Awww Screw It, I'll Write About Football!

I have been holding off on writing about football on this blog because it's not really what this blog is about.  If you haven't guessed, this blog is about family, jobs, parenting, love, loss - in short, it's about life.  But the truth of the matter is that sometimes my life is about football.  So, although their are people that do a much better job of writing about football than myself, (Katie Hull Rathkey, in particular) I'm wound up, so I am gonna say my piece.

First of all, I am pissed off that my beloved 'Pokes lost to Iowa State and I will accept no excuse for it.

(For anyone in the dark, I am referencing Oklahoma State University, the OSU, not to be confused with the school that occasionally cheats it's way to the top of the Great Lakes League, you know, the one who always looks like it is playing in super slow-mo?  Don't adjust your set, it's just the Big Ten.)

But back to my rage:  "Why, Pokes, why?!"

Let's run down the list of excuses:

It was a classic trap game.
How was this a trap?  We won the previous game before halftime in a contest that was as even-sided as a Iron Chef match featuring Anthony Bourdain going spatula-to-whisk with The Cake Boss, Secret Ingredient:  Bone Marrow!  (Jeez, a Food Network reference?  No wonder I don't write about football very often.)  And as for the looking ahead distraction?  We have the week off!  What were we being distracted by?  Oyster dressing?

They had a new quarterback we were not familiar with.
Yeah, and he plays for Iowa State!  That's like saying the Marlins have a new ace on the mound.  Who cares?  The rest of the team is still Iowa State.  And last time I checked, OSU has a decent media facility, we should have been able to break down some game film.  Hell, we could have started working on it at halftime in Lubbock!

They had nothing to lose.
Yeah, and we had everything to gain.  So what?  When you are a championship caliber team you handle your business.  You were playing a team with an atrocious defense.  One of the worst in the Big 12.  This game should have been out-of-hand quickly, which would have forced the Cyclones to throw their game plan out the window and play catch-up.  That's how we win ball games against inferior squads.

We lost two coaches in a plane crash the day before.

I will not try in any way to diminish the loss of two very special people in our tight-knit Cowboy family.  This event, no doubt weighed heavily on the hearts and minds of every coach and player that evening.  Additionally, it was a real class move from the folks in Ames to assign a moment of silence in honor of our fallen comrades before the game began.  But the truth of the matter is, the only way that a plane crash should have kept us from beating Iowa State is if our starting offense would have been on it.

We blew it.

Chances like this don't come around often for Oklahoma A&M in the realm of real-deal championship football.  In fact, I have been alive for 38 years, and we have never had a legitimate title shot - not once.  We are the Andy Roddick of college football - we may not deserve to be in the hunt, but sometimes a perfect storm occurs and there we are.  Texas is down, aTm is out and the Sooners are short 3 studs and somehow have a defensive backfield that is full of holes rivaling the ones in Wal-Mart's Black Friday Preparedness Strategy.

We had to come from behind in College Station and needed the help of a earthquake to stop the Wildcats from upsetting us at home.  Rarely is a championship season built without some close calls.

But the debacle in Ames has turned is into spectators.  Now our hopes are pinned to the former A&M of Alabama to see if they can pull the upset in Jordan-Hare.  Take it from one who knows, Auburn may be the only other team in the country as unfortunate as the Pokes to live just up the street from such a storied and historically rich big brother of a football program.  The difference is that when the Gods smile on Auburn, they take advantage and win championships.  They are relevant.

In the end it doesn't matter that much what happens in the Auburn/Alabama game this afternoon if we don't focus on the only thing under our control:  Bedlam.

The Cowboys have had the singular goal of winning an outright Big 12 Championship for several years now.  Hell, one year we even had little bracelets made so that we wouldn't forget.  The Sooners could get caught up in a Cyclone today in a rainy contest at Memorial Stadium, which would hand us the title without even having to play for it, but I wouldn't count on it.  And I don't want it that way.

We need a Bedlam win and an outright Big 12 Championship.  That's our next step.  Forget Ames, don't worry about the SEC West and all the maybes and could-have-beens.  Just win your game against your in-state rivals and let the healing begin.

It's been said often this year that, "these are not your father's Cowboys".  Until last week, that was correct.  But on a Friday night we played like a high school squad and we looked just like my dad's Cowboys.

The players on this team are too young to remember Bedlam collapses having to do with walk-on kickers, unscripted onside kicks and Sooner Magic.  They don't even know the name Brent Parker.  But they need to win this one for all of us who lived through their father's Cowboys.  A Big 12 Championship, Bedlam win and a BCS bowl game are steps forward for Oklahoma State.

On campus in Auburn, Alabama today about 80,000 people will be rooting for a two teams that have so much football history that they often stumble over it.  They also have serious confusion regarding their mascots.  Alabama apparently is some kind of wave of blood or something to do with a pachyderm.  Auburn, like 15 other southern teams claims the official (and wildly imaginative) moniker, Tigers.  But what the fans will be chanting at the Iron Bowl (don't get me started) is "War Eagle".  Another sketchy reference to some wonderful event that happened pre-printing press at a game between Auburn and the University of Georgia.

Today, Pokes fans will be watching OU take on Iowa State.  Some rooting for the Sooners, the embittered and less informed rooting against them (it's not right, it's just in our nature).  But no matter what happens in that contest, many will be tuning in to watch southern smash-mouth football.  Teams with history, pageantry - teams with defenses.

Remember Pokes fans:  If all the storytelling, all of the gaped-mouth announcing, all of stroking of the SEC's ego starts to get disorienting (and it will), just root against the team in crimson.

"War Damn Eagle!"

The Luck Stops Here.

I wonder if it is easier to forgive a parent or a child.

In most cases, I'd say it would be easier to forgive a child because by definition, they should never be as old or learned as a parent.  Then again, I can see where forgiving a parent could be easier at certain times due to the more flexible thought processing of the youth.  Maybe it depends on the infraction.

Call me naive, but I can't see much use in holding a grudge these days.  Maybe it's because I have found that withholding forgiveness affects me much more negatively than it seems to affect the person I may grace with such an act.  Maybe it's because nothing that bad has ever happened to me.

I recently forgave my father, whom I had not had any contact with in almost 10 years, for failing to be the father I was supposed to have had.  If that's not the silliest sentence I've ever written.  Anyway, it wasn't easy.  Took me nearly ten years to come around to the idea.  We missed a lot of each other in that time - some of it needed to be missed, but probably not that amount.  Because of my lack of willingness to forgive, my father and his wife missed the birth and almost all of the first two years of their (only) grandson's life.  Hardly seems like a fair trade for not living up to my lofty expectations.  I am sorry it took me so long to learn to forgive, but oddly enough, I had to have a child teach me about it.  You see, once I had a child and became a father was the first time I could see how painful life might become if we couldn't find a way to forgiveness.

At first I thought, "Well, my father had a bad father, and I had a bad father, but my son has a great father.  My son and I are gonna break this chain." There's only one flaw in that thinking.  It assumes that I will either be a perfect father for the rest of my days, or that my son will need to learn how to forgive me at some point.  Well, how was I gonna teach him to do that?  Bingo.

I'm not the only one in my family with these issues.  My father-in-law, Mike, recently made peace with his mother after several years of estrangement.  What their issues were I don't really know,  I'm not entirely sure if I ever knew.  Actually, it doesn't matter.  What matters is that they found a way back to one another and to a place where they didn't have to hold on so tightly and expend so much energy on proving a point.  The point being, that somebody had let somebody down.

