Day 243: Man Up, Grandma

Just about the only thing worse to observe than a bratty, mouthy kid stepping all over his grandmother is watching a grandmother let a little monster take bite after bite out of her ass. Christ, today, I had to watch a little monkey do just that for what must have been a half hour at the park. "Evan, I swear, if you don't do what I say, we're leaving."

Uh, yeah, Grandma, that's the seventh time you've said that. You going to follow through one of these times and do what you say?  

I swear, this kid was just flat out mocking the poor old woman, and she acted as if she was born to let it happen. I knew it was bad when my four year old asked me, "Dad, what would you do if that kid was yours?" Well, dear, let me tell you what I'd do. I'd escort his little ass straight to the car, strap him in nice and tight, and when we got home, usher him off to his room where I say "so long, little man. Enjoy your stay and get familiar with your surroundings, because you're going to be seeing them for quite some time." But all of that would come far after I'd straightened his little ass out right there on the playground in front of the world to see. Parent in public as you parent at home.

That's the problem. Some parents change their whole behavior once they're out of their four walls at home. "Grandma" kept looking at me every time her grandkid starting popping off at the mouth, as if asking me, "What should I do." You should man up. Take control. Seize the respect you're not getting. You should teach him a lesson. Teach him you call the shots. Most importantly, you should stop negotiating with someone who is at least 50 years younger than you and hold no perceivable power. 

About the only positive that came out of this experience, one that I seem to witness too often, is that gives me great opportunities to reinforce to my kid that "what you've just seen is never going to fly between you and I. You'll never treat me like that, and I'll never treat you as if I fear you. We have mutual respect, and that's far more important than getting your way when you want it." 

Day 242: Politics Sucks, Continued (The Clint Eastwood Edition)

I found myself left feeling very sad watching Clint Eastwood looking at an empty chair, trying to make a point but only coming off ultimately like a delusional old man. I have respected the hell out of Clint Eastwood for decades. I mean that sincerely. And for more than just being an actor. He epitomized to me what it meant to be a man. A standup man. On and off the screen. He's always carried himself in a confident, non-effected manner that I've truly admired. 

This opening from an Esquire article from years ago sums it up pretty much: "Why is Clint Eastwood still the man? Because no other man's come along to unseat him. And even though he's eighty, we could use someone like him as the epitome of masculinity right now."

To me, Eastwood meant far more than John Wayne or any other "man's man" that has come along over the decades. Eastwood was a true artist who also so happened to be a true man, at least in my book. Watch some videos of him playing piano sometime. Look at the films that he has directed. Read about his run as mayor of Carmel, Calif., back in the 1980s. Eastwood has always been more than just a face and image and guy who could spit out some memorable lines. There was a brain with a definite artistic vision behind those steely eyes in his chiseled face. 

I've seen "The Outlaw Josey Wales" more times than I can count. Literally. I still watch it with the same appreciation and awe. It takes me to a different time and place, and it leaves me wanting to jump on a horse and fight for a cause. That's Eastwood's doing. 

Years ago, on a flight to Portland, I picked up that copy of Esquire before taking off because there was an article with Eastwood inside titled "What I've Learned." I think I read that article a dozen times in the following weeks. It was full of so much gold, and I felt better about myself, life, and the future after each time. It also made me laugh numerous times for nuggets like this, which I identify with: Kids piercing themselves, piercing their tongues -- what kind of masochism is that? Is it to show you can just take it?

Despite leaning the left on pretty much all issues, I'm pretty old school in the ways I approach life, particularly where respect and honor and integrity are concerned. I don't always live up to the billing I'd like to achieve, but I try. Moreover, I respect endlessly those who are known for those traits who have truly earned the reputation. I consider Eastwood definitely one of those people. 

I hope Clint Eastwood isn't remembered ultimately as the bumbling old guy who spoke to an empty chair at a convention. I hope the jokes stop sooner than later. But I think what I've learned from Eastwood has to also apply to Eastwood: That as a man, you're responsible for your actions and how you carry yourself. Your words are your own, and after they come out, they are your's to possess and defend. No one pushed Clint Eastwood on stage and made him target President Obama and come off looking like a sorry bully who didn't have his full capacities in tact. He did that to himself. I'll choose, however, not to think and remember him in that way. I think of him as a guy who might have had good intentions where his beliefs are concerned but made a mistake. We all make them, even the most manly of men. 

