My Great Grandfather: The Tester

Grandfather Erwin kept a jar of candy tantalizingly on the top of the kitchen counter.

The sweets inside the jar tantalized the many children that would come to his house.
Colorful hard candy, peppermint sticks, gobstoppers.
Any child's dream
The best part: the jar wasn't off limits

He never handed out a single piece of candy























Erwin Henderson was a carpenter. He and his wife Twila built their own home in Downy, Idaho. A small, cozy, wooden house with yellow wallpaper and a flowerbed by the green door. Erwin had a large woodshed where he would do his work. Tables, chairs, and his signature work- building blocks for the neighborhood kids

He was a practical man who worked hard
With calluses that never softened
With wrinkles that were wooden
With a mind was sharp as a blade

And he would sit in his straight backed chair, a product of his hands And he would watch the jar

And he would watch the children
Silently preforming his test

For candy out of reach is still obtainable to a clever whit

No chairs or stools in the kitchen- yet to the innovative candy seeker a world of possibility of open
For the innovative candy seeker knows that candy out of reach becomes possible when the towel drawer below is pulled out and used as a stool

The innovative candy seeker knows the cloth under the jar can be pulled

The innovative candy seeker gets the candy



Year after year he watched his great grandchildren preform the test.

Some passed. Some failed.

He never told us who.


But Great Grandfather Erwin was gone just before I could be tested. The jar of sweets, locked away

All that was left was the small house, dozens of straight backed chairs, and boxes of wooden building blocks 

But what about her? Anthem of the heart breaker.

This piece is going to swear. Just once though. I usually abstain from crude language, but in the context of the thoughts going through my mind, there was not a better word. 



And the stage is set. 

Scene 1: Boy likes girl.

It's the girl he's been in love with all his life, the girl next door, who never seems to notice that he even exists, but she smiled at him that one time.

It's the girl who has been his best friend for 3 years. He's seen her without makeup, in tears, sun burnt, acne covered, then though puberty when she suddenly became gorgeous to the world; but he's known she's beautiful throughout the entire journey.

It's the girl who sits next to him in math. She jokes with him and helps him with his homework.

It's the girl who has freckles. The girl with white blond hair or curly black locks. The girl with straight As or the girl with a rebellious streak. The girl who wear tee-shirts. The girl who wears dresses. IT DOESN'T MATTER.

Because he loves her. He loves her so much and when he sees her he gets butterflies. He loves her because of her soul, not her body. And she makes him so happy.

Beautiful.

Day after day her watches her, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she feels the same way.

Except she doesn't. 

He texts her everyday with "I miss you" text messages. He asks her out and hopes she says yes. He buys her flowers and chocolate, knows all of her favorite songs, he can tell when she's feeling sad when no one else can, and it gives him so much pain that no matter what he does she does not retaliate the feelings. 

Because she doesn't miss him. She doesn't want to go out with him. She doesn't care about what he says or does it will not change the way she feels.  She keeps saying no.


And he and his friends look at her with daggers of hatred because what a cold-hearted, condescending, insensitive, obviously insecure, BITCH. Sorry. She's not even pretty. She's not good enough for him anyway. She's a brat and he's lucky he sure dogged a bullet. 

Her friends shake their heads at her as they ask how she can be so heartless, and "why can't you just give him a chance, and he's such a good guy.  And it would make him so happy if you went out with him. And look at how you torture him. You're the reason people kill themselves. SMH SMH SMH "

Scene ends with the heart broken. The "why doesn't she return my love?" The "how can she be so cruel?" Boy is sad. Boy doesn't know how he will ever get over her, if it's even worth it. Poor boy.

And here the audience cries. They have all felt heartbreak. They feel for boy.

They all ask "why?" They all ask "why is love so empty?" No one cares to ask, "what about her?"


* * *          * ** ** *         *       *       * *         * * *            * * *   **       **       * * * *            ***    


Scene 2: Her

She has no idea he feels this way. She tries to be kind to everyone, smile at strangers, help classmates out with math. She has lots of friends that are guys that she's known since forever. When she sees him, he's sad, and she doesn't know why. She tries to help him, but this seems to only make him sadder.

"Ignorance is bliss." -Thomas Gray

BUT SOMETIMES SHE DOES KNOW.

She hears every dagger and feels every every word spoken. She has a heart and it's breaking but not because someone doesn't love her back, but because she cannot possibly return the value of love that has been invested in her and the debt she feels grows everyday. She sees the boy, broken-hearted and broke, spending his love on something that was never for sale. She wants to shake the boy and scream stop! The love you pour falls into a bucket with a crack; a bucket that will never fill and when it's done you will find your rivers dry and vegetation crumbling because you have thrown your most valuable resource onto the dry desert ground. 

No amount of feelings he has for her can create feelings in her for him. 

It kills her that she hurts him. And it kills her that she has no control over it. Her heart isn't cold, it's alive and beating and just as important as his.

The more he pushes the more it hurts. He tells her she is the only thing that can make him happy. He tells her that she makes life meaningful and without her he doesn't know if he wants to live. He tells her she's beautiful and thinks that's enough to win her over. 

But she just doesn't like him. Her friends shake their heads at her indifference.

But she just doesn't like him. He could be the most brilliant, attractive, funny guy, but it would not change the way she feels.

