Emanuel's First Christmas

(I wrote this very short story a couple of years ago as an exercise in writing outside my own genre, and the fun I had with it was a big part of what prompted me to write The Messenger Bag. It's a Christmas story, but a depressing one.)

A cowboy who sold his cattle and shot his horse is nothing more than a pedestrian, wearing the wrong kind of shoes for hiking, and looking for the nearest town with a horse trader. And that horse trader better be honest or Manny was going to plug him between the eyes. Three days of hoofing it in boots meant for riding has a tendency to bleed the sweet right out of a gentleman. And there wasn’t all that much sweet left in Manny to bleed.

He was grieving what was sure to be the loss of a fine saddle, Mexican made, with some fine tooling and silver, and broken in just the right amount. He’d tried to carry it with him. Strapped everything he had onto it and dragged it like a sled behind him with a couple of branches underneath to keep it from sanding down to nothing. But the branches kept wearing out on the rocky soil, so he knew he had to ditch the saddle and hope to come back and find it later. He tied branches on it to disguise it, but figured it was just a matter of time before some bright-eyed fellow would come along and say, how come there’s a bunch of branches on the ground there, looking like someone picked posies and stuck them in a vase?

Manny sat close as he could get to the little fire he’d made under a rocky outcropping and sipped hot coffee. He was mighty tender about the loss of his horse. She was a nice little mare, that Essie, not too big, but a great cow horse. She wasn’t afraid of anything. Bossed the cattle around like they didn’t outweigh and outnumber her. Did anything he told her to. But the second night after he’d brought the herd to the buyers up north of Placerville she’d stepped on a damn rattler in the dusk, taken off running, and broken her leg in a ditch she didn’t see. He had to shoot her. Had to look at those huge brown eyes gone wild with pain and fear and pull the trigger. Nothing else he could do. Just shoot her and start walking.

He pulled his hat low over his face as a blast of icy wind howled and reduced his campfire to a pile of smoldering sticks. Daring to leave his niche in the wall of the cliff, he went in search of rocks he could bank around the fire, being mindful of the sheer drop he knew lay in the hollow darkness somewhere in front of him.

He regretted taking this job. It was too late in the year to be traveling through this pass. But he wasn’t like the big cattle companies in Stockton -- he had to take work when he got it. Besides, when Doc Wilson wants ten head moved, and when you owe Doc Wilson a terrible amount of money, you move his cattle.

He got the fire going again behind its rock screen, but still the wind whipped through his clothes leaving him as cold as he ever felt in his life. As cold as when he fell into the river full of snowmelt, only there was no getting out for warm clothes and a cabin. He was stuck there until morning.

Within the orange glow of the fire he wandered a little further, hunting for more rocks to pile around the niche to protect him from the wind. There weren’t many more to find without getting too far from the safety of the light. Hunkering down the best he could with everything he had piled around him, he waited for dawn, which he estimated was a long time off with night falling so early this time of year.

Why did he have to be such a stubborn man, always working alone? This is what got him into this fix. If he’d been working with partners they’d be home by now. But no, he always had to do things his way. Always had to turn down anything that would commit him to what someone else wanted.

Gust after gust slammed the icy cliff face, carrying away all warmth and all light. All except for a small campfire, a speck of warmth painting one tiny bundled man, shaking violently.

Manny was trying to stay alert by doing math. He’d delivered the cattle on December 19^th. Then he spent the night. Which meant he left for home on December 20^th. He rode Essie on the 20^th and the 21^st, and that night was when she got bit and broke her leg and he shot her. Then he walked on the 22^nd, the 23^rd, and that meant today was the 24^th. I’ll be damned. December 24^th. Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve people were supposed to be in their warm houses with their families eating fine foods, and maybe lighting a Christmas tree. Giving each other presents. Taking care of each other.

They weren’t supposed to be all alone in the dark and the cold. They weren’t supposed to be wondering if they were going to survive until morning. They weren’t supposed to be sure that nobody would even notice they were missing for a long time, and that there was no chance someone would come looking for them.

