Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 146

He who must not be named

Perhaps you’ve heard that a certain person refuses to get vaccinated in order to play professional basketball because he’s “doing what’s best for me.”

This same person also believes that the world may be flat.

I’d like to humbly suggest that we should talk about him far less often based upon these two things.

If you don’t know who I’m talking about, congratulations.

Not bed bugs. Just an exceptionally rare species of scabies.

In a recent post, I mentioned that I became the subject of an article in a medical journal after canine scabies managed to burrow under my skin.

That’s a delightful sentence.

I was asked if I could elaborate on this incident. Here is the story.

Back in the summer of 2012, Elysha and I thought that our home had become infested with bed bugs. Over the course of a week, we began getting bitten, presumably while we slept. First me, then Elysha, then Clara, and finally Charlie.

Charlie was just a couple months old at the time, so it was especially upsetting to see his tiny body covered in bites.

Three separate inspectors came into our home and could not find any sign of any insect whatsoever. They asked if we had changed our laundry detergent, altered our diet, and other annoying questions.

Would changing our laundry detergent result in four people reacting in the exact same way?

So we continued to be bitten, and with greater and greater frequency.

After three weeks of inspections, consultations, the laying of insect traps, and massive amounts of internet research, it was decided that we would treat the house for eight different insects with hopes that the treatment would kill whatever could not be found. In addition, the mattress on our bed would be sealed, so if there were insects inside it, they would be trapped inside forever.

It is not an exaggeration to say that this consumed an enormous portion of our July and August. We would go to bed every night, dressed from head to toe in clothing, hoping to avoid being bitten again.

It sounds silly, but it was a traumatic time in our lives. Exhausting and constantly upsetting.

On the day of the scheduled treatment, the technician found a marking on a bed sheet that was a probable sign of beg bugs. Elysha has sprayed the bed frame with tea tree oil after having read that it is an insect deterrent. Some of the spray landed on the sheet, exposing a marking that appeared to be the classic sign of bed bugs. The technician cancelled the treatment immediately. Our house, he explained, would need to be treated for bed bugs, so an inspection was scheduled once again.

Oddly, we were somewhat pleased. Although the treatment for bed bugs runs in the thousands of dollars and would require us to throw away furniture and linens, dry clean clothing, bake our books in the oven, and spend at least a week decontaminating the house, we were happy to at least know what we were dealing with.

It was the inability to diagnose the problem that had been the most frustrating, and at least, it seemed as if we had an answer.

It would be three days before the treatment could begin, so Elysha took the kids to her parents’ home, hoping to find some relief. I remained home with Kaleigh, our dog.

On the first night that my family was gone, I did not bother going to sleep at all. Climbing into a bed that I knew contained bed bugs was just too much to bear.

On the second night I slept for three hours in the fetal position on the kitchen floor without blanket or pillow, in fear that all of our linens were infested as well.

Then Monday morning finally came. The inspector arrived. We disassembled the bed and spent two hours looking for any signs of a bed bug. Other than a small stain on the sheet, which the inspector said could simply be a water stain, he found nothing. “If this stain was actually the residue of bed bugs,” he explained, “then we should be able to find hundreds. We can’t even find one.”

He rescheduled the initial treatment. I asked if we should also treat for bed bugs, just in case. I was desperate. He said he could not. It turns out that it is illegal to treat for bed bugs unless a bed bug can be found.

At this point Elysha and I had lost our minds. From her in-laws’ home in the Berkshires, she began placing calls with state agencies, leaving voicemails with whoever she could find, and eventually getting in touch with the chief entomologist for the state of Connecticut. Over the phone, she explained our problem. Less than a minute into the call, she was crying.

The chief entomologist asked if Elysha was suffering from postpartum depression. She told Elysha to stop reading the horror stories about insect infestation on the internet.

