It’s no secret that Jacksonville isn’t exactly the literary capital of the world. Ask the average citizen what they have been reading, and they are likely to return a puzzled, slightly charmed look as if you had just revealed that you have a pet goat taking up residence in your guest bedroom. The Jacksonvillians that do read likely shy away from the tired likes of Steinbeck and Hemmingway in favor of more recent luminaries like Palin and Beck.

For this reason, it shouldn’t really come as a major surprise that the city’s bookstores aren’t exactly plentiful. In a metro area containing roughly one million people, we have exactly two Barnes N’ Noble stores, spaced somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 miles apart. In the company’s defense, if nearly 500,000 of the people in said city honestly believe your store to be called Barnes and Nobles, and an additional 250,000 think it’s a place where you order non-existent drinks like “frappes” and “coffalattes” and thumb through US Weekly while waiting for your table at the Cheesecake Factory, you may have a case for the lack of expansion.

In addition to Barnes and Noble, we also have two or three somewhat decrepit Books A-Million stores scattered around town. Aside from having the largest magazine sections I have ever seen, these bookstores are really only notable for the fact that the same mustachioed gentleman seems to work simultaneously in all three cafes, aggressively pushing Books-a-Million’s signature “Italian Soda” on anyone who steps within 20 feet of his register. “Come on up sir,” he says as his mustache circles round his mouth. “Try a soda… it’s what we’re famous for.” The obvious response seems to be, “Well sir, if you were truly famous for your Italian Soda, why is this 8,000 square foot bookstore completely deserted, save for several tragic looking older women combing the 44 aisles labeled “Romance.”

I learned my lesson the hard way when it came to this horrendous beverage. It was a cold December afternoon. Tired from a long day of holiday shopping, I stopped into the Books-A-Million Cafe to enjoy a cup of coffee. “You sure you want a coffee, bub?” the strange gentleman said with a leer. “Pretty sure,” I responded. “How about something different… something special.” “Go on,” I said curiously. Pistol Pete then went on to explain the process to me. A little squirt of seltzer, mixed with a flavored syrup of my choice, would instantly transport me across the globe to Florence. I would exit the bookstore a changed man — a more worldly man — a gentleman of distinction.

I was convinced.

“Pour me your best flavor,” I said with a smile.

He winked.

Thirty seconds and $3.50 later, he handed me a clear cup bubbling over with a light blue liquid. It looked like something Doctor Frankenstein would have fizzing away in a beaker somewhere.

“Peppermint soda!” he exclaimed. “It tastes like Christmas.”

On this afternoon, I was devastated to learn that my favorite holiday doesn’t taste like gingerbread, or pumpkin, or perhaps a frothy cup of nog, but rather, it tastes like carbonated Listerine. The hellish beverage made my eyes water. I couldn’t even keep it in my mouth.

Chamblins — a locally owned chained of bookstores — is also

On this afternoon, I was devastated to learn that my favorite holiday doesn’t taste like gingerbread, or pumpkin, or perhaps a frothy cup of nog, but rather, it tastes like carbonated Listerine. The hellish beverage made my eyes water. I couldn’t even keep it in my mouth.

an interesting place. Personally, I quite like it, but it’s not for everyone. Imagine a small nuclear warhead detonating under the Library of Congress, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what Chamblins looks like. Each location sells in the neighborhood of 6 billion books, stacked incoherently along mile upon mile of plywood shelving. Their organizational system makes Big Lots feel like it was designed by the most decorated of Smithsonian curators in comparison. Chamblins is the kind of place where you could get murdered and it would take a full month for someone to stumble upon you in the 4th floor L-wing, wedged between hand-bound Star Trek fan fiction and a binder full of broken Fats Domino cassettes.There has always been one bookstore in Jacksonville that I love though — Borders on Southside Boulevard, just north of the Avenues Mall. Since moving to Jacksonville in 2005, Borders has been my go-to book store for reading, studying, and working. Borders has stood out from the pack for a few reasons:

1. Unlike Barnes N’ Noble or Books A-Million, Borders has computers randomly distributed around the store that customers can use to search for and locate specific books. To me, it’s shocking that every bookstore doesn’t offer this. There is nothing more private than what a person chooses to read. If a person wants to read sensitive tomes like I Swear It Was a Tutorial — What to do if you’re Wife Catches you Photoshopping Her Book Club Friends into Adult Sex Scenes, Malaria or Herpes?, Lunar Secrets – Neil Armstrong was a Hologram, or “There’s Waldo ” (the adult version of the popular book, only in this case, the winner is the first to point out the sweatered gentleman with their private parts) they have to awkwardly ask an employee.

2. The Cafe. The Borders Cafe has undergone many changes throughout the years, both physically and to the menu. I’ve always felt like their coffee far exceeded other bookstores.

   While this Borders is my favorite bookstore, I’ve long worried about its chance for long-term survival. In order to illustrate this, let’s look at the three distinct time periods this particular bookstore has experienced since I’ve moved here, name for clarity sake after the original Star Wars trilogy:

   A New Hope – 2005-2007The glory days. During this time period, Borders was the undisputed king of bookstores in Jacksonville. The coffee peaked in 2006, before Borders tragically moved from their own blend to Seattle’s Best. Specifically, I have so many fond memories of drinking Borders’ knockout Pumpkin Spice coffee on cool Fall days, and Christmas Spice coffee on frigid December evenings. No matter when you went into Borders during these years, there was a real buzz (coffee pun~~~~~~~!!!!!) in the store, and not a table to be found.

   The Empire Strikes Back – 2008-2009These two years were very dark for Borders on Southside. The St. Johns Town Center was now open, and Barnes N’ Noble was the true centerpiece of Phase I. Virtually overnight, Borders became a ghost town. It was during this period that I first thought that the store might be in trouble. You could see the defeat on employees faces. It wasn’t uncommon to stop in on a Saturday night and find the place uncomfortably quiet. Very few customers. No music. Dark. It was eerie.

