Month: December 2021

The Green Dragon goes full out Thai gaudy. I’ve never been to Thailand and have no idea if their eating establishments look anything like it, but the food was delicious. The sign out front sported a green dragon perched atop a whimsical treasure hoarde of pink peppers that faded to red toward the lower end of each pepper. The dragon reminded me of an artist rendition I had seen in a compendium of fantasy game foes from a game that partially shares the dragon name.

Much like the fantasy game, rolling a ten was mediocre. Rolling a 20, you’d be set. A ten spot would have you seated within a few minutes. A twenty would book you choice of any table in the house, quickly.

Aroon Yang had been the host for as long as I’d eaten there. I shook his hand, ensuring the folded 20 I had in my palm was seamlessly passed along, only to disappear into a hidden pocket of Aroon’s vest.

“A quiet booth upstairs please.”

“Follow.”

Aroon wasn’t much for small talk.

Faded red carpet graced the stairs. Pictures of ancient eroding Buddhist statues graced the walls. The ceiling was painted to resemble a vaguely cloudy sky. Music from instruments unknown was pipes in softly through hidden speakers. A golden cat seated squarely on its haunches waved perpetually at the patrons. Thai restaurants always seem to sport the same views. I love the food and the motif.

Booths at the Green Dragon isolate diners from one another. The only entrance to the booth is graced by a set of small swinging doors that Hollywood loved as entryways to saloons in old Westerns.

As soon as we’d placed our order, I gave Zoey the green light to tell me details. She wasted no time.

“I’m in over my head, T. It’s my mom and dad. Dad keeps forgetting things. It’s not just that. He’ll disappear for hours at a time.”

“I head off to think now and again. I make sure I avoid people when I do.”

She went on to describe how it wasn’t like that at all. I heard about him pulling the car to the side of the road because he hadn’t a clue where he was or how he’d gotten there. It was happening more and more often. Dementia or any of the associated conditions didn’t matter. He was becoming a potential danger to himself and possibly others.

“He goes on about NASCAR and the race. Dad hasn’t ever been pulled over for speeding, let alone tried to race anyone. I’m an only child, but he keeps insisting I take care of my brother whenever I go to visit. My brother Carl. Carl was one of the MPs in Berlin at the base. It keeps becoming more and more elaborate.”

I heard about lost items, lost people, lost time. Visions and hallucinations of day’s past and things done decades ago were now common fare in the household. I heard about Z’s mom and the efforts to keep up appearances while all the while she struggled to keep life as near to normal as she could.

“It’s wearing her out. I know he’s going to have to have round-the-clock care sooner rather than later. I need your help.”

I didn’t point out over the mound of my pad thai that I was unqualified to pick a senior care facility. I chose not to direct her to a social worker or agency better equipped to deal with the issues. Friends who disappear for awhile are still friends. I vaguely knew her parents.

Instead of pointing out things I’m sure she’d already likely pondered, I made the decision that would alter the channeled course I’d carved out recently for my life.

“Zoey. Zoey. Z. I’ll do what I can.”

She let out a huge sigh of relief and a tear or two.

We didn’t talk of old times or what we’d done since we’d last seen one another. She dug into her curry, and I aimlessly wound noodles around my fork until dinner was done.

I probably should have offered to walk her back to her car, but I was already thinking about what to do. We hugged and made sure we added contacts in our phones and went our separate ways.

I needed time to think. A slow saunter back to the office in the light mist that had begun to fall seemed in order.

I still hadn’t gotten another kiss.

We couldn’t walk down the stairs side by side. The building had been built before such trifles as fire codes. There was no way I was trusting the claptrap of an elevator. It was only two stories. Besides, the mostly present white hexagonal tiles and wrought iron ballisters and handrails lent an air of better days gone by.

I let Zoey lead the way while I started to digest and attempt to understand the exact nature of her request. It still hadn’t been made clear exactly what she felt I could do to help. She was in some sort of bind, that much was clear.

“My family isn’t somewhere I can turn. I don’t trust they’ll have anything but keeping their image intact. Most of my friends are too busy or self-absorbed. I’ve thought about it for months and finally realized it was either me alone or you, Tee.”

Tee was her pet name for me. My first “girlfriend”. Third to fifth grade. Serious stuff for a young boy, but it seemed much more serious now. Her monologue had taken us to the second floor landing, and she showed no signs of slowing. I interrupted her.

