SHOW NOTES

In this week’s episode I talk about an infestation of carpenter ants in my home a few years ago that made me respect this unique and incredible force of nature.

TRANSCRIPT

A few years ago, my home was invaded.

We were under attack. Every day was a battle in a war that we were desperately losing. We were on the verge of giving up hope and succumbing to our new overlords forever…

And no, I’m not talking about an invasion by people.

My home was invaded by an army of carpenter ants.

It’s the only time as a homeowner that I had to fight for my house. Never in my life have I experienced anything like the incredible force of carpenter ants.

I won the war, but they ultimately won my respect in the end, and it was obvious to me why ants have been such an influence on fiction.

The army of carpenter ants is the subject of my sketchbook today.

***

Hello, and welcome to episode 31, the story of how an army of carpenter ants nearly gave me a mental breakdown.

My wife and I bought a house a few years ago, and the house sits on a big lot that has a lot of trees. A lot of trees. When you’re a homeowner, the number of trees on your property directly correlates to the number of problems you’ll have with the home.

For example, we had tree roots break our pipes. Trees are home to a family of possums in our backyard. A tree was growing up against our porch and we cut it down, but it already did tremendous damage because the previous homeowner did nothing about it. Every autumn, I have to do a lot of work to rake and mulch leaves in my yard—usually takes me two weekends to get all of the leaves. The trees shade my property, so we don’t get much sunlight in our yard, making it hard to grow things. A pine tree in my backyard sheds its needles directly into my gutter. A family of deer lived behind my garage, hidden for days by trees. My backyard has been home to owls, to hawks, to groundhogs using tree stumps to grind their teeth on.

So yes, as much as I love trees, they are nothing but trouble for a homeowner.

Which brings me to my carpenter ant story.

***

The summer started off like any other. Hot. Sunny. Lawn mowers humming every evening, and crickets singing every night. Just another season in our Midwest house, life going on as normal.

One day, my wife noticed an ant in the kitchen. She squashed it and didn’t think anything of it.

Another day, I saw an ant in the bathroom. I crushed it with some tissue and moved on.

Another day, we both noticed an ant traveling along a baseboard. I crouched to inspect it, and noticed it for the first time—a stocky black ant. Compared to other ants I’d seen, this one was built like a boxer. It could beat the crap out of a field ant.

Again, we squashed it, talked for a minute about how it might have gotten in the house, and went on with our day.

And then, the next morning, ants were everywhere. They were on the walls, on the floor, in every room. They invaded our food. They invaded our daughter’s toys and bit her while she played.

They attacked me in the shower.

My home had been thoroughly besieged.

***

We tried to fight the ants with bug spray and ant traps. We killed maybe a hundred a day, caught hundreds more. But still, they kept coming.

I patrolled the perimeter of my house, tried to find where they were getting in. There were no holes, no openings, nothing.

It only took two days before we were completely defeated. I called a local pest control service. I couldn’t have been happier when a black pickup truck rolled into my driveway. A fat guy in a t-shirt and jeans climbed out, smiling and whistling as he strapped on a utility belt. He greeted me jovially, frowning at a trail of ants on my sidewalk.

We walked around the house, and he inspected the same spots I did. No openings.

“Hmm,” he said, bending over a little too far, and revealing more behind than I wanted to see.

Then we went into the house, and he observed more ants on the wall.

“Talk about trouble,” he said.

As we moved through the house, he kept whistling, shining a flashlight behind all the furniture, into the attic.

“You’ve got a serious case of carpenter ants,” he said.

At that point, I had no idea what carpenter ants were. He then told me that they were a big problem, and if I didn’t do something, they’d undermine the structure of the house. I gulped.

Two hundred dollars later, he armed the house with more baits and traps. He told me that if I saw the nest, to call him right away.

They didn’t work.

In fact, the ants seemed to multiply.

***

I was desperate. I was willing to do anything to get rid of these damn ants.

At this point they had already bitten my infant daughter multiple times, and we couldn’t keep letting this happen. They were getting meaner and bolder too, too, openly attacking me when I was writing my novels, climbing over our food as we were eating it. And their bites stung.

One day, when my mom was visiting, she picked up a fallen tree branch in my yard and told me she noticed something strange in a dead cherry tree in the back of my property.

I inspected it, and sure enough, there was a river of ants flowing in and out of a hole in the tree.

I measured the distance between the tree and my house, and it was a good one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet. Probably the equivalent of a day’s journey for an ant.

I called the pest control guy and he was there the next day.

“Yep,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “I’ll be damned. I’ve never seen anything like this. They’re traveling pretty far.”

He threw some kind of bomb into the hole, and ants spilled out of the tree. Hundreds of thousands of them. I never saw anything like it in my life.

Later that night, the grass was covered in dead carpenter ants, and my lawn was filled with birds who were feasting on them.

Slowly but surely, the ants disappeared.

We still saw them in the house, but in fewer numbers. After a few days, they disappeared completely.

We had the tree cut down and taken away.

We had won the war.

But in the end, the ants won my respect.

They were a true force of nature.

***

Hope you liked that one.

Like I said, those ants were inspiring.

Since, I’ve learned to think of my books like carpenter ants. They’re journeying out into the world to find readers and bring money. The more books I have, the more people will pay attention. And every day they bring back money to me, the mother colony. I know it’s a little cheesy, but the analogy works in my head.

Anyway, the moral of this story is, if you ever see ants in your house, just call somebody. My wife and I still talk to this very day how quickly they multiplied. I know it sounds like I dramatized it in this podcast, but I’m serious about how quickly they multiplied. I wasn’t exaggerating.

