Missing the Fall.

Summer is my favorite season. My body doesn't deal particularly well with it - I sweat more than most people and my skin gets the crap kicked out of it by the sun - but summer is my favorite season.

Summer is my favorite season because of the last hour or two of daylight. The sun sits at such an angle that its light is soft and golden; it takes long enough for it to go down from there that the evening is marked with a air of casuality. As the golden light drapes over the tops of the lazily swaying trees, an hour or two seems to pass in three or four. There's a magic about it which makes me stop more often to appreciate that moment more fully than any other in the year. I am deeply grateful to be alive and to have a chance to enjoy the beauty of the world in those waning moments of a summer evening.

But I don't miss summer very much when it's gone. This is mostly because I'm usually resigned to the fact that my summers will be devoted to activities like leading at summer camps or going on mission trips. In the summer, I'll usually spend some time closer to the equator, and I think the angle from there is less conducive to creating that summer moment I hold most dear. With camps and things like that, I'll be anticipating the night, when young people have spent the day together and aversions to vulnerability get broken down. That's where a lot of the action happens, where people will be more open to getting to the heart of things.

In the other months, I'll think about the upcoming summer and the things I have set before me and I'll remind myself to embrace the few times I get to fully soak in those parts of the summer I hold most dear to me. As a result, I experience them deeply, enjoying the full measure of their beauty.

But fall? I miss the fall.

The school year starts up, so the ministry year starts up. I never feel very good about myself unless I feel like other people need me. So after the last part of the summer, where nothing is really happening, I'm bored and useless. The fall takes care of both of those concerns, so I put full energy into ministry and into the people involved with it. I spend whole days thinking about what role I'm playing at a certain event or replaying previous ministry events in my mind. Unlike with the summer, I don't spend the other seasons reminding myself to enjoy the beauty of the fall.

So I miss it. I miss sitting outside in a park when it's gotten cold enough to ward off most people, wearing jeans and a comfortable sweater and pensively staring into the distance. In the fall, it just seems like the thing to do, so my hyper-introspective tendencies alienate me from others a little less.

I love the sound of the leaves crunching under my feet. "Crunching" doesn't seem like a soft enough word.

My street might be the best street around to live on in the fall. It's not very wide, and there's a tree right next to the curb in every single yard. Some yards have two. It's a one-way street, so I have to drive up its length every time I come home. The trees on both sides hang over so that the leaves spill into the street. For a few days when the leaves are falling, it's the prettiest thing you'll ever see just driving in a car. I'll drive up my street and the leaves will be falling on both sides - red, yellow, orange, green - falling to the street in slow-motion as my car makes its way to the end of the block. It plays out in front of me like a shot in a film that somehow loses none of real life's beauty in its transfer to the medium. It is magical.

I'll have to find a way to remind myself to enjoy it.

Have-nots and Have-nothings.

I'm not the most well-traveled 26 year-old, but I've been a few different places on mission trips. I've been to South Padre Island, Texas on a mission trip. I've been to Mexico on three mission trips. Costa Rica twice. Colombia twice.

Between all these trips, I've run into my fair share of needy people. One needs not travel very far (or at all, really) to find needy people, but I've run into them on these trips. One tends to look a little harder on these trips, which makes a world of difference.

On these trips, I've run into a lot of people who might be referred to as have-nots. I've run into them in poor, undeveloped parts of the world. I've run into them in an orphanage in a crime-ravaged border town. I've run into them in an orphanage that specializes in the care of abused and sexually abused orphans. I've run into them in spring break party zones.

On most of these trips, I've gone with several other people. A common reaction to seeing people in these situations is to be surprised by how much they do have. This is usually a reference to non-physical things (a natural counter to "have-nots" usually referencing physical things), often love, joy, contentment, stuff like that.

Side note: That's never been my reaction to those situations. I don't really know why. I think part of it might be because I've always had a very clear objective to serve and to show love to the people I've run into in those situations. From the get-go my focus has been more on my particular place in the situation than on the situation itself. I don't know how that sounds, but it's served me well.

So it turns out that the have-nots have something after all...

So what about the people who don't have what the have-nots have?

Well, those are the "haves," idiot! Nice blog!

No, not them - I'm talking about the people that have neither what the haves have (tangible wealth) nor what the have-nots have (intangible wealth).

You ever meet one of them? Have you ever seen someone who looked like they just absolutely have nothing?

I've gotten as close as I'm going to get for a while, I think. It was at a Perkins restaurant. Now, the person I saw was working there, so they were gainfully employed. That gets them a lot farther in the physical part of things than the have-nots, so it ruins my story in a way. But I justify writing this because one doesn't likely make a whole bunch of money hosting at a Perkins. Probably just enough to get by. Maybe less than enough. However much it is, a decent portion of the material and financial lack common to the have-nots is probably experienced by this person.

But when I saw her face - this person was a woman - I saw a deep, deep sorrow. I saw a lack of intangible wealth, a lack of what many of the have-nots have. I saw her face and I was filled with sadness and empathy. I don't know where I get off making these kinds of judgments, but when I saw her face I just felt like nobody around her is ever good to her. Like she doesn't ever experience the love or the joy or the contentment or the enjoyment of life that keeps the have-nots going. All of this while also not experiencing any of the "advantages" to which the haves lay claim.

