The Writer's Poke

As my parents continue to grow older, I often wonder what it will be like to live without them. My assumption is that I will, in fact, outlive them, although stranger things have happened. We live a few hundred miles apart, and so each visit is important. They could live for years more, but I can measure their lives in the number of days that we'll actually be together physically. Some of my friends have already experienced the loss of a mother or father, or both. What's even more amazing to me, though, is that some have cut off all ties with a living parent. In other words, their parents have became the living dead. What will they feel when their parents actually die? Will they regret the years of life lost, or will they stand by their decision? To the best of my knowledge, none of my friends who have stopped talking to their parents were sexually abused, but all would claim a never-ending mental abuse. One of the toughest transitions for parents is to recognize when a son or ...

Empty your mind of all thought and belief. Do you believe in God? Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not against the idea of God. In fact, I would side with Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan, who believed that we have no way of knowing whether God exists or not, but to make the leap of faith and live as though He does is highly illogical. In no other realm are people allowed to make such illogical leaps of faith. Rather than giving in and believing, why not withhold judgement and live a life of curious inquiry? Other God critics, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens come to mind, seem to have more at stake in proving God's non-existence. Perhaps this is a natural knee-jerk reaction to a world that just overwhelming assumes that an Old Man in the Sky exists. To be neutral, then -- to be agnostic -- is not an option, because the voices of the believers are too loud. Recently, someone tried to use the line on me that it doesn't matter if God exists or not; we should simply li...

How much is virginity worth? Almost all of us probably gave it away for nothing, but one twenty-two year old Women's Studies graduate student decided to auction hers off to the highest bidder. Somewhat incredibly, the bidding has risen to 3.7 million dollars. Are there really no more twenty-two year old virgins left in the world? The student admitted that she found the bidding war funny, as virginity isn't even valued anymore. Apparently it is, and the irony is that it took something like this stunt to prove it. Explain the value of virginity. OR What would you do for 3.7 million dollars? "It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue ." -- Voltaire

I was one of those people who never took care of their car. Why bother? I thought. First, the repair would cost more than the 1978 Oldsmobile Delta 88 was worth. And second, I didn't have the time to sit around waiting for a mechanic to fix my car. I had to live, damn it. When the muffler finally fell off, though, I knew that I would have to buy a new one. So I took it to Midas, and five hours later, I had a new $400 muffler on my less than $400 car. And I thought to myself, "Great. That's the last muffler I will ever need to buy." Yes, I was naive, but then again, in a literal sense, that was the truth. Midas guarantees all mufflers for the life of the car, and if I had decided to drive that car until the rust had totally disintegrated it down to the tires, maybe I wouldn't have ever had to buy another muffler. The real point is, though, that no matter how many times you go to the mechanic, the doctor, the dentist, the grocery store, the mall, the post office, th...

This may not be a new idea, but it's a new experience that I'm now living with. Everyone knows that I'm a father, and it's a great conversation starter. "How old is Octavia now?" they might ask. And I tell them, following the baby protocol by giving her age in months. What I've discovered is that Octavia is my walking, breathing calendar. My wife and I have been together for ten years, for example, but the passage of married time isn't that noticeable. On the other hand, I've been with Octavia from the very beginning. And even "before" the beginning, for that matter. When she turned 15 months old, it struck me. Not only is she 15 months old, but I'm 15 months older than I was when she was born! Maybe that's not an earth-shaking realization, but she will always be my age-marker, and as she grows older, I will see in her my own aging. How do you feel about aging? What reminds you that you're growing older? "Thirty-five is a...

Every week he would come over for an hour, and we would work through one of the Watchtower publications. We did this my entire senior year in high school. These sessions were interesting to me, but I was never converted. In a Watchtower publication, you read through an "argument" that's always heavily documented with Bible verses. Then at the end of the article, you're asked to review questions that direct you back to the verses you've read, or to points made in the article's argument. I found this frustrating, as there was no incentive to think outside of scripture, or beyond what the article said. For example, one article talked about the idea of the Watchmaker. I didn't know that this metaphor had actually been around for 200 years. And unfortunately at that time I didn't know that Richard Dawkins had recently written an entire book refuting the idea. All I knew was that according to the article, I was supposed to see the logic that humans must have...

As I'm writing this, a virus is spreading across Facebook. It's called "25 Things about Me." The idea is to brainstorm a list of 25 things about yourself, and then post it for your friends to read. When you post it, you "tag" 25 of your friends, asking them to post 25 things about themselves. And so on. And most people, if they're bored and have nothing better to do, are pretty considerate about complying with the request. If you care about the people doing the posting, then the lists can be somewhat revealing, and at least mildly interesting. If nothing else, the lists show you which of your friends are creative, and which ones are willing to reveal real secrets. What 25 things did I post about myself? To find out, you'll just have to join my friends list. Try this activity yourself. Brainstorm a list of 25 things about yourself. Did any of the items surprise you? Are there any items on this list that you wouldn't want people to know? "Onl...

