By Lamont Hiebert of Ten Shekel Shirt
Spark
For the most part this song is meant to rock and reveal the joy and freedom found in forgiving. Yet there is still an ache attached to the mood of the song because forgiveness is not meant to be flippant or taken lightly. I like the 2nd verse, “Its good that you get angry and its good you let it go.” We become subhuman if we don’t get angry over injustice and abuse. However, if we linger at the table of anger, smack our lips at the thought of revenge and chew on large portions of blame we will end up devouring ourselves.
Fragile
“It’s my fault.” I have heard this tragic phrase too many times from survivors of child abuse and exploitation. Even children with divorced parents struggle with this lie. In order for people to move forward in the recovery process they need to know otherwise.
There is something powerful about declaring words aloud so as the song climaxes I switch from the third person to the first person repeating the words, “its not my fault.” I have been planning a music video for this song for years but have not been able to afford one yet. If that ever happens there would be an enslaved teen in a brothel writing the words with lipstick on a mirror; “it’s not my fault,” a child soldier etching the words into his gun stock; “it’s not my fault,” a young victim of domestic abuse writing the words with sidewalk chalk outside her suburban home; “it’s not my fault.” At the end of the video I would flip my guitar around revealing those same words displayed on the back of my instrument, signifying my need to declare those words myself.
Wartime Lullaby
This song offers lament and hope for a city and its inhabitants during a time of war. It’s meant to be tender, up-close and somewhat timeless. I envisioned myself as an elderly person exhorting my loved ones to hold onto me and to continue to hope. My publisher, called this song “darkly romantic.” I’m not sure about that but it is the most poetic song I have ever written. Jonny Rodgers (lead guitarist) helped me write some of these haunting melodies and chord changes. He’s so money. This song needs to be in a movie. Maybe even in a black and white movie. Do they still make those?
En Garde
This song is a celebration of intimacy and sex in marriage. Enjoy!
Surprised
I went through a difficult time a few years back. It resulted in a sabbatical and some time alone in the mountains. I’m pretty sure I can think clearer at high elevations and possibly even hear God whisper to my heart on rare occasions. As I was musing over my troubles in life I was surprised and impaled by the following words, “I’m with you.” Whether I made that up and just imagined God was speaking that to me or not, I’ll take it… because either way I believe it’s true.
Love from a lesser god
It dawned on me one day that most of my unhealthy tendencies stem from misplaced desires and affections. The gods of vanity, lust, greed, gluttony and fame are great if you like gulps of salt water as a means of quenching your thirst.
Jubilee
The origin of the word Jubilee has nothing to do with a wedding anniversary or a schmaltzy Las Vegas show. It has everything to do with the emancipation of slaves and the celebration of freedom and justice. When I wrote the title track, Jubilee, I combined that ancient meaning of the word with this true story of a teenage girl rescued from slavery and her first moments in a safehome.
At the tender age of 12, she was sold to a brothel by her stepfather. After 4 years of unspeakable violence, cruelty and shame she was rescued and brought to a safehome our charity (Love146) supports. The first moment she entered the home she noticed a small picture of Jesus on the wall. When she saw it she fell down and wept in utter relief and astonishment. She then explained that while she was in captivity she would often dream of being in a safe place and that in those dreams she would picture that face.
A strange thing happened while I was writing the song. Although I was writing about a safehome I kept feeling like the song had another layer to it, one that was somehow linked to the hereafter. I told the safehome director about this unintended sense I was getting from my own song. She then told me that after a successful, restorative year in the safehome the girl that had inspired the song had died of AIDS. The caregiver said she past away with a peaceful countenance on her face as she expectantly prepared for her ultimate Jubilee.
Its Slavery
This is a hard hitting, slap in the face to those who drive up demand for youth in the sex industry. Society’s tolerance level for this injustice is appalling and must reach a boiling point soon. I think much of the problem can be found in class and gender discrimination. Most of the victims of modern-day slavery are impoverished minority ethnic females. Imagine what the front covers of our newspapers would look like and what radio talk show hosts would be saying if there were two upper-middleclass white males trafficked into slavery every minute. (As is the case with today’s vulnerable females.)
