"Eye Witness to History" -- "It just happens"

I stayed home from school that day, convincing my mother that I was sick. My only memory of the day is walking across the street with my mother to Mrs. Dugas' house; and when we walked in her front door (nobody knocked; you just walked in), she told my mother, "Sha, they shot him."

Baby Boomers have been faulted by those younger, those who collectively and exasperatedly have said, "We don't care where you were when Kennedy was shot." I was 8 years old and happy to be out of school, so when I'm asked, I don't have an expanded story of tragedy and shock that many of my peers can share from November 22, 1963.

Earlier this week, my wife, younger daughter and I drove to the University of North Texas to see the video "Eye Witness to History," produced by the Dallas Morning News and journalist Hugh Aynesworth, and to hear Aynesworth's follow-up commentary.

During the Q&A session, I told Aynesworth and the Dallas Morning News moderator that it was a wrestling match to get my 16-year-old daughter to attend the program, and then asked, "Why should she care?"

The moderator patiently explained to my daughter that Kennedy shaped the lives of Baby Boomers: his call to action ... "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" ... and the unprecedented ugliness that Pandora'ed out of his death. 

Baby Boomers can be obsessed with the Kennedy assassination. We're all somewhere between awestruck admirers and cloak-and-dagger conspiracy theorists, grieving for the man who opened the door to civil rights and made us a proud nation of moon-walkers, but still asking, "Who shot Kennedy?"

To today's teenager, Kennedy may just be a page in a textbook. But as my professor, Samra Bufkins, explained to my daughter, we never thought something like that could happen. Then Ms. Bufkins and I began walking my daughter through the events of our childhood, just a few that shocked us into a "new reality:" Charles Whitman, the UT sniper in 1966; and the 1968 murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

And then we turned to my daughter, nodded to her phone as if it was a 21st-century Walter Cronkite announcing Kennedy's death and together asked, "Does it bother you to hear about ...?" And I'm not even sure what we asked, but she knew we were talking about the 24/7, readily accessible news -- broadcast media and social media -- about school shootings and violence among kids and almost daily killings of civilians in always shifting war zones.

And she said, "It happens." Her eyes get moist, and she repeats, "It just happens."

Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib

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Hugh Aynesworth's career was dramatically altered, when he took the day off from his beat as a science and aerospace reporter to see President Kennedy's cavalcade pass through downtown Dallas; and he has spent the last 50 years becoming one of the most recognized researchers into the Kennedy assassination.

He is considered one of the more informed experts on the Kennedy assassination. He not only witnessed the shooting of the President in Dealy Plaza, but he was on-site when Dallas police arrested suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and then when nightclub owner Jack Ruby gunned down Oswald in the basement garage of the Dallas police department.

The video is fascinating, and I'd encourage you to spend 60 minutes watching it. Aynesworth interviewed many of the key characters from the Kennedy assassination story, including officers who arrested Oswald, the Irving homeowner who befriended Oswald and his wife, Oswald's co-worker who drove him to work at the Texas Schoolbook Depository, the physician who worshipped Kennedy but had to watch him die at Parkland Hospital, and the Secret Service agent who scrambled to protect Mrs. Kennedy as she struggled to retrieve her husband's blown-away skull pieces from the trunk of the Presidential limousine.

 

"He became a millionaire:" Make it go away!

My daughter and I went out for Chinese food tonight, and a few seconds after this photo was taken, in the no-time-for-segues, relentless conversational pace of teenage girls, she blurted, "Oh, my gosh. My history teacher. Today. He starts singing that song. The Beverly Hillbillies. And he asked, 'What happened to Jed?' And I said, 'He became a millionaire.' And he asked, 'How did you know that?' And I said my dad walks around the house singing it ALL the time."

Whew!
 
About an hour later, Luci (my dog, the quieter of the females in my house) and I walked the mile up to our church's community garden. This past weekend, my wife and I planted a couple of tomato plants and seeds for peas, beans, carrots, spinach and other foods that we don't like but that grow in the fall, and I was planning on watering.

But I took another look at the sky just to be sure it's not going to rain, and this is what I saw ... beautiful!



 

And with the same uncontrollable mind rush that delivered "first thing you know ol' Jed's a millionaire" to my daughter, Tennessee Ernie Ford's choir launches into:

 

He walks with me

And He talks with me

And He tells me I am his own

 

Ironically, that song is In the Garden, and I remember my dad playing Tennessee Ernie Ford's album and singing along (it's a great phrase for meditation, especially if you just happen to be in a garden watering vegetables). 



 

So, what causes those "mind rushes?" What makes those memories stick.

 

Why can you say "three-hour tour" to someone my age -- many of us who can't even remember to pull our zippers up -- and we immediately break into the theme song from Gilligan's Island? Walk up to a baby boomer and say, "farm livin' is the life for me," and we're holding a pitchfork or driving an imaginary tractor, singing "Green Acres."

 

What makes words, phrases and ideas memorable? We were a TV generation, and those simple, story-telling theme songs burned forever in our brains. But how can contemporary writers deliver messages that have the same impact?

