Summer Camp Baseball

First off I do not have fond memories of summer camp. My parents sent me to three different summer camps over five years and I'm very happy that I never have to go there ever again. (Unless there's reincarnation.)

Next up I am no good at all at sports, except for volley ball at which I excel, but this is about baseball, not volley ball. I am a klutz with a hockey stick and since I've been off the ice for decades I probably can't skate any more. I was not good at it when I was a kid. I cannot catch a spherical ball. I'm not bad with a football but I do not have the stamina, or the willingness to have bones broken, required for that sport. As far as hitting a ball with a bat goes forget it. I can't do that either.

I was at summer camp. This was my third year of being at summer camp and my first at this particular one. Let me give it a fictional name for you: Camp Moosewappi. If you find 'Mooswappi' on Google I will be somewhat surprised but not floored. I just made that up as I wrote it.

There we are day one or day two at Camp Moosewappi and out camp councilor, let's call him Bob, gets all enthusiastic about us playing baseball. When I say us, I mean the group of kids that were put together to be led by this councilor. There must have been a camping type name for it but I have mercifully forgotten what it was. For lack of a better term for it I'll call it a cabin. You OK, with that? You better be.

I went first with my baseball flaws and deficits. Turns out I had been put in with a cabin full of baseball losers. I was not the only one who had extreme difficulty with the skills required by that particular sport. One by one, each of the guys in my cabin admitted their lack of interest in baseball due to their incompetence with that sport.

At the end of this defeatist outpouring Bob looked thoroughly dejected and defeated. I mean his shoulders were hunched over. He gazed down at the floor. He emitted a series of deep sighs.

Nevertheless, baseball was on the agenda. There was a camp tournament among the cabins. Time had been scheduled for it. Like it or not we could not opt out of playing baseball. We had sympathy for Bob. He had obviously been good at sports and perhaps had even experienced winning from time to time.

Bob took us out to one of the baseball diamonds and began by assessing our skills, or rather, I should say, our lack of skills. We played what I think is called round robin baseball. People take positions on the playing field while someone goes to bat and when they strike out or are tagged out they go on the playing field while everyone moves to the next position.

Doing that, everyone gets to do everything. They get to bat, catch, pitch, field, be at a base, and so on. We did that for a while and I could see Bob's exasperation at how really bad we were. Like I said, baseball was on the agenda, and he was getting paid to be the councilor so he did what he could.

Having assessed our lack of skills he then set into assigning us positions on the team. Where in the typical assignment of positions a coach looks for the most skilled player for any given place on the team. In Bob's case he had to look for the people who was the least unskilled.

I should interject here. You are probably comparing us to 'The Bad News Bears' or something like that. Look. The players on 'The Bad News Bears' actually wanted to play baseball. I mean, they had skills.

The thing Bob and the rest of us did was acknowledge and accept ourselves for the way we were with all our flaws and shortcomings. Once Bob had assigned places on the team we started to practice. We learned to take into account the difficulties of the other players on the team and work around them. For example, my teammates knew that if they did anything other than a very soft lob of the ball to me there was no way in the world I would ever catch it.

We spent that first day working all that out and practicing. The next day we had our first game playing against the guys from one of the other cabins. I really can't remember how the game played out. As I remember it the other team showed up all cocky and confident, while we showed up all fearful and defeatist.

What none of us knew going into that game was that Bob had made us into a team. Individually we sucked. Together, allowing for each of our flaws and weaknesses and playing up what little strengths we each had we managed somehow to defeat the other team.

Everyone in the camp seemed to be surprised with this unexpected anomaly, none more than us. We could not believe it. Bob was over the moon. Having won a game we became a little less defeatist. We practiced some more when we had free time, which was scheduled daily. We each became somewhat more competent but nothing approaching any kind of superstar competence.

Bob did his job. He reordered out batting lineup. He rearranged our defensive positions and he made us practice the skills we were weak with, which was pretty much all of them.

As this story gets longer I'm about to bring it to a close. I think I've made my point, anyway. Over the two weeks of that camping session our cabin won the baseball championship, defeating all the other much more skilled and competent players in the camp.

Somewhere, if it still exists, there is a carved and painted wooden Indian chief supported by a pyramid of half inch thick wooden disks, one for each camp year. On one of those disks the names of the guys in my cabin have been engraved with a wood burning tool for having won the baseball championship that summer so long ago.

The LEGO Refill

I was doing some buying with a distributor. They had what was called a LEGO refill. A LEGO refill was a thousand pieces of LEGO in a plain cardboard box at an incredible price. So I ordered one to give it a try.

No one bought it. Most people when they buy toys, they throw the packaging away, but even though this was a deal there were no takers.

After having it in stock for two years I finally put it in the window with a sign on it that very plainly explained how good a deal it was. Three weeks later someone bought it.

The next day, three people came in asking if we had any more of them. I guess the population at large just has a very slow nervous system. Not you, of course.

