I wonder if I scared him off

Posted on 07/13/2009 by RLW3

(I originally wrote this on June 18th. A certain unnamed party persuaded a permanently biased judge to issue a temporary injunction against its publication. The legal wrangling has finally ended and the banned post can now be made public)

I don’t have the greatest set of social skills. I tend to be too honest.

I don’t say that in the sense of virtue. I say it in the sense of that I reveal too much to people I probably shouldn’t.

Maybe I should say that I am often too transparent. I could probably use a little more opacity in my life…

So far in life, I have been blessed in that it hasn’t come back to burn me. However, I frequently walk around with the uneasy question in my mind, “Should I have said that?”

I tell you that because I had a big one tonight…

A few weeks ago, my oldest daughter warned me that a prospective beau would be calling me to ask if he could court her. This is the same fellow who called several months ago to ask my permission to date her. That question was easy. This one is in a whole different league.

I asked her if she was asking me to really be the gatekeeper or was I to merely imitate a bullfighter who waves the red cape and lets the bull rush by him while the crowd shouts “Olé!” She wanted me to be the gatekeeper.

One of the difficulties of life is trying to handle situations that you have never been in before. What am I supposed to say? What are we supposed to talk about? How should I know? How much money do you make?…

The “contemporary” version of courtship is dating to see if the couple wants to “pursue” marriage. It strikes me as very similar to what was called “going steady” in previous generations. Me no like a that!

I looked up the definition of courtship in Webster’s 1828 Dictionary and this is what I found:

1. The act of soliciting favor.

2. The act of wooing in love; solicitation of a woman to marriage.

That’s not dating to see if you want to pursue marriage! That is trying to convince the girl that you are the  one! That means that the man has already made up his mind! It also means, if he’s going to do it right, that he has gained permission from the girl’s parents to pursue and persuade their daughter.

Instead of them pursuing marriage, which sounds like work, the man is pursuing the woman! That sounds like fun!

The young man called tonight…

In the beginning of the call, I asked him questions about his life, his dreams, his plans.

I then decided to jump into the deep end of the pool…

I asked what his thoughts were concerning physical displays of affection before marriage…

I liked what I heard.

As I listened to him, I was like an old-fashioned tea kettle on the stove just before it whistles to let you know that the water is hot. After an awkward pause, he asked what I thought…

I proceeded to tell him…

I went well past merely “sharing” my views on said subject. I included the psychological, sociological and theological reasons behind them at no extra cost! And he actually listened!

Was I supposed to do that? How should know!

We never quite made it to the actual intended question…

In fact, I told him that I didn’t even like the question that he was going to ask.

“If you are calling me to ask me if you can date my daughter to see if you REALLY want to date her, I am not interested in that conversation. But if you are going to tell me that you are sure my daughter is the one for you, that you cannot live without her and you can convince me that you are the man for her so that I will give you my permission to pursue and persuade her, I am very much interested in having that conversation!”

I was not at all surprised when he said that he wasn’t quite ready for that.

Stay tuned…

Posted in Masculinity, Parenting | Tagged | Comments Off on I wonder if I scared him off

As easy as pie

Posted on 07/12/2009 by RLW3

We left Overland Park at 6:00 A.M and arrived in Denver at 2:00 P.M. (Mountain Time) as planned. Outside of 10-15 minutes in a torrential downpour with strong gusting winds that were almost creating waves in the water on the freeway and lightning flashing all around, the drive was uneventful and pleasant.

When we pulled up to Invesco Field, there were three cars in the parking lot! I immediately wondered if we had the wrong dates, the wrong city, etc. No, this was the place and today was the day…

It seems that everyone came at 5:00 in the morning. Of course you know what that meant for us…

NO LINES! and therefore no waiting!

In less than 1o minutes, we were registered and back on the road to get something to eat and to find a place to sleep for the night.

Nice!!!

