World's Worst Fundraiser

I’ve never won any prizes for my fund raising abilities. I do not like fundraisers - don’t like asking people for money. Neither do I like being forced to do things I don’t want to do. And, I refuse to use salesman tactics to guilt someone into a contribution.

So, when the powers that be at my small high school, decided to sell candy bars as a way to raise money, I was disinterested. And said so. Of course, no one gave any consideration whatsoever to anything I had to say.

The day the candy bars arrived, I came back from lunch to find four boxes of them at my desk. I said something about declining to participate and was told that wasn’t an option. Everyone had to take at least four boxes to sell. With a twenty-five per box count, that meant I was supposed to sell one hundred candy bars! Not a likely scenario.

I asked what we should do if we didn’t sell them all and was told to bring back any unsold candy at the end of the fundraiser. That was all I needed to hear!

The candy sat at my house for two weeks and I didn’t sell a single one. When the fundraiser was over, I returned all of them - minus the four I’d eaten! Actually, my mother had sold four or five of them, so I suppose I should say I returned most of them. At any rate, the folks at my school were not impressed.

They shouldn’t have been surprised. This wasn’t the first time I’d demonstrated I wasn’t the fundraising type. They’d tried to get me to sell a number of things - unsuccessfully. And still they didn’t learn.

A few months later, someone at the school came up with the idea of having a jogathon - a lot like a walkathon, only faster. This I could do, I thought. I did like running.

The way it worked was, instead of having a set distance; we would run around the track for three hours. Our sponsors would pay according to the number of laps completed in that time. Apparently, this new idea of a fundraiser had been designed with me in mind. Everyone knew I liked to run and despite being considerably shorter than most, I was fast and had a lot of endurance. I was then, expected to win. They even offered incentives - first through third place prizes for the most laps completed and thus, the most money raised. Bribery. That’s what I called it.

I did win - in a way - tallying up one and a half times the number of laps as the next closest runner. Everyone was excited and making a big deal out of the fact, I’d actually gotten involved. That is, until they looked at my sponsor sheet, which I had dutifully turned in as required. It was completely blank.

They shook their heads and stared at me. I’d run three hours for nothing. “You didn’t get any sponsors?” one of the teachers finally asked.

“Uh, yeah, I sort of forgot about that,” I said. “But I did participate by jogging. And,” I reminded them, “I did have the most laps.”

No, I didn’t win any prizes.

Rave Reviews Book Club

Featured Selection

Daydream's Daughter, Nightmare's Friend

by Nonnie Jules

_____________________________

Jennie Sherwin

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books. Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and other titles, are available as ebooks on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. His books are also available in paperback at most online retailers or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526 Bruce also serves as the Vice President of Rave Reviews Book Club http://ravereviewsbynonniejules.wordpress.com

Where Am I?

Fog. Another winter driving hazard with which I’m all too familiar. Usually, when people encounter fog, either they run out of it in a few minutes, or they are not going that far so it doesn’t last long enough to affect them. Me, I’ve driven for twelve hours straight in fog so dense I could barely see the signs on the road. As a fellow driver put it one day, “I’m sitting out on the edge of the hood and I still can’t see where I’m going.”

Sure, I’d much rather have the fog than ice or snow, but it is still rather frustrating and nerve-racking, especially when spatial disorientation kicks in. For those who may not know the term, spatial disorientation is defined as the loss of a sense of direction, position, or relationship with one’s surroundings. The phrase usually refers to pilots but can also be produced in other situations such as through blindfolding or, by fog.

Pilots who suffer spatial disorientation lose the ability to determine the direction they are flying or their altitude. Despite their instruments providing them this information, they are lost - flying blind because they simply don’t believe the instruments. For truck drivers, this translates to believing you are traveling uphill when you’re really going downhill or vice-versa.

It’s quite a remarkable phenomenon actually, when your brain begins to override what you know to be true. And, it can be fun! Sort of.

The first time it happened to me, I found myself arguing with the speedometer. I knew I was climbing the mountain yet from all indications outside it appeared I was headed downhill. Then I started thinking something was wrong with my truck - I had to keep downshifting and was still losing speed. Now, all of this is perfectly normal when going uphill and still, I was convinced I was going down a steep grade. Keep in mind that even in the heaviest fog, I can still see mile markers and other roadside landmarks as I go by. I’d driven this road every day for years and knew every bump and curve. I knew exactly when to shift and the speed I should be going at each point on the road so I should’ve been able to determine exactly where I was. Yet, I could not.

Since that first time, I’ve learned to recognize when this starts happening - and try to not let it affect me. Just the other night, I was finishing up my run - in the worst fog I’ve experienced in a while. I couldn’t see where to turn but since this is my sixteenth year of driving for the same place, I knew precisely where it was by the contour of the highway. Still, it takes a little nerve to turn a loaded semi off the road into a vast nothingness. But just because the road can’t be seen doesn’t mean it isn’t there!

