Two years ago, Cindy and I were starting to flirt with the idea of writing. Observing the void of quality children’s books that dealt candidly with money, we decided to develop a few concepts together and see what we could do. We agreed to meet a week later and exchange some thoughts.

Seven days passed and stories were born. There were five tales told that night. One about a girl named Promise; the same poem that two revisions later became The Eighth Wonder of the World. Another was about a young boy who discovers the miracle of compound interest while on a fishing trip with grandpa.

A year passed and the story stayed at six pages. Then, last October, when someone close to me told me they were getting their first book published by a major publisher and that they would be happy to pass on anything I had to their agent, I grabbed my pen and got to work. We’d already closed shop at the preschool and the hunger was rolling through my belly. I couldn’t afford to let opportunity pass.

Though I’d already written a book, it was more like 600 pages of brainstorm than it was a page turner. I love that book, learned to write by writing that book, and someday will revel in the chance to revisit that book, but it was a mammoth sized mess I couldn’t afford to get tangled in.

I needed something I could write with jet fuel ink.

I remembered the story about the boy and his grandfather, then paired it with my own experience in elementary school, shilling classroom contraband like candy and Garbage Pail Kids. That book, I believed, would practically write itself.

It did. I rolled right through the rough draft. Each day I’d sent Cindy what I’d written and every night she’d ask for more.

The story came together in no time. It’s about a fifth grade boy, Kelly, who learns a lesson from his grandpa that sends him on an entrepreneurial elementary school adventure. Kelly must steer clear of the school administration, while continuing to think up clever ways of turning the school playground into his piggybank. The book is a lot of fun. It’s twelve chapters, each chapter a month of the year, the entire book taking Kelly from one summer to the next.

I finished a second edit and passed it to the friend just days before she had a meltdown. To this day I’ve no idea whether she actually had a book or agent.

Disenchanted, I allowed the manuscript to lay dormant for nearly a year.

Cindy told me it was good. Really good. But she loves me and it is occasionally difficult for me to endow her compliments with the same gravity as someone who is entirely objective, as unfair as that may be. And the last thing I wanted to do was start the querying process. At the time, I believed focusing my energies on Writer Dad was the smartest strategy, so Penny to a Million became just another one of those things – 90% finished and permanent resident at the Bottom Drawer Estates. Fortunately, about two months back, Cindy convinced me to get feedback from others. I did.

Penny will be in print by the end of this year.

At least if everything goes according to plan. This is Collective Inkwell’s first of many titles and Dave and I will both be learning as we go.

Just as we have serialized Available Darkness, fresh installments of Penny to a Million will be published each Friday at Children Write the Future. Today we published an introduction to the story. Next week is the first installment. Below is the same introduction on the site today. Hope to see you there next Friday!

Kelly McCannlis’s world changed one August afternoon while sitting next to his grandfather in the middle of a lake. It was in that moment that Kelly first learned that anything was possible.

After a lifetime of watching his parents count every penny, Kelly decides he wants a different, better future for himself and comes up with a plan to take a single penny all the way to a million dollars.

• Will Kelly’s parents allow him to carry out his plan?
• Will Kelly be able to keep his principal and the teachers at his school from finding out what he’s up to?
• Will Kelly be able to make all his dreams come true?

Find out next Friday, and every Friday to follow with a fresh weekly installment of Penny to a Million.

Writer Dad

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This is an excerpt from the September chapter of my Four Seasons book which will come out in full sometime next year.

Enjoy!

It took Dean three decades and two divorces to finally realize he’d gathered his life’s most valuable lessons from the crusty old timer with no hair and two perfect rows of teeth who had lived right across the street his entire childhood. He was always there, living in the neighborhood’s only pink house, always ready to give him a meal or a scolding, whichever one he needed most. His own mother barely did the one, and though she did the other, it was seldom from the right side of sobriety.

It had been a decade since Dean had seen Solomon. Most days he thought of the old man at least once, other times he would go a month without a thought. Sometimes, Saul barely strayed from his thoughts the entire day.

