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The Randomness of Easter

Back in 2004 when I was in Bangkok, Thailand, I was riding in a taxi with my friend Jessie.  We were on our way to visit a Thai museum and she was asking me about American holidays.  Describing what Easter is to a Thai native is somewhat confusing when it’s said out loud:

“Easter is the day we celebrate Jesus coming back to life after he died on a cross.  But it’s also a way to stimulate our economy because everyone buys a bunch of chocolate candy, sends gifts to each other in ‘Easter baskets’, and purchases some sort of pastel colored dress or suit and tie for the church service that Sunday.”

She asked me, “But what do Jesus and chocolate candy have to do with each other?”

The answer?  Here’s the best I can do.

The LSD tripping Easter Bunny and the general populations’ collective excitement over the candy and the traditional gift giving serve as a vehicle to force the non-religious to identify that there is some sort of significant meaning behind Easter.  They may not fully understand who Jesus is, but they at least know that a lot of other people recognize Easter as the day Jesus came back from the dead.

Americanized Easter is a vehicle that is not against Christian Easter.  It points people in the right direction.

This past Easter it occurred to me just how big of a deal that Easter is to Americans, with or without the solid understanding of what the day is actually celebrated.  My wife and I spent the weekend with my family back in Alabama.  We literally had to leave the church service because there wasn’t enough room for everyone to sit.

So we left the Baptist Easter service and hung out at the Methodist church next door.  Because everyone that’s ever gone to church shows up on Easter.  It’s a major American holiday.  More major than I realized.

I kept hearing “Happy Easter” from everyone and seeing it as status updates on facebook.

Even last night Jimmy Kimmel was talking about his mom still giving him an Easter basket, though he’s now 42.  And he talked about how someone stole his friend’s seat before the church service started and all he could think about during the mass was punching the guy who stole the seat he was saving for his friend.

Funny.  And it shows that behind all the silly American traditions, that even the famous and influential Jimmy Kimmel recognizes there’s more to Easter than what’s on the surface.  In his joke he specifically stated that Easter is when we celebrate Jesus.

And I can relate to Jimmy.  I often want to punch annoying people in the face.

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Operation: Mustache (A Social Experiment)

For three days, I had a mustache.  Life was different.

We as an American culture are quite familiar with movies where the protagonist disguises himself as something he’s not and is treated drastically different by society: 

In Tootsie (1982), a male actor in NYC pretends to be a Southern woman in order to get an acting gig on a soap opera.  In Soul Man (1986), a white guy pretends to be an African-American so he can get a college scholarship.  In Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), a San Francisco dad pretends to be an aged Scottish woman to spend more time with his kids after the divorce.  In I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007), two straight firefighters pretend to be married homosexuals for the monetary benefits.

We recognize these situations as comedy.  After recently realizing on my own that men under the age of 40 (who are not cops) can not be taken seriously, I decided to prove my theory.  For 72 hours, I lived my life as a 28 year-old mustachioed man.  Here are the results.

At work, my male and female workers under 40 did nothing but crack jokes about my mustache and talked about what a creep I looked like: 

“I don’t think it’d be a good idea for you to go near a school with a bag of candy…”

 “Where’ s your Harley?”

 “When is your wife going to put her foot down about your mustache?”

“No offense, but you totally look like a pervert with that thing.”

 “Seriously, I can’t even look at you.  In fact, step away from me…  You’re kinda freaking me out!”

However, not surprisingly, the men in my office over 40 specifically and sincerely made a point to come up to me and tell me otherwise:

“Man, I like that mustache.  Looks good on you.”

 “How long did it take you to grow that?  I wish I could have one like that.”

Though I know nothing about babies, for some reason, they always like me.  Whenever I’m near a baby in public, I make funny faces at them and they always laugh.  But Tuesday night, I was standing in line at Blue Coast Burrito with my wife when I looked behind me and saw a mother holding a baby.  I did my usual thing.  The baby didn’t smile or laugh, instead, he looked confused.  His mother turned away from me. 

