Confirmation...

Confirmation received, Big Brother stepped in, the markets are up (despite what I thought yesterday) and all is right with the world. I'm an idiot. Or not, we'll see. I just looked at the Dow. After skyrocketing up this morning, after an overnight infusion of money, it's dropping again.

Anyway. I'm as bored with all of this as you probably are and if you're not, if you're still interested, there's always Zero Hedge, The Economist, Financial Times or any other of hundreds of sites.

So, no financials, no econ, no baseball. Done, done and done, so what's left?

I dunno, so I think I'm going to punt (<= Sports Term!). Here's a flash piece that was well received last week.

The prompt was 'Apartment Block'

Stories at Meadow Park

Ed and Midge were new to the Meadow Park Retirement Community. Just moved in brand new and trying to squeeze in, to make themselves at home among the more senior members. It wasn’t hard, because most people were friendly, but it wasn’t easy, either.

Midge busied herself playing tennis and bridge.

Ed busied himself playing golf and sitting around the clubhouse, sipping tonic water with a fresh slice of lime. No one needed to know it didn’t have gin in it. It just was there to give the appearance of a convivial fellow.

“Yep,” Tony said with a shake of his head over his beer, “I could tell you stories that’d make your hair curl.”

“Sounds like you had quite the time. Forty years, you said?”

“More’n. Closer to forty-one, but” a shrug, “who’s countin’.”

“That’s a long time to be in one place. You must’ve been pretty happy.”

“Ye-ah. Ya might say we were, mostly, but there were some pretty rough times, too.” Tony’s sky-blue eyes looked over the table. “Had a gal, prettiest gal you’d ever see, tall, slim… She lived on the top floor. Had lots of fellas comin’ round but nothin’ out of the ordinary, no complaints from the neighbors or nuthin’. Just a lot of visitors, sometimes women, too, for the parties she had.” The lids crinkled in a smile and Tony leaned closer, “Didn’t know it for the longest time, but she was a call girl. Runnin’ her business outta her apartment.”

“No!”

“Yep. Ada found out, by accident; heard someone talkin’ about it when she was at the market one day. One of the other girls was there, chattin’ with a friend and mentioned this gal’s name, said, ‘you should go see her. She knows people and can get you set up, too’. We started payin’ closer attention after that and, ‘bout six months later called the cops.”

“Why? Why’d you wait so long?”

“No reason to, before, but one night she had a party. It got loud. A coupla guys started fighting, throwing things and all. Neighbors called and…” a shrug. “Cops said they’d been lookin’ for her for a while.”

“Huh.” Ed turned his glass on the ring of condensation, watching as it smeared on the plastic tabletop.

“Yeah, that was pretty tame. We had plenty of other things, worse things. We had one couple that carved each other up, blood everywhere. Dunno who started it but by the time the cops got there, he was dead and she was right next door to. All because of money. At the trial Ada and me were called as witnesses. That gal said he spent their rent money on booze and a dame and she wanted to teach him a lesson.”

It was Ed’s turn to smile, wryly, “Pretty rough lesson.”

“Yeah. Some other guy, oh… ‘bout twenty years now I guess – he tipped his lady friend down the garbage chute. From the eighth floor that was. She was still alive when she went it and it still gives me chills now to remember; made my hair stand on end for days to hear her screaming. Not as bad as the sudden silence, though.”

Ed stared as he imagined. Tony didn’t seem to notice, he was looking morosely at his glass which was almost empty. “After that we sealed up the chutes and folks had to haul their trash downstairs. That was a mess in the elevators but it just seemed the best thing to do.”

“Yeah, yeah I can imagine.” Ed slid his chair back, “I’m ready for a refill, would you like another?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” The glass was pushed across the table and Ed carried the empties to the bar.

“He’s quite the talker, isn’t he?” Joe said as he pulled Tony’s next beer.

“Yeah, he sure is.”

“He’s a funny old thing, too.”

“What’s funny?”

Joe leaned on the bar, as if to share a confidence. “He never managed an apartment building. He was a writer, wrote a book about one but no one ever picked it up.”

The rag came out and went to work as Ed turned away, a glass in each hand and a bemused smile on his lips.

* * * * *

Have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

What Was

Yesterday was kind of a peculiar day. A normal day in most ways, but it marked an ending. A beginning, too, but as beginnings usually are, that’s cloudy, unfocused. What’s next is unknown. It remains to be seen. The ending, however, is known. It’s a clean cut – an excision.

Most days do that. They begin and they end. Some endings are good, some not so good, some wonderful, some bad. I don’t know what kind of an ending yesterday was. For me, it was pretty ordinary. For others, it was momentous. In all cases, time will tell but, for now, this morning and the foreseeable future, it’s up in the air.

No matter, good or bad, it got me to thinking of my past, my experiences.

Like most people I go through life not really paying attention most of the time. I get from here to there and back but, if I were asked to say what happened, I’d almost always be pretty hard pressed on the details.

‘What did you do between 9:35 and 10:35 yesterday morning?’ Uh… I was a work.

‘What, specifically were you doing at 9:52?’ Blank. I know where I was, but I could not say, with precision, what I was doing. I doubt, unless it was a monumental moment, anyone could.

On the other hand, there are those monumental times. Those easily recalled moments that, when prompted, act like a pop-up book of memory and images. For me, almost always, they’re the bad moments.

