#one Christmas she gave me like 8 dollars in quarters and it was probably my favorite gift that year

[stopfunkinwmyheart]

[eriklehnsherrific]

in honor of the apush exam on friday

the apush exam is on friday so here is the ongoing list of quotes my classmates and I have been keeping since october:

“Yee-oh man farmers”-Will, 10/17/18

“Leaving out Will?! That’s like vote-kicking Canada!!” - Josh 10/17/18

“Elecatorical college”- Rishon, 10/17/18

“The Alien and Sedation Act”- Rishon, 10/17/18

“What is really really really significant about the political changes was”- Rishon, 10/18/18

“This class is the class that will destroy you” - Megan, 10/19/18

“‘I don’t want to work hard for him, he’s not smiling’”- Mr. Brown, 10/19/18

“I don’t even know what that means, but lets get it” - Rishon, 10/19/18

“My stomach is like...hungry” - Rishon 10/19/18

“Hey Ethan, do you have reading due tomorrow for Catch the Rider? (Catcher in the Rye)” - Rishon, 10/22/18

“If you can confuse the reader, then you are winning” - Will, 10/22/l18

“Is that a letter of the alphabet or, like… a physical letter?” - Ethan, 10/23/18

“Who can use their tail-hand the best?” Logan Durant, 10/26/18

“Nothing like sucking up a week before end of the quarter” Mr. Brown, 10/26/18

“Mr. Brown, I’m deeply hurt”-Ethan

“That’s okay”-Mr. Brown 10/26/18

“Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Wait, no no no no… no… no… just... no” Rishon, 10/26/18

“I’m not going to risk wrinkling my suit!” - Ethan 10/29/18

“You can’t suppress poor people” - Josh 11/5/18

(Answers a question on slavery) “what did I just say?” -Will 11/7/18

“Do we need more analyzing? What is the level of analyzation we need?” - Sophia 11/7/18

“Is cotton edible?”- Ethan 11/8/18

“Hope! It gives them hope” - Josh 11/8/18

“What if we use Kansas as symbolism for the US?” - Josh 11/9/18

“Are there any fish that blow themselves up?” - Ethan 11/14/18

“How are crabs terrorists?” - Ethan 11/14/18

“Good ol’ slap stick” (During the Birth of the Nation) - Joel 11/16/18

“That doesn’t mean that honey mustard, barbecue, and mayo are not relevant” - Rishon (during class meeting) 11/20/18

“Snowfile”-Will 11/26/18

“What is manifest destiny?” -Mr. Brown “Ties into a lot of god and stuff” -Will 11/27/18

*Josh dabs at the mention of Nazism* - Josh, 11/28/18

“The plural of wheat is wheats” - Ethan 11/28/18

“Wheats is my favorite word” - Ethan 11/30/18

“I don’t know where I was going with that [rambling for 2 minutes] but . . . It was hard” - Rishon 12/3/18

“America, domes and wheats” - Lisa, 12/3/18

“You get wheat. Farmers have a lot of wheat. Wheats, if you will. Starting with big agriculture, farmers have lots of wheats. Wheatses!” - Josh/Joel, 12/3/18

“YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE!” - Josh, 12/11/18

“Stealing is fun”-Ethan, 12/13/18

“Ellis Island is like the TSA but the stakes are higher” - Josh, 12/13/18

“Austria-Hungaria” - Joel, 12/14/18

“MIchael Pheleps” - Rishon 12/18/18

“Can we bring cookies?”-Afra“sure if I don’t know about it”- Mr. Brown 12/18/18

“So its bad...it’s not good” -Rishon 12/20/18

“...you just cut me off to say you don’t know?” - Mr. Brown 12/20/18

“Joel are you balding?” - Ethan 12/20/18

“Simpleton sandwich: two pieces of bread, one slice of cheese” -Will 12/20/18

“So I called my historical critique ‘The Frontier Thesis is a piece of trash and so is Frederick Jackson Turner’ to make myself angry, but I forgot to change it before I submitted it. So the official title was ‘The Frontier Thesis is a piece of trash and so is Frederick Jackson Turner’”-Lisa 12/20/18

I can’t put the picture in here but Rishon deadass thought Ellis Island was called both Essil and Easter Island

“100 dollars… you can buy two fishtanks with that!” -Will 1/3/19

“But I don’t want you to get the idea that they just sent legions of young people down into the mines and said ‘1...2...3…’, and then they sneezed and out came the gold and the silver.” -Mr. Brown 1/4/19

“What type of currency is the United States’ dollar?”-Mr. Brown “Imaginary”-Josh 1/4/19

“We don’t heat our house with the oven, Rishon!”-Ethan, 1/7/19

“How do deaf people program?” -Will 1/9/19

“Say your sorrys”-Rishon 1/9/19

“When your father asks you if you wanna be an arborist…” -Ethan 1/9/19

“ save the kisses for your future wife”-Rishon“ I don't have a future wife”- Will 1/9/19

“Her husband… was like… her chicken” -Lisa, 1/10/19

“William Taft is more like a sourdough loaf”-Aliya 1/11/19

“She Rishoned it”-Mr. Brown, 1/11/19

“John Rolphee”-Rishon 1/15/19

“Give me liberty or give me education” - Josh 1/15/19

“I love how you are holding hands. You can’t do that on the test, but it’s cute”-Mr. Brown “No, that wasn’t… ok”-Rishon, 1/16/19

“If we annex Hawaii, we can stop Pearl Harbor”-Ethan 1/30/19

“The HawaYEET Act” - Logan 1/30/19

“When I read it, I was like, ‘wow’” -Afra 1/31/19

“The big whack”- Ethan 1/31/19

“It will be like the Second World War...except we’ll win this time…” - Megan 1/31/19

“We should colonize Russia so we can rule the world!” - Megan German 1/31/19

“And the politicians are like ‘I can oppress my people now!’ Then WHAM! Right back at ya!” - Ethan 1/31/19

“Note to self, Mr. Brown does not like aliens”- Will 2/1/19

“Treaty of Guadeloup”- Will, 2/1/19

*after falling asleep at 11:30 with book in hand* “these are naysayers” -Ethan (date unknown

)“What was the name of the international organization for workers that had a really funny name?”-Mr. Brown “The Comintern!”-Will 2/12/18

“If you go to QCC you are a KKK member”-Tom 2/12/18

“America was suffering but luckily Pearl Harbor came to the rescue”-Josh 2/12/18

(On rabbit bashing) “Can this be equated to playing a father-son game of catch?”-Ethan, 2/13/18

(On The Dust Bowl) “It’s like Christmas, but not fun” Will 2/27/19

“And the banks gave loans to… which also happened in 2008 or so…?” - Mr. Brown “Terrorists?” - Josh 2/2/7

“Rishon is that a juice box you’re drinking?”- Mr. Brown*Everyone looks back* “Nah, he’s just drinking chocolate milk”- Ethan 3/5/19

“Did the water get intoxicated?” Rishon 3/12/19

“He’s a comfy man”-Ethan, talking about Will’s shoulder 3/21/19

Ethan: “Can I go to the bathroom?” Mr. Brown: “So you can get out of doing work?” Ethan: “Of course not!” Mr. Brown:“Are you going to go vape?” 3/29/19

“We need a Google Doc Renaissance”-Will 3/29/19

“ Mr. Brown can I go to the bathroom?”-Ethan “Why, so you can juul?”-Mr.Brown

“It’s like an in class field trip, but not fun” -will 4/1/19

Afra: *Making the Unit 6 map on the board *Mr. Brown:  “On the board, write methods” Afra: *writes ‘Meth’*4/5/19

