The Sock of the Month Club

So a herd of wildebeests are crossing the great savannah of Africa on their annual migration and they come to this river teeming with 20 foot long hungry crocodiles and the herd is going to cross it anyway because they’re wired to do crazy things like that. The first wildebeest jumps in and a huge croc slips beneath the water in the direction of the struggling animal and you know that within seconds the poor creature will be pulled under the water and eaten right there on TV in High Definition. Sure enough ripples appear near the struggling animal and the croc explodes out of the water but the wildebeest makes a quick turn and the croc misses. Quickly the crocodile gathers itself for another lunge. And right then my cordless telephone rings.

I didn’t look at caller ID before I picked up (I was staring at the screen with a bowl of popcorn in my lap when they cut to a commercial) and so suddenly I was talking to a telemarketer who wanted me to sign up for the Sock of the Month Club. Me being the sort of individual who can be mesmerized by shiny objects or put into a trance by songs like “It’s a small world (after all)” just sat there and listened to the whole spiel.

Apparently you pay a certain amount and every month for 12 months (with automatic renewal available at the end of the year) you get a pair of socks in the mail. They have all kinds of socks---black socks that go above or below the calf ( your choice) , work socks, hiking socks, socks with wires in them for heat during the winter and ultra thin socks ( all cotton) for the summer and all their socks have an odor eating chemical sewn right in for people with odor issues. I’m a Gold Bond foot powder man myself---industrial grade.

Sometimes I wonder how people come up with their ideas for a new business and I think, Gee, where do all these people come from? I often hope they do not have a valid driver’s license or children. Anyway I started talking to the Sock Man.

I have a tendency to give a lot of myself to people which probably gets annoying at times. But Gavin, the Sock Man, wasn’t annoyed at all. I was telling Gavin about my tennis elbow and how the doc had shot my arm full of steroids and so now I could ride my motorcycle and how it no longer hurts to turn a door knob or shave and then Gavin told me about his recent bout with the flu and kidney stones and that he had a motorcycle too.

Soon Gavin and I were like old buddies. He explained how he was converted over to Harley Davidson motorcycles by a passing missionary and I told him I rode a BMW. “Oklahoma”, he said when I asked where he lived and that instantly put the “whoa” on any Sunday afternoon rides together.

I ended up not buying the socks but I am on the call-back list so Gavin and I might be exchanging tips on helmet maintenance sometime within the next six months.

Now only the crocodile was back on the screen---looking fat and lazy. I tossed some popcorn in my mouth and decided I like plain and simple---such as fresh bread, azaleas in bloom, Sunday naps and cheating at checkers with the grandkids. The simple things in life are always the best. Aren’t they? Sure they are. Always.

Arresting thoughts while driving

So I’m riding down Interstate 40 thinking about my tennis elbow and Obamacare-- which led me to worry about national bankruptcy and how will we eat when the army locks all the food in secured warehouses and that in turn made me think about something for supper --- then suddenly there was a blue light flashing behind me. One minute you’re part of the regular crowd, an honest person headed home thinking about pizza delivery and mobs in the streets; the next minute you’re pulling over onto the highway’s Shoulder of Shame. You wonder if the night will end with you wearing a bright orange jumpsuit and being served bread-and-water in lockup.

You try to be upbeat---maybe the jail will have some nice Italian bread with herbs and a balsamic dip. Maybe your cell mate will be a timid drunk named Dwayne rather than a very lonely muscular man called “Bull”.

Your first thought is to not act in a suspicious manner. Law Enforcement officers hate it when you act in a suspicious manner. The officers become cautious and may suspect they are dealing with a criminal or a Washington lobbyist—two species that you always approach with caution.

If at that moment a rabid badger bursts into your car and dives into your lap you must ignore it completely or they’ll think your frantic activity is an attempt to conceal something. So never mention the badger. These are trained professionals and they are not fooled by Sudden Badger Syndrome. Just lean over and put both hands out the driver’s window and act like the guilty scum that you are.

Things go through your mind. You promise God anything if He’ll get you out of this. Or you hope the trooper just became a missionary and he’ll start practicing grace and forgiveness right now before he goes to Rwanda. You’d make a great first test case.

Suddenly you remember that time in 1974 when you were dancing in a crowd of people in Atlanta at Ruby’s Red Warehouse. You pulled a yellow lever marked “Do Not Pull”. Who knew the building’s fire suppression system would work so well—and that polyester bell-bottom suits retained so much water? Now, after all these years, they’ve finally found you and you’re going to be the poster child for Cold Cases Solved.

