Turn-Offs, Part 2

When I ask, "What is your opinion?" and she replies, "Whatever you want."

In Twain's hierarchy of untruths, this answer falls between lies and statistics.

My Latest Million Damn Dollar Idea

I start a business to install two horns on your car: a friendly horn and an angry horn. So when you want to say “Excuse me, will you please let me in?” or “You’ve got the right of way,” or “I recognize you and request your attention!” there is the friendly horn. The angry horn is for when you hate everyone in front of you.

I realize there are bugs to be worked out, chiefly, when you’re reaching for a horn, you rarely have time to deliberate what level of emotion you’re putting behind it. This is okay, because we can install a third horn for that.

I Burned My Finger for Lent

Tonight at church we had a thing where you write down something you want to repent of, something you want to leave behind for Lent, and then burn it, thus symbolically leaving [whatever] behind you.

So I did that. What I burned was a paragraph long, and I’m not sure I actually wrote the thing down itself that I would like to repent of, but by the time I’d filled up an index card with small writing, I thought I had at least an emotional grip on what I was talking about, even if I couldn’t explain it in a sentence.

I think the idea was approximately that I wanted to repent of... fear and aloneness. But I don’t always have control over the times I feel fearful and alone, and so there was a wish, a prayer, at least a desire, to be forgiven and rid of pride that requires me to tough through fearfulness alone when I could get help.

I don’t know... because frequently, I would be happy to be helped during those times, if someone really were helping me, rather than trying to help, but really requiring me to describe how they can help, and therefore what they’re doing is not helping, and then suddenly we’re dealing with their feelings about trying to help instead of my feelings which are the reasons we’re here in the first place.

You know what? I had a whole different place I was going when I started this. I was going to talk about the burnt spot on my finger.

I burned the tip of my index finger when I was burning my symbol of fear and aloneness tonight. I’m tempted to assign symbolism to this, a hidden meaning in burning my finger. Holding on to things too long? Burned by the cleansing flame?

I don’t think there’s any symbolism. I wanted to make sure the card was good and burned, because I didn’t want there to be any chance ever that anyone would read any of it, any of my floundering. And I was playing with the candles a little, trying to get it to burn in two spots.

There is hidden meaning there, in what I just wrote, but not symbolism. My desire to make sure no one sees me struggling to communicate – this is a symptom of the fear and aloneness that I want not to have any more. Even though I feel strong and well now, this is the kind of thing that will keep me huddled in my cave next time I don’t.

That’s why, even though I’m still not sure I’ve got the idea down, I’m putting this here. What I’m writing here isn’t smart, well written, or even entirely representative of what I was trying to say. But I need to be seen floundering. In a non-symbolic way, this thing I'm writing now is an act of contrition, a repudiation of pride, letting you, whoever you are, see me struggle and fail.

Whoever you are, please be merciful with what you read here.

5:47 R8 to Chestnut Hill West

originally written 11/12/04

The gentleman across from me, in his 50s perhaps, reads the Inquirer. He’s gray, balding, with a goatee and mustache. His face is thin, and he looks mentally active. He wears thin-rimmed silver spectacles. Like some absent-minded professor, his weekly train pass is wedged between the side of his head and glasses frame. The card is at a jaunty angle. In a hat band it might look rakish instead of pragmatically dorky. Another good argument for the return of the hat, I suppose.

The poignant part of this—don’t miss it!—is that I have seriously considered doing the same thing. I only abstained because I thought, “I bet that looks dorky.”

Turns out, I was right. But twenty years on, that is so me.

8 Crimes

Here's a game* I made up to pass time at the game table when it's not your turn.

Get a bunch of 8-sided dice. Divide them into teams by color. Roll them all in a contained area.

Treat the faces of the dice as arrows pointing in the direction that the number is most easily read. Starting with 2s and working your way up, a higher number "kills" the closest lower number it's pointing at. Equal numbers kill each other. Higher numbers are unharmed. Remove killed dice from the area immediately.

Once the killing ends, count up remaining number values. Highest team value wins.

It's almost like fun!


*not really a game

Does It Include, Like, Taft?

I'm not going to work tomorrow, and I was lying in bed this morning thinking about that. About Presidents Day. Or Presidents' Day. Or President's Day.

Lots of people get off work, and it's a great time to buy a mattress. But what's the deal behind this holiday? When I was a kid, there was Washington's birthday and Lincoln's birthday, and around the time we decided to start honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. with his own holiday, one of these Rushmoric figures in the American pantheon got the boot. Is that fair?

Like I know anything about fair. But I have research, which is more interesting than fairness. The rest of this post is a synopsis of Wikipedia and Snopes, so pretend that I cited accurately. I've tried to avoid pure plagiarism.

Attempts to combine George and Abe's cake days started in the early '50s, well before MLK's martyrdom. Nixon is also said to have issued a proclamation to combine the two during his administration, but no one has found any record of it.

Instead, in 1971, a law was passed designating the third Monday in February as "Washington's Birthday," a holiday for federal employees. Apparently, the draft of the bill that became this particular law never got around to being changed from "Washington's Birthday" to "Presidents Day." Lincoln just gets the shaft.

But wait! Dig deeper, and you learn that Lincoln's birthday has never been a federally recognized holiday. It was a state recognized holiday in many states, which accounts for my stacatto Februaries in Tennessee.

