Erich Stauffer

Category: Writing

  • A Tent

    A story about “afterwards”:

    The three of us decided one day we would make a tent. We searched through homes and businesses for sturdy material then used heavy duty rope and wire to sew long pieces of the material together. Using ladders and rope we positioned the strips of cloth over a row of power lines in the middle of our town. There was little risk of shock as there hadn’t been electricity since The Event.

    Each strip was fashioned to the one next to it and the ends next to the ground were stretched out and tied to the ground forming a wide, cool area underneath. We gathered some candles and some instruments and began playing music as the sun set. Slowly the townspeople came to see what the ruckus was about. Mostly they stared and watched until one little boy began dancing. He was followed by a little girl and she by her father. Soon afterwards the whole town was dancing to the candlelight in the street they had all once drove down. For a moment the hard times were good.

  • Is Something Fundamentally Broken?

    Is there any new money being injected into the system? Is any new wealth being created?

    This is something I’ve heard time and time again over the last 8-10 months if not years. I’d like to share my thoughts on making money if you’ll bear with me here. The easiest way to make money is when someone is already spending it. In other words, the closer you are to a money stream, the easier it is.

    Here are some examples:

    -banks skim off the top of every transaction. They are right there next to the money so they just take some of it in the form of fees.
    -real estate brokers skim money off of big transactions via commissions. Again, be there when the money is being transferred.
    -stock brokers make money whether you do or not. They charge for the buys and sells. All they do is make money all day long.

    Once you have this mindset, you can start to look for where transactions are already happening so that you can skim off of the top.

    Examples include:

    -affiliate marketing where you get in between a buyer and seller to make a commission off of that sale
    -general contracting where you skim profit off the top of a large bid for smaller bid sub-contractors
    -reviewing things you buy everyday to see if there’s any way you can get paid by spending money – use this for discovery only as you want to use other people’s money to make money

    What I’m really talking about here is how to get money without taking it away from someone else. Is there any new money being injected into the system? Is any new wealth being created?

    Napoleon Hill talks about a man starting with nothing but an idea for a service he can provide. He gets someone with money to pay for his service and thus income had appeared from an idea. But the guy who paid now has less money – unless that service allowed him to make more money.

    There are three traditionally successful products and services that always have and always will make money:

    • save someone time or money
    • make someone more money
    • fix a problem or frustration

    Now there are other things like teaching, the arts, and sports, but even those things solve problems of lack of knowledge, boredom, and lack of fun. Speaking of sports, there is no shortage of money being spent in that field/arena.

    So how do YOU make more money?

    • become an employee
    • sell something people want

    Being an employee is less risky, but you have less control, less freedom, and the moment you stop working, you stop getting paid. Being independent means more bosses, less frequent paychecks, but you get paid on value, not time and if you do it right, you get paid over and over again for the same work.

    If I had to do it over again, I would have learned to code programs, but I’ve helped a lot of people by being who I am now. There’s a need in the market for people who understand technology and can talk to people. You are a great front man. I think you should run for office.

  • Ghost Dreams: A Screenplay

    Scene A

    Derek goes about his life normally. He wakes up. He eats breakfast. He goes to school.

    Scene B
    While at school Derek talks to one of his friends about his fear of dying. His friend says he has the same fear and then asks Derek if he thinks ghosts dream.
    Derek wonders if ghosts even sleep, but sets that aside as he further comments that if they did sleep, then surely they dream too.
    His friend comments that if a ghost can dream, then what stops those dreams from being nightmares?
    “What if those nightmares were about your own death?”
    Scene C
    Derek comes home. He eats dinner and goes to bed.
    Scene D
    The audience does not know he’s really asleep. Derek goes about life normally. The difference is when he comes home, someone tries to kill Derek. In the attempt to kill Derek, Derek is knocked out.
    Scene E
    Derek wakes up again in his own bed. The audience now realizes Derek was just dreaming.
    Scene F
    Derek goes about life normally. He gets up to eat breakfast. This time when he throws something in the trash he sees a human head. Before he can turn it over his mom grabs him and starts shaking him. She accuses him of putting the head in there.
    Scene G
    Derek wakes up again in his own bed with his mother shaking him. “It’s time to get up!” she says in a sweet voice like she had every morning. Derek was starting to doubt his sanity, but hoped for the best that this time the nightmares were behind him.
    Scene H
    He goes about life normally. Then he comes home again expecting to be mugged, but he is not. Derek rests easy. Now someone breaks in on him. Derek is scared so he gets a gun.
    Derek tries to kill the intruder with the gun, but he only manages to hit him with the stock and knocks him out. When he turns on the light to see who the intruder is he discovers it is himself.
    Derek freaks out and starts to walk backwards. He knows now that he is a ghost.
    Derek breathes, “I’m a gh…?” but before he can finish his mom cuts his head off with an ax.* Derek’s mom throws his head in the trash. She then carries his body and lays it on his bed. She begins to shake his shoulders and say, “It’s time to get up!”
    *Happy Mothers Day!

  • It Was a Hot Day

    It Was a Hot Day by Erich Stauffer, 6-28-1997

    He escapes through the front door and begins to run.

