Parental Advisory?

When I was in my 20s and 30s I knew everything about parenting, which made it even more unfortunate that we didn't have kids at that juncture. Apparently that brand of expertise comes with an expiration date, sadly, because by the time the kids actually arrived I seemed to know a lot less about being a parent.

As it turns out, it's like everything else in the world: you can't really be taught, you have to learn it for yourself. Of course, over my 12+ years of experience, I've developed a few theories... but I'm reminded of a baseball quote. Charlie Lau, on catching the knuckleball: "There are two theories on catching a knuckleball; unfortunately, neither of them work."

Each of my children has in their own way provided a well-equipped laboratory for research and development in the field of study, but I thought it might be interesting to submit a case study for possible peer review.

Our daughter is prone to report a new ailment every day -- I'm always prepared for a litany when she gets off the bus, and she rarely disappoints. And despite her apparent athleticism, she seems to get bumped & bruised on virtually any trip across a room that's not completely empty. I've heard it before, is what I'm saying.

So this morning I was not completely astonished to find her with a long gauze bandage wrapped around her hand and halfway to the elbow. When I inquired, she told me that her arm hurt and she needed to protect it. I don't have a lot of patience with her... well, I don't want to say "hypochondria"... let's say "hypersensitivity", so I told her she would be taking it off before school. She said no, she needed it because her arm hurt, and she was to say the least not impressed by my contention that since it was neither cut nor broken, it wasn't doing her any good.

I am aware that you can't really win a war of wills with someone who's determined to be unreasonable -- I have often said that parenting is the ultimate proof that you can't ever really make another person do anything -- so I decided to retreat to the shower to consider my next move.

I knew that gym and recess are highlights in her schedule, so I decided to tell her that if she was that hurt, she would have to sit out of both gym & recess for the day. Maybe I was just waterlogged, but I really believe in natural consequences: if you mess up, the result of that should be related to the offense. So I thought it was a logical way to squeeze her... but she just shrugged and said, "okay."

I certainly didn't want this to devolve into me chasing her around the house with a pair of scissors, and I couldn't very well threaten not to take her to school, so I decided to up the stakes: I told her that since she had been argumentative and defiant in not removing the bandage, her consequence would be to lose her privileges for the day -- no evening TV, no bedtime snack, no video games or any "special" recreation after school. Surely this would tip the balance...

... except of course if it had, I wouldn't be writing this. She said, once again, "okay."

And of course she had an awesome day at school because everyone was all curious/interested in her Serious Injury, so it appears she, well, beat me at my own game.

I did tell her that if the bandage continued, she would be too injured to play in her Little League game tomorrow, so she did conclude this evening that it was feeling better after all. But I hate to lose to an 8-year-old.

I suspect that if by some miracle I get multiple readers for this entry, the snickers will be inversely proportional to the number of kids per reader -- some of you have Been There, I'll wager -- but I'm certainly curious to know whether any of you would've handled it differently (I can ask that because I'm reasonably cure my wife won't read this; I know she would, ah, have an opinion). Warning: if you get all know-it-all on me, don't be surprised if your doorbell rings and you find her standing there with me peeling rubber halfway down the block....

Diamond Mind

I never had any shortage of toys as a kid -- don't get me wrong, I wasn't pampered either, but I don't recall ever feeling like I was missing out on certain "stuff". I did my fair share of Sears-catalog surfing at Christmastime, and my parents will tell you that I always created an itemized list on lined paper with the columns carefully drawn in with a ruler: page number, item, description, cost. But I don't think I ever seriously expected to get three-quarters of the stuff, nor did I feel like I came up short when I didn't.

It was always kind of a moot point anyway; there were only a few possessions I really cared about. The vast majority of the time, I had a book in my hand (and it wasn't unusual for the other hand to be buried up to the elbow in a bag of chips, but that's another story), although I can tell you that may not be the best policy at times such as when riding a bicycle, for example. When it was dark, or there was snow on the ground, I was racing Matchbox & Hot Wheels cars. When I needed something portable that I could mess with for hours, I brought my baseball cards.

The rest of the time, anytime I could get outside, it was my baseball glove.

On my frequent trips to the drugstore down the street to buy baseball cards, I would also carefully evaluate the available rubber balls to find the ones that would give me the perfect bounce off the brick wall of the church next door, then off the driveway into my waiting glove. If only there had been a Little Brick Wall League.

Even as much as I loved baseball, as a small, skinny kid who (at least when away from the brick wall) did not demonstrate prodigy-level baseball skills, I was actually too scared to play Little League the first year I was eligible. Once I got started, however, I couldn't be stopped. I played 4 years of Little League, and when I graduated from that -- despite ample evidence that I had already, ah, peaked as a ballplayer -- I played 3 years of Senior League. Well, "played" is perhaps a little strong in the latter case, but I had a uniform, and I showed up for every game, and every once in awhile they'd let me out on the field until the good players showed up. There comes a point, unfortunately, when no matter how fiercely you love the game, it stops pretending it loves you back. Regardless, however, when I look back at my "career", what I mostly think about is the fact that I missed playing that first year.

As a parent, I have tried not to make my kids merely xeroxes of myself -- I want them to have their own interests and their own opinions. So my son is big on Legos, which I never cared about as a kid, and they both like Pokemon cards, which I find kind of weird. Still, I was certainly hoping that the boy & I could share baseball; when he turned out not to dislike it, but not be enthusiastic either, I won't deny I was a little bit disappointed.

I'll also concede I was a bit surprised when it was the daughter who started at a pretty young age to ask me to play ball in the yard, and before long to beg to play Little League. Life around here (especially in the evenings) can get a bit complex, so we held her back from playing for a couple years... but as she continued to ask, and I continued to remember that year I didn't play, it just felt like we had to let her play.

She's having a great time playing -- she shapes her whole week around games and practices -- and I'm having a good (although often nervous!) time watching. I try to be there all the time for her; I remember that in my later seasons, my dad would walk to the field... see that I wasn't playing, again, and turn & walk home. I want her to remember me there. And I resist as much as possible the urge to coach, although I do... ah... encourage her in very specific terms. Most importantly, I try really hard not to call her "honey", "sweetie", or "baby".

TFD: Holding Serve

It’s been quite awhile since my last post – in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever gone quite this long without disgorging something. In that time I’ve had ample opportunity to think about my favorite subjects, including of course me.

While I was pretty busy in the intervening weeks – including all my annual tasks connected to my fantasy baseball league; the beginning of both major league and Little League baseball; Holy Week; and the yearly Income Tax Ordeal – I don’t know that I was honestly too busy to write. In some ways it felt mostly like I didn’t have that much to say… maybe that’s an indication that I’ve already said everything worthwhile (I have been at this for more than five years!), or maybe at a deeper level I’m just not all that interesting.

There is for sure one aspect of my cosmopolitan, jet-set, on-the-go existence that I ponder quite often; I’ve hesitated to write about it because there are so many ways it can come out badly, but maybe if I can cross it off the list, something else will take its place.