She was emotional, and rightfully so. Her three-year old daughter and infant son were being bitten by some unseen insect, and no one was able to do a thing about it. Clara was tearing into her skin from her scratching, and Charlie was covered in a rash. She had a right to be upset. We had no idea what to do. We had begun talking about selling the house, throwing away everything we owned and starting over.

It was a genuinely scary time.

Then the mystery was solved.

Six weeks earlier, I had brought our dog to the vet for an allergy flare-up. Kaleigh suffered from seasonal allergies, so the vet thought nothing of this latest attack and administered the standard treatment and prescribed the standard medication. In that time since that appointment, Kaleigh’s allergies had gotten worse, and we assumed that she was being bitten by the same insect that was biting us. In fact, she had stopped sleeping on the bed weeks before and eventually stopped coming upstairs altogether.

The cat had also taken to sleeping on my desk instead of his customary cushion in our room.

The animals, we thought, knew that something was wrong, too, and they had evacuated as best they could.

The same day that the insect treatment was re-rescheduled for the house, I brought Kaleigh back to the vet’s office for her follow-up appointment. The vet examined her skin and was surprised to find that she was not responding to the allergy treatment as she had so many times before. I explained that we thought she was being bitten by the same thing that was biting us, and that he skin was probably reacting like ours.

“You’re being bitten, too?” he asked.

I showed him my arms. He was shocked at how badly they had been bitten.

“I know what that is,” he said.

“You do?” I asked. “You really do?”

“I think so,” he said. “I’ll be able to tell you in a couple minutes.”

I hugged him.

After examining a skin scraping under the microscope, he confirmed that Kaleigh was infected with a mite that causes the canine version of scabies, and we were reacting to these mites as well. The vet explained that the mite infecting Kaleigh is exceptionally rare and typically only found on foxes and other wild animals. It is what gives them their mangy appearance. The only way to contract this mite is to come into direct contact with an infected animal.

Kaleigh on a leash 100% of the time and had not come into contact with any other animal in months. Other than perhaps the sniffing of an occasional dog who we pass on the streets, there is no way that she could have come in contact with a wild animal.

We still have no idea how this could have happened.

The veterinarian also explained that it is one of the worst things that can happen to an animal. It’s itchy and painful and exceptionally uncomfortable, as I can also attest. But as much as we were suffering, Kaleigh’s suffering was exponentially worse.

As the vet was explaining this condition to me, I was texting the news to Elysha, who happened to be on the phone with the state entomologist. She relayed the vet’s diagnosis to the entomologist, and the entomologist became immediately excited over the possibility of getting a sample of this rare mite.

They had never seen a live sample before. The entomologist doubted that our vet’s diagnosis was correct.

She ordered that slides of the skin scraping and a tube of live mites be brought to her office first thing in the morning.

The treatment for this mite, the vet said, is to simply to treat the dog with heart worm pills. Once the dog is mite-free, we would be mite-free. Best of all, the mites cannot live off their host, so nothing in our home had been infested with the insect.

Also, person-to-person transfer of the mite is almost impossible unless you have constant, close contact with another person. In all likelihood, I had passed the mite onto the kids and maybe even Elysha since I have the most contact with the dog, but we were not capable of passing it onto other friends or family by simply being in their presence.

So we could not infect anyone else.

The next day I was sitting in the offices of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture beneath an inflatable bed bug, where excited scientists were getting their first look at a mite that is so rare that finding a living specimen on an infected animal is almost impossible. Even the vet said that he almost never finds the mite through a skin scraping but treats the animal for them anyway, knowing how hard it is to actually find one.

Kaleigh was covered in them.

I was shown the mite while under the microscope. It’s a horrifying little creature. The entomologist called the chief entomologist, who asked again if Elysha might be suffering from postpartum depression. I listened as the entomologist assured her boss that they were helping “that poor woman who called yesterday.”

“Her husband’s sitting right here,” the entomologist said. “I promise to take good care of them.”

Elysha can certainly make an impression.

