Category: Ruminating Page 2 of 3

My Name is Enrique Garcia-Ayesta

On February 6, 2023

My Name is Enrique Garcia-Ayesta

For those of you Princess Bride fans, none of Enrique’s acquaintances killed my father and they do not need to “prepare to die…” If you haven’t watched the movie, I’m sorry you’ve not only missed out on classic cinema but also endured an introduction to this blog which makes no sense.

Enrique, or “Henry,” as we called him from the moment he walked through our door, entered our life when I was a junior at Montesano High School circa 1982. Our family signed up to host a foreign exchange student for the year, specifying Spanish as our language preference (I took Spanish in high school) and male for gender (there was no world in which my parents were going to allow a female high-schooler to live across the hall from my bedroom.) Enrique hailed from Bilbao in northern Spain but never failed to remind us he was a Basque, not a Spaniard.

What a special year. Enrique joined the football team as a kicker (surprise!) and had no problem fitting in at our high school. We developed a close friendship that included climbing out our bedroom window to attend “keggers” on abandoned logging roads, and lamenting about how hard my father could be to get along with (Enrique gave my dad a 1979 translation of The Nietzsche Reader for Christmas.)

At the end of the spring semester, Enrique returned home and I turned my focus toward my senior year. We missed each other. Although we weren’t much in the way of letter writers, we continued to trade correspondence through my sophomore year of college, before losing touch.

Fast forward twenty years and I’m commanding a C-130 squadron in Arkansas and flying a drug interdiction support mission to eastern Columbia (yes, the same mission I wrote about here where I “bent” our airplane.) We’ve got an overnight in Panama City, Panama and are pretty pumped about our hotel after months of living in tents in Pakistan and Oman. We walk into the hotel lobby wearing “sanitized” flight suits (all patches and identification removed) so no one will suspect we are Americans on our way to Columbia.

Yeah, right.

I’m checking in at the desk and hear a voice behind me.

“Camerón?” The accent is on the last syllable, but I recognize someone is trying to say my name, rather than the Spanish word for “shrimp.” I turn, and Enrique smiles at me.

“Enrique!” I give him a hug, and we step back and look at each other.

His hand touches his thinning hair like he’s embarrassed about it, but then he points at my balding head and says, “I wasn’t sure it was you…”

Long story short—neither of us had ever been to Panama before. Enrique was moving from London to start a cell phone company in Panama City and was checking into the hotel until he could find long-term accommodations for his family. I met his Greek wife, Athina, and their son Ektor—Enrique was a family man!

I’ve written before about my love for coincidence—as an affirmation that the impossible is actually possible. What are the odds that the two of us would randomly cross paths in a Panamanian hotel?

Enrique and I stay in touch. Our emails are infrequent, but enough such that he can ask about our kids, and I know his son is at University and they have a daughter now.

I don’t think our reunion was chance.

Hope Is Local

By Cam Torrens

On January 8, 2023

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

Hope Is Local

I grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, took an oath, spent thirty years and one month serving my country, and still feel my heart swell at our anthem’s words “that our flag was still there.” I’ve always believed our country, our democracy, and our intent should present an example to others that the best way for a people to propagate freedom is to demonstrate their values by serving as what former President Reagan termed “this shining city on the hill.”

Ronald Reagan borrowed most of this phrase from seventeenth century Puritan governor John Winthrop, who never intended the metaphor to represent a democratic ideal but rather to serve as a warning that all eyes of the world were watching to see how a Protestant colony would govern themselves in the New World.

Political discourse has always been fraught with polemic arguments and wanton emotion. The difference this century is that we no longer interpret this dialogue through a newspaper report or magazine article. The miracle of social media allows us to witness firsthand the messy, complicated, and frustrating process of governing our country. When I bring up helpful advice retrieved from my middle school days, my seventh grader often admonishes me by saying, “That’s TMI, Papa. Too much information.” That’s how I feel about political debate in the current environment. TMI.

All eyes of the world are upon our “city.” If we are shaking our heads at our own leaders, then just imagine the example we are setting abroad. But I find myself turning apathetic—almost cynical—wondering what tools the common citizen has to combat the inertia gripping this country at the national level and taking the shine out of our city.

Growing up, I took road trips with my family in a yacht-length station wagon with fake wood paneling. I whiled away the hours by heckling my two younger sisters in the back seat. Once, after a sister-squeal too many, my dad shot one hand backward and cuffed me on the side of the head while maintaining perfect steering control with the other. I was unhurt, but it surprised the heck out of me. I felt the same type of surprise when the solution to my political apathy knocked on my front door.

Looking for hope? It’s right here at home.

The mayor of my town owns an auto repair shop and changes the oil in my car as often as I remember to have it done. (His reminders help.) He also leads a board of trustees that runs our community. I am amazed every day at how well they do their jobs.

Our local leaders are fixing chronic shortages in low-income housing and are directly addressing environmental damage on our town’s perimeter. Together, they are figuring out how to attract the tourists that keep our economic engine chugging without neglecting the essence that makes us a community. All in a nonpartisan effort to make our home better.

