The Garden State of Mind

Perhaps the thought came to me because the arrival of the Labor Day weekend officially marks the end of summer and the ushering in of cooler weather. Maybe the thought came to me because I am psychic. Maybe the thought came to me because deadpan irony follows me. Maybe what I was thinking was led by a subconscious linkage to the matrix. Maybe nothing has to do with the other.

What I do know is that I found myself walking and not driving my vehicle to my next work appointment. After slinging my briefcase in between two buildings, I entered an alley way. For whatever reason, I began to think of my limp lackluster crop-less tomato garden back at the homestead. My tomato plants hunkered in fresh tilled black soil, regularly watered and sprayed with Miracle Grow have failed to thrive all summer. As I longed for my own ripe tomatoes to make fresh salsa, spaghetti gravy and lush salads, I spotted something familiar ahead of me. Growing in between harsh curb and hot blacktop and somehow missing lawnmower haircuts lived a healthy tomato plant stalked with two little promises.

I'm just a paint brush and craft paint shy of a green thumb.

Rocky Road

As I pedaled my bicycle down the middle of a familiar neighborhood street, I caught goose bumps. A bone chill shot down my back. Although traveling alone on the road, I felt as though someone was watching me on a side street near open land dedicated to an underground gas pipeline.

I heard the sound of loose gravel kicking up by the side of the road. I figured that my bike tires had catapulted pebbles on top of the loose gravel. I became concerned once the noise traveled along with me in the direction of my bicycle. I took a few more revolutions of my bike chain but could not shake the noise. My head shot over to the source hoping to find a jogger running by the roadside. This was not to be. I knew I exhausted logical explanations and could be experiencing the inexplicable.

I watched in horror as the deeply bedded gravel formed footstep impressions whose strides followed the trail of my bicycle down the road another ten yards. Some invisible force ran beside me.

Remote Control

If this blog story were simply a television show, the three introductory words “Ten Years Ago” would slowly bleed onto the screen for viewers. In a far away Amish Country in rural Lancaster County Pennsylvania, I had a paranormal experience.

On a guided tour of a working Amish farm, our loquacious bearded guide explained this throwback culture in living color. The Amish worked off the land and their great green rolling pastures magnified the way things must have looked most places one century ago. The Amish customarily shun modern conveniences but somehow thrive with their self-reliant horse and buggy ways. During the tour, my mind fixated on the Amish’s choice to live like shut-ins from the outside world and not own television sets. I experienced a déjà vu feeling that I could not pinpoint, distinct and indescript at the same time. Even though the tour consisted of the entire workings of the Amish community, I could not escape their communal rejection of the television. A future intersection of three things kept repeatedly circling my thoughts – Amish, TV, and my life. Since the Amish barred television sets and I held no association with the Amish, I dismissed this awkward feeling not long after my dirty shoes left the splendor in the grass farm.

Fast forward a decade of time. After I sold a New York Giants bookmarker on Ebay, I emailed the seller indicating her package was about to be mailed. The signature post-script to every sent email is my Freudian Slips blog address. This Ebay customer took the initiative to visit my active blog. As if appearing for her eyes only, the customer read the then lead story of transferring my home movies on VHS tape to DVD. She promptly emailed me to ask if she could pay me to do the same service for a bunch of her video cassette tapes. A week after I signed on to the project, a package arrived in the mail. A wrinkle in time followed.

Sorting through the package, the VHS tapes contained labels of news broadcasts and televisions specials. I plugged in my first tape only to arrive at a Good Morning America piece on a tragedy that happened in the Amish Country on October 2, 2006. A clinically depressed gunman takes a roomful of schoolchildren hostage in a rural Amish school. In unspeakable fashion, he shoots ten innocent girls. He murdered five of them before he fatally shot himself.

As if the tragedy is too horrific to process, its connection goes undetected. Reminiscent of my former vacation in that region, the same countryside and the unmistakable colonial Amish attire starts to register. I time travel to the Amish farmhouse and the guided tour where I experienced the déjà vu complete with narrative. The ghoulishly similar narrative on the television broadcast hurdled me to that same eerie feeling of déjà vu, distinct and now descript.

Janice Ballenger, who hired me to burn the DVD’s, appears on the taped television program wearing the hat of Deputy Coroner in Lancaster County, Pa. I recalled Janice’s promise to the families of the victims. She wants to show the Amish families affected by the tragedy, the television coverage on a single DVD. Employing my modern technological conveniences of a VHS/DVD up/converter playing on my high definition television, I complete the discs which will eventually become property of Amish families. Burning the discs made me wince. At long last, the unlikely trilogy of the Amish, television, and my life came to fruition. Words bleed onto this page. Five school children just had to die in the meantime.

