Self-Perception

There are times when we think we earn far below our proper wage grade.

There are times when we think our good looks are undervalued.

There are times when we think we are God’s gift to the world.

Then we view the image in the mirror, and once again, all becomes real.

And we are reminded that those who love us give us more value than we could deserve.

Gargoyle Sleep

In mid-sleep, the thoughts come.

At 2:50 AM, the restless, sleep-grabbing thoughts are insoluble and germinate as quickly as the toxic toadstools growing in the gloom outside our window. We are reminded that we made a mistake. A big mistake. And at this time of night, any mistake will do. Make that plural. Mistakes.

We are beyond help. Solutions simply seem out of grasp. Our consciences are not feeling good right now. Guilt grips us. We screwed up.

The dizzying roller-coaster thoughts grow and intensify. There’s no way to get off.

The thoughts remain in the dark, haunting us like winged gargoyle carvings, and sleep escapes.

By 5 AM wakeup time, we are mentally, physically and spiritually exhausted. The experience threatens to stay with us.

Reason returns by daylight, or at least it’s supposed to. But sometimes kindred crazy thoughts plague us again the next night. And the next night, and they seem just as real.

But we don’t deserve this. Although it all seems so real, this is not ultimate reality.

Ultimately reality is best viewed looking down, rather than from the bottom up. Cynical thoughts lose out to what the Almighty thinks of a life lived in his presence:

You are loved and cherished.

You have nothing to fear.

There is nothing you can do wrong.*

(A quote from a neuroscientist who returned to life after visiting heaven, his brain having ceased all cognizant functioning.)

I Choose the Servers

At our favorite once-a-week local eatery (not the one pictured above), we are known as “The Couple.” We huddle down into familiar chairs and pretend to have never seen the menu before. After much unnecessary deliberation, we order the same thing we ordered last week, and the week before. No matter. We will analyze the meal as if it were a brand new experience.

The servers all know us by name, as we also know them by name. It’s our version of the TV show, Cheers. While we may remain lost in our own world of conversation, we are also welcomed to swap stories with them, earning a way into their lives. Nobody is trying to impress anybody. There is little groundbreaking about it. It’s a comfortable weekly tradition. That’s why it is so welcoming. As we leave, I wish a good evening to our fellow diner who always protects the same seat in the same corner so that he can read his books.

It’s a sharp contrast to listening to the speaker whom I recently heard. His message was advertised as an event that would change our lives. As he warmed us up to his polished discourse, he reminded us of his extensive education. All along the way of his crafted speech, he gradually led us further into his grasp, as “we”–those of us who were savvy enough to catch his clever quips–were gradually separated from “them”–the unlucky non-hipster dolts who didn’t get, or didn’t appreciate, the inside jokes and insinuations. Given time, we were all expected to be a part of the “in” crowd, affirming his perspectives and humor with our approving laughter. In time, we would all endorse him.

Winston Churchill could pull this off. But lesser talents should beware. The risk is being written off as an insincere huckster, peddling a self-aggrandizing bill of goods.

At the end of his delivery, I tried hard to recall the good points that the speaker made, but I labored to embrace them. The process was neither enjoyable nor affirming.

At the end of this travail, I looked forward to Friday night, and to the friendly faces of those who expect me not to validate them for their talents and insights, but instead welcome me as their friend and equal. 

Every Thought Captive

The preacher suggested to “take every thought captive.” That is, errant thoughts have no place in our lives. Get rid of them.

Unfortunately, those unwelcome thoughts, over time, can become institutionalized as we spend years trying to uproot them.

So, what to do?

This business of taking every wayward, niggling thought captive is a tough nut to crack.

To capture an elephant or another large wild beast, one might dig a hidden pit covered with branches.

To capture a bee or wasp, one might place a pheromone-attracting substance in an inescapable test tube.

A fly just landed–

One of my best friends will have double knee replacement surgery in three days. In addition, he has a heart condition that compromises his situation. He is not himself since he is highly medicated for pain.

He was frustrated at his current condition. He explained, “You’re used to being who you are. All of a sudden, you’re not who you are.”

The fly had landed–it was a difficult thought that landed.

So–how to take this thought captive? Or is it errant at all?

And how to trap–and dispel–the next errant thought?

