The Christmas Alphabet

I discovered at an early age that wherever "hip" was located, I was always going to be in the next room. Or maybe "cool" was just being sequestered at an Unknown Location. In any case, I wasn't very old before I came to terms with -- maybe even embraced -- my nonhipness.

Perhaps it was inevitable anyway, for a skinny kid with glasses, always the youngest in my class, not athletically gifted, but pretty successful academically. Compound that with the fact that, as someone in a position to know said recently, I was born old; all of this is unlikely to add up to someone who will ever be anointed as an Arbiter of Style.

So instead, when other kids wore jeans & sneakers to school, I was wearing doubleknits (OK, I just dated myself) and sports shirts and dress shoes. When the popular kids were waiting for class to be over, I was the kid with his hand up -- not just to answer the question but to be first to answer. And although I was, as you might guess, not invited to the cool parties, I'm pretty sure that the playlist at those parties did not include Barry Manilow.

And I'm equally convinced: they don't know what they were missing!

With all of that, you'd think I would be prepared to land on the Unhip List yet again, but I was a bit caught off-guard this year by all the abuse heaped on writers of Christmas letters. Both the comics pages and several columnists I've read recently have had caustic things to say about the level of truth contained in such letters, as well as the level of interest on the part of their readers.

I suppose some people probably write to induce envy; perhaps some get bogged down in minutiae unintelligible to 'outsiders'; maybe some test the tensile strength of the truth. As for me, I got the idea to write an annual letter from my mom, and I've been writing our family's letter since... well, I think the first couple were printed on a dot-matrix printer, for anyone who's ever seen one of those in a museum. I try my best to make them interesting for all possible readers (of course, I try the same with the blog, and look how that's working out); I also resist the temptation to exaggerate or even brag. And as I write, I always keep in front of me a few specific goals, stated here in no particular order:

• A basic recap: This part may be more for me, but I like to summarize the most important parts of the year (very) briefly.
• A shorthand character sketch: Since our marriage we have lived in 4 towns in 3 states, and made & left behind friends all along the way. The letter is a way for them to see what we've been up to, as a window on who we are now (well, not me -- I haven't changed since I was about 7). This is particularly important for our more recent friends, many of whom are very fond of our kids. I labor the hardest to paint the kids' picture: not of "what they do", but more of "what they're like".
• Coherently written: Especially in the years B.B. (Before Blog), the letter served as an outlet for my literary impulses. My wife is grateful that the release valve of the blog has lessened my inclination to write jokes in the Christmas letter. Actually, I am too; it saves me the trouble, since she always took them all out anyway.
• A spiritual undertone: I have always tried to make it clear to our readers (not all of whom are Christians or church-affiliated) that for our family, Christmas is much more than a jolly fat guy in a red suit. I try not to command anyone to find a Bible and open to Luke chapter 2, since not everyone is thrilled with a full-fledged sermon in their mailbox. Still, there's always the chance that some reference might touch a heart in some way.
• A gentle prod for response: I don't think we're alone in this, but of the people whose company we enjoy who we don't see regularly, only perhaps a tenth are in any kind of regular touch. I always put a commercial at the end of the letter saying, please contact us -- maybe the unintended subtext is that "your news can't be any more boring than ours", I don't know -- and it does pay off some percentage of the time. That alone is worth it....

It seems to me that people who carp on the great American tradition of the Christmas letter ought to keep in mind the difficulty of the task. Not only am I trying to capture an entire year (in this case, 4 person-years) in a space of 800 or so words, but I have to do it with an alphabet that has a letter missing. Or at least, it seems like everywhere I go, I keep hearing “Noel”!

Love, and puns, from our house to yours... <:-)~

Turn, Turn, Turn

Around our place, basically anything that has buttons or a display -- particularly any kind of digital readout -- is my responsibility. TV, VCR/DVD, clocks, computers, even to some extent the oven, all fall under my purview. After all, I am the Moderately-Well-Paid Information Technology Professional. I do my best to bear up under such a heavy load... although it's probably best that we don't talk about the first day of Daylight Savings Time back in 2000, AKA "Black Sunday".

The irony is that I am not the one in the house who owns a personal digital assistant. My wife, whose traditional brand of organizer has always been the patented "lots of scraps of paper" method, saw another minister using one at a meeting; when she got home, we got in the car and went out to buy one for her.

As enthusiastic about technology as I am in general, I haven't felt the lack of a PDA too intensely. I'm not exactly an Early Adopter by nature -- I even bought a VCR recently. However, I'm coming to the conclusion that I need something to help me keep track of one thing: whose turn it is.

It started simply enough, although I confess I don't recall what the first instance was. One day we went to do something and someone said, "He/she got to do it yesterday", so I said, "OK, today it's your turn." But I have a 7-year-old son who is obsessed with being first, and a 4-year-old daughter who is grimly determined that he won't get anything that she can't also have. In both cases, the wailing about the hideous fate of 'going second' is earsplitting; my son is especially fond of "Ohhhhh, I never get to do that!"

So at present, I am attempting to keep track -- using only the memory chips my Maker originally gave me -- of (at least!) whose turn it is to do the following:

• bring in the newspaper in the morning
• choose a group of 3 videos for potential viewing
• select the afternoon video from the group of 3 (this division of duties was itself devised to try to get around the 'my turn' thing, but succeeded only in creating an extra turn)
• choose his/her afternoon snack first
• open the door first
• get in/out of the van first
• take the first bath
• open our Advent calendar and retrieve the day's chocolate treat
• sit on a particular parent's lap during prayer time
• administer evening prayer time (each evening during prayer time one of the children gets to choose who goes next to offer their "thank you to Jesus")
• be put to bed by a particular parent

I actually thought about keeping track on our "fridge calendar" -- but there's literally not enough room to write it all in, unless I expand it to include the whole side of the fridge. I suppose the alternative is to designate each day as belonging to one kid or the other, but I'm not sure either of them can wait a whole day for their next turn! At least this way each child has something to hold onto each day. Or, you know, I can just ask them... to which the response is almost invariably "Me!"

Since a parent's job seems to involve a striped shirt and a whistle anyway, perhaps we should start each day (each activity?? Noooo!) with a coinflip: "Captains ready? Call it in the air..."

How long do you think it would be before, "Ohhhhh, I never get to be heads!"

Metablog: Better to Light a Single Candle

As far as I can tell, Hallmark does not carry a line of Happy Blog Anniversary cards -- nor, as far as I can tell, do the popular e-card sites. That is unquestionably why I have not received any greetings, salutations, or felicitations on the occasion of this, my First Blog Anniversary.

What's worse, a Google search on "blog anniversary" produced a bunch of very complimentary readers, congratulating their favorite blogger on his/her happy occasion. I didn't read them, but several of the search-text results included a line about 'I read you all the time' or 'I can't start my day without you'... which did kind of make me wonder the secret of their success.

No matter; I'm coming to terms with the concept that I'm writing this for me, and if anyone else pops in, I hope they enjoy it too. Living in a parsonage for most of my life, I'm acquainted with the need to be prepared for unexpected guests, so I've actually done a little bit of renovation that I'm showing off today in my Anniversary Open House (unfortunately, it's BYORefreshments -- but please, feel free to enjoy a refreshing beverage or tasty snack as you read. Just remember to use a coaster).

My host (or, I suppose, "landlord", to extend the metaphor), Blogger, has recently introduced some new features. The one I was eagerly anticipating was the "labels" feature, which allows me to categorize my posts. So I've been plowing through the Back Issues, trying to pigeonhole myself... not an easy task, since I really do take the "Random" part seriously! I also have a habit, more pronounced in some of the earlier efforts, of starting out in one direction but fetching up entirely somewhere else -- kind of like Edgar Allan Poe with multiple personalities and a touch of ADD.

Anyway, here's the list of my labels and what they mean:

1. A&E -- this is my Arts & Entertainment section. I write about books, music, TV or movies. For some reason, when I started out, I was sure the cyberworld was desperately awaiting my opinions on these things. I do it a lot less now, but I think my favorite was My Date With Donnie (Pt I-II)... although Sine Qua Noel is certainly more timely in this season.
2. Comics Page -- I had a hard time deciding what to call this one. It's a little embarrassing, or at least risky, to stand up and say This is funny about something you've written yourself. In any case, this is the place for things I wrote that I either intended at the time to be funny, or ended up sort of accidentally amusing. Not only does this label continue the "newspaper" metaphor I use in other labels, but I'm also secure in the knowledge that the "real" comics page is itself only sporadically funny (with the possible exception of Frazz) so I'm shooting at a makeable target. I think my favorite here is Not Quite the Fortress of Solitude; in general this category has the highest percentage of "not quite what I had in mind".
3. Day in the Life -- The largest group, entries based on something that's happened in my daily life. With any luck there is some overlap here with the previous category. I'm probably fondest of these myself and it's hard to pick one to recommend; if pressed, I'd probably go with Into the Rodent's Jaws or Christmas Performance Review.
4. Family Room -- Pieces in some way about my family. Like most parents I pull a fair amount of material out of the kids. I believe my pick here would be Lower Education.
5. Locker Room -- I thought when I started that I'd be writing pithy, amusing, insightful sports pieces pretty regularly. That was before I discovered that the people who do read this with any regularity are not generally sports fanatics... and that I don't have all that much pithy or amusing or insightful to say about sports. In any case, my fave is probably Not For Nothing Do They Say Hope "Springs"... although truthfully it's not all that much of a sports piece!
6. Metablog -- These pieces are blogs I write about writing blogs. I tried to write a piece about writing a piece about writing a piece once, but I blew a hole in the time/space continuum. I can already tell this entry will not be my favorite here; I'd say my top was The View from the 40s.
7. Op-Ed Page -- I started this to begin with in part because I had opinions on a couple things and no real place to put them; the alternative is to write the newspaper and become One Of Those Guys Who Writes to Newspapers. You know the type -- they type with one hand and use the other to hold onto the tinfoil hat that keeps out the thought rays the government is trying to poison them with. I don't do it too often -- even I'm not that interested in my opinion -- but the one I feel the most strongly about is Motivational Speech.
8. Rewind -- I think a lot about the past, whether mine specifically or simply in the historical sense. I don't write it that much, though, because I can't always see my own past, at least, from far enough away to make sense (or something interesting) of it for another reader. The one of these I enjoy the most is The Hazards of Time Travel.
9. Theology for Dummies -- is my somewhat tongue-in-cheek label for anything spiritual. It stems from my core belief that we are all theologians, whether we really "think about it" or not; everything you do is in some ways a reflection of who you believe God is and how (or if) you relate to Him. I'm not going to pick a favorite here -- some are "big" thoughts and some are "smaller", but I feel like they're all (I hope) truths that God has helped me see, so they're all important.

