Daily Disasters – Animal Adventures

[Snapping Turtle]

 

Introduction

A distant relative with whom I have developed a good relationship has recently moved from Connecticut to the Ozarks. I’ll refer to her simply by the acronym JK for privacy considerations. For those who are not familiar with the Ozarks, this is a branch of the Appalachian Mountains that crossed the lower Mississippi and extends across the states of northern Arkansas, south-central Missouri, the eastern edge of Oklahoma, and a small corner of Kansas. It’s about as different from Connecticut as it could be. JK has enjoyed my blog for many years and has asked me to share some of her adventures – or as she calls them her Daily Disasters. I hope that this will become a regular feature of my blog, going along side of my genealogy explorations, my medical issues, and the occasional short story.

 

Animal Adventures

Moving halfway across the country and quite a bit farther south, the types of animals that one encounters on a regular basis can be quite different. Here are three of the ones that JK has encountered so far.

 

Snapping Turtle

The above picture is one that JK sent me when first outlining what’s been going on in her life. While one can encounter them in CT as well, they tend be found in moist/wet areas such as ponds and not in the suburbs where JK had lived before. Since her property in the Ozarks is much less suburban and, being somewhat flat, she and most of her neighbors have small ponds on their properties. Thus, seeing a large snapping turtle is not unusual there. But if you have never had one in your suburban property before, it can be quite a shock to see one.

 

Termites

Termites occur nearly everywhere, but again, with JK having been in a CT suburb with zoning regulations, they tend to be much less common than in her new digs in the Ozarks where she is beyond the incorporated areas and in a much older house. This is something that she will have to deal with in the coming days as it appears that the house is well infested with them. Just one more of her daily disasters that I will be commenting on in a future blog post.

 

Armadillos

The last animal I will mention here is the armadillo. Originating in South America, their range is continuing to spread, with many found in Texas but others as far north as southern Illinois and as far east as North Carolina. Adults average 30” in length, so they are not small animals. And their principal diet? They are particularly fond of insects like ants and termites – perhaps the reason that JK is seeing them around her house.

[Nine-banded armadillo]

 

Moving to a new part of the country can mean encounters with new types of animals. They may or may not be dangerous, but when you step into the front yard they can be scary! Just one more of the daily disasters that JK is now facing.

Thoughts on Truth

My younger brother, Edd, recently posted in his blog an article titled “What is Truth” (see here). As he noted when posting it, “Warning: it is long and it gets political”, and he is quite accurate. But there were several thoughts that occurred to me as I read it (and yes, I read the whole thing – multiple times). I’ve been mulling over these thoughts for the past several days and would like to share them here. This posting will also be long and get somewhat political, but not quite to the extent of my brother’s post.

 

How do we Communicate?

My brother spent the first part of his post exploring the concept of absolute truth – with references to works by Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) (see bio). Schaeffer developed the term “true truth” to capture the essence of what he meant. Since Schaeffer was born and got his seminary education not far from where I was living beginning in 1975, I was very familiar with his works and had read many of them myself. But initially I did not grasp well what he was teaching. Nonetheless, when he was giving a lecture at a school not far from us, my wife and I went to hear him in person.

I had grown up knowing the 7% rule – namely that only 7% of what we communicate is in the words we use. (This is based on a study which noted that our communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only (see one explanation here). While there have been other studies since then, the point is that our words constitute only a fraction of what we communicate. In written communication we often use other literary devices to enhance our communication – things like differing fonts or font sizes variation, bolding, underlining, etc.

But Schaeffer’s books did not come across very well. And one of his major works, the film version of How shall we then live?, was just in the process of being developed from the written version which had been published in 1976.

When I heard Schaeffer in person in the late 1970s, it suddenly occurred to me what my problem was. Apparently for many of his books, Schaeffer had presented the material first as a speech. This speech had then been recorded and the print version was developed by transcribing the exact words that he had spoken, but the other literary devices had not been added in, so that only the words remained. Thus, in the publication process, and using the above percents, they had removed over 90% of that which he had communicated and published the verbal only portion of 7%! But now, knowing what Schaeffer sounded like from the hour or so I heard him in person, and understanding how he communicated, I could go back through those books and mentally add back in the nonverbal and vocal constructs as I re-read them. It was a real “ah ha” moment for me.

