stephenAmurphy.com

The war started when I was 6 years old.

At 6, I was a devious creature. During the summer, I would fill up my latest hand-me-down Super Soaker and scan the side of my family’s brick house for prey. Sure enough, I would see them.

Ants crawling up the wall. One pump. Two pumps. And then I would let it rain.

This is what I would do for fun during the summer.

I would also occasionally ride my bike.

And one July afternoon, I made a mistake that would haunt me for the next 15 years.

I was riding my bike down good ole Pleasant Place in Kearny, NJ, a beautiful suburban street with many large chestnut trees providing delightful shade in those hot, sticky months. Right out in front of me, I saw a squirrel dart across the sidewalk (I followed my mommy’s rules, I avoided the street at all cost).

I still don’t know why I did it. Perhaps I simply was just an evil child. But for some reason I sped up and aimed for the squirrel.

Now I was just trying to scare it, I swear.

But the squirrel got that “deer in headlights” look and froze. At the last second, I swerved away, petrified of what I had almost done. And the squirrel, regaining its mobility, sprinted up a nearby tree. In fact, I had gotten so close to it that I thought I might have even ran over part of its tail.

I was terrified to ride past that tree again, but I had to get home. Like I told you, I followed my mother’s rules. I was going to stick to the sidewalk no matter what, so I had to return to the scene of the crime.

I took a deep breath and pedaled as fast as I could. For some reason, I was scared that the squirrel would try to take its revenge.

Ridiculous, right? Wrong.

Just as I flew by the tree, the squirrel jumped out of the branches and chased me down the street. I turned to look back at it, which turned out to be a monumental error in judgment. I lost my balance and crashed into the pavement. My knees bled, my hands were red, but this was not the time to cry.

I got up and sprinted all the way home, convinced that the squirrel would attack me if it ever got its chance.

Several days later, I returned to get back my bike, my eyes alert the whole time, ready to protect myself if necessary.

But I never saw that squirrel again. But unfortunately for me, the payback was just beginning.

You might not know it, but squirrels have an intricate and extensive communication system. They must have, because from that day on, chestnuts would rain down on me any time I would walk under one of his fellow brothers’ trees.

I was Public Enemy No. 1.

This war has lasted for about a decade and a half.

But as of this week, I am pretty sure that it’s over.

It all happened on an innocent jog. I was running around Roye Park here in Stigler, and I noticed a little baby squirrel. Still alert because I have to be (you never know when they will strike), I noticed a large bird swoop down and fly just above the squirrel’s head.

My first naïve thought: “Aw, how cute. Two animals playing.”

Then I saw another similarly large bird swoop down toward the squirrel. The baby squirrel looked at me. I looked back at him. I would recognize that look anywhere. It had that same terrified expression that the squirrel from my bike incident had 15 years ago. These birds were trying to make this baby squirrel their lunch.

Now, you know I am not a squirrel advocate. We’ve certainly had our differences over the years. But the time had come. My moment for redemption had finally arrived.

Like a madman, I clapped wildly and threw my arms up in the air, running toward the two attack birds. The birds, frustrated but intimidated by my incredibly muscular arms, flew away. The baby squirrel quickly found shelter in a nearby tree but before he scrambled up to safety, he looked back to me, as if to say, “thank you.”

Knowing how impressive of a communication system the squirrel world has, I have no doubt that my heroism will be conveyed back home to New Jersey and to the rest of the squirrels worldwide.

After 15 years, squirrels and I have finally made our peace. Let the celebration begin.

When I told people that I was moving to a little town in Oklahoma called Stigler, they inevitably went to Wikipedia to get some more information on my new stomping grounds.

It was always the same old story.

“You’re going to the town that put the 10 Commandments in front of their courthouse, but couldn’t spell ‘adultery’ right?”

To much of the world, that is what Stigler is known for — its decision to perhaps push the definition of “separation of church and state” to the limits by agreeing to put a stone monument on government property. The decision, and the subsequent lawsuit by the ACLU, thrusted the small town of 3,000 into the national spotlight for a while as commentators argued if it was legal and whether or not the commandments should be allowed in such a public place.

But one notable detail was overlooked. Chiseled into the tablet, the seventh commandment read, “Thou shalt not commit adultry.” (By the way, spell check just automatically formatted it to ‘adultery’ so I had to go back and edit it)

It was the perfect punch line for far-left commentators. In their opinion, it was just a hick town that “clung” to its religion, propagating it mindlessly whatever they could. Their unintelligence was, for the commentators, confirmed by the misspelling.

And now, for anyone who checks out the Stigler Wiki page, they see the controversy and the misspelling.

