Is This Something I Need?

This is Memorial Weekend-2010. This is a holiday of conflicting ideas and activities. When you think about it, it is designed as a sad and reflective weekend. Unlike its twin brother on the other end of summer, Labor Day, where we celebrate, well, 'labor' and the 'Merican worker, Memorial Day is designed to be somber and passive, thinking about those warriors who paid the ultimate price for us. In response to this, the Americans honor this day with those things that only Americans have earned the right to do. We remember Memorial Day with the Indy 500, lake boating, and sales on toilets.

Look, I use to be like everyone else and talk about what we, as a family, were going to do on this three day weekend until Travis decided to connect the dots for us with his deployments into the throat of the dragon. But I won't take you there. I got my flags out and run through my mind the significance of this day and how it could very well relate to me and my family this coming year. BUT, and I speak for my son, we are not going to dwell on that. There are other things to think about, fun things.

Let us examine the sales that tag along with this day and what, if anything, we can do about them.

Our fallen would actually, if we could hear their collective voices, want us too. "Momma, I'm fine here, don't you fret. You need to get yourself out and go mallin'. Go find that pillow you've been talkin' 'bout. You're sleepin' on one you've had since you were in tenth grade. You keep sayin' it makes your jaw hurt. Take Aunt Millie with you. Let her drive. Her eyes are better than yours.' Yep, I think our fallen would want us to think about them and the cost they paid, maybe over the morning cup of joe, but then get ourselves out and enjoy the day-the way of life, they wrote the check for. I think if I could take their collective souls shopping, we would hit two places-Costco and Home Depot. And what says Memorial Day sales better than toilets!

But do I really need a new toilet with 'siphon flush action?' Do I want a toilet that uses the word 'action' in its advertisement? Do I want a toilet that does something that you describe as an 'action' rather than just a 'flush'? Especially when I am at its mercy and in a position of vulnerability?

So we have a toilet in this house of ours that dates back to when I was a child-in this same house. I never changed it and my dad never changed it. Its an American Standard. The type that won the hearts and minds of the third world. It has different guts but the porcelain is the same. It has been acting up lately. It is strictly an indication of the guts needing to be replaced, but one doesn't just go buy guts to a toilet without first looking at 'what's new in the world of toilets.' Its very similar to when you need to buy new tires for your car so you go buy a new car.

At Costco recently, they had a toilet for an odd price of $93.78. Why not $93.76 or .79? Someone told me once that those weird prices indicate something is about to go away and be sold out. Which means, good luck on finding someone to fix it. AND, it had a push button flushy thing. No handle, just a button. Apparently, you can pick your flush strength which, I would guess, taps into that 'siphon action' we were reading on the side of the box. It also is a way to save water, which is something I am not sure I want to negotiate about when it comes to my toilet-plants and trees, yes, my toilet-nope.

Look, I don't know about you, but I am a 52 year-old man that is, apparently, at a cross road in his life. I have to make a life changing decision. I don't think I want to make this decision. I don't think I want my life to be faced with ANOTHER life change. First, its computers, and televisions then cell phones, and as always, boxers or briefs.

Questions raced through my mind. Men take their toilets seriously. We spend time there. We 'linger.' Women get in and get out. Men, ah, men plan financial empires during their toilet time. It's said that Tesla came up with the alternating current while camped on his. Mercury astronauts sang songs before their flights on commodes, or the invasion of the Falkland Islands was mapped out on the back of the stall door. Worlds are conquered here. Very serious stuff-very.

So to change from handle to button, oval to round, toilet height to seat height, all are easy decisions for a women. Men, well, we have to go to our god about such things. Then, we field test them.

Yep, I sat right down on that bad boy right in the middle of Costco. No, I didn't 'use' it but I wanted to check it for, you know, reach. That's why they put one out there, for the men, to try-I swear. Can I reach around and push the button without getting up? Yes, with some strain to my back muscles. It just means I need to spend more time in the gym working that part of my back. Seat height appeared fine. It wasn't chair height like the one in our other bathroom. My feet dangle on that one and my legs go numb. This one, well, height was not an issue.

There ya have it. The decision of the day. Instead of watching the Indy 500, I can wait until tonight to see the wrecks, the best part of the race, I might buy a toilet with 'siphon flush action'. There is a game or two on today but maybe I'll try to finish the crown molding in the living room. I didn't buy the toilet for $93.78 with the siphon action the other day. The timing wasn't right-maybe today. I thought about it, but then thought I would go price another set of guts at Home Depot, my other favorite store.

As I was walking out of Costco, my path took me right by the LCD flat screens. I slowed. I stopped. I have a second thing to take to my god-I guess.