 

Communication in a Cultural Context

One of the items that’s not mentioned in the above 55/38/7 model is the impact of different cultures. My brother and I had different experiences here. He and his wife lived and worked in Haiti for several years at the beginning of their marriage. They also lived and worked in Thailand for the last dozen years of their working life, and were located in different areas of the country for each term of their missionary service. As such they took formal language training as well as lived it every day. Thus, they are both trilingual (which I am not).

I had a very different experience in that I spent the last several years of my work as a Business Analyst who served a number of different countries. So, rather than learn primarily one foreign language, I needed to learn just a handful of words in each of several languages. So, I could say the equivalent of “hello”, “goodbye”, and “thank you” but not much else. But I also learned several other non-verbal aspects of communication – things like the proper method of greeting, which hand to use for eating (and which utensils), the impact of the primary religion on culture and any “no no’s” to avoid.

I’d like to close this section with two examples – one with a poor ending, and one with a good ending.

 

A poor ending – One year, because of all the technology changes happening withing the company, management decided that it would be a good idea to bring all the IT support personnel from around the world to our headquarters where we could instruct all of them at the same time. There were representatives from about a dozen countries. As the business analyst for many of these countries, I was also invited to attend. We would then have a series of the IT experts in each of these new technologies make a presentation and allow those in the room to ask questions to be sure that everyone left with a common understanding.

Since I was not in charge of the agenda and did not even know who would be leading each session, I was not able to give any cultural advice to them in advance. So I simply sat in the back of the room, listened in, and observed the representatives from each country. Since a requirement to work for the company was that everyone communicated in English, the presenters thought that they could just speak in English and everyone would understand. But they did not appreciate that having a common language only addresses the 7% of communication being verbal.

It was a disaster! A measure of proficiency in the US is that the person can speak as fast as they can. But this does not take into account that a listener for whom English is a second language needs time to hear (in English), translate the individual words (which may not easily translate into their primary language), then understand the translated result. Thus, the US-based “experts” spoke much too fast and the non-US-based IT folks were quickly overwhelmed. Sitting in the back of the room I could easily see this as all those non-US-based folks were glancing at each other, shrugging their shoulders (or the equivalent in their culture), and just letting all the new words pass them by. Since many of them also came from cultures where to criticize someone is to insult them, or even to ask a question is inappropriate, if the speaker paused and asked, “any questions?” he/she was met with silence and then just continued rambling on. After seeing this in the first few speakers, I tried to get subsequent speakers to slow down, but that didn’t register. I ended up having to have one-on-one meetings with many of the non-US folks to try and fill in the gaps.

 

A good ending – Sometimes a good interchange does not even involve any exchange of words at all. On one of my visits to Brazil, I was there for several days and my visit turned out to be over the time when they celebrated Christmas. Thus, I was invited to attend the office get-together after work one day. They had rented out a local bar – both the bar in the front room and the back room where the tables were all pushed to one side. Although many in the office spoke English, this was an after-work party and so everyone was using their primary language – Portuguese. I was in the front bar room (drinking a non-alcoholic beverage) and was speaking with probably the best English speaker from the office – the executive secretary of the Managing Director. I don’t remember the content of our interaction at the time, but it was fairly innocuous. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a late comer entering from the street. She was one of the younger ladies from the office.

She was headed for the back room but stopped by each person/couple standing at the bar to exchange greetings. This had been part of my cultural investigation before the trip, so when she reached where I was standing, I turned, and without any words being exchanged, touched my cheek to the cheek that she proffered and “kissed the air”. (FYI, the number of cheek touches and kisses vary by country, with some being one cheek, some doing one on each side, and some even three kisses – left-right-left”.) She then moved along to the next person standing by the bar.

When I turned back to the executive secretary, she was smiling broadly and said to me, “you know our customs!” The whole tone of our conversation then changed. I had not said anything, but I had greeted this girl from the office with a culturally appropriate kiss instead of sticking out my hand for a handshake (the typical US greeting). But as a result, my whole interaction with the executive secretary of the Managing Director was impacted. And since she was the gate-keeper to the Managing Director it also had a positive impact on my access to him as I continued supporting the IT connections in that country. And all from one non-verbal interaction with a lady from the office whose name I didn’t even know.

