Short Non-Fiction Pieces

In 1971 I was attending Lake Michigan College while still living at home. I had a five year old Mustang I drove every day on I-94 to get to my classes.

The entrance ramp I would take to get on I-94 was shaped like a half circle on which I would build up speed before melding with the east bound lanes.

One day at just the right place on the ramp my left front hubcap popped off and went spinning on edge toward the highway. It spun across the three east bound lanes and became slightly airborne in the center median. Then it hit the bank on the opposite side and became airborne again and hit a west bound car right below the driver window! I can only imagine what must have gone through that driver's mind!

Later that day when my classes were over I drove by that same spot, hoping to retrieve my hubcap but it was a crumpled mess so I left it.

In the spring of 1974, against the better judgment of just about everybody, I bought a motorcycle, a 1971 Suzuki 500cc. What a beaut, even if it was metal flake purple! The two-stroke engine sounded like a popcorn popper, and the handlebar mirrors always seemed to vibrate and fall off, but I had a bike!

This was not only the first motorcycle I ever owned, it was the first one I ever rode. Most people start out with smaller bikes and work their way up. That's really what I should have done, too, but this was the bike that was available at the time, so that's the one I got.

I didn't really get much of a chance to become very good at riding the bike while living in town. Going around the block with Carol on the back, one time I accidentally threw her off into the street in the middle of an intersection! Another time I took a turn at an intersection too widely and ran into the curb, causing the bike to fall over. It must have been hilarious for the other drivers to see this idiot on a bike get knocked over by a curb!

But the worst thing was something very odd, something I never would have expected. Usually, the problem with motorcycles is that they aren't visible enough. Drivers of cars sometimes have trouble seeing them. But my problem was when I was on my bike I had trouble seeing the cars! More than once I almost ran into a car because I didn't see it when I clearly should have.

I did have occasion to ride the bike to work, though. One rainy morning my car wouldn't start so I put on my military raincoat and rode my bike. My helmet didn't have a face mask so the raindrops felt like bees stinging me. But at least I got there, amazingly not falling over on the wet pavement.

Later that summer we rented a house in the country. The landlord didn't know we had a motorcycle until after we had been approved and were moving in, and raised an objection at first, but since the bike was quiet she let it slide. I wouldn't have it much longer, anyway.

From our new home I could ride my bike faster on the open country road before getting to town, so one day I decided to really open it up by not shifting gears until the tach was redlined, just to see how fast it would go. As I revved it up it felt like I was really flying! When I finally got to the sixth gear I was holding on for dear life! The wind in my face was so strong I could barely breathe! My eyes were watering like crazy and I really wished I had a face mask! With great and deliberate effort I managed to look down just long enough to get a quick glimpse of the speedometer.

I was only doing 80 mph! It felt like 180! With great disappointment I slowly let off the gas and coasted down to the speed limit with the final realization that I wasn't the motorcycle type. Laying the bike down one more time at slow speed in town, I finally decided that this was one horse I wasn't going to get back on. I sold the bike for what I had paid for it, $400, a month or so later. I even drove it on I-94 for the first time taking it to the guy who bought it. And I have never gotten on another bike again.

So far!

Probably the most popular teacher at Lakeshoire High School when I attended there was Mr. Porter. Tall and thin, with a longish chin, he had a droll, very dry sense of humor that sometimes took awhile to hit you. He had a quirky way of looking at things, and I thought he was hilarious. He taught algebra and pre-calculus, not exactly funny subjects!

As a freshman I took algebra I with him. That first half of the school year he had a female teacher trainee who did almost all of the class teaching. Blonde, fresh out of college, and very pretty, especially in her shortish skirts, we all thought she was very hot. I think that was the first class I made sure to sit in the front row. How I managed to get an A in spite of her being an obvious distraction I'll never know!

After the first of the year the trainee was gone, much to our disappointment, and Mr. Porter took over his own class. I continued to sit in the front row but now I only got B's, in spite of no distractions!

One day I came in and sat down in my front row seat wearing a pair of flourescent orange socks. Mr. Porter in response reached into his desk drawer and put on a pair of sunglasses.

As a senior I had my own car, a 1963 light blue Corvair. Corvairs were simnilar to VW Beetles in that the engine was air-cooled and in the back. Corvairs were a little bigger than VW's, but they also had no heaters to speak of. And they were way underpowered.