So that's the starting lineup. I'll add more categories if the need arises, and I may add more labels to some of the entries -- an entry can fit, and be assigned, several labels.

I have really enjoyed writing Year 1; I've taken great pleasure in the pure writing piece, and in thinking about my life and the world in new ways. I'm also appreciative of anyone who chooses to read it, even if they don't share a comment. But my pleasure, or satisfaction, shouldn't be (can't be, under the circumstances!) dependent on yours... so I'm going to keep going as long as I can, and see what else I learn.

Work Release

Some days, my commute to work can be pretty tough.

If one of the kids spills their milk, conditions can get slippery. And when there's a pileup -- of toys on the basement steps -- there can be significant delays in getting downstairs to my office.

I started working some of my hours from home almost 7 years ago, and for about half that time I've been a 100% remote employee. I vaguely remember those office days, but it's hard to imagine going back at this point. On the other hand, I may actually observe a stricter dress code for the most part than my last office -- I find that the more casually I dress, the dumber I am. I must say I particularly appreciate the "footwear-optional" policy at this location, however.

Obviously self-discipline can be an issue when you're all alone. If nothing else, the combination of no one watching, a little bit of stress, and unlimited access to snacks can be dangerous, if not lethal. The biggest challenge, however, is probably the isolation. I'm pretty solitary by nature... but even for me, there's a fine line between solitary work and solitary confinement.

That's why my occasional forays out of "the office" can feel a bit like being let out of jail (or at least like the prison work-release program). Taken to its extreme, I get to go to a meeting in Las Vegas; after all, the 7 people on my immediate team live in 6 different states, so that kind of extravagance is the only way we ever get to see each other.

Even my last "outing", although not reaching the Vegas standard, was a significant treat. Last week I drove about an hour to attend a class in Microsoft Excel (no, Bill doesn't get a link from me). I got to wear a shirt with a collar, and real shoes, and carry a briefcase. Just for one day I got to feel like a grownup... as opposed to a kid holed up in the basement playing video games or something.

Granted, the impartial observer might see it as a bit of a disappointment. I drove a long way, in the rain, to sit in a drafty meeting room with a mob of strangers (some of these strangers, judging from their inane and repetitive questions, had a difficult time finding their way home afterwards). The instructor was... well, not a natural teacher, with a decent but not awe-inspiring grasp of Excel. Though I was only four rows back, I couldn't see much of the work on the screen anyway; I could frankly sit down for an hour with the handout and get more out of it. Even my long-anticipated lunch out was just okay.

On the other hand, I just kept remembering it was my Grand Day Out -- and isn't it fortunate that I have such a relentlessly sunny outlook on life? After all, the next workday is back to the slippers, and back to the basement... at least as soon as the traffic clears on the stairs.

L&O: CC – The Conclusion of a Special 2-Part Episode

In the criminal justice system, the people are also represented by a third important group who normally go completely unnoticed: the jury. This is their story.

DUN-dun!

Previously on L&O: CC, the jury selection process. On tonight’s episode: the trial.

The trial began on a Tuesday morning bright and early. Okay, 9:30 (court keeps some pretty relaxed hours, really; our first “day” of jury selection was actually 9:30-12:15). I came to regret my decision to wear suspenders – not because of the fashion faux pas my wife warned of, but because I set off the metal detector. So once again my arrival fell into the general 9:29ish category.

Not long thereafter, we settled into our comfortable yet squeaky chairs for opening arguments. Problem #1: the judge doesn’t allow note-taking. He wants us listening instead of scribbling; I’m shocked at his lack of concern for those of us who are bloggers. Hard to get the good stuff without writing it down!

I do make a few general observations pretty quickly: first of all, it’s really dimly lit, the exact opposite of a television studio. Almost restful, as I would find to my chagrin after perhaps a little too much lunch.

There’s no gallery, which is going to deprive us of the legendary Perry Mason finish. I suppose it’s still possible one of the witnesses will jump up and say he did it. Or, who knows, maybe a juror. Although only the foreman generally gets a line.

Court reporters on TV don’t get lines either – just the standard shot of her (always “her”, right?) tapping away. This one talks more than the judge, constantly interrupting to ask the witness to repeat himself. I’m on the verge of asking her to switch places.

The case concerns a man who went to an instant oil-change place. During the service, he was standing next to the car when it began to roll. He jumped in front to stop it, but was pinned against the garage door and severely fractured his leg.

The basic facts are not in dispute; the plaintiff says it's the garage's fault for letting him stand next to the car, and they must have done something to make it roll. The defendant says he wouldn’t have been hurt if he hadn’t jumped in front of the car... which is certainly true in the “fact” sense; we’ll have to see if it holds up in the “liability” sense.

I think opening arguments are kind of like the opening act at a concert. Nobody’s there to see that part, and nobody pays any attention to it anyway. It’s just sound; in this case the opening arguments boil down to:

• My client has been wronged, and his life is ruined, so you’ll want to give him a bunch of money.
• We didn’t do anything, the guy jumped in front of the car, and besides the car moving must’ve been an act of God.
  

Then we have witnesses, starting with the two mechanics on duty. Their stories are just enough different to leave you wondering what really happened. On the other hand, the incident was 2½ years ago, so it might be weirder if the accounts were identical.

We do get one stock moment when one of the mechanics says something and the plaintiff’s lawyer takes a pause. Then he pulls out a document and says, “Perhaps you need to refresh your memory...” The witness studies the paper, then says, “I must have said that but I don’t recall saying it.” Disappointingly, no one is hauled off to the Graybar Hotel for perjury (“Call my wife! Call my lawyer!”).

The plaintiff takes his turn. He’s kind of a mope and I take an instant dislike to him. I can also feel brain cells popping from the strain of trying to formulate all the facts and spin into a coherent, and impartial, account – mindful that it’s hard enough to know what happened, but I also need to know why, and who’s really responsible (and potentially, how much dough that’s worth).

On top of that, I’m very conscious of not only listening objectively but also appearing to be objective. I know the lawyers and the judge are watching, and I don’t want to look like I’m favoring one side or another. Fortunately, my default face is pretty expressionless anyway....

We also get an Expert Witness, in the field of... Auto Mechanics. Much discussion ensues about how the car moved and why it might have moved. Oddly, the thing that strikes me most about his testimony is that he is in fact expert at being a witness; if he’s asked a yes/no question, he answers only yes or no and waits for the follow-up question to supply the details. We are thus deprived of the classic: "Objection!" "Sustained -- the witness will confine himself to answering the question."

Now it’s midafternoon and the judge says we’re moving quicker than anticipated and have covered what was planned for today. Translation: the remaining witnesses are doctors and there’s no way they’ve been just sitting around waiting for their turn. As a result, we are adjourned. Day 2, 9:30-2:15 (with 2 breaks, and an hour and a half for lunch) – I could get used to these hours.

I’m getting the rhythm of this trial down; on Wednesday, I arrive at the jury room at... 9:29 (no suspenders, and I left my sunglasses in the car, so I breeze through the metal detector). The Court Officer says there will be a slight delay – the judge & lawyers are in conference. We immediately begin to speculate that it’s a settlement conference. After about a 45-minute wait, we are brought into the courtroom to be told that the parties in fact have settled; later, in the jury room, the judge tells us the plaintiff got $125K.

Looking around the room, the consensus seems to be that he wouldn’t have gotten that much from us; we weren’t entirely sold on his story, or the extent of his “pain and suffering”. And none of us can quite decide: is it cool that we got out without having to deliberate, or did we miss out on part of the experience? Overall, I’d say I’m just as happy not having to translate all that testimony into a dollar figure.

So in exchange for sitting in a chair for (parts of) 3 days, I'm off the hook for (at least) 6 years. Plus, now I know how those Perry Mason extras felt.

Law & Order: Civil Court

Now I know how the extras on Perry Mason felt.

A recent day's mail held the modern-day equivalent of the old Selective Service "Greetings". This one, however, came from the County Commisioner of Jurors, and requested my presence at the courthouse for a fun-filled week of jurisprudence.

Of course, the odds were still in my favor. Surely a hundred or more similarly civic-minded citizens were being summoned as well -- after all, my number was 65.

