Cracker Barn! (Tales from the Vault)

Some Midwestern Spring Day, 1997

Yesterday, Shayne asked how paper is made. We talked about trees, waterways, paper mills…and then I mentioned, “Mommy makes paper sometimes.” So today, at Shayne's request, Shayne and I made paper.

We’ve actually enjoyed this activity together before, but Shayne’s curiosity did not extend beyond swirling his hands in the slurry of pulp and flowers in the mixing bowl. To him, it was probably just another curious thing Mommy does when she might otherwise be mopping floors.

Today was different; he was pursing his own interest in the art of papermaking. We gathered our materials:

• Blue piece of construction paper and some leftover brown package wrap
• Casting molds by Paper KrazeTM 
• The Blender!
• 2 entire sets of mixing bowls (Shayne enjoys kitchen accessories almost as much as Lego blocks)
• Essential oil of lavenderarious dried flowers and seeds 
• Enough water to make mopping the floor later a cinch

In my opinion, the most tedious part of papermaking is the tearing. I usually do this while reading or talking on the phone. Shayne, however, being the consciously-living soul that he is, found this part of the process most rewarding. Something about watching a child moving objects, releasing all of that energy, brings new awareness to mundane tasks. I began to relish the satisfying act of freeing paper fibers from the bonds of uniformity—Fly, little fibers, fly!

Ahem. OK. So, we amassed enough confetti for a crude celebration, and dumped it into The Blender along with a couple of mugs of water. Shayne added essential oil of lavender, and all I can say is my cabin fever headache vanished at the first whiff—go aromatherapy! I would normally recommend a couple of drops of oil, but 17 drops seemed to work well for Shayne. Maybe we will use the finished paper ornaments as tennis shoe sachets…

Once Shayne’s ears were covered, I switched on The Blender and swirled our paper squares into a pulpy, purple soup. To this we added leftover seeds from last season for texture, and to stretch the dubious worth of our project past its aesthetic limits into yet another level of recycling: Seed paper can be planted in the earth! (In fact, a few years ago the dregs of one batch of paper I made for Christmas sprouted a garden of marigolds beside our composter the following spring.) Shayne dumped in small sunflower seeds, while I sprinkled in mesclun salad mix seed and flax seed. To compliment the generous measure of oil, we added dried lavender blossoms and tea rose petals.

After enthusiastically stirring our liquid paper, Shayne chose a mold tray with a birdhouse theme. I showed him how to lift the mix out of the bowl by the fork-full, allow it to drain a bit, and then pack it carefully into the depressions in the tray. He preferred the task of pressing our designs with a natural sponge to absorb the excess water. 

After the tray was filled with damp pulp and set aside, I slogged off to the garden to dispose of the leftovers. Meanwhile, Shayne located a chopstick and began banging out a tune on the empty mixing bowls and blender. When I returned, we filled the bowls with water to different depths. Shayne then proceeded to drum a convincing rendition of "All You Need Is Love", as I rescued my seeds, tossing a cracker into the zip-lock bag before closing it. 

"Why are you doing that?" Shayne wanted to know. I explained that it absorbs moisture in sugar dispensers, and I was trying the method with our seeds. "Can I have a cracker to absorb all this water in my bowl?

"Uh, sure. But you might need quite a few…"

The cracker rafts sopped up all the water they could hold, as Shayne propelled them around the bowl with his chopstick, humming an invented song. Suddenly, he froze and fell silent, the universal sign of eureka. A moment later, Shayne dispatched me to rescue one of his crackers from certain disintegration. 

"Lift it up," he instructed, directing me with his hands. "Now, put it in the this farm mold very carefully."  I complied, as he began singing, "A cracker barn! A crack-er barn!" piggy-backing another Beatles tune.  Then he carefully smooshed the wet cracker into the mold's hayloft crevices, just as I’d shown him with the birdhouses earlier. After sponging off the excess (slimy) water, Shayne sighed with satisfaction, and hopped down from his chair to set the barn tray beside the others on the dining room table:

Recycled Cracker!

The Mortician’s Apprentice

Now, you sit here wondering about my scar. I see you staring. There's no shame in it, my scar or you staring at it, I mean.

