Disturbing Christmas Math

Yesterday, we finally nailed down (sorta) our Christmas Day plans. It would appear that we will be hosting Pam’s family here at our house. At this hour we still have not decided on a precise timeline for the meal, but the details that are clear present some troubling mathematics. There are three particular numbers that give me pause, 18, 7, and 3.

18. This represents the number of human beings that will be in my house for the day. Luckily for me, I love all of them. They are generally well-mannered, well-spoken, and they all bathe regularly. It will be as agreeable a group of family members to be trapped inside with for four-five hours that one could possibly ask for. 

7. This is the number of fully decorated and lit Christmas trees that will be competing for space with the aforementioned 18 humans. Long time readers of this space are familiar with my wife’s Christmas Tree obsession. They are all lovely, each with a different theme, each designed to make a different statement. They are placed strategically throughout the house in every available nook and cranny. All of this is well and good. Far be it from me to put a damper on my wife’s Christmas spirit. Heaven knows we need more, not less, of it...but our house is not what one would call, overly spacious. It has 2600 square feet, I’m told. Although if you subtract the space gobbled up by the 7 trees and the 18 humans, it feels much more like a 600 square foot bungalow. Which brings me to our third number...

3. This will be the number of Golden Retrievers that will competing with the 7 trees and 18 humans for floor space and attention on Christmas Day. Each of them are beautiful, adorable and loved by one and all. But each of them brings their own, er, uh...challenges.

Lucy, is the elder statesmen of the group, and if you can believe it, the most well-behaved and rational of the bunch. This picture was taken as I was having a talk with her, warning her about the coming chaos. I’m aware that this will be hard for many of you too believe, since her many neurosis are well known to readers of The Tempest. But, as crazy as it sounds, she will be the voice of reason in the dog hierarchy on Christmas Day. (God Help Us)

Jackson. Then there’s this guy, the Great White Dope, the galloping galoot, the 95 pound canine freight train. Jackie-Jack is the sweetest boy you’ve ever seen, but has never exactly played with a full deck, he’s not what you would call a Rhodes Scholar. He is covetous of our attention and thinks it his responsibility to warn all of us of every chirping bird, falling leaf, or odd cloud formation lurking outside with a full-throated bark. Most trips, Pam tapes paper on the windows on the sides of the front doors to block his view of the terrors outside, but this is only partially effective since Jackson has a vivid enough imagination that he doesn’t require visual evidence of his prey to belt out a warning bark. Also, Jackson can sometimes be jealous of the newest Pup in the family...

Frisco. The newest member of the family is this gorgeous good boy. Unfortunately, in keeping with family tradition, Frisco brings his own mental issues to the table. Of late he has discovered his reflection in his water bowl, which causes him a great deal of angst and produces much barking. Also, alert readers will notice that in this particular photograph, Frisco seems quite concerned about something, distraught, in fact. Yes, that would be his profound suspicions about his very first ever...Christmas tree. Obviously, this has the potential to be problematic when he gets to our house for the first time and is introduced to 7 of the monsters.

So, while each of these three numbers are perfectly fine in isolation, and although each of these three numbers are even desirable on their own, the pending combination of these three numbers has the potential for chaos. At the very least, this volatile combination of numbers could produce enough material for a month’s worth of blogposts. For that I suppose I should be grateful.

Pray for us.

Elf on the Shelf. Sigh...

Ok, I should probably begin this blog with a disclaimer, an airing of my biases on the matter of the plague that is presently sweeping the nation called...The Elf on the Shelf. Set aside for a moment the authoritarian, nanny state implications of a stuffed elf who spies on you 24/7. Set aside the entirely new edifice of parental lying that must be built to sustain the con. Set aside the therapy that your child will  no doubt need after waking up one morning to discover this...

Having said all of this, I must confess that I am so angry that this wasn’t a thing 25 years ago when I had two small pups in the house. I would have had a field day with this thing! I bring all of this up because I have a really crazy friend down in North Carolina who is rapidly becoming something of an Elf on the Shelf legend. For several years now, her co-workers at the North Carolina Department of Revenue have entered the building every day in December with fear and trembling, wondering where the little bastard is going to turn up...

See, this particular Elf on the Shelf doesn’t teach warm and fuzzy life lessons. He doesn’t promote good tidings of great joy. No, this Elf seems intent on violating all Ten Commandments, like the time he got caught hooking up...

Cross dressing, and public defecation...

But, this morning was perhaps his finest moment. Sure, I know what’s going on here. He probably set the whole thing up to gain public sympathy. He’s probably hoping that we will all be so worried about his well being that we will forget all the havoc he has spread for the past two years...

