Creationism

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Creationism: (n) the doctrine that matter and all things were created by an omnipotent Creator

It is a twelve-year-old conversation. By this, what I really mean is that it is a discourse among twelve-year-olds. It makes no sense outside that gathering—and to many would seem frivolous.

But when I was twelve years old and had a sleepover at my house with five other young gentlemen, we sat around and discussed, lamented, worried, bragged and mocked one another over the size of our testicles and penises.

It was not a planned topic for the evening. Someone brought up the subject of girls, and since we knew absolutely nothing about that, we decided to discuss what we believed, in our infantile reasoning, was the item that attracted women to men.

In the course of that ridiculous discussion, some of my young brethren waxed eloquent. Others were just silly. One or two were belligerently adamant on their foreknowledge—yet all of us, obviously, ignorant.

But this misinformation did not keep us from speculation and postulating on our particular rendition or theory.

Fortunately, we never pulled out our private areas to actually visually compare—but while maintaining them securely within our briefs, we explained to everyone in the room how massive they were and also, evolving.

It was a comical situation which could only be tolerated by a roomful of immature individuals who were over-zealous about their insights.

Likewise, this is the identical way I feel about the theory of evolution and creationism. When I hear people argue about “how we got here” or if there is a “here,” or where “here” came from, or where “there” is going, my head begins to spin and I want to scream and ask them to pull out their balls and prove their point.

Of course, they can’t.

There are no balls to pull out and no one has a definitive point.

Since we are creatures which inhabit a planet which has been around a long time, and we only have the possibility of a hundred years, it might be better for us to get about the business of creating something beautiful as we evolve toward kindness.

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Create

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Create: (v) to cause to come into being

You created me.

So the story goes.

What was your intention?

Was I literally the next step in the evolutionary chain?

That would be fine. Yet I have to admit to you, I’m a damn far sight cuter than a chimpanzee. Maybe it was your time for a leap of faith.

The tale also includes that you created me in your image.

Which image?

Since you’re a spirit, there is no physical. So am I created in your spiritual image? (I’m sorry, I don’t think you’ll be able to buff out the dents I’ve generated in that situation.)

So what is your image? Well… I know you create. Duh.

So did you create me to be a creator? Will we compete? I suppose not. You can do the whole galaxy thing—I can make a telescope to see your stars.

So was I created to be creative? Was I evolved to further evolve? Or was I an accident due to some sort of ethereal busted rubber?

It’d be nice to know.

I must be candid with you—your response time is poor. Maybe it’s because the staff you have to work with consists of other humans like myself, easily carried away by their own fantasies, and they forget to be helpful.

I don’t know.

I refuse to be a chimpanzee. I don’t have the hair for it.

I’m reluctant to believe I was an accident.

I am waiting for an assurance agent, not an insurance agent. (See how creative I can be? What did you think of that assurance/insurance thing? A play on words.)

Maybe that’s what I am. Maybe you were making angels and you fucked some of them up and decided to rename them “human.” I can buy that. We’ve all had embarrassing workdays.

Here’s what I’m going to do:

I am going to believe that you created me in your image, which is a creative one, so that I would find a way to create, with the materials provided for me.

I don’t know whether this is right or not—but I do believe it promotes sanity.

It’s a much easier story to follow than me being a ping-pong ball in a fevered match between you and Beelzebub.

 

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Cream One’s Jeans

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cream one’s jeans: (v) to experience emission of a small amount of semen 

I was twenty-five years old and just smart enough that I seemed like a genius among my peers.

It is a very dangerous supposition—because possessing premature gravitas does not mean you have adequate “salt and pepper” in your philosophy. But my friends—and their friends—trusted me explicitly.

So when a young woman came to me for counseling, I was more than willing to help her through her hour of need. She was very attractive—but I felt that I was mature enough to handle it in a clinical fashion, and would not allow my animal to slink out of the jungle.

It went along pretty well. Unfortunately, the problems she was experiencing were of a sexual nature, with her fiancé. She was very willing to be honest—dare I say, even blatant. I tried not to become emotionally involved in her situation, but she was so doggone pretty that I found myself siding with her rather than actually helping her find the key to her solution.

