Normal - CH1 of Becoming Thuperman

Special powers notwithstanding, I wasn't a likely candidate to ever become a superhero - not even a regular hero, if there was such a thing. All I had to do was open my mouth and no one took me seriously. You see, as a result of a playground accident when I was six involving a teeter-totter, a pretty girl named Judy, a bully from the fifth grade named Jake and my chin, I bit the end of my tongue off. It required seventy-four stitches but ever after I have spoken with a lisp.

Because of the speech impediment, sometimes people have trouble understanding me. Generally, I hang out with people I know to minimize the confusion. Otherwise, I don't talk much, especially to strangers.

Another thing wrong with my superhero potential was the name of my hometown, Normal, Illinois. No kidding, it really is named that. Kind of ironic for someone who has made a life of being abnormal. I suppose it's better as a place of origin than some fabricated somewhere no one could ever visit like Smallville or Gotham. If I ever become famous, maybe they'll erect a statue of me somewhere in Normal. I'll have that one up of any superheroes from fictitious places.

Sometimes, Normal is a little too real for those of us who actually grew up there. Oddly, a lot of people I grew up with still live in Normal. Some do so by choice, other have no choice. For the rest, who knows. Mostly it's just you have to be from somewhere, I guess. There are probably worse places to be from.

Anyway, except for being accident prone, susceptible to childhood diseases and having two big sisters who bullied me badly until I was around thirteen, I had a fairly average go of it as a kid. There were the requisite number of run-ins with tough kids. They picked on me before the accident with my tongue. It only grew worse afterwards. At first, I got pissed at my so-called friends when they ran off leaving me to take a bully's thumping. But after a while, I realized I'd better hang onto the few friends I had because they were hard enough to come by. No point in losing any of them along with my lunch money. As far as being bullied, all I can say is, if only I knew then...famous last words, right?

My vivid imagination survived everything every adult authority figure in my life tried to do to it. By the time I reached the age of being sort of grown-up, I wasn't too mature to believe my strangeness derived from coming from another planet. That wasn't really the case, but it was the best I could come up with for an explanation of my difference from everyone else. It just happened I was a human in a fringe kind of way.

There were girls I liked before I was supposed to. You know, boys and girls aren't supposed to connect until maybe fifth or sixth grade at the earliest. It was fine that I noticed them, though, because not that many of them noticed me. So who knew but me? But that's normal, too - for me anyway.

There was always Sandra, though. She was a little different in a lot of the same ways I was. She never liked to dress up like a girl unless her mother made her do it. Then she looked about as silly as I would wearing a dress. Yes, I did that once. Only once and it was on a dare. It also happened to be one of the few times any of the girls in school noticed me.

At the time, when Sandra and I were seven or so, I didn't think of her in the same way as I did everyone else, especially the girls. You see, she was one of those special people you meet in life who you just know you're going to like being around most of the time. So you end up being around them a lot and feeling pretty comfortable with the situation. I guess she felt the same way about me back then. I never asked her, but since we're still best friends, how could it be otherwise?

Sandra and I hung out nearly everyday - except for when one or the other of us was sick - which happened a lot for me - or grounded - which happened a lot more often for her than me. She was into games, the arcade ones - not like playing the kinds of tricks girls do on guys. I never understood why girls think it's funny to make guys look like fools which, granted, isn't all that hard to do. Never once did Sandra string me along or lie to me. In return, I never was anything but totally honest with her. I guess that's why we're still close friends.

All day Saturday, except for the aforementioned times when we couldn't, we spent hanging out at the arcade. Whatever my best score was on my favorite machine, she came along and trashed it - cold, without ever having played the game before. That was one of her special powers, I think, though she never admitted it. Like me, Sandra was superhuman in particularly unusual ways even for a superhero.

By the way, have you ever noticed how the female of hero is heroine but the female of superhero is not a word, but the hyphenated super-heroine. Why is that? Are the political correct police sleeping on the job or what? Fair is fair.

