Jack vs Jill

 My chiropractor and I have meaningful conversations while he’s adjusting my vertebrae and cracking my neck. Today we got on the topic of nursery rhymes. We got to kicking the whole genre around while he poked and prodded my spine.

“It would be hard to write a book about Jack and Jill,” he said. “There’s not a lot of back story there.”

“I bet she pushed him,” I said, as the air whooshed out of my lungs. “That’s why he fell down the mountain.”

“Or, when he fell, she could have been laughing so hard that she tripped and lost her balance, too,” he said.

Could be. If so, it serves her right for laughing at his clumsiness. If it was me, I'd have been laughing about that crown he was wearing.

I told the doctor I’d see him again in a couple of weeks and went home to research the ill-fated couple on the internet. I love a good writing challenge. Expanding on the misadventures of Jack and Jill would be fun.

But when I got on the internet, I found out someone beat me to it. Louisa May Alcott, who authored Little Women, published a novel with the very imaginative title of Jack and Jill, way back in 1880. Some of her fans described it as better than either Little Women or Little Men. 

That’s a high bar, but I’m not sure they’re right. I read the Cliff Notes and I think Louisa missed the point. Ms. Alcott thought it was a love story, and when the two childhood friends grew up she said they got married.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not buying it. I decided to start at the beginning because I wanted to get to the bottom of this. So to speak.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.

First of all, who told them to head up that hill together? We don’t know. Maybe they were bored and got thirsty. Or they wanted to go swimming and this was the final pail that would fill their inflatable pool. What I really want to know is the name of the genius who decided that the place to install a water fountain was way up there at the top of a hill. I’m no civil engineer, but even I know they should have fired that guy.

Maybe Jack was Jill’s brother. Even her twin. Or maybe he was her third cousin on her mother’s side. Mother Goose doesn’t tell us and that really bugs me. Louisa May didn’t know the truth either, but she decided they were best friends who eventually tied the knot.

Please. That's so predictable.

Whatever their relationship, there’s an even bigger mystery that’s hiding here in plain sight:  Jack.Fell.Down. 

Doesn’t that strike you as being suspicious? All the boys I’ve ever known fall down because they’re wearing roller blades or riding electric scooters or climbing trees. They don’t fall down walking up hill. If you ask me, there's something squirrely going on here. 

I could see Jill falling down. Back when this microstory was written, girls jumped rope wearing floor length dresses made from yards and yards of gingham and flounce. That’s just asking for trouble. Have you ever tried to walk uphill in a dress that drags the ground? I have. You’ll step on the hem every time. I’m just saying. It wouldn’t take much for Jill to come tumbling after.

So why was Jill the second kid to roll downhill and not the first? I know why. Because she needed an alibi.

Think about it. Boys are athletic. They all have ADHD. You could harness more energy from one nine-year-old boy than you can from an entire field of solar panels. Jack was probably doing somersaults while they headed uphill to forage for that bucket of H2O. He was running circles around poor Jill while she sweated under the weight of all that fabric she was wearing. Maybe Louisa May was right in her assumption that someone was in love, but I can guarantee you it wasn’t Jill. She was spitting fire watching Jack show off on that uphill journey until finally . . .

She just couldn’t take it anymore.

And she pushed him.

That’s right. Jack fell down and broke his crown because Jill pushed him. And she wasn’t sorry, either.

She wouldn’t have been the first girl to push a boy down a hill for annoying her. Buttercup did it to Westley in The Princess Bride, remember? She didn’t know it was Westley at the time, but when she figured it out, what did she do next? She threw herself into the wide open air and went tumbling after him.

I’m telling you. Women are a lot more dangerous than they get credit for. But in this case, based on circumstantial evidence and hearsay, the reason Jill came tumbling after is because she knew that if she got road rash, too, there would be no one to convict her. Jack couldn’t prove she pushed him. Not when she came home bleeding just like him.

So, there it is. Mystery solved. Jill and her vast supply of petticoats went tumbling head over heels after Jack so no one could point a finger at her for breaking his crown. And she would have been in the clear, too, except Mother Goose went on to tell us the rest of the story.

Up Jack got and home did trot as fast as he could caper;
Went to bed to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper.
Jill came in and she did grin to see his paper plaster;
Mother, vex’d, did whip her next for causing Jack's disaster.

He ratted her out after all. I knew he would. And I knew she did it. And apparently his mother not only knew what Jill was capable of, she also knew that Jill was Jack's sister. Somebody should have alerted Louisa May Alcott to that tiny little detail.

Maybe the next time Jill has to follow her brother up the hill for a heavy bucket of water, instead of losing her temper on the way up, she'll wait until they reach the top and then shove him into the well instead down the hill.

It’ll give her time to come up with a better alibi.

With thanks to ChapstickAddict for the use of the terrific photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: galvanized bucket sink | chapstickaddict | Flickr

Here We Are Again

I’ve talked myself out of posting this at least a dozen times. I told a close friend that no one would want to read it. Until I landed here, I wouldn’t have wanted to. I would have protected my soul from any reminder that someone else’s heartache could someday become mine, too. They don’t make Hallmark cards with sentiments like that in them. And for good reason.

“I’d read your post,” she said. It humbled me. Sometimes I forget there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Rob and I were married in 1976. I was eighteen, he was twenty-three. We’d been separated for nearly eighteen months while he completed his hitch with the Air Force in another country and I finished high school in this one. We always said it was a test of our relationship, both of us being so young when we got engaged. And we made it through with flying colors. He’d barely been back in the states for two weeks when we tied the knot and began this adventure called marriage.

Tomorrow would have been our Fiftieth Anniversary. In a holy, spiritual kind of way, it still is. I know Rob is still very much alive, and that it’s right to say he’s far more alive now than he ever was here despite the gaping hole his absence has created in all our lives, especially mine. He knows the significance of this date.

We would have made it again. And we would have exceeded fifty years together. Maybe that benchmark mattered to me because other family members set an example of long, enduring marriages when their golden wedding anniversaries rolled around. I looked forward to that in our story. Among our many long-time friends, Rob and I are the only ones who didn’t reach this special anniversary. I’m left here to remember it without him beside me.

There will be no parties. No congratulations. I don’t think those go out to members of the Widow’s Club. Only our children and a few longtime friends will comment on the day that didn’t turn out the way we had hoped. They will show me a great deal of love and kindness, as they are so kind to do. But it’s an awkward anniversary this year. I guess it’s a good thing Rob and I celebrated in a big way on our fortieth. That one will have to stand in for the one stolen from us by a virus.

We’ve been separated from one another for five and a half years at this point. By now I’m supposed to have learned to count my blessings, practice gratitude, reframe my thoughts, find meaning, and trust God. It’s exhausting to say the least. Remembering how crushed I was for the first year and how disappointed in God I was back then, I’m calling it a big win that of all the positive advice offered to me by therapists and books and others, the one thing I ended up leaning into with all of who I am was relying on God again. 

His presence has held and sustained me like nothing else could.