The entomologist confirmed that if we treated the dog, the problem should be solved, though there was a chance that the mites may have infected us as well, meaning we would all need to be treated. As I was leaving the office, the entomologist said, “Next time you have an issue with insects, call us. That’s what we’re here for.”

A lesson to you all:

Don’t hesitate to go straight to the top.

Elysha, the kids and I saw multiple doctors and ultimately decided to be treated for the mite, just in case.vI asked the vet if I should also take a heart worm pill. “I would,” he said. “It would probably work just as well for you as it will for Kaleigh, but I can’t advise doing so.”

Elysha forbade it. Instead, we applied a cream on our bodies – from head to two – for five nights in a row. In truth, it was likely that only I was infected with the mite, since my rashes had persisted while everyone else’s have reduced considerably.

“It makes sense,” Elysha said last night as we applied the treatment. “You have a lot of hair.”

“So the mites confused me for a dog?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

The pediatric dermatologist was just as excited about our condition as the state entomologist, taking photographs of my son’s skin for a journal article that she said she might write about this rare case. She had never seen it before, either. None of the doctors who treated us had ever seen this happen before.

My dermatologist discovered that the mites had actually burrowed beneath my skin. “You might be the first person ever to have these mites under your skin,” she said. More excitement. More photographs. More talk of a future medical journal.

In every case, doctors couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

One of the doctors actually called the Centers for Disease Control for advice.

As I said, you cannot imagine how much of our summer had been consumed by this problem. I spent the summer writing about it every day, which is how I’m able to remember so much from that time with so much detail, though I suspect that Elysha could do just as well.

It’s the kind of thing you never forget.

As my friend Shep said at the time, “If it’s mysterious, rare, or a never-seen-before condition, you are the one who is going to get it.”

He’s right.

My life might always be interesting, but that doesn’t mean it’s always fun.

But even with the canine scabies, the kids were still so damn cute back then.

Small business people at work

Charlie, age 9, has begun writing his next edition of The Francis Drive Weekly, a less-than-weekly newspaper that he distributes to neighbors on our street.

Hearing about the latest edition, Clara, age 12, asked if she could place an ad in his paper, promoting her mother’s helper services.

Charlie and Clara then began negotiating the size of the proposed ad and its corresponding price. For more than three minutes, they went back and forth on price, size, and location in the paper. They settled on a “medium-sized ad” for $1.

Clara handed Charlie four quarters.

Clara then asked that the ad include the fact that she is fully vaccinated.

Charlie said “That should drive business your way.”

Clara agreed.

Elysha and I are apparently living with human beings who can negotiate ad rates and write targeted ad copy but still leave shoes lying all over the house and can’t turn off a damn light.

Golf is about a lot more than golf

I played golf with my friend, Rob, yesterday morning.

Happily, it was just the two of us, because watching us play would’ve been painful for anyone to see. I played my worst round of golf all year, unable to strike the ball with any authority. I lost four balls over the course of 9 holes, scored an 11 on a short par 4, and three-putted the first four holes.

Rob was no better.

Together, we failed to make a single par. Rob actually gave up on one hole and simply picked up his ball and walked away.

It was a disaster.

Despite our poor play, it was a glorious morning. A lovely walk with a friend through a picturesque landscape. A crisp, autumn morning spent in the company of nature.

This is the beauty of golf. You need not play well to spend quality time with friends between grass and sky.

I played atrociously, but I still felt terrific as I stepped off the course. How could I not after having spent two hours staring at views like these?

If you don’t play golf, maybe reconsider.

Red Sox or Astros: An impossible choice

I’m a New York Yankees fan.

I grew up in the Boston area, deep in the heart of Red Sox country, but I hated my stepfather and enjoyed annoying my brother whenever possible, so early on, I decided to become a Yankees fan. I would tune the television to New York’s channel 11, which carried Yankees games at the time. and would just leave the game on to irritate the members of my household.

