Tag Archives: human

Dayton

Dayton: (n) a city in SW Ohio

Growing up in Central Ohio, Dayton was eighty miles away—just far enough that you felt going there was “taking a trip.”

I’ve always liked Dayton.

When I first started as a musician—impoverished and therefore ridiculed by friends and relatives as being irresponsible—I had a little place I went to in Dayton to perform my songs, where they treated me like I was on the top forty—and also, in some way, like I was a long-lost relative from Yugoslavia.

They loved me.

Therefore I loved them.

That’s when I learned the system. It is so much easier to love people when you know they’ve already made the leap to love you. It is certainly possible to love people when they’re considering loving you so you can share those feelings back with them in a considerate way.

Yet it is nearly implausible to love someone who has decided that you are not pleasing.

Loving those who don’t love you.

There’s really not any nobility in it—even though for centuries we have touted that true spirituality is ignoring one’s feelings in an attempt to aspire to more god-like actions.

But since we’re not supposed to be gods—we’re human—it seems forgivable to go ahead and feel at least “iffy” about those who place us in the reject pile.

I felt rejected in my hometown.

I wasn’t perfect, or even close to it.

It wasn’t that I didn’t do things that were worthy of critique.

It’s just how quickly those around me were ready to criticize.

In Dayton, I felt human.

I felt that my presence brought a smile.

I believed they even looked forward to seeing me.

I heard applause.

I received edification.

And because I did, I grew. I experimented. I took some chances.

I found out that my right hand and my left hand could do much more on the piano than I had imagined.

My voice could go higher.

I could actually sing on pitch.

My music gained emotion.

I was willing to listen to those who favored one tune over another without sensing an attack.

Somewhere on the eighty miles over to Dayton, my visit there and the journey back, I always healed.

The process was faithful—every time. I left home despondent, curious if the evening would make it better. I took a deep breath, put together a show, played it the best I could and expanded in the appreciation.

My heart grew, and I drove home—a little less defensive.

It was heavenly.

It was an experience I grew to cherish—and named “The Dayton Effect.”

 

Crypto

Crypto: (adj) secret or hidden, as in “a crypto Nazi.”

 What a cool word.

Of course, I’ll never be able to use it. If I applied it in an everyday situation, people would say, “What do you mean by that?”

Then I’d find myself in that state of trying to explain something, defending myself on why I decided to use it. No thanks.

But for the sake of this article, I will tell you that I do believe in Jesus, but I am a crypto Christian.

No one could be more reluctant than I am to admit to being a part of such a disorganized organization, and unloving ministry of love.

I guess I’m a crypto male, too.

I just don’t buy into all the myths about the human penis, domination, superiority and winning the dame by flattering the hell out of her.

Some people might consider me a crypto American because I don’t join a political party. I learned a long time ago to never go to a party that doesn’t serve refreshments.

In some ways I’m a crypto writer. It doesn’t mean I can’t write. It means that I find the snotty, bratty people who edit and publish to be restricting—kind of like that suit I bought when I was twenty-five, which I really liked but was two sizes too small so I never got a chance to button it.

But I will never admit to being a crypto human.

Religion wants to make humans faltering sinners. Secularists want to make them individualistic gods.

I know what it means to be a human.

It means discovering your weaknesses but working through them to discover your strengths.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

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Crevice

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crevice: (n) A narrow crack, fissure, or cleft.

I guess I find it easy to be candid in my writing because I’m not going to be sitting over dinner with any of you, being curiously peered upon.

I am a fat person.

As a fat person, my body is constructed a bit differently than the average human form. I have an overhang at my stomach—what you might consider a fleshy awning.

It’s not something I enjoy revealing or find to be one of my better attributes. But those who have this overdraft certainly know that underneath is a crevice.

Oh—it is a fussy place.

In the summertime, when it gets really hot and friction sets in, you have to be careful that you don’t start making some human gravy down there. Why? Because it mingles with dirt, and you get stingy and it hurts and it’s ugly, and I’m already beginning to feel like “why did I start talking about this in the first place?”

So it is necessary to clean that crevice and make sure it stays dry. It is also a great reminder when you occasionally you don’t have the motivation to lose weight and decrease the arc of your crevice—because the problems caused by this little get-away bungalow can assuredly provide fresh energy to push away from the table.

I have a crevice.

And now you know the story of my entire underbelly.

 

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Crave

 Crave: (v) to long for

I am very familiar with three great cravings.

They are not unique to me nor can they be labeled by the simple titles “good and evil.” But I know that all three of these have, do and funny wisdom on words that begin with a Cprobably will wiggle their way into my thinking and manifest themselves as desires.

The trouble is, each craving demands that I take on a certain responsibility. Or maybe “responsibility” is over-spoken. It’s actually more like a chore.

1. I crave orgasm.

It feels good. It’s a pleasant burst. There’s just enough unpredictable about it that each encounter possesses uniqueness. It is a few brief seconds when I no longer care that I am human, and I allow all the animal stoked deep inside me to roar.

With this craving comes a chore. It’s called sex. Although we insist that sex is pleasurable, it is actually the orgasm that brings the ecstasy, and to achieve that we go through the practice, interaction, danger and mediocrity of sexual relations with another person.

