Entries Tagged 'Once Upon a Time...' ↓

I cried softly in the dark, slumped in a faded neon green t-shirt, guzzling orange soda. A Boyz II Men ballad blaring through fuzzy-sounding speakers flooded the tinsel strewn cafeteria. Tables were pushed along the wall, the mint and pink stool seats clashing with the decorations selected by a select committee of my classmates. I would like to have been on this homecoming dance planning committee, but I had no idea when those kids were chosen. It was the way those things would often go. Cool things like dance planning or group outings to the teacher’s house on the 4th of July would occur, always with the same rich kids in attendance, and none of the rest of us would be informed.

I cried, but no one noticed in the dark. I hated the slow songs. Even still, when I heard the tempo slow I’d nonchalantly walk around the handful of boys in my classes who might ask me to sway face-to-face with them, trying to catch their eye. They craned their necks to see over my head to the girls who weren’t growing out a short, botched haircut. Eventually I retreated to a chair after purchasing the soda, then sat and watched an 8th grade couple dance really close, chest to chest and crotch to crotch, deeply kissing for minutes with their tongues. They were out of sight of the chaperones, not that they cared. They were staring one another down when they didn’t have their mouths mashed together. He held her head in his hands as he kissed her on the dance floor.

I decided through my tears that a boy would kiss me like that some day, not like a prince kisses his bride and not like the kisses I saw on television, but like that couple who didn’t care if they got caught.

[Inspired by Sarah Brown]

I never have trouble spelling ‘desert’ and ‘dessert’ correctly because of my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Bell.

She one said to me, "Which one would you rather have two of? A big, sandy desert or a delicious chocolate dessert? You would rather have two ice creams than two dry deserts, right? Then you put two s’s in dessert and just one s in desert."

And I’ve never misspelled it since. However, I still have to think back to Mrs. Bell’s memory trick to get it right, lo these twenty years later.

Last week the boyfriend and I went out for Mexican food at our favorite Nolensville Road restaurant and just happened to be seated by the managing editor, Mark, of the news station where I work. He was sitting alone because his family was out of town, so I asked him to join us. Since he was already drinking a beer, he did the sensible thing and invited me to sit with him. We accepted his kind invitation.

He asked me about my day, and I told him it’s always been a good day when you’ve been called a pro-anarchist baby killer. The boyfriend found it funny that I’d been labeled pro-anarchist since I am so laughably not at all like that. I grew up a total goody-two shoes and even now, I explained, I’m always afraid I’m going to get in trouble. I always want to know the rules and try to follow them out of general fear. The few rules I do break I break willfully and after giving it much thought.

Mark asked me why I was like that, always afraid of getting into trouble. I paused because the answer is so complex and sordid it would take days to tell. I found the right words in, "My childhood was somewhat chaotic." We all left it at that and dove for more salsa.

But after spending a wonderful afternoon with my mom and my sister yesterday reminiscing, I was able to think more about the chaos. And learn more. My mother told me things about very messy part of my past that, frankly, I don’t remember much about.

She told me about the divorce from the man she married after she and my Dad split up. He was abusive mentally and physically, and he had been hoarding money. He controlled every aspect of our lives and worked us like little slaves on his propery, raking leaves for hours on end, picking up cigarette butts he’d thrown on the ground. I was too young to fully grasp it at the time, but my stepfather was exploiting this mentally disabled man who was poor and lived on our street for labor. He’d work him for hours on end with payment of only a meal for his effort. He was such a sweet man, and I felt so sorry for him.

My mother, who worked at the time as a church secretary, spent hours in counselling with the pastor at our church. She finally found it in her to leave him, even with the little money she had. I never thought until now how much that preacher saved my family. I should contact him and thank him for that.

So, she told him she wanted a divorce. Then he bugged our house.

Seriously. It’s like something out of a movie, but it happened. He installed a surveillance system in our home and on our phones to monitor her every move. He was going to try to prevent her from leaving in whatever way he could. He was hoping to catch her in an affair with the pastor of the church who was helping her flee his abuse. He listened in on her conversations, then would take phrases or snatches of her speech he couldn’t have possibly heard and repeat them to her later. She thought she was losing her mind, and how could she not have?

