“Holiday Penguins” by Terry J. Aman
Merry Christmas
2010
and
a Joyous New Year
from Terry J. Aman
First and foremost, best wishes to you
and yours this season. It’s been kind of a rough year out there for quite a few
folks, and my fondest Christmas wish is that the coming year brings some joy.
I wish I had better news for everyone,
and I guess it really depends on how you look at things. One bright spot has
been my health. I had a sleep study done this fall and it turns out I was
shutting down terribly overnight. With assistance I’m sleeping much better, I’m
much less short of breath generally and I’ve lost some weight so that’s all
good.
CHARITY DODGEBALL
This fall,
however, I took part in a charity
dodgeball event at the college, which did not go well. My team – that’s us
over there – was made up of actors and stagehands from the Minot Area
Theatrical Society and we were hopeless. We were also up against a team of very
capable dodgeballers.
Here’s what I remember about the match:
The ref explained the rules, and there were dodgeballs lined up along the
center line. We made a run for them and then, whoever got there first grabbed a
ball and whipped it at the person who got there second, which in both instances
was me.
Our first match I was running hard as I
could to get to the ball but tripped and came down hard on my right hand,
injuring my hand, my foot, my chest (where I landed on my hand) and oh yeah, my
pride, a little. The other guy whupped the ball at me while I was down and I
was out easily. The second matchup – we played for best two of three – I was a
lot more circumspect and when it became clear he was going to get there first I
took up a defensive posture, hoping to at least catch the thing. He threw and I
was hit square in the chest, and the ball bounced … someplace else – maybe
heaven – and I was instantly out once more.
What all of this did, however, was wake
up an old sprain to my right foot and I was more or less out of commission for
weeks. I rested it, stayed off of it to the extent I could, I soaked it, kept
it elevated, wrapped it in ACE bandages, occasionally eating aspirin like candy
in order to get my shoes on so I could get to work. All of this has helped, to
the point where I suppose it was more or less healed with a little intermittent
soreness behind my big toe.
When I was finally able to get in to see
a podiatrist here, just before New Years, we got it checked out and X-rayed. I
guess for all the pain it had been in – there’d been days I was ready to hack
the thing off with a machete – I was expecting to see a break that had healed
badly. But all my bones were intact and all lined up, pretty much where they
were supposed to be, so I didn’t really know what to do with that information.
What he did was he gave me a cortisone
shot and within just a few minutes it was like I’d been given a whole new foot.
Seriously, this was what I’d been waiting to feel for a month at this point –
nothing at all. Very nice.
And for all our team lost our one
matchup that night, we did help to raise some $900 for cancer patients in
Minot, so there was some good that came from it as well.
This winter has been brutal. Our first
snow of the year came as part of one of the worst storms we’d had in a long
time, and threw everyone for a loop. Of course we were reminded of the
miserable storm we’d had last Christmas that trapped everyone in their homes
for four days, and when the weather turned ugly over Thanksgiving lots of
people were snowed in wherever they were. Which is fine – I’d rather spend
Thanksgiving at home than in the ditch somewhere – but it was nice to be able
to get to Fargo for Christmas.
CAR TROUBLE
It was fun to see cousins at Julie’s
for Christmas Day and you can see some of those photos here.
My folks and I spent Sunday shopping and taking in a show (“The Tourist” –
pretty, but not much there), and then I started my car Monday morning to head
back to Minot and it made this squealing sound like Justin Bieber was spotted
in a middle school.
I looked at it, and my dad looked at
it, we let it warm up for a good long while and it was still making this sound,
so we determined I should have Tires Plus look at it on my way out of town.
The Tires Plus guy in Fargo looked at
it and figured it was my V-belt, and I would be able to make it to Minot
safely. I head north and the squeal is pretty much drowned out by the wind.
Stopped to get gas at Stamart on Gateway and the squeal was replaced by this
clattering as I headed west.
