www.MentalContagion.com Tin Can Literary Series Memories from the Past & Future November 2002 – November-December 2008 (*Exceptions) *January 2004 (Redacted, Not Found) *March 2005 – April 2005 (Redacted, Not Found) *July 2005 – September 2005 (Redacted, Not Found) *January 2006 – July 2006 (Redacted, Not Found) Selected Emails From the Future (Sub-Series) By Gene Dillon May 2003 – December 2005 After the Jettison: Tales Told From Memory In Zero Gravity (Sub-Series) Fictional essays about baseball and haikus. August 2006 – October 2006 Opening the Can: Publishing in 125,000 Easy Steps (Sub-Series) Ongoing documentation of Gene’s effort to publish of a collection of stories. November 2006 – November-December 2007 Freelancing for Sasquatch (Sub-Series) A fictional account of iChat sessions between Gene and Karen regarding Gene’s disappearance to British Columbia. January 2008 – November-December 2008 Gene Dillon lives in Boulder, CO with his wife, Michelle. His two young, adult children are currently navigating school and real life. A native of Chicago, Gene moved out West for a multitude of reasons he still does not understand. He first appeared in Mental Contagion in April of 2001 with a plumbing story entitled Karmic Baptism. After that, he began documenting his present and future life in a monthly column for MC called Tin Can. He is currently working on… thinking about writing again. 1 Mental Contagion | 20th Anniversary Archive Edition Tim Can by Gene Dillon | Copyright ©2020 Gene Dillon via Mental Contagion Gene was an integral part of Mental Contagion in the aughts. At times, he contributed as an editor and producer, and was also the creator of a conversation feature called The Shovel, in which he interviewed people from all walks of life. In his third chapter with MC, Gene documented the depressing and humiliating process of trying to get published, in a column called Opening the Can. There were a lot of worms. Gene misses you. He writes the column Tin Can for Mental Contagion. All content ©2020 Gene Dillon via Mental Contagion. Content may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, or transferred in any form or by any means without prior written consent from the author and with express attribution to Mental Contagion. For reprint information contact Karen Kopacz (former director) via Public Field Guide or Design for the Arts. 2 Mental Contagion | 20th Anniversary Archive Edition Tim Can by Gene Dillon | Copyright ©2020 Gene Dillon via Mental Contagion November 2002 Tenderfoot — Part 1: A Couple Mistakes The moment I stopped resenting my parents was the moment I began to feel sorry for them. I was the youngest of eight children, one year behind my brother Andrew, two years behind Kathleen, three years behind Mary Therese... You get the picture. For the better part of two decades, there was always a kid in diapers, while another kid was endangering the life of some other kid, while yet another kid was off in a corner, huffing airplane glue. By the time Andrew and I came along, our parents had gotten spread pretty thin. They had to be so tired. From the get-go, Andrew and I did all that we could to help make their lives miserable, and we did not let up as we got older. Andrew was thin and small for his age, so we were pretty evenly matched. Our bloody bouts of whiffle ball in the back yard could have brought prison guards to the brink of tears. The wrestling always got out of hand - body slams, foreign objects, blood curdling screams... We held brutal boxing matches in the square-shaped, upstairs hallway on a nightly basis. Our short-sleeved, Catholic School uniforms did nothing to hide the hideous bruises that decorated our arms at school the next morning. We showed them off proudly to our classmates. Lord knows what our teachers must have thought. We did not limit our interests to violence alone. We also thrived on the rush of destruction. Brand new bicycles were thoroughly demolished by “ghost rides” before summer reached its end. We set things on fire - anything that would burn. The hair on a GI Joe would burn over and over and over again. Stuffed animals were strung up on telephone wires. We combed the alleyways of our neighborhood, picking through trashcans and dumpsters in search of discarded appliances. Old televisions were best. We opened them up, and pulled out the little tubes, tossing them as high up into the air as we could. They made the coolest sound when they landed. We flipped a coin to decide who would throw the first brick at the picture tube. The aftermath of our demolition was left scattered up and down the alley behind our block. Nobody made a big deal out of it. We were boys. Boys did these things. We were merely emulating our greatest heroes - Dick the Bruiser, Evil Knevil, Mohammed Ali and The Three Stooges. 