“Scums” Rishon 4/3/19

“Look at how big Reagan’s gavel is!” - Ethan

“Big Gavel Energy”-Lisa 4/10/19 “BGE” -Ethan

“Barack Obama. I was trying to remember his first name”-Stefanie 4/29/19

“My life can be summed up into two parts: pre depression and depression” -Stefanie “My life before and after APUSH”-Sufana 4/29/19

“Manifest Destiny. Manifestiny”-Sufana 4/29/19

“I’m going to make it prettier this time. I’m going to make it horizontal.” - Lisa 4/29/19

“This class has a very strange dynamic. Half of us are depressed and the other half would make Narcissus look insecure.” - Sufana 4/27/19

“Battle of Yemen (Yorktown)” -Rishon 4/29/19

“The John Smith Era”-Rishon 4/29/19

“Big Stick Diplomacy”-Mr Brown “Big Stick Energy”-Stefanie 4/30/19 

“We will talk about dictators and leaders of genocide, but not bad actors” Mr. Brown (About Nicolas Cage) 4/30/19

“National Treasure is one of my favorite movies and one of my family’s favorite movies. We’ve watched it more than eight times probably” - Stefanie “Wow. Now I’ve lost all my respect for both you AND your family” - Mr. Brown 4/30/19

“Our APUSH class is just one big support group” - Stefanie (5/1/19)

“1908 supreme court case that gave women a 10 hour work day”- Mr. Brown“Women v United States? Just kidding that’s every day”-Megan 5/7/19

i’m sure we’ll say more dumb shit once the exam is over. for now, happy testing and goodluck!

[kaceybruce]

31+ days with no social media..

If being on your phone isn't a problem for you.. carry on warriors.. but it is for this house hold.. and the ironic part is I have always hated this electronic leash.. the only reason I bought a cell phone for myself at 19 was because I moved out on my own and thought.. its probably time to feel safe while living on my own.. 

when pagers were a thing.. my boyfriend at the time bought me one in case he needed to get ahold of me.. and I LITERALLY REFUSED and told him i wasn't about the “ electronic leash” haha.. funny thing is it involved pulling over at a gas station to find a quarter to make a pay phone phone call.. 

what.a.waste.of.time.

well flash forward a dozen years and here we are.. I am no saint.. by any means.. but the more and more I saw my kids feining for it.. and fighting over it.. umm hello I just gave you this so mama could sleep in.. and whining for it.. I knew it was a giant problem in this house.. but like most.. I still justified  giving it to them in small doses.. FYI small doses are torture.. it doesn't benefit anyone.. 

they played games.. and watched “tv” aka you tube which is just the worst thing on the planet for kids.. I watched Olive literally changing right in front of me.. so much vanity and feeling less then.. her friend at the time used to send me craigslist adds (to my cell phone) with phones I have to buy for olive.. “its only 85 dollars!!!!” which started fights between me and olive because its all she wanted.. its all her friends had that she didn't have.. and she would LITERALLY ask me 50 times a day for one.. then whine and cry and flail her body to the ground until I lost my marbles.. I quickly realized that my other 2 weren't like that.. did they love building homes on mind craft and setting cats on fire.. 

sure.. 

gulp.. I had no idea this was a thing until the summer.. 

but when I told them to hand back the devices.. they went ok. then went back to lego and coloring and watching Dora or whoever graced our tv.. Olive.. not so much.. 

there are dozens of these pics on my phone.. as much work as we have done separating them from devices over the last year.. she still picks it up.. flips up the camera and takes photos of herself.. 

is she feeling herself? absolutely!

do I want her to be confident? 100%! 

do I want her thinking most of her self worth comes from how people see her through likes and comments and like this.. HELL NO..

but when the make up questions.. and mentioning how she was too small and too skinny and not like other girls.. and the crop tops and the pulled up way too high pants came to be.. I took stock.. because here I was.. fighting tooth and nail for myself and these kids to have a childhood.. and me actually do things I love instead of zoning out on on social media.. here we were.. in the hamster wheel.. with every one else.. 

I made a conscious choice to not bring iPads into my home.. I have a desk top.. and an old phone kicking around.. and so whenever we go to the mall.. the apple store is always a must..  

I was also starting to do some take down from Christmas and I had a little poinsettia plant that had been thriving all December.. and I plopped it on my little table where the modem sits.. and within 8 hours.. the plant closest to the modem shriveled and died.. 

the other side of the plant.. fresh and full still.. wifi waves are a whole other ball field though.. so I digress.. 

so.. with 2020 arriving.. me and my sis and friend started a one year challenge.. and every month we will focus on a different thing.. get together at the end of the month.. or FaceTime.. and talk about it.. so month one.. without a doubt was the pull of social media.. or what I though was social media.. turns out.. I was about to learn very big lessons about myself.. 

I decided to take notes in my phone of the process.. which I thought would be super easy and give me a few weeks to clean out my closets and get some things done and feel good again and move on.. except I can feel the shift in the air.. and I don't want to go back there.. 

also.. I read Glow Kids.. kindle it.. order it on amazon.. you will never be the same.. 

Day 1: actual irritability and jone-sing - I remember thinking.. oh shoot.. why did I pick January 1.. I want to hear and read everyones new years resolutions! and see their Christmas photos.. I also could not sit still on the couch watching a tv show.. every time the Handmaids Tale credits came on.. boom.. quick check.. oh wait.. theres nothing there.. Ill check the weather and my email.. also.. handmaids tale is one of the best shows I have started in a very long time.. and I couldn't take my eyes off it.. except when I had 10 seconds of credits until the next one started.. 

you guys.. I was SO up to date on the Arctic storms weather patterns.. I would literally talk about it with anyone that would listen.. snow starts at 1! cold front coming in! 5-10 cm!! like who the f cares.. I was at home with my kids building snowmen.. I did not need to know what was happening for all the activities I wasn't leaving the house for.. 

Day 5 -  woke up with my own thoughts - I actually wrote that.. it was so foreign to me to wake up.. roll over and look out the window and think about my own things.. what to do.. fun stuff with the kids.. where should I go.. that I actually took note of it.. it wasn't .. alarm clock.. oh someone text last night.. quick email.. instagram.. 

Day 7 - random people I follow are popping up into my brain that I miss and want to know information about.. I also went into a safari internet spiral and started googling random things.. example: how tall is Vana White? 

Day 9 - wanting to just mindlessly scroll.. I realized I actually have moments throughout the day where I just walk up stairs.. plop on my comfy bed with a view of real life out my window and just want to scroll.. like its a little reward treat that I have earned myself.. 

Day 10 - Desperately want to cheat and go on instagram.. it was also snowing and I couldn't rely on fb to tell me that the schools were closed in the morning.. so I actually had to find out how to access this information.. also.. shout out to the 4 friends who sent me text messages in the morning knowing I wasn't on social media.. LOVE Y”ALL.. 

also.. watching my screen time and seeing that I still had a boat load of pick ups.. even 10 days in without achieving the social media part of it.. I quickly started realizing its the phone in general that was giving me the dopamine hits.. instagram just fills in the nosey part of me.. picks ups were still in the 3 digit.. like I said.. I was alllll over this winter storm.. 

Day 13 - havent thought about insta to fb.. started the sweat challenge ( kayla insine) and didn't numb out and scroll and out it off because I deserved to sit on my but for an hour.. still picking it up all the time.. so I started an exercise program/challenge.. 

