There were many reasons why I didn?t identify with those around me.  My dad was a native Alabamian but my mom was from Idaho (they met during Chemistry class at Ricks College).  Instead of picking up my dad?s southern drawl, I spoke with my mom?s more Midland accent.  Except for the occasional “pie” (paai) or “nine” (naaan), most of what I said was fairly accent free.  This, coupled with my taste for overly complex grammar and unnecessarily long words, served to draw blank looks almost every time I opened my mouth.

My unfortunate obsession with khaki pants didn?t help matters either.

But what really sealed the deal for most people was the fact that I wasn?t on the football team.  With the exception of only a handful, all the boys at Catherine Academy from the seventh to the twelfth grade put on a football uniform at 1:00pm every school day from August until November.  I had never enjoyed football.  The only time I had really given it a shot was an exhibition pee-wee game when I was in the fifth grade.  A couple of juniors were put in charge of dividing us into teams and attempting to teach us plays.  Our pee-wee game was played during the half-time of one of the high-school?s games.  After five minutes of me standing on the field completely unsure of who to block, who to tackle, or even who was on my team I was informed that we had lost.  And then I cried.

I was a sensitive child.

Considering I had committed the unpardonable sin of not playing high school football, I sought to lessen my condemnation by playing basketball (the only other option being baseball ? which I saw as only slightly less deadly than football).  So, in the seventh grade, I put on high-top tennis shoes, a t-shirt, and shorts and walked onto the court for my first basketball practice.

I was terrible.

Not just terrible, I was a disaster.  But, then again, I was only in the seventh grade.  Then again, I was only in the eight grade.  9th? 10th?.  By the time I was a junior, I had accepted the fact that I was never going to be good – or even decent – at basketball.  But I continued to play anyway.  I enjoyed practice and prided myself on not holding back during scrimmages.  My cousin and I would compare our legs after games to see who had the most abrasions and bruises after fighting with the other team for possession of the ball.  Not that I played much in games, I was usually the person that was sent in during the third period to give one of our temperamental forwards time off because of foul trouble.  I was fine with it.  Even though I wasn?t very good, the other players (most of whom were football players that weren?t really into hunting and didn?t care about missing deer season) seemed to respect me for at least being there and the effort I gave.

My junior year the school hired a new basketball coach who I was pretty sure was Hitler raised from the dead.  After only a week of practice, most of the team wanted to quit?several did.  He was insulting, foul-mouthed, and was yell at us for any infraction ? real or perceived.  I began to wonder if it wasn?t time for me to quit basketball as well and I hated him for making me consider it.

But then we started winning games.

You see, I was terrible (just awful) but most of our team wasn?t very good either.  And for us, winning became like a drug.  We would spend most of the week in mental and physical withdrawals admitting we were powerless over basketball and only a higher power could restore us to sanity (some of us were on the verge of making a list of wrongs done to friends and family), but come Thursday night all of that would be forgotten as we looked at the scoreboard and realized we were ahead when the buzzer went off.  We weren?t used to it.  Hate him or hate him, our coach was making us win (it also helped that that year we had a 6-foot-7 350-pound center named Buford who would camp out under the goal and just nudge the ball in after we?d lob one pass after another to him).

Even so.  We were winning.

I didn?t get much attention from the fuehrer for which I was grateful.  The one aspect of my nonexistent game that he did berate me for was my free throw shots.  Like every other aspect of basketball, I wasn?t very good at free throws, but he pointed this out in such a passive aggressive?really not passive…mostly aggressive, way.  I started staying after practice and shooting one free throw after another.  For weeks I would do this and over time, I actually got?a little worse.  Not much, but yes, a little worse.

We eventually made it to the first round of the state championship.  We had managed to win all of the regional games necessary to take us there.  Things were going fine until our forward?s tempers got them fouled out in the third period.  After some quick shuffling of positions, I was put in at guard.  Those two fouled-out forwards were the only two on the team that had any real talent whatsoever.  Even after I went into the game, we weren?t winning, but we weren?t losing either.  We always managed to stay within a few points of the other team.  It was amazing. (The fact that Buford was still camped out under the goal didn?t hurt.)

The problem really started when the crowd started counting down from ten…nine…eight…seven…we were down by two…six…five…four…and I had the ball!…three…two…ONE!