My mother referred to me as The Instigator for good reason.

But it was the 1980’s, and Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, Ricky Henderson, and Willie Randolph were easy to love despite the team’s inability to win.

Along the way, there were some memorable moments, too.

I watched Dave “Rags” Righetti’s Fourth of July no-hitter on July 4, 1983 while sitting alone on my living room couch.

A decade later, I watched Jim Abbott – the one handed pitcher – throw his no-hitter while sitting on a couch in a townhouse in Washington, DC.

In May of 1998, I was sitting on the third base side in Yankee Stadium, about 20 rows up, when David Wells pitched his perfect game. It was Beanie Baby Day at the Stadium. Today, those Beanie Babies are worth upwards of $200 on eBay.

One year later, in July of 1999, I was in the stadium again, this time sitting behind the plate in the second deck when David Cone pitched his perfect game.

Just 23 perfect games in Major League Baseball history. I was fortunate enough to witness two of them in person.

Two of the most exciting moments of my life.

Seven years later, in October of 1996, I wept as the Yankees won the World Series for the first time that I could remember. They had won in 1977 and 1978, but I was just 6 and 7 years old at the time and have no memory of those championships. It was the win against Atlanta – the first of 5 championships that I would celebrate – that I remember best.

Rooting for the Yankees and despising the Red Sox has been the story of my life.

But now the Red Sox face the Houston Astros for the American League Pennant. The Astros won the World Series in 2017 (beating the Yankees along the way) but were later discovered to have cheated during the entire 2017 and 2018 seasons (and possibly the 2019 season).

Many of those cheaters are still playing for the Astors today.

So I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place:

Root for the team that I’ve hated all my life, or root for a bunch of cheaters who stole a World Series championship – possibly from the Yankees themselves.

What is a baseball fan to do?

Following in his father’s footsteps. Kind of…

Big week for Charlie.

Earlier in the week, he came home with his trumpet, and with just two lessons under his belt, he seems remarkably adept at playing it. His tone is good and his stamina is already impressive. He’s been walking all over the neighborhood, trumpet in hand, playing it constantly in between playing with his friends.

He even wrote his first song:

“Wake Up the Neighborhood”

He presses down all three valves and blasts it as loud as possible.

Brilliant.

Yesterday, he delivered a speech to the student body in an attempt to be elected Treasurer of his elementary school.

A couple hours later, we learned that he had won. And unlike certain adults in our country, the children who he defeated possessed enough decency, civility, and mettle to accept their loss with grace and dignity.

“I want to follow in my father’s footsteps,” Charlie had said in his speech, which was true. I was once Treasurer of my school, though my route to the position was slightly more circuitous than Charlie’s more traditional path.

In college, I ran for President at the urging of my friend, Chris Johnson, who was already running for Vice President. He came to class one day, sat down beside me, and said, “I’m running for VP. You should run for President.”

“President of what?” I asked. I didn’t even know our school had a Student Council.

By the end of the class, I had declared my candidacy (to Chris) and launched my campaign.

I plastered the campus with posters featuring my baby photo and some halfhearted promises, delivered a very good speech to a lightly attended assembly, and debated my opponents, Jane and Tim, at an even more sparsely attended event.

I was a two-time state debate champion in college, so I was hoping to destroy my opponents, but the format didn’t permit any back-and-forth between the candidates, and the moderator didn’t allow for many rebuttals.

At one point, I was asked why I thought I could handle the Presidency given the fact that I was working a full time job, running my own business, and already writing occasionally for the newspaper. “How will you find the time?” he asked.

My response: “My father once said that successful people don’t find the time. They make the time.”

The line received a the only real round of applause for the entire debate. Of course, my father had said no such thing. Or maybe he did. I don’t know. I don’t really know my father, but I thought that the words would sound better if they had come from someone other than me.

I was right.

Ultimately, I lost the election to Jane by 9 votes.

