tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84967942024-03-06T22:24:31.697-08:00Occasionally KeenKeen can mean sharp...Keen can mean enthusiastic...Keen can mean a long wail of despair. Let's all hope for the first two.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.comBlogger258125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-74247354303760732182014-01-15T18:36:00.000-08:002014-01-15T18:36:03.260-08:00With Great Power Comes Great Chance to Screw Things Up<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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Some things are important and some things aren’t. (It is amazing the insight this column offers
its dedicated readers.) There is
important like avoiding being run over by speeding vehicles. There is important like saving infants from
falling out of skyscrapers. There is
important like keeping Lindsay Lohan from marrying any or all family
members. There is unimportant like 99%
of what is on Twitter. There is
unimportant like when a person whose opinion you have never valued in any
instance says your tie is ugly. There is
unimportant like being made fun of by people because you choose to learn how to
juggle at the ripe old age of fifty just because you always kind of wanted to
(so there all you people who made fun of me…yes, I am a fully evolved human who
doesn’t take things personally…much…okay that might be more important than I
first thought.)</div>
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There are also things people think are terribly important
even though they know full well they aren’t.
In my life I have to say this category is mostly populated by
sports. </div>
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I am not a superstitious person in any other part of my
life. I will brazenly walk under a
ladder. If a black cat crosses my path I
do not alter my destination. If I break
a mirror I do not consider it seven years of bad luck I simply think I am now
spared of looking at just how gray my hair as gotten and I can continue to
pretend I am a strikingly handsome brown haired man. (I said I was not superstitious. I did not say I was not delusional.) When it comes to sports I am terribly superstitious. Actually, I take that back it is not
superstition if it is a scientific, data supported, fact of life. </div>
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Exhibit A - I refuse to wear anything bearing the icons of
my favorite sports teams on the days they play their games. Well, several years back I spaced off that
the Kansas Jayhawks were playing basketball that very evening as I dressed for
work. I unthinkingly put on my Jayhawk
necktie. Halfway through the day it
occurred to me what I had done but I thought I was safe because the team was
playing the Colorado Buffaloes and we hadn’t lost to them in years. That night the Jayhawks lost. It was clearly all my fault. </div>
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Exhibit B – There are times my very attention to the
sporting event can cause bad things. I
was the general manager of the Dodge City Legend basketball team in 2005. We were playing for the championship of our
league. I had taken to pacing the
hallways of the Salina Bicentennial Center while my team was on the floor. This seemed to have worked in the previous
two games in the championship tournament.
It had even gotten around to the other teams. The general manager of the Salina team, our
opponent in the big game, approached me before the game and made a joke about
having security keep me in the gym during the game. So I am pacing, listening to the crowd noise
to take my cues as to whether good things or bad things were happening. At one point I decided this was ridiculous
and I went through the tunnel into the arena.
The scoreboard showed it was a close game. Standing at the free throw line was Roy
Tarpley. Roy was a former NBA player who
had joined our team late in the year. He
had literally made every single free throw he had taken the entire time he had
played for us. I am using the word
literally in its literal sense not the figurative sense my daughter always uses
it for saying things like “I was literally freezing to death” in regards to
being caught outside without a sweater when the temperature dropped below fifty
degrees. Anyway, Roy is standing at the
line as I enter the gym and he throws up a brick large enough to bludgeon Paul
Bunyan’s blue ox into submission. I
sigh, drop my head, turn on my heels and go back out to the hallway. We won the game and I enjoyed watching the
video tape later. </div>
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I admit it is hard to believe a middle-aged man tucked
safely away in western Kansas spending the majority of his time sitting in a
twenty year old green recliner has such total power over things he actually has
no part of. But it is true. As my other daughter would say, for reals.</div>
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<i>Christopher Pyle
offers the final proof – he was not watching the Chiefs play the Colts until
halfway through the third quarter. Chief
fans can ask for his apology via email at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-31985500939634692072013-12-18T19:42:00.000-08:002013-12-18T19:42:14.075-08:00Two Tales of Christmas<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
It is the week before Christmas and all through the house
every darned thing is stirring and I wish they would calm down so I could get
some sleep. (I don’t think the poem
would have become such a big part of the holiday season if it had started that
way.) Even though at the writing of these words it is over 60 degrees outside
it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
I take that back. It has been
beginning to look a lot like Christmas since October 15<sup>th</sup> if you
count going into major chain retail establishments. But I digress. Christmas is nearly here and at my house much
of the decorations are in place, many presents are under the tree and the bank
accounts are properly depleted so let the holidays commence. </div>
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This really is a Christmas story so stick with me to the
very end. You know how people tell the
story of how Bruce Lee was such an amazing martial artist he had the ability to
reach up into a person’s chest, pluck the heart from the thoracic cavity and
show it to the person before their inevitable death. (See I told you you’d have to wait until the
end.) Well, it is not just Bruce Lee who
can do that. I once had an
eight-year-old do that to me. </div>
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I was playing the part of Santa Claus. If there any believers reading this column I
was simply standing in for the jolly old elf due to an unavoidable scheduling
conflict with the Macy’s in New York City.
You don’t mess with Macy’s. There
was a sizable line of hopeful children lined up to sit on my lap and make their
demands, uh, requests. After the usual
number of requests for video games, electronic devices and the occasional
throwback requests like dolls and BB guns, a particularly adorable girl
approached me. She perched on my knee
and looked at me with brown eyes which may have been partially to blame for
global warming. She did not ask for a
doll, a video game or straight cash. She
said her aunt was very sick and wondered if I could make her better.</div>
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Now, everyone who knows me knows I have no problem
talking. At this time I lost the power
of speech. I looked at her. I then looked directly at my feet, the clock
on the wall, the particularly ugly Christmas sweater worn by grandma number
seven taking a few hundred pictures of the oblivious toddler in front of her
and the stain on the carpet next to the exit because it is not a good idea to
show dozens of small bright-eyed children that Santa can cry like a chronically
depressed person watching Tommy Kirk shoot Old Yeller.</div>
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I don’t exactly remember what I said to her. I think I tried to explain that Santa and his
elves can’t handle that kind of thing. I
gave her a hug, more for my benefit than hers, and told her I would try
whatever I could to help. Then she
walked away, a tiny Bruce Lee, holding my still beating heart in her adorable
little hand. </div>
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See, I told you it was a Christmas story.</div>
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As I said in my last column, I love Christmas. Christmas has a lot of different meanings and
messages.</div>
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Since I really see my role in this newspaper endeavor as
more public goofball than teller of heartfelt stories, I need to end on a
different note than my real life story of what is most important at
Christmas. </div>
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Every year thousands of people, if not millions, watch the
1964 animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, an endearing tale of a group of
misfits finding their places in the world.
At least that is what we have been brainwashed to believe for
years. Take a minute to look more
closely. Rudolph is mocked, shunned and
eventually driven to self-exile from home and family because of a simple
abnormality, not because of anything he purposefully perpetrated on his
Rangifer (the genus for reindeer – I looked it up) brethren. It is only when the leader of the elfin
sweatshop realizes Rudolph’s abnormality can be exploited for his own personal
gain that our hero is accepted. Isn’t
that a perfect message for this season of peace on earth and goodwill towards
men. (Just not for Rangifer tarandus,
the binomial name of reindeer. Like I
said, I looked it up.)</div>
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<i>Christopher Pyle
wishes all of you a wonderful Christmas season no matter your religion or your
interpretation of Rudolph but he might mock you if you open presents on
Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning.
He can be mocked back at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-23242015580261142372013-11-20T18:35:00.000-08:002013-11-20T18:36:19.074-08:00Powers, Both Super and Not<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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The following was a sign in front of chain store: “Now Hiring Managemen”. Now, I know full well the Kansas wind simply
removed the final “T” from the last word but it made me laugh. All I could think of was it was a whole new
cadre of superheroes. First there was The Justice League of America,
The X-Men and The Avengers now the world is being protected by The
Managemen. </div>
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Their leader is Manager Man.
His powers include making at least one third of his staff unhappy no
matter what decision he makes, the ability to be uncannily out when the most
important things happen, and he can throw words like paradigm, proactive and
brainstorm with such deadly vagueness his enemies are so confused he can, not
so much stop, nefarious deeds as make the people looking to perpetrate them so
crushed under protocols and bureaucracy they simply lose the will to
perpetrate. </div>
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Another member of this group of patriotic warriors is Middle
Manager. This may be the hardest working
member of the team but he seems to be always behind. The newest crime wave is thrown his way but
just before it is taken care of the upper management team swoops in, finishes
the task with only a tiny bit of genuine effort and takes credit for the whole
thing while poor Middle Manager is given a whole new set of criminals to deal
with. </div>
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There is also Micro Manager.
This hero is able to infiltrate the criminal netherworld and get his
hands into their different endeavors.
His chief power is to nitpick and annoy to the point everyone involved
with the evil plot just becomes so annoyed they simply walk away. </div>
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Finally we have Office Manager. She is incredibly talented and gets the most
accomplished in the least amount of time.
She multi-tasks with an efficiency truly terrifying to the lazy and incompetent
evil doers of the world. Her greatest
nemesis is Glass Ceiling. </div>
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I really think I am on to something. Does anyone have Joss Whedon’s phone number?</div>
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The biggest money maker movies these days are all the
gigantic scale superhero movies. I admit
I am one of the mindless movie-goers willing to plunk down my eight bucks to see
good looking people in ludicrous costumes save the world from the less good
looking people in less ludicrous costumes and their labyrinthine plots to take
over the world. Some of these labyrinthine plots to take over the world are so
convoluted the guys who actually wrote the script get lost about thirty minutes
in. </div>
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The biggest reason I
go to these movies is I was a comic book kid.
I loved comic books. Every time I
walked to the convenience store or went to the grocery store with my mother I
would get a comic book. Now before the
younger generation reading this column starts thinking I was some sort of
Richie Rich (non-superhero comic book reference) comics didn’t cost four bucks
a crack. The very first comic books I
bought were twelve cents apiece. No,
they were not painted on the walls of caves.
Those would have been a bear to store under my bunk bed. (Also, when I bought bubble gum baseball
cards there was actual bubble gum in the package. The bubble gum and the cards tasted about the
same but the bubble gum would not make the cool sound in your bicycle spokes.)</div>
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I still think comic books helped me develop the vocabulary I
have to this day. Think about it. Would someone who only read the readers in
school use the words I like to use? The
school books didn’t say things like:</div>
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This is Dick. Dick
has a ludicrous costume.</div>
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Or</div>
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See Jane. See Jane
run. See Jane run with her cadre of
mutant companions. </div>
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Or </div>
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See Puff. Puff plays
with Spot. Puff has a labyrinthine plot
to kill Spot. </div>
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I would have preferred books like that in school, especially
one with Puff being an evil doer planning canicide. (Yes, that is the real word for killing a
dog.)</div>
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I think we all would like to be a superhero or at least have
a super power. </div>
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My choice would probably be the power of flight. Let me add an extra requirement to that
power. I want to be able to fly really
fast. I would love to be able to travel
around the country and still make it back to work on Monday. See my kids at college each evening. Fly to New York for a show. Heck, even making a quick trip to Toledo
would be great if I could fly there. </div>
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<i>Christopher Pyle
considers his true super power to be confusing people with his words. He can be contacted at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-75055271812100034502013-11-14T16:53:00.002-08:002013-11-14T16:53:23.469-08:00Brushes with Greatness<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It seems to be a common component of the human condition to
be impressed by people because they are famous, even people who are famous for
being as useful as Lindsey Lohan at a…at a…Lindsay Lohan pretty much anywhere. I freely admit I am right there with all
those other humans. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The other night I was watching television. That’s a lie.
I was watching a television show on my computer via <a href="http://www.hulu.com/">www.hulu.com</a> (he says hoping the people at hulu will
see I mentioned them and be grateful enough to send me a check for the
unsolicited solicitation on their behalf – I am willing to lend my column out for
flagrant begging). The show had a scene
which took place in a hat store. I
almost fell out of my chair when I recognized the store as the place I had
visited in New York City. The very place
I went with my daughter and spent an unconscionable amount of money on two
fancy hats was on TV. I was so excited I
had to tell people that one place on that one television show is a place I once
stood. How cool is that? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Actually, not that cool at all. It is a store in one of the most densely
populated cities in the United States.
