I was working on a story about my childhood that features the constellation Orion when the phone rang. Caller ID said it was Anne.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Can you go outside?” She said.
“Sure,” I said.
“Okay. Walk out onto the porch, and look to the West.”
I got up from my desk, and made my way to the front of the house.
“How’s are my grills?” She said. We call our dogs The Grills instead of The Girls. I have no idea why.
I put on my I’m-talking-to-the-dogs voice. “How are you Riley?”
She jumped up at me and barked.
“Riley says that she’s got teeth,” I said.
“And how’s Ferris?”
“She’s got her pout on.” I said. “I think she’s been watching the Pods too much.”
“Or she wants to go for a walk,” Anne said.
“Maybe,”I I said. I can’t say the word “walk” or “around” or “go for” or any words that rhyme with them, because . . . well, The Grills are smarter than the average pooches.
I opened the front door, and walked out onto our porch. The smell of freshly-cut grass brought a smile to my face, if a sneeze to my nose, and the cool September evening was a welcome break from the stifling September days we’ve been having.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m outside. What am I looking for?”
“Just look up to the West,” she said.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I saw it: Jupiter and Venus, low in the pale blue sky, clear as anything.
“Do you see them?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“The planets?”
“Oh,” I said, “I thought you meant the Kims, who leave their drapes open.”
“. . . what?”
“I’m just kidding. Of course the planets! Thank you for sharing that with me.” I looked some more. “You know what else is cool? Those tall palm trees across the street are silhouetted black against the blue sky, and the crescent moon is sitting right on top of one of them. It’s like a painting or something.”
“Oh! One of those seventies oil paintings with a really heavy wooden frame!” She said.
“Yeah, and a beach, and some velvet!” I said.
“And it’s in the living room, right next to that naked lady statue that hangs from the brass chain with oil dripping down wires around her!”
“Dude,” I said, “you just described my next door neighbor’s house from my childhood.”
“I think I just described everyone’s next door neighbor’s house from our childhood.”
Ryan called from inside the house. “Wil, I need some help with my homework!”
“I have to go help Ryan,” I said.
“Oh, with what?” She said.
“I don’t know, but I hope it’s not math.” I said.
“Yeah, math is hard,” she said.
“It sure is. When will you be home?”
“In about an hour,” she said.
“Okay, I’m counting.” I said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I hung up the phone, and looked up into the sky. Venus looked back, which felt very appropriate.
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Awesome story, Wil. I don’t know about my next door neighbor’s house, but it was a lot like my best friend’s! 🙂
Oh, and first one to post! Woo-hoo!!
That is a loverly story! And Orion features heavily in memories of my parents’ house. Orion rose directly over our house in the winter and I loved coming home at night and looking up to see Orion brighter than anything as we were walking inside where it was all nice and cozy. Nice.
Going to plug one of my favorite sources for sky watching info — the nifty website for “Earth and Sky” a nationally syndicated radio program on earth science that has been on the air since 1991. http://www.earthsky.org/
But the producer and creator of Earth and Sky, Deborah Byrd, has been writing about skywatching since 1978, when she created a very popular radio series that focused more on just astronomy and was called, very appropriately, “Star Date”.
Aw, that’s lovely, Wil.
Continued good luck at the WCOOP! Loved your BARGE speech, of course. 😉
Beautiful little anecdote, man.
I hope you’re watching the rest of Event #5 unfold, Raymer is still in it with a decent stack (slightly above average) with 60 players left! Yay for PokerStars homefield advantage! 😉
awwwwww that is so sweet
I love it when you describe things like that – I could smell the fresh cut grass as I read that
I think whatever has been keeping you up is now effecting one of my boys since it is 11:30pm & he is wide awake – is something in the air???
That is very cool…Orion was the first constellation that I learned to ID on sight…although I always thought his knees were his feet and couldn’t believe how short he was 😛
Got to see you play a bit tonight in a couple of H2H’s. Lost one, won one so a partial wtg. I don’t think that your oponent was down with the humor though…but I was sitting in obs and wanted to say “there’s lots of them *rocks back and forth*. We’re counting cards.” Did you ever find your face cards?
Have a good night 🙂
And my mom’s Avon lady had one of those dripping oil lamps…back in the day…*thinks that far back, passes out*
I so enjoy these little family-oriented stories of yours.
very nice. and math *is* hard. sometimes barbie just says it like it is!
in fact, just today i piped up in a meeting that i didn’t want to have anything to do with the risks and budgeting of a project ’cause me and numbers don’t get along.
i think there is something with taking a theatre degree that strips you of whatever minute bits of math ability (or perhaps confidence?) you may have posessed.
