Bob Jonas's Blog, page 2
May 10, 2023
Cpap Quandary
Facebook post seven years ago:
It’s a Miracle (can now be found on my websit
First night, monster me, so afraid that Susan wouldn’t want to sleep next to Hannibal Lector. Lucky me, she likes me a lot and her patience and understanding really paid off. I slept eight hours, didn’t get up to pee once, and according to the snoring police, I didn’t warble all night long. And my breathing didn’t stop any time during the night. I had energy all day long and did not fall asleep at the keyboard or while watching television. It’s now been thirty days and this pattern has repeated itself every day I’ve worn the mask. It’s a miracle!
Seven Years Later
We still sleep in the same bed,the snoring has never returned, or the interruption to breathing. I still have more energy at the end of the day, but I can’t truly attribute that to the machine, as other lifestyle changes have had an impact. And the machine does not guarantee a good night’s sleep. Once I fall asleep, it deepens, but for the times I have had trouble falling asleep, it does not help, and many times I have had to remove the mask so it doesn’t bother me as I’m trying to fall asleep.
So why am I now having doubts about the treatment—because I hate it. After seven years, it is a pain in the ass. In a recent report—one of many made possible by a secret cpap satellite—said I was doing poorly on the rubric set out to measure my daily success. So now, in addition to my machine, I have a chin strap to keep air from escaping my mouth, making for a better seal and all the benefits that entails. In other words, it keeps my mouth shut better. My sleep doc, when she found out my numbers were not great, had me do yet enough sleep test, one of those all-night gigs, hooked up to a million cables and told to sleep—right. When she found out I had lost about 25 pounds, she said it was possible that I might be a candite for stopping the treatment, as weight gain is a very big determinant in causing sleep apnea. I had never known this, and thus, the incentive to keep losing weight escalated.
But the real cause for my concern is the marketing of this affliction. As my generation has grown older, marketers come out of the woodwork, looking to cash in on our age-related infirmities. I remember as soon as I signed up for Social Security, I was assured by the government all my information would be kept under wraps, but as soon as I signed up, I began getting an overflow of information from mortuaries, wanting to plant me as soon as possible, not to mention tons of other vendor ads wishing to sell whatever they thought old people needed.
And my supplier of Cpap stuff, Apria, sends me constant mailers, snail and email, and texts, and phone calls, about what the government is willing to pay to keep me in gear I do not need. And then I go to the dentist, thinking I am cpap safe, and the first thing the dentist gives me is a form to fill out, about my sleeping habits.
“Why this?” I ask the receptionist.
“To see if you have sleep apnea,” she says.
“But I do have sleep apnea, and I do not need to fill out this form, and why oh why does this affliction fall into a dentist’s lap?” Obviously, it’s another way to make money.
“Because people can have sleep apnea for years and not know it, and they see a dentist much more often than a sleep doctor.”
“Really? A dentist has as much training in sleep disorders than a sleep doctor? I also see my car mechanic much more often than my dentist.”
“If you have a seat, the doctor will be with you soon.”
Me and my big mouth. I am now supremely aware of a whole generation who now have this affliction. At times it seems as every other person at the airport is carrying their handy dandy little bags of sleep apnea gear. And at parties, it’s not what your mental health professional is saying, or which brand of incontinent gear you buy, but what your sleep doctor is prescribing.
I have searched and searched for any support to indicate that this is just one big sham, but alas, it is so universally prescribed and recommended, I do not have a leg to stand on. And then there is my wife, so ready to put up with my monster look every night, just to get me to live longer. Well, if she can stand me, I guess I am stuck.
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May 2, 2023
We Thought It Couldn’t Be Done (especially when you love to eat as much as we do)
Seven months and three weeks ago today we started to walk, and walk, and walk, and walk—and only missed four days since then, two due to illness, two due to snow.
It was a conspiracy of doctors that finally got me going, and Susan. In the past year and a half, having a variety of maladies—none at all serious, just old man maintenance (sorry Ruth)—at the end of each visit, they all said the same thing. You could lose a little weight. Not a big deal, they didn’t use a club, they all knew, after so many years, that I had heard it all before, so maybe just a little hint to get me going. I always shrugged and smiled, and said to them and to myself, sure thing, never believing I would.