Feeling pretty proud of myself, I parked the semi, grabbed my stuff, and walked toward my pickup. Or, at least that’s what I intended to do. It took only a minute to discover that I was headed the wrong direction and was nowhere near my pickup. But which direction should I go?

Obviously, I did find it - eventually - and even made it home. But clearly, spatial disorientation is still alive and well! And still fun. Sort of.

RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB

Featured Selection

Daydream’s Daughter, Nightmare’s Friend

by Nonnie Jules

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books. Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and other titles, are available as ebooks on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. His books are also available in paperback at most online retailers or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526 Bruce also serves as the Vice President of Rave Reviews Book Club http://ravereviewsbynonniejules.wordpress.com

The Water Cycle

I’m not much of a scientist so; I’ll try not to bore anyone with a lot of science talk. Try. But, there are no guarantees!

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the water cycle. If not let me refresh your memory. As the wind blows across the ocean, it picks up moisture forming clouds, which move to the shore and (usually at the most inopportune time) it rains. The water on the ground then forms streams, running to creeks or rivers and eventually, it flows back to the sea. This is by no means a full explanation, just a quick overview.

Along with providing water, one of the purposes of the water cycle is to clean the environment. The air is cleaned by the rain, the water by the ground, and then anything left in the water is churned away in the briny foam of the ocean. Again, this is a very brief summary.

So, what does this have to do with me? Well, that is my story.

Back when my oldest daughter was baby, my wife and I thought we’d save a little money by using cloth diapers instead of buying the expensive plastic kind. So, we purchased a couple dozen cloth diapers and for the first few days, everything went great. Then, one day when my wife was at work, I got the bright idea of using the water cycle to my advantage.

The problem with cloth diapers is they need to be washed, right? You can’t just throw them away. But washing all those dirty diapers is no quick task and I like to do things fast. So, being wintertime in Wyoming, we had a nice big pile of snow outside our door and I spread the diapers out on top of that. After a few more snowfalls and then warm days, I figured the diapers would be clean - at least by Spring!

No, it didn’t work. Not exactly anyway. In the Spring - after all the snow had gone away and I again could find them - the diapers were surprisingly almost clean. The problem was my wife could now see them too. And for some reason, she didn’t approve! I explained my theory of the water cycle saving us a lot of work but she just looked at me like I was from Mars!

We ended throwing those diapers away and just going back to using plastic ones. From time to time, she still brings up my little “experiment.” But if I remember correctly, I never claimed to be much of a scientist!

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books. Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and other titles, are available as ebooks on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. His books are also available in paperback at most online retailers or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526 Bruce also serves as the Vice President of Rave Reviews Book Club http://ravereviewsbynonniejules.wordpress.com

The Fastest Way To Clear A Drain

I’m the kind of guy who likes to get straight to the point. It solves problems far more effectively. Besides, beating around the bush is not my style at all. In a debate, or any other dispute for that matter, I usually go for the throat. However, I’m not entirely unreasonable. I do try to solve things amicably first. The nice approach. But when that doesn’t work, as is most often the case, I see no point in wasting time. So, I go right to the top and strike with as much force as possible. BOOM! That’s my logic.

A quick example: Once, when I bought a set a tires (from a national tire store), one of which disintegrated within a week, crumbling right off the wheel, I first tried to have the local shop replace it. They refused, telling me it my fault. They did add that I could file an appeal and gave me paperwork that said to contact the area manager. And then the district manager. Then the regional manager. And on and on it went, listing about ten different offices. Instead, I wrote a letter to the President of the company and in less than a week received several phone calls of apology and a new tire! BOOM! Much faster than going up the chain one person at a time.

I generally follow this same approach when facing problems in the day-to-day run of things. For instance, when my we had a bathtub that repeatedly would not drain, I made a trip to the store to purchase some Drano. That usually worked, but not this particular time. I then found a bottle of Liquid Plumr in the shed and poured that in as well - still nothing. We still had a full tub of water. I had heard baking soda and vinegar would do the trick - it didn’t.

So, back to the store I went. I’d tried the “nice” way, now for the big guns! Lye. The ultimate drain opener. And cheap too! Cheaper than either Drano or Liquid Plumr.

I did read the directions but then promptly dismissed their “suggestion” to only use a spoonful of the stuff in a clogged drain. Neither was I content with two or three spoonfuls; I dumped in the whole bottle! And... still nothing.

By this time, supper was ready and I went to the kitchen to eat. We’d just about finished our meal when we heard the explosion. BOOM! The Lye had mixed with all the other chemicals I poured down the drain and reacted! Loudly!

We were lucky! All that happened was the drain opened and the water in the tub was gone in an instant. Of course, most of it was sprayed all over the bathroom walls - along with a white film of lye that never really came off. But the plumbing and wall were still intact! And, we never had a problem with that drain again!

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books. Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and other titles, are available as ebooks on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. His books are also available in paperback at most online retailers or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526 See Bruce’s Smashwords Profile at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders?ref=BruceABorders  #BruceABorders