A friend of mine from Minneapolis sent me an interesting link: Three Poor College Guys. He’s the one in red on the left. I also know the one in the middle. They’re both very cool guys. Morally upright, etc. I can only assume the one on the right has similar qualities, or has been changed for the better under their proper influence.

Anyhow, we’ve all been in their situation. You come upon a real need and you realize that you just can’t hack it, and you turn to someone for help. Have you ever been helped? Have you ever felt Warm Fuzzies? Have you ever seen "Pay it Forward"? You know what to do.

In the spirit of Verry Merry May, this will be a simple entry, the crux of which is to bring some discussion about how the mind of a child operates. And not just any child, but the child who was you. You know, when you were a child.

I highly doubt I’m the only one who had a special toy or two. Did you have a toy that you simply could not part with when you were a kid? That toy which, looking back at it now, may seem silly, but regardless held your love and your interest captive without effort? If so, what was it? If not, what the heck is wrong with you?!? I’m talking young kid here, not ten or twelve, but like… six, or three, or something.

OK, I’ll start. First, a tragedy. There was a toy (whose name I cannot recall! Help?), and it came out sometime around 1985 or 1986, I think. It was like an Etch-a-Sketch in that it was hand-held and somewhat flat, but the drawings were done pixel-by-pixel, and the idea was that you would create “frames” and then make very pixelated, short little animations with it. They showed an animation of a cheetah running, and a boy hitting a baseball, and possibly some other stuff. And I wanted one so badly for Christmas or my birthday or one of those other days when kids all around the world suddenly deserve toys. Well… I didn’t get one. Never did. And I still remember that to this day. Cry a tear for me, I’m scarred for life. Watch out Greg Boyd, your red airplane has nothing on me.

Of course I did have some toys that I loved that I still remember. We had this old wooden toy box with an ugly green plaid rough-feeling cover on it, and I had all my treasures in there. Little Sesame Street cars, somewhat like this one that had Ernie and Bert and Cookie Monster and Big Bird in them, and you could roll them around and fill in the blanks with your imagination. We’ve still got those around somewhere. There was some kind of jack-in-the-box that I loved. But it wasn’t a regular jack-in-the-box (although we had/have one of those). It was smaller, and I don’t remember what it looked like. (We’re going way back into the subconscious here, people.) But you could push a button and something would open up and pop out. I don’t know.

G.I. Joes with parachutes were cool. You could throw them way up and watch them float down. Model rockets (with dad’s help, of course) were a blast. I remember the little cardboard fuel tubes that came with the little wire thingies you’d stick in the end and wire back to the ignition button. I remember how the used ones would smell.

The Intellivision was another favorite of course. Got me started as a gamer, followed somewhat closely by the Commodore 64. I’ve been playing video games since I was three or four years old.

Oh… this oughta damage me if nothing else does: I also liked Rainbow Brite for a period of a month or two when I was six and in the hospital on bedrest with an injured eye that was bleeding internally. I insisted that I be allowed to buy one of the dolls, and my parents were like, “Are you sure you want one of these dolls, hon?” And I was. So I got one. Then a couple months later I was like, “What the heck am I doing?” and I got rid of it. I have no idea where it came from.

Alright. None of you can have anything worse than that. Time to share. Out with it! I demand that you reminisce! It better be fondly! FONDLY!

I’ve disliked Chris Rice for some time. I’m not sure what it is exactly, and I acknowledge that my opinion is invalid since I’ve only heard maybe half his songs. But there’s something non-masculine about him. Something very self-abasing and whine-whine-why-do-I-suck-so-badly about his lyrics and his voice. I understand the frailty of humankind. I just feel like he should get another topic, that’s all. Much to the chagrin of Stephanie, I’ve even called him “Christina Rice” on a few occasions. But this entry isn’t directly about Chris(tina) Rice, so hang in there. Let me cut to the point.

Stephanie and I were talking about him and his music the other day, trying to pinpoint why I don’t like his stuff and why I tease him when he’s clearly quite talented and has a good voice and solid sense of artistry. We didn’t reach any direct conclusions on that exact point, but I discovered a deeper respect for him when Stephanie quoted the lyrics to Naive, a song of his, to me. Read them. Please. They provide context for the rest of this entry.

Sometimes Stephanie’s arguments really put me in my place. Those lyrics not only did that, but they brought tears to my eyes. Here I was, sitting in a pizza parlor, listening to this stuff, getting all sappy over my slice of thin-crust sausage.

I can’t tell you how often I think on those subjects. Those questions spin over and over in my mind every day. When I was a teenage boy, my mind was obsessed with sex. Now, thoughts of this kind of thing have matched and replaced those old thoughts in volume and intensity. Maybe this is what it means to have the weight of the world crush your spirit. I don’t know. I could’ve sworn I wasn’t scheduled for my spirit-crushing until sometime around my early thirties.

Continue reading “Impatience” →