Go listen to George Strait. I don't care if you sit behind him in the restaurant and listen to him read the menu, just find a way to listen to the man. Go to Youtube.com when you have a weekend free and sit by the computer and smile vacantly. Country silk - that is one way to describe him. The Sinatra of country music is another. Absolutely the epitome of manly vulnerability with a voice that Angels think, "that's just heavenly."
My wife loves the "The Chair" and it is absolutely beautifully done by Mr. Strait. I happen to think she loves it more for the fact that her Grandfather really loved the song too and would sing it when he came up behind one of his daughters or granddaughters when they were sitting in a chair he wanted. But it is a great story song. And Strait is a great story teller with a sense of timing, suspense, and romance and a voice that is milky soft.
I guess his cowboy hat has always been too big for him to be a cross over star the way others have been after him, but I would love to hear him cover Sinatra and Crosby and any ballad from any other artist ever. He is one of those folks you never want to have cover your big hit - you won't ever be able to play it again without feeling second best. That is flat out talent - cowboy hat and all.
Lock the Freaking Door (or simply "Bloop")
My wife and I lived together before we were married. We always had multiple bedrooms and multiple bathrooms and tried to make it work out as best we could. We even maintained the separate bathrooms for a while after marriage because I know that even among very manly men, I produce, how shall I type it..., very potent by-products of digestion. I never wanted my wife to be exposed to such things, but a life together leads to all sorts of exchanges that single people never think they will have to endure.
We need to discuss the fact that I was raised in a house that only had one bathroom. One bathroom and three brothers. Friday nights, we would all be showering, shaving, evacuating (if you know what I mean) while the bathroom was occupied. My mom would even do her make-up while we were showering and we would have to tell her, "Coming out!" so she could evacuate the room for drying purposes.
This affected my sense of the closed door bathroom. If the door is locked, then you are doing something that requires privacy, and usually, a sitting position. If the door is unlocked, you are showering behind a curtain or putting on make-up or brushing your teeth. Got my thinking? Good. That will prove important in a paragraph or so.
Priscilla and I were getting ready to go out, but had not settled on where we were going. We were still in the single, but living together phase of our relationship. I had told her I loved her. About a week later, she had told me the same. We were still in that excited to show the other something NEW phase. While we were getting ready, I thought of this great restaurant we could go to that night.
I went over to her side of the house and did not find her in her bedroom getting ready. I saw that her bathroom door was closed and asked, "honey, are you in there?"
To which she replied," Yeah, baby. What do you need?"
I opened the UNLOCKED bathroom door and replied, " I was thinking we could....."
That was all that I could say. My speech center in my brain is apparently closely located and shares an electrical transformer with the "Oh, Holy Crap!" part of my brain since I was rendered speechless.
Sitting there, on a porcelain throne, was my beloved. She was not speechless. She was not only able to speak, she was able to speak LOUDLY.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT!"
I stood there for a second or six trying to say what I was thinking, "Why would the door be unlocked if you were in here doing this? Why would you not have the door locked? Why aren't you just brushing your teeth or doing make-up or brushing your hair? You know I had 2 brother and only one bathroom when I grew up and we had to share...."
"BLOOP"
SOMETHING had hit the water.
I felt my eyes go wide - as wide as they possibly could and still stay within the confines of my skull.
My future and current wife simply stated in a voice that would make James Earl Jones jealous, "OUT!"
Cowardice in the Face of Talent
Whether you believe it or not, I am pretty good at this writing thing. At least as good as some of the people that I have seen published. Not all of them mind you. Steinbeck and Asimov and Card and Nietzsche and Bendis and Bujold and Herbert are just some of my favorites who are better than me - or at least as good as me. But they all have something in common that I do not. They have all received a rejection letter from some publisher who thought they did not have what it took to be a successful writer.
I have never received any such missive. I have never had a story rejected by any publisher no matter how great or how small. There is a very simple explanation for this feat of consistency - I have never submitted a work to be judged by anyone who could be an expert at evaluating talent.
That is not entirely true. While a senior in high school I submitted a short story of teen suicide to a "young author's conference" that all of the local teachers loved and that they wanted the featured author to take with her as a sample of what small town south GA could produce. But since I only had the one copy, I had to keep my original and send her a copy once I had made one.
The short story was passed around the bus on the way home once everyone had heard of the interest of the author and the teacher. I was elated that everyone wanted to read my work. When we arrived home, the short story was no longer on the bus. I had been too busy getting into Kay's pants to watch where it went and I now believe it floated out the window on a wave of jealousy.