Kicking Irony

Call it serendipity or synchronicity but sometimes my thoughts literally match up with the world unfolding. I believe these ironies are small magical trophies to behold. Dozens of times a day, irony appears to the forefront of my life. The conversation I just had with someone, strangers talk about in my next location. The fine-tuned idea that I just produced in my head repeats on the airing television. The thought that enters my brain from the stratosphere is the title of the next song that the radio plays. From the many corners where I turn comes happenstance, karma, and kismet. It never ceases to amaze or stupefy me. I do not always share my coincidences for I do not want to be called a warlock but these wondrous sledgehammers of irony keep me not only interested in life but privately engaged in the reason for our being.

As I reflected on the irony heap thrown my way on this one particular day, my remote control channel surfs for a sports station. I reasoned that sports stations would be covering the upcoming championship football games. It is the time of year for playoff football so that type of program coverage would be no revelation. My mind settles on the unbeatable New England Patriots. I said to myself that I would not be surprised if they were talking about the New England Patriots right now. Given the Patriots undefeated season, this too would have been no Nostradamus prophecy. I continued to channel up on the remote control. I almost stop to watch a high definition special on dinosaurs before I remembered my yearning for a sports agenda.

I turned on the first sports station that crossed my dial. A sports anchor interviewed Garo Yepremian, a member of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins team. At a 1998 sports memorabilia show in Philadelphia, I occupied the same press box as the pint-sized player with a cannon for a leg. In discussing his professional football playing days and the 25 year anniversary of that perfect season, Garo told me every time a current team gets midway in a season without a loss, he starts getting phone calls from the press asking for opinionated statements on whether the current team could likewise go undefeated.

I paraphrased my commentary to Garo. “If a team goes undefeated for an entire regular season, you will be doing TV interviews during the playoffs.”

My head tilted to stare at kicker Garo Yepremian on my TV set…even though irony not him was kicking me again.

Last Call

Old Man Sullivan reeked of a broken man never far from his last beer. He floundered at the end of a life of hard knocks with alcohol fueling his veins. In order to provide the necessities of life, he continued to work longer than his wrinkled body could cooperate.

Sullivan and I both worked as grungy dishwashers at a busy American fare restaurant in 1980. It was a second job for me, a full time job for Old Man Sullivan. After clocking out for the night at work, we usually sat barside emptying free draft beers until closing time.

Sullivan only saw what was in front of him and I should have kept it that way. For some strange reason one night, I felt compelled to share with him an unusual story. Amidst the suds of another downed beer, my conversation digressed to something abstract. I came to find out that anything not right in front of John he had trouble digesting. My interest in psychic phenomena had no business in his life but I put it right in front of him.

I said, “What do you make of this? Somebody in my family can tell when a person’s time is up on this planet.”

His eyes rolled then his expression tightened. “What the hell do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“They carry an aura, a white light around their heads prior to death.”

“Are you talking about yourself?" asked Sullivan. "This sounds like malarky. Are you the one in your family that can do this crazy sort of thing?”

I tried to relieve his raised fears. “No, I can’t do that. I am more ordinary. Just night dishwashing like you, Sully.”

That night Old Man Sullivan staggered the short distance walk from the restaurant to the seedy motel he called home. Inside the cramped motel room, he found his beloved wife dead in bed. Old Man Sullivan never looked at me square again. He rarely looked at me ever again.

Under a Microscope

- Joe Tornatore, standing in the second row fourth from left.

God must have a damn good sense of humor. Nobody can make sense of irony because it just happens. Maybe God wants it that way. I have encouraged my readers to look for irony in their lives. Irony can function as measures of purpose and levity. On a personal perhaps mystic level, I believe that irony is God’s way of talking to me. Although irony has broad sweeping tentacles in my bizarre life, I needed a magnifying glass to uncover this irony.

While scrapbooking, I came across a 1974 group picture of Gloucester County Times newspaper paperboys. Like yesterday’s news, in studying the dated photo it takes me longer than it should to find myself, a former paperboy. Dressed in nothing but shorts and a short sleeve shirt, my sprouting body shone summery flesh. What first caught my attention was my flesh. I grab a magnifying glass to check out the integrity of my skin. I wanted to see what my skin looked like prior to developing the connect-the-dot blemish pattern of my rare skin disease, urticaria pigmentosa. Now magnified under glass, my eyes scan to find myself. The lens tracks to the center to settle on a familiar figure standing in the second row. I do a double take then violently pull away from the magnifying glass.

“That is impossible!” I utter in disbelief to nobody but myself.

