Context, Again?

Back in August, I posted a blog entitled Context Baby all about taking things out of context. Funny how our imaginations can run amok at sprinter's speed when they latch hold of something. You overhear a snippet of a conversation, you see a glancing touch or a curious expression, you find that someone is not where you expected them to be, and your mind's flood gates open up to flesh out the details. You can easy become convinced that your crazy stories or scenarios must be true as there is no other possible logical explanation for what you witnessed.

Back in August, I played a game of running through a dozen T.V. stations, pausing only briefly, and recording what I heard. It was fun and silly, but it provided a good illustration of how our minds try to paint a picture given just the smallest slice of the pie. Well, if it was fun once, then it must be something worth repeating? Right?

My random T.V. snippets for today. Let them wash over your mind and see where they go.

• When did you find time to eat a diaper you found on the beach?
  
• The owner of the dog must present a 90 second routine.
  
• He is the skin guru!
  
• Who high fives after tonguing a urinal?
  
• Monkeys will grab your daquiris.
  
• We trapped Kim in a dust-filled box.
  
• There is no oral rinse in the world that can rinse out the shame.
  
• What's that smell? Oh, ..., burnt face.
  
• You, my friend, have executive vision.
  
• Back and forth and up and down. Why not a circle?
  

Comb-Over's Revenge

Have you ever seen a man, or for that matter, a woman, with a really bad comb-over and chuckled to yourself? Do they think that they are fooling anyone on any level? "My hair arrangement is so natural I am quite certain that everyone thinks I am Rico Suave." The balder these folks are, the more ridiculous and, yes, pathetic, their efforts become. It is a fact that young people are the cruelest when it comes to pointing these people out in very public situations. Be that as it may, I have a suspicion that shortly after Joe Q. Neanderthal invented the first comb-over, all of the other people in his village immediately began copying him so that the latest trend sweeping o'er the land did not pass them by. Ever since then, young and impressionable kids, who are vapid and thus cannot think of anything original, have copied whatever the latest fad happens to be.

In this day and age, we can all look directly to Zac Efron. If you don't know who he is, then I will explain. He is a teenager that has been pushed as an icon and dreamboat by the fine folks at Disney (motto: we do not have our founders head in cold storage in the basement, honest). His one notable feature is an odd hair style where he has attempted to wrap his hair around his head in a wacky and crazy sweeping motion (and yes his hair goes the other way around whenever he goes to the southern hemisphere - it is referred to as the hairiolis effect). Ever since Zac appeared on the scene, everyone between the ages of 2 and 16 has been trying to imitate his obviously comical hair-do. If you get a chance to stare intently at a poster of this teenage heart-throb, doesn't his hair remind you of a really bad comb-over? Maybe the old geezer set can now finally get in some justified payback.

Mighty Warrior

Clinically speaking, I can say that I am one part anti-social, one part self-conscious, and one part agoraphobic. When you take each of these ingredients, which individually can render a person noticeably odd, and stir them all into a single pot, it's amazing that I can even leave my house at all. Most folks who know me in my work role, would not believe that I am thusly afflicted. In fact, I have noted this strange juxtaposition as well between who I am professionally and who I am in any other situation. If you have seen actors who come across in interviews as shy and quiet and curious, and then see them light up a movie screen with bold and brash and brilliant performances, then you can begin to see that my behavioral traits are not unique to me. My condition is more than a little bit frustrating. I was even recently asked by a man I like and respect why I didn't like him. I tried to explain myself, but I don't think that he even had an inkling of understanding until he got to know me a little bit better. It takes me so long to be able to adjust to people and fight through my issues, that I appreciate my friends more, I think, than most people. It also makes goodbyes for me a tortuous ordeal.

Given this background, I wanted to share (and claim) a recent victory. Pastor Mark Batterson would say that I killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day and Pastor Erwin McManus would say that I seized a divine moment. What I did might be viewed as minor to some, but it represented an important step toward "normalcy" for me. Earlier this week I hosted my church community group in my home. I was a bit edgy leading up to the meeting, but I felt totally "at home" during our group's time together. Small steps, small steps. Rock on mighty warrior.

Special Angel

My evening ritual before I head off to bed is to go into my daughter's room and check on her one last time. I straighten her covers, I turn off her lava lamp, and I tidy the floor near her bed in case she has to get up during the night. The final thing that I do is to give her a kiss on her forehead and tell her I love her. Sometimes, though, I linger just a bit and watch her sleep. I really love these moments. She looks so peaceful and content. Usually she is hugging one of her favorite stuffed animals. Sometimes it is Puppy, sometimes Sniff, sometimes Spots. She has many buddies, but she holds just a small few in a special place of honor. As I linger, I think back over our day together and the adventures that we shared. The important things we said, the giggles and silliness we threw around, the mountains we climbed. If we had some conflict over chores or homework or attitudes, this brief time together allows it all to melt away, to fall into proper perspective. There is a unique and special and deep love that we have for our little ones - a love that the ancient Greeks referred to as agape. I will always cherish my times with my own special little buddy. Good night angel face, sweet dreams. Daddy loves you.

