My Mountaineer Friends and I Take on Mt. St. Helens

The view of Mt. St. Helens as we set out on foot.

Although I don’t have the best memory of all events from my childhood, I distinctly remember not being a fan of volcanoes when I was a little kid.  I remember a book about volcanoes that my brother, Danny, brought home from school.  I don’t know if I was able to read it at the time, but I do remember the images of houses buried to the edge of the roof in the book.  How horrifying!  We lived in a three-story house.  That, my friends, is a shitload of lava.  Screw that.  I didn’t want any part of it.  Now, fast forward to the spring of 1980 and to the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.  I was a little older, and I’d probably learned that there weren’t any active volcanoes in Maine. I’m sure that I’d learned enough about geography to know how far away Washington was.  I just remember watching the news stories and seeing smoke and ash billowing from the mountain. As a ten-year-old, I made no immediate plans to go visit Mt. St. Helens, and I never thought I’d be hiking to that crater as an adult.

Skip ahead to my recent army reserve annual training trip to Ft. Lewis, Washington when some friends and I took one of our days off to go climb Mt. St. Helens.  A few days earlier we’d climbed to 10,000 feet on Mt. Rainier, and we wanted to conquer another mountain while we were out there. Unfortunately, there are only a hundred permits to climb above 4,800 feet each day, and it’s all booked through September.  So we packed our new gaiters, some food and water, and some extra socks and stuff, and we went to the Johnston Ridge Observatory north of St. Helens across the South Fork Toutle River Valley, hoping that someone might have blown off their reservation.

Of course, this was a really dumb plan.  To climb the mountain to the top of the crater, we should have gone to the South Side, you know, where the climbing routes are.  My friend, Bruce, and I may have actually made use of the gaiters we bought at the Tacoma REI the night before. There is snow up there.  We had decided to gear up, not wanting to risk climbing another mountain on balls alone.  The guy at REI was really helpful.  A friend of his had climbed St. Helens a few days before, and he advised us on gear we might need for the current conditions.  He said that gaiters might be a good idea, and that for the love of God, we should get some moisture-wicking clothes, man.  I had some decent hiking shoes and socks, so I just bought the gaiters and a moisture-wicking T-shirt.  Oh, and not wanting to tempt fate with snow-blindness again, I got some sun-glasses.  And I bought a pocket knife.  I didn’t need a pocket knife, but I found one like the one I’d lost two years ago.  It has a cool carabiner/bottle opener thing.  I couldn’t afford not to get it.

Check it out, this T-shirt just
wicks moisture away from me.

Also, when I said that we set off for the Johnston Ridge Observatory and implied that there was some sort of planning involved in this, that was bullshit, too.  We kind of headed south on Interstate 5 looking for the “Mt. St. Helens Climbing Routes” exit.  Using the GPS for the “Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center” was somewhat helpful.  So were the directions we got, three times, one set of them from people at a Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center.

So, there we were, ready to climb Mt. St. Helens.  The Forest Service lady, Peg, suggested that we go to some bullshit-ass viewpoint place, about a five-mile hike from Johnston Ridge, because the view is nice there.  Thanks, Peg.  But, we explained to her that we’re mountaineers, and we wanted to go there, pointing to the mountain.  She suggested that we go to the Loowit Falls Trail, about a seven-mile hike from Johnston Ridge.  (We learned that the trail was about seven miles away and the falls are about eight.)  While at first there was a bit of “hey-it’s-two-o’clock-and-it-took-two-hours-to-get-here-do-we-really-want-to-set-out-on-such-a-long-hike,” we decided, “Fuck it.  We’re mountaineers, man.”  A little while later, we saw our last fellow human for about five hours.

  Of course pointing out that we saw our last fellow human for about five hours is kind of dumb.  I mean, people do that all the time.  Five hours is nuthin’.  Our solitude—if four people can have solitude—was just amplified by the desolation of the valley.  That volcano blew the living hell out of everything there.  Everything. 

It would have made a perfect location for NASA to stage the moon landing in 1969. Yeah, perfect.  Then they let it sit there for 11 years, making up this whole “volcano” thing to ‘splain why there was absolutely nuthin’ there.  But I’ll stop with the bullshit conspiracies.  I’ll tackle these and others on another day.  I’ll explain why the Constitution isn’t real.  It was written by Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston and paid for by a grant from the NRA.  Maybe I’ll tell you all how the Berlin Wall was bullshit, too.  JFK, Raytheon, and Colt subsidized it to help keep the Cold War going after it started to peter out in the late 1950’s.

Perhaps I’m digressing.

Spirit Lake, from the mountain.

Anyway, one look at the valley on the crater side of Mt. St. Helens, and I couldn’t help but be awed by the unspeakable power of the earth.  There was a big-ass void in a mountain about the size of oh, I don’t know, a fucking cubic mile.  Then there was a valley with nothing.  Looking in the opposite direction from Johnston Ridge, mountains were covered with what used to be a forest, trees lying like scattered matchsticks all over the place.  Looking out toward the mountain and Spirit Lake, the lee side of spurs and ridges showed some green new growth, but the blast sides were still mostly barren, still healing from the eruption.  The view demonstrated how we, as a species, are, and will always be, at the mercy of the earth.

