Gruffy Pups and Christmas Fronds

Social media is not really my thing. I do have a Twitter account and you can follow me if you want, but I cannot imagine why you would.  I very rarely post pictures, either, mostly because I don’t own a smart phone and it would just take more steps than I could really justify.  My food is not that photogenic.

Occasionally, though, I do use Facebook to link to my blog or to share some inane commentary on some inane topic like the new Star Wars movie.  Also—and I’m a little embarrassed to admit this—I did recently chime in on the whole “Christmas” debate we’ve been having for the last half decade.  I could summarize it for you, but I think our best option is to just copy and paste it and show it to you verbatim.  After all, I still have gifts to wrap.

“Calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree does not offend me.  I have a mortgage, two little kids and a pregnant wife.  I have actual real life-type stuff to occupy my mental energy.  However, calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree does not make you sound suave or progressive.  It makes me think that maybe you just kind of climbed off the spaceship and no one has really filled you in on stuff. 

A Christmas tree is a Christmas tree.  It just is.  That’s its name.  Calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree so as to not offend people is kind of like saying we’re going to start calling bulldogs ‘gruffy pups’ or something equally as dumb.  ‘Oh, you know, in much of America, when people hear the word “bull” they think of an animal that spends a good chunk of its time making love with all the girl cows, and, well, we just don’t want to offend anyone who might think that’s too weird, so let’s rename it something less likely to make people think of cow sex.’  No.  That’s dumb.  A bull dog is a bull dog.  That is the name it has. 

You can call a Christmas tree whatever you want.  You can call it a magic glow bush and I won’t lose sleep over it, but please don’t imagine you are making the world a better place by basically wiping your armpit with the English language. 

However, please feel free to wish me happy holidays.  Do it.  That’s awesome.  I will smile and probably wish you something equally as cheerful back and we’ll both be better off for the very reasonable and civil exchange we had as part of our pluralistic society.  Cool.  But calling a Christmas tree a holiday tree?  I will just smirk and give you the same look I give my kids when they try to convince me orange Skittles is a fruit.”

Now, objectively, that is hilarious.  If I was a humor writer I would totally put that in a column.  Much more importantly, however, others thought it was kind of funny, too.   I think it earned fifty or so “Likes.”  It also garnered a pretty detailed, albeit good-natured, comment from one of my wife’s cousins. 

He is a math professor, and, thus, by default, an arch nemesis.

As an important side note, people who teach the humanities, like history and English, are in a constant and mostly pretend struggle against those who teach the “hard” subjects, such as math and science. Our rivalry very much parallels the grudge between super hero teams like the Avengers and the X-Men.  Officially we are on the same side in a cosmic battle against ignorance.  Unfortunately, we often end up using our tremendous abilities to punch each other through skyscrapers in an effort to boost ratings.

My wife’s cousin did not use his sinister math powers in his Facebook commentary, however.  He instead used a deft combination of history and linguistic evolution, which is kind of like injuring Captain America with his own shield:  I should have seen it coming. (Yeah, I guess I’m saying the humanities are the Avengers in this dumb analogy.  Sorry if that offends.)   

To summarize, he basically pointed out that calling a Christmas tree a Christmas tree would have been almost sacrilegious a mere 300 years ago.  After all, putting trees in our home and decorating them is very much a holdover from a more pagan era. 

His point was well taken and very valid.  Language absolutely does change, and we would all probably be better off focusing more of our energy on things like our relationships with real people we really know instead of getting worked up about vast impersonal trends over which we have little control.

However, what still bugs me about the whole “holiday tree” thing is not so much the semantics itself as the strategy.  Political correctness attempts to change language from the top down.  Those with influence basically use that influence to modify the language, fully aware that through language we make meaning, and thus behavior. 

I am a big proponent of civility, but modifying language in this way is terribly insincere. In a democracy language should change organically.  It should change from the bottom up, by its roots.

You know, like a Christmas frond or something.

Enough Mugs!

With less than a year until the general election, it is time we come to terms with the fact that I will not be your next President.  Although I am constitutionally eligible to hold office, 2016 will not be our year.  2020 does not look good, either, but we will not cross that bridge when we do not come to it.

Ladies and gentlemen, our entire campaign would have been an uphill battle.  A profound lack of funding, combined with my own dismal charisma ratings and almost non-existent name-recognition, would have proven to be insurmountable obstacles.  However, not all is lost.

The ideas we have generated over the course of the last seven minutes, ideas born out of the incendiary environment that is modern America, can still be brought to light.  These are ideas that other, less-losable candidates can carry with them to the White House.  These ideas are as follows:

In the realm of health care, we propose that health care cost be based on actual market forces, not the whims of monkeys throwing darts at numbers.  If you do not believe in the monkey-dart hypothesis, then you have clearly never looked at an Explanation of Benefits form sent to you by your insurance company.  These forms are full of figures that not only seem to have no real basis in tangible health care products, these numbers seem to fluctuate based on a patient’s level of health insurance and number of lawn ornaments.