And I wasn’t kidding about trees, either. That cherry tree was the cause of our troubles. So if you own a home, do yourself a favor and inspect your trees. You’ll be glad you did.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.” E. O. Wilson

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SHOW NOTES

In this week’s episode, I talk about how I watched a friend of mine fall in love.

TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever watched someone fall in love?

Their outlook becomes rosier. They smile more. They’re more pleasant to be around.

I’ve been fortunate enough to see friends in my life fall in love. And when it happens, it makes me happy.

In this week’s sketchbook, I want to talk about when a friend of mine met someone special.

***

Hello, and welcome to episode 27. Twenty seven is a lovely number. A number of love.

Ok, maybe I’m making that up, but this is definitely an episode with a flair of romance and infatuation.

I wanted to talk this week about a friend who met a very special woman. He met her when he was in college, and he was completely infatuated with her.

I was in college in Des Moines, Iowa, and he was in school in St. Louis, Missouri. I visited him throughout the summer and we would hang out, usually in the form of driving through the scenic streets of St. Louis and listening to jazz.

I remember him telling me about her.

My friend, who is usually pretty even keeled about things, was excited. To this day I’ll never forget the enthusiasm in his voice.

What’s even crazier is that I was driving. Usually my memory is crap when I’m multitasking, but I remembered all his words crystal clear.

It was a rainy evening in St. Louis, and we were stuck in crazy traffic.

So while we were fighting traffic and listening to some jazz, he told me this woman’s story.

It affected me so much that I went home later that night and I wrote the story down in my sketchbook. This was back in 2008, I think.

There are a few times in a writer’s career when you realize that you’re experiencing something special that will end up in a book someday.

Now, I’ve changed the woman’s name and some key details, but what follows is pretty much exactly what my friend told me.

***

Regina has cream-colored skin, like chai tea. Her skin matches her personality. Thick lips but not too thick, bluish-green eyes whose color you can’t quite pin to blue or green—eyes that leave you dumbstruck in conversation when it’s your time to speak. She likes to drink for the taste of alcohol—not for the drunkenness. She prefers gin to vodka, rum to whiskey. She adores flavored drinks and Amarettos.

She was born in Guyana. She’s half-Lebanese and half-Chinese, and she went to school in Holland. She speaks English, Dutch, French and German—maybe Farsi and Arabic, too.

We were in a book store and I was looking at this art book. Oil paintings of Scottish castles.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“An art book,” I said.

She snatched the book out of my hands and started thumbing through the pages.

“I love art,” she said.

I mentioned that I listened to flamenco music and her eyes grew wide—she was the only person on the trip who liked it, too.

“I don’t know if she was saying she liked all these things because it was true or because she liked me. I don’t want her changing her opinion because of me. I want to know who she really is, you know? No need to put on any shows for me.”

***

I captured the conversation and I filed it away. I forgot about it.

My friend only saw the woman a few times before she ended up traveling away. He moved on.

Nearly a decade later, when I was writing my book, Be a Writing Machine, I was describing how I keep a sketchbook, and I had an idea to share some examples.

I have thousands of different entries—bits and pieces I’ve captured over the years.

I found the conversation, and it brought a smile to my face.

I told my friend about it, nearly ten years later, and he’d forgotten about her, too. Funny how life goes on.

But he was floored when I read the entry to him. He couldn’t believe how good my memory was.

It was a reminder to me of how cool that moment was for the both of us—him living it, and me hearing him retell it.

That’s what I love about being a writer. When you capture someone on the page in true color, it moves people in many ways. It becomes permanent art that lasts forever. Even if it affects just one person, it was worth it.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Memory…is the diary that we all carry about us.” Oscar Wilde

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SHOW NOTES

There are some people you’ll never forget. In this week’s sketchbook episode, I talk about a school bus driver who made an incredible impression on me, and taught me an important lesson that I still use even today.

TRANSCRIPT

There are some people you’ll never forget as long as you live.

This week, we’re going back to 1999. I was in seventh grade, and my primary mode of transportation was a school bus. I can remember many, many frosty mornings standing on a corner in my apartment complex waiting for bus number 546 to lumber up to the curb.

The door would creak open, and every day it was the same bus driver, an elderly black man with gray stubble, a denim Oxford, and trucker cap. In my entire two years, I don’t think he ever missed a day.

I consider him an early mentor, and he taught me a lot about humility, and how to deal with trolls. He’s the subject of my sketchbook today.

***

Hello, and welcome to episode 23.

Let me just start this week’s sketchbook out by saying that I was bullied pretty bad. While I look back on my middle school days fondly, I can’t look at them without feeling some pain, either. And when I think about those days, the things that got me through the constant bullying and teasing and fights, it was the guidance of teachers and adults that ultimately believed in me and helped because they wanted to see kids succeed.

I went to school with a lot of kids who thought they were invincible and disrespected adults something awful. And when I say disrespect, I mean cursing, punching, and all kinds of other verbal and physical harm. It was tough to be a teacher in my middle school. There were many days where teachers ended up with black eyes for trying busting up fights. My principal got assaulted in the parking lot one night after school.

Not even the school buses were safe. Fights broke out there, too, more times than I liked to count.

Which brings me to my bus driver, a man just doing his job in a hostile environment.

***

No one ever knew the man’s name, so everyone just called him bus driver. He only had one facial-expression, and that was stone-faced, staring straight ahead. He looked like a man who’d had a life of quiet disappointment, probably because he was driving a school bus of rowdy kids who disrespected him every day.