I take a deep breath. A Curious George, I return to the lens. My eyes zoom in on the irony needing magnification. I am wearing a Ripley’s Believe It or Not imprint shirt! I stare at the time-stamped picture. Despite my present affiliation with Ripley’s Believe It or Not, I completely forgot that I once owned their tee shirt. As my poly/cotton blend recollections return, I realize that I am an unwitting billboard for the television show that I would appear on thirty years later and for the book that I would write about my disease. Call it a weak moment but this is too much irony for even the host of Freudian Slips. I need a witness to my viewpoint.

So I entice my son to look at the group picture. My son finds nothing unusual about the picture. He does not even recognize me in it. I point to a lad in the photograph then hand him the magnifying glass for closer inspection. He provides a carefree look but cannot see anything out of the ordinary. I impatiently grab the magnifying glass from him. Through a squint, I can now even make out the signature Ripley’s logo across the top of the shirt.

“Look at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not shirt.” I proclaim. “Doesn’t that beat all?”

This may have been the most ironic folly since the discovery of Fool’s Gold. At that exact moment in time, the landline phone rings.

My wife greets, “Hold on…” She passes me the phone.

With one hand pressing the magnifying glass to my eye, my other hand cradles the cordless telephone. I do not pay much attention to the caller at first. While my left eye marvels the ironic picture of myself wearing a Ripley’s Believe It or Not tee shirt, my right ear catches the purpose of the phone call, a rare book order for my book Stop and Smell the Silk Roses.

“…You want to what?” I asked into the phone.

Everything came into focus. Albeit an eerie coincidence, the timely phone call connected my past to the present. Life is like a trail of tiny bread crumbs that can only be seen under a microscope. Just ask my magnifying glass.

The World is an Oyster

Freudian Slips has been online for over a year and I have yet to post a single story of fiction. My personal life is chock full of irony so I haven't found reason to fabricate stories from conception. By the same token, I have been reluctant to post some of my more outrageous experiences here for fear of reader ridicule. This is another Twilight Zone story, as my friend Keith calls them, that owns a familiar plot in my life.

Engineering your own desired outcomes is an acquired skill. It is rarely taught and may be more difficult to explain. Previous posts have talked about the concept and illustrated how this engineering has influenced my life. What I am about to describe may be my most vivid example. Herein lies proof that desks are meant to write about and not just write on.

My wife recently came up with the great idea of adding a personal computer to our son’s bedroom. I supported the idea. I found enough computer components laying around the house to make an integrated PC. With all the creature comforts in our children’s bedrooms, there were space considerations. My measuring tape retracted like a Jedi light saber across his bedroom carpet. I figured out a scientific method to retro-fit a small student desk that would not interfere with the sling of the fold-down attic steps. Respecting the picayune measurements, I scanned circular ads and clipped coupons. Every good storyline needs conflict so enter my wife. After my time and energy went into the project, my wife decided she doesn’t want to put out the money for the desk. Let’s just say we had a little discussion about marionettes and puppets. We totally abandoned the subject, the store sales on desks expired, and the computer components lie in a heap like an unassembled Star Wars droid.

On my way out of the house the following Sunday, I started to think about our four-legged impasse. I hate being a puppet so I put a positive thought out in the world with no strings attached. There must a better way than arguing with your wife over trying to carry out her own dag gone wishes. I told myself that in my travels, a one hour round trip, I would find the right desk to fit our needs.

The first half of the trip was uneventful. On my return trip home, the desk stayed forefront in my mind but I felt like I needed a sign. Driving about 32 mph in a 25 mph residential zone, my neck crooked to eyeball a desk put to the curb. I would like to take this time to apologize for the skid marks I left in the road. I swung the car around to get a better look at its size, condition, color. When you are dealing with my wife, beggars must be choosers. I jumped out of my car and nearly skipped-tootle-loo-my-darling to the desk. Touching the desk, I was pleased to learn that it wasn’t a mirage. It was a student desk within specifications, in perfect condition, and it matched the woodgrain finish of my son’s bedroom furniture.

The way the stars lined up for me caused me both joy and confusion. Surely, this desk was not trash. The lack of wear and tear alone convinced me otherwise. I tempered my glee and rationalized its lone position by the curb. I arrived at a logical explanation and knocked on the front door of the home.

An elderly lady answered the door and she looked more confused than me.

“Good morning.” I greeted. “If you’re setting up for a yard sale, I would like to buy that desk.”

“Yard sale?” the woman mouthed back. “That desk is trash. You can have it.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much.” I spouted in a dash down the driveway to claim my prize.

