299 Days: The Preparation

Chapter 8 The Docker Years

Grant was headed out to a big New Year’s party. He walked by the mirror in the hallway of his house. Who the hell was that? This guy had on Dockers, a polo shirt, a gut, and Acura keys in his hand. Seriously, who was that? The scrappy kid from Forks was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the mirror reflected some lame suburban guy.

Grant was in his thirties now, and a father of two children. Their girl, Amanda, was five and their boy, Cole, was two.

Grant loved being a dad. He constantly thought about all things he would do differently than his parents did. He realized how many bad things had been taught to him during his upbringing. When one of the kids cried, for example, Grant would start to get mad but then would catch himself. For a split second, he would think that he had a right to resent all the stuff he had to do for the kids. But then would realize that normal parents love their kids. And he definitely did love those kids. But he had to constantly fight against what he had learned from his childhood. It was hard because Grant and Lisa had such radically different childhoods.

Grant worked nearly all the time. He loved his job and he was continually trying to improve his résumé. He wasn’t doing anything around the house like repairing simple little things. Instead, he spent his time writing articles, giving presentations, volunteering for bar association committees, working on campaigns. He thought his time was so valuable that someone else should do the work around the house.

That someone else was often Lisa, whose time was also valuable. Naturally, over time, she began to resent her role as the only one doing house repairs. She couldn’t believe that her former logging town husband was so worthless around the house. It pissed her off. A lot.

When things broke, it led to an argument. Grant would respond by noting how many important things he had to do for work right then. Lisa would respond with something like, “Oh, I guess saving people’s lives isn’t as important as what you do.” Things became very unpleasant in the house, which gave Grant yet another reason to be at work. It was a vicious cycle.

When Grant later looked back on the “Docker years,” the one thing he was ashamed of was squandering all the skills he had in Forks and becoming a dependent, soft, fat, typical suburban American. He became what would later be known as a “sheeple” (a combination of a “sheep” ignorantly grazing without thought and “people”).

Grant, who worked very hard, was a sheeple. As a sheeple, he fit in just perfectly in the Cedars subdivision where they lived. The Cedars was an upper end place. The houses weren’t mansions, but they were upper end. Almost everyone who lived there was a state employee; many were assistant directors of state agencies. People were nice … well, Grant assumed they were. He never actually got to know most of them.

One exception was the Spencer family two houses away. They were not government employees. They were friendly and their kids played with the Matson kids. They were Mormon, but didn’t meet all the stereotypes about a male-dominated household that tried to convert everyone. They were just regular people who, as Mormons, did slightly “weird” things like have a year’s worth of food stored. And they didn’t drink. The Spencers were the only other “conservatives” Grant knew of in the neighborhood.

The rest of the people in the neighborhood were unknowns. It was weird. Grant knew which agencies his neighbors worked for but didn’t know much else about them. They would wave when they drove by, but Grant didn’t know their names. In fact, Halloween was the only time he would see them when he took the kids out trick or treating. By the time Halloween rolled around the next year, he had already forgotten what his neighbors looked like and what their names were. Why even learn their names? He only talked to them at Halloween, which was fine with Grant. They were mostly liberals or, as Grant called them, “libs.” They all put up Democrat yard signs during election season. Putting up those yard signs was like a display of loyalty to the great and wonderful God of government.

Grant hated all the Democrat yard signs in his neighborhood, so he put up his own yard signs for Republicans and even an occasional Libertarian. Once those signs went up the first time, some people in the neighborhood stopped being (fake) polite to him. They were a little cold toward him. Most still waved, but a couple of them were downright hostile.

Grant was actually proud that these people didn’t like him. They were the ones using their government jobs to hassle the little people and take everyone’s money to waste on their stupid utopian dreams. They were the kind of people who had plumbers charged with crimes for installing water heaters.