He wore the same thing every day: a denim oxford and a trucker cap. He had a potbelly, and a voice that reminded me of Bill Cosby. In fact, that’s why the kids made fun of him. Not a single day went by where someone in the back of the bus didn’t bust out a Bill Cosby impersonation just to mock him.

The kids mocked him for what he wore. They mocked him for being quiet, taunting him and trying to get him to talk, and he would ignore them. He’d focus on driving the bus methodically through his serpentine route.

He took a lot of crap, and he took it gracefully.

***

Two incidents forever made me a fan of this man.

He was, at that point in my life, the only person I had ever seen who was bullied more than me. Those kids terrorized him like you wouldn’t believe, and as much as I hated to see it, seeing someone else be terrorized instead of me for a change was a welcome breather, time for me to reflect on those long bus rides home.

As is any nerdy kid’s custom, I usually sat in the front of the bus, directly behind him. I’d stare wistfully out the window.

One day, he spoke to me. I don’t know how or why.

But he must have believed I was only kid on that bus that was worth talking to, because he never spoke to anyone else.

He was incredibly friendly to me. I thought he hated his life based on his facial expression, but when he spoke, he was actually very warm.

“You’re not like the other knuckleheads in the back of the bus,” he told me. He’d ask me about my classes and how they were going. He’d ask about my family. And we’d have pleasant conversation. Hell, we talked about philosophy and about the ways of people.

***

Near the end of my eighth grade year, he said something I’ll never forget.

He said, “You look like you’re destined to go somewhere in life, wise beyond your years. The other kids here, they just talk and don’t know what they’re talking about. You look like the kind of kid that gets all the facts and makes up your mind for yourself. That’s gonna take you a long way.”

I don’t really remember the details of all our conversations, but I’ll never forget that.

Here was a man I only spoke to for maybe twenty minutes a day, but I learned a lot from him. I connected with him in a way that I didn’t with other adults. I viewed him as an elder, like my grandparents and great grandparents.

He believed in civility. He treated people with respect even if they disrespected you. He believed in jazz and its power to transform a person’s life. He believed in doing a good job because that was the minimum of what was expected of you. He believed that as a black man, it was his responsibility to be a role model to other black people, especially the young pups, and he told me many times that I needed to pass that on.

***

The second incident, I saw him break.

Those kids broke him.

I suppose one can only take so much before he snaps.

It was just before summer vacation at the end of the day, and a kid got on the bus with a CD player. I didn’t think anything of it as he passed. But soon, the assistant principal ran onto the bus and called the boy’s name.

Turns out the kid’s teacher had confiscated his CD player because he was listening to it in class, and he stole it out of his teacher’s desk before he left.

The confrontation immediately turned into a shouting match, and the kid called the assistant principal all kinds of bad names. The bus driver sat silently as the encounter unfolded, eyeing the boy in the rearview mirror.

***

Eventually, the assistant principal confiscated the CD player, and I don’t remember why, but they let the kid ride the bus home. The whole way home, he was making passive aggressive remarks about the principal, the school, and life in general, in colorful words I won’t repeat.

Anyway, the bus is driving down a busy street when the kid says something to the tune of, “Everybody in this school would be much better off without teachers treating school like slave day.” Imagine that, but with more curse words.

The bus screeched to a stop. Seriously, I didn’t know a school bus could stop that fast.

The bus driver put the bus in park and stood up.

“What did you say, boy?” he asked calmly.

“It’s a motherfuckin’ slave day!” the kid shouted.

“Slave day?” the bus driver asked. “You don’t know the meaning of slave day.”

And then the bus driver exploded. He lectured the entire bus on how insolent we were and as black people that was a damn shame. He said a lot of slaves died so we could be more than just three-fifths of a person and actually live in this society as free people.

And, predictably, the kid cursed him out.

And the bus driver shut him up and got even madder. He pointed a finger at the kid and said a lot of people stood up and spoke out just so we could ride a bus in the first place. And here this kid was with his first world problems mad, at the principal because the principal was enforcing the rules.

He opened the bus door, which led into the middle of traffic, told the boy to get the hell off his bus.

Then he drove off, leaving the boy standing on the curb.

I’ve never heard that bus so quiet. And if that wasn’t enough, the bus driver then glanced at us with a harsh warning.

“Any of you wanna talk like that, I’ll put you off my bus!”

And then he didn’t say another word.

***

Hoped you liked that one. That bus driver was unforgettable. And he got in a lot of trouble for that incident. After all, he lost his composure and endangered a child.

After everything transpired, he told me that he almost lost his job over it. But he didn’t seem to mind. A job’s a job, and he could drive a bus in any school district, probably better ones than mine.

Many years later, when I was working in corporate America and took a stand for what I believed in and almost lost my own job as a result, I thought of him, and his quiet confidence.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.” Hal Borland

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SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• What happened at Fair St. Louis in 2005 and why it was the most memorable 4th of July for me
• Random people-watching session that inspired a short story

TRANSCRIPT

In the United States, the 4th of July, or Independence Day is a major holiday.

People love to barbecue, spend time with family, and of course, take to the streets and shoot off fireworks.

For days and days before (and after) the holiday, you can hear people shooting them off, even if it’s against the law.

In my hometown of St. Louis, nothing spells 4th of July like Fair St. Louis, which is basically our version of a state fair. Thousands gather downtown for concerts and entertainment, food, fireworks, and alcohol.

In this week’s episode I’m going to talk about a people-watching session I had all the way back in 2005. This one’s an oldie but a goodie.

