Why Men Are in Trouble (If they read William J. Bennett’s Article)

“For the first time in history, women are better educated, more ambitious and arguably more successful than men.”

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

 I mean, that’s supposed to be my response, right? As a man, I should feel emasculated and afraid. William J. Bennett (henceforth referred to as Statty McStaterson, Secretary of Ms. Education, Old Man Blowhard, or Riverboat Bill) has come to a realization, folks: women are moving up in the world, and that is pant-crappingly terrifying.  Reading this article has led me to take a few moments to express my frustrations. Not with the “fact” that men suck, or the “fact” that women are taking over the world, but with the FACT that this article is paradoxically genius (in its ability to pander to both genders) and moronic (in its irresponsible use of percentages, conjecture, blanket statements, and obvious [if not actually relevant] catering proclamations) at the same time. Let us get started.

 Statty McStaterson brings the percentage heat after his initial scare tactic/progressively bold statement. He quotes a scientific study says that men have seen a steady decline in their portion of all the college degrees earned since 1970 (of course, with no specification of which gender is getting which degrees), and he then goes on to write one of the most Scanners-head-exploding inducing paragraphs I’ve ever read.

“In 1950, [this is me, Lowell, reminding you of the ridiculous economy boom after WWII] 5% of men at the prime working age were unemployed. As of last year, [sorry, me again, reminding you that we’re rolling around in a pretty nasty recession these days] 20% were not working, the highest ever recorded.”

Then comes the next sentence, a truly amazing feat: “Men still maintain a majority of the highest paid and most powerful occupations, [wait, did he just admit that all his previous statements were misleading?] but women are catching them and will soon be passing them if this trend continues. [no worries, he got right back to scaring/emboldening us with his creative ‘will soon be…if’ statement]”

 Ok, let me take a step back. Deep breath… there. Better. My obvious problem with Statty is that, while I don’t necessarily think his numbers are fake, they sure as heck soundlookfeel fake. But I’ll chalk that up to the misleading nature in which he uses them versus the “research” itself. I think I can sit back and take Mr. Staterson’s number game with a grain of salt. Oh look, there ahead of us, he’s got an answer for the skeptical Lowell’s of the world!

“If you don’t believe the numbers, just ask young women about men today.”

Ha. Really? I’ve honestly written the following paragraph five different ways, and I can’t do my annoyance justice. So, I’ll just be childish and come up with a Top Five List of people who may have a lot of experience with a subject, but probably shouldn’t be used as a source:

5. Henry VIII as a source on marriage

4. Facebook as a source on self-improvement

3. Lowell Slagle as a source on student loans

2. Women as a source on men

1. Men as a source on women

“You will find them talking about prolonged adolescence and men who refuse to grow up.”

 …Crap. Ok, so that may be true in MY case but Statty has still completed his transformation from McStaterson to the Secretary of Ms. Education. This article has officially entered the “stupid boys, always picking their nose, butt, or scabs” zone. I know this zone, because I’ve driven all my girlfriends there and left them stranded. Yet, the Secretary is about to boy bash, and I’m feeling the need to bash back.

“Man’s response has been pathetic. Today, 18-to- 34-year-old men spend more time playing video games a day than 12-to- 17-year-old boys.”

First off, let me just say that I wouldn’t call myself a gamer, but I love video games. Guitar Hero, Madden, Hitman, Halo, Fable, etc. I’m down with the genre. But I can’t hold a candle to the amount of gaming that the kids in my ministry do. This very morning I was schooled on the newest BETA (I don’t know what that means) of the newest Modern Warfare game with the newest knife kills by a table full of High School freshmen and sophomores. They scoffed at my ignorance. Literally making the noise *scoff. So, at surface level my initial response to that “stat” (Statty is still rearing his ugly mug) is “I don’t,” but then I’m forced to go beneath the surface of that asinine statement.