“Start from the beginning Zee. We’ll catch up on where you’ve been for the past few decades at the restaurant. I need details. The problem. Only the problem. Tell me.”

It wasn’t her way to be entirely direct. Some people have to share their take in their own way. As we approached the restaurant I learned about her past and the problem I was being asked to solve.

After her family had spirited her to North Carolina, she retreated. I hadn’t moved from home until I was off to college, but due to her dad’s military postings, uprooting and moving from place to place were regular occurrences to Zoey.

She began to lash out. Not being able to make long-term friendships and bonds nor to ever put down roots hadn’t broken her, but she’d bent more than the reed of any child should have needed to while becoming an adult.

Zoey was intelligent. She began to lash out in mostly non-destructive ways. Adults tend to frown on ways kids deal with stress. Great grades, but always in detention. Potential unused, labels of miscreant. It was a story you could pin on many military brats.

When she went off to college, freedom from supervision caused her to experiment. Drugs, sleeping with anyone who would have her, male or female, all were her province. I could relate. I had had a stable home life and still went a little wild when I first was on my own.

She founded a tiny design company after graduation. Home renovations. It made a good living and provided an outlet for her creativity that was a far sight less self-destructive.

She had met a guy and sold the business to take time off to raise their son. They never married. He’d gotten her pregnant before she found out he was an ass. He left with some floozie in the middle of the night leaving her his name and his son behind as his legacy and remembrance. The boy was two when all this happened.

None of this was much different than a million other stories throughout the nation. I still didn’t know what she wanted of me. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shout at her to get to the damned point already. Instead, I interspersed sympathetic comments and nodded in the appropriate spots. It was a story I’d heard in one version or another from many places and people. She wasn’t telling it for me. She needed to tell it for herself. Sharing is caring, or in this case, cathartic.

She didn’t have a good support system and had given her son Charlie up for adoption. She’d had to sign an agreement where she’d not be able to contact him. I could see how that would weigh on someone’s soul.

Battered, yet still not broken, she trudged onward in life. Her passion had always been investigative journalism, so she found a job with a local newspaper. Obituaries at first.

Being Zoey, she’d find something about the dead that most hadn’t known and share it in the blurbs she wrote. Her editor noticed. A promotion followed.

When she walked into my office, she currently had risen to editor-in-chief. All of this let me know who and what she was. It might come in handy to help me solve her dilemma if I’d only known what the dilemma was in the first place.

I had enough background. It was time to redirect the conversation.

“That’s incredible, Z. I haven’t heard yet why you came to see me.”

She gave my arm a soft punch and giggled. Oh how I remembered that giggle.

“You haven’t changed. Raring at the bit as always. Patience young man.”

She was two days older than me.

“I won’t make you wait anymore. You should have seen your face. I did it on purpose while I watched you fidget and your face get redder and redder. I was wondering how long before you burst.”

Tease.

“Here it is. A few weeks ago I was…..”

I stopped her. It was my turn to chuckle. I was definitely returning the tease.

“We’re at the restaurant. Hold off for now. Tell me after we’re seated.”

She turned as red as I knew I’d been mere moments before. I grabbed the handle and held the door for her. Each frustrated and unfulfilled, we entered the dimly lit eatery.

Most of the time thinking about work reminds me I still haven’t taken the challenge of asking an oral surgeon to give me a root canal sans anesthesia. I am in no rush to check it off my bucket list.

Reasonably well off meant I worked when I wanted to. I had a fairly well-sized office downtown with some relatively new secondhand furniture. I even had a receptionist, at least on the days she decided to grace me with her presence. I didn’t mind. She was reasonably well off too.

Plus we fought. Often. It wasn’t that we didn’t get along. Her idea of how to do a job and mine sometimes took different routes to the same end. She usually was right, but I’d never tell. So we fought in the way siblings or long time friends would. I paid her salary, and she mostly failed at keeping my moral compass pointed in a reasonable direction. It worked.

“Marla, any appointments today?”

“No, TK.”

I wasn’t expecting any. I never do. I was handed the job via my father. He knew someone who was friends with someone who made up a position for me. Marla was one of the conditions of the job. I didn’t mind. It helped her pay her way through night school, and despite our differences, the clients seemed to find her decent enough to stare at while I made them wait.

