Montezuma's Revenge

Through a Google Search, I've discovered that Montezuma's Revenge is either Travelers Diarrhea or an Indiana Jones video game. Well, my story of Montezuma's Revenge is neither, but could possibly be the inspiration for both. It's also listed as a Bluegrass music group, a 24 hour ultra-endurance mountain bike wilderness race, and Wikipedia states that the term comes from...

Moctezuma (c. 1466 – June 1520), also known by a number of variant spellings including Montezuma, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma and referred to in full by early Nahuatl texts as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin and similar, was the ninth tlatoani or ruler of Tenochtitlan, reigning from 1502 to 1520. It was during Moctezuma's reign that the episode known as the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire began.

Well wherever the term came from, it's Hell on wheels.

Knotts Berry Farm was the first place in the world I ever tried Chili Cheese Fries, now a staple in my weekly diet it seems. Mom had never heard of them before we moved to California, so we decided to try them out when we saw them on the menu. They were wonderful!! We ate every last bite. Shortly afterward, any fond memories I may have had of Knotts Berry Farm were quickly wiped out with the simple motions of one very nasty roller coaster and the harness that failed to do its job.

We all hear the horror stories around the world about something going wrong on a roller coaster. Some kid falls out of a Ferris wheel because he's screwing around, another teen gets his arm ripped off because he didn't listen when they said to keep hands and arms inside the car at all times. It happens. That's a fact. But we never think it will happen to someone we know, or to someone we're riding with, or even worse, to us.

Montezuma's Revenge, or at least the one I'm talking about, is a roller coaster at Knott's Berry Farm. We went there back when I was about 8 or 9 years old, so it was in the late 80's, about the time we first moved to California. Mom liked the looks of it, and I was still young enough to not be afraid of anything but Lima Beans, which I still don't like. She wanted to go on the ride, and she wanted me to go with her. Instantly I agreed.

It looked simple enough. It had a loop in the middle and two dead ends on either side. We watched as the roller coaster would back up one of the dead ends, then get a fast start at the loop. It would go up and over the loop, all the way to the other dead end, and then stop. It would then go backwards through the loop, all the way back to the first dead end, then coast back to its starting position. It even paused a little in the center of the loop. It looked like a lot of fun to us. We got in line and couldn't wait to get on board.

We climbed on and took our seats. Clearly I remember my mother being to my left. We were both so excited. The harnesses came down over us and locked in place. The coaster started to back up. My heart was racing. I was thrilled to be going on such an adventure ride with my own mother. There was a lot of room in my harness, but I didn't think much of it. I was always a really skinny kid. I met the height requirements, so they let me on. That was all that mattered.

The coaster backed up to the dead end and we hung there in silence waiting for it to release. I grabbed the handles on the outside of my harness, waiting for that weightless, silent release of the coaster surging forward. I looked at Mom by poking my head out of my harness and looking around at her. She grinned ear to ear. Suddenly the world began to move forward in slow motion.

The coaster released and I hung in mid-air for a moment, weightless and excited. It raced past the platform of waiting riders and reached for the sky. It flipped over and slowed down just at the top of the loop. All of this happened in seconds, but it felt like an eternity to me. Suddenly I started to slide in my seat. I looked up and saw the ground below us from my upside down position. I slid further, grabbing at my harness with every ounce of strength I could, screaming out for my mother to help me as I felt my shoulders slide right between the shoulder pieces of the harness. There was nothing holding me in but my weak childhood forearms. I remember screaming bloody murder for my Mom to help. She turned and looked at me. She knew from my voice instantly that something was wrong. She reached over for me and pulled with all her might. She's a terribly strong woman when angry or filled with adrenaline.

My body slid back between the shoulder harness pieces, though my butt was still far from the seat of the coaster. I brought my arms back inside the harness and pushed up on the shoulder pieces with every ounce of strength I had, though I still could feel myself sliding. The coaster moved forward again and I slammed forward into the harness on the way down. It screamed past the platform on its way to the other dead end, my mother screaming as loudly as we could for them to stop the ride. They didn't hear us.

We flew upward toward the other dead end, my mother openly praying to God to save her only daughter. I don't know if she remembers doing that. I remember her crying out and holding on to me, screaming as loud as she could "God, please save my child," as I clutched her with all my might. She never loosened her grip on me for even a second. In vain, she screamed out to stop the ride again and again. Tears streamed down both of our faces as I sat there in horror, knowing what was coming. As that weightless feeling came over us again, there were no smiles between us this time. There was nothing but pure horror written over both of our faces as we plunged backwards towards what could have easily been my death.

I've never had much upper body strength, even when I was in the best shape of my life. I've never been able to do a pull up, and to this day I don't know where my strength came from. I braced my knees under the bottom of the harness as we plummeted back towards the Earth. By the time we screamed bloody murder to stop the ride past the waiting crowds, I had braced my arms inside the harness, pushing hard on the shoulder catch to hold my body to the seat. I hunched over and gripped the heels of my feet under the tiny lip of the seat I was on. Mom grabbed my shoulder as much as she could and pushed down with every bit of strength she could manage.

We screamed backward up into the loop, slowing just as before near the top. Then the coaster came to a complete stop once more. Silence filled the air around us. My back began to slide down the seat.

My ankles throbbed from gripping the seat under me so tightly on the very small lip I could hook them to. Mom couldn't get a good grip on me and had to let go. She grabbed my shirt instead and pulled towards her with all her might. She screamed at me to hold on. My arms didn't have the strength they needed to keep me inside the harness. My legs slipped and my knees were no longer braced against the bottom of the harness. I began to slide more. My shoulders reached the harness and started to slip through. I bent at the waist, dangling my legs in front of me over the shoulder harness. I hung like a rag doll upside down in a roller coaster I was supposed to be tall enough to ride. My body swung, a pendulum in the breeze, any second capable of finding death.

"HANG ON, MANDA!" My mothers words echoed in my ears every time I saw a roller coaster for years after that. I hung on for dear life.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the coaster started to move again. My body slammed to the back of the seat and slid slowly down the hard plastic surface. My feet let gravity take them to the floor once again. Mom didn't loosen her grip on my shirt, but I was OK with that.

We reached the dead end behind us at long last, and Montezuma's Revenge coasted to the bottom. I was weak from fear and could barely stand up to get out, while my mother was so pumped up with adrenaline that she practically dragged me out of the coaster and towards the ride operator. She screamed and yelled in his face, though I have no idea what she said. That could have been the relief in me blocking out whatever she was saying, but something tells me he really didn't understand her words either. She was completely hysterical, screaming and crying.

She told me later on that the second I shouted out to her, she got an instant migraine. It was instinctive for her to grab on to me, knowing something was wrong. She and I both thought I was going to die that day. As far as we know, nothing was done with the harnesses on that ride for several years, until a teen in the 90's slipped through the harness and died.

For years I was terrified of roller coasters. Then it became coasters that went upside down. Eventually I got over that and have only been afraid of slow moving heights, like a Glass Elevator, or the slow incline of a roller coaster in the beginning. Now that I remember the story of Montezuma's Revenge clearly, I believe this is and always has been the source of my Glass Elevator fear.

The Bronson File

Eventually I was taken out of my High School and enrolled in the school for "troubled" kids because of my running away as a teenager. I was in the second semester of the 11th grade when this took place. My attendance was terrible, my grades were even worse. I had given up on school, friends, grades and everything in general other than taking care of myself. Some would say I was depressed - but in a secret reality, I was going through withdrawals.



