Photo © 2008 “that_james” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

At the Museum of Science in Boston, the last time I was there, they had a display of cockroaches, big ones. (Similar to the display pictured here, which is from the London Zoo.) Even though the buggies were behind plastic, I felt an urgent need to get out of there as fast possible.

My phobia of bugs (except for spiders, which don’t bother me much at all, except that I don’t want to get bitten)… My fear of bugs might stem from my childhood. I spent most of my growing years living in an old, yellow house on the side of a hill. A lot of pleasant memories are attached to that house, and a few creepy ones. Each year, for example, we were attacked by a hoard of ants of various sizes. Mostly, we saw the normal, black, carpenter ants, which I learned to live with and to kill on sight. We set down ant traps sometimes, in a never-ending struggle against these tiny invaders.

But we also got other kinds of ants from time to time, too. On one occasion, I pulled a box of cereal out of the cupboard and poured myself a bowl. The cereal was laced with hundreds (or maybe thousands) of tiny, brown-black ants only a millimeter or two long— I don’t know what kind they were, and I never want to see them again. (Fortunately, I can still eat cereal, but I’m religious about wrapping up the bag and closing the box securely when I put it away.)

Jim “Suldog” Sullivan’s tale of The Ant & the Dishwasher reminded me of this and a couple more of my own. And unlike Jim, I do not hate to kill insect. (Shudder.)

One night when our elder daughter C was very young, I walked into the kitchen of our upstairs apartment, probably to get a late-night snack. Unfortunately, instead, I found the kitchen sink absolutely covered with black, carpenter ants. They were marching into the kitchen from a tiny crack around the back door, straight across the wall to the sink, and then returning via another path lower on the wall.

I freaked. And as I often do when I freak, I searched the Internet for a solution. I discovered that these ants can destroy houses if they move in, though they are otherwise harmless to humans, except as pests. And more importantly, I discovered that the best way to get rid of them is probably just to get rid of whatever brought them into the house. They like sweet, fattening snacks, and they need water. Indeed, that evening, we had sliced open a muskmelon, and remains of the rind were still sitting on plates around the sink and resting in the garbage under the sink. And the sink itself was full of still-dirty dishes from dinner. I was sure that this is what drew the mass of ants into our kitchen.

I instituted a new rule (at least for a few days): Each night before bed, the sink was to be cleaned and the garbage taken out. Also, the wall where the ants had entered, I wiped it down with a solution that one web site had recommended, to destroy the ants’ pheromone trails.

And then I waited.

A few scouts. I killed them. Nothing more. I understand that the smell of dead ants encourages other (still living) ants to stay away.

Fast forward a few years. The Little One had been born, and we had moved into the bigger apartment downstairs. And the fruit flies came, en masse. They started to become a nuisance. Again, the Internet came to the rescue. I set up small, simple traps made of sugar-water mixed with a tiny bit of dish soap. The sugar-water draws the flies, because it’s a source of food for them. Usually, they land on top of the water, their tiny little feet acting like a seaplane’s pontoons. They drink their fill and fly off. However, the soap reduces the surface tension of the water, so that instead of floating, they sink, drown, and die die DIE.

But reading about this tiny species of fly, I became convinced we had an infestation somewhere, and unless I could remove the source of the infestation, none of my efforts to eliminate the flies would succeed. Fruit flies breed on sweet, decaying food. They can even make a nest out of a dropped apple core or a spill of ketchup. And at the time, we had two small children, who I’m sure could easily have left somewhere in the house a suitable medium in which they could breed. And that could be anywhere. I didn’t know where to begin looking, and I found nothing.

… until the flies became numerous enough that I could tell where they were most concentrated.

Some time earlier, we had bought the girls a play kitchen sink, with a little plastic faucet and plastic drawers and cabinets. It sat in the kitchen not too far from our grown-up kitchen sink. Both sinks were clean. But the little plastic faucet had come off of the play kitchen sink, because one of the plastic parts had broken off inside the moulded plastic sink body. Yeah, whatever. It’s plastic. It’s a toy. We had simply slid the faucet back into the hole where it belonged, even though it could now slide out again. Good enough for play, right?