I was behind the three-point line when I shot.  I didn?t even have time to think…which was too bad because I didn?t even hit the backboard.  Luckily, an overzealous guard on the opposing team fouled me, causing me to fall on my butt.  (I wasn?t going to show my cousin that bruise.)

Since we had ten fouls in our favor, I was placed on the free throw line with three shots.  Me.  The kid who was publicly mocked by his Nazi coach for having the worst free throw shot on the team?a team that included seventh graders.  The ridiculousness of the situation put me in a semi-delirious state.  I laughed maniacally as I looked up in the stands where my mom had her hand over her mouth in shock.  My sister-in-law had her hands over her eyes. The game hinged on my free throw shots and I was laughing like the Mad Hatter in nylon shorts.

I turned and saw the look of panic and confusion on Adolf?s face.  I could see his thoughts: Why him?  The referee nervously gave me the ball.  I snapped it back above my head and quickly released it.  It flew through the hoop so cleanly that the net barely moved.  The players on the bench were beside themselves.  They leapt and cheered.  My crazy laughter continued.  This is insane, I thought.  I cocked my arm back and let the ball fly again.  A perfect bank shot.  The crowd roared.  We were tied.  And I had one shot left.  I could win the game!  Like the others before, this shot was done quickly and without thinking.

Brick.

We were in overtime.  I was exhausted by this point and just wanted the game to be over.  I didn?t even like playing in basketball games anyway.  I enjoyed practices but games were just the stress-filled nights that got in the way of me trying to pick up the WB on my sister?s 15? black and white TV.  Once again we weren?t winning, but we weren?t losing either.  And again, the crowd started to count down.  10?9?8?7…we were down by one…6?5?4?oh, come on!…3?2?1?shoot!  Brick.  Butt.  On the line.

We were down by one and I had two shots.

What if I was in a time warp or something?  Some sort of high-school “Groundhog Day” where I was condemned forever to take buzzer shots in a never ending cycle of overtimes and fouls?  I fired off the first shot.  Brick.  I shot again.  Swish.  Second overtime.  Of course it was.

This overtime was different.  Instead of staying a couple points behind we actually maintained a small lead.  We were even ahead by a few points when the crowd started to count down again.  10?9?8?7…just in case, I?m going to pass?6…5?4?3?2?1.

Will and I found a seat at the Woodruff Center Concert Hall.  The website said that admission to the Atlanta Symphony?s Sampler Concert was free, but insisted that you needed tickets.  When we got there, however, we found that they weren?t even checking for tickets and people were allowed to sit wherever they wanted. 

I looked around me at other people filing their way in.  I saw people taking pictures of their orchestra with their cell phones and felt a tinge of snobbery well up in me.  They were probably only there because the concert was free.  I then realized that I had forgotten to bring the printout that told you when you were supposed to applaud.  I mean, were you supposed to clap between movements?  I didn?t remember?.

The special musical guest walked onto the stage and we applauded.

The conductor walked on stage and we applauded.

The conductor was a short Asian woman and a long white coat that made her look like she would be more at home in a lab than a concert hall.  After briefly welcoming us, she turned and stabbed at the air with her baton.  The orchestra exploded into the first movement of Beethoven?s 5^th.  I?d never heard it performed live and the hair on my arm stood on end as the tiny woman slashed and jabbed at the orchestra as if she were willing an untamed animal into submission.  Her gesturing was so emphatic, there were a couple of moments that I thought that she was going to fall off her podium.

The orchestra finished the movement with escalating passion and the audience erupted into applause.  The old lady sitting next to me was smiling from ear to ear with pleasure.  The emcee emerged from backstage and asked how many people where there for the first time.  I raised a sheepish hand and Will raised a cautious one.  He said that the question ?Who?s here for the first time?? was sometimes a dangerous one.  I realized that I agreed, especially amongst classical musicians ? I knew that they could be a dangerous bunch.

In between performances by composers such as Mendelssohn and Bach, the emcee explained the benefits of purchasing a concert series by the orchestra with a tone that made us feel as though we were trying to be sold a cultural time-share.  He was usually brief, however, and the orchestra was soon playing a concerto.  The audience clapped between movements, so we did, too.

Just about when I started to fall asleep during the performance, it was over.  The orchestra played the last few bars with such energy that I thought the conductor and orchestra were going to tear themselves apart.  The audience?s following applause was an opened floodgate of noise and the old lady next to me leapt to her feet in a fit of ecstasy.  I realized that these guys were good at what they did.  Give you just the right amount so that the last thing you remember about the experience was the joy on an old woman?s face as she cheered and not what you were dreaming about as the conductor put down her baton.