 

My daughter's Beverly Hillbillies horror reminded me of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Heath and Heath, 2007) that I reported on a few years ago.

 

It convincingly outlines the SUCCESs concept to making writing memorable. SUCCESs is the authors' acronym for the key elements to creating messages that "stick" with readers or listeners:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Authors Chip and Dan Heath immediately make their point in chapter one, "The Kidney Heist," telling the urban legend about a traveling salesman who meets a woman in a bar, invites her to his room, and then the next thing he remembers is waking up in a bathtub full of ice with stitches on the spot covering where his kidney should be.

 

Re-read or simply re-tell that story. Like so many urban legends and other stories, theme songs, commercials and movie scenes that have created our unique cultures, it has all the SUCCESs elements to make it memorable. Made to Stick is a must-read for any writer, but especially those writer charged with delivering convincing, persuasive messages to move publics to action.

 

Or for those writers who want to plague TV-watching fans long into middle age (and their children ... bwahahahahahaha) with ditties that never die, like my own personel nemeses Underdog, Batman and, of course, The Addams Family (snap, snap).

 

My dad loved to play his guitar and sing, and he especially liked country gospel and bluegrass music. I know I've posted this photo before, but it's one of my favorites, so just think of it as a bonus. Here's my dad:

 

 

Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib

 

Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Made to stick: why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House, 2007.



 

 



A Napkin Holder, A Sports-Fan Dog and People Who Still Call Me Georgie

I know I don't get there often enough
But God knows I surely try
It's a magic kind of medicine
That no doctor could prescribe

That's the opening of Jimmy Buffett's One Particular Harbour, one of my all-time favorites. I was driving home from my Aunt Dorothy's late last Sunday, when the familiar thump-thump-thump, which sounds kind of like the sound of waves lapping against the bow of a boat, rolled out of the speakers.

As I drove, I'd been thinking about how much I enjoy being at my Aunt Dorothy's and how, for as long as I can remember, her home's been the center of the energy that drives our extended (WAY extended) family and a comfortable refuge from the storms of whatever age I happened to be. Hearing Jimmy Buffett sing, I realized that Aunt Dorothy's home, her kitchen table more specifically, has been my own 'particular harbour' for the last 50+ years.

Daughter #2 has become obsessed with my Aunt Dorothy, partly because she's as close to a grandmother from my side of the family as daughter #2's known and partly because she's told daughter #2 that she'll spank me if I'm mean to her. Both of us -- non-stop talkers, randomly energetic, always a friend and . . . hardheaded and a tendency toward bossiness -- are very much like Aunt Dorothy. Our drive was the return trip from a weekend that we'd spent visiting with her (in Southeast Texas, near the coast).

I've always gravitated to Aunt Dorothy's, even more than my own parents' house, and most of the time has been around her kitchen table. Aunt Dorothy has a front door, but I think the hinges would've frozen long ago if she didn't use it to check the mail every day. Anybody who's ever visited Aunt Dorothy goes through her always-open garage door and into her always-unlocked kitchen door, rarely knocking, and sits right there at the kitchen table.

I never realized one of the keys to the comfort of that kitchen table until last weekend. Aunt Dorothy served boiled crawfish before daughter #2 and I left town. When I needed a napkin after I'd used about half a roll of paper towels, I reached up to the same napkin holder -- if you're a boomer, you've seen them: wooden box, mounted on the wall, red rooster prancing on the front -- that's been there for my entire life. There's real comfort in that kind of consistency.

Aunt Dorothy's house is on a well-traveled street, once the main street for her small town, two blocks from the shopping area that included the drug store, where we always went for cough syrup (never remember getting a prescription from the doctor); Dryden's, where we bought most of my clothes (I think we had a charge account there); Spencer's, where the ladies shopped (or maybe just window-shopped); a store that carried toys (my favorite); and maybe 4-5 other stores. The Catholic Church -- Aunt Dorothy's church -- still anchors the other end of the main street.

Aunt Dorothy's house is unique because, like Aunt Dorothy, it seems bigger than life. My Uncle Emmett built it himself in the '50s and even though it's only about 1,600 square feet, it seemed huge when I was growing up. Even as an adult, her home, with all its 'extraterritorial jurisdiction,' still seems huge.

Across the street -- from her main entrance through the garage -- is her parking lot, a requisite for the traffic of friends, kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and the rest of us who flow non-stop through her house. The parking lot was a small store and apartments, I believe owned by Uncle Emmett's family. The building was gone decades ago, and the slab and shell parking area has been shared by Aunt Dorothy and the former-grocery-store-now-church that's catty-cornered from her house.

Across the street on the side of the house, which is actually the nearly unused front of the house, is a grassy, pecan-treed block, never built-on, and the family's super-size playground, for as long as I can remember. The now-nearly vacant downtown is on the other side of this block. A gazebo sits on the property now; and, in a decades-long tradition of knowing everything that goes on in her town, through the kitchen window above the sink, Aunt Dorothy (with some help from the rest of us) stayed up-to-date on the progress of last weekend's wedding at the gazebo.