Those people in the warm Christmas houses, they were willing to bend a little. They knew they didn’t always have to do everything their own way. They wouldn’t die alone.

Manny watched as the wind tried to rip away the tiny flame of his fire and suck it into the void. And he tried to think of Christmas carols he could sing.

“Silent night, holy night. All is calm. All is bright.” The song was torn out of his mouth. He was being erased by the darkness and the cold. He had wanted to be alone, but now that he was getting his wish he didn’t want it anymore. He didn’t want it!

Dying on Christmas would be mighty ironic for a man named Emanuel. His mother had named him that because it meant “God with us.” Manny hadn’t ever cared one way or the other whether God was with us.

But never before had Manny seen the horror of being all alone in the darkness and cold of a universe without anybody else but himself. Had never seen the importance of a source of light and warmth bigger than what he could provide for himself.

There was no longer any feeling in his feet, his hands, or his ears. He shook so hard it cramped his muscles. Then the shaking stopped and he rested for a moment. It was like heaven. But again he shook. He figured when he stopped shaking and didn’t start again that would be it for him.

That was when he prayed the first real prayer of his life.

©B. Gorshe 2014

How Oregonians Handle Snow

1      1.  Newscasters begin predicting snow days in advance, however they rarely say “snow,” instead calling it “the white stuff.” Lower ranked reporters, stationed along highway overpasses, come up with new ways to announce that nothing is happening, while attempting to remember why they majored in journalism. Since local weather forecasters have cried wolf one time too many few believe there will be any snow anyway.

        2. Those who do succumb to the media-fueled frenzy crowd local supermarkets to load up on food they fear will not be available again for a long time. Only a few prepare by putting chains in the trunks of their cars.

        3. When it does begin to snow school district administrators carefully monitor road conditions and wait until roads are at their worst to release all children from school.

        4. Panicked parents leave their jobs and hurry home as quickly as possible. People without young children see parents leaving and the herd mentality kicks in. Everyone flees all places of employment at the exact same time.

       5.  Having nearly every single person in the metropolitan area getting behind the wheel at the same moment causes gridlock. Many drivers put their cars and SUV’s in ditches. Most of these vehicles are four-wheel drive or were being driven by people who grew up in warm climates, like Southeast Asia.  

       6. Transplants who grew up in places where there’s real snow go about their business and wait until the crazies get off the road. Despite their winter driving experience most Oregonians do not listen to them.

7      7. Upon arriving home the Oregonian becomes a whirlwind of activity, attempting to make cocoa, put on a ski sweater and slippers, light a fire in the fireplace, make a tiny snowman, and Facebook everyone about it all at the same time, while being pleased with having once again come through the weather event unscathed. 

And thus the pattern will repeat next year.

Photo KOIN-TV

If You Had a Short Time Left to Live

What would you do if you only had a short time left to live? This actually happened to me, except I survived.  What I thought I would do and what I did, in fact, do were not the same things.

My extended brush with death came about when I had congestive heart failure, brought on by treatment for thyroid cancer. Since I was not really a candidate for congestive heart failure, and hadn’t even heard of it, by the time I sought medical treatment I was, as the doctor said, gravely ill. Hearts have an ejection fraction, which is a measurement of how well they pump out blood. A normal ejection fraction is between 55 and 70. When it drops down to 40 you get diagnosed and start medication. At my first doctor visit my ejection fraction was 7. It rarely happens that someone with a heart as sick as mine was survives, but I did.

There was no sudden healing. I endured a year of simply not dying that day. I expected it at any moment. Everything I did felt like the last time. There was one day when I came awfully close to death. I was in the car with my family and my heart went into an odd rhythm unlike common pvc palpitations. I felt the blood drain out of my head and started to quietly black out. Then it started beating normally again. My heart had fibrillated. It was terrifying.

