Enjoying the Life of a Two-year-old

My wife and I spent the last week visiting and taking care of our two-year-old grandson. What a treat. I’m now an expert on animals. My grandson and I spent hours talking about animals whether on matching cards, in books, stuffed or real. I learned you don’t need to say it exactly right as long as you’re enthusiastic. Some of the translations: monkey was “buddy;” lion became “ion;” sheep, “ship;” and dog, “goggie.” After a day of learning the words, we communicated clearly. What I found interesting is the learning process. An animated cat or a photograph were identified immediately as “kitty.” I also experienced what, in a positive sense, could be considered tenacious or in a negative way be called stubborn. With a cut on his finger, “boo boo,” he constantly then wanted “car,” which was a Disney Car movie band-aid. Whenever one band-aid fell off (five minutes after attaching it), he immediately said, “boo-boo,” followed by “car.” Grandparents learn as quickly as a two-year-old, and he soon had us trained. The other thing that has changed since we raised our kids—every piece of plastic in the house spoke or sang. I’d bump into a plastic farm set and it would immediately serenade me with “Farmer in the Dell.” When we travel, I take time off from writing. Now I’m reenergized and back to my normal writing schedule. That is until our next grandkid trip.

Tags When Writing Dialogue

As a writer I’m always trying to improve my craft. One thing I’ve learned is to develop a balanced approach for using tags in dialogue. The simple and most direct is to write she said as in:
“It’s time to go to the movie,” she said.
Common practice is to use this rather than an exaggeration such as he expostulated. Dialogue can also be identified by movement or idiosyncrasies of a particular character:
“Make my day.” Sam raised his shotgun
Tags can be underused. I’m in two online critique groups, and once in a while I read a manuscript where dialogue goes on for a number of paragraphs with no tags, and I lose tract of who’s speaking. On the other hand, not every element of dialogue needs a tag. Robert B. Parker is a wonderful writer, and I enjoy his stories but listen to one of his novels as an audio book. Nearly every line of dialogue ends with he said. After fifteen minutes of listening, this grates on the nerves. As a result, I always read my manuscripts out loud on my last editing pass. There is nothing like hearing what you’ve written.

Reunions

Ah, it’s reunion season. In the last two weeks I’ve attended two reunions for companies I used to work for. The problem is, I will see someone who looks familiar but can’t place them. At a reunion yesterday, name tags helped, for those who wore them, but with my eyesight I still had to squint at someone’s chest to see the name, and this wasn’t always well-received by the women. Once I was able to match a face with a name, most of the time I could remember how I knew the person, and we had a change to gab about old times. My forty-fifth college reunion takes place this year, and then in 2012 I’ll be going to my fiftieth high school reunion. Before then, I’ll have to review my high school year book and hope that the reunion organizers use large name tags.

Crowds

As humans we always like to categorize things, so here’s my take at one type of classification. I think there are two kinds of people: those who enjoy crowds and those who don’t. Earlier today, I volunteered to help at the Boulder Police Department booth at the Boulder Creek Festival. My duties including popping popcorn that was given away and encouraging people to buy raffle tickets and donate to the Special Olympics. After my tour of duty I strolled through the acres of attractions, food stands and booths that sold and promoted every imaginable product and service. I like to walk an hour a day and I got that in just making the rounds of the festival. I even brought my notepad in case an idea struck me for the current novel I’m writing. As I headed back to the car, what did occur to me was a visceral reaction to being confined in wall-to-wall people for an hour. I enjoy speaking with people, but the mob scene wasn’t for me—too noisy, too crowded, too much pushing and shoving. I would have preferred to be hiking in the mountains. You can tell where I fit in the crowd classification.

After the End of the World

With today being the predicted rapture by certain religious group, it brings to mind what happens to someone who has bought into one of these predictions.

Put yourself in this situation. You expect the end of the world to occur on the stroke of midnight. In preparation you have set your life in order and have gone out in your backyard to await the event. You gaze up toward the Milky Way, say a prayer and take a deep breath. A car backfires and you jump, your heart racing faster than the winner approaching a NASCAR finish line. You check your watch. 11:59. The second hand approaches the top of the dial. You countdown like when the ball descends at Times Square on New Years Eve. 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . You scrunch your eyes shut and then open them. Your oak tree still stands where you last saw it. The knot hole in your fence is still there and, in fact, your whole fence has not been incinerated by a fiery explosion. You regard your neighbor’s house. Still standing, not demolished by a blast of hot air. You look around. Your house looks the same and your patio devoid of furniture that you donated to the Salvation Army remains immaculate. You check your watch again. 12:01. You tap the dial. Can it be correct? Maybe it’s set wrong. Then you remember an hour ago you synchronized it with the atomic clock at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado.

What are you going to do now? You’ve given away all your possessions, deeded your house to your alienated son, told all your friends that the end is coming. When you stumble out the door in the morning to pick up the newspaper, your neighbor Fred will laugh and say, “You’re still here. Didn’t happen did it?” Oh, yeah, you forgot. You discontinued the newspaper. You won’t have to face Fred, but you won’t be able to hide in your house for long. Your son will show up to take possession and be delighted to kick you out. You decided not to sign up for Social Security or Medicare since a stipend and health care wouldn’t be needed after the end of the world. You gave all your savings to the bearded prophet in the flowing robe who convinced you doomsday was approaching. Now what?

How True Crime Cases Differ From CSI on Television

Several years ago I attended the Boulder Citizens Police Academy. As a mystery writer, I found this program extremely useful in learning about police procedures and the incredible contribution that the police department makes in our community. I’m now vice president of the Boulder Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association, and we meet once a month to hear a presentation on some aspect of law enforcement. This last week we heard from a detective regarding a homicide case that took over ten years from the time of the rape/murder until the perpetrator was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

One of the key attributes of writers is patience and perseverance. This is equally true of police detectives. Although the perpetrator’s DNA was collected from the victim and entered into the national database, there was no match for over a decade. The perpetrator had been arrested and was in prison in another state, but the DNA was not entered by law enforcement in that state for seven years. One DNA analysis along the way determined the racial background of the suspect, but this couldn’t be taken any father until a matching DNA sample was found. Another piece of evidence was a fiber that was identified by an expert as coming from a particular model of car. This became useful for later corroboration. After the DNA match was made, the police department needed to produce significant information for the trial including over 14,000 documents during discovery and an extensive chain of evidence list of everyone who had handled DNA samples over the ten plus year period. The reality of police work is much different from the quick resolution during a CSI television episode.

One other intriguing aspect of the case. The ER doctor on duty when the female victim was brought in insisted that she had not been raped. Fortunately, two ER nurses saw evidence of rape and stood up to the doctor and insisted that a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) be brought in with a rape kit. Semen was recovered, producing the DNA sample eventually leading to conviction of the rapist/murderer (the victim died a day after the rape and brutal beating). If these nurses had not stood up to the doctor, the perpetrator never would have been brought to justice.

Elders and the Future of Our Country

Given that I write about older characters, I’m always interested in information about the aging population. An article appeared in our local newspaper this week stating that Americans 45 and older now account for the majority of the voting population. The aging populations has grown rapidly with a 43% increase in people aged 55-64 from 2000 to 2010 and a 33% increase in the 85 and older segment. Of even more political interest is the statement based on actual election turnout that people 45 plus represent 60% of the voters in national elections. So in addition to being an increasing percentage of the population, older people actually exercise their votes more than younger people. Let’s use this voting power to steer our country away from the polarized rhetoric of the extreme right and extreme left, to vote for and bring into office politicians who forego the distracting symbolic issues of both extremes and focus on the real needs of the economy, jobs, environment and health.