Stay Away From the Tunnels

"Don't go in the tunnels," Mom said...And since we were such well behaved kids, we never went anywhere near them. Sure.

They were part of our apartment building and they used to be fall out shelters--tunnels that ran underground from one apartment building to the other.

"Go play. Dad is trying to study." Mom would shoo us out of the apartment, so we really had no choice...did we? It was the heat of the summer in New York and we didn't have a television.

Sometimes my brother Tim and I collected kids along the way. Nobody ever asked where we were headed. The forbidden was always unspoken.

The laundry rooms for the apartment building were down there, but there wasn't very good lighting, and the tunnels had a damp, moldy feel to them. And it echoed down there. How great is that? Perfect for playing hide and seek. The fact that none of us was supposed to be down there, combined with a creepy, dimly lit area that used to be a bomb shelter really cranked up the excitement meter on the game.

I can remember feeling such relief when we ventured back out into the hot sun. Kind of like we had defeated a villain or something down there and come out unscathed.

So when my friend Margaret and I went suburban exploring a while back and we found the abandoned house with the Keep Out sign, it was the tunnels all over again. Don't go into the house. My mom's voice came up loud and clear in the back of my brain. Hmmm...we really had no choice, did we?

My Brother is Still Kicking My Butt

Three pages a day. If it's good enough for Patricia Reilly Giff and Linda Sue Park, it's good enough for me! I figure if I set out to do three to five a day, I'll be able to come up with a solid two--easy...right? I'm going to also allow myself to adhere to the Anne Lamott SFD (loosely translated, "crappy" first draft) rule.

And here's another thing...my brother is completely kicking my butt in the blogging area. Not only is he incredibly prolific, his entries are incredibly not SFDs.

So...to keep up with this standard I've set, I need to maintain the 5:15 am start. As I pointed out to my friend, Laura, there is nothing pretty about 5:15.

This morning, I wrote about a page and a half, then went on a quick run to jumpstart the creative juices. So I'm running along the sidewalk in the neighborhood, and I see some kids emerge from the bushes across the street. I recognize a couple of them right away. They are now middle schoolers, but they were once my first graders. Something is up across the street, but being middle-schoolers, nobody is likely to squeal. So the best thing for me to do is to let them know I am on to them. As soon as we make eye contact, a tiny glimmer of panic flares up on their faces, because they know what I do; once you are in my first grade, I am forever your teacher. So I pick up the pace on the sidewalk. "Hi guys!" I call out.

"Hi," they say, nervously, wishing without a doubt they hadn't strayed from their backpacks at the bus stop.

"What's across the street?" I ask, freezing them to the sidewalk with my first grade teacher/Tony Soprano eye lock.

"Oh, nothing," one of them squeaks, weakly. "We just wanted to see what was over there."

Lame excuse, my teacher eyes tell them. Because a couple of them have lived down the street from that swamp their entire lives.

"Your feet must be wet," I say. "I'm sure you won't be going back there again, since it's just a big swamp."

They laugh nervously, trying unsuccessfully to avert their eyes from mine.

"Have a great day at school," I tell them. Don't worry, my eyes say. I'll be by again tomorrow.

ROCK 'N' ROLL SOLDIER

The dinner table at our house was centrally located, with the kitchen behind my dad, and the living room television directly behind me. There was a definite routine to it. My brothers and I sat in the same places and the television was always on, permanently tuned in to the evening news, which was the closest I ever got to Vietnam.

I have several close relatives that served in the military in Vietnam, and not one of them was willing or able to say much about it. But Dean Ellis Kohler and Susan VanHecke do in the new young adult memoir from HarperTeen, ROCK 'N ROLL SOLDIER.

It's a good thing my family is pretty self-sufficient, because I had to force myself to put this book down. VanHecke and Kohler had my undivided attention from page one. I truly felt the grit and visceral emotions of a kid just out of high school as he lands knee-deep in Qui Nhon, Vietnam, a newly trained nineteen-year-old military policeman.

Before Vietnam, Kohler, like so many young adults, had dreams of making it in the music world, in a legitimate rock and roll band. And he was living his dream, having landed a national record deal. But his life was one of bad timing, because before he and his band could set foot in the recording studio, Kohler received his draft notice.

But he never feels sorry for himself. He sets out to get a band together-- a fully-functioning, touring rock band in the middle of the muddy, mosquito-infested war.

So here is what kept me reading...it wasn't just the fast-paced action that held me...it was the incredible voice. I was there in Vietnam like I'd never been during the evening news at my dining room table. I was in the makeshift club, listening to Kohler's band, The Electrical Banana, wanting to go put their record on my stereo. Kohler and VanHecke gave me an unusual glimpse of the humanity of the war, from pondering who the not-so-obvious enemies were, to coping mechanisms the young soldiers would acquire to keep from losing themselves.