 

Impact on our Church

Before I get to Political Implications, which my brother covered quite well, I’d like to explore the cultural issues in the context of our church. As a basis, I think it’s appropriate to refer to Acts 1:8 (ESV). The final command of Christ before he departed earth were his instructions to his disciples “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Since our church is not in Jerusalem, a way of categorizing these is “within the church, around the church, and around the world. So, how is the church I attend doing in each of these spheres?

 

Within the church – Most of the churches around us tend to be composed of similar people. There are churches that are all/mostly white, all/mostly black, mostly old, etc. But the same cannot be said of our church. While it has its roots in the German Mennonite community of the early 1700s, it is anything but monolithic. The senior pastor is black, the sermon notes are available in both English and Spanish, as are the placards in the downstairs hall. We host an Arabic-speaking congregation who meet every Sunday afternoon and have periodic joint services with them. Two of their young men are part of our worship team and a few weeks ago the words to a song were on the screen in transliterated Arabic and we all sang the chorus together. There are a number of darker skinned folks in the pews, including a family who sits in front of us which is composed of a white man, his wife from Dominica (they met when he was on a mission’s trip there), and their four black adopted children from a family who were previously in Texas. We are decidedly multi-cultural and that in my mind is a great strength.

 

Around the church – Several years ago we had the opportunity to purchase a large piece of land on the outskirts of town, but we deliberately chose to remain in the restricted-parking area in the center of town, stating that’s where our “Samaria” was located. We operate the food bank for the town and each person who comes through the building every two weeks is accompanied by a volunteer – not only to assist the person in choosing a balanced cart of foods (rather than just loading up on one kind), but to get to know the person and to minister to them. In order to serve inner-city families where all the adults in the house are employed, we operate an after-school program for the students – picking up the students at the school just a few blocks away. Because of our long-standing relationship with this school, we were invited to send volunteers to oversee the students after lunch while their teachers get a well-earned break. The school is more than willing to partner with a church because they know that we care! These are just a few examples of how we have reached out to our community.

 

Around the world – there are many churches in the US who do not have well-developed mission’s programs. Perhaps they are too small, perhaps they are large “mega churches” who are centered around a dynamic pastor who is quite well-paid. When we began attending nearly 50 years ago the church had five missionary families – two in Venezuela, one in Morocco, one in Zaire, and one in India. Three of them were families who grew up in the church, but the other two were from elsewhere and only associated with our church because we had purchased a home right across the street which we made available to a family who was home on their periodic furlough (missionary families back then tended to serve a 4-year term, then spend 1-year back in the US meeting with their supporters, etc.). But because of our relationship with the two families from elsewhere, when they retired as missionaries both of them chose to purchase their retirement home in our community and to serve their retirement years with us. The same was true with our pastors as they retired – rather than retire to elsewhere, they remained with us and became part of our congregation. We were “family” to them.

About 30 years ago we began a missions-focused program for teens. In their first year they could participate in a weekend ministry. In their second year they could participate in a week-long, US-based ministry (perhaps a VBS program at one of the smaller churches in our denomination that did not have the necessary resources), then in their third year they could participate in a 2-week-long missions ministry outside of the US.

So where are we today? We have a total of 7 missionary families, 2 in Germany and one each in Mexico, Jamaica, Czech Republic, Venezuela, and Zambia. All but the one family in Venezuela are members of our church, and that family are an indigenous family serving in the church begun 50+ years ago by one of our missionaries there. The wife of that former missionary now lives here in the US, attends our church, and is the contact person for that church in Venezuela. Several of these missionary families are products of that teen program from 30 years ago.

Those missionaries are very much a part of our church, and we get regular videos from each one that show the tremendous work that they are all doing on our behalf. But that is still not enough. As I am writing this, we have a team of people finishing up a week-long trip to a Muslim country looking at ways that we can have a presence in a country that is generally hostile to Christians.