I'm not saying that wealth and possessions and status are acceptable substitutes for the intangible wealth of many of the have-nots. I'm just saying that one usually expects a person to have at least one of the two - tangible or intangible wealth. The notion that there are have-nots who also do not have any intangible wealth scares the hell out of me - I've likely lived a very coddled missionary existence.

Back to the woman - I saw her and I finished eating and I went outside into my car and sat with the rain pounding my car and prayed for her until the pain in my heart dulled. I could have done something more proactive. I could have interacted with her, though it's kind of weird to approach someone knowing that your initial motivation was "I looked at you and decided that your life sucks."

I guess that this is where I'm going with all of this:

This experience put a possibility into my mind - there may be some neglected middle ground of people who have enough tangible wealth to be neglected by people who seek to spread intangible wealth to those who lack tangible wealth. In other words, some people may have just enough to be completely ignored by people with the noblest of intentions and the purest of motivations.

Need is everywhere. Whatever motivates you to fill it (I am motivated by a God who chooses to involve me in the story of him extending his love and hope to the people of this world), need is everywhere.

Why I'm Afraid of Bees.

When I was in elementary school, a book series called Goosebumps was released. It was a series of scary books for elementary students, and I read the first thirty-something of them when they came out. One of them was called Why I'm Afraid of Bees.

This blog post is almost completely unrelated to the book, though it does explain why I'm afraid of bees.

Growing up on Fernwood Street in Roseville, my grandmother lived up on the next street (Griggs). On holidays where we'd get together with my father's side of the family, I'd walk out the back door of my parents' house and walk for about a minute and I'd be in grandma's back yard.

Every now and then, my parents would have a bunch of people over, but I'd still make the walk through the backyards - through the Hamernicks' yard where Romain or Bernie would be tending their garden and would greet me warmly, through the yard next to theirs which was usually full of children as it hosted a daycare service. There are some occasions on which my parents have a party at their house (the fourth of July being one), and they need some extra tables and chairs and stuff. On those days, I made the walk to my grandma's house to get her red picnic table and its benches.

It was a long, sturdy, wooden red table; its age gave the red paint a grayish tone. It had some heft to it. I used to measure my strength by how easy it was to carry one half of the table (usually with one of my brothers on the other side) and one of the two benches (with one of my brothers carrying the other).

The top of the table consisted of three long, flat wooden boards, probably six or seven inches wide, with about a half inch of space between them. The legs of the table were X's on each end. The benches had two flat wooden boards apiece, probably about half as wide as the boards which comprised the table's top. Again, wooden X's on the end to give solid support. The whole thing was very well-constructed.

This is where I was sitting on an early summer day (I was probably eight or nine years old) when a bee landed on my leg.

I didn't know what to do. I had never really had to deal with this before. I had a rush of adrenaline that made my leg hyper-sensitive to the bee's movements. I could feel each of the bee's feet landing on my leg like little pin pricks. It was my right leg, a little under half way down my lower leg at the point where my shin starts to become my calf.

My mom was there; she saw me freaking out. "Just stay still. If you don't bother the bee, he won't bother you. Leave him alone, and he'll leave."

The bee left. I held this advice in high regard, it having saved me from pain, and I made sure to remember it.

Some weeks later, I was in the backyard running around with my sisters. It was mid-day, so the sun was high overhead, shining with an intense brightness that I like much less than the golden laziness with which the summer sun shines in the evening. In my memory, the red table and benches are sitting out on my parents' patio, but it's entirely possible that they weren't there. It was sunny, and the Japanese lilac tree in the backyard was still healthy enough to provide a huge patch of shade at the end of the patio.

In the normal course of running around as a kid, I wandered past established boundaries and into the neighbor's yard on the north side of the house - the side opposite the Hamernicks, opposite the day care house, opposite my grandma's house.

I ran up the four-or-so feet of slope which took me from my parent's yard into Hazel Christensen's yard. Hazel is a sweet old lady with whom I never spoke until I made some small talk with her now and then after I got out of high school. She is a widow. Now that she's pretty old, her family visits her more often, I imagine because her physical capabilities are lessening. I still say "hi" if she's around when I pop into my parents' house.

The top of the slope from my parents' yard into Hazel's was marked by a tree. I don't remember what kind of tree it is, but we always ended up with a decent portion of its leaves in the fall. On that summer day, running around with my sisters, running away from the Hamernicks', away from the day care house, away from grandma's and from her table and from the Japanese lilac tree - I ran around to the far side of the tree, placing me squarely on top of a bee's nest.

I remembered my mother's advice.

Just stay still. If you don't bother the bee, he won't bother you. Leave him alone, and he'll leave.

My body quivered in pain as I stood directly over the bee's nest, hot tears pouring over my face. I just stayed still. I didn't bother the bees...with the exception of trampling their home and killing their family members. They took it personally, dozens of them handing my pudgy, nine year-old ass to me.

My sisters ran inside to get my mother, who ran outside to tell me to stop standing there and to run away. I made my way inside and my mother tended to me, feeling a mountain of guilt over my stupid-ass interpretation of her normally sound advice. I don't remember what she applied to my many, many wounds, but it was gritty. I don't remember ever dealing with the stuff before or since. I just sat there and cried and hurt and felt bad that my mother felt bad.

