On This Day: Your History

[ER]

October 7, 2004 In her Connacht lilt my grandmother used to say there were two beings always ready to listen to you day or night: God and the devil. I recalled her saying that late on this night when I decided there was no one else who would understand something I was going through, so I called the last person I'd have ever thought I'd reach out to, the closest thing to the devil I personally knew, but someone I felt I could trust all the same, and I took him completely by surprise as I poured the state of my life out to him with a searing degree of self-effacing candor. It was a humbling, self-shocking act, but I felt better afterward as I somehow knew I would. I used to think if there was a Hell he'd be the person I'd be there with, or else there was no irony in the afterlife, since some things were so terrible you could only think you deserved Hell for your role in them. Sometimes I still think that.

[Alex]

07 Oct 2019.

After rushing down to Ayrshire following the bad news the night before, I went to see my mum in hospital. She got moved out of the high dependency ward and onto a regular one, if only for a short while. Luckily the aneurism had been treated early enough. The doctors found something was leaking inside though and had to move her back in while they redirected the fluids to somewhere harmless. She was able to sit up in a chair and talk to us, although she wouldn't remember this the next day.

[Alex]

8th October 2013.

I had the house to myself for a few days. I'd bought tickets for myself and Kristi to go an see Danny Elfman perform his movie soundtracks live, but I couldn't get time off work to go attend. My little sister got my ticket instead. I made use of my free time when I wasn't as work with recording myself as having three choices:

1) I could mope around missing Kristi until she gets back (this is referred to as 'Doing a Twilight').
2) I could tidy the house, get various jobs done I've been meaning to do.
or
3) I could run around in my underwear (ok fair enough I do that anyway), listening to Rob Zombie up full blast and while watching horror movies at the same time.

I do not recall what I actually did those days. I do remember what happened tomorrow morning though very vividly.

[ER]

October 8, 1989 My grandparents flew my cousin Jared and me to Sea World for a weekend trip. We left Friday evening and got back on Sunday. Jared was terrified of sharks, and I kept offering him various things if he'd stand with his face against the aquarium glass while the sharks swam past. He'd try then leap back, freaked out. In the hotel where we stayed a family from Amsterdam were in the room directly under us, and all had the same bright red cheeks, and never stopped grinning. When I went back to school the next day, Monday the 9th, and told about my weekend, a few kids there didn't believe me, because they said who ever heard of going to Florida for two days?

[RCMerchant]

On this day I am smoking a bowl and drinking Irish tea!
It will be history later on today!

[ER]

October 9, 2006 My dad's fiftieth birthday had been marked by a nice occasion, and I was home alone cleaning up afterward, feeling tired but happy, though maybe too much energy had been invested, because without warning something I'd said to him that evening---

"To the next fifty years!"

---came back to overwhelm me to the point I actually slid down the wall and sat down on the floor.

There almost certainly was not going to be another fifty years, and time had rushed past so fast.

I folded up on myself, glad no one saw me like that, feeling helpless in the knowledge that there was nothing I could do against the force of time, that it would take my father one day, take everyone I loved, take me as well, we fragile little beings who somehow seized joyous moments in the face of that certainty.

I sat there wondering if everyone had overpowering moments of realization like that, or if it was unique to me that it could hit me so strongly. I cried so hard that even the next day my head ached and my eyes stayed red, like symptoms of a hangover from weeping, and when I confessed all this to my friend in Austin, he whom I call "Hugh" because it's an inside joke, he said my response was a realization of being caught in the horror of samsara, and that grasping the ephemeral nature of life was a sign of enlightenment.

"Then may I remain happy and ignorant," I said back.

"Then I suggest you start a hobby of hard drinking."

[Alex]

9th October 2013.

I was awoken at around 3 or 4 am by someone pressing our door bell and keeping their finger on it. I jumped up out of bed, stark bollock naked assuming that something like the house was on fire was happening and I didn't have time for clothes. When I got to the front door there was a young guy standing there who proceeded to tell me that he'd missed his last bus home, didn't have the money for a taxi and it was my job to sort out his problems for him.

The f**k it was.

I spent a few minutes arguing with him before just shutting the door in his face. He then proceeded to go around the house trying the various doors to see if I'd left anything unlocked. At this point I went outside and punched him out. I was so glad Kristi was away that night as I hate to think how she'd have reacted.

[ER]

October 10, 2021 On this Sunday afternoon I unexpectedly found myself offered a very good employment opportunity in the Republic of Ireland, to begin after I left my then-current job. I don't believe I considered it deeply but it was....flattering? My mom had been pushing us for some time to come over long-term and kept sending pictures of nice little houses for sale: not to me, but with more strategic deftness than I credited her with having, to Daisy, who absolutely wanted to go, and who could persuade her adoring dad to do almost anything, so two votes right there. It could have been sweet to live there for a time, be near Mom, let my children have the experience of another country, mudlark the Corrib, metal detect the hills, feel the power of the lonely burrens, but it would not have been the right decision, we didn't go, and I haven't regretted it.

