Gas chamber

I recently was mugged by a fart.

I lost no money, no credit cards. I still have my car keys and my watch. What I lost was the memory of every smell I'd experienced in my childhood; my teen years; my adulthood. The smell of my first baseball glove, carnival popcorn, Thanksgiving turkey, my wife's perfume.
Gone. Gone and replaced by an invisible element of warm, humid odor, so foul that my nose nearly cried out for help.

The stench storm was waiting for me on one of the elevators at my office building. I was going from the basement level to the fourth floor. When the elevator doors opened, I stepped on. The doors shut and a silent avalanche of colorless gas overcame me, nearly throwing me to the floor. I reached for the door; gasping for air, but afraid to breathe.

"Who did this?" I wondered aloud. It was a futile query, for anyone who could have generated with their body a dirty bomb of such a toxicity would surely now be dead.

"DING"

I watched the floor numbers light up as the elevator traveled upward. It seemed to struggle under the weight of me and the vile violation of human smog.

"DING"

I felt beads of sweat roll down my back. It was like I was wearing a fart parka and it was suffocating me.

"DING"

I then had a new fear: What if someone else gets on the elevator? Naturally, they would think this pocket of poison was created by me. As their face began to melt, they would look at me and wonder why I did this.

"DING"

The elevator had made it to my destination. I'd swear I heard a loud "hiss" sound as the doors opened. I stepped off, looking for signs of life, wondering how this happened, why it had happened to me and whether this funk would stay with me.

Regardless, the harm was done. I had been violated by a flatulent beast.

I was in Close Encounters of the Third Kind

I was in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Steven Spielberg's 1977 science-fiction movie was considered a blockbuster and even won an Oscar for best cinematography.

A little more than a year and a half before his movie hit the theaters, Spielberg and his film crew were preparing to greet dozens, maybe hundreds, of Alabamians to his alien invasion story.

My mom, stepdad and three sisters and I were among those he was going to greet. The six of us, along with a cooler full of sandwiches, fruit and water, were wedged into our 1974 blue Chevrolet Vega and on our way to Bay Minette, which was just a half hour north of our home in Mobile, Ala.

It was still dark as we traveled. I was pinched between my two older sisters, who took turns holding our youngest sibling in their laps. Only an hour earlier my stepdad, wearing cut-off jean shorts, a tee-shirt and his Army-green boonie hat, had announced that we were all "going to be in the movies!"

Somehow my parents had learned that a film crew was going to need hundreds of extras to take part in shooting a scene for a movie called, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." I had no idea what the movie was going to be about.

We pulled into Bay Minette and found the parking field for the movie extras. We walked to the movie set, which was the town's single-building, one-room train station. A number of train box cars and passenger cars sat still on the tracks that split the set. For the next three days, Bay Minette would be a rural town in Wyoming.

Hundreds of people sat or stood listening to a man barking out directions through a bullhorn. Had a person not known better, the gathering could have been mistaken for a livestock auction.

According to the man's instructions we were to act like a panic-stricken mob trying to flee the city by train. When we were instructed, we would move — some running, some walking — toward the trains. Some individuals were selected to climb onto the trains. My sisters and I received no specific instructions. For a very small part of three days, this is what we did. Like cattle, we were herded toward the trains. The person with the bullhorn would yell, "Cut!," and we would go back to our places so the camera crew could set up to shoot the same scene from different angles. We were a fleeing mob of hundreds, but we needed to look like a fleeing town of thousands.

The rest of the time we sat, either out in the heavy Alabama heat, or cooled off in the oven-like temperatures of the car. It was early summer, which, in southern Alabama, is like mid-Hell in most other places.

Normally, for an eight-hour day of work, lunch is enough to hold you over until dinner. But for an eight-hour day of waiting and sitting and being bored, eating becomes the only activity worth doing. Most of the time my sisters and I ate our lunch before 11:00. We'd finish our ration of water by noon. In the dirt parking lot, my little sister and I dug down and poured the cooler sand on our arms and legs like a couple of hogs.

