Things Not to Ask of Jesus

A few years ago my son, Aidan, was taking religious education classes. One day he returned from catechism telling me that his instructor, a young woman in her twenties, accidently dropped her phone in the toilet. She retrieved it quickly, but it was completely submerged in the loo so it was unlikely that it would still function properly. Aidan told me that she said a prayer to Jesus, and the phone worked just fine afterwards.

One time I was watching a television documentary about kids getting ready for college. Several Christians were all about to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). They formed a circle and asked Jesus to help them with the exam "especially the math."

I had a colleague once who was quite religious. He told me that he said a prayer before a blind date "to ensure things went well." He also prayed before job interviews for the similar reasons.

This got me thinking about what it must be like for Jesus to hear prayers. I don't think He really cares all that much about your cell phone which you carelessly dropped into the toilet no matter how sincerely you pray. I wouldn't bother Him about a test either. Best to just study up. And praying for a date to go well is just plain wrong. What did that sound like,

"Jesus, please make sure that my blind date has a nice rack."

Or praying for an advantage on a job interview,

"Jesus, please give the other candidates the Nutella squirts."

Gold Rush

I saw something like this unfold while watching the History Channel's smash reality hit, Gold Rush. That's the show whereby a bunch of gruff moderately skilled dude bros spend their summers up in the Yukon washing dirt and rocks to capture a cup of gold. Jack Hoffman, the patriarch of 316 Mining, prays for success at finding gold all the time. He exclaims,

"Heavenly Father, we ask that you richly bless us with gold."

I don't think this is a good idea. He doesn't ask that no one falls into the grizzly bars or gets sucked into the tromel. He doesn't ask Jesus to look after their families in their absence. He asks for money. He might as well ask Jesus for a winning lottery ticket. You have to remember that these guys are all religious folks so they know the story. No matter what you believe in, historically speaking, Jesus had a pretty rough time when he was down here. I wouldn't be asking Him for coin especially when there are other people who are in real need of help queuing up as well.

Carrie Underwood has a song on her debut album, Some Hearts. It's a ballad that tells the story of a young distracted mom who's speeding to her mother's house on Christmas Eve when she hits a patch of black ice and loses control of her vehicle. Her small child is strapped in the back seat. As the car spins out of control the woman throws her hands in the air and cries,


Carrie Underwood

"Jesus, take the wheel!"

While I know this is a reference to letting the Almighty take control of your life in this particular situation it would have been best if she kept her hands on the steering wheel and turned into the skid, that is, spin the wheel in the same direction in which the back of the car is moving. She made it out okay but not from her superior driving skills. It just doesn't seem right to ask the Savior to drive your car for you.

Religious folk ask Jesus for everything all the time as if He's got nothing better to do but answer their lame ass prayers. I grew up Catholic so my religious education was liberally seasoned with a good amount of guilt, and it appears to have worked. I rarely ask Jesus for anything. In fact, I often thank Him for things that went well in my life as in,

"Dear Jesus, I don't need anything right now. I just wanted to say thank you for that awesome wave I just rode all the way into the shore."

Or sometimes I thank him for not getting run over while I ride my bike on my daily loop. You should try it once in a while. You know, thank the Man for another day on earth. After all He's dealing with millions of knuckleheads asking Him to be their copilot. Who knows? You just might make Him smile, and how cool would that be?

Editor's Note: Originally posted on March 30, 2017.

The Telephone Game

When our son, Aidan, was old enough, my wife was adamant that he go to a private school. Christine was bullied horribly in public school which left an indelible mark on her opinion. I wanted a rule free, creative, avant-garde teaching environment staffed by former pot smoking hippies from the 60's turned educators. You know, a real artist's haven so we looked into the only private school in our area. When we attended an open house, one administrator boasted,

"We don't have to follow any state mandates, being a private institution."

 

This appealed to my conservative sense that all state mandates are bureaucratic wastes of time. What I didn't know then was that boys are more difficult to educate than girls, and knowing how to effectively teach them requires real skill. For years people always said,

"Girls mature faster than boys."

Today, this is generally regarded as untrue. Girls are more inclined to try to impress their teacher, who is often a woman while boys are equally likely to wonder aloud what will happen if they jump out of a nearby tree. Since girls are more compliant, they are more likely to be regarded as intelligent.

The private school we sent Aidan to was stuck in the 70's. They used outdated techniques like round robin reading and math bees which were rejected by public institutions years ago since such approaches reward the most competent students while ignoring those who need the most help. Public schools know how to educate boys because some of those state mandates thrust new ideas in education into the system. Public teachers understand that boys are sometimes not going to sit still and need to move about now and then.