Sadly, Chris lost, too.

But when Jane failed to return to school in the fall to assume the Presidency, the Student Council was shaken up quite a a bit. The Vice President-elect,  Angela, became President. The Treasurer-elect, Marvin, took Angela’s role as VP. Chris took the position of Secretary, and I came onboard as Treasurer.

Not exactly elected as cleanly as Charlie, but by losing the election for President and being appointed Treasurer, I was still given an office on campus and access to my own a computer, printer, and phone (very valuable in 1997). I was able to travel to Washington DC for two national conventions, establish positive and productive relationships with the President of the College and Dean of Students, and gain some valuable leadership experience.

And by missing out on the Presidency, I had time enough to become a full time columnist for the school newspaper and assume the Presidency of the National Honor Society instead.

All while managing a McDonald’s restaurant full time and working as a wedding DJ every weekend.

Busy days.

I’m most impressed by the courage that Charlie demonstrated by throwing his hat into the ring. When I ran for President, it was only at the bequest of my friend, Chris. Charlie did it all on his own. He stepped forward and risked defeat in hopes of finding higher ground.

He was also highly strategic. When I asked why he didn’t run for President, he explained that lots of kids were running for President in the primary, so he thought his chances of getting through to the general election were a lot better if he ran for Treasurer.

Well played, my boy.

Following in your father’s footsteps indeed.

It wasn’t a fish bone

Back in August, I made a list of my 18 visits to the emergency room over the course of my life, which included:

2011: Bay leaf caught in throat (ambulance)

Readers asked about this item, wondering what the hell happened. Here is the story:

Back in the fall of 2011, Elysha and I were having lunch with one of my college friends. I was eating clam chowder when an object became lodged in my throat. It wasn’t blocking my airway completely, but it was most definitely stuck and causing me to struggle to breath. Based upon what I was eating, we assumed that it was a fish bone or a bit of a shell.

I began coughing. Then the coughing became hacking. Then wheezing.  I drank a glass of water in an effort to dislodge it. Then I drank another and another and another.

Still I coughed and hacked and struggled to breath.

Eventually the manager arrived at the table and offered assistance. We were sitting in the middle of the dining room, so my coughing was undoubtedly creating a scene. The manager led me through the dining room (with Elysha in tow) to a closed-off bar area where, before I knew what was happening, one of the waitstaff began to administer the Heimlich maneuver on me.

Ironically, Elysha and I had just been re-certified in CPR the day before, so I knew his attempt at this procedure was poorly executed. Since I was coughing and speaking, the Heimlich maneuver should never have been applied in the first place, but the way the man administered it was even worse. He wrapped his arms around my chest and began squeezing, lifting me off my feet as he did. This did nothing for the bone lodged in my throat but hurt like hell and made it even harder to breath.

Between gasps, I begged for him to stop.

A moment later, an ambulance was called.

The manager led me and Elysha through the kitchen to a loading dock at the back of the restaurant. I initially thought the manager was being helpful, but I soon realized that he was just trying to get me as far away from the other customers as possible and avoid having an ambulance parked in the front of the restaurant.

Seconds later, the ambulance arrived. Paramedics placed me to a stretcher and began taking my vital signs. I overheard one whisper to the other that I had “decreased breath sounds on the left side.”

I asked them to either share this information with me or do a better job of whispering, because they were freaking me out.

I was loaded into the ambulance. Elysha climbed in alongside me, and we were off.

I was brought to the University of Connecticut Health Center, which was thankfully just a few minutes down the road. Doctors first attempted to use forceps to dislodge or retrieve the object. My throat was sprayed with a numbing agent, four doctors and nurses held me down in order to counter my gag reflex, and a fifth jammed a set of long, metal metal forceps down my throat.

It was awful. Painful and frightening and exhausting.

This process continued, off and on, for nearly an hour.