It is a store in one of the biggest tourist destinations in the country. It is less than a block from the Empire State
Building. There have been thousands of
people in that store. I am far from
special. But I still texted people in a
sad attempt to be associated with famous.
(By the way, the name of the store is J. J. Hat Center. I am saying that in hopes they will send me a
new Borsalino fedora – size seven and half – in gratitude for the plug. See previous parenthetical for my explanation
for having no shame.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I once lived in one the epicenters of famous people, Los
Angeles, California. Really there were
movie stars just walking around like they actually were people who had to eat
and buy stuff and mundane things like
that. Weird, huh? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I worked at a bookstore and Jonathan Banks (a talented
character actor in tons of things from 48 Hrs. to Breaking Bad) asked if there
were any Ansel Adams calendars. I hopped
to it and went to the backroom to find what he wanted. He was very nice and thanked me. I responded that is it was the least I could
do considering that very morning I had watched John Lithgow choke him
death. I had been watching The
Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8<sup>th</sup> Dimension and he had
indeed been killed by Lithgow. This
started a conversation with him about how he doesn’t live through a lot of his
movies. He asked if I had seen Beverly
Hills Cop and the guy behind him in line reminded him that Eddie Murphy had
shot him in that one. (Oh, yeah.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There were two pinnacles of brushes with greatness at my
bookstore job. George Carlin came in
looking for some sort of philosophy book.
I held myself together and took him to the proper place in the store and
we looked. We didn’t have it. I said we really are just a top forty
bookstore and he laughed. George Carlin
laughed at ME. One of the first people to
ever make me fall of the couch laughing released a small giggle at something I
said. I am never washing these ears
again. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The other one was Dick Van Dyke. He stepped up to the cash register and I lost
the power of speech and movement for a second.
Rob Petrie was who I wanted to be when I grew up. Dick Van Dyke was a comedy god to me. At first all I could muster was “That’ll be
seven dollars and forty-eight cents.”
Then as he turned to go I blurted out.
“I am a huge fan of your work.”
He turned and gave me a big genuine smile saying “That is always so nice
to hear.” I think I fainted. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I was in the store as a customer to get a friend
a birthday card. John Larroquette was
there. I approached him and asked if he
would sign the card I had purchased for my friend. He asked if I thought my friend would believe
he had actually signed it. I was too
polite to say if I was going to make up someone to sign the card it would be
someone more famous than him. He refused
the mere Bic I offered him and signed it with a fountain pen from his breast
pocket. </span></span>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-47070781270459799642013-11-14T16:51:00.001-08:002013-11-14T16:51:18.668-08:00Destiny? Not so much...<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">People will point to major events in their lives as the
turning points where destiny was fulfilled.
I think it is more often insignificant things which actually put people
into the places they end up. I love to
tell this story which illustrates my point.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My father was the City Manager of McCook, Nebraska. He had applied for the same position in
Hutchinson. McCook was celebrating some
sort of centennial so most the men in town had grown beards or mustaches to look
like pioneer guys. This only worked so
well as they still wore slacks and button down shirts with ties, but hey, it’s
the thought that counts. Dad had grown a
mustache to be with the in crowd in McCook. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He goes down to Hutchinson a day early for his
interview. He drives around town to get
the lay of the land and checks into a hotel for the night. That evening he looks in the mirror and
decides to shave off the mustache, a small decision for which even he didn’t
have a real explanation for why he did it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Flash forward several days.
My father is hired to be the City Manager of Hutchinson. The vote to hire him was 4 to 3 by the City
Commission so he was barely hired (the vote might have been 3 to 2, Wikipedia
doesn’t have an entry for this so I have exhausted my research capabilities). Flash forward several more days. There is a reception to welcome Dad to town. One of those stand around with glasses of
punch and balancing little smokies in one hand while shaking hands with people
you know full well you will not remember their names even ten minutes from now
because you have been unenthusiastically introduced to roughly seven thousand
people in the last three hours, kind of receptions. During this reception he mentions to one of
the commissioners that he had a mustache the day before the interview but had
shaved it off that night. The
commissioner tells him she would not have voted for him if he had still had the
mustache at the interview. (It was 1966,
and only hippies and Dan Rowan had mustaches back the.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Think about it. If my
father hadn’t shaved I would not have moved to Hutchinson at a young age. I would not have met the friends who shaped
big parts of my personality. It is
because of those friends that I decided to pursue a career in the movie
industry. That is the reason I majored
in film studies at KU. That is the
reason I dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles. That is the reason I hated living in LA and
moved back to Kansas. That is the reason
I returned to KU. That is the reason I
ended up with a film degree from KU. That
is the reason I worked at a bookstore in Kansas City. That is the reason I did an open mic night at
a comedy club. That is the reason I
abandoned the dream of being a comedian.
That is the reason I had to go back to college years later to get a
degree which led to an actual job. That
is the reason I became a teacher. That
is the reason I pursued writing as a hobby.
That is the reason I started writing a newspaper humor column which paid
roughly thirty dollars a month. That is
the reason I became a principal. That is
the reason I made enough money to send my kids to college, well, not enough
money, enough to go into mind numbing debt in order to send three children to
college because mind numbing is required when you sign that master promissory
note. That is the reason I still kind of hope I will
be discovered and whisked away to be a comedy writer. That is the reason I wistfully ponder being
whisked. That is the reason I am writing
this particular column. That is the
reason you are reading this column right now.
So if you hate this column address your angry letter to the Gillette
Corporation who made it possible for my father to shave off his mustache. Darn those activist razor companies. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Please remember this cautionary tale when you
are thinking about doing something as monumental as facial hair removal. It may mean your child will never become the
next Johnny Carson like he always dreamed of being. That is the reason we became stuck with Jay
Leno. That is the reason for the whole
Conan O’Brien debacle. Sorry…I won’t do
that to you again.</span></span>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-55674810918342437112013-11-14T16:29:00.003-08:002013-11-14T16:29:28.892-08:00No Skills No Problem<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, before we start our regularly scheduled column I have
to share something.</div>
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Let me set the stage.
As many of you know I live in Dodge City and out here in Dodge City we
understand wind. Chicago, Illinois
claims to be the “Windy City” but that is as full of beans as the large number
of mayors and governors that city and state has seen indicted. Dodge City knows wind. So on this past Monday when the wind was
blowing a consistent thirty miles an hour and gusting to forty-five we took it
in stride. Even though most of the
topsoil from Grant County had taken up residence in my hair and between my
teeth I just went about my day. Sure
some of the kindergarten kids at my school had to pulled back down to earth as
I guided them to the bus and sure I had used a stapler to ensure my hat stayed
on my head and I grant you the birds were white knuckling it on the tree
branches due to a fear of flying I soldiered onward. Even with all that being said I saw something
which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that we hardy denizens of western
Kansas scoff at wind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was driving away from my house at about 6:30 in the
evening and the wind was doing its darnedest to not only separate hats from
heads but was going for the naturally sprouted hair as well. I go past a place of business with a large
lawn and the professional lawn guys were cutting and trimming their little
hearts out. One of the minions of a well
manicured lawn was dutifully wielding a common tool of his trade as he moved
down the sidewalk. He was using a leaf
blower. Holy unnecessary Batman. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now back to our regularly scheduled column…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is a poor musician who blames his instrument. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am a very poor musician and I have no desire to blame the
instrument. Even with a Stradivarius in
my hands if I played the violin it would sound like a schizophrenic cat arguing
with itself about who used up all the catnip.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Different tools get very different results in the hands of
different people. Don’t get me wrong I
have some skills in the handy man department.
I can use a screwdriver, but there have been times I used the handle of
the screwdriver as a hammer because I couldn’t find the hammer. Hey, it worked and truthfully, I hit my thumb
less frequently when I do it that way. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whenever I have had “do it yourself” projects they weren’t
totally done by myself. I have to rely
on the kindness of friends. Sometimes I
just need to borrow the proper tools.
Sometimes I need others to act as consultants as I use the tools. Other times I need to borrow the person to
wield the tools. I always return them,
the people at least. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Truthfully, this lack of any useful skill set makes my life
easier in many ways. Think about
it. If you can fix plumbing issues
friends will call you evenings and weekends to help them out because a plumber
would cost roughly the Gross National Product of Finland. If you have computer skills people call you
when they have a virus, their e-mail won’t open or their uploads and downloads
are pinging over 100 milliseconds. (I don’t exactly know what that last thing
means, I Googled “common computer problems” in order to finish the joke.) Even
just owning a truck means people call you when they have to move big
stuff. I am left alone because I have no
discernible skills and my four door sedan barely holds my family.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am probably being too hard on myself. I do have some skills. I have been a school administrator for about
nine years so I can threaten to take away recess really well. I can help a kindergarten kid find his or her
lunch card in under 2 seconds. I can be
totally invisible to children as I try to slow them down when they are running
for the bus as if Usain Bolt riding a cheetah was chasing them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have some other skills. I can play the Jeopardy “thinking
about what to write on your screen for the Final Jeopardy question” music on
the ukulele (just don’t ask me to answer it for you the one time I had a crack
at that I messed up). Also, I have
pretty much mastered juggling the three ball cascade pattern.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now don’t everybody call out at once for my services.</div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-64634332952823365022013-08-28T18:16:00.000-07:002013-08-28T18:16:01.222-07:00Here's your money...wait...what?<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You know how you shouldn't go to the grocery store when
you’re hungry. You’ll find yourself unloading
the bags at home asking why on earth you bought three packages of Fig Newtons
and seven varieties of Doritos but no toilet paper or bread. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, I have a similar rule; don’t write your column when
you are angry…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am now going to break that rule.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How many gentle readers out there have a child in college at
this very moment? How many gentle
readers out there became less gentle thinking about the process of dealing with
colleges? I like to think I am pretty
even keeled but I have spent a lot of time with the demeanor of Bruce Banner’s
big green friend the last several days, all due to the world of higher
education.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Both of my parents, two of my siblings and I all attended
the University of Kansas. I look back on
many parts of my life in Lawrence with positive nostalgia. I am a huge Jayhawk basketball fan. So, it was natural for my children to approach
the university with favorable thoughts.
Now, my two daughters are going there this semester. Not only are my daughters going there but
large chunks of my once and future earnings will be going there as well. It is ungodly expensive but that is not why I
am angry. I knew that part of the deal
long before either child was even out of kindergarten.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, correct me if I’m wrong. If you pay me I work for you but if I pay you
then… You. Work. For. Me. This is the crux of my Hulk smash attitude.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The University of Kansas may have a whole bunch of eggheads
working for them. People with advanced
degrees in all sorts of intellectual pursuits but they seem not to have learned
that basic equation of customer and service.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My children are often treated like employees. Not just any employee but the kind of
employee who is on a plan of improvement because he has shown the initiative of
a plate of over-cooked noodles and the intellect of the plate upon which the
noodles reside. I understand there are
expectations for fulfilling requirements like which classes should be taken and
then the tasks within said classes. I
have no problem with that. That is part
of the expected covenant between the parties involved. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me give you examples using other employer/employee
relationships to illustrate my point.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s say I am the CEO of a Fortune 500 business (I do not
have the temperament for such a job but, hey, this is just for the sake of
illustrating a point). It is 8 o’clock
Sunday evening. I send you an
email. It is expected you will be
checking your work email at such a time of the weekend. The content of that email requires you to
write a two page memo about a segment of the business which was never part of
your job description. I pay you so that
is acceptable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Flip to college. My
daughter gets an email from an instructor at 8:00 PM Sunday night telling her
she has an assignment, an assignment heretofore never mentioned in any class or
syllabus, due the following day. Wait a
minute, I’m paying you to do a service for me.