We had to hike along the boundary trail on the ridgeline, disturbingly at first, toward Spirit Lake, and not toward the mountain.  But as we hiked, I realized that this was all being preserved.  Nature was taking her time to restore, and the Forest Service, the US Geological Survey, probably some garden club from Yakima, and who knows who else was studying the progress of the restoration of this land, from the vast emptiness following the blast to whatever nature may bring in the years to come.  I probably wouldn’t have had to “realize” this if I’d just read a sign or placard thing or two along the way.  It’s not a secret.  I did read some signs that said something like “stay on trails and paved areas” and “$100 minimum fine.” Informative stuff.  Oh, and did you know that “plants grow by the inch and die by the foot.”  They do.  It’s our feet that kill them when we step on them.  Most of them don’t die as soon as they reach a foot tall.  Take trees, for example.  They get pretty tall.  Of course, this could be bullshit, too.  I don’t always bother to be well-informed. 

A thousand or so of the billions of caterpillars.

You know what nature had brought to that valley, though?  Caterpillars.  Shitloads of ‘em.  It’s caterpillar country out there.  But as we walked and observed, there were mosses and grasses growing.  There were flowers, too, pretty wildflowers, which I would have picked for my girlfriend, but I don’t think I could have picked $100-worth of them.  They probably would have died before I got them to her.

 But anyway, having only seen pictures, and most of those since the hike, it was hard to really grasp that the land where we stood was well forested before the eruption.  All we could see looked like the desert.  We saw Spirit Lake, but we didn’t know that the current lake was a few hundred feet higher than the previous one, now filled with ash and debris from the eruption. Even as we stood on the cliff of Loowit Canyon and took pictures of the falls, it didn’t fully dawn on me that this creek wasn’t there before 1980 and neither was the canyon.  It’s been carved out by erosion, and it continues to change.

For some reason, this view wouldn't suffice.

We foolishly climbed higher above the cliff to get better views.  I realized how stupid this was about halfway up.  We were on a pile of loose rocks that the aforementioned creek had cut through like butter about 30 feet from us, and we were over a cliff.  Loose rock climbing is a pretty dumb adventure sport.  I tried to mountain goat my way down, jumping from bigger rock to bigger rock on my way and hoping desperately that these bigger rocks were as stable as they looked.  But we had climbed higher for the view, always the view, and it was worth it.  I stood there late on that day as high as we would get on Mt. St. Helens even though there was so much higher to go.  I looked out and loved what I saw.  Nature, in an ironically pristine state, so much of it untouched just so we can watch it grow and learn from it.

We absolutely did not cut some distance out of the return trip
by heading toward the big rock.  Absolutely not.

This hike was different from our climb up Rainier.  On Rainier, I felt my body disagreeing with each step as we trekked higher, and it’s difficult not to be amazed by the alpine glory of Rainier and the surrounding mountains.  The view from St. Helens was different.  It’s not slap-you-in-the-face alpine glorious, and there wasn’t the thin air to intoxicate me and tell me how amazing and dangerous this was.  The view from the lower lip of the Mt. St. Helens crater is different.  It tells a story, a story of power and destruction, and of the long, slow, and glorious rebirth of the land.  It’s a story the earth has been telling forever, but we don’t always recognize it.  It’s a story that’s still being told to me as I follow the endless links about Mt. St. Helens.  Someday, I’ll go back, and the story will have changed, but next time, I’ll pay attention to that long, slow exposition of the earth’s narrative.  I can’t wait.

And when I do go, I’ll wear the moisture-wicking underdrawers that I just ordered with a Groupon.  Fifteen or so miles of hiking makes for significant chafing.

The Idiot’s Tale: Mount Rainier to 10,000 Feet

                I had joked on Facebook earlier in the day that if I didn’t make it back, please tell my kids and grandsons I love them.  I had joked with the others on the trip, “If I don’t make it, tell our story.  Tell it!”  But as we approached 10,000 feet, I had long since realized that this was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.  The air was thin.  The mere exertion of a few steps left us breathless.  We struggled to crest a slope that seemed as if it was beyond cresting.  I was genuinely afraid of any number of calamities befalling us, and I genuinely regretted the flippant tone of my Facebook post.  I was actively trying to suppress thoughts about the perils of our pending descent when there it was, Camp Muir, a base camp at just over 10,000 feet.

                Now the day had started innocently enough.  We were going to Mount Rainier, and we were going to do some hiking starting at the Paradise Visitor Center, which is about 5,400 feet above sea-level.  Last year, during my annual training visit to Fort Lewis, Washington, some friends and I had gone to Mount Rainier and walked around a little at Paradise, and then we stopped along the way down for some photo ops.  My friend, Nate, had gone last year later in the summer than I had, and he had done some hiking from Paradise.  A few of us decided that we wanted to do some hiking there as well.  Somewhere along the way, we decided to go for Muir, perhaps after a fair amount of oxygen deprivation.

Oxygen deprivation sets in.  I couldn't even line-up my buttons. How embarrassing.