 Not only do i have the sneaking suspicion that he’s using collective hours versus individual seeing as his sample groups are ridiculously lopsided (five year span compared to a 16 year span), but if the Secretary knew anything about being a guy under the age of 68 he would know that the target consumers of video games are in the 18-25 year old demographic. I imagine (see? Making up statistics is fun!) that the Amount of Gaming During a Man’s Lifespan would be a rather lopsided bell curve:

That beginning low point represents the time before boys realize their thumbs are opposable, and that spike followed by a dip is the average age that us silly boys get out of college and enter the workforce. Speaking of workforce…

“While women are graduating college and finding good jobs, too many men are not going to work, not getting married and not raising families. [That kind of sounds like comparing the women leaving college to most guys still in college] Women are beginning to take the place of men in many ways. [What is he implying?] This has led some to ask: do we even need men? [He’s right. There are huge amounts of people who hate existing]”

 I get it. Women are very driven. The glass ceiling is slowly turning into a glass wall. “We can do it!” is turning into “Look what we’re doing!” I’m still left wondering how the Secretary of Ms. Education is promoting female success and fear of female success at the same stinking time. Here comes Old Man Blowhard to explain.

 This fine piece of writing takes a very abrupt and uncomfortable turn at this point. Reading this article provoked many moments of audibly growling at the passive aggression in Old Man Blowhard’s shots at both genders, and rolling of the eyeballs at his misleading information, but there was only one point when physical violence crossed my mind:

“The machismo of the street gang calls out with a swagger.”

 What. The fart. Does that mean?

“We need to respond to this culture that sends confusing signals to young men, a culture that is agnostic about what it wants men to be, with a clear and achievable notion of manhood.”

Ohhhhhhhhh. I understand! FINALLY! This is about boys falling into the trap of false manhood. Never in the history of me hating what someone is writing have I jumped onto their bandwagon after having spent a lot of energy trying to PIT maneuver that same wagon off the side of a cliff. Although his point is out of left field, and I still don’t think women gaining success and recognition is a negative to be rectified, AND I don’t think that this is the only cause of the world’s problems… I agree… kind of. Every age of the male gender gets (what I think is) a very clear message of what makes a man:

 Being the most athletic, having the most sex, and making the most money.

 That’s no reason to discount Old Man Blowhard’s point though. Right? He’s calling us to action. He’s tired of these ambiguous views of what makes up a man. Old Man Blowhard is atop a horse in a green field with blue face paint, and he’s going to pick a fight!

“…industriousness, marriage and religion are a very important basis for male empowerment and achievement. We may need to say to a number of our twenty-something men, “Get off the video games five hours a day, get yourself together, get a challenging job and get married.” It’s time for men to man up.”

Are you joking me? The ambiguity, falsity, and hoity-toityness of that closing paragraph make want to find this man’s computer, rabbit punch it into oblivion, then point my index finger in this man’s face while giving him a Jesse Slagle stink eye. After a call for men to throw off the shackles of agnostic expectations and secular frameworks, he turns right around and closes his article with a conclusion that would make a freshman English 1101 student cringe.

 I still don’t know in what way Riverboat Bill is trying to enlighten us with this CNN article. Most people will think, “Yeah, guys need to get their act together.” Others might worry aloud, “Women are getting a little to big for their britches.” To BOTH of those people, I have this to say:

 Please don’t be swayed by William J. Bennett. A man who spends his time finding out where to place the blame (righteously or not) simply gives more work to those like Joe Ehrmann who are coming up with real solutions. Boys and men alike DO need to get better, but not at the expense of videogames. That is the equivalent of improving womankind by eliminating trashy magazines. We’d all be wasting our time scooping water out of our flooded basement rather than fixing the leak.

 I know there’s a “man crisis” and I hate that I add to it more often than not, but what I hate even more is that someone can write an opinion piece like “Why men are in trouble” and put it on a major website. Mr Bennett’s piece belongs in the trash along with his tactics. My stuff could use the company.

Egypt 2010

It has been a crazy trip. I’m just now getting to a reliable internet source after 11 days. This post will be short, but filled with my favorite pictures. Hopefully you enjoy the fun I had.

The boys after landing in Egypt

Me, on a camel, in front of the pyramids

Brandt and I on the high ropes course @ camp

Leading the charge in Warball

Dance party on the last night

Hanging out next to the library in Alexandria

And there it is. I’m just hanging out at the hotel for now. We’ll go to the bizarre this afternoon, then head to garbage city to play some crazy games with the kids there. As much fun as I’m having, though, I really look forward to a visit to Taco Mac when i get home. And all the fun that follows.

