The Nifty 50

Over Memorial Day weekend I’ll be hitting the half-century mark. Since I’ll be a grandfather before September, the weather was nice and I was enjoying a Texas spring day, I thought back on my journey thus far. It’s been interesting.

I can remember where I was when Martin Luther King and both John and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, Ronald Reagan was shot, and I watched the Challenger shuttle explode – live. I watched Armstrong walk on the moon, Nixon resign, and Cronkite read the news.

TV was 3 channels and some of that “UHF” stuff and then morphed into cable or satellite dish. “Color TV” became commonplace, and now the “Hi Def is coming” articles I read have also come true. Vinyl records became CDs, VHS and Betamax fought it out and the winner lost to DvD and TiVo. I got to see microwave ovens start and of course get better.

This isn’t going to be some sad dissertation on how much better things are now or how things were better in the good ol’ days. The truth is if you look back where you’ve been it might surprise you. Might make you wonder too.

I wonder if anyone in the last 30 years got the same thrill seeing a band or singer on television the way I did, getting to stay up and see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan? I saw the first music video on MTV (yes, they used to play music videos. Really.), and I can’t remember anything being close to that. I can only imagine what someone who was able to see Elvis about 8 years earlier (albeit from the waist up) might say as a comparison.

Sadly I can also remember where I was when Elvis, and John Lennon, and George Harrison died.

I missed having a mid-life crisis. Never got around to having one and now I think it’s too late.

I listened to Chicago play at Pine Knob in 1975, and 20 years later I stood near the same stage as I listened to them again, this time as a paramedic. In effect I went from someone that had no cares to someone that was ready to care for anyone that needed help.

I’ve had to explain to someone that their spouse of 35 years was dead. On other days I extended a marriage. Let’s not kid around here. When someone that was clinically “dead” – no heartbeat – walks up to you at work a few weeks later and shakes your hand to say, “Thank you”, you had a good day.

I’ve delivered babies. Not something I recommend outside of a hospital, by the way.

Do I have a point? Yes.

Life is a tapestry, but sometimes you need to examine the individual threads. Sometimes that is the only way you’re ever going to appreciate just how great your life has really been.

How healthy is it to get hit by a truck?

Random thoughts from driving to work:

A lot of Austinites get out of bed, strap on some athletic shoes and take an early-morning walk for improved health. Kudos to them. However, more than a few seem to let their brains sleep in. I met a pair today that were walking next to a road that has a speed limit of 60, and few streetlights. They were adorned in dark red tops and black shorts. No reflective materials on them, not even their shoes. I didn’t see them until I was right on top of them, and I look for people when I drive.

Second, a sense of satisfaction when there is a Police Officer around when you wonder about them. I admit I drive about 5 mph over the limit. So when someone passes me like I have my truck in reverse, and then a little while down the road they are having an up-close-and-personal conversation with an officer, I can’t supress a snicker or two.

Yes, I’m Pro-Choice. Get over it.

Not sure why the “Pro-Life” folks have decided to keep allowing the zealots to come to the group meetings, but I’m thinking maybe they need to re-evaluate things.

I got dragged into an argument (my fault, I went to WalMart and was minding my own business, a sure recipie for disaster in that place) between two women, one that had the poor taste to wear a button with a “choice” message on her purse.

The zealots don’t listen, and that’s probably because they are too busy screaming and picketing, and demanding that Roe vs. Wade be overturned, and when they get time they are screaming we need a Constitutional Ammendment that defines “marriage” as being between a man and a woman. That’s a pretty full schedule there, so actually talking to someone that’s Pro-Choice would take intelligence, and patience, and listening.

I’m not sure how Pro-Choice got jobbed into meaning “Pro-Abortion”. I’ve never seen a Choice rally where the people on the podium advocated women abort as many unborn as possible. I’ve seen them in favor of women keeping their rights to choose how they want to live their lives. So let’s get this one out there for the Pro-Life people to ignore yet again.

Pro-Choice is NOT “Pro-Abortion”.