It’s not that I don’t recognize all the ways I’ve been blessed. I do. But I don’t “practice gratitude” in daily journals or make that my goal because it feels like denial. I won’t make it through the slog of grief if I deny that I’m walking there. I can’t tell you how many times a day I tell Jesus “Thank you” for keeping His promise to never leave me or let me down regardless of how sucky my attitude is along the way. He simply keeps holding me tight. I know He is with me every step of this journey I’m on, and He’s not offended by anything I feel or say to Him.

I know. I didn’t hear that in Sunday School either.

I also don’t try to reframe my thoughts, as though I'm widowing wrong. I don’t know how long my grief will last, but apparently it’s contingent upon how long I’ve loved Rob. Sounds fairly permanent to me. As another widow recently wrote, "I am an actual person living an actual life after an actual loss. There is a hole in my life that will never disappear. I am learning to live with that."

People in grief circles talk a lot about honoring their person when holidays or special dates roll around. That’s another thing, and I’m sure this will surprise you, that I see differently. By now you have an entirely better idea of what a saint Rob was and still is. I don’t fit into anyone’s box, no matter how much I’ve tried to. The idea of honoring someone who has died can look like making their favorite meal or finding a way to serve others or even spending the day in isolation. I’m told that whatever is right for you is what you should do, and I’m not making fun of anything that brings comfort to others who grieve.

But somehow none of it is right for me.

I spent my entire life honoring and respecting my husband. I knew from day one how lucky I was to be loved by him, chosen by him to share his life, and to get to share my life with him. Grieving the loss of him and our life together cannot be called anything else except honor. 

But I don’t like his favorite dessert, pumpkin pie, so I’m not going to eat it on his birthday. I’m not setting an extra plate at the table in front of an empty chair and calling that honor at Christmas. I know some do, but I don’t. It doesn’t comfort me. It would feel weird and make me cry more than I already do. And I’m not serving meals to the homeless in his honor because there’s barely one servant bone in my body and I don’t like doing stuff like that, even though I know he would have been the first one in the kitchen and the last one out.

See what I mean by how lucky I was that a man as wonderful as Rob McLeod loved a woman so flawed as I am?

I've tried to come up with a way to signify this special date on my own, though. I thought about going through all our photos and putting together one enormous album to display our love story chronologically. And then I started crying at the thought of creating an emotional project like that on such short notice. Almost all my photo albums are still in storage and decades of pictures are on a couple of hard drives that, for all I know and am afraid to find out, might be corrupted and inaccessible.

I tossed that idea in the circular file where it belongs.

Then I thought about driving across town tomorrow to the little Baptist church where we were married. Maybe bring my daughter or a grandchild with me and show them the spot where our love story began. After all, that’s where we met. But it’s not the same building anymore. They renovated it more than forty years ago. It looks completely different now, no one there knows who I am or who Rob was, and I hate going to the west side of Phoenix anyway.

Buildings, just like circumstances and people, change.

I thought about buying myself an anniversary ring with a lovely diamond. But to be honest, if I’m going to spend that kind of money, what I really need is a recliner that doesn’t hurt my back.

In the end, the only way I could think to honor Rob on this particular anniversary would be to write about him in a blog. You know, one of those mature sounding pieces that makes me look like a shining example of Christian fortitude. A godly, happy widow, grateful for all the years we did have together, who would never question God. 

Or, I could simply be honest and tell the truth. 

I’d tell you all the wonderful things I love about Rob McLeod. Like the way he always looked at me with love in his eyes—unless I pushed his insurmountable patience to the extreme which I did more often than you might think. Or I might tell you how respected he was by every firefighter and staff member he ever worked with, although one or two had the bad taste to be narcissists, and they don’t like anyone except themselves.

I could tell you how much he loved Jesus, or how often I told Rob that he was my hero and that when I grow up someday I want to be just like him. He was the bravest man I’ve ever known and the most sacrificial. “I could stand on my head for two weeks if I had to,” he often said, and it wasn’t hyperbole. I, however, wouldn’t do that for two seconds. Not for anyone, not for any reason.  I would pray for them, but I wouldn't stand on my head for them. 

He was also the adventurous one of the two of us. He started his fire career all over again here in Arizona for me. It still makes me cry to remember his sacrifice there. He meant it when he told me he could be happy anywhere. I have tons of stories about the camping trips we took together and how not a single one of them ended without some kind of catastrophe. And yet we kept on camping. I didn’t mind it as long as he was there. He inspired our children to be themselves and love their lives. They do, and they adored their father.

Or I could tell you how much he hated it when I beat him at Scrabble and how, to this day, I still can’t figure out how he always beat me at Spades. You might not know this, but Rob loved to write poetry. Don’t feel bad. I never realized that either, even though I was the recipient of most of his poems. I thought he wrote poems to me for our anniversaries and other special dates because, like most husbands, he didn’t make it to the store in time to buy me a card.

Looking back, I realize how much I missed about who he was.

I could tell you how hard he worked, how peacefully he slept, what a big Gators fan he was, and that no matter how long we lived in the desert he never dusted Florida's white sugar sand from his feet. He was a Florida boy through and through. Still, he loved Arizona’s mountains.

He held me when I was scared or cried, and joked that he was going to get a sponge surgically implanted in his shoulder. He loved Christmas and real trees and didn’t mind giving up his man card to sit through Hallmark movies with me. He once worked in a movie theatre and he loved watching movies. His favorite at Christmas was always A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. His favorite war movie was Patton with George C. Scott. His favorite movie star was George C. Scott. Apparently.

He did four years with the Air Force and got out because he got married. To me. But if he hadn’t married me and got out anyway, he told me he would have become either a mercenary or a monk. So, I either saved the world or robbed it. It’s hard to say. But this year I finally found the courage to bring out his folded American flag and display it in my living room. It’s been five years since they gave it to me. It hurts a little less to see it now.

He took up calligraphy when he retired and a few months after we lost him, my granddaughter found a piece of artwork he’d practiced penning for me. I framed it and now it hangs in my bedroom, one more handwritten poem that he left behind. On the days when I miss him so much, and after a growing absence where I question if he was really here, I see it on my wall and know that he was. His handwriting, recognizable even in calligraphy, reads, “Eula – My Love, My Life, My All.”

Those are just a few of the things I would write if I had the heart and stamina to do so. That’s what I would tell you about the man I married. I would put all of those thoughts into a long, long post and upload it in honor of our golden anniversary this month.

But I can’t write a blog like that because there aren’t enough Kleenex in Walmart to help me get through it.

All I know is this: I’d give anything to have one more hug from him. I’d give up the remote and learn to read a book beside him while he watched the Gators play football to his heart’s content. I wouldn’t make him stop biting his nails while he did it, either. I wouldn’t grumble at him to organize his desk or the garage. I’d sit outside in the heat and watch him mow the yard while I thanked God for the privilege of just being near him. I’d even weep with joy to see his sweaty ballcap tossed carelessly on the kitchen counter where I prep food for dinner.