This is what I would have thought I would do when faced with my own death, and what I actually did.

1     Upon hearing a diagnosis of probable imminent death I thought I would rapidly cycle through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Instead I skipped right past denial and didn’t have the energy to be angry. I followed all the doctor’s instructions to the letter, which I suppose could be construed as bargaining. Then for a while I was plucky: I’m going to beat this! Depression came later and was massive. It has been seven years and I still haven’t completely reached the acceptance point. After I survived I wallowed around in depression for years, then circled back to anger. Acceptance is on my to-do list – not acceptance that I was going to die, since I didn’t, but acceptance that such a thing could ever have happened to me. I protest! I’m against it! As for denial, which I had skipped in the first place, my husband has that one covered.

2    Emotional reactions aside, it seems like the first thing you would do is get your affairs in order. The reality is that if you’re so sick you’re about to die you just don’t have it in you to worry about consolidating bank accounts, updating wills, and so forth. The life lesson here is to keep your affairs in order all the time. Also remember that eventually someone else is going to go through all your drawers.

3    Wouldn’t your imminent death be a great time to say all those things to people you’d been needing to say? Some things, yes. I think I told my family a billion times how much I love them, which wasn’t really news. But when my heart was barely beating the last thing I needed to be doing was to call up an old boyfriend or someone else from my past and hash things out or say what they’d meant to me. If you’re too chicken to say something now you’re not going to be less chicken when you’re at death’s door. Let’s be realistic.

4    About that bucket list – do it now. Sick people don’t tick off items on the list. After I was doing better I did start work on the novel I always meant to write, and I’m still working on it.

5   They say your life flashes before your eyes, and I have to agree with that, except for the flashing part. Since I seemed to be dying a slow death my life spun out for me slowly. Many memories came back to me of who I was at all the stages of my life.

What else?

I condensed my life down to just my family. I decided I wasn’t going to spend my remaining time yelling at my kids about homework and videogames, but to make sure they knew how much I loved them. Nor was I going to spend it worrying about my diet, other than the low-sodium diet the doctor had prescribed. Cleaning house? I mostly couldn’t, so we hired cleaners and said that was clean enough.

I reevaluated my religion, throwing out much of the religion and keeping Jesus. I saw through a lot of big talkers. I saw who really cared about me. I saw plain as day that God had His hand on me. I stopped letting people waste my time with immature lessons on spirituality.

I played a lot of World of Warcraft. If you are inclined to scoff, watch this TED talk, which talks about how playing games increases your resilience and decreases depression: http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_the_game_that_can_give_you_10_extra_years_of_life.html I hadn’t seen the TED talk when I started, but my kids were playing WoW and I was doing lots of things with them. I found that the social aspect, the reward system, etc., of games were keeping me feeling strong and positive.

What do you think you would do if you knew you had a short time left to live?

A Married Christian Woman on Gay Marriage

... and it's not what you think.

I was reared in a very liberal part of the country, and have spent some of my life in the theater milieu. However, I made Jesus the Lord of my life, which usually places me with a conservative crowd. Because of the hand I've been dealt it's not for me to accept any pat answers or slogans about a lot of political issues. I have to think things through for myself. 

The main argument my fellow Christians make against gay marriage is that they believe the Bible is opposed to homosexuality. I’m not going to argue about that. I’ve read some interesting verse-by-verse interpretations that have a different perspective, particularly about some passages in Leviticus. If you want an overview of the variety of opinions Bible scholars have adopted on the subject you can start here if you like. http://peacetheology.net/homosexuality/the-homosexuality-debate-two-streams-of-biblical-interpretation/ I’m not a Hebrew scholar nor conversant in ancient Greek, and I’m dependent on translators like most of us are. All I can do when I come across contentious points is to fall back on what is absolutely clear. God loves us all. We are all sinners. We need to forgive one another and be patient with one another. We need to love one another.