I think that, constitutionally, I’m as selfish as the average person. I can confess – since my family never reads this – that if I bring an especially delicious treat in the house, I tend to store it in the most inconspicuous spot I can find. I’m not saying hide, exactly – OK, I did hide that 3.5 lb bag of peanut M&Ms… but I swear that was for everyone else’s protection… sort of. But I’m big enough to admit that I don’t usually call attention to such items either. In fact, I’m big enough to do most anything, since I quite often eat all the treats myself.

So what I’m getting at is that I certainly don’t see myself as Gandhi or Mother Teresa or anything. But there is no getting around the fact that in the structure of my daily life, I take on the role of a servant as much as any other role.

I have written about this before, and I’m sure it looks from some angles like I’m sitting here faux-modestly and stretching up my neck to receive a reassuring pat on the head. Hey, I wouldn’t put it past me to be a trifle mixed in my motivations. But I think mostly I’m just holding it up to the light and turning it around and trying to understand what it is. If it’s an ego issue at all, it’s probably more related to thinking that I can make it interesting to anyone else.

In fact, I think that if anything I’m finally starting to understand just how not-applause-worthy it all is. If I sort of cross-reference my life with Scripture, what I think I understand is that far from being up for the Nobel Prize in the husband/father category, it may be that I’m just meeting basic expectations (if that, even). After all, it says in Ephesians that husbands and wives are to submit themselves to one another; while that passage is often taken to mean something more like “obey”, I wonder if it’s not closer to the idea that in a marriage each partner may at times, or frequently, need to put aside individual ambitions for the good of the other.

So when I get right down to it, I understand that when I defer -- or even extinguish, so to speak -- following my more immediate desires, I don't get to take a bow. I have to say, I find that... really annoying. I like getting credit for stuff, and I love looking like the good guy. Instead I'm supposed to pull a Joe Friday -- "Just doing my job, ma'am."

Carrying it a little further, of course, I run smack into Philippians 2:

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature^[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature^[b] of a servant...

So I apparently don't win the prize; all I get is the home version of the game...

House Arrest in HD

I've never seen the movie "A Clockwork Orange" -- in fact, after a brief exploration of the movie courtesy of our Wikifriends, I believe I'm actually quite grateful that I never have. It's also really gratifying that I'm actually too young to have seen it the first time around. At my age, and I don't believe I've ever used that phrase before, being "too young" for anything is not to be taken lightly. However, the most famous scene from that movie has been floating around at least as a concept for a long time, so I got the reference when Lost used a similar scene. Let's just say, if you're not familiar, that too much TV can be not good for you.

On the other hand, consider the postulate advanced by a noted,ah, lifestyles researcher: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." I have to say I've already had cause to wonder about that on more than one occasion, usually related to expense account meals or some other form of free food.

So taken all around, I'm having a hard time deciding exactly how I feel about this. OK, I know you hate it when I force you to follow a link (or as my wife says, how come you're underlining random words?), so here it is in a nutshell:

Major League Baseball is conducting a casting call for a baseball fan’s dream job. The winner of this Dream Job promotion will move to NYC to star in a baseball web series and be a part of a live interactive experience for baseball fans that will include watching every MLB game over the course of the entire baseball season (simultaneously when multiple games are on at the same time), blogging opinions, interacting with fans through social media and appearing in video blogs. The web series will be distributed on MLB.com and through social media outlets.

Well, sure, if baseball is good -- surely that is a fundamental truth -- then mo' baseball is mo' better, and ALL of baseball has to be awesome. So that would be a hard job to turn down... except perhaps for a couple of pesky obstacles. The list of skill requirements is pretty daunting, but it really gets crazy when you check out the "Responsibilities" section.

Even before that, of course, it would be a tough row to hoe for anyone who already had a ... you know... life. Not that there's ever going to be an action-packed reality series based on my life, although I suppose it might possibly appeal to the Agoraphobic Channel. But I'm fairly sure that my employers would notice I was gone after, say, a few weeks. And at home the laundry would pile up and there's only so much peanut butter you can stock ahead of time. So I'm not sure I fit the target audience of No Friends, No Family, No Job, No Particular Reason Not to Throw All Your Possessions in a Liquor Store Box and Take Off for the Big Apple.

As a matter of fact, looking a little closer, we discern that they are not explicitly promising a suite at the Plaza; to be precise, "Must reside in a location picked by MLB in New York City for the entire baseball season." I think it would likely be relatively difficult to find a steam grate with high-speed wifi, so the "location" probably has walls... beyond that, who knows.

Here's the one that really got me, though: "Must be present in the location to observe all MLB regular season and postseason games during the 2011 season." I take that to mean you have to be in your chair any time there's a game on -- even West Coast night games that start after 10pm New York time. I'm hoping that they supply a wide variety of delivery menus; it would also help if there were screens in, um, some of the less typical rooms of the house.

But at least you won't have to worry about keeping your dignity intact. The promotion is co-sponsored by Endemol USA, makers of quality television programming such as "Deal or No Deal", "Wipeout", and perhaps most appropriately, "Big Brother".

A Different Annual Review

Almost any website has the potential to ensnare me... I have to be very careful at baseball-reference.com, for example, because any player page or team page I visit always leads to 2 or 3 more, and so on, and so on...

Another fun read is at tvtropes.org. This site defines a "trope" as follows: "Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations." For example, in sitcoms everyone's familiar with the bumbling dad, the precocious kid, etc.

Practically every movie trailer is built around tropes, captured brilliantly here:

One you hear with some regularity in a movie ad, often quoted from the reviewer for the Cedar Rapids Weekly Shopper, is "If you see only one movie all year, make it this one." Of course, this is really relevant to me because the over/under on the number of movies I attend in a given year pretty much is 1, especially if you discount anything with talking animals and/or animated characters.

So when I do decide to go to The Cinema, particularly for the Valentine's Date, there's a certain pressure there... and as a result, I was particularly gratified to score an absolute bullseye with my choice.

I also found it interesting that the night after the movie date, I watched a movie on HBO that was the complete antithesis, and in fact the movie that serves as a virtual graduate course in tropes: Valentine's Day.

OK, I'm not saying it's not an entertaining movie. It's pretty fun in its own narrow genre, and hey, it's a romcom, it's really not meant to be a documentary. I am finding it slightly ironic that the ultimate disposable, forgettable movie has obsessed me for several days -- but as is so often the case, that may say more about me than it. You were ahead of me on that one, weren't you.

In the movie, there are a bunch of couples -- it's easy to lose track -- and along the way there are the usual misadventures and misunderstandings, but by the end every single couple gets their happy-ever-after moment; several Life Lesson Speeches are delivered. Each couple fits a particular demographic, of course, and somehow they all connect with each other in the course of the single day depicted in the film. But what struck me the most about the movie is that from start to finish, there's not a single instance of behavior that represents the way people actually behave in real life.

Try this: 2 high school girls, basically acquaintenances, are trying to find a time to have a meeting. One says, "I can't do it at lunch, I'm having sex with my boyfriend for the first time today."

Or how about this one: a man is visited by his fiancee in the morning; she's obviously having second thoughts but he's so excited he's oblivious to it. At lunchtime he goes home to find her moving out, and she breaks up with him; by midnight, he's kissing another woman who he realizes is his true soulmate.

