"Apples of His Eye," a #YA Short Story

 

Douglas Winslow Cooper and Brian Maher

“What’s this from a Dr. Gupta, love?” Mr. Williams asked his wife. “We don’t know anyone by that name.”

“It’s a beautiful thank-you card and note, addressed to Tess and me. She’s thanking us for our honesty in returning her lost cash. She says we restored her faith in people and brightened her day.”

“Wow! That’s quite a compliment, What happened?”

“Last Friday afternoon, Tess and I were leaving the building where our dermatologist has his office. As we were getting into the car, Tess saw an envelope by the front tire. It was addressed to the bank down the street and was filled with cash.”

“A lot?”

“It looked like a lot. At first we didn’t count it, but we decided we should. There was no question we would try to find who lost it so we could return it.”

“I love detective stories,” Mr. W. replied.

“We figured it came from one of the offices in the professional building we had just left. Besides our dermatologist, they have a dentist, a lawyer, and accountant, and a few others.”

“And?”

“We went from office to office, asking whether anyone reported losing an envelope filled with cash.”

“How would you know the person was telling the truth?”

“I’m coming to that.”

“I think it was in the third office that we went into that the receptionist said that they had lost a deposit for the bank, and had looked high and low for it without success. It was a dentist’s office, not our dentist, and I said I wanted to speak with her boss.”

“Did you have to wait long?”

“Are you kidding? As soon as the dentist heard what we had, she put her drilling or extraction or whatever on hold and came to talk with us.”

“And?”

“I told her we found an envelope filled with cash and wanted to return it to its owner. She said they had lost a deposit. I asked her to describe it to me. She thought for a moment and checked her books and said it was for $440 and had a couple of one-hundred-dollar bills in it. I knew she was right and gave her the envelope, for which she was obviously very thankful.”

“Well done. I’m proud of our women!”

Tess came in, slightly out of breath for some reason, but that wasn’t unusual.

“Tess, we got a lovely thank-you note from that dentist, Dr. Gupta, whose money we returned last Friday.”

“That’s nice, Mom. What did she say?”

“Not only that she was very grateful, but that we had made her day and restored her faith in humanity. I guess she thought she’d never see that money again.”

“You two are terrific. You are the apple of my eye, sweetie,” Mr. W. said as he gave Tess a big hug. Then he kissed Mrs. W., adding, “And as they say, ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’”

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One of our series of fifty instructive short stories for young readers.

"Motorcycle," A #YA Short Story

 

Douglas Winslow Cooper and Brian Maher

“Dad, I’d like to buy a motorcycle. OK?”

“Over my dead body, Rick. Better my dead body than yours.”

“Why?”

“Let me tell you a story. Your Uncle Chris had a best friend in college, Bert. Funny guy, nice guy. Our family loved him, and Chris did, too. They kept in touch after college, later saw each other only rarely because they lived far apart.

“While Uncle Chris was in graduate school, he got the shocking news that Bert and Bert’s girlfriend were killed riding a motorcycle. A truck stopped suddenly right ahead of them, and when Bert braked, the motorcycle skidded, sliding under the truck rear, with the riders running into the back of the truck, killing them instantly.”

“That’s terrible!”

“It has been about thirty years since it happened, and Chris still thinks of it, still is saddened by it. Bert’s family was devastated, as were his girlfriend’s relatives. Death of your child, your spouse, your best friend– these are shocks you never fully get over.”

“I’d be careful.”

“Careful is not enough. With only two wheels for control and guidance, you are in trouble if even only one of them hits a pothole or a large bump or a greasy patch, which may have happened in Bert’s case. I know from riding a bicycle that having one of the wheels rub against a ridge is enough to cause a spill.”

“True. That’s happened to me.”

“As an EMT, I have gotten called to some of these accidents. Even with helmets on, motorcyclists are easily injured in incidents that a car’s passengers would walk away from unharmed. Hospital wards for paraplegics and quadriplegics are populated largely by war veterans and ex-motorcyclists. I will not allow you to get a motorcycle, and that is final.”

That put an end to the motorcycle discussion.