I can’t; in my worst mood, see a woman that finds herself unexpectedly pregnant flipping her hair and thinking she’ll just pop the thing out like a pimple. I can’t begin to imagine a woman’s thoughts over deciding to have or not have an abortion. But I can say that as a man it’s not my place to slap down any deterrents if in the end a woman decides that because of the circumstances in her life, she must choose to get an abortion.

As a man, I don’t have to suffer the hormone changes, the body changes, and all the natural consequences of a pregnancy. How can I possibly agree that a woman be forced to bear a child to term, or be considered a lawbreaker?

I would never suggest a woman get an abortion. If my daughter came to me and said she was pregnant and was considering one, then I would talk to her about other options, but in the end the decision would have to be hers to make.

Back to the argument. The woman that was vehemently Pro-Life asked me if I thought abortion should be legal. I’m afraid I tripped her up when I asked what she was doing to provide for the children that were born to women that didn’t want them. Did she make or buy diapers, formula, and clothes? Did she offer to care for the babies while the mothers went and found work? No to both questions. Stumped her I’m afraid when I asked what her ideas were about all the children – obviously unwanted – being born to mothers that couldn’t afford to care for them.

That’s my biggest problem with the Pro-Lifers (well, after their habit of shooting and killing doctors that perform abortions that is). It seems the Pro-Lifers are all about the stopping, but nothing about the consequences of their victory. I don’t see the Pro-Life people or the “Moral Majority” providing for the care of the children. It’s more important that these unwanted offspring make it into the world. Then they can be part of the ugly statistics of increased child abuse, which allows them to grow up and be much more likely to commit a felony, and end up in prison.

Oh hold it. Maybe the Pro-Life people are thinking ahead. Seems most of them are in favor of the Death Penalty. But if I were to suggest that they make their motto “Save The Fetus So We Can Fry The Felon” I’d catch all kinds of Hell.

Wandering thoughts…

Things that hit me while I’m trying to shop, and end up thinking about…

Because of the way a lot of people push shopping carts around, I tend to limit my shopping excursions to the quick-hit, get out fast type. In theory, that should mean I can use the express lanes for faster exits. Fat chance.

If I head for a lane clearly marked “10 items or less”, I will find myself behind someone that can’t count, can’t read, or doesn’t care. In most cases I suspect all of those reasons. Regardless, I stand there with my frozen items steadily thawing while Bertha tosses her 250 items onto the counter to get a tally, and then wait a bit more while she counts out her bill in pennies. This sort of stuff gets me thinking, leaves me wondering, and also gets me more than a little pissed off.

Most of all I’m getting increasingly frazzled by the growing “I don’t give a shit about manners, nor do I give a shit about you, I’m the only important person” attitude.

I’m getting the sense that “parents” now are really some sorry asshats, and there’s a growing fear that I – as a parent – was on the tail end of the generation of people that really were “good parents”. Being on the tail end means that I wasn’t the greatest, but I still managed to raise a child that isn’t going to snap and commit some heinous crime.

I read today that some teenager walked into a shopping mall in Utah and just started shooting. The kid ended up dead, so we’ll really never get any insight into why it happened. My thoughts are that the parents should be tried and punished for failure to care about their son.

There is no way that I – as a teenager – could have gotten to the point where I was so psychotic that I would be able to grab firearms and then head into a crowd of people and start thinning the herd. My parents were on top of me as I grew up. They asked what I was doing in school, they wanted to meet my friends, they knew where I was when I went out of the house. If my parents weren’t home when I got there, the neighbors were caring people, and they would have told my folks if I had people over (which was against the rules in most cases). The neighbors knew my parent’s expectations for me, and they helped enforce those rules.

Today I don’t see that. I see parents that are distant, more tied up in their work, and trying to wedge in some “quality time” with their kids, who aren’t stupid – they know Mom or Dad resent having to force interaction. TV, iPods, the internet – all of these things have become electronic babysitters, and the poor kids are cut loose to figure things out, because Mom and Dad think a V-chip or “parental controls” mean they care.