This is like walking into a car dealership and having this conversation.

Customer:  How much is this car?

Car Dealer:  Well, that depends. How much insurance do you have?

Customer:  Uh, what?

This is absurd.  We propose that health care costs be based on how quickly the customer can either run a quarter mile or how far they can throw a can of soup.  This is equally as stupid as monkeys flinging darts, but at least this way the customer will have a modest incentive to stay in shape, which will lower health costs overall.

In the realm of cyber security, we propose that all social media sights establish what will henceforth be known as a “Trending Filter.”  Why?  Because I don’t know care if Alyssa Milano is breast feeding her kid. I don’t.  There may have been a point in my life, around 1992, maybe, when this would have been news to me.  That day has passed.  Just because I have logged into my Facebook account does not mean I am a bored pervert.

We propose that these “Trending Filters” be color-coded in such a way that the user can select to what level of stupid they are exposed.  For example, a college-educated, political moderate who does not believe in ghosts could set their trending filter to “Fresh Laundered Khaki.” An unemployed teenage boy, on the other hand, could set their trending filter to “Fifty Shades of By Myself.”  Whatever works.  We are just tired of being tempted to click on stories about unicorn fossils.

On the manufacturing front, it has come to our attention that there are too many coffee mugs.  My kitchen cabinet alone has three times as many mugs as any reasonable person needs, collected over years as a recipient of last-minute gift-giving. 

We propose the institution of a “Year of Mugilee” cycle.  Mugs can be manufactured and sold for three years.  Then, on the fourth year, no mugs can be created.  You can borrow mugs and give old mugs as gifts, but no new mugs can be made.  Over time, this will decrease the clutter in our kitchen cabinets and also allow for a more pragmatic use of porcelain.  Admittedly, this is not our strongest idea.

Our final plan comes from the world of education.  Many students, beginning at about the age of seven months, begin to develop a disdain for formal schooling.  This distaste originates from a number of factors, but whatever the cause, students who do not like school almost always make it less productive for the other three people in the room.

Our current system makes students attend school until they are almost adults.  That’s dumb.  We propose the establishment of giant community food plots designed to give unmotivated students something to do besides text each other behind my back.  Students who do not want to go to school can be bused, free of charge, to these food plots.  Here they will be given the opportunity to grow a variety of geographically viable produce.  In lieu of grades, students will be compensated with fresh fruit while the excess produce is donated to community food banks.  Communities without food banks can put the food in mugs.

In closing, I would make a pretty bad President.

Gravity

Skiing downhill is easy.  This might sound ridiculous for those of you who, like me, have skied and almost died in the process. The reality is, however, that going from the top of the mountain to the bottom is not all that complicated.  If you are not overly concerned with how you look, whom you hit, or what bones you break, skiing downhill is simple.  Ski slopes are slippery.  Gravity does most of the work.

Skiing uphill, however, is a heftier trick, which brings us, naturally, to a discussion about  pornography.

As many of you know, Playboy was in the news lately for making a rather peculiar announcement: it is no longer going to publish non-articles.  This magazine, known for more than half a century as a place to find non-articles, will stop doing so, and the reason is quite simple:  market saturation.  The supply of non-articles has become so shockingly immense, so easily available on laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets, that apparently it’s just not reasonable to actually try to sell such a product on glossy paper.

Thus, Mr. Hefner, the magazine’s founder, has inadvertently become this weird “victim” of his own enormous success.  I use the term “victim,” loosely, of course, because, by worldly standards, Mr. Hefner has done quite well.  Over the course of his nine decades he has garnered wealth, fame, and the consequences of each.  He’s had a life.  However, his flagship publication, which reached its peak in 1975 with over five million subscribers, now has a circulation of around 800,000. What makes the entire story ironic is that one could argue that he designed this scenario sixty years ago.

From the very beginning, Hefner saw his publication as more than just a way for men and adolescent boys to look at pictures of naked women.  Hefner saw himself as a top general in a 20^th century American culture war.  He was going to change the way American society viewed sexuality. He was going to fundamentally adjust what he considered puritanical sexual mores.

And he did.  Not by himself, of course, but by packaging images of “the girl next door” in between engaging text, he designed his magazine to be a more respectable alternative to the seedier mediums stashed away in the closets across America.  Over time this very juxtaposition diminished what many considered illicit content in the first place.  Although considered profane at the time, the earlier centerfolds would hardly raise an eyebrow now in few places outside the Middle East.

This erosion was by design.  When commenting in the New York Times about the decision, Scott Flanders, Playboy’s chief executive, had this to say, “That battle has been fought and won.  You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passé at this juncture.”

            Before continuing, I think it’s reasonable to pause and just let that comment sink in.  Mr. Flanders, to my knowledge, was not being ironic or making a clumsy attempt at humor.       He apparently equates being able to view “every sex act imaginable for free” as some kind of first amendment victory lap, which now brings us back to skiing.  

The “slippery slope” theory basically states that once a society allows one thing to happen, such as looking at centerfolds of scantily clad women, it will eventually allow anything to happen, such as, well, the above paragraph. 