That's why I'm afraid of bees.

Kindergarten: Five Things. One lie.

In my previous post, I alluded to something I remember about kindergarten, noting that I don't remember much about the time I spent there.

Now that I think about it, I remember more than I originally estimated, but as far as actual events are concerned (and not general things like classmates' names or physical details of the rooms, etc.), I remember five of them, considering only one of them to be truly important.

One. We ate paste. When I was in kindergarten, in addition to having glue, we had adhesive paste. I never used it after kindergarten, and I don't recall either of my younger sisters using it when they were in elementary school, so ever since a few years after kindergarten I always thought that I was one of the very last people ever to use it. There's no way that's true, but I thought it for a long time.

Anyway, I remember the day we ate the paste. It was a group of four or five of us. It was regrettable and, in a surprising turn of events, minty.

Two. We ate crackers with butter on them. The crackers themselves were buttery, too; they weren't saltines. I have no idea why we did this. Now that I think about it, it's possible that someone my teacher knew made the butter. I think we may have been talking about making butter. Really, I think the whole thing was just a way for my teacher to have what was likely one of her favorite snacks. Why else would you talk about making butter with your kindergarten class?

Three. A girl named Katie threatened boys on the bus with a belt. She was the only Katie I went to elementary school with; there were Katherines and Kates, but no Katies - and she went to another school after kindergarten. She was wearing a dress, not any sort of garment that would require the wearing of a belt. Threatening boys on the bus by snapping a belt was such a good idea that she went out of her way to bring one to school - this couldn't wait until a day on which she might wear a belt anyway. That's almost as dumb as writing about this event in such a way that suggests that kindergarteners might voluntarily wear belts at some point.

Four. Stop, drop and roll. One day in kindergarten, we talked about fire safety. As one might expect, this eventually involved discussion of stopping, of dropping and of rolling. When I was in kindergarten, I was pretty happy to be at school. All the way through elementary, really. I liked it and I got a lot of satisfaction out of it. I was more than a little bit of a goodie-goodie. Almost as much of a goodie-goodie as my classmate who composed and sang a song in front of class at music time, the lyrics to which go like this:

I like school and school likes me,
I'm as happy as can be,
I like school and school likes me.

I still remember the melody.

The first (only?) time this got me in trouble came on the day we talked about stopping, dropping and rolling. On the bus home, I sat next to David Barker, who was blonde and tiny. We got to talking (and to getting excited) about stop, drop and roll.

At this point, I began to physically demonstrate in the bus seat. David Barker got a bloody nose. I don't need to tell you how funny it was.

Five. My teacher lied to me. My teacher lied to me and I will never, ever forget it.

We were using a particular type of plastic blocks. They were sort of Lego-ish in that they locked together, but were a softer plastic and only had one shape and size. You could stack them in a line and that was about it. The teacher was having us use them in order to teach us about patterns.

We were instructed to use different colors of blocks to create a pattern. I was doing this next to a girl named Megan Sutherland. I remember that it was her because, had my teacher not told me a terrible, terrible lie, Megan would have been the focus of my anger, not Miss Petersen.

I was sitting on the floor, taking the plastic blocks out of a bin and constructing my pattern. The pattern went like this:

Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Red. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Red. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green...and so on.

My pattern took considerably longer to develop than all the other ones in the classroom. It also took many, many more yellow blocks than the others. That's the part that was disagreeable to Megan Sutherland. As Miss Petersen walked by, Megan told her, "Miss Petersen, Jon's hoggin' all the yellows."

Miss Petersen, in what (in my experience) was the only wrong thing she ever did to anyone, turned to me and lied:

"Jon, that's not a pattern."

It was a damn pattern. I fought, trying to explain to my teacher how it was a pattern. It didn't really matter; she understood that it was. But she told me it wasn't.

My pattern took more brains (...and more blocks) than those of the other students. It shouldn't have been taken away from me because it was inconvenient. Or even if I had to give up the yellow blocks, I certainly didn't deserve to be lied to.

What if I hadn't fought it? What if I didn't hold on to what I knew to be true? In my mind, that was a truly dangerous moment. It could have been the first step toward developing a very different mind than I have today. For convenience. To avoid ruffling any feathers.

I don't know for sure whether that moment actually triggered anything that ended up affecting my mind long-term for the better. But I have to think that the fact that I so vividly remember it suggests that it was very important.

I very genuinely thank God that I resisted in that moment. The consequences could have been staggering. It was a pattern.

Slouching, Then and Now.

Most of the time, I have terrible posture.

For much of the day, my head and shoulders are lowered and leaning forward as I appear to be a few inches shorter than I actually am. I've been like this for long enough that standing up straight with my shoulders back in line with my body feels unnatural and uncomfortable. It started when I was young, and the way it began doesn't have much of anything to do with the way it is now.

I slouched when I was young, but it didn't really start until kindergarten. This was the first place I went regularly and had repetitive social interaction with people who weren't part of my family. (You might be thinking, "what about preschool?" I only went to preschool for two days. I didn't like it.)