You'd think it'd be a bigger issue, but I guess a lot of superhero types out there don't realize it for a long time, if ever at all. You see, we all have special powers, just most of us don't ever realize it - or if we do it happens kind of later on in life. Like my great uncle Carlton. People used to call him Carguy, which also became his superhero name. He could make anything broken work but his true talent for which people knew him best was his ability with automobiles. So, naturally, his cover was being a mechanic, which he did for forty-five years, until he retired. Then Uncle Carlton became a legend, patrolling the road in his pickup helping motorists when their cars break down - usually for free, unless someone refused to accept no for an answer and paid him anyway.

Sandra also has some superheroes in her family tree, though the traits appeared most often on the female side. Her Aunt Flo could hold her breath for a very long time, which she claimed was a talent she developed from growing up around her brother Raymond who was particularly flatulent. Ray, of course was known as Gasman. His cover was talking with a fake - and very bad - Australian accent easily mistaken for an equally bad British accent. He claimed to be the 'foul wind from down under' - the entire reason for the fake accent in the first place. But in truth, he was from Encino, which is somewhere in California. I've not cared to go there because Ray's still around and probably his legend precedes him.

Aunt Flo's superhero name is Proud Mary. Not sure why. Her talent is being ignored, which comes in handy a lot, I think. She has a slightly different perspective on that, especially after the number of times she has almost been struck while crossing the street.

Sandra was the one who taught me everyone has something they are good at and that can be turned into a superpower. Take my uncle, Jon. He's the one who gave me the talisman I wear with my superhero costume, not that he ever needed it anyway. He was really good at sneaking up on people. People accused him of being able to turn invisible - which is not to be confused with being ignored. Since no one ever caught him doing it, though, there was never proof. When you think about it, it's hard to catch someone being invisible, you know? But that's getting way ahead of where I need to be in telling this story.

Back to Sandra - on any given day she could look like she was someone else. Really, it was kind of creepy, in special sort of interesting way. She decided I should call her Sandy or Sand, just so we could keep her different appearances straight. Occasionally, she was Cassandra, which was her real, official birth certificate name. She told me she was named after some mythical Trojan princess, who was psychic and stuff. Interesting story to tell a kid of eight. I asked her how she knew all that. Her mother and father told her, sort of as justification for what they did to her saddling her with that name. You see, normally she didn't like being called Cassandra. It made her sound too old, she said.

She found out later that she had a great aunt by the same name who was very mysterious - like she was into witchcraft and occult things. I could see why her parents never told her about her namesake when she was a kid, but it never made sense to me why they would go ahead and name her after a relative hardly anyone knew and fewer yet liked all that much. Sandra told me it was an obligation. She didn't explain; I didn't ask. Eventually, you find out about obligations in the course of your life.

Maybe her folks told her about the Trojan princess thing as a cover for their obligation to her great aunt. That makes more sense than just naming her that for 'what the heck', you know?

Namesakes can be a problem. For example, I'm named Wilson, like the last name expect it's my first name. That always starts off things on a confusing note for me. You see, I always go by Will because I don't want to even start the explanation about Wilson. But people sometimes want to call me Bill, like I'm named William - which I'm not. If I tell them my name is Wilson, usually they stare at me for a couple of seconds and feel obligated to make some comment, usually innocuous, but sometimes kind of offensive. Something along the lines of, "Isn't that unusual."

Yes, it is unusual. My grandfather thought it was, too, but that never stopped anyone from naming me after him. It's a family name. Yeah, well, it was a mistake that has been perpetuated ever since - as mistakes are often prone to do.

So, I could totally relate to Sandra's thing with her official name. I hardly ever went by Wilson, and she hardly ever went by Cassandra, unless she was being very serious - in a funny, overly formal and dramatic kind of way.

When she got a little older, she told me it was really her secret identity, as if she were a spy. That was kind of cool. We played like we were spies a lot when we were kids - always a fun thing to do. It became good practice for what was to come in our adult lives. It's not a coincidence how the play thing works with kids, by the way. The more you play at doing something, the better you are at those things later on in life. It's like playing sports and becoming a professional jock just because you've got the necessary practice time in from an early age. So don't ever tell a kid not to play.