Posted in Travel | Tagged | Comments Off on As easy as pie

Just drop the ‘L’

Posted on 07/11/2009 by RLW3

I guess it wouldn’t be Fargo time without having to overcome a significant injury…

Last year at about this time, one of the top Junior wrestlers in the country rammed his head into Big A’s sternum during a Mo-West practice. He was in pain right up to and through the tournament.

This year, that same wrestler, now an All American in college, came back for the club’s last workout before departing for North Dakota. Since Big A has been pretty much whipping everyone else they have put him up against, in the last 15 minutes of his last full Mo-West practice ever, the coaches paired them up again.

The guy bear hugged him from behind, arched backward and threw him to the mat. Big A’s legs followed his torso and whipped his feet into the mat very hard. He went from flat feet to fat feet in one smooth move!

He was limping pretty bad almost immediately so we went to see the doctor.

Thankfully, the X-rays came back negative. However, he has very painful soft tissue damage called “turf toe”. The doctor, who was a top level wrestler in his day, prescribed a new anti-inflammatory ointment, told him to keep it iced. The recovery time should be about 3-5 days.

He leaves for the Kansas team training camp on Monday.

Posted in Children | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Just drop the ‘L’

Sorry, son, but that is reality

Posted on 07/10/2009 by RLW3

Time continues to move swiftly. Fargo is now just two weeks away.

This week, my son had a change in his training schedule so he has been taking me to work and heading directly to the morning practice. He comes back and we eat lunch together.

This morning, my wife gave each of us a bowl of her chili in our lunch bags. We found a picnic table and got down to the task at hand, two men silently enjoying a very practical manifestation of God’s goodness, spoonful by delicious, savory spoonful. That chili was SOOO good!

I was just enjoying the moment when my thoughts momentarily left the chili to the fact that I don’t have much more time with this young man. And then, almost immediately, I had two simple but significant realizations…

He is leaving for college…

I am not…

I saw a delicious opportunity (forgive the pun) to both make an important impression and have fun with him at the same time…

“You’re going to be leaving for college in just a few short weeks.”

“I know.”

“You’re excited about IT?” as I took another bite of chili.

“Yeah.” He took a bite.

“I think it’s going to be good. It’s going to be a great time of learning. Your going to realize a bunch of things.”

I took another bite.

He looked at me with a quizzical expression on his face and took another bite.

“One of the things that you are going to realize…”

I took another bite…

“is that the woman who made this chili married me and not you.”

He winced ever so slightly.

You might say that is cold hearted of me. I disagree.

First, since we aren’t going to be shipping him food via FedEX, that means that his days of enjoying his mom’s cooking are rapidly drawing to a close. He needs to appreciate how blessed he has been. It might turn out to be much easier to cut weight for wrestling at Drexel than it has been at home!

Second, he also needs to realize that he needs to trust God to bring him a wife. That realization should cause him to grow in his relationship with God and spur him to fully become a man.

Third, he might want to believe for a woman who can cook!

“Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.”

Posted in Masculinity, Parenting | Comments Off on Sorry, son, but that is reality

OUCH!

Posted on 07/09/2009 by RLW3

When I was younger, Fram Oil Filters ran an ad campaign featuring a mechanic sporting a thick New York accent and a knowing grin in front of a broken down car saying “You can pay me now or pay me later”. Here is the print ad.

The idea was that you either chose to incur a little bit of pain now (the cost of an oil change) 0r you WOULD experience a great deal of pain later (the cost of a new engine).

That principle doesn’t just apply to the internal combustion engine. A fair amount of the pain in our lives is caused either by our inability or by our unwillingness to learn the easy way. So, we eventually learn by pain. Sometimes we just refuse to learn at all and just repeatedly suffer pain.

In my experience, the most frequent form of pain that we must undergo is associated with change. Usually the change is really quite small. However, human beings are not prone to make changes easily. We fight it for a variety of reasons: it will break up our routine, it is inconvenient, we are too lazy, we will look stupid, no one else is doing it, etc., etc.

