Cleaning out my e-mail...

I've been clearing out my unread e-mail over the last couple of days and I just now got to the month or so around my stroke.

It's been interesting for me because I don't remember a lot from just before the stroke (or just after) so it's a bit fun for me.

The other day I found C.'s friend request from when he first joined Facebook. He isn't thirteen yet, but we let him join early, mainly so he would stop asking. He saw the e-mail over my shoulder and he was like, "Hey!"

He was indignant, until I explained to him what it was, but I still don't think he appreciated the significance.

But it was also weird seeing the last year of my life in review. I had forgotten about LinkedIn and Google+, since both have faded into obscurity. My ebay receipts reminded me of why I can't find anything. The Tonka figure that looked like Michael Fitzgerald? I sold it. The same with the silver 5 peso coin I used for coin flips.

I spent weeks looking for those when I first got home from the hospital.

Likewise with Hex Games. I tried to do a story on them at Fandom Fest last year and I couldn't remember their names or who they were. I've been calling them "the Hobomancer people."

They were downstairs at this year's Fandom Fest so I couldn't go visit them, which is a shame. They were nice people and they could have used (and deserved) the publicity.

I am disappointed in the Boy Scouts

Anyone who knows me knows that the Boy Scouts of America are a huge part of my life. My father was an Eagle scout, my brother was an Eagle scout and my brother-in-law and I got our Eagles together, on the same day.

My brother and I both met our wives through the Boy Scouts. My wife used to come to the meetings with her father and John's wife was staff at summer camp.

Growing up, my brother was involved in the Order of the Arrow and on camp staff. I started out at McKee as a CIT (Counselor in Training) but everyone always thought I was the younger brother, even though I am three and a half years his senior.

Working at McKee, we had to undergo "Youth Protection" training which was a goofy set of videos followed by a discussion. We made fun of the videos because they were ridiculous. An adult would climb into a shower with a boy or someone would be holding a video camera and shouting, "Here we are right now at the World Wrestling championship."

We made fun of the videos, which is what we were supposed to do. The man giving the training said if someone wasn't laughing then that was a sign something was wrong.

The phrase, "That's not for me!" which is what the boy in the shower said, became something of a dark joke around camp. As in someone would do something perfectly innocent but which might have had another dirty meaning.

"Hey, pull on this," the scout would say.

"That's not for me!" everyone around would say at once.

It was sort of like, "Smoke this and we'll see."

At the time I assumed that the youth protection was a gambit to eventually allow homosexuals to be scout leaders. The national organization had nearly bankrupted itself with legal fees, defending itself from lawsuits. They wanted to keep out gays, atheists, and an entire list of peoples who didn't conform to their morals.

There were also boycotts. The most effective was when Levi jeans pulled their support. Levi Strauss manufactured shorts for the Boy Scouts of America, but I also had seen the Levi outlet store in Dupont Circle when I had been in Washington on a field trip. The new shorts were not and still are not as durable as the denim shorts.

There was a brief ray of hope in the 1990s when the BSA allowed women to be scout leaders for the first time. They had always allowed them to lead Cub Scouts. When my father first worked with my den in the cub scouts he told me that when his mother had the same job she had been "Den Mother."

With all that going on, I also realized the Boy Scouts were becoming more and more conservative. Every time they would piss off a liberal group then the conservative groups would gain that much more control. Pretty soon it would be nothing but the Catholics, the LDS and the Baptists.

None of those groups are gay friendly. The LDS church is considered to be the main backers of the Prop 8 ammendment that barred gay marriage in California.

I can honestly say that all of my gay friends were Boy Scouts. When George Takei came out as gay on the Howard Stern show he said his first gay experience was at a boy scout camp.

Like it or not, the Boy Scouts and homosexuality are intertwined, like sweaty lovers more or less.

When my friend from college (who had been married at McKee in a Pagan ceremony which wasn't legal) was looking for a boy scout alternative for her son, I didn't have to ask why. It was the gay thing.

I told her about the YMCA Indian Guides program although I have no idea whether it is still around or not.

I still consider myself to be a Boy Scout, and I still think about the oath and law everyday. I can't in good conscience endorse an organization that spouts hate, regardless of whether they see it as God's plan or not.

It's the 100th anniversary of the Eagle Scout award, and last week a committee met in secret and issued a statement affirming the Boy Scouts stance on gays.

The committee met in secret and none of the members signed the statement. In an election year where gay marriage is likely to be a wedge issue, this seems like a purely political move from an organization that claims to be above politics.

That's not for me.

My Failure as a Parent

Right after my son, Christian, was born, Robin and I ran into a friend named Henry Lyon and he gave me the best piece of parenting advice I ever received. He told me that the one thing I need to provide for my child was, "Stability."

When I mentioned it to him a couple of years later he couldn't remember saying that, but he did and I've always fallen back on it for every parenting decision.