The public face of Christianity has done a very, very poor job of showing love to homosexuals. It can be argued that the enemy magnifies this is in people’s minds. It can also be argued that the worst offenses are committed by people who invoke the name of Christ only as a rallying cry and have not submitted much of their heart to Him at all. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that anti-gay behavior of every sort continues to happen, and televangelists continue to make money declaring that God doesn’t allow the sexually immoral into Heaven. Point of clarification: God doesn’t allow any sinners into Heaven, including liars. This is why Jesus was sent to atone for our sins and wipe our records clean - liars and the sexually immoral alike.

The second argument people make in opposition to gay marriage is that our laws should be based on Bible principles. I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Our laws are not based on Bible principles now. If they were it would be illegal to dishonor one’s parents, or to take the Lord’s name in vain. Our prison population would be unsustainable. Add to the roll call everyone who had said something untrue and harmful about someone else. These three examples are among the Ten Commandments, the most important and clear-cut of all God’s Laws. What can you say about the American economy, which is largely based on coveting what others have? This is not illegal. The law of the land and the Laws of God have not been in complete harmony since Israel was a theocracy, thousands of years ago. Much has changed in those years, not the least of which is Jesus’ arrival, bringing forgiveness of sins and a call to not only follow God’s laws but to love one another and forgive them. He placed his Holy Spirit in the ones who followed him, which, in part, brings ethics into the heart of the individual. Jesus didn’t come and rewrite the laws of the Romans. His was a different Kingdom. Governments come and go. They can be fairly good and they can be downright evil. We can’t expect the government to be the arbiter of morality. Nothing good can come of allowing our ethics to be determined by a system of government. Government is about power, both in the way it’s acquired and how it controls people. As Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The third reason we often hear for prohibiting homosexual marriage is that it erodes the foundation of a sacred institution and the family. I’m sorry to say, that ship has left the harbor. As most people know, the current divorce rate in the U.S. is about 50%. The rate for church-attending Christians is not much different (Barna says one thing, other researchers say another). In 1965 the percent of people 25-34 who were married was around 80%, but by 2010, when living together had become commonplace, it had dipped to around 44%. http://www.prb.org/Articles/2010/usmarriagedecline.aspx Assuming half of those marriages end in divorce, that leaves 22% of Americans following the heterosexual married-for-life plan. When heterosexuals accuse homosexuals of eroding the foundation of a sacred institution I am reminded of Jesus telling his disciples that before they point out that someone else has a spec in his eye they should remove the plank in their own.

A fourth claim in opposition to gay marriage that sometimes comes up has to do with the financial impact of all the people who would now be eligible to receive government benefits that weren’t before. A recent poll shows that only about 3.4% of Americans identify as gay. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/10/19/how_many_americans_are_gay_or_lesbian_gallup_survey_says_3_4_percent.html It’s likely that it will mostly (but not exclusively) be lesbians who are interested in marriage. So we aren’t looking at a lot of people compared to the number of heterosexuals who have willingly given up heterosexual marriage benefits.

The fifth claim, and the last I will address, is that when you give an inch they’ll take a mile. Once we capitulate on gay marriage they will be clamoring for legalizing incest and pedophilia. I say, let them clamor. The American people make a big distinction between something that affects children, and a “victimless crime,” and they will not cave in to either of these. Lately there have been articles circulating about the legalization of gay marriage in Canada, and pastors and others being arrested for speaking out against it. We are not Canada. Freedom of speech is a Constitutional right here, and something we must protect.

My radical proposal is this: the government needs to get out of the business of defining what marriage is. Everything that is now called “marriage” under law should be rewritten as “civil union.” A civil union would be a legally binding relationship between any two consenting adults for whatever reason they choose. The sacred institution of marriage would be completely under the authority of the religious sector. It would look like this:

 - A Christian or other religious couple wants to get married, so they apply for a civil union like they do a marriage license, and they go through a marriage ceremony in their church

 - A non-religious couple wants to get married, so they apply for the civil union, and do whatever they want for a ceremony (an Elvis impersonator in Vegas, absolutely nothing, etc.), but there is no “marriage,” with all the promises before God that they have no intention of keeping

There will be people who are married in some very weird religions you don’t agree with, but if they find a religious authority to marry them, that is the way it will be.

