I originally shared this story as a comment on another post. After what D$ has been posting over on Clouds in My Coffee, I decided that I needed to share a story of my own. I have taken the original post and updated it just a bit. Again, I offer this disclaimer: This story, like many, truly deserves to be told and not merely written. Furthermore, it should be told by my sister as she brings a unique perspective.

A couple of years before I got married, when I was still in college, I had a date. This was not just a date, mind you, it was a first date. I was supposed to pick up Tiffany Abbott at her home in Enterprise. From there, we were going to go to a wedding in Troy.

I know, I know… a wedding isn’t exactly the ideal setting for a first date, but it was a church member and as a staff member at a small country church, I was expected to be there. After the wedding, we were going to Montgomery for dinner and a nice evening together.

At the time, I drove a 1984 Buick Park Avenue that looked a lot like the one pictured above. I had many affectionate names for this car that would seat 8 comfortably… the land yacht, my little ghetto sled… but I generally referred to it as my Hoopdee. That Saturday afternoon, I washed and waxed the Hoopdee, filled it up with gas, got a shower, and went to pick up Tiffany. (Incidentally, the Hoopdee got about 12 miles per gallon. At today’s gas prices, that is about three miles per dollar.)

The church was about a half hour or so from her house, and we had a pleasant enough conversation on the way there. I was witty and charming, and Tiffany laughed at all the right times. There wasn’t a single bit of that awkward silence that often accompanies first dates.

About halfway to the church, I noticed cute little clouds of smoke seemed to be coming from the rear of my car. Dad has always stressed the importance of watching one’s gauges, so I did. They didn’t show a darn thing.

About two-thirds of the way to the church, the cute white puffs of smoke became great big, black, billowing clouds. I was killing mosquitoes in three counties and doing irreversible harm to the ozone layer. I noticed that the gauges still showed that everything was fine, but even I, the single most mechanically-retarded person you know, could tell that the gauges were obviously missing something important. Where the heck is the Big Black Billowing Cloud Button, anyway?

I pulled over to the side of the road and popped the hood. Sure enough, there it was… an engine. That is about all I could tell… except that it smelled pretty bad. I wasn’t sure what I had done, but I was pretty sure I was going to hear the phrase “burnt up an engine” later that evening from Dad.

Some kind people picked us up and gave us a ride to the church. Everyone I knew in the community was at the church for the wedding anyway, and my parents had gone out of town for the day. I was pretty much stuck until after the wedding.

I sat there during the whole wedding dreading the conversation I was going to have with my father. “Dad, do you remember my car?” “Yes, son.” “Dad… do you remember the engine that used to be in my car?”

Tiffany was great. Throughout the whole wedding, she kept patting me on the hand and telling me that everything was going to be fine. “Don’t worry, Blair. I am sure everything will be okay.”

She lied.

After the wedding, we walked out the front of the church. One of the my deacons came up to me and told me, “Blair, that man over there is looking for you.” I looked in the direction he was pointing and didn’t recognize the man who was apparently looking for me.

As I walked up to him, he hitched up his overalls as heasked “Are you Blair Andress?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

He continued with, “Did you leave a car parked down the road?”

Oh, crap. I knew I had pulled the Hoopdee completely off the road, but somehow or another someone had hit it. Not only had I burnt up an engine, but someone had hit my Hoopdee. Dad was going to kill me.

As soon as I could speak, I told him, “Yes, sir… I left my car down the road.”

“Well, son…. it caught on fire and burnt up.”

It caught on what and did what?

The most intelligent question I could come up with was, “The whole thing? The whole car… burnt up?”

“No, son… just the front half of it.”

We got in this volunteer fireman’s truck, which smelled like a curious combination of fishbait and hot garbage. A spring from the seat was attempting to violate me, and Tiffany and I both had our feet on a tacklebox. As he drove me AND MY DATE back towards the remains of the Hoopdee, all I could do was shake my head numbly.