And would it be asking too much to hear him tell me one more time that he loves me?

Tears flow on the regular because I miss him. They flow because of all the things I overlooked for forty-four years while I naïvely believed we had another forty years ahead of us. They flow because of the future that was stolen from us. And because we never got to have any final conversations due to the circumstances surrounding his death.

And they keep flowing because my love for him is still a river.

Here we are, separated again. Not forever, thanks be to God, but for longer than I wish. And I’ll be thinking of him and of us on our fiftieth, just like I do every September 25^th.

Happy Anniversary to my darlin’. I love you, baby.

It was the honor of my life to be your wife.

Runaway

I don’t know if you've heard this story yet, but it's a doozy. It’s a tall tale from the state best known for them. Texas. Best of all, it’s almost entirely true. 

You can’t make this stuff up.

When I think of Texas ranches, I picture acres of noisy beef, handsome cowboys on fast horses, and mesquite trees. Especially mesquites, the secret sauce for Texas barbecue. Once the wranglers round up the last of the stragglers at the end of day, they can’t wait to make them the guests of honor at supper.

But about a hundred miles northwest of San Antonio lives a different breed of rancher. He’s not raising your typical kind of stock. You’ll never find meat from his grange listed on a menu side by side with brisket and cornbread. That’s because he’s not a cattle rancher. His livestock go by the name, "Texotics."

Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

His private ranch became famous last month when one of his youngsters got out of the yard and wandered off into a countryside marked by dense mesquite trees and rocky terrain. She disappeared faster than cookies at a potluck. Somewhere out there on acres of brush-filled land, a gangly, long-legged four-year-old was running loose, having the time of her life.

So concerned was the rancher that he offered a five-thousand-dollar reward for anyone with information leading to the recovery of Gracie. It should have been easy money. It should have been easy to spot the runaway, too. After all, in her stocking feet she stood at a towering ten feet tall and, when last seen, was wearing a brown and white spotted coat.

You’d think an adult giraffe would kind of stand out in the Hill Country of south Texas, wouldn’t you?

But the ranch was remote and the geography strangely reminiscent of the African savanna where Gracie's relatives hail from. She was in her element. There was plenty to eat, fresh water abounded, and it’s not called Hill Country for nothing. 

Turns out it’s pretty dang hard to spot a wild giraffe in south Texas.

They searched for Gracie for two long weeks. They brought in helicopters, covering 7,500 acres with no success. While blades whirred overhead, scouring the open range for any sight of her, Texans scratched their heads and were quoted as asking, "How the hell do you lose a giraffe?" 

A ten-foot-tall zoo animal with a periscope neck should have been easy to locate.

It's not like they didn't try. They pulled out all the stops in their efforts to find the missing giraffe. The local sheriff alerted every other rancher in the county to be on the lookout for large, dark soulful eyes staring back at them above any tall oak while munching on leaves. 

They searched the canyons on foot, incorporating the latest technology as they flew drones overhead. The sheriff even issued a public alert with detailed descriptions of the runaway. I presume those were posted inside bathroom stalls at gas stations.

And they reached out on social media which, as always, came through like a champ. But it quickly became confusing. Maybe the reward generated too much excitement. Long-legged as Gracie is, it doesn’t seem like she could cover as much ground as the internet soon reported.

The first photo that emerged showed the missing giraffe wearing yellow turnouts and a fire hat. She stood taller than the ladder truck at the volunteer fire department which called her “a welcome addition.” They were pleased to announce that the probationary firefighter had been recruited for her ability to assist in roof inspections and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

They weren’t the only first responders to claim she’d joined their crew. Five hours north of the ranch, near Fort Worth, another fire department told San Antonio residents, “You can stop looking for Gracie now. We’re keeping her on B-shift until further notice.” What I want to know is how she traveled three hundred miles on a state highway without getting pulled over by a Texas Ranger. You know she didn’t have a license.

Not to be outdone, a local plumbing company leaked a photo of Gracie peering out of the back of their work van. “We’re not saying Gracie is hanging out with our crew,” the byline read, “but we aren’t saying she isn’t either.” I can’t imagine what kind of dexterity she has that lends itself to fixing plugged up toilets.

She stopped by the Alamo for a photo op, too. I guess if you’re out sight-seeing and you live in Texas, visiting the Alamo is a given. Later, Gracie was seen window shopping near a popular bath soaps boutique. Suddenly, everyone forgot about the frantic rancher who’d lost his giraffe while they took selfies with the ten-foot escapee and posted the photos for clicks.

Her disappearance turned her into an instant celebrity. Everyone was on the lookout for the young lady who stood heads and tails above all other Texas wildlife. And yet no one convinced her to stand still long enough so the cowboy who misplaced her could send an Uber to pick her up and bring her home.

Once again, this is the failure of social media. There were plenty of photos of her going viral, and she was spotted multiple times on game cameras throughout the county, but by the time all these locations were searched, Gracie was always gone.

It seems to me that giraffes, with their relatively small brains when compared to the overall size of their bodies, are smarter than they look. Gracie stayed on the run for fourteen days, outsmarting every technology known to man, all while proving how indispensable she is. Apparently she singlehandedly put out two housefires, cleared one clogged drain, and washed off the stink with boutique soaps she purchased in downtown San Antonio. All while she never forgot the Alamo.

When she was finally found by the ranch manager as he flew overhead in a helicopter, she was ready to go home. She’d done the impossible. She’d scaled a rocky slab to escape the Texas compound, an athletic feat never before accomplished by a giraffe. She’d explored the wide-open country, posed for a few photos, and probably eaten an ice cream cone. Somewhere.

“She was out on a fling,” the sheriff reported. And while the state of Texas breathed a collective sigh of relief, I think a few million Facebookers are a little sad that Gracie’s adventure has ended.

The final photo of Gracie was an aerial shot taken from the helicopter when she was finally found, searching for her way home. Clearly, it shouldn't have taken half a month to locate the poor animal. She was standing right there in plain sight the whole time. 

See for yourself. 

Clear as day, right?

You could spot her anywhere.

I mean, come on. She looks exactly like the mug shot they posted of her inside the women's bathroom at Buc-ee's.

 

Oh.

Maybe that was the problem.

Progress

 

 As a little kid, I was astonished by elevators. The first time I remember using one I was with my grandparents. We walked into a bank lobby filled with tall counters, scattered seating areas, potted plants, and walls lined with office doors. The department we needed was on another level so we were told to take the elevator. We turned and walked into a windowless metal box, and I watched wide-eyed as the giant door closed us in.

I had no idea what was about to happen, and I gripped my grandpa’s hand tightly while I counted to ten. When the door opened, all the furniture had been moved. All the people were swapped out for new ones. Even the carpet was a different color. And that’s when I figured out how elevators work.

Magic.

It all happened so fast! While we stood behind a metal door for ten seconds, a bunch of people rearranged the entire room. And when it was time to go home and we got back inside the elevator again, they put everything back the way it was before. Kind of exhausting, if you ask me.

