The Musings of an Olympics Junky

The Musings of an Olympics Junky

Published August, 2012

            The Olympics have been underway for a week, and I confess, I have watched at least half of NBC's projected 3,500 hours of broadcast.  I'm a sports junky, and the Olympics are the epitome of sport, and I, the junky, am mainlining the event.

            I had planned to work Friday night, but the opening ceremony with the Queen, escorted by James Bond, parachuting into the stadium was too much to miss.  It is so hard to work with the TV on and me in front of it.  What writing I am doing is during commercials, late at night, or early in the morning when there are no broadcasts, but as the week has progressed, even those windows of time have closed due to modern technology that allows me to watch around the clock, or record events when fatigue demands my nightly sacrifice to the sleep gods.

            If you do the math of dividing the broadcast hours by 24, you will find a result of 145.83 days, or 4.8 months.  How can that be?  Easy, there is the broadcast channel, three cable channels, television and cell phone apps, along with live, streaming of events over the internet.  I can watch events live in HD on my phone!  I bet I can get the Olympics over the microwave or refrigerator if I try.  How did I ever think I wouldn't be watching?

            I don't really care about equestrian events, but I watch.  I like the horses, don't care much for the people, but the Royals are in the stands, so that's cool.  Who's the athlete here anyway, the horse, or the rider? 

            Every four years, I swear that I am not going to watch such sports as curling in the Winter Olympics and badminton during the summer games, but when they come on, if there are no other options, I'm watching.  I even watched soccer before the other events started, and as much as it pains me to confess, I enjoyed it.

            We all have our favorites.  Most women and a good number of men love women's gymnastics.  I don't care for it.  I prefer track-and-field because I want an objective outcome as opposed to a subjective one.  I like a clear winner, not a judged one. 

            If you've followed this column, you know that I have written about two sports more than others.  One is in the Olympics, boxing, and one once was, is no longer, but should be, baseball.

            Boxing is subjective, and the scoring is done by people who are either blind, or are selected randomly off the street and are offered ring side seats if they will come in and punch some buttons.  I often wonder if they have ever seen a fight, or are watching the same one I am.  See what I mean about subjective? 

            Would someone please explain to me why air rifle shooting with contraptions that do not even remotely resemble an air rifle, and the shooter who is covered with so much gear you think he might be a Borg from a Star Trek movie, is considered an Olympic sport, and baseball, played by at least half the world, is not?  Really?  Something I did as a kid to break windows and aggravate my parents and neighbors is an Olympic sport, but the other thing that I did all day, breaking windows and aggravating my parents into the night is not in the Olympics?

            Another sport I don't get being in the Olympics is ping-pong, oops, excuse me, table tennis.  Are there more countries in the world that see this as sport rather than baseball?  The game is nothing like we play in the garage unless you have a very large garage, and body armor.  Forest Gump should have run in the Olympics anyway.

            ESPN Sports Science did a piece on table tennis that reported that the ball, when served, arrives at the end of the table in less time than it takes to blink an eye.  To be able to see it, players stand eight feet behind the table to return serve of a tiny, plastic ball that is moving at over a hundred-miles-per-hour.

            I can hear my mother now, "Y'all stop serving that ping-pong ball at over an hundred-miles-per-hour!  You're gonna' put someone's eye out!"  This is the same ball that my dog used to crush in his jaws when we didn't get to it first, and it's going to put my eye out?

            I do believe that doing anything during my childhood, except eating vegetables, was capable of putting out an eye.  Maybe they should have a running with scissors game as part of the Olympics.  It would make as much sense as air rifle shooting with all its fancy visors and mirrors, and scoring would be clear-cut, (get it, scissors, clear-cut), but I am rambling.

            I guess if they had vegetable eating in the Olympics, I'd watch it.  I don't care what the sport is, even team handball which I had never heard of before this year, I want team USA to win, and when we don't, I hurt.  I feel it to be my patriotic duty to cheer our country in every sport, even those that do not make any sense to me.  When I make the sacrifice to watch and cheer, and not work, or stay up too late to work the next day, and get up before dawn to watch more games on four channels, my computer, and my phone, those gals, and guys, had better be winning.

            Oh, excuse me; I must stop.  The commercial is almost over.  Happy obsessive watching to all y'all.

How to Survive a Public Shooting

How to Survive a Public Shooting

Published July, 2012

            With the increasing frequency of public shootings, such as the ones in Tuscaloosa, and Aurora, Colorado, I have become concerned for the safety of my family and myself at crowded, public gatherings.  I have always envisioned these scenarios, wondered what I would do, and have formulated a plan of action.  To me, that is not paranoia, but being prepared, which is key, as any Boy Scout will tell you, for success in any of life's circumstances.

            The possibility of being involved in a public shooting is virtually nil, but these events are happening.  I am going to give you some tips, not as an expert, but as a common sense guy with a strong penchant for survival.

            The first one is something I have hounded the Admiral and Princesses with for years; be aware of your surroundings.  Do not wander about ignorant of what is going on around you, for such makes you a victim.  Observe the people and the place. 

            Note exits wherever you are.  They instruct you on airplanes to "make a note of your nearest exit", for a reason.  Make it a habit.         

            While making note of exits, observe any obstacles that may slow you getting out.  It may be faster, and safer to take an exit that is further away.  When a life-threatening event occurs, time is critical, and seconds can mean the difference between being a victim, or a survivor.

            In a crowd, keep your head up and look around.  Observe the people, particularly those observing you.  Make eye contact with them and let them know you see them.  Don't be confrontational, but criminals are cowards and are looking for weakness.  If they know you are watching them, you have communicated that you will not be an easy mark. 

            Look for people acting different than the situation would dictate.  At a late night movie premier, the atmosphere is loud and boisterous with lots of smiles, laughter, and costumes, whereas at a church or worship gathering, the behavior will be quiet reverence.  If you see someone in either situation not blending, acting nervous, or agitated, watch them.  They may be having a bad day, or are nervous in new surroundings or crowds, but whatever the case, forewarned is forearmed, and if necessary, take action. 

            What action do you take?  Above all, don't panic.  As they teach in scuba classes, when something goes wrong, stop, think, then act.  A person in full panic, running, waving their arms, screaming wild eyed for an exit, may as well have a target painted on their back.  You only have split seconds when something like a public shooting happens, and again, what you do in those precious moments can be the difference between being a survivor, or a victim.

            If you are near an exit, and far enough from the shooter when gunfire breaks out, and you can get out with those who are with you, get out.  How far is far enough away from the shooter?  That is a judgment call.  If I am more than five steps from an exit, there is a crowd between the exit and me, or I cannot get those I am responsible for out with me, I am not going.

            The thing they drill into you in infantry training, and in combat, is, "Get down, and stay down!"  Running routes are easy for a shooter to figure out especially if you are in a panic.  The human eye is attuned to motion, so once down, and concealed, stay still!  Unless you can get yourself, and those with you unobserved to a safer point, you are better off where you are. 

             When you go down, get as low as you can, and seek solid cover, something that will stop a bullet.  If you are caught in the open, lie flat and make yourself as small a target as possible, and DO NOT MOVE!  If possible, keep your eyes open and watch the shooter.  You may have the opportunity to take further action.

            There are exceptions to the not moving rule, but they come with risk.  If you are secure, call the police.  There may have been a hundred calls made, but you may be the person who is calm enough, and in a place where you can make observations that will be helpful to first responders.  Making this call can save the lives of those within, and without.

            If you and those with you are safe, aid the wounded.  Do what you can with what you have.  This is where first aid training will save lives.  Take a course, now.  Be prepared.

            At some point, a shooter will have to stop to reload, or to draw another weapon, or he may turn his back to you.  You will have a second or two to act when their attention is diverted.  If you need to move, now is the time.  If you have the training, or a weapon of your own, attack the shooter.  You will be in a crowd, and if you act, so will others, but above all else, you are to survive and to save as many around you as possible.  If you cannot eliminate the shooter, or don't want to take the chance, the aid you render to those near you is just as valuable. 