Now, it is important to admit that this process does not always play itself out.  For example, early immigration patterns caused many Anglo-American Protestants to fear that the nation would eventually be ruled by the Vatican.  Let in the Irish-Catholics, the thinking went, and eventually the entire nation would be run by papists.  Clearly those concerns were unfounded, as evidenced by a brief glance at an American history book.

            However, sometimes the “slippery slope” theory is spot on, which seems to be the case here. 

            In closing, I am not, by nature, much of a finger-pointer.  For one, my own life has hardly been one to emulate, and secondly, the world is just too complicated to try and blame one effect on a solitary cause. It is worth mentioning, though, that as our culture’s acceptance of pornography and pornographic imagery has mellowed, the divorce rate has gone up, sexual assaults on campus have increased, global human sex trafficking is running rampant, and the exploitation of our most innocent has only worsened. 

Can any of these societal ills be blamed entirely on pornography?  Of course not.

            But I do have a skiing question to ask before it gets too cold:  are we getting close to the bottom?

Push

Elevators bug me.  Although needed, they nonetheless combine experiences better-left alone:  tight spaces, awkward silences, and, of course, the even more awkward forced conversation.

“Kind of hot in here, huh?”

“Well, it is a metal box.”

            If I can, I usually try to take the stairs.

Sometimes, though, you can’t take the stairs, which happened to be the case this past July.

On our way home from Orlando this summer, we meandered over to Panama City Beach.  Avid readers—both of you—are already familiar with my take on the wisdom behind interstate domestic travel.  However, after successfully not losing anybody at Disney World, we looked forward to a few days on the coast to perhaps actually relax before going home.

This was kind of dumb.  We were still in Florida, after all, on one of the most densely populated beaches in North America.  To add insult to injury and perhaps even as part of some karmic vendetta for a recent column, the city was also hosting a giant girls’ softball tournament.

We were staying on the twenty-fifth floor of a twenty-six story building, and although the view from our balcony was lovely, anytime we wanted to go to the beach we had to pack enough stuff to supply a short camping trip.  Also, since every other floor was also full of people wanting to “enjoy” the beach, it took us a half hour to go from our room to our coveted spot in the sand.

Granted, these are all first world problems, but claustrophobia knows no borders, especially when you’re trying to hold three boogie boards and a set of beach chairs under one sunburned arm.  

About midway through our stay in paradise, however, the four of us decided to take an evening stroll.  The din of the day was over, the air cooler, the beach calm.  Time to breath. 

Before continuing, it’s important that I pause briefly to explain that both my kids like to push elevator buttons.  They fight about who receives this privilege and their rivalry has become so intense that we have designed a pattern to ensure that each of them gets to push a button at least once per trip.

It was my daughter’s turn to push the down button, which meant my son had hijacked her turn and scuttled away to avoid getting punched.  She then pushed the down button a few more times, just to be sure, and stood directly in front of the elevator door so she could “rush the box” and snatch his down button turn away from him.  With both of us occupied with scolding him, neither of us noticed when the door opened.

           By the time we did notice, our daughter was already in the empty elevator, and the door was shut.

           Before continuing, it’s important that I pause briefly to make this really rather simple public service announcement:  teach your kids how to run an elevator by themselves.  Our daughter did not possess this skill, because, after all, why would she ever be on an elevator without an adult, right?

I am not good at numbers, but even with my stunted math skills, I quickly realized the potential gravity of the situation.  Eight elevators, twenty-six floors, hundreds of rooms, thousands of people. The prospect for an unhappy ending was quite real.

We panicked.  With my wife screaming orders toward the elevator shaft and terrible thoughts free falling through my mind, I ran down the hallway toward the stairs with a misguided “plan” to stop on each floor.  Before I made it to the door, though, my wife shouted.

“She’s on seventeen!”

A nice lady with a small dog, who was on another elevator that happened to stop on our floor, mentioned, after prompting, that she had indeed seen a frightened little girl moments before. While my wife and son stayed put, the lady and I rode the elevator back down to seventeen where, sure enough, we found my daughter unsettled but safe.

It lasted maybe five minute.  Five horrible minutes, which was more than enough time to convince both of our kids to never again enter an elevator without holding at least one of our hands.

We have all run through the specifics of those moments many, many times, and we always came back to that lady.  Why did she happen to stop on the seventeenth floor, stop again on twenty-five, go back down to seventeen, and not once actually get off the elevator?  Was she just taking her dog out for a walk, and just happen to be at the right blessed place at the right blessed time?  

Or do we consider a more supernaturally grafted explanation?

Elevators still bug me, but this question does not.  Sometimes the obvious button to push goes up.

Sacrifice

Most Americans are OK with abortions, at least under certain circumstances.  According to the most recent Gallup poll, a little over half of us, fifty-one percent, believe abortions should be permissible in cases such as rape, incest, or when the health of the mother is at risk.  While only twenty-nine percent believe abortions should be allowed in any situation, and an even lower percentage, nineteen, believe abortions should be banned entirely, the majority of those polled wind up in this fuzzy middle.

