Kicked off doc 1
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Category Archives: child advocacy
Kicked out, part 3
If you read either part one or two, you may notice that the kicked off part is not there.
Hence, part 3:
I did not realize that the ropes were separating from the handles on a regular basis until I was riding and two riders-one very good, one pro, hollered at me from the water–I lost my rope!
I was not sure what they were talking about so I let go of my rope and asked them.
They both told me the same thing-they had been riding when suddenly the rope separated from the handle and they were left in the water with only a handle.
Weird.
I then quizzed a group of good riders, the cable operator, the cable manager, and one of the owners about how the cable rope was affixed to the handle.
The answer is-like a Chinese handcuff the rope is threaded through itself.
Which means that threading it right is crucial.
The cable operator told me his safety policy was to let everyone know they should expect to lose the rope.
The owner said the manager sometimes said stuff without thinking it through.
The manager said I was being a troublemaker.
The owner said I brought too much drama and was taking up too much of his employees’ time.
But by the time I had quizzed a dozen people I realized that 80 percent of them had a rope-loss story within the last two weeks.
I realized I might have had one as well…
There are falls and losses in wakeboarding all the time. These things often happen in isolation. A rider, even a good one, may not realize that a fall is due to operator neglect or park negligence unless they know that it is happening to other riders, sometimes with alarming regularity.
Within the two weeks following the refunding of my family’s membership the ropes continued to separate from the handles while in use.
I hope that someone remedied the situation eventually.
Kicked off the ranch part 2
It is a basic tenet of writing lists–of you have a part one you have to have a part 2.
So this is it: how I went from dragging my kids to the Texas Ski Ranch every day –to-how I was told to leave no matter what.
First, the bikini contest-reminiscent of nothing more than a stock show. A stock show to sell price inflated Corona?! Treating beautiful young women like commodities?
Then there were the poorly attended juvenile detention peeps.
And last there were falling ropes. It seemed to be clear that either through operator negligence or rope defect the ropes were separating from the wooden handles–off the dock, in mid-air, on structures riders were falling because their ropes had failed them.
Safety has to be a paramount concern in extreme sports. When it is not taken seriously, people get hurt.
So that is how I was kicked off the ranch. But just as interesting as that is the waiver that TSR and Springloaded require participants to sign.
Worth careful perusal.
Like the confusion about light years
Just like the confusion over light years-
Unit of time? Unit of distance?
Grief is more than ordinary synonyms
Loss, sorrow, mourning.
No, grief is a place you go sometimes
Sorta like a cruise or a bus tour, I guess
Or trip to a fancy casino
Only of course all the slot machines are empty and
You have no stomach for the buffet.
At first you think
This trip will never end
But it starts to let up after
A very long time
Then, just when you thought you were home
Safe, with your bunny slippers on,
You fish up
Back on that dammed boat, that bankrupt resort
And somehow your inability to escape this
All expenses paid vacation
Makes you weep, weep in the weird soulless light
Of this world of broken pronouns
Standing in for faces in a picture, once so vivid alive
Before the fall…before all the terrible falls
Crash into light years.
Dear Sir,
Imagine the mountains
you would move to save
The one you loved
then switch
to the hills you might shift
for someone you were
merely fond of
then calculate the dirt
in disheveled piles
you might consider
scooping here to there
for a stranger
then last of all take this into account:
all real love stories are also physics problems
Either stones rolled in place over deliberate tombs
or somehow, miraculously
Rolled away.