Until seven months and three weeks ago, when Susan once again reminded me how, when we got married, there was this seventeen-year difference in our age, and how she wasn’t about to have me go first. And then there was the nonstop nagging of body parts that were always acting up. Nothing serious, as I said, but damn annoying: afib, peripheral neuropathy, sleep apnea, recurring back pains—in short, life, with Susan having her share as well. I never bring any of this up in conversation, except with Susan, as she has her own challenges, ones we share without boring each other to death, although that sometimes happens.
And so, even with excellent health care, and good meds, we persisted, but in a way, not adding joy to our lives–until seven months and three weeks ago. I’m betting a bazillion people have read the tons of advice in articles about the benefits of walking. After being so acutely aware, you’d think we would have started years ago. But it always seemed like such a little thing—half hour a day, to start. One of Susan’s best friends, on a visit last year, reminded us—it’s only a half hour, and believe it or not, that has become our mantra.
Once we started, we decided on a few other things: like eating healthier, an even more challenging scenario for two people who love to eat. Looking back at our lives overseas, we could trace a lot of our ups and downs with food, to the places we lived. When there wasn’t much to do in Saudi, we walked around our compound, again and again and again. Next up Germany: bread pork beer bread pork beer bread pork beer bread pork beer.
And when we first moved home, the flood gates, or should I say, the gates to the bakeries drew us in, as did the gargantuan servings at restaurants everywhere we went. In Norway you could count twelve different kinds of cereal on the cereal shelf, few with sugar added. Back home, at a Safeway store, we counted 256 different brands of cereal. At my first trip to the doctor, surprise surprise—sleep apnea, irregular heartbeat, and some other minor health skirmishes, all to do with weight gain. And now, all starting to get much better, with the walking.
Not to mention our dedication to almost eliminating sugar, processed foods, much smaller portions of everything, more fruit, and next to no red meat. It ain’t brain surgery, and IT AIN’T BEEN EASY, but we do indulge every once in a while. But the benefits, between the two of us, in addition to losing a total of over 50 lbs., have been astounding. 
And all this without machines, which I hate, no extreme exercises or exercise routines or diets, and only Zumba for Susan two or three times a week. Not condemning in any way any program that works for people, I am just too lazy to conform to any of them. The walking routine has become so much an automatic part of our life, we don’t even question it. When one of us says, at least once a week, “I don’t want to go today, “we are already lacing up our great new walking shoes as we head out. We have walked in every kind of rotten weather Portland throws at us, except those days when we couldn’t even stand up on the ice.
And most importantly for us: we do it together, because if we didn’t, we
wouldn’t do it. It can be done, not necessarily with fad exercise regimens and diets, but with will power—something that has always been in short supply for me. I have never appreciated how hard it is for people to lose weight until I made a concerted effort—IT IS DAMN HARD!!!!!! And it didn’t start out as a weight loss program for us. Our concern was for a much healthier lifestyle, fewer trips to the doctor(s), and somehow, miraculously, outlasting Susan. Weight loss has been a fringe benefit, one that many think should not be a goal in itself. That might be true, but so far, we love it.
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April 13, 2023
GETTING IT DONE
I have been writing for years, using Works, Word, Apple Works, Google docs, open source, and more—for business and personal use, to write letters, ads, lesson plans, and all the rest. As Word became the preeminent word processing application over the years, starting out with just a few thousand commands, adding thousands more through upgrades, things became more and more complicated. Like so many Word users, I am self-taught, and there’s the rub. I am good at what I know, but have not progressed much past the few thousand commands I first knew, and to this day, still rely on. I do love all the modern conveniences of an electronic word processor, and I cannot imagine ever writing in long hand again.
Every time there is an upgrade, I am again forced to learn new commands. Often, when working on a new project, I need to remind myself of something I have not used for quite a while, inevitably forgotten, and then must teach or reteach myself—and the forgetting keeps getting worse. But there is a point to this tale of computing woe, and a happy ending—not that kind Jay.
When you are manipulating words for a book, at 100, 200, 300 or 400 pages or more, and you cannot remember how to set page breaks, and how they must work in conjunction with pagination, and margins, and a variety of other formatting tools, including headings, while trying to save time establishing a consistent format using the styles pane—an aging brain can hit the wall. After trying to gain as much as I can from YouTube instruction, and a variety of other online help pages, I am ready to punch out the computer, and continue on with what I love to do most—create.
All of this changed last year when I discovered outsourcing companies, to format my projects, every time I write anything longer than a letter. I’ve known about these kinds of companies for years but did not think to explore an area of expertise for writing. As most people probably know—leaving me far behind—these companies are now everywhere, offering competitive services in just about any category of business you can think of.
