Mega Roll

I was sent to the store today to buy toilet paper. I really don’t understand all of this mega roll crap. Every brand is touting that there rolls are bigger than their competitor’s, and that each roll is equal to four normal rolls. If every roll now is a mega roll, then isn’t that a normal roll? If you can’t find a “normal” roll, then why do they keep referring to it by comparison?! And what was the point of increasing the size of the roll of toilet paper to the point that it no longer fits on the dispenser? If it can’t turn because it’s mushed up against the wall, then it’s useless. This is especially perplexing when you have an emergency and desperately need a few sheets of paper only to have it rip off a single sheet at a time.

With Distinction

Anybody who knew me later in life might be surprised to find out that I wasn’t a very good student when I was younger. But I was a C student at best.

The problem wasn’t that I was stupid or anything. It was that I was unmotivated. There was no incentive for me to get good grades. My brother had the same issue, and my parents used to give him money, the amount varying based on the grade he got. But that didn’t work for me. I was never driven by money like my brother was. That’s not how I defined success. Nor was I driven by things either. No material thing that my parents dangled in front of me worked to get me to focus on my grades. My drive came from within, and until I had a cause worth trying for, I wasn’t going to try at all.

Fortunately, the school, and God working through them, came up with a new program when I was in the third grade…The Honor Roll. It had three levels, similar to the cum laude system in college. Level 1 was a blend of As and Bs. Level 2 was all As and no more than 2 Bs. And Level 3 was straight As. Not only would you be recognized in front of the whole school, but you’d also get a certificate with your name in calligraphic writing, forever immortalizing you on paper. The two higher levels came with other rewards as well, such as a free pass on one homework assignment and lunch with the principal, but I didn’t care about that. I wanted the recognition and affirmation. I wouldn’t realize it at the time, but that should have been an early indicator that one of my love languages was “Words of Affirmation.” But I digress.

That year I buckled down and finally focused on my school work. I wanted to be on the honor roll. I wanted to hear my name called out at assembly…to be one of the chosen few set apart as greater than the rest. Now that I read that out loud, I realize that I could have easily become a super villain. Fine line I guess.

When the first six weeks report came out, I had done it…all As and Bs…Level 1. I can’t recall now if my parents acknowledged the accomplishment or made a big deal about it. Frankly, I didn’t really care. As funny and duplicitous as it sounds, their praise didn’t do it for me. No cheering fans or roaring crowds would scream my name because of what they said. I needed the public to know. But praise dies down and fades into silence. I was a junky that needed more. I had to get back that feeling.

So, the next six weeks I did it again…and the next…and the next. By the end of the school year, I was up to Level 2. Better, but still not enough. The best words and loudest cheers still came for the top level. I wanted to be on the Principal’s Honor Roll. And when fourth grade rolled around that’s exactly what I set my sites on accomplishing.

And after the first six weeks, I had done it. I had reached the pinnacle of my small, unknown private school’s mountain. I was finally counted with the best of the best of the couple hundred people that attended that school. In my small corner of the world, I was elite. I doubt now that the cheering and applause was as glorious and raucous as I heard it in my mind, but I didn’t care. Those random strangers adored me!

But every Napoleon has his Waterloo, every William Wallace has his Falkirk. And the second six weeks, everything came crashing back to reality. I ended up with an 89.4 in reading. No amount of coaxing or begging would move my teacher to change it. I offered to do an extra assignment, retake a test, anything…to no avail. The hardest part to take was that I wasn’t an entire point away. I was but a mere tenth of a point away. I missed getting straight As by the smallest possible fraction.

As I reminisce about it now, I’m convinced that God sent that moment to humble me. I had grown too cocky and self-reliant, and I had missed out giving praise back to the One that made it all happen. But just like a blacksmith can make a sword stronger by first tearing it down and folding it on itself, God used that moment to make me better. I was no longer motivated by the recognition of others, but by an innate drive to be better. I no longer cared about the tangible rewards or being better than other people. My reward came from challenging myself to be better than myself.

I never got another B in elementary school or junior high. I graduated as the valedictorian of my eighth grade class. I’m sure there was applause and praise along the way, but I didn’t hear any of it. Nothing someone could say either good or bad could be more than I said to myself. My identity was no longer in man but in the One who made me.

I would go on to get all As and Bs in both high school and college. I graduated with honors from both. It’s amazing to think back at how much that honor roll changed the entire course of my life. In ways I could have foreseen, and in ways I couldn’t. It made me a better student, but God used it to make me a better person too.

NOTE: Did you know that “cum laude” is Latin for “with distinction”? It is the first level of graduating with honors. The second being magna cum laude (with great distinction) and third being sigma cum laude (with highest distinction).