We live in a small town made up of a trifecta of worldviews. We’ve got the young folks barely hanging on out here as they guide river rafts, climb mountains, and try to make a living through outdoor adventure. They tend to lean to the left. There are also the local locals, longtime residents who pretty much make everything happen. They trend to the right. Finally, we’ve got the crowd that already made their fortune and are living their best lives in their mountain retirement home (or second home). It is hard to generalize with this crowd, but they are set in their ways, and they all lean one way or another.

Everybody here has a political worldview, but they don’t use it at the local level to divide or split us apart. Out here, we get things done. And in between making our community a better place, we celebrate together: an annual town dinner with rows of tables running the length of Main Street—all four blocks; an impromptu parade for a football team leaving for the state semifinals; and a Chocolate Walk celebrating local businesses.

I haven’t sworn off social media yet, but I’m proposing a new filter. I want to select “within ten miles” for my news feed because that’s where our country is getting things done. And that’s where I find hope.

* My friend and talented author/essayist Jerry Fabyanic graciously included my essay above in his book Food for Thought: Essays on Mind and Spirit Volume Two published this past fall. If you’re interested in reading more, the collection is available on Amazon here.

A Better Place to Be

By Cam Torrens

On December 1, 2022

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

A Better Place to Be

Harry Chapin tops my list of favorite writers. I know music aficionados out there are shaking your heads. No one who remembers this 20^th century folk icon thinks of him as a writer first. They picture a singer, a guitarist, and a storyteller. But I’ll argue all day that Chapin’s use of tone and mood put him square in the writer category.

New writers often struggle with the basic terms. What’s the difference between the tone of a piece and the mood created? It’s simple to define—but sometimes hard to identify.

Tone is the author’s attitude about what they wrote and it’s aimed at the reader. Words like formal, angry, and humorous often describe the writer’s tone.

Mood is the feeling the reader gets when they read the author’s words. When reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,

“Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!”

“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the unicorn, “if you believe in me, I’ll believe in you.”

you might experience a mood described by words like whimsical, amusing, or fantastical.

Chapin used words, volume, tempo, and texture to deliver a distinctive tone and create a mood for his listeners…and he did it better than most. Look at the lyrics to Taxi or play the song here. Chapin’s tone is frustration—especially when he belts out the refrain, “I’ve got something inside me, to drive a princess blind…” But the mood he creates is nostalgic sadness. The listener warms at the story of past love but knows there’s no chance at reigniting it, especially after the line “Another man never would have let her go…I stashed the bill in my shirt.” 30,000 Pounds of Bananas blasts a tone of satire, but the mood created with changes in tempo (and Big John’s humorous inputs) is comedic horror as the listener perches on the edge of their seat waiting for the bottom of that hill.

A Better Place to Be captures Chapin’s talents best. (Warning: this is one of Chapin’s longest songs, so only keep reading and clicking links if you haven’t had enough Chapin for today—otherwise skip to the end of this blog) Written in 1972, this song remained Chapin’s favorite—a story about lonely people.

Chapin’s tone in this piece is sadness—a depressing sadness. The mood he creates is one of loneliness—the desperate need for human connection. To see how he uses his music for tone and mood, you can listen to the song here. Note his changes in musical tone between characters, his crescendos (…came back with my paper bag,) and tempo (shhhhh…I know just how you feel.)

But I’m a sucker for words and want to highlight some examples of how Chapin used them for tone and mood (full lyrics here):

– “an early morning bar room,” “started at his cups,” “fight her lonely nights,” and the little man not acknowledging the bar maid, all serve to create the sad and depressed tone Chapin intended.

– Nothing creates a mood of loneliness and despair like a dead-end job where “(sic) you watch the metal rusting and watch the time go by.” Later, we see a man so cynical about his chance for an emotional relationship that he’s given up on making a friend and settled on just making a play.“…but I decided to glide on over and give her one good try.”

– The man tries to turn on the light in the room but the woman asks him to leave it off. She can’t bear to see herself so low. But she needs someone or something as bad (or more) as the little man and says, “Anywhere’s a better place to be.” Desperate loneliness.

– Chapin ends his song in a more depressing tone than the beginning. The waitress is so sad about the man’s story and so sad about her own loneliness, she offers herself to him. And Chapin, the writer, slyly slips from sad to cynical as the little man “smiled a crooked grin,” and agreed to take her home.

I don’t consider myself a musician (sorry, Mr. Nelson—you did your best) and I haven’t done justice to how Chapin crafted his music (outside of his lyrics) to provide tone and mood. I feel it…I sense it…I just don’t know how to describe it. But I recognize good writing when I see it. You can get away with a non-literary line like “I did not want to share her, or dare to break the mood; So before she woke, I went out to buy us both some food,” if you have created tone and mood such that the reader/listener is hanging on your every word.

Harry Chapin did that for us with his stories. Thanks, Harry!

p.s. A link for everyone saying, “but you left out Cat’s in the Cradle…”

A Few Eggs Short of a Dozen

By Cam Torrens

On November 4, 2022

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

A Few Eggs Short of a Dozen

While our family tries its best to sit down together every night for dinner, it just doesn’t always work out. There’s Boy Scouts on Tuesday, a Zoom meeting every other Wednesday, and…to be perfectly honest, its football season!

These are legitimate reasons to announce to our household’s two remaining minors: “It’s make your own dinner night.” Loud rejoicing usually follows, much to our consternation. We adults have “game” when it comes to cooking, and this reaction never fails to chip away at the ego.

