Maybe I’m getting old, but this New Year’s Eve I was in bed before the ball even dropped.

I hadn’t planned it this way. Jess and I started out with dinner and a movie, prepping ourselves for the proper ringing in of the new year. By ten o’clock we were back home, as planned, watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2009. (Is it me, or does this title get longer every year?) By 10:15, I wasn’t ready for the surprising discovery I’d made. To my astonishment, I realized I had Dick Clark on more out of duty than enjoyment. 

I knew not wanting to spend New Year’s Eve with Dick Clark was wrong, un-American and, perhaps in some households, immoral. I felt strong with guilt. On TV, dedicated New Year’s Eve enthusiasts shivered in Times Square streets, like homeless revelers, sacrificing their comfort so I could be entertained from the warmth of my own home. Alternative Rock Bands straight off the cover of Teen Magazine plucked guitar strings with frozen fingers for my New Year’s Eve benefit. And here I’d rather watch Seinfeld re-runs.

How ungrateful was I? I tried to fix things. I resolved to get into a chilly so-so performance by a sleeveless Taylor Swift. Next, the Jonas Brothers, and their Tom Hanks haircuts, brought all they had, too. I swayed to their garage-band sound.

It was no use. My soul was simply unfazed, no, worse, it was bored. Not even Ryan Seacrest with his puffy coat and ear muffs could cheer me up. What was wrong with me? What did 2008 do to me to make me so calloused? Was it the government bailouts? Too much Hillary Clinton? Brad Pitt’s new trash-stache? I didn’t even know myself anymore.

Before Will.I.Am could finish his bit, I had flipped to a station showing the movie Elf. Jess, who was half-asleep by now, hardly put up a fight. Now I had seen Elf probably a hundred times already this Christmas season, but I loved it exactly the same every time. As Buddy the Elf (Will Ferrell) was singing his Christmas gram to his estranged dad, I promised myself that I’d flip back to Dick Clark before midnight.

Sadly, this never happened. Jess and the dog were snoring on the couch by 11:30, and secretly (I’m just now admitting this to myself) I was happy to call it quits for the night. In bed by 11:45, I decided to ring in the new year by reading a book. Beside me, Jess and the dog were unconsciously paying their last respects to the dwindling 2008.

At exactly midnight, I heard fireworks outside, which according to next day’s news reports some were actually gunshots fired at the sky. Evidently, some locals had celebrated themselves into believing they were figures of the Old West. Though not much for public safety, these urban cowboys were impressively punctual. The ringing of gunshots hit midnight right on the nose. I suspect they’ll show up perfectly on time for their court dates. 

It was 12:01 when a dull sadness caught me off guard. I tried to pinpoint the source. I guessed first it was simply nostalgia for the old year. That’s perfectly normal. Maybe it was because I’d missed the ball drop, and the count down, and all the magical feelings that come with welcoming in the new year with a formal fuss. People were blowing horns, wearing party hats, and kissing their spouses in the living rooms of the houses of my imagination. Not to be left out, I kissed Jess’ sleeping head. She didn’t budge.

Then I guessed it. My serotonin levels had experienced the equivalent of a train wreck after taking in the depressing Will Smith movie, Seven Pounds, earlier that evening. I won’t give away the ending, but let’s just say I hope I don’t accidentally see it again. I was sort of hoping to ride into the new year on a lighter note. But this dream, as were several other 2008 dreams I had, such as getting to hang out with the Burger King, were blatantly squelched.

Anyway, once I solved the mystery of my low mood, I was able to move on to the more serious question of the evening. Why couldn’t I care less about making a big to-do over New Year’s Eve?

By 12:15 I found the slippery solution: I was happily content with what I had at home. I wasn’t missing out on all the people and parties out there. They were missing out on me and all that was with me, i.e, my wife, dog, and Buddy the Elf. Comparatively, everything else, Dick Clark included, had lost its luster.

Whew…all this psychoanalyzing had made me sleepy. I killed the lights at 12:20a.m., January 1, 2009. From there I slipped into my first dreams of the new year. I can’t remember what I’d dreamed that night exactly, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it had something to do with paling around with the Jonas Brothers, firing guns into the frosty air, and looking-forward to getting home early.

Categories: Life, Philosophy, Television
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Jess was a cat again, and I was a clown from the neck up.

Before the first flock of trick-or-treaters took to the streets, I entered the bathroom just as Jess, cat ears already intact, was drawing on the last of her whiskers. She had also done up her nose the color of a maraschino cherry.  

“Your turn,” she said.

I took a seat on the toilet lid, which made for a nice impromptu beauty station. Blue and red were Jess’ primary colors of choice, and before I could say the sort of clown I hoped to be, she said, “All done.”