And lastly, at home, well, as my wife put it:  “I’m sorry, but I just can’t take you seriously with that thing.”  It really changed the dynamics.  She graciously let me do the mustache experiment, but was just as happy as I was to shave it off last night.

Based on my experiment, Operation: Mustache, a man under 40 can not be taken seriously.  I invite other qualified young men to participate in the same experiment, but I don’t recommend it.

Needless to say, I don’t plan to grow a mustache again until I’m at least 40.  Even then…

Read the prequel, Must Not Mustache  http://wp.me/pxqBU-D3

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Sounds Like Someone’s Got a Case of the “What If’s?”

If you could “redo”, would you?  Should you?

It’s only natural to think, “If only I could go back in time with the knowledge I know now…”  That goes through my head way more than it should.  About all kinds of things from my past.  But to be able to do that would mean I would have the mind of a 28 year-old and the body of a kid.  Unfair advantage.

I’m sure it all goes back to the hidden (male) feeling of inadequacy:

I should have made a point to build stronger friendships with certain people in high school and been more involved with school events, like decorating of the halls for Homecoming Week which I skipped out on.

I should have focused more on writing while I was in college.

I should have just gone to the University of Alabama and saved my parents thousands of dollars instead of going to a private college in Virginia.

Here’s the irony.  If I would have done those things differently like I “should have” done, I wouldn’t have gained the experience that I have know to even though that those things were what I would have wanted.

I would have probably just have ended up more confused with even more “should have’s”.

So I here am, still paying off college debts because I was “supposed to” go to Liberty University in Virgina.  When I could have just gone to Alabama.

In theory, if I could go back and do things in the parallel What If Universe, I would have been more confident in high school, I wouldn’t be in debt because of college, and I would have gotten a more specific education and would now be a famous author with a major book deal and a 40 state tour to sell my book, Scenic Route Snapshots.  They end up making a movie from my book, starring James Franco.

That’s me totally romanticizing my life.

But I’m here instead.  A great life.  I wouldn’t change a thing.

I just have to quiet that daydreaming tendency in me that wonders “what if?” Of course if I really lived in that What If Universe, I have a feeling I would still end up in the same place.  Dang flash-sideways.  Actually, things would probably be less desirable.

I would always be wondering how my life would have been different had I left the state of Alabama after high school graduation.  I would always be curious about that exotic life I never got to live.  I would be envious of the life I live now.

It’s often easiest to want the things we can never have.  Like the ability to go back and live in the What If Universe.

Whether or not my life would be changed, I couldn’t say the same for the lives of a few others in my life.  The reason my sister and her husband met was because of where I went to college.  Out of state.  The kids they end up having, in some fashion, I helped bring them into existence by my random dream to go to college in Lynchburg, Virginia.

And another married couple I brought together unintentionally:  During my senior year of college I ran the front desk of Liberty University’s brand new state-of-the-art student center, equipped with an Olympic sized pool and 6 basketball court.  I worked the early morning shift with a girl named Jen.  Every morning these two funny guys named Chris and Jesse came in to work out in the gym.

A few months went by of the usual random conversations I would have with them as they came in. The whole time, Jen was right there sitting beside me- the more soft-spoken one of us who observed and participated in our conversations of the day:  “Which movie is scarier?  The original Willy Wonka or The Wizard of Oz?”

For my birthday that year, Chris and Jesse performed a special dance and song they had written just for me, with the lyrics, “Naughty Nick, naughty, naughty Nick…” The corresponding dance moves involved syncopated pelvic thrusts and a finale where they pulled underwear out of their shorts and left them on the floor as a birthday souvenir.   (Check the comments on the “About the Author” tab on this site.  Jesse recently reminded me of all this, bringing this post into existence.)

Soon after, I took off a day from work.  I returned the next day to find out that Jen agreed to go on a date with Chris- a motorcycle ride and dinner, to be exact.  That was five years ago.  They have since been married and recently had their first child.

What if?  What if I wouldn’t have forced my friendly abstract banter with those two guys day after day?  Would Jen and Chris have broken the ice?  Or would he have just been another guy going to the gym have morning and she just another girl checking for student ID’s at the front desk?

