About an hour southeast of Dallas there’s a little town called Athens, Texas. When Michele finished residency, their hospital hired her to set up a pediatrics clinic, and me to work in the urgent care of their ER. We lived there a little less than two years. It was in many ways a “starter relationship“ with a town and a career, where the first hard lessons are learned. 

Athens had a few hints of being a progressive town in some ways. It had a huge private-grant park in the middle of town, with an olympic pool and sports fields. It had the first real disc-golf course I’d ever seen. The course threaded through the pines, like a huge hedge maze. There were moments I felt as likely to see Narnia as Texas. Athens was a tiny town: It still has a population of just over 10,000 people, and an outlook on the world that is almost exactly the caricature of a small Texas town. Not long after we got there a group of doctors invited Michele and I out to dinner at the country club, and the only Hispanic woman there besides my wife was the woman clearing the table. Not long before we moved, there had been a horrendously newsworthy racial killing in a county south of ours.

The jobs both had a touch of the unearthly and surreal. Michele‘s hiring had apparently been more about keeping a rival hospital system from getting a toehold in the town, and she was never really supported by the institution that set up her clinic. She struggled to balance her hospital and clinic duties with the scant resources doled out to her from the “big city” of Tyler, where her administration was based. During my time in the Urgent Care I picked up one literally certifiable super-fan, who wrote me a multi-page manifesto accusing me of being in league with the alien influences I was submitting him to in his medicines, which was weird enough that my boss forwarded the letter to the local police department. My tenure in Athens also contains the low point of my medical career. I failed to recognize the abnormal vital signs of a young mother who had the flu. She died of pneumonia a few days later. If my math is right her newborn son will be graduating high school soon.

We struggled to make success of our choice to move to Athens.  We briefly considered taking jobs with the competing hospital system which offered more support and structure.  Ultimately we decided that moving closer to San Antonio and Michele‘s family was a better choice. 

Athens had been my swing and a miss at an ill-defined target. It was far enough north and east in Texas that it caught just the last tip of the great forest that made my beloved Atlantic Coast. The pine trees dropped beautiful brown needles in the winter. The leaves changed to familiar oranges and reds,  albeit in November or December, before they dropped. The hills on a certain Appalachian curvature. It was the first taste of a cure after a decade of homesickness. 

But it was never going to fit. When we left Athens, almost everyone of our friends said “oh it’s about time. I wondered what you guys were doing up there.” Not unlike what your friends say to you after you break up with a girlfriend that everyone knew wasn’t right for you, but didn’t want to be the one to say it. I at least failed to see the forest for the trees.

At the far end of the stem of the inverted “T-shape” that was my high school, under the West Cafeteria, was a double-sized classroom full of drafting tables, where I took Mechanical Drawing, with the best group of friends and classmates Colonie Central High had to offer. I took four years of drawing and drafting in high-school, which even included a fancy new Computer Aided Design module as a senior in 1988, which was pretty high-tech at the time. 

Mr. Vanamerongen (who always told people to call him “Mr. Van” for the obvious reason) was the high-priest of the room, and his students were devoted to him. He was kind and quiet, and firm and fatherly in the way the best career teachers are. He was one of those men who understood that the course material might fade, but the skills he taught us, on the page and off, could be permanent. He usually had a coffee mug in one hand as he’d pass  through the room looking over our shoulders, quietly correcting our mistakes. 

I can close my eyes and look around the room and see where everyone in the class sat. It can’t really be that everyone sat in the same spot for three or four years, but I can’t picture Rick or Ralph, Russ or Margaret, Dan or James, Mike or Joe at any other desk than “their own” in my memory. I wish I could remember who else was in the room.

As I think on it, the most palpable thing in that room was the quiet. Not silence, not the absence of noise or action. Quiet. There must have been days at a time when a dozen or so teenagers could spend forty-five minutes in focused effort, heads near a large page of paper, pencil in one hand, three-sided ruler in another. From here I see the haven that it was during the noisy hormone driven day. 

My mother credits MechDrawing (MechDraw? – we had some “cool” abbreviation) as the only reason my handwriting is even remotely legible, and she’s probably correct. Learning to patiently trace letters and numbers, even with a stencil took all the concentration I could muster. We learned to make blueprints for machines, parts, even houses by the end. We broke increasingly complex objects down into component parts and views, learning how different something could appear from the front, top, or sides. I struggled for the entire time to capture the strange way even the simplest curves warp in your eyes and on the page as you change the location of your eyes to pin them down.