This ain’t part of the deal. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I pay you it is acceptable for me to expect a certain
level of myopic focus on your part. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s say I am paying you to paint my house. I expect while you are at my house, you paint
my house. Not spend time pursuing your
hobby of raising parakeets. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Flip to college. My
daughter is expected to myopically focus her life on a single aspect of her
college experience by her professor.
Forego all the other stuff they pounded into her during orientation that
she should get involved with a myriad of activities and groups. As well as forego the things which feed her
soul between working truly hard on the regular expectations from all of her
other courses. Once again, I’m paying
you. This ain’t part of the deal. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I still have fond of memories of attending KU. Two of my favorite memories ever are sitting
with my father watching KU win the national championship in 1988 and sitting
with my daughter watching KU win the national championship in 2008. I have a hope Bill and Young Mr. Wiggins will
give us a championship in 2014. But I
have to say I no longer bleed crimson and blue.
I bleed confused and annoyed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle apologizes
for venting his spleen all over your nice clean computer screen. He can be reached at
occasionallykeen@yahoo.com<o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-446075961687451812013-08-14T15:49:00.001-07:002013-08-14T15:49:38.621-07:00Not All Matriculations are the Same<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Another big jump in the lives of the Pyle family of western
Kansas is happening soon. In a bit more
than a week Kid #1 will be joined for the first time by Kid #2 attending
classes at the University of Kansas. There
are a lot of different things going through my mind as I see them pack all
their stuff in preparation for college life.
Since my chief goal with this column is humor I will not describe many
of the things going through my head because I am a great big sap and having my
girls leave home brings out epic levels of sap.
I’m talking Vermont in syrup season levels of sap. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbWdp3CfuUv58ijLmk6Zz4GPv_oM2j2Dxuf8T8ZjPBLnrcMu5wusMirZQaqAaKgA4FJqmJw8HWTUbtjUVDS5mYKm04Rohgnz_pi_A7B-tD7iaD8KY0Z44OtlMMrDdcHF-rIZOHzw/s1600/college_130c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbWdp3CfuUv58ijLmk6Zz4GPv_oM2j2Dxuf8T8ZjPBLnrcMu5wusMirZQaqAaKgA4FJqmJw8HWTUbtjUVDS5mYKm04Rohgnz_pi_A7B-tD7iaD8KY0Z44OtlMMrDdcHF-rIZOHzw/s320/college_130c.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Therefore, in order to avoid tear stains on my keyboard, we
are going to push Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman to the side, climb into the
Wayback Machine and visit young Christopher as he wandered the streets of
Lawrence and the hallways of higher learning at KU back in the mists of
antiquity known to historians and scholars as “The Early 80’s”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was not a highly motivated college student (and for you
kids heading off to college that was a big mistake, more on that later). My older brother actually filled out my college
application forms because he was determined to broaden my horizons whether I
wanted to enlarge them or not. He also
went with me to Lawrence to enroll in classes and select an apartment. Then he left and I had to actually do
everything else myself, the heartless twerp.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I lived in what we lovingly referred to as the student slums
my entire college career. This was great
for the clinical introvert Chris, because he does do better when he can
recharge in solitude but is was not good for the pathological introvert Chris
who would go several days in a row without talking to another human being
entirely too often. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My first apartment was actually a single room roughly the
size of your average maximum security solitary confinement accommodation with
access to a bathroom and a kitchen down the hall. Since I sprung the extra ten bucks for the
mini-fridge (in order to avoid the awkward forty to fifty seconds of bumping
into somebody else from the building as I shuffled to the kitchen for my
nightly can of Pepsi) the rent was a whopping $100 a month. Let me tell you the price matched the level of
luxury it implies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My second year at college was the anomaly. I shared two floors of an old house with my
brother and my best friend. That year I
was borderline social. I had a part time
job which required me talking to people, even pretty girls. We even hosted parties. The rest of my college career I lived alone
in basement apartments, one of which was at the bottom of a dead street. The symbolism was not even lost on me at the
time. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My girls have a lot more to take with them. Some of it is because they are girls. Some of it is because they are young at a
time in the history of the world when there a lot more gadgets. Some of it is because they wish to live like
fully evolved humans. When I moved to KU
I had a reasonable amount of clothes, a portable black and white television, a
cassette tape player, two each of spoons, forks, knives, plates and cups
(eventually I had many more cups - about a gross of convenience store plastic
cups) and some basic school supplies, not including a calculator because I
hoped to be finished with math. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This brings us back to the lack of motivation issue. I didn’t really know what my passion was so
when I went to college I mostly just fell into a course of study. I majored in Film Studies which at KU during
this time was just a bunch of classes on film history and aesthetics, no film
making at all. This prepared me for a
cracking good career in video rental stores, and we all know how well that
industry thrives to this day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actually, I get annoyed when people look at college as
nothing more than a conduit to the workforce.
My lack of passion was the reason for the lack of career, not a poor
choice of major. If I had been fully
engaged I would have gone to USC and made movies. Now I want to go back to college and become a
real writer. Timing is everything in
life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle will
pretend the girls are just in the basement a lot the next few months. You can contact him at
occasionallykeen@yahoo.com<o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-24214294467754095852013-06-19T19:09:00.001-07:002013-06-19T19:10:03.876-07:00Children Require More Changes Than Diapers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLfyB3BLD-yl_tOA0zGLlSJ7QjVnnDAta1FWdLdbuwgZk5_n7QPcVIDhsiCmBM0bwkytIckb2v1-Ui_gjtlU9mNZlfZk4l5M3-wtSdGvCLM55u4MeFKgUIdN8Zm3cglS0k9rLoRw/s1600/YoungBoy.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLfyB3BLD-yl_tOA0zGLlSJ7QjVnnDAta1FWdLdbuwgZk5_n7QPcVIDhsiCmBM0bwkytIckb2v1-Ui_gjtlU9mNZlfZk4l5M3-wtSdGvCLM55u4MeFKgUIdN8Zm3cglS0k9rLoRw/s320/YoungBoy.gif" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Father’s Day is over for this year so you can rightfully
accuse me of not being very timely with the content of this column. (Honestly, you can rightfully accuse me of a
lot of things in regards to the content of all of my columns: lack of timeliness, lack of relevance, lack of
seriousness, lack of long form analysis of the works of Marcel Proust, lack of
data approved by institutions of higher learning and an acute lack of nutritional
value.) Even though I am a tad late I am
going to write about fatherhood. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am currently well into my fiftieth year of life so I have
seen fatherhood as a spectator for nearly that long. I wasn’t very attentive to anything other
than food, sleep and hugs for the first several months and for the next couple
years Bugs Bunny and Batman overshadowed my observations on the art and
practice of being a parent. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have also participated in the experiment as a father for
twenty years. Kid Number One showed up
in 1993 and since then two more moved into the house. So I have some experience to draw upon as I
come to my various conclusions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are frequent times I wish I could be more like my
father. A man who exuded integrity. A man who had earned the respect of so many
people. A man who was not expected to go
to all of his children’s music programs and ballgames and art shows because he
was the dad and he was allowed to sit in his chair, watch the news, read the
latest Louis L’Amour western and only be involved in the raising of children in
a manner of his own choosing due to the fact that Dads of the 70’s were still
using the Dads of the 50’s as their role models. The current paradigm of being “engaged” and
“present” in the lives of one’s children is exhausting. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the kids were very small I was amazed about many things
involved with being a father. It was
stunning just how much love I could feel for what was at first nothing much
more than a blob of protoplasm but a blob which could smile. It was unbelievable how easy I found it to
put selfish things down the priority chain and focus on the needs of a helpless
human. It was downright astounding the
things I was not only willing to touch but unthinkingly grab hold of and put in
my pocket (by “things” I mean the materials exuded from the various orifices
the child had not yet learned to control on his or her own).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ever since I moved out of the toddler stage myself I have
been a rather sedentary person. I like
stillness and quiet. Then a set of
toddlers appeared in my house and still and quiet were not their preferred
modes of being. I found ways to meet
them halfway. For instance when we went
to the swimming pool they would want to play games in which we each pretended
to be some sort of sea dwelling creature.
One would be a clownfish, one would be a dolphin and one would be a sea
horse and I would proudly announce I was a barnacle and gleefully attach myself
to the side of the pool. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Don’t get me wrong I enjoy my children very much. Especially now that they are such complete
human beings capable of driving themselves places. I
truly like them. I’m talking not just
the paternal love that is considered to be a requirement of the deal, but a
genuine “I would hang out with these people even if they didn’t share a large
amount of my DNA” kind of like. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I often talk about how important it is to me to laugh. My kids make me laugh often and with
gusto. Kid #1 is in college, engaged to
be married to a fine young man and a fully capable contributor to society but
she still likes to dance across the living room in a silly manner and try to
engage me in a fight with her inner mongoose.
Kid #2 is heading off to college in August and has a stronger work ethic
than the guys who got Apollo 11 to the moon but she spends time finding the
cute and her wicked wit keeps the house lively.
Kid #3 is often ignored due to his basic hermit tendencies but he is
multitalented and contributes such statements as “The Martian Manhunter is a boss. He is the Swiss Army knife of super
heroes.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle
continues to take on the role of barnacle on a regular basis. He can be contacted at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-70568650277790944352013-06-04T18:13:00.000-07:002013-06-04T19:23:09.660-07:00Be Careful What You Chase, You Might Catch It<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH9wiWPB06fGiA-0nAktli1reZKk9T3NvkUsZ42504TM97TCZJvpfMM53W8Ike0Da7I9_VoJtpgmCGpkcXT2fzly7SkZufF3v-DzcGzjtbbfeANfCRcSR9V565jAbFkybxGrdfSA/s1600/red+skelton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH9wiWPB06fGiA-0nAktli1reZKk9T3NvkUsZ42504TM97TCZJvpfMM53W8Ike0Da7I9_VoJtpgmCGpkcXT2fzly7SkZufF3v-DzcGzjtbbfeANfCRcSR9V565jAbFkybxGrdfSA/s320/red+skelton.jpg" width="259" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
A long time ago, in my life, not in the grand scheme of
things – I’m talking 1988, not anything which would require carbon dating
processes, (believe it or not that was the first version of the Star Wars
prologue) I was fascinated with the television series of interviews Bill Moyers
did with Joseph Campbell entitled “The Power of Myth”. It described so many things I found
interesting in such an accessible way I actually internalized many of them. The basic story components Mr. Campbell
described found their way into things I have written. There was a phrase he espoused which I kind
of glossed over at the time but now that I have children who are just about to
push through the threshold into the adventure of their lives it has taken on a
greater level of importance. That phrase
was “Follow your bliss”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I do not think a learned man like Mr. Campbell (Wikipedia
actually lists his occupation as “Scholar”.
How cool is that?) would be telling people to follow a truly hedonistic
lifestyle including such things as unlimited supplies of doughnuts and two naps
a day (obviously my ideas of reckless self-indulgence isn’t on par with grown
up child actors and there will be no “reality” show about my life). My interpretation of the phrase is people
should pursue a life which allows them to do the things they truly like. A friend of mine stated a similar sentiment
when she said kids should look into careers they truly like doing if for no
other reason than they will be doing it a lot, the sheer volume of time needs
to enter into the thought process. Think
about it. Most people spend more than 40
hours a week at work and it would make for a much happier life if those hours
were spent doing things you at least kind of liked doing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, I took that bit of sage advice and then started thinking
how does one decide just which bliss to follow.
