What are we really up to?

This last Saturday was a great day at Costco! Now, many of us need to just come clean, especially the men. There are few reasons we go to either Costco or its bastard brother, Sam's Club. Very few of those reasons have anything to do with saving money. Sure, they got some deals if you are able to break it down by unit. But when you have to buy 1500 units of anything, the upfront price is a little, well, pricey. Nope, we go to Costco for a limited number of things-the free food and big screen TVs.

Sometimes, in a man's Costco quest for the best day for the free stuff, he hits the jackpot. It's like fishing and you find that hidden inlet in a lake that, for some reason that day, all the fish in the lake are at. You throw your hook in and WHAM! Fish on! Saturday, yesterday, May 30th, was such a day.

You enter pushing a cart. Professionals at this all have carts. You can spot rookies who are in a warehouse shopping store with nothing to carry all their 'groceries' in. Yep, the big screens were there and on and as you entered you were awash in three foot high faces from shows and movies in such vivid colors that just don't exist in the real world. You proceed past them, the nuts, videos, you slow your pace down as you see some slacks for less than $10 but you keep moving. There is the $500 grill they sent you a flyer on that does everything except buy the food and rub your feet after a night of grilling. The big shed made out of that heavy plastic would look great at your house; you just have no place to put it. Then the patio furniture but there, next to the cheese and the $9 wine, is a tent. Not just any tent, but a tent by a sausage company! The fish have come to you.

You walk by slowly, not wanting to seem too anxious. The three sales reps, schlepping a sausage you've never heard of, were actually grilling them on two George Forman's and placing the hot links, carved and in their own little paper doilies just for you. Six different sausages. Who cares what they were, the justification to try all six was clear. You didn't care about the name because there was no intent in buying any when you can have at least six bites for free. Then, as if the gods were with you, the three reps all turned their backs at once, focusing on the grills. The crowd moved on in one mass, leaving three of the sausage platters open for one massive, first round score. You sweep in as if you were a Delta Force operator and scored three doilies and moved on without breaking your stride. None of the three men even saw you. This was such a critical event in time because now you could come back as a regular shopper, casually strolling and take on the other three as if you were a true comparison shopper. Then, as you tasted each as if it was a fine Chablis, they would offer the other three again. You don't want to disappoint them so you wolf down all of them.

Now your thirsty, you need to cleanse your pallet so you mosey to the other side and hit the power drinks and those that are good for your joints. They are next to the pasta and pot sticker samples. You walk past the 'vegetable medley' being offered by the woman in the hair net. She's not too happy because she knows she got the lame sample station and it will be a long day for her. You hit the free chicken patties and then the pot stickers. Then its time for dessert and you find yourself heading back to the bread side, next to Valhalla and the sausage. Free cheesecake today.

You top off your luncheon buffet with chips and salsa then head for the door. Oh, wait, the coke and thirty-six rolls of toilet paper. That's right, you actually came for something.

Show ME the money!!

I read in the paper this morning that the Federal debt will cost every household something like $577,000. Now, I'm not going to sit here and argue over who got us here, Republicans or Democrats, or muskrats. It really doesn't make any difference after the ship hit the iceberg, who might have had a little too much rudder one way or the other. My comment is on that number-$577,000. I have confidence in the powers that there are some bright people in the right places that have legitimate degrees in finance and economics from known colleges that are low enough on the GS pay scale to still have to pay their own bills and are really thinking this was the best thing to do. I get that. I want to throw my two-cents in because, well, this is my blog and I can.

I want the money.

Now, I don't have a degree in Finance, Accounting, or Economics. Those degrees, frankly, would have caused me to paint my walls with grey matter a long time ago. Nope, I have no idea what I'm talking about. But I do have some common sense and sometimes even a blind pig will find a walnut or however the saying goes. Track with me and see if you don't say "Hmm, the white boy may have somethin', Maude."