I saw a dude in his thirties today at Einstein Brothers Bagels (I wore a mask) whose faded 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics T-shirt had so many holes in the back and shoulders it looks like it had survived a shotgun blast. The fabric was worn so thin that it wouldn’t have qualified as clothing if it had been on a woman. The collar ring had frayed clear through in places. I couldn’t resist complimenting him and it. He told me his mom had even had to sew up some of the bigger holes to keep it wearable. 

Do you have an item like that? Do you have a favorite shirt? Or an oldest shirt? Or something that’s both? It doesn’t have to be a shirt. A ratty old pair of jeans that “still fits” despite the fact that you’re not remotely the same size?

For decades, I owned my dad’s freshman football practice “jersey“ from Siena College. It was a double layer cotton T-shirt:  blue with yellow letters/yellow with blue letters. They  could flip inside out to identify practice squads. My dad was a freshman in when John F. Kennedy was elected. I don’t remember dad wearing  it much. It must have lived in his drawer until Jim was big enough to wear it. When Jim went off to college, I inherited it. I probably used it more as a sleeping shirt. I have no idea how it ever fit my dad, because it was always too small for me.  But every once in a while I would wear it to work out in my 20s until it became so threadbare that each time I put it on I could feel a seam in the collar or armpit start the fray. After that it just lived in the bottom of my drawer, as a totem I would look at or touch from time to time. About 10 years ago I contacted somebody on Etsy to make “duplicate“ shirts and gave one each to Jim and Dad and myself. I gave the original to  my nephew Jordan. I don’t think I properly explained that I had freighted him with such a historic memento. If he still has it, I doubt he knows where it is.

I know that items like this are just shirts, or jeans. However, we live in an age when I myself have thrown away a microwave oven because replacing it will cost me $80 and repairing it will cost me twice that. I think the things we chose to mend tell us something about ourselves, and others. It’s not just frugality or laziness. Those very closures are actually windows into something important. Like a visible scar on skin, I know there must be a story behind a stitched piece of cloth. I am drawn to those stories.

Three years ago, my parents dropped me off at the Albany airport after a week-long family reunion in the Adirondacks. I was flying back alone, since my wife had left earlier in the week to keep the clinic open during the “back to school” season. I had a wonderful time with my family, but had spent a week without the Internet, so I was very excited to catch up on a dungeons and dragons podcast (I know!).  As soon as I cleared security, I put my noise canceling headphones in, while I waited for the boarding announcements for my flight. I’m the kind of person who arrives at the airport very early for flights.  While I was wandering the gate area, I noticed that another early-bird was flying with a cello, and his ticket was out, while he napped.  It said boarding group H — same as mine. I took a nice comfortable seat in view of the gate since I knew it would be a while. 

The podcast got dramatic as I watched Gate Lady get on her microphone.  People formed lines and boarded in my eyes, while the heroes fought their enemy in my ears. Gate Lady kept going to her microphone, but never called for Group H, and I watched the cello, and it’s owner lay there, on the ground by the wall. After a while, after the passenger stream turned into a trickle. Gate Lady turned around and closed the big door and opened her phone and clearly started surfing Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or something. I said to myself “it’s weird that she’s taking a break before this plane is totally boarded.” Then it hit me that it was time to turn off my podcast and get off my ass.

When I spoke to Gate Lady I said, “I noticed you closed the door.  Does that mean that the plane is done boarding?”  

She looked at me with an exasperated look and said “Yes.” 

I said “I’m supposed to be on that plane, but you never called my boarding group.”

She said “Are you Mr. Glynn?”

My heart started to pound even faster than it already was as I disappointedly said “yes.” She said “I’ve been calling your name for the last 15 minutes.”

 I replied “But I had my headphones on.” (I wonder what would have happened if I’d said “I was listening to a D&D podcast)

She started to tense up like the next thing she expected me to get hostile, so I said “Oh this is definitely my fault. There’s no doubt about that. Can you help me fix my mistake, or do I go somewhere else?”

Her next words were like angelic singing: she said “Let me see what I can do”, as she walked away with my ticket. While I stood at the desk, waiting for her to return from the help the idiots department, a sleepy, frantic young man carrying a cello came up to me and said “Oh my god did the plane leave? I fell asleep!“ 

I said “Yeah man, we’re both screwed.”

A number of minutes later she came back. “Mr. Glynn, I’ve got you on a flight to Chicago with a connection to Austin [my destination]. It’s the next gate over and it was delayed, so it’s boarding right now” 

After an effusive thank you, I asked “How fast am I gonna have to sprint through O’Hare to make my flight?”