When my daddy was coming up, you weren't supposed to stare, so he learned how to watch out of the corner of his eye for the person he wanted a closer look at to look away. Then he'd sneak a good, long stare.

He told us bedtime stories that would curl our hair some nights. He'd break out the good whiskey and pull me onto his knee and tell my kid brother Kenny, "Load my pipe." then he'd tell us what he'd seen at our age.

"Hold your nose, you don't want to smell this," he told us one time, and we did, half expecting him to poot. Instead he told us of the man he saw in a diner one with gangrene so bad on his big ole foot that the flesh was all black and pulled back to the bone. He said that bone was white as my new permanent tooth.

We could smell the rotten frog smell of that dead foot still attached to a living man. Daddy said he went back to watching out of the corner of his eye as the man dragged that foot right out of the diner and on down the road.

So when one of us kids got a mind to climb a tree and fell out scraping up a knee or elbow, we'd run around the yard scaring each other with the bloody skin, yelling, "gangrene, gangrene!" while the rest of us screamed. We loved gore, thanks to Daddy's staring stories. I guess I write about zombies now for the same reason.

Yeah, I'm a published writer, with clippings and everything. The local newspaper lets me write the obits in exchange for printing my zombie stories. That's how I got this scar, chasing a zombie.

The undertaker at Beezer Funeral Home gave me a tip that a famous local butcher died under gruesome circumstances and I may want to check him out for research purposes. Of course, I made a beeline for Beezer.

Every time I enter the iron gates of the graveyard, the back way to Beezer, Daddy's corny joke comes to mind, "Why is the graveyard so popular? I don't know, but people are dying to get in there!" It's a comfort to hear his voice in my head, especially when I'm trudging through all those spirits. Graveyards are just lousy with ghosts. Haunted, period.

But even scarier are the undead. When a spirit hops inside a corpse, you're just asking for a staring story. That's why I have to see the goriest recently deceased Beezer has to offer, so I can stare as long as I like, imagine sticking a spirit inside that corpse, then write about it.. Bam! Zombie fic.

So I advanced on the slab. Poor Badlatch. I got the biggest steaks out of him back in the day. He gave me those little Cajun filets for almost nothing, too. Wrap them up in bacon, make my Mama's mouth water.

Now he's the meat. And not quite neat. Before Betty gets in here, I can sneak a few shots on my iPhone, I think. A little HD video. Pre-FX, he's a mess. They're talking open casket, but I'm thinking closed. Betty's magic is spectacular, she could make a fortune in Hollywood with her make-up artistry. But still...

McCullen's dead on. This corpse screams zombie. I slip him my milk money and get set up to write my best work.

Apparently Badlatch ran his hand through the thin slicer, after testing the knives. McCullen mumbled something about a domestic dispute while shoving my pair of Lincolns in his pocket. He crossed himself as he left me with the body.

I began with a headshot, a close-up of his blow to the cranium, presumably with a meat cleaver. Lots of skull, a few splinters matted in his blood-encrusted hair. I'll admit to gagging, I mean, I knew this guy.

I just stared. The iPhone clicked away as if of its own accord. Then I looked down at his massive chest, still shrouded in a blood-stained apron--cow's blood, his blood, who knew? And I saw something expand near the neckline of the apron.

A long, raspy moan filled my brain. It was probably a post-rigor gas release, I told myself. But then Badlatch's jaw started to clench and release. The rasping became intentional, like he was trying to talk.

Dead men tell no tales, but this butcher had a lot to say. In the next few seconds--on video, no doubt!--Badlatch let me know he was not the grateful dead, "no!" "Jezebel!" and "hell" were clearly audible. The poet in me admired him for rhyming.

Stock-still, holding my breath, I watched the enormity of Badlatch reanimate. He labored to breathe, then raise his wrecking ball of a head. I reanimated, too, leaping back a few feet, as evidenced later on the iPhone footage. I spied a pool of blood where his head had been.

Somewhere beneath my terror, my soul recognized his. Not quite ready to believe it, I geared up for a zombie apocalypse. Badlatch, King of the Zombies, was rising right before my eyes!

It is intrinsic in science to try to prove our beliefs. If I had paused a moment, I may have cut myself on Occam's Razor, but my body was already following my belief in the undead. I found myself on the defensive.

