Dirty Santa

 Each and every year, we’ll continue to play this game. It’s one of those things that we just do without really having a reason for it. I think—though the History Channel has yet to confirm—at one point in time, this game was actually fun. It must be true, or we wouldn’t play it year after year. Repetition transforms into tradition and here we are, years later showing up at a Christmas party with a crappy gift, only to leave hours later with an equally crappy gift. Some of you are thinking: what’s wrong with this Dirty Santa? I’ll tell you.

The Name

The name: Ew, right? The name has to go. The issue is complex though. We want to call it something that puts out a ruthless thievery vibe while also capturing the Christmas season’s championed fatty. But dirty Santa puts a bad mental image in my head. I either picture a wino mall Santa whose beard color matches that sweat-stain-of-a-white-t-shirt shade or some creepy, toothless, pervert Santa that has to inform you when he moves into your neighborhood.

The backside of the issue is that the name just seems to have found a natural comfort zone in all our hearts and so every other name sounds so foreign that we reject it. For example, I had a youth group leader years ago who tried to call the game “Greedy Grinch” because of the exact reason I’ve just mentioned (see “toothless, pervert Santa” line). Greedy Grinch was, in reality, no different than if we had called it by its original name, but I felt like we were catering to a younger, dorkier crowd. I remember thinking, “Oh, great. We’re about to play for finger puppets,  something Adventures in Odyssey or various things both ugly and homemade.”

People Fight

This game can get ugly… really ugly. This is probably a product of the fact that all the gifts usually suck (more on that next), and so everyone is fighting over the one good gift. What’s hilarious is when people cry or get all nasty about it. Someone takes their gift card, forcing them to settle for a Christmas themed Beanie Baby, and all they’re thinking is, “Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.” Or maybe they get a really sour attitude about it and just act all pissed off the rest of the night. That’s funny too, I guess.

The Gifts Suck

At least some of the gifts have to be good. Some of you are thinking: I’ve been to parties where the gifts are good. Trust me, you are the one percent.

Here is a quick guide: Gift cards are unoriginal and lame. Cash is equal to gift cards in how lame it is, but it’s worse because you’re both lame and you didn’t think ahead. I estimate that an entire space station could be made out of how many ugly coffee mugs full of chocolates have been given as dirty Santa gifts. [Though, I went to a party recently where the coffee-mug-with-stuff-in-it song was sung as beautifully as it can be... twice]. Christmas CD’s: No.  Typically (and by typically I mean always) homemade things are a bad idea. If it really was the thought that counted, they’d be great, but there are those of us who have been stuck one too many times with peanut nativity sets and potholders—just buy something. If you’re going to bring a calendar, it had better be epic, and I mean EPIC. All-time worst gift: a piece of lace fabric with cedar shavings inside tied together by a ribbon. It’s not an air freshener, it’s ridiculous.

There’s always the gag gift idea, right? Wrong. If you’re thinking of getting a gag gift for a Christmas party, stop. Ask yourself this question: Am I truly a funny person and is this truly going to be a funny thing, or am I just really trying to be funny? It’s getting to where all of us (actual) funny people are afraid to branch out with the humorous gifts, because we’ve got to take into account, “Oh, wait, Terrance is coming and he’s probably bringing something he thinks is hilarious like an over-sized pair of granny panties with a chocolate stain in the crotch, so I had better think practical.” Here’s a good thought to consider: funny people are often cautious about getting a funny gift because they don’t want to take the risk of not being funny. Un-funny people usually tell everyone what their gift is before it’s been opened (Don’t be this guy).. If you’re really eager for some sad sack to open up that framed picture of you mooning the camera with a smiley face painted on your better side, chances are you’re in the more despised category of the two.

It takes too long

One thing that is absolutely necessary is that there’s some kind of time limit. No one wants to watch some spotlight-starved person take forever to pick between a purse organizer and a self-grooming kit (as a side note, these two gifts together may be criminal). People lose interest fast, which could also be corrected by the gifts being better. We should transform this game into a speed game, making take a total of about 30 minutes, maybe. Otherwise, we all lose.

There is actually a good way to play this game. Are you ready? The answer is to not play. Let’s face it, this game is as boring as the first week of bowl season. I don’t know of too many people that would throw their hands up in outrage if we simply forgot this game altogether. We’re already bequeathing too many stupid things to our future generations. Let’s take dirty Santa off the table. Come on, America. I believe in you. Maybe there are passionate Dirty Santa players out there that really pride themselves on their strategies and gift ideas, I don’t know. I do know that I’m happy not being the best at Dirty Santa. I’m happy trying to speed the game along in order to get back to the party and going home with a worthless gift.