Except that some little girl had clearly removed the plastic faucet, inserted leftover sandwich, and replaced the faucet. That hid the deed well enough so that none of us noticed, but not so well that the fruit flies couldn’t figure it out. I noticed that the flies seemed to congregating around the toy sink. Then that they were crawling under and around the faucet. I pulled the faucet out, and— Phewee! I was hit with the stench of flourishing yeast, as well as a barrage of fruit flies, suddenly freed from their hiding place.

Fortunately, that was good news. The plastic sink went outside, along with its passengers. The fruit-fly traps eliminated some of the last remaining stragglers, and the rest died.

But now, whenever I see a fruit fly, I wonder whether it just stowed away on a banana, or whether it’s planning on having babies.

-TimK

photo by "dragonflysky" on Flickr; © 2007 CC BY-NC 2.0

I have simple tastes. I could survive on soup and salad, and an occasional hot dog, and be happy. I need a roof over my head, companionship, and an Internet connection (because that’s business).

Nonetheless—to answer Jamie Ridler’s Wishcasting Wednesday question, “What luxury do you wish for?”—there are a few things I really enjoy that I’ve given up or scaled back on during the recession. And now that things are turning around and looking up again, I hope to enjoy these again.

• Chocolate for the family — Until our economy improves, we can afford it only as a special treat. And I hate it when I have to tell my kids that we have no sweets, because we simply can’t afford them.
• A glass of wine with dinner — Several years ago, I started drinking red wine regularly, because studies show that there are health benefits to regular moderate drinking of wine. And I acquired a taste for a glass of wine with dinner. But of late, it’s a luxury, only once in a while, but we enjoy it when we get the opportunity..
• Earl Grey tea — I ran out several weeks ago, and I’ve passed it by since then, because I’m the only one who drinks it.
• NetFlix — I consider this business, because I learn as much about writing from watching movies as I do from reading. But when my account goes down to 0, NetFlix shuts me off, and I notice it in more than just a business sense.

Now that the economy seems to be improving a little, and I’m getting more inquiries about my services, and I’m even working with a colleague on a project that could turn into something big, hopefully I’ll be able to enjoy some of these luxuries again soon.

What luxury do you wish for?

-TimK

The Missus & I are proud members of the 9/11 Club, those whose wedding falls on September 11. Of course, people are still getting married on 9/11. Numerous couples, I’m sure, got married today, September 11, 2009. (Just ask Google. He’ll back me up on this, I think.)

And to all of them, I have only one thing to say: “Mazel Tov!”

I might post more pictures next week, because I have to scan them first from the actual photos. (Remember those?)

Today, while I was waiting to have blood drawn, some folk singer on TV was singing a woeful song—I’m sure it was supposed to be woeful—about how she couldn’t forget this day, because it changed her life forever.

Look at these pictures! This is why when I heard that song, I smiled—instinctively—and thought, Yeah. It sure did change my life forever.

The rehearsal dinner, before “What Not to Wear”

Listening to my old friend sing his song “Mighty God”

At the reception.

Getting kissed by a pretty girl.

I’m about to do something in extremely poor taste; and I’m going to explain to you the reason why; and I’m not going to apologize. And you’re going to understand. And more than that, you’re also going to support me.

You see, while 9/11 for most other people holds memories of dread and of grief, for me, it holds memories of hope and of joy. Because September 11 is my wedding anniversary.

Margaret and I married each other on the afternoon of September 11, 1993. That means, this Friday, we will had been married 16 years. Not a milestone, but significant enough to keep us on the dance floor long after all those young whippersnappers have been driven off, leaving us to dance with the 20-years-ers, 30-years-ers, 40-years-ers, and… Well, you get the point.

And we’re not the only couple who was married on September 11. As they say:

Married in September’s golden glow,
Smooth and serene your life will go.

I personally know at least one other couple who was married on September 11. And couples are still getting married on September 11. And they, like Margaret and I, we all have to look to that day—not as an example of what to fear—but as an example of love, of what our lives ought to be.