Once you hit your mid-30s, it's probably common to wonder: "Where do I fit in? Am I young? Am I old? Most likely, I'm somewhere in between, but what does that mean?" My daughter is still a toddler, but I have friends my age who have kids in high school. Are we really the same age? In all likelihood, they will be grandparents in just a few years. Can I really be the same age as potential grandparents? Such thoughts make the mind shut down. Just this morning someone my age said, "We're young enough," and the idea really struck me. There will come a point when I might not be able to say that. What age is that I wonder? When I reach that age, will I automatically know it? One thing for certain: I plan to age the way nature intends. When I start to go bald, I will shave my head -- no comb-overs for me, thank you. No tummy-tucks, no face-lifts, no fancy hair dyes to cover the gray (sorry Emmit Smith). No pretending that I'm not getting older, and that at ...

If you ever watch House Hunters , you know that most people have very limited vocabularies. Q: "So, John, what do you think of the kitchen?" A: "It's nice ." Q: "And how did your lobotomy go?" A: "It turned out very nicely ." Sure, it makes a great drinking game, but why can't the average person be more descriptive? Why is it that everything is "nice," or if we're even more jazzed by what we see, we think that "very nice" adequately expresses the idea? Doesn't that mean that there are various levels of "nice," and if so, why are we so opposed to using a more specific word to more vividly describe what we're seeing. And more importantly, what we're feeling. In contrast, some MTV "reality shows," such as Parental Control and Next seem horribly scripted. While watching, you just know that the people involved in the shows would never talk that way or that they would even be capable of ...

One of the little things I like to do when I stay in a hotel is check out the number of escort services listed in the town's yellow pages. Any city that's moderately big has at least a few, but probably no place has more than Las Vegas. Hell, if the phone company was smart, they'd create a whole separate directory -- maybe instead of the yellow pages they could call it the black book (or the red-light book?). Las Vegas is one of the few places where such matters are not just hidden in phone books and industrial areas. Skin is advertised right on the Strip. Of course I've noticed that the farther north on the Strip you go, up around the Stratosphere, for example, the more likely you are to find Mexican-Americans handing out baseball-cards of Veronica and Amy, and maybe the twins -- Misty and Sarah.  Most people tend to walk on by, ignoring the outstretched offerings of the smut peddlers. But the last time my wife and I hit the Strip, we collected all the cards we could...

Denny's used its Super Bowl ad to invite America to a free Grand Slam breakfast, and families with litters of children responded. The offer was good from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and when I headed to my local Denny's at 1 p.m., the parking lot was still completely full, and cars were parked down the street. Even the adjacent vacant lot was half-full. All this for a free Grand Slam that retails for four bucks on weekdays. People were standing in a line that extended out the door, patiently waiting in 10 degree weather for up to half an hour. For Denny's. Was this an advertising stunt gone wrong? "I'd hate to be a waitress working at Denny's today," I heard one Nascar -jacket wearing gentleman say and then spit three feet from me. At that point, I decided a free meal wasn't worth the hassle. After tax, a coke, and a tip, I was planning on it costing me at least five dollars anyway, and so I headed down the street to Culvers .  Did Denny's really lose any mo...

If I were somehow granted three wishes, my initial reaction would be to wish for health, wealth, and happiness. But why wish for things that are within my power to control? That is, at least to some extent, I control the power to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. To "wish" for these things seems to indicate that they must be given to me by a power greater than myself. And I reject that. So what's worth wishing for? What about something like World Peace? That's something that a lot of people would like to see happen, but is it worth wishing for? What I'm working through in my own mind is: when does the wish eliminate a person's willingness to work for it? If we can work for world peace, then why sit around wishing for it? Save the wishes for the impossible. If it's possible, you don't need a Genie. Just the willingness to believe and work hard. So, if you had three wishes, what would you wish for? And more importantly, knowing there's no one around to...

Steve Martin said that when you listen to banjo music, you can't be angry at the same time. The instrument's sound is just too upbeat. Listening to Ace of Base works the same principle. Here's "Life Is a Flower," which is the same tune as "Whenever You're Near Me" with alternative lyrics. Silly video, but you can't watch it and be angry at the same time. Or, if you are angry when you start watching it, you won't be by the end -- unless you're one of those few people that hates Ace of Base, which means you really hate life, and there's no cure for you.