Have I changed their lives forever by playing an off-beat pawn that caused them both to be on the same track?

The same could be said for John, the guy who introduced my wife and me to each other.

Thank God for all the times we don’t get to live out the “what if’s?”  My guess is that it’s often the somewhat seemingly bland path we did choose that leads us to take the scenic route.  And that leads us to the things we love most about our lives.

For the more comical version, read “Must Punch Punk Kid in Face”  http://wp.me/pxqBU-F5

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I Should Have Punched That Punk Kid from Flintstone, GA in the Face, Back in 1988

Sounds like someone’s gotta a case of the Shoulda Coulda Woulda’s…

In the spring of 1988 when I was 7 years old, I was in Flintstone, Georgia at a family reunion at my grandparents’ duplex house.  There was a boy from the other side of the duplex about my age who was outside playing while I was.  We started chasing each other as some sort of “tag, you’re it” deal.  As he was getting near, I hugged the tree, which was the “base”.  He couldn’t tag me if I was at the base.  So he gave me some kind of classic line like, “I’ll teach you to mess with me!”  Then punched me in the stomach, hard.

I was so surprised by his bi-polar behavior that I just stood there at the tree, shocked.  By the time I realized what had happened, he had wondered back over to the front porch of his side of the duplex, sort of grinning at me.  He won.

That was 22 years ago.  But I’ll never forget it.  Mainly because since then I’ve wished I would have found a way to punch that kid.  I was being his friend and he just punched me.

This isn’t a grudge I’m holding.  It’s not a matter of forgiveness being withheld.  I’m dealing with no bitterness here.

It’s just the principle of the matter.  He needed to be punched by me.

As a boy, you’re secretly always looking for a reason to get to punch someone.  I had my chance, but blew it.  My parents would have been proud of me.  I was just caught so off guard.  Dang it and dag gum.

As an adult, you can’t punch other deserving people the way you could as a boy.  Stupid lawsuits.

For the philosophical version of this, read: Redo  http://wp.me/pxqBU-F7

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Adventures in Giving Someone a Hard Time When They Call Me with the Wrong Phone Number

I have an Alabama cell phone number.   The state only has two area codes.  My number is the same as a doctor’s office in Birmingham, only with the other area code.  Therefore, I sporadically get a voicemail (I never answer if I don’t know who it is) from a senior citizen.  The tone is angry and confused.  They’re always shouting:

“You never called me back.  I need my prescription refilled and you never called me back…”

The voicemail usually lasts about two minutes but seems much longer.  I admit I didn’t use to call them back, but my wife convinced me to be a good citizen.  So now I do the courteous thing and politely let them know they called the wrong number and that I’m not a doctor.  Typically, they don’t understand what I am telling them at first and insist that I refill their prescription.

But yesterday was a little bit different.

I got a call at work yesterday morning from an angry, loud, and older sound man:

“I told you not to send me this!  I said you could send me the sample but not the gallon!  And now you’re charging me $129 for it!  I don’t want it!  I told you…”

The funny thing is, the company I work for doesn’t sell or give away any products whatsoever.  He clearly had the wrong number.  So politely and professionally, I explained that to him.

He interrupted:  “No, no!  You sent me a whole gallon of this stuff and I don’t want it!…”

I ask him:  “Sir, what company do you think we are?”

He replies:  “What?  I don’t know the name of your company but this is the same phone number and I told you I only wanted a free sample…”

After multiple times and trying to help him understand reality, I gave up.  And gave in.  The plan: to annoy him until he hung up.

So then I ask the guy:  “Now, this stuff they sent you… is it lotion?”

“NO!  No, it’s not lotion!  It goes in a gas tank to get better fuel mileage.  And I don’t want it…”

I respond:  “Now, tell me, does it smell like oranges?  Is it made from oranges?”

“NO!  No, it doesn’t smell like oranges.  I don’t know what it’s made out of.  But I told that guy I didn’t want it…”

Click.  He hung up after just a few of my annoying questions.

I love annoying people who refuse to accept reality.