For a while my Corvair had a charging problem so I used to carry an extra battery with me just in case. One day I had to go to Harding's to pick up some grocery item for my mom. I happened to find a great parking space right in front by the door.

When I got back out to my car it wouldn't start. I was in the back with the hood up, preparing to jump the battery with the one I'd brought with me with jumper cables, when Mr. Porter walked by on his wasy into the store. "Forget to wind it up?" he asked as he walked in.

He was also flexible when the situation called for it. As a senior I had phys. ed. right before his algebra II/pre-calculus class, and one day when I walked in I suddenly remembered that I had left my baseball glove on the field, and it was about to rain. Mr. Porter let me leave class to go get it, which I really appreciated.

Eighteen years after my graduation, In 1987, Whirlpool closed its manufacturing plants in St. Joe, costing me my job of fifteen years. On my very last day Carol bought an above ground swimming pool at a rummage sale for $40, so we spent the next few days putting it up and filling it. A month or so later we went to a local truck stop and went around back to the repair shop where we had heard you could buy those big, used, truck tire inner tubes cheap for floating on in pools.

To my surprise, there was Mr. Porter, working there during the summer break from school. Not only did he recognize me, even with my beard, he refused to let us buy any used inner tubes, instead insisting on giving us two brand new ones!

I have heard that various class reunions had him as guest of honor over the years. Some teachers you love, some you don't. Mr. Porter was loved by everyone. He has since passed on but is not forgotten.

Waiting and patience go hand in hand with being a Cub fan. We invented "Wait 'til next year!" Generations of Cub fans have been doing just that, waiting for a World Series Championship, for 102 years now.

I'm a mere novice, having been waiting for only 59 years! But I'm still waiting. Job's got nothing on us!

I didn't want to go to kindergarten but I had to. Mom said so.

We lived close enough to the school to walk, but the main road we had to cross had lots of cars, and I had never been allowed near it before. That and the other kids, all bigger than me, was scary! I didn't want to go by myself. I didn't want to go at all! I just wanted to stay home where it was safe.

At first Mom had to walk me to school every day. And if I looked out of the window and she wasn't there I'd throw a fit! It must have been hard for her, waiting outside for three hours or so for kindergarten to end, but after a while I got to where I could go to school by myself. Little by little I grew to like this thing called independence.

In the summer of 1975 Carol and I rented a house, one of four our landlord had in the back on his property. It didn't take long for us to realize our neighbors weren't very friendly. Nor were they the kind of people we wanted to be around, anyway.

We had two outside dogs at the time, a German Shephard and a Border Collie, that we kept chained up near a shed in the back yard. We bought their dry dog food in forty pound bags and kept it in the shed. After awhile it seemed like our dogs were going through their dry dog food faster than normal. Their bowls were never empty but the bag would seem to go down too fast. The shed had no door and so couldn't be locked up.

One night I woke up to the sound of our dogs barking and playing, but I also heard whispering and shushing. Our neighbors were playing with our dogs and stealing their food from the bag in the middle of the night! I thought better of confronting them since I would have to leave Carol at home alone and defenseless in the morning when I would have to go to work, so I came up with another solution to our problem.

We went to a local department store and bought a .22 caliber starter's pistol along with a tin of blanks for it. (You can't just walk in and buy those things nowadays!) Then we went home and walked out to the far edge of our back yard that overlooked an open field where I proceeded to appear to teach Carol how to shoot the gun.

We only shot six blanks, all the pistol held at one time, so no one would see us reload blanks instead of full size bullets. None of the neighbors came outside but we assumed after a shot or two we had gotten their attention and were watching from their windows to see what was going on. After firing the blanks we went in our house without saying a word to anybody.

No one ever stole dog food from us again.

The day after Carol passed away we realized we needed a head shot photo of her for the newspaper's obituary. I didn't really have all that many photos to choose from since Carol never did like having her picture taken. It was almost a phobia of hers.

We settled on one photo I had taken in 1978 with my old Yashica Electro 35 rangefinder, when she was a mere twenty-five years old. It would have to be heavily cropped to leave just a head shot. Josh accomplished this feat on our computer and the result was perfect. The original was a 3.5x5 photo but the enlarged head shot was an 8x10, making the new image not blurry, really, but slightly softer, not as sharp or crisp as the original. It really came out very nice, I thought. Both images can be seen here, the very first and last images.