***

Hello, and welcome to episode 19 of the podcast.

In this week’s sketchbook episode, which may be the oldest dated sketchbook entry yet, I wanted to talk about one of the most memorable 4th of July holidays I have ever had.

The year was 2005.

I had a crew of friends and we did just about everything together. We played in jazz band together, volunteered with the American Red Cross for community service, and just generally hung out all the time on weekends.

One of my friends found out that the Black-Eyed Peas were playing at the fair, so we decided to go see them.

That year, the fair was downtown on the riverfront of the Mississippi River under the Gateway Arch.

So if you’ve ever seen St. Louis in pictures or been there yourself, you can imagine how cool it would have been to be among thousands of people, sitting on the grass under the arch, watching the river flow by and the Black-Eyed Peas singing their greatest hits.

***

We drive into downtown St. Louis, and buildings rise all around us as we fight traffic and rivers of pedestrians in order to find a parking garage.

I’m the lucky one driving, and my knuckles are practically white as I park the car on the top floor of a parking garage.

Being teenage boys, we take the stairs, joking and laughing several blocks, all the way down to the St. Louis Gateway Arch.

There are people everywhere, drinking beer, smoking, and chatting.

Underneath the Arch is a giant stage, yet we can hardly see it because we’re so far back.

The sun is bright in the sky, spinning sequins off the brown water of the Mississippi. The sky is endlessly blue, and it’s so bright that I wish I brought sunglasses.

I want to eat something but I don’t have any more money so I can’t. I’d used my paycheck from my job to pay for gas to and from the fair.

My stomach rumbles.

***

We’re sitting on a concrete wall, and it’s hot. Sweltering hot and humid, only in the way that St. Louis weather can be. Not even the breeze coming off the river can cool us down.

There’s this game we like to play. It’s a people watching game. Each of us pick out the most interesting person in sight. We talk about the person’s story and find a good laugh about it.

Various acts take the stage, play entire sets.

Of course, they keep the Black-Eyed Peas until the end, so after the fifth or sixth act, the sun is lower in the sky, and the first hint of night appears in the clouds, the skyscrapers start to blink on.

The Black-Eyed Peas take the stage, and everyone erupts into applause as they sing their hits.

They put on a pretty good concert. Not memorable, but definitely not bad.

Still, I’m hungry.

***

The concert ends, and fireworks erupt over the river. Brilliant bursts of red, blue, and purple, they fill the sky and everyone applauds as music plays.

At this point it’s around nine or ten o’clock, and we’re tired. We’ve got curfew to make.

We navigate through crowds of people making their way out of the park.

We make it back to my car and as I pull out of the parking garage, we run into trouble.

Big trouble.

Traffic is backed up for miles.

Now, traffic in St. Louis is a normal thing. It usually takes at least 30 minutes to 45 minutes one-way to get anywhere in GOOD traffic.

But this traffic jam is the worst I’ve ever seen.

All over, cars are spilling out of parking garages. People are honking aggressively at each other.

My stomach rumbles again, and my eyes fall down to my dashboard.

I’ve only got half a tank of gas at best.

***

We sit in traffic for four hours, listening to all the angry people shouting out of their cars.

There’s no accident, no hold up. Just the natural result of thousands of people crowding into a small area on a Saturday night holiday.

I have to call my grandmother to tell her I’ll be late.

I don’t know my way around downtown very well, and smartphones hadn’t been invented yet, so imagine me with a printout from MapQuest with step by step directions, consulting it to find out where to turn next.

My friends and I are tired. Exhausted.

But there are so many people walking on the street that we start to play our game again.

We’re sitting at a corner and a bunch of pedestrians pass by on the sidewalk. Among them is a middle aged black man in a bright yellow suit and a pimp hat. Seriously, the suit is as yellow as a banana. He’s wearing sunglasses and has an immaculate brown Bible under his arm. He’s also wearing shiny brown shoes with wingtips. He struts down the street.

Randomly, he shouts something about everyone needing to find Jesus and then disappears around a corner.

My friends and I all look at each other. And then we start cracking up.

***

Hope you liked that one. I didn’t get home that night until around 2AM.

Oh, and the gentleman I saw in the yellow suit inspired a short story that eventually ended up in my book, Reconciled People. It’s called “The Book of Cutty” and it’s about a black man who sets up camp on the Las Vegas Strip trying to convert as many people to Jesus as he can, and then the devil shows up to stop him.

Because I kept a description of him, I was able to use that nearly seven years later in 2012 when I sat down to write “The Book of Cutty.” That’s how valuable my sketchbook has been to me all these years.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“A day without sunshine is, like, you know, night.” Steve Martin

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SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• My encounter with a seemingly innocuous “company” disguisted as a pyramid
• A crazy account of what happened behind closed doors
• The story of two people trapped
• (Thank goodness I escaped!!)

TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever been in a situation where things seemed perfectly normal, and then something happens that makes you realize that it’s actually not very normal at all?

In this week’s episode I’m going to talk about a run-in I had with a pyramid scheme company. This memory stands out as one of the strangest and most bizarre things I’ve ever experienced, and something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Stay tuned.

***

Hello, and welcome to episode 15 of the podcast.

Today I’m telling my pyramid scheme story. I’ve told this to friends, but never the writing community, so here goes.

The year was 2006. I was a freshman in high school. I was going to a small private college in Iowa, and as one of the only black people, I was trying to make the best of it.

If you’ve never met me in person, it probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that I’m fairly outgoing and friendly, even though I’m socially awkward and an introvert at heart.