Perhaps I was a clown from the Great Depression, back when circus budgets were tight and clown make-up had to last, because Jess had applied only the strict bare essentials. My cheeks had smudges of peacock blue, and my mouth at rest wore a thin lipstick smile. The rest of my face bore the color of my own ruddy complexion. But add the rainbow wig and sponge nose, and, technically, I guess, I passed for a clown. Although, I wondered if more serious clowns, like Ronald McDonald, might argue this point. Which brings me to a deeper, perhaps, more philosophical question: are all clowns equal?  

Take for instance Batman’s clownish arch-nemesis, the Joker, namely the one played by Heath Ledger in the latest Batman movie. This costume was the most popular one of the night, though some were better than others. In fact, I got a laugh-snort when I confided in a pair of Jokers who were at our door wanting candy that I was dressed as the Joker, too. Evidently, my clown costume failed to meet the criteria of the cool, deranged, PG-13 Joker. Even Jess seemed ashamed.

“No he’s not,” she reassured the Joker twins. “He’s not the Joker.” Then she dropped candy into each of their bags as if to smooth things over.

What was the big deal? The Joker’s a clown. I’m a clown. You’re a clown. We’re all clowns here, aren’t we? Or are we?

After the Joker twins left, I became insecure about my clownliness, or lack there of. But this soon wore off when I noticed that some of the smaller trick-or-treaters refused to take candy from me. Instead, they eyed me warily from behind their parents’ legs. Maybe I wasn’t the Joker, but there is something to be said about a grown man-clown who strikes fear in the souls of two-year-olds.  

“His dad never liked clowns either,” barked one’s grandma, laughing like a lunatic as she towed her mute grandson to the next house. Ironically, I was frightened of her. And that’s when it hit me: does the makeup make the clown? Because this woman wore only her God-given face. Not that she was ugly; she just had that wild, Halloween clown look about her that even the best Jokers of the night couldn’t capture.

I may never find the true answers to these clown questions. But now that I’ve been a clown, I like to think that I can better relate to their culture. They’re people, too. Just like you or I. 

Concerning cats, I don’t think Jess put that much thought into her costume. And our small dog, who dressed up as a ladybug, probably had no idea she even was a ladybug.

Categories: Culture, Fashion, Philosophy
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In the small town where I grew up, Daisy Dukes for men made a real splash (or at least they did in my case). For four misguided years I swaggered through the halls of my high school showing off more leg than a can-can dancer. I cannot remember if I tucked my T-shirts in nicely, or let them hang out and devour the length of my tiny frayed shorts. I do know, however, that my bottom half was never complete without my black suede leather high-top sneakers. And since ankle socks had not yet reached the country corners of the Midwest – or if they had it’s news to me – it was nothing to also catch me shin deep in a pair of sparkling white tube socks. 

I also had this I.O.U. sweatshirt the color of grape-flavored Bubble Yum. It had no hood but draw strings that passed through the bulk of an extended collar that stopped tantalizingly short of a turtleneck. All stops pulled, I strode right into my freshman year of college with it, along with the rest of my country apparel. Chest out, I felt cool and confident walking on campus, knowing that beneath the buckle of my braided belt was hidden the loudest pair of cheetah print underwear since Johnny Weissmuller played Tarzan.  

It wasn’t long before I made some dorm friends who were of the more metropolitan regions of Ohio. Whether it was because they pitied me or were just curious to see what I’d put on next, they remained silent on the subject of my clothes. Although, it seems possible they would discuss it wildly behind my back. Surely someone had to get the burning image of my pegged stone-washed jeans and boat shoes off his chest. I was oblivious to what my trendy peers were wearing: Timberlands with wool speckled socks, cargo shorts, all of 1994′s latest fashions. But one kid finally broke, and for the first time I was forced to question my plush Bugle Boy polo with the turned-apple-colored front and the checkered long sleeves. 

One day, through a series of networking and by the fortune of being in the right place at the right time, we won an invitation to participate in a co-ed football game on West Green somewhere. Co-ed – that meant chances were good that girls would be there. I dressed to impress. The night air was just crisp enough for bringing out the grape I.O.U. sweatshirt. Having gone through several washes, it was beginning to ride up on me a bit. Down the hall to grab my friend, I kept stretching the bottom of my sweatshirt past the waistline of my loud, little Umbros. When my friend opened the door, he erupted into surprised laughter, as if I’d punched him in the gut with a whoopee cushion. I stood there in my Bubble Yum sweatshirt, taking it. ”You look so cool,” was all he could get out. Then, knowing it was all out in the open, he laughed harder and more freely. I heard it all the way down the hall to my room.