I revisited the idea of riding my bike across the country.  I would have to plan ahead, of course, and save my money.  I?d read about other people who made the trip and knew that it would take around 30-45 days.

Mile 2.4
There was a lot of other things I needed to save up for in order for the trip to work: a new bike, clothes, and an iPhone.  The new iPhone was pretty much a handheld computer and I was sure that its data and GPS capabilities were perfect for a cross-country bike ride.  Plus, I had to be in shape to do it.  I knew that I had a lot of work ahead of me and I figured I could probably start today.  Last year, I had rode the trail and gone about 28 miles.  I figure that I could probably up it to 50 today.  Yeah, 50.  That would be awesome.

I noticed that my bike?s front tire was crooked.  Not just a little off?but really crooked.  How had I not noticed that before?

Mile 13.0
I stopped at the quarter-way mark and walked around a bit.  My legs felt heavy and stiff, but I got more than a little satisfaction by how large my thigh muscles looked after riding.  I pulled out my tool kit and set to work repositioning my front wheel.  It was then I realized that I didn?t have a socket big enough to remove the nut on the front wheel.  Even if I had a spare tire on me, I didn?t have the tools to change it.  I put the tools away and continued on.

Mile 23.0
I realized that the previous five miles or so had been all downhill, which meant that the return trip would be uphill.

Mile 25.0
I got off my bike at the halfway point and walked around.  My legs felt twice as heavy as they did at 13 miles.  The first creeping doubts entered my mind, but I quickly pushed them out and got back on my bike.

Mile 13.0
I almost don?t make it up the rise to the park bench.  I sit down and feel the weight of my lower half as if it were going to break the seat.  I tell myself that I?d just have to take it easy from there on out.  Unfortunately, it isn?t just my legs that were complaining; I hadn?t worn padded shorts.  Even coasting (when possible) was problematic.

Mile 12.0
I stopped and staggered around my bike for a few minutes.

Mile 11.0
See “Mile 12.0”.

Mile 9.5
My body had almost completely shut down for the previous two miles.  I stop at a side mini-park and lay on the grass.  In my headphones, ?This American Life? interviews two homeless people.  Every time I try to get up and walk, my legs almost completely fail and as I lay on the grass, I consider vagrancy for myself.  And then I vomit.

Mile 9.0
Fortunately, that gave me enough of an endorphin rush to ride one more half-mile to a trailhead that had access to restaurants.  While I still had water in my Camelbak, I hadn?t eaten enough and I knew I needed some food.  I coasted to the McDonalds and ordered a chicken salad.  After I ate, I walked outside to my bike and realized that I couldn?t ride any more.  I didn?t know what to do.  I was 9 miles away from my car, in Powder Springs, and it was 4pm on a weekday.  I called my friend Jey who got off from work about that time and asked if he could pick me up.  He said yes and I sat down and mulled over my own naïveté.

Mile 0.0
Jey dropped me off at my car and I promised to buy him dinner to make up for the call on a Monday afternoon to save me from the suburbs.

In my iPod earbuds, forty-three year-old Robert explained that this was the podcast for week 8 of the 9 week couch-to-5k program.  It was only my second day running, but I decided that I was definitely more towards the 5k side of the couch-to-5k spectrum and decided to skip ahead towards the end.  Robert?s voice faded and the volume on the techno music ramped up.  I had worried that I would find the music too boring, but as I walked down 12th Street to the park, I found that the high BPM music really energized me.

?Okay, are you ready for your run?  This will be your only run and lasts about 28 minutes. I?ll give you reminders about halfway through and then about a minute before we are done.  If you are ready, let’s get started with your 28 minute ru-.?

I hit pause.  I was waiting to cross Piedmont and didn?t want the time to start without me.  Once the traffic died down, I walked over to the park entrance and pressed play:

?-un…?

The music set a quick pace as I cut to the right and hopped up the stairs to the paved trail that edged 10th Street.

Beat.   Breathe.  Beat.  Breathe.  Beat.  Breathe.  Beat.

The wind was cooler than it had been the previous few days and I easily glided by the power walkers and the strollers.  Every once in a while, I smugly passed another runner, not even acknowledging their presence.

