To Buzz, Or Not To Buzz... There Is No Question

As a general rule, anything with more than four legs gives me the creeps.  There are a few exceptions.  Ladybugs.  Lightning bugs.  Butterflies.  My working theory is that it is because those bugs hide their legs pretty well.  In the case of fireflies, I mean come on now.  They light up.  How can you not like those?


I am a big guy.  Aside from the few examples above, most bugs/critters give me the heebie-jeebies.  No lie.  I'll be the first to point out a spider if there's someone else in the room.  Then I will act like I'm in the middle of something terribly important in hopes that someone will take the initiative to clear the room of the offending visitor.  


A neighbor caught me as I was getting out of my car today and asked if I would help her and her daughter.  Ever the good Samaritan, I said of course.  They believed they had heard a cicada in one of their bedrooms.  How ironic.  I would likely have been flagging down neighbors if I heard a cicada in my own place.  But, I put on a brave face and went to work.  Had I found the cicada, I would have put aside my cowardice, stifled a scream, and dispatched the unwanted guest.  As it turned out, I could find nothing (and yes, I really tried to, in case you're wondering).  I assured her that if it was, in fact, a cicada, it was probably the last one alive in Nashville, since they died off a couple of weeks ago.  So it wouldn't be flying around the room.


Cicadas are strange creatures.  This is the second time in the last five or six years that I've been around for what I call a cicada "convention".  When I lived in Ohio, we had had a variety of cicada known as the 17 year  cicada.  This meant that every 17 years, they would emerge from underground in massive numbers.  I happened to be there for the big event before I moved out of the state a couple of years later.  


They are incredibly noisy bugs, especially when they number in the thousands and thousands.  And they are hideously ugly.  Big orange eyes.  About 2 inches long or bigger.  


I'm no entomologist, but in my opinion, they are the stupidest bug on the planet.  You will see one just buzz along, fly directly into a building or a person, fall to the ground and buzz angrily.  Maybe they don't see well.  I'm no optometrist either.


Yet at the same time, some of them are quite stealthy.  You can have one land on your shirt and not even realize it until you happen to look down, scream like a little girl, jump up and down and flail your arms wildly to brush it off.  Of course, I have only witnessed this with other people.  Ahem.  Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes.  The good thing about them is they only live about 3 weeks, then disappear for another 17 years.  


Well, fast forward five or six years and I happen to be in Nashville when it comes time for their 13 year cicadas to make an appearance.  They were even worse than the ones in Ohio.  I could be driving down a tree-lined street, windows up, A/C on, radio on, and I could still hear them buzzing in the trees.  Unbelievable.  That was about a month ago when they were in full swing, so it's all still fresh in my memory.  


Here is a picture of one of the little darlings:  

It should be noted that this is not my photo, and therefore not my hand in it.  The scenario in this picture would never occur,  unless I were heavily sedated.


Now, imagine yourself seeing these things by the hundreds on a daily basis.  Then imagine yourself sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper and run across an article entitled "Nashville Residents Cook, Eat Cicadas".


Say what???


"Adventurous eaters in Nashville said they are feasting on the 13-year cicadas that have emerged in the region" the article states.  It goes on to feature a couple who decided to try eating cicadas after they heard about other people enjoying them.


Okay.  I hear about a lot of things that people enjoy.


I've heard about the polar bear clubs whose members find an icy river in the middle of winter, strip to their bloomers, and dive into the frigid water.


I've heard about people that go to clubs just to be suspended in the air by their body piercings.  


If this is something people enjoy and they do not force anyone to join, then I say great.  Have a wonderful time.


Have I ever said to myself after hearing of people enjoying such activities that I should probably try them?  Hell no.


You would be just as likely to see me on a 20 degree day in January climbing out of an icy river in my skivvies, or hanging like a side of beef from metal hooks in my back, as you would be to see me sitting down to dinner with a plate of sauteed insects.  


......  Um.  I think I blacked out for a second.  I was having a vision of someone hanging from their shoulder skin inside of a walk-in freezer, wearing nothing but their underwear, and feasting on cicadas.   That would sure be a time saver if you were really adventurous, wouldn't it?  Three activities in one?  That is some good time management right there. 


Anyway.  Apparently the couple in the article prepared their cicadas with butter and garlic.


There ain't enough butter and garlic in the world, people.  I'm just sayin'.