(Doughnuts or naps, probably can’t figure out a way to do both.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another learned person, Susan Cain, the author of the book
Quiet, gave advice about a way to figure out what one should pursue in
life. She suggests looking at what we
envy in others and see if that is a direction we should go. Now, I know what some of you are saying. Envy is not supposed to be a positive state
of mind. It is actually in the Top Seven
No-no’s list as compiled by some religious scholars. But, it makes sense. If you wish you could be like someone than
maybe you should actually try to be like someone. (I wish to add a caveat. If you envy Justin Bieber, anyone named
Kardashian or the person whose job it was to talk Will Smith into doing After
Earth – stop, stop right now.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I think back to my early days and who I envied and then
extrapolate from that what I should have pursued as a career I come to a very
different skill set than the one I use in my real job. I loved comedians. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have a very distinct memory of seeing Red Skelton do his
famous Guzzlers Gin sketch on The Merv Griffin Show. Of course, hundreds of thousands of people
probably saw that show and enjoyed Mr. Skelton’s hilarious skill but I bet
there weren’t many kids who went into the backyard when the show was over and
used the garden hose as their water supply to practice doing the “spit takes”
he had just done. I did…until I was
called in for dinner. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, as an educator I do have to get the attention of an
audience and keep it but true comic skills aren’t always the best choice. One day I was teaching some simple addition
skills to a classroom of 1<sup>st</sup> graders and decided to use some Charlie
Callas (give yourself 250 bonus points if you remember him) style sound effects
as part of my presentation. Let’s just
say we weren’t able to remain focused on place value concepts after that
choice. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have to admit there are times I very much wish I had
followed my envy to my bliss and into a different career. Just last week I went down a YouTube rabbit
hole and watched Bill Irwin do his unique performance skills with envy, but
wearing baggy pants and a top hat to school would make discipline an uphill
battle.</div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle has
recently been dedicating 30 minutes a day to practicing his ukulele and
juggling, knowing full well they are not school administrator skills. He can be reached at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-68806065527674704312013-05-22T18:17:00.002-07:002013-05-22T18:17:53.938-07:00Generation Graduation Gap<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjwUe0kzDMF-dVzilSC0cK9vHg_SmjKCmLg8wp2ua_wR2PyP_Xg-uwoncNWgFln82CPKLZ64t7cqVNy2GlAEDhhu1NJlyv3JyXWJ7ZyWL77eF3qbnPFe0NCqAF3SUKzs-MBz4h6g/s1600/Alice+grad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjwUe0kzDMF-dVzilSC0cK9vHg_SmjKCmLg8wp2ua_wR2PyP_Xg-uwoncNWgFln82CPKLZ64t7cqVNy2GlAEDhhu1NJlyv3JyXWJ7ZyWL77eF3qbnPFe0NCqAF3SUKzs-MBz4h6g/s320/Alice+grad.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
This past week was graduation week in various places
throughout the region. My own personal
Kid #2 (in birth order, not in any other ranking or judgment, all of my kids
are equal in my eyes at least that is my story and I am sticking to it)
graduated from high school. Alice truly
used high school as a place to grow and prepare for the life ahead of her. Not everybody does that. I know I didn’t. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Don’t get me wrong. I
value the education I received at Hutchinson High School, but I didn’t actively
pursue it. It just sort of happened
around me and because I was blessed with good genes I was able to absorb much
of it by simply being present. Like so
many people who were in Mr. Knauer’s senior English class I can still recite
much of the first eighteen lines of The Canterbury Tales in its original Middle
English (which is only useful when trying to annoy people with your
pseudo-intellectual persona at parties).
I remember I wrote a research paper for Ms. Lisman’s junior English
class about chivalry and knighthood (which introduced me to my all time
favorite name for a king, Pepin the Short).
I remember learning the scientific names (kingdom, phylum, class, order,
family, genus, species) of a metric ton of different animals for Mr. Harris’s
biology class. I remember not paying
attention in Mr. Dixon’s geometry class because my friend, Mitch, and I were way
too busy making up strings of puns to put any effort into the quadratic
equation. (Was the quadratic equation
even part of the geometry curriculum? I wouldn’t
know, but I can supply a couple dozen puns related to having a cold.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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The chief memories of my high school days revolve around my
friends. People who knew me then will be
surprised that I think of my high school days as a social time because I was
not a very outgoing person. Part of
being shy was my natural inclination towards introversion and the other part
was being chronically ridiculed by a number of my more athletically inclined
classmates. I did have a circle of
friends who were quite important to me and I think of them often. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The aforementioned Mitch was a ringleader for my group. The parties were most often in his
basement. He arranged trips to Wichita
to see movies and the occasional concert and when I went it was almost always
in his Toyota Celica that I made the trip.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember one trip in particular. We were going to a concert and I was wedged
into the back seat between a couple of pretty girls (which was as close to a
date as I ever got in high school). We
were riding along when a song came on the radio and one of the pretty girls
said she liked the song and I should remember it. Mitch said I probably would remember it
because I had a wicked memory. For the
duration of the ride she added to the list of songs she liked that I should
remember. The list got up to six. Those songs were: Head Games (Foreigner), Show Me the Way
(Peter Frampton), Heartache Tonight (Eagles), Cold as Ice (Foreigner, again),
You’ve Got a Friend (James Taylor), and Daniel (Elton John). I do solemnly swear those were the songs, the
whole list of songs, and nothing but the songs so help me Casey Kasem. </div>
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<br /></div>
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We now jump some 30 years to return to present day.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Alice worked way harder than I did in high school. She was in four high school musicals (zero
for me). She was in marching band for
four years (I marched once in 9<sup>th</sup> grade and we played the song Feelings
and the theme to The Bob Newhart Show).
She was a drum major two of those years putting her in a position of
leadership (I sat in the front row of a couple of classes). She got a 32 on her ACT (I vaguely remember
taking the ACT). She was well liked and
respected by a great number of her peers (many of my classmates probably would
have been able to identify my body if I’d turned up dead in the quad). </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Alice did high school right and many of her friends did as
well. When I look at them, this is going
to sound a little sappy, I actually have a greater degree of hope for the
future. Unfortunately, much of that hope
is squashed when I see anything having to do with Congress.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle is
very proud of each of his children, but wishes to point out his wife did most
of the hard work. He can be reached at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-68637269861174569922013-04-24T18:48:00.000-07:002013-04-24T18:48:01.359-07:00An Epiphany of Fear<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbvrAFNxcVAFc4VqsvkccHeK8Rs-70QAAk1289__Z24419s5DILIZF-3APlPODhqZ08zHoFnOK-Zaxl03AfS27YQbzdz1vnYP_bISBpS6XxOV6WVyuMeVAKoQkCUPRkJ_H3Q-RAQ/s1600/scared+face.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbvrAFNxcVAFc4VqsvkccHeK8Rs-70QAAk1289__Z24419s5DILIZF-3APlPODhqZ08zHoFnOK-Zaxl03AfS27YQbzdz1vnYP_bISBpS6XxOV6WVyuMeVAKoQkCUPRkJ_H3Q-RAQ/s1600/scared+face.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
As is so often the case something in my real life brought to
mind something from a cartoon. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Remember the Charlie Brown Christmas special? There is the scene where Charlie Brown goes
to Lucy at her psychiatric stand to seek answers. Lucy rattles off a list of phobias,
everything from cats to crossing bridges. When she gets to pantophobia, the fear of
everything, Charlie Brown yells, “That’s it!” sending Lucy spinning into a snow
bank. I found my “That’s it!” phobia the
other day, katagelophobia. Luckily I was
alone at the time so I did not send anyone spinning into a snow bank. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Katagelophobia is the fear of being ridiculed or
embarrassed. Now at first glance people
who know me might be a little confused by this notion. I have, quite on purpose, done things that
would embarrass many people. I have
performed in plays as characters with pretty embarrassing attributes. I did stand-up comedy at an open mic night at
a real comedy club (not even filling my allotted three minutes and apologizing
at the end of my truncated set). I have
been the mascot for a minor league basketball team wearing basketball shorts
and cowboy boots, at the same time. I
have been a parent of teenage girls which means I was an embarrassment to them
by doing things like breathing and being in the same room in which they were
currently residing. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The thing about the above mentioned situations which made
them not embarrassing for me had to do with the fact that I was in control of
what was happening. If I choose to do
something which might lead to embarrassment I can handle it better than a
situation that comes up more organically from circumstances. For example, I truly hate going into big city
style delicatessens. I have an abject
fear of ordering something stupid which compels the sandwich aficionados behind
the counter to mock me. “He wants
mayonnaise on that! What an idiot.” This
doesn’t come into play when I go to Subway.
Those “sandwich artists” are as interested in their work as a septuagenarian
is interested in the latest musical release from Lil Wayne (I had to look up
the name of rap artist for that last joke).
</div>
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<br /></div>
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Way too much of my self-image is wrapped up in being
smart. This also works into the
katagelophobia. There have been times
when I hold forth with some sort of pontification (now, gentle reader, don’t be
too shocked by this) then I find out I am horribly and irretrievably
wrong. I’m not talking just a little bit
wrong but “Dewey Defeats Truman” wrong, Snape is a bad guy wrong, there’s a
viable reason Kim Kardashian is famous wrong.
The embarrassment I feel when it dawns on me that I was so very wrong is
entirely too debilitating, especially considering just how often there is “wrongness”
put forth into the world – just ask CNN.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Really, it is ridiculous.
The other day I was having a simple conversation with some co-workers
and we were discussing a set of television commercials we found funny. We then talked about the fact we couldn’t remember
what the commercials were plugging.
Anyway, I was rather determined to contradict one person’s statement
about what company was being advertised.
