Handling money has always terrified me because I have “dyscalculia.” It’s the numerical equivalent of dyslexia.

During high school, each sport or discipline had to take turns in the ticket-gate for home football and basketball games. It was during the basketball season that I was placed in the ticket window.

By the end of the night I had all the receipts screwed up and I would be suspected of stealing at least a hundred-bucks, if not more, from the lock-box. And while I hadn’t, I couldn’t prove I had not and that left room for a lot of suspicion.

It fell to Coach Brian Ferguson to ask me if I had taken the money. I can still remember him finding me as I sat in the bleachers next to Candy Lehto, watching the game.

I thought for sure that he was going to call the police and have me arrested.

Worse yet, I felt bad for Candy. Her only crime — guilt-by-association.

Perhaps I should have left the moment Deirdre called me, but instead I waited about six-hours and now, it was too late. I had already stopped at Eureka General and now I was pulling up into the driveway at Mom and Del’s home.

However it was no longer Del’s home either. He had passed away while I drove from Reno to the hospital.

Del Middleton and Mom had been married since 1989. It was a second marriage for both and I was happy to call him my step-dad.

Del was the only family member to express his sorrow for my real dad’s passing nearly two-years earlier. That meant an awful lot to me and I told him so, time and again.

The house was locked up tight and I couldn’t get Mom to answer the phone. I was certain that after the last 24-hours she was finally getting some much-needed sleep, so I decided to go to the local Chinese restaurant and get myself something to eat.

Later in the evening I called again and Mom answered. She apologized for not answering earlier, telling me that the door was unlocked and to come in and that she’d be back in bed.

Since I was staying with Mom, I became her gate-keeper, meaning no one saw her unless it was okay with her, this included the numerous telephone calls.  By the end of the second day, there must have been 30 plates of food and pies, several dozen balloons and nearly as many sympathy cards.

Also on the second day, Mom was able to will herself out of bed and have breakfast with me, though she didn’t eat much. She started talking about how Del’s death had transpired earlier in the week.

It began with Del taking their old dog Freckles to the vet and have the dog euthanized. Freckles was old and crippled up ever since she tangled with a bobcat a year or so earlier.

The next day, Del fell ill. He was having trouble breathing and was complaining of severe chest pains.

Mom said, “Freckles must have known something about Del that we didn’t.”

Delmar had multiple sclerosis, congestive heart failure, emphysema and was HIV positive. He had contracted the virus that causes AIDS through a blood transfusion during open heart surgery.

It took Del three days to succumb to heart failure. In that time, nearly a hundred people came to his bedside to say their goodbyes, including close family.

But like I already said, I was too late to say goodbye to Del. Therefore, since I was removed from the directness of his death, I was the one to handle Mom and his business that week.

“Your tardiness,” Mom told me, “is my blessing.”

The entire U.S. Air Force environmental health class was out in the field studying vector control. After a lengthy bus ride, we hiked into the area in which our instructors had pre-selected as our outdoor classroom for the day.

It was an area covered with rocks and small tree-like plants. It was obvious to me that the area was a flood-plain for the nearby river in the winter and during the spring run-off.

One of the warnings we were given was to watch for rattlesnakes, fire-ants, hornets, wasps, bees and scorpions. We were told to watch where we sat, leaned, placed a hand, and stepped.

No one reported seeing any of the things we were warned about. However that all changed when I found a fallen log in the shade to sit down on.

I felt a sharp pain in my right butt cheek and grew immediately ill to my stomach.

The pain was so sharp, that I jumped to my feet and pulled my fatigue pants down. A number of my classmates confirmed I had a large red, swollen welt on my backside.

After an hour or so I finally got over the nausea. It was decided that I had been stung by a Striped Bark Scorpion. Luckily, they aren’t deadly, jus’ painful.

And though I’ve encountered a Striped Bark Scorpion, I’ve never actually seen one.

Shortly before Mom and Dad decided to convert the garage into a rumpus room; it was a plain old place to park the car. However, neither parent ever bothered to bring the car inside.

Instead it was simply a place for Adam and me to play, Dad to do whatever household repairs he was given by Mom, and for Mom to work on her crafts and such. It was also the starting place for at least one strange community-wide shenanigan.

One evening I recall standing around the garage watching Dad and “Uncle Ron” Benedict spray painting a piece of cardboard. I wasn’t old enough at the time to understand that they were making some sort of statement at the time.

I remember them laughing mischievously as they planned to put it up during the early morning hours of the next day.

To this day, I still don’t know what they pair were referencing at the time. But what I do know is that the sign they created, ended up posted somewhere very visible and it caused enough of a stir that a picture of was published in the Del Norte Triplicate.

The black spray paint outline was eventually covered by carpet as the rumpus room took shape. And that same outline was there when the carpet was pulled up during my parent’s divorce in 1980.

I still don’t get it and maybe I never will.

Our 1971 Opel Cadet was in the shop being repairs and Dad had to borrow Pa Sanders’ old Dodge for the day. We were there to shop for my high school graduation suit.