Tiffany had given up trying to reassure me.

As we got closer, I could see the pillar of smoke. We came over a hill and around a curve, and there she was. The burnt remains of my Hoopdee. The front tires had exploded. The paint had been baked off the entire front half of the car. The front windshield was smoked up and cracked. In short, the Hoopdee had gone out in a blaze of glory.

I ended up borrowing a car from a friend, and I took Tiffany with me back to my parents’ house. My parents weren’t home yet, but I wanted a witness with me. (I felt like Dad would be less likely to kill me if there was someone else around who might be called on to testify.) Once I was home, I called my sister, who lived next door. I tried to explain what had happened, but I struggled to get the words out. She finally figured out what I was talking about and told me to take Tiffany home. I did, and Kim came over to keep me company until my parents came home.

Dad called before they actually made it home, and he could instantly tell something was wrong. When he asked, I told him, “Dad, we’ll talk when you get home.”

“Son, I think you need to tell me now… so get started.”

So I told him. I had just gotten to the part about the white puffs becoming big black clouds, and he interrupted me.

“Crap, son… you burnt up an engine, didn’t you?” he asked loud enough for my sister to hear.

Kim literally fell in the floor as she laughed and told me, “That’s not all you burnt… tell him, Blair… tell him!”

Obviously, Dad didn’t kill me. I assured him that I had kept check on the oil, coolant, and everything else I could possibly check. I convinced him that this was just a freak accident that defied all that we know about mechanical things. He convinced me that white puffs of smoke are bad, even if the gauges say otherwise.

At this point, I have to explain why my sister’s version of this story is so much better than anything I can write. You see, when I had started telling her what had happened, she totally misunderstood. I didn’t know this until years later, but for some reason, she got the impression that I was calling her because I had been on a date and had a horrible sexual experience. I am not sure exactly what she was thinking, but apparently her mind was in the gutter when I kept moaning and saying over and over… “Kim… the Hoopdee burnt! It burnt, Kim… I can’t believe it.” I am not sure what she thought the Hoopdee was, exactly… and I am not sure I want to know.

When I began to tell her that I was scared of how Dad was going to react, she replied, “Now, Blair… you don’t have to tell them everything…”

“Kim, I think he is smart enough to NOTICE!”

“Not necessarily, Blair….”

When she tells this story, she can draw it out forever. People that know Matt and me have a hard time believing it, but she really is the loudest of the three of us, and possibly the most dramatic as well.

For the record… I never went out with Tiffany again.

One of those friends, a dear friend that I have known since seventh grade, is learning how to use Facebook. She posted something on her wall this week that I didn’t notice until she sent me a message asking me to read it and respond. In that very public forum, she felt the need to apologize to me for what she perceived as being unkindness in the past. She chose to apologize in a public forum, and I am choosing to respond in a similar fashion.

Dearest Celia,

Your words were so incredibly sweet, my friend. I had not seen your post, and had you not told me, I would not have gone looking for it. On Facebook, people tend to write on the walls of others and not on their own walls. Unless I happened to get nosy and start reading the entire contents of your wall (which I, like many Facebook voyeurs, sometimes do), I most likely would not have noticed.

Please know that you and I apparently remember things differently, for I don’t think an apology was necessary in the least.

So how do I remember things? Well, let’s see…

In seventh grade, I met a girl. I honestly don’t recall how I first met her, but I do know that a friend of mine named Billy liked her. They were even going together, though, like most junior high couples, they went nowhere together. One night, they had a fight and broke up. He wanted me to play the middle man and try to help him out by calling her, so I did. She and I talked for a while, and even though I was starting to like her myself, I convinced her to at least talk to Billy.

When she and I got off the phone, I called Billy and told him to call her. He did, and then he called me back to tell me about the conversation. He told me that they had gotten back together because he had fake cried on the phone. That made me so mad, so I called her and dimed him out.