The downside of my father-in-law's story is that he and his mother were joined in this reconciliation by serious illness.  Mike's mother became terminally ill and recently passed away.  I am very proud of him for letting go of the anger and resentment he was carrying around before she was physically absolved of the material world.

I am not certain any of us did enough to say we were sorry to Mike when his mother died.  We sent messages and such, and I know that he knows we care, but I for one, am terrible at grieving the dead.  Always have been.  I cried more when my cat had to be put down than I did when my grandfather passed away.  I'll cry at a movie, a moving poem from The Writer's Almanac, even a particularly poignant episode of Parenthood, but death of a human, meh.  I don't know what it is, I'm just not good at it.

But, fortunately for Mike, his grandchildren are fantastic at cutting through the ephemera and useless emotions that tend to accompany such an event.  A few days after Mike lost his mother, he got letters from Sadie Bea (8 years) and Simon (6 years) - they call their grandfather, "Poppy":

Dear Poppy,


I am sorry to hear about your mom (drawing of sad face at the end of this sentence).  I know that you are sad, but it was time.  


Love you a lot,


Sadie Bea (with a little cartoon heart dotting the i)

Simon's offering of condolence was less nuanced, but quite frankly receives high marks for not dancing around the subject matter as much as his sister had.

(This written in the absurdly large and wobbly script of a person who is just now learning to write.)

Dear Poppy,


I am sorry that your mom died, but luckily she was ready to die.


Love,


Simon

Reportedly, Mike and his wife Rita were in tears at the reading of these letters.  Mike could not stop laughing at the wording the kids used.  "How lucky was that?" he would say to his wife.  "She was ready to die," and then they would burst out laughing.

When I was in high school a woman called our house one afternoon and my stepmother answered the phone.  After several minutes, she hung up and told me that the person who had called was related to my grandfather and they were calling to let my father know that his father was in a hospital (in Illinois, maybe) and he was going to die soon.  They wanted to let my dad know so that he could go see him, so that he could make peace with him.  My father declined.  In fact, when my stepmother told him about the call, my dad used some choice words to describe his old man and the variety of reasons for which he would not be booking an airline ticket any time soon.  Even at his funeral, my father was angry about the proceedings, the cost, etc...

I have visited my grandfather's grave several times - it is near my other grandparents' graves, so I kinda figure, you know, while I'm in the neighborhood.  I don't know why my dad and his brother couldn't bring themselves to forgive their father, we've never talked about it that much.  I do know that I have never heard anyone in our family tell one good story about my grandfather.  His epitaph reads something along the lines of, "Loving Husband, Devoted Father".  It would be as accurate to say, "Cured Polio, Walked on Moon".  

I am sure it stung to have to pay for that headstone as my father and his brother surely did.  I'm fairly certain that it must be rough to be told you've got a shot at burying the hatchet with your old man, only to leave him to die without you.  And I hope I never know what it's like to be on my deathbed and place the call only to have no one respond.

Of course by then, luckily I'll be ready to die.

Possible Alternative Names for the Brady Arts District (In response to Lee Roy Chapman's insightful article on one of our city's founding fathers in This Land Press)

1)  Hatey District
2)  Uncle Tate's Klantastic Family Fun Zone
3)  Ku Klux Kreative
4)  Hate-Ashbury
5)  Konfederate Korner
6)  Klavern on the Green
7)  Greenwood

Thoughts on Tom Riley (1945-2011)

(Author's Note:  I have not been directed, petitioned, or otherwise received permission to write anything that would serve or substitute as a eulogy for Thomas F. Riley.  I simply record these memories because they are important to me and because in such a small amount of time, Tom made an enormous positive impression.)


I met Tom Riley sometime around 1986.  I was best friends with his youngest boy, Tim, and as such was a frequent stowaway at Tim's mother's duplex.  Tom was there most weekends as well.  Even though he and Tim's mother were divorced, they got along well and you could tell he enjoyed being near his boys.  It occurs to me now, that this was Tom's insurance policy.  He stayed close to remain in his son's lives and protect their shared relationships.  He didn't let the break-up of a marriage impede him from the duty of parenting, and perhaps more impressively, he didn't use it as an excuse.  He continued to teach his boys how to become men.  And when the time came, he acknowledged their arrival.

It should be noted for those that did not know him, Tom Riley was a big man.  Often, a person is described as big, figuratively - a "big" philanthropist, a "big" businessman.  While these labels may have also applied, what I mean to say here is that his size was impressive.  He had a shock of thick hair that at the time was more silver than black, always neatly cut and fixed.  He carried a scent of masculine cologne with a undertone of cigarette smoke.  I noticed even back then that he had the build and hands of an athlete, although it would be in his obituary that I would discover he had been a scholarship member of the football squad at the University of Tulsa.  He had a deep voice and a relaxed laugh.  He was handsome and strong, but never showy.

Whenever I was in Tom's presence, his focus was exclusively on his children and their friends.  He doted on his boys.  He hugged them and kissed them and called them "baby" and "honey" which initially struck my ear as effeminate, or at the very least, emasculating.  What I would come to understand is that in the Riley's shared language these terms were not used in relation to gender but rather, spoke to level of affection.  He loved his boys deeply and without shame.

The first time Tom addressed me in such a way was mat-side after a wrestling match I had lost.  I was disappointed in my effort, and I was not a gracious loser.  He wrapped his arms around me and said, "Honey, shake it off.  You're a star.  You'll get 'em next time."  He cupped the retreating side of my sweaty head in his oversized hand and pulled it into his chest, mashing my face into his sweater.  After that, I didn't care what he called me.  I kind of just hoped he'd always be there when I lost.

As the years passed and we made our way to college, Tim and I found new sets of friends and interests.  Our circles overlapped on occasion but with less frequency than in our teenage years.  Understandably, I saw Tom less as well.  I was too preoccupied at the time to know how much I missed him, but looking back on it now, it was evident.

The last time I saw Tom Riley was at Tim's wedding, it must be more than 15 years ago now.  He was happy.  He had so many people crowded around him, celebrating with him, that I was reluctant to approach.  But he caught me in mid-slink and carved his way towards me.  "I am so proud of all you boys, you all have really grown up to be fine young men" he said, absolutely beaming.

I didn't have the guts to tell him I was failing most of my classes, or that I didn't really know what the hell I was doing with my life.  I couldn't have expressed how lost or scared I was that I would never know what or who I was supposed to be, even as we were celebrating the union of two people who were defining a significant part of their new identities - husband, wife.  All I could really do was smile sheepishly and accept his misplaced praise.

Sometimes you can find yourself so physically removed from a person you admired earlier in life, that the time you spent together seems fictional.  I don't know if my recollections of Tom - the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he acted - are true, or if they were constructed in decades of absence to fit the narrative of my life.  I feel certain that I can see him in a v-neck sweater with a starched, button-up shirt underneath.  I am fairly confident that I can recall the smell of leather and cigarette smoke belonging to the interior of his car (some kind of Ford - a Thunderbird, or maybe a Taurus?).  My memories are slippery and I am often suspicious of them.

One thing I am sure of is that I enjoyed being around Tom.  He never talked down to me or treated me like a kid.  He cared for me because I was his son's friend.  He cared for me whether I won or lost, whether I was right or wrong.  For whatever reason most of my friends grew up in households affected by divorce, their fathers absent physically or emotionally or both.  Tom was a father in a world that needed more fathers.