I was put on ritalin against the Doctors orders at the age of four and a half. By the time I was fifteen, I knew that I didn't like how it made me feel. I stopped taking them all together. Mom started counting the pills every day, so I started flushing them down the toilet. I didn't know what withdrawals were, but I felt like wearing black every day. I went through terrible mood swings where I would lash out for no apparent reason. I would often get angry and scream at my parents for the smallest things. I never got away with that, though.



Convinced I was on drugs (when really I had taken myself off of drugs) my parents started taking me to shrinks on the military base. They prescribed Klonopin, Paxil, Prozac and a myriad of other mind and emotion numbing drugs. I refused to take those, too. I flushed them down the toilet every day, right along side the Ritalin.



One night I got into trouble for something. I don't even remember what it was. I was told to go down to my room while my parents discussed the punishment. Wanting desperately to show them exactly what the drugs would do to me if I ever actually took them, I took only one tablet of Klonopin. Even I didn't know what the effects would be. By the time I was to report upstairs for the punishment, my eyes were fully dialated. The suspicions only grew. They had me pegged as being a dope fiend and searched my bedroom that night for any illegal narcotics. The only things they found were the things they were trying to force me into taking. It worked just as I had wanted to. They got off of my case about drugs. They still wanted me to take my prescriptions just before bedtime so nobody saw my dialated eyes, but I still refused. I continued to flush them down each day, or grind them into dust and sprinkle them in the yard. There were a few happy birds flitting around for a while when I did that.



At the alternative school I started to run into people I hadn't seen in a few years. I had gone to school with some kids in Jr High that suddenly disappeared, much the way I did in the 11th grade. Of course I had few friends the entire time I lived in Utah, so I was used to spending my time alone. That suddenly changed at my new school. All of the Social Outcast kids banned together. We didn't pick on one another no matter what our ailments were. The kid with Coke Bottle glasses was treated with equal dignity as the girl with head gear (me) and the former Football player, kicked out of his school for trying Steroids. We were all equals, standing on equal turf. Nobody was better than anyone else. I was in heaven.



At Washington High, I was voted "Sweetest Girl" in the school, and my dear friend Trent Heckman was voted "Sweetest Guy" so our photo was taken for the year book. I had friends who talked to me in each class. I had teachers that would treat me like an equal instead of like a plague. I didn't realize for a long time what the core difference was between Washington and Bonneville, but when it dawned on me, it hit like a ton of bricks. We weren't Mormon.



We came from all walks of life. We were a collection of Catholics, Methodist, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and a variety of other religions. The teachers were as well. We were Military kids, mostly - brought together in the middle of Ogden, Utah because of the simple reason that we were of a different religion.



I've always been a part of the Majority. To have suddenly been thrust into a Minority group because of the church my family went to (or rather, didn't go to) didn't make sense to me. I learned how to cope with it quickly enough though. I made friends all over my school and became one of the most popular kids there. Nobody made fun of me anymore, people asked me for help on English assignments, teachers praised me and my attendance became legendary.



I ended up making friends with a Bronson Babbit after a couple of months. I had known Bronson for a little while in the 7th grade, but like so many I knew, he suddenly disappeared. It turned out that they had moved, and later on was forced to go to Washington like all the rest. He had been a bit of a nerd boy when I knew him before, but I didn't even know who he was when he called out my name in the hallway one day.



"Amanda," he said, "is that you?"



"Yeah, do I know you?"



"It's me. Bronson."



"Bronson who?"



"Bronson Babbit. 7th grade."



He brushed his long hair out of his face, curled his upper lip into a snarling smile, and squinted slightly. Instantly I knew who he was, even with the eye liner and sweat band bracelets.



The very next time I ran away from home after being violently attacked by my mother in the parking lot of the school, I went to Bronson's house. That time I had decided to take my dog Cookie with me. She was such a lovely dog, I couldn't just leave her behind. My parents had threatened to get rid of her if I ran away again. I refused to let anything happen to her. I smuggled her on the city bus by sticking her inside a duffle bag and carrying her like I would a suitcase full of clothes. She never made a sound.



Bronson's family were kind to me. They lived in a small trailer in a Mobile Home court and were fine with me bringing Cookie with me. She got along with Bronson's mother very well and becamse a member of the family very quickly.



The family lived off of Hamburger Helper at almost every meal. They were all fairly heavy set, including Bronson, but their hearts were good and they took care of me. I was free to come and go as I pleased and continued going to school each day. My attendance remained steady, never missing a class.



Finally, and quite suddenly, Bronson's family had to move and I was forced to move on alone. Without anywhere else to go, I finally made the long trek home to my mother and father. I hated no having options.



Cookie was happy to see my mother, but I certainly wasn't. They had cleaned out my room, getting rid of everything I owned except for a mattress on the floor and the clothes I was wearing. I didn't even have a door on my bedroom anymore.



That started another jouney for me - one that would take me over a state border and over 600 miles from home... but that's another story. That's the story of Byron Miller, a story I've never told to another living soul. I'm not proud of it and I did a terrible thing, but I'm ready to tell the truth.



Stay tuned.

Living Italian

The second time I was considered to be a teen run away, I was actually placed in another home for two weeks by the Police for suspected child abuse.

My father had gotten very angry at me for not taking out the trash one day and found me sitting in the family room with my feet up on the coffee table watching the Simpson's, much as I'm doing right this very second. He tucked the toe of his boot under my knee and shoved hard. Some would say he had kicked me. At the time, I said he had kicked me. He honestly didn't. Then he picked me up off of the couch by my ponytail. He then threw me to the floor by it, not intending for me to land on the rock mantle of the fireplace, but indeed that is where I collapsed.

My knee was swollen the following day. I sat in my English class massaging it during the teachers lecture. The girl that sat next to me in class asked me what was wrong. I'd never talked to her before other than asking her once what the teacher had said about hyperbolas for my notes. For some odd reason I decided to tell her everything. I even embellished a bit to make the story more interesting. The next thing I knew, I was being rushed to Tirzah Tolman's house that day after school and the Police had taken a full report on everything.

It was only a week before my 17th birthday when all of this happened. Without planning, without warning, I was suddenly thrust into another home, all because I told the Police that I didn't want to leave home. They took it as a sign that I was afraid of my parents. When I told them my Father didn't hurt me, that I had been stupid and kicked a post the day before trying to show off my martial arts training, they didn't believe me. My leg had been fully extended before I made contact with the post and I felt a pain screaming through my leg, radiating out from my knee like thousands of needles covered in acid and fire. That night when my father pushed my legs off of the coffee table with the toe of his boot, he had no idea that I was already in severe pain. I had done it to myself. The Police thought I was singing the familiar tune of a tumble down the stairs when I told them all about it. I was looked at by them like a kid that had told a story of walking into a door handle with his eye.

Tirzah's family was amazing. She had two sisters that just adored me right off the bat. Both of her parents were teachers and were under the same impression as the Police. I decided just to not talk about what had happened. I was tired of people looking at me with sympathy like I was a pathetic child afraid of the world and all it had to offer. I finally just shut up about it all together and stopped trying to defend my family.

I was given a list of chores. The bathroom downstairs was my responsibility to clean twice a week from top to bottom and spot clean every day. I would sweep the floor in the kitchen on the even days, and on the odd days I would vacuum the living room. Tirzah and I traded off for these chores, while her two little sisters, still in grade school, had the simple chores of cleaning their rooms, clearing off the dinner table, and sweeping the front porch daily. Everyone in the family pitched in. We even gathered each night to read a passage of the Bible. For the first time in two years, I felt like I was a part of something, like I was a part of a family.

When my birthday came, every member in the family had gifts for me. Tirzah gave me a beautiful purse / backpack in black faux leather. I fell in love with it the second I saw it. Her sister Rebecca gave me a candle. It was a Cinnamon Apple candle to be more precise. To this day a Cinnamon Apple candle reminds me of that birthday and of Tirzah's family. I was there such a short time and truly grew to love every one of them.