So, I tried Fiverr. For fifteen dollars, I found an extraordinary service provider, who formatted a 250-page book for me. He had it done in less than a week, and with every suggestion I made—and there were many—changes were made almost immediately. It was perfect. I asked him to prepare it as a standard Word document for sending to an agent or publisher, and as a document, ready to send to a POD (print on demand) companies like KDP, Lightening Source, or Ingram Spark.
In the past few months, I have also hired him to format a very complex book for every electronic format, that included 155 pictures in addition to the 110,000-word text—it is perfect. Jump, a memoir, in both print and eBook format, will launch in early September.
But that is far from the end of the story. My service provider, Ajmal Mamoon, lives and works in Islamabad, Pakistan. He has become much more than a business contact half a world away. Seldom have a I met someone as kind, humble, considerate, and skillful, to do whatever a client asks to get a job done. After numerous contacts, we started getting to know one another on a more personal level. He is a devout Muslim, and from all our communications, I can tell he truly practices his beliefs. At first, I did not know what to make of all his thoughtful and generous remarks, wishing me the best of both worlds, all based on the love of his religion, not once proselytizing. I never doubted his sincerity or convictions or his best wishes and desire to make me happy.
When I needed to have a new website, Mamoon recommended a company called Sixdees, also based in Islamabad. The website was a huge undertaking, and this company was just a start up. They did not realize how involved the effort would be, but never questioned or reneged on the initial estimate. By the time the site was done, it was obvious he had way underbid. I was delighted to greatly increase their fee. I hope you can see why I am very happy with the final site: http://www.vagabondlibraraian.
Both SixDees and Mamoon’s company, Concept Seekers, are highly skilled, and if you need their expertise, I would recommend them without reservation,
Ajmal’s Mamoon’s services include:
Book formatting, typesetting, and interior layout designs for all sorts of print books and ebooks (mainly, memoirs, novels, poetry books, children’s books, cookbooks, academic books, workbooks, planners, low-content books, and other fiction and nonfiction books)making the books publishing ready for all publishing platforms like amazon kdp, Barnes and nobles, kobo, Ingram spark, lulu, Smashwords, etc.Book cover designs for both ebooks and print books (paperback and hardcover)Rectification of any issues in files made in InDesign or Word or any issues related to formatting or publishing.brochures, flyers, and banner designs.Concept Seekers
Ajmal Mamoon
Email: mamoonajmal1997@gmail.com
Whatsapp: +923474505711
Website Design
SixDees contact information is:
Hamza Ahmad
H59V+R7Q, Block C
Naval Anchorage, Islamabad,
Islamabad Capital Territory, Pakistan
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April 6, 2023
Blogger Bob is Back
Greetings blog readers, Bob blog readers, or Bob Blog Binge Readers, all of whom at times, I’m sure, feel overwhelmed in trying to keep up with their favorite blogs, news feeds, Op-ed pieces, and an online mountain of way too much information and visual garbage. My promise to you, if you have a look at my humble offerings, is the same promise I made to all my kids over twenty-two years as a school librarian: I will not be boring! And if such an occurrence strikes, and I am called on it, a million dollars will be doled out to you, or at least a free ticket.
Laugh you might, but there is no way to gauge the number of kids and parents of kids who have told me years later, those freebees remained on their fridge longer than any card form Grandma. And how at the time, they never could have guessed, I would be enriching their kids way beyond what any school had promised them.
As much as I hate to use the same intro image I’ve used in the past, it seems chillingly apropos. Not quite as chilling as when Jack Nicolson’s character, Jack Torrance said, “here’s Johnny,” but on the same scale, for those who remember and wet themselves watching the Shinning. What’s so new this time that has forced me into something I’ve tried to avoid like the plague? I am terrible at writing when it forces me to write to a deadline, but for this endeavor, I am told, if I want consistent readership—as much as those who are enticed to read about Lume products, https://youtu.be/aXaGYaE5EFs (another blog post to look forward to)—I must be consistent.
But why now?
Life. Twenty-five years of life: travel, teaching overseas, and killer adventures, with an overwhelming desire to share thoughts about what it’s been like to repatriate—a term overseas workers know well, and usually dread—in other words, what it’s like to come home to place you barely recognize. Rip van Winkle slept for twenty years and missed the American Revolution. We were gone for twenty-three years, 1998-2021, so just think what we missed. That’s why so many who work overseas, daring once again to reenter their old lives, last a very short time before shipping out again.