In a sense, elevators are like time machines. While you sing along to ‘elevator music’ that was chart topping when you were a teenager, that box you’re standing in moves you between realities, all with the push of a button. It happens so fast! Push a button in a mall elevator, and suddenly the smell of Cinnabon floats in from a food court. Wave goodbye to a hotel lobby and when the door slides out of the way, a swimming pool magically appears. Wait a little longer for the door to open inside a skyscraper's elevator, and when you step out, you’ll be dodging pigeons.

There’s no end to the possibilities! Look at all the progress we can enjoy just so we don’t have to climb so many stairs.

Could we please stop? I can’t keep up with how fast the furniture keeps changing.

Progress has altered the way we function in the world. But, just like elevators, there’s a little glitch with the way it behaves. It moves so quickly, I'm in a daze. Cable is out, streaming is in. Venmo is in, checkbooks are out, just like cash. I picked up lunch at Taco Bell today and when I paid for it, the teenager in the window thanked me profusely for giving him exact change. Which, I know from previous experience, means he was terrified of breaking down a ten-dollar bill on his own. Pretty sure that isn't progress.

Then there’s transportation. A few things have changed since I learned to drive. No longer do I have to crank my own window up and down. Now I just push a button and watch it go. I don’t need a road map anymore because I have a Siri. And, thanks to the camera on my dashboard, now I can watch in real time while I back into somebody’s bumper.

Also, I can count on one hand the number of kids I see who actually pedal their own bikes in my neighborhood unassisted. The rest of the horde ride eBikes. Saints preserve us. Electric bikes are about to make me lose my mind. Watching out for them in my peripheral when I’m on the open road is the equivalent of dodging mosquitoes at a Florida picnic in July. They’re everywhere and they’re deadly.

Here’s the thing about eBikes. You don’t need a license to ride one on a busy street. All you need is an eBike. You don’t have to obey traffic laws or signal your intentions or look both directions before you pull out in front of an old person who thinks driving her car into a canal would be a fun way to spend the afternoon. Most eBikers don’t bother with helmets, either.

Scooters have gone electric, too. And skateboards. And unicycles. Unicycles! I saw one lit up like a Christmas tree last year and thought I was a having a close encounter of the third kind. But that’s not the most alarming thing. All of these modes of transportation can travel between twenty and twenty-eight mph on sidewalks and in bike lanes and on surface roads. So far I haven’t seen them on the freeway but I’m pretty sure that’s coming.

And I used to think normal traffic was stressful.

Then there’s Waymo, the autonomous vehicle with a giant, spinning donut on its roof. Here in the desert, driverless cars are multiplying like rabbits. One of them even tried to follow me home this week. Unnerving. I’ve heard they do that in cul-de-sacs sometimes, entire herds of them. Instead of returning to the mother ship to await their next mission, they stage in dead end streets, circling all their station wagons like they’re about to be attacked by hostile natives. That’s a strong possibility, too, considering their self-imposed traffic jams make it impossible for locals to leave their own garages.

I don’t know when we gave up using people power to propel ourselves around, but maybe it was when Mr. Ford saw the Wright Brothers fly through the sky and thought to himself, “Hey! I like the idea, but with some modifications.” Of course, I could have that backwards.

All I know is Grandma never had to deal with this kind of stuff. Of course, Grandma never had a driver’s license, either. Still, now that I’m one of millions of boomers trying to keep up with technology while my eyesight slowly gives way to cataracts, is this really a good time to release robot cars of any kind on an aging society? Just asking.

I shouldn’t have asked. I’m betting you’ve got your own frustrations with most, if not all, of the machines I just described. But there’s another one I just ran across. Not literally. Nearly, but, well, let me explain.

I’ve seen them a few times, but I’m still not used to them. I was about to pull out of a strip mall driveway onto a busy street a few days ago when something weird caught my eye. A flash of red showed up in my periphery. It looked like a giant vegetable headed straight for me and, for a second, I thought Return of the Killer Tomatoes was a real thing. I mean, it could have been, if I’d pulled out in front of it. I definitely would have squashed that rolling red tomato.

It was doing twenty mph in the bike lane. Everything clogging up the highways now runs at twenty mph. I’m barely used to looking for kids on scooters and electric bicycles, and now I have to keep an eye out for rotund red robots, too. Just like its Waymo cousin, this one was unmanned and automated. But unlike Waymo, it had big eyes on the front of it. Big LED eyes! Funny, friendly eyes that moved to and fro, like a character that just escaped from the movie, Cars, and couldn’t find its way back.

I mean, come on. I can’t take much more of this. Our streets are turning into cartoons. What’s next? Waymo fire engines and police vehicles? Bucktooth pickup trucks and muscle cars that flirt with volkswagons? How many hot wheels are going to clog the streets before I wave a white flag and start calling for an Uber?

I didn’t know what the heck I was dealing with, so when I got home I looked it up. They’re the brainchild of Door Dash, and each rolling automaton is called “Dot.” Appropriate, since that’s all that would be left if my Tahoe had run over it. Inside their bulbous selves they can carry up to six pizzas and presumably a small, hungry child. I’m just guessing about the pizzas. Apparently, they fill a niche in the Phoenix area market where hungry homeowners and businesses alike take one look at their outside thermometers and think to themselves, “That’s robot weather out there. I’m calling in for take-out delivery.”

The company’s website gushes about their desire to lean into electric vehicles because they reduce emissions and traffic congestion. Not so fast. If I’d run over the dang thing, like I came close to doing, there would have been increased traffic congestion just from Looky Lou’s standing in the street, laughing. In my opinion, the only way to make a Dot safe is to make it a lot more visible. Instead of being 1/10th the size of a car, they should have supersized it, just like the hamburger and soda it was carrying.

All this to say, now when I get out on the open road around here, I don’t have time to watch for other cars. I’m too busy protecting myself from electric skateboarders, electric scooters, disoriented driverless cars, eBikes, and delivery units with glandular problems, when all I wanted to do was escape my house and pick up a salad.

I don’t know how to handle all these changes. I’d blame it on progress, but I think it’s really the fault of elevators. If I close my eyes, could all the magical people please put the furniture back the way it was before? 

Yeah, I didn't think so. 

I should have never left the ground floor.

**Seen above, actual image of a convoy of rolling tomato dots. 

    It's getting weird out there.

The Art of Waiting

I look at my thin-skinned hands, scarred from life and age. Old lady hands that will never be held by his again. And I think, it’s over. My life with Rob is over. You might think that, after five years of living without him, I’d have already come to that conclusion. I did. And now I’m doing it again.

That’s how grief works. The hole in my life that took his place is permanent. It’s a life sentence. The waves of sorrow are less frequent now but, when they hit me, they’re just as turbulent as ever and I have no choice but to ride them out.

I sought counseling right away just before he died, thinking he had a long recovery ahead and I’d need help to navigate that difficult road. Instead, I was the one with the long recovery ahead. Only, I don’t believe you ever recover from losing your beloved. You learn to live alongside it but the loss, the hole, is still there, because he isn’t. He isn’t here.