Inside the safety of my room, I looked in the mirror that stood between my dresser and the harsh dorm light. It was as though I were seeing myself for the first time. I tried to pick out the abhorrent elements of my shirt that had turned my friend into a jerk. Could it possibly be because the draw strings had no hood? I couldn’t tell. I suddenly felt illiterate. The stubby turtleneck stared back at me like a foreign cuss word. I opened my drawer, freshly skeptical of the clothes that lay innocently there, waiting to make me look stupid. You mean my forest green windbreaker, too? And my outdated mountain boots I got for a good price? What a dreadful revelation this was! I couldn’t have been more shocked than if my parents had told me I was Chinese.      

For a year I was severely overwhelmed by my dearth of fashion sense. I couldn’t tell what went with what. I even developed a mysterious rash on my face, but that could have equally been from living in a cloud of my roommate’s secondhand smoke all year and never washing my pillow case. But, nonetheless, I set my mind on learning what others were wearing. As my eye grew keener, I started trading my jean shorts for khaki ones. But I’d always just miss the mark, returning from home with a shopping bag full of prim and proper dress shorts instead of the cool baggy Abercrombie ones guys were wearing. I’d never even heard of Ambercrombie.       

By winter quarter, I noticed that guys were cool who wore their hair in their faces. They’d sit with their dorm doors wide open, picking sour notes on their beat-up guitars, with nothing but a burning cigarette poking through their perfectly messy locks. I’d march right over to Saturday’s Family Hair Care on Court Street and explain to the exasperated hair stylist that I wanted my hair to look like Brad Pitt’s in Legends of the Fall. If she couldn’t do that then make it similar to the late Kurt Cobain’s. But my hair was fuzzy and thick and wouldn’t budge. Sweating and flushed, my hair stylist spun me around to face the mirror. I considered the broccoli sprout haircut I’d just been given. ”You’ll have to give it time to grow past that awkward stage,” she said. There was nothing I could do; my whole hair was an awkward stage, defying gravity, always growing up and out, never down and cool.  It would be a few years yet before Justin Timberlake invaded the Hollywood scene, bringing my strain of hair back in style. So I was stuck all alone with a head of hay that matched my ridiculous wardrobe. 

Whenever I’d complain about this back home, my mom would try to coax me into letting her style it. At first, I refused; especially when I found out a hairdryer would be involved. But finally I gave in. She used the mirror and dresser in my bedroom as her beauty station. Mom laid out her tools: my sisters’ hairdryer and the oversized, thick-bristled hairbrush Mom bought before I was born. I felt the hot breath of the hairdryer on my face and nape. Using long, ponderous strokes, she brushed my hair back nice and squirrelly, until it rose like a souffle. When Mom’s work was complete, my hair had the dry, bristly look of a beaver pelt. And it seemed I had more forehead than I remembered. “There,” my mom said, still touching up the sides. Staring back at me in the mirror was the spitting image of Ted Danson.  

Everything changed during winter break of my sophmore year when I discovered Mom’s bottle of Paul Mitchell hair conditioning gel on the bathroom sink. Something otherwordly prompted me just to try it. But it’s for girls, I argued with myself. Just try it. I was desperate and no one was home. So I squeezed a blue dab of it into my hand and ran it through my hair. It was amazing! My hair drank it up greedily. It was so thirsty; I had no idea. I felt like a bad parent. I threw a little more in. Working my fingers frantically like combs, I watched my hair transform into a magical new do. No longer did it behave like a crappy swimming cap. It pieced and clumped, and cool, curly tufts emerged. My hair obeyed my every whim, and it stuck wherever I told it. Catching my breath, I moved back to take a look at myself. My hair actually looked, well, cool.    

When I returned to school with my new hair and an endless supply of Paul Mitchell, friends showered me with compliments. “I can’t quite put my finger on it,” said one, “but you look different, cooler.” Girls laughed harder at my jokes. I received more co-ed football invitations. I was practically invincible, like a modern day Samson. Not even the damage of putting on a pair of guy Daisy Dukes could hinder me — though I dared not try it.

Shortly thereafter, the day came when I knew I had finally arrived. I was hanging out with a group of buddies, when I saw a highbrow acquaintance of mine from the suburbs of Cleveland coming toward us. He wore a navy button down with a thin red checkered pattern that looked oddly familiar to me.

“Hey,” I said to him, “Nice shirt…I have a pair of boxers that look just like it.” And, the truth is, I did.  

I let out a good hard, freeing laugh. My buddies laughed with me. I can’t remember what the guy with the shirt did. He probably just thought I was a jerk. And, at that moment, I was. But I could afford to be, because I was wearing a deadly combination of cargo pants and Birkenstocks.    