Characters in The Seven Second Kiss: Mae

Mae Madison is a supporting character but I think she's my favourite. She was great fun to write. She is tough, outspoken and completely streetwise. I tend not to describe the characters physically. I picture Mae at about 5' 4" with a round face, a large smile and with medium length unstraightened hair. She's fearless, hard working, and intelligent. She does not hesitate to speak her mind and she is very opinionated. I think Mae provides an ideal foil to Connie.

Visualizing the World of The Seven Second Kiss

I set up a board in Pinterest for The Seven Second Kiss and added photographs as examples of where things take place and things that happen in the novel. Click here to see it.

Adventures in Retail:The Professional

This happened at least four times with four different people. Talk about déjà vu, déjà vu, déjà vu. I'm going to tell it in present tense.

A guy in jeans and a suit jacket with no tie comes in the hobby shop. I break the ice with, "Hello." I rarely to that 'may I help you?' stuff.

He says, "I'm a *professional* architectural model builder." He emphasizes 'professional' like that sets him apart and above me like I'm a dirty little plebe. That puts me off and I am predisposed to dislike him.

He goes on, "I've built a maquette." 'Maquette.' That's fancy talk for 'diorama.' More of, 'I am so superior to you it hurts.' Two strikes, buddy.

Then he gets to the reason for his visit and this is where there's some variation among the four, because they all built their maquettes in different scales. It doesn't really matter, though. The outcome will be the same. "I built a model of a building and I'm looking for people and cars to put on it to give it a sense of scale."

I ask, "What scale is it?"

The four scales used were 1:50, 1:100, 1:200 and 1:300. They used those scales because the math for the conversion is easy. I start by telling him there aren't any people or cars available in that scale. Then I tell him what the closest scale is and what's available. For 1:50, there are trains, cars, tanks, trucks and people in 1:48 and cars in 1:43. For 1:100 there are trains, people, cars, and animals in 1:87 and cars in 1:90. For 1:200 there are trains, animals and people in 1:160 and for 1:300 there's nothing, sorry. Not quite true, there are military vehicles, tanks and soldiers in 1:285 and there are ship models in 1:350.

What follows is extreme frustration on the part of the professional architectural model maker who has made a maquette. The scales that are close are not close enough and won't do. He suddenly looks like a pitiful animal looking at oncoming headlights in the dark. And he proceeds to chew me out because there isn't anything for him in the scale he's chosen. Then he stands there looking at me like he expects me to do something for him to make it all right.

Finally he leaves dejected and all I can think is, 'If you're so professional, how come you didn't come to see me and find out what's available before you built your maquette?'

Someone asked me if I like working retail. I said, "Not really."

Characters in The Seven Second Kiss: Eva

Eva plays a small but significant part in The Seven Second Kiss. She is the singer in Tommy's band, which is engaged to entertain in the club where Connie has gained employment washing dishes. Due to circumstances that are unspecified in the book, Eva is unable to perform for a period of time leaving Tommy's band without a vocalist.

That opens the door for Connie to perform in the band. Unlike Peggy Sawyer in 42nd Street Connie does not come back a star. Instead she comes back with a strong desire to be a star with many obstacles in her way.

Eva is much older than Connie but still holding on desperately to her prime. I didn't specify what had brought Eva down because I didn't really know for sure at the time. Looking back I'm pretty sure Eva had been taking heroin and suffered from an overdose.

In a way, the book is on the light side when it comes to things going on in the world. I think I did that because most of what takes place is from Connie's viewpoint and she is essentially naive and innocent. She does undergo a significant character arc but by the end of the novel she hung onto her innocence. If I write a sequel I expect it to be darker and more explicit as Connie becomes streetwise or loses her innocence.

I expect Eva to play a major part in that. I think she has the potential to be a very interesting personality in a sequel.

Making the Characters Real

There are so many things to keep in mind when writing anything and especially a story with characters. A certain amount of ego has to enter into it while I'm writing in order to keep the intimidation of the task and the anxiety associated with it at bay. While writing I exude a sense of confidence. "I can do this, no problem." Then when I stop the doubts creep in. "Is this really any good?" I certainly hope so but it isn't for me to judge.

One thing I think is important is to treat the characters in the story in such a way that the person reading about them will find them real and, more importantly, care about them and what happens to them. I think that is the thing that makes a story worth reading.

So what do I do with the characters in the stories I write to make the reader (or viewer) care about them? I wish I knew. Writing this stuff would be so much easier if I did. I do what I can to make them real. As I write down what they do and say, I can see them, and as I progress in observing them and writing down what they do and say they become more real to me. That's about the best that I can do.

I hope when people read The Seven Second Kiss that Connie, her parents, Jordan, Jim, Mr. Evans, Sam, the bartender, Mae, Emma, Tommy and Eva will become people that are real to them and people who they care about.