When this failed, a doctor inserted smaller arthroscopic forceps, complete with a camera and clippers, through my nose and down into the throat in order to remove the object.

It sounds horrifying, and it initially was, but that scope was soon put up my nose and down my throat so often that it became fairly normal. Just a thin, little snake sliding around in my skull.

It was eventually determined that the object was too large to bring back up through my nose, so it was back to the original forceps.

Numbing agents were applied again. More attempts to reach down my throat were made. I was worked on for more than three hours before it was determined that I would require surgery. Fearful that the object might end up in my lung if not removed soon, the doctors would make an incision from the top of my throat down to my chest to remove the object.

“Depending on where it’s lodged, we might have to crack the chest” one doctor explained.

This sounded insane to me. I was going to have my throat cut open and maybe my chest cracked for a fish bone?

With Elysha by my side, they began rolling me from the emergency room to the surgical floor. As they rolled, I began to panic. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Stop,” I said.

To their credit, they did.

“Have we tried everything?” I asked. “Take a second and think. Is there anything else we could possibly do before you cut me open? Can we think outside the box?”

To their credit, everyone was quiet for a moment, and then one of the nurses said, “Well, we’ve never tried to slide the arthroscopic forceps down someone’s throat before.”

“Well,” I said. “Let’s try that.”

Instant excitement swept the team. If it worked, this would be a new procedure.  A new use for a medical instrument. Other doctors were called to observe. Two video cameras – the large, old fashioned kind – were brought in to record the procedure. About a dozen doctors in all jammed themselves into a small examination room where the procedure would be attempted, pushing Elysha to the far corner of the room.

Once again, a handful of doctors held me down to counteract my gag reflex as the snake-like device was slid down my throat and a doctor, staring into the eyepiece, poked and prodded. A minute later, the scope was retracted. Trapped in its tiny forceps was a dried bay leaf.

Not a bone or a shell.

Just a leaf, which should have been removed prior to serving me the chowder but was not.

The room erupted in cheers. For a moment, I was entirely forgotten. I looked across the room, through a crowd of excited doctors, and made eye contact with Elysha. She looked exhausted, but she was smiling.

I spent about six hours at the medical center that day, and though I probably could have sued the restaurant, I did not.

In retrospect, I wish I had.

Nevertheless, I learned something very valuable that day:

There is nothing wrong with questioning your doctor. Had I not stopped that gurney from rolling into the operating room, I would’ve ended up with an incision in my throat or even worse. It was panic that caused me to stop the doctors that day and ask them to find a different solution, but in the future, it will be the knowledge that I can play an active and potentially helpful role in my medical care.

A doctor informed me that I would likely end up in a medical journal, which did not excite me as much as it seemed to excite him.

It also wouldn’t be the last time I was the subject in a medical journal. Years later, when canine scabies managed to burrow under my skin – something never seen before in a human being – a professional photographer was called into the dermatologist’s office to take photographs of my forearms for an eventual medical journal article.

Such is my life.

For the record, I never saw my college friend again. This was the first time she and I were reconnecting after more than a decade, but once I left the table for the bar area and loading dock and ambulance, I lost track of her, and we never spoke again.

Such is my life.

One bay leaf in top view

Good advice from Gary Paulsen

Author Gary Paulsen passed away yesterday at the age of 82. Paulsen was a young adult author best known for coming of age stories about the wilderness. He was the author of more than 200 books over the course of his storied career, and he also wrote more than 200 magazine articles,  short stories, and several plays, all primarily for teenagers. He was a three time Newbury Honor winner and won the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1997 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens.

Quite a career.

I didn’t read any of Paulsen’s books as a child, but my students have certainly read their fair share of his books over the years, and  I had the honor of meeting Paulsen at my very first author event back in the fall of 2009. Paulsen, novelist Elinor Lipman, several other authors, and I gathered for lunch one afternoon on the eve of the Brattleboro Literary Festival.

Paulsen was being recognized by his publisher for selling his kazillionth book.