These statistics, perhaps, are not surprising. For many Americans, abortion is a complicated issue involving multiple lives.  What might be surprising, however, is that none of these numbers have fluctuated much in forty years.  Today’s percentages are nearly identical to what they were in 1975, two years after Roe vs. Wade.

Thus, the purpose of this column will not be to persuade you one way or another.  If you’re literate enough to read a newspaper, then you probably already know into which percent you would fit.

Now, granted, I am tempted to use this forum to share with you my own personal views.  I would like to spend a few paragraphs expanding on how I believe that life in general is miraculous and human life is especially sacred.    I could also share with you my own political ideas on the topic.  I could go into detail about how, due to the above mentioned statistics, I think the focus for everyone should be on minimizing abortions as much as possible through education and support for local crisis pregnancy centers.  After all, in a democracy, when over two-thirds of the population believes something should be at least quasi-legal, throwing all your resources behind trying to make it illegal is a bit like trying to plug up a dam with a stick.  We might consider using buckets.

Regardless, I will spare you that column, because in the end, what would happen is this:  those of you who agreed with me would put down the paper and say, “Yep, he’s right,” those who disagreed with me would click on a different link and mutter, “What an idiot,” and both groups would move on to their next moment in time. 

Personally, I think our time is too valuable for that.  We are all too busy to rehash old arguments.  However, I do have a request, and as an English teacher, it is a request born out of a need for clarity. It is the same ask my students often hear:  be precise.

Thus, I would ask that we stop referring to abortion as murder.  It isn’t murder.  Murder is a crime, and abortion is legal, and so it cannot, technically, be murder.  When we use words like “murder” we get both sides angrier than they already are and nothing gets accomplished. No one gets rescued when we shout “murder.”

I would also ask that we stop referring to it as choice.  It isn’t a choice.  A choice is something you make at a drive through window.  A choice is a plane ticket to one destination over another.  When we use sterile words like “choice,” we dismiss in a very profane way the gravity, for every person involved, of the procedure.  No one is fooled when we whisper “choice.”

The word we should be using is one you might not consider when it comes to this topic, and that is “sacrifice.”  More importantly, we are talking about human sacrifice. 

Clearly the pre-born human is being sacrificed for one or more reasons.  It is being sacrificed due to economic hardship, unanticipated health concerns, social pressure, or a bleak combination of all three.  The human mother, however—a person rarely discussed in this conversation, weirdly enough—is also sacrificing something. She is sacrificing potential.  She is sacrificing, perhaps, many years’ worth of lost moments, when she must ponder the twin questions, “Did I do right?” and “What if?”

Every human involved—the father, the family, the medical personnel—sacrifice part of themselves in an abortion. That is why it’s so important that we get our terminology exactly right, because minimizing human sacrifice as much as possible—ending human sacrifice as quickly as we can—seems to be an idea that any rationale American could get behind.

After all, we’re not exactly the only culture that practices human sacrifice.  The history books are full of them.

Outsource

Only a handful of years after President Johnson began his war on poverty, but decades before our current war on terror, Richard Nixon, in the summer of 1971, declared war on drugs.  Nixon's proclamation, that "America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse," was initiated in part by an alarming report that a full fifteen percent of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were addicted to heroin.

Part of Nixon’s strategy was the creation of the Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention, which federalized under one organization a number of anti-drug initiatives.  Another component, much less well-known, was to actually study what happened to these addicted soldiers once they returned home.

            The White House chose Lee Robins, a well-respected psychiatrist of the era, to spearhead this effort.  Before long a system was set up to test soldiers before their homecoming.  According to her research, a full 20 percent of the enlisted men she interviewed self-identified as addicts.  These soldiers were kept in Vietnam until they “dried out,” and once they returned to the United States, Robins kept tabs.  According to her final report, close to 95% of these soldiers remained clean a year after their return.

            Now, this was a pleasant enough chapter in a much longer, much less pleasant story, but it also flew in the face of what was considered “common knowledge” at the time.  According to an NPR article from January of 2012, Robins spent years defending her final analysis.  After all, close to 90 percent of domestic heroin addicts who had gone through rehab usually relapsed within the first twelve months. That statistic was basically the exact opposite of what was happening with the veteran group.  What was going on?

            The article continued by suggesting that many of the soldiers had “outsourced” their behavior, so to speak, to their very intense environment.  Although many of them were indeed physiologically dependent on the narcotic, once clean, they had an easier time not relapsing.  Psychiatrists who have studied her report believe that this was in part because the environment in which the soldiers had become addicted was so dramatically different than the one to which they returned.  The theory is that because domestic addicts did not have such an abrupt and extreme change in surroundings, their relapse rates were much higher.

            So, what does this forty-five year old study have to do with us?  Unfortunately, quite a bit.

