“We Believe in the Real Numbers”

On my first day of college, my honors calculus professor, Galen Shorack, strode into the classroom, picked up a piece of chalk, and wrote on the blackboard, “We believe in the real numbers.” His message integrated profound insights. Mathematics resides in the realm of metaphysics. Mathematics is a belief system built upon discovery, upon revelation, not invention or manufacture. The fruits of mathematical labor are verified by agreement with real world facts, but in and of themselves the manipulation of numbers and symbols are representational, not real.

What I Saw on the Moon

The way people use language communicates hidden meaning. I found English composition class, in junior high school, an enlightening experience. Everybody penned the same introductory topic, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” with pathetic results. My classmates couldn’t stick two coherent thoughts together in one complete sentence. Superglue hadn’t been invented yet. So each I-did-this, I-did-that list lacked structure, cohesion, or interest.

What happened outside of my classmates bore greater interest than what happened within them. This trend held true through my tenth year high school reunion and beyond. Results of a decade milestone survey were published alongside pictures of attendees. By then superglue had been invented, but to no avail. Eventually organizers caught on, because the writing prerequisite was dropped from future reunions to the relief of many. I was always an exception. On an unrelated occasion, while I helped my eldest sister move, Mary’s husband Steve said to me, “When taking something heavy, put something light on top.” He could have been describing the writing style I tried to cultivate from the beginning: deep and entertaining.

The youngest of four siblings, by the time I was born my eldest sister and brother had mastered sarcasm. So from the get go I had to understand hidden meanings to learn language. For example, on my eighteenth birthday the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. That tells you something about me, but only indirectly. My first insight in writing compelling compositions was a knack for identifying lousy sentences. To unblock my muse, I struggled to fashion catchy beginnings. I modeled my compositions on stories with surprise endings, not lists, and I loathed lists of boring sentences.

Our composition teacher made overtures to inspire her students. She granted us personal choice from five new titles to spark each assignment. Typically one and only one title ever appealed to me. “What I Saw on the Moon” remains the only topic I retain as a distinct memory. Since at that time nobody had yet been to the moon, I contrived a story wrapper introducing a relative of mine, from the future, who communicated through me what he saw on the moon. Then in my conclusion I woke up, as if from a dream.

In-between, I described a creature. My brother authored the description and deserves full credit. His curiosity overcame him during a writing break at dinnertime. He read my incomplete story up to the point where the creature appeared. Following my brother’s suggestion, the creature “pranced about like an elephant stuck in a refrigerator.” You might think this tells a whole lot more about my brother than the creature, but I’d wager you couldn’t be too sure. My brother was an avid viewer of the Steve Allen Show. With audience participation, the TV host often constructed what we now call Mad Libs, although I prefer to call them Allenisms, which rhymes with Aneurysms. That’s as far as I’ll go in trying to explain my brother.

But notice the description. The creature “pranced about like an elephant stuck in a refrigerator.” It does nothing to convey the creature’s appearance; rather it describes its behavior. So from the creature’s description you can’t picture it. Surprise! In fact it’s incomprehensible, which is the point. After all, what’d you expect to see on the moon? At face value, no pattern exists in the choice of words. This is the random nature of Allenisms. But order does exist in the parts of speech, which is the structural integrity underlying Allenisms. What an Allenism is missing is any sensible context connecting the choice of words. It’s the random words that stand out, attracting attention initially, and subsequently for those totally lacking in mental discipline.

Throwing away the words and filling in the blanks, consistent with the surrounding context, reveals the hidden meaning disguised by Allenisms. Communication is the art of synchronizing thoughts and emotions with other people in a common context. But often the context isn’t understood, so miscommunication occurs. The allure of Allenisms is that they return us to the state of childhood, when parents purposely spelled words out loud to communicate in code what wasn’t meant for children’s enquiring minds. Even to adults, Allenisms sometimes sound suggestive and appeal to our sense of adult content, a nearly lost art of growing up.

People spell the word “cookie” in front of their dogs to avoid the conditioned Pavlovian response. Dogs don’t understand context, and I haven’t yet met a dog that could spell. Persuasion is the art of discovering what means “cookie” to other people, then embedding it inside self-serving contexts. As Napoleon Bonaparte phrased it, “You can get a man to do practically anything for a small piece of colored ribbon.”

