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Transitions

January 1, 2010 – 2:56 pm

It’s been two months since I have written, and I apologize for that.  Thanks to all of you who have emailed me, reminded me, and encouraged me to get back at it.   For everything there is a season, and this past two months has not been the season for writing, which is the essence of this story.  This story encompasses a month, and I will have to take you on a bit of a trip to tell it so you can appreciate it.  So be patient for a few minutes as I share the following with you. 

As the story starts, it is the day after Thanksgiving of 2009.  I am sitting in a chair on my driveway eating an apple pie.  Not a piece of pie, mind you, but I am eating the whole pie, with the pie pan in my lap and a fork in my hand.  The sun is out, as usual, and the temperature is in the mid-60’s. It is a day well worth living. My dog, Riley, is sitting directly in front of me on the driveway in her “begging” position.  She wants pie too, and I give in numerous times, because she has me trained well.  I have spent the last two days putting my yard away for the winter.  That means raking and mulching and digging up bulbs, mowing one last time, cleaning the gutters, winterizing the cars, etc., etc., etc.  I have two favorite times of year, and this is one of them.  The other is getting the yard back out in the spring, where we essentially repeat all the above in reverse.  

As this story ends, it is New Year’s Day, 2010.  Some things have changed since that day back in November, and some things have not. I am NOT sitting in my driveway eating a pie, as the temperature outside today is -1, and there is a foot of snow on the ground. Besides, we don’t have any more pie.  I am sitting in my 90%-windowed office eating fudge instead, a whole plate of it. I am reclining in my office chair, with my feet up, Christmas music playing, and fireplace roaring.  Riley is again sitting directly in front of me in her begging position. And I again oblige.  The sun is out again, as it seems to be quite a bit in this part of the country. And as I sit here, I am able to reflect on the last several months and all they have brought, good and bad and funny and tragic and yet unknown, to our family, our friends’ families, and our world in general.    

The last several months have been a very scary and emotional time for both sets of my parents, with a pancreatic cancer scare, two bad falls, a return of prostate cancer, and an overall unending health drama that older years bring as a reward to those who have worked hard and done right for many years. This is hard on our parents, and they are afraid.  It is hard on us too, and we are afraid for them, and we are afraid for us.  Some of our friends have lost loved ones, people we in fact have known and loved ourselves. My wife, Gloria, continues to suffer from neck pain brought on by an auto accident last year. Tiger Woods imploded, and while that seemingly has little bearing on my family or daily life, our heroes’ failures do place pressures on all of us.  Like the lowering of the tide, it brings us all down.  And on and on and on this litany can go….if we let it. 

I am sure that my little world is not the only one afflicted with heartache and instability.  I have little doubt that you have experienced times like these, perhaps even now, and perhaps even harder times than I have described. None of us are in a position to escape life’s bad things. Bad things happen even to the best people, even to those who seemingly best prepare. I have MORE than experienced this personally. I don’t have an answer for why other than since the origin of our species, life has been hard. That is the only constant that we are given when we are born. The story of Job in the Bible sets this all up beautifully. Life has to be manufactured by each one of us with no guarantees of a “happy” anything. We are required to eek out a living on a rocky-surfaced, hot ball of magma that is hurdling through space at 38,000 mph. And then once we eek out an existence, we want to be happy doing it.

Every one of us cried coming into this world,perhaps an omen of things to come, and tears will inevitably accompany our leaving this world. How we handle the events in the years in between is what I believe determines our success in life and whether life was worth living at all. How and whether we (1) pushed back against the randomness and (2) how and whether we took time to enjoy the good things that are all around us are two very important things. Regarding the first, the place where we are does not have to be the place where we end up. We can achieve things; we can reduce the probability of bad things happening.  And regarding the second, when we do get hit my one of life’s random mortars, how we handle it (or them, as these things always come in bunches) is really what defines whether we are, in fact, happy or not.  If you look around, there are many, many things to bring us down. But if we are capable of refocusing, we will also see many, many things that are good. Focusing on them helps us balance the inevitable existence of the bad things. But it takes effort, as the bad things have more gravitational pull on our psyche.

So, this is New Year’s Day.  It is the most natural opportunity for transition in our culture. Like my yard in the fall, I can put some things away. And like my yard in the spring, I can get some things out. I can “mulch” all the old things, and I can start to plant new things. The new ones will not grow by themselves.  I’ll need to tend to them.  I do not know what life will bring this year.  I know that some things will go well, and I know that some things will not. Will I be happier one year from now? Maybe.  But not without effort.