Badlatch lifted his hand to his head and howled at the bloody patch where he'd been struck hours earlier. A huff like a lion's roar began deep in his throat. His eyes still closed, he hoisted his body from the slab, knocking it over as he scrambled to stand. The instruments on the table next to him sprayed the wall above my crouched form, a scalpel nicking my forehead.

Watching Badlatch from the corner of my eye, I groped for a weapon among the sharps. Then, puny scalpel in hand, I righted myself, squinting through the ribbon of blood from my own wound.

My iPhone in one hand, my weapon in the other, I paused for his next move. Badlatch whimpered. Something inside my fear softened. I pushed away compassion with a grunt of will. You can hear that in the recording.

Then it began, the blind howling of a wounded animal. Looking back, I think, poor butcher. But at the time, I'm ashamed to say I took the opportunity to advance upon the creature with a pathetic threatening swish of my tiny blade.

That's when his eyes opened. Taking in the scene, Badlatch beheld my form with a look of fright. "Mary," he cried, before crumpling into a heap at my feet.

We had a game when we were coming up, I guess to break the tension. When one of us kids would whine, another would try to think of a song to match. Usually we sang to Johnny, because he was the baby and whined a lot. So in that moment, Hendrix echoed through my mind, "and the wind cried...Mary."

I bolted out the door to find McCullen, and ran right into him. “Zombie! Badlatch!” I tried to explain. McCullen, cool as a cucumber, sauntered past me into the room and knelt beside the giant. On his way, he handed me a handkerchief from his pocket without looking at me in a practiced display of automatic decorum, presumably to wipe away the blood from my nicked forehead.

McCullen calmly gained control of the catastrophic happenings with the skill of a man accustomed to zombies. His purposeful motion of rolling Badlatch onto his back, checking his neck for a pulse, and stepping away dial 911 on the landline gave me a moment to begin to feel ashamed.

“—and bring that Rookie Calhoun, he needs to recall his latest delivery.” McCullen hung up the phone and placed his hands on his hips to survey the destruction. “This happens sometimes,” he explained. I nodded, still not sure what had happened, but fairly positive that Badlatch was headed for the hospital when the paramedics arrived.

“Sometimes they come back,” McCullen shrugged, as if the dead could make the conscious decision to spring back to this life after making the journey to the afterlife. He sighed. Badlatch groaned. “Good thing you were here to prevent the wrong spirit from getting to him first.”

What? My mind reeled. What wrong spirit? The words “this happens sometimes” took on a new meaning. What happens other times, I wondered. I thought of Betty the post-mortem makeup artist working with McCullen to prepare the body, drain it of blood, the key to life. Is that why the tradition of preserving the body had gained popularity? I’d ask her over coffee sometime.

The idea of embalming as zombie prevention struck me. As if the veil had been lifted at last, I was seeing behind the Funeral Director’s curtain. Suddenly McCullen was a general on the front lines of holding back the zombie apocalypse. No wonder there were no undead out there in the cemetery digging themselves up and terrorizing the town.

So standing there in the middle of the mortuary with dried blood on my forehead where this scar is today, I had an epiphany. I began to center my stories on the true hero of zombie prevention, the mortician. My stories would forevermore include the zombies fleeing morticians wielding embalming fluid, the foil to their folly.

Those spirits I sensed out in the graveyard were lurking, just waiting for a moment to catch an un-embalmed victim unsupervised. Because, like Daddy used to say when we passed the graveyard, “that’s where the dead people live.”

Well not on that day. No, we’d fought to reunite the right spirit with his body and won. Badlatch lives. OK, he’s a little less generous with his cuts of meat these days. And he has been known to toss a meat cleaver at the occasional customer who complains about it. But he’s mostly back to normal.

Badlatch’s ex-girlfriend, Mary, was the next body I examined at the mortuary that year. It was all a great mystery how she managed to trap herself in her own basement only to be gnawed to death by rats. But staring at her chewed flesh was quite inspiring. I have a clipping of the zombie fic about her predicament it if you’d like to read it. Because whoever said truth was stranger than fiction had never read one of my stories.

Smoke Ring

Marley slaps the butt of wisdom

And begs a smoke from the choking man.

From her stool, she surveys life,
Takes a drag, and nags her neighbor,

“Give me your hat, Vince, you dented it all wrong.
The dip goes along here.”

