Small Town Dad

Spend yourself on a worthy cause

2018-06-23T01:10:00.003+06:00

It's a certain boy-wonder's birthday today. A big one. For part of his birthday present, I labored long and hard to reconstitute the Small Town Dad blog.

I deleted the entire thing (or so I thought) a year ago or so when one of our Small Town Fiend's (the "Mrs. Olson" to our little community, for sure) used the blog to try and wreak some mischief involving the kids.

The boy-wonder was sad - told me he enjoyed reading the things I wrote and encouraged me to take up the quill again.

So - for his birthday - the blog is reborn and archived and I even saved the 20 or so drafts I was working on when I deleted the entire thing a couple of years ago after "Harriet" started her mischief. I thought I would chronicle in no particular order, many of my favorite memories walking along with him on his journey to adulthood.

I preface this chronicle with a quote from my mother that she shared with me when I was at an important moment in my life. It has been magnetic north on my emotional compass ever since, particularly since that warm first full night of summer years ago when he was born, and I was born as a Small Town Dad. I should also add that many of these little pellets from the intellectual Pez dispenser that is my memory will only make sense to the birthday boy. Whattya gonna do? It's his birthday :-)

The quote goes like this:

Its lesson so simple - get the hell off the sidelines, dive in, do your best, choose a worthy cause and be prepared, as reward for that risk-taking and adventure, to fail while daring greatly.

"Spend yourself."

When you boil it all down to its essence, that's what we're doing here - spending ourselves. Doing so wisely, with fun and adventure, character and a wholesome purpose - that pretty much sums up the mission statement of any decent kid/parent combination I've ever known.

So. my beautiful son - we dared greatly along the way to your birthday. Here are many of my favorite recollections of those adventures. I started out with the goal of writing just a handful - one per year. You can see how that worked out. There are about 100,000 more that didn't make the list because I couldn't fit them all in. I love you - happy birthday :-)

Some of my favorite memories with the boy-wonder for his birthday:

1. The Very Scary House we passed at the stroke of midnight in the rough hills of Pennsylvania on the way to Gettysburg (2018). I still laugh about it.

2. The very slippery floors in the master bedroom sometime around 2008 (“This is what you do?! THIS IS WHAT YOU DO?! YOU LAUGH WHEN SOMEONE FALLS DOWN?!”)

3. My 46^thBirthday – Sleepy Hollow State Park (Subject of Small Town Dad “It came without packages, boxes or bags” blog post). http://small-towndad.blogspot.com/2010/10/it-came-without-packages-boxes-or-bags.html

4. Your journey to Eagle Scout – from the moment you told me you were going to be an Eagle Scout until the moment you did it.

5. SCUBA Diving – getting lost underwater, being your dive buddy, working out for a year so I could go, the trip to Gilboa and our last dive there, the underwater handstand.

6. The many times we played catch – in the street or at a campout.

7. Pheasant Hunting with the boy scouts.

8. Your CMU Marching Band Audition

9. Watching you play in your play room when we lived in Lansing – bob the builder toys, galactic heroes, Thomas the tank engine. All your favorites.

10. Watching your antics as Drum Major - the parking lot music from the first band day at CMU is one of my all time favorites.

11. The speech you gave at Aunt Julie’s wedding

12. The speech you gave at Grandma Armistead’s funeral.

13. The picture of you and Grandma Armistead and Grandpa Armistead.

14. You playing on the rocks at Devil’s Den.

15. The finish of your last cross-country race at Ithaca.

16. The night I dropped you off at Blue Lake after the benefit you played in for the Band Boosters.

17. Snuggling you when I came home from work when you were a baby.

18. Watching you help the man on Mackinac Island your first year on the honor guard.

19. Your speech to the boys in Troop 111 as Senior Patrol Leader after the trailer was stolen “Here’s what we’re NOT gonna do…..”

20. When I told you that you could quit football in the 4th grade and you said “here’s the thing, Dad. This is a small town and I’m going to be seeing these guys for a long time until I graduate. I’m not going to let any of them ever call me a quitter…”

21. Learning you got accepted into Blue Lake and later Blue Lake International.

22. Seeing you at the Grand Canyon after missing you so much.

23. Watching you earn your snorkeling and SCUBA award at SeaBase.

24. Listening to you teach yourself how to play the guitar.

25. Watching you and the boys from Troop 67 play instruments at the Friendship Camporee in Canada.

26. “Knock Knock….” “Who’s there?” ……silence……silence…..silence... “…not George Jones….” Entire carload of boy scouts erupts in laughter.

27. Playing Lego Star Wars with you.

28. Touring Scranton, Pennsylvania on our quest for The Office.

29. The 20-mile hike with the scouts (the second one) when I told you that you could go home with the older boys and you reminded me “Dad, there’s a scout out on this road. I’ll just stay here with you, Noah and Mr. Cuthrell and we’ll all finish this walk together…”

30. The picture of you standing on top of the Continental Divide

31. You playing catcher in the fourth grade and flashing signs to the other team’s coach during coach pitch baseball.

32. The time I almost killed you at the water park - you were very forgiving AND grateful for the rescue.

33. When I almost killed you in the hot tub at Pokagon - again, forgiving AND ever so grateful to be retrieved from the depths of that murky hot-tub.

34. When I threw you up into a ceiling fan at grandma’s condo in gulf shores and you looked at me like "dude, seriously?” This time, not so grateful - more incredulous like "how in THE hell did you not see that coming?"

35. Christmas mornings

36. All of your track adventures

37. All of your band adventures

38. All of your scouting adventures

39. Every day I wake up and get to be your dad……

Thanks for dropping by the blog today. I hope it won't be four years before I take up the quill again. Wherever you are today, I hope you are marking the landmarks of your life recalling blessings in abundance, the tender mercies of service and courage to those in need and who might be counting on you, and magic. Most of all, I hope you are the recipient of magical times the beauty of which is unimaginable to you.

Dennis

Of Courage and Eagle's wings...

2014-03-31T09:36:00.002+07:00

One of my favorite stories in our family lore is that of my son's declaration that he would be an Eagle scout some day. I remember the day vividly and have included the tale in a couple of entries here. When he shared the goal with me, I remember thinking that when I was 6, as he was when he first articulated a desire to be an Eagle Scout, all I wanted in this world was to be a professional baseball player. Let me tell you how that worked out - I didn't even letter in high school...

But Michael said he wanted to be an Eagle Scout and, true to his word, he just kept showing up and keeping up with the older kids until, after 8 years as a cub scout and then a boy scout, he stands at the edge of that goal. The required merit badges are well under control and the capstone event - a required scout initiated, designed and led community service project - is upon us.

It has not been an easy path. In all honesty I think we both would have to admit that. In truth about 2% of all scouts ever achieve this rank. As relates to me and Michael - I am a dad and he is a son. Nature, it seems, has by design charged these relationships with a natural tension between the expectations of dads and sons and the performance by each party in relation to those expectations.

Now I freely confess, I am an idiot. This revelation is not news to any who know me well. My expectations of Michael, as a son, seem to be that he miraculously become a whirling-dervish combination of I.M. Pei, Vanderbilt, Zuckerberg, Teddy Roosevelt and Lord Baden-Powell. He seems to expect me to be reinvented into a combination Pa Ingalls, Bill Cosby, Mike Brady, and Homer Simspon - the cool dad who is great with tools and self-reliance who is either always calm or, in the alternative, just muddling along brainless and happy. We have had our fair share of struggles about the nature of hard work, goals, expectations and endless speeches about "grindstones."

In true dad fashion, I sit here reflecting on the really hard times and then have to face the realization that, despite the struggles and mutual frustrations, there has been on his part amazing achievement and incredible courage.

It is his courage that humbles me most. Honestly - sometimes it catches me in private thought and I am moved nearly to tears. Let me linger a bit on that idea - the courage. His first ever camp out was a winter survival camp out. At age ten and a half, having just finished his arrow of light and crossed over into the Troop, he joined the boys on their winter survival camp out when they slept in quinzees (a hollowed out snow-mound). I remember telling him a hundred times he didn't have to go. I recall saying "Uhh...look...this isn't cub scout camping...this is more or less "your-plane-crashed-high-in-the-Andes camping..." Smile on his face, off he went.

After surviving that he mustered his courage to join the boys on a 38 mile back pack trek through the Montana wilderness, 2000 miles from home, on his 11th birthday. On that trip they crossed the continental divide at 8000 feet above sea level in 60 mile per hour winds. He saw black bear and grizzly, eagles, fell in a river (from which he had to be rescued), and spent five days in the wilderness with nothing (almost literally) more than his pack and his fellows on the trail.

The following spring he completed his SCUBA certification and then that summer did 12 dives in 8 days in the Florida Keys (including two night dives on the second of which he had to recover his secondary regulator after his primary failed in 25 feet of water, at night, in the ocean, with two barracudas behind us and two sharks in front of us). Cool as a spy, he replaced his secondary and just continued on his dive. He was two days removed from his 13th birthday.

In addition, he soared to 2000 feet in a glider and watched as the tow plane pilot cut loose the line and then he and a glider pilot glided back to Earth. He has skinned a rabbit, hunted, killed, cleaned and cooked pheasants, and earned several merit badges - including life-saving, first aid, and backpacking.

Thinking about his current goals, it occurs to me that along the way to all of these adventures; all that has been asked of him, he never once said "no." At any time he could have shrugged his shoulders and said "you're crazy, I'm not doing this... I'm too cold, too hungry, too hot, it's too heavy, I'm scared, I'm mad at you, I'm mad at him, he hurt my feelings, I'm sick of this, this food sucks...etc." He could have said any of those - I am sure he felt them.

But, the thing is, he never quit. He is lucky enough to have a scout master who is truly one in a million. Rugged and friendly; resourceful and generous in his understanding that not all of the rest of us can tie a knot or make a great shelter. He is Michael's Eagle Scout coach and his legend is beyond that of heroic status in Castle Armistead.

But, it is in Michael - in my reflection of that wild eyed, energetic 6 year old and his innocent declaration that "whatever is the best in scouts; that's what I'm going to be!"- that is where I find the gut-wrenching, knee-buckling lesson of courage. It is a fact Michael is a better kid than I ever was. He is brave in a quiet, steady way. I was never once quiet and steady as a kid.

In my youth, long before it was ever shared on Facebook and attributed to John Wayne, my father once said to me "Courage isn't the absence of fear, Denny. It is being afraid and doing what you have to do anyhow..." That has been Michael's approach to scouting. Just do what you gotta do anyhow. Don't matter if you're scared.

I am sure Michael has been afraid some times over the last eight years. I know for a fact this Eagle Project has him good and well scared. He is building dug-outs for the local little league field. The project has been approved and we are in the planning, budgeting, and building phase. Lord willing and the creek don't rise - last season will be the LAST season those little kids cook in the sun while dodging foul balls without protective shelter and fencing. It's a rocking great project for a boy who loves baseball, played on that field, and now wants to leave his footprint somewhere as an Eagle Scout. I am immensely proud of him.

He is scared - it is a big project. We do not have the expertise to build it ourselves. We'll need help all around - funding, construction, craftsmanship...hopefully everything BUT first aid. To his credit, though he has been a little reserved about some of the process; out of fear I suspect, he has never once said "I quit, I'm scared, it's too much, it's too hard, I don't want to..."

So, difficult as it has been some days because of the differing expectations between dads and sons, I am all in with him. Like SCUBA, where he was my dive buddy for each of those 12 dives, he and I will sink or swim together.

I've created a gofundme site if you are inclined to contribute to his project. He expects the budget for the dugouts to be between 1650 and 2000. Every little bit helps. Even if your support is to remember him in your prayers or to drop him a note - he will be warmed by those thoughts and gestures. He is by far a better young man than I ever was and, at just a couple of months short of 14, has achieved in ways that are as ambitious as they are rugged and wholesome. He is on the verge of seeing his dream come true; and I can't wait to see how all this turns out.

Thanks for stopping by my blog tonight. I hope wherever you are, you can take into perspective the hopes, dreams, struggles and triumphs of those near and dear to you, and in that measure your hopes for, and love of, those people are affirmed and inspired.

Filing away a memory; a small town moment for a small town dad

2013-07-23T01:40:00.003+07:00

Remind me some time, when I am worrying about bills, or money, or career, or other nonsense things, that I have a favorite memory. The memory of a time when the world opened up in the most gentle fashion and revealed an essential truth to me – that I am a lucky man.

It happened last night. I was exhausted after a very hectic weekend and looking for reasons to get out of taking the dog for her night time tour of hedges, mailboxes, and assorted parked cars. I wanted to go to bed. I considered my options and they were scant – the 13 year old was spending the night at a buddy’s house. He is my usual “go-to” person for dog walking duty. My wife was already getting ready for bed – so that was out of the question. I sat on the edge of the couch and tried to apply some mathematical reason to the likelihood that a teeny little dog’s digestive tract was robust enough for her to “hold it” another seven hours until I took her out in the morning.

So it happened that my preoccupation with ditching the dog-walking duties was interrupted by the appearance of my six year old daughter – freshly scrubbed from her bath and in pajamas and slippers with the leash in one hand and a flashlight in the other. She was smiling – mostly she always is smiling.

“I’ll take the dog with you dad,” she said – eyes sparkling at the prospect of staying up way too late and compounding that luxury by venturing out into the neighborhood during what is the late night news hour.

“You hold the leash and I’ll carry my Tinkerbell lantern so we can see…you know…when she goes to the bathroom.” For extra-cute effect, she raised the Tinkerbell lantern while she spoke.

I relented. Out the door the three of us went, me holding the leash and the 6 year old holding my right hand in her left, and her lantern in her right.

We walked around the neighborhood and talked about many things great and small – her cool new lantern – rescued from obscurity at a weekend flea market – boys she “may or may not” have a crush on in our neighborhood, and my mom – Kristin’s grandmother – who passed away in May.

The weather was perfect for a late night walk – clear skies, just enough humidity to remind you it is summer, warm enough to walk around the block in your jammies and cool enough that you could appreciate the gentle breeze for just the breeze itself.

As we completed our circuit and approached the house, the 6 year old reminded me that we normally celebrated her upcoming birthday with my mother and reflected on how that might be kind of hard this year since Grandma passed away. It is true – my mom’s birthday is a week from my daughter’s. I agreed that it would be hard and told her we would find a way to get through it.

We were home. The warmth of the front yard light, the closeness of the summer evening, the jammies, the hand holding and freshly scrubbed hair – it was all just a perfect moment – a dad with his daughter just having a chat. She walked up the two steps ahead of me and then turned around to look me in the face.

“Dad?” she said “I know you might be worried about your mom’s birthday coming around and not being together with her on my birthday this year. Don’t worry – I’ll share my birthday with you and that will make it still a special day, ok? So don’t worry about Grandma – she will be watching us, and the day will still be special, ok?” And with that, she stood on her toes, looped her arms around the back of my neck to give me a hug, actually patted my head, and said “I love you.”

So if you hear me complaining about long lines at Meijer, the price of gas, the heat, or anything else - if it comes up that I am complaining about something not going my way, just remind me about that memory. You have my permission.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today – wherever you are –whoever you are with, I hope your day is warmed by the idea that you are loved, and in that essential truth is all the luck you will ever need.

Dennis

The world needs Boy Scouts, I am sure of it...

2013-05-22T02:51:00.000+07:00

I never wanted to be in scouts. As a child, our neighbors were heavily involved in Boy Scouts as members, scouters, and volunteers. Over the early years of my youth, I would watch them come and go to regular meetings and activities in their uniforms and think to myself that I never wanted to do that.

“Too much hassle….too much conformity….short pants with green socks?!”

Consequently, I never gave the scouts much thought until, many years later, my son was in the first grade and my wife told me that I was taking him to Cub Scouts. We argued; me dead set against it largely because of the stereotype I had of it. She arguing for it largely because of the stereotype she had of it.

In the end, she prevailed and I took him to his first Cub Scout meeting. I recall it was very foreign to me – all this talk about “Akelas” and “Weblos” was over my head. He had a great time – walked out of the meeting holding my hand and just beaming.