Dean had waited until about five minutes after graduation before getting the hell out of Dodge. He managed to finish high school, but did so while sleeping a few hours each night on the floor of his own apartment after pulling grave yard at the gas station. He lived in a single room above a garage, rented by a kind family of four who pretended not to know he was only seventeen. Once the caps were thrown in the air, Dean was a dust cloud. He loved Solomon, though not enough to ignore the proximity to his mother, and felt bad about leaving his fifteen year old sister behind, but Maya was whip smart and plenty capable of taking care of herself. Dean saw his sister through high school and college, always tending to her every need. It was at a distance for the first couple of years, but had always been as close as she wanted since.

After trading coasts and spending the next couple of tattered chapters of his life building a thriving business and destroying a marriage, twice and each time in that order, Dean finally returned to California and settled right on the sand of the Pacific.

He could have easily bought a first class ticket for him and all three of the friends he still spoke to in Jersey, but chose to drive cross country instead, stopping for a day or two in every other state and usually at a waffle house. The three day drive took nearly a month and when Dean was finally racing the sun into the edges of the golden state for the first time in fifteen years, something inside him did a little dance. He realized he was excited to be going home, and that home might not be such a bad word after all.

Though he should have gassed up before crossing the Arizona border into Cali, Dean found it difficult to pass a perfectly good chance to race against a dipping red line. He ended his trip in a fit of laughter, slapping the steering wheel with nothing but fumes in the tank, parked beside a pump at the same station where he’d mapped out maybe two-thirds of his future dreams. Dean walked into the station and saw his old boss a second later, fifteen years later and looking thirty years older. His boss had always been kind, working his fingers bloody for thirty years with little hope of retirement.

After a quick handshake and So how’ve you been? Dean offered him twice what the station was worth, in cash, and even threw in the faded black F 150 sitting idle by the pump. “You’re responsible for filling her up,” Dean said with a smile, tossing his old boss the keys.

This was more than a homecoming for Dean, it was a reboot. He had spent the last decade and a half with his eyes fixed just enough on his future to make him turn a deaf ear toward his present. Now something inside him was stirring. It was high time to reconcile all that lay behind him with everything still sitting in front.

He was back in town for three days when one of his best buddies from high school, Jake, came into the station for a pack of cigarettes…

Writer Dad

If you’d like more of this story, or any of the eight which proceeded it, please sign up (for free) to the newsletter. I’d love to have you!

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I‘m not sure what I’ll do with this, or even where it came from, but I really wanted to share.

Last Friday my muse tapped me on the shoulder and begged me to write this. I was hard at work on something else, but she is a playful minx and I try to indulge her whenever possible. Fortunately, my schedule could accommodate the diversion. The first stanza rattled around in my head and was quickly followed by the rest.

The rhyme tackles a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately, especially as Cindy and I continue to develop content for Children Write the Future, though it is admittedly not very well explored. I’m sure at some point it will turn into something more pointed and specific, but for now I am happy with how wonderfully unexpected and off schedule this little rhyme was.

Enjoy!

Tomorrow is coming, one spin of the globe
More future to filter, new problems to probe
Education is lacking – now cracking and crumbled
We started so strong, but then somewhere we stumbled

Old backwards feels forwards, threads fraying toward fail
What once was ahead is now trapped as our tail
Someone get a medic, don’t dally. Go run!
From daycare to college – knowledge 911

Penicillin’s for killing a viral disease
But reality’s gravity’s dropped us to our knees
What sorta solution or fusion of fixes
Can take our twos and our threes, multiply ‘em to sixes?

It’s a lot of monotony – this mind-numbing stage
Keeping planet potential locked up in a cage
There’s interest that’s nested inside of the heads
Of millions of children, so long as it spreads

Mom and dad need to get a bit mad and then moving
If we expect to collect a situation improving
What will our kids think of the present presented
If it isn’t what it should be, then won’t they resent it?