She squints as the smoke laughs its lurid,
Snaking path past her bloodshot eyes.

And Vince gropes after his prop, the
Wince of uncrowned humility playing atop

A whine, “It’s mine, I want it like I had it.”
His habit carved in pine,

So easy to indent with her talons,
Smoothing the felt, replacing benevolence spent

In misused crags of his frown.
“You need a good woman,” she narrows it down.

Reading his fear with a sniff of regret
Before stubbing out her lent cigarette,

Brushing away a phantom curl and sliding
Her legs slowly against his in the hush of his terror.

Because what he wants is a good, stiff drink
To blind his mind to memory, blink away

The gal who once touched the brim of his ego
And smoothed the lick of him on her mouth.

A snort of mocking from the corner not meant for him
Locks down his ambivalence.

“You are a puzzle, Vince.”
She spreads her hands, laying them like cards on the bar,

Empty-handed, straight flush of vanity, sanitizing
His eyes with surrender.

“You give up so easy, but what you’ve got
Locked up in there is pure gold, you’ve sold me.

“You gotta give me the key, a hint at the
Combination.” His hesitation fills her chest.

She strokes her shoulder, consoling herself,
As she feels his soul freeze, his knees buckle.

“I don’t know, Marley,” he mutters to her toes.
She closes her eyes, “You don’t want to know.

“But that’s OK, Vince, I’ve got sense enough
To play one last song and go on home.”

She scoots her jeans from the stool and
Leaves a cool wake, stirring stagnant air.

She closes in on the juke box and
Bums a dime from the bouncer draped over the neon sign.

Three good cries for a quarter, a dime buys just one.
She bites her lip and sighs before pressing the confession

Of a temptress: Willie Nelson, a man crossing the line
In dress, intention, not to mention convention.

That seals the distress. Vince will wait out the rest
Of the night alone. He, too, will go on home,

Leaving comfort for the known sour sheets
And incomplete thoughts of a man who’s grown

Narrow and cold in the safety of his jingling coins,
Mismatched socks, and sweat-sogged boots.

His head burns with what might have ignited
Within at her caress, what the mess of his life

Might have fractured into, letting in the fire
Of feeling again… The pulse of voiced pain,

The gain of laundered thoughts of a man insane
From his injuries. As he flees even the mildest degree of sympathy,

Marley saunters to his thighs, dips his hat with a tap and
Stares hard into his hazel eyes.

“If not me, let someone in,” she grins, as he places a
Trembling hand at the nape of her moist neck

And tastes the cigarette, the rum and coke, the choking
Spit of regret in her sweet mouth before jerking away in liquid anger,

The nerve twitching in his face, the stroke breaking through his consciousness.
He hears the bell, the itch of escape, but his boots stay

On the rung of his chair, and he sees her hair brushing
Her cheek. He tries to speak, but the air becomes too thick with need.

So he grasps his hand behind her head, as a tear from the sting of smoke,
Or the spring of relief,  traces her nose to her rosebud lips.

He licks this salt, eats her anguish, ingesting it, his diet not deferred--
He dines on his own often.

“Maybe two deads are better than one,” she quips. Then his lips again
Meet hers in forced risk.

She lifts his hat and flattens her curls with its damp weight,
Crawling inside his psyche to transfer

His prayers to her God. She reaches in with veteran fists
To wrestle free his dimming spirit, as faces flash before his reddened vision.

He presses against her, crumbled at last, his past fresh before
Her blinking gaze, a haze of sacrifice.

A smoke ring rises from the ashes, signaling the flash
Of change in the timbre of a worn out man’s survival.

“Strange how I can be with you,” he murmers to the drawl
Of the music and the stench of swollen consequence.

They’ll share a view of a dying star from
His roof, proof that salvation comes in a bar.

Web of Dreams

He is caught in the web

Of un-purchased dreams,

For it seems if an artist

Is to cater to his audience,

He must market to those

He cannot call friends,

Those who dine at tables

Where he is the waiter,

Where he cannot smoke

In the cigar room,

But must step out back

With the cook, chat by the

Dumpster, watching rats run.

His place outside the rat race,

Where those with means

Say he is lucky to live,

Will not give a glance

To his canvases,

For they know him as a

Servant, not a painter.