Allenisms are related to idiomatic expressions, which exist within shared linguistic and cultural contexts, e.g. like a fish out of water, like a cat on a hot tin roof. These examples describe distressing circumstances. Useful as shortcuts, they communicate feelings of frustration, a condition often hard to express in words. In a sense they’re euphemisms, strange yet familiar stand-ins for difficult emotions. Cross breeding idiomatic expressions might produce Allenisms, of a sort, e.g. like a fish on a hot tin roof, like a cat out of water. But Allenisms must be incomprehensible and without discernible context, the placeholders of hidden meaning. Valid contexts differentiate idiomatic expressions from Allenisms. One way to mentally bridge this gap is to rediscover a lost context, e.g. my classmates adopted the status quo of conformity and avoidance like a cat out of water, whereas I was driven by a thirst for emergence and immersion like a fish on a hot tin roof.

Likewise, the creature’s description exhibits a context, albeit a private one. In my youth, elephant jokes were the rage. “How can you tell if an elephant has been in your refrigerator?” “By the footprints in the butter.” So a creature “prancing about like an elephant stuck in a refrigerator” isn’t devoid of cultural significance, no matter how many raw impressions to the contrary. However, the creature’s description does contain ambiguities that confuse context, presenting a litmus test to readers. It’s not apparent whether the refrigerator prances about of its own volition, or whether some cause and effect relationship on the part of the elephant is responsible for this observed behavior.

What is apparent is that this frustrating configuration inhibits both the refrigerator and the elephant from becoming self-actualized. Some would blame the elephant for inhibiting the refrigerator, contradicting those who would blame the refrigerator for inhibiting the elephant, while still others would seek to analyze how the elephant got stuck in the refrigerator in the first place before fixing blame. Blame stems from exclusionary, cause and effect worldviews which I reject on rationally supportable grounds. A systems perspective serves my muse better. It requires that I try to wrap my mind around the whole problem space, while striving to see the big picture on the Tao to transcendence – not an easy task by any standard.

One way to make sense of the creature’s description is to think of the whole exercise as participating in the child’s game of telephone. Although it’s a given that the initial message is understandable, after passing through relays, the translation coming out the other end is distorted beyond recognition, with the original meaning being lost. But can its true meaning ever be reconstructed? In hindsight, I think it can. My past self’s future relative is the source of the creature’s description. Who is he? The straightforward evidence appears in the title, “What I Saw on the Moon.” Therefore, in a relativistic sense, my past self’s future relative is me in the present. My brother is my relative; and I am my brother’s relative, which accounts for my past self’s confusion.

The Apollo moon landings commenced when I was in high school. I watched them live on TV. The final moon mission concluded during my college years. I was surprised to hear rumors that the moon landings were faked, supposedly enacted on a secret sound stage someplace on earth. Even today students argue the flag was waving in the breeze. In a real vacuum on the moon, of course, it couldn’t. So, as the conspiracy theory goes, the whole thing must’ve been special effects. Therefore, according to doubters, it didn’t really happen.


I worked in Hollywood doing visual effects in the 1980s, and we didn’t have the technology to fake the moon landings then. High speed cameras would have been required to get the slow motion look of lower gravity. Back then this could only have been done with film, passing film through the camera faster than normal. But film to video transfer looks different than straight video, and the moon landings were broadcast in video. I’m convinced American ingenuity planted the flag on the moon. As for the waving of the flag, a pendulum will sustain its motion longer in a vacuum. It was just vibrations not wind. From my perspective, NASA’s Apollo missions accomplished their goal: to land men on the moon and bring them back safely.

Mythbusters Moon Myths

Non parallel shadows

Fill light in shadows

Moon boot print

Waving flag

Walking in Moon gravity
So how does my story end? Wake up. This isn’t a dream. The mysterious creature resides here on Earth, not on the Moon. The elephant is the symbol of the Republican Party, political puppet of wealthy special interests. Plutocracy and Capitalism are relics of Feudalism. The elephant is trapped in a class struggle, where no resolution will transform the sealed refrigerator into a coffin. To transcend this class struggle we must look at the creature from another perspective.

Here the refrigerator signifies a box, where brainstorming an exit strategy requires thinking outside the box. However, elephants learn to obey human masters. Shackled to a stake in the ground, a baby elephant learns to surrender all attempts at escape, because no amount of exertion can break free from the shackle, but circumstances change when a baby grows into an adult. In the new context, an adult elephant could easily pull up the stake and gain freedom, but the adult never questions the lesson learned as a baby. An elephant never forgets, despite the fact that insight could liberate the elephant from bondage. As imagined, I saw the whole spectacle from a distant time and place. Hence, novel insights expose hidden meanings and opportunities.