You Rescue
Okay, this is crazy. I sat down one morning and wrote this song in about 15 minutes. Immediately after I was done I received a phone call from a friend of mine who runs an organization that rescues modern-day slaves. Although I hadn’t received a call from him in over a year he felt “compelled” to call me at that moment to tell me something. He said that he just got back from SE Asia where he helped rescue more than 90 slaves; women and children from 7 different countries, all held against their will in a multi-story brothel.” Like a 2x4 from heaven his phone call served as a stark reminder that maybe I was onto something with this song.
Daylight
A guy recently told me that he liked my old songs better. He said the old ones made him feel good while the new songs made him think about others. I took it as a compliment.
Although I cut my teeth in the music industry on “worship music” I believe it is dangerous and unhealthy to be self-absorbed with vertical religion. I often warn faith-based audiences that if we hold our hands in the air for too long we become spiritually constipated. Conversely, if we strive to be about God’s business without His influence of love, forgiveness, justice, mercy, compassion, etc… we soon become burned out and bitter.
So the posture I propose (figuratively) is to live with one hand up towards heaven, seeking God’s pleasure and strength while the other hand is outstretched horizontally to protect, restore and empower our oppressed neighbors in the world. Hopefully this song inspires this kind of living.
Higher Ground
There’s a bunch of stuff in this song. First off, as you can tell by the first verse, I am not a fan of determinism. However, I am a huge fan of redemption, the making of something good out of something bad. Do I know how all things are going to work out? No, the cosmos and eternity are far too complex for me to figure out. I do believe that “all will be set right again” but as the 2nd and 3rd verses of this song remind us we’re not supposed to sit around waiting for better times to magically appear. I’m sure we all want to make the world a better place (even Miss America wants to do that) but there is a catch for those of us who aspire to be followers of Christ.
Throughout human history people of faith have done well when we have aligned ourselves with the upside-down principals of the kingdom of heaven (expressed most accurately through the beatitudes and the cross) as opposed to the times when we have aligned ourselves with the earthly structures of power and pride. Yes, it’s fine to point out the splinter in Caesars left and/or right eye as long as we work to pry out the plank in our own. Living upside down is extremely difficult (I’m not very good at it) but giving up is not an option. Something about this song makes me feed off the camaraderie of the like-minded community around me. Either that or the group vocals at the end just make me happy.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Two Truths and a Tale_ Part 2
For those of you who have read Two Truths and a Tale_Part 1 (Featuring: Vampire Bat, Toe Story and Stupid Girl) you may find the answer below. For those of you who are new comers to my blog please be a good sport and immediately go to my April 2007 posting and read Two Truths and a Tale_Part 1 first. There's a link to your right or you can just scroll to the bottom of this page. You'll find instructions on our little game there as well.
Two Truths and a Tale - Part 2
The Wedding Singer
What is it about human nature that finds it excruciatingly funny to laugh during moments when you are not supposed to laugh?
I hate singing at weddings to begin with. They are so serious. The bride and her family are typically wound way too tight. You have to deal with abnormal stress levels and bad church sound systems. It all started as the guests were being seated. The gentleman I was singing with was a tad large. He was wearing some suspenders that were a tad small. In front of everyone the back clips of these suspenders unhinged from the rear of his trousers and bungeed up into the air over his shoulders and down towards the floor in front of him. He was able to keep his pants up and for the most part we were able to keep our composure. But the silly-damn was beginning to break.
It was during the communion portion of the wedding ceremony that the best thing ever happened. The pastor, along with the bride and groom had their backs to the audience as they faced the make-shift alter on the back part of the stage. All eyes were on them except for mine. I was looking out towards the audience as I sang a solo from the side of the stage. I wasn’t even half way through the song when IT happened. At first my shoulders began to shake and my voice started to crack like a bad country singer. Then the giggles just leapt out of me and I couldn't reel them in. I burst out in uncontrollable laughter in the middle of the ceremony… and I could not stop. The pastor, the audience and certainly the bride and groom were not impressed. There was nothing I could do but very ungracefully leave the stage, still laughing.
