Christmas Parties

My church operates a thrift store called, unimaginatively, Hope Thrift. It’s a pretty big deal that generates a lot of money every year, the majority of which gets channeled back into the community. It’s a wonderful ministry which does an awful lot of good, but like any successful ministry requires a ton of volunteers. In the case of the store, over 150 volunteers are needed every year to make it all work. Last night, Pam and I attended a Christmas party given for those volunteers at a large and lovely home in Barrington. Today, we have the 1:00 to 5:30 shift at the store.

So, I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas parties, all large social gatherings, really. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them. I had a nice time last night. It’s just that my particular set of neurosis are ill-suited to affairs that sandwich 100 human beings into the confined spaces of even the most expansive west end estate. Last night there had to be at least 100 people...and five rooms in play, six if you count the large foyer out front. It should be pointed out that of this house full of people, I actually knew maybe a dozen of them. My strategy...and yes, one must have a strategy at these things...was very simple—stay on the move. I quickly acquainted myself with each of the five available rooms, making note of the ideal escape routes for each. I planned on constantly flowing from one room to the next, trying not to get pinned down in any one place too long. The secret is short, friendly conversations...Hey, how are ya? Nice to meet ya. How ‘bout that crab dip, huh? So, what do you do at the store? Excuse me, I think my wife wants me for something.

That last part isn’t true. I know exactly where my wife is, and she doesn’t want me for anything. She has parked herself somewhere with a couple of people she knows and they are talking about God knows what. If she had her way, the three of them could very well stay in that one spot for an hour or more. She is a marvel of patience and fortitude. As I pass through her room I glance over at her. She doesn’t see me, she’s smiling and laughing at something, looking like a movie star. Meanwhile, I have shaken the hands of a couple of dozen strangers, a bunch of nice people. This morning I can’t recall a single name, despite the fact that everyone was wearing a name tag...Bob, Barb, Brooke, Beth, Bill...it’s all a blur, but I will remember every face.

I did have some things going for me though. Whenever I mentioned to anyone that the store manager, Renee, was in my small group, immediately I became special! Renee is awesome, they would reply...the store would fall apart without her. Some people would ask me if I worked at the store, they didn’t remember seeing me there. That’s probably because I have only been there four times. Then I would explain that I was Pam Dunnevant’s husband. Wait,...they would light up...Isn’t she the pretty blond that works the cash register? Without fail, she was always referred to in those terms! As soon as it was discovered that I was with...her...then, bam!!! I was in! Behold the power of my wife’s kind heart and blond hair.

After two hours and roughly thirty laps it was time to go. I found her talking with a couple of ladies in the kitchen. We made eye contact and I mouthed the words, time to go. She nodded, and fifteen minutes later we were on the way home. If the two of us had been wearing Fitbits, my wife’s would be suggesting that she get moving at some point, since she had been largely sedentary for the past two hours. Mine would be congratulating me for completing my 5k.

But, we work together, Pam and me. It’s a great mystery.

Big Picture vs. Details

December 7th. 77th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. 94th anniversary of my father’s birth. And, the staggering realization that there are only 18 days until Christmas.

Yes, it’s about this time every year where the enormity of the task of Christmas hits you. Now, before my wife reads this and spits out her coffee in apoplectic rage with...WHAT?? You think YOU have a task of Christmas? I’m the one who does all the work!! Ok. Yes...that is true. Maybe not all the work. Sure, she’s the one who decorates the house, buys 90% of the gifts, plans the meals, sweats every detail concerning family obligations, prepares the house for the arrival of our children and their pets, and does all the cooking....but, it’s not like I don’t do anything. I will buy her presents. I will eventually put the lights up outside. In addition, it is no small detail that I will be paying for all of this Christmasing. I mean...that’s something, right? Oh..and I will clean the house and clean up the dishes and kitchen after each meal. So, I’ve got that going for me.

But, basically...in the Dunnevant house, all of the Christmas details and logistics are sweated over by my wife, which makes it much harder on her than it is on me. Why is that? Why is it that the details of anything never enter my head? For me everything is big picture. When I think about Christmas I think...buy gifts, wrap gifts, kids home, wear ugly sweater, drink hot cocoa, open presents, clean up. In other words, I think of what happens as a result of someone’s meticulous planning and attention to detail. That someone being my wife.

Even though I know that this failure of mine to appreciate details is a flaw, there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it. Try as I might, I have never been able to think like she does. Even in my profession, I have had to hire others to handle the detail stuff. It’s why I haven’t filled out a tax return since 1987. I take one look at the tax forms and my eyes glaze over and I get sick on to my stomach. What I think is...I made money. I must pay taxes. I will hire accountant to tell me how much. 

Thankfully, I don’t run the world. 

My Neighbor

I live on a cul de sac in a nice neighborhood in Short Pump. We had our house built 21 years ago and are the only people ever to live here. There have been a series of neighbors to our left and right. Almost all of them have been nice. When we moved here Pam and I had an eight year old and a ten year old. It seems like an eternity ago...and just last week. So, although we have gotten older, our neighbors keep getting younger. Which brings me to something incredible that happened yesterday evening.