We uploaded the new file to Walmart.com and ordered an 8x10 to go along with all the other photos for the funeral home viewing. Since then that photo has been hanging on my living room wall.

The other day someone at Lory's Place, a group grieving and counseling center, suggested that we all bring in a small photo of our lost loved one for the bulletin board. This idea seemed to go over well, so I went back to Walmart.com and ordered a 4x6 of that same head shot for the board.

When I went to pick up my print the photo tech, while looking at the print, said to me in all seriousness, "We had some concerns about possible copyright issues."

My immediate reaction was a surprised smile as I replied, "Wow, thanks, that's quite a compliment!"

Apparently satisfied, he responded, "Yes, it is," and handed me my print. I noticed that the envelope it was in had “copyright?” handwritten in the comments section.

It's too bad Carol never got to see it.

This past January, after my angiogram, I decided to begin a walking regimen in order to drop a few pounds. I started walking in the mall, briskly enough to work up a good sweat, at first for two rounds, which is one mile. I increased my walk by one lap the next week, and the following week by another lap, making for a two mile walk.

It turned out that if I took a short sit down break after two laps my back would recover enough to make the next two laps easier. Then I went to five laps, two and a half miles, with a sit down break after three laps.

By early April, though, I had only lost three pounds, and I had lost that in the first week! I bacame discouraged and finally quit.

Yesterday, May 15th, Lory's Place held a 5K race/walk fundraiser, and at the last minute I decided to enter the walking part of it. 5K is 3.1 miles. 995 people participated, a record crowd. The route was circuituous, weaving in and around the local neighborhoods and down by the beach, beginning and ending in front of Lory's Place. The media was there, and everyone was timed, with prizes for winners at the end.

We all took off, the runners first and the walkers second. It didn't take long for me to question my decision to participate.

I was walking at a pretty fast clip, just as I had in the mall earlier, but was constantly getting passed by virtually everybody. During the first mile I got passed by two women pushing baby carriages! By the second mile marker a third woman pushing a baby carriage passed me. Up ahead I saw people who were chatting and seemingly just shuffling along, but I never caught up with them!

The route now took us by the parking lot my car was in and it was so tempting to just hop in my car and go home, but I didn't. By now I was getting used to the pain in my back so I trudged along.

About two and a half miles into the walk everyone had pretty much settled into the spot in which they were going to finish. Those behind me were still gaining on me but wouldn't catch me before the race would be over.

I finished in 64 minutes, 22 for the first mille and 21 each for the last 2.1 miles, so I guess I did pick up the pace a little. But the walking winner finished in less than 25 minutes!

I know one lady, in her 80s, who walks the Mackinac Bridge every Labor Day, and has done so for over thirty years. That's five miles long! Some people are even afraid to drive across that bridge, especially if the wind is blowing.

I should probably just accept the fact that I'm not the athlete I once was, if I ever was. But it was for a good cause. The group grief sessions at Lory's Place have been invaluable to me during the last two years.

I suppose most of the time certain behaviors, comments or points of view that can generally be identified as being politically correct are amusing. A little chuckle in response to such real-life foolishness is usually all that is needed. Usually, but not always. Sometimes you just gotta meet absurdity with absurdity.

I knew a co-worker once who was really into self-reliance. He read Mother Earth News and Frontier Living religiously, and had an amazing wood shop in which he could make almost anything.

However, along with that he had some ideas that could only be described as slightly off-kilter, from my point of view, anyway. This caused us to have some good natured and funny exchanges at each other's expense from time to time.

One such exchange occurred when we were discussing dietary concepts. The conversation eventually moved toward fast food generally, and then Popeye's specifically. My friend criticized the way chickens were raised in a factory-like way, and then said he wouldn't mind eating at Popeye's sometime if only they would use 'free-range' chickens.

Well, I couldn't let that pass! What follows just slipped out.

"Not me," I replied. "I don't like that gamey taste. No, sir, I want my chickens tame. In fact, I want my chickens so compliant they slit their own throats!"

Groans and guffaws ended that conversation!

It was Mother's Day around 1977. Carol and I went to Jewel's that Sunday morning to get some groceries and a card for my mom.

On the way out we saw a young guy, obviously physically handicapped, in a wheelchair selling hardback books. They looked pretty expensive, and he had a few boxes of them he was selling.