You give me the $577,000 (hereafter referred to as the $$). I turn around and clear all of my debt. Now, for some of us, that won't be enough but I figured if you are that high in the debt ratio, you don't need it in the first place and your house in the Hampton's can just wait for that extra coat of paint.

If I take the $$ and pay off the mortgages, I am clearing my bank's debt; I have just relieved their receivables and AIG's obligation to insure it against default. That debt can now be reinvested back, via the bank, to another investment opportunity, maybe creating jobs-reemploying people. Now, that money I got from the Feds, maybe part of it is taxable and counted as taxable income. That means they get some back. Whatever money I don't use, I turn around and beef up my 401, thereby investing in the stock market, almost ensuring my retirement plans or at least making them and me feel better about retirement and not becoming a ward of the state or living in a friends garage at 80.

Now, there's always someone who will take that money and go to Vegas, bet it all on red at the roulette table. Those are members of the "herd" we will always have and need to be thinned but what can you do? The rest of us, however, the farmer rebuilding that John Deere, the baker replacing that Vulcan oven with a newer one, the candlestick maker--well, you get what I'm saying, will buy crap we need, employing more people. I think we, the people, would allocate that money pretty well. If we did, we would all win. Even those that mis-spent their allotment would feed the system, like a dead carcass starting the food chain with the flies and worms. They bet on the ponies at one of the local Indian casinos. Obviously, the casinos benefit and hire more people. The individuals who just lost their money, drink their problems away, stimulating those depressed areas in Kentucky to grow more grain for Jack Daniels. On the drive home, they run off the road and into a tree, destroying the tree thereby stimulating the dramatically hurt landscaping industry. The investigation and subsequent arrest help my son's-in-laws and promote hiring more police, thereby employing my son. The driver, is transported to my daughter's hospital, ensuring her job and helping out the gauze and bandage industry. We all win.

All we need for this to happen is for us to get our check. Of course, we can only get it with a valid driver's license, an original birth certificate, and one credit card with our picture on it.

The price had no sales tax added

The sun hasn't come up on this 2009 Memorial Day. I woke up and got the dogs walked and made a cup of coffee and came in and sat down. Best time to create and think is just about now. I look out the window and see the trees and plants moving in the pre-dawn light. It's a fresh feeling, a time of renewal. So different for many whom we celebrate today.

In thousands of stories, those who stood in the gap, had their lives end just before dawn-in the darkness, days very similar to what I am looking at. The day captured thousands but there is something about the night that cuts to our primal fears. The Boogieman loves the dark and dwells there. The fears we have as children of darkness and things that go bump in the night are, almost always fictional. Parents scramble out of bed to the night terror cries of their kids who are having a bad dream. We tell them no one is going to hurt them and everything is just fine. It is fine, for most of us. But for those in this photograph and countless others, the night brought with it the fear of those things that live in closets and under beds.

So, you're nineteen and are in some beauty spot like Guadalcanal, a sandy Normandy beach, Mogadishu, the Mekong, or Tikrit and you are on patrol, or with a long-range patrol (LRP), or standing a post. It's night, and you know about the Boogieman. You know he's real. You know he exists. Yet, you continue to do your job. Where do we get such men and women who can look under the bed and then crawl under it with those things that go bump in the night?

Now, don't make them Supermen or Superwomen. They will be the first to tell you they're not. They are scared. Have you ever been scared? No, really scared of something that was real; it breathed and wanted in the worst way, to look you in the face while it took your life. That kind of fear. Knowing that something so vile was right there-waiting just for you. And yet you took steps forward, not backward. Something moves these people. Yeah, it could be for love of country or honor. I don't think all that political crap applies. I think what moves these men and women, who stepped into the vastness of fear, was a motivation of the heart. That's the only thing that could move the body in such conditions. Now, maybe their hearts were motivated by their love of protecting their country or their family or getting even for sins against them. Most of them would tell you they did it for each other, the person to their left and right. God is the only one who knows.