Aunt Dorothy's house is actually one of two houses on the double lot. The second house, a smaller post-World War II pier-and-beam house, is where she, Uncle Emmett and their three kids lived before building her current home. Her grandson and his family live in the older house now. Storms and age have taken their toll, but at one time, the two lots had -- my guess -- six large, very generous pecan trees.

Just as an aside, her grandson has a black Labrador retriever. From his house, he can send the dog to Aunt Dorothy's, then call to ask for the sports page of the newspaper. About that time, the dog scratches on the door, Aunt Dorothy hands it the sports page, and it obediently returns home.

So Aunt Dorothy's house -- actually two houses, a double lot, a parking lot, a park-like block, an old downtown, a steady stream of friends and family, a sports-fan dog and people who still call me Georgie -- may actually be larger than life. It remains one of my favorite places and like Jimmy Buffett describes, my 'particular harbor.'

Aunt Dorothy? She'll be 85 next month, and she's thinking about retiring from her job. She has three children, seven grandchildren and 13 grandkids. Just a few years ago, the local chamber of commerce voted her 'Mother of the Year.' She survived breast cancer a couple of years ago, facing it with a relaxed 'I'm 82, I've lived a long time' attitude. An embarrassing amount of energy, and she loves the beach, where she and her family celebrate Easter and her birthday every year. Always a finalist in the annual croquet tournament.

Her multi-generational offer to me, my other cousins and probably a hundred other teenage friends of her sons and grandsons: 'If you're going to smoke, drink or gamble, you come over here. I don't want you on the streets getting into trouble.'

Her advice when I complained of daughter #1's teenage behavior: 'Georgie, she's not on drugs, in jail or pregnant. What more do you want?'

But, most importantly, Aunt Dorothy has me being a lot nicer to daughter #2. I'm way too old to be spanked . . . but she's not too old to do it.

And there's that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within

How Am I Supposed to Know?' 10 Things About My Dad (#3)

Here's the 'When We Last Saw Our Hero' catch-up: During a TV show set in Kentucky, I asked daughter #2 who was born in Kentucky, and she just shrugged. When I exasperatedly told her that my dad was born in Kentucky, she just as exasperatedly questioned, 'How am I supposed to know anything about him?' So I'm scribbling down 10 things for her to know about my dad. I posted Number One and Number Two earlier.

Number Two Postscript
I'm 6' 1" and usually around 210 pounds, which is about two inches shorter than Mohammed Ali and right in the middle of his range of fighting weight. After my last post, someone described my dad as 'larger than life,' and I laughed. He was 5' 8" and probably weighed 150-160 pounds most of his adult life. Even at that size, when we'd watch Ali, Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston and all the other heavyweight boxers, he'd tell me that he could take them all. And maybe with my height and my heavyweight bulk, he could've. Or, if you read my last post, you'd know that he would've at least made it entertaining.

Number Three
My dad's the one on the right, and nobody knows who Kelley is except that the two of them celebrated V.E. Day (Victory in Europe, ending World War II in Europe). He joined the Coast Guard in 1939 in St. Louis, Missouri, before the United States entered the war, and told me that he enlisted when he saw a poster of a ship-to-ship rescue. He later mentioned an additional sense of urgency to his enlistment.

Prior to joining the Coast Guard, my dad worked as a truck driver, delivering ice to homes and businesses in Western Kentucky. I'd like to think that patriotic duty and the lure of adventure on the open seas drew him to the Coast Guard . . . but the real story seems to involve speeding along a dark roadway, skidding the ice truck on its side around a curve and his sneaking away to St. Louis.

During the war, he became a Chief Petty Officer in the engine room of a frigate, the Tallapoosa, escorting convoys in and out of North Africa. He also spent time in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

His stories of World War II were always funny. One of the best occurred during shore leave in Oran, Algeria, when an Algerian military policeman stopped a truckload of his shipmates. A buddy of my dad's stepped out of the back of the truck, assuring them that he'd handle it. He casually walked up to the soldier looking eager to improve international relations, then knocked him out with one punch and returned to the party in the back of the truck (I later saw this same episode in a movie, but you have to believe your dad).

My dad showed me how he cooked 'Frog in a Hole,' atop a diesel engine. It's an egg and toast combination that I passed on to my kids and that daughter #1's friends love for her to cook. He talked of friends and wild antics that made me believe that he loved his military days.

During my senior year in high school, I began recognizing the signs that our family really didn't have the money to send me to college. At the time, I wanted to go to the University of Texas, like my cousin Jack, and eventually become an architect.

I knew that my dad loved his days in the Coast Guard, so I stopped by the Navy recruiter's trailer in Port Arthur's Jefferson City Shopping Center. This was a major step for me because the Vietnam War had ended just a couple of years earlier; and I'd spent most of my junior high and high school life scared to death of being drafted and hauled off to a place that I understood only by the nightly news score cards (we always won, killing and wounding more of them than they killed and wounded of us).

I told the recruiter that I'd like to be an architect and that I'd heard the Navy would pay for me to go to school. He assured me that the Navy would pay for me to go to school to become an engineer, which he told me was pretty much the same thing.