Your heart pounds as your tires touch the rough shoulder of the road. You cling to hope, maybe it’s a forgotten parking ticket but deep down you think--- what if he has a warrant and you’re going to get a matching set of ankle bracelets? You wore sneakers today, you should have worn loafers. On TV they remove your shoe laces and belt. You realize you’ll have to walk with your toes curled to keep your shoes on.

Suddenly the blue light is beside me but then continues on. What’s this? The officer passes me ---he was after someone else! You accelerate back onto the road as relief washes over you. It feels wonderful to be out from under judgment, a good lesson to remember—obey the law. But then human nature regains control and relief is replaced with smugness and you smote your breast and thank God you are not as other men are-- liars, extortionists, publicans or a speeding motorist.

So now I’m steering with my knees and typing all of this into my Blackberry.

You say what?
Yea, I know you’re not suppose to text in a car but this is just for a second……and the knees………..aw, c’mon, geeeez! It’s not like I’m a liar or an extortionist or a publican or…….

Soap or Consequence

Recently I finished reading a delightful children’s book written by an author/poet friend of mine, Dicy McCullough, titled "Tired Of My Bath." It’s a wonderful story of a little boy, John Allen, who did not want to take his bath and his mother warned him of the consequences. And guess what? The kid experienced consequences!

I was amazed that the concept of allowing a child to suffer for his/her own actions was still considered. I swooned twice before finishing the book.

These days, parents scramble to remove all obstacles that might hinder their child from experiencing the world and reality. I was raised on secondary smoke, beans and rice. These days, a guest who smokes is sent to the backyard like a convicted sex offender --- can’t have Johnny inhale anything stronger than his mom’s Yankee Candle.

If a kid misbehaves, parents desperately thumb through reference books on child-rearing for the correct reaction to “when siblings express themselves." It’s all about feeling good instead of learning responsibility. My mom would cut to the chase and whack the daylights out of you. I’m loaded with responsibility.

Today, children are raised in the Home of Free Expression where discipline is rationalized away and kids are served fast food eight out of seven days a week (yeah, I did the math and I stand firm). Children are coddled to the state of an invalid and are rarely held to standards or made to suffer consequences. In my day it was wrong to treat a child as a helpless thing.

When I was a kid instead of padding they had rocks under the city jungle gym sets. You learned to hang on.

They didn’t have safety belts on swings because the whole point of swinging was to see how high you could launch yourself upward, toward the sun --- in free flight. Sometimes you landed on your shoulder or arm. You went to the emergency room just as soon as your mom went outside to hang the wash and found you flopping around like a fish.

Emergency rooms kept suckers to give you as soon as the doctor finished constructing your arm cast. Nobody was hyper; spankings took care of that, so it was OK to have the sugar.

We parachuted off the corners of our houses with pillow cases and tied towels to our back to act as capes (like Superman) and learned for ourselves that you cannot fly, no matter how loud you scream “Geronimo!”

We threw dirt clogs and nails at each other, there was no such thing as sunblock, we played with BB guns because they could hurt you. We’d take turns shooting each other in the rear-end to see who would squeal first.

We blew up model airplanes with M-80s and our metal Tonka toys had cadmium in them. One time I swallowed a small plastic Roy Rogers canteen and my mother still made me eat my vegetables --- to this day I’ve never received any counseling.

We rode our bicycles without helmets directly into traffic and built go-carts out of scrap wood and we drove those into traffic too. We soon learned the first name of every traffic officer. It was “Sir?”

We played outside on the grass and invented games, and sometimes we got mad and settled things with fights and wrestling. Then we’d get over it and go play army and shoot each other with sticks for machine guns.

But at day’s end our mothers would always make us take a bath because if you didn’t there were consequences --- and no one wanted anymore of those. Here’s to you, John Allen.

You say goodbye and I say hello

Recently I had lunch with two very dear friends. They were directly responsible for me writing and for my presence in this newspaper. We had a great lunch--- we caught up on each others’ family, solved the recession problem for the United States, poked fun at elected officials and marveled that government works at all. We talked about old bosses and cleaning out closets. Then it came time to say goodbye.

We walked out into the parking lot with that unhurried amble of people well fed, people with no pressing worries at the moment and I noticed we lingered. That little feeling of “goodbye” came over me and it was a sobering moment. I realized we may never do this again or be quite like we are now. I know life is pretty much a lot of partings and goodbyes stretched out over time but heck, I don’t like saying goodbye to good friends. I think most people don’t care for goodbyes. It occurred to me that we often stretch out our goodbyes by ten or fifteen minutes.