About a month ago, we returned home one day and discovered that someone had gotten all of the leaves up from our front yard. I remember thinking, what the heck? I could have sworn there were leaves in our yard this morning! After some detective work I discovered that my neighbor had borrowed one of those high powered industrial strength power blowers from one of his job sites and had gotten carried away with the thing and went ahead and did my front yard after he finished his own. I thanked him and made some crack about helping an old man out.

Well, yesterday afternoon late I heard the sound of another high powered leaf blower out front. I looked out the window and there he was again making short work of my very leafy front yard. He informs me that he had decided to buy his own industrial leaf blower and was trying it out. I thanked him awkwardly...it’s a strange feeling to watch another man doing my job! I said something about owing him big time and he replied...No man...you guys have had to put up with a lot with our kids, so...

My neighbor is a young man with a beautiful wife and three adorable stair step kids, a boy and two little girls. The boy is in elementary school. They have their hands full with three little ones. When our kids were their ages, Pam and I were always exhausted. I remember very well the hectic pace, the chaos of getting them ready for school every morning, the scheduling logistics of getting them to and from all of their extra curricular activities, breaking up fights, etc...it was thrilling madness. When I watch them interacting with their kids it takes me back in time..And makes me smile. What my neighbor doesn’t understand is...it’s not something we have had to put up with, I actually enjoy it. I love seeing their kids playing in the cul de sac. I see them in the back yard with their toys all over the place, hear them carrying on, and it never fails to warm my heart. Their kids are beautiful...and a mess. Exactly how our kids used to be.

I have never understood the concept of the retirement community. That’s where older people all want to go once they retire so they can be around other people their own age. I can’t think of anything more horrifying than living cloistered in close contact with nothing but...old people. No way. Put me on a cul de sac with young families with loud kids any day. Especially if the parents are as kind and considerate as my neighbors.

But seriously...I owe him big time.

Christmas Ornaments

Well...our new Mexican/Chinese Christmas tree is up. This past Saturday, my wife was a tree-trimming beast, setting up and putting lights on seven trees, and fully decking out three of the seven with ornamental finery. The one above is our family tree, the one under which Santa will unload our largesse. Perhaps I am assuming too much with that last sentence, since the issue of whether or not all six of us made it onto the NICE list is unknown at this hour. Actually, the wife and kids are shoe-ins. As always, my status will be a game time decision.

This year’s tree has 1,000 lights and over 125 ornaments, each of which tells a story of our family history. I assume this is true for every family tree in every home. You go somewhere cool for vacation or a weekend getaway and the first thing you do is buy a Christmas ornament to commemorate the experience. Big events like the birth of children and weddings have their own ornament, etc.. There’s one that we bought on our Honeymoon, one we bought that time we all got in our jammies on Christmas Eve and drove into town for Krispi Kreme doughnuts...it has a hot now light that flashes!

And, of course, our tree is chocked full of Maine-themed ornaments...

No Dunnevant Christmas tree would be complete without dog ornaments. We have three, one for each of the golden retrievers we have had...

It has been said by someone...maybe me...that you can tell what a man values most by what he would run into his burning house to save. Would he risk his life for a file full of stock certificates? That stash of emergency hundred dollar bills in the shoe box? I don’t know. Luckily I’ve never had a house burn down before. But, something tells me if it ever did happen...I would make a mad dash for the box of Christmas ornaments in our clothes closet upstairs.

Wouldn’t you?

Why is College Football More Fun Than the NFL?

I happened to post an observation about the differences between college and professional football on Facebook the other day...to wit, that college football is immeasurably more entertaining than the professional game. An enthusiastic and regular reader of The Tempest actually challenged me to write a blog attempting to answer the question...why? I know this reader very well and he apparently knows me very well since he knew that by so publically challenging me he was guaranteeing a response. 

I should first point out that I don’t really care enough about professional football to write persuasively about it, having lost interest in the NFL several years back. But, I still love the college game, especially Alabama...roll tide. I mean, it’s not baseball...but I suppose college football is my second favorite sport. However, I think I can answer the why question by using baseball as an example.

I LOVE Major League Baseball. But, I have many times in this space taken my favorite sport to task for its short comings. However, the most enjoyable baseball to watch occurs in the low minor leagues. Why is this? Single A and Double A teams are filled with 19-22 year olds who either don’t have the skills to make it to the bigs, or their skills require more work. So, the quality of the baseball you see on the field doesn’t even compare to the major league product. That being the case, why is it more fun to watch? Here’s why...