Day 15 - down right sick of myself and the phone..  ok.. 15 days in.. lines were drawn.. and now I am just annoyed with myself.. in a get a freaking life kind of way.. realized the phone is the problem.. the flipping phone.. i carry it everywhere.. and my goal of having a charging station at the front door where its left upon home arrival.. has just never happened.. 

Day 19 - Missing out on Meetings and info by not being online.. specifically fb.. random people keep popping into my brain.. now that the winter storm is over I am asking myself why I am picking up my phone and checking the upcoming rain.. aka.. I don't care.. at this point I see much more clearly.. and am getting mad at myself.. I have erased most apps off my phone.. and now its just making me angry that the habit to pick it up is still there.. why am I picking up this phone??? 

Day 23 - out of no where at work.. I've just started using my phone for texting only and actually going a few hours at a time and think.. oh. I havent even checked my email! 3 weeks in and there was a a palpable shift.. I felt it.. I thought.. of.. 21 days to break a habit.. is this it? I am leaving my phone around the house more.. and on my desk when I go for lunch.. the craving to always touch it is cut by 75%

Day 24 - went to shoppers to buy some shampoo and had this overwhelming urge to buy a magazine.. like back when I was addicted and thrilled to buy magazines. .I wanted to sit and read.. if you knew me back in the no phone days.. or even flip phone days haha.. you know I loved magazines.. US weekly and people specifically.. when I was living downtown.. my friday morning ritual was going to the 7 11 across from my apartment.. buying a diet pepsi.. soft cheezies and my US magazine.. and lord have mercy when they weren't updated.. I had also just purchased my first Mac laptop.. and was just starting to use email.. and I can't remember if the websites were celebrity gossip were there yet.. which is why I so heavily relied on hearing about my trashy addiction through paper.. I came home and curled up on my couch with a blanket looking out the window and read the magazine with absolute pleasure.. the only time I now buy magazines is at the airport.. and truth be told my attention span is so short that I just flip through and fast and hope the plane doesn't crash.. 

Day 26 - went out and had no desire to take photos of what we were doing - this was a big one.. I love taking photos.. always have.. before it was a my cameras.. and disposable cameras.. and my moms old phone i BEGGED her to let me use and buy really expensive film for.. but I found myself at a new pool with the kids just there.. and present and having fun.. 

Day 28 - having actual inspirational thoughts. it felt like a few years since I have had this.. wanting to plan summer and home things - this one is really sad for me to write.. after reading Glow Kids and knowing I was just a big apart of the problem.. he said.. if you think you don't have a problem.. go on your phone for an hour and a half.. do whatever you want to do.. bounce around.. take it all in.. then put your phone beside you and pick up a book.. I did this on day 1 of the challenge and even while reading glow kids ;) my brain just bounced to it.. to the little red message indicator.. to the oh i just wonder about this.. I will google it.. I all of a sudden have had these surges to plan.. and book trips again and start planning my back yard for summer.. and booking camping.. came flooding in.. and I used my thoughts and past thoughts to think about what I personally like and want to do.. not a pinterest scroll looking for the right things.. 

Day 30 - 2 days left! debating if I even go back on fb.. only need it for school stuff and do I really need it? Might just do instagram and minimize the people I follow and set time limits.. ok. .its not February 2 and I have not activated the 2 main players.. fb and insta.. I really miss instagram.. fb.. meh.. not so much.. I missed a pac meeting and seeings people things.. but did I really need it any more.. I asked myself how I find balance.. I was on a girls weekend this weekend and with snow coming in the forecast.. I actually came home a night early.. and arrived home at 8:00 pm .. not feeling so hot from so much fun.. and as I rolled into town I went.. oh its my weekend with no kids.. its only 8:00 .. you could go visit a friend!? and then at the same time the thought entered.. the same thought of “ oh its February 1 now! you can go home and log back in and catch up on the month!!! 

then I realized that even after 33 days.. I still don't have the proper boundaries in place for me.. I still need to set some clean lines to ensure this feeling I now have.. which actually feels like some sort of recovery.. scary I know.. but I don't know how to enter back.. 

so.. here we are.. the month of January proved all sorts of crazy for me.. I also decided it was time for me to put myself at the top of my own list.. and get back on track.. I know for a fact that how I feel now ( not the first 3 weeks) feels a lot different then the last few years.. my head feels less noisy.. I even took my 20 lists constantly filling up my iPhone note pad and erased most of them.. I spend so much time worried that I can't remember things anymore and will forget to do them.. and I realize now.. that if its not going to get done its not going to get done.. so I erased most of them and decided that the good stuff will remain and get done.. and that I also am able to remember a lot more stuff too.. I noticed at work especially.. things I used to use a post-it for now is just something I can actually remember on my own.. the biggest growth has also been with the kids.. for months I had started the NO battle.. no you can't.. whine all you want and go find a toy to play with.. and its changed the entire dynamic of our house.. i realized little bits here and there are torture for them and didn't get us anywhere.. i emerge from my bedroom on saturday morning now and the kids are outside of it playing barbies or house together..  olive stopped asking to wear my make up and wore whole sweaters again..  and when science fair time came last week.. we excitedly went and bought boards and started painting them after work.. the rush rush rush that consumed my evenings in fear of sliding and not keeping up is almost entirely gone.. I have better peace of mind.

 good luck on your journey.. whatever it may be with whatever demons you may have..

[canaryatlaw]