I had just published my first novel, Something Missing, and had sold decidedly fewer books.

I sat with Paulsen and his wife, Ruth, for lunch, and remember that Ruth, an author and illustrator of children’s literature, was the entertainer of the couple. She chatted me up quite a bit while Paulsen sat beside her, quietly listening.

Later that day, when it came time to sign books for attendees, Elenor Lipman taught me how to sign a book, explaining which page should be signed. She was sweet – a seasoned author showing a brand new author how to sign his very first book.

It was quite a day for me, surrounded by such literary royalty.

Before I left, I managed to ask Paulsen what it was like to sell so many books.

He said, “It’s all about the next sentence that you write. Don’t look back. Look ahead.”

It was excellent advice for a brand new author, and I think it’s pretty good advice for all of us.

Rest in peace, Gary Paulsen.

John and me and my stupidity.

Last week I wrote a post complaining about a couple who posed for a piece on the supposed trend of solomoons or unimoons, criticizing both their yearlong honeymoon and their willingness to publicize the existence of their yearlong honeymoon, which included three months apart, in the New York Times.

My storytelling friend, John, reached out to me later that day via email to tell me that the post had really upset and hurt him.

“I know I’d prefer to be told when something I wrote had a bad impact on someone,” he said in his email and offered to speak about it over the phone if I was interested.

He was right. I also prefer to know when something I’ve written has a negative impact on someone, so I called immediately.

“What have I done, John?” I asked, ready to listen.

John explained:

If the couple in the photo – two men – decides to someday have children, they may not be able to travel to certain places in the world with their kids because of bigoted laws that could prevent them from leaving the country with their own children. It’s possible that these men are traveling the world for a year knowing they may not be able to do so again for quite a while.

Being a straight, cisgender man living in a state that treats all couples with decency and equality regardless of their composition, this had never even crossed my mind.

John also explained that traveling with your same sex spouse is often fraught with possible peril because not every place on Earth recognizes the spousal rights of same sex couples. If one of the men were seriously injured in any way while traveling, the other might not be permitted to make medical decisions on behalf of their spouse or even visit their spouse in the hospital if he is incapacitated.

So doing so before children at least makes the possibility of this happening less complicated.

Once again, this is not something that ever occurred to me.

Lastly, I joked in the post that I would metaphorically punch any of my friends who agreed to have a self congratulatory photo and caption like this published in the New York Times, which is probably a poor choice of words in any circumstance, but it was especially poor given that it was a same sex couple and is therefore far more likely to be victimized by violence than someone like me.

John told me that when he and his husband kiss in public, neither one closes their eyes in fear of how an ignorant, violent bigot might react to their expression of love.

I also made the reference to that metaphorical punch on the anniversary of the brutal and ultimately fatal attack on Matthew Shepard, so my timing also really, really sucked.

This is all to say:

I’ve written a blog post for 6,683 consecutive days. More than 18 years without missing a day, even when a tiny band of pathetic cowards tried to derail me and my teaching career with lies, mischaracterizations, and stupidity based upon words that I had written. If I’m writing and publishing something online daily for almost two decades, I am bound to say some ignorant, insensitive, stupid, misinformed, and misleading things from time to time.

I accept this. My hope is that when I do, readers are kind with their feedback.

It’s probably 50/50 in that regard. About half of my readers respond with thoughtful, productive feedback.

The other half does not.

But John could not have been kinder.

Thanks to my ignorant, insensitive blundering, I learned things about same sex marriages and same sex relationships that I had never known before. Though I wish I could’ve learned these things absent the pain I caused my friend, mistakes are valuable. I’m a better person today than I was yesterday thanks to my willingness to put my sometimes stupid thoughts into the world and having someone like John take the time to educate me.

John, unsurprisingly, proved himself to be the better man through his thoughtful, direct, and open hearted conversation with me. He had every right to be angry with me, but instead, he chose the higher road.