Why September 11 is a special day for me

For me, September 11 is all about going through the struggle and arriving on the other side, having prospered and found joy. Because before I met my bride, I had spent 10 long, arduous years looking for love, and only finding pain. And then the secret finally clicked, and I changed the way I was looking for love, and I finally found it. The switch was almost magical. I know that sounds too good to be true, and indeed I thought it was at the time. My biggest problem was getting out of the way and just letting it happen. I was like Cinderella, except that I kept arguing with my fairy godmother that there was no way a pair of glass slippers would ever get me to the ball.

Old habits die hard, but they all died a permanent death, when I said, “I do.”

That’s why September 11 is a special day for me, because it represents for me a new life of love and companionship. And that’s why I refuse to let the terrorists rob it from me.

Let me put it this way: We were husband and wife years before the date had anything to do with terrorism. And long after the twin towers have been relegated to a footnote in classroom history textbooks—and I know it’s hard to imagine that day could ever come, but we’re already seeing signs of its approach. That’s why, long after the terrorists have been all but forgotten, Margaret and I will still be celebrating our marriage on that day.

We had 9/11 first. We have dibs! Bad things happen somewhere in the world every day, and I refuse to give up the celebration that day represents for Margaret and me. Because we have dibs. So the terrorists will just have to find another day of the year for their thing.

And that leads me into the tasteless thing I’m going to do.

I’m going to ask you to join with us in celebrating our marriage.

And it even gets more tasteless than that.

I’ve pulled out from my library a number of inspirational books, romantic books, and books about relationships. And I want to give them away with copies of my true love story, Love through the Eyes of an Idiot, because that’s they whole point of the day: the struggle I went through and the joy and love I found.

So starting on September 11 and for as long as supplies last, anyone who orders Love through the Eyes of an Idiot from my online store, for the standard price of $7.97 + S&H, can also choose one of these free-bonus books to go along with it. They’re all in “very good” or “like new” condition, and I’ll be posting a full list soon. But for now, here’s a sampling:

• The Romance Factor by Alan Loy McGinnis – The bestselling author of The Friendship Factor looks at romantic love and finds that it isn’t something you happen upon or fall into—it is something you create. This is one of the books that I read during my own spiritual awakening (chapter 9 of the Love-Idiot book), and that now I wish I had read more closely at the time, because it held solutions for the problems I was facing.

• 100 Ways to Live a Happy and Successful Life: Overcoming Depression by Frank B. Minirth, Paul D. Meier, and States V. Skipper – 3 Christian counselors list 100 specific ways to combat depression, leaning heavily on the advice and comfort of the scriptures. Having gone through and overcome my own baptism of major depression, it now amazes me that this book was in my library all along, and I never cracked it open, had completely forgotten it was there. Because the advice contained in this book are exactly the sorts of things I finally did to win the battle over my own depression.

• Self-Esteem: Gift from God by Ruth McRoberts Ward – Drawing from her experience as a marriage and family counselor, Ruth Ward challenges you to discover your uniqueness and begin to enjoy who you are, whether you’re an extrovert or an introvert. Introversion, she says, is a gift, not a personality flaw. This point particularly resonated with me, because I’m very much introverted, and I remember enjoying and being uplifted by this book.

Also…

• Healing for Damaged Emotions: Recovering from the Memories That Cause Our Pain by David A. Seamands

• Loving Each Other: The Challenge of Human Relationships, the #1 bestseller by Leo F. Buscaglia, Ph.D.

• Addicted to Love: Recovering from Unhealthy Dependencies in Romance, Relationships & Sex by Stephen Arterburn

• Joshua and the Children, national bestselling inspirational novel by Joseph F. Girzone – This is the sequel to his bestselling novel Joshua, my copy of which was borrowed and never returned.

• … and numerous others.

You see, this Friday is a celebratory day for me. And frankly, I’m feeling happy just talking about it.

To be continued tomorrow, as the date counts down…

Subscribe to this blog (via RSS or email), because then you’ll get the next post, tomorrow, in which I list all the books I’m giving away in for my wedding anniversary. Plus an extra something I haven’t revealed yet.

