Author Archives: A.L. Schultz

I’ve been dealing with a couple of buttheads on my walk to work in the mornings; yes, buttheads, in all their Elementary School glory. There’s two of them, a boy and a girl probably somewhere between third and fifth grade, and for some reason they’ve decided that I’m a prime escape for their boredom while they wait for the school bus each morning.

It started last week when the girl stepped into my path. I smile at everybody, especially when they make eye contact*, so I was smiling at her when she moved slightly towards me with her hand half over her mouth and, between giggles, said, “Eff you.”** Because of the muffled words and the sheer unexpectedness of the insult, I didn’t immediately understand, which clearly showed on my face because she said it again, only a little louder.

Unsure how to respond***, I kept walking and, in my disappointed Mom-voice, told her, “That’s not very nice. It’s not very funny either.”

She disagreed, because I could hear her declare to her friend — the boy who undoubtedly had a hand in egging her on — “That was hilarious.”

On Monday, the boy throws a rock at me.

That’s over-dramatic. The boy lobs a rock in my general direction, in the same way that IT Guy, when he was this kid’s age, lobbed snowballs at his little sisters without technically throwing them at us so that he could truthfully tell Mom later (when we inevitably went crying to her) that our location was incidental to his aim. (He was also really good at getting The Sister to reciprocate so that he could get both of them in trouble at the same time, but that’s a story for another day.)

There’s a decent chance they’re not nasty kids but kids who are acting nasty, though they’re definitely feeding off of each other at this point as they attempt to show each other up. I was generally a nice kid myself back in the day but I could tell you — though I won’t — a few stories of my own nastiness, often motivated by a desire to show off. That they’re targeting an adult is a little mind boggling to me (I never had the guts when I was their age), and so far they keep foiling my plans to read them the riot act. Yesterday, Eff You Girl’s mom was waiting at the stop with her daughter, and I purposefully missed the chance to say anything. The mom seemed very nice — we exchanged pleasant smiles and good mornings — and instead of telling on her I just stared at the girl for the next few steps, trying to convey with my eyes, “We both know I could tell your mom what you did, but I’m not going to. Yet.”

On the other hand, I quite possibly conveyed this:

Which would explain why neither she nor her mother were visibly present this morning. I think they might have been hiding in their car as they waited for the bus, avoiding the crazy lady. I’d planned to lay the smack-down on Effie by offering her an ultimatum (treat me respectfully or I tell on you next time), but curses! Foiled again. Rock Boy was there – I think – but as he wasn’t throwing rocks I couldn’t decide if I recognized him. He did have a hard time meeting my smilingly I-will-be-pleasant facade, which makes me suspect I’m right, though all I did was offer him the usual, “Good morning!” You butthead.

I’d like to say we exchanged pleasantries. I think we might have. I think he looked at the sky and said something about the fact that it might rain. But my hearing has never been great, especially when it’s windy, so I gave him the same look I gave to Effie when she first told me what I could do with myself, and he too got the message and repeated…whatever it was he had said. I still didn’t get it completely, but at that point I had to respond in some way or try to fake-laugh my way out of it. So, naturally, I pointed out that he had an umbrella.

Clearly I need to stop hanging out with two-year-olds. It’s habit-forming. For example, my conversations with two- and three-year-olds go like this:

Niece on phone: I painting.

Auntie: You’re thanking me?

Niece speaking louder at phone: I PAINTING.

Auntie (still hearing “I TANK-YOU”): You’re welcome?

The Sister: She’s PAINTING.

Auntie: Oh! You’re painting! That’s great, that’s–

The Sister: I’ve taken you off speakerphone. She can’t hear you.

And when their voices aren’t being garbled through a phone’s microphone (I swear I can understand them in person):

Niece B: I’m a princess.

Aunt: You’re a princess!

Nephew A: I’m driving a truck.

Aunt: You’re driving a truck, how nice!

Niece B: I’m driving a truck too.

Aunt: I see, the princess is driving the truck too!

Niece A, visiting her cousins: *Desperately sad noise* Why doesn’t [refers to herself in the third-person] have a truck?

Aunt, calmly: Because you have a helicopter.

