He’s quickly wearing out the box tops. And he certainly doesn’t look comfortable.

In my dreams, I’m never able to seriously hurt anybody. I don’t know why that is. I might be in a raging gun battle with Disney-themed demonic muskrats, but my bullets do no harm. I’ve certainly never killed anyone in a dream. This is sometimes a cause of aggravation, though I’ve never asked God to change this, sort of assuming that God wants it this way.

But last night, I most definitely killed a zombie.

He was a “fast” zombie (not the lumbering type), running full speed at me with a hatchet, and screaming. Yes, a zombie with a hatchet. Bet you haven’t seen that (yet) on “The Walking Dead.”

Dream Steve grabbed him and sliced off his head on a mailbox post (in the alternate universe of my dreams, mailbox posts apparently have razor-sharp edges). Even in my dream, I realized something new had just happened. I stood there looking at the severed head and thought, “Did I actually just do that?”

It seemed like a breakthrough of sorts. Or maybe it was a case of dreamstate backsliding away from pacifism. I’m not sure. We’ll have to see if it happens again.

That’s me, kneeling in front on the right, next to Coach Gentry.

I played–actually played–on my high school basketball team in ninth and tenth grades. That was in Arizona. Then we moved to California, where I attended Tulare Union, a school twice as large. I made the junior varsity team, but that’s as far as it went. Belonging to the team and seeing action are two different things.

In our daily practices, I worked and sweated and grunted just as hard as my first-string teammates. On game days, I suited up in a uniform identical to everyone else’s, except for the number and the lack of sweat-stains. I participated in the pre-game warm-up drills–free throws, fast breaks, lay-ups, etc. Just before tip-off, I added my hand to the huddle and joined in a zealous “Let’s go!”

But after that, it was, “We’ll take it from here, Steve.” If you don’t have it, you don’t have it. I didn’t have it, and didn’t know where to find it.

So I would plop into my seat at the end of the bench, cheer my teammates to victory, dream of a never-meant-to-be-game-winning-honor-and-glory-forevermore-last-second-jumpshot, and wonder what in the world I would do if the coach actually put me in the game.

“What? You want me to go out there, onto the court? But I might accidentally touch the ball and make us lose the game. Are you sure, Coach?”

Coach Gentry was an easy-going guy in his first year as a basketball coach. To defend myself, I could claim he was too inexperienced to recognize talent when he saw it. The truth is, even a rookie coach can recognize a lack of talent. And so I collected splinters, watched, rooted, hollered, and brought home a clean uniform for Mom to wash.

Cut to Creative Writing class. There, I starred for Mrs. Harbour. I sunk half-court swishers, slugged home-runs, threw touchdown bombs, drilled aces. I think she liked me.

That semester, Mrs. Harbour assigned a writing “decathlon,” you might call it, in which we had to compose various types of writing. A rhymed poem. Free verse. Haiku (the most ridiculous thing this side of Form 10-40, don’t you agree?). An essay. A short story. An interview. A news feature. And a parody.

Ah, the parody. Only a week or so remained of the basketball season, and I didn’t plan to try out for the team my senior year. Nothing to lose. So here’s what I wrote for Mrs. Harbour.

Mr. Gentry is my basketball coach; I shall not play.
He maketh me to lie down at night with aching muscles;
He wind-sprinteth me beside cool-drinking fountains.
He restoreth my thirst.
He keepeth me off the playing floor, for his team’s sake.
Yea, though we lead by 50 points, I will fear not messing up, for I still won’t play.
In practice, thy whistle and thy slave-driving, they tireth me.
Thou anointest my body with sweat;
My pores runneth over.
Surely exhaustion, anonymity, and depression shall follow me all the days of the basketball season.
And I shall dwell at the end of the bench forever.

It was just for Creative Writing class. Mr. Gentry would never see it…would he?

A couple days later, Coach Gentry stopped me between classes.

“Mrs. Harbour showed me your poem,” he said, as all color drained from my face and I envisioned running about 5000 laps. “It was funny.”

“Uh, thanks,” I said, quickly scooting away to my locker.

Had I known Coach Gentry would read that parody, would I have written it? I doubt it.