But the boys aren’t bad chefs themselves. They have taken one of our ancient family secrets and upped the game. Since you’ve read this far, I’ll share it: EVERYTHING TASTES BETTER WITH AN EGG (or two) IN/ON IT. Our Top 5 regulars are listed below:

RAMEN: Our 110lb middle linebacker is a soup addict. If you can pour it, he will eat it. But his go-to soup for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is ramen. With an egg. And a bunch of other stuff…but I digress.

RICE: Our 97lb defensive end (did I mention how small our high school is? These guys were middle school starters!) goes for rice. Does he put an egg in it? Not on day one. But there’s no holding back if it comes out of the fridge on day two. You know how that rice can get all hard in the fridge? The egg fixes that.

BURGERS: Questions? It goes right on the patty, sunny side up. Bring a napkin.

FRIED SALAD: I wish those boys ate more salad. Alas, this favorite is mine (the family vegetarian.) You take the salad that’s been in the fridge just to the point where it probably should be tossed out instead of just tossed. Open the lid and sniff. Remind yourself how the cost of produce has skyrocketed. Then dump it in the frying pan with olive oil and garlic. Fry on high for three minutes, make a hole in the middle and crack your egg. Flip after a minute and sprinkle on a layer of cheese. Don’t get no better.

LEFTOVERS: Mix everything together in a large frying pan and fry on high. Add an egg or two to give the mass enough consistency to form a Leftover Pancake. Add cheese on top. Bring on the sriracha.

The daily egg consumption is subtle—“Papa, I only used one…”—but consistent. I do the bulk of the grocery shopping and I’m not sure it’s normal to buy two 18-egg cartons once a week.

Or is it?

Let me know your go-to recipes with egg…or suggestions on cutting back!

Welcome to the Jungle (It Gets Worse Here Every Day)

By Cam Torrens

On October 4, 2022

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

Welcome to the Jungle--It Gets Worse Here Every Day

In which I’m driving in a parking lot accident…inside a $30M aircraft

It’s autumn of 2003 and our C-130 unit is still running balls to the wall supporting the Global War on Terror. In the past twelve months, we’ve moved from Pakistan—flying night low-level airdrops into Afghanistan—to Oman, where we supported the initial invasion of Iraq. We’re given four months back home at our base in Arkansas to “recharge” before we deploy to Qatar for another round of “fun in the sun.” Lots of hugs and kisses (and tears) as we return home from the desert and settle in for a temporary round of family life.

I’m the commander of this unit and I’d love to tell you morale is high. But it’s not. We’ve all been on the move since 9-11 and there’s no end in sight. Our families know this is just a stopover to get the aircraft overhauled and try to restore some sanity for our airmen and our spouses. Unfortunately, I get more than one aviator in my office, head hung low, explaining how they are trying to reestablish control of the household, only to discover their presence is superfluous. Those guarding the home front managed things just fine while our fliers were gone and certainly didn’t need advice on how to keep a tight ship.

So, it’s no surprise when a month or two after we get back, I’ve got aircrews ready to get back on the road. Not to the desert, boss—I can wait for that. But how about that three-day mission through Vegas? Or what about that Alaska trip? And I’m just as guilty. A four-day trip to South America pops up and I’m thinking to myself…the commander needs to keep up his flying currency as well, right? What I don’t realize is this little hop down south will result in more updates to my currency than I’m asking for.

Here’s the mission: Deliver Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC—also known as Zodiacs) to a remote airfield in Columbia. Are there other details? Yes. But we just deliver beans and bullets, so we aren’t privy to the “why” and I likely wouldn’t be able to share them here if I was. President Bush’s Plan Columbia is in full swing and our special operators probably have a menu of options: 1) destroy drugs 2) eliminate drug traffickers 3) train Columbian forces in counter-terror operations 4) tell their grandkids about whitewater rafting east of the Andes…

I’ve got a young crew. Normally, the scheduler would have fixed that. Regardless of how good the commander thinks he or she flies the plane, the mid-level captains are convinced we just do paperwork, go to meetings, and suck up to those above us—we’ve no business behind the yoke without adult supervision. They’ve done well with their choice of an engineer—he’s crustier than I am—but the rest of the crew has a combined time in the squadron of about six years. And I should have recognized that taking only one loadmaster (who’s never flown outside the US) with a plane stuffed with bulky rafts is probably not fair to the young man.

We overnight in Panama City, Panama. The next day, we drop into Cali, Columbia for gas before the final leg into our narrow 3K’ strip east of the Andes. All is well.

Our mission planning warns us we need to ensure there are no other large aircraft on the ground before we land at our final destination. There is no taxiway, just an off-ramp of corrugated metal mats forming a path through the mud off the end of the runway. If a plane is on the ground and another lands, there is no legal way for the plane on the ground to get to the runway and no way for the landing plane to turn around and take off again.

We call with these questions and request clearance to land. The combination of broken English and great Spanish was clear enough for us. We’re cleared to land.

We put the plane down on brick one and I silently smirk at those silly schedulers worried about my rusty pilot skills. My smile fades about 2K feet down the runway as I see the telltale triangle of another C-130 tail loom into view.

“You see that, boss?” My engineer asks.

“Yep.”

“Yep.” He replies.