Another year gone. Did it count?

Just finished another school year. It was a high casualty rate this year. Out of twenty-six juniors in one class, eleven failed. Here's the tough part, they chose to do so.

'Mark,' you start off, 'We think you're just a crappy teacher.' Well, sure if you are any teacher at all, you should go there. What can I do differently? What didn't I do? All of it. Many times we can, as teachers, differentiate our teaching and adapt. But sometimes, sometimes we need to let choices be lived out.

I've heard people say that kids don't choose to fail. They would be wrong. I've seen it. I've talked to them. I've actually heard them say 'I choose to fail.' Why?

That's all they know. They're comfortable with it. They've been told all their lives they were worthless, no good, wish they were never born, by those that were suppose to be their biggest fans. Some of the lives of these students are what make up bad movies. Their lives are terrible. They are old before their time. Parents? What parents? I am a firm believer that some parents-many parents, should never-ever be parents. They leave a wake of damaged children in their path. Somehow they breed and have children they don't care about, sometimes even hate. The cycle continues with the next generation.

But then there are those students that walk into class, torn, worn, beaten, and still they would rather spend the day with me than at home. It always happens just when you are contemplating changing your career path and thinking that being a roofer is the Arizona summer sounds like a nice break from this gig we call teaching. There's a look in their eyes. So, we take a walk, using whatever the non-educators at the state tell us we should be teaching. Ahhh, and here is the best part-I have learned that I can adapt and teach Life using anything-ANYTHING. Somehow, I can find an application to these young minds while identifying a preposition; how about Shakespeare? Way too easy. Give me a stick and a ball of twine and I will tie a life skill and a literary element to it. I can look any geek from the state in the eyes and justify why I used pudding pops and sock puppets to explain the literary element of characterization in Homer's Iliad while the transcendental metaphor was ignored. Yeah, I know, it makes me dry heave too. Same with the kids. We don't teach this crap for any other purpose than to help them understand the life they've been given. So, I usually tell the kids -"Look, the parts to Shakespeare you can't understand, well, those prose were probably written in the afternoon after he had been drinking rum all day because the water in London was so foul (sucked). The stuff that makes sense-the 'once again into the breach...' that good stuff? He wrote that in the morning before he got tanked." They buy it because instead of rum-momma's live-in-boyfriend is doing Cobra 40's.

Some of these kids, actually, most of them, will be the first in their family to graduate from high school. In some countries they make doctors out of a high school graduate. Here, you'd be lucky to mop the blood off the floor of the surgical room the doctor was in.

So, we as teachers, are running for the door at this time of year. This teaching crap really takes its toll. Lives are used up and spent before they even have a chance to grow whiskers. We get front row seats at the train wreck. We can even predict them, with almost 100% certainty. But, then there are those that have the eyes, looking into mine. The worn out and broken ones that somehow show up and stay.

I think about the course changes that have brought me to this very spot. In some districts, I'd be fired for talking to someones little spoiled brat the way I do. Here at my school, ahhhhh---I have students like 'Jose' come up to me. He was timid, shy, struggling with the language and life. He was almost completely broken, badly bruised, and his heart had been spoiled.

He waited until the room was empty before he spoke. "Mister, is it true?"

"What?" I responded. I was distracted with something meaningless.

"Is what you say, is it true?"

"About what?" I don't even think I looked up when he clarified. It took a minute before the radar picked up something.

"About what you told us all year, that whatever we can dream, we can do? I come from a real bad neighborhood and life. I don't want that. They shoot people and do drugs on the corner. My cousin, he wants me to join his gang-I want what you said."

Its was then that a middle-aged teacher's back straightened. Somewhere deep inside, as I get older, I find myself looking back and identifying, in times like these, with my heritage. My one grandfather was a Scotsman and my other was a rancher in the 19th century. Both, if they heard this, and I reckon they did, would look at each other and wink.

Grandaddy Jim's family, my brother and I figured, were not great warriors in Scotland; maybe his great grandfather, although doubtful. They were probably bakers. But in Scotland three hundred years ago, you were all warriors. You all went to the fight with whatever you had-an axe, a mallet, a long stick sharpened on the end. Your clan lived for a good war. You'd kiss your wife goodbye whom, by the way, could kick your ass, and you'd go. "Aye, looks like the lad is in need of some guidance he is," James would say, swirling some fine single-malt as he watched my show from the other side.

"Yep, reckon the boy needs someone with a good rope and a strong back to carry him if need be," Harrison would say missing the spittoon and leaving some pug on his chin. Grandad Harrison's idea of fine medicine was a kerosene soaked rag wrapped around whatever open, leaking wound he had, usually caused by a dull knife covered in cow dung. He would gargle with it when he had a sore throat. The brothers and I tried the kerosene treatment. It actually worked. He had the rag always with him, around his neck. it was his kerchief and if he needed to, he'd blow his nose in it too.