What happened? While all eyes were on the couple at the communion alter or closed in prayer, I saw a man in the balcony lunge forward like he was trying to hold back a sneeze. Disastrously for him his hairpiece fell off of his head and fluttered down into the main seating area below right into the lap of an elderly woman. The lady lifted her head just high enough to notice the gentleman in front of her was balding. She picked the toupee off of her lap and innocently placed it on the stranger’s head in front of her.
Red Dawn
I think my mother must have been trained as a spy. How in the world she found us that day I have no idea. She completely ruined the fun… but saved the day.
The sawmill in our town was a great place to play “Red Dawn.” The mill workers were the evil communists driving their war-like machinery (fork-lifts, excavators, dump trucks and loaders) and my friends and I were the good guys under siege. The borders of our war games consisted of rows and rows of fallen trees piled high on the north and east sides of perimeter. Train tracks, often with moving train cars loading and unloading, established the southern border while the western edge of the sawmill was closed off by the Kettle River. The middle of the playing field consisted of wonderful mazes made by the innumerable stacks of cut lumber wrapped and ready to be shipped to a Home Depot near you.
Every kid had a sling shot in those days. Some kids shot birds and other small animals with these ancient weapons. I was never into animal cruelty. Especially not after our cat Barney came home one day moaning something awful with suspicious devices attached to his underside. It turned out that one of the neighborhood kids had attached a clothes pin to each of Barney’s testicles. Ouch!
No, my sling shot would not be used on animals…people maybe, but not animals. The mill workers wore hard hats so when we were aiming for their fork lifts and dump trucks it seemed a pretty harmless game. Besides, in our minds, we were fighting the dreaded Red Army. Our targets could be difficult to hit because they were darting in and out of buildings and lumber piles. We would sometimes climb the lumber piles and shoot at them from atop the vantage point or we would press our bodies between narrow passage ways and launch our assault from inside the maze, knowing we could lose them with our speed, skill and prowess.
I don’t know which one of us fired the shot that made it inside the cab of the vehicle but it must have wounded one of their soldiers because that area of the mill was abruptly shut down. They literally stopped working because they were searching for us. We could hear the mill workers cursing and yelling instructions to their comrades, “Over there, I saw them run that way. Follow me we’ll catch those #@!*#! kids around back.”
The fear and thrill of being chased by angry grown men was exhilarating and unmatched as a kid. They tried for a long time to locate us but we knew the inside of the lumber maze better than they did. Plus we could squeeze into small spaces and climb precarious ledges that our big-bellied enemies could not. We could hear their footsteps and heavy breathing as they approached. So far so good, as long as we didn’t giggle too loudly we were safe. As the sun began to set, it dawned on us that we did have one problem; we were unable to go home because we were surrounded and trapped.
Unexpectedly, we heard someone making their way confidently towards us. Then a voice called out, “alright boys, it’s time to go home.” It was my mother. I couldn’t believe it, how did she find us? Was there a homing device planted in me at birth. Did she have supernatural powers? Regardless, I was thankful she came. She led us down the main road of the sawmill right through the front gates without anyone seeing us. It was the last place the Soviets would expect us to exit through.
Aerodynamics
I don’t remember anyone ever telling me that you shouldn’t ride your bicycle downhill on a one-way street the wrong way with your head down to cut the wind. I happened to think it was a brilliant idea.
My older brother always beat me in races so this was my chance, my moment to make a statement to him and to the world. I saw him out of the corner of my eye on the opposite side of the road just a little ahead of me. I pedaled hard until I reached the point when pedaling becomes irrelevant. I leaned forward and tucked my head down to reach full speed, then hyper speed, then finally ludicrous speed. I glanced over at my brother to see that I was in the lead for the first time in the history of this post-elementary school day rivalry. He had his head up and seemed to be slowing down. In fact I think he was trying to tell me something. The sore loser is probably trying to distract me I thought. The finish line was the bottom of the hill and nothing could stop me now, or so I thought. There was a horn blowing but I couldn’t be bothered, I was preparing for my victory speech. Thankfully, the car had pretty much come to a complete stand-still when I hit it. My bicycle became one with the front bumper and I defied gravity; I was flying. The way I remember it is in slow motion… me flying over the entire vehicle without ever touching it. It was awesome!