With wild hair and happy eyes, he looked up and me and asked “Dad? What’s the best I can be in scouting?” Uncertain of the answer due to my own scouting inexperience, I replied “I don’t know, maybe an Eagle scout?”

He looked down, set his jaw and then told me “well that’s what I want to be then, an Eagle Scout.” I remember thinking at the time that just the week before he wanted to be Batman. But, we signed up and I committed to go and stay involved as long as he wanted it.

Several years of Cub Scouts followed and I was still very much ambivalent about scouting. Can’t make a derby car, no real outdoor skills at that point and my co-workers were all decidedly weary of me lugging Cub Scout popcorn to every meeting. To me, scouting was just another commitment in an otherwise very hectic schedule. I was never completely at ease with it.

Complicating all of that was the issue of exclusion. One of my best friends from school was gay. I didn’t find out until years after we were in school together. When the topic came up, I remember asking him why he never told any of us. “It’s hard,” he confessed. “Very complicated. I thought you guys wouldn’t want to be friends anymore…”

I remember it as a turning point in my life – the realization that normal events associated with growing up; discovering that you are attracted to other people, dating, relationships, and holding hands – all of those deliriously awkward moments of adolescence are made infinitely more complicated for the teen who awakens into a world where he or she is gay. I remember thinking it was simply beyond absurd, and a bit painful, to think he believed we would abandon him because of who he was. I shared this with him and he said in a voice more weary than his 22 years “trust me, people hate me.”

The moment left me with some sensitivity to the issue – my good friend suffered for years worrying about what people would think of him, worrying that he had to keep a significant portion of his life not just private, but super-secret private.

So it was that in 2000, I was in law school and, like many in law school at that time, I spent more than a few minutes in any of a half dozen different classes debating the different constitutional merits of either party’s case in Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000).

I carried a lot of the feelings generated by my friendship with John into these debates in school. The law was more than likely clear. So too was the predictable outcome of the Supreme Court vote. The joke in school was the true story that one of the Justices voting to uphold the ban wrote that he actually thought homosexuality only occurred in prisons, on desert islands and in forced survival situations like shipwrecks and plane crashes.

Given that, and as a student of the law, I was pretty much certain that the 2000 US Supreme Court wasn’t going to create a protected class of people based on sexual orientation using the Boy Scouts as the fulcrum to do so. And history shows that they didn’t. A 5-4 court upheld the BSA’s exclusionary policy as a manifestation of BSA’s freedom of association. In other words, legally it was the right call according to the US Supreme Court.

Fast forward ten years to the fall of 2010. My son, then 10 years old and in the 5^th grade, was riding out the waning moments of his Cub Scout career as a Weblo. His Cub Pack went from having around 60 kids to having no more than 6 kids ten years after the BSA v Dale decision. I was eager with anticipation for the moment I could tell him “well, good work with Cub Scouts. You gave it a first class effort but it looks like this is the end of the road. No Boy Scouts, no Eagle Scout. Let’s move on to the next great challenge…”

So I had been rehearsing, mentally, the “talk” with my son for several weeks during my morning commute. I practiced the talk I planned to have with my wife and him several times and had just about refined it to the level where I was ready to pick the date by which I would break the news that we were leaving the dream of Eagle Scout behind us.

There was a camporee planned and I expected the Cub Scout presence to be very small – perhaps just one Weblo family (us). That would present the perfect opportunity to introduce the topic of how we were spinning our wheels with this backward looking organization.

Perhaps adding accelerant to the fire burning inside of me was the fact that for this particular weekend, I was forced to say yet another “no thank you, we have a scouting event” when a colleague offered free football tickets. These tickets were to the annual Michigan State/Michigan football game.

To say I was ambivalent, ten years post-Dale, is generous. I was in fact itching to move on from scouting and pursue other ways to kill off a beautiful autumn weekend in Michigan. Free football tickets aside, by the fall of 2010 I had no love lost for the Boy Scouts of America. I fundamentally disagreed with the exclusionary policy. It seemed to be based in prejudice and was contrary to anything I believed in terms of civil rights. I was actively looking for ways to get my only son away from something I considered bigoted and irrational.

Committed to the idea that this would be our last scouting event, I loaded up the car and went to a fall camporee at a scout camp in Central Lower Michigan. Nothing extravagant. Not at all far from our home, but a very nice camp with a long, uphill curving driveway leading in.

It was a camp I hadn't been to before. Set among gorgeous rolling hills heavily wooded with stands of hardwood and pine, it appeared to be a first rate camp. As we worked our way up the neatly paved drive leading up the slope, I noticed there were – spaced out at even intervals – neatly lettered yellow signs arranged along the camp’s driveway.

They stood dappled at the tree-line on the edge of the forest – almost as much a part of the landscape as the plentiful cedar and white pine. They said, in successive order “A Scout is…. trustworthy …… loyal ….. helpful ….. friendly ….. courteous ….. kind ….. obedient ….. cheerful ….. thrifty ….. brave ….. clean ….. and reverent.”

They didn't say anything about sexuality, or law books, or politics, or courtrooms. Just plain old words describing extraordinary virtues. They described the essence of scouting. Scouting, in that moment, began to crystalize for me as something that could not, and should not, be defined by a single polarizing issue.

Something about each handmade sign caught in my throat as I drove by. My father died when my son was 5 years old. Much of this whole “being a dad” thing has ended up me doing it without the benefit of my father to guide me on what’s right for a kid. The signs were handmade, tidy, but with faded paint. They had been there a while but were tended to by someone who had an eye toward their importance.

For my son, the day was one to climb the “Victory Tower” and to Shoot BB Guns and to have all kinds of scout fun. For me, it began what was a serious reflection on what scouting would come to mean for me personally; what it truly meant to me as a dad. It began a period for me that I later recognized as my time to consider how I could best spend my efforts in bringing up a boy with timeless values and a solid sense of confidence and service.

Those signs staring at me from the shadowy tree-line were the beginning of a new commitment for me with scouting. I did not have the conversation I planned and practiced with my wife and son. Instead I researched the scout law and eventually sat down with my son and had a different conversation:

“Michael, the world needs Boy Scouts.”

Not the kind of thing any who know me as a bleeding heart, mushy-headed college liberal would expect me to say. Growing up, the term “boy scout” was a put-down. Something synonymous with a “goody two-shoes” or “teacher’s pet.” But I was convinced of it then and am doubly certain of it now.

“The world needs Boy Scouts.”

I have watched my son grow from a Tenderfoot to a newly minted Life Scout. Have joined him on countless service projects in our community and watched him mature from a tiny little fellow in pants and shirt way too big, to a solid young man who, in the thick of the worst thunderstorm I have ever endured outside, reminded me "Dad, this happens every time I come out with the scouts. Trust me, you're going to be ok." His mom and I have followed his travels from Montana hiking over the Great Divide down to Florida Seabase where next month we will take our SCUBA certifications and test our mettle SCUBA diving in the ocean.

“The world needs Boy Scouts.”

Along the way, I was lucky enough to get involved as an Assistant Scoutmaster, Unit Commissioner and as a member of a great Wood Badge patrol (Owl) at C2-271-12. My Wood Badge experience was held at the very same camp where I had my scouting epiphany several years before.

Having spent this time and energy; having come to embrace the idea that the world needs Boy Scouts, I’ve also become convinced that the Boy Scouts need the world. I had the good fortune of joining scouts from 22 countries at the Michigan International Camporee in the summer of 2012. There it was my pleasure to join in the community of international scouting and discuss with them the development of scouting in other countries.

If you accept that the Boy Scouts need the world, then you must also accept that the Boy Scouts need to reflect on the aims of scouting as originated, not by the BSA v Dale case in 2000, but rather by the words and vision of Lord Baden-Powell when he cultivated this dream. The Boy Scouts exist not because some council in New Jersey won a legal battle in 2000. They exist because of the vision of an extraordinary man in 1908.

Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, wrote the original Scout law in the publication Scouting for Boys in 1908. Included in that text is the tenet that a Scout is a friend to all and a brother to all other scouts.

"A SCOUT IS A FRIEND TO ALL, AND A BROTHER TO EVERY OTHER SCOUT, NO MATTER TO WHAT SOCIAL CLASS THE OTHER BELONGS. If a scout meets another scout, even though a stranger to him, he must speak to him, and help him in any way that he can, either to carry out the duty he is then doing, or by giving him food, or, as far as possible, anything that he may be in want of. A scout must never be a SNOB. A snob is one who looks down upon another because he is poorer, or who is poor and resents another because he is rich. A scout accepts the other man as he finds him, and makes the best of him -- "Kim," the boy scout, was called by the Indians "Little friend of all the world," and that is the name which every scout should earn for himself."

“…Accept the other man as he finds him, and make the best of him…” was Baden-Powell’s approach to differences that might arise between scouts. The presumption, unstated but obvious, is that the brotherhood of scouting transcends those differences. It demands that we approach our neighbors – strangers and friends alike – with a bias toward temperance and a commitment to the non-judgmental. You cannot be a friend to all if you are wagging your finger, or spewing hateful rhetoric, or passing judgment on one lifestyle while freely indulging your own lifestyle choices absent having to answer to others for them.

To be a brother to all Scouts, as Baden-Powell intended when he blazed the trail for all other scouts, you cannot approach your fellow scouts or scouters and tell them “you cannot be my brother because of who you love.” If Baden-Powell’s words have meaning; if the notion “a brother to all other scouts” will indeed have vitality, then that brotherhood cannot be revoked merely because a scout is gay.

Making the rounds presently on social media is the story of Bruce “Trip” McMillan, a 37-year veteran professional Scouter currently living in Charlotte, N.C. Trip’s noteworthy take on the exclusionary policy is that the practice of excluding brothers; the practice of institutionally excluding scouts and scouters based on who they love, is contrary to the community of scouting.

“Shame on us (scouting) as a movement,” McMillan says, “if we continue to abandon ‘one of our boys’ at perhaps the most difficult moment of their life.”

A brother, a scouting BROTHER who is coming to realize his developing sexual identity, does not need to be abandoned by his brothers in scouting. He needs that community of friendship, that continuity of fellowship and virtue. Scouting needs to be standing taller than what has been presently made of their virtues. Scouting needs to say to that boy, “here you are among the scouts, and the scouts are among the best. So here you will thrive. We will find the best in you.”

Change will come. I am sure of it. No species on Earth has ever purposely starved itself into extinction. So true with the scouts, whose membership continues to shrink while its “brand” has been hijacked into this issue.

Change will come when Boy Scouts of America comes to realize they need the world as much as the world needs the Scouts.

Change will come, because the world needs scouts.

Change must come, because a weary world wants for that boy scout “constant” - the virtuous helper, leader, and friend to all to continue.

Change must come, and it will come.

Dennis Armistead is a writer, labor relations professional and mediator, and scouter from Bath, Mi. As a member of Wood Badge class C2-271-12, Owl Patrol, one of his ticket items was to write an essay regarding the Exclusionary Practice of the Boy Scouts of America as it relates to homosexual scouts and scouters. This is his essay. All rights reserved to the author. The World Needs Scouts©

The struggle is a good thing…

2012-07-19T02:11:00.000+07:00

So I am blogging again today. Looking back, it occurs to me that I have been away a while. Baseball, tee ball, ballet (not me, the half-pint), teaching, working, scouting – all of those things that I love are taking me in a direction away from something else I love – sharing this little corner of the universe with you. So it is that there is one thing in particular nudging me back into the electronic study where I can pace around and sort out my feelings. The Boy Scouts of America, yesterday, “affirmed” their stance on discriminating against “avowed and openly” gay scouts and volunteers.

What utter nonsense. First and foremost, let’s just take a look at the words they use. They “affirmed” their policy. How does one “affirm” discrimination? The juxtaposition of the two words in the same sentence brings to mind the inauguration speech of Alabama Governor George Wallace. “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”

In that speech, the Governor “affirmed” his state’s policy, didn’t he? No doubt about it that he “affirmed” his policy of never letting one group of people mix with another group of people. 50 years in our rear-view mirror, I have to ask – how did that affirmation hold up? Was it the right thing to do? Was it in keeping with our founding principles? The answer is certainly “no,” at least for the humane and decent among us, it is.

So you have this “affirmation” from the Boy Scouts of America that they are going to keep discriminating against people. They say that “a majority of their parents” want this. Well, wait a sec – no one ever asked me. I have been in scouting since my Star scout was in the first grade. Can’t recall ever seeing a questionnaire from BSA mailed to our house or our troop. How do they know what a majority of the parents want when they never surveyed them?

I am just a volunteer, working my butt off for this great little Troop so that they can grow into strong, wise, and self-reliant confident men who make up their own minds about such nonsense. I have no resources to donate to scouts other than my time and my commitment to the principles of scouting. Principles like this little ditty from Sir Robert Baden-Powell: “The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light. “ Or maybe this one: “The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others. “ How does any of that involve discrimination based on a person’s sexual preference?

Baden-Powell is, if you didn’t know, the founder of scouting (there is considerable speculation that he himself was a closeted homosexual. While his sexual preference doesn’t matter a bit to me, I guess since he wasn’t an “avowed” homosexual, scouting’s founder must be ok in the BSA’s eyes, because to date they ain't kicked him out).

And let’s talk a moment about that concept of being an “avowed” person of any sexual orientation. I missed a lot during puberty, I mean there was just a lot going on with girls, and sports, and school and family life…so I could have been out fishing or playing baseball the day the village elders came around intending to make me swear a vow to be either hetero or homosexual. I do not remember ever “avowing” to any particular sexual orientation. I do remember seeing Dawn Wells on TV in those little red shorts on Gilligan’s Island and being pretty well smitten by that, but that is about as close as I get to “avowing” anything in terms of my individual sexuality. Maybe it’s different for others, I just don’t remember having to swear a vow about my sexual orientation. Seems I just grew up having the one I got.

So this topic of the Boy Scouts of America “affirming” their discrimination against “avowed or openly gay” kids and volunteers is nonsense. Scouting should be open to all. It diminishes the integrity and credibility of our commitment to the Scout Law to intentionally turn our backs on kids and their parents because of something as absurd as sexuality. As a committee member and assistant scoutmaster, I find it absolutely inappropriate that I would be expected to engage any of my scouts in a discussion about their sexuality. Discussin gthis decision, a good friend of mine and scoutmaster pointed out the obvious, "as scout leaders who grants us that license, that charter, that permission to engage kids that way?" No one. Yet the scouts have forced that dynamic precisely. By making a big a deal out of individual sexuality, the BSA has wrongly thrust that issue onto local Troops.

A scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent. Nowhere in there does it reference sexuality. I will continue to love scouting and maintain my commitment to the kids in my Troop. And I will keep faith that, at some point, the Boy Scouts of America will embrace the true meaning of their charter and open the doors of scouting to all by abandoning this antique and contradictory obsession with homosexuality.

So, today is a little more pointed than most of my entries. I suppose that happens when you see something you love making a bad decision or heading off in a wrong direction. The reality is that scouting, just like the scouts themselves and their volunteers, is not defined by this one issue. There are millions of us out there who say “let the kids join; let the parents volunteer” regardless of this issue of sexuality. Don’t mistake my passion for contempt – I love scouting and the opportunities it presents. I am just a little sad and embarrassed today by the direction BSA is taking here.

Wherever you are today, whatever you are doing, I hope you can take some time to reflect on what is best about scouting in America; the kids. Their decency, their commitment to solid scouting principles, the promises they make, and keep, on a daily basis. I hope you can spend some time being assured that there are a million or so volunteers all pulling hard in the right direction and I hope you can join me by keeping that faith that someday, someday soon, we too shall overcome this. Until the time that we do, like many things in scouting, the struggle to achieve will in the end serve us well.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

Yours in scouting,

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

Why we celebrate...

