Life is like pulling teeth

Consider the phenomenon of teeth-pulling: an older, larger, and stronger human creature offers to snap a bone off your face.

No wonder kids find the whole experience terrifying. Adults have even developed a special lexicon in an attempt to disguise the trauma. After “working” on a tooth for a minute, the adult tells the child, who now has tears in his eyes, that it’s “not ready,” meaning, “All the pain you just felt accomplished nothing. You now have six or seven days to dread the repeat of this exercise.”

To make tooth-pulling seem less like punishment, adults created Tooth Fairy. Whether the prize was a quarter or a five-dollar bill, they believed that the promise of wealth would assuage their children’s fears. How typical.

I didn’t like the idea of any strangers being in my room while I was sleeping. I don’t care if you’re a leprechaun, troll, or the Tooth Fairy. Wearing velvet and having a fat bank account changes nothing. Where I come from we have one name for people who hang out at night in the rooms of other people’s children: Pervert.

“I’ll spend the money if you leave it, Mr. or Mrs. Tooth Fairy, but I’d prefer you just keep your filthy paws out from underneath my pillow. What do you do with all those teeth anyway? Sell them to Oscar Meyer for use in their hotdogs? Go find friends your own age, you sicko.”

One time, I decided to pull my own tooth.

I tied a piece of dental floss around the loose tooth, then gave it a tug to see how much force was necessary. Yikes! It was still in there pretty good. Plan B was to tie the floss to a door then slam it shut.

As I was pacing around the den trying to psych myself up, my older sister Elizabeth walked in the room.

“What’s that?!!” she asked, but before I could answer, she grabbed the floss hanging from my mouth and yanked on it.

Sure enough, the tooth flew across the room and landed on the carpet. Not knowing what else to do, I burst into tears.

“I was going to pull it!” I yelled. “I was going to do it myself. Why did you do that?”

“Well, now you don’t have to worry about it.” She smirked and walked off.

She received no punishment, and I found a dollar underneath my pillow. This is the world we live in. I’m sure I’ll have to pull some teeth one day, distracting my little ones as though I were about to give them a shot. “You’ll feel a small prick. What’s your favorite color? Okay, there, all done.”

I’ll also probably find myself using other grown-up propaganda like, “This hurts me worse than it hurts you,” and “You’ll understand when you’re older.” Will I understand or will I just stop asking difficult questions?

Despite the borderline lies and clever half-truths, parents must carry an open wound in their hearts for their children. No matter what lengths they go to to share their own experiences, provide instruction, and protect their little ones, they still must send them out into the Savage Land of bullies, cliques, and crushes. No one writes a manual on how to navigate with grace and poise the hurt and disappointment of that fly ball you dropped or piano recital you botched.

Kids never know what they’re supposed to be feeling or how they’re supposed to act or what any of this is supposed to mean. Nothing can prepare you for the endless procession of traumas and triumphs that is childhood: getting made fun of or ostracized at school; getting your heart broken by a girl; not making the team; not getting the part; not winning the election; listening to your parents fight. Kids would eat their vegetables every night if it meant avoiding these rites of passage.

At least when your uncle tries to pull a tooth that’s not ready, the pain is temporary, and you know who to blame. I’m still waiting to find money under my pillow for all the other bloody noses and ugly heartbreaks. I should have racked up at least a couple million bucks by now. I have a hunch that I’m the only one keeping track.

Rather than give my kids money, I’ll share with them what I’ve learned: the less you blame others for your suffering, the more space you will have in your heart to store up joy. Your heartache does become money. In looking for ways to listen well to other people’s pain and quiet it, you will experience healing. Lay down your life, and you will gain it.

If that doesn’t do the trick, I’ll buy them ponies.

Puberty is a dark room

When I was going through puberty, my nose changed shape. I tracked down my mom and shared this alarming discovery:

“Mom, I think I need to go to the doctor. I think I’ve broken my nose! It’s been straight for as long as I can remember, but now it has a bump in it!”

She reassured me that my nose was not, in fact, broken, and that when our bodies start maturing, our facial structure also goes through some changes.

How could either of my parents have explained puberty?

“Oh, by the way, in the coming months and years, your balls will drop, and your pee-pee will develop a mind of its own and will never do as told. Your relationship with this organ will be best described as ‘love-hate.’ Also, you’ll grow hair in places you’d rather not discuss, even with your pediatrician, and your voice will sound like somebody took it out of your throat and whacked it a few times with a hammer. The bones in your nose, cheeks, and brow will swell and change shape forever, and you’ll soon discover that girls do not, in fact, have cooties. On the contrary, they have boobs. For many years after, boobs will somehow be the center of the universe. This will seem ridiculous to you because when your mind rises from its fog, you realize that they are simply sacks of fat with milk-producing glands designed to sustain new life. You cannot, of course, seek help in divining these mysteries from the people who carry them around. You will come across either as a pervert or a weirdo. So, please just bottle up your confusion and do your best to navigate, well, your whole existence while obliterated on a cocktail of hormones. Oh, and don’t screw up. After all, our family has its reputation to consider. Prayer and scripture might help, but you will feel guilty when in the middle of Philippians your mind wanders and you realize you’re thinking about boobs. Again. We’re your parents and we love you and we just wanted to give you a heads up. And remember, you can tell us anything.”