   Return of the Jedi – 2009-2010After taking a beating for two years, Borders finally regained its swagger. Three things really put Borders back on the map. First, they completely renovated the cafe. Seattle’s Best Coffee replaced their own blend, massively caloric desserts replaced stale cookies and brownies, and the existing space was ripped up and redone. Secondly, the store was renovated and remodeled. The music came back. And everything got a much needed coat of fresh paint. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Wifi went free.

   At least once every month or two, I took a day off work and went to Borders. The place was packed. Laptops were humming, employees and patrons were bustling about, and a certain magic filled the air.

   I honestly thought the location was doing well.

   Knowing that at least 200 Borders Stores were secretly on death row, I decided to make a trip to the Southside location the weekend before the store closings were announced. The place was packed, but the nervous faces on the employees told me that this location was far from safe. When ordering my coffee, I gave a friendly smile to the barista, leaned in close, and awkwardly asked, “So… you think you’ll be closing?” He was very frank and shockingly specific with his assessment. He admitted that the store was losing money, though they were close to their goals. He knew that they were on the bubble, but hoped that corporate would grant them a short reprieve to continue turning things around.

   Several days later, Borders officially announced that 200 stores would be closing. By mid-morning, a list of the affected stores had yet to surface. I nervously called Borders the minute they opened, and again awkwardly asked if they would be affected by the closures. Sadly, they seemed blissfully unaware of the fate that awaited them. In fact, the girl who answered the phone said that corporate had just called to let them know that the Southside location had, in fact, made the cut and would be remaining open for the foreseeable future.

   45 minutes later, the official store closing list surfaced, including Borders Bookstore on Southside Boulevard.

   I called back to see if the list was accurate.

   “Our store is closing,” the dejected voice on the other end replied. “Liquidators are coming on Friday.”

Since that day, I have made several visits to Borders, each more depressing than the one before. By the end of the first day that the closing was announced, the cafe went dark. The lights were cut off in the area, the tables were stacked and labeled with price tags, and the coffee machines were turned off.

The next day, the vultures came.

Borders sent me coupons on a near daily basis advertising anywhere between 15 and 30% off any book of my choice. Still, the store remained empty. Ironically, the 20% off that Borders began it’s liquidations at was enough to get half the city into the store.

XVII. Amateur Ufologist

I’ve always been terrified of the unknown.

Never was this more evident than the time period between 3^rd and 4^th grades, a span that my brother mockingly refers to as “the summer of mystery.” As an early birthday gift, my best friend Erik had received a half-dozen volumes from the Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown collection. The books had been advertised all year in a series of absolutely terrifying television commercials in which a spooky, Vincent-Price-esque narrator dramatically described the contents of each book while eerie music played in the background. Each commercial began with this man screaming the name of a location where a mysterious happening purportedly took place; he also elevated his voice to accentuate the more troubling aspects of each story.

“STONE HENGE!” he would shout. “A visitor fashions a copper coat hanger into the shape of an ancient Egyptian symbol. He points it at the stones and a SURGE OF POWER rushes into his arm, knocking him unconscious.”

“EUROPE! Four men are drawn to an ancient Anglo-Saxon fort, the site of a fierce battle. They enter the shadows of a ring of trees, and WITHOUT WARNING, one of the men is grabbed by an unseen force, lifted five feet in the air, and suspended for thirty seconds.”

“BRITAIN! A woman has a sudden image of a black mountain that’s moving. Children are trapped underneath. Two hours later, a Welsh School House is buried in an avalanche of coal slag.”

“THE MIDWEST! A woman feels a sharp pain in her right hand. Far away at that exact same moment, her daughter screams as she touches a SCALDING HOT PAN.”

In addition to letting me know that I had to have these books, the elaborately produced advertisements – conveniently run during both Saturday morning cartoons and favorite television show, Charles in Charge – led to weeks of lost sleep. These commercials also made me paranoid about everything.

Without explanation, I demanded that my Mother replace all metal coat hangers in my closet with their plastic brethren. Accepting a few dozen neon pink hangers leftover from my sister’s room was a small price to pay for peace of mind. Though these items were unquestionably girly, they would be nearly impossible to accidentally fashion into the shape of a hieroglyph. I interpreted late-afternoon cramping in my wrists to come not from 10-hour marathon sessions spent playing Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! on my bedroom floor, but rather as a surefire signal from the Aztecs or Mayans that at least one of my parents was on fire.

I stressed endlessly over places and things that I couldn’t even identify if they hit me on the head. One evening as my Father was in the back yard grilling hamburgers for dinner, I nervously kicked at the siding on our house before inquiring, as conversationally as possible, if the original design for our home called for the use of any coal slag. I called Good Shepherd during the summer. Disguising my voice, I pretended to be an interested parent phoning to see if the main building was, by any small chance, Welsh. And on a family trip to St. Augustine, before I would agree to enter the historic fort, I made the tour guide, to the incredulity and annoyance of two dozen other tourists, swear with absolute certainty that the fort was neither ancient nor Anglo-Saxon.

I spent most of the summer holed up in a makeshift fort in my bedroom with these books, scaring the piss out of myself (quite literally at times when my Mom knocked unexpectedly) for the sake of my edification. In this cave, I would closely examine each volume on loan from Erik, discovering the true secrets of the universe as I read. By reading Hauntings, I learned about ghosts throughout history – terrible creatures who haunted old castles, schoolhouses, and cemeteries. Magical Arts, after seeing the It’s a Good Life episode of the Twilight Zone, proved too troubling to even open, lest I be cursed with the same gifts as the boy on the show. And in Mysterious Creatures, I learned of the Yeti – a ten-foot tall ice-ape known for its terrible stench and insatiable appetite for the local ice fisherman’s trout. I came to believe that my friend Wesley’s Mother could possibly have trace amounts of Yeti somewhere in her bloodline, though a phone call to his house proved inconclusive.

One book though, more than any other, caused many sleepless nights — Alien Encounters. I remember the great sense of anticipation and panic I felt coming home from Erik’s with this particular volume in my backpack. It took me two days to even gather the nerve to remove it from my bag. Then finally, when my brother was out to dinner with my Mom, I had the entire bedroom to myself. There could be no more excuses. I pulled a blanket over myself in the fort, locked my bedroom door, and finally retrieved the tome from its resting place.

