My First Viral Video

I'm not doing a Christmas post this year. I thought I'd share something that happened recently.

I've been posting videos on YouTube for more than 13 years. I post videos on a number of different topics, some of which related to this blog and my experiences with neurodiversity (although I haven't posted on that subject in years). Sometimes, they can consist of little jokes and observances. I was basically making YouTube Shorts in landscape mode.

I wasn't expecting much at first, but I was hoping that my audience would grow as I developed more content and I would get a clearer idea of the direction my channel was going to take. If I started getting a lot of followers, I could consider monetizing my channel. However, very few of my videos ever got more than a few dozen views. It looked like this was just going to remain a hobby.

One day, I shared a video that became my first actual YouTube Short. I was astonished at how quickly it racked up 14,000 views. In addition, it was getting more likes and comments than all my previous videos combined.

I started producing more Shorts. But I didn't get anywhere near as many views as I had on that first one. But they were averaging about a thousand views each, so I still saw this as an improvement over my previous posts. Eventually, I produced a Short that garnered 25,000 views on YouTube.

A few weeks ago, I was driving home from work on Southbound Highway 85 before the Union Avenue exit. There is a bridge overhead that frequently sees demonstrations over various policital issues. They were there before the recent 2025 California General Election. But this time, their signs said, "Honk if you're not in the Epstein Files." I quickly thought of a joke and recorded it. I then posted it on YouTube. After I got home, I posted it on my Facebook page, and it was simultaneousy posted on Instagram.

I managed to rack up 7,000 views within 24 hours on YouTube. That was way better than average. But I didn't really pay attention to it for a couple of days. I later went on Instagram and was shocked beyond belief that it had acquired more than 400,000 views! Not to mention that it had thousands of likes and more than 100 comments. In addition, I'd gotten about 30 additional followers because of this video. And the number continued to increase above 765,000 views. It's pretty much slowed down, but I continue to slowly get more views and likes.

All of a sudden, the pressure was on to create more content. I couldn't think of anything new that I could immediately post, so I would find some of my old short videos and redo them for the YouTube Shorts format. I also made sure these would post on Instagram. Sadly, nothing else is hitting like the Epstein video. I am getting more views than average, but I don't think I'll get another viral hit like this right away.

And that really burns me up. I've often heard stories about artists (music and otherwise) who would work really hard on their craft, but find that their most popular and enduring work is the stuff they basically slapped together in a short amount of time without a lot of thought. For me, this was just a joke on the fly. But I guess that the combination of politics, sex and crime created a perfect storm that was hard for everyone to ignore. It is rather irritating that the social media projects I put a lot of thought and planning behind don't get much traction. This would apply to the "A Liberal Christian" project (which was all done before YouTube Shorts became a thing) and my efforts to get Democrats to temporarily change their registration so they could vote against Trump in the primary (which were ALL YouTube Shorts). If 700,000 people saw those videos, I could have really made a difference.

So, I don't know when I'll get lucky like this again.

The Bully That Wasn't, Part Two

In yesterday's post, I went into detail about how a boy named Shad, whom I had known since the 5th grade, wound up getting involved in an armed robbery and murder when he was 16 years old. Today, I'm going to focus on what happened after he went to prison.

One thing I didn't mention yesterday was how brutal the incident was. The restaurant owner was shot five times when he was killed. The wife suffered from four gunshot wounds. So, this was not a case of "Oops! My gun accidentally went off!" or "I fired a warning shot and it hit you!" What happened next shouldn't come as a surprise.

I would imagine that Shad was counting down the days until he hit the 15-year mark and he would get released. During this time, there were reportedly several incidents of him getting his hands on drugs and getting high in prison. Around the 13-year mark, he may have realized that he wasn't going to be released after all. He filed a motion claiming that his public defender didn't properly explain the consequences of the sentencing and that he wouldn't have agreed to the plea bargain if he'd understood that he wouldn't actually get out in 15 years. There was a transcript of Shad's appearance during the plea, in which the judge at the time asked him if he understood that the 15-year release was no guarantee. Shad appeared to agree with everything during the proceeding. The motion was denied.

(And I would imagine that the public defender really didn't want to represent Shad at trial, considering the nature of the crime. The public defender was just doing what could be done to avoid the death penalty and probably misconstrued the truth about early release in order to get Shad to accept the plea agreement.)

After this point, Shad became more of a model prisoner and took measures to improve himself by taking courses and helping other inmates. After he had served 30 years, he was eligible for parole. But he was denied. The surviving wife testified to the parole board. (And I should mention that #2 was also eligible for parole at the same time.) I saw an article in which the wife stated she would show up and speak to the parole board every time the two of them were up for consideration. Parole was denied four more times over the course of the next few years.

The ACLU got involved in Shad's case to work toward keeping offenders under 18 from getting life in prison. I couldn't confirm this, but it would appear that the wife passed away before Shad's sixth parole hearing took place. Parole was approved for Shad and #2. Shad had spent 40 years in prison up to this point and was released.

In an interview following his release, Shad complained about the attitude of the parole board during the earlier proceedings and that they just weren't paying attention to him while he was making his case. Did anyone explain to him that the wife testified? Was the board not supposed to take her pain and suffering into account when considering parole for Shad?

That's the real issue. In everything I read and watched about Shad's case, I don't see him taking responsibility for what happened or showing any regret over his past. He just appears to blame peer pressure for his situation. You'd think after 40 years, he'd say something like, "I'm sorry for what I did. That was a big mistake and I should have known better. I blame myself."

Another thing came up during Shad's release. He claims to have moved around and gone to 12 different schools in the five years after he turned 10. So, four of those would have been Central Elementary, Zia Intermediate, Park Junior High and Artesia High School. But I don't know what the other eight schools would have been. Like I said yesterday, I wasn't aware of there being a time in which he wasn't in school in Artesia. But I wasn't tracking his attendance every day. And his father's obituary seems to indicate that he never left Artesia after moving there. Unless Shad was constantly being passed around to different relatives during this time, I don't see how he could have possibly been enrolled in that many schools.

Now, Shad's path to freedom doesn't end here. About six months after being on the outside, Shad became friends with a 19-year-old woman. The nature of the friendship isn't clear, but he was with her when she was arrested for armed robbery. Since Shad was not supposed to associate with criminals, he was also arrested for a parole violation.

Shad was supposedly not aware the woman had been involved in an armed robbery. Shad was denied representation and there was no appeals process for parole violation arrests. He wound up going back to prison (the same prison he had been released from) and was there for at least six months. The ACLU was able to step in and help, but there were a lot of roadblocks to getting him released.

(And it wouldn't surprise me to find out that the only reason the woman became friends with him was that she was planning to blame the robbery on him. I'll bet she actually attempted this and investigators probably laughed in her face.)

It looks like Shad eventually settled into a normal life. I see he had set up Facebook and Instagram accounts. (And #2 is one of his friends.)

And I recently saw online that people in the community where the murder took place still talk about it 40 years later. It had that kind of impact.

I was kind of worried that Shad would try to reach out to me to make amends (like you're required to do in a 12-step program). I was more concerned about having to pretend I didn't know he was in prison for 40 years. But I came to realize that Shad was likely the kind of person who would not make amends.

I seriously doubt I will ever hear from him.

The Bully That Wasn't, Part One

I'm not back to blogging on a daily basis. I just wanted to get this one out because something caused this incident to rise to the surface. This was an article I had planned for a Friday post, but I needed to produce enough articles to build up some steam for a full comeback.

I had ignored this incident during the teenage years era of the blog. I had kind of forgotten it had happened, but then I remembered the individual involved and looked him up on the internet. I was very surprised at the way his life had turned out.

I first met Shad in 1974, when I first started attending Central Elementary school. He was shorter than me, but stout. He was in the other 5th grade class. We weren't really friends, but we didn't really get much of a chance to get to know each other. I really just remember once during recess, the boys from both classes were organized together to play keepaway. I noticed he ended up handling the ball less than I did. I really didn't like that my teammates didn't trust me with the ball. It wouldn't have surprised me to find out that he felt the same way about his team. Outside of this, I didn't feel like I had enough common ground with him to try to be his friend. All I knew about him was that he wasn't very smart and he didn't talk much.

I would sporadically see him from time to time as we attended Zia Intermediate for 6th and 7th grades and then Park Junior High for 8th and 9th grades. I don't recall a time that he wasn't going to school in Artesia (in that he might have moved in and out of Artesia).

So I was surprised when I was riding my bike around downtown Artesia and he approached me. He started saying mean stuff to me, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. He was trying to threaten me, I guess. I was bewildered. I didn't know what he was trying to say or wanted to do. Was he trying to start a fight? Why? What did I do to him?

