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Dramatization - not actually one of my children

I learn a lot from my kids. Lately, I’ve been learning a lot from them about pursuing happiness and pursuing things I want.

We’ll start with the younger of the two, Grace. She’s 6 months old, so she has very few things that she wants. But she’s all about getting the things that make her happy. She cannot crawl yet, but if she sees something across the floor that seems moderately interesting (that is, if she thinks putting it her mouth will be awesome), she rolls, squirms, and forces her way over to it. She can’t be stopped. You can stop her and move her back over to where she’s “supposed” to be. Turn away, and she’ll be rolling her way back over to whatever the object happens to be. (This is why you have to baby proof). She doesn’t second guess, she doesn’t equivocate, she just goes.

Luke, who is 3, is much the same, only more rational about it. There are more things that he “wants” than his sister would list, but his pursuit of it is the same. He asks, he pushes, he does things. If having someone to play with would make him happy, he turns and says “Daddy, would you please play with me?” Sometimes, it’s not even as formal. The game is in his head, and only when my role is announced am I aware that I’m playing. He doesn’t worry about rejection or doing something poorly or anything like that, he just does.

I hope I can learn from that. Even when they’re is something I want (let’s say, being a more disciplined writer), I waffle. I don’t take steps to make it happen. I don’t squirm my way to my goal in the face of resistance. I just cave. I want to be more like my kids, more intentional about reaching out and grabbing things, asking for things, doing things. Little life lessons from little kids.

Guys ask me, don’t I get burned out? How can you get burned out doing something you love? I ask you, have you ever got tired of kissing a pretty girl?

- Tommy Lasorda (Hall of fame baseball player and manager)

(Editor’s note: That’s brilliant.)

Unfortunately, I’ve had egregiously awful experiences twice lately with movies that I’d hoped would be good but were instead… not really bad, just not really anything. Totally unremarkable. Not even worth thinking about. Story-less. Arc-less. Not fun.

These weren’t movies picked out to be bad, either. There can be some glee in that. I mean, how else does one explain bollywood? I kid, I kid. I’m probably going to get over-run with bollywood afficionados for that one. To quote So I Married An Ax Murderer, that was a wee bit off-sides, now, wasn’t it? Seriously though, you can enjoy a really bad movie. These movies weren’t enjoyable. They were just sadly incomplete.

I won’t bother with titles, one was a typical rom-com and the other an attempt at black comedy. In defense of rom-coms as a genre, most of the time, I love them. My favorite movie is Notting Hill. I get snappy dialogue. I get what the cliches are for. But, when the hero, the guy she ends up with, is a gutless flake and the heroine is dumb enough to put up with that, really, what are we saying about the world? The dark comedy was worse. It was supposed to be honest about how difficult things are borne, but instead I was mostly mildly aggravated with the protagonist.

Both of these movies feature actors that I loved. And they were awful in them. Now to my point (only 250 words in… sorry):

What do you do with movies that stink? While I’ve matured to the point of putting down a book when it stinks, I’m not there as a filmgoer, unless its offensive to me. These movies weren’t offensive until I got to the end, processed what I’d seen, and got angry. Could I have figured it out earlier? I’m not sure. I’m seriously looking for advice. Does anyone have a scheme by which they evaluate a movie before they waste  a whole evening on it? I’m thinking that maybe a cross-reference of rottentomatos.com and amazon.com reviews might help. But, critics aren’t always right. Have you watched the academy awards? No? Every year, it’s an attempt to prove that movies no one has ever seen can still be valued. And those movies often stink. I digress. I’d love to stop watching movies that stink though. Suggestions welcome.

In professional football, when the referee goes to announce a penalty, the audio equipment usually works. In college football, well… it occasionally works. It’s seldom functioning the way the ref expects it to work. And it’s kind of funny. Undoubtedly, it is frustrating. The ref is trying to communicate the call rapidly but clearly so that everyone understands what took place. He’s also trying to keep the game moving.

