As I was driving down I-275 west on my way home from work today, I noticed something weird in the corner of my eye. It was white, and it was moving … right on the edge of the woods. I slowed down a bit to try to get a better look, when I suddenly saw something surprising.

It was an arm.

I quickly pulled off to the side of the road and put my hazard lights on, backing up until I got to the spot where I had seen it … and sure enough, there was a man crawling out of the woods, desperately waving his hand in hopes of getting someone’s attention.

I stopped my car and ran across the I-75 north exit ramp, where the picture became clearer. The man was on all fours with his head hanging to the ground, and behind him, in the trees, sat a totally smashed car. This older businessman, dressed in a white shirt with nice black pants and shoes with blood splatters here and there, had driven straight off of the road and crashed at highway speeds (there were no skid marks anywhere) into the edge of the woods.

I ran to him and asked him to lie face-down in the grass, then dialed 911. I then sat down in front of his head, holding his neck to try to stabilize his spine. As I was explaining our location to the dispatcher, a couple more cars stopped by, and we were able to ascertain that he had been traveling alone and that he had severe pain in his neck and back. One woman was an x-ray technician who thought to get his wallet and ask him about family … he had none, aside from his wife, who was in a hospital far away. Another woman who stopped had seen the accident … she reported that he had been run off of the highway by a semi-truck.

Thankfully, after a few minutes, the police and ambulance arrived, and we handed off the situation to the professionals. They put his neck in a brace, rolled him onto a stretcher, then asked us a few questions before carting him off to the hospital. And that was it.

So if you can, pray for John tonight. He is probably alone.

You know, there are two kinds of seashells that tend to catch my eye …

I like those tiny ones, the kind that seem to wash up in the millions, tumbling over each other and hiding in the sand. They all kinda look the same, until you make an effort to bend down real close and examine them. Then it becomes clear that they’re actually quite amazing, surprising little packages of color and pattern that only hint at the grand shells they could one day become. I like to pick them up, roll them around in my hand, rinse them off, then toss them back in the mighty ocean … these little guys are all about potential.

I also like the big colorful broken shells, the ones stepped over by dozens of beach combers because of their imperfections. They may be cracked and incomplete, but if you really stop and look at them, it’s clear that their fragments tell marvelous stories, hinting at long journeys and terrible conflicts and stubborn strength. I like to wonder where they’ve been and imagine what they looked like in their former glory … these guys are all about adventure.

You know, there are two kinds of people that tend to catch my eye …

When I was a young kid, maybe 10 or 12 years old, my brother HP had a car with a magic pedal in it. It was amazing, really … whenever we were sitting at a traffic light, he could hit this pedal and the light would instantly turn from red to green! He could seriously control traffic signals from inside the car … so cool, and quite convenient when we were in a rush!

It wasn’t until years later that I realized the truth … that he was simply watching the intersecting street’s traffic light and pressing the clutch just in time for the light change. It’s too bad, really … cause I could really use one of those.

In China, many of the delicious dishes you could order in restaurants were fat-based. And I’m talking just fat … not pork or beef or anything like that, but straight up cooked fat and veggies. It was actually pretty delicious, but it took a little while to get used to.

One time when I went to the doctor for some skin problems (mostly from the polluted and damp air), he actually prescribed it … I had to eat about a fist-worth of lard every day for two weeks. Mmm … scrumptious!

Funny, sure. But it does raise some big questions, I think. We’re told, over and over, that eating fat is bad for you … but almost every dish in Hunan (where I lived) was soaked in oil and fat, and the people were, by and large (pun intended), incredibly skinny!

So where do we get our strong ideas about diet and nutrition, and how accurate are they? Are we just taking the word of the food industry, which some say is the second-largest industry in America (behind pharmaceuticals)? It has thousands of lobbyists and unbelievable marketing budgets … should we be connecting those dots a little more?

So … I was just awoken from a deep sleep by the sound of my phone’s alarm in the other room. By instinct, I hurriedly got up and followed the noise, hoping to turn it off before it woke up the tenants upstairs.

When I got to the piano bench, where I had left the phone, I suddenly heard a tremendously loud crash, felt my nose go numb, and looked up to find myself flat on the floor.

Wha?

Turns out that I had gotten up a little too quickly … I had passed out, fallen face-first into the bench, and sent it (and myself) crashing to the floor. And as the numbness started to spread to the rest of my face, I had a valuable epiphany … summer mornings are supposed to be s.l.o.w.

Today I drove halfway to school before realizing that I was still wearing my slippers. I had to turn around and drive all the way back to get my shoes … but now I kinda wish that I hadn’t. My feet would’ve been much happier!

