Category: Writing

Gross Songs Kids Love

The first book I ever wrote was a collection of lewd songs children sing in grade school called Gross Songs Kids Love. However, due to file mismanagement and The White Album Problem, I no longer have the book.

It was originally written in PFS Write on a Zenith personal computer with a 5 MB hard drive. It was written between the years of 1988 and 1994.

It’s not like I didn’t have a version in Windows. My father helped me convert the files from PFS Write to a file that could be read in Windows by “printing to file”. I had to have a computer that could read the 5 and 1/4 inch floppies, which my Windows 95 computer did.

I copied the files from the Zenith PC to the Gateway 2000 PC running Windows 95, which was used as the family PC. There the files sat as I got on with high school, swimming, and Shog.

By the time I had my own Windows 98 computer I failed to copy the book to the new PC and therefore lost the digital copies. But what about the physical copies? After all, I printed it out on the attached dot-matrix printer. What came of those?

In my physical file cabinet in my office I have not one, but four “Things I’ve Written” folders and not one of them contains a copy of the book. It may be somewhere else in the file cabinet, but it just goes to show that even paper copies can be lost (or is that more obvious – I can’t tell anymore).

My children are now of the age when I started writing this book, but when I look at what they are creating, it pales in comparison. Even though I’ve bought them Snagit to record Minecraft videos on Youtube and it’s easier than ever to create content, they have little to show for the available resources before them.

I blame myself for not pushing my children to create more works despite my own professional advice to business owners to create content to market their businesses online. How does that saying go, “the cobbler’s son has no shoes?” Don’t be that guy, Erich.

July 11, 2014
Who is Roger?

Roger got up to go to work, just like he does every morning. The sky was still dark, but there was a hint of gray as the sun was rising far away from his east window.

His wife made him breakfast as he put on his shoes. He always kept them by the front door and took them off just as the kids would greet him on his returning home.

The kids were still asleep and so Roger went over the upcoming bills with his wife and what the calendar had down for him tonight and this weekend. Nothing much.

After finishing his breakfast and brushing his teeth, Roger grabbed the cup of coffee and lunch from his wife, kissed her and left for the day, same as always.

On his way to work he passed the same courthouse, the same school, the same hospital, and the same corn fields. In every way this was a typical, normal day.

GNNgnzhh! A loud, static, industrial grinding sound blared from an unknown location. Black pixels appeared above the roofs of the houses. The world began to flicker.

Darkness.

Applause.

In front of him sat a studio audience. He couldn’t move his head. “Where am I?”, he thought. “How did I get here?” Suddenly a game-show-like host came near.

“Who do you think you are?”, asked the show’s host.

Unsure if he could speak, he said, slowly, “I’m Roger.”

“Who do you think Roger is, Roger?”

“That’s me. I’m Roger.” The audience laughed.

“Where do you think you are right now, Roger?”

“I, I don’t know. I was driving and…”

“Ladies and gentleman, allow me to introduce to you the first fully functional artificial intelligent computer of it’s kind, R.O.G.E.R.”

Roger attempted to cry, but there were no ducts, only a LCD monitor, and a fading, gut-wrenching realization that everything in his life was a lie.

July 7, 2014
Kite – How I Got Fired from My First Writing Job

Ryan Zimmerman owned more computers than anyone I knew at the time. He was 14 and ran his own bulletin board server from his bedroom via an ISDN line in a time when most people only had dial-up. Our high school had just got it’s first T1 line the year before, a connection that’s slower than most people’s cell phone today.

That was roughly the story that got me fired from my first writing job. It was my first semester working for Kite, the yearbook at our high school. My assignment was to write a feature story that would be included in the yearbook that year. I knew Ryan and that his story was unique, but I didn’t know how to make it interesting.

My teacher had me re-write the story 3 times, but ultimately she failed me on the assignment and kicked me out of the class. Now I write stories like that almost everyday. I write them on Facebook, Twitter, and on this blog. I write them in emails to coworkers and to friends. I write them in reports and in documentation that gets stored on servers.

It’s all boring.

No one wants to read about someone who has everything. They want to read about the boy who struggled and overcame. Okay, so he had a fast connection and a lot of computers. No one cares. If I would have wrote about how he got cigarettes from his parents and stole computer parts from Best Buy, maybe I’d have an article in the Kite, but I didn’t.

