Happy New Year

Reflecting back on the past year, we seem to be an increasingly offended people.  We seem to be increasingly angry and annoyed by those around us, particularly when those around us seem to get such joy from being annoying.  Whether it is the opposing party in Washington or Springfield, MTV or A&E, people are really starting to tick us off. 

And granted, there is no shortage of really bad behavior.  This year our fellow Americans have been rude, ignorant, and often gross.  Those charlatans across the aisle have made terrible decisions that have most likely caused irreplaceable damage to our fragile republic.  Those “entertainers” on stage and in front of the camera have said things that polite people do not say, and made gestures that decent folk do not make.  Due to our seemingly abundant leisure time and media access, we did not have to look far this year to find something so offensive it merited posting and reposting, tweeting and retweeting, again and again and again and again.

Being offended, of course, is not new.  Our cultural ancestors became so offended in the last quarter of the 18^th century that they started shooting people.  When the shooting stopped they took a break and created a really impressive form of government, and then they started shooting people again.  As American history has unfolded over the last two centuries, it has really been mostly a series of arguments interspersed by dodging bullets.

In some respects, this arguing and fighting is natural, both biologically and culturally.  Like all animals, on one level we fight for limited resources.  As human beings accustomed to debate, on another level we fight for our ideas and ideals.  Without this struggle and panache for conflict, we would not really be who we are.  After all, before the majestic bald eagle was adopted as our national symbol, a much lowlier yet no less dangerous indigenous animal was often used as aggressive icon:  the rattlesnake.  Well before we minted coins with fancy Latin phrases or lofty inclinations toward God, a much earthier motto prevailed:  “Don’t Tread on Me.”

The curious thing about rattlesnakes though, is that they do not have a habit of just biting random ankles. They do not crawl around the North American underbrush looking for trouble.  Rodents?  Yes.  Nourishment?  Of course.  But a fight?  That’s just dumb.  Both rattlesnakes and bald eagles have better things to do than look for things to bother them.  They are usually pretty busy struggling to pass on their DNA.   

We are human beings, though, and admittedly, our existence is characterized by much more than mere survival.  We are not snakes.  We are not birds.  Sometimes, often times, we do need to fight for more than just our lives.  As moral agents, it is our responsibility to fight the good fight against the vices of this world.

But what, exactly, constitutes the good fight?  What ideas and practices are actually worth getting upset about?  The Gadsden flag motto was not, “Don’t Annoy Me,” or “Don’t Offend Me.”  It was “Don’t Tread on Me,” and getting “treaded” upon is not the same thing as being offended.  A snake that is treaded upon is in physical danger.  A snake that is offended is just being a cartoon.

           

 Thus, as 2013 draws to its exasperated close, perhaps we should consider a different approach.  Perhaps we should ask ourselves a new set of questions in 2014.  Instead of getting annoyed by other people’s bad behavior and “discussing” it into perpetuity, what would happen if we focused more on our own less-than-post-worthy antics?  Instead of being offended every time we turned on the television or logged onto the computer, what would happen if we quietly and diligently “tended to our own gardens,” so to speak, and dirtied idle hands making certain our own branches bore more fruit?

             

What might happen to our nation if we all focused more on the giant planks of wood sticking out of our own eyes and less on the specks of sawdust we see in each other?  If nothing else, wouldn’t we at least have better vision?

Christmas Card, 2013

This past year has taught us many things, but perhaps the most important life lesson to come out of 2013 is this: brochures lie.  Traveling with small children is a bad idea.  If you see a brochure full of smiling little kids, those kids have just been fed an entire bar of chocolate.  Brochures trick us into believing that we, too, could enjoy a relaxed, fun-filled day of deep sea fishing with the entire family.  You cannot.  It is time we face the facts.  There are some places in this world where parents should not bring anyone under the age of ten, and that place is outside the home.

Our most ridiculous “life lesson” of the year occurred in February.  We thought it would be a nice idea to take the kids to an indoor water park for our daughter’s birthday, and so the four of us secured a room at such a place in Indianapolis.

Things went fairly well until we pulled into the hotel parking lot and were informed by both children that, despite having had access to a delicious McDonald’s breakfast ninety minutes before, they were now deliriously hungry and could only be satiated with a delicious McDonald’s lunch. So we bought them cheeseburgers.  They were delicious.  Unfortunately, at least one of the sandwiches was perhaps undercooked, as our son threw up on himself mere seconds after finishing his meal. 

If you have ever cleaned up this kind of mess, the one were the mess has been stolen from the toddler’s stomach and redistributed onto his clothes, the floorboard and, most importantly, the cracks and crevices of the car seat, then you know that this is not how wonderful travel memories begin.  This joy of discovery continued a half-hour later upon entering our hotel room, which sported a leaking roof and smelled like an understaffed dog kennel.  Now we had competing disgusting odors vying for supremacy, so we cleaned off our son’s clothes as well as we could and found a new room.

By this point the kids were anxious to take advantage of the water park, so we decided my wife would change them into their swimsuits while I finished brining our unnecessarily large array of belongings into the hotel.  This too, was a bad idea, as our son, at that point in his life, had just grown tall enough to reach most door handles.  In an admirable display of comic genius, he chose to make his escape from the hotel room not only when he was entirely naked, but as were his mother and sister.

Thus, he shot down the hallways sans clothes.  My wife grabbed a towel and gave chase.  The door shut behind her.  Locked.  Our daughter, who is capable of being hysterical on an absolute whim, began to shriek like a crazy person because she was alone in a strange hotel room and believed she was trapped while her mostly naked family members were running down the hallway outside.

Because desperation is, of course, the mother of intense foot speed, my wife soon snatched her youngest and began to plead with her oldest to “please open the door mommy needs to put on her clothes!”  As mentioned, the hotel door was pretty easy to open from the inside, and so the remarkably amusing scene was kept pretty short.  Our daughter, still sobbing, opened the door.  My wife, nearly sobbing, entered the door, and then that door was shut and locked by deadbolt.

The only thing that kept me from asking the obvious question upon returning to the room, which would have been “Why in the world did you lock the door with the deadbolt if you knew I was bringing stuff up?” was divine providence. After all, asking that question under those circumstances would have probably been grounds for justifiable homicide.  God clearly did not want me to die at that point, because who, then, would be available to bring up the rest of our wardrobe?

This story should end now, but it does not, because we have not yet reached the part where we had to evacuate the building at 4:17 in the morning.  Usually such predawn exits occur due to false fire alarms.  This alarm, though, was not false, because the elevator nearest our room, perhaps the oldest in the state, really was on fire.  Now, instead of half the family running down the hallway entirely naked, the entire family ran down the hallway with pajamas and coats.  Fortunately I grabbed the keys, so we quickly found suitable shelter in our vehicle, which, of course, still smelled like toddler vomit.

Despite this misadventure, we just recently took our children out in the open again, albeit with much less public nudity.  We took them to Indiana, of all places, but this time, to minimize our exposure, we avoided the state’s capital and instead went to French Lick.  Here we stayed at the historic French Lick Resort and enjoyed a sugary ride on their version of the Polar Express.  Here we met three different incarnations of Santa Claus himself, each of whom was capable of mystifying our daughter and alarming our son. 

Here we dead bolted our room immediately and avoided fast food hamburgers.  We may be silly for traveling with our children, but some lessons cannot be ignored. 

So, in closing, we hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.  And remember to always lock the door.  

"Am I on the nice list?"

"I am?!  Even after Indy?  Yeah!"