100 Years Since “A Night to Remember”

The last known picture of the "unsinkable" RMS Titanic as she left harbour for her rendezvous with fate.

At 2:20 AM, 100 years ago this morning, the RMS Titanic‘s keel broke in two just before she dove 2.3 miles down to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean carrying nearly 1,000 people to the Stygian depths with her. Around 500 more unfortunate souls were swept from her swiftly tilting decks into the sub-freezing waters of the North Atlantic to drown or die of hypothermia or shock within minutes of entering the water.

The disastrous sinking of the Titanic is the subject of thousands of articles, hundreds of websites, a multitude of full length books, and at least eight full length feature films . . . and that’s just in English. The individual triumphs and tragedies of surrounding the voyage are the stuff of legends and people like the ebullient buoyant “Unsinkable” Molly Brown, the craven coward J. Bruce Ismay, or tragically shortsighted Captain Edward J. Smith live on in our memories to this day — one century later.

Nothing I could write about the disaster hasn’t already been written and by much better writers than I. Still, this disaster is one which resonates with something deep inside my mind and fills me with dread and foreboding even here in my warm, dry, and safe office. In my mind’s eye, I can see, with little trouble, the chaotic terror washing over the decks of the doomed ship like the water which would carry her to her grave. Imagine what it had to be like in the lower decks where the Second Class and lower passengers were trapped and trampled in the mad rush toward the top of the ship. Think of the brave, doomed men of the boiler rooms who stayed at their posts shoveling coal into the boilers to keep the spark of the wireless dancing as long as possible.

Photo of the iceberg that sank Titanic taken by a crewman of RMS Carpathia as she collected survivors and bodies following the disaster.

Should this world stand long enough and the Almighty tarry in His return, we shall all die. That is a certainty which comforts some and terrorizes others, but it is a certainty nonetheless. Still it is one thing to be felled by a lightening strike, a car accident, or some dreadful disease, but how many of us are fated to watch helplessly — as the people aboard the doomed liner were — Death’s slow, inexorable approach? Could you stand to watch the water slowly, then not so slowly, rise up the deck as you held your child upon your shoulders in a vain effort to keep him from the water a second longer? Would you jump into the frigid, salty blackness and clutch Death to your bosom like a lover just to make an end?

The wreck of the Titanic is something which haunts my nightmares even though it occurred long before even my grandparents were born because nearly every race and social strata participated on the Titanic’s maiden voyage so it is a picture of the death of the world in miniature. The people aboard the liner were happy and looking ahead to a bright future one moment then marking the steady approach of Death the next. What if instead of an iceberg plowing into a ship it is an asteroid plowing into the Earth? Those on the ship had two hours to ponder . . . how long would we have?

It makes me think of the people trapped above the crash levels in the Twin Towers. That was another microcosm of total destruction. People who are going about their everyday lives all morning then without warning they are off to meet the One whom Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins bet their lives and souls is not there. Can you feel the bitter cold of the water? Can you feel the rush of the air sweeping by as you plunge from 110 stories up?

The bow of RMS Titanic as she sits at the bottom of the North Atlantic, slowly turning into powder like the dreams of those who perished aboard her.

The water isn’t the most terrifying aspect of that horrible night for me, however. The worst scenario my mind can imagine is to be one of those who likely made it alive 2.3 miles down. Of course people scoff at that idea. No one could have survived that descent could they? I remember when NASA went public with the revelation that the crew of the space shuttle Challenger actually survived the initial explosion and were alive for the seven minute plunge to the ocean where the force of impact killed them. What if someone or several someones were happily sealed inside one of the many watertight rooms aboard the ship? What if they made it to the bottom? How did they die in the inky blackness at the bottom of the ocean? Suffocation or starvation? It’s a horrible thought, but not impossible. The interior of the wreck has never been even halfway fully explored. When you are as claustrophobic and fearful of the dark as I am, such a possibility is too terrible to imagine, but not too awful to be ruled out.

In any event, the loss of 1,514 people in the black icy water of the North Atlantic 100 years ago is a tragedy almost too great to imagine, if for no other reason it was so completely avoidable at so many points, but none of that matters anymore. To this day, it is the 8th greatest loss of life in a non-military maritime disaster in recorded history. So when you think of the Titanic or, God forbid, go see the hideous 3-D adaptation of the already hideous 1997 James Cameron movie, remember the words to an old hymn and say a prayer for those await the day when the sea shall give up her dead.

