My subscription to MAD Magazine ran out over 40 years ago, but I still harbor most of those juvenile traits deep in my soul. Sometimes they are so close to the surface that it threatens to give me away to the public. I have followed many scandals in the last few years about authors accused of plagarism, nepotism, cronyism, pedophilia, drunkenness, and other sins. I figured it was time to out myself as a miscreant child. Some of you may have already realized this, but I figured I better clue in both of the other readers before they found out in the news.
I am the guy who walks past the blood drive poster at work and can barely contain the urge to run to my desk, get a Sharpie, and make sure that everyone in the picture has a mustache and horns before I return to work.
I am the guy who can sometimes resist, sometimes not, the urge to write my name in the snow bank in my back yard with leftover tea from my thermos. In letters 2 feet tall. Northerners will understand the joke.
A beloved former pet of mine has a very high credit rating. When I get calls for him I take them quite seriously. I never lie. I am always polite. When they hang up they send me more credit cards. I never knew a sheepdog could be good for 50K in credit. Not once did I lie about anything, they just keep sending cards. He joined AARP last year. Only fair, he was about 153 in dog years. His card is in the corner of the frame that holds his picture.
Telephone solicitors will regularly have me ask them what they are wearing. I do it in my very worst Arabic accent. It upsets them. I speak Arabic a lot on phone, almost always with people who don’t speak Arabic back. It does cut down on return callers. Not one has ever wanted to know how I’m dressed. They always hang up.
I am overly amused by Hellen Keller jokes. Yes, it’s terrible. My wife is a saint.
I am up to level 20 on my current tablet video game. I can shoot up tanks with the best of them. I make KAPOW noises, quietly, while I blow up trucks as well. I do this in bed, lights off, like a 5 year old caught reading books after lights out.
I call your desk phone as you leave to go to the bathroom. I hang up when you get back to your desk, but before you can read the caller identification.
I draw stick figure cartoons.
I enjoy life immensely. And if that makes me 14, 12, 9, or even 5 years old in the eyes of some, I’ll take the hit.
Okay, for the four of you still out there, it’s not as heavy as all that. I wanted to talk about 3 deaths that impacted my life of late. Let’s start with a dog picture. My boy Edzell:
I was enjoying the first really nice day in a while around this horrible part of the globe (long winter) and thought about my boy. This is the first time in the millenium when he hasn’t been here for spring. I chuckled over his nickname, Bugsy. Every spring he’d go sticking his snout into the garden, under the flowers and plants growing there, and come away with bugs on his head. Usually beetles or mites of some sort. Nothing that gave me any trouble. It was kind of amusing to ruffle the white spot on the top of his head and watch the critters jump around. It passed in a few days, he didn’t care, and I didn’t mind. It was always a sign of new life – mainly on his scalp, but in the garden as well. My spring and summer will be a little less joyous without the old fellow this year. He was a good friend.
The next death is that of my father. Oliver Courtemanche died 6 years ago today. He’d be ticked to get second billing to a dog, but I’m strictly going chronologically here.
Dad’s watch.
When my dad died, he left behind a family in tears. Now, six years later, it’s a bitter-sweet memory for all of us. I’m actually glad for him, he beat the rap on the last year of emphysema by his passing. Besides, his final words were, “I think I see Jesus.” Doesn’t get better for a Christian. Today I’ll pray for my mom and think about my dad. That watch is my big keepsake, I had a bigger band put on so I could wear it. Today I will do so in honor of him. Semper Fi, Staff. I’ve got the watch.
The final deaths to be covered are the ones that took place this week in 1986 when the Libyans bombed a disco in Germany and we gave some free landscaping in return. We lost pilots, they lost people. But it shut Khadaffi in his box for a while and put him on notice that things could get ugly if he kept it up. This attack, and our response, weighs heavily on a service member very close to me. They feel responsible for those deaths in Libya because of their role in the intelligence community. I’ve tried to tell them that it’s not their doing, they were an honorable person who was doing their job to defend the country. That’s small comfort to a Christian who feels guilt for those days and comes to tears and sadness each year on the anniversary.
Three different deaths: One a good memory of a buggy friend, one a father whom I miss, one an attack fomented by a terrorist strike against our people in Europe. All a part of my life. Death, a part of each of our lives.