-TimK

“/doh,” by “striatic” on Flickr, © 2008 CC BY 2.0

Sometimes I do something so stupid, I amaze even myself.

I wasn’t planning on writing anything for Wishcasting Wednesday this week, and indeed I didn’t, preferring instead to read others’ WW posts. And I actually did read several. “What do you wish to begin?” is what Jamie Ridler asked for this week’s wishcasting prompt. And just running across that question set me to thinking, because writing prompts are like that when you’re a writer.

I originally thought, because yesterday was the first day of school, that I’d talk about the kids beginning school, about getting back onto a normal, school-year daily schedule. I also thought about starting a new book, but I don’t know which book to start yet. Or about starting a new job. Over the last week, I’ve been in contact with a recruiter regarding a full-time software management job. And then I heard back from someone at a small technology company about a part-time tech-writing position, writing web content about their software. That actually sounded trés kewl, even though it pays less, is part-time, and is probably less permanent…

Okay, pays less— But still enough to make me happy, because it’s not really about the money; it’s about the expertise. (That’s a different blog post, though.) And part-time— I’d actually prefer that, because it means I can continue my own writing, which I would largely need to give up if I took a full-time management job. And less permanent— Again, that’s a good thing, because it gives me more independence, and independence is very important to me. So when the person at the small technology company looking for a tech writer, when he asked me if I had a resume—

I’d make a damn good tech writer!

Why don’t I have a writing resume? I have credentials, maybe not stellar from a classic resume point-of-view. But as a sales letter? Especially for a tech writer?

• Because of my extensive technical background (over 20 years developing software), I understand technology.
• Because of my years of experience as a writer, I know how to make even complex topics accessible.
• Because of my skills as a storyteller, I know how to make even boring subjects engaging. (Hint: the secret is understanding what motivates your reader.)
• As a software engineer, I’ve had extensive experience writing both internal and end-user documentation.
• I’ve authored 3 books and written over 700 online pieces.

I can even do a Billy Mays-style WOW demonstration, by rewriting some boring, convoluted user documentation (probably from an open-source project) or corporate-speak (probably from the brochure of a we-want-to-appear-bigger-and-more-clueless-than-we-really-are company). I could probably even pass the so-called Sinatra test, named in honor of the song “New York, New York”—”If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”—a test so astounding as to be almost unbelievable. My Sinatra test might be something like making “insert tab A into slot B” actually interesting and engaging.

Remember I said, sometimes I do something so stupid as to amaze even myself? Well, it honestly and truly never occurred to me to offer freelance writing services. I’ve been taking software and web-development gigs, on and off, to make ends meet and to give myself working capital. And I even thought of picking up freelance writing gigs. But I never really pursued the latter, even though that’s where I ostensibly want to take my career and my life.

But now I’ve talked to the Missus, and yeah, writing gigs would bring in enough money, and if it would make me happy—and I think it would—then I should do it.

What do I wish to begin?

I want to begin to offer freelance writing services. I’ve already started the first of a number of sales letters, which will go up on my main site. I want to begin offering a range of services, all specialized to my areas of expertise:

• technical writing, especially for web content
• online copywriting, especially for technology companies
• ghostwriting of articles, small memoirs, and pocket-sized books
• copyediting and typesetting for self-publishers and indie publishers
• consulting (on writing and story) in the fields of computer software and musicianship (the two areas I’ve been in longest in my life)

That’s what I wish to begin. And I’m actually working on it, too. Stay tuned.

-TimK

P.S. If you’re looking for someone to help you in any of these areas, please do contact me and tell me more about your project. Maybe I can help.

To sum up from yesterday, a friend of mine posted on Facebook the “texting while driving” video, which contains an extreme, violently graphic depiction of a severe (maybe fatal) auto accident. My friend posted this with only one comment, that it’s “a short video that speaks volumes.” Not a word of warning regarding its nature or content. And I frankly beg to differ regarding how well it “speaks” and what it says.

For the full experience, however, click here for part 1.