But, I have to hand it to him. This is epic!!!

Did I mention that my friend who is responsible for all of this works at the North Carolina Department of Revenue? Yeah, think about that for a minute, let that sink in...

An Afternoon at Hope Thrift

Today is the second Saturday of the month. That means it’s our day to work at Hope Thrift. Of course, not counting today, there are only 11 days until Christmas Day, making this particular Saturday the worst possible day to be spending half of it doing anything other than Christmas stuff. But, a deal is a deal. We committed to work at the store on the second Saturday of every month. Period. So off we go.

The people we volunteer with are great people. I divide them by whether or not they are front peeps or back room peeps. The difference is profound. My wife is definitely a front peep. You will find her behind the cash register with Lynn Hewette. Today they will both be decked out in some ridiculous looking Christmas getup, both looking adorable. That’s a key characteristic of front peeps, they tend to be  more—how shall I say?—aesthetically pleasing than we back room peeps. It’s not an intentional thing on the part of our managers, I’m sure. Robin, Renee, and Jennifer are all three wonderful folks and clearly in the front peeps camp. It’s just that if you spend enough time in the back room, or out at the dumpster, or unloading people’s cars for more than thirty minutes, you might have been a front peeps candidate when you arrived, but now you’re a back room peep all the way.

Usually on my shift I work with Christy and Brenda, two veterans of the back room. Christy can usually be found over at the toy counter, elbows deep in an assortment of puzzles, Power Rangers, and stuffed animals. Brenda is always tethered to the incoming clothes counter trying to decide if the mountains of clothes that get dumped at her feet every Saturday are suitable for resale or destined for the dumpster. She goes about this mundane task with what seems almost...pathological cheerfulness. When I arrive I am usually assigned book duty, that dreadful task of essentially throwing away 25 year old paperback classics like The Hardy Boys Meet Nancy Drew on Brokeback Mountain. Then there are always the hardback coffee table books which people have convinced themselves someone alive in 2019 would want to buy and place on their coffee tables. The 100 Best Selling Hats of 1957. The Encyclopedia of Cross-stitch. Everything You Need To Know About Origami. Once I manage to break away from that drudgery, I usually wind up at the dumpster taking out my frustrations by throwing glasses and plates. 

Eventually, I end up roaming around the place looking for Dave. He’s the main guy in charge of heavy lifting. He also knows where every single thing is, knows where everything goes, and knows all the lyrics to every 70’s and 80’s tune that plays over the sound system. In other words, he is clearly the most essential volunteer at Hope Thrift. Whenever I get stuck and yell out, “Dave, what band is this??”, Dave can be counted on to provide the answer, “Come on dude, that’s Cheap Trick from 1977.”

The best part of a day at the store is the end when the front door gets locked, all the customers are gone, and the manager on duty gathers all of the volunteers together for a quick prayer before we leave. When its Renee, she looks exhausted. That’s because she actually runs the store. She’s the first one there, the last to leave. When we all arrive in the circle she asks, “Alright, is this everyone? We lose anybody?” It’s not a rhetorical question. The pace of work at Hope Thrift can be frenetic to the point where the thought that someone might be passed out under a pile of cardboard boxes a real possibility! Once everyone is present and accounted for, someone leads us in prayer. We are thankful that we have this store. We are thankful that we get to work here. We are thankful that we get to serve in this ministry. If you’re reading this and a member of Hope, you should volunteer. You don’t know what you’re missing.

Waiting For a Reaction

My courageous friend had an excellent day yesterday. She went for her second to last chemo treatment and her platelet count had gone way up (a very good thing) and the attending physician said he couldn’t even feel the tumor. She was so excited and felt that rarest of emotions when battling cancer...encouraged. So to celebrate her good spirits I felt I really needed to up my Joke Game this morning. It helped that I woke up at 4:30 since that gave me extra time to search even the most remote and obscure corners of the inter-webs for material. Here’s what I found:

An old married couple are in church one Sunday… when the woman turns to her husband and says, “I’ve just let out a really long, silent fart. What should I do?”

Her husband turns to her and says, “replace the batteries in your hearing aid.”

 A wife sent her husband a romantic text message… She wrote: “If you are sleeping, send me your dreams. If you are laughing, send me your smile. If you are eating, send me a bite. If you are drinking, send me a sip. If you are crying, send me your tears. I love you.”

Her husband texted back: “I’m on the toilet. Please advise.”

What’s the difference between a Mercedes Benz and a porcupine?

The porcupine has pricks on the outside.

