good day being a dad

Prajna and Harrison are in Indonesia on a mission outreach and Benjamin and Sarah are in Mammoth with friends for the weekend. That left me Jamie and Nathaniel. Sunday night we got pizza and watched Aladdin and Herbie Rides again. They had never seen Aladdin before and Herbie Rides again was my favorite movie as a kid until I saw Star Wars in 1977. We ate the pizza and Oreo cookies and other snacks in the living room watching the first movie and then watched the second movie in my bedroom and ate Reeses Pieces.
The next day we packed a lunch and left for Big Bear. It was about and hour drive up the mountain. We ate our picnic lunch by the lake. There was a cook breeze and the boys enjoyed watching the jet skis out on the water. After lunch we went to the Moonridge Animal Park. There are animals indigenous to the area there. Most have been rescued and cannot return to the wild. We saw grizzly bears, cougars, timber wolves and other animals. The boy’s favorite was probably a barn animal who seemed to hang his head and shake it incredulously at the lack of coolness in humans.
After the zoo we walked around The Village in Big Bear and looked into some of the tourist traps. I grew up in a resort town and felt at home there. We had supper at Jack in the Box and then I took the long way home.
We stopped by the lake on the way out where I spotted a port-a-potty for Nathaniel. Then I spotted flat rocks ideal for skipping and did one of my favorite things to do and at the same time was able to impress my young sons. I skipped several rocks for them. That may have been the best part of my day.
We drove out on what is called the Rim of the World Highway. There are drops on both sides for a while and you can see south down into the San Bernardino area from 7000 feet up. There was a layer of haze thick enough to make more distant mountain tops appear like islands.
The boys were good all day and thanked me at the end. In turn I thanked my heavenly father at the end of the day for one of the nicest days I’ve had.

The Mission Outreach

Tomorrow night Prajna and Harrison leave home on their mission outreach. They will leave Los Angeles at 1:50 in the morning and arrive in Taipei after a 13 ½ hour flight. Then they fly to Jakarta and stay in a hotel for a half a day. Finally they island hop to their final destination, Jayapura, Indonesia. Jayapura is the capital of Papua on the island of New Guinea.
Yes, of course I’m concerned for them. Even though the drive to Los Angeles is more dangerous than the flight, my wife and oldest son are going to be on the other side of the world. Indonesia has earthquakes and radical Islam. But I’m not overly concerned that way either. I guess I’m just sad that they will miss me and the rest of the family as must as we miss them. I won’t be able to rub Prajna’s feet if they’re sore. That’s where I’m most concerned.
Your prayers and support have been integral in these past weeks. We will continue to need them.

Foxie Faux

I am leaving tomorrow for a Faux Family reunion. It was about 19 years ago that the patriarch of the family passed away. I will always regret that he didn’t live to know he had a great grandson named after his father.
My grandpa had false teeth and could rattle them while still in his mouth. Then he would stick the upper plate out for cartoonish buck teeth and bow back and forth. (I didn’t know he was doing an impolite Chinaman.)
Everyone called my grandpa Foxie. He had fox figurines all over his living room along with a mantle clock and candy jars.
One sweltering Phoenix summer Grandpa took my sister and me to the dime store behind his house to buy water pistols. When mine didn’t work he took me back to the store with it and told the young ladies at the counter we needed a new one.
Taking merchandise in and out of a store was an unspeakable crime to me. And there we were with the old water gun pouring the water into new ones and testing them out.
As we did that I hoped my grandpa would not make a scene and refuse to pay. But when he was satisfied with a new water pistol we put the faulty one back on the shelf and headed out. I held my breath as we passed the counter.
“Here’s one for the same price,” my grandpa said.
“Okay, Foxie,” came the reply.
Of course they knew him. I should never have forgotten who my grandpa was. And I’ve tried not to since.