Counseling felt like I was attending Grief School. It was there that I learned firsthand how grief works. I was late to class, I guess, something I’d always been thankful for, and also a little bit worried about, inexperienced as I was. But I didn’t need to worry. Whenever Grief finally shows up, it doesn’t leave. You’ll learn its lessons right on time.

I didn’t want to meet with a “Christian” counselor. I’d already heard the rounds of comments about trusting God from other Christians. About being “tested” by God. Learning whatever lesson He was trying to “teach” me. Basically, the word on the street was that God was the bad guy. Or I was. Comfort from some people felt a lot like friendly fire. No one meant to shoot me down, but they took aim on my grief and I got in the way.

The last thing you need when your heart is broken is to feel guilty for not being a stronger believer, a faithful servant, a better example. Being human was not allowed. I could be selling Christian counselors short since I never spoke with one, but since I’d already been told by a few Christians to “never question God,” that losing Rob was “God’s will,” that the reason God took him and not me was that “God still has work for you to do, Eula,” and that I should not “pitch a tent in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” I felt certain that this unfamiliar pain probably would not be understood by those who had not yet lost their beloved spouse.

So, I met instead with a woman who respected my belief in God, encouraged me to lean into Him and sit with Him, and told me the truth about how long grief lasts. “It takes as long as it takes,” she said, shaking her head at the statement that a lengthy grief was the equivalent of staking my claim in the Land of Sorrow and trying to set up shop there. “There are no shortcuts,” she told me. “The only way through it is through it.” She was referring to grief, not the valley of the shadow of death. Which, in the case of losing my darling, was way more than just a shadow. It was the real thing.

She was patient. She did not judge me or anything I dared to tell her. After our sessions ended, I spent a year online connecting with other widows and listening to a “grief coach.” You can’t say I haven’t tried to find my way. It’s what I do. I keep trying.

But here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about recently. I’ve been told that my relationship with Rob didn’t die with him, but “it changes.” Well, that’s an understatement if ever I heard one. I’ve also been encouraged to speak to Rob any time I need to. I do that anyway. After forty-four years together, even death can’t shut me up. And, in that regard, our communication has definitely “changed,” since Rob doesn’t speak up the way he used to. Or, another way of looking at it is that he’s as quiet as he always was when I took too long to get to the point.

But what did they mean when they told me my relationship with Rob would go on, but would change? It never made sense, and you’d think it would since I’m the authority on what it’s like to have to live without him now. The “advice” felt so ethereal, vague, woo woo. I’m pretty sure it had Rob laughing if he was listening in. He's always been a practical kind of guy.

It was meant to comfort me, but it didn’t. And, I suppose, in the world of widowing, maybe not every bit of advice will fit every kind of widow. That’s fair. But if that widow is a believer in Jesus Christ, if she knows that the Holy Spirit lives inside her as her Comforter and Counselor, and if her darling is also a believer, then what is the comfort that actually does its job when the two of them are torn apart and one of them must keep living with her feet on ground muddied by her own tears?

This is where comfort happens for me. Jesus cries with me. He never criticizes me, no matter what I have to say, and I’ve had a lot to say in the last five and a half years. If that isn’t grace, then grace doesn’t exist. On a side note, that’s also the reason I love Jesus, because He accepts me as I am. A flawed human being who is also His.

He has carried me from Day One. Actually, from T-minus 35 and forward, for the five weeks that Rob’s life hung in the balance, and we hoped against hope that he’d make it. And afterward, when I stopped talking to God because I didn’t understand and I was hurting and blaming Him, He did not turn His back on me. He held me. I knew He was doing it and after a while, I started talking to Him again. Yet He’s never once made me rededicate my life or grovel at His feet, begging His forgiveness for not having enough faith. He just kept carrying me and walking with me through this thing that takes as long as it takes.

And what about Rob? Where does he fit into all of this? Well, I can tell you one thing. He isn’t dead. He’s more alive than he’s ever been, more alive than I am. He’s “waiting” for me, if you can use that word for a place that exists outside of time. I sometimes think of him as being away on assignment. We’ve been in that position before, or maybe you didn’t know that. We were engaged in April of 1975, two weeks before the Air Force sent him overseas, and I didn’t see him again until a week before our wedding in September of 1976. Eighteen months of letters and rare phone calls, a year and half spent waiting for him to come get me while he waited to be free to do it.

I’m waiting again. In the Spirit, I sense him sometimes. In this world, I get signs from him sometimes. In my dreams, I see him often. But my arms are empty, my bed is cold, my tears come daily, and I miss him like the moon would miss the sun.

I’ve heard all kinds of descriptions of where our loved ones are once their bodies die, usually from people who are unsure if God exists or if He loves them. I wish I was a better communicator of the reality of who God is. I’m a pretty lousy witness. A terrible debater. Even a weary widow. But Rob is not hiding among the stars. He’s not the energy around me. He’s not my spirit guide or an angel or a personal assistant scheduling my future. He’s also not relegated to just memories and photos, stories and a tombstone.

He’s alive. We’re apart and I hate it. I keep telling God that I don’t understand death. I don’t understand the space between Rob and me now, knowing he’s alive when I can’t see or hear him. But when I asked my son, the Anglican priest, where Rob is, his answer came easily. “He’s in the arms of God, Mom.” And so am I. I have been since Day One, T-minus 35, carried by the One who also carries my darlin’.

If God carries both of us at the same time, then Rob is as close as my heart.

I’ll try to keep remembering that on the days when my hands look old, my tears keep falling, and I’d give my right arm to hear him speak to me again. He’s waiting for me.

It’s not over if he’s waiting for me again.

Check, Mate

I’ve never understood the game of chess. Or math. Or strategy, for that matter. Other than that, I think chess is the perfect game to play. When you stop to think about it, it’s even a good analogy for life, if your life is anything like mine. Since I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time, I cross my fingers, fake my way through it, and hope my queen doesn’t get taken out. 

There’s just one problem. In my life, I’m the queen. And usually I’m in jeopardy, so maybe a better name for this game would be Jeopardy.

I “learned,” and I use that word liberally, to play chess when I was ten and my opponent was old.  “It’s not really that complicated,” he told me. I had my doubts. Not only did it look complicated, but it also looked boring. Where were the dice? The gingerbread pawns from Candyland? The colorful spinners? Right away I knew I was being set up for failure.

But since I had a grownup paying attention to me, I pretended to enjoy moving little wooden toys around on top of a map while I tried not to die.

“It’s not a map,” he began. “It’s a chess board. And the pieces here aren’t toys. That’s not a horse, it’s a knight. The knight doesn’t move like the other pieces. It’s sneaky. It moves over one and up two.”

I scratched my chin as I listened. So, the horses in chess can dance, cha cha cha. Or else they stumble over their feet, like they’ve had too much to drink. Got it.

“What about the little castles?” I asked. “What do they do?” Well, they weren’t castles, I was told. They’re rooks. But they looked like castles, so why not call them castles? "Because that's not their name," I was told.