Office Politics

My apology caught her by surprise. After a couple of weeks consulting for a company, I suggested a redesign of their entire software product line; unifying their various data formats to make the data interchangeable between all their products. A woman was head of customer service. She resisted my idea saying that their customers liked the products the way they were.

That night I pondered how to reason with her. Instead I remembered reading a book in high school. The book was “On Aggression” by Konrad Lorenz. I realized this woman was acting territorially. She was defending what was familiar territory to her. I was new. I was telling them to change, but I had merit on my side. To me it was obvious. I had an outsider’s perspective with no vested interests. The book I read also covered dominance and submission in animal behavior.

Next morning I walked into her office. I intentionally met her on her own turf. Her body language reacted defensively. I said, “I apologize.” I told her that I needed her input on satisfying customer needs. Her body language changed to cooperation. She said she had thought about my proposal and agreed that it made sense. I won without a battle, because I realized the real argument was not about the merits of my proposal but about territory. I figuratively groveled before her and surrendered all claims on her territory, and she conceded technical superiority to me. It was a win-win bloodless coup, and I gained an ally that day, by simply demonstrating respect.

Many arguments derive from misunderstandings not just conflicting opinions or values. Partnerships that don’t share common values are probably doomed. In this particular incident common ground was achieved; but it’s not always that simple, or even possible in many cases. Emotional detachment is a male trait. I looked at the problem in technical terms. Women don't tend to approach life the same way. Recognizing this gender difference was the key to overcoming a major obstacle in our working relationship.

Do You See What I See?

During the pioneering years of computer animation, I worked on the Disney feature film TRON, which was released in 1982. At the time I was employed by the Movie Group at Information International, Inc. and had responsibility for debugging and enhancing the software for image rendering and for a custom version of a film recorder that the company manufactured. Craig Reynolds wrote and maintained the animation software. Larry Malone wrote a smooth surface modeling program that he used to create the Solar Sailor object, and a separate interactive program for registering computer generated backgrounds with live action scenes.

Between the three of us we divvied up the majority of the animation for those scenes assigned to our company, which occurred during the latter half of the movie. Craig animated scenes with the Solar Sailor, Larry animated scenes with Sark’s Carrier, and I animated scenes with the Master Control Program (MCP). Mal McMillan had animated some preproduction tests, before I arrived in the Movie Group. Art Durinski, our resident artist, created the majority of objects we used. Art digitized our objects from plans he drew on paper, similar to blueprints, which were based upon concept art created for TRON by Syd Mead, Peter Lloyd, and Jean Giraud.

Jeremy Schwartz, who made high resolution, still frames for backgrounds, also managed to animate a few scenes while creating the building objects for his scenes. Jeremy’s scenes are the only computer generated scenes in the movie where you’ll actually see any shadows being cast. James Rapley maintained our hardware, a “state of the art dinosaur,” the Foonly F1. Our Creative Director, Richard Taylor, managed the Movie Group and also served as co-supervisor of Visual Effects for TRON, spending most of his time away at Disney throughout the duration of production.

Richard had a laissez-faire management style. He brought together people with talent and initiative. Richard said, “Reality is the most widely held fantasy.” He felt that the commercial marketplace of today for graphic artists is the equivalent of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages for artists of that era. After TRON he told me, “There are two kinds of art directors. When you give the first kind what they ask, they’re satisfied. But the second kind uses that as a starting point to begin changing things.”

The Movie Group operated like an ecosystem where everyone found his ecological niche. To maximize usage of Foonly, Craig, Larry, and I worked three different shifts. I started at four in the morning, Craig came in at ten, and Larry followed in the evening. Technology in that era was less reliable than it is today. Foonly couldn’t run a week straight without crashing. It was Art’s original idea to get babysitters for Foonly to prevent crashes during the night from delaying our production schedule, but his suggestion had fallen on deaf ears.

One morning I came in and found Foonly idle. My shot had been stopped, but not restarted. I was incensed, so I wrote some flame mail, before the day of email, and posted it on the partition next to the desk of Lynn Wilkinson, our production assistant. That was my Cambrian explosion moment. In the flame mail I wrote about my frustration that my shot was not restarted and brought up Art’s suggestion about babysitters. Richard read my note and Art’s nighttime babysitter idea was put into action almost immediately with two of Art’s students from UCLA, Kathy Fisken and John Howard, and a young woman from Disney administration who volunteered, Rosalyn Fischer.