Beat.   Breathe.  Beat.  Breathe.  Beat.  Breathe.  Beat.

I passed the space bathroom.  Jey and I had been walking in the park a few weeks earlier when we first saw it.  Near the south entrance of the park stood a small-brushed metal building.  On it was an LED sign that said “Vacant” or “Occupied”.  Jey pushed the elevator-style button that said ?Open? and the door silently slid to the left.  There was more brushed metal on the inside ? including the toilet.  Since it was a public bathroom, it was trashed and looked like it could use some Lysol.  An interesting ?feature? of the space bathroom that we noticed advertised on the front was its anti-loitering policy.  After 10 minutes of occupation, the door automatically opened – no matter what.  We moved on.  I kept running.

Beat.   Breathe.  Beat.  Breathe.  Beat.  Breathe.  Beat.

I reached Park Tavern and was starting to feel the first signs of fatigue.  I still maintained my quick pace, but my lungs were beginning to burn.  I was passed by an old guy in black running shorts, but I made up for it by passing a woman that looked like she was in pretty good shape.

Beat.   Breathe.  Breathe.  Beat.  Breath.  Breathe.  Breathe.  Beat.  Breathe.  Beat.

I have to make it as least as far as I ran on Saturday, I told myself.  Two days before, I had taken the same route and had run to the dog park tucked back in the trees.  I dropped into the woods on one of the singleback trails to scout it out for mountain-bike potential, but after seeing the eclectic mix of litter that covered the ground, I decided that I wasn?t ever going to go into those woods again without an adult.

Beat.  Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe.  Breath.  Beat.  Beat.

Where was the friggin? halfway point?  Surely I had been running fifteen minutes already.  Whatever the time was, I knew I wasn?t going to make it much longer.  I picked a point in the distance as my goal and pushed ahead.

Breathe.  Just keep breathing….

I reached the garbage can and placed my hands on my head as I slowed to a walk.  Was I really in that bad of shape?  Couldn?t I even run 15 minutes?  I walked towards the bridge.  A couple with a small puppy walked by and before I realized it, I had kicked the dog.  It was a complete accident caused by the lack of coordination on both of our parts and it wasn?t as much a kick as a firm foot-nudge, but I was still horrified and bent down to scratch its tiny ears in apology.  The couple rolled their eyes and I kept walking.

?Okay, you are about halfway through your 28 minute run.  How are you feeling??

Screw you, Robert.

?Great.  Keep going!?

A guy skinnier than me blew past.  Bullcrap.  I broke into a jog.  There was no way I was letting this little nerd leave me behind.  After thirty seconds of pursuit, he double-backed.  Wuss.  I continued on up the hill, but soon was walking again.  I gave a poodle the evil eye in the hopes he would charge me only to be jerked back on his leash by his owner, but the little punk was trying to be the bigger man.

My chest seared from the effort and I walked with my hands on my hips.  Drum beats and synthesizers echoed in my ears.  I dropped down to the ?active oval? and started running again on the small, firm gravel.  I wanted to yell through my gritted teeth.

Running was such an evil monster.  I loved doing it and the feeling of accomplishment that it gave me, but it wasn?t going to just hand all that over.  No, it had to beat me like a single-wide common-law wife first.  I hate you, running, I thought.

I was an angry runner.

I completed a lap of the ?active oval? and painfully slowed to a walk again.  I cut across the field and staggered down the stairs to the path along the north side of Lake Clara Meer.

?Okay, we have a minute left to go.  Push it if you can.?

Die, Robert.

I pushed it and passed a rollerblader who apparently hadn?t realized that the nineties had been over for eight years.  Come on, dangit.  You can do one more frigging minute!  I forced myself to not count one-thousands.

?Congratulations!  You made it through your 28 minute run!?

Robert, you suck.

?Now let?s take five minutes to cool down.?

I not-so-briskly walked back up 12th Street.  When I got to my building, I passed the elevator and plodded up the stairwell to my apartment.  Once inside, I opened my laptop and downloaded Podcasts for Running?Week 1.

A cool breeze filtered through the tree next to my balcony.  The city was still quiet except for the drone of the large air conditioners of the tall buildings around me.  Across the way, people staying at the Four Seasons were waking up, soon to be headed to their 9am meeting or back to the airport where they will catch an early morning flight back home.  There was a slight fog, which blurred the top of the Bank of America Plaza.