The Fallacy of Common Sense

Here’s a little anecdote:

A while back, I was driving by one of my employees at the summer camp I work at. One of my jobs at camp is making sure everything gets set up and broken down, and for that I have a team of about 15 High Schoolers that I can delegate to and terrorize to get the jobs done. We have a large campus, so we incorporate two golf carts and a black 1994 Nissan pickup truck to move the equipment around. Each vehicle has specific jobs attached to it that take care advantage of its abilities. The end of the day can be a hurried time and this particular day was no exception. I was flying by one of my kids (Tim) on a golf cart, and shouted “Tim! Get the black truck started!” My assumption was Tim would get a couple of people, jump in the truck, and start the series of responsibilities that go with the Nissan at the end of the day. He nodded as I went by and started jogging in the direction of the truck. Roughly five minutes later I was cruising back through the area, headed back to where I came from, and I saw Tim leaning against the truck. By himself. Picking at his teeth. Now, Tim is possibly my best kid. Incredibly trustworthy and capable of jumping onto a refrigerator with a short running start. Great kid, but at this moment simply looking at me as I approached in angry confusion.

“Tim. What are you doing?” I asked as the golf cart came to a controlled stop.

Tim looked at me for a second after pulling his fingernail out from between his teeth and said, “You told me to get the truck started.”

Before snapping back with something uplifting like “Then why aren’t you doing anything useful to me right now?!” I paused for a second and realized the truck was idling. Then I understood just how literal Tim had taken my instruction. He had, indeed, gotten the truck started.

Here’s an even shorter anecdote:

I was complaining to my father about someone doing something stupid back in my middle school days. My final statement of my rant was, “Just use your common sense.”

My father looked me straight in the eye and said, “Lowell, there’s no such thing as common sense.”

This of course bothered me to a great deal. I asked him what he meant and he responded, “If it was common sense, then everyone would have it. More often than not, people do not. So, it doesn’t exist if its qualifier is that it is common.”

Here’s my opinion:

Most of my father’s advice has stuck with me for one reason or another. Whether it was something I wanted to hear or not… the idea of common sense’s non-existence is a nail my father hit on the head . The idea that there is even a standardized test out there that will tell a kid if he’s smart or not makes me rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. Yes, we want kids and adults both performing at levels of decision making that will keep them (and the people around them) safe, but to condemn those around us for their learning styles or what they’ve learned up to this point is self centered and foolish. The idea that I can/should rip into Tim because he didn’t understand me correctly is on par with Stephen Hawking electronically chastising me for thinking Cosmology had something to do with makeup and not the vast mysteries of the universe.

One last anecdote:

I heard this from a professor in college named Dr. Dan Bauer. He mentioned that a child in one of his student’s classes failed an elementary test because he didn’t identify a picture of a stove as being a stove. The little boy called the stove “kitchen table.” When asked by Dr. Bauer’s student why he had done so, the boy replied, “Well, that’s where we eat dinner and breakfast. We don’t have a lot of room in our apt, and it don’t cook food anymore, so we eat off it.”

My last opinion:

I think he got that question right.

The Kitchen Table

Growing up in Forest Park, we had a small house. We had two bedrooms (three counting the porch which was converted into a room for a miniature me), a living room, a bathroom, a dining room, and a kitchen. All of this was squeezed into a house that held a family of 5. Plus a dog. Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of room for big time luxuries. Kitchen tables are luxuries. We already had the washer, dryer, stove, fridge and sink all shoved in the small kitchen space. There was hardly enough room in the kitchen to walk through it, much less stand in one spot while food was being served. There was such a flurry of activity during mealtime that a false step usually resulted in either a mess or immediate expulsion from the area. Once we had our food, we either went to the living room to sit in front of the TV or the dining room to eat at the table.