Fortunately, that's not the movie we actually paid for*. And by the way, just let me say that I know I live in the past; it's true that in my head, you can buy a pair of Levis for $18 and a nice pair of shoes for $30, maybe even a new car for 10 grand. I fight against that kind of mindset every time I walk into a retail establishment... still, I was astonished to pay twenty-one dollars and fifty cents for 2 movie tickets.

* I have to admit that, with as little as we watch HBO, it probably cost even more than the one we "paid for".

I did have lots of time in the theater to recover from the shock, between the commercials and the coming attractions and the continuing harangues about not talking or texting (I'm no expert, but is it really impossible to text in a movie theater without disturbing anyone?), and then at long (long, long, long) last we got to see The King's Speech.

Just a lovely, lovely movie about relationships, with people who act like real people act. And filled with marvelous performances; it's a treat to watch actors who can show you what they're thinking and feeling just with facial expressions, communicating just as clearly as any big chunks of clunky dialogue.

I know it's already been around the block, and might even be difficult to find in the theater. But if you haven't seen it yet, it's worth your while to hunt it down, at least if you enjoy movies that are not explosion-based. Maybe I'll even be inspired to try to shoehorn a SECOND film into 2011.

You Kids Get Off My 50-Yard Line

A few weeks back, my daughter was annoyed at me for some reason -- it's possible she didn't even know herself, of course -- so as she came down the stairs behind me, she made a disparaging remark about a relative scarcity of hair on a certain spot that was directly in her line of sight. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware of what's going on back there... but I am content to keep it behind me (much like some of my hairstyles from days gone by).

In similar fashion, I'm as aware as anyone who sees me that I'm middle-aged, but as long as I stay away from mirrors and try not to exercise too much, I don't have to face up to the grisly facts all that often. In my mind, I'm still... I don't know, mid-thirties?

So it's pretty annoying when it gets flung at me as it did yesterday. I can remember when the Super Bowl was the biggest football game of the year, rather than a national holiday. The first one I can recall watching was Super Bowl VII, when the Dolphins beat the Redskins. As far as I know, 100 million people were not online immediately afterwards, debating the quality of the commercials; just to see exactly how much things have changed, note the following, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The pregame show was a tribute to Apollo 17, the sixth and last mission to date to land on the Moon and the final one of Project Apollo. The show featured the crew of Apollo 17 and the Michigan Marching Band.

Later, the Little Angels of Chicago's Angels Church from Chicago performed the national anthem.

The halftime show, featuring Woody Herman and the Michigan Marching Band along with The Citrus College Singers and Andy Williams, was titled "Happiness Is".

As far as I could tell yesterday, Andy Williams did not appear in the halftime show -- although there's no way to prove he wasn't one of those people with the white suits and LED lights (if you can get a jumpsuit over one of those wintery sweaters he seemingly favored). I read Entertainment Weekly, so I know who the Black Eyed Peas are; while I don't have a vast collection of their music, I actually do have a will.i.am song, thanks to the kids -- his version of "I Like to Move It", from Madagascar. It's fun, and I was thinking the halftime show might be kind of cool...

Then they came on and in about 2 minutes I was transformed, against my will, into my father. I instantly became the "you call that music?" guy. "That's not singing, it's yelling!" I could almost feel my hairline receding as I watched. Plus there was a part of me that was crying out, "No! Please don't be that guy! You're still youthful (pay no attention to that hair exodus)!"

I have since regained a little of my equanimity, finding that I was not the only one who was, ah, underwhelmed. And I'm not really calling for a return engagement for the Michigan Marching Band, or even Andy Williams. It's just... I love my dad, and I respect him, and for someone to say I reminded them of him would be an honor. But this wasn't the way I had in mind. Fortunately, instead of blaming myself for What I've Become, I can blame the Black Eyed Peas for yanking it out of me involuntarily.

Be It Ever So Humble

One of the topics I have mined pretty frequently for bloggish fodder is travel, both family and business trips. And in the case of the latter, I don't believe I've been very successful in keeping the secret that I look forward to business trips (and perhaps more so than vacations).

There's not too much to hate about it, really, starting with the fact that someone else is paying the entire tab, as well as hosting you at better hotels and restaurants than you would typically seek out on your own. Well, the restaurant thing not so much necessarily; when on the road and given a chance to choose the stereotypical Relatively Fancy Local Restaurant over the usual middle-of-the-road chain place, I go for predictable over chance for greatness basically every time.

I work harder, and longer, on the road than I ever do at home, but it's energizing to put your ability on the line in front of colleagues and clients. Or just to see colleagues and clients, since I spend 99% of my time isolated at home.

And I also have to admit that being away from home, and free from the domestic responsibilities that usually wrap themselves around work's demands, holds a good measure of appeal. Love my kids, love my wife, don't mind taking a break from it all once or twice a year.

This week I am on my first business trip in more than a year... and I am also clearly being punished for looking forward to it just a tiny bit.

If you are reading this more or less in real time, you're aware that travel throughout most of the country is in upheaval right now due to a severe winter storm covering almost all of the US that actually has a winter. Here are a few... ah... highlights of my trip so far.

* It's a 2-day trip from NY to MO, so I have to travel on Sunday to get there in time. It's hard to fly directly to Columbia, MO, so I have to fly into St. Louis, then drive more than an hour. I pick the latest possible flight so I can spend the most time with family... but I miscalculate the total length of the trip and there's no way I can get there before 11. Local time -- midnight body time.

* Southwest allows you to check in online 24 hours before takeoff, and I actually check in 23:59 before, putting me in the "A" boarding group. This allows me to get a really choice seat, but does not in any way prevent the mom with the crying baby from sitting across the aisle, one row back.

* Baltimore/Washington International is not known for even the level of cuisine I favor on trips. The best possible choice for fine dining turns out to be... Quizno's.

* I get to St. Louis and head for the baggage carousel; as I walk up, about 8 bags come tumbling out, none of them mine. I sit down to wait for the rest of them. I watch the carousel for probably 20 minutes until it dawns on me, with nearly lightning speed, that there ain't nothin' else coming. I go to the baggage office; they have no clue where it went but they take my contact info. They think they can get it to me sometime on Monday.

* Since I am delayed picking up my car by my absorption with luggage, by the time I drive halfway across the state to Columbia, I arrive mere moments before midnight. A good preparation for my 7:30 meeting the next morning. On the bright side, it won't take long to choose my wardrobe.

* We get to our meeting Monday morning, and practically the first thing our host says is, "There's an enormous storm coming tomorrow; if you don't get out today, you might not get to leave till Thursday." We stumble through the meeting till the first break, but instead of using the restroom, we all get busy trying to change our flights. I get a 4:15 out of St. Louis (and let Southwest know I'm coming to get my bag, so don't send it!).

* The meeting breaks up and our team takes off. I stop for lunch at the hotel, then I start out for St. Louis. As I get on the highway, my cell rings... it's an automated message from Southwest to tell me my flight's canceled. I circle back to the hotel but I can't reach the airline to reschedule; I can't even get through.

