The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for February 2005

An End To Hate

by 4 Comments

I almost spit out my coffee when I read this email. Is this for real. What a wacky world.

Dear SirMister Jack,

I have been reading your site for manny months now and it is parent to me that you had sum problemz that I can hope you with. You are G-dless and stuch in a place that is like hell on Earthe. I knowe how to break the spell of the witch whoo voodooed you. But such thinks cost many dollars.

Iff you sent me monay I culd buy ingreedents to fix your problem. But that is only the furst step. Tha next think to do is to get you to da church on time and wurk on your soule. Thease things will make your hart pure like a baby and will end your trubbles so you be happy all of the thyme.

G-d loves you and me,

Marston Constantine

Dear Marston Constantine,

I am flattered by your attention. It is clear that you are a man who recognizes things in people that they cannot see. I am not sure where to begin. You refer to living in a hell on Earth, but I do not live in Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit or anywhere that people of sense would call hell.

When you mentioned getting me to church on time I could not help but hear David Bowie singing to me.

I would be happy to send you some money, but I need your help. The bank has instructed me on how to place a wire transfer. It is like email. You need to send me $5,000 American dollars so that I can send money to you. It is standard procedure.

Once I receive your money order or cashier’s check I can quickly and effectively process the return. As we say E Pluribus Unum, You take the Bus, I take the Bus, We all take the Bus.

Finest regards,

Jackson ShackMaster Esq.

Dear Jack

by Leave a Comment

Dear Jack,

I have been trying to post a comment for close to a week now, but every time I try to do so Blogger prevents me from doing so. It is really frustrating. I wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed reading about your grandparents, music story and some of the other posts.

But I really want to ask you about your Inside the Bloggers studio post. Where did that come from? How did something so crazy show up in your dreams and do you remember everything you dream about.

Thank you,

David

Dear David,

Thank you for your note. I wrote Blogger this morning and asked them for assistance in diagnosing the problem with the comments. I am hopeful that they can fix this problem soon.

I have a very vivid imagination and I think in graphic terms. Often when I am mulling something over I have a mental image of whatever that is in my head.

I remember many dreams, but I can’t say that I remember all of them. And sometimes what I remember is a piece of a dream, a fragment that only makes a little sense to me, but not enough to explain who, what, where, why or how.

Regards,

Jack

Stumbling Through Life

by 3 Comments

This is part of a story I once told. It changes each time I tell it. Even though is told in the first person, It is fiction, with elements of truth.

I was almost 25 when I left the city of my birth. It was time to go, time to move on and get away. There were new experiences to be had and the pain of what I had once been, what I had once had was too much. Everywhere I looked there were signs of the glory and the fall.

For most of my life I had been a scrapper, never afraid to fight, never willing to give up and not smart enough to get out. It was a self imposed punishment for sins that I had committed but was unwilling to discuss.

It is not much of a description, not very colorful at all. In fact it is rather ordinary, but that is ok, I am ordinary and I prefer it that way. If you stuck me in a crowd full of people you would be hard pressed to pick me out. It was like that in school, never did or said much in class. No need to draw attention to myself I did what I needed to do to get through and nothing more.

And for the longest time that had been enough, an average, nondescript existence. It suited me fine to be a guy who punched a time clock. But sometimes even the average man find himself in a situation that is beyond his control,a time in which he becomes something more than he has been.

But the question is not what he does to elevate himself but how he handles the elevation.

It was Friday night and I had just finished my shift at the plant. There was no rush to get home because there was no one to get home to, no wife, no family, no girlfriend, not even a dog. Just an empty house that was sparsely furnished.

Friday nights were not much different than any other night of the week. I’d go home, pop open a can of beer and stare blankly at the television screen content to let my brain turn to mush.

On this particular night I decided to stop at an ATM. I wanted to order a pizza and I had nothing but the spare change from the last time I had visited the liquor store. It wasn’t enough to buy a pack of gum, so I was forced to go to the bank.

There were two people ahead of me in line, a man and a woman and behind me there were a couple of teenage boys.

I didn’t see him approach. I didn’t notice anything about him including his presence until he was standing in front of us, waving a gun and shouting for our wallets. I have a bad habit of giggling when I am nervous. I don’t like being the center of attention and now was certainly a bad time to laugh, but laugh I did.

5’8 or so and about a buck 20 sopping wet with a bad haircut and a Judas Priest shirt, that is all he was, oh and he had a big gun and an even bigger attitude. He grabbed my collar and asked me what was so funny. Before I could answer he had grabbed the woman in front of me.

She cried as he pulled her in front of him and asked me if I thought that this was funny. I choked back a snigger and told him that it wasn’t. He told me that if I so much as smiled he would kill her. I wiped the smile off of my face.

It was the wrong thing to do, but I didn’t know it. The jackass cuffed me in the side of the head and laughed. It infuriated me, brought back memories of years of being teased and tortured by my older brother. So I just reacted. I kicked him in the balls and smacked him in the head.

In the movies the gun falls and the hero (there has to be a hero) grabs it. Not here, not in my world. In my world when I slap him there is a flash of light and a loud noise. I am splashed with something, but it feels like hours before I realize that he just shot the woman, and that he did it involuntarily. The wetness I feel on my face is her blood.