I ran my hand along the edges of the book.

If the book’s cover was in any small way a reflection of the content within, I would likely be dead of anxiety by evening’s end – a frozen, twisted figure left to be discovered by my Mother like the girl in The Ring. The black, “handsomely-bound” volume featured the title, Alien Encounters, in a silver, embossed lettering that lent the words a prismy, dream-like quality. An intricate series of perpendicular grooves gave depth to the faux leather binding. And a single, horrifying image was framed on the center of the cover – a man, not much older than me, lost in the forest, hands above his head, looking up at a massive flying saucer. A bright beam of light projected from the bottom of the disc was pointed directly toward him. The drawing seemed to depict the single instant before this unfortunate man would be sucked into the saucer, never to return home to his family again. The horrors that I was certain he would encounter inside of the craft – both physical and sexual – were too awful to consider.

My hands trembling, I opened the book and began my descent into the rabbit hole.

From that evening forward, Alien Encounters took over my life. I read and re-read passages from the book every single day. I studied it first thing in the morning in the safety of daylight. I immersed myself into the book again during the two-hour post-lunch period that my Mother had coined “quiet time.” And – if I could muster the nerve – I’d comb through some of the safer passages at night. These nights always ended the same way, with a trip to my parent’s bedroom floor, despite being told repeatedly that there were no vacancies available.

Knowing that I would soon be asked to return the book, I kept an incredibly detailed collection of notes outlining what I had learned in Alien Encounters. This bright-orange, three-ring binder was carefully tucked under the mattress of my lower bunk bed. If my parents ever checked this prime pornographic real estate to see if any illicit copies of Playboy or Hustler had been stowed away, they were most likely deeply disheartened to instead uncover nonsensical technical notes on the inner workings of “tractor beams” and poorly drawn sketches of the most terrifying of alien creatures – the greys.

More than any other spaceman, the grey – with its coarse ashen skin, cone-shaped head, and bulbous black eyes — truly haunted my dreams. It terrified me to have to draw these unspeakable monsters. I surely didn’t want to. Each pencil mark seemed to bring them closer to life in my very bedroom. But I knew that my research would one do prove invaluable to the human race. The needs of the many, I thought proudly, outweigh the needs of the few.

When Erik finally came calling for Alien Encounters, I made a promise to myself to continue my investigation based on the groundwork laid from the book. Each day, I studied my notes, looking for any clues that might allow me to better see the big picture. I arranged my pages of scribble-scrabble into different orders, convinced that each shuffle brought me one step closer to the truth. Family trips to the library, once the low-point of my weekly summer schedule, became fact-finding missions aimed to secretly further my research. I carefully tucked Kidnapped by Greys and Alien Encyclopedia between stacks of Choose Your Own Adventure and How To Win at Nintendo Games books, and used nickels stolen from the cup holder in my Mom’s minivan to photocopy the most provocative information.

By the end of summer, I had actually begun to fancy myself a true Ufologist. I also grew bolder in discussing my area of expertise. Where once I felt it my Homeric duty to shield my family and friends from the disturbing truth about flying cigars, malleable metals, and alien implants, I gradually became convinced that the only way to stop a takeover by the greys would be to educate as many people as possible about their origin and the grave danger that these sentient creatures posed to mankind. In many ways, I was a bit of a scientologist before it became vogue.

My parents were nice enough to humor my newfound interest in spacemen. “Mom.” I said sternly during one of our bi-weekly Thursday night dates at Burger King. “If you see a saucer, I want you to close your eyes as tight as you can. It may protect you from the tractor beam – but only if it’s holographic.”  She thanked me – as if she genuinely valued my advice – before encouraging me to finish my Bacon Double Cheeseburger and fries so that we may go home. My family learned quickly to avoid any euphemism about the “time flying,” or “where has the day gone?” lest they be subject to one of my thirty-minute dissertations about missing time. And once, after noting in my orange binder that my Dad had trouble remembering what he had for lunch earlier in the week, he awoke to find me under the covers conducting a full-body search for any silicone chips that they might have implanted in his body.

With 4^th grade about to begin, I think my parents secretly welcomed the distractions a new school year would bring. “Hopefully he’ll make some new friends and stop with all this alien bullshit,” I imagined my Dad telling my Mom in private.

My days would no longer be filled with laborious “research,” usually consisting of reshuffling my notes, paying my brother ten cents an hour to toss my parents’ wedding china across the back yard while I counted the spins (“Fascinating,” I always noted in my log), and giving my little sister dismissive lectures every time she watched E.T. or Mac and Me. Instead, my parents hoped, I would get swept up learning about math and history. I would play flag football, and go roller skating, and attend birthday parties. By Christmas, I wouldn’t even remember what an alien was.

Little did they know how seriously I took my new calling. I didn’t choose Ufology, I wanted to tell them. Ufology chose me.

And I was eager to share my work with the world.

Like a debutante making her grand debut into formal society, I was poised to emerge into the 4^th Grade as a new man. A man of great worldliness, great sophistication, and above all else, great saucer-knowledge. I was certain that when I confidently entered that classroom on the first day, head held high and orange notebook tucked neatly under my arm, the other students probably wouldn’t even realize that I was the same student. Instead of the collective “twins” being dropped off that morning, it would be two separate boys: Joey, and the incredibly cool new addition to his carpool – Dr. Anderson. Girls would fight to be near me on the playground, recognizing that not only had I matured into the single raddest kid at Good Shepherd, but also that I was the only man who could possibly save them from the terrible violation that could only come from the long probe of a grey.

To punctuate the transformation, I needed one final touch. Now that I was a Ufologist, I needed to look the part. Our annual back-to-school trip to the Edison Mall gave me a golden opportunity to find an outfit that really hammered home my new status. After six hours of hellish shopping, I finally found what I was looking for.