I posted them at precisely 5:27 am. Usually she’s already up by then. So far, there has been deathly silence. Either she is sound asleep or so overcome with delirious laughter she can’t steady herself enough to type. Of course, there is a third possibility. She may have read these three jokes and been so embarrassed and underwhelmed that she dozed back off again. Thus is the tenuous nature of comedy. So, here I sit waiting for her verdict. I’m thinking that the silent fart joke deserves at least one laughing face emoji, perhaps two. The romantic text from the toilet is golden so if it doesn’t get three laughing face emojis, I’m going to feel insulted. The Mercedes joke will probably get an eye roll emoji, but it was the weakest of the three. I can deal with that.

Sure, my friend is dealing with cancer. But this is no picnic for me either!!

My Wife

Someone posted this on my wife’s Facebook wall...

My wife responded thusly...

I disagree.  I believe that respect can be (and often is) separated from honor or admiration.  Sometimes we have to show respect to those we dislike, disagree with, or even have contempt for -- simply because they are in authority over us.  You don't have to like them, but you do have to show respect.  Of course, EARNED respect is a powerful thing, and we hope that those in leadership would show actions and character that will result in earning our further respect.  But that's not always the case, sadly. 

My wife is amazing.

A Day That Changed My Life

It was a cold, bright morning in December, 1979. I was running late for my exam in Dr. Bogel’s Modern Middle East class at the University of Richmond. That meant that I had gotten a late start on my 25 minute commute from Hanover County in my trusty 1968 VW bug, the one with over 200,000 miles and a couple of rusted-through holes in the floor board. That particular morning, I was putting the old girl through her paces, pushing the limits of German engineering. I had just made a sharp left turn into a neighborhood shortcut near the corner of Three Chopt and Patterson Avenue when I heard the disconcerting sound of a mechanical malfunction, then smoke and the distinct smell of burning oil. My commute had come to an emphatic end.

Since this was 1979, there was no cell phone handy. That meant that not only could I not take a picture of the trail of oil coming from beneath my dead car and publicly whine about it on Facebook, I also had to knock on somebody’s door at 8 in the morning to ask if I could use their phone. The only call I could think to make was to my friend David Axselle, who happened to be a mechanic. Even though this happened 40 years ago, I remember it like it was yesterday.

David took charge of my life. He could tell that I was quite distraught. In those days my life was like a treadmill. I was a full time college student, had a 30 hour a week warehouse job, and the racing around from those two commitments in a beat up Volkswagen was a blur. I lived on a shoestring of little sleep, little fun, and lots of work. So much for the alleged care free days of college. David picked up on the panic in my voice and took over...

“Ok kid, here’s what’s gonna happen. I’ll come tow your car in to the station. I’ll send someone over to take you to school so you can take that exam. When you’re done, call me and I’ll send someone over to pick you up. By the time you’re done, we’ll know what the problem is with the car.”

The entire time I’m taking Bogel’s exam, I’m thinking about the car and feeling sorry for myself. I looked around at the room full of rich punks from New Jersey and Connecticut, most of whom hadn’t done an honest day’s worth of work in their entire miserable lives, and felt nearly overcome with jealous rage, irrationally angry that my Dad was a small church pastor instead of a corporate executive. The resentment had been building up for most of my life and now, thanks to a blown engine, had reached it’s ugliest level.

When I walked in to Axselle’s Auto Service on Lakeside Avenue, I was about as down as I had ever been. David gave me the verdict.

Bad news, bud. You blew the engine. I can put a brand new engine in it for $700, but you could probably buy a decent used car for that much money. Another option is, I could get a rebuilt engine from a guy I know up in Ashland and put that in for you for around $400.

I said nothing as he talked. He might as well have said $4000. I just didn’t have the money for any kind of repair at that point in my life. Every nickel I made at my job went for gas, and the payment I was making to the bank every month for the loan I had to take out for my sophomore year to pay for tuition and books. Then David Axselle did something that I will never forget.

Listen Doug, here’s what you’re going to do. I’m gonna give you a loaner to drive for a couple of days while I rebuild this engine. I know you can’t afford to get this car fixed right now, but the way I see it, you don’t have a choice. So, I’m going to take care of this. One day when you’re all graduated and successful, you can do something nice for me. Now, get out of here so I can get to work. I’ll call when it’s ready.

It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that that conversation changed my life. I walked into David’s shop defeated and resentful. Then his act of kindness and generosity redeemed me. I was overwhelmed by it. Suddenly I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. In that moment I was able to let go of much of the resentment which had built up in my heart. Someone had believed in me, placed a bet on my future with his checkbook. But more importantly, David had provided me a real world illustration of what grace looks like. I had heard the term in church all of my life but seldom saw it in action. David had extended grace to me, giving me a glimpse of a different way to live life, one not consumed with merely making money, but sharing it with those in need. 