Being up at dawn always reminded me of traveling when I was a kid.  In our trips across the country, we?d wake up at 5:30 in a hotel and pack our bags back into our car when the only thing you would hear would be the drone of the air conditioners from the other rooms.  We were told to talk quietly in order not to wake the other guests.  I felt that same quiet respect, like early morning was a meeting at church.

People started to walk down the street in front of the apartment building.  Most of them were construction workers heading to the mostly-completed high-rise condo in the shape of an ?S? half a block away.

I sat on the balcony and listened to the birds chatter in the trees.  Slowly the sound of cars grew as people in the building headed off to their jobs/classes/appointments.  Soon, I would join them, but not quite yet.

Right then, I would close my computer and my eyes and feel the morning air drifting past.

But I didn?t care.

I wanted to get out of LA and back to the south as fast as I could.  My attitude surprised me.  I had spent much of my life wanting to leave the south and I greatly enjoyed the time I spent away from it.  But LA had been different.  Something just felt wrong there.  As I drove east on the 10 I felt as though I had just narrowly escaped something, but I didn?t know what.  I tried to tell myself that I was thinking irrationally and myself agreed, but I didn?t slow down.

When my boss had mentioned the possibility of me joining the crew of the TV show that he was slated to direct, I conveniently ignored the word ?possibility? and replaced it with the words ?assured certainty?.  By the time production was to start, I had backed my boss into such a corner that, to him, telling me that I would have to stay behind would have been like taking candy from a baby and then promptly killing a kitten in front of the child.

I had dreamed about working on a national television show since I was a kid.  When I was thirteen I commandeered the family video camera as my own personal plaything.  True, my younger sister Beverly also laid claim to the Panasonic Palmcorder, but I didn?t think that the twenty-five minutes of tape devoted to following our overweight dachshund mix was a worthy use of the camera?s time.  Watching my sister?s tapes was like watching a mixture of a PBS nature documentary and TMZ.  As she followed Penny around the front yard, the dog would look into the lens with an expression of desperation that I would years later recognize on the face of young Hollywood starlets on the covers of the tabloid magazines.

Our mom had allotted us one tape each and I refused to fill the 30 minutes that the VHS-C cartridge allowed with such banal nonsense.  I created entertainment.  My Hotwheels cars and track set the scene for a high-speed pursuit, followed by a fiery explosion.  I created the explosion with the camera?s built in titling function and added the explosion noise vocally.  I edited the scene in camera, starting and stopping the tape for each shot and shooting in chronological order.

Soon, I realized that to do anything more in depth than a car chase, I needed actors and, faced with the crippling boredom that only preteens can feel, Beverly and my cousin Beth were easily talked into participating.  With their help, I told the Christmas story using ornaments and a flashlight for the star in the dark upper hallway of our home.  I loved horror movies (which was amazing considering I had never seen one) and this inspired me to direct a short in which Beverly was stalked and chased through the woods by an unseen monster.  The monster was played by the stuffed monkey my grandmother gave me when I was in the hospital having my tonsils removed.  I created the sounds for the monster by breathing into the microphone as I chased my sister through the pine trees that stood next to our home.

My most elaborate production was probably the afternoon I concepted and shot my own hidden-camera prank show.  My home-made reality show resembled what Ashton Kutcher would years later release on MTV as ?Punk?d?.  But instead of popular celebrities being the target of my surprise attacks, I focused on more accessible victims: my sister, Beverly, and my cousin, Beth.

I decided to call the show ?Tricks of the Trade? which displayed, even at that young age, my fondness for alliteration.  I felt clever that the title of my show carried a double meaning, although I never really knew what the other meaning was.  I had no idea to what ?Trade? I was referring, but I figured having the word ?Tricks? in the title was sufficient for most people to get the idea of the show.

Episodes of Punk?d started off with Ashton excitedly talking straight into the camera and explaining the concept for the prank to be performed.  My precursor show started the same way, but with a slightly different effect.  I was smack dab in the middle of puberty and me excitedly talking into the camera resulted in a shrill noise that caused Penny to react as if someone had blown a dog whistle.  I was small for my age and very thin.  I wore a teal Arizona Jeans Company t-shirt that was so large if I weren?t careful, it likely would have fallen off over my shoulders.  Self-conscious of my size, I thought that wearing clothes that were a couple of sizes too large would mask the fact that I was smaller than most of the other boys in my class.  It would be years before I would realize that they had the opposite effect.  Instead of puffing me up like an angry cat, the shirt made it look like I was the incredible shrinking man, only hours away from bathing in a spoon or sleeping on a cotton ball.  I completed my host?s outfit with jam shorts and bare feet.

