Not many people take a picture of the candy machine when they go to their college reunion, but I did.

When I was in college, my dorm was being remodeled, and the workers left their tools in the basement near the washing machines… and the candy machines.

I don’t know who would leave a crowbar next to a candy machine at any college, but it was especially foolish at our women’s college. My 5’10” best friend and I were truly the perfect accomplices in this crime. It was an old candy machine with a padlock and a latch over the front, a latch that could be opened. My friend would use her height and wedge the crowbar into that space, and I would slide my small hand into the opening and around whatever was in the first row of the machine: cheese crackers, Snickers, gum.

Not legal, but at least we never stole anything bigger than a Snickers – except for soda.
When I rode horses, my trainer’s son taught how to reach in the opening, press a lever, and get a free soda – it was his dad’s soda machine, he explained, and he needed my hand to reach that bar.
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I carried that skill over to the old Coke machines at college. It was a dicier job, for sometimes I would get a small electric shock.  Then again, I deserved much worse.

​There is something about the sight of an armored truck that just makes me long to rob it.

This urge first surfaced when I worked in Spain. I used to take the bus to work. Every day, Monday through Friday, I would get off the bus, and there she would be: a shiny armored truck, back doors flung open to the morning air, canvas bags piled near the front of the cab.

Not once did I ever see a driver or a guard. But every day, Monday through Friday, I would thank God that I was wearing high heels.

“There is no way I could ever get in and out of that truck and then run fast enough to get away. Oh well…” And this recurring yen would hit me again the following day, and the next….

It wasn’t the money: it was the idea of getting away with it. It was those casual canvas bags beckoning from the floor of the truck.

The absolute worst thing was that once the armored-car-set-up had been firmly resisted, a far greater one often presented itself.  At least, this one only tested me about twice a week: it was the egg-carrying waiter.

On the next corner from the armored truck, a waiter would be carrying a delivery of about ten trays of eggs. I longed to trip him.  You know, just to see. Once again, I would be thankful for the high heels, because there was no way that waiter would ever have let me make my getaway. 
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Part One:

It is always good to have your core described by your older siblings. One of my sisters has always said that I had a heart of larceny.

I started young. Mama would take us to the science museum and sometimes she would let us buy “one thing” in the gift shop.

I always, every time, opted for a set (Three counting as one! Brilliant me!) of bone china figures of a deer family: father, mother, and Bambi. My sister, one year older and less greedy, would choose a bone china rabbit. There were several different rabbits available, so she gradually accumulated a line of bone china bunnies on a shelf in her room: whimsical, wry, sweet, and playful.

Besides the variations in their poses, the china bunnies had the advantage of being sturdier than the deer family. The buck’s antlers snapped off so easily – usually on the way home. The fawn’s legs? Gone in a week. My deer collection was a display of wounded game, propped up by bits of pencil erasers and thimbles. My sister’s rabbits reclined or sat on secure haunches, missing only the occasional ear.

It was too much for my sore young heart. I stole. I stole bone china bunny after bone china bunny. My sister would cry. The bunny would reappear. My longing would surface and I would swipe another rabbit; my sister would cry – it was a vicious cycle.

The longing stopped when I started school but I have never really stopped feeling bad for making my sister so sad.
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The other day in a store, I saw a bone china rabbit sassily sitting on its hind legs.  Guess what my sister is getting for her birthday…?

I had a professor when I studied in Spain who lectured in a voice loud enough to reach the back of Carnegie Hall. Once he told us a story about his school days.

He was called in to the Head of the Department’s office one day.

“Antonio, you have been chosen for a great honor. Borges is coming to visit and you have been chosen to give him a tour of the campus. Imagine! It is a great privilege, indeed.”

Our professor smoothed his tie and paused as he let this honor sink in on us, his slow undergraduate students. He knew one of us would break the tension.

“Professor, how was Borges? What was he like? Did you get along?”
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“’Get along’? How did we ‘get along’?” Our professor boomed, “Borges is blind and I am practically deaf. No, we did not ‘get along,’ but at least we both made it through the tour alive.”

My dad was going to operate on my former trainer. By then, I was in college and had closed, locked, and put a trunk in front of the door that led back to my horse-back riding days.  When my dad called me at college, insisting that I come home, I was shocked.

“But why? There is a party on Saturday…I really don’t feel like going home.”

“I understand that you would like to go to the party, but this is quite a serious operation.”

“What is it again?”

“It’s a delicate one. Look, Mary, how many times do I ask you to come home?”

“Not often…”

“This man was more your father than I was for five years of your life.”

“But I sent flowers!”

“I know, and he has them in his room. Your mother will pick you up Friday after your last class and she’ll drive you back after you visit on Saturday. I will see you Friday. I love you.”

And my father hung up.

I dragged my feet on the newly installed blue carpet in the hall as I went back to my dorm room. I sat on the floor, leaning against my bed, and mentally moved the trunk away from the riding-memories door.

I thought of my dad and his splendid hands opening up my trainer’s cranium and fixing things. I knew he would fix everything; he always did. I got up and started to pack a backpack for the weekend, grateful for both of my fathers.

How many of us get to have a father who can fix your other father?

***

“C’m’here,” my trainer beckoned from his hospital bed. I moved to the side of the bed and he moved, a tangle of tubes and cables, to give me the never-before-or-after-kiss on the forehead.  I felt his thin, dry smoker’s lips on my skin, smiled, and stepped back.

“Well, take it easy….”

“Thanks for the visit….and the flowers.”