We stop on the runway and get the other C-130 on the radio. Its props are turning and they are ready to go. They’re none too happy with our arrival and the resulting delay in their departure. After a few minutes of coordination, we come up with a plan. The other aircraft will hug the eastern side of the metal mats, while we hug the west. The only way it will work is if one of our aircraft allows its nosewheel to go off the metal and into the mud while turning. Since we’re the ones in the wrong, (landed with another C-130 on the ground already) we get to do the nosewheel maneuver.

And it works! Some US contractors are out helping clear the wings, and we’re able to maneuver ourselves past the other plane so that our tail end points toward their “ramp” where several single-engine aircraft are parked. My nosewheel is still in the mud, but it’s maneuverable. The other C-130 takes off.

While the copilot and I head into a tent to use a SAT phone and let our headquarters know we made it, the engineer is checking out my nosewheel and shaking his head, and the navigator is doing…well, she’s doing that nav stuff.

No one’s watching our young loadmaster who has a bunch of jungle-fevered contractors yelling at him to hurry as he works through his checklists. He flawlessly offloads the rafts, but as he raises the ramp at the rear of the aircraft, he forgets an important step: Ensure Door is Clear. Unfortunately, one of the “helpers” has left a tie-down strap in the clamshell area of the door and when the hydraulics complete their cycle, thousands of pounds of pressure punch the buckle of the strap through the skin of the aircraft. We now have a hole in the airplane.

I can’t believe it. I’d just Q3’d (disqualified) a crew in Afghanistan for bending metal on the aircraft when they took out a light stand. Not their fault. Definitely their responsibility. Those are two different things. Now here we were in peacetime, in daylight, on a milk run. Bending metal.

I get permission to fly the aircraft back and we prepare for takeoff. The first thing we have to do is back the aircraft on the metal matting so the nosewheel is back on a solid surface to turn toward the runway. I’ve got spotters on both wings to make sure we don’t bump anything while reversing, and the loadmaster is watching out the back end to ensure sure we don’t hit any of the single-engine aircraft. The last time I had this much attention on my back end was at my annual flight physical.

We move backwards approximately ten feet when there is a sudden metal-on-metal screeching sound so loud it penetrates our ear protection. I stop reversing.

“What was that?” The nav asks.

“That’s the sound of my career ending,” I reply, never at a loss for a smart-ass remark, regardless of circumstances.

We shut down and survey the damage. As the weight of the main wheels sank into the rear of the metal matting, it caused the front end of the matting to “pop a wheelie” out of the mud and into the bottom of the aircraft. Since all eyes are on the wings and tail of the airplane, no one notices the metal scraping our underbelly until it collides with the nose gear door and shears it partway off.

While the engineer hack-saws the remaining portion of the gear door off the aircraft, I make my SAT phone calls, first to my boss back home. Then to headquarters. I brief my commander my policy of “bending metal” and how I need to be Q3’d. He tells me I don’t need tell him that. Get that plane home and I’ll have the disqualification paperwork waiting when you walk down the steps.

And so we do. Flying under 150 knots (that’s slow even for a Herk) and below 10K’ (except for an hour on oxygen when we climb over the Andes) we limp home over the next several days. We stop for an overnight again in Panama. No beer. We just sulk. And then back to the states.

They say you can’t recover from a taxi accident and you can kiss your career goodbye if you have a Q3 in your records. I have both because of our little Columbian adventure. Back in Arkansas, I take two proficiency rides with an instructor, where they review important things I know, but didn’t utilize on my mission:

-if you’re unsure about your landing environment and will not get shot down, then do a fly-by and check things out

-if you’ve got an inexperienced crewmember under pressure, don’t leave them alone so you can get a cup of coffee and make a phone call

-if you’re backing up, ensure you have people watching the whole aircraft and not just the back end.

I take my check ride a week later and return to qualified status. By the end of the month, I’m commanding a deployed squadron in Qatar, and we’re doing great things for our troops in Iraq. Even get to send an aircraft to Iran with relief supplies after an earthquake. I take special joy in putting a female pilot in command of that mission.

I’m never sure whether my career continues because it’s a time of war and we need the bodies, or because I’m a commander and someone is taking care of me. I like to think the decision was in higher hands than those.

But I still think that responsibility thing is pretty important.

Under Where?

By Cam Torrens

On August 6, 2022

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

My kid (any of them): Papa, have you seen my water bottle?

Me (pointing): Yeah, it’s under there…

My kid: Under where?

Me (laughing): You said “underwear!”

My kid: (silence)

Underwear is funny.

Some might disagree, but they’re likely the same hi-falutin’ snobs who probably wouldn’t appreciate the humor found in the unexpected release of trapped gas.

We’ve got a hard drive around the house somewhere with a picture of my oldest boys when they were two and three with tighty-whities pulled over their heads as part of the superhero game they were playing. Always a good photo to pull up at Christmas—especially if they’ve brought home a girlfriend.

When I was four, I tried to smuggle Fig Newtons into my bedroom by hiding them in the back of my own tighty-whities. My dad wasn’t fooled by the strange droop in my drawers, and rather than multiple spankings, I only endured one swat and some smushing which rendered the cookies inedible. Got to stay up late for a second bath, though!

A few close calls in the venerable C-130 (4 Fans of Freedom, Hero of the Skies) where bad food in Africa, small arms fire in Afghanistan, and one specific Iraqi SAM in early March 2003 may or may not have resulted in underwear checks at the end of the mission.