I remember introducing myself to a lot of different people my freshman year, just trying to find people that I could relate to.

That’s where this story begins.

The Beginning of Bizarre

It’s my freshman year of college, and I’m standing in line at the college grill, waiting to buy a hamburger. There’s a guy standing in line front of me, and I smile and nod to him.

Slightly balding strawberry blonde hair, which was unusual for someone his age. Short, wearing a blue baseball cap, gray athletic shirt, and basketball shorts.

We start chatting and actually ended up eating dinner together.

He tells me about how he is majoring in business and how he is actually an entrepreneur, selling products in his spare time.

He strikes me as a geeky kind of guy, but not the entrepreneurial type.

I, not knowing what entrepreneurs are at the time, am impressed. I want to know more.

He invites me to a weekly conference that he attends and says that he’d love to have me learn more about his company.

Being a young college student with no money, I agree to join him.

Mistake #1.

The Middle of Bizarre, Part 1

A few days later, we arrive at a local hotel. My acquaintance is dressed up, wearing a black suit and tie, which is a complete wardrobe reversal for him.

There are signs everywhere directing us to the conference center, a gigantic ballroom in the back of the hotel. Crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, a big stage in the front with blue and green lights shining in the center.

There are people everywhere, crowds and crowds of them, like your typical conference.

They’re all dressed up, too. I’m wearing a lavender button-down oxford and jeans, and I feel out of place.

As we’re pushing through the crowd, people are calling out my acquintance’s name.

As he shakes hands and waves at people, I think to myself, this is awfully elaborate for a weekly conference.

He introduces me to his district manager, a mousy guy who’s my age, which is saying something because I’m only 19.

The Middle of Bizarre, Part 2

We sit at a table and the manager tells me how he’s invested his life into the business.

He had a full ride to a prestigious school in the Midwest United States, but he dropped out of college to be a businessman, and he’s all-in.

I ask him what the company sells, and he tells me they sell… products. He hands me a brochure. There are energy drinks, shakes, exercise accessories. Things I would hardly call entrepreneurial.

It also doesn’t make sense that he keeps claiming he’s an entrepreneur, yet he’s employed by this company.

I pepper him with dozens of questions, and to this day I don’t think that he ever gave me a clear answer on exactly what the business was or how it made money.

Instead, he asks me point blank, “do you want a new future?”

I’m taken aback.

“You’re a smart guy,” he says. “And black. You could really make a name for yourself in this industry.”

I politely decline.

He asks again, I decline.

He asks me again, and I tell him “look, dude. I’m cool.”

Then he gets up and walks away, tells me that he’ll check in with me after the conference.

He’s not going to take no for an answer, and that’s when my gut tells me something’s not right here.

The Middle of Bizarre, Part 3

More people sit down and I find myself sitting next to an Asian woman about my age.

I ask her some questions and we start chatting. I’m sensing some flirting, and she is pretty attractive.

She’s dressed in a tan blouse and a long pencil skirt. There’s a pen tucked behind her ear and she has a portfolio on her lap filled with eloquently written notes about profit & loss, supply & demand, target markets and funnels. She strikes me as smart and assertive.

She tells me that she works for an aquarium manufacturer by day, but that she dreams of being her own boss. I ask her what she sells, and her answer makes zero sense.

Still, I like her personality and her energy.

The Middle of Bizarre, Part 4

The conference begins.

The lights dim, everyone claps, and a tall man in a double-breasted suit jogs on stage. He looks and sounds like a pastor.

What ensues is a sermon, but not about God. This sermon is about business.

The guy chastises everyone in the room for not activating their full potential, and then he praises them in the next sentence for being brave and taking their lives into their own hands.

He talks about how he just bought a brand new Cadillac because he was a good businessman. He calls two people up to the stage, hands them the keys to THEIR brand new Cadillacs because they are the sales people of the year. Everyone claps.

The whole time, the woman is taking notes, filling up page after page.

I’m confused.

The End of Bizarre

I’m chatting with the Asian woman the whole time, and we’re hitting it off. Despite the fact that I have no clue about the business she’s in, I’d like to get to know her better.

I’m pretty shy when it comes to these things, but I mustered up the courage to ask her out for…ice cream.

Her eyes light up when I ask the question, then she says to hold on, she needs to ask her manager if he would give her permission to go out with me for ice cream. [CUE NEEDLE SKIP]

She ventures through the crowd, asks the manager I confronted earlier. He gives me an evil look.

Then she wanders back over and says “I’d really like to go out with you, but he won’t allow it.”

My head is about to explode.

I tell her thanks, and good luck.

Then I turn.

And I run like hell.

True story.

So that’s my pyramid scheme story. I researched that “company” later that night and found out that it was, in fact, an alleged scheme. I read horror stories of people who invested tens of thousands of dollars into it, only to find themselves in a dangerous physical, financial, mental, and emotional danger, usually from manipulation.

I won’t share any more because I don’t want anyone to know what company I’m talking about. This is some scary stuff.

I can laugh about the event now, but I remember feeling really sorry for that woman.

She was definitely in over her head. Whatever kind of relationship she had with her “boss”, it couldn’t have been healthy. Not if she couldn’t think for herself.

I read stories of “managers” controlling every aspect of people’s lives, even telling them what to wear and say. I’m pretty sure some manipulation was at work here.

I think sometimes if maybe I should have done something. Called the police and reported the incident. But I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have ended well for her OR me. I hope she got out.

Or, maybe I was completely wrong and misread the situation. Or maybe she misunderstood what I was asking. I don’t think so, though. I was pretty clearly asking her out on a date.

