Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 536

The Moth: Shoe Thief

On July 17 I will be competing in The Moth’s GrandSLAM championship at the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan. I gained access to this championship event by winning the Moth’s StorySLAM at the Bell House in Brooklyn back in March.

The theme of the night was Theft.

Thanks to my wife, I told a story about a time when I was nineteen and I stole some shoes from a shoe store. I had many other stories that fit this theme well (which doesn’t say much about me) and had chosen one that I liked a lot, but at the last minute, I switched stories, trusting in my wife’s instincts over my own.

I should do this more often. 

The theme of the upcoming GrandSLAM championship is “Fall from Grace” and once again, I regrettably have quite a few stories from which to choose.

The following is a recording of my StorySLAM winning story from The Bell House entitled Shoe Thief:

A moment that makes up for all the poop

As a parent, you never know when your child is going to do something that will cause your heart to soar (or sink). One minute your child is lying about the obvious poop in her diaper and the next minute she is breaking your hear with an act of unplanned grace and generosity.

Like yesterday, when Clara said, “I’ll be right back!” and ambled up the stairs to her bedroom. She returned a couple minutes later with a handful of books, plopped herself down on the floor next to her sleeping brother, and began reading to him for the first time.

It was one of those perfect parental moments that I will remember for a long, long time. 

Four audiobooks: One I loved, two I can’t wait to listen to, and one that annoys the hell out of me.

June is Audiobook Month!

With this in mind, I stopped by my local Barnes and Noble yesterday to pick up Nichole Bernier’s debut novel, THE UNFNISHED WORK OF ELIZABETH D. (not yet available on audio) and decided to take a moment and browse the audiobook section as well.

Truth be told, I purchase almost all of my audiobooks through Audible. It’s much easier to download the books digitally rather than uploading the CDs onto the computer, but I’ve been known to purchase audiobooks in their physical form as gifts for friends and family, so I find myself in the audiobook sections of bookstores quite frequently.

I pulled these four books from the shelf for comment:

The first is THE ILIAD, which I have actually listened to on audio several times. In addition to listening to new titles on audio, I love to listen to books that I have read previously, and especially books like THE ILIAD that I was required to read several times in college as part of the curriculum and now want to listen for pure enjoyment.

If you’ve been afraid to read THE ILIAD because it’s ancient and large and daunting, don’t be. Try listening to it on audio. You will not be disappointed.

The second is UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand, which is a book I purchased from Audible almost a year ago after listening to a book club discuss it as a possible choice for the coming month. I’m also a fan of listening to nonfiction on audio, since I find it easier to jump in and out nonfiction regardless of how long I go between listening. If I am listening to fiction, I feel like I need to listen every day, and oftentimes more than once a day, in order for the story and the characters to remain fresh in my mind. It’s not impossible, but if my life is especially hectic, my podcasts have piled up and I don’t have time time to listen regularly, fiction on audio can be a challenge for me.

I have yet to listen to UNBROKEN, but it is near the top of my audio pile. I saw a segment about the book on CBS Sunday Morning recently and am looking forward to it all over again.

Enter video caption here

The third is WORLD WAR Z by Max Brooks, a book that I desperately wanted to listen to since the book, an oral history of a fictional Zombie War, seems to be perfectly suited for audio. But for reasons that will always baffle me, the publisher, Random House Audio, produced the book in abridged form only.

Abridged? Who the hell wants an abridged version of any book? Why does the industry continue to produce abridged versions when everyone listener I know despises them? I don’t get it.

I DON’T GET IT!

Random House also went out of their way to cast an impressive list of narrators for the book, including Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins, John Turturro, Alan Alda, Becky Ann Baker and more. Yet they decided to abridge the damn thing, cutting these talented voices short!

I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by this decision.

I plan on reading the book, but I feel like it’s an opportunity wasted.

The last audiobook is ROOM by Emma Donoghue, a book that my upcoming novel, MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, has been compared to repeatedly. I have yet to read ROOM for this very reason, but I made it my Audible pick for May and now have it loaded onto my iPhone. It is currently in a metaphysical battle with UNBROKEN for my next listen.