 

Political Implications

My brother has a lot to say in the political arena which I will not repeat here. But I encourage you to read it (link is up above). He ends with these closing statements:

I believe that there is true truth that can be found in God’s word, the Bible. But most people have abandoned any hope of knowing such truth, and I believe that America is suffering for it. Pray that the President and other elected officials will seek after this true truth that we can find in the Bible.

The individuals who run for various offices in this country, from President and on down to local officials, are not perfect. They all suffer from various types of imperfections, just as I do. When there are elections, I study the issues, I study how the various candidates have done in the past and what they say in their campaigns (and often their past actions are quite different than their current campaign statements), then I vote for the individual who I believe would do best. I do not vote for perfection. One might rightly say that I vote for the “lesser of two evils”. Then, as their term progresses, I will answer various surveys that I would hope might have some measure of influence on them.

It's unfortunate that so many of us live in “echo chambers” where whatever ideas we have are multiplied by the voices around us that reinforce what we say. Those surrounding our politicians, either by their choice or by the choice of the politician, tend to be people who are “yes men” who are part of those echo chambers. So making change is very hard and really seeing things from someone else’s perspective is difficult.

Not voting is simply abdicating and letting the views of others count instead of mine. And so I participate by voting. But my responsibility does not end there, I pray! I pray without ceasing. I pray that whatever the politician is making decisions on will end up being a decision that is God-honoring. It doesn’t matter whether the politician is a Republican or a Democrat. I will pray for whomever is making a decision that he/she will end up honoring God. And it doesn’t matter if they make that decision because they are also a Christian like me, or simply because they see the value in those decisions that happen to be God-aligned.

So if there is any value in this post, I ask that you join me in prayer. Living in PA, that means for me that I pray for a President (who happens to be a Republican), I pray for senators (who happen to be Democrats), I pray for our governor (Democrat), state legislators (Republican), and local officials (Republican). Pray with me! Get yourself aligned with God!

Amputee Support

           Back when my amputation was complete and I was finally mobile again, I heard that the Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVHN) had an amputee support group that met every month. I went there for what I thought was one of their meetings, only to find that no one showed up. It turned out that LVHN and Jefferson Hospital had just announced that they were merging and one of the things they needed to do was synchronize their volunteer support processes. It would be several months before they again started meeting again – earlier this month.

It was a good meeting, and I was able to interact with several other amputees – the oldest being about my age and the youngest being only around 19. Some had arm amputations, some had legs amputated above the knee, others below the knee, and a few with other amputations such as multiple fingers, or, like me, a partial foot. The oldest amputation dated from 1977, and the newest from last year (like myself).

Besides monthly meetings, with some kind of speaker, one of the things that this group provides is signing up to be a hospital volunteer so they can visit those in the hospital who have had a recent amputation. I signed up for this and will be going through an interview process later this week. During the hospital’s merger, this was another activity that got set aside, so there was only one person there who is still qualified to do this.         

There are two principal aspects of dealing with an amputation – the physical adaptation and the related mental adaptation.

 

Physical Adaptation

Most amputations happen suddenly, through things like automobile accidents, or, like myself, who went into the hospital with an infection from a long-term diabetic foot ulcer and found myself 48 hours later in the first of three OR visits, terminating in the removal of half of my right foot. Unlike things like a broken limb where the individual may have a cast for 4-6 weeks, or a joint (like hip or knee replacement) which these days are just an overnight (for a hip replacement) or of a few days (for a knee), an operation involving an amputation is permanent. Recovery may lead to the use of a prosthesis, but even this requires a period of healing and adjustment before the individual is “normal” again.     

This period of healing/adjustment may have several stages. In my case it went from (1) being flat on my back and “NWB” non-weight-bearing, to (2) being able to get up with all the weight on my left leg, then swiveling to sit on a potty chair, to (3) swiveling into a wheel chair, to (4) using a knee scooter to go down the hall, to (5) using crutches for mobility, to (6) using a cane. I was in stage 4 when I was released from the rehab facility, in stage 5 when I was learning how to (cautiously) drive again, and I expect to stay in stage 6 indefinitely. It’s a long process!