Here's the article link, in case anyone is interested.  Or thinks I'm lying.  


http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2011/05/27/Nashville-residents-cook-eat-cicadas/UPI-64531306485000/


I lived in Ohio the first 37 years of my life.  If people ate cicadas there, it wasn't in the newspaper where I lived.  I don't know if that speaks to anything as far as the difference between Ohio and Tennessee.  I will say, however, that if someone made up an official hunting season for cicadas, two-thirds of the men I knew would have been out in the woods on opening day and probably would have developed a taste for them.  Those boys liked to hunt.


So, needless to say, cicadas don't fall into the same category as cute little ladybugs and colorful butterflies in my world.  Not many things do, to tell the truth.


I told my neighbor to call if her little friend made an appearance and I would come to the rescue.  Secretly I am hoping my phone doesn't ring.  But if it does, I'll man up and go take care of business.  I hope I'm not hungry when she calls.

Things That Grab My Eye (Briefly) - Volume 1

I will admit it... My attention span seems to get shorter as the years pass.  The thing about this that frightens me is that I'm only 42.  If I'm noticing the effects of it now, what happens when I'm 52?  Will I be able to carr-------  Oooo.  Look it.  Something sparkly....

Where was I?


Whatever.  

I decided when I find something unusual on the World Wide Web that catches my attention, I will put it on here. Then down the road if I can't find anything that interests me any longer because my attention span is equal to that of a goldfish, maybe I can find a little entertainment.

So, welcome to Volume 1.

This is a short video clip.  It's something I've never seen before and nothing I would ever have thought of myself, which makes it even more intriguing.  I hope it still amuses me when I am 52.

Here 'tis:

Race to the Finish

Maybe it's just me.  The more I read news and the more I live and learn, the more I question the intelligence of those following my generation.  Granted, I questioned the intelligence of many in my own generation.  Still do, in fact.  


Let's take drugs, for example.  Wait.  That came out wrong.  Let's talk about drugs, not take them.


I was born in 1969.  So my generation was coming into itself in the 80's.  I was in high school then.  The days when girls had big hair.  If they used enough hairspray to make their bangs touch the top of the door frame when they entered a room they were stylin'.   Boys had mullets.  When that became not cool enough, they permed their mullets.  For the record, I totally wanted a mullet when I was in school.  But, my hair kind of defied explanation.  My hair didn't grow long, it grew big.  And the hair in the back that I desperately wanted to reach my shirt collar was more apt to curl up on itself.  It was hopeless.  In hindsight, I think it was God's way of protecting me from never having pictures of me, with a mullet, surface in this age of Facebook.


Where was I?  Oh right.  Sorry, I was supposed to be talking about drugs.  I had to set the scene.  When I was in high school, the posters with the whole egg, designated as "your brain", and then the next frame with the egg frying in a black skillet, which was meant to describe "your brain on drugs", were incredibly popular.  They were everywhere.  On posters.  On television public service announcements.  I couldn't say if that campaign ever stopped anyone from wanting to do drugs.  If I had to guess, I would say not.  The people I knew who did drugs could not possibly have been less influenced by a fried egg.  Whereas I, who had no interest in drugs anyway, would look at the poster and think to myself that a fried egg sounded delicious right about now.  I was never tempted by drugs.  I could always be tempted by food.  

In this period of the 80's there was 1) alcohol and 2) marijuana.  There wasn't much variety back in the day.  At least not where I lived.  No "designer" drugs.


I moved on from the high school and college years and into the workplace as I grew older.  Turns out, in the workplaces I happened to be in, things hadn't changed a great deal.  If they had done random drug testing for marijuana in almost any of the places I was working at the time, over half the workforce would be fired.  Which was exactly why there were never random drug tests.  Everyone knew who was doing it.  And it wasn't affecting job performance.  At least not that you could tell with some of them.


I did have occasion to change jobs when I was around thirty years old and went into a job at a restaurant that was predominantly the newer generation.  Kids still in high school or freshly out.   This is where I started to notice a generation gap.  Added to the usual mix of drugs and alcohol, prescription drugs were pretty popular.  Granted, this was not exclusive to the younger members of the staff.  Some my age and older partook in any and all of the choices available.  But it was at this time I started to question the intelligence factor of the newer generation.  I never claimed it was a scientific study.  If it had been, I certainly would have gathered a larger core sample from which I would watch and learn.  