Fast forward to the next day when I saw one of the commercials and it
turned out I was patently wrong. I
couldn’t get to sleep that night. I can
pretty much guarantee none of the other people in the conversation remembered
or even remotely cared that I had arrogantly disagreed, but that didn’t stop me
from e-mailing the person I had disagreed with and admitting my mistake. It is easier to admit mistakes than put up
with others pointing them out when you are katagelophobic. (That is a self-diagnosis. I have not, as of yet, sought professional
help for my problem.)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another manifestation of how this phobia impacts my life is I
have become less and less able to do things I have not done before, simple
things, for fear of showing ignorance and being mocked because of it. Being a Kansas boy I took my first ever taxi
cab ride last summer in New York. I
spent the entire ride in a half panicked state worrying about what I was
supposed to tip the guy, oblivious to the fact he almost got me killed by
ignoring the septic cleaning service van hurtling toward us. (That would have been one heck of an obituary.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle is
more likely to do another horrific stand-up comedy performance than he is to
try ordering food from the new sushi kiosk at Dillon’s. You can mock him at <a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com">occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</a>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-25738376248334007402013-04-10T18:06:00.001-07:002013-04-10T18:06:51.088-07:00Not everything needs to be enhanced<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsvqb2vOmKk_R0gGpctpwKj0y9hQ9oVXZAIpDwMZ12SbDjWJvtf-cVskzaxV2zr5RJa1hN_D-xIow1NnvnwtWimn76d6qBQDx4QCV5NP3mEmNRt_FvqtANceFJqHNFjqvdIqOdKg/s1600/ferret.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsvqb2vOmKk_R0gGpctpwKj0y9hQ9oVXZAIpDwMZ12SbDjWJvtf-cVskzaxV2zr5RJa1hN_D-xIow1NnvnwtWimn76d6qBQDx4QCV5NP3mEmNRt_FvqtANceFJqHNFjqvdIqOdKg/s320/ferret.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Since paying attention to the important news of the world often
creates a sense of…a sense of (what is the phrase I’m looking for?) a sense of
utter despair (yeah, that’s it) there are times I only allow myself to look at
the fluff news items which pop up on the internet. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The other day I saw an article about a man who purchased what he was told, and his eyes believed, was a pair of toy poodles. When he took his new fluffy doggy friends to the vet for a checkup he found out he had something other than canine companionship. He was now the proud owner of two ferrets. (What does one call that? Ferretine companionship?) Not just any ferrets, but two ferrets that had been raised from birth on a steady diet of steroids to increase their general size and hair teasing and blow drying to increase their general fluffiness. </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Ferrets on steroids? Who comes up with this nefarious plan? Is some guy actually sitting around his living room one afternoon thinking: “Hey, I know what I’ll do. I’ll get a couple of newborn weasel-like creatures and pump them full of steroids so they grow to abnormal size. Oh, oh, then I’ll wash their hair over and over but never use any conditioner whatsoever so they have split ends all over their bodies. This will mean I will have two giant frizzy ferrets. Oh, boy! Then I will sell them to some unsuspecting rube at the local bazaar by convincing him they are actually toy poodles. Yep, that makes perfect sense. I am totally doing that.”</span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Maybe having steroid-ridden ferrets for pets is better than toy poodles. Can a toy poodle chase rats, mice and rabbits out of their burrows? Can a toy poodle perform the weasel war dance? What’s a weasel war dance and will it replace the Harlem Shake? A weasel war dance is described by Wikipedia as “a frenzied series of sideways hops and bumping into things” which serves as an invitation to play and almost anything would be better than the Harlem Shake. Are toy poodles crepuscular? Wait, what in the name of William F. Buckley is crepuscular? Well, besides being darned fun to say crepuscular means ferrets sleep 14 - 18 hours a day and are only active around the hours of dusk and dawn. There are frequent days I myself longs to be crepuscular. </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">This could be the beginning of a whole new industry in pet services. In sports the press often refers to steroids and the like as performance enhancing drugs or PEDs (or sometimes Tour de France Juice). PEDs could now be pet enhancing drugs. Think about it. Gerbils the size of Rottweilers would be cool. However, you would need one of those plastic tube habitat things as big as the tubes at Chuck E. Cheese's to accommodate your cute not-so-little Gerbzilla. A canary on steroids might be neat. If nothing else you could scare the kitty litter out of the neighbor’s cat who keeps waking you up in the middle of the night yowling on your backyard fence like Pavarotti with an ingrown toenail. </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Why stop at sports and pets? Let's look at getting performance enhancement into more walks of life. First we need to decide just what performance enhancement would look like in different fields. Would the PED heighten what the person was supposed to be doing or would it enhance what they typically do? That is a genuine danger. </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">For example, let's look at insurance salesmen. A PED could make it so the salesman clearly and concisely explains the different plans available and kindly matches your needs and budget with the proper product. Or, he could become the most insufferably insistent and preternaturally boring person who ever plunked himself down on your couch, drank your coffee and proved as likely to leave as the odor of a skunk which died in the crawlspace under your kitchen. </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">If PEDs were used simply to enhance what we already do they probably need to be controlled more stringently than other drugs currently outlawed. Sure they can help a baseball player who
already has amazing hand-eye coordination and strength enough to send a nine and a quarter inch spheroid 390 feet onto Waveland Avenue send even more balls out of the park but used in other situations the results could be catastrophic. Just think what would happen if we enhanced the current skill set shown on a regular basis by politicians. We are back to the phrase utter despair.</span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Christopher Pyle thinks if he used PEDs he would definitely become crepuscular. He can be reached
during the hours around dusk and dawn at </span></i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</span></span></i></a></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">. </span></i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-17623141196035098782013-03-27T18:13:00.000-07:002013-03-27T18:13:19.266-07:00This is Only a Test<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLJiiFrzo4uhuOnyIeL-9k5Ob_Vg31HbaNXJrEZpxz7kuxA3LqD7y7pZEpUT3AbP2xf3T18LFsKRk59Rv3P-zbHdcsyQ8ZT_0H6tdq02EVbp_weZlIdnaBxnjsZgf9G33j2SoEkw/s1600/Toyota+MR2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLJiiFrzo4uhuOnyIeL-9k5Ob_Vg31HbaNXJrEZpxz7kuxA3LqD7y7pZEpUT3AbP2xf3T18LFsKRk59Rv3P-zbHdcsyQ8ZT_0H6tdq02EVbp_weZlIdnaBxnjsZgf9G33j2SoEkw/s1600/Toyota+MR2.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
It was about six months ago I turned 50 years old. At the time I took it in stride. It barely
made a ripple in my psyche. Now I am
starting to worry I may be having an issue and turning a half century old could
be at the root of my current malaise. I
don’t want to be a stereotypical gray-haired, pot-bellied father of nearly
grown children who steps out of normal everyday life into a mid-life crisis but
that may be where I am headed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
OK, even if I am going down that path “crisis” is way too
strong a word. I am thinking I may be suffering
from a mid-life
truly-inconvenient-stage-of-life-in-which-I-use-words-like-malaise-to-describe-myself
phase.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first problem I face if I am going to fully jump in and
have a mid-life crisis is I still love my wife.
This makes it very difficult to chase young women in an attempt to
recapture my youth. This brings us
immediately to the second problem. If I
were to recapture my youth in regards to chasing young women it would mean I
would spend an inordinate amount of time staring at the phone with the
particular object of my affection’s phone number clearly written on a scrap of
paper in plain sight yet my finger is unable to dial the number because my
brain has ground to a halt of epic proportion making it so I cannot read
numbers or form coherent thoughts much less words capable of wooing. (That is probably another contributing factor
to not being successful with the ladies. I use words like wooing.)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m sure those of you who have been reading my musings for
the last few years find it unbelievable this silver-tongued wordsmith did not
have any woman he wanted eating out of his hand, au contraire my mon petit
chou.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My very first slow dance with a girl was like many other
boys, in the gym of a junior high school.
Everyone knows how that setting is just dripping with romance. If junior high school gyms had been around in
Shakespeare’s time his greatest love scenes would have surely taken place with
a basketball goal hanging dreamily over the heads of the starry-eyed
youths. Also, like many of the boys of
my generation that first slow dance with a girl…I probably ought to stop saying
it that way, it implies my previous slow dances were with a boy…anyway, that
dance occurred while the Bees Gees played over the tinny sound system and since
it was a slow dance it was “How Deep is Your Love?” To this day whenever that song comes on the
radio I am immediately whisked back to that spring night at Liberty Junior High
and I have to fight the sudden and dramatic urge to jerk the steering wheel
hard to the right and drive into the nearest tree. You see that dance didn’t end so well for
me. We were silent for the first three
minutes and 40 seconds. I was
concentrating on at least approximating smooth steps and arduously avoiding
direct eye contact for fear of…for fear of …just plain fear. Therefore
I didn’t talk. Then she broke the
silence by uttering these words which will forever live in my memory and
dreams: “Boy, this is a long song.” My
next slow dance was about six years later and the Bee Gees were nowhere to be
found.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, my mid-life crisis will not involve dancing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fine, what is the next best thing? Most men who start feeling that life has
passed them by look to get into a racy sports car and drive as fast as they can
to see if they can catch up with it. I
am far too cheap to do that. Don’t get
me wrong. I think it would be fun to
have a cherry red convertible which goes from zero to fifty a heck of lot
faster than I did. Then I think again
and realize a convertible is only really a good idea in southwestern Kansas
about seven hours a year. If the
temperature isn’t arctic blast or oven hot the wind is blowing like it needs to
get to Nebraska before dinner. There is
sometimes an afternoon in late April when it would be perfect to put the top
down and go bombing around town. I
repeat, sometimes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, it appears I do not have the makings of man willing to
fully commit to a mid-life crisis. I
guess I will have to be content with buying a new hat and moving forward with a
fabulous wife and a sensible sedan. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle will
entertain other suggestions for how he could pursue a jolt to his current life
at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-20474345251260504132013-03-12T12:21:00.001-07:002013-03-12T12:21:57.203-07:00Frozen Snack Foods of Joy<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4-GchgzSdHUQml5SpnUvgURzAJk1epPxZufTI3hWrg9Wvf6_9emhaxCalWiJVGxx6UK07-9tmrUSC7na7Pwix0CbXuzi27luG5fIWbZNlbHqIaOGDvmX5hR94GsWWDzjSvuGP8A/s1600/cheez+doodles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4-GchgzSdHUQml5SpnUvgURzAJk1epPxZufTI3hWrg9Wvf6_9emhaxCalWiJVGxx6UK07-9tmrUSC7na7Pwix0CbXuzi27luG5fIWbZNlbHqIaOGDvmX5hR94GsWWDzjSvuGP8A/s320/cheez+doodles.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
The other day a podcast I listen to (WNYC’s Radiolab) shared
something truly cool. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A story about Aleksander Gamme. He is a Norwegian, uh, he’d probably say “adventurer”,
where I’m more likely to say “person-who-clearly-hates-being-comfortable”. He went on a trip all by himself to
Antarctica in order to walk to the South Pole.
The hosts of Radiolab are talking to him because of a video he posted to
Youtube. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is near the end of his trek, day 86. He is tired and he is well beyond
hungry. He comes across a stash of
supplies he buried in the snow towards the beginning of his trip. He has no real memory of what is buried there. He pulls out the bag of stuff and starts to
go through it. At first it is just stuff,
Vaseline, zinc oxide, some rope but then comes the Holy Grail and the Golden
Fleece rolled into one, a bag of Cheez Doodles.
He yells out to the miles of snow with such energy and enthusiasm I very
much felt genuine happiness myself. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do yourself a favor and find the video on Youtube. The reaction is priceless, unadulterated
joy. It is also really entertaining to
hear a string of blissful Norwegian words with the undeniably English words
“Cheez Doodles” wedged in the middle. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Watching the video and listening to the podcast guys talk to
Mr. Gamme got me to thinking about just what causes happiness. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you ask someone what was the happiest day of their life
they usually respond with the day they got married or the birth of their
children. I don’t think so. Now before you jump to any conclusions,
gentle reader, I am happily married (more so than most I’d wager) and I believe
my children to be the best parts of my life.
The problem is getting married and the process of childbirth isn’t really
happy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Think about it. The
day you got married may have been a great day and there may have been many
fabulous moments but there were also moments of stress or even abject
terror. When my wife and I got married
it was not an extravagant affair. It was
at the Reno County Courthouse. The judge
was late and then we had to use a substitute judge. No stress there. To be totally honest I just remember
snapshots of the day, pleasant snapshots mostly, but really the happiness of
the marriage is in the bigger picture, over time, because I chose wisely. The day of marriage was not a giddiness
sandwich served on two slices of delight.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The three days in which I experienced the birth of my
children were better characterized by anxiety and a sense of being superfluous
than a feeling of bliss. All of them
were c-section deliveries so I didn’t even get the role of Lamaze coach. My jobs were to distract my 65% numb wife and
make sure not to look. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Really, having a tiny person forcibly removed from the
midsection of the person I like best is not a day at the beach. For Kid #2 they had to completely knock my
wife out. Tell me it is fun to be in the
room with your betrothed when she has her eyes taped shut and various medical
professionals looking for the prize in the cereal box that is her abdomen and I
will tell you you are wrong. The
majority of the time I was staring at the doorknob. Then I heard the newly minted Alice start to cry. In my mind that meant she was now separate
from her mother and it would be safe to look.
Bad choice. Her head and
shoulders were “out” and she was angry.
I went back to examining the doorknob.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, back to the yelling at the sky happiness Mr. Gamme felt
about his Cheez Doodles. Most of us
don’t get to that level of happy but we do have little moments of giddy. The other day I opened my desk drawer at work
and inside were two, count ‘em, two, fun size Milky Ways. If the ladies in the office hadn’t been
nearby I would have cried out with joy.
The other day one of my imaginary friends (I use that term for people I only
know via the internet – don’t worry, no stalkers) remarked about her great
happiness about getting a brand new sponge for working in the kitchen (“It is just
so clean!”). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It really is those little things which we need to stop and
truly enjoy, and maybe even whoop to the sky about. People will mock you, but who cares, you’re
happy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle
wishes you and yours a wonderful week of whooping. He can be contacted at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-39629524119217539272013-02-22T09:26:00.001-08:002013-02-22T09:26:34.056-08:00Taking a Drive-In Down Memory Lane<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Nothing like several inches of snow to make one wax
nostalgic for the carefree days of summer.
One of the things I think about when casting back to hot temperatures
and extended sunshine is drive-in movies.
