Growing Up Miles, Part 3a: The Espionage Days

In fifth grade I wanted to be the Miles version of Harriet the Spy. (If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it.) Despite my nearly boundless imagination, I almost slavishly tried to copy Harriet. This led to difficulties.

For reasons I can't recall, I wanted a spy outfit identical to Harriet's. This would have required:

• a flashlight I could hook onto a belt,
• wearing a sweatshirt year round in El Paso, Texas,
• convincing my mom to never wash a certain pair of jeans,
• using my allowance for notebooks instead of comics, and
• trying to sneak around a completely flat neighborhood consisting of wide open front yards and completely fenced in back yards, with no other cover at all.

I solved the flashlight problem by making a hook from a piece of wire. Of course, I then had the problem of sneaking my Dad's flashlight out and looking like a goofus because I pretty much couldn't' go anywhere at night. A flashlight is somewhat conspicuous at 4 in the afternoon in broad daylight. Even if I could have snuck around at night with a flashlight this was extremely west Texas in the 60s. I'd probably have been shot or eaten by dogs.

I also gave up on the sweatshirt, deciding that tee shirts were anonymous enough and would attract less attention than passing out from heat stroke. (West Texas, remember?)

I also decided that dirty, smelly jeans might not be required spy gear. Spies in the movies seldom wore dirty jeans in the suburbs, so I might just get away with it.

We had no alleyways to skulk through. Peeking in windows or going over walls in plain view of an entire neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else seemed like a good way to get my backside tanned. Once per neighbor who caught me and a second time at home when they called my folks.

This left only the problem of... The Notebook. If you have read the story, you know that notebooks are the heart and soul of a spy's life. Poking around the house I realized that while we didn't have a surfeit of notebooks (I wasn't willing to touch my comic book money) we did have lots of 3x5 index cards. I found some wax paper envelopes just the right size to hold several 3x5 cards, which would make organization easy-- at least until I had a lot of notes on a subject. This was probably when I started writing in very small letters.

Every spy has to start somewhere. I started by taking notes on my family, neighbors, school mates, and teachers-- just like Harriet did. Faithfully following my hero's example, my notes were generally derogatory. I might, for example, have written that "Fred Mickle is mean and ugly. If I were that mean and ugly I'd have myself hung as a horse thief." (That name is completely fictitious.) I'd like to hope that I hadn't yet finished the book and seen where this would get Harriet, but I probably just thought I was safe since I could put my cards in my pocket.

I'd been a spy for a couple of weeks when Mom ran across my notes while I was out playing. After I explained what they were she read some of them out loud.

"How would these make you feel if your family and friends had writing these about you?", she asked.

"But Mom, they aren't about me!"

Eventually I got her point, and it all hit home.

This left me out of a job. I had no idea what else a spy might write about other than communists (this was, after all, 1965 or 1966). I was pretty sure I didn't know any commies because they all looked evil and foreign in the comic books. I didn't know anybody like that. I destroyed the cards and hung up my spy gear, a has been at 10 or 11, a forlorn, minuscule footnote in the annals of spydom. I hoped I'd never meet Harriet, or that if I did my failed career wouldn't come up. Thankfully, we never met outside her book.

I still reread her book about once a year.

Tesseract Me, Baby

If you look really closely at the end of the movie you'll realize that Asgard entrusted the tesseract to me.

Essentially infinite energy!

I could drop a whole herd of pregnant elephants on your house quicker than your Mini Cooper gets away from a stop light, and it wouldn't cost me a plastic penny.

It does attract the odd alien invasion but that's what the Avengers are for.

Grown Up Miles- Adventures in Musicland, Part I

After years of not playing guitar much I got serious about playing again in 2009. This was prompted by a need for live music at church (singing along with CDs can only take you so far). I realized that the prospect of playing in front of the congregation didn't bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. That was a fairly big (if happy) shock. To find out why, let's hop into our 1967 Shelby Time Machine (the muscle car years were also the glory years for time machines, despite Doc Brown's later work with Deloreans).

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The first time I can recall playing guitar and singing in front of more than two people was at the Midtown Mission in Atlanta. I'd practiced one of my songs on my electric, but at the last minute chickened out of playing an electric in front of this particular group of people (who would have undoubtedly been fine with it, but I apparently needed things to be nervous about). So I borrowed Will Bozeman's brand new acoustic. As I walked up to the music stand (too nervous to trust my memory for the lyrics) I whacked the guitar really hard against the massive, steel, music stand. I tried not to think about what Will was going to say about the dent in his new guitar.

When I started to sing the music stand collapsed on itself. I nervously mumbled the first thing that came to mind, something about the magic stand I brought as a joke. I somehow made it through the song despite wondering how I could afford to replace this lovely guitar. My knees were knocking, my voice developed a tremolo, and I was sweating so much I figured the people on the front row were ready to build an ark. Everyone was shocked later when I told them how nervous I had been. ("You seemed so relaxed, making jokes and stuff!") And the guitar was intact. It was a couple of years before I played outside my living room again...