So, these people that we celebrate today, what do they want us to do today? Do they want us to wear black and mourn their passing all day? If we have lost one, we probably feel like doing just that. Everyone of these fallen this country loses, we should take personally. That is a good healthy reaction. I think they want us to enjoy what they bought.We live in the greatest country in the history of the world. Sorry Canada. You're real nice but you know we're right. I'm looking out my window into a nice yard-a yard-with grass! NO ONE in Iraq has grass. I'm listening to Aretha on the radio right now. They shoot people in Mogadishu for listening to a female singer. We get upset standing in line at the grocery store wondering why they don't open another lane because there's four of us in this line. I counted yesterday, there are eleven different bars of soap at the store. Eleven! Whole towns in most of the places we sent troops don't have soap, of any kind. I can even decide if I want to go to work, or live under the 7th Avenue bridge. My life, and that of my family's is our choice. I can follow God or pray to Ulsa, goddess of the pond trees. I can be a professional taxidermist or President of the United States. Its up to me. Those we think of today bought that for me.

When people complain about the U.S. and are here from other countries, I don't think we should say, "Hey, ya knucklehead, go home then." I think we should say "Stay and take another look. You obviously missed something the first time. Forgive them Father, for they don't know what they are saying." We wear our worst on our sleave. You want to know what issues this country has? Read the paper or watch the news or listen to the radio. We'll tell you. Our worst day, beats most nations best. That 7th Avenue bridge thing? That's good living in some countries.

So, today is Memorial Day. This weekend-where did you go, what did you buy, what did you bring to the picnic, soccer game, NASCAR event, Indy race, come on, what did you do? We did everything we could except what we should have been doing; going around and kissing, full on the lips, every veteran of any war, conflict or dispatch we could find, then looking them in the eyes and saying nothing. Just making that eye contact; they will know what we mean. I don't care if you're sitting there coughing and saying "Well, ah, Mark, I know what you want to say, but I just don't feel comfortable kissing another man...." Git you're scrawny, phobic ass over it! That's not the point. As I get older, I am finding myself losing my tolerance for whatever it is I feel I am losing tolerance for. Whatever the heck that just meant. These people, the ones that survived, are the living legacy to the ones that paid the bill for us. This prize we call life, was paid first on the cross, the gold standard to follow. Then, it was paid by millions of men and women. Thousands are standing that same post today. Anywhere the weak need protection or violence happens and that special kind run to help, the soldier, sailor, marine, airman, coast guard, police, or fire. These people go to the noise rather than flee from it. They know the potential is there that they will come face to face with the Boogieman.

Some people think that God has nothing to do with this. I honor your ability to believe what you wish. But I find it impossible to separate the two out. There is an old saying "there are no athesists in foxholes." Before our son, Travis, went to Iraq, we all met as a group. The 63 Combat Regiment has a motto. All units do. Now, some of you might be thinking "Oh, what is it? Gut 'em when you find 'em or some other violent chest pounding rhetoric?" Nope, his combat unit's motto was from Isaiah 6, "Send me Lord."

Where do we find such people to pay the sales tax on our enjoyment on this life? We find them in the homes we have made. From our teaching and our our own hearts. Those that died, they came from us. They mimicked our hearts and minds. They are us and we are they. This is "our day" the best and brighest would say. Remember them, cherish them, kiss them full on the lips.

Life's path

There are layers to life, I think. When you look back or forward in you life, there are twists and turns which occur at specific stages of life.

Like the early years, when you chipped your tooth playing football in the front yard. Grade school and then high school was when you discovered girls were dopey and then girls cause us to be dopey. College years or post high school were when you wanted to exercise your sophistication with smoking a pipe, drinking beer, discussing Milton, or discussing the validity of Fifty-cent (for the older group-he's a rapper and only God knows how he spells his name). Post college years we're spent looking for a mate.

Then we moved into child years or traveling in search of ourselves; or we're in jail. There's a long stretch here where we're running fast and hard. Once the kids are grown and start to cycle out, we look around for something to filling the void. First, there's the long awaited nap. But that doesn't last. You can only take so many of those during the day. You start going to things, like the symphony. Some, finish their spousal duties and move on to others-again. Others, move into different phases with their partners and look for what phase is next.

