Oblivious To Bad Words

[content note: offensive language]

I saw a link to an opinion piece by Ruben Navarrette at CNN.com in which he decries the use of the w-word. What? There's a w-word now? I am so behind! and so I clicked on it to find out what it was. After the first few lines, though, my desire to be aware of offensiveness was momentarily thwarted when he stated that he would not be writing the word out because it is so offensive. Instead he wrote out the first half and censored the last with hyphens. I had to search the comment section for someone who was brave enough (offensive enough?) to write the whole word out.

This self-imposed censorship made me think of Louis C.K., who gets angry when people refer to any vulgarity or slur as "the [insert letter here]-word," because it immediately puts the actual word into his head, letting the speaker off the hook for taking responsibility for their language. (You can watch his rant here, if you like, but first know that he is far mor liberal with his language than I plan on being in this post.) A friend of mine once made a similar case for the use of words like "gosh" and "darn" as a stand-in for "god" and "damn," saying that these are likewise abdicating personal responsibility. I suppose he has a point.

And that reminded me of my first exposure to the biggest, baddest vulgarity of them all (or at least it used to be - it may have since been eclipsed by others).

I was in the fourth grade, and had either never heard this particular word or, as the title of this post and my genetic legacy as seen in a particular child of mine seem to suggest, had heard it but was simply oblivious to it.

One morning, I arrived to find a group of third and fourth graders huddled around Matthew, gazing at him in stunned silence.

"What's going on?" I asked Kelly.

She pulled me aside, a look of awe on her face, and whispered, "Matthew said the f-word."

I, a fourth grade student not yet laden with that adolescent quality which seeks to appear more knowledgeable and worldly than one is, asked her what this f-word was.

She, slightly startled, spelled it out for me, again in a whisper. "F, U, C, K."

"Fuck!?"

And pretty soon I had my own congregation of quiet students, staring, shocked that I would have the audacity to utter a word of such power. But I wasn't trying to be audacious. I was simply demonstrating to Kelly that I was literate.

Aw, fourth-grade Mark. How fond I am of you.

The Times I Got Mugged, Part 2

I spent fourteen years of my childhood living in Bogotá, Colombia. And during this time, there were several instances of attempted mugging, only one of which was successful - the first.

I think that this first attempt was the only successful one because it was the only one in which the muggers just took what they wanted without any sort of request accompanied by threats of violence. They just took it. There's a lesson to be learned here for would-be muggers - asking for the cash will get you nowhere. You need to just take it and run. I do not endorse this lifestyle, by the way.

But I get ahead of myself. Later, once-and-if I've shared all of my mugging stories with you, you can let me know if you have a better explanation for why the first one succeeded where the rest failed.

The second attempt to take what was mine happened about a block or two from the location of the first. You'd think I'd want to stay away from these places, but they were also a block or two from where I lived, and a guy needs to walk home every now and then.

So it was dark outside, and I was on my way home, from the mall or youth group or both, along the sidewalk of a busy avenue with a tree lined median. I was by myself, and it was a bit cold out, so my pace was brisk. Not brisk enough, I guess, because I soon became aware that another pedestrian was slowly catching up to me. I picked up the pace a little, but so did he, and he was soon speed-walking right next to me. I bet we looked hilarious to anyone who could see us. He was carrying a folder or a purse or a man-bag in front of him. I may have been shouldering a back-pack. Have I ever mentioned how spotty my memory is?

"Do you have any money?" or "What have you got in that back-pack?" he may have asked.

It's not important what his question was, because my answer, whatever it was, did not please him at all. Or maybe we had a short exchange and that didn't please him, because at some point his words were along the lines of, "Do you know what I have in this folder/purse/man-bag? A knife! You don't want me cut you, do you?" I do remember the threat of being cut.

I'm fairly certain that I didn't answer him. "Yes" would have been a silly and untruthful thing to say. And "No" would have been, somehow, negotiating with a terrorist.

I sped up slightly, not so that he would think I was trying to out-speed-walk him, but in a manner that would demonstrate how nervous I was. Then, suddenly, I stopped, ran a few yards back, and then, seeing a hole in oncoming traffic, darted across the street and onto the median.

You may think that my judgment is as spotty as my memory. You are probably right.

I turned and saw he had not been able to find an additional hole through which to pursue me. I yelled at him, and here's the part I'm ashamed to type, but, in the interests of getting as much as I remember out there: "¡Colombiano estúpido!"

I stayed on the median and jogged in the direction of home, after noticing him turn around and begin walking back the way he had come. And that was that.

When I got home, my family and future brother-in-law were waiting for me. Maybe it was taco night. I told them the story. They were horrified and then laughed at my awkward rebuke of a would-be mugger.

Carlos, if you read this, do you remember any additional details?

The Times I Got Mugged, Part 1

I spent fourteen years of my childhood living in Bogotá, Colombia.