            As most of you are well aware, heroin abuse in our community has spiked in recent years.  Unfortunately, the dramatic increase in heroin-related deaths is not isolated to this region of Illinois or the country at large.  A terrible combination of relatively cheap product and sophisticated distribution has led to a plague that most small law enforcement agencies simply do not have the resources to combat effectively.  The Effingham area, due to infrastructure that is generally counted as a blessing, seems to be particularly cursed.

            Now, I am not so naïve as to believe that the answer to such a serious problem might find itself inside a bi-monthly newspaper column.  However, it is worth mentioning one commonality that most recovering addicts share is a genuine change in scenery.  Regardless of the bad behavior, whether it is shooting up, smoking, drinking or even overeating, most bad habits cannot simply be “will-powered” away.  Addicts must often remove themselves from the environment and the people with whom they have come to associate with their addiction.

            Although he used different terminology, the apostle Paul basically said as much when he told the Corinthians to “get rid of the old yeast in order to become a new unleavened batch.”  I’m paraphrasing, of course, but the takeaway is this:  if someone is serious about starting a new life, that person must first end the old.  For some that might be as simple—and as difficult—as removing toxins from their homes.  For others, it might mean removing toxic people from their lives.             

            America is a martial society, often willing to wage “war” on complicated problems—poverty, drugs, terror—in an effort to weaken their destructive power.  This panache for the aggressive metaphor is perhaps understandable.  After all, we are a country that was both born by revolution and emboldened by many military victories.

            When we are tempted to use this jargon, however, we should also remember that there are those among us, often terribly young, who are fighting very real battles on a daily basis.  If you know someone like this, take a page out of recent history and do whatever you can to get them far out of their jungle.

Turtles and Frogs

The average four-year-old, supposedly, asks 437 questions per day.  Who knows where this curiously specific number came from, but I saw it on a sign at the St. Louis Children’s Museum just last week, so it must be true.  Of course, this is also the same business that believes the fair market value for one stick of string cheese is a dollar fifty, so I do have my suspicions. 

Regardless, it is nice to know that our own residential 4-year-old is quite average on even his most average day, asking more questions than we really even know what to do with.  Some of them are fairly general, “Hey, ya’ know what?” and some are quite specific, “Why don’t frogs die in the water?”

Being as he’s getting a new sister soon, he of course posed that quintessential question, “How did the baby get inside mommy’s stomach?” Like all lazy parents, we went Socratic on him and asked, “Well, how do you think the baby got inside Mommy?”  He considered this awhile and eventually decided that his mother must have eaten a pregnant bug. Granted, that is probably inaccurate, but considering how busy my wife and I have been the last few years, we really aren’t for sure how it happened, either.

The big whopper, though, came when he asked, “What is ‘revenge’?”

He had picked up the term from a recent episode of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  The turtles, as you know, spend a large chunk of their time doing what they can to keep Shredder from seeking just that, so it was a fair question.  We tried to explain the concept as well as we could without giving him any ideas about seeking his own vengeance for whatever slight his sister might commit.  We also tried to end the conversation with the standard, “And it isn’t something God wants us to do.”

He thought about that for quite some time before adding, “Then why is there even the word?”

And that’s a good question, because, why is there such a thing as revenge in the first place if God doesn’t want it around?  In fact, that’s perhaps the number one question many people have been asking for thousands of years.  If God is real, and God is good, then how can evil exist? 

Now, before continuing, let’s just reiterate something most of you already know.  I am not a theologian, so no need to take notes.  However, I personally think that one of the simplest explanations, and, thus, perhaps the best for this question in particular, comes from the world of physics. 

Many of you have probably already heard the argument that suggests that “evil” as an actual thing doesn’t really exist anymore than cold or darkness.

For example, nothing really generates cold, at least not naturally. “Cold” is merely a word we’ve come up with that describe a lack of heat.   The sun makes heat; but Antarctica doesn’t really make cold.  Thus, the colder something is, the less heat it has, not the more cold it holds.

Darkness, too, is not technically there; it’s simply an absence of light.  Using this analogy, the argument quietly moves to the realm of cosmic theology and suggests that evil is not really a “thing”; it is simply the absence of God.  The more evil an event seems to us, the further away that event is from God.

Although a tight little argument and perhaps even logical in its own right, this explanation is also quite sterile.  While this reasoning may, for some, explain “how” what we call evil can exist in a universe constructed by a benevolent deity, it still does not explain “why.”  If God is God, by his nature he could alleviate the potential for evil.  If God is good, why would he allow even a portion of his creation to make choices that lead to poor behavior?

Personally, I think the answer lies partially in that particular abstract noun, “choice.”

Without choice, authentic relationship is not possible.  Without moral agency, humans are simply clever animals, using our giant brains to manipulate the environment toward our own instinctual ends.  Without free will, in fact, it would be impossible to demonstrate moral agency in the first place.

This, then, suggests that God seeks relationship with creation, especially the part that asks hundreds of questions a day.

Forward

Trying to corral little kids into a game of T-ball is often compared to herding cats.  However, after spending three years in “the big T,” as it is never referred to, I think this analogy might be unfair to the cats, which spend much less time scratching around in the dirt.  The main roadblock when it comes to T-ball is the issue of focus.  This is not meant to be insulting.  4-year-olds are great.  But expecting them to stand in one place beneath the hot sun for more than 90 seconds?  That’s insane.