I guess he wanted to bully me, and I was probably the only person he felt like he could bully. What was weird was that he never did anything at school. He would only try to give me grief if he saw me around somewhere outside of school. But I didn't consider him a bully. I knew that if he started to get physical with me, I would be able to take him.

I guess he figured out he really couldn't do anything to me, so he turned his sights on my brother Loyd. Loyd had just purchased some candy. Shad went up to him and threatened to beat him up if he didn't give him the candy. From Loyd's perspective, Shad appeared much bigger than him, so he gave him the candy and came home.

Later, Mom asked me if I knew Shad and said something about the encounter Loyd had with him. I mentioned that he had been acting like a jerk to me for pretty much no reason. She said something to the effect that he didn't have life so good at his home and he was taking it out on me and Loyd. I didn't know why he thought we had things better than him. He wasn't being forced to work at Dad's apartments. Shad came to our front door later and apologized for taking the candy. I wasn't in the porch area when this transpired. I was just looking out from the foyer.

I didn't have too many encounters with him after that. All he did was continue to act like a jerk if we saw each other. I once drove my car past the high school with Rad in the passenger seat. Shad threw a rock at my car from across the street. It hit the undercarriage. I stopped the car and glared at him. "Did I hit your car? "YES!" "GOOD!" I told Rad who he was and that he had once stolen candy from Loyd. That wound up being the last time I remember seeing Shad.

A few years ago, I remembered the stuff that happened with Shad and I was kind of curious about what happened to that guy. I had already passed my high school years in the blog, so I wasn't looking to go back and revisit it during this phase. It was surprisingly easy to find him on the Internet. And I was rather shocked by what I found.

(I should take time to point out that I normally don't go into detail about the bad stuff someone has done unless it actually affects me. And this did affect me because I was worried for awhile that Shad was going to attempt to reach out to me.)

So it turns out that about a year after my last encounter with Shad, he was involved in an armed robbery and murder that took place at a fast food restaurant in a small town.

From what I could gather from archived newspaper articles, this is what happened: One Sunday morning, Shad and another person (who I'll refer to as #2) went into the restaurant and held the owner and his wife at gunpoint. Supposedly, the owner begged for his life and told the two to take whatever they wanted. They went ahead and shot the owner and his wife, took $100 out of the register, got the owner's car keys, stole the car and drove to the next state over. The owner died, but the wife survived and was able to tell police what happened. (And there's no information about who shot who.)

(And I should point out that it's apparent that no one knew what they were doing. The morning would be a terrible time to try to rob a restaurant in a small town. Breakfast at a fast food restaurant averaged about $2 a person back then, so there couldn't have been much cash available at that time, even if 50 people had come in. However, it is likely that $100 was the most cash they'd ever held in their hands.)

Police in both states were alerted about the car they needed to be on the lookout for. About an hour later in the next state over, officers saw the car and gave chase. Shad and #2 drove off the Interstate onto a gravel road. There happened to be another officer on that road and he was alerted that the suspects were headed his way. He blocked the road with his car. When Shad and #2 were coming toward the officer, one of them reportedly leaned out the passenger side window and fired shots at the police car. The officer was not hit, but bullets went through the windshield. They then ran into the officer's car head on, got out of their car and ran off. After about an hour, officers searched the area and had them surrounded. They then surrendered and were arrested.

They were both extradicted to where the murder took place. Even though he was a teenager, Shad was charged as an adult. He entered a plea agreement and received a sentence of 30 years to life in prison. (Shad was supposedly encouraged to enter into this plea deal by his public defender, who said that he would avoid getting the death penalty and would likely get out in 15 years.) #2 had a trial and was found guilty. He received the death penalty. However, that penalty was overturned due to errors made in the sentencing phase.

It should be mentioned at this point that there was a third person involved in all this. (I'll call him #3.) Shad, #2 and #3 were all residents in a drug rehab program. #3 had a car and was getting ready to leave the rehab program. Supposedly, Shad and #2 invited themselves to come along. #3 thought they were going to want to be dropped off at a location along the way, but they continued to want to ride with him to his destination.

When they got to the small town, #3 allegedly ordered Shad and #2 to go in and rob the restaurant and kill the owner, and threatened to kill them if they didn't follow through. (And I'm assuming that everyone had guns in their possession at this point.) #3 appeared to have taken off after they went inside the restaurant.

Both Shad and #2 said that #3 was the person who planned the robbery and murder. As a result, #3 was arrested. During his trial, Shad testified about what #3 had told them prior to the robbery and murder. #3 took the stand in his own defense. He stated that he witnessed the robbery, but left after that. He did not witness the murder. In addition, the wife was not able to identify #3 as being at the scene. As a result, #3 was found not guilty.

Now, I have no idea if #3 actually threatened Shad and #2 into the robbery and murder. But I'll bet Shad was shocked at the outcome of the trial. He and #2 probably wanted to bring #3 down with them and they failed. I was not able to find out anything about #3's whereabouts after the trial.

(And I should point out that it really wouldn't have mattered if Shad and #2 had properly been sentenced to death. In 1986, Governor Toney Anaya commuted all current death penalties to life sentences before the end of his term.)

This all came to light recently when Loyd texted me to tell me about the recent flooding in Texas. A friend of his was trying to find his son. Rescuers wouldn't do anything for him because they were looking for the girls who drowned, so his friend went and got his son himself. Loyd said I would likely do the same for my son.

Loyd then recounted his encounter with Shad. He said that Dad always said he wouldn't fight our battles for us, but Loyd came home and told Dad about the big kid who stole his candy. He said that Dad ran out of the house without his shirt and took Loyd in the pickup. They found Shad four blocks away, eating the candy. Dad supposedly pushed Shad to the ground. Shad yelled, "I'm just a kid. I'm going to tell the cops what you just did!" Dad responded with, "The cops are afraid of me! Never come around my son again!" I was not aware Dad had gotten involved prior to Mom telling me about what happened with Loyd.

I immediately called Loyd and told him what I knew about the kid who stole his candy and what happened to him. After I told him when the robbery and murder had taken place, Loyd responded with, "That was just a couple of years after he took the candy from me! He was just a bad kid!"

And there was a lot more that happened to Shad after he was incarcerated. I'll go into detail about that tomorrow.

Fayd vs. Santa Claus

(Please note: I'm kind of skipping way ahead here to present day. I thought this was worth writing about.)

When I was a kid, I absolutely believed in Santa Claus. I bought into all of the lore: Coming down the chimney (even though we never had one), reindeer on the rooftop, sneaking around in the middle of the night, filling our stockings and providing my brother and me with gifts that my parents swore they couldn't afford.

I remember some Christmas Eves in which it was difficult for me to even fall asleep. I was so excited about the prospect of being deemed a good little boy and being showered with presents as a reward. I recall one night in which I was laying down in my Aunt Cind's room and started hallucinating about the Three Kings. (And Mom and Dad wondered why I appeared to be so grouchy the first thing those mornings.)

That all changed after the Christmas in which I was 10 years old. I realized the truth about Santa. However, Loyd still believed, so I still kind of had to go along with it. But I wasn't going to lose any sleep over Santa again.

I remember a "Bad News...Good News" cartoon in Mad Magazine. In the first panel, it said, "Bad News is finding out there's no Santa Claus." The second panel said, "Good News is finding out it doesn't make a difference" and showing a boy under the Christmas tree with a lot of gifts. That's pretty much how it was for me and Loyd. We were still greeted with large presents on Christmas morning, regardless of whether we believed in Santa. The only bad thing was that when we were teenagers, Mom and Dad still insisted that we wake up early on Christmas morning, even though there were no other little kids in the house. I was REALLY grouchy then.

But one thing I did like about how Christmas was done by my parents was that Loyd and I were always aware of who was giving us gifts. We knew that only the special Christmas morning gifts and stockings stuffers were provided by Santa. All the other gifts were clearly labeled who they were for and who they were from. Santa was not going to be used as an excuse to avoid writing thank you notes.

So I frequently wondered how I would handle Christmas when I grew up and had kids. I certainly did not like my sleepless Christmas Eves of anxiety and wouldn't wish them on anyone else. After Boyd was born and we had experienced his first Christmas, I had a discussion with Myz. I told her I would prefer if Boyd didn't absolutely believe in Santa. I didn't know how we were going to get it to work, but I didn't want him to believe that Christmas was all about Santa. We never came to any real consensus about it, but we knew that we wouldn't have to worry about it for a couple of years.

That and the next two Christmases were spent with Marina's younger brother, his wife and their daughter Quyd (Boyd's cousin), who was five months older than Boyd (and experienced her first Christmas when she was a month old). Those holidays went off without incident and we didn't have to do anything special for Christmas morning. We just had to wake up, wait for other family members to arrive and then open presents.