                I know what you’re thinking, “Ted, you’re a bad-ass.  You’re in the army reserve for Pete’s sake.  You’re a damn soldier!”  And while all of this is true, none of it could really prepare me for such a hike.  I may be in the army reserve, but I’m less than a year from my planned retirement.  I do have to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test, but I have a bad back and a number of other chronic joint strains.  I haven’t been able to do the run in about two years because it leaves me with horrific back spasms for a week or so.  Now, I do a two-and-a-half-mile walk instead of a two-mile run.  I do a remarkably small amount of exercise, and I can’t do the sit-ups for the test anymore because the last time I started to ready myself for the test, I had to stop after four sit-ups.  Yes, four.  My back was killing me for the two weeks I was waiting for an appointment with my chiropractor.

                Can you imagine how awesome I would be if I weren’t such a broken-down, injury-plagued, old soldier?  Yeah, it blows my mind thinking about it, too.

                My friends, Jay and Bruce, who also made the climb, are in much better shape than I.  They actually work out and run and shit like that.  By the way, one of them had the idea to keep climbing.  It certainly wasn’t my idea.  I just wasn’t ready to quit.  I have this stupid thing I do sometimes where I don’t like to show weakness.  It doesn’t happen that often, of course.  I am—all will agree—pretty damn awesome.

                At some point after Panorama Point on the Skyline Trail, we kept climbing up.  Nate stayed behind with the less experienced climbers—even less experienced than us—but he planned to climb behind us and meet us along the way.  After Panorama we saw increasingly fewer casual hikers.  They all had this fancy gear and experience and shit like that.  As we left them in our wake, we all thought that some of these would have been a good idea, perhaps with some of these or these.  It would have been a good idea to have some of these, and one of these may have come in handy as well. And on the descent, I would have preferred to wear a pair of these as I slid down the Muir Snow Field on my ass.

                In retrospect, we realized that we passed so many people because we were too dumb to pace ourselves.  I’ve said before that no one ever accused me of not having half a brain.  Well, yesterday on Rainier, I was using the other half.

                No, we didn’t have any gear.  I was wearing my hiking shoes, shorts, a t-shirt, and a light button-down shirt, and I had a fleece jacket, my wind breaker, and a change of socks in my backpack, nary a stitch of Gore-Tex on my person.  Jay and Bruce were similarly equipped, although Bruce, being an experienced adventurer, had a North Face jacket.  I didn’t even have sunglasses, and my anxiety about snow blindness grew with each step after Nate pointed out that the conditions were ideal.  No, we had no gear.  Some may call it hubris.  Some may call it foolishness.  Me, I prefer to call it balls, and we were fully equipped with three sets of brass ones.

This is how mountaineers view the world.  Soak it in.

                And somewhere between 7,500 and 8,000, feet we really started to notice the lack of oxygen, but we climbed onward over the snow, trying to find paths where people had already climbed, so we could use their steps.  As we climbed, our steps grew shorter, baby-steps up the Muir Snow Field.  With each step my anxiety grew, and I started to feel that unfamiliar feeling that some of you may call surrender.  But the balls—or foolishness—in me stifled any chance to give voice to that feeling, and I hoped that Jay or Bruce would be the ones that decided we’d climbed high enough.

                Like I said, though, there it was, Camp Muir, close enough to give us a visual goal at the end of the seemingly crestless slope of the snow field.  We made it there, close enough to see the tents of the climbers with, you know, well-formed plans of ascent.  We approached to see the stone fortress of Camp Muir, and we said, “Fuck it.”  Smoked, beaten, and—at least for me—feeling the anxiety of the pending descent, we stopped and looked around.  With Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens in the distance, I don’t recall ever feeling so awed and humbled by the blend of the beautiful, the grand, and even the terrifying in the limitless vastness of nature. 

                Then, as we sat in the snow—Jay and Bruce on their army wet-weather coats, me on my soon-to-be-drenched LL Bean windbreaker—and changed our socks, I realized the full measure of torture that the descent could bring.  The impact of each step downward would compound the pressure on the stupid-ass bulging disc in my lumbar spine, inviting at least a few days’ worth of muscle spasms.  I reassured myself that I could probably get some Flexeril at an emergency room.  But no, as we had seen the experienced climbers slide down on their butts, we decided to try the same.  Often, a pile of snow would build up in front of us, making the descent slow.  Jay and Bruce quickly abandoned this method and pretty much ran down the snow field with gravity leading the way.  Me, I persevered, covering much of the snow field on my snow-drenched and frozen ass.

That's an ice-cold mountaineer's ass, soaking up some rays on the descent.

                After the snow field, the descent was quick, and each step was like sticking my foot in a bucket of ice water.  I made sure to identify us as the biggest idiots on the mountain that day.  Some people, not surprisingly, didn’t get it.  A couple people tried to argue their case, but I pointed out that they had, well, appropriate gear.  All we had were three sets of brass ones.  Case closed. 

                Back at Paradise, we quickly found Nate and the van.  I got in the back and stripped from the waist down.  I had nothing to change into.  I just covered my lap and my junk with my button-down shirt and let the feeling come back to my ass as we got close to the Fort Lewis gate.  On the van, someone read aloud from the Mount Rainier National Park brochure.  It said that climbing Mount Rainier is hazardous and that the three key elements to a climb are proper equipment, experience, and excellent physical conditioning.  I might suggest that they add serious balls to that list.

Three ill-equipped, albeit ballsy mountaineers.