            Your chances of survival are much higher if you will use the one weapon we all carry with us, our brains.  If you will stop, think, then act, not react, your chances of survival in any disaster are significantly higher.

            Some of you may be thinking to stay home rather than risking exposure in a large gathering, don't.  When you do, the bad guys win.  Go forth, enjoy life, but as you should in every situation, be prepared.

Reflections on the Clothesline

Published June, 2012

            I remember "laundry day" from when I was a little boy, and I don't miss it.  Monday was the day to do the dreaded chore, and that seemed the norm for most families.  Oh, how we prayed in church on Sunday for rain on Monday, because if it rained, we couldn't do laundry, because you see, we had a clothesline. 

            My sister and I were POLs, Prisoners of Laundry, for the entire day.  Washing of the clothes was well under way before us kids got out of bed, and as soon as breakfast was done, we were outside getting the clothesline ready to accept the hanging.  We got the clothespins down from the wall on the back porch where they hung in a bag sewed from mattress ticking, and carried them out to the line.  This was a misnomer, because it wasn't a line, it was several.

            Our clotheslines, four of them, were strung between two "T"s made of welded, three inch, pipe.  They were at least eight feet tall.  It was my job to take a ladder and a wet rag and wipe the wires used for lines.  In west Texas, where sand storms were the norm rather than the exception, this was a necessity, or you would end up with brown strips on whatever you hung on the line.  I enjoyed this job.  When I had reached as far as I could on the wire, I would grab it with both hands and swing like Tarzan to the ground, and then move the ladder.  My father, who had to tighten the lines, frowned on this, so I made sure that mama wasn't looking before I did it.

            As I grew older, so did my involvement in hanging the clothes.  My sister and I would carry #10 washtubs of wet laundry to the lines, and, under the direction of mama, we would hang clothes.  There were rules to this, and they were precise.

            Clothes were hung in a certain order, and to this day, I do the whites first.  Sheets and towels were hung on the outside lines so that the neighbors, or a stranger passing by, could not view the unmentionables hung on the inner lines.  Heaven help us if anyone knew we wore underwear.

            You hang socks by the toes, not the tops, pants by the cuffs, not the waistbands, and you never, never hang a shirt by the shoulders, always by the tails.  If you didn't, you would have to go back and re-hang them so that there wouldn't be pinch marks showing on daddy's shirts.

            We were required to be efficient in our use of clothespins.  We always overlapped an item with the previous one, and used one pin to hold both.  This also had rules.  You never hung a colored item with a white one.  You hung reds with reds, and all the other colors together.  Dante, and Milton haven't a clue as to what hell is like until you hang a red sock with one of daddy's white, dress shirts and it bleeds a pink spot onto it.  Hell smells like bleach as you scrub the stain out, and the odor is in your skin for days.

            It mattered not a hoot to my mother if it was freezing out, we hung the clothes anyway.  I think she preferred it.  On those days, I learned the phrase "freeze dried".  We would take the clothes off the line, shake them out to get rid of any ice crystals, and lay them neatly in the tubs to carry back in the house.

            Folding the sheets was mama's job, because we were not tall enough, but we were warned, "Your day is coming, watch how I do it," and it was magical.  The sheets were hung over the line length wise, and she would fold the sheet on the line back on itself, and continue to do so until it was a perfect, folded square, and it never touched the ground.

            Laundry day rules required that all the clothes be off the line, folded, ironed, and put away before dinner.  The pins were not to be left on the lines.  That was considered very tacky.

            Looking at a neighbor's clothesline was almost as good as looking through their window.  There were no secrets when you hung out the clothes.  If there were more sheets than usual, or they were out on a day other than Monday, mama knew someone was sick, and would take over some soup, and bring back a load of laundry for us to do.