Notice two things: first, I said “many of the ones I’ve seen,” most of which are freshmen girls. You could well dress like the Amish and not come into contact with me. If you’re a modest mouse, just know that I’m not talking about you. Second, notice that I said they are dressed “like common whores,” not that they are common whores. I will be no more guilty of assuming a girl dressed as a whore to be a whore than I would of shooting some child in the head with a shotgun because he dressed as a zombie for Halloween. Now, if he should try and eat my brains, that’s a different matter—he’s going out of his way to convince me that he actually is a zombie. I suppose the same could apply if the girls that are dressed as streetwalkers come trolloping by me, completely inebriated and having some unfortunate-looking blokes on their arms, equally unsober; they’re going out of their way to convince me that they’re actually a flock of floozies. So, why is it so wrong to assume that they are?

So what are they wearing? I’m so glad you asked.

I’ll start with one of my personal favorites (and by that, of course, I mean one  of the options I find the most “interesting”). Rompers are not bad in theory, but so few people can actually pull them off. I would estimate that 0.001% of the entire world looks good in a romper, but this post is not about the way that girls’ clothing looks in general—it’s about why it makes the girls look minxish. Here’s a good starting point: when I see rompers, I think prison garb with class minus the class. Something about them, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about them is just not okay. On top of that, I witnessed a female-type human wearing one the other night. I figured that she was a she because I noticed the length of her hair, the general shape of her figure, how petite she appeared, et cetera. As if that was all insufficient to proving her femininity, she was also winking at me with her eyes open (if you know what I mean). Yes, in a public place, showing a very private part was an apparent woman, all too proud of that which made her so. This is the bottom line for why rompers are to be avoided; ironically, her “bottom line” was also showing as she shamelessly walked away.

Next. Shoes are great, am I right? Well, except for Toms, but, in general, shoes are a great way to gird your feet from the damages that life hurls your way. High heels have a different purpose. The purpose of high heels is to force the woman’s heels into a position superior to the toes, extending the legs and hindquarters to a tightened position, also positioning the bust outward. I’m not trying to write an essay on fashion’s direct effect on the female body; I just say all of this to prove a point, that high heels have a purpose. This purpose (generally speaking) is to improve the perception of the woman by men. How much is this purpose negated when men see the women hobbling around drunk, clearly unable to wear their big girl shoes? Heels are meant to make you look better, girls. You don’t look better when you topple over onto your face because you just had to wear stilettos, and tomorrow when you’re at work/school/church explaining what happens when your face loses a fight with the sidewalk, no one is going to care how tight your butt looked, least of all you.

Another thing, I really think that many girls are getting their clothing altered. I don’t mean that they’re letting out the waist a bit, or hemming up the legs of their favorite blue jeans. No, I speculate that they’re taking box cutters to their favorite tops in an effort to show more skin. I’m not dogging the skinsation that has always bewitched modern man, I’m making a direct attack on the clothing that appears to have served as a practice for a group of blind preschoolers that are learning to use scissors. I see tops that are cut diagonally across a shoulder, cut in jagged patterns down the back, wavy patterns above the navel. If someone had told me that it was common for female roommates on campus to, as a way of spiting each other, cut pieces off of each other’s clothing, I would totally believe it. It just looks odd—maybe it’s just the inner notion that I have desiring all things to be symmetrical.

What it boils down to is this: I am not the cutting edge of fashion. I don’t understand wanting to wear anything other than blue jeans with a t-shirt every day. So the notion of trying to go out there to look hot just doesn’t make sense to me. Notice please that I didn’t say that rompers, high heels and/or showing a little skin were evil or contemptuous. I pointed out that wearing things in the wrong way, to a certain extreme or accompanied by liver-pickling behavior are grounds for making yourself appear that way. There are two things to remember here, ladies. The first is this: the kind of guy that is going to give you attention solely because you’ve dressed like a saloon-style madame, is the kind of guy that is going to be done with you when you gain a little weight, quit tanning and stop acting so sexually charged. A relationship, conversation or business arrangement that is dependent on what you wear and how you look is not one in which you want to stay. I could be wrong, I guess—if you can handle the guilt of contributing to America’s obvious divorce problem, test me. My opinion is that the girls that look the best are those that know their physical limitations and dress with class.

Oh, yeah. The second thing to remember is this: you can’t polish a turd. Just moll that over.

Then it hit…

And it’s funny that I’ve never heard anyone say that they started puberty. No, they always say that they hit puberty. You know why? Because puberty isn’t a car, it’s not a college education, it’s not a movie—you don’t start it. Puberty is a big, steel-reinforced, brick wall. It’s something that you hit and, stopped by it, your course alters, your life changes.