After compressing the backseat cushions, I got the desk to fit in the car upside down with about an inch clearance. If I had not just dropped off my daughters, I wouldn’t have had the room to transport the find in the first place. Twenty five minutes later, I carried the desk into the house and placed it in the foyer. My wife could only give it her stamp of approval.

“Sometimes I surprise myself.” I admitted to her.

no assembly required

The Last Word

A strange coincidence occurred while I tweaked the closing sentence of paragraph #15 of my short story Dear Great Grandchildren.

"It seems euphemistically apropos that we now publicly view private life through transparent Microsoft Windows founded by Gates."

In the clang of my peck and paw typing, what do you think happened? I got besieged by a Pop-Up window that relentlessly prompted me to buy a $149.99 registered version of Microsoft Word. It is hilarious to describe the downright nuttiness in writing about what was simultaneously happening to me. Art was imitating life and this was no form of flattery. If there are any probability majors in college reading this, run that irony by your professor. I guarantee you the professor will be reading Freudian Slips every morning with breakfast coffee.

Truth be told, the Pop-Up window did not arrive as an electronic billboard without advance warning. Let me explain how I thought I took care of the problem. My two month old computer came with a 60 day trial software of Microsoft Word 2003 and its expiration occurred at that very second. Now I don't go through life eating sand for a living as an ostrich. A case in point, I had already acquired and installed a stand alone copy of Microsoft Word 2002 to stay ahead of the game. Inexplicably however, my version overrided the permanent version. The only other option to remove the Pop-Up overtop my unfinished work was to hit a kill switch. The detonator icon of the kill switch included a blase warning that some features of Microsoft Word would no longer be available. I reasoned that having most of my 2002 Word product was better than nothing at all. Naturally, I did what any mouse running through a maze would do - I hit cancel to save $149.99.

I returned to my Great Grandchildren essay with one exception. Bill Gates froze not some of the features but the entire document. He was keeping his Word while not keeping his word. I couldn't do a damned thing not even finish the paragraph that acknowledged Microsoft products revolutionizing the world. I was ready to open up my own Windows and scream! I closed out of my unfinished project jeopardizing losing unsaved work. I opened a randomly selected document out of the My Documents folder and the dreaded Pop-Up extortion menu returned. I hit cancel. I opened several dozen of my older text files created under Microsoft Word for Windows 1997. All were locked with the key thrown away. Who can invade your home never through the front door and always through windows? To borrow a line from the Family Feud game show, survey says: Bill Gates.

I am not a conditioned monkey but I got to admit that I reached crisis mode and actually removed my credit card from my wallet. I was fully prepared to buy online the rights for Bill Gates to open the gate and unlock the personal documents on my computer. I took a deep breath then hedged on the impulse purchase. The problem withstanding, I tried in vain to outwit the genius Gates himself. I called the electronics store where I purchased the computer to quiz tech support.

I vented, "Is there any way I could get out of this controlling nightmare cheaper than $149.99?"

"Yeah, you could buy a student version for $69.00."

Seeing my way out of the technological problem, I jumped at the opportunity. "Yeah, I'm willing to do that. Do you have any in stock before I take a helicopter to your store?'

"Sure we do but I got to ask you if you have any students in the house?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Two more children and I got them by the half dozen. Is your heliopad on the roof?"

"Not so fast. One of your kids will have to punch in their college identification number to register the product or you will be unable to finish the install process."

"Are you freaking kidding me?" I vented. "None of my kids have even been to a high school prom. Since when is a student college level only?'

"Not my definition." replied the good cop about the bad cop. "Bill Gates runs the show over there at Microsoft."

"You're telling me." I agreed. "Gates is on my computer right now running the show with a Mr. Freeze gun! It's a virus. I type Bill Gates name and his money grabbing Pop-Up screens make me sick to my stomach. That's a license to ill, if you ask me."

Bill Gates always gets the last Word.

Psychodrama

“I see you working in a day care or nursery school but you aren’t doing direct care work. You must be a director or an administrator.”

A psychic prophesized my occupation before I had even declared a major in college. I dismissed the illogical claim to pedestrian fame and the prediction stayed in my rearview mirror. I didn’t revisit the notion until I was middle aged. On an average Wednesday morning, the 25 year old trace memory surfaced like a divining rod of purpose.

Let me explain how. My work location has not changed in the last thirteen years. It is a noisy day program of non-ambulatory, non-verbal developmentally disabled clients. My employer rents space for me to have a shell of a satellite office in this special needs day program. As the lone social worker, I oversee clients who attend this day program. It is the same rickety foam partitions forming the walls of my office cubicle, the same fluorescent light covers brimming overhead with trapped dead bees, and the customary paper clips and staples underneath my pacing feet. For all of its flaws and lack of amenities, it is where I conduct business. The drab office is my home away from home. It is where I belong and from where I will probably retire.