As the years pass, comfort becomes the command of the day. Instead of that 1977 Gremlin you nursed for years, you live on the edge with a Kia, a brand new one. You get your hair done differently, you daily try to stay ahead of the ear hair. You've become fluent in HDL and LDL dialog. And later, you begin to take interest in news reports on what the Federal government is doing with Social Security and Medicare.

In your fifties, which is where I am finding myself now, I am dramatically closer to the end than to the beginning. But I remember, with advantages, what feats I did those days. My youth is but a thought away and sometimes, like yesterday, still thinking I can leap tall buildings or at least find I can still leap up on a short wall without the use of a ladder, to check my mister system for my front porch. I was kind of proud of that little hop. The old man can still move. Of course this morning, as I write to you and sip my coffee, KYOT playing their Sunday set of melodic music in the background, and two of my favorite things laying at my feet, I have a dull pain in one of my hips. Brought on, of course, by something other than my leap of youth yesterday.

So, what's next? At this point of my life, what is coming up? They say that fifty is the old forty. So, I guess I am equal to what my father was at forty huh? Well, okay. I can live with that. I just don't want to go to ninety. I think if I went to ninety those last few years would not be as cute as the first few years. Lots of talking at high volume. "MR. WILLIAMS, DO YOU WANT TO GO DOWN THE CAFETERIA AND HAVE SOME MUSH?" Nope, I think at that point we take stock in where we are and look at a cab ride to the Golden Gate Bridge, take a walk out to the first tower and take one last leap, with the intent of hitting a passing luxury liner. Wow, now that would be fun! Yep, I want to always be able to leap tall buildings, or at least a short wall.

End of the year teacher's story

Carol Ferguson was wrapping up her room the week after school let out for summer. She had been a teacher for thirty-nine years, the last thirty-three in this inner city high school district and at this particular school. When she told people how long she had been there and just after their gasp, she would comment “Well, I have changed rooms over the years.” What she didn’t say was the last twenty had been in this particular room, tucked away in one of the older wings. Now, at the end of her career, Carol Ferguson found herself trying to find a place for the lifetime of memories, most of which she knew she couldn’t take home. It was time for Carol Ferguson to make room for the new teachers and time for her to rest. Carol Ferguson struggled with the idea of whether it had been worth it.

She walked the room as if lost. She would start packing a box then flitter to another part of the room. She would bog down with opening a book or a file and finding something that she hadn’t looked at for years, in this case, a file with cards from students. She would linger over their words and pictures. Carol Ferguson would then smile and again wander the room, trying to find a place to put the old treasure. She had until the end of the week to clear out. A new teacher was transferring in and wanted to get keys and move in before they got too deep into summer. It was at this point Carol Ferguson heard a knock on her open door.

“Hello,” the old man with the cane said. He was about seventy but looked older with a hunched back and a long mustache. A well worn hat covered his head.

“Hello,” she said.

“Are you Carol Ferguson?”

“Yes, can I help you?”

The old man shuffled a few steps into the room before he spoke. “You don’t know me. But I needed to see you.” The man paused for a moment.

“Would you like to sit down?” she offered but the man held up his hand.

“No, I can’t stay. I just needed to see you.” There was another pause. “Thirty years ago, you had my kids. They was one behind the other in ages,” the old man slowly started, a tinge of southern drawl hung in his voice. “Two boys and a girl.”

“What were their names?”

“It ain’t important. What is important is what you did.”

Carol Ferguson had a flash of worry. Fear, quickly swept over her; as if this man posed a violent threat and that she was going to pay for some mis-deed from years past.