It's has taken a long time for the lessons I learned from being around Tom Riley to take hold.  I guess I had to have a child before they could fully manifest.  Legacies have a peculiar way of appearing at the right time.

Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I love my boy publicly, without shame - and that I call him "baby", "honey" and "darling" without a moments thought to how that might sound to any other person.  I know the day will likely come when my son will be embarrassed of my affection and attention.  I am prepared for that.  When he questions my motivation for such behavior, I will be proud to blame it on Tom.

The Golden Driller: France's Most Generous Gift

The following piece was originally written for the local publication, This Land Press, but was rejected at deadline for "missing the mark".  This rejection not only came as a surprise, but very nearly disintegrated what was left of my questionable self-confidence.  However, after much reflection and the absorption of several self-help pamphlets gleaned from the waiting room of a local therapist, I have decided to press on and publish the piece myself.  It is my sincere hope that you enjoy the fruits of my (now) very public failure.  

In a warehouse in Toulon, France, a young artist pulls an enormous canvas sheet pieced together from discarded sail material over a bronze statue in repose.  The year is 1952 and Guy Montparnasse has completed his masterpiece.  A golem outfitted with work boots, gloves, a safety helmet, pants and a belt with a buckle that reads, Tulsa.  He takes one last look at the giant’s expressionless face before giving a hearty tug at the canvas and concealing the sculpture completely, a move borrowed from a mortician.    

In the next several weeks, Le Petrolier Braves (The Brave Oilman), will occupy the lion’s share of a cargo ship headed toward the United States.  Along the way there is a  scheduled stop at the Port of New Orleans to unload several pallets of beignet mix and afford the crew a well deserved night on the town.  Next, the statue will wind its way up the Mississippi, divert course at the Arkansas and deliver what will eventually become known as The Golden Driller to the Port of Catoosa in time for the International Petroleum Exhibition of 1953.  

The statue (third largest in the United States) garners much attention and slack-jawed amazement of all who attend the exhibition.  But what most casual oil slobs will never appreciate is the story behind its creator.

In the spring of 1946, Guy Montparnasse had nearly deserted his dreams of becoming an artist.  Subsisting on a diet of absinthe, barbiturates and literary erotica, his life was not so much spinning out of control as it was ambling in the path of a steamroller.  His application to the Sorbonne had been rejected for the third time, and in their latest correspondence, the institution had expressed their doubts not only his ability to become a significant artist, but in a manner that could only be described as unusually cruel, questioned whether or not Montparnasse was “fit to be walking freely amongst the rest of the French population”.  It was true that Montparnasse was given to the more violent ebbs of manic depression and ritualistic self abuse via chronic masturbation, but as his friends had pointed out, these tendencies would seem to solidify one’s acceptance to such an institution.

Broke, jobless and without much hope, Montparnasse decided to give up his artistic delusions.  He took a job as a dockworker but was excused after his foreman caught him in the act of defacing the side of a shipping container.  In a bipolar fit, he had painted the words le sperme de singe (monkey semen) on the broadside of a cask of champagne bound for London.  His next position was that of fishmonger, a job granted to him through the father of a mutual friend.  But again, Montparnasse’s maladies betrayed his employability as he was fired for what his co-workers deemed excessive time spent in the salle de bain and for hurling fish guts at passing tourists on the boardwalk adjacent to the market counter.

Humiliated and cast aside by his friends and family, Montparnasse began making plans to end his own life, but his contradictory aversion to pain and painkillers conspired to leave him among the living.  One day, while thumbing through the classified section of a homoerotic magazine in a church courtyard near the Place de la Liberte, he noticed an advertisement inviting european artists study in the United States.  The Art Instruction School, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota was making a push for international accreditation and as such was willing to relax its normally stringent acceptance standards, which up to that point had required the drawings of a tortoise in profile, a cartoon bear replete with top hat and bow tie, and a mildly despicable rendering of a pirate.  Within a week, Montparnasse had been notified of his acceptance to the AIS based on the strength of his portfolio comprised of drawings of suicidal rodents and a series he had titled “Amputated Dreams” which seemed to be abstract expressionistic works featuring photos of the Sorbonne’s admission board members smeared in a foul-smelling, tawny source material.

Montparnasse flourished in Minneapolis. Its arctic winters and the round, nearly featureless faces of its inhabitants seemed to inspire him.  Even his turbulent bouts of auto-erotic flailing were coming on less frequently now.  In the United States, Montparnasse had been given freedom - freedom to call himself an artist.  The school sponsored quarterly gallery exhibitions and Montparnasse was quickly becoming a star.  His employment of neckerchiefs, striped sailor shirts and his european accent lent instant credibility to his work.  

In a chance meeting, Montparnasse was introduced to William “Bill” Skelly, an oilman from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  The two got along famously and Skelly commissioned Montparnasse to create a massive sculpture to adorn his International Petroleum Exhibition.  By this time Skelly was in his dotage and had made several questionable investments including a football stadium for the University of Tulsa.  

Since its initial unveiling, the Golden Driller has created its own history.  In 1966, it became a permanent feature at the Tulsa Fairgrounds, its brutish right arm resting on a retired oil derrick from a depleted field in Seminole.  In 1979, the Golden Driller was adopted by the Oklahoma Legislature as the state monument.  And in 2006, as part of an online promotional contest, the Golden Driller was named the grand prize as a top ten "quirkiest destination" in the United States, winning its nominator a $90,000 international vacation for two.  Although its once bronze coating has been stained to a mustard gold by airborne contaminates, the result of westerly breezes carrying petrochemicals from the refineries across the river, the Driller remains one of Tulsa’s most beloved icons.

The monument’s creator, however, enjoyed no such fortune.  He had planned to return to the United States in 1966 for the unveiling of the Golden Driller at the fairgrounds, but  his agent argued against it, claiming that his attendance “could only jeopardize his reputation as a serious artist and confuse, if not horrify the people of Oklahoma, which are a kind and Godly people.”  

Mentally and physically ill, Montparnasse died on Bastille day later that same year.  While cycling home after night of rampant debauchery, his scarf became entangled in the spokes of his bicycle, and as he was traveling at a decent rate of speed, proceeded to snap his neck.  The coroner’s report, however, claimed that the artist had died from erotic asphyxiation.  When pressed for an explanation of this additional humiliating information, the coroner noted that although the subsequent winding of the scarf had likely broken the artist’s neck, one couldn’t help but notice that the subject’s left hand was in his trousers at the time of death.

I'm Sorry I Didn't Help You Move.

Here's the thing.  I saw your Facebook post asking if any of your friends might be available to help you move on fairly short notice and I feel really bad about not replying.  I am currently in self-imposed exile from capitalism and I have a fair amount of time on my hands. I certainly could have at least pitched in and helped you with the heavy stuff or maybe even with some packing, but I didn't.

Perhaps it is for the best.

For one thing, I barely even know you.  Maybe you would have thought it strange that I offered to help, certainly your real friends would have.  I mean, I am your friend, but you know, not your friend friend.  I am your Facebook friend, and that hardly warrants potential back injury.  I know that we were once real friends (maybe?), but previous recreational drug use combined with the passage of some years have left my memory as blank and scratchy as a garage sale etch-a-sketch.  Truth be told, I didn't even help my best friend move last time I had the opportunity.  And the last time I moved, I hired some guys to do it for me, which means I didn't even help myself move.

But what has really started to gnaw at my soul is not my absence at your moving party (which as I understand included pizza and cheap beer), but why I can't figure out how we know each other.  Forget about the fact that I didn't help you lug your crap from one apartment to another, how do I know you?