“Yeah, sure. I really want to sit down with you and go over the smorgasbord of sexual lore I’ve picked up at school. Please confirm what’s true and pluck out any misinformation. We can get some bubble gum ice cream at Baskin Robbins, watch The Goonies, and make an evening out of it. I’ve put it down in my calendar. Can’t wait.”

No one I know got a thorough briefing on puberty or sex. A man named Dr. Leeper came to David Lipscomb Middle School a few times to arrange some transparencies on the overhead projector. “Here are the different stages of sexual development for males.” A pack of 6th and 7th grade boys ran down the checklist in their heads to see how far they had progressed and how far they had to go before this affliction called puberty would desist.

“Okay, I’ve sprouted a few pit hairs and woken up horrified that I’d wet the bed at fourteen years old, but then upon closer examination, I discovered that I’m now at Step 4 on Dr. Leeper’s development chart. The horror! The horror!”

[Joseph Conrad was onto something in Heart of Darkness, but it had nothing to do with colonialism, self-worship or the depravity of man.]

One year, Dr. Leeper made the mistake of opening up the floor to questions. He may as well have chummed shark-infested waters, drawn a knife across his forearm, and jumped in. Every smart-aleck in two grades finally had his opportunity to confirm or disprove certain urban legends which I won’t discuss here.

I came out of those sex ed classes thinking that line drawings of women’s internal architecture looked like something that would grow on the ocean floor, something that looked like a vegetable but was carniverous. When we compared notes with the girls, who had endured through their own sex ed classes, we found out that they knew even less than we did.

“Vulva? Fallopian tubes? Don’t those go somewhere on an engine? Sounds like an import, maybe a Ferrari.”

All you wanted was to be cool and to avoid sticking out in any way. You don’t know what you’ve done to deserve punishment, but it must have been very bad. Puberty is a dark room where a teacher you don’t know calls on you to answer questions that you didn’t hear in the first place.

“Welcome to adulthood, children. We hope you enjoy your stay.”

My First Kiss

First kisses can beautiful, psychedelic, and terrifying experiences.

Like LSD, crystal meth, or hallucinogenic mushrooms, they can forever alter your neurochemistry. “Just one,” you tell yourself. “I’ll just eat one of these bright red Amanita Muscaria mushrooms and have a story to tell my friends.”

Oh contraire, my friend. You’ll ruin your life.

I was in the 8th grade. Sarah’s friends made it known to me that I should make our mutual crush official by asking her to “go” with me. That seemed so 5th grade to me, yet going against their better judgment to appease the women they want is something that men do all the time. Pubescent males, in particular, have this Achilles’ heel, not that they have much wisdom or discernment in the first place.

I’d grown up hearing my parents preach that compromise is to relationships what oil is to engines, so I went ahead and asked her.

I was fifteen and couldn’t go pick Sarah up, which meant that my dear old dad had to drive me out to her house anytime I wanted to see the object of my affections. Sarah and I always came back to my house, or my parents took us to the movie theater or mall.

Sarah and I made plans to have a date the same night that my parents were headed over to my grandparents house to play cards. We were stuck. We had no choice but to tag along.

My dad was driving the blue Suburban, my mom was riding in the passenger seat. Sarah and I were sitting in the second seat. I was trying to figure out how to hold her hand without my dad being able to see in the rearview mirror, as if he would have cared.

As I was conceiving my plan of attack, my dad slammed the brakes, something smashed into our truck, and gray-brown fur flashed across the windshield.

We’d just bagged us a whitetail deer.

Back in 1997, a lot of the land on either side of Hillsboro Road, heading into Green Hills, was still undeveloped, and the woods ran right up to the road. Opossums, raccoons, deer, coyotes, foxes, rabbits, and roughly a billion suicidal squirrels would cross from patch of trees to the other. Sometimes, you’d see the carcass of a smushed opossum or the sharp stink of a careless skunk.

My dad drove straight to my cousins’ house, and Uncle Scott came out to look at the damage. He stuck a fingertip in some mud on the side of the truck, and after smelling it, wrinkled his nose and frowned. It wasn’t mud.

“You scared the crap out of that deer,” he said.

How come he got to say “crap,” and I didn’t?

Eventually, we did make it over to my grandparents’ house. The adults played Hearts upstairs, and I escorted my lady down to the basement where the cousins played pool on the same table our parents had grown up using and ping-pong on the table that Granpa Parkes had built himself.

I hadn’t made up my mind to kiss Sarah that night. Just the thought of actually closing my eyes, leaning in, and pressing my lips against hers made my stomach feel as though I’d lost my wallet or caught a kickball with my groin. When Sarah and I were together, I could think of little else. I mean, how did it feel? Would I be “good”?

I’d experienced the paralysis that came from a similar interior monologue while sitting next to a girl in a dark movie theater. Staring at her hand out of the corner of my eye, I faced that moment of truth:

“Do it now, Austin. Take her hand right now. Okay, okay, relax. Oh no, I’m sweating! Cardinal Sin of Handholding #1: Nobody wants to hold your sweaty hand. Why does she look so calm? She’s just sitting their watching the movie like I’m not even here. Maybe she doesn’t even care if I hold her hand. Maybe she doesn’t even want to be here. She probably doesn’t even like me. What was that? She smiled at me! There is hope! Okay, do it now, Austin. Take her hand right now…” and so on.

I’m sure the girls had it just as bad, if not worse. They had to worry about some putz asking them out on dates. Even if they liked the guy, they had to think about what they were going to do if Prince Charming got handsy. Or, maybe he was a really nice guy and lacked boldness, and she had to sit there wondering what was taking him so long.