“How about we show your father what you guys got at the mall?” my Mom said when we arrived back home. My Dad’s expression seemed to convey that, though he loved us all very much, what he really wanted after a long, hard day of work was to eat a quiet dinner, watch a little TV, and then go to sleep – not play captive audience to some dandy fashion parade. “Ohhh, alright,” he eventually conceded, sounding not unlike the salty old man in Home Alone who finally agrees to trade Kevin’s parents his two airline tickets in exchange for their jewelry, pocket translator, and life savings.

For the next hour, my brother and I were made to walk down the living room hallway “strutting our stuff” in our new school clothes. Extra M&Ms were promised after dinner in exchange for the humiliation, an offer that, if refused, would have probably escalated into the use of a cattle prod. My Mother, like some abusive paparazzi, took so many snapshots of her “little models” that, for over a week, every time I closed my eyes I would see the faint outline of a flash cube. “You two could be the CORIES,” she hollered with pride. “Which one is which?” my Mom asked excitedly. There was a brief pause, before my little sister broke her silence. “I’d say Joey is Corey Haim,” she said dryly. “He’s got the fatter head.”

As the freak show came to a merciful end, my Dad rose from his seat, clapped half-heartedly as if to say “Don’t blame me when they marry each other,” and made a move toward his bedroom where the promise of Hogan’s Heroes reruns and a well-hidden stash of King Dons awaited.

“Wait!” I shouted, not wanting my Dad to miss the main event. “I have one more new outfit to show you.” I knew that if he was to see it, he would finally understand. It would open his eyes and he would finally realize that what I had dedicated my entire summer to wasn’t a joke, but rather a gravely serious pursuit.

As I slipped into my new shirt, I imagined my Father beaming with pride, tears in his eyes, applauding lightly as I walked toward him. After an approving squeeze of my shoulder, he would go immediately to the garage and retrieve his toolbox so that he could begin the long process of converting the dining room into a private study where I may continue my research. My brother and sister would be equally moved, pledging half of their weekly allowances to me in the form of “grants.”

Here goes, I thought, recognizing this as a truly defining moment in my young life.

I emerged from the bathroom in my new top.

At its heart, the shirt was a basic long-sleeve black tee, though you could hardly see the actual fabric. A massive, silk-screened alien creature took up the entire front of the shirt. Though the sales clerk refused to confirm either way, I was sure to let her know that the alien was most assuredly of the subgenus grey. I tried to give her my phone number to distribute in the event that other children had questions about the specific Martian imprinted on the shirt, but my Mother stopped me three digits in. “We don’t want sales calls at home,” she later explained to me in the car.

The dome-shaped head and insect-like eyes of the creature rested just below my chin. The alien’s arms were imprinted on the long sleeves, running parallel to my own arms, and his four-fingered hands laid across my wrists. The back of the shirt depicted the backside of the grey, including its distinctive, creaseless ass. And, as a final cosmic touch, both shoulders were bedazzled with shimmering rhinestones, described by the sales clerk as crystals.

“It’s a hot seller,” the clerk had assured us. Empirical evidence seemed to suggest otherwise (despite the shirts being discounted by 75%, the rack was crammed full), but honestly, I was relieved to see that so few of the shirts were out on the streets. Truthfully, I thought, I was probably the only one in the entire city, nay STATE, with the necessary qualifications to possess such haute couture.

As my Mother snapped photos, my Dad left for his bedroom while my brother and sister exploded in laughter. They’re not going to be laughing when the tractor beam begins pulling them toward the core, I thought spitefully.

Unfortunately, when the first day of school arrived, I found my peers to also be less attentive than I had anticipated. Things were chaotic, with parents coming and going, students catching up on summer activities, and our new teacher – Ms. McGill – busy introducing herself to the class. Though I expected my classmates to mob me on first site, practically begging to pick the brain of the Ufologist in their midst, by midday, no one had really said anything about my shirt.

Figuring that they probably had just yet to get a good look, I confidently took my blue plastic pencil-box from my backpack and walked toward the pencil sharpener in front of the room. Though my pencils were brand new and perfectly pointed, I placed one directly into the sharpener and angled my body awkwardly to the side so that my classmates may get a better glimpse of my stunning new look.

“Hey,” a cute blonde girl new to Good Shepherd said with a smile.

Though already picturing what our children might look like, I ignored her advance, not wanting to limit my options just yet.

“Hey,” she repeated sweetly.

I didn’t want to disappoint the first of what was sure to be many new groupies, so I coolly responded, “What’s up?”

“Can I ask you a question?” asked.

“Go for it!”

“Which one are you? Barbie or the Rockers?”

The entire class, still cordoned off into small cliques, was suddenly united in laughter as I stood with my back to the chalkboard, stretched into a near jumping jack position.

“It looks like my sister’s prom dress!” another painfully cute girl added.

I began desperately thinking of some way to turn this around. I considered giving a small lecture about the alien spacecraft that crashed in the New Mexican desert. I would even begin it in the same fashion as the creepy Time-Life narrator. “ROSWELL!” I pictured myself shouting, the whole class instantly turning ghost white and sitting Indian-style at my feet. But before I could, our new teacher butted in.

“Everyone sit down, ya’ll hear! You’re going to make me have a chest panic.”

For the rest of the day, I sat quietly at my desk while most of the class bonded by harassing me under their breath. Instead of “Dr. Bowen,” they called me “ALF.” I knew it would simply take them understanding who I was and what I hoped to teach them, but the abuse still bothered me. Further, I grew quite alarmed to see that several of the prettiest girls in class already seemed to be in the process of deciding who they would like for the year. I knew it was time to accelerate progress.

I needed to do something that would grab their attention. Something that would convince them, once and for all, that I would be the shepherd to lead this good class toward salvation.

It was time.

With Ms. McGill seated at her desk and the class quietly filling out the dreaded ice-breaker questionnaires, I arose from my seat, as if compelled by some mystical force far beyond my control.

I began to point.

“What’s going on?” several students whispered.