I have compiled a list of things I have been able to piece together from mutual friends, my damaged memory, and your Facebook profile:

• You work as a bartender at several establishments in the downtown area.  This much I know.  When I used to have the kind of time and disposable income required to drink in public, you were there sometimes.  We would acknowledge that we knew each other, but I never could put my finger on the origin of our aquaintance.

• You have 454 Facebook friends!  Impressive.

• You wear glasses.  Apparently, not just for reading.

• I have the feeling that the way we know each other has something to do with church, but then I recall that I didn't ever attend a church service at the time I was supposed to know you.

• You have curly-ish hair.

• We attended the same High School.

• Sometimes we talk about bicycles because we both seem to enjoy riding them.

I remember that I like you, doesn't that count for something?  I have a generally "good" feeling when I see you at your job.  Of course, since you are a bartender, I am drinking when I see you at your job, but I still have some memory of liking you more than most other near strangers.

The truth is... I just can't figure out how I know you.  Why does it matter?  Because you seem like a person that I would like to know.  Because I am too afraid to be honest and explain that I have forgotten how we know each other for fear of seeming obtuse or inconsiderate.  Because I need people to like me. I need to be one of the people who you showcase as your "talented friend" - I need to feel just a little bit more special than most people, not for the purpose of grandstanding, but so that I might humbly accept praise in a self-deprecating manner that would make me all the more attractive as a human being.  I need to be thought of as clever and cute and witty and wise and all of the things that I am not when I am full of doubt, worry, and regret.

This isn't about you.  It's about me - it always is.  If it were about you, I would have answered your post and you would have had a much needed helper on moving day.  Maybe then we would be friends, we would have eaten some pizza, drank some beer, and realized that we both weren't sure about the circumstances surrounding our initial meeting, but we were going to have a helluva good time trying to figure it out and piece it all back together.

Like I said, really sorry I didn't help you move...

Beau

Things I was Actually Thinking About When I Have Said That I Was Listening:

Sex

Surfing - not really learning how to surf, but just kind of knowing how to do it - and how kick-ass that would be.

When sharks die, do they float to the top like smaller fish or what happens?  'Cause you never just see a dead shark floating around.  Whales - same question.

Hang Gliding - How does that work?  I have at best a precursory knowledge of thermal updrafts.  This will require further investigation.

Having sex with the person that I am supposed to be listening to.  I wonder what that would be like?  Probably pretty good.

What kind of dog would best fit my trendy, urban lifestyle?  No little yippers, though - I don't care for those.

How did I end up here listening to this asshole?  I was supposed to be an English Professor at a prestigious all- girls college in New England with patches on my jacket sleeves and other shit like that.

Sex with supermodels - I bet it’s not all its cracked up to be.  I bet there is a bunch of bullshit you would have to put up with and eventually you would just be like, "Man, this is too much bullshit to put up with."

Living in Italy on the Amalfi Coast wearing wrinkled linen suits and maybe learning how to sail.  I don't know, sailing?  It is sooooo pretentious.  Maybe just something simple like "collector of fine art."

Maybe I should take up making things out of stained glass.  I like stained glass, and I need a new hobby.  No, fuck that.  What would I do with all of it?  Nobody likes to get that shit as a gift, anyway.  That's a stupid idea.

Do they still make glue out of horses?  Did they ever, or is that just bullshit?  There are a wealth of adhesives out there these days - are they all made from horses?  Wouldn't that be like a shitload of horses?  What's up with that?  And, why just horses?  Why not Congressmen?  Oh, Beau you’re so clever.  Oh shit, stop smiling, they can tell you're not listening, again.

Did I eat anything yet today?  Oh yeah, I had that crappy breakfast burrito from the convenience store.  Why did I eat that?  The checkout girl was pretty, though.  I wonder what it would be like to have sex with her?  Probably pretty good.

38

It is the anniversary of my 38th year on this planet and there are a few things that I feel a compulsion to share.  One is my own mortality.  Without consulting any type of directory or scientific manual, I am certain that my life is, at least statistically speaking, nearly half over (although I have always felt that the title of octogenarian was well within my reach).  And since the baby boomers have successfully marketed 70 as the new 40, I feel confident that I will be spared any mention of being "over the hill" and the ridiculous amount of black crepe paper decorations that use to accompany such a transition.  However, being on the earth for this many spins has afforded a certain amount of perspective.  A quick note:  I have an overwhelming feeling that this piece may ramble (if you are easily nauseated, it may be time to exit this ride now) but a bit of rambling, I might tell you, I feel entitled to at the moment.  So, instead of conjuring some comprehensive listing of "What I Have Learned in My 38 Years", I will simply describe some parts of my life and let that be that, by which I mean, politely draw your own conclusions.

It should be noted that for a great deal of my life I have had a hard time going to sleep - the truth being that it was a wrestling match between my restless brain and the inevitability of repose.  Over the years I have hosted a number of worrisome soirees in my head at bedtime, the guest list including money, women, family, career, etc..  Now, as a result of having and raising a child, I can sleep at almost any moment, anywhere - I could sleep right now (some of you who are reading this may feel the same).  When I wake, either day or night, I am greeted by the my son's voice.  After several minutes of singing he begins to talk.  At nearly 14 months his vocabulary is limited, but not necessarily unsophisticated.  He greets the birds in the morning, "Hi, birds."  He cannot see a bird from his crib as the curtains are drawn, so my feeble brain deduces that he is imagining them, which is not altogether different from seeing them in the first place, and to his world, perhaps no different at all.  After his vocal gymnastics, he joins us in our bed where he wiggles around like a worm whose tail has been dipped in hot sauce and attempts by any means necessary to make us laugh (which he does with great acumen, as he is quite adept and we are of course, a very willing audience).

It is at these times that I wonder what his life will be like, and abstract thoughts of my own childhood will launch themselves into the movie projector in my head:  The times I spent in a treehouse my father made for me (several graying, splintery planks lodged in the crotch of an elm) and the sounds the leaves made as they were rough-housed by the wind.  The feeling of sunburned thighs and feet after a day at the lake.  Deconstructing an oversized model of the human eye in my father's office, gripping and twisting the optic nerve like the throttle of an imaginary motorcycle.  The sound of 52 children bouncing 13 basketballs in a YMCA gymnasium, the acoustics of that room affording each bounce a volume at least three times louder than it deserved.  My grandmother's embrace and how she held me longer than I liked at the time.  Removing my socks and shoes that were soaked with dew and seeing my feet wrinkled up and white like the flesh of a fish fillet.  Laying on my stomach and face on the hot cement to warm my body after jumping into a cold, chlorine scented swimming pool.  My mother's cologne - earthy and rich, hanging heavy in the air.  The juxtaposition of the terra cotta flowerpots beneath the reddish-pink geraniums I planted on my mother's porch and the way those colors irritated my sensibilities as the temples of my eyeglasses now irritate the area behind my right ear, with a slight pressure.  I remember family trips, singing along with the car stereo and being fascinated with the leather appointments near the car's gear shift.  I can feel cold winds that made me believe that the bones in my face might shatter like a rubber ball dipped in liquid nitrogen, some sort of junior high science experiment.  The smell of the Carnegie Library and its dark mustiness.  I can taste the charred remains of the hamburgers that my grandfather used to press and handle until they achieved the form and resilience of a charcoal briquette.  I recall the church bulletins with line drawings on thin paper the color of vanilla ice cream.  Sweat running down my spine and into the pants of my polyester little-league baseball uniform.  The smell of a freshly opened can of tennis balls.  The complicated feelings of being attracted to girls who were older and much more developed than I was.  Bloody noses and lips from fist fights with best friends.  Hydrogen peroxide poured into scrapes on various parts of my body.  Bunk beds and themed comforter sets belonging to my brother and me.  Creaky would floors and airplane plants that hung in front of streaky windows in beaded macrame hammocks.  The weight and heft of glass pop bottles and the beautiful sound of glass on metal as you removed them from the collars in the skinny vertical door of a coin operated cooler.  Fireworks lit by my grandfather's cigarette.  Fireflies in a mason jar with holes poked in the top by a rusty screwdriver.