The Police came by only a few days later and told me that they were sending me home. Their investigation had turned up no results. They told the Tolman family that I had "made everything up" and I needed to go home. They actually apologized to the Tolman's, telling them that it was a shame they had to put up with me for so long over something that I had clearly made up. Tirzah never spoke to me again - but for two weeks, I didn't just have a sister, but three sisters and a real family.

I often think about Tirzah and wonder where she is. I hope her sisters lived up to their brilliant potential. I wish Tirzah all the good things life has to offer. She was such a kind girl to take in a relative stranger when she thought I was in trouble. May she never loose that divine spark and the desire to help others. She, and her entire family, were wonderful.

Go Away! (poem)

Just Go Away!!!


You’ve asked me for a date.
Go away.
You want more time with me.
Go away.
You’re too impatient to wait.
Go away.
Why cant you let me be?
Go away.

You’ve called me every day.
Go away.
You’ve given me so many things.
Go away.
I don’t know how else to say.
Go away.
I wont be one of your flings.
Go away.

Its not ok in my eyes.
Go away
Please don’t cheat on your wife.
Go away.
I once thought you so wise
Go away
I wont be your second life.
Go away.

I wont be how you break your vow
Go away
You’re not who I think of.
Go away.
There’s someone else in my life now
Go away.
I found someone I love.
Go away.

Do not come by my house anymore.
Go away.
Please don’t call me again.
Go away.
I will not be your dirty whore.
Go away.
I am something you'll never win.
Go away.

Amanda Blackwood
08/04/06

(This was written and dedicated to a stalker.)

Big Black Snake

The first snake I ever saw was in the middle of a dirt road tire track. He was black and slimy in my opinion, though I learned much later in life that it wasn't slimy at all. He sat there, sinister and shining in the sun, glinting as though it was encrusted with exquisite jewels.

In mid-pedal, I dumped my bike, jumped several feet backwards, and ran for home like it was chasing me. I could practically feel that forked tongue lapping at my heels as I ran. I stepped high, lifting my knees nearly to my chest. At some point, a blood curdling scream escaped from my mouth as I ran the half mile back to the house. By the time I got there, I had morphed that into screams of "Snake! Snake!"

My mother was waiting outside for me when I rounded the corner and leapt over the ditch in one tremendous bound. As I flew through the air, I suddenly realized that there could be any number of snakes in the grass I was about to land in. Just the week before my mother told me about a snake she had run over with the lawn mower over by the wood shed. My feet landed and I sprang straight back into the air, throwing my body wildly over as much ground as I could cover with each leap. I looked like a cross between a gazelle and a baboon, I'm sure. I was a rather lanky 7 year old.

By the time my mother convinced me to walk back down the road with her to retrieve my bike, I had stopped shaking and the sun had stopped shining. The stars began to peek their heads in the darkening horizon. The crickets chirped, telling of the coming evening. I walked slowly, not wanting to face that snake any more at that time than I had the first time I came nose to nose with it. A rabbit bounced across the path in front of us. The birds flitted from tree to tree and the cows grazed in a near by pasture, occasionally calling to one another. Arkansas in the spring was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.

The snake was long gone by the time we got to where my bike rested in the middle of a small mud puddle. I still laugh at myself and how afraid I was of that little snake. I remained terrified of snakes for many years until one day I was face to face with a pet snake belonging to a boy I liked. So completely bent on impressing this boy, I reached out and gingerly took the snake from his hands. I wrapped it around my neck and over my shoulders the way I had seen him do. Then I smiled my most winning, fetching smile for an awkward girl of 12 years old. I was still terrified, but I was too stupid to show it.

At times I have moments of that same type of stupidity. My judgement lapses and when fear tells me NOT to do something, I challenge myself to do it anyway. I've learned a few tricks for doing this, such as convincing myself that when I reach the number 1 counting backwards from 10 I will attack whatever it is I'm afraid of. I've used this method for saying things that needed to be said and I was afraid of saying. I've used this to pick up snakes, hold spiders and tarantulas, ride glass elevators and climb into a VERY tall roller coaster.

This past weekend I tried to do something along these lines and I failed. I'll try it again the next time the opportunity presents itself - and I'll do it by remembering the big black snake. It's the first time I've failed at this method... and I won't let it happen again.

Dirty Magazines

My brother and I had a babysitter somewhere around the time I was about 5 or so. She was a rather portly Hispanic woman. My brother and I loved her at first. She used to take us out for ice cream, read to us, and color in my coloring books with me. We always had such fun.
Eventually, she showed her true side though. She started telling my brother she was going to tell our daddy on us if we didn’t listen to her. My brother and I really didn’t care about that, or at least I didn’t. I loved my daddy. I adored and idolized him. There was no greater being on the face of the earth than my daddy when I was 5 years old. I couldn’t understand why my brother always acted so scared when she would use these silly threats on us. It wasn’t until years later my mother told me why. Now that I look back on it, it makes a lot more sense.

I loved my brother. He was my best friend. When he started acting scared of this woman, I started feeling a bit odd toward her, too. If my brother were scared of her, I most certainly would be. I drew my strength from him. I looked up to him. It escaladed to the point where he and I would hide in his closet when we were at home. I was more terrified of this woman than I was of being in a dark closet. We didn’t want her finding us.

I think eventually she was able to find us in his closet, and we had to find another hiding place. For a while we chose the old car trailer my dad had in the back yard. We would climb under the middle of it and huddle together in the fall, freezing cold, but refusing to come out until we knew either Mom or Dad had come home. My brother would often hold his arm over me to keep me from shivering so hard my teeth knocked together.

This woman used to take my brother and I in her station wagon every time she had somewhere to go. I don’t remember anything about where we went, but most of the time we had to stay in the car while she went in somewhere. While she was gone inside one day, my brother and I decided it was our business to be nosy. It didn’t take us long to find the Play Girl magazines on the seat behind us, laying in a pile on the top of a cardboard box.

I will never forget the face the woman made when she realized what it was my brother was looking at in the back seat of her car. It took her until we were almost home to realize what he held in his hand, snickering at behind her seat. Suddenly the car swerved violently, scaring both of us kids more than I care to admit, and the tires screeched to a halt. This big, angry Mexican woman spun around in her seat, ripped the magazine out of my brothers’ hand and smacked him over the head with it.

If my memory serves me right, she then called my brother a pervert. In my mind, that doesn’t make much sense. She was the one with two kids under double digits in her care, toting porn magazines around in the open space of a back seat, inches from the children. I remember her screaming and yelling at us all the way home, though I don’t remember a word she said. I think most of it was in Spanish.

My mother fired that woman not long after that, but I don’t remember ever knowing exactly why.

Lost in Prague

For many, many years I had a terrible sense of direction. I would get lost walking from my house to the bus stop. It didn't help that the house was situated at an odd angle on the corner of a 5 way intersection. I wouldn't know my North from the West if my life had depended on it. I knew how to get home and how to get to school, but for all else, I depended on others around me. In the middle of the night, in a foreign country where English was barely spoken, I had a rude wake-up-call at 23 years old and to this day I have a hard time realizing how lucky I am to be alive.

Bill and I had gone to Germany for Stefan and Barbara's wedding. It was the first time I had been back to Germany since we moved away in 1982. I hadn't remembered anything about the beautiful Country in which I was born except for the briefest of flashes during that moment I found myself reminiscing over my life with my grandfather while stuck in that layer between death and life. Even then it was too limited to really know anything about where I had been born. All I could tell anyone was that I was born in Kaiserslautern.