I thought I was doing more good than harm until after the third session—for when she left, I went into the bathroom, pulled down my underwear to urinate, and there it was: a little deposit of fresh cream in my shorts from my body’s excitement.

I felt stupid.

Aside from being a little bit yucky, it was a piece of evidence which could not be denied. It proved that my mind was moving sexually instead of heavenly.

I was so pissed.

I continued a few more sessions but at the end of each one I found the same surprise. Yes—I was creaming my jeans over a young woman I was supposed to be enriching.

She didn’t know, and she would never know unless I told her or tried to act out my body’s wishes.

At this point I had to decide whether I was just clever or really caring. There is a major difference. People who are just clever don’t really care if it hurts anyone or not, and people who are really caring sometimes have to walk away from their need to appear clever so as to actually be caring.

I explained to the young lady that I was going to send her off to someone who was more suited to her problem, and that she could counsel her better in these matters than I. The young woman was disappointed, but not crestfallen. After all, she was there for help…not foreplay.

I learned that day the difference between just loving yourself and really loving your neighbor just as much.

 

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Cream of the Crop

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cream of the crop: (n) the fatty part of milk, which rises to the surface

Audacity can be richly comical if you don’t take yourself too seriously and believe that any one of your proclamations or dreams is sacred.

I’ve always been a music man with a poet’s heart, and the body of a lumberjack. (An overweight lumberjack.)

I’ve wanted to play songs, and I reached an age when the music part of my show was just not bringing in enough dough.

What I had available to me was a wife and two sons. So I decided to form them into a music group. We were not exactly the Partridge Family, the Jacksons nor the Osmonds. We were more like the…

Well, like the Smiths.

There was talent there—but the nine-year-old had just started playing drums, the fourteen-year-old was faithfully practicing on a bass guitar that was mostly broken, and my wife… My wife sang like a wife.

I was an old war horse who had done music for so long that I convinced myself, and quite a few other people, that I was proficient enough at doing it that I should not quit. So I decided to tour with my family.

I am not going to try to rationalize my decision nor disparage it. It was what was available, it was what we could do, we would be together, and no animals would be harmed in the process.

I taught them five songs. That’s right—five. It took a while. The sound was not great, but it would have evoked a smile of approval from the grouchiest member of an audience.

We needed to make a tape we could offer for purchase after our little shows. This way, people would have the music and we could have a few dollars for bologna.

We rented a studio and went in with our five songs—plus one, which I added the day of the recording session. Over the next five hours, we recorded them, mixed them down and ran off a master copy for duplication. Considering that I was working with a nine-year-old, a fourteen-year-old, my wife and my own nervous energy, the production quality hovered just north of bad.

The engineer turned to me and said, “What would you like to name the tape? Because I have to write something down on the label.”

I paused. I thought about the fact that these were the only six songs we knew, and there were no prospects in the near future of adding to the roster.

I thought about naming the tape, “The Best So Far.”

I mused the title, “Our Greatest Hits.”

I lamented that the title, “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” was already taken.

Finally it came to me.

Since it’s what we had, and we did our best, and it seemed we were at the top of our game at this station in our musical journey, I told the recording engineer to name it, “Cream of the Crop.”

He winced—but obeyed.

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Creak

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Creak: (n) a creaking sound

After eight-and-a-half straight hours of driving in the middle of the night, I stopped with my two buddies at a truck stop outside Lincoln, Nebraska.

I was twenty-two years old and had long hair, which proudly lay on my shoulders, defiantly displayed. When I walked into the truck stop, I noticed that nobody there had enough hair on their head to generate a hairball.

My two traveling companions were women—normally quite attractive, but after eight-and-a-half hours of slouching in a car, looked a bit ragged.

We found our way to a table and sat down. Even allowing for some paranoia, we were still the source of a roomful of stares. We didn’t care. We wanted something to eat, some coffee to drink, and to be doing something besides turning a steering wheel and trying to stay awake.

Everything went fine until it was time for us to leave. I stood to my feet and I got a painful catch in my hip joint. It was so surprising that I immediately sat back down, wincing from the agony.

I was scared. Because I was twenty-two and had no idea about pain—thinking a stubbed toe was excruciating—I was terrified.