While the stages may take an extended period and will differ depending on the type of amputation, the person who has just experienced the event that caused the amputation usually not prepared for it. This is where the amputation support volunteer can add some value. The doctor can relate the things which he/she has done and a therapist can help the individual with the exercises and activities needed to aid the recovery process, but this is only part of the process. Being able to talk to someone who “has gone through it” is helpful. I hope to be able to use my experiences to let the patient see “the light at the end of the tunnel”.

 

Mental Adjustment

The physical adjustment should not be ignored. But neither should the accompanying mental adjustment be ignored. Remember that the individual has lost a limb, even if just a finger. And, unlike something like a hip replacement, the limb loss is permanent. It will not grow back. Thus, the individual needs to adjust to not only all the series of changes during the initial hospital stay, but must be prepared for whatever changes there will be in the rest of their life. Being able to interact with a support person who has gone through what the patient is experiencing and who can still present a positive attitude can be very helpful. I was told just this morning by someone with whom I interact most Sunday mornings that they didn’t even know that I had a foot amputation (the reason why I was sitting by one of the primary entrances to church where I could interact with him and others).

Thus, I believe that I have the proper mental attitude that can help others going through an amputation. I certainly want to try!

 

I’ve submitted my hospital volunteer application. I still have to go through an interview, supply references, get a child abuse clearance, and a TB test. But I am looking forward to being able to interact with other new amputees and pass along my experiences and positive attitude. If all goes well, I’ll post again on this topic in the future.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Time Flies

         It was February 1955. Our little street, which had been a dead-end, was being pushed through. What had been a narrow path through a swampy area just wide enough for one person to walk would soon be a paved road that connected to the street beyond. My world was about to expand.

[Alan in 1^st grade]

 

I was the oldest in our family of what had just expanded from two children to three. I was six-and-a-half and in first grade. My sister had just turned five at the end of the previous year. She was a cute and precocious girl with blond hair. My brother was only two months old. Our family had been living in this house in Wolcott, CT since my father purchased it nearly nine years ago. He was 34-years-old and had been working at Scovill Manufacturing as a draftsman since graduating from high school (except for the two years he spent in the U.S. Navy during WWII). My mother was a beautiful 30-year-old and was focused on raising we children.

My grandparents (most of them) were in their mid-to-late 50’s. The primary exception was my grandmother’s second husband who was 30 years older than she was. He had been born just a few months after the end of the Civil War, making him almost 90. I thought about him growing up at a time before Edison invented the carbon filament light bulb. Even when my other grandparents were born in the 1890s, light bulbs were not common outside of major cities. Automobiles came along toward the end of the 1800s, but even by 1910 there were only 5 vehicles per 1000 people in the US. Commercial aviation was not available until the mid-1930s when my father was a teenager. So the lives that my grandparents and parents lived were totally different than my own has been.

While the road from our house to the city where my father worked had been paved about twenty-years earlier, he saw few cars on the road during the seven miles he drove to work. Telephone service was provided by the cities to the north and south of us, so it was a long-distance phone call to others even in the same town. We had recently gotten a television (black-and-white of course). It only got three stations, and they came from different directions so my father had put a motorized antenna turner so we could turn the antenna on the chimney to get the best reception possible. Shows were all live and after the late-night news there was only a test pattern being broadcast until the following morning.

As noted above, I had recently started school. Our little school serviced the entire northern section of town, but still only had one class per grade. Some of my classmates came from English backgrounds, as did I, and our ancestors had been here in the US for over 300 years. Others came from more recent immigrant families and had ancestors from places like French Canada, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, or Austria. We were a pretty motley crew, but our differing backgrounds really didn’t matter. Having the commonality of being in the same class was more important than our ancestries.

 

Time Moved On

I stayed in that small town until I graduated from high school in 1966. Then I spent five years in Michigan for undergraduate and graduate school. Getting married, my wife and I spent four years back in Connecticut, living in Prospect. Then in 1975 I got a job offer in Eastern PA. We moved here in June of 1975 and have now been here for approaching fifty years.