These are the stories of youth and probably explain why those of us who haven’t quite grown up still laugh at them. But it doesn’t explain why my best underwear story happened in middle age.

It’s 2011 and I’m only six months away from a move to Beijing, China, to take a job in the US Embassy. In the lead up to this assignment, I spent over a year learning Mandarin Chinese, several months diving into Chinese culture and a couple of weeks learning social skills (I know. I know.) The Chinese course’s capstone event is a four-week language immersion in Beijing. Courses in the morning. Exploring Beijing in the afternoon. And the rest of the time living with a host family that speaks no English.

I arrive at my host family’s apartment late in the evening after getting snowed in at Chicago for an extra day. I’ve rehearsed my apologies in Chinese on the taxi ride into the city, but when I explain, Shushu (Uncle) just gives me a blank stare and

turns to his wife Ayi (Aunt) who returns the blank stare. They both start talking and my gut sinks as realize I must have got off in the wrong country. I arrived so proud of my 15-month progression in Mandarin, and I haven’t understood a word so far. And from the looks on my host family’s faces, the Chinese I am speaking is also unrecognizable.

Fortunately, Shushu has the universal translator stored under the sink. He pops the bottle open and we share a couple shots of erguotou, a sorghum-based liquor popular with Chinese workers—kind of like PBR, but with five times the alcohol content. By the time we hit the sack, I still don’t understand Shushu’s Chinese, and he doesn’t understand mine. But we’re communicating perfectly. Ayi just shakes her head.

Over the next few days, I’ll sort out the language issues in class. My instructors teach me how to understand the nuances of the Beijing accent, and at home with Shushu and Ayi, I begin to understand most of what they are saying. Mostly I nod my head, because they still give me that “deer in the headlights” look every time I open my mouth.

Shushu and Ayi live in tight quarters like most Chinese city dwellers. The table folds out from the wall, an alcove with a curtain serves as their bedroom (and a nursery for their granddaughter who spends the day with Ayi,) It’s clear they gave up their real bedroom—the only other room in the house—for my stay.

But wait—I failed to mention one more room. The bathroom measures approximately four feet wide and seven feet deep. Never have I seen so little space multipurposed in so many ways. The sink empties through a hose leading to a drain near the toilet. Above the toilet is the showerhead and the entire bathroom floor slopes toward this central drain. You shower by closing the lid of the toilet and standing with your feet on each side while spraying yourself. A washer dominates the rear of the bathroom, so close to the toilet you could switch the clothes to the dryer (if they had one) without getting up from the toilet. And criss-crossed on the ceiling are nylon lines with clothes hung up to dry. Everything is clean—but the tight quarters make me nervous. My first shower feels like bathing in a phone booth.

It’s day three at Shushu and Ayi’s house, and they are starting to nod when I speak to them. I told them I was going to shower, and they even pointed toward the bathroom. My language skills are improving! I’m sure the towel and soap in my hands has no bearing on their comprehension.

At the sink, I test the luke-warm water and decide to just shave my face rather than the patches of hair that stubbornly try to grow from my bald head. In and out is my bathroom strategy tonight. I lather up and after I rinse the shaving cream from my hand, I reach above me for my towel I’ve hung on one of the drying lines. As I pull, it catches on the rope and when I tug harder, the rope bows toward me like a rubber band, then springs back, causing the remaining drying clothes to jerk toward the ceiling.

I’m unsure whether the ensuing time period allowed me to utter “Oh, shit” or whether I just thought it—it’s hard to remember because time suddenly slowed. I stare at the ceiling as the clothes fall back on the line, but as soon as I let my breath out, one article of clothing slips off the line and falls. I drop my towel and reach up but cannot snag the white material before it falls between my arms and settles on the surface of the water in the toilet. I bend over and recognize (OK—obviously I don’t recognize…but there’s no way Shushu would wear these…) Ayi’s underwear.

My first instinct is to pull them out, wring the water, and hang them back up to dry—I mean, if my dog can drink out of my toilet at home, how dirty can the water be? I stare in the mirror, my heart pounding, and remind myself I’m a grown-up. The “pretend it never happened” strategy is not a grown-up move. I reach for the underwear, then stop. If I pull them out and take them to Ayi, I’m not sure my Chinese will adequately convey the gravity of the situation. She might just nod and say, “Yes, they haven’t dried yet. Please put them back.” And trade concerned glances with Shushu about the strange 老外laowai*.

I decide to man-up. After cleaning the shaving cream from my face and putting my shirt back on, I step out of the bathroom, turn the corner, and face Shushu and Ayi, who wear questioning looks on their faces. I take a deep breath, bow my head toward Ayi, and announce: 你的内裤掉了厕所Ni de neiku diaole cesuo **(Your panties fell toilet.) Ayi’s eyes widen, and she rises from the table and walks past me into the bathroom. I’m mortified. I follow behind her and watch as she looks in the toilet, cranes her head up to the nylon ropes on the ceiling, then fishes her underwear from the water. I hear Shushu laughing behind me and I don’t have to know much Mandarin to know Ayi’s telling him to shut up.

Fortunately, Ayi would never insult a guest, and our relationship quickly recovers from my initial buffoonery. I’ll always remember that day as a turning point, when I began communicating in another language.