    The man inside would realize he was gone and start after him in his vehicle if he chose. The who escaped started running through the woods instead of on the road. A vehicle was coming from the other direction to pick him up – he had to avoid being re-captured, yet catch a ride with a vehicle traveling down the road not knowing where he is. “Only a few hundred more yards to a payphone,” [he thought].

    He gets out his phone card and the number. Dial. Get behind the phone. Punch in the code. Get behind the phone. Type the phone number. Get behind the phone. What does the man’s engine sound like? Here comes a car!

    “Cellular customer unavailable.”

    He keeps walking. He walks past the church. Could it be open? He might miss his ride. He kept walking. Visual contact!

    “Get in the car!”. [He gets in the car.]

    “Turn around and get outta here.” He’s sweating. It was a hot day.

  • Everything I Know About My Dad

    My dad’s name is Stephen, but he goes by Steve. I used to tell my friends that if you ever saw him running, you had better start running in the same direction because I’ve never seen him run in my life. It’s not that he’s not a fit dude, he just prefers to work out by actually working. One day while standing in line for food at church, a man trying to strike up a conversation asked my dad if he liked sports. He quickly and unequivocally said, “No,” and turned away. Steve has never liked or played sports. He recalls having to write a story about football in elementary school, where he attended a one room schoolhouse in the backwoods of Missouri, “I didn’t know anything about the game other than the field had 100 yards. When I read my story about how the player crossed the 50 yard line, then the 55 yard line, and so on, everyone started laughing at me and I was humiliated.” His humiliation didn’t stop at school. They didn’t have running water at home so in addition to the use of an outhouse, he had to take baths in a metal wash basin in the middle of the kitchen next to the wood stove. Steve must have seen technology as a way to escape the trappings of rural life in the 50’s and 60’s and as a way to differentiate from the jocks who mocked him. He gravitated towards the only tech he get could at the time: the wood and machine shops at school.

    Car Seve Stauffer BuiltBy the time my dad entered college, he had built every piece of living room furniture they owned, turned their back yard into a junk yard of stripped cars, and graduated at the top of his class. At college, Steve worked on airplanes in the Aircraft & Powerplant department. His favorite professor was Doc Swiger, a aircraft mechanic and theory instructor. Doc was an old, single, Navy veteran who didn’t go to any “marryings or buryings”. Doc would let Steve work on pet projects in the lab after hours. One of his projects was rebuilding a old tail-dragger Piper Cub airplane, which Steve then got to fly in. They also overhauled and repainted an old Volkswagen bug, which Doc loaned to Steve. It was in this car that my dad took my mom out on their first date to a park in Kansas City near the river. My mom made chili and on their way back they attended evening service at the church where they met. My mom credits Steve with her being able to pass the Physics class they had together. Steve had already finished his 2 year Associates Degree in Aviation technology, and was continuing with classes to complete his B.S. degree in Power Technology. He wasn’t confident in his ability to get a 4-year degree so he got his 2-year degree first. After graduation, he worked as an airplane mechanic for 3 months before getting a call to apply at General Motors in January, 1976.

    Steve started working on the assembly line in the paint department under his father-in-law, Don. By this time, Don had worked long enough to have lost his sense of smell. Soon, an electrician position opened up at GM and Steve moved into that position. His first year at GM he and his wife house-sitted Don’s house out in Garden City during the week. In 1977 there was an oil crises in America and it was actually cheaper to buy a home closer to work than to pay the gas to drive an hour away. Don and his wife bought a house in Kansas City and Steve carpooled with Don’s brother, Bob. My dad still complains about Bob’s “on or off” heat policy in the car anytime someone doesn’t slowly adjust the temperature because of Bob’s habit of either turning the heat full blast or completely off. Living rent free and carpooling to work allowed my parents enough time to save up a down payment for their first house, “The White House”. That’s the house I was born in. They planted fruit trees in the back yard, had a vegetable garden, and cultured African Violets in the basement. Steve joined a woodworking club and enjoyed carving old men smoking pipes while sitting on a log. He would take us to the park and just sit on a bench while me and my brothers dug in the sand with the ride-on excavators.

    In 1984, my parents moved into what we called, “The Brown House”. It was a 5 bedroom, 3 bath, 2 story with a split level entrance and a 2 car garage. When it rained the basement would flood because the backyard was sloped towards the house. Steve spent a summer digging a ditch around the house to divert the water and the flooding stopped. He had so much success, he convinced our church that he could help their flooding problem too. He dug ditches all around the church, diverting water away from the foundation, preventing it from flooding the basement, whose walls were yellow with water stains. He also changed light bulbs in the sanctuary and gymnasium, replaced air filters in the giant furnaces, and added more circuits to the antiquated electrical system. Whenever the church would have get-togethers in the gym, he would make me and my brothers setup and tear down chairs and tables. Steve also ran a Young Married class with my mom. One day they took their class out to Don’s farm where they had a scavenger hunt. I remember the two-flavors in one Bubble Yum gum I had in the back seat of the car on the way down and the gummi bears we found at the end of the hunt.