“Joe Tornatore.” I answered the phone for the ten thousandth time.

There was a deliberate pause. “Joe, it sounds like you are working in a nursery school.”

“Can you hold on a minute?” I asked the caller.

What did the caller just say? Where have I heard those words before? As I took in the familiar sights and sounds of the day room, the psychic’s quarter of a century old prediction rang true with the lifted weight of a startling revelation. Forget the last 13 years I have worked here without changing jobs and not coming to the same conclusion. Life happens on a subconscious level and it often doesn’t bubble to the surface right away. So for the very first time, I listened with the mind’s eye of that gifted psychic.

An interactive toy spit out a singy-songy nursery rhyme. I heard the non-harmonious blend of vocalizations. Amidst cooing, cackles, and crying sounds from mouths yearning to be fed and bottoms stirring to be changed, I remembered the psychic’s prediction verbatim. Humm…where I work cannot be distinguished from a day care center. Oh My God! That psychic was right!

The Mind is a Terrible Thing To Waste

Do you remember the time in your life that you were the angriest? I try to forget about it but the unusual circumstances cause me to revisit the emotion from time to time.

On the night in question, I found myself sleeping on a couch that didn’t want me either. I was in between marriages. Enough said. I kneaded my fingers into the folds of my closed bloodshot eyes. I had pent up anger inside. I tossed and turned. I mumbled invectives that would make a pirate blush. When I get angry, it paradoxically becomes more of an internal battle. I am my own worst enemy in argument. Endless playback ability. Swirling mental anguish. Gnawing and knashing of teeth. Private auditions for sobbing. Emotional implosion. Inability to regroup. This is me.

On the couch in question, it felt like my anger ionized the air. A pressure cooker, my head readied to explode under the volcano. The detestation attacked me like a parasite bringing suitcases. I tossed and turned on the couch. At the apex of my anguish, I heard what sounded like a shotgun blast in the late hours. The blast came from inside the house and it sounded to be only a few feet away. It scared me enough to silence my crying. My body stiffened up. I listened but heard no further sounds in the eerily quiet house. I sat up and looked around in the darkness. There were no other sounds to be heard. I should have cased the entire house. Instead, I chose immobility and the wallowing in my own pity as the lonesome priority. I returned to my crying towel, a musky throw pillow saturated with the salt of my tears. Anger once unleashed can be a heck of a manufacturer’s recall. Eventually, exhaustion helped me drift off to asleep.

The next morning, I awoke to an unexpected mess. When I walked into the kitchen, I noticed a cabinet door ajar. A curious blood splatter pattern tainted the kitchen floor. I could not believe my eyes. Judging by the splatter pattern, the red substance originated from inside the cabinet. I looked inside the cabinet not really sure what I would find. I soon discovered the culprit, a mangled can of tomato puree looked as if it had undergone rapid decompression before exploding out of its tin. Being a chef, I mused over the squandered chance to make my authentic Italian gravy. Mama Mia! What force of nature could have blown the cabinet open and splash tomato puree across the kitchen? I had to look no further than myself, the volcano. I realized that if I could bottle my anger, a side job as a human can opener in a traveling carnival was not beyond possibility. If you let it, canned laughter can easily be replaced by canned anger. The mind is a terrible thing to waste.

One Man's Trash, Another Man's Treasure

"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Luke Skywalker after witnessing his master complete the impossible.

"That is why you fail." explained Yoda.

I don't believe in coincidences but I have a habit of explaining away psychic phenomenon as merely coincidence. Coincidence is more mainstream and digestible to disbelievers of psychic phenomenon. I am no psychic but some unexplainable stuff has happened to me. Let's not forget that irony is also the cornerstone of Freudian Slips and that is no coincidence.

Let me attempt to explain what is not easy to explain. I try and put into my head what I would like to extract from the day. I don't always find all the pieces to the puzzle and no not where the parts come from. It may sound like a silly notion but I use my mind to engineer my own desired outcomes. I put positive thoughts into the world and see what vibes come of it. It could be called the power of prayer in religious circles, a Guardian Angel in spiritualism, wishful thinking in prosaic precincts, or lunacy in mental hospitals.

Allow me to use the unlikely example of trash picking to further this notion. First let me set the stage. Everyone knows I have a preciosity with order and organization. I replace what is broken. I put things in there place. I am a tireless task oriented worker to a general fault.