And underwear is still funny.

*non-Asian foreigner

**It was only after I returned to the US and told this story to my Chinese instructor that she reminded me I forgot to use the directional word “进jin (in)” in my sentence. I’m sure Ayi was quite unsure what actually “fell” in the bathroom until she entered.

Virtue Signaling: Dog Poop and Economic Sanctions

By Cam Torrens

On July 9, 2022

In Blog, Ruminating

When you think you have something important to say, it’s best to define your terms. I made this next one up.

FPUP = “Faking Picking Up Poop.”

Before you accuse me of swirling into the cesspool of scatological humor, hear me out. I’ve got a story to tell and a point to make.

Here we go. I live six miles outside a remote Colorado town nestled against the Rocky Mountains. A homeowner’s association (HOA) runs our neighborhood, armed with the associated covenants and bylaws to ensure that just in case the federal, state, or county government do not provide enough guidance in our lives, the HOA can help tighten things up. Hmmm. I digress…

Regardless, as in any community, when I walk my dog, I’m expected to clean up after my dog. Even though we’re out here in the boondocks and our community is all gravel roads, I’m OK with this rule. It’s a common courtesy to my neighbors who enjoy roaming about our neighborhood as much as I do.

Here’s the rub. Half the time I walk my dog, she’s got the same issue I do after a three-hour airplane flight. Things ain’t moving so good on the inside and movements that are supposed to be regular become, well…irregular. So my dog strikes the dooty-ful pose like she’s dropping a load but then comes up short.

It’s a fake poop.

I don’t hold that against her and that’s not the problem. The problem is me. All the neighborhood houses sit on 3- to 5-acre plots. Just far enough from the road for my neighbors to see I’m walking next to a dog pooping in front of their house, but too far away to shake their heads and say, “Oh dear. That dog needs more fiber in her diet.”

So what do I do? I whip out a plastic bag with the panache of a proctologist wielding a surgical glove, bend over, and fake like I’m picking up poop. Analyzing the proximity of the closest house, I’ll often wrap the bag around a small rock to lend the bag a believable amount of heft, before flipping it inside out and tying it off.

FPUP. Faking picking up poop. Actually, it should probably be FPUFP—Faking picking up fake poop.

Why? What compels me to do this?

Must be a DNA thing. Or maybe my personality. I’ll likely never know because I’m a thrifty kind of guy who carefully uses my City Market grocery points at Shell and Loaf & Jug to lower the cost of filling my gas tank, and I’m not about to pay an analyst to tell me why my brain works this way.

Here’s my best guess: I want my neighbors to think I’m the type of guy who picks up after his dog—even though my dog isn’t actually pooping.

The last time this happened, I leaned over and zeroed in on a nice rock for my bag when my back suddenly gave out. You think it’s bad when you hurt yourself putting on your socks. Imagine the shame of injuring yourself while virtue signaling.

How far will we go to make it appear like we’re doing the right thing? Even when we’re not. Even if it hurts?

Our recent sanctions on Russia might help answer that question. We want the world to know that we are not the type of nation that will tolerate Russia’s invasion of sovereign Ukraine and are doing something about it.

But sanctioning a country to change their behavior has a poor historical track record. Sanctions rarely work and often delay progress toward a diplomatic solution (Cuba.) There are examples of successful sanctions, but they are usually accompanied by a credible threat of military force (Iraq, Serbia)—a threat (understandably) missing in the response to nuclear Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Finally, if sanction regimes are not unilaterally imposed, they can backfire and harm the countries applying them (US/EU fuel prices rise while India and China help Russia profit through oil purchases.)

With sanctions, we are faking like we are doing something and hurting ourselves.

Military intervention would be a more effective use of power, but I don’t favor that option. The invasion does not directly affect our national interests, Ukraine is not a formal ally (no US-Ukraine defense treaty) and Russia has nuclear weapons. Don’t get me wrong—the assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty is wrong in every sense of the word. I’m simply suggesting military intervention is not a reasonable choice.

Here’s what I support—the continued supply of US weapons and associated training. If my neighbor was fired from his or her job, I probably wouldn’t boycott their employer and encourage everyone else to do the same. Instead, I would find out what my neighbor needed and help them get it. The Javelin missile provided by the US proved so effective, that a picture of Mary Magdalene cradling one to her chest dominates social media. The recently introduced High Mobility Rocket Artillery System (HIMARS—a much more powerful acronym than the one I made up about dog poop) strikes enough fear in the Russians that they are spreading false reports of its destruction.

I also support the use of the diplomatic and informational instruments of power. They are often as ineffective as sanctions, but at least they signal our stance to the rest of the world, and we don’t harm ourselves through their use.

I know–hot button topic for my blog that’s supposed to be fun. But those long walks with the dog get you thinking. So bring it on…what’s your opinion?

A Small, Small World

By Cam Torrens

On May 9, 2022

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

There is nothing more cliché than Disney’s song “It’s a Small World” *

The parlor game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, probably made the actor more famous than fighting sand worms or getting his shoelace caught on a tractor.

But isn’t coincidence amazing? It’s like an affirmation that the impossible is actually…possible.