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

A rare postscript

I feel this particular picture did not fit with the tone of the rest of this post, but I must include it in any discussion where that abominable 1997 movie might come up . . .

This highlighted frame capture shows the piece of flotsam CLEARLY has enough room for Rose AND Jack if only the selfish cow had possessed the common decency to SIT UP or SKOOCH OVER!

Let’s Get the Facts Straight, Shall We?

I sooooo miss the '80s. I was there and it was awesome.

It’s taken awhile for me to weigh in on this matter, but with the Super Bowl and then the Grammys right after, I’ve kept my silence long enough. It’s time to set the record straight and if no one else is going to do it, then I am. Lady Gaga is NOT as cool as Madonna. Lady Gaga is not the new generation’s Madonna. Lady Gaga is NOT Madonna’s heir.

I like Lady Gaga, but to paraphrase the infamous debate exchange between Lloyd Benson and Dan Quayle, “I watched Madonna come on the scene. I saw her take MTV by storm. Madonna was my teenage lust-crush and, Lady Gaga, you are NO Madonna.”

Let’s look at the facts. Lady Gaga wears outrageous costumes and has certain risque’ choreography in her videos and acts. Madonna made cone bras and lingerie-as-outerwear fashionable. How many young girls do you see walking down the street wearing a dress made of steak? Right. Now if you had been alive in the ’80s (aka the most awesome decade EVER) you would see girls from 8 to 80 rocking bustiers and fishnets without even standing on the corner. Fashion icon point? Madonna.

Maximum weirdness.

Lady Gaga is the stage name for Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Madonna’s stage name is . . . well, Madonna. You don’t get cool points for giving yourself a nickname. Nicknames are bestowed; they are earned through hard work and memorableness. Put out an awesome song that cements your place in music history and you get a nickname. Lady Gaga’s well-earned nickname is? Right, she doesn’t have one. Madonna? “The Material Girl,” a name she earned after channeling Marilyn’s turn in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”  in the video for the eponymous song. Nickname coolness? Madonna.

That’s 2-0 if you’re keeping score.

Next up is — for lack of a better word — groundbreakingness. Lady Gaga? What’s she done that’s never been done before? Matter of fact, what has she done that Madonna didn’t do before her? The word you are searching for is nada. What taboo walls did Madonna knock down, or more accurately, explode in a blinding flash of flame, fame, and diamonds? Let’s see. First, she writhed around in a pure white wedding dress for “Like a Virgin.” Then there was the “Borderline” blasphemous video for “Like a Prayer” where the erstwhile Catholic schoolgirl danced in next to nothing before a background of burning crosses.

Can you say "Went over like a fart in church?"

If Skinhead O’Connor hadn’t torn up that picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live, Madonna still would be persona non gratia at the Vatican. Oh, and how did she follow that up? She only put out the first video to get an X-rating in its initial release when “Justify My Love” was banned from being shown before midnight on MTV. I still remember being in a cramped and crowded dorm room on E-Hall in the Johnstone Dorms of Clemson University to watch that first showing. Then Madonna went on to release a book and a movie called Sex.

Then, just to show she still had the power to rock an audience with the unexpected, THE Material Girl frenched Christina AND Brittney (back when they were at peak hotness) while wearing a Marlene Deitrich suit just to pass the torch on to the next generation of hot women singers. Taboo destruction points? Madonna.

Still crazy after all these years.

So that’s 3-0 and game, set, and shutout to Madonna. Now with 7 Grammys and 13 MTV awards, Lady Gaga is off to a good start for sure, but she’s still got a ways to go to get 10 Grammys out of 28 nominations and turn 68 MTV nominations into 20 awards INCLUDING “Lifetime Achievement Award.” Lady Gaga is doing well for herself after five years, but can she sustain the flow and keep rocking into a third DECADE like Madonna? Only time will tell.

Of course, as much as I still love Madonna, I respect the fact that she too isn’t completely original.

That honor, of course, would have to go to . . . who else?

Left 2011, right 1992. Not exactly identical, but not bad for a 62-year-old.

CHER!

The Ex-Mrs. Bono is past Social Security age, still rocking, and still pretty hot — thanks to the miracle of modern plastic surgery and despite the stress of having Chas as a daughter/son. Keep it up, girl!

And the rest of you rock on and keep those feet clean.

Love y’all!