I absentmindedly fiddled with a few files while Marla studiously attended her cherry red nails. This week they were cherry. They’d likely be viridian or blue next week, along with shocking orange or pink hair. It was always a surprise that greeted me when I waltzed in for the day. At least her eyes never changed. She’d shooed many a client away with one glare from her icy blues.

Again, I didn’t mind. Clients meant I would have to do actual work. Water rights in the town had been sewn up by big business long ago, so even the rare client meant nothing more than a computer search to verify that yes indeed so and so had the right to put a well in any time and as deep as they chose. Five or ten minutes of work a day or week for spending cash. I could think of worse ways to pass the time.

I heard the buzzer sound as Marla let in my latest client. It was a busy week. This was the second person besides us that had entered the office that week. I heard the clacking of heels on the oaken floor and caught the faint wisp of a perfume I didn’t recognize. It was probably expensive. Most of my clients likely could have paid Kevin’s settlement without blinking an eye.

I glanced at the video feed and saw a woman roughly my age, fidgeting with nervous energy. She seemed vaguely familiar, but nothing about her rang a bell.

Marla didn’t escort her back nor make her take a seat like she normally did with a client. Hmm. Instead, she left the lady standing and came into my office. Also unusual, she plopped down on the recliner where I would nap when particularly bored.

“TK, she isn’t here about water. She says you know her.”

Did I mention vaguely familiar? I went through my mental files trying to remember if I’d dated her or maybe pissed her off on the freeway. I’m a horrendous driver. Either was possible, but no recollection of who she might be jumped to mind.

“Ummm… Send her back.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Marla held the door, and for the second time that morning, someone besides me plopped into my chair.

“You gotta help me TK.”

Only my friends and Marla call me TK. I’m Tracey Knott or Trace to the rest of the world. I have the birth certificate buried somewhere in my house to back it up in a pinch. I didn’t know her, and I wanted her to know I didn’t know her.

“People call me Trace, or Mister Knott.”

“You’ve been TK since we both shared our first kiss in third grade.”

I KNEW she looked vaguely familiar.

“Zoey?”

I didn’t need the nod or slight upturn of the left side of her mouth to remember. Plus nobody else I’d ever known smiled in that lopsided I’m up to no good way.

I tend to be clearly focused and quick-witted when presented with the unexpected. I was even more on my game than usual with Zoey.”

“Um. Er. Wow. I haven’t seen you since….”

My words trailed off into stunned silence. As I said, great in the face of the unexpected.

“Since I moved in fifth grade.”

Again, my reply was nothing if not utterly brilliant.

“Oh! Yeah, right.”

“Straight to the point as always TK.”

“Um, er, hi! What’re you doing here. Now? Here? Wow!”

“It’s not about water, and I’m not going to let you kiss me again. At least not unless there’s a dinner in there somewhere. I need help.”

“I putter around on government pay to pass time. I’m not connected. What’s going on?”

As she talked and explained I couldn’t help but wonder why she’d come to me. It wasn’t really something I thought I could help her with, but at the same time couldn’t say no. Zoey always made me feel that way.

I only had the barest outline of her problem and needed more information if I was going to be able to help. I invited her to dinner so she could tell the details. The devil in me was also hoping for another kiss.

“I know a great Thai place a few blocks from here. Tell me exactly what’s going on on the way.”

She took my hand, and we headed on our way to more than a few strange and questioning looks from Marla.

Darwin’s books and theories have always been a love-hate thing for me. I love the idea of natural selection, but at the same time it creeps me out, gives me the willies, causes the hackles to stand up on my neck, and any other relevant or irrelevant phrase that has been used by every grade b movie or hack writer over the years. Cliches are the new pink. To pun or not to pun, is it even a question.

I keep coming back to not COVID-19, but to the coronavirus itself. The disputed fact of it was a modified version manmade rather than evolved doesn’t matter. Isn’t relevant. Water under the bridge.

What got me thinking about it was hearing that someone who used to ride the bus to school with me, had retired from law enforcement, and was trying to supplement his retirement in the career of propane had been killed by a gun-toting maniac. Multiple gunshot wounds are detrimental to survival. Things change, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

I’d also seen recently that the latest version of the virus now had mutated to a version, omicron, that blam blam, like an automatic weapon can fire rapidly a volley at a human cell from 25 different spicules. All the spicules have the ability to hit and attach, but some are more likely to attach than others.