Brochures in hand -- probably featuring photos of a '70s version of a ship-to-ship rescue -- and expecting elation from my dad, I excitedly told him and my mom of my plans. His only response was, 'Don't worry. We'll find a way to pay for college.'

I was shocked and didn't understand until about 10 years later, when my dad checked into an alcoholic recovery unit. My older sister and I had never experienced any kind of abuse, neglect or embarassment because of his drinking, so this took us as a HUGE surprise.

He was out of his room, when I arrived for a visit, and I picked up a handwritten note off his night stand. When I asked about the note, he told me that patients in the unit talked in groups about their addiction-related issues, then wrote letters of encouragement to whoever spoke during that session.

This letter said something like: 'George, I know it must have been awful for you during the war to see men burning in the water, screaming for help, and you couldn't do anything.'

A German submarine had sunk a ship in his convoy, trapping its crew and passengers in a sea of burning oil and diesel fuel. His dreams of an exciting ship-to-ship rescue had become a decades-long nightmare.

I don't think I'm ready to share all of Number Three with daughter #2. In her very sweet, caring way, she'd ask, 'Hey, buddy. What's wrong? Why are you crying?'

'How Am I Supposed to Know?' 10 Things About My Dad (#1 and #2)

This is my dad. This photo is one of my best photos. I took it in the late '70s, and it's been around our house for decades. I think it captures my dad perfectly, in appearance, character and personality, although I did have loan him the hat for full effect.

I'm telling you about this photo and introducing you to my dad because of daughter #2. She shocked me last weekend when we were watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (our family's weekly sniff-and-feel-good-about-people time together). The show took place in Louisville, Kentucky.

When I asked daughter #2 who was born in Kentucky, she just shrugged. When I exasperatedly told her that my dad was born in Kentucky, she just as exasperatedly questioned, 'How am I supposed to know anything about him?' He died when daughter #2 was less than 2 years old.

So, here are 10 things about my dad (in no order of importance . . . forgive me if I've already shared some of this with you) that I'll share with daughter #2.

Number One
He was born August 6, 1916 in Dukedom, Tennessee, and grew up in Mayfield, Kentucky, which is in Western Kentucky, and was a teenager during the Great Depression. He was the youngest in his family and had two older sisters -- Kathleen and Ruby -- and an older brother Herman.

Aunt Kathleen and Aunt Ruby visited Texas when I lived in Conroe in the early '80s. My parents drove them over from Port Arthur, and I still laugh when I think of them calling my dad, then nearly 70 years old, by his childhood name: 'Baby.'

Number Two
My dad was a boxer in his teens and 20s. He told me that he was a Golden Gloves boxer, but most of the stories I heard were about his matches when a carnival came to Mayfield or nearby Paducah, Kentucky. Carnivals were traveling shows that moved from town to town during the Depression; and their games, contests, shows and exotic animals were the most excitement a little town like his would see for months.

Some carnivals featured a 'champion' boxer, and when the carnival hit town, word spread quickly (and tickets sold just as quickly) that this champion would box and beat 24 of the 'best' local boxers in 24 hours. My dad usually was one of those 24 boxers; and during the Depression, when jobs and money were hard to come by, he was happy to look good for a few rounds, take a few punches, hit the mat, and then pick up his paycheck from the champ's manager.

He must've been a local favorite because other carnivals recruited him for their Thursday-through-Saturday, best-of-three matches. From what I understand, he always lost on Thursday, but made a valiant, underdog comeback on Friday. Tickets sales 'skyrocketed' (as much as tickets sales would skyrocket in a small town) for Saturday's championship bout; and almost always, he lost after a 'hard-fought' match. And then he picked up his paycheck from the champ's manager.

My dad was 'older' -- 39 -- when I was born (I was 42 when daughter #2 was born, so I laugh when I think about it), but he was very quick when he'd box with the neighborhood boys in his 50s and even when he'd shadow box in his 60s.

I don't think I appreciated just how quick he was until he shared with me how he and a World War II shipmate (he was in the Coast Guard, which was rolled into the Navy during the war) would pick up a few bucks before shore leave. My dad would pull his handkerchief out of his pocket, lay it on the ground and stand on it with both feet. His friend would take bets: my dad would remain standing on the handkerchief and any challenger could try to hit in the head. The story, as told to me, was that he never got hit; however, his ears sure were cauliflowered (a sure sign that a boxer has taken some hits -- could've been from all those carnival losses).

There does seem to be common thread of boxing and money running through all his stories.

My dad gave me two bits of boxing/life advice:
- You gotta roll with the punches (which, at 52, I finally realize is true)
- You gotta bob and weave (a skill to which he attributed his handkerchief-bet winnings)

He tried to teach me how to box, but I was slow, skinny and not very strong. And I weaved and bobbed when I should've bobbed and weaved.

When I was about 13 or 14, we were boxing in the front yard (can you imagine today's response to a father and teenage son fighting in the front yard?). He hit me upside the head with a right cross and floored me. Like most teenage boys, I sprang up wildly, and I caught him by surprise with a right hook in the side. After several days of soreness, he went to the doctor, who told him that he had a couple of broken ribs.