I hope today you can spare a moment or two to pray for my mom. She lost her best friend six years ago today. Someday they will be together again. Until then, the love continues temporarily unrequited.
Normal is a long way back in the rear view mirror of my life.
There are some tales that are so profoundly confusing that they beggar the imagination. You stand in the midst of them and wonder how you got there, and then you wonder if there really is a way out of the center toward your goal. The story of Casting Crowns and their concert at Target Center in Minneapolis is one of those messes that I specialize in of late.
When the concert was announced months ago I told my wife that I’d likely not be going as it was on a work night for me. I like Laura Story and For King and Country as well, so I knew it would be a great concert. However, I hate taking vacation days early in the year, it makes the Santa season tough – sometimes I need that time off at the end of the year way more than I do in April. Especially when it’s what we call demand time at work – I don’t have to get the date authorized, I can demand to take the day off. I get 40 hours of that a year and I use it spariningly. Mainly because if I need to take time off to shoot a commercial or record voice overs the money ratio demands that I sacrifice some demand time. It’s usually a 20:1 difference between what I make doing acting jobs and my hourly wage , often quite a bit more. I husband those 40 hours.
Shiny object, toast, rhubarb jam, ah, yes, the concert. I bought two tickets for the concert so that my wife and a coworker of mine could attend together. They have gone to concerts before this and had a good time so it was a nice fit. Problem solved, they’d both enjoy the music and I’d just work my normal schedule.
Three days ago that changed. KTIS sent me an email informing me that they had 4 VIP tickets in the suite that they’d like me to have as a reward for my volunteer work at the station! Sweet news, I love volunteering there and this was pure joy. So I let my wifie know and she forbade me from telling my coworker – the suite would be a surprise. Now I had to find someone to take the two tickets I’d already purchased and two more people who would like to visit the suite with my wife and my friend.
You have no idea how hard it is to give tickets away. Really hard. The tickets down in the usual area were the first to go, I had been blessed with some tickets to see Petra last year and so the call went out to the giver of that gift. Yup, he was there in hours to pick up the ducats. Problem one solved.
The suite tickets have been gifted to no less than 4 sets of people in the last 24 hours. Yes I’ll take them was followed within hours by sorry I can’t go now. Early this morning I found the final recipients of the two spare tickets – the daughter of a friend and her boyfriend. Both lovely young people in college who love the bands. Perfect.
Just before leaving for work this morning wife unit #1A informs me that she feels terribly ill. Recovery from surgery is slower than expected and today is one of the bad days. “I probably won’t be going if I feel like this…” Super-de-dooper. She’d been looking forward to this for weeks, so I know she feels like something Stormy chewed up.
Obligatory Stormy photo.
4.5 hours before the concert the phone rings – wife unit will not be attending concert. My pea brain kicks in and analyzes the situation as: KTIS gives me nice tickets to thank me for helping. I send 4 ringers to sit in my place and work. It smacks of ingratitude at the very least. Pull up vacation schedule, years vacation to date, etc. I can spare 5 hours to go to the concert and occuply at least my once seat. Call accomplice/coworker/friend of wife and let her know about change in plans.
And, having now gone full circle, off to the concert. Is there any wonder why my brain hurts trying to keep up with this stuff?
Then it happened. I was in the Explorer with my friend, both of us laughing about my slobmobile and we drove like a couple of punch-drunk boxers to the arena. Got there early enough to score a primo parking spot, walk through the arena with no crowd, and grab some sodas and appetizers at the sports bar downstairs. Minimal complaining about work.
We got to the suite where … well, God showed up. For the next three hours I met up with friends of friends, friends at the station, fellow volunteers, on air people I’ve come to know, and the calm that God provides when you need it most. I didn’t realize just how hard I’d been running myself down for the last few weeks but the healing words of the bands and singers startled me in ways I just didn’t expect.
The guys from Casting Crowns talked about needing to be in the Word. For most that means the Bible. For me, Saturday night, it meant the words and music. The messages of these artists were all rooted in the Bible. Sometimes the words come right from the Bible. I listened closely, let the healing love of Jesus wash over me, strengthen me, refresh me. I sang along, let tears stream down my face, and filled my heart with the love that swept over that arena.