But when he finds

True like minds

In a tiny gallery

With high rent

In a location two doors

From his boss’s chic bistro,

He knows hope.

This wallspace

Becomes the place

Of dreams to him.

On a whim, he flashes

iPhone photos

Of his talent

And they nod and listen

As he watches their eyes.

This web that snared

His future, has caught

This couple, too,

Their dreams intersecting.

We can free each other,

He thinks, we can be

Who we are together.

And the art has a slow start,

But it sells to those who dine.

Until one evening,

Long after his stint

Waiting on time

And tables,

He is able to call himself

An artist.

And the couple says,

He was sent to pay the rent.

And he says, my art pays

My way.

And they become friends

For a lifetime

In a new web

Of fulfilled dreams.

Frustrated Dragon Slayer Battles…Locusts

Let’s say your empire stretches as far as the eye can see. It’s been a struggle through the years to protect it from attack, and your drawbridge opens onto an elaborate display of your stuffed dragon collection. You’ve slain them all with the sword at your waist, trusty blade of steel. You wear a few scars, but overall find yourself in vibrant health.

As you look out of your highest tower, a dark cloud can be spied in the farthest field to the East. It’s not rain, not smoke, but a cloud of locusts. They’re devouring your barley crop. There goes the ale for next year! You send out the knights to address the issue, but decide to ride with them to deal with the invasion.

After Googling insect infestation solutions, you set out, a little wary and without much experience but full of confidence. What’s a few locusts?  I’ve battled dragons and won every time! Near the field, the loud munching and flying noises unsettle you. It’s a plague of Biblical proportions, darn.

They’ve leveled the barley and are headed for the wheat. Swishing swords at them, your knights prove their incompetence. You search the skies for birds, but no luck.

According to Google, the only other predator of any merit is, of all things, the dragon. Oh, well, none in sight. No wonder, you think, touching your trusty sword.

Over the next few days, you order tents to protect the crops, but the locusts chew right through them. The villagers are out of food by Tuesday. Your castle is locked up tight by Wednesday, but those pests are infiltrating every crevice. You’re picking one out of your beer when you get an idea.

Time for a bit of entertainment! Calling together your merry players, you shove one of the stuffed dragons into the courtyard and order them to scream and run around. The knights appear and as the dead dragon begins to advance upon them, they slay him good. 

You peek out from behind the black cloth disguising your place on the catapult, where the dragon’s strings are suspended from your arms, articulating his motions. The locusts are watching, no longer munching. After a moment, they begin to form a cloud of assembly.

Flying with all their might toward the stuffed dragon, they surge. What’s up with that? You dangle the black cloth down from the catapult between the locusts and the dragon on the end of your sword and swish! They fall to the ground. The merry players stomp them beneath the cloth with a mighty, gruesome crunching.

A whoop goes up from the people, your people. No way, you think, but that crazy plan of yours actually worked! Not quite like you expected, but you did something, you worked together with the artists and improvised the destruction of the plague.

That night, as the calm and quiet meets the cloudless sky, you spy from your castle tower the silhouettes of twenty stuffed dragons guarding your empire. After a moment of reflection, you still cannot think of the moral of the story. But you thank Google, toast with the last of the ale, and survey the stragglers of the grand, impromptu celebration below.

They ate the bread and cheese, drank the ale and felt secure in the kingdom of such a clever leader. Sometimes it’s good to have a villain to remind everyone what it’s like to have their lives threatened. But only if you can kill it, of course.

Your family, like the knights, are snuggled onto their mattresses in their respective halls as you tack the black cloth to the windowsill and unfurl it down the length of the tower as a banner. The locust guts smashed into the cloth have dried into a pattern, and in the moonlight it resembles the shape of a dragon.

Man Down: Can You Survive The End Without One?

Inspired by this.

I live in Southwest Florida where the threats to mankind are skin cancer, heart disease, and running out of alcohol during a hurricane. The first two are very serious, but the last is usually handled through a bug-out plan of watching your Weather Channel iPhone app while hitting ABC Wines on the way to the airport, destination: Midwestern hotel and spa.

But what if your credit card, your plane ticket, and your man disappeared all at once? What gold digger's ready for that? This middle class Gulf gal’s got it covered.