There was a young lady working at the restaurant who was completely irate one day just as I was coming in to work.  We both happened to be walking past the manager's office when she turned to him and demanded he do something about the theft problem in the restaurant.  Of course he was willing to help so he asked for more details.  As luck would have it, she had a bag of weed in her purse when she worked the previous evening and during her shift, it had allegedly been stolen from her handbag.  Naturally, she was outraged and thought he should take action against who she was sure had taken it and try to get it back for her.  At this point, he had looked out at me.  I was laughing too hard to be of any help.  He asked her if she had thought about phoning the police to sort out the matter.  She rolled her eyes at him.  "I can't tell the cops I had marijuana stolen!" she exclaimed.  He said "But you think it's okay to come in here and tell me that you brought an illegal substance onto company property and you want me to do something about it?"


There was another employee at a later time who, after I had moved into management, came in to the office to ask the general manager and myself if we could save him all the banana peels we used when we made desserts.  We glanced at each other and I had to ask why.  "Well," he explained, "I heard you can get way higher smoking the banana peels than you do with pot."  Eureka!!


Incidentally, I walked into the kitchen not long after that and there were banana peels in the convection oven, apparently for drying purposes.  I just told him to clean up his mess when he was done.  I did hear later that they weren't as potent as he had hoped and it had given him a headache.


It's my feeling this was about the point where someone tainted the gene pool with something and I'm not sure what.  Since those days, I'm astounded at least monthly when I read what kids are doing trying to get high.  Some dork wanting to smoke banana peels was pretty funny, I admit.  But something has happened and things have turned far more serious.


Some of the things I've heard about teens either huffing, snorting, smoking, ingesting, etc. :
Paint
Household Chemicals
Cough Syrup
Nutmeg
Morning Glory Seeds
Bath Salts  
Vodka soaked tampons (used by both girls and boys, frighteningly enough)
Potpourri and incense
...
And the list goes on and on and on.


Getting high seems to have taken on a whole new desperation, if you look at it from the outside.  Sparking up a doobie in the 70's and 80's seems fairly mild compared to the risks that kids are taking as time goes on.  Even smoking banana peels is tame in comparison.  Stupid, but tame.


This could be the time to get philosophical about kids feeling increased societal pressure from which they need to escape, blah blah blah.  I'm not philosophical to that extent.


To me, this pattern should be telling parents to WAKE THE HELL UP AND SEE WHAT YOUR KIDS ARE DOING!


In the interest of full disclosure, I don't have kids.  I don't presume to know what it is like to raise kids in today's world and, to be honest, it scares the living daylights out of me to even think about it.  I think if I had a child, I'd be tempted to lock Junior in a safe room with no computer and no internet and no television.  


Kids already have a strike against them because they think they are immortal.  I know I did when I was a boy when it came to some things.  But I really think I had a fair amount of common sense.


I can see myself as a fifteen year old boy and someone asking me if I wanted to play the choking game.  I would be instantly suspicious for a couple of reasons.  When I was fifteen, no one ever asked me to play anything, unless the gym teacher made them let me play on their dodgeball team.  Secondly, anything with the word "choking" in it would have thrown up a red flag as something not fun.  So when they explained that it was played by them putting their hands around my throat and cutting off the blood circulating to my brain until I passed out because I'd get high from it, I would have wasted no time getting home and locking the doors.  Maybe I would have even put a turtleneck on to protect my throat, but I doubt it.  I wasn't a coward.  Besides that, I never owned a turtleneck.

We all engage in self destructive behaviors.  Many people smoke.  Many people eat things they shouldn't in quantities they shouldn't.  Many people drink too much.   

I certainly have my own vices that I know are against my doctor's orders.  Some of us are either oblivious to how quickly the finish line approaches or we are willing to take the chance in exchange for some pleasure out of life.  As adults, we know better a lot of the time.

But, where is the disconnect from when I was fifteen years old back in the 80's and a fifteen year old today who is snorting bath salts and dying from it?  Something has clearly changed.  Admittedly, the first thing I think when I read an article about the latest dangerous thing teens are doing to get high, is "how stupid is that?".

Is it stupidity?  Lack of common sense? I don't have the answer.  I have an opinion that it starts at home.  But it's only an opinion.  If I had a fifteen year old daughter, who is to say she would not be doing the same things?  The first time I heard anything about her participation in an activity like that, I guarantee I'd be at The Home Depot buying building materials for that safe room.

I have never been high.  I've never smoked a joint.  I've never snorted anything but the occasional nasal spray when I've had a cold.  Even getting drunk does not bring me pleasure.  I don't see the appeal of getting high.  So maybe that is why I can't imagine anyone risking his or her life to make it happen.  