Over a period of about one year laboring on TRON, I completed my scene assignments first in the Movie Group. Then I was assigned scenes that were behind schedule from another company, MAGI. The transferred scenes were of high computational complexity as conceived, and took on the order of ten hours a frame for MAGI’s system to compute. When it comes to image rendering, our polygonal based approach was orders of magnitude faster than MAGI’s solid modeling approach. Conversely, solid modeling is orders of magnitude faster to create complex, mathematically definable objects than our polygonal system. Nevertheless, toward the end of production we had the advantage in putting scenes onto film, which is what counted at that point.

After completing all my assigned scenes, I felt rejuvenated. My stress level dissipated, and I got playful. I negotiated technical changes to the scenes catering to the strengths of our polygonal approach. One scene in particular, I thought, was ideal for embedding Mickey Mouse in the background. So I asked Art to make an object to support this whim of mine. Art responded favorably to the idea, but claimed he couldn’t draw Mickey Mouse. So I drew the plans and Art digitized the object.

The drawing caught the attention of my coworkers. Craig complained that he didn’t think it was right for people to do whatever they wanted. He felt strongly that it was the director’s movie and that he should have complete control. According to Craig, I shouldn’t be allowed to do what I was doing. In all fairness to Craig, he was under a lot of pressure. Not only hadn’t he finished his scenes yet, but he was under a deadline to publish his inaugural paper on his Lisp based animation software, and make a photo which eventually made the cover of the conference proceedings. Years later Craig pioneered the simulation of flocking behavior in computer animation and in artificial life circles.

At the time, I showed Richard my drawing and informed him of my scheme. He consented with one caveat: that no more than twenty percent of the audience caught on. He suggested that Mickey Mouse be oriented at an obscure angle to avoid appearing obvious. I set up the scene in accordance with his wishes. For every scene, our animation was supervised by a traditional animator. For most of my scenes with the MCP I worked with Jerry Rees, but for this scene Bill Kroyer served as my co-conspirator. Bill jettisoned the glancing angle idea straight away. He wanted Mickey Mouse to get noticed. So that’s the way I animated and filmed the scene. When completed days later, the exposed film went into the can and was sent to the lab for processing.

Motion picture film is developed at night. It’s screened the next day in a critical, peer review, group session called “Dailies.” The objective of Dailies is to catch mistakes as soon as possible. I’ve attended a few Dailies myself. Once I caught a continuity error. When the realization struck me, I blurted out, “The background’s not moving.” The scene had live action matted over one of Jeremy’s background stills, done by the traditional cell animation approach at Disney. I had finished the scenes just preceding this scene in question. In my scenes, new scenes I had gotten from MAGI, the background transitioned from static to moving. It was supposed to be moving, but the background was static in the scene being screened in Dailies. Richard, who usually supervised Dailies, checked the scene log and verified my claim. The scene needed to be redone with the correction - a moving background.

Another time Jeremy blurted out, “It worked!” when one of his background still scenes was shown. In it the actors were filmed jumping around on a black stage with marks that Jeremy had provided. It was supposed to be dangerous terrain, where one misstep was fatal. When the live action and background stills were matted together, it came off without a hitch. We were all surprised, but none more so than Jeremy.

I did not attend Dailies for my Mickey Mouse scene. Richard told me how it went later. Everybody focused on catching mistakes but overlooked Mickey Mouse, hidden in plain sight via a little misdirection. During Dailies the film for a scene is spliced head to tail in a closed loop, which is projected repeatedly on a big screen over and over again. Disney animators have a saying, “If you do everything right nobody notices, but when you do something wrong everybody notices.” I did everything right. Nobody noticed Mickey Mouse’s cameo in TRON.

Richard knew it was my scene so he tested those in attendance during Dailies, “What’s wrong with this scene?” Everybody in the screening room then knew that something was wrong, but nobody caught the slightest error. “Come on people. What’s wrong with this scene?” Silence. Everybody was afflicted by selective blindness. Zero percent caught on. The guest appearance of Mickey Mouse passed completely undetected under professional scrutiny until Richard clued them in, “There’s Mickey Mouse.” Then all at once, like a miracle, the blind could see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Mickey
http://www.hiddenmickeys.org/Movies/Tron.html
http://www.eeggs.com/items/2351.html

Can’t Relate to Hate

Despite its global appeal, I can’t relate to hate. I suppose the closest I’ve come to experiencing hate is my gag reflex response to slime.