Here’s what has happened in the forty years since that day.

I now live across town from Axselle’s Auto Service. It’s a pain in the neck to haul my vehicles all the way from Short Pump. I drive past at least a dozen mechanics closer to home and cheaper than Axselle’s Auto. But, there’s not a chance in hades that I would ever allow anyone else to work on one of my cars. In 40 years, I have probably sent at least 40 people there via referral. So, I suppose David was right all those years ago. I did eventually do something nice for him. But, anyone who knows him knows that he didn’t pay for my car repair all those years ago for purposes of business promotion. He did it out of an abundance of generosity. David was and is the type of guy who knows how to take care of others. He understands the old proverb that To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required.

So, on this dreary December morning in 2019, let’s be on the lookout for a chance to bless someone else today. You never know when the smallest act of kindness might have the power to change someone’s life.

Taking Care of Each Other

Every year it happens. From Thanksgiving Day through Christmas I always become more aware of and sensitive to the vast chasm that exists between people. Many of us, blessed beyond measure, secure in our homes and fortunes, while others struggle to make ends meet, insecure and fearful of what the future will bring. Politicians and others eager to empower themselves seek to exploit this gap by pointing fingers of blame at a whole host of villains, none of which ever ends up being wrongheaded policies they themselves were responsible for. So, the gap between the rich and the poor becomes yet another fault line, another battle ground to divide us.

I know that this gap has always existed throughout all of human history. I also know that regardless of what attempts are made to correct the inequities that exist, our savior’s words are instructive...the poor you will always have among you. But, for some reason, I notice it more this time of year. The holidays can be the best of times for some while being the worst of times for others. Whichever station of life you happen to be in gets multiplied and underlined this time of the year, I suppose.

I happen to believe that the government has a big role to play in helping address the inequities of a modern society. There are many things that only government can do at the scale required. When I pay taxes, one of the things I am glad that those taxes pay for is assistance to the less fortunate. But, like Ebenezer Scrooge in a Christmas Carol, it’s tempting to say, “Are there not poor houses?” One disadvantage of living in a country with such a large and generous safety net is the complacency that it brings in our hearts. When we outsource the care of the poor to the government it can dull our own sense of responsibility. 

Of course, there are many exceptions to this. The United Way, The Red Cross, The Salvation Army, and many other organizations do outstanding work. My church and thousands of others give to food banks and benevolent societies that care for thousands of people. This is all good and proper. So, why this time of year do I still feel inadequate? Part of my problem stems from the fact that it has always been a profound mystery why God chose to bless me with success while many of my colleagues, smarter and better looking than me, have struggled? There must be a reason. It can’t just be so I can buy more stuff. 

So, lately I have been obsessed with the simple notion that we need to do a better job of taking care of each other. I’m not talking about  some grand new government program. I am mostly powerless to do anything about systemic poverty. What I’m talking about are the people right here in our neighborhoods, the people all around us at the mall, the gym, at work, and at restaurants. The people who deliver our packages, do our dry cleaning, bag our groceries, bus our tables. The folks who pick up our garbage, work on our cars, stock the shelves at our stores. What can I do to be a blessing to the people right here in Short Pump, up in Ashland, out in Mechanicsville?

To that end I’ve been thinking about something my wife showed me a while back about a restaurant in South Carolina and another in Maine who both came up with a pay it forward option for their customers. At the cash register of these restaurants there were these coupons posted all around, each worth a designated amount of money, $5, $10 and $20. They were paid for by previous customers and available to anyone who needed them to pay for their meals. One restaurant had a sign saying that his cash register was an official NO JUDGEMENT zone. If you needed to use a coupon, no questions would be asked. I haven’t been able to get this idea out of my mind. How cool would it be for a local restaurant in Short Pump to do this? Many of us could add 10 bucks to our bill to fund a coupon every time we eat out. If I understand the way life works, I imagine that at some point the same people who had to use the coupons would eventually be the ones funding the coupons.

I know that there are many business owners who do this same thing in a less obvious way and God Bless them. But wouldn’t you love to go to a restaurant that allowed you to help take care of your fellow man this easily? I know I would.

Now, I’m sure there are details about this sort of thing that would have to be considered. Where there is charity there is always abuse. But, I think that we can figure out how to make it work if we really wanted to. There should be no excuse for anyone to go hungry in the United States of America, especially at Christmas. All of us need to commit ourselves to doing a better job of taking care of each other.

If there are any restaurant owners reading this blog, I ask you to consider this coupon thing. If you do, tell me about it and I will give you free advertising in this space and I guarantee you I will become a regular at you place.

God Bless.