This certainly is why masturbation is so popular.

2. I crave companionship.

The chore that comes with this particular quest is people.

Yes, unless I plan on having just dogs, cats and miscellaneous domesticated animals surrounding me, unable to carry on conversations, I will have to learn, understand and tolerate the actions of other Homo Sapiens.

The payoff is great, but the process is—well, shall we say, unending.

3. I crave immortality.

The chore with this, if you will, is dealing with God.

There is no evidence that I possess any likelihood of longevity beyond a century without a belief in an eternal home.

God becomes problematic.

He is so loving that He includes fools, religionists, shysters and the most boring theologians ever conjured in a seminary.

In my craving for orgasm, companionship and immortality I must survive the chores of sex, people and God.

There are times when I wonder if it’s worth it.

There are occasions I wish to be free of the entanglements and the conditions brought on in satisfying my cravings.

But usually, a good nap, a meal or allowing my mind to be free of pressure makes me once again a willing participant in the pursuit of what I crave.


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Corner

Corner: (n) the place at which two converging lines or surfaces meet.

Jerry was my friend. His dad was a conservative preacher who refused to own a television.

Jerry didn’t share his father’s convictions. When he was around his papa he was as silent as a mouse, and as soon as he walked out of the door of his home he turned into a roaring lion.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

He was fun.

But even though I was just a kid myself, I knew there was something a little bit mixed up with Jerry. There was a hidden rage which was not very well disguised. It was like a box sticking out from under your bed that you thought was put away, but everybody knew there was something beneath.

Jerry got angry easily. Matter of fact, one night we were at my house and went into the garage. We found a possum next to our freezer. (I share this with you because it was unusual. If we normally had possums next to our freezer, I would have left it out of the tale.)

The possum was a little surprised to see us. It acted like it was pursuing a normal routine and we had interrupted the process. It gave a quick snarl in our direction. It was enough to convince me to get the hell out of the way. If you’ve never seen a possum up close, it’s ugly enough to avoid without the snarl, but if you put a growl with it… Well, I was ready to head to the next county.

But not Jerry.

Jerry seemed upset that the possum had dared to emit disapproval. He ran over to a shelf in the garage and picked up a hammer. I know I probably should have said something, but honestly, it was my first time being in a garage with a man who was going to attack a possum.

The possum scurried over into the corner of the garage.

Bad maneuver—now it was trapped. It was either going to have to fight its way out, or it was going to face whatever verdict Jerry had chosen for it.

Jerry changed right in front of my eyes. He was breathing heavily, standing with his legs spread, hammer over his head, eyes bulging—and it became obvious to me that he planned on attacking the creature.

I did finally gain speech. “Jerry, let it go. We’ll just leave the door open and it’ll scurry away.”

Excellent advice—especially coming from a teenager whose frontal lobe was not yet complete.

Jerry did not hear a word I said. He was ready to “kill possum.”

He moved closer. The possum snarled even more ferociously.

And even though I liked Jerry, when I heard that possum, I got the hell out of there. So peeking through the window from outside the garage I watched as Jerry grasped the hammer tightly.

One, two, five, ten…twenty blows. With all his strength, he killed that possum.

I don’t think Jerry had anything personal against the possum. Jerry’s outburst was coming from somewhere else.

When he was done, he backed up, panting, with the bloody hammer in his hand.

As I slowly walked back into the garage he spoke, “I got the goddamn motherfucking thing.”

I was completely shocked, I had never seen anyone kill a possum. Matter of fact, I had never encountered a pissed-off possum. And I sure had never seen Jerry so out of control or heard him spew such profanity.

About that time, my mother arrived, came into the garage, looked into the corner and saw what remained of the smashed possum. She gazed carefully at Jerry, who was still clutching his weapon.

Honestly, my mother was not a sensitive or intuitive person, but in that moment, she knew that Jerry was not all right.

She put her hand on his shoulder, gradually reached over and took the hammer away, and then cupped her hands around his face and said, “Good job, Jerry. Why don’t you two boys go bury the possum while I clean up the corner?”

So we did.

We walked about a quarter of a mile down the road to the railroad tracks. Nothing was said. It was so quiet I could hear the shovel strike against the ground as we drug it along.

We dug a hole and buried the flattened creature beneath it and covered it up.

When we were done, Jerry returned to being Jerry.

That day I learned a very valuable lesson.

If you corner any of God’s creatures—and that includes the human variety—they will fuss, spit, growl and even snarl at you. At that point you have to decide whether you’re going to walk away or if you’re going to destroy them.

Let me tell you—there are a lot of “Jerrys” in the world.


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Convulsion

Convulsion: (n) contortion of the body caused by violent, involuntary muscular contractions

“When you are weak, you are strong.”

This concept is roundly rejected in everyday humanity, because it sounds ridiculous. So we give it the greatest insult of all—we ignore it.

When one of my sons was hit and run by a car, the brain damage that occurred through the accident left him with occasional seizures. I will never forget the first time I saw my child, who was impaired and unable to communicate, lying on the bed in the grip of a convulsion.