Less than a mile from a hardware store where I planned on buying chicken wire, I got a distinct feeling that I no longer needed to make this purchase. That is when I saw a man putting his trash to the curb. In his hand he carried a huge roll of chicken wire. I calmly pulled my car up curbside and lowered my window.

I asked, "Is that chicken wire considered trash, sir?"

"I'm afraid so. I have no use for it."

"I'll take it." Just like that the man hands it to me like efficient service at a drive-thru window.

On my way to Walmart to buy lounge seats for the kids to play their video games, I took a shortcut off the beaten path. I saw a man closing his garage door before retreating back into the house. He must have just set out two black leather video seats by the curb because they were cool to the touch. They were mine a minute later.

While on my way to the drug store to buy a blank videotape, I drove by a yard sale that had can't miss signage VHS Videotapes 4 for $1.00. The hand made sign had everything but my name on it. I was in and out of there with what I needed in a minute.

A more recent example of coincidence occurred two weeks ago. It freaked even me out and I put the original thought out there. Recently, I have been selling big ticket items on Ebay. It is a packaging nightmare often calling for double boxing(two different sized boxes one placed inside the other). I just sold a Fender Stratocaster guitar on Ebay and needed to ship it pronto. I put the positive thought out in the stratosphere that I would find a cardboard box of the right dimensions on the ride home from work. My eyes scanned storefronts and dumpsters. The closer I got to home, the more reality set in. I entered my housing development all but convinced this was an unanswered thought. As I made a left-hand turn into my driveway, I noticed that my next door neighbor had put his trash out early for the next day's pickup. I walked over and picked up not just an empty cardboard box but an actual Gibson guitar box!

Sometimes it is no coincidence to find the very thing you need in the world right outside your front door. You can't always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need.

Most Accidents Happen Close to Home

Aerial photography of my housing development.

I do not say much but I am an outstanding viewer of life. Freudian Slips offers me an avenue to publish thoughts that I would not ordinarily share with others. It is a way to live in the moment and appreciate life for what it is. Life is a magical mystery tour and I am a bus driver on the road to irony.

A funny thing happened by accident on that roadway. I was transporting a client to a specialty shoe store. He needed to be fitted for SAS comfort shoes due to his diabetes. To pardon an expression, feet are a sore subject with aging diabetics. He alternates between humming songs on the radio and peppering me with repeated questions. He outlives his welcome and soon becomes a sore subject with me. I alternate my attention between him and the road.

"Where are we going?" he said.

"I told you. Berlin."

"Why?"

"What did I say five minutes ago?"

He answered his own question. "Shoe store."

"Please don't ask me that question a fourth time."

"Where are we at now?"

"Runnemede, NJ."

"Never heard of it." He seemed befuddled. "Does this town have a Chick Filet? I'm hungry. You took me to Chick Filet last time."

I explained the timeline. "We aren't stopping for lunch this time. I will have you back at your job by noon. I have a busy schedule today. Sorry."

As he digested the delay of gratification, I embarked on a shortcut to the White Horse Pike. It's a ten mile route that will coincidentally take us by my house. During the course of the conversation, he asks about my children, my wife, how much money I make, and any number of inappropriate personal questions. I rebuke him and I am not about to let him know where I live. He would show up for Thanksgiving dinner with three of his friends and a nearly dead squirrel covered in cranberry sauce.

He changes the subject. "My HUD contract is almost up. Maybe I can move out of my apartment and come live with you."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?" he asked.

I explain, "No room at the inn."

"Come on, Joe be honest with me. You probably live in one of those big houses like that." He pointed over to my left. "Betcha you have more than enough room to take me in."

We had gone miles. There are 66,000 people living in my hometown alone. We passed thousands of homes in our travels. God as my witness, he pointed to my development, the identical model six doors down from my actual homestead. I admitted nothing but I took a circuitous route on the return trip. Irony is an accident waiting to happen.

Hey Bartender!

A long time ago, I realized that my DNA is missing the loneliness gene. I do a lot of activities by myself and do not need company to have a good time. The world with its infinite and endless irony is my playground. Escorts are a luxury whom I do not refuse but I have learned to live without their company.

I went by myself to Grabbe’s in Westville, New Jersey. It is a shell of a tavern in a small town that serves an outstanding all-you-can eat crab special. A female bartender manned the empty bar on a slow Monday afternoon. Bartenders are like pharmacists with a puny inventory and today there was but one customer to be had. I nestled into a bar stool, ordered a root beer, and my slobber waited for the first plate of garlic crabs to come out of the kitchen. The bartender walked over to the jukebox to pump background noise in the joint. She played one of my favorite songs in the world, For Crying Out Loud I Love You by Meatloaf. Her choice of song proved to be uncanny. When she returned behind the vacant bar, we talked about rock music for awhile. Our conversation got redirected over to people in different walks of life.

