A Penny in the Old Man’s Hat

As I've previously stated, the holidays start early where I live. Despite being surrounded by festive Christmas decorations mere days after Halloween, I was having a little trouble getting into the Christmas Spirit this year. The usual holiday decorations and songs weren't as enchanting to me as they can be. I thought giving money to a Salvation Army bell ringer standing sentinel at a store entrance might help. It wasn't just spare change either, but enough to buy someone a good lunch. I know that no matter how hard off I am there is always someone more in need.

The problem with giving so much at one store was that I began to feel as if I was being judge by other bell ringers at other stores. I almost felt like I needed to stop and explain I’d already given. Okay, I can admit it was all in my head, but soon I found myself feeling a little resentful. These bell ringers didn't know me.  Can’t a man run in and grab a gallon of milk without feeling guilty for not dropping change in every red donation bucket he passes? I have since moved past this self-imposed distress and looked for other ways to fill the holiday void.

There are lots of other ways to give and spread cheer during the holidays. Volunteering time or donating to Toys for Tots are always good gestures and I do what I can with juggling between three jobs. Even with giving what I can, my small donations began to feel pitiful, and my lack of Christmas Spirit increased.

My holiday miracle occurred at a chance meeting with Santa Clause at SeaWorld.  It wasn't Santa that did it for me or even the giant Christmas tree in the middle of their arctic exhibit. It was the simple wish of one small boy. Santa was talking to him about his favorite things to do at Christmas time. When it came time for the boy to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas, he responded with the unrehearsed and genuine answer. “I want everyone who was hurt by Hurricane Sandy to be able to have a good Christmas too. Some of them don’t even have houses anymore.”

How does Santa respond to that? How do I, a mere witness, respond to that? I’m worried that the guy ringing the bell outside my grocery story is judging me for not dropping some change in his bucket each time I pass while there are others who have real problems. I’m the guy who feels guilty that I have the only house on the street without Christmas lights. I was numb to the spirit of the season that everyone else appeared to have until one little boy and his simple statement melted my heart. Then it hits me and I realize ­­—Christmas is a feeling you can’t force.

So what’s a guy to do when he isn’t feeling in the holiday mood around Christmas? Nothing. You can’t force yourself to get into the spirit of the season, and the more you run around trying to feel it the more evasive it seems to become. It’s like falling in love; you can’t force it. It just has to happen. So, if you’re like me and need a little help to get in the spirit, I suggest you don’t look in the usual places. It’s good to do what you can, but more important to simply keep your eyes and your heart open. What you’re looking for will probably come at the most unlikely time from the most unlikely source.  You simply have to believe you’ll find it and be wise enough to recognize it when you do.

Getting Lit for Christmas -Without Alcohol.

Christmas is all over the place. Seriously, I can’t seem to get away from the reminders that one of the most commercialized holidays is rapidly approaching. In Orlando Christmas comes early because of the theme parks.  Literally overnight Christmas decorations are put up as they remove Halloween ones at the end of October. I've lived in and traveled to a lot of places, but this is the earliest I've ever seen, although the rest of the world seems to be catching up.

Christmas is also highly visible in my neighborhood.  This is my first year at my new address, and I've never seen Christmas displays quite like the ones lining the streets of my subdivision.  Now that strings of lights are cheap and energy efficient, everyone has a display that should be recorded and put online.

My favorite addition to these extravagant holiday displays it the appearance of inflatable lawn ornaments.  These have only really taken off in recent years and they fascinate me.  By night, they may be snowmen, snow globes, or even Santa in a helicopter with working propellers.  By day, they look like runny cracked eggs on everyone’s front lawn. Despite their odd appearance in the day, I want one.

These neighborhood displays started with a single house. Then there were two, then three, then four.  The count jumped each night following Thanksgiving.  Not only did more houses acquire lights, but already decorated houses gained more and more strands of them as well.  It seemed the neighbors were in competition with each other, and now the entire street is lit up like Vegas. 

Except our house.

Now, this lack of lights is not because I’m a scrooge, I do love putting up Christmas lights and have managed some truly spectacular displays in the past. This year, however, my funds have been pulled in other directions and lights weren't in the budget. Still, as I watched the growing displays around me I thought, okay maybe I need some lights.  A string across the house can’t hurt, right? So off I ventured off to a handful of stores to purchase my lights only to discover the best ones had already been pillaged from the shelves.  I’m sure they’re all hanging on the houses in my neighborhood. The lights and my competitive Christmas spirit will have to wait another year.

Hold Your Breath

Death scares a lot of people. For me, it’s never triggered those kinds of emotions, nor was it a taboo topic in my family. My parents addressed the issue regularly and candidly. My dad said he wanted to build a grandfather clock we could use as his coffin by pulling out the gears when he passed on. My mom tells us it’s okay to pull the plug if she’s ever on life support. In her words, “I’ve lived a good life and I know there are people waiting for me in heaven.”  

Nothing brings me more comfort than a good walk in a large cemetery. To many this may sound strange, but for the first 12 years of my life I lived across the street from the Salt Lake City Cemetery. Its more than 250 acres was a great refuge and playground for me in my early childhood. I believe cemeteries are a place of solace for the living. Grief is only felt by those who have been left behind, the dead have already moved on. I learned this at an early age as I spent endless hours on those hallowed grounds.