Cost effective way of attending college

The New York Times recently ran a piece on the soaring cost of college:

For all borrowers, the average debt in 2011 was $23,300, with 10 percent owing more than $54,000 and 3 percent more than $100,000, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports. Average debt for bachelor degree graduates who took out loans ranges from under $10,000 at elite schools like Princeton and Williams College, which have plenty of wealthy students and enormous endowments, to nearly $50,000 at some private colleges with less affluent students and less financial aid.

NPR offered this visual of the increasing costs of higher education:

With justifiable concern over the high cost of a college degree, I find myself constantly reminding people that there are alternatives to the traditional accumulation of debt in pursuit of a college diploma, including the slightly unorthodox path that I took to college.

I began my college career at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT at the age of twenty-three. I stated college later than most, primarily because the path to secondary education had never been made apparent to me.  Throughout my childhood and during my entire high school career, the word college was never once uttered to me. Not by parents, not by teachers, and not by guidance counselors. For reasons that I will never understand, it was universally determined at an early age that I was not college material. 

So even though I graduated in the top 5% of my high school class, I found myself rudderless and lost after graduation with no plan for the future. I quickly moved out of my childhood home, a process that had begun two years earlier when my parents gave me bath towels, flatware and a microwave oven for my birthday (making it clear what they expected of me), and embarked on a five year journey of difficulty and heartache that ultimately led me back to school.

I attended Manchester Community College for two years, earning an Associates degree in liberal arts. I have attended three other colleges and universities since my days in Manchester, earning degrees at each one, but the best education I ever received was at MCC.   

After graduating from MCC, I enrolled at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Trinity accepted all but one of my community college credits, meaning that I effectively received two years of Trinity College credit at a community college price.

At the time, tuition at Trinity was about $38,000 per year.

The cost of my two years of community college? Less than $5,000.

A savings of more than $70,000 for the two years.

As a result of my academic performance (top 5% of the class again) and involvement in the MCC community (President of the Honor Society, member of student council, a Truman Scholarship finalist), I was offered immediate acceptance and a sizable scholarships at a number of outstanding schools in the area, including Yale University, but I opted for Trinity College for a number of reasons.

Most important, Trinity was only about fifteen minutes away from home and work. While attending MCC and Trinity, I worked about 50 hours a week managing a McDonald’s restaurant, launching my DJ business and tutoring in the writing center on campus, so proximity to home and work was critical if I was going to succeed.

Trinity also had a program that specifically catered to non-traditional students. Though it did not change my course work in any way, Trinity’s IDP program was designed to help integrate the non-traditional student into campus life as much as possible, and the program made me feel more welcomed and accepted than any of the other colleges I was considering.

Trinity was also a member of the Greater Hartford Consortium of Colleges, affording me access to a number of colleges in the greater Hartford area. This allowed me to earn a degree in English from Trinity while simultaneously earning a teaching degree at St. Joseph’s College, an all-women’s school in neighboring West Hartford that had a solid reputation for turning out excellent teachers. Thus I earned two degrees at two different institutions for the price of one.

Enormous savings.

I attended Trinity College (and St. Joseph’s College) for a total of three years, meaning that I spent a total of five years in college while most traditional students spent four. But I graduated with two degrees (three if you count my Associates degree from MCC), making the extra year well worth it.

I received a number of scholarships from Trinity based upon my academic performance at MCC (another enormous benefit of attending community college first), but I was still responsible for well over half the cost of tuition during those three years of school. I paid for this with student loans, Pell grants, and personal savings, graduating with about $16,000 in debt.

Don’t get me wrong. $16,000 is a lot of money, but it’s not an overwhelming amount of money when paid off over time. Six months after graduating, my loan payments amounted to less than $300 a month.

Absent any parental support or college savings, the cost of a college education could have been astronomical for me. Paying the full cost of four years at Trinity College without the benefit of scholarships would have left me with a debt exceeding $100,000. Though I certainly had to make sacrifices in order to earn my college degree, I did so without crippling my financial future.