After 38 years, these are the things that I remember from my childhood.  I can be prodded to remember other events if someone will set the scene for me, but for the most part, I tend to recall the small things:  The stains of mulberries from a neighboring yard or watching my math teacher get into her imported car at the grocery store and imagining she and her husband moving off to a more cosmopolitan city.  I have always been lost in these thoughts, in their detail.  In any classroom, church service, vacation motel, family visit, car ride, or sporting event, I have found time to focus on something in the periphery for far too long.  I used to fight it, but now I realize it is just a part of who I am.  Take me to a musical and I might spend a serious amount of time wondering about the life of the elderly usher, constructing a history for him, his deceased wife, and the persian cats that he shares his modest ranch home with now.  At a baseball game my attention will be focused on a child with gum stuck to her shoe or a particular favorite, the hot dog vendor.  No matter what the scenario, I will be present for only a short amount of time before I become fascinated with another person and check out momentarily.

My mother has always said that you can never tell if I have enjoyed myself until months or even years after an event has occurred.  In many respects, she is right.  These things take time.  My life has taken time, as all lives tend to do, and I can honestly say to you now, dear reader - I am glad to have had the time to take.

Jerome

A couple of weeks ago my wife, Cari, and I were sitting on our porch and drinking a glass of wine like we sometimes do after putting our child to bed for the night.  I am not sure what got me started , but I began to tell her a story of one of the various characters that I used to know when I lived in Savannah, Georgia some years ago.

It should be noted that I sometimes talk too much - particularly when I am excited - and I certainly was excited on this occasion.  This behavior wears Cari down.  I know that she loves me very much, but there is only so much enthusiasm a person can take, and when I am excited about something (anything) I roll downhill with quite a bit of force.  It is a wonder that she tolerates my stories and though I can see her contempt start to rise at the outset of one, most times my excitement gets the best of me and I must proceed.

Some years back, an associate editor for Esquire magazine named John Berendt wrote a book called Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil which chronicled the murder trial of a prominent Savannah resident named Jim Williams.  A New York Times bestseller for a record 216 weeks, the book was a "fun read", containing a murder mystery and a menagerie of bizarre characters that painted the town of Savannah in a mystical light.  When I moved to Savannah in 1997, Clint Eastwood and his crew happened to be shooting the movie adaptation of the book in Forsyth Park about three stories below my apartment.  The film by all accounts was horrible, which was too bad because the cast was fantastic.  But, even the best laid plans... you know.  I enjoyed the book and treated it as a reference for the things that I might want to visit or recreate when I moved into my new town.  My roommate, who had lived in Savannah for a number of years couldn't stand it.  In fact, I think the copy of the book I have was his at one point;  He was all too willing to give it up.  His main problem with the novel was the inflated characterizations of the citizens of Savannah.  He claimed to know some of them and said that none of them were as flamboyant or interesting as the book portrayed.  He was right.  Through the years, I met some of the people as well and none of them lived up to the larger than life personas they had been assigned.

But here is where my roommate and I have a difference in opinion.  It didn't bother me that these people fell short of their billing because I never really expected them to live up to it in the first place.  As a writer, I understand that it is necessary to pad real life people a bit for effect.  If you didn't there would be very few interesting books written about actual people.  Experiences are enhanced by knowledge of the people involved.  A story about your friend is funny to you, but would mean almost nothing out of context when relayed to a perfect stranger.  So, if you want to write a book about a fantastical place, about a unique group of people that is intended to be read by millions with no frame of reference, you had better err on the side of the absurd rather than the routine.  To my mind it is not a lie or an outright deception, rather an amplification - and that is okay with me.  In my opinion, the only time an author ought to be completely accurate when writing about another person is when they are writing their biography or their obituary, and my guess is that Berendt meant to write neither.

Some writers inflate characters, some conjure them out of thin air.  But I think most writers succumb to a pleasant amount of what I call selective remembering.  I know that I do.  Selective remembering isn't fabrication as much as it is reconstruction.  It is the combination of character, events, and most importantly, time.  Time to forget the mundane and let the sublime marinate.  Time for the mind to fill in the gaps and explain the nuances that were not evident as it experienced it.  I think that all art is pushed by this phenomenon to some extent.  If not, wouldn't we just be reading stories about people as ordinary as our neighbors or looking at paintings that we could not discern from photos?

All of that being said, what follows is a true story, at least in as much as it was relayed to me truthfully, which I believe that it was.  While it could be argued that stories have a way of being embellished as they are told and re-told, I know the subject of this tale and I can fully vouch that his life is so fantastically depraved that the only reason I relay this story is because other ones are beyond belief.

The man's name was Jerome.  We were employed by the same company for a number of years at or about the turn of the last century in a place called Skidaway Island, Ga.  Skidaway Island was and is home to a gated private community called The Landings, which at the time was the largest private golf club in the United States.  The Landings consisted of 6 golf courses serviced by four maintenance facilities and over 100 employees working in various horticultural departments in order to keep them pristine.  Jerome was one of those people.

The first time I ever heard this story about Jerome, I was at a pizza place called Vinnie Van Go-go's in the city market area of downtown Savannah.  I was eating with my boss and several other co-workers when we began to compare notes on the biographies of the crazy people we had worked with in the golf course industry.  I had played my hand, telling them about a man named Eddie that I had worked with at a previous job.  Eddie was the first illiterate adult I had ever met.  A fact that I discovered by accident one day when I asked him to help me interpret a pesticide label.  He signed his employee handbooks, insurance forms, and the back of his paychecks with a wild scribble that was rarely the same twice.  He was also nearly toothless which relegated him to a diet of rice, some sort of gravy, and meat that had been slow cooked until wilted.  Eddie had lived a difficult life, and by all accounts had not been graced with fortune either inherited or earned.  It was difficult to see him struggle through each day and it would have been downright heartbreaking if he hadn't been one of the biggest assholes on the planet.  In the eight months I had worked with Eddie he had cursed at me on nearly a daily basis, thrown a wrench across the maintenance shop which found its stopping point in the spot on my back between my shoulder blades, and on the day I left that job for a new one, he whipped an empty liter of Jack Daniel's Whiskey at my truck as I exited the parking lot.  The panel agreed, Eddie was a character.  But, I was told, he was nothing compared to Jerome.  As it turns out, they were right.

When I met Jerome he had been living on the porch of his mother's home where he slept in a garish coffin - the result of a series of events that are quite unbelievable to anyone who had not met him, but seemed matter of fact to those who knew him well.  The coffin in question had been purchased at an estate sale earlier in the year by Jerome's mother.  A sad effort in low-country funeral planning, it was intended for Jerome's stepfather who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  Jerome had been living in a mobile home with his girlfriend, but had recently been evicted due to non-payment of lot rent.  His girlfriend left him, he was unemployed, and he was up to his ears in debt with bills from a local hospital.  The medical bills stemmed from an incident that had occurred during the fulfillment of a bet he had made with one of his friends.  The bet was that Jerome could shoot himself in the stomach with a .22 pistol and not have to be hospitalized.  The wager was for twenty dollars.