The old man’s voice began to break. “You see, I wasn’t around much when they was growin’ up. I wasn’t around at all, by choice, I guess. Their mother raised them as best she could and they were ripe for the pickin’ if you get my meaning. They could have gone either way. I hadn’t seen them since until last year. They found me and we all got together and,” he paused again and caught his voice. “It’s something now. Really something. I needed to come tell you because when we was talkin’ they said one thing that got them through and that they remembered for, well, until now, was their high school teacher, Mrs. Ferguson, giving them the will and the courage to believe. One’s a contractor in Chicago, one’s a writer for a magazine in LA, and the girl is a teacher in the South Miami. They all said between momma and you, they made it. I just came here to tell you thank you for saving my kids.”

The two stood for a moment and neither spoke. The old man shuffled in his turn and left the same way he came in. Carol Ferguson walked over to her desk and sat down, still holding the treasure in her hand. She opened the file and a card fell out. She picked it up and opened it, noticing it was signed by three kids-two boys and a girl.

Carol Ferguson closed the file, laid it on her desk, and began to cry tears of joy.

Mother's Day

Today is the one day of the year we stop and turn to our mothers and say all that we should of said over the last years of our lives. Fathers are important, critical actually, but when the father doesn't fulfill his role in the home, it is the mother who almost all the time steps up and takes on both roles. Frankly, I think most of us take our moms for granted until there is nothing around to take for granted anymore. "Oh, mom, geez."

There is a strength in mothers that fathers don't have. There is a strength that is so strong, so powerful that it is hard to describe. It runs the gambit of physical, emotional, social, environmental and anything else that ends in 'al.' Sometimes we know when they're leaving this planet but sometimes we don't. Maybe you were four and you and your parents were living a good life, just the three of you. Your mother and father loved you very much and their love for each was shown as an example to you every day of your young life of what pure love was to look like. Then, your mother developed a cough, maybe a little fever, then she was gone. It was 1918, and she was one of 18 million who died of the flu that year. Or you had a little time, some warning. She became sick when you were nineteen and it was just you and her now. Father had died and the older siblings had moved away. Now it was just you as the last of the family who stood and watched her breath. The cancer had her. She was boarding on unconsciousness until you bent over and whispered something in her ear. Then, she smiled. She rallied and said a few words of coherence and a smile. It would be her last smile on this earth. That image is burned into your mind. The last thing she did was smile at something you told her. Not a bad ending for a son or daughter with their parent.

What are you whispering in your mom's ear today? What are you going to say to her? Don't let her go without a word or two. Moms aren't perfect. The contamination of the Earth has made sure of that. But they are our mothers. Revere them today. Hug them today. Let them know their life counted. Because in them, all they really want to do is love you and know they meant something to you.

Happy Mother's Day moms everywhere!!

As part of my second life, that of a teacher, I am finding myself sounding more and more like my parents generation. I can't say I sound like my parents because they died when I was young and never really got a chance to talk to them about anything other than daily surface stuff. But I'm guessing they would say certain things and I am finding myself saying those exact things. Such things as "Weren't you listening?" "Didn't I just say that?" "Copy the example on the board-exactly," X 3; or my favorite-"Kids music now a days."

Still, I am comfortable with the generation coming up. "Mark, how can you say that? Have you heard blah blah blah." I know what you're thinking but I really do think we'll be all right. Kids today are no different-----NO DIFFERENT than when I was growing up, except maybe more resilient. Listen, I don't like rap music. Anything that is called 'music' that I could actually do, is not music. If I can stand and hold a microphone too close to my mouth and mumble words and get a million dollars for it, I don't think is music. How is that different from someone like Bob Dylan? You can't understand him even if there is no music and you and him were the only two in the room. How about the Beatles? Huh? Now I've touched a nerve. I knew a girl in high school who, I am sure, lit a candle to them every day. Have you listened to the White Album? Charlie Manson did and apparently it told him that he was the next Jesus Christ.