Awkward isn’t just for Adolescents

As I’ve come to understand it, Americans should get out of college and pair off. Preferably the pairs will marry, but this is no longer the rigid step it once was. As a couple, you’re allowed around two to five years to “get to know each other” and “just be the two of you,” unless you happen to announce your intention to “start a ‘family’ right away.”

In that case, babies can start showing up within a year and stop when the couple reaches their desired number, which could range from one or two in most couples’ cases, to four or five if you want to be on staff where I go to church, all the way up to “20 and counting” if you are Amish, a member of a Quiverfull sect, or want your own lucrative reality television show.

Then you raise those children, get them educated, grown and gone, then retire to a life of travel and leisure while your empty nest periodically refills with grandchildren to bounce on knees and spoil rotten. Then you die, preferably surrounded by all those loving children. THEN — if you’re Mormon and had your marriage sealed in one of the Temples — you get to go to your own planet somewhere in the universe and do this whole cycle again on a deified, planetary level.

So, based on this supposed normal cycle, Budge and I have an awkward social problem. Apparently, we’ve skipped the vital “having and raising children” and, as a result, we are the “older childless couple.”

Let me clarify by saying that we didn’t set out to be an “older childless couple.” That’s just how our life has worked out. Budge was young (18) when we married so neither of us felt a great urgency to add to the world population right away. She still had college to finish and I was a relatively new teacher.

Time passed, we got our own place, and we let nature take its course. After the obligatory five years, we were still childless. Then we found out Budge has P.C.O.S. which will make it difficult if not impossible for her to ever have children. Now that is the main roadblock to our fertility that we know of. I could have issues or she could have another issue. We haven’t ever pursued it simply because life has continually gotten in the way.

We dismissed fertility procedures right from the start. We knew we didn’t have the funds to pursue treatment then and we sure don’t have it now. The profits pharmaceutical companies and some doctors are raking in from people desperate to have a child are obscene. I think it’s borderline criminal to make so much money on another person’s misery and anxiety. Also, we’ve seen first hand and up close what an untrammeled and unfulfilled desire to have a baby can do to a couple financially, but more importantly, emotionally. We didn’t want to put each other through that ordeal when we’ve got plenty more ordeals to deal with as it stands.

We studied adoption and got super-interested in adopting a baby girl or two from China. That door closed for us when China completely overhauled its foreign adoption policies. Looking at several websites of agencies specializing in Chinese adoptions, we soon realized we didn’t meet ANY of the financial or medical criteria China now set for foreign adoptions. After our plan of adopting from China aborted before takeoff, we briefly looked at domestic adoption but abandoned that idea for one reason — money.

So we’ve been married fifteen years and we have no children and, barring a miracle or a tragedy (we are the guardians of several children in friends’ wills), we won’t have any. We’ve come to accept this way of life and found it not so bad. We love children — we wouldn’t have both gone into education if we didn’t. We have a grown niece and four nephews (and counting) that we spend time with. Some of our friends have little ones we adore and spoil as much as possible, but mostly it’s just us. That’s okay with us, but it seems to be a problem for some other people.

You don’t really understand just how much this culture worships children until you’ve been married (or even together these days) with nothing but a small home and several pets to show for it. Churches especially seem to spend a huge section of their budgets on children’s programming and facilities. If you don’t HAVE children, you become — quite without malice, I’m certain — a bit of a second class citizen. We just don’t fit into any demographic.We aren’t singles; we aren’t empty-nesters; we aren’t parents. In such a child-centered world, we are oddballs.

If I had a dime for every time some well-intentioned person asked “so when are y’all gonna have some kids?” I’d be wealthy enough to buy the child of my choice on the black market. It doesn’t make me or Budge mad and we don’t experience the agony some infertile couples do, but it still makes for an “awkward turtle”-esque pause in the conversation.

Being childless also has a few aggravating implications. We are the last people in either of our families to know of any family plans because, “y’all don’t have to worry about schedules and stuff.” The thought being, we don’t have children so we can come and go whenever it suits everyone else. Likewise, people don’t mind “volunteering” us for stuff for much the same reason. We don’t have to worry about baby-sitters. It also means we get excluded from a lot of conversations — even among our friends. I guess they think being childless makes us deaf, too; so they feel free to talk about feedings, clothing, and sicknesses as if we didn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation. We don’t have children of our own but that doesn’t mean we know nothing about children! Go figure.