I've shown up at court and fought evictions, hid things from my children and always picked them up at school on time, even if I had to call someone to pick them up for me.

Until my stroke.

The last year or so has been hell on my children. Visiting me in the hospital, never knowing who would pick them up, and watching Robin take over all of my duties and new ones as well.

And now we've uprooted them, moved to my parents' house in Lawrenceburg, away from every person and place they've ever known.

I try to keep some continuity, to give them the illusion of stability, but it doesn't seem to work.

I let my son keep his World of Warcraft account because he can keep in touch with the people in his guild. That's it, the only contact he has with anyone from his old life.

Grace made new friends, but she's already lost them. The boy told her to open a can of paint and she did, then they painted the carport of an abandoned house together.

Her defense was, "He told me to..."

So here we are, no home in Bowling Green, living with my parents and the kids don't even know where they'll be going to school in the fall.

Robin is starting to crack and I'm only holding together for her sake.

My best day ever (that I can remember)

Last Thursday was my final trip to Cardinal Hill. It was the six month follow up exam for a research study I participated in for stroke victims and brain damaged persons.

At least I think that's what it was for. They had a detailed scientific description of the study on the wall next to the mat where I did my stretches, and I must have read the description of the study and I can't even piece together a random word from the wall.

I know they strapped electrodes to my bum arm and shocked me for a certain amount of time and that I could bring a DVD and watch it.

I quickly went through their collection of DVDs. I picked off the musicals first, and saw classics like Carousel for the first time. I also finally saw West Side Story for the first time, something my friend Michelle Holbrook had recommended back at the Methodist Home.

(When we WORKED at the Methodist Home. We were never "inmates" there.)

Thursday the main difference I noticed was cognitive. I could read the test materials as they were given to me and inadvertently commented on them.

One test the doctor gave me (other than the people running the study, I don't know anyone's professional credentials). She had me do some repetitive task (they were all repetitive). I think it was place a wooden block on top of a cardboard box or move a weight across a line or who knows what it was.

Anyway, I glanced down at the instructions and the directions said to give me a minute's rest between each of repetition. I pointed this out to the doctor (or research assistant or whatever her title was) and she very quickly covered up the page.

The other thing I read off the page was the name of the test. It was the "Action" research analysis exam, a fact which I made fun of for the remainder of the session.

Anyway, to the point, I considered myself cured, or at the very least "recovering." My brain was better than it had been.

But as Rudyard Kipling wrote in his famous poem "If," triumph and tragedy are twin imposters. I would learn this the next day.

hell night of the woeful (in)continence

When I started writing this blog in April, it was so I could record what it felt like to poop my pants for what I thought (I hoped) would be the last time.

I mean how often does an adult male find himself in the sort of situation where he can admit having pooped his pants?

I can only think of one other person who ever admitted to it, and he was an exception. I don't think he ever would have admitted it except 1) his girlfriend was there (he was meeting her parents), 2) he was stressed (he was meeting his girlfriend's parents), and 3) he had the flu.

Also, there may or may not have been alcohol involved (it seems like he had a hangover, but now that I think about it, that doesn't seem likely, especially if he had the flu.)

And he was in a public place, the middle of a Cracker Barrel restaurant.

To me (before the stroke) those were the qualifications to poop in public - you had to be stressed, sick, in a public place and it had to be an embarrassing story.

For example, the last time I pooped my pants before the hospital was when I was ten years old and on a hike with the Webelos in Natural Bridge State Park. I got caught short and couldn't get to the bathroom in time so I ended up burying my scout shorts on the side of a hill in the woods somewhere.

Even though I wasn't an adult at the time, I still was married for years before I told the story to my wife, and she still was shocked by it. She kept bursting into laughter and saying, "Your shorts are buried on a hill somewhere!"

No one over the age of three should no what it feels like to poop one's pants. It is a feeling of total helplessness and embarrassment and you just want it to go away, but it doesn't.

When I was in the hospital they had adult diapers the hospital staff would force you to wear if you had an accident. Even if you spilled a pee jug on yourself, they would threaten you with a diaper, which I don't know if you've ever worn an adult diaper but they aren't exactly functional.

When an infant poops itself you can grab it by his or her little feet and clean the cute little baby bottom. It's simple, easy and it's over in a few minutes.

With an adult in the hospital, every one goes into panic mode. Nurses are everywhere, in and out of your room, trying to get someone else to take care of it.

It is not an experience I would wish on anyone, from either end of things, the pooper or the nurse that has to clean it up.

So anyway I was thinking the other night about how I hadn't pooped myself since April and I should write a blog about that, when I pooped my pants again.

I knew it was coming. I had been on the toilet all night and I hadn't wanted to wake Robin and send her to the store for Immodium. As soon as she woke up, she went to the Kroger and asked if I needed anything and I said yes grab me some Immodium.