                  Climbing to 10,000 feet on Mount Rainier is unquestionably the stupidest thing I have ever done.  I could continue to catalogue the mistakes we made and the perils involved.  Screw that.  Glory trumps regret.  I will not soon forget the feeling of success and relief, the joy of a heretofore unimaginable accomplishment, or the view from nearly two miles above sea-level.

Livin’ the Dream

                The jury is still out on the meaning of dreams, I think.  I don’t really pay much attention to anything besides Ohio State football and what day of the week it is, and the latter is just so I know not to get up early on weekends and go to work.  I’m overstating my inattention to life just a bit, but for the longest time, I didn’t really give a crap about dreams and their meanings because I didn’t really remember any.   A Google search on dream quotes gave me this little gem from Gao Xingjian, “Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self,” and I must say that he’s full of shit, based on the ones I can remember.   However, some dreams worked their way into my memory as, well, memories.  So maybe he’s not that far off the mark.

                You know, I wasn’t sure how I was going to use that quote, but it seems to fit, so far.

                Anyway, I’m not sure when I stopped remembering most of my dreams.  Until recently, I might have remembered one or two every eight-and-a-half months.  It was very rare.  Some are fun, like swimming with whales around the Great Barrier Reef.  I have no idea how I held my breath for so long.  And some are disturbing, like dreaming I was being electrocuted by some stupid-ass torturer guy.   My jaw hurt when I woke up because the ‘lectricity made me clench my jaw, a lot.  I don’t dream like that very often, I think.  Most of the time, the dreams are just weird. 

From sometime in my childhood through a couple years ago, I would often wake up right after a dream and think, “THAT was weird.  There’s no way I’m not going remember that.”  I’d go back to sleep, but in the morning I could only remember thinking that and nothing about the dream.

I do remember a nightmare from my early childhood in Defiance, Ohio.  I remember not liking the bridges on Clinton Street.  I dreamed that they were built like a wooden roller coaster.  Frankenstein and Dracula would climb up the side of the bridge and try to get in the family station wagon as we crossed.  That would send little Teddy to my parents’ room.  And you know, thinking of that dream still gives me chills.  Can you imagine a bridge made like a wooden roller coaster?  That won’t support automobile traffic!

I recently dreamt that I was some kind of union steward living in the barracks again.  The barracks weren’t populated only by people I knew in the army.  There were current co-workers, family members, and a younger Bill Fagerbakke from when he was Dauber Dybinski on the series Coach.  The barracks were older, open-bay buildings and not the newer, dormitory buildings that I spent my regular army career living in, so there were essentially 30 of us sharing a room.  There was a big fuss about the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and when Dauber married a guy who was in my platoon at Fort Riley in 1991, the shit was about to hit the fan.  I facilitated the arrangement that it was okay for the two of them to be bunk buddies, but they couldn’t, you know, share a bunk.  We determined that it would just be awkward for the two of them to touch each other’s wangs and have gay sex in a room they shared with 30 other people.  And that was fair. 

I don’t always, or even often, have gay sex as a subject in my dreams, but I’m second-guessing my inclusion of it in this post already.  I just wanted to give an example of how bizarre my dreams can be.

But hey, I was going to talk about remembering my dreams as memories, wasn’t I.  Anyway, there are times when something will come up in a conversation, and I’ll remember something that happened in a dream.  For instance, someone at work might mention having dinner with his mom over the weekend, and I’ll remember that my mom brought me a chicken sandwich from Burger King the other day.   Of course, she didn’t bring me a chicken sandwich from Burger King the other day because she lives in North Carolina, and I live in Maine.  So, instead of having the shared experience of recently dining with our moms, I just smile and ask him what they ate.  Then I think about chicken sandwiches for a while and decide to call my mom soon.

When I was little, I dreamt once that my sister had brought me to her friend’s house, and he’d tied me to a tree in the front yard and held a knife to my throat while he had a pleasant conversation with her.  This is probably the earliest example of a dream that I remembered as memory.  For many years I’d remember this happening and wonder what the Hell had happened.  I wasn’t really terrified or traumatized by the memory, just confused.  I never told anyone about this until recently when I was telling my girlfriend Stephanie about my dream/memory stuff.  Suddenly it hit me; one of the most confusing-and-oddly-not-terrifying memories from my childhood had been a friggin’ dream, man.  Go figure.

The funniest example of this is a conversation I had with my college roommate, Aaron.  He delivered pizzas for Spanky’s in Bangor, and although he was pretty liberal, he told me that sometimes he’d listen to Rush Limbaugh in his car to get an idea of how conservatives think.  (This isn’t the dream yet.)  He talked about Rush having a good point one time—still not the dream—when he was talking about how offensive television and the media had become.  I had to agree with him, and Rush for that matter, because I had watched an episode of Seinfeld that had Jerry telling Kramer he was, “Fucking nuts.”  And I had watched SportsCenter with Rich Eisen commenting on how Mark McGuire was simply ”Beating the shit out of the ball.  He can just fucking hit it.”  I told Aaron that it was true.  The networks would air just about anything, and then I caught myself.  How hilarious, I had agreed with Rush Limbaugh about something.  See what not remembering your dreams can make happen?

Although I remember a lot of my dreams now, I still have to catch myself.  I’ll ask Stephanie if I had told her about something or if I’d only dreamt telling her about it.  If she says I hadn’t told her, I’ll then remember that after telling her, we both turned into wild dogs and scampered through the war-ravaged ruins of New York City.   And while dreams may be more real than I could possibly imagine, I’m going to continue to be vigilant about keeping dreams and reality in separate realms.