I was lying on my back, now behind the vehicle, with the wind knocked out of me expecting some sympathy from the driver. Instead Satan’s wife stepped out of the car and began giving me heck. I heard words from the driver that day that would have made Scarface blush. Answer for Part 1: Stupid Girl is the tale.
Now make your guess for part 2. Which one is the tale? Wedding Singer, Red Dawn or Aerodynamics? Good luck! I'll let you know in the next blog.
**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Two Truths and a Tale - Part 2
The Wedding Singer
What is it about human nature that finds it excruciatingly funny to laugh during moments when you are not supposed to laugh?
I hate singing at weddings to begin with. They are so serious. The bride and her family are typically wound way too tight. You have to deal with abnormal stress levels and bad church sound systems. It all started as the guests were being seated. The gentleman I was singing with was a tad large. He was wearing some suspenders that were a tad small. In front of everyone the back clips of these suspenders unhinged from the rear of his trousers and bungeed up into the air over his shoulders and down towards the floor in front of him. He was able to keep his pants up and for the most part we were able to keep our composure. But the silly-damn was beginning to break.
It was during the communion portion of the wedding ceremony that the best thing ever happened. The pastor, along with the bride and groom had their backs to the audience as they faced the make-shift alter on the back part of the stage. All eyes were on them except for mine. I was looking out towards the audience as I sang a solo from the side of the stage. I wasn’t even half way through the song when IT happened. At first my shoulders began to shake and my voice started to crack like a bad country singer. Then the giggles just leapt out of me and I couldn't reel them in. I burst out in uncontrollable laughter in the middle of the ceremony… and I could not stop. The pastor, the audience and certainly the bride and groom were not impressed. There was nothing I could do but very ungracefully leave the stage, still laughing.
What happened? While all eyes were on the couple at the communion alter or closed in prayer, I saw a man in the balcony lunge forward like he was trying to hold back a sneeze. Disastrously for him his hairpiece fell off of his head and fluttered down into the main seating area below right into the lap of an elderly woman. The lady lifted her head just high enough to notice the gentleman in front of her was balding. She picked the toupee off of her lap and innocently placed it on the stranger’s head in front of her.
Red Dawn
I think my mother must have been trained as a spy. How in the world she found us that day I have no idea. She completely ruined the fun… but saved the day.
The sawmill in our town was a great place to play “Red Dawn.” The mill workers were the evil communists driving their war-like machinery (fork-lifts, excavators, dump trucks and loaders) and my friends and I were the good guys under siege. The borders of our war games consisted of rows and rows of fallen trees piled high on the north and east sides of perimeter. Train tracks, often with moving train cars loading and unloading, established the southern border while the western edge of the sawmill was closed off by the Kettle River. The middle of the playing field consisted of wonderful mazes made by the innumerable stacks of cut lumber wrapped and ready to be shipped to a Home Depot near you.
Every kid had a sling shot in those days. Some kids shot birds and other small animals with these ancient weapons. I was never into animal cruelty. Especially not after our cat Barney came home one day moaning something awful with suspicious devices attached to his underside. It turned out that one of the neighborhood kids had attached a clothes pin to each of Barney’s testicles. Ouch!
No, my sling shot would not be used on animals…people maybe, but not animals. The mill workers wore hard hats so when we were aiming for their fork lifts and dump trucks it seemed a pretty harmless game. Besides, in our minds, we were fighting the dreaded Red Army. Our targets could be difficult to hit because they were darting in and out of buildings and lumber piles. We would sometimes climb the lumber piles and shoot at them from atop the vantage point or we would press our bodies between narrow passage ways and launch our assault from inside the maze, knowing we could lose them with our speed, skill and prowess.
