Words from WW Blog

Although creativity is a part of my DNA, I’ve never been accused of being progressive in my viewpoints. Perhaps that goes back to the strong connection with my dad, who saw the value in change but also the necessity for common sense. Change that had no root in common sense was not held in high regard by him.

He, and me, valued loyalty and dependability. Come to think of it, dependability was wrapped up in the jacket of loyalty. It was meshed up in the fabric of our culture.

Somewhere along the line, things changed for the quality of loyalty in our culture’s viewpoint. Loyalty went from the front seat to getting pushed into one of the corners of the trunk, wedged in between faithfulness and integrity.

Many would disagree with me on this next view, but I’m not offended in the least. The college transfer portal system for athletics is the new world where loyalty has been replaced by “let me leave!” Athletes, blessed with scholarships that cover the cost of a college education, change schools as often as airlines change flight departure times. I’ve noticed that TV game announcers even put in little blurbs about the past resumes of players, letting the viewers know that #11 has been at two other schools before his present one. It’s now said as naturally as someone ordering cheese for his hamburger.

This morning I noticed that the sidebar on the ESPN web site consisted mostly of one-liners about current players who had decided to enter the portal. I’m fully aware of how quickly coaches can get hired, fired, move on, or move out. Athletes should have some of the same freedom, but it’s becoming excessive.

Being a season ticket holder for Air Force basketball, there’s no one transferring in. Who is there as an incoming cadet is who will be there for the next four years, except for those who decide the academy is not for them. Of course, the academy’s values begin with integrity and service before self.

Nowadays, it’s not so much about service and sacrifice, but about oneself. Thus, transferring loyalty from one higher institution of learning to another is as easy as switching jerseys. Some players are more concerned with making sure they get their desired jersey number, then they are about the teammates and fan base they left behind.

Once again, it’s just one of the many indicators that loyalty is not what it used to be. Back in my very younger days, I used to pretend I was Louie Dampier, Dan Issel, Pat Riley, and Larry Conley playing against Tennessee. My arena was the school’s basketball court down the street from us. I’d do the play-by-play as the Wildcats took it to the Volunteers. I knew the names and even their shot selection.

Not so anymore. I couldn’t tell you who played for Kentucky this year. Most of them arrived in August and will depart in May, not long enough for me to even figure out how to pronounce their names…and finding it hard to even care.

 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

When I was a lot younger, college days in fact, I worked a few hours a week at the Ramada Inn across the street from Judson College (now Judson University), in Elgin, Illinois. A few other Judson students and I would serve at banquets, working hard as we served as many as 300 dinner patrons. Our “tip” was determined by the cost of the meal being served, not much for breakfast but a nice sum for a steak dinner banquet. No matter who the guests were or what the menu was, we hustled and served at hyper-speed. It’s what we did. The hotel banquet department expected it of us, but more than that we expected it ourselves.

However, I’ve noticed that the gratuity concept that we call tipping has changed. It’s become the expected. Yesterday, I was at a store that served Starbucks coffee. If all you wanted was a cup of Pike Place, there was an urn to the side. You ordered, the cashier handed you a cup, you paid, and poured your own cup of coffee. She was as pleasant as a welcome breeze on a July afternoon, but when I scanned my credit card (Since it was a cashless business. Huh!!), the screen asked me what percentage tip I’d like to add to it. I punched the 15% button because I felt a combination of Baptist guilt and the need to take care off my fellow man, but the situation perplexed me. My $4.00 cup of coffee had jumped to $5.00 with the tip and taxes…and the only part of the work experience the cashier had performed was to hit two buttons on the register and hand me a cup.

Before you classify me as a penny-pincher and tight wad, my wife and kids would tell you that I over-tip. I suppose it goes back to my Ramada days and the sympathy I have for restaurant servers and staff. It seems, however, that tipping has been redefined to mean “the expected, regardless of the service and effort.”

Tipping is now taken for granted. What was once a gesture of kindness, a gift, has become part of the payment. I wonder if Dave Ramsey has any episodes on tipping philosophy.

That tipping mindset has seeped into our shallow understanding of the grace of God. Grace has slipped into the wading pool of expected actions. Its days as a gift have drained away. It’s not thought of as a special category of compassion that God has for his created, but rather a tax added on to the cost, no questions asked.