I do not judge those who partake in mind and/or mood altering substances.  I have had plenty of friends who did.  They do not need my judgment.  Besides that, they are adults and they know what they are doing.  Without getting into the issues of legalizing pot and all that, I can say if someone wants to smoke a joint, more power to them.   I don't hang around if someone is smoking a joint.  I hate the smell.  And trying to have a conversation with someone who is stoned is just really not a good time, in my opinion.  I personally think it would be rude to toke yourself into oblivion if you're having a conversation with me.  Then again, who's to say that having a conversation with me wouldn't drive you to it?    

In my humble opinion, smoking pot is completely different than spraying paint into a bag and then sticking your face inside and taking deep breaths.  That, I would deem as dangerous and while I've never been in that situation, I like to think I would try to intervene on someone's behalf.  (This is probably not the time or place, but as a side note, you know how hard it is to get paint off your fingers when you're spray painting a lawn chair or something?  Now imagine trying to remove it from your eyebrows and your nose.  See what I'm saying?)

Maybe that is the key.  Maybe no one intervenes anymore.  I don't know.

What I do know is there are a lot of young people who have crossed the big finish line long before they really ever started the race.

Blood Money for Tootsie Rolls

While browsing the internet earlier, I ran across a link for a photo entitled "Child's skull with baby teeth and adult teeth".  This was something I'd never seen before.  Being a curious sort, I had to check it out.  Here is the link if you'd like to check it out as well:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfschafer/3990631783/in/photostream/

This got me to thinking, as things sometimes do.  What do you suppose God had in mind when He designed children?  Not every child has the easiest time of it when he or she is that age.  There's a lot to take in and a lot to learn.  Did God take this into consideration when He decided at some point during (as an example) young David's developmental years to have all of his teeth begin to fall out of his head?


Don't get me wrong.  I'm not one to second guess God or His designs.  I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason.  What comes to mind is if we had our larger adult teeth come in first, then we, as children, might all look like we had horse teeth.  It's likely we'd never be able to close our mouths or be able to chew or learn to speak because our heads would be too small for our chompers.  Okay, in thinking about it that way, maybe it does make sense.


Maybe it isn't traumatic for other kids.  I remember as being young David that it was, in fact, a dark period in my childhood.  


I don't remember if I was ever warned it was going to happen.  Knowing my family, I have serious doubts.  My sister and brother were older than I was by 9 and 11 years, respectively.  So they were too many years away from losing their own teeth to be sympathetic when it was my turn.  If my mother ever had the conversation with me, which I doubt, it would have been something like this:


Mother:  David, pretty soon your teeth are going to start getting loose and fall out.


Young David:  What?  (pushing against each tooth with his tongue to test for stability)


Mother:  That's right.  It happens to every kid.  There will be lots of blood and you'll think you're in agony, but it doesn't really hurt.


Young David:  That's preposterous!  The very idea!  There is nothing wrong with my teeth.  Maybe that happens to other kids, but it is NOT going to happen to me, I can tell you that.


Mother:  Shut up and eat your Brussels sprouts while you still have enough teeth to chew them properly.


As I said, it's highly unlikely that exchange ever took place.  What likely happened was I suddenly found a loose tooth one day, became concerned, as I would do sometimes, and went in search of my mother.


"Let me see it.  Show me which one it is," she probably said.


As a trusting young lad, I probably opened wide and gave it a wiggle to show her which one it was.  What did I have to fear?  This was, after all, the woman who up until that point had kissed boo-boos and made them better.


I imagine at that point, she went for a paper towel, which I would later learn was for better grip, took hold of the offending tooth like a dog with a bone, and jerked my head back and forth until it came out.  I, of course, would have stood there crying, bleeding, and trying to reconcile in my mind why the woman who was supposed to protect me from all things bad had just betrayed me.  


I don't remember losing the first tooth, specifically.  Psychologists say the brain has a defense mechanism where it will block out traumatic events that are too much for us to handle.  Surely that is what happened in my case.  


What I do remember is learning fast that if I felt a loose tooth, I kept it to myself.  As a young boy though, when I did have a wiggler, I could not stop touching it with my tongue, or occasionally a finger.  I would become engrossed in "Gilligan's Island" or something on the TV and next thing I knew, without a thought,  I was playing with the damn tooth.  My mother would notice this and immediately inquire and want to see.  I would snap out of my TV trance and vehemently deny it.


"I won't touch it, I just want to see," she would sometimes try.


Ha!  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  Yes.  I admit she conned me with that line and I fell for it  at least once.  


Unable to concentrate on my show, I would leave the room and wiggle my tooth in private.