I don’t know which one of us fired the shot that made it inside the cab of the vehicle but it must have wounded one of their soldiers because that area of the mill was abruptly shut down. They literally stopped working because they were searching for us. We could hear the mill workers cursing and yelling instructions to their comrades, “Over there, I saw them run that way. Follow me we’ll catch those #@!*#! kids around back.”
The fear and thrill of being chased by angry grown men was exhilarating and unmatched as a kid. They tried for a long time to locate us but we knew the inside of the lumber maze better than they did. Plus we could squeeze into small spaces and climb precarious ledges that our big-bellied enemies could not. We could hear their footsteps and heavy breathing as they approached. So far so good, as long as we didn’t giggle too loudly we were safe. As the sun began to set, it dawned on us that we did have one problem; we were unable to go home because we were surrounded and trapped.
Unexpectedly, we heard someone making their way confidently towards us. Then a voice called out, “alright boys, it’s time to go home.” It was my mother. I couldn’t believe it, how did she find us? Was there a homing device planted in me at birth. Did she have supernatural powers? Regardless, I was thankful she came. She led us down the main road of the sawmill right through the front gates without anyone seeing us. It was the last place the Soviets would expect us to exit through.
Aerodynamics
I don’t remember anyone ever telling me that you shouldn’t ride your bicycle downhill on a one-way street the wrong way with your head down to cut the wind. I happened to think it was a brilliant idea.
My older brother always beat me in races so this was my chance, my moment to make a statement to him and to the world. I saw him out of the corner of my eye on the opposite side of the road just a little ahead of me. I pedaled hard until I reached the point when pedaling becomes irrelevant. I leaned forward and tucked my head down to reach full speed, then hyper speed, then finally ludicrous speed. I glanced over at my brother to see that I was in the lead for the first time in the history of this post-elementary school day rivalry. He had his head up and seemed to be slowing down. In fact I think he was trying to tell me something. The sore loser is probably trying to distract me I thought. The finish line was the bottom of the hill and nothing could stop me now, or so I thought. There was a horn blowing but I couldn’t be bothered, I was preparing for my victory speech. Thankfully, the car had pretty much come to a complete stand-still when I hit it. My bicycle became one with the front bumper and I defied gravity; I was flying. The way I remember it is in slow motion… me flying over the entire vehicle without ever touching it. It was awesome!
I was lying on my back, now behind the vehicle, with the wind knocked out of me expecting some sympathy from the driver. Instead Satan’s wife stepped out of the car and began giving me heck. I heard words from the driver that day that would have made Scarface blush. Answer for Part 1: Stupid Girl is the tale.
Now make your guess for part 2. Which one is the tale? Wedding Singer, Red Dawn or Aerodynamics? Good luck! I'll let you know in the next blog.
**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Two Truths and a Tale_part 1
So this is my first blog. Where do I start? Do I need to attract your attention and entice you or can I just get right down to business? Hmmm, I think a little warming up is in order. I know! Let’s play “Two Truths and a Tale.” Good idea, Monty! (I call myself “Monty” when I come up with a grand idea or when I do something really stupid. I call myself “Monty” a lot.)
Okay, here is how this is going to work:
I am going to tell you 3 stories: VAMPIRE BAT, TOE STORY and STUPID GIRL. Then you have to guess which one is the tale / fictional / a lie. It’s very simple. Then post your guess on the feedback section of my blog. Got it? I’ll give you the secret answer in one of my upcoming blogs.