I didn’t go where you thought I was going, did I? You thought I was making a case in favor of homosexual marriage, when what I’m actually doing is saying that marriage in America is so broken that it’s too late to make it more “sacred” by barring someone from it. True sacred marriage needs to be lifted out of the mire into which all these disposable marriages have sunk. I don’t see the government being of any use whatsoever in doing it.

What makes a marriage sacred is the vow you make with your spouse and God. There is no sacred institution. Our Founding Fathers wisely separated church and state.

Finally, if you are a Christian and you don't feel terrible about the treatment gay people have historically received, and continue to receive, then you need to wake up. Seems to me we should be binding the broken-hearted. But that could be the topic of a whole other blog.

Pushing the Pendulum Back to Introverts

I recently posted on Facebook a link to a TED talk with Susan Cain on introverts. In it, she clarifies what introverts are: people who get their energy from solitude. This is not the same as being shy, which is being fearful of people. Introverts may love being with other people but do their best work when they have time to think things through alone. American society has been devaluing introverted behavior more and more, and Susan Cain does a beautiful job of describing why this is a mistake. http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

In my Facebook posting I commented that I wished teachers and church leaders would be forced to watch this. A friend of mine from high school, Ken, asked why church leaders? The short answer is because churches are full of the same people, modern day Americans, who work in corporations where decisions are made in meetings and innovations come from think tanks. Add to this the fact that people who go into ministry are by nature people persons - extroverts. Add to that a desire to include everybody in everything and you end up with a whole bunch of meetings. And meetings end up making decisions, as Susan Cain puts it, based on the person who talks the most.

You can buy books on this from Christian book companies - the benefits and indeed, Biblical soundness, of doing ministry as a team. Doing everything as a team has been the buzzword in churches for the past couple of decades. I don't mean to downgrade the idea of teamwork. I'm all for it. You can't accomplish much with a lot of lone wolves running around.

And speaking of lone wolves, how about those characters who step away from accountability when it comes to religious doctrine and start to wing it on their own? Rev. James Jones! Drinking the Kool-Aid! One of the best criteria for deciding if something is a cult is to look at the leadership. Is there one guy who makes all the decisions and holds all the power? Huge red flag. So when I say church leaders need to value the introvert more, I'm not talking about doing away with teams, especially when it comes to matters of doctrine. Teams are good.

Recently our church was putting together a statement of core beliefs, and one of the proposed versions included a line that began something like this: "Because we recognize that no spiritual growth comes independent from other believers ..." This line had passed through many hands unchallenged before I saw it. No spiritual growth? What about all the centuries of monks who took vows of silence for the very purpose of spiritual growth? What about the mountaintop experiences of feeling closer to God? What about near death experiences, answers to prayer, and most important of all, what about the working of the Holy Spirit? Doesn't this imply that the Holy Spirit doesn't do anything except through other people? What they were getting at in the core beliefs statement was that they wanted our church to focus on mentoring one another. This is a loving thing. But let's not overstep ourselves, because that would be arrogant. Sometimes in order to hear the Holy Spirit we need everyone else around us to pipe down.

It would probably be a good idea for me to interject something personal. I'm not a true introvert. I've taken the Myers-Briggs test (there is a free online version here http://richardstep.com/myers-briggs-mbti-personality-quiz/) many times throughout my life and I'm actually pretty close to the middle, leaning slightly toward introvert. I'm an ambivert, as Susan Cain said. I like team meetings for some things and find them stimulating. For other things I find them annoying. Sometimes I need to get by myself for a while and think things through. I'm going to guess that most people actually feel like that. It also depends a lot on who else is in the meeting. Throw a very strong extrovert into the mix and that person's ideas will always prevail because they will talk the most. I've been the most extroverted and the most introverted in groups. I've seen both sides.