“I got one for you." she quipped. "A few years ago, this guy came in here wearing a strange white suit from head to toe. I was working as a waitress that day. He sat right back there in the corner booth. I couldn’t believe my eyes.” Her description sounded like her subject had disembarked a UFO to enter the bar for shits and giggles. “I have been working here for 18 years. I will never forget it as long as I live. I asked him why he was dressed like that. He explained he had some weird disease and had to wear the suit everywhere he went.”

With that bombshell of a story off of her chest, the bartender torched a cigarette. I asked her to come hither before she had time to get judgmental about her visitor. I opened my cell phone and showed the bartender the screensaver of me in my beekeeper’s suit.

“Did he look like this?” I asked whimsically.

“That’s the guy!” she exclaimed. “I don’t believe it! What are you doing with that guy’s picture?”

I wanted to tell the bartender a yarn about working for the FBI and that I was on the trail of an illegal alien from space. But strange enough coincidence existed that needed no invention.

“That is me!” I admitted.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” she said bewilderedly. “Wow!”

We made small talk about the idiosyncrasies of my skin disease. The conversation was effortless like we had known each other for years. She changed the channel on the television until it settled on Oprah Winfrey. We talked next about the joint experience of turning 40 years old a few years ago, spouses, family matters, and former relationships.

The bartender asked, “What high school did you graduate from?”

“Washington Township High School.”

“You know, I went to Gateway Regional High School. I graduated in 1980. I may be dating myself but when I was in ninth grade I had this crush on this real cute boy. My God, I was obsessed with him. I used to write his name on my book covers and day dream about being with him. I hold him responsible for my mediocre grades. Damn, I can still visualize his name scrawled across my text books. Joe Tornatore.”

She uttered my name with a tonic of fondness and familiarity. I nearly swallowed a crab claw. The bartender wasn’t dating herself as much as she once wanted to date me. I wondered how many times the bartender has told this barroom story before it reached its rightful owner? She turned her back on me to wash some dirty glasses. It gave me a moment to regroup. I seized the moment by removing my driver’s license. Proof was all around us, distilled or not. I asked her to come hither again.

"Hey bartender!"

“Now what?” she asked.

I instructed, “Do yourself a favor and read me the name on that driver’s license.”

She walked over to my open wallet then looked as though she had seen a ghost. “What the hell is going on here?”

I enlightened, “I am Joe Tornatore.”

“You are not. How can that be?” she protested. “What are you doing with Joe Tornatore’s driver’s license?”

“For crying out loud, I am he!”

“No. You just told me you went to Washington Township High School.”

“No, I said I graduated from Washington Township High School. I went to Gateway from 1974-1977 and that included hormone raging freshman year.”

She gave me a blindsided stare. Her world kept spinning on its axis and stopping at longitude and latitude Joe Tornatore. I was hosting a surprise party of one at the expense of another. I started to frighten the bartender so I put a big ole sweet pea grin on my face. A brash woman, I reduced the bartender to blushing. She regained her composure in no time for a stab at sarcasm.

“Joe, is there anything else you want to freaking tell me?”

A symbol of what?

Automatic Writing Symbol

If anyone knows what this symbol represents, please post a comment. This symbol keeps turning up in my life and its mystery has been haunting me for 25 years. A symbols website http://www.kamous.com/translator/s.asp?l=1652 was not a resource. I am hoping somebody finds my posting in a Google search and knows exactly what it is or what it represents. The criminally insane need not apply but I’ll take any solid reference to mythology, hieroglyphics, or Stonehenge.

The Irony Giant

In October 2004, Readers Digest made preliminary contact with me regarding a short story I wrote entitled Wish I Could be like Superman. It was written about my disease Mastocytosis and how my life intersected with actor Christopher Reeve on the day he died. It was an uplifting story about irony and it was gaining attention. I had aspirations of moving from the theatre of the bizarre anyway. Yes, I wanted to move from my appearance on TV’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not, enter a Witness Protection Program, and relocate to mainstream middle America writing under a pseudonym. I had all of my bags packed for Main Street Middle America when I received an email from an editor at Reader’s Digest. She politely explained that my short story had been rejected. After I finished digesting humble pie, I unpacked my suitcases for my prose was all dressed up with nowhere to go. Rejection without constructive criticism can be confusing to a fledgling writer. I envisioned my short story grinded through the steely claws of a shredder then a night custodian emptying the trash can as he mumbled about the waste of trees in America. Ouch!