What is so great about growing up across the street from a large cemetery? Well, the neighbors are always pretty quiet. Okay, that may be a bad joke but honestly, noise was never an issue other than the mowers at 7:00 am on Saturdays. It was a beautiful place to take a walk, both in the summer and in the winter. It was a giant front yard. It was a place I could run to when I needed to get away from the world and be alone (I was picked on as a kid but that’s a story for another time).

I carry some pretty amazing memories from that cemetery. I learned to ride my bike there. I may have started on my front sidewalk, but I mastered my bike riding skills on the hills and valleys of the cemetery’s narrow roads. I also learned to rollerbladed on the rough cemetery pavement, and have the scars to prove it.

Once, a friend and I temporarily shut down the filming of a Touched by an Angel episode. Yeah, that’s right; I was a bit of a rebel. We were running around, playing one of the games we played in the cemetery, and suddenly found ourselves on the set of the show. The director yelled “cut” and everything. I can still remember the crew running toward us with rants of “do you know how much it costs every time we have to take this shot” and “get out of here.” Needless to say, we found a hiding place nearby and made loud noises for about an hour.

I remember seeing some strangers attempting a séance. My oldest sister witnessed a real one up close on Halloween at the site of Emo’s grave. This particular grave was, and probably still is, the subject of a local urban legend that claims if you light a candle and walk backward around the grave three times you’ll see Emo’s ghost when you look into the crypt through the metal door on the large granite grave. The séance I saw was from a distance at a different grave. Not quite as cool as the one my sister saw, but at my young age, it was one of the scariest things I’d ever witnessed.

That cemetery is also the place where I first encountered the loss of someone close to me. My Grandpa, and the first immediate relative of mine to be laid to rest, was buried in that cemetery on my 9^th birthday. It is as vivid in my memory as the day it happened. I can still see the Salt Lake City skyline in the valley below as they carried his casket to the site. For years after that, my grandma fertilized the grass at his plot making it greener than the surrounding grass until she herself was laid to rest next to him.

There is a saying that you should hold your breath when you drive past a cemetery to ensure you don’t inhale the spirit of someone who was buried there recently. If that is the case, then I’ve inhaled a lot of spirits, but I’m not frightened by that. Looking back, I can think of no better location to have spent my childhood. To me the cemetery was a teacher, a friend I could turn to when I needed a shoulder to cry on, and a place of joy and of tears.  So, when you pass a cemetery, don’t think about death.  Cemeteries are monuments to the lives of the people who are buried there, and respect should be given to their legacies.  When it comes right down to it though, cemeteries are for the living and should be enjoyed by all of us.

Origin of Stories

One of my favorite childhood memories dates back to when I was 9 years old. My family and I went to go see Jurassic Park on its opening weekend. We all piled into our big blue van and drove to a movie theatre where my eldest sister sold movie tickets and scooped popcorn for Salt Lake City’s movie going public. 

Now, by the modern standards of IMAX theatres and multiplexes with dozens of screens, this theatre was not the biggest I’ve ever been in. It was quite large though, even for that time, and featured stadium style seating which was not a common feature of movie theaters in the area at that time. We took our seats in the center of the theatre, the lights dimmed, and the projector started.

It was during this movie that I, for the first time, truly appreciated the movie going experience in a theatre full of people all as excited to see the movie as I was. Jurassic Park had it all. Drama, action, comedy, cinematic scenes shot on a large scale, state of the art special effects, a musical score that rivals any to date, and plenty of audience connection moments. You know, those moments when the entire audience jumps at the same time in response to an unexpected appearance by a T-Rex or velociraptor. I distinctly remember one of those very moments. Even to this day, I can picture the back of hundreds of heads sitting in the house below me jumping at the same moment. I too was a part of that group of people who grabbed their seats and tossed their popcorn in the air. I was experiencing an adventure with the characters on the screen and by doing so was connecting with a room full of strangers. It was an event made possible by a film that started as a story written down on paper by a single author.

So where do the stories that lead to event blockbusters come from? This is a question that I often ask myself as I sit with a notebook and pen or in front of a blank computer screen searching for the inspiration to write my next story. I’ve written plenty of stories to know that the answer to this question is not one that is simple or even one single answer. Stories do in fact have roots in all aspects of life.  Every story I’ve ever written has stemmed from a different experience, emotion, or stimuli. AfterLife is no exception.  I won’t begin to compare myself with the masterful writer Michael Crichton. His body of work is one that even the best of writers aspires to be able to match.  I will, however, simply state one example of an experience that inspired me.

AfterLife started as a dream.  In the dream I was completely surrounded by zombies.  It’s curious as to what brought on this particular dream since, up to that point, the undead was never a genre of major interest to me. None the less, there I was fighting off and running away from a scary group of the walking dead.

Finally, the zombies captured me, but they didn’t eat me as I expected.  Instead I was dragged to a hospital room and was strapped to the table.  As I lay there, waiting for my fate, I overheard the zombies talking.  It was at that moment that I realized that I was in fact the dead one and everyone who was chasing me was alive.  When I woke up, I considered the concept.  Granted, I was not very familiar with zombie literature at the time and, therefore, had never come across a story from the zombie’s perspective. However, I started doing research and the story of AfterLife began. 

It started as a short story following the concept I discovered in my dream.  It evolved from there and, well, if you read the book you know it became quite more. As I wrote chapter after chapter though, there was always a part of me that wanted to tell the story as if I was recounting what I had watched on the big screen in a movie theatre full of an audience of strangers.