Girls Vs. Boys

I will say changing is most likely harder for girls. For boys, we have no defined period of time where it officially starts. We can go on in this vague interpretation of what we think puberty is. We can deny that we’re changing and live freely as children. For girls, it’s like, “Boom, you’re a woman. Now, go buy tampons.” Not to mention that, for girls, puberty is part one of two, and—from what I hear—Menopause is worse. I did notice though that some girls were more aware of their changing than others. Many girls had what I call “Bra-blems.” That is, they needed bras far before they went out with mommy and bought some.  Oh, and makeup. Gosh, there was a time where I can clearly remember walking around a corner at school and jumping back because, apparently, some mother had just okay’d her daughter to start wearing makeup. The problem was that, either she had strong aspirations to pursue a life in the circus, or mommy hadn’t properly taught her how to not look like Pennywise. Mothers, know two things: t-shirts are thin and kids are cruel. Buy your daughter a bra before she needs it, saving her from nipple jokes and offering her the support that only you and a soft cup can give. And, for the love, please teach your daughter that, when it comes to makeup, less is more—unless you want your daughters pursuing a career in which she tells all her clients that she doesn’t kiss on the mouth.

Big Feet

The first thing to hit for me was my feet. They shot out like water skis. I was anything but graceful during this time, tripping over much. A coach of mine, upon meeting me, said, “Geez, Nelson—you sure do have some big, daggum feet.” I quickly informed him that the doctor had told me that, because my feet were so big, I would likely be around 6’3″ when I had finished growing. Well, either I’m not done growing, or the doctor was sadly mistaken—I suppose he could just be some sick-minded liar, but I choose not to think that way about him.

Accutane

I do blame the doctor for one thing though, Accutane. It was his solution to my face looking like it went to war with an army of fire ants and suffered heavy casualties. In all respect to the drug, it works like a charm—if you would say that our atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki “worked like a charm,” that is. This drug effectively reduces the amount of oil your body produces. It works because it keeps your body from the possibility of having acne. I was on the drug for a total of fourteen months over the course of two years. For me, side effects included: dizziness, aggression, severely chapped lips, depression, dehydration, depression, loss of appetite  and depression. As if puberty wasn’t bad enough, they now had a drug to make it suck worse. You may have heard of Accutane. There have been many commercials made by lawyers, advertising how easy it is to win a lawsuit for having taken the drug. It’s okay, though. What doesn’t kill you only makes you want to kill yourself, right? That’s no joke either: listed among the side effects is “thoughts of suicide”.

Voice Cracking

My voice never really cracked much, so that wasn’t too big of an issue for me. I feel like, because of that Brady Bunch episode with the “time to change” song, voice cracking is thought to be the worst part of puberty. While I have mad respect for voice cracking and all those that weathered that storm—especially the girl that used to read the announcements for school in the morning who cracked every other word (bless her red head)—I didn’t even sail that sea. I did have one instance though that I feel is worth mentioning, for your reading pleasure. Many attractive girls went to my school, and I’ll say that I had crushes on most of them at some point. However, there was one girl that, I think, stood out as real beauty. Hallways at school can be a terribly awkward place at times. If you found yourself walking down one with another person headed your way, you had much time to plan how you were going to greet them, if at all. Well, this true beauty was walking down the hallway just above the stairwell that the fat, bitter math teacher used to give us detention for walking down during class change. I was on the other end. The girl saw me from afar, and greeted me. Now, when my voice did crack, it didn’t go all high-pitched, it just broke into silence. I attempted a response which failed to be heard at all, and then tried again to the same effect. I grew worried, for I couldn’t let Brittney think that I was ignoring her. Determined to be heard, I pushed through my breaking voice, accidentally screaming, “HEY” at the poor girl just as she passed me. I suppose that psychopathic yelling is better than being the guy that ignores girls when they’re kind enough to say hello.

Perspective

Another memory that sticks out is that of my second-grade friend, Jeremy. I was staying the night at his house and we were playing outside. He wanted to go off into the woods, and so I went with him. We started crawling around through some pretty tough thicket when he paused to look around. I asked him what he was looking for. He told me he was looking for a mailbox. As the story unfolded, he confessed to me that in the mailbox was a “PB”. It took some explanation, but he finally explained that a “PB” was not peanut butter, panda bears or peppermint bark; it was a Play Boy magazine. Now, I’m in second grade at this point. The previous year in school my teacher asked our class to write the scariest thing we’ve seen on the back of our spelling test. I wrote: “One time I walked into my sister’s room and she was naked.” So, you can understand that my concept of naked girls was not a favorable one. Still though, I knew that, according to Jeremy it was cool. Thank God, we never found that mailbox and went to go play Super Nintendo instead.

Growing Pains

Many of my friends also going through puberty would tell me that their backs were sore, their legs, their arms and shoulders, et cetera. I never had any pain from my bones, my muscles. No, but I had other pains, and with that pain came self-consciousness unparalleled by anything else I’ve known. It came to such a point that I remember my father talking to me as I sat on the edge of the pool at the country club. I didn’t want to get in the water. Looking back, I know this was because that would involve taking off my shirt. My father looked at me, and how I wish he would have whispered what came next. “Son, no one’s going to be looking at your nipples when you’re swimming in the pool. Is that what this is about? There’s nothing wrong with your nipples. Get in the water.” My father was patient and kind towards me throughout the entire process. I have no complaints there. I just so happen to look back upon this with humor… humor and pain, that is. I can still remember talking to my parents in a conversation that surely motivated his stern urging that I get in the water. I asked them if I needed to get my nipples drained. You see, in my sixth grade mind, I was worried that perhaps my body was developing mammary glands, when—in all actuality—I was just in pain from my chest’s swollen totems that my doctor explained away as growing pains. I think Mike Seaver would agree, the show was better than the experience, if only slightly so.