I never saw her again.

As for the acquaintance that dragged me to the event, I don’t know what happened to him, either.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.” – Henry Rollins

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE?

 Let me know!

SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• Snippets of songs that I wrote around 2005-2010.

TRANSCRIPT

You just heard a song called “Watercolor Sunrise.” And guess what? It was written by yours truly!

This episode features music written by me. Because in order to understand where I’m going, you’ve got to understand where I’ve been.

Before I Was a Writer, I Was a Musician

Hello, and welcome to episode 10. The podcast is now 10 episodes old, and that’s worth celebrating!

Before I was a writer, I was a musician. I wanted to be a video game music composer. I grew up listening to Japanese video game music composers religiously, and I didn’t see any black faces in the video game industry, so I wanted to make my mark there.

My songs were a mix between video game music and jazz, and they were a lot of fun to write. From the time I was 15 until 22, I wrote over 120 songs, and I had to get creative because I didn’t have state of the art equipment.

The music you’re going to hear in this week’s episode is nearly 10 years old, but I think you’ll be able to hear my creativity, a unique sound that doesn’t sound like anything else. It’s me trying to find myself.

I’m glad I ended up on the writing route. But it’s fun to look back every now and again.

Enjoy the music in this episode.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I enjoy being happy every day, and hopefully you can hear my happiness in my music. Life is beautiful.” –Christina Milian

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE?

 Let me know!

SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• How I had some car trouble in the middle of Iowa
• A kind act from a stranger that I will never forget

TRANSCRIPT

[Cue Car trouble sounds] Have you ever had car trouble? Imagine that you're stuck on the side of the road with your hood up. It's a blazing hot summer day and you're dripping in sweat as you listen to your engine sputter. You smell like exhaust and oil, and you're frustrated at how much money this is all going to cost.

You feel despair as you glance at the street, watching car after car after car go by, wishing you could get some help. If only your car was one of those cars, if only you weren't the one sitting on the hot asphalt!

This happened to me and a friend back in 2011 when we had some car trouble. Fortunately, we weren't stuck on the road forever. Fortunately, someone did stop.

The gentleman who helped us out is the subject of my sketchbook today.

***

Hello, and welcome to episode 6 of the podcast.

As I mentioned in the intro, this week’s sketch is from all the way back in 2011.

It's funny how time blurs out little details, because I don't remember the specifics of this day other than that we had some car trouble.

Here's what I remember: a friend of mine and I were on the way to a place called Wesley Woods, which is a camp where a lot of college students work summer jobs. My friend worked there.

We stopped for snacks at a gas station on a county road, and when we turned the car back on, it didn't start.

We were stuck in the parking lot of this random gas station in the middle of rural Iowa with no idea what to do.

We were in our twenties, so in other words, pretty naive. We never thought to call roadside assistance or the insurance company, and we didn't have smartphones back then.

So we called a tow, and waited.

We watched a lot of cars pass by. In fact, there must have been hundreds, and the drivers all stared at us.

We were already late and off schedule. This didn't help. And, I should add that there we were of color. Imagine a black guy, a Filipina, and a Latina standing around in a gas station parking lot in the middle of nowhere. Not something you see in Iowa very much.

Just when all was lost, a red car pulled into the parking lot and saved the day.

***

We’re standing around, trying to figure out how we’re going to fix my friend’s car trouble when we hear tires crunch over a pothole.

A 90s red Lincoln Continental slides into the parking lot and curves around the pumps real smooth. The way it moves reminds me of a pimp rounding a corner in the hood. The car stops, then reverses into the parking spot next to us. The trunk pops open.

Out of the driver’s door comes a skinny black guy with a goatee. He's wearing a long white tank top and blue basketball shorts.

“Y’all need some help?” he asks.

We nod desperately.

He pulls a jumper cable from the trunk and goes to work. Within minutes the car is running.

“Could be the alternator,” he says. “But your real problem is your battery fluid. It's too low.”

We make small talk, try to pay him, buy him a bottle of soda, but he refuses.

He tells us he's a mechanic at a shop nearby. Only black guy in a county full of white people. He said he saw us and knew he had to stop. It's not every day that you see some pigment around here. He had just gotten some gas and was on the way to a Corvette show in the next county.

His name was Wesley.

And funny coincidence, we were going to Wesley Woods that day.

What I remember the most is just how many cars passed us by that day, and how he was the only one who stopped.

***

Quote of the week: “Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

Melody Beattie

CREDITS

Intro/Outro Music: “Kick. Push” by Ryan Little.

Sound Effects/Miscellaneous Credits:

Sound/Music Credits:Sound/Music Credits:Intro/Outro Music: “Kick. Push” by Ryan Little: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ryan_Little/~/kick_push

Hold My Hand (Ambient Mix) by Ars Sonor: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ars_Sonor/In_Search_of_Balance_Among_the_Shadows/07-Hold_My_Hand_Ambient_Mix_1984

RFX_Car Engine by willybilly1984 https://freesound.org/people/willybilly1984/sounds/345335/

Car Honk by sethlind https://freesound.org/people/sethlind/sounds/264993/

Cars passing in the night by snapalicious32 https://freesound.org/people/Snapalicious32/sounds/143925/

Pulls up and parks car by benwer https://freesound.org/people/benwer/sounds/260828/

Sound effects courtesy of Freesound.org.

SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• My writer's sketchbook and why it is invaluable to me and my career
• A page from 2011 during a people-watching session.
• Full sketch is available below the transcript

TRANSCRIPT

The funny thing about malls is that everywhere you look, people are waiting. Old men in the leather chairs that a measured out every five hundred feet, young girls and boys on benches outside of stores eating ice cream and watching the passersby, husbands waiting at the entrance of clothing stores for their wives to return, employees in empty stores waiting for customers to enter, customers in busy stores waiting to check out, janitors waiting for tables in the food court to clear so they can be wiped down. Everyone is waiting for something to happen. And it never does. 

***

Hello Anchor Nation, and welcome to chapter 2 of the podcast. Thanks for tuning in this week, where I share some author’s notes.

One thing you may not know about me is that I keep very detailed notes. I like to people watch, so I make notes about people’s behaviors, words, and gestures that I can use in a novel later.

Any time I come up with a random idea, I write it in my sketchbook. I use the book for inspiration whenever I hit a rough spot in my novel. Seeing all kinds of different ideas jumbled together does wonders for my creativity.

I’ve been doing this for nearly fifteen years, and I literally have thousands of notes.

I’ve never used most of my notes, so I thought it would be fun to dig these out, jazz them up, and share them.

Today’s sketch is from all the way back in 2007, during a people-watching session at a local mall in my neighborhood that seems to be dying more and more every day. The food court, in particular, is pretty pathetic. Here’s an excerpt from what I noticed sitting in the middle of the food court. I did change a few names here and there to preserve some anonymity.

[CUE ETHEREAL MUSIC]

“To my left is a place called David’s Sack Lunches, a new restaurant that I doubt will be here for very long. The lights are turned down low, and I wonder if this is on purpose. Then I see a piece of paper attached to the cash register with tape that says “Sorry, We’re closed. Reopening Monday at 10AM”.

I wonder if the restaurant is open because I see a thin, tattooed guy behind the counter cleaning up while an Asian girl leans over the counter, flirting with him. Her long brown hair falls toward her back, and she is wearing dark blue; a color that compliments her skin very well, though I cannot see her face. I notice Japanese or Chinese tattoos all over the guy she is talking to, and his hair is a dirty blond with neat, square patches of black all across. His head looks like a tiger, or worse, a bumblebee. This patchy, stripy design reminds me of a jail cell. I don’t know why; maybe that’s where this guy is headed.

I wonder what he and the girl are talking about. I notice the lights in the kitchen on in back, but no one’s there. Maybe she’s applying for a job, or perhaps they know each other. He waddles out from behind the counter through a half door, and her body follows his direction. He tells her not to step back; there is a nasty soda spill behind her sandals. She giggles when she sees it, and sidesteps.

The guy, who is wearing long jean shorts, plan white shoes, and no socks, motions to a janitor in the distance wiping down empty tables to come here. The janitor is a tired Latino man with a paunch who looks like he is going to fall asleep any minute. He makes his way over to David’s Sack Lunches and the guy holds out his hand and says, “Better watch it buddy, there’s a nasty spill right here.” The janitor grumbles and asks the man a question, which sounds as if he is asking where the janitor closet is, which is funny, because he is the janitor. He and the guy, “David” (I’ll call him) disappear around the bend into the expanse of the mall. The girl waits. And waits.

She checks her watch and puts her elbows on the counter. David and the janitor return several minutes later, the janitor trailing behind with a mop cart, pushing the cart with the hilt of the mop. Flecks of water splash out here and there. David smiles to girl, and she smiles back, as if those minutes she spent waiting were seconds. He hops over the counter, flips a light switch, hops back over the counter and walks away with the girl, laughing and flirting all over again. “You got this, right?” he asks the janitor. The janitor grumbles. “Chain of command, dude,” David says. “Chain of command.”

***

Hope you liked that. That’s half a page from 7 pages that I wrote.

I was a young college student learning how to observe back then. I was writing poetry, I believe, and I remember having an apprentice mindset. I wrote pages and pages of stuff back then just to get in the habit of “feeling” like a writer.

Know what the funny thing is? I never used any of the material in this note until now. It was a fun trip to reread this, and when I did, I felt like I was still at the mall on that quiet, sunny day.

If you would like to read the rest of the sketch, visit the show notes at michaellaronn.com/podcast.

***

Next week, I’ll be going behind the scenes of my new urban fantasy series, the Sound Mage Sonata. As the series takes place in the Middle East, I’ll be talking about research I’ve been doing.

Until next time, I leave you with a quote.

“I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota.” Gustave Courbet

CREDITS

Intro/Outro Music: “Kick. Push” by Ryan Little.

Sound Effects/Miscellaneous Credits:

Hold My Hand (Ambient Mix) by Ars Sonor: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ars_Sonor/In_Search_of_Balance_Among_the_Shadows/07-Hold_My_Hand_Ambient_Mix_1984

Sound effects courtesy of Freesound.org.