Secure in the "knowledge" that I was off the hook, I completely forgot to call in till bedtime that Sunday night, when my wife said, "Hey, don't you have jury duty tomorrow?" So I dug the instructions out of My Pile, confident that I wouldn't need to go at all... but the recorded announcement said numbers 2-80 should report between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. the next morning.

Unfortunately, I have a hearing problem: if you say "between 8:30 and 9:30", I hear "as the second hand hits 9:29:59". And it would have worked, too... if not for the school bus I met. Or the fact that I parked at the wrong end of the "municipal complex". Or the metal detector at the courthouse door.

In any case, when I got there, the Jury Spiel was already (just, okay?) under way. Even so, walking in I noted that there were perhaps 40 people in the room -- a far cry from the almost 80 I was anticipating.

The orientation process included a video, narrated by (among others) Ed Bradley -- slightly unsettling, as he had only just "signed off for the last time" four days before. The highlight, by far, of the video was a recreation of the practice of Trial By Ordeal of Cold Water, which so neatly parallels the corresponding scene in Monty Python & the Holy Grail that I couldn't help but chortle (and wonder aloud if we would get to practice a similar form of justice).

We had almost completed the video when half of us were summoned to a courtroom, and suddenly I began to get a picture of my true odds: 21 people in the room, choosing 8... and then some guy says, "I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow," and the judge says, "Sure, no problem," and now it's 20. Since everyone's got an equal chance of landing in any of those 8 chairs (and they're all equally stuck), I have an 8/20 chance of being snagged: 40%.

Naturally, I felt a bit smug when 8 names were called and I was missed. And I have to admit, it was pretty entertaining watching them being quizzed, and realizing that some of them were clearly not going to make the final cut -- right up until the penny finally dropped and an inner voice started yelling "dummy, if somebody goes home you're back on the hook!"

Sure enough, 5 stay and 3 go; now it's 12 bodies for 3 seats (25%). Another round of calls, another bullet dodged... before I know it, 12 have been called (the gallery where I'm sitting is starting to look like the stands at a Tampa Bay Devil Rays game), but only 6 chosen: 2 seats left and I'm back to a 25% chance. And then, the hammer falls.

Now we all know there's more than one way to answer a question, and it would have been a simple thing to spin one of those "can you be impartial" kinds of queries to get a free ticket out the door. I felt that several of the dearly departed were very careful to stress attitudes that ensured they would be voted off the island; I decided it would be a worthwhile and interesting experience to stick around, so I played it straight.

Some of those who got the boot actually came after me -- we ended up running through a total of 18 of the group of 20 in order to assemble a panel of 8. And the two who turned right around and went home without even speaking are still excused from jury duty for a minimum of 6 years!

So, as the Book of Genesis would have it, there was an evening and a morning, the first day of my experience as one tooth on one cog in the enormous intertwined system of gears that is Our Justice System. In the next episode of Law & Order: Civil Court, the trial begins!

Truth, Justice and the American Way

Here in the carefully-vague region of "Upstate New York" -- if I'm being overly cautious in revealing personal details, it's only because I'm trying to avoid the inevitable onslaught of paparazzi -- we've recently emerged from the sludge of Election Campaign Season. I've discovered that you can use all the Windex you want on your TV screen, but it's still hard to watch when the film of slime is coming from inside the set.

Our Congressional race was famed far and wide for the brutal, yet juvenile, tone of its advertising. I think most of us who have seen a few campaigns knew that the relatively unknown challenger had to kick up a bit of fuss to be noticed; incumbents have an enormous built-in advantage in money and recognition. And certainly, the incumbent had a few, ah... foibles... that merited discussion.

But I, at least, was a bit surprised when the Congressman avoided discussing his performance record and instead eagerly embraced the Politics of Personal Attack himself. In the end, I believe it was the insight thus gained into his personality, and not any debate over his past performance (or, for that matter, the worth of his challenger), that made the difference in his somewhat surprising loss.

In the interview after her victory speech, the Congresswoman-elect noted that the incumbent hadn't aired a single ad about his own record. This appropriately enough was, like much of what we'd heard for weeks upon weeks, "more-or-less" true -- true in spirit, at least. Full of what Stephen Colbert would call "truthiness": the essence of being or at least seeming true, without actually being what the dictionary might identify as "accurate".

So in the continuing pursuit of Truth, Justice, and the American Way... I have the general sense that perhaps Truth was not 100% victorious in this case (not that it would have been any more so, if the outcome were reversed). Justice? You tell me; as I said, I suspect the result was largely self-inflicted, so there's a certain karmic justice, at least, in that.

And what about the American Way? The sad fact is that I think this now is the American Way. Someone once said we get the campaigns we deserve, and I fear that's correct. The West Wing was popular at least in part because it allowed us to think we like our politics noble -- that we'd all rush to vote for a man of principle like Jed Bartlett. I'm not sure, however, that the electoral records of those few who have told us the truth about who they are and what they hope to accomplish are all that glossy. Not that we have that much data to go on. And honestly, how different was the tone of this campaign from the tone that society in general has taken in recent times (as I discussed quite some time ago)?

Not long ago, a bunch of reporters from newspapers all over (including our own) gathered to discuss the political campaigns they'd covered, and our paper did a story featuring some of the most telling/amusing incidents. One of the anecdotes related concerned the candidate who put out a glossy brochure featuring a photo of his All-American family (we're in favor of that, right?) -- down to and including the faithful family dog.

However, as the candidate subsequently admitted... he'd rented the dog, to make the photo look more All-American.

Gee, I wonder why we're having so much of a problem with voter turnout?

Sure, Now You Listen

As a parent, you seek every day to help your children absorb all the lessons they'll need to grow and learn and become the people you want them to be. So naturally, when they demonstrate that they've really "gotten" something, it gives a parent a rush of pleasure. Right?

Well, as it turns out, that may depend.

One of the relatively small things we spend time discussing is table manners, which aren't necessarily top priority for a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old. We're not bad at please & thank you, but food-related behavior is often up for grabs.

Recently my son was having crackers & peanut butter for the Ritual Afternoon Snack; he is, as I have mentioned, a creature of the clock, and if he sees it hit 3:00 he will remind me that it's snack time before the colon blinks again. He loves crackers and nearly lives for peanut butter, so naturally he put a whole Ritz in his mouth. Not for the first time, I reminded him that "we need to take bites". He gave me the look he often gives me, which translates roughly into "you didn't see that, did you?" (Sometimes he even says that to me when I reprimand him for something: "You didn't see that!" It's probably my second favorite rejoinder of his, after: "You don't tell me what to do!" Um, that's actually most of my job description...)

That evening during supper, he got a chance to demonstrate that he was catching on. I popped a french fry into my mouth and he instantly said, "Dad, we're not supposed to put the whole thing in our mouth." I briefly considered explaining to him that it was really a bite-size fry -- but I figured it was best to affirm him for recognizing the lesson, so I began to apologize to him for breaking the rule.

So my daughter broke in quickly and said, "Dad, we don't talk with our mouths full!"

With No Direction Home

One of the best ways to tell whether I'm awake is to note whether I'm reading. While we discontinued the newspaper briefly when the kids were tiny, for a few years now I've had my daily dose of text delivered to the door -- to go with four weekly publications and a houseful of books. Along with the advent of the Internet, I rarely have to fall back on cereal boxes to get my daily fix.

I've also very much enjoyed having a fresh Sudoku arrive every day (two on Sundays!) -- at least in theory. For some reason, our local newspaper is publishing the Short Attention Span Theater version of Sudoku. They are so painfully simple that they never take me more than 10 minutes, and usually 5 or less.

The problem is that the Puzzle Center in my brain is just starting to wake up at that point and still wants to play. So I've gotten into the habit of tackling the crossword puzzle located on the same page. I'm not a crossword maven, but with a mother and aunt who structure their day around the morning puzzle, there's definitely a strand of it entwined in my DNA. The newspaper crossword is not overly difficult, so I've had reasonable success.

My daughter found a way to increase the challenge level, however. Finding herself with the day's newspaper and a pair of scissors (and minimal supervision, apparently), and knowing my fondness for puzzles, she cut out the crossword, sought me out and presented it to me with a flourish.

Unfortunately no one had the chance to explain to her that in order to do the puzzle, dad would also need the clues.

But you know, I see this kind of thing going on around me all the time. The virtue seemingly most prized in today’s world is “tolerance”, which at one time meant “respecting the right of others to have different viewpoints and beliefs”. The new & improved Y2K definition appears to be “believing everyone’s viewpoints and beliefs are equally valid”.

When you carry this to its logical conclusion, there’s no way for parents to teach their kids the difference between right and wrong – if there are no absolutes and it all depends on the situation and “what feels right to you.”

I think those of us who were raised to believe that there are moral absolutes would probably testify that we’ve seen some disturbing and even tragic choices come out of this approach to life. Recently, however, I've found myself feeling sorry for the young minds that have been put in this spot. After all, it’s hard enough to Do the Right Thing when you have some idea what the Right Thing is. It must be a truly helpless feeling to try to make decisions, some of them potentially life-changing, with absolutely nothing to go on. As Rich Mullins wrote in another of my favorite Neglected Classic songs, “The Maker of Noses”:

They said boy you just follow your heart -- but my heart just led me into my chest
They said follow your nose, but the direction changed every time I went and turned my head
And they said boy you just follow your dreams -- but my dreams were only misty notions
But the Father of hearts and the Maker of noses
And the Giver of dreams: He's the one I have chosen
And I will follow Him

I don't lay claim to a perfect record of making perfect choices, but I'm certainly glad that I have something, and Someone, to base them on (the poor choices have more to do with my own Short Attention Span). The puzzle's hard enough to do when you have the clues.