It happened to us in 2016, our first return. Trump had just been elected. Four year later—the longest we had ever lived in the same place during our married life—we were gone, no longer able to recognize the country we used to call home. It’s not that we’d lived our lives under a rock. We read the news, and as librarians, provided up to date periodicals to our overseas communities and kids. We knew what was going on in the US. But there was no way we could possibly measure how it would feel and the impact it would have on us by actually being here.
Our hands were forced when the pandemic struck. Most importantly, a close family member was dying of Alzheimer’s, and we needed to be home for him and our family, and we so greatly missed sharing the love of family and friends.
Over the past two years, I have chronicled these travel years into a memoir entitled Jump. It has been a labor of love, and pain, and reconciliation, and so much more, and to be truthful, another of the reasons to start sharing the lives we led and what inspired me to write it all down. With only a few more months before the book launches, as a way to gain as much interest as possible, my revitalized website, contain the blog, and is the best way for me to reach out. www.vagabondlibrarian.com
No agent, and no publisher will touch an untested author’s memoir these days unless they are famous or infamous, or get damn lucky. Due to the ease with which one can get something published these days, it seems as if every third person is also writing their life story.
I plan to broadcast each blog post’s contents to my other social media as well, commenting on our life overseas, and what we found when we returned home. I also plan to ruminate, as Susan Stamberg once did on her NPR program, “All Things Considered.” I have so much stuff in my head I can’t begin to limit myself to what may seem a self-serving marketing scheme to sell books. I don’t plan to get rich, go on tour, or get carpel tunnel from signing too many autographs. But for any who share a love of travel, an interest of overseas work or education, school libraries, or need a guide to some exciting adventures—of your two favorite librarians—Jump may be the next entertaining read next to your bed.
December 5, 2022
Starting Over—Strangers in a Strange Land
Starting over, next to nothing left, at least in the way of stuff. After 25 years on the road, buying, selling, giving it all away, donating, and even leaving quality crap alongside the road (on Vashon), we’ve deep sixed more than one or two household’s worth of eclectic, priceless heirlooms, and are down to the bare bones.
The final cleansing occrued on Vahson, just before our move to Norway, thinking we wouldn’t be needing anything essentail for years. In this, continuing our decades old cathartic neurosis, our judgement turned out to be questionable.When I say nothing, I mean nada, zip, niente, zippo. We had to order a bed which good friends set up for us so we’d have a place to crash upon arrival, but that’s about it, except for some plates and silverware and books we still have in a small storage unit. At least this time, with just 648 sq feet of space, we don’t have to worry about fitting it all in. Finally, our junk does not control our lives in any way.
Once before in Hong Kong, we had a flat with just 500 sq feet, and by the end of a year, thought one of us would have to throw the other out the window. We knew then, at least we thought we knew, we could never live in such close proximity again. Wrong once more. Our decision to come home now, with Susan trying out semi or full retirement, we knew we’d have to sacrifice the big footprint and the life of luxurious expat living we had grown used to.
Next step, shopping for essentials. I started my search this morning, two days from our departure—although, unbeknownst to me, Susan started hers weeks ago. Using search terms like old furniture, used furniture, kitchen stuff, etc. my searches went nowhere, leading me to more up-to-date search terms like, vintage, antique, recycled, and previously owned. Old crap, junk, and second-hand shit also went nowhere. Low and behold her loveliness, much more attuned to online shopping, was already using web sites like Wayfair, Overstock, World Market, and West Elm, not to mention Amazon. While I slept, she started going wild with orders that multiplied exponentially. I was so focused on a list of 40,000 other items to get us the hell and gone, her shopping exploits went unnoticed—until.
When messages from our new apartment started arriving, from a service they call Concierge, we were informed that way more than a shitload of packages had begun arriving. When I looked more closely, at least on Amazon, low and behold, my honey had been busy, busy, busy. In my great admiration for her great good sense, stuff like shower curtains and dish towels were among the orders, things I never would have thought of, still trying to understand what it is to truly start over.
As soon as we have a day or two to sort out our jet lag, we will hit the road, top down in Susan’s VW convertible, and go shopping—another fabulous, unique experience, like ones we have always craved, but in lands far away, with much bigger budgets. I did find a couple of quality offerings for our walls, embedded in this post, but I’m not sure this will be to Susan’s taste. I might have to be flexible.