When I got to kindergarten, I very quickly noticed that I was noticeably taller than everyone else. There were others in my age group at Emmet D. Williams Elementary who were as tall as or taller than me for most of my time there, but at the time they were in the PM kindergarten class, which met later in the day. I was an AM kindergarten student, and my teacher (to whom I was as attracted as a kindergartener can be, regardless of the fact that she was likely at least five times older than me at that point) had the same initials as I did. Her name was Janis Petersen.

When I would stand around and talk with the other students, it felt weird to be several inches above them. I didn't know anything about...well, anything at that point (I was in kindergarten), and I figured that if I was talking to people my age and "fitting in," I shouldn't be towering over them. So I slouched. I did what I thought was necessary to fit in (which contrasts sharply with one of the only other things I remember about kindergarten, about which I will blog sometime soon).

But when I got older, I developed an entirely different reason for slouching. My motivation for slouching began to change when I was in middle school, which was absolutely the worst time of my life and (hopefully) will remain so for the rest of my existence.

In middle school, I didn't slouch to avoid the appearance that I was different from the other students. I slouched to avoid being noticed, as my two years in middle school were filled with people treating me and others in ways nobody should ever be treated. If someone noticed me, they would notice how completely seventh-grade, don't-understand-what-the-hell-is-going-on awkward I was, and then start to mistreat me.

It would be kind of weird (and would reveal lots of deep-seeded issues) if the reason I slouched when I'm 26 stemmed from things that happened when I was 13. Instead, the reason I slouch today is both different from and related to my previous reasons for slouching.

I slouch today because of the cumulative effect of innumerable disappointments and embarassments which my mind refuses to forget.

I remember so, so many embarassing or shameful events from my life, no matter how small. I don't know why I remember them so vividly, but I do.

When I was very young, I was running around in my back yard. I wandered into my neighbor's yard, where my neighbor was sitting around with her yippy, terribly annoying chihuahua, whose name was Mitsy. At one point, I got to hold the dog. I don't remember whether I asked to hold the dog or whether I was asked if I'd like to hold it.

I dropped it.

I vividly remember exactly where I was standing at that moment. I remember the exact direction I was facing and where my neighbor was in relation to me. I remember looking down at her (I was standing, she was sitting in a chair) and I remember the exact look on her face as she yelled at me: "GO HOME NOW! YOU COULD HAVE BROKE HER BACK!" I remember very clearly that she said "broke" and not "broken." I remember what her glasses looked like. I remember the tone of red her face took on as she yelled it, and I remember beginning to cry instantly and sprinting into my house.

I remember this and a number of other similarly shameful incidents I repeatedly went over in my head during my youth. I don't know why these things stick with me as well as they do. It probably just comes with my hyper-introspective nature and how deeply I've always desired to avoid disappointing people (middle child!).

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I slouch. There are reasons. The reasons have changed over the years. I don't have any way to bring this all together. Writing a blog about nothing in particular is usually done under the assumption that the readers are interested enough not to need me to take this in any more dramatic or productive direction.

General Tso Explains Colombia.

Recently, I've had an unusually strong desire to eat spicy food.

I have a few memories of really good, spicy Asian food, so I've been grabbing food from different Chinese places around town lately, asking whoever's taken my order to spice it up a bit (a lot). Most of these experiences have been fairly disappointing. I've requested extra spicy food and received a plate of tasty-but-not-so-piquant food. This happened like five or six times in a row.

Two Fridays ago, I got out of work and drove to a Chinese place by my house that's open until midnight. I walked in and placed a take-out order for General Tso's chicken. Desperately hoping to end my streak of disappointing requests for spice, I said something to the effect of "can you make that really, really spicy? Like really spicy. Like a lot. Just give it to me. Let me have it."

The woman who took my order, concerned for my well-being, asked me, "are you sure?" to which I responded, "just... try to kill me."

After telling me "okay..." in a tone meant to absolve her of all responsibility for the scorching of my palate, she communicated my request (in a foreign language I can only assume was Asian in origin) to the cook. I don't understand a lick of whatever language they were speaking, but it was very clear from their tone and repetition that it would have been something like this in English:

Hostess: "He says he wants it really, really, really spicy."
Cook: "Is he sure?"
Hostess: "He said try to kill him. Really, really, really spicy."
Cook: "Is he sure?"
Hostess: "Yes, he's sure."
Cook: "Really?"
Hostess: "Really, really, really spicy."
Cook: "Really?"
Hostess: "That's what he said. Don't look at me."

This was encouraging. It assured me that if I wasn't going to get my desired level of spiciness, I'd at least get their best attempt at it. I don't think I even have a particularly high tolerance for spicy food. I've just wanted it lately.

When the hostess brought my order to me, she handed me the bag and told me "good luck with your chicken" on the way out. I went from encouraged to mildly nervous. I was either going to get exactly what I asked for and love it or get exactly what I asked for and get the crap kicked out of me by a plate of Chinese.

I drove home and began to eat. It was hot. It wasn't the sort of spiciness that bites you immediately. Rather, it just got hotter and hotter and hotter as I ate. I could feel an intense warmth in my cheeks (which, according to my roommate, were quite red), I was sweating, and by the time I had finished the plate of food, my tongue was considerably swollen. It was a combination of physical reactions to food that would really freak someone out unless they had asked for them; it was very unsettling. I absolutely loved it.