However, it is rarely in good form to identify a problem without offering up at least a few plausible solutions, and so the following ideas might be considered.

For starters, we need to schedule the competition in stages.  On opening day we simply pass out team shirts to the entire league and put everyone in center field. Their respective coaches, who will also be wearing the team-colored shirt, will be placed in different spots in left and right.  A whistle will be blown, and the youngsters will then go find their team. 

  Once the teams are found, the kids will be given their ball gloves and will be told to put the glove on the appropriate hand.  “No, the other hand.  I said the other hand!  It’s backwards, somehow you put it on backwards.  OK, good.  No, there’s no bee in it, that’s just the tag.  I don’t have scissors right now to cut the tag off,  just put the…please put the glove on…pick up your glove! Will you get off the ground, you’re acting like a child!”

Once gloved, the players will pair up and just play catch with each other for a few minutes before repeating this process with every other member of the team.  This will emphasize the crucial yet often over looked component of organized sports:  your team members are the ones wearing the same shirt.

At the end of the day, anyone who doesn’t cry gets a snow cone.

Game two will focus on base running.  One team will line the edge of the infield while the opposing players will just run around the bases until they are exhausted.  This will take about three minutes.  Coaches will be at each base to emphasize some key components:  run as fast as you can, the pitcher’s mound is not a base, and don’t stop to wave at grandma.   

At the end of day two, anyone who doesn’t cry gets a snow cone.

Using this strategy as a template, each week an additional skill could be introduced.  For example, many T-ballers have a difficult time differentiating between offense and defense.  On more than one occasion, in fact, I have seen very eager youngsters leap off the bench to field pokey grounders swatted by their own teammate.  I have even seen kids field their own hit, which might sound impossible unless you have actually witnessed the speed at which a T-ball grounder moves.  

The point is this:  T-ball is a process.  Not only is this often the first time these kids have played organized sports, it’s the first time some of them have even thrown a ball at someone their own age.  Focusing on a new aspect of the game each week might prove beneficial.  Of course, it also might still be cat-herding.  I’m not psychic.

Regardless of the activity—T-ball, jump rope, bull riding—it’s a process, which also happens to be one of my favorite mottos.  One of the most useful epiphanies of my entire career came the day I realized that it wasn’t actually my job to make each of my students into a good writer.  This might sound weird coming from an English teacher, to say nothing of the transition it takes to move from a discussion about T-ball to one about writing instruction, but look at it this way. Some students are already good writers.  On the other hand, writing well can be a real challenge, and some students are simply designed for other pursuits.  However, if I’m doing my job right, each of them should at least be better writers in May than they were in August.

 Accepting that little cosmic reality has made teaching and just about everything else much less stressful.  It’s the arc that matters most; not so much the speed.  To paraphrase one of our nation’s finest writers and orators, Dr. King, “…if you can’t run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl; just be sure to keep moving forward.”

Many of you are parents and grandparents, some of you are teachers, a few of you are students. With the new school year fast approaching, this “moving forward” business is something to keep in mind.  First base to second; second to third; defense on the field, offense up to bat.  Little by little, glove on the right hand, leave the dirt alone.

Chin up, hustle, try not to cry.

The snow cones will be waiting.

M-I-C-K-E-Y

Disney World is the happiest place on earth.  It says so on the sign.  However, after spending a few days there I have decided that this statement is not so much a slogan as it is spatial reality. You see, if a place’s “happiness level” can be quantified, which, for the sake of this discussion, we are assuming it can, this assessment must be based somewhat on the amount of smiling people per square yard.  Disney World, thus, has to win, because there are just so many people there in the first place.  Using this formula, though, I guess Disney World might also be the angriest place on earth, too, and perhaps even the creepiest, but neither of those comments are going to sell very many tickets.

Speaking of tickets, we bought ours almost a year ago, and we knew all along that this family discovery event was going to be much more detailed than our others.  We had a good time, though, and that is partially due to low expectations.  “You need to have low expectations,” I was told on more than one occasion.  “Yes, you’re spending a crazy amount of money, you’re going to devote a tremendous amount of time and energy just physically moving around the park, but remember, Disney World is for kids.  Don’t lose them.  A successful Disney World trip is returning home with the same amount of people you left with, preferably the same ones.”

The reality of it, though, is that I actually did enjoy myself.  Seriously.  Did I enjoy it as much as the six-year-old who met Elsa the Snow Queen and had the audacity to ask her for some ice powers?  Probably not.  Did I enjoy it as much as the four-year-old who left the Seven Dwarves mine train with a giant smirk on his face?  Not a chance.  But it was fun.  Disney World, even in hot, busy July, was a good time.  A month ago I saw the trip as a once-in-a-childhood adventure that our kids had better enjoy or else.  Now, though, because of good planning and great advice, I can absolutely see us returning in five years, which brings me to the actual topic of today’s column.