I had dreamed of going back to Germany for many years. For my 16th birthday my parents bought a VHS tape about tourism in Germany and took me to the only German restaurant in Ogden. It was a birthday worth remembering. So when I found out that there was a chance to go see where I was born, I jumped at it, eager to see the world.

We flew into New York City with the aspirations of seeing a Broadway show with some other people who were also headed to the wedding over seas. I couldn't believe it - this trip was going to give me two of my greatest dreams! Next to Germany, my other top item on my 'bucket list' was to go to a Broadway show!

Unfortunately things happen and my dreams of seeing the show were dashed upon the rocks like a ship lost in a storm. With Richard and Gloria, things often "came up" at the last minute, so that trip we never made it to Broadway. We had a quiet dinner in a restaurant with a 2 hour wait for a table. All I kept thinking was that we could have spent that 2 hours at Broadway, Damn the meal. The next day we were boarding a flight to Germany though, so I didn't let it dampen my spirits.

We flew into Frankfurt on a 14 hour flight with me stuck in a broken seat that wouldn't recline. Gloria's snide condescension drove me up the proverbial wall. I'd never truly liked her very much anyway, but I had always been good at being 'pleasant' to her in social situations. I grabbed out my ear buds and popped them in when the movie started with the intention of drowning her out. My in-flight head set didn't work right for the movie though, and by the time we got there I was so bored with word search puzzles that I never wanted to see another for as long as I lived and it was all I could do to restrain myself from knocking Gloria unconscious - but we were THERE. We had made it to Germany!

My nerves were a bit frayed at this point from lack of sleep and the occasional condescending blast from Gloria. Society cant pin that many people into a cramped space with screaming kids and falling hat boxes without expecting those who know one another to be cranky with one another. We're constricted by social graces to be kind to strangers, but with people we know, we can be our cranky selves. By the time we loaded up in the rented diesel station wagon, the four of us were snapping like bears in the salmon run. We were each out for blood and we knew it.

Even the ever-patient Richard grew testy. I was ready to claw Gloria's eyes out with just one more snide comment about how I was too young to know about this or that, or that I didn't know about a particular social grace because I didn't "grow up with money" as she put it. I couldn't help but think to myself that she most likely didn't either. Due to the way she spoke to those around her, I guessed that I had more class, dignity and grace in my little finger nail than she possessed in her entire body. There were certain things I'd never understand according to her because she was a nurse and I wasn't. There was something about Gloria that I truly despised. Later on I discovered what the underlying reason was for her condescension and knew that I was justified in my dislike of the woman. I'll save that story for another day.

Gloria had been rude each time she thought even for a second that it couldn't be overheard by the men. I wasn't the type of person to complain, so when some of her remarks were overheard inside the car, Bill started to realize there was something going on. He knew me well and could tell when I didn't like someone, but he didn't say anything to me about it. He thought it was all in my mind, most likely. She proved that it wasn't all in my mind, Gloria really did NOT like me. She made that trip almost unbearable for me, but vindicated me at the same time.

We drove from Frankfurt through East Germany and straight in to Prague, only getting lost once or twice on the way. We got there late at night and settled in to a Bed and Breakfast where we would be staying for the next few days. Before even 10 minutes passed, we were settled into bed for the night, exhausted from the long journey. Each of us felt as though we either had a plane or a car growing out of our buts.

The next day we found ourselves wandering Prague. We visited the famous sights, took tours of castles far removed from the city and purchased typical "tourist" items like watercolor paintings of the famous clock tower. We watched the fire eaters and sword jugglers on the Charles bridge, we peered in awe at the blue glass in the shop windows along every street. The church was stunning. Prague was one of the most beautiful cities I'd ever seen in my life. By the time we stopped into the bar for a quick meal though, we were starving and tensions were high once more.

We drank fresh Pilsner beer, marveling at the massive difference between that and what we get in the States. With the beer, lips became loose and we all began to have words. Gloria had pushed me to the limit, and when Bill said something to me, I took in a negative way. Honestly I don't even remember what he said, but tempers were flared and I was more frustrated than I let on.

Without warning, I snapped. I walked out of the bar leaving the three of them sitting there. Gloria huffed behind me, complained about my being so immature because of my age, and sighed in complete impatience and ignorance.

Bill thought I would be right back. My own stubborn pride refused to allow me. I stayed outside for a few minutes, but Bill came out and I couldn't handle a discussion right then. He strode out with purpose and told me that he wanted to talk to me. He didn't sound happy and I really didn't want to start screaming at him in the middle of the crowded street. I walked away into the crowd and didn't look back.

If I were to guess, I would estimate the time was around 5 in the evening. I was hungry and angry, a dangerous combination for a redhead. Had anyone messed with me right then, they would have had the fight of a lifetime on their hands. I didn't stop walking. I walked past familiar shop windows, my face steaming. I practically sped across the Charles Bridge, striding with purpose past the stunt performers and street dancers. I blazed past the musicians with open guitar cases. When I passed the station, I dug into my pockets. I had no money so I couldn't take the train anywhere - I just kept walking. By the time the sun went down, I strongly wished I hadn't left my jacket at the table. It had been hours since I walked away from the table and my hunger was getting the better of me. I told myself to remember the Saltine crackers, and I just kept walking.

Dark, shady cars filled with dark, shady faces slowed down to look at me. Taxi's offered me a ride, but with no currency there wasn't much I could do. I ignored the young men making eyes at me. When the three men carrying hand guns down the middle of the road with the large, scary guy carrying an assault rifle walked past me, I refused to make eye contact. Prague turned out to be a little frightening at night.

I tried to tell myself that I was going the right direction, but I wasn't really sure. Some of the streets I wandered down started to look familiar, like I had seen them once or twice before. I walked past the Prague clock tower at least three times. I walked back across the Charles bridge no less than three times, too.

The smiling faces of the flame throwers became the grimacing mugs of tattooed fire eaters as the sun set. The sword jugglers became the night's assassins, out for my blood. The shops with the lovely blue glasses were suddenly dark and empty recesses filled with sinister shadows. Around every turn I found something waiting to swallow me into this strange world.

When finally I found the main street leading out of Prague, it was nearing 11 at night. I was all alone on the streets of a foreign country where I didn't even speak the polite words like please and thank you in the native tongue. Even if someone were to attack me, I couldn't beg for my life properly. Not that I would do something like that. I couldn't cry out for help. I didn't know the streets, so I couldn't even run away. I had no allies. I was stranded and alone in the dark night of a dangerous land.

In the year 2003 the Czech Republic had some of the highest crime rates for several of the surrounding nations. When the sun goes down in Prague, girls get kidnapped and sold as sex slaves. I couldn't believe as I wandered the frightening streets of Prague at midnight that I had once again put myself into that position.

I was certain that by now Bill had gotten Gloria and Richard to agree to look for me. I was lost, cold, alone and frightened. I was hungry and tired. But I knew that since I was finally on the main road, it was only another 2 hour walk back to the Bed and Breakfast just outside of town. I could see a possible shortcut in front of me to cut about an hour off of my travel. The scariest part would be having to walk parallel to the railroad tracks, trying to avoid eye contact with the street bums. I was no stranger to that tactic, so I decided to go for it.

The industrial section of Prague spewed black smoke into the air, making the dark night even darker, enveloping the stars in a thick soot that settled on everthing around me. Flames spat into the air from the chimneys, allowing brief glimpses of my surroundings. I stumbled once and fell on my hands and knees. When I stood up to dust myself off, I looked to see what it was I had stumbled over. There behind me was a leg poking out from under a blanket. It was cold to the touch, like ice. The blanket wasn't wrapped around the body at all, but rather just tossed on top. I wondered if the body was even alive. The chimney vomited more flames and black soot, and under one corner of the blanket I saw the face.