A Brief History of Competition

I suppose at the beginning of the history of man, he spent most of his time working. Adam, for example, had to name and classify and organize all of creation; remember, this predated not only the computer database, but also the invention of the 3x5 index card. Eventually, however, he must have felt the need for recreation. The Scripture does not record whether he recognized the basic human instinct for play within himself, or whether Eve simply began complaining that he never took a day off or took her anywhere – judge for yourself.

Soon thereafter, recreation probably included testing one’s skills in rock-throwing for distance or accuracy, or the like: the beginning of sports as we know it. Then, after the invention of what we like to call “other people”, someone else was standing nearby and said, “I’ll bet you a day’s manna that I can throw the rock farther,” and suddenly we have competitive sports.

One day two of those guys were having a close contest, and the neighbors came over to watch, leading to the advent of spectator sports. My guess is that it was the next day that an enterprising fellow put a wall around the other two and began to charge admission -- would you call that “organized” sports? And the day after that, one of the contestants said, “I’m not going to put on a show for you unless you give me a cut of the gate,” which of course constitutes professional sports.

And so it continued for many, many years without much change – until the coming of newspapers. Think about it: reading a newspaper allows us in effect to send someone else to the game for us; then we read his or her account of what happened. Which is yet another “degree of separation” from the original guy throwing a rock.

Two things got me started thinking about this topic: Television Without Pity, and Big Brother. Television Without Pity is a blogsite where the writers blog about TV shows; I visit it frequently to keep up with my favorite shows. Oddly, I prefer to read an entry about an episode I’ve already watched over an episode I’ve missed; I do that every day, and even I think that’s weird.

Big Brother is a reality competition program (as always, using the word “reality” in its TV rather than its actual literal English-language sense) where people go live in a house filled with cameras, and one by one they get kicked out. I watched the first season, right after the original Survivor got me all hyped up about reality TV, and... nothing happened. They sat around, they talked, they ate peanut butter; once in awhile they had a competition invented by the producers. There was one guy who was mildly controversial, so they kicked him out first thing. OK, I confess I watched the second go-round too, but even less happened, so I’m all done.

But suppose I take it into my head to read the Big Brother blog? Actually, I do, once in awhile if the headline catches my eye. Then I’m sitting at my computer, reading something written by a guy who watched a show produced by a bunch of guys who pointed their cameras at a bunch of other people sitting around in a house doing nothing.

I love TV, I love to read, and I especially love to read a good TV blog. But when I consider how far removed you can get from actually doing something, I have to turn off my computer and go outside. Let's see how far I can throw a rock.

Root, Root, Root for the Virtual Home Team

In the photo album of my mind, I seem to be missing many of the pages allotted to childhood, but one memory I can almost put a specific date on is the 1969 World Series. I’m aware that I may have inadvertently embellished this one over the years, but I have a very distinct memory of Jerry Koosman batting for the Mets and NBC play-by-play man Curt Gowdy talking about what an awful hitter he was. I also remember being a bit offended by that (although I would, over the years, learn for myself that he was indeed an awful hitter).

The real significance of that memory is that it marks the conscious beginning of my interest in the Mets. Throughout 1970, our local TV station would occasionally broadcast Sunday Mets games, which I watched avidly; in 1971 I got to go to Shea Stadium to see a game in person, and by then the affair was in full bloom.

As a consequence, this has been a satisfying season for me – except for the fact that I’ve seen about the same number of Mets games as I did in 1970, thanks to the evil gatekeeping trolls at our cable company, who even through a corporate takeover have (both) steadfastly denied me access to the Mets’ cable network. So I have an extra reason to enjoy the Mets’ trip to the postseason: I get to watch their games.

I find that playoff games give me a purer kind of joy than the regular season games do; you see, as I’ve confessed previously, I am a fantasy baseball player. In any game, the team I am rooting against – even the absolutely loathsome corporation that also wears an NY logo, whose name I shall not speak – may include a player (or worse yet, a pitcher, since their performances tend to have a more pronounced effect on my scores) who is part of my fantasy squad. So I end up hoping that a guy like Ryan Howard of the Phillies will bat against the Mets with 2 outs in the 9th and the bases loaded, trailing by 5 runs, so he can hit a grand slam: Mets win, I get 9 points for my team.

This brand of rooting is extremely mentally fatiguing, especially when you multiply by the number of players I “own”, so in some ways it’s a relief that the fantasy portion of the season is over (all the more so since I won my league, and by the absolute thinnest of margins: after 6 months of competition, my score was 0.5% higher than the second-place finisher).

Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m obsessed or anything. No, no, no, the Other Guy is “obsessed”; my friend is “preoccupied”; for me, it’s merely an “interest”. I could point out to you that I was in second place as late as September 26, but I’m afraid you might read something into the fact that I'm aware of that statistic.

Trust me, it’s only a “hobby”.

If I told you that I had the leading scorers among both shortstops and outfielders, you might lose sight of the impressiveness of that feat (distracted by wondering who would even know such a thing).

Really, it’s just a “pastime”.

However, if you’re curious about the standings as of June 12… if you’re wondering which player scored the most points in the month of August… if you need to know which team totaled the most RBI for the season (ahem, ahem)… just let me know. I mean, it's not like the binding on the yearbook is even real leather.

The Lifesong in My Head

Some time ago, I read somewhere that people who talk to themselves are usually very intelligent. At least I think that’s what I read; I’m certainly not going to go back and try to confirm it. Considering the alternatives, I’m going to stick with the most attractive, and self-serving, explanation possible.

In my defense, it is basically one conversation at a time… well, that may be a little misleading (and self-serving). There are usually several channels going at once: besides the mundane running dialogue (oops, did I say dialogue? I know, I KNOW, you’re not supposed to answer yourself), it’s not uncommon for something like a separate “process” to be running, writing a blog in my head; and there is almost always a music channel playing as well. This doesn’t even count the input from external sources, which – depending on the number and identity of the children in my vicinity – can be prodigious in its own right. I am fortunate that the brain is the ultimate Windows(TM) operating system, capable of minimizing one program while one of the others is running full-force.

Most of the music I listen to from outside my head these days is Christian contemporary, so that’s also the bulk of my interior playlist. While, as I have mentioned, I’m fairly susceptible to getting a song stuck in my head, in this case it’s not entirely a bad thing.

My opportunities for spiritual self-maintenance are somewhat sporadic… or more accurately/truthfully, I don’t fully take advantage of the opportunities I have. One thing I do have going for me is that I've always found that Christian music burrows inside my soul and my brain in ways that books and sermons can’t always match.

Recently I have been haunted (I don’t think that’s too strong a word, actually) by one image in one song: “Lifesong”, by Casting Crowns. Mark Hall, the lead vocalist & principal songwriter for the group, has a remarkable ability to capture important spiritual concepts in a song that rocks but is also challenging (I would recommend without hesitation either of their first 2 CDs).

Here’s the chorus I keep hearing:

Let my lifesong sing to You
Let my lifesong sing to You
I want to sign Your name to the end of this day
Knowing that my heart was true
Let my lifesong sing to You

It made me really think about how many of my days I even want to sign my own name to, let alone God’s name. Most of the time I think I would be content to submit my day anonymously (just leave it on the desk when nobody's looking), and not have to answer for the results. Well, all right, there are any number of days where I’ve done “good work”, and I’d be willing to take the credit for them. But how often is my day of the kind of quality, and consistency, that makes it appropriate for inclusion in the God Signature Collection?

I continue to ponder that as we move into fall; with so many demands ramping up all around me, it can be tempting to settle for Good Enough. I’m getting the feeling more and more that God (who created my multichannel brain to begin with) is using one or more of those channels to remind me not to settle for the best I can do … but instead to strive for the best He can do.

Einstein Said He Could Never Understand it All

I've awakened on several mornings recently with a song in my head -- the only pop song I'm aware of that references Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity -- an unjustly-neglected James Taylor classic called, "Secret O'Life":

Now the thing about time is that time isn't really real
It's just your point of view
How does it feel for you?
Einstein said he could never understand it all...

Note that the Theory of Relativity does not refer to the idea that time goes slower when your relatives visit. I never said that and I will continue to deny that I did.

Regardless of what you think of Professor Einstein's theory, and Professor Taylor's corollary, there are a lot of examples of time being relative. This is impressed upon me quite forcefully when talking to other parents, especially the ones with adult children.

For some reason all of them are obligated to advise me: "Enjoy this time -- they grow up so fast." You will perhaps pardon me if that seems a little difficult to believe. Since our son was born in 1999, and our daughter will be graduating from high school in 2020, we are still in the warmup stage, kidwise.

I'm going to entirely put aside the question of "enjoying" this time... probably best to take the Fifth Amendment on that one.

It's definitely true that it's difficult to maintain an accurate sense of time when you're in the midst of the whirlwind. For a long, long time we were eternally vigilant over our children. Never can tell when the little one might take a notion to expand the concept of what's considered "edible"... or perhaps her brother might decide to use her to practice for his future calling as an NFL punter.