Day 241: Politics Sucks

I sincerely am struggling these days. I'm trying to play the good soldier and weather on, but it's getting harder and harder. Every day that the presidential election gets closer, I find myself having to work just a little harder than the day before to wrap up my wicked little tongue tightly and securely and keep it from spouting off at will.

I know it's my right to say whatever the hell comes to my mind, and frankly most of what would come flowing out would be "left-wing," "liberal," and democratic in nature. So take that for what' it's worth. But I'm trying to walk the fine line and keep my opinions in check. I'm trying to be responsible and not antagonistic. I'm trying not to be confrontational or reactionary or get sucked into the traps the "opposition" is setting for me. But it's hard, man. It's hard. It's hard watching it from both sides of the divide. 

There was a time when I lived and breathed politics. I loved the game. I loved the fight. I loved the ability to seek out a candidate who I wanted to back and then get to work championing his or her cause. I loved the process. I loved the system. There was a time when I even would make the argument that I truly believed most politicians had the people's best interests always at heart. Always. They always did what was best for the people they represented. Always. Without question. There was a time when my energy and enthusiasm for the political machine was without limits. 

No more. I've grown tired and weary. I hate to admit as much, but it's true. I'm tired of the pessimism. I'm tired of the half-truths. I'm tired of the games and wasted time and money and energy. I'm tired of the facades and charades. I'm tired of the blind following the blind. I'm tired of the ill feelings and bad blood and lack of good will. I'm tired of the low blows and hurdles and hoops. I'm tired of rhetoric. The stereotypes. I'm tired of the hidden and blatant racism. I'm tired of the rich vs. poor. I'm just tired of it all. 

I'll continue to vote, and I'll continue to inform myself so that my vote is a qualified one made with the best of intentions. I won't abandon my duty to educate myself and arm myself with all the pertinent data. ALL THE PERTINENT DATA. I won't stop investigating and digging and tunneling a little deeper than the top headlines to find the real bits of truth. That's the least I can for all that I've been given living in this country. It's the least you should do, too. But I won't allow myself any longer to be baited into meaningless debates. I won't allow myself to fall prey to those who only spew the party line but know nothing beyond that. To those who don't go deeper than the surface, but rather rely on merely what their neighbor or spouse or Fox News or MSNBC tells them is true. I won't walk down paths of arguments with those who don't recognize historical facts. When I read public declarations from friends and family about why candidate X is the savior, I won't pour my heart and soul into discounting why he's really not. I won't take my precise time to take what you say personally. 

Unfortunately, I've come to recognize I live in an increasingly more hateful, divided, and disconnected country. I recognize there's an odd need at foot to pick sides and go to battle, tearing at the throat, scratching at the eyes, and breaking bones--even if many of those doing battle are ill-equipped to wage war truthfully and honestly. I'll respect your opinion sincerely and honestly--if it's been developed and grown sincerely and honestly. Otherwise, I don't think I can afford to recognize the ignorant any longer, if only for my own sanity. 

I have to somehow remain positive about this political animal running free now, this beast that continues to grow more nasty every day. If not, I fear I just might turn my back on that animal once and for all. I can feel the urge to do just that growing increasingly stronger each day. I don't want that to occur. I want to take part in this system because I believe in this system. I believe this system still has potential. 

But without a doubt, the system is flawed, and I can't pretend it's not. The system is full of minds that are flawed, and I can pretend they are not. They system is full of landmines and trick doors, and I can't pretend there are many who would willingly step on them and walk through without question. I'm fairly well convinced that I can't continue to engage politically with such people. I don't have the inclination any longer. I have to concentrate on being and becoming a better citizen. For me, that means fostering what's right and changing what isn't. That starts with myself. That means solidifying my beliefs, not working so damn hard to make everyone else aware of them or agree with them. That means less counterattacks and more progression. That means recognizes what meaningful vs. what's just more cluttering and nonsense polluting the air.  