Violent video games, television shows, movies, and music lyrics don’t turn kids into killers. Distant parents do.

Root for the home team, unless…

The Super Bowl approaches and I’m in a bit of a quandry. I want Peyton Manning to lead the Indianapolis Colts to victory, and forever remove the possibility that he will be “Another Dan Marino”. Only to do this he has to beat the Chicago Bears.

Yeah, I’ll explain. Get comfortable, this is gonna take a while.

First, Peyton Manning. Great player, with great career stats. Before this year had always run into another team (usually the New England Patriots) that beat Manning’s team for the trip to the Super Bowl. So he was hung with the “can’t win the BIG ONE tag.

People like to say that “Football is a team sport”, yet one superstar at any position can make a pro team’s identity. It’s worse when that superstar, and in Peyton’s case a star among superstars, is the QB. A receiver can drop a pass that hits him in the hands, a lineman can miss a block and get the QB wiped out on a sack that causes a fumble, a running back can get fancy and try and reverse his field and lose 15 yards, but if the QB throws an interception during the last drive to try and win the game – you can bet the rent that’s all people are going to talk about. Fair? Not even close.

Well Peyton Manning finally won the “big one” to get to the Super Bowl. His future enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame is pretty much guaranteed at this point, even if he – excuse me his team – doesn’t win the Super Bowl.

The problem is if he doesn’t win, and never gets back to the Super Bowl, he’ll go to the Hall of Fame like Dan Marino, who had the same type of career. Huge star, feared player, all sorts of records set and never won the Super Bowl. You can’t have a conversation, read an article, or listen to a sports commentator talking about Dan Marino without hearing some form of “but never won the Super Bowl”. I watched the day Marino was enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

That “never won the Super Bowl” was like a huge rock chained to Marino’s ankle that he had to – and will always have to – drag around like Jacob Marley drags chains and lockboxes.

I don’t want that to happen to Peyton Manning. Not because I’m a huge fan of Peyton Manning, or the Colts. But Peyton seems like a nice enough guy, and he doesn’t deserve that. In addition, if there are two players that were incredibly good at playing the position of NFL quarterback, and never won a Super Bowl, then it’s likely that some wag will make a new wing at the Hall of Fame in Canton OH. for players that meet that criteria. It happened to Dan Marino, and that’s enough.

So how do the Chicago Bears play into all of this? Tradition. In this case, family tradition. The Bears play in the NFC North, which houses the Detroit Lions, my home team. While I’m sure someone reading this is now thinking “Oh now I get it, you’re an idiot” – read on, there’s more.

I’m also a University of Michigan fan. As such, I *hate* Ohio State University teams. During the NFL season, I want the Lions to destroy in Bears in the best tradition of the old “Black and Blue Division”. That’s how I was raised. My father was a Detroit Lions and UM fan, and so am I. So one New Year’s Day OSU was playing USC in the Rose Bowl, and I couldn’t wait for USC to just destroy OSU. I mentioned to my father “Dad, how bad do you want USC to win?” to which he replied “I’m hoping Ohio State wins.”

I was – understandably – confused. So my father explained that OSU was from the Big Ten – the same conference as UM. By extension, OSU winning would share that glory with the Big Ten and Michigan. So the Detroit Tigers are my baseball team, and I root for the American League to win the World Series, and for the NFC to win the Superbowl, especially since the Chicago Bears – from the same division as the Lions – are playing in it.

Only if the Bears win, Manning gets hung with that tag.

Clear as mud? I’m not surprised.

Icy Reception

The 15th through the 17th of January brought some nice ice and sleet and cold weather to Austin, a place that prides itself on having places to go swimming to cool off in November.

Needless to say, it led to a lot of problems.

Thus, anyone that wants to talk about global warming should avoid me for the next week or so. If you do feel so inclined to discuss the impending destruction of the polar ice caps (while I chip the ice off my truckcicle so I can drive to work) then I hope a homeless person sneezes on you.