Summer Shorts-Four Short Stories

By Jan Miller

What do you want from life? A pathway to a respectable career? An escape from a respectable career? Acceptance by society? Escape from society? What would you do to get it? In "Summer Shorts", author Jan Earl Miller explores those questions through four tales.With "Radar", Miller examines a man emerging from his teens in search of a meaningful career. "BB Boy" follows a young boy with a single talent as he grows into a teenager struggling for acceptance. The short "Mirror, Mirror" shows a man in his mid sixties trying to cope with a youth oriented society. Lastly, "FIre Dance" asks a couple approaching middle age "To what lengths would you go to attain your deepest heart's desire?".

After his humorous pseudo-memoir "The Boys Next Door", author Jan Earl Miller explores the darker side of life with "Summer Shorts". So while die-hard "Dill Dillon" fans might at first be a little disappointed, if they look closely, they just might find a little of Dill in each of the four main characters of "Summer Shorts".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jan Miller
• Release date: Jun 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311165879

Jan Miller

Jan has played in over a dozen bands as a lead guitarist and lead vocalist. He has also performed as a solo acoustic artist in lounges and coffee houses. Behind the scenes, Jan has logged countless hours as a studio musician and back-up vocalist for other area artists. His primary instruments include electric guitar, slide guitar, and mandolin.Although not considering himself as a composer, Jan has written lyrics for music featured in two motion pictures: “Don’t Tell” (2005 Pier Oppenheimer film) and “And They’re Off” (2011 Scrambled Eggs Productions); composed the Christmas anthem “Bring Back That Christmas”,and created video-musical compositions “9-11 Suite” and the comical “Old Men Stink”. Jan’s viral video commercial “Unemployed Web Browser Blues” was a national finalist in the “2006 Firefox Flix” competition (Jan wrote the screen play, composed and performed the song. co-edited the music and video, acted and co-video recorded the commercial with colleague Jonathon Boyer).Beside his creative life, Jan held down a “day job” for twenty-three years as a technical specialist in the health insurance industry, put two kids through college, and even coached his daughter’s softball team. He currently works as a free-lance web consultant on content search engine optimization.

Book preview

Summer Shorts

Four Short Stories

Copyright 2014 Jan Earl Miller

Published by Jan Earl Miller at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Discover other titles by Jan Earl Miller

The Boys Next Door

Table of Contents

1.Prologue

2.Radar

3.BB Boy

4.Mirror, Mirror

5.Fire Dance

6.Acknowledgements

7.About the Author

Prologue

What do you want from life? A pathway to a respectable career? An escape from a respectable career? Acceptance by society? Escape from society? What would you do to get it?

Every five years our own private world completes its revolution, and we are totally different creatures than we were at the beginning of that revolution. Our wants, needs, society, finances and family transform in that revolution.

In Summer Shorts, author Jan Earl Miller explores those questions through four tales. With Radar, Miller examines a man emerging from his teens in search of a meaningful career. BB Boy follows a young boy with a single talent as he grows into a teenager struggling for acceptance. The short Mirror, Mirror shows a man in his mid sixties trying to cope with a youth oriented society. Lastly, Fire Dance asks a couple approaching middle age To what lengths would you go to attain your deepest heart's desire?

When you finish reading them, ask yourself Did they get what they wanted? And then ask yourself Was it worth the price they had to pay?" Would you have paid it?

Radar

Hold his head still with both your hands while I stitch up his busted lip. A couple of teeth went right through it…musta' hit the steering wheel the young intern instructed. Radar said Ok. Got it Nurse Ann whispered in Radar's ear Talk to him. He's drunk and rowdy. Try to keep him still. The patient who called himself Wild Bill had just been brought into the ER by a local squad. The paramedics wheeled him in to the first exam room and Radar helped them move him onto the gurney for examination. Wild Bill had way too many Buds that night and drove his pickup head first into a large oak tree. The tree won the encounter and was still standing, scarred…but it was upright and otherwise intact. Wild Bill, on the other hand, had flown head first through his windshield and was now in Memorial Hospital's emergency room, his face and tee shirt drenched in his own blood.

******

Radar had overtime taught himself a coping mechanism: blood is just leaked engine oil…that's all…nothing more. He thought back to his first day on the job as an orderly…when blood was blood. That first day had started with all the chaos and confusion any college-aged teen would encounter on a new job. The world of a hospital--- with its glaring fluorescent lit halls and beige walls, it was a harsh, alien scene. The white uniforms of the 1970's exaggerated the features of the lower ranks who wore them: the nurses, nurse aids, technicians, and orderlies. As one of the latter group, Radar was part of the bottom caste…those who see the worst there is to be seen up close; those who mop it up, and those who bag it and haul it away.

Even though the dress rules were strict regarding their uniforms, each member of the caste added their own little signature look to his or her appearance. The nurse aides who shared the same bottom rung as the orderlies could be identified by their cheap hair dye jobs and over-abundance of make-up. Some pushed the dress code envelope by wearing non-regulation brightly colored panty hose, giving those women the look of a hooker dressing up like a nurse to work a bachelor party. The young female technicians working in X-ray and the various therapy departments also took liberties with their panty hose colors, but their subdued color choices, natural hair shades, and normal make-up distinguished them from the aides. The real nurses---the RN's and LPN's--- were held to the letter of the dress guidelines and were sent home to change if they deviated in any way. The orderlies followed a simple, but strict dress code: white smock or tunic, white pants, white hospital-approved plain tennis shoes and white socks. Being that it was the Seventies; the hospital administration was somewhat lenient on the length of orderly hair: it must be off the shoulders and clean. No beards were permitted, even though several doctors had them.

Radar liked the simplicity of the uniform: it kept him from trying to figure out what was in style every morning. Being young and single, his looks were still very important in a youthful society. But as he would find out, the hospital whites had an effect on everyone he encountered--- they assumed that he had the knowledge…and he would learn how to use that impression to get his job done.

The knowledge couldn't prepare him for what he was about to encounter on that first day. Shortly after picking up his pager and then making his way to the nurses break area at the side of the nurses station, his pager beeped and he was instructed to go to the morgue to assist in a squad delivery.

E was waiting for him there. E, as they called him, was about six feet three…an imposing figure with jet black hair and long thick sideburns just like the ones his idol Elvis Presley wore. He got his nickname E because he moonlighted as an Elvis impersonator. E was always singing, regardless of the situation. A kinder, gentler soul you would never meet.

E greeted Radar with Boy, do we have a treat for you on your first day! as Radar entered the room, wild eyed at stepping foot into an actual morgue. If the hallway fluorescent lights created a ghoulish environment, the stainless steel autopsy tables, examination tool trays, wall cabinets, and large mounted flood lights made the morgue look like something out of a Sci-Fi Frankenstein movie.

"You're…we're gonna need this E" chuckled; pulling a large