1989. I am stationed in Zweibrucken, Germany flying the mighty C-23A twin-engine Sherpa, a plane also known during its brief seven-year Air Force tenure as “the slowest, ugliest plane in our fleet.” I’ve just graduated from flight school and moved from a shared apartment with a twin mattress on the floor and a giant Orca pool toy hanging from my ceiling. I’m confident I’ll decorate my new abode in Germany differently, now that I’m an Air Force officer and a qualified pilot.

But single occupancy apartments are scarce in the villages surrounding our base near the French border. I end up living on the second floor of an old farmhouse in the 500-person village of Rosenkopf, about five miles east of the base. The first floor has been modified—the foundation split into a series of stalls for the pigs my landlord raises. The smell of dank hay and the livestock reminds me of the couple years we lived on a farm in Oregon along the Columbia Gorge. Good memories.

I bring a couple of my squadron mates over to check out my new digs the day after I move in. I ask if they smell the hay. I see them look at each other before one of them, a blond-haired Captain who’s been in the squadron for two years already, speaks up. “It smells like shit.”

But I love it. The house. The village. There’s only one other American family in the town and only a handful of German families with any English skills. A great opportunity to learn the language.

Six months later and I’m best friends with the elderly German couple two houses up the hill. The husband, a bed-ridden World War II vet who spent most of the war as a POW in America, and his gregarious non-English speaking wife who makes it her personal mission to feed me. Two of their three daughters also live in the old farmhouse and before long, I’m spending holidays with them—an amateur Thanksgiving effort on my part, and them folding me into a memorable Christmas picnic in the woods with sleds, schnapps, and sausage. We become good friends.

That spring, I’m sitting next to the husband’s bed and he’s helping me through a conversation in German while we both drink beer. With each gulp of Parkbrau, I feel my German language skills improving. He’s describing his third daughter—the one who lives in the US—and her family. She had married a GI some twenty years before and she and her husband and grown boys live in northern Idaho. I switch to English.

“I used to live close to there—a little town west of there in Washington called Kettle Falls.” I have no idea why I’m telling him this. I was in 7th grade when I lived there, and the population was less than 1,500. I don’t remember a stoplight.

My friend’s eyes flash. “That’s where they lived before. In Kettle Falls!”

I shake my head. “Are you sure? It’s a very small town.”

“Yes, Kettle Falls. When did you live there?”

I do some mental math. “Around 1976.”

“That’s when my daughter and her family were there. They lived there for about five years.” He calls for his wife and rattles off our discovery in German. I understand enough to recognize he’s asked her to go get a picture.

She comes back and thrusts the picture in front of me. Her husband is staring at my face over the back of the photograph to see if I recognize his daughter.

I’ve never seen their daughter or her husband in my life. They’re posed for a family picture with their two boys sitting in front of them. I stare closer.

“That’s Chase and Del…Sanborn,” I stab at the photo with my finger. “From Boy Scouts!”

I hear a “Mein Gott” behind me from my friend’s wife and he utters something—also in German—I don’t understand. I explain to them that their
grandsons and I went on camp-outs together, built snow caves, and cooked with Dutch ovens. I leave out the stories of lighting farts, a stolen Playboy, and a wedgie gone bad. Because I’m a mature Air Force officer now…and I don’t know how to say “wedgie” in German.

They insist I call their grandkids on the phone right away until we calculate the time difference and realize it’s midnight in Idaho. The next morning, I’m back at their house and they are holding the phone to my ear. Del, the younger of the brothers, is on the line and we both marvel at the odds that I’m standing in his grandparents’ house. We catch up on each other’s lives. After ten minutes, we run out of things to talk about, and I hand the phone back to his grandmother. We’ve never spoken since.

But it’s a story that I’ve never tired of telling. Ask a hundred random Germans if they’ve heard of the farming village of Rosenkopf and ninety-nine will say “nein.” (did I just do an English-German homonymic alliteration? Is that a thing?) Ask a hundred Americans what state has a town named Kettle Falls and ninety-nine will have no idea. But there I stood, in a German farmer’s kitchen on the phone with his grandchildren, my childhood Boy Scout buddies.

Impossible? Obviously not.

God. Fate. Karma. You believe in what you believe, and I’ll stick with my beliefs. But I think we can agree it’s a small world out there. And all things are possible.

* “It’s a Small World” is also the third most annoying family road trip song behind “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and “This Is the Song That Never Ends…”

Home Alone? (gasp)

By Cam Torrens

On April 5, 2022

In Blog, Ruminating

Home Alone? (gasp)

At what age did your parents let you stay alone in the house? I’m not talking overnight, but from the time school let out until your folks got home. I’m betting it was under the age of 10.

I can’t pinpoint my exact age, but I have vivid fifth-grade memories of unsupervised walks home from school with my 8-year-old and 7-year-old sisters and plopping down in front of the TV until the adults finished work. Enough time to take in Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, or Bonanza. Enough time to raid the freezer for an afternoon microwave invention (we weren’t allowed to use the stove.) And just enough time to have my sisters in tears through various types of psychological terror (I saw Mom & Dad give your Barbies to Goodwill) and dry-eyed before the car pulled into the driveway (Oh, look! Here are your Barbies in the back of the closet.)

Was it a different era? Was this afternoon independence a phenomenon occurring after I walked to and from school barefoot… uphill both ways? Or do some elementary school kids out there still enjoy this bit of unsupervised bliss? I think it still happens. It’s just not something people discuss.