The latter only happened when mom had pulled all the stacks of documents and wrapping paper off the table and set the placemats. This is what we called “a special family dinner.” They were always of the delicious sort. The only kitchen table we had was the bare space on top of the washer and dryer. They were next to each other so if you were fixing a bowl of cereal, or needed a spot to place the bills that was the place to do it. Our kitchen table wasn’t necessarily a classic representation. It didn’t have chairs, or a table cloth, or legs, or a neat little centerpiece with frilly crap sticking out. This was the place where we gathered… in two’s of course. This was where discussions were had about grades, curfews, discipline, and general daily events.

I can remember the first time I brought home an F on a report card. My father leaned against the washer and looked me in the eye. Fury. He pointed his finger at me and said in that calm voice, “This is not acceptable. Do this again and you’re in serious trouble.” That’s about the extent of my father’s temper when it comes to yelling. When I brought home my second F it was me with my hands on the side of the washer bracing for impact. I was, in fact, in trouble. I didn’t stop bringing home F’s until we moved out of that house, but after all the failing grades I placed on that washer, I’m surprised I didn’t bend my finger prints into the metal casing of the washer itself. I never handled the whoopings very well.

I also remember arguments raging between my two sisters and my parents. My parents mastered the art of divide and conquer, mostly because there was never enough room for all four of them to be in the kitchen at once. It would almost always be two on one, so my sisters would need to yell loud enough to match the calm, biting remarks of our parents. The arguments were never a case of bargaining, but the “kitchen table” would be the only thing separating the two sides as they yelled different “e.t.a.’s” at each other.

My father would start the dance, “10 o’clock.”

One of my sister’s would respond, “12 o’clock.”

“10 o’clock.”

“11:30.”

“10.”

“COME ON!”

“10.”

The backdoor leading to the yard was right next to the dryer. I would have one step out the back door, ready to jump into my imaginary world of being an X-Man when I would hear my mother calling from where ever she was hiding, “Hold it.” I always turned and put on the face of a young boy who’d finished all forms of homework and chores. She tended to see through it, but asked for asking’s sake. “Have you taken care of all your responsibilities?” After trial and error, I learned not to lie, so I would put whatever gun or sword in my position on the dryer so I could grab it on the way out later. The dryer supported my hope of recreation. As long as my weapon was sitting on that dryer, I had a chance of going outside; the second my mom picked up my weapon and put it away, I knew my chance of back yard adventures were gone. Our washer dryer table was the source of a code that only the washer dryer table and I understood.

This part of the house wasn’t restricted to debates, or codes, or discipline. Confessions always seemed to come out around the washer and dryer table. Seeing that there were no chairs around, those of us who were interrogated were forced to stand. Our parents leaned comfortably against the washer and dryer, but our own feet bore holes into the linoleum floor. The pain in our knees and feet would throb and stab while we searched our brains for answers to trick questions. You know the kind, “Did you think skipping class was a good idea?” “If everyone skips class, does that make it ok?” “How could you be so thoughtless?” By answering “yes” to the first two questions I learned that honesty can be just as dangerous as lying. But that last question always threw me for a loop. Like, how would I know how I could be so thoughtless? Wouldn’t being thoughtless keep me from answering the question itself? The purpose of the question was to reveal an answer not through my words but my ability to construct the answer. If I could achieve this, it meant I wasn’t being thoughtless, but I was very aware of my actions in the first place. If I sat there with a blank expression, it only confirmed that I was a dummy, incapable of complex thoughts.

All things seemed to revolve around that part of the house. Bedrooms were restricted to their inhabitants, and the living room was only used for couch potatoe-ing. The bathroom stopped being a place for community involvement once I learned to bathe myself, and the dinning room was only used for big-time-meals. Yet the most important parts of life were developed in the kitchen around our “table.” Discipline and love were dished out around it, but fine china was never placed on it. We leaned on the table with our body weight and the weight of our hearts. We used it to wash our consciences clean and dry our towels until they were warm and soft.

After we moved into our new house we got a kitchen table, but it never really measured up to the washer dryer table. I reached the point in my life where I wanted to spend time with my parents almost as much as I wanted to drink poison. This greatly reduced the moments that occurred around the new kitchen table, intimate and angry alike. There really is no comparison to the washer dryer and the actual table in the new house, because of the experiences tied to both of them. It may not have been the prototypical kitchen table, but it served the purposes that came with the title of “kitchen table” and that’s all that really matters.

