Oath of Office – Chapter 1

So, here’s a kind of fun but yet serious story I’ve sort of been working on between other major stories. It’s just a chapter for the moment, but if you like it, leave me a comment and tell me you want to read more!

1. Breach & Clear

“Honey?” Virginia whispered in my ear as she shook my shoulder.

“Wazza?” I asked sleepily, letting go of the slim island woman’s waist as the Caribbean jazz fusion faded into the rustling of covers and the slightest of muffled noises.

“Alex, wake up,” my wife whispered again, this time more urgently. “I think there’s someone outside.”

“Probably some fuckin’ protester assholes,” I mumbled, desperate to resume my conga line dance even if it wasn’t with my wife of twenty years. “You have my permission to shoot them.” I rolled over on my side and closed my eyes.

“Dammit, Alex, I’m serious!” she hissed, giving my shoulder one final rough shove.

“Okay, okay, sheesh,” I said then wiped the drool from the corner of my mouth. “It’s probably the cats and they see another cat outside.”

I rolled my legs onto the floor and stared into the darkness for a moment as if my slippers might suddenly glow softly so I could find them. I huffed a sigh and gingerly tiptoed barefoot toward the bedroom door, praying I avoided any number of obstacles that might make me erupt in a high-pitched scream of vulgar profanity.

I silently pulled the partially-opened bedroom door back, immediately feeling the brief sensation of fur on my bare ankles twice. I waited until I felt a third before taking another step. Stepping on one of our three cats in the middle of the night was only slightly more pleasant and slightly less heart-stopping than feeling my foot slide through a puddle of cold, slimy, chunky feline vomit.

I paused for a moment after hearing a series of strange sounds. The noises were muffled but my brain tried to interpret them as two-way radios. I shook my head and walked to the living room window to look out. The exact instant my mind tried to piece together why an army of police cars were outside our home was the exact instant what seemed like an Anti-Terror Special Operations Unit burst through every possible opening into the house.

“GET DOWN!” screamed at least seventy thousand voices all at once. Continue reading

Echo Chambers

I’m down to 30-ish friends. The rest have been unfriended for being racists, homophobes, rape apologist dude-bros, nasty little misogynists, idiots who claim the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and the Confederate flag isn’t a symbol of hate and division, and/or Trump supporters.

It’s refreshing to have a FB timeline that isn’t full of nutty nutter bullshit from privileged white persons (mostly males) and the pretzel-defying contortions they fold themselves into to deny all facts while pointing “but look over there!”

However, putting ourselves in an echo chamber is actually not that great of an idea. To only surround ourselves with those who think almost identically to ourselves while shunning all others who have opposite views creates an extremely polarized society. Hence, our current predicament.

I try hard to argue with myself about this, and I can’t help but feel somewhat annoyed by my consistent swing back to “but these people simply live in a fantasy world.” I contort myself into the same pretzel-defying logic that others do just to try and find myself at fault, for being no better than they are for refusing to even listen to them anymore.

It sucks. A lot of people I grew up with are now outside of my echo chamber. A lot of people I really liked and/or respected are now persons of suspect intelligence, moral views, and what I fear are ideologies based on tainted propaganda designed specifically to separate those who are susceptible to such incredulous beliefs even though factual evidence is literally beating them over the head.

But, at the end of each torture session, I still cannot accept the friendship or sincerity of anyone who believes whites are superior to all other races (insert various twisting and pretzeling about why blacks commit crimes, do drugs, have 17 babies, you know the drill).
Continue reading

You Think You Know What Teachers Do, Right? Wrong.

Washington Post

“The problem with teaching as a profession is that every single adult citizen of this country thinks that they know what teachers do. And they don’t. So they prescribe solutions, and they develop public policy, and they editorialize, and they politicize. And they don’t listen to those who do know. Those who could teach. The teachers.”

Disclaimer: My wonderful wife is a badass high school History/Human Geography (AP) teacher. I’m properly biased.