Early on Aidan was deemed ADHD by his kindergarten teacher who requested that he be tested. In most states it's illegal for a public school teacher to make such a determination due to their lack of actual medical or psychological training. This wasn't my idea of mandate free radical teaching I was hoping for. The previous year Aidan took the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) which showed he was two standard deviations above the norm for vocabulary and one standard deviation for math. They didn't want to hear about that even though their own school psychologist administered the test. The first time I heard the letters ADHD strung together was when his teacher called me in to tell me about Aidan's misbehavior. He said,

"I was teaching a lesson when I said to the class, 'Watch carefully. This will happen quick.' Aidan said, "You mean, 'quickly.'"

I was puzzled.

"You do know he's right," I responded.

"That's besides the point. I'm the teacher!" he retorted.

So I got dragged into my son's private school which was costing me $21,000 a year to listen to his kindergarten teacher espouse his grammatically incorrect sentiments. This along with other infractions led Aidan to be put on the "ticket system" which was a punitive scheme by which a student is given five tickets for the week. Each time they get in trouble they lose a ticket. If on Friday they have less than four tickets, they can't go out for recess. If they have at least four, they win a prize. When his teacher explained this to Aidan, he asked,

"Don't you think there should be something for all five tickets?"

His teacher told him that they do it that way so you can lose one without penalty. Aidan inquired,

"If I have a friend who has three tickets on Friday and I have five can I give them one?"

"No, Aidan, you can't do that. You have to follow the rules. One ticket for one infraction," his teacher recited.

"So there's nothing for five tickets?" Aidan asked.

"No, nothing," she explained.

It just didn't seem sensible to Aidan to have a system that didn't reward the top score. One spring day, his teacher had all the kindergarteners sit in a circle to play "Telephone." That's the game by which each student in the circle whispers a phrase in the ear of the adjacent classmate. His teacher started off the game with,

"Spring is here!"

As the phrase made it to Aidan, he whispered to his friend, Hampton,

"Dunkin Donuts."

When the last student recited the phrase aloud, the top of his teacher's head almost blew off. She angrily asked,

"Who told you that?"

She backtracked up the circle looking for the culprit. Aidan knew he was busted so he just waited for the phrase to reach him.

"Give me a ticket Aidan," his teacher commanded.

Now here is where good judgment and youth do not intersect. Aidan explained,

"That's okay. It's Friday, and I have five tickets."

This angered his teacher so she tried to take another ticket from him.

"You can't take two. One ticket for one fraction," Aidan exclaimed.

It didn't help that when his teacher called me, I chuckled a bit. Most of my friends who are parents thought I was teaching Aidan to be disrespectful, but I didn't see it that way. His teacher established a set of rules which he followed to the letter, and in doing so, he found a way to beat the system. Many of the same parents had previously advised me to establish "504 status" for Aidan via an ADHD diagnosis in order to get him more time on tests and preferential treatment. One parent told me,

"It's the only way to level the playing field for boys."

The problem is Aidan was not disabled, and as such, didn't warrant protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That would be more than disrespectful. It would be criminal.

We left that private school a short time later. I homeschooled Aidan for two years in which he completed three years of education. He entered middle school in sixth grade. He's in the national honor society in high school and plays varsity tennis and trumpet in the jazz band, all things that were unavailable to him at the private school. He was one of the youngest members in Bugles Across America, a nationwide, organization which provides volunteers to play Taps at military services in honor of veterans. He's also a second class petty officer in the Naval Sea Cadets.

The dirty secret about private schools is that they generally have less money than most public schools, and likewise, hire lower qualified teachers. Ignoring state mandates ensures that private schools remain stagnant. We discovered teachers at the institution had assigned the same project to all four of a colleague's children. They use an ADHD diagnoses to cover for their inability to effectivly educate. While most parents welcome an ADHD diagnoses and raise their kids comfortably behind a snowplow, my wife and I were confident that Aidan's behavior was his choice. Boys are three time more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than girls, and the diagnose is on the rise. One leading expert in the field said,

"We need to find out why boys are more susceptible to ADHD than girls."

I think the answer is because one of the biomarker for ADHD is having testicles. This is not the same thing as believing vaccines cause autism. This is drugging your child on a baseless diagnoses so that he becomes more compliant in an educational system that processes children in batches according to a factory model.

One thing I learned from teaching my son for two years is that kids like Aidan are the real deal. You can't stop them from becoming. Just give them sunshine and some room to grow, and they'll do the rest.