It’s time to get going. No reason to stall
Let’s bust down each brick in the barrier wall
That’s casting the rules of our schools in antique
Dulling our tools, slowly turning us weak

We’re procrastinating and waiting for why?
So much of our NOW we’ve yet to apply
If we don’t get going, adopting new skills
Then pillage the village and head for the hills

Without a revision, division’s impending
It’ll come out of nowhere and feel never ending
Demand more today, so tomorrow will double
With twice the advantage and half of the trouble

Yes we can do it, but only together
All of us standing no matter the weather
Draught, flood, tsunami; arid, rain, snow
One-hundred and ten to well forty below

If we all command it, then it will be done
Four faces, all aces, our future is won
Do all you can and do it your best
If everyone follows, that takes care of the rest

Writer Dad

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On a day so calm, under sky so blue,
Just like in a fairy tale, though this story’s true,
A mommy and daddy brought a girl to their world.
She was tiny and perfect. Her small body curled

Into a comma until she stretched out;
Giggling, and sniffling, and wiggling about.
Her eyes were so bright, her skin like fresh cream.
She was the beguiling answer to their beautiful dream.

She looked as full as a promise, so that’s what they said,
When they named her that night, as they lay in their bed.
They looked on their newborn, with nothing but love,
As pure and as still as that blue sky above.
A flawless gift given, she demanded respect.
Mom and Dad must be mindful, and know what to expect.

They were both wise, to indeed understand:
All life is exciting, though all life can’t be planned.
It can be prepared for, so that’s what they’d do.
I know this story’s fantastic, but it can work for you.

Living is quite costly, and they shouldn’t spend too much,
Buying things they didn’t need, and drifting further out of touch.
Savings are important, especially when you’re young –
If you wish to climb life’s ladder without slipping down a rung.

As Promise grew, her needs would too. Pressure would surely mount.
Before we get too busy, let’s pause and start to count:
College, car, a wedding day; plus, Mom and Dad could bet,
Promise would need at least ten things, not invented yet.

Now here’s the rub – the problem large, at which Mom and Dad were staring:
How could they do what should be done and keep their daughter caring?
They wanted Promise to have the World, while staying nice and gracious;
Like living in a one room flat, and thinking that it’s spacious.

They did not want to spoil her, or cause her head to swell.
No, Promise must be humble and she must treat others well.
They would keep her savings secret, until she could understand,
That the finest things in life are those you gain with your own hand.

The road was long in front of them. They would have to start their walk.
Mom and Dad had a cup of tea and a long and winding talk.
They had to save more money, but they had none left to save.
They would need to change some habits, and financially behave.

A little isn’t much until time prods it toward a lot.
Just keep adding, rain or shine, and soon that’s what you’ve got.
Mom and dad, each one had, some things they could improve.
It’s the little things that mean a lot when you work to fiscally improve.

Dad went to the Jolt-N-Bolt to help him stay awake.
He loved their roasted coffee and the muffins they would bake.
Mom bought lots of magazines and fancy haircuts too.
She quit with both these luxuries; the least that she could do.

Day by day, Mom and Dad, gathered all their extra cash.
At the end of the month, a BIG surprise, look how much they had stashed.
Three hundred bucks, and yes I know, it sure sounds like a lot.
But let’s add lots of time on top, and then see what we’ve got.

When you gather lots of money, your horizons are uncurled.
That’s why compound interest is the Eighth Wonder of the World.
At three-hundred a month, for five straight years, they now had twenty-five grand.
Let’s not get too excited. Instead, let’s watch these funds expand.

Three-hundred a month, was now one-fifty a week, because their interest grew.
What an amazing secret, they thought. What if everybody knew?
Mom and dad kept squirreling dough in all the falling years,
Saving money helped them shed unnecessary fears.

They never gave attention to what everybody knew.
Especially with their Promise watching everything they do.
They never spent their dollars on a heap of useless stuff.
When their Promise asked for more, they said, “No, you’ve had enough.”

Let’s skip ahead now, several years with Promise nearly grown.
Mom and Dad are perfectly proud with the qualities she has shown.
A humble girl, just as they wished. They had taught her many things –
Like how to think intelligent, and how to spread her wings.

