Maybe mouthy kids aren’t such a bad thing…

Posted in Stories
mouthy kids

You’ve seen the posts, haven’t you?

“If you were whipped as a kid, like, share, and comment.”

“Kids these days don’t know what it means to cut a switch from the yard.”

“If I talked back to my teacher, I’d get slapped. Share if you agree!”

The bruises we wear on our behinds, the back of our hands, and the insides of our psyches have become a badge of pride. Read more »

The re-emergence of racism

Posted in Stories
the re-emergence of racism. Photo courtesy of pixabay.com

May 2003

Foreign. Alien. Must adapt. Can’t adapt.

The most impossible adjustment ever. Within a week, I’d gone from ultimate freedom to this.

I was a missionary. I sat in my apartment, unclipping and re-clipping my name-tag. A constant mold stench permeated the building. The brown laminate of the kitchen looked like a bad remodeling job from the 1960s. The air was hot, cooled by nothing but a circular fan that coughed when you plugged it in.

“Let’s go,” my missionary companion said. I’d never met the guy before yesterday. Blond hair. Short. From Utah.

A stranger. Yet this stranger would become my only companion for the next three months. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week.

My only privacy was my trips to the bathroom. And even then, I could sometimes hear his breath through the paper-thin walls.

I hated it. This wasn’t home. Read more »

My sins are better than yours

Posted in Stories
My sins are better than yours

Amber gave me cash to buy groceries, cuz that’s how we roll now-a-days (Dave Ramsey style). Said cash was to pay for groceries for a father/son camp-out. Bacon. Eggs. Hot dogs. Buns. But not a ketchup bottle. That’d be a waste. No, we’d source the ketchup from elsewhere.

I put said cash in the pockets of my basketball shorts.

Or did I?

I walk inside Walmart and reach inside my pocket to hand the cashier the money. No cash in my pockets. I must have left the money in the van. I instead pull cash from my personal fund with the intention of reimbursing myself later. Read more »

The curse of entitlement

Posted in Stories
the curse of entitlement
Boy, I loathe that sense of entitlement. I hate it when other people develop a sense of entitlement. I remember as a young undergraduate making the mistake of calling one of my professors by the first name. (Let’s call him John.)

“Hi, John?” I said. “I have a question.”

Dr. John “Smartipants” Smith removed his glasses from his exceptionally long nose, placed them on the podium, closed his eyes with a deep sigh, and said, “The name is Doctor Smith.”

I almost laughed. (I had enough sense to restrain myself.)

At the time I knew I would never be one of those professors who felt entitled to have everyone bow down to my intellect and call me Dr. Fife.

And then I got my PhD. Read more »

On being human

Posted in Stories
on being human

When I began this blog, I guess I somewhat viewed it as my online journal of sorts–a way to remember things that have happened in my life. I suppose it’s evolved a bit such that I feel some pressure to make a lesson out of every event.

But sometimes there’s no lesson to be learned. Or, perhaps, it takes time to see the lesson.

Maybe that’s where I’m at. Maybe I just need some time to process things.

Alright, I’ll quit my yapping and get to it. Read more »