okayyyy it’s late so I should get writing. today was pretty good, very productive, so that’s good. I woke up to my alarm at 11 and got ready, then grabbed my stuff and ubered over to the post office for my 11:45 passport appointment (which you were supposed to get there 10 minutes early for). There was a bit of a line for the normal packages so I waited a bit over in the designated passport section, then a woman came over and started helping me. I had brought a second copy of the front page and the other passport photo because I had a feeling I fucked up the first one because the stapler was being uncooperative which ended up being a good thing because she did opt for that one instead. but yeah, gave her all the required stuff, showed her my ID (you need to give them a copy of your driver’s license or ID front and back to pass along to the govt and show the post office people your actual ID) along with a copy of my birth certificate that will get mailed back to me. So yeah, pretty easy, I was happy about that because the last time I was doing this my senior year of college it was a giant pain in the ass and I ended up having to make like 4 separate trips to the post office to get it done, so I was just glad this was done. they said 4-6 weeks to get it in the mail, which should be just in time for the London con we’re doing at the beginning of March (so excited for that!). I could’ve expedited it by paying more, but the total already came out to like $145 so I was like eh that’s plenty and for some reason you could only pay in cash, check, or debit (no credit) so I didn’t want to make it any more expensive. So that was all handled, I stepped outside and tried to figure out if there was any public transit options that made sense but there really weren’t, so I ended up doing an uber pool back which worked out pretty well, one of the other passengers, the driver, and I ended up in a conversation about how silly the express pool’s decisions as to where to drop people and how to route things are and they just make no sense, and I ended up getting dropped right at my apartment instead of having to walk, so that was good. I hadn’t eaten anything yet so I heated up one of my frozen NY bagels and ate that while I went on my computer for a bit. I realized I had failed to bring along the envelope I had to mail to the post office, so I would have to run to the UPS store to get that done (it’s much closer than the actual post office, but depending on what you need it can be a lot more expensive). I also counted my quarters since I badly needed to do laundry, which I needed $8 for to do two loads ($2 each load in washer and dryer) and I ended up with $7.50, so I figured I could go to the UPS store and pay in cash and hopefully get two quarters. So I went to do that, it ended up being like $3.62 (it was one of those big manila envelopes, containing job application stuff for an appellate research attorney position that looked interesting but insisted on mailing in the application) which would land me with one quarter, so I asked if he had enough to give me 4 quarters instead of the dollar bill and he said sure, I told him I needed to do laundry and was just short and he laughed and said clean clothing is definitely important, so I appreciated him helping me out on that. Once I got back I tried to collect as much clothing that had been thrown around my room into my hamper before carrying it to the basement to start my first load. Once that was done I returned to my apartment and thought about being lazy and watching some tv but I decided to be productive instead and start cleaning my room, which was pretty much a disaster zone at this point, so I ended up working on that the rest of the time I was doing laundry. I ended up finding even more clothing that needed to be washed so I threw it in with the second load which then ended up being overstuffed, but I didn’t have enough quarters for another load so I didn’t have much of a choice. Once the first load was dry I took it upstairs and folded them and put them away before retrieving the second load. Our dryer isn’t terribly effective, especially so when you put too much clothing in, so most of the clothing was still quite damp, so I tried to figure out what was okay to put away and what I needed to let lay on my bed for a bit (something I generally have to do with jeans and such anyway). So I did that for a bit and my room was pretty clean at that point. I had plans to get dinner with Jess once she got off of work, so I went to the living room and watched some more of The Jinx. I’ve only got one episode of that left now (it’s only 6 episodes). I have to say, I find it to be much different than the other true crime docs in its category like Making a Murderer and The Staircase namely in that I am entirely convinced he’s guilty of all the three separate murders he’s been accused of, when that was something I was not ever even close to concluding in the other shows, so that’s been interesting. He just comes across so psychotic and his stories don’t add up at all, and I’m sorry but that’s just way too many coincidences for me- like if it were two like in The Staircase (though that is still highly suspect being that the deaths were so similar) or in that one season of Undisclosed I could believe it would happen, but three seems to be a bit much. Anyway, Jess got off of work and we met up at the spot to get some food. It was very cold out (like 20 degrees) and she wanted to get out of the cold ASAP so we ended up going to one of the restaurants that were on the first corner we reached, which was a restaurant/bar combo that’s known for its various drag queen events such as drag queen bingo and other fun things like that. So we went in and got some food, and after not too long they announced there was gonna be a comedy show, so we were like okay cool, and there were three stand up comics that were pretty funny, the last one was definitely the best. so that was cool, and then at like 8:30 they were gonna have an open mic which initially wasn’t meant to be many people but it seemed to just snowball when there was more and more interest in it and since we were there when it started we didn't want to leave and seem impolite, so we ended up staying for the whole thing which ended at like 10:15, and we’d been there since like 7 😂. These comics were obviously much more amateur, and varied in comedy levels quite a bit. Some of the subject matter was like OH GEEZ but we also live in a very LGBT friendly/populated neighborhood (and it’s basically somewhat of a gay bar really) so there was a lot of stuff around that which was really funny. The highlight was definitely this one lady who was talking about her experience being a transwoman and recently having surgery (which she referred to as getting an “artisanal hand-crafted vagina” and then what she had to do in aftercare and those implements being discovered by TSA when she flew in earlier that day.....and honestly she was funnier than the rest of them all put together lol. They only got like 4 minutes each though so they were in and out fairly quickly, there was just a LOT of them. I was thinking like what I would do if I ever tried that and I feel like I would revert to my best stories which generally revolve around my little sister as a small child being incredibly cute like when she was 2 and we “accidentally” taught her the f-word and one day she just looked at my brother and was like “Rudy you fucker” in front of my mom and we all just died on the spot 😂 or when my mom accidentally bought her a Christmas dvd from the church bookstore which she didn’t know contained Santa at the end (our parents did not do Santa) and when he came on my sister was just like in her angelic 3 year old voice “wow, I guess there really is a Santa!!” and the look of sheer horror that was on my mother’s face was something I’ll never forget 😂 those are the things I find funny at least. Once every wrapped up the host was like “Shoutout to the two ladies in booth 2, you guys have been here since like 7 pm, you’re awesome” and we pretty much just died laughing. Went home after that, did a bit more room cleaning while my roommate was in the shower and refilled my pill box for the week before taking a shower and proceeding to get ready for bed, and now I am here. So yeah, good day. I have nothing like, scheduled to do tomorrow, so I’m gonna aim to do my hair (not the full dye, just the overtone deep treatment which should help it last a few more weeks before I have to fully redye it) and hopefully do the dishes, which aren’t too bad right now (as opposed to how ridiculously full it normally is by the time I get fed up enough to actually do them) so that should be fine, and watch the Brooklyn 99 premiere in the evening, lol. The only other thing on my “list” of things to accomplish is get an Illinois driver’s license since I’m gonna be sticking around here for a while and I need to get an enhanced one for travel anyway since NY state is now requiring that, and I can’t do that until after we get back from Phoenix this weekend because I need my ID for the airport, and once you apply for an IL one they take your old one (and give you like a paper copy in the mean time but that would definitely not work for an airport) so I need to do the flying before I start that process. I should have enough time between that any other trips we’re doing to get it in the mail, I don’t think we have anything flying-wise scheduled until London at the beginning of March, so that should be fine. We’ll probably do a few more local Midwest cons in February that we hit up last year that were fun. And yeah, that’s about it for now. It’s almost 2 am and even though I don’t have any solid plans for tomorrow I should still be getting to sleep so I don’t stay up too late, so I am going to go to bed now. Goodnight my dudes. Stay excellent.

[therecoversite]

Devastation from The Press Box: Ken Daniels Loss

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Devastation from The Press Box: Ken Daniels Loss

Today the Detroit Red Wings Play-by-Play Announcer Ken Daniels, visits Washington to share a different story, one that took place within his family, not on the Little Ceasers Arena in Michigan. Daniel’s lost his 23-year-old son Jaime, in 2016 when he overdosed on a deadly concoction of heroin laced with Fentanyl.

Ken was interrupted while wrapping Christmas gifts on December 7, 2016 when a police officer showed up on his doorstep. He had become familiar with law enforcement throughout his son’s drug abuse and was surprised when he was greeted by an officer he didn’t recognize.

“He said, ‘Are you Ken Daniels?’ and I said, ‘Yes. What did he do?'”

He being his son Jaime Daniels, who was away in South Florida in the midst of seeking treatment for his addiction to opioids and benzodiazepines. In the last 8 months Jaime was in and out of multiple facilities and was staying at a halfway house for recovering addicts in Boynton Beach, Florida. The previous day, Jaime had spoken to his father on the phone and told him how he had painted the wheels on his car and promised to send pictures, and ended the conversation with his common departing message, “Love you.”

To Ken Daniels shock, the officer informed him his son was not arrested or broken the law, but had passed away.

“I guess there’s shock, which seems like a half an hour and its probably just seconds,” he explained. “And then he came in the house and he hugged me and he’s got that police vest on him, so you never forget that feeling. And then all I could think of was: ‘How am I going to tell his sister? And how am I going to tell his mother?'”

According to an autopsy report, Jaime died of an overdose of heroin that was laced with fentanyl. Ken was confused, wondering how his son could overdose in a sober living home. Ken was determined to find answers while investigating the dark and disturbing side of the billion-dollar rehab industry of South Florida.

South Florida rehabs suffer from the lack of oversight seen in other rehabs, but to an extreme. Federal laws are exploited by people who are supposed to be in a position to help pull people out of their addiction, but instead have no interest in keeping recovering addicts clean. Jaime was lost in the insurance scam known as “The Florida Shuffle.”

“It’s one thing to have an addiction and not being able to overcome it because the addiction overtakes you … but then when bad people get involved and they contribute to it, it makes you sick,” Ken says.