To be certain, it was a stupid bet, but Jerome had an angle.  He was sure that if he pulled the excess skin from around his middle, pinched it together and shot through it, he would not only fulfill the bet's parameters of shooting himself in the stomach, but also be able to secure the payoff by ably treating a subcutaneous flesh wound that in his mind couldn't be much worse than a large piercing.

As with all tragedies, there were a number of unforeseen circumstances that led to the dismantling of such a great plan.  In his case, Jerome's undoing would be partially tied to the fact that he couldn't own a gun, the result of several gun related arrests.  So, even with Georgia's liberal gun laws, Jerome would have to shoot himself in the stomach with another man's gun.  Not possessing the instrument with which to shoot yourself could be a problem, but with Jerome's friends it would be easily remedied.  The man who made the bet with him was more than happy to provide the firearm that he was sure would eventually secure him the twenty dollars.  He even joked with Jerome that he wasn't going to charge him for the bullet the nurses in the ER were going to have to pull out of him.  The fact that the gun was not his own was not Jerome's main problem, though it was a component.  His main problem was physiological.  Because although one .22 caliber pistol may not be remarkably different from another, the human response to a gunshot may be decidedly so.

As the story goes, the bet was to be fulfilled at a party on a friday evening at the gun owner's home on the back creek of Whitmarsh Island.  By all accounts, there was a crowd of 15 to 20 people drinking and carrying on into the night - word traveled through the party about the bet, and like a sentence passed around a room it would grow more outlandish and grotesque as imagination and alcohol fueled its journey.

When it finally came time to make good on the bet, Jerome was all too happy to reveal his plan.  It was late at night, so most of the partygoers had either headed home or moved on to a different affair.  So it was that Jerome and two other men found themselves near the back creek with the moonlight bouncing off of the brackish water in the creek which was near high tide.  Jerome waved the pistol in a defiant motion at the sky and then grabbing an impressive amount of flesh from the belly of his slender figure proceeded to fire a shot through his rolled skin.

The shot went through clean and if a person could have witnessed the event in super-slow motion they would have put twenty dollars on Jerome, too.  But mere nanoseconds after the shot sliced through his bunched up stomach flab, nerve endings carried with great urgency a message to Jerome's brain telling it that he was under attack and that in preparation for another assault it would be for the best if he would collapse his frame to protect his vital organs and tense up every available muscle - including the ones in his right index finger that were wrapped a round the trigger of a .22 caliber pistol.

Although the first shot had performed as planned, the next one, as a consequence of Jerome's body buckling found a more direct route into his abdomen.  A point blank shot that shredded its way through his intestines and finally came to rest near his bladder.  Jerome was rushed to St. Joseph's hospital on the back of a Harley Davidson Super Glide, an unfortunate conveyance for such an occasion, but for various reasons, Jerome's friends didn't want police showing up at their home.

After an emergency operation and several weeks of recovery Jerome was ready to go back to work, but the construction company that he had been working for had replaced him and the phone calls were coming in requesting payment of his staggering balance to the hospital.

Broke, wounded, and with his reputation in shambles, Jerome drug himself to his mother's home just to be told that his room had been rented out for necessary income and that it was 4 months into a 6 month lease.  Having little other option, Jerome decided to sleep for two months in the same vessel his stepfather would eventually sleep in for eternity.

After I finished telling my story about Jerome to Cari and assuring her that this wasn't even the best one, I looked at her face and noticed that it was filled with disgust.  "What?"  I said.  Cari started gathering her things and heading inside, "I am not going to listen to your porch stories anymore," she said.

So there I was alone on the porch, glass of wine in my hand and I started to wonder to myself how much of my story was authentic.  I catalogued the main story line and started to revisit the details as well when it struck me once again that I didn't really care if it was true or not.  It was a good story.

Lost and Found

The summer of 1992 was sandwiched between my freshman and sophomore attempts at becoming a college student.  Paired with the upcoming fall semester and my full initiation to the Oklahoma State University campus, it would become one of the most formative and confusing times in my brief life.  I was an impossibly well mannered and bright kid who was on a mission to tear apart any semblance of my former personal history and strike out new in an effort to recreate myself.  

I had taken up residence in an apartment complex not too far from the neighborhood where I had grown up.  This was a snap decision made one night at a party where I had run into some old friends from high school and drank way too many beers out of a plastic cup.  The buildings in the apartment complex were painted a cappuccino color with dark brown accents and had all the charm of a minimum security prison with only a little less privacy.  But the best thing about them was that neither of my parents lived there.

When we first moved in, I had a job washing dishes at a local restaurant.  But I quickly figured out that I had saved more than enough money in the previous year to quit that job and spend the summer at my leisure.  My father had agreed to provide me with a stipend of $275 per month as long as I was attending school and making good grades;  an agreement that I made him regret almost immediately.  Since I had decided to share this two-bedroom apartment with three other guys, our rent and bills when split four ways totaled roughly $150 per month.  This meant that I had and extra $125 per month to spend on beer, marijuana, and compact discs to round out my growing music collection.  It seems crazy now, but $125 was more than enough and I rarely even had to dip into my savings unless I wanted to attend a concert or buy food.

My days were spent employing the apartment complex’s many amenities.  Never one to enjoy an indoor gym, I opted instead to split my time between the faux beach volleyball court and the miniature pool that happened to be within earshot of my bedroom.  This was a lucky break for the other residents of the complex because I was able to wedge my stereo speakers into my bedroom window and direct them at the pool area.  That way we could all enjoy the bootlegged Grateful Dead performances of the last 30 years, 4 hours at a time.  “Don’t worry,” I would say to a young mother with her toddler in tow, “after this one is over it will immediately switch to the next tape.  We can hear the entire set from the 1978 show at the pyramids before I have to reload.”

On occasion I would visit my father for lunch and the customary pay out of our agreed arrangement.  At some point he would inevitably ask, “So, what do you do all day?”  I couldn't understand it at the time, but it frustrated him to no end that I had decided not to work through the summer.  I have to give him credit for keeping up his end of the deal, and I can't really fault him for rescinding it later on that year in an effort to put his wife through school instead.  Although it did sting quite a bit to lose my financial padding to my stepmother, it was a much more sound investment. 

Finding something to occupy my time that summer wasn’t really as much a burden for me as my father might have imagined.  I would wake up when I was tired of sleeping, eat whatever I could find leftover from the previous night, take a shower, and prepare to start my day promptly at noon or so.  By this time someone was usually hanging around looking to drink beer at the pool, smoke a joint and drive to the lake, or maybe just watch some movies.  It was a time to ease into the day, make friends with it, and see where it was going to take you.  This was also a good time to get some reading done, explore some of my roommate’s cd collections, and gather a mental schedule of which of my buddies would be available to hang out on that particular evening and which ones might have to work.  

Also of prime importance was phone answering.  In the days before cell phones and absent an answering machine, it was imperative that someone be there to answer the phone in case a person might call with information regarding a party or a trip to the lake involving a borrowed boat.  On this front, I was invaluable.  I can’t remember how many times I waited with great anticipation for my roommates to wander in so I could tell them what information I had gathered during the day.  Mostly I can’t remember, because I smoked too much pot.