2012-05-06T13:26:00.002+07:00

A remarkable series of events occurred this weekend prompting tonight's late-night post. The weekend began with a celebration - a friend was retiring after a career spent in the military and in law enforcement. He is my son's scoutmaster and the troop was invited to attend the celebration. As assistant scoutmaster,I attended with them and was very happy to participate with them as they honored our skipper. The speeches and tributes were all really great, but what really caught my eye was just the love and pride his friends and family had for him. It was a great celebration well earned by a very great cop.

The next morning we welcomed three of the troop's senior scouts to our home so they could lead training exercises with a younger scout (my son). Leading the training was necessary to satisfy the rank advancement requirements moving the three of them from Star to Life scout at our recognition banquet tomorrow night. Life scout is the final rank a scout achieves before gaining the rank of Eagle scout. (As a side note, less than 1% of all American men have achieved that goal - these are terrific kids and this milestone is a really good one to celebrate. They are on their way).

So great fun was had watching these young men lend themselves to the development of a younger scout and to watch these brave and accomplished leaders handle the delicacies of offering their required training while simultaneously being whipped at Candyland, Old Maid and Go Fish by my five year-old daughter. We will have a great recognition banquet tomorrow night.

After the boys left, we ran errands related to my nephew's Confirmation at church tomorrow morning. This rite of passage within the Methodist church carries with it a gathering of the clan and an opportunity for hearts bound by common blood to be again warmed by the common experience of family. It will be so nice to see everyone; brother, sister, mom, cousins - just to be with them and smile, hug, drink in their good humor and the pride of another family milestone reached. It will be a great day.

As I said, we were out running errands (new pants for the ever growing 12 year-old who, I am certain, is keeping several textile mills in business with the rate at which he is growing out of his clothes). As it happens we live very near the campus of Michigan State University and Saturday was Commencement Day. Everywhere we drove on campus, we saw moms, dads, proud grandparents and siblings embracing the new graduates dressed as they were in green robes and beaming from ear to ear. There were no obvious estrangements, no observable fears, worries, or resentments - those ordinary human emotions that pop up in relationships from time to time. From the outside looking in, all you could see was love and pride conjoined with relief and anticipation. There too, clans were gathered to jointly mark the day with one of their own. An opportunity not to be missed, a singular moment of shared joy too good to be traded for any other moment at any other locale.

A few of the errands we were running that afternoon also related to the Boy Scout recognition banquet planned for tomorrow night. Given that my son is advancing to a more senior level of scouting, and that he is in my mind an outstanding young man and a fine boy scout to his troop, I'm looking forward to celebrating with him tomorrow night. There will be a similar, albeit smaller, gathering of the clan to mark this milestone. But the emotion is unchanged - an opportunity not to be missed. One more chance to say to one of my family's younger young men "I see you! Do you see me seeing you? 'Cause I was wondering if you saw me seeing you because I wanted you to know how really neat I think you are."

I was reflecting on that sentiment - those goofy but heart-warming words spoken by my mother so many times in my youth - and it dawned on me that THAT is exactly why we celebrate. To come together and say to the celebrant "Do you see me seeing you be great? Because I wanted to make sure you knew I know how really neat you are..."

And I think that is pretty neat.

So wherever you are, whomever you are with, I hope you find the time to celebrate the good things in those around you. We are reminded all too often that the only time we are promised is this exact moment we are living right now. And if we are lucky enough to string together these moments and others like them in sufficient quantity, then we ought not take for granted a chance to join with our families, our friends, those people we think are really neat, in celebration. In the end, it's our joined lives and the very living of them that we are celebrating. To quote the great Bruce Springsteen, "It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive..."

So thanks for stopping by my blog and including me and my little corner of the world in you being really neat in your little corner of the world.

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

The Hunger Games; reality, and My Reality

2012-03-26T10:09:00.001+07:00

Long ago I gave up on any ambition of being "cool." I WAS cool, once - long ago when the Earth was still young and MTV still played music videos - I was a pretty cool guy. Readers of this blog who knew me in high school will not remember me as cool; because I wasn't back then. But in college - well that was another story. I hit my stride in college and there lived a pretty cool existence.

That being said, as I sneak up on my 30th high school graduation anniversary, I admit that I do not know any current songs, recognize any current tv stars, and cannot even begin to fathom the circumstances under which I would pick up one of those dreadful "Twilight" books and lend to it any of my precious time. I realize that I loved Seinfeld and that show went off the air 14 years ago.

So, when my nearly 12 year-old son asked, it was with a high degree of anxiety that I bought the wonder-boy the Hunger Games books. He loves them. I thought perhaps they were too dark for my liking. When I was a boy his age, honest to God, I was reading the Hardy Boys (read every one of them two or three times), The Chronicles of Narnia (thank you Mr. Seiter for sharing those books with me in 5th grade - I have worn out three sets in my lifetime) and was fixated on the tales of King Arthur, the Three Musketeers, and Robin Hood. My books had old fashioned heroes and old fashioned themes of good and evil and the hero always fought hard and won the day.

So when junior said he wanted the Hunger Games I wanted to demonstrate enough trust in him to buy them and give them over without first censoring them. I hadn't heard of these books except that I knew they were wildly popular with young kids - which to me meant they must be filled with inhumanity, cruelty and sex gushing off every lurid page. But, rather than censor the books, I engaged him in a thoughtful discussion why we read, what we hope to get out of reading, and what to watch for about the ideas we let others put in our heads. He humored me with the same degree of patience a 5 year-old uses when needing a restroom.

After the lecture, delivered with skill in a locked and moving car in order to frustrate any plans he had on escaping, I gave him the books. He read the first book in about 2 days, a fact which convinced me that my innocent, terrific, wholesome little boy who still gives hugs and kisses before he goes to bed had just read "Tropic of Cancer" meets "Lady Chatterly's Lover."

When he asked me to take him to see the movie this weekend I was impressed that he would invite such parental scrutiny into his lurid world of post 20th century pop culture. Then it dawned on me that I was his ride. I said "yes, of course" and then promptly went to the interwebs to see what I might learn about this story.

I subsequently learned that the novel, written by Suzanne James in 2008, was inspired by the author's dim view of "reality" television. Already I was pleased. I too share a dim view of reality television. It celebrates the most base instincts, emotions and pleasures in all of us. Whether it is man's inhumanity to man and the effront to civility represented by any number of survival games, or our pop culture's celebration of the shallow, vapid, and empty-headed morons being paid millions to impress us with their stupidity and complete lack of depth - I find reality television to be anything BUT reflective of reality.

I find it analgous to hunting bear with a bait pile of doughnuts and pie filling. The bear knows that what it consumes is probably going to end up killing it, but it is there, and easy to consume, requires little effort to digest, and virtually no effort to acquire. The bear can't resist it and those who desire to control the bear's behavior know exactly what to feed the bear to get it to do what they want it to do.

So we saw the movie and I was impressed by what I saw; both on screen and in my son and his good buddy. The movie celebrates courage and humanity while shining a bright light on the toxic portent of reality tv. At the movie, the kids cheered for the right reasons, held contempt for the vile characters, and were moved by the most humane parts of the story. I walked out of the theater happy and proud that, 30 years removed from the stories of my youth, the modern knights of literature were knights no less than those I cheered on in Arthur Rex. The good guys were as dauntless and bold and human as any that I encountered in any of my favorite stories.

My reality for the weekend was that I probably worried for nothing - that the child sharing my house was not going to be any more of a miscreant after reading the Hunger Games than I became after reading The Catcher in the Rye. For that, I am relieved and a little proud of my son and the good company he keeps. My belief that a company of good boys will, by and large, grow into a company of good men with just a little trust and support was affirmed by what I saw tonight.

So, thanks for stopping by my blog today. I hope wherever you are; whomever you are with today, you are crafting a great story of good guys, heroes, courage and faith. The kind of story where the hero is tested, shows strength, loves, hurts a little, and in the end wins the day.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

"Whattya mean the parents can't watch?"

2012-02-01T04:16:00.000+07:00

My daughter takes ballet class. Of course she does. Why wouldn’t she? She is an American kid of the girl variety; pigtailed and turbo-charged. She needs something to do; so why not ballet? Despite the fact that it is nothing fancy or extravagant (the blogging world has yet to turn me into an overnight “hundredaire”), it means the world to her. She jumps, tumbles, learns French words and gets some very solid girl time once per week. I love that she is in ballet even though the decidedly “anti princess” part of me is watching these dance teachers like a hawk. No princesses allowed.

So that attitude kind of sets the stage for understanding my tenuous relationship with ballet class. At its most basic level, I agree to pay them and have the half-pint there dressed and ready to go at the appointed hour. That’s my side of the deal. And I love that my daughter loves it. Truly, she can hardly contain herself on “ballet nights” because she is so excited to go and dance, and flip, and tumble for 40 minutes. What really feeds my concern, however, is their side of the deal. It seems that in exchange for me paying them and having the kiddo here at the appointed hour; they take the kiddo and go into a room where the parents may not tread and play music for 40 minutes after which the child appears rosy cheeked and asking for food and water. Yes, what is really giving me heartburn over the whole deal is this idea that the parents are not permitted to watch ballet class.

For those of you with non-dancing kids, I will repeat that. The. Parents. Are. Not. Permitted. To. Watch.

Hmmmph. Nothing in my recent memory has made me feel so old and grouchy as being told I cannot watch my daughter dressed in her cute little ballet dress (funded by yours truly) and her fancy little ballet slippers (also provided by the SmTD Endowment for the Arts) with her hair braided and gorgeous (done each night before class by her mom) flip, and leap, and giggle, and strive, and overcome, and achieve. I want to see her soar; but I also want to see her struggle to get there. I want to cheer at the recital, but I am being robbed of the journey that precedes that finish line. Telling the parents they can watch at the recital and two practices a YEAR just feels like someone is being a ninny about the whole thing (to me anyhow – and I realize that dance class has been this way since the first cavemen took their cavedaughters off to cave-ballet class and the first cavewomen said “take it outside, bub.”)

So instead of sitting there bursting with pride, enthusiasm, fear, hope and all of the other really good things that grip a parent watching their kid apply herself; I sit with all the other parents in the hallway, fiddling on the smart phone or reading books. I sit there wondering how much joy I am missing; wondering what images I might be seeing the memory of which will warm my heart and blur my vision well into my old age. I sit there, writing this blog entry and deleting it over and over because it sounds so crabby in comparison to how much my daughter LOVES ballet.

I sit and wonder how things would be if we handled baseball, or swimming, or football this way. When I had knee surgery, my wife had the option of watching the operation from the hospital’s operating theater. If a surgeon can slice into the really ouchy parts of my body and somehow withstand the observation of some uninvolved yet otherwise interested third party, then, and excuse me for saying it so bluntly, what the hell kind of atomic research are they doing at 5 year-old ballet class that I can’t sneak a peak of my daughter being every bit the 5 year old whirlwind I imagine her to be?

So, I will make this promise. I will keep my grousing about ballet class limited to these electronic pages, and I will follow up this grouchy rant with some assessment of my feelings AFTER the recital, but for now I am contentedly grumpy with ballet class. Maybe next term I will just have to sign up with her so I can get inside the door.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today. I hope that wherever you are, whatever you are doing today, you are doing it in a fashion that those who are warmed by the mere thought of you can cheer you on, wave to you, and chant your name.

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

Bullying, we are all victims and participants....

2011-10-15T04:45:00.003+07:00

When I was a younger man, probably around 25 or 26, I played Church League softball. The team I played on was terrible; horrible; god-awful. We routinely lost in huge fashion. I distinctly remember one game during which I played left field and the opposing team hit so many home-runs into the woods behind me that I eventually stopped going in there to fetch the ball. Play had to be suspended until they could talk somebody's little brother into braving the woods and the mud and mosquitoes and collecting all the balls that were smacked out there. We were horrible.

So, it was with no small sense of wonder that in a game against Ward Presbyterian, our arch-rival, we were actually within striking distance in the bottom of the final inning with two runners on and me up to bat. I was never any kind of speed merchant on the base paths. Rusty Staub like speed probably best describes me. But, the times we played on fields without fences, I could usually hit the ball hard enough once or twice a game that, even with my diminished foot speed, I could lumber around for a homer.

The game I am remembering, there were runners on second and third with two outs and I was up for my team's last at bat - and we were down by three runs. I put every ounce of my then 6 foot, 265 pound frame into a long, hard line drive to deep left field that rolled forever and started my journey around the bases.

As I rounded second, I noticed the left fielder searching for the ball in tall grass and recall feeling like I was going to tie the game for sure. As I rounded third, the third base coach told me the ball was coming and to run harder. I looked up and saw that the other team's catcher, a child of 12 or 13, was standing in perfect position to block the plate and I said a small prayer for the relay throw to miss him by a mile. It didn't, it bounced once, hard, on the dry clay in front of the plate and skipped right into his mitt like he was a goalie making a glove save on a hard slap-shot.

"Crap," I thought as I came churning down the base-path. Either I had to kill the kid, or not. The kid, to his great credit, looked up with a face ashen with fear and apprehension as I churned down on him, but did not yield his position blocking home plate.

In the end, I dodged lamely to the left and was tagged out - standing chest to chest with the diminutive catcher. As he tagged me out, we each smiled as my teammates erupted with alarm and anger. "You should have creamed him!" screamed the players from the bench. "You cost us the game!" yelled another.

My face crimson, I turned toward the crowd and found my girlfriend (now my wife) who was the only other smiling face in the crowd. She understood. As I deadfooted it back to the bench, a solitary old man - his hands as soft as velvet - took up my hand in both of his and shook it firmly; meeting my gaze as only those from older generations seem to be able to do.

"Mister, that was the finest act of sportsmanship I have ever seen; and I just wanted to say "thank you." That boy is my grandson, and, well, I just wanted to say "thanks." His clear blue eyes peered right into mine, and I knew of course he was thanking me for not smooshing his grandson, a kid less than 1/3 my size (who never should have been playing catcher in the first place). He was thanking me for realizing that this was only a game and it wasn't worth anyone getting hurt over.

So, that night, I went from hero, to goat, to hero in the space of about 3 minutes. But walking back to my car I felt slightly taller; slightly more affirmed. My team, sensing that a rare opportunity for a win had evaporated into thin air but had also left behind an even more rare opportunity to celebrate the right thing, welcomed me back with open arms and we all had a good laugh about it.

So, what does this story have to do with bullying you might wonder. Well, we all have choices. We all can decide to smear the little kid playing catcher and win the game, or realize it is just a game and there are far more important things in the overall scheme of things, and then seize upon that knowledge and do the right thing.

A bully thrives on the idea that most people will not do the right thing; most people won't say "well, you invited all of us to the party but excluded this other one - I'm not letting you get away with that." Maybe more of us should. Most parents are so happy to have their child included with the "in-crowd" that they never think to confront the "in-crowd" on the very fact that they are guilty of creating an "out-crowd." Maybe, as a responsible parents, we ought to stop and consider that dynamic before we stand idly by and let the other kids feel heart-broken and alone in a small town.

A bully loves to pick on the little kid, or the disenfranchised, or the different or unpopular kid. And kids, at least kids whose parents don't work to confront and dilute the power of a bully by leading their kids to higher ground than that occupied by the bully, adopt a pack-like mentality just out of a sense of self-preservation. Well, what kind of world would we have if all of us taught our kids to say to the bullies “you're not getting away with that, I won't let you. I see what you're doing and we all know it's wrong.” What kind of world might we live in if we worked harder at inclusion than the petty bullies and deficient parents do at exclusion?

So that's what it has to do with bullying - we all see the choices around us. What separates the inspirational from the frustrating and ordinary and honestly pathetic is how we choose to confront those hard choices. We cannot begin to get serious about confronting the bullies of the world; physical and emotional, without also challenging ourselves to say "I will not tolerate this." Until we do that, it's all just empty talk.

So, thanks for stopping by my blog today. I hope wherever you are, whoever you are with, you look at those you love and see those who will grow into the people who will craft a better world for all of us; and that you move boldly and firmly and in the full light of day to make that happen.