Courage Over Regret

I have very few regrets in life, but one of them is how I went through high school. I never put myself out there and experienced things. I merely trudged the halls a quiet, reclusive, unknown person. People annoyed me, so I limited my contact with them. I was introverted and cynical. But that’s more a by-product than the cause. In truth, I was afraid.

In high school, I always wanted to sing and act. My best friend even tried to get me to join the choir with her, but I could never get up the courage to audition. What if they rejected me? What if I was the only one not to make it? What if I wasn’t good enough? I was afraid to fail. And if I couldn’t be guaranteed of success, then I wasn’t even going to try.

To this day, I still have no idea if I had what it takes to make it. I don’t know how singing and acting might have changed the entire course of my life. I don’t know because I never tried, and that’s one of my great regrets in life. I sat on the sidelines, or on the stoop behind the temporary buildings to be more precise, while everyone else put themselves out there.

I was on the soccer team, well I was the water boy for the team, but even that was more forced on me rather than a choice. When I was sitting with the guidance counselor signing up for classes, she asked me if I played any sports. I replied soccer and baseball. She told me to pick one, and I picked soccer. I had no idea that that meant I was agreeing to try out for the team. I thought she was just trying to get to know me better.

The only thing I really picked for myself was to join the Christian Student Union, and even that was terrifying. I loved it, but I was intimidated by all of these amazing people that sang better than me, knew the Bible better than me, and had a faith stronger than me.

There were just so many choices that I could have made, and I didn’t…choir, theater, cross-country running, the football team, yearbook committee, taking photographs. I didn’t care about drinking and partying like some people. That wasn’t my thing. But I wish I’d been more involved. I wish I’d had the courage to at least try.

Eye Five

Back in college, JT and I used to play a game called Torin’s Passage. It was a single-player game, so JT would control the character, and we’d work through the puzzles together. I don’t really remember much about the game other than the graphics were pretty cool for that time. But I do remember this one part where our character came across these two snails, Slim and Slime. They were giving us a hard time, insulting and making fun of us. Every time they’d throw out an insult, they’d say, “Eye Five!” and then they’d slap their eyeballs together. For some reason that had JT and I in stitches. To this day, neither of us can hear someone say, “Give me a high five,” without attempting to correct them that it is in fact an Eye Five.

Vertigo in a Bottle

I had vertigo today, and I was really dizzy. I had to sit down most of the day because every time I stood up, I felt like I was going to fall over. My head felt like it weighed twice as much as normal, and I was having a hard time keeping it “balanced” on my neck. The weirdest sensation was when I was walking and then I’d stop moving. My body would stop, but it felt like my head was still moving forward with inertia. I would have to “catch” it and try to balance it, moving back and forth as it wobbled from side to side. I imagined I looked like one of those performers balancing a plate on a stick that was balanced on their chin.

The worst part was that I had a lot of meetings today where I had to be on camera. A few of them were even interviews. The room was moving around me the entire time, so that I’m sure I looked like I was high on some psychedelic mushrooms. When I told CC about this, he suggested that some people might actually pay for that sensation. If I could bottle it, I might be able to make a fortune. We started laughing as we created an entire marketing campaign for our new product, “The Essence of Man.”

Feel like your life is boring, like you’re stuck in a rut? Liven it up a little with The Essence of Man.

Have meetings become like a monotonous chore? Try The Essence of Man, and you’ll never experience a meeting the same again.

Do women have you feeling like your life is spinning out of control? Take The Essence of Man, and it really will be.

I surmised that we wouldn’t even need a real product, just a placebo. We could bottle up sweet tea and sell it, using suggestive marketing. I’m sure people would feel the effects anyway, just because we told them that they would.

The One-Eyed Giant

When I was in elementary school, there was a stigma attached to wearing glasses. Kids made fun of those who had to wear them, calling them “four eyes,” or “nerd,” or some other equally stupid and hurtful name. Lacking the self-confidence that I have now, I desperately didn’t want to be in the line of fire. So each year when they’d bring an optometrist to our school to conduct an eye exam, I’d make sure to position myself toward the back of the line. Then, as the kids in front of me went through their tests, I’d memorize the eye chart. So that by the time it was my turn, I could recite it off without having to actually see it.

At the time, my adolescent brain told me that this was a good thing. But what I didn’t know was that my actions prevented the doctor was diagnosing the fact that I had an inherited astigmatism (my mom has the same issue). Essentially, I am blind in one eye. This affects my ability to reconcile objects at a distance. It wasn’t until I was in high school that it was identified, and I did get glasses at that time. But apparently had it been caught earlier, corrective lenses might have actually fixed or lessened the issue.

