Skiing? No thanks! I'm trying to quit!

The way I see it, (which is generally in a moderately "blurry" way on any given Sunday morning), summer's coming on, and it's only a matter of time before I'll be expected to make a series of "guest appearances" at Cedar Bluffs lake, sitting on my son Cuyler's pontoon boat drinking beers and pestering grandchildren, which is basically the same activities I do on my own front porch, but minus the water and the fish. One thing that I'm really happy about is that generally all we do at the lake is drink beer and fish, and so far nobody in my family has shown any real desire to attempt "water-skiing", which is a sport that, if I ever get published in any major newspaper, I intend to write numerous columns about the dangers of. Oh sure, I know that many of you, what with your extremely high levels of coordination and manual dexterity probably wish you could be skiing right now, but not me. I remember when I was a much younger man trying to learn how to water ski under the careful tutoring of my friend Randy Chapin, who was apparently secretly trying to kill me at the time, judging by the way he would drag me along the bottom of the lake until I finally obtained the mental capacity to "let go of the rope", which is in quotation marks only for the reason that that's exactly what he told me I should do if I found myself going "under" the water rather than gliding along rapidly "on top of the water", where, as it turns out, was where everybody else tended to ski. I don't really know why I could never get the hang of it, but I know I never did! Randy would take off in the boat at speeds rivaling that of a space shuttle re-entering the earths atmosphere, and I would immediately sink to the bottom of the lake and drag along it until my mouth was full of mud and moss, and only then remember to "let go of the rope", floating to the surface dazed and confused and swimming in circles, like a catfish with a severe disorder of the central nervous system attempting to spawn in waters near a nuclear facility with obvious radioactive waste violations. Thankfully, I was young and extremely "bull-headed" back then (unlike today, wherein I'm "old" and "bull-headed"), and I would try this same skiing technique again and again, and always with the exact same results. This makes me think of Albert Einstein, but for reasons that I'm unsure of. It's just crazy. Someday, when I die and my grandson Caleb demands that an "autopsy" be preformed on my carcass to preserve his "innocence" in the case, it will probably show that the reason for my death was as simple as that most of my major organs were chock-full of mud, moss, and lost fishing lures. I would even go so far as to guess that a large percentage of these fishing lures were endorsed by Budweiser, but that's just me. In any case, now that I've grown older, I've also resolved to treat all "skiers", whether it be on water or snow, as "real" human beings. Also, the opinions expressed by this "writer" may not reflect accurately on the opinions that this "writer" is REALLY thinking! Have a great week Friends, and remember that I appreciate everybody who actually reads this blog, rather than doing something "constructive" with their time. GOD LOVES YOU, and so does Rany!

Education is impotent! Ain't it?

In my opinion, life has changed a bunch since I was a kid growing up in Lebanon Kansas, where for awhile, when I was between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, absolutely NONE of the town's adults appeared to have a "lick of sense", at least to me and my particular "circle" of friends! Fortunately, over time and probably many long hours of specialized night schooling, these adults, (who are now "senior citizens"), appear to have finally gotten their "act" together, and in many cases could easily pass for geniuses, at least in my old mind. I'm not sure that if these same adults would have achieved this level of intelligence if they would have to start all over, and be educated by our current public school system. In fact, I'm not sure they would even "fit in", and I don't blame them, cause I'd be a little lost myself! If I remember correctly, even as recently as the sixties and seventies, things were a lot different when it came to the "little" things in life, such as the actual "raising" and educating of your own children, mainly because the actual PARENT had to assume the biggest share of the responsibility, rather than the government and whoever was the "First Lady" at the time. Our parent's were weird that way. It may just be my "clouded" memory, but I was also thinking that our parents were just our parents, and didn't in any feasible manner attempt to be our "Best friends", and in some of the more EXTREME cases, would expect us to sort of "earn our keep" by doing menial labor tasks called "chores", wherein we would have to "slop the hogs", "gather the eggs", or in my particular case, carry several "bazillion" cases of motor oil down into the basement of my dad's gas station, just so I could carry them back up again every time I changed the oil in somebody's car, which I was already doing at 12 years old. Many times I would ask dad why we didn't just leave the cases of oil upstairs in the shop, but to no avail, the oil ALWAYS had to go downstairs. Dad was a real "Hoot" when I was a kid, and seemed to be under the impression that hard work would build "character" or something, but who knows, because as I stated earlier, literally ALL of the grown-ups in Lebanon during this particular time frame appeared to have underlying mental conditions leading them all to believe in the exact same principles. If I had to take a stab at figuring out what caused this problem, I would have to assume that somehow it would be "Bush's" fault, but I'm only here to write, I'm not a detective! Our school teachers weren't much better in them days than our parent's were, at least I didn't think so. It seems that they were more interested in the actual TEACHING of us, rather than just being our "friends" and drawing their meager salaries. Just to be fair though, I really think that eighth grade teacher Doug McNichols TRIED to be friends with me, but we never really had a chance to get to hang out with each other very much on account of he was a teacher and attended school pretty much on a daily basis, whereas I was a student spending large amounts of my actual "learning time" being on "suspension", and carrying cases of motor oil up and down the basement stairs at my dad's gas station. As far as I'm concerned, I pretty much "paved the way" for all the "S's" on the other kid's report cards, even though theirs mainly stood for "satisfactory", and mine were mostly for "suspended". All of our teachers were basically infected with the same type of disease that our parents were back in those days. My seventh grade teacher was Esther Herndon, (who took teaching very seriously, as if the future of our great country depended on it in some way), never once gave me the impression that she wanted to be my "friend", and for the life of me I can't remember her ever asking me to support her in a "picket" line wherein she could demand some type of "collective bargaining" for her profession while letting her students miss large amounts of school time. Esther was strange in that way, but you have to realize that in these days people actually CARED about other people, and many made HUGE sacrifices to their own well-being in order to do the job that they were hired to do by the people who actually pay for it, which is the tax-payers. Even the coaches were infected by this way of thinking back then! Heck, if you lost a game they would tell you that, sometimes straight to your face, and many times even tell you whose lousy playing was to blame, not like "modern times", where the coach always takes the blame and everybody always wins, the parents and teachers are always the kids best friend, the actual "gun" is the real killer, rather than the idiot pulling the trigger, (who is a "victim" of society anyway), and of course, "Muslims are our Friends", even though they repeatedly try to kill us. If I could take only ONE lesson away from my encounters with our "Senior citizens", I would have to say that it is being responsible for yourself and your own, but that's just me! I also think that we were raised by the most intelligent collective group of people on the entire planet, and trust me friends, it's a GIFT that we should NEVER take for granted! Plus, we should also warn our children and grand-children as to just how "crazy" life was when we were kids. Have a great weekend Friends, and remember that my writing will be famous someday, so this would not be a good time to delete me! Save your bullets and your green beans, and GOD Bless YOU!