When he saw me he noticed my Led Zeppelin belt buckle and said, "Hey, do you want to see the real Stairway to Heaven?" and handed me one of those books. It had beautiful illustrations inside and was clearly a well made book. The title was Bhagavad Gita - As It Is. I had never heard of it before, so I asked him how much he wanted for it.

"Whatever you want to pay, whatever you think it's worth."

I didn't have much so I offered him $3 and he took it, putting it in a coffee can. We left with our new book.

Later that afternoon when we finally got home I started thumbing through the book. It had been several years since I had been to church, and it would be several more before I would go again, but I knew enough about the bible to get upset by some of the things I read in this book, not to mention some other things in it that were just total nonsense. As I continued to read I started to get mad, first at the book, then at the guy who sold it to me, and then finally at myself for getting duped.

One thing was for sure. That book had to get out of our house. I almost threw it away, but then decided to see if I could get my money back. So I went back to Jewel's to see if that guy was still there.

He wasn't, so I drove over to the Plaza and there he was, sitting in front of Woolworth's, still selling those books. I parked my car and walked over to him, carrying my book. He started to offer me another one and then looked up and recognized me. There was a trash barrel nearby so I told him, "Look, I already bought a book. Here it is. I think it's complete nonsense and I want my money back. So here's the deal. I could tell you I paid anything for it, but I only gave you $3. Either give me my $3 and I'll give you this book back to sell to someone else or you can watch me rip it up page by page right here in front of you and anyone else who walks by and throw it away in this trash barrel. What are you gonna do?"

He immediately but slowly reached into his coffee can and gave me my $3 back without saying a word. I gave him his book back and left.

On the way home I took some gentle ribbing from Carol for "strong-arming a gimp" and I almost wish I had ripped up the book, anyway. But we would laugh over that incident for years to come.

Now retired LPGA Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam was known as Ms. 59 because she once shot a 59 for eighteen holes in a tournament, an amazing feat never done on the Ladies Professional Tour before or since.

Probably most of us amateurs have shot higher than that for only nine holes. I know I have a bunch of times.

There is one sense, however, in which I could be known as Mr. 58. Back in the early '80s, with friends and co-workers watching and timing me, I once solved a Rubik's Cube in 58 seconds. I know the world record is something less than fifteen seconds, but I'll take it!

April, 1980 saw the birth of our second son, Joshua. My wife, Carol, and I had been married for eight years.

One of the more popular new parenting mantras at the time was to make sure everyone in the family welcomed a new addition, and that no one, not even pets, felt left out, ignored, or jealous in any way.

This seemed like a good idea to me, so I mulled it over, trying to find a way to apply it to ourselves, when a brilliant idea hit me. Why not include our then four-year-old son Justin by actually having him pick out who his new little brother would be? All I'd have to do was hold him up to the maternity ward nursery's viewing window and suggest he pick the one closest to him. Joshua, as the newest newborn, would be right there. How hard could that be?

Of course, when I held him up Justin started picking out babies who were farther away from the window. Some were even against the back wall of the nursery! I kept saying, "No, no, how about one up close you can see?" and after three or four attempts Justin finally chose the one who really was his brother. I don't know why it made all that much difference to me but it did. I guess I was afraid he might actually be able to tell if his brother wasn't the one he picked.

Even though I felt proud of myself for including Justin in such a clever way, there was so much else going on that I forgot to mention it to Carol, who was in her maternity ward room at the time, and soon I forgot about it myself.

About a year later we were all in our living room. I was watching TV, Carol was reading a magazine, and the boys were on the floor playing.

Little Joshua was bugging his big brother until finally Justin said to him, "If you don't stop it I'm gonna go get a different brother!"

"WHAT DID HE SAY??" was Carol's startled and angered response, directed at me, as she started to come up out of her chair. I tried to explain myself but remained in hot water for a while after that! I guess there probably were better ways to make sure Justin felt included!

I am from history that is not my own. I am the product of others' hopes, wishes, and dreams, failures and successes. I am both a success and a failure, depending upon which relative you talk to.

But I am not totally a product of the past, or at least I hope not. I have my own experiences, thoughts and desires, core beliefs that are my own, not necessarily shared by those who went before me, that I bring to the table, good or bad.

I am shaped not only by my past but also by my present. I hope to shape my future. Thinking makes it so, I think.

I am free to make mistakes. I am free to grow, change, improve. I am not free to stagnate.

The sun was shining, but I had to ride my bike as fast as I could. The rain was like a wall moving fast upon me from behind. How could that be??