Many things are exciting because they are dangerous. The following year, at Rick’s graduation, there was a short memorial speech and a moment of silence for two of his classmates who were killed, not in a motorcycle accident, but in a car crash.

The old saying that applies? “Better safe than sorry.” Or perhaps a new one, “Four wheels are better than two.”


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One of our fifty such instructive short stories for young readers.

Review of Memoir HIGH TIDE

THE TIDE ALSO FALLS

Bill Searcy has thrown it all away. Almost. His memoir– HIGH TIDE: A Story of Football, Freefall, and Forgiveness– tells of Searcey’s going from being a fractious fatty in middle school to an all-American high school football star of prodigious size and strength and a first-string player on Coach Bear Bryant’s national championship University of Alabama [Crimson Tide] gridiron teams. He missed starting some games because of troubles he caused due to late-night partying, booze, babes, and cocaine. These four horsemen of his own apocalypse bedeviled him for decades, costing him a pro ball career and his marriage, leaving him sleeping in his car and desperately trying to score drugs to get high and to suppress pain and depression…the period of freefall.

Four decades after his college days, “for the first time in what seems like an eternity, I have my own place, a basement apartment in Birmingham. At this writing, I drive a truck and sweep parking lots for $85 a night.”

What saved him from death on the streets were the efforts of religious social workers, who took him in, helped him understand and overcome his obsession with drugs, and gave him an outlet to channel what he learned from his experience into helping others overcome their addictions. What brought him from being a four-hundred-plus-pound giant to a man who could shop for normal-size clothes was a six-month reality-TV endeavor at Hilton Head, NC, where his days, and especially his meals, were scripted and supervised.

The book is well-written, with the help of Kelly Wittmann. The people are interesting, the descriptions evocative, Searcey’s story touching, even as he makes it clear he did it to himself. To those given much, much is expected. He was given intelligence, athletic ability, and the willingness/determination to endure the incredible training regimens required of world-class athletes. His hard work was almost undone by his addictions. He credits God and those who led him to God for a life now worth living.

Searcey’s dedication is revealing: “For my son Woody– the best son a dad could hope for. Though I love you more than words could ever say, I at least hope this book will keep you headed in the right direction and off the path I was once taking.”

Others tempted to pursue “better living through chemistry” by getting high should heed the lessons of this memoir.

Review of Novel THE HARD SWIM

THE HARD SWIM IS AN EASY READ

Novelist Keith Dixon’s leading man, Sam Dyke, is smart, tough, likable– a detective with a heart and with scruples, living with his formerly estranged son and his own most recent girlfriend.

Dropping in on an international conference of translators, to serve one of them with a subpoena, Sam Dyke meets the lovely and mysterious Chantal Bressette, who has brought with her a cryptic World War II diary partially written in code by a former French Resistance fighter. She hopes to find a translator. Instead, she finds trouble. Just in time, Dyke subdues sinister Connell Steele, a hit man whose stream-of-consciousness comment opens the novel: he “had wanted to take her with him, but now he would have to kill her.” Unfortunately, Steele is not acting alone; he has lots of back-up help. Quickly the chase is on.

Through Britain and, near the end, deep into rural France, Sam and Chantal are pursued by the hired thugs of British political big-wig Gideon Blake, who is desperate to gain possession of the diary, fearing the contents will subject the Blake family, and thus him, to public humiliation and the loss of an near-certain, coveted political promotion.

There is a bit of rocky romance: Sam and Chantal’s warming up causes Sam’s current consort a corresponding cooling.

Throughout we are given strategic and tactical analysis, ethical deliberating, and believable hand-to-hand action. What’s not to like?

This is the third in this Sam Dyke series by Keith Dixon. I can hardly wait to read the first two, ALTERED LIFE and THE BLEAK, both of which I have obtained for my Kindle. 

Review of THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT MARRIAGE

Good News / Bad News about Marriage

You probably have read that about half of marriages in America end in divorce, as do half of second marriages. Such discouraging statistics are mistakenly high, as Harvard-trained social scientist and best-selling author Shaunti Feldhahn demonstrates in her recent book, The Good News about Marriage.