* It's pretty icy on the windows (the roads are surprisingly drivable), but the luxurious rental Toyota Yaris I'm driving has no scraper on board. I use a plastic bottletop. Oh, and here's a quote from right before I left the house on Sunday: "I'm not going to need a hat or gloves."

So here I am in St. Louis; I hope to be going out tomorrow afternoon (through Orlando, since at least there's no ice or snow there). In the meantime, here's a tiny measure of good news that struck me just a little while ago: I have no meetings tomorrow. I have no children to get me up tomorrow. I'm at least planning to travel virtually all day tomorrow, so while I intend to get some work done in the morning, there's really no schedule-based urgency.

In short, I need neither a mechanical nor human alarm, and I can basically get up whenever I want to. And I have absolutely no clue when that happened last.

The Best Kind of Sticker Shock

I was a genius when I was a kid.

I was reading before most kids my age even knew their letters. School came easy to me; I was always ahead of everyone else, always got the best grades. Gradually my pervasive awesomeness overcame most of my native humility and I got a little arrogant about how brilliant I was – rarely (although I can't honestly say never) as an excuse to act superior to others, but sometimes as license to goof off.

Then came the day I had to go home & tell my mother I was failing reading. “How can you be failing reading?” she retorted. “All you ever DO is read.” That was a Scared Straight moment for me and after that I resumed my previous trajectory, continuing at the top of my class all the way through.

It was really when I got to graduate school that I grasped the essential truth: that I wasn’t that special intelligence-wise after all. I was blessed with the ability to pick up new ideas pretty quickly; I was always very successful in testing situations; and I was motivated to succeed and/or scared to fail. Bright “enough”, quick-witted maybe, definitely faster with a punchline than was probably healthy (in multiple senses)… but no genius. I met people in grad school who had the sheer brainpower, as well as the will, to tackle complex problems and just chip away at them until they got to the other end. That was not me; I made it through my Master’s just fine, but no one was throwing incentives at me to get me to shoot for a doctorate.

Still, as kind of a geeky kid, and then adult, who loves to use big words, has a fairly (um…) complex sense of humor, and knows a fair amount of trivia about a variety of subjects, I’m probably most comfortable around bright, educated people – not because I’m a snob, but because they tend to “get” me better. Literally, they speak my language. And I always hoped that when my kids got old enough, I could introduce them to Twain and Thurber and O’Rourke, we could discuss the intricacies of baseball analysis, then sit around exchanging all sorts of obscure wordplay.

Then our son was born, and we gradually learned that he had some intellectual and emotional challenges. Not the kind that get you a telethon or label you “handicapped”… just the kind that ensure you’re always going to start the race from the back of the pack. And while nothing we learned diminished my love for him even an iota, it did kind of make my heart sink.

Not because I was disappointed in him. Not because I couldn’t point to what an awesome success my kid was. Because I thought it meant we’d never “get” each other. The things that make me who I am, in a sense, are things that will never be a part of him at all; the things I love are largely out of reach for him.

Or so I feared. He’s 11 now, and as a semi-part-time stay-at-home dad, I spend more time with him than anyone else and I know him better than anyone else. What I’ve learned is that he loves music, just like I do. He loves a good joke – granted he doesn’t always know why it’s funny, but he often seems to be able to feel the funny even when he can’t quite spot it. He has a particular facility for a very odd trivia subspecialty: if he hears a voice on a cartoon, he’ll often point out that it’s the same actor who did a different voiceover. In fact he’s almost infallible at that and at, “Hey dad, we heard this song last year when we were going…”

I wrote before about some of his school struggles and the way he was overcoming them or at least persevering. At this point he’s classified as Special Ed, so while he spends part of his day in the general classroom, he also gets extra accommodations and small-group instruction with individual help.

I was standing at the bus stop waiting for him one day several weeks back when a car went by with one of those “my kid is an honor student” bumper stickers and I thought, you know, if my boy ever came home with one of those, I think my head would explode. A few minutes after that, he got off the bus and we walked up the street to the house, where he pulled out his backpack and said, “Hey dad, look what I got at school today…”

Turns out it wasn’t that essential after all – but it’s sure cool having one more thing in common.

Yet Another Christmas Review

I guess I need to figure out (once again) whether it’s my life that’s out of whack, or my expectations.

Every year I have this vision in my head about how Christmas is going to look, and every year my actual mileage varies. By quite a bit, really. I’ve written about this before, enough times in fact that it’s probably time to wake up and smell the eggnog. I seem to be perpetually in danger of missing Christmas because our Christmas doesn’t look like the one I see in my mind’s eye.

After all, our Christmas is pretty entertaining in its own somewhat skewed way. But with three services on Christmas Eve, for example, and creating PowerPoints for 2 of them and providing all the music for the third, I may not ever get a profoundly spiritual experience out of it – at least not from sitting in church. Maybe, however, from incessantly cycling through over 300 Christmas songs on my iPod, or from sitting quietly in front of the tree, or from trying to help my own kids keep the meaning of the season front & center, or even from a paragraph in a Christmas letter – even if it’s my own.

Even though we may have fallen short, once again, in observing the rituals I’d like to see become our family-traditional Christmas, there are always events of the season that guarantee we won’t forget it. Such as:

· My son playing a Wise Man in a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story – in this case a Wise Man who was too busy at a conference to discuss “Celestial Signs of the Coming Messiah” to actually notice the birth when it happened.

· The kids deciding that the best way to give Santa a list is to wait till the last possible moment, and in fact revising the list as their last act before going to bed Christmas Eve.
· Dad hauling out presents to put under the tree, eating the cookies left for Santa (and a few more, just for the sake of realism), pouring the milk back into the jug, and then settling down – AFTER midnight – to compose the traditional Santa Reply Letter. Don’t ask me where Jolly Old St. Nick keeps the laptop and printer on the sleigh.
· In response to each child’s inquiries, the letter addressing subjects including (a) how the reindeer are doing, (b) what Santa’s favorite baseball team is, and (c) how exactly he can tell from all the way up there who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Also, why you’re not getting any of the presents no one even knew you wanted because you just added them to your list on Christmas Eve.
· Watching on Christmas morning as the boy disappears in a blizzard of wrapping paper scraps, surfacing only to ask repeatedly, “Are there any more presents for me?”
· My daughter walking around the house all Christmas day in a ninja costume, playing a trumpet which someone with apparently a rather evil sense of humor has given her, while…
· Her brother spends most of his day trying to sneak up on people with a remote-controlled Rude Bodily Noisemaking Device that someone else with a rather evil sense of humor has sent us.
· The girl pausing in the midst of a soliloquy about all the cool stuff Santa brought her to look sharply at dad and say, “Wait a minute, did you…?” before stopping herself. “What were you going to ask me?” “Never mind…”

And of course there’s one other tradition that never misses – the hurried sprint out of town for vacation, since as long as she’s in the same town where the church is located, she can hear it calling her (this is the spot where I really wanted to include a sound clip of the slot machine in this Twilight Zone episode, but I couldn't find it as a standalone).