The two ladies had already sauntered off to pay the bill, so I was sitting there, in a roomful of hostile strangers, wondering why my leg was dying. Gradually, I decided to attempt standing again. This time, though it felt a little tingly, my hip decided to go back to being workable again.

I had no trouble staying awake after that. I was intimidated. I was frightened.

I was experiencing my very first journey into becoming creaky. Fortunately, a good night’s sleep took away all the discomfort.

Now, when I stand up and my hips work at all, I want to shout hallelujah, and imagine myself doing a victory dance.

All of our bodies begin to creak.

And that is why it is so hard to stay hip.

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Crazy

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crazy: (adj) mentally deranged; demented, insane.

Demented? Insane?

Well, I suppose so.

But I would venture to say that if we think “crazy” is about being diagnosed with a mental illness, we are going to miss many situations which need to be corrected long before someone is running down the street naked, singing the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

I’ll give you a different definition for crazy:

Crazy is anyone who continues to be amped up and overly excited by the latest craze.

Crazy is when you run your life by following what’s most popular in the moment.

Crazy is when you read polls and statistics to determine what’s right and wrong.

Crazy is listening to the opinions of pundits about what candidate is offering the best political jambalaya.

Crazy is thinking that because something is fashionable, it “certainly should look good on you.”

Crazy is listening to people who are barely out of puberty who have written a book on child-rearing, when deep in your heart you know everything they’re saying needs to be hauled away on the poo-poo pickup.

Crazy is when you think your husband or wife is suddenly going to don a whole new persona to reactivate your sexual interest.

Crazy is when you think belief in God needs to be stimulated by bigotry, prejudice, lies and exaggerated faith.

Crazy is when people line up and take sides over gender, sexual preference, political parties, church denominations, colas or flavors of chicken wings.

Crazy is when you become crazed because you’re pursuing what is the craze.

God wants us to be faithful to our own selves above all else.

If you don’t believe there’s a God, being faithful to yourself above all else should be the god you follow.

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Crayon

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crayon: (n) pointed stick or pencil of colored clay, chalk, wax, etc., used for drawing or coloring.

Elaborate was my plan.

Yes, many details, pieced together, far beyond my five years of life.

I loved crayons. But my mother never bought me a box that had more than twelve—and then, she never purchased the actual Crayola unit, which was so recognizable to my friends. So sometimes I showed up to play with our coloring books with my white box of eight crayons and they asked me, “Don’t you have crayons?”

It was mean. They could see that I had crayons—they just knew mine were “fake” and I was one of those kids who couldn’t afford “real” Crayolas.

I can remember like it was yesterday the first time I saw the gigantic container holding sixty-four crayons.

It was huge.

You couldn’t even use all the crayons—each hue pleaded for attention.

Fortunately for me, my friend allowed me to borrow from his pack of sixty-four, leaving me nearly teary-eyed and completely breathless. I never wanted to leave his home. After all, this was a house that contained the ultimate box of crayons, with sixty-four different opportunities.

Yet what started out as a pleasurable journey into the world of color ended up with me envious and angry.

So when my friend wasn’t looking, I reached in and took out six of my favorite colors from the pack and stuck them in the front pocket of my pants. To make sure he wouldn’t miss the crayons and there wouldn’t be a gap in the order as they stood like little soldiers in a row, I inserted some Kleenex into the slot and squished the crayons together, hoping to disguise the absence of the stolen six.

It worked.

He packed up the crayon box, put it away, and an hour later my mother came and picked me up.

Now, it was the next morning that my friend’s mother called my mother and asked if I knew anything about “missing crayons.”

I did but I wasn’t going to tell them.

The subject was dropped. They decided to take me at my word.

It would have been the perfect crime had it not been for the fact that I forgot to remove the crayons from the pocket of my pants, and my mother washed them in the machine—only to come out of the laundry room screaming over the messy, sloppy and smeary result.

I not only lost my crayons—I not only was unable to use what I had stolen—but the evidence of my guilt was now clearly melted all over my trousers.