The only thing that really bothers that people do is when a mother or a father looks at me when I speak up about children and says, “well, you’d think that since you don’t HAVE any children.” Well, goober, no I don’t have any children of my own, but I spent 10 years seeing how idiots like you screwed them up by the time they got to their teen years. I don’t say that much though because Budge usually starts patting me on the leg or back as soon as she hears someone say something that could set me off.

So, y’all, just keep in mind that some of us out here are childless. We didn’t choose to be, but we’re okay with the hands life dealt us — you know, “whatever condition you find yourself in be content?” All we ask is a place at the table. After all, we make great baby-sitters.

Keep those feet clean and know that I love y’all!

Verbal Brutality — A Still Life in Words

You ever get something on your mind and you cannot move on to something else because you can’t concentrate with THAT thought rolling around in your head? You know, kind of like getting “It’s a Small World After All” stuck in your head on an endless loop? I’ve run into that syndrome this fine Monday morning.

I was balancing out the checkbook from the weekend, pretty much the way I do every Monday, and I uncovered a couple of bills that had slid or slipped or — knowing me — been placed under a stack of other papers. One was the water bill and of course it was overdue so I went online and paid it immediately since Budge doesn’t ask for much, but running water IS one of her requirements.

Anyway, after settling up those couple of bills and scheduling out the taxes (which were ALSO resting comfortably under the aforementioned pile) I realized we had about a third of the money I’d hoped we’d have for Christmas. Now, please understand, that’s nothing unusual. It was just a little disheartening to get socked with this early on a Monday morning AFTER my awesome new-to-me laptop decided to lose it’s mind (and LCD screen) AND after spilling a heaping cup of Domino’s Extra Fine Granulated Sugar all over the counter and floor as I was making tea. I just wasn’t in the mood to be reminded of this particular incident, but . . . what’re you gonna do? There it was rolling around in my head and I’m hoping that telling this story publicly for the first time will help exorcise this foul mental demon. After all, I need the room up there.

 

So without further fanfare, I want to tell about the most brutal, most condescending, most intentionally hurtful thing ANYONE has ever said to me. Names have been changed to show how even with  BPD, Dysthymic Disorder, anger management problems, and all my other issues I’m not on the same level as this cretin, which gives me a certain cold comfort.

My Papa John had a 1965 Pontiac GTO that he was insanely proud of. He loved that car. When I was small, he would put me on his lap and let me steer it down the highway. The GTO died when I was in middle school, but instead of getting rid of it, Papa took it down to our little white church and put it up on jack stands (not blocks) and threw a nice cover over it. Our plan was for me to “fix it up” and drive it once I got to high school and got my own job. Apparently, at some point, Mr. Ash Whole, the antagonist of this story and filthy rich Pontiac aficionado, found out about the GTO and offered to buy it from Papa John for a pittance. Now, folks, Israel will give up the West Bank of Jordan and leave Jerusalem before my Papa John would have sold that car. So he said, “No thank you.” Undeterred, Mr. Ash Whole would make papa the same offer several times over the years.

Then in my senior year of high school, Papa John had his first major debilitating stroke. It wasn’t his first stroke, but it was the first one to take him out of action. Papa John gave me the title to the GTO and said to go ahead with our plans and as soon as he got well, we’d work on the car together.

Unfortunately, I found out that restoring cars is a rich man’s hobby. Even repairing the GTO enough to return it to the road proved to be beyond my means with my high school jobs. Fortunately, the GTO wasn’t eating anything, didn’t cost much in taxes, and was more or less safe from the elements.

Once Mr. Ash Whole found out about Papa’s stroke, he started turning up the heat on ME to sell him the car. Please bear in mind I had all the same issues back then that I do now, BUT I didn’t know anything was wrong with me, I just thought I was a slight jerk with a hair trigger temper. So I said, “No.” When he kept asking, I upped my response to “Hell no.”

Then, one night after I’d had a pretty disastrous day, the phone rang. This was in the pre-caller id days or I’d never have answered it. It was, of course, Mr. Ash Whole. We started going through the usual preliminary small talk that is expected of Southern men even if they DO hate each other but this time, he had a different tack. He went straight for the guts. He said, “Shannon, I’ll tell you, I’ve been trying to buy that piece of $#@! GTO from your grandfather and now you for too long and I’m just going to be straight with you, John’s never going to drive again and you’ll never get that car running on what you make at a grocery store– you need to sell me that car tonight if for no other reason than

(here it comes)

(the ugliest thing anyone’s ever said to me even to this day)

I know you are dirt poor and could desperately use the money.”