My daddy can't wait for the apocalypse. He's been planning for it all his life. I grew up rolling my eyes at his prophecies. As an adult child of a would-be prophet, I have deleted his rambling emails--once he even boasted about selling freeze dried food at gun shows prepping for Y2K. He wants to believe.

Given that heritage, I've had lifetime to think about a survival plan, and mine was always The MaggieB: well-stocked, girl-captained boat off the Florida coast decked out in orange trees and ingredients for fish-fry breading. Any real Gulf girl eats her catch after a day of fishing the Everglades, and recently I've incorporated a kayak and a hammock into my plan.

My little girl daydream of escaping the end of the world didn't include a man. I have one today I'd die for, but what if he dies for me first? A girl's gotta have her own bug-out plan, mostly to avoid bug-eyed prepper boys.

I have great teeth--no dental mental breakdown in my apocalypse! I don't wear makeup or curl my long hair, and I don't get needles full of goo injected into my face. I don't need injections because I know the magic of Vitamin C and aloe Vera gel. In your Apocalypse's Garden in the Shade, grow some Clary Sage, some lavender, a bit of the grape.

And forget investing in gold, you're growing it! Early in The End, Botoxed babes will trade their jewelry chest of gold for your naturally handcrafted anti-aging serums. You'll be rich!

At least you'll have something to pay for something when something is worth anything again. Barter beats banks, but "gold has never been worth zero" at least to governments. Your power lies in the hoarding of designer gold earrings from women who think younger looking skin is the key to survival. Laugh all the way to the government underground bank with the spoils, girlfriend! ;)

Why I'm Against Ripped Stockings

The raped prostitute look is in among alternative girls. I remember punk, new wave, and grunge... And then my son was old enough to take over. Assaulted Sailor Moon is the new punk. This is convenient for the guys who already have no respect for women. And pedophiles. But what girl does this look work for?

 I've seen the self-hatred that causes 16-year-olds to push a pound of metal into their faces and inject the entire surface of their bodies with ink that will not scrub off. Those girls have already been violated and have learned from it to violate themselves. But the fresh ones, the virginal girls who look raunchy as a fashion statement, what's up with that?

No, I'm really not just jealous, I'm angry. Looking "Juicy" in the sorority house isn't your thing, I get that. But understand Japanese culture and the Lolita style with me for a moment. It comes from a society that both pretends to revere and actually violates women. Prostitution is exalted, and women have little hope of attaining liberation. They are the equivalent of slaves. And they are sold as such.

 The manga trend means something else in the US market, but it's supposed to turn guys on a little bit. And the wealthy Japanese can afford to dress their girls like Sailor Moon. But in the US, where we have ComicCon, where guys who love comics either make a fortune as software designers, or live in their Mom's basement way past high school--or both!--the fantasy of having a real girl is something of a pipe dream. (Blow Link's ocarina and you'll get about as far.) So if any girl will do, and they cannot be attained in US culture unless seen as equals, why would girls in US culture dress in such a way as to suggest they are trashed out rape victims?

What they are is legally untouchable. And perhaps that's the key. It's flaunting a look that is both a tease to men, intended to touch something dark inside them, and a middle finger to underscore the fact that men cannot touch the girl wearing the getup. Our society protects even alt girls who dress like they're asking for it. And they're not asking for it, if they even know what "it" is.

They've never been raped, hopefully, and the look of young, violated prostitute is just fashion. It holds appeal for the girl who needs a lot of confused attention. And if she shows up in the ER looking that way, it might be a foregone conclusion that she's been battered.

So to those with misplaced self-mutilation fashion sense, perhaps the coolest thing is not wearing your creations, but putting them to use on the set of Law & Order SVU, or in a nice haunted house. After all, Halloween isn't every day. (Yes, that's a Ministry lyric reference circa 1981, I realize.)

 As a footnote, I've never understood the desire to opt for stockings, ripped or intact. They're hot, confining, and too often fetishistic. But then, I’m 4 blocks from the beach, so it's not even an option.

Generation Chameleon... Whaaa?