Sometimes, when God sets you down where you are, you don't know why most of the time. You look around and you question the foundation of life. 'This isn't my plan.' But sometimes, sometimes, he lets you see behind the veil. Instead of flying fighters off of a carrier, I am here. Aye, tis a good day for a fight! I could hear in the back of my brain.

"Yeah, Jose, every word is true-every word. Stay, and I'll show you," the old middle-aged teacher said.

Yeah, give me time and pen and paper. I'll make it fit into anything the state wants me to 'teach.' I'll even issue a grade.

As you read this, I am on my way to graduation. I don't want to be late. Jose is walking. He will be the first one on his block to graduate from high school.

Excerpt from Holy Ground-need your imput

We are getting close on the release of the second book Holy Ground later this year. It's darker, deeper, and hopefully, more entertaining than Emancipating Elias. Don't get me wrong, I liked Emancipating. I think it was a great read and people I've talked to say the same thing. Of course, they'were in a drunken stupor and thought I was the Sultan of Brunei.

I want your opinion, truly want your opinion, on a few things.

• The photo to the left-every book I am going to write, (unfortunately for you there are YEARS worth) will have a photo of the author trying to capture the mood of the main character and the story itself. Emancipating doesn't have that but we are going to re-release it under a different publisher so we get a second shot. What do you think about that idea?

• Tell me about the chapter you read. Would you like to read more? Does it cause you to keep going or does it not interest you (topic, genre, etc)? Or are you just reading it because I am standing over your bed at night with my Glock in your ear forcing you to read my crap?

I've included here the first chapter to give you a little taste of our hero, Cooper William Gardner, a middle-aged man dealing with things, much like the rest of us. The tests of his past have tainted him. He's a train wreck just waiting out life. Little does he know, 'life' is right around the corner.

Enjoy-

CHAPTER ONE
The purpose of life is to fight maturity.
—Dick Werthimer

March 20, 2003

Cooper woke up, lying on his back, to the clock radio.

“The second invasion of Iraq started early this morning….”

He was breathing like he just finished a run. His pillow was soaked with sweat. “Oh, god,” he groaned. His right shoulder hurt him. If he laid on it long enough, an old high school football injury flared up. As a matter of fact, it had gotten worse. Now, the other shoulder hurt from laying on it so much, so he would roll to his back. He couldn’t sleep on his back. His fifty-five year-old body was becoming a wreck. He was sore from osteoarthritis, from years of running on hard concrete, streets trying to keep his fading body somewhat in shape. He was losing that battle. He smoked too many cigars and drank too much scotch at Moreno’s Bar, usually to the point of becoming a stumbling pile of goo. His blood pressure bordered on hypertensive, and the rib-eye steaks he allowed himself to eat helped his total cholesterol to reach the nice round number of 260.

In the base of his brain, he listened to the radio and the report of the invasion. He kept his eyes shut and his breathing slowed. His hand moved up to his face and to rub his ear. He felt the whiskers on his face then down to his chest and his testicles, freeing them from the boxers he had on that spun tight as he rolled over.

Cooper’s ruddy complexion was highlighted with close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair and a gray mustache. His face was filling out from the high consumption of alcohol in the last year. His face had taken on a reddish tint, especially his nose, from hours in the Arizona sun and was marked with broken capillaries, just above his cheeks. His lips were thin; if it wasn’t for the mustache, his face would almost appear mouth less. Jowls were forming below his jaw line. His ears seemed to sag, like the rest of his body, which after years and years of abuse, sloped down as if he had carried a heavy rucksack and never taken it off. His whole body, under a load of weight that had been there for so long, no one noticed it anymore, especially Cooper, worked on the joints and muscles.

He felt his stomach and his growing waist line. His abdomen, which at one time was cut into six muscular sections, began to push on the belt holding up his pants when he would get dressed.

Surprisingly, in some regards, his body still depicted health. But if one looked, they could tell. Even though he went to the gym and ran three times a week, his body was still writing checks it couldn’t cash. All in all, Cooper William Gardner was a physical wreck waiting to crash. In a few years, if he kept up his lifestyle of self-abuse, he would drown in his own life, probably in his own toilet.