But that all changed for Christmas 2016. Boyd was three years old and Quyd had just turned four. They had both watched enough TV in December to know that somebody was supposed to come down the chimney in the middle of the night and deliver presents. They were excitedly talking about Santa coming. I hadn't anticipated that they were going to understand this. I didn't know what we were going to do. We hadn't gotten them anything special. In addition, I was prepared to try to explain the Santa thing to one child, but I wasn't going to be able to do that with a child who wasn't mine. It looked like we were stuck.

On top of that, I had to hope that no one questioned how Santa was going to get out of the fireplace without breaking his neck:

Fortunately, Boyd fell asleep that night without any issue. Myz went out into the living room for a bit. I thought she was setting something up and waited for her to come back. When she did, I went into the living room. Imagine my surprise when I saw a cup of milk and a little bag of Oreo Minis there and NOTHING ELSE! I rushed back in the bedroom. Myz hadn't fallen asleep yet. "Hunny! There's nothing from Santa out there!" "Well, no, we don't have anything!" "We can't do that! The kids are expecting something!"

Myz and I went back out. We already had stockings sitting out with their names on them (along with other ones for the rest of the family). Fortunately, we had a couple of candy canes that we were going to give the kids the next day. We put those in their stockings and grabbed bananas and apples to fill the rest out. We didn't have any little toys or other gifts to put in, so it was all food items.

I also got out a piece of printer paper and quickly wrote a note from "Santa" to Boyd and Quyd, telling them they had been good and wishing them a Merry Christmas. I hoped they weren't expecting more.

As it turned out, I had a hard time falling asleep that night, worried about the reaction of the kids.

We were still in bed the next morning when we suddenly heard a SHRIEK from the living room. Boyd got up out of bed. I scrambled to grab my phone so I could take video and pictures.

Quyd was screaming, "He came! He came!" She held up the note and somehow, she seemed to be able to read what it said.

They were both excited about they had received. I was relieved. After this, I realized that all we needed to do was just fill their stockings. We would likely put other things like toys and other knick-knacks, but we weren't going to have to go overboard and set something special up each year. It looked like we had reached the perfect compromise between doing nothing and killing ourselves for the kids each year.

However, Myz decided to add a new twist for the next year. in 2017, Quyd and her family no longer lived with us, but we still planned to fill her stocking as they still lived in the same town and would be coming by to spend Christmas Day with us. I had shown Myz a YouTube video of parents who had left snowy footprints in their living room. I just thought it was funny. I didn't present it as a Christmas morning routine that we should co-opt. That year, Myz got a can of spray snow and put footprints on our carpet.

When Boyd woke up the next morning and saw the footprints, he said, "Somebody's going to have to clean that up!"

We did the footprints again the next year, but the spray snow can ran out. For 2020, I pretended that Santa couldn't leave snow footprints because of COVID-19 and left paper footprints instead. Boyd still seemed happy about it. We did the same for 2021, but I stopped doing that in 2022.

One year, Myz wanted to put a Nintendo Switch in the stocking. I didn't want to do that because it meant we were going to have to outdo that the next year. However, Myz couldn't get it to fit in the stocking, so it just became a gift from Mom and Dad. I was relieved.

A few years ago, I was discussing our Christmas routine with a co-worker. I mentioned that Santa only puts gifts in the stockings at our house. Her eyes widened, like she just realized that she didn't have to go crazy for Christmas all those years with her kids (who were already adults).

Boyd is now 11 and he's started to get a little cynical about Santa Claus. He says he'll continue to believe until he's 13, but I think the end is going to come a lot sooner than that.





And what's going to happen to the blog a this point? I don't know. Things are very complicated in my life that I don't have much time to myself to work on it.

At least I still do one post a year.

Fayd and the Christmas Day Playlist

One thing I love most about the holidays is listening to Christmas music. No matter how stressed out I get about deadlines this time of year, music never fails to remind me the meaning of the season and how much I enjoyed Christmas as a kid.

However, I notice there's an issue with A LOT of the songs you hear every year. Mainly, they're mostly inappropriate for Christmas Day.

This was something I first noticed on Christmas Day 1987. For whatever reason, the TV was on CMT and featured a performance by Crystal Gayle singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." I was aware that it was a performance that had been recorded prior to Christmas Day, but the thought occurred to me that it didn't make any sense to be singing this particular song today. After all, "Santa" came last night, so why are we singing about it today?

And then I realized that the vast majority of Christmas songs would not match this criteria for timeliness on Christmas Day. They basically lead up to a big climax on Christmas Eve. This includes the songs about Jesus and Santa. "O Holy Night?" Well, It's daytime now. What are we supposed to do? Wait around for Mary to breastfeed him? "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town?" Well, he came and went last night. Now, we have all these presents we don't know what to do with.

This is compounded by the fact we don't know what time Christ was born. (And really, we don't know what day.) But we seem to have this idea that he was born after midnight, so that's what we roll with. Just know that a lot of songwriters seem to find more inspiration from everything that takes place in the wee hours and not so much on December 25th, after everyone's done with their long winter's nap.

So what does this leave us with? Years ago, I had a blog post of "Fayd's Favorite Songs of the Season." The theme was that all the songs listed made no mention of Christmas, Jesus or Santa. All these songs would be appropriate.

I'm not going to supply an exhaustive list of songs appropriate for Christmas Day, but I will go with a few to give you an idea. Just know I can't think of many religious songs that would meet this criteria. Only "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" comes to mind.

Other non-religious songs include: "Deck the Halls"
"We Wish You a Merry Christmas"
"Feliz Navidad"
"Last Christmas"
"All I Want for Christmas is You"
"Do They Know It's Christmas"

Any songs about coming home for Christmas, like "2000 Miles" and "Please Come Home for Christmas." After all, if people make it home the day of Christmas, it still counts.

And there are actually a couple of songs about Santa that would be appropriate. "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" both reference events that took place the night before and are being relayed on Christmas Day.

Also, all the music from "The Nutcracker" would work, because that takes place on Christmas Day.

Wow, this is a really short list. I hope some songwriters are out there working on new material.

Fayd vs. The Star Wars Holiday Special

I was 12 years old when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. It was interesting because it marked the first time my parents had taken me and my brother to see a blockbuster film. They wouldn't take us to see "The Godfather" in 1972. They wouldn't take us to see "The Exorcist" in 1973. They wouldn't take us to see "The Godfather Part II" in 1974. They wouldn't take us to see "Jaws" in 1975 and they wouldn't take us to see "Rocky" in 1976. They wouldn't take us, even though we BEGGED to go. However, when they did go, there was usually a family film playing at the Cinema Twin in Roswell, so we were all able to go to the movies at the same time and didn't need a babysitter.

I became a big Star Wars fan right away and was later thrilled to hear that they were going to make a sequel. In the meantime, I first heard about "The Star Wars Holiday Special," but I didn't know it was supposed to have anything to do with the holidays. In the fall of 1978, I overheard two boys talking about it during the bus ride home. One of them asked the other if he knew about the upcoming "Star Wars" TV-movie. "Yeah, the one about Chewbacca and his family?" I was surprised that I didn't know anything about it. Years later, I would remember this was during the period of time in the 9th grade that I was doing poorly in school and Mom punished me (and my brother, who also wasn't doing well) by taking away the TV for several months. This was why I didn't get to watch it. The punishment was so severe that I couldn't even look at TV Guide.

In my head, I envisioned a TV-movie that was shot on film, similar to how the "Ewok Adventures" would look a few years later. I expected it to be a prequel solely focused on Chewbacca and his family, without Luke, Leia, Han, R2D2 or C3P0. I thought it would be serious in overall tone, like the first "Star Wars" movie. Another thing that I anticipated was that the TV-movie would be shown again about a year later after I got my grades back up and Mom's TV punishmnent was over. I would be certain to be on the watch for it, but it never did come back on again.

I put it out of my head for decades. After 1999, when "The Phantom Menace" came out and was being released on DVD, my friend Chud and I were discussing getting the DVD release. I told him I was going to wait for the full package with all six films. And I wanted EVERYTHING to be included, like the "Ewok Adventures" and the TV-movie about Chewbacca and his family.

It was at least another 10 years after that conversation that I came to learn what that TV-movie actually was. It was called "The Star Wars Holiday Special" and it was a variety show. And it was shot on videotape, not film. Also, while Chewbacca's family was the primary focus, it included all the other characters. And it was apparently the biggest freaking disaster in the history of Star Wars!