Promise was a modest girl, always willing to work hard.
She never failed to pay herself, with her own debit card.
She looked ahead, toward her brightest future yet to come.
It was almost time to leave for school, and that’s a mighty sum.

But Promise insisted on paying it all – every tuition bill
(Even though she was clueless she was worth a quarter mil).
Just three-hundred a month could add up to that? How could that possibly be?
It’s the miracle of compound interest. Keep on reading and you’ll see.

Let’s jump ahead seven years. Promise is twenty-five.
She is brilliant, bold, and beautiful. She is vividly alive.
She had found someone with whom she wanted to share forevermore,
But weddings were expensive; a fact that she could not ignore.

Promise had saved just enough for the day inside her head.
She wanted things to remain quite simple, at least that is what she said.
Promise still had no clue what lay quietly in wait –
One half a million dollars, by her pending wedding date.

Our tale concludes with another five years piled on our story.
Promise and her husband had worked to finalize their glory.
They had a house and baby too, a descendent of their own.
Someone they could love and cherish until he was all grown.

Promise was an angel. She was diligent and kind.
Her family’s future never strayed too far outside her mind.
Mom and Dad were ready to tell and fully confident,
That thirty years of saving had been three decades nicely spent.

Just three-hundred a month, every month, in Promise’s account,
Had blossomed, bloomed and burgeoned into a generous amount.
For Promise, and her family, the sum was oddly strange.
Living life was mostly a cinch with a million bucks and change.

Writer Dad

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There are many things I love about working with David Wright, but his sense of humor might just be my favorite. This showed up in my inbox yesterday, right out of nowhere and connected to nothing. I can’t stop laughing.

Starting today, and running for the next several weeks, Dave and I are running a series over at the Inkwell on our first year online. Today’s post is “The Lies Every New Blogger Believes.” Check it out!

Today is also the first of our daily posts over at Children Write the Future. We’re kicking off our Monday – Friday publishing with a post about “How to Write Stories With Your Children.” Enjoy, and see you tomorrow!

Writer Dad

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Our children will write the future. What they write will be largely up to us.

Cindy and I have been working on our Children Write the Future site for a really… er, REALLY long time now. Setback after setback, it’s sat in our lab, patiently waiting for the time when it could have the attention it so deserves.

One of our biggest desires is to build a high-quality online home where young writers and their parents can comfortably gather.

Starting this coming Monday, Children Write the Future will publish a continuously evolving stream of content, five days a week. However, we both believe it is often easiest to learn with consistency in place.

For the time being, the Children Write the Future schedule is as follows.

• Monday: We will start each week with writing tips for young and emerging writers that will both encourage them to become their best writers while also giving them the tools they need to make their writing as sharp as it can be.
• Tuesday: A writing prompt will be given each week to get those creative juices flowing.
• Wednesday: On Wednesday’s, Cindy and I will write a post together, discussing the most common roadblocks to writing, simple solutions, best practices and emerging trends.
• Thursday: Our 7 year old daughter Mia is going to be publishing her work each Thursday, along with the occasional guest post from another child. There are also whispers that Lucas Bright may make an appearance or two.
• Friday: A serialized excerpt from an upcoming book. Our first selection is, Penny to a Million, my first chapter book going to print, and a topic I’ll be talking a lot more about shortly.

We’ve also decided to gather each week’s information and publish it in a weekly newsletter, in an easy to digest format delivered directly to our subscriber’s inbox. It is 100% free and sent out each Friday.

You can sign up for the newsletter below right now. Otherwise, we’d love to see you at the site next Monday!

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“Dammit!”

I knew I should have pulled off sooner.

According to my directions I’m still a few miles shy of the Kodak Theater. I’m late for the conference, lost, and the emergency light on my fuel gauge has been lit for ten minutes.

I look left, then straight ahead, both directions showing nothing but a sea of stalled metal and red lights. I sigh, flick my blinker, then turn the steering wheel of the old Sienna right, cursing myself in every word I know in my native tongue, plus a few I know in others.

I shouldn’t have left Long Beach without gassing up.

