Yeah, I titled it that so anyone not interested could toss it off without any loss of score on either side. (No pun intended.)
We played disc golf last night.
In the dark.
And in mini hurricane situations.
Whether the hurricane situations were from the wind or the temper tantrums some of us nearly threw, will be a question that stays out on the course, and in the dark.
The owner of the local course, Evan Smith, announced this evening some time ago. He threw a teaser out of pork tacos for anyone attending.
I had never played at night before; I was a little dubious about what kind of fool I’d make myself into.
I ordered lights for my discs. These are special little flat lights that you tape to the bottom of your disc and turn on, obviously, so hopefully you can see where your disc lands up.
I gave it a test run here at our place several evening before last night and said, “No way.”
I basically lost my disc, right here in plain sight.
But I did find out that I had the lights on wrong. I had them facing down, and it seems the proper way is to face them up, through the plastic, an on a fairly transparent disc. Neither of which I had done.
When I heard of the possibility of hundreds of people being there, my heart nigh well fainted within me, and all my imagined distance drives flopped very unethically to the ground not more than 30 feet in front and off to the right of me.
But the idea kept hanging around in my mind, and I figured if I had gone to all of that work like Evan had, I’d want folks to show up. So, I got a few of my family to join me there at 8:45.
I taped two lights facing up through the plastic, and one down on my Saint. I wasn’t about to lose this one. Josh gave it to me after hearing that I had lost my other one to the trees in Mcpherson. This disc flies good. I didn’t want to lose it. I figured I’d use only one disc all evening rather than try to keep lights working several of them.
Bryce, on the other hand, grabbed the rest of my lights and had a regular Christmas light show going on by the time he had a couple of his ornamented.
But I get ahead of myself.
We were only a quarter of a mile from our house when we saw the lights of town haze down. “What’s going on?” I asked Jan. About then my phone rang and Bryce says, “It’s terrible windy here. If it’s that windy in town, there is now way we’re playing. See what it’s like there and let us know.”
It was terribly windy. I never saw an anemometer reading, but I’m guessing in the 20 m.p.h. gust range.
Some sort of insane thought process ran a jolt though me, (not uncommon at all if you ask the females I live with) and I called Bryce and said, “I’m going to play this.”
I guess beings they are some relation of mine, the insane idea took hold on them also.
We tried a few practice putts, and I heard Bryce say, “This is hard.”
“No it’s not,” I said, as I easily sunk a long putt. But I think that was the only put of any acclaim for me. It was like Bryce said, hard. The lights on the baskets made you wonder just how far off or near you were.
The wind was hilarious.
We joined up with a couple of good folks from Copeland, Ryan Nightengale and his boy Jed.
It turned into a super fun evening. It was almost magical to see the disc’s fly off, distance soon became a myth, and the lights kept us glued to their mesmerizing flight of up and down and all around. Some throws went phenomenal. Some hit the ground, got caught in the wind, and rolled on into the moonrise, on and anon.
We cheered even the weirdest throws, and gave it up for Jed when the wind caught what might have been a 50 foot toss and kept it going for a good 150.
I doubled down in disbelief when Bryce boogied, and then like to wet myself when it kept rolling and rolling and I heard the groan of utter despair next to me. And then he double boogied. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Scores ranged in the plus 4 to plus 10 range, which, considering isn’t bad, if you ask me, when you play in a wind like that and in the dark.
Due to the wind, the course wasn’t as full as I was afraid of, which was actually quite nice for my timid nature.
a mode of behavior or way of thought peculiar to an individual:
At first, I thought the word I was looking for was fetish. But that word means more of a fixation on something. Idiosyncrasy fits. Amusingly so it seems, as I gaze inward.
Years ago, I read of this TV celebrity who had a thing about how new socks felt when he pulled them on for the first time, and how they felt for the next couple of hours afterwards as he wore them.
So much so, that his manager had to hire two people who concerned themselves solely with the purchase and dispersal of his new and slightly used socks. The news brief said, supposedly, that he was wont to go through two pairs a day, wearing them only one time, before they were said to be ready for the next user(s). This was the job of the second person on the sock team; find worthy individuals who felt gratified to wear slightly used, slightly odiferous socks.
I guess you could say one of his idiosyncrasies was new socks.
The story seemed so blitheringly ludicrous that I practically snorted as I read it. But then, like I said earlier, as I look inward I see a few quirks unique only to me that I imagine someone else may snort about, should they read this.
For instance—
Don’t make me drink my coffee out of a cup that has been washed with soap. I’ll taste the soap every time.
But, that’s only part of it.
Don’t make me drink my coffee out of a cup I don’t normally drink it out of. (At least when I’m around home.) It won’t taste right, neither will it feel right in my hand, which is synonymous to coffee tasting right.
I have a thing about napkins and envelopes.
I don’t care if I’m sitting in a restaurant, or my own dining room table, the way I leave my napkin at the end of a meal is important to me.
Not so much with my wife and sweet daughter. I told my friend Justin the other day that contrary to most of the signs, I am a perfectionist. My napkin proves the point.
I like use only the edge, not the middle, of my napkin to wipe any excesses away. This way when the meal is finished the napkin has very few wrinkles, can be folded neatly in half with most of the soiled areas folded inward, and placed beside my plate.
The females in this house, on the other hand, place little fuzz balls that once were napkins by their plate when they are done. Their way is good for them, mine is good for me; we don’t fuss about it per say.
I’m really not sure what motivates me to open my envelopes the way I do. I do know it feels totally far out when I see someone get their mail, jamb their thumb under the flap, and crinkle and crackle their way to the other side. The end result is an opened envelope, yes, but a completely disfigured one. And it always leaves me with questions as to the integrity of whatever was inside the envelope after such a process.
Like, what if it is a card I received from my good wife or sweet daughter, telling me of their nicer feelings towards me and I opened it that way? Doesn’t it seem a little crass to treat such fine sentiment in such a coarse way?
Sure, I get the excitement of someone wanting to see what’s inside so badly they practically can’t wait to rip it open. I get that. For sure if I suspicion it’s the aforesaid card from one of the aforesaid females in this house.
But I don’t want to trample their love, right in front of them.
Neither do I like the unseemly mess on my desk should I open the bills with my thumb or some other blunt object. The pile of trash gets hard to manage with its this-way-that-way mentality.
Open them with a letter opener, on the other hand, and you have a neat pile of trash that you know is trash and a neat pile of bills that you wish were trash when you see what you owe on them.