Jaime’s Decent

Jaime Daniel’s attended Michigan State University where he became the video manager of the Spartan’s Hockey Team and talking about going into law school and becoming a sports agent. Then he joined a fraternity and as told by his friends, began using heavy drugs.

“Jamie has a very addictive personality, where he can’t really say no, and he didn’t really know his limit either, so he’d just keep doing it and taking more because he liked the way it made him feel,” says Amanda Farber, Jamie’s friend from both high school and Michigan State.

Farber told how in Jaime’s freshman year, he began using Cocaine and then Vicodin and Xanax. Soon away from school, his family began noticing the obvious signs of addiction.

“You’d see him at night and trying to put a coat on and even struggling to get the arm in there. But you’d say to him, ‘You high?’ ‘No, I’m not high,'” Ken says.

His younger sister talked about a public incident where her brother was acting out of control and was barely functioning.

“He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t stand up straight, and I was embarrassed to have him there. I took him back to my apartment … I couldn’t handle it,” Arlyn said.

Both Jaime’s parents Ken and Lisa were exposed to the angry and dangerous side of drugs.

“The s— that will come out of somebody’s mouth who is on drugs is amazing. The crap that they’ll say … it’s another person, just takes over the body,” Ken says.

While home from college, he split his free time between his mother Lisa and Father, who had divorced when Jaime was 9. Lisa recalled one of the more violent rages her son expressed while under the influence.

“I can’t remember what prompted it, honestly, but [Jamie] threatened me. He threatened to kill me,” Lisa says.

She explained that Jamie was always remorseful and was always sincerely apologetic after lashing out. But regardless of the sincerest apologies, she says, she took the threat seriously enough to remove the knife set from the kitchen counter and lock her bedroom door at night.

While Jaime was a heavy drug user, he was able to function as an addict and a college student. Maintaining a 3.5 GPA and frequently staying on the Dean’s list, he was able to graduate in May 2015. Over the following summer he started working at mortgage company in Downtown Detroit, and also became a camp counselor in Ortonville, Michigan. It was at the camp one hour north of his father’s house where he reached the low point that resulted in his first real call for help.

“You could tell from the phone call he was desperate and just so high,” Ken says. “He was at the point saying, ‘I need to go to rehab.’ And we said, ‘OK, if you’re going to rehab, we’re picking you up from camp and you’re going right to rehab.’

Ken placed Jaime in a rehab in Michigan but his stay was brief and was followed by relapse two weeks later. Over the next month Jaime’s parents were subjected to his lies, hospital stays and a car accident. The car accident where he had flipped his car and called his mother from his cell phone while hanging upside down from his seatbelt. He walked away with minor injuries and not long after, agreed to out of state rehab in April of 2016.

His mother Lisa had heard of an intensive inpatient program in Palm Beach County, Florida. At age 22 Jaime boarded a plane to South Florida with the intention of obtaining sobriety.

South Florida: The Recovery Capital of America

Palm Beach County Florida is headquarters to hundreds of unregulated treatment programs, who advertise resort like conditions and weather, with the promise of lasting recovery and a second chance. But with three quarters of its patients in the private treatment centers, South Florida has earned its title as the recovery capital of America.

But Palm Beach County also held an equally important title, as the county with the most overdoses in a single year. 571 people died from overdoses that year, more than any other county in the state and jumping up 110% from the previous year.

But Jaime had a good start. He checked into Beachway Therapy Center in Boynton Beach, costing more than $15,000 a month for the intensive inpatient therapy. He stayed for over a month then transferred into a sober living in Delray that featured a supervised apartment complex.

“Jamie came in, and immediately he knew where he wanted to be in life, and it wasn’t as an addict,” says Chris Ege, a manager at Sober Living in Delray. “He was working. He was going to meetings. He had the sponsor that was top of the line. He was doing everything right.”

He stayed in Sober Living for more than five months and worked as a clerk in a local law firm during that time. But he began to grow annoyed at the over structured environment because of the constant spot checks and urine tests. On November 1, 2016 Jaime moved into the sober home “Miracle House” blocks away from the Sober living home he was at the beach bungalow style home was in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Delray Beach.

“The whole concept of having kids in a sober house, to mutually support each other and keep each other honest and struggle together for sobriety is pretty good — done right. Done wrong, the results are much worse,” says Marc Woods, a code enforcement officer for the city of Delray Beach.

Woods, has spent the last 30 years working as a police officer in Delray Beach before retiring in 2009.

Around 2014 Woods started noticing a shift in ethics at the sober homes in the neighborhood. When the Affordable Care Act kicked in policies were lifted for insurance companies that limited the policies for drug treatment, which then gave treatment centers a “blank check”. During the shift in the insurance policies, sober living homes began treating urine samples as liquid gold because insurance companies would reimburse them for the tests.

“The recovery industry took a turn for the worse when people found out that the urine testing billing was lucrative, and the wrong people got in the industry to enrich themselves,” Woods says.

And so began the insurance fiasco involving patient brokers and marketers that would lure addicts with good insurance and pair them with unregulated sober homes. With a less structured environment and cheap rent, insurance companies then would bill out tens of thousands of dollars for unnecessary drug treatments.

And the trend continued, the growing number of sober homes estimated to be in the hundreds started opening in neighborhoods across Palm Beach County and with the privacy protections in place under federal law, local governments had no say about it.

“Now you have sober home owners, who are using that law designed to protect individuals in recovery, so they can prey upon people in recovery,” said Dave Aronberg, State Attorney for Palm Beach County.

“In The Florida Shuffle, you go in and out of recovery, in and out of rehab centers, in and out of sober homes, milking the individual for their insurance until that person dies,” Aronberg says. “Our current system isn’t really a recovery model, it’s a relapse model, where the big money is in relapse. It’s in failure rather than success and sobriety.”

The Florida Shuffle has been investigated in the past by such media outlets as The New York Times, the Palm Beach Post and South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Jamie’s story was first told by The Athletic.

Jamie became another one of the victims of the Florida Shuffle, supported by his father’s insurance, he was sent for tens of thousands of dollars in urine tests while living in various sober homes.

“About every two days, they were doing blood and urine testing, and the charges were anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000 a test,” Lisa Daniels says.

Urine tests, even on the high end, should cost no more than a few hundred dollars per test, says Ege, the manager who supervised Jamie at Sober Living in Delray. Most reputable treatment facilities, Ege says, conduct drug screens for opioids that cost no more than a few dollars a test and can be purchased from the local drug store.

Jaime came to visit during Thanksgiving Break 2016 and that visit was significant in two ways. First it was the last time Ken and Lisa would see their son alive. The second being that during that time, Ken’s Insurance was billed for urine specimens three times during the dates of November 23, 25, and 27th, when Jaime was in Michigan visiting his family.

“I figured, when he went back … I was thinking in my head, you know, ‘How long is he going to stay down there for?’ And then the s— hits the fan,” Ken says.

When he returned to Florida, Jaime moved sober living again and started renting in a home where he stayed in converted garage turned bedroom at Sea of Recovery, Boynton Beach. He told his parents rent was only $50 a month and he shared the room with one other person in recovery.

“I started hearing something in his voice. His voice just sounded off … but I thought, ‘He’s in a home. They drug test. It’s the safest because, if he were using, then they would know,'” Lisa says.

Kade Potter, Jaime’s short-term roommate at Sea of Recovery, told media that during their time together in that room, they were regularly abusing drugs together. And that Jaime was using his drug of choice, Xanax, again.