To add insult to injury, I inquired about LASIK surgery after I graduated from college. But apparently I wasn’t a viable candidate. One because my issue was only with one eye, and two because my eye had gotten so bad that they’d have to remove too much of the eye to correct the shape. Again, I might have been eligible had I been wearing glasses all along and kept the problem from getting out of hand.

The strange thing, and I actually had an optometrist tell me this, is that my depth perception issues should have prevented me from playing sports. Especially sports like baseball and basketball that require judging objects at a distance. But I played both sports and wasn’t bad at either one. I was even a center fielder on my baseball team, where I had to track and catch a lot of fly balls. Although, I wasn't the most consistent hitter, which makes sense now.

With basketball, I figured out that I had taught my brain how to judge distance by trial and error. I would take the same shot over and over until I made it. I would then file away a mental index of what the shot looked like and how much power I’d have to elicit to make it there. The rest was muscle memory.

I still play basketball occasionally, and it usually takes me a little time to get my shot going. I have to “map” out the court and the shots, so I can repeat them over and over again with success. But mostly I rely on layups and short jumpers.

It’s amazing how the brain will adapt to overcome a shortcoming. I do wear glasses now, but not all the time. Apparently, my brain now has two sets of visual patterns. It adjusts and adapts how it sees to whether I’m wearing my glasses or not, so that I can be successful either way. Personally, I think it’s a survival instinct. My brain is adapting to keep me alive. Well, it’s a theory anyway.

SIDE NOTE: Because of my condition, I would always choose the handle "Cyclops" whenever my stepfather and I would play computer games. I thought the one-eyed giant from Greek mythology seemed an apt choice.

This, of course, came from Polyphemus the Cyclops described in Homer's Odyessy, which I was reading in school at the time. Polyphemus was the son of Poseidon, who Odysseus and his crew encountered on their journey home from the Trojan War. The cyclops catches Odysseus and his crew trying to steal provisions from his cave and blocks them in with a huge stone. Foregoing hospitality, Polyphemus starts to eat the crew two men at a time. Odysseus gives him some strong wine that he acquired earlier on his journey, and when the giant asks his name, Odysseus tells him that it's "Nobody." 

When Polyphemus falls asleep that night, Odysseus and his remaining men stab him in the eye with a wooden stake. Polyphemus calls out to his brothers to assist him, saying that "Nobody has hurt me." Thinking that he's gone crazy, the other Cyclops refuse to come to his aid. The next morning when Polyphemus lets out his sheep to graze, he feels their backs to make sure that the men aren't trying to escape in the process. Odysseus and his men tie themselves to the underside of the sheep and thus escape to continue their journey.

Wednesday...Wednesday, What Went Wrong?

When I was in elementary school, my favorite day of the week was Wednesday. All of my friends liked Saturday, or Friday because it was like Saturday Eve. But not me. I liked Wednesday. This was because we had music class on Wednesdays, and that was my favorite class.

Long after I left elementary school, I still liked Wednesdays. I guess I hung on to the old memories and positive endorphins that Wednesdays always evoked. Now, I like Mondays and Fridays, mostly because those are the days of the week that I have the least meetings. It’s funny how something so trivial can drive such an important emotion.

The Same Again

A common ice breaker question that I’ve been asked quite a few times is, “If you had to eat the same meal every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?” The question in and of itself is ridiculous and unrealistic, because any meal, no matter how much you love it, would eventually get old. But what if we relegated the question to only a week? That’s a much more manageable timeframe. Most people would still get sick of the same thing every day for a week, but I think that we can all agree that we could endure it for that short amount of time.

Back in the summer of 1989, my family took a vacation to Washington DC. The trip was crammed full of historical landmarks and museums. The White House, the Smithsonian, Monticello, Martha’s Vineyard, Ford’s Theater, the Lincoln Memorial…all the usual suspects. But what I remember most about that vacation was the food court in the subway.

Every day we’d stop for lunch at the food court, and every day I’d ask for the same thing. No matter how hard my dad tried to convince me to explore something new, I only wanted a cheeseburger with mayonnaise. For ten straight days, that’s what I ate. And for ten straight days, I was in heaven. I didn’t tire of it. In fact, my yearning for it grew stronger every day. I started to look forward to it. It was the highlight of my day. Surrounded by all of this history, and the highlight was a mediocre cheeseburger on the subway.

So, I know the answer to the question of what I’d eat every day for a week. I lived it, and after all these years, my answer is still the same. Although, now I’ve also added pickles to give it some zing!

Break With Reality

There are times when I’m feeling very introspective and closed off. At those times, I don’t feel like talking or interacting with anyone. I just want to be. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be around people. I actually love going to stores, malls, parks…anywhere with people and just watch them. Observing their behaviors as they navigate their lives is calming. It’s like I can step outside whatever is going on in my own life and allow myself to be carried away in dozens of others, for just a moment. And sometimes I need those breaks with reality to help me face reality again.