Looking back at Mom's punishment, I was very thankful for having TV taken away because it gave me a new perspective on life. I didn't need to watch TV every day. In fact, TV would have been detrimental to me in high school because I otherwise wouldn't have been involved in so many extracurricular activities. As bad as I thought high school was, it would have been even worse if I spent every night at home watching TV. And of course, not having to sit through "The Star Wars Holiday Special" was icing on the cake.

I still have not seen the entire special. I've watched the first 20 minutes. I've seen clips of the rest of the show and have watched all of the Boba Fett cartoon. I have a good idea of what my 14-year-old self would have thought of this, especially after expecting a serious TV-movie. A few months later (when I could watch TV again), I watched both episodes of "Legends of the Superheroes" (featuring live-action versions of the DC Superheroes). When the first episode started, I thought, "Oh, they're not going to take this seriously." I then altered my expectations so I could enjoy the program on a different level. I assume I would have done the same for "The Star Wars Holiday Special." I would have recognized it wasn't going to be a proper follow up to "Star Wars" and probably would have been entertained by it. By this point in my life, I had seen lots of cheesy stuff on TV and considered it the norm.

Of course, another issue was that no one talked about it at school, not even the two boys I had overheard discussing it in the first place. It was years later that I was reminded about what happened after the special had aired. The Guyana Tragedy took place. EVERYONE in school was talking about that. I felt so out of the loop because I hadn't been able to watch the news on TV. After that, Mom agreed to allow me to only watch the news on TV.

I guess the only thing I don't like about missing it was how clueless I was about the content for the next 35 years. I'm glad I didn't embarass myself by casually bringing up the TV-movie about Chewbacca and his family and getting a series of distorted looks from my geeky friends. Yes, there were things worse than missing "The Star Wars Holiday Special."

Long-Distance Christmas

I just realized I'm about to go a full calendar year without posting something on my blog. I have to apologize for this.

The nature of my job has been impacted by COVID-19. While I would usually take time during my lunch and breaks to write articles, I can barely get five minutes of peace without having to put out a figurative fire somewhere. I'm hoping things calm down next year. I have a few articles about ready to go, but I really want to build up a cache before I start blogging regularly again. I thought I would be well into Phase Two and Phase Three by now.

So, I thought I would at least do my annual Christmas post.

It's very interesting to see how things have changed over the last half-century with regards to the holidays. One of those has specifically to do with the long-distance calls to relatives and other people you weren't able to spend Christmas with in person. Does anyone remember how long-distance use to work? You had to call at specific times to get the best rates. If you called long-distance during a weekday, the cost was outrageous and you only did that in the event of emergencies. For whatever reason, someone decided it was a great idea to have the lowest rates between 11pm and 5am the next morning. And this was back in the day that if the phone rang and you were at home, you were obligated by law to answer it.

So on specific holidays, the overnight rates were in effect for most of the day. EVERYBODY in the country was trying to call their relatives. If you tried to call long-distance, you would get a recording that asked you to try your call again later. One Christmas, we were trying to call my uncle Ord for eight hours straight and we could not get through once! We did get to connect with him after 5pm, when the long-distance went back to the regular evening rate. While Grandma Bend was glad to finally get to talk to her son, she didn't like that she was going to have to pay the extra money for the long-distance call.

I couldn't help but wonder if the phone company didn't just shut down long-distance for the day and force everyone to use the evening rate if they wanted to call their loved ones so badly. It was bad for us because we only needed to make this ONE call. I can't imagine what it was like for those who had several people they needed to contact.

It is so hard to imagine that we used to live like this with our old technology. In at least the past 30 years, I haven't had any problems with trying to call people on Christmas. I can even make multiple calls and I never get any recording that tells me to try my call later.

People are always complaining how the cost of living does nothing but go up. This is the one thing that has actually gone down.

In this respect, I don't miss the old days.

Encountering an Asian Stereotype

You may have seen this clip from "Family Guy" before:



Prior to dating Myz, I was aware that this stereotype involving young Asian women existed, but I never thought I would actually encounter it. When I went to visit Mom in 2002, she gave me some water bottles to take on the drive home. They were 10 oz. bottles. I thought they were rather handy and didn't require a lot of extra effort to pick up, twist off the lid and drink while I was driving.

I continued to use these bottles when I made my trips up to San Jose to see Myz. I brought a couple of the bottles into the bedroom. Myz picked up one of the bottles and said, "Oh, my gosh! Look at this water bottle! It's so CUTE!" I explained that I had gotten it from Mom the last time I went to Phoenix. She kept going on and on about how small it was, like she'd never seen a water bottle like that before.

During that same visit, I went into the kitchen to fill a bottle from the water dispenser. All I had filled it, her cousin Haad grabbed the bottle out of my hand and said, "Oh, my gosh! Look at this water bottle! It's so CUTE!" I remarked that Myz had the same reaction, but I still didn't see it as anything special.

A few weeks later, I was going to leave directly from work to drive up to San Jose. I brought a few bottles into the breakroom so I could fill them from the water dispenser. All of a sudden, an Asian co-worker of mine named Xiz picked up one of the bottles and said, "Oh, my gosh! Look at these water bottles! They're so CUTE!"

I have since encountered other Asian stereotypes, but none so glaring as this.



And I guess I should go into a little detail about Xiz. She was a co-worker I had a crush on before I met Myz. She was of Chinese descent and was very pretty. She appeared to be a little flirtatious toward me, enough for me to think that maybe she was interested. But it seemed like she was that way with everyone.

She did have a couple of issues, though. She smoked and she had a kid. Another co-worker had met her daughter. He wasn't aware that Xiz lived in the same apartment complex as him. He saw the girl and thought she looked exactly like Xiz. He then asked the girl if her mother's name was Xiz. The girl said it was. He was shocked at the resemblance.

One day, I overheard her telling another co-worker in the breakroom that while she would date outside her race, she wouldn't marry outside her race. That pretty much told me I didn't have much of a chance.

Fayd vs. "A Christmas Carol"

One of the things I loved doing as a kid was watching all the animated Christmas specials on TV. If it was a cartoon and it was about the holidays, I couldn't be torn away from the TV. (I remember throwing a fit one year because Loyd and I wanted to watch "The Mouse on the Mayflower" on Thanksgiving, but all the men wanted to watch football on the only TV. We lost that one.) And it always lifted my heart to see the percussive "CBS Special Presentation" logo come on and lead directly into the soft piano intro of "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

When I was around 7 years old, I saw that something called "A Christmas Carol" was going to come on. This was the first time I'd ever heard of it. But "Christmas" was in the title and it seemed like it was going to have songs in it, so I watched. (I have confirmed it was the "Famous Classic Tales" version from 1970. You can find it on YouTube.)

I don't recall everything I was thinking while I was watching it. I must have been bewildered by the old guy griping about Christmas. Who doesn't like Christmas? And I was probably pretty freaked out by Marley's ghost and wondering why that was in a Christmas cartoon instead of a Halloween cartoon. (I had seen the "Famous Classic Tales" versions of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" earlier that year.)

I do know I was thinking that every time the ghosts removed Scrooge from his house that Santa wasn't going to come by. Maybe that was why Scrooge didn't like Christmas. He wasn't getting anything from Santa. I mean, it's one thing if you're at your grandmother's house. Santa knows to bring your presents there. But if you're just gallivanting through time and space, Santa's not going to even try to track you down.

So yeah, a lot of the story was really lost on me. However, I must have liked the cartoon because I know I watched it again the next year. But this time, I had a better understanding of what was going on. That one year made a difference in my perspective of the world.

I came to realize that not every Christmas cartoon needed to have Santa or Jesus in it.

The Reveal to Mom

In my relationship with Myz, I decided to hold off on telling my Mom about it for as long as possible. She always got WAY too excited anytime I was seeing someone. ("Grandchildren on the way!") I was actually glad she never met my previous girlfriend. I don't even remember telling her until after it ended the first time. And I don't even think I told her when we started things back up.

After I'd been seeing Myz for a few months, Mom told me there was someone she wanted me to meet. Her name was Rowd and she knew her from working in the New Mexico Legislature. She was around my age and was living with Mom and Dend in Phoenix until she could find a job and get on her feet. She thought she was someone I would like.

This forced my hand. I didn't tell her about Myz right away. I had to discuss this with Myz first. I had to let her know how my Mom got anytime I told her I had a girlfriend, about the expecations for getting married and having kids. I had to tell her about all the previous disappointments. (Myz knew about my ex-girlfriends. She just didn't know the extent of my Mom's involvment with them.)

We decided it was in everyone's best interests if I told Mom what was going on. This way, she wasn't getting Rowd's hopes up. One afternoon, I called her. She happened to be shopping with Rowd at the time. (Oh, great! I didn't want to do this while she was with her! Well, we've gotten this far. We need to get this over with.) I told her that I had started seeing someone. I said that her name was Myz and she lived in San Jose. "Is she Spanish?" "No." "Is she Black?" "No." "Is she White?" "No..." "THEN WHAT IS SHE?" "She Asian!" "Oh, okay."