Suddenly -- and I have absolutely no idea when or how this happened -- we've reached a state of affairs where we look at each other and ask, "Where are the kids? What are they doing?" I'm not talking about tossing my daughter the keys and telling her to drive herself to preschool... but they have showed they can handle a certain amount of autonomy.

We still have the odd occurrence of Wrestlemania down in the playroom, but we're just as likely to hear bumping & giggling and when you call down, "What's going on?" they reply in completely innocent-sounding unison, "Nothing!"

I can take advantage of the extra free time by doing lots more chores. That is, I can... but I don't. It actually gives me a chance to check a few extra websites, or finish a sudoku, or simply grab a snack without having to explain to the kids why I get one and they don't.

It's all part of the master plan: we encourage the kids to be more independent, to amuse themselves, to learn to get along better and resolve their own disputes, fostering more closeness between siblings.

Or maybe I just don't want to have to share the chips.

Affirmative Action

When I was in college, I would sometimes listen to the Dr. Demento radio program. With a name like that, you can imagine it seemed extremely subversive on my conservative Christian campus – which of course was part of its appeal.

If you’re not familiar, it’s not as bad as it probably sounds. Each week the Doc played an assortment of comedy bits, song parodies, and the like; I won’t deny that the guy definitely has one table leg that's shorter than the other three, but it was pretty harmless. Perhaps his greatest crime was that he introduced Weird Al Yankovic to a wide audience, but that’s not indictable.

I vividly remember one routine of a guy going through a drive-thru window. The kid on the speaker is virtually unintelligible and keeps mangling the order; the driver repeats it again & again, a little louder, a little slower, a little more agitated… and then finally goes berserk. You hear the car rev up and drive into something – then, garbled through the speaker: “Can I take your order?”

I thought of that bit recently when I was musing about being a dad: some days it feels like you’re hollering into a microphone but the party on the other end isn’t quite hearing (or maybe listening); other times it’s like listening to that fuzzy speaker. Especially when my four-year-old gets going – she can ramble at length, and it’s all subjects and verbs and subordinate clauses and prepositional phrases and everything; complete sentences, perfect grammatically, but when she’s done I have no idea what she’s talking about.

There’s also one form of parental communication that's almost unique to parenting: the incessant stream of “nice job”, “way to go”, and “I’m proud of you” for tasks as basic as sharing a toy, pushing oneself on the swings, or going potty (hence the expression, “way to go”). I’m not that easily impressed as a rule – some would say I’m probably more blasé, in general, than I need to be – but I recognize the importance of affirming my kids. I also see how much they like to check in with us and receive our approval, and I want to keep that going as much as possible. I know the day is coming when the Parental Seal of Approval will feel more like a condemned sign to them, so I’ll enjoy my position of oracle while I can.

In a neat twist, I find myself on the other end of that sort of ego-boosting, because for several months I have been taking piano lessons. As I’ve mentioned, I’m reasonably adept on guitar; not a pro by any means but able to keep from embarrassing myself. And I know enough about music to know what piano-playing is supposed to sound like. Once in awhile, when the stars are aligned right, and the light hits the paper just so, and my fingers are optimally limber, I play something that sounds like the song in my head (well, one of the songs in my head, at least). Most of the time…not so much.

My piano teacher, of course, is unfailingly encouraging. Often she’ll tell me how much progress I’m making, how well I played the song, and …“I’d like to hear it for one more week” (thus giving me the option to imagine it’s because she’s enjoying hearing it so much). And sometimes, after I’ve struggled to the end of a piece for the umpty-umpth week in a row, sweaty like I just ran a lap, she’ll check it off (and sometimes add a smiley!) and I know in my heart: it’s not because I’ve mastered it, it’s because she knows I’m about to go crazy from the effort and the frustration and the sheer Chinese water-torture sensation of playing the same thing over & over & over again -- especially the mistakes, of course.

I don’t suppose the kids get much objective joy out of sharing toys; the praise is supposed to reinforce the habit. And until I can consistently play a basic piece without sounding like my fingers (or the keys, or the notes – pick any two) have all been removed and reattached in random order, I won’t have that many moments of true musical satisfaction either – so I need all the sunshine pumped in my direction that I can get.

Theology for Dummies: High Concept

Seekers of Truth in Advertising will be thrilled with the current movie, "Snakes on a Plane." Aficionados of classic cinema will no doubt have to look elsewhere, but when it comes to being self-explanatory, it's hard to beat a title like that.

On the other hand, we've all seen "Coming Atttractions" that make it unneccessary to see the actual movie, so there is such a thing as giving away too much. In my case the title itself is actually overkill -- as soon as I see the word "snakes" I know to stay away.

This is an excellent example of what Hollywood calls a "high concept" movie. Anything you can describe in one sentence -- let alone a 4-word title -- is considered high concept. Obviously not high in the sense of lofty, but rather in the sense of taking precedence over story, characters, acting...

Any film where special effects, car chases, and/or the soundtrack should get top billing is a good example of high concept. Movies like Top Gun, Die Hard, and every Stallone picture after the first Rocky fit comfortably in this category.

[A slight oversimplification: I'm not sure Stop, or My Mom Will Shoot fits comfortably into any category.]

I'm really not a cinema buff; I think in TV terms. "Miami Vice" is the quintessential high-concept show; it's said that Brandon Tartikoff (head of NBC) wrote "MTV Cops" on a napkin, and the show sprang from that. "Seinfeld", on the other hand, became known as the show about nothing precisely because it's so hard to put your finger on.

If the same sort of classification were applied to books as well, I believe we'd find that in some ways, the ultimate high concept book is the Bible.

That seems absurd on the face of it, because the Bible is actually made up of 66 books: history, poetry, prophecy, teaching; all different writers; spanning hundreds of years. But I believe that the entire Bible exists to illustrate two basic ideas (hey, it's a big book -- I can use 2 sentences instead of just one).

1. God loves us in a way that, if He were human, you'd probably call irrational. Time and time again He reaches out to His people, only to be pushed away; over and over He believes in them, and they let Him down. He keeps reaching... He keeps believing... and "in the fullness of time" (what a wonderful phrase!) He sends them His Son. By the way, when I say "them", I mean of course us.
2. God uses the most unlikely people to accomplish great things. Abraham & Sarah were old; Moses was a fugitive; David was a shepherd boy; Mary was a young girl; Paul was a professional Christian-hunter. Two lessons from that: first, God doesn't need to use us but it delights Him to work in partnership with us. Second, no matter what you are, you're not ineligible (or exempt, or safe) from being called to His purposes. Or, as someone wiser (and funnier) than I said about the story of Samson (Jdg. 15:13-17), if God can use the jawbone of an ass, He can certainly use you.

There are unquestionably other Big Themes in the Scripture, but these are my favorites and in my eyes the most important. But hey, it's a game anyone can play -- go find your own! Read the Book, don't wait for the movie.

Metablog: The View from the 40s

A new quarter has been heard from in the ongoing debate about what constitutes middle age (and whether present company is excepted), as I discussed previously.

I had been noticing over the last 6 months or so an increasing difficulty seeing close up. I found myself, in fact, peering over the top of my glasses whenever I had to work with something tiny. I was concerned enough to violate my usual protocol and make a doctor’s appointment.

When the ophthalmologist came in to begin his very thorough exam, I described my symptoms to him, and he sort of snorted before retorting, “You’re describing what happens to everyone in middle age.” Later in the exam he explained he would try to avoid over-correcting my vision, since younger eyes can adjust for that… but “you older fellows will definitely feel it.” Evidently ophthalmologists have little experience in developing bedside manner.

So I’m now adjusting to a brand-new pair of “progressive lenses”, the modern-day version of bifocals. Actually I think I’ve done well adapting to the lenses; it may take longer to adjust to the idea of being a guy who needs progressive lenses. Not to worry, however; the optician, who is clearly in league with the doctor, tells me that the shape of my new frames makes me look “younger”. So there’s a bit of a paradigm shift as well – I used to seek to look older, more mature…

Anyway, it wasn’t really my 40s I set out to discuss (although it seems to be preoccupying me more than I have perhaps admitted even to myself!). I noticed on my blog maintenance home page recently that I am now in the 40s for number of posted articles. And while it won’t be until later in the month that I reach my 40th week, I sensed an opportunity for a look back.

I read a statistic recently -- in my favorite airline magazine -- that 55% of all blogs are abandoned before they hit 3 months. If nothing else, it’s wonderful to know that at least in one respect, this blog is above average – well, median, at least.

Like the new lenses, having a blog has changed the way I look at life. It’s arguable whether it’s a better way now, but I find myself in some ways more engaged with what’s going on around me, trying to determine what makes today unique (or sometimes, archetypical) or interesting or funny. Maybe I’m in some ways less engaged too, because I’m sometimes walking around writing in my head. I didn’t start this to make myself a better person, but I don’t want it to make me a lesser person either!

I did do it for my own satisfaction, and for the chance to put down my thoughts in a place that was all my own. Along with 8 zillion other bloggers. And I’ve found even more pleasure in the act of creating and writing than I thought I could. I tend to re-read my stuff pretty frequently, and I’m still proud of what I’ve written and enjoy reading it, with a few notable exceptions. When I get into trouble is usually when I have one thing to say, usually a joke, and I try to create a 500- or 600-word frame to put it in. Some of them are meant to be serious and come out kind of pseudo-serious; others are meant to be funny and come out… well, pseudo-funny is no funny at all.

