Connecting The Dots - Part 1

I was going to make a really bad attempt at humor today. The plan was to talk about my experience with a colonoscopy a few weeks ago. This was going to be the "I got anal probed in my sleep and I wasn't even abducted by aliens" post, but I've since thought better of that. Lucky you.

Instead let me tell you a tale. A tale of how I got to here. I call it connecting the dots. Milan Kundera called it "The Seven Unlikely Events Without Which We Would Never Have Fallen In Love" (thank you Haven.) Usually I play the game backwards where I'll start with a person and end up with how we got to be connected. This time I'll start at the beginning and work my way forward.

Pretty much everything starts with my father's death. I was twelve years and two days old when the accident happened. It was a violent end to a man's life who could no longer control the hold alcohol had on his life. Or for that matter the hold it had on our lives as his family. We're told that out of every ending there is a new beginning. I don't believe that is entirely true for everyone involved. Sometimes and ending is just that and things move in the path that they have already started on. Like a game of billiards, the trajectory of one ball can affect the motion and direction of the other balls on the table. But some of them are never touched by the action and so remain rooted where they are. Luckily for me, I was one of the balls in the path.

A few years after dad's passing, when I was fifteen, a church elder named Mark took me under his wing to be a father figure in my life. He knew that I didn't have any grandfathers living and that dad had passed.Mark  decided that he would be a surrogate grandfather to me. He would take me on errands with him in the summer. He let me drive his AMC Matador on old back country roads and talked me into attending a church camp that summer. It was something that I hadn't wanted to attend the year before or even that year, but Mark thought it would be good for me.

Great. Spend a week in a musty cabin out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of strangers. Gang showers in the bathroom, no doors on the stalls, and I'm 15 and I'm becoming increasingly attracted to guys. I'm not admitting it yet, but it's there in the back of my consciousness. Sign me up! I couldn't think of any possible scenario that could have been worse, but I couldn't come up with a reason not to go other than "I don't want to" which wasn't flying with anyone. Mom wanted us out of the house for the week. The pastor at our church was trying to save our heathen hides and David was trying to gain my trust. I was, in a word, screwed.

So, the pastor loads us up in his van, drives us to somewhere south of Terre Haute to an old Bible College that had been converted into a summer camp for Christian teens. Only one building remained of the original college. Cabins, a swimming pool and a dining hall had been added to the grounds over the years. It was depressing. No TV, no books other than our bibles and no escape. We had absolutely no alone time except for after vespers and before bed time.

My bunk mate was a few years younger than me and was attending with his two sisters and brother. His name, coincidentally was also a Mark. As the week progressed, we became closer and closer, staying up late at night talking about the people we had met and the days' events. My brother became even closer to his younger sister and would take the evening walk with her along "lover's lane" which was just a big circular path through the grounds.

The week ended and we said many goodbyes to the people we had become friends with in that short time. Mark and I stayed in contact sporadically, gradually tapering off communication over the next few years. With college looming on the horizon, I thought it was one of those friendships that would stay back in childhood.

Then I was accepted to Ball State University. My brother did the mapping out of our route to my freshman orientation. I started late and it was only a one day event - or non-event since it was pretty much watching a slide show and signing me up for classes. He discovered that the town Mark and his sisters lived in was just north of Muncie. My brother still had a crush on Mark's younger sister and got their phone number and arranged for us to meet up. They had an older sister my age who was at the camp that summer I met Mark, but I didn't remember her.

It was arranged so that we would go on a double date because the younger sister wasn't old enough yet to date on her own. Again, lucky me. Our first date (double date) was at an Arby's where we all met up after my orientation sessions. And there the groundwork was prepared for an on again, off again relationship with the older sister that would end badly (for the sixth time in nine months) when I realized that I was more attracted to Mark than I was to her. And, no, I didn't tell her that was the reason. Her immaturity was the reason I ended the relationship. Seriously. Six breakups in nine months. Way too much drama for this small town boy.

(to be continued)

'Tis the Season

‘Tis the Season. Shoppers gone mad. It’s been said many time, many ways, but when did Christmas get so-o-o out of hand? The shopping. The lines. The meanness. Unbelievably, one of the sweetest young women I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with was called a snotty little bitch. Twice. In one week. Two different women, who probably had waited until the last minute to get something we had been sold out of for weeks, called her that. Snotty and bitch seem like the perfect adjectives to be using at this time of year. They just didn’t realize that they were referring to themselves instead of an underpaid hourly retail employee who was doing her job and trying to be helpful.