And I think that became Chapter One in his unwritten, unplanned Lessons for Fatherhood. Even with fascinating recollections of carnivals and ship-board bets, that front-yard match and those broken ribs became his most-often repeated boxing story for the next couple of decades.

Daughter #2's going to have to wait for Things to Know About My Dad #3-10.

First Date: Meeting the Parents

10-year-old daughter #2 has her first date this weekend. She and the Man of Her Dreams have been an item for a couple of weeks now, and tomorrow's pre-teen tryst is their special Valentine's Day event.

But tonight is the prequel to the Big Event. . . . we meet the parents, and here's how I anticipate the evening (at CiCi's Pizza by the way) going down: Them (those very strange people we don't know) and Us (well, you know us). . .



When daughter #1 was in fifth grade, she had boyfriends, but they never talked on the phone or saw each other outside of school. They were just 'going together.' We'd ask how she knew they were going together, and she'd say, 'We just know.'

This non-contact courting continued through middle school and even began to include just as confounding break-ups. 'How do you know he's breaking up with you? We're still not sure how you knew you were going out.'

'A friend of his told a friend of mine who told me that he was thinking about . . .' and the 'about' could've been pizza, football or spitting on the sidewalk. When she finally started 'dating,' we really didn't know because she and a group of her friends would meet him and a group of his friends at the movies.

But, more importantly, we didn't meet any parents until several boyfriends later during daughter #1's senior year, and that's when we ran into them at a nearby bar.

Daughter #1 and the Man of Her Dreams have been planning this date and pre-event parents' meeting for the last two weeks (I can hear her upstairs now talking to a friend on the phone about what she should wear). She came home from school yesterday, Valentine's Day, with an armful of, as she described, 'a foot and a half tall teddy bear, a big balloon and chocolate . . . from Brazil.'

This is developing into a true courtship. Daughter #2 says that Man of Her Dreams tells her that he loves her every day. She also says that his life has changed since he's been seeing her . . . his friends think he's REALLY cool now (daughter #2 can never be faulted for her lack of confidence).

And daughter #2 did make it a point to call daughter #1, who's currently boyfriend-less (yessssss!), to let her know all about her new 'honey.'

So, tonight at the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, we get to meet 'them.' And I get to talk to kid whose teddy bears, balloons, Brazilian chocolate and daily 'I love you' are making me look real bad.

Go Ahead . . . Make My Day

Pardon the mixed metaphor (or whatever you'd call it) . . . I know none of these unpleasantly dispositioned movie characters ever said that . . . but I'm sure each of them lit up the screen with something appropriate to my current mood.

No more than 5 minutes after daughter #2 comes home to tell me that one of the 'populars' -- I'll just refer to her as the Bully Bitch -- shoved a cupcake up her nose, my wife calls just in time to stop me from e-mailing her teachers to demand Bully Bitch's head on a platter.

However, she tells me that daughter #1 just called her to share the conversation with her ex-boyfriend in which he expressed his burning desire 'to be truthful:' For the two years they dated (and pretty much co-habitated during their year at Tech), he continued to see his previous girlfriend.

For those of you picking up the phone to dial 9-1-1, no need to worry. I don't own any guns or sharp knives . . . but I don't think a spineless piece of lying wormshit has the balls to castrate anyway.

As for the Bully Bitch, daughter #2 has some pretty sharp claws.

Whew! Glad we could talk.

Our Dreams: A Family Tradition

When I sleep, I dream. Not simple, random dreams; but continuous, vivid dreams, from the moment I close my eyes, when the commercials and previews start, until I wake up following the final feature.

Vivid dreams seem to be a family tradition. My dad would talk in his sleep and often would 'act out' his dreams. During a weekend stay at a local Scout camp (I worked for the Boy Scouts for about 20 years), we stayed in cabins; and in our cabin, his side of the bed was up against a wall (apparently his side of the bed at home wasn't). From my room across the cabin, I heard him smack in to the bedroom wall, later learning that he had jumped up in bed and chased someone right into the wall.

I spent my 40th birthday in my dad's hospital room, where dehydration was one of the doctor's concerns. Apparently, hallucinations are a symptom of dehydration. After an evening of zig-zag, sometimes-difficult-to-follow conversation, my dad asked me to get the nurse a Coke. I realized that he thought she was his home-health nurse when I looked at her name tag, and it wasn't the same name he was using.

I went to the nurse's station to ask what to do about his hallucinations. The nurse said to gently bring him back to reality and let him know that he's hallucinating. Some time around 2:30 a.m., I'd pretty much resorted to 'yeah, dad. whatever.'

I've carried on the tradition, in many cases, much to the concern of my wife. A couple of recurring dreams from my earlier parenthood days:

- I'd dive out of bed to keep my kids from falling, a dream that made a trip to the dome of the Texas capital building a nightmare (get away from the railing! Daddy, we want to see!) and a visit to the Grand Canyon a real nerve-tester.