Mom and I got out of the car in front of Daly’s Department store and went inside to start looking. Dad stopped to drop a couple of dimes in the parking meter before joining us.

After finding and purchasing my suit, we headed back out to the car. We had been inside the store for so long that the parking meter had run out of time.

Once there, Dad saw the ticket under the passenger-side windshield wiper and he was mad about it. Later he admitted to Mom and me that saw the meter-maid filling out the ticket, but forgot we were using the car.

Jerry Lane, Esq., passed away after a nearly two year-long battle with cancer. He’s Kyle’s and his sister Kaitlyn’s maternal-grandfather.

I feel badly for their mother, Charissa as she was unable say goodbye in person and I know how desperate that can be.

Jerry never really cottoned to me, after-all I got his only daughter pregnant. And worse yet I was a married man and her pregnancy was out of wedlock.

The first time I met him, rather than give me the third-degree, he stared me down. I can’t recall ever feeling like a pin-cushion for daggers before that night.

Then I really made him mad at me when I decided to take Charissa to court in order to assert my parental rights. I can’t remember how it happened, but somehow I got the blame for calling him an “old fart,” or something during like that, during the proceedings.

He was actually one helluva lawyer, having served as legal counsel to the Nevada State Legislature in Carson City. He also had his own law firm in Las Vegas, before going into semi-retirement and hiring on to represent the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony which includes the Paiute, the Shoshone, and the Washoe tribes.

After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, he and his wife moved to Texas, where he passed away October 10, 2010. Jerry was 83-years-old.

I’m so sorry for both Kyle, Kaitlyn and their mother’s loss.

The Christmas before, there had been several fist-fights in stores across the nation over the toy “Cabbage Patch Kids.” Cathy Andre’s mother, Shirley, however found a way to creat her own “kid.”

It was made from old nylon panty-hose and cotton batting, with movable arms and legs. And best of all, Shirley’s were more life-like and bigger than the original toy.

However, it caused nearly as much trouble.

One afternoon, Cathy and her mother were at the post office when Shirley took the doll from the back seat of her car and placed it in the trunk of the vehicle. A woman saw this and mistook the stuffed-toy for a real child and called police.

It would have been fun to see the officer’s face when Shirley lifted the trunk lid.

“Ron Schmitt just called me, saying the police refused to go to his church and investigate some vandalism,” my editor, Angela Mann said, “I’d like you to go up and take a look around. I think there’s a good story in this.”

Ron was a Sparks’s city councilman and part of the lay-clergy at the Holy Cross Catholic church on Vista Blvd. I called him on his cell-phone and asked if he could meet me at the church.

Ron said he would.

About fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the nearly vacant parking lot. I gathered my camera and note pad and walked towards the front door of the building. I noticed right away that the glass doors were missing, having been replaced with plywood boards.

Carefully I pushed the door hand and found that the door frame was still in working order. I went inside the church.

Once inside I found I was walking on tiny shards of glass from the now-shattered doors. I continued through the front of the building towards the voices he heard in the back.

“Hello, I’m with the Tribune,” I said as I held out a hand to the two women in the back office.

One of the women shook it, saying, “We were told to expect you.”

“Is it okay if I have a look around?” I asked.

“Certainly,” the woman answered.

Turning, I went back out to the front of the building. I wanted to look over the damage and develop a few questions as I waited for Ron. As I was viewing the damage I noticed a small hole in the wall near a picture frame.

Jus’ as I was looking for something to climb or stand on, so I could get a better look at the hole, the church priest, Father Wolf came into the room.

He asked, “Did you get a look at the back office?”

“No,” I answered, following the priest to the back of the church.

A double pane window had been shattered in the business manager’s office. There were small bits of glass strewn all about the small room.

It was starting to look like the damage wasn’t jus’ simple an act of vandalism. However I needed more evidence before I could say anything.

Looking outside the back door, near the business manager’s office, I searched the gravel-covered ground until I found what I was looking for.  I then went back inside.

“Father, was there any other damage?” I asked.

“Yeah,” the priest responded, “They busted up a piece of stained glass.”

Asking if I could have a look at the stain glass, I was shown to a room off the main hallway, where a red and white stain glass series of crosses rested against the wall.

Father Wolf told me that the glass had been hanging on one of the busted out front windows. The damage to the glass was severe.

There were three holes about the size of silver dollars busted out of the wood framed stained glass. Father Wolf speculated that the vandals must have rammed a metal bar or pipe through the windows and the doors to bust them out like they had.

Walking back out into the front of the church I put all the pieces together. Then I called Angela, to report my findings.

“This church was shot up,” I told her.

She immediately decided to call Ron with my findings. The councilman arrived at the church in less than five minutes.

While I waited for the councilman, I poked around the front lobby. I stood in front of the busted out glass doors and looked around the room, where I happened to notice a small dimple in a free-standing wooden cross.

It was a dent, no deeper than a quarter of an inch and it looked fresh, judging from the newly exposed wood and chips of paint at the cross’ base. It was while looking at the paint flakes that I found the other half of what he was looking for; a piece of flattened metal no bigger than a dime.