Well, cowardice, for one thing. Fear of rejection. Insecurity. Ladies, you can be guaranteed that no matter how exciting or suspenseful the movie, your date took you to a movie for one reason and one reason alone: to hold your hand, put his arm around you, make out, or something similar.

However much we men may love superheroes or cowboys or chase scenes or watching the good guy get the girl while reducing the villain to a mewling babychild, we love females more. Have you ever stopped to wonder why movies are the default date? Movies are about the worst possible way to get to know someone and find out what you have in common. Spending two hours sitting next to someone you barely know and watching as a man and woman onscreen end up together in bed despite all the odds isn’t the best way to decide if you want this woman to be the mother of your children, if you want this man to open salsa jars and drive to the store for tampons.

Movies are really about that electricity of touch. Darkness dials up the voltage. I want to get drunk on her perfume, her closeness, her warmth, her softness, our arms grazing, a glance, one corner of her lips turned up in a smile. Of course, the uncertainty enhances the excitement, and as the feelings fade, a deeper, more stable intimacy should replace the physical and emotional fireworks.

Perhaps I had no intention of kissing Sarah for the first time. Perhaps I had every intention of kissing Sarah for the first time. Considering all the hormones coursing through my veins, I’ll bet it was both—hoping that I had the guts to kiss Sarah for the first time.

The year before, my seventh grade year, I’d dated a girl named Lauren. Our group of friends went trick-or-treating in Kyle’s neighborhood on Halloween night. To encourage me to make a move, my buddies and the rest of the girls kept on walking ahead of Lauren and me to give us time to ourselves, only to catch up with us after a couple of minutes, pull me aside, and ask, “Did you do it? Did you do it?”

I was always a romantic, and my first kiss seemed like a special rite of passage, not the sort of thing you waste on any girl who catches your eye. This type of nudging from my friends diminished its significance. I really just wanted them to leave me alone and make up my own mind about when was the right time and which was the right girl.

Though I meant it as no slight, I never did kiss Lauren. Still a lip virgin a year later, I was in my grandparents’ basement teaching Sarah how to play pool, which supplied a convenient pretense for putting my arms around her.

At one point, I tickled her, and when she wriggled away and faced me, our eyes locked and with that peculiar gravity, I leaned in and touched my lips to hers.

When I pulled back, she was smiling.

I was very pleased with my boldness and with her reaction, and planned no other operations for the evening. We continued playing pool until my dad yelled from the top of the stairs that it was time to go.

The wonderful thing about tickling is that the girl inevitably ends up in your arms. So long as you can discern when enough is enough, tickling is one of the most effective and versatile tools in our flirtation arsenal. On the way to the stairs, I grabbed Sarah’s calf or jabbed her in the side.

Apparently, this set the mood because when we got to the stairs and I flipped off the overhead basement lights, the yellow light from the stairwell caught Sarah’s face, and she had The Look. How I knew what The Look looked like or what it signified, I cannot tell you. No one taught me. I just knew somehow that The Look means business time.

I leaned in to kiss her again. Our lips met, and something strange happened. She stuck her tongue in my mouth.

Woah! I guess I figured that we were working on my timeline. One thought entered my foggy mind: “I have to fight back.”

I returned the favor, and we had a fist fight with our tongues for a couple of seconds. Then, it was over. Sarah wiped her mouth, and not knowing any better, I thought this was normal and did likewise.

Unfortunately, I chose to commemorate that momentous occasion by making an observation.

“That was weird,” I said.

Sarah just smiled and started up the steps.

“Idiot!” I thought. “Why’d you have to go and open your stupid mouth and say the something so stupid?”

****

I thought about nothing but kissing and my embarrassing little speech for the next twenty-four hours. Sarah and I talked on the phone the next night. I couldn’t leave it alone. I couldn’t let her think I was that uncool.

I took the conversation there: “I can’t believe what I said after we kissed last night?”

“What?” she asked.

Surely, she couldn’t have forgotten.

“Don’t you remember?” I said. “Right after we kissed I said, ‘That was weird,’ like the dumbest thing of all time.”

“I completely forgotten about that!” Sarah said and start laughing.

“Idiot!” I thought. “Why’d you have to go and open your stupid mouth and say the something so stupid?”

At that point in time, I was unacquainted with a quote that is most often attributed to Mark Twain: “It is better to be thought a fool, then to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Moral: After kissing a girl, say nothing. Give her a hug, hold her face in your hands and smile at her, or tuck her hair behind her ear—all these are fine. If you must wipe your mouth, do so discreetly, and make a note to yourself to learn better technique. If the kiss is a disappointment, you can whisper, “Let’s try that again,” but don’t come crying to me if that backfires. I warned you.

Does anybody have any good first kiss stories?

The Pannus

Most of my friends are at least in their mid-twenties. All of us are at the crux. We must decide either to embrace healthy dietary and exercise habits or capitulate to the slow and debilitating onslaught of the Pannus.