I asked the sweet daughter what she thought my idiosyncrasies were. She never replied. I’m guessing the list got long enough she lost interest with it.
But it all begs a question. Do you know what the quirks are of those you live with? If they, like me, remain largely silent about what we are bugged about, is it still an idiosyncrasy?
Do my wife and daughter know that when we take a walk, I need to walk in 4/4 time, with my walking stick moving only on the primary beat? Do they know that if their step gets out of time with mine, I must readjust, sometimes almost continually, to get it to come out right?
No, I doubt they know. And I doubt it would matter to them if they did know. It probably shouldn’t matter as much as it does to me.
Anyway, wouldn’t it be a hoot to compile a list of ten people’s idiosyncrasies without their names?
I don’t think I’ve ever been one of those who thinks this world has different ages to it.
I’ve looked on, mildly amused if I must say, at the efforts of a certain agency as they endeavor to determine if there is/was water on Mars. It amuses me because, at least to my small way of thinking, the truth is self-evident in a certain passage at the beginning of a Book I read where it says, “And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.” Which leads me to think that before all this was, there was water everywhere.
Including on Mars.
But all that aside, some do think this earth came to be in varying intervals, and thus they explain what looks to them like dated matter. Others say there are old souls among us. Souls that have lived a life, died, and came back to live in a young person’s body.
I suppose I’m too simple minded; it is easier for me to think it all got started at the same time. The world came into existence all at once, just as a person comes into existence all in one piece, and not in varying stages and different times.
But I must say that what I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks has made me think about it all in a little more detail.
Here in Western Kansas, the state of being is in continual flux.
At least it seems that way.
I look out over the prairie at night, or what used to be prairie, and see flashing strobe lights to the west and south of me, indicating to their owners that their center pivot irrigation is functioning. I hear the steady thrum of the motors pulling away at the lake of water below us, ever and anon doing their job.
I see huge piles of grain, a million bushels or more, taking shape in long Saharan ridges. In a few months, I see a payloader reach into that same pile, back out, turn towards the waiting truck and dump its cargo, until at length, the pile is no more.
I take in the scenes of new houses going up here and there. I see new shops and businesses take off, and, in most cases, flourish.
Even the wind, which whispers or hollers along the open plains hints at a new season approaching.
Crops are planted, little seedlings rapidly take on the form of their mother plant and in a couple of months are taller than my head. A couple more months, and that same crop is brown, ready to be harvested. It’s not long afterwards, and tractors with implements are working through the stubble in anticipation of the flurries of snow that may soon whisk across the cold fields.
In a way, all the change I see makes this area I call home seem younger, or newer, if you will, although I never would have realized that until I saw what I did a couple of weeks ago.
We started packing Friday evening, in hopes of leaving home Saturday morning. A problem ensued when the luggage we were attempting to get into the car for a certain young lady in this house didn’t appear to fit. But eventually, with enough muscle and new ideas, it did. Even if the rearview mirror was rendered useless because it was completely blocked off, and even if the bed of the truck and back seat of the truck cab was filled.
Once on the way, though, all went fairly well. This was my first time farther north and east than Ohio (in the U.S. that is) and I was looking forward to seeing what I could see.
It was when we got into Virginia that I started having thoughts about the age of things.
I saw hills, they called them mountains, that I knew had massive history. I knew Indians had walked through them for hundreds of years. I knew pilgrims had settled in them, fought for them, died in them. I knew slaves had hid in the dark of night, and then stealthily ran through them, ever northwards. I knew blood was spilled upon them as the war for the slaves was fought.
As those hills gave way to scenic Pennsylvania farmland, it seemed I could look back into the years and see dairymen tramping out early in the morning. And even before them, I saw frontiersmen, chopping down trees, exposing the fertile soil in which today’s lush corn now stood. Stone built barns and houses easily told me of their 100 years and more of memories nestled within their walls.
Late in the evening of the third day, we started winding through hills again, more north now than east, towards the town of Little Falls, New York. Rain fell, off and on, and ahead we saw patchy clouds and mist hanging low on the hills.
Perhaps it was the tracks of Amish buggies in the pavement, or, maybe the colonial style architecture, or then again maybe it was the actual stone house of one of the generals from the Revolutionary war that sat me back into a state of time warp.
It was no surprise, when I hiked up to the falls only a couple of minutes away from where the sweet daughter now lives, that I saw what I saw, and sat transfixed.
How long, I asked myself, has this water been running? Since the civil war? Since the pilgrims? Did it start when Indians first came to this land?
It seemed the answer cascaded upon me as easily as the water fell before me. It had to be since the beginning of time.
The rock strata arrested me next. I looked, incredulous to see the seams running vertical, not horizontal. I remembered, years ago now, hiking down into Canyon de Chelly, and running my fingers along the sand layers that so completely told me of a great flood many years before, a flood of such magnitude that it totally rearranged the landscape of the world then, cutting huge gouges into the landscape as the water flowed in torrents and how, as I looked, one could read the days of drying time in each horizontal layer as the water slowly dried away.
This vertical rock strata seemed to speak of years before that great flood, untouched as it were, even by that flood. Or was it? What did those colossal waterspouts during the flood do?
I stared at that rock, looked below to see how much had fallen away from that wall, some one hundred feet high, and saw very little at its base.
Time, it seemed to say. Time stands before you. And your existence? Does it matter?
I thought back to something my Uncle John once told me. He said, “If you’ll notice when tracks are made in the pastures that lie just behind our place, in a few years, they heal over, and you can’t really tell where they are.”
The whole thing came full circle for me then, while I was still sitting by those falls.
Nothing is older or younger than creation. And, if another 5,000 years come and go as the previous have, my existence and efforts will be as effectively erased as the tracks in the pasture, or as the trace of man upon those hills in New York.
But I will say this, that place where the sweet daughter lives is stunningly beautiful, and I probably wouldn’t mind if time did slow a bit when I’m there.
And I’ll also, say this. I’m not sure any of what I wrote made sense.
There is one thing that is just about as sure as death and taxes.
Let the grass start greening up; let the air get that fresh, spring smell to it, yea, even though there may be snow yet upon the ground, this one thing shall come to pass.
For just as sure as you have all those things, then just as surely, this question will be asked of the sweet daughter, if you have one in your house.
“Can I have a bottle calf?”
If this question gets asked as early in the year at your house as it does at mine, then it can be successfully parried for a couple of months as you extol forth in humid sobriety the dangers of very young calves taken away from their mothers in such cold and unfavorable, muddy conditions and expect them to survive.