I let out a sigh. This was such an old person’s game.

Nothing about chess seemed normal to me. It was confusing. The pawns were the weakest players, but as a consolation they could move two spaces forward on their first attempt. After that, they lost all motivation. They had no awesome superpowers like the little castle pieces, I mean rooks. Rooks can slide all the way across a whole row of squares, forward or backward or sideways, like they’re wearing ice skates. That’s cool.

The best thing about pawns is that you can use them for ransoms. That’s not the best thing if you’re a pawn, though, because it means you’ll be sacrificed when you reach the other end of the board instead of being rewarded for crawling all the way over there while avoiding enemy capture. 

That’s not how we treat our own military, and I don’t think pawns should be treated that way either. “No man left behind,” that’s our motto. But if you’re a pawn, all bets are off. At the finish line, you’ll be finished. Then you'll be exchanged for a more important, yet careless, player who failed his mission and was taken hostage earlier.

If you ask me, that’s a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Pawns, it turns out, are only useful if they agree to go to prison and be tortured in place of a castle or a horse or a vain queen who was too busy flirting with the bishop to avoid being captured. 

So, we began to play. The object of the game was to act like I was learning strategy. I’m not a very good actor. I play chess like most people play checkers—hurry and get all your pieces over to the other side of the tiled squares so you can be King. Incorrect. That’s how you get all your pieces moved off the board and your King gets checkmated.

Oh.

And while we’re on the subject, what’s up with the King? He’s actually less powerful than a pawn. It’s like he’s got shackles on his ankles. No one respects a King with shankles. He can only move one square at a time in any direction. So why is he the King? The queen is way more powerful. Just like the little castles, she can slide from one end of the board to the other any time she wants to, and even diagonally, like she’s doing retail therapy in a shopping mall. But the King? The guy making all the money? His feet are glued to the floor watching everyone else have all the fun.

Who came up with these rules? I bet it was the Queen.

I began to make my horse do fancy dancing, sent my rooks sailing into my opponent’s bishop and soon there was a growing graveyard of all my players lying in enemy territory, giving me dirty looks. It was disappointing to find out that bishops are actually sneaky and violent—they crash into you diagonally when you least expect it. That's not very spiritual. But it is convenient that they know how to deliver the last rites.

I was having so much fun I couldn’t wait for the game to be over. When, after an hour, it was finally finished, I had three pawns left, all frantically trying to take down a King while they dodged an entire brigade of horses and castles. I had managed to eliminate five of my opponent’s pawns and watched in dismay as my queen pledged allegiance to the other team.

It ended the way I knew it would. In simple terms, my strategy was to name all the horses, have the bishop marry the Queen to her King, watch as they welcomed eight little baby pawns into their royal family, and live happily forever in their tiny little castles.

“That’s not how you play chess,” I was told right after I was checkmated. Well, that’s not true. I just proved that’s how I play chess.

Come to think of it, that’s the last chess lesson I ever had. Maybe I do know strategy.

With thanks to Ingrid Lemaire for permission to use the darling photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: chess | look at the birds behind her on the wall | Ingrid Lemaire | Flickr

Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies

For more than three hours I sat at a small table with my laptop, listening to nine other people do the thing I’ve never had the courage to do—enter the infamous lair of Dungeons & Dragons. The horrifying role-playing board game my younger self feared would lead my children down a cultic road that would either corrupt or enslave them, possibly even leaving them addicted to creativity, imagination and a love of story.

Silly me.

The Warriors, ranging in age from nine years old to forty-four, were brave. They were talented. They were thrown together by chance. And I, embedded as I was within their small entourage, witnessed the timeless clash of good versus evil. When it was over, I came away with one thought in mind.

What the heck just happened?

First, allow me to introduce the cast of players who met up by chance at The Inn at the Edge of the Woods. The name has a lovely ring to it and sounds like a charming B&B I might want to visit some time. No. This is a creepy Inn at the edge of creepy woods. None of the players should have stopped in at the inn. If they were smart, they’d have sought out a Super Eight instead. It would have been a lot less scary.

In real life, the brave adventurers are all related. Katy, my daughter, is mother of Allie, Juliet, and Will, and wife of Dan. Jessica, my daughter in law, is mother of Tully, Moira, and Iain, as well as the wife of Lee, my son, the game's guide, and brother to Katy. Now that we've come full circle, let me confuse you a little more. 

Enter the infamous game of D & D.

The first visitor is Kithri, aka Katy, an ancient druid (Celtic priest) who is, apparently, a poor money manager. She owes her guild a lot of cash and needs work. I don’t know what she looks like in this fantasy story, but in real life she’s smart and pretty. It is simply her character who is lousy with money.

Next is Jade, aka Allie, the pirate, who announces to the room of strangers at the Inn that she is “very undeveloped, so I might not be helpful at all.” Perhaps this means she’s no good at swashbuckling but great at theft. She needs a new crew, wants to go on a sailing adventure, and also needs to make money.

At this point, I think what the whole team needs is a good financial adviser. Hopefully one of those is about to enter the dining room.

Now we meet Zadath, aka Tully, who plays the role of a barbarian, a big and gray Goliath animal. Definitely not a typecast for this fifteen-year-old with her gorgeous head of red hair and sparkling blue eyes. But she did growl really well. I was almost convinced. Zadath is an ex-soldier, a drinker, in between jobs and – you guessed it – looking for work.

Apparently, this Inn is a magnet for the unemployed. Good luck getting reimbursed for their rooms and supper.

Next through the door comes Vaelopria, who had to spell that name for me. AKA Juliet, who in real life is called the Animal Whisperer, Vaelopria clatters into the Inn with hooved feet. The attractive centaur is a ranger on the run from her herd. Betrayed by her brother, she ran into the inn to hide out. She is the first to arrive with spare change in her pockets, if centaurs had pockets.

Now we meet the half-ork brothers, Norris and Boris, who may still hold a grudge against their parents for those rhyming names. Norris, who goes by “Chuck,” is played by Dan and in real life is the husband of Katy/Kithri as well as the father of Boris aka Will. Norris stopped by the Inn for a pint and was shocked to see his brother Boris there, perhaps because Boris is underaged.

This is already starting to feel like an episode of The Young and The Restless if it took place in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

So Norris, or Chuck, is a wandering monk, but not the religious kind. Instead, he’s a martial artist skilled at harnessing mystical energy for combat. Which explains why instead of praying for the creatures he encountered on this ominous evening, he flew through the air, landed a reverse roundhouse and sent the misty green zombies’ heads flying.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Now to his brother, Boris, who in real life is a space entrepreneur renowned for co-commandering a C.A.R. through portals where he and his enormously talented Commander save the universe on the daily. Boris is a fighter who fights with a great sword. Boris wants a dog. He went into the forest in search of a wolf, saw the Inn, and stopped there to get some sleep.

Major mistake.