My biological grandparents passed at ages 68, 71, 75, and 81, so I have lived longer than three of them already and am quickly approaching the age of the last one. My step-grandfather is the exception as he lived until the ripe-old age of 93. My parents were married for nearly 60 years and both passed away at that house in Wolcott.

Now, my children are in their mid-40s and only 20 years away from retirement. My oldest grandson is in college and the youngest is several years older than I was back in 1955.

Interestingly, despite having moved away so long ago, I still remain friends with many of my classmates from that small school. We communicate frequently, despite being scattered around the country – it’s a rare day that I don’t see a message from one of them.

The technological changes that my grandparents and my parents experienced may have seemed extraordinary to them all those years ago. But in my lifetime, I’ve experienced changes just as revolutionary. Just think what things like computers and instant communication have brought to our world. Children the age that I was 70 years ago often have access to smartphones of their own on a regular basis!

 

As my time here on this earth grows shorter and shorter, I can’t imagine what changes my grandchildren will see. The youngest ones may live until the next century (just 75 years away!). And they will experience things that I can’t even imagine over the intervening years. I won’t be around for those changes. But I’m glad that I’ve gotten to experience all that I have!

When one is younger, time moves much more slowly – after all, between the ages of 10 and 11 one gets to experience 10% of their life. But that same year only represents 1.3% of my life at this age, so the years seem to roll by so much more quickly.

 

Christmas 2024

Family

As has been our family custom for many years, we had our full family together at Pinebrook in the Poconos in the summer. We had thought that 2023 would be the last year to have all 7 grandchildren, but Aryon got a summer job working there so we were blessed to have them all together this past summer as well. Below is a picture of all of them.

For a few months all of them were 1x years old – Asher turned 10 in July and Aryon did not turn 20 until October. Aryon is now in his second year of college, Tiernan is a senior in high school (he once again took a missions trip to Japan to help take care of a group of younger students while their parents, who are missionaries, had a week of meetings), and Ilyanna is in 9^th grade. In PA, the four boys are in grades 9, 7, 7, and 5 this year. We’ve enrolled Ethan in a dual-enrollment program at Liberty University Online Academy where he will graduate in 2028 with a high school diploma as well as a full associates’ degree. We’re planning on doing the same with all the younger boys as well.

Ethan is led in his coursework by Kim, and I handle the three younger boys – with the exception of Isaiah and Caleb taking Spanish (led by Kim as she knows that language and I do not) and Asher’s literature class where Donna has a chance to get involved. All of them are straight A students. It keeps me busy every day as I sit in my recliner and there is a constant stream of boys coming through my room.

 

Medical

While I’ve been dealing with various medical issues over the years, 2024 was a memorable one. I’ve had a diabetic ulcer on the bottom of my right foot for several years. Over the Christmas holidays last year, I developed a case of COVID. It was not a bad case, but the extra level of infection got into my foot. I went into the hospital on January 2^nd and didn’t come home for an entire month. And when I did come home it was after a partial foot amputation. The surgeon did an excellent job of closing the wound back up, but having only a partial foot has been a definite challenge (see picture below).

          I can get around pretty well, but only with the use of a cane. People see me as pretty normal as I have a “toe-filler” prosthesis and wear a regular shoe. But navigating stairs is difficult and I am constantly in danger of falling. I have other medical issues, but this one overshadows all of them. At home I spend most of my time in a recliner as I want to avoid any further injury to that foot. Getting old is not for the faint of heart.

          I’ve had to give up all outdoor activities. It’s good to have several growing grandsons around to pick up tasks like grass mowing, taking the trash cans up to the corner each week, and even smaller things like walking up to get the mail each day.

          On the plus side, I can now relate easily to other older member of the church who have canes or who have issues like Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, or any of the other infirmities that come with getting older.

 

Genealogy

          While a large portion of my day is consumed by overseeing the schooling of our grandsons, I’m still quite involved in genealogy – mostly for others. As an example, just this week I was able to introduce two men in our church to each other as being third cousins (i.e. sharing a great-great-grandfather) that they had not been aware of.

