Fred Wemyss

We moved here just before I started Kindergarten. I've always felt like a foreigner, although the move was only from Manhattan to Long Island. At the age of five I felt the closing of ranks against me as the other boys in school literally walked, a few times, in sets of three or four, with their arms resting on each other's shoulders. What was bonding to them was, to my eyes, which dared not meet theirs, an expression of defiance. All of them were neighbors living within two blocks of the school. I lived a mile away.
I didn't make a friend until the tale end of second grade, when I, sitting on one end of a see-saw, the other side of which was tilted upward without an occupant, heard a voice which asked, "Can I see-saw with you?"
This was Henry, who'd just moved to town. He was tall, I was small. He began to climb the see-saw after I said, "O. K.," and, just as he got on, the same three boys who'd walked around in a phalanx two years before called out to him.
"You don't want to play with Worms!" My last name, "Wemyss," is pronounced "Weemz," hence Worms was the logical distortion.
"Why not?" said Henry.
"Come on and play kickball with us."
"No, I want to see-saw."
"Not with him! Come on, play kickball."
"No."
At this, one of them said, "We'll never play with you."
Henry said, "O. K."
They waved him off. Henry never played with them. He and I became friends.
I gained another friend in third grade. It was another boy named Henry, also tall. He came from Queens, where he'd gone to a Catholic school. Starting third grade, he'd had no prior experience of me. We had the same bus stop. I used to stay about six yards away from the group clustered at the stop and, after after a few weeks, this Henry called to me. "Stand with us!"
found I was able to talk with some of the others with Henry standing there.
I still would start the wait at the bus stop a little way off from the crowd and Henry would appear. I'd walk toward them. He met me halfway once. "Don't hold your books like that," he said in a low voice. "Hold them like this."
Henry had his books at his side. I had mine in front of me, as if I were carring a bag of laundry."
I shifted my books to the side. "But they're too heavy to hold with one hand," I said.
"That's holding them like a girl," said Henry.
Sensing a route to acceptance, I kept the books at my side.
The Henrys didn't like each other. Whichever one would call me first on a Saturday morning was the one I'd play with that day.
One time, in class, the newer Henry once threw a new pencil I'd showed him across the room. "Copycat," he cried. I had bought the sleek lead pencil after seeing the one he had. It was the same color, a shade of blue I'd thought very masculine. The first Henry told me that this Henry was cruel. When I bought a replacement pencil I kept it at home. It was the same blue.
I did befriend someone my height once. He moved in in fourth grade. He wasn't named Henry. He introduced me to the WHITE ALBUM, which had just come out. He used to kick me, very suddenly, between my legs and laugh endlessly. One day my brother told me I should fight back. My newest friend shoved me for some reason. I simply walked to the other room. My brother, who was standing there, said, "Fight back or he'll never stop." I reluctantly went back into the room. My friend pointed his chin at me, shoved me harder and I took my knuckles and rapped him once, on top of the head.
He let out an agonized noise to match his twisted expression. He called his mother and she picked him up. He didn't play with me again for a few weeks.
I had a birthday party once and invited Henry, Henry and the friend who used to kick me in the crotch. I also invited two members of the gang of three who'd walked around en masse in Kindergarten. My mother drove us to Coney Island.
Afterward my original friend Henry said I should stop trying to get everybody together.
I only keep in touch with him now.
The other Henry told me, at our last meeting, that if I didn't visit him and another mutual friend at their post-collegiate dwelling in Manhattan that "this will be your last chance."
I run into the ball-kicker every now and then and we talk about the Beatles.
I did have someone who almost became a friend just before I met the first Henry. We'd play on the see-saw and see-saw faster and fast, shouting bump game. I jumped off once, causing him to smash on the ground. I did that to him again. The second time he got back up and slowly walked toward the kickball field.

Back in college I thought of a funny title for a book a character in a novel of mine might try to write:
IMPROMPTU GUIDE TO METHODOLOGY IN RESEARCH.
I never wrote the novel, so I never created a character who tried to write a book with that title.
The title came to me when I was in the college library, stunned at the number of books with tongue-twisting titles.
I decided the character in my novel would be dreaming of writing his book for years.
I've been trying to write a book with a character who tries to write a book. I've taken years to do this and haven't done it and my character is supposed to take years doing what he wants to do and neither of us has done it. My character is ahead of me, in fact, because he has a title and I don't.