His eyes were dark, hollow shells. He stared off into nothing, vacantly resting on a pile of broken wood and shattered bricks. Even staring straight into his face I couldn't tell if he was alive or not, but I strongly assumed he wasn't.

I bolted. I ran for all I was worth, tearing up the ground beneath me with each foot fall. I clinched my teeth together to avoid screaming. Bones were littered here and there; I couldn't help but wonder if they were human or not. The chimney kept belching out black, ominous clouds over bright flashes of evil flames. The world had never seemed so dark.

I shivered, partially from cold but mostly from fear. I stumbled my way down the tracks. Dogs howled and barked in the distance and I suddenly had flashes in my mind of running from a pack of German Shepherds as they tracked me down and ate me for trespassing. I splashed through an open sewer and up the side of the embankment, scrambling and clawing at the hill side for something to pull myself up. The dogs sounded closer with every second. I grappled my way over the chain link fence and fell in a heap on the other side.

An hour later, I realized I was damn lucky I made it all the way back.

Bill was rightfully angry at me when he found me at 3:30 in the morning snuggled up in bed after a hot shower, sound asleep, I don't remember what was said or for how long he said it, but looking back on that frightening night, I'm sure I deserved every moment of it. What I had done was incredibly impulsive and ridiculously dangerous. I don't know exactly what I was thinking that day, if I was thinking at all.

I had been so scared and cold that night wandering around in a strange city thousands of miles from home that I didn't care how long he yelled at me, I was just happy to be back.

Until now I never told a soul about the train yard of Prague. Not even Bill.

 

.

The Sea Doo

Mom liked to brag about me when I was a teen, telling her friends at the Post Office about what a daredevil I was. I obviously got it from her, and I think that's why she enjoyed it so much. Her Utah co-workers enjoyed the days she would stop in at work on her day off to pick something up and she would happen to bring me with her. We would stop and chat a while at each of the carrier cases and I would watch them laugh together like the old friends they were. Wendy and Jo Ann were my favorite carriers other than Lynn, otherwise known as "Pee Wee" at 6'5" tall, and Dale. They weren't just my mothers friends. When I went in there, they were MY friends too.

They all decided to have an office picnic one year out at the lake. Mom and Dad had a boat that they brought out with them and we spent a day eating hot dogs over an open fire, going for boat rides, slathering up with the sun block and playing in the water. When my mother found out that Dale would be bringing his SeaDoo though, she told him ahead of time that I was her little daredevil.

"Scare her, Dale. Scare the $hit out of her," she said to him without my knowledge.

"Really," he asked. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, scare her as much as you can. She doesn't get scared of anything. Just have fun out there and abuse her a bit."

"You're sure?"

"Dale, just do it."

"Ok, Beth - you asked for it." He thought for a moment. "Just don't be mad at me for it."

Dale saw me coming up the beach and asked me if I'd like to go for a ride on the back of his Seadoo. I had never been on one so I jumped at the chance. It sounded like a lot of fun to me! For a few years I had been the only one in my family able to get up on the knee board. I had jumped many waves in the inner tube. I'd mastered the art of getting up on the water skis. I loved water sports in any form and this was one I'd never had the chance to try but always wanted to.

"When are we going," I asked Dale, ready to spring into action like a dog eager to go for a walk. I nearly pranced with excitement.

"Let me finish my burger," he mumbled through a very full mouth. Bits of honey oat hamburger bun fell out onto the sand only to be quickly snatched up by the Utah State Bird, the California Sea Gull. I always have laughed at that fact, the Utah State bird being from another state entirely.

He finished eating and it was all I could do not to drag him to the water monster waiting on the sandy strip below. We climbed on board with my mother shouting "Hang on, 'Manda," over behind me. I barely heard her. I hooked my hands into the back of Dale's life jacket and away we went.

Dale took it easy at first. He asked if I was ok, and I would shout back that I was fine and that so far it was fun. Each time that exchange of words took place, I could feel the gas revving a bit more. Pretty soon I felt like we were doing a whole 15 miles and hour. It was a very mild ride.

My Dad went screaming past in the boat and I shouted to Dale that I just knew we could catch up to him. Suddenly the challenge was on. Dale slowly started to increase speed and within a minute, we were doing around 30 miles an hour. I was squealing with delight, fully ready to go faster and overtake my Dad.

Dad killed the motor to the boat ahead as one of Mom's coworkers climbed over the side and prepared to try water skiing. Dale and I went speeding past and kept on going. We turned around just in time to see Dad taking off, creating a wake behind him. Dale goosed it, I held tight to his life jacket, and we hit the wake at around 35 miles an hour. The jet ski soared into the air higher than I thought was possible. We sailed with nothing under us but air, finally landing with an abrupt sputter and jerk as we took off through the water once more. I squealed with delight, screaming at Dale about how much fun that was and that I wanted to do it again.

He took wave after wave, increasing speed each time I squealed with delight. Finally we wiped out and both of us tumbled in a syncronized cartwheel formation over the surface. We splashed into the water and I came up laughing. The jet ski was close by and we both swam over to where it rested.

"Ok," Dale said to me when we managed to climb back onto it, "I think I'm going to let you take it out on your own for a while."

We cruised at a low speed back to the shore where Dale made a direct line to my mother. Talking with animated hand movements, I knew he was telling her the stories of our hour long ride. He asked her if it was ok for me to take it on my own for a bit, then walked over to show me how it worked. I couldn't wait to get it out in the open.

What I didn't know was exatly what they had talked about.

"I tried, Beth. I really tried," he said to my mother. "I even scared myself a few times, but I couldn't seem to scare her at all. When we wiped out, she came up laughing and I came up thankful to be alive! She's a tough kid, Beth. I don't think you have to worry about her."

"That's what worries me," she said to him. "Without being afraid, how far will she push it?"

I took the jet ski out for hours that day. I went all over that lake on a motorized vehicle - the first time in my life I had ever had something with power completely to myself. I didn't have to answer to anyone or listen to directions. There was no "Go here" or "head there" or "you're going too fast" that I expected to hear the first time I ever drove anything with a motor. I didn't have a back seat driver - it was just me and the open water of Pine View Dam. What glory!

I flirted with boys, I cruised into the docks, I wandered from finger to finger among the many that made up all of Pine View. I coasted through reeds, watched for fish, jumped boat wakes and had a glorious day.

"Hey," one of the boys of a passing boat shouted out. "Can I have a ride?" I looked around. I didn't see anyone from my group close by, so I told him to go for it. He lept over the side of his family boat and dove with grace and ease into the murky, dark water. When he surfaced, I told him that I wouldn't take him anywhere unless he was wearing a life vest. His brother tossed one in the water beside him and he pulled it on. He was very fit and was probably a basketball player in High School, tall and lean. He pulled himself onto the jet ski with ease. He wrapped his arms around my mid section and we took off like a rocket. I felt him as he smashed his face against the back of my shoulder and hung on for dear life.

"You ok," I shouted back to him after a little way out.

"Yeah," he said quietly. I slowed down.

"Seriously, are you ok," I said, turning to look at him. His face was white.

"I've never been on one of these things before," he admitted sheepishly. "I didn't know they would go that fast." I didn't dare tell him I'd never been on one before that day, too.

I took him around at a lower speed for a while, jumping wakes and exploring the lake. After about an hour I took him back to the boat and he thanked me with a kiss on the cheek.

I never really thought of myself as a tough kid before that. I was certainly adventurous, but to have scared a High School jock when I was only 15 years old by driving a Sea Doo over water - water! That substance that gives when you land on it! - really drove home a point to me. I guess most people just can't handle the adrenaline rush of it all.