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

10 years after September 11…

2011-09-10T00:52:00.000+07:00

I have very few ritual traditions in my life. There are the usual – Christmas and all the holiday trappings. We have a tree, and hang stockings, and usually I try and squeeze in time to see the musical version of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” – titled “Scrooge.” For Thanksgiving there are the meals, and the phone calls to loved ones, and of course football. But the exercise of these holidays comes without much in the way of lock-step tradition.

There are no special dishes that we MUST have; no special piece of china that occupies the high ground of tradition. I guess there is a prayer that I try and say on each of these special occasions – Robert Louis Stevenson’s Prayer of Thanksgiving:

Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; and for our friends in all parts of the earth. Amen

I say that I try and say it because, invariably, the words are muted by my gratitude. But, in terms of ritual, it is about as close as I get.

On September 11, though, I have a ritual I have enacted since my oldest started school. As I recall, the morning of September 11, 2001 was one of sterling beauty in mid-Michigan. I distinctly remember walking out of my home and thinking it had been a long time since I had seen such a beautiful day.

Ten years later and we all know how that day ended. As the events unfolded on that morning, I found myself back at home – hugging my wife and young son and telling them both that I love them. I wondered then how I would ever explain that evil day to my son as he grew into a man.

Ten years later, that boy is now on the threshold of adolescence. Lean and tall, kind-hearted and patriotic – he has been asking lots of questions about September 11, 2001. His mom and I share with him that, at its heart, the story of 9/11 is a story of courage, and love, and heroism. It is a story that warns us not to let hatred tear at our common sense; it is the story of triumph and resilience. It is the story of how the passengers on flight 93 voted before they took action. It is an American story and an intensely human story.

So it dawns on me that one tradition I have that is immoveable is this – each September 11, I play hooky from work a little bit and I swing by Michael’s school at about 9:00 am. I go into the office and tell the secretary that I have to give him something I think he might have forgotten at home and ask would she please call him to the office. Then I stand in the hallway and wait for my Lochinvar in tennis shoes to come bounding down the hallway. What he gets is a kiss, a hug, and a reminder that his mom and I are immensely proud of him, love him and no matter what occurs ever, he should never forget that and he should never feel alone.

The tradition grew out of the idea that every person who was killed on 9/11 was just some person going about the details of leading their lives. One person that was ultimately deprived of a last hug; a last kiss – a final reassurance they mean the world to someone else.

As traditions go, I think it’s a keeper.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today – posts are slowing down just due to the sheer busyness of us leading our extraordinary ordinary lives. I hope wherever you are, however you mark the solemn occasion of 9/11’s sad anniversary – you do so among a crowd of those you love; and who love you, and that never far from your gaze this weekend is the beloved face of someone special to you. Also, in honor of all who perished then and after, I hope you take the time to remind those you love how cherished they are.

Dennis

Smalltowndad@hotmail.com

Alone in a digital age, how is this possible?

2011-07-31T22:53:00.003+07:00

When I was a young man, my dad's mother passed away. That happens with grandparents - if all goes according to plan. Not a single parent on the planet, regardless of faith, color or creed wants to outlive their children. So that fact of her passing is not really remarkable. Grandparents die.

What is remarkable is what I learned; and am learning, from it. See, to say she was "unpleasant" as a person is perhaps the second greatest understatement of last 100 years. The first greatest understatement of the last 100 years being that of Lieutenant Henry Wilde when he said "do you think?" to Captain John Smith of the RMS Titanic when Smith said "maybe we should go slower around this ice.".

She was extremely unpleasant. Hateful would be a better way of putting it. And, as a consequence of her aggressive, intemperate life spent attacking everyone around her, she found herself, at the end of her life, completely alone. Estranged from her only son, her brother, her grandkids who were the frequent targets for her venom and manipulation. Her death came quietly, without any family near her, at a government subsidized nursing home.

After she died, I helped my dad pack up her stuff. It was an extremely sad time. Sadder still was what I discovered when I found her phone bill. See - she died back at a time before there were cell phones or internet. Looking at her itemized phone bill, the single number appearing - repeated over and over - was to the time.

Yes, "back in the day" it was possible to dial a number and have the phone company tell you "at the tone, the time will be 11 o'clock and thirty-five minutes....DING." I can't remember what it cost, but I do remember that she was calling that number 75 to 100 times a day, every day.

I never had the nerve to ask my dad about it; it just seemed so crazy and sad. But after he passed away I mentioned it to my mother - who is very wise about the ways of people - and she told me "it was the only human voice in her life; we all need to hear a human voice. At the end of her life, that was the only voice that could bear to talk to her..."

So today, hear I sit, decades removed from that lesson, in what you would otherwise think was a busy dad's paradise. My wife and son are away with the Boy Scouts - a week of primitive camping, canoeing, and fishing in an area of the state so remote and beautiful that I am actually green with envy. They will see trees whose roots date back to the time of Lincoln and whose shade protected the Ojibwe and their guests not as visitors to the forest, but as inhabitants.

Amazingly, or perhaps more accurately, blessedly - there is no cell phone coverage, no electronics, no digital anything. Just life the way the scouts have been living it for the last 100 years - camping, cooking your catch over an open fire, stars by the divine multitude. The week will become a colorful stripe woven forever into the tapestry of each of the lives of both mother and son. I am sure of it.

And my daughter, the 4 year-old magical human-tornado who never stops talking, is spending the week with her grandparents in "the Big City." She will visit with her grandma and grandpa who spend their winters in Florida. She will see their friends and be shown off at church, doted over, be treated like the princess she is not permitted to be in my home. (no princesses here, this is a working household - she wants to grow up to be an astronaut, surgeon, or hard working stay at home mom - fine. But no princesses allowed here - she is so much better than that). That being said, it's ok if she goes to grandma and grandpa's house to be a princess for a week. All granddaughters ought to be their grandfather's princess I suppose.

So here I sit - the military channel on an infinite loop as I try and remember to do all of the stuff my wife usually does to keep this house together (water the cats, feed the plants, do the wash, mow the lawn, follow up with the doctors and dentists about appointments, pick up the trumpet from the music store...) in a house that has suddenly gone quiet. In the last 48 hours I haven't really talked to anyone - haven't told anyone "eat your dinner, brush your teeth, don't run in the house, be careful..." I think the only words I uttered in the last 48 hours were "oh great" when the cat barfed.

And I - I can't believe I am saying this - I miss the noise. I miss the activity. I miss always wondering "what next?" I miss the door bell ringing and seeing one of Michael's pals and knowing I'll be cooking for one more tonight. I miss Kristin chasing me down the street when I leave for work - racing me down the sidewalk smiling and waving as she races the car out of the subdivision.

The quiet reminds me of the blessings - the vitality of a house that is really a home to a busy family. The blessings of sorting out the border wars of who gets the best spot on the couch, what time baseball starts, why the shrimp is out of bed at midnight. There was a thunderstorm the other night and there was no one for me to reassure that everything was going to be ok. Two days into this reverse exile, I miss the cacophony that marks the rhythm of my life.

So, wherever you are today, whoever you are with, I hope your ears are filled with the joyful music of a life made busy with love; with urgency; with the laughter that comes from busy, silly kids. Wherever you are today, if you need to know what time it is just to hear the sound of a human voice, gimme a call and I'll chat you up, and throw in the time for free. Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

PS - before you get all teary-eyed thinking of me, I should add that, by the time you are reading this, I will be on the second tee with a good friend and I have a T-bone steak the size of a small pizza thawing in the fridge. I think I will probably survive being on my own, if only the cats would stop barfing. :-)

Father's Day...

2011-06-19T21:17:00.005+07:00

I suppose my first notion of the concept of Fatherhood occurred about when I was 4 years old. My older brother Dave wasn't feeling well and my Dad got signed up to take both Dave and me to the doctor. Being that dad was a salesman, he was always dressed very professionally for work; impeccable suit, tie, shoes polished - the works.

Whatever illness we had at that time, I remember that both Dave and I got shots for it. And Dave started to feel a little queasy in the aftermath of the shot. The color drained from his face, he crossed his arms over his stomach and said "Dad, I don't feel so good..."

My dad turned his attention from me, I was still sobbing from the shot, and he looked back at Dave. I suppose it was the sound of that first hard gag that got his attention. I remember him crossing the room in a flash while at the same time searching for any kind of vessel to catch what was inevitably coming next. It was almost like something out of a cartoon or maybe a Dick Van Dyke movie. He danced around the examination room in fast motion - moving from counter to counter searching for a wastebasket, barf bag, lunch box - anything I suppose - and eventually wound up in front of Dave with his empty hands outstretched the same way a punter appears just before he drops the ball to kick it.

"BBBB.....BBBBBB.....BBBBB...BAAAAAARRRRFFFFFFF!" is what Dave said.

Dad's hands weren't empty after that. In his later years, when we were grown and he was more confident in sharing with his children some of the saltier passages from his time in the service, he described that moment to me this way "I stood there, covered in barf, feeling like I had been shot at and missed and shit at and hit..."

The point of the whole story is, I remember at the moment it happened, thinking "Well, if that's what it is to be a dad, then I don't ever want to be a dad."

Well, I have been a dad now 11 years. And in those 11 years I have been barfed on, peed & pooped on, had every shirt I own treated as a hankie for a kid crying from hurt feelings, skinned knees, or missing toys. I survived 1000 or more shots to the grapes from the murderously cute and fast moving hands, knees, elbows, and feet of my two kids. I have driven 75 miles round trip to a rest area in the middle of the night to search a rest area garbage can for a lost iPod Touch...let me just let that sink in for you...a rest area garbage can. If anything on Earth can be more accurately described as Hell's anus than a rest area garbage can I don't know what it is; but I searched it for a missing iPod Touch that was a gift from Santa. I mopped up Barf at Sam's Club - and I have never worked at Sam's Club.

I can confidently say that if those were the only things listed on the Dad job description, I would have never applied. As it turns out though, the creepier, more disgusting aspects of fatherhood really kind of fall down to the level of "other duties as assigned" on the "Dad Job Description."

I have also cheered like a madman at baseball games and, lately road races. I cried at scouting events and pre-school graduations, read stories and had them read back to me in hilarious fashion and have been party to a million inside jokes. I've had to stop the car two houses down, already late for work, because a pee-wee in pigtails and a sundress is chasing me down the street crying because I did not give her sufficient hugs and kisses before I left the door. At work, I wear a lanyard carrying my work ID that proclaims I am "The World's Greatest Dad" because one Christmas when my son was 8, he apparently thought that. I watched both of these children come into the world - have known them literally since the time they were "1 second old." I have been told I love you 95,000 times more than I ever expected to hear that phrase in my life.

In short, I have been changed in ways I could not imagine. And - despite the vibrant disagreement I am having with an 11 year old boy over what are reasonable expectations for a snoozy Sunday morning at the precise moment I am writing this - I can say with certainty and confidence that I am still the luckiest guy I know.

So this Father's Day, I hope all those great dads out there stay dry and free from any type of human emissions. From this SmallTownDad to all the other dads out there, have a great Father's Day.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

P.S. Any dads out there reading this already know the inevitable outcome of the missing iPod Touch. The device that everyone was certain had inadvertently found its way into a McDonald's bag on the way home from some trip and was then discarded in the Rest Area garbage can? Yeah, it was under the back seat of the car. I only discovered it there AFTER I searched the garbage can. But, I am a dad - and that still rocks.

As it turns out, I have Kryptonite...

2011-06-07T00:02:00.003+07:00

It's true. As it turns out, I have my own Kryptonite. And, discovering that this past weekend, I confess no small degree of surprise that it’s not cheesecake, BBQ ribs, foxy boxing or war movies that will prove my undoing.

No, my Kryptonite, of all stupid and improbable things, is a song. And to make it worse, it’s a song from a Disney movie! I can sense you shaking your heads. I know. Imagine things from my point of view – you are just now learning this about me. I AM me and am just now learning this about me.

The circumstances of this discovery are run of the mill, "small town dad" kinds of things. I was at my daughter’s pre-school graduation last Friday. Yes, we are a small town, and yes, we do pre-school graduation – and try as I might to sneer my cool sneer at this idea of a graduation pre-dating the time that this little kid actually even starts school; I can not.

The teachers have been with them two years (in some case almost half of the little kids’ lives). The kids themselves and the parents have traveled this road together. The parents can walk confidently from the parking lot without crying or looking back and their little ones have gone from terrified toddlers unable to let go of mom or dad’s pant leg in the morning, to budding independents with confidence, intellect, and unvarnished personality in full bloom. These thoughts already on my mind last Friday, I confess, I was feeling less than bulletproof when I got there.

The ceremony itself was in a beautiful old fashioned school auditorium. A gift to the community 80 some odd years ago from auto millionaire James Couzens after a madman destroyed the community school and killed scores of people. Upon learning of the disaster, Couzens called the Governor and said “Mr. Governor, my fortune is at your disposal. Rebuild the school.”

Rebuild it they did. The lobby of the auditorium is almost sacred in its reverence to the little town and its school kids who survived the tragedy. It is hallowed ground already. Evidence of so much vitality; so much life having passed through its halls in unheralded fashion, is everywhere. Ancient school desks on display; the school clock saved from the bombed out ruins, composite pictures of every graduating class dating back to pre-World War II remind all who pass that time is always special; and always moving, never guaranteed but for the precise moment you are living.

So it was that I walked briskly through this sepia toned slice of my new hometown to take in what was to be the most modest of ceremonies – my little girl, the miracle child who almost never was, graduating from pre-school.

As I made my way into the auditorium, I heard “the song.” Now, I don’t pretend to know everyone reading these pages, but I know enough of you to know that almost of all of you who are parents have a song that is “the song” that reminds you of your kids.

The song I heard entering the auditorium was Phil Collins’ “You’ll be in my heart” from the Disney movie, Tarzan. Immediately my knees buckled, I could not breathe, and either allergies or the gnats from a thousand camels attacked my eyes because for some reason I could not see out of them and they started leaking this kind of clear, viscous fluid. I had to sit down.

That song, as it turns out, is “the song” for my son, our oldest. He was born on a summer night at very nearly midnight. Like it is for all new parents, the experience of bringing our first child into this world was an adventure of conquering the unexpected and walking through the fear. When he was born we were at the hospital for over 13 hours and had one minor emergency that scared me to death. Around 4:00 am, when all went quiet and my wife and new son were tucked in and safe and sound – I walked out to the car for a short ride home to catch some sleep before coming back to the hospital the next morning.

Our modest home was about 5 miles away and the roads were deserted. I started the car and turned on the radio just in time to hear “You’ll be in my heart.” It’s a song I'll forever associate with him and my journey from plain old Dennis to SmallTownDad.

Listening to the lyrics that day, reflecting on the events and permanent change they brought to my life, I realized then how, all at once, I had a new singular purpose in my life – to keep this family safe. By the time I got home that night 11 years ago I was so full of passion and adrenaline I would have gladly gone looking for lions, tigers, or any other perceived threat to my family. I felt inspired and committed to the idea that no matter what in my life, as a dad I would always have to be brave.

So it was that the same song that inspired me 11 years previously sapped my strength last Friday. I sat immobile; every ounce of testosterone repelled from my body with the force of two magnets of the same polarity. In that moment I came to another realization. The bravery stuff is obvious – all animals have it when it comes to their children. It’s how we guarantee the survival of the species.

But, zoology and evolution aside, I realized then that nothing in my life prepared me for how much I would love these children; how vulnerable I would be to even their most humble achievements or modest heartaches. Nothing prepared me for the reckoning that with each celebration marked, each milestone achieved – there comes a collateral moment of the rare and beautiful gift of this special time slipping away into my life’s rearview mirror.

So today’s blog is a blog about celebration and appreciation. I am so grateful to have been blessed with this chance to be a dad; to watch them grow and to know their stories – to have these small hands to hold if even for a little bit. The legacy of this little town we chose is to not take one moment for granted; don’t forsake any of the badges or incidences of childhood. Through natural means or other, those will be gone into memory soon enough.