Touchy Subjects

There are a handful of things that I don’t like talking about in public, much less in a paper. Come to think of it, I can narrow that list down to a “Top Five List of Things that Lowell Slagle Would Just As Soon Shave His Face with a Rusty Razor Blade than Talk/Write About.” In no particular order, the things that made my list are Zombies, Politics, Sex, Religion, and Zombies. Yes, I know I put Zombies on there twice and that should just let you know how much I don’t want to write about them. They scare me more than anything else on this earth, and just because they don’t exist yet doesn’t mean that they won’t show up one day. I never have and never will write about Zombies because they’re so damn scary, but I digress.

I’ve done my best to try and write about some of these things seeing that I’m a creative writing major who needs to go outside my comfort zones. My ventures into religion have gone rather well, my one try at writing about sex failed miserably. So, let’s see how politics goes. I read a poem by Siegfried Sassoon called “Base Details” a couple of years ago at the request of a professor. After reading this poem I was immediately inspired to write about it, but it’s taken me a while to develop a good enough opinion in order to do so. Putting it to paper has taken me even more time, but I hope that I can show you why it grabbed my attention so easily.

I have two quotes pertaining to Politics that will act as kind of a disclaimer for the rest of this blog. The first is, “Politics don’t make friends.” This quote is as true as it is obvious. I find it hilarious how worked up people get over the smallest things and I find it equally disgusting how people pay so little attention to the larger things. But when the subject comes up I keep in mind that whatever I say will dictate the direction my relationship with this other person will go. Politics care about relationships almost as much as I care about the migration habits of the eastern kingbird. It doesn’t matter if the people involved are classmates, roommates, teammates, family, best friends, mild acquaintances, one night stands, or within the same political party; after chatting about politics, the two people almost always end up hating each other on a deep level.

My second quote is, “Mixing religion and politics is like mixing ice cream and horse shit. The ice cream doesn’t help the horse shit, but the horse shit ruins the ice cream.” This quote sums up my views on the church and the state perfectly. I’ll leave it at that. Here is the poem:

Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,

I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,

And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,

Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,

Reading the Roll of Honour. “Poor young chap,”

I’d say-“I used to know his father well;

Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.”

And when the war is done and youth stone dead,

I’d toddle safely home and die-in bed.

This poem was written about war and the way our leaders sent young men to their death. It was written through the eyes of the type of man that isn’t concerned with the value of all life on earth, but the betterment of his personal agenda. This poem has just as much to do with the First World War as it does the second. “Base Details” is just as relevant to the L.B.J. Administration as it is with the current one.

I am aware that he word “war” means conflict, but in the spirit of research I looked the word up in the dictionary. There were several definitions ranging from “armed conflict” to “concerted campaign” to “active hostility or contention.” These definitions confused me, because not one of them mentioned death, maiming, dismemberment, or decapitation. Maybe that kind of stuff just doesn’t happen. Maybe my relatives in the armed forces go over seas to play a simple card game with insurgents. I can see it now, the future of a nation state hinges on whether our marines can slap down a higher card than the Iraqi’s 10 of hearts.

I had a U.S. History teacher in high school that was a Vietnam veteran. Aside from his over the top renditions of “O Canada,” and the distraction of his incredibly ashy elbows I remember “Mr. R” for one other thing: how he talked about the war in Vietnam. Bizarre. He would constantly refer to the horrors of being in “that country” during those “dark days,” but he always seemed to skirt the issue of what he actually did. Once we found out he was a typist for a newspaper the stories started to change in a way that reflected less bravery and more second hand accounts. I mention this because of the 5^th line of the poem that referred to the hotel. Mr. Roegner mentioned sitting on the hotel roof tops and watching the flashes of light in the night caused by explosions on the horizon. That’s when I got it.