Day 240: Dress Shoes & Snow

Back in second or third grade, for some reason my mom instituted a rule that I had to wear my dress shoes to school at least one day a week. I think she wanted to get her money's worth, because other than that one day, there weren't a whole lot of other opportunities popping up regularly to slip those bad boys on and start to stepping. 

I hated those shoes with great, intense passion, and I wasn't all that pleased with my mom on those days, either. That damn shoes put a serious dent in my kick soccer skills. They also made my feet feel like someone had taken a hammer to them. Beyond that, they made me look like an insurance salesman in the making, especially compared to all my peers who were sporting tennies on their toes. 

(My mom also instituted a rule somewhere along the line concerning wearing a "nice" shirt or sweater, but I circumvented that one pretty easily by wearing an extra shirt underneath whatever buttoned-up abomination she set out for me. I simply stripped off her good in favor of my tattered bad once I got to school and did the opposite before I got home. Not so easily done with shoes, though.) 

Eventually, I found a good use for those damn shoes, although I'd pretty much instantly regret it. Every year at my grade school, when the weather would take a turn for the worse and the snow started to fall,  it would cause pretty much every kid with a lick of adventure running through his or her bones to head off to the killer hill that sat off to the edge of the playground. Add a little snow and ice to that natural decline, and you had the makings for an all-out, downhill, shoe-sliding bonanza. Damn if my 1970's-era platform dress shoes weren't fast as lightning on that snow and ice. I mean, jet-like fast. Unfortunately, I only experienced the rush and thrill of racing down that hill on those shoes once. Yep, exactly once. 

Those shoes were so amazingly slick, I couldn't get back up the hill--literally. I vividly remember slipping time after time after time after time while trying. Take a step and WHAM! Face first in the white stuff. Take a step and BLAM! Right on my arse. I fell so often and so hard, it wasn't long before I started to cry. Hard. Beyond being legitimately worried I was never going to get back up that hill, kids were whizzing by me with no regard for my immediate safety. It was like dodging human bullets. Add to that the school bell going off with me still at rock bottom, and I was beyond flustered and panicked. Somewhere along the line, I decide that crawling on my hands and knees served as my best chance of getting up. Eventually I made it, albeit soaking wet, exhausted, and with a face covered in a nasty mix of tears and snot. I froze all day sitting at my desk in those wet clothes. At recess when the other kids headed back to the hill, I ran the other way. I'd seen that monster, and I wasn't about to look him in the eye again. 

For whatever reason, I still think about that day and those shoes surprisingly often. I've never really demanded that my kids wear certain clothing, although in certain situations where some decorum was called for, I really wanted to or might have even strongly suggested as much.  But I can't recall flat-out telling any of them that they couldn't wear their hair in a certain way or implemented too many other similar restrictions. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing honestly. I can't decide if my mom was right for getting her money's worth from those shoes. Some days when my kids start squawking about this injustice or that, I wish I had those shoes still. I'd tie them to their feet and tell them to get to marching. I'd like to see if they hated them as much as I do. Sometimes, though, I'm thankful for the bits of discomfort that have surfaced over the years. Some things come to easy to too many people. We all should have dress shoe-snow hill setbacks to toughen us up along the way. 

Day 239: Writing In The Car

I do some of my best thinking while in the car riding alone. I always have, going back decades to those late nights when I'd drive my way from western Nebraska to eastern Nebraska. You could get a lot of thinking done in those days driving along the mostly abandoned highways and interstate in the wee wee hours. 

These days, most of my solo driving takes place in the morning, which really is the perfect time to collect your thoughts. Although my morning drives don't allow as much time to conjure up the song lyrics and poems and movie ideas and daydreams that traveling those hours-long stretches across Nebraska did, I still manage to compact a lot of notions and schemes into a short time frame. 