I recently spent five weeks in Colombia, doing ridiculous physical labor in ridiculous heat, humidity and sunlight. I felt physical comfort for a cumulative total of what could have only been a few days throughout the trip. In addition to the physical rigors of the trip, it was filled with deep and honest introspection and toil over my inner state of being, my life and its direction.



Now, almost two full months after my return from the trip (I have spent more time back from Colombia than I did in Colombia), that plate of Chinese food is the most fitting analogy I can use to explain my experience. It was painful. It was increasingly intense, having more effects on me than I could have anticipated.

It was the time of my life.

Cancer.

I don't have it. Well, really I don't know, I guess. But I haven't been diagnosed with it. I haven't been checked for it, either. One of my roommates and I were having a discussion about it last night. That's why I'm blogging about it.

We were watching Dexter, which is a television series about a blood spatter analyst who lives a double life as a serial killer. It's far more interesting than the description I just gave. Even so, it's pretty clear that conversations that are sparked by viewing the show won't center on happy things like lollipops or unicorns.

No, I suppose lollipops can't really be happy. And I guess unicorns can be downright ornery at times. Tell you what - you find a grumpy unicorn and bring it to me, and I'll stop blogging about cancer.

So my roommate and I were talking about cancer. Our discussion was sparked by a moment in an episode of Dexter where a long time acquaintance of the main character (who's name, in a surprising twist of events, is Dexter) is dying of a terminal illness. We started talking about the ways in which it would be really, really, really bad to die of a long, drawn-out illness. After covering a few different angles in that conversation, I shared with my roommate a thought I've had about cancer in the last year or two:

Were I diagnosed with cancer, I would seriously consider refusing treatment.

Of course, this kind of thought (or many thoughts I have about many things, I suppose) would be subject to rapid and radical change in the event that I became aware of a life-threatening disease that was ravaging my body. But it's the thought I've had on the subject lately.

I suppose one might wonder what sort of stupid, backwards reasoning I have behind this thought. I don't think it's quite so backwards - I mean, it is MY thought, right? Anyway, here it is:

From what I've seen while having only been connected to three people who have suffered from cancer (two of whom have died from it), the physical realities of a disease that has destroyed countless lives (both of those afflicted and those surrounding them) are secondary in my mind to this concern:

When someone has cancer (as far as I've seen, anyway), his or her whole life is about cancer. Every personal interaction is laden with cancer. "Hey, how are you feeling? You doin' okay?" Hey, is that...? Yeah, that's him. Oh, how's he doing? Cancer becomes the frame of reference for most everyone talking to or about the person who has it. A person's identity is taken over by a disease. This, in my uninformed, know-nothing-about-cancer opinion, is why cancer is so terrible.

Realistically, I don't have any right to speak about this stuff as though I know anything about it. But that's what I think about it. I don't mean to offend people who have had experiences with cancer. I also ended two consecutive paragraphs with a colon, making it seem as though my blog was just coming around to some point that would actually never be made. I don't mean to offend people with literature backgrounds. Grumpy unicorn, I'll stop doing both.

On Potential and God's Plan.

Reader be warned: this one might (...will) get long (...and slightly scattered). I'll make and explain some observations, beginning the process of trying to make sense of some of them. This is pretty preliminary.

To me, potential is a funny thing. As a hopelessly obsessed fan of NBA basketball and a still relatively young Christian who grew up in the church in which I grew up, I've been able to observe a thing or two about potential.

Let's start with basketball.

Anyone who watches the NBA for long enough will see countless front office executives make terrible, terrible mistakes in the name of potential. They'll do it when they draft players, they'll do it when they sign players as free agents, and they'll do it when they make trades for players.

The examples are too numerous to begin to list. Just for the sake of giving you an idea of what I'm talking about, I'll talk very briefly about one Jerome James.



Jerome James spent a very short time doing nothing for the Sacramento Kings before spending a few years doing nothing for the Seattle Supersonics. At the end of his time doing nothing for the Seattle Supersonics (may they rest in peace - the team has since moved to Oklahoma City and been tragically renamed the Thunder), Jerome James put up very modest, minimally respectable statistics for eleven playoff games. This was parlayed into a $30+ million guaranteed contract.

Jerome James has played in 90 games in the four seasons since - out of a possible 328. Some of those games were missed because of injury. A large number of them were missed because Jerome James just plain isn't any good by NBA standards. Yet $30 million was dished out to this guy in the name of potential - after he had already been playing in the NBA for five years.

But the real guy I want to talk about in regards to potential is Tim Thomas.


Among many NBA fans, Tim Thomas is seen as one of the bigger wastes of potential in recent NBA history. When he was a little younger, Tim Thomas was seen as an intriguing combination of size and skill. He's about 6'10" and generally more mobile than other players his size, with a pretty good shot from long range.

At one point, Tim Thomas showed some promise in a playoff series after playing in the NBA for five years (sound familiar?) and was rewarded with a huge contract worth about $66 million. He never really got much better. A few years into his big contract, Tim Thomas was still a big player who was generally more mobile than other players his size, with a pretty good shot from long range.

There's a difference in the way people talk about Jerome James and the way people talk about Tim Thomas. Jerome James was just a stupid mistake - he was never good, played about average for a few games, and then continued not to be good. But Tim Thomas? People will tell you that Tim Thomas was a waste of potential - that he could have been something more than he was, but he blew it.

