My Other Son, Buddy

In October of 2006, my wife was trying to politic for a dog for her birthday.  This was an obvious “NO SOUP FOR YOU!!” request and she knew it.  Our previous animal weakness occurred on 9/11/2002.  She worked in downtown Fort Worth and made the mistake of taking her lunch hour outside at the very sorry “SPCA - 9/11” rally.  They felt it was already very appropriate to piggyback the tragically lost lives of our loved ones from the cowardly terrorist attacks with the needs of our mistreated animals in shelters.  The hair on the back of my neck was like a shark fin when I heard of this event.   The problem?  I learned of the event after she had made eye contact with a shelter survivor – a horrible optical placement error on her part.  Within nanoseconds she had signed ownership papers and somehow was now the proud owner of a new transport kennel for an abused Miniature Doberman Pinscher.  If the love of this animal was shown to us through the act of submissive wetting, then this animal loved us more than anything has ever loved our family.  Within a few short weeks, Noel (an obviously under-thought Christmas gift name for a soon-to-be abusive family) was able to change the shade of our white carpet in our house to a dull amber hue. 

Noel slowly sucked the life out of the entire family.  She did have one redeeming quality now that I think about it.  She loved to dig her way out of our backyard.  Maybe I did have a little admiration for her in a Steve McQueen kind of way.  I especially loved the part where she cleared our backyard fence by jumping down a ramp of Legos on a scooter.  I could have made a fortune with that one but every time I’d try to get her to do the trick in front of someone else, she did her impression of the Warner Brothers frog and would just sit there, wetting the pavement around her. 

One day, she gave me a great early birthday present.  She dug out of our backyard and apparently caught a Greyhound bus back to Dobermanville.  This was absolutely a “Get Out of Jail” card of the highest order!!  Now I could honestly look both boys in the face when I explained to them that she had ran away (insert fist pump and self-inflicted high five here)!!!  The peace that existed in our urine-stained dwelling was beyond nirvana.  It was more like paradise.  We quickly found a donee for the remnant dog food and dog accessories.  We opened the windows and began digging through our junk drawer for our favorite carpet cleaner’s business card.  I felt like I had been given new life. 

For those of you taking notes at home – new life usually lasts no more than two years.  Enter my wife’s approaching birthday.  She, of course, already had everything she could ever want and really needed nothing for her birthday except for ……….. “well, it’s silly.” 

Ken:  “What?” 
Spouse:  “Oh nothing.”
Ken:  “Come on.  Tell Me”
Spouse: “Okay.  I really want a….. a dog (sheepishly spoken as she was hastily putting on her bullet-proof jacket the wrong way)”
Ken:  “Can you believe the Rangers have failed to make the post-season again?”

I stopped what I was doing, helped her put the jacket on the right way and slowly began to reason with her. 
I explained that I only had a few more months to live and that maybe we should go to one of those free, high-pressure sales getaways and buy a time share condo instead.  They’re much more pleasant.  She straightened up and reestablished her position of wanting another pet.  I thought for a moment and tried to direct the discussion toward a compromise – fish.  She acted like I had been speaking to her while communicating through a bad cell tower.  All I could hear was her blinking.  I said “No” and ran out the front door to see if I could catch the Greyhound bus that was driving by that said “Paradise” on the front.  I did this so that she could honestly explain later to the boys that “Daddy just ran away” without having to lie to them again.

Several days went by and my cell phone rang at work.  My youngest son was excited to talk to me – the first clue of impending danger.  He had apparently found a stray dog that wasn’t foaming at the mouth (yet) and he wanted to keep him.  Apparently, he and a few of the neighborhood kids in his Jr. Cript gang had been harboring a fugitive in our garage for the last several hours as the dog catcher was circling the neighborhoods repeatedly looking for the perpetrator.  I’m not sure where my tax dollars for City employee training is going but I’m pretty sure if you see six or more kids standing around with their hands behind their backs, whistling and avoiding eye contact – you might want to get out of your vehicle and INVESTIGATE!!!! 

The helicopter thumping subsided, the sirens and searchlights stopped.  All that was left was a brown and black dog in an orange jumpsuit in my garage furiously working a hacksaw on his cuffs when I drove home from work that evening.  I intentionally avoided eye contact with the creature (a life skill attainted in my former line of work as a part-time Green Beret).  When I did address him, I made the Jedi hand gesture to use the Force on him to inform him that “these are not the Masters you are searching for.”  He abruptly licked himself in an area I care not to mention at this point in the retelling.  When he resurfaced several minutes later, he began to follow us into the house in an eerily calm fashion, as if he had been inside a home before.  My youngest son swore on my grave as I held him up against the wall forcing his eyes into the glare of the spotlight that he had not let him into the house before to tarnish the “driven snow” appearance of our carpet.  