I’ve decided to keep the quote in my intro.

Holy Shit: The First in What Could Be a Very Long Series of Embarrassing Moments from My Life When I Somehow Managed to Avoid Attention, But They’re Just Too Damn Funny Not to Share

                Ah, the first date, a time of magical possibilities and, as well, a time perilous with the ever-watchful eye of judgment looking for a reason to say, “no, this person is a dipshit.”  It’s a time when we want to wear our cutest outfits, you know, the one that just looks awesome on you and makes your ass look absolutely perfect, and we want to find that delicate balance between being funny and being on our best behavior.   It’s a time when one might want to think about taking care of embarrassing bodily functions before you get to his or her house, preferably before you leave your own.  Indeed, and while I think we’d all agree that “pull my finger” is no way to break the ice, I believe that there are ways to let a little wind go without anyone being the wiser.  I mean, you’d have to be a complete idiot not to take it to the john, right?  Let me say this, I’m no complete idiot.

                But first, I want to digress.  While discussing my first date embarrassing moment with my friends, some of them shared theirs, too.  That’s what guys do.  We compare stories and revel in each other’s humiliation.  It’s great fun.  A friend of mine told me that he had, you know, that all-too familiar intestinal urgency when he went to a woman’s place to pick her up.  He asked to use her powder room, and to make a long story short, her toilet was soon thereafter overflowing onto her bathroom floor.  There was no second date.  I told him that he should have just walked out of the bathroom and said something like, “Hey, you seem wonderful, but I don’t think that we’ll ever work.  Have a nice night.”

But this isn’t about his embarrassing moments.  It’s about mine.

             I met Stephanie in Quebec.  We were there for a two-week French immersion program while we were students at the University of Maine.  She was sweet, smart, pretty, and funny.  I was, of course, awesome.  I had a girlfriend who a year later was my wife.  Stephanie had a boyfriend.  She’s told me since then that she had a bit of a crush on me and that she liked how I didn’t hit on her.  I did have a girlfriend, you know.  More than a decade later, after my separation and divorce, after some alone Ted-time in my life, after a lot of therapy, after I was ready to put myself back on the market, I thought to myself, I’d like to meet someone like that Stephanie I met in Quebec.

                And not long after this, Stephanie had been stalking me on the Facebook.  She sent me a message asking me if we had met each other in Quebec.  We had, and we became friends on the Facebook.  We sent each other messages, and we left sweet and funny comments for each other.  It was amazing.  Unfortunately, she lived in Brooklyn and I lived in tiny Old Town, Maine, eight-ish hours away. 

                We managed to get together once, though.  She was in Maine to visit friends for a few days before Christmas 2010, and we got together for dinner at the Liberal Cup in Hallowell, not far from where I work.  It was a nice dinner, a sammich and some sweet potato fries, a couple delicious brews.  Afterward, we went to sit in front of Dr. Zeleniak’s office in Augusta, and sat in my car talking in the glow of his Christmas light display set to music.  It was a great night.  But Steph and I don’t really consider this our first date.  We were just old friends who reconnected on the Facebook getting together to catch up.  I had not, at this point, had any scatologically embarrassing moment.

                A couple days later, she told me that she’d had a crush on me back in Quebec.  I told her that I had a crush on her right now.  Yadda-yadda-yadda.  We decided to get together for New Year’s.  I had a four-day weekend, so I made the trek to Brooklyn on December 30^th.

                I was a bit nervous.  I really liked her, but I didn’t want to rush anything.  I didn’t want anything to be awkward or uncomfortable so far away from familiar turf.  It was a long and anxiety-filled drive.  Stupid-ass rubberneckers heading south on 495 in Massachusetts slowing down to look at an accident in the fucking northbound lanes, are you fucking kidding me?  I don’t want to die on the interstate before I get a chance to spend some time with her.   And really, she lived in Brooklyn.  I lived in Old Town, Maine.  How could this work? What was I thinking?  Let’s just try to have a good time together.  Why the hell didn’t I have a GPS?  Do you know how hard it is to use printed directions on busy, unfamiliar highways as it’s getting dark out?  What in the world was I thinking?  And the traffic, why didn’t I leave earlier?  How long does it take to get through this stupid toll plaza?  Why does it look like I’m heading out of New York City now?  Is this Long Island? 

                Stephanie had to talk me in.  I called her to say I was absolutely lost, and she pulled up a map on her laptop.  She managed to get me to her door, and we were able to chat a bit as I made my way to Eastern Parkway and the Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.  I put my car in a garage for the weekend, and she showed me up to her place.  We chatted a bit, and she told me about a place she thought would be nice for dinner.  I had to use the restroom, and then we’d be ready to go.

                And by “restroom” one might think that I’d sat down, but hey, I’d been sitting in that driver seat all friggin’ day. 

                Often, while making water—I’m sure I’m not alone in this—I might release a little wind, as Benjamin Franklin called it.  And on a side note, I often excuse myself while at a public urinal.  “Oh, pardon me,”  “Golly, what’s happening to me,” and so forth.  One time, a guy said, “Don’t worry, man.  Every once in a while you need to release a little back pressure.”