it had me at the first image

I sat in the dark theatre listening to music. I decided I liked the third song played and I would tell my family which was my favorite. But this was the summer of 1977 and I was in a movie theatre listening to recorded pre-show music. I completely forgot any of it.
My father told me he was hearing about a great new movie called War of the Stars or something. Minutes after my dad read me the opening crawl I tried to call out to my mom to look because there was that robot that looked like a vacuum cleaner with the actor inside. When I saw the young hero driving his floating air-car my dad on one side and cousin on the other both turned to me and asked me how do you like that car, David? The noise of the garbage chute frightened me, but then when Threepio hears the heros shouting for joy and thinks they’re dying I thought that was the funniest part. I had trouble retelling that to my grandma, though.
I saw the film several more times in the theatre and became pretty enamored to it. Luke Skywalker was my favorite character. I wished more than anything for a machine that I could just watch it again and again. I have that now, but it’s flawed. Han shot first.

cue the music

Don’t bother to cue the Stand by Me music here. It wasn’t that type of a moment. I was probably seven or eight years old and playing with some friends. Another kid came running up and told us we could go see a dead bird so we all took off. Very soon we were there in a vacant lot in a small circle around a grey bird lying motionless on the ground.
Okay imagine the music if you have to, but I for one wasn’t thinking that whole: this bird wasn’t sleeping; it would never fly again; this bird was dead.
I don’t know what killed it. I think I would remember seeing blood or mutilation. I don’t know if The West Nile Virus existed in the mid ‘70’s. I just thought that it looked very uncomfortable there on the hot dusty ground. One of my friends reached out to touch it. Then his sister yelled at him.
“No, don’t!” she said. “You’ll get fizzy-whiz.”
A dead bird wasn’t scary, but this disease I had never heard of was.
To this day I caution my kids to not touch dead animals because they will get fizzy-whiz. Anyone reading this may warn people too.
“Mom got fizzy-whiz once,” the girl continued. I think the circle expanded away from the dead bird then. And like a rock in the pond that girl’s information can spread to the world.

first grade anxiety

I went to the first grade in 1973. I don’t know what first graders do nowadays, but we held hands in a circle and sang songs, learned about Pilgrims and had a picture of George Washington on our wall.
The teacher’s desk was at the back of the room. My best buddy, Charles sat close and did different work sometimes because he was so bright. I will refer to our teacher as Mrs. T. She stood up in the front of the classroom when she lectured us. More than once she would stop teaching and start sniffing the classroom air. She narrowed her eyes a bit and jerked her head slightly. I could hear her nose hiss.
“It smells like somebody has to go to the bathroom,” she declared. “It smells like someone has to sit down.”
I remember this happening at least one time where she completely halted the lesson. No one chuckled at Mrs. T. saying someone had to sit down. 20 children were at their desks sitting down right then. But her discreet way of stating that one her charges had to pass a stool was not amusing. It was stressful. She wouldn’t resume the lesson until someone left the room. I don’t know about anyone else but the anxiety would have slammed shut any evacuation desire right away.
“Come on,” Mrs. T. finally said. “You can get some water for my plant too.” And he held up an empty coffee can.
Finally Charles walked out of the room taking the can. I don’t know if it was his flatulence that began the incident or he was just taking a bullet for us. But that’s the kind of courage that is rarely acknowledged. Thanks Charles.

inflammatory proselytizing

I lot of my Facebook friends use their statuses to proselytize. The odd for me is that I have friends all over the political, religious and lifestyle spectrum. Sometimes I feel stuck in the middle. I usually don’t comment on inflammatory issues although I may like something once in a while.
A year or so ago I wrote and posted a note on Facebook that generated a lot of comments, mostly negative and I even got unfriended by one person. I appreciated the intelligent discussion with once friend who disagreed with me and we’re still friends in real life as well as FB.
But my lack of proselytizing does not mean that I don’t have strong opinions about some issues. I also have unpopular opinions on some inflammatory issues. I don’t post them to FB status mostly because I think that that is not the place for it. I think that this blog is a much better venue for venting, preaching, or whining. But if you go back and read every blog I’ve posted you won’t see anything terribly seditious.
I don’t think that if I post anything that it will accomplish anything. I won’t change anyone’s mind if it’s made up already. I assume most people know where I stand anyway. But I’ve decided that to strengthen my blog I don’t want to leave any question about where I stand. So to my friends who read this, I love you guys, but tomorrow is post number 50 and I want to just say how I feel about some things. I may or may not hurt some feelings.