Every three or four weeks during my year in China, I would go to the local salon for some special treatment. They’d shampoo it up, massage my scalp and shoulders, cut my hair, shampoo and massage it again, clean out my ears (and eyes, if I wanted), blow dry my hair, and style it however I wanted. An hour of pampered service … for two dollars and fifty cents!

Now it’s just me and my clippers in the bathroom on a Friday night.

Every autumn, my school lets the students out early one Friday afternoon for a huge extended outdoor party called Fall Festival. Students from all four schools come to the middle school backyard, tons of rides and games and prizes are brought out, and a good time is had by all.

For my contribution, I always pull out my old Glee Club tuxedo, red tie and all, and take a one-hour shift in the dunking booth. It’s pretty fun … after hearing my taunts about their bad aim and seeing my over-confidence all week, my students show up in droves to humiliate me, over and over. This year they were particularly accurate … I must’ve been dunked over a hundred times!

I was searching for some information about my school on Google News today when I stumbled upon a few shots of me in the dunk tank on the Cincinnati Enquirer website. Nothing too special, but it’s always fun to accidentally find yourself online!

There’s a moth in my shower. How is that possible?

As I was eating lunch outside at work today, I noticed one of my coworkers coming into the school dressed to the hilt. I had never before seen him in a suit, let alone one as nice as this one … so I had to tease him a little.

I yelled, “Wow … why so spiffy, Gilbert? Did someone die?”

The other teachers chuckled a little … then he stopped, looked up, and said, “Yeah.” Apparantly, he was coming from a funeral.

I’m just glad that Gilbert has a sense of humor.

My cousin Erica has encouraged me to write more stories online. She’s right … my busyness and disinterest lately have turned this blog into a blahg. Hopefully this choice morsel will help.

A couple of days ago, I was going to the post office to mail two packages back to America (a four-hour ordeal that deserves its own story). I carried one of the packages to the front gate of my school, returning a couple of minutes later to retrieve the second package. When I entered my apartment through the door that I had left ajar, however, I heard someone moving in my bedroom.

Now in America, I would have been pretty cautious and “smart” in this situation. In China, however, I’ve become pretty bold … I’m generally bigger, stronger, and louder than everyone else, so I’m rarely afraid of confrontations. Plus, people simply don’t have guns. So I immediately walked toward my bedroom to take care of the problem.

As I entered my office, I saw a little girl, about 6 or 7 years old, pulling up her shorts and underwear. Ok … weird. I looked at her face to try to gauge what was happening, and I saw that she was a little surprised, but not scared at all … in fact, she was smiling pretty broadly, like she was proud of herself.

Then I looked down and saw the puddle.

Yeah … this random little girl was grinning because she had just had peed on the floor in the middle of my office! I was pretty helpless … I couldn’t ask her any questions or talk to her about it or anything. So I took her hand and said, “wo men zo” (let’s go), walking her outside towards the front gate of the school, where I was going to try to explain to the guards what had happened and find out where she belonged.

During our walk, I noticed that her demeanor was calm … she still wasn’t frightened at all, as most children would be when “caught” like that, especially by a foreigner. She just looked around and smiled. In a way, her behavior actually reminded me the children with autism who I worked with in college.

As I tried to empathize with her bizarre behavior, we rounded a corner and ran into a man who I could immediately tell was her father. He asked her where she had been (she didn’t answer) then thanked me profusely. And that was that. All I could do was walk home and continue my day, as if nothing had ever happened.

At least I hadn’t yet given away my mop. Or my bleach.

Weddings are sometimes a pain for me. All of the grandmas poke me and say, “You’re next!”

Now I know what to do. I’m going to start doing it to them at funerals.

Today I started keeping track of how many mosquitos I assassinated in my apartment. I have thirty seven confirmed kills.

Someone told me yesterday that “my style looks like Elvis”.

This morning as I walked to class, a group of junior one (sixth grade) students ran up to me and started yelling, “Haaa-looooo, lao-wai!” (”Hello, foreigner!”). One of them was smoking, right in my face, with no shame or fear or second thoughts … so I threw his cancer stick on the ground and forcefully dragged him to the office to turn him in. When I reported his actions to the teacher, she simply asked him his name and said, “Students are not allowed to smoke on campus.”

I politely smiled then walked to class … where for 45 minutes I confronted junior one students who were eating, drawing on desks, passing notes, talking in Chinese, throwing pens at each other, and reading pornographic books. During my class.

Ah, finally … things are getting back to normal around here!