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The following was written exactly 6 years ago.

My grandmother lays on the rented hospital bed in the blocked off living room, next to my chair. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t respond when you ask her if the piano music is loud enough, just calmly stares off into the distance. Other people bustle through the house while I just sit there, wondering what she is thinking.

She’s dying of cancer, and I have never watched someone die before. I’ve known people who have died, but they all happened as something far away, not this close.

My mom asks her if she wants to have pea soup or macaroni for her dinner, and she doesn’t reply, doesn’t move a muscle. We manage to get her attention with some Indonesian deserts I had brought from lunch. My uncle leaves to do some work, and my mother busies herself in the kitchen. I sit, and I wait, for something that I hope doesn’t come, but I slightly wish would hurry up.

They talk about financial matters, logistics, the sober planning of the reality that’s soon to be. She doesn’t seem to mind, she seems to see that it’s better to get these details out of the way while she’s still there and can participate, so her children won’t have as much hassle when she dies. I don’t know if I could bring myself to sign my own bill for cremation.

I said my goodbye to her on Saturday before I left for my flight, leaned over and embraced her, and felt her tears on my shoulder. I rarely cry, but that was the last I will ever see of her. Before I walked out the door, I gave her a silent kiss on her forehead; just below the wool cap she wore to hide her lack of hair.

She is in much pain. She gets a morphine patch every three days that seems to help, along with numerous other medications to ease her suffering. Nothing to stop the cancer.

I don’t feel one emotion at a time. I want her to die, right now, so that she will be free of her days of sitting, waiting for the end. I want her to die so she will be out of her pain. But I want her to live to see all the things I see, all the beauty I have yet to show her. I want her to die because I love her, but I want her to live because I love her more.

I go back to school soon, and I can only wait. Every time I hear the phone ring, I imagine it’s my uncle, and I watch for my mother’s smile to disappear. But no, it’s a telecommunications company with another plan.

While I know it is coming, that doesn’t stop this. I miss her, and she isn’t even gone. I miss the her that she used to be, that vibrant and exciting woman that I love. But all I can do now is wait.

So I wait.

Happy Halloween everyone. Our story starts in the fall of 2002, on a sunny afternoon in a quiet neighborhood of Cleveland, OH. I was working as a radio station DJ, and that afternoon the station general manager sent out an e-mail to the general list saying:

There’s an independent film crew in town that was hoping to shoot some footage of our radio station. They say it’s the only authentic looking radio station they’ve been able to find during filming (screw you Clear Channel!!), and I need someone who’d be willing to go and babysit them for a couple hours this afternoon.

It was weird enough to pique my interest, so I responded and headed over. Expecting to find a couple of filmmakers and an actor or two, I was a little surprised when the door to the station was surrounded by half a dozen zombies. The local film producers were filming the final scene of Zombiegeddon, a horror movie that cost about $10,000 to make, yet features an ensemble cast.

I’m not going to describe what happened next, because some things are just too awesome for words. What I will tell you is that, during the course of events, I was chosen to be the body double for an actor holding a knife during the scene in which zombies rush into the room to kill her. The clip doesn’t make a damn bit of sense, but look for the arm with the black sleeve holding a knife menacingly in front of the camera. That’s me.

Summary: I was a body double in a Zombie movie. Look for the black sleeve and the knife.

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Things to note:

1. My arm was in Zombiegeddon with Edwin Neal, who was in JFK with Kevin Bacon, giving me a pseudo-bacon number of 2.
2. My Erdős–Bacon number remains undefined.
3. The arm holding the knife when the zombies rush in has a black sleeve; her sleeves are some sort of animal print.
4. The movie includes a cameo by Ron Jeremy.
5. My arm is used as a body double for a woman.
6. Therefore, my arm is used as a body double for a woman in a movie featuring Ron Jeremy.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of names and concepts you should avoid when naming your pet. The reasons to avoid them are many, but should be easily spotted by reading the selected Real Life Simulations of their usage below.

1. Something that sounds like a child’s description of medical symptoms or a body part. For example: Nuggles, Boompers, Babykins, Binky, Princypoo, Snuffles, Buttons, Tickles.

Real Life Simulation: “Yes, your honor, myself and Officer Richards arrived no later than 12:30am, and we could already hear Poopers barking from outside before we knocked on the door.”

2. The complete name of a historical or cultural figure. For example: David Hasselhoff, Aristotle, Marlon Brando, Peewee Herman, Oscar Wilde, Engelbert Humperdink.

Real Life Simulation: “Dan Quayle, come here right now! Bad dog! Bad dog! Come back in the house! No, do NOT shit on the neighbors yard! Dan Quayle come here this instant!”

3. The common name of the generic animal. For example: Cat, Snake, Rabbit, Fish, Bird.

Real Life Simulation: “Missing: Black Labrador retriever. 2 years old. Responds to name ‘Dog’.”

4. A word that has never before been used as a proper noun. For example: Prudence, Machismo, Charisma, Disparity, Prevalence.

Real Life Simulation: Upon discovering a woman looking behind a bush in your front yard, “Um, excuse me ma’am, can I help you?” “Oh no, I’m just looking for my Sanity. She’s run off again.”

5. Any combination of a title indicating status with a nonsensical last name. For example: Princess Buttersnaps, Lord Fauntelroy, Admiral Fuzzy, Mister Peeps, Ghengis Khat.