Many of you may not know what the Pannus is and what it represents. Like you, I once was ignorant of this word and the corresponding posture towards life. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia, the web’s foremost authority on the Pannus, which will illuminate this phenomenon:

Pannus is a medical term for a hanging flap of tissue. When involving the abdomen, it is called a panniculus and consists of skin, fat, and sometimes contents of the internal abdomen as part of a hernia. A pannus can be the result of loose hanging tissues after pregnancy or weight loss. It can also be the result of obesity. A pannus can come in many different sizes and shapes and can become very large, even hanging down below the knees. The extra tissue of a hanging pannus can make personal hygiene difficult. Skin conditions such as yeast infections under the pannus are common problems. A massive hanging pannus can get in the way of walking. A smaller pannus can be an annoyance with clothing as the individual sits or stands. (Source)

Sweet Sally, I think I’m going to have nightmares.

The Pannus is more than rolls of belly fat. The Pannus is a state-of-mind. I had two years of Latin in high school, so I can tell you right now that the Latin word panis means bread. The Greek word pan means “all” as in “pantheism” or “pangaea.” Thus, the Pannus means “all-bread,” or “Pillsbury Dough Boy.” Expressed in layman’s terms. The Pannus means “letting yourself go.”

We’ve all thought about it: Nobody wants to be that guy at your ten-year high school reunion. When you see him, you almost cuss. You’re that shocked. It’s as though he’s gone fuzzy around the edges. Somebody erased all the lines then pumped him full of lard.

Bear with me as I paint a picture for you:

[Some of the former dorks, thespians, and computer geeks are standing in a corner of a rented room drinking punch and dropping chip crumbs onto the floor. In walks Dudley, the all-star quarterback, now part-time father and real estate salesman. Conversation ensues.]

Ralph: “Good gracious, is that Dudley?”

Sarah: “What happened to him?”

Russell: “Boy, did he let himself go!”

Ralph: “He looks awful.”

Sarah: “That’s what happens when you date Natty Light for about 15 years.”

[All three laugh.]

Russell: “How much do you think he’s put on?”

Sarah: “Fifty or sixty pounds at least!”

[Sarah begins to feel bad about her enthusiasm.]

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had two kids, and I can tell you right now that it’s a struggle to find time to exercise. But there’s a difference between putting on a few extra pounds and begging for a heart attack.”

[Dudley walks over. He smiles at nods at the three.]

Dudley: “It’s been a long time.”

Russell: “No doubt. How’re you doing, Dudley?”

Dudley: “Pretty good, pretty good.”

Russell: “Where’d you get that beer? I must have missed them.”

Dudley: [He winks.] “Oh, I brought it. I’ve got some more out in my truck if you want one.”

Russell: “Oh, that’s alright. Thanks for offering. I was just wondering.”

Dudley: “Cool. Well, you guys take it easy. I’m gonna go says some more hellos.”

[Dudley wanders off.]

Ralph: “Holy crap. He brought his own beer.”

Sarah: “Yes, he did, and he finally earned his name.”

Russell: “Sarah, that’s terrible.”

[All three laugh.]

This scene, though fictitious, illustrates what can happen when we fail to guard against the Pannus. Sure, we can make jokes about our compromises by slapping our bellies and saying, “Why have a six-pack when you can have a keg?” We can create imaginary ailments as conversation pieces. Take, for example, Dunlap disease: “Your belly has done lapped over your belt.” Or Thangdo: “Your gut sticks out farther than your thang do.”

Our metabolisms slow down, and other responsibilities and obligations cut into the time we once used to stay in shape. Life happens, and poor time management skills and a lack of self-discipline plant us on the couch.

Letting ourselves go happens slowly and subtly. You still feel like you’re sixteen, then, one day, you look down and realize you can’t see your feet. The Pannus has struck again.

I know what you’re thinking:

“There’s no such thing as Pannus envy. How can I be on my guard? What can I do to protect myself?”

There is hope. I’ve compiled a list of questions, known as The Pannus Prognosis, to help you identify attitudes and assumptions that make you susceptible to the Pannus.

Instructions: Ask yourself the following questions and keep track of your answers. Give yourself a 5 for every Yes and a –5 for every No.

1) Could one healthcare professional locate my genitals without assistance?

2) Do I have the mental and emotional fortitude to put a pint of Ben & Jerry’s back in the freezer after opening it?

3) Do I still have what people refer to as a chin?

4) Am I able to get out of bed without help?

5) Can I remove the rings from my fingers?

Next, give yourself a 5 for every No and a –5 for every Yes.

1) Do I have any body parts I wasn’t born with? (Examples: a panniculus, turkey gobble, or muffin top.)

2) Do I often partake of the Captain Ds?

3) Do the good folks down at my local Golden Corral or Ryan’s Steakhouse know me by name?

4) If bacon were a person, would I date him or her?

5) Do I consider butter a food group?

6) Have I ever found missing objects on my person while naked?

7) Do I own a Snuggie?

8. Do I wear sweatpants anywhere other than the gym and grocery store?

9) Have I ever lived or do I currently live in the state of Texas?

10) Do I ever unbutton my pants during or after a large meal?

Now, calculate your score out of a possible 75 points.

If you scored 50 or below, you are at risk. 50 and above means that though the Pannus may yet overtake you, your appearance at your high school reunions probably won’t make people gasp.

Keep in mind, however, that this test is still in its trial phase.

People all over the world, especially in the United States, are counting on you to help make the Pannus Prognosis into an effective tool for the diagnosis and treatment of The Pannus.

Please submit your own questions in the Comments section.

The Toast

My dating history is a mashup of triumphs and failures.