So, what happened? Did I get my superhero powers? Did I transform into this being of pure man who kicks butt with his over-sized feet and has overcome nipple pain?  Of course. I may not can shoot web from my wrists, extend knives from my knuckles or pull off a dress made out of meat, but I have braved the forces of nature. She may have been a cruel mistress, but in the end, I am victorious—and I would say that with confidence in a voice that doesn’t crack, even to Brittney.

First, tanning is a natural process for those of you unlike me who enjoy spending periods of time outside of the shade. It’s a process supposed to happen that way—naturally, not under the lighting of a pseudo-solar coffin you climb in a few times a week to “get some sun,” which, by definition, you aren’t doing. Tanning beds are for darker skin what steroids are for weight-lifting, it’s cheating. And at the end of the day, you just look weird. What’s so wrong with tan lines, men? What’s so wrong with being stark white and better for it, huh?

Second, everyone should wear deodorant. Period. The purpose of such a modern device is to prevent those of you who appear to have been outside a great deal—though we’ve covered that many of you are cheaters in that area—from smelling as if you have been. Deodorant is not meant to make you smell good, it is to prevent you from smelling bad. All this body spray and cologne and scented hair gel just make me think one thing, that you’re a Will & Grace fan. I’ve gotten complements on my pleasant odor before, in fact, a portly black woman now in jail once told me that my particular scent had been arousing her all day. So there. If deodorant is enough to charm yourself into the prison fantasies of such an African goddess, why bother with fragrancing yourself with body spray—also known by straight men as perfume.

Third, the art of written expression is falling to the wayside. I know of far too many men choosing to highlight their more vehement words by adding an exclamation mark at the end of whatever they just “lol’d”. I can take no man seriously who chooses to say things in such ways. Does this make me a snob? No, it makes me a preserver of the English language, a language more terminally ill than Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. It’s dying folks, and every time you muliebral beings, calling yourself men, “lol” at something proceeded by an exclamation mark, you drive the knife further than it ought be thrust. Shame on you. Shame on all of you who’ve ever used abbreviated phrases such as “lol”. And shame to all those of you who frivolously dispense exclamation where it mustn’t be. The far worst of all of you are those of which would utter such a crime against spoken language and then go on about thinking of yourself in any masculine light whatsoever.

These may seem petty, but these are issues to me of a vast importance. Tanning, perfuming your body and saying “lol” don’t convey anything near to what masculinity is supposed to adhere. Instead, in my mind, you’re forever stuck wearing a mesh shirt with capri pants that you’re over and over again trying to convince me are not capris but something you’re calling “clam diggers.” Congratulations, you have succeeded in taking the man out of mankind. Soon, we’ll all be legally obligated to tan and smell like a florist’s while half-assedley communicating about Martha Stewart—the newly required school curriculum. I hope you’re gay, and by “gay” I mean happy, for you’ve done this to us. I can’t prove it, but somehow this hole we’re in, this economic outhouse can all be attributed to somewhere, at sometime men not acting like men but something weaker.

Let me outline it for you. If you own a wand replica from the Harry Potter series, you’re a nerd. If you dress up for the midnight showings of Harry Potter movies, you’re a nerd. If you find yourself pretending to cast spells that you actually know the name of at your friends who also know the names of the spells, you’re even worse because you’re a nerd and you have nerd friends. If you’ve changed your Facebook picture to be some epic screenshot from the coming Harry Potter movie “in honor” of the release, you’re a nerd. If you come out of said movie talking to your friends about the difference between the book and the movie, you’re a nerd. Lastly, if you’ve been counting down the days to this midnight release, you’re most certainly a nerd. The biggest problem is that many of you are quite a few of these put together. You have a wand that you bring to the midnight showing you’ve been counting down to where you’ll sit with your friends who’ve all been assigned a particular character to dress up as (your fat friend with the bad hair got stuck as Hagrid) and then you’ll all leave while discussing the differences between the book and movie before you go home to further discuss the movie over coffee that you’re drinking in a mug that you bought at Harry Potter World’s opening day and has some lame Harry Potter logo on it. If this is you… you are the nerdiest of nerds and sit on the throne of nerdiness.

But, I said I was a fan, right? I am. I just am not a worshiper of Harry Potter. When these books and movies first started coming out, it was nerdy. It sat where it should have: somewhere far less nerdy than Star Trek/Dungeons and Dragons and somewhere exponentially nerdier than sports/rock and roll. Somewhere along the line, Harry got a little blurred. Hollywood came in and made the story have cool graphics, above average music and the lovely Emma Watson. They made you forget about how nerdy dragons, wizards and magic are in general.