I told Mom that her parents had come here from Vietnam. Mom said she hoped that she would get to meet her someday. I don't recall what else we discussed after that.

After getting off the phone with Mom, I called Dad and let him know. I never had a problem with telling him, but I figured it was best to keep him in the loop at the same time.

Not long after that, I had a few days off and went to Phoenix to see Mom and Dend. Rowd was still staying with them. I remember driving and getting there late at night. The first thing I had to do was call Myz and let her know I had gotten there safely. I had a cell phone at the time, but I was worried about roaming charges. (It turns out there really weren't roaming charges, but I didn't know how it all worked.) I had to use Mom's landline to call Myz and use a calling card to make the long distance call. I had to punch in all the numbers and the phone made a very loud beep every time I hit a key. I was afraid I was going to wake up the entire house just by punching in my card number. And then, I didn't so something right the first time, so I had to make those beeping noises ALL OVER AGAIN!

After talking to Myz, I went to sleep in the guest room. I woke up the next morning and saw Mom and Dend. Later, Rowd got out of bed. Usually, when Mom had tried to set me up with someone, she would be like a younger version of Mom, with blond hair and blue eyes. I could tell that Rowd was Native American. I thought that at least Mom was trying to fix me up with someone closer to my taste.

Rowd talked about how all the beeping from the phone woke her up. Mom and Dend hadn't heard anything.

Rowd was nice and very smart, but I knew I wouldn't have started something up with her even if I didn't have Myz in my life. This was because Mom was involved. Now, if I'd met Rowd on my own without Mom's involvement, there was a possibility. But I didn't put much thought into this.

Later, Mom told me that Rowd had divorced her ex-husband after she had been arrested for beating him up. I guess Mom thought that after my other disastrous ex-girlfriends, Rowd would have been a cakewalk.

This provided justification for me knowing that I could never allow Mom to pick my girlfriends. And thankfully, she never got that opportunity again.

Meeting Family and Friends

I'd already gone into detail about how I med Myz' cousin Haad. I wound up meeting a few of Myz' other family members and friends in unexpected ways. But it would be a very long time before I would get to meet her parents, older brother, sister-in-law and niece.

The next one I met was her younger brother Sand. Sand was the one who was supposed to be living in the house when I first came up to meet Myz, but he moved back home before I made the trip. While I was visiting Myz, he showed up unexpectedly. I was in Myz' bedroom at the time. Myz told me he was there, but she didn't want me coming out. (She hadn't told her immediate family about me yet.) She was going to go talk to him to see if he was going to stay long. I thought I should go ahead and meet him because I knew it would look bad if I was trying to hide. She thought he was going to leave soon, so she told me to stay. She talked to him for a bit and then came back. She said he was planning on spending the night. I was going to have to meet him, but she needed a couple more minutes before I came out.

She went back to talk to him to let him know she had started seeing someone and that I was there at the time. She then called for me to come out. I greeted Sand. He just kind of shook his head. "We'll talk about this later. I gotta go." He went out to his car and left.

Myz had to run an errand, so I was left in the house all alone. Sand came back later. He was outside smoking. I decided to go start a conversation with him. I don't remember what all we talked about, but we were both being casual. He then asked how old I was. "37." "Oh, so you've been married a couple of times, then." "No, I haven't been married and I don't have any kids. Myz wouldn't have had anything to do with me if I had."

After that, we seemed to get along okay. Later, Myz and I were watching a DVD in the living room and holding hands on the couch. Sand came in and saw us. He appeared to not like what he was seeing, but he didn't say anything.

Anytime I saw him after that on future visits, he seemed okay. But even though he's my brother-in-law now, we've never really bonded like brothers. (That also goes for Myz' older brother Phod.)

I had visted Myz at least eight times before I got to meet the other occupant of the house, her cousin Robd. He was Haad's younger brother and lived on the other half of the mobile home. (I should point out that the mobile home was a single-wide, but they enclosed the porch area and put in a bedroom, bathroom and laundry room. It looked like a double-wide, but it wasn't.) When he was home and Myz and I were in her bedroom, we could always hear him when he was home.

One of the things that I knew about Robd was that, even though he was 19, he LOVED to drink. All over the house was a number of photos of him getting drunk with his friends. There were a few photos that showed them taking a sharpie to someone's glasses while he was conked out. I got to meet Robd when he happened to be home after Myz and I had returned from doing something. He was there with a friend. I don't know if he knew anything about me beforehand, but he didn't act surprised to see me.

About the fourth time I came up to see Myz, I met Gied. Gied was Myz' best friend from high school. She was a student at San Jose State University. Myz and I were in the bedroom when we heard the driveway door open. The next thing, we heard knocking on the bedroom door. Myz opened it and it was Gied. Gied gasped when she saw me. (Fortunately, Myz and I were fully clothed at the time.)

Once, Myz and I went to a portrait studio to have our pictures taken. When we were there, we ran into a friend of Haad's. She was with her boyfriend doing the same thing we were. Myz talked to her for a bit before we finished our pictures. Later, Myz found out that friend told Haad about meeting us. Somehow, they were able to figure out that I was older than Myz and they thought I was manipulating her. We kind of laughed about that.

Another time, we were in the bedroom and we could hear other people coming in the house. It was Haad and Robd's parents (Myz' uncle and aunt). Myz clearly did not want them to meet me because she knew they would tell her parents. We had to stay quiet in the bedroom for at least an hour. Because the conversation they were having was all in Vietnamese, I don't know what they were talking about. I needed to pee very badly, but Myz wouldn't let me sneak into the bathroom. It got to the point that I thought I was going to have to pee in a cup in the bedroom. At this point, it was quiet in the house. Myz went out and saw that everyone had left. The coast was clear. I could pee in peace.

On another visit, Haad warned Myz that her parents were coming up from Monterey and they would be there in an hour. For some reason, Myz had something she had to take care of at the house and wouldn't leave right away, thinking we had plenty of time. I kept trying to rush things along, but Myz was adamant about completing her task. Finally, we left. Just as we were pulling out of the mobile home park, her uncle and aunt pulled in. They could clearly see us and Myz shyly waved at them.

Later, when we told Haad what had happened, she said that her parents had poor eyesight and probably didn't see me in the car. I expressed my doubts about that at the time. However, it didn't look like they said anything to Myz' parents about me. But when I did actually get to meet them for the first time about a year later, they commented to Haad how they thought I was better that Myz' old boyfriend (whom they saw in the car that one time).

And I also met Haad's boyfriend Tond. An odd thing after meeting him was that I was working at Walmart at the Customer Service desk one day in San Diego. I noticed a TV news crew was shooting footage of me assisting a customer. Tond saw that footage on a Bay Area newscast and recognized me.

I guess I didn't always have to use my car to get around.

But it took awhile before Myz got to meet any of my friends and family.

A True Long-Distance Relationship

So, this was the first time I'd been involved in an actual long-distance relationship. I felt like it was definitely better than being in no relationship at all. I trusted Myz very much and never felt like I had to worry about what she was doing when I wasn't in San Jose. And I felt confident enough in the future of the relationship that I didn't need to hedge and see if I could find someone close to home.

We talked to each other on a daily basis. We also continued chatting on AOL whenever we were both on at the same time. If I was planning on doing something in the evening, I could let her know so we could talk before I left or we could just let it wait until the next day. I was pretty much free to come and go as I pleased while I was in San Diego.

I continued to drive up to see her every three to four weeks. I didn't mind that I had to be the one to always travel to see her. And it seemed like the more I drove up there, the shorter amount of time it took. It was like I was going at warp speed speed because I would literally zone out and the next thing I knew, I was there. (However, this didn't work when I drove back home to San Diego for some reason.) And somehow, even though I was working at Walmart, I always had money for gas, food and other forms of entertainment. It was like taking mini-vacations to the Bay Area all the time. (I didn't even go to Vegas that often!)

There was even one time that I decided to drive up to San Jose on the spur of the moment. I had hoped that she would enjoy me making a surprise, unplanned visit (even if I was going to show up at 2am). I actually wasn't going to tell her anything until I got there. (But if she was happy I did that, I knew I had a keeper!) However, she actually called me about an hour after I left San Diego and asked what I was up to. (I guess she could tell I was driving.) I thought for a moment and decided it would be best not to absolutely surprise her. I told her I was on the way up the San Jose. She was indeed excited, because she was actually going to ask me to come up! She really missed me!

