The THINGS I LOVE

Another way to present the 9 types of intelligence as exemplified by my How Do We Measure Intelligence post.

The basic idea is that different people are good at different things. These 9 probably don’t cover the wide range of smarts we all possess, but it’s a start.

I’d spoken to Nate’s psychologist about the times he’d claim to speak with the ghost of his dead father. The doctor would nod his head and say my son had hold him the same thing.

“Just part of the grieving process, Mrs. Hammond. These things take time. But thank you for bringing it to my attention. I never want you to feel like any detail is too small or unimportant to tell me. If Nate feels like he needs to imagine his father and relive some of their moments together in his own context, you should let him.”

It all made sense to me, but it seemed to happen a whole lot. One morning over breakfast, about a year after his father’s death, Nate told me about how he’d been speaking with him just a few minutes before he’d come downstairs.

“What did he tell you?” I asked, mentally taking notes I’d be sharing with his shrink.

“Just the normal stuff,” Nate replied. “Advice and all that.”

“What kind of advice?”

Nate paused. “Things he’d tell me when he was, you know, still with us.”

He started to get teary eyed. I followed suit.

“He talked about Boy Scout stuff.”

I grinned. Ted had been a beloved scout leader for as long as I’d known him. He got along so well with those kids. All kids, really. He had a way about him that was both disarming and assertive - qualities I’ve found all the best teachers have.

“What kind of scout stuff, Nate?”

Nate shook his head. “He didn’t want me to say too much. He said you might get mad.”

Keep in mind, I’d never even considered giving a ride to a stranger before. All my life, I’d been told that’s how you get killed. “Only crazies hitchhike,” they’d say. “They’ll cut your throat and steal your car and you’ll be dead in a ditch.”

I didn’t want to die in a ditch. And I liked my car. But after I’d left the gas station and I saw the poor guy sitting in the gutter on the I-95 onramp, feebly holding out his thumb, I made my choice. I’d be a good samaritan.

The storm in the distance looked pretty threatening. If I let that guy sit there, he’d have to bear the brunt of it. From the looks of him, he didn’t appear to be able to bear much at all. I pulled over to the side and rolled down the window.

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For decades, my sweetheart stared straight ahead. Before him, always, stood an expanse. Even if his eyes weren’t weak, he would have stared through the hopeless blankness of the cosmos across innumerable light years, past dying stars and decaying time, and have his gaze forever land on the back of his own head. Staring outward brought him nothing. Brought us nothing. Brought the world nothing. Billions of pairs of eyes staring at the back of the heads which imprisoned them.

Last night, The Universe slipped Her tongues inside my sweetheart, turned his eyes around, and allowed him to see the beauty hidden inside himself. His screams of pain and indignation turned to gasps of ecstatic transcendence. He became the first man in the history of men to see who he truly was. Who we truly are. Who we can truly be.

When you work in an Alzheimer’s ward, it’s difficult to determine whether or not a patient is telling the truth. Obviously there’s no malice intended if they’re lying; it’s likely they believe what they’re saying to be true. It’s the unfortunate nature of the disease.

A few nights ago, Madge Daniels started to complain about abdominal discomfort. We believed her. There’d been a nasty stomach virus going around for the last couple weeks. Madge’s overall lucidity was pretty good, too, so we did our best to make her comfortable and ensure she was getting a lot of fluids and adequate rest.

The next morning, Lou Franks, Ray Davis, Melinda Renz, and Veronica Auster-Coates were complaining about their own stomach pain. We gave them a once-over. They seemed fine. We figured they’d heard about Madge’s problem and believed they were experiencing it, too.

Did I ever tell you guys the story of how I f*cked with my white coworker out of spite? No? Let’s go:

So I had just gotten promoted and had moved to sit with my new supervisor and team. I was a little nervous because this area was white af. I chose a seat next to the only other black girl on my team. Little did I know, that on the other side of me sat the Mayonnaise Monster. He comes to his seat and introduces himself as ‘Evan’. Asks my name. Mind you, my new desk has my name on it.

He looks at the name and says ……. “What the f*ck does this say”

I brace myself for the f*ckery like;

I always scoffed at the local legend about the tiny people who lived in our town. That’s what the adults talked about when we were growing up - the little helpers who lived in the cracks and crevices of homes who scared away bugs and cleaned up crumbs. I never saw one. No one I knew did. But still, people talked about them as if they were there, like modern fairies.

This morning, I woke up to one sitting on my pillow, deftly cleaning a puddle of drool off my pillowcase.

He seemed as startled as I was.

“It’s okay,” he assured me.

I was surprised how loud and clear his voice was, as he was only four inches tall.

“I’m Sade Smols,” he said. “I’ve been cleaning here for the last six months.”

I don’t want to write about this. I’ll try to keep it short. My doctor suggested I put it down on paper, though, so he can have a better idea of how everything happened. He’d never seen such a thing in his 30 years of practicing medicine and he actually wants to talk about my case at an ENT conference next summer. So why am I posting the story here? Because if I have to suffer through writing it, you might as well suffer through reading it. Yeah, I’m a prick.

I’d always been an avid outdoorsman. Hiking was my thing. After my divorce, I did what I thought I had to do: quit my job and hike the whole Appalachian Trail. You know how your coaches always used to say “walk it off” after a bad hit? Well, after being sodomized by the vicious cock of alimony, I needed the longest walk I could think of. So off I went.

As I sit here and hold my baby, I can’t help but think back about how difficult my life was before she was in it. But things are so much better now. She was worth everything. Every little bit.

When you’re expecting, the hardest part is the wait. You can’t tell anyone for the first few months, just in case something terrible happens. That’s a lot to worry about, you know? After 12 weeks, you can break the news. In my case, though, I didn’t. I was worried what people would think.

I wasn’t married. I didn’t have a job. I knew people would say that a baby would be irresponsible. But I wanted a baby. I needed one. The companionship would be so important - especially after Bobby left. The bastard.

My uncle worked for the State Department. He died a couple weeks ago. As per State Department policy, whenever one of their higher-ranking employees dies, the Department sends a small team to the home of the deceased to ensure they had no sensitive documents in their possession. It’s not that they distrust their dead colleague – they just don’t trust his family.

The Department team came to my uncle’s house one morning, spent a few hours rifling through his closets and drawers, and left with a small pile of papers. They expressed their condolences for my loss, then left. I never saw them again. Not even at the funeral.

On the night I visited and found him on the floor, dying of a heart attack, he told me something. It’s something I would’ve preferred to have never heard; something that made me wish I’d gotten to his house 20 minutes later to find him dead.

In an abandoned house about ten miles south of our high school, deep in the woods, there’s a bedroom that is always wet. 

On the surface, it sounds unremarkable. Woods. Abandoned house. Water. Leaks. Wet bedroom.

Go inside, though, and you’ll realize it’s a little more complicated than that. A little harder to explain.

The water in that room clings to the floor and walls and ceiling in heavy, gelatinous globules. Touch one and it’ll break, spilling foul-smelling water on you. I made that mistake the one time I visited on my own. It takes days to get that stink off.