I didn’t have anything to say. He was pretty much right. I told him I’d come by his store with the title and the key after school the next day. What he gave for Papa’s beloved GTO wouldn’t buy a cart of groceries today.

Just as a little side note, I went to high school with Mr. Ash Whole’s son. Later on, I would be roommates in college with Mr. Ash Whole’s son and that dude was one of the most solid friends I’ve ever had. I can only figure he took after his mother. I never mentioned that conversation with his father to my buddy. He wasn’t real crazy about the man either. Still, that did open up some more painful wounds because he knew where the car came from even though he didn’t know the circumstances. With total innocence, he’d update me on his dad’s restoration project. Mr. Ash Whole poured thousands upon thousands of dollars into that car. Today, it is a national show winner.

I don’t think St. Peter allows driving where Papa’s gone to now. It’s most likely hard to get tire marks off golden pavement, so I doubt Papa could care less.

As for me, whenever I see a 1965 GTO, to this very day, I taste bile and — more than that — dirt in my mouth for hours afterwards.

Love y’all, keep those feet clean, and be careful what you say to each other.

Well Merry *bleep*ing Christmas to You Too, Jerk!

For 22 years, starting in 1659, our lovely Puritan forefathers banned Christmas. Now I don’t hold too much with Puritan beliefs. I’ve had enough commerce with modern day Fundamentalists (who are only a pale shadow of the Puritans!) to know most of their beliefs rest in the authority of men rather than Scripture. However, on this whole idea of banning Christmas — well, they may have been on to something. I just spent parts of three days at the mall with about 350,000 of my closest friends and I can testify to one irrefutable fact — a whole truckload of people would be better off mentally, emotionally, and financially if we just skipped Christmas.

Now, before anyone wants to skewer me as being a Jehovah’s Witness or irreverent towards Jesus’ birthday, let me get one thing straight. For those of you who don’t know, Jesus Christ was not born on December 25, 8 BC. The Gospels state that the shepherds were in the fields with their flocks. If you ever have the time, check out the Weather Channel for Bethlehem in December. Not all the Middle East is hot all the time. Suffice it to say neither the shepherds nor their sheep would have been out in the fields in December in Judea.

No, Christmas as we know and love (or loathe) it today is a pastiche of pagan traditions adapted by some early Christians to make their new religion more appealing to their pagan neighbors. They basically co-opted the traditional Feast of Saturnalia from Roman pagans and later on, when Christianity reached the British Isles, the Druids added a healthy dose of their traditional Winter Solstice or Yuletine celebration to the Roman underpinnings. Honestly though, I don’t care about the origins of the Christ Mass. Christ can be honored at Christmas just as much as people want to honor Him. Or not. Paganism has nothing to do with my musings on canceling Christmas.

I’d consider canceling Christmas because it has morphed from “Tis the Season to be Jolly” into “Tis the Season to be a Raging Douchebag!”

Face it, NOTHING brings the collective inner a-holes of society to the surface like the Christmas season. Starting somewhere around August these days we start seeing the first glimmerings of the tinsel to come. Then stores get fully decorated as soon as the black cats and witches hats come down for Halloween. Thanksgiving gets brushed off and then OMG!

It’s Black Friday and the world loses its freaking mind!

From the Friday after Thanksgiving until sometime around the first week of January, you take your life into your hands if you venture to within a mile of a retail establishment. People will SHOOT YOU over a parking spot at the mall. I have personally been given the middle finger by several little old blue haired ladies driving their stretched out Cadillacs around the parking lot of Haywood Mall like the Malachy Brothers and Pinky Tuscadero in a demolition derby.

The Bird — from GRANDMA! That’s what Christmas DOES to people these days.

If you want to visit a breeding ground for strokes and heart attacks, head out to the nearest US Post Office starting around the second week in December. I was in my local station last Thursday to pick up some stamps and this guy a few people back in line from me gets on his cell phone (I will refrain from my “cell phone in public places” rant) and starts pitching a fit with whoever was on the other end. He actually SAID, “I’ll be here for AT LEAST an hour because for some reason EVERY IDIOT in this town brought TEN BOXES to mail!”

Really?

And people accuse ME of going off at the drop of a hat! Dude, word of advice — buy a calendar and some Xanax! Better make it the PURPLE ones too, because you are BEYOND the orange ones.

What I don’t understand is WHY ALL THE FUSS?!