Once my mother told me I couldn’t have ice cream until I cleaned my plate. I dreaded the cooked spinach, but I completed my half of the bargain. Then my mother reneged on our deal. I never got the ice cream she promised. At the time, I’m not sure I was in the mood for ice cream anyway, because I reneged on eating the cooked spinach all over the table. I think my gag reflex response to slime is instinctive, but psychological reasons might’ve contributed.

Another time a family of vagrants squatted in an abandoned shack in our neighborhood, until the police evicted them a matter of days later. The oldest daughter bet us she’d swallow a slug. The neighborhood kids and I were both intrigued and revolted when she performed the delectable deed. She dared us with a second course, same as the first, dangling between her outstretched fingers. No takers, she didn’t let the morsel go to waste. Looking back, slugs were probably a vital source of protein in her diet, but as kids we never considered that.

Now, I harbor absolutely no interest in ingesting either cooked spinach or raw slugs. Avoidance solves the problem; and I’ve reached a stable, emotional plateau. I don’t hate spinach. I’ll eat raw spinach in a salad without trauma. As long as they lie low, I don’t hate slugs, in particular or as a group.

Hate requires chronic frustration without hope of reprieve. For hate to grow, people need to feel oppressed, blaming a real or imagined scapegoat. I’ve never identified with being a victim. I don’t hate to admit it, but I can’t relate to hate.

While the Cat's Away

"While the cat's away, the mice will eat the cream," an Israeli colleague, at Microsoft, told me. A familiar saying with a twist, I thought. It sounded odd. "You mean, 'While the cat's away, the mice will play'?" In fact, my friend had translated his version from Hebrew into English. As far as I'd known, my version was an American original. The boss was away, we knew what we meant, or so we thought. Remembering back, I'm not so sure.

In American tradition, we might say that our boss, King George, was the cat; and we kicked him, his redcoats, and his Hessians back across the pond. Every Fourth of July we celebrate our independence. It's "An American Tale." "There are no cats in America."

But in Hebrew tradition the cat always comes back. So, fill your bellies while the food is unguarded. 'Life is a perpetual struggle' is embedded in Hebrew literary tradition. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Islamic law has a reciprocal history. Existence is a never ending cycle of vengeance. Peace has no chance when attrition governs conditioned responses, with annihilation as the only exit strategy. Despite historical attempts, ethnic cleansing and genocide are not valid paths toward peace.

Traditions are mired in the past. The world has changed, but mindsets haven't. So conflict prevails while survival tactics eclipse sustainability goals. Peaceful thoughts, strategies, and ideals are prerequisites for world peace to succeed. Eons of Middle Eastern culture are in desperate need of transcendent mindset updates, for peace to earn a fair chance of success.

Ann Flavored Kisses

Despite all the hype, my first kiss was forgettable; but I never forgot Ann. After our date, Ann ascended the stairs to her home. On the second or third step she stopped, then turned around, our height disparity erased. Ann's receptive manner secured my confidence. Then I kissed her. A kiss I soon forgot, like kissing cardboard.

My analytical self mused out loud, "You're the first girl I ever kissed."

"Why'd you say that?" was her surprised response. Then Ann regained her composure. "Lick your lips" Ann demonstrated and I copied. Then Ann waited for me to kiss her again. Moisture conducts electricity, that much I knew from science, but the psychological effect? I'd never imagined.

It's funny where the mind goes when it gets lost. Like buried treasure my mind unlocked a hidden childhood memory. In the best of all possible worlds, it was the girl next door who had shown me how to pick a vine flower, nip off the tip of a sprout at the back, then sip out the nectar. It tasted sweet, like diluted honey, but without the bee spit. That was my brain's closest approximation to my second kiss, and in hindsight it proves that nobody can make you happy. Although, in my mind, Ann indirectly benefited from my past pleasant memories, she was directly involved only in our shared experiences, and they were great.

Ann and I swapped warm, sweet, nectar flavored, saliva. Together, we repeated this twilight ritual on several occasions, with reproducible results. Either Ann told me or I'd imagined two revelations. First: Binaca breath drops was the secret ingredient in Ann flavored kisses. Second: girls gather in restrooms to share Ann's secret.