No Warnings, No Second Chances

Needless to say, watching the “texting while driving” video over-stimulated me. It enraged me, in fact, because I know that it’s unlikely to have any real effect on anyone’s actual behavior. Because people who are likely to engage in obviously risky behavior like that are going to take a “that’s not gonna happen to me” attitude, because the story doesn’t actually apply to characters they can sympathize with. Remember, I said we never got to know the girls in the car. They were just third-persons, dead bodies at the side of the road, a spectator sport.

But the intense emotions are real. And they end up being attached to something, because that’s how the mind works. In fact, that’s one way that people can develop dysfunctional, compulsive behaviors and phobias, because they associate the behaviors with specific feelings, or the fear with specific objects. And some therapies attempt to treat those dysfunctions by breaking the association, allowing the behavior or object to become a normal memory, rather than invoking feelings at the instinctual level.

And when I watched the video, the feelings I felt became attached to something. The revulsion I felt watching the scene, and the rage at having sat through it, glued to the screen, I attached these things not to the video, but to the person who presented me with this video, told me it was “a short video that speaks volumes,” without a word of warning as to its subject matter or content.

I immediately vowed never to watch another video that he posted, because I didn’t want to feel swindled again. And I may carry through on that threat, because it upset me that much.

The Punchline

Even the film The Aristocrats warned you that it’s about the most vile, disgusting joke ever conceived, before anyone on film actually told you the joke. But that I got. That was funny. Vile and disgusting, yes, but still funny. Because it was a joke.

Hey, maybe that’s how I should describe the “texting while driving” video:

On second thought, I’m not sure that makes it much better, because it still reminds me too much of Lynne’s accident. (Not her real name, by the way.)

I never met Lynne, but she’s the niece of an old friend from years past, a friend who back in the day occupied a special place in my life. This past June, Lynne got into a serious auto accident. I’m not sure of the details. But she made it to the hospital, pretty torn up, physically, from the accident. And through numerous major surgeries over the past months, she has been slowly recovering. Earlier this month, she finally went home, though she still has to shuttle back and forth to the hospital for frequent check-ups and procedures and so forth. It’s been an uphill battle for Lynne, but her friends and extended family have supported and loved her, have pulled out the stops to make sure her medical bills are paid for and her family’s basic needs are all met.

Her story inspires me. I need more of those stories in my life.

That’s the real punchline. There are some stories that evoke fear, trouble, worry, sadness, anger, and nothing else. Want examples? Turn on the TV news. Or read any of the Internet news sites. Almost everything on there invokes fear, panic if possible, because fear sells. Our instincts are pre-programmed to prioritize fear over pleasure, because that’s necessary for survival. So everything’s a disaster, or at least a disaster waiting to happen. And fear can turn to worry, and that can make us do crazy, stupid things, like give up hope and become engulfed in a cloud of depression.

But there are some stories that encourage hope. They show you that it’s okay to take risks, that very few mistakes are permanent, and that even when you’re at rock-bottom, it’s still possible to go up. They evoke strong emotion, yes, but they attach that emotion to a higher purpose. They urge you to turn yourself outward to help, encourage, and teach. Rather than evoking fear, they inspire love.

These are the stories I aspire to write. And these are the stories I long to hear.

-TimK

Instead, I’m going to talk about a personally traumatic experience. Because I was one of the people today subjected to the “texting while driving” video that’s been making the rounds.

I say “subjected to,” because I had not heard of it before, and I received absolutely no warning of its extreme, violently graphic content. So I am giving you fair warning, if you haven’t seen it. But I also want to talk about the dangers of watching videos like this, and about the alternative. Because I’m so emotionally keyed-up, I might say something I’ll regret later. But I think I need to express a unique insight on this video, as a writer and storyteller. I’ll also connect it to a repeated trauma that I was forced to experience when I was in elementary school.

This essay is long enough that I’m splitting it up over 2 days. I’m scheduling the second part to be published about 24 hours after this one. (That’s Wednesday at 8 PM.)

And I promise not to name names. (At least not real names.)