At such time that it was being held in by gravity alone or friction with its neighboring tooth, I would let my mother finish the job.  Why?   Two reasons, really.  One, I was too cowardly to do it myself.  I tried this a few times but I would involuntarily loosen my grip right at the point I should have been pulling it out.  Secondly, the only thing that was worse than having the sucker yanked out was biting down and catching the loose tooth with another. That would usually either hurt badly enough or creep me out enough to seek the services of my mother.  My older siblings were always there to offer services, but they always wanted to employ medieval torture involving strings and doorknobs and the like.  No thanks.


I don't remember the going rate for the Tooth Fairy back then.  That was pushing 40 years ago, so I don't imagine it was more than 50 cents or so, if that.  


Certainly, it was not enough to make up for the psychological scars.  That isn't to say I didn't accept the money when I found it under my pillow the next morning.  I may have been emotionally drained, but I wasn't stupid.  Money was money.  Fifty cents at that time would buy a lot of penny Tootsie Rolls and other treats at the market down the street.


God apparently knew when He was drawing up the designs for people that baby teeth would not be the undoing of anyone.  Every kids survives it.  I did.  From that point forward, though, if I had a boo-boo that my mother wanted to see, I approached with caution and wariness.   I knew what kinds of things she was capable of doing without a second of hesitation.  Not to mention the fact that I could only cash in on the teeth.  


I just remembered how much I liked Tootsie Rolls.  God knew what He was doing when he made those too.

My Face... My Glass...

Read

Love Will Come To You Lyrics

here.

I guess I wasn't the best one to ask 
Me myself with my face pressed up against love's glass 
To see the shiny toy I've been hoping for 
The one I never could afford 


From the song "Love Will Come To You" by the Indigo Girls


Glass.  We press our noses against it and use our hands to shield the light from our eyes in order to get the best view of what lies on the other side.  We can move from spot to spot to get just the right angle.  But what we are looking at doesn't change.  It's the same view, really, from all sides.  The only thing that changes what we see is how we allow ourselves to look at it.


The song above has been one of my favorites for a long time.  For years, I thought it was written just for me, because that was how I viewed love, among other things.  Always something I was looking in on but couldn't ever have for myself.


Songs like this, on many lonely candlelit evenings, became the soundtrack of my life.  I would program my CD changer to play track after track of lonely heart anthems.  I would sit sometimes for hours letting gloominess have its way with me until I would either fall asleep on the couch or, more often than not, get hungry.  Then I would close the curtain on my dramatic play, wish my audience of none a safe trip home, and get on with fixing a snack.  Hunger trumps despondency when you are me.


Now, these years later, my play still opens for limited runs, usually with the same soundtrack, and for the same audience of none.  But it has been severely edited and the length cut.  Why?  I fall asleep easily, especially with music.  I get hungry often, regardless of music.  My attention span has shortened with age.  That's right.  My own depression bores me now.


I have changed.  


My face is indeed still pressed up against the glass a lot of the time, but what I see is completely different.  I can look at the same scene that I used to stare at during my musical interludes.  What I saw in the past was something beautiful and idealistic.  All that was visible was a bright and shiny object atop a pedestal in the middle of the room, the only light a brilliant spot from above to accent the elegance and draw attention to the object itself.  Now when I press my face up to the glass, what I see is still on the same pedestal, but it is not alone in the room.  The darkened spaces are exposed and I can see that attached to the object is an entire network made up of the things that make that object real and allow it to exist.  It is a tightly woven web of sacrifices and rewards, pain and joy, worry and peace.  All those things were there when I used to look, but I could only see what I thought I wanted.


We all have our own spaces inside the glass.  My side of the glass is cluttered with experiences and stories and lessons learned from well thought out plans and even more valuable lessons learned from stupid decisions.  The more you share those with others and learn from what they have to share, the more dark spaces you can start to illuminate.  It's all about learning.  And, in my opinion, laughing along the way.  I can find funny in almost anything.


That is the best thing about glass.  There is always something to see on the other side.  We can all take something away from pressing our faces against the glass.  Some can learn.  Some can laugh.  Then of course there are those who don't even realize there's a world on the other side of the glass.  They just like to see what their nose-print looks like or they like to breathe hot air onto it and write "hi" in the resulting foggy patch.  That's okay.  There's a place in my world for those people too.  At least they are having fun.


So feel free to put your face against my glass and see what I have to offer.  Feel free to leave fingerprints and face-prints.  That way I know someone was here.  I would, however, refrain from licking the glass.  You never know who has been breathing on it before you got here.