Vampire Bat
When I was 18 years old I went to Costa Rica on this faith-based / Peace Core kind of mission right after the country had a massive 7.5 earthquake. I spent my nights with a local family who just happened to have an extremely hot daughter about my age. I said to myself, “Monty, this is the one. You have got to impress this girl.” Well I did just that but not in the way that I had imagined. In the middle of the night the creepiest thing ever happened. I was sleeping in a room all by myself in my whitie-tighties (because that’s what Canadian kids do) when something landed in my hair. I panicked and quickly threw it away. It came back. I frantically threw it away a second time but it came right back. Ahhh! It felt like a mouse with wings and it was crawling around in my hair. I jolted out of my sleeping bag and started screaming like a little girl at the top of my lungs. The entire family, including the caliente Latina, came rushing into the room, turned on the light and found me standing in my whitie-tighties completely freaked out. With wild hand gestures and grunts in broken Spanish I explained to them what had happened. They looked around the room and saw nothing. I feared they wouldn’t believe me. Then they explained to me that sometimes vampire bats found their way into the local homes through ventilation gaps common in buildings in that region of Costa Rica.
I don’t know about you but the words, “vampire bat” evoked tremendous dread in me and conjured up images etched in my psyche from late night horror flicks. I checked my neck…no teeth marks, no blood. Whew, that was a close one. The two boys in the family joined me in the room that night and I demanded that the light be left on to deter that bat from coming back. The girl and I never got married.
Toe Story
I grew up in a gorgeous rural town in British Columbia, Canada. Flowing down from the nearby scenic mountains are two rivers that provide plenty of playtime for locals and give the town of Grand Forks, B.C., its name. Fifteen minutes down the winding road, past the orchards and fertile farmlands and just beyond a treacherous waterfall is the private yet stunning; Christina Lake (the warmest tree-lined lake in all of Canada.) The summers there are a lot of fun and are hotter than you think. It’s not uncommon for the temperature to rise above 100 ºF / 38 ºC. So if you don’t water your lawn it will turn brown and die. The grass was still wet from the sprinkler that morning.
I had been enthralled with the joyride on the back of the riding lawn mower until my eldest brother told me to go inside because he was going to start the blade. I was maybe 5 or 6 at the time and I didn’t really care what he was going to do. Start the blade, shmart the shmade. I went inside for a short while pretending to obey. Then I went to the back door and began to slip on my rain boots only to be reprimanded by my mother for not wearing sneakers on a sunny day. I grumpily said, “I hate tying shoes,” then I ran outside with my boots on which unfortunately were very slick on the bottom.
I saw my brother making his way toward the blue spruce trees at the end of our property. My plan was to make a run for it and surprise him by jumping on his back as he circled a tree. I made my move with cheetah-like instincts. He then made a sharp turn I wasn’t expecting. I tried to put on the brakes but I had no traction with the rain boots on the wet grass. I slid feet first towards the lawn mower. He saw me at the last second and tried to stop but it was too late. The lawn mower had consumed one of my legs up to the knee. Thankfully, the rubber boot, along with my foot stalled the lawnmower.
My brother, with legendary muscle and adrenaline, lifted the heavy mower off of me and literally tossed it aside. He carried me inside to my horrified siblings and mother. My calf muscle was almost entirely removed, my three middle toes were hanging only by the skin on the bottom of my foot and my two outside toes were missing. My mum told my siblings to go look for them. They found them in the neighbors’ yard.
On the way to the hospital I remember asking my mum if I was going to die. Then in the hospital I remember inhaling some strange air through a tube and watching the room start to spin. I woke up in a different hospital about an hour away in the city of Trail, B.C. The doctors there were much better evidenced by the sewing job they did on my foot. My baby toe was reattached upside-down.
Stupid Girl
There was this family down the road from where I grew up that had more than it’s share of ill-fated happenings. “Fat Frankie,” as they used to call him, set the bar pretty high for the bullies in our area who looked up to him as the model low-life. He used to terrorize his sisters and the rest of us younger kids in the neighborhood. And there always seemed to be a ripple effect from Frankie’s actions. The impish things he did were often mimicked and repeated, sometimes even in accidental or mysterious ways.
My parents went bowling with their parents every Thursday night and beforehand we would sometimes eat dinner together. On one occasion, in front of us all, Fat Frankie stabbed his sister Elizabeth in the forearm with a fork because she took the last pork chop. The fork must have dug into her muscle tissue at least half an inch because it stood there sticking straight up out of her arm. Obviously, Liz screamed and then her mom screamed and then her dad started chasing Frankie around the house. I will never forget that nauseating feeling I had after watching that meathead stab his sister. That incident turned out to be an omen that I should have heeded.