    My brother’s and I asked our dad for a tree house until he eventually built one. It was more like a small house in the sky where he hung a porch swing underneath. He also helped us with our Pine Wood Derby cars, which he used to teach us about aerodynamics and friction. With his help we shaped our pine blocks into airplane wings for efficiency and sprinkled graphite on the axles for speed. We won every race whether you ran them frontwards or backwards. But if you have ever done a race, you know that each car is weighed before racing. If it’s not within a certain range, it can’t run. The problem was that each person’s scale was different and the scales that were used were carried around, making them inherently less accurate. We would either have to physically shave wood off the car before running or install bolts to add nuts for weight. This frustrated my dad because the cars were often painted and shaving the car would ruin the paint job and adding bolts would increase drag. Eventually, my dad came up with a solution to fix the problem. He carved a hollow area on the inside of the bottom of the car, filled it with some BBs, and held them in with a metal plate. If the car was too light or too heavy, he could add easily add or remove them, while keeping the car pristine and slick.

    Steve Stauffer, ElectricianIn 1988, my dad was laid off when the GM plant in Kansas City closed down and he was relocated to the GM Indy stamping plant as a journeyman electrician. About a year later he accepted the job within the plant as second shift Electrical Controls support, a per diem job. Sometime before 1996 he had to make the decision to go back to hourly electrician, or to become a salaried Controls Engineer. Deciding was a struggle for him, leaving the perceived security of the UAW union and contracts to the whims of GM towards the salaried workforce. Steve chose salary, but always wondered if the hourly would have been better. One day he was working on a stamping robot, which moves up and down, transforming a sheet of metal into a car door. For this particular problem, Steve had to go inside the machine, where the metal sheets went, in order to do the repair. A good electrician will always put on a public lock and his personal lock on a machine before attempting any repairs. This is meant to prevent any accidental injury that could occur if the machine were to become operational during a repair. On this day, a fellow employee came by and needed to start up the machine. They removed the public lock and his personal lock and started up the machine. When Steve heard the machine start, he grabbed his tools and dropped down into a safety hole, narrowly avoiding being crushed. He never told his wife.

    In 1994 my parents moved to a home in Franklin and began a passion for landscaping. By 2002 they had transformed a blank canvas into inviting paths, ponds, and gardens and had the opportunity to feature their back yard in the Johnson County Glorious Gardens Tour. Steve was approached by many friends saying, “Could you come to our house and do something with our yard?” so they started their own landscaping business. Steve does most of the landscaping and my mom deals with the customers and the paper work. He did this in the morning before working a full shift at GM in the afternoon until October 2009 when he retired after 32 years.

  • Everything I Know About Breakfast

    Bacon with sunny side up eggs served with toasts.
    Bacon with sunny side up eggs served with toasts.

    Breakfast is the first meal of the day. It’s named after the end to the pause most of take in eating overnight. This pause is called a “fast” and in the morning, the fast is broken, hence “breakfast”. Some people pronounce breakfast as “breafkast”, which is acceptable up until the age of 18 and after that it’s just not cute anymore.

    1/2/2016 UPDATE: I now have a whole site dedicated to breakfast at Breakfast Club Me. Check it out.

    The best breakfast consists of bacon, eggs, hash browns, and biscuits and gravy. This is what I call the “base four” or the “quintessential breakfast.” It’s very hard to pull off at home and there are very few restaurants that offer this as a combo. This is because they know that’s what people want and can charge more on that one item you have to order to make your breakfast complete.

    Hardee’s is the only restaurant that I know of that offers the quintessential combo, but it doesn’t come with a drink. Again, you have to pay extra for perfection, but at least Hardees recognizes a man’s needs – something Hardees does very well. Hardees is the Taco Bell of breakfast. Take their breakfast bowl for example. They take all of the base ingredients from the base four, but put it in a bowl instead. And the best best breakfast sandwich ever, the Monster Biscuit, does this and more. What it lacks in gravy it makes up in ham. I’ve written to Hardees specifically asking them to make a biscuit and gravy sandwich, which I feel would really round out their selection, but they’ve yet to implement it.

    Sausage

    Sausage is not only a base ingredient in gravy, but can be cooked as a patty or as a link. Unless you’re cooking for gravy, the sausage should be kept at an even heat throughout the cooking process allowing the inside to cook and the outside to sear. This is what will lock in the juice on the inside and caramelize the outside. Unlike hamburger patties, you’ll want to flip your sausage often to keep the heat as even as possible allowing the inside to cook before the outside burns. When given the choice, I almost always opt for bacon over sausage, which is our next meat.

    Bacon

    Bacon, the only meat to taste both sweet and salty at the same time, will be cooked slightly crunchy if you’re an American. Leave the limp bacon in France for when you’re just passing through. Like sausage, bacon should be flipped often and don’t try to cook a pound at a time. You’re not tossing a salad here, you’re graduating a class of delicious strips of bacon. Unlike sausage, you want to turn the heat down slightly over cooking as the grease in the pan increases. Wait for the the pops to slightly diminish and the aroma to lift before removing the bacon from the pan. Do not leave the bacon while cooking it. It will cook faster when you’re gone than if you are watching it, but no matter how short you’re away, the bacon will burn. Burnt bacon is only good for grandmas and garbage cans so keep your eyes on the prize and watch that bacon.