While pedaling furiously I glanced over my shoulder and saw the wet pavement inching closer and closer. It was dark behind me, and I didn't think I'd make it to our garage before the rain caught up with me.

Sure enough, turning into the driveway gave the rain just enough time to get me, but not enough to drench me. But why was I trying so hard to avoid this odd little downpour, anyway? It was, after all, only water!

An easy way to understand generally what the beatitudes in Matthew 5 are is to think of them as be-attitudes, that is, attitudes we should be, or possess. That simplifies the process and makes the rest of that Sermon on the Mount easier to digest and understand.

All of us, however, possess a certain amount of don't-be-attitudes, that is, qualities or tendencies, maybe weaknesses or desires, that initially allure us but in the end do us much more harm than good. Insects attracted to a bug zapper becomes an excellent example of how we can become our own worst enemies. The zapper didn't go to the bugs, you know. It merely attracted them.

That's why it is so important to make sure that what is within you controls how you react to what is without you, that is, the things you see, hear, touch, or taste. How you possess those things determines who is in charge, you or everything around you.

Things that don't stay buttoned can be irritating, as can things that don't unbutton when they should. They're like little obstacles, roadblocks that make you pause and ask yourself, "Is this right? Should I proceed?"

Sometimes I think my life is too button-downed, although lately life in general has forced me into some uncomfortable situations. The buttons are becoming undone, exposing me to possibilities here-to-fore unconsidered.

This is both uncomfortable and in a way exciting. Uncomfortable because this is not what I would have chosen for myself, exciting because the end is not planned, not yet known.

Who knows how many buttons there are yet to be undone?

I was never chosen last for anything, but usually closer to last than first. Mostly, I think, because I was small for my age.

The only sport I was ever good enough to play for an organized team was baseball, my only claim to fame in high school. I even tried out, at fifteen, for four major league teams! They were the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Indians, the Cincinnati Reds, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Even though one scout said I had a beautiful swing they chose not to choose me.

I didn't mind. Even then I thought what a cool story that would be to bore my grandkids with when I got old. Unfortunately I still have none, so you're stuck!

When I was coaching Little League I was aware of how important it was to make sure every kid on my team felt wanted, important, and had fun. I made sure everyone played in every game, and I'd get mad whenever I'd see an opposing coach embarrass a kid for making a mistake. They seemed to forget that this was supposed to be fun.

I saw more than one kid cry, and I wondered if they ever regretted being chosen at all.

What's the point of having Thanksgiving on a Thursday, anyway? It ought to be on a Friday so we get a three day weekend out of it. Let the first big Christmas sale day be a Saturday. A lot of folks have to go back to work the Friday after Thanksgiving, anyway. I did, most of the time.

Usually hardly anything important happens on a Thursday. I suppose I should be hitting my stride for the week, but the reality is it's the day after hump day and I'm really just looking forward to tomorrow, Friday. I just taught a bible class yesterday and am free until Sunday, so today is a good day to just take a break.

Thursday, a nice, relaxing day. I almost wish every day was Thursday.

When Justin was in kindergarten he had a birthday coming up in February. We decided to have a party for him at Show Biz Pizza (before it became Chuck E. Cheese.) He asked if he could invite some friends from school and we said sure. He was turning six that year, 1982.

Show Biz Pizza had all the arcade games and a stage show with animatronic animal robots playing side two of The Beatles' Abbey Road, which was phenomenal, although the kids were all too busy playing games and running around to notice.

Invited kids started showing up, more and more of them. Some were let out at the door by parents who didn't even bother to get out of their cars before taking off. I asked Justin how may kids he invited and he said the whole school!

Some kids several years older than Justin showed up, and only one parent came in to help. None of the other parents even said when they'd be back to pick up their kids. There must have been fifty kids or more, most of whom we had never even seen before!

Our total bill was over $75, quite a lot for 1982. We never did that again!

Justin didn't want to come home. He was 12 and was supposed to stay at Western Michigan University for the weekend, some program for young kids in association with his school.

This was not his first sleepover away from home. When he was younger he went to camp one week and had a lot of fun.

This was different. He stayed in a room with three other boys, all of whom happened to be 14. Now, that may not seem like much, only two years older, but they were on the other side of puberty, something the organizers hadn't considered.

Let's just say that it wasn't working out when we got the call about 10 pm that we needed to come and get him.