Categories: Culture, Fashion
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The first time I hit a pedestrian with my car, it was rather awkward for both of us. Not only was I new to it, but he seemed a novice as well. The man, who wandered into my blind spot as I was making a right on red, had the tall, lanky build of a fifty-year-old high-jumper. There’s a chance he wore a beret, too, but of this detail I cannot be sure. I pressed the gas, turned the wheel, and a flash of arm struck the rim of my peripheral. There was a dull thud, and I turned in time to see a man do something resembling a half-baked barrel roll over the hood of my car. With impressive agility, he landed on his feet, cat-like, beret still intact. Slightly shaken and, it seemed, a bit embarrassed, he continued on his way to the CVS across the street.  

At the time, I was unfamiliar with the protocol of running over a man. In fender benders, I knew enough that you avoid blurting out anything self-incriminating before undergoing the ritual of exchanging insurance information. But, being the pedestrian he was, the man was absent a car. And, as far as I knew, there was no such thing as pedestrian insurance—though I was thinking there ought to be. At a glance, he seemed to be in good condition, a slight limp, maybe, but I still felt obliged to find out for sure. I rolled down my window and said, “Hey! Sorry. Are you all right?” Here, an interesting thing occurred. The man, avoiding eye contact, nodded quickly, and picked up his rusty pace away from my car. It seemed he wanted nothing to do with me. My brain in a fog, I looked both ways several times before making the right turn I had set out to do earlier.

I got halfway to McDonalds before I snapped out of it and decided to turn back to check on the man once again. I found him inside CVS, his head floating down an aisle. As I homed in on him, he began moving faster toward the back of the store. I was getting out of breath when I tried to slow him down, “Hey!” I said. No response. We had both broken into a near full-blown sprint. “Hey!” I shouted. Heads in the greeting card aisle turned, but the man kept on target, his pace steady. I knew he’d heard me. Finally, there was nowhere left for him to run. I had the man trapped between myself and the pharmacy. The pharmacists, in their white coats, hovering over their half-filled prescriptions, eyed me nervously. Then, a funny thought came over me. Do I introduce myself as the man who hit him with his car? Or had these preliminaries sailed on the moment he rolled over my hood? “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. His face went flush and he averted his gaze. His beret was slightly ajar. The man seemed tortured not physically, but mentally by my dogging persistence. I decided not to push it any further. I said, “Okay,” offered another weak apology, and removed myself from the man’s sight as quickly as possible. It was rather awkward behavior on his part, I thought. I could not understand why the man was so bent out of shape. I left slightly offended.

Some years later, I clipped a college kid crossing the street. Once again I was turning right, but this time it was at the stop sign of a busy outdoor mall intersection. Amazingly, I got the same response from the kid as I did from the man in CVS. It just must be the standard, I concluded. As the poor kid hobbled toward the curb, I leaned out my window and asked cooly, “Are you all right?” Already having one hit pedestrian under my belt, I felt sure of myself this time around.

In the midst of a fast and slightly painful-looking getaway, he gave a curt response, “I’m fine.” I watched as he stiffly reached the door of the restaurant across the street. He was probably on his way to meet up with some friends. For a half-instant, I thought of going in after him to see if he really was okay. Instead, I checked for more pedestrians, stepped on the gas, and decided to do the kid a favor. I’d drive away and get out of his hair as soon as possible. And this time, I wouldn’t take it so personally.

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Jess and I decided to take off work Monday. Instead, we went to the zoo, a top priority on our list of things to do this summer. The zoo parking lot was all but empty when we arrived, and to our amazement, we drove right up to the front and found a nice parking spot in ORANGUTAN ROW 1. The sun’s power had increased considerably in the twenty minutes it took to get from our house to the zoo. Halfway to the zoo entrance, I became disappointed in my decision back home to forgo sunscreen. I could already feel my neck turning the tender color of raw calamari.

Inside the zoo, near where a bearded employee handled an armadillo before a gathering of moms and screechy kids, we went over the zoo map I had snagged from the ticket booth. The layout of the place appeared to run in one big loop. The animals were sorted by continent. Nonetheless, all the ”continents” we visited maintained the same steady sweltering climate of the Sahara desert. I feared my body would eventually run out of sweat.

North America was our first destination. I figured this part of the zoo would be nothing short of taking a leisurely stroll through my backyard. I was partially right. Three steps deep inside the Western Hemisphere, I caught a dreadful odor that rivaled that of our garage trashcan the day after I threw away the dead mouse we’d caught in our basement. Nonetheless, we pressed on.