I removed the handcuffs from my son and put the Taser back in its holster, slowly entering the back door to our house.  For some unknown reason, probably related to job stress, I allowed the animal to enter our house without a diaper draping his furry carcass.  He walked with a casual gait and a sense of purpose.  I just knew that he was taking in the layout and gathering information for a future ransacking of our home when we were away on a long-term mission trip!!  He slowly lay down and placed his head gently between his paws.  This was an obvious strategy – to lull us into close proximity from his lazy posture then leap up, maul us and rip out our jugulars.  From here he would logon to our family lap top, hack our accounts and steal all of our unsecured debt as our lifeless bodies bled out the last of our hemoglobin.  Suddenly his head rose up and I covered my neck and lower legs instinctively in preparation of the impending attack.  He yawned and laid his head back down.

He kept up this act for hours until he eventually got up and slowly walked to the back door.  He used his nose on our blinds to make a foreign metallic clanking, something Noel had never heard nor produced ever.  He acted as if he wanted to use the restroom outdoors.  I had never seen such a performance.  My youngest son took the initiative of opening the door and the furry foreigner sauntered out the backdoor to casually pee on my fence.  I turned my head and cried.  He had passed the pee test - the one test that no other animal had ever dared attempt in this home.

As the sun began to set, my youngest offspring mustered up the courage to request that we let this monster stay the night inside and sleep with them on the floor.  Friday nights usually meant the boys would sleep on the front room floor and fall asleep watching “Frontline” reruns.  A calm feeling came over me again, probably from the medication, and I allowed the interspecies sleepover to take place on my carpet.

I awoke the next morning to find the animal sitting at our breakfast table drinking a cup of freshly brewed coffee and reading the Dallas Morning News.  We had brief small talk as I waited for the coffee to kick in.  We spent the rest of the morning discussing what George Bush should be able to accomplish in his second term even though most critics thought that “Lame Duck” presidents were less motivated to push social agendas.

The beast had morphed into our family – a family with rules.  The beast had become our family pet.  The pet became known as Buddy.  My youngest had generically named him this because he answered to it as they were protecting him from local authorities.  My son could have called him “Oozing Neck Wound” and he would have answered given the circumstances, but we kept the “Buddy” alias just the same.  A former co-worker and good friend commented that our family has a history of naming their pets after co-workers.  Acting offended, I succinctly responded “Nut – uh!!”  She had no response.  The name of my boss at the time was Buddy.  I couldn’t figure out where she was going with her line of questioning, so I left it alone. 
She quickly called Noelle at my old job and filled her in on what was happening at our house.

Buddy (not my boss) is now part of our family.  He sheds at a remarkable level and I don’t notice any change in my blood pressure.  His stellar impression of a dog on lithium is amazing.  He does it almost continuously.  He sleeps a lot and has to spend a lot of time by himself.  We are a busy family and many times he becomes an afterthought with respect to the activity calendar.  We are convinced that he has chronic depression what with the obvious symptoms:  can’t get motivated, can’t do more than sleep all day, can’t hold down a job, watches an inordinate amount of daytime television, dry mouth, cramping, nosebleeds, headaches, dizziness, muscle aches, itchy eyes, dry skin, etc.

We love Buddy and he loves us for some strange reason.  He is a kept dog.  He could have run away but I think he tried that before and maybe regrets the results of being on the lamb.  In fact, we are sure he was someone’s dog because he is trained in several areas.  He rarely barks.  He knows how to ride in a car without throwing up.  He has successfully killed and mounted the following game:  corn snake, grackle (2X), large rat, an opossum (almost), the elusive and annoying squirrel and some other bird that was unrecognizable to the next of kin.  Buddy is a gentle killer, yet a protector of his family. 

The change of heart towards Buddy was pretty amazing to me.  I grew up with dogs and never wanted another one, to be quite honest.  They take time, they bark, they make messes and they bark.  They tie you down and complicate your schedule.  I was the last guy I thought would ever own a dog, much less love the thing.  I’m also the guy who was probably never going to get married or have kids or maintain gainful employment or blog.  Life and time changes you – whether you want it to or not.  I look at a lot of things with much less zeal these days.  Maybe it’s like the joke about life resembling a roll of toilet paper – the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.  Or maybe it’s where you are in your ability to let things go.  Or maybe it’s God’s timing. 