I never stopped looking for that adrenaline rush. I love Zombie movies and haunted houses. I love pretending to be the toughest person in a group no matter how frightened I really am.

Mark Twain once said "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."

My story is not to say that I didn't feel fear. I wasn't numb to being afraid - but the fear made the ride more fun for me. In certain moments of extreme danger I'm smart enough to get away when needed, wise enough to protect others when that's more urgent, and determined enough to stay until I see it through to the very end whenever possible.

I wondered for the briefest of seconds if I would break my neck as I tumbled end over end, turning somersaults and cartwheels over the water beside Dale. As my feet dipped into the wave and my body twisted its fall to follow, I knew that fear had no real meaning. I would be fine, even though I had bruises on my body for weeks.

The fun outweighed the fear. The adventure outweighed the pain. The determination outweighed the danger.

That's how I live my life, one wave at a time.



.

Shack in the Woods

WARNING - THIS STORY IS NOT
FOR THE WEAK OF STOMACH.


By far I think some of the most unusual friends I had in my youth were brothers, Steve and Dan Stakely. For years I had an incurable crush on Steve, who was my age and grade. I was always boy-crazy, but my mother was convinced I would someday marry this crush. Steve and Dan’s mother was convinced equally that Dan would one day marry his crush as well. His crush just happened to me me. It made for many interesting stories involving the bus ride to and from school. At the time, I wasn’t being a very good role model, but I also didn’t realize that Dan looked up to me as much as he did.

I was a rather poor student at the time one particular adventure took place. Well, I wasn’t exactly a bad student. I was actually quite a good student, when I was at school. I had started skipping classes the year before, and eventually it elevated to entire weeks the next year. At this point, it was just a day here, a day there. I suppose I must have been about sixteen at the time, or almost that age. Dan was most likely somewhere around the age of fourteen.

In the beginning, Dan and I would just decide not get on the bus in the mornings. Instead, we would walk down to the park and meet at one particular place. From there we would decide on where to go and what to do. Sometimes we walked to Sheplers and filled out job applications. Other days we would go browsing through Media Play or Walmart. Nobody ever said anything to us about not being in school. He and I had quite a few adventures, but none so memorable as the day we decided to stay at the park on a snowy, cold, frozen day and tried to find some shelter.

Dan and I had explored the woods behind the Cinedome at the park many times. We knew the trees and the paths through them almost as well as we know our own back yards. We headed up the winding sewage creek towards the top of the hill. We climbed and scrambles our way up the muddy embankment past where the sewage pipe submerged from the sheer mud cliff. We emerged in a clearing and could see nothing around but trees, a wrecked, stripped, and rusted old mail van, and a tiny old wooden shack off in the distance.

For a moment, we lingered in the old van, neither of us wanting to do what was coming next. At this point, it was already clear to me that Dan thought I was the toughest girl he had ever known, and had taken liberty to tell me as much on several occasions. To one person, I stood out in a crowd. I was finally important to someone. I didn’t want that to change in his eyes, or my own. I’m not entirely sure if it was ego or pure stupidity that made me do what came next, but one thing that will never change is that I did something I had thought I would never do.

Dan and I picked our way across the snow dusted field, being sure to only step on the tufts of grass on alternating sides all the way up the path. With each tip toe step on the grass we tried to leave footprints indistinguishable from the grass itself. We continued this way until we reached the old wooden shack. One window looked into the building but was too high and too dirty to see into. I pulled my brand new gloves out of my pockets with frozen hands, and slipped my fingers into the leather extremities. My body heat had warmed the gloves as they snuggled deeply in my jacket pockets, and the warmth felt wonderful on my Popsicle fingertips. I clenched and unclenched my fist a couple of times in order to stretch the leather to my hand just so. When I was ready, I struck. The sixteen inch high, one foot wide pane of glass shattered.

Dan stood back in awe. His mouth hung slightly ajar, and his eyes were wide with surprise. I opened my fist inside the window and with a flat palm, pulled more of the glass out through the fresh opening. I picked the broken glass out of the back of my now serrated brand new leather glove and tossed it into a nearby bush. In my heart I knew that what I had just done went against everything I had ever been taught, but at that moment, it just didn’t matter to me. I wanted to hang on to that feeling of being important and needed. I suppose then that it was my ego getting the better of me. I wanted to remain someone who stood out in a crowd. I suppose that was the turning point. I’ve stood out now nearly every day since.

I drug an unearthed tree stump under the broken window and pulled the loose glass from the sill. Making sure I was properly covered everywhere first, I grabbed the rotten wood lining the window and shimmied into it up to my waist and looked around. The opening was so small that I would have to turn sideways to get my hips through. I was much skinnier in my youth, and looking back on this incident, I know now that I wouldn’t have been able to make this same move only a year later.

An old workbench lined the tiny wooden floored room to my left, it’s edge nearly under the window. All the way on the opposite wall on the right, an old glass-handled door remained closed. I couldn’t imagine what treasures lay just beyond that door, just beyond what I could see. Even the room I was in was filled with treasures. Old rusted tools with fifty years of dust or more were scattered across the workbench. An antique tin tool box sat on the wooden floor under me, it’s lid slightly warped to remain forever open. This was a child’s paradise, a teenager’s fantasy come true, and a history fanatic's paradise.

I tested the workbench with my left hand for stability and found it mostly trustworthy, so I slowly pulled my twisted hips through the opening and turned to my left in order to put one knee on the workbench as I pulled the other leg through the window. I felt like a gymnast performing for the circus, but somehow I made it all look graceful.

Once through and on my feet, I turned to help Dan climb inside. The wooden floor was elevated about a foot off the ground, so the window didn’t seem nearly as high from my vantage point. I peeked out and could still see the short boys blond locks poking out in every direction under his knit cap. He elevated himself on his toes, and his blue eyes came into view.

"Step up on the wood," I whispered to him. Hi hands gingerly reached for the windowsill, cautious as he should be with no gloves on.

"I’m already on it," he said with a bit of a sneer, thinking I was poking fun at his short stature. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. I pulled on his arms as he braced his feet against the wall of the shack. Somehow, he got turned around and ended up looking at the ceiling.

"Eww! What’s that," he asked, completely disgusted. I followed his gaze to the corner of the ceiling nearest the two of us. From a distance and in the natural dark, they looked like chicken drumsticks hanging on wire hooks from the ceiling. It seems like not only a weird thing to hang in a workshop or shed, but a rather gross thing to leave around anywhere until slightly molded and covered in cobwebs. I told Dan not to worry about it, as was my usual answer, and pulled him the rest of the way inside. I was never an extremely graceful person myself, but Dan’s entrance made me look like a prima ballerina. He was all arms and legs, getting tangled crazily. He landed on the floor in a pile.

As Dan looked around, I became curious about the drumsticks in the corner. I crawled cautiously onto the workbench, still not fully trusting the rotten wooden blanks. They held my weight though, and I inched closer to the dangling pieces.

I nearly screamed. I bit my tongue to avoid shouting out loud. Those weren’t just old chicken legs. They were bats that had been tied upside down from wires around their feet so long ago that the flesh was rotting off the bones. Part of the skull was protruding in the area of the mouth and the eyes were mere empty sockets of complete nightmare. They seemed to stare straight through me with complete nothingness. Just about the time I was going to jump down from the workbench and onto the floor, I saw one more hanging only inches above the window, It also happened to be only inches from my nose. The stench rolling off the rotted corpse gave away its location long before I saw it. I gulped and scrambled down from the table, not letting a syllable utter from my lips. Dan turned and looked at me.

