Drop 1: Preface + Chapter One
This is the beginning of a fun little short story I wrote while I am editing He Walks With The Dead. No LinkedIn version. No repurposed post. Just something that started with a gazebo, a garage, and a question I could not stop asking.
It is a work of fiction. Mostly. Dr. Helena Voss is not real. The Institute for Male Behavioral Studies does not exist. The gazebo, however, is entirely real and was assembled in my driveway, slightly crooked, adding character.
This is Part One of six. A new chapter drops each week. I hope it makes you laugh. I hope it makes you send it to someone who will recognize themselves in it, or recognize someone they live with, which is a different and arguably more satisfying experience.
It is a very different story from He Walks With The Dead. Mostly fiction.
Welcome to the field study.
Preface
It was a Tuesday. Dr. Helena Voss was visiting her sister in Hilo, Hawaii, when she witnessed something that would change the course of her career. Her brother-in-law, an otherwise functioning adult male with two graduate degrees and a reasonable credit score, spent one hour searching a garage for a gazebo.
The gazebo was on a shelf. At eye level. In a box that said GAZEBO.
Her sister found it in thirty seconds without putting down her coffee.
Dr. Voss stood very still. She had the feeling scientists describe as the moment before everything changes. She took out her notebook. She wrote three words.
What is happening.
Fifteen years later, she has 340 pages of answers.
Chapter One: The Condition
Caecitas Masculina is a neurological condition affecting the male of the human species. The name derives from the Latin for blindness, which is perhaps unfair, as the subjects can see perfectly well. They simply cannot see the thing they are looking for.
This is an important distinction.
The condition was first documented in 1994 by a researcher in Oslo who noticed that her husband could not locate the butter despite holding the refrigerator door open for four minutes while standing directly in front of the butter. She published a short paper. It received little attention. Her husband did not read it because he could not find it, despite it being emailed directly to him with the subject line PLEASE READ THIS.
Dr. Voss considers this woman a pioneer.
The condition presents across four primary symptom clusters, each of which will be examined in turn.
To be continued - Chapter 2 (The Gazebo Incident) drops next week.