I continue trying to learn the easy way as much as possible. For the last 25 years, I have tried to cultivate the “habit of action.” When I get an idea, discover something that bothers me or see something that I need to change, I try to do it right away. That is when my motivation is the highest and my excuses are the weakest.

Unfortunately, I find that I have to learn the hard way when I am unwilling to make the necessary changes in my behavior that are exposed the easy way.

I had just such an incident Wednesday night.

I wrote the Sunday and Monday’s posts on Tuesday evening. I was really happy with them. I felt inspired while writing them.

However, yesterday afternoon, I accidentally deleted both of them. Over an hour’s worth of creative genius (LOL) vaporized with a few quick keystrokes! Pain! Ouch!

I still can’t figure out exactly how I made that mistake.

In desperation, I called the hosting company. They last backed up my database, you guessed it, on Monday night!

They are not obligated to do it at all. They do this as a courtesy. I knew this before I called. I knew that if the database that holds all of my posts ever crashed, I would lose quite a bit of our great family history.

But…what is the likelihood of that happening? I have a good hosting company…Besides, I don’t have time for that. It is a big enough challenge to write a daily (almost) post. I’m sure it will be all right.

Oh the excuses were flowing real good!

And, it turned out that I was right. The hosting company is reliable. The database is stable. My problem turned out to be my own thinking and decision making.

So, I spent yesterday evening rewriting those two posts. I didn’t feel anywhere near the same level of inspiration.

And started copying the contents of this blog to my computer…

Posted in Goals | Comments Off on OUCH!

Wewease the secwet weapon!

Posted on 07/08/2009 by RLW3

Prior to moving to Kansas City, we taught our children at home. That meant that my son’s options for athletics were somewhat limited.

He played Pee Wee football until he was 15 years old.

In the first game of his last season, my wife and I noticed that he couldn’t run for the last half of the game. I mean that literally. Instead, he shuffled…slowly.

That is not a good thing if you are a linebacker and expected to chase down the guy with the ball. It was painful to watch him.

Initially, we thought he was just tired. When it happened in the second game, we asked him what the problem was. He told us that his feet hurt.

No wonder! My son has flat feet.

I’m sorry. I didn’t communicate that very clearly…

My son’s feet are FL-A-A-A-A-A-T!

A sports medicine guy told us that on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the worst, he ranks a 9.

We bought him some orthotic inserts and, voila!, the next game he could run!

…not exactly like a deer but he could actually run.

He outgrew the inserts very quickly and when we went to get him refitted, we learned that the store had gone out of business. Then we moved to Kansas City, and…we never replaced them.

In just a few weeks, we will be taking our son to Philadelphia for college. My mind is thinking of last minute things that we can do to help him get off to a successful start. The story I just shared with you crossed my mind and it dawned on me…

He has been complaining about his knees and ankles…hmmmm…

His feet are still flat! I ought to buy him some new inserts!

What a coincidence! He has just enough time to get completely acclimated to them before he wrestles in the Junior National Freestyle Championship three weeks from now.

I have a sneaky suspicion that with his feet and ankles and knees and hips and back being properly aligned, he might just wrestle a little better…kinda like how water flows more freely after you take the kink out of the hose!

If you have seen the animated movie “Feivel Goes West”, I might have just “weweased the secwet weapon!”

Stay tuned…

Posted in Parenting | Tagged | Comments Off on Wewease the secwet weapon!

A time to leave, a time to return

Posted on 07/07/2009 by RLW3

Thirty two years ago today, I boarded a plane in Philadelphia as a 17 year old with two large suitcases  and $800 in my pocket and took my first flight to Los Angeles, CA.

In two short months, my wife and I will take our 18 year old son back to the land of my youth to attend my father’s alma mater.

My immediate family will see my complete family for the first time in more than a decade.