    Eggs

    There are many different ways to make eggs and everyone has their own opinion about what is best. I used to like making scrambled eggs after frying up some bacon in order to use the bacon bits leftover in the pan. I did this once for a friend and he freaked out, rejected the eggs and the breakfast. He also prefers hamburgers with only ketchup and nachos with only cheese, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but every since, I’ve subtlety changed the way I think about making eggs that way.

    I like to think that I don’t have a favorite type of egg, but egg moods. Sometimes I want a scrambled egg and sometimes I like them over easy. I don’t care for a poached egg or sunny side up, lets not get crazy, I say. Boiled eggs are okay after church on a Sunday picnic, but let’s not bring them into the breakfast nook where they don’t belong. You can pack me some when I become a steel worker and I can eat them out of my metal lunch box while sitting on a beam 400 feet over Fifth Avenue.

    Even a certain type of egg like scrambled eggs can be cooked differently. There are those who make them essentially like omelette in sheets and those who make them fluffly. I prefer mine to be the texture of sausage gravy, somewhere in between the two, but even I have trouble cooking them just so. When cooking an egg, you must be prepared with your strategy going in because once it hits the pan, there isn’t much time for adjustment. Here’s how I prepare the perfect scrambled eggs.

    Start by getting your pan hot, which I consider slightly over medium heat. While the pan is heating up, crack your eggs into a bowl, get a fork, and stir them up. Test for heat by dropping a pad or two of butter into the pan. Listen for the sound of the sizzle and watch for the color to run run clear. Butter is mostly water so don’t wait too long before adding the eggs or else the butter will burn. Drop your eggs in and begin slowly stirring like a good gravy. Keep stirring until the eggs begin to roll into balls. Turn off the heat before you think you need to. They’ll keep cooking even without the added heat.

    Hash Browns

    One of the most important, yet most neglected breakfast item is hash browns. Why is it that so much effort has been placed in this country to perfect the perfect french fry, yet our hash browns wallow in the wasteland of the culinary arts? Let me be clear, I am talking about the long, thin strings of potato like you get at White Castle in a cake, not the cubes of potatoes. There needs to be an amendment to the constitution or at the very least a Wikipedia entry stating which is which. We can’t allow restauranteers to continue to get this wrong. Countless breakfasts have been ruined by the misconception of this oh so important difference.

    Hash browns are best prepared days in advance of when they will be eaten. The best hash browns go into the deep fryer frozen and come out golden brown. When plated, they should nest in between the gravy and the eggs, not to touch the bacon or the sausage. I like to add both salt and ketchup to my hash browns and don’t mind if a little gravy gets on there too.

    Biscuits

    If you don’t know how to make good biscuits and are not willing to spend 10 years perfecting your recipe, then you’re better off going to Hardees or getting some poppin’ fresh dough because those are your next two best options. The best biscuits are fluffy on the inside, golden brown on the top and bottom, and white around the edges. They should look like a sandwich waiting to be stuffed with meats and cheeses or split open for some butter and strawberry jam.

    Cracker Barrel is to Mexican restaurants as Hardee’s is to Taco Bell as their unlimited “chips and salsa” are their unlimited biscuits. A good strategy is to order a meal with a side of gravy and get the biscuits as part of your meal, thereby obfuscating the fee associated with purchasing biscuits and gravy outright. Having said that, an order of biscuits and gravy at Cracker Barrel already contains unlimited refills, so you have to judge how much you value social norms.

    Gravy

    There are several types of gravy, some made with or without sausage, some white and some brown. The best gravy is made from grease and flour, but since restaurants don’t often have enough grease from sausage to cook gravy, they often use oil, which makes the gravy seem much more like gelatin than pudding. The worst offense is to use chipped beef in gravy. If you can’t put little balls of sausage in my gravy, just serve it white or not at all. A little honey will go a long way.

    Biscuits and Gravy

    When I was young I was taught to break apart my biscuit and pour gravy all over the top, then eat it sort of like a casserole. I’ve since learned that the aesthetic appearance of eating it New York style as an open-faced sandwich is much more pleasing and can save time. When trying to maximize all-you-can-eat biscuits and gravy, you have to be efficient. Being efficient doesn’t mean being stupid. Pouring your gravy over an unopened biscuit will ruin your biscuits and gravy. Just don’t do it. Take the time to split the biscuit open to fully enjoy your meal.

    The best places to get biscuits and gravy are in greasy spoons and small town diners. They wouldn’t be able to stay in business if they sold bad biscuits and gravy. Like the coat of a dog shows what kind of food he eats, biscuits and gravy represent how a restaurant is run. If the biscuits are hard and crunchy, they’re coffee is probably going to be bitter too. If they put chipped beef in your gravy, that’s probably not real eggs you’re eating. Pay attention to the little things and you’ll get the big picture.

    Fruit

    Fruit says, “I care enough about you to not give you what you really want for breakfast.” If you’re getting fruit for breakfast, the person serving you is either too cheap or too lazy to get up and fry you a pancake. In fact, the only time fruit should be included with breakfast is in a pancake, which is what I’ll talk about next.

    Pancakes

    Sometimes you’re not in the mood for biscuits and gravy cause you just had it for dinner last night. In that case, the next best thing is pancakes. Like biscuits and hash browns, your pancakes should be cooked golden brown. Basically, there’s a reason why it’s called golden brown, because like gold, it’s the best. When cooking pancakes, wait for the bubbles to start popping up through the mix and then test a corner by lifting it up to see if that side is done. If you’re a pro like Uncle Buck, you’ll flip it in the pan. Otherwise, use a spatula.