She was at the store when I had my accident, and I was standing in the kitchen, watching television with my father and waiting for her to get back with the medicine. She either got back just before or just after I had my accident, because I'm pretty sure she had handed me the Immodium and I had already taken two when the poop arrived.

My parents' have no tile in their bathroom and they just put in a new floor, so it was like when I was visiting my friend Rob and he fed me some Shepherd's Pie and his bathroom was being remodeled and I threw up all over the exposed plywood.

His roommate Carl wasn't happy about that the next morning.

The Return to Fandom Fest (part 1)

You may ask yourself how I could return somewhere that I never mentioned being the first time. The reason I never mentioned Fandom Fest is that it was about two weeks before my stroke and I didn't get the chance to write anything down. Not that I didn't plan to write about it; I took copious notes and did a couple of interviews with people, mainly about a game called "Hobomancer."

The concept was brilliant, I thought. Hoboes and tramps were the one essential piece of Americana thaat hadn't had a turn in the pop culture spotlight. Cowboys and Miners are everywhere, the Hobo, not so much. The gist of the game was that hoboes were actually wizards and that the rail lines functioned like ley lines. They crisscrossed the country and where they crossed, those were places of great power.

Every player had a hobo power (for instance the ability to make a stew out of any available ingredients) and for my character I chose the ability to find random objects in his pocket.

The downside of this ability (every hobo power had to have a positive and a negative aspect) was that every time my character would put something in his pocket, had to roll a die to see if he randomly lost the item.

Anyway, I had fun, they were nice guys and I planned to write a story about their concept. I started the story a couple of different times and even had half an essay written before the show. Some vaguely inspirational drivel about Woody Guthrie and the American Spirit.

I honestly don't know if it was dreck or not because I had the stroke and lost all half a dozen drafts in my computer somewhere. I don't know where, but I lost lots of things from my computer when I went in the hospital.

For instance, I've been locked out of my web site for the past six months because I can't remember the database password.

I still have all the data, I just can't put it back on the internet because I can't figure out my own password. My father keeps telling me I should hack it, but I take internet security very personally and all of my passwords are unhackable.

(Now that I've said that, I'm hoping one of you will try to hack into my web site and prove me wrong. If you do manage to find my password, send me what it is, please.)

In 2011, Fandom Fest was disorganized and chaotic. Rooms were double booked, tables were double booked and it was so hot that the air conditioner gave out in the main exhibit hall. To complicate matters, the air conditioners for the rooms all emptied out into the main atrium, making the temperature unbearable.

Our room was on the backside of the hotel, and it would have been bearable, but our door opened on to a glass covered hallway, which functioned as a greenhouse and also had the heat from a couple of dozen air conditioners pumping hot air into it. The walkway was unbearable especially in the hot August weather.

Running to the room was not an option, but neither was walking. Even walking down a 120 degree hallway would leave you dripping sweat by the time you made to the door. If your keycard decided not to work (which it frequently did) then by the time you got in to your room you would be out of breath. The heat was a dry heat, as though you were inhaling pine trees or sitting in a redwood sauna.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the gaming track was placed by the pool, and the lifeguards, being told that the pool would be closed over the weekend, decided to shock the pool.

Shocking the pool is a process in which you dump bagged chlorine directly into the pool, raising the chlorine to ten or twenty parts per million (a good number is usually three, at the YMCA we would have to close the pool if it tested at 5 parts per million or higher.)

Kirk, the evil mustachioed maintenance man of whom I refuse to talk about in print because he seems like the bitter sort of person who would sue me over mentioning his name, shocked the pool every Friday before I taught swim lessons on Saturday morning. It wasn't pleasant and he wasn't pleasant. The rumor was that he was a germophobe, but I think he was a mean, spiteful man who hated children.

My friend Rob said he came in once while Rob was teaching a swim class and shocked the pool with children in the water. He was a mean spiteful man.

Anyway, the pool at the hotel had been shocked and you could tell there was too much chlorine in the water by looking at it. When pool water has too much chlorine it's visible in the water, and the pool at the hotel had visible chlorine.

Which isn't a problem with an outdoor pool because sunlight burns off the chlorine. But the hotel pool at Fern Valley was indoors, at the back of an atrium, with tables set up for gaming all around it. The place smelled like a chlorine leak. It made my eyes red, it was so strong.

Before chlorine was used in pools it was considered a chemical weapon. Derek Jones, guy in my father's scout troop, worked as a lifeguard at one of the Frankfort pools and caught a lungful of chlorine. It reduced his lung capacity to the point that he couldn't get in the military. He married a woman who was in the army and now he lives with her on a military base in Germany, but that's not the same thing.

Anyway, chlorine is bad, was the point, and you could tell there was too much in the pool.