Let’s leave rejection behind and travel back to the glorious week that I imagined my life’s story would be read by millions of happy readers across the United States. I grew-up with Reader’s Digest and cannot think of a more wholesome publication to be associated with. So when Reader’s Digest gave me a deadline to submit not only the final draft for my short story but a one page story proposal on myself, I made a fresh pot of coffee and hunkered down at the computer for a long night of extracting the creative juices from every orifice in my body. Strangely, I sat staring at the blinking cursor on the monitor. I developed a troublesome full fledged writer’s block trying to figure out a lead sentence in the crucial last paragraph. It seemed intimidating toying with the notion that I was actually writing for an intended audience for a change. But the longer my keyboard emitted no sound, the more my forehead grew sweaty, and the more I realized I may be out of orifices.

Beside me, my wife sat down happy-go-lucky on our second networked computer. She punched up the website to AT&T to investigate the pros and cons of their AT&T Advantage plan, which operates through your cable line. Her nimble typing seemed to bastardize my writer’s block. The phone rings. Since I am the only one in the room not doing anything, it seems my responsibility to answer the blasted phone. The caller is John, a middle aged guy who only recently met me.

John had never been on the Internet until last week when his cable company connected him. The very first thing he did on-line was go to Ebay. He types in the name of Randall Cunningham, a former quarterback with the Eagles. He finds my listed auction advertising the sale of a Randall Cunningham photo. From the auction he links to my own memorabilia website and sees that I live not only inNew Jersey but also in a neighboring town. He retrieves my phone number off my website, gives me a phone call, comes over to do business, and viola, friends for life. There are easier ways to make friends but I wasn’t knocking his sucess. The nice guy that he is, John is calling to see if I want to go with him to a bookstore in Philadelphia to an autograph signing of Philadelphia Eagles superstar Terrell Owens. I tell him to call the venue and get back to me on the details of the event.

He declines on my suggestion. “Joe, do you mind if you call the book store and check it out? I don’t know if you have ever heard of the AT&T Advantage plan but there is no 411 information. You are hooked to your cable and you got to look up numbers on-line. I am not skilled at the Internet thing yet. I was lucky to find you. "

I looked over to the monitor of the second computer where my wife still read from the AT&T web page.

“John, hold on for a minute.” I muffled the receiver then whispered to my wife to clue her in on the irony. “John is on the line. He is calling from an AT&T cable line right now. He brings with him new meaning to the saying word of mouth advertising.”

“Oh, how does John like AT&T?” my wife asks matter of factly.

“That’s the thing.” My wheels started turning upstairs and this caused me great celebration. I had found another orifice that I did not know existed. “Evidently, one advantage of the AT&T Advantage plan is you don’t have to dial long distance.” I chuckled. “Yeah, you just call local friends to make the long distance calls for you.”

I get back on the phone and tell John he could never sell me the AT&T Advantage plan, which has left both of us disadvantaged. I explain to John that my wife is looking at their web page as we speak. He seems surprised but only in a small way.

“Joe, our relationship is based on irony. Remember how I found you. I thought I was expanding my world and I found you in my backyard the first place I looked. That’s pure irony.”

I took it one step further; risking sounding crazy to a person I met only once. “That is all fine and dandy, but I’m telling you my whole life is based on irony. Life imitating art. Irony tripping over itself. Irony engulfs my life and don’t ask me why. In fact, I’m sitting here writing a short story about irony this very minute. I am up against a deadline to get this to Reader’s Digest and I’m stuck wrapping up the last paragraph.

Then John delivered the ultimate irony. “Maybe, irony is God’s way of talking to you.”

“Oh, my God.” I reveled in emotion. “That is it, isn’t it? You are so right, John. That is exactly what I am trying to say in my short story to Reader’s Digest.”

I took it that God was talking to me through John. John appears to be a lightning rod for irony. He was the Irony Giant and he was slaying me with coincidence. Not that I needed or wanted anymore irony in my life but if this guy gets this short story published, I made a silent vow to put shoes on his baby and give God twenty percent after taxes.

I couldn’t help but ask. “John, how attached are you to that moral-of-the-story line you just gave me?”

“Why, do you like it?”

“I love it. It is the bomb.”

“You can use it, no bid deal.” he says.

I gained consent to permanently borrow his adage but not before I made clear no royalities would be involved with his contribution. We put the social plans on hold as I vowed to finish my short story at a decent hour.

After I hung up the phone, my wife chimed in, “What else did John have to say?”

“Besides finishing my short story for me, John now wants to buy a copy of my autobiography (Stop and Smell the Silk Roses).”

Diane concluded, “The world is a different place for you isn’t it?”

When God helps you make a deadline, you know He is in your corner.