BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I used to wonder if my family had ties to Mexico. We’ll get to why in just a bit…

If you happen to follow me on Facebook you probably saw a status update last week lamenting the fact that I had a fairly obnoxious Christian witnessing to me. She’s actually a nice lady, but she’s a little too passionate about her beliefs – literally to the point of being outright disrespectful about anything that doesn’t match her way of thinking – which, as she tells it, it God’s way of thinking. But, I’m not here to get into that… Suffice it to say, I received just as much advice on how to handle her from my FB friends as I did advice from her in the first place. My bad. I probably should have kept the whole thing to myself. But, again, I’m not here to get into that…

You see, on the heels of all that, I attended a family reunion – EKay’s side. This portion of the family, much as I love them, are also deeply ingrained in their religious beliefs. All good. However, some of them take the same approach as the young lady I dealt with the previous week – that being that even the simplest of conversations must be turned into a witnessing and/or sermon. At past gatherings this has forced me to excuse myself and go hide. This go around, fortunately, I was spared such, and had a great time. But, again, this has little to do with my suspicion of a Mexican heritage – or does it?

Here’s the thing: Being at odds about religion is nothing new to me. Portions of my own family were just as ingrained in their beliefs, especially on my Dad’s side. In fact, my grandfather literally “ran the pews” at his church. Whenever I would spend summers back in Kentucky, working on the farm, Wednesday and Sunday always involved Church. A lot of it. And there were other Church events – suppers, picnics, etc – where I would end up as well.

Again – where does this south of the border heritage thing come in?

Well, my grandfather would say grace at every meal. Now, while I may have been at odds with them about religion, by the same token I was respectful about it as long as I wasn’t being beat over the head too badly. So, when grace would come around I would bow my head, remain silent, and listen. My grandfather, Joe Sellars, would invoke Jesus, request blessings upon the food, the land, the family, and anyone else sitting at the table. If someone else needed to be included in the prayers they were, and then he would wind down to the end. As he approached the final “amen,” his mumble would become less intelligible – at least, to me. For years I struggled to understand what he was saying but never could quite put a finger on it, other than to the best of my hearing he was saying: Fiesta now and then, uh-huh…

Given that Joe Sellars ran the pews at the church, I think maybe there’s something to that. Apparently he was more of a “partier” than I ever knew.

I had it in my head that I was going to save this story for the magnum opus autobiography I would write in coming years, but since I really doubt anyone much cares to read about how I got up, went to work, then came home, over and over again for 400 pages, I thought maybe I’d just put it here.

But, who knows? Maybe something interesting will happen before I kick off, and I WILL write that autobiography anyway. If I do I think I’ll go ahead and call it, Fiesta Now And Then…

Just for fun I’ll have the release party in Water Valley, Kentucky and hold it on Cinco de Mayo…

More to come…

Murv

So, my kid is brilliant.

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. In fact, I’ll repeat it again right now for good measure. My kid is freakin’ brilliant. She’s in the gifted & talented program at her school, she has a reading comprehension level umpteen jillion grades ahead of her own, and a vocabulary that will sometimes astound you. Not always on top of the slang, as evidenced by an earlier blog entry, but hey, I’d rather she not be.

So, why am I telling you this? Believe it or not, it actually has something to do with the story.

You see, being brilliant – I did mention that, right? Anyhow, being a brilliant child, the O-spring is also enrolled in the College For Kids program at a local community college campus. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s kind of a neat deal. Gifted kids from all over get to come and take classes in all sorts of things – from oil painting to biology to robotics to chess to geo caching, and a ton of stuff in between. They have two sessions – winter and summer. Winter happens on Saturdays for 5 weeks. Summer happens for one straight week in August.

See where I’m heading?

Yeah… See there, you’re brilliant too… Anyway, the O-spring managed to pull the three classes she wanted this session, (like the real deal, it doesn’t always work out that way), which means we have to head out the the college right around morning rush hour.

Being a bit anal retentive about punctuality, we tend to leave a little early, just in case something happens to slow us down, and then we spend 15 minutes sitting in the lecture hall doing that Dad – Daughter bonding. This means she talks to me about Pokee-Man cards and I listen. Sometimes we even talk about things that old dad actually knows something about, such as writing. She has it in her head that she wants to be a writer. I have yet to find a suitable way to discourage her from that folly. Who knows? Maybe she will actually be successful at it, unlike her pops. Time will tell… But, I digress as usual.

On the day in question we were heading up the main drag, only a couple of miles from home, and we ended up stuck behind some guy in a four door sedan who either had no idea where he was heading, or simply wasn’t awake. From what I could see, the only thing of real interest to him was his cigarette. Well, that’s not entirely true. He was also deeply involved in some sort of driving game which entailed speeding up, slowing down, and going from 40 to 0 in nothing flat for no apparent reason. Another apparent part of the game’s strategy was to make sudden swerves to the right, then jump back into the lane.

This went on for a good mile or better, with me unable to get around him due to other traffic. Eventually I began to mutter all manner of expletives, some of which I had been using for years, others of which I had learned from Luets (my multi-lingual buddy). I even made up a few names for the guy and issued detailed instructions – upon deaf ears, of course – about what he needed to do with his car if he wasn’t going to take the time to learn how to drive it.

The O-spring watched and listened in silence. She’s heard ol’ pops rant before, so this was no big deal. She just watched the idiot in front of us, and waited to see what would happen.

Finally, cigarette man screeched to a halt, turned on his blinker, and made a painfully languid turn into the parking lot of the McDonalds. Thankful that I was now going to escape the rolling roadblock and still have plenty of time to arrive at the college for the first class, I sped up and pushed us along on our way.

My 10 year old daughter, still quiet, swiveled her head to watch the lurching car putter around the McDonalds parking lot as we drove past. Before the arches had even made it into my rear view mirror, she clucked her tongue and in a matter-of-fact tone announced, “Well… Apparently somebody hasn’t had his Frappe yet this morning.”

Told ya’ she was brilliant. How could she not be? With a sarcastic mouth like that, she’s obviously got my DNA…

More to come…

Murv