Way back in the day, I made several solo road trips across various parts of the country. I was in my mid-20s, just about dirt broke, and there weren't a whole lot of career prospects on the horizon to keep me tied to one place unfortunately. But what I lacked in professional production, I damn sure made up in life experience. My skin got pretty thick and tough during those days, and living essentially on nothing made me grow up in a damn hurry. You learn to make a lot of different things last when you're not sure when or if you're going to be able to replace them again. I probably didn't appreciate the lessons of longevity I was learning then while making a sandwich stretch into two meals or a bottle of water last all day so that I would have gas money in the next town, but I sure appreciate the lessons today. 

Not having a lot of possessions to keep you preoccupied means you cook up others things that can take up your mind's attention. You devise plans. You create mythical situations. You think about past and future relationships, repairing them, bridging them, replenishing them, creating them. Given a lot of alone time in a moving vehicle, you learn to see. You learn to observe. Your intuition begins to sharpen and take over. You learn to trust yourself, have confidence in yourself, relearn what it was you once found appealing about yourself. You become honed and formidable again. 

I wish I had more time for road trips these days. I long some days for the years when I could pack everything I owned into one car, when I could take off and had no place to necessarily be or a time to necessarily be there. I regret I didn't take better advantage of those days, but I'm eternally thankful for those times I did experience. I know many people never do. I know many people never leave their comfort zones or their backyards for that matter. I can't imagine who I'd be today if I hadn't. 

Riding in the car is magical for some people. For me, it's magical for the solitude it provides. I'm not a true appreciator of cars in general, and I barely know one model from another, but at least from the perspective of the freedom that four wheel and a black top provides, I completely understand and covet the magic of the automobile. I've spent plenty of time sitting behind the wheel thinking about this and so many other things. 

Day 238: Kindred Spirits

This morning on the way to taking my daughter to school and then myself off to work, we drove by the park near our house just as we do every morning. I like to think of this park as being more than an ordinary park, however. It's special. Our park sits on the edge of several acres' worth of wetlands, all of which is protected by law from the land being development or from other projects taking place that would ruin the aesthetic beauty and way of life that exists there. It's also a park that stretches from north to south, leaving you to look east to take it all in. On just about any morning in which the sky isn't cloud covered, you can sit on the bench or picnic tables and watch about as amazing of sun risings as I can imagine existing anywhere, sun rises that inch up over the horizon ever so slowly, heating up and flushing with color land that hasn't been touched since before the first settlers came barreling across Nebraska in their covered wagons. 

On some mornings, like today, that sun will be accompanied by a fog and a dew and a haziness that's so thick and seductive, you'd swear you could climb right on top of it all, curl up, and embark in the greatest sleep of your entire life. The way the sun bounces off the whiteness of the fog is beyond spectacular, and the colors that bounce and dance and spiral off the leaves and grass is hypnotic and utterly mesmerizing. 

Most mornings I drive by, I feel as if I'm alone in the world witnessing this beauty occurring.  Despite years of pestering whatever child was sitting next to me in the car's passenger seat to wake up long enough and "just look at that sunrise, will you," they have never been anywhere nearly as impressed as me. These days, I rarely even make mention of the natural miracle happening right outside the car window for their benefit. I just resign myself to take in the wonder alone and leave it at that. 

Today, though, I noticed a woman sitting on the picnic table under a canopy at the far edge of the park. She was leaning back, just basking in that sunrise, and in a mere second, I thought to myself, "I know exactly what she is feeling and seeing right now." As far as I know, we've never met, but for that brief second, just seeing the way in which she was reveling in what was being presented before her, I felt like we have always known one another. 

Life is strange in that way. We can feel completely isolated and devoid of any human contact while standing smack dab in the middle of a bustling crowd, and we can feel completely connected and as one with someone we've never looked at face to face or exchanged one word with. Sometimes, I need to know there are people in the world like me. I need to know that somewhere there is someone who values the same things as me. Even if I don't know them from Adam. 

Day 237: Being Content

For some reason I'm feeling content today. I have bills up the wazoo, and tomorrow is  Monday, meaning the start a new and busy work week, but I'm feeling good about life. Being happy in your home makes all the difference. Have happiness in the home and all the problems that the outside world brings seem to go away, or at least become entirely more bearable. I'm lucky in this way. I don't take that for granted. I can't afford to.