Sandra decided her name was very useful for having secret identities without really having to change her name all that much. She could be Cass, Cassie, Sandra, Sandy or Sand. Each one was a different persona for her. I knew them all and had no real preference. Any one of them was immense fun to be with.

With my name, I didn't have any real options. Dad called me Sonny, which was also what people called grandpa when he was young. But Sonny always seemed generic to me. People called me Willie when I was little. That didn't work any better than Will and kind of irked me. So, mostly I went with plain old Will and was done with it.

Sandra grew-up just as a nerdy as me. We were soul mates before I knew what that term meant. It means a lot more than how it's commonly used, though. You see, part of my special abilities involved always being able to find her, no matter where she was in the world. We weren't always born in relatively close proximity in our past lives. - Yes, I believe in  reincarnation and you should too because you made it back, after all. It just happened that, in this particular lifetime we came to share, we were both from Normal. Two of the most abnormal kids ever in the history of being kids, and we were born a few days apart in the same hospital in a small city in Illinois.

If you've never been to Normal that's understandable. You may not know where Normal is, but you probably have at least heard of Illinois. If you weren't good with geography in school, think of the map of the United States. Find the middle, which is actually a place called Lebanon, Kansas. That's a piece of trivial knowledge for sure, but it comes into play later on, which is how I know about the place. Anyway, move your finger kind of northeast from there, toward Chicago. Normal is on the way, north of Bloomington, which is just about smack-dab in the middle of the State. That's where my story and Cassandra's begins.

Becoming The Moron In Oxymoron - Humorous

'Seriously funny' were the words used to describe a presentation I delivered when I was in college. Of course, I understood what the spontaneous critic meant, despite the oxymoron. I took it as a compliment.

It's true. Sometimes, I play the fool. I know that people may think I am really that way, a complete moron. But what difference does it make? I have fun whenever I can.

I'm not a comedian. I don't think I'm naturally funny. Occasionally, I see the irony in situations, though. Sometimes there is humor clinging on for the ride. If you flip the irony over, like the slime clinging to the bottom of a rock, you will find some humor. There are few serious situations that are without irony. I'm convinced irony is the mysterious invisible force that holds the universe together. So, there is a good deal of humor available, even if you have to dig a little to find it. And if you can't find anything to laugh about, make something up. Be creative!

Why do I look for irony and humor? No one else I know seems to be doing it. If they were, I'd gladly sit back to listen and watch someone else playing the fool. Some things just need to be done, though. Without levity in life, what we have is the same old conditional gravity that makes the world a cold, emotionally starved place. Life is desperately difficult for most of us. Lighten someone's day, lessen the load and make them chuckle. What does it cost? What can it hurt?

Say something unexpected and completely off subject. See another's eyes twinkle as they realize you've just temporarily eased their burdens. Try it out. Do it even if you have to resort to a little event shaping. Help someone to laugh and make the drudgery of the day go by a little faster.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. I have a friend who plays golf every weekend. Let's call him Lance. That's not his real name but I won't tell if you don't. Sometimes when the weather is nice he kicks out of work an hour or so early. He forwards all his calls to his cell phone, just in case there is a sudden outbreak of work demanding his personal attention. On his way home from the office, he takes in a quick nine holes. Yeah, he has the golf addiction.

Now, Lance knows I have never been a golfer. Over the years, Lance has often offered to teach me the game. That would certainly be an ego trip for Lance. He often brags that he could have gone pro. He has a low handicap. If it weren't for work, he could have made a living at it, eventually.

It takes a lot of faith to pursue a dream. It is walking across the economic tightrope of reality without a safety net.

A while back, Lance took some grief from his wife. He bought a new set of professional quality clubs. He tried to sell his old clubs in advance of the purchase to help offset some of the expense, but no one was interested in paying the price he asked. As you can imagine, his old clubs were pretty good. He took very good care of them. They were probably worth more than the bargain hunters were willing to pay. Then again, I am no expert.

Finally, he decided not to sell them and used the excuse of saving them for his boy, which sort-of - temporarily - got him out of the proverbial doghouse and back in the living room, even if it was only to sleep on the couch. At the time, his son was five years old and at least eight years away from using adult clubs. So yes, the excuse was a bit of a stretch.