Our culture has erased part of the equation. That is, the cost of grace has been scratched out. The gift of Jesus, crucified on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, has been minimized in importance. The work behind the grace has been forgotten.

I know, I know…all this simply because of being handed a coffee cup, told to pour my own cup, and presented with the option of tipping. Well, I think it’s a proper analogy of the view we have plummeted to in our view of God’s grace.

And by the way, I had to pour my own cream and sugar into the coffee, as well!

Yesterday it finally came! The last day of our middle school’s third-quarter. There are certain things in life that you think will never end: a college basketball game where one team keeps fouling to stop the clock, completing your tax return, the drive-through line at In-N-Out, political commentaries, and the third-quarter of the school year.

Our third-quarter begins after the Christmas break and runs to the exhaustion line of March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, but even leprechauns don’t have that much energy to finish it. Eleven weeks, populated by a multitude of teacher-pleaded prayers for a foot-and-a-half of snow to be divinely-dropped on our school district.

In the midst of student and teacher mental exhaustion, there had been numerous moments of absentmindedness. It was as if we were driving through Kansas with Dorothy and oblivious to the school hallway tornadoes of carelessness and chaos. We trudged on, the “E” light (Education) begging us to stop. I went from 4 cups of coffee a day to 6, felt no remorse for a few students who were home sick, thus reducing the number of hyper-active bodies sitting in front of me. Quite honestly, there were a few days where I came home in need of an attitude adjustment.

During the never-ending quarter, I intentionally threw in a few lessons for shock value to shake up those who were expecting the ordinary. There’s nothing like a good class period right after lunch on the cannibalism of the Donner Party to cause the consumed lunch nachos to bring some indigestion, or create uncertainty about that cheeseburger that tasted a tab different. If I would have thought of it, I would have dressed up as Bela Lugosi, complete with fangs, to add another element of surprise; or maybe I should have fixed a platter of barbecued chicken legs for students to munch on.

We were able to read the book The Cay and then watch the 1974 movie of the same that starred James Earl Jones. The visual effects in 1974 were a bit less sophisticated than what the students were used to, but they seemed to enjoy watching what they had already read. And a couple of weeks ago they did their own 30-second pitches, where they made up an idea or product, recorded their pitch, and then tried to sell me on what they were selling. The creativity was a nice break, but also prepared them to do their own 2-5 minute speech in front of the class.

But there were other signs of boredom rising to the surface in the midst of the student population. Restroom antics, cafeteria chaos, hallway pranks, Little Johnny discovering he could say four-letter words that would make his mom blush, and the emergence of “couples” and hoped-for romantic interests. The spring sex-ed classes should have been placed in the midst of the third quarter…right after the Donner Party!

One day at the end of school, one of my students pilfered my candy stash. A couple of pencils have been broken on purpose. My room phone rang several times, asking me to send a certain student to the office. On a number of occasions, that student did not return to class…for a few days! Our security officer, Mr. C., has kept busy watching video from the security cameras to identify the “guilty” in various escapades. The office has been in need of a number system like at the DMV, where students pull a tab and wait until their number gets called.

The never-ending quarter has taxed patience, damaged friendships, caused pizza to seem tasteless, sent teachers searching for available flights to tropical climates, and had our custodial crew pray for certain numbers in the mega-million lottery to be drawn so they can hire someone to clean up after them.

Of course, there needs to be a P.S. at the end of the never-ending quarter. It will come on Monday in the form of a few students falling to their knees and pleading for grace in the form of excusing missing assignments and the D letter grade miraculously being turned into a B. I’ll look at them and reference the Donner Party: “Bad decisions sometimes are remembered for generations to come. For you, however, whatever was eating at you in the last quarter can be solved by the new adventure and effort of this final quarter.”

Pleading faces will become indignant and further practice of four-letter words will commence out in the hallway.

I have come to realize that I am a creature of habit, as well as a reflection of my past. Those two news items in my bio don’t really cause any eyebrows to rise in amazement, unless there is a handkerchief involved while there are eighth-graders in the vicinity. You see, I’ve always carried a handkerchief in the back right pocket of my pants. The back left pocket is for my wallet. Depending on what I’m doing, my left hand reaches for the wallet and my right hand reaches for the handkerchief. Once I switched the two items, but kept pulling out my billfold to wipe my nose.