Hot, dry, hungry, and coated with dirt that had now mixed with sweat to form gray splotches on our bodies, my sisters and I looked like we might have been extras for "The Grapes of Wrath." To kill time between filming, I walked around the set and observed the other extras, looking at their sweaty red faces and eyes that said they would kill for fried chicken and iced tea.

I wandered into an area where I was awakened from my dehydration-induced stupor by the smell of barbeque. I followed the smoke and scent to an area of tents. The real movie crew -- the cameramen, writers, producers, directors and the real actors -- were there eating and drinking and laughing. Large fans were set up to cool these people. This was Hollywood.

On the third day of shooting my stepdad was chosen to play the part of a Coke vendor. He strapped on a tray and was given two six packs of Coke. Why a Coke vendor would be selling drinks to a mob of people fleeing aliens was a question I could never answer, but who cares? My sisters and I had what so many other extras desperately wanted: cold Coca-Cola.

Dozens of people approached my stepdad and offered him 10 times the cost of a Coke. "I'm sorry," he would say, "These are for the movie." Later he would give me and my sisters two Cokes to split between the four of us. It was Hollywood on an Alabama scale.

Weeks after the movie crews left Bay Minette, we received our $50 checks. The memory of 36 hours of hot, humid hunger had long faded. I still had no idea of what the movie was going to be about, but I knew exactly what I planned to buy with my earnings: the Playskool McDonald's Drive Thru. It cost me less than $15. To this day, I don't know what happened to the other $35.

When the movie was released my family went to see it on the first night it played at the theater. Frankly, the movie was boring and I was even more disappointed that I didn't see myself or anyone else in my family.

A few weeks later, my family loaded up the Vega and a U-Haul truck and moved to Gainsville, Fla. I started the third grade at a school where I knew no one. Back in Mobile my classmates had gotten used to my long, dirty hair and my wearing my sisters' hand-me-downs. A new school brought with it not only the pain and difficulty of being different, but also the embarrassment of looking like a kid who transfered from a school in a Third-world country.

During my first week at the new school, my teacher asked me to tell the class something about myself, I knew exactly what I would say to them that would inspire envy and demand immediate popularity.

I stood up and said, "I was in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." I paused to allow for two things to happen: First, allow my words to sink in with my classmates; second, allow time for their excitement to build to a boil over having a celebrity in their presence. I believe one of those things happened.

A blond, curly-haired boy already known for getting laughs raised his hand and asked, "Were you one of the aliens?" His question brought down the house and propelled a new wave of disregard toward me. That asshole solidified his role as the class clown, while I effortlessly stepped into the role of the class hobo.

None of the kids believed me. I thought about going into more detail about the whole experience, but once I considered my memories of being hot, hungry and thirsty; of sitting around for hours with nothing to do; once I thought about the condition of the other extras, I decided I would never convince my classmates that I was in a movie.

But I really was in a movie. Trouble is, I didn't look the part. I didn't look like the people on the movie set who were eating barbeque at a buffet and drinking soft drinks and tea and having giant fans blowing on them.

At that moment, I had an epiphany. I would lie. I would lie my way to popularity.

I started small, simply saying that I got the autographs of the stars from the movie. "I have them framed and hung on my wall in my room," I claimed. Autographs seemed to have a dumbfounding affect on them. From there on, whenever someone mentioned an actor or musician they liked, I had their autograph. Framed and hung on my wall in my room.

Like the BeeGees? I have their autographs. A fan of Roger Moore? I have his autograph. Like the movie "Star Wars?" Not only do I have Darth Vader's autograph, but I have a helmet just like his.

The lie about the helmet got me into a bit of trouble, as some boys actually wanted me to bring it to school to show them. "It's put away in our attic," I said.

A girl I had a crush on was a fan of Andy Gibb. "I have his autograph," I said. As I said it I noticed something different about the way my voice sounded. I was speaking with a slight British accent.

"Are you from England?" she asked.
"No, but we go there so often, I sometimes pick up the accent."

