"Heather with Account Services"

I just got a call from Heather with Account Services. Heather is an automated voice prompt. She had an offer to help me lower my credit card interest rate. I could press 1 to talk to a representative, or 2 to be removed from the calling list.

I pressed 1.

Why? Because when she called the first time, around the 1st of Feb. I opted out by pressing 2. When she called the second time, on Feb 15th, I opted out by pressing 2. (Yes, I have started keeping a log of the telemarketers that call, and the times that I request they stop their calls.) Today when she called, I had had enough. I pressed 1 and was about to quote chapter and verse from donotcall.gov on their being subject to a $10,000 for failing to remove me from the call list. I had just gotten started with talking to the rep, when he said "I don't have time for this. Just shut up." and then he hung up on me.

Apparently, I'm not the only person that has had problems with Heather before.

Not that any of you need reminding, but don't give out any personal information or credit card information over the phone to someone who calls you.

Dentist

I hate going to the dentist. I don't know if there is residual emotional scarring from when I was a child, or what, but I don't want to hear them say "Do a better job with your brushing." As a teen, I think between the orthodontist poking around in my mouth, and the dentist poking around I just created this big well of anxiety that I tap every time I go.

Today wasn't too bad, but I could feel it on the drive there. And of course I got the "Do Better" speech. I know I could do better. Thankfully, I have good teeth.

The good news is that I don't have to go back for 6 months. To celebrate that good news, I went out and got a Chick-fil-A biscuit to eat with my newly polished teeth. Yum...

I've been there.....well, almost.

I was almost there.

Mine happened about 17 years ago, January of 1991 in Austin, TX. I had just gotten back to UT, after the winter break.

Over the break, I had gone by and talked to my ex-girlfriend, Cheryl, over the holidays, because we were still on good terms, even though it had been about a year since we broke up. At one point, she told me that she had something to tell me, and pulled me aside (we had been talking in the living room, with her parents there). Her mom made a quiet remark to the effect that they would know when she told me, as she and I went into the kitchen. After getting a drink, she held my hand, and told me that she had joined the Marines, and would be leaving in February. I was very supportive, because she was planning on doing this as a means of getting money for college. I had to leave shortly after this. As I left, her mom had a slightly curious look on her face as I said goodbye.

Three days after I got back to school, we were having a party in the dorm on the last Saturday or Sunday before school started back up. I got a call from my parents during the party, so I went next-door to call them back. When I got them on the phone, they told me that they had seen a story about Cheryl in the paper. They asked if I knew she was going into the military, to which I said yes. Then they asked if I knew she was married.

This floored me. My mom summarized the story. Cheryl and her husband had been married about two weeks before. While I can't remember exactly, I think it was a couple of days before I saw her that she had been married. They were scheduled to ship out one month after being married, to opposite ends of the country.

I called Cheryl. We spoke for a few minutes. About ten minutes into the conversation, I asked if there was anything new. When she didn't say anything, I said that I just wanted to say congratulations on the wedding, and good luck in the military. The only thing she was able to say, before I hung up, was "I'm sorry."

I quickly had another drink, and went for a walk. It was about 11:00 PM. I walked around campus for a bit, and then after about an hour or so, I walked from the UT campus down to Town Lake. I walked around at the lake, sat on a bench for a while, and then decided to go back to the dorm.

As I am walking back, I get to about 11th street on Congress, just south of the Capitol, when a police car, with lights on, screeches past, and parks right in front of me. I hear another car pull up behind me, and I look and it is yet another police car. As I look back at the first car, the officer has his hand on his gun and yells at me to put my hands on my head. Thoroughly confused, I comply, and the two officers from the car behind me come up behind me, and one of them starts to search me. With at least some clarity, I remember to tell the officer about the buck knife in my front pocket, which is immediately removed from my possession. In this time, two more police cars pull up.