The nature of the pranks was another way in which my show differed from Kutcher?s ratings success.  Instead of elaborate hoaxes involving trained professionals and actors, I merely filled a cardboard box with stuffed animals and set it precariously on the top of my bedroom door.  I placed the camera on a tripod in the corner, out of site of the doorway to prevent my victims from seeing the cameras and becoming self-conscious.  (The show would only work if I got natural reactions.)  There was a bed next to the door and I decided ? as a failsafe in case the box didn?t fall ? that I should hide under in and grab their ankles as they passed.  This was sure to get a reaction.

I smiled into the camera and with a thumbs-up that I would later find excruciating to watch, I yelled downstairs to my Beth and told her to come into my room.  Ever the good host, I gave an eye roll to the camera when she initially refused.  It was an eye roll that said, ?girls?.   After a few seconds I heard footsteps and I quickly tucked my head back under the bed and waited.  When Beth came into the room, she tripped the stuffed animal trap.  It didn?t go quite as planned and, instead of dumping out the stuffed animals, the entire box fell down on her head.  She wasn?t hurt by any means, but the shock of having a cardboard box on her head definitely killed the surprise of my under-the-bed attack.  She then saw the camera and started to laugh and I crawled out form under the bed to stop the tape.  We probably watched it twenty times that afternoon, each time picking out new elements that we found particularly hilarious.

I reflected on this as I pulled off the interstate in Banning, California.  I wondered if the clerk who checked me in was legally working there because she looked so young.  She was pleasant and smiled as she gave me the wifi password.  I thought back to LA.  What was that the problem?  Had I hoped deep down that LA was a bunch of 13-year olds in jam shorts with their parent?s video cameras?  Was I hoping that by helping to create an alternate reality, I was trying to get back to a point in my own?  Whatever the expectation, I found myself at the end of the job bitter and decided to start looking for work in another business as soon as I got back to Atlanta.

I drove to a nearby IHOP and ordered pancakes.  I noticed the waitress, who smiled as she placed the short stack in front of me, and I wondered what she did with the rest of her time: the time she didn?t spend giving people their order of Rooty Tooty Fresh ?N Fruity.  What if she was a superhero and she merely used this job just to pay the bills?  Not all superheroes could be eccentric millionaires, after all.  That would be a great idea for a sitcom, I thought: the daily lives of c-list superheroes.  I decided that I needed to write the pilot episode.

Maybe when I got back to the hotel.

I had recently broken up with a girl that had left me in a state of exhaustion and confusion.  She had been one of those girls that was skilled in the art of manipulation and control and it wasn’t for several months later that I realized the extent of her power over me.  Had it not ended when it did our relationship probably would have progressed to the point of her monitoring all my communications and me identifying too closely with the Partnership Against Domestic Violence television ads.

Plus, she had a ferret.  She was truly evil.

But we had only been broken up for a few days as I sat with my friend in the little red coupe and she listened as I recounted every moment we had spent together in painful detailed.  She also patiently endured as I analyzed every word, gesture, and glance to discover what it revealed about me and my ex and wether this was the early sign of a lifetime of heartache and loneliness.  A less than superhuman person would have rolled their eyes at this dramatic fatalism and suggested we head over to the Taco Bell (the only place still open), but my friend simply listened to my pained spoutings.  Plus, had she suggested we go to the quasi-mexican fast-food joint, it probably would have sent me into a fit sighs since my ex and I had frequently gone to Taco Bell late at night and this connection would have stirred up such tortured melancholy worthy of lonelygirl15.  Of course, we wouldn’t have had much option because, after all, Taco Bell was the only place open that late.

With the engine off, the cold air outside caused our windows to fog over, obstructing our view of the town below.  My overly complete dissection of my previous relationship over, my friend talked about other things and other people.  Her voice was calming and even though my ego wanted to wallow in self-pity and teenagish despair, I enjoyed being distracted by ward gossip and was soon happily joining in by contributing what little information that I had.  The radio was quietly tuned to the local alternative rock station and when a song we liked came on, we were quiet and listened. If we really liked the song, sometimes we sang along.  The bitterness that I had packed around my heart was starting to melt away and the world was starting to seem tolerable again as we sat under the cold stars.