And then everyone wants the helicopter. Rinse and repeat. And I do mean repeat. Most of my conversations with preschoolers involve either translating the things they’ve said into proper English or reiterating knowledge they already possess. So when a ten-year-old told me it looked like rain, by habit I responded with an overly cheerful, “You have an umbrella!” Which, considering the look he gave me, was either bewilderingly obvious or entirely inappropriate to the conversation.

Good night, no wonder kids throw rocks at me.

*Random fact: I once found a website for foreign tourists and what to expect when visiting America, and one of my favorite tips was, “Just because they smile a lot doesn’t mean they’re idiots. It’s a cultural thing.”

**Censored, but you get it.

***If I was their age I could’ve just hit them with my umbrella and moved on. If they were my age, I would’ve given them the confusingly sincere, “Well, thanks!” (followed up, in this context, with, “But no thanks! I’m not that kind of girl.”), which worked wonders in high school. But when you’ve got at least twenty years on someone, the first will get you an assault charge and the second seems too flippant when you’re a role model — because that’s what adults are to kids, no matter how distantly you’re connected. As a stranger I’m not responsible for them or their behavior, but I am responsible for my own actions and what I may inadvertently teach someone is acceptable behavior. The curse of adulthood: more authority and way, way less freedom.

****FYI, these asterisks aren’t attached to anything. Just wanted to say that I felt better about my partially-spoiled morning walks when I discovered that The Sister and her husband talked about the situation over dinner in front of their children, who were both fascinated and perturbed. Apparently it’s been a good object lesson. (“Do we treat people like that?” “No.” And on my own part, when Miss A.B. asked why these kids would do such a thing, I got to pass on the unfortunate but universal lesson of, “Sometimes people are just mean.”)

Good morning, forks! Sorry about the radio silence. I spent the last couple of weeks working on a project that actually earned me some money (woohoo), which not-so-inadvertently also bumped it up the priority chain. I spent the last week doing nothing as some sort of lame-o recovery period — because if I’m going to work for real then I’m going to leverage it into another pointless writing break for myself — but I’m back at it again as of this morning. I’ll post more about the project (and my part in it) once it’s available online. In the meantime, I’m back to writing a back-breaking 40 words a day.

/re-shun

It’s toad weather in Fort Wayne (they were all over the walking trail near my apartment last night, throwing themselves out of the way of my feet), and as of this morning I am 40 words closer to posting chapter 5. That’s right, The Sister: I wrote nothing yesterday, and this morning it only took me 45 minutes to write those 40 words, putting my typing speed at less than 1 word per minute. When I know what I want to say I can type 100x that (typically 102 wpm with a handful of spelling mistakes thrown in), but when I don’t…well, you get the idea. On the other hand, if I keep up the pace, tomorrow I’ll have 80 words written, the next day 120, and in a month I’ll have written an entire 1,000 words, which is still only about a fifth of what I need to polish this story off. But still:

Progress.

Speaking of wpm, does anyone else remember 6th grade typing class? The other day I realized that these classes are already a relic from the past (and let’s not talk about the Ace of Base tape my sister frequently borrowed from my brother, because Ace of Base was dope and so were tape cassettes when we were in elementary/middle school; never mind that “dope” wasn’t the slang back then).  Mom used to tell stories about learning on a typewriter with the key faces covered so the students were forced to learn without visual cues, but what I remember from the early 2000s are the typing games, which I found enormously fun probably because I was one of the best in the class–which is less amazing than it sounds, when you take into consideration that 80% of my class were Thai and English was their second language.

Mind you, it took me well into 7th or possibly 8th grade to admit to my family that I had learned how to type — and I can’t remember now how it actually came out — but I will never forget my father’s face when he learned the truth. He used to type up my stories/papers for me when I was in elementary school, and I knew the gravy train would dry up as soon as he found out that I could do it myself. Which it did. He sounded annoyed but looked enormously amused when he found out, and never typed another paper for me again.