I have to hand it to him, though, awarding extra points for quick thinking.

Note the genius of the concept Lance employed. He instinctively used an ages old male survival technique. If a man ever does anything selfish and/or childish while married, he needs to make it look like he did it for completely unselfish reasons.

Using the kid was brilliant. I must warn you, though. What he did will not work a hundred percent of the time. Still, it may lessen the severity and duration of the solitary treatment. It may garner a blanket for sleeping downstairs. Then, after a night spent alone in the living room, buying some flowers, taking the wife out for a night of dancing or cooking dinner for her - whatever seems to work best - will re-establish some harmony in the marital universe.

Just don't overwork this technique. It wears thin quickly. With some wives, it may work only once.

Anyway, knowing that Lance had an extra set of clubs, I called him up and asked if I could borrow them.

"What for? I thought you said putt-putt was challenge enough for you."

"Hey, hey. Can you negotiate that windmill, really?"

Lance chuckled. "Seriously, you are going to play golf with someone?"

"I am going to the amusement center to play a round of putt-putt."

"Why do you need a set of clubs? They have their own putters."

"Look, Lance, I'm serious. I want to walk up to the booth and ask for a caddy."

Lance laughed for several moments. "God, I would love to see you do that."

"Then come along, hide and savor the moment."

"I can't. I got the kid thing tonight. It's the wife's night out."

"Well, you're going to miss a memorable event, as long as I can use your old clubs?"

"Yeah sure, just bring 'em back whenever. They belong to the boy, you know."

A few days prior to that, I had gone to play putt-putt with my wife and three kids. It was a special family night out and fun for all. I pretended to let my wife beat me. Really, she was playing better than me. But you understand. It's a male ego thing. My son suggested that I was letting Mom beat me. Immediately, I seized the concept. "Now, why would I want to do that?"

On the way out, we had to wait for the attendant to get a very unprofessional and completely public bawling-out from his supervisor about something inane. I don't care what someone does; it never deserves public embarrassment.

I decided that on my next day off, I was going to give the kid a laughable memory. I really did walk up to the counter with a bag of golf clubs and ask for a caddy.

I'll bet he still remembers.

The Confusion 'Principal' - Humorous True Story

From the first day that I was in Mrs. Hibbett's English class, she mispronounced my name.  She insisted that I should be called 'L-Jon' instead of 'L-Gun', the way my family pronounced my name.  I took it as an insult but even still if she insisted on calling me 'L-Jon', I could tolerate it for a while.  I guess that I thought that maybe eventually she would get it right.  Who was I to correct an English teacher on how to pronounce something?  Except it irked me.  It was my name and as far as I could tell she handled everyone else's name just as they pronounced it.  Why was she singling me out as the only student who was mispronouncing a first name?

She had ignored the first couple of times when I had attempted to correct her; she persisted calling me L-Jon.  The more I tolerated it the longer it would linger as a continuing irritation.

To that point in life I was a rather quiet, generally shy person.  I was a listener more so than a talker and a watcher more so than a doer.  I tried to never make trouble for myself or anyone else.  Then, one day all of that changed.

I don't know why it happened as it did or even what happened to trigger it.  Maybe it was that my voice had begun to deepen and hair had begun to replace the fuzz of youth in my private places. I might have even got up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed.  Sin of all sins, I ignored Mrs. Hibbett calling someone named 'L-Jon' to the front of the class to do board work. It was a silent protest and despite her repeating the request, I was sitting there staring into space. I  completely ignored her while trying not to notice that every eye in the classroom was suddenly trained upon me.

She got up from her desk, and walked over to my side of the room. We were seated alphabetically, of course. So I was pretty-much at the back of the room and furthest from the door as my last name started with a 'W'.  All the other tail-enders of the arbitrary alphabetical segregation were seated in the same ghetto of surnames around me. Mrs. Hibbett walked right up to my desk. She angrily planted her high heels into  the resilient tile floor and reiterated that she wanted someone named 'L-Jon' to do board work.