After a short meeting with one of the organizers, to whom I pointed out their mistake of bunking 12 and 14 year olds together, an idea that clearly hadn't dawned on him, we left, amicably enough.

As I was pulling out of the parking lot I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw Justin's teary eyes looking up at the building we were leaving. I felt so sorry for him!

A few years later I had the opportunity to gently remind him of this incident when the shoe was on the other foot. Alas, his memory of it was different from mine.

Being in the hospital for the first time since my wife Carol died was an experience. My elderly parents had to take me to and from since there was no one else available.

My cousin is a head nurse at Lakeland so everyone there was put on high alert by her to be extra good to me, and they were! Everyone was great, the angiogram I had showed nothing needed fixing, and less than six hours later we were headed back home.

My mom can't ride in the back seat (she gets nauseous) so I had to. Even though the car was mid-sized it was still hard to get in and out of the back seat.

We pulled in my icy driveway just as I was getting a call on my cell. Trying to answer the cell while struggling to get out of the car I slipped on the winter ice on the driveway, staggered for four or five steps trying to regain my balance, and finally fell in the snow next to the driveway. And it was so slick I couldn't get up! My near 80 year old father had to help me get up!

My keys fell out of my pocket into the snow so we spent about ten minutes pawing the snow with our feet until they finally appeared so I could get in my house. My parents didn't want to leave me alone but I insisted.

And it all worked out. But if Carol had been there she would have freaked out!

I never told anyone what really happened, or that anything had happened at all. Nor did I ever hint that there was something to hide. That's key to doing a good job of keeping a secret.

Mostly it was to keep from embarrassing someone. No good could possibly come from it, and who kows how long the ramifications might last?

Better to act as if nothing happened at all. On a need to know basis no one needed to know.

I've had to do that several times in my life, mostly, but not always, to save someone else's face, and also for my own peace of mind. I have found that most of the secrets I kept I no longer even remember, so it's as if they never happened. Most but not all.

I did sort of tell one person one secret, kind of. I never said what it was but I did hesitatingly hint at it. And this person betrayed me as best he could. Speculation ran wild and I reverted to 'clamp-down' mode.

The betrayal withered, with nothing solid to build upon, and I never took that chance again. My mantra remains, the best way to keep a secret is to never acknowledge that there is a secret to keep. Or have I said too much now?

A friend was going to a concert so I loaned him a 'star' filter for his camera that would add white or colored lines in an X shape to any light source in his photos. I had used it to great effect a number of times with my own camera.

When he got his photos back everything was fine except the act onstage was upside down! And my friend was convinced my star filter was the culprit.

It's been over 30 years and I still have no idea how that happened.

Whatever comfort I might otherwise derive from a lit candle is more than negated by my fear of them.

They can be comforting, to be sure. I especially like the ones that smell like vanilla. They remind me of my pipe I finally put down for good a few years ago.

Other candles are too ornate to ever be lit. They are more like 3D pictures or sculptures. I bet most of them never get lit. I wonder what they smell like.

My late wife used to get these avocado 'serenity' candles. I'm not sure they ever helped much. Maybe they did. They could help set a romantic mood on occasion.

What scares me is how dangerous candles can be. We used them often during power outages, always being extra careful so as not to set the house on fire. So for me my greatest comfort came when blowing them out.

I still have a few on hand I hope I never need to use.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I need a haircut. Tough. I'm gonna see how long I can go before I can't stand it anymore. I have no boss to bitch at me so why not?

In the '70s, when I was in the National Guard, we used to tuck our hair under short hair wigs to get through our on-duty weekends. What a pain but it was only one weekend a month. But hair was so important back then. Is it still? Is that why I'm letting it go?

Every week it seems to curl a little differently, so to be fair if I don't like it I ought to wait a week to see what happens before doing anything drastic like going under the knife.

Besides, it's one of my few joys in life that doesn't require me to do anything.

What a loser I must be.

(p.s. I ended up getting a haircut the next day.)

The chain on my snowblower broke last week. Fortunately the weather was such that I had a few days to fix it, so I am ready for the next onslaught, if there is one. And I'm sure it's coming.

Snow was great as a kid, except for the blizzard of '67. As an adult the blizzards of the late '70s were horrendous, too. Being snowed in with a baby, having the local volunteer fire department come by on snowmobiles to see if we needed any food or diapers (we did!), knowing we wouldn't see a snowplow down our road for a few days.