- I'd stand up in bed and reach up to get the kids off the ceiling fan, a dream that significantly improved my wife's sleep-to-alert reflexes (I'm sure her response saved my fingers and the top of my head many times).

My 'favorite' has its own place in the lore of our family history, a story oft' repeated 'round campfires and television sets.

My wife stayed up late to watch a movie with daughter #1, and I'd already gone to bed. She walked into our room, and I jumped out of bed, ran to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. With what I would call my best Jack-Nicholson-'Here's-Johnny' leer, I started shaking her and shouting, 'I've got you now!' My wife's not petite, so fortunately I woke up before she and daughter #1 threw me down the stairs (I did make it a point to tell a friend because I'd heard that sleepwalking was a solid defense for murdering your wife if there's documentation of previous, similar events . . . I have since heard that it's not).

Now it seems like my action-filled dreams are limited to seeing 3-D geometric patterns on the ceiling, usually well-lit, and me waking up my wife to show her and explain the details. She's usually not interested.

But the tradition continues . . .

So far, daughter #2 only talks in her sleep. When my son was much younger, I woke up to him standing next to my side of the bed. Fortunately, my ever-vigilant wife sounded the alarm, 'He's still asleep . . . and he's about to pee!' When daughter #1 was younger, I followed her down the stairs in the middle of the night and caught her pulling down her pajama bottoms as she was getting ready to pee in the middle of the living room.

I have the flu this week, and I left work early Monday. After daughter #2 came home from school, I went upstairs to take a nap while she went across the street to play. Unfortunately, daughter #2 has become quite the 5th-grade socialite, and her friends started ringing our phone just a few minutes after she left. Around 5 p.m., I gave up and called her to come home.

From 5:17 p.m., when I gave her the phone, until 6:35 p.m., when my wife called, there were no dreams.

For somebody who always dreams, that's pretty frightening. When daughter #2 woke me up to talk to my wife, I felt like I had to crawl out of a deep black hole to wake up. And that darkness is all I remember about those 78 minutes.

Pretty scary, although I'm sure the fever prompted that deep sleep; but I keep wondering, where did I go?

Just in case you missed my previous post, only one person can answer that:

In This Corner, Wearing Calico Whiskers . . .

Revised recommended reading list for 10-year-old girls:

- The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- On War by Carl von Clausewitz

And then some book about cats . . .

It's fifth grade, and the cat-fights have started. Yesterday's best friend is in tears. Something about last month's best friend and the two Populars, or Plastics depending on the Disney movie you just watched, acknowledged bitches and leading candidates for Britney-hood.

She said, then I said and she laughed, then she came over, and I went over, then we laughed and she cried; I didn't mean to but they made me and said this, then I said, but before I could, she went and I didn't, but they did . . . and that was just on the phone while I was still at work.

Daughter #1 is nine years older than daughter #2. The heavyweight cat fights didn't start until seventh grade then, but as girls have become better trained and more catlike and the malls and movies and TV offers more catty opportunities, the title matches have dropped to the fifth grade.

Daughter #1 was pretty callous, when necessary; and at the drop of a 'you're not my friend anymore,' she would casually reply 'see ya' and walk away. In a day or two, they were friends some more. Daughter #2 has a harder facade and, as a result of having an older sister, is a little more savvy at 10 than her sister.

Fortunately in real life, but unfortunately in the cat wars, daughter #2 is very sensitive. If she accidentally hurts a friend, she is devastated,. Like her older sister, she is tolerant of just about anybody, which attracts guerilla cat fighters waiting for the opportunity to pounce on the weak and unsuspecting. And when the pipe bomb of non-Hollister clothes or Target shoes or last week's music explodes, daughter #2 and soon-to-be-victim friends are caught in the crossfire.

The hardest part for my wife and me is to avoid giving proven advice: 'Walk up to her and slap the holy shit out her!'

So, instead, we counsel and cuddle and help make amends with hurt friends, then we walk into our room and:

We're NOT ready for this.

Addendum: when we asked daughter #1 to give advice to daughter #2 on dealing with girls, she said; 'Hang out with boys.'

Mondays: All You Need is Love

Everybody knows Monday.

I crawled behind my keyboard about 6:45 a.m. I'm way behind on one job (because of last week's surprise), and I'm responsible for our Marketing Excellence Team (METs) meeting at lunch (and my preparation is far from excellent). I'm beat: I worked 23 hours just on Thursday and Friday of last week on the afore-mentioned 'surprise' project, then daughter #2 was sick most of the weekend, and, of course, the Cowboys lost (they didn't lose it; they gave it away).

I open my e-mail, and there's a note from the technical leader on last week's surprise project (two days to turn around what normally takes two weeks): 'thanks for your hard work.' Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Around mid-morning, I'm copied on an e-mail from a firm principal to the firm president: 'Major kudos to George Bowden, a miracle man, on the quick turnaround . . .'

At the end of my noon meeting, one of our conference call participants, before hanging up, takes the time to say 'Thanks! Good meeting.'

About 2 p.m., a technical lead's Reply to my draft of a proposal team org chart arrives: 'I think this is really great! You’ve captured just what I was trying to articulate.'