The evolution of our spiritual walk is a magical thing – much better than Buddy’s dog impression talents.  God is very subtle in His formation of our lives.  Even His rebukes are difficult to hear or see sometimes if we’re not paying attention.  Quick word of advice:  start paying attention.  When He has to raise His voice, you’ll never forget it!!  What’s even better?  Asking Him what we need to change, let go of, apologize for or ask forgiveness for.  God loves proactive believers!!  God loves to see us evolve into Christ like children.  He loves to hear us when we are still enough to ask.  He loves us to gently lay our heads against him and relax.  He loves us to be obedient, to rub our noses against the backdoor instead of being lazy and making messes around ourselves and others.  He loves to watch us play and protect those around us.  He loves to take walks with us.  And many times He likes to challenge us with silence so that we can think and consider our circumstances instead of Him giving us every answer on demand. 

God’s timing is perfect, especially with Buddy.  I later found out that my wife was secretly praying for a dog for her birthday.  She wanted a puppy, a chocolate lab to be more precise.  God gave us a wire terrier mix.  He gave us a dog that was 2-3 years old already.  He gave us a dog that was ready for us.  I never chided my wife for praying behind my back, and I never will.  He brought us a gift and a family member and I am so grateful.  The life that was sucked out of the family from our hasty decisions was replaced with real “life” when we involved God in our tiniest of decisions.  Give it a shot!! 

Woof,

-- The Guy with the Distracted Mind

A Caveman’s Assessment of Social Media

I have been a slow entrant to pop culture movements my entire life.  Social networking is an area where I have chosen to remain on the sidelines, mostly because by doing so makes me look cool.  In reality, I’m torn between launching my own site and easily taking over the world (which sounds like a ton of administrative follow-up) and remaining on the outskirts where I can eventually predict that this “fad” is just about run its course, never having to create a profile of inaccurate personal information. 

In my early 20’s I hid from the world long enough to earn a Master’s Degree in Marketing because I thought it was interesting and a great bargain at only $13,000 (especially in today’s market).  While I was learning clever new ways to trick the world into believing that things you had for sale added value to your life, I was introduced to the Internet, or at least to Prodigy.  This happened one night during my Marketing Strategy class.  Prodigy at the time was awesome!!  You could download a static weather map IN COLOR in less than 10 minutes!!  News articles took slightly less time so that was even more convenient.  I was hooked on the idea and my diabolical mind began to consider other unimaginable uses like library catalog card searches, encyclopedia searches and YouTube.  The last item was obviously a stupid idea so I focused my imagination on things like on-line phone listings.  Some day you could look up a phone book on-line – that would be useful.

As I pondered the possibilities of Prodigy, I was a little overwhelmed by the whole idea of broad based information available on demand.  What if this technology fell into the wrong hands, like Disney?  The potential for exploitation and career abuse of our “tweenagers” would seem to be a likely evolution.  While this exploitation might help fuel our economy in the healthcare segment through an increase in referrals for in-patient, juvenile drug dependency, it seemed to me that the boundaries of such power might get ahead of our ability to control it. 

At some point in my graduate education, I was introduced to the lifecycle for technology adoption.  Lifecycles exist for almost every product or service.  Restaurants (another area in my professional background) are as notorious as fashion movements for having steep curves and violent retreats in their adoption by prospective users/customers.  At the time of my post-graduate studies, the lifecycle for technology was rather new but was believed to contain the same basic categories as other lifecycle models.  The categories are:

·         Innovators – 2.5% of potential market

·         Early adopters – 13.5%

·         Early majority – 34%

·         Late majority – 34%

·         Laggards – 16%

The Innovators are basically the ones who get hosed repeatedly.  They usually have a ton of money though and are historically addicted to risk.  They accept technology before it had been ironed out.  These are the Betamax video crowd who actually understood why it was a better video format than VHS but couldn’t wait long enough for the market to determine if the technology was going to be around.  You may have a video disk player in your attic and all the shame that goes with it, but you were probably right to embrace it, technologically speaking. 

The next level of risk takers are the Early Adopters.  These folks are typically the ones who did some level of research and may actually be in the business or have careers that lend themselves to having more information on the technology itself.  These are probably the folks who jump on-board after the second release of some type of technology, which often includes the inclusion of patches and debugging that fixes the initial complaints by the Innovators. 

I won’t beat you down with descriptions for the remaining categories because you are all wise people whom I hope to marry someday and don’t want to run you off. 

Now that we’ve established some structure for the ways in which technology is embraced, which category do you find yourself falling into with respect to our topic, social media?  I’m pretty sure that I am a Laggard, primarily because I have not established a profile on Facebook yet and it has been around since around 2002.  To be honest, I think MySpace will rebound with a vengeance much the same way Betamax did.  Maybe that’s why I am refraining from getting into the game.  Currently, Facebook only has approximately 500 million users, hardly a number large enough to declare it a technological success.