          A lot of my investigation is for people in our church (where I am related to about 2/3 of them) or to some of our new neighbors, I’m also enjoying my relationships with others in the Pierpont/Russell lines with whom I have established relationships in the past. I am now the official historian of the Pierpont Family Association due to the passing of Bob Kraft, but with my driving being restricted due to my foot, I may not be able to go to our annual meetings. While many of these relatives are not like me and they have different views on life (including their political persuasion during the past election season), I enjoy the challenge of not being in a political “echo chamber” and having my views be challenged.

 

Putting Christ in Christmas

          This time of year is one where I focus on sharing my Christian values with those around me. For those reading this who share those values, may the joy of Christ encourage you. Any of those who may not share those values, know that we love you anyway. Christ is the basis for our family’s outlook and we will always encourage others to see His love through us.

 

Merry Christmas!

Alan & Donna

 

 

Term Party

I spent my college career at Michigan State – 5 years (3 undergrad and 2 years of grad school). I was in an off-campus housing unit the entire time. Like other such housing units (fraternities and sororities), we had a number of social activities. One of the major ones was our annual term party held in early June. We held this at a camp in the small town of Wolverine that was owned by a former member of the housing unit. Renting the camp would typically have been way in excess of what we could have afforded, so we had a unique way of paying for it. In the early part of the quarter (MSU had not yet made the conversion to semesters), several of us made the trek north (about 200 miles – a little less than a 3 hour drive) and spent a weekend opening up the camp for the summer season – cleaning the rooms, sweeping all the floors, making all the beds, clearing all the walkways of winter debris, etc. This would have taken the owner and his wife several weeks or he would have had to pay someone, so it was a good trade of our hours of work in return for a weekend rental about two weeks later.

On term party weekend, we carpooled north to Wolverine. Carpooling was necessary because not many in college owned or had access to cars. After the evening meal, we could gather around the campfire or meet in small groups in the main open room. On Saturday many of us went canoeing on the nearby Sturgeon River or hiked on trails around the campground.

Saturday supper was an award ceremony with a number of interesting awards. In 1970, the first time I went with a date – the girl who I had recently begun dating and to whom I would get engaged that fall and married the following summer – I got the MO cup. The MO was marked on the glass cup as standing for “Most Outstanding” and was passed on from the person who had won the award the prior year. But privately, we guys know that it stood for “Make Out” and was given in recognition of that dubious award.

In the evening, the camp owner brought his hay wagon – pulled by horses and loaded with bales of hay for sitting on. The hill behind the camp – with the darkness of being away from the “civilization” that we were used to in East Lansing – offered a nice view of the stars and was a great view for couples.

On Sunday many of made the trek to the nearby town of Petoskey (about 25-30 miles away) and attended church there. After lunch we regathered in our carpools and made the journey back to East Lansing – giving us enough time for any class assignments which were due the following day.

Our ride back was a pretty interesting one. There were six in the car – 3 guys and 3 girls – as this was a time when cars still came with bench seats. To pass the time we told a “story” which could have as many as 26 lines. The first person said one line which was “I went to the store and I saw a ____” where the blank was an adjective-noun pair each starting with the letter “A”. Everyone else listened. Then the next person repeated that line and added “and _____” where the blank was an adjective-noun pair each starting with the letter “B”. This continued around the six of us with the “story” growing with each repetition. So your mind was consumed with having to remember an increasing number of word pairs as well as having to compose the next alphabetized pair when it was your turn. And with the silly pairs that were being said, the amount of laughter was also growing.

It’s now over 54 years since that event, and I can still remember all 26 of the eventual word pairs. In fact, I can also repeat them in reverse alphabetical order. For those who care, here they are (with a few editorial comments):

·       Adorable aardvark

·       Brown bear

·       Kooky cat – not a “C”, but sounds like it

·       Delinquent dog

·       Enormous elephant

·       Fastidious fish

·       Gouted goat

·       Huge heffalump – from Winnie the Pooh

·       Inquisitive ibex

·       Jumbo jet – the first non-animal, but we were pretty forgiving given the amount of laughter in the car

·       Klean kitchen – not a “K” here, but this will balance out the “C” above

·       Lamentable llama – starting to make pairs with long words to make them harder to remember

·       Morose moose

·       Nefarious nodule

·       Opulent owl

·       Petoskey’s pavement – we had been here earlier that day

·       Queer quirk

·       Redundant racoon

·       Sterile stegosaurus

·       Tintinnabulating tutor

·       Unforgettable umbrella – sounds like a good idea

·       Voluptuous vacuum cleaner

·       Wonderful Wolverine – another town we had been in

·       Exuberant xylophone – hard to come up with “X” words

·       Yellow yak

·       Xenophobic zebra – ah, here’s the missing “X”

 

Ah yes, such wonderful memories of those earlier years – but of course the best part was my date for the weekend – the girl who I’m still married to!