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I met a guy named Alan who wanted to start a band. We jammed a little and decided to practice some songs together (I had a couple and he had a couple of dozen). After two or three months, when I was just beginning to think that some day I might be good enough to play in public, Alan says, "I got us a gig next week." The phrase "panic attack" hadn't been invented yet, but I had one, anyway. "Oh, don't worry, it's just a small party at a friend's house. They'll have food, and we'll just play 20 or 30 minutes while people hang out. No big deal."

I practiced like a driven man the next few days. By the day of the party I was confident I could play a set for 15 or 20 random strangers who were all concentrating on their food and talking to each other. Background music, no big deal. We arrive at a pretty big house... and there are 20 to 30 cars.

"What's all this?" I asked

"Don't worry, maybe it's a little bigger party than we thought."

We carry the first load of gear in (two amps, a small PA, a few guitars). There's a stage set up with drums, keys, a half dozen amps and stacks of guitar cases nearby! There are 40 to 50 chairs set up in front of the stage.

"Alan???"

"Um, well, I didn't want you to be nervous, so I never got around to mentioning that everyone here is a musician, and they'll all be playing tonight." Further questioning revealed that the other bands had all been playing together for years.

Years.

We were on first. Of course.

Alan and I had worked out an introduction with a little stage patter. I have a vague recollection of forgetting everything and ad libbing something as Alan stuck to his lines. (I had the script on my music stand, but momentarily forgot how to read.) I fumbled the intro to the first song (Alan's song, my lead part). The next song was one of mine, and just as I started to sing, the mic cut out. Vague jokes, panic, somehow we got things working again. Maybe someone swapped mics; it's all a hellish, vague memory. As we started again, a string broke. Swap guitars, start AGAIN. I don't really remember the rest of the set except that the room was very attentive, much too attentive, rare specimen under glass attentive. My vocal tremolo returned. I don't recall ever flubbing anything so horribly in public. I was sure the applause after the set was either for Alan or sheer relief it was over. As we started to remove our amps and guitars for the next act to go on, I excused myself to go put some of the gear in the van. I stowed the gear, then stowed myself on the van floor where I sat in misery for a few hours.

Alan finally brought the rest of our gear out. "Where have you been? Everyone wanted to meet you and tell you what a great job you did!" We hardly talked on the way home. Eventually he convinced me that I did fine, that everyone felt that way some days ("though not to the extent of hiding and snubbing the hosts and guests"), and that if I ever did that again he would feed me my guitar and maybe my amp.

We had some crazy gigs after that (and I had plenty more running sound for a couple of bands), but no matter how weird things got, after these first two times playing in public, the others were all much, much easier.

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If there are lessons to be learned here, I guess they are:

1. It's not nearly as bad as you thought it was. It might even have been good.
2. Get over yourself.
3. Don't embarrass Alan unless you are prepared to eat a guitar and maybe an amp.

For the record, I never had to eat my guitar or amp.

Kissing The Twins

One afternoon shortly after Sharon and I were formally engaged, I'd gone to her dorm to pick her up. Guys were not allowed upstairs so after calling to let her know I had arrived, I waited downstairs at the pool table. I was playing eight ball, solo. I forget whether I was winning.

After a few minutes Karen (Sharon's identical twin) came up behind me and said, "Hey, honey." This was not unusual; we were in the deep south and everyone talked like this. Additionally, Karen often called me this as a joke. I had never had any problem telling them apart, but she sometimes pretended we were together, just to mess with people.

Concentrating on a tricky bank shot, I said, "Hey, Karen". I took the shot, sunk the last solid, and smiled over my shoulder at her. But she was disappearing back around the corner. A couple of seconds later I heard giggling. I knew instantly.

They had plotted together to fool me. "This!", I thought in a Daffy Duck voice, "This! Means! WARRR!"

I called the eight ball in the side pocket and sunk it, mostly on luck. (I still don't recall if I won, or the other me won.) I laid the cue on the table (there was no rack) and headed around the same corner Karen where Karen had disappeared. The twins stood side by side, grinning. I gave them my biggest smile and looked at Sharon.

"Nice try! If you ever do that again, I will act like you fooled me and give her," (here I nodded toward Karen), "a bigger kiss than I have ever given you... Are we ready to go?"

They never tried it again. Sharon swears to this day it was just because there was no point (I had never had any trouble telling them apart). And that may be the truth, or most of it. But I know they both looked a bit nervous at the time!

Would I have done it? I can't honestly say whether at the time I would have tried to give Karen that kiss or not. I can say Sharon would have gotten an even bigger one. But it was a moot point. They've never tried to fool me again. At least in person. On the phone they sound very alike, so I'm never sure whether it's intentional or not.

Bu that's OK. I'd rather wage love than war, so I let it slide. Plus, I'm totally content with Sharon's kisses. Never look a gifted kisser in the mouth; just hold on and kiss back.

Dental company excepted.