I hated school. I still do. In Spanish class I wrote lyrics. In Math class I wrote short stories. In church I’d write to the person sitting next to me. At college I’d chat with girls on AOL Instant Messenger. I learn by writing. I like telling stories, but I’m not very good at it because I don’t like conflict and without conflict, there is no story.

What’s your story?

June 6, 2014
Blueberry Morning

The year I entered high school the administrators changed the rules regarding letter jackets. Instead of getting a free jacket after 3 “letters”, you had to pay after at least one letter. My older brother caught the worst end of this change, having to buy his own letter jacket after his third letter.

I wanted a letter jacket too, but out of respect for my brother I decided to adhere to the old rules and wait 3 years before getting mine. While my brother played football and I was tall enough to play basketball, I decided to swim because, like track, you didn’t have to try out. You just signed up.

When I first saw that Jason had also chose to sign-up I tried to avoid him because I was afraid he would remember me from Mr. Cree’s social studies class last year. He had played a lawyer in a mock trial and had grilled me on the stand. It was one of two classes I had taken with him. The other was art.

Jason loved the Penguins and one day in art he was wearing both a jersey and a hat. That was the same class where I got punched in the face by someone who mistakenly thought I was laughing at them. I said, “Penguins, huh?” and Jason said very loudly and authoritatively, “Yep!” and I walked away.

So it was a surprise to me when Jason invited me over to his house for breakfast that day after morning swim. As a fan of breakfast I said yes and though I don’t recall how we got there I suppose we walked because I don’t recall meeting Jason’s mother until after I had started eating her Blueberry Morning cereal. I asked what I should call her and Jason said, “Hey”, so that is what I do to this day.

They lived on the second floor above the antique store they own and ran below. It was a whimsical life full of history brought to life through his parents constant garage sale hunting, antique store shopping, and auction bidding. Jason filled the time waiting on his parents reading computer magazines.

One afternoon during swim practice I mentioned to Jason a church activity I was going to that evening and he ended up going with me. We had already started hanging out more by this time, along with Ben Raufeisen, Kyle, and a couple other guys I can’t remember anymore.

Eventually Jason started going to all of the church activities and I started getting more involved in Jason’s world. I’d attend auctions and go garage sailing and eventually Jason and I started our own antique business, called Closet Collectibles Company. His dad didn’t like us competing with him, but it didn’t last long anyway. We used the profit from the company to watch movies.

The next year I got a job at Heiskell’s Restaurant and Lounge, which was a fine dining establishment just south of downtown by the creek. I washed dishes 3 nights a week from Thursday to Saturday. It was awful, awful work, but when a job came open, Jason wanted in. He got the job.

At the ‘peak’ of Heiskell’s – Jason, my other friend Danny Warner, and my next door neighbor John – all worked there, but graduation was coming. I worked there through the summer before heading to Kentucky with Jason who also attended the same school. Our drummer, Heath, also went.

Jason and I arguably hung out less at college than we did in high school. He lived two floors down and had different classes and social life. Yes, we still were in a band together, ate most dinners together, went to the lake for fun, and played street hockey behind the grocery store, but not much else.

I worked in the cafeteria at school washing dishes while Jason worked in an office grading papers. I worked with a girl named Kelly who spent her summers working at a camp in Michigan. I told her I was interested and I applied. I got the job. Jason worked at Franklin Power that summer. We didn’t talk much, but I heard he drained a lot of oil.

The next year at KCC was a little different. We were sophomores now and there was a new batch of freshmen, but ironically it was us that got mentored when an upperclassmen chose to teach us the ways of Carter County. He showed us how to go cliff jumping and where to go hiking; how to scare girls in the middle of the night and how to sneak in our rooms when we got back. Those were the good times among the bad.

Despite me having what could be considered an almost girlfriend that year, almost everything that could go wrong did and it was a terrible year by any other measurement. It was clear that we were supposed to leave and at the end of the year all 5 band members went 5 different directions. Jason went to Ball State in Muncie and I went to Milligan in Tennessee via Camp Allendale for the summer.

The first semester of 2000 was very similar to the summer of 1999. I don’t remember much about Jason’s life other than an AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) conversation we had one night when Jason famously asked if “I even had a TV” when I tried to explain to him that I didn’t have cable.