Editor Note: Originally posted on March 16, 2017.

Flying Carousel of Science

William and Aidan on
the Flying Carousel

The Flying Horse Carousel in Watch Hill, Rhode Island is a historical landmark enjoyed by generations of children seeking the brass ring. Parents measure their child's progress through their patronage of the carousel. At two years old they select their favorite among the inner ten horses then hang on for dear life. At three they move to the outer horses where they are handed rings by the attendants. Before long they begin snatching rings from the holder allowing a chance at the elusive brass. They get a solid four or five seasons perfecting their technique before puberty ushers in a weight above the limit.

Most of the local kids move on to the operation of the carousel as a summer job. It was sad the day my son, Aidan, rode the carousel for the last time. The teenagers running the carousel knew it was his final ride so they handed him the brass ring several times allowing an extended whirl. Back in 2017, our youngest, William, was just discovering his ability to snatch rings from the holder. At the time, he hadn't yet felt the summer joy of discovering brass in his little hand.

The carousel offers a lot of opportunity for amusement. When Aidan or one of his friends came up with the brass ring my friend, Steve, would always shout,

"Take the thousand dollars!"

As if there was a choice between one free ride or $1000. The tourists would all look puzzled. Once I told Aidan,

"Don't come home unless you get the brass ring."

The frowns from parents were priceless. Every once in a while a kid snatches the prize and says,

"Mom, Dad! I got the golden ring!"

One of us usually exclaims,

"It's brass. Go back to New Jersey."

Aidan also enjoyed pretending that he fell asleep as the ride whirled about. The carousel was abandoned by a travelling circus in 1879. Originally, it was powered by a horse, but over the years it was modernized and housed in a stone and wood structure at the entrance to the town beach. During winter the horses are repaired and repainted by volunteers. The ride is the oldest flying carousel still in operation in the country. It's been lovingly cared for by the nonprofit Watch Hill Improvement Society for decades.

One day, as I watched Aidan reach out for a ring, I thought of the movie, A Beautiful Mind, starring Russel Crowe as John Nash, a Nobel Laureate in Economics. Nash came up with the game theory concept, Nash Equilibrium, which was depicted in the film as a bunch of guys employing a collaborative strategy to score with a blonde. Not only was this not an example of Nash Equilibrium, it didn't actually happen. That's Hollywood for you. Always dumbing down history for the consumption by us stupid people. The closest the movie got to the actual definition of Nash Equilibrium is when Crowe said,

"The best result comes from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself and the group."

This got me thinking about the brass ring and carousel. I had Aidan and five of his friends position themselves one horse apart from each other. There were ten outer horses which gave access to the ring holder. The odds of getting the brass ring was one out of ten. I instructed the group to pass on the ring when it was not brass so as to constantly feed a losing selection to the person behind them. This ensured that one of the five in the group would always get the brass ring, doubling the odds of someone on the team winning.

The strategy worked amazingly well with the odds going up as the number of riders went down. Some times Aidan rode the carousel with only one tourist who he fed all the losing rings. In this scenario, getting the brass ring is all but guaranteed. Aidan and his friends began dominating the brass ring capture with some kids getting it over ten times for the season. Aidan, himself, lost count after twenty. I enjoyed his theatrics as he missed the ring, ensuring the hapless kid behind him snagged a loser.

Science is often used to enhance our lives as in better medical advancements, more effective means of communication or increased travel convenience. Ever so often, some people use science to beat the system like the Eudaemons, a small group of University of California physics graduate students who in the 1970s figured out an algorithm to predict the outcome of roulette. They derived their name from the word "eudaimonia" which means "human flourishing."

And that's what Aidan did with four of his friends one summer. They flourished as each upped their brass ring count. It never lost its appeal. In fact, it got even more exciting as each kid knew they were beating the system. Many asked me to explain the increased odds they experienced by the passing strategy. One parent said,

"I hope you feel good that you taught them how to cheat."

They weren't cheating like doping, deflating a football or illegally avoiding taxes. They used knowledge to increase their odds of winning. That's not cheating. That's smart. In the end the flying carousel of Watch Hill will continue to whirl about through the summers enthralling generations of children, and every so often the old ride just might inspire a kid to go into science.

Editor's Note: Jeff Probst, the host of Survivor, cashing in on the popularity of the movie, A Beautiful Mind, once claimed that everything needed to win Survivor was in Nash's seminal paper. I'm sure Professor Nash would be thrilled that his Nobel Prize winning work was helping people win the Dorito Food Challenge. Originally posted on March 17, 2017.

