A Most Interesting Game

            So, a few years back I was in a restaurant with part of my wife’s extended family. At this point in time we hadn’t been dating very long, so I didn’t really know who anyone was. Across from me sat my wife’s uncle, a man with a bushy, black, grey-streaked beard and a brightly coloured beanie (yellow and red, if I remember correctly).

            Partway through the evening, after losing interest in the conversation of the rest of the table, this man (who I hadn’t spoken to at all, since I’m kinda the shy quiet type) gathered together two salt and two pepper shakers and put them in the center of the table. He then gave me this serious, considering look, and very deliberately moved one of the salt shakers on an angle to rest beside a pepper shaker.

            Not entirely certain what was going on, or what the intended rules for this game were, I decided to play along. After a moment of consideration, I moved a pepper shaker to make the pattern of all the shakers relatively symmetrical.

            My wife’s uncle made an impressed face, nodding, as if this was a very cunning move. Then he moved a salt shaker, and I followed up with a pepper shaker. This went on and on, for probably half an hour or more. We never said a word to each other. We just kept moving shakers, playing by whatever rules were implied by the other player’s actions and aiming for imaginary goals that we weren’t entirely certain of.

            The game came to an end when someone else at the table finally asked us what we were doing. Playing a game, we replied. What were the rules? Oh, we’re just making them up as we go along.

            The magic of the silent game was broken, there seemed no point in going on with it or restarting now that it had been defined. But to this day, this was the most unique – and I’d even say profound – way I’ve ever been introduced to someone. Strange as the experience was, it was incredible – and the memory of it will stay with me forever.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Squeakers the Black-Ops Mouse

            You may remember that some time ago, I told you about how spider assassins want me dead. Well, it seems they’ve upped their game. They hired Squeakers, the black-ops mouse.

            It all started at 5:00 am last Wednesday. I awoke to this scrabbling-scratching sound. Never one to jump to conclusions, I waited and listened carefully. The sound came again. It sounded exactly like the sound they use for unseen rodents in movies. The third time I heard the sound, I was convinced and I woke my wife to inform her we had something skittering around our bedroom.

            We turned on the light to search, but couldn’t find the intruder. We did, however, find confirmation that there was, indeed, a mouse in our bedroom. Squeakers had left a calling card in the middle of my bedside table, not a foot and a half from where my sleeping head had been a moment before.

            That was when I realized that Squeakers was no ordinary mouse. No. The sounds that came in the middle of the night, in our bedroom where we feel safe enough to sleep. The dropping, placed so perfectly to assure us that those sounds were real, not a figment of imagination or the result of branches brushing the house on a windy night. These were deliberate actions, intended to instil terror. Clearly, Squeakers had to be a black-ops mouse, skilled in the use of asymmetric warfare.

            Since the spider assassins have unsuccessfully sought my death for years, it was easy to guess that they were the ones who sent Squeakers. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep the rest of the night. Squeakers was an expert. Every time I came close to drifting off to sleep, there came a sound of one sort or another. Colleen somehow managed to sleep through it – but then, she can sleep through anything, whereas I’ve been woken up by someone silently looking into my bedroom before.

            Well, the next night was a little worse. My mother-in-law (living in the other half of the house) told us she had mousetraps, but with it being so close to Christmas she hadn’t gotten around to setting it up. The sounds were less frequent this time, but I was too tense to get any sleep until the sky started to brighten with the coming of morning. Even with then, I doubt I got even two hours of fitful sleep.

            That day, the trap was set. It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, every creature was stirring, including the mouse. From downstairs, I heard the mouse scurrying in the ceiling well before going to bed. Yet, when I did go to bed, I was so tired from the previous two nights (and secure in the knowledge that the only food available for the black-ops mouse was bait), I dropped right off to sleep. Until...

            SnapThump! A sound woke me up at 4:00am. The trap, perhaps? Indeed, when we shone a light down the hole in the floor (it was extremely obvious how the mouse was entering our room), it was clear that the trap had been set off. It didn’t look like Squeakers was in it, though. It seemed like the cunning black-ops mouse had gotten away.

            I managed a fitful half-sleep the rest of the night. In the morning, I declared that in spite of getting such poor sleep for the past three nights, I was sort of glad Squeakers had survived – and received a Christmas dinner, to boot. Of course, later, when the trap was actually checked, there was Squeakers – a mouse small enough to be missed.

            It’s nice to be able to sleep soundly through the night again, but I can’t help feeling sorry for Squeakers. We suspect that this talented black-ops mouse was quite young, separated from his/her family when they were chased out during recent renovations. Lost, alone and unable to find food, Squeakers wandered through the foreign upstairs of the house, seeking the means to survive. There, Squeakers fell under the influence of the spider assassins who, ultimately, led him/her to his/her demise.

            Here’s to you, Squeakers! The most talented black-ops mouse that ever there was. You may no longer be with us, but your memory shall live on – thanks to the internet.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Pizza and Brains

            It’s interesting, what sticks with you over time. It isn’t always what you expect.

            This week, for the first time in over three years, I returned to the pizza store where my wife and I used to work. Colleen had just been cured of lactose intolerance and we were celebrating with lots of cheese.

            We were both uncertain as to what would be dredged up in our memories as we returned. While it makes the best pizza we know of, that store was a source of great stress for both of us – so much so that it led us to quit, in spite of the fact that we generally enjoyed the work itself and were very attached to the place.

            Entering the store as a customer (for the first time), I expected to be flooded with reminders of all the negativity that led to me quitting. Instead, I was surprised to find that, instead, I was remembering all the good times I’d had there. A few of the more entertaining bad memories surfaced, but my mind just glazed over them. Colleen reported much the same. That’s nostalgia for you.

            It’s nice to get flooded with positive when you’re expecting negative. I wonder if that’s just how our brains work – with it being easier to remember the good than the bad, as long as it was from long enough ago. Hmm... Now I must do some research into that.

            Oh, and the pizza was excellent. Coming from someone who spent five years treating making pizzas as an art, that’s saying something.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Memory

            This morning, while I was driving to GenreCon, I had an idea for a blog topic. It was a good, profound one, too. I even had it half written in my mind. By the time I arrived, I had no clue what the idea was about.

            Memories are fascinating and frustrating things. You can’t remember what you want to (at least, not when you want to) and you can’t forget what you don’t want to remember. Memory varies from person to person, both in content and in style.

            Personally, I know my memory is in third person. I don’t remember events as if they happened to me; I remember them as if I observed them happening to myself. I also have an excellent memory, at least for most things (blogs apparently not being most things). I tend to be able to replay events for analysis with a high accuracy to how things actually occurred.

            On the other hand, there’s my brother. He has a pretty good memory most of the time, but every now and then he tells a story from our childhood that is slightly confused – specifically in that he remembers things that happened to him as happening to me. They mostly seem to be his unpleasant memories, so I suppose it was a coping mechanism to superimpose them onto me. I find it amazing, though, that a brain can do that.

            One of the best stories I have about different types of memories, though, comes from my mom. She has a good childhood friend who she visits with every now and then. When they are remembering past times, my mom’s friend can remember all the details of an event – even recalling conversations word for word. My mom, on the other hand, remembers all of the emotions connected to the event, what it felt like to be there. Together they’re able to paint a very accurate picture of their shared memories.

            Now... what was I talking about again...?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.