            Diapers or tiny clothes announced the birth of a baby.  Hanging the fancy sheets and towels told that company was in town.  You could tell the ages of the children by looking at the clothesline, and mama, when house shopping, would always go on a Monday to find a neighborhood with children the same age as my sister and I.

            A bare line on Monday meant that the family was out of town.  When they came back, it was sagging with the weight of all the clothes dirtied while they were gone.

            I miss the clothesline…almost.  I don't miss the work, but I miss the tradition, and playing hide-n-seek, and tag, up and down the rows as mother struggled to hang stuff while we played.  It makes me smile and laugh to remember.  I also miss the smell of sun and wind dried clothes.  I loved to run head long into a dry sheet and take a deep breath as it wrapped around me.

But clotheslines now are of the past,

For dryers make work much less.

Now what goes on inside a home,

Is anybody's guess!

I really miss that way of life,

It was a friendly sign 

When neighbors knew each other best...

By what hung out on that line.

                                    Author Unknown

A Fine and Pleasant Misery

Published April, 2012

            I have borrowed Patrick McManus' title to his book on the joys of camping because I couldn't think of a more appropriate phrase to describe what I have been through.  I spent three days and two nights in the woods of Blakeley State Park with the Princesses and thirteen of their closest friends for a church girl's camp.  From the moment of temporary insanity when I agreed to be the male presence for this activity, I began to dread it.

            I am no new-kid-on-the-block when it comes to camping.  If you added up all my days I've spent in the out-of-doors, sleeping in the woods, deserts, and mountains of our earth, they would total more than a couple of years, but I have never spent one like this.

            Some camping trips are pure misery, while others are fine and pleasant.  This one was both, and they all may be, but this campout is worthy of note.

            This trip represented the first time in almost nine years that I had put up a tent.  It had never bothered me to throw down a sleeping pad and sleep like a baby on the ground, but that was almost a decade ago, and things about my body don't bend and fold like they once did.  Getting down isn't much of a problem since it is aided by gravity, but please, explain to me what made that same gravitational force multiply in the night to where it takes a crane to get me off the ground?  I get ahead of myself.

            The weather for the day of the trip called for rain in the morning, clear for afternoon departure, which caused great jubilation in my heart, as there is nothing more miserable than setting up camp in the rain.  My rejoicing was premature.

            We arrived in great, beaming sunshine.  Everyone, even I, the curmudgeon, was delighted.  We took all the gear off the truck, spread it out in preparation of setting it up, and the rains came, soaking everything.  My heart and several other organs sunk.  Let the misery begin.

            My mistake was that I helped set up the other tents first.  Guess whose was the only one on the ground, flat and open, when the sky opened up?  Yep, mine.

            Wet and I do not get along, especially while attempting to sleep.  I threw down my tent poles in disgust and went to sit in the cab of my truck.  To their credit, the Princesses tried to help, but wet is wet, and no amount of youthful exuberance will dry me out physically, or spiritually.  I pouted until the rain stopped.

            I attempted to back my truck, with the tailgate down, closer to my campsite.  The windows were fogged, at least that is my excuse, and I backed the truck smack into a tree, ruining the tailgate.  I put my head down on the steering wheel and tried to imagine the trip getting any worse, and tried to think of a plan by which I could go home.  I came up with no plan, and things got worse.

            I was soaking wet from sweating in my rain gear, which I opted to be out of to be soaked from the dripping trees, but at least I was cooler while being miserable.  I managed to get the tent up, the floor mopped up with the only towel I brought, and get my bed set up.

            For this campout, I was going to sleep four inches above the ground.  I brought a queen-sized, inflatable mattress.  At least I would be sleeping damp on a soft mattress, rather than on the hard ground.  The added height would aid me in rising in the morning.  I could roll over and fall to my knees instead of struggling up from flat on my back.

            When it came time to turn in, I was quite smug, knowing the other leaders would be envious of me.  I didn't say anything, but I felt superior, and was anxious for a good night's sleep.  I undressed, unzipped my damp sleeping bag, and started to lie down.  I didn't make it.