It strikes me that I should have some profound insight at this moment.

I don’t.

It just seems significant.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off on A time to leave, a time to return

It’s time to stop talking about it

Posted on 07/06/2009 by RLW3

If everything goes according to plan, in six days my youngest daughter and I will be driving to Denver, CO.

We will then spend the next two days standing in REALLY long lines with thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of other people at INVESCO Field (formerly Mile High Stadium) and then drive 9 hours back to Kansas City.

Please understand that I am one of those people who can’t stand waiting in line…anywhere…at the bank…on the freeway…at traffic lights.

It’s not that am always in a big hurry. I just have a NEED to make progress. Whenever I am forced to wait, my insides start churning because I hear the clock that holds the moments of my life ticking.

So why am I going to Denver to stand in line?

So Cakes can audition for AMERICAN IDOL!

It’s a long shot. I know that. She knows that. Although we decided only one week ago, we have each had thoughts run through our heads like “what the heck do you think you are doing?” and “who are you kidding?”

No one, actually.

There are always plenty of  “good reasons” not to try something like this. However, those “good reasons” are not without their own costs.

Our hearts were made to be laboratories where dreams and ideas form. Unfortunately, most people’s hearts are filled with discouragement and resignation. There are two primary reasons for this.

More than a few people find it too painful to dream. They started out life trying to turn a dream into a reality only to have the difficulties of life and/or the people around them slowly but steadily grind their once bright hopes into powder. Now, the thought of pursuing a dream conjures up painful memories and internal accusations of “how foolish they were.”

Too many others have lost the ability to dream. Their heart has atrophied like an unused muscle because they never acted on any of the ideas that they got. Instead of taking a chance and launching out, they chose to play it safe, listening to everybody and their brother tell them why it won’t work. They chose the relative safety and security of dieing slowly rather than face the very real possibility of failing. Now they just go through the motions, fulfilling their obligations, merely playing their part.

I have personally battled the first obstacle as I have faced more than a few disappointments in my life. I am determined that my children do not fall into the second category.

I want my children to dream big dreams. I want them to be great and do great things. One of the primary laws of psychology is that you get more of whatever you reward. Act on the small dreams that you already have in your heart and you will get more.

Cakes has been dreaming of this for 5 years. This year she is finally old enough to audition.

When we were discussing it, Cakes began to get sheepish and started talking about next year, etc. I pressed her

“Is it in your heart to do this?”

She started to ramble

“Cakes, is it in your heart to do this?”

She paused and then started to qualify

“Just answer my question!”

“Yes.”

“Then you need to do it!”

We’ve been talking about it for five years. It’s time to take action!

Her dream has been to audition. If she makes it to the next round, great. If not, what was once just a dream in her heart will become a memory for life!

Posted in Children, Goals, Parenting, Travel | Tagged | Comments Off on It’s time to stop talking about it

Give it a good whack!

Posted on 07/05/2009 by RLW3

My son’s birthday is in September. I finally gave him last year’s present…

I took him golfing!

He had never done it before.

As we got my clubs out of storage and started cleaning up the bag, memories started coursing through my mind. I haven’t played golf in over 15 years!

We arrived about 1 1/2 hours early so I could teach him a little about hitting a golf ball and warm up a little. When we checked in, the lady at the desk said we would be teeing off in 15 minutes!

Forget about hitting a bucket of balls…As far as the lesson…

No problem. We’re men! We can make it work!

On the first hole, I hit a pretty nice shot. I was admiring its flight as it landed near the green. Once it landed, everything changed. It bounced off a hill and headed straight for the lake!

While I was looking for my ball, I heard a strange sound behind me. I didn’t even bother looking up. Big A’s ball had just been sucked into the mud. The comedy had started!

We stopped keeping score after the third hole!

On the fourth hole, I was in the trees on the left and he was in the trees on the right. I told him to hit his ball as soon as he found it so we didn’t delay the people playing behind us.