I have to say, this time it kind of worked for me too... once we got out of town, I forgot all about what was "supposed" to happen, and I just enjoyed my vacation. Maybe next year I can start that frame of mind before Christmas!

How Green Was My Mountain

I suppose that if the only knowledge someone had of me came from reading this blog, it’s possible they would think I’m forever gazing into the rearview mirror. Now it’s true that while driving, I make it a practice always to be aware of my surroundings, fore and aft – you never know when an unanticipated lane change might be necessary. But in the larger, more metaphorical sense, I’d like to think I don’t spend any more time looking back over my shoulder than most people.

I won’t deny that it can be very enjoyable, if only in the same way that stretching a sore muscle or wiggling a loose tooth is… faintly painful, but simultaneously satisfying somehow. And since I have a real love for understanding the way things fit together, I puzzle over the meaning of what’s gone before. And since I’m insufferably annoying, I write about it. Which taken altogether leads to a high proportion of backwards-facing blog posts.

I really wasn’t looking for yet another one; they can be the trickiest kind to write, because understanding the past and making it both comprehensible and even potentially interesting to someone who wasn’t there is a tall order (I stumbled across a post recently in which a guy gave a complete review of all his fantasy sports teams, which was perhaps mildly gratifying to the guys who were ahead of him in the league, but not, I thought, a winning strategy for drawing in long-term readership). But as seems to be so often the case, circumstances pushed me where I wasn’t planning to go.

By the way, here’s MS Word’s take on that previous sentence: “If the marked words are an incomplete thought, consider developing this thought into a complete sentence by adding a subject or a verb or combining this text with another sentence.”

The first event, a couple of weeks ago, was the 13^th anniversary of starting my current job. Granted, I’ve shifted jobs within the company, and the company itself was absorbed by a Gigantically Extensive multinational corporation, but still it’s considered my corporate anniversary (as it turns out, the 13^th anniversary is “congratulatory email from your manager”).

I suppose in some ways it’s kind of a lukewarm achievement, but it’s pretty astonishing when you consider the 13 years previous to my start date, when I was teaching part-time and filling in with other part-time odd jobs (and I’m not choosing the word “odd” casually) and never went a whole year with exactly the same “mix” of workplaces. Then when my wife graduated from seminary and we moved to Vermont, I decided it was also time to graduate from perpetually semi-employed Adjunct Instructor to a Real Job.

As I was reflecting on that milestone, I was also reading a book by Chris Bohjalian that was set in Vermont – having discovered his writing because he was writing for the newspaper when we moved there. So I found myself in sort of a Green Mountain State of Mind, which I suppose is kind of like a New York State of Mind, except with cows and trees and plaid flannel instead of Billy Joel.

While I had a perfectly satisfying time living in Vermont, I was not seized by any agonies when we were asked to move back to Upstate New York, so I was a tiny bit surprised when I reflected on my New England sojourn and realized how pivotal – and I mean that fairly literally, in the turning point/change of direction sense – that time had been for me. Consider the following developments in the space of just less than 6 years there:

• ~ Most obviously, both my job and my career. For the first time, I had a regular 9-to-5 type full-time permanent job. In other words, it was the first time my job didn’t come with an expiration date. And once you’ve lived the semester-to-semester lifestyle, the “normal” kind represents an enormous weight off your shoulders. As a nice bonus, I discovered that I enjoyed my new career and I was also pretty good at it, not to mention that the word “salary” has a lovely ring to it.
• ~ It was also my transition back to Parsonage World, being the spouse of a minister with all that entails. Let me be quick to say that being married to the pastor doesn’t make me special in any way – it certainly doesn’t mean that anything I say or do should be treated as having come down from the mountaintop on stone tablets – but it does make me a lot more visible. I live in the knowledge that if I do something wrong or offend anyone or generally screw up, it can have a negative effect on her ability to do her job in a way that could never be true the other way around. As such, it was kind of a rocky transition for me because I became very self-conscious about the image I was projecting to others, and despite my experience growing up in a parsonage, it was a couple of years before I stopped taking myself quite so seriously and was able to really be myself (not that me trying extra-hard to be on my best behavior is entirely a bad idea).
• ~ It was the time period when my children were born, meaning not only the blessing of their addition to the family, but also the adjustment from being a couple to being… well, a family. I suppose that sounds condescending to couples with no children, but my point is really that it sounds and smells and tastes and feels so different. I’m only speaking for me: I knew in my heart that while I loved being the two of us, there would always be a hole in my heart until there were more. I may not know much about the will of God, but I have always been convinced that I was meant to be a dad – not making any judgments about my skill for same – and in Vermont I finally got to do it.
• ~ It was my return from The Exile. You see, if you don’t count college, for the first 32 years of my life, I lived in 5 different homes, and if you drew a line to connect them, it would be about 50 miles from end to end. The Capital District of New York State is in a lot of ways as much a part of me as my hair color (ok, what my hair color used to be; I don’t know what all’s going on up there right now) or my extremely long & narrow feet. Even my college was still in New York -- Western New York, but close enough that I could feel in my bones that I was just visiting and I could go home any time I needed to.
• So when my wife chose a seminary in Ohio, it must have been sheer naiveté for me to think the adjustment would be simple. “A fish out of water” may be a cliché, but like almost all clichés, it got that way by being so true: from the moment I arrived in Dayton, I felt out of my element – no, I was out of my element -- and was quickly emotionally (and nearly physically) gasping for air. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Dayton, but it never for a moment felt like home.
• Vermont isn’t upstate New York, and native Vermonters would often half-jokingly remind us that you’re not a real Vermonter till you’ve got six generations in the ground, but it’s geographically and topographically and culturally close enough that when we moved there I felt like I’d been thrown back into the water and could breathe again.
• I understood much, much later that it was just as much a case of having been uprooted from my church home in New York, not really finding one for over a year in Ohio, and then getting a new start in Vermont, that accounted for my V-shaped trajectory… but in either case, whether Vermont was the cause of my recovery/rebirth or just the innocent bystander, it was certainly where and when it happened.

The churches of Vermont have now been officially separated from the churches of New York, so the likelihood that I’ll ever live there again is pretty close to zero. Somehow I kinda feel like I’ve already lived there for a lifetime anyway.

Practically My AARP Application

Someone who knows me very well once said that I was middle-aged when I was 9 years old. That's probably not the most flattering thing anyone ever said about me... but nonetheless pretty hard to argue against. I mean, it's not like I was born wearing a 3-piece suit or anything -- but if you look hard at the sonogram you might see the outline of a tiny bow tie.

Given that, you can see what I'm fighting against as the years advance and the hair retreats, or at least redistributes itself to some unpredictable locations. I don't want to be the proverbial get-off-my-lawn guy, but I can't much help myself; even when I was a teen I was trying to keep the neighbor out of my yard, and she was gorgeous, so I clearly can't help myself.

Adding another layer to the issue, I have to confess that Halloween has never held much appeal for me. The costume takes something of a creativity factor (and/or a thick wallet), not exactly up my alley; the whole atmosphere of the holiday is built around a certain enjoyment of the macabre and creepy, which is completely incomprehensible to me; and what's up with walking up to a stranger's door and asking them for candy? I've been known to visit friends and be unable to ask where the bathroom is, so again this holiday is not designed for me. And, to complete the woebegone picture of the little kid as sort of accountant-in-waiting, as a kid I (somehow) didn't have that much interest in candy (now? Yes, please).

