Category: True Stories

A few years ago, I served on a jury for my first and, to this point, only time.  I had been in the pool of potential jurors before but had never even had my name called to screened out by the attorneys.  This day felt different.  I already knew that this was an attempted 2^nd degree murder case. I think they pulled in all potential jurors that day, not just my part of the alphabet in anticipation of jurors not showing up and multiple potential rejections.  I just had a feeling that my name would be called. I was not surprised when I heard my name. I was juror number 10.  The judge and the attorneys started asking everyone about their backgrounds and opinions.  I knew there was nothing that would disqualify me. With my background and the way I look, I would seem to everyone to be the ideal juror.  My best chance would be if I knew one of the attorneys, which was not the case here. Several of the jurors were replaced but the challenges came to an end soon and we were allowed to contact people to let them know where we would be.

Back when my children were young, our family was driving through town one afternoon down a 4-lane street that had an extra turning lane in the middle.  We were travelling southbound, and a police car was travelling north on the other side of the road.  There was a bank with a drive-thru and an ATM on our side of the road.  As we came up on to the bank, the police car came to a screeching stop in the turning lane immediately to our right.  Out of precaution, we stopped too.  We looked over at the bank and saw a man running from the far side of the building around the corner.  He was holding a purse in one hand and a pistol.  Chasing closely behind him was a lady. I assumed he had her purse.  Not far behind him was a man that I assumed was her husband. When the purse snatcher saw the cops running toward him from the street, he dropped the purse and the gun, rand a few steps more, then fell to the ground.  The lady ran and picked up her purse. The husband ran and picked up the gun, aiming it at the purse snatcher. I remember my son saying “WOW!”  I first thought “WOW!” and then I thought, “Is he going to fire that gun?”  I didn’t really want to be there.  There were 2 cops in the car that stopped in front of us and another one came up from behind.  One of the cops from the first car ran and grabbed the husband with the gun.  The other cop had a nightstick and went after the purse snatcher.  The road was clear in front of us and there was no reason to stick around so we left quickly. My son said it was neat to see that, but I was afraid of getting caught in the crossfire.

I don’t know if things like this happened at this branch of the bank, but it closed a short time after this incident.  Today, it is a store that sells drive-thru beer and cigarettes.

At 9 PM on January 18, 2022, I went to put our trash on the road. My wife Andrea and I had been watching something on TV.  During a break between shows, I planned to take care of the trash while Andrea got ready for bed and put on a Muumuu. I moved our trash can next to our mailbox at the street. I was walking back across yard to the house and came to a transition from yard to driveway. This was not a huge step, and I should have been able to make it with no problem at all.  Instead of stepping over this transition spot and planting my left leg firmly on the drive, I stepped putting the ball of my foot on the drive and the heel in the grass. As I put weight on my foot, my ankle twisted, and I lost my balance. I started falling forward but I also instinctively stepped forward to try and catch my balance. I knew I was going to fall but I kept going forward even though I knew my legs would never get under my body enough to regain balance.

Almost every year that I’ve been on social media, I have shared the picture above around Mother’s Day. It’s one of my favorite pictures of my mom because I think it tells the perfect story of what kind of mother and wife she was.  She seems to be completely into her task of getting ready for bed, unphased the constant banging of the snare drum her son has brought into the bathroom.  If I remember correctly, I brought this drum into the bathroom after she was already there. This bathroom had tile on the floor and most of the walls, so you know that the sound of the drum got maximum reverberation. I don’t remember her complaining at all.  I’m sure this is just one example of her putting up with an energetic, noisy son. Especially if it was related to making music in any way at all, I was always encouraged, even when my timing wasn’t so great.

During my first week of work at my current employer, it was a time of discovery and exploration.  There were several times during those first few days that I would walk around the facility just to get a feel for where everything was.  The facility was huge with three different break rooms and four sets of restrooms.  I would walk from one department to another making mental notes of where everything was and familiarize myself with the processes and people in each department.

When I was interviewing for my current job, I was walking down the hall of the office area and I saw someone that I knew.  I saw Mark King, who is from my home county and several years younger than me.  I didn’t know Mark that well, but I recognized him, and we spoke. It was nice to see a familiar face at the job interview.  Although I didn’t know it at the time, Mark was a Technician in the quality department. I was interviewing for a position as a Quality Engineer so we would end up working together.

My wife and I had gone to some friends’ house for a New Year’s Eve party.  Our children didn’t have anything going on that night and were old enough to leave home by themselves.  When we got home from the party, our oldest daughter told us that the ice maker on the refrigerator had quit making ice.  For some reason, I decided that I needed to look up and see how to troubleshoot this issue at 1 AM on New Year’s Day. 

Things were changing in the summer 2019.  Our youngest daughter was entering her last year of college.  Our oldest daughter had been out of the house for about a year.  We were beginning to feel like empty nesters.  My wife asked me what I thought about downsizing.  We had been in our house since 2006 and were coming up on having been there for a full 13 years.  One of the bedrooms upstairs had been converted to an extra family room when our son moved out and another bedroom turned into a music room when another child left.  My wife didn’t like going upstairs to clean rooms that weren’t used that often.  There were a lot of reasons that now seemed like an ideal time to downsize.