At about the same time as the officer finishes searching me, the first officer asks me what I am doing out on the street. I relay the story about my ex, and say that I was out for a walk to clear my head. After he finished searching me, the officer hands my id to the first officer who proceeds to run a check. The officer who searched me wants to know why I am around the Capitol, ask me who I am, etc. Around this time, the last two cars to arrive leave. He then proceeds to tell me that there was a report of an individual in the area waving a gun around, and I was the only one in the area. Since they had not found a gun, and did not think I had had time to ditch it, he didn't think that I needed to worry. The other cars were continuing to look for someone else, or evidence that a gun had been tossed away nearby. The first officer came back. He asked me why I had chosen to come downtown, instead of staying back up at the campus. When I told him that I had just wandered down without a plan, he told me that I should NOT just wander back, but that I should head directly back and if there were ANY issues along that route, he had my information.

When the last officer had left, I made as much haste back to the school. I was thoroughly exhausted from the event, and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. (The party had stopped, but no one had left. They were worried about my extended absence. Before leaving on my walk, I had felt obligated to tell the guy whose room I had used to make the phone calls about my ex getting married. By the time I had gotten back to the room, four hours had gone by.)

From today's perspective, looking at the story, I see people exclaiming that this is a result of people panicking over concerns about terrorism. But my incident was about 10 years prior to September 11th. And in a state known to be friendly to guns. Police take threats seriously. They can't ignore statements made by members of the public. Had my incident taken place during rush hour, instead of at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, I have no doubt that things would have been different. For one thing, there would have been many more people, and therefore a need for more police. And I have my doubts about being detained right there at that intersection. The climate of fear of terrorism had nothing to do with my incident, and I doubt that it had anything to do with the incident in London.

Fire!

Today was President's Day, and the new company has that as a day off. So I took the opportunity to sleep in. Since it was a Monday, my wife was able to sleep in also. At about 8:00 AM, the kids came into the room to ask what we wanted to eat. Both of us wanted to sleep, so we said nothing. The kids still wanted to eat, so my wife peeled an orange for my daughter, and went back to bed.

About 30 minutes later, I was awoken by my daughter yelling "Mommy! Daddy! The house is on fire!" I leapt out of bed, and ran toward the kitchen, yelling "Where?!" I pushed past my son, as he was right behind my daughter. He told me it was in the kitchen, basically at about the same time I got there. Looking around, I didn't see anything. I figured that it was in the toaster oven, hidden on the other side of the fridge. I looked, and there was a piece of toast on fire in it.

I used a towel to smother the fire, but decided to take the whole toaster oven outside, because the smoke detectors can be very sensitive.

My son was very upset by the fire, vowing to never make toast again. Since he has never been instructed on the use of the toaster oven, I can't blame him. I had to tell him that I have done the same thing many times (Forgotten a boiling egg on the stove, grease fire, etc. ).

Since it was really a non-issue, I couldn't help but laugh after it was over. Sometimes I guess that is just a result of too much adrenaline in your system.

Interlude 2

For High school, my family had moved back to Texas. Shortly after we moved back, my family decided that we needed to start going to church again. We found the local Baptist church, and began attendance. I did feel a bit resistant to going back. I was a teenager, and I did not want to wake up that early in the morning.

During the time that I did go, I had unsatisfactory experiences. After a few of the Sunday School classes, I stopped going to the classes even though I rode with my parents. I would either find myself wandering around the neighborhood, or hanging out in the parking lot, waiting for the service to begin. The final straw, though, was the service that I went to with my family. The minister delivered a service in which he told us that the music that teenagers were listening to was evil and that we were all doomed to hell, becasue we were out there fornicating, etc. The service was personally offensive. I did not attend service again. I manipulated my work schedule to require that I went to work on Sunday morning.

One of the people I worked with attended a Catholic private school. During the time that I was taking World History in school, he and I would discuss how much of world history is related to religious struggle.

Returning that church for my sister's wedding after I was in college, i brought my girlfriend to the wedding. We had been dating for a while, and she was going to help out with setup, even though she wasn't involved. While we were unloading the car, I gave her a kiss. This happened a number of times, and one of the times, I saw the minister scowling at us.

My Second Blasphemy

Right before going into the 5th grade, my family moved to Pennsylvania, so I was in Pennsylvania for middle school. At the time, there was only one Baptist church in the area, and we only went to church on Easter and Christmas. Of all of my classmates, there was only one that I knew who attended the same church.