I do have to admit that everything was not always perfect between us. Regardless of if I was in San Diego or San Jose, we would still have occasional disagreements. It was never anything so major that I felt like the relationship was in danger, but they were common mistakes that I made in previous relationships. We were always able to work through them and still continue to love each other.

I still had a dilemma: How were we going to reconcile the distance? At some point, one of us was going to have to move to be with the other for the relationship to prosper. I really didn't want to have to be the one to move. I liked living in San Diego. I had friends and after ten years, I finally felt comfortable there. But I also recalled the disasters that took place when I took my former girlfriends away from their homes in order to assimilate into my lifestyle. Those just didn't work out.

I knew I was going to have to be the one to move this time.

However, we're not going to get to that on this blog for awhile. The posts that follow will give a general outline of the things Myz and I went through during the next year of our courtship. It literally all became a blur (because of the warp-speed drive) so I won't be going into detail about every single trip. I will give a lot of general anecdotes about certain milestones we approached.

Some interesting things did happen, but for the most part, it will be drama-free. Unlike those other situations that involved moving someone to be with me.

A Second Go-Round

After going back home from meeting Myz for the first time, I focused on trying to figure out when I could plan to drive back up to San Jose to see her again. We talked on the phone and/or chatted on AOL almost every day after I got back. This was going to be my first real attempt at a long-distance relationship.

One of the nice things about telling Myz "I love you" before I left is that I could go ahead and keep saying that anytime we were on the phone. It always felt appropriate to tell her and she would always say it back before we ended the calls. I was so glad that didn't backfire on me, because it easily could have

Before I came up the first time, she had only told her cousin Haad that I was coming up and spending the night. She said that Haad didn't really think I was there until she went into the bathroom and saw my toothbrush. (Either we were being very quiet or Haad is a sound sleeper!) Her other cousin Bind (Haad's younger brother) didn't know anything, period. And I didn't know if I would ever get to meet anyone from her family.

About a week later, I'd gotten my work schedule for the next two weeks and knew what my days off were going to be. We made plans for me to come up during that time. The only problem was that I had to work until 7pm the night before. This meant I wouldn't get there until at least 2am. She didn't seem to mind having to get out of bed at that time to let me in the house.

One of the good things about this upcoming visit is that I would spend two nights at her house. This meant that we could relax and not worry about trying to accomplish too much in such a small amount of time. I was also aware that because of this, it was possible that we would be making love during this visit (even though this prospect was not a part of any conversation), so I went out and bought some condoms just in case.

The second time driving up didn't seem to take so long. I guess it was because I didn't have this feeling of dread in the back of my mind like I'd had before. The nervousness had disappeared and I could concentrate more on enjoying the journey.

I remember arriving at the mobile home park, parking in the guest area and calling Myz to let her know I was there. I walked to the house and she was waiting outside. I felt my heart being lifted when I saw her and she smiled at me. We went inside, I went into the bathroom, changed my clothes and joined her in bed. We just made out for the next couple of hours before we finally fell asleep.

We didn't really do anything special this time. We just wanted to spend as much time with each other without worrying about when I was going to leave. I remember we were in the living room watching TV. We were making out and it started getting very passionate. All of a sudden, it felt like the same thought came across our minds at the exact same time. We both stood up and ran toward the bedroom. We made love.

Some time later, I had to get ready to leave. It was late in the afternoon. Myz said she needed to run to the store for something while I got my stuff ready to go. This meant I was alone in the house.

After I had packed my stuff, I waited for Myz to come back. A car drove up and parked in the driveway. I wondered if it was Myz. I could hear the sound of a woman getting out and talking on the phone. I figured out it wasn't Myz, but didn't realize this until it was too late to close the bedroom door. The driveway door opened. It was her cousin Haad. She saw me and said, "OH, MY GOD! Hang on! I have to call you back!" She hung up the phone and introduced herself. She kept talking through nervous laughter. It was a good thing she hadn't gotten home an hour earlier.

Myz came back. Myz spent some time talking to Haad before I had to go. I was beginning to wonder if there were really other people in the house because no one made any noise. You'd think that with as loud as Haad was talking with Myz (and on the phone before she came in the house), I'd be able to hear her all over the house.

Myz and I said goodbye. I didn't want to leave, but it was nice to know that I would be able to come back again in a few weeks. I had a lot more to look forward to.

Fayd vs. Encyclopedia Brown, Part 2

In last week's post, I expressed my frustration at not being able to solve Encyclopedia Brown mysteries when I was a kid. I decided to purchase and read an Encyclopedia Brown book to see if I could figure things out with my adult mind.

Donald J. Sobol continued to write the books for more than 30 years after I'd stopped. I had originally wanted to get one of the books from the 80s, which would have been close to the time that I had moved on. However, Amazon offered me a $5 credit and the only book I could get for that price was "Encyclopedia Brown: Super Sleuth" from 2009. (I really didn't want to spend any of my own money. I don't make money on this blog.)

The nice thing about having the book on the Kindle is that it made it harder to flip to the back of the book to read the solutions. Unfortunately, if other people who have purchased the book "mark" key phrases in the stories, those automatically show up in your copy. (I was able to turn that feature off when I discovered it.)

One of the things I noticed right away was that Sobol appeared to be writing the stories as if they still took place in the 70s. Nickels, dimes and quarters continue to be considered a lot of money for the kids. There's no mention of cell phones and a passing reference to a computer.

And I'd forgotten that Idaville, Encyclopedia's hometown, was supposedly known for being a place where no one, adult or child, ever got away with breaking the law. But I seriously doubt that they managed to catch every single shoplifter. I mean, how would a storekeeper know for certain that a crime had been committed if the thief was sneaky enough?

Another thing I noticed about the stories was that every time a perpetrator is confronted with the truth, he or she will immediately confess. As a child, I realized this gave me a very unrealistic view of how things work when someone is caught in a lie. In real life, the liar will immediately come up with some clever way to cover it up, or say he was mistaken or claim he misspoke. Not to mention that real criminals lawyer up right away. But I have to remember that these books are aimed at 10-year-old kids, who may have a simpler view of the truth.

However, the first story in the book appeared to take a surprising turn. It involved a suspect looking for loot that had been hidden in a hollow tree. A rookie officer is staking out the tree and as soon as someone approaches the tree, he jumps out and tries to arrest the man for the bank robbery. However, the man is smart. He says he was just walking by and they can't prove that he was looking for loot or was involved in the robbery. It looks like he's just going to walk away (without the loot). But Encyclopedia explains what's giving him away. The suspect immediately confesses. If this was real life, the suspect would declare that it wasn't evidence and wouldn't hold up in court. They couldn't have even asked for his ID and would have had to let him go.

So, how did I do? I did indeed manage to solve every single mystery and for the right reasons. (Hooray! 56-year-old me is smarter than 10-year-old me!) However, one of the stories was very ambiguous with how the clue was presented. In "The Case of the Stolen Moonstone," Bugs Meany accuses Encyclopedia of stealing a moonstone ring from the neighbor next door. Bugs claims that after leaving the scene of the crime, he walked up to his house, put his hands up to the window and peered into the dark room. Although Encyclopedia couldn't see him, Bugs could see the ring on his hand.

I found this very perplexing. I know that when I try to look into a darkened room, I press my hands up to the window above my eyes like this:

You can clearly see my wedding ring. And if there was a gem there, it could also be seen. However, according to the solution, Encyclopedia's palms were supposedly against the window, like this:

In this instance, you wouldn't have been able to see the gem. The story indicates that Bugs put his hands up to demonstrate. It doesn't say anything about what position his hands are in. And if he did have the palms facing out, even the officer he was talking to would have pointed out the flaw in his story without having to wait for Encyclopedia to defend himself.

But the biggest detail that got overlooked is that Bugs filed a false police report. A third party, whom Bugs manipulated into helping him accuse Encyclopedia of theft, did admit the truth, but Bugs never did. And since there's no indication that Bugs confessed or was charged with anything, that means he GOT AWAY WITH A CRIME!

But really, this isn't anything for me to be proud of. My enjoyment of the series during my youth did, however, help me in my pursuit to solve real-life mysteries, like figuring out how someone messed up something at work. That has become very useful.

A Sleepless Night

After our embrace in the Chuck E. Cheese parking lot, Myz asked me where I wanted to go. I suggested Denny's, which was right around the corner. She said she'd drive her car over there while I drove mine. Even though she appeared very happy to finally get to meet me face to face, I was still afraid she was going to use this as an excuse to just run off and leave me behind. I got in my car and she actually did drive and park at Denny's.

I was so glad that our date was continuing, I went up and embraced her again. We went inside, ordered some appetizers and drinks, and started talking. I told her about my ride up. She told me about how anxious she was during her class. She just couldn't wait for it to end.