But the day comes when you can parry no longer, and the continual questioning of the daughter cannot be muted.
Rather, those questions take on the form of three questions asked by the pudgy man in the presence of his sweet daughter and good wife.
They go something like this—
Me, “If we get this calf that you want to get, who is going to feed it?”
Daughter, “Oh I will. I’ll feed it every day. You won’t ever have to help me like you used to when I was a little girl. . . well, maybe you could help me mix the milk once in a while, but otherwise you won’t have to worry at all about it.”
Me, “Who is going to pay for the milk replacer and the feed later on?”
Daughter, “Oh I will. I’ve been saving and I’ll pay for all the feed . . . well, maybe if we keep the calf for a while, then I might have to get a short-term loan from you, but I’ll pay it back just as soon as we sell the calf.”
Me, “So how can I know you will make good on your answers? Every other calf you have had usually ends up being my calf by the end, because I end up feeding it while it is still on the bottle, and I end up paying for the feed all the way through except maybe for the first couple of bags of milk replacer?”
Daughter, “No this one will be different. I know it might have been that way on the other calves, but I’ll take care of and pay for this one all the way. Trust me.”
And, since all questions were answered in good faith, as they are every year, it remains for the pudgy man to get himself involved in this project.
That day, some years ago now, dawned upon us, and as a considerate father, I made my way over to the sale barn with the intention of coming home with the perfect bottle calf, no matter the cost.
Cost doesn’t matter when it comes to daughters, you see. At least that’s what I’ve been given to understand by the majority female sector of this house.
If I may, I’ll take the liberty to pat myself on the back as to my choice of purchase that day. She was as cute as a button, (the calf that is, but the daughter could be included also) cost a small fortune, (the calf that is, but the daughter could be included also) and was as hyper as your typical teenager after several cans of Red Bull energy drink. (the calf that is, but the daughter could be included also)
The next stage in this oft repeated process, for those who haven’t had a bottle calf, is to acquaint it with the bottle and get it to take it.
What this means, is the ladies gather on the outside of the enclosure that the calf is looking warily upon us from. It also means that they have thoughtfully and considerately mixed a bottle of milk and thrust it eagerly in the direction of the pudgy man, as though it were his duty to take the next step.
So, taking the next step, for him, means literally taking the next step, straight into battle. Cheers erupt from the bleacher section containing it’s two occupants as he plants one courageous foot in front of the other towards his quarry.
The foe in front of him eyes him and in an instant flash is gone to the other side of the pen. Cheers began to fade and soon suggestions are offered as to what the best way to approach may be.
It always goes the same way at this point. Tucking the bottle under his arm, the man goes for the throat. (Of the calf that is) In a fell swoop, tackle/dive/ungraceful fall, he gets his right arm around the head, right behind the ears and in front of the shoulders and gives his mightiest choke hold.
The bottle gets dropped and starts drooling its contents out on the ground.
The calf, which weighs in at barely 110 pounds, begins to drag the man attached to its neck around in a most unceremonious way. Even though the man could be twice its weight if he had all his winter clothes and shoes on and has lots of stuff in his pockets.
It becomes a strung-out affair. The pudgy man, strung out behind and bouncing along, and the calf, strung out in fear and survival mode, eyes bulging, and mouth wide as it emits cries for help, first to its newly lost Mama, and then when that fails, to the females who are now wringing their hands in sympathy for, uh, I think, the calf.
The females rescue the bottle, and the man pries the calf’s mouth open and inserts the nipple, squeezing hard on the bottle to get some milk to wet the back of the calf’s throat. And if all goes well, the calf latches on, closes its eyes, and drinks its fill right then and there. If all doesn’t go well . . . but we won’t go there.
*****
Somehow, I got lost in the details that weren’t really related to what I started out on.
This calf whom we/I were raising and had since been on our place three weeks or so, put on a show that we hadn’t seen coming.
My friend Trav called bright and early one Sunday morning and asked if we happened to be missing our bottle calf.
I torqued out to the pen, and sure enough, I didn’t see her anywhere. (It was still a bit dark, just sayin’)
It seemed strange that our calf would be a good four miles from home where Travis was looking at it, but I’ve seen those calves go crazy for their Mama’s. They’ll do just about anything.
I hitched up quickly to our trailer and made it over to where he and his son Logan were gearing up to get that calf. It had just rained, and the field it was in had 2 inches of soupy, splashy mud.
What I saw next, would make your normal rodeo fans pale.
There was no way a horse could make it in that slop, so Logan sat on the front of the four-wheeler, rope in hand, as Travis shifted into 4 wheel drive.
They took off in a wild, all over the place scramble for that calf. How Logan kept his seat glued to that flat surface he was on I’ll never know. The four-wheeler was doing a wild up and down and back and forth because of all the mud and such. The calf saw it, lit a rag and tore off.
No matter.
Travis stayed stuck to its tail, and I saw Logan began to twirl his rope in the most easy, unconcerned manner, one second being tossed to the right as a turn was executed to the left, and the next instant in the opposite direction. I saw the rope snake out, land on the calf’s back, but just short of its head.
Another throw, and he had it.
They took that calf in their arms and carried it back on the four-wheeler to where I stood waiting. We loaded it up and I got myself on home, hopefully in time for church.
I backed up to the pen, got out to unload this venturesome calf of ours, er, rather the sweet daughter’s, and locked eyes with our calf looking calmly back at me from her pen.
She seemed to say, “And just when will I have my bottle?”
*****
I guess in my haste, I missed seeing her in the dark corner of the little hut she was in at the back of her pen. Knowing the pretentious ways of little calves though, particularly female ones, she may have done hid there on purpose, sensing her chance to get one over me.
The owner of the other calf, which lived only a quarter of a mile from where it was lassoed and where the calf had escaped from, came by later that day after we called him, and picked up his errant little one.
I read this deal a while back that stunned me into a state quietude. Which, if you ask the females in this house, may not be a bad thing.
The piece was about a lady who was responding to remarks said regarding a public appearance she had made. (She was a celebrity)
The remarks were about the dress she wore, and how it did, or did not, accent her body.
Then she made the remark that stunned me.
She said something to this effect—“My body is not me. I live inside it, but it doesn’t define who I am. I have had to make peace with what my body is; it’s okay, but I’m not a part of it.”
I guess I’ve been utterly naïve.