As I have alluded to previously, it astounds me how often a conversation reminds me of something I just wrote. Unfortunately it’s usually my conversational partners who are astounded in turn as I try in vain to find a subtle way to slip in the fact that I have a blog: “You should read what I just wrote about that.” So far the rate of responses inquiring about my blog and its URL is running at approximately 0.00%, so that’s one conversational gambit I’m trying to abandon.

In addition to my own amusement and satisfaction, I do sometimes get a tiny bit of external validation. I don’t think I get too many “random” visitors, but a few of my friends & family have acknowledged stopping by now and then. Just knowing others are reading is gratifying, but I actually have one pretty regular correspondent who says nice things often enough to keep me on the hook. I wonder if she’s familiar with the concept of variable reinforcement?

I was talking to another friend recently who had just read some of my stuff, and she gave me the one compliment I treasure above all others... although it’s still not 100% clear to me that she meant it as a compliment! She said, “When I read it, all I could think is that it sounds just like you.” And that’s exactly what a blog should be, or at least what my blog should be. So if you read two or three and you don’t like them, don’t waste your time by coming back: it’s not the entry you don’t like, it’s me.

The Hazards of Time Travel

As a preacher's kid (PK), I almost literally grew up inside a church. Now my kids are in the same boat; since the church is right across the road from our home, they see it almost like another room of the house.

This is, of course, something of a mixed blessing (I'm thinking of titling my autobiography "There Is No Such Thing as an Unmixed Blessing"... but I digress. Now that I think of it, it should probably be called "But I Digress"). It's wonderful to have children who feel entirely at home in church; if more kids felt this way, we'd have a lot more kids (and their parents) in church. Of course, when you take it to its logical conclusion -- and add in the fact that their mom & I are often a bit preoccupied on a Sunday morning -- what you get is kids running around creating a mild amount of havoc.

At such times, there are often some of our more senior members nearby. I don't care to speculate about what they might say about it to each other... but to us, they invariably comment as follows: "Wouldn't you love to have that kind of energy?" Raise your hand if you think there's a certain amount of euphemism contained there. In any case, the conversation often turns to the question of "going back" to that age, "knowing what you know now."

It's a tempting idea; I always thought it sounded kinda cool. Seems almost foolproof. And then, very suddenly, I got the chance to do just that when I found a box containing 5 years of my life.

When I was in college and first began to fancy myself a bit of a writer, I started to keep a journal (note: never never never use the word "diary"), and for a period of 4 years or so I wrote frequently -- often daily, but at least "periodically". It is a record of what I did and what I was thinking, at a time when an awful lot was kind of up for grabs. It's also a first effort at developing a personal writing style, and it is almost completely uncensored... in the sense that I made no attempt to sugar-coat what I was doing or thinking.

As a blogger, opening a box containing 5 years of my journals was a bit like finding a thick vein of gold running through your backyard. My first thought was that I couldn't wait to read it; my second was that surely I could pull out some nuggets and get a cute blog entry from it. I enjoyed Bob Greene's bestseller based on his journal from his senior year in high school, and although I knew it wouldn't be a bestseller, or even an entire book, it seemed like a slam dunk for a wry and nostalgic piece.

I failed to reckon with a couple of things. First, the writing is appalling. I have enough self-confidence/delusion to put this stuff out on the web where anyone on the planet can read it if they're so inclined... but it's hard to find a single sentence in the journals I'd want to see the light of day. I've never overcome my weakness of drifting toward too cute or too witty or too quirky... but my current prose reads like whipped cream compared to my 18-year-old self.

Of course, the part about uncensored is an issue too. I wouldn't say there's anything I'm ashamed of, but on the other hand I don't think anyone would come off too well if you were able to read all their innermost thoughts!

I found, in fact, that I didn't much like many of the people I was getting reacquainted with. Especially the young me. There are fairly frequent references to clashes with people who didn't like me, found me abrasive & difficult to get along with, and/or were annoyed by something I said. Frequent enough, in any case, that it's hard to say it's "everyone else's fault".

All of that was hard enough, but I was also blindsided by the emotional impact of going back to that point in my life. As you might guess, much of the content concerned relationships with persons of the opposite gender. Going through the cycle of

1. is there any chance she might be interested?
2. wow, this is exciting...
3. I wonder if this could really last?
4. Houston, we have a problem

in the space of a few pages was for me quite wrenching.

So here's the verdict: you can't go home again, or back in time either. I was living it as if all over again. And the only thing I got out of "knowing what I know now" was that I started to get sad pages and pages in advance, because I knew what was coming. I saw all over again all the mistakes I made, all the things I should've done and shouldn't have said, as if from behind a sheet of Plexiglas or like yelling at the TV: No! Don't do it! You'll be sorry!

I'm not sorry I did the things I did; I'm not sorry I wrote it all down (I'm actually thrilled that I have the record, although I truly wish that kid had been a better writer); I'm not even sorry that I read it all again. I just wish that going in, I had heeded the lesson of Scrooge. Remember? He also got to visit Christmas Past, knowing what he knew "now" -- but unable to do anything about it -- and it caught him off-balance too.

After several days have passed, I have a little more perspective, and I feel like I understand the 18-year-old kid better. I don't want to say I've "forgiven" him, exactly, because that implies an offense. But I think I'm ready to cut him a little more slack.

Editor's Note

I published the preceding post on August 27 (in my defense, it was late at night!). It kept drifting through my thoughts all day today, and I became convinced that I hadn't been clear enough in what I was trying to say. This evening I made a few small edits. I didn't say anything "wrong" the first time, but I hope I've said it better the second time....

Reunion

Although we're all officially back to work (OK, the kids have a little vacation left), our thoughts often drift to the Sunshine State. They weren’t kidding about that, by the way; it turns out the State Legislature previously rejected “The Oppressive Heat State” as bad for business.

This was the big Yearly Vacation Trip, including our Date With Mickey. Wait, I already used that with Donnie Iris. In any case, I'm pleased to report that the trip, logistically, was about as routine as could be hoped. There’s even one measurable incidental benefit to flying Southwest: the in-flight magazine, Southwest Airlines Spirit.

The big general-interest magazines like Life went extinct awhile back, but it seems airline mags are the 21st-century equivalent, with an eclectic selection of articles. And they’re even interesting… generally.

My favorite piece this month was an essay by the editor on high school reunions. I briefly considered pasting my own picture over his at the top of the page, because it was kinda funny/kinda touching, or in other words what I'm shooting for in this blog. It was also a reminder, as if I needed it, that he’s a pro and I’m not, and that there’s a lot more to being a writer than good grammar & spelling.

Since I started my own writing “career”, I’ve become much more sensitive to connections and parallels, so I immediately identified with his topic. On our way to pay homage to the Oversized Rodent, we attended my parents’ 60th Anniversary party – which of course also served as at least a partial family reunion.

It was the first time this combination had coalesced in 3 years; perhaps 4 or 5 times in the last 10 years. As a result it took on almost the quality of a high school reunion: infrequent, and a group of people that knew each other most intimately several years ago. I should stress above all that we had a wonderful time during our visit, and time with my family (especially as infrequent as it is) is one of my most prized commodities. At the same time I think it's important to acknowledge that success in these instances is not a foregone conclusion, no matter how loved your loved ones are.

At such times it’s hard not to see each other through the lens of those long-ago experiences… even if the “prescription” has changed significantly in the meantime. Not only that, but I think there's a temptation for most of us to play the same part, even if we’ve outgrown it.

At my recent high school reunions, I was still amazed that the Pretty Girls would talk to me and that the Cool Guys acknowledged me – despite the fact that I’m a married man now, and that 25 years or so tends to level the “coolness” playing field to a large degree.

In the same way, when the family assembles, it’s all too easy for me to be the smart-alecky little brother. Now I know how Jerry Mathers felt when they made “Still the Beaver”; it’s tough to play the same role at 44 that you did at 9 (or even 19). After all, Lucy played basically the same character into her mid-70s – but at the end, none of us could bear to watch.

At a high school reunion, you have the luxury of playing that part, since you probably won't see these people for another 5 years (and chances are you don't care that much about their opinion anyway). Family, or any real relationship, is a different story. The highlight of the week for me was viewing a pile of old family photographs -- but as treasured as they are, I want to make sure none of us gets frozen (or freezes each other) into that image from long ago. In those experiences, I think it's best to remember: snapshots are valuable memories, but life itself is a motion picture.

Into the Rodent's Jaws

You think you understand something about life, and then you become a parent; suddenly everything you once knew is inoperative. For example, we used to drive cars. Then we had a child. At first, everything seemed normal enough, but then one day I woke up and there was a minivan in the garage. I’m still not sure what kind of cosmic waves were emanating from our home … must’ve been those gamma rays that were always creating mutants and raising havoc in those ‘50s movies.

In the same way, once the kids are out of diapers, at least, a sort of homing instinct begins to grow. The swallows always return to Capistrano; the buzzards come back annually to Hinckley, Ohio; and every family with small children is inexorably drawn to the vicinity of Orlando, Florida.

As a matter of fact, most of them were there last week when we visited the Magic Kingdom. I quickly deduced why they call it a Kingdom – it’s approximately the same size as Liechtenstein, at least when you include all the other associated Disney fiefdoms. It even has a moat, at least in a functional sense, in the miles of Mouse-ka-highways that surround the nerve center. I’m pretty sure that if any evildoers massed to attack, Central Command would have time to scramble squadrons of costumed characters to defend Cinderella’s Castle.