And this article from the Colorado Sun reveals why they aren’t talking about it. In Colorado, they’ve just updated laws “to clarify that a child is not neglected when allowed to participate in reasonably independent and safe activities. Those include walking to and from school, playing outside or staying home alone.”

Wait just a darn minute. It was illegal in my state to have my kids do these things? They couldn’t walk home from school alone, play outside alone, or stay at home alone?

Not exactly.

But what was happening was a massive public affairs campaign highlighting the child abuse hotline and encouraging people to make calls when they saw something that didn’t look right. And over 80% of the time, the calls ended up being about kids being left alone. Guess what parents were the targets of most of the calls? Homeschoolers letting their kids play alone outside during school hours, parents of color, and low-income parents who couldn’t afford to have their kids in paid after-school activities.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about effective initiatives to put child abusers behind bars. That’s where they belong. But I’m of the opinion the pendulum has swung just a little too far to the “overprotective” side with our kids. Or in this case, when it comes to passing judgment on other parents.

Something’s wrong with a system where you have to write laws to tell you what you can do. Normally, these statutes highlight what’s illegal.

In the Air Force, we used to be jealous of Navy pilots because their regulations (unlike ours) only told them what they couldn’t do. 1.6.3.1 Thou shalt not buzz the tower, was crystal clear. But any naval aviator worth his salt knew that meant everything else was fair game. Thus, the inevitable newspaper article, Bothell High Grad Buzzes Alumni Football Game With Navy F-18. “I didn’t buzz the tower,” the pilot would protest.

When you have to start writing laws telling people what they are allowed to do, it implies that you’ve covered everything they aren’t allowed to do. And that’s just not true. We still have 31 states that don’t have laws against leaving an infant in a car unattended. It’s still legal to drive a tank on a public road (if you have the right mirrors,) own a flamethrower, and flip off cops. I’m not calling for more regulation, but if you’ve got to meet your rule quotas, we don’t need you telling us we’re authorized to let our kids play unsupervised on the local playground. Write something prohibiting all the “wrong” things and let us figure out the “right” things to do.

Just saying.

Note For Reader: I actually believe the government is “here to help.” Things just go awry in execution. If you’re interested in learning more about the decision to leave your kids at home alone, read this useful pamphlet from Health & Human Services!

Routine Maintenance

By Cam Torrens

On January 8, 2022

In Blog, Ruminating

Routine Maintenance

I have no idea why I’ve settled on 4:52 as my wake-up time. It was even earlier back in my Air Force days (and my go-to-sleep time was much later.) I did a lot of burning the candle at both ends back then and didn’t carry the respect for a good seven-plus hours of sleep that I do now. So why am I getting up before 5 am?

Because I got things to do! If you read my blog post after COVID Year 1, then you recognize I’m a counter. I like to keep track of things in my little day planner (books read, miles run, hot tub usage, etc.) You know—important things. Add them up at the end of the year, put them in a spreadsheet, and then hide them on my computer so no one calls me out for being weird.

But it’s not just counting. I like a routine, too. Probably sounds funny from a guy who spent 30 years in the military, moving every 1-2 years, and deploying overseas regularly in between assignments. It was hard to keep a consistent routine, but I always gave it my best shot, especially with working out and reading.

It’s not like routines are odd—they’ve been around forever and plenty of the “big names” are fans. The Stoic philosopher, Seneca, said,

“Life without design is erratic.”

A couple of decades later, Epictetus noted,

“Progress is not achieved by luck or accident but by working on yourself daily.”

Leap forward a couple of thousand years and I think author Annie Dillard says it best,

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days…”

These days, I have the time and stability for a routine—and I’ve become slightly obsessed with it.

Breaks in my routine annoy me.

There in lies the crux of the problem. I think those long-dead philosophers were right about the importance of designing a life, developing key habits, and incremental improvements. But they were giving advice on how to be better, not how to live better. It’s easy to look forward on a chessboard and try to figure out your next move, but you have to remember your opponent gets a move as well. In other words, life happens to you (rather than “for” you) and if you constantly shirk from external events in order to check off your “to-do” list, then guess what?

You’re not living life.

This truth surfaced for me when four of our children returned for the holidays from college and work and joined the remaining four of us still hanging around the homestead. As I looked at the list of planned family activities (not me! I didn’t make the schedule…) my first thought was “Oh man, I’m not going to get my run done on this day. And there’s no way I’m getting any of the rest of my ‘stuff’ done on that day.” And just as I felt that twinge of annoyance, another thought struck me. It went something like this: “You are a frikkin’ idiot. Your kids traveled from the corners of the country to celebrate a holiday that is all about life, you won’t see them again for months, and you’re worried about making “X’s” in your day planner?” If I’d been standing in front of a mirror, I wouldn’t have met my own eyes.

I’m sure you all learned this lesson long ago, but thanks for letting me share life’s personal reminder to me. Do not underestimate the power of routines. They are an incredible tool to help you be better (and another opportunity for your kids to make fun about you getting older and set in your ways.)

But if you want to live better, you need to embrace the unexpected opportunities that will inevitably slam into your plans for the day. Use the routine when life is routine. Chuck it when you see a chance to get out there and LIVE.

*Note: after I posted this blog, I marked it off with an “X” in my planner