"Excuse me but are you talking to me?"

"Who else would I be talking to, 'L-Jon'?"

"Oh, that's the problem.  My name is pronounced 'L-Gun' not 'L-Jon'."

"It should be pronounced 'L-Jon'," she insisted.

"That is how you choose to pronounce it.  It is my name and I can pronounce it any way I damned-well want to!"

Of course, she sent me to the office.  I was sitting in the outer office awaiting a conference with either Mr. Smith the assistant principal or Mr. Irvine as the latter walked by and said, "Bill, what brings you down here?"

"Mrs. Hibbett sent me to see you."

"Come in, then."

I got up and followed him into his office, closing the door behind me.

"Have a seat," Mr. Irvine said as he offered me a jawbreaker from a jar that he kept on his desk.  "Okay tell me the story."

"Mrs. Hibbett has been mispronouncing my name ever since the first day I reported to her class."

"How do ya mispronounce Bill?"

"Well, that's just it.  My name is Elgon."

"It is?"

"Yes sir.  I think you got Bill from my last name being first on my transcript from military school."

"Oh, oh yeah, that must be how that happened.  Well, be that as it may, it is your name.  I suppose you could pronounce it 'Mike' if you wanted to."

"Well, that is sort of what I told her."

"That is silly.  Why would she send you down here over something like that?"

"It was probably the way I expressed it."

"What exactly did you say?"

"I told her I could pronounce my name any way I damned-well wanted to."

"Oh, well, yes that would matter," he said.  "That is over the top.  It is not good to swear at a teacher, especially in front of the entire class.  You disrespected her and undermined her authority."

"I know that.  I usually don't swear.  I didn't intend to undermine her authority it is just that she belligerently counters everything I say to her in class, always quick with a sarcastic come back.  I have been taking it all along.  It just made me very mad that she refuses to say my name the way I want it to be pronounced."

"Well, she is a very good teacher.  It is just that sometimes her style does not agree with certain people.  Are you learning from her?"

"Yes, I am learning.  It is just the sarcasm that bothers me and her refusal to pronounce my name the way that I prefer."

"Well, I want you to go back to class and apologize to her in front of everyone for swearing and being disrespectful.  As for the name thing, well, I have to agree with you on that one.  I'll have a talk with her about it."

He hurriedly wrote out a hall pass and told me to return to class and refrain from using harsh language in the future.

When I returned to Mrs. Hibbett's classroom, every eye was again trained upon me.

"Well?" she asked.

"Mr. Irvine said that I am to apologize to you for the language I used and for being disrespectful and undermining your authority."

"And..."

"I'm sorry for that and it won't happen again."

"That's good."

"But he agrees with me that it is my name and I can expect it to be pronounced any way I want it to."

I could see her face redden. Whether it was from embarrassment or rage I was not sure.

"Well from now on I will call you Mr. Williams.  That is how you pronounce your last name, isn't it?"

"Yes ma'am."

I was grateful that at that moment the bell rang.  Unfortunately, she wanted me to stay after class for a bit.

When everyone left the room, she closed the door.

"What is your problem with me?  Really?"

"It is just that you refuse to pronounce my name the way I was used to and when I corrected you on it you continually ignored me.  Other than that I don't like being put down all the time."

"Put down?"

"Your sarcasm bothers me.  If I said to you what you say to me in class I would live in the office."

"I see.  Well, I was unaware that you had a problem with any of that..."

"Look, if you don't mean anything by it, I guess that's okay.  I was not in the mood for any of it today, that's all.  I am really very sorry that I swore at you.  I won't do it again."

"Go on to your next class."

Undersplaining - Humorous

My first semester at the University of Texas at Austin, I enrolled in a required macroeconomics course. I had been told that it was an easy 'A'. I was ambivalent about those courses that others promised were GPA inflator subjects. I needed the grades, but I also felt that I was wasting my money having to take classes that really taught me nothing. The guy I sat next to in that class, James, became my roommate during the ensuing semester. He wanted to split costs on an apartment, and so did I. It made economic sense to each of us. So, I figure that is something that I got out of the macroeconomics course.