Does anyone really remember what this time of year is supposed to be about? There are a few people, I’m sure, that do. But there are more than that who think if they don’t have the perfect Martha Stewart holiday, then everything will be ruined. So they rush around (some all year long) looking for that perfect tea cozy for Aunt Sarah because she loves her herbal tea so much and Niece Mary wants to get the perfect gift that will make Aunt Sarah remember Mary even more the rest of the year. Why wouldn’t she? Every day that Sarah get’s the tea cozy out to keep her pot of tea at just the right temperature, she’ll remember what a perfect and thoughtful gift her Niece Mary got her. Then they rush around making the most perfectly iced sugar cookies with hand drawn angels and snowmen on them. All this while decorating their homes to look like a spread out of Better Homes and Gardens. Honestly, who has all that time or energy without getting a little help from their local pharmacist?

But the reality is that Aunt Sarah will probably think “where the hell am I going to put this thing? I have enough crap now including the shiatsu massage that my brother Roy got me last year. The damned thing feels like someone’s digging their knuckles into my back every time I use it.” And Roy is out the $24.95 that he spent plus the time he finally dragged his ass out to the mall (in reality, the local Rite-Aid) to find something for his sister that he hardly even speaks to now that their parents have died. So why do people do this? Is it because it’s expected? I think that most people if they are honest would say that they do it because they are afraid of looking cheap if they don’t. That’s not what the season is supposed to be about.

I’ve noticed there are fewer people shopping this year. And the retail numbers are showing it. Yes, you have people lining up in droves for the super discount deals that many retailers are offering. But most of them are still spending less than they would have in a better economy. I suspect that a lot of them aren’t even using credit cards like they would have in past years as they are afraid that when the bills do start coming in, they won’t have the cash to pay them off. The ones that are out are looking for the deep discounts and, I suspect, not at what they are truly buying. False hopes, empty promises, and overpriced gee-gaws. Batteries not included.

My point is this: maybe, just maybe if people realize that the gifts aren’t the most important part of Christmas, maybe they’ll stop with the compulsive spending habits. Maybe instead of a tea cozy or shiatsu massager all Aunt Sarah needs is that time you would have spent at the mall looking for the perfect gift. And don’t forget the food! Some of my most vivid memories as a child aren’t of the gifts I received as a child. They are of the smell of my aunt’s Parker House rolls. The smell of yeasty bread pungent in the air, the pumpkin pie spices lingering along with the smell of savory turkey and stuffing the minute you walked in Aunt Sarah and Uncle John’s front door. And the laughter of aunts, uncles and cousins all gathered around the farm house reliving the past years and reminiscing about the relatives that had since passed. It’s a fitting way to end the year.

Maybe that’s what the holidays should truly be about. Reminiscing, reconnecting, reliving what brought us all together in the first place. But today it seems that so many families are fractured, split up all across the globe or just plain broken. They can’t get past distance or the past to enjoy today. If you are a member of one of those families, just remember that Robert Frost said “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” The “Hallmark, Norman Rockwell” Christmas for most people is either a myth or an impossibility. Don’t hold yourself to someone else’s standards. If you feel more comfortable or enjoy being around people other than your relatives, then be with them. You know who your “family” really is.

Or if you have a family that you do want to spend time with, then just spend time with, not money on them. I’m sure that they’ll hold those memories a lot longer than they will the stuff that they probably won’t remember past the time it takes to throw out the torn wrapping paper. It may be too late to do anything this year, but bookmark this page, mark your calendar for next November and take a look at this next year. Remember what made you so crazed this year and you can make it a different Christmas for everyone including yourself next year. Have yourself a Merry little Christmas by remembering the true meaning of Christmas, that the true gift is one of love, of time, and of yourself. For this is the time of year when we were given the ultimate gift of love, by the true Father of Christmas.

Merry Christmas

It's been quite a year. Moved back to Indianapolis. New job for Robbie. New car for me - OK so it's a used PT Cruiser, but it's new to me. And Riley, well she's growing quickly. She's become quite the little dancer. Check her out in this home video:

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