For nearly six solid weeks, the great mass of quietly desperate sheeple run around like AD-HD lemmings on meth buying gifts they can’t afford with money they don’t have to give to people they probably don’t like. Why? Men are forced at bayonet point to put up trees and string lights on those trees and many of those men resort to alcohol in an effort to deal with the madness of trying to make out the color of the one remaining microscopic fleck of paint on the tip of a boxful of artificial tree branches! Is it orange or brown! Makes a difference you know.

We won’t even TALK about the lights. I don’t have the raw numbers, but I’m nearly certain the three leading causes of divorce in America are fights over money, lack of communication, and STRINGING CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ON A TREE!

“YES, DEAR, I see the big gaping hole where we need more lights!!”

People don’t enjoy Christmas anymore. They can’t. The “retail therapy” pushers won’t let them. What should be a nice, calm time for friends and family has turned into a materialistic feeding frenzy! My two oldest nephews get more toys and gadgets and stuff at ONE family get-together than Wilson’s Five and Ten’s whole inventory when I was growing up. The push to keep up with the Joneses who don’t even know you exist has driven people to madness.

People will STEAL PRESENTS out of a car. That is almost, but not quite as low as stealing money out of the offering plate as it comes by (not making change in the offering plate, that’s different). I’ve just recently seen women get into hair-pulling, shirt-ripping cat fights over the last Elmo doll — WHILE THEIR KIDS WERE WATCHING!

It’s unbelievable! Folks get trampled to DEATH every year at Wal-marts and Target stores over a sale on DVDs or some such nonsense. A person’s life has become cheaper to society than a round piece of laser etched plastic.

I can imagine Jesus looking over this chaos that — once upon a time — used to be set aside to celebrate His birth and thinking, “Really, guys?”

So watch out for the bird-flipping grannies out there and if you MUST go out to a mall sometime in the next four days, PLEASE be careful! It’s a tinsel wrapped, tiny light strung jungle out there!

Love y’all! Keep those feet clean!

Of Tragedy and Old Friends

I stopped by Kentucky Grilled Chicken (?!?!?) today for a three honey BBQ snacker snack at lunchtime. I was done with the tater wedges and halfway through my second snacker when an old friend showed up in the KFC (KGC . . . KGB . . . ???). Now when I say “old friend”, this chicka is quite possibly my second oldest friend in the world. She and I literally have known each other from right near the cradle. We went through twelve years of grade school and K5 together. I distinctly remember talking her out of playing with the toy kitchen set in Miss Coggins’ room so she would come play in the sandbox with me. Birthday parties, McDonald’s parties, swimming dates. We go way back.

For the purpose of this story, her name will be Nadia. First, I don’t want her real name plastered all over the Internet because she’s a private person and second, I didn’t go to school with anyone named Nadia at any time that I can remember, so people won’t be running to the old yearbooks (as if they cared) to see who I’m talking about.

Nadia was one of my first kindergarten crushes. I thought she was beautiful with china blue eyes and long snowy blond hair, but even more, she was cute and funny. She was a lot like me. Her parents were the first couple in my dinky little home town to get divorced after mine broke the ice. It wasn’t much of a loss for the family since her dad was, as Papa used to put it, “not worth the powder it would take to blow his brains out.” Still, not much ever seemed to get her down. She was the middle child of three, then the second oldest of four when her mother got a bit of a surprise when Nadia and I were beginning sixth grade. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only surprise Nadia’s family would get that year.

Nadia was the most graceful gymnast I knew in my short life. She was athletic all around — great runner, champion swimmer, etc. — but her true gift lay on the floor exercise platform. I still recall our sixth grade talent show when she did her floor routine and absolutely floored everyone else. Her dream was the Olympics. She had her sights set on Los Angeles and 1984 and none of us, young or old, doubted her ability or commitment. We joked in math class about how much tickets to LA would cost. Our closest airport wasn’t even equipped for that kind of trip then. Nadia had big dreams and we all dreamed with her. Somewhere boxed up I’ve got a wallet sized picture of her in her leotard with her rhythm hoop. She’s smiling that spotlight smile and looks for all the world like she was posing on the podium getting the gold medal.

If iPods had been around in 1982, I don’t doubt for a minute she’d have made LA. Nadia, her mother, her mother’s best friend, and Nadia’s three sisters, including the baby, were on their way home in a car driven by Nadia’s oldest sister, who had just gotten her permit. The cassette they were listening to reached the end and automatically ejected. It came out of the player and fell to the floor beneath the sister’s feet. When her sister glanced down to mark where it fell, the car was in the beginning of a curve and drifted into the path of a fully loaded gravel truck  from the local quarry.