But that episode does not excuse my cowardice since then. I have written all kinds of stories and have had all sorts of ideas since then that should have been marketable. Indeed, there have been stories, movies, and tv shows that have stolen my ideas almost verbatim. So at least I know there is a market for my thoughts if I will just take the time to record them and submit them for judgement.
But to have them rejected. To have "experts" determine once and for all that I am not really as talented as I think I am in the one thing that I love to do most? Talk about scary.
And there in lies my cowardice. I will jump out of an airplane. Dive off a high dive. Pet a shark. Move hundreds of miles from my home town. Change jobs after almost twenty years.
Submit a piece of paper with a little bit of my soul tangled in the type - let's not get carried away.
Astros, Needles, Blood Work, and Love - Sweet Love
My wife is deathly afraid of needles. Whenever her doctors would want to do blood work, her mother would go with her and distract her from the situation while the techs would do their work. Once we were married, this task fell to me.
I would explain to the tech that my wife and I would be talking about baseball and that we did not want to know about anything that the tech was doing. We explained that if my wife had to think too much about what the tech was doing, she would cold-cock said tech and run screaming from the doctor's office.
We explained further that we were a peace loving family and would not see a med tech reduced to broken fingers and shattered pelvis if we could help it, and that I would be talking Astros baseball to my wife as a distraction. We thought this was as good a warning of self-preservation as could be provided - right up there with, "Don't press this button, for the love of GOD, don't press this button if you love your fellow man"
But as psychological studies have confirmed, saying "Don't press this button, for the love of GOD, don't press this button if you love your fellow man," simply creates an almost irresistible urge to press that freaking button.
We had one tech that could not find a vein in my beloved's right arm and had to explain all of this as she progressed to the left arm. My wife looked up at me in a loving way that said, "I am going to cold cock this f<"&i^% b)&%#@ if she doesn't shut up"
I responded as only a loving husband can in these situations by saying," Ma'am, you are going to have to shut the hell up so I can finish my story about Andujar Cedeno, or my wife is going to kick your @$$"
Wonderfully, she replied, "My son loves the Astros. Is Nolan Ryan still on the team?"
Warm Hand of a Friend
My dad was like most of us in that he was scared to die. He knew Christ and had a list of questions for his Lord that he was anxious to have answers - don't know if most of us are like that.
He spent so long dying - a fate that I don't wish on any - that he had time to come through the fear and stand on the other side dripping with the waters of the oh-so-frigid river . He told me and others that when it came time for him to die, that he would not face the cold hand of death. It would instead be a warm hand of friendship welcoming him to his final reward.
I am not afraid of dying. I am afraid of the things associated with dying. I have written before that I imagine a possibility where a bullet through the brain (the organ that perceives time) could feel like it takes centuries to complete its journey. That scares the living crap out of me.
Heck, the idea of living crap scares the living crap out of me. I know my reward. I know I will be at eternal and infinite peace with Christ in a way that I cannot fathom in this world where I can only find true peace within the confines of my wife's arms.
I fear for the day that I die for what it does to her. I fear that the peace she finds in this world are encompassed by the extent that my fingers interlace behind her back.
Things My Wife Hits Me For
Hearing screaming children in public and saying, "they have not beaten that child enough."
Sitting in a fast food restaurant and looking at a really fat guy (really fat guy = guy fatter than me) and saying, "Bet you a thousand dollars he supersizes whatever the hell he orders."
Trying to get into another lane of traffic with my blinker on for several minutes with the guy next to me blocking me out and then finally counting to three and closing my eyes and changing lanes anyway.
Tickling her at any and every occasion. (She really hates that. From anyone but me.)
When someone tells a long, drawn out story about how someone else has wronged them and then asks a crowd of us, " Am I wrong?" and I answer, "Yeah, you were a complete ass."
When someone finishes their large soda from McDonald's in the middle of Walmart and leaves the empty cup on top of the girl's short sleeved shirts display and I ask nicely, "were you raised in a freaking barn? Why don't you take your damn trash with you?"
When the hostess asks if we have reservations and I answer, "No. We are sure we want to eat here."
When I publish the "BLOOP" story on Facebook via this blog.
Ben and Nate
These two boys are my unofficial nephews by marriage and are scary bright. Mischief and cuteness are located on the same hemisphere of the brain which explains why children are so frustratingly adorable and adorably frustrating.
Ben and Nate are well behaved in recognition of the efforts that their parents put into fashioning strong young men. But even in these well mentored youngsters, I laughed at the follies that I remembered subjecting my parents. One slip, one violation of consistency and children will go all in on gamble after gamble that you will surrender again.
And it does not help that Uncle Ray laughs at most transgressions and smiles at most others.