Ken didn't also ask, why teachers? But I'm going to answer that one anyway, for two reasons. First, because I felt bad afterwards. It's not the fault of the teachers. It's the current pendulum swing in teaching theory, and all the administrators have jumped on the bandwagon of kids doing everything in groups. Second, because in preparing kids so thoroughly to work in groups I'm observing them graduate from high school and suddenly look around and go, where's my team? They are not being prepared well for working independently. Much of life is independent, especially right after graduation. They graduate and feel a need to reference their team, their tribe, for everything. They don't know what to do.

This is so very different from when I was in school. We were always told to do our own work. If someone looked at our paper we would cover it with an arm and say "stop copying!" There were group activities like sports, but academics was all about you mastering the subject on your own. Schools are completely different now. The desks are all in little groups. All of the work is done in little groups. Then they take the SAT all alone. They apply to college all alone. In college it's back to little groups. Then they graduate and completely scatter. No group. No natural leader to direct them. No consensus about where to live and what job to get.

In the old model of schooling the introvert did well. Introverts work well alone. In the current model of schooling the extrovert does well. Introverts are being made to feel inadequate. I won't expound upon why this is so ridiculous because Susan Cain already covered it.

Who Gets 1000 Wishes?

Actually living with cancer gives a person a different perspective on many things. If you’ve never had it you can be the most kind-hearted person and not really understand what it feels like unless someone tells you. So I’m going to tell you what part of that journey feels like.

You walk into the doctor’s office being your own self, with likes and dislikes, plans, preoccupations, hopes for yourself and your loved ones, a colorful history in which you had successes and failures. You’ve learned from your mistakes and you’re wiser and more mature than you’ve ever been. There are all sorts of things you’re going to do later that day, the next day, next week, next month, next year. Then you get a diagnosis of cancer and you are instantly transformed from being your own unique self to a cancer patient.

You watch people’s faces as they push most of what they know about you out of the little box they have reserved for you in their mind and replace it with “has cancer.” You go into the hospital for surgery and you’re stripped of your clothing, your wallet, and your wedding ring. Then they give you anesthesia that strips away your mind. After that more things are done to your body and your body does more things in response and none of it is what you want, it’s completely out of your hands. But the “you” inside your heart is there going, here I am.

Time passes, there are other treatments, and you feel like you don’t own your body anymore. It’s some sort of lab experiment you happen to inhabit.

The healthiest thing someone with cancer can do is to own their own body and life again. Be your own unique self, and feel like more than a patient. Not let cancer define you even if others sometimes want to do that to you.

That Facebook posting says, “A person has 1000 wishes, a cancer patient only has one: to get better! I know 97% of you won't post this as your status, but my friends will be the 3% that do, in honor of someone who has lost their life to cancer or is battling cancer right now.”

People keep posting that because they want to honor people with cancer but if you actually have cancer it’s really kind of an insult. It’s basically saying people with cancer have ceased to be complete human beings and are now only patients.

I wonder if it was written by a child, to be frank, partly because of the made-up statistic (“97%”), and partly because of the subtly coercive language which reminds me of sixth grade. You know, if you’re my friend you will do what I say.

I know my friends who have re-posted this have kind hearts. I just wanted to give you all food for thought.

My Favorite Way of Seeing Things

I love to experience new things by surprise, without any expectations fostered by friends or media sources. I prefer to let the experience wash over me unadulterated. Many people like to research in advance and plan things out to the last detail to make sure they miss nothing. While I do acknowledge that some planning is beneficial, spontaneity brings its own rewards. The happy planners have a number of terms to describe someone like me, such as “disorganized,” but I prefer to be called “ethereal.”