Because, to be right honest here, I always thought me was me.
All of me, that is. My fingers, my hair or lack thereof, my knee that aches ‘most everyday, all of me.
But according to this lady, (I can’t remember her name, thankfully) that’s not me.
That’s my body.
And, ping.
Just like that, I’m absolved of any blame or responsibility. Not so much for my body, but then, it surely can look out for and defend itself.
I suppose on my good days, if I have accepted and made peace with my body, then I could even take credit from some of the good things my body does.
I suppose on my bad days, if I wish, I can find all sorts of things wrong with my body, and therefore prove that ‘it’ isn’t me, and that ‘it’ doesn’t need my attention on such a day.
Hmmm.
I see some very real possibilities with this approach. And maybe some disadvantages.
Let’s suppose the sweet daughter says,
“Can you fill my car up with gas, please?”
Me,
“Well, it just so happens that ‘I’ would be happy to do that for you. But this ole body of mine just ain’t been cooperative today, and last I checked, it threw a hissy fit when I proposed any type of physical movements. Sorry, looks like not today.”
Or, the good wife goes,
“Can you dump the cat litter box sometime today?”
Me,
“You know I’d do that any day for you, dear. I’m obliged to skip out on it today though. I heard my body having a conference with all members earlier and it seems it is holding a mutiny against me for the way I disregarded its desires yesterday.”
Or what about this angle—
Officer,
“Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?”
Me,
“Yes, I do in fact. My leg knew I had an appointment that I was late for and it kept pushing on the accelerator. I knew it wasn’t going to end well, kept trying to talk it down, but it wouldn’t listen. I really can’t help what my body just did. It was against my wishes; I’ll have you to know.”
Officer, looking at me narrowly,
“Sir, you can resolve this in court if you wish. I’m writing you up for speeding and for contempt of the law.” (if there is such a thing as contempt of the law)
I wonder. If I took this thing to court, would it take two lawyers to defend my case? One for my body, and one for me? Probably only one, since I wasn’t involved, just my body was. And I suppose, should I be asked to do my time in the pen, I could look on disdainfully at my body as it rots away and be thankful that at least I was innocent of such heinous crimes.
*****
I guess this isn’t anything new. If I remember right, I read not so long ago about a certain man who was eating something he wasn’t supposed to, and when asked about it, said, “Um, er, well, you see it was like this. The woman You gave me, made me eat it.”
You know what? I wish we didn’t have to deal with this kind of thing. The thing of making excuses and always trying to look and be right.
But it looks like since that man ate what that woman gave him back there, years ago now, that we as a human race have been struggling with it ever since.
It seems like it is so much baggage to maintain.
Some folks use their dog as a scapegoat.
Some repeatedly use their spouse, which infuriates me.
Some even use God, making it look like they are super good folks and always do just what God says, but when they get pinned in a corner, then it’s God who told them or didn’t tell them what to do.
I had a friend tell me once, when I was facing some dire circumstances that were of my own making, that, “Really, facing the facts, even if the facts aren’t pleasant, brings its own bit of courage to deal with them.”
So, if I think about this correctly, if we don’t own up to our mistakes, or face the facts, then we are cowards.
And we prefer to act helpless and stupid about it all.
Every last one of us.
Because we’ve all made excuses at some point or other.
And if we are really honest, those excuses are never really the whole truth, rather just enough of it to make us look good. But looked at by themselves, those excuses appear for what they really are, just a bunch of flimsy, fishy words strung together that sound kinda right for the situation we are in.
An old minister once said, “An attitude becomes a spirit when we let it stand up and cry for itself.”
Now I don’t mean to get preachy here, but it seems to me that if we let our excuses stand up and try to do the talking for us, we’ve entered into a contract of sorts with a certain subtle one that began this whole process with our father and mother, back there in a garden.
If I’ve let myself make excuses, and entered into that contract, then it remains that unsigning that contract is going to be difficult.
But it can be done.
And the way to do it is so simple. It’s the courage it takes that is hard.
If I would go back and relive my life, I might do some things differently.
If I didn’t immediately lock up when taking a test of any sort, and if I didn’t retain vivid memories quite as easily, I’d pursue a career in the medical field.
Terms like Blood Sats, V-tach, Epinephrine, and Patient Care would be commonalities rather than novelties.
But even if I didn’t lock up, and my memory were less sharp, I would more than likely have failed in it.
Because I wouldn’t have known what I learned about 3 years ago, and I know what I learned is pivotal to a successful medical career.
*****
It was an extremely hot and windy summer day.
I had just received a fresh load of hominy a day or two previous, and as the wind started to kick up, so the hominy started to leave.
I was busy and as I drove by, I saw the tarp we used to cover the hominy was flapping madly in the wind.
I called my good wife and asked her to run out there to weight it down with some cinder blocks and railroad ties.
I forgot all about it until a couple of hours later, when I made it back home and saw the tarp was still flapping madly.
And I got madly. (To my shame)
Jumping on the four-wheeler, I buzzed out there to try to take care of the situation. It wasn’t easy, because by then the wind was really messing around, and the more I tried to capture that tarp, the more hominy I got in my eyes, and the more the tarp snapped and cackled at me.
And I got more madly. (To my shame)
Finally, I felt I had done what I could, and I jumped on the four-wheeler, and all my madlies got pushed into the throttle.
I saw the corner coming up faster than it ever had, and laughed at it. I had this, I thought, in my madly crazed state of mind. I’d hold that throttle stuck until the last instant, snap off it and onto the brakes and drift that corner like I used to do when I was a fair bit younger.
The drift started out right, even if it was at warp speed.
But there was a big rock that seemed positioned precisely at a right angle to the rear tire now in a full skid. (I deduced all this a couple of weeks later by following my still visible tracks.)
The rock had a huge tipping factor to it, and an instant later, I knew my four-wheeler and I were on separate excursions. I caught a blurred split-second snapshot of it tumbling very ungracefully off to my left and comprehensibly thought, “I hope it doesn’t turn directions and land on me.”
Meanwhile, I was stretched out, all of my 6 feet, upside down, back facing the forward and front side of me looking back the way I had come, while still travelling at the original speed.
This was all fine, as long as I stayed airborne.
But sooner or later, in this case sooner, perhaps because of the extra pounds the sweet daughter says I carry, my head dipped lower and lower until it skidded along amongst the rocks and gravel, picking up small pieces of sand in its back trail and throwing them into my eyes.
Allow me to share a brief testimony here.