This doesn't really fit anywhere, but let's pause a moment to consider the genius of wearing one of those thin nylon bodysuit costumes in an area where the average low temperature on Oct. 31 is 35 degrees. Nothing says 'superpowers' like a parka and mittens.

Why do I go through this elaborate setup? Because I'm incapable of doing otherwise. Well, that, but also I know how this is going to sound. Complaining about Halloween Nowadays is going to come off like the usual Why in my day everything was fun and innocent and these kids today just don't know how good they've got it and whatever happened to simpler values and and and....

My real point, however, if I haven't already run out the clock on having one, is that while I've never really 'gotten' or especially enjoyed Halloween, it's way worse now than it was. It wasn't much fun then, and it's considerably less fun now.

I know I'm hopelessly square and old -- I got an excellent head start on coming to terms with that, as a child -- but what I see around me is mostly just disgusting. I get that the white sheet with the eyeholes is Charlie Brown-passe, but so many of the costumes I see now have to look like the wearer is actually bleeding, or decaying, or at least getting ready to kill a bunch of people. Several of the kids at the Cub Scout Halloween party -- Cub Scouts, now, say ages 6-12 -- had some sort of zombie-looking garb AND semi-automatic weapons. I suppose with as slowly as the traditional zombie moves, it pays to have something to even up the odds a little.

In that case, I guess I should congratulate the costumes that don't require a parental advisory sticker, except a lot of those aren't costumes at all. I saw a couple of young-teen girls just wearing what appeared to be kitty ears. Get your mind out of the gutter; I don't mean just kitty ears in the sense of 'kitty ears and nothing else at all', I mean it in the sense of, "Let's put on our coats and go out to scam some candy -- hey, look, put these on your head so we can say it's a costume."

But they make up for it with their charm and personality. A big clump of them comes up & rings the doorbell; when you open the door, they shove a pillowcase in your face and stand there till you come across. I have to say it does not exactly bring out the gracious host in me.

Sigh. I know. I KNOW. They're just kids, and scary can be fun, and they're just trying on roles as kids have done forever, and I shouldn't expect everyone to have perfect please and thank you manners, and I'm probably the last person in the world who should be criticizing others for leveraging opportunities for free food. And I should stop being such a study hall monitor already. I guess I was just hoping that we could get all excited, and drop money on costumes and giveaway treats, and tromp around in the cold and rain, for something a little more... life-affirming?

OK, I have to admit, it wasn't a total loss. We were still making the rounds when my daughter dug around in her pumpkin-shaped bucket and pulled out and handed to me... a tiny, tiny (TINY! I believe it was the 1.74 oz. size, or maybe 6 pieces) bag of Peanut M&Ms.

Atmosphere Is for Meteorologists

Shortly after my wife and I were married, we mutually discovered that one of us had the interest, plus a little bit of experience, to do the grocery shopping. So began the process -- which continues to this day -- of dividing the domestic duties according to something other than standard, traditional gender roles.

Early in my tenure as the Potentate of Provender, I discovered something that put a light in my eye and a spring in my step: Edwards Food Warehouse. As it turned out, I needed all the light my eye could supply, for Edwards was a large, square, dimly-lit barn without a hint of ambiance; their purpose was to charge about 18 cents less than the other guys for each item -- passing the savings on light bulbs and shiny floor tile on to the consumer.

There are few more potent combos for me than food and saving money (see also the Entertainment Book), so it was almost a physical blow to me when Edwards went out of business. And as we moved about ourselves, virtually my first task in each new location was to scout out the grocery with the best value (in Ohio, Meijer was cheaper than Kroger; in Vermont, Price Chopper was usually better than Shaw's; back in Upstate New York, Price Chopper beats Hannaford).

I'm always diligent in tracking PC sales, especially their Buy One Get One (BOGO) and even on occasion Buy One Get Two, along with clipping coupons and using the Advantedge savings card. Of course, shopping like this means that occasionally... supply outstrips demand. So in recent years I've had a large shelf in the basement, and a small freezer in the garage to store the items that -- well, it's not that they're not needed; it's more that their time hasn't come yet. I don't think of them as "extra" or "surplus", but rather Bench Strength. Any good coach needs a deep and flexible bench. It should also be noted that in our house, we go through cereal, and peanut butter, and toilet paper like... well, like they're being used extensively every day.

One of the hidden hazards of moving was that I had to drain down the surplus a bit (plus pack a bunch of, ah, less-immediately-needed items, which itself resulted in a Spousal Advisory). So when the dust cleared in the new home -- oh, if only that were a metaphor -- I found myself feeling somewhat under-supplied to face up to the needs of the household.

The upside of the move, however (in my never-ending quest to find the silver lining for every cloud), was that I found myself a mile from BJ's Wholesale Club, which not only sells all sorts of things at a discount but was even having a sale on the membership fee! Why, it's as if they created the place specifically for me....

I am, as surely everyone who might possibly care knows, virtually unerring in my church attendance, but I find I attend BJ's scarcely less regularly. The atmosphere, if you could call it that, is reminiscent of Edwards (not to mention redolent of tires) but it looks like Shangri-La to me.

Here are some of the treasures I've unearthed on my voyages of discovery:

• % 2 one-gallon apple juice jugs linked at the handle
• % a package containing a dozen toothbrushes
• % 3 jars of peanut butter shrink-wrapped together
• % 3 one-pound bags of Goldfish, in a single box
• % a huge cello-bag of juice pops that I can "pop" in the freezer a few at a time
• % a two-pound block of mozzarella
• % a jug of Windex big enough to keep all our windows clean until we move again
• % a wall adapter for my iPod
• % 3 cans of shave gel -- say it with me -- shrink-wrapped together

So my shelves are once again robust, which in turn has contributed to a feeling of being a little more settled and "at home". Plus, if there's ever a nationwide shortage of peanut butter or shave gel, or tortellini or AA batteries, I'm going to be sitting pretty.

Trees, Swaying in the Summer Breeze

OK, I guess it's more or less over -- although they are saying we have some 80-degree days coming this week. Still, I've been wearing a lot of long pants lately, and even a jacket for the cool early-morning trip to the bus stop. Of course, that could be just because my temperature control hasn't had a chance to reboot.

But the calendar tells us that the end of summer is just days away. And it's already been a couple of weeks since I celebrated Labor Day in my traditional fashion: I sat at home and mourned the fact that summer had ended basically before it even felt like it started.