Now the girls in that family weren’t all that bad looking. The youngest one, Emma, was actually kind of cute but still a little scary. She was a year older than me but had failed a grade so she was in my class. We were both on the school track and field team and had qualified to compete in Vancouver for the Provincial Championships. I think she ran hurdles and the 200 meter and I threw javelin. Right before our biggest competition I was throwing very well on the practice field, with enough distance to possibly beat the provincial record for my age group. Emma decided to pick up one of the javelins and take playful aim at my feet. She was just trying to mess with me by making me jump and dance a little. Her forward thrusts into the ground with the javelin were getting harder and harder and closer and closer. I kept telling her to stop but she was one of those people without the normal shut-off valve the rest of us have. My feet were already mangled from the lawnmower, I didn’t need another accident. Sure enough, she got me.
Not only did she get me she started jumping up and down chanting this happy little mantra, “I got him, I got him, I got him.” Then she suddenly clued into reality and said in a lower, deeply concerned voice, “I got him.”
Unlike the fork in her sister’s arm the javelin didn’t stick and stand straight up. It was probably too heavy to do that so it just fell over. Instantaneously the top of my shoe turned red and by the time I got my shoe off my sock was covered in blood. She stabbed me on the top-front part of my foot. Thankfully there was no permanent damage but it hurt like hell and took a while to heal.
I never did get a chance to go for the javelin record that year… thanks to that stupid girl.
Lamont
www.lamontsongs.com
Okay, here is how this is going to work:
I am going to tell you 3 stories: VAMPIRE BAT, TOE STORY and STUPID GIRL. Then you have to guess which one is the tale / fictional / a lie. It’s very simple. Then post your guess on the feedback section of my blog. Got it? I’ll give you the secret answer in one of my upcoming blogs.
Vampire Bat
When I was 18 years old I went to Costa Rica on this faith-based / Peace Core kind of mission right after the country had a massive 7.5 earthquake. I spent my nights with a local family who just happened to have an extremely hot daughter about my age. I said to myself, “Monty, this is the one. You have got to impress this girl.” Well I did just that but not in the way that I had imagined. In the middle of the night the creepiest thing ever happened. I was sleeping in a room all by myself in my whitie-tighties (because that’s what Canadian kids do) when something landed in my hair. I panicked and quickly threw it away. It came back. I frantically threw it away a second time but it came right back. Ahhh! It felt like a mouse with wings and it was crawling around in my hair. I jolted out of my sleeping bag and started screaming like a little girl at the top of my lungs. The entire family, including the caliente Latina, came rushing into the room, turned on the light and found me standing in my whitie-tighties completely freaked out. With wild hand gestures and grunts in broken Spanish I explained to them what had happened. They looked around the room and saw nothing. I feared they wouldn’t believe me. Then they explained to me that sometimes vampire bats found their way into the local homes through ventilation gaps common in buildings in that region of Costa Rica.
I don’t know about you but the words, “vampire bat” evoked tremendous dread in me and conjured up images etched in my psyche from late night horror flicks. I checked my neck…no teeth marks, no blood. Whew, that was a close one. The two boys in the family joined me in the room that night and I demanded that the light be left on to deter that bat from coming back. The girl and I never got married.
Toe Story
I grew up in a gorgeous rural town in British Columbia, Canada. Flowing down from the nearby scenic mountains are two rivers that provide plenty of playtime for locals and give the town of Grand Forks, B.C., its name. Fifteen minutes down the winding road, past the orchards and fertile farmlands and just beyond a treacherous waterfall is the private yet stunning; Christina Lake (the warmest tree-lined lake in all of Canada.) The summers there are a lot of fun and are hotter than you think. It’s not uncommon for the temperature to rise above 100 ºF / 38 ºC. So if you don’t water your lawn it will turn brown and die. The grass was still wet from the sprinkler that morning.