And so the days went, the most delightful rut I had ever had the pleasure of being stuck in.  I had worked every summer since I was 13, but this summer was mine.  It would be the first and last of its kind.  

The fall semester at Oklahoma State University brought with it rampant change and confusion.  I moved in with some acquaintances from the summer;  a group of cowboys that had been kicked out of their fraternity house the previous semester and were now renting a huge 4 bedroom home near campus.  The rent was cheap and I probably could have gotten by without working, but as luck would have it, one of my new roommates got me a job at a record store in town.

The excitement of meeting new people at my job and through my new housemates was overwhelming.  I looked forward to school and enrolled for the fall semester.  Never one to be accused of being a show-off, I signed up for 4 lectures and a lab, totaling 13 hours - one more than the necessary 12 required to be classified as a full-time student, therefore securing my financial aid.  I could barely contain myself as I breezed through the first week of classes, until I attended the biology lab on Thursday morning.

I walked into the lab and chose to sit next to a fairly attractive girl whom I had hoped would become my lab partner.  After several minutes of awkward chatting, our attention became focused on the figure that had entered and set up camp at the teaching station towards the front of the room.  He was a tall, slender man and not having much experience with non-native people, I strained to guess his origin.  He announced his name was Manu, and that he was originally from Ethiopia.  He told us that he lived with his wife and three children in the married student housing complex on campus.  After disclosing a few more facts about his life, he went on to instruct us that we should not call him by the title of professor as was customary, but simply by his first name.  The reason for the informality was that he was also a student working on his master’s degree.  He spoke of himself in the third person and gave us an example of the protocol we should use in addressing him.  “If you see Manu walking on the campus,” he said, “do not say, ‘Hello professor’, but instead you say, ‘Hi Manu, hello to you!’”  This he exclaimed with tremendous enthusiasm as if he were putting us all at great ease.  “We are the same,” he said, “all students.”

These were some of the last words Manu said that I ever fully understood.  And as I left the lab that day thinking of his words, I couldn’t help but think that we were not the same at all.  Outside of the fact that we both had bursar accounts, I couldn't think of one thing that we had in common.  I was a boy attending college in my own hometown hoping to change myself into the adult I thought I wanted to be.  Manu was a man, a husband and father, thousands of miles from home, struggling to grasp the language, to fit in and become a part of our society.  In addition, he was tasked with teaching an entry level laboratory class to about twenty kids who had little or no interest in his knowledge.  Truth be told, the lab could have been completed by simply following the manual that was purchased for the class.  There was no real need for an instructor except to call roll and make sure that we didn’t cheat off of each other on the quizzes, which Manu called “cuses.”

Still, I was sorry when Manu took our failure to learn personally and claimed that our performance on his quizzes, “gave him great pain.”  I know that more than one person went to their advisor and complained that Manu’s english was so poor that they could not learn the material, and it made me sad to think of this information ever getting back to him.  

Out of pity and middle-class guilt, I decided to remain enrolled in Manu’s lab while others were dropping and adding like flies.  My rationale was that I probably wasn’t going to do that well in biology anyway, so why blame it on someone else?  Besides, I was an english major, and what more could you want but an interesting person like Manu to write about?  I had fantasies of becoming his friend and helping him to navigate the troubled waters of first person speaking.  Perhaps he would teach me about life in Ethiopia and enlighten me in the ways of the solid sciences.  

In the end, I didn’t get to know Manu that well.  The truth is, I made no effort.  I didn’t even get an opportunity to casually cross his path and fulfill his dream of shouting, “Hi Manu, hello to you!”  I suspect this had more to do with geography than anything else.  Manu’s life was towards the west end of the campus, grounded in the earth sciences and their laboratories while mine was towards the east end, near the bars and sandwich shops.

As the semester dragged on, Manu and I struggled through it together but separately.  His english never improved much, nor did my understanding of cellular mitosis.  And when the time came for our last class, we parted ways more or less as we had met, with our only common bond being enrollment at the same institution.  He, presumably moving on and fulfilling his requirements as a master’s student and me, preparing to go home for the holidays and explain to my parents why I had made many new friends, but few passing grades.

New and Improved?

It has been about three months since I left my career in an effort to improve my life.  A drastic measure to be certain, but I am an all or nothing kind of person to the core.  I will be clean shaven or have a beard.  I can be the life of the party or be quite reserved.  And sadly for those that share my life, I can be wildly excitable or completely sullen.

Since 90 days seems to be a good probationary period (you can tell I worked in a corporate setting by that phrase) I thought I would check in on my wish list that I compiled when I was trying to gather the courage to radically alter my life.  It is important for me to go back and look at my goals to make sure I give myself credit for achieving them.  Too often I accomplish something, give myself no credit, and then wrongly accusing myself of getting nowhere.  So let's give them a look...

• Time - I want lots of time to think and play and figure things out and create.  There is no more precious commodity.  Everything I desire hinges on time.  Time = Freedom.  I certainly have more time than I used to, but most of it is taken up with helping to raise my child.  Perhaps it was a bit naive to think that I could quit my job and just wander around the city.
• I want to walk around and look at things - study things.  Maybe I will draw them, maybe I will paint them, maybe I will simply marvel at them.  I have begun to slow down and pay more attention to my surroundings and this makes me very happy.
• Money.  I want ample amounts of money.  Money to live the life of my dreams, money to aid others, money to start foundations and charities, money to help myself and others.  This one is funny.  When I wrote it, what I really meant was that I wanted to have millions and millions of dollars.  But, being afraid of being perceived as greedy, I wrote "ample."  Well, I got what I asked for.  I have "ample" amounts of money.  I would like to restate this wish at this time and become perfectly clear, I want millions of dollars.  And I will probably want millions more after that.  For the record we have given money to aid others, donated to charities, friends, and strangers.  I want millions so that I can do more of that.
• I would like to ride my bike to whatever it is I call work.  I have worked odd jobs downtown for a friend of a friend and have ridden my bike to get there.
• I want to spend more time with my family.  Not in a creepy congressional scandal way, but in the real way.  I want to be around Cari and Grey throughout the day.  Have I gotten to spend more time with my family?  Um, try all day every day.   I have driven them crazy and on some days they have gladly returned the favor.  But, I will never take for granted the opportunity I have had to be with my wife and son over the last three months.  I am extremely fortunate to get to be this much a part of their lives.
• I want to be a great father.  I am a great father.  I make tons of mistakes and I get very frustrated and I say and do the wrong things ALL of the time.  But I apologize and I keep showing up.  I don't know a lot, but I know the secret to being a great parent is to be honest, loving, sincere, and above all, to keep showing up.
• I want to be the best husband.  I could stand some improvement here.  I am insistent, impatient, and sometimes short-tempered.  This is a goal that I need to focus on much more intently.  I am going to do that starting right now.