And so I pledge to do two things this year. (1) I will push back, because I can, and doing so might make things better in the long run for my family and me. There are many things in life I want to accomplish. I can’t take my eye off of them. I actually started this transition about two months ago, and I was so busy I didn’t have time to write.  And (2), I will be more and more mindful of the good things, making sure I enjoy them in order to balance the ever-present bad things in life.  I challenge you to do the same. If you don’t like where you are, change it. And no matter what you do, look around and identify happiness.

And as such, despite the afflictions and general chaos, I thank God for the long (but incomplete) list of things below,  which may be too long of a list for you to read.  So, yOu might consider spending the time making your own list. I guarantee you will be happier when you are done:

..this fudge…..the whole plate of it,
..the pie…..the entire pie…it was great,
..the sunshine,
..the foot of snow, which is quite uncommon around here,
..the nose-clearing cold air,
..my beautiful wife, who despite neck pain and headaches, brings smiles and laughter into many lives every day, especially mine,
..my two children, who lift my spirits and make me proud every time they walk into the room,
..my friend Wayne, who has buoyed me through bad times, whose Christmas present to me this year was way beyond expectations, and whom someday I will beat in racquetball,even if I have to cheat and break his leg,
..Rich Schneider, my mentor and the person who guaranteed that 2010 will be “my year”,
my old college roommate and still friend “Tree”, whom I get to abuse unmercifully and sophomorically on a daily basis,
..my old college roomate and still friend “Meat”, whose example has taught me much,
..my brothers, of which I am still the best looking,
..my Florida parents, who endure life and keep smiling, and who raised five boys without jumping off a bridge or locking up the boys in cages,
..my Oregon parents, who through their trials have taught me much,
..my wife’s parents, who have been rock solid and who still play a mean game of shuffleboard and spades,and who love goo moo pai gan,
..my dog, Riley (Skipper), who is trying to find a way to naturally bond to my hip, who makes me laugh every single day,and who does flips in the air when I come home, even if I’m only gone ten minutes,
..my office, which is a refuge,
..my boss, whose nearly bizarre energy levels are only outshined by her kindness,
..my ‘65 Chevy pickup, which constantly reminds me of my Grandfather and Grandmother Snow, his work ethic, and her servitude and fried chicken,
..the three hand-painted bird pictures in my office, which were Christmas gifts from my Grandmother Lee, and which remind me of her virtues in raising nine children by herself,
..the 455 real birds that we feed outside of my office window, with the exception of the mean Blue Jays,
..my wife’s beautiful Christmas decorations,
..the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose six championships give our family a link to immortality,
..the lowly Kansas City Royals, where we can get really good seats because the team plays so poorly,
..my book collection, which looking at makes me happy,
..Wally, who died two weeks ago, who repaired my car many times and who pulled us out of the ditch in ten feet of snow,
..the Grand Canyon, the Columbia Gorge,
..the History Channel, ESPN, and Everybody Loves Raymond,
..Tostitos chips with a hint of lime,
..the Capital One barbarians,
..Joe Pa, his longevity, and his grumpiness,
..the little girl with red boots who was in my grandmother’s Sunday School class,

By Fred Snow | Tagged , , , | Comments (4)

His Eye is on the Sparrow?

October 18, 2009 – 7:42 am

I grew up with that song.  I’ve sung it a thousand times.  It was one of squares in the religious quilt of my upbringing, and it served to assure me on numerous occasions that things were okay and that there was some order to Creation. But as I sit here, now nearly 50 years old, I am simultaneously reflecting on life in light of that song aaannnnd, I am actually sitting and watching the great Sparrow War of 2009 take place at the birdfeeders that hang outside my office.  It is a strange interaction between religious philosophy and downright entertaining realism. 

 

The sparrow song referred to above is actually drawn from Luke

Main Street in Sparrow Land

Main Street in Sparrow Land

12:6.  It is used countless times by Christian ministers and writers to stir up in listeners a romantic, almost euphoric assurance that things will be okay.  Well, I’ve learned over time that things are NOT okay.  Life is tough, and it is not even close to being “fair” or ordered. I’m not saying the Bible is wrong.  Who am I to suggest that? But those who translate Biblical meaning to us are in a powerful position, and their translation of a romantic, unrealistic context of the verse – and reality – is inaccurate and damaging to their own religion. Assurance is fine, but don’t go overboard to the point of rewriting reality.  The problem is that people will find a gap between reality and what their religion promises.