I'm headed out the door about 4:30 p.m. (I did come in early, okay?), and one of our marketing group members stops me at the door: 'I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the work you've put into the METs program. It's really good.'

I have to figure out a way to get to the office tomorrow morning; I flew home! What an amazing day . . . and it's Monday!

Make somebody's Tuesday. Or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or their weekend. Sprinkle some of that magic 'thank you' dust, and watch 'em fly away (there's a little Peter Pan in all of us).

And thank you, Beatles:

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

And to James Brown:

Wo! I feel good, I knew that I wouldn't of
I feel good, I knew that I wouldn't of
So good, so good, I got you

Wo! I feel nice, like sugar and spice
I feel nice, like sugar and spice
So nice, so nice, I got you

Dad-isms #3

8th-grade girls basketball, and daughter #1 is point guard, leisurely taking the ball for a stroll down the court. Very nice of her team and the opponents to wait on her. From up in the stands, I shout her name and yell, 'RUN!' She STOPS in the middle of the court and stares at me in the stands. After the game, I knew that I'd misplaced my priorities when I found myself saying, 'DON'T YOU EVER LISTEN TO ME AGAIN!'

My son's moving from Laredo to go to school and major in computer gaming software and live on his own in Austin. Daughter #1 keeps abandoning the dog she's supposed to be babysitting during winter break like it's some grandchild I've been waiting to spend 'quality' time with, and daughter #2 is . . . well, daughter #2.

So you can tell how far my Dad-isms have gone. Here's the last batch for awhile.

Yesterday’s over my shoulder, but I can’t look back for too long. There’s just too much to see waiting in front of me, and I know that I just can’t go wrong . . . Jimmy Buffett

Make good choices! . . . Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday

Just do it! . . . Nike

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails . . . John Maxwell (author)

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority . . . Ken Blanchard

And more of mine:

SMILE! Enjoy life! Be happy.

Be positive. Avoid the negative. People need and are attracted to the positive and shy away from the negative (and it’s too easy to a grinch).

Problems don’t get better with time. Take care of them right away.

Take care of your business . . . now.

Set goals. Ask yourself, ‘what have I done today?’ to get what I want.

Ask for what you want. Nobody’s waiting around or trying to read your mind.

ROLE MODELS

All is Calm . . . Traditions are Safe

It's quiet. The only other noise in the house (besides my dog snoring) is the dishwasher running with the dishes from Christmas dinner. Everyone else is upstairs in bed. Pretty uneventful, but calm, finish to a nice Christmas.

Two days ago, I was looking for a Scrooge photo to post so I could rant about how much I hate Christmas. I really don't, but by the time it gets here, I'm right on the edge of 'in-santa-ty.'

I even had Monday off from work and still had a long, wife-induced Shopping/To Do List. This year's Christmas budget was tight, too, so I also had to battle my own addiction to last-minute gift impulses (both for my family . . . and for me).

I'm better now. We don't have a big family gathering here in Fort Worth . . . only four of us this year. We do have our Christmas traditions, however, which I thought we lost last year. But this Christmas Eve was a season-saver.

We went to worship service at Northwood Church, which has pretty much the same Christmas service every year. I like it because it reminds me a lot of the Virginia-backwoods Christmas Eve service in The Homecoming, which is the original Walton's Christmas movie: Kids dressed up for the nativity scene, someone telling the Christmas story interspersed with everyone singing Christmas carols, and a brief message from the pastor.

After church, we watched The Homecoming and Santa Clause 2 (daughter #2's preference -- we watched the original Miracle of 34th Street the night before; no It's a Wonderful Life, Bells of St. Marys or The Bishop's Wife this year . . . but there's still time). And we ate tamales. My yankee wife loves all things Texas, so we've eaten tamales on Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember.

Our Christmas Eve tradition for the last 15-16 years has been to read Christmas books and sip hot chocolate around the fire before sending the kids to bed. Last year, I thought our special tradition came to an end because daughter #1, who'd come home from her first semester of college, spent Christmas Eve with the then-boyfriend-now-sleazeball (that's the story I get) and his family. Daughter #2 crashed during midnight services at our neighborhood Methodist church (truly embarassing; she starts snoring -- loudly -- during a very quiet communion, and because of the ice, there are only about 40 people in the chapel), so it was just my wife and me to do the Santa Claus thing.

But this year, after our movies and dinner, we looked for our Christmas books, which includes the much-fought-over Polar Express (each of us reads a book), and couldn't find them (aagggghhhh!!!). We moved daughter #2 into daughter @1's old room earlier this year, and the books have been lost in the shuffle.

I did find one Christmas book that has recipes, stories, poems, songs, etc. and asked daughter #1 if she wanted to read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (when she was much younger, she had it memorized).'

Daughter #1 teaches swim lessons and is an incredible teacher for young kids. As she read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas,' she was very playful and would pause before the end of well-known lines, and we'd shout out the rest . . . NOT EVEN A MOUSE!