Full Version of This Week's Sketch

Lightly edited from my sketchbook (pardon any grammar errors or typos)

The Food Court is a tired, tired place. I am sitting in a tiny chair with a metal back at a purple table that has been poorly washed (and recently, too, because I can still see streaks of ammonia across the shiny lavender surface that hasn’t evaporated yet) as I think this. This place is like any other food court in any other mall in America. Sunlight washes down from skylights cut in the ceiling, rays that seem so pure, you could touch them. The sun rays have a sound of their own—-something like that of a pond, or the sound of rushing water or water fountains. Maybe it’s all this sunlight that is pouring down that makes the place so tired. I wonder if the architects had planned this on purpose, ruminating over their blueprints in the design of this mall how to make people buy as much as possible. Although I wonder how being tired can affect your spending habits. There are strange people here, although I notice them only after taking a long look at the restaurants, most of which have been long gone and only exist in the form of a ghostly thin wall that bears an imprint of neon signs and food counters and coming soon signs. To my left is a place called David’s Sack Lunches, a new restaurant that I doubt will be here for very long. The lights are turned down low, and I wonder if this is on purpose. Then I see a piece of paper attached to the cash register with tape that says “Sorry, We’re closed. Reopening Monday at 10AM”. I wonder if the restaurant is open because I see a thin, tattooed guy behind the counter cleaning up while a Asiantian girl leans over the counter, flirting with him. Her long brown hair falls toward her back, and she is wearing dark blue; a color that compliments her skin very well, though I cannot see her face. I notice Japanese or Chinese tattoos all over the guy she is talking to, and his hair is a dirty blond with neat, square patches of black all across. His head looks like a tiger, or worse, a bumblebee. This patchy, stripy design reminds me of a jail cell. I don’t know why; maybe that’s where this guy is headed. I wonder what he and the Asian girl are talking about. I notice the lights in the kitchen on in back, but no one’s there. Maybe she’s applying for a job, or perhaps they know each other. He waddles out from behind the counter through a half door, and her body follows his direction. He tells her not to step back; there is a nasty soda spill behind her sandals. She giggles when she sees it, and sidesteps. The guy, who is wearing long jean shorts, plan white shoes, and no socks, motions to a janitor in the distance wiping down empty tables with a dirty rag to come here. The janitor is a tired Latino man with a paunch who looks like he is going to fall asleep any minute. He makes his way over to David’s Sack Lunches and the guy holds out his hand and says, “Better watch it buddy, there’s a nasty spill right here.” The janitor grumbles and asks the man a question, which sounds as if he is asking where the janitor closet is, which is funny, because he is the janitor. He and the guy, “David” (I’ll call him) disappear around the bend into the expanse of the mall. The Asian girl waits. And waits. She checks her watch and puts her elbows on the counter, her behind sticking out into the air. David and the janitor return several minutes later, the janitor trailing behind with a mop cart, pushing the cart with the hilt of the mop. Flecks of water splash out here and there. David smiles to the Asian girl, and she smiles back, as if those minutes she spent waiting were seconds. He hops over the counter, flips a light switch, hops back over the counter and walks away with the girl, laughing and flirting all over again. “You got this, right?” he asks the janitor. The janitor grumbles. “Chain of command, dude,” David says. “Chain of command.”

There are four little girls at the table next to me. On one side is a blonde girl in a tye-dye shirt. Her shirt is an indicator of her age; I rarely see any one except children in tye-dye shirts anymore. Sitting across from her is a girl who looks too high-maintenance for her age. While she is young, I have seen her face and her aura on people twice my age. Rouged cheeks, brown hair that falls down to her shoulders, a blouse that shouldn’t be worn by girls her age. I wonder who she will be when she grows up. I wonder if the baby fat that is still gathered over her face, across her checks, and in her stomach will give way to a statuesque physique. This is, of course, years into the future, something that I will never know. Next to this girl is a little Asian girl in a black and white checkered dress that almost seems like an overcoat. There are buttons on her sleeves that are undone, and her short sleeve is sprawled out across her arm, like the petals of a delicate flower. Her hair hangs down in front of her face, the rest behind her head, and she texts on her phone. I do not remember the other girl sitting at this table. I expect them to be talking about boys, or silly things, but this is too stereotypical. To their credit, I try to imagine them having a more sophisticated conversation, at least for twelve year olds. Maybe they are talking about how tired this food court is—-something I’m thinking myself—-and how they wish they could escape tired old Des Moines, Iowa, and do something with their lives.

There are immigrant families here, mostly Latino, but some Indian, Bosnian and Chinese, too. There is a Latino family who passes through from the Kohls’ entrance, their young children running out like scouts in front. They are smiling, enchanted to be here, where, to them, everything in the world is happening and everyone in the world is watching. Their parents trail behind them with a heavy, invisible weight on their shoulders, their faces riddled with financial burdens or the burden of not having any money at all. They smile to hide this frustration, but I can see it nonetheless. I remember being a child, running around in malls in front of my parents. We almost never bought anything; we just grazed through, window shopping, secretly wishing we had the money to buy all of the things that we didn’t need anyway.

From the Kohls’ entrance I see an interracial couple emerge. It’s a young black guy, probably in his twenties and a young white woman of the same age. He is smiling wide, and I can see his teeth gleaming from halfway across the food court. She’s wearing a green football tee.

And then I realize that despite all the things in the mall, all the things for sale, all the things we pay money for, what’s really on sale is ourselves. Just like the window displays with airbrushed shirts of Goofy, Optimus Prime and Cadillac Escalades, underwear rimmed with rhinestones, basketball hoops and diamond earrings—-we are all windows, hoping that the world will buy the image of ourselves that we have brought to this mall. For what purpose? To feel as if we are the people we want to be, not who we are. Even though the eyes of the passersby will probably never see us again, it’s enough for us to be a stranger to strangers, a stranger to ourselves. 

The funny thing about malls is that everywhere you look, people are waiting. Old men in the leather chairs that a measured out every five hundred feet, young girls and boys on benches outside of stores eating ice cream and watching the passersby, husbands waiting at the entrance of clothing stores for their wives to return, employees in empty stores waiting for customers to enter, customers in busy stores waiting to check out, janitors waiting for tables in the food court to clear so they can be wiped down. Everyone is waiting for something to happen. And it never does.