But it gets worse. Mrs. Harbour immortalized that parody at Tulare Union High School. For years afterward, she distributed mimeographed copies to her English classes as an example of a good parody. A real live literary masterpiece by someone who attended TU. A treasure from her star pupil, who at this very moment was no doubt writing The Great American Haiku. (“Can anything good come out of…yes! And I taught him everything!”)

For all I know, that frivolous parody still makes the rounds at Tulare Union. It is my only mark on that school, my legacy. If Mr. Gentry remembers me, it’s not because of my forgettable jump shot. It’s because of that one silly little poem.

It has now been two years since I vomited. Sorry for the mental images. But that’s how we Miniere’s Disease sufferers measure progress. I’ve struggled with Miniere’s since 2004, and for much of that time, recurring vertigo would cause a vomiting episode (or more likely, a series of them) at least once a quarter.

I’d be okay for a while. And then I’d not be okay. You get so you can read your body, and know when it’s coming back in force. You wake up in the morning and just know, “Probably around noon, it’s gonna hit me hard.”

But my life changed on April 16, 2010, when I had an endolymphatic shunt surgically installed behind my left ear. The first year saw definite improvement, but a bout with acute pancreatitis threw my body off, and I still had some of the aforesaid episodes. But the last one occurred in April 2011.

April 2011 was also my last serious episode of nystagmus, where the world suddenly starts spinning and you’re nonfunctional for about ten seconds or so. For me, a vomiting episode is often a delayed reaction from a nystagmus episode. Not always, but often. I’ve had a couple minor episodes of nystagmus that stopped pretty quickly, and could usually be attributed to excessive sodium intake. But very minor.

Anyways, I give credit to the endolymphatic shunt. I can almost feel it kick in sometimes, taking in ear fluid before it triggers vertigo.

I’ve posted about the shunt surgery several times over the years, and I usually get comments or emails from other Miniere’s sufferers who are researching the surgery and discover me through a Google search. There have been a few negative reports, but most are very positive.

There are several surgical options for vertigo sufferers, and the shunt is both the lease invasive and the option with the highest success rate. During the past year I’ve heard from a couple people who have had a shunt in place for up to 20 years, and it seems the shunt was wearing out and they were having the surgery done again. I can live with that. It’s not a bad surgery.

I really feel like I’ve gotten my life back. I drive and fly without worry. I still watch my sodium and caffeine intake (moderation only). Alcohol is another trigger, but I’ve never been a drinker, so that’s not an issue for me. The fourth trigger is stress. You can’t always minimize that; I’m coming up on a period at work when there will be a higher level of stress. But I’ve learned to cope with it.

So, two years and counting.

My various posts about the surgery:

• Now Proud Owner of an Endolymphatic Shunt (April 17, 2010)
• My Meniere’s Surgery, One Year Later (April 16, 2011)
• My Meniere’s Surgery, Two Years Later (April 16, 2012)
• Miniere’s Disease and the Barf Update (April 25, 2013)
• My Annual Meniere’s Disease Update (April 22, 2014)

I work with lots of ministers, and ministers always have a “life verse.” I think it’s a requirement for getting a ministerial license. But, I admit, I’ve never had a life verse. It has always made me feel spiritually deficient.

However, there is one verse I apply to my work more than any other, so perhaps it qualifies as a life verse. Proverbs 10:19 says, “When words are many, sin is not absent” (NIV).

As a Communications Director, my career is based on churning out words. This verse tells me, “The more words, the more chance there are mistakes.” Ain’t that the truth. You can’t crank out thousands of words every day without getting something wrong.

A very nice woman called me today to point out a mistake. She was nervous and apologetic about it, and was calling because somebody else asked her to. The idea of correcting me intimidated her, I think; she didn’t know how I would respond.

But I’m long past (most of the time) being defensive. Making errors in writing–whether mere typos or, as was the case today, factual errors–is just gonna happen. It’s been happening for over 30 years. I accept my fallibility. Probably 99.95% of what I write is clean, mistake-free. But that .05% won’t go away anytime soon.

So I told this woman the mistake was entirely mine, I apologized for it, and I promptly corrected it (you can do that with stuff on the web). No sense being prickly about it. I appreciate people pointing my mistakes, as long as they aren’t jerks about it.

And keep this in mind: whenever somebody talks a lot, or write a lot, there’s a good chance that some of it is just plain wrong. It applies to your local newspaper reporters, to TV pundits…and to your own preacher.