You look at our gaggle of teens about ready to step out on the stage of graduation and then into the 1040 long form and you find yourself rubbing the frontal lobe of your head in worried anticipation. Nah, we'll be alright. My parents couldn't fathom why anyone, men in particular, would want to wear their hair long. My brother was cut out of his grandfather's will because he had a beard. What exactly is a 'Doobie Brother'? And wat iz txtn LOL? I look at my three kids and their friends and play the stories back of their teen years. Our girls were 'better' than our boy but none of them caused us to worry about their hearts short of them being hurt by their boyfriends or girlfriends at the time. Now, we see young men and women where children once stood-peers in the faith. I got into my sweet Jessica's car the other day and she had some head-banging music on-my Jessica the nurse! Jeannette and Travis actually know the lyrics to rap songs!

So, take rest in the knowledge that those that follow will be fine. Sure, they will face divorce, death, taxes, war, and that cross-road decision about God as they grow. Maybe our fear is that they will turn out like us? They watch us and want to emulate us. I guess we all know what that means. We better get our act together and model what we want them be like. Apparently, we're still leading the parade.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

What was I thinking? WHAT WAS I THINKING? So, yesterday I made a doctor's appointment. Now, I'm a fifty-one year old middle-aged white guy. At this point in my life, the appointments to see the doctor no longer include "torn ACL's" or "pulled ham-strings" or the endless ringing in my ears from too many "gun fights" at close quarters. I am still in reasonable shape and still, if I had too, could leap tall buildings but age has given me wisdom so I use the elevator to the top then jump to the other side. Get my meaning? Nope, doctor visits are reserved now for those things that men, women, no one of any real decorum, want to wander into.

So, I made this follow up appointment with the doctor. Sure, it had been three years but things like this, especially a man-in his fifties-still able to sit-scared of what she had already said, didn't want to rush in to. I needed some time to think and three years seemed appropriate. But it was time. I don't know what I was thinking. I thought she was just going to open the file and simply say "Oh, hi again Mr. Williams, I see its been over three years but sure, I don't think anything has changed, lets just schedule that "procedure" and you can be on your way. I knew I had not thought this out when they put me in a room with buttons, switches, garden hoses, and something that said "Craftsmen" on it.

I sat in the chair waiting. I was proud of the way I looked, my new Jerry Garcia tie and clean white dress shirt. I looked good. Then my eyes scanned the room. There was a Tupperware container with stainless steel things; things you see only on Thanksgiving when one is basting the turkey, soaking in a light blue liquid. Then I looked up. In the ceiling was a light; one of those fish eye lens aimed right at a strategic spot on the table. There were tubes of ointment on the counter. Maybe they were left over from the last guy? I thought. Then I said 'hmmm.'

She was real nice-the doctor. Yes, a 'she.' So was her six foot Russian nurse. Something about her, though, screamed in my mind 'gulag'. Now, you have to understand, she was just the luck of the draw three years ago when my primary doctor sent me to her. My brother and a dear friend who both counseled me back to life after these previous events, asked the same question--'a she'? Here's all I got to say-small hands. Yep, that's critical-especially in these 'procedures.' But, she was not going to budge. She had to repeat everything she did three years ago. It was like it didn't even happen! Like that whole thing just sailed out to sea, never to be seen again. My tie and starched shirt looked worn and used draped across the chair I was previously sitting in.

So men, I stand before you-humbled but proud. You see, at this age, as I walked out of the office, finding my car one floor down in the parking garage, I realized I didn't really care. There was a point of pride of what I had just accomplished. Younger men would still be up stairs, curled up in a little ball and the Russian would be tapping them with her size eleven boot say "git up ya sloppy pool of a man!" Nope, as I enter this stage of my life career, I greet it not with trepidation but with open arms! "Go on, take your best shot. I'm an 'Merican male, father, warrior of the faith, husband, grandfather, protector of the weak-you ain't got nothin' with those things in the Tupperware container. I laugh at you!"

So, sometime in the next few weeks, I will make an appointment and do the do. I will march in, the Royal Dragoon Guards playing in my MP3, my head up, my chest out, the word 'mommy' quietly clenched between my teeth.