Here's how it goes for Gen X (until recently, a meme-free joint):

Weird hair in high school 
Hang out at the mall & smoke
Long hair in college
Hang out at the bar & smoke
Live together with roomies
Lose religion, or find it, or change it, or forget it
Live together with lovers
Get married
Stop smoking
Have a kid 
Maybe another one
Get divorced
Get depressed
Date a barrista & feel old
Shop at the mall & smoke outside
Blame, blame, self-help 
Consider "Addiction"
Find religion, or renew it, or create it
Reunite with old friends
Shop at Whole Foods (run into your mom, envy her cart)
Consider Botox (too young/too natural/too broke)

Get remarried
Go back to school
Put kid(s) in college
Start a dream business
...and that brings us up to date.

Perhaps some of the details are different or still in the future. Perhaps you escaped the big D or secondary education, you rebel.

But if you ate popcorn (or in my case, Milk Duds) in the theater to The Muppet Movie, Star Wars, and The Breakfast Club in that order, you're familiar with the life I mentioned.

The biggest expectation of your future was that there would be a shaky economy often, social security checks never, and there may be an apocalypse anyway, so plenty of time to worry about that later. 

It's later. 

Many of us are still Imaginating our post-apocalyptic reincarnations as dirt farmers, some of us are freaking out about how much savings we've blown this year trying to maintain homeostasis, some of us have accepted the hand-to-mouth lifestyle as permanent and moved back in with our parents (again), some of us are still smug as a bug in a rug waiting to get stepped on, telling ourselves we're a little smarter and planned a little better than others of us. All of us need a rich daddy to swoop in and make this a good Disney movie. Down in front, you're blocking the flatscreen, pass the low-fat popcorn, and stop smoking pot in front of my kids, bro!

Consider this: Our kids are the 3rd generation after the apocalypse. 

It's already happened, sometime in the 60s. The fallout is still raining down, due to end this year according to the Mayans, but about to clear. Our kids are going to clean it up and carry on. They have friends all over the world. Literally. Thank you, Al Gore for inventing the internetz. 

Our kids would consider their apocalypse the satellites falling out of space & crashing their wifi, but they'd rebuild an infrastructure inside of a week. After all, they raised us, to some extent, and made our lousy keyboard music into mathematical genius, if not quite musical genius. Most of them are stuck somewhere in the morph cycle from Dora the Explorer to Epic Fail, but at least none of them have a blog! 

They're not very introspective, to their credit, and they live with regrets, but only long enough to text them, or blab them in IRC chat (how retro!) & on Facebook to a group of friends you're not privy to. (Two words: keylogger > passwords.) 

They know how to share, don't value privacy, think piracy is normal, and don't hold any conspiracy theories dear. They have the morals of our grandparents, hidden deep under a pile of dirty Hot Topic tees and old cellphone chargers. At some point, they will rise from the ashes and Not go to the University of Phoenix. 

They'll go to work. Work-y work. It won't involve a keyboard, it may look a lot like a video game, it will support your grandkids, and possibly you and what's left of the detonated Babyboomers with their rotting, over-Botoxed bedsores. (Not you, Mom, you're still my hero!) 

The best part is, they're busy building the future through relationships while we're still trying to figure out whether or not God exists and how to grow tomatoes on the porch. They're busy using technology in innovative ways to thwart our ability to monitor them--it's all a game to them. 

They’re unburdened, unfettered, and undisciplined. The ones not on Ritalin will show the others how to live wild and free, no worries! They know there's a God, but that's not something you have to go searching for or even talk about. 

They trust torrent uploads, but not drug dealers--they grew up with virtual viruses & their parents' "addictions", so trust is hard-won as much as it is hardwired with them. They work the system, changing it as they go--did you know they can listen to iPods in class?!? 

They don't ask why, they tell you why not. They are the most quickly adapting, information-raiding, inventive humans to ever touch the earth. By the time they reach White House age, they will have made it virtual or something. They'll have devices better than jetpacks, just watch.

We're all thumbs to them, especially when we text. And they're right. We were hobbled by our parents, but they're no victims. The Chameleon Generation is going to blend in with the trees while changing trees on a cellular level. 

But be not afraid, they're still human, they'll survive. And as gamers they know that you may die, and that's how you learn to win. But sometimes you have to upgrade your hardware. Which reminds me, I need to hock more designer shoes to buy that new gaming system, because somebody's got a 17th birthday coming up!