Over Christmas break Jason got engaged to a girl he met at that church we used to go to together back in high school and so I left Milligan to move in with Jason’s roommate and my other long-time friend, Derek in Muncie. Doing that meant leaving my other long-time friend, Ben, back in Milligan.

Living in Muncie with Derek was similar to living in Kentucky with Derek in the amount of time spent with Jason and his new wife. I first got a job delivering furniture followed by a lawn mowing job. Jason got a job at Chili’s and then at a bank. Derek also worked at Chili’s, but got a job at Target next before joining jason at the bank. And finally, I joined the bank too so we all worked there for a few months before we were laid off due to a consolidation made possible by the Check 21 Act passed by George Bush on October 31, 2001.

Jason’s wife worked at another bank and somehow that bank heard Jason was getting laid off and offered him a job working for them. He accepted and still works there today, but in a much different way. He invested in his career through dedicated learning and growth and now he works in Indianapolis.

Meanwhile he started multiple businesses, had multiple children, and moved a couple of times. Although more has happened since the early times, less has changed. It’s the ‘formidable years’ that I tend to write about on this blog and in my fiction novels. Sometimes I wonder if I should focus less on the past and more on the present. I am presently writing about the past. That may also be my future.

Jason doesn’t really like me writing about him so I’ve kept this purposely vague while attempting to provide insight and historical archiving. While we both have big families and job responsibilities we still find time to hang out together and projects to work on together.

I went to church with Ben, Derek, Danny, and Jason and worked with all of them together at different times in my life (Heiskell’s: Jason/Danny/Erich; KCC Cafeteria: Derek/Erich; Shog: Jason/Erich; Muncie Bank: Jason/Derek/Erich; Indianapolis Bank: Ben/Derek/Erich), Jason is the only one who still hangs out with me and I appreciate him for that. Although I allude to him a lot in this blog, I hadn’t written about him or our friendship directly before so I thought it was appropriate to recollect with you that fateful, blueberry morning.

May 25, 2014
King’s Island

I had been dating Jessica a little over a year when she broke up with me the day she graduated from high school. I had driven down from working in Michigan to see her graduate and on the way to her friend’s house she told me it was over.

That night we went to a party and I ended up sleeping on the floor before driving back to Michigan the next day. When I got back I called Kristin from a phone booth in Niles. I hadn’t talked to her in years, but we were childhood friends.

I knew Jessica always went to King’s Island each year on Labor Day and if Jessica had one thing it was consistency. I asked Kristin if she’d like to go with me to King’s Island and she said she would so I arranged a time for us to meet in Indiana.

Our parents are friends so when they found out we were meeting, they wanted to meet to so Kristin and her whole family came out to my parent’s house for a meal and Kristin stayed the night. The next day I drove her back to her house before going to King’s Island.

When we arrived she asked if she could bring a friend, then proceeded to beg a series of friends until one of them agreed to go. I should have stopped the trip there, but I really wanted Jessica to see me with Kristin. I was pretty stupid then.

Kristin drove to King’s Island and when we got there I quickly realized that she would not be riding any rides with me. She did not ride any rides with me that day. The time spent waiting in line was mostly spent in silence or with her talking to her friend.

When we went to the water park I offered to buy her a locker, but she said no. While she was in the water, her bag was stolen and later found in the women’s restroom. Luckily her car keys were still in it, but her wallet and clothes were gone.

I had bought a locker for my things (I was pretty smart then) and so I used my ATM card to get cash to buy her new clothes to wear back into the park. It was getting towards the end of the day, but not yet dark, and we were walking towards the park exit.

Just then I saw Jessica up ahead, left Kristin, and ran ahead to meet her. Jessica was both surprised to see me and guarded against me. When Kristin caught up I introduced her and we walked off. Kristin now knew why we came. I had won the battle, but lost the war.

On the car ride back, Kristin’s oil pressure spiked so she threw it in neutral while traveling down the highway. She would continually have to do this on the way home. This was back when cars were not made well and did good to make it to 100,000 miles.

When Jessica arrived at school that August I didn’t invite her to meet my parents. She later asked why. I don’t remember what I told her, but we didn’t talk much that year. I was over her by that point and had started a new friendship, but that’s another story.