This has given birth to a confidence in nerds. Nerds—never before being able to discuss their passions openly among their peers—were now able to talk about their favorite thing, Harry Potter. The cool people are sitting back thinking, “Okay, this isn’t cool but I like it.” The nerds are thinking, “They like this so it must be cool now.” It is my theory that the nerds then felt freedom to show how “cool” they were by buying wands and costumes and changing their facebook status to saying something ridiculous like, “My childhood is ending tonight. What am I going to do with no more harry potter things to look forward to?” They began to advertise their nerdiness because they mistook it for coolness.

Aww, you poor, poor nerds. Bless your hearts. Someone mistakenly made you think that Harry Potter was cool. I’m sorry to be the equivalent to the kindergartner saying that Santa isn’t real, but Harry Potter isn’t cool even if cool people like it. You just think it is. That doesn’t mean that I am not going to see it. Oh, I’ll be there at midnight, but it’s okay because I’m nerdy. My favorite show is The X-files, I just bought an I WANT TO BELIEVE poster from the series. I love Star Wars and just downloaded this techno remix about The Dark Side (click here). I have nerdy things about me, I’m telling you. Here’s the difference, I recognize that my nerdy traits are, in fact, nerdy and uncool. I’m not deceived into thinking that what I enjoy is cool. HA, I am laughing at the thought of some of the things I have seen and heard on Twitter and Facebook.

Tonight it does end and thank God for that. I’m so ready to be done with all of this. What started as children’s books has turned into some band-wagoned cult of confused nerds, thinking that what they so passionately love is actually cool. Do I enjoy Harry Potter? Sure, I do. Is it nerdy? Of course it is. Why the confusion? Either way, quit changing your facebook picture to that of Harry Potter, quit talking as if the sun won’t come up tomorrow after your beloved childhood has—in your eyes—ended (as it should have already since you’re in all likelihood an adult), and for the love of nerdiness put away your wand or I’m going to grab it and shove it up your chamber of secrets.

My coffee grinder.

The exterior of my coffee grinder is mostly white and plastic. I suppose that if you dropped it from a reasonable distance, it wouldn’t break or be damaged too severely, but then again if you dropped my coffee grinder, I’d want to immediately know what you were doing in my room messing about with it in the first place. You would no doubt have some explaining to do. My coffee grinder doesn’t make the sweetest sounds, but it’s okay—I have a stereo for that. I doubt that in the Toy Story-esque moments when I leave my room, my stereo and coffee grinder fight over whose purpose is grander. My coffee grinder is filthy from its past, being used over and over again to grind beans into coffee. It cannot clean itself, I must do that for it. My coffee grinder has a maker, Mr. Coffee, and it bears his mark. I would love to meet this Mr. Coffee—how convenient for that to be his name, and he be in the business of making coffee accessories. Amazing. My coffee grinder has a specific purpose. It accomplishes that purpose for me. I fill it and it works for me. And I am delighted in it.

I’d like to tell you all about me. That is, to tell you all (y’all) about me, not to tell you all (pause) all about me. I am mostly white my exterior. My mother can surely attest that if I am dropped from a reasonable distance, I am not damaged too severely. I have a maker as well, and I bear His mark, though mine is not visible. I was made for a specific purpose as was my coffee grinder. When I accomplish my purpose, my Maker delights in me. Well, He delights in me when I don’t as well, I suppose. He fills me, and I work for Him. And He delights in me.

The Westminster Confession of Faith says this:

The light of nature showeth that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all, is good, and doth good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served, with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the might.

(Westminster Confession of Faith 21:1)

Knowing my Maker and of the purpose for which He has created me, I can scarcely read these words aloud all the way through without having to pause and catch my breaking voice. Much like my grinder, I am filthy from my past. I cannot cleanse myself from this, my Maker alone can do that for me. And He did. And He uses me for His purpose. And He delights in me.

Yesterday morning, as I was singing in church, and, much like my coffee grinder, I don’t make the sweetest sounds. But my Maker tells me that’s okay. He reassures me that I, being made to worship Him, was equipped with a particular vocal system, making specific sounds that He created me to make. And He delights in me.

I can’t tell you all why this was such a beautiful revelation to me, for me to think about how I am fearfully and wonderfully made to worship God and serve Him. I can tell you this though. With every morning that I make coffee, as I fill my grinder and hear its awful noise, I will be reminded of the thoughts I’ve shared with you today.

For some reason, we cherish the old days, even when the old days were not as good as the new days. If I had told you fifteen years ago that technology was coming that had clearer picture, better sound, you could hang your television (flat screen) on a wall and you didn’t have to rewind it, you would probably be all for the idea. Even my family—the cutting edge of technology (NOT) for we had a rewinder separate from our VCR—would have loved the promise of this ‘alien’ advancement. However, we look back and for some reason love the old days. This is classic romanticism, the belief that old times were better than the present… back when we didn’t question gas prices, movie prices, what our congressmen were taking pictures of or the legitimacy of our President’s birth certificate.