When she's done, she thumbs through the book and wants to sing The 12 Days of Christmas. We are NOT a singing family, so this was highly uncharacteristic of us, and, unfortunately, we couldn't remember any gifts beyond five gold rings; but we had a wonderfully goofy time.

So, all is calm . . . and all is bright. Our Christmas traditions are safe for another year.

Just another Saturday night

When daughter #1 left for college a couple of years ago, I told a friend that our house felt like it was missing a huge source of energy. Fortunately/unfortunately, I've gotten used to a no-teen house.

Social butterfly was the description used by #1's 6th-grade teachers during one of those 'I'm-so-sorry' parent-teacher conferences. In high school, especially her senior year, she became a custom-fitted, hyper-charged social bumblebee . . . on steroids (note to all her former coaches and UIL officials -- that was joke). Her activities were the driving force behind just about everything on our schedules, and it seemed like we often went into the fourth quarter working on adrenaline alone. 'Our' senior year was exhausting.

She's home for a couple of weeks during her winter break, and she really hasn't done anything disruptive or illegal or of questionable safety or sense -- yet -- (except bring home what I hope is a friend's dog . . . she said the friend told HER mom that the dog belongs to ANOTHER friend . . . both friends have gone on vacations with their parents during the break), but the energy has returned.

Not the feel-great, charged-up, let's-tackle-Everest energy, but the kind that crashes atoms into whatever atoms crash into and makes basic elements realign with other basic elements to create whatever B-movie creature that inevitably crawls out of the sand following a nuclear test.

I THINK it's the dog (un-house-trained, rat-sized, three-sweatered chihuahua-dachschund mix), although it's not a bad dog. And I THINK it's daughter #2, now an only child and an early-years victim of our attention to #1, who dearly loves and admires her older sister and who's determined to keep our floor from dirtying the dog's paws. But I KNOW that it's because my Lost-in-Space-Danger-Will-Robinson force field and daughter-repellant wife is out of town (my wife's been the 'don't worry, I'll talk to dad; he'll be fine' kind of mom for our daughters).

Actually, everybody's gone now: #1 took dog to do something possibly disruptive or illegal or of questionable safety or sense. #2's at a birthday sleepover, and wife is still out of town; went out with her sister this evening, probably to do something disruptive or illegal or of questionable safety or sense.

Hello-hello-hello-hello . . . okay, let's turn the energy back up. You can come back now. I'm done enjoying my quiet evening . . .

Warning: Side Effects of Dad-isms

(Some of this post might be considered PG-13. I have to figure out how to write it without attracting the attention of google-pervs. Forgive the odd spellings.)

I've always had a pretty up-front relationship with my kids; and even though they've normally ignored my Dad-isms, we've openly discussed important, age-relevant issues.

When my older daughter (#1) was about the age of my younger daughter (#2) now, my wife had miscarried twice until she was able to carry our younger daughter to full-term. #1 and I had some very frank and descriptive discussions during that time about pregnancy, secks, life and death, and relationships. This eventually capped with the 'If you give a mouse a cookie' speech I wrote about in Dad-isms #1.

Daughter #2 is much more direct and straightforward than my older kids. My wife, #2 and I were having dinner at Haltom Chinese last week, when I brought up the evils of pre-teen boys (I'm open-minded), anticipating the receptiveness and understanding of daughter #1.

#2 stops me mid-evil-boy sentence and said, 'Mom's done IT. I'd rather talk with her about this.' When pressed, #2 counted our children (a yours, mine and ours family) and detailed that mom had done IT twice and that I had done IT twice, but she'd much rather get the details from mom.

She told me last night that she and mom had talked about IT on the way home from the doctor's office. BUT mom probably didn't adequately explain what happens when you give a mouse a cookie.

A couple of side-notes . . .

Note #1: Haltom Chinese's owner is incredibly nice. Near his cash register, he's posted autographed photos of local pageant contest winners who visited his restaurant. When Daughter #1 became her high school's first-ever homecoming queen (a new school), I joked about him posting her photo (#1 wouldn't do it). But ever since, he's referred to her as 'The Queen.'

As we've continued to eat at the restaurant (we've been loyal for about 10-15 years), he now refers to #1 as 'Big Queen' and #2 as 'Little Queen.'

(okay, watch for spelling)

Note #2: When #1 was about a junior in high school, my wife and I were watching the news, when a story came on about teenagers not considering or uhl secks to be secks (hmmmm? odd name for not being secks).

I immediately recognized this as an opportunity for a Dad-istic conversation and called #1 in to talk about the news story. I confidently explained the news story to her and asked if it was true at her school.

She said, 'Oh no, we call it give ing hehd.'

I'd Dad-isized myself into a corner. Did I really want to know anymore? Think. Think. Think (just like Winnie the Pooh). Hours must've passed, but I replied, 'We've talked about STDs before. Just because it's or uhl secks doesn't mean you don't need to use a condom.'

There is a God. With dad-relieving spontaneity, without taking time to think about dad's ears already bleeding from what he'd just heard, she spewed (bad choice of vowels?), 'I'm not putting some guy's dirty pea nus in my mouth!'

Okay, maybe mice could stopped at a glass of milk.