Barbershop Theology, Part Five: Down on Their Luck

I was sitting in a waiting chair as my dad whisked his barber clippers in short motions at the back of his customer’s neck. Another Saturday in the barbershop, a lazy afternoon of casual greetings, conversations about the weather . . .  I was probably reading a Richie Rich comic book.

The scene is quite clear to me because it was the second such experience of the summer. As the barber shop shoe shine boy I was privy to this man’s world of adult conversations and a wide variety of news and opinions.  This day the door opened, banged back and then opened for a gentleman who as pushing it with a crutch. I’m sure I stared.

He pulled himself into the barbershop and with clarity of speech and standing erect to muster some dignity he declared himself a beggar and would be most appreciative it anyone could help a fella who was ‘down on his luck.’  I stared because the man only had one leg and one arm. The lines etched into his face suggested that life had been hard for him. Very hard.

I’ll never forget my dad’s two questions. First, dad asked him how he had lost his arm and leg.  Without hesitating the fellow said that he had been trying to jump a train and he had ‘miscalculated’ the jump. Bad luck seemed to be the theme of his life, or at least that was his perception and he even conveyed a resigned attitude about it.

Then my dad asked, “Do you drink?” (My dad could cut to the chase like that.) Continue reading Barbershop Theology, Part Five: Down on Their Luck

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NBA Playoff Preview: The Year of the THUNDER?

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I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a sports team that I actually had high hopes about going into a postseason.  There have been plenty of expectations that I’ve had before on my sports teams (like all of those national title game losses with my OU football teams), but my emotional ties to the Thunder are almost palpable.  I would love to pick them to win it all, but my head just won’t let me.  It’s a little too soon to say that they will win it all this year.  Don’t get me wrong, they could.  They have the championship makeup of a winning team in the NBA, but I still think that it’s too soon to say that would happen. So instead I will be giving you who I think will win and why.

Let’s start in the not-too-difficult-to-predict Eastern Conference.  If there’s a person who thinks that the Indiana Pacers, the 8 seed, will make it a competitive series against the top-seeded Chicago Bulls, that individual should never watch sports again.  This was the easiest pick in the entire playoff bracket for me.  The Bulls defense is simply too good for the Pacers.

The next matchup is the Heat vs 76ers.  The Heat seem to have gelled toward the end of the year but to me, Miami is still the biggest wild card in the entire field.  The Heat really didn’t play as a team all year because it was pretty much D-Wade and Lebron carrying them the entire season.  Chris Bosh is a joke to me.  He’s the guy who puts up 25 points and 12 rebounds against teams like the Timberwolves but when he plays a team like the Celtics, he folds like a Bob Stoops National title contender (still bitter over all of those losses).  But now they have seemingly found a way to play together and that could mean gloom and doom for the rest of the teams in the playoffs.  What Doug Collins has done with this 76ers team is great but there just isn’t enough firepower on that team to take the Heat past 5 games.

This takes us to the most intriguing matchup in the first round in the East of Celtics vs Knicks.  Let’s get one thing out of the way.  The Celtics have been worse than an average ball club since the All-Star break.  In their last 21 games of the regular season they had a 10-11 record.  The infamous Kendrick Perkins trade that Danny Ainge coordinated has not only made them worse defensively, but also cohesively. Continue reading NBA Playoff Preview: The Year of the THUNDER?

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Best Friends and Bullies Make Strange Bedfellows

“Bullying” has always been a buzzword to me, not entirely unlike “life skills” or “at risk.”  The similarity lies in the fact that I know the definitions of these words and I even use them occasionally, but they seem more like fodder for grant proposals or annual reports than concepts which exist in real life….or at least in MY life.

However, this year I’ve learned more than I want to know about real life bullying.  I can say in earnest that my quick education on the subject has been different and more painful than I expected because it involves my child.  I never thought I’d use the words “my 6 year old” and “bully” in the same sentence, but the reality is that these very sentences have consumed much of our recent dinner conversation as we’ve attempted to help our daughter solve some very real problems.

My child has a bully.  An interesting and complicating factor is that her bully is also her best friend.

As background, like many kids her age, Bailey tends to form friendships of convenience. She has played with her current BFF more than others in her classroom because they have a similar after-school situation.  This is not to say that the girls don’t have a good deal in common or share mutual affection, but being readily accessible is just as important to little developing minds.

At first, I was pleased to see Bailey buddied up with another strong personality.  The moment I discovered my child’s stubborn nature during the toddler years I developed a fear that she would choose friends based on ease of ability to control or manipulate.  I certainly don’t want my child to be the dictator in the room and have been relieved that this hasn’t been the case with most of her friendships thus far.  She and this little girl seemed to be a good match and played together well initially despite some run-of-the-mill little girl arguments.

Then, we started hearing stories about the friend’s antics at school. Continue reading Best Friends and Bullies Make Strange Bedfellows

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The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 15

Soma no prescription USA FedEx shipping #15 of 52 : DAVEY
Imaginary Family Project Week 15

External Photo Clues:
None

Imagine:
That’s my cousin Davey.  We were about the same age and lived just a couple of miles from each other for most of our youth. We didn’t have any brothers or sisters and so were pretty close — as close as anyone could get to Davey, that is.  Davey was a Cub Scout.  Always tryin’ to do good.  At least that’s how it seemed.   As for me, I’d do right if the situation arose, but I didn’t go outta my way.  Still don’t.  

Anyway…that dog in the box?  Well, there’s no tellin’ what its name was cuz it was just one of several strays that Davey had a propensity for takin’ in.  By the time we were seventeen, I betcha he’d brought in about five different dogs that eventually died or drifted off again. Why, so many dogs used to come around that I figure they must’ve had some sort of signal between ’em, tellin’ each other where to go when things got tough.  I guess in that respect Davey’s nature wasn’t so unusual; a soft heart for strays, be they animal or human, well, you hear about that every now and again.  Continue reading The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 15

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In Defense of the Pocket Knife

The following is a guest post from David Roberts, who is one of the best high school English Teachers in the land by day and a defender of all things awesomely manly by night. He also happens to be my brother-in-law. The next three Wednesdays will feature posts by him as I am take a few weeks off off blogging to tackle a few other written pursuits. Enjoy!

[michael]

***************

I won’t claim that real men carry pocket knives. What I mean is, pocket knives are neither exclusive to Real Men nor a requirement for Real Manhood.
However, if you carry one, have carried one, have thought about carrying one, or don’t know what a pocket knife is, please read on.

The giants of my childhood carried a knife in their pocket or on their belt: grandpa, dad, step-dad, uncles, Rambo. In my mind, the correlation was clear: men carried knives.

I saw my grandpa skin raccoons, open envelopes, cut rope, dig out splinters, clean fingernails, all with the same pocket knife. I suppose that’s the root of why pocket knives, seemingly a vestige of some older time when dudes needed to carry sharp objects to protect themselves, have continued to be popular: so many situations render them necessary. Have you ever needed to cut fishing line, slice open a package (particularly those 100-ply-polymer-blend-government-grade plastic packages that kids’ toys seem to come in), pry a flat object from an even flatter place? In such situations, the inevitable query is, “Anybody got a pocket knife?”

I’ll tell you what: it feels good to be able to say, “Yeah, here’s mine.”

Many of the accouterments of manhood seem a bit like our appendix: nice to have, but not essential for existence. A pocket knife, on the other hand, has so much utility.

So whether you carry Buck or Case, Swiss Army or Ka-Bar, Gerber or Browning, know that you stand in solidarity with me and many others. Carry on.

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