My stepfather confronted the pastor with the tapes as if that was proof my mother was cheating. That is how far gone this guy was. He’s the one who told my preacher about bugging our house, which is how we all knew. Luckily, this information saved my mother from losing her mind. Can you imagine having someone repeat your private conversation back to you when you know they were somewhere else entirely?

It wasn’t long after that that we left. We actually fled his house in the night and ran to my uncle’s house. But not before he hit my mother one last time. We stayed at my uncle’s house for two days, and I was just happy to be out of there.

We got a tiny apartment in Ashland City and for a while my stepfather stalked us. He would follow my sister and I on our walks home from school and offer us donughts if we’d get in his car.

I learned last night that soon thereafter he had a heart attack.

My mother went with my aunt to visit him in the hospital. She knew his children who lived out of state didn’t know about his heart attack, so she thought she’d do the decent thing and contact them. She looked for his children’s numbers in his wallet, but they weren’t there.

She called to his room a few days later to check on his status when she was told she’d been barred from contacting him in person or in phone. When he awoke, apparently, he thought that my mother had been going through his wallet to steal his money. And with that phone call she ended her relationship to a severely sick individual.

He moved to Phoenix with his childeren after that where he had another heart attack and died. My mother did not learn this until she saw that mentally disabled man my dead stepfather also once abused working as a greeter at our hometown Wal-Mart. He stopped to tell my mother that my stepfather’s family had flown him out to Arizona for the funeral. Apparently that sweet man did not know he’d been mistreated, or could not hold a grudge.

Then he asked my mother if she’d been the one to send dead flowers to his funeral. She said no, that that was the first she’d heard of his passing. And with that we made our way to buy whatever it is we were there for.

Dead flowers will always be how I remember him.

• Free drinks. Man, I never bought anything to drink (excluding alcohol, of course). As a server and bartender I always had access to all kinds of beverages, and helped myself to them liberally. I’d snag Perriers behind the bar, or come in for free coffee fifteen minutes early in the morning. When I felt sick to my stomach I could choose from an assortment of herbal teas accompanied by fresh cut lemon to soothe my nausea. All without paying a penny.
• Good food all the time. It’s a good thing waiting tables requires an extended workout, because I was always surrounded by scrumptious food I eagerly partook in. Sure, much of the time I was starving and surrounded by beautiful dishes with no chance of eating for four more hours. But after work each night I’d end the shift with smoked salmon and goat cheese mousse or baked brie with crositini. After my lunch shift I’d splurge on hummus and feta salads or crispy fried green tomatoes–not exactly things I whip up regularly at home. These are foods a girl could get used to, and did. Now I have to pay full price plus tip for all that gourmet goodness, so I madly miss the daily meals out.
• Weekdays off. I never fully realized how glorious it was to go to the gym at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday when everyone was working. I always took for granted grocery trips in the middle of the day on a Monday, with their wide open aisles and short register waits.
• The server "tax break."
• Never having to decide what to wear to work. Strapping on an apron over all black for ten years left my wardrobe somewhat lacking. And tattered.
• Wine tastings.
• People who work in restaurants are often very funny. At least to me, anyway. I miss the laughing.
• Late night television.
• Drinking on Monday and Wednesday and Friday and Saturday. Then directly after Sunday brunch.
• The constant cursing.
• The customers. I got so used to interacting with a revolving assortment of freaks and fools that I took it for granted. In fact, I didn’t so much like the majority of them. That isn’t to say I would like them today, but I miss the fodder. I miss getting a glimpse of human nature for an hour or so–witnessing their joy over a new engagement or watching them struggle to choose a wine to impress a new date. I saw many tears and many missed chances. I miss peeking in on people at their most primal–eating–and investigating what I saw that day later in my writing. I think I miss that most of all.

I’d gotten my hair cut too short the year before, a mistake that turned into an unfortunate mullet. I spent all of 7th grade trying to grow it out. Long curly hair with giant teased bangs was the standard of beauty at my junior high, neither of which I could attain.

Our school regularly had dances, about one every six weeks. They’d push all the tables out of the cafeteria and turn the lights off and bring out some strobes. It was a money maker for the school. It cost $2, I think, to get in, and damn near every body came, all grades 6-8. The strains of the day were Tony, Toni, Tone and Boyz 2 Men, with a little Whitney thrown in for good measure. I’d dance with my friends to the upbeat songs, decked out in a flourescent yellow shirt and tight-rolled stonewashed jeans. The girls would dance in a circle, one brave soul willing to try a new move, only to have the entire circle copy her style. Middle school was about conformity, and no one wanted to be made fun of. It was this junior higher’s scariest thought: "Is someone out there making fun of me, even in their mind?"