Slack-jawed and wide-eyed, I walked slowly toward the window. Really slowly. Less like a Ufologist, I was told years later, and more like a bridesmaid. Continuing toward my destination, I made a great show of lifting my extended pointer finger toward the sky.

“What are you doing?” Heidi Greene said with disgust.

Pointing toward the heavens, I drew my opposite hand over my open mouth, as if in great wonder and awe, and whispered the three letters that would surely be my ticket to 4^th grade popularity.

“U….” I began quietly.

“F…” my voice shaking.

“O…”

“What did you say?” Jason Chadakowski said, displaying signs of imminent laughter.

Kicking my poor thespian act into overdrive, I formed my mouth into a great circle and threw my head back in disbelief, as if I couldn’t possibly fathom what I was seeing.

“UFO.” I again whispered, pointing to nothing in particular.

Suddenly, everyone rushed toward the window, fighting for the best view of the sky. I felt a great rush of bodies thrusting into me from behind, like Paul Anka was about to take the stage and thousands of fans were pushing and clawing their way toward the front for the best view.

This is it, I thought. My moment has arrived.

“Tell me what you saw,” Heidi said, not finding me quite so stupid anymore. I put my arm around Heidi to prepare her for a gentle warning about the invasive probe of a grey. I was immediately overtaken by her scent – she smelled like creamsicles. And because of my bravery and expertise, she was now all mine. As the other children continued their stampede, I took Heidi by the arm and moved her toward the corner of the room. It was here, while the other children trample each other, that I will tell her the secrets of the universe.

And then something strange happened.

“I saw it too!” Ms. McGill screamed, clutching at her chest.

“You saw it?” a student asked excitedly.

“Yes!” Ms. McGill shouted, nearing hysterics. “I saw it!”

The class mobbed her.

“I may have actually seen it first,” she said, breathing heavily and fanning her face with her hand. “Something told me that I should look up from my desk. I gazed toward the window and there it was. I saw a great saucer in the sky, just as the boy was walking toward the window. It was dark green, with white cracks all over it. It hovered, just for a moment, and then zipped off toward the heavens.”

I felt a great anger rising up inside of me. Not only had this witch stolen my thunder, but she had described a saucer the likes of which I had never encountered in my research.

“Tell us more, Ms. McGill!” the class said, crowding around her.

I was now standing alone by the window.

Why are they talking to her? I thought. I’m the one who spotted it. I’m the one with the knowledge to tell them what it was. And I’m the one dressed like a Ufologist.

“There’s no time now, children,” she shouted. “To the chapel!”

Before I knew what was happening, Ms. McGill was herding the entire class toward the chapel. “This is bullshit!” I tried to scream toward my brother, but he wanted nothing to do with me. “I SAW THE SAUCER. IT WAS ME WHO SAW THE SAUCER.”

As we were rushed through the hallways, bouncing off of the concrete walls, Ms. McGill knocked on several classroom doors that we passed along the way, stopping only long enough to stick her head in and shout “I saw a saucer!”

“My chest!” she repeated as she continued her sprint, clutching at her heart.

Within three minutes, my foolproof plan for attention had somehow developed into a mid-level Armageddon scare at Good Shepherd. Two other classes joined us in the chapel, as Ms. McGill wept about “The rapture! The rapture!” and coaxed us into begging for our young lives. We were all made to sing “Take it to the Lord in Prayer” while Ms. McGill dramatically pantomimed the “saucer’s” trajectory with her finger.

The whole thing was infuriating.

That evening, I went home and threw away my bedazzled alien t-shirt. I removed the loose-leaf notebook paper from my orange binder, pushed it into the wastebasket, and replaced it with hand-written match results that I had copied from Pro Wrestling Illustrated. I covered my doodle of a grey on the front cover of the binder with a WWF sticker. I tied off the trash bag, took it to the garage, and placed it in a large garbage can. I then closed the lid on this brief, cosmic phase of my life. Though frustrated and disappointed, I now had closure. Never again would I have a nightmare about aliens.

I no longer feared spacemen – I hated them.

Unfortunately, I found the teacher to be amongst the most irritating people I have ever encountered. His name was “Rupesh,” and he was pretty much what you’d imagine a yoga instructor to look like. Small, dark-skinned, East Indian, with a tight tank top and grey parachute pants. He spoke with a somewhat forced Middle Eastern accent and repeatedly mentioned the fact that he was the “only Indian-certified yoga master in the greater Jacksonville area.” “Don’t be fooled by imitators,” he whispered to the class. “Rupesh is the only true Hindi in northeast Florida.” I didn’t have the heart to inform him that Hindi is a language, not an ethnicity.

Rupesh then lowered the lights and turned on Indian music, signaling that class was about to begin. As I stretched, he stooped forward and, without provocation, balanced himself on his hands and arched his legs backward in a manner that made me horribly uncomfortable. He froze in this position, looking not unlike a gay Punjabi centerfold, and gazed upon the class. He waited silently. Suddenly, his regular attendees all broke out into uproarious (yet somewhat disingenuous) applause. Rupesh dramatically shifted to a one-armed hand stand. The cheering grew louder. Finally, he sprung to his feet, grabbed his ankle, and hoisted his left leg above his head. What was supposed to be a peaceful yoga studio now sounded like an obnoxious surprise party, with the entire class clapping and whistling in adulation of our great leader.

This pompous display would continue for the next hour. Each time I was beginning to get comfortable in a position, he would suddenly destroy the calamity by whipping into a super pose. If this wasn’t met with immediate applause, he would pause until the class clapped. A delay normally wasn’t necessary though, as over a dozen students were quick to render the Pavlovian response that seemed to be a requirement for this class. Though many of them seemed genuine in their admiration, the girl beside me caught my look of repulsion and whispered to me, “Just clap.”

“I’m not paying $20 an hour to feed this freak’s ego,” I whispered back.

“It sucks, I know. But just clap.”

Though I appreciated her acknowledgement of Rupesh’s lunacy, I simply refuse to clap for a show-off. If I wanted to throw money away to watch some goofball be affectatious and moronic, I’d order a Dane Cook pay-per-view.