May 22, 2014
Silver Beach

It was unusual for only two of us to be at the lodge at any one time, and strictly speaking, it was not allowed, but that’s the predicament Denise and I found ourselves in that weekend.

The year was 1999 and gas was high at $2 a gallon. We were both working at Michiana Christian Summer camp and while I lived there full time, she was only there during the day.

I worked in maintenance, which meant that I not only had to clean the cafeteria/gym and bathrooms 3 times a day, I had to fix whatever broke, and do all of the landscaping work.

Denise worked in the office on a computer. It was air conditioned. I would see her when I went into the office to take out the trash and vacuum the carpet. She was always nice to see.

We would all eat together in the staff area of the cafeteria. Some days I’d pour my water on her head just for fun. It was fun. At night she’d run the concession stand near the pool.

That Saturday morning I asked her if she wanted to go to the beach. To my surprise, she said, “Yes”. We drove up from Niles to St. Joseph, Michigan where US 31 ends, and Lake Michigan begins.

There was a bend in the road near Berrien Spring where Denise made a cross sign on her chest as we passed. Her friend had died there the year before. She wanted to stop to test drive a new vehicle.

I helped her look at the SUV she had been eyeing and then we continued on to Silver Beach. When we got there I realized I didn’t have any swimming trunks so we went to a shop there on the beach.

I picked out a green pair of swimming trunks and asked Denise what she thought. She didn’t care. I asked her if she was going to swim. She was not. She sat on the beach while I plunged into the water.

On the way back to the car a train came. I asked her if I ran to get on the train if she would go with me. She said she would. I didn’t run.

We stopped at McDonalds on the way back to camp, but she wouldn’t let me buy her lunch. “It wasn’t a date,” she said. And I knew that.

May 16, 2014
Things Change

After making fun of his mom (like kids in 6th grade do) he stood up, pushed me, and we both ended up in the principal’s office. That summer Joey Harless stole his dad’s car, wrecked it, and killed himself with his dad’s gun.

My sophomore year of high school Molly Gibson dug her fingers into my arm after she found me looking at the brush she’d left outside the pool locker room. Driving home one night our senior year she was hit by another car and died.

On August 11th, 2011, I took this picture of my daughter Magdalena in front of the Hardee’s in Tipton that had been there 20 years:

A month later, it was torn down and a Casey’s General Store was being built there. This is what it looked like in December of 2011 (with Carmina and Samuel):

That same day (August 11, 2011) I took this picture of a window in a home in Tipton:

By April 21, 2012 it looked like this:

On January 7th, 2012, I took this picture of my son, Samuel in front of a building at the corner of Main and Dearborn in Tipton, IN:

The next month (February) the building was demolished:

In the summer of 2012 I walked through some woods behind Starbucks on Old Meridian in Carmel by Meijer:

The next time I drive by, bulldozers have tore everything down to bare ground and they were putting in a new apartment complex.

One night when I was running the paper route in 2010 I took a picture of an old farm house in the middle of a corn field. The next morning (around 3 AM) a semi-tractor trailer had wrecked right in front of the old house – police cars were everywhere.

Last fall (2013) I was driving on 96th Street in Indianapolis across from HH Gregg headquarters and thought, “I should take a picture of that scenic, tree covered drive,” but I didn’t stop. The next time I drove by, the trees had been bulldozed to put in a parking lot.

I learned from my mistake. When I saw this house along US 31 in Westfield I pulled over and took this picture.

The next time I drove by it was gone.

I walk on a strip of grass in Greenfield, Indiana for the first time, the next month they pave over it with a brand new sidewalk. I update a customer’s website copyright date as a courtesy, only to find out hours later they are closing their business. I think of a coworker I haven’t thought of in a while and email my boss about him – he gets fired hours later.

None of these things are related. Things change. People die. Old buildings get torn down. Businesses close and people get fired. That’s life. Sometimes you’re there to document it one last time before it goes. Sometimes you get to have a visceral interaction with someone before they go so you remember them longer. I still think about Joey and Molly sometimes.

