First strip act

It was one of those fund-raisers Rock loved. He knew on a first-name basis at least a quarter of the roughly two-hundred people gathered at First Tee of Little Rock to raise money for the club, which claims to target underprivileged children for its lessons in golf and life.
Everyone there acted as if they were happy as hell to see everyone else. There were big smiles all around as Rock stepped from the A-framed pro shop toward the driving range, where several PGA Tour players with local connections were teaching a few of the children gathered around the range.
After an hour or so of pure entertainment, Rock walked from the practice range and through the First Tee building to the parking lot. At some point, for a reason he would never know, Rock took off his white long-sleeve T-shirt, an act he wasn't even aware of until he suddenly found himself beside his car with the shirt in his right hand. He heard people laughing, surely at him he supposed.
Rock immediately put the shirt back on and drove away as quickly as possible. He wondered on the way home when he took the shirt off and how many people had seen him, and furthermore whether he was losing his mind.

Gym cats

Rock felt as though he were stuck, perhaps for the rest of his life, in a zone that extended from his bedrooms to the exterior door of his back porch.
While on his bed, all he could do was watch a video display of cats playing basketball. Once he made it to his couch he could also attempt to read email on his laptop, but no matter where he was, Rock wondered how long this condition would persist and when his essential supplies would run out.
After the second tube of energy gel registered, Rock was fine, and awake. He was also very hungry.

Mankind at risk

When Rock woke up, he was on his back on the rug in his back bedroom. He knew he had just worked out a deal that would cause the end of the earth and mankind if he were to repeat his first move of the day. Unfortunately, he wasn't sure what it was, so he was afraid to move at all.
After approximately ten minutes, Rock decided to walk to his refrigerator and eat something. Once there, he chose apple sauce and ate it directly from the container with a table spoon. Rock was pretty sure he'd never done that before

Abandoned furniture

It confused Rock to be awakened from a nap by a garbage truck parked in his front yard. He stepped onto his porch to see why it was there and noticed a wooden shipping crate and piles of boards he assumed had come from other crates. As the driver finished picking the wood from his lawn, Rock saw that his cat Pam had run under the front of the truck.
Rock ran to the cab and asked the driver to wait. "My cat's under your truck. Hold on until I can get her, would you."
With very little encouragement from Rock, Pam scurried away and across his yard into the street.
"Thanks a lot, man," Rock said.
"Yeah, no problem," the driver said. He drove away across the edge of the driveway, and Rock noticed something crazy. Behind his cars on the driveway were several large pieces of furniture, apparently new. Rock knew his house had no room nor need for more furniture, so he began to stack it on the edge of the street, frustrated that it would sit there for a week before the truck returned.

Harding

Rock was on the campus of Harding University for the first time since the late spring of 2007. He was there to attend a basketball game but while wandering through the hallway of Rhodes Fieldhouse ran into the head football coach.
"Coach, it's good to see you," Rock said. "Oh, and by the way, congratulations on your championship. I just found out about it."
Harding's football team won the NCAA Division II championship in 2008, or maybe 2009, but Rock had been unaware of it until minutes before he talked to the coach, when he saw the trophy and other tributes on display in Rhodes.

The bench

Rock literally had no idea why he was a college basketball coach, but suddenly he was. He awoke to this realization with a couple of minutes left in a game.
His team had an insurmountable lead, and it occurred to Rock that he should probably take his starters out. He turned to the bench. He didn't know anyone's name. No one looked familiar to him, so he asked the nearest player for help.
"What's the blonde-headed guy's name?" Rock said.
The player looked confused. "Coach, that's Larry. How could you not know?"

Bertrando

The Kentucky Derby was a few days away, and Rock was back in the barns at Churchill Downs, seated in an old, flimsy aluminum folding chair in front of several contenders.
Bertrando, a tall white colt with yellow splotches, was among them and stood out for Rock in size alone. His head was particularly enormous.
It was late in the afternoon and Rock watched as Bertrando stretched out in front of him until his head was beside the chair. The colt then leaned it against Rock's left shoulder and closed his eyes and was almost instantly asleep.

Clothes day

There was no way to know why, but Rock was up early to return as a student to Russellville High School. He put on a light blue, oxford cloth shirt, and noticed it was stained, and next that the collar of his white undershirt was ragged and frayed and yellowed.
Rock's mother was at his house.
"Mom, I have to get some new clothes," he said. "When I get home this afternoon, I'm going shopping."

Panic

They were out on a bright blue morning, a two-minute walk from their one-floor apartment building on the south edge of downtown Little Rock. Rock was with Pam, the cute character from the sitcom The Office, when they suddenly saw from several blocks away hundreds of people running directly away from the center of downtown.
Rock felt fear surge.
"What are they running from?" Pam said. "What should we do?"
Rock considered joining the crowd in its flight but decided instead to go indoors. "Let's go to your apartment," he said. "We should be safe there."

Blocked exit

The original exit for the Blackwell liquor store on I-40 had been closed for years, so Rock was surprised when his high school track coach Don Carnahan slowed almost to a stop to take it.
He was surprised not only that Carnahan didn't realize the exit was closed but also that he would want to go to a liquor store. Rock had known Carnahan for a little more than forty years and had never known him to drink.
"Coach, I hate to tell you, but that exit's been closed for at least fifteen years, maybe more," Rock said.
Carnahan backed away from the fence that sealed the exit and returned to the flow of traffic. "I don't think it's been closed that long," he said.

Jen

It had been fourteen years since Rock last saw his ex-girlfriend Jen, but he suddenly found himself in her small one-room house with her husband Dave and teenage step-son.
Their house was in a poor, working-class neighborhood in Little Rock, and Rock listened as Jen and the boy complained about Dave.
"I've been trying to get Jen to leave him for me," the boy said.
"To tell you the truth, I've considered it," Jen said.
This stunned Rock, almost as much as Jen's appearance when they were reintroduced after so many years. She was no longer thin nor pretty. Her face was bloated and weathered and pocked in a way that made her look as if she were poorly nourished and a heavy drinker.

Telephone bill

This was hard for Rock to figure. Apparently he had made a phone call late at night to the old Aikman house in Russellville and then failed to hang up, or something like that. All he knew is that someone told him the Aikman's had been informed that he was responsible for a fraud charge of three-thousand dollars, payable to AT&T.
Rock was awake for nearly an hour before he knew for sure he didn't owe anyone any money.