    One of the nice things about pancakes is the ability to pour syrup all over them. You may drink Diet Coke and refrain from adding sugar to your coffee, but when it’s time for some pancakes, you’re smothering them with syrup. Why? Because it’s delicious (and they can be really dry without it). And do you really want to put all of those Maple trees out of business? Michigan has enough unemployment with you skimping on the syrup so next time you’re in the grocery store, go ahead and get the good stuff, you know you want to.

  • Everything I Know About Cars

    Almost all of us have ridden in a car, but each of us has very different experiences. It’s easy to forget about the 99% of the time when nothing happens, which is generally what we want to happen, but it’s the 1% that you tend to remember.

    My first memories of a car occurred when my parents were trading in their blue station wagon for a brand new 1984 Caprice Classic. I was 4. I still remember my little brother’s black vinyl car seat, it’s skin cracked from the sun, exposing the yellow foam underneath. There were three of us in the back seat, all boys. I was the middle child, but preferred the back, right seat as it had the waist seat belt easiest to undo without my parents noticing. My big brother and I both knew this and fought vehemently over the spot. Eventually I figured out how to do it with the other side, but it was shortly after this that we got the 1988 Suburban.

    My parents used to buy new vehicles anytime they were going on a big vacation. In 1984 we took the only two week vacation my family ever had. We took the Caprice Classic from Missouri, where we lived at the time, through Kansas to Nebraska, down through Colorado and New Mexico to Texas, and back home again through Oklahoma. In 1988 we went to Walt Disney World with the girl with the necklace and her family. They had a luxury van so my dad must have figured we needed something bigger too. They had four kids, two older boys and two younger girls. I remember us stopping at rest stops and Cracker Barrel together on the way down, but once we were there, we hardly saw each other.

    The first car my dad ever bought new was a 1977 Monte Carlo. My grandpa claims he painted it while working as a paint supervisor at the GM Leeds Plant in Kansas City. He’s the one who helped get my dad a job there and the reason why we got to cut in line at the Epcot Center in Disney World. It’s also the reason we had to move to Indianapolis when GM decided to close the plant in Kansas City. He held on to the Monte Carlo until around 1994, rarely driving it, selling it to a co-worker for about $1700. It had a giant rust hole in the right door and metal fell off anytime you opened and closed the door.

    My dad taught me most of the things I know about cars. He actually built his own car in high school from spare parts from a junk yard. It wasn’t street legal, but it did give him street cred. He was known at school as “the guy who built his own car”. He became student council president his senior year when the more popular person he was running against got his girlfriend pregnant and dropped out of the race. When I turned 16, the 84′ Caprice Classic became mine to drive. It was 12 years old then and had about 120,000 miles. The ceiling felt was falling and the speedometer meter fell off, but it was a good (and powerful) car with over 300 horsepower in a V8.

    I tended to drive the car as if I was always being chased. Sometimes I was being chased, so the practice came in handy. I would even practice learning how to recover from a fish tale by going out to country gravel roads and whipping the car around. One time I was late to work washing dishes after school, cut a corner too close and spun the back of the car into a mail box. I had to drive to town to withdraw money from the ATM to pay for the box before making it to work on time. I had such a mastery of this car’s dynamics that I was able to slide the car down a hill sideways and recover. Looking back, I’m not sure how I was able to do this, but I know I did. One thing I look back on with horror is the time I got bored driving up to camp in Michigan. I thought it would be okay to get in the back seat while driving, but once I got there I realized I had no way to stop the car if I had to. My heart started racing pretty hard, which had the added affect of waking me up, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

    The Caprice Classic was with me when Stephani ran backstage on Audio Adrenaline, it was on my first date with Jessica and there when she broke up with me, and it drove Sarah around when she was trying to figure out who she wanted in her life. While I was up in Michigan working at camp, the radiator went out. I should have known something was wrong after it overheated taking a hitchhiker to Chicago one day. I took it to a mechanic to have it repaired and he said I could buy the parts and get someone to do it for less. My boss at the camp said he could do it for me, but he forgot to reconnect the transmission fluid lines that run through the radiator to cool. When the liquid ran out of the transmission it seized up and my dad had to tow it back at the end of the summer. We stopped at Cracker Barrel on the way back though. He donated it to the blind for a $800 tax deduction.

    Despite my bad management of the Caprice Classic, my dad let me take his 1999 GMC truck to Tennessee. I was still driving this truck when I met Suzanne, but by the time I was engaged to her two months later, my dad had swapped me out with his 1994 Chrysler van. After my job in Muncie relocated to Indianapolis I transferred to school there and shortly after purchased my first vehicle, a 1999 Chevy Silverado. It was the largest mistake of my life at that time. At 13.5% interest, I would pay more for it monthly than I would rent. I made the decision without the advice of my dad or my soon-to-be wife and it crippled us financially for years. Soon after having our first baby we traded the truck in for a Pontiac Vibe for an overall loss of $10,000. The actual cost of owning the vehicle for the time I had it came out to $1000 per month.

