Arghhhh!

I can't stand it! I woke up this morning hearing the original long winded version of "McArther Park" by Richard Harris in my head, and now I still can't get it out of my mind. Not even after hearing a bunch of Deep Purple songs on my way to work.

I haven't posted in a while, mainly because I haven't had anything worth mentioning, I guess. We've started a new semester at the university and it looks like we'll have a few displaced students from Louisiana attending, but not very many.

Oh, I came up with a story that's a little different for me, not the usual type I write, but it is based on a couple of characters from other stories I've written, so they make references to things that have occurred in those other stories. I guess those references are used as a device to introduce the dialogue:

All the Way to Zero


“Mom! I’m home.”

“Annie, you’re home early. How was your date?” asked Sammie. “…I didn’t hear a car drive up…”

“Oh, I took the shuttle home. Where’s…Dad? I haven’t seen him around in a couple of days. Don’t tell me you two had a falling out or something; I mean, you two just practically found each other again.”

“No, Annie,” said Sammie, “everything’s fine. I guess you didn’t know…one of his friends had some type of emergency, so he went out of town to help him out. He’ll be back in a day or so. I guess you weren’t around when he left.”

“Sooo?”

“Sooo, what?”

“So how’s it going with you two? Are you going to get together for good? I mean, even before I knew he was my father, I thought you two belonged together…”

“I don’t know, Annie. It’s too soon to tell. We’re not the young couple we were when we first met. We’re more cautious about things. I think the feelings are there, but a lot has happened since that time…”

“You mean like his ex? Or your boyfriends? You never were serious about any of them…”

“Well,” said Sammie, “we all carry our baggage around with us. His ex-wife and my old boyfriends are just extra luggage, I guess, but your father feels guilty about…several things, like having forgotten all about me or not knowing about you…and, I think, his…other daughter.”

“How ‘bout that! I come out having a sister and in some weird way kind of related to someone who’s from…a different world…”

“I’m not sure if we’ll ever understand what’s the real story there. Anyway, I noticed you neatly steered away from answering my question,” said Sammie.

“What’s that, Mom?” asked Annie.

“How was your date?”

“Oh, that. Well, let’s just say I’ve seen the last of Mike.”

“I’m sorry, Mijita. I know you really liked him…do you want to talk about it?”

“…some other time, maybe,” answered Annie. “It’s no really big deal…and please don’t call me that; I’m not a little girl anymore…so when’s Dad coming back, anyway? You two should really go out on dates more often; you know, enjoy yourselves, enjoy just being with each other and forget everything else. You have a lot of years to make up…”

“Oh, you’ll always be my little girl, and don’t worry about us; like I told you, we’re not rushing into anything this time,” said Sammie.

Annie walked over to the kitchen cabinets and got a bowl; then she walked to the refrigerator. After serving herself a dish of ice cream, Annie approached her mother.

“Mom, what was it like?” she asked.

“What was what like?” asked Sammie.

“When you first met…Dad? I mean, you told us back there that you met and fell in love and the third day after you met you got married. How did it feel? Was it love at first sight or what?”

“I’m not sure I can explain it. When we first saw each other, all we saw was one another; we couldn’t keep our eyes away from each other. When we met, it was like…like we’d already known each other for ages. I think he fell in love with me at first sight, if there is such a thing. And I probably fell in love with him a little then, too…” said Sammie.

“I thought I fell a little in love with Mike the first time I saw him, too,” said Annie. “But I wouldn’t do anything like marry him right away…”

“Well, ordinarily, neither would your dad or I,” said Sammie, “but the situation dictated we do something for us to stay together…for all the good it did. So what happened with Mike, Annie?”

“Oh, Mom…you know we’ve been going out a few weeks. I really thought I loved him, and I thought he loved me, but he never said anything. I just thought he was shy. So earlier in the week, I was pretty excited when he told me something special was going to happen when we went out this week. I thought he’d finally tell me how he felt, that he loved me and wanted for us to get serious about each other.”

“But that didn’t happen?” asked Sammie.

“He picked me up. We went out to a movie; then we went to dinner…nothing fancy; after all, we’re just college students on a limited budget. We went to that little Greek restaurant near UT. Anyway, afterwards, we started driving around, and he said, ‘Something real special is going to happen in a while…’

“‘He’s looking for a special place to pull over,’ I thought. I was thinking he was going to propose or something. But we passed the campus and got on the freeway. He started driving north, and I asked him, ‘Is it going to happen in Roundrock?’ And he said, ‘No, it’ll happen here in Austin.’ So we got to Parmer Lane and he turned back toward Austin.

“We were passing the LBJ Library and he smiled and said, ‘It’ll be soon.’ I was getting pretty excited. He got off on MLK and drove by the campus. ‘It’ll happen in there,’ he said, looking toward the campus. I was thinking he was being romantic, wanting to tell me he loved me where we first met…

“He pulled into Speedway and drove slowly into the campus. I thought he was looking for the perfect spot. He parked under the tree in front of the Jasper Building and looked at me, grinning. ‘There,’ he said.

“‘What?’ I asked him, expecting him to reach for me and kiss me and tell me he loved me…

“‘Look,’ he said, grinning and looking at the panel in front of him. He pointed to the odometer and said, ‘Look! It’s reset. It’s all the way to zero again. It’s like I have a new car all over again.’

“Yes, Mom. The odometer was all the way to zero, and so were we…”