One thing she told me was that her brother was no longer living at the house with her and her cousins. "Oh, do you want me to go ahead and sleep on the couch like we had originally planned?" "Oh, no! I don't want my cousins to see you. You can still sleep in my room." (Well, okay then.)

I don't remember everything else we talked about, but I do remember getting up and going to the bathroom. She was still there when I got back. Always a good sign.

We left Denny's and I followed her back to her house. Again, she did not try to ditch me. She drove into a mobile home park and went to a guest parking area where there was a playground. I parked my car, grabbed my bag and went into her car. We sat and talked a little bit longer. During this time, I started holding her hand. Almost immediately after I intertwined my fingers with hers, she says, "Wait a minute here," and removes her hand. Uh-oh! Did I do this too soon? She reached and got a tube of lotion. She squirted some on her hand and started massaging mine. "This is something I learned in my massage therapy class!"

We talked a little bit longer as she continued the hand massage. She then had to do the other hand. It was nice. She said, "I think my cousins are asleep now." Myz drove her car over to their mobile home. We got out and went inside. Her bedroom was across from the driveway door. She pointed where the bathroom was. I grabbed my toothbrush, toothpaste and sleeping clothes (a t-shirt and the sweat pants from my Halloween costume) and went into the bathroom. After changing clothes, brushing my teeth and using the bathroom, I left my toothbrush and toothpaste on the sink and went back into the bedroom. I was aware there were other people in the house, but I couldn't hear them.

We got into bed and laid down. We told each other good night. I started kissing her on the lips. We continued making out for the next couple of hours before we finally fell asleep.

We woke up a few hours later. We were still tired. Myz asked me if I still wanted to go to Monterey. I said it would be a good idea if we left the house, but I was still really tired from having to drive the day before and I was going to have to drive home again later that day. I was going to have to take a nap in her car while we drove down. I didn't like that I couldn't be 100% alert during this time, but she didn't seem to mind. I tried to sleep on the drive down, but I was not able to conk out before we got there.

She asked me if I wanted to see Cannery Row. I don't know if she knew this, but I really liked that novel by John Steinbeck. I was expecting the area to resemble the description in the book, but the whole area looked like Toon Town with a drive through. It was a tourist trap, like Seaport Village in San Diego, but on a much larger scale. Where did all the winos go?

We also walked around the wharf for a little bit. We went up to one of those photo booths to get our picture taken. She asked me to choose a background. I chose the one that said, "I (heart) You." She didn't say anything when I picked that. We posed and had the photo taken. We had two copies made. (It's interesting, because a lot of photo booths don't have the option for making more than one copy.)

We drove back to San Jose. We were definitely enjoying our time together. We went back to her house and into her bedroom. While we were making out, we started engaging in activity of a sexual nature. I was surprised at how fast this was moving along. She asked me if I wanted to spend the night that night and wake up early enough to make it in time for work the next day. I was very tempted. I think I was scheduled to start at 4pm, but I didn't want to risk trying to drive all day and then trying to summon up the energy to work an eight hour shift, especially after I had gotten little sleep the night before and expected to get the same amount that night. I had to tell her no, but I definitely wanted to come back up in a few weeks. She seemed disappointment, but said she understood.

As I got ready to leave and we were saying our goodbyes, I had trouble coming up with a way to close this incredible time together. I pulled a Ted Mosby: "I love you!"

She hesitated for a moment, then she said, "I love you, too." But I didn't hear 100% confidence in her voice. I think she didn't really know what to say, either.

"I'll see you soon. I promise."

As I left, I hoped I hadn't just ended the relationship.

It turns out I hadn't.

The Road to Romance

The day I was going to drive up to San Jose to meet Myz was quickly coming up. I had gotten all of my affairs in order in the event that I never returned.

Then a new situation arose just a couple of days before our date: Myz informed me that her younger brother (the one NOT in a Vietnamese gang) had moved into the cousins' house and was sleeping in the living room. That meant that I wouldn't have a place to sleep. This put me in a real bad place. I mean, I had enough money to pay for stuff like gas, food and other activities. But I sure didn't have enough for a motel room.

I brought up the possibility that I may have to sleep in my car somewhere up there. But she said, "No, you can just sleep in the bed with me." WHAT?

At this point, I felt like it was REALLY too good to be true. I mean, this NEVER happens to me. We had spent a lot of time talking on the phone and she knew a lot about me. While I felt I knew enough about her, it kept seeming more and more like I was being set up. But if the worst that happened to me was getting beaten up and having my car stolen, then I would have learned something and never made this mistake again.

Finally, the day arrived. Even though I was nervous about what was going to happen, I was still able to get a good night's sleep. I wasn't going to leave San Diego until 12pm. This would be a good time to drive up as I would have an easy go in traffic through Los Angeles.

I don't recall anything eventful taking place along the way. I stopped to fill up with gas in a small town called Buttonwillow. I came up with a good joke to remember the town. "Check out the Butt on Willow!" (I was a big "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fan at the time.)

The entire way up, I was excited and nervous. I kept thinking that if I didn't get killed, the second worst thing would have been for her not to like me and just abandon me on the date. I knew that this was far more likely to happen.

I stopped at a restaurant called Apricot Tree in Firebaugh. This was a small town that was basically just a rest stop off the highway. There were several restaurants and gas stations in this one small area. I ate a meal of biscuits and gravy. I was expecting that I would get something to eat with Myz later, so I just wanted something light. At this point, I was still 100 miles from San Jose, but four hours away from the time we were expecting to meet. That meant I was going to have to kill some time once I got there. Still, it was going to be best to arrive early in case any obstacles got in my way up there. (As smooth as driving through LA was, I just KNEW there was going to be some major accident clogging up I-5 on the way up!)

I got more excited as I got closer to San Jose. I drove through the town of Gilroy. I'd known about Gilroy, because when I worked at the Hillcrest Cinemas, we were always shipping films to a warehouse there. I was not aware of the Gilroy Garlic Festival at the time, but boy, could I smell garlic all over the place!

Coming into San Jose on Highway 101, I saw an exit that led to Hellyer Avenue. I thought about Myz' celebrity crush on Stone Cold Steve Austin and thought, "Hell Yeah Avenue!" Very soon, I came up on Tully Road around 7:30pm. Since I was still a couple of hours early, I decided to park and scope out the area. I drove into the Chuck E. Cheese parking lot.

I called and left a message for Myz to let her know I was in town. I was kind of hoping maybe she didn't go to class and would just come meet me right away. After a few minutes, she didn't return my call. I decided to go exploring. I noticed there was a Denny's nearby. I figured that was where we would go get something to eat. (At this point, I had heard about the reputation of Chuck E. Cheese pizza. I commonly referred to it as UpChuck E. Cheese. I was NOT planning on eating there.)

I drove down Tully Road to see what else was there. I remember going to a Blockbuster video and checking out the titles they had. One of the surprising things they had was the original DVD version of "Tron." I had the newest edition that had come out. I was surprised to see how barebones the packaging was.

I kept driving down Tully until I got to Eastridge Mall. I noticed it was a large open area with a parking lot. I didn't go into the mall because it apparently close to closing time. I decided to go to McDonald's and get a soda. While I was drinking out in the parking lot, Myz called. She was still in class, but was about to leave. She knew I had left a message and she couldn't wait for class to end so she could call me. She would be at Chuck E. Cheese in about 30 minutes. I started driving back.

I parked again in the lot and started walking around. I noticed there were a couple of guys hanging around across the street. They were just loitering. I felt like they were getting ready for something to go down. But if they were going to do something to me, it wouldn't make sense for them to wait for Myz to arrive. But I really had no idea how these things worked. I did notice that Chuck E. Cheese closed at 9pm. Maybe they were waiting for that, so I wouldn't have a safe place to run to.

Eventually, I saw a car drive into the lot. It was just as she described, but the license wasn't personalized. What I did see was a decorative license plate in her windshield that said "Austin 3:16." If I was going to get attacked, that information wouldn't have provided any guidance for the investigators.

Myz got out of her car and was very excited to see me. She came up and gave me a hug. While we were embracing, I was looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was coming up from behind. Nope, all clear!

"And that, Boyd, is the true story of how Mommy and I got together."

"Great, Dad. Are we done?"

"Oh, we're not even close!"

"..."

What's the worst that could happen?

After a few weeks of AOL chats and phone conversations, Myz and I decided to actually meet in person. When I knew my days off from Walmart a couple of weeks in advance, we started making plans for me to drive up. (While you never knew way in advance when your two days off each week were going to be at Walmart, they were almost always consecutive.)