I'm still here. There was a time when, after many days without posting, I would post an entry with the Subject Heading, "Still Extant." That almost sound like "Still Extinct."
Maybe I'm extinct.
I have a friend who says I have no instincts.
Actually, I have a lot of instincts. It's the people around me who have none, so I have to test them in order to see if they'll simulate an instinct.
I have a reduced sense of smell, so, with that in mind, I may have a reduced level of instict. People will say, "Do you smell smoke?" and I'll sniff and say, "I'm not sure." My olfactories used to be powerful, but, with the years, my ability to detect odors has declined to a dangerous level. I can't tell if something I'm about to eat is as rancid as it looks.
My instincts have been battered by people who sit and watch TV all day and think that's living.
I walked into a Starbucks one day and the guy behind the counter kept making jokes about Brittney Spears. He saw I wasn't relating and said, "Guess you're a fan of hers, huh?"
The reason I couldn't react the way he wanted is that I have had no exposure to Brittney Spears other than moments when my eye scans the cover of a magazine I'll never open. I could have told the guy, "I don't know Brittney Spears's songs and I've never seen her in a movie if she's made one. But I do know you're likely to be cruel, stupid and misogynist. Plus you're not dealing with me as a customer but as an audience for the lounge act you'll never have the energy to create."
But I didn't say that.
The coffee wasn't bad. I added milk to my liking. It hit the spot.

Pardon me:

Both!
F**KING!
Houses!

Well, I've given up the write-a-50,000-word-novel-in-a-month project (visit http://Nanowrimo.org if you want to read about this annual web event) because I'm just not in the mood. Last year it got me writing 13,000 words (or was it 3,000?) In fact, here's a chapter from last year's effort. It's about Dr. Boland and a friend of hers. In real life, Dr. Boland was my grandmother and her friend Kate was, for all intents and purposes, my great aunt. They knew each other in their college days. Both of them were born in 1891 and they died within weeks of each other at the shared age of 91. This excerpt depicts them driving from New Jersey to the Catskills to visit my father. I was about three when they came to visit.
Before I paste the excerpt, let me mention that I'm also giving up reading an excellent new novel, LAY OF THE LAND, by Richard Ford. I'm returning it to the library because I simply can't read it in the space of three weeks. It deserves to be in the hands of a library patron capable of reading a deep book at sonic speed.
Okay, here's the excerpt from my NanoWrimo entry of 2005:


DR. BOLAND spread marmalade on her toast and had a sip of orange juice. She looked out the window at the ceramic cat which had been positioned so as to appear to be climbing the tree.
When Dr. Boland was finished with her toast and orange juice she rinsed the glass, put it in the sink and threw the napkin away. She took the piece of paper with the directions on it, read it and put it in her purse. She went to the porch door and made sure it was locked. She went to the closet and took a sweater off a hanger. She put it on. She took her hat from the little stand by the telephone. She took her white gloves from the drawer which held the address book and put them on. She glanced down the hallway toward the kitchen, looked at the living room and walked to the front door. She opened it and stepped into the vestibule. She looked at the umbrella stand. She considered and then took her umbrella. After closing the front door she opened the very front door.
On the stoop she opened the little metal mailbox by the door. It was empty. She shut the door, put the key in the lock, turned it, tested the handle, put the key in her purse, closed her purse and walked down the steps.
She walked along the sidewalk and then up her driveway. She unlocked the garage, pulled the door upward and and then pushed it further up. She got into her car, started it, backed out of the garage, stopped the car, put it in neutral and put on the emergency brake, got out, pulled the garage door down, locked it, got back in her car and drove to Kate's.
When she pulled up, she saw a white-gloved hand part a lace curtain in a second-storey window, as it always did.
"Good morning, Lucy," said Kate when she got in the car.
"Good morning, Kate."
"Now I'm just going to stop at Mr. Benson's and have the oil checked."
"And are you getting gas too?"
Dr. Boland pulled out. "No, it's almost full."
"You don't want to run out of gas, you know."
"Oh, I know, but it was full yesterday afternoon. But, you know, I think I'll get the tires checked."
"Oh, are they low?"
"Well, I don't think so, but driving into the mountains, you know."
"Yes, you need air in the tires on gravel roads."
"Oh, I know."
"Oh, yes."
"You remember Bob Finchenhurst."
"Finchenhurst. Wasn't it Finchenhorn?"
"I don't think so."
"I don't think I remember him."
"Of course you do. He was married to Mamie Finchenhurst."
"Who was she before?"
"Gwendolyn Punker's daughter."
"Mamie Punker married Bob Finchenhorn?"
"Well, the Bob and Mamie I knew were Bob and Mamie Finchenhurst."
"I don't remember them."
"Well his tires were low in the Poconos."
"What?"
"In the Poconos."
"I thought you said 'low in the Poconos.'"
"I did say 'low in the Poconos.'"
"What's that describe?"
"What's what describe?"
"Low in the Poconos. I don't know an expression, 'Low in the Poconos.'"
"In the Poconos, which is a range of mountains, Bob Finchenhurst had low tires."
"How do you come to know he had low tires?"
"Mr. Benson told me."
"Mr. Benson told you Bob Finchenhorn had low tires?"
"Yes."
"Well, why would he tell you that?"
"Because Bob Finchenhurst, whose name is Bob Finchenhurst and not Bob Finchenhorn, hit a rock and the front tire burst and he was stuck all day."
"Oh."
"If he'd had full tires the front tire might not have burst."
"Is it true that low tires are more likely to explode than full tires?"
"Yes. I think so."
Dr. Boland pulled into the gas station.
"Hello, Dr. Boland," said Mr. Benson. "Check your tires?"