Why is that? Why, out of all the life experiences that I have had, are the bad moments the most memorable? Why is it that I can recall those moments with greatest clarity?

It makes me wonder. Am I unusual? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s that, at all. I just think those moments are the Teaching moments. The comeuppance moments that remind us that, no matter what we might think, we are not entirely in control. It is a moment of Grace – an opportunity to accept and stop worrying over what you cannot do anything about.

One of my worst experiences was on an airplane. My daughter, who was four at the time, and I were flying up to Seattle to go see my sister. Even though, for us, it wasn’t common to fly, it was also fairly routine, something I had done occasionally.

At San Francisco the plane was delayed. Rumor circulated through the lounge that it was late on its first leg because of a mechanical issue.

Okay. Something needed fixed but they wouldn’t fly the plane if there was a big problem would they? I went back to trying to keep my four-year old occupied without disturbing those around us.

Ninety minutes after we were supposed to have left, the plane arrived. Deplaning, cleaning, preparing, that all took another hour.

We boarded, listened to the safety spiel and took off.

My daughter was excited, staring out the window at the ground falling away. Asking questions like a typewriter on overdrive. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat until, finally, I diverted her by pointing things out and describing what we could see.

All is well until… boom over Southern Oregon there is a loud explosive sound from outside, muffled, and the plane jerks – hard.

I have never heard a large group of people get so quiet so fast. It wasn’t silent before, but in a nanosecond it was. Pin-drop on carpet silent with everyone looking at their neighbors as if to ask, ‘did you hear it, too?’ A collective ‘oh shit’ moment. The flight crew is suddenly animated, hurrying up and down the aisle, peering out the windows. ‘What was that?’ That was the universal question.

It was an almost breaking news story. We had lost an engine – one of three on the plane.

To a pilot with a multi-engine plane, losing an engine is worrisome but not scary. Most planes, even big ones, can manage to get along on one engine so long as everything else is working. It’s called design redundancy. Give it more than it needs, in case.

The bigger issue is the controls. What happened to the hydraulic lines? Do they still have rudder for steering, flaps for elevation?

So my daughter and I are in a metal tube, tens of thousands of feet in the air. We are at the mercy of the pilots – are they capable, are they competent?

Ours were. After, perhaps, ten minutes, the pilot announced what we already knew. We had lost an engine, one of three. We had descended to lower altitude and would divert to Portland.

Still, the stewardesses were on high alert, peering and hurrying. In the middle of it, not having the first foggiest clue what’s going on, my child decides she’s thirsty. It is a pedestrian thing, nothing big, nothing out of the ordinary – except for the circumstance. I asked her to wait. She said she can’t. It’ll be a little while. But she’s thirsty now.

If you’re a parent, if you have had only one child, you know the drill.

It’s a calm request at first. Then the hint of a whine creeps into the voice, the face tightens and creases. You try again but it escalates and you know that if you don’t do something, that child is going to get louder and more demanding with each round.

The last thing those several hundred people trapped in that tube who don’t have any control over anything but themselves in those minutes need, is to have a screaming four-year old demanding water. I asked for water. The stewardess gave me a glare that should have left me as a pile of ashes on my seat, but she brought a paper cup of water – from the coffee reservoir, so it tasted like coffee.

My daughter sipped, said it tasted funny. I said it was all they had so she could take it or leave it. She left it, but was satisfied to wait. Mini crisis averted and I turned my attention to the fish fry.

Now, in that little scene are three things:

Normalcy – a young child’s lack of awareness outside of themselves.

Irritation – the glare of someone thinking ‘geez, woman! Don’t you know we could all die?’

Acceptance – yes, I perfectly understood the circumstance and the danger. I also recognized that there was not a blessed thing I could do to change the outcome. Why let my daughter, and the others around us if the tea kettle whistle blew because she thought she was being ignored or dismissed, suffer?

Call it selfish, call it a last request fulfilled, call it what you will, but in the overall scheme of things, it was a tiny thing. It probably isn’t something that woman, and certainly none of the other passengers on that flight that day remember – but it’s vivid in my mind.

Why? I don’t know. I wasn’t afraid. I was worried, concerned, but I wasn’t afraid. There was no point in being afraid – I was stuck, trapped, and totally out of any chance of control. So it wasn’t fear that tattooed that memory into my brain.

There are other memories like that. Most are the not so good variety but, for whatever reason, that was yesterday’s strongest memory. The one presented while I drove home thinking of what was.

We survived, obviously. After about forty tense minutes the plane landed safely in Portland. Along the runway, every few dozen yards, was a line of fire engines – all ready to spray the plane with fire retardant, if needed. As we passed, each fell into line behind us, following us to the gate.

We came to a stop and, as soon as the plane stopped moving, the entire cabin exploded in applause for a Job Well Done for the flight crew. Spontaneous and well-deserved and the rest, as they say, is ‘history’.

It was a good ending to what could have been a terrible day.

As we deplaned the stewardess offered each passenger a $25 discount off our next ticket. I kid you not. $25. I don’t know how many people accepted it. I didn’t. I couldn’t believe that after that, that was the best they would do.

I called the family to let them know we were okay – before the news did it for us. We raced around the terminal, from airline to airline to get seats for the next leg and, ultimately, got to our destination safely.

We did make the news that night, but as a passing comment instead of a headline. And that’s what was, in that time.

Yesterday is another What Was for others. I just hope they arrive safely, too.

Best~

Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories