Sometimes Roads Diverge

The Man With No Number

2010-07-20T13:53:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I was summonsed for jury duty. I’ve been waiting for this day for 17 years.

Call me crazy, but I don’t understand why people try so hard to get out of jury duty. Yesterday, when the clerk asked for anyone who thought they should be excused to form an orderly line, 50 people stood and queued to the left of the bench. None of them were dressed as if they would rush back to the office as soon as they were dismissed and put the final touches on their groundbreaking cure for cancer, finish drafting a pre-approved mid-east peace treaty, or tighten the last bolts on one of those anti-gravity hover cars I’ve been expecting since I was 7-years-old.

On the contrary, if they were excused, each of these men and women were planning to go home, turn off their cell phones, and waste the afternoon by watching television. Like me, they’ve all spent a significant portion of their lives sitting on a couch in front of the square-headed time eater. And what have they been watching?

2000’s: American Idol, a show where we watch young “singers” perform so we can responsibly cast our vote as to whether they’ve presented a strong enough case to stay and compete on the next week's show. Paula, Simon, and Randy are the judges. America is the jury.

1990’s: Law & Order, a show where the legal process in action – from arrest to prosecution – holds the attention of millions of people for 60 minutes (or up to 5 hours if you get drawn into a vortex of re-runs on TNT) every week… or, if you get caught in the previously mentioned syndication vortex, every day.

1980’s: The People’s Court. One of the earliest examples of reality TV, The People’s Court gave daytime television watchers a voyeur's seat at the legal system’s bedroom window. While we folded laundry and waited for Al Gore to develop the internet, didn’t we all try to guess how Judge Wapner would settle “The Case of the Overdone Underthings”?

Honestly, who hasn’t succumbed to the guilty pleasure of Divorce Court? Who wouldn’t recognize Judge Judy if they passed her on the street? What child of the 80’s can claim that he/she didn’t ask to stay up after The Cosby Show and Cheers to watch as Judge Harry T. Stone presided over his zany Night Court? What baby boomer doesn’t know how Perry Mason ended every week?

I’m sure Oliver North, Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and OJ Simpson each wish America wasn’t addicted to the drama of our legal system at work.

I’m also sure John Grisham is thankful we are. His book-to-movie fortune has been funded by courtroom junkies who love reading/watching stories with titles like The Firm, The Client, and Runaway Jury.

And yet, when given the opportunity to watch legal drama in real-life, 50 people lined up yesterday in a Brooklyn courthouse to say “No thank you. I’d rather not see the live show. I’ll wait for it to come out on DVD or maybe buy the paperback.”

Fortunately, as these men and women gave their carefully rehearsed excuses to the court clerk, I was sitting close enough to the bench to overhear many of their reasons for “why I can’t help protect the innocent (or punish the guilty, depending on whether your glass is more full or more empty) today.”

My favorite excuse? A middle-aged man handed his summons to the court clerk and asked (in a heavy Brooklyn accent) to be dismissed. The clerk, confirming that the man wasn’t an immigrant (despite his Brooklyn Forever! accent), politely asked “sir, where were you born?”

“I’m from Brooklyn,” the man said, barely hiding his pride that he’s never been above 23rd street.

“Then why didn’t you fill in your Social Security Number?”

“I was born here in Brooklyn,” the man confirmed, “but they never gave me one of those Social Security Numbers. They must’a forgot. Can I go?”

Bank accounts. Insurance forms. Tax returns. W4’s. 1099’s. Credit card applications. Marriage licenses. Certificates of divorce. All of these documents require a Social Security Number. Is it possible for a 40-year-old man to live in Brooklyn, USA his whole life without having a "Social"?

Did the man really expect the court to believe that the US Government, who uses this number to make sure every citizen pays every penny of tax they owe, simply forgot to issue him one? It would have made more sense for the man to tell the clerk he was waiting for Uncle Sam to issue him a new Social Security Number ‘cause his old one was broken.

The clerk rolled his eyes and told Citizen X to sit down and finish his paperwork. I laughed aloud, wondering again why people gripe and groan when given free tickets to this marvelous show.

Tomorrow, the man with no number will sit on a jury. Together with 11 other fair and impartial strangers, he will be forced to do in public what many of us voluntarily do in private – pass judgment.

I hope he’s more fair than he is clever.

There Should Always Be Dancing

2010-07-15T19:17:00.000-05:00

A man danced during an earthquake and believed his steps shook the world. When his dancing stopped, the man saw what he assumed his joy had done, and swore to never dance again.

Foolish man. There should always be dancing.

What I Did During My Summer Vacation

2010-07-01T13:47:00.003-05:00

Protected by the long shadows of tall buildings, my virgin city skin hadn’t seen the sun in many months. Imagine its surprise when I arrived in Florida, stripped my shirt, and asked it to gradually toast from flour white to a light, golden brown. I know I should have given it more warning. If I had, maybe it wouldn’t have skipped brown, paused only briefly at pink, and committed itself to a stunning shade of red in less than two hours.

At the time, exposing my skin to the roasting sun didn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to do. After all, even at its hottest, a summer day in Florida is seldom hotter than 100°. Although 100° is undeniably hot, it’s not technically “scorching hot.” An average oven in an average kitchen doesn’t even offer 100° as an option. The dials on most ovens start at a “warm” (and basically useless) 250°. Chocolate chip cookies refuse to bake if offered anything less than 350°. The bread in your toaster expects at least 400° before it will properly toast.

Why, then, was a relatively cool 95° day able to thoroughly burn my skin in less than two hours?

The answer, of course, is concealed by my clever cooking metaphor. Everyone knows that playing in the Florida sun has become less like playing in a conventional oven and more like playing in a microwave oven. Thanks to teenagers spraying Aqua-Net in the 1980’s, soccer moms driving SUVs in the 1990’s, and armies burning oil wells in the 2000’s, Florida’s summer sun can now scorch your skin quicker than ever before.

You may ask, “Why did you let yourself get burned, Bryan? Haven’t you been listening to Al Gore? Haven’t you been paying attention to global warming, the greenhouse effect, the hole in the ozone layer, and the dangers of UV radiation? Don’t you know that an afternoon at the beach is practically as dangerous as smoking a cigarette or eating out of old Tupperware? Why didn’t you wear sun-screen?”

Well… I did.

Before my first day on the beach, I carefully applied suntan lotion to every inch of my exposed skin. I even lotioned a few places that weren’t currently exposed, but threatened to be. Because I knew each body part would receive a different amount of sun, I covered each with a different strength of lotion.

Ears/nose/shoulders: 70. Face/neck: 50. Chest/back/arms: 40. Legs: 35.

When I finally walked onto the beach, my collective SPF (sun protective factor) sounded like a Master Lock combination.

And yet, despite my diligence, by lunch-time my shoulders and arms were already the color of a perfectly cooked filet mignon. (For vegetarian readers who might not understand this reference, I basically just said that “my shoulders and arms were hot pink and warm to the touch.”)

I spent the rest of my vacation swimming in a t-shirt, hoping that wet cotton has an SPF of “impenetrable.”

**

Like the best vacation, the good parts of most days pass too quickly. And like the bright summer sun, even nice things sometimes cause unexpected pain. The worst of these hurts are the ones that surprise us – the ones that come without warning – the ones we didn’t know we needed to protect ourselves against.

Friends too quickly become former friends. Lovers too quickly become former lovers. Jobs too quickly become former jobs. It’s so easy to get burned. Nobody is impenetrable.

I recently got burned, and it hurt. But after the hurt healed – after the damaged layers peeled away and the red faded into tan – I realized that my new, deeper color makes me more interesting.

Of course, getting burned also contributes to wrinkles, leathery skin, weird moles, and premature aging – but that’s not the point.

The point is – I got burned, but it got better.

Finding Your Seat

2010-05-04T11:29:00.005-05:00

(inspired by the stories of Chuang Tzu)

A boy, traveling to meet his friend in the city, rode the subway,
constantly looking for a place to sit.

When his train stopped, an old woman stood.
So did a business man and a girl with her brother –
all in different parts of the car.

The doors opened, and they went shopping, to work, or to school.

The boy scrambled for each vacant seat,
but was always beaten by someone closer –
someone who stood still until the place in front of them was free.

The boy found his way to his friend in the city,
but the trip was harder than it should have been –
and his feet were tired before he got there.

He stood the whole way.

When We Were Young

2010-04-20T10:36:00.001-05:00

There was a day when we were young.

There was a day when someone could run fast and someone could make us laugh and someone always smelled funny. There was a day when everyone had their place, even if it wasn’t the place they wanted.

There was a day when mothers brought cupcakes for all our classmates. On that day, when our friends sang “Happy Birthday to You,” we shared our cakes with the class as if to say, “no, happy birthday to us.”

And for the few minutes between Geography and Gym, it felt good to be a gift. To share.

When we were young.

Shadow Games

2010-04-12T09:09:00.002-05:00

Gracie sat in my lap and wanted to play a game. This is a reoccurring theme that the distance between Nashville and New York keeps from reoccurring very often. I wish it could reoccur more.

This time, Gracie wanted to play outside. But after a weekend packed full with Easter eggs, bike rides, tickle fights, and birthday parties, I didn’t want to go outside. I wanted to rest. In a chair. Inside.

“Gracie,” I said, “maybe you should go outside and play by yourself for a few minutes while Uncle Bryan sits here and finishes his tea.”

Uncle Bryan sometimes speaks in the third person because it makes him sound like he’s doing a favor for someone other than himself.

“But Uncle Bryan, you have to come outside with me” Gracie whined, “I can’t play hide-and-seek with my shadow!”

She’s right, of course. There are a very limited number of outside games a person can effectively play with their shadow.

“Follow the Leader” – yes.
“Hide and Seek” – no.

Maybe that’s why childhood… and adolescence… and even adulthood have been so uncomfortable for so many of us. We’ve spent too much time playing hide-and-seek with our shadow, running from something that can’t leave, hiding from a part of ourselves that refuses to go away.

Instead of playing outside, Gracie and I sat at the kitchen table and drew pictures. Then we shared a piece of cake and built a spaceship with her brother’s Legos. It was a wonderful afternoon of playing games, telling stories, and spending special time together – all of which Gracie’s shadow was (and will always be) welcomed to join.

Zombie Playground

2010-04-06T11:17:00.016-05:00

Last weekend, in an attempt to escape from the concrete and chaos of NYC, Jeremy and I took a day trip to Rhinebeck, NY. There, hidden behind a quiet antebellum church, we discovered a zombie playground.

If New York City is a Big Apple, Rhinebeck is an underdeveloped peach. Its downtown consists of a single intersection, the spokes of which are studded with a cigar shop, ice cream parlor, antique market, and four surprisingly good restaurants. The buildings in Rhinebeck are all short enough to loose a Frisbee on top of.

It took only two hours for Jeremy and me to walk through each of the town's hot spots, eat lunch, and talk with two shop-owners. Our site-seeing complete, we made our way to the suburbs, a three block hike out of town.

In Finding Nemo, an ocean native named Gill observed that all drains lead to the ocean. On his Discovery Channel show (Man v/s Wild), Bear Grylls taught that all trails eventually lead to water. As a small town explorer, I would like to add that – depending on your feelings about organized religion – all sidewalks eventually lead either to or past a church.

Jeremy and I weren’t looking for a church, but that’s where the sidewalk led us.

The white, wooden church that sits three blocks from Rhinebeck’s only red light is probably older than most of the trees in Manhattan. The bell in its steeple has been Rhinebeck’s alarm clock since the days when men set their pocket watches to its hourly toll. Its long wooden pews are polished smooth from ten generations of weddings, Easter celebrations, and Sunday morning services. In its backyard grows a cemetery the congregation started planting in the late 1700’s.

Up from the seeds of the church's death and grief have sprouted several dozen antique tombstones. Each stone marker records dates of both joy and pain (Benjamin Cooper: born 1790 died 1843). Many have inscriptions to help mathematically challenged mourners (aged 53 years, 4 months, 8 days). Some even give a brief biography (drowned in the bloom of health) or a frightening last thought for loved ones who might attempt to move on (as I am now so you shall be, prepare for death and follow me).

Excited by our morbid discovery, Jeremy and I walked through the people-garden and took pictures of the head stones. I wanted a shot framed with the church in the background and the graves in the foreground, a (probably too obvious) comment on the hope that religion – and especially Christianity – gives its dead.

That’s when I saw the playground. Nestled against the back corner of the church, surrounded by a short chain-link fence, stood a cedar play house, four swings, a sandbox, and a green plastic Playskool slide. It isn’t unusual to see a playground behind a church. It is, however, unusual to see a tombstone poking out of the sandbox. Most churches put their playgrounds on an out of the way corner of unused land. Very few build them on top of their cemetery.

A closer look at the playground confirmed that sticking its head out of the sandbox was a short, moss covered tombstone (In Memory of Mary). Two taller stones (Eliza Ann Williams 1779 – 1810 and Leah Bergh 1769 – 1843) stood immediately beside Mary’s in the sandbox, casting long shadows across a yellow Tonka truck. Two additional stone markers, whose inscriptions have been worn smooth, stood watch over the playhouse and swing set.

At some point in the church’s fairly recent past, a middle-aged man apparently stood in the back corner of the cemetery, looked at Mary’s eternal resting place, and thought “This. This is the perfect place for a kid to dig a hole.”

And then he built a sandbox.

From Mary’s perspective, being buried under a playground probably has significant advantages. Although her neighbors get to rest peacefully on a quiet hillside, they’ve all finished decomposing and have nothing left to do. They’re probably bored to death. Trees don’t really grow quickly enough to provide much entertainment.

Planted under the sandbox, however, Mary (debatably) has the best plot in the yard. Every day she gets to watch castle construction from the ground up. She gets to listen to giggling children play their games and tell their secrets. She even gets to feel the soft patter of little feet running through the dirt.

Unfortunately, she’s also forced to look up at the not-so-pretty end of neighborhood cats who use her sandbox as a toilet. Every time they make a deposit, I’m sure Mary wishes rolling over in her grave was really as easy as the living seem to think it is.

While Mary quietly wonders why Jesus is taking so long to come back, neighborhood children spend their days sitting on her grave, digging in the space between life and death. I hope they appreciate the incredible opportunity they’ve been given. After all…

How many kids get to dig for treasure and actually feel their shovel hit a buried wooden box?

How many kids get to schedule regular play dates with their great, great, great, great grandparents?

And how many kids know that on Sunday morning, when their Sunday School teacher asks the class if they know where they’ll go when they die, that they always have the best answer?

“Yes,” they can say with confidence. “I’ll go to the playground.”

**

To see pics of the playground, click the epitaphs in the story ("In Memory of Mary", "Eliza Ann Williams 1779 – 1810 and Leah Bergh 1769 – 1843", "Two additional stone markers"). You can also click here to see pics of the playground.

Epilogue.

2010-03-15T11:25:00.002-05:00

This is what it says it is… an epilogue. If you would like to read what it’s an epilogue to, check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

In the years since John, Kyle, and I made our trek up the mountain and through the woods, much has happened. Kyle moved to California to study a scientific discipline I can’t even spell. John finally looked over his shoulder and saw an amazing woman standing there who will soon be his wife. I returned from Yosemite unaware that over the next few years I would navigate a car-sickening ride of life, career, and geographic changes.

It’s been a big five years.

Re-reading this story has made me realize that I need to go back to the mountain. I need perspective and grounding. I need to dangle my feet over a ledge and remember that sitting on the edge of something uncertain, while terrifying, can also be beautiful and exciting.

Of course, I also need somebody to pay for the plane ticket. Interested?

Toothpicks

2010-03-09T13:30:00.008-06:00

While this post can stand somewhat steadily on it’s own, it’s much more stable when supported by Part 1 and Part 2. If you haven’t read them yet, maybe you should do that now...

After an hour on top of Half Dome, Kyle, John, and I headed back down the trail toward camp. Down may be a faster direction than up, but both force your muscles to fight the mountain. And when your muscles fight the mountain, the mountain always wins. And when the mountain wins, you muscles are always sore losers.

It was dark when we finally got back to camp. Each of us went our separate ways to shower and apologize to our aching legs. I started a fire so we could heat some canned beef stew, but was overly generous with the lighter fluid. The resulting campfireball almost blew us into the trees. Fortunately, when you’re primitive camping and there’s no TV, a few small explosions are welcomed entertainment. John, Kyle, and I sat around the blaze for hours, staring into the flames, eating our stew and contemplating how much our muscles would hate us in the morning.

On our way out of the park a few days later, after our legs had forgiven us, we stopped at one of Yosemite’s redwood groves to walk through the giant trees.

The redwoods in these ancient forests are so broad that in 1895, a group of industrious settlers carved a tunnel through one of them. Forrest fires burned a tunnel though another one. The tunnels are large enough for a Honda to drive through without scratching its bumper. The park’s forest rangers don’t like it when you drive Hondas through their trees, though. Apparently it distracts the elves from putting fudge stripes on their cookies.

These beautiful redwoods have been alive for (literally) thousands of years. Before Jesus had skin and cooed in the manger, back when the earth was still flat and MTV actually played music videos, these giants were standing. Growing.

In the 1860’s, however, nearsighted lumberjacks walked through the Yosemite Valley and couldn’t appreciate the majesty of a forest that was planted when Cleopatra swam the Nile. They stood in the woods and had no respect for trees that would one day rise twenty-nine stories into the sky. They measured trunks that circled ninety-two feet and were somehow unimpressed. They saw branches as thick as a man is tall and continued walking with their hands in their pockets and their minds in their wallets.

These lumberjacks missed the majesty and saw only a challenge, an arm wrestling match with nature. They didn’t see ancient beauty in the branches or hear the voice of God rustling through the leaves. With necks bent back and faces pointed toward the sky, they saw only profit. They heard only the whisper of their own ambition. And so, these short-sighted men started chopping.

They stood beneath monstrous trees that had outlived fifty generations of men and cut them with saws and axes and other tools that would rust and dull. And when the mighty trees fell, they shattered. Instead of landing whole and complete, the trees cracked under the force of the fall, broken into four foot sections.

Sacrificed to ego and ambition, the pieces of these once-giants were too short to cut into lumber for furniture or houses. Wasted, the fallen trees were chipped and whittled into toothpicks and pencils, splinters of their former selves. Ancient pillars that survived two millennia of fire, earthquakes, ice, bugs, and birds were reduced to fifteen seconds of picking corn out of somebody’s teeth.

What a shame.

In 1878 people picked their teeth with giants.

Unfortunately, they still do.

In a country where we’re obsessed with all things organic and eco-friendly, too many giants are still being sacrificed for a lesser good, cut down in their prime, whittled into toothpicks of their former selves. If you’ve been listening, you’ve probably heard some of them fall.

California couples like the artist and the architect celebrated their love through marriage until one day voters candidly informed them that
**Chop**
equality was meant for everyone else.

Millions of hardworking Americans watched as talking heads on the nightly news claimed that
**Chop**
they haven’t yet earned the American Dream… or the right to affordable healthcare.

An entire generation of young Africans disappeared in under-reported genocide while wealthier nations
**Chop**
fought each other for revenge, ideology, and oil.

Ponzi schemes were built, mortgages were sold, and bonuses were collected by wealthy men willing to
**Chop**
**Chop**
**Chop**
sacrifice the financial futures of men and women who now fear words like foreclosure, downsize, and retirement.

I wonder, though, if the lumberjacks among us would still swing their axes if they stopped obsessing over:
whether oaks should be allowed to marry maples,
whether the forest should offer free fertilizer and subsidized rain,
whether foreign seedlings are taking root in domestic soil,
and whether or not it’s fair to ask bigger trees to care for smaller ones,

and stop to watch God dancing through the leaves.

Which He is.

(I’m sure the poetry of idealism has blinded me to its impracticality. But still, I wonder.)

To Be Continued…
Click here to read this story's epilogue.

It's Not The Fall That Kills You

2010-02-27T10:22:00.009-06:00

Every life-inspired story is essentially a peek into the past. Consider this a peek into mine. This is part 2 of story about a hiking expedition I embarked on with my friends John and Kyle. If you know me well (or even casually), don’t be thrown by phrases like “I live in Nashville.” This was originally written several years ago. Check out Part 1 of the story to catch up.

With muscles aching and joints screaming, my friends and I made the summit of Half Dome at 3:00pm, just as the sun lit the valley for postcard views. While John explored and Kyle took pictures, I sat on top of the mountain with my legs dangling over the edge, tempting gravity to steal my shoes. Sitting on top of Half Dome made me wonder how the Earth must have felt during its ten million year labor, giving birth to this mountain of stone. Pushing it through miles of earth and air. Enduring contractions that shook the planet.

Looking down into the valley made me question how this mountain must have felt when it was a moody geological teenager and a glacier bullied its way through the rocks, tearing away at Half Dome’s face and digging a valley between he and his friends. It was a glacier that clipped the mountain’s rounded top and gave him the nickname Half Dome.

What a cold, hard thing for a glacier to do.

But building up and tearing down are the verse and chorus of nature’s song, the synopsis of God’s story. These mountains are human history in slow motion. They remind us that we are creation, cracked and scarred, yet beautiful beyond belief. They tell us that this is life, both majesty and pain, each serving a purpose. They encourage us that our struggles, while important, are seldom eternal.

I had only been on top of the mountain for a few minutes when two guys crept up behind me and peeked over the side.

“I can’t believe you’re sitting that close to the edge,” one of them said. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll fall?”

I smiled. “Well, it’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the two guys that sneak up and startle you while your legs are dangling over a 4,000 foot ledge that kill you.”

The two men laughed and produced a peace offering of dried fruit. I accepted and returned a handshake, inviting them to join me on the ledge.

As they sat, a hawk made a soaring pass in the space just under my feet. We looked down on the bird as it flew 4800 feet above its unsuspecting dinner. When the hawk turned and its wings caught the wind, I felt like the chorus of an old Bette Midler song.

Together we sat on the edge of a mountain, looking down on the world from a rock that has enjoyed its view for ten million years. We chatted. I asked the obligatory questions of “where are you from?” and “what do you do?” They were from San Francisco. One was an artist, the other an architect.

Although it was a brief biography, the word “we” was used frequently enough to safely establish that these two men were in a relationship. The rainbow pin on the architect’s backpack hinted that it might be a romantic relationship. So did the fact that they were holding hands.

The architect offered me a piece of mango jerky.

“Where are you from,” he asked.

“Nashville, Tennessee” I answered.

The architect sighed a lungful of mountain air. San Francisco sits on the west coast and is known for its famous bridge, hill topping trolleys, and homosexual community. Nashville is in the south, where the Bible buckles its belt. If there is stereotype surrounding what it means to be a homosexual from San Francisco, there is equal preconception of what it means to be a Christian from the south. While people in San Francisco cross the Golden Gate bridge and eat good seafood, Nashvillians go to church on Sunday and enjoy a diet rich in southern fried Christianity.

The architect sighed, and with a smirk that obviously masked something like frustration or hurt or betrayal, he said, “don’t worry. We’re not really as bad as Jerry Falwell would have you believe.”

Jerry Falwell is a televangelist who, until his death in 2007, led a conservative movement known as the “moral majority.” In 2001 Falwell blamed gays, lesbians, abortionists, and other “pagans” for the terrorist attacks in New York City. “You helped this happen,” Falwell said, implying that homosexuals in the World Trade Center served as lightening rods for God’s judgment. In a moment, on national television, this influential preacher presented Christianity to the world as a faith of finger pointing and hatred.

And the world was watching.

I paused so the architect would know I had heard what he said and had taken it seriously. Then I smiled. “I’m of the opinion that nobody is as bad as Jerry Falwell would have us believe.”

He smiled back.

But then, to continue the conversation, the architect asked another question, harmless and ripe with possibility. My answer would either intrigue my new friend or infuriate him.

He asked what I do for a living.

I had two correct answers for his question. I am an author, but I am also a preacher.

To tell the architect that I am an author would likely have given us ten minutes more to talk about. Telling him that I am a preacher, however, was likely to produce an awkward silence and hasty retreat. Being an author would safely establish me as an open minded artist. Being a preacher would associate me with Jerry Falwell.

I’m not embarrassed by my faith. I’m not ashamed of my Christianity. But I am sometimes ashamed of other Christians. That’s why I told the architect I am an author and quickly changed the subject.

In retrospect, I made a poor choice.

What I should have told him was, “I’m a preacher, a Christian. And we’re not as bad as Jerry Falwell would have you believe either.”

I wonder if he would have smiled.

To be continued...
click here to read Part 3.

Nature Needs an Elevator

2010-02-19T10:39:00.008-06:00

Several years ago, when I was still traveling as a speaker for youth events and still had hopes of publishing a second book, I went on a hiking expedition with my friends John and Kyle. I recently brushed the digital dust off of what I wrote after the trip and edited it into a four part blog post. This is part one…

I know heaven doesn’t float in the sky and hell doesn’t bubble and burn beneath our feet, but when you sit on the top of a mountain, you can’t help but feel closer to God. The mountain gives you perspective. It lets you rise above the earth while still standing connected to it. The mountain is grandeur and grounding. It is both powerful and broken.

I wonder if that’s why God often brought his favorites to the top of a mountain when he had something important to say.

Abraham. Moses. Joshua. Peter, James, and John. They were all changed by what God showed them on a mountain. On the mountain he gave them new perspective. He said, “Let me show you how to rise above this life while still staying connected to it.”

I recently hiked to the top of Yosemite’s Half Dome with two friends from college. Together we climbed 4,800 feet, higher than almost four Empire State Buildings, over the course of a nine mile hike to the summit. The two men I hiked with were an unusual and eclectic mix. John, Kyle, and I are old friends who share a love for movies, the outdoors, and everything sarcastic.

Kyle and I lived together in a retirement community for a year just after we graduated from college. At the time, Kyle worked for the government and investigated sources of radioactive activity. Obviously, working with radioactive elements is sensitive work. Our elderly neighbors sometimes thought it odd that their lights got brighter and their hearing aids whistled every time Kyle walked into the room. I got nervous every time Kyle found an odd rock in his pocket or came home from work with a bigger bald spot. We owned a microwave oven, but never used it. For dinner I set my macaroni and cheese in Kyle’s lap for 45 seconds and enjoyed a hot meal.

John and I were roommates and best friends in college who did all the ridiculous things college friends do. We set flame to our farts and stole shoes from the bowling alley. I have pictures of the two of us so covered in mud we look like we’ve both been iced with earth chocolate. In a time shortly before cell phones and just after smoke signals, John and I installed CB radios in our cars so we could talk and tell dirty jokes across town. John is a professional actor now. While Kyle glows in the dark and cures cancer, John connects with his inner child and uses his Hollywood good looks to date beautiful women.

Our hiking trip up Half Dome wasn’t simply a reunion, it was the set up for a really bad joke. A scientist, an actor, and a preacher were camping in the woods . . .

To Be Continued...
Click here to read Part 2...

Let Her Eat Cake

2010-01-06T11:15:00.011-06:00

During Christmas, Gracie crawled into my lap and announced that we were going to play a game.

“Great. What’s the game?” I asked.
“I don’t know, silly,” she said. “You have to think of one.”

Fortunately, I once taught a class at How to be a Great Uncle School about impromptu stories and games-on-the-fly. Halfway up my sleeve I found exactly what we needed.

“Gracie,” I asked, “if you could open MiMi’s magic oven and find any treat baked inside, what treat would you find?”
Without thinking, she said “Chocolate Cake.”
“Not peanut butter cookies or a roasted buffalo?”
“No, Uncle Bryan, (smiling) Chocolate Cake!”

MiMi is what Gracie calls my mother, her grandmother. MiMi didn’t invent chocolate cake, but she might have perfected it. She bakes chocolate cake well and often – especially when her grandchildren are spending the night.

“Gracie, if you could open the magic closet in MiMi’s bedroom and find an exciting something hidden behind her clothes, what would you find?”
“Chocolate Cake!”
“Not a house for your Barbies or a dress made of diamonds?”
“No, Uncle Bryan, (with a giggle) Chocolate Cake!”

Other than pizza and peanut butter with honey sandwiches, chocolate cake is the only thing Gracie eats voluntarily. Everything else is consumed under duress and only to earn a reward, often of chocolate cake.

“Gracie, If you could open MiMi’s magic backdoor and go anywhere in the universe – even if it’s an imaginary place nobody has ever been to – where would you go?”
“Somewhere that has lots and lots of Chocolate Cake!”
“Not Sesame Street or a pineapple under the sea?”
“No, Uncle Bryan (losing control), somewhere with Chocolate Cake!”

Squirming with laughter and lost in her own silliness, Gracie begged for more. “Ask another one, Uncle Bryan, ask another one!” How could an uncle resist?

“If you could pick up MiMi’s magic telephone and talk to anyone – even someone who’s not real – who would you talk to?”
“Somebody who knows how to make Chocolate Cake!”

“If you could dig a magic hole in MiMi’s backyard and fill it with anything you can imagine, what would you fill it with?”
“A whole ton of Chocolate Cake!”

“If you could climb into MiMi’s magic bed and dream about anything in the world, what would you dream about?”
“Eating Chocolate Cake!”

Every time Gracie said “Chocolate Cake,” a smile spread across her face and into her eyes. The letters of her words were all mixed with laughter. Her love for the cake is loyal and strong.

***

Gracie is a creative, clever, and genuinely funny girl whose six-year-old imagination skips across ideas like a rock across water. That’s why, when our game started, I expected her to travel through space, talk to the tooth fairy, and swim in a pool of marshmallows.

Apparently, I underestimated Gracie’s imagination. It takes a very powerful love – and a very clever girl – to find cake in every question.

One day, however, Gracie will discover the beauty of things like new books, old movies, the sound of her mother’s voice, the touch of her lover’s hands, cold lemonade, and fresh snow. All these things will eventually find homes in Gracie’s heart – but she will always love chocolate cake.

When stupid boys make fun of her glasses, Gracie’s mother will sit with her on the couch and there will be chocolate cake.

When boys stop being stupid and one finds the nerve to ask Gracie on her first date, her best friend will squeal with delight and there will be chocolate cake.

When she graduates from high school, and college, and feels hope in her future, there will be chocolate cake.

When the economy plummets and she can’t find a job, there will be chocolate cake.

When a man asks her to marry him, there will be chocolate cake.

When she fights with the man and they say hurtful things to each other and she thinks about leaving, there will be chocolate cake.

When she sells her first painting or gets a promotion, there will be chocolate cake.

When her babies have birthdays, there will be chocolate cake.

When the biopsy comes back negative, there will be chocolate cake.

And finally, after enjoying a life full of flour, sugar, and cocoa powder, Gracie will sit at a kitchen table with her grandchildren… and there will still be chocolate cake.

**

If Gracie is as clever as I think she is, she will eventually realize that Chocolate Cake doesn’t really answer every question. The most important questions are better answered with words like “love,” “my family,” “God,” and “I don’t know.”

And if Gracie is as smart as I hope she is, she will also learn to exercise. Otherwise, her love for chocolate cake is going to make her very, very fat.*

__________________________

* For the record, “fat” is a terrible word and is used here only because Uncle Bryan suffers from an adolescent infection to his sense of humor. Gracie is a perfectly sized six-year-old, and unless her doctors tell her differently, whatever size she grows into will always be exactly the right size.

** Gracie, if the internet is still alive when you’re old enough to read archives of your uncle’s blog, give me a call. I'll tell you silly stories about your brother, we’ll eat cake, and together we can laugh at my receding hairline.

Santa is a Fraud

2009-12-18T09:22:00.008-06:00

When the batteries snapped into his back, Capt. Awesome suddenly became aware of flashing lights and Christmas music in the living room. His tiny AAA heart beat faster.

And then a middle aged woman set him on a coffee table – a COFFEE TABLE! – and took a huge bite from the cookie.

“What the f---,” he thought. “You’re not Santa!”

As the woman stuffed him into a red felt stocking, the reality of Capt. Awesome’s situation set in.

He wasn’t built in Santa’s workshop... he was bought in a store! He was a bastard toy. And like all bastard toys, his life expectancy would be that of a house-fly. Even if he didn’t break before his batteries ran out, no self-respecting child was going to choose him over a genuine North Pole toy.

He was doomed to life under the bed.

Eventually, the woman turned off the lights and went to bed. After working for hours to build a bicycle and set up something called a “Barbie Tropical Water Park,” she looked exhausted.

“Why would she go to that much trouble,” Capt. Awesome thought. “He’ll be here any minute.”

***

Capt. Awesome spent a sleepless night peering over the white-furred edge of his stocking, waiting. To pass the time, he counted the presents under the tree. There were thirty-four. Four red boxes had gold bows. Two red boxes had green bows. Three blue boxes had silver ribbons. Eight boxes didn’t have bows or ribbons. Six boxes were wrapped in green, five had paper with pictures on it, and one little box was silver and shiny. Most of the presents were square-ish, but three were strange shapes that crumpled the paper. Tucked in a corner were two gift bags with white tissue paper erupting from their tops.

Shortly before 6:00am, Capt. Awesome heard tiny voices telling sleepy parents it was time to wake up. An old man, probably the grandfather, scooped coffee into a pot and made noises that sounded like they belonged outside. A few minutes later, a little boy ran down the stairs and shouted when he saw a shiny blue bicycle.

Capt. Awesome was exhausted. He stayed awake the whole night. Santa never came.

***

It was the parents. It was the parents the whole time. Every box. Every bow. Every toy and foil wrapped chocolate was a fraud. It was all carried home in a sack. None of it rode in a sleigh.

And the parents let it happen. No, they didn’t just let it happen. They made it happen. Every year they filled their poor, empty-headed children with stories about a fat man – a stranger – who loved them so much and thought they were such good little boys and girls that they deserved presents.

Capt. Awesome was furious. “Wrapping a lie in red velvet,” he thought, “doesn’t make it right.”

Three weeks later, Capt. Awesome sat on the kitchen table while the mother wrote checks to pay credit card companies for the Christmas presents they had bought. Capt. Awesome thought she should forward the bills to the North Pole for reimbursement, but he decided not to mention it. At the moment, the mother looked too fragile to take suggestions, even from a superhero.

Capt. Awesome was sure that before Christmas both the boy and the girl had written letters to the North Pole asking the non-existent Santa for everything they wanted, including a bicycle and a Barbie water park. To their credit, the boy still rode his bicycle and the girl hadn’t yet forgotten about the pink water park in the corner of her room – not that she could. On December 26, however, their markers suddenly went dry. Every day they played, but they never said thank you.

Ungrateful kids.

***

During the months that followed, Capt. Awesome spent most of his time in the van. He went to soccer practices and swim lessons. He waited in the backseat during dance recitals and birthday parties. He endured the agony of family vacations and once almost won his freedom in a Burger King parking lot. He probably would have gotten away – or at least been picked up by a new boy in a new van – if the boy hadn’t shouted for the mother to stop. Apparently, bastard toys aren’t as expendable as Capt. Awesome once thought. Damn.

Capt. Awesome eventually overcame his nausea from the van's stale french-fry smell. He also learned to ignore the endless repetitions of something called “Finding Nemo.” He even taught himself how to mentally dissociate when the boy forced his head through the van’s cracked window as they rushed down the interstate. Capt. Awesome couldn’t tolerate it, however, when he got wedged between the back seats. The horrors he saw in the depths of that dark and sticky hell were more than even the bravest toy could endure.

Capt. Awesome soon learned that the boy’s name was Daniel. The girl was Kris. The mother was usually called Mom or Mommy, except when one of the men was in the van. Then she was called Susan. Capt. Awesome got nervous when the mother became “Susan,” especially if the boy and the girl were staying with a babysitter or sleeping at their grandparents’ house. On those nights, when the mother was in the van alone with one of the men, he sometimes heard things that made him wonder if Susan might be the reason Santa didn’t stop at the Cooper house.

***

In November, the mood in the van began to change. The boy and the girl, who seldom sang along with the radio, started requesting songs about Frosty the snowman and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Finding Nemo was replaced by a movie that referenced a disturbing place called the “Island of Misfit Toys.” The mother also began asking the boy and the girl awkward questions about elves and what kind of cookies Santa likes.

Soon it would be Christmas, the most dishonest time of the year.

***

Early one morning, the family piled into the van already arguing about their day.

“I get to go first,” said the boy. “I’m older so I get to go first.”
“But it’s my turn,” the girl protested. “Daniel got to go first last year. It’s not fair!”
“I told you, it doesn’t matter who goes first. You’ll both get a turn,” said the mother. “Kris, what are you going to ask Santa for?”

The girl didn’t even have to think about her answer. “I want an American Girl doll, a bike like Daniel’s with a pink helmet and a white seat, and a white fairy princess dress.”

The boy also had his list memorized. He wanted a chemistry set and a microscope like Brendon’s “so we can do experiments together.” He also said he was going to ask Santa for a remote controlled car and something called a DM3.

The rest of the way to the mall, the mother was obviously working to keep her lips from moving while she rehearsed their lists. Capt. Awesome couldn’t believe the boy and the girl didn’t see it. Sure, they were only kids, but how weak did your batteries have to be not to see the mother memorizing every word they said?

American Girl. Pink Helmet. White seat. Princess dress. Chemistry set. Microscope. Car. DMSomething.

A week later, the mother drove back to the mall without the boy and the girl. She stayed inside for several hours. When she came back to the van, Capt. Awesome could see a chemistry set in one of her bags and the white sequence of a fairy princess dress in another.

“Christmas,” he thought, “when deception disguises itself as goodwill.”

After last Christmas - his first Christmas - Capt. Awesome was convinced that Santa was a great manipulation, and nothing more. He was a fraud built by the collective imaginations of adults who regularly spanked their children for lying. Capt. Awesome was sure that by perpetuating the Santa story, the parents were digging their own graves.

Did parents really think the world leaders they were raising would find solutions for the fossil fuel crisis when they honestly believed magic elves spent twelve months a year making everything people asked for?

Had the parents actually convinced themselves that the global economy would be stabilized by a generation who thought an overweight saint slid down their chimneys to deliver toys?

And who did the parents think would care for them in their old age? What possible motivation would their children have for giving selflessly to another person when they believed a 1400 year-old fat man existed for no other reason than to give them presents?

It was all so absurd.

***

After the kids sat on Santa’s lap, the van was filled and emptied four different times. The mother brought home rolls of paper and hid department store bags under her bed. At the grocery store, she bought two bags of the candy she used to help fill the kids’ stockings. Capt. Awesome remembered it from the year before when he stood on it through that horrible sleepless night. At the toy store, the mother asked a handsome young man wearing a blue vest to help her load a bike-sized box into the van. The young man smiled weakly when the mother handed him a dollar and wished him Merry Christmas.

Long before Christmas morning, Capt. Awesome knew that not only was the boy getting a chemistry set and a microscope from “Santa,” he was also getting a basketball and two new shirts.

The girl would love her fairy dress and would probably spend most of Christmas afternoon riding her new bicycle. But Capt. Awesome knew that “Santa” was also going to surprise her with a shiny chrome bell for her handlebars.

The kids had no idea what was happening behind the Christmas scenes. Every afternoon they rode home in the backseat of a grey Astro-Van that secretly doubled as Santa’s sleigh. If they knew that Santa poured their cereal and drove them to school every morning, they would go absolutely mental.

***

On the Saturday night before Christmas, the mother dropped the kids off at their grandparents’ house and picked up the man who was her current favorite. On their way to dinner, the mother and the man talked about Christmas and which child would like which present the best. “Susan,” the man said, “You’ve kinda gone overboard this year, haven’t you? Can you afford all this?”

“Not really,” said the mother.

And then she started to cry.

***

After Christmas, the man helped the mother tie a brittled Christmas tree onto the top of the van. After they dumped the tree in a pile near the playground in their favorite park, the man announced he was taking everyone out for pizza to celebrate the new year.

On the way, he turned to ask the boy and the girl if they had a good Christmas.

“Sure did,” said the boy. “Santa got me a microscope and a cool chemistry set and a DM3!”
“I got a silver princess dress and a pink bicycle with a bell on the handles,” said the girl.
“That’s great,” said the man. “What did your mom get you?”

The boy and the girl looked at each other blankly.

“I don’t remember,” the boy answered. “Mom, what did you get me?”

Capt. Awesome couldn’t believe his ears. If he had any muscle control – if he had any muscles at all – he would kick the boy in the lap.

“Santa,” he wanted to scream, “is just a front man your parents use to launder their own generosity. He’s a puppet crafted to give you the clothes you need and the toys you want and let somebody else get the credit. I can’t believe your mom sits in the shadows while an overstuffed fairy tale steals her glory.”

Ungrateful kids.

Super? Human. (Martin)

2009-12-14T09:33:00.005-06:00

Martin’s story is part five of a five part series. Read part one, part two, part three, and part four to catch up.

Martin

Martin sat in his favorite coffee shop, bemoaning his fate.

He had been fired earlier that day after an unfortunate incident at school. Martin (or Mr. Smithson as he was known to his students), was walking down the hall just outside the girl’s bathroom, when a kid pushed past him in a rush to get to class. Martin stumbled and tried to catch himself, but with no luck. He fell through the wall and straight into the girl’s bathroom.

Since he was a child, Martin had been able to pass through things. He could reach his hand through ceramic cookie jars and walk through solid walls. Unfortunately, none of his wardrobe shared his super-ability. Just because Martin could walk through walls didn’t mean his clothes could come with him.

When Martin fell (literally) through the solid wall outside the girl’s bathroom, he landed on the other side unscathed, uninjured… and unclothed. Now, thanks to the several shrieking sophomores who had seen his “biology lesson,” he was also unemployed.

The school board said Martin was a danger to the kids. They claimed he was a liability. They paid no attention to his defensive argument. "At least I'm not turning invisible and intentionally stalking through the locker rooms," he said. "This was just an honest mistake." Twenty minutes later, they fired him.

Martin hated his super dis-ability.

Superman. Wonder-Woman. The Green Lantern. They all did what came naturally and the world embraced them for it.

“For the rest of us,” Martin thought, “life’s a little more complicated.”

The End.

Super? Human. (Heather)

2009-12-07T12:24:00.007-06:00

This is part 4 of the Super? Human. series. Why start with 4 when you can begin with part 1, continue with part 2, and then enjoy part 3?

Heather

Heather spent her life as a quiet prisoner to her inside voice.

Heather’s “inside voice” wasn’t anything like her “inner voice,” that whispering conscience that gives paranoid advice and warns people of impending doom. Heather’s “inside voice” was the contrast to her “outside voice,” a sound that froze everything that moves.

Every time Heather shouted or screamed, her raised voice pressed a pause button that stopped time.

Usually when a woman shouts, one of several things happen: 1) people run to her aid, 2) a child is sent to its room, or 3) everyone rolls their eyes and wonders why that horrible woman is being so mean to that poor waiter. These things happen because a shout is meant to be heard. A shout, by nature, elicits a response.

Heather’s shout, however, was terribly counter-productive. People who heard it, strictly speaking, couldn’t respond to it. They were too busy being immobilized. Frozen. Instead of turning in alarm, people who heard Heather shout were temporarily petrified, stuck in an involuntary game of freeze tag.

Because Heather had colic as a baby, her father was constantly late for work. Several times a week, he woke up early, sat down for breakfast, and was then turned to a statue while his carpool left without him.

“Shit,” he thought. “If that kid doesn’t stop crying, I’m going to loose my job.”

Heather was six months old when her unemployed parents sent her to live with a deaf couple.

In the 8th grade, all the girls in Heather’s class were required to take woodshop with the boys. The school said it taught them to be well-rounded. One day Heather told the shop teacher that “the needless butchering of trees for poorly made book cases and bird houses violates my principals as a vegetarian.”

Mr. Reinheart explained to Heather that she apparently misunderstood what “vegetarian” meant. When Heather yelled a defiant “BUT…,” all the drills stopped drilling, all the saws stopped sawing, and everyone in the woodshop froze. It was SO embarrassing.

By the time she got to high school, Heather was already one of the prettiest girl in her class. When she tried out for the cheerleading squad, her gymnastic routine was great, but her cheers left the judges silent and still. She didn’t make the squad.

Her sophomore year, Heather dated a boy that, like every other boy at school, was completely infuriating. But every time Heather reached her emotional limit and yelled about his stupid clothes and his stupid car and his stupid friends, the boy just stood there, still as a stone. Frozen, he even missed her dramatic exits, which made Heather even angrier.

The day Heather rode a roller coaster at Six Flags was an absolute disaster.

Heather hated being quiet while her friends were being crazy. She hated using her “inside voice” when her inner bitch wanted out. Most afternoons, when she got home from school, Heather was so frustrated that she slammed the door and shouted as loud as she could.

When her deaf foster parents saw the cat frozen with one leg in the air, wishing its bath hadn’t been so rudely interrupted, they signaled each other and spoke in their sign-language shorthand, “Heather must be home.”

To Be Continued...

Click here to read part 5

Super? Human. (Paul)

2009-11-29T19:37:00.009-06:00

This is part 3 of the Super? Human. series. To catch up, start by reading part 1 and part 2.

Paul

Like a Bible character he barely remembered, Paul got his strength form his hair.

In 1967 he and his flower children friends – his botanical brothers and sisters – all grew their hair long in protest of a war they didn’t believe in. But as his friends grew shaggy, Paul grew strong. Very Strong.

The first time his mother hinted that he needed a haircut, Paul already knew to be careful when he tied his sneakers before a protest. Sometimes he got excited and bruised his feet before the laces broke.

When his bangs had to be parted to keep them out of his eyes, Paul was regularly entertaining his friends at sit-ins by bending gun barrels into balloon animals while singing “Give Peace a Chance.”

By the time Paul’s muddy locks covered the tour dates on the backs of his tee-shirts, he spent every fourth Saturday holding his family’s El Camino in the air while his dad changed the oil. His dad wanted him to get a job that “took full advantage of his talent.” Unfortunately, when you’re a super-strong hippie pacifist, there isn't much work that fits your skill set.

When the boys in Washington heard about his extraordinary strength, they "randomly" drew Paul’s draft number. Like it or not, they said, he was going to Vietnam.

“Don’t you want to be a star soldier,” they asked. “Don’t you want to serve your country?”

He didn’t.

The first day of boot camp, the Army shaved Paul’s head and gave him a pair of green pants. His commanding officers wouldn’t listen when Paul told them not to cut his hair. They said it was “regulation.”

Nine months later, Paul ran through the jungle with a new haircut, sweating under the weight of his backpack. Unable to keep up with his company, Paul never saw his home again.

To Be Continued...

Click here to read part 4

Super? Human. (Oscar)

2009-11-22T19:10:00.010-06:00

What follows is part 2 of the Super? Human. series. If you haven't already, I suggest you click here to read part 1.

Oscar

When Susan won $500 in the lottery, she wasn’t even excited. Oscar could fly, and that was so much better.

If she could fly, Susan knew she wouldn’t need the lottery. She wouldn’t have a car payment, or auto insurance, or rising gas prices to worry about. She could even earn extra money as one of those traffic reporters on the radio that tells everybody where all the wrecks are on the highway.

Her stupid brother had the power to fly, and he never used it – not even if he woke up late and there wasn’t any coffee and rush-hour traffic was a mess. He said it was too slow. He said he could spit faster than he could fly.

He was right. Oscar flew slower than a small child tiptoes past his parent’s room during the night.

When they were kids, Oscar occasionally took off in the front yard to show off for his friends. But when his friends started crawling under him to untie his shoes and tickle his feet while he lifted off, Oscar had an important revelation. Unless a neighbor’s cat was stuck in a tree and they weren’t in a hurry to get it down, his power was neither very useful nor very impressive.

What’s the point of flying, Oscar thought, if it’s not fast?

As he got older, his opinion didn’t change. Recently, when he got caught in traffic on the way to an emergency surgery, Oscar took his chances and took off. Four blocks later, he was passed by a butterfly.

Now, unless the puddles were unbearably deep, Oscar usually walked. And Susan hated him for it.

Oscar knew his sister was jealous of his ability, but he was thankful Susan couldn’t fly. His logic? There’s a reason animals in the wild walk on all fours, hiding their underparts. There’s a reason birds, who fly so unashamedly, don’t have external genitals. It’s the same reason women who only wear short skirts, women like his sister, shouldn’t have the power of flight:

Decency.

Nobody wants to look up and see that, especially in slow motion.

To Be Continued...

Click here to read Part 3

Super? Human. (Michael)

2009-11-16T11:52:00.006-06:00

Michael

Michael discovered he could become invisible when he was a teenager – that glandular time when the other boys were also discovering their own secret and hidden abilities. When he realized he could become invisible, Michael dreamed of using his power for the ultimate good: surveillance missions… gaining important intelligence… and infiltrating the girls’ locker room.

Visibility happens when light bounces off an object and gets caught in the camera of an animal’s eye, making a picture in the brain and immortalizing the object as “visible.” Invisibility happens when light doesn’t bounce – when it passes through an object, frictionless. Clean glass. Clear air. Calm water. These things are “invisible” because light shines through them in a straight line, never bounced back to report the shapes and colors of where it’s been.

Michael could turn invisible. He could allow light to pass straight through his body, keeping him a secret. But becoming invisible meant light passed through his body. All of it. It didn’t bounce off his shoulders, stomach, and feet, showing his size, shape, and location to everyone around him. But it also didn’t get caught in his eyes.

Instead, when he was invisible, light passed through his lenses, ignored his retinas, and shot straight out the back of his head, never telling his brain anything about where it had been.

Michael could turn invisible. But when he was invisible, he was also blind… which made the girl’s locker room much less interesting.

To be continued...

Click here for Part 2

What It's Like (part 1)

2009-10-18T17:38:00.004-05:00

If you follow my blog, you know that I usually write essays – creative non-fiction stories inspired by actual events. “What It’s Like” is a new experiment for me.

What follows is one of my first attempts at writing fiction. Because blogs are short by definition, I’ve broken this story into 6 small parts. This is Part 1…

What It’s Like

The Earth took his training wheels off only a short few billion years ago. Before then, he followed the other planets through their frenzied orbits, barely keeping out from under their feet. He wasn't the typical middle child, quiet and demure. The Earth was curious and inquisitive, constantly asking questions like:

Why do I have to wear sunscreen?
What if I don't want to eat my vegetables?
and
Are we there yet?

Despite the endless questions, the other planets liked the Earth. He was innocent and green. He seldom whined or complained about his cold, wet bottom. Plus, he never made fun of Uranus... and that was hard to do.

There were a few years during puberty, when his face erupted in a volcanic mess, that the Earth was unbearable. But that was all behind him now. The Earth had learned to accept that as you grow older, things change. Everything shifts. Pangaea gives way to urban expansion. And no matter how hard you diet and exercise, your doctor is going to continually nag that your rising sea levels "might be cause for concern."

Mid-life was comfortable for the Earth. Covered with a shadow of rain-forest whiskers, he looked rugged and distinguished. He had established a routine, but predictability made the Earth restless. He worried his life was going around in circles, never really getting anywhere. Parts of him felt like the days went on forever and the night would never end, like there was nothing new under the sun.

Then, two days after giving Asia an extraordinary sunset, the Earth heard some unsettling news. He wasn't eavesdropping, of course, but it's hard to ignore a billion voices whispering in your ear. That's why he loved text messages and Twitter. They did wonders for his migraines.

But since terror really is expressed best through the spoken word, the news that a meteor was headed toward Earth was bigger than text messages could accommodate. As soon as the meteor was sighted, television reporters across the world began talking about "the catastrophic event," "our pending extinction," and "the violent end of life as we know it."

And the Earth was listening.

The Earth noticed long ago that the people were always panicking about something. Fortunately, their hysteria seldom lasted long. Before he turned around twice, the drama usually died down. Most of their problems ended as little more than forgotten headlines in a landfill.

The news that a meteor was headed toward the Earth, however, rocked the Earth to his core. The dinosaurs hadn't done a very good job of warning him about the last meteor, a surprise from the black that hit him like a cosmic car accident. One day he just turned around, saw it swerve into his orbit, and thought, "shit, this is going to hurt." And it did. Bad.

And now, according to the people, another meteor was on its way. "Whoever's out there throwing rocks needs to stop," he thought. "I'm too old for this."

Unfortunately, the coming meteor wasn't just a rock, a hardened teenager who had run away from home with plans of crashing on another planet's couch. It was bigger. Much bigger. It was so big that the popular media was at a loss for how to report its true size. Most people had seen enough disaster movies that they were desensitized to phrases like "rock the size of Texas."

In truth, the meteor had quite a bit in common with Texas, an ambitious - and egotistic - American state who dreamed of breaking free to become its own country. But the meteor, a rock several times the size of Earth, had done what Texas never would. It had succeeded in breaking free from its own solar system and had achieved geologic independence. Practically its own planet, the meteor went wherever it wanted, unencumbered by curfews and gravity. And since the its equator was wider than everyone else's, most planets knew not to get in its way.

The idea of a bully pushing its way through the cosmos was understandably stressful for the Earth. He didn’t like conflict. He didn’t enjoy being pushed around and bumped into. He was already self-conscious about his receding rainforests. The last thing he wanted was a new unsightly crater on his southern hemisphere.

Unfortunately, the Earth worrying about a new crater before being hit by the meteor was like a child worrying about a loose tooth before being hit by a train. The meteor wasn’t going to dent the Earth, it was going to destroy the Earth.

Within a few weeks, the meteor would become visible as a small speck in the Milky Way. The speck would grow as the meteor approached, slowing filling the night sky. First the North Star would disappear. Then the big dipper would loose its handle. Within a few months, Orion, Scorpio, and all their twinkling friends would be hidden from view, eclipsed by the meteor’s huge girth.

Several weeks before the big event, when the meteor was finally close enough, its gravity would pull the Earth’s oceans from their beds, gathering them together until they looked like a giant raindrop falling up into the sky.

Then, at the moment of impact, the Earth would shatter like a snowball, barely feeling a thing.

To Be Continued...

To read part 2, click here.

What It's Like (part 2)

2009-10-18T17:37:00.003-05:00

This is part 2 of a short story cut into shorter sections. To see part 1 and follow the entire story, click here.

“It’s just obnoxious the way these meteors think of no one but themselves,” the Earth ranted. “They go wherever they want and do whatever they want with no thought of who they’re inconveniencing or what they’re destroying. It’s not as if the stupid meteor doesn’t know where I’m going to be 253 days, 3 hours, and 14 minutes from now.”

The Earth had a good point. His schedule was as regular as clockwork. In fact, his schedule was the basis for clockwork. Everyone always knew where the Earth was going to be years before he got there. That’s the beauty – and monotony – of orbit. It leaves little room for variation.

If the meteor knew where he was going to be and when he was going to be there, then why, the Earth wondered, did it insist on disrupting his schedule?

The answer, of course, was that the meteor was terribly inflexible. Concepts like “yield,” “stop,” and “turn” implied compromises that the meteor, a selfishly single-minded rock, saw as signs of weakness.

While the Earth didn’t appreciate the meteor’s bullish arrogance, he secretly envied its freedom. Unlike the Earth’s constantly curved path, the meteor’s straight line seemed exotic and unpredictable. Its past and future never met. The meteor never saw the same thing twice. It had direction, but no plan. It never knew what it would encounter or who it would run into in the swirling void.

The Earth felt like he was in such a rut. Every day was a circle that started at dawn, curved through noon and midnight, and eventually led back to another sunrise. The years passed with the same summer always coming after the same spring. He wondered what it would feel like to live un-tethered to the daily demands of orbit. He enjoyed his circle around the Sun, but how many times could he smile and make small talk with Venus as they passed? Sure, she was attractive. Saturn was dying to get his rings around her. Even Pluto, a shy planet with an eternal identity crisis, wanted to talk to her. But for all her charms, Venus wasn’t much of a conversationalist. The Earth needed more.

To Be Continued...

To read part 3, click here.

What It's Like (part 3)

2009-10-18T17:35:00.002-05:00

This is part 3 of a short story cut into shorter sections. To see part 1 and follow the entire story, click here.

The Earth wondered how the people would deal with the approaching meteor. He suspected they would recycle one of their Hollywood clichés and shoot a missile at it. The people, of course, had the same idea. Within hours of the meteor’s discovery, a swarm of satellites started buzzing around the Earth like gnats on a spring day. China talked to England. Canada made a conference call to Turkey. NASA turned its telescopes to the heavens and told everyone the end was near unless they acted fast.

The people acted fast. Their leaders started pressing buttons and unlocking doors, uncovering weapons hidden long ago like eggs in the Easter grass.

“If we can split an atom,” the people thought, “surely we can split a meteor.”

But given the choice between fight and flight, the Earth wasn't sure picking a fight with the meteor was the best idea. "Flight," he thought, "might be a better option."

Afraid for his own future, the Earth began to formulate a plan.

For years the Earth had walked lazily around the sun, turning the corners gently to keep the people from losing their balance. But what if he sped up a bit?

"If I start running now," he thought, "I can just get out of the stupid meteor’s way. I could be halfway across the solar system by the time it arrives. If I’m 186 million miles ahead of schedule, hiding safely on the other side of the universe, I won’t even have to brush shoulders with it when it passes!”

The Earth knew that speeding up would require everyone – including himself – to adapt to a new schedule. The change would be hard for the people. Traditionally, even slow changes that obviously needed to happen (like evolution and equality) had been difficult for them.

Adjusting to a new way of life wouldn’t be easy for him, either. But what choice did he have? The facts of his existence were conspiring against him. He couldn’t continue on his current course and still survive.

And so, before the people could launch their missiles at the sky, the Earth took a deep breath and started to speed up. Faster and faster he ran. The faster he ran, the faster the days flew by. They passed with quickening speed until a single week was little more than a blur of sunrises and sunsets.

The roosters were the first to realize that the days were passing more quickly. Their cock-a-doodle-doos were hardly done before the sun was high in the mid-day sky. The people felt it, too. They noticed that the evening news was barely over before the morning show began. An alarm clock company even went out of business when its customers complained their clocks wouldn’t stay set. What the disgruntled clock holders didn’t realize was that their clocks worked perfectly, ticking away sixty seconds every minute of a 24 hour day. It was the days, hurried by the Earth’s new schedule, that were wrong.

The Earth didn’t care. It felt good to take control of his own future.

He sped straight through summer and practically skipped fall. The long trip that usually took a lazy year to complete was done in a matter of weeks. Birds, confused by the strobing sunsets, flew south for the winter only to find their homes under four feet of snow. Children were equally surprised when spring break started three days before Christmas.

The children loved the new schedule. They had hardly finished one birthday before the next one began. Girls celebrated their sweet sixteen with Barbie Doll cakes and Dora the Explorer parties. Boys were old enough to buy beer before their voices changed.

The rapid succession of birthdays made parents worry that their babies were growing up too fast. Their concern, however, wasn’t only for their children. A woman in Iowa had just graduated from college, gotten married, and was expecting the birth of her first child when she became eligible for a senior-citizen movie discount. Millions of women like her were equally unprepared to grow old gracefully.

Anxiety levels also rose among college students who complained they didn’t have enough time to study for exams. Pulling an all-nighter was practically pointless. The sun came up before they could finish a second cup of coffee. And when fraternity boys partied all night on Friday with plans of sleeping late on Saturday, it was sometimes Monday morning before they woke up and wondered where the weekend had gone – which wasn’t very different from the way things had always been.

College students weren’t the only ones with hurried schedules. A chapter of PA (Procrastinators Anonymous) contemplated disbanding when its members complained they could no longer find time in their newly-busy schedules for the monthly meetings. The president put off making a decision until more members could be present for a vote.

Even Santa’s elves were disgruntled. Unable to keep up with their new production schedule, the doll division threatened to strike.

The future was simply coming before the people were prepared for it. Before the Earth began his sprint toward safety, both the quick and the careful could order their lives because they knew what words like “next week,” “next month,” and “next year” meant. Like “one pound” and “four meters,” the meanings of “one minute” and “four days” were constant. This predictability not only helped sell thousands of calendars at Christmas, it also gave the people an illusion of control.

But now “tomorrow” was like a menstrual cycle -- reliable, but unpredictable. The people always knew it was coming, but they didn’t know exactly when it would get there or how long it would stay.

Across the globe, petitions were signed asking the Earth to slow down. Concerned citizens gathered at community centers and organized anti-Earth demonstrations. Unlike the great protests of the past, however, the people marched without knowing where to go. Since City Hall couldn’t solve their problem, the people wandered aimlessly, hoping the Earth would hear them yell.

At a march in Oregon, an environmentalist who had once fought to save the rainforests led a group in chanting “stop the world, I wanna get off!” At a rally in Atlanta, a construction worker carried a shovel, but he never followed through with his threats to dig a hole.

It didn’t take long, however, before the people realized that there wasn’t anything anybody could do to make the Earth slow down.

Activists couldn’t boycott anyone.
Armies couldn’t attack anyone.
Police couldn’t arrest anyone.
Lawyers couldn’t sue anyone.
Men couldn’t threaten anyone.
Women couldn’t manipulate anyone.

The AARP, whose membership had recently doubled, printed an informative pamphlet, but nobody had time to read it.

In the chaos, confusion, and frustration, the meteor was temporarily forgotten.

To Be Continued...

To read part 4, click here.

What It's Like (part 4)

2009-10-18T17:34:00.002-05:00

This is part 4 of a short story cut into shorter sections. To see part 1 and follow the entire story, click here.

The Earth felt it first in his North America. It then spread to his Europe and across his Asia. This wasn’t one of those headaches he got from too much pressure along his tectonic plates. This one was the direct result of 6 billion feet marching across his surface in angry unison. If they didn’t stop stomping soon, he would be forced to knock the people off balance. The Earth hadn’t been this upset since the invention of high-heeled shoes.

During what he considered the puberty of their race (generally referred to as “modernity”), the Earth felt the people had become disturbingly self-centered. Maybe he had a heart of stone, but the Earth was tired of being taken for granted. He was tired of letting ungrateful people walk all over him.

Wasn’t he always patient with them during their Thanksgiving Day Parade? Didn’t he suffer quietly through their New York City Marathon? He even allowed their military to practice their ridiculous advances and retreats at all hours of the day and night. His patience, however, was growing as thin as his ozone. The endless protest marches had to stop. They were not only irritating, they were insulting.

The Earth wasn’t deaf. He knew what everyone was saying about him. He heard it when the geologist from Caltech questioned his stability and told a reporter he thought the Earth might be cracking up. He was listening when Greenpeace voted to take his name off their website. He noticed when Earth Day was cancelled and replaced with a symbolically violent tether-ball tournament.

The Earth tried to ignore preachers when they filled their Sunday Sermons with stories comparing him to somebody named “The Prodigal Son,” but he couldn’t. From pulpits across the globe they shouted that he was like an arrogant child who ran away from his father and leapt carelessly into the future. They said he “neglected his responsibility” and “denied his true calling.” They condemned him for “choosing a path other than the one that had been assigned to him” and urged him to return to “the natural state of things.” They didn’t think the Earth realized how serious things had become.

The Earth was offended that the same people who invented oil-powered engines and artificial sweeteners dared to lecture him about “respecting creation” and “acting according to the laws of nature.”

Why, the Earth wondered, didn’t the people didn’t understand that he hadn’t broken away from his pre-determined path? He was still following the same circle around the same sun. He was simply doing it differently than he had been before. And even if he had rushed into the future, he hadn’t done it carelessly. He had done it from necessity.

Self preservation and selfishness are two entirely different things.

To Be Continued...

To read part 5, click here.

What It's Like (part 5)

2009-10-18T17:32:00.002-05:00

This is part 5 of a short story cut into shorter sections. To see part 1 and follow the entire story, click here.

Right in the middle of the evening news, the people looked up and saw it. It seemed like years since anyone had mentioned the meteor, but in reality it had only been a few months.

Fist the North Star Disappeared.
Then the Big Dipper lost its handle.
When a shadow fell across the sun, the people began to panic.

Some of them ran deep into underground cellars. Others herded themselves into churches to pray. A few important people remembered the missiles they’d left carelessly pointing toward the sky and met to decide what they should do.

Just as these important people prepared to push important buttons and send the missiles streaking into space (with little or no effect on the outrageous rock), a physicist scribbled something on her chalkboard. Out of the lines and numbers rose a wisp of chalky hope.

“But how is that possible,” the important people asked. “We already calculated that if the Earth is orbiting the sun at 29.77 km/s and the meteor is traveling in a straight line at 56.2 km/s, then we should collide with it… 7 months ago?”

The director of the CIA stormed into the room, brushing the first flakes of a light summer snow off his jacket.

“So, you’re saying what?”

“The meteor,” the physicist said, “is apparently going to miss the Earth by 186 million miles.”

“Well,” he stammered. “I’ll be damned.”

To Be Continued...

To read part 6, click here.

What It's Like (part 6)

2009-10-18T17:31:00.003-05:00

This is part 6 of a short story cut into shorter sections. To see part 1 and follow the entire story, click here.

At first the meteor’s pull on the Earth was as indefinable as emotion – little more than an idea tugging at his corners. Like happiness, fear, and excitement, it could be felt more than it could be explained.

As the meteor came closer, however, its gravity grew into something more concrete. The Earth’s oceans noticed it first. Suddenly disinterested with the moon, they found themselves attracted to the meteor, drawn to its rugged strength. Like crazed fans, they crowded the beaches and fought for the best view of its approach.

The Earth lit his northern lights to warn the meteor that it might be coming too close. Unfortunately, the stubborn forces of nature often ignore even the most heartfelt wishes and requests. The Earth didn’t know what to do. He had already done everything he could to control his future, and was worn out with the effort.

Until now, his path had been familiar and frictionless. Every day he moved through space carried by his own momentum, hardly working to spin through the seasons. In the vacuum, there was little need for effort or exertion. Nothing worked against him. Trusting his instincts and inertia, the Earth had taken for granted that he would always coast easily through life.

But now his forward motion was being interrupted by a sideways force. For the first time since he settled into the routine of orbit, The Earth felt resistance… friction… gravity pulling him in a direction other than the one he had always known.

As the meteor came closer, its gravity increased. Like a ball fighting to roll uphill, The Earth strained against its pull. When he tried to move forward, the meteor tugged him back. It didn’t matter how tightly he tried to hold to his orbit. The Earth was a movable object fighting an unstoppable force.

Finally, after weeks (or was it months? or years?) of straining against the meteor’s gravity, the Earth finally accepted what he could not change. He stopped fighting the invisible truth. Exhausted, he stopped running. For the first time since the meteor was sighted, the Earth relaxed and let nature take its course.

And as the meteor passed by – only 186 million miles away – its gravity wrapped around the Earth’s middle and slowly pulled him away from the sun and into the deep, dark unknown. The predictable curve of the his orbit was straightened into an infinite line. Like a hound chasing its quarry, the Earth left his home and followed the meteor into in the unknown of space.

When the meteor was first sighted, the Earth tried to save himself. He chose to run – to avoid the meteor rather than let it collide with him – and his plan worked. He hadn’t been destroyed by an impact. But despite his effort (or perhaps because of it), his path had been forever changed. Now, as the Earth followed the meteor past stars he had never seen, he wondered which was better, change or annihilation? He didn’t yet know.

He noticed, however, that the people weren’t saying anything about what happened. They weren’t admiring the view or complaining about the cold. They were all strangely quiet.

The Earth thought he liked them better that way.

The End.

Red Light?

2009-10-09T09:13:00.003-05:00

New York is a pedestrian city. New Yorkers don’t walk for recreation or because we can’t find a closer parking place. In New York, the closest parking place is New Jersey. In New York we walk because it’s too expensive to hire a $20 taxi every time we leave the house. Poor and unwilling to remain confined to our apartments, we walk everywhere, littering the sidewalks with our smaller carbon footprints.

When we walk, we watch the traffic signals. New Yorkers know that when the green light turns yellow, the stream of cars blocking our path will slow to a stop and we can get an early start across the street. Unlike their suburban cousins, New York drivers are trained to never speed through a changing signal. In New York, running a red light means running over twelve people.

Last weekend, Jeremy and I were part of a crowd of NYU students and out of work actors crossing 18th street before we should. Several seconds before the red hand gave way to a walking man, a little girl on the opposite sidewalk stepped away from her father and into the street, following a herd of bad examples.

I saw the little blonde girl step off the curb, disobeying the red flashing hand that told her not to. Her father saw it, too. He shouted for her to stop, but in the chaos of the crosswalk it was hard to tell if he yelled more from fear for his daughter’s safety or hate for what his insurance company would do if she got hit by a car.

The little girl heard his shout and quickly stepped backward onto the sidewalk, safe and repentant.

When he knelt in front of the little girl and put his hands on her shoulders, the middle-aged man was still a father – angry, frightened, and flawed. But when he opened his mouth to scold his daughter, he was also something more – part prophet, part poet, part messiah. If the little girl remembers his advice, it will help her survive more than just the city.

“What have I always told you,” he said, sternly. “Don’t follow the people. Follow the signs.”

I listened too, and was thankful for the reminder.

SNAP!

2009-10-01T09:56:00.007-05:00

Mice haven’t invaded my apartment, but they’re beginning to send spies. Every few days one scurries across my kitchen floor and hides under the stove. One by one they enter… but they never return home.

When the first mouse was spotted, my roommate shrieked, “it’s not even cold outside yet! I’m not emotionally ready for this!”

Is anyone ever emotionally ready for mice to invade their apartment? Isn’t the hallmark of a good invasion that it starts as a surprise? Would the Nazis have succeeded in occupying Eastern Europe if Hitler had RSVP’d with Poland for a September attack? Probably not. That’s why it’s important to end an invasion before it begins.

And so, with Old Testament vigilance, I’m catching the mouse spies one by one and killing them.

(Technically, and is the incorrect conjunction in the preceding sentence. The story shouldn’t read “I’m catching the spies and killing them.” It should read “I’m catching the spies by killing them.”)

SNAP! is my new favorite sound.

While I happily accept the role of grand executioner, serial killer, and/or instrument of rodent death for our apartment, Casey (my roommate) is a pacifist. She’s not offended by death, but she doesn’t think it should be forced on anyone (or anything). She wants the mice exterminated, but she doesn’t want to hear stories about it. Like the problem in Darfur, she’s aware of the killing, but thinking about it makes her sad.

Casey and I briefly discussed buying catch-and-release traps, but agreed that the theory behind catching and releasing is only effective if there’s an element of rehabilitation involved. Otherwise, your kindness is mistaken as hospitality. After the “release,” you’re practically guaranteed the mouse will bring its rodent friends back to your apartment to meet the nice people who keep filling the wire box under the sink with cheese and snacks.

The instructions for these pest-control placebos should read like the back of a shampoo bottle: “catch and release… and repeat.” Unless you have an infestation of golden retrievers, why bother?

It might be true that ever time a mouse dies, PETA cries… but in my opinion, the best way to catch a mouse is to kill a mouse.

***

Belly-up is always a posture of death. When you see a mouse trap flipped on its back, you know your resident rodent has finally joined Puckers – the goldfish you forgot to feed – on the other side of eternity.

This morning I looked behind the kitchen trash can to check a trap. It was sprung, tossed at a wild angle by the force of its snapping spring. The bait, a walnut tied to the trap with a piece of string, was completely intact and uneaten.

Beside the trap laid a dead mouse.
It wasn’t injured.
It wasn’t broken.
It wasn’t bloody.
But it was dead… next to the trap.

The mouse was resting three inches from the overturned trap, just far enough to blur the line between cause and effect. It was like finding a dead man across the street from a car accident.

Mysteriously, they both lay there, coldly divorced from each other, their bodies not even touching.

As far as mysteries go, “the case of the mouse who died, but wasn't caught” isn’t a very good one. I’m smart enough to know that cholesterol isn’t the only thing that causes heart attacks. When, on a calm autumn afternoon, your tiny mouse heart is already beating at over 9 times per second, SNAP! probably isn’t your favorite sound.

Animal rights activists can say what they want, but this confirms what I’ve always known. I’m not a killer… I’m a heart-breaker.

The Soda Man

2009-09-10T22:19:00.006-05:00

There’s an elderly – and slightly crazy – man who walks past my apartment almost every day. If it’s warm and the windows are open, he stands on his tiptoes, peeks through the screen, and asks, “Do you want a soda?”

Usually, I don’t… which is convenient since the Soda Man never has any soda with him.

Yesterday I was sitting at the table next to my windows eating dinner when the Soda Man stopped to talk. “Where are you from,” he asked. “Peru?”

For the record, I look as much like a Peruvian as I look like a puppy. This should explain the slight up-turn in my voice when I said, “…no?”

“India?”

Again, I’m one of those Caucasian hybrids who doesn’t look like he’s from anywhere, the human equivalent of a maple tree. I’m too ordinary to be from anywhere exotic.

“…no?”

“Scotland?”

Closer, but still a confused “no.” Letting the Soda Man off the hook, I told him, “I’m from the south.”

“Oh,” he exclaimed. “That explains it! I thought you sounded patriotic!”

The only remotely patriotic things I’ve done in the past two years are vote, watch fireworks, and sleep late on Memorial Day. I don’t even turn toward Washington, D.C. when I pray. Maybe I'll feel prouder of my country when my country's government starts acting prouder of its people, treating them all is if they're created equally. Even then, however, I'm not sure I'll want to be identified as a "southern patriot."

I won't waste valuable space on the internet retelling the part of the conversation where the Soda Man asked what I do for a living, but you should know that our talk ended with the question, “Did you write part of the Bible?”

For the record, I didn’t.

When you live in a street-level apartment in Brooklyn and your windows have no curtains, you live in a fishbowl of crazy.

Memories

2009-06-20T12:07:00.008-05:00

Pac-Man was about a hungry circle that lived in a haunted square.

Pong was about two lines negotiating the joint-custody of their dot.

Frogger was about drivers ignoring the world's most polluted river.

But I can't remember who started WWI.

Hi(gh)

2009-06-05T23:20:00.003-05:00

Several times a week, a generous pot-head (or glaucoma patient) gives the homeless woman who lives in my subway station a free joint. She then sits on her bench, burning it down, filling the cave with sticky sweet smoke.

I wonder if the pot-head thinks he's funny, giving a homeless woman an unbearable case of munchies she can't afford to cure.

Ellen's Island

2009-05-24T20:59:00.005-05:00

Several years ago my friends and I embarked on a campaign to abandon our lives, move to a tropical island, and adopt lives of Gilligan-esque simplicity and equality.

At the time, Ellen Degeneres - whose talk show I watched every day during lunch - was in the habit of answering viewer mail by granting wishes. I started writing Ellen, asking if she would like to escape with my friends and I to a tropical island where she would serve as our Queen. While the flattery was sincere, the letters were (in truth) really a thinly-veiled ploy for Ellen to finance the adventure.

Sadly, I am no longer self-employed. I am no longer able to watch Ellen during my lunch break. But as summer approaches and I desperately miss the three-month bliss a year of multiplication tables and spelling tests once earned, I am thinking of re-visiting my campaign for Ellen's Island...

(originally sent 8.20.07)

Dear Ellen,

You may not be aware of it, but you and I eat lunch together almost every day. Because I work from home, most afternoons you dance into my living room and chat while I enjoy my lunch. You usually bring friends, and I enjoy the company. Sometimes you talk on the phone for a few minutes, but I don't mind the interruption. In fact, you've so generously shared your time with me that I'd like to return the favor with an invitation.

Would you like to be the Queen of my island?

I know... it's quite an offer. And so, I suppose it's only fair to disclose that I live in a small condo that is desperately landlocked. To be honest, I am not yet an island-owner. My friends and I have decided, however, that an island will be our next (and first) group purchase. We plan to quit our jobs, sell our stuff, and move to a tropical paradise where money isn't allowed and there are no bills (we'll make an exception for the occasional William if you know one you'd like to bring). We're ready to run away, but we don't want to leave you behind.

I know this might sound a bit like a failed social experiment one of the Marx brothers dreamed up a few years ago, but in my opinion his communist vision was never fully realized because...

1. Lenin had virtually no sense of humor.
2. The guest list was all wrong.
3. Nobody in Siberia makes a decent Mai Tai.

We think our island remedies these flaws because...

1. You are much funnier than Lenin.
2. Our island is invitation only.
3. The Mai Tai will be our state bird.

As we chose our monarchy, the candidates were narrowed to either you or Jimmy Buffet. We eliminated Jimmy because we were afraid he would just spend his time wasting away again. But you're so funny, energetic, sincere, and kind that we feel you'd be the perfect Queen. We love your show and know that you must be as wonderful in person as you are on syndicated television. You're obviously the piece we need to make our island paradise complete.

It won't be big or fancy, but our island will be surrounded by clear water and warm, white sand. We're fun people, Ellen. You'll like us. Will you please come and be our Queen?

Of course, we're all very poor and could never afford an actual island. We'll probably have to settle for sharing an inflatable raft at the public pool – but you're invited to that too.

Don't forget to pack your crown and some sunscreen.

Your humble servant,

Bryan Currie

Survival of the Fittest

2009-05-15T19:32:00.032-05:00

When they ate the herbs out of her herb garden, my mom was irritated. When they dug up her daffodil bulbs, she was upset. But when the chipmunks chewed through the wires in my step-dad’s car, my mom declared war.*

For the past two months her tactic has been to lure the chipmunks into a wading-pool trap where the rodents drown while trying to eat floating sunflower seeds. The "Salem Witch Trap," as I've come to think of it, may be barbaric... but it's also brilliant. (a similar version can be seen here.)

To celebrate both my mother’s birthday (which was Sunday) and her apparent victory over the chipmunks (she’s drowned at least 10), my sister and I bought flower bulbs to replace the ones the rodents have eaten. For the card I composed the following series of chipmunk limericks/memorials.

Feel fee to add a few verses of your own, but please remember... chipmunks seldom live on Nantucket.

There once was a chipmunk named Pete
who thought your backyard was a treat.
While he was digestin'
you taught him a lesson.
"You shouldn't swim after you eat!"

There once was a chipmunk named Mills
who feasted on your daffodils.
He got a surprise
when he realized
He should have spent time growing gills.

There once was a chipmunk named Jay
who thought your yard was a buffet.
But lunch isn't free
as he would soon see.
Too bad he's now floated away.

A chipmunk was named Alowishus
who thought your backyard looked delicious.
But eating a car
was going too far!
you sent him to sleep with the fishes.

*for more on my mom's war against small, seeminly defenseless animals, click here.

grounded?

2009-05-10T13:58:00.011-05:00

Today I found myself outside the Chrysler Building (which, by the way, is tall enough it might block God’s view of Brooklyn) where a small church sits snugged between the skyscrapers.

This morning the cross outside the church was still wearing its Easter outfit; a shroud draped across its shoulders… and a chain securing it to the street.

I know what the chain says about my city, where bicycles and icons (apparently) need the same pad-locked protection. But if this is what the last two millennia have been leading us to, I think someone deserves an apology.

O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and salutations.
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.
(traditional Hindu invocation)

Too Many Lives

2009-04-23T11:11:00.004-05:00

There’s something great about being complicated, but it’s terribly complicated as well. The truth, then, should be faced with courage. We cannot be fully known. By anyone.

We have simply lived too many lives.

The good news is that this shadow of lonely will always haunt us. It must.
Without it, our lives would be too brightly lit and we would always long for the privacy of some dark.

Two in the Bush

2009-03-23T11:57:00.007-05:00

I like to run, even when dogs and the police aren’t involved. A few years ago I trained for a marathon. On the big day, however, I only ran half the distance. Running a half marathon is like being pregnant with twins but only giving birth to one baby. It's both painful and rewarding . . . and when you finish, you always wonder if you should have pushed harder.

I watch the sidewalk when I run. Even on the prettiest spring days I ignore the sky and search the ground, hoping some other runner might have dropped his second wind. Once, during the final push of a 10 mile trot, I was counting cracks when a flash of movement caught my eye.

did I just see a *breathe* over near the *breathe* is that a . . .

I looked up from the sidewalk to see a small spark of a bird dart out of a ditch and fly a few feet from my sweating face.

This wouldn’t have been noteworthy except for one small detail – the bird’s color. Instead of camouflaging its feathers to blend with a earth toned environment, the bird was bright green, like a crayon or piece of construction paper. Crossing the street, its wings flashed neon in a cardboard world.

Of course, I hold no prejudice against green birds. I believe all of God’s creatures should be proud of their heritage and display their colors without fear of drawing undue attention to themselves. It’s just that in most neighborhoods outside the Amazon, birds tend to be less flashy. Less exotic. Less green.

In Nashville, where I was running, we had many lovely blue birds, brown birds, red birds, and gray birds. We even enjoyed a few spectacular yellow finches. The only place in the Music City where you might find green birds, however, was at the zoo and on the Discovery Channel.

That’s why it was surprising, as I ran up a hill and into what I feared might be the beginning of cardiac arrest, when a wad of emerald feathers flashed across the sidewalk and into the great suburban wild of Nashville. I was certain the bird – a small fist-sized parrot – must have been an illusion, a figment of my sweating imagination. Had I suddenly tasted pennies or felt a tingling sensation in my left arm, the hallucination would have made much more sense and I might have expected to turn the corner and find myself running into a warm, white light.

But instead of a glowing end to my suffering, all I saw on the street was a rust red pick-up truck approaching on my right.

When you’re running and a truck passes going the opposite direction, you don’t have long to look through the windshield. Dolly Parton could drive past and you probably wouldn’t notice. But because the rust red truck was moving slower than it should have been, I had a few extra seconds to see the driver. Sitting behind the wheel was a sixty year old man, rough and unshaven, with gray hair, a red shirt, and a large green parrot perched on his right shoulder – the second parrot I had seen in the past two minutes.

With the exception of Jimmy Buffet – who lived in Nashville before he moved to Margaritaville – men in the Music City don’t generally wear parrots to work. In fact, the average Nashvillian knows as much about parrots as he does about recording contracts. Both are rumored to be real, but few have seen either in person.

After ten feet of careful consideration, I decided that the pirate trucker must have been driving through my neighborhood not because he wanted to spoil and plunder, but because he had a pet problem. It’s only a hunch based on unbelievable coincidence, but I think the pirate was the proud owner of not one, but two parrots - one lost, the other riding shotgun on his shoulder.

The parrot in the truck wasn’t simply along for the ride, tagging along to tell stories when the eight-track went out. It was being used as a zoological GPS to find the lost bird that crossed my path only moments before. The pick up pirate must have hoped that if birds of a feather really do flock together, he might be able to use this instinct to his advantage.

(I think it’s worth questioning whether a grown man should really trust directions squawked by an animal that has a vocabulary of only eight words, three of which are “cracker” and “pretty bird.” Personally, I wouldn’t. Of course, I don’t usually talk to anything that doesn’t have two external ears.)

It will forever remain a mystery as to why the little green spark flew away from home. Maybe he was tired of being served corn-nuts and Budweiser for breakfast. And while I will probably never know if the pick-up pirate was ultimately successful in his quest for the lost bird, I continue to be impressed by his effort. Finding a lost pet is never easy. At least when rounding up a runaway dog or searching for a lost cat, your pet’s hiding places are limited geographically by things like fences and streats. And gravity.

But when tracking a runaway parrot, there’s a tremendous amount of up to consider. The bird might be enjoying a bath in your neighbor’s backyard, or he might be eating french-fries with the parking-lot pigeons at Sonic. Or, if it hasn’t been fond of your brand of crackers, your bird might be on his way back to South America to teach a flock of its Brazilian cousins how to read the sports page in English. The sky is literally the limit.

As I rounded the corner, I glanced back to see the pirate’s truck turn left into a neighborhood filled with towering oaks and bushy maples. The Captain and his parrot sailed into the suburban jungle and I never saw them again. But on sunny days when the sidewalk calls, I still lace up my shoes and run. And I still sometimes wonder if the little green bird ever found its way home.

**

As a child I went through a stage of wanting to keep a bird as a pet. I was told, however, that it is both inhumane and inconvenient to keep a bird in a cage. Birds are born to fly free and cages are meant for naughty children who disobey their parents. Plus, depending on your political bias and opinion of the popular media, newspapers are intended to be read, not pooped upon. That’s why, in the redneck south, birds aren’t pets. Birds are target practice. Or dinner. Or both.

In Asian cultures a proverb says love is like a bird in a cage. If you love something, you set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.

In the Christian tradition, the bird is replaced with a sheep. The sheep is free to wander off – which it does – and is lost in the wilderness. Fortunately, in the traditional story, the shepherd is smarter than Little Bo Peep who lost her sheep and didn’t know where to find them. The shepherd knows his sheep and is convinced they are worth more than grilled kabobs and warm winter sweaters . . . so he leaves his flock to rescue the one who is lost.

And when he finds it, he joyfully carries it home where his friends and neighbors rejoice because the lost sheep is found.

During this season of Lent, I celebrate the shepherd Jesus. I am thankful that he is wise enough to know that love isn’t like a bird in a cage. If something you love runs away, you go after it no matter the cost.

One in the Hand

2009-03-14T15:35:00.006-05:00

Some people approach the new year like they approach a swimming pool in the spring, before the sun has really had time to share himself with the water. They step up to January first cautiously, poke one toe into the wintry water, and then decide that the only way they’ll survive the shock of a New Year is to dive head first into the deep. And so they take a breath and plunge into the New Year by making resolutions to change. To lose 100 pounds. To pay off all the credit cards. To learn Portuguese and read A Tale of Two Cities.

But what is it about the midnight between this year and the next that makes people decide they should make life altering resolutions? Why must we celebrate a new calendar year by buying a membership to a gym we’ll never use or spending ten torturous days dropping a smoking habit that we’ll be forced to find again in February? Why do we start our year with a maddening sprint when the finish line is still a long 365 days away? It just doesn’t make sense.

That’s why, when the New Year says jump, I don’t ask how high. I ask for how long and set the bar accordingly low. If I’m really going to commit an entire year to doing something that’s so unpleasant it requires a resolution, I at least want to know that I’m capable of finishing what I start. I like to set my New Year up for success by making bite sized changes that are small and easy to swallow.

For example:

One year I resolved to make my bed every morning. After 365 days of straightening my sheets, I finally realized how much more inviting it is to sleep in a bed that looks like it got dressed-up for the evening than it is to crawl into one that seems to have just wrestled a small goat. I liked the change so much I’ve made my bed every day since. Success.

The next year I committed that I would always hang my keys on the hook next to the front door instead of keeping them between the couch cushions or under my bed. I find that I’m much more punctual now and tend to swear less in the mornings. Success.

One year I told myself that I’d floss regularly. For the first three weeks of January I ate an unusual amount of corn-on-the-cob just to start the habit. This strategy met with mixed results. Literally.

I enjoy my manageable resolutions so much that several years ago I challenged myself to train for a marathon.

Three days a week I stretched my legs and laced my shoes, preparing my body to run its way through dehydration and heart attack. As anyone who has followed in these footsteps knows, whenever you attempt to run any mile number greater than your shoe size, death always feels approximately one breath away.

Although running carries with it both positive and excruciating side effects, it really is a wonderful way to learn your neighborhood. When you run, not only do you burn calories and exercise your heart, but you also see a snapshot of the people who share your sidewalk and your mailman.

For example:

When I ran the ten mile loop around and through my Nashville neighborhood, I often passed a thirteen year-old boy at the corner of mile three. I saw him only on colder days, but I think the boy wore his hood pulled up more for attitude than for warmth. He never smiled, and I learned that I shouldn’t either. Instead, when we meet on the sidewalk, we frowned coolly at each other and raised our chins in a sort of cranial wave. I assumed this meant hello, but considering the neighborhood it might have also been the boy’s way of telling me his pockets were filled with smokeable plants that he was “holding for a friend.”

If the boy’s nod was some sort of subtle sales pitch, I hope he takes a marketing class when/if he gets to High School. The boy obviously has no idea of how to recognize his target consumer. Trying to sell weed to jogger is like trying to sell a bikini to a nun . . . in December.

I also occasionally saw a man I called “Cross Country.” When he ran, Cross Country looked as if he was concentrating, like his mind was thinking about things like form and balance and breathing, like his brain had to focus to control his body. Until I began training for the marathon, I had no idea running was so complicated. I thought it was simply an evolution of walking that we all learned when we were toddlers and our cholesterol had not yet awoken.

When he jogged past me, Cross Country never nodded to acknowledge that we were both sweating through the same sadistic ritual. He ran in his own world, and no one else was invited. Cross Country wore special shirts that were loose and synthetic and probably designed to recycle his sweat and prevent dehydration. Not me. I wore pre-stained shirts bought from the bargain bin at Goodwill. They were 100% cotton and advertised everything from credit cards to Christian camps. They also retained water like a pregnant woman.

Some people like to run with partners or groups so they can encourage each other along the way. But what is there to say while you’re running except “help,” “oh God,” and “glycerine”? When I run, I don’t want to be encouraged. I want to be alone. Sometimes I don’t even listen to music. Although I like the distraction of music, I get mad at the singers for breathing so easily.

Once, however, I was running up the hill that marked mile eight when I passed a fellow jogger who smiled and shouted “That’s right! Good job!” as he reached out his hand and gave me five. At the time I was so busy needing something actual like oxygen that I didn’t feel the need for something abstract like five. To my surprise, however, an encouraging slap from a stranger was exactly what I needed to finish the last two miles. When I collapsed exhausted in front of my house, I repeated his words “That’s Right” and “Good Job” just before I threw-up.

Then, one afternoon, just after I passed the hooded boy and shortly before my encounter with Cross Country, my heart and iPod were each thumping their own separate rhythms when a homeless man stepped into the sidewalk fifty feet in front of me. The man looked confused and unsteady, like someone who has just rolled out of bed and is still uncertain of how to start his day.

In my mind, I called him Oscar.

I gave the homeless man this name not because of his unusual aroma or wild, discolored hair. I didn’t call him Oscar because he was green or because I had ever seen him associate with a Cookie Monster, Big Bird, or Mr. Snuffleupagus. In fact, I don’t think there was a Sesame Street anywhere near my house. I called the man Oscar because of his unpleasant personality and half-empty attitude.

Oscar was a grouch.

After climbing over the curb and into my path, Oscar stood in the sidewalk silently watching the cars pass. He looked left. He looked right. And when Oscar finally turned toward me, made eye contact, and raised his right hand, I smiled, preparing to wave and say hello as we passed, pleased that I was making a new friend.

It soon became clear, however, that Oscar wasn’t interested in becoming friends. If he had been, his raised hand would have been opened in a gesture of welcome and brotherhood. But it wasn’t. His hand was almost entirely closed. Except for one lone finger.

Fortunately, since the middle finger is the tallest of all the fingers, it can be most easily seen from the farthest away. Even at fifty feet I knew exactly what Oscar was trying to say, and it wasn’t hello.

(As a child, I often played checkers with my grandfather. We called him Granddaddy Jack, but I’m not sure why. His first name was Harvey and his second name was Lee. We called him Jack because that’s how he was known to everyone in the small town of Trenton, Tennessee where he lived - but I don’t think anyone in Trenton knew why he was called Jack either.

I liked to play checkers with my Granddaddy Jack because he had style. When we sat down to play, Grandaddy Jack didn’t move the checker with his pointer finger like I did. Instead, he always used his long middle finger . . . his “bad finger” . . . the finger tough kids on the playground used when they were angry . . . the finger that got you sent to your room without any dinner if you used it while you were shouting at your sister. Granddaddy Jack was a deacon in his church and a man of great integrity. He never got in trouble on the playground and probably had no idea why I giggled every time he moved his checker.)

Oscar began his unfriendly gesture when we were still a staggering fifty feet apart. As I ran toward him, the grouch and I stared at each other for every bit as long as it has taken you to read this story. I’m not a very fast runner. And for each of those seventy-five awkward steps, Oscar’s finger stood in its lonely salute as a testimony to his feelings for me. He and his finger hated me for fifty feet. It was like watching a Peter Jackson movie or reading Tolstoy or listing to Queen’s almost six minute Bohemian Rhapsody. Oscar’s grouchy middle finger took a simple message and turned it into an epic statement.

I would like to think that Oscar was like my Granddaddy Jack and was simply using his middle finger for some innocent and utilitarian purpose. Maybe he was checking the wind or letting his nail polish dry. But I don’t think so. Oscar didn’t seem like the nail polish type.

But because I try to see the best in other people, I choose to believe that when Oscar raised his finger that day, he had the best of intentions. He probably meant to give me five and simply forgot the other four. I understand. I’m not very good at math either.

That’s why, when we passed, I decided that Oscar didn’t need something actual like income. He needed something abstract like encouragement. And so, instead of ignoring him or saying something unkind and trotting by in a sweaty blur, I acknowledged Oscar’s finger with a smile, gave him five, and cheerfully said “That’s Right! Good Job!”

And then I finished my last mile, happy to be a bright spot in someone’s day.

Slippery Squirrels

2009-03-05T16:22:00.012-06:00

I'm not sure why my mom hates squirrels, but I think it started with popcorn.

In an age before coaxial cable wired HBO and Showtime directly into televisions across the United Sates, the first VCRs found their way into suburban living rooms when I was in elementary school. Prior to the VCR, if you wanted to watch a movie you were forced to either see it in the theater or wait ten years until a highly edited version was shown on one of the three network channels your family’s television was able to tune-in. The houses of my childhood looked like giant bricked insects with aluminum antenna mounted on their backs. TV Guide was much thinner.

The idea of preserving video on cassette tape revolutionized the free time of an already television addicted generation. The new VCR recorded our favorite shows and gave children the freedom to go to the bathroom sometime other than during commercial breaks. It allowed us to pause, rewind, and skip the boring parts of programs we taped while we watched the Cosbys settle this week’s crisis or the Miami Vice keep Florida crime free. The VCR helped us memorize favorite jokes and imitate the characters who were live on Saturday night. It let us watch any movie any time we wanted to. It did for cinema what reruns had already done for television. It gave us a second chance.

I’m convinced that both the newly invented VCR and its accomplice, the video rental store, were also ultimately responsible for the great squirrel invasion of 1986.

One particularly warm summer night my parents piled my sister and I into the family station wagon and drove us to the new local video store to see what blockbusters it might offer as entertainment for the evening. As always, the choices were so overwhelming that Kathy and I argued over what we would watch. I wanted to rent an action move. She wanted a drama. I wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. It wasn’t until we remembered that a boy named Ferris Bueller had recently narrated an entire movie about how to take the perfect day off that we reached a compromise: I would rent the movie about the kid who knew karate, my sister would watch Molly Ringwald blow out her sixteen candles, and we would both enjoy learning from Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane the fine art of skipping school.

After a night of watching movies and popping popcorn, Kathy and I were cleaning the living room when my mom noticed a few handfuls of popcorn left in the bottom of the bowl. Before we could put the uneaten corn in the trash she said, “instead of throwing that popcorn out, you guys should toss it in the backyard for the birds to eat. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

At the time, the idea of throwing leftover food in the backyard for birds to eat seemed both indecent and exotic. My family usually put its leftovers either in Tupperware or in the trash. We never threw them in the yard. But since Jesus didn’t seem to get too upset when his five thousand friends left a bit of stale bread littering a rural hillside, we decided that tossing a few kernels of popcorn in the backyard might not be such a bad idea after all.

Feeding the birds with our table scraps quickly became a game for my sister and I. For several weeks after the first popcorn feeding, when my mom baked biscuits or made cornbread for dinner, Kathy and I fought for who would win the right to crumble and scatter the uneaten bread across the yard. Although the project was really less about feeding hungry animals than it was about making our backyard look cheerful and charitable, the birds loved our homemade treats, and we were convinced they loved us for providing them. Our backyard soon became a bird buffet with loyal customers ranging from blue jays and cardinals to robins and redbirds.

We eventually graduated from feeding the birds discarded popcorn and biscuits to using an actual birdfeeder. Our first one looked like a little pine house on a pole. Its clear plexiglass sides let potential diners see what kind of seed we were serving for dinner, and we soon found the birds were just as happy with convenience food as they had been with home cooking.

The cardinals enjoyed a diet rich in sunflower seeds while the doves and finches ate lots of wheat. Thistle seed was a favorite of the goldfinches. The mockingbirds, blue birds, robins, and woodpeckers enjoyed dried fruit in the feeder. For the sparrows, we bought lots of millet. When you consider their diet, it’s really not surprising that birds have become infamous for giving a sh** where others dare not.

Although our intent had always been to feed the birds, squirrels apparently enjoy bird seed as much as birds do. And since birds tend to be fairly messy eaters, they usually supplied the squirrels in our yard with a fairly constant rain of castoff sunflower seeds and millet to supplement the thousands of acorns already littering our yard.

I would like to think that that most creatures who can’t enjoy the luxury of large franchised supermarkets would be content with free food raining from the sky. Our squirrels, however, were smart enough to understand that the shower of seed raining from above was coming from somewhere other than heaven, and they wanted to know where that somewhere was. When the first squirrel championed an expedition up the birdfeeder pole and found a small wooden house full of food at its summit, he knew his days of foraging and hoarding were over.

In the frenzied seconds that followed, the air in our backyard grew thick with fur and flying seed. Until I witnessed the squirrel’s appalling table manners, I never imagined that animals could binge eat. It was a Jenny Craig nightmare. In less than a minute, a single squirrel emptied our entire birdfeeder of its contents. While some of the seed must have found its way into the squirrel’s small mouth, most of it flew like Cookie Monster crumbs across the yard and was quickly collected by the squirrel’s waiting (and grateful) friends.

My mother was mortified. After months of enabling the birds with a steady diet of ever-available seed, she was convinced they would no longer be able to survive in the worm-eating world. Thanks to the selfish squirrels, she said, our backyard birds were going to bed hungry.

And so began our quest to protect the birds and keep the squirrels out of our birdfeeder.

Plan A:

Our first anti-squirrel experiment involved a cone that was attached midway up the birdfeeder pole with its open side down. The cone made our birdfeeder look like a skinny one-legged girl wearing an aluminum dress. In theory, the hungry squirrels would climb half-way up the pole, reach a dead end, turn around, and give up. Unfortunately, our squirrels either didn’t think the birdfeeder’s new outfit made it look like an underfed supermodel, or they were terribly immodest. Not only did the squirrels continue to climb up the birdfeeder’s one long leg, but they also found a way past her shiny aluminum skirt and into her feed box, where they eagerly scattered their seed.

Who could blame us for our outrage?

Plan B:

Because, as natural climbers, the squirrels would always find a way up the birdfeeder pole, the next logical solution was to eliminate the pole altogether. If the birdfeeder could somehow be suspended in midair, the squirrels would be forced to wait for evolution to grant them the gift of flight before they could steal our seed. And since evolution is notoriously slow, hanging the birdfeeder above the ground seemed like a marvelous idea.

After three trips up a stepladder, a tightrope of clothesline cord was strung between two trees with the birdfeeder dangling from its middle. Unwilling to wait for wings, however, the squirrels decided to attack from the trees. Two hours after we hung the birdfeeder, a squadron of squirrels dove from the branches, landing on the birdfeeder’s roof and swinging it until every seed had been thrown from its hold. The troops waiting below devoured the seed in moments, eating it off the ground and picking crumbs from each other’s fur.

Until that spring, I never considered that birdseed is actual seed, but it is. And like all seed, it grows. April showers usually bring May flowers, but by June our yard grew more than daisies and tulips. Thanks to the squirrels and their seed scattering, the spring rain of 1986 transformed our backyard into a half acre of suburban farmland.

While our neighbors’ yards grew dandelions, ours sprouted sunflowers. While other neighborhood dads tried to keep their crab grass under control, mine fought a backyard full of summer wheat. And as the squirrels continued to sow their seed, I became increasingly aware that I had somehow transitioned from mowing the yard every Saturday to harvesting it.

Plan C:

My Uncle Frankie, the Peter Pan of our clan, devised a plan to eliminate our squirrel problem that involved a five gallon tub of Crisco and a pair of latex gloves.

Although we should have known better than to play along with whatever Neverland game my uncle’s imagination had invented, we didn’t. Instead, we followed Uncle Frankie’s advice and smeared handfuls of shortening along the length of our birdfeeder pole.

Uncle Frankie claimed that this homemade slippery pole would make it impossible for squirrels to climb all the way to the birdfeeder above. They might make it half-way, but the combined forces of gravity and whipped vegetable fat would ensure the birdseed’s safety. He personally guaranteed that the Crisco pole could be conquered by not even the most persistent squirrel. Climbing it would be impossible, like climbing a stick of butter.

Uncle Frankie was right. The Crisco pole was an unparalleled success and as entertaining as it was effective. A few ambitious squirrels made impressive attempts at climbing the greased pole, but after four lubricated feet their exhausted arms lost their grip and they inevitably slid slowly back down like small, greasy firemen.

(The whole scene was reminiscent of that torturous day in jr. high gym class when the girls were moved to one end of the gym to play kick-ball while the guys were herded to the opposite corner and told to climb a giant rope hanging from the rafters. For some unknown reason, gym teachers always wanted us to climb the rope, as if this was a life-skill that boys were required to master before adulthood. Didn’t our gym teachers understand that most modern buildings are equipped with both stairs and elevators? Unless your career goals include becoming a pirate, I could never think of a single job that would require a grown man to climb a rope on his way to the office. And yet, they still made us climb.)

After several unsuccessful hours trying to pillage the birdfeeder, the poor squirrels sat at the bottom of the pole, spent and frustrated, licking the Crisco off their paws. Since squirrels generally survive on nuts, berries and the occasional high fiber-bug, their small bodies aren’t accustomed to an un-cut Crisco diet. And so, thanks to both my Uncle Frankie’s brilliant plan and my family’s blind obedience, our yard was quickly filled with the fattest squirrels ever seen in the wild.

At the end of a long day of pole climbing, when the greasy squirrels finally summoned enough energy to drag themselves back home, tree branches creaked and groaned under their pot-bellied weight. The summer was particularly harsh as several of the cat-sized squirrels baked to a golden greasy brown in the hot August sun.

**

More than two decades have passed since the great squirrel invasion of 1986, and its final moments have been lost to memory. All we know for sure is that what began with the Hansel-and-Gretel-like innocence of children dropping crumbs in their backyard quickly degenerated into a Crisco-covered mess.

Family lore doesn’t record who finally won the battle or how. But as we laugh over the story during countless Thanksgiving dinners, my mother continues to defend her actions. She says she simply hoped that if we put the food just out of the squirrels’ reach for long enough, maybe they’d get frustrated – maybe they’d give up and go away.

Not long after our backyard conflict was resolved, a more significant family battle began that eventually caused my parents to divorce each other and re-marry other people. When I was a senior in high-school my mom met and married a wonderful man named Bob and together they moved into a home that wasn’t haunted with memories of slippery squirrels and starving birds. The hummingbird feeders that now hang in their kitchen window are filled with sugar water. While these feeders attract the occasional winged insect, they are never fought over by anything larger than a bumble-bee.

Unfortunately, at her new house my mom is now doing battle with another rodent foe. A family of chipmunks has invaded the yard and is threatening my mother’s sanity. She and Bob have approached this new challenge with very different strategies. Bob is a kind and gentle man who has attempted to re-habilitate the chipmunks in an unsuccessful catch-and-release program. My mother prefers a more aggressive approach. She wants to adopt a hungry cat.

My Uncle Frankie has a brilliant solution to the chipmunk problem that involves steel wool and peanut butter, but we don’t listen to him much anymore.

Zoo Cow

2009-02-21T15:54:00.012-06:00

Once there was a Cow who lived in a zoo. He lived next door to the Panda and across the path from a Zebra, but they didn’t talk much. The Zebra was always busy and the Panda never had much to say.

Plus, they were fancy and the Cow was plain.

The Panda was wonderfully white with black spots and the Zebra was beautifully black with white stripes. But the Cow wasn’t extraordinary at all. He was just regular white except for a big black patch on his back.

Black and white.
White and black.
All three of them looked like I Love Lucy reruns standing in a field.

The children loved to watch the Panda and wished they could pet the Zebra. But when they stopped in front of the Cow’s fence, it was usually just because they needed to tie their shoes or becasue they found a stray nickel. Most children had seen a cow before.

One child had seen a cow on a milk carton.
Another had seen one holding a sign in a fast-food chicken restaurant.
The little boy with a balloon had even been brave and touched one once when he drove from the city and visited his Grandfather’s farm.

The Zebra loved it when the children took pictures of his beautiful stripes and watched him run across his field. Their shouts and flashes made him feel special. He sometimes wondered, however, what would happen when the children realized that he was really just a horse with stripes who was afraid of lions. They would probably think he was ordinary and boring and never come back to visit.

The Panda adored the bronze plaque that told everyone she was born in a far away place called China. It reminded her that she was rare and wonderful. She spent all day pointing at it so the people would notice, but she was secretly afraid that the children would love the monkeys better than her because they whooped and hooted and threw their poop at grown-ups.

The Cow stood in his field wishing the sticky faced kids would think he was something other than ordinary. He often heard their parents call him “Grade A” and “Prime,” but somehow their comments never sounded complimentary.

One day a group of children came to the zoo in a big yellow bus. They stopped to look at the Cow, but only because their teacher told them to.

“The Cow looks lonely.”
“The Cow smells funny.”
“Why does the Cow have flies on its butt?”
“Are cows stupid?”
The children were loud and asked lots of questions.

One little girl said, “Mrs. Jenkins, is that the kind of cow that makes milk like I put on my cereal?”

“No,” Mrs. Jenkins said. “That’s the kind of cow that makes hamburgers like we’re eating for lunch.”

The little girl rolled her eyes. She was a vegetarian. Her mommy said that hamburgers would give her cholesterol. The little girl didn’t know what “cholesterol” meant, but since she already had cooties, she wanted to be extra careful.

The Cow felt trapped in the zoo. Lonely. Of course, most animals feel trapped in a zoo. That’s why it’s called a zoo and not a forest or a farm.

The Cow, however, didn’t feel trapped because of the gate. He wasn’t lonely because he didn’t get to visit faraway farms and factories like the country cows did.

The Cow felt trapped because the children and their questions reminded him that he would always be a cow. No matter how hard he tried, he would never be as special as the Panda or as interesting as the Zebra. He would never climb a tree or race like the wind. He didn’t like bamboo, and whenever he wore stripes, they only accentuated his already round belly. The most the Cow could hope for in life was a fresh bail of hay, a vague fantasy about a stampede, and a bell around his neck ringing to remind everyone that he was a big fat cow.

And so the Cow spent every day eating his grass – ignored and ordinary – feeling like a cow in the zoo.

**

One day a Chinese woman came to the zoo and stopped to look in the Panda’s cage. She yawned when all the Panda did was pose and point and eat bamboo. The Chinese woman wondered if the zookeeper might have any ideas for keeping Pandas out of her backyard. It made her angry every time she saw one of the black-and-white beasts snacking on her serenity garden.

An African man seemed mildly impressed with the Zebra, but in a hungry way that made the Zebra nervous.

Later that day a little boy came to the zoo wearing blue jeans held up by a belt with an impressive silver buckle. The boy walked past the Panda and didn’t care much for the Zebra. But at the Cow’s pasture he stopped and watched for the longest time.

He stood next to the Chinese woman as she tried to offer the Cow a piece of her hot-dog. She seemed disappointed when he refused.

An African man behind the boy whistled so the Cow would run and play, but the Cow didn’t want to run and play. Especially not when someone whistled at him.

But when the boy saw the Cow he didn’t take pictures or point. He didn’t poke his hand through the fence or make loud noises. Instead, he watched. He watched until long after the Chinese woman and the African man left.

The boy wasn’t impressed by the Cow, but he didn’t need to be. He knew that it’s better to understand something than to be impressed by it. And he already understood the Cow. Little boys wearing belts with big silver buckles usually do.

The Cow ate his grass and watched the little boy watching him. After a long while he finally realized what the Panda and Zebra never would.

When someone really understands you, your cage doesn’t seem so small.

Christmas in Five Acts

2009-02-11T14:07:00.007-06:00

I realize that Christmas 2008 was thrown out with the wrapping paper almost two months ago. But as many of you know, the last year has been . . . well, transitional. Chaotic. Hopefully you’ll forgive me for posting an out-of-season story that I’ve only just finished. If you do, I’ll forgive you for wearing white after Labor Day. -b

Act 1. The Problem:
Even though the last days of December are already hectic for both Santa and Jesus, I thought it was appropriate to tell history's two most popular people what happened. Since neither seems overly concerned with justice, I feel it's necessary for someone to help them update their naughty lists during the busy season.

Of course, I don't fault them with what happened. I understand that neither Jesus nor his party planner spend much time watching locker rooms at the YMCA - especially at Christmas. To do so would almost certainly be a violation of the omniscience that has made them each famous.

But that doesn't excuse the fact that I was robbed.

Act 2. The Setting:
My sister’s Christmas tree was spectacular, planted in a mulch of ribbons and wrapping paper, blooming with a hundred colored bulbs. Angels and snowmen nested in branches drooping with a harvest of fragile glass balls. The poor thing should have been the happiest tree on earth.

Kathy is a good mother. She waters her children regularly. They're so hydrated they sometimes leak at night. She even gives Santa, who only stops by for a few minutes each year, a glass of warm milk and cookies. The Christmas tree, however, endured its three week stay in my sister's house without her offering it the smallest sip of water.

For all its decoration, the tree might as well have been a princess parading through a dessert - dressed for a banquet, but dying of thirst. Parched, it probably spent the entire Christmas season wondering how an eight foot evergreen transplanted to a suburban living room and covered with flashing lights could possibly be forgotten by a family of four.

Sadly, it happens – especially at Christmas.

Act 3. The Situation:
Children’s minds get cluttered at Christmas. At least twice during the holidays they need to have their brains washed to clear the visions of sugarplums out of their heads. Bloody slasher movies do the trick, but most parents prefer things like playgrounds, trampolines, bike rides, and basketball.

Four days before Christmas, Kathy told her kids that they were going to the swimming pool and Uncle Bryan was coming too. The Children cheered and changed their clothes. The Christmas tree sighed.

“Mammals,” it thought, “have all the fun.”

It was right. Four days before Christmas, we went swimming.

Act 4. The Stupidity
Does Santa lock his sleigh so kids out after curfew don’t swipe his pack of smokes off the passenger seat?

Did Mary lock the manger door to keep loitering shepherds from stealing her family’s new stash of gold, frankincense, and myrrh?

Do the elves lock their toys in a trunk every time the Tooth Fairy comes for a visit?

No. Of course not.

In a similar spirit of blissful trust and unintentional generosity, when we went to the pool I didn’t lock my locker.

Act 5. The Scandal:
The kids who stole my cash didn't care if Santa watched when they were sleeping. According to a Christmas carol loophole, by day he only knew they were awake.

If the details of their waking lives, and therefore their hopes for a coal-free Christmas morning, were protected by this technicality – why shouldn't they help themselves to the contents of a stranger's wallet?

Answer: Even if he wasn't watching when they opened my locker door, Santa will see the aspiring young convicts at the mall next year. When he does, he'll wonder where they got the money to buy those new shoes he wasn't asked to make and he'll know why they no longer need his services.

So don’t forget, little thieves, your name never gets crossed off his list. It only gets moved to a different column. This is where the two Christmas patriarchs part company. Santa holds a grudge.

Close Enough

2009-02-03T17:19:00.004-06:00

Everybody has an airport story – that excruciating tale of waiting on the runway for four hours that's unique to everyone we know.

They’re among our favorite stories to tell because we’ve rehearsed them so often, perfected their timing and developed their characters. We can perfectly describe both the woman who filled two seats in row three and the man who somehow lost his barf bag. During each of our repeat performances, we remain confident that nobody can compare turbulence to a roller coaster quite like we can. Our accounts typically begin with subtle and understated openings like, “Not long ago I had to fly to . . .” and end with the self-conscious clincher, “well, it was just terrible.”

We usually tell these stories at parties, not because they’re particularly interesting or original, but because someone else opens the door with their own travel nightmare. And even though everyone in the kitchen is bored with the subject as soon as they’ve told their own tale, we’re convinced they’re still listening on the edge of their seats, sitting in an upright and locked position while we finish a monologue about our luggage being lost.

“Well,” we say, “it was just terrible.”

And by the time we’ve finished talking, everyone agrees. That really was just terrible.

**

After a recent trip to visit my family in Nashville, I was scheduled to land at New York’s LaGuardia airport. Half-way through the flight, 40,000 feet over impending doom, the pilot made the following announcement:

“Excuse me ladies and gentlemen. Please pardon the interruption, but we’re experiencing a few technical difficulties we’d like to make you aware of. Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with the plane. But our brakes don’t seem to be working . . . “

Being a man of words, I quickly applied an editorial ear to this announcement and gleaned the following key phrases. One of them feels a bit conspicuous, like it doesn’t belong with the others. You have to bend its corners to make it fit. Can you guess which one?

1. We’re experiencing technical difficulties
2. There’s nothing wrong with the plane
3. Our brakes don’t seem to be working

If we’re (1) experiencing technical difficulties and our (3) brakes don’t seem to be working, then it logically follows that there is something wrong with the plane. Feeding a metal tube full of passengers that small spoonful of sugar does not help the medicine go down.

I wonder if the captain of the Titanic, the pilot of the Hindenburg, or any of the Space Shuttle Challenger crew ever started a speech with “there’s nothing wrong with our ship, but...”

Consider a mother panda telling her tear stained daughter, “sweetheart, there’s no need to worry. We’re not going extinct... but there’s a reason you don’t have any friends.”

Or Santa mentioning during a staff meeting, “you all know that global warming is a complete ho-ho-hoax... but I was thinking that maybe we should make our uniforms with shorter sleeves next year.”

Or a Native American man saying to his son, “the nice white people said they don’t want our land... but if you were going to pack your four favorite things into a box, which four things would you choose?”

The “but” serves the same purpose in these speeches as it does on the human body. It’s just fleshy nonsense that does nothing but cushion an impending blow to your backside.

After the announcement, a wave of quiet panic swept through the cabin. The woman filling two seats in aisle three tightened her already strained seatbelt. A man holding a curious smelling sack excused himself from row twelve. While most of the passengers wondered why oxygen masks hadn’t already fallen from the ceiling, the passenger sitting in my seat wondered how the pilot discovered our brakes weren’t working.

Did he tap the left pedal and notice a sluggish response? Considering that objects in motion tend to stay in motion, would that really be cause for alarm? I suspect that driving a 400 ton passenger jet is not unlike managing a nuclear conflict – once it’s started, it’s probably difficult to stop – and for good reason. Principals like inertia, momentum, and gravity dictate that stopping suddenly at several thousand feet is an exceptionally bad idea. To be no longer moving forward is to be quickly moving downward. Stories of airplanes stopping suddenly usually end with words like “crash” and “tragedy.”

The pilot, however, wanted us to stop not immediately, but sometime shortly after reaching the airport. Unfortunately, the airport was as much of a problem as our broken airplane. The runways at New York’s LaGuardia Airport are apparently too short for a 400 ton jet hitting the ground at 160 mph to stop using only its emergency brakes. Errant planes at LaGuardia coast off the end of the pavement and drop into the East River, never to be seen again.

In an effort to save 200 passengers the trouble of using their seat cushions as flotation devices, our pilot radioed the tower and requested that our flight be re-routed to New York’s JFK airport, where the runways are longer and don’t force emergency brakes to work under such impossible deadlines.

Geographically, the change wasn’t significant. It wasn’t as if LaGuardia closed unexpectedly and forced planes to land in Los Angeles, 3000 miles away. Our flight was simply re-routed from one side of the city to the other. Only twelve miles apart, LaGuardia and JFK are as close to each other as a person’s elbows are to his knees. The same taxis, trains and shuttles connect them both to New York’s mid-section, home to the city’s Empire State Belly Button – one of the largest outies in the world.

Despite our broken brakes, several passengers seemed concerned not that we might experience a rough landing, but that the inflatable slide might dump us out at the wrong airport.

A college student pressed her call button and asked the already frazzled stewardess, “But what about our luggage? I mean, how are we supposed to get our bags?”

The stewardess paused and inhaled deeply through her nose. “The pilot thought it would be best if we all arrived together,” she said, “so he had your luggage re-routed to JFK as well.”

“Oh,” the girl said. “good.”

**

When our plane finally bumped onto the runway, several people jerked awake from long in-flight naps. They wondered why their fellow passengers applauded and cheered when the plane finally pulled to a stop. Were the lights and sirens escorting us down the runway celebrating ours as the one-millionth landing? Would there be prizes? Would we each be awarded a free membership in the mile-high club?

As old men stretched and young women collected their belongings, the pilot made his second big announcement of the evening. First he confirmed that we had just landed safely at JFK, stopping well before the end of the runway. He then announced that the airline had arranged for a shuttle to take us to LaGuardia.

A few tourists smiled, obviously believing this was good news.

The rest of us wondered, why would we ride a crowded bus to LaGuardia when for $2 the subway will take us from here to anywhere we want to go?

“Must we take the shuttle,” a passenger asked. “Will it be possible to retrieve our luggage and leave from here?”

“No,” came the reply. “According to FAA regulations, all luggage must be loaded onto the new airplane that will fly us to LaGuardia.”

Airplane? Fly? Had the airline that charged $25 for each of our bags and would soon deny us a small cup of free soda really arranged for an airplane to fly us the final 12 miles to LaGuardia?

According to the pilot whom we applauded only moments before, the answer was yes. He assured us, however, that this would be a relatively simple process:

As soon as our replacement plane landed (45 minutes) and it’s passengers unloaded (20 minutes), the cabin would be cleaned (15 minutes) and our luggage would be transferred while we re-boarded the new plane (30 minutes). We would then wait for clearance to take off (25 minutes) before we flew the final 12 miles to LaGuardia.

In other words, it would take the new airplane over two hours to shuttle us 12 miles.

A handicapped toddler could carry our luggage to LaGuardia faster than that.

This news raised the terror alert on our flight from an ever-present orange to a more realistic red. Even the love-starved co-ed with a boyfriend waiting at the wrong airport threatened to join our mutiny against the shuttle. In our solidarity, we would not allow the airline to hold our luggage hostage. We would not fall victim to their ill-conceived customer service. We would not add two needless hours to this already nightmarish trip.

Like Moses and Martin Luther King, Jr., we fought for our freedom.

“We have a right to ride the subway,” we cried.
“You can’t force us to the back of a bus!”
“Let our luggage go!”

When a stewardess started to cry, however, everything settled down quite a bit.

In reality, the angry passengers who complained did it mostly to each other. Their shouts were little more than the mumblings of tired and passive-aggressive passengers. A man in first class might have threatened to sharpen his seat-belt buckle into a shiv, but to my knowledge he never followed through with his plan.

Eventually, the jetway extended. Overhead compartments emptied as passengers shuffled to the front of the plane. A gate agent met us in the terminal. “Your luggage will be delivered to carousel three,” he said. “You win. You’re all free to go home.”

“But why,” he asked. “Why all the commotion? LaGuardia’s not that far away.”

An exhausted mother turned and smiled, wearily. “Sometimes,” she said, “when you don’t land where you thought you would – close is close enough.”

**

Once upon a time I would have called this attitude “under achieving.” I would have argued that as people built with divine purpose, we weren’t meant to smile wearily when life stops 12 miles short of where we think it should.

But that was back when things like potential and possibility seemed more definite than they really are – when the future was clear because it was still far away.

Now that the future is right in front of me, it’s terribly hazy.

Now I find myself asking my God and my resume’ to shuttle me safely to where I think I belong – to a patch of greener grass that I always assumed was mine. But maybe it isn’t mine. Maybe it never was. Maybe this patch of greener grass was grown for me.

Sometimes, when you don’t land where you thought you would, close is close enough.

Five. a fiction

2008-10-02T18:50:00.004-05:00

For most people, birthdays are a Christmas you aren’t forced to share with anyone. On your birthday, you are celebrated for your own nativity – rewarded for a day you don’t remember. Friends carol you over cake as wise men and grandparents bring presents from afar. “Blow out the candles!” party guests yell, celebrating your good fortune, knowing the cake won’t be cut until you make a wish.

Gracie looked especially forward to the day that marked the end of her fourth year and the beginning of her fifth. Honestly, though, it wasn’t the new age that thrilled her most. It wasn’t the upcoming presents, the candles or the cake that kept her awake at night. She looked forward to the day of frenzied children running through her house, but that wasn’t what inspired her countdown. Gracie was excited because she had already done the birthday math and added all the elements into one very special event.

Her party.

Gracie invited everyone to her birthday party, including (but not limited to) the boys and girls in her class at school, the lady who cut Mommy’s hair, the children she played with at church, two people at the grocery store, the postman, and a confused cashier at McDonalds.

Her Mommy and Daddy would be there, of course. They even promised to let her help hang balloons before everyone arrived. Her brother would spend the day entertaining guests with magic tricks. Her cousin would cry. Mimi would take pictures and BobBob would play his guitar while her friends sang “Happy birthday to you – happy birthday to you – happy birthday dear Gracie . . .”

Everyone would be there – except Uncle Bryan.

Nobody loved Gracie like Uncle Bryan did. He told her so every time they played together. Uncle Bryan read stories to her and played dolls with her and pushed swings for her and caught her when she jumped into the swimming pool like a big girl.

Gracie knew that Uncle Bryan wasn’t coming to her party. She remembered the goodbye sleepover at his house. She remembered drawing pictures on the boxes so Uncle Bryan would remember her when he got to his new city. Gracie knew that Uncle Bryan moved to New York. What Gracie didn’t understand was that New York was more than a birthday party away.

And so, when her mommy interrupted the party to say that someone on the phone wanted to talk to her, Gracie squealed with delight.

“Uncle Bryan!” she screamed across the country, “When are you coming to my party?”

Before he could answer Uncle Bryan heard his sister intervene.

“Sweetheart, Uncle Bryan called to tell you happy birthday because he can’t come to your party.”

“But he promised!” Gracie protested, excited differently than before.

Of course, Uncle Bryan was smart enough not to make promises to little girls that he couldn’t keep. “Gracie,” her mommy said, “Uncle Bryan promised he would come home for Christmas, not your birthday.”

Unfortunately, Gracie had already wrapped her birthday with paper, piled it with presents and filled it with pictures and playing.

“It’s the same thing!” she demanded.

Before the adults could correct her, Gracie turned away, pressing the phone tight against her face. Uncle Bryan was asking her if she could keep a secret, even though he knew she couldn’t. The whispered conversation filled Gracie with more excitement than she could hold. Forgetting a promise made to her uncle only seconds before, Gracie ran through the house shouting the news:

“Uncle Bryan said he’s coming to my party!”

Some secrets are simply too big to fit inside a little girl at a birthday party.

Mommy tilted her head and smiled. Gracie noticed that it was the same smile Mommy used every time her brother said he was going to be a magician when he grew up. The mommy knew, of course, that little girls who play with dolls are sometimes prone to invent conversations. The voices in their heads, while entertaining, are seldom accurate.

Fuzzy Bear asked for sugar in his tea.
Puppy said he isn’t feeling well.
Mr. Whiskers told me he likes it when I cut his hair.
Uncle Bryan said he’s coming to my party.

While all such sentences may sound equally unlikely, parents who hang stockings over fireplaces, fill baskets with chocolate and eggs, and encourage their children to hide discarded teeth under their pillows should be careful when debunking the fantasies of small children.

Mommy reached down to take the phone from Gracie, but Gracie had already folded it in half, ending the call.

“Gracie, sweetheart,” Mommy said, “you must have misunderstood.”

Gracie, however, wasn’t listening to her. She was busy inspecting the cake and asking Mimi to cut her another piece.

“Gracie, did your mother say you could have another piece of cake?”

“No. It’s for Uncle Bryan,” Gracie said. “We need to save him some.”

Mommy and Mimi exchanged a look that wasn’t quite as far over Gracie’s head as they must have thought.

“Gracie,” Mimi said, “I know you miss Uncle Bryan.”

She paused, the short silence undermining her confidence. She missed Uncle Bryan, too. When it was manageable, Mimi continued, “but do you remember what Mommy told you this morning? Uncle Bryan lives too far away to come to your party.”

“But he said to save him a piece of cake!”

Despite her best efforts to include them in her joy, the grown-ups continued trying to keep Gracie’s hopes from getting too high. Didn’t they understand that hopes are supposed to be high at a birthday party? They even tried to distract Gracie with presents, a tactic proven successful by generations of parents, but Gracie said she would wait to open them until Uncle Bryan arrived.

“Honey, this one’s from me and your mother,” her father said. “Don’t you want to open it?”

“No! Uncle Bryan is coming to my party!”

Gracie almost never got to say “I told you so.” Little girls seldom do. It’s not that they’re always wrong, as some girls grow to believe, but when you’re five years old it’s seldom that you are ever more right than anyone else – a fact that everyone else seems acutely aware of.

Uncle Bryan’s present, the best Gracie would receive that day, happened during those five minutes before the doorbell rang.

or more

2008-08-11T10:53:00.009-05:00

Shopping at a 99¢ Store should be easy, even for the mathematically illiterate. At a 99¢ Store, the number of items in your basket always equals the number of dollars you need. There are no price tags or sale stickers. A bottle of dishwashing detergent, two boxes of Oreos, a roll of gift wrap, and some toothpaste can all be purchased together with a $5 bill. If you want to know how much something costs, you ask the kid behind the counter who then rolls his eyes and wonders if you're making fun of him.

"ninety nine cents," he says, looking down at the one boring button on his cash register.

Unfortunately, the ease of the 99¢ Store changed when crude oil magically raised the price of everything.

An example of this change, my neighborhood 99¢ Store recently introduced both a new name and a new marketing strategy. One day the owner masking-taped the words or more under each of his 99¢ signs, giving every off-brand item in the store a raise and a promotion. Now, instead of being an encouragement, the posters serve as a warning. "Be careful," they say. "Everything here is at least a dollar."

Despite the change, the 99¢ or more Store's aisles remain full of shoppers turned archeologists, each digging through shelves packed full of beanie babies and dental floss, all searching for the elusive good deal. I don't know why they try so hard. The signs overhead are perfectly clear. Everything in the store is 99¢ or more, just like everywhere else.

What has the 99¢ or more Store taught my neighborhood? Is it a lesson in inflation or an encouragement to advertise honestly? Maybe. Mostly, though, I think the 99¢ or more Store shows that you shouldn't assign yourself a label that you can't live up to.

But if you do, don't worry. You're probably worth more than you thought.

Build a Memory. Build a Bear.

2008-07-22T21:47:00.010-05:00

There’s a copper-toned Queen in New York Harbor who, until recently, happily greeted visitors to the shores of our promised land. She now sits on Ellis Island politely checking green cards and work visas, reminding the huddled masses to wipe their feet on the way in, worried they might stay too long.

One of my roommates, Eimear, arrived in America three weeks ago from Ireland. She didn’t arrive by boat and has yet to visit Lady Liberty. In fact, Eimear isn’t even planning to say long, but would like to work while she’s here.

In order to work in the United Sates, however, non-citizens need three things:

1. Valid identification
2. Work visa
3. United States social security number

Even though she has an appropriate passport and visa, Eimear is having as difficult a time being issued a social security card as many of us will have collecting social security benefits.

This is especially unfortunate because Eimear might have found a job at the Build-A-Bear Workshop, a toy store where children design and construct their own stuffed bears. Build-A-Bear is the salad bar of toy stores, and as soon as she’s issued a social security number, Eimear will begin walking children through their bear buffet in Times Square.

(Times Square is an exciting chaos of light and sound where most tourists take their first bite from the Big Apple. Like the strip in Las Vegas, the French Quarter in New Orleans, and the McDonalds in Montana, Times Square is the social center of our city. Sinatra once sang that “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” The same holds true for a child wanting to build a bear at the Build-A-Bear Workshop in Times Square. Can he/she make one there? Yes. With over 200 locations in malls nationwide, can he/she also make one anywhere? Same answer. Yes.)

After completing all the necessary paperwork, Eimear arrived at the Build-A-Bear Workshop at 10:45, fifteen minutes before her scheduled 11:00 interview. Eimear didn’t realize, however, that you don’t interview to work at the Build-A-Bear Workshop, you audition. This audition is held for a group of twenty candidates and includes, but is not limited to:

• An oral recitation of the Build-A-Bear pledge, from memory.
• An improvised group presentation entitled: “Build a memory. Build a Bear.”
• A personal testimony covering “my definition of teamwork,” “a time when I touched someone’s life,” and “what makes me special.”
• A 150 question ethics exam meant to evaluate whether or not the potential bear builder might one day qualify for relocation to Santa’s Workshop.

One applicant was so overcome by her own “a time when I touched someone’s life” story that, weeping, she had to be escorted from the room. Perhaps behind closed doors the interviewer told the girl that the Build-A-Bear Workshop would probably be too emotionally demanding an environment for someone with her sensitive temperament.

Or, she might have immediately been named employee of the month.

Eimear wasn’t as fortunate. After the three hour audition / interview, Eimear arrived at our apartment emotionally exhausted.

“How did it go,” I asked.

“I didn’t offer to work for free like the crying girl did, but I think it went quite well.”

“The crying girl? What crying girl?”

“The one who told a story about how she touched someone’s life by shaving her head because her friend went bald. I don’t know. I was fighting a wicked hangover and was having quite a hard time paying attention through her blubbering.”

“You interviewed at a toy store with a hangover?!”

Despite her condition at the interview (and after two subsequent call-backs), Eimear was offered a job at the Build-A-Bear Workshop – and she should have been. Even at her worst, Eimear is magnificent.

Even Eimear, however, doesn’t deny the irony of her own story.

Arriving hung-over at a Build-A-Bear interview is like showing up pregnant for a Snow White audition. The same rules apply.

In a world where image is everything, smile.
It’s what’s on the outside that counts.

sing.

2008-07-15T18:26:00.008-05:00

New York is a city where I can’t sing out loud.
Crazy People can. And do.
Street Performers can. And do.
Broadway Actors can. And do.

But I have four roommates and no car.

Singing aloud between home and work only gets me glares on the subway
with Crazy People
and Street Performers
and Broadway Actors
and others who can. And do.

New York is a city where I can’t sing out loud.
But my voice will be heard, even in this city of sound.

law

2008-07-13T21:12:00.002-05:00

“That’s a beautiful church,” I said, and he thought so too.
“What’s that the billboard says?”
Luntz, Elder, and Stern, attorneys at law.
“They must be doing well to afford a church. What kid of law do you think they practice?”
In a church? These days, it’s hard to tell.

One Way Ticket

2008-06-27T19:58:00.005-05:00

$300 is a lot to pay for 1.5 hours of mediocre entertainment. I've known people who paid less money for a few minutes of fun and at least got a sexually transmitted souvenir. Today all I got was a small Diet Coke with very large ice and a stewardess demanding that I discontinue the use of my portable electronic device.

But the change of scenery was worth it.

growth

2008-06-26T09:32:00.004-05:00

Today I emptied the pots.

Five will be filled with new dirt and new plants and live with my sister. Rosemary and Thyme will stay with me, if they survive.

These two herbs that I love best were packed into a moving pod this morning. It will be a week before they arrive at our new home. A week without water. A week without wind. A week without sun. I pray for them, my herbal Anne Frank and Corrie Ten Boom, suffering in their hot hiding place. I hope they survive. I think they might. Maybe.

Their brothers, Oregano and Sage, were left behind. Like orphans of the apocalypse, they will wait. I will not return. I abandoned them along a fence in a pile of their own earth. I hope they take root, turn wild, and grow. If it rains enough, and soon, I think they might. Maybe.

This will be a long journey of hot mornings and many miles. There will be new seasons and new sunlight from a new sky. I wonder who and what will survive.

Oil Cap

2008-06-25T08:28:00.004-05:00

My car is red. It accepts both oil and gasoline, but each into different receptacles. Its tires, like most of our recent presidents, should be changed at least once every four years. Other than which radio stations are pre-set to which buttons, this is everything I know about the mechanics of my Jeep.

And so, when the Lube Pro told me today that my oil cap was missing, I smiled and asked, “is the oil cap something that fits on top of the engine or underneath it?”

“On top,” he said.

“Does that mean that unless my car rolls over, the oil will stay where it’s supposed to be?”

“No,” he said and swiped my credit card.

**

Gary, the man at the auto parts store, was only slightly less helpful.

“I need an oil cap for my 2001 Jeep Wrangler.”

“Engine?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

Gary sighed, unamused.

“How big?”

Such a personal question. I told him, but in a whisper.

Gary disappeared between the shelves and returned a few minutes later, carrying my new oil cap.

“I should probably know this already, but where exactly does this thing fit?”

Gary paused, judging me.

“On your valve cover.”

“Oh . . .”

Another pause.

“The valve cover? Where exactly is that?”

More silence.

“It’s right on top of your head.”

On top of my head? Really? It seems like I would have noticed it there somewhere between my last rinse and repeat.

Apparently the “head” has something to do with the "engine block,” which is essentially the same thing as the “engine,” only with the word “block” attached. Until today, I had no idea how much mechanics have in common with politicians, preachers, and physicians.

Since Gary was determined to show his knowledge without sharing it, I walked into the parking lot alone, lifted my hood, and looked for a hole that needed capping.

I found it, all by myself.

extra credit kid

2008-06-01T20:41:00.005-05:00

My new friend Leah can’t speak sign-language, but she could when she was young.

When she was ten, Leah’s 5th grade teacher used the hour after lunch to teach her class the beautiful language of the deaf. Even though everyone in the class could hear – even though they all listened to their radios at home and turned their TVs louder than their mothers would have liked – this particular over-achieving educator decided she wanted her class to know sign language. She wanted to teach their still innocent hands how to do something constructive. She wanted them to learn gestures that would communicate without offending the elderly. She wanted them to learn sign language.

The children loved it. Once, during a silent game of Ring Around the Rosie, they even got so rowdy that the teacher had to remind them to use their inside hands.

After the first week of silent speaking lessons, one of the 5th graders told the teacher that his grandmother was deaf. He said that everyone in his family knew how to speak sign language. He had been doing it for years. Sometimes, before bed, he even used his hands to read out loud to his grandmother.

But not the Bible. All the whosoevers and wherefores made his knuckles crack.

The teacher was amazed. Like an exotic exchange student from a faraway (and quiet) land, the boy was a native who already knew the language. He was a natural tutor. And so she offered bonus points to any child who spent time with the boy whose hands could talk.

He was the extra credit kid.

Apparently, within hours of the teacher’s edict, the extra credit kid became the most popular kid in class. His lunch table was always full. His seat was always saved. He never spent recess jumping rope by himself.

Every afternoon the extra credit kid leapt off a bus full of friends, eager to tell his grandmother how popular he was at school. With exhausted fingers he bragged about how everyone wanted to spend time with him because he was good at something. Because he knew something. Because he could do something no one else could.

Because he was extra credit.

***

I heard the story of the extra credit kid on a Saturday, three days before an important job interview. Although Leah lost contact with the boy sometime during puberty, I found myself needing to believe that in his epilogue the extra credit kid passed from the 5th grade into adulthood as a successful worker, a confident lover, and a compassionate friend all because someone was wise enough to recognize his extra credit.

“Hitler was a nasty exception,” I convinced myself. “Most people really do look to see the potential in other people. The extra credit kid lived happily ever after. So will I.”

Three days later, I changed my mind.

Sitting on a park bench an hour after the unfortunate interview, I thought about the extra credit kid and was forced to wonder what happened when he crossed back from extra to ordinary. What did he do when the children all mastered singing Happy Birthday with their hands and didn’t need him anymore? How did he react when the teacher’s arthritis forced her to stop teaching sign-language and start teaching something more practical, like meteorology?

After a month of mailed resumes and more silence than response, I need to know what the kid did when he stopped being extra credit. I need to know what he told his grandmother that night, after a day of learning about weather systems, an hour sitting alone at the lunch table, and a recess spent jumping rope by himself.

Did her ever find that calling, that hobby, or that unexpected other person who reminded him that he is still, and will always be, extra credit?

For all of our sakes, I hope so.

Big and Old

2008-05-22T16:55:00.004-05:00

It seems that people, finite and small, are generally fascinated by anything bigger or older than we are. God, dinosaurs, and outer space all capture us with their mystery because they’re too large and too ancient for us to understand.

While I love the universe and its existential enormity, my small, insecure ego sometimes wonders how the universe feels about me. We’ve never actually had a conversation about it. A sub-freezing void freckled with black holes and imploding stars doesn’t exactly seem welcoming. I’ve noticed, however, that when governments send astronauts up into outer space, the universe doesn’t usually spit them back out.

That must be a good sign.

And as interesting as dinosaurs are, I think we only feel comfortable studying them because the fossils we find buried underground seem to have lost their enormous appetites. Otherwise, I’m not sure 5th graders would be very excited about writing book reports on gigantic monsters that eat scientists.

And God? I’m still trying to figure him out. He’s big. And old. But I’m almost certain there’s nothing to be afraid of.

thinking inside the box

2008-05-19T17:25:00.003-05:00

Everything that’s not in a box ought to be.

One day this room will be clean.
Completely clean.
The floor will be empty.
The walls will be bear.
The clutter clear.

And then it will all move to a fresh floor.
In a fresh room.
In a fresh place.

My chaos in a cardboard box.

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Short Shelves

2008-05-18T17:11:00.008-05:00

Today is the fourth Tuesday of the month, a death day. Sometimes I stay home on the morning of the fourth Tuesday and chat with my exterminator when he comes to squirt poison on the baseboards, but today I don’t feel like making small talk with an almost-stranger. Today is a quiet day. Today is an alone day. Today is a day when I feel like scurrying into a social corner to hide and hope nobody finds me. Since Phil, my exterminator, has a key to my house, there’s no need for me to stay home just to open a door he can unlock for himself. And so, this morning I ran away from home. I left a check on the counter to pay the assassin for his services, packed my computer, and escaped to the library to read and write and watch the books.

It’s a little overwhelming to sit in the library and write, surrounded by so many words that have been used so well for so long. Writing here makes me feel small, like a little boy singing “row, row, row your boat” while the Boston Philharmonic roars in the background. I feel like I’m crashing a party, trying to maintain conversation with sophisticated strangers I’ve watched and admired my whole life while stuttering foolishly about how much I love them and how I’ve read all of their work and how I wish I could be as wise and eloquent as they are. The library is intimidating. I feel insecure and inadequate here. All the clever phrases and elegant ideas that live on these shelves are gracious to let me sit quietly and scribble on my pad while they whisper their magic around me.

If I look across the library’s horizon of bookshelves, my eye moves from right to left across the tall skyscrapers of adult fiction, biography, and science & technology to the squatty suburbs of children’s literature at the far end of the room. In this section, where the books turn tall and skinny, their bookcases shorten to accommodate the limited reach of curious children. In the children’s section the shelves are low and proportional to the small readers who wander through them. Adult visitors to the library might have to ask where in the grown-up sections they can find Stephen King, Stephen Hawking, or a history of World War II, but it’s obvious where Dr. Seuss lives. He’s right across from Peter Pan and two books down from Curious George. He lives where the shelves turn short, in the children’s section of the local library.

Librarians put these short shelves in the children’s section not because they want to be condescending to young readers, but because they realize a child can’t read what he can’t reach; and he won’t reach for what he can’t see. They learn this logic in library school where the classes are quiet and everyone sits according to the Dewy Decimal System. Smart librarians know that there’s no point in putting a book over a child’s head. If you do, he’ll assume that what is out of his reach is also beyond his grasp. And then he’ll get frustrated and go home and play video games instead.

I must admit, I miss the days of the short shelves, when everything was easy to reach and easy to read. Today I remind myself that while there is wisdom to be found on the high shelves of philosophy and history, theology and ethics – wisdom need not hide in shadowy corners full of mice and fear. There is also truth close to the ground and well within reach. Incarnate. Full of color and life. And short sentences. And easy words. And joy.

Portrait with a Stranger

2008-05-16T20:49:00.005-05:00

Before the Statue of Liberty started modeling her coppery green gown for the hungry masses, before the Eiffel Tower pretended to pump oil from the ground beneath Paris, before Big Ben became London’s alarm clock – back when the Grand Canyon was just a mediocre valley on the undiscovered side of our pancake planet, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote a travel pamphlet telling the ancient world where they should spend their summer vacations. Shortly after it was published, the seven destinations listed in this pamphlet became widely known as the Seven Wonders of the World. According to Herodotus, even if your kids were screaming in the back of the chariot, even if the Motel 6BC was holding a reservation for you, even if you were down to your last doubloon, these were the seven stops that shouldn’t be missed. These were the vacation spots that Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty saved all their pennies and pebbles to see.

It would be nice to know which landmarks Herodotus held in such high esteem. Unfortunately, along with countless maps and ketchup packets, his original list has been lost in the glove compartment of time. We will never know exactly which wonders the historian chose for his own family vacations. But in the centuries since Herodotus, other world travelers have followed the historian’s example and written numerous other "wonders of the world" lists. We now have The Seven Wonders of the Natural World, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, The Seven Wonders of the Modern World, The Seven Man Made Wonders of the World, and even The Seven Underwater Wonders of the World. Some of the more recent lists writers have even chosen to break with tradition and not limit themselves to seven wonders. Many of their lists are so exhaustive and list so many attractions and make our world seem so wonder full that it seems a wonder we don’t each have our own personal tourist attraction in the backyard.

In September 1999 a movement was made to update one of the traditional Wonders of the World lists. Because most previous lists had been compiled by committees of world travelers and other special interest groups, it was decided that the sight-seeing public should have some input as to the most important and impressive sights on our planet. Thanks to the modern wonder of the World Wide Web, starting in 2001 travelers were given the opportunity to vote online for the tourist attractions they felt were most worthy to be placed on the new list. The twenty finalists included the Statues of Easter Island, Greece’s Acropolis, Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

I had no idea we were having a planet-wide popularity contest until I personally visited Rio de Janeiro and saw their famous Christ the Redeemer statue. Christ the Redeemer is a 130 foot statue of Jesus that overlooks the city of Rio with his arms opened wide, as if he is offering Brazil an oversized hug.

I visited the statue with a group of teenagers during the summer of 2007 after we shared a week long missions experience in Rio. As we patiently waited for the cable car that would tow us up the mountain, my friends and I entertained ourselves by wandering through Christ the Redeemer’s gift shop and photo gallery. Ironically, very little of the tourist information we read on the plaques and posters at the bottom of the Redeemer’s mountain say much about the statue’s religious significance. They tell more about how the statue was built and who built it than why they chose the image of Jesus. Walking through its educational exhibit, it feels as if the monument is an attraction, but the Jesus is an afterthought. In fact, most of the tourists I saw on my visit didn’t seem to be flocking to Christ the Redeemer because he’s the redeemer. It seemed that they stood in line and bought their tickets to see the statue simply because it is over twelve stories tall, is featured in every Brazilian travel brochure, and had been nominated as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

I wonder how Jesus feels about being a tourist attraction?

As we stood in line waiting and talking, one of my friends noticed that on each of our tickets a printed advertisement encouraged tourists to Vote No Cristo (Vote for the Christ). That’s all it said. "Vote for the Christ." In the US, it seems the religious right has been begging voters to do this in every recent election, as if Jesus has taken time out of his busy schedule to run for office in an attempt to set our country straight. But the advertisement on our tickets wasn’t a political statement. Instead, it was Brazil’s campaign for Christ the Redeemer to become one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. In July, 2007, Brazil succeeded. After eight years of campaigning, Jesus made the list. The votes were counted and Jesus was officially voted prom king.

When my friends and I stepped off of the cable car at the top of the mountain, I expected to climb a few stairs and turn a corner to see a grand statue of Jesus standing with his arms opened wide to the world, welcoming the tourists and camera carrying travelers that scurried beneath his enormous feet. I expected to see children holding their mother’s hands and old men wearing shorts and socks with sandals. I expected to see young people carrying backpacks and listening to MP3 players as they took pictures of this wonder of the modern world. I expected to see people either looking at Jesus, looking at the spectacular mountaintop view, or at least looking at each other. In other words, I expected to see people who could see the statue.

That’s why I was surprised by the blind man.

But there he was. Standing at the overlook. Tapping his red-tipped cane against a step. Smiling as the wind whipped his silver gray hair. A blind man.

In my travels, I haven’t encountered many blind sight-seers. The phrase itself seems to belong in a list alongside "jumbo shrimp" and "military intelligence." Maybe I am limited by my own sighted imagination, but I would assume that most traditional sightseeing destinations must have little to offer a blind tourist. Without the benefit of sight, the Grand Canyon must be an enormous disappointment. Sitting shy and quiet in her frame, the Mona Lisa couldn’t possibly live up to her reputation. To a blind traveler, China’s Great Wall probably feels just like every other wall in the world, only with fewer corners.

So why was there a blind man at the Christ the Redeemer statue? Short of climbing 130 feet up Jesus’ soapstone body and running his hands over Christ’s Volkswagen sized face, I couldn’t imagine that the statue could be as captivating to him as it was to me. Even if he stood on a chair with his hands stretched high overhead, the blind man couldn’t have tickled the bottom of The Redeemer’s feet with his red-tipped cane. And since postcards of mountaintop views aren’t usually printed in Braille, why would a blind man spend his day at the statue?

I mean no disrespect to the blind community or to those with friends or family who cannot see. It has just never occurred to me that a blind person might want to pay thirty dollars to ride a cable-car to the top of a mountain and see a statue that he cannot see.

But the blind man wasn’t alone. Holding the hand that wasn’t holding a cane stood a woman. Smiling, the woman guided her husband through the crowd, patiently describing every sight with an animated play-by-play commentary. She swept her free hand through the air in front of her like a game-show beauty showing off today’s fabulous prizes. Slowly, I worked my way toward the couple so I could hear what the woman was saying to her husband. Unfortunately, she spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, a language crafted with unknown letters, strange accents, and odd markings that made it much more exotic than my Tennessee English. But while I couldn’t understand the woman’s words, it wasn’t hard to imagine what she must have been saying to her blind companion . . .

". . . the boats below are so amazing. From here their white sails and gleaming hulls look like specks of sugar scattered across the blue . . ."

". . . over to your left the mountains tumble into the ocean, crashing themselves against the waves. It’s so magnificent! There are children playing on the beach . . ."

She turned toward the statue. "If you can believe it, we’re almost standing in his shadow! He’s the color of fresh baked bread and taller than our apartment building. Up there," she pointed toward the statue with a finger her husband would never see, "a group of gulls are resting on his head! Oh my! Jesus has birds in his hair . . ."

The woman paused for a moment.

". . . He’s not smiling, exactly, but his face is calm and pleasant, like a grandfather watching children play in the backyard. I wish you could see how straight and steady his arms are . . ."

The blind man may not have been able to see the boats below him or watch the waves or look at the statue, but at least he wasn’t alone. Standing in the breeze, he had someone next to him, holding his hand, describing the view, painting pictures with her words. These words could never be adequate, but at least the woman cared enough about her husband not to let him stumble around in the dark.

Armed with his red-tipped cane and trusting the warm touch of his wife, the blind man spent an afternoon tapping his way around the feet of Jesus, able only to guess at the real wonder of Christ the Redeemer standing right in front of him. But for those of us who are followers of the Christ we cannot see, aren’t we all essentially bind men tapping our way around the feet of Jesus? Don’t we all sometimes feel limited and alone, like we’re walking with our eyes closed, unaware of what seems obvious to everyone else? Aren’t we all feeling our way through a faith we don’t completely understand, searching for the wisdom to keep us from stumbling in the dark, looking for the God that we’re told is all around us?

I am ashamed to say that at this point my good-boy manners ran out and I was forced to let the adolescent idiot inside me run free. The beauty of the moment was lost to its irony.

On the crowded observation deck I stood shoulder to shoulder with the blind sight-seer and his wife as they talked about the statue. Thankfully, due to the crowd and chaos, I don’t think the couple noticed when I waved so my friend Joel would turn and see me standing next to them.

If he was listening closely, the blind man might have heard the click of Joel’s camera. If she was paying attention, his wife might have seen its flash. But neither the blind man nor his wife could possibly have known that the grinning tourist having his picture taken next to them didn’t care if Christ the Redeemer could be seen in the background. I didn’t care if the monument was visible behind us. I was much more concerned with the kind, unconsenting couple in the foreground who didn’t know that they were posing for a portrait with a stranger. I wanted to be sure that when the picture snapped, the three of us looked natural, like friends smiling next to each other in the sunshine. I wanted a photo I could put in a frame and talk about at parties.

"Are those your parents," people would ask. "I didn’t know that your dad was . ."

Joel clicked a single digital exposure. Unfortunately, the picture didn’t turn out very well. The blind man blinked.

Shortly after my trip to Rio I met a beautiful blind woman named Lisa who has continued to trust Jesus even after losing her sight as an adult mother of three. Even though she has been forced to deal with challenging new limitations, Lisa’s humor and grace are staggering. She peppers conversations with surprising little statements like, "Do you like my shoes? I think they're cute, don’t you?" Lisa is so confident and comfortable with herself that you find yourself answering her questions before you realize she’s never seen her shoes.

I told Lisa my story of the blind man at the Christ the Redeemer statue and asked her if she could explain why a blind person would spend an hour standing at the base of a statue he would never see.

She said, "You want to trust people when they tell you what they see. But even though you’re blind, you still want to experience things for yourself. You want to be able to say, ’I may not be able to see what’s in front of me. But at least I’m here.’"

I may have no idea of how magnificent and grand the big picture of God truly is. I might be blind to the stunning beauty of His greater plan for creation. Even with my arms stretched high overhead, I am sure I have no idea of how high and wide and deep is the love of God which surrounds me. In fact, most days I feel like I am stumbling around in the dark, tapping my way through a life of faith, blind and questioning, desperate for someone to take my hand and show me a better way, oblivious to the towering Jesus that stands right in front of me.

But at least I’m here.

Stick for Sale

2008-05-16T20:47:00.004-05:00

Today my nephew tried to sell a stick at a yard sale. While I was busy getting rid of coffee mugs, Christmas ornaments, and old shoes, Braden was selling a stick.

Yard sales are essentially eBay in the wild. With card tables. Without computer screens and user names for shoppers to hide behind, yard sales let you watch as people search for treasure in your trash. Standing among tables piled high with unappreciated Christmas presents and neglected what-nots, yard sales give suburban scavengers the freedom to scrutinize rejected possessions and haggle over worthless junk.

Maybe that’s why only the brave among us host these front-yard thrift parties. It takes a certain amount of courage to clean out your closets and decide that you’re willing to build a public display from everything you’ve found in the dark corners of your house. It’s hard to assign value to your own junk. You feel like a monster as submit your cherished Scooby Doo cereal bowls and your sixty-four tape collection of Little House on the Prairie to the cold scrutiny of card tables only to watch as neighbors judge the junk you’ve spent a lifetime collecting.

"I can’t believe you actually own sixty-four tapes full of Little House on the Prairie . . ." your across the street neighbor might say. When he does, he might then turn away and mumble "that’s the most pathetic . . ." Or, the discovery might ignite a spark of something special between you and your neighbor. He could just as easily continue, "So do I! Do you have episode number fifty-three where Pa digs the well . . ."

That’s the risk of displaying your life’s leftovers and intimate secrets for strangers, family, and friends. Sometimes you feel judged as people casually pick through your collected life. But sometimes, when a curious shopper stops to admire a trinket or appreciate what others have ignored, you find comfort in the knowledge that we’ve all collected the same trash.

Of course, most of our yard sale fears are unfounded. Yard-sale scavengers might sometimes be discriminating and judgmental, but they will also buy almost anything for the right price. Before Braden came to visit, I sold a sack of Christmas ornaments and a pair of swim goggles to a bearded man wearing a hat. Apparently, his family is planning to celebrate the holidays by bobbing for Christmas. Around 9:00 I sold a short woman four Tupperware tops without their bottoms. It felt a little indecent. Several people asked if I had any electronics for sale. I said no. I don’t trust people who sell electronics at yard sales.

I even sold a wet suit to a woman who wanted to know if it would keep her dry.

I think God understands when you laugh at yard sale people.

With all this perfectly wonderful junk on display, my nephew tried to help by selling a stick. He found the small branch under a tree where he was busy trying to keep the grass off his shoes. Braden is five years old and doesn’t like to be messy. Freshly cut grass in the morning is messy. It makes your shoes look like nature has thrown confetti all over them and leaves your socks wondering why the rest of you weren't invited to the party.

While Braden wiped the confetti off his size three sneakers, he found the stick. And decided to help.

Braden has always been a good helper. He loves to help you eat the icing off your cake. He likes to help you get wet while he’s taking a bath. He’s also good at helping you play in the backyard. Some children help their parents and teachers only because they’re told to or because they want to be rewarded for their efforts with candy and praise. My nephew, however, is an exception to the candy reward rule. Braden likes to help simply because he wants to be near you while you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing.

On the morning of my yard sale, Braden wanted to help sell all of the things I was either tired of using or shouldn’t have bought in the first place. And a stick.

When he picked up the stick and started to play with it, I couldn’t understand why the child had chosen to entertain himself with a broken tree branch playing with the wonderful junk I was trying to sell. There were four chipped baseball bats and a pile of stuffed animals well within reach. And what child wouldn’t be happy playing in a box of old socks?

"Boys will be boys," I thought as I left Braden to enjoy his stick.

Braden, however, didn’t want to simply play with the stick. He wanted to sell it. Just as I was about to remind the boy that his mother would probably be unhappy if he managed to poke out his eye with a stick, Braden’s attention turned to a Hispanic woman digging through a pile of slightly used shoes. He held the stick out to her as if this particular stick was the most wonderful thing in the world. How have you lived this long without it? It’s just what you need! "Excuse me," he said in his most polite voice. "Do you want to buy this stick?"

The pause that followed was filled with innocent and awkward. Braden stood in the grass with his tiny hand extended, smiling the precious smile of a child who still believes that please is a magic word. While he shuffled his feet in a nervous dance of hope and terror, Braden’s eyes filled with a fear that he will only fully understand the first time he asks for a date or uses the words "I love you."

"Do you want to buy this stick?"

To a five-year-old, a stick is still a treasure, worth a few shiny quarters. It is a magic wand and a baseball bat, a sword and a shovel. It can attack a tree and poke things you’re afraid to touch, including (but not limited to) sleeping dogs, wasp nests, and girls. A good stick is at least as valuable as a tennis racket and more useful than an old waffle iron. It was therefore reasonable for Braden to assume that the old woman might actually want to buy a slightly used stick. She could use it to beat her husband or maybe stir some soup.

Unfortunately, the woman hadn’t used her imagination in a while. It had gotten rusty. She didn’t need a magic wand or a baseball bat, a sword or a shovel. She had no desire to attack a tree or poke a sleeping dog. She didn’t want the stick.

Braden clearly couldn’t understand the woman’s apathy. Why hadn’t she immediately accepted his offer and produced a handful of cash from the infinite mystery that is a mother’s purse? Braden assumed that buried beneath the gum and tissues, mints, makeup and other womanly gadgets, the woman must have had at least two spare quarters that wanted to be spent on a stick. But she wasn’t interested. The woman looked down at Braden like he was offering her a cup of lava or a few dozen mosquito eggs and walked back to her station wagon empty handed, oblivious that she had just rejected a five-year-old child who had only just begun to explore the wonders of a free-market economy.

The woman drove away without realizing that when Braden offered her the stick, he wasn’t really trying to make a sale. He was trying to make a friend. When Braden spoke to the woman, he was essentially asking a question he will continue to ask for the rest of his life.

Is what’s important to me important to you, too?

Is what’s valuable to me valuable to you, too?

Do we both think the same things are beautiful?

Do we both think the same things are funny or clever?

Do the things that break my heart break yours also?

Will you please decide that what I have to offer is valuable and worth your attention?

Would you like to buy this stick?

Whenever we try to find what we have in common with another person, we always risk finding instead what will keep us separate. But if we never risk rejection, we also never risk acceptance.

Fortunately, Braden’s innocence still protects him from the fear and insecurity future years will bring. When the ungrateful woman walked away, Braden didn’t cry or pout or even attack her with his tree sword. Instead, he dropped the branch and took up the new task of cleaning an old file cabinet with a barbecue brush.

Braden doesn’t like for things to be messy.

Later in the day, after Braden went home and the buzzards carried away everything of real value, a few yard sale snobs slowed their cars just long enough to glance at my picked-over tables. When they realized I had nothing they wanted, they sped away, avoiding eye-contact, anxious to find a coffee table the next block over or a few rare records across town. I tried not to let these suburban drive-bys hurt my feelings, but they did. I guess I’m not as secure with myself as Braden is, skipping through the yard with his clean shoes and four-foot bravery.

That’s why, when I walk out of my house every day, I leave everything valuable locked inside, hidden behind closed curtains and doors. If people had full access to my history, I’m afraid they might find all the memories that have filled my past, the stories that have built my present, and casually disregard them as unimportant or uninteresting.

"Would you like to buy this stick?"

If people were free to wander through my closets, I am scared they might poke thorough the boxes and uncover all the secrets I've wrapped so carefully and packed away in safe places on high shelves. I am afraid they will decide that I just have too much junk. The work isn’t worth it. And I can’t risk that. My confidence, like interest rates and my property value, is simply too fragile.

"I know it’s not particularly flashy or brilliant. It’s terribly ordinary. But it’s the best stick I have."

Sometimes I wonder if people understand that every conversation, every joke, every story, and every smile is essentially one person offering himself to another person, posing the same basic question. Every awkward silence, every nervous laugh, every spoken or written word is really me asking in my most polite voice,

Do you want what I have to offer?

Will you see that I am valuable?

Would you like to buy this stick?

I ask these questions hoping you will see that I am not just dead wood, broken and useless. If you look close enough you will find that I am also a sword, a shovel, and a magic wand. I am a child. A lover. A sometimes failure. I am even reasonably useful if you use your imagination. I can dig a hole or stir some soup. Or be your friend.

Would you like to buy this stick?

Before you answer, I need for you to close your eyes and use your imagination. I need for you to be willing to look into my deep darkness, and sadness, and fear, and hurt, and hope and not cringe or laugh at what you find there. I need for you to realize that every house has a closet full of unappreciated treasures and misunderstood trinkets. And trash. I need for you to understand that sharing those things with the world is scary.

Very scary.

And so, if one day I gain the courage of a five year old and really offer myself to you, please don’t walk away. I might not handle the rejection as well as Braden did.

Would you like to buy a stick?