Agendas.  Disney World absolutely has to have an agenda.  You have to go into the place with a plan, a schedule, and a map.  For example, part of our plan, much to the chagrin of some sleepier members of our party, was to get up early enough to be at the park before it opened each day.  Another part of our plan was to actually know what rides we wanted to enjoy before we saw them, and to know when the lines for these rides would be the shortest.  Here’s a hint:  Most lines are shortest right after the park opens each day.

Another crucial component was our strategic use of the Disney Fastpass.  Every Disney patron is allowed three Fastpasses per day, which basically allows a person to jump the line.  These can save you anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours.  These are free, but they are also scheduled, which is usually done weeks in advance.  This might sound silly and perhaps even antithetical to that “family oriented vacation experience,” but there are few things less “family oriented” than standing in a muggy line for ninety minutes with strangers and their desperate children.

Because of these strategies, our trip, although not perfect, was certainly worth repeating.  After three full days at various Disney parks, after dozens of rides and multiple character meetings, we probably stood in line for less than three hours.

This is all entirely dull and useless, though, if you have no plans on going to Disney World in the near future.  Some of you are probably even thinking, “What?  I’ve just read six paragraphs about Disney World?  I hate that stupid mouse.” And that’s cool.  I get that.

However, there is a much simpler, much more universal application to all these Disney-themed specifics: Seek wise counsel.

From the very moment we knew we were going, close to two years ago, we—and by “we” I mean my wife—began to talk to Disney veterans.  Hours were spent discussing the specifics with those who had gone before and who had returned with all their people intact.  Multiple three-ring binders were offered up by various experts.  We were even blessed with a detailed, family-specific itinerary conjured up by a cousin who wanted our experience to be as enjoyable as hers.

As I get older, the more I appreciate the sincere input and advice of others.  It might be a small world, after all, but we should never let it get so small we don’t ask anybody for help.

Civilization Goes Boink, 2015

According to my wife’s doctors, she will give birth to our third child mere days before my 40^th birthday.  This seems like pretty bad timing on their part, but I didn’t go to medical school, so what do I know?

It’s still a bit too early to know the baby’s tie-breaking-gender, but, thanks to previous experiences, I already have a pretty good idea how many people will respond.  If it is a girl, I will receive a lot of “oohhhs” and “awwws,” and, “Oh, more pink dresses, huh?”  If it’s a boy, I will most likely get something like this:

“Well, I hope you’re ready to get peed on again.”

For the most part, I’m not.

I have been peed upon, of course, but this is not the same as being ready for such an event, and so I think the question, in and of itself, assumes quite a bit.  As we know, baby boys, due to anatomical specifics, simply “go” on things more often than girls. Even I, apparently, once “went” on my grandmother many decades ago during a routine diaper change, and thus the karmic implications are clear.

I have it coming, and I have been warned.

Despite all this, though, it is important to note that most boys outgrow this tendency in practice, if not always in theory, which leads us rather clumsily into the actual focus of today’s column:  comic strips.

Many years ago, during the zenith of American history more commonly known as the 1990s, an immensely talented man named Bill Waterson wrote and illustrated an immensely entertaining comic strip by the name of Calvin & Hobbes. Calvin, named after the 16^th century French theologian John Calvin, possessed a galaxy-sized imagination that he often used to escape his humdrum life by exploring space, fighting monsters, or building dozens of decapitated snowmen. 

Hobbes, on the other hand, named after the 17^th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, possessed the wonderful ability to change between a rather normal stuffed tiger into a wry, philosophically-gifted real tiger that was prone to spastic bursts of intense, good-natured violence. Together these two ruled the world of late 80s and early 90s newspaper comic-strips.

Watterson was an artist, though, and, like many artists, he often let his integrity get in the way of good old fashioned commercialism. Fed up with the hounding of his employers to market Calvin and Hobbes and weary of newspapers throughout the country voicing their own annoyance about his strip taking up so much space, Watterson left the comic world in the winter of 1995. He accomplished, thus, what very few entertainers ever do: he retired on top with an unsatisfied fan base asking for more.

A few years later, as many of you might recall, a decal of Calvin began appearing on the back windows of cars and trucks. This twerpy little doppelganger looked almost exactly like Watterson’s version except this character was relieving himself on the number 24. Or the number 3. Or a Ford emblem, or a Chevy emblem, or just about anything you might imagine a person would secretly want to pee on but could not because of our society’s draconian laws forbidding such behavior. Thus, if you did not like Jeff Gordon the racecar driver and needed a straightforward way to express your disgust, you simply bought a decal of this kid doing what he did on top of Jeff Gordon’s racing car number. Problem solved.

What this said, in effect, was this: “My contempt for Jeff Gordon is so profound I really, really wish I could just go to the bathroom on him. But I cannot, both because it is illegal and  I’m not certain where he lives, thus I will instead verbalize this contempt by placing a decal of Kalvin P. , (who represents my inflated Id) peeing on the number 24 (which represents that nasty NASCAR driver I despise so much.)”