Just off the walking path, a sign called our attention to a low patch of weeds. It informed us that black ants were in there. I strained my eyes but could not make out even one anthill, not even an ant. Slightly puzzled, Jess and I never arrived at a solid conclusion over the ants’ whereabouts. The best I can come up with is that they probably filed their way to the nearest overflowing trashcan and got tangled up in a swath of cotton candy. To be honest, as long as they didn’t end up in my pants or something, I was fine with not knowing their mysterious location. By the time Jess had me posing for a snapshot with a tired old goat with stubs for ears, the ants had left my mind.       

Counting the invisible ants, there must have been a million animals in the zoo. Many seemed immobilized by the noonday heat, either slumped in a shady corner or sprawled out inside a hollow tree trunk. Some animals came off as rather pedestrian, like the mallards, that swam and quacked like the ones back home, but some were worth noting, namely the penguins.

Heavily influenced by Coca-Cola commercials, I have always pegged penguins for snow birds. These particular ones, however, were out and about in the sizzling sun. Not to be mean, but the poor birds looked diseased, as if they constituted a sort of bird leper colony. Instead of donning their usual tuxedo coats, the penguins hobbled out in something more like a dung colored blazer with the stuffing coming out. They were losing their feathers in clumps. What feathers remained mashed into a chaotic mess, looking as if the zoo staff had taken to cooling them off with fire hoses.    

It occurred to me that the penguins might be contagious. As I considered how life might be like living in quarantine, I read up on the penguin facts posted outside their habitat.  Apparently they make nests out of mounds of seabird guano, aka, bird poop. I wanted out. Though not totally undone of my suspicion, I was put partially at ease when I overheard a lady in a zoo polo shirt explaining to an equally uneasy observer that this is molting season.

So maybe they weren’t diseased. But it was an image I knew would stay with me for a long time. I’ve heard of molting, but never witnessed it first hand. I learned a lot from my visit to the zoo. Although it has its plusses, Nature can be very ugly at times. Especially during molting season.

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Since we bought our first house a year ago, my wife and I have adjusted nicely to home living, except for one thing. Whenever someone rings the doorbell, it throws our whole household into disarray. Our 9 pound dog starts yapping her Monopoly piece-size head off, and Jess and I suddenly go to acting like two parrots caught on fire. We dart madly about the house attacking each other with the same crucial question, over and over: “Who’s that? Who’s that?” This sort of thing usually continues until someone is able to drum up the courage to answer the door. And assuming the person at the door is still there, the other takes his place behind the couch peering at the door. That person (I’m not saying it’s always me. Okay?), having already dialed a ”9″ and a “1″ on the cell, will keep a finger ready over the final “1,” waiting, stiff-muscled, to the thump of his heartbeat in his throat. 

This tactic is extremely necessary — and may or may not be approved by Oprah – in case our  surprise visitor decides to grab ahold and make off with one of us. It’s not like we live in a bad neighborhood or anything. We are just neurotically suspicious. Besides, it has just been hard for us to adjust to the throngs of Girl Scouts in the area pushing Thin Mints.

Therefore, I have decided that from now on I shall wear jeans to bed. You just never know when that next knock at the door will be. And that scares me.     

Categories: Life
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Recently, I learned I have a serious handicap: I don’t live in fear. 

It’s an inverted notion, I know, since living in fear itself tends to indicate a handicap of sorts. But I’m talking about fearing God. God struck me with this peculiar idea during one of our predawn meetings. Before, I always considered “the fear of God” as rather Old Testament, outdated, if you will, that is, after Jesus came on the scene. I was living in the era of Grace, free and fun, and…I know, I know, Truth too. But, as a Christian, my salvation already sealed by the Holy Spirit, I hardly worried about Hell at all. Except for those bad days at the office, you’d rarely find me cowering in the closet corner at the thought of God sending me packing to Babylon, if I stepped out of line. Although, now that I think about it, He very well could, if we reinstate the draft.      

But I was missing the point. There’s real power to be had in fearing God. And I was just as surprised as anyone to find myself suddenly praying for the gift of this holy fear. After my many failed attempts to live like Jesus, who is sinless where I am not, I realized that fear–fear of messing up, fear of not being liked, fear of God bailing on me, fear of fear itself (props to FDR)–bullied me like the high school hoodlum (no offense, man…please don’t hurt me!). As it turned out, fear was often the ringleader to my compromising my faith. It loomed over me as an ever-present obstacle to my living life to the fullest, how Jesus said. I soon discovered a secret Peter crouched inside my heart, waiting to leap at the chance, given the right mix of scary circumstances, to deny his Savior three times, even more.