Once it was so cold the fuel oil in the copper line from the tank outside gelled and wouldn't flow, causing the furnace to shut off. I had to heat that fuel line with a propane torch just to get it to flow again! And all we ever did was shovel to keep the driveway clear for when a plow might make it down our road.

I can't do that anymore, so fixing that chain on my snowblower was a top priority! But I've had a few days where I saw how nasty it was outside and chuckled over my friends still having to get in it to go to work while I went back to bed.

It turns out that the six things I had to give up were the last six I had written down. I guess all nine had been written in order from most to least important, with the last two or three basically being on the same level as the next one hundred would have been had this exercise gone that far.

I guess in the whole scheme of things there aren't that many that rise that far above everything else. Lots of things are important in their own way but few are so critical as to be indispensable. Exercises like this can be helpful in making you choose which is which, at least to you.

I never mentioned what three I kept, did I? In order they are my faith, financial security and my health, all of which have taken hits ot one degree or another over the last three years but have survived intact. So far.

I believe in creation, or Intelligent Design, because Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics says you can't create something out of nothing and yet here we are. Science speaks of The Big Bang but can't explain where that material that banged came from. Science's limits is the beginning of philosophy, and science will always have limits.

I believe in the resurrection because of all the eye-witnesses who died believing what they saw.

I believe in the boring, comfortable contentment of mutual love that expresses itself in a thousand ways, from finishing each other's sentences to spontaneous sex, from a touch on the hand to a warm glance.

I believe in forgiveness without asking. I believe in giving the benefit of the doubt.

I believe the best rock music came from the '60s and 70s.

I believe (I hope, anyway) that I won't spend the rest of my life alone.

I heard somewhere that all fortune cookie messages instantly become more interesting if you end them with the words "in bed."

So, "Someone who is close to you is not who they seem in bed" would really be disturbing to me since the only one in my bed is me!

On the other hand, no one really knows anyone else completely enough to not ever be surprised by something, nor do we know ourselves as well as we might think. So I guess the fortune cookie message is true after all, in bed or out.

What I mean by embarrassment is shame, a feeling of letting someone down, of not coming through, or feeling regret or remorse over having done something that shouldn't have been done or of not doing something that should have been done.

Shock value oftens seems to be its own, and only, reward. It is one way some people get their fifteen minutes of fame. More than once we've seen kids who were shooters in school grinning ear to ear from the back seat of a police car. Did someone die? Too bad, but look! "I'm on TV!"

We don't get to see them much later on when the reality of it all sinks in, and all the copycat kids remember is that grin. But the reality of death is much more than they know from a video game. No one gets up, there are no do-overs.

Passing the point of no return isn't even noticed. A little embarrassment now and then would probably do all of us a little good.

I could never live in Arizona or anywhere else where snakes are prevalent, especially poisonous ones. I can understand wild animals protecting their domain but hey, what kind of a threat am I, anyway?

And there's just no excuse for ever going to the Amazon, is there? What do you need to see that you can't see on The Discovery Channel?

Another major fear, of the sudden, startling variety, was seeing a police car in the rear view mirror. I could always relate to that line in the old CSN&Y song about that. I'd keep glancing in the rear view, keeping an eye on the police car until he was out of sight, wondering if he radioed another cop ahead about my going five miles over the limit.

I'd see them with their rolling stops all the time, but let them see you do it! How unfair! And sneaky! Like snakes!

I am twelve years old and Floyd Patterson is my new idol since I just read a book about him and his rise from poverty to heavyweight champion of the world.

My friends and I decide we're going to have a boxing match for the fun of it. I can't wait! I got new boxing gloves and everything for my birthday.

Today's the day! Leon says, "Ding!" and John and I start boxing. Why won't he go down? Hey, that hurts! But I gotta be winning. Why won't he go down?

Uh, oh, John's bleeding and starting to cry, and still he won't go down.

This isn't fun anymore.

I am ten years old. There is a path to the school that goes between some yards the back way. The apple trees near the path are so loaded the branches almost touch the ground. Old man Johnson can't miss the one or two I take but I hear him yelling! Gotta go!

I hit a ball through our next door neighbor's back door window and ran. How did they know it was me?

I am eight years old. I fell (okay, I jumped!) out of a tree in our back yard and broke my leg.

The cast goes from my toes to my hip, and does it ever itch like crazy! I had to spend the night in the hospital with two other boys in one room. One kept calling me Muscle instead of Russell.

