Misbehaving In Maine

When my great-grandmother, “Grammy Williams,” snapped her fingers to get the attention of some sinning child, that snap was the cocking of a gun.She never raised her voice. Didn’t have to. The angrier the quieter, and that’s far worse.On Halloween, she dressed like a witch. Off Halloween, she ran a preschool. It was called “Grammy’s House,” as in “My house, my rules,” in the sense of:“You’re in MY world now.”Don’t worry, she never hit us. Not with her hands. She hit us with her eyes and with that voice of hers, which would go so quiet it could only be heard by dogs and the damned.Let's meet this marvelous woman...

My favorite laws to break when I was a child were child labor laws.Grampa showed me how by putting me to work for the family’s blueberry-harvesting company when I was six, seven, eight, and so forth.

OCD doesn’t care about what you want. You’ll be washing dishes with your mother, scrubbing a steak knife, and an intrusive thought will show you an image.OCD: Oh my goodness, look at this! It’s you! You’re stabbing your very own mother!Of course, you’d thought of stabbing your mother before, many times, but those thoughts were always yours, enjoyable because they were controllable. They weren’t intrusive. They weren’t from a mind that sounds exactly like yours, but is alien.

When I was halfway through writing school, the program promised us a famous visitor:The journalist, memoirist, and novelist Joyce Maynard.Unfairly, everyone said one thing about her (as if that’s all there was to say):“She used to be J.D. Salinger’s girlfriend!”“Who’s that?” I said.I loved writing more than I loved reading back then.“J.D. SALINGER!” shouted the person I was talking to. We’ll call him “Julian,” what else?Julian screamed, “The Catcher in the Rye guy!”“Baseball?”

I always wanted to fall in love too much.How much?Take a look at my weird childhood. All Disney had to do was put eyeshadow and clothes or no clothes on animals, and I fell in love.With foxes, dogs, and lions, and when all the Bambi animals caught a raging case of mating season and an orgy was in the works, I was first in line.

The naps of deep youth: You chewed on your bed, banged your head on the wall, punishing your parents — you were just old enough to know they loved you more than was healthy for them; therefore, harming yourself harmed them — then, after whipping your hatreds into vortexes reaching the psychic cellar door where the Devil’s always knocking, you needed a rest.

Grampa is my humor teacher. Once, at Dad’s birthday, I said to Grampa, “Thanks for making Dad.”A twinkle lit Grampa’s eye, and he said, “It was my… pleasure.”Gross, Grampa.And what a joke. Tight as hell.

Here's a glimpse of my 20s, a decade my son loves hearing about. He's a huge fan of heartache and horror. Enjoy.

Listen as my wonderful wife asks questions and I do my best to answer them. Love you all.

Enjoy the day I almost became a body...This episode (lucky 13) concludes season 2 of Misbehaving In Maine. Tune in next week for an interview with the author.

Remember your third-grade desk, the little station you owned every day, a ship with a crew of one, and every member of that crew was captain?You didn’t care that the desk belonged to others before you, some of whom scarred its body with messages:their names, of course,their most belovèd profanities, of course,and peace signs, pentagrams, and that famous S-shape thing, the “Cool S,” symbols which are the beginning of the end of adventurous doodling; they’re prefab forms that yawn before the imagination; it pours itself into them, the wee molds. Graves. Once doodlers dig these graves, they’re in danger of never leaving them. They Cool S their way to the big mold where the mortal doodle that is the body unwinds into all the little lines that make up a drawing, but in this case, (I beg your pardon) we’re talking (what else?) worms.My desk was the best kind: the flip top. It had four legs and a wooden lid, which opened like a trap door, God bless it. Beneath the door, a metal basin, one big enough to bathe five gremlins or to drown one big rat...

I had a bad best friend in 4th grade. Enjoy the destruction of our friendship. And if you're into these stories, you can now preorder my book: Misbehaving In Maine: 30 Half-Learned Lessons.fallscitypress.com/misbehavingEnjoy!

the day I met the lady who owns the ocean

Then, as they say, something happened.A bumblebee flew into my vision.And not just any old bumble; this one was my very first memory.He was the beginning of a new kind of life for me, a life that had grown so far away from the womb and so big, it could now store and transport my past, which meant I could look at my past whenever I liked.From then on, for better or worse, I would be accompanied by all the Dans I’d been before.

There’s a deep river in Maine with cliffs on either side. Woods crowd the edges of the cliffs, and one hundred million rope swings hang from the trees.These swings send you flying so high that when you land wrong, you get your very own deep river enema.This is my story...

Meet the kid who didn’t mind blood, my blood...

My great grandmother scared me.And the day I did what I did in her bathroom and waited for her to find out, she scared me more than ever before...

My friend Timothy and I were on the school playground doing daring things: jumping from the swings and flying sliding down the slide sideways, upside down, and backwards balancing on top of the monkey bars, the pull-up bars, and the railings of the bouncy bridge.It was here, at the bouncy bridge, that I wronged my friend...

In elementary school, we called our 8th graders the “Big Kids,” and we were right. We were so right that even decades later, they’re still the biggest kids we’ve ever known.Let’s meet a few of them, then I’ll tell you a story...

In the 1980s, my grandfather ran blueberry-raking crews in Maine, and I was on the crews, a boy-shaped cork adrift on waves of blue romance.Minus the romance.

God put a cigarette in my hand when I was a child, just to see what I would do.

Friends, welcome back to Misbehaving In Maine. In this episode, we meet my old insane best friend: Peter, Peter, the teacher defeater, the no-look leaper, the Church of Kid Immortal preacher. Watch him go...

This is the story of the day the Earth stood still in Houlton, Maine, the day the students took the high school and showed the Earth what true power sounds like. And this has been Misbehaving In Maine, season one. The End. See you next time, friends. And remember: You may be wicked, you may be weird... but you're not alone.

If you can get hurt badly enough and scream enough, Mom and Dad just might let you stay home from church. Try what I did. It worked. Best of luck, Sunday-morning soldier.

Parents who don’t force musical instruments on their children deny them the profound pleasure of quitting.

What's the first lie you remember believing? Here's mine, and it's about dinosaurs, who else?

I dare you to let my grandfather draw your face. It will make you stronger.

Ironically, my first French kiss happened at a talent show. Enjoy as I discover that making out with one's hand for practice does not prepare one for the real thing.

Breaking up with friends is hard to do. Watch me try.

If the payoff is grand enough, you can endure any friendship.

What's the first lie you remember believing? Here's mine. And it broke me.

Watch what happens to my grandmother when I find her rage button.

A story about arming a kid with an animal brain and a bike.

This is a story about spit, relatives, and regret. Remember the days when thinking a thought meant doing a thing? You didn't have the time or ability to say to a thought, "You're bad." You simply said, "Welcome, new thought," then carried it out. Why? Because you were a kid and didn't yet know that some actions can create a new county of hell on Earth, your county, where you have to live now, and pay taxes, and vote every November for the Devil.

Do you ever feel accidental? I do. Do you ever feel like a miracle? I do that too. We're all so close to not being here at all. Are we accidents? Miracles? You tell me. But first, here's how I almost got killed by the biggest dumbest boat in history.