The first Super Bowl I can remember watching was Super Bowl XV. The Oakland Raiders beat the Philadelphia Eagles, and it wasn't even close. After that game, I inexplicably became an Eagles fan. I grew up in a small town in central Illinois, and all of my friends were Chicago Bears fans. But even in first grade, I didn't understand why people felt obligated to support the team in their region. Yes, I liked the Bears, but the Eagles were my team. But why didn't I become a Raiders fan? And what explained the negative reaction I had to other teams? I hated the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the silliest of reasons -- I just didn't like their uniforms. Other teams, though, I simply hated without cause. One of those teams was the Pittsburgh Steelers. An Eagles fan might hate the Redskins or the Cowboys, and that is easy to explain as they all played in the same division. Explaining a hatred of the Steelers is not so easy. Not only did the Steelers play ...

First there was the group known as the Confessional Poets. They incorporated highly autobiographical elements into their poetry, and it changed the way people thought about "proper subject material" for poetry. Then, anyone who has read autobiographies in the past 15 years has surely noticed that no subject seems off limits. Want to talk about your incestuous love affair with your father? Go for it. Want to discuss your history of one-night stands? Why not? I bet you'll sell a lot of books. Personally, I don't have any problem with this. If you're a writer, the number one source of material that you have is your life. And yet, we don't want to hurt the people we love. So we have all kinds of material that most of us never delve into, not because we're scared of "going there," but because we don't want to make those closest to us angry or jealous or bitter by what might come out. For the longest time, I can remember wanting to be a writer, but...

She had only lived in the dorms for 3 semesters, but already she had had 12 roommates. How is that even possible, I asked her? She narrowed her brow, and quite seriously said: "I need to be more sentient."  I had never heard anyone talk that way, and it really turned me on. But a strangeness about her set off alarms in my head, and while I toyed with the idea of getting to know her better, I finally decided that I didn't need the drama in my life at that point.  In one of our last conversations, for example, she asked me out of the blue if I believed in monogamy. That's usually not a subject that just pops up, and I didn't have an immediate response. When she saw my hesitation, she chastised me, saying, "I thought you were smarter than most people." All I could do was bow my head in shame.  After that, I'd seeing her hopping around campus in her brown pelt-like coat, but I decided it would be better if I let this one get away. Describe one of the wei...

So much depends upon a blue plastic hippo resting on its back beside the Big Buddy cup.

So, do babies really "change everything"? There's little doubt that they change a lot. For one thing, I'm a lot more productive. I have to be. Tavi wakes up at 6:30 a.m., and that means I no longer sleep in. She's usually in bed by 8:00 p.m., but then I feel obligated to make the most of my evening free time. No more wasted evenings watching mindless TV. Well, except for maybe American Idol, but even that I record so that I can save time by skipping the commercials. But I made a commitment that some things would not "change", and so far, I've been able to keep that promise to myself.  One quick example: the last time I picked up Tavi  from daycare, as I pulled into the drive, I counted the vehicles. There were eight, and all were minivans. I still drive a Beetle, not a minivan. And that small victory was enough to make me crack a smile. I am still not a minivan chauffeur. Have you ever made yourself a promise that you wouldn't change in some ess...

Four pretty young women were riding their bicycle through Fox Ridge state park, and they stopped when they saw us staring at them. "Hallo," one of them said in a heavy German accent. "Could you tell us please which the direction is to Charleston?" We pointed the way, and off they went. Why would four German girls be riding their bikes through central Illinois? Since we had lived there all of our lives, it was hard to think of Coles County as an international tourist attraction. And yet, here were four girls that helped us see something old in a new way. Because, although we had lived there all of our lives, we had never taken the time to bike around the entire countryside. Doing so would be silly, right? Of course the last time I was in Italy, I saw American tourists who paid a fortune for the privilege of doing just that. And the Italian countryside was really no more extraordinary than Coles County. It was simply farther away from home. What places near your home ...

For Writers: So, how do you like your eggs? I like mine scrambled, but my wife prefers her symmetrical. Confused? Me too. Some things you just don't learn about a person until you've lived with them. Take egg distribution, for example. The average egg carton contains twelve eggs. Well, when you remove the first egg from the container, what happens? You have an unfortunate imbalance. But when you remove that second egg, you have a choice to make things right. If the first egg selected was bottom row furthest to the left, then the next egg selected must be top row furthest to the right. That is, if symmetry is your game. Why is symmetry so important? It's all about balance. Take two eggs from the left side of the cartoon, for example, and watch how much heavier the right side becomes. The difference in weight between the two sides could cause the remaining eggs to spontaneously explode, and who wants to clean up that kind of mess in the kitchen? What idiosyncratic habits have...