Here marks my exit of memory lane. I apologize for the trip there. Anyway, my recent experience with Redbox has been great. Yes, I have Netflix, and I love that I get movies instantly through my computer and through my Bluray player, that I get DVDs and Bluray discs in the mail. I won’t apologize to movie rental places for this. I have heard people speak out against redbox and Netflix as if they were evils of the world for ruining the business of rental retailers. That philosophy is stupid. Should I pity the leech farmer because Penicillin has made way for a healing process not requiring my naked body to be subject to him sticking me with leeches? Certainly not. I will say this about Netflix, if you don’t have it, get it… It’s the delivery pizza of home entertainment and gives you a reason to go to your mail box, if you don’t have a good one already like some of us.

Here’s the thing though, Redbox gives me anxiety sometimes. See, the one I frequent is somewhat of a hot spot in a college town like Tuscaloosa. Now I don’t mind taking my time at ‘the box’ (that’s slang for Redbox by the way), but when people are waiting behind me, I feel judged. I start having insane thoughts that they’re evaluating me based on which movie I select. I don’t know why. I’m a bold person, I don’t care what people think… oh, but I do. This way of thinking leads to few options: I can either rent something epic like Batman: Dark Knight or The Godfather, or I can leave as if nothing there suits me. So you can see my issue when some couple is behind me and I know I’m delaying their movie night, and all I want to do is rent Shrek Forever After: The Final Chapter. I sit there at TRB (more slang) and play out these scenarios where I get the movie I actually want—for instance, Shrek—and the guy with the girlfriend yells out, “Hey, everybody, this LOSER just rented Shrek.” Then, more people than have business at a gas station all surround me and point fingers at me, laughing. A school bus filled with orphans, being driven by an adorable granny-ish nun pulls up and all the kids are pissed because I rented the last copy of Shrek, and they’ve waited for a long time to see it, so they start chasing me, screaming. This forces me to run away shamefully, but I trip and fall into a puddle where the guy that’s always at that gas station asking for money spits on me and laughs. Then, when I’m home, I don’t even enjoy my movie, because renting it was such a traumatic debacle.

I like Redbox, I really do, but renting can be an adventure sometimes. Renter beware, your thoughts may consume you. There is another option though. For example. Go to your local RB (not rainbow), look through the movies and decide which you want to rent. Then—if it’s embarrassing—leave, making some comment like, “Nothing here quite makes my esteemed list of movies worth watching.” Then, get some girl friend (a friend that’s a girl, not a girlfriend-girlfriend, because if you have  girlfriend-girlfriend you won’t get to pick the movie anyway) to come back later and rent the movie. Girls seem to have no shame in renting movies. This way, all the really cool people that hang out at the gas station that you’re concerned may have a bad opinion of you won’t think badly of you, just the girl that is also your friend. Another option is that you could foster thoughts of sanity rather than thoughts of a crazy person that assumes people care whether or not they rent Shrek. I will say though, if you see a school bus full of orphans, play it safe and let them go first.

Park was born nearly thirteen years ago by way of an emergency C-section along with his twin brother, Zachary. That story is HERE. I know that I cannot begin to capture all of his adorable uniqueness in the confines of this post. For that I would need a book, and a lengthy one at that.

Park loves soccer and being in the water. When we go to the beach, you can always find him braving the waves in goggles that pin his ears to his head and have to be so tightened that the slack is enough to imagine him with antennae. We noticed this at an early age in him. It’s not to say that we don’t like the water collectively as a family, the rest of us just weren’t born with gills like Park. As the sun climbs high and the day gets hot, you’ll still find Park outside in the water, somehow not pruning up like the rest of us.

Park also loves things that do things: fire, fireworks, slingshots, water balloons, remote control cars, magnets, any kind of chemical reaction and the fact that things freeze when you stick them into the freezer. Any boy reading this list of things surely thinks, “Yeah, who doesn’t love these things?” I won’t disagree, but Park has a sincere passion for them. Mom can’t keep vinegar and baking soda in the house because Park is using it to blow the tops off of disposable water bottles after he—with careful precision—mixes them quickly and screws on the caps. This is, of course, in between his shoving bouncy balls into a giant balloon that he’ll then fill with water and put into the freezer to harden so that he can take the balloon off and have a mass of bouncy balls frozen together by ice. What purpose does this serve? I can’t tell you and neither can he. He just does it, and when you open the freezer to steal one of Caroline’s popsicles and see a frozen mass of bouncy balls, you can’t help but smile. We recently stopped at a gas station on the way back from a family trip. Park spied some instant fire starters on a shelf in the back. As his brothers and sisters asked Mom to buy them candy and drinks, Park begged her for the manufactured ability to instantly start a fire, a fire that has no purpose but to exercise his inner boyhood. Upon Mother’s sensible decline, Park settled for some beef jerky and a soda.