James was a native Texan, born in Austin but raised in Houston. He had been a middle linebacker for his high school football team. Even though he was a little bit on the scrawny side, I never doubted his story. James could be a madman at times, passionate on a few things, focused and unwaveringly opinionated on others. In any debate, he had a wild look in his eye, something that might frighten the faint at heart causing them to relent in their arguments until James left the room. To me, his look was that of a religious zealot or perhaps a mass murderer. Yes, the more I think about it, Charles Manson has the same look. Unlike Manson, James was generally harmless.

Anyway, our friendship began in that macroeconomics course. He and I used to take turns asking questions of the professor. The point was to present some broad topic with a general inquiry for which there was either no real answer or a sort of answer that lent itself to the professor's propensity to pontificate. James told me the guy could be manipulated. "Ask him something fringe or controversial, and he will waste all the class time trying to explain something that he has no clue about."

James would do homework for his other classes while the professor rambled on about nothing important or even remotely relevant. It was only toward the end of the class that the professor would reel in his far-flung conclusions, tracking back on to subject just before the bell rang.

Sometimes I did other things in that class, especially when I had an impending exam. But usually I listened and tried to figure out what the professor was talking about. It occurred to me that he actually was basically still on subject until, at times, he fancifully flew off onto this or that tangent, digressing upon this or that almost unrelated subtopic. I determined he really was attempting to answer the question that was posed. When I mentioned this to James, he scoffed. He reasserted what was his fervent belief: "The man is an imbecile. He got his credentials by accident or through mail order. Anyway, he's an economist. Economists are like the world's biggest bullshit artists."

Emperors and kings of old used to have court astrologers to advise them as to the proper courses for their decisions. In modern times, where money matters most and all money is based on a fiduciary system, the shaman of preference is an economist whose job is to spread out the tarot cards, read the tea leaves, check the bumps on back of the First Lady's head, count the number of times that the Presidential pooch had to go outdoors for a tinkle during the course of a day and then explain the mysterious forces of the world's economy. James was correct about one thing, regardless the source of the bullshit, bullshit is still and always will be bullshit!

The macroeconomics professor had no idea how to answer some, if not most, of the questions that James and I were asking him. Yet, he tackled the challenge with as much hubris and vigor as any so called 'expert' would. As I observed what he was doing and listened to what he was saying, he perhaps had numbed my mind to the point that he eventually started making sense. Alternatively, he had perhaps stumbled, stammered and him-hawed but only to a point. Then suddenly, it was as if a light had illuminated from the heavens above, and shone down, penetrating the roof and several floors of the business building to light his way out of his self-excavated pit. Immediately, he became succinct and purposeful. The transition was astonishing to behold.

There was no word that I knew of that could encompass that entire process I observed, so I made up one. It was obvious to me that in the course of his trying to answer a question he was beginning to understand something even while he was explaining it, hence the term 'undersplaining'.

For George And Abe - Humorous

When I was very young there were two Presidential birthdays observed in February. Neither of them was a school holiday. I don't recall, but I think banks and the post office were closed in observance of both. I guess that for such a short month, two legal holidays were too much. Thank God there was no official observance of Groundhog Day or St., Valentine's Day. Other than the passing reference to whether Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, I tried to ignore Groundhog Day.

Observing St. Valentine's Day seemed kind of silly too. There was the annual, traditional and almost mandatory exchange of valentines with all the members of the opposite sex. Not only did you give them to the prettiest girls - those that would never otherwise give you the time of day, but also you had to include all those that you feared might actually believe that you had some cloistered amorous intentions. I suppose in these politically correct times, it may have not occurred to anyone that this practice probably violates some obscure but federally-mandated something-or-the-other.

Don't laugh. That might happen.

It usually takes Congress to create something utterly ridiculous. A case in point may well be Presidents' Day.