40 minutes into the class, after yet another of Rupesh’s preposterous twirls, he made direct eye contact with me, furring his eyebrows in a way that I interpreted as confrontational. “You better applaud,” his eyebrows seemed to suggest.

I looked around. The entire class was clapping except for me. I shrugged my shoulders, raising my own eyebrows in dramatic fashion right back at Rupesh. At this point, I was ready to walk out. Out of respect for the others in the class though, I just looked toward the floor and dropped it.

“Move from the plank position,” Rupesh whispered to the class. “Walk with your hands toward your feet,” he added.

There was a long pause, and then:

“Downward dog!” he exclaimed theatrically.

If you’re not familiar with yoga, the downward dog is a pose where you bend over, lean forward, and support yourself with your hands. When the pretty OnDemand instructor bends over in this position, it’s actually one of the leading cause of previously mentioned yogawood.

“Close your eyes and feel your spine lengthen,” Rupesh said softly.

I closed my eyes, planted my feet into the ground, and leaned forward as far as I could. I really worked the position and began thinking to myself that yoga could be something that I see myself really getting into. I stretched my body and felt incredibly at peace.

“WRONG!” Rupesh shouted.

His voice seemed to be coming from directly behind me.

I momentarily froze, and as I did, I felt Rupesh’s hands clasp tightly onto my hips.

“Feet FLAT,” he whispered. “Feet flat.”

And then, before any of this could fully register, Rupesh did the unthinkable. Standing directly behind me, squatting slightly, Rupesh tightened his vice-like grip around my hips and – in one sudden jerk – drew my exposed backside directly into his pelvis. Once, twice, three times he forcibly pumped me into his groin, demonically repeating those two words, “Feet flat.” I was powerless to escape.

As quickly as it began, it was over.

When class came to an end, I spoke to the same girl that I had been whispering with during class. “Did you see what happened?” I asked her. Though I firmly believed that Rupesh, furious by my lack of applause, had purposely gone out of his way to simulate a sexual assault on me, she didn’t seem nearly as convinced.

“You’re being paranoid,” she said. “He helps everybody tweak their poses.”

“Not like that,” I replied.

“Don’t worry about it, guy. It’s nothing.”

Maybe she was right. After all, I’m new to this whole yoga thing. I probably had the pose all wrong. He was just embarrassed by my ineptitude and wanted me in the proper stance. I did see him helping several other students get into correct position. Nothing to worry about.

Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was a guy named Justin – the only other male in the class.

“Dude,” he said gravely. “You got raped by Rupesh.”

There are about eight of us in Spanish class who always sit together in the back of the room. We have a lot of fun in our little nook and have genuinely grown pretty close in the last nine weeks. The teacher collectively refers to us as “the corner.” This reference is usually invoked with the most negative of connotations, such as “Would the corner please keep it down?” or “noise from the corner, what a surprise.”

Anyway, after nearly forty classes together this semester, the entire class has basically fallen into a non-official, de-facto seating chart. Everyone sits in the same place every day. There are no surprises. It works out well.

This morning though, out of nowhere, this obnoxious wannabe hippie girl casually undermines the accepted order and occupies one of the “corner” seats, despite having a clearly defined seat on the other side of the room.

I’m not one to confront people over such trivial nonsense, but I was currently harboring a small crush on the brunette who usually sits at the desk in question, so I figured I’d ask her nicely to move.

“Hey, I could care less,” I said with a friendly smille. “But my friend usually sits in that seat. Would you mind moving over a seat if it’s not a problem? If it is though, don’t worry about it.”

It was the single most bizarre holiday reference I’ve ever encountered.

I couldn’t figure out why she would call it by that name. My initial reaction was that it was a religious thing.

She constantly blabbers about her Jewish faith, but the last time I checked, candy canes were a reasonably non-denominational treat. She had no reason to alter the name of the sugary candies because of her beliefs. I could understand if she called them “Jesus was a great prophet but NOT the son of God Sugary Mint Hooks,” but to reference them in a fully Christian manner actually seemed against her religion.

The frightening truth seemed to be that she truly believed that the proper name for these candies was in fact Christmas Sticks.

I sat in the back of the room for the rest of the class and gasped in horror thinking about what a life with this girl must be like around the holidays.

If it was snowing, we’d go outside and build a “Frost and Ice Gentleman.”

In early December, we’d gather in the living room and decorate our “Holiday Bush.”

At every opportunity, she’d try to lure me under the “Twiggy Circle of Kissing and Berries.”

She never left the corner seat.

For ninety minutes straight, she sucked on her tiny, individually wrapped Christmas Sticks.

I think she was trying to eat them seductively. She would snake her hippie tongue all out and slither it all over the cane. Instead of coming off as sexy though, it looked more like one of those Discovery Channel documentaries where the exotic lizards blend in with their surroundings and catch crickets with their long, sticky, speckled tongues.

When she caught me staring, she looked over at me and said, “I like to try to lick off all the red.”

“Good luck with that,” I said, counting the seconds until class came to an end.

Ken vs. The Gas Station Cowboy

June 2004:

It was 3:00 on a Friday afternoon, and I was on my way Barnes N’ Noble to read a few chapters of Bill Clinton’s new autobiography. Despite tepid reviews, I still thought it newsworthy enough to thumb through over a cup of coffee.

Running dangerously low on fuel, I pulled into a gas station to replenish my supply. I pumped $20 worth of gas into my tank, roughly a gallon and a half of fuel at the time, screwed the gas-cap back on and patiently waited for my receipt to print out.

While I waited, I noticed a man and woman on the other side of the pump. They were holding hands, and both wore wedding rings. Though they could have been secret lovers acting on a shared petrol fetish, my best guess is that they were a married couple. Something about this pairing struck me as odd, though.

The woman appeared perfectly normal. She was wearing a preppy summer outfit — something you might see a lady wear to an afternoon tennis match — and looked to be of a fairly pleasant disposition. Her husband, I noticed, seemed the polar opposite. Specifically, he seemed to fancy himself a cowboy.