In middle school, dances started. If you happen to know some Baptists, you'll know that dancing is generally (though not always, I have found) frowned on. I did not actually know this, until my friends dad told me. He was one of the chaperones at my first dance, and did not agree that there was anything wrong with it.

So I went to the dance, and most of the dances that were held at my middle school. I did not think much of the rule against dances that the church had. The dances were fun. Thanks to my friends father, I learned that I did not have to agree with the church to still be a good person.

Interlude 1

It was not long after the incident with the teacher regarding Noah that my attendance at church started to slack. My parents slowly stopped attending church. In part, it was because some weekends we were out of town at my great-grandparents house. Other weekends, I would be on the lake fishing, but also out of town. Maybe there were other reasons. Instead of going with my parents, my sister and I rode the church bus to church. This was awesome. The bus had doughnuts and actually stopped right in front of my house! (And it drove me to the church, which was right across the street from the school that I walked to everyday.) This was awesome. Of course the newness eventually wore off, and like all children do, I decided I didn't like riding the bus. And like my parents, I stopped going as regularly. Eventually, I stopped going myself.

Growing up in the South in the 70's and 80's, church was a fact of life. You assumed everyone went to church. But, at least where I was, I don't remember ever talking about it, unless we had a scheduling conflict. No one mentioned it, except at the beginning of the school year, when they were telling us that they had spent two weeks at church camp, or had fun in Mother's Day Out over the summer. We had way to many things to do: play football, baseball, or soccer, build sandcastles in the sandbox, ride bikes, boardgames, etc., etc. I was living life, and it was grand.

My first blasphemy

While I'm not going to even try to describe why, I have recently been reading Genesis. I read the story of Noah, and was reminded of a Sunday school lesson from when I was about 6 years old.

The teacher started the class with a simple question: How are we all related? I was sure that I knew the answer. I raised my hand, and when she called on me, I proudly said "Noah". She dismissed me with a polite "No". I was obviously sad, but then I got indignant when the answer turned out to be Adam. I raised my hand again, and said "What about the flood?" When she didn't understand my comment, I said that everyone except Noah and his family were drowned in the flood. I was told, in that patronizing tone adults can have, that we were all related through Adam, and that's what we we studying that day. I closed down at that point, not paying attention to much of the rest of class. When the teacher came to ask what's wrong, I told her that I still think we were related through Noah. I was told that that wasn't what the Bible said, and was told to get on with my work(Drawing a picture of Adam in the garden of Eden).

I was very turned off due to that teacher. Either the teacher was wrong, or the Bible was wrong. I chose to believe that the teacher was wrong. It soured me on accepting summaries of data by sources I did not know. To this day, I really like seeing citations, and being able to review the materials for myself.

And that drawing? I turned in a picture of Noah on the Ark.

I am ....

When I was at the most recent Leadership Development Conference, one of the training sessions was on anti-racism/anti-oppression. An aquiantance of mine, who is trained as an AR/AO trainer, and one of the youth that I work with, came in and talked to us about the training. After their talk, our trainers led the exercise for the section. The exercise consisted of each of us going off on our own and writing sentences (I know. It sounds like punishment. It wasn't.) Each of the sentences needed to start with "I am". After we wrote our sentences, we would then form small groups and discuss our lists, and the process that we underwent to generate those sentences. (We didn't have to share anything we didn't want to.) This was intended to show us something about our identity.

I had a hard time starting the list. Sure, there were easy things. I am caucasian. I am 35. I am male. Then I thought of a few less obvious things. I am an uncle. I am a computer programmer. I am an advisor to youth. Going further.... I am secretive. I am scared. In all, I ended up having about 20 lines on my sheet. When we got into the small groups, I went first. I shared probably about 1/2 of my list (mostly due to time constraints, but there were some things I wasn't ready to share), and commented on how hard it had been to write some of these things down on paper, but in a way, it made me think about who I am, how I see myself, and how I am seen in the world. I thought it was a very interesting lesson.

I know plenty of people in that circle who never got beyond those first two categories. They expressed the obvious, or the easy. But even thought I didn't share some of my harder things with my group, I did write them down, which forced me to consider those lines as they applied to me.

Take some time, and consider your identity. Write it all down. The easy things, the non-obvious things, the hard things, and even the things you are hiding. Write them down.