Wil–
Congrats on today’s poker success. (I don’t speak Poker but your stories make me want to learn the language, err, umm, the game.)
I’m guessing we might get to read about you and Elder Pod Person’s homework. Maybe an opportunity for some Humanoid/Pod-Person interaction. (He did *request* your help, after all.)
Good luck with the math assignment (or whatever it is — I’ll bet it’s some complex calculus crap, the stuff we all forgot once we graduated).
Awww! *hugs quickly*
I love reading stuff like this. It gives me hope that someday I might have a relationship like that.
And I love Orion too. When I was a kid with a paper route, it was usually dark when I had to go collect money for the paper and I used to pretend that Orion was watching over me, keeping me safe.
BTW, I’m one of those weird people who are not only good at math, but can tutor others in it. I even successfully tutored my mother in college Algebra.
You ever want some good math analogies, I’m your gal.
Heh, awesome! My friends and I totally have the same kind of conversations… but we’re lacking the palm trees. Very sweet piece. Ben needs to illustrate that.
Wow. I didn’t see it, but it’s the Astronomy Picture of the Day. If you got to see something anywhere near as beautiful as this pic, I’m very jealous.
Now that is what I call a good old genuine blog.
I was riding my motorcycle home around 7:30 (edt) and saw that sicle moon and the planets- it was magical.
That was a great story: simple and sweet- thanks.
Hey Wil,
I noticed that you don’t post much in your photo blog anymore, what up with that?
Math sucks – FACT!
You’re not only one who says “grills” for “girls” either…silly isn’t it, and actually not funny, so why oh why do I do it?!
This reminds me of when me and the missus went to Easter Island – it was the first time we’d seen the constellation from the Southern Hemisphere and it was awesome to pick out the stars using the map we’d brought specially for that trip. I seem to recall we could see Jupiter or Saturn with the naked eye. Very cool
Ha! This is just the kind of writing you’d just convinced me you weren’t going to do anymore. 🙂
I hope that I will still have those little romantic moments that make life so great with the person I spend my life with, just like you still do. 🙂
Okay…this is weird. I tried to log in from home last night and this morning, and it wouldn’t let me (just kept saying I had to sign in), so I sent an email instead. C’est la vie. Hopefully I don’t have that problem anymore. Now that I CAN post…*hee hee*
I was just going to post that I remember many nights where a younger version of me went with my dad to the planetarium to watch the star show…and a couple of nights down on the long pier on Lake Michigan armed with his telescope and a pair of high-powered field binoculars watching a lunar eclipse. It was some of the best times with my father. Due to clashing personalities, we don’t always get along, but we try. 🙂 I still go out on clear nights and look at the stars. Orion became (in my mind anyhow) one of my guardians, especially in winter.
I also have and had that sort of preternaturally intelligent canine companion. We had a yellow lab growing up whose vocabulary was amazing. We couldn’t even SPELL things like “cookie” or “frisbee” without him going nuts and waiting by whatever object to which we had referred. He’s been gone now for several years, but I laugh every time I think about his shennanigans.
Thank you, Wil, for bringing back a happy memory or three.
“star light, star bright, first st-”
“that’s a planet”
“oh, ok – planet light, planet bright…” 🙂
“I hope its not math”?? I can’t believe this is coming from bona fide Geek royalty. With a programming background, for pete’s sake!
And math does NOT suck!
Off topic: see how computer hackers make your computer into a BOMB! This is too funny:
http://sc.tri-bit.com/Image:ahm.gif
Funny, I and my dearest also looked at the planets last night as did a whole whack of people I know (as I told them to ahead of time). How many of us shared the moment without actually sharing our thoughts.
Check out today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day to see what Wil and Anne were talking about:
But I have to agree with Sumo in protest over the “math is hard” comment. I am hoping Wil was just joking about that… Seriously, people have a subconscious fear of anything mathematical, and popular culture as well as the media do very little to help us overcome this. I recall a video of Trent Lott giving a speech to a bunch of middle-school-age kids. He said that if you wanted to go into politics, you should study history, art, and things like that. He said, “I took math- what a waste of four years.” And do you know what? All the kids loved it. But what is the worst part? That he told them you didn’t need to understand math to be a politician? Gee, they never have to deal with big numbers, do they? (I hope you can smell the sarcasm!) Or is the real problem that they all agreed with him??
I try to teach university-level science, and I cannot even ask a college student to find the ratio of two numbers without getting protests about how “there’s no math requirement for this class.”
OK, I’m backing down off of my soapbox now. Thanks for the story, Wil, but you hit one of my hot buttons…
This is one of my favorite things that you’ve written. I don’t know that that is really true, they all seem to be my favorite when I read them
Now THAT is what I’m talking about! Writing which puts the smell of freshly cut grass smack into the middle of my mind.