Oh, and because I can’t keep my thoughts together at 7 in the morning, FYI it turns out that The Sister doesn’t hate my story because it hasn’t been updated in so long and she’s losing hope; she hates it because she can sense the bad ending coming and has already lost hope. She just wants to find out for certain whether her cynicism about this particular story holds water, probably so that she can start getting over it emotionally. Whether it’s actually bad or all in her head is a matter for the courts–I can neither confirm nor deny these rumors. I will say only this:

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

And besides, you know what they say: never judge a book by its cover.

For some reason I decided that it would be more fun to work on chapter 7 of 7 instead of either chapter 5 or 6 of 7 this evening. Eventually this will work out for me, but today it means I didn’t work on chapter 5 and thus am not closer to posting it. Apparently The Sister has been checking TheStoryFolder every couple of days out of a sense of fading hope, but as this will die soon I won’t try to feel too bad about it.

(Even though, for the record, I do feel bad about it.)

I’ll be working on all three chapters daily, in little bits and pieces, which will eventually lead to completed chapters. Going forward I plan to stop uploading only partially completed works, because this is just ridiculous. I always think I’m on top of it, right up until I’m not. But for now that vague promise helps you not a whit. I can only offer you guilt, which doesn’t help either.

So back to it. Just wanted to let you guys know you all are weighing heavily on my conscience tonight.

EDITED 9/2/18 “conscious” changed to “conscience” because StayOffMyLawn is an irritatingly helpful pendejo.

But seriously, sorry about the radio silence folks. I can tell it’s been too long, not only because my IT Guy is leaving extra (and useless) comments on my previous blog post, but because The Sister is starting to hate this story. That’s usually a good sign.

Anyways, I’m working on it with fingers crossed that it’ll be done by next week.

Behind the scenes at The StoryFolder, where we make up our own lyrics to popular folk hymns and take well over an hour to record a minute and 25 second video for our father on Father’s Day. These clips were pulled from the reject pile.

Return of the nostril-upshot. I wasn’t going to upload this publicly, but I couldn’t compress the video small enough to email. Obviously there’s nothing stopping the rest of you from watching this, but it’s really meant for my dad. Happy Padre’s Day, pendejo! (Lyrics at the bottom of the post.)

Please note: a big part of the reason I wasn’t going to make this public is because I poke fun at “Amazing Grace,” which I recognize is a hymn that many people love — so much so that it’s often the featured hymn at their funeral. However, while I find the story behind the words gives the hymn depth of meaning (John Newton was a slaver who converted later in life, which gave him a firsthand perspective of impossible redemption; that Christ could truly forgive any sin), the words never actually dive into the specifics of how this grace was won, let alone what “grace” refers to. Thus the folk hymn easily crosses secular lines into the “spiritual but not religious” crowd. So while the hymn has a strong Christian message for those who are Christian, it isn’t a very good teaching or witnessing tool. It’s like Esther in the 2016 “Ben-Hur” movie telling her husband to “just have faith.” Okay, sure, but faith in what? Because the “what” matters. Belief isn’t powerful on its own; detach it from reality and it’s useless.

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

1 Corinthians 15:13-19

Uh, don’t mind the tangent. Feel free to write off my lyrics as the inside joke that they are. Also, here they are, for the hearing-impaired:

“Amazing grace,” my father cried,
“Is not the hymn to play!”
For grace implied is grace denied,*
Or so I’ve heard you say.

Because of you I cannot stand
Songs weak in theology,
And this is not the end of all the gifts in hand
My father gave to me:

Like self-awareness, judgment, wit,
A love of oldies too,
An intellect so swift, and old school-style grit,
These all came to me through you.

Thus thank you God who well designed
And built my dad this way:
Impatient, yes, but kind, the best among mankind,
So, Dad, Happy Father’s Day!

Finally, credit where credit is due: the gift of self-awareness, judgment, and intellect (plus a deep abiding fondness for the Carpenters alongside the rest of the 70’s soft rock I usually have playing in my car) were a joint effort on my mother’s part. Dad doesn’t get all the blame. (Oh, and before Mom gets insulted thinking I’m suggesting she doesn’t know how to tell a joke, the “wit” I’m referring to is the kind that leads to nicknames that are actually foreign swear words.)

*Note: actual quote is “The Gospel implied is the Gospel denied,” but that was three syllables too many for the line.