She dumped him. After what I deemed an appropriate time (probably twenty minutes or so), I asked her to go with me.

For two weeks over Christmas break, we went together… and went nowhere. In fact, she was out of town the majority of that time, and the very first thing she did when she got back in town was dump me. Oh, well… I deserved it. I did act like a fink toward Billy, I suppose.

We did remain friends, and we had our own little routine for the rest of that seventh grade year. Pretty regularly, at break, I would grab her rear end. After all, we were in seventh grade. Girls were looking curvier than ever before, and the boys were quick to notice. Unfortunately, she was not that happy with my grabbing. In fact, she usually grabbed my forearm and dug her nails in. Without loosening her death grip, she would start heading down the hall, and I would follow along just to try to preserve some of the flesh on my arm. She would let go, and my arm would slowly begin the healing process. For a smarter person, the scars would serve as a reminder not to grab this particular young lady’s rear, but I was not smart. I was hormonally retarded… and I always returned. Like a moth drawn to a flame, I simply couldn’t help myself.

Luckily, she and I went to different schools for the next two years. If we had not, I am certain that my forearms would remain scarred to this day.

That was twenty-five years ago. Over those twenty-five years, the friendship that she and I have shared has been cyclical. There have been times of great closeness and togetherness followed by times of distance. In junior high and high school, the distance was because of different friends, activities, or romances. In more recent years, it has been miles, jobs, and families.

The cycles of togetherness have been wonderful. In junior high, it was long talks on the phone. (I still remember her parents’ number even though I haven’t dialed it in years!) In high school, she took me to a formal. She may not realize this, but she was the first woman I wore a tux for. She went with me and a group of friends to Shipwreck Island, and she and I spent the day enjoying ourselves all over that water park! I worked at a camp in North Carolina one summer, and I will never forget the look on her face when I made a surprise visit home. I also remember the hug she gave me when she ran up to me that night.

After college, she and I were workout partners. We were also the best of friends once again. Neither of us were dating anyone, so we could always count on the other one being there. We saw movies, we had dinners, and we just enjoyed ourselves.

The other night, she sent me a friend request on Facebook. I accepted, and the next thing I knew, she and I were chatting on there. I found myself smiling and laughing the same way I have countless times over the past twenty-five years. Over the past week, we have discussed her children (four) and mine (two), her husband, my wife, and the journey that has taken us from where we were to where we are. I have told her how I love the incredible woman that she has become and how I love the Jesus that I see in her, and she has told me that she is proud of me and all that I am accomplishing.

And now she is trying to apologize.

For what, Celia? For being my friend? Friendships are like marriages… they stick together through thick and thin, good times and bad, sickness and health. You owe me no apologies, my friend. You have brought smiles and laughter for twenty-five years.

You have been my friend, and for that, there is no need to apologize.

Always,

blair

I am giving deeperwater.com and its offspring, school.deeperwater.com, a facelift as a symbol of my renewed commitment to blogging this school year. For those of you who still bother to check in… thanks for your consistency!

P.S. - Chris, I haven’t forgotten your sovereignty question. A response is brewing!

The end of the school year. I know students think that they are excited by the end of the school year and the beginning of summer, but the fact is, teachers are just as excited. We just have more work to do at the end of the year. Cleaning out classrooms, getting final grades together, etc. all takes time. I managed my time as well as possible, but didn’t have a lot of time left over for indulgences.

The closing of a church. Nine months ago, I made the decision to step away from a staff position at a church where I had been serving for over a year and a half. The relationships my family had made their were very dear to us, but we knew God was calling us to step aside, and we had to be obedient. Leaving was very difficult because of our love for the people there. You read all about this by going here.

The sad fact is, many church plants do not become permanent churches. The last statistic I heard was that over 80% of church plants fail. A little over a week ago, I was called and told that this church would be meeting for the last time on Memorial Day weekend. Needless to say, my heart has been heavy, but I have a hard time considering this church plant a “failure.” The fact is that the church was a success in many ways. Lives were changed, the gospel was shared, and relationships were built. I am a changed man because of my time with this group of believers.