A recent Internet search uncovered three flavors of Binaca: Peppermint, Spearmint, and Wintergreen - not a hint of Ann among them. In the best of all possible worlds two wishes come true. First: Binaca reintroduces the secret ingredient in Ann flavored kisses, or if it never existed they invent it. Second: when girls gather in restrooms they share the secret of Ann flavored kisses, or if they never did they do from now on.

Minors under the Influence

Alcohol, tobacco, and driving were illegal in my youth, with firearms the sole consolation prize. In retrospect, everything I know about people I learned on the rifle range, in Boy Scouts. Every year at scout camp we practiced grownup social skills with manual, bolt-action, .22 caliber rifles. But that was kindergarten compared to one rifle range visit. The experience had the itch of an exotic arms bazaar, and we were just kids granted unrestricted license to scratch, no learner’s permit required, although bonding dads rendered adult supervision. For red-blooded American boys there’s no way a candy store rated anywhere near this cool. From pioneering, muzzle-loaded, flintlock muskets to modern, high-powered, assault rifles this was trick or treat. This was a hands-on history lesson, covering the entire industrial revolutionary era, which none fully explored before a permanent cease-fire enforced a curfew, our trembling trigger fingers suffering withdrawal pangs.

Several scout troops had pooled their resources together to dangle this all-you-can-eat buffet of harmless fun within the reach of growing boys, too young to shave. It was a remarkable day filled with the intoxicating fumes of spent gunpowder unleashing fierce swarms of screaming hot projectiles, rivaling the eruption of Mount St. Helens for sheer destruction of airborne, ground, and sinus dwelling microorganisms. Although thoughtless incidents occurred, nobody got maimed; but if somebody had been seriously wounded, we were prepared. Many in attendance, including myself, had earned First Aid merit badges courtesy of our gracious sponsor. The Vietnam War waged on as we partied. Even the U.S. Army had sent clean-cut role models, for our exclusive benefit. Soldiers from Fort Lewis were favored to win the opening, ceremonial contest for most rounds fired in a single minute. They sported Government Issue arms, banned from civilian ownership. With all the hype, we expected to witness an assault on the world record. I can’t recount all the entries; but let me tell you, the whole shooting match was mighty impressive.

The M-14 looked like a hunting rifle fitted with a magazine clip. What am I saying? Not only did it look like a hunting rifle. It was one, only Bambi wasn’t its game. One shot fired for every pull of the trigger. The recoil ejected the spent shell, driving the next bullet from the magazine into the firing chamber – semiautomatic. For political reasons, semiautomatic was an imposed handicap. On full automatic the rifle continued to fire as long as the trigger was held, like a machine gun, or so we were told. Deprived of a full automatic demonstration, I figured it could spray shells faster than a kid could spit watermelon seeds, but this was no little kid’s picnic. The M-14 had restricted access – an age limit, magnifying its allure. Did I mention that it was illegal for civilians to own? It was forbidden. How much more tempting could it get? Tall for my age, I passed muster without having to lie. Soldiers warned that the M-14 kicked like a mule, and you had to press the stock firmly against your shoulder or else risk a bruise when the gun recoiled. I’m pretty sure one shot was powerful enough to go clean through a car: doors, seats, body, tires, fuel tank, the pavement too. China, watch out.

Dead last, in the contest, went to a muzzle-loading, flintlock musket; with maybe three rounds fired in that same timed minute, an impressive sight in its own right. The muskets used black powder, which created the only explosion that rated its own advanced warning announcement. Nobody plugged his ears. We weren’t wimps, but who knows what the startle response might do, without the precaution, to some excited boy exercising his Second Amendment right to bear firearms? Each blast produced so much smoke that it took longer for the air to clear than to reload the weapon, which the owners did using ramrods – the old fashioned way. The muskets were darling favorites, drawing the longest lines. Their inaccuracy didn’t matter, though the prospect of a long wait discouraged me. The rest of the smorgasbord was so inviting that I never got around to experiencing the thrill of going deaf and blind. How far a musket ball could travel through a car, I’m not sure – Davy Crockett never bagged a Chevy, but the entry wound would be something extraordinary to gawk at, and mesmerize listeners in the retelling.