If you have ever been upended, and your head is divoting around like the point of a spinning top, and your body moving along at 35 m.p.h. or so, then you will agree that it gets very noisy as those rocks keep clobbering away at the top of your head.
But it doesn’t last long. Because the weight of your upper body, (wait, is it still your upper body when you are upside down?) starts to bear more and more upon said head and eventually that head buckles under, and you realize, very distinctly in that moment, that the next move your body takes will be entirely up to fate.
In this case, my body took up the motion of a defective gyroscope as I wheelied and bounded this way and that.
I came to rest on my belly, head scrunched down partially underneath, and my right arm and shoulder at a funny place with a funny feeling in them.
Suddenly, the heat became intense.
I tried to roll over, and found as soon as I moved my head, that I lost all feeling in my upper body. So, I stayed put, and gingerly reached into my left front jean pocket for my phone.
It was still there, thankfully, and neither was it broken.
Even though I was less than a hundred feet from the house, with the noise of the A/C running and being in a blind spot visually, I figured I’d be there a while if I didn’t make a call to my good wife.
She and the sweet daughter were out in milliseconds, it seemed, and much to my disbelief, called 911.
In a case like that, you sort of have to go with what they put on you.
Our local emergency services arrived in a very short time; a couple of the guys came on personal vehicles directly and began their assessment.
Gentle hands folded me over onto my back and onto the backboard, keeping my head and neck stationary during the whole process. My shoulder hurt, there was sand in my eyes, but more than anything, I was so hot I couldn’t breathe. My good wife and daughter stood in between me and the sun as much as possible to help with that.
I was soon loaded, by those same gentle, kind hands, into the back of the sick wagon, and we began to pick up speed, rapidly because of the damage they thought I might have to my neck, in the direction of the emergency room.
And here is where I would have failed, had my career in medicine been successful, and had I been in Sid’s place at my side, or Doug’s place behind the wheel with my wife riding shotgun.
I would have failed in patient care, to be sure.
I’m guessing the facts come instinctively to those who take care of us injured ones in situations like that.
But facts, proper cc’s and IV placements, aren’t the patient care that made the difference for me that day.
I heard Doug’s calm, kind voice, fading in and out of the siren and ridiculous speed he was driving, as he eased my good wife’s fears. I don’t remember anymore what he said, but I know it made a difference.
Because of my broken collarbone, I suppose, my right arm didn’t want to stay by my side and kept dropping off the gurney to the floor.
Sid noticed. It had nothing to do with the facts, but everything to do with patient care.
“Here,” he said, “I’ll put my knee right beside you and you can rest your arm on my leg.”
My eyes were shut during that whole trip because they hurt so badly from the sand in them, so I couldn’t see, but I’m guessing it wasn’t the most natural place for him to put his knee for each of the 20 minutes that it took to get me to the hospital.
Neither did the lesson in patient care stop when I arrived at the hospital. My shirt had been cut off, and after the extreme pain of trying stay in position for x-rays, I was as desperately cold as I had been hot less than an hour earlier.
My nurse Jared brought in some heated blankets without being asked. Sensing I was in pain, he injected a drug, the likes of which street users would have paid dearly for. My body, not being used to it, reacted by seizing up momentarily. His kind words, together with his quiet chuckle, “Didn’t like that too well, did you?” as I eased off into a medicated bliss calmed my fears as to what was going on and told me that he had noticed what felt like was loss of control when the drug hit.
I know now what I didn’t know 3 years ago, thanks to all the kind hands and hearts that helped me that day . . .
Be patient in your care, whether you are a medical professional, teacher, or just a plain ole mom or dad.
And I realize that what I just wrote probably isn’t the textbook definition of patient care. But that’s what got through to me that day, and it made all the difference.
Sure, there were times when I didn’t feel that way, but then, if you knew the circumstances I knew, you probably would agree that they stood in my favor if I didn’t feel that way about her.
It’s just that some days, the way she went about her life rubbed me wrong.
Okay. She did have it bad. Her mom died when she was 16 and she was left with caring for the family, since she was the oldest of 6 siblings.
I suppose the life she was subjected to while still at home made her anxious to get away from it all. At least that is how it looked to me when that good for nothing young man came along and started trying to woo her.
Anybody with a lick of common sense could see what he was out for. He had never learned to work; one of those yuppie types. She had every quality he didn’t have—beauty, a chaste life, good work ethics, and, even if they were desperately poor, had the ability to save a few coins now and then to help along with her dad’s expenses.
Of course she fell for him. They got married and it wasn’t long, and he was off, galivanting his life away with hard playing and hard drugs. She dutifully kept the home fires burning for his intermittent, stop-by-on-my-way-through visits.
I didn’t know if to be relieved or grieved for her when he partied too late one night and was killed in an accident on some lonely road.
Yes, she had two little boys to try to raise on her own, and I knew that was going to be a challenge, for sure if either of them had inherited any of their father’s good for nothingness. But I figured the rest of us would be around to help financially when the need arose. In fact, not that I want it known around town or anything, but I set up an automatic transfer to her bank account from mine for $50 a month.
Anonymous of course. She never knew it was me.
I figured that little bit of cash might ease some of the hard times and grief she was going through. I couldn’t figure her out. Seemed like she spent an awfully long time grieving that good for nothing husband of hers. I never could see what she saw in him; must have been something more than I saw, that’s for sure.
Well, time has moved along, at least for some of us. Not so much for her. She would make an attractive picture if she would sew up some newer fabric into one of the more stylish patterns I see the lady folks wearing these days.
Oh. And her boys?
So, let’s just say with me being on the school board and all gives me pretty much a weekly interaction with them. And it’s just like I could have predicted. Those boys are trouble. It’s been more than once that I’ve had to go deal out a little bit of tough love to get things back on track. It pretty much tears the heart out of me though, the way those little guys cling to me during those times.
I must say, though, that their mom has courage and some sort of determination. I suspect you’d have to, if you lived in her shoes.
I don’t quite get why she does some of the things she does; seems like a tradition from earlier days. It’s often that she’ll have a few of us over for a meal. Knowing how little she is able to pay on her school tuition, I don’t see how she scrapes by.
We men know that when we go there for a meal, we aren’t coming away full to the brim like we do when we eat out with our friends some Saturday evening uptown. No, she has that meal figured down to what is good and healthy for a person and that’s about what you get. And it’s not your rich food either. Always stuff you know was on sale that week in the local grocery store.