Then later in the evening they’d change it all to slow ballads. "Every Rose Has It’s Thorn" or maybe a sweet country song. Obivous couples would immediately pair up, mostly the 8th graders. Kids with crushes would linger near each other until one of them drug the other by the hand, pretending not to like it all the while. I would sit with my back against the wall and watch, and sometimes cry.

I don’t know why, but I always ended up crying at school dances. And it wasn’t as though I had some mad crush on someone who jilted me for a bigger haired broad, it was that I never danced with any boys ever. No one ever asked me to slow dance with them. I would buy a Sprite and a Snickers and watch as the 8th grade girls, with their blossoming everything, would place their heads on the boys’ shoulders and just sway. I thought it would be wonderful if someone would want to stand and sway with me, in front of the entire school.

There was this 8th grade couple, she a model and he the captain of the football team. She was tall, but he was taller, and they truly looked like real live adults. She’d wear very grown up clothes, and he already had to shave every day. The two of them danced like a couple of old pros, spinning and dipping and all that jazz. They were often the focal point of the room, wowing everyone with their skills. But they’d also stand crotch to crotch and kiss each other deeply on the dance floor when no teachers were looking. He mouthed her hungrily, and it only made me cry that much harder.

But I always went back. School dances were not to be missed. That little ritual went away in high school, replaced only by prom, where no one danced anyway, just figured out the best and quickest way to get drunk. Anyway, I overheard a twelve year old talking about wanting a shorter skirt than her mother would allow to wear to the dance, and all that came flooding back.

I went to day care on Main Street. It was actually a house, a big, old white one with peeling paint and a big front porch. There was a large front room where much of the playing was done. The floors were hardwood, but dark and gritty smooth with the dirt and slobber of children. They were always a little bit dusty.

I remember very little about the inside of that place, because I spent all my time outside. The home that was renovated into my day care had a large backyard. Almost no grass though, due to constant little feet. There was a swing tied to a high oak tree with thick rope. And there was a basketball goal.

I guess I was eight or so when I started going to the day care. The first day I arrived–my sister and I–I remember discovering the place from behind my mothers’ legs, flashes at a time. I was shy and nervous, and we’d just moved to that town. A girl from my grade immediately asked if I wanted to play a game of Horse. If I ever see that girl again I’m going to thank her for that, because it made me feel at ease and accepted, and it gave me something to take the anxiety away. That girl and I stayed friends through high school.

They served the nastiest snacks at this day care. Peanut butter and celery? Gross, I didn’t want to eat that. I mean, I don’t want to eat that now. There isn’t enough milk in the world, and that was the other thing. Each parent had to take turns bringing in milk for all the kids to drink. Don’t ask me why that wasn’t included in the price of day care, biut whatever. It happened. My mother, not known for exorbitant spending or for being particularly rich at the time, brought in jugs of milk. Other parents did not. They sent their child to day care with powdered milk.

Typing the words "powdered milk" just now made me gag a tiny bit. And again just then. Powdered milk (blar) was always, at best, luke warm and gray in color, and I am going to puke if I go any further. That shit shouldn’t be given to anything that breathes. It is beyond cruel.

I wrote plays at that day care. Yes, I did. Well, I basically retold fairy tales, but if James Lapine can do it my eight-year-old self could do it. I wrote a dark and somewhat morbid revision of Cinderella and cast all my day care friends in it. There was a large cast, and I basically had to force some of the children too young to put up a fight to play along. The production was a chaotic affair that disintegrated after about two minutes. I never wrote another play.

I went to a different day care later. One in a little yellow house up on the hill, just a few blocks from the one on Main Street. One of the day care workers played serious favorites with the girls–taking some out for breakfast, bringing them along to listen to the tape player while she ran errands. And sometimes I was included, and sometimes I wasn’t. And that fucked me right up. I am totally against day care workers playing favorites like that with nine-year-old girls. Ya know, for the record.