Grad School. I suppose I am grudgingly accepting the fact that teaching is not just a temporary gig. (Or maybe I am just willing to concede that it is a LONGER temporary gig than I am willing to admit!) At any rate, I have now officially begun my coursework. My first class was last Wednesday night. I know that this hasn’t occupied a lot of my time yet, but it has still been something on my plate.

Being a family man. What can I say? I love my bride and my girls.

For those of you who check out DeeperWater looking for updates (both of you), I promise to do more writing over the summer.

Here in Montgomery, we have an incredible shortage of substitute teachers. We have developed a grueling test for potential candidates that we call the “Spoon Test.” Basically, we hold a spoon up to their mouths and noses. If it fogs due to breathing, we put ‘em on the list.

Recently, I had to take an afternoon off during standardized testing due to a death in my wife’s family. I went in for the testing, and then took off for the funeral. After testing, the schedule included 20 minutes in first block, 45 minutes or so in second block (my planning period), and a regular schedule for third and fourth blocks.

During the abbreviated first block, one of our assistant principals had a question for me, so she appeared in my classroom halfway through the 20 minute. The substitute, an elderly woman who is apparently substituting because her children think it would be a good way for her to stay active in her reclining years, had managed to call roll and then fall asleep already. This is pretty impressive considering that she had been in the room for less than fifteen minutes. (I later learned that when she had last substituted in a local junior high, she fell into such a sound sleep that the students moved her and her chair into the hall. She woke up as the bell rang and junior high kids began streaming around her.)

She managed to survive my planning period, but before she had a chance to pass out the worksheets to my third block class, some of my students had absconded with half of the SETS (yes, entire sets) of worksheets. Of the two students that she managed to report for bad behavior, one was an autistic student that rarely speaks unless he is picked on by other students. The students know this; they figured out long ago that all they had to do was call him “Coolio” (not his name) or ask if they can borrow one of his pencils. (He carries approximately 100 of them in a pencil bag. At the beginning of each class, he
performs a little ritual as he decides which one to use.) She noticed him responding to the prodding of the other students, but totally overlooked the students causing the trouble as well as my notes on the class. Had she bothered to read them, she would have known of his autism and the tendencies of a couple of troublesome students.

Fourth block, we had an incident. In a post-Columbine era, school security can never be stressed too much. When two unidentified males appeared in the school, an announcement was made: “We have an interloper in the building. Please lock your doors.”

My substitute locked the doors. She then proceeded to build a little barricade around my desk. The students said that she put the boxes and folding chairs up in a way that reminded them of the homemade forts of blankets and sofa cushions that many of them had made years before.

Then very quietly, she got under my desk and put the trashcan over her head. Needless to say, my students laughed harder at this little old woman under my desk with a trash can over her head than they had ever laughed at any movie or comedian. When they had regained their breath and were able to speak, they asked if she had any room for them.

“HELL NO!” she barked. “I don’t care about you. Go away!”

You know, deaths happen and funerals must be attended. I am asking everyone I know to please be considerate enough to die during the summer or possibly during the other conveniently arranged holidays. As for sick days, I have told Miranda to force me to school unless I am actually bleeding arterially.

And, by the way, if you know of anyone in the Montgomery area who might be interested in substitute teaching… let me know.

I have often told others that I am a writer, and in all honesty, I do fancy myself one. Perhaps this is because I like thinking of myself in an artistic, Bohemian fashion. Plus, I do write. I write grades in a grade book, comments in the margins of students’ essays, notes to others and myself, and every month I reluctantly write the checks necessary to keep the lights on and the water running for another thirty days. Sure, I write, but I am not writing those things that I truly desire to write. The poems, the short stories, the essays all escape me.

