To My Mom

If you've read my blog before, you've probably seen some posts about my dad and the influence he has had in my life. But, of course, Dad was only half the equation while I was growing up.

I've mentioned my mom in a few posts, but without further ado, here's some additional thoughts and comments about my mom.

• The last time I was home for Thanksgiving there were 40 people at my Mom's house for lunch. I'm only related to 12 of them.
  
• My Mom once dressed up as a werewolf for my childhood Halloween party.
• My Mom and her friend spent hours creating handmade outfits for my sister's Barbie dolls. My sister found the box before Christmas.
• Mom made me a Ultraman costume out of paper-mache when I was a kid.
• She kept me out of school one day just to take me fishing.
• Likes to listen to Willie Nelson, Freddie Fender, and Metallica.
  
• Still likes to hear me play Greensleeves on the trumpet.
• Has her concealed handgun permit.
  
• She's an award winning cook.
• She has a HUGE Santa Claus collection that takes over the house every year at Christmas.
• She loves her family (and friends that she treats like family).
• Everyone is welcome in her house. My mother has never met a stranger, and really taught me how to love people.

I could go on and on, but for now I'm just going to say Happy Mother's Day Mom!!

Labels? Schmabels!

Just to clarify, this is not the same post my good friend Jeff wrote entitled "Label Schmabel". I mean, it's obviously not exactly the same. My title is plural and has punctation. You ought to take a few minutes and read his when you have a chance.

My thoughts aren't crystal clear on this subject yet, but I thought writing about it might help. So, here goes.

If you've ever watched The Breakfast Club, a movie about a group of high school kids that spend a day in Saturday detention, you know it deals with stereotypes. At the start of the movie, their judgemental supervising teacher gives them an assignment to write an essay about who they think they are. At the end of the movie, you hear the essay read as a voice over.

Dear Mr. Vernon,

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us...

In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...

...and an athlete...
...and a basket case...
...a princess...
...and a criminal...

Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

Very interesting, huh? Like Mr. Vernon in the movie, we all, in general, define people by the "groups" that they belong to. A few examples immediately come to mind:

teacher
Texan
musician
liberal
adult
environmentalist
biker
geek
Christian
professional
father

Whether it is because of a person's profession, gender, political leaning, age, or socioeconomic class, we all tend to view people through those stereotypes/labels/paradigms. But, also like in the movie, the reality is that no one is only one of those things, or a perfect representation of any particular group.

You might ask, "Aaron, if a movie from the 80's has already explored all this, why are you re-hashing it?"

I might answer, "I don't know." But I won't. Instead I'll answer by saying that the thing I wanted to remind myself (and you, if you are reading this) is that when we let labels define people, we ascribe faults and strengths to people that they may or may not have. I have one friend who always says (only half-jokingly) that anybody with dreadlocks smokes dope.

When I met my wife in college, I volunteered to tutor her in trigonometry. I'm a big guy, and in college I was in (much) better shape. My (future) wife's response internally to my offer was, "How can he tutor me in trig? He's just a big dumb jock."

You know what they say...don't judge a book by its cover. (But you may not know what I say...don't judge a book by its movie. )

Though I may have looked it, I, of course, am not a big dumb jock.

What do you think people might assume about you? Who do you tend to "pre-judge"? It's worth thinking about.

There you have it...told you I didn't have my thoughts organized very well on this.

I've Said It Before

Kiefer Sutherland is possibly in a little bit of trouble.

The bizarre case took place at a costume gala afterparty at New York's SubMercer bar, where Sutherland reportedly saw fashion designer Jack McCollough knock over Brooke Shields. When Sutherland asked the Proenza Schouler designer to apologize and was pushed instead, Sutherland reportedly headbutted McCollough, breaking his nose.

If I've said it once, I've said it a dozen times:

Don't mess with Jack Bauer.

A Fun Little Task

My son loves the movie Cars, so the other day when I was at Kroger picking up a few things I bought a Cars book for him. It was a very cool book. It was a pop-up book that had pop-up cars that popped out. AND, more importantly, it had a fold out racetrack in the back.

I knew the pop-up pop-out cars wouldn't last long, but I wasn't too worried. He has Hot Wheels that he prefers to play with anyway. But the racetrack was a different story. I didn't want that to get destroyed because he was having such fun with it.

I like to build stuff. I think it's fun. So I got the bright idea of making the racetrack into a table. My mom has a little table that's less than a foot high that she always pulls out for kids to play blocks on, etc. I thought that something along those lines would be perfect for this.

So I built a little table, took the map out of the back of the book, and mounted it on the table under plexiglass. Thanks Home Depot. It sits about 6 inches tall and measures about 18" X 30".

Cheryl tells me he played with it all day!

Fun for me and for him.

It's Been A While

Wow! I haven't posted since the other day. My family was gone to Texas for two weeks, and I kept myself pretty busy with "honey-do"s. Since they returned on Saturday we've just been playing catch-up.

So, if you have wondered if I had fallen off the face of the earth, the answer is no. First of all, it has been proven that the world is, in fact, round, and therefore has no face from which to fall. Secondly, I promised the other day to only post if I had something to say. Truthfully, I've been so busy I haven't had time to think about anything to say.

That being said, I have a few things I will probably be posting about in the next little bit.

1) Labels

2) Dreams

3) Other stuff

See you soon.