            The mattress had deflated since I had set it up.  It had a leak.  I wasn't feeling so smug as I calculated that it was near 11:00 PM, and the mattress had deflated over a period of near eight hours.  If I reinflated, I would have a like number of hours of comfort.   As dawn approached, I would once again be on a squishy cushion of air, I figured it wouldn't be too bad.  I figured wrong.

            With my added weight, air was forced out of the leak, and by 2:00 AM, I was sleeping with my torso on the ground and my feet elevated, the remaining air being squeezed to the lighter end of the cursed mattress.  I determined that sleeping flat on the hard ground was preferable to this, and pulled the plug to let the remaining air out.  Again, I was wrong.  I was damp, cold, and aching.  It was a fine and pleasant misery.

            The morning dawned bright and beautiful.  I cooked my blueberry pancakes and sausage over and open fire, and started a new day.  I was tired, my truck was broken, and I had only the hard ground to look forward to, but the sun was out, the girls were happy, and I was to lead a hike of over five miles.

            When we got back, the Admiral had sent another ground pad, the tent and sleeping bag were dry, and things were looking up.  I was tired from the hike, but the girls had enjoyed it, no one was lost, or broken, and not many bitten.

            The campout had shifted its focus from "misery", to "fine and pleasant", and I was reminded of something I had preached during our travels, "The only difference between an adventure and an ordeal is attitude."  I need to work on the "fine and pleasant" within me for next decade's campout

The Day Has Come and Gone, and I Am Still Here

Published 7/20/12

            I have quirks and eccentricities, as we all do.  I have never denied or hidden mine, but some I have not acknowledged except to those closest to me.  Herein, I celebrate the passing of one such quirk, or, some might say, phobia.  It has been with me for almost twenty-three years, but it has run its course, expired, is no longer valid or useful.  It is gone, over, finished, and I am done with it.  Well, sort of.  July 11^th marked its end.  On that day, I had been alive on this earth, one day longer than my mother was.  That day has haunted me since she died.

            Losing a parent, or any loved one for that matter, is not an easy thing.  Such an event serves as a glaring reminder of our mortality.  Even if we are familiar with death, due to war, sickness, accident, or any form of demise, the death of a parent signals to us that the previous generation is expiring, and shouts, "Hey, you're next in line." 

            There is no logic to my unusual attachment to the time of my mother's passing.  I am an educated man of some intelligence, although there are those who would argue otherwise, thus it is assumed that I could, or would, reason that my mother's death is uniquely hers, and mine is in no way attached to, or influenced by her passing.  That would be reasonable, but emotions often rule my thinking.    

            It is observed by the family that I favor my mother.  I was slight of build as a child, as was she, fair, not dark like my father, Germanic, not English, aggression from both sides, and the list goes on.  If I favor her in life, why not death?      

            I am attached to her, as well as to my living father who will be 89 this year.  I share twenty-three chromosomes from each.  It is logical and reasonable that I could live to be as old as my father is, or older, but emotion allows me to think that the things that have happened to them, could, or will happen to me.  If we inherit all we are, eye and hair color, stature, intelligence, predilection for diseases, and longevity, why not timeliness of significant life, or death events?

            So it is, that with all this reasoning, whether intellectual, or emotional, that I have both anticipated and dreaded my sixty-fourth year.  It has come and gone now by a month, a week, and several days.  I have overcome the genetic tendency on my mother's side, where the females' lives are notoriously short, and now look forward to becoming an octogenarian…at least.

            What does all this mean?  I don't know.  It isn't logical to think that anyone of us is attached that closely to another, yet, I wonder.  Do we inherit addictive tendencies such as drug and alcohol abuse, or anger as opposed to passivity?  Are those traits inherited, or learned, or some of each?       

            Some have proposed that we inherit fears and attitudes.  In a book by a prominent minister, the story is related of a boy who had an unreasonable fear of school.  He had been a well-adjusted child with normal growth and learning, but when it came time for him to start school, he was terrified beyond the normal fear of going into a new situation.  He could not make it through a day, and often, could not even get to school.