But Congress could not have been moved to pass a bill to care less, and with the rising popularity of MLK in the 80s and 90s, most states ditched our grandest Civil Rights proponent for our sexiest.

Furthermore, since Washington was actually born on February 11 (1732), his birthdate can never be celebrated by the date formally set by the federal government (which falls somewhere between the 15th and the 21st). So, suck it George! Neither of you gets his birthday celebrated!

Finally, only the calendar makers call it Presidents Day, because no official source does. And none of the Hallmarkers can figure out if or where an apostrophe goes, so pick one you like and use it with impunity, because there's no standard!

As an occasional copy editor, I recommend no apostrophe. Because it's shorter.

Quitting My Job Again

Sometimes I wonder if there's something horribly broken in me that keeps me from settling into a job. I'm in good company for pinballing through the first half of my adult life -- lots of interesting people go down this road. But nobody, I think, does it because it seems like a good idea. You just do it when you don't know a better way.

A friend offered me a job at a game company in San Diego last month, and for the first time as an adult, when I had an opportunity to jump off into a new, weird life, I didn't. Because I'd have to move.

I'm not in love with this town. I give Philly a 6. But it's an okay place to stop for a while. Maybe... maybe some things can catch up with me.

A Story: I was driving across country a few years ago and stopped to hike in the Grand Canyon. I didn't bring sunscreen, but at a rest point, a young married couple let me use theirs. We swapped Cliff's Notes life stories. When I said I was just driving around, doing whatever seemed like a good idea, the husband said, "You are so lucky. Man, I envy you."

I didn't have a good response. Later, on the road, I thought:

"I am lucky. But so are you. If I had a pretty young wife to go on vacation with into the Grand Canyon, and if I was talking seriously about a baby on the way... I don't think I'd envy me. I'm only here because I can't figure out where else to be. If I had a clear mission, I'd be doing that."

Five years on, I still don't know what my mission is. But lemme tellya Houston, as of next week, it won't involve Vanguard no more.

Turn-Offs, Part 1

Girls who say "can't" when they mean "won't."

I Totally Skipped Church Tonight

I got an enormous box of books from Amazon for Christmas courtesy of my generous mother. One of the books is Life of the Beloved by Henry Nouwen, subtitled, "Spiritual Living in a Secular World."

When Xians talk about sacred versus secular, I always sort of quietly root for secular. Sacred seems pretty well covered.

I've at very least wanted to be a Christian for most of my life. But I've never felt a part of most Christians I've known. I feel more kin to nonbelievers, because what I believe is hard for me to believe. I believe Jesus is the son of God, and he saves me from meaninglessness and separation from God. But I can totally see why people wouldn't believe. Seems like plenty of reasons not to, or at least to hang back and see what happens.

My brother recently asked me why I was still a Christian. He's not. He doesn't get why I am. The answer is because I believe. I know that's a circular, nonrational answer. I know it doesn't explain anything to you if you don't believe. I'm not satisfied with it either. But it's the answer.

===

In college, I had been reading Franky Schaeffer books, notably Sham Pearls for Real Swine, and was struck by his idea that Christians needed to be out in the middle of media instead of hand wringing over its worldliness. I had been fiddling with the idea of being some sort of minister, but after reading that, I realized that we've got plenty of people who sit in church buildings and mouth pleasant words all day. I wanted to go be a guy with a job and a guy who also loves Jesus at that job.

Fitfully, I have followed that call since. I'm not really good at it. But I wonder why this isn't SOP among American Christians. Why do we have to have so many ministers and our own little music industry and our own special crappy TV shows and networks?

When I wrote that, I meant it as a rhetorical question. But now I don't know the answer.

Once I was out there in that Secular World, I discovered that nonbelievers were great people and I liked being around them. So I'm very interested in a book that talks about spiritual living in a secular world. Because man, sign me up for secularity, and for spiritual living in it, yo.

My South

Found this idea on another blog, Loriloo. She describes My South.

My personal South is mainly a childhood thing. My grade school pal, Paul Huffington, used to live on an honest-to-murgatroid farm. During high school the Huffingtons sold it, and the new owners turned the land into a couple dozen condos. Much of My South appears pre-condos.

However, I also went to college in Birmingham, Alabama, so I know there's still plenty South up for grabs.

My South involves:

• Cutting through other people’s back yards when you walk somewhere, and sometimes the people who own those yards stop you just to talk.
• Getting into a short conversation with the person behind the counter at the fast food joint.
• A constant, seductive mix of graciousness and passive-aggression.
• Talking about church and not feeling everyone in the room shift one millimeter away.
• A basic assumption that the weather will be nice.
• Allergies.
• Relaxing a little because people tend to take it easy on you.
• When you step on other peoples’ feet, they apologize too.
• Beat-up cars in people’s yards.
• Occasionally deciding to use simpler words.
• Great barbecue.
• Long drives through grassy land.
• Riding in the back of the pick-up because it’s fun, and no one wastes air telling you how unsafe that is.
• Lovely women everywhere, especially at college. Not plastic-surgery pretty like in California. Just lovely.
  
• People who know local history. Like, seriously. It’s important.
• Looking strangers in the eye and smiling at each other.