The Highway Patrol statement said there were no skid marks visible from either vehicle. Neither driver had touched a brake pedal. The truck was stopped by climbing atop the car and sliding several hundred feet until both vehicles went into the ditch. The truck driver was physically unscathed and everyone, including Nadia, have always maintained there was nothing humanly possible he could have done to avoid the collision. In any event, I heard the accident drove him to the bottle. Whether that is true or not, I can’t say. You’ll hear anything in a small town.

What is a fact is Nadia’s Olympic dream ended in a tangle of sheet metal and diesel fuel. Her spine was severed right below her belly button. She would never walk again. Her mother, the friend, oldest sister, and the baby, who wasn’t in a car seat because she didn’t have to be in those days, all died at the scene. Nadia’s next sister, seated at impact between the friend and Nadia, walked away with a cut over her left eye that required five stitches.

I don’t know many well adjusted grown men and women who could have withstood a tragedy of that magnitude with all mental flags flying, but Nadia seemed to. I don’t pretend to know what nightmares have ridden roughshod through her dreams these last thirty years, but I know she took to her wheelchair like the proverbial duck to water. After some therapy, she was riding rings around her grandmother and grandfather’s home. She even came back to school and finished the year.

In those pre-Americans with Disabilities Act days, our beloved principal and several of the more “handy” fathers came to the school several days over the winter break and built ramps to every place they could imagine Nadia wanting to go. She was given a key to the faculty bathroom because it was the only restroom in the school large enough to accommodate her and her wheelchair. One of her trusted friends would always accompany her in case she fell making the transition from chair to commode and back. That’s how we did it back then. We took care of each other.

Nadia was the first handicapped person I knew up close and personal. She could have been the poster child for how to deal with the biggest poop sandwich I’ve ever seen handed to one person in one lifetime. She was, and still is, a survivor. She and I graduated the same night and I lost track of her for some time. Then I started running into her at local stores and such. She was still pretty as ever. In time’s due course, she married a very kind and decent man. He was with her today. They have four children and the oldest was graduating tonight, just as his mother and I did these twenty years gone.

So I told y’all Nadia’s story to tell you, and myself, this little tidbit — it could ALWAYS be worse. What’s more, when it GETS worse, it’s up to you how to handle it. If anyone in this world has ever had a right to end up hooked on drugs or completely depressed or suicidal, Nadia was that person. That wasn’t how she rolled, pun intended, though. One dream and most of her family had died, but the woman I saw today still had a head held high and her china blue eyes still sparkled. The snow blond hair had some grey streaks, but mine does as well and my life has been a cakewalk compared to Nadia’s. So don’t take anything for granted folks. Life moves at the speed of love and it moves by very fast. Nadia is moving right along with it. She’s been an inspiration to me for going on thirty years now. I hope her story inspires some of y’all as well.

So, love y’all bunches and now that summer’s here, when y’all come in from chasing fireflies, don’t forget to wash your feet!

What Does Pelosi Know About This?

Okay, so Friday, The Reason I Get Up In The Morning and our adopted 30 year old girl child wanted to go to the local Vietnamese Embassy nail parlor to have that quintessential rite of womanhood relaxation — the pedicure. I, being the manly man, stayed in the car with my iPod and played Solitaire — that quintessential rite of manhood relaxation.

Well, the days are beginning to heat up here in the South after a particularly wonderful spell of unseasonably cool and non-humid weather and the Midnight Blue of the Santa Fe began to draw a mite too much heat for my comfort. So, when the sweat rivulets began to form, I struck my flag in surrender and went into the nail parlor where it was cooler.

Once I recovered from the assault on my nose from whatever noxious and probably toxic chemicals were venting into the air, I settled down on a pagoda armed chair and went back to my Solitaire game. I looked up every now and again just to maintain an air of situational awareness and the last time I looked up, my two female charges were head to head with the diminutive owner of the business. Once glance in my direction and I knew the day was about to take a turn for the strange.