This older girl Christie (who had a trampoline, though I never used it–she just talked about it all the time) and I put on a beauty pageant there once. With us as the only two contestants, obviously. No need to waste time. Christie whipped my ass at that pageant. She had a shiny, sparkly leotard with feathers on it and I just had my old, janky Ashland City Cowboys cheerleader uniform that was a size too small. Christie always got to go along in the car to run errands.

I can’t believe some kids have never spent a single day in day care. I’m happy I went. I think it contributes to a bit of that bend I pride myself on. In other words, day care made me a little bit weird, but I’m glad about it.

I would tongue the skins of unpopped popcorn kernels between my teeth and gums for the entire night. My skinny, tanned thighs spread over a rusted metal chair, I’d shove my hands into the red and white, waxed paper bag full of bright yellow puffs. A coke in a small, clear plastic cup was twenty-five cents and it came over that cylindrical, textured ice. I hated being there. Layers of cigarette smoke clung to the wet, hot air like a stain even the giant fans could not get out.

A man on the microphone up front spoke quickly and on purpose, his booming voice punctuated with numbers and prices slowly escalating. Everything was going once, going twice, then sold. The concrete floor was where I kept my eyes most of the time. We went every weekend. I can’t understand why. It was mostly cheap, dirty stuff no one before us wanted. Old, broken clocks, handsaws, toilet seats, and dusty rugs. Only in a place like that could a fairgrounds auction be the preferred end-of-week activity.

At least there was popcorn and coke with that ice that made it taste like a slushie. And there were unicorns. Majestic, wonderous creatures who came in glass and porcelain and wood. Figurines were the only thing I ever asked for, and occasionally I got them. I acquired a small but well-selected collection. I only asked for figurines of true unicorns, not white horses with a horn.

I kept those figurines for far too long. Until I was like 16 or so. One by one their horns broke off. Sometimes a unicorn would become an innocent victim in the fights Amy and I had. Eventually I was down to three unicorns when I sacked them all, replacing them with Smashing Pumpkins and Tori Amos posters.

They say never date a girl who is into pegasuses or unicorns. No explanation needed. I think if I came across a unicorn figurine that I really like that I would buy it. Maybe it would remind me of a time when I kept an eye out for flashes of silver in the woods.

Mr. Angevine is dead. I told you about him before. He was my Latin and German teacher. Our nickname for him was Beaver. Actually, I think just one other girl and I called him that. He had a thick dark mustache and bushy, long eyebrows. Wirey gray hairs sprung from them. Sometimes he wore a toga over his suit for no reason. Like, once a month.

Mr. Angevine was really smart. My friend Aaron once said he thought Mr. Angevine had two brains and that is how I’ve thought of him ever since. Aaron and I used to try to figure out a way to cash in on his endless vault of trivia and knowledge.

He was so smart. When it was his turn to monitor the gates at basketball games he could be seen reading novels written entirely in German. That blew my mind. Remember I went to school in rural Tennessee, a public school, so my education was lacking at best. But there were definite bright spots, and Mr. Angevine’s class always challenged me.

Everyone in Latin class signed up for the Junior Classical League. Then we’d actually go to the events. It wasn’t one of those clubs people joined just so they could get more page numbers next to their name in the index of the yearbook. He made you do shit. Like take the National Latin Exam. And go to the Classical League Conventions. Once we went to Memphis and competed in the mock Olympics. It was disasterous. There were all these games that our poor country school didn’t have. Like swimming. We sucked hard at the athletic competitions. It was embarrassing. But we did okay on the quiz games and exams because Mr. Angevine was passionate about language. Like few people I have ever met. And he made us love language too by showing us the direct link between Latin and our own native tongue. I can credit a lot of my desire to write to him.

He was funny. And a little bit pervy. And there were rumors he was not nice to his family, but I never heard anything but gossip. But overall he was fascinating. And he told us the most amazing stories. He told us tales of singing sirens and Trojan fleets and tragic betrayal. He required huge passages of reading each night for homework, words I ate up with fervor.

My senior quote in the yearbook was about the most pretentious thing I can think of. But it was inspired by Mr. Angevine. It was, "Damnant quod non intellegunt." Horrible, I know. And frankly, that is about all the Latin I remember now. We rarely spoke it in class. What was the point? No one else did. But we read it and we wrote it, and it gave me a whole new appreciation for this language from which it has evolved. Latin is not a dead. It lives in my language, these words right here.