    Our first son was born the day Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 and soon after all of our credit cards were unusable. The banks decided to lower our credit limit to our current balance, rendering them useless. We had foolishly been relying on credit each month to pay our daily expenses, but suddenly we were forced to pay for everything with cash, check, or debit card. We didn’t make enough money at the time to pay our monthly expenses as we had been living outside of our means since before we were married. For the next year I did odd jobs on the side and we cut expenses, but the time came when we couldn’t reduce our expenses any more and we had to raise our income. In the fall of 2009 my wife decided to get a paper route.

    After running the paper route four months, another route opened up and I applied. I started running the paper route Feb 1 and ran it every morning until November 30. For ten months my wife and I would get up at 3 AM, be at “The Shed” by 3:30 and be done delivering papers by 7:00 in order for me to be at work at my day job by 8:00. I’d get home, change my clothes, and jump back in the car. When Suzanne started the paper route, the Vibe had 180,000 miles. By the time we both quit the route, it had 260,000. In the mean time, my parents gave me another car they inherited from my grandma. It was a Oldmobile Alero. This was the car that coined the term, “Rat Life” which is a unit of measurement for how dirty your car is based on how long a rat could survive in it. The Oldsmobile or “Oldsmosex” as it was called, maintained a steady rat life of around 2 weeks, sometimes higher. After I quit the paper route, we sold the Oldsmosex to my little brother’s friend who had high, high socks.

    I still drive the Vibe, which now has over 280,000 miles on it. My wife traded in her 2007 Saturn Outlook for a 2003 Pontiac van. We’ve learned to live within our means, pay for things with cash, and be thankful for what we have. You would think I would have learned from the truck purchase before purchasing a home or learned from the home purchase before purchasing new windows and doors, or learned from the windows and doors by not buying the Saturn Outlook, but at some point if you can’t stop – you will be stopped. That’s what happened to us and we couldn’t be happier.

  • Everything I Know about Women

    Pitches

    My earliest memories of women occurred at my home church in Kansas City. My parents would put me in the nursery where I’d sing songs, eat vanilla wafers, and play with old Star Wars toys. It was in this play area that I had the most interaction with women.

    I remember playing with the Millenium Falcon when a girl said to me, “I can hear your whisper more than your regul ar voice.” I thought that odd, but assumed it was because it held a different pitch.

    My dad used to do maintenance and electrical work at the church, digging ditches and improving electrical systems. There was a barn in the bottom of the parking lot by the willow tree full of newspapers. My dad thought it was a fire hazard so one day he went there to take them all to be recycled.

    The parking lot was at an angle, with the top being near the road. I was near the top of the parking lot playing, by one of the islands mulched with red lava rocks. My mom was about half-way between me and my dad when she called out my name in such a way as to paralyze my muscles. It was as if it was her dying breath. The muted, passive tone turned my legs into concrete and time slowed down. It was something about the pitch.

    There was an older boy at church who would play with me sometimes. He would swing me around in circles, flying me in the air. He had a sunken chest too. Suddenly he stopped playing with me and started hanging around some girl instead. One day I caught him kissing her in the parking lot so I picked up a lava rock and pitched it into her face. He responded by feeding me Apple juice that turned out to be vinegar. I violently puked for the next hour.

    Parties

    A couple of years later the girl from the nursery moved to Indianapolis and a couple of years after that, we did too. I went to one of her birthday parties and my mom let me have one of her gold necklaces to give her as a present. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but she seemed to enjoy getting it. We went to different schools, but saw each other at church.

    I had two third grade teachers – both women. One of them thought I had some issues to deal with so she recommended me to see a counselor – also a woman. One of the first things this counselor had me do was to draw a picture of my family. I figured she would be using it to analyze how I thought of my family based on what I had seen on TV so I made sure to draw everyone with smiling faces, but I have no idea how it actually got interpreted. I credit these visits and my chest with keeping me out of the military, but I’m sure they would have taken me anyway.

    The next year my teacher got pregnant and had to leave mid-way through the school year to avoid a virus that was spreading through the school that could hurt the baby. Before she left she asked us for advice on how to raise her daughter, since she would have been her first-born. I remember recommending to give her as much allowance as possible. I recently ran into this daughter on Facebook, which was a surreal experience. This teacher was the one who recommended I be entered into advanced classes, called IDEA.

    My fifth grade teacher was as tall as I was at the time (5 feet) and she loved talking about space and space travel. She had a friend at NASA who would visit once a year and do acrobatics on a chair and show us the fastest way to empty a 2-liter bottle. We built space stations out of toilet paper tubes and rockets out of cardboard boxes. She had applied to be on the Challenger, but didn’t get accepted. When it blew up she had to go home because she was so upset.

    That year was the first year I had a social group outside of the kids who lived in my neighborhood. Although I had more shared experiences with those of us who were bused to the other school for half a day to learn advanced topics (Solitaire) I got along better with the kids who enjoyed sports. I was the fastest runner and highest jumper at the time probably because of my height. One day I got invited to a party after school. It was my first non-birthday party.

    The party was in the basement of one my friend’s houses. There was a home made bar there and a boom box. The music was playing and people were dancing. I had no idea what to do, but there was a girl there who may have liked me. Her name was Misty Ward. She lived in the apartments along Madison Ave, just south of Stop 11. When Valentines Day came around, I gave candy to two girls who didn’t like me and none to her – she never liked me again.