 

 

God Himself gave us five senses to absorb reality. But I believe, in fact, that there is a sixth sense – common sense – that he expects us to employ. And you know, there may even be more senses that we just haven’t tapped into yet.  Creation is slowly revealing itself to mankind, and as it does, we have to rewrite our own understanding of it or face believing in something that just isn’t accurate.  The “creationists” who believe in the literal translation of Genesis do not and cannot believe in dinosaurs.  But prehistoric creation – the events of hundreds of millions of years – is far more evident than post-historic creation.  Believing in only a tiny portion of the creation that you see is lying to yourself. Those who don’t allow for the teaching of evolution ignore the greatest gifts that God gave us, our ability to absorb and interact with our world.  And those who capture and manipulate depressed people with assurances that creation is always under control and  fair – a la the eye on the sparrow – are doing a great injustice to their listeners.  Teaching children this is even worse. This is not an ordered or happy planet, and they need to know that.  WE as individuals can choose to be happy, but we live on a violent, spinning ball composed of 99.9% hot magma and whirling through space as part of a billion billion galaxies, which each have a billion stars. Assuming we are not vaporized by a chance interaction with a comet or an asteroid, which has occurred at least 12 million times in the Earth’s history, our everyday hard work is often outmaneuvered by good luck or usurped by bad luck.  Many good people die too young; many mean people live too long. It’s just not a peaceful existence. And the more we try to order it, the more we defeat the very freedom that wants to be inherent in our existence.

 

Hmmm… So instead of singing “His Eye is on the Sparrow” to our children, we should strap a helmet on them, teach them how to survive, how to adjust, and how to be flexible in a changing environment. Don’t give them the promise of stability if it is not natural in the world in which they must find a way to not only survive, but excel. Tell them to ask God’s help, to ask for His blessings, and then to ask for strength to face their own great sparrow war on this spinning magma ball. Assure them you will be there to help, but even that is not necessarily under your control.  Your being here could easily be trumped by a teenager who is texting her boyfriend while driving.  Happens every day.

 

Now, back to the real sparrows – This is a violent and tenuous

Baby Robin - HOW CUTE !! - found a pile of feathers the next morning about six fee away

Baby Robin - HOW CUTE !! - found a pile of feathers the next morning about six fee away

existence at best.  We think of sparrows as being so cute. In reality, sparrows are mean, selfish, territorial, subject to disease, a favorite prey, and frequently smash into my plate glass windows as they chase each other around.  Their world is very much like that of every other creature that inhabits the planet.  It is absolutely survival of the fittest, and occasionally the fittest even get nabbed by my cat.  There is hatred, bias, starvation, gluttony, happiness, and sadness. One day I was coming home from WalMart, and I stopped at a red light.  Right in front of me was a little sparrow, sitting on the road.  He was a baby, obviously, with his mother trying to tend to him.  As we were sitting there at the light, the little bird started to fly, and at that very second, a larger bird swooped down, plucked him from mid-air, smashed him on the ground, and proceeded to peck his head.  It was a violent killing, an avarian contract hit, a rubout.  It was sheer violent murder of one of the most innocent things we can imagine – a baby sparrow – in what is supposed to be a somewhat peaceful little bird world. There was a blind eye on that sparrow.

 

 

Now, am I suggesting that we as mankind or as individuals should

Neighborhood Bandit

Mr. Squirrel reeks havoc in Sparrow Land. How many squirrels are there in YOUR world? I have had a few.

lament in the fact that there seems to be no order?  As a species, should we just give up and go with the flow and start burning down our neighbor’s house because their leaves blow in our yard?  No.  We as humans have something the sparrows don’t.  We do have an ability – as fleeting as it may seem sometimes – to direct our future, to set aside our violent tendencies, and to work towards a system that will take some of the ambiguity, chaos, bedlam, confusion, and hate out of our existence. But we’re certainly not there yet.  There are still quite a few of us smashing into our own plate glass windows.  There are still a lot of humans preying on our weak, young, and innocent, just like the killer bird at the WalMart intersection. Utopia is a long way off.