Yes, I am that old. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrC9TbP1-KwWKfhAAcSkyytabMH6Qhu2BJt1Wy7s6qJjibogM5bu3YovkJ5uhCN1AULLSG23sI5dIvc6igamD5hA4690hSWSoJDpDijr7p803iSQ3MpKtOq2_DJkpp2fdPiTPUbg/s1600/Drive+in+speaker.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrC9TbP1-KwWKfhAAcSkyytabMH6Qhu2BJt1Wy7s6qJjibogM5bu3YovkJ5uhCN1AULLSG23sI5dIvc6igamD5hA4690hSWSoJDpDijr7p803iSQ3MpKtOq2_DJkpp2fdPiTPUbg/s320/Drive+in+speaker.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Truthfully, my family didn’t go to drive-ins as a summer
time treat. Dad would watch movies every
once in a while but they didn’t make movies like Red River anymore so he wasn’t
all that interested. Mom could tell you
where she sat and what she was wearing when she saw Ben Hur in the theater but
she didn’t want to go. My experience
with the bygone movie presentation was as a worker. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the end of my sophomore year in high school a friend
invited me to work with him at the Airport Drive-In (give yourself 50 bonus
points if you ever went to a movie there).
At that time there were two drive-ins in the area, the Airport and the
South Hutch. The South Hutch played
movies you could take the whole family to for a wholesome evening of
entertainment. The Airport….didn’t. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our specialties were four movie marathons featuring one of
two things, crazed men wielding chainsaws, knives, machetes, or really pointy
sticks (not all of them were very bright) or women wearing short shorts, tiny
bikinis, spandex or cheerleader outfits (at least until they changed into the
tiny bikinis). Now don’t worry, I was
safely sheltered from these films which could poison the young innocence of a
bright eyed high school boy because I worked in the concession stand. (On second thought you don’t get 50 bonus
points if you ever went to a movie there. You should probably have points
deducted, or simply think better of admitting it to anyone.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It really was a great job.
The manager was an older lady who would mother all of the high school
aged workers. We all got along. Most of us were friends before and after the
job and my cousin Kevin even met his future and still current wife working
there. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There were three basic roles at the theater. The box office: This was almost always a girl who sat out in
the tiny little “house” at the entry gate selling tickets to the degener…uh,
customers. The concession staff: These were the hard-working stiffs popping
popcorn, frying up burgers and shilling the sodas. The ramp man:
This was the guy who was charged with walking the ramps, that is the
inside vernacular for where all the cars parked to tilt ever so slightly
upwards to look at the screen, in order to keep order and catch people who
tried to drive in via the exit and charge them for admission. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now for a peek behind the curtain of that mysterious and
mostly extinct exotic workplace the drive in.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The concession stand had its standards for the food it
served. These standards may or may not
have been the ones suggested by the health department. We would bag up any leftover popcorn in a big
trash bag to be used the next night. The
rule of thumb was if you carefully took a single popped kernel of corn and
gently bit down on it with just the maxillary and mandibular central incisors
and heard a squeaking sound the popcorn was officially too old to sell. Also, yesterday’s hamburgers became today’s
cheeseburgers, the cheese covered up the bits of bun which had stuck to the
hamburger patty as we prepped them for cryogenic preservation (stuck them in
the freezer) for the next day. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In our defense the clientele was not possessing of highly
discerning palates. We would often laugh
at the people who would purchase popcorn tubs big enough to transport a defecting
family of Cubans to Key West with extra buttery flavored oil (that is what we
were required to offer the customers – why there was a pang of remorse on the
part of the company asking us to exercise some truth in advertising on this
matter while doing all the other stuff we did was beyond me) multiple hot dogs
and hamburgers, a package of Twizzlers, a package of Corn Nuts (the loudest
foodstuff ever devised by man) a package of Milk Dud (it was not a package of
Milk Duds because the air conditioning didn’t work so well in the storage room
and the individual candies had coagulated into one giant Dud) and then yell at
us because we didn’t carry any diet soda.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle will
be checking with his lawyer about the statute of limitations on certain actions
and possibly share more drive-in information in his next column. He can be reached at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-75175521838472516442013-01-30T17:28:00.000-08:002013-01-30T17:28:04.933-08:00Another Opening Another Show<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s show week! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dodge City High School is presenting its yearly musical
theater extravaganza and the two younger Pyle children are rather prominently
featured. This means for them a week of
excitement, a week of costumes and hair styles, a week of dancing, a week of
singing, a week of very little sleep, a week of becoming a bit snappish with
the father who asks too many questions about how it is going and a week that
will live in their memories for a long time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It wasn’t intentional that we would become a family of
performers, just sort of happened. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I did a couple of plays in high school but that was only
because the Inimitable Rob talked me into it.
My lovely wife, Claudia, was a singing and dancing Molly Brown, you
know, the one who proved to be incredibly buoyant, at her high school but
neither of us did any performing again for several years. Our kids, however, have been much more
involved in shows in their younger lives as well as high school. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Daughter #1, Emilyjane, was born with a theatrical
bend. She would emote at the drop of a
hat. She loved to dance even before she
could walk (this mostly consisted of rocking back and forth on her bottom in an
emphatically rhythmic manner). As she
got older she danced as often as she walked.
If she needed to go to the refrigerator to get the milk, she danced, if
she was going out to the car, she danced, if she was traveling through the
aisles of the grocery store, she danced.
For some reason whenever her mother or I decided we would dance in the
grocery store it was mortifying to her, wicked double standard if you ask
me. She would later become a singer as
well and burst into song more frequently than a hyperactive canary. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Daughter #2, Alice, didn’t seek the spotlight as often as
her sister but she never shied away from it either. There was one time in a performance of the
children’s choir at church she was handed a solo the morning of the performance
because another child was sick. She kind
of muffed the opening of it. The choir
stopped for a second, the kind-hearted young boy standing next to her called
out to the congregation that she had just got it today, and then she proceeded
to nail it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Only Son, George, takes after his father with very strong
hermit tendencies. He will spend hours
by himself but he always had a very strong imagination and in his younger days
his pretend play was pretty elaborate.
He was oddly without stage fright at a very young age. Even as a toddler he was given a costume to
resemble the outfit his old man wore as the mascot for the Dodge City Legend
Basketball team and was willing to be silly in front of several hundred folks
as Mini Marshal Hoops. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am a pathetically proud papa. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Emilyjane was in middle school and I drove her to a music
contest. Anyone who has ever been to a
school music contest knows it is two to four hours of driving in order to have
six to seven hours of sitting around with a very intense three or four minutes
of performance. She sang “Shenandoah”
while I sat in the back of the room trying lot to let anyone see that I was
crying like a menopausal woman watching “The Notebook”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Alice was given one of the featured roles in Seussical when
the Depot Theater Company did the show a few years back. Since she was not as prone to perform around
the house I have to say I was genuinely surprised and blown away when she truly
opened up her pipes and sang her big song, luckily it was dinner theater and I
had a napkin handy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
George was in a show I directed for the Depot Theater
group. We had added a couple of kids for
extras. I was surprised when the musical
director gave him a couple of short solos in some of the big chorus
numbers. The result was ten different
performance nights with the director/dad at the back of the house smiling like
an idiot. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Alice takes the stage as Sandy (wearing a wig because
her hair is too short to be a fifties teenage heartbreaker) and George stands
up there as Kenickie (with his hair slicked back like a BP pelican) I will be
very glad the lights are on them and not on me.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle is
glad his children enjoy the arts, but regrets this means none of them can
support him in his old age. He can be
reached at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com<o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-89326881013298890902013-01-19T08:36:00.004-08:002013-01-19T08:36:56.796-08:00Another Milestone around my Neck<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
There are times it is actually pretty hard to come up with
what to write about in these columns. I
know the gentle reader is shocked to find out the bon mots and Algonquin Round
Table style wit which flows from my brain through my fingers onto the keyboard
and into your hearts and minds every other week requires a strain of my
creative abilities. The preceding load
of Grade A plant food was brought to you by the good folks at Ferti-lome. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was one of those weeks.
So, I sat myself down at the dinner table and announced I was brain dead
and had nothing to write about. Here are
the suggestions which followed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Lovely Wife said I could write about how I was now old
enough to have a daughter who had gotten engaged. Uff-dah.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, my oldest child is wearing a ring on her finger capable
of cutting through glass or at least through her boyfriend’s life savings. It was not a shock. The two of them have been together for quite
a while now and they had been talking about their future like it was a fait
accompli marriage was going to happen.
But still it makes a father pause when the little girl he helped teach
to walk and talk, the little girl who crawled into his bed at night and
promptly used her feet and elbows to lacerate his spleen and kidneys, the
little girl who used her big brown eyes to talk him into getting dogs and cats
who then ruined carpet and furniture, the little girl who needed prom dresses which
cost more than all the clothes hanging in his closet, the little girl who now
goes to college and will probably not come home as often as he would like, the
little girl who looks too much like him, the little girl who laughs at his lame
jokes, the little girl who still wedges herself between him and his wife when
they try to hug and says “baby sandwich” is getting married. I never should have let her mother talk me
into teaching her how to walk and talk.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The young man really is a good guy. He even came to me at my place of business to
ask for her hand in a very old fashioned and respectful manner. I told him my concerns, which were not many,
and he acknowledged and addressed all of them.
I felt like I was then beholden to list the dowry he would receive. I almost didn’t have enough goats to seal the
deal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He really did surprise her when he popped the question. For the last few years my wife and kids (I am
too socially inept) have hosted a caroling party a few days before
Christmas. My daughter’s soon to be
fiancé decided he would ask her when the group was at his aunt and uncle’s
house during the caroling. Everyone had
sung a couple of songs when he announced he had something to say. The cell phone cameras of all the people who
had been clued in all sprung into action.
He got down on one knee and she started crying. I was standing at the back of the throng with
the boyfriend’s father. After the
original hubbub subsided he called out he hadn’t heard the question. I then chimed in that I hadn’t heard the
answer. She said yes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All those cell phones recorded the moment for
posterity. Which will be great for so
many reasons. Not the least of which is
my daughter was wearing what she considers to be a hideous Christmas sweater.
Her sister and some of her friends who knew what was going to happen tried to
figure out a way for getting her to change.
Everything from a friend thinking about spilling something on it to her
sister throwing herself on the fashion grenade and claiming she wanted to wear
it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The wedding is two years away but that doesn’t mean the last
few weeks have not been filled with planning and discussing and planning some
more. I, being the voice of reason, or
wet blanket, depending on your point of view, keep reminding people the wedding
is two years away and people might change their mind. Oh, not about getting married, but rather
what songs they will want played at the wedding. They just look at me funny and go on. That happens a lot in my house.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My suggestion on what to write about for this week’s column
was how much I like ketchup.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle
approves of the boyfriend, approves of the marriage and very much approves of
the two year waiting period. He can be
contacted at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-29309254335560648982012-12-05T18:17:00.002-08:002012-12-05T18:17:34.571-08:00The Sound of One Hand Tweeting<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Okay, this made me laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I have mentioned before that I have a Twitter
account. The majority of the people I follow write jokes. I do not follow people who use it to discuss
the mundane day-to-day of their lives (Oh, boy, I just love milk) or who use it
to push an agenda (You must send money today to protect the planet against the
ever increasing scourge of people wearing plaids and checks at the same time)
or people who simply use it as a way to self-promote (I will be selling my hand
woven raffia iPhone covers at the supermarket parking lot this Saturday).