Helpless is where I began. It quickly moved to frantic, and then took on a bit of fury as I screamed for the nurses to come, and for somebody to do something.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

He was so out of control. I mirrored his position.

I could not understand the worth of such ugliness and felt abandoned, desperate for some sort of purpose.

Yet I must tell you, I despised every deep thought offered to me to assuage my guilt or suggest divine guidance on the purpose of a little boy shaking and shuddering with no remedy.

I had to come to grips with me. After all, disappointment has two parts to it:

  1. Why in the hell did this happen?
  2. Why in the hell did this happen to me?

Each question has to be answered individually until some comprehension about human progress begins to settle into the fiber and DNA of our thinking.

When nothing happens, we remain the same.

When good things happen, we remain the same but arrogant.

When bad things happen, we can’t remain the same, and arrogance prohibits us from finding peace of mind.


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Contempt

Contempt: (n) the feeling with which a person regards anything considered mean, vile, or worthless

I listened intently as the gentleman closed his argument by proffering, with a sneer on his lips, “Just because you’re swimming doesn’t mean you’re a fish.”

The point he was trying to make is that no white person could ever understand what it’s really like to be a black person.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

There was applause in the room when he spoke the words. I, on the other hand, sat quietly, seething in my soul, feeling nothing but contempt.

I have complete contempt for racism.

My contempt is also full for culturalism—the assertion that certain groups of humans react differently from others due to their location or skin color.

I have great contempt for ancestry.com, which propagates the idea that because my family members from the past were of a certain ilk or style, that this characteristic influences my decisions.

Anything that tries to break us down into a category other than “human” shall always receive my contempt.

I do not care if I am alone in this position—it doesn’t frighten me if people find my thinking to be insensitive to what they would refer to as “the natural divisions among people.”

It is wrong.

If God did not tell us what color Adam was or what preferences Eve had in salsa, I think the message is clear: The human race is, and evermore shall be, one family that just wants to squabble about who’s superior, so that they might receive better seating in the living room.

 

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Confederacy

Confederacy: (n) the Confederate states

As I sit quietly, my mind sometimes conjures the memory of something really dumb I have done. I am most comfortable when that piece of idiocy is well in my past.

But it is important, when that nasty memory comes to the forefront, that I own it, regret it and establish how ridiculous it was and how it mustfunny wisdom on words that begin with a C
 never be done again.

It’s part of being human.

Rationalizing all of our activities and granting them license immediately turns us into assholes.

Assholes, in this instance, are people who think they do not have elements in their past that need to be remembered with shame.

There was a time in this great nation when we denied our creed of the equality of all mankind and decided it was all right to own people as long as their skin was black. So intensely were we deceived that we were willing to go to the battlefield, bleed and die as feuding brothers.

A Confederacy challenged our Union.

It was shameful–a frightening part of our past.Yet it is a chapter of the book we call America.

We have two responsibilities:

  1. Don’t deny it happened
  2. Offer the necessary regret and shame required to eradicate it from happening again by eliminating all the prejudice that brought about such foolishness.

 

 

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Mr. Kringle's Tales...26 Stories 'Til Christmas

(click the elephant to see what he’s reading!)

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Competition

Competition: (n) the activity or condition of competing.

“There is no competition between us,” she said with a smile.

And then we sat around the room trying to answer Jeopardy! questions. As the moments passed, the intensity of her responses increased, with evidence of a bit of froth at her mouth.

Of course–we’re all in competition.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

If we’re not competing for money, we’re competing for parking spaces.

As children we compete for the affection of our parents.

Sometimes we even stand in line at the grocery store and check to see if our tally is more impressive than the person before us.

Life may not be a competition, but in the process of living it, we develop a strong need to compete.

Some people call it greed or avarice.

Others deem it motivation.

I think it’s just quicker to call it human.

 

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Colleague

Colleague: (n) a person with whom one works

A colleague is what we call a friend we go into business with…and it’s the first day.

Day 4 we’re calling the same person a “partner.”

Day 10, the word “adversary” slips in.

And by Day 30, “son of a bitch” seems appropriate.

Thus is the evolution of human involvement.

We always start off with our ideals and goals way too high. Putting ourselves on such a pinnacle makes the fall from such heights nearly lethal.  I, on the other
hand, like to perch my dreams on mushroom caps–awfully close to the ground, with just a little rise and a nice wide seat for my big butt.

I realize that the chance of two people remaining colleagues while still abiding on Planet Earth is similar to finding a movie you really enjoy at the Cannes Film Festival. (I mean, you think you should enjoy the flicks. It’s pointed out to you why you should appreciate them, but there still seems to be something missing.)

And what’s missing with the concept of “colleague” is that we’re very human, and tend to be human with each other at the same time. For instance, if one person was human and the other a bit divine, it would be great. The idea of both parties being divine at the same time is, of course, ludicrous.

What normally happens is that two human beings arrive at the same situation, with raw human emotion–and act like monkeys. Perhaps I insult the little apes.

We revert. We begin to feel that if we don’t have top billing, we don’t have any billing.

Finding a colleague is similar to establishing a relationship with God.

You have to understand that He (or She) has a will.

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