I stand there in shock, numb and not really aware anymore of what is happening. The guy she had been with is beating the crap out of the jackass, the Judas Priest shirt is stained now, but it is with his blood.

There is a cop speaking to me, but I don’t answer. The real hero is lying, telling the officer that I saved everyone’s life, that if I hadn’t hit him the guy would have killed us all.

I didn’t hit him, I hit Georgie. It was Georgie I saw in front of me. It was Georgie taunting me, I just snapped and reacted. But I guess that somewhere inside I began to hear and to believe that I had been the hero, that when the bell rang I had come out swinging.

And that was really the beginning of the end.

Puberty and the Four-Year-Old Mind

by 3 Comments

Tonight the younger and better version of myself spent time discussing various items of interest to him. Where do bugs go at night, why does his friend say Googie and not doogie, when will he look like me, will he have hair on his legs and back, what about his feet, will they be big like mine, why does Popeye eat spinach, and why does mom want him to go to sleep at night.

It was just like that, a run on sentence of questions about his place in the world, life, what to expect and more. I love it. I love the curiosity and interest. He cracks me up with the questions and some of the comments are priceless.

“Daddy, will you pour me a nice glass of water in the Scooby Doo glass. It is refreshing.”

And then he’ll slip in expressions in Hebrew that he learned in school. “Abba, Motek, bo leh poh. Ani roseh ledeber itcha.”

This is followed by counting in English and Hebrew. It is pretty cool to watch and listen, sometimes he’ll take time to instruct me. “Daddy, this is hamesh, five.” I smile and praise him, positive reinforcement and encourage him to keep teaching me

Sometimes he really gets into this, he loves pretending to be the daddy while I am the son. I haven’t explained to him that when I don’t listen I am not acting, I am just being me. Ask my father, he’ll confirm it.

We seem to have moved away from the conversations about death. I was never bothered by having to discuss it, never upset with the topic. It is all natural and age appropriate, but I must say that when he asked me to tell him when he would die, that did hurt. It wasn’t a rational pain, but it is not something that any parent wants to consider.

Today one of the girls in his class hugged and kissed him. He said that he told her to stop or he would punch her in the nose. I told him that there were better ways to try and charm a woman. And then he reminded me that she is yucky and that she didn’t listen to him when he said no. I laughed and muttered “get used to it, they never do” and was simultaneously struck in the shoulder.

Supermom had managed to get the drop on both of us. My boy better develop some real skill at woodcraft or superpowers, because between his mother and I he is going to be hard pressed to fool us.

Did I mention that he beat me 15-0 on the Playstation. I was walloped and abused by a four-year-old. Ouch. That is ok, he should be better, smarter and more successful than his old man.

Keanu Reeves And Me

by 4 Comments

Dear Keanu,

It is your old friend Jack. Ok, I am not your friend and you are older than I am, so I suppose that makes me a bit of a liar. Or you could say that it makes me an actor, an actor just like you. See, this is not personal, but you seem to have a very limited ability to play a role convincingly, at least anything complicated or somewhat sophisticated.

That is not such a nice thing to say, but this is my blog and I am not one to always hold back.

You make buckets of money for doing an ok job. I can’t fault you for that, I commend you. It is not often that mediocrity is so well rewarded. But it gives me hope, hope for the future.

It makes me believe that I can have a career as an actor. Jack can act a little, or maybe that is Jack acts like he is little. Doesn’t matter, all I know is that people like you and Bill Shatner comfort me as I know that there is a chance that Hollywood will learn to love me.

In Dire Need Of Affection- When Father Goes AWOL

by 1 Comment

Since I work across the street from my son’s preschool I am able to see him at school everyday. I try to walk him into class as well as pick him up. And on Fridays I always help him make challah for Shabbos.

I feel very privileged to be able to share this time with him and I know that my presence has caused a few ripples for the other fathers who are not able to make it to school as some of the other children have asked me to speak to their daddys and ask them to come to school.

There is one particular family in this class that has caught my eye because their son has latched on to me. I don’t mind, I love children and his mother is well aware that her son is interested in spending time with me.

What bothers me about this is that it is clear to me that he is starved for male attention. He is looking for his daddy and I am not him. I can try and be a good role model, a big brother if you will, but I’ll never be his father.

I happen to know that his father works locally and that he could find some time here and there to show up, but it almost never happens. I am at a loss for words, I just do not understand how this man can be so close and yet so far away from his children.

His son hugs me and tries to play with me daily. Sometimes I see a pained look on his mother’s face and I don’t have to ask what she is thinking.

The cliche is right, there is nothing more difficult and nothing more rewarding than being a parent. I’d like to punch this guy in the mouth and give him a swift kick in the ass. Not to hurt him, but to wake him up, he can turn this around. His son is young, but he cannot wait, he musn’t wait.

My gut says that it doesn’t matter what he does, he has sunk his chances with his wife. But the boy is a different story. Tonight when I put my son to sleep I’ll kiss him goodnight and he’ll pretend not to like it, but he’ll never question his father’s love. What will his little friend think? It is not right.