Like I say, she’s a bit out of style in that area. Our set likes to meet uptown for a meal. Gives you more space and lets your money show you care, which is a bit more of the norm these days.
I haven’t thought about her for a week or two now. Glad I have that $50 set in place for when the rest of my life gets too busy.
The reason I haven’t thought of her, is because there is talk of adding on to our church. I’m all for it. But it does come at a rather inconvenient time for me. Our business is really booming, and I had just purchased some equipment to enhance our bottom line. I’m not sure how I’ll make the donation that I’d like to make for the church.
Sure, nobody else will see the size of it, but I have a personal goal I like to meet each time there is a chance to give monetarily. Do well, give well, live well—that’s the motto our set goes by, and I aim to live up to it as much as I can.
*****
This church addition thing has me losing sleep.
Finally, around 2 this morning, I fell into a fitful, dream addled sleep.
I still see everything in that dream so clearly.
We were at a gathering of some sort. All my friends were there, and I noticed that she and her boys were there also.
I hadn’t been there for an hour before I noticed there was a stranger among us. He really wasn’t a stranger though, by looks he fit in very well.
I stepped over to introduce myself and my family and found him very congenial to be around. Seemed I was attracted to him a little more than normal, for some reason.
It wasn’t long before I saw that others felt the same way, and it soon became an unspoken challenge with me to try to make friends with him before too many others did. I offered a couple of times to take him out for a coffee at one of the better-known bistro’s in town, but it seemed he wasn’t too keen on it. And as often as I would start engaging him in conversation, just as often he would break off to go visit with our widow lady and her two boys.
And what’s more, those boys behaved flawlessly around Him. It seemed His love reached and filled so many hollows in their little lives, sort of like they found in Him the father they had lost so many years ago.
I thought to myself, “If that Man knows anything about their dad and his shortcomings, He’d probably be careful just how much attention He gave them.”
There was a basket at the front of the food line to raise funds for our church project. I had my check ready, even though I needed to swing a loan from another venture of mine to write it.
I figured I’d hang back just a bit, so it wouldn’t look quite so conspicuous when I dropped it in.
A lot of my friends had gone through the line already, and I could see the basket was brimming up, when I saw our lady take her boys and get in line.
It didn’t take a accountant to figure out what happened next. I saw those two one-dollar bills fall from her work worn hands onto the heap of checks and large denomination bills already there and felt a pang of embarrassment for her. I knew it was probably the last two dollars she had.
“Hmmm,” I heard from the Stranger standing at my side, as though speaking to Himself, “She just gave more than anyone else will give this evening. It’s her love for her Father and her fellowman that multiplies it. God bless her.”
*****
“What a mistake”, I thought, as I awakened from my dream. “What an total mistake I have made to think that love or favor can be bartered by the monies I have, or some good deed done”
And the more I think about that, the more I realize, in retrospect, just how much that poor widow lady gave and how, up to this point, how very little I have given.
A year ago, last month, we had received approximately 15 inches of rain. Last month we were at 5 inches.
A year ago, last month, the four-wheeler wasn’t running right, and the only way we could get it to run was to take the airbox completely off. I had a lot more power that way, and it definitely had a throatier sound. But I didn’t like running it much that way because the dust could be sucked straight into the engine.
A year ago, last month, the sweet daughter and Bryce had just finished a corral in the pasture where we normally ran our spring purchase.
A year ago, last month, the corn was at much the same stage it is now, tasseled and close to 9 feet tall.
A year ago, last month, we hadn’t had nearly as many hot days as we have had this year, but we still had experienced some low hundreds for temperatures.
A year ago, last month, Bryce was newly engaged, not that it necessarily made such a huge difference, and then again, maybe it did.
A year ago, last month, I told Lex, Bryce, and my good wife at the supper table that I wanted to gather the calves in off the pasture and into that new corral, bring them to our corral, and have them ready to ship by the next day since the grass was about grazed off.
I got out there on the four-wheeler and started them all moving in the direction of the new corrals. I had Bryce in his truck down below and west of the corrals that I was moving northward towards. Lex was in my truck, not as far below and to the north of the corrals. I was hoping that once they encountered Bryce’s talkative diesel and the front on, lights on approach of my truck, they might veer from north to east and if they did that, then the three of us would form a moving fence behind them that would funnel them up against the hot wire fence on the south side, and the rails and open gate of the corral on the north side.
They all got started easily enough, and it wasn’t long before we had a quarter mile of blacks in twos and threes, some kicking up their heels to the sky, others twisting their tails straight up and running in short bursts around each other. I sat back for a bit and got a feeling that I thought could have been akin to that of the wild west and a good summer’s evening drive towards Dodge City, or maybe even as far as Abilene.
But things kept moving along, and I knew I couldn’t sit back for long or I’d lose the show. They moved on over the hill, met Bryce and turned as I hoped. We three eased in behind them as they neared the corrals and started bunching up. I motioned to the other two to let up on pressure and we all sat back about 100 yards behind them as they grouped up in a tight, slow-moving circle.
In a few minutes, a couple of them saw the gate and moved through, and less than a minute later, all 150 head were in the corral and we skittered up there swung the gate shut.
Even though the sun was only fifty feet above the dusty horizon, Bryce and I hooked on to the gooseneck and got started ferrying those heifers to the home corral where we had a load out system that worked better than the one we were at.
We fell into an easy, on again off again conversation as we loaded and unloaded. I could tell from the small twitches at the edge of his mouth that he was messaging someone down in Florida, namely his betrothed. We chatted about their family and ours, what was the same and what was different. I listened to a discourse given by some man on what hymn style music was and what constituted proper emotion in music when Bryce and I weren’t talking back and forth.
I had been jumping out when we got to our place and opening the gate of the trailer to offload the calves. It was getting dark, and I told Bryce this would be our last load; I would chain things up at the corral we had been loading out of, and he could go kick that last load out and close things up at home. We met back at the house, and I checked my count with his as to how many we had here, and it agreed at 111.
It had been a hot, dusty evening and the shower felt good. I dropped into bed and was soon oblivious to the occasional bellow and general shuffling noise of 444 hooves moving here and there in the dark. In the morning, we’d go get the few odd head left at the other corral and be ready to ship the next day.
I awakened early for some reason that next morning and rolled over to look at my phone. “Strange,” I thought, “to have a missed call this early. I’ll quick see who it is and maybe catch another hour of sleep.”
My missed call was from a man who was driving by a half mile south of our place and had encountered some calves on the road with what he thought might be our brand.