Ikea Conundrum

Of all the possible ways there might be to build a piece of Ikea furniture, there is only one correct way. Like pockmarked two-lane blacktop, there are plenty of demoralizing instruction-reading and brain-teasing, spatially-challenging pitfalls on the path to discover that One Correct Way.

I judge the quality of the assembly job by how many parts are left over afterwards. Each piece of Ikea hardware is inevitably an exotic, one-of-a-kind design, fasteners otherwise appearing only on a Mars lunar rover.

This time there was one ungainly fastener with a screw head, a swiveling joint in the middle, ending with a bulbous protrusion that looked like a spare part from a Triceratops. So whatever would I do with this extra shoulder-bolt-screw-on-adapter thing? Humph! I wondered how much of my money they had wasted by mistakenly enclosing this surplus part in my furniture kit!

Then it dawned on me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have had this shoulder-bolt-screw-on-adapter left over! Maybe this was a vital part that I should have installed in my prized construction—had I suffered a concentration lapse and lost my way through the instructional pictographs? I feared this piece of dinosauric-appearing hardware—now missing from my construction—might render my piece of furniture too dangerous to use, an oversight that might cause a painful finger pinch or even a fatal collapse upon a favorite family pet!

Search as I might through the booklet of instructions, there was no hope of finding where the missing part belonged.

And there was no doubt what had to be done.

Retrieving a generous length of rope from the garage, I lashed my assembled furniture with the cord, first lengthwise, then sideways, then diagonally. I yanked and knotted the rope tight so there was no possibility that the omission of the missing part could cause bodily harm.

As I lashed down the final ungainly cord while on my belly beneath the chest of drawers, I noticed a hole. It was a hole designed to perfectly fit the missing shoulder-bolt-screw-on-adapter, which now lay uselessly upon the assembly instructions. The blood drained first from my head, then from my limbs. I would have to disassemble the entire piece of furniture to insert the missing part.

There was no way I would do that.

Upon returning the still rope-trussed furniture to Ikea the next day, the salesperson asked for the reason for its return.

“Defective,” I answered in a word.

“I’m sorry,” the salesperson responded, thinking I was referring to the furniture.

“Defective,” I repeated, not bothering to tell her that I was referring not to the furniture.

Instead, I was referring to myself.

Nano-World

Edgar blamed a faulty alarm clock for oversleeping, causing him to miss his usual train. He would have to wait a full 20 seconds for the next train to arrive. It was a waste of his precious time, something that would surely be noticed by his boss. He valued his job because in this economy, not everyone enjoyed the privilege of working a whole ten-minute workday. He had come to enjoy his position as a dirt inspector, a highly respected vocation in the world of wheelbarrows, where subterranean housing is the construction de rigueur. He was proud that even though he was only nine months old, he had already worked at the job for four months, nearly half his life.

Life in wheelbarrow Nano-World, where everything—including time—is measured in 1:48 “O” model railroad scale, had not always been rosy for Edgar. Born into the low-rent Wheelbarrow Handle District, he had moved through the ranks of the working class to the much smoother-riding Rubber Wheel District.

At the “O” Scale Wheelbarrow Universe Fair (OSWUF), wheelbarrows from far-flung regions convene for their annual pilgrimage. Wheelbarrow communities tie up alongside one another, throwing up temporary bridges, and the seven-hour long party begins, the full vacation time allotted to a wheelbarrow citizen. A gigantic wheelbarrow is at the center, where the two top contending wheelbarrow football teams may compete for as long as a mind-boggling 4 minutes to win Wheelbarrowland’s championship.

“O” scale wheelbarrow communities have, by necessity, restricted populations, so it’s hard to find a mate if the girl next door doesn’t strike one’s fancy. It’s not surprising that at the championship football game, a roasted corn vendor named Rosabelle caught Edgar’s eye. Time and again Edgar purchased the butter-slathered corn, tipping her generously until he ran out of cash. It was she that, at game’s end, his belly aching from too much roasted corn, helped him home to his own wheelbarrow. Before the OSWUF concluded, she had rented a spare bedroom in Edgar’s wheelbarrow from a neighbor, and the rest, as they say, is wheelbarrow history. After patiently courting her for nearly 8 days, they married. Two children had followed (one of them born prematurely, a mere five day pregnancy), requiring him to add bedrooms to his second basement subterranean dwelling.

