At the insistence of the author's attorneys (and wife and neighbor/BFF) I must state that the tale previously told may have included some untruths and/or hyperbole and/or fantasy.

Probably.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how you can make one wrong move, one time, and it follows you around for life - and how that can change your life for good, there it is.

Like that time when I had just woken up and was starting to do the still-asleep zombie shuffle by the giant windows in the master bedroom that had sold us on the house in the first place. It's an older house, been on the city rolls since 1900, and there are some parts that are probably original, but that's okay 'cause they knew how to build things to last in those days, right?

Except this window, which was apparently the victim of some sort of an insidious & silent dry rot which had been subtly weakening its stoutness for decades probably.

So when my still asleep stumbled over themselves as I was climbing and I fell sharply toward the window and my right arm shot out to brace myself against the frame, it gave away with a sickening stop-time moment of thinking clearly to myself something like 'Hmmm, that's not right.' and then thinking to myself as I defenestrated myself 'Good thing that porch roof will break my fall - and maybe I can grab something there to stop my descent'*.

The porch roof slowed my fall, alright, but my hands clawed fruitlessly at the asphalt shingles as I slid down the angled roof and fell with a loud thud on the sidewalk outside.

I was understandably jarred for a moment and my breath all seemed to been forced out of my body with a huge grunt as I hit. Again, within that peculiar clarity, I remember being embarrassed that I had made such a loud noise - 'Great, now all of the neighbors are going to look and see', I thought with chagrin.

Then I remembered I was just getting out of bed when this unfortunate accident has befallen me.

And that I usually sleep in the buff.

And that was the state I was in.

And, because I had no clothes on, I had, obviously no pants, and therefore, no pockets in which my housekeys normally reside.

And, because I traditionally lock the doors before bedtime - out of the fear of the extremely unlikely fear that an unknown intruder would murder me in my sleep - that the doors would be locked now.

Which brought me back to my current state of nudity.

As I processed all of these thought, I turned my head and saw the first of my neighbors gathering at the edge of my lot, gazing slackjawed in a mixture of shock and hilarity.

And that is how I became known eternally to my shame as 'that naked guy', all because of a singular bad move.

*I know what you're thinking - there's no possible way he could be having such remarkably cogent thoughts as he was hurtling unexpectedly to the ground a story below - but the whole episode was unfolding for me with that peculiar clarity people get in the midst of such sudden events. Probably you've experienced that too, huh?

"I am being prosecuted for loving people."

(There don't seem to be any permalinks on the site, so this story ["Jason Werner arrested by Cleveland police"] might go away).

Sounds like these convicts or these people.

Jason, sounds like you were were righteously busted for disturbing the peace. My spirituality, like my sexuality or my political beliefs or whether I like boxers or briefs, is mine alone and is not open for discussion.

If you feel the need to convert me to your beliefs, please do it passively: put a bumper sticker on your car, wear a t-shirt, buy ads in the medium of your choice but DO NOT insist that I listen to your views. That, my friend, seems a lot more totalitarian ('communist' as you term it) than any of the love you preach.

I don't dislike Christians. I strongly dislike blinded zealots.

There's been a huge freaking project at my day job for the last couple of weeks, one that has just reached the point where most of it is done - it's just all about shooting the stragglers in the head and leaving them for dead.

Jesus, did I just type that? I guess even after about eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep I'm still in that walking-dead mode of taking just one more step toward that ultimate goal. This is the sort of mindset that led me to write arbeit macht frei on an index card and tack it above my desk way back in college during finals week when I would be struggling to complete all of the work I had successfully ignored so far in the semester. (Did you ever have that dream where you're going to take a final for a class that you had forgotten to not attend for the entire semester? Yeah, me too. Even twenty years beyond the big sweat point for me. At least the one about showing up for class in my underwear seems to have gone away from my nighttime parade at last.)

The idea that "self-sacrifice in the form of endless labour does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom" makes sense to me, given that if you don't sort of blank your mind to the horrible amount of work at hand, your mind (mine, at least) starts endlessly repeating that part from Devo's cover of "Working In The Coal Mine" speaks "I am so tired! How long can this go on?"

My officemates and I began to get a bit giddy as we reached the end of the week, laughing hysterically at jokes that - even now, a scant day later - seem incredibly dull and unfunny. At one point, for some reason, in a quiet moment, somebody launched into a monologue:

At times like this I remember how happy I was back at the puppy farm, playing in the green meadow under blue skies with my brothers and sisters. Those days were wonderful. We never even considered that they might someday end.

There was a quiet pause in the room and I looked up to see who had said that. I saw my officemates gazing at me, puzzled and bemused, and I realized it had been me.

Glad to be back, everybody!

It's weird; neither Lynn or I freaked too much about getting the loan and buying the new (used) car. In fact, I think the most distraught we got was when we realized the songs on the piped in music in the dealers' showroom - songs that we were recognizing from our past - were, in fact, from an oldies station.

I mean, really: is Cyndi Lauper an oldie now? Oh, wait, that record was a hit twenty years or so ago.