I thought I could make it, left home with more than a quarter tank and only 30 miles to go. It was early, but LA traffic can be murder and I wanted to get into the heart of the city before the arteries clogged. The last 90 minutes spent at near standstill had reduced the tank to fumes. Now I was winding my way through the canyons of Mulholland Drive without direction in the vain hope I’d stumble upon a gas station before the Sienna started to sputter.

I suddenly smiled.

I remembered my miracle phone came complete with GPS. I pulled to the side of the road, which apparently angered the man in the black Escalade who gunned his engine and sat on his horn as he passed me.

I picked up the phone and hit the MAPS app, typing the word gas into the search field. A small map of the city appeared with one pin for me along with several other pins for gas stations dotted around my proximity, the closest of which was 0.4 miles away.

0.4 miles away!

It was almost spitting distance, but also in a place I never would have looked. Five minutes later and I was topping my tank and typing “Kodak Theater” into the Map. A neat blue line showed me exactly how to get from my A to B.

At lunch, I decided to get out of the theater and off for a walk. The streets of Hollywood are amusing after all. The Kodak is where the Academy Awards are held and sits directly next to the Mann’s Chinese Theater, where a riot of costumed panhandlers gather for passing attention. That day I saw Batman, Captain America, Shrek, Darth Vadar and Jack Sparrow, and that was just while I was descending the stairs. I stood on the corner and took out my phone. I knew where I wanted to go, just not how to get there. After listening to countless people over the previous two weeks telling me I needed to read Gary Vaynerchuck’s Crush It, I’d  finally decided to go to the book store and buy it.

I typed “Borders” into the map and it blinked back with a route, a half mile away.

Of all the things I expected to love about the iPhone, the Map feature wasn’t even on my radar. Perhaps it’s because my first several years behind the wheel were spent doing deliveries and as a result I’ve driven tens of thousands of miles while having to navigate my next move on the fly, or maybe it’s that I’ve lived in the same area my entire life. Could be I’m a dude and therefore allergic to asking for directions. For whatever reason, I love that now when I need directions, there’s a genie in my pocket that will help me and never tell anyone I needed to know.

Thanks for keeping my secret.

Writer Dad

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“The iPhone is the most sophisticated, outlook-challenging piece of electronics to come along in years. It does so many things so well and all so pleasurably.”
~ David Pogue, US technology writer as Apple’s new iPhone hits US shelves June 2007.

I’ve hedged on this post for a while. You see, I really don’t want to be that guy. I’m rather private about such things, and don’t think anyone needs to know what type of phone I slip in my pocket. One of the first things I did the day I got the phone was go into the settings so I could remove the little thingy that says, “sent from my iPhone” and sent an email to Dave asking if it showed up.

Thing is, I’ve been wanting an iPhone since they were only a whisper. As you may know, I have a borderline fetish for shiny products made by Apple and back when the iPhone existed only as rumor, I kept tab on the blather daily. I watched Steve Jobs give the keynote announcing Cupertino’s newest wonder five minutes after it went live, then made Cindy watch it with me later that night.

Unfortunately for me, the iPhone over delivered. It was far more phone than I could ever justify at the time. I ran a preschool and needed to check my email once a day at the most. Besides, I was a half solar system away from being able to afford a $500 phone, the cost for awesome when first unveiled. The last two and a half years have been kind to my needs. Now the iPhone is only $200 and I check my email in between blinks.

Anyone who knows me well has seen me get overhyped on something only to get woefully deflated once I experience it. This happens often with movies, but holds true with many other things as well. After a year and a half waiting for an iPhone, was it even possible for it to live up to my expectations?

I don’t think there’s ever been anything without a beating heart that’s managed to impress me more. The iPhone isn’t just the most remarkable piece of technology I’ve ever personally seen, I believe it is in many ways the future.

There’s something inevitable about the iPhone. It just works, and I believe certain elements of the gadget will not only make their way into the design of nearly every future phone to follow, but in operating systems in general. When I use the iPhone, it is easy for me to imagine Apple’s followup to OS X as a touch screen operating system based on the roots of everything the company has learned in designing their pocket device from the ground up.