Thanks for stopping by today – I hope wherever you are this graduation season –if you are celebrating a college, high school, or pre-school graduation – you seize that moment to cry hot tears, cheer ‘til your throat is sore, and reflect on the cascading series of miracles that put you and yours at exactly this place with exactly these people.

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

"There are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something."

2011-05-17T10:58:00.001+07:00

That was Thomas Edison's famous quote on rules. To him there there were rules, and then there were rules. And while for most of us, we aren't competing exactly with Edison's level of achievement, we nonetheless have to deal with certain rules governing or defining our existence.

I often joke with my son about how there are "SmallTownDad Rules." Nothing new for me - my parents had them too. For my dad, one example of those rules was: "Don't ever shine your flashlight down the outhouse..." For my mom, the teacher, her famous rules were much more refined but nonetheless as practical as dad's. One famous one was "If you want an answer right this second, I'll give you an answer right this second. I'm pretty sure you won't like it, but you'll get your answer."

So, I am preserving here for my kids a few of my "rules." I am not sure if any of them mean anything except that nearly always - well around half the time anyway - they end up true.

1. There is always a closer parking spot. Now this one doesn't work at the local 7-11 or gas station. But at the big-box store and the mall it is a near certainty to be true. You just have to be patient.

2. In a small town, the person in traffic that you made that obscene gesture to at 9:00 am? Yeah, that person almost certainly will be at the 10:00 am meeting you were rushing to. Always always always... I was at a birthday party at a local zoo, parked in the parking lot 8 miles away from any other car - just waiting for my daughter to come out when this little car zipped into the spot next to me like I was in some kind of dog-fight with her. I can only imagine the look on my face, having watched this daredevil come within a hair's breadth of smashing into my car. As the stuntwoman...I mean driver...exited her vehicle, I realized it was a woman I worked with for years who was volunteering at the zoo. The 9:00 am rule always is true.

3. There is always one more meal's worth of fuel in the propane tank, until there isn't. I have two propane tanks for my grill - and propane compared to other fuels is relatively cheap - so there is really no excuse for not keeping the spare filled up other than a) I like the action of gambling a family dinner of strip steaks and corn on the cob against the odds that the grill will go stone cold two minutes after ignition; and b) keeping a second full propane tank in the garage is like keeping a second bomb sitting around. Yes, I am well aware of the school of thought that says a real artiste would only work in charcoals - but I make no pretense of being an artiste. I am a dad.

4. The Mirth Curth - just when I get up a good head of steam yelling at one or the other of these two kids, they will invariably crack me up. It is no wonder there is no good order or discipline in this house. Plenty of mirth, but certainly no good order or discipline :-)

5. The more you blow off your wife's worrying about the sump pump not working, the more you virtually assure that the sump pump will stop working...in the middle of the night...in between pay days.

6. The word "now"; while effective as a command to those younger than 10, is of no possible utility to a married man in his relationship with his wife. Think of it - you can say to a kid "get in there and brush your teeth, Now!" and the kid will listen or at least understand you. "Now" is an important word for kids. But consider the difference it makes in the following, seemingly innocuous, sentences: saying "What's wrong?" to your spouse takes on an entirely new meaning when presented as "what's wrong now?"

7. The second you draw a line in the sand with that child, you know the one, who tells you she has to go potty every time there is a chore to be done; the second you say "No. Baloney. You do this to me every time. You can hold it until we finish cleaning the kitchen..." Well that second will be the time you end up with a wet and smelly line in the sand and your wife asking you "what did you do, now?".

8. Chocolate milk and fudgsicles are a terrible home remedy for Rota Virus. That's all that needs to be said about that, ever. Again.

9. No matter how small the amount - liquid dish soap is never an acceptable alternative to dishwasher soap for the dishwasher. If you doubt me, try it once. I promise you that in the aftermath you will achieve a new appreciation for the word "astonishing."

10. Vernors and vanilla ice cream will cure all manners of scrapes, bumps, bruises, hurt feelings and suds-flooded kitchens.

So, a few of the rules of this house - shared for your utility and commentary. Wherever you are tonight, I hope you find yourself in the company of those who would celebrate in your unusual and contradictory rules; those who would forgive your cold grill, and those whose glad heart will make you laugh even after you catch them writing on the walls in magic marker.

Thanks for stopping by my blog tonight - please feel free to share the basic or unique rules of your home here.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

An Ordinary Extraordinary day with Scouts...

2011-05-08T05:18:00.005+07:00

"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared."

That great quote from WWI flying ace Eddie Von Rickenbacker is one that is oft repeated or emulated by others. My dad, without the benefit of Google or the internet, shared a nearly identical version of it with me as a child growing up. On an extraordinary, ordinary Saturday morning we in my family saw, in miniature, what that quote really means.

This particular Saturday found us up at the crack of dawn, heading off to yet another terrific Boy Scout adventure. Groggy family piled into the family grocery getter, we all headed off to Camp Kiwanis in Central Lower Michigan for a day of service to others. Michael's Boy Scout Troop was volunteering to help with an event called "Webelos in the Woods," an opportunity for Cub Scouts and Webelos to earn merit badges and participate in some of the greater aspects of scouting, camping, and achievement.

Planned for the younger kids were activities like Archery, Engineering, Camp FIre building and a climbing/rappeling opportunity on the camp's famous "Tower of Strength." Parents were invited to come and hang out while the older Boy Scouts volunteered to help out at different activities around the camp.

During break periods and down time, the Boy Scouts who were present were permitted to engage in some of the same activities that were set up for the younger Cubs and Webelos. It was during one of these times that I asked our nearly 11 year old son if he thought he wanted to a take a crack at mastering "The Tower of Strength."

Call her what you will - "The Widowmaker," "Old Cranky," or "The Plywood Pariah"; the Tower of Strength is a four sided climbing tower of ancient construction with a rock course on two sides and a rappelling surface on the third. It is central to the parade grounds at Camp Kiwanis and casts an imposing shadow there for all of the visitors to see.

I was expecting some hemming and hawing and an eventual "no" from Michael. He is my conservative child; my "why cannonball into the pool when the steps are right here?" child. He is as deliberate, purposeful and cautious as my youngest is wild and carefree. So it was that he surprised me by meeting my gaze with a huge freckly smile, and said, "Sure, Dad, I'll give it a try."

I was doubly surprised because I knew how exhausted he must have been. The night before there was a Walk-A-Thon event at the local school and Michael ran the entire three hours he was there; stopping only twice for water. He logged nearly 14.5 miles in three hours of solid running merely 15 hours before we arrived at the base of Old Cranky. So, I expected him to flop down into the camp chair next to me and tell me "maybe next time, dad."

But - he made a bee-line for the Tower. He was suited up, given an expert safety instruction and assumed his place on the right side of side by side climbing stations set up to assault the west side of the Tower of Strength.

The Tower is a seductive temptress to those adolescents who come within its presence. Its rock course, straight up a 90 degree wall using only your brain, arms, hands and legs, tests strength, courage, and flexibility. The reward for reaching the top? Rappeling down the other side. That's the rule of the Tower - the only way you get to rappel down is if you can find the grit within you to climb up. It's not uncommon for kids to have to use successive trips on different visits to the camp to work up their courage to make it to the top.

Now the fact is that anyone climbing is first and foremost in the hands of trained, certified climbing instructors. So, thing one - the kids are always safe. Thing two - they are tied off in expert climbing fashion and, if everyone has done their job right, should be able to make the effort at climbing the wall with no real possibility of falling. Those things being certain, however, try convincing a ten year old 15 feet off the ground and 15 feet from the top that he is no danger whatsoever.

So it was that Michael approached the course. He is lean, and strong, and very flexible and the first 15 feet up were achieved without even breaking a sweat. Then, at the midpoint of the wall, he became uncertain of which handholds to take and had the courage to tell one and all "I'm afraid, can you lower me please?" He didn't cry or scream out, but there was no doubt he wanted down.


Anthony scales the wall to help Michael

What he didn't see was that a fellow scout, Anthony, a whirling dervish of a kid with wild hair and a broad, energetic smile, was preparing to assault the second route on the exact same wall. He called out "Hang On Michael! I'm coming, I'll show you the way!"

The crowd around the Tower also called out to Michael "Hang on, Don't quit! You can do it!"

In a flash, Anthony, a confident and skilled climber two years older than Michael, zipped up the left hand side of the wall and, pausing ever so slightly when he got next to him, said to Michael, "c'mon, you can do this. Follow me."

Michael, all eyes on him now, re-mounted the wall with vigor and commitment and, when he couldn't find a foothold, used his hands and arms to pull himself up to the next spot where his boots could find purchase. Families from Scout packs we had never met before called encouragement to him "You can do it!' came a call from the archery range. "Don't quit, Michael!' called out a dad from behind his young son. A complete stranger standing next to me called on to Michael as if he was his own, "You can do it buddy! You're almost there!"

Slowly and surely he made his way to the top and successfully summited The Tower of Strength on his first try. We all cheered. I cheered hard, knowing how tired and afraid he must have been.

Rappelling down !

I watched with pride as he rappelled down the smooth side of the Tower. I wondered what I might tell him later of his extraordinary ordinary day in Scouts and it occurred to me that not a single person in the world would have held it against him if he said "I'm tired, and scared, and for crying out loud gimme a break I ran almost 15 miles on 10 year old legs just last night." No one would have judged him if he insisted on being lowered from the Tower.

But...instead...

Instead of having done something no one would have held against him, he (with help from fellow scout Anthony) achieved something now that no one will ever be able to take away from him. He saw his fear, and mastered it. He stood fast and colored in the lines of his character with bravery and achievement and did the very thing he was sure he couldn't do. He did on an ordinary day what is the ordinary mission of Scouting and the parent volunteers who work so hard at making these days possible.

And, in that regard, he had an extraordinary, ordinary day at Scouts.

So thanks for stopping by my blog. Wherever you are today; whoever you are with - I hope you are spending time with people whose courage lifts you, inspires you, and reminds you that there is bravery yet within all of us, if we just look for it and sometimes have the help of others to find it.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

Reflections on September 11, and on today...

2011-05-03T05:35:00.001+07:00

I have started this blog post many times over the last 15 hours without being able to settle into something that strikes the appropriate tone. Osama Bin Laden is dead – killed in a boots on the ground military operation in the previously unheard of city of Abbottabad, Pakistan. The last thing in this world he saw before he met his end was the grim face of a US warrior. The face of conviction and resolve; the face of justice delivered courtesy of the Navy SEALs. And while I do not cherish the idea of celebrating any person’s death; it seems just so unseemly, I can say that the events are remarkable. Like the slamming of great and terrible door while simultaneously opening a beautiful window.

The news of Bin Laden’s death brings to the mind many memories from September of 2001. Ten years in my rearview mirror - I remember September 11, 2001 distinctly. It was a Tuesday morning – perhaps the most stunningly beautiful morning I had seen in a long time. I recall the sky was gorgeous and there was a slight late summer breeze blowing through trees still full with leaves.

I was at work when news reports of the first plane hitting the towers came in. We all thought it was an accident – I remembered reading a story in fourth grade about how a bomber lost in fog had crashed into the Empire State Building and the sheared off propeller killed a woman. I remember thinking that the weather must be a lot worse in New York City than it was here if that happened.

Then came news of a second plane, and immediately we all knew it was an act of terror. Around the same time my mother-in-law called me at work, her voice anguished and very emotional. “We’re under attack” she screamed and then reminded me that I had left the house that morning with the computer still on so she couldn’t reach my wife and our then 1 year old son to check on them.

I left work, without permission of my supervisor, and went to the bank where I drew out 500.00. I filled the car with as much gasoline as it would hold and then went to our local discount retailer where I bought diapers, baby food, bottled water and bread. Having not lived through this before – I had no idea what to expect but those seemed like wise choices.

On my way back from the store to our modest home in Lansing, I noticed the gas stations wildly raising their prices – prices ranged from 3.00 per gallon to upwards of 5.00 a gallon. I felt a small tinge of relief at having gotten gas for right around a buck fifty per gallon. I can also vividly recall stepping out of the car and, for the first time in my entire life, realizing that there was virtually no air traffic flying. That morning was so beautiful and turned so dreadfully quiet. I remember every car at every stop light had an American; tears flowing, making regular eye contact with his or her neighbors at the light. I remember feeling that day like I was part of a nation; moreso than ever before in my life.

Once home, as I reached for the front door, I remember thinking that nothing would ever be the same in our lives again. I remember thinking that my new son would grow up in a world stained by war and terror – that his parents would be forever changed in the way that my parents and theirs were forever changed by Pearl Harbor. I turned the knob and there were my wife and son, playing in the front room – TV off. My wife asked me what I was doing home from work, and what was wrong – had I gotten fired? “Turn on the TV,” I told her.

The rest is just such a blur – the whirlwind moments in the days and weeks and months that followed. The eerie, haunting sounds of the firefighters’ distress beacons - "beep beep beep" that carried over to the news accounts from Ground Zero. The catheter of fear that is “news ticker” and its never ending torrent of information – mostly wrong. I remember crying, a lot. And I remember the rage, and patriotism, followed much later by a deep and sinister cynicism that we had been allowed down a path of war by those among us who wanted war.

On vacation in 2002, I asked a man from Pennsylvania if the effects of 2001 were more local, more potent to him living closer to New York City than to those of us in the Midwest. I remember he started to cry, and told me a story about having dinner at Windows on the World, and then being left wondering the next week if “that kid who brought me a pizza and a beer” was still alive.

I remember my visit to Shanksville, Pennsylvania in September of 2002 – and what a powerful and moving experience it was to be there with my family. The passengers and crew of flight 93 voted before they took action – how uniquely American. They voted. I remember walking away from that field in Shanksville thinking I would never again forgo my ability to vote in any election.

I also remember wondering what it would feel like when we finally caught up with Osama Bin Laden. That was a decade ago. So much of my life; all of our lives really, now gone - spent. And while I have never forgotten our troops in the field; never spent one moment taking their sacrifice for granted – I have to admit that over much of the last several years I have given as much thought to Osama Bin Laden as I have what I might cook for dinner.

So today, he is gone and we are here. I don’t know really how to feel about it. I don’t want to cheer the death of another. It’s just not my values. But I think it is good that he has had justice brought to him. It is good to show that whatever the costs there will be an accounting for terror; and I think it is good that it was Americans who did it.

I’ll go to bed tonight so very proud of our servicemen and women, our President, and our country. I do not know what will come of this – if there will be more peace or less in the weeks and months to come. But for today, we can rejoice in the notion of justice and a difficult job well done by those whose pledge is to keep America safe.

Two final remembrances of 9/11/2001 – before the advent of blogging, my writing indulgence was exercised only by writing an annual Christmas newsletter. Once per year I would sit down and punch out a couple of pages on whatever. A lasting change, after 9/11/01, was that I would sign each newsletter with the words “Peace in our time.”

The second is more a tradition than a remembrance. Each September 11, I stop by my son's school and ask the secretary to call him to the office. I tell her "I have to give him something he might have forgotten at home this morning." I then wait in the hallway for him and, when he appears, I give him a hug, a kiss and I tell him I love him and how proud his mom and I are of him. It is never lost on me that all who were lost on 9/11/01 were just ordinary people just leading their ordinary lives.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today. I hope that wherever you are, whoever you are with tonight – you find yourself in the company of those you love; those whose lives are precious to you and you are warmed by them. I hope you reflect on your mythology lessons and remember that, after Pandora opened the legendary vessel loosing all of the evils unto the world, therein remained just a solitary occupant of the box – hope. Tonight, hold those that are closest to you and hope and pray for a lasting peace in our time.

Dennis

Smalltowndad@hotmail.com

What really matters…

2011-04-14T23:07:00.001+07:00

So tomorrow is the big day – the dreaded knee surgery is upon me. Two months ago, while shepherding both of my kids and my sister’s oldest across an icy parking lot, I slipped and fell and landed squarely on both knees. Imagine a hockey goalie trying to make a save in the “5-hole.” That was pretty much me.