In stunning contrast to his wife’s elegant white outfit, he was adorned in a leather vest, tight jeans overlayed with animal-skin chaps, dusty pointed boots, and a bucket hat. He looked like the type of man who spent his leisure time chewin’ cud, whiddlin’ wood, and accosting the occasional minority. The kind of guy who threatens his wife with a taste of the belt if she fails to wash his favorite Big Johnson t-shirt before the church service on Sunday.

As I fought to tug my receipt free from the iron grasp of the fuel pump’s printer, I suddenly heard a tiny squeaking noise. Not knowing what it was, and perhaps fearful that a rodent might have lept upon my shoulder, I stood perfectly still, ears perked. Suddenly, I heard the nose again. This time, I knew the source.

The squeaking wasn’t coming from a sewer rat or a hamster. There was no 230 pound capybara peering out at me from behind the payphone. It was a sneeze. A female sneeze.

In rapid succession, the cowboy’s wife had just let out a series of three, possibly four, loud, squeaky sneezes.

I quickly glanced over at the cowboy, eager to hear his accent when he called back at his wife’s sneeze with the appropriate “Bless You” or “Gesundheit.” I was secretly hoping that his voice would be as affectatious as his outfit — perhaps an exaggerated southern drawl.

But he spoke not a word.

He simply looked at her.

I waited in stunned silence for what seemed like hours, wondering what exactly was going through this rude cowboy’s head. There must be some reason, I thought. The post-sneeze blessing has been social convention for over 2,000 years. Surely he doesn’t think that his roughneck lifestyle exempted him from this obligation.

He had obviously heard the sneezes, as she was standing less that two feet from him, but he chose to ignore them completely.

What kind of person does this? What made this cowboy think he was above a simple “bless you?”

Nevertheless, I continued to give him the benefit of the doubt, figuring that maybe he would offer a delayed blessing eventually. I have known several delayed-blessers in the past, perhaps he was one as well. When we reached the half-minute mark though, I knew that no such words would be coming from the mouth of this ingrate.

At this point, I knew that action was necessary. It would be dangerous, but there was no way I was leaving before this poor woman received that which she was entitled to. Plus, as the second-closest person at the time of her expulsion, I felt it my obligation to carry out the blessing.

Being as discrete as possible, I swung around my car, closed the little swinging gas door, and quickly leaned in and offered a quiet “Bless You.”

It seemed harmless and inoffensive enough.

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, the woman’s face lit up. She smiled from ear to ear and casually said, “Thank You.”

She put all the emphasis on the “Thank”, as if to secretly say, “I’m glad that somebody was nice enough to say ‘bless you.”’

Despite my good intentions, things quickly went downhill.

As quickly as it had lit up, the woman’s face grew cold and grave. I turned my head.

The moment I made eye contact with the cowboy, I knew I was in trouble. He looked angrier than I ever thought a cowboy could look. This man had a look in his eyes as if his entire crop of slaves had refused to work the fields that day.

Call me well-mannered, but I’ve never really been one for getting into afternoon fist-fights at the local handy store, so I ran to the other side of my car as quickly as possible.

The cowboy began taking several steps towards me. He was beet-red, sweating like a maniac, and reaching for something in his pocket. Fearful that he might pull out his lasso, I jumped in my car, locked the door, and hit the gas.

As I drove off, I could see the cowboy in my rear-view mirror angrily shaking his head back and forth. He was mouthing something to his wife, and it didn’t seem overly pleasant. Probably something along the lines of “Wer does dis’ big-city pretty boy’ git off blessing ma’ wom’n. Ma’ wom’n is ma’ prop’rty, jest like ma’ plow and my steeeed.” I had a sad feeling that it would be the last blessing she would receive for a long time.

Crazies.

They’re all crazies.

What this world coming too if you can’t even bless a cowboy’s wife at a gas station?

Well, as I recently sat bored in class, watching her sip her sticky brown liquid, a suspicion began formulating in my head. It seemed pretty insane, almost absurd, but I just could not rid my mind of this sneaking inclination. Looking for evidence to support my hypothesis, I carefully observed her drinking habits over the course of three or four classes. Eventually, I developed a startling, almost horrifying theory: Could she possibly be bringing the exact same can to class each day??

Once this theory was planted firmly in my mind, I knew I couldn’t rest until the puzzle was solved. After a little bit of solitude and concentration, I formulated a plan. Before class, I went to Walgreens, picked up a black Sharpie, and tucked it away in my left pants pocket. It felt kind of good, so I pulled out the pen and tried it again. Well, maybe I didn’t, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to overuse the italics button even more than I already do.

As I entered the classroom, without any eye contact of acknowledgment, I took a seat directly beside Emily. I tried my absolute hardest to act calm and cool. You know, friendly hellos, trivial smalltalk, maybe a few cool head nods. I can be cool. I really can. Watch this: “Hey there baby. I hear your Mom’s got a van.” Uncanny, eh?

For the next 48 minutes, my teacher droned on incessantly. I honestly wasn’t paying much attention though. Instead, I carefully watched Pepsi Girl out of the corner of my eye and waited for my opening. All I needed was one quick diversion — a momentary lapse of concentration on her end — to shamelessly exploit the situation at hand.

At roughly 5:38, it happened. She laid her head down on her desk for a brief moment. I couldn’t tell if it was truly a full nap, or maybe just a quick rest, so I knew I had to move in very, very swiftly. Quickly uncapping my permanent marker, I leaned waaaay over her, nearly on top of the poor girl. Once there, I placed a tiny, inconspicuous black dot on the rim of the suspicious can.

As I was pulling out, her head shot straight up and she looked directly at me. She gave me a look as if to say, “I know you’re up to something… I just don’t know what.” I gave her a look all, “You’re pretty, but I’m on to your game Missy.” She shot back a look all, “What is wrong with you?” I returned a sly, casual look, as if to say, “Hello Mrs. Kettle, where’s your friend the POT.”