Associated Feelings

Now I remember what I was going to write about today. I was going to talk about The Corrs: Live at the Royal Albert Hall, which I rented from NetFlix and watched last night, and it made me feel again the rush of excitement of being up on stage, of having practiced for so many hours, preparing for the performance, gearing up, then making it all look so easy, the satisfaction of sweat beading on my forehead, the vibration of the music flowing out your mouth and through your fingers, the passion, in front of all those people, the roar of applause, the swelling of accomplishment. I haven’t done that—not quite like that—not in a long, long time, and I miss it a little.

It’s fascinating how the human mind works. Watching a simple performance of a band whose music I appreciate, I experience all those feelings all over again, feelings that are mine personally, because what’s portrayed in the video, I’ve associated it with those feelings. And I’ve associated those feelings with those things, simply because in my past, they’ve occurred together.

But today, I was catching up on my Facebook friends’ feeds, and one of my friends posted a video, with one simple comment, that it was “a short video that speaks volumes.”

So I began to watch it. I got through about 30 seconds of the four-and-a-half-minute video, including the most intense, graphic, violently realistic car-accident scene I have ever encountered, every bloody detail faithfully choreographed. At the first break in the action, just as the EMT came upon the scene, I instinctively tuned out; then the impact this video was having on me dawned on me. Then I quickly stopped the video, but it was too late, because the damage had already been done.

The reason filmmakers use such graphic imagery, when they do use it, is to invoke gut-level angst, revulsion, despair, rage, at nothing in particular, a bevy of intense emotions, untargeted, yet riveting. As a storyteller, I realize that these emotions keep you glued to the page or to the screen, unable to think for yourself, unable to turn away until the story gives you breathing room. As a storyteller, however, I also realize that when set in the context of a rich story line, these emotions become attached to the characters and situations in the story; they become imbued with meaning.

But as a storyteller, I furthermore realize that this video couldn’t possibly “speak” anything, because it fails to imbue the emotions with meaning, because we never get to know the girls in the car who get into the accident. They’re not real story characters. They’re just 2-dimensional, paper-cut-out characters, like an accident on the side of the road, everyone craning their necks to catch a glimpse of a crimson puddle draining across the asphalt. And by the way, that disturbs me, too.

In the end, this video simply traumatized me. It did not make me want to be careful about driving. It did not make me want to avoid texting. It did not even make me scared of cars. But it did have a perverse—yet totally predictable—side-effect, which I’ll get to in tomorrow’s installment.

Dead children and bus drivers

The video reminded me of the bus-accident movies my elementary school forced us to watch when I was a kid. And that was traumatic for me, too.

Three short films, three devastating accidents, and dead children. In one story, rowdy kids on the bus interfere with the bus driver. One boy puts his hands over the bus driver’s eyes, as a joke presumably. End result: an overturned bus and a dead bus driver. In another, a little girl, carrying her class project home from school, accidentally drops it on the road in front of the bus. Without thinking, she turns around to pick it up. The bus driver never sees her. A third story involved a bus, a bridge, and a body of water, if I recall.

It makes perfect sense that I would remember these images, burned into my brain by being subjected to them year after year, as we children were ushered into a room and without a word of warning subjected to these violently graphic images and story lines.

Fortunately, my own kids are not subjected to such torment. But they’re no less safety-conscious than I was at their age. More so, I think, because they can stand to think about these issues without their thoughts being clouded by traumatic emotions.

Enter my own clouded emotions. As you may know, I’ve been managing depression. Without getting into details, my life is kinda complicated right now. Or at least it seems complicated, feeling so passionately about writing, dreaming about being a full-time writer, but needing to make money, and not being able to make enough money yet from writing, and needing to go back to software development, and not being able to find a software job, and… I face a lot of conflicting feelings every day. If I let these get out of control, I can become overwhelmed by them, and then I won’t take action to make my life better.

That’s why I’ve been avoiding the universal-health-care debate, for the most part. I’ve even started conversations with people about it, seen how they might directly be swayed to my point of view, and then—argumentative me—dropped the whole discussion, right in the middle of it, because I simply don’t have the emotional energy to deal with that right now, not when I have a gazillion more important, personal matters to take care of.