I couldn’t see anything, but what is
happening is that the temperature gauge is going up and up. I’m nervous enough
that I turn around and by the time I’m back at the Stamart it’s steaming and
beeping and having a fit. I fill up the coolant and decide to get it looked at
before I leave town.
The Tires Plus in Grand Forks is by the
mall, which is miles away. So on my way there from Stamart I need to stop three
times to cool down. It takes an hour or so and my eyes are glued to my
temperature gauge the whole time. People are calling me in to the Highway
Patrol, they’re stopping to see what’s going on, I don’t know what’s
going on but I’m hoping to find someone who does and by the time I get there
I’m so frustrated and turned around I don’t know what to do.
Fortunately they were able to spend a
little more time with the car and determined that the water pump in the cooling
system had eaten itself. Bearings had come away from the teeth, a chunk was
torn from the casing, it was wobbling on its center axis – it was in a bad way.
The timing belt was off, and what’s more it was hot from just crossing the
street.
It’s a three-hour repair job and I
don’t even want to talk about the cost, but they do manage to fix the car and
I’m on my way. It’s running beautifully for now, but it’s a
13-year-old car so that’s just a matter
of time.
The moral of the story is, if your car
is making a sound like that, you do not have 300 miles of highway before you
figure out what it is and get it to stop.
VACATION
All the same, this was somewhat more
restful to me than
my actual vacation. We were all able to
get together for a
few days in Wisconsin over the Fourth
of July. My folks
drove us out there and we took in a
fireworks display over
Lake Michigan and spent a few days
shopping. I can’t say it
was especially relaxing, but it was
fun to see friends, and my
folks got to see the giant boot in the
Red Wing Factory Outlet
on our way back.
Good things
If 2010 sounds like a bit of a downer
so far I apologize. Good things happened too. I turned 40, for one thing. Also,
my folks got a chance to take in my presentation of Sir Winston Churchill in
September, and I thought that went pretty well. I developed a character and
wrote the speech I gave in the Minot Area Council on the Arts Gala USO Show,
based on some of his more famous speeches. The funnier passage was cobbled
together from a few different quotations but they read well together:
Yes, you
American servicemen, such as has reached my ears, such scuttlebutt as
“overpaid, oversexed and over here,” perhaps to jealous, jaundiced eyes
overdecorated, overstaffed, overmaintenanced and overbearing. Your GIs had a
retort, that our boys were underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower. Which is
perhaps to say, underfoot. Nevertheless, today I say, I am overwhelmed by your
service to our gracious homeland.
Like I said, it seemed to go over
pretty well. I also took part in the Minot Area Theatrical Society’s murder
mystery fundraiser “Til Death Do Us Part,” one of those role-playing dinner
party mysteries where people have to figure out whodunit by asking the cast
questions and from clues that get revealed over the course of the night. That
was fun but it’s exhausting presenting a character all night – especially one
as ridiculous as the one I had – a gossipy, over-the-top society columnist. And
yes, that might sound sort of familiar, but I ran out of material fast, so I
just spent the night hinting at a bunch of scandalous nonsense I made up about
all the other characters.
Somewhat more
successful was the comedy I directed last spring – “Let’s
Murder Marsha” by Monk Ferris. Basically, a stockbroker tries to buy a
birthday gift for his wife guaranteed to knock her dead. She gets the wrong
idea entirely and the whole plot spins completely out of hand. My lead actor
took an award for outstanding actor and the show itself was named best show for
2010, so I felt pretty good about that.
COMING UP
Overall I’d say this year had a lot of
challenges, but there were some bright spots amid the difficulties and
certainly it feels like there are some things to look forward to. Now that my
feets seem to be working again I’m looking forward to getting a little bit more
walking in, along with the occasional swim. And I’m currently prepping for a
lifelong goal of playing George in our April production of “Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?” and I have a good feeling about that.
So yeah, really, it’s all in how you
look at it. Stay positive. As we recall in this season
of short days and hard times, when
things are at their worst, they can only get better. Merry Christmas, and all
the best heading into a brand new year. Enjoy!