If you’ve never been to a modern Christian concert, go soon. Find out where the bands are playing. Google Christian Concert Alerts and find an artist that you like. Go and worship with thousands of others. Find that love in the music you listen to every day. If you don’t live in an area with a Christian station, you can create your own on the internet. There are lots of them. It will change how you look at things. I promise this with all my heart.
Three hours and twenty minutes later we walked back to the car. I had been healed unexpectedly. By KTIS and their gift of concert tickets. Thank you, Elisabeth. My spine is a bit straighter, my gait a bit lighter, and my head a lot clearer as a result of those three hours with my brothers and sisters in Christ.
Now, for some pictures:
Casting Crowns
Laura Story
Thousands of cellular phones during Amazing Grace with For King and Country
The sad thing is that the person who uttered those words is a gentle soul who advocates for the downtrodden and alienated. For some reason they felt that because the person put up a selfie on Facebook that they’d somehow made it okay to judge them and … and.
It frankly makes me a bit more than sad that this happened. I love both of these people, pray for both, and know that both have problems that would overwhelm 90% of the population in short order. But Facebook is a social media item – and it brings out a competition for popularity that baffles me.
I don’t think that I consider the total number of friends when I hit that button asking if someone would like to be my friend. I do consider whether or not they’ll send me into Santa Hell again, but beyond that it’s not an issue. (Santa Hell is where you go if over 1/2 of your friends are professional Santa types. All you ever see is a raft of friend requests from other portly white guys with beards. You never see any of your other friends. Facebook makes sure that nobody with a blue suit (versus red) ever shows up in your potential friends queue.)
I do monitor my friend count on the author page. It’s pathetic at the moment. So head over to your right and click on the Facebook logo (or this link) and like that page. It helps me with publishers. But friends? I have a lot. I don’t honestly know the number. Nor do I care.
Back to the issue of this post. For some reason otherwise normally kind and generous people go nuts on Facebook and dismiss others with contempt based on looks. They simply don’t realize that this is the only outlet that some folks have for their social life. That may be due to a brutal work/school/family schedule that allows no other activity. It may be because they are victims of agoraphobia. It may be because they are so depressed and lonely that they cling only to the folks who have already acknowledge them on Facebook. It may be – fill in the blank, it’s probably a real reason.
The next time you laugh or grimace at a photo on Facebook, take a moment to pray for that person. You might still laugh or grimace, but you’ll be working toward the right end if you take time to lift them up to God and ask for favor for them. We all need it. We all have stories that matter. We all need prayer and love from the people we meet in real life and in cyberspace.
She may look creepy, but she’s my friend and deserves better than that. I’m no peach myself.
After a week of decent weather, we’re back in the freezer in Minnesota (which may no longer be true when you read this posting – I bank the generic ones for a while sometimes.) So, it’s 12 degrees and my little friend just spent a full half-hour outside running around in the cold sunshine. It’s lots warmer than the cold shadows – you feel the difference the instant you pass into the penumbra.
So, back to the picture/story. I had finished doing the dishes, grabbed my coffee and plopped down on couch. She hopped up next to me (unthinkable just a few months ago) and came over to give me a sniff. I returned the favor and was rewarded with Winter Sunshine On Clean Fur. I wish I could bottle that scent. Dog owners in the northern climes would buy a big bottle of it and save it for years after their friends have passed away. It’s exactly what the words say, and it evokes a visceral response that I cherish. I bury my nose in her neck like some kind of scent vampire and inhale deeply.
Her good smell, relaxed response, and my satisfaction at making her life easier, all contribute to a rush of endorphin that makes me temporarily blind. I close my eyes and remember old friends who have gone on ahead. Friends with whiskers, poopy butts, limpy legs, and gentle souls. Friends who never spoke a word of English but captured my heart with their soulful eyes. Friends who now sit next to me on the couch without taking any space at all. Friends who have taken this current ball of fur into their company and let her know that it’s okay to hang up the anxieties for a minute and just be loved.
She flops down next to me and nibbles the bolster on the couch, her scent pervading the room. All too soon that will be gone as well. She’s not a kid. But I am so glad to have her in this moment.
Pardon me, I have to go stretch out next to her and rub that white chest. We both need it.
Have a blessed day. I hope it’s filled with Winter Sunshine for you as well.