Day Dreams Gone Bad
The Aida—ofthe German cruise ship line–just docked on this bleary, rainy morning. I guess there are still a few more cruise boats due in over the next few weeks.Today, I might get a slightly different perspective of their arrival.
Susan was given a pair of binoculars for her birthday—among other things—and said they were probably more for me—as if. Maybe a few peeks, but I’m no peeping boat tom. l did write to the Aida company, to see if I could get a tour while one of their ships was tied up, but they only offered a web address, so I could book a tour. Not too friendly—they won’t make the Acknowledgements page.
So what’s guy to do, to get a little better glimpse, to explore possible elements for a new book? Yikes, Aunt Ida and Uncle Fritz just waltzed out in their bermuda shorts and rumpled tank tops. Better get back to work before I see something untoward. Oh no, too late, two women in their bras waving to me.
Back to day dreaming. More productive to let my wander about flying whales than suffer the reality of cruise ship tourists.
Death’s Door, and More
Michelle Obama cancelled last Friday so we took off to Portland Friday afternoon, just ahead of the snowstorm that jeapordized her visit. Kept saying to Susan, why are we heading into this storm when we could be snugging down, watching the geese fly by? Surprise, surprise, surprise, a b-day party for me, thrown by my honey, friends and family. Excititng stuff for a guy turning just 69. Do you think they thought I wasn’t going to make it to 70? Naw, I’m lucky enough to hang with people who find any excuse to party. It was a blast!
Just in case you can’t read the labels on the booze, the gin label say Death’s Door, and the wine label says 1,000 Stories. How well my people know me–telling storeis to the end? Can’t imagine what will be on my tombstone.
Home a few days later but, sad to say, remnants of the snowstorm were everywhere. Barely slid down our mile lone driveway, only to find it entirly blocked the next day by fallen trees. Both snow plows on the island are broken so we are all on our own for the next few days. I’ve lost count of all the days Susan has missed but it’s nice having her her
Ladalizing the Liberian
Ladalizing the Liberian — Nov. 24, 2004
After three years in Shanghai and a year and a half in Beijing, one of the best things about living in China – as we have repeatedly bragged to family and friends – was the how safe we felt here. The rose colored glasses came off last night when Tarzan the Liberian came crashing though our utility room window in the early morning hours.
At 1AM, awakening from a deep sleep, the lovely Susan asked me if I had heard the doorbell rung again and again. Up in a shot in nothing but skin, I carefully assessed the situation, then, after manfully assuring her that it must have been a prankster — if anything at all — and fell right back to sleep.
Not noticing her quiet retreat from the bedroom to the computer nook, I was again ripped from a comfortable bed after she came racing in to tell me that a big crash had occurred just a few feet from where she was Skyping with her sister. Together we tip toed, her in her nightshirt, me in my birthday suit, through the kitchen to the alleged scene of the break in. At this point I still did not take the situation seriously — Susan has a very dramatic side. But then she saw him, lying among the clean laundry, broken glass, and blood splatter. This time she had every reason to scream, and scream. We ran from the kitchen as he groggily moved towards us.
A glass doorway separates our kitchen from a computer alcove. The utility room where the intruder landed is right off the kitchen in the back and of course where all potential weapons (golf clubs, tennis rackets, etc) could be found. The unlockable glass door, which we shut immediately was the only barrier that separated the good guys from the bad guy. We all knew the doorway was only an illusion of safety but from behind it we felt very comfortable in screaming, “get the hell out, jump off the balcony (we’re on the second floor), no you are not coming in here, we can hear you, don’t you dare touch that door” and a few other blood curdling instructions that must have had him close wetting himself.
At this moment we had no idea how to get hold of Alan, ourr school security guy. After numerous promises to myself to always keep his number handy, I remembered that I had written it down in my planner, which on this evening was at school. We then tried the Internet but for usual reasons, our service was down. The first number in our staff handbook was the school’s CFO. After telling Susan that he would look up the number we needed, the phone went dead. No Internet, no phone, and now cut off from world. We began to believe the story our intruder had told us — the one with three men chasing him with knives.
The Dirctor was second on our list. In the first few seconds with him the connection went from bad to real bad. Fortunately, we had enough of a connection to hear him assure us that a call was in to Alan, our security guy — minutes later, still nothing.