I found mine first and hit it pretty good only to hear the ball crash into some tree branches. A moment later, I heard his ball crash into tree limbs on the other side of the fairway. We were like Father & Son Deforestation, Inc. at work!

On the sixth hole, Big A scored either a 12 or a 14. (For you non golfers our there, that is really bad. He was supposed to shoot a 4!) And that doesn’t include all the times that he picked the ball up! In fact, he eventually tossed the ball onto the green and, after a few failed putts, dropped the ball into the hole by hand! As he picked the ball up out of the cup, he tipped his hat to an imaginary crowd!

The seventh hole was a par three. That means that you should be able to make it to the green in one shot…if you know what you are doing!

The group playing ahead of us was walking onto the green to finish the hole. Big A asked me if he could hit.

I had just seen this man hit the ball 5 straight times and only advance 20 yards (He said that was his “frog” hit because the ball would hop about 10-15 feet into the air before hopping a few yards). The people on the green were in no danger at all. Now the birds in the trees on the right or the rabbits in the tall grass on the left…that was a different story.

“Sure.”

He swung and my decision was justified. The poor rabbits!

He ran and got his ball, came back, set up again and asked, “Can I go again?”

“Sure. Why not?”

I guess he just needed some human beings to aim at because he hit a beautiful, straight shot right onto the green WHILE THE PEOPLE WERE STILL ON IT! I went from laughing about the rabbits to frantically screaming “Four! Four!” and REALLY hoping that no one got hurt!

Anyway, we played golf the same way we play racquetball, swinging hard and laughing hard the whole time…except I didn’t get hurt this time!

Posted in Children | Tagged | Comments Off on Give it a good whack!

Happy Independence Day!

Posted on 07/04/2009 by RLW3

Celebrating holidays in America is pretty challenging. Most people gather with their families but the overarching meaning of each holiday is frequently missing.

In many homes, Thanksgiving Day has been reduced to “Turkey Day,” a great day to watch football. Christmas is a now largely a consumer holiday.

The Fourth of July is now looked at by many as just an extra long weekend.

What differentiates July 4th from July 11th? Should getting together with your friends and neighbors today be any different than getting together with them next weekend?

I say “Yes.”

Because we do not either know or appreciate history, we really do not understand how blessed we are in this country.

What is freedom? Is it merely doing what you want to do? Is is getting drunk and taking “What’s your name?” to bed? People who live in oppressed countries do that, not because they are free, but because they are depressed. That can’t be what the Founders of the country gave their lives and fortunes for.

Freedom is having the opportunity to govern yourself, to profit from your labor, to live out your convictions, to associate with people of your choosing and to worship God according to the dictates of your conscience. This has been exceedingly rare in the history of mankind. The norm is a strong man who rules over his countrymen through sheer power according to whim and fancy.

233 years ago, after carefully enumerating their reasoning for taking such a bold step, 56 men publicly signed the Declaration of Independence.

All but a few of those delegates to the Continental Congress were men of substantial education, wealth and property, not unlike the people who govern us today. However, these men, instead of using their office to increase their wealth and power as is unfortunately so common today, “mutually pledged to each other (their) lives, (their) fortunes and (their) sacred honor.”

It was not empty promise. The King of England declared them guilty of treason.

All 56 signers were hunted by British soldiers. 9 died during the war. 5 were captured and brutalized. The homes of 12 of them were burned to the ground. 17 lost all of their earthly possessions. Many lost their wives and children.

233 years ago, these United States of America declared their independence from the King of England. 233 years ago, men and women of great conviction purchased our freedom from tyranny with their very lives.

During our celebration today, let us at least, either personally or publicly, read the document for which they gave their life. Let us sit still long enough to take each one of those 56 names upon our lips in appreciation of their sacrifice!

Happy Independence Day!

Posted in Family, Personal | Comments Off on Happy Independence Day!