When you actually think about it we rarely say goodbye at all. We do this half-wave thing and say “yep!” or “This was so nice!” and then a little hug or a pat on the shoulder. Someone always remembers a child’s toy or a coat and has to run back into the house to get it and the conversation carries you down the steps and off the porch. We take two steps and then it’s someone’s purse or a piece of paper with a recipe jotted down on it and they have to go back to retrieve it. We keep talking, delaying the moment until someone in the car says “We have to go! C’mon!” or “We’ve got to get these kids to bed!” and the word goodbye gets lost in the second round of quick hugs and gentle arm squeezes. Someone invariably remembers something funny or a bit of gossip and has to tell it quickly over their shoulder as they walk to the car. Doors slam and the engine starts. Then we say “Drive safe! Be careful!” and before anyone can actually say “Goodbye” they back out of the driveway, everyone waves a little harder and the car roars off. You stand there for a moment as if you’re looking in the distance at something or trying to remember a lost thought but you can’t and you slowly turn and walk back inside.

I’ve had some goodbyes in my life that were real doozies-- the ones where you know that you are never going to see this person again and it hurts. You stand close and memorize their hair color, every inflection of their voice, their smell, their facial expression and you want to remember what it feels like for them to stand close to you. A feeling of loss starts in your chest and it spreads out until it fills you up completely. You try to put a positive spin on the moment and say how wonderful your time together has been but you’re just postponing the inevitable. A silence suddenly descends and “Goodbye” is said wither you speak it or not.

As I was pulling out of the parking lot I thought that eventually we will all leave everyone we meet and so maybe we should work really hard on saying “Hello” and enjoy our time together. My cell phone rang and the ID showed it to be another friend. I smiled, took a deep breath and said “Hello, buddy! How are you?”-- and I really meant it.

I did it in the car

My ancestors were very religious people and as soon as they stepped off the boat they shot the Indians, set up a budget, formed a committee and built a church. They proclaimed themselves Baptists and we were taught to be suspicious of pleasure, avoid dancing and believed the presence of God was strongest in the back three pews.

But as time passed they felt there simply were not enough restrictions and rules so in the late 1940’s they pulled away from the Southern Baptist Convention and became known as Free Will Baptists. Most were farmers and so I grew up in a church where the men had white foreheads, our Broadman Hymnal was green, oscillating fans kept the heat bearable in the summer and you were expected to pay attention during the sermon. Attention Deficit Disorder was cured instantly by your parents or any other adult that told you to sit still and be quiet and listen. If a warning didn’t work you got smacked--and that always worked. We were not pill people.

I grew up inhaling second hand smoke and standing upright in the car seat as my father drove down country roads at 70 m.p.h in a 1959 Ford while Johnny Horton sang about the Battle of New Orleans. Ground beef was our friend and butter made everything taste better. Kids these days are raised using ten-foot shelves of books accompanied by excuses. I was raised by pure chance.

Lately I’ve been thinking about those times and I miss the joy. We were wonderfully naive back then. A cigarette was your link to Hollywood movies and you guffawed at corny jokes. We thrived on ignorance and everybody thought Lassie was just one dog.

Now we have too much information, too many guardrails, too much black and yellow tape and warnings “Do not touch, glowing charcoal may be hot”, “Sharp, may puncture skin if pressed into it”, “Open with extreme misgivings—see Therapist”. It takes a wrench to open your pill bottle and everything is potentially harmful to you.

I’m tired of the stress so last week, on pure impulse, I drove all the way to work with my seat belt unfastened. Yep. I did it-- NahNahNahNahNah, Naah! It was a cheap thrill. The Angel of Death rode shotgun and I felt young and reckless again. You’re the first person I’ve told about this.

One day the doctor will stride into the room holding a report and with dark concern on his handsome photogenic face say “Your jangular expialadocious is disseminated. You have two months to live. I can make you comfortable but that’s it. Also, I’m out of the office all next month.”

“I’ll handle it,” I say. I shop the nearest grocery store for ten cartons of unfiltered Camel cigarettes. The cashier is horrified and swoons to the floor. I walk out holding the cigarettes and six cases of Land O’ Lakes butter under my arm. People try to intervene or give me pamphlets.

“Stuff it,” I say and walk home and I light up a Camel and my nervous system rings like a doorbell.

I make gallons of Nestle's chocolate milk using too much chocolate ( Hi mom!), put on a Mel Torme CD and soon word gets out. Neighbors who for years have been slaves to their kid’s safety obsessed bipolar needs and crazy schedules now find their way to my house. I grill steaks every day, we jump in the pool with our clothes on and we all stop eating vegetables.

Every now and then it’s good to break free. No, I haven’t gone over the edge yet, but I am peeking at it.