At this point, I began to wonder if the Inn was really a “Dungeon” and questioned where all the “Dragons” were. I did not have to wait long. Osborne, aka Iain, a minute but heroic paladin, arrives. Osborne, a knight renowned for his chivalry, is . . . duhn da da duhn . . . dragon born. Finally. Osborne has apparently just returned from another incursion and stops by the Inn looking for shelter and entertainment. “I saw the lights,” he says. Of course. Dragons are drawn to bright things.

Interesting that our knight in shining armor is also dragon born. Am I the only one who thinks that’s an oxymoron? We’ll see how this plays out.

And finally, the Racoon, aka Jessica, the wisecracking genius who brings comedic relief throughout the entire adventure. Racoon is a rogue, a quintessential scoundrel. She likes to make the rounds at local Inns to steal from stupid drunk people. She knows that The Inn at the Edge of the Woods also has the best stew around. She shows up intending to steal, but this Inn doesn’t have enough guests, so mostly she’s here for the stew.

Now to the staff. Vester is the hired help at the Inn. Anonda runs the bar and is the wife of Glen who is not a people person. Poor choice of occupation, in my opinion. The couple are retired adventurers. I had no idea that was an actual paying gig. They “gathered their loot” as it was explained to all the other guests, bought a place away from civilization, and opened it up for strangers and zombies, as we shall see.

So, to summarize. Pirate Allie/Jade has lots of loot, is rich, and because of that she gets to sleep in her own private room. Centaur Juliet/Vaelopria wants to stay in the stable, naturally. Fighter Will/Boris is afraid he’ll get murdered if he sleeps in a shared room. He and his brother/father Norris/Chuck/Dan decide to sleep in the same room. Hope that works out. Rogue Raccoon/Jessica is waiting to see who gets the nice rooms because they obviously have money that she is willing to take off their hands. Everyone else sleeps on the floor in front of the warm hearth.

Only, on this night, no one sleeps. At all. Or gets a refund.

This is where the dice come in. All six or eight or twenty of them, I don’t know. I lost count. Every player brings their own specialized set of dice to the event. They’re weird looking and also strangely pretty. They’re not cubes. They look like Temu versions of cubes. Close, but no cigar. From what I could tell sitting across the room from where the action was taking place, every die had a purpose and was rolled to determine things like “perception” or “strength” or “levels of intelligence.”

Apparently no one arrived at the Inn with any awareness of how smart or strong they really were. Instead, they had to rely on chance by rolling numbers ranging in size from, I suppose, zero to as much as 23. I think I heard 23 announced once. Right away everyone cheered and said, “Great! The bad guy is dead.” So, from now on I plan to avoid the number twenty-three. Just to be safe.

The Dungeon Master, aka Lee, casually referred to as the “DM”, shared the story of the Inn with its guests. His daughter, Moira, the musician of the family, provided an ever-changing background of sound effects and musical accompaniment. The DM explained that he would give the group a scenario to react to and then the reaction reacts to their reaction. I think that's what I heard. I was still busy trying to make sense of the dice.

With every piece of the plot, the guests followed the square on the board representing them and decided on a new plan of action. Usually that meant rolling one of the specialized dice to determine how well the assault played out. “You’ll either attack or cast a spell. When you roll your damage, let me know,” the DM said. “I’m not keeping track. This is so you can enjoy combat.”

Enjoy combat. Hunh. I think I saw Boris swallow hard at that one and look at his brother/father, the non-religious monk, perhaps wishing his father was more spiritual and less gymnastic. I don’t think Boris enjoys combat. Not if he’s afraid of being murdered in a shared room.

All of that information overload led to a popcorn break because warriors require sustenance. I didn’t eat any because a) I’m not a warrior, and b) I don’t like popcorn.

When they returned to the table, all hades broke loose. As soon as the cheese board was presented, the hostess, Anonda, asked some of her guests to go upstairs and invite an old woman in one of the rooms to join them for supper. The red-headed barbarian, the centaur and Osborne the paladin volunteered, but the woman’s door was locked. Vaelopria, who has no manners, kicked the door open with her hooves and the group found the guest dead in her bed.

This is exactly what Boris was afraid of and probably why he didn’t volunteer to go with the others.

The diminutive knight, renowned for his heroism and chivalry, suggested that they kill the dead woman. Clearly, he forgot to roll his die for intelligence points. Though the other guests were seated downstairs drinking ale and chowing down, they listened to the drama playing out upstairs and offered free advice.

Boris said to be sure that the old dead woman isn’t a zombie. Racoon said to remove the head because maybe that kills zombies? I’m not sure. The DM rolled his eyes. “Kick the door open, find a dead woman, dismember her, as you do,” he commented sarcastically. Then he instructed the whole group to roll their die to determine their levels of intelligence. A little late for that one, I think.

Let me explain. No, let me summarize. The woman is not dead. She is creepy, though, has a raspy voice, weird eyes, and frightens the murderous group who broke into her room with these terrifying words: “I hunger.” Well, maybe you had to be there. She follows up that acknowledgement with, “The children come for the kine.” Then she attacks the centaur, the barbarian, and the knight. She’s pretty tough.

But here’s how this battle and all the others following throughout the long, dark, weary night played out. Orva, the comatose guest, jumped at the paladin, tried to bite him, but didn’t succeed. “Roll your three twenty in and add your dexterity bonus,” the DM directed. The paladin attacked Orva with a mace, rolled his d20 and added a mace number from his cheat sheet. 1d6, got a five plus 3 equals 8 damage points. The centaur can now kick the old woman. Rude. She rolls a 16 which only allows for a smack on the face. The centaur rolls again, gets a 1d6, adding a strength of 9, and was victorious. “That takes her out,” the DM announced. “She’s gone.” And the peasants rejoiced. Racoon now says to remove the entire body, not just the head.

At this point, you may be weary, realizing that we’ve only just begun. Every round at the table takes six seconds in D&D time and thirty minutes in actual earth time. My back was beginning to ache where I sat at my little table, typing, typing, typing.

Allow me to hurry things along here. You’re welcome.

Tonight’s episode is reminiscent of the old game of Clue, where strangers attend a banquet in a creepy inn, suspicious at first of one another, and eventually must pull together to discover who the real killer is and work as a team to defeat the enemy. I took thirteen pages of notes during this initial encounter. Oh, yes, you read that right. This three-and-a-half-hour episode was only part one. Part two will be difficult to pull off as the members of our heroic little entourage live in two different states separated by two thousand miles.

While the Gang of Three were fighting a dead woman, they also searched her room to the enjoyment of Racoon, but the dead woman woke up and got creepy while her belongings were being ransacked, so who can blame her for defending her dead self? The frightened trio ran downstairs and described what was happening. Everyone wanted to call the cops. I didn’t hear about any D&D cops in the introduction, so, as I suspected, they were on their own.

The couple who owned the Inn were shocked by this turn of events, and right on the heels of their shock an earthquake took place, apparently. The building began to shake and disintegrate causing the DM to jump into action.