Too cute and too loving. Anyone of honor or my half-honor, feels the need to be better to live up to the unflinching trust found in those eyes of unbending innocence.
W and History
Do yourself a favor and read the memoir of President George W. Bush. Through the changes in Egypt and Libya and brewing in Syria, no one has brought up the name of a President that some, maybe most, find embarrassing. But he committed this country to a war in Iraq to expunge weapons of mass destruction that were never found. He found a plan B in founding a democracy in an Arab state in a region that had none. The only democratic state in that part of the world is found in Israel and there is a whole inheritance feud going on between the main characters that would make the Hatfields and the McCoys shake their heads in bewilderment.
But it seems that there is a chance for democracy to find purchase in Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and perhaps Syria. If that does turn out to be the case, the befuddled and dumb-founded W will likely find himself like Ronald Reagan and the fall of Soviet Russia - a perfectly shaped peg that too few historians will ever attempt to fit into an all too obvious historical hole.
WDMG and WOKA
When I was growing up these were the two radio stations that came in most often on the radio. One was mainly country and the other was only slightly country with a hint of rock and roll. I grew to hate the limitations of these stations as I grew older.
When I moved far afield from home, I found radio stations that played other music that spoke to me where it found me and even more music that I moved to find.
But, as I sit here and type this, the wife and I are playing music over the internet. Each taking turns finding songs from our youth or that were important to family or even modern songs that just spoke to us.
I found myself playing Tom T. Hall and Jannie Fricke and David Allen Coe and Lynard Skynard and Alabama.
The hidden soundtracks of our lives. I did not have cable and even so, I predate the founding of MTV. Static filled music introduced by announcers who sounded just as rustically southern as I did was an experience that could not help but shape a life.
"He-ah is the Baatulls hit song, 'I Want to Hold Yo-ah Hand,'" just has to graft something on to you or carve something off.
Happy Accidents
I was the typical irrational, rebellious teenager. It did not require me to be the victim of an injustice for me to get fired up about it. I got more fired up than the one who was the actual victim. I understood much more than most people my age (it seemed to me) that we had so little power and that so much of what happened to us in school was capricious.
As I got older I realized that many of the fights that I carried out were not really worth it. I also found out that most of the teachers that I thought of as petty and narrow minded were even more petty and so small minded that "narrow" was a relative term that was actually too broad as I pictured it.
But there were those occasions of happy coincidence that just played out better than I ever could have planned. But I really wish I had planned it.
The best example is a teacher that got on my nerves almost as much as I got on hers. One day I was talking about something in class - because, let's face it, I am most often talking rather than doing anything else. The teacher is question called to me, "Ray"
"Yes ma'am, " I answered with no agenda or even a clue.
"Shut. Up"
"Yes ma'am," I answered again with a bit of confusion in my voice that was thankfully not discerned.
"Ray!"
"Ma'am?"
"Hush!"
"Yes ma'am"
"Ray!"
"What?" as I started to realize what was happening.
"Be quiet!"
"Okey dokey." Pretty sure of the game now.
"Ray!"
"Yes, um?"
"SHUT UP!!"
"You Betcha!" Knowing that I have my opponent in mate and as long as she struggles it just makes it more painful for her.
"Ray!!!"
"Yeah?"
"Stop talking!"
"Whatever you say, boss lady."
"Ray!!"
"Whatcha need?"
"Hush!!!"
"Sure nuff."
"Ray"
"Huh?"
"Don't say another word!"
"K"
"Ray!!"
"That's me."
"BE QUIET!!"
"Will DO!"
This may have gone on longer but I think I have made my point. Although back then I may have carried this out much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much longer. You know have teenagers are.
You Oughta Know about Rolling in the Deep
Take a minute and listen to "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette and "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele with a follow up of "Someone Like You" by Adele. Broken-hearted women apparently make big COIN out of misery.
These are a couple of cases where when you compare the man to the money he engendered, he just wasn't worth it.
Poker
I am back to playing poker. Not for cash mind you. But I have found a circuit that will allow me to play cards at least twice a week with my rotating work schedule. Such a thrill to settle down at the table and get a hand that fosters a bet.
Even better to see the flop and find encouragement that has to be quickly masked so that others at the table will see you as weak when you are really strong. Nietzsche and Sun Tzu would be so proud.
Waiting for others to raise the bet and then calling it with subtlety allowing others to be the aggressors. Staying in the game but in the background as lesser players duel and fall.
Finally to slowly slide all your chips to the center and see the fear in the eyes of all those who had forgotten you still held a hand.
Confidently laying down your winning FLUSH with your KING standing high above the rest.
And then that one jerk in the corner has the freaking ACE and puts you out. Crap. Poker.