While it would have been wonderful to attend college immediately after high school and live on campus for four years, this was simply not a possibility for me after high school. I did things a little differently, and though it set me back by at least five years in comparison to my peers, I also feel like I was much better prepared for college when I finally made my dream a reality. I had spent the previous five years before college struggling immeasurably. I had been homeless, jobless, penniless and had experienced the crushing sadness that comes with the belief that you have no way of making your dreams a reality. When I entered my first college classroom in the fall of 1994, I was ready to work and prepared to excel.

There are many roads to college. Some are easier than others. Some are costlier than others. The crippling debt that so many students graduate with today is not required in order to be successful. It is a choice that is made by students who do not want to compromise on their road to higher education. I respect their decision. I sometimes wish I had made the same decision. But the crushing debt that follows graduation should not come as a surprise. A college education has a cost attached to it, and that cost is made clear before a person ever signs a student loan agreement.  

I remind my students almost every day that anyone can find a way to pay for college, regardless of their family’s financial means. All they need is the desire to succeed and the willingness to work.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

There are places (and moments) that I will always remember

My wife and daughter sang this song together night before our son was born. It’s one of those moments that a Daddy will always remember. 

Resolution update: May 2012

I am six days late in posting my mostly lack of progress in terms of my yearly goals.  

On a positive note, I still have more than half of the year to complete these goals. 

On a less than positive note, I have been a pathetic disappointment thus far.

1. Don’t die.

Done.

2. Lose ten pounds.

Since my wife went on doctor-ordered bed rest three weeks ago, our friends have been sending over food on a fairly regular basis, and I couldn’t be more thankful.

However, the food that they send over tends to be the kinds of dishes that are easy to transport and reheat. Lasagna. Casseroles. Pizza. Pot roast. Spaghetti and meatballs. All delicious but also heavy on calories. Add to this a decreased workout schedule because of my wife’s constant position on the couch and I now find myself twenty pounds over my goal weight.

The birth of my son last week is not helping. Less time at the gym. More delicious meals from friends.

I’m going to be very hungry during the second half of 2012.

3. Do at least 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups five days a day.  Also complete at least two two-minute planks five days per week.

Done.  

4. Practice the flute for at least an hour a week.

My broken flute remains in my car. I drove by the repair shop this morning, but I was driving my wife’s car, so I didn’t have the flute with me.

I mention this in a veiled attempt to imply progress.   

5. Complete my fifth novel before the Ides of March the birth of my next child.

Not complete. I’m quite disappointed with myself.

6. Complete my sixth novel.

Though I am not currently working on my sixth novel, I have about 12,000 words already written for one of them, and several thousand words written for two more. Plus about 3,000 words of a memoir.

Perhaps this is why I am failing so miserably with the previous goal.

7. Sell one children’s book to a publisher.

No progress in the month of May. All writing energy has been directed at finishing my novel.

8. Complete the book proposal for my non-fiction, photographic  collaborative project.

This project will be tackled during the summer.

9. Complete three chapters of my memoir.

This project, which will be part of an overall proposal, will be completed this summer.

10. Complete at least twelve blog posts on my brother and sister blog.

My sister posted for the first time this year, and I have since responded. Two down, ten to go. She promises another post this week.

It should also be noted that Kelli is writing these posts on her phone, since the fifteen year old IMB laptop that she has been using is no longer functioning. She plans to visit this month to see the new baby, and I will give her one of my old laptops, which will probably seem impossibly futuristic to her. More importantly, it will help her to produce work faster.

11. Become certified to teach high school English by completing two required classes.

Elysha continues work on this project. I believe that she has one class ready for the fall and is still in search of the other.

12. Publish at least one Op-Ed in a newspaper.

I published a piece in Beyond the Margins in April, which is not exactly a newspaper but is a great place (and maybe even a better place) for an author to publish.