He had his tonsils out and so didn't want the ice cream promised to him earlier. Good. Serves him right for calling me Muscle.

I am six years old. I am in kindergarten. We had to walk single file through all the classrooms. I don't know why but someone said I got chosen to be Bud Prince of our school. I don't know what that is but they say I have to ride in some parade. I don't want to but they say I have to. And worse yet, a girl is going to ride with me.

I'm scared.

I can almost taste the seven-layer lasagne Carol used to make. It would fill up a roasting pan. Early on she would make her own sauce, but as store bought got better and better that eventually became the way to go. It had at four kinds of cheese, as I recall.

Amazing how it always stood up, or held together, better the second day. And even though there was just the two of us plus two kids eating it, it almost never made it to the third day. We'd eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, always eating after we were full because it was so good. You might say it was almsot orgasmic.

Certain special occasions just called for her lasagne. No one, not Olive Garden or anyone else, could match it.

That's just another thing I miss.

It's interesting how as we get older we tend to become more direct, less discreet, sometimes even defiantly so. Certainly we may become less concerned about what others may think.

I have run into that several times in the nursing home. Once a lady after church services said she liked my sermon but then said, "But I've had my medication, so what do I know?" Another time another lady called me over to her wheelchair and then whispered in my ear, "My butt itches." I don't know what she expected me to do about that!

We can rightfully become obsessed with our own bodies and health, especially if both are going south. My wife had been ill for a long time before ending up with cancer and dying at 54.

For me it's important to keep in mind that this world, and our physical beings, are not all there is, and that no matter what we do our flesh will wear out. So the question to ponder is, what then?

Things that don't stay buttoned can be irritating, as can things that don't unbutton when they should. They're like little obstacles, roadblocks that make you pause and ask yourself, "Is this right? Should I proceed?"

Sometimes I think my life is too button-downed, although lately life in general has forced me into some uncomfortable situations. The buttons are becoming undone, exposing me to possibilities here-to-fore unconsidered.

This is both uncomfortable and in a way exciting. Uncomfortable because this is not what I would have chosen for myself, exciting because the end is not planned, not yet known.

Who knows how many buttons there are yet to be undone?

As a kid I never had crayons last their full length very long. Why did they always seem to break? And they never tasted all that good, either. You'd think I'd remember that after the first time. Maybe I'm just not doing it right.

When I was a kid I once drew a horse on paper with crayons on the floor in the hallway, only to find when I brought it out into the light that it was purple. All that time and a good drawing wasted.

In college I worked with oil paints but later in life came to appreciate black and white charcoal drawings. At least none of them ever came out purple.

I never did like seeing people take an unfair advantage over other people just because they could. Over the years I've seen a lot of people doing just that, doing to others what they would hate to see done to themselves, and doing it in such a way as to suggest they're merely doing it first before it gets done to them, because they can.

Ironically, sooner or later they always seem to get theirs, usually at the hands of someone else who also will one day probably get what's coming to them.

You see it on TV, too, foolish people who will do anything for their fifteen minutes of fame. They are all too willing to be humiliated and taken advantage of by the socalled experts of the day like Dr. Phil and his ilk, purely for the entertainment of the masses, their feigned protests to the contrary notwithstanding.

Doesn't decency require us not to take advantage of others, to protect those too foolish to protect themselves?

And what does that say about those so entertained by others' humiliations? It's like our version of the lions in the Colosseum.

The world always seemed new, every day, when we were little kids. The magic of Silly Putty transferring images from the Sunday funnies, even if they were backwards!

And who could resist, after a few minutes with play-Doh, eating just a little of it? Don't eat that, it's dirty, it's been on the floor! Okay, but it's cleaner than the dirt in the back yard we ate yesterday. Don't tell mom!

Never did eat any worms, although I did trick a neighbor kid into it once. Yuck!

But hey, we were bullet-proof then. Now we have to have purified bottled water. The garden hose just won't do anymore.

Or will it?

The flash was extraordinarily bright from inside our dark house. The storm had knocked out the power and as we watched the rain coming down in sheets the whole world outside our window seemed to shake in the sudden brightness, but it was just us startled by the loudness of the lightning strike. The tree outside did not survive. We barely did.

Fire and rain, nature's fury, and the fragility of all we hold dear came together in that flash, and we realized what was most important to us as we instinctively grabbed each other in that clap of thunder and flash of light.