I LOVE that everything on my desktop is synced in my pocket. I love that I have full access to every document I own at any time. But more than that, I love that iPhone knows how to volley with my brain. The iPhone operates on instinct and that is a remarkable thing.

I do believe there is a danger in having such a powerful tool in society’s pocket, but I’ll talk about that another time, perhaps next week. For now my iPhone is still shiny and I want to wax poetic as long as I can. I could go on and on (and to be honest, on and on some more) but you’ve been patient enough for today.

Tomorrow I’ll tell a story about how I got to use it’s awesomeness to save my hide last week in real life.

Writer Dad

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Today’s Deja Vuesday/old favorite takes us back to one year ago when some punk ass kid was outside my house uglifiying my corner more than it already was. In the year that’s passed, the neighborhood has continued its decay of comfortable apathy. It’s sad really; what could be one of the more romantic rows of our beautiful city, lined with vintage houses and hard working families has been mostly left to fester and rot.

Hopefully the sun will shine brighter on this zip code on some once upon a someday.

Enjoy!

“Cindy, I need you!” I’m out the door before she can answer, feet over the fence three seconds later.

“Hey!” I yell.

I stop in front of both of them, but grab the bigger one by the shirt as he’s walking away. He’s holding a fist full of labels swiped from the post office. A kindergartner’s logic paints his paws as red as the stop sign he just slapped a label on.

He shrugs me off and starts to walk off, his friend a beat behind. I grab his shirt, pull him toward me, then sidestep in front. “You’re going to clean that off, or you’re gonna wait with me until the cops get here.”

He stares.

I stare back.

The vandal’s a big kid, not used to being challenged. He’s somewhere between fifteen and seventeen, about six foot two. Maybe two-hundred and fifty pounds. He’s got about seventy-five pounds on me, but I’ve the advantage of an inch, and I press it on him like it’s the peak of a mountain.

“Two choices.”

He shrugs me off and gives me his shoulder, but I maneuver back in front. Silent, I produce my phone and hit the number for police, non emergency, our neighborhood enough decayed that the number is immediately accessible.

“Fine,” he says, walking toward the stop sign, “but it don’t come off.”

“It will come off.  The last time I scraped one of those stickers, it took me about half an hour. Though I’m probably faster than you.”

He stares, hate boiling.  ”I don’t have to do this,” he says.

“Then don’t.”

He stands on tip toe, and peels the sticker from the sign. When it’s gone, he scrapes the what’s left with the scraps of his nails. Every peer is peering, countless eyes are peeking from windows, trees, and alleys.

I stand on my corner, arms folded, watching him work, enjoying it far more than when I’m the one scraping. It took three years to get the four way stop sign put on our corner, and all of two days to get it tagged.

“I bet you wouldn’t have done that if your mama was watching,” I say.

“I just did it while my grandma was watching,” he boasts. There is genuine pride in his face, though it is clearly masking a different emotion.

“I hope she’s watching right now.”

The stop sign is shining and he turns to leave. “Don’t forget the trash can,” I said pointing to the can on the corner.

The small trash can came from the city. We first petitioned and then waited two years for its delivery. The trash can is our responsibility. We wipe it down and dump it every Friday. Yes, it is a filthy job, but still preferable to the era when we didn’t have the can and people used our yard, sidewalk and hedges instead. Since we’ve had the can, it’s suffered graffiti, frequent beatings with a baseball bat and intermittent detonations from fireworks stockpiled during the Fourth of July weekend. At the moment, I’m looking at a postal sticker splayed across the side. I didn’t see my new friend do it and don’t know for a fact he was the culprit, but it matters to me not at all.

He continues to stare, hatred now mingled with defeat, then peels the sticker from the trash can. It comes off easy. Just like they always do. I let him leave, but not without a final word. “You need to show respect around my property.”

“Which one’s yours?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yeah,” he sneers.

“The whole corner,” I say.  ”Anything in eyesight of my kids.”