One issue was that she had a massage therapy class the night I had planned to drive up and wouldn't get out until after 9pm. This didn't really give us much time for a actual date. Since it was going to take me about eight or nine hours to drive to San Jose from San Diego, it meant that I was going to have to spend the night there. I didn't have enough money for a motel, so she said I could sleep in the living room where she lived. (She lived with her cousins.)

We also made plans to drive down to Monterey the next day so she could show me where she used to live with her parents. (She didn't have class that day.) I expected that I would be leaving around 3pm to get back home in time to be at work the next day. It seemed like we were going to be cramming a lot in such a short time frame.

This was the plan for meeting: I would arrive in San Jose, call her and leave a message that I was there. I would then wait for her to call me. We would meet in the Chuck E. Cheese parking lot off Highway 101 and Tully Road. After that, we would figure out where we were going to go for our date. We were probably just going to get something to eat.

There was no guarantee that any of it was going to happen. She could have decided not to meet me after I'd gotten there. This was going to be a big risk.

But for me, there was an even bigger risk. With what she had said about her brother being in a gang and what I had read about there being a problem with Vietnamese gangs in San Jose, I started fearing that I was being set up to be beaten up and have my car stolen. I was also afraid that I was going to get murdered, or at the very least, left unconscious with no one to help me get to a hospital. Even though I was willing to take this risk, I needed to take measures to ensure that someone didn't get away with it.

I wrote a letter that I would leave on top of my computer in my apartment. If someone was going to investigate my murder (or find out why I was in a coma), I knew this was the first place they would go. The letter included instructions to turn on the computer. The first thing they would see was a photo of the suspect. The letter contained as many details as I could provide. One problem was that while I knew her first name, she never gave me her last name. I included her age, phone number, a description of her car, with the possibility that it had a license plate that read something like "AUSTN 316." (You can only have up to eight characters on a California license plate, so I knew there was no way it actually said, "Austin 3:16.")

I also took a copy of the letter to Abed and Pesd. When I told them them that Myz was 21, Pesd said, "Wow, she's younger than me." (And I need to go off on a tangent here: Pesd had a lot of really cute friends. I was always disappointed that she never thought to try to fix any of them up with me. Maybe she didn't think I was interested in anyone that young. But one of them was a single mother. She couldn't have even thought she was appropriate?)

I knew I might be walking into the biggest mistake of my life. But I also knew that it would be an even bigger mistake if I didn't follow through on it.

There will be more tomorrow.

Fayd vs. Encyclopedia Brown, Part 1

I did quite a bit of reading before I was a teenager. I had a tendency to read material aimed at kids, now referred to as "Juvenile Fiction." I was never the type of person to read things that were considered advanced for my age. I didn't read classic stuff, like Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare. I mostly focused on age-appropriate books.

But there was one book series that ALWAYS caused me frustration. It was Donald J. Sobol's "Encyclopedia Brown."

The stories are about a 10-year-old boy named Leroy Brown, who had read and memorized the entire encyclopedia. He was supposedly so smart that he could figure out the solution to any kind of caper that was taking place in his hometown just by listening to people give details about how incidents had played out. Between 1974 and 1977, I probably read the first 13 books in the series. And for the life of me, I could not solve a single one of the mysteries.

This was irritating to me. I figured I was as smart as Encyclopedia Brown. So I was bewildered as to why I couldn't figure any of the stories out. Even worse was that there were a couple of stories in which I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN the solution. One involved a cave drawing showing a man fighting a dinosaur. I KNEW THAT DINOSAURS AND HUMANS DIDN'T EXIST AT THE SAME TIME! HOW DID I BLOW THAT?

I guess the main problem was that the answers were easily accessible at the end of the book. I couldn't wait to read the answer, so I would just turn to the back to get the end of the story. If I had been more patient and taken the time to re-read the story and look for clues, I likely could have solved them on my own. I was able to determine which passages were important, but never could reach that "Aha" moment that I was looking for.

Reading the books kind of provided a level of wish fulfillment for me. I could identify with someone who was very smart, but still had to go to regular school like everyone else. In any other reality, Encyclopedia Brown would have been enrolled in some school for genius kids and he would have already have finished high school. He also never got beat up, even when thwarting the plans of the local bullies. While the books attribute this to the presence of Sally as his bodyguard, you can also bet that the fact that he was the Police Chief's son played a big part.

I stopped reading the books in 1977. At that point, I was two years older than the main character and had no interest in reading about someone who was younger and smarter than me.

But there were a few things that bothered me while reading the stories and the answers. Sometimes, it seemed like the author wasn't playing fair and would be rather ambiguous about the depth of Brown's expertise.

For starters, there was one story that involved a suspect who explained that he was holding some object in his right hand, and while he was running, he put the object in his left pocket. The answer stated that it was impossible for someone to put their right hand into their left pocket while running. (And if you're thinking "Challenge Accepted," the boy in question also had his left arm in a sling. This means that he would have had to reach over his left arm to get into the pocket.) Let's be clear, that is not in any encyclopedia. And I'm surprised we haven't seen that scenario play out on "Mythbusters."

And there were also "set up" situations, in which Encyclopedia would lay out a trap. One involved a character named Algernon. When confronting someone and introducing him as "Al," the bully claims to have never met him. However, he tells someone else his name is Algernon. At the time, I didn't get what happened until I read the solution. Another time, he tried to catch a bully who stole money from kids. The bully would always say that he asked for change and the victim lost his money in the sewer. The set up involved the victim having an amount that would not produce exact change. Again, this was not something in an encyclopedia.

I also recall the contest mysteries that involved cheating. One was an egg-spinning contest in which the cheater was using hard-boiled eggs instead of raw eggs. Later, I would think that since that was an easy way to cheat, why would the organizers allow participants to bring their own eggs? And if they did, why didn't they try to crack open the eggs after the spinning had completed just to make sure they were raw?

And there was another contest that involved drinking terrible-tasting concoctions. In this instance, participants had to drink something that tasted like a "mustard bath." (What, did they combine mustard with soap?) The boy who won every year was seen sucking on an ice cube because of the hot weather. However, Encyclopedia determined that he was cheating by using the ice cube to desensitize his taste buds. Today, I maintain that if there was no rule against consuming ice cubes in the contest, then he wasn't technically cheating. However, I soon discovered that ice cubes don't really freeze your taste buds and I could still taste food that I thought was yucky!

But because I couldn't figure any of this out on my own as a kid, I started wondering lately if I could solve Encyclopedia Brown mysteries today, with 45 years' life experience behind me. I decided to do an experiment. I bought a Kindle book on Amazon to see if I had what it took.

I'll give the results next Friday.

Internet Tease #4: Riez

Before things started going full steam with Myz, I was continuing to see if there was someone in San Diego that I would be able to meet on-line. I was still excited about the prospect of meeting Myz in person, but I was concerned about having to drive all the way up to San Jose and was also thinking that maybe I needed to meet someone closer to my own age. This was what I was striving for. It wasn't like I was targeting women in their 20s, but they seemed to be the only women who showed any interest in me.

I came across Riez on AOL. I don't remember which chat room (but it was probably one of the "Big and Beautiful" ones). She was 35 years old and lived in San Diego. I don't remember too much about her. I do recall that she seemed to think I was very funny while we were chatting. I had actually gotten rather good at being clever when chatting on-line and I guess she liked my sense of humor. Once she suggested that we go get ice cream. I told her that I was up for that. "Are you serious?" I actually thought we were going to meet.

I guess she decided not to meet right then and there, but did ask me to send her a picture of me. I sent the two photos that were stored on the computer. She sent me a couple of photos of her. I recall that one of the photos showed her with a big smile. I commented that she had nice teeth. The other one almost looked like a photo on an ID badge. She appeared to be someone that Fraz would take an interest in. I wasn't ready to go down that road again, so I decided that if we became involved, I would delay her meeting Fraz as long as possible.

I gave Riez my phone number and told her she could call me. I was expecting her to call me right away. But she didn't. In fact, she didn't call me until the next day.

By this point, I had already started on the plans to drive up to San Jose to meet Myz. I was actually becoming invested in this. This may have been on my mind when my phone rang. The person on the other end said, "Is this Fayd?" "Yes, it is." "Do you know who this is?" (Great... Someone playing Internet Roulette, but I knew this couldn't be anyone else.) "Is this Riez?" "Yes, it is!"

I know that I was not being as clever or funny on the phone as I had been during our chats. And I know I can easily do that over the phone. But with her not really being that attractive and her not giving me enough to work with, the conversation just fell flat. We were only on the phone for about five minutes before she said she had to go. I guess it was better that I disappointed her then instead of later. It allowed me to concentrate my efforts on meeting Myz.

I don't know her last name, so I have no idea where she is now. I was just glad she didn't get in the way of me taking my next big risk.

More on that Monday.