Letting Go

 

This year I elected to get a jump on the spring cleaning by collecting up the stuff no one uses and then bringing the items to the transfer station. We have a reclamation shed where unwanted things can be dropped off for other townfolk to peruse. It's a great idea that's keeps useable stuff out of the landfill. This spring I concentrated on a set of trucks that have been in the basement for years now. Our youngest, Willy, last played with them when he was very little after I brought in a pile of sand as clean fill. We have a designated sandbox area but it is often overlooked in favor of the nearby swing set. I didn't bother to check with Aidan who is in high school now. He's more engrossed in the college selection process, jazz arrangements and a semiprofessional electronic sports league team he's created. When it came time to ask if I could discard the toys, the question naturally was posed to Willy.

"Can I get rid of those trucks you don't play with and give them to someone who doesn't have any toys?"

 

I usually bait the question like that to ensure I get the answer I want. Willy is often mortified that there are children who haven't toys. We don't shield him from reality with the exception of the fat winter clown, the egg laying rabbit and that crazy broad that collects teeth. Willy gave me the go ahead so I gathered up the toys along with some of my contributions, a retractable clothes line, a hoe with a cracked handle and some electrical wire remnants and then off we went to the dump.

Some of these trucks have travelled with us to warm weather destinations in the Caribbean. One in particular was Aidan's go to beach toy when he was young. He often rode in the bed of his dump truck. I would push him along on the beach as he sat in reverse, enjoying the ride. When he got older and too heavy for the rusty axles, we bought another identical truck which he seldom played with. The new truck became his brother's shortly after his surprise arrival. I sometimes wonder what happened to those boys who happily played with trucks on the beach so many years ago.

Parting with toys can be hard for a child and sometimes for a parent. Once my cousin, Ken, and his wife, Michelle, took their young children to Disney World. On their drive home, their son, Matthew, had discovered that he left his favorite toy, a worn and tattered Pooh Bear at the park hotel. As Michelle relayed the story I was momentarily aghast with the idea that a cynical employee might have discarded the bear due to its rough shape. She wasn't certain if they were even going to retrieve the stuffed bear as no one was quite sure were Matt had left it.

"I told Matt that Poo might go live with another family just in case we couldn't find him,” she recalled.

Now, mind you, this is Disney we're talking about. Those guys have better customer service than the Vatican. Ken found Matt's beloved Pooh Bear in the hotel's lost and found bin. Far from someone subjectively weighing Pooh's condition to determine his fate, Michelle discovered a note pinned to the stuffed bear that read,

"Much loved Pooh Bear."

 

My wife, Christine, lost her stuffed bear in a move when she was six years old. In middle school, she was up in the attic helping her father find something when she opened a box only to find her favorite toy. The bear spent the remainder of its days in a rocking chair in her bedroom. When she went off to college, her parents expanded their room by knocking a wall down in Christine's room. Much of her childhood belongings went on the curb. Ironically, if she hadn't discovered the bear it would likely still be in the attic.

My favorite toy was my Spirit of 76 Tyco train set. I still have it today because I boxed it up as a teenager and put it among the thousands of things my mother hoarded over the years. Remembering where it was, I retrieved it before she selected her "good friend" as the executor of her will over any of her kids. Her friend cleaned out my mother before she was even in the ground. I also have two surviving matchbox cars from my youth that are part of Willy's collection now.

 

When I take things to the dump, I'm fond of making a formal display I usually photograph just in case I forget what happened to something. Christine helped me arrange the toys logically on the shelving. On the way home, she received texts from Aidan concerning our latest contribution to the town's junk swap. Apparently, Aidan who is rarely awake before 10 am, saw the pictures of the trucks at the dump in the cloud, much to his horror. As we drove, I glanced over to Christine.
 

"What?" I asked.

"Aidan wants his red truck back," she lamented.

Stuff doesn't last in our town's reclamation shed. For some reason people just like other's free shit. Often people snatch up the stuff before we get a chance to snap a farewell picture. We had gone grocery shopping. Dropping off stuff hours earlier just about guaranteed that the trucks were long gone by now. I reluctantly agreed to swing by the dump to see if by some luck, Aidan's beat up truck would still be there. We agreed to check the site but not to admit to having done so if the truck was not there. This is what we found.