In the weeks immediately following the fall, I noticed an increasing sensitivity in my right knee. As it turns out, my father was not entirely correct when he said all injuries far from our heart can be cured by “rubbing some dirt on them” and “shaking them off.” So, I limped around for about a month while my wife reminded me frequently that I should get it checked out.

I had no desire to get it checked it out, for a couple of reasons. 1) The doctor I see is in cahoots with some unknown person from my past who has reason to want me dead. Why? I don’t know. But I know I have survived three or four earnest attempts by my present doctor to kill me so I really don’t have much faith in him. 2) It didn’t hurt that bad, it just always hurt. So I figured I would just “shake it off” and “rub some dirt on it.” And 3) the doctor’s office is where the scale lives – and the scale is to me what fire was to Frankenstein’s monster. “Aaaaaagghhhhh! Bad!” I am no fan of the scale.

So it was that at a family dinner in March, I was descending the staircase when my right knee decided it had had just about enough of my nonsense and decided to basically pull the old “exploding pain and popping sensations in the knee” trick. Down I went – unable to put any weight on it at all and then there was the pain. There was not enough dirt in all of Clinton County to rub the pain out of this injury.

The Emergency room diagnosed it, with a straight face mind you, as a “mild sprain.” I was hopeful and incredulous all at the same time. I have sprained my ankle before – and yes – it was very painful. No, the onset of that sprain did not have me re-enacting Raymond Burr’s silhouette from the opening credits of “Ironside” as I did with this injury. So, my incredulity was based on the fact that I was surrounded by doctors and nurses and orderlies and they said “mild sprain.” Turns out, there was nothing neither mild nor “sprainy” about it.

Torn meniscus was the diagnosis. Painful but common injury to the knee. Could have been much worse – fix it with arthroscopic outpatient surgery, take it easy and should be right as rain (with the attendant certainty that I will develop arthritis in that knee some time in the future).

So in all the poking, prodding, examining, imaging and testing that goes into moving this injury from a mild sprain to a torn meniscus and the eventual surgical repair, they tell me to go and have a pre-op EKG so they can make sure the ticker is still registering all moments great and small in its proper fashion.

I won’t bore you with the details – but I did have the EKG and there was an irregularity that was later chalked up to the human sweater vest I wear under my tee-shirt. The lovely woolen number from the Robin Williams collection seems to have interfered with one of the EKG leads and, after figuring that out, everything else tested out just fine.

While at the heart doctor’s office, they gave me a stress test. This was funny to me because I take one of these every day at my home when I open the evening mail. Apparently the doctor wanted something more scientific and observable than me opening the statement from the student loan people, so he ordered a test.

Because of the knee injury, I couldn’t do the six million dollar man treadmill test, so they gave me a chemical test. Basically you lie there on your side and they inject you with a drug that makes you feel like you are having a heart attack. I’m sure that’s not its purpose, but the feeling that there was an army of hobbits trying to kick their way out of my chest cavity did nothing to help calm my nerves laying there on the doctor’s table.

The sensation was terrifying. My dad died from complications of a heart attack. As I lay there, heart pounding wildly out of control, I thought of him and was profoundly impacted. The chemical stress test is deceiving in that your heart is racing but you aren’t breathing hard or working out or having any accompanying physical exertion. You just lay there, heart racing like the engine of a parked car with a brick on the accelerator.

In that moment I thought “this is what it must feel like to die of a heart attack.” Now I will be the first to admit that I have a real gift for the dramatic. And I am sure I was never in any danger at all – and if your doctor tells you to go and have a stress test; go and have the stress test. Knowing what is going on in there is better than not knowing.

But laying there as I was, heart racing, the reptilian genes whose genetic legacy is the maintenance of bare instinct and raw survival emotions slowly came to life and went to work slowing my heart even when the techs were telling me to get my heart beating faster.

Images from my extremely ordinary life began to flood my mind. All of sudden there was the summer day my best friend and I spent with a couple of girls we had crushes on, circling the lake in a speedboat, vivid memories of talking with my daughter about very ordinary things and realizing she is anything but ordinary. Next I saw my wife – this person with whom I have shared the last 25 years – at the hospital on the day both kids were born and equally vivid were the images of Michael; his impossible good humor and infectious laughter. Finally, my heart slowing back to its normal 75 beats per minute, there were hazy moments from when I played little league baseball. All of my family was there – dad in that orange, Banlon short-sleeved shirt, mom in her lawn chair, and both brothers leaning up against a fence hollering at me. There too was my sister, 9 years younger than me, running around in a sun dress.

I guess the point of all of it is this – as I lay there, heart pounding, feeling like the only thing I could control was what thoughts went through my mind – the images that came to me weren’t of work, or money, or possessions. I did not recall a single time I won an argument, told someone off, or vanquished some rival. What came to me were friendly faces, warm memories, time with my family. That’s what matters. What came to me was a reminder that it’s the good stuff – a smile, a joke, 10 hugs and kisses to the 4 year old before you can get out the door for work in the morning – that’s what matters.

So listen, thanks for stopping by my blog today. It’s been a while since I posted and I appreciate your continued support. Wherever you are or whoever you are with today; I hope you find yourself in the company of people the memories of whom will act to comfort and secure you some time in the future. That is what really matters.

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

An Extraordinary Ordinary hero...

2011-03-22T03:06:00.001+06:00

This age of blogging and instant publishing - everything from the miraculous to the mundane is fair game for the on-line community. Evidence of that fact is that on these very electronic pages, the two most popular stories are the one I wrote about Chicken Dino Nuggets and the one about how my wonderful daughter was one act of generosity away from never being born. And Dino Nuggets is beating Miracle Daughter by about 150 pageviews. You just never know what written word will resonate with people.

Such is the case with this entry - which is about my mother. She is not perfect; she'll be the first to tell you that. But none of us are, are we?  She is, however, a wonder - I really think there ought to be a movie made of her life.

There just don't seem to be any people like her, other than her, in my life. If she was a ship's captain, I would sail exclusively with her. She has been surviving cancer since I was a young man - since 1985. In that quarter of a century there have been close calls, and surgeries, and chemo, and moments of desperation. All of what you would expect from a mother of four living with cancer. Just consider - my sister was 12 when our mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. When she began this road, she worried about what the diagnosis meant for her then 12 year old daughter and that daughter's three older brothers. Now, those four kids have 13 kids themselves - the oldest of which will be 21 this year.

What is remarkable about the last 25 years is the courage, peace, and heroism she has shown.  She is a living testament to the adage of "It ain't what happens to you that matters, it's how you deal with it that counts." Through all of her struggles she has been upbeat, positive, and inspirational. The leadership she has mustered in stealing her life back from this disease is an example my children will have to guide them the rest of their lives. Sadly, she is not a blogger - that much is all of our loss. She has so many gifts - expression and understanding are two of her many impressive strengths. It would be nice to have her impressions of the extraordinary heroism she has shown in the face of this perpetual uncertainty that is living with cancer. She would blow it off, chalk it up to her parents and theirs who were exceptionally brave and strong people. She would think herself "just ordinary." Well, it is not the time for eulogies and there is lots left to do, but she shared some things recently that I wanted to pass along.

She maintains a page on line where she shares from time to time her feelings. With her permission, I will include her words here as the site's second-ever guest blogger. Just a brief snapshot image, preserved here for my kids and other readers of these pages, so that all might know a little about this amazing woman who is my mom.  The post below was entered on her carepages site at www.carepages.com/joanscave

Dear Hearts and Gentle Friends, so we now have experienced 3 more months of great living. Here we have cause to pause and reflect. Consider what constitutes a 'normal' day. Joy, friendship, good food, adventure, stuff to do, people who love and need you and looking forward to tomorrow. We expect that tomorrow will be just like today. These great tomorrows seem endless. We never want them to change. Then one day, suddenly, it DOES change. No reason, just the ever progression of the stars and planets working their way through the vast hopes of tomorrow. Then, like Japan, suddenly all the tomorrows take on a new shape. We assign new priorities. The new priorities part is a good thing. It reminds us not to take tomorrow for granted. Don't spend today, as precious as it is, in anger, or worry or disappointment or other negative emotions. Those things won't change a thing only take away today. Not a good trade. Take my advice; I'm not using it myself at the moment. So this is where I am today.

I have thought long and hard about whether or not to share this with you. But I have decided that you are my balcony people. You are the wind beneath my wings. If you were not there, I would surely fall into the abyss of depression and hopelessness. There are those among you, and you know who you are, who are the fountains of optimism. You are always bright and sunny and bring me laughs and joy and hope and very importantly, distractions. God, how I need distractions. They are my lifeline. So, here's the scoop.

As you already know, that all important CA 27/29 has been steadily rising. Okay, we have done scans and tests and we don't know why it continues to rise. Formerly, my great fear was that the big C would reach my liver. We know it has done that. However, we also know that the drugs I have been given have put up a formidable front and that seems to be somewhat under control for the moment. However, still the numbers escalate. We are now in the 400's. The last place to look for activity is the brain. Cancer attacks places in the body that are rich in blood. That would be lungs, bones, liver and brain. We've covered 3 of the 4 and we know it's present in those 3 places to one degree or another. The most heavily infected is bone. The doctor now feels that the brain must be investigated.

I am very afraid. I don't have the optimism that some of you possess. I am at best, a weak pessimist. I have been accused, and rightly so, of being a perennial crepe hanger. Guilty. I always thought if it attacked my brain I wouldn't want to know. Just let me die in peace. But then, what if there is hope? What if it could be stopped? What if it isn't there.....yet? Is it better to know, or not know? If it's in my brain what will I do? Of course, if it isn't in my brain I will celebrate and still worry about where is it. I have had friends that have had cancer and they couldn't locate it and they died never knowing where it was. What are my tomorrows to be? You also know that I firmly believe that dying is not the worst thing than can happen to you. There are things that are much much worse. And if it is to be that my brain becomes a prison for my body, then I sincerely want the plug to be pulled and I will join my parents and others that I love that have gone before me. Ones that taught me not only how to live, but also how to die. I am so grateful for them.

Do I have a bucket list? You betcha. If I can't attain my bucket list will the sky fall? Probably not. The sun will continue to get up in the east and go down in the west. However there are things on my bucket list that I desperately want to accomplish. If I can't complete my mission, then I have to leave it to God to send in a replacement and I need to have the faith that He will do it. It's said that God never shuts a door without opening a window. Please, God, I pray that that is true.

So here I am. Please don't ask me how I am. Don't tell me that I'm brave. I don't feel very brave at the moment. I don't want to discuss this business. I just want distractions and fun and laughter with you my loved ones. So, ultimately, I am in God's hands. You are the messengers and the supporting angels. You are the carriers of God's messages of hope and love. I know you will lift me up. I know you will keep me in your prayers and that's all I ask. You are my balcony people that hold me aloft and make me feel loved and wanted. There is nothing better. I love you all and I will keep you informed.

The MRI of the brain is scheduled for Tuesday the 22nd. If the dr. calls me then I will know. If she doesn't call me, then I will feel better. My next appointment is scheduled for the 18th. I know you're there. I love you all. Let's all just keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep showing up. Above all, keep breathing, stay vertical and mobile.

Love, ME

Thanks for stopping by my blog today, and for sharing the words from my mom. She is a wonder. I hope wherever you are, whoever you are with today - you look them squarely in the face and, if you love them, tell them. And tell them why - because it's important that they should know. And if there is something you can forgive, then forgive it - let it go. A wise woman once told me "...don't spend today, as precious as it is, in anger, or worry or disappointment or other negative emotions. Those things won't change a thing; only take away today...." I hope today, and for the rest of your days, you make each day a good one free from anger, worry, disappointment, or other negative emotions.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

There but for the grace of God…

2011-03-12T02:04:00.000+06:00

Last night I was watching my oldest walk through the family room. It is a nightly ritual – I come home from work, cook dinner, we clean up from dinner, and then, when the last bubble from the last bit of suds isn’t even popped, Michael will venture out into the kitchen and shove his head into the pantry.

Unlike me, he is lean and athletic. Oh sure, I suppose there was a day when you might have said I bordered on athletic. I played baseball, golf, and softball and I lettered in tennis in high school. But never in my life would I have ever been described as “lean.”

Michael on the other hand is lean and strong. When he went for his snorkeling badge at Boy Scouts his scout leader was worried that whenever he got into the pool he sunk like a lawn dart. No fat on the kid whatsoever. SO maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about the constant grazing, but I do.

Every night I watch him go through the house, growing by the day, with his cheery smile and perfect posture. In the blink of an eye he has gone from being my cute little side-kick to being every inch of 5 feet tall and encroaching on the frontier of adolescence. He is well on his way to being a fine young man. I watch him move through his world and I just want everything to slow down. He teeters on the abyss of puberty. He has been such an excellent boy that I long desperately for that little boy to hang around just a bit longer.

And the girl, his sister – the four year old who I am certain will some day be a pharaoh somewhere; I watch her and it is obvious that she is growing by leaps and bounds. The pajamas she got for Christmas are now fitting her about like they are clamdiggers. Two weeks ago I stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched her descend early on a Saturday morning. My brain literally came to life in my head and, as if it had a separate personality, began hammering away on every frequency shouting to me an urgent message to remember that moment, to freeze its quiet and rare beauty forever in some less traveled part of my brain. There she stood, stuffed animal and pillow in arms and slippers on feet she tip-toed down the stairs, gave me a hug, and whispered “good morning daddy, I love you. How’dya sleep/”

Again I told myself to stretch out time, play the four corner offense, use every second of life’s shot clock to my advantage. I cannot believe the great good fortune I have to just share in the beauty of these two kids.

So it was this morning when we all awoke to the news of Japan’s horrible earthquake and the subsequent devastation of the resulting tsunami that I was reminded to take nothing for granted. The kids all got extra hugs and kisses this morning. The “I love yous” were pronounced and embellished with good eye contact and a warm embrace. With each kid I indulged in a final intoxicating inhalation of their hair.

I couldn’t get over the haunting vision of that mass of debris moving relentlessly in slow but unstoppable motion across the Japanese countryside. It reminded me that there is no stopping nature. There is no pause button while you gather your thoughts, collect your wits, or rearrange your plan. Living is doing, loving is a deliberate commitment, and legacy is a luxury not all are guaranteed.

So today, in the shadow of great suffering and loss of life in Japan, my only plan is to kiss those two little farts squarely on their faces, tousle their hair, hug them like there is no tomorrow and to let them stay up munching popcorn until their mom says it’s way too late for little people to be up. Tomorrow we wake up to a day of ballet, and baseball camp, and then a family outing to the movies. Because what we do becomes what we are, and what we are eventually becomes what we were. So today we will honor those in Japan and everywhere, by making the most of our lives together. Today we will live reverently the words “there, but for the Grace of God, go I.”

We’ll laugh and hug and share inside jokes. And that will be the only plan. The solitary mission – to revel in each other. Because today is all that any of us are ever promised – no matter how much we wish for it to slow down, to stop, to live on forever unchanged. Today is the best chance we’ll ever have to be the best we can be to each other.

Wherever you are today, thanks for stopping in and sharing this moment with me and my family. I hope you are well and that those you hold dear are safe and free from harm. Wherever you are today, I hope you take a minute or two to find the best you can be to those you love, and then to make it a plan to be that.

Dennis

smalltwondad@hotmail.com

How to help (I have not checked all of these out, this list is reposted from another blog):

United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) – This is the United Methodist Church’s disaster response organization, and is one of the best church-based response groups in the world. Donations can be accepted through the International Disaster Relief fund.

Red Cross: The American Red Cross, according to its website, have opened up emergency operation centers. Donations to relief efforts can be made here. It may also be appropriate to look into the International Federation of Red Cross, as well. You can also try the Japanese Red Cross Society here. (However, I am not finding a solid place to donate just yet to the Japanese Red Cross, which is understandable.)

AmeriCares: You can donate to relief efforts that are ongoing by AmeriCares by clicking here.

World Relief: You can donate to relief efforts here.

World Vision: According to the organization’s website, the group is preparing to respond to the disaster. You can make a donation by clicking here.