So it's perhaps emotional self-preservation that prompts me to look back more intentionally on my summer. Granted a lot of the carefree spirit was leached out of it by the move and all the attendant stress, work, and expenditure... but somehow we still managed to shoehorn our share of summery fun:

• # We didn't spend an inordinate amount of time at camp, but we managed a handful of days.
• # Thanks to one of our new neighbors, the kids were able to swim almost at will.
• # There were a number of picnics, including one that served as a reunion for us with some friends from a previous congregation.
• # I attended (and brought my daughter to) my first minor-league baseball game in a lot of years.
• # We got to have a date at a fine local theater production of "On Golden Pond"...
• # ... and also brought the whole family to a delightful, and absolutely free, outdoor production of "Annie Get Your Gun".
• # You might already have heard about this, but it's worth re-emphasizing that the family vacation consumed about 15% of the summer all by itself.

While I am well-known from sea to shining sea for my generally sunny outlook on life, even a dyed-in-the-wool optimist such as myself can benefit from an effort to remember more of what goes on in my life than working and laundry and running the kids back & forth to childcare. Hope you also have some summer events that you can recall with satisfaction.

Classical Gas, I Know

I still remember the first research paper I ever wrote -- I think it was in fourth grade*. We had to choose a state to report on, and since I had recently visited friends in Delaware with my family, that's what I chose. They helped out by sending me some brochures, and since I didn't know anything about research (and nobody taught me anything about it, either) I mostly cut out the pictures and pasted them on construction paper, then wrote a few sentences loaded with really basic facts -- you know, chief products, population, etc. Of course, I did have one really cool feature: since it was Delaware, the map I included was actual size.

*OK, I don't have to work too hard to "remember" -- I still have it.

I did a lot more papers over the years and it took awhile for me to get any better at it. I got pretty much called out for it in 7th grade when I wrote a paper about baseball. One of the problems was that the topic was baseball, and since I never narrowed it down from there, I never did get a handle on what to wrote. But again: I didn't feel like anyone ever taught me anything about writing papers, and it took me several tries to get the hang of it.

In college, I wrote a paper about lobbyists... which turned out not to be an awesome paper, due in part to my stupidity in being born too soon to use the Internet in college (and my college was so isolated that literally the only source available was the college library). But it was notable for the fact that it might have been the first paper I ever did where I picked the topic because it was something I wanted to know more about.

I didn't write too many more papers after that, and when I was out of school for good, I was actually disappointed, because I felt like I'd lost that chance to find out about more interesting topics. Nothing stopping me from learning, of course, but if there's no way to "present" it, it's like it's unfinished.

Now fast-forward 20+ years and I'm pondering creating a blog. I remember thinking at the time, hey, here's a place to write some research papers (although somehow I forgot to mention it)! That was until I discovered that merely writing the thing was plenty time-consuming enough, so more often than not I just make stuff up.

However, I still get curious about stuff, but this time I'm going to turn the research on its head: I'm going to ask the readers to supply the answers to a question that somehow got stuck in my brain this week.

I was reading about Aroldis Chapman, rookie pitcher for the Reds, who was clocked throwing a pitch 105 mph, fastest of the year and one of the fastest ever. There's been a lot of discussion about the theoretical limits of the human arm -- this on the heels, of course, of Usain Bolt and the parallel discussion of how fast a human can run.

From there, my mind made the leap to music, and I wondered how far you can push a particular musical genre -- like the Beatles did for pop and Miles Davis for jazz.

What about classical music? When I think of classical -- and I freely admit I'm totally naive here; it's not music that I actively seek out or think about much -- the names that come to mind are the guys like Bach and Mozart. While I could probably throw in Aaron Copland, I'm curious: if I were a classical music fan and were listening to the radio all the time or seeking out the hottest CDs/MP3s... would I be hearing primarily music that's 200 years old? Or are there current "classical" composers who are really considered in the same breath as the traditional masters? Contemporary classical seems kind of like a contradiction in terms.

As a rule, I don't get a lot of comments on my blog posts... but then again, when I read blogs, I probably comment 5% of the time or less, so that enables me to convince myself that I have a vast readership just waiting to be tapped. So this time there's no punchline -- I'm counting on you all for that.

Vacationpalooza Tour 2010

The Family Summer Vacation is our annual phenomenon, and every year I attempt to make some sense of it in this space. But an experience so sprawling always proves elusive to summarize -- especially for someone like me who likes to be concise and brief and a man of few words and generally is not given to going on and on about something almost indefinitely until you finally are about to forget what the beginning of the sentence was.

Wait, what was I saying?

Oh yes... I was making the point that two weeks packed with adventures can even pose a writing challenge for someone such as myself, who is, you know, gifted with, like, words and stuff.

The basic structure of the trip does not change: the meat of the sandwich is several days at a beach house in North Carolina with "my side of the family" -- enjoyable despite the minor tensions inherent in putting 9 (related) people under the same roof. Every day we go to the beach, we read a lot, we eat, we talk and play cards, and at almost any given time someone is asleep. It's almost as close as any of us usually gets to turning off the main engines and simply idling for a prolonged period of time.

So it's doubtful that that portion holds any interest for anyone not related to me, or at least someone without an inordinate interest in sand castles (not that that's stopped me from the attempt in the past). But I thought it might be worthwhile to mention a few highlights from the "bread" of the trip sandwich -- the seemingly endless miles of interstate highway travel which we attempt to punctuate with Fun and/or Educational Experiences (and suite hotels with pools). The driving part of the trip was extremely grim, more than 1800 miles of travel split into not nearly bite-size chunks... but the Experiences seemed to be home runs across the board.

The first of these was the National Aquarium in Baltimore. As far as I can tell, they became the "National" aquarium essentially because they decided they would call themselves that... but they filled the bill and more. There were of course all manner of tanks full of beautiful or odd or scary marine life -- my wife was particularly mesmerized by the jellyfish -- but also a delightful and exciting dolphin show, and a couple of odd things: a rainforest habitat and a live show with native Australian animals. Come to think of it, I'm not sure they have any better grip on the concept of "aquarium" than they do of "national"... still, it was certifiably both Fun and Educational, and you don't see that every day. Frankly I have a hard time envisioning any visitor that wouldn't be captivated by a visit, and that's a pretty strong endorsement coming from me.

Since we were in such a rush to get to the beach, the second Big Adventure didn't arrive till the trip back: a visit to Sight and Sound Theater in Lancaster, PA. This was the trip my wife in particular had been yearning to make for several years. You might describe Sight & Sound as an attempt to bring the feel of the Broadway musical, mixed with a little bit of circus, to Biblical storytelling. The show we saw was Joseph, depicting his life from his conflicts with his brothers to slavery in Egypt to a respected position to prison back to a respected position to reconciliation with his family. It's a gripping story on the page... but presented on stage (multiple stages, actually) with scenery and costumes and music, and live animals, helps you understand and feel the story in a so much more visceral way. The show was thrilling and touching, one I think every Christian would certainly enjoy... and something I would urge on anyone who wasn't actively hostile to a story that revolves around faith.

The very next day saw Adventure #3, our third trip to Hersheypark (I should mention that we always start our Hershey day with a fun, and free, trip here). Hersheypark will remind you of basically every other amusement park: you've got rides, souvenir shops, shows, food... and you have to really keep busy all day long, not only to do everything but to keep yourself from thinking about the hurting they put on your wallet at the front gate (exacerbated this year by our 10-year-old being full-fare for the first time). Oddly, it was the one day of the trip that was not hot & humid, so some of the charm of the Intercoastal Waterway was diminished, but we still had a relaxing drift and also still hit the bumper cars and the Reese's Xtreme Cup Challenge and a bunch of entertaining shows. Our thrill-seeking 8-year-old daughter even ditched us long enough to get 2 roller-coaster rides and a trip on the Scrambler. It was a lot of fun even though we would have had to stay for another 3 weeks or so to get our money's worth out of it.