            The parents and teachers, along with counselors and psychiatrists worked for months with no improvement.  All were baffled until one day, the father of the boy was relating to his own father the problem they were having.  The grandfather then told the family of an incident in his early childhood related to a school bully, which caused him great fear until it was resolved.  With this information, the mental health professionals were able to treat the boy who went on to have a successful school experience.  Was this fear of school passed on, skipping a generation, and if so, how?

            I do not know the answers to any of this.  You can see where reason and logic have gotten me.  I am sure that my time here is uniquely mine, and although tied somehow to those who have gone on before me, I cannot add to, nor diminish it by any thought or action on my part.

            I saw a phrase on a t-shirt in the gym long ago.  It read, "Eat right, run far, lift heavy, die anyway."  There is great truth in that comedic effort.  We can prevent some diseases by proper diet and exercise, and by taking care of our bodies, maybe prolong our days, but the message was not concerning quantity of life, it was about quality.

            None of us knows when we are going to depart this world.  I have spent twenty-three years with this nagging little doubt, far back in my mind that I would not live longer than my mother.  I haven't belabored it, or been obsessed with it, but it has been there.  I have learned one thing from this that we all already know, and that is that any day, any moment, could be our last.  That, combined with the saying on the t-shirt, have made me realize that it is the quality of our days, not the quantity, that we should focus on, and that I should live every day as if it were my last by pouring everything I can into it. 

            That sure puts the twenty games of Solitaire I played before, and during the writing of this piece in a different light, doesn't it?  Live on, and live well, for life is before you, not behind.

An Evening with Mark Twain

This is an old one, but one of my favorites.

I was asleep; at least it felt like sleep.  I was awake too.  I was not dreaming. 

I sat up and standing at the foot of my bed was a man dressed in a white suit with an unruly head of hair the color of the suit.  He was smallish, and had a mustache that covered his upper lip.  I could smell cigar smoke.  Training and practice dictated that I reach for a weapon, but something stopped me.  It didn’t seem right to shoot Mark Twain.

I laughed at the thought of shooting a dead man.  He smiled at my laughter as if we had shared a joke.   I then thought, “What do you do with a dead man in your room?”  I laughed, and again, he joined me.

Since it was clear that killing him was futile, I determined to talk to him.  “What are you doing here?”

“You invited me,” he said with a twinkle in his eye that told me he knew more about the situation than I did.

“I did not,” was my brilliant retort.

He smiled again, reached into his right suit pocket, and took out an apple.  I watched as he turned it in his hand.  It looked solid.  I couldn’t look through it and see his hand as if it was a ghost apple, nor could I see the apple through his fingers. 

Mr. Twain, then put his left hand into his pants pocket and took out a small penknife.  As he opened the knife’s blade, he spoke, “You were reading Letters from the Earth, and you called me.”  I did not speak, having sounded dumb enough with my first attempt.  He nodded, “You said, ‘I wish I could meet the mind who wrote this’, so here I am.”

“Nice to meet you.”  I said, “Nice to meet you”!  How lame?  I embarrass myself.  To recover, I added, “I love your War Prayer.”  Another smile.   

My attention was drawn back to the apple because his was.  I watched as he started to cut it.  I had always seen and cut an apple on its north-south axis, into slices, removed the core and ate them.  Mr. Twain was cutting the apple around its girth.

The apple spun deftly in his hands as the small blade incised an arc through the heart of the fruit.  He split it, and held two halves, one in each hand.  I smelled fresh apple in the room over the fading cigar smoke.  He held the two halves, fruit side out for me to see. 

There were two stars, one in either half.  I had never known that splitting an apple that way would reveal stars and was delighted with the discovery. 

I looked at him smiling.  The twinkle in my eye matched his as he said, “Look beyond what you know and see the stars.  Things are not as they seem.”  He then took a bite of one-half and held the other toward me.  I reached for it, but as I did, he faded and was gone. 