If one calls himself a dancer, others assume that he dances. When that Lord of the Dance guy says he is a dancer, those who hear him do not think that he occasionally does a little jig when listening to the stereo while vacuuming the carpet. Rather, his listeners think to themselves, “Here is a fellow who prances across a stage wearing obscenely tight pants that probably allow the observant people in the front row to determine his religion.”

If one calls himself a lover, we assume that he is in fact a regular Casanova. Needless to say, we are disappointed when we learn that his last date was during the Reagan administration.

So I guess when I say I am a writer, people assume that I write things of greater substance than yesterday’s check to Wal-Mart for the family package of Charmin and a copy of Yahoo! Magazine. (Mom always said never to buy toilet paper alone… and I figure what goes better with toilet paper than a good read?) Truly, I like it when people assume that I am producing pieces of true literary merit, and, in the past, I have. So why is it that I, the writer, do not write?

I could say that I haven’t the time. My days are usually packed. Monday through Friday, you will find in room 205 at Jefferson Davis High. To the dismay of the teachers I tortured, I am in fact molding the future of America. (Much like the people who swear they will be good parents because they will never repeat the actions of their parents then find themselves slowly becoming their very own mother, I find myself slowly becoming the teachers I had. Just yesterday, I found myself telling a student that I would do back flips up and down the hall if only he would do his homework! The ghost of teachers past is haunting me!) And as every teacher knows (but the general public DOESN’T know), the job doesn’t end at 3:45 when the last bus pulls away from the school. There are lessons to be planned, papers to be graded, averages to be recorded…. and the list goes on.

Now the incredible salary of a teacher does afford me certain luxuries. My wife and I actually eat meat several nights a week, and it has been months since the lights were cut off for lack of payment. Teaching also allows me to pursue another little past time that I fondly call “my other job.” Selling clothes at the mall isn’t great, but it beats selling blood and plasma down at the local blood bank. (Plus, the last time I was there, the nurse had a really tough time finding a vein to poke.) So add another fifteen or twenty hours to the fifty or fifty-five and you get a workweek of sixty to seventy hours. To this figure, add the hours spent doing the “necessary” things of life (eating, sleeping, watching X-Files reruns… you know, the really essential things!), and it becomes evident that in order to truly invest time in writing, all I need is a clone.

Of course, the time thing may be just an excuse. I’m not saying it is one, just conceding that it MAY be one. After all, we find time to do the things we really want to do. So what else could it be? Maybe I’m just lazy. Maybe the strain of actually sitting down and putting words together is just too much. Maybe I lack the creativity, inspiration, or intelligence necessary. Or maybe I am just making excuses.

Want to know a secret? I think I prefer to think of myself as a writer capable of great and mighty works who didn’t write than as a guy who tried and didn’t succeed. After all, if I never write, I have a perfect excuse to not producing a masterpiece… “You know, I had this great idea for a book, I just never got around to it.” If I do write, and my best effort is mediocre at best, what excuse do I have? That I am just inept?

If I don’t write, the only apology I have to give is a half-hearted, “Sorry, I just didn’t get around to it.” If, on the other hand, I do write and the piece is particularly awful, I would probably find it necessary to find each person who read the work and apologize personally. “You know, I really am sorry. I don’t mean to suck, I just do. I really should just stick to writing checks.”

So I am afraid. There, I said it, and I hope hearing my confession makes you happy. For in saying it, I take the power it has held over me. And since I am actually writing it, I AM REALLY taking the power away. I promise to face my fear boldly with a monitor in front of me, and keys clicking beneath my fingers. There are stories, poems, and essays inside of me that will never be told if I don’t tell them. If I don’t breathe the breath of life into them, they shall forever remain lifeless. I am Doctor Frankenstein, and whether beautiful or hideous, these shall be my creations, for only I have the power to create them.

The concept of a lover who doesn’t love is pretty sad. A dancer who doesn’t dance is pathetic. And a writer who doesn’t write… isn’t a writer at all.