The virus is the 20’s version of parachute pants in the 80’s. It’s all over the news, people who got caught up in having them might survive, might not. Don’t believe me? Do a web search of death by parachute pants. It isn’t pretty.

This isn’t my fictional work. I haven’t decided yet if I want to put it on this website, or if I do whether I should make another page for fiction. This is about Darwinism, plain and simple.

Omicron. Sounds like a bad science fiction movie. The WHO and CDC freaked out about it. The last news blurb I heard said people in 18 states already have it. The sky is falling. Captain, she’s taking on water, and the pumps can’t keep up. We’re going down. Yeah, right.

Lol and behold (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase in my writing but considered it way too cheesy, ha!) the hype was just that, hype. (Don’t Believe the Hype – You know the song.). Omicron appears to be slightly worse than a severe cold.

Sticking with cliches and overused phrases, with omicron, the coronavirus looks to be a victim of its own success. At least on the surface it does, but is it really?

Like all life, corona wants to procreate. More virus means more opportunity to infect hosts and procreate yet again. To quote the Brain. “The same thing we do every night, Pinky – Try to take over the world!”. In this aspect, omicron is perfect.

It doesn’t appear to kill its host, nor like other versions of Corona does it appear to leave most who catch it incapacitated. Have omicron? Go grocery shopping! Head into work. It’s your week, so carpool the neighborhood kids to school. In short, it’s mutated to a version that can find new hosts much more readily. It can procreate more and more easily.

Now to the main point. Vaccinations. I doubt the federal government and categorically deny the pharmaceutical industry will play up any version of this. Why? Ka-ching. Money.

Billions made on vaccines. An atmosphere of fear. Get the vaccine and hopefully live. Look at the poor saps who didn’t get it and died from corona.

My older brother was listed as a victim of the virus. In reality, he’d lived a lifestyle of poor choices and taken risks with his health. Overweight, diabetes, wrong choices of diet, sedentary lifestyle. He’d had quadruple bypass surgery, and if it wasn’t Corona, it would have been lifestyle and time eventually. But… He got Corona. The stress it placed upon his system resulted in 2 heart attacks, the second one fatal. He had chosen to pass on vaccination.

Would he still be alive today if he’d gotten omicron? I don’t know. I do know he had strong will. I think it likely he would have been a Timex. Still ticking.

Vaccines again. Omicron. Bad cold. Death from this version not quite zero, but lower than most versions of the flu.

But Damon so what? Good question. Think of it this way. A person who recovers from omicron has to fight off the virus. Just like other versions, both live and dead versions of the virus are passed along in fluids, excrement, and by touch. Omicron lives longer outside the host. It’s much more contagious. It’s the perfect storm.

More people will live with omicron. The body, as in other versions, has to fight off the virus. The immune system is hyped up and looking for a fight. The 25 spicules omicron can use to attach to cells contain the same spicules as the more deadly versions of the virus as well as multiple new spicules.

The hosts who survive omicron will be, without directly receiving a vaccine, in essence vaccinated. The human body doesn’t care if the virus is alive or dead when it enters the body. The immune system will react to and attack the foreign bodies. It’ll out up defenses to try and keep further incursions from occuring. Both the vaccine and omicron reach the same end result, resistance to the deadly form of the disease.

But what does it mean? In short, vaccinated or omicron, your body will weild the same defensive tools to resist further infection.

Ain’t nobody at the pharmaceutical companies gonna want off the gravy train. The push for vaccinations shall continue unabated. The government won’t, nor at this point do I believe they could if they wanted to, change its position on vaccinations. They can’t. Imagine the loss of public trust if the position were to be reversed now. It isn’t going to happen.

I have been vaccinated. I will not be receiving any boosters from this point forward. It was a long and hard decision, and I totally respect and agree with anyone who does choose to both get vaccinated and decides on boosters.

I won’t. Despite the commercials explaining how safe the vaccine is and how rigorously it was tested, compare it to other FDA approved drugs. There simply wasn’t enough time between initial development of the vaccine and its release to the general public to have performed the standard FDA approval animal and human trials of the vaccine. I understand the public pressure to get the vaccine made and distributed, but the side effects, including deadly ones, are virtually unknown.

I’m not ranting political nor trying to influence anyone. This was just a sharing of the things that went through my head after hearing too many details of a good man’s murder.

Peace