    Concerts

    In sixth grade, the girl with the necklace moved to New Castle and we moved to Franklin. I spent a lot of time in my back yard digging holes and trimming trees. There was a girl down the street who had hoped to piggyback on my initial popularity at my new school by asking me out. I didn’t initially know how to handle this so I fumbled it pretty bad, making her get up from sitting next to me on the bus and then spending the next three years trying to get her back. I never did.

    My first date wouldn’t be until after I graduated high school. A girl from my third and fifth grade classes, who also went to my church, invited me to her graduation party. I went and for some reason we started calling each other and I hanging out. One of the first things we did was go to a party at one of her friends houses. There was a home made bar and a boom box playing music. No one was dancing and I had no idea what to do.

    One night I was over at her house watching a movie and her mother asked me when I turned into a pumpkin. Not sure what she meant, she asked when I needed to be home. Not having an answer she told me she wanted me gone by midnight. I remember eating popcorn and wanting to shove as much of it into my face as I could. Stephani (that was her name) advised me to take one or two pieces at a time, but that was very hard for me to do.

    She had this quirk about her that whenever she went to a concert she would rush the backstage afterwards to meet the band. We were watching Audio Adrenaline at Garfield Park that summer and as the concert ended she approached the stage and asked if I was coming with her. I said no and I didn’t see her again until a year later at a Reality Check concert at her college, Indiana Wesleyan. I was selling t-shirts for the band and she was about ready to rush backstage. I haven’t seen her since.

    Parks

    The summer after my freshman year in college I worked at a camp in Michigan. I called up the girl with the necklace and invited her to go to King’s Island with me for Labor Day. She agreed and after eating dinner with her parents at my house in Franklin and spending the night at her parent’s house in New Castle, we drove to the park.

    On this same path, three years earlier, I sat in the back of a van with a girl I met at an Audio Adrenaline concert a few months before in Bright, Indiana. It took all day, but I finally worked up the courage to ask her to ride a roller coaster with me. She did and we ended up being pen pals for a couple of years until I asked her to go to a movie with me one night on my way home from college in Kentucky.

    We dated off and on for about a year and in June of 1999 I drove down from Michigan to see her graduate. After her graduation in Bright, we drove together to her friend’s graduation in Sullivan, Indiana and on the way she decided to break up with me. I ended up having a great friendship with the girl from Sullivan, who would sell t-shirts with in Marion, but I digress. Today I was on my way to Kings Island.

    The girl with the necklace felt uncomfortable going to the park alone with me so she begged one of her friends to come with her. I should have took this as a sign and said “Forget it”, but I didn’t and off we went with her friend in tow. I didn’t ride a single ride with her that day, having to ride each time by myself and even when I offered to pay for her to get a locker for her stuff at the water park, she refused. After her bag was stolen I had to buy her new clothes from the store in the park.

    On our way out of the park, I captured a glimpse of the girl from Bright, Indiana walking up ahead. I left the girl with the necklace and ran up to meet her. It was embarrassingly obvious that I had brought everyone here just to show my ex-girlfriend that I had moved on. No one was amused and I didn’t go back to Kings Island until my honeymoon (I rode alone that day too).

    Tennessee

    The next year, the girl from Bright and her friend from Sullivan enrolled with us at Kentucky and I started hanging out with the school’s accountant’s daughter, who was an identical twin named Sarah. Sarah’s boyfriend was a basketball player on the school’s team, but she was actively trying to break up with him. It was all very odd. I would hang out at her house and she would talk about him and he would visit her window and call her on the phone. I thought we were just friends who watched movies together and made mix tapes for fun.

    Before I went home for Fall break, Sarah gave me a card. Not thinking much of it, I ended up going to a club with a girl I dated in high school. [I know I said I didn’t have any dates in high school, but that may be because the dates with this girl were all setup by her friend and I didn’t really like her. The dates I went on after high school were the first ones initiated by me.] When I got back, I told Sarah all about it. She responded by telling me how she really felt, but that it was now too late. I spent a couple of weeks trying to get her back, but never did.

    That year I decided to not go back to that college. On a whim I transferred to a college in Tennessee with the other person who was selling t-shirts with me in Marion, Ben. I treated Tennessee like it didn’t matter and looking back I can say that’s true. I told everyone my name was Dirk Douglas and I would regularly kiss girls that I didn’t know at lunch. I was very popular, but I flunked all of my classes and left. My greatest accomplishment was being a part of the first feature length film there as assistant producer.

    Before MySpace and Facebook, there was CollegeClub.com, where I met a girl named Susan. She was working backstage at a Christian concert in Johnson City and wanted me to meet her there. I had never met her before, but found the back door, which was more like a garage, walked in, and started to get food from the staff buffet along with the others. It wasn’t until I sat down next to the girl who I thought was Susan that someone asked me who I was and what I was doing there. We ended up dating a couple of months before she decided to move on.

    I briefly dated a senior in high school who worked with me at our school cafeteria, but she quickly pawned me off to one of her friends in a group date. I should have known that she was no longer interested when she introduced me to her guy friend and the other girl she had brought with her. I guess I was confused by the mix CD she had made for me with custom artwork. I tried to learn from the mistakes I made with Sarah, but there was so much more to learn.