I couldn't believe how gullible my friends were. And they were now my friends.

At Least It Wasn't a Mockingbird

I once killed a bird with a golf ball that I hit off a tee. It was a terrible shot -- sliced wildly through the air toward a small, wooded area. My ball went into the tree, and then a bird was deposited to the ground. By the way the bird landed, it was obvious the ball killed it on impact.
Surprisingly, for a 15-year-old, I felt terrible, and recalled that this was not the first time a bird had died at my hands. This tragic event took me back some years to an afternoon when my best friend and I were goofing around in a field behind his house. Todd had a BB gun, which was something my parents had forbidden me to have, not that I’d ever asked for one. Judging by my prowess with the firearm, I would never be a danger with a BB gun to anyone other than unintended targets.
Todd set up cans and bottles as targets. He would take a turn and hit a few of them, and then give me a chance and I would miss everything but the ground.
Bored with missing bottles and cans, I looked elsewhere and spotted a Blue Jay on a branch of nearby tree. To this day, I still do not know why I chose to point that BB gun at that bird. Even though I had demonstrated all afternoon that I couldn’t hit the broad side of an elephant with a barn, I would normally never, ever considered shooting an animal.
But there I was: one eye closed, the other eye staring down the barrel of a rifle. I fired. The speed with which the BB hit the bird was possibly equalled by the speed by which my body was consumed with regret for ever pointing that gun skyward.
But that was just the beginning. When Todd and I found the bird, it was laying on its back, staring up at the sky. We stood over him and he looked at us. The Blue Jay blinked. He was still alive.
Fast forward an hour and Todd is saying things like, “That was one tough bird,” “I guess he had a lot to live for” and “Maybe he would have been able to live with the one BB.”
It’s that last line that gets me. The reason for that is because when Todd and I were standing over the still-alive bluejay, we determined the best thing to do for this bird was to put it out of its misery.
So I once again pointed the BB gun at the bird and pulled the trigger.
It was still looking right at us, still alive.
I shot it again. And again. And again.
In all, I shot it 13 times before it finally died and I was at last able to bury him.

For the next few weeks, I buried myself with the memory, shame and saddness of what I did that afternoon.
I even had a nightmare where there was a knock on my door, which I opened to find a person-size bluejay standing there, trail of BBs behind him. The giant bird is breathing heavy and he looks right at me and says, “Remeber me?!” Then he spreads out his wings and shakes his body, like some kind of an exotic dancer, making a sound, much like that of change jingling in a pants pocket.
All of these memories come rushing back to me as I stood, golf club in hand, staring at another bird that I had killed, this time with a golf ball. At the very least, I was fortunate to not have to put the bird out of its misery, as the image of me repeatedly clubbing this bird was almost more than I could take.

Civil Movement

My early childhood memories mostly revolve around being dirt poor and all the experiences that can take place with being one of four children raised by a young, single mother who had to work full time. We often lived in dumps in neighborhoods composed of other families who lived in dumps. As was often the case in Mobile, Ala., many of those families were black.

My three sisters were my earliest friends. They were who I played with most often. I didn't spend a great deal of time outside, but I would spend hours inside playing house and listening to records with my siblings. It wasn't until I began preschool that I had my first real interactions with other children.

The day care my little sister and I were to attend was not too far from our house. I remember the brick building surrounded by a chain-link fence with bushes inside the fence. There was a large field next to the building. Kickball games were played there.

One other thing about the place: My sister and I were the only white people there.

On our first day at the day care, we were greeted by the smile and open arms of a very large black woman. The two of us were also greeted by the stares of about 30 black children. We were the clear minority, and even though my two-year-old sister and I didn't realize it at the time, we were the pioneers of a two-person movement to integrate the once-all-black day care.

There was no coverage in the local or national media of our daring display of bravery in our desire to be equally read children's books to during story time. No uplifting church pulpit speeches to support us in our quest to play with the same blocks once reserved only for black children. Gov. George Wallace was not there to keep us from playing on the playground slides.