My longest relationship to date was a nine-month soiree with a lovely young woman named Lindsay. I remember the very first time I saw her. She was walking through the rows of cardio equipment at the Maryland Farms YMCA. I was running on a treadmill and talking to Shannon, a curvy blond bombshell. Shannon was a year ahead of me, and took a new interest when she found out what I’d scored on the ACT. We were in Mrs. Rickleton’s art class when Mrs. Simons brought in the paper reports for everyone who’d taken the test. I was in the middle of a project, so I told Mrs. Simons to just set my scores down on my desk.

Shannon couldn’t stand it. “Don’t you want to know what you got?” she asked.

“Sure, but I’m in the middle of something. My score isn’t going to change if I finish this, and if I didn’t do as well as I would have liked, well, I can wait on that kind of disappointment.”

She asked if she could look, and I told her to go ahead.

Her response after looking over my scores? “Austin, I had no idea you were so smart!”

I just smiled and said thank you, but I thought, “Shannon, I had no idea you were so adept with backhanded compliments.”

From that day until Shannon graduated, she regarded me with a mixture of awe and playfulness. I became a curiosity of sorts, something you admire anytime you’re in the shop but something that you’d never buy. If I had been a bit more naive, I would have thought this special attention from Shannon suggested a special affection. I knew better, however. She just thought I was smart because of a silly number, which piqued her interest in my opinions on a variety of subjects. I was more a plaything than a serious love interest.

On this particular day at the Y, she wanted to know what kind of girl I was interested in.

Without hesitation, I pointed—discreetly, of course—at Lindsay. “That kind of girl,” I said.

Lindsay had curly blond hair down to her shoulders and very large blue eyes. Her cheeks were always flushed, and she was almost as fair-skinned as me, except she was the type of white that became tan with enough quality time roasting in the sun. My skin just turned red and started to itch. Thanks for nothing, genetics. Lindsay was the star player on her lacrosse team, I found out later. If she played, they won. If she missed a game for some reason, they lost.

Lindsay was the type of pretty that I found magnetic at the point in my life. She was perhaps the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in person. That meant that I should never, under any circumstances, go over and talk to her.

My quick reply must have surprised Shannon. No opinions or philosophy this time, no, just a straightforward answer: that girl.

”Why don’t you go talk to her?” she asked.

Strange creatures swam through my stomach. Obviously, Shannon didn’t understand how it worked. You don’t just go talk to a girl that pretty. At the time, I had the notion that women of a certain caliber of attractiveness were beings of absolute confidence with formidable powers of critique. She would make mincemeat of me with these weapons. From her lofty abode in the ether of physical and mental charms, she would brush aside my pathetic attempts at conversation and humor. She would single out every mistake I made and reduce me to putty.

No, one didn’t simply walk over to a goddess and ask her what her name was and where she went to school. Aphrodite was born with her Ph.D. in captivating, befuddling, and destroying mortal men. Circe turned men into swine. The Greeks built mythology around natural phenoma. They must have watched beautiful women turn men into slobbering fools; otherwise, the stories wouldn’t exist.

Thankfully, Lindsay left the room, and without looking like a coward, I could tell Shannon that I had missed my window.

This all happened in the spring of my junior year of high school, and over that following summer, I ran into Lindsay a couple more times. A mutual friend introduced us at a Jars of Clay concert at the Harley Davidson dealership in Cool Springs. Out of nervousness, I had been rolling up a piece of paper into a ball between my fingers, and when she turned to ask me a question, I threw the paper ball at her. I guess this was a juvenile attempt at flirtation. It hit her in the forehead. She raised an eyebrow and said, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I said, thinking though was “You idiot! Is your brain damaged?”

I ran into her another time when I went to hang out with our mutual friend John over at another friend’s house. Towards the end of the summer,  we talked briefly at Dancin’ in the District. That’s when we found out that we had the same last name. Yikes.

John was doing some work over at Forest Hills Baptist one afternoon, and I dropped by to say hey. School had started up again at this point. We were both seniors.

He must have picked up on the fact that I was interested in his friend Lindsay. He himself had been interested in her, but he said he was fine with stepping out of the way if I wanted to pursue her. I’ll say this, different girls have come and gone, but John and I are still friends. Both John and Lindsay were involved with FCA at Brentwood High, and I was involved with a homeless ministry downtown through Lipscomb High.

What if I invited Lindsay to ride along with me one evening and McDonald’s hamburgers? We could get to know one another a little better, and I could get my foot in the door under the pretense of ministry.

[Attention, Women, this is a classic Christian nice guy move. If some guy with a crooked smile on his face asks you to volunteer at the mission, or hand out clothes, or go rake an invalid's leaves, then beware. He's really asking you out on a date, but he doesn't have the cajones to do it straight up. He wants to see who you are in a variety of environments. He's trying to put together the full picture so that he can be sure that you're worth the risk of rejection. He may also ask you to “hang out.” This is the nebulous no-man's-land between friendship and romance. Ask him what his intentions are.]

While I was in the middle of pitching my idea to John, he was dialing a number.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Calling Lindsay,” he replied.

“What?!! I wasn’t even sure—”

“Lindsay? Hey, it’s John…I’m doing fine, how are you?” John was now talking to her. I guess he’d made up my mind for me.

He handed the phone to me. We talked for awhile, and she agreed to go downtown with me.

We passed out 25¢ McDonald’s hamburgers to the homeless men who gathered on Demonbruen near the mission. My teacher and mentor Mr. Millson was there to give me some good-natured ribbing in front of Lindsay. I made a mental note to thank him.