Then I moved over to the wall and climbed up on a table top in front of the hole in the wall, I had started to look at before the priest had called me away. There I saw what I believed to be another piece of dull metal.

Ron walked through the front door just as I was climbing down from the table top. He had a look of anger on his face.

“I just got off the telephone with Chief Dotson,” he said.

“And what did he have to say?” I asked.

The councilman smiled wryly, “He didn’t have much to say because I read him the riot act.”

Ron explained how the police were called around eight that morning when the damage was first discovered. They had refused to come out and investigate because it was jus’ a case of vandalism.

“I told the chief that had they done their job like they’re supposed too, I wouldn’t have had to call the newspaper and that a reporter wouldn’t be doing their work for them,” Ron said.

Then he added, “By you finding bullets and casings — that make this situation even more damaging for the police.”

Ron also told me that Chief Dotson was on his way to the church.

“I speculate that he’s looking to do some damage control,” Ron finished.

While we waited for the chief to arrive, I walked the councilman through the building and to each piece of the puzzle. I even walked the councilman outside the back door and pointed out the spent shell casing and shoe prints.

That’s where I decided to try a minor experiment. I told Ron to watch as I picked up the spent shell casing between my thumb and pointer finger with my left hand, then setting the casing back down where I had found it.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Ron asked incredulously.

“It’s a little test to see if they test it for prints,” I said as I looked up, smiling at the taller man.

“Well, what if they do? Your prints will come back and you could be accused of being the person who shot the church up,” Ron replied.

“That’s why I had you watch me do it,” I replied, “and you saw what I did and I’ve told you why. So you’re my witness.”

The councilman’s face grew into a broad smile.

Chief Dotson arrived within minutes. The councilman escorted him to the back of the building.

I tried to walk back with the pair but I was waved off by Chief Dotson.

Angela arrived a few minutes after that to look at the damage. That’s when one of the two women said that she had found a strange piece of metal on her desk when she first opened her door.

“Really?” asked in astonishment, adding, “Where’s it now?”

She said that she had thrown it out because she didn’t think it was worth anything. I dug through the garbage can near the woman’s desk and found the slug of metal.

Angela took a photograph of it as I held it in the palm of my hand. Then I handed it to Chief Dotson.

Outside on the front lawn was another police officer. He was bent over looking in the grass, searching for more bullet casings.

He had already picked up the casing in the back of the building. And it didn’t take him long to find two more identical casings in the grass.

“We probably won’t find any finger prints on these,” he said.

“Does that mean you’re not going to send them to the lab?” I asked.

But he didn’t answer me. I suspected he had been instructed to say as little as possible to me as I was an investigative reporter and his words could end up in the next morning’s newspaper.

The case was never solved and nothing was ever said about my finger prints being on evidence.

Steve and I were in the middle of a shift change at KEKA. Our sister-station, KFMI, was on an automated reel-to-reel system with pre-recorded voice drops, so we we’re the only two in the building or scheduled to be there at that time.

A sudden rapping at the back door alerted us that someone else was at the station. Steve walked to the door and reached for the knob.

For me, time appeared to slow down at that moment. I had the thought: don’t open the door — but I was too late to say anything.

As soon as the door moved away from the frame, a man pushed his way into the building. He was swinging a large butcher-knife wildly through the air.

In a matter of seconds he had cut Steve in the arm at least twice. As he continued to press into the station he yelled something about getting Satan off the radio.

Steve in the meantime, slipped past the attacker and rushed out side into the parking lot. The intruder turned as if to give chase but instead he jus’ stood in the doorway.

That gave me time enough to pick up one of our three tele-type machines and slam him in the head with it. He dropped like a bag of wet cement and rolled down the ramp that led up to the backdoor.

Grabbing the knife, which he had dropped, I turned and walked back inside to the control room. There was nothing but dead-air coming from the speakers as I pushed the microphone button to calmly say, “If you’re listening right now, I need the police at the station on the end of G Street. One man has been stabbed and another man has a serious head injury.”

From there I went outside to find the assailant trying to pick himself off the ground. I gave him a swift, vicious kick in the ribcage, which dropped him to the asphalt once again.

In the distance I could hear sirens, so I knew help was on the way. I located Steve, who was hunkered down behind his truck, and started first-aid on him.

Both the knife-welding man and Steve were taken to the hospital, while I filled out an endless stream of police reports. I did this while I returned the station back to its normal music-intensive format.

A couple of days later, Steve returned to the station with a few hundred stitches in his arm to show-off to co-workers.  As for me, I got a $350 bill for the repairs needed to the tele-type machine I had used as a bludgeoning device.

Kyle was sitting on the couch in the living room. His legs were crossed and  hands were folded behind his head.

He was watching “Barney and Friends. ” It’s a show about a big purple T-rex that befriends a group of kids, sings, dances and tells stories.

I was in the kitchen washing up the remainder of our breakfast dishes.

Suddenly in the very serious voice of a five-year-old, Kyle says, “This show’s stupid, but  I like it.”