Okay. So I didn’t find that next hour of sleep.
What I did find, as I walked dazedly out to the corral, was the bottom gate hanging open, smiling jauntily at me, and one, again, only one calf moving around in circles like she was lost, looking for her mates.
All but one. Gone.
For an insane moment, I thought of swinging the gate wide and urging her out to join the rest.
For the next hour, the daze I had walked out to the corral in pretty much enveloped me and rendered me speechless. I remember my good wife calling me and asking me what she should do, and I replied that, “I really don’t know. This thing is too enormous for me, I can’t even think.”
I took a picture of our brand and posted it on my status and asked that if anyone saw our calves they should call or message Jan, since I figured I’d be to busy to take calls.
And that’s when the unthinkable happened.
People started showing up on four-wheelers and pickups. I was south of our place about ¾ of a mile working with a group of around 30, slowly edging them back to our place. But then they spooked because of a loud four-wheeler coming by with a neighbor man on it moving a couple of ours back to our place. They broke through a hot wire fence and got in our neighbor’s pasture. I quickly cut juice to the fence and repaired it to hold them there for the time being.
There was a group of 40-50 farther south that a couple of guys were easing back our way and doing a fine job of it, when over the hill popped a guy in a truck that didn’t know of what was going on. He was going at a good rate of speed and the resulting skid to slow down and quick move to the side of the road spooked the whole group into a field of standing corn. There was no way of finding them in there. We’d have to wait until they made their way out.
In ones and twos, sometimes threes, others were found here and there, the farthest being about two miles from the home corral and herded slowly back this way.
Things were getting to where it looked like I could break away to see about those in the neighbor’s pasture. I eased my air filterless four-wheeler over there and saw that a few more of ours had joined, making it a group of about 40 of ours and 13 of the neighbors.
There was a set of panels there, otherwise written about in a post called ‘Brahma Cowboying’, that I was familiar with. But these girls were extremely edgy. And it was a set of panels sort of out in the middle of 120 acres with really no wing setup up to ease them down and in. And besides, it was just me out there.
I changed the position of a few of the panels to make a straight line on one side of a very small 10-foot opening into the main part of the panel corral. The other side was more rounded. I employed all the Bud Williams cattle moving savvy I had and started riding at a right angle to them in long sweeps back and forth, slowly moving in closer against them.
I prayed fervently.
They were jumpy, cagey, and in an unfamiliar pasture with an unfamiliar set of corrals.
Every notion of common sense said it wouldn’t work.
I started them a little more to the rounded side of the approach and they began following it around to the opening. I had to resist every urge within me to put a shove on them. In fact, the closer they got to the opening, the farther away I started riding flank on them until I was far enough away, they really weren’t paying me any mind.
I shut the four-wheeler off and waited.
After about 5 minutes of sniffing and jostling around the opening, one or two ventured in. A few had wandered on down the straight side of the panels, and I figured they were gone for the time being. I knew if I tried to bring them back, I’d mess with the others. But they saw their cronies moving in the opposite direction and turned around to join all the rest in the enclosure.
I could hardly drive up to close the gate, I was shaking so bad.
But I knew one thing for sure. It wasn’t me who had penned those cattle. I’m sure the ringing in my ears from the high strain on my nerves prevented me from hearing the wings of those come to my aid out there in that lonely pasture. But I know they were there, just the same.
After that, it was a simple matter of sorting off the neighbors’ heifers, loading ours out and trailering them back home.
It was becoming unmercifully hot. By a little after noon, it looked like most that could be found had been, including quite a number of those that had spooked into the corn field. The last ones coming in had ran hard and were foaming badly. I told the guys that we needed to stop; we’d kill them if we kept driving them in this heat.
We gathered for lunch around two, a worn out, overheated, glazed-eye bunch. Austin and his new bride were soon to arrive with a load of sod that had to be laid yet that day or it would perish without getting water on it. Those younger than me recovered quickly and offered to go whack that job out.
Later that evening, we got a few more calls of ones and twos and by the time we had them back home, a final count showed us missing some 10-13 head out of the original 111.
The next day, we got a call with several more calves spotted about 7 miles from home. I knew if we didn’t get them quickly, we’d be had, as they were moving south at a good clip. Again, I was helpless to help. I was on the truck hauling the first load of the runaways to the sale and a good 100 miles from home. But the neighbors pitched in again and after roping and dragging a couple of them in managed to bring them back also.
This left 3 or 4 unaccounted for. We knew where a couple were last seen and decided to see if they would show after a few days. They did, in another neighbor’s pasture and he offered to let them run with his until he gathered his.
In the end, one died due to heat exhaustion. It was one of those they had to rope and drag in, so had we not caught it that way, we would have lost it anyways due to it leaving the country.
The rest all brought a good price, and four of them are still on the place today with little calves by their sides; we were going to save some back anyways and they fit the description as well as any. For quite a while they were rather jumpy, to say the least.
Two things hang fire in my mind about that episode.
How can a person ever thank their neighbors sufficiently in a deal like that?
And I really wonder how the man who bought them at the sale the next day faired with them.
Then again, maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that.
I looked back in my gallery to see if I still had the photo I took that morning to set on my status. I see I do, and it looks like I took it over in the neighbor’s field. I didn’t see until today, the silhouette of another of our calves standing near, on the flank of the first one.
As I tell the boys, “It’s all about making memories.”
Although I would hope my neighbors don’t think I’m saying that flippantly.
A year ago, last month, we lost all but one, and in the end, found all but one.
You maybe didn’t know this. But if you think about it a bit, you’ll come to agree with me. There were more disciples than the twelve named.
I was part of a group of seven men. We all had the same thing in common. Each of us had been healed by the Man who did miracles. A couple of us were previous lepers, a couple had been lame.
My name is Zichri, and I joined the last three as one who had been blind, but now could see. Someday soon I want to tell you the story of my previous life and how I was healed.
I guess you could say we were sort of a subcommittee that had formed out of basic gratitude. We often shared, in our frequent meetings, what new things we were seeing, doing, or being a part of that we hadn’t been able to do before we were healed.
We didn’t have the ways and means to be a part of the twelve disciples who left their jobs to follow Christ. We kept our day jobs and between keeping up at work, keeping the home fires burning, (for some of us, you see, had new brides; a part of life we hadn’t had access to before) and doing what our group had set out to do, left us running pretty much all the time.
Our group of men were committed to furthering the cause of this Man who had recently come to live among us.