The homeless men drifted away when the food ran out, and the rain began to fall again. It had been raining off and on all day. As Lindsay and I drove away, she mentioned that her church had already started. I invited her to go to church with me, so we went to youth group at Hillsboro Church of Christ.

When class ended, the rain had let up. I opened the door for her, and she leaned over to unlock my door, which, according to Code of Dating Ethics I’d developed with my friends, was a good sign.

I settled into my seat and started my ‘88 Honda Accord Lxi. My dad bought the car for $1000 from one of his clients after a hailstorm had totaled it. He fixed everything that needed fixing, and my parents surprised me with it the summer after I turned 16. Although I was grateful for their generosity, I’d wanted a ‘73 International Scout that my dad and I had looked at in Belle Meade. The man who was selling it had done all the work himself. It was beautiful—hunter green with white shearling seat covers. It was also $13000. I would have looked so awesome in that truck—the original SUV. Visions of my cruising around in the summer without the hardtop evaporated. Instead, I received an Accord with a leaky seal around the sunroof.

The “Toast,” as I called my champagne-colored means of transportation, would sometimes hold water between the roof outside and the ceiling upholstery inside. None of the water seeped through to indicate the reservoir above my head, so I had no way of knowing whether or not I was about to get soaked on any particular rainy day. Sometimes, water dumped all over me. Sometimes, it didn’t. Hit or miss. How exciting!

Of course, on the rainy day that I had the girl of my dreams in the Toast and wanted desperately to come off as charming, smooth, and impressive, this special feature of my car slipped my mind. I pressed the clutch and put the car in first gear. I gave her a little gas and turned to the right.

Remembering what happened, I can see a gallon of mean-spirited water pooling invisible above my head then pouring out the crack underneath the sunroof cover. At least half a gallon fell on my head, soaking my hair, shirt, jeans, boxers, and the seat itself.

I was too shocked to speak. I pressed the brake. You can imagine what that would look like from the outside looking in. Dumping a bucket of water on a guy’s head while he’s in the middle of trying to woo his quasi-date. Talk about ruining a guy’s game, or as my friend Kyle called it, his “swerve.”

Lindsay was bent forward laughing so hard that her face was almost touching her knees.

I squeaked out a few words, “I’m not really sure what to say except I can’t believe that just happened. I am so embarrassed. I hate this crappy car.”

Lindsay was near tears at this point and waved her hand at me as if to say, “Too much! Too much!”

Nothing to do but press on, so I gave the Toast a little gas and straightened the steering wheel. Now, you can imagine what was left of the rainwater above our heads shifting to the right and pooling above her head.

A moment later, the Toast dumped half a gallon of water on Lindsay’s head.

I hated my car, and I hated my life.

How does one apologize in that situation? “I’m sorry that my car gave you a shower. I wish I could say it won’t happen again, but I cannot make that guarantee. You are very pretty and sweet, and I hope this doesn’t ruin my chances of dating you, but I completely understand if my mode of transportation makes you vomit a little bit in your mouth and associate that taste of swingset chains with my face.”

What I did say was, “I. Am. So. Sorry.”

Lindsay was gracious: “Don’t worry about it. It’s just like we were standing outside in the rain.”

“But,” I responded, “It’s not too much to ask that when you’re actually inside a car, you stay dry.”

She just laughed, and we started talking about other stuff. I drove her back to her car at Granny White Park. We talked for awhile longer, and I mustered up the courage to ask for her number.

She gave it to me, and we dated our whole senior year and through the summer right up to seven hours before she left for Clemson. A couple of months into her first semester, she met the man who would later become her husband.

Looking back, I guess that the Toast was a blessing in disguise. Those invisible buckets of water got my relationship with Lindsay started in the best way possible: I couldn’t be too cool. I had to be myself. When your underwear is wet and your quasi-date has to hold out her shirt so that her bra and goodies won’t be visible, you can’t take yourself too seriously. You may as well just laugh and savor the moment. Relationships are messy, but at least they give us good stories to tell.

6th grade was hell

The 6th grade was a bad year for me.

I hated middle school in general. Even though I went to a public elementary school, my arrival at a private Christian middle school in the 5th grade signified my miseducation in matters pertaining to sex, girls, profanity, cruelty, ostracism, tribalism, sarcasm, and all the other -isms and social spasms you can imagine.

The school itself was fine. The vast majority of teachers were kind and truly cared about the students. The problem had more to do with the age group than the particular setting. If William Golding had chosen a Christian island for Lord of the Flies, then he would have had no less material. All the brutality and moral depravity gains more subtlety.

Left to our own devices, we use our creativity to invent ways to consume one another.

We may never have killed a wild boar and smeared its blood on our faces, but we did orchestrate a lie so that one of the boys in our grade would be led to believe that both boys and girls have menstrual cycles. For boys, this was called “shooting your dot.”

****

“Billy, have you shot your dot?”

“No?”

“Hmm. Guess that means we’ll have to kick you out of our cliques and pretend like you don’t exist. Sorry about that. Check back in with us in a few months. After a few more gauntlets of hazing, public humiliation, and paperwork, we’ll consider letting you back in. To be one of us, you have to be a real jerk, and you’re too kind, compassionate, and gullible. We really need to stamp out your trust in other people.”