Suddenly two police cars raced up the road and in an instant I saw our lonely car must have looked at the top of a hill with foggy windows.  Oh, crap, I thought.  Without thinking, I put my car in reverse, but the first squad car turned on its lights and siren.

Crap, crap, crap.

The cop knocked on the window and I rolled it down.  He looked at both of our IDs and had the other officer call them in.  To the amusement of my friend, I looked nervously back at the police car.  What if we were arrested? What if it got around that we had been caught in a car with fogged up windows?  I thought about getting my mug shot taken and already felt the ink on my fingers from the fingerprinting that was sure to follow.  I had never had contact with the police more than a traffic stop or two.  My friend had grown up as a normal teenager and, while never having been involved in anything serious, had participated in her fair share of loiterings and pranks that, to her, had lessened the seriousness of cops rapping on the car window at one in the morning.  The cop returned our IDs and told us we couldn’t park there after hours.  I looked at the police officer who now seemed less a stone-cold enforcer of the law than a bored cop in his late twenties trying to fill the time.  My eyes were still wide, however, as the squad cars raced down the road to the base of the hill.  I put my car into reverse and we left.  I felt hungry, but the Taco Bell was probably already closed.

I finished writing the first page and hit save.  I named the file “novel attempt number 445246.doc”.  It was an arbitrary number, selected by hitting keys at random, but it seemed as though there were that many.

I rarely deleted files, much less things I had written.  On my hard drive, in neatly organized folders, were stories I had written for my high school newspaper (the newspaper I had started and then disbanded all within a few months), term papers I had written in college, and commercial scripts I had written for work.

And then there was the Writing folder.  Here were dozens of novels, screenplays, and short stories that I had started and then abandoned.  They ranged from romantic comedy to science fiction, from thrillers, to memoirs.  Very few of them had more than one page of content, having suffered the wrath of my indifference or – more likely – my paralyzing self-editorializing.  After page one, the story became mediocre in my eyes or even idiotic.  I couldn’t even bear to read its offensive lines and it was banished to the literary Guantanamo Bay that was the Writing folder.

Every once in a while I would mill about through the folder like a hipster in a thrift store, rolling my eyes at the quaintness and sometimes even liking a piece but, being too afraid to admit it, putting it back in order to save face.  I wondered what would happen to the ideas that I’d created and then left for dead in the Writing folder.  Would they come back later when my self-criticism had waned due to age and apathy or would they forever remain in the folder only to disappear forever in a hard disk failure?  Whatever their outcome, they wouldn’t be alone, because I already had an idea for “”novel attempt number 445247.doc”.

When I crossed Piedmont Avenue and entered the park at the 12th Street gate, I saw I wasn’t the only one that seemed to have had my idea.  The park was fairly busy with joggers, cyclists, rollerbladers, and just-plain-strollers.

I started to jog.

I tried to control my breathing and my pace.  Frequently when I ran I started off too quickly and soon tired.  This time, however, I could tell I was going to be able to run longer than normal.  I decided to run around the lake.  The daylight quickly faded as I turned the corner at the east end of the circle path.  As I ran, I looked over to the buildings along the Midtown stretch of Peachtree.  Their lights were already on and their glow reflected off the sky.  I remembered when I first saw them almost two years earlier.

I left the highway on the Pine Street exit and turned left onto Peachtree.  I held the Google Maps printout against the steering wheel of my ’92 Toyota Paseo and craned my neck to see the numbers on the buildings.  I was looking for 860 Peachtree.  I was getting close.  Was I going to work in one of these buildings?  Surely not.  I realized that the address I was looking for was probably in a smaller building in between a couple of highrises…or something.  Still, in between highrises was better than no highrises at all.  As I approached 860, I grew excited.  I already decided that I wanted to work here.  I didn’t know where I would live or how I would live as an intern, but I knew I wanted to work in this neighborhood.