Because I’m trying to manage my depression, it’s essential I stay away from being emotionally over-stimulated.

(continued with part 2: click here)

I met Margaret in February 1992 at a Bible study. We talked. She looked young for her age; she was a little older than I had originally thought, but I didn’t see how that mattered, because we were still part of the same generation, spoke the same language. She was studying to become a physical therapist, renting a room in a friend’s house, and putting herself through school by working at UPS. Moreover, she seemed completely and undeniably normal, no debilitating past, no extreme neediness, no spiritual crises, no psychological disorders, no indication of any desire to “just be friends.” And her hair was dark, and her eyes were blue-grey, and her nose was flecked with tiny freckles, and her name began with M and R, all things I loved in a woman.

She was wonderful and perfect, so naturally I had completely no interest in dating her.

But I had been here before. The girls I was most attracted to had always ended up hurting me, and terribly so. It may not have been their fault, but I still did get hurt, over and over and over again. I was sick and tired of that pattern, and I knew I wanted to break it.

So I asked for Margaret’s phone number, and she gave it to me.

I waited a couple weeks before I called her to set up a date. Unknown to me, each day after school, she raced up to her room to check her answering machine. No messages.

Until one day, I did call, and I asked her if she’d like to go out, and she said she would. We went bowling, and I sucked at bowling (almost as much as I sucked at rollerskating), but Margaret didn’t seem to hold it against me. We had fun anyhow. Then we saw a movie together at the theater down the street. Then we went out for a late dinner at Bickford’s, not fancy, but comfortable.

I was developing some sort of bony prominence on one of my wrists, probably due to my poor posture at the computer at work. I wasn’t really concerned about it, but I was curious. And since she was studying physical therapy, I showed her my wrist.

She gently held my hand, so delicately, so tenderly examined it.

I stared into her eyes and wondered if I could fall in love with this woman.

I wrote to a friend, telling her about Margaret. But, I said, “I’m not sure I’m ready. I mean, sure, I thought I was, but just meeting her brought back many memories… I found myself longing again for the relationships I’ve had most recently, which of course isn’t fair to Margaret.”

I had been under stress, obsessing over my feelings, desperately wanting to put the desires of my past in the past, but not knowing how to do it. I was falling asleep late, waking up early. Unknown to me, I was on the fast track to a major depression.

My friend eventually wrote back and said, simply, “Stop looking for a catch, and I don’t think Margaret is a mistake.”

Before that could happen, though, I answered my own questions easily enough.

Margaret and I went out with a bunch of Margaret’s friends. We all stopped to eat at a restaurant. As I sat across the table from Margaret, I noticed out of the corner of my eye one of the waitresses, a trim, fit, fair-skinned beauty, wearing a skimpy white outfit barely one notch above a bikini. I kept my eyes trained on Margaret’s face. Good boy!

As I recall, Margaret asked if I liked the way the waitress was dressed. I shrugged my shoulders. Truthfully, she was probably fun to stare at, if I could do so with impunity. But I wasn’t about to date a girl like that, and I certainly knew enough not to let it distract me from my date with Margaret.

That night, I drove Margaret and her friend to the friend’s house, where we had all met up to go out. Before Margaret and I parted, we sat in the car and talked. I turned off the engine, because we had been sitting there for so long.

Time to say goodbye, I asked, “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” she answered.

And I leaned over and kissed her, a long, deep, passionate kiss.

Then one morning, not too long after, at 3 AM, we were parked on the street near the church. I was to drive her to her job at UPS, because she worked the early shift at 4. She didn’t want to go into work, but it was how she was supporting herself, at least for the time being. She coughed and said she was also afraid she might have pneumonia, so we prayed that she would get better.

Unknown to me, she was thinking in the back of her mind how in love she was with me, and that if I were to ask her to marry her, she would say yes. A crazy thought, maybe, but not idiotic.

In the middle of the conversation, out of nowhere, I said, “Will you marry me?”

She replied, “Yes.”