Trying to effectively communicate can leave you a lot like that ref. Everyone’s looking at you, trying to understand what you were thinking. They’re ready to run another play, too, so there’s no time to clarify. And sometimes you just have to roll with it. Mama always said life is like refereeing a college football game. You never know if your mic is going to work.

There is a house that inspires in me a feeling of welcome, openness, and nostalgia. From the goofy architecture (why would they build a kitchen shaped like this?) to the tiny bathroom, from the vinyl step savers that my brothers and I ripped off, oh, a thousand times (“Stop running on the steps!”) to the crawl spaces (“I definitely heard a voice in there, Jonny,”), the idiosyncrasies of that house are some of the best memories of my childhood.

It’s not a great house because it was huge or spectacularly designed but because of the hearts of the people who live there. The hideakey that everyone in the neighborhood knew how to find exemplifies it. The lawn that was always taken care of but never obsessed over does too.

That house in East City, Peterborough, is a special place to me, but only because Don and Lynda are there, with the door open, ready to let six-year-old me watch YTV while I was sick on a school day, ready to let 18-year-old me move in, ready to be overrun with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

That’s a great house.

My boy has started liking to hear a story each night from whichever parent is present for bed time. It started out that he just wanted to hear us (my darling wife more particularly) tell a story. Then I got in on the action. Finally, just these past few days, he’s started telling stories back. He often incorporates an element or two from the other stories he’s heard, but he’s getting pretty creative. Tonight, I got three stories. They started like this:

-”One day, Susie (imaginary character from these stories) went to Lukey (my son)’s house. But Lukey wasn’t there.” At which point he fell apart in giggles.

- “One day, the stars were talking to each other. And then they couldn’t.”

- “One day, the school buses were talking late late late in the dark time. And they forgot the children.”

Hysterical. The kid totally cracks me up!

The saying goes that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I’m realizing that the unexamined life is happening to you because you’re too busy.

I don’t know what all the ramifications of that are, but I’m pretty sure it’s the case. Of course, it could be because you’re watching reality television, too. But then it’s just because you’re too busy with unimportant things.

This is the story of my day yesterday:

I went up our hill and started to hear a thump-thump under one of the tires. I thought “Hmm, strange!” I stopped the car, but didn’t see anything. I pulled up the hill and off the road, and saw that the end of a bungie cord had punctured the driver’s side tire. It was still in the tire. “Darn it,” I thought, “I should’ve brought my gloves and a hat.” I called my father-in-law, whose advice was to leave the offending object in and drive it to walmart to get the tire repaired.

I called my wife and had her call te dentist to cancel. I got about 1/2 way to walmart when the thump-thump stopped. The hook popped out. I managed to get pulled off at a little sketchy bar on the side of the road before my tire went flat. ”Darn it,” I thought, “I should’ve brought my gloves and a hat.”

No problem, I thought, I have a can of fix a flat in the trunk. I pulled it out and hooked it up to the tire and … it was frozen. I waited for a half hour with that can sitting on the heater on the dash board, hoping it would thaw. It didn’t. “Darn it,” I thought, “I should’ve brought my gloves and a hat.”

I went into the sketchy bar to let them know I was working on it. They had a sign on the door that said “This is not a bar.” Inside, they had a bar (so much for “This is not a bar?”), video lottery machines, and maybe a bed in the corner? (I’m not sure… it was scary. I got out as quick as I could). “Darn it,” I thought, “I should’ve brought a hazmat suit.”

So, I walked about 3/4 of a mile to the gas station (12 minutes or so, walking as fast as I could). I bought two more cans of fix a flat, and walked back to the sketchy bar. “Darn it,” I thought, “I should’ve brought my gloves and a hat.”

I pumped the first can of unfrozen fix a flat into the tire. It inflated about 1/4 of the way. I could hear it hissing still. Apparently this flat would not be fixed. I pumped the second can into the tire, which got it to looking about 3/4 full. The hissing persisted. “Darn it,” I thought, “I should’ve brought my gloves and a hat.”