“Roll a dexterity saving throw for me!” he ordered. “Unless it’s bubbled in your proficiency, then it does something unintelligible.” I think he explained what it does, but it was unintelligible to me. Sometimes I couldn’t hear very well from my little table. The barbarian rolled a 10. “Roll a d4,” the DM said. She got a 2 and a picture frame fell off the wall and smacked her in the head. “Take a 2 damage,” she’s told. “Scumbag,” she says. That’s what she gets for standing under a picture frame.

Now everyone “runs” outside and here the story takes an ominous turn. A river of misty green, highlighted by glowing green eyes, rushes down from the mountain, headed straight for the Inn and certain destruction of our band of roguish heroes.

Time for another popcorn break. 

Really?

Afterward, the DM summarizes everything they’ve experienced thus far, which begs the question, are these guests the brightest and best if they’ve already forgotten the trauma they just experienced? Just saying.

“What do you guys want to do?” the DM asks. No one asks me. I want to go get some chocolate. I didn’t get any popcorn. Racoon wants to know if the windows are zombie proof. They’re thick and cheap, she’s told. Boris wants to order another round of ale and move a table in front of the door. Centaur believes the green, misty zombies are after one of the guests and suggests that the group sacrifice someone. “You first,” her mother, Kithri/Katy says.

The centaur sighs and pushes a table against the door while Kithri snarls in the corner of the room. Despite their best efforts, the Inn is compromised and the creatures push their way inside. This is what the DM tells them. If you ask me, I think the DM is a double agent.

The pirate suggests that everyone go upstairs so they’ll only need to barricade one floor of the Inn. Racoon and the paladin agree and go upstairs together so they can better view the chaos down below. Boris pulls out his crossbow and takes up a position at a window. Table stackers roll their d20 for a strength save. 10 and 19 plus five. Chuck Norris rolls a 12 and adds 2 proficiencies on top of that. Racoon gets her bloomers in a knot and declares that she wants to kick some old lady. “Bam bam bam!” she yells.

I check my watch. One hour in. Gonna be a long siege.

The redheaded barbarian throws an ax because she moved 6 up and 3 over on the board. She attacks with a 1, 5, 4, or 7 and did not hit. The ax clatters out of the way. I think if she’d just thrown all six of her dice at the green-eyed goblins, she’d have done more damage.

The DM would have let everyone roll at once now that the security of the front door is in question, but no one has religious training. Then why do they even have a monk? The monk rolls his wisdom score, gaining a 10 which is possibly a perfect number. However, he gets no credit for it since we all know he’s not skilled in religion. The team guesses that if someone can light a candle and is willing to sacrifice a hit point, it might satisfy the creatures and keep some of them at bay. Boris volunteers. My hero.

The centaur gets under a table and shoots with her longbow, rolls her attack and is rewarded with a 10 and a 14. She hits, adding a dexterity bonus to the damage. “2 points of damage over here,” the DM declares. I don’t know. It looked like more than to me. The pirate hits a zombie with her pistol. Shooting isn’t very efficient with the undead, I presume. Pistol whipping gives more points of damage perhaps. She rolls a 13 which hits and winds up with 5. I don’t know why.

Upstairs, Kithri the druid is in wolf form. Her speed is unknown, but probably a 16, according to the DM. “I’m biting to attack!” the wolf says, before asking how far a wolf can jump. “40 feet,” she’s told. She growls menacingly but chickens out. I mean, if I was a wolf I’d have jumped 40 feet in the opposite direction.

Hoo boy. You have no idea how hard it is to summarize 3-1/2 hours of combat into one readable blog. My speed on these keys is 140 wpm which, I believe, should give me 26 points of attack. In the future, that’s what I’ll negotiate for.

Basically, the Inn is in utter chaos. The barbarian got wiped out and took 6 points of damage as well. “Why do they hit so hard?” she cries. “They nasty,” her mother/Racoon says. Someone with a blowgun rolls a 5 which is not enough because Zombies ain’t afraid of blowguns. Norris attacks using his monky martial arts. “An 18 will hit, roll 6 and add 4 to it,” the DM, who is not a mathematician, tells him. The non-religious monk flies through the air after rolling his die four times, landing with a thud which crushes the skull of a zombie. “I double killed him!” he says in victory. The DM nods and replies, “What you notice is there’s less of him left than there is of some of the other undead.”

Which made me laugh, but no one else did. War is serious, I guess.

It was all pretty messy after that. One by one, the green misty creatures who infiltrated the Inn were taken out by the whole crew until only the warriors and the Innkeepers were left inside. I lost track of Zester the capable servant early on and suspect he escaped through the back door, never to be seen again. But since I don’t have a die to roll to support that theory, we’ll never know for sure.

There were breath attacks, kidney shots, and 15-foot cones of fire from the dragon-born knight. This paladin is the youngest warrior at nine years old, but I don’t doubt one bit that he can exhale a 15-foot fire blast in a breath attack. I watched this kid lick ghost pepper sauce off his finger earlier that day and he didn’t even flinch. Or drink water afterward. He really is part dragon.

Orva, it turns out, has a perpetual mission to spare the Inn and perhaps the entire fantasy world by making a deal with the green-eyed, misty undead annually, but struggled with her plan this year. Which is why the river of zombies flowed out of the woods, hungrily searching out fresh brains. I think. It makes as much sense as whatever the truth actually is.

But, in the end, they all did their part to destroy the green underworld. As the final enemy hit the ground, a green vapor dissipated and his body zipped away back into the Fay Wild which I cannot explain because I don’t even understand what it is. But I can tell you it caused a sense of distress to the warrior crowd. I felt it, too. I thought once they killed everyone that I could go home and get some sleep. But, no. I had two more pages to type.

A final discussion about how to bring the outside threat to an end led to the obvious question, is there even a winner in this game? Do the zombies stay dead? Does the green mist cause respiratory failure? I think if everyone threw all their dice into the air and ran out the door, we could rest up and call it a night before the demon tree in the woods could turn all of us into Chow Mein.

Dawn approached, walls were popping, floorboards creaking, swords were flying, hundreds of undead bodies were strewn everywhere. It was the Alamo all over again. But at least the green mist disappeared as the sun peaked over the distant hill. “So, we survived the haunted barn?” someone asked. I never heard that the barn was haunted. “Yes,” they are told, “and you can loot the bodies. But you won’t be blessed if you burn down the building.” Well, duh.

So, what have we learned? Following a 3-1/2 hour game, I reduced thirteen pages of notes down to seven for a total of more than 3,700 words on this Word document. All eleven participants, including the DM, the sound technician and the scribe survived what can arguably be called the most disturbing and terrifying night of their lives and yet, as far as I know, no one had nightmares afterward.

For myself, when the dust settled, my eyes were bloodshot, my fingers cramped, my back was aching, and I wished desperately that somehow I had learned to enjoy eating popcorn as a child. All in all, as I packed up my gear, I reasoned that I had suffered about seventy-five hundred points of damage during the entire altercation.

That’s the last time I bring a laptop to a gunfight.