Sure enough, the ladies had bought me a pedicure. Now I could have stood my ground and battled for my manly rights to grocery store feet and lack of daintiness, but it was two and a half against me and I just didn’t have the energy to mount the necessary defense. So, in the name of science (at least that’s what I told myself) I mounted the raised platform and sank into the depths of a surprisingly large and comfortable Naugahyde recliner with a foot basin at the bottom. No sooner had I settled in than said basin began filling with fizzy blue water. This piqued my interested because the fizzy blue water was exactly the shade of fizzy blue water that Granny Wham went to great lengths to keep my feet — and other body parts — out of when I was younger. Of course, that water had been contained in a basin of a different material and makeup, thus the difference. Still, the cognitive dissonance was there.

Once the basin was filled and the water jets were jetting, a tiny, tiny, tiny ageless but seemingly young and definitely dainty Asian lady came up to me, smiled at me and, by pointing, made me to understand I was to put my feet into the fizzy blue water. I did so. Then I sat marinating my prized grocery store feet in fizzy blue water for ten minutes.

At the end of the aforementioned marinating time, the aforementioned animated doll came up and seated herself on a stool at my feet. Then she opened a drawer next to the basin. This drawer was filled with a variety of implements that I had not seen since the final torture scene of Braveheart. My apprehension grew, fueled not only by the sight of the drawer of horrors, but also by some nagging thought that I should remember something that was gnawing at the fringes of my consciousness. This seemed singularly important, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not bring the memory to recall.

So, somewhat confused over my nagging memory, I put myself into the hands of the dainty picture at my feet. She again smiled sweetly and touched my right calf in a manner that I assumed, correctly it turned out, meant, “please take this huge beef shank out of the fizzy blue water and place it on the stand in front of the basin.” I complied and she picked up some metal and plastic tool closely resembling a piece of two by four with sixteen penny nailed studded throughout it. Budge told me it was a callous file. In any event, the precious lady at my feet grasped the “file” in one hand and clamped down on my right foot in a grip of iron. It was at that moment I remembered what my brain had been trying to tell me for the last twenty minutes.

The bottoms of my feet are ungodly ticklish.

For as long as I can remember, anyone wanting to torment me who could manage to contain my size and adrenaline would grasp my ankle and proceed to run fingers or a feather or anything lightly over the sole of my foot. I would explode into paroxysms of laughter and involuntary spasms of jerking and kicking. As a child, it was the favorite pastime of my beloved Uncle Larry to hold me off the ground dangling upside down by one foot while he tickled said foot and watched me turn blue. Once, however, he made the mistake of doing this not knowing I’d eaten a half-gallon of Rocky Road ice cream right before he arrived. Granny Wham and Aunt Cathy were none too happy at the resulting inverted geyser. But I digress.

The foot therapist’s touch immediately triggered the old reactions and it was only at the last second and only by brute force that I managed not to unleash a front kick that would have no doubt propelled my attendant through the air and probably the far wall. For the next fifteen minutes, thirty if one counts the repeat performance on the left foot, I fought back insane laughter and jerky twitches of my poor assaulted feet. To make matters worse, my beloved and our girl child sat next to me visibly shaking as they tried to contain their laughter.

Finally, it was over, or so I thought. She released my feet into the fizzy blue water and I took a breath for the first time in nearly half an hour. Then she turned to her assistant and said something in the melodious sing song that is the Vietnamese language. I soon found out that her words loosely translated into, “Please bring me two asbestos bags of molten lava to help soften and rejuvenate this poor sap’s feet.” Of course, I didn’t know at the time that the beautiful amber liquid in the plastic bags the assistant brought was the temperature of the Sun’s corona. So, I unthinkingly and meekly put both feet into the bags . . . and watched through tears as my toenails melted off. As the “paraffin” hardened like so much basalt around my poor feet, I thought of how I was going to crawl to the car and, once I reached home, I’d have to rename the blog “Granny Beads and Grocery Store Ankle Stumps”.

Then, as quickly as the whole process began, it was over. The bags were removed from my feet, my calves were massaged with fragrant lotion, and my torturess was remarking how much she’d enjoyed working me since I was a “big man, like [her] husband.” I thanked her and told her that was wonderful and the intimate contact we had enjoyed with her at my feet made us husband and wife in several cultures, but irony doesn’t translate well.

So, we paid our bill and I walked out to the car on callous free feet as far from grocery store grime as the day I was born. In retrospect, the feeling was delicious and I can totally see how ladies become addicted to the experience. Perhaps next time, I’ll go for the hot stone massage . . . we’ll just have to be very clear on our definitions of “hot.”

Until then, wash your feet in fizzy blue water!

Love y’all