****

I got made fun of all the time. Admittedly, some of my comebacks were less than clever. That time I changed the lyrics to Peter Frampton’s “Baby, I love your way” and sang it to Adam trying to deliver the death blow? Yikes. If I had been a spectator listening in on this playground altercation in front of Harding Hall, I would have used the words of the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade after Donovan drinks from the wrong cup and his skin melts off like cheese and his skeleton explodes. In a dry, British accent, Robert Eddison says, “He chose…poorly.” Indeed, I did. I had one foot in high school before I lived down that lameduck comeback.

Don’t let me forget puberty. Thanks to mandatory chapel services every day, there was always a chance to read scripture, lead singing, or pray in front of an audience of my peers. Without fail, my voice would crack. I’d be reading a passage in Luke and reveling in my rich, new baritone and then KAPLOWEY! My voice would jump an octave.

[“Who was it? Which one of you just kicked me in the groin? I wanna know who it was! God, I thought you loved me, and then this? Again?”]

Sixth grade got off to a decent start. I got Mrs. Bornstein for homeroom, which, I was told, was best-case scenario. We went to church with her. She lived in our neighborhood. I already had an in. Great. “Maybe this year will be better than the last.” [Counting Crows, “Long December,” Thank you, Adam Duritz, for your optimism. I wish it had been true for me.]

Foolish little boy with my naive belief in people’s goodness.

I brought some of it on myself. For example, when Mrs. Bornstein went out of the room one day and left us to work quietly on our homework, I took the opportunity to climb up on my desk and shake it, shake it. I figured that I had a good 5 minutes of tomfoolery. In the words of my dad, “Wrong-ola.” Mrs. Bornstein had forgotten something she needed for her errand and walked back into the room right as I was settling into my groove.

She jerked me right down from my glory, and from that day forward, I had to go with her whenever she left the room. To copy papers in the main building, to visit other teachers, to grab something from her car, I was the ignoble one who had gotten caught. The pariah of shortsighted choreography.

Mrs. Bornstein told my mother who later told me that these were some of her favorite times during the day, when the two of us left the classroom to take care of the endless procession of details and administrative task that make up the life of a teacher. Apparently, when you separated me from my peers, I was a sweet, polite, precocious youngster who talked to Mrs. Bornstein like an adult.

Talking was something I was good at. I finished up the 6th grade with 27 conduct marks, meaning that over the course of ten months, a teacher recognized my exceptional gifts for disrupting class and ignoring directions. If conduct marks were grades, I was the Salutatorian, bested only by Lauren, who broke 30.

I came in 2nd in the spelling bee because I misspelled “Leviticus.” I added an extra “c”: “Levicticus.” That “c” stands for “C’mon, you idiot” or “cad.” I’ve never entered a spelling bee since.

I was always in a pickle, but sometimes, it wasn’t my fault. Out on the playground one day, I found a tomato hornworm moth caterpillar that resembled a bright green hotdog with white stripes. I was carrying this prize around on a stick and showing it to people. Making the girls say, “Oooh, gross,” was passion of mine then, and still is, really. The whistle blew, and recess was over. What to do? Mrs. Bornstein was walking in front of me on our way back into the portable. I was in the middle of scheming how to smuggle the caterpillar inside the classroom when she turned, saw what I was carrying, and said, “Put it down, Austin.”

I should have just dropped the stick and the caterpillar along with it. That was have been the shortcut. Instead, I held onto the stick and tried to sling the caterpillar off of it. That little booger had a good grip. I shook the stick a little harder. Then, as in all those moments that don’t go according to plan, time snapped into slow motion. The caterpillar finally flew off the stick doing somersaults in the air. Higher, higher, forward, forward—it landed on Mrs. Bornstein’s shoulder. She felt it and looked at her shoulder. She then let out a scream that chilled my blood. I never heard a dying horse, but I think it would sound like my 6th grade teacher with a green striped hotdog on her shoulder.

How did this happen? I was trying to do exactly what she’d asked. Naturally, she didn’t believe a word of it.

O Cold Silence of the Heavens!

My younger sister started at David Lipscomb Middle School that year. One of the bullies in my grade, Carter, started picking on her, nothing mean, just a little flirtation. Guess who got to tell him to stop? This guy. My mom told me that I needed to stick up for my sister and protect her, so the next day at school, I walked up to Carter and said, “Stop talking to my sister. She doesn’t like it.” He was so surprised that he just stared at me for a few seconds before he responded, with a touch of sheepishness, “Okay.” That was the end of it. Phew.

I wasn’t a bully, but I also wasn’t a poster child. On the one hand, I made high enough scores on the standardized tests that my teachers told my parents how special I was. On the other hand, when David refused to let me borrow a pencil during Mrs. Anderson’s Geography class, I grabbed a handful of his shirt and yanked him out of his desk.

Of course, Mrs. Anderson came back in the room right as he was getting up off the floor.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded.

And I was in trouble. Again.

It was in Mrs. Anderson’s class that I cheated the second and last time of my academic career. We took a short quiz on our homework, some pages from Island of the Blue Dolphins. I couldn’t remember the dimensions of the island, so I took out my paperback book, found the answer, and wrote it on my paper.

When I got my quiz back, I’d made a perfect score. Then, I started to feel guilty. I erased the answer I’d looked up then wrote in my first answer. I walked up to Mrs. Anderson’s desk and showed her my quiz.

“You counted this one right, but I think it’s wrong.”

She smiled and replied, “My mistake is your gain.”

This made me feel even worse, but I was a coward. I never told her the truth. Maybe I should give her a call today and let her know.

