Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 451

Just so cute

   

Cardboard cutout cruelty

From the TIME piece entitled Fake Transit Cop Spooks Bike Thieves

Unable to pay more officers to patrol its transit stops, the Boston area’s debt-laden transit authority has resorted instead to cardboard replicas of police officers to help deter crime.

Since it installed two, life-sized cutouts of 10-year veteran Officer David Silen earlier this summer, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority has curbed bike thefts at one station by 67% compared to last year, according to WHDH.

It reminded me of an incident that occurred in 2004 when Elysha and I were living in an apartment together.

Our school had a parade float that students decorated and rode on each year. Part of the decorations were life-sized cardboard cutouts of students, including actual photographs of students’ faces. These cardboard cutouts were stored on the school’s stage when not being used on the float, and every time I walked through the empty auditorium on the way to pick up my students at the gym, I would turn left, spot one of these cutouts on the stage, and jump right out of my skin.

They scared the hell out of me, and I wasn’t the only one who reacted this way. There’s something creepy about the frozen image of a two-dimensional child with a realistic looking face and a cartoon body, arms raised to the sky.

Cute for a parade float. Terrifying in real life.   

Seeing the opportunity for a prank, my principal, Plato, convinced Elysha to bring one of these cardboard cutouts home with her on a Friday afternoon and hide it somewhere in the apartment to scare the hell out of me. I was working at a wedding that night, so she would have as much time as needed to find the perfect hiding place. But regardless of where she placed the cutout, she found that it frightened her just as badly as it had frightened me back in the auditorium, even when she knew that it was there.

The thing was scary. Plain and simple.

Guilt began to sink in as the night progressed, as well as legitimate fear over what might happen if I found this cutout in a darkened closet or looming over my bed. She eventually came to the conclusion that the prank was too cruel and and decided to back out. Instead of positioning the cutout in a place where I would see it, she would hide it and admit to the prank in the morning. But as she searched for a hiding place in the apartment, it occurred to her that every place she hid the thing might also be a place where I could unknowingly stumble upon it.

In fact, the better her hiding place, the more terrifying the cutout would be in the unlikely event that it was found.

Why she didn’t just return the damn thing to her car is beyond me.

Finally, she decided to place the cutout in plain sight, where she reasoned that it had no chance of frightening me. Our back door, which was also the door that we entered the apartment, as made of paned glass, so she placed the cutout in front of the door, facing outside, and she left the lights on so I would see it while coming up the walk. With plenty of forewarning, she reasoned, the cutout wouldn’t have a chance to frighten me.

I arrived home around 1:00 AM and unloaded my car. Because I had gone directly from work to the wedding, my arms were full as I started up the walk. I was carrying a large plastic box, full of tools, wiring, batteries, CDs and spare parts for my sound system. On top of the box was a smaller case of CDs that I had brought home to restock. On top of that was a gym bag full of the clothing that I’d been wearing at school that day. On top of that was the garment bag that had held my tuxedo. The pile was so large that it blocked my vision, so instead of looking forward, I was navigating the brick walkway to the house by staring down at the bricks.

Once I arrived at the door, I fumbled with my keys, attempting to balance the precarious load while thrusting one hand forward to unlock the door. I actually managed to unlock the door and push it open before I was finally able to look up.

Staring me in the eye were the eyes of the cardboard cutout.

I screamed. An honest-to-goodness scream of terror. The scream of a little girl who has seen the boogieman and knows that death is upon her. I jumped. My hands flew into the air like small birds, launching the plastic box, the CD case, my gym bag and my garment bag into the air. The lid of the box flew off midflight. A horde of batteries, wiring, screws, screwdrivers, paper and CDs rained down upon me.

Elysha couldn’t have frightened me better if she had tried.

No way, Jose.

Sometimes the less correct word choice is the better word choice. Case in point: 

AP Style tip: Velcro is a trademark for nylon material that can be pressed together for easy fastening. Use generic term: fabric fastener.

Would a reader even know what a fabric fastener is? Couldn’t it also be a zipper, a button, a shoelace or thread?

Bad ass old man of all time

Samuel Whittemore might just be the toughest old guy in the history of the world.

Born in England in 1694, Whittemore went to North America in 1745 as a captain in the British army, where he fought in King George’s War (1744-48) at the age of 50 and the French and Indian War (1754-63) at the age of 64.

Then on April 19, 1775, at the age of 80, he engaged British forces returning from the Battles of Lexington and Concord at the onset of the Revolutionary War.

Whittemore was in his fields when he spotted an approaching British relief brigade under Earl Percy, sent to assist the retreat. Whittemore loaded his musket and ambushed the British from behind a nearby stone wall, killing one soldier. He then drew his dueling pistols and killed a grenadier and mortally wounded a second. By the time Whittemore had fired his third shot, a British detachment reached his position; Whittemore drew his sword and attacked. He was shot in the face, bayoneted thirteen times, and left for dead in a pool of blood. He was found alive, trying to load his musket to fight again. He was taken to Dr. Cotton Tufts of Medford, who perceived no hope for his survival. However, Whittemore lived another 18 years until dying of natural causes at the age of 98.