[ER]

October 11, 2016 Trying to come up with something fun for them to do while I was out that evening, my husband took our children, then aged seven, five, and four, to a presentation about UFOs at the library, then after that he showed them some alien abduction videos on YouTube, something I would have reallllly warned him against doing had I known, so that by the time I came home the children were freaked out to the point that seven-year-old Daisy left her bedroom light on all night and brought our dog Chocolate up to sleep with her; I stayed in with five-year-old Keagan til he nodded off; and four year old Trinity came to sleep in our bed.

Even with me in his room with him I had an almost impossible time of getting Keagan to relax, and he kept whimpering, "The UFOs are gonna get us! They watch people from the sky! They know how to open doors!"

Good job, Daddy!

When I finally did drag into bed after midnight, very annoyed with Landon for his questionable parenting skills, he actually said, "You have no idea how tempted I was to put on that rubber alien mask from Halloween and sneak into Keagan's room."

I stared at him in abject disbelief, thinking we did not possess enough money to pay for all the therapy bills that would have engendered...

[ER]

October 12:

2002: Did a 20K bike ride for MS with the man I eventually married, and afterwards found myself making out ("just" making out) for the first time in two and a half years.

2005: Watched Ghost Hunters visit Mansfield Prison, where I'd once done a ghost tour and encountered absolutely nothing supernatural; despite their claims I doubt TAPS did either.

2006: My maternal grandparents visited, and I had long conversations with my grandfather, a humble, soft-spoken, well-read man who should have been a professor or writer, but invested his life in volunteer work. He was never rich but he was respected and loved.

2007: On a Great Lakes road trip, we were in Milwaukee, and save for the weird accents, "doncha know," found the northern part of the Midwest's German triangle much like where we lived in its southeast corner. (Saint Louis being the western portion.)

2015: My husband built our son Keagan a Viking longboat bed so awesome I kinda wanted one myself.

2016: Saw a baby elephant born on live TV (awwwww!) who within minutes tripped over his own ground-dragging member and rolled over a little hill.

2018: My mom, once apolitical, stood for hours to hear Donald Trump endorse an area congressman. She wanted me to come and bask in the glory, but I had no interest.

2022: After school I took my girls to Home Depot to see the Halloween stuff on display, and decided if I could I'd buy absolutely everything there.

[ER]

October 13, 1995 Ever wonder if you've accidentally summoned an evil Hindu goddess?

I was at Brian's apartment and saw he had a vinyl record from the special collections at his university's library, and when I asked what it was he said it was a rare recording from the early twentieth century of 2,600-year-old ritualistic chants to the goddess Kali the Destroyer. He added that these were chants associated with human sacrifice.

When I told him I wanted to hear, he put it on, and when the needle touched the record a loud crackle was followed by a long hiss of static, and then something I would never have expected: the sounds coming off the record proved instantly disturbing.

I told myself it was supposed to, what else would worship of a death goddess sound like? It was simply old noise captured, nothing more, it couldn't hurt anybody. Still, the chants were clearly not friendly, the keening Sanskrit words seemed to come from the priests' throats in animalistic growls, the same phrases, whatever they were, ripping loose again and again like whiplashes, as jarring instruments unknown in the west banged along percussively.

Brian looked at me and asked if I was actually getting creeped out, and asked if I wanted him to turn it off. I said no, which was only true for the second question, so he played the entire recording, which seemed to only grow darker and more intense, more frenzied, more violently fierce and angry, like hatred itself spat out from it.

When it finally ended Brian sat quietly for a moment, the silence loud, and finally said, "Do you have the feeling I shouldn't play that record again?"

"Yeah," I said. What we'd heard had come straight out of nightmares.

He joked, "And I have to sleep in this place tonight." Then he threw out the detail: "I was the first person since 1977 to check that out."

I asked, "I wonder what happened to the person from 1977?"

He kind of laughed and seemed to shake it all off, but I kept thinking that those chants calling a cruel goddess into the world were something we shouldn't have heard, and wondered if I'd want to know what its words actually meant. Nothing good I was sure.

And that was it, as far as I could tell nothing bad happened in the short term because we played that, but to this day it remains the most disturbing music I have ever heard.

[Alex]

14th October 2019.

I am guessing the clocks had just changed, which always messes with Ash's sleep pattern but tonight I made an attempt at getting him to settle down at his regular bedtime. He played quietly in his cot for a couple of hours and then fell asleep which I guess counts as a victory.

14th October 2018.

I found Ash standing up in his cot. This was an immediate signal to lower the base so he couldn't topple out.

14th October 2017.

As my brother's best man, we set out on his bachelor party. The night did end up involving a strip club (his choice not mine although I did have an interesting chat about geopolitics with one girl from Moldovia), but also us finally completing the old coin-op Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game in an 80s retro bar.

14th October 2013.

I enrolled on a course in one of the Ivy League universities in the US studying The Walking Dead. Alas due to the difference in when it was transmitted in the US and UK, I was unable to keep up with the class discussions, but it was a free course anyway.

14th October 2012.

Although it was supposed to be kept a secret, Kristi blurted out the date of our wedding on Facebook. I foiled her plans though by moving the wedding forward to February.

[ER]

October 14, 2009 I was offered a chance to read through, comment on, and offer editing suggestions on a body of poems and journals left behind by a troubled young man from the east coast, who'd hanged himself about a decade before, just shy of his twentieth birthday. On this day I read this poem of his written while he was in high school:

Tomorrow Boy
tomorrow is my best and only friend cuz tomorrow never hits and never judges never yanks my chain or jerks me off til I get a scab just waits for me to catch up to this favorite place I know tomorrow boy is who I am my super power my disguise and if I show it to you it means I trust you more than myself

(It wasn't a great poem but it was an ironic one.)

[ER]

October 15 (date unimportant) Though they made us take classes on security and sign forms attesting that we understood both the dangers to look out for and the steep consequences of violating the trust placed in us, the only time in all my years working for the government, on an Air Force base at the time but also in other facilities, in which I had an experience of being reached out to by what was potentially "another side," was so sudden and old school, that I did not react like I always imagined I would. If ever you've been in a surreal situation, you probably can relate.

Later I wondered if it had actually been a test conducted by my own bosses, who were notorious for doing all kinds of creepy things to us, like once having someone pretend to stalk me to see how I'd react.

The apparent contact happened when I was in a public place, off the clock, under social conditions, and found a middle-aged "looking" man I'd describe as a sort of charismatic professor type was suddenly beside me, smiling in a friendly way. Without wasting words he said, "We can make your particular problem go away."

It was too abrupt to jolt me at that instant like it would when I had time to think about it, but I just smiled back and asked how they'd do that.

He said, "Why by convincing the person behind the problem that the thing he wants to happen actually did happen. I'm surprised your friends haven't done that already and if I were you I should be worried that they've demonstrated so little care for you. We could a better friend than that."

It ended with him setting a card down with a gloved hand, and then walking into the crowd around us in a truly masterful fade of the sort that's a difficult art form to teach. I felt no urge to try to follow, just stood there processing it all, feeling like a deer in the headlights. The entire incident was maybe twenty seconds in length.

I picked up the card with a bar napkin and saw it contained only a phone number, and immediately called my boss at Wright-Pat according to the protocol drilled into me, and when he met me on-site within minutes, he slid the card into a plastic bag and sealed it, then told me to ride back with him, while someone with him drove my car there. I spent most of the night telling the brief event over and over to a series of several very serious men without ever being told thank you or well done, and was finally sent home, never enlightened about anything and never again contacted by the professorial man, whoever he worked for, be it a government, or a private concern (or my own employer testing me).

[ER]

October 16, 1990 Our grandpa took my year-older cousin Jared and me downtown for the opening game of the World Series, in which his beloved Reds, only a year out from the morale-busting Pete Rose scandals, were up against the Oakland A's, whom USA Today had that very morning ranked among the greatest squads in baseball history, and forecast they would humiliate the less talented Reds. Still, the Reds defied the odds and won 7-0 that night and ended up sweeping the Series in four games, showing, as local Hall of Famer Johnny Bench put it, how a "good" team playing well together could defeat a "great" team playing as a collection of individuals.

I remember the city was packed, people everywhere, panhandlers, zealots handing out flyers, news crews, celebrities, and Air Force jets flew roaring overhead during the national anthem. We had nice seats halfway between home plate and third base, ten rows up, not far from the team's owner, Marge Schott, and a cool breeze blew up from the river, making me glad I'd brought a sweater. I was into tennis, not baseball, but I could feel the sense of moment in it all that night when it felt like the whole country was focusing on our city while the home team earned itself a lot of respect.

Grandpa bought a couple beers about halfway through the game and gave one to Jared, who was waaaaay underage but still drank it and got red in his face and goofy and laughed and yelled with the crowd instead of sitting quietly like he had been, he being the most normal cousin of our generation, and Grandpa said Jared would be our entertainment while the A's were batting.

Walking back to the car later across the crowded 1860s Suspension Bridge, he also told us we could now say we'd been to the World Series, which back then was a big deal in American culture, and I promised him I would always remember the night and tell people I went there with him.

Promise kept.