Recently I clicked on the follow button for the Dalai Lama. He doesn’t talk about the tasty mustard seed
dressing he had at dinner last night, ask for money to buy more robes for
disadvantaged monks or peddle his mountain top tours. He says things that promote kindness and
reinforce the ideas that we need to be nice to each other. I like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Here’s the part that made me laugh. Twitter sends me e-mails suggesting people I
might want to follow based on who I already follow. The e-mail I got after choosing to follow the
Dalai Lama said “Here are accounts similar to who you followed. Similar to the Dalai Lama… The Onion.” The Onion is an organization dedicated to
silly. It creates fake news for the
purpose of entertainment and has very little concern about offending
people. So, on the one hand we have a
man who has dedicated his life to spiritual enlightenment for himself and as
many others as he can possibly reach and on the other hand we have a group of
people who like writing stories with as many double entendres as humanly
possible. Yeah, that connection makes
total sense. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now let’s examine the idea that the Dalai Lama has a
Twitter account. The Dalai Lama is
thought to be the reincarnation of a series of spiritual leaders who have
chosen to be reborn in order to enlighten others. The Dalai Lama is the highest
lama of Tibetan Buddhism and the highest goal of Tibetan Buddhism is to achieve
Buddhahood, or a state of perfect enlightenment. This perfect enlightenment means one is freed
from all mental obstructions, one attains a state of continuous bliss attached
simultaneously with the knowledge of emptiness, and all limitations to help
other living things are removed. That is
perfect for Twitter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Let’s look at the perfect enlightenment one
component at a time. One is freed from
all mental obstructions. Have you spent
much time on Twitter? Or any part of the
internet? Mental is not what it excels
at so mental obstructions would not be present. One attains a state of
continuous bliss attached to the knowledge of emptiness. Happiness brought about by emptiness may be a
better definition of the internet than a global system of interconnected
computer networks. Finally, all
limitations to help other living things are removed. The internet is pretty magic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sounds to me like Twitter was created to facilitate
the Dalai Lama’s mission statement: end
suffering in 140 characters or less.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The e-mail from the Twitter minions brought to mind
something else about the internet world.
Just how many people know stuff about me? The Twitter guys know who I follow. The iTunes guys know what music I buy. The Google guys know what I don’t know. The Wikipedia guys know I am gullible enough
to believe the Wikipedia guys (see the previous paragraph comprised of Dalai
Lama facts). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now I lead a preternaturally uneventful life and my
deepest darkest secrets include the guilty pleasure of eating food designed for
eight-year-olds. (Froot Loops, they’re
not just for breakfast anymore.) Also,
the fact I listen to entirely too many showtunes for a fifty-year-old, happily
married, father of three in western Kansas.
(Yes, I even have stuff from Glee on my iPod. Is there a support group for this?) So the
fact chunks of my life are open to those living in the cyber-world doesn’t
scare me all the much. Really, anyone
who hacks into my internet browser history would be asleep in the first ten
minutes. After the third story about
Jeff Withey’s prowess blocking shots and the fifth blog entry from a guy who
wrote for television comedies back in the 80s they might not just doze off,
they might start contemplating a fork in their own eye to spice things up a
bit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Christopher
Pyle truly does believe that spreading kindness is important and hopes to end
prejudice especially against grown men who listen to Julie Andrews and Brian
Stokes Mitchell, on purpose. He can be
mocked at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-5813823780498560862012-11-21T17:37:00.001-08:002012-11-21T17:37:15.297-08:00The Good and the Bad of Fooling Yourself<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
I have spent entirely too much time recently being annoyed
with life. Truth be told, I have
absolutely no good reason to be grumpy.
The Thanksgiving holiday is supposed to be a time of reflection and
taking the time to be grateful for the things which enhance our lives. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The A #1 things I have to be thankful for are my two
fabulous families. The family I grew up
with and the family I am now spending my time with as a father and a husband. It is truly amazing how important it is to
choose wisely when getting married and both my parents and I hit that one out
of the park, on the first try I might add.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the next few paragraphs I am going to focus on something
my lucky-enough-to-be-born-into family gave me.
This something has proven to be one of the greatest gifts ever given to
me and it wasn’t even purposefully given.
It was an organic construct which grew slowly and was not-so-intentionally
cultivated by my father, mother, siblings and some of my most influential
friends. What is this mighty treasure,
this psychological boon, this windfall of nature and nurture combined? Well, I’ll tell you. It is a wholly unrealistic world view (sound
of phonograph needle being scratched all the way across an album).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wait, a second, did I just say I am grateful for an UNrealistic
world view? You bet. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before I describe this unrealistic worldview let me place
one caveat in the mind of you, gentle reader.
I do not wish to say that everything in my world view is fantasy. It is not.
The reason I call it unrealistic is it tends to ignore a lot of what is
real in the world. The things which are
counter to the worldview I wish to subscribe to are frequently not given the
importance of the things which support it.
That being said. Here we go…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My family was fully comprised of readers. Every flat surface in the house was home to a
book, a magazine or a newspaper. This
means knowledge and intellectual awareness are components of my worldview. I think this is important and then I project
that sense of importance onto other people in my life. This, like most every aspect of my
consciousness, is a double edged sword.
It means I approach people believing they are thinking, curious people
which helps us meet on a plane that cultivates respect and equality. The problem is I do, from time to time, come
across people for whom thinking is, shall we say, not listed on their personal
Billboard Top Forty of daily activities. When that happens it is seldom the
other guy who is left with a sense of disappointment and disillusionment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My family also valued creativity. My father was a weekend painter. He mostly did landscapes and he did them
nearly every Saturday and Sunday for the majority of my youth and young
adulthood. (This was proven without a
doubt as we cleaned out our ancestral home and every time we moved something we
found yet more paintings. Most of them
currently reside in my basement and whenever anyone visits they are not allowed
to leave without a painting in hand and a promise to display it somewhere in
their home.) My mother was a
writer. She wrote letters, not e-mails,
letters which were informative, interesting and displayed wit. She also wrote poetry. The most common poems were to friends and
family on their birthdays.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The good side of being raised by creative minded people is I
get true enjoyment out of the creativity of others and feel most engaged with
life when I am being creative myself.
That feeling of high engagement is valued and cultivated but it does not
reap benefits of the more material nature (the bad side). I have been writing for this illustrious
publication since June of 2007 and recently broke $2,000 of income reaped from
that five and a half year tenure and that amount is Warren Buffet meets
Exxon/Mobil money compared to what I have earned from every other writing
product I ever created. I do not do it
for the money but I would really like to do much more writing and less of what
I really do every day but living on $363 a year would not make my children very
happy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still after examining the negatives I get much more positive
from my unrealistic worldview. I’m
keeping it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle is
thankful for many things. Not the least
of which is he will be snug in his bed during all the Black Friday door buster
sales. You can contact him at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-26097725920446225642012-09-30T16:14:00.002-07:002012-09-30T16:14:40.930-07:00Bad Guys and Thank You<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
I spend a lot of time around people. Because some of what I see is downright depressing
I often try to distance myself from the actions of others by dispassionately
observing and attempting to draw logical conclusions from the evidence and
data. This may make me seem to be a
rather aloof person who sees himself as being better than other people. After spending a couple of minutes examining that
description of me I decided I can live with that. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first observation was something I had been kicking
around in one form or another for some time and then I heard a guy on a podcast
(Marc Maron) put it pretty succinctly. His
basic message was people’s brains are hardwired to “find the bad guy”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This doesn’t just mean it is easy to spot Darth Vader is the
bad guy because he is dressed like Johnny Cash’s closet exploded quite near him. It means in run of the mill life people look
for who they will cast as the bad guy in their own personal life story. Like the guy at work who has no problem shirking
his duties so other people’s lives become more difficult. It is not unreasonable to cast him as your
own personal Snidely Whiplash while you Dudley Do-Right through your day. The inept boss who constantly makes the lives
of his underlings downright crummy is another example. That guy, on some level, deserves being
mocked by his employees as they call him Voldedork a.k.a. He Who Must Not Be Able
to Pour Water Out of a Boot Even with the Instructions Written on the Heel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is another motivation behind people finding the bad
guy in their lives. This motivation
could be called “blame displacement” (also swiped from Mr. Maron). This is when people have screwed up all by
themselves but look for a bad guy to blame.
We have probably all done this at one time or another. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like that time you were backing up out of the garage and due
to your own inattentiveness you got too close to the wall and broke the
rearview side mirror. Most of us just
start using all the words our mothers told us never to say and then go looking
for the duct tape. The people who choose
to go the blame displacement route will start looking for the bad guy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oh, it wasn’t my fault I broke the mirror on my car. It was because of those darned politicians. If Congress hadn’t passed the Smoot- Hawley
Tariff of 1930 which raised tariffs to the highest levels in U.S. history since
the Tariff of 1828 than the economy might have rebounded faster during the
Great Depression and World War II might have never happened which means Japan would
not have been forced to become a country who only made electronics and cheap dependable
cars which eventually caused American homebuilders to shrink the size of
garages built post 1979 to sizes not conducive for parking anything larger than
a Datsun 240Z and I wouldn’t have ripped the rearview mirror from the door of
my man sized Chevrolet Pangaea. Curse
you Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now to the second observation. People do not say thank you often
enough. Oh, sure people say “thanks” all
the time but that has become as meaningless as the word “fine” when said in
response to “how are you?” It is simply
pro forma.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before we go on I feel I must say I still want people to say
“fine” when I ask them how they are. I
do not have the time or the stores of sympathy required to listen to a litany
of maladies, both major and minor, that people are actually experiencing at
every given moment of their lives. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How are you? Oh, my
sacroiliac is acting up, the Eustachian tube in my left ear filled with fluid
last Thursday and is really causing me some discomfort and I think I may be
developing a case of scurvy because you just can’t find good citrus fruit
around here. (Don’t care, sorry.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back to thank you.
This week I worked on a project which wasn’t all that fun with a group
of co-workers. After it was all said and
done I sent them a heartfelt thank you note.
The responses I got made it look like I had volunteered to give them a
kidney. If thank yous had been more
common in their lives mine would not have elicited such a response.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle is
certain there are times he deserves being called Voldedork, but he is
particularly pleased with that joke so he won’t mind. You can contact him at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-16889928328674161152012-09-01T13:30:00.003-07:002012-09-01T13:30:35.474-07:00A Writer and his Needy Tweets<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
In previous columns I have admitted to being a very flawed
individual. I am lazy. I lack the will power required to abstain
from snack foods. My avoidance of
confrontation reaches pathological levels.
I’ll stop there because this column is limited to eight hundred words
and if I am going to get to the point I really want to make I need to limit the
list of my character limitations. Which
brings to mind another flaw, I am horribly long-winded. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now to the latest flaw I am trying to work through. I am too needy of positive attention. Everybody craves and appreciates compliments
and accolades. Where I may be different
is I want it for too many things and in an unrealistic timeframe. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Case in point is my existence on Twitter. Twitter is a social network that allows
people to share all sorts of information in bursts of 140 characters or
less. Some people use this internet
contrivance to share important stuff like what they had for breakfast. Others use it for promotion of their money
making endeavors. The people I choose to
follow mostly write jokes, which is all I try to do. This is where my neediness comes into
play. I will create a wonderfully
crafted Tweet (that is what one calls the individual units distributed on
Twitter). Then I spend the rest of the
day looking for validation, frequently, no, really a lot. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are two different ways to show approval for things written
on Twitter. If you particularly like one,
you can click an icon which labels it a “favorite”. A higher form of acknowledgement is when a
person “re-tweets” something. This means
they liked it so much they then send it out to all of their followers. Whenever anybody does one of these actions
the individual Tweet is tagged with the number of favorites and re-tweets it
has received. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is my problem. I
am constantly going to my Twitter page clicking on my Tweets hoping for
favorites and re-tweets like a love starved puppy jumping up and down at his
master’s feet demanding attention and belly rubbings. No really, I am that pathetic, just not
nearly as cute. One problem is it
doesn’t happen all that often, the favoriting and re-tweeting, that is, the
neediness happens all the time. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the moment my Twitter account has 74 followers. Last week I had 75 and went through an
inordinate amount of grief when I lost one.
The defector was not one of my actual friends, meaning someone I have
seen with my own eyes in real reality.
So the fact that I was emotionally jarred by the fact a person (a person
I have never met, would probably never meet and may not have even liked if I
did meet) took less than five seconds to intentionally “unfollow” my
sporadically attended to and even more sporadically entertaining 140 character
attempts at humor is not the healthiest of reactions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have one follower who is a real life comedy writer and has
over thirteen thousand followers of his own.
When he favorites one of my Tweets I have to squelch the desire to
contact all the girls from high school who would not give me the time of day
and inform them that I am officially a funny person and they sure missed
out. I am able to resist that urge for
two reasons. First, it would accomplish absolutely
nothing and second, because contacting all the girls from high school who
showed zero interest in me would require a very large amount of time and
effort…days, probably weeks. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A few months ago this cyber-buddy wrote a Tweet in which he
suggested that people follow me and then said “He is a funny guy, a nice guy
and he teaches kids and cares about them…We need more like him.” I was thrilled beyond words and as I stated
earlier in this column I am by nature long-winded. I never would have thought I’d get my
tombstone epitaph from Twitter especially one written by a guy who has also
written words spoken by Homer Simpson.