In 2005, Whittemore was proclaimed the official state hero of Massachusetts. Not bad considering this is a state that produced such wartime heroes as Paul Revere, Israel Putnam, John Hancock, Robert Shaw and John Kennedy.

All great men, but if I were sent to war, I’d choose Samuel Whittemore to stand on my side above them all.

Best prisoner’s dilemma ever

This is a classic case of the prisoner’s dilemma. Though it is incredibly unorthodox, I think it’s played brilliantly.

Credit this blog for last night’s Moth StorySLAM victory

When I started blogging in 2004, people thought it was silly. They believed that it represented an unpolished, unprofessional form of writing that would go unread and unnoticed and eventually go away. They thought it a fad. A burst of digital narcissism.

In 2007, blogging had begun to gain more mainstream acceptance, but the perception remained that most blogs were written by loners and losers who were sitting at desks in their underwear.

2007 was also the year that blogging nearly destroyed my life. A long story for another day. A story I once told on a Moth stage. 

By 2010 blogging had become an accepted and valued form of personal expression and serious journalism. Authors were encouraged to blog in order to build their platforms. The media turned to blogging as a means of getting information out faster and more seamlessly. Readers turned to blogs as replacements for the dying newspaper and magazine industry.  

Today, blogging is viewed as a valid and valued form of written communication, news distribution and self expression.

I have been blogging consistently, almost daily, for almost ten years. This blog is my third. While my previous two blogs no longer exist on the Internet, I retain the material written on those blogs. My archive of posts, as a result, is almost a decade long.

I write my blog for several reasons:

1. It provides me with a means of expressing ideas, thoughts and experiences with an audience of engaged readers.

2. It connects me with people who I might otherwise have never known.

3. It serves as a laboratory where I can test new ideas before committing them to something more formal and traditionally published.

4. It provides a record of my life.

This last reason is an important one for me. Though I don’t often write about my day to day experiences, I do so when the moments are important or unique enough to warrant a mention. As a result, I have an extensive archive of the events from my life that I can return to again and again when needed.

Last night I was fortunate enough to win another Moth StorySLAM at Housing Works in Manhattan. I told a story about the day I intervened in a fight between two men outside my gym. When I saw that the theme of the night was Interference, the fight outside the gym immediately popped to mind as a perfect fit for the theme. But I also found myself unable to recollect the specifics from that morning. I couldn’t remember enough of the story to reliably tell it onstage, so for a few days, I searched for another story from my life that would fit the theme.

Then it occurred to me (while in the shower, of course) that I had written about that fight on my blog, almost immediately after retuning home that day. While I was sure that it wasn’t a perfectly crafted story suited for a Moth stage, I thought that the post might contain enough details to sufficiently refresh my memory.

I was right. The fight took place more than two years ago, but I found the post and all the long lost details that I required to prepare the story for a Moth performance.

The A-Team tee shirt that one of the guys was wearing.  The dialogue that we exchanged pre and post fight. My post-fight panic attack. All were details long since forgotten that came rushing back to me while reading the post. In fact, reading the post returned me to that morning in a way I didn’t think possible. I was able to remember even more about the fight, and especially my feelings about the fight, than even the post itself contained.

I was lucky to win last night. Some exceptionally strong storytellers did not have their names drawn from the hat.

But I am also lucky enough to have a detailed account of so many of the odd and unique moments from my life. It’s an archive that I can turn to again and again when I need to recall a story but my memory is failing me.

Specific details and the emotions of a moment are so critical to crafting and telling a successful story. Many times I can remember these elements with perfect accuracy. Other times, they are lost to the abyss of time. But as long as I continue to write for my blog on a daily basis and capture these moments in ones and zeros, I can reach down into that abyss and extract the information needed to craft a complete story.

I mentioned how lucky I felt to win last night competition to a fellow storyteller. He reminded me that luck favors the prepared.

I feel like I had been preparing to tell last night’s story for a long time. At least as far back as February of 2011, when I wrote the story down, and perhaps as far back as 2004, when people scoffed at the idea and laughed at the notion that I was writing a blog that no one would ever read.

Last night served as a big, fat “I told you so” to all those doubters and disbelievers. 

You know that you’ve hit the big time when…

Elysha pointed out that the toy that my son was playing with (which she picked up in a consignment shop last week) was Gordon from Sesame Street.

Just imagine what it must be like to have PlaySkool facsimiles of your image out in the world.

Surreal, I bet. And AMAZING.  

Neither true nor universally acknowledged

My wife’s favorite first line from literature comes Pride and Prejudice:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Many people like this first line. While I have always appreciated the line, it has never felt right to me.

It’s sexist. Isn’t it? 

From a female standpoint, isn’t it little more than a subtle suggestion that a single woman should seek a man with money?

And from a male perspective, the implication is clear:

Wealthy bachelorhood is an unfortunate and unacceptable state of being.

