Life
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Not a Singer
At the end of the year in elementary school, the band teacher at the middle school arrived to test us, fifth graders, to see who had “the music.” If you had the music, you could be a part of the middle school band the next year. If you did not, then you took woodworking. We lined up by the stage. The band director played a few notes on the piano. It was strange to be in the cafeteria when it wasn’t time to eat. Every sound bounced off the floor and empty tables. Some students hummed in tune. Many were off. If you hummed in tune, the director would then…
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Never Rescue Frogs (They’re Evil)
I am sitting on the couch in the lobby of our local gym because I rescued a frog. Now, normally, I’d be upstairs working out — in the very limited way that I do. My wife is upstairs in the torture room she calls “exercise.” Healthy people walk by with their frou-frou water on the way to the weight room, racquetball, or one of the other torture rooms. They look at me smugly as they sashay by. Maybe I remind them of a mangled car wreck. It sure looks that way by their looks. Meanwhile, one of my lower back disks is continuing to press upon the sciatic nerve going down my…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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,…