Samaritan’s Purse: The North Carolina-based organization is still considering what relief efforts it will undertake, but you can donate here.

Operation Blessing International: The organization says it has teams standing by to respond. There is a Disaster Relief fund that you can contribute to here.

Giving Children Hope: This California-based organization is in the process of sending emergency relief to Japan. You can donate here.

For a more general list of disaster relief organizations, you can click here.

Stuff I learned, volume I...

2011-03-02T03:08:00.000+06:00

I’ve had a couple of job interviews in the last few weeks. Nothing Earth shattering but opportunities I am none the less very excited about. One is a teaching opportunity – something on the side – and the other is an opportunity to do basically the same job I am doing now but in a different area of my present employer. During both interviews, the topic of my education came up. I was astonished to realize that until I surpass 48 years of age, I will be able to say, counting everything, I have spent more than half my life in school.

That’s not a boast – trust me – perhaps if I had spent more than a good portion of that time inventing something or writing the next great American novel, I wouldn’t be interviewing for a second job or driving a mini-van as my primary means of transportation. (My Ferrari is in the shop, getting wider seats installed).

No, the really significant thing about the amount of time I spent in school is how much I learned when I wasn’t in school. Some examples:

1) For the last ten days or so we were dog-sitting my sister’s adorable, cartoon like pug puppy, “Beans.” I have written here before that we are a cat family. We are. So the advent of a dog in our home was thrilling for everyone, myself included. Thus it was understandable when it came time to take Beans home that there were long faces among the children. In trying to comfort my daughter, after we said our good-byes to Beandiggity, I snuggled her up and asked her if she was going to dream of him that night. She yawned, shook her head gently and said to me, sleepily “probably going to be rocket-shoes tonight, Dad.”

So – one thing I learned that never showed up in any of my classes is that four year olds dream of rocket-shoes. At some point we grown-ups stop dreaming of rocket-shoes.

2) Fifth grade is hard. Fourth grade was hard. I don’t know if kids these days are doing more work than when I was in school, but I am constantly amazed by how much work my oldest is doing at school – and the subjects he is studying. So far we have had physics and algebra, geometry and all kinds of really terrific history lessons. My fear is that, at this rate, by the time he hits high school he will have surpassed all of my abilities and be completely on his own. I am sure he too is looking forward to the day when his parents can’t help him with his homework.

So – a second thing I have learned, and it took me leaving school, having kids, and having those kids go off to school themselves –is that I had incredible public school teachers. I cannot believe how much of this stuff I remember. But more than that, I can literally in my mind hear them talking to me about different topics. So – to my teachers – many of whom are likely shaking their heads that this kid ever graduated college, let alone grad school and law school, I say “Thanks!” and remind them that their efforts were neither wasted nor taken for granted.

3) My mother is in cahoots with some powerful and dark forces to have worked such magic as she has in the curse she put on me. I was not a terrific kid. It all began for me when I read this book entitled “Peck’s bad boy.” I read it when I was in around the fourth grade and found it so funny that it forever changed my life. I went from being this sweet little kid to the kind of kid who would shoot out windows with a bb gun, put salt in his great aunt’s bed, and warm up flat root beer and serve it to my dad as coffee. It is a miracle I was not sold into servitude on some kind of commercial vessel before I ever hit puberty.

So – what I learned is that my mom’s curse “I hope someday you have a kid just like you” is a really interesting one. Because both of my kids are way way way better kids than I ever was and both of them are an absolute handful when they want to be. You could also add to this topic that I learned to pay a lot of attention to the kinds of books my kids are reading and that for every year I age, my mom gets about 10 times smarter than I thought she was (and I always thought she was pretty smart).

4) Kill it and grill it – lastly I will share with you here a secret of terrific grilling for steaks. Some of you, dear friends, may be vegetarians or vegans. More power to you – you are welcome to stop by any night and I will make sure your steak finds an appreciative home. Mine is a carnivore’s habitat – no apologies there. If God didn’t wanted us to eat cows then why did he make them so delicious?

I never learned this while I was in college nor while I was working in any one of four or five different restaurants along the way. And I have come to realize there all kinds of spices you can use on a cowboy cut rib eye depending on your taste. Some might use butter and kosher salt; some use a kind of bullion powder with garlic salt and some, those who also might put a paper umbrella and lime in their beer, might use a store bought marinade. Whatever – it’s up to you. But the one thing you must do with any decent steak is to let the meat come up to room temperature before you grill it. This might be counterintuitive to everything you ever learned about food safety, but trust me. Take that steak out of the fridge and cover it loosely with Saran Wrap for an hour or so before you cook it on a grill that is as hot as you can get it.

Any germs you were worried about by letting the meat sit out will not survive the Armageddon of your grill and the meat will be as tender as you can possibly imagine – especially if you buy a good cut.

So – the thing I learned was this – sometimes the thing you have to do to get the desired result is the exact opposite of the thing that you are inclined to. Try it and see if a different approach yields better results.

Those are my thoughts for today. Thanks for stopping by my blog. Wherever you are, whoever you are with, I hope your childlike spirit is intact enough so that tonight, if you try hard enough, you can find the joy of dreaming of rocket-shoes.

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

Out of the mouths of parents; the improbable things we say in a week's time

2011-02-22T11:27:00.002+06:00

There is nothing so capable of humbling any of us as being parents. Think of it this way, in all of the James Bond movies, did you ever see him sitting at the dining room table trying to explain compound fractions to a 10 year old? Did you ever see him trying to get a four year old from the front door to the back seat of his Aston Martin without having her jump in every snow bank and mud puddle between the two points? No - Hollywood is a dream world - they would never show old 007 completely over his head; at the mercy of two kids he adores yet who drive him to say stupid things. He gets all the easy stuff.

Parenting causes you to kind of reinvent yourself, doesn't it? I love to tease that I was cool at one time in my life. My memories of college are that as a college senior I was somehow funny - a bit of a character. Now, 23 years later, I am 100% caricature. The precise thought of how really odd this parenting thing would be first struck me the day I lifted my two year old son up in the middle of a crowded restaurant, held his tiny little backside up to my face, whiffed, and then proclaimed to his mother "He's fine!" When I realized that I did this with the same ease and fluidity of motion as I do putting on my coat or flipping on the computer I knew then that my world would be forever changed.

I also knew at that time, based on the two distinct groups of people I noticed staring at me as I lowered my giggling son; those, mouths agape, staring in disbelief at my complete lack of couth, and those meeting my gaze and nodding in silent agreement - the parents - that I was joining a select group of hearty adventurists.

Since that day I have been barfed on, peed on, pooped on, cried upon, searched the skate park for shards of two broken teeth, and it seems to me that every sweatshirt I own has at one time or another been a welcome hanky to a kid with a sinus infection. I have learned more about Rota-virus and the differences in boogers than most epidemiologists and have along the way said some things that, for lack of a better word, make me feel like an idiot.

So today, an experiment - I have tried here to isolate the most idiotic, absurd, maddening words and phrases and exchanges occurring within the four walls of my home for the last week.

1. "Hey you - whatever your name is...please don't color the cat." You can never remember their names when you really need to. Most days I call them "Moe and Larry." Yes, I am aware one of them is a girl...

2. "Whose poop is this?" (like I was gonna call "dibs" or something...).

3. To my ten year old, who seems to be on some kind of iPod sponsored life support - "When I was a kid, iPod Touch was called a baseball mitt."

4. "Not all farts are funny..." (to my son and his 11 year old cousin)

5. "Hey, you know what?" (said to the same kid standing in my kitchen staring blankly at the open maw of a dishwasher waiting to be filled.
"What?" He says back to me, in a trance...
"Your "not helping me" (air quotes installed)...it's not helping me..."

6. "I've told you a million times to keep your hands to yourself! Now get over here and give your sister a hug and kiss goodnight..."

7. "There's nothing coming out of your closet. I'm the scariest thing in this house and I am right here - You're fine so go back to bed!"

8. "Did you toot?" (there were only two of us in the car and I was pretty sure it wasn't me who dealt it).

9. "Don't you point that sword at your sister!" Yes, we have swords - plural. And why did I say "don't point that at her" when he was across the room? Was I afraid it was going to go off accidentally while he was cleaning it or something?

10. "Eat your dinner" This comment in and of itself is neither silly nor absurd. What is both silly and absurd is that I would have to say it 92 times in a single meal to my four year old. I can't wait for her to master reading so I can just get it printed on a sweatshirt and be done with it.

11. "What do you mean you left your shirt at school? Didn't you notice you weren't wearing one when you got on the bus to come home?" (this was absolutely one of my favorite "Dad" moments ever - it was from last year, not last week, but a good one none the less. :-) Just being there when he skinned off his coat like it was perfectly normal to come home from school without his shirt. God I love that boy :-)

12. To either of them, several times during the course of the week "whatwereyoudoinganddon'tyoudaresayIdon'tknow?!" (comes out as all one word a million miles an hour. Have to say it all at once and quickly otherwise they get two or three seconds to think up a plausible lie).

13. To no one in particular "Who wrote on the wall by the bathroom...?" Silence, silence, silence....then comes a wee little squeaky voice two rooms away "well....it could have been Michael...or maybe a monster...but I probably think it was Michael...it sure wasn't me...." Suggesting it might have been a monster was actually a very wise gambit for a girl only four years old. The offending graffiti was right by the basement stairs, and we all know that's where most of the monsters live.

14. This next one was more Kristin than me - Wednesday night we had to take our cat, the brown one, to the vet. Turns out she is kind of pretty sick. I actually feel bad for her. So, it was a tough night all around. So after making a stop for some cat things to make the brown one more comfortable, I decided I was too tired to cook when we got home. "I'll call for Chinese" I said.

So I place the order for delivery and we drive home. 25 minutes later the doorbell rings and the 4 year old races to get it. Looking out the door she announces "DAD! It's the Chinese, they're here!" The delivery man was, you guessed it, Chinese.

15. And the all time topper in this category comes from my dad, to me, when I was questioning him about genetics and his family. His father and my grandmother were divorced when my father was two. So I never knew my grandfather on my dad's side.

When we were pregnant with our oldest, the topic turned to genetics over dinner one night and I am afraid my dad got a bit defensive at Outback steak house. Tired of the topic, he eventually slammed his hand down on the table, palm down, resulting a terrific clattering of dishes and silverware, and proclaimed:

"This is bullsh*t!" he growled, "your genes start with me!" I cherish that memory - so wonderfully him <3

So thanks for stopping by my blog today. I hope wherever you are or whoever you are with; you are sharing time with people whose company delights you and whose future development is so important and vital to you that the urgency of it causes you to say improbably silly things.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

The forces of good...

2011-02-17T00:36:00.001+06:00

Those were the words Michael’s fencing coach used when completing the initiation ceremony for young fencers moving from the beginning to the intermediate fencing class.

During the ceremony, the kids dress up in their gear – all of it shiny, spotless, and brand new – and stand at salute position while the coach addresses them; challenges them to be “ambassadors of the sport, abide by their honor…” and then finally, binds them on their oath to join “the forces of good.” He then moves smartly down the line of modern knights, striking the guard of each one’s sabre with a quick stroke from his own blade thus giving each of his students their first dueling marks.

So I heard the words “Forces of good…” and thought “My God, who talks like that any more? The forces of good?” I was moved by it. We all ought to talk that way, I thought. What’s wrong with telling kids out loud that they should make it a goal to do good things, take good care, and be good people? We place an emphasis in our family on being the good guys - and that goal is not always easy or uncomplicated. I was reminded of that fact late last year when I got a note from Michael’s school indicating he had been making comments that some thought were perhaps better kept to himself.

Michael is neither particularly shy nor quiet. He is my live wire. A terrific kid, full of energy and laughter. I cannot imagine he blends meekly into the woodwork in any class. Leading a class with him is probably sometimes a little like trying to fish with dynamite.

Inquiring a little farther, I learned from Michael that he had been having disagreements with some of his classmates over, of all things, a cousin’s name. Michael has a cousin who is wonderful, Ababu. Actually all of Michael’s cousins are wonderful kids. My family, this flock of great kids ranging in age from 20 to 4, is overflowing with fantastic kids. Proof again, I suppose, that as a child I was found wandering near my parents' home and they just sort of took me in.

‘Babu is from Africa. A child my brother and his wife adopted from Ethiopia, literally saving his life from a place where he was given up for dead. To watch ‘Babu with my brother’s family is to understand that love and life exist on a level most of us could never imagine.

So when Michael learned they were coming to visit last Thanksgiving, his enthusiasm got the better of him. Pretty much the case for all of us really. I think the last time my entire family; siblings and their kids, was all together was about 4 years ago. We were all a bit giddy about seeing them.

So the disagreement at Michael’s school turned out to be that he was telling his buddies the story of Ababu and a couple of the kids starting making fun of ‘Babu’s name. Michael, who has not seen ‘Babu in four years, took up the defense of his kin by lighting into the offending classmates.

“That’s racist,” he told me he said to them.

Hardly words of temperance and deliberation, and not the kind of words his mediator dad would use to resolve a conflict, but then again his mediator dad wasn’t there, was he? So this 10 year old, possessed of a very strong “champion” gene, took up the fight and, as a sworn member of the "forces of good," rode out to meet the forces of ignorance, intemperance, and discrimination. Lochinvar in tennis shoes. A champion with freckles.

“He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was a knight like the young Lochinvar.”

Did I mention he’s 10?

The champion gene, not always the most useful in every situation but nearly always one of the most remarkable to observe in action, is strong in my family. My dad’s family had it – one ancestor was actually kicked out of West Point for striking another member of the Corps of Cadets over the head with a plate because he thought the man a coward.

And my mom’s family is rife with it. So famous is the fast blade of indignation and affront on her side of the family we actually named those moments “Joan moments” after her. If she didn’t have a car she would certainly have the fastest horse in the county and it would remain perpetually saddled next to the homestead, ever at the ready to ride into harm’s way if someone dared trespass against one of her kids. The Joan moments are things to behold. She is indeed a champion.

So that night when I was chatting with Michael about the note from school, it was with equal parts concern –I reminded him that we absolutely will be respectful of the educational setting and treat everyone’s learning time as if it is vital; and admiration. The admiration part was me wondering “who among us taught you to be so righteous, so decent, and so devout to the high principles of the forces of good? How are you so courageous and yet won't turn off the light in the basement?"

Mostly, I did not forget to remind him of how proud we all are of him that, though he cannot remember to turn off the basement light, he certainly has kept his promise to join the forces of good. He is, among all the other things a 10 year old could be; impossibly decent and essentially good.

So thanks for stopping by my blog today. I hope the day finds you in good health, protected by the love of a fine family, and that among your kin there is a champion who will protect, inspire, and defend you to the last as a dauntless member of “the forces of good.”

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

"The tree long remembers what the axe soon forgets..." What are you teaching your kids?

2011-02-11T05:16:00.002+06:00

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that talked about global warming. Essentially it said “what if we fixed global warming; made the Earth healthier, saved endangered species and cleaned up our atmosphere and it was all a big mistake?” The sticker ultimately was taking a jab at the consequence of fixing the causes of global warming and then it turned out that global warming wasn’t even really as bad a problem as we thought it once was.

So that, in turn, got me thinking about bullying. What if we committed ourselves and our schools to raising better kids; creating learning communities that were more supportive, more accepting, and less harsh or cruel – and in the end the bullying problem wasn’t as bad as we feared it once was?

Any of us with kids who aren’t bullies feel like bullying is a danger to the physical and emotional well being of our kids. Just google the names: Seth Welsh, Phoebe Prince, Bobby Tillman, or any of thousands of others and you will take a small measure of the problem. Google the phrase “Bullied to Death” and among the 320,000 hits on that phrase you will find in heartbreaking detail descriptions of bullying’s worst case scenarios.