The continuing controversy over legitimizing same-sex marriages shows that many Americans– on both sides of that issue– still view marriage as an important institution, more important than our shockingly high out-of-wedlock birth statistics might indicate. Rates matter. The higher the divorce rate, the less special the tradition of marriage, as compared with simply “shacking up,” and perhaps the less it makes sense to try to support marriage.

Feldhahn and her research associate, Tally Whitehead, analyzed many studies that attempted to determine the fraction of first marriages that end in divorce and the fraction of subsequent marriages that do likewise. Getting this right is a statistical challenge, akin to the medical specialty of epidemiology.

Simple approaches are often wrong. Imagine trying to determine your probability of dying eventually (=1.00) by comparing the number of births per year versus the number of deaths per year. A young population will have more marriages (and births) per year than divorces (and deaths) and the reverse will be true for an elderly population. Separations and second marriages complicate the marital statistics further.

Correctly estimating the fraction that fail is important, however. A large likelihood of divorce makes marriage less attractive and makes those in shaky marriages more likely to give up than try to save the union. Feldhahn and Whitehead argue persuasively that only about one-fourth of all first marriages end in divorce as do about one-third of second marriages, results more encouraging than the one-half fraction often cited.

These researchers encouragingly note: “In multiple surveys, 91 to 97 percent of respondents say their marriages are happy….In another poll, 93 percent said they would marry their spouse all over again….Most marriage problems are not caused by big-ticket issues, and simple changes can make a big difference.” Even in troubled marriages, almost all the spouses involved claimed to care about their partner’s well-being. “…in 82 percent of struggling couples, one partner is simply unaware of the other spouse’s unhappiness,” a problem much easier to solve than “addressing major systemic issues, such as addiction….”

The book is well written and a treasure trove of valuable information on the topic. Readers interested in the details will want to refer to the book, which includes 134 footnotes, most with references, and several tabulations.

Professionals interest in the health of the institution of marriage will find much to encourage them here. A case is made, as well, for the value of religious belief and observance in strengthening marriage and reducing divorce. More material on achieving successful relationships and marriages written by Ms. Feldhahn is advertised at the end.

On the other hand, even if only one-quarter of first marriages fail, this is a shame. Worse, though not within the book‘s purview, is that the rate of out-of-wedlock births has skyrocketed over the past few decades. Perhaps these researchers will address this next. I would buy that book, too.

Review of GENEVIEVE: Based on a True Story...

This is an inspiring novelistic treatment of the biography of a remarkable woman who triumphed over her disabling multiple sclerosis. Written by one of her daughters, Mary Laurienti, and one of her grandsons, Jerry Laurienti, it tells of the life-long struggle of a gallant, usually cheerful even playful, woman whose motto was, “Mrs. Can’t Never Tried,” exemplifying to all who knew her what it means to show grace under pressure, through her courageous persistence despite pain and disability. Readers will be impressed and inspired.

Multiple sclerosis [M.S.] strikes about one in a thousand in the USA, twice as many women as men [suggesting a connection to the X chromosome]. This auto-immune malfunction ranges in severity from occasional annoyances to full-fledged quadriplegia, the condition my own wife has endured these past ten years. On the average it shortens life an estimated half-dozen years. The most common type, the relapsing-remitting version that Genevieve battled, can cause its victims to become bedridden, but often they can recover partly over months or years, as she did. As we get older, we are more and more likely to know someone with multiple sclerosis, although a minority choose to hide it, rather than risk adverse consequences in the workplace.

The marriage of this heroine and her husband survives the stress of her severe disability and of separation due to his difficulties finding work during the Depression and World War II. Genevieve’s determination to preserve their union is matched by Martin’s, and the novelists make clear that he is much to be admired, too. Without her extended family’s help, particularly the care of Genevieve and of the children, her survival and flourishing would have been nearly impossible.

Actual writings of the people on whom the story is based are included and the authors add an epilogue telling the reader how several main “characters” fared after the period covered by the book. The novel format allowed use of descriptions and dialogue that could not reliably be claimed to have been remembered.

Interesting, informative, inspiring, this story is well worth reading. The authors deserve our thanks for this tribute to an extraordinary woman and her fine family.