Sleeping Beauty and the treachery of images
they say her dress
obscured her face when they found her in the river
he as young as his eventual wife would be
when she went from girl to muse
muse is a tricky thing, Child
who never was a pipe
I inventory both the cause and the cure for addiction
The need, the proper remedy, the clouds white amidst blue in the cup of your head
Chose a different slumber
Not opioid, not heroin, not poison in the fruit or spindle, not locked in a room, not guarded by dragon
Medicinal sleep
Antiseptic reset, white coats, gently beeping monitors
Let the girl rest
Let her own dreams fell the dragon
So that when the spell is broken
The clouds and sky will spill out over her
Beautiful, fragile babies
What if this is the real world?
what if this is the real world?
what if you are the ghost?
what if it is your own child
you see in the sudden picture
on the other side of the scrim
Holding
worlds both together and apart
You do the math when
you see her–how old she
was, is, will be
If she makes it that far
Refrain in your head thudding
like fists on plate glass
because you are the ghost
voice thin and impossible
just the other side of glass
as you watch her slowly
slip away.
Poetry Redacted
Knowing how uncomfortable you get when I jaw on about the abuse issue, I have decided to redact it for you, using a host of hip and bipartisan global and political crises in place of all the words for felonies against children.
So here’s the story. Redacted for your comfort, of course-
When we were still young we fostered then adopted two children who were already diagnosed with global warming and national debt by the time we met them.
In fact, they had so many problems they had already fired dozens of US attorneys as was customary at the beginning of a new administration.
We were told to be consistent and disciplined. We were told this would help…
Perhaps it did. Could what they did have been worse? Pacific-Ocean-vortex-of-trash worse?
Maybe.
But as it happened, when their younger siblings were still quite young, Charles DOB 2/17/94, was caught Ponzi-scheming and coyoting his little sisters. For years-quite systematically -in the places ordinary people went to push down their risk of type 2 diabetes-football stadium, tennis court, high school pole-vault mat.
He had taught the little ones expensive border walls were necessary to keep bad hombres out.
Only as it turned out, he was the baddest of the hombres.
He taught them universal health care with a single payer system would bankrupt them while at the same time using the machinations of federal agencies (such as the IRS) to bully or intimidate them into keeping quiet.
He bussed technically deceased persons across county lines to vote for the candidate of his choice (him, unsurprisingly).
More victims than fingers on his own pale, freckled, meaty hands.
Until one day, way too late, he was caught, and the truth all came tumbling out–
The lies
The bleached coral reefs
Lost, extinct, and endangered species
Poor afflicted pollinators
Thick winter smog trapped in Alpine valleys and obscuring Beijing’s winter sun
Our staggering national debt…
All under the foolish, trusting, naive noses of his legal guardians, people who had mostly always believed in the electoral college. Believed in a bicameral congress, Founding Fathers, and law-and-order presidents.
The aftermath was crippling. The survivors found themselves in the usual need for puppies, s’mores, and a celebrity rant or two (at an award ceremony here or there).
Instead they went to court, called elected officials, petitioned the government, and wrote about it.
Only to find that all those used plastic toothbrushes swirling in the sea can really make a nice person nervous. As if all that swirling detritus far out to sea were a contagious kind of broken.
Our kind of broken–redacted, parochial, muted somehow.
Placeholders for tragedy.
Among the Grave
somewhere in the bowels of the NIH there are tiny, fragile pig-children
Spun from the DNA of “us” and “them”
Which reminds me of a story—
Once there were these two guys
Who let iterations and outlines of darkness
Into every corner of their very own souls
(Whatever that is, right?)
Only to find their place among the dead
Until…
Love walked in
Dispelled the ghosts of men into the
Real and understandably alarmed
Sea of pigs
Who then chose death over the dark wraiths of men
Sometimes I ask myself
What happened to those panicked pigs?
Did they find the eternal?
And what about these new unconsenting
children of a lonely room
Half-pig, half-child
Will they be allowed to
Escape the grave
And, with no help from their human side
Find rest for their weary souls
the smallest boat in the world
i fish it out of the no-man’s land
beneath the back-back seat
momentarily mistake it for detritus
before realizing
it is the smallest boat in the world
dime-sized fighting ship
speculate about the shipbuilder
know the whole
time the real problem
yet to be addressed-
was it always this small?
life’s work of tiny men?
or was it once a real boat
whittled down to this diminution
by years and years of sturm and drang
in this teacup full of sea.
Carrying Light 