But Mr. Angevine is dead. And that’s too bad.

When I was a cheerleader most of the girls on the squad were really mean to each other. Big shocker. It was one of the reasons I decided to only do it for two years. They were all dating from the same pool of football playing boys, so that didn’t help inter-squad relations much.

I remember that the captain of our squad had it out for one of the "climbers" (aka those on top of pyramids). The captain just happened to be the person on whom the climber’s life depended. One time as we were about to send the climber flying into the air for a basket toss the captain said, "You better hope I catch your ass."

I was like, "WHAT THE FUCK?!" and moved to make sure the girl in the air didn’t come crashing down on her neck. I didn’t have to, because the captain was just fucking with her, but threatening murder or major bodily harm was fucked up, we can all agree.

I remember that that same climber’s mother had a problem with me. Isn’t that fucked up? I can’t even remember the reason now. It doesn’t matter. I was 14! I distinctly recall climber’s mother approaching me at a basketball game in this floor-length fur coat. God, I wish I could remember what her problem was now, thirteen years later, but I can’t. Something ridculously petty, no doubt.

There was always such drama. Once at practice I was being punished for something–not going back handspring, I’m sure–and was required to jog one mile for each transgression. I was up to about 6-7 miles, but I couldn’t force myself to do the flip. I’d jogged about a mile and half when I gave up. I was tired and beaten, and I quit. I grabbed my jacket, the one with my name embroidered on the front just above a stitched megaphone, and headed to a pay phone to call my mom. I had wussed out and just wanted to go home.

As I waited for my mother’s sedan I cried. Tears fell and I reached into the pockets to look for a tissue or something when my hand hit a small box. It was a hard pack of Marlboro cigarettes.

I’d grabbed the wrong jacket. The coat in my hand belonged to that captain I told you about, the really vicious one, the one I’d probably pissed off the most by walking out just before we were about to compete at nationals. I stood there another five minutes, maybe, contemplating just keeping the other girl’s jacket. But she was bigger than me, and three years older, and I think she had been in a few fights before. As I’ve made clear in this story, I was a big ole baby. I knew I had to give that jacket back.

So, I did what I had to do and marched back into the gymnasium. I opened the double doors with my head held high and walked to the pile of belongings on the bleachers. Twelve pair of eyes glared at me as I strode past, nothing but disdain and disappointment. For whatever reason the silence was too deafening, the sound of my sneakers on the gym floor and the sound of my beating heart was all I could hear.

"I TOOK THE WRONG JACKET," I said too loudly and too emphatically. It was obvious I’d taken the wrong jacket. Why did I say that? They all laughed. All of them. Not all at once, but like, one by one. That made it worse. By the time I made it out those doors hot tears were splashing onto my t-shirt.

I still regret never mastering the back handspring. I gave up. I failed. I let my fear keep me from doing something I really loved, despite all the cattiness I had to put up with. I haven’t let fear prevent me from doing too much else since.

I played softball for almost nine years, but I never was any good at it. My sister and I both played, but not only was she good, she was exceptional. I never hit a homerun in my entire softball-playing career, yet Amy was often purposefully walked by the opposing team because she could drive it far over the fence.

We are two years apart in age, which meant that every other year we were on the same team. The league was divided as such: 6-7 year olds, 8-9 year olds, 10-11 year olds and so on. And our teams were always pretty good. I remember one year when I played for the Ashland City Bankettes we won every game but one, I think, and we’d routinely beat our opponents by 30 points or more. That year we went to the state finals and came in fourth. But I certainly wasn’t the reason.

It’s kind of weird how I continued to suck for so long after so much practice. I was really scrawny when I was growing up, and clumsy. I was an eager batter with a weak swing. But once I was on base I was good to go. I was, at the very least, fast. I was always about the 7th or 8th batter on the lineup, and I played catcher. In a slowpitch league. I think everybody knows what that means.

Then all of the sudden our league became a fastpitch league. All of the counties surrounding us had been playing fastpitch for a couple of years before we finally made the switch.

Needless to say, catching for a fastpitch softball team is a little more, shall we say, challenging. For one thing, fastpitch allows base stealing. That meant my main objective was to never, ever drop the ball. Also, softballs flying at your face at 50-60 mph is frightening. You feel a little safer behind the mask and chest pate and shin guards, but you still go home with bruises on your palms.