When I finally got it through my thick skull that fearing God wasn’t a bad thing, I started to see the benefits it offered. It boiled down to a near-mathematical equation: fearing God equals fearing nothing else. Wow! It’s like having a super power! If I could fear God, let’s see, I could face kings, wild beasts, and even the uncertainties of the Wendy’s acquisition.

Of course, this did not mean all the symptoms of fear would magically disappear. Oh, I knew my legs would still turn to spaghetti and my voice weaken the next time I was elected to stand up and give an impromptu speech to a room full of strangers (which I hope never happens). But–and here’s the big “but”–if I had the gift of fearing God, fear would no longer stop me from doing God’s will. How great!

This new revelation made me want to kick back and smoke a big freedom stogie (although I strictly smoke secondhand). But the image I’m trying to conjure is that of a free man, a truly free man, free in the inside, no matter the hostile environment, free to live the good life, free because of fear–the fear of God. 

Whew! Now, for my next act, I’m going to jump out of a plane. Not really, the thought of it scares me to death.       

Categories: Christianity
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Underoos were the bee’s knees when I was a kid. Cartoon underwear fashioned after superhero suits–what kid wouldn’t beg his mom for a pair? Let’s see, they had Superman, Batman, and Spiderman (my favorite), and, oh yeah, Wonderwoman, too, so not to leave out the girls. I wore Batman and Spiderman.    

Around the same time I donned these flashy undergarments, I was also heavily in to watching Saturday morning cartoons. Every Saturday from 9a.m. to noon, kids had somehow managed to gain complete control over all the TV stations in the world. I dabbled a bit in Smurfs and School House Rock, but the main attraction, hands down, was Superfriends. No normal kid could stand to sit still after absorbing a half-hour’s worth of the Superfriends (including the Wonder Twins with sidekick, Gleek, the caped space monkey) foiling, once again, the evil plans of Lex Luther and his Legion of Doom. So, after my cartoon fill, I’d suit up in my Underoos, dart outside like the Flash, and take to the skies in pretend flight through the neighborhood.  

Barefoot, half-naked, and unashamed, I fought crime in a pair of snug blue briefs and a Spiderman T-shirt. Often, an imaginary spiderweb did the trick for getting me around. I’d breeze through the summer lawns as Spiderman would the streets of New York. Whenever I reached the length of my web, I’d perch myself on an old, termite-ridden log that had rolled off our backyard woodpile onto the grass. A log always made for a nice imaginary flagpole, especially one that hung from the 50th story of the Daily Bugle. Up there, I’d ponder the crime-filled streets below. When it came time to move on, I’d flip my wrists over, bend them just slightly so, and emit two suddens bursts of sound: psst, psst. In my opinion, these sounds–a sort of hiss placed between a “p” and a stong ”t”–most accurately described my shooting webs from my wrists. Once my web grabbed hold of something sturdy, like a skyscraper, a radio tower, or a large man’s back, I’d give the web a tug for good measure, then sail off to my next destination.  

Sometimes it became necessary to set a web trap for the bad guys. This took a lot of psst’s. A neighbor curious to see what the fuss was about could look outside in time to see a streak of legs disappear around his house corner or behind a wall of trees. The same neighbor might also have wondered just who had taught this odd little boy how to run with his hands clasped in a ball above his head. It was like he hung from an invisible thread. He’d never play sports. 

One day, I had the Joker and his villainous cronies on the run. My plan was to cut them off in a back alley somewhere. So, I took a short-cut through my backyard and, to my dismay, landed my barefoot on an angry bee collecting dandelion pollen. A sharp pain shot up my foot. It worked on me like Kryptonite (blasted Joker!). But instead of falling weak and listless to the ground in typical Superman fashion, I burst into tears and bawled like the 4-year-old I was. Finally, I collected myself enough to hop home on my good foot. Mom doctored my war-torn foot and, although I didn’t quite know it yet, I had learned something: justice is not always embraced in this world.    

Later, after my Underoos grew too tight, my mom hit up Jo-Ann Fabrics, and I upgraded my superhero wardrobe to capes. I had a Batman one and Superman one. They both were very cool and did wonders for my crime-fighting. Although, as I got older I grew tired of pretend flying. I wanted to fly for real. So, one gray day, I tied on my Superman cape, went outside, and started jumping, both arms out, with the intent that I might eventually stick in the air. When my efforts failed, I turned to God.

“Please, God, give me the ability to fly.” Jump. Crash. Then again, “Please, God, I want to fly.” Jump. Crash, again.

I carried on like this for nearly an hour. Eventually my bones started to ache, and I realized (could it be?) I was a victim of unaswered prayer. Or worse, a prayer forever answered with a disquieting ”no”. 

What’s with this not letting me fly stuff? I mean, am I missing something? Is this not a noble request? 