I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good ole’ days before you’ve actually left them.” -Andy Bernard

Epilogue

Being that Joey Harless died before the World Wide Web (<1993) and that he was a minor at the time, I couldn't find any information about him online, but you can donate to Molly Gibson's memorial, Pooh Bears for Molly. It still makes me sad to this day. Whenever I have a life event I think about Molly. At first it was the senior prom. Then it was graduation. Then it was going to college. Then getting married, graduating college, and having children. She is missed and still thought of. As the father of a daughter getting ready to be Joey’s age I can’t imagine losing her and I can’t imagine what it would be like for his parents – or Molly’s parents – and I hope I never have to find out. All we can do is love the people we’re with while we’re with them and pray for the best.

April 21, 2014
Facebook: The Journal of Our Times

Before Facebook, unless you kept a diary or wrote a blog, there was little recording of day-to-day events in most people’s lives. Some people made baby books for their children, but mostly just for their first or second child. But now, the combination of smartphone cameras and mobile apps, documenting our lives has never been easier and never before have more people done it.

Enough time has passed since the mass adoption of Facebook in 2009 for us to see how people are using it long-term. We know what people like and what they hate. We know who their friends are. We know when they start relationships and when they end them. We know what they looked like when they were younger and what they look like now. We know everything someone is willing to share.

Before Facebook, my wife used to blog about what was going on in the house, about her pregnancies, and about milestones with the kids. Now that’s all on Facebook. If I wanted to create a story of our last 5 years together, that’s where I’d look. And our baby books are on there, too. We still have real-life baby books, but we certainly aren’t printing any of our pictures.

What will become of this information?

As a society we’ve all invested so much into this platform. While Facebook’s Timeline feature helps to sort through it all and services that help you print Facebook help, there is still a general anxiety I feel about how we will overcome the White Album Problem. Most people don’t remember Collegeclub.com, but that was a platform like Facebook that one day just disappeared.

And the other side of the coin is that this information will never be deleted and we will always have a perfectly searchable memory of everything that’s ever happened. Nothing will ever be forgotten. No friend is ever left behind. That’s not how the mind works. That’s not how life used to work. We used to forget, move on, and get on with life. Now it’s all just a click away.

Why do I still blog in a post-Facebook world?

I own this domain. I pay for this hosting account. I control what the website looks like and when it changes. I control my own backups. I am not subject to Facebook’s rules. I can download my data whenever I want. I can make my content look like whatever I want. In short – it’s my own platform where I can tell my own story over time regardless of what Facebook is or does, but that’s not the only reason I blog.

I know there is some benefit to me in the short term to be able to flesh out ideas and some value in the long term to be able to look back on what I was thinking or working on, but I didn’t know if it was actually of value to other people. I considered my blog a ‘failure’ because it doesn’t get that many visitors for the posts I care about, there are little to no comments, and little to no email newsletter sign-ups.

It turns out that those metrics aren’t the only ones that matter as people have reached out to me in other ways to let me know they’re reading. You don’t always know what effect you’re going to have on people and you may never know, but if you don’t put yourself out there, you’re reducing that chance. This small bit of encouragement helps. I’m glad you also read my blog.

April 11, 2014
Sometimes I Worry

Sometimes I worry about people. There was a guy who went straight into the military from high school. I think about him every now and then and wonder if he’s okay. Today I looked him on Facebook. He’s got 4 kids and he looks like he’s doing okay. Now I don’t have to worry about him anymore.

Sometimes I think about how much time I spent making movies, music, and writing stories when I was younger and how little I do that now. I literally have a video camera in my pocket and I never make movies. What was different about my life then vs. my life now? I’m not busier. I’m less busy now.

Sometimes I wonder why I wasn’t friends with more people who were geographically close to me growing up. There were two girls who lived relatively close to me, but their houses were on the other side of the highway and it was hard to get to. How can I be friends with the neighbors I have now?

Sometimes I wonder what impact I’m having on the world and how I’ll be remembered by my children when I’m gone. I wonder how they’ll think of me and whether or not they’ll remember me or only remember the pictures they took of me and the words I wrote on my blog. I’m glad they took pictures of me and read my blog.

Sometimes someone you thought was no longer your friend reaches out to you to reconnect and sometimes someone you thought would always be there leaves your side. These things happen more often than they told you it would. But what they also told you was that it will be okay. And it will.

April 9, 2014