On the next & final day of the trip, dear old dad begged for a bit of Driver's Privilege. I've tried for the last couple of years to bend the trip to include the Martin Guitar factory tour but could never quite shoehorn it in with all the space Hersheypark takes up... but we were so close, and on our way home anyway.... I am a guitar player, and while Martin's a bit out of my price range, I appreciate them as wonderful instruments and works of art in their own right. The tour was an hour of walking through the factory with a guide who was once the plant manager (and should have invested a bit more of the salary in a better toupee). One of the neat features of the tour was that each person had their own headphones and the tour guide "broadcast" to us, which made it so much easier to know what was going on over the noise. Guitar-making these days is of course highly automated, but on the high end there is also a lot of hands-on craftsmanship -- to the point where it takes easily 3 months for one of their non-customized guitars to make it from pile of wood to finished instrument -- and we got to see both.

I now know much more about the guitar as an instrument than I did before, which was principally this: it makes no sense for me to buy an expensive one, because in my hands it sounds just the same as my (presumably non-craftsman-created) Yamaha that was $200 25 years ago. In fact, I think they disowned it because I can't find it on their website, although I did find it here and here.

We had other, smaller adventures along the way -- including coming home & then leaving the next morning for a camp weekend (including s'mores!) -- but these are the ones we'll remember when we look back...

... in a few weeks when the credit card bill arrives.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

When I was in college, I had been dating a certain young woman for a matter of some weeks when she suddenly -- at least from my perspective -- broke up with me. Since I hadn't seen it coming, I asked to get together with her to discuss it; that began a series of meetings and intra-campus mails (and if you think you wait for an answer in these days of cellphones/texts/email, you ain't seen nothing. I think intra-campus mail was delivered by actual snails).

After the 2nd or perhaps 3rd face-to-face, my roommate -- he of the quiet demeanor and dry wit -- said to me, "So, are you guys done breaking up yet?"

As it turned out, that particular breakup didn't take, and we stayed together about 6 months more before the final exit ramp arrived...

That whole scenario came to mind once more about 10 days ago as our breakup (this time not a case of "it's not you, it's me" but rather Circumstances Beyond Our Control) with our previous home & church seemed to reach its own final exit ramp.

See, this has really been going on since March, when we got the call and first realized we would be moving on... then she had her interview with the new church and it began to be real; then we announced it at The Old Place. Then the process of saying goodbye begins in earnest, and everyone wants to know what the new place is like but on some level what they really want to know is, you're not leaving us for someone younger and prettier, are you?

Before you know it, everything you do is The Last Time I'll Ever Do This, and the process of packing hammers it home every day almost like the sound of a door being slammed. Then comes the goodbye party and a struggle to put into words what we mean to each other; the last service, with the last sermon; and suddenly, very much before you can come to grips with what's happening, you find yourself standing in an empty house as two big trucks pull out with all your belongings and you close that front door for The Last Time Ever. And you cry.

At that point you'd forgive us for feeling, "OK, that was horribly painful but at least that part is over now and we can at last get on with the rest of our lives"... right? Not so fast. Because The Master Scheduler had us first to move, she actually had to go back one more time for the annual service/picnic in the park -- which of course prompts a fresh round of goodbyes. And in actuality, even after the service is over, there are still 10 days left in the month, and she's still officially pastor there, even though they've promised not to call except for emergencies.

So the breakup -- or maybe legal separation -- drags on. We're not living together any more, but the divorce (annulment?) hasn't come through yet. The following Sunday we're back in town for a graduation picnic, which is more goodbyes but also, in a more healthy way, a chance for us to describe and make real for them and us Our New Life. Is it possible that the break is finally complete...

... except we have to go back to the church One Last Time, at least as "our church", to drop off all the keys -- anything we still have that marks us as connected to this place. That unspoken meaning hangs around us like heavy fog as we bring stuff in & write explanatory notes to people & put this here & pile that there: this is the end of the end. After this, the breakup is complete.

And as we get to the front door -- now locked, and after it swings shut we will no longer have any way in... in several senses -- my son has stood it as long as he can, and he bursts into tears. Now my wife is holding him and sobbing out her own sorrow and grief. And I........ I seem to have forgotten how to cry, I so rarely do so anymore, ever -- but I wish I could. It would be such a welcome release to expel this huge pulsating mass of wistfulness and loss and pain and yes, even fear. Instead it sits in my throat and chest and expands till I can't swallow or breathe or even think.

Neil Sedaka actually had two hits with "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do". The first was in the early 60s, and if you listen to that version, it's a really bouncy uptempo pop song. The mood of the song has about as much to do with the subject of the song as tiger lilies do with tigers.

He cut it again in the mid-70s, this time as a slower, more reflective and altogether melancholy ballad. That's the one that has always grabbed me; it's a very affecting song. I think it captures in a visceral way how a prolonged breakup can also prolong and intensify the pain.

Catching the Bug

I'm living proof of the limits of heredity. My dad was in his day pretty good with cars. That was in an era when an actual person could look at an engine with just eyeballs and fix it -- and I don't think that's in any way diminished by the fact that in those days, "winterizing" meant "closing the rumble seat". As a teen, he worked in a garage; even when I was a kid, he could always ID anything on the road at a glance (often by year).

It may be just more pointless nostalgia but it seems to me that cars were more distinctive awhile back, and none moreso than the Volkswagen. The VW Beetle was responsible for the "punchbug" game (spot a Beetle and smack a companion). I hadn't even heard the term in years... but now despite the fact that most VWs are no longer in the insect kingdom, the company is trying to revive the tradition. Of course, since Bugs are now few and far between, they call it "punch-dub".

They can say what they want, but they can't control the people... so my son came home from school last week telling me about the Punchbug Game, and ever since then we've been playing each time we leave the house (One significant problem there is that, as I referred to earlier, all cars look alike these days unless you can zero in quickly on the hood/trunk ornament. Am I wrong about that? If so, feel free to correct me in the comments....).

It was only a matter of time until my daughter the competitor caught on to what was going on. Now she wants to play every second of car time. I'm finding that I'm up against a certain array of disadvantages:

• > My sunglasses, which I have to use for driving, are at least 3 prescriptions behind my new glasses
• > As the driver, I have a few other things to do
• > My reflexes, shockingly, are not quite as fast-twitch as once they were

Maybe the biggest disadvantage in playing against my daughter is that she has always been from the school of "shoot first, ask questions later." Basically if it has wheels and it has a roundish insignia, whap. That doesn't take away from the fact that she seems to be able to spot one from the next block... so taken all around I'm flying with one flap down these days. But I'm determined to get back in the game.

In a completely unrelated development, I rear-ended the car in front of me four times on the way home....