The instruder was beginning to go psycho. He was worried that the guys with knives would find him. He seemed to be counting on us and the help we were trying to reach to save him. But where was the help to save us — from him.
Alan finally got back and assured us that the diplomatic police had been called. Minutes later they called and began asking the most bizarre questions. In this twenty minute interview they asked who we were, where did we work, why were we in this country, why should they come, and why can’t we call our own security. And how about this — did we know the intruder? When we had finished answering all their questions they told us they could not come onto the grounds of a diplomatic compound.
Meanwhile… the crazed looney in our kitchen was losing his grip on reality, getting to the point of serious mayhem, and no one seemed to sense our urgency. I think, through all the phone calls, the lovely Ms. Susan projected a way too calm demeanor. Referring to our intruder as “this gentleman” and never raising her voice, she never projected the scared shitless state we both were in. At times I wanted to grab the phone and be more direct — “get the f_ck over here, someone is going to die, where the hell is anyone to help us, there’s this crazed – not gentleman – motha_f_cking son of a bitch is about to go medievil on our poor librarian asses…and stuff like that, but to keep the situation cool, I let Susan do the talking.
Meanwhile, Charlie Manson Jr. kept begging us to let him out, all of us knowing he could have easily opened the door at any time. He kept coming close to the glass to show us how one of his teeth had been knocked out, how his hand had been cut and the resulting blood all over his hands. At one point he got down on his hands and knees, facing away from us, rocking back and forth and praying, all the while staring right at a full set of very sharp kitchen knives. Come on police, come on Alan, hello headlines: “It was reported today that two school librarians – peaceful people from America – were found brutally murdered in their apartment as the authorities tried to figure out who best to send help.
Oh yes, in another conversation with Alan the security guy, we were told that the authorities had asked if they should bring guns along. Well, how do we answer that? Can’t really imagine the cops in the US calling back to ask that question.
Meanwhile, Charlie is telling us that he was visiting a girl he had picked up in Sanlitun — the local bar district — and that three guys with knives interrupted his visit and threw him out of a fourth floor window. That is how he came to land on an entranceway roof close to our little open utility room window. The story changed later to him jumping out the window. In fact, much of the original tale changed considerably over the course of the evening. From the roof, he performed an amazing display of drug enhanced acrobatics by pulling himself up the building and through this tiny window, only to get hung up on a laundry pole which sent him reeling and crashing into an interior plate glass window. This being the subsequent crash that startled poor Susan away from her Skyping.
At one point, Susan’s calm demeanor mislead Alan’s good sense, as he asked us, “did you offer him a cup of tea?” I guess there was no way for him to know, without us screaming a bit more, that there was this doped up, glassy eyed intruder within inches of us, on the brink of who knew what, and that we didn’t want to violate the only barrier – if only an illusionary one – that kept Charlie away from us and that a good cup of tea might indeed have been nice, but this was probably not the time. At the moment he made this insane suggestion, the only thing I had thought to give our guy was hot lead.
In the meantime, we were able to get a bit more up front and personal with Charlie. Small but endearing facts; like the $2,000 buckaroos he had in his pocket, the USD denaros that daddy had supposedly given him for a little trip to Bankok the next day. Oh yes, and that his dad was a Liberian ambassador in Holland, and that he had left his laptop behind when he was thrown from the window, and how his leg was broken, although he was walking around fine. At one point he turned off the light so the bad guys with knives could not see him from our kitchen window, although he kept giving them a good target by constantly going to the window to look out. This was the eeriest moment. We had to keep a light on in our hallway, but the reflection it cast on the darkened kitchen window left him barely visible. Every time he would come close to the door it was as if he had popped up in a minstrel show. Opening wide to show us what a tooth socket looked like without a tooth was a dental lesson we would not soon forget. Although I had to urgently pee after standing guard the whole time, no way was I leaving Susan. She had to bring me a water bottle that I politely turned to one side while not missing a drop.
Susan contiued to engage him in death at our doorstep small talk, but after too much time had passed, and after he repeatedly told us that he welcomed the arrival of the police, and after he had seen us again and again and again on the phone with no result, his agitation level began to suggest he was about done being polite .
Plan B had to be put into effect. We had not dared go outside, seriously believing that guys with knives were somewhere out there. But as he started going further and further into psycho land, Susan rounded up shoes, wallets, cell phones, passports and heavy coats. We decided that if need be, we would make a run for it and take our chances outside. The most serious protection we were able to come up with was a two-foot long wooden ladle we had bought in Chile. When I started holding onto this in front of Charlie, he must have thought – dinnertime? These stooges — crazier than me? I was ready, willing, and able to ladel a bunch of hurt on this guy.