He had no clue. “Mr. R” never fired a shot and was never in any type of danger. Well, I shouldn’t cut him short. He had more of a clue than me. I had never even been on the same continent as a war, much less in a neighboring city. So, now, I start to wonder if the people that wrote the definition of “war” had ever been around one. Maybe they share my own experience, or lack thereof. That’s when I got it… again.

Through this century our opinions on wars have swung from one side to the other. In cases like the Great Wars we look back with admiration and respect. We think that Wilson and F.D.R. and Truman were men of action. Yet the pendulum swings the other way when it comes to Vietnam and Iraq and Korea. Suddenly Johnson, Bush and… Truman (huh?) are vilified. What is the biggest difference in these wars? Is it the actual military service of our leaders?

That question has an interesting answer. Roosevelt and Wilson were never even enlisted where as Truman, Johnson, and Bush were in the US Army Reserve, US Navy, and Texas Air National Guard respectively. So, logistically, the Presidents who actually served are the “bad war time presidents.” Wait a minute… I think… I just got it again. Are these presidents with the “experience” worse at managing conflict, because they have deluded themselves into believing that they’ve actually “been in the shit,” so to speak? Is this a simple case of Johnson’s troop surge, Bush’s WMD fiasco, and Truman’s chest thumping competition with General MacArthur being nothing more than big ego’s getting in the way of careful thought? Did Roosevelt and Wilson succeed because they let their military personnel make the decisions? What another minute, I’ve got it once again.

We won the World Wars! That’s why we like them, because we were the obvious winners and the enemies were the obvious losers. Even more, those obvious losers were the obvious bad guys. It was a “good” war, right? We fought for truth, justice, and the American way! Our men were brave and diligent, our women were strong and loyal, our leaders were correct in their processes. Wait a minute. I don’t get it.

How can some wars be “good” but others can’t? Isn’t that just a cop out? It very much is. Sassoon wasn’t a fortune teller, no matter how well he pegged Dick Cheney in the first line. This poem was written right after the first World War, and Sassoon felt the exact same way that a lot of Americans feel today. He saw his leaders leading their followers to death and saw them doing so from the safety of their offices (political and literal). Sassoon simply looked at the America around him and wrote down what he saw: the dark side of war. Not the Webster’s side, or the high school teacher’s side, or even the side that history had twisted and fluffed up. Sassoon saw the nitty-gritty of the corruption side that the leaders don’t.

Our president may surround himself with other people that have never really seen warfare and call them his advisors, and he can think of his war being different from Vietnam and more like WWII, and he may even pick up a dictionary to look up the meaning of the word, but he’ll never know what war is until he really listens to the “Poor young chap” (Line 6) that he sends to Iraq. Until we finally elect a man or woman who can invest everything he/she has into this war, we’ll continue sending good people to die far away from those who love them. Do we need to pull out, add troops, drop the bomb, befriend everyone, alienate more countries, or start peace talks? I DON”T KNOW! All I do know is that war isn’t some chess game on steroids, it’s real life pain and suffering. And if we don’t elect a leader that’s going to invest themselves in the same way that the “poor young chaps” do, then we’re going to be in an even bigger world of hurt than we are now.

My definition? War- A competition that arises when one or more opposing parties decide that a dialogue will no longer solve their dispute. At that point troops from one party will invade another parties boundaries and then proceed to kill their enemy. Death is never limited to military personnel and civilian casualties sometimes rival those of the actual military participants. Some people die quickly (i.e. decapitation, and explosions) but others die slowly (i.e. bullet wounds to the stomach, limb separation resulting in bleeding out). Prisoners are taken and treated poorly (see torture) and a majority of soldiers suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Panic

This past summer I was the director for the middle schoolers at Camp All-American. That job gave me the opportunity to talk directly to parents when they had questions or issues, design the schedule to make camp as fun as possible, and to be the last line of discipline before the kids were sent home for miss behavior. I didn’t necessarily love this part of the job, because it usually meant my only interactions with the kids happened when I was angry, but something happened this summer that I like to think effected both myself and a camper in a positive way.