 

Middle School Drama

The Students

Judy was one of the tallest students in her 7^th grade class. While it’s not unusual for girls to get their growth earlier than boys at that age, Judy had gotten hers earlier than most. The other students in her class would tend to use adjectives such as tall, pretty, or even large words such as statuesque to describe her. But her close friends, who knew her well, would use such descriptors as kind, friendly, or loving – words which focused on her personality instead of her physical attributes.  She had only been in this school since last spring, but she already had several close friends.

Paul was one of the few students who was taller than Judy. But his was not a result of early growth – rather he was taller because he was older than all the others in the class. He had been held back twice already because he was a poor student. But he used his size as a way of bullying other students. His fellow classmates were generally afraid of him.

At the other end of the height spectrum was Thomas. If you were acquainted with his family, you would conclude that he was likely to be taller than most eventually, but he was a late starter and for now was the smallest in his class. However, what he lacked in height he made up for in his intelligence and he was generally well liked.

 

The Confrontation

It was the first day of school after the Christmas break, so perhaps Paul was tired of visiting relatives for the past two weeks and being the “little kid” compared to all his relatives. But whatever the reason, he was trying to reestablish his position. When he saw Judy at her locker at lunchtime, he came up behind her and put his arm on the adjoining locker – effectively blocking her in with the open locker door on one side and his arm on the other. Speaking loud enough for the other students in the area to hear as well, he said to Judy, “Hi there, beautiful, how’d you like to be my girl this year?”

Judy had no desire for such a relationship, but she didn’t want to give a totally negative reply, so she just said simply, “Please leave me alone.” Refusing to be rebuffed, Paul reiterated, “Aw, come on, we’d make such a great tall couple.” Judy responded again by telling Paul, “No thank you.”

Thomas had his locker right across the hall. Although he didn’t want to get involved, he could sense Judy’s discomfort. So he crossed the hall, and, coming up behind Paul, said, “You heard the lady, Paul, please leave her alone.” Paul turned his head and, having to look down at Thomas who was a good foot shorter than he was, said, “Get lost, shrimp!”

Not one to be put off so easily, Thomas repeated, “Please leave her alone.” Paul’s response was to turn toward Thomas and give him a push, saying, “Pick on someone your own size!” He then turned back toward Judy.

Once recovered from that push, Thomas again crossed the hall and tapped Paul on the back. When Paul turned to face him again, Timothy swung a fist toward Paul. Being so much shorter, his punch connected with Paul below the belt. Paul immediately collapsed, holding his abdomen, and groaning. Freed from being pinned against the locker, Judy stepped over the groaning Paul. She briefly turned and said to him, “Yes, Paul, pick on someone your own size!”

 

The Aftermath

There were a number of whispered conversations all that afternoon. Judy’s friends all wanted to talk to her and get her perspective on what had happened. Paul’s former followers, who were never really friends, kept saying in his direction, “Pick on someone your own size, Paul.” Thomas heard a continual whisper of “Nice job, Thomas!”

The teachers, none of whom had happened to witness the actual event after lunchtime, were silently happy that Paul had been put in his place as school regulations prevented them from any physical encounter with a student. But their response of closer scrutiny of Paul for the rest of the school year ensured that he was no longer able to collect a gathering of followers and be the bully that he had previously been.

At the end of the school day, Thomas was a little surprised when Judy came up to him at his locker and said bluntly to him, “I’d like to have you as a protector, would you be willing to walk me home?” And so, to the sigh of many other girls in the hall at the time, Thomas did so – the first of many such walks together.