Back to the phone calling. Allen at another time asked if we were Americans and did we want him to call the US Embassy? Had this guy been drinking? But, Susan had the phone and said something like, sure why not. If it had been me, I again might have yelled something like, I don’t give a flying f_ck who you send, just get them the f_ck over here, this guy is starting to unwind. Somehow, someone finally got a message to our embassy to get the idiotic diplomatic police over to us before the bloodbath began.
But before the cops arrived, after two agonizing hours, Charlie disappeared. We saw him go back into the little window but could barley make out what he was about to do. A few minutes later we heard a pounding and more pleas for help. He was now on the same roof he had originally fallen on, and we only learned later that he was asking that the hall window by the stairway be opened so he could make his final exit. We also noticed his watch on this roof the next morning and remembered how he constantly was looking at his wrist in disbelief that the watch was not there.
During these two longest hours of our lives, we were on the verge of sympathizing with Charlie Manson Jr., but knowing the way he must have put himself in harms way, the way he sacred us to death, the perceived threat to our lives, kept us easily at a distance.
When the police guys finally showed up they were relaxed, no guns drawn, no guns at all. They found Charlie freezing on the roof. The first thing they said when they saw him on the roof was, “how we get him down?” After all the other bizarre questions the police asked that night I was not too surprised with latest question. I wanted to say, why don’t you just shoot him down? When they had finally rounded him up, he was escorted back to our apartment to ask us if this indeed was the one. After looking out one more time to see if there were dozens more Liberian crazy men swinging around the rooftops, I said yes, this was the guy. They hauled him to the kitchen and pointed to where we told them he had broken in and they yelled at him, “you go there” pointing to the window. As they escorted him out in handcuffs, he said to us, “please speak for me.” We didn’t know what to say other than he didn’t hurt us, he was just a desperate kid, what do you say? His last words as he was calmly walked out our door, were “go with Joshua and his children.” PSB asked no questions. They did call the next day to take a report — a report that included our names, Susan’s first name, what we were doing in China, where was our school, and what was the damage. That was it.
After the police left, at about 5:30 AM, we hugged each other and I fell dead asleep while Susan did some serious phone calling to her sister. At 7AM Tom the Director called and generously offered to get us subs — and to see if we were still alive. But if Tom had not called, hard telling when we would have woken up.
The management of the compound came later that day to see the damage. At least seven or eight people viewed with amazement how this kid climbed from the roof he initially landed on, to our tiny window. In the early morning I had seen his watch, but by the time the management came, someone had grabbed it and ran. The managers were very apologetic, but between all the people involved, and all the people we knew and have known in China, no one could ever remember something like this happening. They told us the police were usually stymied whenever any kind of foreigner was involved and that they tried to stay clear. We still don’t know if these were regular PSB guys or the special diplomatic police that were promised.
This could be a useful cautionary tale if lessons are to be learned. We have taken our safety for granted for so long that I think we can do better in the future. Now that we know we are on our own if anything happens, we need contingency plans. In the two hours that many people tried to decide how best to help, we could have been sliced and diced and carried out in a suitcase. Only Richard called back one time to check to see if anyone had arrived. No one else ever called to see if we were still alive or how we were doing until the morning.
Now, after having just that much more to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Day, I know we need:
1) A phone by our bed
2) A better, bigger weapon than our precious wooden ladle — kept by our bed
3) All emergency numbers including, Allen, Richard, our compound emergency number, and our embassy emergency number. Not to mention a couple of big guy friends we know will come under any circumstance.
4) And next time, I will take what the lovely Susan says seriously, the first time – I think
And in the end… we never heard another word about this incident. Nothing from school, the cops, or the US Embassy. We have no idea what happened to the intruder. In time we did feel sorry for this kid. He did not mean us any harm and he was scared to death. The only understanding we could bring to this affair occured after learning a number of things concerning Chinese relations with many African nations. China desperatley needs minerals they can only get from countries like Liberia — the home country of our intruder. During the time we lived in downtown Beijing, we often wondered how, in this heavily policed city, the main streets where we lived could sustain such a heavy, illegul drug trade — with impunity. Not hard to imagine now. Unlike Tibet, where the governemnt can do anything they wish, they have to be nice to African nations to get what they want.