Park has a condition as I did in my youth called vocal nodules. It causes his voice to be raspy and hoarse after he yells, talks or whispers too much. When aggravated enough, the nodules can make speech impossible; believe me, I know. This causes his voice to usually sound strained to speak. He’ll shake off the disability though and join me among the numbered survivors of vocal nodules—holla at Julie Andrews. In the mean time, he’s not hindered in the noise-making department. Just ask Mom about his plastic drum filled with bouncy balls (unfrozen) that he likes to shake around. Then again, you can ask any of us about the noises he makes with his mouth: clicking his tongue, smacking his mouth, whistling, et. cetera. He recently asked Mom, “Why is it that you get so annoyed with me making noises all the time, I mean, why can’t I just make noise?” See what I mean? I wouldn’t have put this in here unless I could absolutely promise the following: Park is not annoying. You’d have your work cut out for you should you try and find anyone who would call Park annoying. He’s just one of those unannoying people, I suppose.

Park has a confederate flag over his bed. He’s not a racist, though. It was my flag and I gave it to him after I graduated high school. I’m not a racist either, I went to a high school whose mascot was the rebel man. I just find it funny when I walk into a preteen boy’s bedroom and see a rebel flag tacked up over his bed (not that walking into the bedrooms of preteen boys is a usual occurrence—I literally never do that).

At the A-day game, us kids were swapping jokes, riddles, et. cetera when I-don’t-remember-who started one of those ridiculously stupid games where they tell you to start with a number, make you jump through a series of mathematical hoops and then guess what your number is. After the near-lethal dosage of these puzzles (2) Park was frustrated enough to shout at one of his siblings, “Okay, take the number 7, times it by 7. Do you get 49? See? It’s not that cool.” This story points out his quick temper and impatience with such things, which I find hilarious. That was the funniest moment of A-day for me.

Park sometimes has rotten luck. Christmas two years ago he was gifted a remote controlled airplane. He crashed it into a pine tree (or maybe I did) and broke it. This year, he was gifted a remote controlled car. It wasn’t long before it hit a curb and broke a vital part to the steering mechanism. Rotten luck. It’s humorously heart-wrenching to see such felicity forced from a boy’s face by in-moving tears. It hurts but you can’t help from laughing a bit at the anticlimaticism of it all. I know one time he broke his arm while at my grandmother’s house. As he screams the story, “Caroline fell on my arm and broke it.” It was a tragic accident involving a wheel barrow, a steep hill, gravity and a bad idea. Again, humorously heart-wrenching, rotten luck.

I love my brother, Park like I do all of my siblings. He’s great. Everyone loves Park. His temper is fierce, but that’s the way tempers are supposed to be, I reckon. He’s obedient and an all-around good kid. These are merely glimpses into his life. You all are not as lucky as I am to see all that I get to see him do. I get to know him.

So what have I been doing?

I guess you can just say that I’ve been taking a break from the blogging thing. Gosh, I hate blogs. You know why? Because it’s not writing. It wouldn’t be so bad if every single blogger out there didn’t introduce himself/herself as a writer. That’s like calling yourself Jeff Gordon because you build model cars. I mean no offense to fellow bloggers out there—and I’m certainly not putting myself above you—I just don’t want to pretend. I’ve always said that artists are artists regardless of whether or not they actually produce anything called art. A writer is a writer, even if he/she does not write. I firmly believe this because being an artist has nothing to do with what you make of the world, only how it is that you see it. The artist though, well, he’s naturally forced to write, paint, sculpt, direct, produce, et. cetera as this exhale of all that he’s ingested through his perception of the world. Based on that logic, just because you do write, sculpt, et. cetera, it does not mean that you are an artist. Am I? Ha—I have no idea. I don’t know how fine of a writer I am (by the definition of being one who writes, not a ‘writer’) but I suspect that if I write very much and don’t try to please anyone but the source of all goodness Himself, then perhaps someday I should write something worth reading. Until then, I guess I’ll keep doing this and take the few-and-far-between compliments as they come (mostly from grandmothers and children) and smile knowing that this is enjoyable to me. I mean not to belittle your blogging. Keep blogging, it is wonderful. Just don’t mistake it to be real writing. Because despite what many people think, writing is hard. Ask anyone, a first draft isn’t brilliance. But that’s what we publish here, a first draft. You know why? Because we’re lazy. That’s just what we do. Sure, we’ll spend hours correcting a final paper; we’ll scan the essay portion of a test again and again to make sure that all the commas are in place; we’ll even ask a friend to read it before we finalize it. But will we do that with our blogs? Or will we just continue to try and effectively get our point across without having to inconvenience ourselves by spending an hour or two on it, rather than just posting the first thing that comes to our minds? Exactly. Now, some of you really think about things before you post them. Good for you. For the rest of us rapscallions, I apologize, and furthermore carry our banner. Yeah, I’ve got stuff to say. I hope this unedited post is a step back towards that direction. Sorry for the hiatus, and I can’t promise I won’t do it again. Upcoming posts: what it means to not be a man, why bikinis are meant to be exclusive, and a post concerning David and Goliath.