This book will stay with me for a long while.

Driving to Sunday School in the Chevy BelAir

My favorite quote from yesterday's first day of Sunday School. The five-year-olds were looking at their new children's bibles..."I've got two of these God books at home."

Whether you went to CCD or Hebrew School or Sunday School...you could probably insert your name into my story. First of all, you got the new shiny shoes. I loved my new church shoes. We weren't poor, but we didn't have a lot of extra money to toss around, so my mom was always screaming at us about not going outside and scuffing them up before we pulled out of the driveway in the station wagon.

I remember exactly what my brother looked like in his. He used to walk, looking down at them, with a big smile on his face. I was just thrilled that I didn't have to wear my ugly everyday saddle shoes, built to last and to survive a nuclear explosion. I'd tried to destroy those things. I'd get up to an earth-shattering speed on my bike, careening toward the vacant lot at the dead end of our street, and at the very last second, I'd slam the toes of those saddle shoes down on the pavement and skid to a stop. Yes, they were scratched-up a bit, but my mom would just smile with her wry, I'm-on-to-you face and get out the polish. I think that polish she soaped them up with had liquid concrete in it, because they always seemed a little heavier each time.

So back to the driveway... You'd think all would be well in the Haywood station wagon. New shoes...it's Sunday...supposed to be a day of rest and reflection. My dad will tell you there was nothing restful about the Chevrolet BelAir on a Sunday morning. That was when all the fights broke out. It usually started with our older brother not wanting to go...or maybe someone had gotten grass stain on their good pants trying to act out their best NFL plays in anticipation of the afternoon television marathon. Then an all-out battle would break out in the back seat. No seat belts in the Chevy, so when my dad took a corner, there was the inevitable sliding into your brother. And my older brother was king of the painful finger flick. He could thump you a terrible one in the arm with virtually no detection from the front seat. Then there was always a good amount of sharp kicking. We usually arrived at church with my dad careening around the corner, one hand barely on the steering wheel and the other trying to take a wild swipe at anything in the back seat. One big plus to not having seat belts was you could slide swiftly on the vinyl and out of his reach. Thinking back, I'm surprised my mom didn't get out at the first stoplight and jog off into the sunset. Whenever I see a mom with a tight smile on her face on Sunday morning, I know exactly what went on in their car.

I wore my black patent leather shoes yesterday, but my Honda CRV is not the same. I miss that Chevy BelAir. Thinking back, if I would have had any sense, I would have positioned my saddle shoes in the driveway behind the back tires. Those saddle shoes are probably in some landfill near Auburn, Washington. I can see them sitting right on the top, virtually unscathed and still shining with my mom's seventy-two coats of cement polish.

The Tweet of Anxiety

I am fighting off Internet-based anxiety this morning. Do I know how to Twitter? Can I...should I figure out how to Tweet?? There's this really frightening feeling trying to surface in my brain: if I add one more thing to my technology challenged list, will my life turn into a retro Twilight Zone episode? Will I wake up one morning and find that the line between cyberspace and reality has been permanently blurred??

Running always reduces my self-imposed anxiety, so I go out for a nice long jog. As I'm going along, I picture this weird Twilight Zone scenario. If I do succumb to one more Internet-frenzied time suck, will I only be able to talk in web speak? Instead of deep conversations with my cousin, I'll only be able to say, "LOL, Trish. OMG . Let's TWEET-UP. TTYL." And on my runs, perfect strangers will start "following" me, waving a file folder, trying to get me to look at their questionable pictures. Then more people will join in the chase, trying to give me crucial information about how to enhance/alter one of my body parts that I may or may not have.

Someone honks their car horn at me and zaps me back to real time. An actual person! Yay! Someone I know! A friend who is giving me a real-life wave!

There's a chance for me, yet. All is not lost. I'm going to go home and write TWO snail mail letters...and two chapters for a book that will be on real paper with a nice, sturdy hardcover and book jacket...with real pages that you can turn and smell the newness or the unmistakable library shelf scent...

...Uh oh....what was that? You know TweetDeck makes a very appealing and realistic sound...

My Brother is a Facebook Addict

Okay...this is totally cheating...I did not write the following blog....but I did keep it in the family. My brother wrote it. He's a year younger than me, so we spent a lot of time together as kids. You have to read it, because it shows, in a few short paragraphs, why my childhood was never boring and always an adventure...

Click HERE

Harmony Book Reviews

Today I am guest blogging over at Harmony Book Reviews. Click here to find out how she's giving away a free copy of ALSO KNOWN AS HARPER...