I went to return a DVD to Redbox, and there was this kid waiting in line behind me. His phone rings. He looks down, sees the name, and suddenly looks kind of nervous/shocked/flustered. He answers the phone as he surreptitiously smooths out his shirt.

“Hey, Valerie?” he asks, incredibly nervous…his voice is shaking. “Yeah it’s -” his voice cracks and we can barely hear him say, “it’s Dave.” He clears his throat and tries again, “Sorry it’s -” voice cracks again, and yet again we can’t hear him say “Dave.” Finally, he takes a deep breath and tries and third time, but again fails.

Poor bloke. What a bad time for puberty to set in. Well, Dave, we’re all pulling for you Valerie! #GiveDaveAChance

Okay, what is the point of birds? Seriously. All they seem to do is poop on your car, and wake you up at some ungodly hour by chirping to each other. And if you’re trying to grow grass in your lawn and have put down fresh grass seed (like my parents), they will swoop down and eat the seeds. I guess if you’re a Disney princess, they will help you clean and get dressed, but most of us are not Disney princesses. If you’re Harry Potter, they’re can be used as the postal service, but again how many of us got that letter to Hogwarts when we were eleven (by the way, I’m still waiting for my letter…obviously the owl got lost, and it’s just taking them ten years to deliver it to me…).

If you’re wondering, a bunch of birds of all types are living outside my window, and they decide to gossip around 5:30 a.m….every single morning…and it’s driving me crazy.  And, a bird flew right into my head the other day when I was biking.  So….

When I was in high school, I had teachers who told me I was an awful writer and that I could not write no matter how hard I tried. I also had a guidance counselor who asked me which colleges I was going to apply to, and I told her my plan was to go to this particular university and she told me to reconsider.   Actually, her words were “don’t go there” because I wasn’t “good enough.”

Three years later, I go to that particular university, I work as a writing tutor, and I am a published author and have readers from all around the world.

So, who got it wrong?

Thank you all for reading!!!

My day started with my dad driving down to Cape Cod, my mom in the passenger’s seat, and me sitting behind them in one of the middle bucket seats of our SUV.  “Phillip, can you get me a drink for the cooler?” asks my mom.  I oblige, and climb like a spy into the back to lean over into the trunk.  We’re at a red light, waiting to turn onto the highway, and I’m hanging like a monkey into the trunk, trying to pull out three sodas from the cooler.  It really wasn’t graceful…at all.  I look up, and the guy in the car behind us is staring at me, smirking. Well, this is awkward, I think, but then I climb back to my seat.

We finally make it down to the Cape area (I don’t know the exact name of the town, I wasn’t really paying attention…clearly) and we pull into a McDonalds to use the restroom and regroup.  Then, this EMT guy comes out of McDonalds and holds up the food to the other guy in the ambulance, who shouts, rather aggressively, “AW YEAH!”  And I get the urge to shout “YOU’RE HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS!” like a character did in a scene from Nurse Jackie, but the EMT guys look rather mean and giant…so…I mean, if they were that passionate about McDonalds food, can you imagine what they would do to someone being rude to them?

We continue on our journey until we get to the canal in Bourne/Sagamore on the Cape.  Can I just say, there are a freakin’ ton amount of roundabouts in this area.  Like, every five seconds the GPS would say things like “take the third exit in the roundabout.”  It was crazy.  Anyway, so we’re driving on the road parallel to the canal, and we notice these indentations where you could pull over and look out at the canal.  Because it’s such a beautiful day and because I like taking moments like these to just appreciate how beautiful life and nature really can be, I convince my parents to pull the car over.  I get out of the car and walk up the dirt path that leads to train tracks.  Now, where I’m from, most of the train tracks don’t operate
anymore, and they have either turned them into bike paths or have made path near them; the canal on the Cape has a bike path right next to these train tracks.  So, obviously, my mom and I climb onto the tracks when a guy says “be careful, a train just came by twenty minutes ago.”  Well, there goes my plan to lay down on the tracks to recreate Taylor Swift’s single artwork for “Mean.”  Oh well…I didn’t have rope anyway…

After hitting some Christmas Tree Shops (they have a lot of them on the Cape…) and visiting different sites, we make our way home.  Every road trip I take, I make a special playlist.  A lot of them tend to be interactive where I ask my audience (i.e. my family) to listen to original songs and then covers or remixes, and I try to start a spirited conversation about who did it better, etc.  Anyway, my parents and I really got into in on the way home because we started a segment we like to call “Backseat Karaoke,” (something Jimmy Fallon should pick up for the Tonight Show), meaning I sing along to the track from the backseat.  The song I get?  “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” by Shania Twain.  Now, if you’re a guy and ever in this situation, you have two options: you either sing this song with passion, especially the line “the best thing about being a woman,” or you just kind of lamely sing along and change it to “I feel like a man.”  So, I went for it, and I had my parents laughing their butts off.  So yeah, backseat karaoke is a thing.  Because I say so.

There I was.  Eating lunch in the kitchen, watching an episode of VEEP when I looked out the backdoor window and saw the groundhog.  Eating in my mom’s garden [insert gasps].

I jumped up, kicked off my sandals, and ran to get my bow and arrow shouting “RALLY THE TROOPS!” (I don’t really know why…it just kind of came out).  I snuck out of the front door of my house barefoot, and snuck around to the back.  My neighbor was outside and saw me, and was about to shout something over to me when I waved at him, miming for him to shut up.  I could not talk, I could not let my enemy get away!  (Although, in all fairness, I must’ve looked rather strange…a grown man with a manic expression, standing barefoot with a child’s bow and arrow…)

I crept around the house and made it to the driveway that runs parallel to the garden, with the groundhog about fifty feet away.  I had an arrow in place, I took aim, and shot.  And I hit him!  From fifty feet away!  I am Katniss.

Again, this is a kids bow and arrow, so it didn’t kill him, it just hit him and made him jump in shock.  He scampered away, and  I followed, loading another arrow.  I saw him, hiding behind a tree next to our shed.  I took aim again, and I think I hit him again…it was hard to tell because there are a lot of bushes there… I  heard him scramble away, under the fence and away.

The enemy may have gotten away, but I hit him.  Twice….ish.  My neighbors cat has just come out and is again patrolling the garden. #WeMeanBusiness.

******

Related Stories:

“The Groundhog War”