I learned the handkerchief thing from my dad. It’s what he taught me back in the days when there wasn’t a slew of tissue boxes around. Handkerchiefs were used to wipe the sweat off your brow, unscrew the top to check the car’s motor oil level, stop a blood flow, handle evidence at the scene of a crime (Okay, I guess my dad never used one for that, but he would have!), and blow your nose. Handkerchiefs were practical, as necessary as your underwear and socks. In fact, I have double the number of handkerchiefs than I have of boxers!

But now we live in an age where students and tissue-addicted adults don’t use handkerchiefs, don’t carry handkerchiefs, and don’t think handkerchiefs have any purpose except to gross thirteen-year-olds out. For my students they are listed in that column of gross that includes picking your nose, picking your teeth, and using the gym locker room showers.

Here’s the thing! When I sense a sneeze is coming, I don’t have to run halfway across the classroom and grab a tissue. I reach in my back pocket, pull out my hanky, and capture the moment. That sequence makes no sense to my students who watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre while munching on popcorn saturated with butter.

So we have discussions about the different ways we were raised, family traditions, and how we are reflections of our parents. They don’t understand handkerchiefs and I don’t understand pants that have more rips than fabric. They don’t understand why I tuck my shirt in and I don’t understand piercings in noses and eyebrows. They don’t understand why I go to bed shortly after the 9:00 chimes occur and I don’t understand why they think midnight is a good time to cook up some nachos and watch Tik-Tok. They don’t quite understand the grey in my hair and I don’t understand their purple, orange, pink, blue, and tutti-frutti colored-hair. I don’t understand why so many of them don’t eat breakfast and they don’t understand why I do. Thus, I get asked for granola bars several times a day, something I keep a box of close at hand.

I’m a creature of habit. Part of the habit is not being able to NOT think about what needs to happen in the coming week. Last week I took two days away from the classroom TO WORK ON TAXES, mind you! However, I found myself thinking about school, what the kids were doing, hoping they weren’t driving my friend, Ron McKinney, crazy, and pondering lesson plans for the next day. Every time I pulled out my handkerchief I could see their disgusted faces in the corners of my mind.

Strangely enough, it brought a smile to my face.

I recognize I have been infected with the “Baptist Mom Guilt Syndrome”. It’s this condition that develops in your thinking, decisions, and emotions in your growing-up years that continues to reoccur throughout adulthood. There is no known cure, even becoming a Unitarian (which I ain’t!). The BMGS hit me yesterday when a lady and her son in the parking lot of Safeway approached me with a sign that said, “Please help! We need money to buy food!” I said no and felt BMGS all the way home.

On the other side of the argument, BMGS has its benefits, because in much of our American culture today there is an apathy that has come as a result of the comfort level of our lives. Comfort is nice. It’s our preferred grazing grounds. It’s like that recliner a person always…and I mean always…sits in when he watched TV, and then one day he comes home and finds his oldest grandson sitting in Grandpa’s usual spot. Comfort just left the room. Grandpa is confused, maybe angered, and unsettled.

Comfort is where we live, white picket fence, the smell of barbecue, and characteristic of the good life. Just have the doorbell ring when you are in the midst of your comfort zone and take note of the immediate change in your demeanor.

The world has been pierced with crises and tragedies that become 30-second news blurbs. Earthquake in Turkey, a tornado in Kentucky that devastates a town, hurricanes in the Caribbean, shootings everywhere, Ukrainian heartache…the list goes on page after page. We see and hear and go for a walk around the block to stretch our legs.

I wonder if Jesus had a comfort zone. He seemed to be the happiest when he was sharing a meal with people or encountering those who needed encouragement or a momentary touch. I can not pick up any sense of apathy that was a part of his life. Anguish, anger, anticipation…yes, those were some ‘a-words’ that resonated with Him, but not apathy.

And now I go back to my BMGS. Seeing an image of my mom with her hands on her hips, giving me the look that brought cringing and correction…that look that electrified me with the error of my ways. Maybe I need a new dose of that. Maybe I need some recliner-repentance and a heart stab concerning the hurting.

If not me, who?