I called my father-in-law again. He’s a gracious man. He said “Get it to Walmart if it’s at all possible.” Since the tire took about 4 minutes to deflate originally, I figured I had 2 – 2 and a half minutes – tops. So I got in the car and drove up the road to walmart. I made it there, and got back to the tire and oil change place. I waited (as my tire deflated) for the attendant. He said, “yeah, we can fix that.” I knew I needed new rear tires, so I thought, “What the heck, my day is already ruined, what’s a little more money? At least I didn’t have to pay the dentist!”

Anyway, I did make it home, missing only(!) 4 hours of work, but I have 2 brand new tires on the front of my car, and the 2 newer ones of the four we had on it this morning (including the one that was punctured and repaired) on the back, so at least our snow driving should go better.

What a day.

As I drove away from Walmart, I was still pretty grumpy. I had a moment where reality all snapped together for me, though. It was God’s grace that I didn’t end up with a disabled vehicle in the middle of a busy road. It was God’s grace that I didn’t total the car and die. God’s grace. And, if I had totalled the car and died, that would’ve been God’s grace too. I have so much to be thankful for.

So, I rescheduled the dentist to February. I wonder what’ll go wrong that day? One thing I know for sure, I’ll take my gloves and a hat.

I posted that Lewis quote on Monday because it’s been rattling around my brain for a little while now. It’s been combining itself with a concern about the nature of the information we (I) take in on a regular basis.

Seth Godin’s post, Deliberately Uninformed, launched itself into the narrative I was already engaging in my head. He’s got a lot of good things to say, but the most important part for me was this:

Access to knowledge, for the first time in history, is largely unimpeded for the middle class. Without effort or expense, it’s possible to become informed if you choose…

Or you can watch TV.

The thing is, watching TV has its benefits. It excuses you from the responsibility of having an informed opinion about things that matter. It gives you shallow opinions or false ‘facts’ that you can easily parrot to others that watch what you watch. It rarely unsettles our carefully self-induced calm and isolation from the world.

I found it interesting that Seth would pick on TV; in my mind, increasingly, the culprit is not television but the internet. Not the internet on the whole, but the popular internet. Let me define that for you:

The pop internet is made up of the most commonly trafficked destination or aggregation (not search) sites. So, by Pop-Net, I mean sites like MSN.com,  Yahoo.com, or CNN.com for the non-geeks or Reddit, Digg, or Stumbleupon for the semi-geeks/geeks.

The content you’ll find dominating these sites is primarily things that will make you, well, stupider. Read carefully. I’m not saying that all the content on all of those sites will make you stupider. I’m just saying that a lot of it will. “Don’t be afraid of your home’s ghosts” on MSN. “Kate Hudson’s Style Missteps” on Yahoo. “Katey Perry, Russell Brand Wed” on CNN, “Neighbourhood Kids Set me Up for the Greatest Comeback ever” on Reddit, “Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things” on Digg… And these all in the top stories of the day.

I fear that, in spite of unprecedented access to knowledge, we’ve created a culture that aspires toward the experience of curated stupidity. We’ll let the most popular sources tell us what to look at, and we’ll accept that as the information we ought to be taking in. It is no better than the assessment of the downside of watching television above.

Another angle: did you know that many top universities post free courses on Youtube? Want to learn about Chemistry? MIT can help. Want to learn about the theory of Literature? Yale will hook you up. With all this great, in depth, educational info, surely the top videos on Youtube must be riddled with good information, right? Wrong. There’s nothing smart at all in the top videos for the last week.

It appears that, when faced with the choice between consuming things that will make us smarter and things that will make us chuckle (while making us dumber), we’ll pick dumber most of the time.

All that to say, I’m seeking to stop making myself dumber on the internet. I’m going to be seeking out good, helpful things. If I’m going to consume information this way, it’d be nice for the preponderance of it to be things that make me smarter. And, for a while, you’ll likely find the results here. Sites that might make you smarter. So much better than a link to, say, peopleofwalmart.com.

“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.”

- C.S. Lewis

More to come on this.