The contest didn’t get executed as advertised. Due to technical difficulties the soldier with the M-14 fell out of the running. The winner, at 24 rounds per minute, was some guy from a gun club, a card carrying NRA member, sporting his manual, bolt-action rifle with an internal magazine – its advanced feature. Four shells, two short of a six-pack, could be inserted at once. A single round was rammed into the chamber with the forward thrust of the bolt, priming the gun to fire. A squeeze of the trigger detonated the charge. Retracting the bolt ejected the shell casing, completing one cycle. After four cycles he inverted the rifle and strategically removed the four-pack clasp, flipped the gun over, then popped in another four-pack. Most of his time was spent dealing four-packs, so when recycling properly he had to be firing faster than one round every two seconds. We were blown away. He had pushed himself hard, jerking about like a fanatic, but with justifiable cause. The soldier was the prohibitive favorite going in, so this guy just wanted to make a respectable showing in what promised to be a humiliating defeat. As for the soldier who entered the contest, his M-14 jammed after maybe 6 rounds relinquishing his early lead. After he cleared the gun jam it was too late, but everybody was convinced that semiautomatic weapons were the wave of the future, after all the bugs were worked out.

Contest over, it was our turn to occupy the front lines, and we had a blast. In our collective hands we held enough firepower to overthrow Seattle’s government, and even withstand a siege until we were at least old enough to drive. We were young and naïve. Joiners are wannabe pushers. The way you get to be a pusher is to recruit joiners. It’s a pyramid scheme. Victims become victimizers. Scouting was fertile ground for this military mentality. We were in basic training preschool. Our pledge was to be obedient. In hindsight, the soldiers and gun owners were just as anxious to get weapons into our grasping adolescent clutches as we were. They brought us together to enlist the attention of our impressionable little minds, which we unconditionally surrendered – attentions, imaginations, and wills. Official uniforms were our free ticket, we were joiners; little did we realize that this was our opportunity of a lifetime. The first time always is. Group organizations pose an easy target. They’re so big; anywhere you aim it’s a direct hit. We couldn’t miss if we tried.

Handguns are fun. Like candy laced pacifiers to babies, we were lured with the high quality stuff: a police .38 magnum revolver, and a military .45 caliber, semiautomatic pistol. How could we just say no? No way. But talk about inaccurate. It’s no wonder there’re so many innocent handgun victims. The handgun targets were placed at close range, segregated from the rifle range. I could pinpoint where I hit the target firing a handgun. I had excellent vision. To build confidence on the rifle range, the targets were placed far back making bullet holes appear smaller than pinpricks to the naked eye, no messy details to witness. I never did see whether I hit any targets on the rifle range, and this bothered me. Not because I questioned my skill, but because kids I knew bragged about hitting the bulls eye with every shot they fired.

Waiting turns occupied most of our time. Allotted rounds were consumed at an alarming pace. So, equipped with a box of shells and a rifle my dad had brought along, I assumed a prone position, blocked out all other distractions, and got into a groove with enough bullets to sustain me for a while. Steady, breathe, exhale half a breath, hold it, align the gun sights with the tiny black circle at the center of the target, squeeze the trigger – no kick, at least none I could feel, but that was normal. The gun was a manual, bolt-action, .22 caliber rifle, similar to scout camp. The ammunition was a .22 short round, less powerful that the regular .22 round at Camp Parsons on Hoods Canal. An archery bow had more recoil than either one. Reload. Repeat the drill. Did I hit the target? I couldn’t tell.

Even back then my dad’s shells were old, so he decided they were expendable. Expiration dates hadn’t been invented yet, but a date stamp on that box could’ve predated President Kennedy’s assassination, which had happened while I was in Cub Scouts. I couldn’t tell you how many rounds I bombed through before I became concerned. Not only couldn’t I tell whether I was hitting the target, but I couldn’t tell if the slugs were even leaving the gun.

Why I checked the weapon after one particular shot remains a mystery. No perceptible difference had occurred. It was just some subliminal visceral reaction. I felt uneasy, and didn’t know why. Some nerve cells in my body began to panic and their panic spread amongst themselves until my entire nervous system was tuned into my environment with the gain on my heightened sensitivity cranked way up. All I received was incoherent static. My mind was searching not knowing what to seek. No clue was present. I was ambushed by feelings of dread, which washed over me in waves coursing through my nerves. My nerves had been an unruly mob, now they were rallying. I concentrated on the details.