Quick side note: That's right, it's Colombia, not Columbia. The places that most often misspell the country's name are, infuriatingly, establishments that sell coffee. Know your product, people! Also, do you think it is socially acceptable to point out that your sign may mislead geographically literate people to assume you got your beans from South Carolina?

Yes, fourteen years in Colombia. And during this time, there were several instances of attempted mugging, only one of which was successful - the first.

I think that this first attempt was the only successful one because it was the only one in which the muggers just took what they wanted without any sort of request accompanied by threats of violence. They just took it. There's a lesson to be learned here for would-be muggers - asking for the cash will get you nowhere. You need to just take it and run. I do not endorse this lifestyle, by the way.

But I get ahead of myself. Later, once-and-if I've shared all of my mugging stories with you, you can let me know if you have a better explanation for why the first one succeeded where the rest failed.

I must have been around sixteen or seventeen. I had recently purchased a ball cap. It was purple. It had some team's logo emblazoned on the front, but I can't remember which team it was, which is interesting to me - why did I buy it? Purple was not my favorite color. The team can't have been one I was a fan of, as none of my favorite teams' colors are purple. And, if I remember correctly, it didn't fit me all that well, either. Perhaps it was very cheap.

I was riding a bike (my brain won't commit to whether it was mine or my sister's) from my house to an unremembered location that had to have been several blocks away, judging from where the mugging took place. Could have been church, or youth group, or my mother's work place. Or maybe I was just out for a ride. Jeez, I feel a little bit bad for you! Here I am trying to tell you this story, and I sound like a rambling old man who can't get half his facts straight.

Right, so I remember riding my bike on a street that was on the north side of a pretty big mall. And there were a couple of hot girls walking towards me on the opposite sidewalk.

I heard the sound of an approaching motorcycle behind me and steered the bike so I was closer to the curb - better safe than dead. As the driver passed within inches of me, his passenger reached out and *yoink* grabbed my hat off my head.

My head was jerked to the side as they drove off. I lost my balance, turned my handlebar too sharply, and flipped over the front of the bike, beautifully scraping both palms on the asphalt. Fueled by rage and probably the unconscious desire to appear manly before the approaching ladies, I quickly got to my feet and began to run after the motorcycle, but it was too fast, and had already rounded the corner at the intersection, my purple hat with it; gone for good.

The two hot girls crossed the street to me, wringing their hands and speaking words of pity to me. I believe the word pobresito (which pretty much means "poor little guy") was used.

For some reason, this added humiliation to my boiling anger.

And that's all I remember about this first and only successful mugging attempt.

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Jesus calls all who labor and are heavy laden. What does he mean by that? I suppose it could be a physical exhaustion. It could also be those struggling with emotional burdens because of economic hardship, social hurts, relationship breakdown, or simply depression. He calls all of these people who are just plain tired with life and promises to give them rest - rest for their souls.

As a Christian, I found this to be true. I found the idea of Jesus calling me, taking my heavy burdens, and replacing them with his simple yoke incredibly refreshing and compelling. Here was a simple relationship of trust and obedience, like a child's with her parent; one that often gave me a wonderful sense of peace. Keith Green's song often came to mind when thinking of the yoke of Christ: Just keep doing your best, and pray that it's blessed, and he'll take care of the rest.

Jesus says that his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.

And again, this was something I experienced. Faith in God and his ability to care for me and to lead me where he wanted was relatively easy.

Unfortunately, the more I thought about my faith and its validity, the heavier this yoke became on my shoulders.

The yoke that was supposed to bring peace and rest instead began to weigh heavily on my mind as I considered the ramifications of what it meant to trust in (and actually feel benefit from!) a deity who was not there.

It was the feeling of relief evaporating when one realizes that the sight of life-giving water was merely a mirage. It was the feeling of hope dying when the report of a cancer-free body is discovered to have been accidentally switched with another patient's.
It was a feeling of dark despair.

I began to deal with the terrible cognitive dissonance of believing in a god who loved me with zero real evidence that he's actually there.

Why I Hated Madagascar 3

A month or two ago, we bought a trio of blu-rays from Dreamworks. Upon bringing them home, we realized each had a coupon for $8 off a kid's ticket for Madagascar 3, and since we have three kids, yay! We were hanging out with a good friends from out of town who have a couple little hooligans of their own, so we decided to go see the movie together on Saturday.

We arrived at the mall with plenty of time to do a bit of shopping before hand. We congregated at the entrance to the theatre at 2:45 (the movie was supposed to start at 3:30), but the doors were closed and there was a sign saying they'd open at 3:00. Fine. Let's hang out for fifteen minutes longer, no problem. We put our kids in the hurricane simulator. We chatted. We waited.

