basement for quite a while after.

But the worst of it, even worse than just the weird feeling -- wait. You know when you watch a really scary movie late at night, alone and you get that feeling that the serial killer is just on the other side of the door? or waiting in the next room? And you know you're being silly and stupid and it's just because of the movie that you feel all paranoid, but you can still feel it?

Well try getting that feeling at random times while walking around your family room (the basement) for no apparent reason at all. It's even creepier when you can't blame it on a scary movie. And it's even creepier when there's this bit of personality attached to the feeling. It felt male. It hated any nudity at all. (Occasionally you could feel him in other areas of the house, too.)

So anyhow, even worse than the weird feelings were the nightmares that everyone who stayed more than a couple of nights had. You know how in most dreams you have dream logic? You know it's your house, for instance, but in real life you've never lived anywhere even remotely like that?

These dreams weren't like that.

These dreams always took place in that house and if you were really lucky, you could make yourself wake up before the obvious conclusions happened.

Some examples:
I would walk into a room in the house and reach for the lightswitch. Nothing. Horror movie feeling. Overwhelming fear. Lights across the house go off. I've got to go down to the basement and mess with the circuit box. Flip at the basement stairs lightswitch, just in case I'm lucky.

I'm not.

Flashlight on, I head back into that corner of the basement where he lives. If I'm lucky, I wake up now. If I'm not, I go back into the room that used to be the landlord's darkroom. Just a flashlight. The feeling is becoming unbearable. I know he's there, in the back-most part of the basement, by the furnace, water heater, crappy toolbench and the circuit box. Under the stairs. I know he's there.

On occasion the dream goes far enough that I turn and see him briefly with the hunting knife. But I always wake up before he can strike.

The feeling lasts for a couple of days -- not just a few hours like with most nightmares. And no one after having one of those, will actually go into that back part of the basement -- especially not when one of the breakers trip. And they trip all the time in that house. I'm not saying the ghost actually tripped the breakers, but going back to the circuit box usually involved figuring out who had had the nightmares last.

The worst nightmare that I had involved me waking up in the morning and walking out of the bedroom. The house was not air conditioned, so I'd put a little window unit in the bedroom because I canNOT sleep if I get too hot. So the bedroom door was always closed during the summertime to keep that cool air in.

So in this nightmare, I walk out of the bedroom and into the living room. And into one of the worst things I've ever seen in dream, reality or movie.

Not so graphic version: my cats had been killed. Stop reading now if you're the squeamish type. Skip down until you see
*****HEY IT'S OKAY NOW*****

*

Seriously, you don't want to read this if you're easily grossed out.

*

Okay, I double-warned you. I walk out into the living room and each of the four cats I had at the time has been mutilated. Each one has a frickin' railroad spike through the chest/tummy area and is nailed to a wall. One cat to one wall. There's writing on the wall, using of course, the cats' blood. I don't remember what it said, I'm not sure I even remembered once I woke up for real. They were further bloodied, but I won't go into it.

*

*****HEY IT'S OKAY NOW*****

And we all knew that those weird nightmares that took place in that house were related to that ghost. I've never had any nightmares similar to that since.

But the last coincidence that really just confirmed things was when one of my roomates had a friend over. We were sitting on the living room floor when this friend suddenly got a weird, weird look on her face.

"Is there a ghost in this house?"

I shrugged. "I think so. There's a kid who plays with the toys down there. I can hear him giggling sometimes."

She shook her head. "No, there's some--" She shivered and paled a bit.

Now, look. I think this lady's a bit of a flake most of the time, but this was really freaky. She was sitting in that spot where the cats wouldn't go -- above the spot in the basement that I thought of as the ghost's. And it was obvious from her reaction that she wasn't doing this just for her "rep" or for attention. You don't turn that color for fun. And I never saw her do anything like it ever again. (Of course, she didn't set foot in that house again, either.)

"What's the matter?

"There's something wrong in your basement."

My roommate shot me a look. I nodded. The bad ghost had been very active lately.

"There's a bad ghost down there, too."

About six months and two roommates later (I'm a little more stubborn), I finally had a roommate who was himself so scary that the bad ghost quieted (or left, I was never sure which).

How did Justin get the ghost to leave? He played techno-goth every night. He watched more horror movies than any human on the face of planet. And anime. The really, really violent anime.

I don't know if he scared the scary ghost or if he just satiated the ghost's need for violence.

And that's the story of the bad ghost. And that's why I no longer think that ghosts are harmless. I don't think they could physically hurt me ... but that one taught me they can make you hurt yourself just from the paranoia you start to get!

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:21 PM | Comments (6) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

August 16, 2005

Haunted

My cousin used to tell me terrifying ghost tales. I loved watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In second or third grade, I checked out every book in the public library on ghost stories and hauntings.

I'm not some wishy-washy, new-age, granola-eating hippy who thinks ghosts are real.

But I do think ghosts are real even though I've never seen one.

I have been around a few ... as the meme the other day reminded me.