 

As individuals we have to find a way to reckon with the environment around us.  Each of us is subject to the randomness of the universe.  I think that is the way God wants it.  Who are you to say that everything is ordered?  What you see is what God made. Our efforts as individuals and as a civilized species call for us to try to overcome it, to tame it, and to live within it. 

 

But there is one thing, and only one thing, that we can really control. In fact, we are in COMPLETE control of it.  That thing is whether we will be happy and spiritually settled in this chaotic environment.  No matter what your lot, no matter how many plate glass windows you have smashed into, no matter how many big bully killer birds have attacked you, and no matter how hard you have worked and had the fruit of that work taken away from you by mean people, you have the ability to be happy. It’s not easy.  Remember, you are whirling through space at 34,000 miles per hour on a planet that just yesterday was populated by giant lizard sparrows the size of jet fighters with teeth the size of machetes. This happiness is a journey, not a destination.  I believe that THIS is God’s test for each of us.  Next time you read the Bible, look through those glasses and see what it says. 

 

Have fun out there. Try your hardest. And watch out for the plate glass windows.  They are actually harder to deal with than the violent killers.

 

 

By Fred Snow | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Ben Would Have Been Proud

October 11, 2009 – 7:50 am

  

There are many fine and diverse places to live across this country, and I have had the privilege of living in a number of them.  Each has advantages and disadvantages, from climate to topography to the very definite differences in people and cultures.  This article is about Pennsylvania, and in particular, Franklin, PA.  Franklin is only one of many beautiful, beautiful towns in this most historic and scenic state.  If you have never spent much time in PA, you need to.    

 

I was born and raised in Northwest Pennsylvania, in a town called Franklin.  Next to “Springfield”, the name “Franklin” (after Ben Franklin) is the most common city/town name in the USA.  But Franklin, PA is no common town.   In fact, it is extraordinary.  Those who have lived there all their lives might not realize that.  I know I heard growing up that “there is nothing here”, etc.  But I have heard that absolutely EVERYWHERE I have lived. Until you move away from where you grew up, you probably don’t really know how special it is. Isn’t it funny how that works?  We don’t value the most obvious things in life until we don’t have them or until we experience alternatives that just don’t seem to measure up.  It takes a long time for us as individuals to admit to such a thing, as we humans have a natural tendency to view the grass elsewhere as greener, and we are too proud to admit otherwise when we find out it just isn’t true.   

 

I come back to Franklin about once a year, sometimes twice.  I return to visit my in-laws and to visit my Grandmother Lee, who has lived in the same house at 321 Pacific Street for 56 years.  She has a tremendous flower garden, and the primary objective of my pilgrimage here is to see each and every flower in it, listen to her describe what she is doing with each and every plant, and perhaps even have the privilege of helping her move something or lift something for her. But while I am doing these things, which are important only to me (and probably her), I have the privilege of also absorbing all the good things that I left behind in my hometown.

 

Let me tell you about these good things.  Franklin is nestled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains at the confluence of French Creek and the Allegheny River, the same Allegheny River that meets the Monongahela 70 miles downstream in Pittsburgh to form the Ohio.  The vistas in and around Franklin can be described as spectacular, peaceful, and historic.  The Venango County Courthouse is unquestionably among the most beautiful public buildings in the country.  Its glistening white towers provide stark contrast to the deep red body of the building.  The Courthouse bisects two extraordinarily large center-city parks, with real working fountains, a bandstand, and trees that seem larger than life.  Surrounding the park are homes that are 200 or more years old.  The main street in town, Liberty St., is lined with beautiful “Main St.” architecture that has been well maintained.  The residential architecture was born in the oil-rich 1800’s and early 1900’s.  Franklin, Oil City, and Titusville were literally the birthplace of the world oil industry, and the early barons have left behind their architectural marks in the form of great Victorian mansions, dozens and dozens of them.

sandy-creek
riverridge1small
main-stree
library
french-creek
franklinphoto4small
franklin_pa_courthouse-park
courthouse-300
ben_franklin
storm2

 

Surrounding Franklin are many, many hills, and those hills are absolutely full of hardwood trees, thousands of square miles of them.  Pennsylvania means “Penn’s Woods”, and it is well named.  Those out west might think of PA as being a member of the East Coast Metro, but nothing could be further from the truth.  My brother, who also hales from Franklin, tells the story of standing in a garage in Oregon, with the garage full of deer slain by PA transplants.  The neighbors were ooing and awing about the kill.  One older fellow suggested that he didn’t think folks in PA knew much about hunting.  My brother, who was just a kid at the time, smiled, and in his understated way, told the fellow that people were hunting in PA before Oregon was even a place. And he was right.