The main impression, as a result, that you tend to take away from the whole venture is the utter immensity of it all. There are something like 35,000 people living in my town… but there are approximately 55,000 Cast Members (not “employees”, “staff”, or “indentured servants”) at the Magic Kingdom. And I literally cannot even comprehend how many other sweaty, suddenly-much-poorer souls were in attendance along with us (and Disney ain't telling, either -- I asked them).

But there is clearly no enterprise on the planet more attuned to processing the great wads of humanity (and cash) that show up every day. After awhile I confess I stopped thinking of myself as “someone on vacation having a good time”, or even “a customer seeking to get my money’s worth”, and I became what industry sometimes describes as a “throughput”: a commodity designed to go through a certain process and come out the other end in some different state.

Here’s the truly odd thing – I say that not in resentment for being manipulated, but in sincere admiration for how they pull it off. Despite the fact that we were surrounded by more people than have ever watched UPN, we really never experienced an interminable wait. That’s fairly significant considering two of our party were under 7.

And you know what, we had a lovely family time, despite being trapped in the world’s largest convection oven. In fact, considering the unrelenting barrage of entertainment (and courtesy, and even cheerfulness), I even came away with an almost unsettling sense of having gotten my money’s worth – which anyone who has seen me with my hand over my wallet knows I do not say lightly. I think that in some sense I began to see the way we were being efficiently fed through an enormous machine as part of the show.

So I find myself against all odds recommending the experience and even considering repeating it. Someday. After my feet and my bank account and my internal thermostat recover. And here’s a little extra ammo for my family to save up and use against me: if I balk, remind me of the feeling of a family of four, ranging in age from 4 to 44 and in life attitude from totally trusting to … somewhat skeptical :-) … remind me of those four people all cackling gleefully as we blast the Bad Guys together on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. The omnipresent MasterCard ads would describe those moments as "priceless", and although that's not the way it shows up on my Visa bill, it will certainly remain a slide in my mental Powerpoint of highlights for some time to come.

Everybody Has a Dream

There are four distinct television periods in our home. First is 7-9 am, dominated by a wide variety of animated programs (but always including, if at all possible, “Magic School Bus”); next is midday, which is a TV-free zone punctuated by an occasional video; fourth is the after-8-pm/after kids’ bedtime period.

In between the last two is the pre-bedtime period. Understand that we don’t as a rule use TV as a child-distraction technique, but in the half-hour or so before bedtime, it can be an effective landing strip for kids to come down from a long, busy day. Even at that hour, it’s possible to find kid-oriented programming, but that’s not cartoon time in our den.

No, even if you take Our Boy out for ice cream, or the circus – or ice cream at the circus – his main preoccupation will be whether he’s going to miss “Unwrapped”. If you’re not familiar, this is a show on the Food Network that goes behind-the-scenes to show how things like M & M’s, ice cream, or chips are made. I have to admit that I am often as transfixed, or more so.

His official bedtime is at 8, but unfortunately that’s when The King makes his entrance, and nothing will do but that we watch at least a few minutes. I’m speaking, of course, of the one and only Emeril. Once he’s seen the segment before the first commercial, it’s as if his day is officially complete and he can go to bed fulfilled.

I’m not sure I understand the fascination. Maybe it’s because he’s loud and boisterous and laughs at his own jokes. Maybe it’s just the “Bam!”, although my son rarely if ever emulates it. One way or the other, he’s clearly the Big Cheese, or Pork, or Pasta, at our house.

The truth is I’m a bit obsessed with him myself. I wish I were an accomplished chef, a wealthy man, a TV star, a celebrity… but it’s really not just a shallow envy of someone who could buy and sell me 100 times over.

I want his support staff.

When he stands up to cook, you know it wasn’t him who chopped all the veggies, boned all the chicken breasts and measured all the spices. When he gets every pot in the house dirty, it’s not him staying after the show to wash dishes; he doesn’t have much incentive to re-use a measuring cup and he never runs out of clean paring knives.

I’d surely love all that, but I’m really most fixated on something even more obscure. After he does the opening bit, the theme song plays and the stagehands come out. One wraps him in a clean, white apron; one pins his mike on him; and right before he takes center stage, they hand him a pristine, snowy white towel.

If he were in my kitchen, he’d be wiping his hands on the same scrap of paper towel all day – trying not to use up the whole roll, since I also have no shopping support staff. And forget about using a kitchen towel, because guess who’s the laundry support staff?

Every time I see the show, that towel seems to loom a little larger, glow a little brighter. I think at this point I’d chop all the veggies, bone all the chicken breasts, measure all the spices, wash all the dishes… if only there were someone to hand me a pristine, snowy white towel when I’m ready to cook.

Brought to You By Hanes

Our local sports/civic arena has fallen on hard times lately. Every year seems to be a virtual torrent of red ink (“but don’t worry, we get great benefit to our economy from the visitors”); now the main tenant, the hockey team, has flown the coop.

If you’ve watched SportsCenter lately, you might guess what solution is being proposed. Maybe you’ve seen some highlights from an Astros game at Minute Maid Park, or perhaps you schedule your New Year’s Day activities around the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. In the 21st century sports world, the way to raise quick cash is to sell naming rights. The Army used to say, "If it moves, salute it; if it doesn't move, paint it." The modern equivalent is selling sponsorships; our local arena is selling every surface, region, and object, down to individual seats.

I’ll say more about that in a sec, but the most positive local news the past few days is that we’ve finally achieved a respite from the oppressive weather we’d been experiencing – one day last week brought a high temperature of 96 and a heat index of 115. It made me wonder, to the extent that one could form a coherent thought last week, whether it would have been a good time for a fire & brimstone kind of sermon: you know, clean up your act or you could be having this kind of weather for all eternity.

After thinking about it, though, I concluded that would never work. In the first place, one of my core beliefs (and I still intend to explore those more fully sometime) is that you can’t scare anyone into believing. Even more than that, you can’t impress today’s spiritual consumers (word chosen intentionally) with a threat of hell or a promise of heaven. Maybe colonial-era folks – who weren’t having all that much fun in this life, especially if you were the colonize-ee – were motivated by thoughts of the next, but in the present age if faith doesn’t have benefits for the “user” right here/right now, it’s going to be a tough sell.

The good news is, we believe faith does mean something more than pie in the sky, by & by. But even if threats were effective, I’m not sure we have much ammunition. After all, it may be hotter in That Other Place, but I can’t imagine there’s as much humidity.

And if you were wondering, I thought the first “title sponsor” of my blog should be Hanes – since this entry is… umm… brief.

Not Quite the Fortress of Solitude

The trend is definitely exacerbated in the summertime, but it seems to get harder every year to find a television program with actors and, you know, scripts and things. "Unscripted" television (the industry term for what you and I call reality TV) is all the rage these days, of course. If that troubles you, keep in mind it could be worse: we had a reality boom once before, and all we ended up with that time was "Real People".

I still remember when "Survivor" debuted. I don't think even CBS was expecting much -- after all, it was the dead of summer -- but I was hooked instantly and so was seemingly everyone else in America, and the trend has mushroomed from there.

While there is much to dislike about many reality efforts and the genre itself, especially the way the contestants have gotten increasingly self-aware/conscious/referential, on balance I am enough of a fan that I try to check out a lot of the new ones, and end up watching several on an ongoing basis. At some point I will probably gather my thoughts about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Recently I got to watch the debut of another new one entitled, "Who Wants to Be a Superhero?" It's a competition show with a group of "ordinary"... no, "average"... wait, "normal"? Well, let's just say they're civilians. They say they want to be comic-book style superheroes; they show up with their own persona and corresponding costume, ranging from "Captain Victory" and "Creature" to "Monkey Woman" and "Cell-phone Girl".

After one episode I'm still trying to determine how serious everyone is, and what is strictly tongue-in-cheek, but I'm intrigued enough to stop in again. Part of my interest stems from the fact that superheroes are big business around here.

Our son is 6, and our daughter is 4, and they spend much of their waking time playing with a wide assortment of action figures. And the assortment gets wider every week -- they can't wait for Saturday to arrive so they can hit garage sales to recruit more new "guys" for the Task Force. Some of them are good guys, some of them are bad guys -- although this is extremely fluid -- and some of them seem to be the dad of some of the others. This is also fluid, but our superheroes at least seem to feel the need to form impromptu family groups.

As parents we applaud the exercise of creativity indicated by the constantly-changing storyline -- not to mention the idea that they can play together for a period of time (hopefully even without a great deal of Adult Intervention). It also made me, as a parent who naturally wants the absolute best for his children, visualize my own "guys" as superheroes. What might be their secret identities?

Possibilities for my son:

• The Human Alarm Clock -- We never set our alarm any more, for we know without doubt that Our Boy will be in our bedroom every day precisely at 7 a.m. And by "precisely", I mean after the clock hits 7:00 but before the second zero turns to a 1. Who knows, that might be a superpower that would come in handy at the Justice League clubhouse.
• Needle Man -- Not the kind that is used with thread, unfortunately. No one has, or could have, more skill at getting under his sister's skin. This would come in handy if she ever becomes an Archvillain, but I suppose it's possible that he could use it to frustrate other evildoers as well.