At first I assumed that the decal was an anomaly, a trend that would eventually go away. Unfortunately, the sticker has turned out to be much more harbinger than quirk.  That decal, I’m afraid, is totally us.  As a people, we have become cartoon versions of ourselves pretend peeing on whatever it is we find annoying, offensive, or rude, entirely oblivious to the fact that we, ourselves, are often being annoying, offensive, and rude.  Most angles and sides of almost every single issue you could ever wish to imagine have become so bloated with pride and self-righteous indignation that there’s practically nothing left to talk about.  Only yell about.  Only pee upon.

With this in mind, I’d like to end this column by asking Mr. Watterson a favor.  Come back.  We need you.  Our civilization has gone absolutely “boink.”  In all my years, I have never met someone who didn’t like a good Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Watterson’s artistic talent and integrity, combined with Calvin’s enthusiasm and Hobbes’ wisdom, are sorely needed in today’s public discourse.

In the meantime, I’ll reread some of his old volumes.  Starting in December, I’ll reread them to a new audience.

Core

Baby birds love Effingham.  This is a given, of course, but I was reminded a few weeks ago while driving my family back from yet another successful jumping session at Monkey Joe’s.

Monkey Joe’s, as you might assume, is an indoor inflatable amusement park.  This might sound ridiculous, but keep in mind that much has improved in the inflatable recreation business in the last few decades.  In other words, these are not your father’s bounce houses.

 When I was growing up, we had one inflatable jump house at the county fair.  These looked really cool from a distance, but they also got super crowded.  Children bonked heads; toddlers got stuck in the creases. They were a mess.

Fortunately, those days are gone.  Modern American children, thanks to businesses such as Monkey Joe’s, can enjoy all the fun of inflatables without the sweat and tears.  Multiple inflatables, from giant slides to lengthy obstacle courses, minimize crowding.  These parks even provide snacks and arcades.

I’m no businessman, but I sincerely believe that if a person opened such a park in Effingham they would do quite well for themselves.  In fact, I will make this promise right now.  If you build it, my kids will absolutely go there, and they will bring their friends, and we will all buy pizza.  In fact, considering the area’s panache for socializing, I predict that if you built the place with refreshments on tap, you would die quite rich.

But I digress.  Back to baby birds.

On the way home from our fun, we made a pit stop at the Centralia McDonalds.  We used the drive up window and somehow managed to purchase a cheeseless cheeseburger.  Weird.  Fortunately we caught the error and quickly turned around.

While crawling through the drive through the second time, a baby bird, perhaps three weeks old, literally dropped into our car.  This startled me a bit, but I was on a cheeseburger mission, and so I kept my composure.  After parking the car, I knelt down to rescue the bird but instead the silly thing jumped up into the inner workings of the vehicle above the foot pedals.

However, no one even believed we had a baby bird in the car in the first place, and we were in a hurry, so I started driving home, curious as to how this adventure would end.  Considering the fledgling had made the decision to hitchhike mere inches from the engine, I was not optimistic.

Anyway, it was a relatively peaceful trip home until about half way between the Keller Drive and Sigel exits.  That was the moment the baby bird made its second appearance.  On my daughter’s startled lap.

 “A bird!  A bird is on me!  A BIRD!  Ahhhh!”

Shrill.  Intense.  Insane.

“I told you guys there was a baby bird in the car.” I helpfully explained, curious as to how the creature had somehow managed to sneak past my feet, beneath the seats, and onto my daughter’s lap.  As the screaming continued, my wife turned around to rescue her firstborn from the vicious predator.

Over the course of the next few moments, while my six-year-old daughter continued to scream like a maniac and my four-year-old son calmly watched the whole thing like it was a nature program, the poor creature was finally snatched up. After giving the newbie sparrow some directions and a few bucks, we dropped it off in a safe neighborhood and wished it good luck.  I’ve thought about the young bird’s destiny more than once these last few weeks.  Considering recent weather patterns, it is most likely wet.

Regardless, I will probably never forget this episode.  For my daughter though, this frightening moment may become a core memory.

A core memory is one that you keep with you your whole life.  I know this because I have watched Pixar’s most recent cinematic triumph, “Inside Out.”  According to the movie, a core memory is so intense, so closely forged with your personality, that it influences your life well after the event has passed.

We all have core memories.  Some of them are positive and some of them are not.  One commonality about most core memories, though, despite their importance, is that they are rarely made on purpose. 

For example, a former student contacted me recently to thank me for some kindness I had offered him over fifteen years ago.  I had basically told him, after reading some of his poetry, that he would be a writer someday.  Apparently that token of sincere affirmation has stuck with him the last decade and a half, because his first novel will be published at the end of this month.

Now, I didn’t share this story for kudos.  I shared the story to emphasize that although we rarely design our own core memories, we can absolutely influence those of others, particularly for our young people. 

This is something to think about the next time a baby bird falls into your car or jumps onto your lap.  For my daughter, part of her core memory will be that weird-looking little bird, yes.  But a larger part, most likely, will be that of her mother risking life and limb to crawl into the backseat to rescue her.