                There I was, standing in Stephanie’s bathroom, making water, and I had to release a little back pressure.  I certainly didn’t want to let this go while we were having fish tacos.  Ah, sweet release.  Only, as it turns out, this wasn’t an entirely wind related event.  I felt a little trickle down my leg.  If I hadn’t already been shitting my pants, I would’ve shat my pants.  No, I absolutely did not want to let that go while we were having fish tacos.

                Time to think and act quickly, Ted. 

                I cleaned up.  It wasn’t a bad mess.  My jeans were spared.  The toilet paper didn’t clog the toilet.  (With such a long drive ahead of me, I'm glad I didn’t have to just walk out and tell her to have a nice night.)  But there was the problem of the remaining evidence.  My poopy drawers were on her bathroom floor.

                I quickly reviewed my options.  The first thing that came to my mind was to tell her.  She seemed like a pretty easy-going person.  She did have a crush on me.  But did I want to gamble on the weight of that crush?  No.  Stupid idea, Ted.  Could I hide them in her teeny-tiny, little trash can?  Hmm, not likely, even if I had rinsed the shit out of them.  Could I smuggle them out to my bag?  Again, no.  Did I have to tell her?  Shit!

                Then I looked up.  Behind the commode, slightly higher on the wall, there was a window.  It opened easily, and my poopy underdrawers were gone, forever, into that good night. 

                I had done it.  I had just shat my pants, hid the evidence, and no one would ever know.  Ever.

                Until, of course, I got back to Maine, and told some of my friends.  This was too hilarious.  I told Stephanie a few months later, after that crush had turned to love.  She laughed and confirmed that I had made the right choice not to tell her. 

                My secret New Year’s resolution for 2011 was to not shit my pants at all, and I didn’t, that whole year.

Regrets, I’ve Had a Few

                The operative word here is had.  I’ve had my regrets.  Seriously, I used to be one of those guys who would beat myself up for everything I did that wasn’t done perfectly.   I may not come across to people like a perfectionist—I may even across as though I simply do not give a shit—but there was a time when I REALLY cared.  That time was, more or less, 95 percent of my life. 

                Now, though, I like to think that I’m a man of few regrets.  Sure, there are things I wish I hadn’t done, but I can’t undo them.  But all the things I’ve done, good and bad, have influenced the man I’ve become, and I kind of like that guy today.  Well, I guess I should say that I’m a man of few regrets now because for many years, I regretted just about everything.  It took a long time to let go of all those things and to accept them as lessons learned on the road to becoming the Ted I am today.

                Really, though, when I give it some thought, there’s probably only one thing that I truly regret.  Well, one thing that I can think of.  One thing I think of all the time.

                But first, let me tell you about old Ted, full of regret.  RegretTed.  I guess somewhere along the way—very possibly birth—my self-esteem took a nose dive.  Bottomed-out.  Nothing there.  I wished at times that everything about me was different.  Well, I didn’t want a vagina er nuthin’ like that, and I always wanted to be, you know, Ted.  I just wanted to be a smarter, taller, cooler, funnier, sexier, wittier, more punctual, sideburn-growing, more responsible, better looking, not balding, zitless, full-beard-growing, more muscular, more toned, darker-haired, lighter-haired, emotionally-present-and-aware, color-visioned, better-word-knowing, more stylish, ballsier, more self-confident.  .  .  You see where I’m going with this?

                Although, there is one thing that I’ve for the most part been confident about in my life:  my behind, my glory, if you will.  I’ve got an ass that just won’t quit.  Sometimes, I’m all like, “Cut it out already!”  But it doesn’t because, as I’ve said, that thing simply will not fucking quit.  Oh well, my cross to bear.

                But anyway, with various therapists over the years, I grew to call this alternate, daydream persona, “SuperTed.”  And as I’ve grown more confident in regular ol’ sweet-assed Ted, the daydreams of SuperTedness have dwindled away.  I’ve come to accept that all those things I did and said that I thought were dumb or foolish or whatever, all those things made me the Ted I am today.  Today’s Ted is the man.

                Sure, there are times when I question myself in my thoughts.  “Ted, why did you do that?  That was so dumb!”  Or, “Ted, why did you say that?  You’re a moron!”  Or, “Ted, why did you leave the scene of that accident?  You should have checked for survivors.”  At times like these, I remind myself that I can’t change what I’ve done.  I can only do things differently in the future.  Some days, I have to remind myself of this quite a bit.

                But what about this one regret?  Well, this one thing probably would not have made Earl’s list of things to do to mend his Karma on the sitcom, My Name is Earl.  I didn’t hurt anyone or ruin anyone’s life, but in my book, I simply did the wrong thing.

                Oh great, now you want the details.  Whatever.

                So, a friend of mine when I was stationed in Germany, Dave, had a brief fling with a woman who was, at least in the eyes of us early twenty-somethings, an old lady.  We nicknamed her Oma, German for grandmother.   Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that two people with a strong-enough bond of love can’t overcome any difference or obstacle.  Love conquers all.  Dave, however, did not love Oma.

                We were young men, and Dave was dating a single German woman who, not uncommon to women in the area, would come to the club on post to drink, to dance, and perhaps, to meet that special someone.  Oma was, or at least appeared, about forty-or-so years older than most of the others.   Not a German girl, as many of us were so interested in, but you know, Oma, old enough to be our grandmother. 