To be fair, I should tell you that Tim Thomas was generally regarded as an uninspired player - a fact that might suggest that he actually could have become considerably better if not for lack of intrinsic motivation. But realistically? Before his big contract, Tim Thomas was a fairly mobile forward with good touch from long range. Five years after he signed his big contract, he was still a fairly mobile forward with good touch from long range.

In regards to Tim Thomas and potential, my point is this: at some point, though people saw the same thing in front of them, people stopped saying that Tim Thomas had potential to be something better than what he was. He went through years as what was pretty much the exact same player - but at some point Tim Thomas's potential was exhausted.

So with Tim Thomas, potential was there when people decided it was there, and it became wasted when people decided it was wasted. Potential was whatever was in the best interest of the people perceiving it. It was justification for a contract offer. It was the thing that was wasted, allowing critics to be right and to show they knew everything about how a guy's career was panning out.

Now, that whole church thing...

I grew up in (and still am quite connected to) a church where people talk a lot about "the plans God has" for someone's life. This concept of God having a preference in the way someone's life works out interacts with people's perception of potential in strange ways.

When I was a little younger (maybe around the end of high school or the beginning of my college career), lots of adults around church were really excited about my potential. I'm not exactly sure what convinced them of it or what they wanted it to look like, but they were excited about it. They were convinced that I was going to accomplish great and meaningful things in my life (I suppose that whether or not I have or will is partially a question of definition).

Eventually, I stopped attending college (and not because of any kind of graduation). That'll have a certain effect on people's opinions about potential.

When I was still attending college, potential was about things I would eventually do - for a time I studied to become an English teacher. Now that I am not currently attending college, potential is about things I am currently doing - about my involvement in ministry and the places it is leading me.

I think part of it has to do with the fact that I'm 26 now. 26 is a lot different than 19 or 20.

I've also noticed that "potential" and "God's plan" become very different things (at least from what I've seen at my church) when dealing with older people. In my time at my church, I've seen some middle-aged people experience "potential" and "God's plan" in different ways. I've seen some middle-aged people confused about the direction of their life or unhappy about their position in life. This resulted in a lot of people around them talking about "God's plan" or about these people's "potential" as what could also just be seen as the most apparent and practical course of action. The step that would result in the most comfort and security (or the step that would satisfy the greatest number of people's expectations) suddenly becomes "God's plan."

People's opinion of my "potential" (or of "God's plan" in some cases) changed as my life changed, allowing them to avoid being disappointed in me or to avoid seeing a life in which they've invested go in a direction they didn't like. Again, people's definition may have changed in order to be more convenient or self-serving.

I'm not really sure how that (or much of the stuff before it) reads. It's just what happens to be going on in my head at the moment.

When I was a senior in high school, I was in my church's youth choir, directed by a woman named Diana Merriman. She is wonderful. After just a few months of knowing her, she started saying the same thing to me whenever we had some time to talk about our lives:

"Jon Palmer, what are you going to be when you grow up? I'm going to ask you that every time I see you."

This is only loosely related to what I've been writing about, but she didn't ask me what I'm going to do. She asked me what I'm going to be. I like that question much better. Asking me what I'm going to do when I grow up is asking what career decision I'll make to ease people's worries about security. Asking me what I'm going to be? That's an entirely different question.

Plenty of people are concerned about what I'm going to do. I don't blame them. On paper, it looks pretty bad. I'm a 26 year-old without a bachelor's degree who works at a job that makes him just enough money to pay his rent and to eat. What's worse, I'm happier in my current position than I've ever been in any other position. My happiness is much more directly related to the details of my life I didn't just list, the details relating to the person I am becoming.

I am more concerned with what I am going to be. Diana's is the question I think about.

Para Escapar.

Every now and then, there's a truck parked on University Avenue just east of where it intersects with Hamline. It's parked somewhere within a few miles of that area every day; Hamline and University is one of its regular spots. It's got two or three Mexicans in it, preparing good, authentic Mexican street food and selling it on the street. I stop by it every time I can. It has both the names "Border Tacos" and "Frontera Tacos" painted on it. Frontera is the Spanish word for border. I refer to it by whichever name corresponds with the native language of the person to whom I'm describing the truck.

If I stop at Border Tacos at just the right time, it is magical. The right time is in the middle of a hot, sunny summer day. I'll step up to the window in the truck and feel the hot sun overhead. The sun's heat will combine with the heat emanating from the truck to give me an impression of heat that doesn't exist naturally as far north as I live. At that point, I'll start conversing in Spanish with whomever's working in the truck. I'll ask how business is going, and whoever's working in the truck will be curious as to how I learned Spanish (and as to how I developed a Mexican accent when I speak it). I feel heat comparable to that of a typical day in any of the places I've been in Latin America, I'm speaking Spanish, and I'm close enough to the truck that I can't see the city around me.

For a brief, brief moment, I feel as though I am in another country; none of my immediate physical experiences give me reason to believe otherwise. I am hit by strong memories of my times in Mexico, Costa Rica and Colombia.