I still have two pieces currently in the pipeline with hopes of both finding their way into print soon.

13. Attend at least five Moth events with the intention of telling a story.

My plan for attending my third StorySlam of the year in April were quashed when our then-unborn son decided to create problems with my wife’s placenta, necessitating fulltime bed rest.

My third Moth appearance will now take place at the GrandSLAM championship on July 17 at the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan. The theme of the night is “Fall from Grace.” If you would like to attend the show, let me know and I can alert you as to when tickets are available.      

14. Complete the necessary revisions of our rock opera (The Clowns) so that it can be staged as a full production in 2013.

My partner and I plan on finalizing the script this summer. The director of the playhouse has recently expressed excitement over the project and a desire to assist in the revision, which sounds great to me.

15. Rid Elysha and myself of all education debt before the end of the year.

Incremental progress has been made on this front in May.

16. Give yoga an honest try.

It does not appear that yoga classes will be happening at my school after all. I need to find another introductory class to attend. Anyone? 

17. Meditate for at least five minutes every day.

I mediated for five minutes a day for approximately 25 of the 31 days of May. I haven’t realized any benefits from this time spent yet, but I will continue trying.     

18. Agree to try at least one new dish per month, even if it contains ingredients that I wouldn’t normally consider palatable.

In May, I tried honeydew for the first time and found it palatable but boring.

19. Conduct the ninth No-Longer-Annual A-Mattzing Race in 2012.

The race is planned for the fall. 

20. Post my progress in terms of these resolutions on this blog on the first day of every month.

Six days late, but my newborn son is seven days old, so I’m using him as an excuse.

A recommendation, a quandary and a stupid book that belongs in the trash

The books that are most popular with our three year old daughter eventually find their way off the shelf and into a wicker basket in her bedroom. As these books fall out of favor, they eventually make their way back to the shelf, often to regain favor again months later. 

Comments on three books currently residing in this basket:

THE RECOMMENDATION

10 MINUTES TILL BEDTIME by Peggy Rathmann: I cannot say enough about this book. It’s essentially a story that teaches children to count down from ten, but the illustrations are tremendous. Clara and I have read this book more than twenty times, and I am still finding details in the illustrations that make every page new, interesting and fun. It’s the kind of book that both parents and children can mutually enjoy.

THE QUANDRY

WHEN YOU GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE by Laura Joffe Numeroff

My daughter loves these books, including this first one which launched the series, but I have never understood one thing about this book:

Why does the mouse use scotch tape to stick his picture to the refrigerator? It makes no sense. Why not a magnet? Has anyone in the history of modern-day refrigeration ever thought it a good idea to affix a piece of paper to a refrigerator with tape?

THE BOOK I WANT TO THROW IN THE TRASHCAN

I’m not going to say the name of this book, because although I despise it with every fiber of my being, I’m not sure how we acquired it and do not want to risk offending the person who gave us this book.

It’s a non-fiction children’s book about ballet, including descriptions of ballet practice and recitals. There’s far too much text on each page for someone as young as my daughter, but it’s a series of photographs in the middle of the book that I find most objectionable:

Little girls, approximately 5-7 years old, plastered with enough makeup to make them look like sad, elderly children.

Rarely have I ever seen grown women wear the amount of lipstick and eye shadow that these little girls are wearing.

What kind of parent thinks this is a good idea?

Clara loves ANGELINA BALLERINA, so when she found this book on her shelf last week, she was thrilled. But since there is too much text on a page for her age level, I’ve been inventing a story of a more appropriate length to go along with the photographs, including sentences like:

“Look at those girls wearing all that makeup. How yucky. Those little girls must be so sad. Little girls should never wear so much makeup. It’s gross.”

I can’t remember a time in my life when I wanted to throw a book in the garbage, but this might be the one. At the very least, I plan on removing this book from my home as soon as possible lest these clown-like images of these sad children become ingrained in my daughter’s mind.

I brought my son home from the hospital and found myself in the midst of Hartford’s Puerto Rican parade.