So what have I been doing? I guess I’ve been resting. I’m done doing that now, and I’m ready to “write” again.

For those of you that have never had the pleasure, Ponderosa’s tournament is what is called ‘best ball’ play. This means that everyone hits a ball, and whoever has hit the best shot is where all players in the foursome hit the next shot from. This means that if I hit my initial tee shot in the water of which I feel there is far too much of on a golf course, then it’s okay because I can hit from where a teammate has hit a better shot. What this means for me is, while every now and then I shine with a decent shot, I am mostly playing from someone else’s ball.

All day long this forced upon my mind the imagery that golf has to the Christian life. There can be an analogy to just about any occurrence in our lives, so forgive me if I have stretched this image too far. However, at one point in the day, I almost teared up as I considered the correlation of golf to God’s amazing grace. [I must point out that, like many analogies, this one is not perfect. For that, I ask your grace and that you try and connect the dots anyway.]

One cannot accurately share the message of grace without proclaiming the depravity of man. Simply put, all men (and women—holla)  deserve to suffer eternal torment in hell (a place real whether or not you believe it to be). However, God intervenes with both His prevenient and saving grace to save some through the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ, who three days later rose from the dead, proving His mocking victory of death and the torments of hell. All who believe on Jesus and trust that He alone can save them from their sin are recipients of God’s grace and spend eternity in glory (heaven) with Him.

I’ve posted this before, but the best definition of grace (I think) is when Alistair Begg called grace “The undeserved love of God to man, revealed in Christ. His active favor bestowing His greatest gift to those who deserve His worst punishment. Grace is whereby God gives to us what we do not deserve.”

Paul says this: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus… For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2.4-6 &8

So where does this get back to golf, right?

I’ll go ahead and let you know that I have taken formal golf lessons at the Vestavia Hills Country Club. I grew up living on a golf course. I have a putter that is valued at roughly $300. Needless to say, I could arrogantly think that I bring a lot to the table. Now, I didn’t walk out on the course thinking that at all. To be honest, I expected the guys to NEVER want to play from my shot, if my shot was outside of water and woods, or if my shot was even findable without using satellite technology. My point is that if I was a complete fool—and it is by the grace of God alone that I did not act this way—I could have thought that I brought a lot to the table.

We go out to play and it isn’t long until I swing and hit a golf ball that travels a whole three feet and dies, far short of its goal—the hole. No, I wasn’t putting; I was on the tee box. In thinking of the length of a long par-5, hitting it three feet is infinitely shorter than where it needs to be. I have tried my hardest, exhausted myself and have oh so little to show for it. I find myself miles from where the flag is and essentially worthless to my teammates.

Surely many of you have begun to piece together what my point is here. In the Christian life, we often try so hard to ‘work’ our way towards God’s favor. We try to do it ourselves. Golf is a sport and, in the grand scheme of things, a silly game. In this game some human being lacking of divinity in every possible way must work for the achieved results. The Christian walk is not like that at all. If we should try to work our way into God’s favor, we would find ourselves much like my ball did: nowhere from where you started and miles away from where you need to be.

But there’s good news…

Paul says to the sinner: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5.14 Christ, in this metaphor, takes the role of my teammates that continually bailed me out of having hit so many terrible, terrible shots. I was told by them, “No, Rand. You get to hit from up here, not from back there where your ball landed/sank into the water.” I was continually given that of which I was completely undeserved. My efforts were useless, as they are in the Christian faith (when it comes to works vs. grace).

I could have come to the game with my predispositions about myself and my worth. I could have argued that I grew up on a golf course (in a good, Christian home with a strong spiritual pedigree), that I had had formal lessons from good coaches (going to church, AWANA, Bible Club/Bible Study, Camp, et cetera) or that I had a really expensive putter (a great Bible with calfskin leather and awesome footnotes). Instead, the golfer in my shoes (sinner) must come to the game recognizing his insignificance in light of his teammates (Christ—admittedly a weaker point in the metaphor) and trust that they will do all the work for him (salvation by grace through faith).

In the end we wound up with a pretty good score, a score that there is absolutely no way we would have come upon through my action alone. Trust me on this. All in all, it was a wonderfully humbling experience in light of the correlation that God revealed to me. I’m thankful for this.

The bottom line is this: All men deserve hell, but God saves those confessing sinners from that through the substitutionary death of his son, Jesus, who never sinned and was thus, a perfect sacrifice for that wrathful punishment we deserve because of his divine saving grace. May this never grow old to hear by those who have found this grace, and may the unrepentant sinner hear this message from God: “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”