In that moment, I remember walking around in Juarez, finding a newspaper everyday so I could check up on what was happening in the NBA Finals, though I didn't know enough Spanish at that point to make complete sense of it. I walked around looking for a man named Lalo, telling him that Dwyane Wade won the game with two free throws in the closing seconds. I had pizza with him a year later and we talked about his separation from his wife; I felt a deep empathy for the first man outside the United States to whom I'd ever had any real connection. I remember visiting Quirino, the warm and humble man who made a living making piñatas in the stuffiest, hottest indoor work environment I'd ever seen.

I remember the orphanage in Atenas, Costa Rica, where I played with a little girl named Louchy. I would take her hands and spin around until she was flying, squealing with laughter. I remember the first moment I realized how much it would hurt her when I left, how often that must happen to those orphans and the bitterness I felt about it, not understanding that the love I could give in a short time outweighed that pain.

I remember Yolaida and Loida, the two women who cooked most of what I ate in Colombia, sitting down to rest for a few minutes after each meal. I'd pass them after cleaning my dishes, thanking them for the meal and talking up how great it was. I remember them sitting me down so they could pray for me before I left to take a boat to Cartagena so I could get on a plane back to the US. Theirs was the most regular and predictable interaction I had in the course of my five weeks in Colombia.

These and a thousand other memories compress into a flash of deep sentiment I feel while I wait the two or so minutes it takes to prepare my order. The way I feel in those two minutes lingers on into the rest of the day, and I'm happy and distant until I go to sleep that night.

I stopped at Border Tacos today. It wasn't like the experience I just described.

I walked up to the truck today and noticed that the menu signage was all new and different. In the past, the menu was displayed in the window of the truck and was quite clearly created by someone with a less-than-fluent understanding of English. This added to the character of the truck in a way that was very pleasing to me. This new menu signage was all very fluent and sensible English. That's no fun.

The real disappointment came when I was looking at the new menu and a woman stuck her head out the window and asked me, "are you ready to order?" She was way, way better at speaking English than I wanted her to be. So I interacted with her in English instead of Spanish. It wasn't hot, either. All of these physical factors that I associated with this experience were different, so it just didn't have the same mystique about it.

I stepped back a few feet from the booth while I waited for my food instead of sticking my head in and initiating conversation. I don't suppose it's fair to deprive someone of interest in her life because she speaks English well, but my line of thinking at that point was much less nuanced than any of that. I didn't get what I wanted so I just stood around.

And then three men walked up behind me. They were Mexicans. They stepped forward to place orders and then leaned against a nearby tree while we all waited. From them I got the conversation I was looking for, the little taste of my international experiences that make a day so, so much better for me. They were painters, doing a job near Grand Avenue. We talked very briefly about the food, about Latin America and my experiences, and about how I learned to speak Spanish. I didn't ask their names. They were on what I imagine to be a short break in the middle of a hard day's work, and I didn't see it necessary to take any more of their time than what was available while I waited for my food. This interaction completely made up for the disappointment I had experienced moments earlier.

In the short time we talked, I explained that I ordered food from the truck any time I could para escapar, in order to escape. One of them told me that he does it, too. Just another example of food existing to bring people together.

The food is very good, by the way. Today I ate some tacos al pastor, along with some tacos de lengua (tongue):















If you live in the Saint Paul area, you should stop by this truck when you see it. It's good, authentic Mexican. It's definitely worth the trip, even if you don't have somewhere else to escape to along the way.

Speaking of the Doctor...

My last post dealt with a man named Roger Ettel (commonly called "Doc" by my father and me) and my recent running into him after not having seen him for what must have been a few years. I wrote briefly about doing some landscaping work with him.

One of the days we were working on those steps, Doc and Betty took me out to McDonald's for lunch. I remember exactly what I ate: double quarter pounder value meal, Sprite to drink.

More importantly, I remember this detail: we shared an apple pie.

I remember it very well, and not because of any particular affinity for the food (though at the time I was a big fan of it), but because we shared it. I remember it because it was one of the first times I ever thought about something I now strongly believe: food was created not simply for nourishment or for enjoyment, but so that people might have a way to share an experience together.

I'm convinced that you could get any two people, no matter how different, to eat together if the right food was on the table. Jesus and Hitler is the pair that usually springs to mind. That's one of the more unusual sentences I've ever put together.

Doc Ettel and I didn't know anything about one another's lives before we ate together. I still don't hardly know anything about his. But I have a great deal of affection and respect for him, and it started with sharing a fakey, nothing-special apple pie from McDonald's.

A strong belief in the value of this sort of experience has led me to dozens of nights of invading people's kitchens, cooking up some food, and sharing an evening together. The food usually turns out well and (since I have developed a passable talent for cooking) the other people eating are usually impressed and grateful. I'm not sure, though, whether they know that it doesn't have much of anything to do with the food.

I cook the food to enjoy its taste and its preparation, and it's my favorite creative outlet, but before that it's an excuse to spend time together and to create common ground between us.

I dated a young lady for three and a half years (the relationship ended about two years ago). Of all the experiences I had with her, the best was the tradition we developed of cooking Sunday dinner and eating it with her family. If you want an example of very different people being brought together over food, that's the one. For a number of reasons, it's a marvel that our relationship lasted as long as it did. I imagine that our Sunday dinners were to blame. Come to think of it, they were just about the only thing that actually brought us closer together after a certain point.