I nodded and walked toward the door, counting my steps. I stopped and turned around in the doorway.

“Oh, hey, don’t worry about the operation. My dad’s like you….” I let my right arm settle on the door jam, right hip casually swinging in, as I waited for him to cock his head. I gave him a half-smile, “…he’s the best.”
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I had at least three fathers: my biological one, the one who trained me when I rode horses, and my first horse.

Brevon was an older gentleman. My parents leased him for me so I could learn from an expert. I was in awe of him, of his status, of his knowledge, and even of the great love he awoke in me.

The first time I ever rode him, I was eleven, and I was so thrilled to be trying out a horse that I don’t remember much. I do remember dismounting near the door that led through the passage-way to the boarder’s side of the barn instead of the lesson side of the barn. The thought of walking through that tunnel with my horse made me mightily proud.

I had dismounted and stood at a 45 degree angle to Brevon, my right hand on his left shoulder, ready to swing the reins over his head and lead him to his new stall.  Then he stopped me by swinging his noble bay head around. He eye-balled me, then curved his neck around me and hugged me to his body.

With that, he taught me to slow down.

I learned from watching my trainer, now cured, but worn, bones broken by horses and their world.  He would pause to talk with Brevon.

“Well, Father,” my trainer would start and then inevitably take a drag from his cigarette or a sip of coffee, “What do you think I should do…?” And my trainer would hang his head and consult with the comfort only wise Brevon could give, and then he would nod, and pat Brevon’s neck and move off, smoking, or drinking his coffee.

One day when I was riding, feeling frustrated at myself for not being better, a visitor had greeted Brevon, “Why hello Brevon, old man!” and ignored me. I was suddenly bitter. I started to canter down the long side of the indoor ring. It was good until it wasn’t. Something happened, something wasn’t right, I don’t remember what. But I jerked my right hand to punish, to correct. As I write this I can still feel that tension in my arm….

I had seen older riders do this, so dramatic, so wrong, but such a powerful feeling. I felt in control.

I jerked a second time.

Brevon stopped square, turned his fine head to look at me, disappointment, and more important, gracious forgiveness in his eyes.
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He taught me power is not control – and I hope he taught me not to be a jerk.

One day, years ago, I was walking down a busy city street. It was chilly, and I was wearing my boyfriend’s jacket, snuggling into the warmth. Suddenly, there was a tawny movement on my left, and the next thing I saw was the fangs of a German Shepard looming toward my throat. I threw my left arm up to protect myself, and the teeth ripped into the sleeve. White fuzz from the jacket’s lining filled the air.  Then the dog knocked me over and searched for my neck.

With my right hand I grabbed his throat and tried to hold him off me. I swung my right hip up and over his body, pinning him to the ground. I kept pressing the neck, not wanting to hurt, but not wanting to get hurt either, as I moved on top of him. Tufts of the white lining settled over both of us, as I looked around for the animal’s owner.

“What the Hell are you doing to my dog?!” The owner demanded.

“Where have you been? Look at me! Your dog knocked me over and attacked me!”
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“Well he’s an attack dog. What are you doing wearing a big jacket like that, you dumb blonde? You were asking for it!”

I hate it when the geese are standing on the path where I run. I find it anxiety-provoking. Years ago, my mother and I had driven up to a barn and blithely gotten out of the car, only to be swarmed by a gaggle of guard geese.

Their necks, like thick snakes, reached up past our shoulders. They thrashed at us with hissing open beaks, their strong wings flapping us back toward the car. We complied.

The owner came out, and by way of apology, explained, “Geese are better guards than dogs:  no one’s going to bribe a goose.”

Mama and I saw shades of more than one Hitchcock movie, and our visit was short.

Hitchcock does bear some of the blame. The fear he stirred up in “The Birds” comes to mind whenever I see one of the Canadian geese on the running path stomp its foot firmly on the dirt, the web spreading under its weight like a prehistoric fan, neck tensing like a cobra, beady eye in a swinging head as I run by, my heart racing faster than I ever could move.

This morning Father Goose stood in the middle of the path like a bully looking for a fight.  I took a deep breath, clapped my hands, and ran by.

Yeah, I’ll take a dog any day.
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When my son was still young enough to ride in a stroller, but also old enough to walk alongside it, he found a golf ball in the zoo parking lot and stuck it in the bib of his overalls.

We walked by the snake building over towards the monkey area. It was early morning and the chimpanzees were listless at best. By now my son was holding the golf ball, his fingers worrying over the divots as he gazed sadly at the chimps in the cage.

He must have been concentrating hard, because his fingers loosened their grip and the ball rolled down the drainage ditch toward the cage. Quicker than you could say, “Peter Rabbit,” the juvenile chimp leapt down from his perch and grabbed the golf ball.

The juvenile stared at the golf ball, his fingers worked over the divots. He mouthed the golf ball and then tried cracking it.  The parents wanted in on the fun, but they couldn’t catch him.

I looked around for a zoo keeper, and realized that the flurry of primate activity was drawing a crowd. My son looked at me.

“They’re not gonna be giving my golf ball back, are they?”

“Gee, it doesn’t look that way…”

A zoo keeper came and tried to exchange the golf ball for a banana. No deal. Monkey chow? The juvenile rolled his lips back in a smile and shook his head vigorously, “No.”

Finally, an older keeper came over with some yogurt, and the golf ball was dropped.

“Show’s over,” said the younger zoo keeper.

It sure was. The chimpanzees went sullenly back to their stupor and my son and I wondered if the old zoo keeper would let the young chimp play after closing time.