The social media movement has established itself in the mainstream pop culture to the extent that movies about the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, are being made and nominated for Oscars.  The movie, which I have not yet seen, depicts Zuckerberg, a Harvard drop out, in a less than glorifying light.  I’ll probably see the movie when it cycles through the $1 theatre circuit, just in case it’s not any good.  Zuckerberg’s meteoric rise to financial success is quite frightening.  His net worth is estimated to be somewhere around $6.9 billion and allegedly greater than that of Apple Founder, Steve Jobs.

My wife is a Facebooker and probably logs in several times a week.  I have pretended to work on projects in her vicinity as she’s Facebooking so I can stalk her moves and track her interests.  She rarely notices me doing this since she seems enthralled with what she’s reading.  I occasionally ask her what she’s reading and she typically remarks “oh this guy I used to go to school with is commenting about this one thing.”  My interest couldn’t be higher. 

Just between you and me – I have actually stepped inside the octagon known as Social Media.  I have secretly pretended to be my wife.  You may have noticed this when reading some of her comments which seemed to  contain violent twists of sarcasm.  What have I found?  Basically, I wasn’t very impressed.  I say this with a certain level of reluctance as I know several friends who are heavy users and whom I hope will leave kind comments on this blog.  The comments in Facebook are often innocuous but may lack a level of relevance.  I think where my difficulty in adopting the Facebook hobby is with the resulting confluence from lumping every single personal contact into the same dialogue.  Add to this potential awkwardness the fact that all your friends are doing the same thing and you have second and third level semi-acquaintances commenting on each other’s comments.  Here’s a real world analogy – the Christmas party you host at your home every year.  Let’s say that this year instead of strategically selecting and inviting your guests, you had unlimited resources and space.  You would be able to invite every single friend from around the globe and from every corner of your life.  The uncomfortable silence from those invitees who weren’t privy to the inside jokes and stories being told by other folks I share my life with would make me want to run out of the house and into the cover of darkness. 

At the risk of sounding like I’m living a life of multiple personalities, I live a life of multiple personalities.  By my very nature, I am a private person, with the exception of my newly found hobby of blogging.  Blogging violates my preference for a private life but has also opened a door for my writing.  I initially sent my Blog link to certain friends and family who might “get” the style of the way I write.  The forwarding of my Blog link beyond this group might cause a Facebook type amalgamation of readers.  This is where I begin to feel like a hypocrite.  Essentially, my blogging is a form of sharing.  Facebook is also a form of sharing.  In some cases, Facebook sharing can be rather insignificant such as “Hey Everyone!!!  I just breathed!!!  Ooo!!  There, I just did it again!!  This is sooooooo cool!!”  These comments should automatically be deleted from walls and the writer banished to Eek, Alaska.  In other cases, I have seen where individuals request prayers for life situations and health issues.  Who in their right mind doesn’t stop and pray for someone who reveals that they have been battling cancer for the past several months and have barely been able to eat let alone perform the most minor life skills?  This type of sharing seems to be one of the most remarkable elements of Facebook. 

The combination of every soul in our lives sharing our secrets and joys is how I imagine eternity will look.  This eternal Christmas party will have unlimited resources, space and time to share laugh and commune.  Many of us affix and maintain boundaries to keep the sharing of secrets to a minimum.  Secrets oftentimes have scars associated with them.  Many of us choose to hide our scars so the potential of having to share the story behind them is limited.  After some considerable thought, I may be a “Laggard” because I have scars that I choose to cover up.  Perhaps some of the folks that reveal trivial things about their lives on Facebook do so to feel connected, as opposed to feeling disconnected.  For many, I think that the allure of Facebook is the ability to reconnect with others from the past.  I must confess I find this element attractive.  For those of you who are aware of my ability to retain stupid details from my childhood that all others had long since forgotten, you understand my point.  In a nutshell, I appreciate a “community” and Facebook resembles that concept in many ways, albeit in a very mosaic format.  The retreat from community is something our modern culture has mastered to perfection.  The re-creation of community is something that Facebook seems to do rather well and in an amazingly short period of time.

While I am reluctant to plunge into the Facebook frenzy, I do appreciate the upside and the potential for souls to be touched and for lives to be reached.  As irrelevant as some of the content may be, I guess I am an optimist in the power of others to reach out, support and nourish those who may find themselves in a dark place.  Maybe people someday will earn “Facebook Bucks” for every positive comment they post to lift up the lives of others or encourage friends to follow their dreams or to serve those who need assistance.  In the meantime, maybe we should all pretend that this “Facebook Bucks” form of reward already exists and we can begin immediately to lift up those who need lifting and affirming those who need affirming.  After all, aren’t we already supposed to be doing that to earn jewels for our crowns?

God likes this!

-- The Guy with the Distracted Mind