The doors opened, and we made our way in. We found out we couldn't use our printed-out coupons at the little automatic kiosks. Also, the box office was closed (apparently our theatre is under-staffed). No problem. We'll just stand in line and get our tickets at the snack bar, like everybody else. Our friends got their tickets at the kiosks and said they'd save us some seats. At this point, it was about 3:05.

Well, we waited in line. There were three of them, and of course we picked the one that was being attended by a staff member in training. Or else he was just really methodical. I don't know. At any rate, our line was moving very slowly. Our kids were getting restless. I was getting restless. But you know what, that's okay. I'm glad they have staff members in training, or at some point that would run out of staff, am I right?

After about fifteen minutes in line - at about the point we realized we'd probably not get into the theatre in time, my wife nudged me and whispered, "These people are trying to cut in line."

I looked, and there was a small group of people standing right next to us. A lady with two kids that looked like hers and one more kid who didn't. They were staring straight ahead, and the youngest kid was standing almost directly behind my wife in line. It appeared he was trying to look like he belonged in our group.

But I like giving people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they were just standing in an odd place. I asked my wife how she knew, and she said that this little family had been doing the same thing to the people in front of us, and that she had heard one of them telling the kid that "the line is back there," which had been followed by the small family moving to stand beside us.

Hmm.

I looked at the kid. He looked at me and quickly looked elsewhere. Some people tell me I'm intimidating.

I stood there and thought about these people for the next five minutes while the line moved a few feet and our movie started without us. The kid and his family slowly began to wedge themselves between us and the people behind us.

I turned to them and, gesturing with my face, asked them, "Do you know these guys?"

"Nope. I think they're trying to cut in front of us."

"Yeah. I think you're right."

I thought a bit longer.

But then I put my face close to the kid's and asked him if he was trying to cut in line. He said, "Well that's my mom right there." Classic. Reminds me of the purse incident from my childhood. Pretty sure I should tell that story some time.

I said, "That's not what I asked. I asked if you're trying to cut in line."

He didn't say anything.

"Would you like it if you'd been standing in line for 20 minutes and some guy tried to cut in front of you?"

He shook his head.

"Then be a good guy and go to the back of the line, please. Because I wouldn't like it, either."

The kid moved to stand on the other side of his mother. I heard him whispering to her. She said something in an offended tone; I caught the word "jerk." I imagine she was referring to me. The family stayed right next to us, albeit not as close as before, for a few more minutes. We inched closer to the till.

Presently they moved to stand a few feet up, looking to try cutting in front of the people a group or two up.

I asked the people ahead of us, "Do you know these guys?"

"Nope. I think they're trying to cut in front of us."

"Yeah."

So there we all stood, letting ourselves be taken advantage of.

Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer. I walked up behind the matriarch of the family, tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Ma'am, do you have a good reason to be here?"

Because I still wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she had a good reason to be cutting in line! I couldn't think of any good reason to cut in line at a movie theatre, but hey. I'm not the most creative guy in the world.

She stuttered a bit and looked around. Classic.

It looked like I was about to win the day, when a large woman standing in line in front of the group in front of us said, "I'm letting her go ahead of me."

I turned to her. "Why?"

"Well because I'm waiting for my husband to come because he's buying our tickets."

"So you're letting these people cut in front of you?"

"Yes."

"Do you know them?"

She looked nervous. I repeated the question.

"I do now."

I was appalled. Temporarily speechless.

"You can't do that!" I finally said.

"Yes I can," she retorted, finally finding her courage. "This is my place in line, and it is my prerogative if I want to let someone cut in front of me. She's not the first person I've let do this."

My voice grew loud enough for the all the people around me to hear what I was saying.

"Absolutely not! It is absolutely not your prerogative to let people cut in front of you! If you were the only person in line, then it would be your prerogative to let everyone and their dog walk all over you, but you are not the only person in line! There are close to 40 other people who have been waiting in line for their movie tickets, movies they're missing now because you've been letting people barge in front of you! You are not the only person here, and what you are doing affects everyone else!!!"

She looked ashamed of herself. She said, "I suppose your right, when you put it like that."

But it was too late. The cutting family was purchasing their tickets and their large quantities of food and drink. I contemplated confronting them as they left and demanding that they hand their tickets over to me, to give to the next people in line. My wife told me that would be illegal, but that cutting in line was not, in fact, illegal.

I fumed out loud for a bit. The families in front and behind thanked me for doing what I did. Of course, no one else in that line had my back while I was trying to stop the cutters. They just watched.

I suppose this is one of the few times I think I'd rather live in the States. I can't imagine Americans watching blithely while a petty injustice like this took place.

So finally we got to the front and tried purchasing our tickets with the coupons. By this time our movie had already been running a full ten minutes. The kid at the till had never seen this type of coupon before and had no idea what to do. He went and got his manager. The manager processed a coupon and then said I owed him 25 cents. Apparently they couldn't just run it all through and charge me two adult tickets plus 75 cents for the kids. This looked like it was going to take a while, as we had no cash and so I was going to have to run my credit card through the machine three times for a quarter and then once for 18 bucks.