When I picked up my newborn son from the hospital on Sunday and finally brought him and my wife home, I had the unexpected pleasure of driving through Hartford’s Puerto Rican Day parade in order to get to and from the hospital. In doing so, I learned a great deal about this parade, which I never even knew existed until Sunday.

Among the more memorable observations:

In truth, I didn’t drive through the actual parade, which began at 11:00 AM and finished well before 1:00 PM. I arrived in the neighborhood around 2:00 PM, and although the marching bands and parade floats had been gone for more than an hour, the Puerto Rican people had taken to the streets in cars decked out with the Puerto Rican flag and commenced an impromptu, amoeba-like extension of the parade that oozed its way into every corner of the neighborhood.
I’ve never seen people more excited about a parade. The amount of pride that Puerto Ricans possess for their cultural heritage is second to none.

Automobile safety, particularly in terms of seatbelts and the general practice of keeping the humans inside the vehicle, is apparently optional, and perhaps even frowned upon, on the day of the parade. I saw vans packed with humanity driving down streets with children as young as 7 or 8 years old hanging out of the vehicle by one arm. I saw a guy driving his Toyota Corolla in traffic with his head protruding through the sun roof. I saw children standing in the backs of moving pick-up trucks and lying prone on the hoods of moving cars. I saw a car drive by with its trunk popped open. Stuffed inside, waiving tiny Puerto Rican flags, were at least half a dozen people, twisted together in what appeared to be a human version of the Gordian knot.

The constant, incessant blaring of car horns was apparently required by anyone driving a car with a Puerto Rican flag affixed to it. This constant blaring was often augmented by the use of trumpets, vuvuzelas and drums, all stuffed within the confines of these vehicles.

Though the were streets were filled with these loud, overstuffed vehicles, nary a pedestrian could be found. Bizarre. 

Traffic lights served only as suggestions following the parade. I quickly learned to drive through intersections at my own risk.

Clothing above the waist is optional for both men and women.

I’ll have to remember to tell Charlie about this last one when he is old enough to appreciate it.

You can’t lie to a man with a penis

My son was circumcised yesterday. I was not at the hospital at the time (appropriately enough, I was playing golf), but the doctor told my wife that Charlie didn’t cry a bit.

As a human being equipped with my own penis, I assured my wife that this was not true. Perhaps he did not wail as much as one might if an arm or a leg were completely severed, but there were cries of pain. That, I said, was a certainty.

It turns out that I was correct. The nurse who was present at the circumcision popped into my wife’s hospital room minutes before we were to leave to say goodbye, and she reiterated this fairy tale about the painless circumcision to me.

“He didn’t cry at all?” I asked.

“Not at all. But he was numbed before the doctor began the procedure, so he didn’t feel a thing.”

“How did he feel about the needle you injected into his penis? Did he cry then?’”

“Well, yeah,” she admitted. “He cried then.”

I was going to point pout that differentiating between the pain associated with the anesthesia and the pain associated with the actual procedure doesn’t mean much to the person who is dealing with the pain, but I decided to remain silent. I was trilled to be bringing our son home, and I did not want to spoil the moment with unnecessary oration. 

But I wasn’t surprised by this fairy tale circumcision. I have enormous respect for doctors and nurses, but when it comes to describing pain, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

They cannot be trusted.

Carlos Fuentes understood me before I understood me

Carlos Fuentes said in a 1981 Paris Review interview:

“When your life is half over, I think you have to see the face of death in order to start writing seriously. There are people who see the end quickly, like Rimbaud. When you start seeing it, you feel you have to rescue these things. Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.”

It’s a frightening and glorious thing when someone captures your most essential truth long before you ever knew it to be true.

Long before it could even be true.

Fuentes was right. Some of us see the end quickly, and when we see it, we feel the need to rescue things. Preserve them. Carve them in stone.

In many ways I was fortunate. I did not have to wait until my life was half over to see the face of death. Without my two near-death experiences (one and two) and the armed robbery, I would not be the writer I am today.

I might not be a writer at all.