    I moved to Muncie, Indiana in January of 2011 and started dating a girl in Marion, Indiana named Starla. I sent a dozen roses to a girl I knew from Milligan that Valentines Day, but my credit card never got charged. I loved the Internet back then. Shortly after Valentines Day I broke up with Starla and began mowing lawns for a living. I hadn’t started school yet at Ball State. My friends worked at Old National Bank and in June I had an opportunity to apply also. The same week I applied, I met my wife, Suzanne on AOL Instant Messenger.

    I broke up with Suzanne in October of 2011 and drove 8 hours down to Tennessee to visit Susan. I met her at the Christian club we used to hang out. There was a home made bar and a speaker system. We danced and then she left with her friend. I drove to my old school and ran into the girl I had sent flowers that prior February. She thanked me for the flowers and then I drove back home. I spent the night in a hotel in Virginia alone.

    Tipton

    The girl with the necklace got pregnant and named the baby Noah. Her parents moved to Florida and soon she moved there after them. I got married and moved to Greencastle where Suzanne was attending college at the time. We had the opportunity to move to Tipton and did so where we had our first child, a daughter, two years later.

    One thing I’ve learned about women is that they are people, just like us. They need to be loved. They have mothers and fathers just like us and the majority of them – like us – don’t know what they are doing. They may appear to have their act together (and they might), but simple rules still apply. Be confident. Be loving. Keep your shoes clean and make sure your socks match. If I could give my son advice it would be to enjoy the company he keeps and love himself first so that he may love others.

  • Everything I Know About Trees

    There are really only two types of trees. There are the trees you know and the trees you don’t. Some trees have needles and some have leaves. Some get naked in winter, while others keep their clothes on. Some trees make nuts and some make fruit. But really, there are just two types of trees.

    Conifers

    Pine Trees

    There’s really just two types of pine trees: the White Pine and the Red Pine. You can think of these as Jacob and Esau. White Pines, like Jacob, have smooth skin, while Red Pines have rough, hairy skin. White and Jacob both have 5 letters to their names, which matches their number of needles. Red Pines have 2 needles. That’s where it sort of breaks down.

    Bald Cypruses

    There are two types of Evergreens. One keeps most of its needles in the winter and the other, the Bald Cyprus, drops them all like a bad habit. They like wet environments and their cones look more like nuts whose shell crumbles in your hand. They are known for their ‘knees’, which is what people call the roots when they grow up out of the ground. They don’t seem to have their act together. Bald Cypruses? More like Bad Cypruses.

    Streets

    Maple Trees

    There are two types of Maple Trees: Silver Maple and all of the others. Besides Red Maple, you don’t really need to know the difference between soft Silver Maples and the other hard maples. Silver Maples twist when they grow, have rough bark, and make helicopters out of their seeds. Hard maples grow slower, make better Jack Daniels, and can be used to make syrup.

    Poplar Trees

    Good luck telling the difference between a Poplar and a Cottonwood tree, but you’ll only find one in your local hardware store. Both are found near water and make fuzzy seeds in the summer, but only one is advertised and sold as a naturally water-repellent wood that’s good for outdoor trim. Poplar is the PNG to Pine’s JPG.

    Flowering Trees

    Magnolia Trees

    There are two types of Magnolia Trees. There is a tree version and a plant version. The plant version is called Rhododendron. They both have big, waxy leaves and they make flowers in the spring. I’ve seen them grow wild in Tennessee and I’ve seen them planted in Washington D.C.. One gave us a Vice President and the other gave us the Internet.

    Pear Trees

    There are two types of Pear trees, those that make fruit and those that make flowers with no intention of ever actually making fruit. Though you may wish your city streets were lined with luscious fruit this summer, what you’ll find is dried up flower petals instead as the Flowering Pear Tree is one of the most common trees planted in cities in the Midwest.

    Nut Trees

    Walnut Trees

    There are two types of Walnut trees: the ones you want and the ones you have. While Walnut is an expensive wood product, it not only makes nuts, but can drive you there as well. If you’ve ever picked up a walnut in it’s skin and spent the rest of the day trying to wash the black tar off of your hands, you’ll know which side of the camp you find yourself in: Team Jacob.

    Hickory Trees

    There are two types of Hickory trees: the ones used to make boats and the ones with shaggy bark. One chose the path to be great. The other chose to be a accessible. The Shagbark Hickory encourages you to break off a piece of its skin, take it with you, and hide it under a co-workers keyboard. “It will be hilarious when he finds it,” the Shagbark thinks to himself.

    Fruit Trees

    Apple Trees

    When given a choice, this tree will choose making more limbs over making more fruit. It’s only through discipline that it can be trimmed to create what really matters, the fruit of inspiration and innovation, the deliciousness created from sunlight and dirt.

    Mulberry Trees

    A favorite among birds, second only to Cherries, this tree could not grow straight if it’s life depended on it. It’s bark more like a Hedgeapple tree than a Pear, it makes berries like a common vine. Scorned by the more popular bush by the same name, this tree is the Greece of the tree world, reaching junk status by the ease of it’s growth potential.