In college I worked for a sub shop in Texas -- Dino's Subs, a properly New York-Italian sub shop. The shop out at the mall was in an outlying building rather than the mall proper, right next door to the movie theatre. I don't know a whole lot about the building's history, but I know it was haunted.

The first few run-ins with the ghost were just odd little things. I couldn't quite explain the things that happened, but I was prepared to think it could have just been a fluke. During a really busy lunch one day, I saw the soda fountain do something bizarre. There's a sticker where you can label what pop should come out of that spigot and over the sticker is a piece of clear plastic to help keep that sticker legible longer. The clear plastic piece over the Sprite suddenly shot off the machine and landed about ten feet away. Not too odd, there's got to be some pressure on the plastic to get it to pop into place. But that pressure should have made it pop forward more than it did. It was more like it moved out about an inch forward and then moved ten feet sideways, not diagonal. Weird, but these things happen.

Another lunch rush the lid to the toothpick dispenser shoots straight up in the air, nearly hits the ceiling and then lands on the counter. Lined up perfectly with the toothpick dispenser. And somehow, tucked neatly under the little "arms" that hold the dispensed toothpick.

Okay that was really freaky, but still, could have just been a fluke.

What sealed it was the night that John and I were working the shop alone. We'd closed the store at 11 p.m. as usual and were working on cleaning up. I went over to the old Wurlitzer juke box and perused the 45s (yeah, this was the late 80s). I popped in a quarter and picked "Mandolin Rain" and "Our House." John calls from behind the counter, "What'd you pick?"

I tell him and he likes "Our House," but violently hates "Mandolin Rain."

"Our House" plays first. Cool. John has me call out the name of every song on the machine so he can pick some out. "Ooooh, I love 'West End Boys.'"

The next song to play? "West End Boys."

Hmmm. Maybe the jukebox shares John's taste in music. Maybe it's not wired right. Whatever.

A third song plays. Huh? Two songs for a quarter ... and a bonus song. Okay, the jukebox is a bit eccentric. Must be the wiring.

But the third song is some old fifties tune. I think it's Elvis, but I can't read the label on the spinning 45. John pops his head out "What song is that?"

"I have no idea."

"But you picked it."

"I didn't pick it. I think it's Elvis." Whatever it is, it's a sappy 50s love song and we're both glad when it's over.

The radio still doesn't come back on as we're treated to an encore performance of "West End Boys."

Very odd, but we figure the wiring on this juke is just old and goofy. I leave a note for the manager to tell her the jukebox guy ought to take a look at the thing.

Over the course of the next few weeks, any time John and I are working alone together, we're treated to "West End Boys" a couple of times a night. After the store has closed. Never when there's customers and we can safely assume that someone is messing with us. And when we close at night, I usually do the front -- near the juke -- and John does behind the counter. There's no way he can be doing it or I'd see him near the juke.

When the jukebox man finally comes in, I happen to be there. "Hey, make sure to take that Elvis record out of there, okay?"

"I don't think there's one in here." He runs through his list. "No, there's no Elvis in here."

"Yeah there is, I saw the thing." And I run through the whole story for him. He literally takes every single 45 out of the juke box. I watch him.

No Elvis 45 is in there. No funky 50s 45 is in there.

In fact, there's no 45 in there with the funky color of blue that I saw that night. You know, that old funky blue with the silver writing that used to be on a lot of records from the 50s and 60s. Nothing like that is in the machine.

WEIRD.

But the really weird thing doesn't happen until John quits. I mean, come on, it's a sub shop and college kids can do better, even in 1989, than $3.85 an hour.

So, I'm closing the store one night with a new kid. She's cleaning out front and I'm cleaning behind the counter. She's barely started sweeping the floor and hasn't made it anywhere near the juke box yet. John's been gone for about a week.

"West End Boys" starts up.

The new kid's head pops up. "When'd you put money in the juke box?"

"I didn't." I don't bother to explain at first. I mean, it sounds crazy to say that a ghost just likes that song. Actually, John and I had a running joke that the ghost had a crush on John and that's why it played the Elvis love song and John's favorite song.

"West End Boys" plays again. And now, I get this weird feeling of query and sadness. I don't know how else to explain it other than I could feel the question in the air. Umm, I'm kinda thinking that the ghost really did have a crush on John.

The song begins a third time. A fourth time.

Finally, the new kid is kinda freaking out. Especially when I explain the whole ghost thing.

When the song starts for the fifth time, and that sense of question and sadness has just gotten more and more intense with every iteration of the song, I finally say out loud, "I'm sorry. John doesn't work here anymore. He quit. I'm sorry."

This time the radio comes on after the 45 finishes.

I never saw the ghost, but me, John and the new kid knew it was there. The manager of the store knew about it, too.

I always felt sorry for that ghost. It was so obvious that it liked John and it was terribly sad when he left.

But that was a nice ghost. Later I'll tell you about the one I lived with who was definitely NOT a nice ghost.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:07 AM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble