Life and Other Bad Habits

By Lee B. Weaver

Do you ever get the feeling that you're in over your head? That maybe - just maybe - your life story isn't going to be made into one of those self-improvement books? And evenif it is, it will be the "before" part - and not the "after" part?

Lee B. Weaver feels that way all the time.

In "LIFE and Other Bad Habits," journalist/smart aleck Lee B. Weaver tackles some of life's thorniest issues and - as he suspected - gets scratched up for his trouble.

But while he licks his wounds, you'll find yourself laughing, shaking your head, and maybe - just maybe - feeling his pain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 5, 2008
• ISBN: 9781467866064

Lee B. Weaver

Lee B. Weaver is an award-winning journalist from Texas.  Please do not hold that against him.  Direct any media inquiries, party invitations or requests for personal over-the-phone readings of selected passages to [e-mail].  Or visit his website, which one day might actually be functioning, at www.feelingforty.com.

Book preview

LIFE

and

Other Bad Habits

by

Lee B. Weaver

US%26UK%20Logo%20B%26W_new.ai

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive, Suite 200       

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2008 Lee B. Weaver. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/28/2008

ISBN: 978-1-4389-0176-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-6606-4 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Cover Design by Ruth Jones

Photography by Ginger Parr

Transcription by Megan Neff

Design for www.feelingforty.com by Maggie Johnson

Contents

A Few Words From The Author

Introduction:

A Career Shoplifted

The Unbearable Nerdness Of Being

In The Pond Of Life

Night Creatures, Great And Small

Crime And Punishment And Sesame Street

Busted By The Junior Police

School Skipping, Day Tripping

When Dad Is On

Screwdrivers And Dancing Girls

U-Turns And ‘U’ ‘T’

Bad Parent Blues

Destination: Kindergarten – Like It Or Not

Dog Teaches Man

Gaming The School System

A (Hopefully) True Tale Of Terror

Superhero In Training

Pigskin Pre-Nup

Family, Football, And Other

Thanksgiving Turkeys

The Walls Have Ears…And Fangs.

And Bad Intentions

Pink-Slipped

I’m With The Band

Dancing For Dollars

Flight Of The Nauseator

THE Suit

Of Mice And Me

Love And Marriage…

And Dating Outside Marriage

A Child’s Story

Declawing Grandpa

It Was A Very Good Year

A Rewind Of The Mind

Handle With Care

A Hoops Dream

Games People Play

The Life Résumé

Position Wanted: Graduation Speaker

Catch You On The Flip Side

The Moving Effect

An Appeal From A Legal Weasel

A Class (Reunion) Act

Aye-Aye, Captain Carl!

Field Of Screams

To my wife and children.

You had no idea what you were getting into.

Sorry.

A Few Words From The Author

Most of the stories in this book were originally written while I was a newspaper reporter for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas. Others first appeared in the Austin American-Statesman and the Austin Chronicle, in Austin, Texas.

It is customary, when journalists produce compilations of their previously published works, for their stories to be reprinted, whenever possible, as they originally appeared. With that in mind, it was my intention to simply select the stories I wanted for a book, slap a title on the cover and be done with it.

But then I made the mistake of actually reading the stories again.

That single act delayed the completion of this book by several months, as I was compelled to re-edit, re-configure and, where necessary, completely re-write every single story that follows.

And just in case that wasn’t torturous enough for me, I’ve since become obsessed with the possibility, however remote, that there is a reader out there who has, for whatever bizarre reason, saved original versions of the stories in this book. And, in my nightmare, this person tells everyone, including you, that the re-written versions are crap compared to the originals – and, in my nightmare, he is right.

That can’t happen.

If you are that person, keep it to yourself. I beg of you. I know I come off as confident, even cocky, but deep down I’m a wreck. I’m this close to giving up on the whole writing thing and getting a job at the bank. At least they’ve got dental.

So, to recap. Enjoy the book. Keep your snotty opinions to yourself. And, if it does go bad for me, come down and see me at the bank; I’ll try to get you a good rate.

Lee B. Weaver

Summer 2008

Introduction:

A Career Shoplifted

There are days we remember forever. For whatever reason, they persist in our memory, often gaining significance and acquiring texture as time goes by. And eventually, those days – and the memory of those days – become a life story.

I imagine each of these days as a dot placed randomly on an enormous, undefined canvas, with no apparent final image in mind until, seemingly from nowhere, a picture of a life suddenly emerges in full focus.

For many years now, I’ve labored to recall and recount these dot-days, waiting – at times impatiently – for the final image to appear. Along the way, I’ve made a couple of observations.

1. It takes a lot of dots to make that picture.

Okay, so it was just the one observation. Anyway, it is in recalling these dot-days that we see both the details and broad strokes of our entire lives. And in recounting them, we find that we are who we have always been and that we are, at the same time, unique and clichéd.

(Case in point. There are any number of these dots supporting the conclusion that I am – and have always been – an insufferable windbag who says stuff like we find that we are who we have always been and that we are, at the same time, unique and clichéd. Honestly. Who talks like that?)

Anyway, the last day of school in May 1979 was a dot-day. That was the day I was busted for shoplifting from a discount store in my hometown of Duncan, Oklahoma.

I’d just completed my ninth grade year. And, as petty theft goes, my crime was among the pettiest, but it marked the beginning of a chain of events that, more or less, led to the words you are reading here.

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The immediate fallout was a speech from my father that history has shown was of dubious value, at best. While my dad was an honest man, he was also a lawyer, which is probably why his speech included the following emphatic, yet morally ambiguous, statement. (I’ve sanitized it for public consumption.)

Five dollars and seventy-two cents. Five dollars and seventy-two cents worth of s—t! G--dammit, Lee, if you’re going to steal something, steal something big! Always be sure that the ends justify the means. Was this worth five dollars and seventy-two cents?

Pause for just a moment and consider his words. While you do that, I’m going to whisper two additional words in your ear:

Mixed. Message.

Missing (perhaps shoplifted?) from his speech was any black-and-white position on the absolute wrongness of stealing. In its place? A whole lotta gray and the tacit suggestion that, if a future heist promised a large enough payoff, I had the moral green light to go for it.

Did I mention my dad was a lawyer…for Halliburton?

To be fair, on that day, standing alone with him in our living room – anxiously wondering where the rest of the family had gone and darkly entertaining the grim theory that he’d arranged their absence to ensure there would be no witnesses – there was no uncertainty in my mind that I had done something really, really bad and was now in really, really big trouble.

But still.

Lest his speech not have the desired rehabilitative effects on my soul, Dad also decreed that I would attend early Mass every morning for the duration of the summer. Which I did. Every morning, for three months, while every other young person on the planet was sleeping in, I got myself up and out of bed and pedaled my bike to church in time for 6 a.m. Mass. That was Monday through Friday. On Saturdays, church started at 8:30 a.m. On Sundays, I went with the family at 11 a.m.

By the end of the summer, I had gone to church something like 90 consecutive days. I’ve never told anyone this – and please don’t tell my dad – but at no point during my religious conscription did I feel myself growing closer to God.

I refer you again to the mixed message.

It’s worth noting that my accomplice that late spring day was my best friend, Kirk. I should also add that, 13 years and seven months later, I married Kirk’s sister, Kandyce – much to the deep, deep dissatisfaction of their father, who made no secret of his belief that I was personally responsible for corrupting two of his seven children.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Continuing, my dad also ordered me to go to confession and, in his exact words, offer your services to the church. After confession, I relayed Dad’s exact words to the priest, who said he would get back to me. A few days later, he called me at home and said he had some custodial work for me to do. (No, this isn’t going any place creepy; it really was actual custodial work.) After a couple of weeks of taking out trash, buffing the floors of the sanctuary and raking leaves in front of the rectory, I was handed a paycheck for much, much more than $5.72.

It seemed my offer to serve the church was interpreted as an application to work there. Imagine my good fortune!

Lacking the financial wherewithal to process the check myself, I asked my parents to do it for me, a request which occasioned my dad’s final words, ever, on the subject of my shoplifting episode, which I present to you now, again sanitized for public consumption.

I swear to God, son. You could fall into a pile of s—t and come out smelling like a rose.

And with that, a writing career was born.

Most of the 40 stories that follow were inspired, whole or in part, by dot-days. This, I would imagine, begs the question as to why I didn’t just go ahead and put dot-days in the title. Well, I can give you two good reasons:

• Dot-day sounds like a book that’s either about computers or for girls, neither of which works for me.

• For more than 20 years, the title was supposed to be Life And How To Live It, but I changed it at the last minute to the one you see at the top of this page.

Which, of course, begs another question…well, actually it begs several questions, the answers to which can all be traced back to – you guessed it! – dot-days.

My favorite band back in the 80s, or one of them, was R.E.M. They put out a song around 1985 titled, Life And How To Live It, the last line of which was,

I’m gonna write a book

And it will be called

Life and