I was mad. I had prayed really hard, with my eyes shut and everything. The thing was, I’d been to Sunday school and knew that God was all-powerful. If He wanted me to fly, then I could fly. It was clear that He just refused to let me.

In my teens and early twenties, I would sometimes look back at that day and think what a cute but silly prayer it was. It was a little-boy-with-an-overworked-imagination prayer. Of course God wasn’t going to let me fly. Why would He?  No one could fly, except Superman, and he, first of all, was a sun-powered alien, not a human, and, second, wasn’t even real. The whole thing made me laugh at myself. My prayer wasn’t practical, it wasn’t scientific, it wasn’t…wasn’t important, what with half the world starving the way it is.

But the funny thing is, now I see things in a different light. That little boy with the Superman cape may have known what he was doing. As I read the Book of Isaiah, I find a new answer to my boyish prayer. And the suspected answer may not have been ”no”. Nor do I believe God blew me off with a light, good-natured chuckle. But instead, if I’m reading Scripture correctly, I believe God’s answer was “wait”:

[B]ut those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles (Isaiah 40:31).   

 And besides, Superman is not the only person who can fly. According to Luke, Jesus flew up to Heaven. And if Jesus is the prototype of the resurrected man, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched that I should fly too someday. With that said, Jess has a sewing machine in the basement, and it looks like I have a date with Jo-Ann Fabrics. And maybe this time I’ll swing by DSW for some superboots, to ward off any Kryptonite bee stings.

Categories: Christianity, Fashion, Television
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The first notion I had of humanity’s vulnerability probably came when I was 3 from a Tom & Jerry cartoon. I dimly remember, every weekday, between 2 and 3p.m., plopping myself down in the brown bean bag in front of the TV. Baby blanket in hand, I’d will away the Calgon and L’Oreal commercials, just to hear the soothing swell of canned orchastra rise from our 24” screen. The Tom & Jerry theme song pumped the equivalent of black coffee into my 3-year-old veins, and it worked nicely to gear me up for a wonderful afternoon of cartoon violence at its best.

As I got older, it struck me how speedily Tom would recover after he took, say, a cannon ball blast to the stomach. The very next scene, there he’d be again hot on Jerry’s tail, no arm sling, no 9-1-1 calls, no emergency squads, just business as usual. It was amazing! Had this happened to your typical human, he’d certainly be dead, or at least severely maimed–but cartoons had it different, I guess. They had the remarkable ability to throw themselves back together again and start where they left off. A 1000 volt shock, where Tom’s skeleton would flash like a strobe light, did little but maybe slow him down a bit. He’d still be good to finish out the rest of the episode. Cartoons held the key to violence without repercussion.

And this is exaclty why Tom & Jerry was not a show for kids…or actually…it was, but, perhaps, it shouldn’t be for today’s kids. Hardly able to discern between fantasy and reality, today’s kids seem compelled to immitate what they see on TV. I, however, was immune to such urges. A cat chasing a mouse in circles with an ax hardly influenced me. Nor was I tempted to pull a similar stunt on my sisters whenever Jerry caught Tom in the mouth with a cast-iron skillet, breaking his teeth to the sweet song of shattering glass.

Although, in all honesty, I must mention here that my record isn’t completely clean. One day I caught myself employing a basic Bugs Bunny tactic–but only this one time, I promise. If I could take it back I would, but at the time, I was 5 and the temptation took a near-supernatural hold on me. Even now, I try to push my delete-memory button as I watch my cousin hanging precariously from the porch banister. I cry out to him, try to warn him of myself, who is moving across the width of the porch toward him. My cousin, so sadly trusting, pays me no attention. He reaches for the Matchbox car I had so wrecklessly flung off the porch and into the shrubs three feet below. Wishing not to pass up the opportunity, I go right to work peeling each of his fingers, one-by-one, from the banister. (You know, like how the cartoons do it. Except, he hung from a porch banister instead of the way-up-high I-beam of a skyscraper, or a cliff.) 

He looks up at me, startled, confused. E Tu Brute?  His irises are swallowed up by two black pools of pupil. I can almost see my cartoon grin in them. My cousin’s pleas for me to stop falls on deaf ears. I just finish working loose my cousin’s second to the last finger when I watch him roll off the porch side. His delicate blond hair disappear into the scratchy, tangled mess below. Tom & Jerry couldn’t have done it better. What a dreadful little boy I had become.