Everybody hustles. Everyone busts their butts running down to first base. They sprint from the dugout to their places in the field. Hell, even the pitching coaches run out to settle their pitchers down. Speaking of pitchers, they don’t take forever shaking off their catchers. You know why? Because they are on a pitch clock and if they don’t throw it fifteen seconds after they get it back from the catcher, they get penalized. Oh, and the batters aren’t allowed to take a thirty second stroll after each pitch, and unlike their big league counterparts, they consider their first job to be swinging at anything that looks close. As a consequence, minor league games are over with in a couple of hours! Another thing, the enthusiasm level of these kids is off the charts. It’s always more fun to watch people doing what they love...especially when you know most of the guys are getting paid 30 grand plus a $30 per diem for food! 

By the time players are good enough to get to the bigs most are making 3-4 million a year...even utility players. Stars get paid 15-20 million a year. With all that money comes fame, ego and entitlement to all but a few rare exceptions that never lose their love and passion for the game. This, we are treated to the spectacle of the 20 million dollar super star, Manny Machado loafing to first base during the World Series.

The Why of the college vs. pro argument in football is much the same. College players aren’t as talented as professionals. The vast majority of college players will never play a single snap in the NFL, so everyone of them knows that every game might be their last...and they play like it! Unlike the pro game where players are traded left and right and sometimes end up playing for four or five teams during their careers, college players play for their school. There’s the old fashioned notion of “team spirit”. Rivalries are real and ancient. The intensity of the competition is palpable. Plus...they are technically...amateurs. Except for their scholarships, these guys aren’t paid. (Yes, yes...I know all about crooked and slimy boosters). All of this results in two completely different games. College football is to pro football what a frat party is to a fund raising mixer for a Republican candidate at the Ruritan Club.

So, in summary, the common denominator in both the football and baseball examples above is?? Large and obscene amounts of MONEY paid to athletes which transforms too many of them into entitled, arrogant slackers who can’t be bothered to hustle.

Any questions?

George H.W. Bush...and my Dad

When I heard the news yesterday of the passing of George H.W. Bush, I didn’t think of politics. I didn’t recall his Presidency at all. I thought of my Dad.

They were the same age. They both served their country in the Pacific theatre in WWII at a very young age, both in the Navy. They both fathered sons and daughters who loved them dearly. And towards the ends of their lives, they suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Everytime I saw a photograph of the former president he reminded me of my father. They even began to favor each other, the way they held their mouth, the way they smiled.

Of course, aside from these similarities, there was a wide gulf between the two. While George H.W. Bush was born into great wealth, my Dad was born into rural poverty. Instead of prep school, it was back breaking farm work for my Dad. While Mr. Bush was making his fortune in the West Texas oil fields, my Dad was loading trucks on the midnight shift on a dock in New Orleans as a Teamster, trying to put food on the table for his four children while a full time student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Still, I have always connected these two men in my mind. They both had a great internal reservoir of dignity and class. They both possessed an abiding sense of duty to serve. It’s what drove them both to defy their fathers and enlist in the military at 18 the day after Pearl Harbor. It was and is difficult to find one of their contemporaries who had a bad thing to say about either of them. They were real men in an age where it is getting more difficult to find them.

Rest In Peace, George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President of these United States.

Rest In Peace, Emmett Douglas Dunnevant, Dad, Grandfather, greatest man I’ve ever known.

Enthusiasm Deficit

We have a bit of a Christmas problem here at the Dunnevant house. That Chinese/Mexican tree Pam bought several days ago? It’s still in the box, and the box is still in my living room...taunting me.

There it is. We both have spent the last four days walking around the thing, never speaking of it, as if it’s invisible. Buddy the Elf would be appalled at our lack of Christmas spirit. I hear that Friday evening is supposed to be a miserably rainy affair. We have tentatively agreed that this might be a good night to open the box.

It’s funny how the entire Christmas enterprise changes once the nest empties. The urgency has completely disappeared. It has taken us a week to get the candles in the windows...and even that has been an ordeal. Last year we spent the money on those fancy candles that come on and turn off at pre-set times, only to discover this year that half of them no longer work! And, of course, no stores within a hundred square miles of our house have any in stock. So, Pam ordered replacements online someplace and had them shipped in. Now there are two candles that can’t seem to get with the program, refusing to turn on and off with the rest of their breathren, frustrating my wife to no end. Just what we need...a couple of renegade, malcontented Christmas candles.

Automatic Timer, it claims...right on the box...8 hours on/16 hours off, it promises. But, then I notice on the back of the box down at the bottom those three ominous words...

Made in China. Where are tariffs when you need them? Wait...what’s this Choking Hazard business? How can a seven inch long plastic object with a four foot long electric chord be a choking hazard? I mean, I get the-This is not a toy thing- but, choking hazard?? Maybe if you’re like a giraffe or an elephant...but how could a child possibly choke to death on a Christmas candle? Now, I can see a kid electrocuting himself maybe. My son, back in the day, happened to unscrew the bulb on one of theses things one year when we weren’t looking (which, around Christmas was all of the time!). The next thing we know, he sticks his finger down in the place where the bulb used to be, and discovered the awesome power of electricity for the first time. He walks into the kitchen with his little blackened fingertip in the air and said...Christmiss candle hurt you!! That’s back when Christmas was fun! Good times...