I have to admit, the monument was one of the first things I checked out when I moved into town. Sure enough, there was the misspelling shining in the sun. I could not understand how it hadn’t been fixed yet. I mean, it’s kind of embarrassing to allow yourself to be the butt of a joke.

Somehow, the 10 commandments issue was brought up in the office this week, and I mentioned that I couldn’t believe the misspelling hadn’t been fixed yet.

Misspelling? What misspelling?

Without exception, every person in the office who was originally from Stigler had no idea the word was misspelled. Every person who moved to Stigler knew about the blunder.

For some reason, the misspelling just isn’t common knowledge amongst the majority of residents here. My theory is that the misspelled word wasn’t noticed right away and by the time someone did notice it, the local media decided that people were so sick of all the 10 commandment news that they didn’t publish it.

But it made its way to Wikipedia and the world knows all about it.

I’m thinking about writing an article for the newspaper about it, but for now, I decided to just settle on the blog entry. I don’t mind the commandments at the courthouse, though I can sympathize with both sides of the argument. I just think we should fix it.

Let’s raise some money, and do this adultery thing right. Well, you know what I mean.

I just discovered that my former principal of grammar school has checked out the blog. That triggered a flashback for me, so without further ado, I present to you some of the fine moments of my experience at St. Stephen School in Kearny, NJ.

Pre-K: The fingerpainting. It was clear from an early age that I would not become an artist. Also, the little-kid bathrooms. Finally, a room that didn’t seem ginormous.

Kindergarten: I don’t remember much from class, but I do remember the great, late Mrs. Higgins, our teacher. A cheerful, round woman who loved her kids, I had the unfortunate occurence of elbowing her in the stomach at church when she grabbed my shoulder from behind. I had thought that it was one of my obnoxious older brothers, so I went in for the kill. My bad, Mrs. Higgins. She was always a tough lady though. She barely grimaced at the time.

First Grade: I remember we used to have foot races after lunch. My speed was unmatched.

Second grade: The beginning of my obsession with The Boxcar Children.

Third Grade: I remember I got detention for something — I was always a problem child — and I sprinted all the way home so I could get home before my parents got home so they wouldn’t find out. Actually, looking back, I’m surprised they released me on my own. Do schools still do that?

Fourth Grade: A lot of connect four. Once again, I dominated. In fact, that may have been my true calling.

Fifth grade: Some paratrooper game on the computer. Good times…

Sixth grade: I think that might have been the year we rebuilt Rome as a class. Ryan G. and I (well, mostly Ryan) recreated the Roman Road to perfection. My cousin Burlick and his clan tried to build the original Colosseum out of sugar cubes but their time management was so bad that they only wound up making a fairly realistic version of the current Colosseum — complete with gaping holes.

Seventh grade: I remember one moment where Mrs. Lott was super mad at the class for something. But I was daydreaming and wondering if I could, on command, wink with both of my eyes. So I began idly practicing as she admonished the group, until Mrs. Lott incredulously screamed, “Mr. Murphy, are you winking at me?!?” Even with her anger, I think she was a bit amused.

Eighth grade: Dodge ball in gym class. These are the moments that prepare you for high school.

* * * * *

The Dirt Devil might be one of the greatest machines of all time.

The amount of filth it has picked up from my carpets is both alarming and very impressive.

Yes, today I finally got the urge to clean my apartment up. It looks and feels like a new place. A 22-year-old living alone does not always live in the cleanest of environments, and that has been true of me the past few months.

But today, out of nowhere, I decided to go on a cleaning binge. Swifters on the floors, vacuum on the carpets, 409 on every table top around.

So, world, if you’re thinking about visiting me in Stigler, Oklahoma, there is no better time than the present. Because you know this won’t last long…

It happened over a month ago, but it exemplified some of the differences between Oklahoma and the Northeast, so I thought it’d make for a good entry.

It was Good Friday, the start of Easter weekend. Management decided to call it an early day, and encouraged people to leave after lunch. In fact, they even had a barbecue for lunch.

Yeah, that wouldn’t fly in the Northeast. I can just imagine some guy in Boston proposing a barbecue on Good Friday — he’d be called a heathen before he finished the sentence.

It is Catholic tradition that you give up meat on Fridays during Lent. Until 1962 at an ecumenical council, Catholics weren’t supposed to eat meat on any Friday during the year. Not everyone minded the inconvenience, especially Italian restaurants. A lot of cheese pizzas were ordered in these days.

But less and less people were observing the rule, so the Catholic Church did away with it, limiting it only to Lenten Fridays.

Most Protestant religions do not have the rule, although they did at one time. It supposedly started in 1548, not for spiritual or religious reasons, but to help the fisherman market.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out one of those cultural differences…

Related posts: The Catholic Guy, Jesus and Vasectomies

It was love at first sight.