3 Mental Contagion | 20th Anniversary Archive Edition Tim Can by Gene Dillon | Copyright ©2020 Gene Dillon via Mental Contagion Mom and Dad, now well into their forties, didn't need the consistent and relentless aggravation that accompanied our existence. At this point in their lives, they preferred a restful martini to the antics of two pre-pubescent boys all hopped-up on Crunch Berries. So they jumped at any chance to get rid of us. During previous summers, they had dumped us on aunts, uncles and grandparents, for afternoons, evenings, and even an occasional sleepover or two. The weekend jaunts were a big deal to us. But they had their ups and downs. Staying with my grandparents was always a little bit weird. They were pretty old by the time we came along, so they didn't have the kind of energy that we truly required. Their house was too quiet, and smelled like Woolworth's. Their candy was old. And for some reason, my grandfather refused to refrigerate his jelly. I did not understand this. Since they never ate it, the same dusty jar was always there, waiting only for us to consume during our semi-annual visits. We were always taught that old people did weird things because of The Depression, like hiding money under their mattresses. So Andrew and I blamed The Depression for the grape jelly that smelled like feet, and tasted like vinegar. One year, the jelly had really turned, but our grandparents were incapable of noticing or caring. We told them we didn't eat jelly anymore. So they gave us bruised bananas for lunch instead. I remember one glorious weekend, when my Auntie Doe had us stay with her at her apartment on the North side of Chicago. On the last afternoon of our visit with her, she went up to the attic to retrieve some old boxing gloves that somebody had left there. Boxing gloves? Good God in Heaven, Auntie Doe is giving us boxing gloves! Like a seasoned trainer, she helped each of us to lace up our gloves, and then she sent us out into the back yard to beat the crap out of each other. The tiny yard was just about the size and shape of an actual boxing ring. We pounded on each other's wobbling heads until we could hardly stand up. Knockdown after knockdown - we kept getting back up to trade more blows. The beatings continued until it became too dark to see. Perhaps the sun was setting. I can't say for sure. I don't think I'll ever know Auntie Doe's true motive for letting us do this. The gloves were huge, and well padded, so perhaps it was just good, clean fun. Or maybe she was sending a message to our parents. I don't know. We begged our parents to buy us two pairs of boxing gloves for years afterward. At some point during the seventies, it seemed like there was a significant gap in time during which no invitations were extended to us. Once our parents had exhausted every possible avenue for dispensing 4 Mental Contagion | 20th Anniversary Archive Edition Tim Can by Gene Dillon | Copyright ©2020 Gene Dillon via Mental Contagion their two biggest problems onto one of their cringing relatives, their choice was clear. They'd have to fork over some dough and get us signed up for an extracurricular activity. Something, of course, that didn't involve them. Our folks opted for something appropriately militaristic. They enlisted us in the Boy Scouts. This was a brilliant move on their part, because in the Boy Scouts, they have overnight camping trips. That meant an occasional quiet weekend around the house, free from the sounds of epic wrestling matches pounding down on the ceiling just above the TV. I distinctly remember the fact that while I was at my weekly troop meetings, my dad would get to watch Wonder Woman, uninterrupted. Dad always kept up the air of being a good and well-behaved man, a devout Catholic. But he never made any effort to hide his attraction to Linda Carter, running around in her strapless, red, white and blue costume, flying an invisible helicopter. I once overheard a conversation he was having with one of my older brothers, that what he liked most about her was her butt. To a nine or ten year-old, this is a shocking revelation. Butts were nasty things, and certainly not the focal point of any kind of sexual attraction. It made me wonder about him. When he proclaimed once that a particular woman was “built like a brick shit-house.” I was really thrown for a loop.