It also doubled my follower total in less than twelve hours. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Writers are often very needy people and comedy writers are
the worst. I want to take a moment to thank
those of you who have reached out to me because of this column: Janet, Dick, Joe, Letty, Sandy, Ann, Linda,
Jennifer, Kim, John, Jim, and most especially, Doris and Larry. Your kind words mean more than you know…and
maybe more than they ought to because I am not a well man.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle
greatly appreciates everyone who reads his columns. He can be contacted at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-66603698638693948392012-08-18T15:59:00.000-07:002012-08-18T15:59:01.781-07:00The Book of Booking Broadway Tickets<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
For those of you who remember our last installment in this
running history of my life and thoughts my daughter and I were in New York
City.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have to say I am always surprised when people remember
things I say in this column or say outside this column for that matter. I am the father of three children who are
currently teenagers and I am an administrator of an elementary school. Those things conspire to make me one of the
least listened to people walking the Earth.
Flight attendants giving the safety speech before take-off at least have
the paranoid sure-we-are-all-going-to-die-a-fiery-death passengers listening to
them which is probably more of an audience than I have on any given day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyway, I mentioned last time that my daughter and I are
both big fans of theater. A big part of
why we went was to see real honest-to-goodness Broadway shows. The impossible to get tickets at this time are
for “The Book of Mormon”. I tried to get
tickets more than a month ahead of our visit and availability was nil. My daughter is a lover of old-fashioned
musicals so we salved our “can’t get the hot ticket” sense of disappointment by
getting tickets to “Anything Goes,” the big Cole Porter revival. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That didn’t go so well.
First, the big star (Sutton Foster, one of Emilyjane’s heroes as well as
being one of her “best friends” on Twitter) left the show before we were going
to be there. Okay, we can live with
that, the show is still going to be fun.
Then we hear the show is going to close eight days before the night we
have already purchased tickets for rolls around. Eight days, really?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I call the ticket agency to see about getting a refund on
the tickets. The lady is very nice and
asks if there is anything she can do for me.
I ask if she could talk them into doing the show until we can get
there. She says that is a bit above her
pay grade. She asks if there is another
show we would like to get tickets for. I
say how about “The Book of Mormon”. She
laughs, politely and all, but it was a genuine laugh. You can’t blame a guy for trying. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, flash forward to when we are actually in New York. We decide to take a chance and just go
directly to the box office of the theater where The Book of Mormon is
playing. We get there just a few minutes
after it opens in the morning, which is 10 AM, those theater folk don’t get up
with the chickens. The guy in front of
us in line is in the middle of making a purchase. His transaction is not making it look good
for us. He is buying tickets for a
performance five months in the future and he is paying a premium price and when
I say premium I mean Bill Gates and Paul McCartney would even split the cost
with their dates. So that guy finishes his
purchase leaving behind his credit card number and a pound of flesh and I step
up to the window.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My opening line was “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t start
laughing until I actually leave the building.”
I then said we were looking for tickets for anytime that week. He started to mention the premium tickets and
I said thanks but I’d prefer not so sell my kidney for the money to see a
show. I didn’t really say that, but I
did say thanks but no thanks. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then he said just a minute.
He looked at the sheet of paper on his desk. (Digression alert) Okay, this theater pulls in thousands of
dollars each and every night. This
theater is in the heart of the biggest theater district in the world. This theater has been in existence since the
1920’s. This is no nickel and dime
outfit. Well, the sheet of paper he is
looking at is a run of the mill computer printout list with dozens of scribbles
done by hand in red ink. There isn’t a
more efficient system, really? (Digression
over) He then excuses himself and steps to the back of his tiny office and asks
somebody we can’t see a question. He
then returns and asks what we are doing Friday afternoon. Since I am known for my witty repartee I say
“I hope I am sitting in this theater watching your show.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that is just what happened.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Christopher Pyle loved
the show and was surprised by the uplifting message they snuck in under all the
humor, much of it a little, um, off color.
You can reach him at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-64582037303155896792012-08-03T17:05:00.001-07:002012-08-03T17:05:12.253-07:00Traveling Beyond the Comfort Zone<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I like being at my house.
Several of my all-time favorite people live there. Wanderlust is not part of my DNA and I find I
get more and more curmudgeon-like as I get older and assiduously avoid being
with large groups of people (large being anything over six). I put all that aside a couple of weeks ago
and got on a plane which took me over 1,500 miles away from my comfy house to a
place populated by way more than six people, New York City. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was a trip taken by just me and my oldest daughter,
Emilyjane. We had been planning it for
weeks and weeks and I have to say it turned out pretty darned good, even if
there are entirely too many people everywhere you turn there. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our hotel was just a couple blocks from Times Square so
after we got safely checked in and our gear stashed we walked over to be
wide-eyed Kansas tourists. Do you
remember the game Red Rover from your grade school days? That is the game where two groups of people
face each other and call out to send over a person to see if he or she can
break through the line. Well, standing
at the corner of 45<sup>th</sup> Street and 7<sup>th</sup> Avenue waiting for
the light to change felt like a weapons grade plutonium version of Red Rover. “Red Rover, Red Rover, send the entire
population of Inman right over.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actually, the pedestrian traffic lights on New York streets
are more suggestions than actual rules of the road. It surprised me how quickly Emilyjane and I,
law-abiding Midwestern salt of the earth people, started brazenly crossing
against the light. At first I joked that
New Yorkers can smell fear but really it is not a matter of fear. New Yorkers are not sharks looking for weak
and scared tourists to bite in half. The
crux of the matter is they simply respect decisiveness. If you are willing to make a choice in a
timely manner and stick to it you will be fine (but you still need to be fully
aware that a taxi cab driver will run you over without spending any time at all
trifling with the brake pedal or a sense of remorse). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I very much enjoyed seeing the big city through the eyes of
my daughter. When we were first riding
into town from the airport her head was on a swivel trying to see as much as
possible. She actually said, “I need
more eyes.” We are both big fans of
theater but I missed occasional parts of the shows we attended because I was
watching her watch the show. Definitely
one of the best perks of being a dad.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was also fun to experience parts of New York through the
eyes of smaller children, especially smaller children who I was not in the
least bit responsible for because traveling with toddlers in this environment
would be exhausting. We were in the
Disney store. The lower level was mostly
stuffed animals, clothes and princess dolls.
We were standing on the second level a few feet from a display of super
hero toys when a little boy reached the crest of the escalator and the various
Avengers came into view. He immediately
made a beeline for the nearest Iron Man toy saying, “This is more like
it.” </div>
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I have to say the sheer volume of smiling and good will was
a bit of surprise to me, the unseasoned traveler. I still had a prejudice that big city folk
would be, not so much rude as entirely too driven and harried to be fun to
interact with, wrongo. Truly, except for
the one food service guy who was moving at his own sweet time causing Emilyjane
to contemplate jumping over the counter and deep fat frying his fingers because
he didn’t seem at all concerned that she had ordered a drink and her current
state of thirst was making her just a tad irritable, everyone we deal t with
was pleasant, helpful and laughed and joked right along with us. </div>
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Frequently in life I have found the ability
to freely admit ignorance and ineptitude followed by the willingness to put
myself in someone else’s hands makes that person not only smile but they work
really hard to help. Everyone likes
feeling valuable and I have no trouble doing my best Blanche DuBois (sans
southern accent, flowing frock and alcoholic tendencies) and relying on the
kindness of strangers.</div>
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<i>Christopher Pyle will
probably do more columns about the New York trip, maybe allowing him to write
it off as a business expense. You can
contact him, unless you work for the IRS, at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8496794.post-29347387791507321662012-07-05T17:52:00.007-07:002012-07-05T17:52:59.267-07:00Some Things are More Important than Others<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">What is important to you?</span><span style="background-color: white;">
</span><span style="background-color: white;">Would you rather watch The Bachelorette or Community?</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Would you rather go to a fancy restaurant or
a baseball game?</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Would you rather spend
time with the cast of Jersey Shore or take a ball peen hammer and crush three
of your own toes?</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">It all boils down to priorities.</span></div>
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The disconnect between one person’s priorities and the
priorities of the other person is the place where animosity lives. The problem is sometimes people put too much
importance on some disagreements that just aren’t that big a deal. </div>
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When my wife and I were first married there were minor
differences in priorities which caused points of friction (since those points
of friction were nearly 22 years ago we obviously got over it). She had a priority of cleanliness that I did
not. To me putting something away meant
it was simply out of the way. To her it
had to be inside something else. She
wanted things in cabinets, drawers and the like whereas I was fully content if
things were in places that were not likely to trip me as I walked to the
bathroom. </div>
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The secret to getting along with others is being able to distinguish
between the priorities that are most important and require a certain level of
agreement and the priorities that can be allowed to be different. </div>
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Priority that can be different: Mac versus PC. This is like the old Chevy versus Ford
debate. Sure there are differences but
is it really worth hating one another. “My
laptop cost more than orthodontia, is thinner than a fine crepe served in a
Parisian restaurant and came with an official Steve Jobs mock turtleneck so I
am cooler and better than you” is just not a reasonable mindset. </div>
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Priority that can be different: Celine Dion is the best singer ever versus
Celine Dion is just Barry Manilow with slightly higher levels of estrogen. With the invention of headphones people do
not have to listen to each other’s musical choices so this doesn’t have to be a
line drawn in the sand. </div>
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Priority that can be different (Kansas edition): KU versus K-State. I have to say I have been very much taken
aback by some of the animosity displayed in this rivalry. Really?
They are two institutions of higher learning where individuals learn
thinking skills and abilities which prepare them for success in the world and
create fully rounded human beings. So,
why do some people approach the relationship more in the manner of Protestants
and Catholics in 1972 Belfast? </div>
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Priority that can be different but lately has become
entirely too contentious: Republican
versus Democrat. I am not so old that I
can remember the Whigs or anything but this animosity and severe level of
vitriol just isn’t like it used to be and can’t be of benefit to anyone. If you listen to the characterizations
created by the opposition advertisers we have a choice for president between a
man who thinks only the rich deserve to be taken care of, that both American jobs
and his own personal money should be sent overseas, and who flip-flops faster
than an X-games skateboarder after drinking two dozen cans of Red Bull and the
other guy who wants government to decide whether grandma gets her insulin,
wants the country to become a socialist reflection of European elitism and is a
closet Muslim. Neither description is
all that accurate but accuracy is not the goal, fear and hatred is. </div>
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Other priorities that can be different: James T. Kirk versus Jean-Luc Picard (also
see William Shatner versus Chris Pine), Bugs Bunny versus Woody Woodpecker, tastes
great versus less filling, Buster Keaton versus Charlie Chaplin, the first
Darrin in Bewitched versus the second Darrin in Bewitched, Gene Wilder Willy
Wonka versus Johnny Depp Willy Wonka, designated hitter versus no designated
hitter, Coke versus Pepsi, Burger King versus McDonald’s, boxers versus briefs,
kindle versus nook, any of the eleven actors who played Dr. Who versus any of
the eleven actors who played Dr. Who, paper versus plastic, Superman versus
Batman, and, finally, Star Wars before George Lucas monkeyed with it versus
Star Wars after George Lucas monkeyed with it.
All of these basic choices will be made due to basic priorities held
dear within the very DNA of a person but none of them should cause an inability
to get along with people who chose the other side of the issue.</div>
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<i>Christopher Pyle
thinks the only nonnegotiable choice is Christmas presents must be opened
Christmas Day not Christmas Eve. You can
argue with him at </i><a href="mailto:occasionallykeen@yahoo.com"><i>occasionallykeen@yahoo.com</i></a><i>. <o:p></o:p></i></div>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09297534804232977528noreply@blogger.com0