I saw a Starbucks ahead on the corner and checked my handwritten notes to confirm that yes, the building across the street was…really cool looking.  860 Peachtree was a twenty-three floor steel and blue glass midrise which reflected the clouds.  I would work there?  I turned left into the parking deck and walked around to the front lobby.  The concierge greeted me with a smile and I walked to the call box with a poor attempt at familiarity.  I found the number and checked the clock on my cell phone.  I was about fifteen minutes early….  I decided to wait, so I sat down on one of the sofas.  I avoided looking at the concierge, but let my eyes wander everywhere else.  The stone floor carved a winding path into the carpet to the elevator lobby which lay beyond a locked glass door.  Large plants were scattered around the room and on the other side of the concierge’s desk stood a three-foot model of the building itself.  The ceiling was at least twenty-five feet overhead and my eyes followed the walls all the way down to my shoes.  My feet shifted uncomfortably in them.  I had woken up before 5am to make it to Atlanta in time for the interview and back to Tuscaloosa, Alabama for a 1pm class.  In my early morning stupor, I was unable to find black socks and I reasoned that no one would look at my ankles, so I put on white socks with my black shoes and black pants.  I now deeply regretted that reasoning and tugged at the bottom of my pants.  I tried to distract myself by looking through my resumes again, but not closely enough that I might find an error that was uncorrectable.

After fifteen minutes, I went to the call box and typed in the number.  The voice on the other end gave me a suite number and an elevator code, which I scribbled on the back of my resume folder.

Upon reaching the 14th floor, I realized I only wrote down the elevator code, not the suite number.  After a quick call on my cell phone, I got the suite number and was soon knocking on the door.  A man answered and introduced himself.  He was whom I had been talking to, but he looked younger in person.  He invited me in and the first thing I noticed was the fifteen foot floor-to-ceiling windows that paneled one side of the apartment.  Beyond the windows lay the north side of Midtown with Buckhead beyond.  I wanted to work there…

I continued running down the path.  To the left, I could see the building that I wanted to work in so badly.  The company had since moved to a much larger space in Inman Park.  As I took in the skyline, I realized that it had been a while since I had really looked at it.  As a kid, I had always wanted to live in the city and that desire grew even stronger on my mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

And I realized that I was doing it.

Near the end of the loop, I cut across the green and ran to 7th Street.  I stopped into CVS, picked up some random household items, and leisurely walked back to my apartment.  Once there, I sat on my couch with the balcony door open and watched the lights as the steady hum of the city floated in.

?Here you go,? he said, pulling out a DVD.

?What?s that?? I said.

?It?s Dan In Real Life,? he replied.

I was confused, ?does this stem from a previous conversation??

?No,? he said, ?I just had it and thought you?d want to rip it, since it is something that it seems you?d be into.?

My confusion now switched to whether he thought I would be into the movie, or just ripping random DVDs.  I decided it was the movie and I took the gesture for thoughtfulness.

?Thanks,? I said and fired up Handbrake.  The movie was taking too long and he left before it was done.

During the edit session, I got an IM from him asking to drop the DVD off at his house after work.

?No problem,? I typed back.  I was in session with the client so he could have asked me over to wax his back and I probably would have said yes, just to end the conversation and not have the client see me chatting online during the edit.

He soon typed back, ?Could you do me a solid and drop the disc off at the movie place??

?Sure.?

As I left the disc on the counter and walked back to my car, I had the sneaking suspicion that I was merely a pawn in an elaborate scheme to not have to take a movie back to a rental store.

A revivalist preacher had set up camp in a parking lot and, with speakers larger than Volkswagens, was filing the air with hellfire and damnation.

One of the missionaries turned to the other, ?I don?t understand it.  Why aren?t they feeling anything??

?I don?t know?? was the response.

We have traveled over one hundred and fifty miles and this was the first house that we were inspired to stop at.  We carry the message that Christ has restored His church, calling a prophet.

The pastor?s gnashing of teeth reached a climax, blasting ?Halleluiah!? against the windows of every house in the neighborhood.  But the missionaries weren’t listening anymore.

?You remember that sunday school tape that we watched about the Doctrine and Covenants today?? asked one.

?Yeah,? responded the other.

?The same religious climate that existed at that time exists today in Brasil.  I think we need to change the way we teach,? said the first missionary.

?I was thinking the same thing,? said the other, quickening his pace. ?I think we need to testify more.  We need to let these people know that Christ?s church is on the earth again.  We aren?t just another Protestant church that says pretty things.?

?We need to emphasize Joseph Smith more, too,? the other missionary joined in with renewed excitement.

The conversation continued until the missionaries knelt in prayer in their small room, thanking their Father for the guidance given and the strength needed to take the few steps that were illuminated for them.

Thunder grumbled and the rain began to fall.  As it did, a calm silence spread across the neighborhood.