"What’s the matter with you," he asked. "You’re white as a ghost. You feeling OK?" I didn’t say anything for a moment, but I guess the way his expression changed as he watched me that he could see the wheels turning in my head. An evil grin slowly spread across my face.
"I got us in here," I began. "Now it’s your turn." He looked puzzled at first. His eyes darted to the corner of the room and back to me again. Suddenly his face completely melted.
"No way!" he cried out. His shout echoed off the snow covered ground outside.

Much to his rejection at the thought, we searched around for something to help Dan to get what he still thought were chicken legs out of the old shack. The two of us finally decided a pair of pliers and some old wire cutters would do the trick, so I grabbed an old key chain flashlight out of my pocket and got back up on the workbench. Dan followed behind me, tools in hand.
Dan clutched the base of the mystery object with the pliers and something crunched under the pressure of his light grip. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the decaying smell something similar to that of road kill after it’s been in the sun a few days came wafting out, turning both our stomachs.
Dan couldn’t see the wire in order to cut it. I knew that would be the case, though I really resisted using my flashlight. Finally, I knew I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I tried to catch only the thin line of wire in it’s beam, but the bony toes were caught in the light. Dan made lurching noises, and for a moment, I thought he was going to burst. He rocked back on his heels and I just barely caught him before he fell off the table. Unfortunately, the light jarred in my hand when I reached for him and the dim illumination fell squarely on the now crushed head of the bat. Something like oatmeal oozed out around the pliers. Every bit of color drained from Dan’s face, and I’m sure mine was a mirror image.

Dan flung the last of the bats out the window as I stood back ’supervising’ his task. I’ve since blocked out everything in between, though glimpses of the process to get the to the opening still haunt me at times.

Dan and I met at the old shack nearly daily for a while that winter. We’d have to meet outside and I would have to help Dan in since he was too short, but it quickly became one of our favorite places.

The same day we had given flight back to the long dead bats for a few seconds, we’d explored beyond the door at the end of the workbench. The room beyond had once been a carriage house. Dirt floors had long since been cluttered with various things, but faint wheel marks could still be seen from a history long past. A pedal powered knife-sharpening wheel sat by where the double doors once opened outward. Antique brass headboards and foot boards leaned against the wall. Rusted spring-loaded animal traps hung from nails in the framework. Ancient chains covered in grit and grime dangled next to machetes on the ceiling. An old mule-pulled plow sat heavily on the ground next to the door inside. It was truly a treasure chest.

I knew Dan was as tired as I was of climbing through the tiny window opening, if not more so. My mind, ever-devious back then, came up with a plan one day.

"Hey Dan, why don’t you check out the side doors from the outside, see what they’re locked with. Maybe we can find a key and use that as our door from now on," I explained after finding an old she box full of keys under a floorboard in the small room. Delighted at the idea, he hurried out the window as fast as his fat, short body would allowed, and ran around the building to the other side of the doors. After explaining to me what the lock looked like, I began to make guesses as to which key would be the right one. I slid the keys one by one under the door, and one by one Dan tried them all and passed them back.

"I got an idea," Dan said to me, after the last key was safely back in its box. I heard him run back around he building and I met him at the window in the next room "Hand me that saw," he said, pointing to the workbench. I handed him the wood saw, not knowing exactly what he was going to do with it, and went back to the inside of the double doors as he tossed his jacket inside along the wall.

First, Dan tried to saw a bracing board in two, and when that didn’t work, decided to try the metal chain and lock that held it in place. Finally fed up with the resistance, Dan grabbed a rock, determined to smash the lock apart. All the noise he was making should have raised the dead bats from their shallow, snowy grave. Just about the time I was going to tell him to stop, to be quiet, I heard a strange voice.

"Hey Kid," a deep, growling voice yelled. "Get away from there!" Heavy footsteps outside warned me that whoever it was decided walking wasn’t getting the m to Dan quite fast enough. I heard Dan’s rock drop to the ground and I knew he was gone, running like a mad man through the woods. I was trapped inside.

There were apparently two men who had come to investigate. I could over hear them talking as they made their was around the inspection of the shed. I crawled, silent as a mouse, into the smaller room and hid under the corner of the work bench closest to the window.

"Aw, shit. Look at this, Chuck," the one who had yelled at Dan said. I didn’t need to look in order to know what he was talking about. The man was standing right over me, looking in through the window. I held my breath. "That damn kid broke the window."

"I s’pose we should nail it up before it snows again tonight," the other replied. "Let’s get a board and some nails." I heard the two start walking back the way they came and my spirits lifted. They were just about back to the double doors when I heard them pause.
"Wait," the one named Chuck paused. "What if the brat comes back?" he asked. "I better wait here while you get the stuff."

My body sprang into action before my mind had time to think. I jumped up, my head glancing off the table above me, and stood before the window. I knew without a doubt that they heard my head hit, and I didn’t have much time.

I lept into the air and twisted my body miraculously like an Olympic diver would ff a high dive and instead of diving into water, I sailed through the open window. Just before passing all the way through, I saw Dan’s only winter jacket on the floor by the wall where he had left it. It was too late. I could only pray he didn’t have any identification in it.

I landed on my hands and rolled roughly onto my back, catching a sharp stone right in the kidney. An old branch tore at my leg. I heard shouting behind me and didn’t take the time to catch my breath after the landing knocked it out of me. I pulled my feet under my sore butt and fled down through the woods, I imagine much the same way Dan had.

It wasn’t long before I caught up to Dan and passed him. My legs were much longer.

Neither of us skipped a single class in school for a month. Eventually Dan’s mother began asking where his jacket had gone. Not knowing what else to tell her, finally he just said that I had it and would get it for him. The retrieval of his jacket was the last time I ever went back up that hill in the woods, but that’s another story.

Florida Nightmare Part 2

This blog has been removed.

If you're interested in reading the original first hand account of the kidnapping, please check out the published book.  All proceeds from the book go toward helping to fight human trafficking.

Find the book here:
Detailed Pieces of a Shattered Dream

Thank you.

Florida Nightmare Part 1

This blog has been removed.

If you're interested in reading the original first hand account of the kidnapping, please check out the published book.  All proceeds from the book go toward helping to fight human trafficking.

Find the book here:
Detailed Pieces of a Shattered Dream

Thank you.

Honeybee

I worked another 12 hour shift on Saturday and was swarmed by around 1600 honeybees while there. At first, I was anything but scared. I grabbed the camera and wanted a picture of the huge swarming mass of them. I walked right up to the ball of bees in the bush with them buzzing all around my head and ears, landing on my arms and shoulders, clinging to my pants and boots. I took several photos and backed away slowly, all the bees taking off as I did. I wasn't worried about being stung, though I probably should have been worried. It would have meant hospital time for me. It was discovered a few years ago that I'm highly allergic to bees now.

My employees have learned a new respect for me though... They saw me stare fear and death in the face only to walk away without a scratch or sting.

"What are you DOING" they asked me.

"I need pictures for the incident report," I replied.

"We can do that," they said. "We wont get killed for trying."

I smiled, walked towards them, and told them I already had the pictures, it was too late. Then a bee landed on one Officer's arm and he started swinging his arms wildly. The other Officer's eyes grew wide and he backed up quickly. I knew I couldn't get these guys to get the pictures I had wanted. Besides, I often tell them I'll never ask of them anything I wouldn't do myself. They finally saw that first hand.

When the proper people sprayed the chemicals on the bees, they started dropping out of the air like little missiles. The first one that landed on my shoulder didn't effect me, but when a dozen dropped on me at once and got hung up in my hair, that was when the panic set in. I called my guys to handle the closure while I guided people around the area in a great sweeping arc. I hid under an umbrella as the shower of bees continued to rain down on the mall for a full hour afterward.