“It’s a 90 minute layover. “(This will become important in a moment).

Interesting aside, this was the day I learned that musicians flying with cellos need to buy two seats, because you would never put your musical instrument in Luggage, and it doesn’t fit anywhere else on the plane. Anyway, the cello guy and I both got on the flight from Albany to Chicago, I never saw him again.

When we landed in Chicago, and I knew I had about 90 minutes, which was enough time to get some food, I decided to walk between the two terminals rather than take the mini train, so I could get my step count up. At O’Hare, the terminal connections are underground tunnels. The entire missed flight debacle happened so fast I never had a chance to call Michele before I got on a plane. I finally got a chance to call my wife and tell her my ridiculous story. As I was spinning the tale I reached the end of the walkway and decided to skip the escalator and further stretch my legs by taking the stairs. I hung up with Michele. When I got to the top of the stairs I saw a sign that said “Now Exiting Terminal.” I took two steps past the sign as the words sunk in, and I whipped around to notice the TSA agent next to the sign hold up his hand.. 

“Did I just leave the airport?” 

“Yes.”

“So I have to go through security again?”

“Yes, and it’s very busy today.” 

“Thank you” I said, as I took off at a sprint.

To once again demonstrate how ridiculously good my luck is, I got through security at one of the world’s busiest airports and made my connection. The flight from Chicago had a tail wind and I wound up getting home less than 45 minutes after my itinerary, despite my double fuck-up.  Since my bag had boarded the original plane in Albany, it was already waiting for me at the baggage claim. I walked in, grabbed it, and walked out before anyone else on the Chicago flight had seen their first piece of luggage.

Before gas pumps had little TV commercials blaring out of them, and before smartphones, I used to play a game to pass the time.

1. Look at my trip odometer
2. recall my historical miles/gallon
3. calculate the number of gallons used
4. multiply by the price of gas
5. make a guess at the expected price of the fill-up, plus or minus twenty-five cents (1-3 percent), in my head

One day when I was at the gas station filling up my red Isuzu pick up truck, I realized that most people don’t do this. I don’t really know where to take this thought from here. There’s a difference in connotation between “weird” and “strange”, but honestly even both those words sound like I might be implying a form of self-pity. That story could be perceived as a humble-brag, or an outright brag, and it’s not. Being naturally math-y is like being naturally tall. If a basketball player brags he can reach the top shelf, they’re just being dense.

I wish I could explain why I wish I could explain this better. 

I’m sure some of you have “superpowers” or physical or mental games/tricks that you took for granted for years. Would you care to share them?

To those of  you who read the “game”, and say “Yeah. I get that. No biggie”, let me just say what a pleasure it has always been to be your friend. I wish we’d been more nerdy together when we had the chance.

I had a medallion of Saint Kevin, after whom I am named, for a while. My mom and brother brought it back from Saint Patrick’s cathedral in New York City when I was a tween. It was about the size of a nickel and I wore it on a let’s-call-it-silver chain. My namesake was supposedly born in 498 and lived to be 120 years old, and like me he spent a period of his life in the wilderness, bathing in lakes, and communing with animals.

I can’t say that the medal was particularly meaningful to me in a religious way, but I’m pretty sure it’s the only jewelry I ever wore. It was meaningful because it was a present from my family.  It was significant enough that I gave it to a girlfriend to wear my senior year in high school, because I did not own a school ring. It meant enough that I got it back when we broke up. It was meaningful enough that I wore it again afterwards.

My saint and I share stories from our life that are shrouded in legend. The saint is said to have aroused such passion in a local young maiden that she went to his hermit cave to seduce him. He beat her with thistle branches and she devoted herself to God.  I got so drunk visiting my brother in Newport, Rhode Island during the summer of 1989, that I attempted to fight a bouncer and was rescued from a certain beating by Jim’s girlfriend. 

While praying in the woods, the saint had a blackbird land on his hand, and build a nest. Rather than disturb the bird, he stayed in prayer until the eggs hatched, being fed berries by forest animals. I was so drunk when we got back to the apartment that I apparently  threw up in the toilet and shit in the tub, and then switched places for a repeat show. The next day, we went out for a sumptuous seafood meal which I could not eat. 

When Saint Kevin lost his prayer-book in an icy mountain lake, an otter appeared, swam to the bottom of the lake and retrieved it, undamaged in any way. When I ripped my St. Kevin’s medal from my sweaty, inebriated neck, there was no magical animal to redeem it.