He walks away and I turn back to the house.

I’m being watched by Cindy, what feels like the entire neighborhood, and our final client of the day standing on our porch and waiting to pick up his son. I wonder what he’s thinking, but then I see the applause on his face and meet it with a smile, relief deep in my bones.

We live in an ancient houses in the oldest part of our city. The neighborhood was overcrowded to start with and has continued to brim. We nurture our corner each day and have helped it to improve  since we planted a flag in our preschool three years back.

Neighborhoods are ecosystems of life, filled with all types of people. Life advances with effort and deteriorates with apathy. Income means nothing and manners are free. I believe in my neighborhood (always have), but the mothers and fathers of today should be paying more attention to the mothers and fathers of tomorrow.

Writer Dad

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I‘m so excited for a brand new Monday, a new week of opportunity to catch up after the duo of conferences and raging illness that chased them like an angry banshee. I’m much better now, but it’s been a while since I felt that beat.

I normally think of sick as involving lots of liquids in plenty of places, but this was a different and rather dry sort of agony. I felt as though someone took my bones and replaced them with pain while an army of tiny spiders with fire for blood laid their eggs in the meat of my throat.

I went to dinner with my friend Jimmy after the conference on Wednesday. Jimmy was my brother growing up, but I now see him about as often as I buy a new car. Jimmy owns a production company and works in Hollywood. I have two children and live in Long Beach. Our worlds orbit in affection, but rarely intersect. Wednesday was awesome; we were in the same city at the same time and a dinner date was as easy as a phone call.

We sat at our table until I was sure I had waited out the traffic, a good call considering the same trip that had taken me two hours and ten minutes the day before took me thirty-two minutes that night. I got home, went to bed smiling, and woke up the next day feeling as though I’d fallen from the tree of torment and been slapped in the face by every branch on the way down.

And that’s the way it was for the next two days. I started feeling slightly better on Saturday morning, though not enough to go forward with my earlier plans for Halloween. My friend Roberto called to ask when we’d be over and I said we’d be sending a triangle of family instead of a square. After fifteen minutes or so of feeling like I was telling him the Great Pumpkin didn’t exist, and him promising me I could lie on the couch and do nothing while he made me tea for my throat that was sure to make me feel like I was being kissed by angels, I agreed to come over as long as I didn’t take a turn for the worse.

By the time of departure I felt no better or worse and didn’t want to disappoint anyone, so I climbed into the car as passenger rather than driver and we were off to Halloween. Fortunately, I didn’t have to dress up. Going along with the Star Wars kick my kids have been on, we all went as a favorite character. Cindy and Mia were both different versions of Leia. Max was an awesome little Darth, with a helmet about nine times to big for his tiny face. He swam in it like Rick Morannis as Dark Helmet in Spaceballs. I went as an all purpose Jedi, my costume consisting of the most comfortable bottoms in my dresser below a well worn chocolate colored cotton tee, all wrapped in a bathrobe.

I was bummed to miss out on the trick-or-treating. I’ve always loved it, never really grown out of it, and each year feel like an old fogey for thinking the holiday just isn’t the same as it used to be. But it was awesome to lie on the couch listening to friends and family having fun. I was grateful for the warmth of the house and happy I didn’t decide to stay home and end up missing it.

After the trick-or-treating ended, I fell into what were two of the longest hours of my life. My full sick came back to stare me in the eyes, demanding to know who I thought I was that I could leave the house just because it was Halloween. My skin started to burn over my icy cold insides as my bones rattled beneath the blanket. All four of my limbs felt like they were being pulled apart by wild bucking horses and you could have easily filled a soup bowl by ringing out my tee-shirt.

Every minute felt like ten until time finally fell back into its normal rhythm. Some sudden victory was apparently won inside the depths of my body and a fraction of my strength returned.

Though my throat is still raw and it does feel as though planes are trying to land on a runway between my ears, I am otherwise fine. I feel reasonably strong and eager for the week.

Halloween was as awesome as it could have been considering and I’m already excited for next year!

Writer Dad

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