I spent the rest of the night gagging, having a hard time breathing. At first I was worried I might have been stung, but once I looked closely I discovered that I was fine. While breathing was labored due to the chemicals, had I been stung I wouldn't have been able to breathe at all.

I've had a few run-ins with Bees over the past few years. The earliest I can remember was stepping on one. Mom and Dad told me not to go outside without my shoes on, and me being about 3 years old, learned that lesson the hard way. I went crying and screaming into the house where my parents scolded me for not doing as I was told. Then my mother mixed some meat tenderizer with water into a paste and put that on my sting. She pulled out the stinger with tweezers. I'm not sure who it was, but I remember having a visitor over right then. I think it was our neighbor, who told my mom how she got rid of the pain for her children when they were stung by bees. I laid there and milked the sympathy for all it was worth.

Another time we were visiting my Dad's sister, though I fail to remember if it was Aunt Denise or Aunt Lisa. I remember the house was a large A frame house with an upstairs, and it was out in the woods, so that leads me to believe that it's more likely to be Aunt Denise, since Lisa lives in Arizona where the woods are sparse and consist of mainly shrub brush and saguaro instead of live oak and cedar. Lightening Bugs zapped through the air sporadically at the early evening hours. I would spend an hour catching as many as I could and putting them into an empty, cleaned mayonnaise jar. The jar would glow with the phosphorescence of the lovely bugs for hours after I would go to bed. We would cook marshmallows over an open fire in the back yard and make s'mores. We would play in the tree house close by. My cousins would fight over who got to play with me or my brother. Yes, now that my memory has been sparked, it was my Aunt Denise and her boys, Chad, Shawn and Jason.

I remember when we first got to the A frame house. I wanted to see every inch of it. I ran from this room to that room, looking here, going there, seeing everything I could see. When I got to the french doors upstairs that led out onto the balcony, I asked if I could go outside. As soon as I got the yes, I swung the doors open and jumped up on the chair to get a better look at everything around me.

The doors swung open and knocked down a hornets nest directly behind me. Within seconds, they were swarming everywhere, going inside the house through the open doors and climbing all over my legs and arms. They stung and bit me almost immediately and I screamed in pain. My father ran out onto the patio and started brushing them off of me in droves. They fell as he swatted this way and that. I'm sure he got stung and bitten too, but he didn't care. He picked me up and rushed me down stairs to the couch. He laid me down and picked off the remaining hornets that had continued to sting and bite any flesh they could make contact with. My memory goes fuzzy from here and I have to wonder if I didn't pass out at that point.

When my memory comes back into focus, my Aunt had made another paste with dark colored meat tenderizer and was applying it to my body in every place that had begun to swell into golf ball sized lumps. I shivered from cold and nerves, not knowing exactly what was going on.

I'm not sure if that was the moment my body got an overdose of bee stings, but many years later when I was stung by a honeybee in 2006 outside of my office at work, I was rushed to the hospital. My throat had closed up and my face was turning purple. I couldn't breathe or swallow, and my skin had started to tingle slightly like it was going to sleep. My entire arm swelled and puffed up like a bright red balloon. It was announced later on that I was very allergic to bees and that I should avoid them at all cost from then on.

There have been a few times when I would bail out of my car and leave it abandoned on the side of the road because a bee had flown in through the open roof or a rolled down window. I've left my home for hours on end because one had gotten through a small hole in the window screen. And yet, here I was on Saturday, walking straight into the Lion's Den just to snap a few pictures.

Sometimes I can't help but feel that I do these things in order to prove a point. I want to make sure that I can still be a dare devil the way I was as a kid, riding a jet ski for the first time at top speeds or breaking into an old wooden shack in order to look tough for someone else. My arm was covered in bees on Saturday and I didn't stop approaching the swarming, squirming mass that had accumulated in the bushes and trees near by.

Then again, sometimes I know I don't do these things to impress anyone but myself. It was perhaps a stupid move, but I did it to prove to myself that I could. I'm not the bravest person in the world, and sometimes I fear stupid things - like glass elevators - but I make up for it in my own way.

Brave or stupid - that's me. Sometimes there's a fine line between the two. Sometimes I tread on that line like a child not knowing when fire is dangerous.

I've recently acquired the nickname Honeybee by someone - and to date it's my most favorite nickname I've ever been given. I smile each time I read it or hear it spoken. I remember the times in my life I've been stung and how much it hurt. Bees have their purpose though, just as everything else in the Circle of Life does. They can hurt us if we scare them or approach them in the wrong way, and yet they can provide us with such wonderful things as pollinated flowers and sweet honey. Maybe that's why I like the nickname. I can hurt those around me as a self defence mechanism when needed, but most of the time I go about my life as merrily as a little bee, trying my best to get things done and leave something positive behind once I'm gone.

I live up to my nickname, Honeybee. At least, I'd like to think so.

The Roach with Soul

On January 30th of 2007, Pete and I went to a blues club in a shady neighborhood with one of his old friends from college. The evening was warm and light for being January, and I instantly liked his old friend Heath. Heath was a funny guy constantly cracking jokes and pushing the envelope. Finally the hostess seated us at the only available table in the place, a small table so close to the band that the snare drum reverberated in my head. I couldn't help but smile. I was already having a glorious night.

We hadn't been sitting even five minutes when I frightened Pete with the look of pure panic on my face. That smile I couldn’t get rid of was gone.

I was sitting next to Pete’s right side when I saw it out of the corner of my eye…

Crawling on his shoulder was one of the largest roaches I’ve ever seen in my life. The thing was monstrous. It was no thinner than my large toe, and the length was around that of my thumb! Horrified, all of the color drained from my face. Pete turned to look at me just then and grew very sober, seeing the look on my face and the ghostly complexion I knew was visible to anyone within sight.

“What’s wrong?” I stood there, watching the roach crawl up his arm towards his neck. It changed direction and went over the bak of his shoulder instead. Hoping it would find its way to the back of the seat, I said nothing. “What is it? What’s the matter?” He kept prompting me. Stalling for time, I began to stutter slightly. Finally, the roach reared its ugly head on the other shoulder and began working its way down towards the suit pocket on his left pectoral. That’s when I squealed.

At this point, Pete’s prompting me had gotten the attention of Heath and his lady friend Brook, as well as some of the neighboring tables. Heath didn’t see what I had seen and thought instead the look on my face was one of complete rage. He said later on that it looked like I had it in my mind to kill Pete – or at least severely maim him. At my tiny squeaky squeal, Brook followed my gaze and saw the ugly bug. Her face widened in alarm and she began to squeal as well. Finally I spoke up.

“Pete,” I said calmly and slowly, “You need to remove your jacket,” I paused, and then shouted “NOW!” I finished quite a bit more forcibly. Understanding a situation of urgency from my expression, Pete shed his jacket faster than I’ve ever seen him remove any article of clothing. He danced a bit, trying to shake off his invisible attacker. I shuddered when I didn’t see it on his jacket anymore and immediately picked up my feet from the floor. For the rest of the night I sat on top of my feet, not caring that I was in a dress.

Heath got a big kick out of me squealing at a bug like that, so Pete jumped to my rescue.

“I never told you,” Pete started. “You’ll never believe it – she found a spider in my room once. Ya know what she did with it? It was a big, ugly, hairy Wolf spider.”

“What DID she do? Scream?” Heath chuckled to himself.

“No,” Pete sat up straight and proud. “She scooped it up in her hand and carried it outside to let it go.”

I earned new respect that day...


(Photo taken at work around that same time, me blownig kisses to Martha the Chilean Fire Spider, the Office Mascott)