“O” scale wheelbarrow dwellers are different people from you and me, but they are not stupid people. Edgar’s job as a professional dirt inspector provides him time to contemplate the world beyond his wheelbarrow, the Standard Time World that houses you and me. To Edgar, it’s a slow motion world, where all moves at a snail’s pace.

Life in the Standard Time World defies reason. In the Standard Time World, Edgar struggles to fathom that his current lifespan of 1-½ years would be stretched to 48 times that length—perhaps as many as a mind-boggling 80 years in Standard Time World!

With this much Methuselah-scale time on their hands, he reckons Standard Time World dwellers could do so much more with it. Why would Standard Time World residents conceive of ever more ways to waste their precious time with trivialities, warfare and petty selfish indulgences?

A devout worshiper, Edgar turns his voice to God. “The gift of time,” he says, as he utters his evening prayers, “is one of the greatest gifts of all. Help me to value the months, the hours and the minutes; I am grateful for the 18 months of life that You may give me. Help me to use my moments well.”

“And, Lord,” he adds, “help the Standard Time World dwellers to use theirs well, too.”

Overkill

The black-shirted salespeople crowding the T-Mobile telephone’s display floor at this year’s county fair resembled a flock of hungry crows. They had descended to hunt for the morsels that would make their day—fresh customers to purchase profitable cell phone contracts. The trouble was that there were no customers to be found. Either this busy team of sales crows had already choked out demand by peddling their wares to every passerby, or, like nervous insects, the customer population had fled the area, taking flight before a predator.

I’d put money on the latter scenario. Likewise, I won’t buy a redundant, overhyped electronic gizmo.

My life suffers from simpler needs. I crave low-tech solutions to low-tech problems.

Case in point–bathroom odors. I’m tired of pinching out candles that were lit by a previous toilet occupier. The candle flames may have been burning for hours, threatening to melt counter tops and depleting oxygen supplies to a prized co-inhabiting African Grey Parrot.

Dangerous stuff. I need Febreze, the safe and pleasantly-scented odor-killing product.

When it was first introduced to the public, the odor-eliminating product Febreze was a sales flop. It certainly did its job, however. Tests proved that it wiped out unpleasant odors unlike any other product. However, it was a difficult sell because the people who needed it most weren’t interested. They had become so acclimated to the stinky smells embedded in their carpet by incontinent pets that they sensed no objectionable odors. Why would they need an odor killer?

The customers who did decide to try Febreze didn’t realize how effective it was. It destroyed odors so completely they thought the product had done nothing at all. It left no smell behind. There was no smell at all. (There was also no residue and no potential lethal house-burning-down candle flame.)

So what allowed Febreze to eventually succeed? The future of Febreze turned on one small change in the product’s formula. They added a fragrance that the human nose could detect, so that, after using Febreze, whether upon nasty pet carpet or pleasant-enough households, things smelled fresh. Never mind that the added fresh-smelling fragrance held no other functional purpose than to mark its presence.

People sensed it was doing something because it now left an irresistibly beautiful scent behind. Things smelled clean, so the product must be effective.

I, too, have become a convert, so I’ll buy a case of Febreze. I’ll put a can in every bathroom and two spare cans beneath each sink. I’ll put one in the car and in my shoe closet, just for good measure.

At next year’s county fair, I’ll square off by inhabiting a booth perched directly across from T-Mobile’s techno-cornucopia. My humble crew of three will be-shirt ourselves with lavender, blue and pink t-shirts with the word Febreze in-scripted across the front. We’ll challenge one of the top carriers in the telecommunications industry with hope instead of pandering to redundant and ubiquitous telecommunications technology.

There’s hope for our bathrooms. There’s hope for our odors.

There’s hope to change the most banal of life’s daily needs, transforming befouled air by converting it into odor-obliterated, fresh-scented freely-breathable air.

Right now, I need that more than another fancy, feature-driven piece of technology. 

Ahhhh. Can’t you just not smell it?

Disappearing Armstrongs

It was a bad week for two famous Armstrongs.

First, seven-time Tour de France victor Lance Armstrong abandoned his quest to clear his name of drug doping charges. For many, this signaled a guilty plea as the capstone to his multi-year efforts to redeem himself in the bicycle sports arena.

A few days later, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died following heart surgery. Each time we view that 1969 grainy black and white video clip of his first step on the moon, we pause to consider his courage. And, for many, this humble astronaut’s passing seals his noble legacy.

