Sneakers

 

My kids have started snarking on my inevitable decline.

“You’re starting to look old.”

“Yeah, your hair is getting thin.”

“Get a wig.”

I agree with them, of course, but I also remind them getting older is simply what happens to people when they don’t die.

“It’s either this face or a casket; what do you want from me?”
            I also remind them age is relative. Granted, I am post-youth, but I can still play catch with them, right? I can still help them build a snowman, and, most importantly during this season of our lives, I still have the dexterity needed to drive them around. And around.

And around.

Despite their verbal abuse, however, I wasn’t feeling old at all until my teenage daughter informed me, without a hint of compromise, that she absolutely was wearing the white sneakers with pink stripes or she wasn’t even dressing up at all.

             Standing in the kitchen just minutes before we needed to leave for school, this scene was supposed to have been a moment I’d imagined for years. Our darling daughter--our firstborn; our princess--would go to school and smile brightly for her very first Academic Hall of Fame picture. She would be wearing a lovely red dress with, apparently, matching tennis shoes?

            “Uh…no.”

            This was about as far as the conversation went, however. She stormed out of the room to finish her hair. Meanwhile, I finished my breakfast and wisely decided to shut up. We drove to school - in silence - then she marched into the building to join dozens of other young ladies wearing dresses and, yes, fashionable sneakers.

            She was right, I was wrong, and I was once again taught a lesson I thought I’d already learned: some battles aren’t worth fighting; sometimes you just have to let things go.

That evening after making peace we all gathered in the living room and enjoyed what had once been a weekly tradition - Friday Night Movie Night. As the kids have gotten older it’s become more of a challenge to find movies that appeal to all three of them, but Pixar’s “Up” still fits the bill. If you’re not familiar with the film I would recommend watching it as soon as you can, but in the meantime just know that the movie centers on a curmudgeonly old man unwilling to let go of his past. Carl - voiced perfectly by the late Ed Asner - floats all the way to South America to fulfill a promise made as children between he and his recently-deceased wife.

This errand takes a series of foolish turns, however, and Carl finally realizes the right thing to do is forget his plans to settle near Paradise Falls and instead rescue the tagalong boy who desperately needs his help. Because his home - and mode of transportation - is being lifted by thousands of helium balloons, however, the only way he can do that is by literally letting go of his past. Thus, old furniture, knick-knacks, and heirlooms taking up space are unceremoniously tossed out of his house. Unhindered by the burden, Carl is able to rise up and save the day.

It’s a clever climax, but the moment also offers up an immediately profound message: sometimes we need to toss what’s behind us to help those in front.

The writer of Hebrews offers his readers a similar message. After drawing on the faith’s heroes for inspiration in chapter eleven, he begins chapter twelve by imploring his audience “to throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” In order to live out their divinely sanctioned destiny, the Hebrews in question - and, by extension, all of us - needed to take a hard look at their bad behavior and rise above it.

It’s often a daily exercise, though, this tossing out of “furniture,” especially when the needs of those in front of us are changing so quickly. My teenage daughter, for example, certainly didn’t need fashion advice from me of all people. She needed breakfast and a quick hug to get her ready for a day that was already going to be stressful. For that morning - for a few more mornings, at least - she needed a ride to school with some fun music or a silly dad joke, not a cold shoulder burdened with enough foolish pride to crack open the floorboards.

            Regardless, most afternoons nowadays she drives us wherever it is we need to go. She has her white slip now and is often eager to flex her increasing independence. Soon she’ll be driving to school on her own - with or without the sneakers - and before I blink, I suppose, she’ll just be driving away.

            And that probably will make me feel old.

Over the Edge

 

The flat-Earther finally convinced me. By sharing pictures of six frying pans posing as planets, he had proved to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was spending too much time on the Internet.

“I have no budget, yet I convinced you these were newly discovered planets.” He explained to the set of skeptics being interviewed on his podcast. “What makes you think NASA, with its billions, hasn’t been tricking us for decades?”

I’m paraphrasing now, but that was the gist of his message. I sighed and scrolled a few more moments, then I put down my phone and walked away. I glanced at the clock. Another five minutes of my life…gone.

Or, maybe it was the young lady who asked the question, in all seriousness, “Can we journey through the ocean to Mars?” Or perhaps it was one of the dozens of folks who suggested we are living in a computer simulation, or that reptilian space aliens have been shape-shifting the gears of global power for decades.

Regardless, they’d found me. After more than a dozen years of posting and scrolling on Facebook, the algorithm had finally led me to the absolute edge of reason. There I was, standing in my kitchen on a Saturday afternoon, listening to a grown man try to convince me – without a hint of irony -  Earth is flat.

Before continuing, I want to emphasize this is not a column designed to refute the flat earth theory, because if you are taking the time to read an actual newspaper column, more than likely you already know Earth is, well, you know, NOT flat, which is an empirical reality thoughtful humans have understood for thousands of years. I merely use such an example to illustrate the potentially dangerous place we have arrived in world history, and that’s because the end of what we might call “flat-earth reasoning” leads us to a set of very dangerous edges.

Primarily, flat-Earth reasoning suggests “the only evidence I can trust is my own evidence; that which I think I’ve seen with my own eyes and that which validates my own preconceptions,” and secondly, “no one who disagrees with me can be trusted;  all the ‘experts’ and leaders and scientists throughout the history of humanity have been in nefarious cahoots, and now it is time to rise up and wallow in our new age of Internet-fueled enlightenment.”

Speaking of human history, last summer I took my son to watch what we have been told is the final Indiana Jones adventure. We liked it in general and I am very appreciative of Mr. Ford for giving me this chance to share the theater experience with him. (My son, not the actor.) However, one particular line seemed out of place. During a conversation where he’s alluding to the many supernatural surprises that show up toward the end of his movies, Dr. Jones comments, “It’s not so much what you believe, it's how hard you believe it.”

This sounds like a strange thing to say in general, but it sounds particularly suspect (and a bit out of character) coming from a scientist who has spent most of his life searching for knowledge while often punching history’s most infamous “hard believing” zealots-- the Nazis--in the face.

 Perhaps the dialogue worked from a narrative standpoint, but even that is debatable.

Regardless, his comment does seem suited to our contemporary zeitgeist, unfortunately, because our world really is full of folks who believe things very hard that often have very little basis in objective reality.  Granted,  an allegiance to Nazism or any other racist ideology is hardly on par with the silly belief our globe is flat. Those are two very different trains of thought going to two very different places. However, I would suggest that both trains leave from the same station.

It’s the same station where folks buy tickets to watch aliens build the pyramids, where school shootings are a hoax, and where now even a performer whose entire career has been punctuated with very public romances is doing something nefarious by watching her boyfriend play football. It’s an increasingly crowded place, but there always seems to be room for just one more remarkable idea, and despite the very curved shape of the planet, all of these trains of thought eventually fall right off the edge.