Orion is my son’s middle name.
Great writing Wil…these little snippits of life are what I love best about reading your stories.
Wow, what a beautiful scene that must have been! I think palm trees are so cool, but that’s probably because I live in Michigan. :oP And as sad as it is, I think you actually described my dad’s house NOW. *sigh* Have a good day!
So, you got it ALMOST right. That was not my neighbor’s house from the 70’s … that was MY house from the 70’s.
My dogs are the same way, for ‘Walk’ ‘Out’ ‘Eat’ ‘Grapes’ and about ten other words. They’ve generalized so that even ‘W–‘ can trigger that happy expectant look that means ‘Are we going /outside/?! In the /Outdoors?!/ Where the /cats/ are?’
That’s beautiful detaiing there. Makes me want to go out and watch the skies. I don’t think any stars are out, though… Plus I think my neighbors would find it a bit creepy for me to be out with my telescope for some reason. They’re just strange.
Wow – excellent story! Kjelgaard had a style of writing that would make me feel as if I was right there experiencing the story. You seem to have that same ability. This is the only thing I have read so far on your blog (except the Hooters story!)I’m glad to read – at least so far that you have found true happiness.
Yesterday, Wil, you asked why you should keep blogging. I’d say that stories like these are reason enough. What they do to people. Look at the comments above, Wil. You wondered the Golden Age of WWdN will ever return. I’d ask wether it has ever ended.
Not to pick your brain. Not to delve into your private life. But for a slice of humanity, perfectly rendered in standards-compliant XHTML.
(Well maybe not necessarily perfectly-standards-compliant XHTML but you get the point :p)
Actually, Wil, using grills for girls is pretty normal. It’s just part of the wider linguistic phenomenon known as metathesis.
In modern English, the nonstandard variant pronunciations of “aks” (ask), “nucular” (nuclear), “asterix” (asterisk), “relator” (Realtor), and “comfterble” (comfortable) are just a few examples of the effect.
Bird was once brid; horse, hros; third, thridda; bright, beorht. “iron” was once pronounced “igh-run” and not “igh-ern”.
In most cases, one of the metathesized sounds is a liquid consonant (“l” or “r”), but the ks(x)/sk transposition is fairly common also. In the case of the verb “ask” the metathesis is so old that even back in Old English both “ascian” and “acsian” existed, and linguists don’t know which is older.
I have been the “grill” in my family ever since a family trip to the beach when my older brothers, who were just learning to read, saw the “no grills allowed” sign and were convinced I wasn’t allowed on the beach.
To the “math is hard” haters: I like math, but I also recognize (from having taught it) that many people just can’t do it. If Wil’s one of those, flaming him isn’t helpful.
To R. Craig Harman: You left off Barclay-broccoli. 😉
WIL,
THIS IS MORE LIKE IT. A VERY SWEET AND WARM STORY. THANKS FOR AFFIRMING THAT I’M NOT THE ONLY HAPPILY MARRIED MAN (26 YEARS ON THE 31ST)OUT HERE. LOVE TO ANNE AND THE POD PEOPLE.
JOHN
My seven year old called the conjuction “a happy face in the sky.” 🙂
Ooops! Gotta go. She needs help with her math.
Valerie S
Wow!
I’ve never had a tear come to my eye reading a blog entry before.
I am a single mom in great hopes of finding a similar relationship to your’s and Ann’s. You two are truly deserving and so am I… and so are all of our kids!!!
I love your writings Wil!
Is it just me, or does Orion play a *huge* role in everybody’s life? How many people are facinated by Orion? How many people are mistified and drawn to its… shineyness…. its…. its 3 almost perfectly spaced stars?
I’m drawn to the nebula inside of Orions belt, personally… I’m not sure exactly where you live, but I’m sure there are too many lights to truly see all the stars, but if you and your family ever visit NW Washington, there is an amazing rock quarry to visit at night that lets you see every star. Easily 3 times as many as you see in the city, even a small poorly lit city.
Admittedly as a child I was a member of my schools “I’m gonna marry Wil” club. I was the founding and only member.
While I still find you incredibly hot, and may very well have a poster hidden in the back of my closet along with my David Boreanez Poster and Jennifer Garner Poster… its good to hear you’re happily married! There are so few stories of that anymore. You’re like what, one of maybe 100 couples?
I thought I was the only person to be lame enough to have a personal website. I’m not sure that its up now, I didn’t bother to pay the hosting fee while I was out of internet… (evil gas prices!) it should be, b/c it passed alot of my time… at least you have a reason to have a website… and visitors… and stuff…
Have an Awesome Day!!
Dying4Eternity
(on myspace)