Despondent and grumpy, I said, "Screw it, I'll just pay for the full amount of the remaining kids' tickets and ours." So I did.

Tickets in hand, we left the line and got to the place where they rip your ticket up. Then I realized I only had four tickets in hand. Looking at the receipt, I realized that I had indeed only paid for four tickets. I almost felt like crying.

I told the guy, "I've only been given four tickets."

"That's okay," he said, and let us through.

So went into the theatre. Our friends waved at us. We sat down and watched the movie. I couldn't really enjoy it.

I can only recall really chuckling at one point in the movie:

Julien and his two sidekicks have just entered a train car that looks like it has a monster in it - spooky music is playing, and you hear a small child singing; a classic movie trope. Then the camera pans down and you see it is only Julien's smaller side kick humming happily to himself.

But that's about it. Everyone else thought the movie was awesome, so that's cool.

Later on, driving home, I asked my wife if I'd embarrassed her. She nodded in the affirmative.

"I'm sorry. I don't like embarrassing you. But at the moment, I'm actually struggling with guilt - guilt that I didn't do more to stop those people from taking advantage of all the people in the line."

She understood. And she said that she was only embarrassed because she hates public confrontation, and not because I did anything particularly embarrassing.

The moral of this story, in my mind, is that our society mostly works. Our species is awesome. We have a successful society because we are capable of empathy. We can imagine what it is like to stand in line for 45 minutes and how little we would appreciate people cutting in front of us, and so WE DON'T DO IT! This mother suppressed her empathy gland, I guess. She was teaching her kids that other people don't matter.

But thankfully, she only represented a tiny percentage of all the people crowding that theatre lobby.

Perhaps that is why, when this mother had finished purchasing her stuff and was walking toward the theatre, I called after her kids, as a parting shot:

"Hey kids! Don't be like your mom!"

The Vacuum Cleaner and the Fish Tank

When I was a kid, I had a bunk bed. I remember sharing it with my little sister for a while, but at some point I got my own room and still had the bunk bed, which was awesome for forts and having friends over.

My room had a sloped, wooden ceiling, and if I carefully leaned out from the top bunk, I could just touch it.

One morning, my sister was in my room for some reason I’ve forgotten, and I was on the top bunk, because I had noticed something odd about the ceiling and wanted to get a closer look.

About six square inches of the ceiling was afflicted with hundreds of tiny holes. I couldn’t get close enough with my face to really get a good look at it, so I would have to rely on my sense of touch to explore this anomaly.

Of course, the second my finger touched the punctured ceiling, a significant portion of it crumbled to dust and fell to the floor. I couldn’t see it, but I imagined the resulting hole had hundreds of terrified termites clinging for dear life to its sides.

My sister made a remark about the trouble I would be in when Mom saw the hole and the mess on the floor, and I knew she was right.

But like any kid, I had a wonderful sense of self preservation, and hoped that by cleaning up the obvious mess on the floor, she would never think to look up. So I scrambled off the bed, ran downstairs, and lugged the machine back up to my room.

After sucking away all of the debris (and possibly a large population of termites), I bent to turn off what I hoped was a life-saving device, when out of the corner of my eye I saw my fish tank.

Here were Freddy, Angela, and Sputnik swimming peacefully in their sheltered ecosystem of bubbly water, brightly covered gravel, and (real!) seaweed.

Ah, curiosity! Lover of discovery and flattened noses!

“I wonder,” I said aloud.

“Wonder what?” said Em.

“What would happen if I did this,” I said, as I plunged the still-sucking vacuum nozzle into the fish tank.

The fact that I did this proves to me that children can be thoughtful and thoughtless simultaneously.

There’s a Calvin & Hobbes anthology entitled Scientific Progress Goes “Boink”. Not in this case.

The slurping noise caused by this action was terrific. A little too terrific for my own good, I thought, and quickly jerked the hose from the tank and turned the power off. My lucky fish seemed none the wiser.

At this moment, my sister made a remark about my stupidity.

Still possessing a healthy sense of self preservation, I knew that I had better get that vacuum cleaner back to its closet downstairs as soon as possible, so I retracted the cord and began to haul it back downstairs.

While on the landing half way down, my sister looked over the banister from above and drew my attention to the puddle of black water forming at the vacuum’s back side.

Panicking, I raced down the stairs and put the vacuum away, hoping against all hope that somehow this situation would rectify itself before my mother discover any of my wrong-doing.

As with so many other crimes committed in my childhood, my hopes were not realized, and I was corrected by a mother who no doubt wished for me to find more positive outlets for burgeoning sense of curiosity.