Cereal Faux Pas

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that open the cereal box flap toward them, and those that open the cereal box flap away from them. And apparently, I’m the only one that does it correctly.

This may not seem like a big deal, but it affects which end the bag is opened (unless you’re one of THOSE people that open the bag all the way across), which affects whether the box is poured from the left or the right.

I’m not trying to harp on this, but there’s just a way that this whole process feels more natural! And the way everyone else does it is not it! So get it together, people, especially if you’re going to open my cereal box. Because after you leave, I’m stuck with a backwards box of cereal. I mean sure I guess I could easily pull the bag out and turn it around, but it’s the principle of the thing!

UPDATE: Apparently, there’s actually three kinds of people. If you’re like my brother, then you open the box from the bottom, so you can get the prize before anyone else. That’s just wrong, but it also explains why none of my cereal boxes had prizes in them!

Reverend Moonshine

Apparently, my great grandfather, my grandmother’s father on my mother’s side, was a Methodist minister back in the 1920s and 1930s. I never knew him, as he died when my mother was still young. My grandmother never spoke about him to me, and now that she’s gone too, I can’t ask her about him.

I know that being a Methodist minister isn’t that unusual or newsworthy, but it’s the fact that he was also an illegal moonshiner that starts to spice up the story a little bit. Apparently, he would make the alcohol on his farm in East Texas and then distribute it to the surrounding area. These practices became even more widespread during Prohibition; when the possession, sale, and distribution of alcohol was prohibited in the United States. My grandmother, just a little girl at the time, and her siblings would ride along on the back of the truck, holding onto the moonshine kegs to make sure they didn’t fall off.

I really couldn’t believe that this kind of stuff happened in my family’s past; but I guess when you have 13 kids, you resort to any means to keep all of the mouths fed!

Patricia

Back in high school, I used to dream of finding a wife. I wanted that sappy, adoring kind of love, where you couldn’t get enough of each other. A love where you stole secret, or not so secret, kisses, held hands, cuddled, and took every opportunity to make “contact” when they walked by. A love where she lit up my life just by being in the room. Someone I wanted to be with, do things with, and couldn’t wait to see again. And every night I fell asleep wondering what it would be like to hold her in my arms. To feel her warm body pressed against mine, fitting perfectly with mine like a jigsaw puzzle.

So one day, I asked my stepmother to buy me a pillow that I could hold in my arms at night. I wanted to get used to sharing my space and cuddling with another “body,” so that when my wife came along, I’d be practiced. I didn’t want a standard sized pillow, because that wouldn’t give the feel of a human being, so I asked her for a bigger pillow.

In my mind, I imagined bigger meaning longer. But she interpreted that to mean literally bigger, and she brought home a square pillow that was two and a half feet by two and a half feet. It was black with red and pink tropical flowers on it, like it had a very Hawaiian shirt feel to it. The pillow, that I named Patricia for some reason, was massive. She took up most of my twin-sized bed, leaving very room for me in it. I guess it was a good thing that I was so skinny in high school, or I might have ended up on the floor while Patricia took the bed!

It took some getting used to, having Patricia in the bed with me. The first couple of nights, she actually ended up on the floor. I’d find her in the morning in a crumpled mess next to the bed. Then, it was hard because I had to sleep in the same position all night to hold onto her. After that, I started flipping from side to side and taking her with me, but I justified this by believing that in my future life, my wife wouldn’t ideally fall off the bed because I wasn’t holding her. And if I needed to roll over, then she could too, and we could switch roles.

So, I fell into a happy rhythm with my gigantic pillow. And when I went off to college, Patricia went with me. And when Patricia finally wore out, I got a new pillow, Patricia 2.0. She even became a running joke with my college roommates, but I didn’t care, because deep down I knew I was practicing for greater things.

I did eventually get married, but it didn’t quite turn out the way I imagined so long ago back in high school. I don’t snuggle up to my wife every night, and she doesn’t snuggle up to me. Mostly we keep to our own respective sides of the bed. I found that having someone’s head laying on your arm for extended periods of time will actually make it fall asleep. I didn’t have this issue with Patricia because she weighed virtually nothing. So, in the end it wasn’t practical.

I actually still sleep clutching a pillow, unable to stop after so many years of training. I do this even when I travel. My arms feel empty otherwise, and I can’t sleep. But due to the awkwardness of having to ask my wife to give my gigantic pillow some space, I have had to downgrade to a much smaller model. The current version has been with me for so long that she’s been molded into a more body-like shape. Patricia has become like Linus’ blanket for me, a source of comfort and peace so that I can relax. Not what I intended so many years ago, but life rarely goes as planned.