I apologized to John, as one should when you have done something hurtful or wrong. The act of apologizing has fallen out of favor recently amongst a certain group of people, but this is not surprising. An apology requires a person to be capable of recognizing the harm they have caused and the courage to admit to that wrongdoing and try to make things better.

Those who see apologies as signs of weakness are both stupid and cowardly. Therefore, an apology is an affront to their thin, fragile, pathetic little egos.

I’m actually happy that this incident took place. I’m not sure if John feels the same (since he was the injured party), but the result, at least for me, was a good deal of enlightenment on something I really care about. I also feel closer to John today than ever before. He may not feel the same, and his feelings are admittedly more important in this situation than mine, but I think that it’s through the friction of discourse that people can understand one another better and can ultimately feel more connected.

I count myself lucky to have someone like John in my life.

With the exception of my especially ignorant and insensitive moment, I hope he feels the same.

Little did I know how things would turn out…

This photo, taken in September of 2004 at Camp Jewell in Colebrook, CT, was handed to me by a fifth grader last week. “My mom wanted you to see this,” she said.

Her mom is sitting in the front row of the photo, all the way on the right, huge smile on her face. She was my student way back in 2001 when I was teaching third grade, and was a fifth grader when this photo was taken.

This means that I’ve been teaching in my school long enough to have the daughter of one of my former students in the classroom across the hall.

I can’t tell you how disturbing this is to me.

The photo itself is far less disturbing. If you look closely, you can see Elysha on the top left, wearing a yellow baseball cap. You may have noticed that she hasn’t aged a bit, so she’s clearly made some deal with the devil.

Elysha is standing beside Rob, our now retired vocal music teacher. In three years, he will be playing the ceremony music – all Beatles tunes – at our wedding.

Standing to the left of Rob is Andy, who was teaching instrumental music at the time and is now the Director of Performing Arts in our school district. In three years, he’ll also be playing music at our wedding ceremony.

Near the top, on the far right, is Plato, our now retired principal. In three years, he’ll be standing beside Elysha and me, officiating our wedding.

Along the right side of the photo, about halfway down, is Sharon, a fifth grade teacher at the time and now our school’s curriculum specialist. In three years, Sharon will be serving as one of Elysha’s bridesmaids, and 17 years after this photo was taken, in the summer of 2021, I will be officiating Sharon’s own wedding to her husband, Alex.

You can find me at the very top of the photo, right arm outstretched. I’m standing beside Jess, who has her left arm outstretched. Jess was the school psychologist at the time and also my girlfriend.

Twelve years after this photo was taken, I will serve as the minister at Jess’s wedding ceremony and also work as the DJ during her reception.

Elysha and I were already close friends when this photo was taken, but we were tumbling toward romance. We will officially begin dating in less than six months, on March 31, 2005. By June, we’ll be living together, and by December, we’ll be engaged.

When the photo was taken, we are both dating other people, but in just 15 months, we will be planning our wedding.

Happily, most of the people in the photo remain in my life today.

Sharon and I still work together and talk every day. We have supported each other in important and profound ways over the past two decades.

I played golf with Rob on Sunday. When this photo was taken, I was performing in musicals written and produced at a local playhouse by Rob and Plato. He is fond of sending me photos taken on his many hikes when he knows I’m still toiling away at work.

Soon after this photo was taken, Andy and I will be writing and producing a rock opera of our own, and we’ll go onto writing and producing three more musicals together. I taught all three of Andy’s children. Someday we’ll write that puppet romance musical that we’ve been talking about for years.

Plato is now enjoying life on the west coast, but we spent a week with his family just prior to the pandemic, and we will be celebrating our shared birthdays in Bermuda in February.

Elysha is still sleeping in our bed as I write these words. Children who we could never have imagined when this photo was taken are sleeping in rooms down the hall.

Little did I know how things would work out when this photo was taken so many years ago.