I just ran into her mother today. We spoke very briefly, and the interaction was very disappointing. I was genuinely excited to see her, remembering all those Sunday nights we shared together, when I came to respect and admire her. I'm not sure what she was remembering, but it probably had something to do with the abrupt, unpleasant manner in which my relationship with her daughter ended and with her general impressions of the head-in-the-clouds, directionless young man her daughter dated for so long.

I wish she would have remembered the Sunday nights. Sunday night was the only time I felt good about her impression of me; it was the only time I felt we had any connection to one another at all.

I blame the food.

An Impromptu Visit with the Doctor.

Yesterday was my birthday.

Birthdays are typically uncomfortable experiences for me. I spend the whole day in a sort of distant state of contemplation, pondering my life and its direction. All of this thinking happens while everyone around me is wanting to be really happy toward me and to involve me in their happiness. I then feel guilt, as I'm not able to properly receive everyone's warm wishes with an appropriate amount of energy and gratitude. In any birthday interaction with my family, this guilt is combined with the guilt I often feel for not spending adequate time with my family, so interactions with them are especially uncomfortable for me every September 1st.

For the last several years now, my birthday discomfort has been further compounded by the Minnesota State Fair. My father is the co-owner of the RC Cola booth, home of the cheapest pop at the fair. Every day of the fair until 4 o'clock, one can find my father doing one of a short list of things:

-Obsessively spraying and wiping the stainless steel counters where clients are served and small amounts of pop are routinely spilled.
-Changing syrup boxes so that the workers inside the booth can continue to sell pop.
-Eating breakfast at a stand just a few feet from the booth, taking one of the few opportunities he gets to relax during the twelve days in which the fair is open.
-Saying one of the following things to customers: "How goes your day?" "Oh, you have a helper today" - which is said to parents with very small children, and "Have a great one."
-Fraternizing with the people working at the booth or with the guy who brings the ice to the booth, trying to make someone else's day better at a time where he works harder and has more demanded of him than most anyone he'll run into.

I'm writing all of those things about my father so that you might be able to imagine the energy and warmth with which he greets me when he sees me at the booth on my birthday. I feel terrible. I just can't muster the ability give to him what he so easily gives to me on that day.

So on my birthday, mentally disconnected from most things that are happening to me throughout the day, I usually run into my father, creating what becomes the most uncomfortable moment of the day.

This year, it had one hell of a silver lining.

I was in the middle of this moment, with my friends Dan and Sarah standing next to me (as they had accompanied me to the fair that day), talking with my father. We were a few feet north of the RC Cola booth standing in a circle, my father facing the booth and me facing the other way. Whatever we were talking about, it was interrupted by my father telling me: "there's Doc Ettel, Jon. Go shake his hand."

I wouldn't have needed any convincing to be motivated to shake Doc Ettel's hand; my dad just wanted to make someone's day better by having him run into someone he hasn't seen in a while. I turned around and saw Doc Ettel purchasing a glass of RC Cola, in large part (I imagine) out of loyalty to my father.

Doc Ettel's real first name is Roger. My dad calls him Doc because he does something medical for a living. I think he's a chiropractor, but I'm not really sure. Doc Ettel has a face I would love to have when I'm sixty-something. By that I mean that he has wrinkles in his cheeks and around his eyes that you can tell came from a lifetime of smiling at people with an admirable sincerity. His face is generally somber, but when he smiles you can see a life's worth of warmth in it.

When I was growing up, my grandmother lived a street away from my family. Doc Ettel lived (and still lives, with his wife Betty) in the house next to what was my grandmother's house. Their yards were separated by a steep and grassy hill. When I was 14 or 15, Doc Ettel paid me a hundred dollars to help him and Betty with a little landscaping work, putting some nice brick steps in the hill with rocks on either side. It looked good and was very satisfying work. While we worked, Betty would bring out a can of pop every now and then for us to enjoy. There was A&W root beer and Sprite, and Roger always allowed me to choose which I preferred. Since those few days, we've always greeted one another warmly when we've run into one another, taking a short moment to catch up. I had seen Doc Ettel maybe 15 or 20 times then, in a span of a dozen years or so.

I walked away from my father and my friends, over to the booth where Doc Ettel had just received his glass of RC Cola. "How ya doin', Rodge?" I shook his hand, trying not to think about my father telling me to moments earlier. Doc was pleasantly surprised to see me, and I got to see that smile I hope to grow into someday. We got to talking for a moment, and he asked me what I had been up to. I told him about my recent trip to Colombia and about a few other things. He was so happy to hear about the course my life had taken. He then told me that I (along with my family) had been on his daily prayer list ever since we worked together for sixteen hours that one summer.

Even if I hadn't been in the sort of mental state that typifies my birthdays, I would still have been completely dumbfounded. Some people are unbelievably good to people. My father spends the most stressful and demanding portion of his year doing every tiny thing he can to improve one of a million people's day. Doc Ettel has been praying for me every day for a dozen years.

I was then reminded of something I've been thinking about recently: in my mind, not much of anything is better or more gratifying or more fun than being good to people. If I can take the next thirty years and become as good at it as my father or Doc Ettel, I'll be pretty satisfied.