                We gave Dave a serious ration of shit.

                He, however, tried to mitigate his situation in our eyes with the simple explanation that she had “big boobs.”  Not being a card-carrying boob-man, I would not relent.  Indeed, his only ally in this was another guy in our battalion who had himself previously fallen under the spell of Oma’s womanly wiles.  Their united front couldn’t even take some of the pressure of Dave.  We merely dealt them both their fair measure of razzing, Oma’s big boobs notwithstanding.  It was great fun, well, maybe not for Dave.  On the other hand, he could, presumably, still have fun with Oma and her big boobs.

                What, you wonder, is my regret?  Do I toss and turn through the night, ceaselessly berating myself for giving my good friend Dave such a hard time?  No.  I was a young guy, and that’s what young guys do to their friends.  We give each other shit.  You see, there was a moment when I could have, indeed, should have done something different.

                Late in the Dave and Oma affair, he was trying to dodge her.   I know, spineless, but that would be Dave’s regret, not mine.  Anyway, a few of us were having some beers in Dave’s room, as we often did, when there was a knock.  Dave, a little flustered and for some reason willing to forgo some big boob time with Oma, said to me, “If that’s Oma, tell her I went to San Remo’s.”  Which is—or was—a lovely little Italian restaurant in Crailsheim, the town where we were stationed.   Then, he shut himself in his bathroom.  And yes, he did refer to her as “Oma.”  I’m not 100% sure he called her that during big boob time, though. 

                I answered the door.

                “Is The Dave here,” Oma asked in her thick German accent.  Yes, she referred to him as “The Dave.”  I could not make that up.  Well, it’s well within my creative powers, but I didn’t.

                Anyway, this is it.  This is the moment I think about.  This is the moment that haunts me.  This is the shoulda-coulda-woulda moment of my life. 

                “No, Dave’s at San Remo’s.”

                “San Remo’s in Crailsheim?”

                “Yes, San Remo’s in Crailsheim.”  I knew of no others.  I hope that’s the one Dave meant.

                She asked if I would tell him that she stopped by, and I agreed.  She left, and I bid her a pleasant evening.  Dave came out of the bathroom, and I told him that Oma (and her big boobs) had stopped by.

                Wow, can you believe that shit?  What kind of person was I? 

Now, I’m not going to make an argument on the side of being honest with Oma, nor will I try to justify supporting my friend’s deception.  Nothing comes from that.  There’s right and wrong in both, so right and wrong doesn’t really come into play with second-guessing my decision.

But this, this is what I should have done. . .

“Is The Dave here,” Oma asked in my alternate reality. 

“The Dave?  He’s takin’ a shit,” I should have said as I pounded on his bathroom door and yelled, “DAVE, pinch it off.  You’ve got company!”

We would have all had a good laugh about that, let me tell you, with the possible exception of Oma, and maybe Dave.  But oh, the rest of us would have been in tears.  I might have even urinated from the sheer hilarity.

So, why would betraying and humiliating my friend in front of his dear, big-boobed Oma be so much better than lying for him?  Easy.  It would have been funnier.  If there’s a grey area muddying up the right and wrong of a situation, it’s hard to go wrong with funny.  It would have been a great tale to tell everyone in the unit, and we would have extended the mileage on Dave’s allotment of shit.

We were young guys.  Giving each other shit is what we did, and I let the big one get away.

Dear Scott,

    I’m Ted, and as you can see, this is TedBlog.   I’m sure you don’t care about it.  You don’t seem to be type of person who’s interested in, you know, people.  Perhaps, though, that’s too broad a judgment for me to make.  I don’t really know you, what you look like, where you live, or anything about you at all.  Well, I do know your old cell phone number—it’s mine now—and I know that you apparently don’t know how to give out your new one.

                It’s been almost five years now—five years—and still it seems at times like I answer more calls for you than I do for myself.   Rather annoying for someone who’s recently come through a period of my life when I’ve struggled with loneliness.  I’ve felt that familiar vibration and answered.   Of course, I didn’t recognize the number, but isn’t there always hope?  Maybe it’s a friend who has a new cell phone number and the call is to let me know about the new number—hint, hint—and maybe we can do something later.   Let’s stop Ted from staring at his four blank walls and get him out of his little apartment. . .

                “Hello.”

                “Is this Scott?”

                Sadly, “No, he doesn’t have this number anymore.”

                Fer cryin’ out loud, Scott, it’s been nearly five years.  Oh, at first it was kind of funny.  My kids and my ex-wife would laugh, “Is it another call for Scott?”  It seems like you must have missed out on a lot over the years.  Dinners, time with friends, dates. . .

                Even holiday greetings.

                One Christmas—yes, this has gone on so long that I can say, “One Christmas.”  Anyway, One Christmas I got a text, “Merry Christmas!” from an unrecognized number.   “Must be for Scott,” I said, laughing.

                My ex, though, was not so sure, “Can I see that?” she said.