I went to group therapy for a semester or so in college. Maybe it started late sophomore year but definitely junior year. I don’t remember exactly why I went to the campus counseling center. Honestly I can’t remember what I was feeling that I made the appointment. I was in a relationship that ultimately wasn’t particularly healthy and ended weirdly, but I don’t think I had any sense of that at the time. I was very grounded in my friend group, which was also the group from the Newman House, and those are still my most meaningful friendships from college. I wish I could remember, but I can’t.

Let’s assume it was about the relationship, because the doctor recommended I join the men’s group therapy. We met weekly or every other week, and most of what we talked about was relationships. Maybe it was just me. 

(Sidenote: privacy is tricky. I want to balance the meaningful parts of “my story“ with respecting that other people are more than merely supporting characters in my memory. They certainly were more than supporting characters in my life. That’s doubly true for the members of my therapy groups privacy, and triply true for past romantic relationships. I’m going to struggle to tell this well.)

There were two other guys in the group who I could recognize if I met them today. There were several other really good, really introspective men in the group who I would like to meet again, but they have faded. Spike (not his name) was memorable because he wound up in the group for his anger problem. While being broken up with by an ex, he got angry and punched the engineering building. When I met him his hand was literally full of pins from the recent reconstructive surgery. I suspect he has punched more hardened concrete structures in the past thirty years. I’m not really one to judge, because I’m not sure I made any breakthroughs either.

Guy number two I remember because he was the ex-boyfriend of the woman I was dating. We hadn’t met socially, but we both knew who was who. We met in group for months and never talked about it to each other or the group. At one point during a rocky patch in my relationship, the rocky patch was him. We never talked about it. Then one day we did. I think I announced that we had broken up, and then mentioned that now we were both exes. Or something similarly passive aggressive masked in “humor”. This is all really sketchy recollection. When I dropped that bomb, the group was pissed! It got tense. The doc running the group tore me a new one right there, and pointed out how we had effectively betrayed the group trust by not revealing it. He was right of course. The other guys were mad as well.

That wasn’t the actual end of group, but it’s the last thing I remember. I don’t remember how and when the group ended, or if I just stopped going. It may have just petered out with a semester break. I remember “enjoying“ the group and I must’ve learned some lessons from it. Having said that, I’m not sure the women who I dated between the ages of 20 and 25 would agree that I got anything out of it.

Oh pitcher, you are made by a graceful hand, and I can’t decide which would be more lovely: the hand that created you, or the water that would pour from your lip. I have picked you up and held you in my own hands, roughened by rocks climbed, and splintered by wood shaped, for the safety of the clients of Genesee Valley OLC. 

You need a home, but is mine the one? My horse-stall at the Outdoor Learning Center is little more shelter from the elements than this flimsy tent stall at the Baltimore Arts Festival, and the sun might scar the purple glazing of your neck. How would I protect your delicately curved handle, upon which a string tag twists a price in mockery? Thirty five dollars is almost ten-percent of my monthly pay, and I have no running water. Would you be satisfied with filling from a duck pond? Your majesty is rival to that Canada Goose that threatened me when I strayed close to her nest? How could I protect you, if it were to dive-bomb while I cradled you in my arms;  your shell encasing my own hopes for the future? 

If another takes you home, you will not fill from a pump and be carried across the uneven swale-wet ground risking a stumble on the white moon-reflecting rock. They would not ask you to share a shelf with a mouse who has babies in their underwear box, I suspect. Their friends would not ogle you, and wonder how much beer you could hold. But would they long for you like I do? Would you symbolize the elegance missing from the life of a man who came in second place for days without a shower? 

No. 

The water I do not drink from you will be sweet, and perfect, and cool on my lips forever. You will be a fantasy of perfection; a cup that I let pass through cowardice. I will protect you and myself by giving your protection to another. I will put you down; back down on the folding table, and walk away, leaving you full of what I am losing with this choice.