The results weren’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped. I felt stangely empty inside. It must have been my first taste of remorse. He did not briefly stand on mid-air with a funny face and wave to the camera before he fell, leaving a humorous, smoky plume behind. No, gravity did its job right away. And further to my dismay, he must have hit his knee on a stump or a root or something, because an ear-splitting cry immediately rose from his new hiding place. I thought for sure it was the end of him. So, I did what any normal kid that age would do and ran like heck. The rest of the day, I stayed inside grandma’s house, across the street, where I peeked through the window curtains. Any minute I expected to see my uncle’s furious face emerge from the front door of their house across the street. I dared not come out until my parents said it was time to leave. And then I lay low in the backseat until we were at least a mile outside of town.

“Just sleepy, mom.”

On a good note, my cousin must have made it out of the bushes okay, because no police ever showed up to arrest me. And besides that, many years later, I attended his wedding. Even better, there appeared to be no physical damage from his fall. I detected no limp, no new stutter in his speech.

Unfortunately, my cousin had to learn a hard lesson that day (and maybe I did too): people aren’t cartoons. Fact: this world is rough; people get hurt. That’s just the way it is, or at least until heaven comes to earth, and maybe then we can live like cartoons, never feeling pain or hurt. But for now…were stuck here, with frail bodies and the rest of the package deal that came with the Fall of man. 

Anyway, after that little experiment with my cousin, I vowed to never mix cartoon behavior with reality ever again. That is, if you don’t count the little trick I picked up from The Little Rascles that gray Sunday morning, when I socked my sister in the nose, but in a funny, little-rascal-sort-of-way. After the shrieking and crying died down, I decided the same goes for Buckwheat and reality. … Okay, I shouldn’t ever be allowed to watch TV again.  

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I opened the Sunday newspaper and about fell out of my chair. In frightening, 75 font-sized letters, ones typically saved for only the worst of catastrophes, such as, say, an underground volcano erupting in downtown Columbus, the headlines read the following: BLIZZARD OF 2008.      

I suddenly had the sense that I’d dodged an assasination attempt on my life, that I’d ignorantly settled down for a picnic inside a lion’s den, and, by sheer chance, escaped without a scratch. Here I’d spent the Blizzard of 2008 cracking jokes, deleting spam mail, asking what’s for dinner, treating it as any ordinary winter weekend, while nature, in all its wintry fury (sore, perhaps, over the imminent return of spring?), had declared war on the Midwest, threatening to bury our houses to the shingles, sealing us forever in a snowy tomb. I might as well have had an absent-minded tea party in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge.  ”Pass the crumpets, please.”

Oddly enough, however, a comparison to war may not be far off. Although at the time I stood oblivious to any hints of danger to myself, I did detect a potential threat to our squirrel-sized dog, Phoebe. To put it simply, the backyard is our dog’s latrine. The snow on the ground had already accumulated several inches, enough to bury Phoebe to the neck. This posed a problem, since her fur is the color of snow, and if we had tossed her outside, a snow drift may have swallowed her up, and we’d have to wait till spring, when all the snow melted, to find her again. 

Armed with only a shovel, I dug a WWII snow trench in our backyard. This was necessary to prevent Phoebe from using the bathroom inside the house. While I worked, Jess occupied the open backdoor, keeping an eye out for enemies and, most important, for any deserters, namely Phoebe, who stood trembling in the wake of the path I had just cleared. 

At first, the trench bore a hard line, stopping abruptly a few feet out from the house. But the dog took badly to its cramped design. She touched her snout to the snow and sniffed timidly. With a clump of white clinging to her charcoal-colored nose and with her tail tucked between her legs, she did an about-face and made for the warmth of the house. Deserter!

With perfect military execution, Jess placed herself in front of the doorway, ending Phoebe’s feeble escape attempt. It was back to her Arctic potty. Phoebe did the only thing she could do: she licked the air and turned to face the elements. Just then, an icy, Lake Eerie wind kicked up. Phoebe’s floppy ears smoothed neatly back to her skull. Her tiny, white head rounded into the circle of a cotton ball. Another blast of wind, and she made slits around her oil spot eyes. Her pink underside shook.

“Go potty, Phoebe,” I said. 

She was expected to “go potty” in this?

 To move things along, I improved the design of the trench. I ran the trench around the corner of the house, where I scooped out a small clearing, to give Phoebe more privacy and room to maneuver. It was still cramped quarters, though, but in the end, Phoebe squeezed in several tight circles and did her business.

“Good girl!” I said. Phoebe then scuttled back inside the house. 

Victory was ours. The battle was nature vs. nature (if you consider Phoebe, being of the animal kingdom and all, as nature), and Phoebe had fought a good fight. We laughed at her struggle, at her silly animal instincts. But little did we know the joke was on us, for we stood unknowingly in the midst of the Blizzard of 2008.  

Categories: About a dog, Nature
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