You may have noticed on the calendar that Abe Lincoln and George Washington's real, honest and true birthdays are ten days apart. It is kind of obvious; enough so that even Congress may have noticed it. The irony is that the collective body of elected officials decided to legislate a lie into a holiday to fall on a Monday between the twelveth and the twenty-second of February. It was to serve as a day to celebrate both birthdays of the past presidents. Oh, but it was also intended to celebrate the birthday of every president, even the not so great and forgettable ones. So, not only did a Congressional act split the respect for two men reputed to be truthful and honest men well beyond the norm, but it also diluted the holiday to the point of near meaninglessness.

As legislation of the sort goes, it is not surprising. The desire was to eliminate as many holidays that interrupt the middle of the week to officially celebrate them on a Monday, creating a three-day-weekend for those who do not work on weekends.

I believe this was around the same time that my state of birth, Ohio, decided to adopt Daylight Savings Time. My mother accused politicians of passing a law that allowed golfers more time on the links.

Who knows? Maybe she was right.

Mom also commented on the new law creating Presidents' Day. She said that if George and Abe were still alive to know about it, they would probably react the same way that my daughter Amanda might, if I told her that since her birthday is on the nineteenth of December, and so close to Christmas, that we are just going to pick a day between the two and celebrate that instead.

I could be wrong but, as I recall, in the years that followed the tragic assassination in 1963, there was some discussion about making John F. Kennedy's birthday a national holiday and, as should come as little surprise, Congress could not seem to agree on doing that. They had already replaced the venerable Benjamin Franklin's likeness on the fifty cent piece to create the Kennedy Half Dollar. It was considered redundant, perhaps since Franklin's image already adorned the hundred dollar bill.

Oh, and by the way, Franklin was never a President, so please do not refer to American currency as 'Dead Presidents'.Not true.

Anyway, I think the creation of a combined celebration of the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln sort of served to quell all the emotionally driven and politically controversial good intentions. In theory, over time there would be enough Presidents with diverse birthdays on the calendar that every day would eventually be some President's Birthday. So maybe Congress did us a favor, even if they didn't realize it. Three or four hundred years from now, when every day of the year will have been some President's birthday, there will still be postal service and banking underway.

President's Day has emerged to become a simple way to honor, remember and basically have excuse for the rest of the year to pretty much ignore the times of the greatest, along with the most obscure, of all the Presidents. Combine everything into one grand celebration that could be remembered in a tribute to the office itself, not so much the individuals that have served. There is a sort of egalitarian logic about that, and it strikes me as being a particularly American sort of thing to do.

At any rate, it was a fairly intelligent, and therefore, probably unintended, after thought, pursuant to the actual legislation. I was not paying much attention at the time, but I know that at the outset the holiday was only intended to honor the two patron demigods of American myth and legend: George that could never tell a lie and good ol' Honest Abe. Honoring truthful and honest men who served in the highest office of the land seems like a very admirable thing to me. But somehow, everyone else got lumped into the mix sometime afterwards, to ride on the coattails of the great in a celebration of honor as well as mediocrity in public service. .

When Congress was debating the matter, it wasn't like the creation of the holiday really needed a whole lot of discussion, but just that debating is one of the things that Congress seems intent on doing. They are pretty good at it, since they have a lot of practice.

During the period of discussion about the new holiday, someone asked my mother what she thought they were going to call the combined holiday. Her reply was classic, and clearly it made me laugh, because it was just as ridiculous as the whole concept of combining the two birthdays into one. Then and ever after, February not only has been unique for having merely 28 or sometimes 29 days. It has been forever associated in my mind with everything else that is kind of off-center and maybe even sideways about our country.

By the way, my mom's suggestion on naming the new holiday was, what else?  'Abe Birthington's Washday'.

Mort Du Jour - Poem

Separation none's fault
Vault across they came
Same unable to assist
Kissed in ices packed

Sacked, struggled sign
Devine mystery entangled
Strangled 'til expired
Wired for certain

Curtain drawn closed
Proposed nothing touch
Much potential, such a lie
Cry more eyes must tear

Fear is second handed
Remanded to custody
Free no more to care
Wear history as a face

Place chance refuse
Reuse bodies to wear
Scare those who live
Forgive my desperation

A Change In The Weather

The most recent of my experiences has changed the way I see the world. These devastating storms that hammered us for a few weeks in 2004 made me consider what is truly important in my life.