Yet, the problem still exists. You’d like to point at teachers and ask “what are you doing? Why can’t you stop this? How are you protecting my kids?” But the truth is, it begins with the parents. The parents of one notorious bully in my parents' old neighborhood said many times “we don’t get involved in these kinds of things; we let the kids work things out for themselves…” It strikes me as a parent now myself that that kind of thinking is all well and good if your kid is the bully. But what if your kid is the victim of the bully? Some surprising and sobering facts on bullies can be found in the 2009 Indicators of School Crime and Safety – a survey which collected statistics from a variety of studies and showed that:

One third of teens reported being bullied while at school
About 20 percent of teens had been made fun of by a bully, 18 percent of teens had rumors or gossip spread about them, 11 percent were physically bullied, such as being shoved, tripped, or spit on, 6 percent were threatened, 5 percent were excluded from activities they wanted to participate in, 4 percent were coerced into something they did not want to do, and 4 percent had their personal belongings destroyed by bullies
4 percent of teens in this study reported being the victims of cyber bullying
Most bullying occurred inside the school, with smaller numbers of bullying incidents occurring outside on the school grounds, on the school bus, or on the way to school
Only about a third of bully victims reported the bullying to someone at school
About 2 of every 3 bully victims were bullied once or twice during the school year, 1 in 5 were bullied once or twice a month, and about 1 in 10 were bullied daily or several times a week
In this study, females and white students reported the most incidents of being the victims of bullying
44 percent of middle schools reported bullying problems, compared to just over 20 percent of both elementary and high schools

Similarly, the 2009 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that about 1 in 5 teens had been bullied at school in the last year. The Federal government's Find Youth Info web site also reports some recent bullying statistics:

Bullying is most common among middle school children, where almost half of students may be bully victims
Between 15 and 25 percent of students overall are frequent victims of bullying, and 15 to 20 percent of students bully others often
About 20 percent of students experience physical bullying at some point in their lives, while almost a third experience some type of bullying
About 8 percent of students have been the victims of a cyber bully
Studies have indicated that females may be the victims of bullying more often than males; males are more likely to experience physical or verbal bullying, while females are more likely to experience social or psychological bullying
Students with disabilities are more likely to be the victims of bullying
Homosexual and bisexual teens are more likely to report bullying than heterosexual teens

Experts agree that there is a relationship between bullying or being bullied and other types of violence, including fighting, carrying weapons, and suicide. So why, with that kind of data so readily at hand, do we tolerate bullying?

For parents, it might boil down to toughness, competition, social Darwinsim. You won’t get ahead in life if you let other people roll right over you, right? Well that’s what we always thought – and what good did it do us? Has tolerating that mindset eradicated bullying? Has peace broken out world wide and no one told me? Was the Civil Rights movement waged by bullies or by peaceful action?

For kids it might be as uncomplicated as “snitches get stitches.” No one wants to be a tattletale. We hold tattletales in greater contempt than we do the bullies it seems. But it’s not that simple, is it? Are we really expecting a decent country if we teach our kids to readily divorce themselves from the greater good? We can’t really mean that.

For teachers, it might be the 30 – 40 kids they have in their classrooms and the requirements of all that goes into educating our kids that keep them from solving the problem. It could be also the state of education in general – I am certain there are teachers in almost every state in the union who wish for more resources and smaller classes. For the teacher contemplating acting toward a bully they must invariably think “well, whose brother, the lawyer, is going to sue me tomorrow if I accuse their child of being the school bully?” While it may be true that we live in a litigious society and that teachers don’t have enough time or resources, I respond to that truth by saying “So what?” It’s called leadership. Failure to exercise it is a betrayal of the sacred trust we put in our teachers.

I don’t know the answer – except to say that we have to force these issues out at least into a open dialogue. Parents, force your schools to confront it. Principals, force your teachers to report it, and teachers and staff members be vigilant in creating educational communities that support trust, acceptance, support. What if, in so doing, we cured bullying and it turned out it wasn’t really that big of a problem after all? What would the benefit be – of having more decent kids; more supportive academic environments, less hate, more tolerance, less division, more acceptance? What if we started out to change just one little corner of the world and ended up making a real and lasting difference? What else might we cure in the process?

My children are my heroes – they are so good; so decent, so kind. It pains me to see them, in their decency, to be made the victim by kids whose parents have raised them not to care, to be cruel for sport; to be deliberately unkind. When we teach effective communication strategies, one of the things I always include is the idea that “the tree long remembers what the axe soon forgets.” Are you teaching your kids to be axes or trees? I am a big fan of the gorgeous trees, myself.

So thanks for stopping by my blog today. Wherever you are, I hope you are well and that you and yours are surrounded by those who love you, who will stand with you unshaken and immoveable by the bully’s unkind agenda. I hope you find yourself in the company of ordinary heroes who will not permit any bully to win the day or take the high ground at the expense of any child’s innocence and joy. Thanks for taking the time to read this note. It is perhaps my message in a bottle to the world written out of love for my kids. An artifact of my silent hope for them, and your kids as well, to grow up in a world more gentle, more fun, and less harsh.

Dennis

Smalltowndad@hotmail.com

There is no title - this post is about drunk driving...

2011-02-04T04:51:00.006+06:00

So look – we all agree drinking and driving is a bad idea, right? I mean at this point, with our current level of media saturation it shouldn’t be news to anyone reading this that drunk driving, or riding with a drunk driver, is a bad idea with potentially tragic outcomes. Yet these stories persist – transecting all age, race, and income demographics – it is an all too common experience that we hear of people drinking and driving and then end up reading about the tragic aftermath.

This past weekend in a small town near my home, 5 kids were out way late on a Saturday night/Sunday morning. There were kids, 5 of them, all jammed into a car on a weekend night - no different than my own experiences jammed with all my regular crew into a buddy's car 30 years ago.

In this case, there was a car accident. Slippery roads, late at night, perhaps alcohol involved. The situation this moment is that two of those five young people, children really, died Sunday morning and a third died at the the hospital today. While no one has been convicted or even tried, police nonetheless suspect that alcohol was involved and the teenage driver is in custody. Word is there was a party – for some affected it was perhaps their first taste of alcohol and autonomy – who knows? In the rush to prove who was right and wrong; who was liable and who was innocent – all reality will be lost to the legal concepts of mitigation, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, rules of evidence, etc.

What is known is that these were all young kids – to their community they were treasure.

What is also known is that three of them are now dead and one of those in the car is now in a situation where his fate lies with scary grown-up institutions and professionals. Lawyers, insurance adjusters, policemen, media, jail, prison, bail bondsmen. Gone forever are the catcher’s mitt, basketball, iPod, and fragile innocence. What is known is that the driver of the car also took the moms and dads and brothers, sisters, friends, teachers, neighbors and many others into this accident with him.

What is known is that for some gone are all the dreams of college, marriage, adventures both great and small. What's left is residue; the inevitable packing up, and the constant hurt and anger that roils and subsides like the pain of a dying tooth.

Present forever will be the “what-ifs” that are irreconcilable; the “how-comes” that strain against the Earth’s rotation only to give way to inevitable and heartless realities. Try as you might to unwish it; to change it, you can’t undo the horrible reality that three kids are dead, one is hospitalized, and one may be headed to jail for a very long time.

As parents we look on and hope and pray that these matters do not affect us; that they leave unharmed those we love and those for whom we are sworn to protect. But here’s the thing – in my life which is decidedly uncosmopolitan – I have seen this phenomena come and go way too often. My small town life has seen it many times. If in my boring Grover’s Corners’ existence this tragedy creeps, then how can anyone really be safe from it?

In college there was the couple killed returning from a New Year’s eve party. They left behind small children and a broken family. After college there was a relative, injured by a drunk driver headed the wrong way down a one way street. Not three years removed from that, there was a good friend, one of the most decent people I have ever met, killed at 22 by a drunk driver out having a good time.

There are no words that make sense out of what follows this tragedy. There can be no commitment to ending drunk driving any greater than what we have already made. MADD, SADD, colleges, universities, high schools – they are all in on the education side. Insurance companies, law enforcement, the government – virtually every entity save for perhaps the food and spirits lobby is a trustee of the message “don’t drink and drive.”

Yet here we are – tonight in a small town in the middle of Michigan, like many small towns all over America on a weekly basis, families grieve the dead with broken hearts. I have been there first hand – was present when the mother of a son killed by a drunk driver arrived at college to collect his belongings.

I will never forget the sound of that one sob as long as I live. Traveling from out of state, she and her husband arrived a day or two after the tragedy to make arrangements for Mike and to pick up his things. As the residence hall director I escorted them to his room and a number of us waited there, respectfully outside – to attend their needs, ensure their privacy, provide some sense of community to them in a place where they knew no one but a place where their son had made many many friends.

The sound of that one sob, the sob his mom made when she snatched up his pillow and could still smell him on it, is something that is with me to this day. They, Mike’s mom and dad, sat in the stillness of that quiet dorm room crying for a long time. My staff and I and others waited outside – guaranteeing their privacy and committed to helping them any way we could.

After a while Mike's dad came out and, through eyes stung with tears, we each met his gaze. He approached the oldest among us, a college administrator who was himself a father and a fine man, and asked quietly "Do you have any kids?"

“Yes” came the answer, “three of them – all girls.”

Through cracking voice my friend’s dad said “well go home then. We’re all done here. Go home and hug those kids, ‘cause you just never know…just hug them”

So while it is a certainty that nothing will tomorrow make the world a softer, gentler place for the community of friends and family mourning this latest drunk driving accident – what is certain is that we can be reminded to go home and hug our kids. Just hug ‘em, hold them, and try to teach them about the way lives can change in an instant. Try and teach them that some mistakes you can't ever take back; and some decisions will stay with you, and others, the rest of your life. Because you just never know.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today. I wish it was a happier topic; wish it was written under different circumstances. Wherever you are tonight, I hope you are holding tightly to those you love and those who love you. It is, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters.

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

UPDATE from the Lansing State Journal, April 27, 2011:

LANSING – A 17-year-old Holt High School senior pleaded guilty today to being drunk earlier this year when he crashed into a tree, killing three passengers.

At a hearing today in Ingham County Circuit Court, Brett Johnson pleaded guilty to one count of operating while intoxicated causing death, officials said.

Johnson faces up to 15 years in prison. He will be sentenced on June 8.

The crash happened Jan. 30 at about 2 a.m., when the 2003 Pontiac Bonneville Johnson was driving went off Hagadorn Road and struck a tree.

Killed in the crash were Holt High School senior Holly Bossenbery, 17, and Holt High School graduate Taylyr Cochran, 18. Anthony Harris, 17, a Holt senior, died three days later from his injuries.

Johnson is a senior at Holt High School.

UPDATE from the Lansing State Journal, April 28, 2011:

MASON — Three college students who hosted a party in January where alcohol was served to the teen responsible for a fatal crash that killed three other teens pleaded guilty today to misdemeanor charges.

The three are: Michael Freund, Jordan Henika and Charles King III. All pleaded guilty to conspiracy to contribute to the delinquency of minors.

Each initially faced five felony charges. Those were dropped as part of a plea agreement.
Freund, Henika and King each now face up to one year in jail and $1,000 in fines. They will be sentenced May 26 in 55th District Court.

Brett Johnson, 17, pleaded guilty Wednesday to drinking at the party at the trio’s Meridian Township apartment and crashing his car into a tree, killing two Holt High School seniors and a Holt High School graduate. Johnson also is a senior at Holt High School. He faces up to 15 years in prison. Killed in the crash were Holt High School senior Holly Bossenbery, 17, and Holt High School graduate Taylyr Cochran, 18. Anthony Harris, 17, a Holt senior, died three days later from his injuries.

I just hate this crap....

2011-01-30T00:49:00.001+06:00

When I was young and foolish, and our oldest was just learning to talk, I banished from our home the word "hate." My feeling was that there was enough hatred in the world and perhaps, just maybe, if we raised one person without the concept of hatred then the world might be somehow improved.

I will pause here while those of you who are parents more experienced than myself enjoy a good chuckle. Go ahead, knock yourselves out.....

Alright, everybody got it back to together? Yes, as you can imagine, that well intentioned banishment lasted just long enough for Michael to have learned it and then watch me abandon it entirely the first time we were in the car and someone pulled one bonehead move or another.

"Man I really hate it when people drive like that. It's just so selfish AND dangerous..."

The hatred treaty was broken and the first shot was fired by me. So, having been asked by my son "what does hate mean?" I reluctantly gave up on my high minded ideal of an era of Pax-SmallTownDada.

Since then I have refocused my idea of hatred. Hatred exists as much as violence, poverty, hunger - all things that exist no matter how much we wish for their absence from our world. So rather than not mention it, we try and understand it - its causes, effects, and drawbacks.

So, because it's Saturday and I have a few moments before running to ballet or to check in on my sister and her broken leg, I thought I would catalog some of my hatreds here. Yes, liberal and temperate as I try to be, I have them. I admit it.

1. The hard wired smoke detector that the ham-handed flat-brained builder of this fine home installed four feet from stove. I cannot so much as boil a cup of water without setting off all eight of the house's hard wired and networked emergency alarms. If ever I wanted to change careers and earn a living defusing bombs, I think the alarms piercing my ears with little or no advance warning every damn time I fry an egg have given my nerves at least a fighting chance at survival disarming bombs.

2. The four way stop sign by my house. Lookit - the rules are simple people - when it's your turn, it's your turn. It's all about knowing when it's your turn. If you tailgate through riding the bumper of the car ahead of you just because you feel like you have waited there long enough, well then...welcome to the list.

3. Intentional stupidity - goes without saying. When people indulge their desire to be intellectually shut-off just to reinforce an argument they feel comfortable with but know is fundamentally flawed - well that is something I despise. Now you may think that is harsh, and normally I would agree - but when you argue for a living like I do something like that just wastes so much time. Enlightenment is a gift and a goal. So refreshing when people travel that path.

4. Reality TV - first off - anyone believing Reality TV in any way shape or form represents "Reality" probably falls into the category above. No offense to any of my dear dear friends reading this who might otherwise be fans of the Real Housewives of whatever cultural, ethically, or morally depraved community is being featured. But, c'mon - there is something called the Heisenberg principle. It basically says you cannot observe a phenomena or experiment without subsequently changing its outcome. Same is true of people - you can't put a tv camera on them without turning them into complete idiots. Throw in the huge sums of money these people get paid for being idiots and you create a class of super-idiots. If most of these morons on reality tv lived in our neighborhoods, we wouldn't let our kids walk down their side of the street.

5. The smell of liver cooking. Speaks for itself.

6. Cooked liver.

7. Raw liver.

8. Purposeful unkindness. People who are deliberatly unkind and think that is ok. Newsflash - it's not ok. Your deliberate unkindness is a burden to those around you. If you worked as hard at kindness as you do indulging your unkindness you might just make a better world.

9. Cable-TV. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called "57 channels and nuthin's on." True. My mom, back in the day when we had three VHF channels and three UHF, would threaten every day to cut the cord off of the boob-tube. I find there is a direct relationship between the number of years I have lived and how much of a genius she turned out to be.

10. Cell phones. People - get over yourselves - unless you are Jack Bauer you can make do without the phone glued to your ear 24/7. Most of the problems at the four way stop sign can link directly back to people's obsession with their cellphones. Leave it on the mantle or kitchen counter and go out for the day without it. It will make you feel delightfully old fashioned. There is real wisdom behind the saying "hang up and drive."

11. Call waiting - nothing like telling the person you are talking to "hey, I have to take this and see if, no matter who it is, they are more important than you..." Most times I just hang up when someone puts me on call waiting. Evidently the conversation was over anyhow.

12. Whining - yes, I see the irony - a list of me whining about the things I hate and one of those things is whining. I don't normally like Andy Rooney - he is a grouchy old pain in the ass, but the smoke detector going off this morning while I was boiling water for Michael's hot chocolate has me in an Andy Rooney mood ;-)

So that's this morning's random thoughts. Thanks for stopping by my blog today. Here's hoping that whatever burr is under your saddle; whatever "chaps your hide;" or, as my mom says "frosts your cookies," that today you find yourself in the company of people whose mere presence will soften the sharp edges of your contempt and take the sting off of your peevishness.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com