A young man who we’ll call Jimmy was sitting in a class room at camp one day, and while his counselor wasn’t looking he decided to draw the letter “A” on the blinds in the window. He’d been acting up all week, so his counselor decided it was time for me to step in and talk to him. The conversation started with me putting on my stern face and approaching Jimmy who had been banished to a corner. Once I got to Jimmy I could see that he was close to crying and really embarrassed but that just meant it was the perfect time to drive home how unacceptable graffiti was at camp.

“Jimmy,” I said angrily “what happened?”

Jimmy couldn’t look me in the eye but responded shakily, “I drew an ‘A’ on the blinds with a pen.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked, expecting a perfectly reasonable answer from the 12 year old.

He still couldn’t look at me, “I don’t know.” His voice started turning into a whine.

This struck a cord with me but I didn’t relent, “That’s not good enough, Jimmy. What does the ‘A’ stand for? What were you thinking?”

Jimmy looked me dead in the eyes, tears welling up, and said again, “I don’t knooow.”

“`

We were camping in North Carolina on a hot summer weekend. These trips were one of my favorite things about my childhood, simply because as a nine year old boy I was allowed to venture as far as my feet would carry me. While doing this I could imagine being on whatever impossible missions I desired. Seeing as how I would come across an assortment of aliens, thugs, mutants, and bears I would need a weapon. So after a brief rummaging through our supplies I grabbed my father’s hatchet.

Hatchets were incredible weapons in a young boys imagination for any number of reasons. They could be wielded in close combat, thrown at oncoming/fleeing combatants, and turned into a lazer pistol when I took the blade in my hand and pointed the handle at my enemy. For that whole half hour “Vanquish” was more than my middle name. It might as well have been my alias. All manner of foe met their end at the sharp end of my father’s hatchet. I convinced myself that it had been passed down through my family for generations, thus giving it even more power. Mjolnir didn’t have shit on my father’s hatchet.

Soon I turned my attention to excavation. Half because my killing everything was getting old, and half because I tripped over a rock that looked amazing. A good portion of it was sticking out of the ground and it appeared to be bejeweled. I couldn’t tell what it was exactly, but I just knew it had to be important/worth millions of dollars. I threw my father’s hatchet to the side and started digging the rock out of the soft earth. I outlined the rock with my grimy fingers, filling my nails with loose dirt. After the rock was free of it’s inclosure I didn’t waste time marveling at my new fortune. It was time to break the shiny purple pieces away from the dull white rock. I took my father’s hatchet by it’s worn, hard-leather handle and struck the rock with the powerful blade. No effect? What sorcery is this? Again and again I hit the rock and every time the blade would bounce harmlessly off the stone.

This game, as the one before, grew tiring and once I smelled smores on the campfire I quit. I grabbed the hatchet and set it down in the supplies on the way to the camp site. It wasn’t long, however, before my father had me backed up against a car, pointing at his destroyed hatchet, and asking angrily, “What were you thinking?”

My response was no less legitimate than my father’s anger.

“`

“I dont knooow.” Jimmy said as his eyes finally spilled the tears they’d been gathering.

My heart broke and I gathered Jimmy up in a big hug. “I understand, buddy. Sometimes we get caught up in our own bad decisions. Sometimes we just don’t think.” He didn’t quite understand if I was being patronizing or genuine. “Sometimes we really don’t know what we were thinking.”

I feel for ya

This blog is gonna be hard to read. I really, for the life of me, can’t think of anything interesting to type. I finally got Internet working at the apartment, and my first thought was, “Sweet! Now I can blog my ass off whenever I want!” Ok, that’s a lie. My first thoughts involved facebook and fantasy football, but after that I thought about the blog. That lead to me racking my brain for anything interesting to talk about.

I doubt anyone that might read this blog would be interested in my thoughts on the sporting world, and there’s no way classes are remotely worth writing about. Maybe I can come up with something obscure and essay ya’ll to death…

Nope. Nothing’s coming to mind. I tell you what, I’ll share with you an interesting tidbit of info:frogs don’t have any ribs. And I’ll promise not to post anymore unless I have something interesting to talk about… Cross my heart.