It should come as no surprise. My family matters most. Unequivocally, I could not have made it through the past couple of months without my kids. Then again, they were the only reason I wanted to make it through the past couple of months, anyway. It is funny how that works out.

I would like the list some of the things I learned:

1. Somehow, my daughters know how to play all sorts of card games that I have never heard of. After the past couple of months, I now know how to play some of them as well. Despite how large a pain in the butt it may have seemed taking them to this and that Girl Scout thing over the years, they learned a lot of useful things from being involved with others and that organization. Not only did they learn invaluable socialization skills, but they also learned a few card games. Enduring the recent power outages in the wake of violent storms would be much less bearable without those candlelight card games.

2. For the sake of one's nerves, if not safety, please, always evacuate when the authorities tell you to. Despite curiosity, lunacy or whatever, experiencing a category three hurricane at landfall is something best left to those silly enough to do it in front of a TV news camera. At least they are getting paid to be incredibly stupid.

3. Freedoms can be taken away in an instant, by fate and/or natural circumstance. Suspended liberty can also linger as an emergency situation for several days afterwards, in the interest of the public good. At my age, having anyone tell me when I HAVE to do anything is at the least irritating. I am not certain that I like the fact that the elected officials in my county can impose an arbitrary curfew, but I do like the fact that the police charged to enforce the times of suspended freedoms seem very interested in relinquishing the power as soon as the emergency has passed. Maybe that is how our country really is different from some other places in the world. The police officers are us and the authority is used only when it is necessary for them to protect us from ourselves. They watch out for whatever there is in human nature that makes people act like idiots.

4. The power of nature trumps everything. No one is impervious. I think storms are a little, not-so-friendly reminder that everyone is equal. There is no immunity. You are not bullet-proof. A storm does not give preference or deference to wealth, creed or ethnicity. It doesn't care whether you eat white bread or whole wheat. It doesn't want to know whether your belly button is an 'innie' or an 'outtie'. Your Atkin's diet doesn't matter. How great you were playing baseball in high school is immaterial. Nature doesn't mind removing a few shingles from your roof either, if that is what it takes to get your attention. The wrath of the elements will humble you into admitting that every person is a puny subject cowering in a corner, hunkering down and hoping for the best until the unleashed fury has passed.

5. Appreciation for electricity, more than almost anything else in life except for my kids, was underscored and highlighted. Having hot water to take a shower because there is electricity is a marvelous thing. It's funny though, I realize now why they call electricity 'power'. Having the 'power' is much preferable to having 'no power'.  However, it is always nice when someone that has 'power' offers to share some of it with you, especially when you don't have any. By the way, Air-conditioning is the greatest invention ever! Trust me on that one.

6. The strangest and most personally uplifting thing I have witnessed over the past couple of months is that emergencies, like this series of storms that my state has suffered, brings out the best in some if not most people. I don't know if it is an American thing or just a human thing - or even if any of that matters. I am relatively certain that it is part of the overall equalizing factor of an event or series of events of the magnitude of a disaster Floridians have sustained. When we are reminded how insignificant each of us is before the awesome display of the forces of nature, we tend to have a sense of community and become nicer to one another. When was the last time you volunteered to help a neighbor trim some palm fronds? - Or remove a tree that had fallen in his or her yard? When was the last time you stopped to ask your neighbor if he or she wanted a ride to get a few bags of ice? It has happened here lately and almost everyday!

These disastrous, violent storms, I would not wish on anyone. It is not that I feel blessed or even particularly singled out to have survived. All the same, I am grateful to be alive. It is only that I noticed a few things that reaffirmed my faith that somehow we will all get through even the hardest of times. It is not because we can or must, but because we are all together in this strange and sometimes twisted little world. Sometimes, it takes a disaster to get our attention and remind us that this is our unique sandbox. This is the only place we have to play. We need to behave ourselves and share, regardless how immature we are. What a pity it is that it takes disasters to bring the 'human' out of our common 'humanity'. The shame is that most of us aren't a little more human to one another all the time. We wait until there is a tragedy become who we really are, members of the same tribe.