(Not) On Thin Ice

So Kathleen and I went to the skating party.
Neither of us actually skated – Kathleen doesn’t know how, and I haven’t skated in probably close to 20 years.
When I was a kid there was a local community recreation building – known most commonly simply as “The Building” – which in the non-winter months was used for things like basketball and roller skating, and in the winter was frozen over and used for ice skating and hockey.
And yes, I did play hockey. I was a decent goalie, as my head would naturally draw any slapshots straight toward it.
Of course, it’s worth mentioning that my brother Stuart was one of the few people who could actually manage a decent slapshot, and, if he was on the opposing team, he generally aimed them for my head anyway, so my cranial magnetism was kind of irrelevant.
For the record, even a soft puck can hurt if it hits you hard enough.
Lacking natural grace, I was never a terribly skillful skater, but I could at least manage to remain upright most of the time.
I remember one night of skating in which we were playing “It” or, if you prefer, “Tag,” which is considerably more challenging on ice skates, and all of the other kids decided to gang up on me to insure that I was always “it.” Little did I know that it was the pale harbinger of torments to come.
Anyway, tonight’s outing did not involve breahtlessly chasing after my cruel and vicious peers in an effort to no longer be it, but it was kind of marred by the fact that it was cold and rainy and that it was held at an outdoor rink.
We talked to David, of course, and a few other people, but for much of it we were standing sort of off to the side near the hot cocoa and cookies. Eventually we moved over to where other people were standing after Kathleen said that we looked like we were anti-social. I pointed out that we are anti-social, but we still moved over anyway.
We hung out long enough for the raffle drawing. Kathleen actually won one of the prizes.
Even though it was his party, David didn’t seem to know what the prizes actually were. When Kathleen told him it was a gift certificate he asked how much it was for and said, “That’s so cheap!” when she told him.
He asked if I was going to write about that here. I told him that I pretty much had to.
In introducing me to a few people he talked up my talent and Heroic Portraits, saying that I could probably make a living off of that alone. When I pointed out that I’ve never had any actual customers, he said that it’s because I don’t market it. Kathleen agreed.
When we were leaving, he asked if I was serious about wanting to develop Heroic Portraits.
Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, sure, it’d be cool, I guess, but the one problem I foresee is dealing with unsatisfied customers, in particular people who would give me the vaguest description of what I want, then complain when I failed to bring their vision to life.
It would be kind of difficult to keep from responding to any complaints with an angry “Draw your own damn portrait then!”
Kathleen suggested some strategies for dealing with that sort of thing.
The biggest problem with marketing the site, though, is that it sucks. I don’t really want people to go there because I know they won’t be impressed, and I just don’t seem to have the wherewithal to make it any better.
Anyway, the point is that it’s a question I’ve asked myself and I’m just not sure what the answer is.
But that was my big adventure out in the world.

A Magnetic Personality

Whatever other attributes I may possess, natural grace is not one of them, and it’s been that way since before I even entered the world.
My birth was the end result of my mother being in labor for 72 hours – despite this, my mom still wanted to have even more kids, but my dad was unwilling to let her go through that again – which was brought on by the fact that, without getting too much into the mechanics of it, I actually managed to hit my head and get stuck on the way out.
That inaugural blow to the head was the first of many I would suffer in the 35 years that followed. Honestly, the number of blows to the head I’ve suffered is truly Homeresque.
This is mostly due to the aforementioned lack of natural grace (and to not paying attention to my surroundings).
For example, in college I had a student job as a custodian, and one of the areas I had to clean was the woodshop where students pursuing certificates in woodworking took their classes. One night, after crouching down to sweep some sawdust into my dust pan, I stood straight up…directly under the arm of a radial arm saw.
To my recollection – which can’t be trusted, all things considered – this was the only time I managed to give myself a concussion.
Of course, my clumsiness has, over the years, led to increased wariness when there’s a chance I might hit my head against something, though said wariness has done little to prevent further blows.
Even if it did lead me to not bang my head against doors and other objects, I would still suffer a lot of blows to the head because my head is itself a magnet for hurled objects.
This is why it always made me nervous to sit in the spot at the bar near the dartboard in my drinking days.
I first confirmed my long-standing suspicions about my cranial magnetism one spring day in the mid-80s when I stepped out onto our front deck and cast a glance in the direction of my dad, who was mowing the lawn. I had turned my head just as the mower went over a rock, which, hurled by the whirling blades, flew several yards with unerring accuracy, and caught me right between the eyes knocking me flat on my back, and causing my dad to abandon the mower and rush over to check on me. I was fine, but the spot where I was hit was, naturally, quite tender.
(My dad also took this as an opportunity to give me yet another lecture about why it was so important to make sure that the yard was free of rocks.)
Later that same day I went to a friend’s birthday party and got clipped by a Frisbee in the exact same spot the rock had hit me.
That was when it hit me – literally and figuratively – and I realized that my head had some sort of pull that could influence the trajectory of any flying object. It explained so much: all the baseballs, soccer balls, rocks, snowballs, Frisbees, and any other flying object that was inexorably drawn toward my melon.
(When you combine my lack of grace with a general lack of athletic prowess and my unnamed but intuited understanding of the affect that my head apparently has on spacetime and the objects hurtling through it, you can see why I didn’t bother joining up for a second season of little league baseball.)
In any case, thoughts about my cranial magnetism came to me like a blow to the head the other morning as I was in my kitchen looking out the window and saw a leaf fall from a tree outside of my property fall, and then, seemingly against the laws of physics, veer sharply upward and drift determinedly over my fence and onto my patio. Apparently my patio is a magnet for fallen leaves, just as my head is a magnet for flying objects, and my attic is a magnet for squirrels, though the latter seems to squirrel-free at the moment.



My head emits powerful waves of some fundamental force that pulls any flying object towards it. Pilots flying overhead need to make major adjustments in order to stay on course and not crash into my head. My patio seems to have a similar effect on dead leaves.