Potter even claimed some of the drugs came from within the sober home and said one of the managers at Sea of Recovery Emmanuale Merilien, knew drugs were being dealt to the recovering addicts in the home.

Merilien denied these claims, saying “There was no drug use in the home. If we found somebody using drugs, we kicked them out,”

But this wasn’t the first time this tactic had been used within the world of sober living. Code Enforcement Officer Woods talked about the horrible practices that would take place in these unregulated homes.

“Some of the illicit operators … would rent these houses and put a bunch of kids in it and then warehouse them and then sell them to the highest bidder to the treatment center that would pay them the most in kickbacks. … The kids wound up being worth more money if they were using drugs than if they weren’t using drugs,” Woods says. “People that have their kids go out of state for recovery, they’re so at risk.”

Insurance forms from less than a week prior to Jaime’s death showed he was drug tested at a facility named Journey to Recovery. Jaime and other addicts would be bussed to the facility for testing and therapy and then sent back to their sober living homes.

Owner of Journey to Recovery Kenneth Chatman was sentenced to 27 and a half years in prison in May 2017 for his role in the insurance scam. During court, Chatman admitted to knowing that drug dealing, and prostitution took place within his sober living homes and he obtained millions in illegal kickbacks from treatment centers.

Four days before Jaime’s death, he was prescribed Alprazolam which is a generic version Of Xanax, the anti-anxiety medication that he had struggled with in the past.

Chris Ege, who managed Jaime’s first Sober Living home in Delray was shocked when he found out about the prescription.

“They gave him something that’s violating all the rules. It is an abusable drug. And not only is it an abusable drug, it’s a drug that will make you black out while you’re wide awake. So the unfortunate thing for Jamie in that week that he passed away, he might have blacked out and made a decision that killed him.”

Jaime’s father Ken agreed, “He should have never been on Xanax,” Ken says. “He should have never been in that place. Having good insurance put him in that place. … I think all contributed to his death.”

The official cause of death was listed as “acute heroin and fentanyl intoxication” The report also showed the presence of the generic Xanax brand Alprazolam.

On the morning of December 7th, 2016 , Jaime’s roommate Kade Potter awoke to the sober home’s manager Emmanual Merilien’s screams. Jaime was white and motionless lying on the floor a few feet away from Potter.

“Emmanuel was packing Jamie’s stuff before the cops got there. He was telling me: ‘Tell them you pay $125 a week in rent.’ … Just telling me to lie to the police because he knows everything he is doing is illegal.”

When police arrived, there were no signs of illegal drugs or paraphernalia to be found. Potter admitted he never reported the allegations against Merilien because he was afraid of him.

Merilien has since left the rehab industry and is now training to become a massage therapist. Merilien has no criminal record in Florida and is not facing charges or being investigated for the way he handled or reported Jaime’s overdose. He vehemently denies profiting from Jaime’s drug treatment.

Even four months after their sons’ death, Ken and ex wife Lisa continued to receive medical bills and insurance claims from the facilities Jaime lived in before he died.

“I’m amazed with the greed at someone’s expense, at their life expense,” Lisa Daniels says. “How do you look in the mirror? I will never get over the anger. That I know.”

Now his parents are sharing his story, party to remove the stigma that surrounds addicts and their loved ones. Jaime was not a nameless stranger, he was college educated, working in law firm and had a loving and supportive family who were trying to help him, and still he was struggling to beat his addictions. They want people to know, if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone.

Ken has been visiting community groups and high schools in recent months, educating people about the dangers of drug addiction and the shady underbelly of addiction treatment in Florida.

“Jamie’s legacy should be to save hundreds of thousands of lives and make everybody aware of what happened to him,” Ken says. “The more people we can make aware than I think we do Jamie’s name proud.”

[theliterateape]

A Death in the Dining Room

By David Himmel

It was years ago, four days before Christmas. Dad was making a fire and had been drunk since we finished the last bit of turkey on Thanksgiving. Janice, Dad’s new wife, seemed high on Ritalin. Maybe it was cocaine. She was running around the house, straightening the perfectly hung stockings, adjusting the garland on the tree, and opening and closing the oven door, basting and re-basting the ham. My brother, Richie was locked in the basement on the computer doing God knows what. I always assumed Internet chess, but it was probably porn. He was fourteen; he could be doing any number of things. I was in the family room flipping channels between football and the MTV top 100 videos of 2002.

Our family holiday party was that night, and we were at crunch time before all the relatives started to show up to drink Dad’s scotch, muss Janice’s stockings and ask over and over again, “Where’s Richie?” Since Dad married Janice two years ago after mom ran off with her secretary (a mirror image of cliché, I know and a bold step forward for fifth wave feminism), she felt it necessary to overcompensate by hosting a big family reunion around Christmas.

“Come on you guys,” she said to the three of us the first year, “family is the most important thing. It’s the only sure thing in life.”

I didn’t know what she meant by that. I mean, let’s not forget that Janice is my dad’s second wife after his first—my mother—left all of us. And we seemed to do just fine before these parties. I was raised seeing any percentage of the extended family maybe once a year and normally only if someone died. But Janice was gung-ho about bringing the entire Daniels family together at Christmastime.

Maybe it was because she had no family, at least no family that any of us knew about. At the wedding, her friend from college was the only guest on her side, and good of my debonair cousin, Ronnie, to have sex with her that night. Janice was twenty-four years old, which was twenty years younger than Dad, and only seven years older than me. She had to play the part of a homemaker if Richie or I were ever going to call her “Mom.” Well, I didn’t buy it and Richie… well, I don’t think he put one iota of thought into it.

“This goddamned fire won’t start!” Dad cursed, the butt of his corduroy pants facing me on the couch.

“Larry, that’s not very nice holiday language now, is it? Andrew, help your father,” Janice said from the kitchen as she finished re-folding all the dishtowels.

Dad turned to me, “She can kiss my goddamned ass is what she can do.” He threw the log into the fireplace, grabbed his drink and sat next to me. Janice came out and leaned down to Dad, whispered something in his ear, patted his leg and then went to the front hall closet to get the vacuum. Dad smiled and threw back the rest of his scotch and water. I could only imagine she said something about sex if he improved his behavior.

After a half hour or so of Janice vacuuming the front hall, Dad’s brother, Uncle Brian and his wife, Aunt Susie and their twins, Michael and Renee, came charging through the front door. Janice turned off the vacuum when she saw them.

“What. No one can answer a door around here? We were knocking for five minutes! It’s cold out there don’t cha know,” Uncle Brian said. “Merry Christmas Janice!” He gave her a big hug and a pat on the butt. “It looks great in here!” He held his overcoat out for someone to take it.

“The house Brian, or her ass?” Aunt Susie scorned.

“Oh, come on, Susie. Merry Christmas dear,” said Janice. “Andrew? Would you please take the coats up to Richie’s room and throw them on the bed?”

I gave the kids a high five, told them to find Richie in the basement—they were about the same age—hugged Uncle Brian and Aunt Susie, took their coats and ran upstairs. Brian was Dad’s older brother. He was a pretty happy guy, but kind of a slime ball. He’d been in sales all his life and no doubt hadn’t been loyal to Susie one day of their marriage. On their wedding night, he felt up her sister in the bathroom at the reception, or so the story went. As I came back downstairs, the door was a steady flow like the gates of hell letting its demons out. Everyone else showed up at once. Grandpa Joe and Nana; Dad and Uncle Brian’s younger sister; Sharon, and her husband Doug with their six hyperactive kids. I swear, Sharon must have had a kid then had sex as soon as the doctors left the room. And the six of them functioned as one big swarm of angry Africanized bees. They were fun to watch because they drove Janice nuts. Her OCD was no match for the power of the Sinister Six.