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Crawl

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crawl: (v) to move on the hands and knees

It is a story found in the Good Book. What makes that book good are the tales that enlighten us, inspire us and cause us to question our mediocre choices instead of covering them with the doctrine of grace.

She was a woman.

This particular lady in this specific story had been crippled for eighteen years. The passage has a detailed description of her problem—she was bowed over, couldn’t walk, and basically found herself uncomfortably situated in some sort of heap, lying on the ground.

Jesus comes upon her. She is some distance away from him, and the assumption is made by everyone in the room that he would walk over, talk to her for a few minutes, and then do some of his jim-dandy magic and heal her. But that’s not what he does.

He calls her to him.

Yes, he requests of this disabled, disheartened woman, that she make the journey across the room, pulling herself along on her arms, elbows and thighs—inch-by-inch making her way to his side.

Can you can imagine the reaction of the room? “This is gross. He’s making her crawl.”

The woman does not complain.

The prospect of being made whole, improved, or even just included was worth it.

She crawled to Jesus.

He did not make her do this because he was a son-of-a-bitch. He wasn’t trying to showcase his authority.

He was giving her a chance to be an intricate part of her own miracle. “Crawl over here and get your blessing.”

Even though each one of us may feel it is cruel or unusual, there are times that we cannot heal the psychological burden of our pain unless we feel as if we are making the crawl to our solution.

I have crawled.

I have made the crawl in joy.

I have crawled, knowing that without the crawl, I would not be able to overcome the anxiety in my soul.

After the crawl came the miracle.

Now…imagine that.

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Crawdad

funny wisdom on words that begin with a CCrawdad: (idiom) crayfish

If you run across a situation which is odd, or a group of people who seem a bit bizarre, always remember the power of the word “colorful.”

In other words, “these circumstances are not dangerous or bewildering—they’re just colorful.”

It’s a word I learned when I lived four years in Louisiana. Being raised in the Midwest, I found the folks of the Bayou to have many traditions I thought were challenging.

Chief among them was the eating of crawdads.

I had seen these creatures as a little boy. My parents even referred to them as the “poor man’s lobster.”

But I had never observed them regarded with such relish as in Louisiana. (Actually, relish is one of the few things they don’t eat crawfish with.)

I was frustrated. There is so little meat on the crawdad that it is an exhausting chore to get two tablespoon’s worth of fishy flesh. The natives, of course, laughed at me. They explained that the great taste of the little varmints lay in “sucking their heads.”

Yes. I’m talking about taking that tiny crusty head which looks like it came off the monster in “Alien,” and putting it up to your mouth and sucking in. They explained that many folks who tried it for the first time compared it to eating raw oysters.

Excellent. May I point out that to me, eating raw oysters is like being forced to slurp up one’s own snot?

I’m usually not this picky. After all, my entire life I have eaten hotdogs with no fear of gristle and bone fragments. But there is something so ugly about the crawdad. The little booger just gives me the creeps.

I tried. But even after four years, whenever they walked over to a table covered with newspaper and dumped a big pan of them onto the table, my first instinct was to scream like a little girl and run down to McDonald’s and order a Happy Meal.


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Craw

Craw: (idiom) to rankle

When I received the menu at the Getting Older Cafeteria, there were many items listed which were unappetizing:

  • Chronic pain
  • Memory slips
  • Aching joints
  • Slower movement

But some of the nastier dishes afforded to those who are joining the Gang Just Over the Hill are:

  • Fussy
  • Self-righteous
  • Judgmental
  • And cranky

All of these particular offerings place those with “graying futures” in dispositions where things start sticking in their craw.

It’s an old-time phrase—matter of fact, many younger folks would not know the meaning (and should be commended for their ignorance). But they would recognize the phrase easily if you changed it to a word they are more accustomed to: bratty.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

I guess you reach a certain age when you just can’t be a brat—so what you have to do instead is “get something stuck in your craw.”

The two conditions certainly appear to be the same. The sour facial expressions are identical. The grumping and complaining, spot-on.

But once your birthdays have accumulated to a certain heap, you are no longer allowed to be a brat. You just get things stuck in your craw.

I, myself, am very careful to make sure this never happens to me. So intent was I to guarantee that nothing got stuck in my craw that I actually went out and had my craw removed.


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