Neither of these interpretations sit well with me. It’s a cleverly constructed and memorable sentence, but it’s implications are not good.

Moreover, can you imagine how feminists might have reacted to this book if the sentence been written in the reverse?

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband.”

Is this sentence any less true or less false than the first?

I don’t think so.

I think both sentences express a truth universally acknowledged that is neither true nor universally acknowledged.

Don’t text and drive.

This amazing and devastating documentary from legendary director Werner Herzog should be required viewing for anyone who drives a car and owns a cell phone.

I don’t text and drive. The closest I come to doing so is to read and respond to text messages when stopped at a traffic light, but even this I think I will stop now.

I never expected my readers to become my friends and change my life. But that’s exactly what happened. Again and again.

I received an email from Charity asking me if I would consider officiating her upcoming marriage. In addition to my many careers, I am an ordained minister and occasionally marry couples. Charity lives in Minnesota and has offered to fly me and my family in for the weekend so I could be a part of this important day in her life.

I was honored by her request. I was also a little surprised. I’ve never met Charity in person. I’ve never spoken to her other than through email and social media. The only reason Charity and I know each other at all is because she read and enjoyed my novels and began reading my blog. Thanks so the wonders of the Internet, a friendship blossomed, and three years later, she made this unique request.

When I published my first novel, Something Missing, in the fall of 2009, I had very few expectations of my newfound role as a published author. I knew that I wouldn’t be quitting my day job anytime soon. I knew that one book did not guarantee a career in publishing. I knew that if I wanted my novel to be a success, I would have to do much of the promotion myself.

I was the antithesis of the starry-eyed author. I viewed my first novel as a tiny, unlikely, uncertain step into the publishing world.

As a result, my career as a novelist has rarely been disappointing. There have even been moments of actual excitement and joy.

Low expectations have a way of doing this for a person.

There have been surprises as well, and nothing has been more surprising than the number of readers who reach out to me on a daily basis via email or social media to let me know what they think of my work, and how some of these readers, like Charity, have become actual friends.

Last weekend Bill and Cheryl traveled from their home in New Jersey to visit me and my family. We spent the day hanging around my home, visiting a local bookstore, and eating ice cream for lunch and burgers for dinner. We chatted about books. We shared stories from our lives. Cheryl helped my wife finish knitting a sweater. Bill played catch with my daughter on our front lawn.

I met Bill and Cherylann in Vermont two years ago. We were attended a weekend book retreat together, and Bill was a fan of my work. He introduced himself to me as someone who loved my books, and two years later, I am honored to call Bill and Cherylann my friends.

Bill still thinks of himself as a bit of a stalker, and there may be some truth to this, but he’s a friend nonetheless. Bill and Cherylann recently began joining me for some of my storytelling performances in New York City, and this fall, they will return to Connecticut so Bill can try his own hand at storytelling at one of the local storytelling events that my wife and I host.

One day Bill picked up my second novel, Unexpectedly, Milo, and liked it very much. That book led him to me and to a friendship that means a great deal to us today.

Gabriela read Something Missing last year. After finishing the book, she went to my blog to learn more about me. She stumbled across a post about my brother, Jeremy, who had been missing for the last five years and presumed dead, and realized that the Jeremy who she had been working with six months ago in New Jersey was the same Jeremy who I described in my blog post. After some deliberation, she decided to bring us back together.

Two months later and just minutes before I was to take the stage at the 92nd Street Y in Tribeca to tell a story about my high school science teacher, Jeremy tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t I know you?”

I couldn’t believe it. My dead brother had come back to life.

Gaby knew that I was scheduled to tell a story that evening and had strong-armed my brother into attending the show. After years of separation, she had managed to bring us back together when so many others could not. Jeremy invited my family to dinner a month later, where he met his two year-old niece for the first time. Joining us for dinner that night was Gaby, who I now consider my friend and savior.

Gaby and I remain in touch today through social media, and she continues to threaten to come to another one of my storytelling performances in New York soon.

Jeremy and I text each other almost every day now. We communicate more now than ever before. In September, he will be taking my wife and children to a family picnic that I cannot attend, and in October, we are going to attend our first Patriots game together.

I have a brother again. My children have an uncle. All of this is thanks to a reader who enjoyed my book and decided to reach out to me.

Since publishing Something Missing, I have published two more novels. The fourth will publish in the fall of 2014. Despite my initial pessimism about publishing career, it continues to surprise me. Thanks to my writing career, my wife has been able to stay home with our children for most of the last four years. My latest novel, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, has been translated into more than 20 languages worldwide, and I hear from international readers almost daily. I’ve met and befriended authors, readers and people in the publishing world who I never would’ve met had I not committed by butt to the chair. Though every book still feels like it could be my last, it feels less so today than it did in the fall of 2009.

These have been many unexpected blessings in my writing career. Blessings I could’ve never imagined. But it’s the friendships that I have formed thanks to stuff I make up in my head, with people who started out as fans of my work but have become so much more, that mean the most to me.