Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

by David Heiller Everybody knows Murphy’s Law, either directly or indirectly: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy's children were probably cute too, it is how they survived. Murphy was probably some hapless Irishman who wouldn’t know a f our-leafed clover if he found one in his salad. But we can all share his motto. I could last week, when I transposed two paragraphs of an editorial piece by Steve Bonkoski. If you read the article, you caught it in this sentence: “I decided to continue the charade of the computer by telling them I had people are there in the world?” Murphy loved it, of course. Steve writes about one major article a year and I lay it out wrong. My son, who is nearly three, loved it too. He thrives on illogical words and ideas. Me : Noah, why did you just cut that cassette tape with the scissors? One of Malika's expensive toys: the broom. Noah : Because the snow is gone. Me : Noah, why aren’t you sleeping? Noah : Becaus...

David Heiller Thank goodness for folks like Vonnie Vayder. She imparted a bit of wisdom the other day that almost stopped me in my tracks. I had just taken a picture of her with some of her students at the Pine County Area Learning Center. They had painted a beautiful Christmas card, four feet high by eight feet wide, and placed it outside their school in Finlayson. I was flustered by a day with too much to do, with a sick little girl, with forgetting my camera, with a dozen other pressures that always seem to rear up at this time of year, at Christmas-time. As Vonnie and I walked back into the school, I asked her what she liked about making Christmas cards with her students. She liked the cooperation it brought out, she said. And she said that it gives a more realistic sense of Christmas than what the students might see on television commercials, for example. Christmas doesn’t always live up to a person’s expectations, she said. “And they (students) get uptight about th...

David Heiller The semi-tr a iler truck driver ahead of me fl ipped on his flashers as we approached the Kettle River Bridge on I-35 last Wednesday, October 23. I was going north, heading home from work. It was raining slightly. The wipers cleaned o ff the windshield every few seconds. Α gray fall day. I slowed down, and wondered, what was going on. Α man stood off to the left, swinging a red flashlight in his hand, waving us to keep moving. He had a grim, impatient look on his face. An accident, I thought. Α little further, a red fl are was burning on the side of the f re eway, to wa rn motorists to slow down. On the right I saw a woman with a blanket over her shoulders getting into the back seat of a car. On the left a car sat in the passing lane. It was terribly smashed. Somebody got hurt, I thought. I couldn’t see a second car, and I wonde re d how this one had been wrecked. It was bad. Then I saw the body of a woman lying on the pavement. She had a blanket over...

David Heiller If I look a little older this week, you can blame it on my pen. Cindy and the kids gave me the pen on Father’s Day this year. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the pen has magical qualities. You can’t tell by looking at it. It’s thin and dark and heavy, a pretty plain fel­low by Parker standards. But when you write with it, you realize this is no ordinary Bic. It writes fast and smooth, with just the right balance. You feel important when you write with it. Like a rich businessman sign­ing a million dollar check. You feel like you know what you’re writing about, even if you don’t, which can be mighty helpful to a newspaper editor. That’s where part of the magic lies, which I’ll mention later. But the first magical part comes with its attachment to me. Usually when I receive an expensive small gift like a pen or a knife, I lose it. Not on purpose of course, but it seems to happen. This pen has already had a couple close calls. The first time, I left it on t...