“That was easy,” I said.

She beamed.

Where was the wooing? Where was the longing? Where was the unrequited love? Where was the conflict, the angst? Where was the fighting for her affections? Where were the desperate pleas for attention? Where was the catch? There was none. We were simply two people, both looking for a committed lover, and when we found each other, we decided to get married. That’s it. No suspense. No romance. No fanfare.

My father agreed to officiate at our wedding. He also counseled us on what we could expect as a married couple. I took away from those sessions some invaluable rules for a successful marriage, from a man who had actually made his own marriage work:

“You will fight,” he said. “No marriage is free of fights. Fighting is normal. Just make sure you fight fair. Don’t make it personal. Don’t tell your spouse what’s wrong with her. ‘You know what the problem with you is?’ Don’t do that. Instead, focus on expressing your own thoughts and feelings.

“Don’t hit below the belt. Some couples dig up old wounds, old hurts that they can blame on the other person. That’s not fair. This fight is about today, not about what happened in the past.

“And never shout, just to get in the last word, and then storm out of the room, because that cuts off communication.

“Foster communication. Always know that you can discuss issues with the other person. Don’t judge each other. And be willing to give up what you want in order to give the other person what she needs.”

Finally, he said, “Remove divorce from your vocabulary. And always promise to love each other, unconditionally. Not, ‘I’ll love you if…’ but ‘I’ll love you,’ period. Because once you do that, you’ll have the safety to work through anything else you encounter.”

Unconditional love, I realized, is the First Amendment of marriage.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government. Even if the government infringes on our other rights, it is said, we the people can still take action to have those infringements rectified, as long as we have our First Amendment freedoms. The First Amendment represents the freedoms that protect all our other freedoms.

In the same way, if you have unconditional love, that gives you enough safety in your relationship to work out all the other stuff that pops up. All I needed was someone I could trust to love me unconditionally. And Margaret was that someone.

Margaret and I held our wedding at a local church the afternoon of September 11, 1993.

Doesn’t that suck, having your wedding anniversary on 9/11?

Hell, no! We were husband and wife years before the date had anything to do with terrorism, and long after the twin towers have been relegated to a footnote in classroom history textbooks, we’ll still be celebrating our marriage on that day.

In other words, we have dibs! Bad things happen somewhere in the world every day, and I refuse to give up the celebration that day represents for Margaret and me. So the terrorists will just have to find another day of the year for their thing.

-TimK

It all started after I developed a crush on this girl, a little young for me, but her mother liked me and trusted me. We sat and talked sometimes. She was small, cute, with dark hair framing a small, pale face dotted with freckles. She had her problems, including an absentee father, as I recall, but mostly she was normal, though sometimes sad.

Once, she was being chased by a group of guys in the church building where we both attended services. Whether they were teasing her or assaulting her I wasn’t sure, but she definitely didn’t want to be chased, and she seemed frantic to get away from them. Her little brother was with her, and I secreted them in one of the Sunday School rooms and locked the door.

The idea was to pretend that the room was empty. But she was in a panic, afraid of being caught. I gently said, “Now, settle down,” and immediately she stopped her anxious rambling and began to stare into my eyes. She was standing with her back against one of the walls, while I stood over her, my hand braced against the wall above her shoulder. We held our breath. All was silent. I experienced one of those charged moments, in which we felt so close. I wasn’t sure whether I should kiss her. I wanted to, to kiss her and hold her. And I probably would have, if it weren’t for her little brother standing in the room with us.

We did date, one time. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to go rollerskating. Okay. It didn’t matter to me that I sucked on roller skates—still do. But what was I thinking? (Answer: I wasn’t.) After making a sufficient fool of myself, and losing her to the crowd of real skaters, I asked her if she’d like to get a bite to eat, something I was much more adept at. But she had apparently met someone else at the rollerskating rink and wanted to spend some time with him. I was livid, demanded we leave immediately, drove her home, angrily. As I recall, she claimed we had not been on a date—and maybe she really did believe that—but I wasn’t going to hear it. We didn’t talk anymore after that.

What was your worst dating experience?