 

Sprinkled among the hardwood forests are plateaus that are home to small Pennsylvania farms, farms with tremendous soil, hard-working people, and vistas that provide 90% of the pictures romanticizing the American family farm.  Big round hay bales in foggy fields with oodles of white-tail deer, turkey, bear, and coyotes form a countryside that is as beautiful and desirable as any in the entire nation. 

 

This particular trip coincided with Applefest, a typical and yet no-so-typical fall celebration that engages the entire town.  Craft booths, car shows, street sales, a 5-k race, music events, and many other attractions together help celebrate another part of Franklin’s rich history, a visit by Johnny Appleseed many generations ago.  We have been gone from Franklin for 16 years.  Walking around Applefest we get to see a lot of people that we have not seen in those 16 years.  And when we see them, they have faces that are familiar, but I just can’t put the name with them.  My wife, Gloria, is much better at attaching names than I.  For years, she worked in a local chiropractor’s office, and she knew everyone in town – at least those who were in pain.  Today their faces are both heavier and thinner, and their hair has whitened and thinned.  Children of the people we knew now have children, etc., etc.   

 

One thing that I love to do when in town is to drive by all the places I used to live.  I’m not sure why I like this; I guess it helps ground me.  Sometimes sitting there in front of those houses reminds me of bad times, and there were some in my childhood.  But increasingly over the years, those visits reinforce and actually revive the good times.  I love to go down to French Creek at the intersection of 11th and Otter, pick up some flat stones, and try to skip them the whole way across. And you what? I still can.  Half the stones on the other shore I put there between the ages of 7 and 17.

 

For the first five years I moved away, I didn’t care if I ever came back.  But now I look forward to it. And you know, at the same time, I am SO glad I moved away, not because of any of the bad things, but had I stayed, I am sure I never would have appreciated Franklin the way I do now. 

 

Is Franklin perfect?  Heavens no. It does have bad things. Can you believe that in Franklin, Little League parents get overly and emotionally involved with their child’s progress?  I swear, it’s true.  And in Franklin, there are some not-so-braggable local politics that occur from time to time.  Imagine that. High-school kids hang out and do undesirable things.  Yep, I’ve seen it.  And the economy is in a constant state of transition, and this past year, there was even a recession there.  These shocking things, of course, only happen in Franklin, PA. But if you can get past these things, it is a great place.

 

Looking beyond Franklin’s versions of those obvious common problems, it is easy for me to see and appreciate an extraordinary place, partly because of its natural beauty and historical significance, partly because that’s where my Grandma lives, and partly because it’s the only hometown I have.

 

Fellow Franklin Knights, don’t take your beautiful town (or your grandmothers) for granted.  Take my word for it. And if you are not from Franklin, perhaps you could take a minutes to reacquaint yourself with all the good things of your own hometown.   

 

Till next week,

Fred

 

 

By Fred Snow | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

The Great Race and The Greatest Race

September 27, 2009 – 1:38 pm

Friends, I am sure you recall “The Great Race”, in which I was racing my good friend to see who could lose 25 lbs. That race is now over.  The results are recorded below.  But there is another Race going on as well, and it too was celebrated this week.  That story is also below.

 

The Great Race:  My friend, Wayne, and I were racing to see who could lose 25 lbs the quickest.  He was employing tactics like utter starvation and the potential removal of his larger appendages.  I was employing a low-carb diet accompanied by a lot of exercise.  My goal was to hit 194.5 lbs, exactly 25 under where I started several months ago.  Today, as evidenced by the picture at