In whatever ways we could, we tried to make it possible for the bigger picture to continue. Which meant, often times, that after work we scraped together what meager means we could and bought take out for the disciples and Christ. Or, if transportation was needed, we rented a suitable vehicle or boat to transport the group to their next location.
In some ways, it was really disappointing not to be in that group of twelve and Christ. But our group had an advantage they didn’t. They were so close to the picture, every day, that tunnel vision was an ever present adversary.
For us fellows, the fact of being healed and the resulting gratitude springing out of us towards Christ seemed to clear up some of the mystery surrounding Him.
Like the one day. I heard a few of the twelve going back and forth on something Christ had said about being in the grave three days and rising again. It was like they couldn’t get it. They were so focused in on the present. They kept wondering what would happen to the kingdom some of them heard He was going to set up here on earth.
For me, though, it was clear. I don’t know if part of Him came to me in my healing and helped me to see it or what. My mind went back to those old words of prophesy from Isaiah and it snapped into focus immediately.
This was the Christ. I believed that without a shadow of doubt. I also believed that if He died, He would come back. There was nothing too hard for Him to do. He had power over my blindness. He had power over everything.
I could see so well what sort of kingdom He would install when he finished his work here.
At least I thought I could.
Evidently somewhere I lost my grip on things. I didn’t even know I had at the time. I guess I was so enthused about helping along and getting things done that I reverted back to the old way of doing things in a few of my dealings.
The old way is such a basic thing to us humans.
I didn’t show so much on the outside, but you can be sure I was seething on the inside when it felt like I had been taken advantage of.
And, Heaven help the poor folks whom I thought were interfering with Christ’s plan. I took on the importance of righteous judgment in those times, and I know it had to show as the most nauseous piety there ever was.
The bad deal was, mixing the old and the new has its own reward system that closely resembled the new way Christ was teaching.
There’s a certain grim satisfaction to be had when a person carries a self-imposed righteous mandate.
And while that grim satisfaction doesn’t last for the long haul, and while it has its own baggage to maintain, it filled in for the time being the void I didn’t realize I was beginning to assume.
Our group all had this problem, to some extent or another. We had exchanged the real thing inside for a counterfeit thing on the outside. For us it took on the form of good works and good Christian living.
We had become a living hypocrisy.
Until one day.
Christ approached me, and in that kind, unforgettable voice said, “Zichri, what is it?”
“Why, what do you mean?” I asked.
“You are troubled.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I see it in your drawn countenance and in the abrupt way you have come to treat people.”
“Well.” I said a bit huffily.
“Yes,” He said, so very kindly. “Yes, it seems you have been going from one crisis to another. And, I’m afraid some of those crises’ are of your own making. It seems you have a heart that’s at war with life in general.”
“Well . . .” I said, not so huffily this time. “Maybe you have a point. It seems like it’s been a while since I felt quiet and peaceful inside.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” He said. “It seems you have taken to yourself things that are carnal.”
“What!? Carnal? That word is for those who live in sin.”
“So it is,” He said. “It is also for those who take too much government and good works of what they think is my Kingdom upon themselves. Because, once they take it from me, it is no longer pure, but becomes soiled with human interest and pursuits.”
We stood quietly, as this all soaked in. Finally, I looked up, eyes brimming with tears.
“No words are needed,” He said quietly.
The sun was sinking, and it would soon be dark. My head cleared as the night air cooled around me and suddenly, I got it.
What had begun as an effortless, autonomous flow through me had, at some point, turned into a lot of hard work.
What had started as love became severity and judgement.
What once was joy turned into drudgery.
Where there had been peace now was war.
“Peace, my brother,” He said, as he extended his hand. “All you have to do is let me flow through you to others.
I read my friend Ciara’s post on her blog this morning about attending teacher prep, and all that goes with starting a teaching career.
I went back automatically to the evening before the first day of my first year in the school system.
I was uneasy.
I had the goods, as far as data, school supplies, and enthusiasm. But I had no experience.
Looking back now, from this vantage point, experience would have been extremely helpful in that first year.
It would have eased my mind as I drove to school late that evening before the first day. It would have had me sit quietly in my chair (I did for a little bit) and look forward with settled anticipation and joy to those I would soon intertwine my life with.
Neither would it have construed the lightning flashing as I left, much later, as a negative omen. Because it wasn’t. My teaching career was decidedly positive, both in what it gained me and in the memories it left. If those first students of mine are able to say anything positive about it—but I think surely they can.
Experience would have held my speech that first morning to approximately 10 minutes, instead of two hours. (possible exaggeration) It would have told me that a human mind, no matter how sharp, can only absorb so much of any one thing. It would have had me catch the first sign of the glimmer fading in their eyes as their attention began to wane.
Experience would have had me go slower in jumping to conclusions, on a certain morning, when I was sure my students were out to purposely challenge me.
I had sent them out after devotions for five minutes of fresh air and sunshine.
Five minutes came and went, and soon 10 ambled by.
I peeked down the hall to the doors they would come in through and saw them all standing grouped together. It looked like they were laughing and generally having a good time. “Okay,” I said to myself, “let’s see how this thing goes. I can wait for quite a while. We’ll see them when they come in.”
Finally, as it got to be closer to 30 minutes, I went to the door, opened it and told them to come in.
Experience would have had me communicate with them a bit better, when, a couple of hours later, I approached them as largely guilty in reminding them of their missteps earlier, and asked them all to write an essay stating of their feelings and their involvement in the matter.
Experience was gained in a moment when, one of the quieter girls told me, after all the essays were in and I had read them, that all the doors to school were locked. That they couldn’t come in, that they had waited, wondering when I would come let them in. (Experience also taught me later in life not to use the word that inconsiderately when writing. Experience was purposefully disregarded in this paragraph.)
Experience would have saved me from the dumbfounded discovery during the last week of that first year, of finding the sum total of all speed drills minus the first one still in a file in my desk.
I would like to give what experience I gained in my teaching career to each of you new teachers this year.
But the consequences of such a move would be dreadful.
Because it is the process of gaining experience that will make each of you the unique teacher you need to be.
And, it is the process of gaining experience that will endear you to those you work closely with this coming year.
When, 20 years from now you write your own memories down of what transpired during your teaching years, you will realize most of those memories are the result of gainful experiences lived.
So, Ciara, and to all the other new teachers this year, take the plunge.
Fearlessly.
Because, experience tells me that each you will be the better for it.