After sitting in the living room listening to Grandpa Joe bitch at Dad for not making a fire, and letting Uncle Brian pull eleven dollars worth of quarters from my ear, Uncle Doug suggested we eat. “The ham smells great,” he hinted.

“Where’s Richie?” Nana asked.

“I think he’s in the basement with Michael and Renee,” I said.

“Well, call them up, Sweetie. We’re going to eat now. Go on.”

“We can’t eat just yet. Simon isn’t here,” Janice told everyone as she blew out and relit the candle on the coffee table. “Ooo… these wicks never burn right.”

We sat around for another hour discussing the awkward social life Richie must have because, “He lives in that basement and is always on those computer games,” Nana said. The Sinister Six continued to run up and down the stairs, around the dining room table, jumping over our legs and screaming shrills of laughter and possibly code. They eventually knocked over the Christmas tree.

“Oh Janice! I’m so terribly sorry,” Sharon said.

“My tinsel!” Janice cried.

“Sometimes these kids can just be such a handful. I wish I could just give them away,” Aunt Sharon said.

Dad laughed as he made another drink at the wet bar. Janice, Aunt Sharon, Aunt Susie, and Grandpa Joe set the tree back up and started cleaning the rest of the mess.

Just then my cousin Simon burst through the door. “Simon!” Janice shouted. “Your shoes!” He was covered in something dark and thick and he had tracked it on the carpet.

Simon, who was about the same age as Janice, was Uncle Brian’s and Aunt Susie’s oldest. A raging drunk and all-around loser, he had dropped out of college after one semester and came to work for Dad at the sheet metal company. Dad loved Simon despite him either not showing up on jobs or passing out drunk when he did show up. Maybe Dad felt sorry for him. Maybe he liked the idea of tending to the wounded animal. Maybe he saw some latent potential. I don’t know. But I always figured Simon would eventually do something that would totally screw over the business and the family.

Nana and Sharon ran to him checking to see if he was okay. Uncle Brian went outside.

“So, what the hell happened to you?” Dad said.

Brian came back in, “Larry, you gotta see this.” Dad got up and the rest of us followed, except for Janice, she stayed inside spraying the carpet around Simon’s feet with stain remover. Outside, Simon’s Toyota Corolla was parked halfway on the sidewalk and the entire front end had been mashed in. The windshield was cracked and smeared with blood.

“Oh God!” Aunt Susie shouted.

“Simon, what the hell?” said Dad again.

Simon, sat on the curb and pointed to the middle of the street. “Oh, holy shit!” Uncle Brian said as he ran to the mangled lump of something in the street. We all followed, except Janice who was still inside cleaning the carpet. Then I heard the vacuum start up again.

A man wearing a Santa Claus suit lay in the road. His body was mangled. The blood pool was still growing under and around him. His arm was tucked underneath his back and his face looked like it had been smashed in with a waffle iron. Or a Toyota Corolla.

His blood was turning Janice’s white Egyptian cotton bed sheets a deep red-purple. The wetness was dripping onto the floor, into the carpet.

“Is he… did I kill Santa?” Simon said through drunken sobs.

Uncle Brian leaned over Santa to listen for a breath and check a pulse. He was just barely alive. He poked at him with the toe of his shoe. Blood bubbled out of Santa’s mouth. Everyone jumped back three feet.

“Goddamnit. Well, what do we do?” Dad asked.

“We need to get him inside—now,” said Uncle Brian.

“I’ll help you carry him,” Uncle Doug said.

“Alright, Sharon and I will get some blankets,” said Aunt Susie.

“Oh no, you will not use my blankets!” Janice said from the doorway. “Simon already ruined my carpet. No way!”

“Goddamnit Janice, keep it down,” Dad said.

Dad and Uncle Brian started to pick Santa up. “Why don’t we just call an ambulance?” I asked.

“Because Andrew, Simon is drunk. I’m not having one of my workers go to jail on a DUI,” Dad said. “We’ll never win another bid again, and do you know what that would do to our insurance?

“No sense in making more trouble for us,” said Uncle Brian.

“Family has to look out for each other,” said Aunt Sharon.

“Oh, Simon…” Aunt Susie said shamefully.

Janice did everything she could to keep Aunt Sharon and Aunt Susie from getting her blankets and simultaneously tried to keep Dad and Brian and the dying Santa Claus out of the house. Nana and Grandpa Joe rushed the Sinister Six into the basement with Richie, Michael and Renee. Uncle Doug cleared off the dining room table. Dad and Uncle Brian laid Santa on top. He let out another cough and what sounded like, “Help.” His blood was turning Janice’s white Egyptian cotton bed sheets a deep red-purple. The wetness was dripping onto the floor, into the carpet.

Aunt Sharon ignored Janice’s pleas to find another way to keep the floor clean that didn’t include using her best towels. Janice was crying now and looked like a 1950s housewife going through pill withdraws. She was scrubbing the carpet and wringing out the bloodied blankets and towels into buckets.

Santa was dying. I knew it. There was no way around it.

His eyes began to sink into his head and as he stared through all of us to the ceiling, they became listless. Blank. I never knew one person could have so much blood in their body to lose. It didn’t slow its spilling out for but a moment, even with all the blankets we’d wrapped him in. His hands were looking gray from all the blood loss. The carpet was making a squishing noise as it soaked it all in. It sounded like a soapy sponge being rung out. I could feel the wetness with every step. And no one would listen to me. No one would call the hospital.

No one wanted Simon to get into trouble. He just stood there, like a scared puppy ready for a beating after chewing up a favorite pair of shoes. And then it hit me: Who was this guy? What was he doing in a Santa suit and why hadn’t any of us thought to take his beard off?

I grabbed it. It was drenched in sweat and blood, fastened around his ears with an elastic strap. I lifted it over his head and he looked at me. I think he was thanking me with his eyes, because he took a deep breath of air like he’d been having trouble breathing then he winced. His face was so swollen and bloodied that none of us could tell who he was.

“Simon! What the fuck happened?” I shouted as I started to cry.

“Watch your mouth, Andrew!” Janice said as she put on a new pair of rubber dishwashing gloves.

As Santa bled out and our carpet became soggier, Janice worked feverishly to keep things in as much order as she could. Uncle Brian and Aunt Susie did their best to reassure Simon that everything was going to be fine. I was concentrated on Santa’s face. Who had Simon killed? He wasn’t dead yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Even if we called 9-1-1 right then and the ambulance instantly showed up, he had lost too much blood. And he probably had a punctured lung or a ruptured spleen or internal bleeding or all three, or more.

But still, I tried to reason, “We need to get help.”

Then Richie came up from the basement. He took one look at Santa. “It’s Mr. Spayer,” he said. 

Of course. Mr. Spayer lived a few houses down from ours, across from the Fitzgeralds. Mr. Fitzgerald died of cancer over the summer and Mr. Spayer had been spending a lot of time at their house as, I guess, a male figure for the three young Fitzgerald sons, and to help Mrs. Fitzgerald out in any way she needed. Mr. Spayer was the nicest man in town. Of course he was dressed like Santa.

Janice ran to Richie and hugged him and started straightening his clothes and hair. “Is that what you’re going to wear to our family holiday party?”

“Goddammit Janice,” Dad said.

“I saw the whole thing,” Richie said.

“How?” I asked.

Just then, Grandpa walked up from the basement. “You should see the set up that kid’s got down there. There’s more shit than we had during the war.”