Dancing on my desk, lame comebacks, Conduct Marks, puberty, caterpillars, bullies, my moral decay—none of these was as bad as betrayal—getting pushed under the bus by one of my closest friends. Let’s call him Andy.

On an ordinary day, after taking a test, Andy and I walked to Harding Hall to use the restroom. We’re standing side-by-side at two urinals, and I turn to ask him how he thought he did. He said that he thought he did okay.

We finished up, washed our hands, and went back to class.

Over the next few days Andy spread a rumor that he caught me looking at his penis while we were peeing. This, of course, was ridiculous. All I had done is ask a run-of-the-mill question about the test we’d both taken.

I became the new scapegoat. If I had a dollar for every time one of my former friends walked up and with a sneer called me “gay” or “faggot” or “homo,” I would be rich right now. I could have started a college fund for myself and gone to school anywhere in the country. I don’t remember getting my feelings hurt by the names themselves. Middle school kids are unoriginal and predictable with their villification. They have small vocabularies, and after the first few skirmishes, you know what to expect. I think I just got sick of trying to ignore them. Even insults lacking cleverness will wear down your patience and poise after while.

I confronted Andy about the whole situation. At first, he denied any involvement. Idiot. We were the only two people in the bathroom. Later, he admitted that he’d told some people.

“But that’s ridiculous, Andy. You know very well that nothing of the sort happened. All I did was ask you about the test.”

The amazing thing? He agreed. His justification for what he’d done was that he needed to take some of the heat off himself. In a truth-or-dare game a few weekends before, he’d admitted to masturbating. Our two friends who were also present lost no time in violating his confidence and telling everybody. Their motivation? A smoke screen. Both of them had also discovered autoeroticism, but kept this fact from Andy. They diverted attention from themselves by betraying him. He made up a story about me to give our classmates something else to talk about.

Knowing why did little to make me feel better. After awhile, people found something else to talk about, and I was never able to monetize all the jabs about homosexuality. Too bad. I hated urinals for years, especially those troughs you sometimes come across in stadiums and locker rooms. Stare straight ahead. Focus on the boogers people have wiped on the tiles. What do they resemble? A hippo? Pamela Anderson?

I suppose 6th grade settled into a routine. I got a mild concession in gym class. I had a cute girlfriend named Christina who I’d met at the pool the previous summer. She was in the fifth grade and froze up every time I talked to her. Our infrequent phone conversations were filled with awkward pauses, so I made a list of questions to ask her. My older sister found this list and thought this was the funniest, dorkiest thing she’d ever seen. Whatever.

I want to gather every middle schooler in the world in a giant arena and give a speech:

“I’m sorry. I hated middle school too. Let me give you some advice. 1) Trying to be cool is the biggest waste of time imaginable. I wish you’d take that to heart and just be yourselves, but you won’t. 2) Don’t spread rumors about people. They’re rarely true. Don’t be cruel. I don’t care if people have been cruel to you, don’t be cruel. 3) Only girls have menstrual cycles. 4) If you must insult someone, do it with style. Never, never, never sing an insult, especially not one based on a cover song by Big Mountain. 5) Stand up to bullies. 6) Don’t cheat. Cheating makes you stupid. 7) Puberty does end. Ask your parents about sex, not your classmates. 9) Violence is self-perpetuating. It accomplishes nothing. People hurt you because they themselves are hurting, but that’s no excuse. 10) Middle school is like a snapshot of the world in all its messiness, ugliness, hurt, and beauty. Without Jesus, we are hopeless. Thank you.”

[I exit the stage, shiver, and offer up a prayer of thanks for making it out of the arena without being killed and roasted on a spit by middle schoolers.]

Jim’s package

I am fortunate to come from a family of verbal blunderers.

My mom has often brought laughter to dinner conversations without ever intending to make a joke.

Her younger sister Amy was born the year my mom married my dad. Amy is only about six years older than me and has always been more like a cousin, but she is definitely my mom’s sister, as the following story illustrates.

We were celebrating my brother-in-law Jim’s birthday with my mom’s side of the family at P.F. Chang’s.

Jim was sitting in the middle of our big table on the opposite side from me. Different family members assembled a few cards and a wrapped gift in front of him.

Amy was sitting a few seats to his right.

There was a brief lull in conversation.

You know the kind. They happen for a number of reasons. Someone makes an awkward or offensive remark. Two people are angry with one another, and this conflict balloons into a palpable discomfort. Or, perhaps, nothing at all is wrong, and the momentary silence signifies a simple shift in a number of conversations, all at the same time. When I was younger, I remember other kids pinning superstitions to this kind of pregnant pause—a ghost passed through the room, an earthworm died in France, an angel got its wings. I believe in supernatural occurrences like miracles, but I don’t think two seconds of silence in a room mean that a sherpa in Tibet got indigestion from unpasteurized yak’s milk at the same time a 23-year-old gas station attendant outside of Glasgow found some euros in an old jacket. C’mon, people.

In an Asian fusion chain restaurant on West End Avenue in Nashville, Tennessee, my aunt Amy scanned our faces and offered her explanation for those two seconds of silence:

“We were all just sitting around staring at Jim’s package!”

I, for one, was doing nothing of the sort.

Amy’s observation created another two or three seconds of silence before we all burst into laughter.

Amy was confused.

“Think about what you just said.”

Her double entendre finally sank in, and she turned red.

My family isn’t one that passes around lots of dirty jokes and sexual innuendo, so Jim’s birthday was a very special occasion indeed.