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Russian Sweet Tea
“You’re doing this wrong.” Don’t you get tired of these stupid headlines? I do! You’re Eating Apples All Wrong You’re Making Beans All Wrong You’re Eating Pizza All Wrong You’re Cooking Meth the Wrong Way I could go on. Regardless, let me share why it’s important that you make sweet tea the right way. You’re welcome! Once, I was in Russia and I wanted sweet tea. That’s all. As it turns out, they don’t drink cold sweet tea in Russia, or pretty much anywhere else in the world. I don’t know why, because sweet tea done right is awesome. We stayed in a dormitory in a college town in the…
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The Blaming Game Starter Pack
I am probably five or six years old. I’m sitting at a table with other preschool kids. The teacher is Mrs. Payne and it’s almost time for the bell to ring and dismiss a hoard of wild little kids to trample anything on their way to the school buses. Mrs. Payne is going on about something. By my right foot, I see a piece of lead, which had broken off from a pencil. Maybe it was my pencil. Maybe it was someone else’s pencil. Does it really matter? It could have been Philip, a little guy that I’d probably just met that day sitting right beside me. For some reason,…
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Tunnel Vision
There were no signs warning me not to drive into the tunnel with an empty gas tank. I was driving my mom’s Ford Focus, which was embarrassing enough. The next embarrassing thing was that the gas needle was on “empty.” There were no signs necessary because the state highway department assumed that I had the intelligence to fill up my gas tank on occasion. While the last thing the highway department wanted was to have some punk teenager run out of gas right in the middle of the busy tunnel and stop eastbound traffic, the state department of Transportation did not care about my automotive fuel needs. Running out of…
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Congratulations, you’re pregnant
There are a few things that professors will tell you not to do when you are in law school: don’t get married, don’t have a baby, or don’t rob banks. Crazy, right? I mean, how are we supposed to live? Thankfully, my experience in these endeavors is limited. And the statute of limitations hasn’t run yet, so… I’ll just stick to my story here. At the tender age of 33, I went back to college. Before that, I’d been preaching for small churches and wanted to get away from all the legalism I had encountered. So, I went to law school… Anyway, my bride and I found ourselves at the…
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The Useless Microphone
I‘m sitting in an audience straining to hear the speaker. “Why?” you ask? I’ll tell you. The microphone is too far away from the dude’s mouth. All he needs to do is to move closer to the microphone and, BAM, his little voice would be amplified and we’d hear him. But he doesn’t. Why do rational people refuse to use microphones? Why do they believe that the conversation level of their voices will carry through a large room? I once sat in a large meeting room in San Antonio, Texas that would hold 500 people. An Army JAG Colonel was giving a talk about career progression in the JAG Corps.…
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Keys and Tryouts
We were near Columbus, Mississippi, auditioning for a preaching job. I stopped at a gas station just a mile or so from the church building where the audition was to occur. You may be surprised to hear the word “audition” associated with interviewing for a preaching job. My experience is that folks are interested in hiring you only if you sound good not if, you know, you are concerned about ministering to people. But I digress. It was winter and cold, even for Mississippi. I got out of the truck, spun around, and the door shut. This was not part of the audition. A feeling somewhere down in the far…
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Lame Claim to Fame
To successfully navigate the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, one must have a sponsor to steer the drunk from continuing on his or her destructive path. My dad had just such a sponsor. He is the guy in the photo. I’ve listened to my dad, through smoke-filled rooms, give testimony to his life with and without alcohol. I preferred without. Thankfully, he did too. After sitting through more than a few AA meetings, I’m convinced that all alcoholics really just trade alcohol for coffee and cigarettes. In our little town in South Alabama, there was a house on the banks of a small river. In this house, converted to a…
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The Russian Lesson
In the next room, I hear the unmistakable chatter of a foreign language. Actually, I hear my bride, Inna, speaking Russian, which is not all that unusual as she was born and raised in the land of matryoshkas (see picture), permafrost (be thankful you don’t have it), and, well, more snow. Inna is teaching Russian to one of my daughter’s friends, who wants to be a translator. Although she can speak a few sentences, they’re starting with the alphabet. Which of course, is a great place to begin. My youngest is also sitting in. But she has an unfair advantage. She’s heard Russian from her mother and grandparents since the…
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Living on Russian Time
Ivan Ivanov (not his real name) was a pretty important person in his little town in Russia and was involved in a lot of building projects. I’m not sure if his work included the statue of Lenin near the airport (or the one at just about every street corner in town). This project was to be completed by the end of the calendar year. Which sounds reasonable. Unless there just isn’t enough time to complete said project by the end of the year. Then, there could be problems. The government was making an addition to the hospital and it was crucial that the project must be completed before December 31.…
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Clean Water
Everyone needs clean water. And we all expect to get clean water, especially if you are a soldier and approach a “water buffalo” that has the word “potable” clearly stamped on the side. (A water buffalo is just a big portable metal tank with clean drinking water.) Usually. They give soldiers and Boy Scouts (or anyone really) access to clean water out in the middle of nowhere. But someone has to clean it out occasionally and refill it and transport it back to the middle of nowhere. So, once upon a time an Army captain and his soldiers were out in the middle of Camp Shelby, Mississippi. They’d been walking…