Scene closes with the heart breaker. Guilt driven loneliness. Ashamed for feeling a way that should not be shameful. Girl is sorry. She really is. But girl can't change.

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It's not just him and her. It's her and him. It's the gay guy who falls for the straight one or other way around. It's every love sick human who has ever found their love sold and every person who can't be bought.

It hurts to be heart broken. But don't forget the pain of the heart breaker. Because both have a heart.

And loving someone never guarantees love.

Close scene.
Roll credits. 

Stop telling me to take off my hat

When a baby is born, the one of the first things you do is put a hat on its head.

The head is the area of intense blood flow, and the vessels of the scalp are particularly vulnerable to external cooling. The blood drops in temperature, lowering the core body temperature.

A baby's head is also larger in proportion to the rest of its body, and often doesn't have hair to insulate the delicate skin; thus exacerbating the process of hypothermia.

It is very important that their head is protected.

Hats from the moment we are born.  Both physical and social. After all, baby girls get pink hats and baby boys get blue. Categorized from the beginning.

People who are Construction workers. Bicyclists. Fire fighters. They wear hats to protect them.  Obviously a construction worker is more then a construction worker, and can have dreams and aspirations and personify traits that have nothing to do with building buildings.

But the hat keeps that worker safe.

Call me fake if you want, but just because I don't show the sad parts of my personality often does not mean the happy parts I do show are fake. I wear my musician's hat. My artist's hat. My "I love calculus" hat.
My happy hat when I'm sad.
My intimidating hat when I'm scared.

Because sometimes hats protect the parts of us that are most vulnerable. Sometimes you just have to suit up and do the job.

Wearing a hat doesn't make you fake. How can it? It's yours, and you choose to wear it.

I don't care about the hats others put on me. I only have one head. And I choose what's on it.

Stop telling me to take my hat off. Because of I took it off just to appease people, that would be the fake part.

I'm going to try extremely hard not to make this cliche

The "backspace" button is by far the most overused key on the keyboard. 

Actually the " " button might be.

Whatever. 

While the " " button is probably necessary, the "backspace" button is not. 

Except for spelling errors. I have a lot of those.

Whatever.

Honestly though, that "backspace" is used far too often. Personally, for every 25 words I've write, I've deleted 5 of them. Either I think what I said could be said in a different way, or, more likely then not, I want to take back what I've said. 

Or there is a spelling error. That's probably the number one reason actually.

Whatever.

5:20 words. Deleted:kept. That's a lot. Not counting spelling.

In a year, I probably type 300 pages. Assuming I write in double space, that's 75,000 words. That means I've deleted 18,750 words. That's 75 imperfect pages I've deleted in order to produce 300 pages that I think are pristine. 

That's a lot of pages. 1,350 pages in my entire life.

Expect I wasn't typing pages when I was 0 or 2 I guess. So a few less then 1,350 pages I've deleted. But that's still a lot of pages.

Assuming everyone is as meticulous with their writing as me, 525,000,000,000 pages are deleted every year. 


That's assuming that everyone writes double space. Also that everyone writes. But I guess there are people who don't write at all. But there are also people who write for a living. So I'll say it averages out. I might be off by a few billion.

Whatever.

It's still a lot of pages. It's like Atlas Shrugged times 450 million. 

Shoot. 

I hope some of those pages weren't as good and revolutionary as Atlas Shrugged. 

Some probably were. 

Whatever. 

That's a lot of ideas. A lot of revolution and passion deleted because it wasn't "good enough" or could be "said better." Or because we wanted to take them back. 

Imagine all those text messages typed but not sent. Letters and emails written in anger and frustration, or love and adoration- words deleted and papers ripped, for fear of what the reader would think if they knew what we thought. 

Every 'politically controversial' topic or 'offensive phrase' that we have used that "backspace" button on. Every comment we've typed on Facebook that we've never posted because what will they THINK and I don't know if I can STAND UP for what I BELIEVE like that and what if they think I'm STUPID or IGNORANT and I don't want anyone to FEEL that way about me and I CARE so much about what everyone THINKS about me and I want my writing to be PERFECT because I HAVE TO BE PERFECT.

I mean, or there's just spelling errors. 

I have a lot of those.

I'm really bad at spelling. 

Whatever.

So I have been writing this introduction without using the backspace.

Except for spelling .

Whatever. 

Honestly, you have no idea how much pressure there is to type everything right the first time. I've probably wanted to restart this introduction like 5 times and talk about something a little more germane. Maybe talk about something deep and typical like how dark life is, I kind of feel like that's how a lot of the writing in this class is going to be. Not that it's bad. I just really don't want to be cliche I guess. 

Shoot I feel like I maybe offended someone by just saying those things about how been deep and philosophical is cliche. ahh I'm sorry

No backspace though  

Only forward 

Whatever. 

I choose the name I did "aa Jack Napier" for some deep philosophical reason that my intro may or may not allude to.

Secretly the "aa" is literally just because I wanted my name to be listed first on the alphabetical list on writers. 

Maybe that in itself is a deep and philosophical reason. 

Whatever. 

I want this blog to be about what I actually think. That's why for not only this post, but for every post I make, I will not be using the backspace. If there's anyplace for raw and imperfect writing, it's probably this class. I want to be real. 

Except for spelling. 

I'm really bad at spelling.