Permission to blog, sir

Oh, the beginning. I’m trying to convince myself that I’ll keep this up and turn it into a healthy, habit forming, creative writing practicing, frustration releasing, idea creating, relationship building outlet. But considering my enormous amount of laziness, I’m not going to put my hopes too high. Plus, I’m going to need to get internet going at mi casa and I’ll have to find the time… it looks like I’m already making excuses not to do this while doing it. That’s some bad shadowing of 4.

Anyhoot. I’m on someone elses compooter right now, so I’m going to leave my fans with this tidbit of hope: Hey, I got this party started! Now you just need to show up…

That’s a wrap August 10 2008

Alexandria was beautiful. We went to the library for a while and enjoyed how big it was. And even though the place we ate seafood at was the shadiest place in Africa, the food was out of this world. We went from a bunch of grouchy Americans to a group of men bellowing praises in Egyptian to the cook. I’ve never seen so many types of crustaceans fresh out of the water and onto my plate like that. Very good stuff.

We finished lunch, went by a ginormous mall, and ate ice cream in a very unique way. The venders passed out ice cream between two cones and if you brought back one of the cones you could get more free scopes. It was delicious. Now we’re back at the hotel packing and saying more goodbye’s. We will be picked up from the hotel at 2 AM, then it’s up up and away. We’ll fly to Paris, then fly to Atlanta (hoping to arrive around 6 PM ya’ll’s time). So, I’ll leave you all with this: a bunch of goobers, ready to see the ones we love.

All good things… August 9 2008

Well, it’s over. The closing ceremony just ended, and the kids are in their beds for the last night. The end of the day couldn’t come a moment too soon for the younger guys, though. We normally only do two hours of ropes in the hot sun, but today we did four. It was rough. A couple of the older guys came and supported us with ice cream and taking over for us, and that made it MUCH easier. They were like sweaty, stinky angels.

However, we definitely saw Graham’s father side today. In an “overreacting to a small amount of danger by way of screaming at an entire group of girls to run for their lives, ” kind of way. Granted, some of the girls needed to move a little bit to avoid danger, but we couldn’t miss the opportunity to make fun of Graham for making a bunch of Egyptians scatter like spilled skittles. Ragging on him in person wasn’t enough, so i decided to do it on the world wide web as well.

Once Ropes was finished we started the final game of “war ball.”

It got rather intense, because the winners of the final game would gain their team enough points to win the overall camp championship. It was great. The only downer was that we (the counselors) didn’t get to play. One of the biggest differences I’ve found between Egyptian and American kids is the way they want to interact with adults when it comes to athletics. None of my kids ever want to compete with me, unless they think they have a very big chance of beating me, where as campers in America will challenge me to anything from thumb war to fist fights. Both of which I usually win.

When we finished bandaging our wounds from refereeing the “war ball” game, we got some delicious pizza with olives, mushrooms, hot sauce, and pepperoni. That lead us into an international celebration where each cabin decorated a tent like a different culture. We saw tents from Spain, America, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Hawaii, and India. Each tent had something special about it, but the main attraction ended up being the sumo wrestling at the Japan tent. We watched battle after battle, until we finally sent our champion into the ring. He went two for three against the “Outrageous Orlandoan” to not only settle the border war, but to win the international title. To put it lightly, our team rocks harder than AC/DC sitting in the chairs outside of the Cracker Barrel.

Just as a side note, as all of the festivities were going on, Travis locked himself in a bathroom for over an hour. It’s not really a big deal at all, but I just thought it was funny enough to not only bring up on the blog, but also video tape his release on my camera. I’ll try to get it on facebook for anyone who is interested in seeing his liberation.

At the very end of the night we gathered all the campers together to give away awards for each sport. The awards were MVP, Best Attitude, and Most Improved. Each sport gave away something different, but each gift was special in a powerful way. Everything from bracelets, to ball caps, to signed balls were given to the recipients and each gift was met with bigger smiles than anything we’ve seen so far. An impact was made on these kids this week, and each and every one of us was used in the process. We are truly truly blessed.

Tomorrow we will go to Alexandria to eat sea food. According to the rumors, we might be eating all of it. We’ll come back and spend our last night here at the hotel again, so ya’ll we get one more blog from me, then I’m coming back home. I might even bring these knuckleheads with me. We love ya’ll, until next time!