Sweet, sweet victory

Sweet, sweet victory

right in which my feet are now exposed to the entire internet community, I have achieved victory.  I have remained below 20 carbs and 1500 calories per day for two months.  And I have been walking and wogging (walk/jogging) and biking and shoveling and wheel-barrowing and digging bricks and laying bricks and visiting hotel workout rooms and walking in airports and doing pushups and situps and bacon and eggs and celery with butt rub (this is a long story) and broccoli and cauliflower and salads and salmon for two solid months. The last week has been a sprint, with an average of ten miles a day on the bike. And the longer I went in this diet, the stronger I felt. And you know, I can honestly say that I was never hungry.  I now weigh 193 lbs.  I am a lean, mean, fighting machine.  And as I write this, I am celebrating by drinking a very large frosty beer and eating an entire bag of pork rinds. Tonight, we are going to Dairy Queen so that I can get a Reese’s Cup Blizzard with chocolate ice cream. My pancreas will probably explode.  It has been inactive for two months. I am fairly convinced that I will use the low-carb lifestyle for some time to come, of course moderated a bit.  This is no longer a sprint, but I do like the lifestyle. 

 

Wayne has done well.  While the gap widened a bit this past two weeks, he looks great.  Unfortunately, he tore his groin muscle playing raquetball.  I simply told him he wasn’t quite tough enough for this level of competition.  I suspect that the next thing we compete in, he will find a way to completely defeat and demoralize me.  Wayne is a worthy opponent in all areas of life.   

 

 

I was certainly aided in this quest by my friend Wayne’s barbing, by my friends who responded to this column with words of advice, by my little dog Riley, and by my wife, Gloria.  My friends found great herbs that help burn fat when on low-carb diets.  My dog accompanied me on over 200 miles of bike riding, and my wife cooked the right things and made dieting very, very easy.  Which brings me to the next subject of this week’s article:

 

The Greatest Race – This week my wife and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary.  Marriage is also a race.  It is unquestionably – and hopefully – a marathon.  Marathons require great training, great resilience, and great motivation.  They require a love of the race itself, a tolerance for fatigue, a love of the feeling of accomplishment, and a love and understanding of the teamwork and the individual contributions that make it doable and rewarding.

 

Twenty-seven years is a long time, but ours is actually longer than that.  We dated for seven years prior to marriage.  We were high-school sweethearts, Queen/King of the prom, etc., etc.  I owe the success of this race, so far, to my wife, Gloria.  It is her conviction, efforts, adjustments, and tolerances that have made us a family, and I love her 27 times more than I did the day we were married. I look forward to finishing the race with her.

 

Our kids, Brad and Lacie, got us a very nice present.  It was a DVD of the pictures of our life – so far – put to music.  And we watched it, and we cried, and we smiled, and we laughed.  Life isn’t always what we want it to be, and I can say that there are a few portions of my life where I am still not fulfilled.  But my family is not one of them.  I can only wish the same for you. Below is a very, very small collage of a very happy family.

 

Best to you this week,

Sweet, sweet victory
Sweet, sweet victory
fred-and-gloria-dance
brad-lace-wedding-tux
gloria-fred-caricature
fred-gloria-wedding

By Fred Snow | Tagged , , , | Comments (7)

A Parking Lot in Gladstone MO

September 7, 2009 – 8:11 am

I am sitting in my car in a plaza parking lot in Gladstone, MO. I’ve been here for three hours, and I have enough material to write a book. It seems that the human zoo has decided that it is “Entertain Fred” day. And it has indeed been good entertainment. Here is a store-by-store rundown.

Hobby Store – I’m not just hanging out in a parking lot in order to practice being a social deviant. I brought a young man in my neighborhood to a hobby store so that he can play Yu-Gi-Oh. That is his hobby, and he is very good at it. You most likely have no clue what Yu-Gi-Oh is, and if you do, you might have a dim view of it. Yu-Gi-Oh is a card game of a fictional land. There are literally thousands of different cards,(over 15,000 I believe) and players collect certain families (decks) of those cards and then duel each other. Here is a website that discusses the game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu-Gi-Oh!_Trading_Card_Game . Every Saturday we go to hobby stores so that he can enter tournaments. While he plays the tournaments, I sit in my car and teach online. I teach four or five classes a year online. It helps me stay grounded with my profession, it represents a little extra money, and I just generally enjoy it. So with my computer, my wireless broadband card, and an extra battery, I can get most of my weekly work done. On this particular day, it is 72 degrees, a slight breeze, and the secadas are not as deafening as most days. So, it is a nice day to be outside in Kansas (actually, Missouri) Back to Store #1 – The Hobby Store -

When we started this hobby store visitation habit many months ago, this kid would get his hide tanned, as he just didn’t have the necessary cards to be competitive. But the entire way to the hobby store – 1 hour – and the entire way home – 1 hour –  this young man talks and talks and talks about the cards he needs and how he would structure them to be better in his duels. He is REALLY into this. Sometimes I have no idea what he is talking about. It is an entirely different language, but I try my best, and sometimes I tease him and sometimes I laugh, but most times I just shake my head up and down in an approving and seemingly understanding manner. But over the last six months, he has accumulated some good cards, and today he was 6-1. He didn’t make the finals, but he came really close. Here is an excerpt (with a little help from Wikipedia, see link above) of the language that I have to assimilate every Saturday.