The most perfect example was when I saw The Wall in Washington, D.C. I was there on a business trip in the early 80’s, and I was alone. In my free time I took in some of the usual sights but one day I felt like walking without a purpose. I was right there in the heart of all the monuments and government buildings: grand, white buildings rising assertively above the traffic. They speak of victory and order.

It felt good to get away from the chaotic traffic and into a park. I didn’t know where I was but figured I could hail a cab to get back to familiar territory. Then I noticed something odd. Among all the gleaming things rising up, there was something going down, something dark. The grass was tilting down towards something that ran like a scar, black and angry, a slash through the park. I didn’t recognize at first what it was. Was the park torn apart? An excavation that collapsed? There were perhaps fifteen people looking at it. I joined them. It wasn’t until I saw the names that I suddenly recognized what I was looking at. In my defense I had been on business trips almost non-stop for the preceding three years, and had not paid much attention to the Vietnam War Memorial.


The way The Wall is situated its high gloss acts like an almost perfect mirror. The whole time you’re looking at the names, tracing them with your fingers as everyone does, you’re seeing yourself and everyone else around you, and life is going on, but the faces are sorrowful. As I turned to leave I noticed a couple of shabby men standing back from the crowd. My first thought was that they were homeless men, and they may have been, but I soon realized they were Vietnam vets who were stuck there like living ghosts.


I blundered into something a lot happier on a different business trip. I was in Memphis by myself over a weekend and ran out of things to do. I went to the zoo. They have a pretty good zoo. On the way back to the hotel I kept noticing little road signs shaped like guitars and thought, I’ll follow those strange little signs and see where they go. They led to Graceland.

There was a muddy parking lot across the street so I pulled over to get a look at it. I was never a big Elvis fan but I recognized the place. A tour bus pulled into the parking lot and a bunch of mostly middle-aged women got out and went over to what I then saw was a ticket booth. I thought, why not, and got in line with them and purchased a ticket. A guide came and put us in groups of about a dozen. My group was the second group to go in.

We were told we had to keep our voices down because Elvis’ Aunt Somebody still lived there, upstairs. So our little group walked through and looked at that house. It is one oddly decorated place. Elvis mostly lived in the basement so nobody could look in the windows at him. There’s a room with multiple televisions so he could watch everything at once. The furnishings look like a mashup between a San Francisco Gold Rush bordello, the Starship Enterprise, and the Disneyland jungle ride. I know a few incredulous “wows” escaped my lips. I had never seen pictures of it or anything. Everyone else in my group was dead silent the whole time.


When I got back to the hotel I put on the local news and saw a story about that day being the grand public opening of Graceland. There were interviews with people who had been in a lottery to get their tickets, and people who couldn’t get a reservation for several more months and were heartbroken. Apparently the people on the bus had come from Arkansas, Nebraska … they were presidents of Elvis fan clubs. So I felt like a real jerk for just waltzing right in there but there was absolutely no way I could have known. There were no signs, nothing. I guess in Memphis it was such a big deal they didn’t need signs. And I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t known what to expect from the decor. Everyone was seeing it for the first time.

I sold my ticket stub for the opening day of Graceland on Ebay last year.


I’ve seen a lot of movies the completely-unprepared way and enjoyed them more because of it. You know the beginning of Night of the Living Dead where the brother is teasing his sister about being nervous in a cemetery and draws her attention to a man walking towards them? “He’s coming to get you, Barbara!” And he is! I turned the TV on one time and saw that scene not knowing what the name of the movie was, so I was completely unprepared for what came next. Scared the life out of me.

I was on a first date in high school with a guy who took me to see a Western movie. I had no interest in seeing a Western but kept my mouth shut since I didn’t know him that well. Meanwhile I was laughing inside. From the moment it started little things made me laugh more and more. The music was completely inappropriate for a Western. I was dying. By the time we saw the jazz band sitting in the desert I realized it was meant to be a comedy. That was how I saw Blazing Saddles. If I had known going in it was meant to be funny my attitude would have been completely different: we paid money for this, now make me laugh.