Real Life Simulation: “Hey, Steve, I know you’re working on the proposal, but could you do me a favor? I’ll be out of town tomorrow, and I need someone to come over and feed Colonel Snickers.”

Alternatively, this list could be used as a blueprint for a great pet name. Of course, by great I mean one that will make me hate you and everything you stand for. Knowledge is power.

On October 1st, I woke up after a couple hours of sleep and put on my pants, my shirt, my badge, my shoes, stood in front of the mirror and slapped myself in the face. It wasn’t something I planned so much as it was something I watched happen. Seeing my own look of shock woke me up more than the slap.

No time to get rested the normal way. This was the end of the fiscal quarter.

At the office I resumed the normal routine that had been my life for the better part of the preceding month. Force every non-work-thought out of your body and force every work-thought onto the keyboard. Just keep repeating “everything will be possible when this is done; everything will be possible when this is done” until you actually believe it. Forgo enjoying any pleasurable pursuit; you haven’t finished your work, and it has to get done. There’s no alternative, it’s just something that you have to do. And whatever falls by the wayside, well, you got here by your own power.

I write and I think and I write and I think and I rewrite, I print and I stack the folders on a shelf, and then I wait. For an acknowledgment of correctness or of non-correctness. Most of the time it’s passive, and I realize as the clock ticks on that nothing’s wrong, everything I did is fine, it’s all checked and working its way through the system. I’m done.

Then this remarkable thing happens.

Everything I had bottled up for the last month, every desire to do something fun, every itch to start a project, every thought that said “Hey, Sam, you should really take care of this entire facet of your life that you’ve been ignoring”, they all come bubbling up with the force of a runaway geyser.

I walk out of the building and the world has been reborn. Everything is new, because everything that had been for the last month has been destroyed and replaced with everything I held back thinking “you can do that when you’re done”.

I hate myself for doing it, and I do it every single time. The heroic final effort. I’ve said “I’m turning over a new leaf” so many times it no longer has any meaning, and should be removed from online idiom listings. But this exact moment has happened so often and in exactly the same way that I’ve begun to cherish it. It simultaneously reminds me of everything I’m capable of and many things I’m not.

Monday afternoon. Freedom.

I spent the summer of ’94 living in Nome, Alaska while my dad did contract work for the military, cleaning up old World War II installations that were left behind to rust. One bright summer day I was standing in a local gift shop, buying my weekly dose of ice cream when my mom came over to me and said:

“Sam, the teller just told me that a polar bear is on the east side of town!! We have to call your dad!”

My mom is terrified of bears, and although our house was on the other side of Nome, in a town of only 3500 people no one is that far from anyone else. We hurried back to our apartment with my two younger brothers and called my dad, who was working at the high school 10 minutes away. Being the man that he is, he promptly rushed back to pick us up and go check it out.

Conservatively, half the town had left their houses to see the bear. Polar bears rarely stroll down into the area around Nome during the summer; the main type of bears you’d see would be little grizzlies munching on blue berries.

After driving the 2 miles from our house, we pulled up to a mass of cars and climbed onto the roof. We were several hundred feet away from the bear, which was then sitting docile on its rear looking shiftily at the crowd. Off in the ocean a lone fishing boat floated its way closer to the shore for a better look.

This wasn’t a little grizzly. This was a full blown “mess with me and I’ll fuck you up” polar bear. Before anyone had come he had found a dead seal on the beach and was munching on it. The road ran perpendicular to the beach, leaving about 1/8 of a mile between shore and roadside. Locals lined the pavement, parked in trucks and anything they could get their hands on, standing on the roofs so they could get a better view.

In retrospect, I don’t know what people thought would happen. Take a hungry wild animal, the top of its food chain and surround him with people leaving no access for escape. What were we waiting for? Did he need to do a little dance and then we’d go home? Something had to happen; all the people were entranced, including me.

Luckily someone took it upon himself to solve us of our problems and cause all new ones. An Eskimo boy of no more than 7 picked up a small rock, and with a surprisingly good effort, threw it as hard as he could at the bear. No one likes having things thrown at them, so although he didn’t hit anything but sand, the bear made a growling bark and reared up on its hind legs, promptly scaring the living shit out of everyone who was standing on their roofs.

The bear then started to charge right towards our car. My dad grabbed me and my brother and dragged us inside. I turned around just in time in the chaos of people rushing for their vehicles and doors slamming to see a lone Eskimo raise a rifle, and gracefully shoot the polar bear 3 times in the side. The bear didn’t break stride after the first shot, stopped after the second, and fell on the third.

Each shot looked like a red paintball had struck, leaving a little bit of paint that just continued to spew. The huge beast, more yellow than white from the dirtiness of living on land, slowly stopped moving, and its coat turned pinkish red. We didn’t stick around.

The Eskimo who shot it got to keep the coat, much to the uproar of the non-native population of Nome. The bear had been in the area for a week, but the authorities didn’t tell anyone because “they didn’t want a panic or an incident.” No mention was made of the little boy in the papers, it appears only a select few saw him throw the rock.

Memory is a funny thing. I might not remember what I had for lunch a week ago, but I’ll never forget those 5 seconds; a moment that began with a rock and ended with a bullet.