Two stories of life’s fame and fortune, walked out in very different ways.

At the One Stop Shop for Fame and Fortune, a waiting line encircles the block. Fame and fortune is what we think we want. Come and get it!

Aisle One is the widest and most traveled, where laurels are reserved for sports achievements, a dizzying aisle plumped with the most popular—and obscure—awards available to claim. Of course, there are home run records, and most soccer goals scored. Looking for more exotic fame? Help yourself to an ice bowling (yes, there really is such a thing) or Frisbee golf championship or two. On the cycling shelf, I notice a freshly stocked area listing available records under Tour de France, apparently recently vacated of Lance Armstrong archives.

Successive aisles proffer fame and fortune in order of diminishing popularity…famous clothing designers, lawyers who have made fortunes, bank robbers who have stolen fortunes, fertilization-specializing veterinarians….

Let’s see…how do I want to gain my own personalized fame and fortune? What should I pick?

My curiosity drives me to explore the last aisle in the store. Down the damp and darkening shelves, I pass into the bowels of the most unpopular fame and fortune categories: plumbing, bomb shelter design, trash and refuse collection, whoopee cushion manufacturing. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not for me, thanks!

Ah, finally! Here it is—the very least popular way to gain fame and fortune. I’m at the very end of the very last aisle. Not much traffic down here. The lonely previous visitor here was probably disoriented, looking for the restroom.

I find the final forlorn shelf—and it’s empty. Above it is a tattered, fading label, which, under the gathering dust reads: “Good Neighbor.” The space is reserved but unstocked. There are apparently no takers—it’s tough to gain fame and fortune at the gig of good-neighborliness. It’s just a shelf, an empty shelf with a note scrawled in fading red ink: “Tried that. Didn’t work out.”

Armstrong want-to-be’s, step right up. Come on in from the cold and take your pick. Come on in to the One Stop Shop for Fame and Fortune.

Remember, there are plenty of choices available on Aisle One, on the shelf marked Cycling: Tour de France.

Fame and fortune are awaiting.

But take care in making your choice.

A Tilling Experience

Saturday dawned, but I slept in. The weekend had arrived. I could handle life’s demands at my leisure.

Until I recalled that today was the day to create the new, long-promised flower bed. Ugh.

Never mind. By mid-morning I trudged out, armed with my blunt shovel, and started digging up rocks–lots of them–as I created a trench outline of the bed.

At well over 100 degrees, it was one of the steamiest days of the year. Within the hour, I hoisted the unmanly white flag of surrender. I was off to Home Depot to rent a gas-powered dirt tiller.

I narrowed down which tiller I needed: gargantuan, giant, or medium. Intimidated, I asked for something still smaller. I had to settle for the scary, medium-sized beast, the smallest that they had. Getting the thing into my car was no picnic. We dismantled the handle bar and gently hoisted it inside, being careful to place the sharp tines on a thick book of maps to keep the leather upholstery from being pierced.

Once home, I constructed a ramp of two 2 by 4s, upon which I gingerly placed the sole wheel, intending to guide the thing backwards down the ramp. The boards immediately parted, leaving me to precariously balance the heavy and awkward contraption on a four-inch wide plank at a 45 degree downward angle. The disconnected handle protruded toward my chest like the horns of an angry bull. The sharply-honed tines, intended to turn earth into shreds, hovered menacingly near my loins. One unfortunate lurch and I knew I could be singing soprano.

A lifetime can seem to pass in the course of one day. In the case of a groin gore, I was glad to already have family firmly in place. In the case that I should collapse and meet Jesus in the sweltering heat, I was pretty sure that heaven was climate-controlled. Besides, we don’t have enough put away for retirement, so I would permanently escape that spreadsheet diorama that wallpapers my office.

“Seven hours and 32 minutes,” came the report when eventually I returned the tiller to the dude at Home Depot. I was filthy from digging dirt, and I wanted my heroic efforts to be noted by everyone at the macho Home Depot store–wow, what a man.

Mr. Home Depot Rental Check-In Man congratulated me. “Good thing you chose the 24-hour instead of the four-hour rental rate!” He crowed, as though he possessed supernatural insight.

Yeah. Just think. If I had gotten my money’s worth and kept the tiller 24-hours, I could have tilled up all three bedrooms and the neighbor’s dog run.

And by then, I would definitely have met up with Jesus.