I checked the worst case scenario first. Slowly I released the bolt on the rifle and drew it back. The shell was empty. It hadn’t misfired. It wouldn’t explode now, because it’d already done so. I proceeded onto the next worst case – the next logical step. In no immediate danger, I removed the bolt all the way out of the rifle. I knew how to do it, so I did it, and I sighted forward into the breach. You’d expect to see all the way through the barrel to daylight, but darkness interposed. What was the holdup? I couldn’t see. I stood up and did a little dance to invoke the gravity gods. No fancy footwork, just vigorous up and down arm motions like a jerk – the dance, not me. But the blockage rebelled against the gravitons and wouldn’t budge. A lot of friction had built up between the two. If it didn’t want to come out voluntarily, I’d have to force it out. All I needed was something long, round, hard, and thin. I wasn’t equipped with anything like that. Never once did I think of asking for help.

So I looked around for something, anything, a tool. I spied a long metal rod used for cleaning rifles barrels. It’d do the trick. I retrieved the rod, and rammed it through the bore, breech end first. A slug popped out the front end of the barrel and dropped to the ground at my feet, dead. So that’s what a dud looks like. That bullet was more confused than I was about the target’s location. I think what had happened was that some part of me must’ve realized that something was amiss – the bullet hadn’t fired properly. In a flash, the shot had fired quicker than the speed of conscious thought, but not perception. It was a conspiracy of circumstances. If only the targets were closer, if only ammunition kicked harder, if only the gun smoke billowed, if only… None of this was inevitable, but I felt better off that it had. My nerves were silent again. The danger had passed.

It wouldn’t be the last time in my life that I’d face a crisis, but that day I slew my dragon and I knew how to do it. I wouldn’t ever feel defenseless. I had survived. I had triumphed. I’ve never seen a gun explode, nor ever want to; but I knew it could’ve happened, in theory. With a plugged barrel the expanding gas has nowhere to go. When firing a rifle you press your face right next to the firing chamber where the detonation starts. Life happens. It’s a Rorschach test, and I’m a firm believer in self-organization as the key to a passing grade.

I learned more about myself that day, than everybody else combined. For my self-esteem, this was a character revealing, rather than a character defining, moment. In times of crisis we glimpse our true selves. In confusion we are of two minds. The part of me that would’ve taken to the other branch was pruned from my tree of life, while the part that had listened to his intuition survived, and I am his descendant. It’s how we fare in the trials of our life that shape our growth. I wasn’t stunted by this experience. Flight or fight? Victim or victimizer? I was neither. Fear didn’t own me, and anger didn’t own me, because I owned the power of reason. I condemned that entire box of ammunition. One dud had spoiled it for everyone. It wasn’t the gun’s fault. I knew that. Then I thought it through.

Reason extinguishes confusion. I could manage the risk. After every shot fired, I could pull out the bolt and double check for duds. To me, the hassle wasn’t worth it. I re-engaged the bolt and laid the rifle down – guilt by association. I was done for the day. My subconscious had reacted to the crisis by pumping adrenaline into my system. My trigger finger trembled, and both hands with it. Some people need material goods to lend a sense of worth to their lives. I don’t, and I recognized that at an early age. The best way I’ve found to solve problems is to pose the right questions. The better aimed the questions the greater the likelihood that the answers will land on target. Centered and true.

A younger scout from my troop pleaded to finish off the rest of that box. I tried reason, but he didn’t want to listen. I explained the danger and the workaround I had devised – checking for duds after every shot. He promised to heed my advice, and I gave my permission. That’s a ploy kids learn well. Promises have short warranties. They’re only good as long as needed to get what’s desired. I accepted him at his word, but his oath proved worthless. The boy couldn’t resist and charged right ahead ignoring all my precautions. Without incident he finished what remained of that box of ammunition, proving me wrong – a dangerous proof, in many ways.

Joiners are so busy trying to meet organizational and relationship needs (both moving targets) that it’s hard to hit the mark of their own needs. So they learn to become pushers, and try to recruit joiners. Many adult addictions first become habitual when we’re young. Ever notice how writers push reading? They were stricken by virulent childhood strains of reading epidemic, no doubt. I never inhaled books as a child. I have no uncontrollable urge to write or to recruit reading addicts. My compelling need is to understand. The smallest imperceptible detail will bug the heck out of me until I figure it out.

The pursuit of Truth is my passion, my motivation, my addiction. Words, like weapons, are manmade tools. Now, I’m a social reader, road signs mostly. I never was infected by whatever it takes to flow with the mainstream. Where’s my proof? I didn’t enlist, guns don’t own me, drugs don’t own me, alcohol doesn’t own me, tobacco doesn’t own me, my car is parked in the garage right now, and I can stop writing any time I want to.