Options for my daughter:

• Siren -- I am, as you may have noted, a boy, and my sisters are enough older that I never really grasped a basic fact about girls: girls shriek. When she is angry, her voice can climb the scale... well, the cliche is that only dogs can hear it. I can tell you that I can hear it (not understand it, but hear it) but I'd just as soon not. The only thing more piercing than her angry shriek is... her happy shriek. I'm quite sure there's a way to use that skill to fight crime; maybe she could shatter the windshield of the getaway car.
• Monkey Girl -- Yeah, I know, that one's already taken (at least till that other chick gets bounced off the show). But I'd be foolish not to leverage her most outstanding skill: she loves to climb and clamber, and I can tell you from personal experience that she can use that talent to immobilize someone. Especially when you take into account the high-velocity impact she makes when she approaches her unsuspecting target.

If I'm dreaming big, I have to confess it's not just on behalf of the kids. I also figure that since superheroes seem to enjoy such a lavish lifestyle, in my old age I'm at least guaranteed the apartment over the Batcave.

The Perfect Storm

When I began my career, I was teaching – a pretty individualistic pursuit. I got to set my own agenda, and I was responsible for my own success. Then I became a programmer and joined a small company, which slowly grew into a larger company, and was eventually swallowed up by one of the largest corporations in the universe.

Now that I’m a tiny cog in an enormous wheel – a guy with a 9-digit employee ID – I have to get used to the corporate way of thinking. One aspect of that is the reliance on buzzwords. Corporations are the folks who gave you task, purpose, and leverage as verbs, you know. One of our favorites, actually, is “synergy” – the concept of multiple factors working together in such a way that the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.

I will not try anyone’s patience by linking to my previous entries; but anyone who’s read this all along knows that I love music, and I love God, and I love kids. So you would think, in the name of synergy, that leading music at Vacation Bible School would be an absolute slam-dunk for me.

Over the years, however, I have come to the place where my least favorite sentence is, “Would you consider leading music at VBS?” Well, it probably runs a close second to, “Honey, did you do everything on the list I left this morning?” But that may be a discussion for another day.

Actually, VBS music is an excellent example of synergy, much like the recent bestseller and movie, The Perfect Storm… a confluence of an assortment of difficult circumstances. For example, I do love kids; I’m really excellent – with a few. Perhaps not so much with 60 or 80 eight-year-olds.

Now it appears to me that VBS publishing is a pretty big business, but in order to keep selling a new package every year, they have to keep coming up with new songs every year. And I mean new – it’s very rare that even the adults know any of the songs that come in the package; forget about the kids.

So we stick the words up on the wall, and we play a CD really loud, and we run through each one a few times, and we hope that somehow the kids can jump on a moving bus. And of course, it’s extremely helpful that probably half of them are actually under 8 and really can’t read the words anyway. Actually, that’s kind of a moot point: if you’ve ever had 80 or so kids in one room… you have my condolences. But I’ll bet my CD player and my overhead projector that if you did, they weren’t all attending to the same task, or for that matter all facing the same direction.

All of this is a little hard on my Musician side. When I do get… enlisted… to do the music, I tend to get a little over-focused on the idea of Leading Singing. I sometimes forget that the point isn’t really to get them singing, but rather:

• to let them hear the songs – maybe even get them stuck in their heads for a later date
• to get them focused on the theme of the evening or the week
• to get them excited about what we’re doing... or more accurately, to redirect the teeming mass of energy already in the room in the right direction.

Somehow it all works together, almost despite the music and certainly despite me. We just concluded our week, with someone else leading music, and the kids (and even the staff) had a great time. Looks like we have synergy working for us after all.

86 on the Chainsaws

There are a large number of web destinations called “Random Access”, but I chose the name anyway because it really is meant to be random – only appropriate since our minds are also (I thought of calling it “100% Brain Flakes”, but it's hard to make a URL out of that).

For example, I still remember the first time I heard Carole King sing “It’s Too Late” … I was in the back seat of a car driving through Troy, and I was about 10. My sister was in the front seat and our friend Lana was driving. I heard the song the other day while driving, and I had such a powerful flashback – even a sense of “10-ness” that I almost forgot how to drive. I was instantly back in that spot. Music is well known to induce that kind of reaction, but I think I got a double portion of that section of the brain; maybe it replaced some of those things I’m obviously missing.

In any case, there’s clearly no accounting for the things we remember. My wife asked me for a friend’s phone number the other day, and I rattled off … the number we last had in 1994 (in my defense, the first 4 digits were the same). I still remember watching a special, around 1990, starring the juggler Michael Davis. He’s as well-known for his comedy bits as for his technical skill, and I remember he did a bit with a bowling ball and a ping-pong ball that amazed me. It might have been him, or another juggler, who juggled revving chain saws – a bit of a step up from flaming torches.

In a way, I feel like I’ve made the same move. Normal life is a bit like juggling flaming torches for most of us, I think. And summer is supposed to be when the livin’ is easy, life takes on a slower pace, we relax a bit… but the more I live it, the more I think that’s only true in beer commercials. Since the beginning of summer, it seems as if I’ve graduated from torches to chain saws.

Everything goes up a notch, particularly the kid involvement. Now that they are out of school, they constitute a full-time job, to go with my part-time actual job (or paid job, if you prefer). Said employment is itself increasing the pressure, with a laundry-list of “first of September” deadlines.

Then there’s the carefree joy of planning and executing the Annual Family Vacation, including a visit to Disney, “The Hottest, Humidest, Most Crowded Place on Earth®”. In August, no less! Did I mention this has me filled with something falling short of breathless anticipation?

Although we finally broke down & bought a power mower for camp, the fact remains that I have two lawns to keep un-savanna-like. So when I arrive at our retreat, the first thing I do is retreat to the shed & haul out the mower. If I stay home, we have a wealth of beautiful new landscaping… but since the weather has been days of either downpours or oven-like heat, there are maintenance duties as well.

I’m trying desperately to do all of that and still attend to things like my fantasy baseball league (although I think divine intervention might be the best bet for my team), and the blog, and piano practice, and miscellaneous household chores. My wife has also reminded me that it’s poor form to squeeze one’s spouse in at the end of such a list – or even “in the middle”, for that matter.

The unfortunate reality is that most of those things are by no means optional, with the exception of the things I do for enjoyment. So I am constantly seeking ways to make all the pieces fit (which, by the way, accounts at least in part for the sparse nature of my posts – but I promise I’m writing them in my head all the time!); I know for sure that one more chainsaw will lead me to drop the whole group.

Liner Notes

Back when music used to come on large vinyl discs called record albums -- kids, ask your grandparents about those (and phones with long curly cords that plug into the wall) -- I enjoyed reading the sleeve inside the album cover. Not all of that material always survived the transition to cassettes (kids, ask your parents about those), but I'm happy to say that the tradition has revived pretty handsomely for the most part with the advent of CDs.

In addition to the photos of the band, and the complete lyrics of the songs, there are often a few paragraphs written by the musicians. Sometimes there are some insights as to the origins of some of the songs, but almost inevitably it's mostly thank yous (and I have written previously about that phenomenon!).

Tucked in amongst thanks to the producer, the family, and so on, are often acknowledgements of the backing musicians or guest artists on the album. And for some reason -- probably the human tendency/mania to create insiders & outsiders -- these often seem to be inside jokes, nicknames, and obscure references that will only be understood by those in the studio that day ("To Punky -- thanks for helping me make bail!").

Today it's my turn for my own Liner Notes. I have been much less active on the blog in recent weeks, and one of the principal reasons for that has been the preparations for my wife's 40th birthday party, which we held yesterday. By the way, I can say "40" with impunity -- she is facing it cheerfully, since as she says her frequent presiding at funerals has left her all too aware of the alternative.

The event was, as far as we could tell at least, a raging success, and for that we owe a debt of thanks to a lot of people. Our credit card debt is paid automatically each month by transfer from our bank account, but I don't want to let my thanks become automated (though skeptics will note that I'm still managing to get the computer involved).

So although I strive mightily to make this blog connection-neutral -- that is, my objective is to be just as interesting (or boring) to the random passer-by as I am to those who know me -- today is directed at those involved with the party. I have reason to believe several of them stop by this space from time to time! So, thanks:

• to Bill & Laurie, who came up with a few things I needed at the last minute
• to Faith, who carried tables and chairs back and forth, and helped set up
• to Bob, who helped me set up the PowerPoint show, and then (quite characteristically) gave up his spot so more people could crowd in to see it
• to Randy & Connie, who stayed after to help clean up the carnage
• to Phred & Natalie and Gary & Jolly, who made a 200-mile round trip for a 3-hour party
• to over 50 of our friends, both longstanding and recent (I make it a policy never to refer to "old" friends), who came and brought food and laughed and talked, and honored us by their presence
• to God, who in the midst of a spell of oppressive weather and frequent storms gave us a beautiful day -- more a necessity than a pleasure when you give a party for 50+ people at a 1000-sq ft camp!

One of the guests remarked to me at one point what a nice party it was -- although objectively it wasn't that much, just some tables and chairs on the lawn, some snacks to share, and the kids playing games -- and I replied that it was easy: if good people come, you've got a good party. Maybe that's why Mary Richards always gave such lousy parties; who wants to hang out with Ted and Sue Ann? For some reason it reminded me of an underrated Jackson Browne song, "The Load-Out":

Tonight the people were so fine
They waited there in line
And when they got up on their feet
They made the show

I hasten to say we didn't make anyone wait in line, and there were adequate chairs so no one had to be on their feet... but it was the people who made the show, and we say thanks to all. Let's see... only 6 more years till Mark turns 50; write that in your calendars now!