I walked into Wimberly’s furniture store in Quinton and my gaze immediately latched onto a beautiful dark chocolate-y brown leather loveseat couch. I walked over to it, petted it affectionately, and knew that it was the one.

I gave my puppy-eyes look to my mother, who was in town helping me furnish my new apartment. She agreed begrudgingly.

Yes, I thought that it was my dream couch. Incredible comfort, a built-in cup holder, it seemed like a 20-something-year-old’s fantasy. But little did I know that it would become a nightmare of mythic proportions.

I’ve had that couch for two months, and don’t get me wrong, I am still a big fan. It is comfortable and easy to clean. But there is one glaring problem.

The cracks and crevices of the couch are evil. The couch has an appetite the size of Kobayashi’s (or should I say Joey Chestnut?) and they don’t like spitting anything out.

This isn’t an old fashioned couch where you can simply remove the cushions so to see if something fell into it; you need to squeeze your arm into the side of the couch or lay down on the ground and try to crawl underneath it when it’s reclined to see if anything made it to the ground. It’s not an easy task, and one that I have had to do far too often in recent weeks.

But last week, the couch had gone too far. Its twisted sense of humor had crossed the line.

I was watching Lebron James and the Cavaliers continue their playoff run on ESPN. Like any modest sports fan, I like me some Lebron. But as games tend to do, it ended and the network proceeded to its next scheduled programming.

It was NASCAR.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disapprove of the NASCAR crowd. People love it, and good for them. After all, I’m a soccer fan and most of America can’t come to grips with that, so I’m not about to critique another person’s tastes in sports. But I, for one, can’t watch it. I refuse to.

I may be living in the Midwest, and there are some things I have allowed myself to do (say y’all and howdy, fire a gun). And there are many more things that I will allow myself to do. And perhaps NASCAR will fit into the latter category one day. But not today. At least so I thought.

But on this particular day, I had no choice.

The remote had been swallowed and since I was in an online poker tournament with internet access only in my living room, I couldn’t leave my couch. I was being forced to watch NASCAR. Yes, it’s a cruel and funny world.

(By the way, the phrase “cruel and funny world” reminded me of the Toby Keith song, “How do you like me now?” Yes, I am officially getting in too deep.)

Because I have one of those new age TVs that don’t expect people to ever need to approach it to touch it, it doesn’t have a power button or a button to lower the volume. So for the next several minutes, I watched a lot of people make a lot of left turns. It was enthralling.

Finally, my poker tournament ended and I went to get my emergency flashlight that I keep for tornados and power outages and I searched the couch. I felt like a surgeon as I masterfully and delicately removed the remote from the beast’s grasp.

It may look ridiculous, but I am seriously considered scotch-taping some string onto the remote and pasting it to my wall so that never happens again. Anyone have any better ideas?

This story is about a week old now, and it’s been flooding all the major networks and media outlets. All the same, I figure some of you, who might only get your news from stephenAmurphy.com, might have missed it.

So, if you haven’t seen it yet, I present to you undoubtedly the best sports story of the year, courtesy of ESPN.

NANOWRIMO UPDATE: 5,024 words, 13 pages. Very far off pace already (I should be at about 9,600), but still a decent chunk of writing. It would help if my writing partner in crime would keep up so I could get motivated… but some of us use that excuse of “kids” and “work” as to why they can’t write. Pssh…

Of course, my excuse is that I have a laptop that is a decade old and is so incredibly slow, it’s hard to believe. It took me an hour to write this — I had to restart so many times and wait five minutes for even twenty words to appear and catch up. Very frustrating indeed. One of these days, I will get a computer that works.

Randomly, Samuel L. Jackson is the man.

The guys (and gals) who made the freecreditreport.com commercials. They’re just so catchy.

Megan visited a couple of weeks ago, and we decided to go to a restaurant that she had read about. It was called The Melting Pot.

It’s actually a pretty innovative chain with several locations around the country (the one we went to was in Tulsa). It’s an upscale, swanky restaurant with a dark and earthy décor, but its true claim to fame is how they cook and serve their food.

They believe in the great art of fondue, which involves cooking something in a communal dish over a small burner. Basically, they provide the food. You get to cook it. And they charge a little bit more for the “experience.”

Sound like a rip-off to you? Yeah, me too, but I decided to humor Megan and go along for the ride.

It was a disaster.

The beginning was pleasant enough. A lovely hostess sat us down in our private booth and told us that our waiter would be with us shortly.

When he finally arrived 20 minutes later, he looked like an anvil had just fallen onto his head.

He was dazed and confusing, mumbling, “Hi, My name is Chris and I will be your server.”

We looked up at him. He looked down at us. Then, there was silence. Horrible, awful, awkward (but not awkward in the cool way) silence. We were just waiting for him to say something, anything at all.

Like… “Our specials today are…” or “Do you have any questions…?” or “Is this your first time at The Melting Pot…?” or “What would you like to drink…?” But he said nothing. Nor did he leave the table. He just stood there.

Finally, I spoke up.

“Yeah, I’ll have a Coke,” I said.

“Oh, OK,” he said.

Then, I thought better of it. “Actually, I’m going to need something with a little alcohol.” So, I ordered something with both booze and chocolate (how could one go wrong with that combo?) and Megan also ordered a drink.

He didn’t write down our drink orders. He just said OK. It was like a bad sitcom plot getting ready to unfold. He wandered anyway.

“What is up with that guy?” I asked Megan.

“I know,” she said, laughing. Then, we realized what the date was. It was April 20, or 4/20. For the older generation out there, this is the date where every degenerate young person feels like it is appropriate to puff the dragon, as they say, or engage in the marijuana.

Yes, on 4/20, we went to a restaurant called, “The Melting Pot.”

You can’t make this stuff up. So much for leaving all the stoner hippies in LA.

Sure enough, another 20 minutes later, he arrived with the wrong drinks. Having had plenty of experience dealing with high people thanks to my time in Hollyweed, I told him to just leave the drinks, make sure they were free, and go back and correct our order.

Eventually, and I mean eventually, we got our food. The food itself was good, but the service was as bad it could have possibly been. I probably should have said something to the manager, because this meal was far from cheap even with our freebies, but I avoid confrontation whenever possible.

So I just stiffed him on the tip.

I only gave him $4.20 — still more than I wanted to give, but it allowed me to feel witty. And isn’t that what life is all about?

The Melting Pot, the restaurant with the world’s worst service.

It’s called NaNoWriMo.

And it will consume my life for the next 31 days.

The past couple of weeks, I was charging my batteries. I’m not going to apologize for not writing, in the spirit of Leslie and this article. But I will let you know that I am planning on continuing this blog whole-heartedly, with the return of daily updates and the promise of upcoming articles on such intriguing topics as what kids do for fun around here, the local Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the probably soon-to-be Oklahoma City SuperSonics.

But for now, I will tell you about my newest adventure — NaNoWriMo.

It stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it was started by some yuppies in San Francisco in 1999. A bunch of would-be authors decided they needed some extra motivation to write that book they were always talking about, so they all decided that in the period of one month, they would just pour themselves into their Microsoft Word documents and crack out a 50,000 word masterpiece. Well, it is debatable if any masterpieces came but it is undeniable that a lot of words were written.

Twenty-one people participated and had such a good time in their efforts that they decided to create a web site for it, encouraging more people to join in the madness. Year 2, in 2000, attracted 140 ambitious people, 21 of whom reached the 50,000 word goal. The project has grown exponentially ever since. Last year, over 100,000 people participated, with just over 15,000 reaching the goal.

For the record, 50,000 words (or roughly 175 pages) is no joke, especially for such a short period of time. That’s more than 1,600 words a day. To provide some perspective, this post will be about 650 words.

Not easy to write so much and so frequently about one topic, but then again, not impossible.

I’ve always wanted to write a novel. I’ve tried at two points in my life. Once, when I was about 8 years old. I loved The Boxcar Children when I was younger, so I decided to write my own fan-fiction version of it. I’m pretty sure I never made it to Page 2.

The last time I tried was at the end of my senior year of high school. I wrote somewhere between 25-50 pages, I think, but didn’t really like where I was heading with it.

Pretty soon into my freshman year of college, I realized that I didn’t know much about writing. I’m certainly not claiming I do now, but I think I understand a little bit more what I’m doing. I have two LMU college professors to thank for that, Chuck Rosenthal and Michael Datcher.

They both have their entirely own unique style, but both men have had a profound influence on how I write and how I think about writing.

With their teaching, I progressed slowly but surely. Perhaps now I have the skills to write something worth reading. Perhaps not. Time will tell.

Manuel, one of my superiors in the office (the arrogant overlord scoffed when I referenced him in an entry as a co-worker), first told me about NaNoWriMo a couple of months ago.

It is originally designed for November, but I couldn’t wait that long. Plus, November is football season and I expect to be especially immersed in my job then. We’re both certainly busy now, but if not now, when?

So today the two of us will start our own NaNoWriMo. He will probably write about a world of fantasy, while I will write Autofiction.

Here’s hoping that by midnight on May 31, I will have written 50,000 words.

(Note: Thanks to all the people who kept checking my blog despite the lack of entries, and thanks for the encouragement to get back to it.)