I got up, raced to the kitchen and grabbed an apple, ran back to my room, got my knife and cut the apple as Mark Twain had done, looked at the stars, laughed, took a bite and swore I smelled cigar smoke. 

You may say the visit was not real, and you may be right, but I know this, things are not always as they seem.  If you look into the heart, you might find stars.

A Writing Class

I am taking a writing class.  Some of you reading this are saying, "It's about time."  Others of you are asking, "Why?"  In answer to both the statement and the question, I offer this, I am taking it to learn. 

I do this once, or twice a year, take a class, or attend a writer's conference.  It is great fun when I speak, or teach, because I learn by doing so, but I always try to attend other sessions because in my experience, everyone, and I mean every individual in that class, or session knows something I do not.  If you think about it, that is very exciting. 

In a previous life, I taught automotive technology, and I had done the same classes so many times, I could do them without notes.  I really knew the stuff, and it had become a challenge to teach these classes because it was becoming mundane.  There was a point that I thought I just might know it all.  Wrong, I knew very little.  If I listened, the individual in class who had the least experience always knew something I did not, or had forgotten.  The key word is, listen.

If there are ten people in the class, then there are ten things in that room that I do not know.  The trick is to get the things I don't know out of the ones who do.  How, do you do that?  You get them to talk, but since it is a writing class/conference, you first get them to write.  Writers love to write, or they wouldn't be writers.  The saying is that writers live to write, while authors write to live.  I guess I am both, but whichever the case, I need to learn.

A writing class is to write, so this column is part of the class.  I will turn it in as an assignment, killing two birds with this stone.  You will see what the class gave me, and what I learned in two days.

Dr. Kevin Rabas was the guest lecturer for, as he labeled it, the Intensive Creative Writing Workshop, offered by the University of South Alabama, Baldwin County, and I do mean intensive.  The term "lecturer" is a real misnomer.  Kevin was more of a masterful drill instructor as he led us from one creative exercise to another.  There was much time allowed for sharing and discussion, but when it was time to move on, we moved.

The class was challenged to write in multiply genres including poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, flash fiction, play writing, and the writing of plays for the screen.  No genre was left unexplored.  I found myself, whose taste in poetry runs more to the, "Roses are red, violets are blue…" class, tempted into wanting to try my hand at free verse.  I have not, not yet, but I am tempted.

I did learn where a short story or two of mine could be adapted to ten-minute plays.  I've never considered such before, but now I am an aspiring playwright to go along with being an aspiring columnist, and novelist, and let us not forget poet.

There were eight in the class, which was a surprise to me that so few would take advantage of such a wonderful opportunity right here in Baldwin County.  The real surprise was that of the eight, four others were my age, or older.  I had expected a much younger crowd, but the vast and diverse pool of experience from those who have live life, loved, and lost, was something we all gained from swimming in.

The class being small was to my advantage, because it allowed for much sharing of written work and critique from fellow students.  These sessions were the real pearl of the oyster for me.  This is where I gained my desired diamonds of wisdom from everyone, and I did.  When I wasn't flapping my gums about my work, knowledge gained from writing and life's challenges poured from my fellow students. 

It is hard to write and not put some of you into every piece, it just kind of flakes off like DNA at a crime scene.  Our writing leaves bits and pieces of who we are scattered wherever we are read.  Souls were bared and experiences shared, and we were all strengthened by having come together and shared ourselves.  I came out feeling enriched and rejuvenated.

There were only two men in the class, which, I thought at first, said that women were more creative than men are, but as I re-think it, I'm guessing that women are more willing to share their life's experiences than men. That is such a shame, because we all have a story to tell.

My first novel, Where the Mockingbird Sang, exist because my great-great-grandfather kept journals.  He told his story.  If he had not thought it worth telling, our family would have been deprived of a wealth of family history, and our getting to know him. 

We ALL have a story to tell…tell it.  It doesn't have to be published, but it needs to be told.  Someday, you too will have great-great-grand children.  Will they know who you were?  Not if you don't write it down.  Tell us your story, enrich us…we're waiting.