 

The only thing left were the two red trucks. We snatched them up. On the drive home, I wrestled with the idea of where sentimentality ends and hoarding begins. Christine was less cynical believing that God simply wanted Aidan to have his truck back. It was all less magical for me. I know Aidan can sometimes be nostalgic when he recalls his childhood. Part of me just can't relate because my childhood for the most part sucked. While I wallowed in my own youthful recollections entwined with a concern for my son's future, Christine remained transfixed out the window as we drove home. She had a slight smile on her face as I assumed she was thinking of her stellar job as a mother intermingled with her own childhood memories. Aidan was in the garage as we pulled up.



It's that time of the year when I don't have to drop the garage door right away when we pull in as it is warm enough to leave the door open. Spring is just around the corner. I grabbed the trucks as I exited the car. Aidan smiled as he saw his toy. I looked to Christine then back to Aidan as he gleefully retrieved his cherished belonging.

And for the briefest of moments, I saw that little boy once again.

Choosing Sides

I stink at baseball. I was often the last kid picked. I was so bad that sometimes I was chosen after the game was over. Choosing sides was one of the fun rights of passage in middle school. The purpose was to divide up the kids into teams. The results were more an overt acknowledgement of who were the best and who were the worst players.

I was so bad that when choosing sides, I was left with the non athletic kids. Kids who were short, overweight, the kids who not only couldn't hit, they couldn't run or throw either. The hardest thing in sports is hitting a baseball with a bat. A good, professional baseball player can't even do it half the time. So there is plenty of room for people like me who can't keep their eye on the ball.

We played baseball in a vacant sandlot that doubled as our ballfield during classroom breaks. Normally, recess was held in a paved parking lot. Somewhere buried in the ecumenical counsel of Vatican II, it was decreed that a grassy field and a play set were unnecessary for Catholic education. Always concerned with scratch, they knew it was more cost effective just to stock up on Band-Aids than to spring for monkey bars, a slide and grass.

 

I had a few friends in middle school. They were all good baseball players. While I could name most of the elements on the periodic table, they could name every team member, their number and position on the Boston Red Sox. When it came to choosing sides their friendship didn't run as deep as their desire to win. So I endured the embarrassment of being picked near the bottom of the pack until one day it happened.

For whatever reason, this time when we were choosing sides, I was picked dead last. I was selected after a kid with a broken arm. Now back in the day we made fun of each other all the time. We called it "busting," short for "ball busting." I may have been lousy at baseball, but I was very good at busting. Being sharp with the tongue was just another survival tactic in the dog eat dog middle schools of the 1970's. It's not a skill that would work today with all the anti bullying agendas. No kid in middle school wants to be the butt of a joke so I used that to my advantage. Being ridiculed could be as bad as a beating so back in the day we unconsciously bartered for our own survival. You won't hit me in the head, and I wouldn't make the class laugh at your big nose.

The two team captains choosing sides on this day were, best I could tell, evening up the score which is how I ended up on the bottom. One kid, Kevin, liked the same girl as me. She hated both of us. The other team captain, Mike, thought he would try to match my middle school wit. All he could come up with was to call me a "nerd" or something lame like that. Mike had a big nose, and I said that when he looked up someone might mistake his nose for a two car garage. He sneezed and I suggested he carry a table cloth to blow his nose. During French class we were talking about cuisine, and I asked Mike what the food smelled like in Canada.

I ended up on Kevin's team. When it was my turn at bat, Mike playing center field instructed the outfield to move in to further humiliate me. I always wanted to feel what it was like to solidly hit a baseball, but usually I struck out. Given the four embarrassing years of middle school, it was bound to happen. I swung at anything, and today my bat accidentally got in the way of the ball which sailed right down the middle towards Mike who reached upwards. I can still see the white blur of the baseball lift over Mike's glove just out of reach. Had he not moved so far in, it would've been an easy catch. I touched first base for the first time in my life. That's as far as I would go as the next fly ball was caught for the third out.

By eighth grade, my last year under the control of the Nuns of Eastwick the sandlot was invaded by a construction crew hired to build a nursing home. I was thankful that we didn't have any place to play baseball anymore. Instead, we played dodge ball in the parking lot with an overinflated soccer ball that damn near knocked out your teeth if you got hit in the face. I was picked pretty early because for some reason I was good at line driving that ball at an opponent's head.

My son, Aidan, experienced his share of middle school vitriol. Luckily, it was far less than what was endured in my day. Aidan said that the criteria for choosing sides was to select all your friends first. It makes sense because we taught our kids not to care about winning. Maybe that's why so many of them toil away for four years in college to earn a degree that can't land them a paying job.

Say what you want about his generation. At least they know how to be a good friend.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on March 2, 2017.