“OKAY EVERYONE, WELCOME! LISTEN UP! HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE PLAYED ‘ROCK PAPER SCISSORS?’ MOST OF YOU…GOOD! WELL TODAY WE’RE PLAYING A BETTER VERSION OF THAT, PLUS TAG! TODAY WE’RE GOING TO GET STARTED WITH A GAME OF GIANTS, WIZARDS AND DWARVES. I’M KEVIN, AND I’M GOING TO EXPLAIN THE RULES OF THE GAME TO YOU ALL! MY ASSISTANTS WILL SPLIT YOU UP INTO TWO GROUPS, AND THEN EACH GROUP WILL HUDDLE UP AND DECIDE IF YOU ARE A GROUP OF GIANTS WHO STOMP (I stretch out tall and raise my arms above my head), DWARVES WHO CHOP (I crouch down low and hold an imaginary axe) OR WIZARDS WHO CAST LIGHTNING (I hold my arms out Emperor Palpatine-style). AS EVERYONE KNOWS GIANTS STOMP WIZARDS, WIZARDS FRY DWARVES, AND DWARVES CHOP GIANTS (I do the poses again). AFTER YOU PICK, YOUR TEAM WILL LINE UP FACE TO FACE AGAINST THE OTHER TEAM. ON THE COUNT OF THREE, BOTH TEAMS WILL STRIKE THEIR POSES. REMEMBER, THE WHOLE TEAM DOES THE SAME POSE!! IF YOUR TEAM ‘WON’, GO TAG THE OPPONENT AND THEY’LL JOIN YOU ON THE WINNING SIDE. IF YOU LOST, TURN AND RUN TO FIGHT ANOTHER TIME. MY ASSISTANTS WILL DESIGNATE THE SAFE LINES.”

From the springs of 1993 to 1994, I lived and worked at Genesee Valley Outdoor Learning Center, in northern Maryland. It was a ropes course, if you know what that is. It was part adventure, part school, part camp, part teambuilding center, part working farm. It’s operating, by the way. So while I say “it was”, I think “it still is” but I’m sure the parts mixture has changed a bit in 25 years. We had clients that ranged from federal agency and corporate team building sessions to small groups of therapy groups for at-risk kids. 

You’ll be unsurprised to know that school field trips were the largest part of the gig. While I was there, Chelsea Clinton was a junior-high student, and although I didn’t work with her or her classmates, I remember the secret service agents wandering around the farm for two days, like the world’s fittest and most protective dads. 

The place was in the middle of nowhere, so everyone arrived after an hour on the bus or in the car. People would land full of pent up energy, anxiety, and urine, so before any of that overflowed, or the rules got laid down, we’d try to get them out of their before mood and into a headspace more suitable for a day of challenging fun. Out of the gravel parking lot at the top of the hill, we’d lead everyone to the other side of the wood-rail fence into the giant farm field, and get everyone good and goofy. In small groups of 5-10 you warm up with jokey games of “frog-and-handkerchief” and with a couple dozen you play a rousing round of “zombie-soccer” or “popsy-the-egg” depending on the age-group.

When a fleet of busses disgorges the entire sophomore class at 9am you’ve got a challenge. You’ve got yourself a crowd for a good game of “Giants, Wizards, and Dwarves.” 

At some point while I was working, that’s what happened. I don’t remember what grade, or what school, but I know it was a couple hundred teens, teachers and parents. It was big. I don’t remember exactly when, but I know it was after my brother Jim had been working as a parade adjutant at the Marine Corps Barracks Washington. The reason that is germane is because Jim had to practice his “loud voice” to project out over a parade ground crowd. Now my loud voice came naturally, but I’m always willing to learn a few tips from people who have to yell over the sound of explosions. 

So go back and read out the intro and instructions.  Imagine someone trying to be a cross between a drill sergeant and a head cheerleader. Now imagine that coming out of Anthony Michael Hall’s character from Sixteen Candles. That’s probably about right. I thought I was so cool. 

Each round one team would grow smaller and smaller, until there were just a few intrepid holdouts lining up to face an overwhelming phalanx of classmates. Now that I think about it, I think instead of going ‘one, two, three’, or  ‘ready, set go’ each round started with them going through all the poses for practice then committing to their team’s choice. 

“READY? GIANT….WIZARD…DWARF…GO!”

During Industrial Arts class in eighth grade, we spent several weeks doing metal working, which was mainly bending and cutting sheet metal to make a tool box, I think. I spent one two entire classes making ninja throwing stars. I got away with that. I kept them in a green plastic filing box of “secrets” under my bed. I used to throw them at a board in my back yard, until the thin metal bent. 

Later, during woodworking, at the urging of another classmate who I was trying to impress, I tried to make a pipe to smoke pot. I’m sure junior high kids must attempt this all the time. The teacher apparently watched me the entire time, and busted me, very discreetly. I never got in any trouble for it. Whether he knew I was doing it to impress another student, I don’t know.