“My Dark Synchro Monster isn’t quite strong enough. He is a monster that can be summoned by deducting the level of a Dark Tuner-type monster from a non-tuner monster. This has a negative level. But, my Accel Synchro Monster can be summoned using two Synchro Monsters, one of which is also a Tuner type, to perform a Synchro Summon. I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I think I might need the Blackwing Elphin contributor.”

How would you like to listen to that for four hours?  Some people associate these Magic card games as being devil worshipping. I had heard bad things about such games, like Magic, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. But I have to tell you, I’ve hung out in that hobby store many, many Saturday afternoons, and I have never seen any one of those kids summon the devil or cast spells on each other. I can’t understand a single word they are saying, but there are no gateways to Hell, at least that I can detect,  or anyone’s neck spinning around 360 degrees. In fact, these are smart, well-adjusted kids. They are really INTO their game, but no more than other kids who are really INTO soccer or trouble. These kids can do math in their heads way beyond what I can do, because they have to keep track of shifting point totals, and most of them do it exactly in that manner – in their heads. I am proud of and impressed with this young man whom I now spend a great percentage of my Saturday’s with. We have a plan to get him better cards that involves yard work and doing well in school, etc. And it is going just fine. So, as I sit in my car, there are 15 boys playing Yu-Gi-Oh in the hobby store. If someone accidently walked in that store and didn’t know what Yu-Gi-Oh was, they would flee screaming and thinking the Apocalypse was in full swing.

Slim-4-Life Store: This is particularly entertaining, and not because I’m making fun of overweight people. You know my current battle, which by the way, I’m down 17 pounds. So, in and out of the diet store they come. And most of them are quite typical… women perhaps 30 lbs overweight, men perhaps 50 lbs. They go in and stay for about 20 minutes, and then they come back out. I don’t know what happens in those twenty minutes. Perhaps it is a weekly weigh-in. Maybe there’s a Weight Priest in there, and Saturdays are Confession Day. Who knows. But whatever it is, it takes 20 minutes. On this day, for whatever reason, I’m particularly observant, or perhaps just bored with my teaching. And I notice, in particular, three different scenarios. First, up pulls a portly fellow on a Harley. He takes off his helmet, reaches into his saddle bag, and pulls out an Extra-Biggie McDonalds #3 Angus Mega-burger with fries and a Coke. He consumes them in about 2 minutes. He then crinkles up the bag, gets off the Harley, and heads into the store. Now, maybe it’s just me, but that seems counterproductive.  Maybe he was trying to gain MORE weight before he went in…..

Second, I see a very robust woman go into the store. Twenty minutes later, she emerges, and then she sits in her car, just across from mine, and pulls out – you guessed it – a Mega-Angus Massive-Carbalofat meal from McDonalds. There is a distinct pattern here that I am learning to spot through my own research and recent dieting experience.  The pattern involves huge quantities of calories, carbs, and saturated fats.   The carbs kill our body’s ability to handle sugar, and so we become obese and diabetic. And saturated fats plug our arteries. Both drain our energy so that we desire to exercise less, not more.  High calorie intake is fine if one has high calorie burning. And I am convinced that, despite the psychological assurance we get as children from Ronald McDonald, that McDonald’s and such restaurants are the fuel for our demise as a healthy society. They are not the cause, they are the fuel. The cause is our inability to abstain.

Finally, there is the skinny family. Dad, mom, and a teenage girl couldn’t weight 300 lbs in total. Why they are in that diet store completely eludes me. Twenty minutes, and here they come. If they lose any more weight, we’ll have to call the ambulance and take them TO McDonald’s.

Time to go summon my Dark Syncro Monster and  do some yard work.

By Fred Snow | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)