I had been enthralled with the joyride on the back of the riding lawn mower until my eldest brother told me to go inside because he was going to start the blade. I was maybe 5 or 6 at the time and I didn’t really care what he was going to do. Start the blade, shmart the shmade. I went inside for a short while pretending to obey. Then I went to the back door and began to slip on my rain boots only to be reprimanded by my mother for not wearing sneakers on a sunny day. I grumpily said, “I hate tying shoes,” then I ran outside with my boots on which unfortunately were very slick on the bottom.
I saw my brother making his way toward the blue spruce trees at the end of our property. My plan was to make a run for it and surprise him by jumping on his back as he circled a tree. I made my move with cheetah-like instincts. He then made a sharp turn I wasn’t expecting. I tried to put on the brakes but I had no traction with the rain boots on the wet grass. I slid feet first towards the lawn mower. He saw me at the last second and tried to stop but it was too late. The lawn mower had consumed one of my legs up to the knee. Thankfully, the rubber boot, along with my foot stalled the lawnmower.
My brother, with legendary muscle and adrenaline, lifted the heavy mower off of me and literally tossed it aside. He carried me inside to my horrified siblings and mother. My calf muscle was almost entirely removed, my three middle toes were hanging only by the skin on the bottom of my foot and my two outside toes were missing. My mum told my siblings to go look for them. They found them in the neighbors’ yard.
On the way to the hospital I remember asking my mum if I was going to die. Then in the hospital I remember inhaling some strange air through a tube and watching the room start to spin. I woke up in a different hospital about an hour away in the city of Trail, B.C. The doctors there were much better evidenced by the sewing job they did on my foot. My baby toe was reattached upside-down.
Stupid Girl
There was this family down the road from where I grew up that had more than it’s share of ill-fated happenings. “Fat Frankie,” as they used to call him, set the bar pretty high for the bullies in our area who looked up to him as the model low-life. He used to terrorize his sisters and the rest of us younger kids in the neighborhood. And there always seemed to be a ripple effect from Frankie’s actions. The impish things he did were often mimicked and repeated, sometimes even in accidental or mysterious ways.
My parents went bowling with their parents every Thursday night and beforehand we would sometimes eat dinner together. On one occasion, in front of us all, Fat Frankie stabbed his sister Elizabeth in the forearm with a fork because she took the last pork chop. The fork must have dug into her muscle tissue at least half an inch because it stood there sticking straight up out of her arm. Obviously, Liz screamed and then her mom screamed and then her dad started chasing Frankie around the house. I will never forget that nauseating feeling I had after watching that meathead stab his sister. That incident turned out to be an omen that I should have heeded.
Now the girls in that family weren’t all that bad looking. The youngest one, Emma, was actually kind of cute but still a little scary. She was a year older than me but had failed a grade so she was in my class. We were both on the school track and field team and had qualified to compete in Vancouver for the Provincial Championships. I think she ran hurdles and the 200 meter and I threw javelin. Right before our biggest competition I was throwing very well on the practice field, with enough distance to possibly beat the provincial record for my age group. Emma decided to pick up one of the javelins and take playful aim at my feet. She was just trying to mess with me by making me jump and dance a little. Her forward thrusts into the ground with the javelin were getting harder and harder and closer and closer. I kept telling her to stop but she was one of those people without the normal shut-off valve the rest of us have. My feet were already mangled from the lawnmower, I didn’t need another accident. Sure enough, she got me.
Not only did she get me she started jumping up and down chanting this happy little mantra, “I got him, I got him, I got him.” Then she suddenly clued into reality and said in a lower, deeply concerned voice, “I got him.”
Unlike the fork in her sister’s arm the javelin didn’t stick and stand straight up. It was probably too heavy to do that so it just fell over. Instantaneously the top of my shoe turned red and by the time I got my shoe off my sock was covered in blood. She stabbed me on the top-front part of my foot. Thankfully there was no permanent damage but it hurt like hell and took a while to heal.
I never did get a chance to go for the javelin record that year… thanks to that stupid girl.
Lamont
www.lamontsongs.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