I knew Richie was into computers, but as it turned out, he was always one step ahead of everyone in the neighborhood. My little brother was an amateur spy. He had installed tiny cameras and microphones throughout the house. Somehow, he’d managed to place them in the few locations Janice didn’t dust daily. He set up cameras up and down our block creating a surveillance system of the whole block. He never left the basement because he didn’t have to.

All of us but Janice went into the basement where Richie played back the tape of the accident. Our house sat a half block from a tight curve. Simon, drunk, and the roads icy, lost control. He hit a patch of ice on the turn, fishtailed a few feet before regaining control, then sped up and ran into Santa as he was crossing the street after leaving the Fitzgera;ds' house. Simon was moving so fast, it was a miracle he didn’t plow through the front of our house.

“Now that we know it’s not Santa and he won’t magically get better, can we please call someone?” I pleaded.

“No. Let him die,” Uncle Doug said. “There’s nothing anyone can do now. We just have to accept that. We need to get Simon’s car out of here. Richie, has anyone been outside since the accident?”

“Not since I’ve been watching the cameras. But someone may have seen it through a window. The cameras aren’t that good. I’m saving up for higher end stuff.”

“Speaking of that,” Dad chimed in, “how have you paid for all this stuff?”

“Your bank card. I memorized the number.”

“How come I didn’t notice it?”

“Probably because you haven’t balanced your check book in years. And you’re always drunk,” Richie said.

Dad laughed and toasted Uncle Brian. “The kid’s got a point.”

Was this happening? Were causal jokes being thrown around our living room with a dead man in it? A dead man my cousin ran over? Where did this sadistic behavior come from? And did it skip a generation? Obviously not, Richie was now in on it. My kid brother, an accomplice. I went back into my initial shock.

“Alright, so we can move Santa into Simon’s car. Is it drivable? Simon?”

“Huh? Yeah, I think so.”

“So we’ll put Santa, the blankets, and the carpet in his car, take it to the CalSag and dump it all in the channel.”

“You idiot, Doug,” Aunt Sharon said. “What about the neighbors. Our little spy here isn’t sure about no one seeing us. And what if they find the car? Huh? What about the VIN? Registration?”

Dad suggested that they bring Simon’s car to the sheet metal shop and strip it of all serial numbers and VINs. They can get rid of the license plates at the quarry on the way to the channel. “After all,” he said, “you don’t want to get pulled over for not having the proper registration, especially with a dead Claus in the trunk.”

And so they all got to work. The car was moved. Grandpa helped wrap up the mostly dead Mr. Spayer in the blankets and put him in the garage. Nana kept all the kids in the basement where they watched from Richie’s command center. I asked Richie if he wanted popcorn to watch the show. He gave me the finger. Aunt Susie, Aunt Sharon and Janice worked on tearing up the carpet and padding. Mostly Janice picked up the little carpet pieces from the floor. The blood had soaked through the pad to the floor. I watched, locked in my shock. The way Janice was scrubbing every surface, I realized that she was the perfect person to have on hand when covering up a murder.

I tried reasoning with them again. No one would listen. Dad even asked me to get him another drink. “Me too, pal,” Uncle Brian said. Then I gave them the finger. I went to sit out back on the porch where Simon was hiding. We didn’t say anything for maybe fifteen minutes. All that I could think about was how horrible it was that Mr. Spayer had to spend his last moments on Earth in the hands a family full of sociopaths—a family that let him die. A family that killed him. My guilt was building.

But I couldn’t do anything. Or could I have? Simon sobered up as we sat there staring at the stars, me looking for some excuse I could use to tell myself so that I could live with myself. I imagined that Simon was doing the same. Finally, I turned to him and said, “You’re a murderer. You know that right?”

“Yeah. So are you.”

We all were. Simon, Dad, Janice, Uncle Brian, Aunt Susie, Aunt Sharon, Uncle Doug Grandpa Joe and Nana. Even Richie. My 14-year-old brother had seen all this happening. Watching it like a voyeuristic freak and didn’t do anything. But then again, neither did I. Simon was right.

“I hope you’re not vomiting on my new floor mat!” she said from the bottom of the stairs.

An hour later, Mr. Spayer was now a cold bluish color. He looked like he was completely drained of all of his blood. With him and the blankets and the towels and the soaked sections of carpet and padding packed into the car, they were ready to move him.

Uncle Brian wanted to be sure the car and body were dumped before daylight. I was concerned about Mr. Spayer missing. How could no one have heard the hit? How could the Fitzgeralds not have wondered what happened to Santa Claus? Richie assured everyone—except me—that Mr. Spayer lived alone, had no family and that the Fitzgeralds hadn’t so much as come to the window when the crash occurred. My baby brother: the Wicked Omnipotent Richard. I felt sick.

Uncle Brian and Simon took the car to the shop to be stripped and then to the CalSag Channel to be dumped. Dad and Uncle Doug followed. It was just Janice, Richie and me in the house. Everyone else had gone home. I was in the upstairs bathroom debating if I should throw up or climb out of the window and run to the police. Janice was shouting to me to get out of the bathroom and help her clean. “I hope you’re not vomiting on my new floor mat!” she said from the bottom of the stairs.

Christmas morning, we opened our presents with little enthusiasm. With every torn ribbon, Dad refilled his glass with scotch and a splash of water. Richie knew what every gift was—he’d seen us wrap them. Janice couldn’t stop staring at the bare floor under and around the dining room table. And I couldn’t stop thinking about all of the blood that was spilled in that room just four days before. I kept waiting for the doors and windows to break open with the S.W.A.T. team flying through on lines from helicopters, guns blazing and ready to take us in. In my mind, the rest of the family was already captive, bound and gagged in the paddy wagon. I kept telling myself it was only a matter of time.

In the afternoon, we went to Uncle Brian’s and Aunt Susie’s to open gifts with the rest of the family. At their house my imagination went from reasonable S.W.A.T. attacks to visions of a team of detectives knocking on the door. Dad would answer and a detective would immediately shoot him in the chest. One would call for backup while the other came into the living room. He would tell all of us to remain still and quiet. Uncle Doug would dash for the back door and the detective would put six rounds into the back of his head. The rest of us would be taken into custody and marched straight down Death Row. No trial—it wouldn’t be needed. The entire long walk, Janice would complain about the dirt. There would be eighteen electric chairs lined up, one chair for each member of my family including the Sinister Six. A cop dressed like Santa Claus, just to add a little insult to their punishment, would throw the switch. Everyone would squirm and scream as they cooked and burned. Everyone but me. I wouldn’t get a chair. I would be made to watch them slowly and torturously die just like I did with Mr. Spayer. Once they were dead, Santa would walk to me, put a shotgun in my mouth and kill me. I would hear the bang then see Santa through the hole in my head as my still working eyes slid down the wall behind me.

After the party, we drove straight home. Aside from Dad’s occasional, “Goddamnit” in traffic, we were silent. As we turned onto our street, we saw the lights. There were two cop cars outside of the Fitzgeralds’. One was an unmarked detective’s car, the other a cruiser. We pulled into our garage. Dad, Janice, and Richie ran into the house. I stood in the garage looking at the cops talking to Mrs. Fitzgerald and her new husband, whatever his name was. She pointed to me, or our house, or both. The cops turned and looked at me. They shook hands with Mrs. Fitzgerald and her new husband. I saw the detective give him a business card. Then they walked across the street right to me.

“Hello, son,” the detective said as he looked around, I think noticing one of Richie’s cameras. “Are your parents home?”