I exited class as soon as we were dismissed, excited about what was to come in 48 short hours. I knew a simple peek at the top of her can come Wednesday would either prove my theory correct, or send it crashing to the ground. I was optimistic, but not fully confident as to what the result would be.

I was also slightly nervous.

What if she saw the dot?

It was small, but I definitely could have made it a bit smaller.

If she were to catch wind of my suspicions, she could easily aquire a new can. Worse yet, she might even drop the class. That wouldn’t be good. I like sitting next to her. Her hair smells really good. Like an orchid. Or is it an orchard? I can’t remember which word is correct. I’ll leave it up to you to guess what her hair really smells like.

Anyway, after much tossing and turning the night before, the big day finally arrived. I gathered my books, grabbed a quick coffee drink on my way to class, and patiently waited by the side door of the classroom. I thought the coffee drink would make this pose more natural. Everyone always comes in through the main door, so I figured I could post up by the side door, staking out the classroom from outside its tiny window. When she came into the classroom, I would immediately swoop in and take the seat beside her. The last thing I needed was for her to sit down somewhere out of the ordinary. I needed my view.

As I was looking through the tiny window, I felt a tiny finger poke me on the shoulder.

“What the hell are you doing Ken? You’re so silly.”

I didn’t even need to turn around, as the smell of her hair completely gave her away. I quickly came up with a cover story about “avoiding Clark,” even though I know absolutely no one named Clark, nor was there one in the class. Surprisingly, she bought it.

She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the room.

We were cutting it close on time, and my normal seat had already been taken by an annoying girl partial to Bob Marley, dirty clothes, and the “Rastafarian Lifestyle.” I borrowed a pencil from her at the very beginning of the semester, and I swear I left class high.

Emily continued pulling me by the arm towards two seats near the front of the room. They weren’t perfect, but they were the only two seats left that were even remotely close to each other. Both seats were in the same row, so I had the option of sitting either directly behind her, or directly in front of her. Seeing as though I had forgotten to bring my complicated mirror systems and advanced pulley mechanisms to class with me, I knew the seat behind her would probably be much more advantageous to my ends. Unfortunately, this thought process takes time, and by the time I finally decided which seat I wanted, she was already sitting in the rear of the two.

I tried my hardest to pay attention in class, but the professor talks so damn low that it’s nearly impossible. If I had no shame, I’d be all, “WHAT??!?” about five trillion times each class. I do have shame though, so I instead listened intently for the tell-tale clink of wooden desk and beverage can.

At the 9:00 minute mark, I heard said clink.

Because of my horrible positioning, I tried time and time again to discretely turn my body around towards Pepsi Girl, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the can. Each time I’d complete my rotation, she’d smile and say, “Hi Kenny.” Honestly, I kind of liked it, and as strange as her beverage habits were, I was actually beginning to fancy her a little bit.

Extreme emphasis on little bit.

I still had a mission to accomplish, and what kind of man would I be if I let a sweet, pretty smile and INCREDIBLY nice smelling hair prevent me from completing my objective. I refocused, but still didn’t know the best way to see the can. It was directly, squarely behind me, and nothing short of standing up would have allowed me to see the top of the can.

Finally, I decided to do something drastic.

I retreated to the restroom.

I try hard to drink 8 glasses a day, but I honestly didn’t really have to go.

I did know though that upon re-entering the classroom, I’d have an absolutely perfect chance to look down at the can before turning and re-desking myself. So, I took a deep breath, washed my hands, and marched back toward the classroom.

I entered quietly, stopping only to make sure the door didn’t slam shut. Then, I eyed my target, collected myself, and walked back towards my seat.

As I re-entered my row, I saw Emily’s smiling face welcoming me back to Desk 3. I smiled back, walked towards her, and QUICKLY glanced at the can.

THIS, friends, is what I saw:

My deepest, darkest suspicions were immediately confirmed. This seemingly normal, pretty girl had been, for the entire semester, bringing in the EXACT same can of Pepsi every single day and drinking from it. She always finished it during class though, and she always brought it back full.

I started thinking of reasons that would possibly explain this behavior, but each reason brought with it many more questions than answers. She definitely isn’t poor. The Express wardrobe and Louis Vatton purses give that away. She can’t be an alcoholic, as she claimed early in the year that she didn’t like drinking. I’ve seen her in the campus bookstore purchasing Scantrons, so I know she has change readily available to use for the Pepsi machine right outside of the classroom.

I just don’t get it.

I am, at this very moment, sitting in Moe’s searching for a job. To paint the most accurate portrait though, we would need to expand the definition of searching for a job to include eating a foot-long burrito and browsing xKCD.

Approximately 20 minutes ago, something happened that I felt warranted a quick update.

Noticing that my beverage was nearly empty, I stood up, closed my laptop, and proceeded to the back of the cola-line. I waited patiently as my fellow burrito patrons filled their cups with colas, or in some cases non-colas like Sprite.

As I waited, a man entered the line behind me. He was a member of the U.S. Air Force, as evident by the light brown jumpsuit he was wearing. He caught me glancing back at him and gave me a friendly nod. I returned the gesture.

“My Grandpa was in the Air Force,” I said to him with a smile.

“That’s pretty cool, I suppose,” he replied.

“Yeah, not to freak you out, but his plane was actually shot down during the Korean War. He spent six months in the hospital.”

“Oh,” he said, taken aback. “Sorry to hear that.”

“No worries,” I said. “I probably shouldn’t have even mentioned it. I’m sorry.”

Looking somewhat upset, he shrugged his shoulders.

I was next in line — the on-deck circle of the cola queue — and decided that it was time to do my good deed for the day.

Turning to my new friend behind me, I stepped aside, motioned him forward, and proudly said, “After you, I insist. It’s the least I can do.”

Looking somewhat embarrassed, he stepped forward, uncapped his beverage, and filled it with Cherry Coke.

As he turned to walk away, I nodded once more at him and said, “I just want you to know that I really appreciate the sacrifices you make to keep America safe and strong. It takes a really brave person to do what you do.”

“Dude,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I’m a mechanic at the body shop across the street.”

Figure A