                I handed her the phone and went back to whatever I was doing, putting laundry away or formulating a plan to balance the glory of the college football bowl system with the need to crown a champion people can believe in or I don’t know.  Whatever.  It’s been a while.  Leave me alone.  Anyway, as I contemplated the merits of the National League adopting a designated hitter or something like that, my ex was engaged in getting to the bottom of this text.  “Who is this?” she narrated as she sent a message.  Me, I was sorting socks or mulling ideas that could bring both the Sunni and the Shia to a negotiating table in Iraq.   Look, I don’t remember what I was doing, okay.   I do remember what happened next.

                “Jen is it?” she said in a tone that really took the humor out of the situation.

                You see, Scott, I had dated someone named Jen before her.  And knowing what an emotionally disconnected guy I was throughout most of the marriage, I’m going to bet my ex was already mad at me—or disappointed in that emotional disconnection—and this “Jen” business just made her wonder.  No, I’m not going to go into exhaustive detail about how she and Jen texted back and forth to figure out Jen was texting you and not me.   This TedBlog post is, after all, about you and how you’ve screwed things up by not giving out your new number.  You’re the one that let all those people call me and send me texts.  It’s your fault that Jen wished me a Merry Christmas and not you.   It’s your fault my ex had a seed of doubt about marital wrong-doing.  It’s your fault my marriage ended so painfully.

                Well, perhaps that’s going a bit far.  I’m just having fun here, Scott.  I’m just bullshitting with you.  I do that.

                Honestly, though, at first I pretty much blamed my ex, but after some hard, emotionally searing work, I came to terms with the fact that blame—oh, I don’t like that word, “blame,” so let’s not.  There’s responsibility that should be shared equally for the downfall of my marriage. One part my ex, one part Ted, and one part you, Scott, you fucking home-wrecker.

                Again, I’m just bullshitting you. 

                And I’m not bitter about the break-up.  I’ve seriously done that hard work and accepted responsibility for my part.  (Have you, Scott?)  I’m okay with who Ted is and with where my life can go.  I took a little break in my life for some Teddy Time, and now I have the most amazing special lady woman friend in the world.   I’m a lucky man, Scott.

                No thanks to you.

                You know what, though, Scott?  You didn’t just play a role in the conflict that was no small piece of the puzzle that ended my marriage, albeit the teeny-tiniest role.  Your telephone number irresponsibility may well have cost you the love of YOUR life.  Are you so comfortable with who Scott is now?  You see, one night last summer, I received another text message.  I’m not sure if it was Jen because I never gave enough of a crap to save phone numbers for you.  I don’t have that serious of a pathological need to please people.  But anyway, I got a text message from someone.

                A very forward text message.

                Now, this is a family blog, Scott, so I’m not going to reveal it verbatim.  I’ll paraphrase it delicately.  A lady sent a text that read, to use the language of Cliff Clavin’s mother when she related life’s truth á la the birds and bees to Cliff, “Will you share a special kind of hug with me tonight?”  You following me, Scott?  She wanted to share a fucking special kind of hug with you!

                And I must admit, or at least clarify, just in case you’re dense, that the language she used—while not overly “lady-like”—is, many would agree, rather sexy.  It also carries with it a certain weight, a certain import, a certain degree of “she-wanted-you-over-there-forthwith-to-jump-on-them-bones,” capiche?

                Admittedly, many may be taken aback at the idea of a lady using such language or even at my applying the term “lady” to your would-be paramour.  But as well, many, mostly men—perhaps—who are more comfortable with the recreational rather than procreational act of  love,  are also rather fond of the use of—again, borrowing from Mrs. Clavin—sharing a special kind of hug and having a lady make such a request.

                By the way, do you know how hard it is to find a picture of Cliff Clavin and his mother?  Very.

                Am I digressing from my discussion of how you screwed everything up by not sharing your new number?  No, I want it to be all-too-painfully clear.  Scott, many will say that you missed out on a night’s romp.  Perhaps that’s true, but you may very well have missed out on the love of your life.  The first of many special hugs, a lifetime of passion and love. . .

                Oh, by the way, I did not take her up on her generous invitation.  I just replied that I did not think it was a good idea, seeing as she really had no clue who I was (nor I, her).

                “Who is this?” she asked.

                “Who is THIS?” I replied.

               

                I’ve got to admit, Scott, from the way I’ve built this up she seems like quite the firecracker.  Maybe, I’m second-guessing my rejection of that kind offer.  Or maybe, it was a dude sending that text.  Text messages don’t have little hearts dotting the "i’s," so it can be difficult to tell.

                Anyway.

Your negligence hasn’t just damaged relationships and relationship opportunities.  It hasn’t just broken hearts.  It hasn’t just cost you a notch in your pea-shooter.  You see, on my way to work recently, I got a call from Seacoast Security in Rockport.  Look at this.

                It appears that may have been an important call.

                Was it your house?  Your business?  Was it a break-in?  Was it just an escaped chimp throwing feces at your windows?   I mean, I’m sure security companies don’t routinely call customers at 6:15 in the morning just to see what’s shakin’.  Am I right?

                But you know what, Scott?  I don’t care.

                I don’t care if your house is a shambles or if there’s a foot of escaped-chimp feces surrounding it.  I don’t care if Jen can NEVER wish you a Merry Christmas again.  I don’t care if you miss out on the cool way that I’m sure she has of finding just the right gift.  I don’t care if you never, ever share a special kind of hug with anyone ever again.  Give people your new—ahem, now old—fucking phone number. 

People are important, Scott.  Stay connected.