• I want to create.  I want to write children's books with Cari, I want to write essays, novels, and parenting books.  I want to receive an honorary degree from a prestigious University.  Essays, yes.  Haven't quite made it to the novels or the honorary degree just yet.  I did however draw a picture of my son's favorite breakfast foods the other day because I wanted to feel extremely clumsy and uncomfortable.  Here it is...
• I want to sell and market a line of greeting cards that Cari has created, I want to promote other friends and artists that I now know and soon will meet.  I want to show people like me that there is a way for them to have a good life and that there is nothing wrong with having a non-traditional career.  Good start on these items, but I need to really step it up.
• I want to give back.  I want to help those who need it and teach those that are yearning to be taught.  Don't know if I have taught anybody anything, but I have given back on occasion.  You just can't do enough of that kind of thing.
• I want to to be on CBS Sunday Morning.  Not yet, but I have enjoyed watching it when I have had the time.
• I want to be on NPR - preferably Fresh Air with Terry Gross.  No calls from the producers of Fresh Air just yet.
• I would love to be a good cook - not a great one, just a good one.  I am getting better at this.  Thank God I have a wife that will gladly try what I cook and tell me that she loves it.  I may not be good yet, but I have found that I love to take the time to cook.  I find it so relaxing and enjoyable when it is not restricted by deadline.  Like all other things, if you start to put time demands on it, I will instantly despise the task.
• I would like to travel - Western Europe, the parts of North America that I haven't seen, and then who knows where else...  Not unless you count Enid, Oklahoma.  However, I am about to help one of my friends out with his business and it requires a good deal of travel, so in the next few months this will change.
• I would like to be good at Yoga.  Ugh, so disappointed in myself for not giving this more attention.  Along with improving my husband skills, this task gets the lowest marks.
• I would like to be friends/colleagues of David and Amy Sedaris.  Hahaha.... not yet.  If you happen to be friends of theirs, feel free to invite us all to dinner some night.
• I am strangely interested in beekeeping - maybe that could be a hobby.  This one needs to be deleted and replaced with home-brewing.  Beekeeping, what was I thinking?  Making my own beer makes much more sense.  What do I need with honey?  I can't finish a jar in a year.
• I would like to live my life, write about my life and get paid for it.  The world is a strange and wonderful place and I think that there maybe aren't enough people keeping record of that.  I would like to volunteer to do that.  Duh, I am totally doing that (payment coming soon).
• I would like to make/restore furniture.  I have no skill that I know of that would lend itself to this, but I would like to give it a whirl, anyway.  I have done a little wood working now and I am certain that I would NOT like to do this.  I think that I was confused.  What I would like to do is appreciate and purchase furniture.  Specifically, of the mid-century modern variety.
• I would like to be smiling most of the time.  It should be said about me, "he is always smiling."  I am smiling s lot more now than I used to.  

So, how am I doing?  Not bad.  Change comes slower than I would like it to, but I know that I am becoming myself again.  I also must remember that it took quite some time to lose the things that make me happy, so it should be no surprise that it will take some time to re-program myself.  

Now, if I could just get off of my ass and do some yoga.

"I am the Way and the Truth and the...

... Night-Light.  No one comes to the bathroom except by me."

To say that I have a complicated relationship with Our Lord and Savior would be a gross oversimplification.  For all of those preparing to stop reading, give me a second.  It is not that I am a non-believer.  I believe in a "God Presence" very strongly.  I know, I know, that didn't sound right - don't click away yet.  Please let me explain.

Okay, let's go back to the beginning.  For those of you devout Christians whom I have already offended by restructuring your sacred scripture in order to provide a juvenile and only mildly amusing punch line, you might be interested to know that the first person to cast doubt of an all powerful Creator in my mind was one of your most talented and dedicated cheerleaders.

Her name was Marcy Hollingsworth and the year was 1984.  Marcy and her husband George used to pick me up every Sunday morning at 8:00 am so that we could get to the First Baptist Church in Perry, Oklahoma in time to have a little quality socializing (and some delicious donuts) before starting our Sunday school classes.  (Why 8:00?  Because bible study started at about 9:00 with the main service beginning at about 10:30 and going however the hell long the preacher wanted it to.)  Marcy was a Sunday school teacher as well as a volunteer at the church two days a week.  Her husband George was a Deacon.  Both of them spent the first hour of every morning in silence at the dining room table reading from, and attempting to gain a better understanding of, The Holy Bible.  Every morning.  The two of them were the most loving, caring, forgiving, and well, Christ-like people I have ever met.  They also happened to be my grandparents.

So, how could it be that such a faithful servant of the Lord helped to turn me away from Him?  Tough questions.  Questions perhaps that could only be asked out of pure curiosity and without agenda.  Questions asked by an eleven year-old.

One day after church I asked my grandmother, "Why do they call Jesus, the King of the Jews?"

She replied, "Because he was.  He was an Israelite.  That means that he was Jewish."

"Then... why aren't we Jewish?" I asked.

"Well," she said, looking over to her husband for some sort of ecclesiastical life preserver, "it's complicated.  Jesus wasn't Jewish in the religious sense, he was of Jewish heritage. You see, Jewish people don't believe in Jesus.  At least, not the way we do."

Whoa, wait a minute.  Jewish people don't believe in Jesus?  This blew my mind.  I wasn't even aware that there was a religion on the planet that didn't believe in Jesus.  I wasn't sure what the difference was between ours and the other 35 churches in this town of roughly 4,000 people, but never in my wildest dreams did I think that one of the major differences might be that some people didn't believe in the one Divine Being that you absolutely had to believe in to get to Heaven.  This sent me down a dangerous and disappointing path of purely scientific theory that would eventually find me a practicing (or non-practicing) agnostic.  No one could prove the existence of God, so how could I be a responsible person and still believe in Him?  

For a good deal of my life, as far as I was concerned, anyone who spoke of religion of any sort could automatically be discounted, if not completely dismissed.  I mean, enough with all of the miracles and the promises of eternal life, and the leap of faith crap - I began to feel sorry for people who pinned their hopes and dreams to the flimsy promise of everlasting life.  "Look at the world," I would say, "If there were a benevolent and loving savior, wouldn't I be driving a nicer car?"

These were dark times.

As I grew older, I began to make the distinction between Faith and Religion, and was ecstatic to find that for me, they could be mutually exclusive.  Except for a few funerals, a wedding here and there, and some brief Unitarian encounters, I have not been to a proper church service in well over twenty years.  I'd like to say that I would be interested in attending a church service.  Sometimes my wife and I talk about how nice it would be to go to midnight mass, although to be honest, my excitement for this is probably tied to the remembrance of "midnight movies" I attended while in junior high school.  

Sometimes I meet the most wonderful people and as we get to know each other they will mention that they are church-going folk.  Inevitably they will ask if I attend.  I always feel a little bad by saying I don't, and then I feel a little worse when I explain that I won't.  I suppose that there is something from that Baptist upbringing that still makes me feel guilty about not publicly professing my love for God and his Son.  For not witnessing to others and bringing them into the flock.  I just don't have that in me.  I can't lead people down a path that I am not certain exists.  

I am however growing more and more comfortable with the path that I am on.  My faith is based on trying to be a compassionate person, working on my judgement issues, and believing that there is some kind of sense to our existence.  What many people call God, I call the Universe.  What Christians call Jesus, I call Jesus too.  I don't happen to believe that I must profess my belief in his kinship to God as a means of entry to Heaven, but conveniently for me, I don't really believe in Heaven, either.  

What I do believe in is acceptance.  It was always the thing that appealed to me most about Jesus.  You can keep your walking on water and other assorted miracles, I liked that he took up for whores.  Because that is what would make someone different from the rest of us.  That is what would be described as an other-worldly characteristic.  Anyone who has recently defended a whore, please step forward.  No?  Me neither.

Whether or not there is an afterlife is of little consequence to me currently.  Whether or not a man has to take certain steps to gain access to it is even less intriguing.  Being a decent human being though, is a great challenge - and one that I can really get excited about.  Taking stock of this intelligent design that we are a part of and treating other people with respect is all the challenge I can handle at this point in my life.  And since God will never give me more than I can handle, I'll just keep working on what I've got in front of me.