Sasser-itis

O.K. folks, it's trivia time. How many of you have heard of Mackey Sasser? .... Anyone? ..... He was a catcher for the professional baseball team known formally as the Metropolitans from New York (aka the New York Mets). What made this gentleman notable to baseball fans is that he developed some weird and wacky psychological disability where he could not throw the ball back to the pitcher. It was sad and painful watching him try to release the ball. What is really interesting, from a detached and clinical point of view, is that if he saw a base runner breaking from first or second, he had a cannon of an arm and could make quick and accurate throws to his fielders. Something that he once had mastered at the highest of levels, he lost and could not find again.

I had a blog entry from a couple months ago entitled Routine Routine; there I spoke of a similar issue where things that you do again and again, can sometimes go completely awry (like biting your cheek while chewing food). As for me, I have recently lost the ability to do something that I used to be able to do like a professional. Folks who know me may know that I am a pretty good chef with years of training and an advanced degree from the Cordon Bleu in Paris. O.K., that last part is completely fictional, but I am a pretty reasonable cook. For years I have used eggs in recipes and never had the slightest issue with cracking them open. Now, for the life of me, I cannot crack open an egg without getting eggshell everywhere. What is going on? Is this some old age thing?

Before we go down that road, I wanted to come back to our friend Mackey Sasser. When I was in graduate school, I used to hang out at a bar with my friends at the end of a long day and throw some darts. Cricket was my game of choice. I was actually pretty good at one point. However, at some moment, I lost the ability to release the dart. I would start the throwing motion, but my mind would not allow me to release the dart. It was exactly the same condition that inflicted Mackey. It eventually lead me to give up darts.

The failure to release the dart, or crack the egg, or throw the baseball, or whatever the affliction might be, is not a problem with lack of effort or lack of passion or level of intelligence. I recently read that Mackey eventually got over his Sasser-itis after he retired by working with a psychologist. Recovery from problems like this can be instantaneous if one is lucky, for others, help may never come. It can be more than a little scary. For now, omelets are off my repertoire.

Oldest Possession

What is your oldest possession? Perhaps it is a trophy you collected as a kid from little league. Maybe your parents saved a favorite toy or stuffed animal from your toddler days. Others have collectibles like snow globes or ticket stubs from a long forgotten trip to see the Ice Capades. For me, it is an old AM/FM radio that I received as either a birthday or Christmas present. I used to listen to this radio for hours every day when I was a kid. Of course this was back in the days before cable television or even more than 3 or 4 channels. I guess that I would say at one time, this radio was one of my most prized possessions, one of the things that I would never want to give up. It was so important to me.

Now, more than 30 years later, the radio sits on a shelf in my office at work. It waits patiently. I'm sure that I have not even plugged it in for more than 20 or 25 years. Still it waits. One of the cool things about the unit was that besides just picking up frequencies associated with AM and FM stations, this one could pick up bits and pieces of airplane communications, and on occasion, if the atmospheric conditions were right, you might even hear broken and crackly snippets from citizen's band radio transmissions.

The fact that I still have this radio is a testament to the fact that I am a bit of a packrat. Once I have something, I don't like to let it go. I'm continually facscinated by how our mindset toward our stuff changes over time. One day my radio is the most special and important thing I have, then it is set aside for something else. Destined to be pushed into the back of the closet. To be forgotten and discarded. Sometimes, if we are fortunate enough to stumble upon them again down the road of our lives, we can relive those special times of listening to the Red Sox ballgames or the captivating top 40 countdowns from Casey Kasem, and we can reconnect, if only briefly, with those comforting pursuits of childhood.

Men are Pigs

It was time for me as a certified man, a man's man, a manly man, armed with actual chest hair, to step up and defend my gender against the female onslaught. I'll admit that we have been taking a beating of late, and are holding up as well as cheap dime store toilet paper on chili night. Now that's a chilling picture, but a little bathroom humor is fully appropriate given what I experienced today. I thought that I had found a men only get out of jail free card, but, alas, I found this new panacea to be fleeting.

What am I prattling on about? Well, let me tell you what I saw, saw with mine own two eyes. I have heard ceaseless criticism from the "fairer sex" that men have all the grace and tact of a drunken bull elephant on quarter beer night at a western saloon. We have been told, among other things, that we have no idea how to pee. They cite as their evidence the tide pools commonly seen at the base of most of the world's toilets. Well, I finally had some new evidence to come to our defense! My finding might have been the biggest news story of the year that did not involve Sarah Palin. After I flushed the urinal today at work, I started to walk over to the sink to wash my hands, even though I was quite sure that I did not pee on them. Anyhow, somehow I was compelled to look back at the urinal in mid flush. What I saw was a vigorous steam of water rushing about the bowl, and to my delight, I saw several drops spill out on the floor. You see, the river of moisture is not our fault! This new finding seemed to vindicate men everywhere for everything and anything they had ever done wrong or might do wrong. Men as pigs? I think not.

Well, my man-type victory dance was short lived. It was as short lived as a plump cricket in a bat convention. One moment I fully expected to be carried up and down the hallways on the shoulders of my bretheren. The next, I was as low as the belly on a possum with a gland disorder. For at that moment, I went into the bathroom stall to gather a dignified amount of toilet paper to blow my nose. There, on the wall of the stall, was an unmistakeable smear of number two. I was so deflated that I shed a single tear. Man, we really are pigs.