Leap Day. If ever an occasion warranted such infrequent occurence, this conjured up holiday does.
And it should be a holiday. It should be celebrated wildly for not only what it is, but what it can be. Leap Day should be a time when high school shadows ask out homecoming queens. Closet faith should open itself to a world of aquaintances in need. Couples poor only in wealth should choose to become parents despite it.
All these changes of direction should happen because once every four years is neither too long nor short a time to accomplish what should take place daily. People should leap.
How often does the next step go untaken? How many times does the path stop at the foot of fear, regret, reason or remorse? But there always must be that one way of overcoming such still steps--by leaping. And there should be a day set aside for it.
Today is as good a day as any.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Fatherhood
People sometimes say I will make a good father. Probably they are trying to be nice. What exactly, after all, is a good parent?
Is it that the child survives to adulthood? No parent holds that control. Is it that the child thinks his or her parent good? Children would dart into streets and soil themselves for years if left to their versions of good.
Is it that the child transitions into a functioning member of society? Is it that the child is loved? Does anyone actually know, or are flattering statements only another way of skirting cluelessness and avoiding worry?
Truth is, people tell me I am a pretty good guy, too. A pretty good son, worker, writer, thinker, teacher--I have heard them all. Yet I know better. I know more of myself than to believe these half-truths.
I am only anything worthwhile at all when I truly realize just how hopeless a son, a thinker, a teacher or a writer I am. Only then do I rely on a strength beyond my own.
So if these people who say I will be a good father are to be proven right, I would do well to remember as much.
Is it that the child survives to adulthood? No parent holds that control. Is it that the child thinks his or her parent good? Children would dart into streets and soil themselves for years if left to their versions of good.
Is it that the child transitions into a functioning member of society? Is it that the child is loved? Does anyone actually know, or are flattering statements only another way of skirting cluelessness and avoiding worry?
Truth is, people tell me I am a pretty good guy, too. A pretty good son, worker, writer, thinker, teacher--I have heard them all. Yet I know better. I know more of myself than to believe these half-truths.
I am only anything worthwhile at all when I truly realize just how hopeless a son, a thinker, a teacher or a writer I am. Only then do I rely on a strength beyond my own.
So if these people who say I will be a good father are to be proven right, I would do well to remember as much.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Rolling
A proper Pinewood Derby track costs $95 up to several thousand, but one can make due with $40 and a little elbow grease. A car costs $4, plus the time to make it roll. Enough cars to host a race comes in at $60. Then comes paint, woodworking tools, weights and the like.
But now, more than a dozen family members are pumped about a race only happening because we decided it should. Adults will race children, mothers against sons, grandfathers against unborn fetuses. Trash talking already sounds like a clanging symbol. One cousin claimed his car would be so fast it would catch fire. Another said his would change color. One car promised a rearview mirror to see the competition, another a metal chain to keep the racing close.
So, is it worth it? Somehow, yes. In perhaps the only family strange and close enough to make it happen, it is undoubtedly worth the hundred dollars and month of preparation. Amazing that such little things could play such a role in keeping a family together. Then again, what else would?
But now, more than a dozen family members are pumped about a race only happening because we decided it should. Adults will race children, mothers against sons, grandfathers against unborn fetuses. Trash talking already sounds like a clanging symbol. One cousin claimed his car would be so fast it would catch fire. Another said his would change color. One car promised a rearview mirror to see the competition, another a metal chain to keep the racing close.
So, is it worth it? Somehow, yes. In perhaps the only family strange and close enough to make it happen, it is undoubtedly worth the hundred dollars and month of preparation. Amazing that such little things could play such a role in keeping a family together. Then again, what else would?
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Crazy
Two of the unlikliest suspects insist on promoting themselves as insane, and I want to know why. How many commercials air for "Crazy Charlie's" or "Wacky Wayne's" used car lot? And how many fireworks stands are operated by "Twisted Ted" or "Slippery Fuse Jackson" or "Weird Willy Boom Boom McBroome"?
Car dealers and firework shops? Really? There are some professions I could see operating out of poor mental health. Rodeo clowns, trapeze artists and daredevils immediately come to mind, mostly because participating in such activities shows in itself--at a minimum--a propensity or inclination toward being unfit for society.
But car dealers and firework sellers, these people must maintain some working level of cognizance. Otherwise bystanders get hurt. I do not want my car bought from or serviced by the Wacko Jacko Auto Mall, where the deals are so good they must be lower level primates. And I do not want my or my neighbor's fireworks coming from the Loopy Rocket Emporium, regardless of whether the inventory is so huge it promises, literally, to blow my mind.
Call me crazy.
Car dealers and firework shops? Really? There are some professions I could see operating out of poor mental health. Rodeo clowns, trapeze artists and daredevils immediately come to mind, mostly because participating in such activities shows in itself--at a minimum--a propensity or inclination toward being unfit for society.
But car dealers and firework sellers, these people must maintain some working level of cognizance. Otherwise bystanders get hurt. I do not want my car bought from or serviced by the Wacko Jacko Auto Mall, where the deals are so good they must be lower level primates. And I do not want my or my neighbor's fireworks coming from the Loopy Rocket Emporium, regardless of whether the inventory is so huge it promises, literally, to blow my mind.
Call me crazy.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Tagged
You want oddity, quirkiness, cause for concern? You got it.
The only secret I keep from people is a self-daignosed condition affectionately termed “the evens.” Symptoms are an insatiable need for having everything balanced between right and left in even numbers, from stepping across hash marks on a football field to eating with both sides of my mouth to the way air conditioning blows against my ear.
I hate to purchase anything. Any monetary transaction is to be avoided like the plague. Even at the grocery store, if the cost is more than $40, Anna has to pay while I stand beyond eyesight of the register.
I write songs celebrating or making fun of people, sometimes at the same time. “Hey Jukes,” “Meisy P” and the COW trilogy are but a few examples, as are the songs I wrote for my sister’s birthday, my wedding dance, my first anniversary and two songs—in the event of having either a boy or a girl—for the new baby.
I hate ice. I hate everything about it.
I always count stairs. No matter if there are hundreds, or if I have counted the same stairs already. Every time I take them, I count. At my parents’ house, for instance, there is a set of eight and another set of six, which I have counted probably a few thousand times in my life.
Until embarking on my current profession, I all but refused to use a telephone. I hate telephones almost as much as ice and transactions.
I believe everything I say. I say I have never flirted because, well, it’s true. For the same reason I say I am not concerned with what others think of me. I will never be past the possibility of being wrong, but never too accomodating to say otherwise.
The only secret I keep from people is a self-daignosed condition affectionately termed “the evens.” Symptoms are an insatiable need for having everything balanced between right and left in even numbers, from stepping across hash marks on a football field to eating with both sides of my mouth to the way air conditioning blows against my ear.
I hate to purchase anything. Any monetary transaction is to be avoided like the plague. Even at the grocery store, if the cost is more than $40, Anna has to pay while I stand beyond eyesight of the register.
I write songs celebrating or making fun of people, sometimes at the same time. “Hey Jukes,” “Meisy P” and the COW trilogy are but a few examples, as are the songs I wrote for my sister’s birthday, my wedding dance, my first anniversary and two songs—in the event of having either a boy or a girl—for the new baby.
I hate ice. I hate everything about it.
I always count stairs. No matter if there are hundreds, or if I have counted the same stairs already. Every time I take them, I count. At my parents’ house, for instance, there is a set of eight and another set of six, which I have counted probably a few thousand times in my life.
Until embarking on my current profession, I all but refused to use a telephone. I hate telephones almost as much as ice and transactions.
I believe everything I say. I say I have never flirted because, well, it’s true. For the same reason I say I am not concerned with what others think of me. I will never be past the possibility of being wrong, but never too accomodating to say otherwise.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Primary View
Want my vote? Come and get it.
Politics are useful enough, but I would give all the thumb waving and podium thumping ever mine to give for one candidate who might actually promise, let alone accomplish, something useful. Consider this platform.
From here forward, by federal law and its full range of punishments, no person shall ever be able to ask the first question that comes to mind. The second question is fine, as is the third or any subsequent question. But the first shall be forever banned.
Imagine the possibilities. No newspaper reporter would hate the virgin moments of each new encounter because that dreaded question--"so how long have you been at the paper"--would never come to sound. A teacher would not be asked each fall how her students are. No one would have to lie to minor acquaintances by responding coyly, "fine."
How much more interesting would this world be if people asked questions of others that required actual thought? Perhaps then the answers would follow suit. And an entire existence known as humanity would find itself in a place public policy, reform and promised idealism could never naturally take it--among the intriguing.
Politics are useful enough, but I would give all the thumb waving and podium thumping ever mine to give for one candidate who might actually promise, let alone accomplish, something useful. Consider this platform.
From here forward, by federal law and its full range of punishments, no person shall ever be able to ask the first question that comes to mind. The second question is fine, as is the third or any subsequent question. But the first shall be forever banned.
Imagine the possibilities. No newspaper reporter would hate the virgin moments of each new encounter because that dreaded question--"so how long have you been at the paper"--would never come to sound. A teacher would not be asked each fall how her students are. No one would have to lie to minor acquaintances by responding coyly, "fine."
How much more interesting would this world be if people asked questions of others that required actual thought? Perhaps then the answers would follow suit. And an entire existence known as humanity would find itself in a place public policy, reform and promised idealism could never naturally take it--among the intriguing.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Perspective
Nothing good matters. At least nothing good that I do, anyway.
The debt simply is too great. It would be the same as some fool emptying out the ocean one soup spoonful at a time and expecting praise for his accomplishment. Why? What difference does it make?
Only the bad matters on my end. Only then does the blood of Jesus matter. And boy does it matter. Like drying that same ocean by grasping the planet and hurling it face-first into the belly of the sun, it matters.
My death, my sin, my shame. His glory. Nothing else matters.
If anything else did, though, it would only be whether I am willing to have my world plucked from space and sent sunward, certain to crash and be forever, unrecognizably changed.
But assuming any other victory when it happens makes for childish arrogance. And why, then, go back to the place that got me into this mess in the first place?
The debt simply is too great. It would be the same as some fool emptying out the ocean one soup spoonful at a time and expecting praise for his accomplishment. Why? What difference does it make?
Only the bad matters on my end. Only then does the blood of Jesus matter. And boy does it matter. Like drying that same ocean by grasping the planet and hurling it face-first into the belly of the sun, it matters.
My death, my sin, my shame. His glory. Nothing else matters.
If anything else did, though, it would only be whether I am willing to have my world plucked from space and sent sunward, certain to crash and be forever, unrecognizably changed.
But assuming any other victory when it happens makes for childish arrogance. And why, then, go back to the place that got me into this mess in the first place?
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