Would we be served snacks or lunch? Or would my sister and I, like two stray marks on a blackboard, be erased? Would we be allowed to sit at a table with other kids during lunch? Or would we be directed to the section of the day care reserved for whites?

My sister was taken away and sat in a 'whites only' high chair and a plate of food was placed before her. With the courage of someone well beyond her two years, she ate her lunch. I, on the other hand, stood in a line where I was given a warm plate that was quickly taken away from me by a different smiling large black woman. Just as I expected: I was not to be fed here.

A moment later, the plate, now full of hot pinto beans, greens and some kind of meat, was given back to me. The same woman then held up two pint-size cartons of milk and said, "White or chocolate?"

I found her joke to be in bad taste and cruel. Still, I knew I would have to learn to fit in if I was to survive, so I asked for the chocolate milk.

I sat and quietly ate my lunch at a table with other children. They talked, joked and acted up with each other, but I could feel their eyes on me. I knew I wouldn't sleep during nap time — too afraid to close my eyes.

Outside time brought with it a new kind of fear, so I chose to stand close to the teachers, who seemed to feel sorry for me. I was relieved when my mother arrived to take us back to our dumpy home.

During the following weeks and months, my sister and I learned the system and found ways to fit in. I was unusually strong and would impress the other boys with my arm wrestling prowess. My sister was just cute and had soft hair.

I developed crushes on some of the girls there and courted them with brave acts of silliness. I was always chosen last to play kickball and was sometimes picked on, perhaps because of my being white, or possibly because my hair was too long and I was wearing my older sisters' hand-me-downs.

Things changed for me and my sister at Christmas. The day care was putting on a Christmas pageant and recreating the story of Christ's birth. I couldn't act and my singing was terrible, so I got to stand with the parents and sing "Silent Night, Holy Night." My sister, though, landed the part of an angel.

On the night of the pageant, the day care was packed full with the families of my schoolmates. Like many of my fellow students, I had been looking forward to the performance. Despite my musical deficiencies, I had fantasized that my voice, and not my color, somehow would set me apart from the other children. The comfort I'd hope to gain by having my two other sisters and mother there with me was quickly lost in the ever-growing number of black relatives flowing through the doors to see the play. I hadn't considered how much more out numbered we would be.
I then began to wonder how I would be treated by the friends I had made at the day care. Would they act the same way they now did at school, or would they ignore me, afraid to admit to their parents that they have a friend who is white.
What would their parents, grandparents and other siblings think when they saw a small tribe of whites at their joyous Christmas ceremony, which had probably enjoyed years of performances without scandal, least of all the integration of the pre school their children attend.
Maybe they thought our car broke down outside and we were just coming in to use the phone to call for someone to come get us. Maybe we were lost and came in to ask for directions. No matter what scenario was imagined, the underlying theme was that we were in the wrong place.
As the program began, I took my place among the parents and at the moment when the three wise men approached Joseph, Mary and the manger, I sang the parts of "Silent Night" that I could remember. The angels filed in and took their places in front of the Nativity scene.

Jesus was completely upstaged. My little sister, dressed in a white gown with paper wings and an aluminum-foil halo, stood in the middle of the row of angels, looking and smiling at all of the families. The teachers glowed with pride as the other parents smiled back at the seemingly out of place child.
When the program was finished the audience erupted into appplause and whistles. As the angels tottered off the stage, the same large, black woman who greeted me and my sister on our first day at the day care, scooped up the lone white angel and carried her around the room. "They're all angels," she said loudly, "But you're our first white angel!" With that, for the rest of night, my sisters, mother and I were novelties, pulled around and introduced to parents, grandparents and brothers and sisters. Everyone wanted to hold my sister, who, still in her angel costume, was passed from person to person, her little blonde head lolling around like a fishing bobber in the middle of a lake.

In the weeks that followed the Christmas pageant, another white family brought their children to the day care. Then another. Things were changing because my sister and I didn't wait for the masses.