Cooper was a helicopter pilot for the Phoenix Police Department. He was the senior pilot and part of the development team that employed the aircrafts when the trend in police work called for it years ago. After his tours in Vietnam, he came back home and joined the department. It was really the only choice for many of the military, unless one could learn some other skill in order to make a living once they returned from the war. If you went over as a doctor, you could come back and work as a doctor, but most of the troops were not of that cut. Cooper had gotten a college degree in business using the G.I. Bill, but business didn’t interest him. He couldn’t stand the idea of working in a room all day. He happened to be at the right place at the right time when the city decided to start an air wing. He was part of the initial six who made up the section. He was also the only one with any helicopter experience. All the rest were street cops the department sent to flight school. He loved it.

He looked over at the top of his dresser and pictures hanging on the wall behind it with him in younger days. He had trouble focusing from the bed so he rubbed his eyes and his face again. Pictures of him and his first wife, Torin and graduation day from the academy. He joined the department and then shortly thereafter married his first wife, Torin, and just as quickly divorced her after a year and a half. The job and the old dreams consumed his life and that of his first wife, Cooper’s sweetheart, who made the mistake of saying she would wait for him to come back from Vietnam. She did. They married. But neither of them were the same person they were before he left for the war.

“God, you’re such a cynic!” she would call him.

“Oh, really, well I guess that makes you a bra-burning feminist!” Cooper wasn’t quite sure what all that entailed but it was the talk of the time and it wasn’t meant to be nice.

The marriage lasted until he had been out of the police academy for six months. He came home one day to an empty closet and a note on the counter saying she was tired of the silence. That was fine; he didn’t want to talk to her anyway.

“…coalition forces started in the darkness with air and cruise missile strikes at the nation’s capital of Baghdad….”

“‘Bout damn time,” he said as he reached over and shut off the radio and then wiped some white stuff from the corner of his mouth, transferring it to his bed sheet.

Mother's Day and the All you Can Eat Buffet

Mothers-I will just apologize to all of you for all of us with a 'Y' in our genetic make up. Your little boy, well, sometimes doesn't think with his head; at least not very well, when it comes to this day.

Look sons, don't, whatever you do, take your mother to an 'all you can eat' anything today. Don't even pretend she'd like it. She won't.

Guys, there are definite rules to this day. Ask your sisters.

Daughters are in tune with this. They have the gene pool, even if they don't have kids, they know what is right and wrong. Ask them and stand by to break that crusted over thing you call a wallet in your back pocket.

But, being a mom, more so as a grand mother or great grandmother, they will smile and say 'that would be fine dear, an all you can eat Sudanese buffet would be just fine.' NO, IT'S NOT!

Look at your mother. Go ahead, I'll wait........................................................................................................................................................Does she look like someone who could put away a $9.99 all you can eat Chinese buffet? She's 4'11" and weighs 90 pounds! She began shrinking twenty years ago and eats almost as much as a large pigeon does in a city park-two large table spoons of whatever and then she pushes away and wants a nice cup of coffee-black please.

OR, you take your mother, who really IS the size of a small freight car for the Southern Pacific. That's what she wants, to be reminded that her presences in this restaurant will panic the owner into starting a fire just to get everyone to evacuate the place and try to save some of his stock.

I went by the new Great China Super Buffet at the corner of 15th Avenue and Bethany Home the other day. It use to be a Country Home Buffet. It had flags and banners announcing its grand opening. It has 'islands,' not just one line, but individual islands packed full of whatever you wanted-in deep bins. The shear size was enough to give that skinny Japanese guy who always wins at hot dog eating the Willy's. You take your mom there, two things are going to happen, you will not get your money's worth out of her and you, yourself, will start to feel self-conscious about the fact that your plate can't be seen under the layers of sweet and sour crap. The other thing is your mother will get a salad. That's all, oh, maybe some cottage cheese and those little hominy pellets but nothing more. Now, you look at her, then back to your plate, then you realize this was a bad idea. Too late. The only buffet that she might even feel good at is one of those that has linen table cloths and a French guy offering some sparkling wine. Your mom hasn't had a drink since your Uncle Phil backed the truck over her legs when she lay passed out from the 4th of July 'party' at a Woodstock reunion festival.

Look guys, the flowers and candy are nice. Even though you'll probably have the first one out of the box. But spend time with your mom today. That's really all she wants, some time with her little boy and girl. If your sister suggests something, listen to them. They know stuff. Go over and fix the dripping faucet or better, pay someone to fix it so she has someone else to blame when it starts up again.

Tell her you love her without her saying if first. That's the most important thing. Some day, if it goes right, she will leave you first. Mother's Day will come around and you won't have that woman around to pester you, wipe your mouth, comment on the wrinkle in your shirt or eat a salad at an all you can eat (totally appropriate place to take her on just about any other day of the year). She will be gone. Then its just you and those memories. Make them good ones.

Happy Mother's Day mom. You were a good one!!