But I loved stealing bases. Like I said, I was never a good batter, but fastpitch rules said we could bunt. I was a badass bunter. That ability, combined with my propensity to safely steal bases, meant I moved up in the batting order and saw a little more play time. I practiced hard when I began training as a fastpitch catcher, because it was rough to lose to those surrounding counties after winning for so long. My coach hauled in a pitching machine, cranked it up to 70 and stuck me in front of it. He made me run laps in all my catcher’s gear.

Despite all the hard work, we still sucked. Our competition was too far ahead of us.

I quit softball to be a cheerleader. I was a way better cheerleader than a softball player, but fear of a back handspring kept me from trying out for the squad my junior year, so I thought I’d go back to softball. I was too old by that time to go back to the city league, but my high school had an accomplished fastpitch softball team. I knew it would take some work, but I was incredibly fit after two year of competitive cheerleading, so I thought I could hang.

The first day of practice was tough, but I did okay. We went out on the field and ran drills, grounded balls, did some batting. The second day it rained, which is something I hadn’t planned on. I only brought my cleats to practice with me that day, but practice had been moved to the gym where only sneakers were allowed. Most of the girls trying out were also on the basketball team, so they had permanent lockers in their locker room which gave them access to tennis shoes. I wasn’t allowed on the gym floor in cleats, so I had to borrow a pair of sneakers from one of the basketball players. The only girl with an extra pair wore a size 9. I wear a size 6. But I had to make do.

They were hightops, all-leather basketball shoes, and they barely stayed on my feet at all. I had to tie the laces super tight around the ankles and wear two pairs of socks. The coaches showed up and divided us in to teams. Team one, my team, was to run one mile–18 laps–around the gym, and anyone that didn’t finsh got sent home. The team with the least number of people to successfully finish had to run an extra mile.

So I took off. And it was ridiculously hard. We used to run a mile every day before cheerleading practice, so it wasn’t the distance that got to me, it was the big ass clown shoes. Running in shoes three times too big makes things exponentially harder. It felt like I was climbing a mountain on skis. I had to lift my legs really high as not to trip. The shoes felt like heavy oversized bricks on my feet. But I made it. I ran the whole 18 laps in boat shoes.

But I forgot to tell you this part: I was sick. I hadn’t gone to school that day because I’d been puking. I tried to call the coach ahead of time and sit out, but she had no sympathy. I had to show up or I couldn’t play. I tried to eat, but couldn’t. I drank as much Gatorade as I could stomach and went in anyway.

The lack of food combined with the presence of a virus made me incredibly weak. After running my face was flushed crimson, and the skin around my mouth was pale white. I thought by lap 17 I was going to vomit or pass out, but I trucked on. I was dizzy and nearly in tears by lap 18. I made it ten yards or so from the finish line when I did it. I tripped over those big fucking shoes. I hit the gym floor with a thud and a squeak. My bare legs smacked against the waxed floor. I saw tiny lights, thousands of them in a sea of dark, but I heard one thing very clearly: "DRAG HER ACROSS!"

It was the coach. He was instructing my teammates to pull my limp, defeated body across the finish line. And so they did. I remember it so clearly. It was humiliating. The big shoes bouncing along as two girls skinned my knees trying to appease the coach.

But it was over. I sat there, a pile of failure in big ass shoes. We were told to move into the weight room while group two took their run. There was no way. I couldn’t even get off the floor. I crawled over to the female of the two coaches and asked if I could come back tomorrow. She said if I left then I couldn’t come back the next day.

I did the only thing I could do and slowly made my way out of the gym. Once safely in the hall I found an out of the way spot. I collapsed on the carpet and closed my eyes and tried not to hyperventilate or throw up.

I have no idea how long I’d been lying there when Mr. Angevine found me. He was my Latin and German teacher. He was surprised to find me in a red-faced, sweaty heap, and he offered a piece of candy to raise my blood sugar level. Mr. Angevine was a diabetic. He bought some water and took me to his classroom, and I rested at a desk until I could call my mom to come get me.

I say this because Channel 2 has a softball league that plays against the other stations in Nashville. And I wouldn’t mind playing; I think it would be fun. Besides, I’m sure it is slowpitch. Then I remember the Big Shoe Distaster of 1993 and I think otherwise. These people have cameras.